We’re basically looking at LinkedIn (they even import your LinkedIn profile) except that you can set a price at which you would be willing to interview with a prospective employer. The idea being, maybe you are happy where you are but you’d be happy to talk about being somewhere else, though your time is valuable. (Employers, of course, already know that recruiting is an expensive undertaking . . . it is not hard to see them pony up . . .)
Apparently this is from “Peerflix refugees” so I’d peg it as “an interesting innovation that rips off an existing proven idea that is probably ahead of their ability to execute.”
I accepted the invite, to check it out but mainly so I could invite a friend who is job hunting. I figured if Powerset and Yahoo giving it a go . . .
First Impressions:
Very rough: when I declined to invite everyone I know on LinkedIn the site closed its own window.
Lame: the “invite-only preview” site is protected by a shared HTTP authentication username and password . . . then you log in.
Also Lame: you can’t view any of their web site (like “About Us”) without the HTTP authentication credentials. Amateurs!
Steals your LinkedIn profile very nicely, but requires your password. Wonder how soon LinkedIn will block them.
I don’t see why LinkedIn couldn’t just add the “set price to interview” as a feature within about two months.
Feels very much like a LinkedIn rip-off.
Snickering towards Doom: Their own “Jobs” page reads, in total: “VP of Business Development”
Doomed: The site is very slow, even as a limited preview. Methinks their engineers aren’t so great.
Actually, now I feel dirty. I’m changing my LinkedIn password . . .
“If you just want equipment you’re not ready,†Mr. Egami said in an interview. But, he added, James Freeman, the owner of the cafe, is different: “He’s invested time. He’s invested interest. He is ready.â€
“Siphon coffee is very delicate,†[James Freeman] said. “It’s sweeter and juicier, and the flavors change as the temperature changes. Sometimes it has a texture so light it’s almost moussey.â€
I have long preferred brewed coffee to espresso. That is a combination of my proletarian roots and my experience as a barista: I have a strong sense of what I want from a dry cappuccino or dry cafe-au-lait, but this sense is not easily found in a cafe, and I lack the technology to do it myself, so let us keep it simple, right?
(In Japan, siphon coffee masters carve their own paddles to fit the shape of their palms.)
Problem: You have logins to a bajillion things and that is too many unique passwords to remember. Maybe you remember a half dozen passwords, if you’re lucky, but you would prefer to have a unique password for each account so the hackers can’t get you.
One approach is to always generate a new password when you get access to a new account, and store that somewhere safe. Sticky notes on your monitor? A GPG-encrypted file with a regularly-changing hash? Either way, you have to account for what happens if someone else gets access to your password list, or you yourself can not access this password list. I am not fond of this approach.
My Tip: I suggest instead of storing passwords, you come up with a couple of ways to “hash” unique passwords depending, on say, a web site’s name.
For example, if you were really lame, and you used the password “apple” for everything, you’d make things better if instead, say, you replaced the the ‘pp’ part with the first three letters of your web site’s name.
Now, you can get a lot more creative than that, like using a non-dictionary word, mixing up letter cases and punctuation, etc.
Try a more advanced hash:
– Start with a pass-phrase “apples are delicious, I eat one every day”
– Take the last letter from each word: “sesiteyy”
– Capitalize the last half of the passphrase: “sesiTEYY”
– Stick the first three letters of the web site’s name in the middle: “sesi___TEYY”
– If the third letter you insert is a vowel, follow it with a “!” otherwise, add an “@”
– Change the first letter that you can from the substitution: a becomes a 4, e becomes a 3, i becomes a 1, and o becomes a zero
Now you get:
Yahoo: sesiy4h@TEYY
Google: sesig0o!TEYY
Amazon: sesi4ma!TEYY
MSN: sesimsn@TEYY
Apple: sesi4pp@TEYY
It is best if you have a few different schemes you can use: some web sites reject strong passwords, so having a really bad password handy is good, and some places you’ll want extra secure. For example, use a different “hash” for your bank passwords, just in case your “every day” hash is compromised.
So, a quick briefer: the girlfriend recently bought a new car, and wanted to give her old car to her brother, who lives in New York. Instead of merely shipping it, I suggested that driving it across the continent is indeed a fine undertaking, and this is what we did for Thanksgiving week, taking a southern route through Barstow, CA to Chinle, AZ to Durango, CO, and stopping to see my relatives in Pueblo, CO, her relatives in West Des Moines, IA, Thanksgiving with my folks in Chicago, and on East to spend some time with her family in New Jersey, where we also got to explore New York City together. We flew home on Virgin America Tuesday evening.
The trip itself was not easy, but you could say that we covered considerable distance in space and in heart. The gory details are a story for another time and medium. Here I share an anecdote.
The girlfriend demonstrated her cool little Eee PC to my father, who was of course impressed with the little bugger running Linux. I told him that I myself had ordered from the OLPC “Give One Get One” program and he said he had wanted to do that himself. Unfortunately, times are a little tough for his family just now and they can’t really afford it.
When we got to New Jersey, the girlfriend’s brother wanted to reimburse us for some of our travel expenses–the girlfriend and I viewed the trip as our own vacation, but the brother had budgeted something to ship the car. I thought a moment and accepted some payment, which I then turned around and sent to OLPC to ship a computer to Dad. “A gift begets a gift begets a gift . . .”
(Today happens to be Dad’s birthday, too!)
I had worried that the Give One Get One program had concluded, but according to their web site the program has been extended through December 31st, so no difficulties ordering another for Dad. Then I got another e-mail today:
Your XO laptop is on the way.
Your donated XO laptop will soon be delivered into the hands of a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda. In one of our recipient children’s own words, “I want to thank you people because you had given us the laptop and I love it so much.” Your generosity will make a world of difference in these children’s lives, and in the future of their respective countries.
Thanks to your early action, your XO laptop is scheduled to be delivered between December 14 and December 24. Our “first day” donors are our highest priority and we are making every effort to deliver your XO laptop(s) as soon as possible. We will send you an update upon shipment.
I have been following the “One Laptop per Child” project for a while now, formerly known as the “Hundred Dollar Laptop” project, though right now the price comes in closer to $200 . . . in November I am looking forward to getting my hands on one with the “Give One Get One” program. I enjoy following developments on the “OLPC News” blog. Today I learned that Microsoft is scrambling resources to shoehorn its normally-bloated Windows Operating System onto this lightweight gem. That makes me smile because it is usually the case that computers like the laptop I am typing on right now are “Designed for Windows(R) XP” or the like, and it is the Open Source community that must scramble to reverse-engineer and build drivers for the new hardware.
Anyway, I was just looking at a post that suggests that since the OLPC is rather ambitious, technologically and culturally, they have no qualms about redesigning the keyboard: no more CAPS LOCK but instead a mode to shift between Latin alphabet and the local alphabet. Also, perhaps, a “View Source” key: which could perhaps allow kids to poke under the Python hood and check out the code that is running underneath. My goodness!
I’d like to chime in with a “me too” . . . sure most people don’t find much use for the hood latch on a car, but we’re glad it is there: it allows us to get in if we need to. For the smaller number of people who DO want to play under the hood, the hood release is invaluable. We all learn differently and and those who are going to get into computers ought to be given the access and encouragement to learn.
As for code complexity: you can still view the source on this very page and understand much of it. I understand that Python is constrained to 80 columns and is highly highly readable.
As for breaking things: EXACTLY!! The kids ought to have access to break the code on their computers. Rather than turning them in to worthless bricks: worst case you reinstall the OS! Talk about a LEARNING experience!! Anyway, programmers use revision control: hopefully an XO could provide some rollback mechanism. :)
It should also be good for long-term security … people will learn that computers execute code, and code can have flaws an exploits. If the kids can monkey with their own code, you KNOW they’re going to have some early transformative learning experience NOT to paste in “cool” code mods from the Class Hacker. ;)
A troop of lone-tein (riot police comprised of paid thugs) protected by the military trucks, raided the monastery with 200 studying monks. They systematically ordered all the monks to line up and banged and crushed each one’s head against the brick wall of the monastery. One by one, the peaceful, non resisting monks, fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Then, they tore off the red robes and threw them all in the military trucks (like rice bags) and took the bodies away.
The head monk of the monastery, was tied up in the middle of the monastery, tortured , bludgeoned, and later died the same day, today. Tens of thousands of people gathered outside the monastery, warded off by troops with bayoneted rifles, unable to help their helpless monks being slaughtered inside the monastery. Their every try to forge ahead was met with the bayonets.
When all is done, only 10 out of 200 remained alive, hiding in the monastery. Blood stained everywhere on the walls and floors of the monastery.
There are some pretty nasty photographs on that page, and video of civilians falling to gunfire.
Images of saffron-robed monks leading throngs of people along the streets of Rangoon have been seeping out of a country famed for its totalitarian regime and repressive control of information.
The pictures are sometimes grainy and the video footage shaky – captured at great personal risk on mobile phones – but each represents a powerful statement of political dissent.
[. . .]
Burmese-born blogger Ko Htike, based in London, has transformed his once-literary blog into a virtual news agency and watched page views rise almost tenfold.
He publishes pictures, video and information sent to him by a network of underground contacts within the country.
“I have about 10 people inside, in different locations. They send me their material from internet cafes, via free hosting pages or sometimes by e-mail,” he told the BBC News website.
“All my people are among the Buddhists, they are walking along with the march and as soon as they get any images or news they pop into internet cafes and send it to me,” he said.
[. . .]
Reporters without Borders describe how a guide for cyber-dissidents provided to young Burmese was seized upon, copied and feverishly disseminated among a growing group of the young, politically active and computer-literate.
Bloggers are teaching others to use foreign-hosted proxy sites – such as your-freedom.net and glite.sayni.net – to view blocked sites and tip-toe virtually unseen through cyberspace, swapping tricks and links on their pages.
I really like to see people taking power for themselves, and I find it all the more gratifying to see the Internet used as a tool in this process.
I’m sure the Chinese government is watching this process very carefully. The BBC article indicates that the government used to be more effective in its Internet censorship efforts: (more…)
If you have a couple of hours free, I recommend sitting back and watching this video of Randy Pausch’s “final” lecture at CMU. He is a smart, talented, ambitious, and accomplished professor who seems to know how to give a lecture, and on this occasion he delivers a lecture some months before he is expected to die of cancer.
He isn’t talking about cancer or dying. He is talking about his life and his advice on how to live life well. I have no commentary; I enjoyed this special moment a great deal and I believe that it is worth sharing.
I was dining out with coworkers, in a group of four. These colleagues were nobody specific: just extras fabricated from spare parts in the subconscious. The topic drifted to the subject of building rapport, and how light physical touches can build a connection with someone, but you might be careful about that in the work place. I reached across the table to brush my colleague’s wrist, and he leaned back, grinning. My hand came to a stop before it would have come over his dinner plate. I smiled back, “and this is about the line where I would have invaded your personal space,” and withdrew.
I headed to the bathroom, where there was a short line waiting outside the men’s room. One or two guys turned back, not wanting to stand in line, and thus making it shorter. I was confident that the line would move quickly, and in a moment I was attending to my business at a urinal. (more…)
A: This isn’t for everyone, but here is the deal I am on right now:
$14/mo for Netflix
$12/mo for DSL------------------
$26/mo Video+Internet
This lets me watch a few movies each week, and when I really want to watch TV I can download the “Daily Show” with the commercials already edited out from BitTorrent. Since adopting this plan I have gotten more into the “shopping for my own food and cooking it myself” channel, the “tidying up and arranging my own apartment” channel, the low-key reality show “can dannyman take care of these flowers” and some call-in shows featuring friends and family. I’m considering some plus packages like “my new pet” and maybe “learn a musical instrument” but I haven’t even gotten in to the last one I tried: “Mandarin Chinese”
One of the big drawbacks to this approach is that there’s not much of a channel guide to help me keep track of all the possibilities, and good luck finding a universal remote! On the other hand, the commercials are pretty rare and innocuous, so you don’t need a DVR.
I was slow in getting away from Pueblo. The Colorado side of the family isn’t a hurried bunch and especially with Dad in the hospital nobody but me felt any haste in leaving. “Only the weekend,” I demure. Dad’s second stroke arrived just as I went to my first lunch with new co-workers on Monday. After not-working for nearly five months, I had selected this fateful day to get started at a new job?
He’s doing pretty well, for a guy who can’t talk and who requires 24-hour nursing assistance, a guy who has several weeks of therapy at the hospital before he gets to return home, and years more of therapy ahead. (more…)
So, sometimes I talk to other single folk who would rather not be single and there’s whining about what a drag it is dating all these random people and how scuzzy / weird / annoying / random is online dating and how much of a pain meeting people blah blah blah. I figure if I want to be not-single then I have to learn to enjoy the art of being single. You need to have hobbies, right? So, writer-type that I am I love ever-rewriting personals ads. (more…)
A photo of Tunji around 2004, that I stole from Tim.
Tunji was a friend of mine back at Allen Hall. He came to school from Nigeria when he was sixteen, so he was always younger than everyone else. He never lost his deep accent or dark sense of humor. A one-of-a-kind kid who liked to play chess online and was studying to become a Doctor. I don’t know if he made his MD or not . . .
Tunji was truly a one-of-a-kind man, whose uniqueness was only magnified by his distinctive accent. I never met his family, but I can only imagine how hard it is for your intelligent son and future doctor to die suddenly, and far from home. . . I have great sorrow for his kin.
I will update with additional information or reaction as I learn more . . .
The News-Gazette.com: Autopsy: Tunji Drowned also narrates more about the fatal accident:
“They had been out there all afternoon and were there into the evening. Apparently (Mr. Toogun) had been in the water in the afternoon with a life belt on. At this time, he was on the boat with friends and lost his balance and fell into the water,” Green said.
Contrary to earlier reported information, friends noticed immediately that he fell in.
“We noticed after a few seconds that Tunji did not surface and immediately six or seven of us dived in to attempt to find him. It was not until 15 to 20 minutes later that we did,” said fellow student and friend Lauren Jakubowski in an e-mail to The News-Gazette.
Tim Skirvin: Tunji Toogun Album, Tim is compiling of photographs of Tunji.
“The coldest Winter I ever knew was a summer in San Francisco.”
It has been overcast, chilly and wet in my neighborhood throughout July. Monday the sun came out for about an hour in the morning, then again at sunset. I ran out of the house when that happened but it was too late in the day to get much sun. The midwesterner in me reminds myself that this is a temporary and “symbolic” Winter, without the snow. It is just weird the way the seasons work when you live adjacent to the Pacific Ocean.
(No, I’m not actually depressed. Well, this gray does make me blue, and that is why I am conscientious about getting out doors any time the clouds break. I am supposed to be starting work next week, so I should be getting more sun during the week.)
