Not really... to take risks doesn't matter if you have the kind of faith your talking about or not.... Faith can mean 2 things:
To thrust in something;
To believe without reason.
In the first you have proof to support your faith to some extend, within reason... the latter you have nothing (religion). So, you can have faith that your work will have a good review, or you can have faith in your god. Risks don't have nothing to do with faith systems, but the risk assessment you make towards those risks do take into account both. I would prefer to thrust in something rather to make a risk assessment based in no reason at all.
Erm... you're messing philosophical schools there.... you wrote atheists, and gave a description of a cynic.... get your philosophical schools straight. Cynicists preached that the purpose of life was to live a life in agreement with nature.... Atheists on the other end don't give a rats ass about deities because we believe in none.
I could go on about faiths, philosophical or theological view points, but why bother? Religion works the same way as placebos cure illness (specially the ones that have gods or mystical beings in their faiths).
I can only talk about my personal experience about all this. We kinda had everything all at once and realy fast around here: internet, cell phones and everything regarding it since mid early to mid 90's (major investiments on mobile phone and internet, because until then most cells phones I ever seen were in big cases and internet only heard about from friends that were in college.... BBS's until then:P). As soon as SMS (short messaging system) was "discovered" all teens started to use it... why? Fast, _cheaper_ then phone calls, you could send them from anywhere if you had cell coverage, and you could send them in situations you didn't want or couldn't call the other person (classes, cinema, etc).
This was more then 10 years ago... since then IM started to appear. Social networks as well... I don't see social networks to exist for long... there will always be such services, but look at IRC and forums... Social networks is nothing more then a reincarnation of BBS's with a semi-personal, semi-public area (profile), with the possibility to share content. It's a neat forum with a more person approach instead of topics.
Getting back to text messaging and all that... Like I said, we had (and have) an huge usage of text messaging (cell text messaging, ergo SMS) but started to balance it self out as age comes. I for example started using email for work, study and so on because I either need to be formal or wanted something to be available on my computer after being sent. All was balanced since it serves different purposes.
I see e-mail as the equivalent to have "something put on paper", like a letter. I only use email for informal stuff when the other person is unavailable in IM or sms (for example, is working, and pays more time to the computer then to his/her phone, so I know I'll catch them reading the email).
IM I use to chat with friends.. It's instantaneous, doesn't require much. Also use IM when I'm in a meeting and need to talk with someone, get some facts straight and quick (althou I sometimes get out of the room and call someone, but if I can prevent that, I do it with IM).
sms/text messaging I rarely use... used it everyday, several times an hour when I was younger (did I mention cheaper then calls? I did? So there you have it), now I just use when I can't get some one to answer me on the phone, or I just want to tell something but it's too late to call, or simply what I have to say isn't worth calling someone to tell it.
Social networks I really can't be bothered to use them anymore... some years back when they were something new, and everyone used it yeah I jumped on the wagon, but can't find anything useful on them except that I can find people I haven't seen for quite some time, ping them, get their number, email or whatever and resume our conversations from there (sharing photos and such is neat, but so is sending them to my email, with the bonus that I don't have to click and save everyone of them... everything else I can easly get from forums, oficial sites/forums/mailing lists, etc).
Saying that email is dead, well, it has been for quite some time where personal relationships is concerned (except for the occasional e-postcard, or the emails I send and receive from friends that are working and can't use IM or call me).
That might be true 'till some degree... I have several friends that have taken their degree and masters "at home", and went to MIT for their PhD and returned afterward, althou most apply for EU scientific organizations and will do their papers afterward... MIT is starting to be seen as overrated (even by themselfs, seem the time and effort spent to do bilateral agreements with EU universities). Also had an handful of professors that did the same.
Several years ago what you'll hear it would be something in the lines of "I'll take my degree here, then go do research or lecture abroad".
Hummmm... install, update, configure to your taste, make a mirror image, backup that image... Need a fresh install? Why bother? Backup all your documents, format and use the ghost image (update everything if needed). Voila:)
Actualy the "$48k/wk argument" can be both right and wrong, just depends on the disorganization (and yeah, I'm talking about disorganization, not mess... so I'm not getting confused about them).
One example: my boss has every email that arrives methodicaly organized by subject, project, blah blah blah blah.... and every time I need to talk to him about an issue thats pending for a long time, I need to check my emails (usualy I just sort by sender since I usualy have a slight idea of who sent me, or to whom I've sent), get the date or the subject, go to his desk again and search every damn folder ' till he finds the email... I took about 3 seconds finding the email, he takes about a minute or more (ofc, there's the search feature:P but that doesn't work when I'm at his desk talking about the email, and he can't find it, and I'll have to go to my desk, track the email, and he has to do a 30 second search to find the right email that took me 3 seconds to find).
On the other hand, if I ever needed to group all emails regarding a single issue together he would do in a couple of clicks, and I would take a day.... fortunately I'll never need to do that. and If I do, I'll just ask him to do it, and move on (I'm fortunately to work in a flat system, even thou we do have a hierarchy but thats only applied where decisions and tasks - not the type of task I mention on this example, since this would be the exception, not the rule - are concerned ).
And about the topic in general... well, I'll have to go with "depends" as well. There's "lazy" slob, and "conscious/unconscious methodicaly" slob.
The first is a no brainer... We all know one, we work with one or more, it's the guy that brings coffee to his work table and leaves it there, and if there's no cleaning lady for two years, that's how long the cup will stay there. He's the guy that tries to get you to do his job, and either is someone cousin, brother, nephew, or his out of a job real quick once noticed. (Well, a bit exaggerated, but you get the point).
The other one is people like me (and in way I'm trying to say that i'm so uber imba good and a genious... just stating something that works for me, it's the only I can vouch personaly for, and it seems to work for some amount of people with slight variations):
- In my place only once I had my bookshelf neat: when I moved In and unpacked. Ever since I just stack books on top of the ones that were already disposed in a row, or did a new stack on the sides. Guess what? It's now easier for me to find the books I want then when they were grouped by type, subtype, genre, size, color, whatever.
- When I get home I place my keys in either two places: at the entrance desk, or my front desk... when I can't find them there I do a mental exercise that most people that usualy have their share of mess do: "let me trace what I did since I got home"... same goes for everything else I can't find in the first 10 seconds, no matter for how long I haven't seen what I'm looking for (and that it's an exercise that actualy has direct results in the way you deal with your memory, either because your predispose to that, or because the exercise makes you do it 'till you do it automaticaly). Same goes for my documents on my laptop: all in a bunch grouped by project (and on the end of the project I just place them in subdirectories subgrouping them by QA Test, Dev Tests, Analysis, Funcional Design, Issues/Tickets... but thats for my benifit but for the stacke holders benifit... well, you can say that it's for my benifit because if they can't make heads from tails from my docs if needed, then i'm in big trouble). I even have a foulder called "garbage" that I keep creating subdirectories in it with funny names like "ffs_someone_shoot_this_guy" or "is_this_4_real" (and so on) for crappy stuff that goes into my hands but shouldn't ever on the first place... The funny part about it is that I can find whatever I want without much effort when I want to show it to someone.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really... to take risks doesn't matter if you have the kind of faith your talking about or not.... Faith can mean 2 things:
To thrust in something;
To believe without reason.
In the first you have proof to support your faith to some extend, within reason... the latter you have nothing (religion). So, you can have faith that your work will have a good review, or you can have faith in your god. Risks don't have nothing to do with faith systems, but the risk assessment you make towards those risks do take into account both. I would prefer to thrust in something rather to make a risk assessment based in no reason at all.
Erm... you're messing philosophical schools there.... you wrote atheists, and gave a description of a cynic.... get your philosophical schools straight.
Cynicists preached that the purpose of life was to live a life in agreement with nature.... Atheists on the other end don't give a rats ass about deities because we believe in none.
I could go on about faiths, philosophical or theological view points, but why bother? Religion works the same way as placebos cure illness (specially the ones that have gods or mystical beings in their faiths).
Cowards? Where? Where? I don't.... wait, your trying to trick me ain't ya, mister anonymous coward?
I can only talk about my personal experience about all this. We kinda had everything all at once and realy fast around here: internet, cell phones and everything regarding it since mid early to mid 90's (major investiments on mobile phone and internet, because until then most cells phones I ever seen were in big cases and internet only heard about from friends that were in college.... BBS's until then :P).
As soon as SMS (short messaging system) was "discovered" all teens started to use it... why? Fast, _cheaper_ then phone calls, you could send them from anywhere if you had cell coverage, and you could send them in situations you didn't want or couldn't call the other person (classes, cinema, etc).
This was more then 10 years ago... since then IM started to appear. Social networks as well... I don't see social networks to exist for long... there will always be such services, but look at IRC and forums... Social networks is nothing more then a reincarnation of BBS's with a semi-personal, semi-public area (profile), with the possibility to share content. It's a neat forum with a more person approach instead of topics.
Getting back to text messaging and all that... Like I said, we had (and have) an huge usage of text messaging (cell text messaging, ergo SMS) but started to balance it self out as age comes. I for example started using email for work, study and so on because I either need to be formal or wanted something to be available on my computer after being sent.
All was balanced since it serves different purposes.
I see e-mail as the equivalent to have "something put on paper", like a letter. I only use email for informal stuff when the other person is unavailable in IM or sms (for example, is working, and pays more time to the computer then to his/her phone, so I know I'll catch them reading the email).
IM I use to chat with friends.. It's instantaneous, doesn't require much. Also use IM when I'm in a meeting and need to talk with someone, get some facts straight and quick (althou I sometimes get out of the room and call someone, but if I can prevent that, I do it with IM).
sms/text messaging I rarely use... used it everyday, several times an hour when I was younger (did I mention cheaper then calls? I did? So there you have it), now I just use when I can't get some one to answer me on the phone, or I just want to tell something but it's too late to call, or simply what I have to say isn't worth calling someone to tell it.
Social networks I really can't be bothered to use them anymore... some years back when they were something new, and everyone used it yeah I jumped on the wagon, but can't find anything useful on them except that I can find people I haven't seen for quite some time, ping them, get their number, email or whatever and resume our conversations from there (sharing photos and such is neat, but so is sending them to my email, with the bonus that I don't have to click and save everyone of them... everything else I can easly get from forums, oficial sites/forums/mailing lists, etc).
Saying that email is dead, well, it has been for quite some time where personal relationships is concerned (except for the occasional e-postcard, or the emails I send and receive from friends that are working and can't use IM or call me).
That might be true 'till some degree... I have several friends that have taken their degree and masters "at home", and went to MIT for their PhD and returned afterward, althou most apply for EU scientific organizations and will do their papers afterward... MIT is starting to be seen as overrated (even by themselfs, seem the time and effort spent to do bilateral agreements with EU universities). Also had an handful of professors that did the same. Several years ago what you'll hear it would be something in the lines of "I'll take my degree here, then go do research or lecture abroad".
Hummmm... install, update, configure to your taste, make a mirror image, backup that image... :)
Need a fresh install? Why bother? Backup all your documents, format and use the ghost image (update everything if needed).
Voila
Actualy the "$48k/wk argument" can be both right and wrong, just depends on the disorganization (and yeah, I'm talking about disorganization, not mess... so I'm not getting confused about them).
:P but that doesn't work when I'm at his desk talking about the email, and he can't find it, and I'll have to go to my desk, track the email, and he has to do a 30 second search to find the right email that took me 3 seconds to find).
One example: my boss has every email that arrives methodicaly organized by subject, project, blah blah blah blah.... and every time I need to talk to him about an issue thats pending for a long time, I need to check my emails (usualy I just sort by sender since I usualy have a slight idea of who sent me, or to whom I've sent), get the date or the subject, go to his desk again and search every damn folder ' till he finds the email... I took about 3 seconds finding the email, he takes about a minute or more (ofc, there's the search feature
On the other hand, if I ever needed to group all emails regarding a single issue together he would do in a couple of clicks, and I would take a day.... fortunately I'll never need to do that. and If I do, I'll just ask him to do it, and move on (I'm fortunately to work in a flat system, even thou we do have a hierarchy but thats only applied where decisions and tasks - not the type of task I mention on this example, since this would be the exception, not the rule - are concerned
).
And about the topic in general... well, I'll have to go with "depends" as well. There's "lazy" slob, and "conscious/unconscious methodicaly" slob.
The first is a no brainer... We all know one, we work with one or more, it's the guy that brings coffee to his work table and leaves it there, and if there's no cleaning lady for two years, that's how long the cup will stay there. He's the guy that tries to get you to do his job, and either is someone cousin, brother, nephew, or his out of a job real quick once noticed. (Well, a bit exaggerated, but you get the point).
The other one is people like me (and in way I'm trying to say that i'm so uber imba good and a genious... just stating something that works for me, it's the only I can vouch personaly for, and it seems to work for some amount of people with slight variations):
- In my place only once I had my bookshelf neat: when I moved In and unpacked. Ever since I just stack books on top of the ones that were already disposed in a row, or did a new stack on the sides. Guess what? It's now easier for me to find the books I want then when they were grouped by type, subtype, genre, size, color, whatever.
- When I get home I place my keys in either two places: at the entrance desk, or my front desk... when I can't find them there I do a mental exercise that most people that usualy have their share of mess do: "let me trace what I did since I got home"... same goes for everything else I can't find in the first 10 seconds, no matter for how long I haven't seen what I'm looking for (and that it's an exercise that actualy has direct results in the way you deal with your memory, either because your predispose to that, or because the exercise makes you do it 'till you do it automaticaly).
Same goes for my documents on my laptop: all in a bunch grouped by project (and on the end of the project I just place them in subdirectories subgrouping them by QA Test, Dev Tests, Analysis, Funcional Design, Issues/Tickets... but thats for my benifit but for the stacke holders benifit... well, you can say that it's for my benifit because if they can't make heads from tails from my docs if needed, then i'm in big trouble).
I even have a foulder called "garbage" that I keep creating subdirectories in it with funny names like "ffs_someone_shoot_this_guy" or "is_this_4_real" (and so on) for crappy stuff that goes into my hands but shouldn't ever on the first place... The funny part about it is that I can find whatever I want without much effort when I want to show it to someone.