pjbrunet

For work on Android I really need native split-screen support. Samsung-specific "multi window" is not a solution.

A proper window tiler would be even better.

Also the interface needs slim UI controls and slim window decorations, basically a "pro mode" theme-switcher for larger screens and mouse/keyboard users.

I never thought of it that way. However, I think companies would be fine (for a while) with all their government contracts and lawyers. I get the impression the "free market" doesn't really apply to big corporations.

One advantage corps have is teamwork. (Maybe I need to get in on some kind of mastermind group.)

I'm curious, what kind of data transfer rate do you need to get a solid call through? In the past when I tried to make WIFI calls through Google Voice "Hangout Dialer" the call quality was poor.

Like looking over Shakespeare's shoulder, hoping to absorb some genius through osmosis ;-)

Think about the market you're interested in and shape your brand to fit that market. Part of that: use the right keywords. The jobs will come to you. If you don't tell people what you want to do, how will they know? If you want to work in eCommerce, you need to have "eCommerce" on all of your profiles. Pick the job title you want and start using it everywhere. I recommend you dive into LinkedIn, it's easy to find work on there without emailing or calling anyone. All you have to do is build your network and work on your "Summary" section. Here's a basic LinkedIn roadmap (work in progress) http://linkedexpertsalliance.com/topic/how-to-find-fresh-new... If you use my method, let me know how it worked for you.

Why ask here? Think about what you're asking, maybe there's a better place find your answer.

You have great advice here. This is how I do it. Create todo.txt and put everything you need to do in there. Make sure it's reasonably comprehensive and then start crossing things off. A productivity book will tell you the same thing in 200+ pages. If you save the finished items, you may be amazed by what you have accomplished. I had an app for this but I found editing todo.txt is faster. Apps like Trello don't have plaintext export. So let's say you finish to-do work for a client, with a text file you can just cut-paste the completed work into Square, Paypal, spreadsheet, whatever the client prefers. I've tried dozens of applications, but none of them will do the work for you ;-) Todo.txt seems antiquated but I found it's easier to make many edits quickly. I indent everything, similar to writing software. This helps me to see the big picture. I have todo.txt on a remote server so all my devices have access to it (no need to "sync") also automated backups that I control.

Those people are smart but there's a textbook to follow, a clear path to graduation. I didn't mean to start a war of the professions, I'm sure there's already a Hacker News thread for that.

My point was, you can teach yourself a half-dozen programming languages, operating systems, databases... (which is inevitable for most developers) or you could have spent that time collecting diplomas in academia. This is not really a new concept, I read it somewhere else. Any profession that demands a lot of ongoing learning, I think people will quit because the effort may not seem worth it.

I agree you have to learn the "right" things but that takes experience and strategy. That's an interesting aspect of all of this. When everybody says "iPhone" you might bet on Android. Everyone says "Google Glass" and you might bet on Unity. If you have a crystal ball, maybe you're the next Warren Buffett ;-)

Not sure why you got downvoted because you're absolutely right. The hard thing is the commitment required.

It's only hard once you realize the commitment required, partly due to the pace of innovation, the depth and breadth of information available and the fact you're competing with the entire world, not just people in your city/state, and there's nobody regulating the influx of competition. A significant chunk of your life will be spent looking at a screen and there's a chance you could end up with a crippling case of carpal tunnel. It's a sacrifice and most people won't make it. In the same amount of time you RTFM, you could have learned to be a brain surgeon, a rocket scientist and a lawyer. And once you have it all figured out, half of everything you learned gets flushed down the toilet because there's some new platform. If you think it's hard and you're not enjoying yourself, don't even bother, there's easier ways to make money.

Just realized the problem, I had been launching Iceweasel from Openbox instead of the CLI.

Somehow obmenu is launching an older version of Iceweasel (version 13) and I never noticed till now :-/

If I launch "iceweasel" from a terminal I get version 31.

Oops!

Thanks for all the help.

I just upgraded to Debian 8 and I'll try mozilla.debian.net after I get my desktop sorted.

I upgraded to Wheezy yesterday, I thought everything was up to date. I had "deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ wheezy-backports iceweasel-release" in my sources.list. My Iceweasel user agent at this moment says "Firefox/13.0"!

Nothing refused to work, just nag messages on various websites. But Firebug, the highest I could go was something like version 1.5 and the older versions starting junking up my context menu. Figured it was time to upgrade and start a Hacker News rant ;-)

Maybe I could still get Aurora with Wheezy? No idea what version Aurora is...

http://mozilla.debian.net/

I have been down this road before, it's just a pain.

Maybe it's because I have Debian stable.

At this moment I'm upgrading Debian to Jessie which according to this https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/ is still "testing".

Typically I would just wait for the next stable version of Debian but for web development I want to get the latest Firebug.

For me, Facebook = distant relatives.

That's it.

Todo: Get extended family on email list and delete Facebook.

Good to know. That was so long ago, it's possible I just had PC-based lists and forgot there were other lists.

What did you use for that? POVRay?

"I kind of wish there was a post-ANSI art scene, maybe using unicode, or encoded HTML <div> tags or something equally crazy and inventive."

If you look at the early issues of WIRED magazine, I would say that's the post-ANSI aesthetic, but that's just my opinion. 1994 and the Internet really killed off the BBS thing fast, otherwise I think Ripterm (or something like it) would have replaced ANSI because modems were getting faster http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPS... For me, 1994 was switching from primarily Pascal, TheDraw & DeluxePaint to HTML, Photoshop & Java.

As far as the demo scene, I was not really part of that but I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that was based more on the C64/Amiga which had powerful graphics/music capabilities way before the PC. So I would guess the demo scene came first and the ANSI "BBS" art was more a product of the IBM PC-compatible world. I remember going to an Amiga club meeting and a few of these guys had big boxes of disks and they would just trade like that, they had limited Internet access through the local university but they didn't have a BBS.

I offered to host their MODs (Amiga music modules) on my BBS. Because of that, I had the largest collection of MOD music in the area. It was like Napster before Napster ;-)

Mirage, that sounds familiar. My impression was ACiD and iCE were the two top groups and you had to be pretty good to get in. Everything was tenebristic because of the way the ansi colors mixed (had no idea what tenebrism was) and the subject matter was almost entirely games/comics characters.

OK I see what you mean, it's in the pack but not rendering. I don't even remember what that is.

-Z-Trasher

I was not into the warez scene but I had some classmates who were. I did ansis for Dragonworld and Asylum, and maybe Sanctuary. The ansi scene was separate but associated with the warez scene (I think the cracking groups paid to have ansis made) if that makes any sense.

I was the sysop of Zap! which was PD/Shareware files, message networks and door games. A BBS was a rudimentary CMS that was like a social network for your neighborhood. If you knew ansi you could customize the interface, especially if you had the source code. At one point I had the Telegard source code (Pascal) and made a lot of UI modifications to it.

I was in GRiM around ~1992 and an iCE trial artist ~1993 ;-) But I'm probably not in any of these packs. I didn't make it into iCE though, I heard there was some kind of Canadian merger and the management changed.

I first discovered all these ansis on Sanctuary in 305. I never met Tempus Thales but I think we lived in the same neighborhood. I got enough positive feedback from my ansis that I went on to get a BFA in studio art.

I was just thinking yesterday, it would be cool if I could select a block of code and then pull a slider and walk back and forth just that one block of code while leaving everything else untouched. Anyway, we're way off on a tangent.

The assumption underlying the whole article: property values rise because a neighborhood is "cool" and appealing, because artists live there. (And then artists must leave because they can't afford rent.) There is data showing that's true, but I don't think there's any general consensus yet. (So more people can understand what the article is talking about.) Rising property values, the cool factor, the vibe, beautiful people, whatever you want to call the thing that attracts people to an artsy area. I called it "quality of life" but yes an abstract concept, I was deliberately vague because that's hard to define. I think people do care, which is why they spend good money to move to these neighborhoods. Also the artists care because they want credit for what they helped create.

Revolutionary, sure. I just think it solves a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. Like if we could prevent cancer, we wouldn't need revolutionary cancer medication.

If I go into Google Docs, I can watch different people edit a document at the same time and nobody is really thinking about version control. I think software development should be the same way.

- If there's more data showing that artists help improve a community's quality of life, I think that's important data to share. The author figures that's a given (and I agree) but I don't think the general public gets it yet. If you roll out the red carpet, create spaces for artists, treat artists with respect, you might attract more artists. (Instead of harassing them, which is common.) However, what kind of artists will you get? You need a strategy.

- There's the whole issue of the Internet that the article doesn't really cover. Not that long ago, New York artists had to wait for the latest styles to get from Paris to New York by ship. Today, location is not as much an issue. If your work is remarkable and you can get a good photo uploaded to the Internet, who cares where you are? New York artists are a dime a dozen. If you're somewhere exotic, that could work to your advantage. Years ago I read an article about galleries closing in favor of more intimate, private viewing spaces where you could make an appointment to see and purchase something you saw online. (Assuming you need to see it in person before purchasing.) So the fancy street address is no longer as important to sell art. And Art Basel (and similar events) make New York less relevant too.

"I secretly hate programming, debugging, programmers, git, the whole enterprise - just seems so stupid & futile."

Git seems like an evolutionary step tovards something more intuitive and efficient.

I would move on to starting the next business, but maybe you need the steady paycheck? You started company A, company B will be even better.

On a related tangent, I would love to know how someone in his shoes could get crowdfunded to start a new business. What do you advise? (Maybe I should start a new thread and ask.)

Depends what they're doing. With a Linode + LEMP stack you can serve millions of users. I'd say MySQL is usually the bottleneck but if you have time to perfect your software, there's no telling how many users you could serve from a good VPS account. Don't get caught up in the hype. Cost of the hardware is not really prohibitive. Finding someone that knows what to buy and what to do with it, good luck!