On wii, huh? Yeah, I'm suffering from it a little with Nintendo right now.
I'm sure they'll bring some neat titles to the system. Besides, there are also Gamecube games like Eternal Darkness, and VC games from any number of "more mature" systems of old.
If energy efficiency was their main pitch, perhaps starting it when they did was just bad luck or being too far ahead of the curve. Wait a couple 5-10-20 years or so. As people use less energy and the companies raise their rates to compensate, perhaps these types of solutions will become more appetizing.
OTOH I don't have any numbers data to back it all up, though, such as cost of a new HPC system from a different vendor versus Intel and all the energy, support, and training that go with each.
I moved from IT, which i worked on in grade school, high school, college, and after college, into financial advice about 4 years back. Since I was not professionally in IT for too long (though I performed a number of functions which are considered professional) I may not be the most qualified to answer this, but here goes (forgive the length):
IT for me just became too impersonal and cutthroat. I'm more the type who would rather enjoy my job and take satisfaction in actually doing something meaningful for someone than just collecting a paycheck. If it means less pay, so be it.
The pay cut has been quite significant, but that stems from personal issues with helping immediate family. The pay cut is mostly because I don't (am not charming enough to) wantonly sell insurance, funds, and annuities, but rather good advice. That's not the way to make a fast buck in this business.
Also, my age presents an initial barrier (yours might?) to the instant rapport of those with gray hair (counts for a lot in this business). I say this because experience matters a lot (obviously), so if you've trained your whole life for IT and decide to go elsewhere you may end up with the Catch-22 so many college grads have: You need experience to get the job, but if you don't get the job you can't get the experience.
Speaking of experience, the learning curve was a total mind-fuck and I'm still always trying to keep up. If you're looking for a skill where you can basically fire and forget, finance is not for you. All those details you learned over your career, and the details before that which landed you the job, AND the details that got you INTERESTED in the details that got you the job? Yeah, you have to relearn ALL that stuff, but you're grown-up now, have less time to tinker (most likely), and probably don't absorb things as easily as when you were a kid (if that's when you began learning IT).
In terms of working with people, that's about 50-70% of our job, and we're excessively analytical when it comes to our practice. Regarding other jobs (even VERY scientific/ analytical ones) many of our clients' "normal" jobs have a rather significant social component to them it seems. Many of those skills are somewhat learnable (if that's your concern, no offense meant). Personally, I have mixed emotions about client interaction. It feels wonderful to tell someone how you've ensured that their kid(s) can go to college, or they can retire despite the big downturn we've had, and see the relief on their face. You've just made an enormous difference in their life and that's no small feat. OTOH, sometimes getting people to heed prudent advice, working with them when emotions run high (family death, disability, whatever) or trying to alter old financial habits can be quite frustrating. I've lain awake at night trying to figure out the right questions to ask people to help them realize how critical a piece of advice is.
So, to use a cliche, it's a double-edged sword (the social aspect). It's also not a 9-5 job, you can always do more.
The analytical aspect is great fun IMO and could never have happened without my time spent debugging code from BASIC in 4th grade to assembler and C in college, in addition to the patience gained from troubleshooting hardware/software in person and over the phone. Although most financial "professionals" don't do it, I read prospectuses for insurance contracts, Summary Plan Descriptions, and other docs to ferret out tiny, but often very important details that few other advisors seem to look for or care about. Yes, I enjoy being so analytical. It helps set me apart by leveraging the general skills I learned over many years working with computers.
I'd say the change can be incredibly daunting, however if you find creative ways to leverage your skills (many non-obvious) with your new field you can become an invaluable worker in that field by bringing new perspectives and skillsets that many others might not have.
I'd say it was worth the transition for me, but I'm also not your average bear.
I hope these answers weren't all excessively obvious and they give at least a little bit of direction for whatever you decide to do.
No new types of gameplay? What about building games like World of Goo? Word games like Thomas and the Magic Words? There have been trippy, weird tries at games that are 4 or 8 bit, too. How about Tower Defense games?
Small, Independent publishers are as healthy as ever, IMO. They release games for $15 or $20 and see if they can make it. I'd say we're actually in the second Golden Age of Gaming, even. We have new adventure games ("Ben There, Dan That" and others), shooters like Rrootage, and other weird stuff on Kongregate (not the pinnacle of gaming, but still good for small publishers)
There's been progress, but it needs to be sought out.
This is what happens when you have a free flow of information. Carmack got well paid for Quake 2 then opened the source up (eventually). If more people/institutions/corps did this it seems there would not only be more hearts and flowers (for all the open source hippies) but there would be MORE technology we could patent! The ability to make MORE money!
If I have 2 innovative products and I decide to open them up to general use, and at least 1 new idea comes from that, someone out there will create something with it and hopefully create a net gain for the system as a whole in the long run.
I know people are selfish, but for Science's sake, open up your information already! The economy is dying a slow, painful death (though the market might refute that this week), wouldn't the SOLUTION in The States be to repeal some copyright laws and let information flow freely so as to foster innovation like this? Even if it's a mouse on a ball in a hall at the mall, I have to believe only good could come from opening things up a bit more.
I disagree with an earlier poster who says this can't replace the desktop interface we know.
He points out that it is inefficient because one has to move hands between keyboard and pad. It seems to me that this interface can be manipulated with just one hand. that's how the mouse works now. you take your hand off the mouse to work with the full functionality of the keyboard, why couldn't 10/GUI replace that? Better still, why not have both! The pad can sense a mouse and act as a mouse pad. If you need to use it as a pad move the mouse off, or perhaps use both the mouse AND the pad at the same time (one hand each). I can see a lot of possibilities there. It could clutter a desk, sure, but I'm sure we can solve that problem.
Second, but probably more importantly, I can easily see this for the work I do, which I imagine is similar to many other people.
I use my system (two monitors) for business. I have data on one side of the screen and sometimes excel or word on the other screen. In addition (here's where 10/GUI could be useful) I'll have a pdf open in the background which i need to quickly scroll through ("in adobe, quickly!?" you ask?). With one hand on the mouse I can quickly zip through Morningstar data, and use my free hand (on the pad) to scroll through a document, then quickly zip back and forth, scrolling and zooming as necessary. Right now that's just using a mouse and it can be tiresome to move around with just that little pointer (especially morningstar! oh it would be nice to have a touch interface for that...)
Finally, I need to have a "document scroller" or whatever it is that I can resize and move around, as I find myself with documents that sometimes need to show different parts of their data on screen. Basically I need to be able to "undock" documents so i can use them effectively (like papers on an actual desktop) and then redock them when I'm done.
That would be a beautiful interface that I do feel would save me some time and frustration. I would buy that for my business.
We came down through the mountains from Denver, over through Espanola to Santa Fe, then on south to I-40 and through northern Texas. Of course there are nice urban areas we missed, true. We did see some awfully nice houses in the mountains (near Carson National Forest I think).
I can only hope this could begin to revitalize that area of the country. While I'm not a native, I drove through there a while back and it was terribly, terribly depressing. Run-down houses and empty shops in lots of towns, not a pretty sight.
Any native New Mexicans who can give us the low-down?
The issue is that "King" Daley ram-rodded this BS through and sold off ALL parking in chicago to a group of stock brokers. They're already putting in boxes on the lake front to make a public asset (which used to be free) a private asset. Good luck to all the runners, soccer players, cyclists, and families who used to use the lakefront for fun, because now it will cost you $1 an hour (with big increases to come).
This whole thing stinks awfully badly, and I hope there is a lot of civil disobedience regarding these boxes. It isn't raising money for the city, it's just lining the pockets of a large brokerage firm.
There was NO public discussion over these things. It just got pushed through.
Well only a year has passed since I wrote my note.
I knew this would happen right from the start!
(I'm a huge Police fan and found no reason to stop myself)
My g-friend and I get organic milk now. We've looked into it and it seems that most milk these days, since it is ultra-pasteurized, has protein that has been broken down to the point of being somewhat useless to the body. I would say there *is* a different in nutrients between industrial and organic, low-temperature-pasteurized milk.
Keep in mind that the space station hasn't begun it's primary science mission yet. It's just now being finished. The station needs a few people up there just to keep it running. Once it is fully crewed (now, and when toilet is fixed) the science can finally begin.
That's why there hasn't been any science coming from it. They have not been doing any!
I agree with you, but I start to see one problem with asteroid minig: Great, we can make stuff in space. How can we get it back to earth to sell to people? Where is the market for the goods produced? If the manufactured goods only stay in space, what good is it? Should companies be expected to make investments in space that may not have a market for a 100 years or more?
Not trying to be difficult, as I said I really do agree with you and like your reasoning, just giving a capitalistic slant that might explain why companies aren't chomping at the bit to go into space and mine the trillions of dollars in resources out there.
On one hand you may be right. On the other, what was the size of the junk they could track? My understanding is that much of the space junk is very tiny (I think something the size of a small screw recently did severe damage to a window on the space shuttle) so perhaps the new technology is designed to find and track these very small objects.
Try going someplace like Somafm.com where they aggregate GOOD indie music. It's free, but I pay them every month and have been listening for over 6 years.
They're going to die because of this, and it's the only place where I can find this caliber of music with a high degree of variety.
This is a HORRIBLE outcome for internet radio. Artists go to small stations and *ask* the stations to play their music. Suddenly this distribution channel is gone. This is just the big guys locking down art and culture even more. I'm losing my favorite (award winning) radio station, and I'm pissed.
It depends what fraction of the "total wind energy" we use. On the other hand, it sure would be sad/funny for us to finally get these things going and have to shut them down due drastic local weather changes.
There might be an upshot to that, too. What if we find an easy way to alter weather to suit local needs better? Sure it's a shock to the ecosystem, but perhaps it could help things by concentrating rainfall in areas where we need it.
I imagine the energy used is a small fraction but I'm no meteorologist. It would probably be obvious fairly quickly if anything was changing, on the order of a few years, but who knows.
IANAE (Engineer, yes) however I seem to recall the energy generation from wind turbines being a fairly simple function of the size. Although I understand there is an acreage issue is it truly necessary to develop bigger and bigger turbines? Can someone explain this? Is it simply that we should optimize the land useage?
Also, bring on the inevitable "ditch wind, go nuclear" stuff. I can has mod points now?
Ask someone who works in that sector what it has done. The larger practices/firms might be ok because they can hire one or more people, but for those of us with smaller, personalized services? We're getting fucked hard, plain and simple. Enormous amounts of absurd, pointless compliance are being rammed down the pipe.
Little of it will have an effect, though. Many rich people still do deals with a smile and a handshak,, and won't be bothered to learn anything about what is going on. It's just making life for the little guys much more difficult (and it was already pretty hard)
You'll get your oversight, to a degree, but the quality of financial advice is going to go down because of it. It couldn't have been enough for the SEC to, oh I don't know, DO THEIR JOB? No, that would be much too easy.
Slashdot Mirror
On wii, huh? Yeah, I'm suffering from it a little with Nintendo right now.
I'm sure they'll bring some neat titles to the system. Besides, there are also Gamecube games like Eternal Darkness, and VC games from any number of "more mature" systems of old.
If energy efficiency was their main pitch, perhaps starting it when they did was just bad luck or being too far ahead of the curve.
Wait a couple 5-10-20 years or so. As people use less energy and the companies raise their rates to compensate, perhaps these types of solutions will become more appetizing.
OTOH I don't have any numbers data to back it all up, though, such as cost of a new HPC system from a different vendor versus Intel and all the energy, support, and training that go with each.
I moved from IT, which i worked on in grade school, high school, college, and after college, into financial advice about 4 years back.
Since I was not professionally in IT for too long (though I performed a number of functions which are considered professional) I may not be the most qualified to answer this, but here goes (forgive the length):
IT for me just became too impersonal and cutthroat. I'm more the type who would rather enjoy my job and take satisfaction in actually doing something meaningful for someone than just collecting a paycheck. If it means less pay, so be it.
The pay cut has been quite significant, but that stems from personal issues with helping immediate family. The pay cut is mostly because I don't (am not charming enough to) wantonly sell insurance, funds, and annuities, but rather good advice. That's not the way to make a fast buck in this business.
Also, my age presents an initial barrier (yours might?) to the instant rapport of those with gray hair (counts for a lot in this business). I say this because experience matters a lot (obviously), so if you've trained your whole life for IT and decide to go elsewhere you may end up with the Catch-22 so many college grads have: You need experience to get the job, but if you don't get the job you can't get the experience.
Speaking of experience, the learning curve was a total mind-fuck and I'm still always trying to keep up. If you're looking for a skill where you can basically fire and forget, finance is not for you. All those details you learned over your career, and the details before that which landed you the job, AND the details that got you INTERESTED in the details that got you the job? Yeah, you have to relearn ALL that stuff, but you're grown-up now, have less time to tinker (most likely), and probably don't absorb things as easily as when you were a kid (if that's when you began learning IT).
In terms of working with people, that's about 50-70% of our job, and we're excessively analytical when it comes to our practice. Regarding other jobs (even VERY scientific/ analytical ones) many of our clients' "normal" jobs have a rather significant social component to them it seems. Many of those skills are somewhat learnable (if that's your concern, no offense meant). Personally, I have mixed emotions about client interaction. It feels wonderful to tell someone how you've ensured that their kid(s) can go to college, or they can retire despite the big downturn we've had, and see the relief on their face. You've just made an enormous difference in their life and that's no small feat. OTOH, sometimes getting people to heed prudent advice, working with them when emotions run high (family death, disability, whatever) or trying to alter old financial habits can be quite frustrating. I've lain awake at night trying to figure out the right questions to ask people to help them realize how critical a piece of advice is.
So, to use a cliche, it's a double-edged sword (the social aspect). It's also not a 9-5 job, you can always do more.
The analytical aspect is great fun IMO and could never have happened without my time spent debugging code from BASIC in 4th grade to assembler and C in college, in addition to the patience gained from troubleshooting hardware/software in person and over the phone. Although most financial "professionals" don't do it, I read prospectuses for insurance contracts, Summary Plan Descriptions, and other docs to ferret out tiny, but often very important details that few other advisors seem to look for or care about. Yes, I enjoy being so analytical. It helps set me apart by leveraging the general skills I learned over many years working with computers.
I'd say the change can be incredibly daunting, however if you find creative ways to leverage your skills (many non-obvious) with your new field you can become an invaluable worker in that field by bringing new perspectives and skillsets that many others might not have.
I'd say it was worth the transition for me, but I'm also not your average bear.
I hope these answers weren't all excessively obvious and they give at least a little bit of direction for whatever you decide to do.
No new types of gameplay? What about building games like World of Goo? Word games like Thomas and the Magic Words?
There have been trippy, weird tries at games that are 4 or 8 bit, too. How about Tower Defense games?
Small, Independent publishers are as healthy as ever, IMO. They release games for $15 or $20 and see if they can make it.
I'd say we're actually in the second Golden Age of Gaming, even. We have new adventure games ("Ben There, Dan That" and others), shooters like Rrootage, and other weird stuff on Kongregate (not the pinnacle of gaming, but still good for small publishers)
There's been progress, but it needs to be sought out.
1) Summer: This flu is the WORST flu we've seen in years. Better get a vaccine!
2) October: We're running out of flu vaccine!
3) November-January: Oops, soorry, it turns out the flu vaccine we were using? It didn't do much against the flu outbreak that happened
4) ?
5) Profit
You forgot the "5. Profit" motive. This is a capitalist sector you're in, don't forget.
Someone is likely to say it, so I will:
This is what happens when you have a free flow of information. Carmack got well paid for Quake 2 then opened the source up (eventually). If more people/institutions/corps did this it seems there would not only be more hearts and flowers (for all the open source hippies) but there would be MORE technology we could patent! The ability to make MORE money!
If I have 2 innovative products and I decide to open them up to general use, and at least 1 new idea comes from that, someone out there will create something with it and hopefully create a net gain for the system as a whole in the long run.
I know people are selfish, but for Science's sake, open up your information already! The economy is dying a slow, painful death (though the market might refute that this week), wouldn't the SOLUTION in The States be to repeal some copyright laws and let information flow freely so as to foster innovation like this? Even if it's a mouse on a ball in a hall at the mall, I have to believe only good could come from opening things up a bit more.
I disagree with an earlier poster who says this can't replace the desktop interface we know.
He points out that it is inefficient because one has to move hands between keyboard and pad.
It seems to me that this interface can be manipulated with just one hand. that's how the mouse works now. you take your hand off the mouse to work with the full functionality of the keyboard, why couldn't 10/GUI replace that?
Better still, why not have both! The pad can sense a mouse and act as a mouse pad. If you need to use it as a pad move the mouse off, or perhaps use both the mouse AND the pad at the same time (one hand each). I can see a lot of possibilities there. It could clutter a desk, sure, but I'm sure we can solve that problem.
Second, but probably more importantly, I can easily see this for the work I do, which I imagine is similar to many other people.
I use my system (two monitors) for business. I have data on one side of the screen and sometimes excel or word on the other screen. In addition (here's where 10/GUI could be useful) I'll have a pdf open in the background which i need to quickly scroll through ("in adobe, quickly!?" you ask?). With one hand on the mouse I can quickly zip through Morningstar data, and use my free hand (on the pad) to scroll through a document, then quickly zip back and forth, scrolling and zooming as necessary. Right now that's just using a mouse and it can be tiresome to move around with just that little pointer (especially morningstar! oh it would be nice to have a touch interface for that...)
Finally, I need to have a "document scroller" or whatever it is that I can resize and move around, as I find myself with documents that sometimes need to show different parts of their data on screen. Basically I need to be able to "undock" documents so i can use them effectively (like papers on an actual desktop) and then redock them when I'm done.
That would be a beautiful interface that I do feel would save me some time and frustration. I would buy that for my business.
We came down through the mountains from Denver, over through Espanola to Santa Fe, then on south to I-40 and through northern Texas. Of course there are nice urban areas we missed, true. We did see some awfully nice houses in the mountains (near Carson National Forest I think).
I can only hope this could begin to revitalize that area of the country. While I'm not a native, I drove through there a while back and it was terribly, terribly depressing. Run-down houses and empty shops in lots of towns, not a pretty sight.
Any native New Mexicans who can give us the low-down?
Longer? Are you kidding me?
I had to be at high school at 7am and did not finish classes until almost 4pm. Then I had to go to work then get my homework done.
Any increase in the school day would have to have been nap time.
there have been new games coming out for the DC for years.
Ikaruga, Border Down, and Under Defeat to name 3. There may be more.
Do a search on Gamefaqs, I'm sure stuff will turn up.
How many Beard-seconds does it take to produce one these things?
The efficiency is not exactly the issue.
The issue is that "King" Daley ram-rodded this BS through and sold off ALL parking in chicago to a group of stock brokers. They're already putting in boxes on the lake front to make a public asset (which used to be free) a private asset. Good luck to all the runners, soccer players, cyclists, and families who used to use the lakefront for fun, because now it will cost you $1 an hour (with big increases to come).
This whole thing stinks awfully badly, and I hope there is a lot of civil disobedience regarding these boxes. It isn't raising money for the city, it's just lining the pockets of a large brokerage firm.
There was NO public discussion over these things. It just got pushed through.
Well only a year has passed since I wrote my note. I knew this would happen right from the start! (I'm a huge Police fan and found no reason to stop myself)
Maybe it will give them time to rethink the title.
"Wings of Liberty"? It sounds like a Republican Think Tank
You mention organic milk, so very quickly:
My g-friend and I get organic milk now. We've looked into it and it seems that most milk these days, since it is ultra-pasteurized, has protein that has been broken down to the point of being somewhat useless to the body. I would say there *is* a different in nutrients between industrial and organic, low-temperature-pasteurized milk.
Keep in mind that the space station hasn't begun it's primary science mission yet. It's just now being finished. The station needs a few people up there just to keep it running. Once it is fully crewed (now, and when toilet is fixed) the science can finally begin.
That's why there hasn't been any science coming from it. They have not been doing any!
I agree with you, but I start to see one problem with asteroid minig: Great, we can make stuff in space. How can we get it back to earth to sell to people? Where is the market for the goods produced? If the manufactured goods only stay in space, what good is it? Should companies be expected to make investments in space that may not have a market for a 100 years or more?
Not trying to be difficult, as I said I really do agree with you and like your reasoning, just giving a capitalistic slant that might explain why companies aren't chomping at the bit to go into space and mine the trillions of dollars in resources out there.
On one hand you may be right. On the other, what was the size of the junk they could track? My understanding is that much of the space junk is very tiny (I think something the size of a small screw recently did severe damage to a window on the space shuttle) so perhaps the new technology is designed to find and track these very small objects.
I'll second this concern.
I emailed Rusty (the founder) and he said they have contingency plans.
Pandora? What a joke. I can't find the breadth of music I can find on SomaFM.
I just want exposure to all these awesome tunes. I see no reason to not distribute this sort of great content some other way.
Try going someplace like Somafm.com where they aggregate GOOD indie music.
It's free, but I pay them every month and have been listening for over 6 years.
They're going to die because of this, and it's the only place where I can find this caliber of music with a high degree of variety.
This is a HORRIBLE outcome for internet radio. Artists go to small stations and *ask* the stations to play their music. Suddenly this distribution channel is gone. This is just the big guys locking down art and culture even more. I'm losing my favorite (award winning) radio station, and I'm pissed.
It depends what fraction of the "total wind energy" we use. On the other hand, it sure would be sad/funny for us to finally get these things going and have to shut them down due drastic local weather changes.
There might be an upshot to that, too. What if we find an easy way to alter weather to suit local needs better? Sure it's a shock to the ecosystem, but perhaps it could help things by concentrating rainfall in areas where we need it.
I imagine the energy used is a small fraction but I'm no meteorologist.
It would probably be obvious fairly quickly if anything was changing, on the order of a few years, but who knows.
IANAE (Engineer, yes) however I seem to recall the energy generation from wind turbines being a fairly simple function of the size. Although I understand there is an acreage issue is it truly necessary to develop bigger and bigger turbines? Can someone explain this? Is it simply that we should optimize the land useage?
Also, bring on the inevitable "ditch wind, go nuclear" stuff. I can has mod points now?
Provisions?
Ask someone who works in that sector what it has done.
The larger practices/firms might be ok because they can hire one or more people, but for those of us with smaller, personalized services? We're getting fucked hard, plain and simple. Enormous amounts of absurd, pointless compliance are being rammed down the pipe.
Little of it will have an effect, though. Many rich people still do deals with a smile and a handshak,, and won't be bothered to learn anything about what is going on. It's just making life for the little guys much more difficult (and it was already pretty hard)
You'll get your oversight, to a degree, but the quality of financial advice is going to go down because of it. It couldn't have been enough for the SEC to, oh I don't know, DO THEIR JOB? No, that would be much too easy.