4 ms·

I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian. My friends working in non tech fields wouldn't even kno

I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian. My friends working in non tech fields wouldn't even know that something other than Windows exists.

beermonster 5y ago
It does seem there are some cool lawyers out there!
rococode 5y ago
Keep in mind there are thousands of lawyers out there whose job is to write software patents or litigate for big tech companies. I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers not working in tech who know about tech stuff just out of curiosity, but the ones who are in tech definitely know much more than surface-level things.
ncphil 5y ago
Retired lawyer (from the 80s and 90s). Second career as a sysadmin now with the lofty title "enterprise architect", which in my case is more like "a senior guy who can do all kinds of stuff". Back in the day DisplayWrite and WordPerfect were the standards, with Word coming up behind fast. I used XyWrite in my own tiny practice. That said, Word Online under a Microsoft 365 sub would get you most of where you need to go, but I have to admit that some are going to be more comfortable with the desktop version of Word for the reasons given above. In that case... KVM virtual machine running Windows! So long as the host has sufficient horsepower (4 or 8 cores, 32 GB RAM), that can actually be an added benefit: two computers for the price of one. On the scanner driver issue, I'm going to curb my natural urge to go into full on problem solving mode (an occupational hazard for both sysadmins and lawyers). Network scanners are a "hive of scum and villainy" if there ever was one. My own adventures with an HP MFP can be found in this gist: https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865773 https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865.... The TLDR is that HP supports SANE through their own proprietary api, which is probably not going to work with a different manufacturer's scanner (for example, Canon).
- throwawayapples 5y ago
  With regards to the scanning issue, you could scan to FTP; new Brother workgroup MFC printers can even scan to SFTP and I'm sure other manufacturers are the same. (Note that smaller, cheaper $150 Brother lasers cannot scan to FTP/SFTP; that feature seems to be reserved for printers in the $400+ range.) For example, you can scan multi-page documents in B&W or color (even double-sided) to individual JPEG's PDF's right from within the printer's sheet feeder itself, and have them uploaded via SAMBA or SFTP. I'm sure the very large enterprise printers/copiers/etc can probably do this with for multiple accounts as well, so that each user on an entire floor could scan directly into their own incoming directory.
massysett 5y ago
For me it’s always been a hobby. I also write my own software tools in Haskell. I’ve used other distributions—Ubuntu, Slackware, Arch, and SUSE. I used to think about some sort of software career but I now know that doing it for a living is nothing like doing it as a hobby. Plus I like my job. Writing a good legal opinion has surprising commonalities with writing good software.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  A bit like writing a not type safe program, which won't get run until there's a disagreement and litigation, and then, the program gets interpreted, by an a bit unpredictable machine (a human) ? :-) Definitely some if and or else, in the contracts, ... For loops are unusual though, are they not. And while true loops too
n_decoded_legal 5y ago
> I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian. I started using Linux while I was at university, reading law. But I spent as much time with computer science and computer engineering friends as I did with other law students - in fact, probably a lot more - and spent plenty of time tinkering with servers and networks. And that’s stood me in good stead for tinkering with legal stuff to do with networks, servers, and related things.
terminalcommand 5y ago
I've been a hacker long before I've become a lawyer. Started programming at 10, lived and breathed computers, grew up online. Actually, it was hard for me to adjust to becoming a lawyer, but I succeeded somehow. I'm a hacker by birth, life led me to law. Most of my computer geek symptoms disappeared after working as a lawyer for a couple of years. Now I'm just a lawyer who was a computer hacker in a previous life.

beermonster 5y ago

It does seem there are some cool lawyers out there!

rococode 5y ago

Keep in mind there are thousands of lawyers out there whose job is to write software patents or litigate for big tech companies. I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers not working in tech who know about tech stuff just out of curiosity, but the ones who are in tech definitely know much more than surface-level things.

ncphil 5y ago

Retired lawyer (from the 80s and 90s). Second career as a sysadmin now with the lofty title "enterprise architect", which in my case is more like "a senior guy who can do all kinds of stuff". Back in the day DisplayWrite and WordPerfect were the standards, with Word coming up behind fast. I used XyWrite in my own tiny practice. That said, Word Online under a Microsoft 365 sub would get you most of where you need to go, but I have to admit that some are going to be more comfortable with the desktop version of Word for the reasons given above. In that case... KVM virtual machine running Windows! So long as the host has sufficient horsepower (4 or 8 cores, 32 GB RAM), that can actually be an added benefit: two computers for the price of one. On the scanner driver issue, I'm going to curb my natural urge to go into full on problem solving mode (an occupational hazard for both sysadmins and lawyers). Network scanners are a "hive of scum and villainy" if there ever was one. My own adventures with an HP MFP can be found in this gist: https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865773 https://gist.github.com/plembo/1630c74806c1c97c2dcee03752865.... The TLDR is that HP supports SANE through their own proprietary api, which is probably not going to work with a different manufacturer's scanner (for example, Canon).

throwawayapples 5y ago
With regards to the scanning issue, you could scan to FTP; new Brother workgroup MFC printers can even scan to SFTP and I'm sure other manufacturers are the same. (Note that smaller, cheaper $150 Brother lasers cannot scan to FTP/SFTP; that feature seems to be reserved for printers in the $400+ range.) For example, you can scan multi-page documents in B&W or color (even double-sided) to individual JPEG's PDF's right from within the printer's sheet feeder itself, and have them uploaded via SAMBA or SFTP. I'm sure the very large enterprise printers/copiers/etc can probably do this with for multiple accounts as well, so that each user on an entire floor could scan directly into their own incoming directory.

massysett 5y ago

For me it’s always been a hobby. I also write my own software tools in Haskell. I’ve used other distributions—Ubuntu, Slackware, Arch, and SUSE. I used to think about some sort of software career but I now know that doing it for a living is nothing like doing it as a hobby. Plus I like my job. Writing a good legal opinion has surprising commonalities with writing good software.

cutemonster 5y ago
A bit like writing a not type safe program, which won't get run until there's a disagreement and litigation, and then, the program gets interpreted, by an a bit unpredictable machine (a human) ? :-) Definitely some if and or else, in the contracts, ... For loops are unusual though, are they not. And while true loops too

n_decoded_legal 5y ago

> I'm curious to know how you and the parent comment came about to know about HN, what an IDE is, Debian. I started using Linux while I was at university, reading law. But I spent as much time with computer science and computer engineering friends as I did with other law students - in fact, probably a lot more - and spent plenty of time tinkering with servers and networks. And that’s stood me in good stead for tinkering with legal stuff to do with networks, servers, and related things.

terminalcommand 5y ago

I've been a hacker long before I've become a lawyer. Started programming at 10, lived and breathed computers, grew up online. Actually, it was hard for me to adjust to becoming a lawyer, but I succeeded somehow. I'm a hacker by birth, life led me to law. Most of my computer geek symptoms disappeared after working as a lawyer for a couple of years. Now I'm just a lawyer who was a computer hacker in a previous life.