Toki Pona is "the simple language of good".
I first came across it a couple of years ago, but it keeps popping back into my mind, so I though I would share it. Toki Pona is a simple spoken language. It is so simple infact that you can become fluient in about a month. I first found it when I was looking for a simple spoken language to that I could teach a computer, but thats another story. There are user groups, and lessons,etc.
Check it out!
I recently got a GMail account.
I noticed they provide a way to import contact from CSV files. So I decided to import my contacts from Outlook. I found that if you open outlook Contacts and select all contacts, you can "save As..." to make a text file. The format is as follows :
...
Full Name: Nigel Thorne
Last Name: Thorne
First Name: Nigel
E-mail: blogFeedback@nigelthorne.com
E-mail Display As: Blog Feedback
...
This isn't CSV, so I had to change it. A couple of second with notepad and Gawk had the following on the screen...
Name, Email Address
Nigel Thorne, blogFeedback@nigelthorne.com
...
Here is the gawk script I used. I handled first and last name seperately because I had some names in my contacts that didn't export correctly
BEGIN{ print "name , Email Address" }
/Full Name/ { lastName = ""; firstName = ""; email = ""}
/Last Name/ { lastName = $3}
/First Name/ { firstName = $3 }
/E-mail:/ {email= $2}
/Display/ {print firstName, lastName "," email}If you are lucky thought the following should work just as well.
BEGIN{ print "name , Email Address" }
/Full Name/ { name = $3 $4 $5 $6}
/E-mail:/ {email= $2; print name "," email}
Ever heard the phrase "At least it's consistant"? Next time you do, it's time to refactor.
Due to supply and demand the value of a developer changes with time. For developers to command a fair salary they have to keep up to date on their current market value. From a business perspective, most companies subscribe to "Pay as little as possible that will stop them walking out the door". The alternative is profit sharing. Pay someone depending on how well the company is doing and how much they contributed to that success.
Semco solution: Make all financial company info open (including everyones salaries). Train everyone in how to understand it. Allow people to set their own salary. You can be fired by your piers. Allow people to gamble a percentage of their salary in profit sharing. The more they gamble the more they profit when the company does.
There is an optimal size for every company. When it strives to expand and become all things to all people it cannot focus on achieving any of these things well. Divide the company into smaller more agile going concerns. Allow the parent company to use the services of the new company, OR any other company that is competitive. This drives down costs. Allow the new company to sell its services to other companies too. This makes them more profitable.
*original idea perloined from Maverick*