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Comment: Reality Check (Score 1) 442

by pvera (#36209612) Attached to: Should a Web Startup Go Straight To the Cloud?

1. Get used to the idea that your development and production environments are two distinct animals to be kept apart on purpose. Using one machine to develop and to host the production service is a recipe for disaster.

2. Stop using the cloud as a magical entity that holds everything that is online. You can go to many web hosts and pick up a decent IIS and SQL Server hosting plan for just a few bucks per month. If you build your solution so it can allow multiple server instances, you can always move it to the Azure Service or Amazon's cloud service.

3. "Hoped to attract" is not going to cut it. You need to have market research and a lot more before you can even talk numbers, otherwise you are down to a "cool idea that I hope catches on."

4. Offload your non-programming duties on somebody else. After many years programming, I have found that I was consistently miserable when my job description included responsibility for the infrastructure. It doesn't mean you stop learning about the infrastructure, it is just that you just concentrate on what you are building and somebody else is stuck keeping the servers alive.

Comment: Re:Well It Sure Set the Bar for Creepy (Score 1) 169

by pvera (#36193778) Attached to: Massive LinkedIn IPO Raises Dotcom Bubble Concerns

The part of LinkedIn that creeps me out is whenever (strangers) people I have had zero professional contact with contact me out of the blue to add them to my network. Or friends that are out of my professional life context annoyed that I won't add them. I am a programmer, I don't mind adding other programmers, project managers I have worked with in the past, that kind of thing, but adding a cousin or a friend that work in unrelated fields is just stupid. It completely defeats the purpose of the site.

Comment: Re:And Oh the Formats to Support! (Score 1) 207

by pvera (#36192364) Attached to: Ebooks Now Outselling Print Books At Amazon

Not only that, but it is multi-platform. I have used both the OSX and Windows versions extensively and both are very nice. I doubt the Linux version is any different than these two.

It is a great app, the developer is very active (some say to a fault) and he doesn't blast you with donation begging screens every other click. It is also very simple to use, of the half-dozen Kindle users I know that also use Calibre none yet has complained about it.

Comment: Re:Nice, but... (Score 4, Insightful) 77

by pvera (#36056070) Attached to: Micro-SD Card Slot Abused As VGA-Port

Because it opens the possibilities of other "unexpected" hacks that people can't visualize simply by looking at the available ports for a given device (not just the one in the article). If you can plug that thing into the microSD port and make it talk to VGA with 10 resistors and a bit of software, it means you can probably use microSD as a connector on other devices knowing that the connector and board are not only dirt cheap but open.

Comment: Re:Step 1 (Score 4, Insightful) 480

by pvera (#36040200) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Becoming a Network Administrator?

I don't understand why this is modded funny, it is the correct plan of action assuming the move was voluntary. If this is a programmer that is trying to bail out of a sinking ship and this was the only job available at equivalent pay, then it is a completely different issue.

The biggest red flag is the "unlimited budget" that doesn't cover hiring a properly trained network admin, instead pushing him/her to learn the whole thing from scratch at the same pay.

Comment: I always wanted to be a PhD (Score 1) 487

by pvera (#35940370) Attached to: Reform the PhD System or Close It Down

Until I actually worked side-by-side with a few. Never in my life have I worked with anyone that (at least on paper) was a world authority in a very minuscule field of study, while at the same time showing close to no knowledge in pretty much everything else around them. It was depressing because I always assumed a PhD would be a really smart person that was an expert in that one particular thing, when in reality it felt like dealing with an idiot savant. Worse, all of this additional education resulted in no impact on their paychecks.

Out of the five we had on staff at one time or another, the two that I consider to be real experts in their fields couldn't be trusted to perform the most basic computing tasks, and the other three were pretty much stupid all around. I am talking "what do you mean I am not supposed to put my critical files in the recycle bin?" kind of people. How the hell can somebody under 40 in this country become a PhD in a computationally intensive biological research field without learning how to use a computer?

Comment: Re:I'm using the 105Mbit service and the cap is re (Score 4, Insightful) 372

by pvera (#35839960) Attached to: Comcast's 105MBit Service Comes With Data Cap

All it takes is two Netflix streaming users in one household. Right before the cap started Comcast opened a reporting page to show us our average usage for the previous three months. I had hit the cap on all three months, even if for month three I cut down my torrent usage down to zero. That means we hit our cap just watching streamed video. I ditched Comcast (22/8, not that it ever performed at that level) for FIOS (25/25 for $5 per month, always performs beautifully) and never looked back.

Comment: Re:Still people will complain (Score 1) 210

by pvera (#35796792) Attached to: Amazon To Offer Ad-Supported Kindle

I have a wall 6 bookcases wide, 6 shelves each, crammed with books. Once we got the first two Kindles we realized that in just a few months we had replaced the contents of one full bookcase. Out of the 6 full bookcases, less than one full bookcase can be considered must-keep books, either because they are unique, they have maybe a dedication, etc. The other 5 bookcases are hundreds of pounds worth of novels with a paper value of close to zero, and they take space, and they need to be kept clean, and they need to be protected against insects, humidity, etc.

And to answer your question on why spend so much money buying and re-buying gadgets? Because I can. I am willing to spend money to gain convenience. I really like not having to chase down for books anymore. All my favorite authors are selling on the Amazon Kindle market, and 99% of the time their prices are reasonable. Usually when somebody gets greedy and overcharges there's a gaggle of people on Amazon that will immediately start complaining and making noise until the prices are lowered.

Is this for everyone? Of course not. But if you are addicted to reading general fiction and you don't care about reselling your old books, a Kindle wifi is practical and very cost effective. The $114 (or what the hell, the $139 I paid for mine) is less than the cost of books and the bookshelves to hold them for even one year of my kind of reading.

Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.

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