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Before I started college, I pretty much had two directions I wanted to go. Either go to college(for CS) or earn a Master Electricians license. I went with the former, however I sometimes wish I had gone the other direction.

Soooooo.... The manual job for me would have been an Electrician. I have friends that chose this route and are doing very well for themselves now. Good pay, make your own hours, potential to start your own business, etc. Manual labor in my opinion is extremely underrated, especially when it comes to trade related work. College is pushed so hard to high schoolers these days, that nobody considers alternative paths. Just like earning a college degree, I think you can lead a good life and possibly become extremely successful applying your skills to learning a trade.


Ask your local SysAdmin; you can do ok without a degree even without going into 'the trades'


I prefer my Apple Time Capsule. Wireless backup, runs in the background whenever my MBP is up, fixed up front cost, and all my data stays on my own network.


The largest IE6 population work wise is the US Government and they have little to no intention of upgrading to anything else anytime soon.

I'm currently stuck in the hell of developing web applications for government contracts that are targeted to IE6. For example... No multi css class support in IE6, which kills lots of JS libs. Horrible stuff.


You MIGHT be right, but I do web application development for government, and I was recently surprised when my new laptop was delivered with IE8 on the standard image.

For this particular agency, EDS is their GSS provider, so if EDS is incorporating IE8 into their ESA image, I wouldn't expect that it's too far off at other agencies they provide general support services for.

Of course, now I've got to make all the apps I've written work in IE6 AND IE8, alongside Firefox, which they're also piloting. I'm pleased at their progress, while staying wary of all the work it's going to bring my way.


That's promising to hear. I worked IT for a large government contractor for years and it often took long amounts of time to roll out new images to the whole company. Considering the average lease time of 3 years, a full IE8 rollout could certainly take time.

I was especially surprised to hear about the piloting of Firefox. Is there a site somewhere to keep up on technology rollouts across the different US Gov't agencies? Or at least the ones EDS provides support for?


It's probably 'sensitive' information, as knowledge of the underlying tech gives the bad guys a guide on what to target, or at least that would be the ISSO friendly answer.

I don't know of anything that trends across gov, but if you had tie-ins with DOD, they'd probably give you the answer for that, as most of the other agencies I've dealt with sort of fall in line with them.


Agreed. Deleted.


Not directly startup related, but the Boston Ruby group is pretty active. http://bostonrb.org


I was just thinking the same thing. 14 on Slicehost and only 1 on Linode seems like an odd ratio considering the similarities of the services provided and price point.

Maybe its because Slicehost offers backups?


I'm not YC, but yes backups differentiate for me.

Though I'm still itching to find something just like Slicehost but with gigabit on the private network.


That's the power of branding..


SH really does have a strong brand. Initially, I wasn't really aware of the 64 bit issue, and saw that lots of people were happy with them, so I went with them over Linode without any real concrete reasons. That turned out to be a mistake, as Linode is significantly cheaper for what I need, yet still seem to run a quality operation.


I was messing around with the Twitter API the other day and was under the impression that their OAuth implementation was still private beta.

Is this still the case? Any ideas when it will be open for all to use?


I've had good luck with AblePlanet headphones (http://www.ableplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_...).

Very similar to Bose technology, considering Bose has since sued them for patent infringement.


Not sure about the choice of name (it confused me at first). Foursquare is a fairly prominent snowboarding gear company that has been around for years.


Wow, I work next door to E Ink and never had a clue what type of products they made. Its interesting to find out they are involved in making the Kindle a success.

Has anyone here purchased a Kindle 2 yet? Anyone willing to offer their personal experience with it so far? (I trust HN reviews more than reviews elsewhere)


I've had the Kindle since it first came out in late 2007. Here's my take (warning, probably won't be that new / insightful):

Good:

* Excellent for traveling. I have a 2GB SD card and more books then I'll ever read on any single trip.

* Fairly straightforward to convert into Kindle format. About half of the books I read are from Project Gutenberg and therefore free :)

* Book/Magazine purchasing is fast and efficient (instant gratification is nice)

* Battery Life: Not as amazing as people say it is, but still quite impressive

* Text resizing: Reading at the Gym / on a bus is much easier when you can bump up the font size

* Carrying case: Leather, makes it look like a moleskine

Meh:

* Internet access: Nice, although the screen refresh is slow enough to make it a little painful

* Audio support: Never tried it, so can't say

* Page turn speed: Takes a little to get used to, but then it's fine and doesn't really interrupt reading

* UI: A little counterintuitive at first, but easy to adjust to. Occasionally slow, and you do accidentally press buttons a bit

* Price: The device is expensive, and occasionally books are more than you might want to pay (I'm used to the library :) ).

Bad:

* Selection is wanting. There are many books that aren't available.

* Graphics: Illustrations don't translate well to 4 colors. This rules out a bunch of books

* My first kindle died within the first month, it was a pain to replace, but at least done for free

* Really bad for skimming / flipping through pages quickly.


Yes, it's fantastic. It's not, however, a money saver or anything like that. You pay for the convenience. That's the same thing I said about the Kindle 1, tho. Kindle 2 is just better, smarter, faster, etc. :)


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