...proving that corporations aren't evil, but trying to stay on top when you're top dog might corrupt absolutely. This would not have happened in "Lord of the Rings."
I refuse to demonize corporations, because I know that people run them and do the best they can with an often paradoxical set of goals. I remember when one boss I worked for sold his company to a larger technological concern, and suddenly all the rules changed. Image became more important than reality. We did everything we could to inflate figures. And the guy who once spent hours thinking about "the next cool thing we'd all like to use" stayed up late looking over spreadsheets, metrics, indicators and other spaced-out crap that has no relevance to reality.
We might call this time "the devirginization of Google," as they are inducted to the weird malevolent world of corporate politics as the top dog in the Darwinian internet struggle for virtual world domination.
Through strife, we become stronger, and less bored. And right now, it seems everyone is bored. How many web apps can you code before you shoot yourself to see what's on the other side? I'll never give up Perl and its swiss army knife approach, but I think challenges make me grow and keep from becoming a stagnant, boring curmudgeon (or more of one).
Young Steve Gates had for a long time had enough. The corporate feudal state commandeered by larcenous sycophants crying crocodile tears for obsolete religions. The deserted wasteland of a city drenched in crime and hatred. The constant exhaust, litter everywhere, and his boring 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th period classes, each of which was designed to teach the low-intelligence worker of the future how to sit down and shut up.
Worst of all was that his fellow hallway sheep did not seem to mind or even notice. Bored in class, text your friends about clothes and hair. Society in the hands of vicious predators, smoke some dope or sniff paint. It was them he minded most of all, the people through whose inattention and selfishness the elites ruled. They were the ones who perpetuated this mess in which he had to live, miserable and alone.
Today, they were going to face that fact. Steve Gates was going to murder them all.
He was ready for the shame, the guilt, and the inevitable end with a pistol in his mouth popping his brains on the wall as the SWAT team made its final sweaty charge into the barricaded classroom three deep in slumped bodies. He knew it would hurt, and that every moment of it would be agony, for each bullet he put into a fool would be another nail in his coffin. After the first, it gets easy, he thought, checking the slide on his Glock.
Four minutes later the auditorium erupted in confusion as the first student to die met a hollowpoint to the face, her sinuses and brain and eyes meshing in an improbably contorted mess that reminded Steve of a tomato funnel cake, if such a thing existed. He kept the rhythm, pacing himself as if he were in an aerobics class in hell, the entire thing resembling a dance. Step into the room, step to the side, shoot a teacher, then drop anyone who rose, then shoot the cowering ones who bleated out prayers and begged. Steve laughed and reloaded. Next classroom. At the end of each hall, the emergency door he had epoxied together rattled with the thrusts of fists infantile in their ineffectiveness, and the squeals of people simultaneously excited by a change in their boring lives and terrified by impending death.
Principal Gerald H. Giuliani wasted no time. He bolted the door in the face of a student, and swept his staff over to see the computer they called, simply, "The Big Board." On it was a graphical display of all the students in the school, tracked by their RFID tags. They looked like dots in a game of Pac-Man... pickups in a game of Doom... bacteria under the microscope wielded by a cruel child. He had to do something.
"Thank God for those RFIDs," said Dana Wilson, the secretary. "We can see where all the kids are, and get them away from this insane maniac. He even said our classes were boring, so he's obviously lost his mind. You see, only crazy people don't like the progress we've made here in adapting our classes so that everyone can fit in... no one feels like the work is beyond them, and we all get gold stars at the end of each day."
Giuliani shot her a look. The nitwit probably thought this was more than a job, he mused, and reached for the microphone. "He's in Hallway C, so if we get them to the cafeteria, we can send the SWAT team in there," he said, keying the microphone. And keying, waiting for the "plik" that came over the speakers when he fired it up.
Sarah Howard backed away. Her locker, once a bright pink and green, was now spattered in the blood of her first ever honest-to-god boyfriend, Jim Dozer. It looked like super-strawberry yoghurt covering her books... but she knew it was the least used part of Jim's body, the brain. A heave throttled deep within her. He had been no prize, but he was her first sexual conquest and real boyfriend, so she knew she would always treasure that status that conferred upon her among others. But that was yesterday, and today was hell.
"Attention all students!" the thick voice split through the loudspeakers. Giuliani really sounded worked up, almost squeaky. "There's a madman l
This lightweight, fast, simple database eliminates many of the headaches associated with using a full-on SQL installation, and works just as well for most of what most developers and users need.
If you're a Perl geek, like me, you will find this Perl module for seamless SQLite interface to be a power tool. The next time you need to get something working by morning, and it's 2am and the person "in charge of databases" hasn't called back, you'll be thanking it.
In the world of user design foolishness, the worst by far are programs that interrupt you while typing with error windows, pop-ups or windows suddenly gaining focus. Internet Explorer, I am talking to you here, as well as every other program that pops up a brain-dead window demanding me to hit cancel or OK while I'm busy with more important things. It's like stopping the State of the Union address to change a lightbulb.
In addition, any web page that doesn't follow sensible usability guidelines becomes a real pain in the neck. I read Jakob Nielsen to avoid most of these pitfalls when I code or design.
Knowing the quality of most software, especially on the cheap side of web development, I have always favored a token exchange system where the actual CC processing resides on the issuing company's internet presence -- like the way paypal works, although it can be implemented in a better manner. Most people do not do the research, testing, or debugging and auditing necessary to implement a secure credit-card processing web app. The cost is too high.
The average small business wants to spend a couple thousand on their web site every seven years, and when you pay that kind of money, you get hacked up custom code by inexperienced programmers, and old versions of osCommerce hacked poorly to fit into discount web presence providers.
I am grateful for the disposable AmEx cards that I can use online and then pitch out (or rather, recycle) because they limit my liability and time, which is a greater commodity most days than money.
What people want in a home or business computer is the ability to use the specialized software they need without having to mess with the computer's configuration much, if at all. They want it to just work.
They are tolerant of it being updated to "just work," and will switch to a pretty Macintosh if they perceive it "just works better," but the last thing they want is a system that requires them to devote more of their lives to it. Time for ourselves is in short supply, and the average person doesn't have the time or the desire to spent a lot of time learning about computers. They want to get good at what they do in their field, find the software that supports it, learn it and not change a thing until forced to by the market.
Where Windows falls down is where it requires them to interrupt the "just work" paradigm. From my experience, about half of this is poorly-designed third party software like the "helpful" wireless managers from Linksys and Intel that work less than Windows Zero Wireless configuration. The security mess over the past two years was a big falling-down for windows also.
Someone once told me that the average person buys a computer, and if after three years anything goes wrong, junks it and gets another. I think this is the case. When I want to show people Linux, I use the Knoppix boot CD I burned a year or so ago. It just works and shows them the "cool" stuff before the tedium.
If I had one wish for all operating systems, it's that they understood this principle better. I think Vista has some work to do in this regard, and the Macintosh OS X errs in a different way, where the user doesn't have to memorize technical details but a very "cute" interface.
I think one reason people get excited by a web-based OS is that they perceive it will have greater transparency than MacOS, WindOwS, or Linux.
(Disclaimer: I'm a proud Windows, Macintosh, Linux (RH) and FreeBSD user, because I'm a geek and... well, proud of it, even if my friends think I'm nuts.)
Let's aim high. In the future, it is likely many individuals will run media servers, VPN in to home, download a ton of video and use services like VOIP that rely on quality bandwidth. Instead of going piecemeal into this future, let's design for the next fifty years, roll out the hardware, and enjoy a nice long depreciation curve. It will be cheaper in the long run...
Try Lynx32. Oh, you wanted graphics and sound and flash? Well, I sure do feel like the US Army in Baghad then, between the infidels (IE) and the complacent forces of benevolent dictatorship (FF). Carry on.
But in all seriousness, Lynx rocks, and I've never heard of a single security issue with it. It can even read and post to Slashdot.
"I'm not aware of any training or education specifically designed to help technical people communicate more effectively with non-technical people."
I'm not sure if this qualifies, but technical writing / technical communications is the skill that merges technical knowledge with an ability to describe it to people of varying degrees of technical competence. Disclosure: I am a technical writer, although I have been a developer, project manager, administrative assistant, salesperson and random subservient "red shirt" in the past.
3. Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, not free but very good on the details. Even if you hate Microsoft... they did a good job on this one. Maybe they did steal it from Apple. I don't know. I like this book.
4. IBM Style Guideliness, free on the web, see disclaimer above if AIX raped your dog.
5. Sun Style Guide, not free, but worthy. See disclaimer above if you call Solaris "Slowlaris."
For developers and others who want to explain things to people of varying technical ability, the skills of technical communications (the "new" name for technical writing) are invaluable. If you have any questions, please contact me through the profile link above.
Yes, I know that. My question is: if you're paying for power from the power company to supplement your solar system, can't you use off-peak power company power, store it in batteries, and use that to supplement your solar panels?
One group wants free software, the other group wants to pay for support so they're never left hanging. For this reason, they don't compete directly, except in one important market: home computing. It's the home computing people who converted to Firefox in droves, and are installing Linux on their homebrew Core 2 Duos. We need to get all of them to install NetHack ASAP.
Jobs are tedious and not challenging or playful enough. For the political fears of others, we spend extra time on metrics and social/political games, which generates a whole lot of phantom work that is not necessary. Every job I've ever had could be done in three solid hours of work per day. Those extra cycles need to get recycled into something, and Open Source software is one of the few you can do from your desk.
A prime example of this from years gone by is the mailing list. You could get detailed replies to queries that were often better than professional documentation (and on some lists, you still can). Employers paid for that effort. Why? Because it was more fun, challenging and interesting than what we do as wage-slaves.
I'm sure this post will start with bad karma, and be modded down to -273.15, but here's my take on it:
It's very cool you're doing this. As you stated it, this is a prototype so you're not about to rely on it, just play with it and test it. That's hacking at its finest: getting equipment to do unexpected but useful things, efficiently.
The people who say "contact a robotics firm/authority" are probably technically correct, but as Robert Heinlein was fond of saying, specialization is for insects. You might want to hit those resources for influences but keep going on the project.
My advice would be to decide whether you want a net of smart controllers, or a central controller processor connected to dumb sensors. Other than that, I know zero about this technology but think your project sounds like a lot of fun.
Never accept doubt as a substitute for enthusiasm.
Like Microsoft, Apple becomes a target...
on
100 Million iPods
·
· Score: -1
When you're on top, everyone hates you. When you're not, misery loves company. And if you're in the middle, they'll simply take your stuff.
Upgrading the visual effects on "Sex and the City" isn't going to make it any less inane, vapid or tedious. Go outside. Use your iPod while you jog, or garden, or make love, or do anything healthier than staring for hours at a glowing box... without a keyboard.
Seriously, GUIs are for wimps. When I install windows, I boot into a fresh command prompt and run Qedit. I've got PC-talk and gcc. That's all I need. The rest of you are just not up to the job, I guess, since you're using a computer that looks like an interior decorator got ahold of it. Bet it reduces your sperm count, too.
Academia is a business. Not surprisingly, academics talk about anything other than reality, so they can keep selling their product. But kicking it old school with Aristotle, that's pimpin'
But, you're still going to have a machine on constantly.
So I suggest instead getting some solar panels, to offset your energy consumption, and keeping the machine for 10 years to avoid incurring the cost of building a new one and the consequent environmental damage.
It's not a terrible oppressive burden to ask them to write an essay in the classroom. With paper and pens/pencils. If they're referencing works of literature, you can have it be open book. Give the kids 45 minutes to write a clear, well-worded, academic-style essay and you'll see what they know. Of course, the little darlings will complain about the "stress," but once the flu pandemic hits and we can see what stress really is, the whining will taper off somewhat.
And they didn't save any energy? I sure am glad we invaded then, to punish that awful Hussein guy for having DSTs, supporting terrorism, and offending fashion senses worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
...proving that corporations aren't evil, but trying to stay on top when you're top dog might corrupt absolutely. This would not have happened in "Lord of the Rings."
I refuse to demonize corporations, because I know that people run them and do the best they can with an often paradoxical set of goals. I remember when one boss I worked for sold his company to a larger technological concern, and suddenly all the rules changed. Image became more important than reality. We did everything we could to inflate figures. And the guy who once spent hours thinking about "the next cool thing we'd all like to use" stayed up late looking over spreadsheets, metrics, indicators and other spaced-out crap that has no relevance to reality.
We might call this time "the devirginization of Google," as they are inducted to the weird malevolent world of corporate politics as the top dog in the Darwinian internet struggle for virtual world domination.
Through strife, we become stronger, and less bored. And right now, it seems everyone is bored. How many web apps can you code before you shoot yourself to see what's on the other side? I'll never give up Perl and its swiss army knife approach, but I think challenges make me grow and keep from becoming a stagnant, boring curmudgeon (or more of one).
Young Steve Gates had for a long time had enough. The corporate feudal state commandeered by larcenous sycophants crying crocodile tears for obsolete religions. The deserted wasteland of a city drenched in crime and hatred. The constant exhaust, litter everywhere, and his boring 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th period classes, each of which was designed to teach the low-intelligence worker of the future how to sit down and shut up.
Worst of all was that his fellow hallway sheep did not seem to mind or even notice. Bored in class, text your friends about clothes and hair. Society in the hands of vicious predators, smoke some dope or sniff paint. It was them he minded most of all, the people through whose inattention and selfishness the elites ruled. They were the ones who perpetuated this mess in which he had to live, miserable and alone.
Today, they were going to face that fact. Steve Gates was going to murder them all.
He was ready for the shame, the guilt, and the inevitable end with a pistol in his mouth popping his brains on the wall as the SWAT team made its final sweaty charge into the barricaded classroom three deep in slumped bodies. He knew it would hurt, and that every moment of it would be agony, for each bullet he put into a fool would be another nail in his coffin. After the first, it gets easy, he thought, checking the slide on his Glock.
Four minutes later the auditorium erupted in confusion as the first student to die met a hollowpoint to the face, her sinuses and brain and eyes meshing in an improbably contorted mess that reminded Steve of a tomato funnel cake, if such a thing existed. He kept the rhythm, pacing himself as if he were in an aerobics class in hell, the entire thing resembling a dance. Step into the room, step to the side, shoot a teacher, then drop anyone who rose, then shoot the cowering ones who bleated out prayers and begged. Steve laughed and reloaded. Next classroom. At the end of each hall, the emergency door he had epoxied together rattled with the thrusts of fists infantile in their ineffectiveness, and the squeals of people simultaneously excited by a change in their boring lives and terrified by impending death.
Principal Gerald H. Giuliani wasted no time. He bolted the door in the face of a student, and swept his staff over to see the computer they called, simply, "The Big Board." On it was a graphical display of all the students in the school, tracked by their RFID tags. They looked like dots in a game of Pac-Man... pickups in a game of Doom... bacteria under the microscope wielded by a cruel child. He had to do something.
"Thank God for those RFIDs," said Dana Wilson, the secretary. "We can see where all the kids are, and get them away from this insane maniac. He even said our classes were boring, so he's obviously lost his mind. You see, only crazy people don't like the progress we've made here in adapting our classes so that everyone can fit in... no one feels like the work is beyond them, and we all get gold stars at the end of each day."
Giuliani shot her a look. The nitwit probably thought this was more than a job, he mused, and reached for the microphone. "He's in Hallway C, so if we get them to the cafeteria, we can send the SWAT team in there," he said, keying the microphone. And keying, waiting for the "plik" that came over the speakers when he fired it up.
Sarah Howard backed away. Her locker, once a bright pink and green, was now spattered in the blood of her first ever honest-to-god boyfriend, Jim Dozer. It looked like super-strawberry yoghurt covering her books... but she knew it was the least used part of Jim's body, the brain. A heave throttled deep within her. He had been no prize, but he was her first sexual conquest and real boyfriend, so she knew she would always treasure that status that conferred upon her among others. But that was yesterday, and today was hell.
"Attention all students!" the thick voice split through the loudspeakers. Giuliani really sounded worked up, almost squeaky. "There's a madman l
This lightweight, fast, simple database eliminates many of the headaches associated with using a full-on SQL installation, and works just as well for most of what most developers and users need.
If you're a Perl geek, like me, you will find this Perl module for seamless SQLite interface to be a power tool. The next time you need to get something working by morning, and it's 2am and the person "in charge of databases" hasn't called back, you'll be thanking it.
In the world of user design foolishness, the worst by far are programs that interrupt you while typing with error windows, pop-ups or windows suddenly gaining focus. Internet Explorer, I am talking to you here, as well as every other program that pops up a brain-dead window demanding me to hit cancel or OK while I'm busy with more important things. It's like stopping the State of the Union address to change a lightbulb.
In addition, any web page that doesn't follow sensible usability guidelines becomes a real pain in the neck. I read Jakob Nielsen to avoid most of these pitfalls when I code or design.
Knowing the quality of most software, especially on the cheap side of web development, I have always favored a token exchange system where the actual CC processing resides on the issuing company's internet presence -- like the way paypal works, although it can be implemented in a better manner. Most people do not do the research, testing, or debugging and auditing necessary to implement a secure credit-card processing web app. The cost is too high.
The average small business wants to spend a couple thousand on their web site every seven years, and when you pay that kind of money, you get hacked up custom code by inexperienced programmers, and old versions of osCommerce hacked poorly to fit into discount web presence providers.
I am grateful for the disposable AmEx cards that I can use online and then pitch out (or rather, recycle) because they limit my liability and time, which is a greater commodity most days than money.
What people want in a home or business computer is the ability to use the specialized software they need without having to mess with the computer's configuration much, if at all. They want it to just work.
They are tolerant of it being updated to "just work," and will switch to a pretty Macintosh if they perceive it "just works better," but the last thing they want is a system that requires them to devote more of their lives to it. Time for ourselves is in short supply, and the average person doesn't have the time or the desire to spent a lot of time learning about computers. They want to get good at what they do in their field, find the software that supports it, learn it and not change a thing until forced to by the market.
Where Windows falls down is where it requires them to interrupt the "just work" paradigm. From my experience, about half of this is poorly-designed third party software like the "helpful" wireless managers from Linksys and Intel that work less than Windows Zero Wireless configuration. The security mess over the past two years was a big falling-down for windows also.
Someone once told me that the average person buys a computer, and if after three years anything goes wrong, junks it and gets another. I think this is the case. When I want to show people Linux, I use the Knoppix boot CD I burned a year or so ago. It just works and shows them the "cool" stuff before the tedium.
If I had one wish for all operating systems, it's that they understood this principle better. I think Vista has some work to do in this regard, and the Macintosh OS X errs in a different way, where the user doesn't have to memorize technical details but a very "cute" interface.
I think one reason people get excited by a web-based OS is that they perceive it will have greater transparency than MacOS, WindOwS, or Linux.
(Disclaimer: I'm a proud Windows, Macintosh, Linux (RH) and FreeBSD user, because I'm a geek and... well, proud of it, even if my friends think I'm nuts.)
Let's aim high. In the future, it is likely many individuals will run media servers, VPN in to home, download a ton of video and use services like VOIP that rely on quality bandwidth. Instead of going piecemeal into this future, let's design for the next fifty years, roll out the hardware, and enjoy a nice long depreciation curve. It will be cheaper in the long run...
But in all seriousness, Lynx rocks, and I've never heard of a single security issue with it. It can even read and post to Slashdot.
I would recommend the following resources:
1. Technical Writing Textbook, free online, which covers the basics.
2. Writing Technical Papers, also free online, a good introduction to the process.
3. Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, not free but very good on the details. Even if you hate Microsoft... they did a good job on this one. Maybe they did steal it from Apple. I don't know. I like this book.
4. IBM Style Guideliness, free on the web, see disclaimer above if AIX raped your dog.
5. Sun Style Guide, not free, but worthy. See disclaimer above if you call Solaris "Slowlaris."
I also maintain a blog called User Advocacy: Technical Writing and Technical Communications in which I detail links and other useful information for people wanting to get into technical writing.
For developers and others who want to explain things to people of varying technical ability, the skills of technical communications (the "new" name for technical writing) are invaluable. If you have any questions, please contact me through the profile link above.
The screenshot
looks good.
It breaks the text down
into phrases
like poetry.
(It looks sort of
like code.)
But, for anything
other than a short document,
you will be scrolling a long time,
baby.
Just up the css line-height to 2, and call it a day.
Yes, I know that. My question is: if you're paying for power from the power company to supplement your solar system, can't you use off-peak power company power, store it in batteries, and use that to supplement your solar panels?
Can't you store off peak power, and then use it during peak times? People just aren't committed to the (expensive) environment.
One group wants free software, the other group wants to pay for support so they're never left hanging. For this reason, they don't compete directly, except in one important market: home computing. It's the home computing people who converted to Firefox in droves, and are installing Linux on their homebrew Core 2 Duos. We need to get all of them to install NetHack ASAP.
Jobs are tedious and not challenging or playful enough. For the political fears of others, we spend extra time on metrics and social/political games, which generates a whole lot of phantom work that is not necessary. Every job I've ever had could be done in three solid hours of work per day. Those extra cycles need to get recycled into something, and Open Source software is one of the few you can do from your desk.
A prime example of this from years gone by is the mailing list. You could get detailed replies to queries that were often better than professional documentation (and on some lists, you still can). Employers paid for that effort. Why? Because it was more fun, challenging and interesting than what we do as wage-slaves.
I'm sure this post will start with bad karma, and be modded down to -273.15, but here's my take on it:
It's very cool you're doing this. As you stated it, this is a prototype so you're not about to rely on it, just play with it and test it. That's hacking at its finest: getting equipment to do unexpected but useful things, efficiently.
The people who say "contact a robotics firm/authority" are probably technically correct, but as Robert Heinlein was fond of saying, specialization is for insects. You might want to hit those resources for influences but keep going on the project.
My advice would be to decide whether you want a net of smart controllers, or a central controller processor connected to dumb sensors. Other than that, I know zero about this technology but think your project sounds like a lot of fun.
Never accept doubt as a substitute for enthusiasm.
When you're on top, everyone hates you. When you're not, misery loves company. And if you're in the middle, they'll simply take your stuff.
Upgrading the visual effects on "Sex and the City" isn't going to make it any less inane, vapid or tedious. Go outside. Use your iPod while you jog, or garden, or make love, or do anything healthier than staring for hours at a glowing box... without a keyboard.
Seriously, GUIs are for wimps. When I install windows, I boot into a fresh command prompt and run Qedit. I've got PC-talk and gcc. That's all I need. The rest of you are just not up to the job, I guess, since you're using a computer that looks like an interior decorator got ahold of it. Bet it reduces your sperm count, too.
Academia is a business. Not surprisingly, academics talk about anything other than reality, so they can keep selling their product. But kicking it old school with Aristotle, that's pimpin'
Last time I bought a Mac, in the 1980s, they charged me $175 for the extended keyboard. Do they still do that?
But, you're still going to have a machine on constantly.
So I suggest instead getting some solar panels, to offset your energy consumption, and keeping the machine for 10 years to avoid incurring the cost of building a new one and the consequent environmental damage.
It's not a terrible oppressive burden to ask them to write an essay in the classroom. With paper and pens/pencils. If they're referencing works of literature, you can have it be open book. Give the kids 45 minutes to write a clear, well-worded, academic-style essay and you'll see what they know. Of course, the little darlings will complain about the "stress," but once the flu pandemic hits and we can see what stress really is, the whining will taper off somewhat.
Code up a windows binary for this exploit, and everyone will move to WPA-PSK much faster!
And they didn't save any energy? I sure am glad we invaded then, to punish that awful Hussein guy for having DSTs, supporting terrorism, and offending fashion senses worldwide.