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Comment I know the guy (Score 0) 685

by anidiot (#24009315) Attached to: Some Developers Leaving Google For Microsoft
He is a friend of mine and in fact very smart and objective. The fact that Google didn't manage to hold on to him is a really worrying tell-tale about it. The fact that Blogspot is free means nothing here -- why not use GOOGs platform and AdSense to generate ad revenue from meaningful commentary? The fact that GOOGs management is worse than MSFTs doesn't mean one should refuse to make use and money off of GOOGs properties if GOOG lays them bare before you!
Security

Submission + - Are there Open Source ways to e-sign Acrobat PDFs?

Submitted by
anidiot
anidiot writes: "In my international consulting, I've had to quickly sign and return a PDF document. I've finally broken down and got Acrobat Professional which allows to electronically sign, and created a signature as a combination of the graphical image I drew in Photoshop and an identity Acrobat created. It looks good and surely beats a faxed or scanned image. The question is, automatic crypto-verification of these signatures works only when they are certified by a trusted server. Now Adobe points to its Certified Document Services providers. Among the four listed there, only one, GlobalSign, has prices listed on the site — starting at $395 a year with up to 500 signatures. It includes a USB token. Others simply invite to "Call Us," indicating what prices could be. All this is sprinkled with "enterprise solutions" speak. Is there an Open Source way to PDF document signing? PDFs can be created and read with Open Source tools. Yet maintaining a trusted authority requires an investment. Making hardware USB keys takes money. Is Open Source capable of supporting such a system? Notice that we need specifically a solution which would work with Acrobat, just GPGing the whole file doesn't cut it."
Software

Submission + - Does Organizing Software Really Help?

Submitted by
anidiot
anidiot writes: "Recently I got MoneyWell to budget my finances and TimeSlice to track my time. I'm trying to implement GTD in OmniFocus and iCal, and I have a hosted Zimbra account to which I try to sync all of it. I've spent more time fixing syncing issues, such as CalDAV supported in Zimbra 5, than doing either the planning or the work. My Outlook-bound friends spend lots of time organizing hierarchical folders reflecting their stressful Microsoft lives, spreading emails from bosses across them, bucketing and rebucketing them, linking with todo items and calendars. My Amazon friends survive hundreds of emails a day coloring those from the bosses, creating Outlook rules, etc. Do you find software for organizing events, todo items, and planning generally helpful, — or taking more time and complicating things? Is it ultimately a way to stay glued to the screen or sip coffee with a MacBook "planning" instead of just doing it — calling, running errands, cleaning the garage, programming, etc.? Does software like OmniFocus or TimeSlice or MoneyWell actually improve your quality of life?"
Enlightenment

Submission + - How can we Manage our Minds? (mindeconomy.com)

Submitted by
anidiot
anidiot writes: "A colleague at Amazon once asked on a list, "is there a tool to turn off Google News"? And a wise elder answered, "Yes: it's called the will power." We're prone to distraction and information overflow. PDA users spend more time on syncing issues than on entering data, and prioritization techniques take more time than sorting out the actual priorities. Tools like MindMaps and OmniFocus exist, but probably provide more eye candy than actual improvement. How do you, as an IT professional, cope with organizing actionable information such as todo lists? How do you balance exploration versus exploitation — e.g., learning Erlang or OCaml instead of programming in C++ and then doing the job faster and having more fun doing (and less hassle maintaining) it, as a positive sidetrack, or spending weeks on hacking Mephisto instead of blogging in boring WordPress, as a negative distraction? How can you increase the feeling of accomplishment by the end of the day, thanks to — or despite, or regardless of — the tools you use, and not feel guilty about learning Lisp or Haskell instead of hacking .Net? A researcher at Dartmouth College would like to generalize the techniques which actually work in the real world of computer technology, calling the methods of saving yourself from braindamage Mind Economy. What other insights can you share for making your mind work and feel better when dealing with information flows?"

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