I am still on the old commenting style, with none of the JS crap, and/. was a pain on mobile till now. This is a fantastic effort guys. Really love the UI and as a product manager, impressed by the placement of ads. Really good.
Do you know why Intelligent design/God still hangs around? It is because we want to. No, not just the uneducated or unwilling, everyone.
Intelligent design means that we have been created by god, and for a purpose. Evolution means that we are here by an accident, we dont really have to do anything except make babies and have a good time (optional). There is no purpose following evolution.
There is a dissonance here. And that is why people have faith that there is god and he created them. We as a species are not good at handling dissonance.
You have just shown you do not understand anything about god. It is a construct used to explain a lot of phenomenon, predominantly social and personal. It works a lot of times (and explains coincidences pretty nicely:)) and thats why it still exists, even in the greatest minds.
Just because you know more about christianity and its bluffs(?) does not make you an atheist. True atheism is a philosophy, and is very well studied and documented. In fact, it is an integral part of some oriental religions and Hinduism too.
Religion has nothing to with facts, it is belief. As much as people want to know, people will also want to believe. And thats why, religion is never going to die. Check for yourself what you believe, and how much of it is as irrational as religion. I bet you will be surprised.
It is the student's responsibility to learn, and he can make use of whatever tools he has at his disposal to achieve that aim.
On the other hand , and in the real world, a majority (citation needed? I can give you anecdotal evidence from each of my 18 years of classroom education) of the students would be distracted by laptops. Forget laptops, I bite my hand regularly in classes just to keep awake and concentrate on what the soporific prof was talking about. Even a scribbling sound would distract me in his lectures, and I would end up dreaming from scratching to itching to that advert about itches to that model in the ad to that film about a struggling actor to latest movie to upcoming movies to next week plans to booze and sports. In an economics class. This actually happened.
I felt it was the professors reponsibility to stop me from dreaming by atleast pretending to not mumble. But I would be pissed if some other tech, which enables me to take notes, is banned.
All said and done, I wouldn't be too sad to see laptops banned.
Actually it is a cycle. De-centralised to centralised then centralised to de-centralised. A lot of concepts work this way. From political power (Local government to kingdom to local government) to computing (mainframe to data centre to cloud), we see this cycle a lot.
I actually hope that someone does a study of this phenomenon, and finds out an equilibrium which has advantages of de centralisation and centralisation. That would be something.
"I call on the President and his Administration to oppose any effort to transfer control of the Internet to the United Nations or any other international governmental entity."
It's not over folks. Keep your Tor up and running.
BTW, I really hate it when media spins it to the advertisers. Wonder if an 'open' news site exists. One that gives me plain texts and actual information, not commentary along with facts.
What it means in Diplomatese is that they are going to set up a commiteee first, talk to each and every nation about their preferences, and then create a document, laying the bare minimum regulations that need to be imposed. Of course, some countries will not like this, and will not opt-in. A few will opt in, but the implementation will be so broken, that each country will set up its own regulation mechanism on the top of it. As these clash with the UN, the UN regulation mechanism will be completely broken.
The UN cannot tie its own shoe laces. This will only justify the creation of a government approved 'regulation' process, which is often referred to as cencorship.
The Internet was nice while it lasted.
What you are supporting is basically a return to the European Dark Ages, where the leaders operated in the dark without the people's knowledge, and the citizens were just pawns in their leader's games.
This.
Wikileaks is there only to serve you and me. It is a leak, not a discovery.
The way I see it, the leaks are not meant to embarrass the governments or bureaucracy. They already know this. Wikileaks works for us. You and me. We see the real stuff what our governments are doing, and if we have a chance, vote for or against the government. If Saudi Arabia was not a kingdom, the ruler would be given the boot. Pakistan now knows what it's government is doing. You guys know what US is trying to do.
Don't play strawman with me.
Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King are honest and simple people. I prefer them. Maybe you would like to be ruled by extremely intellgent and motivated people behind the credit crisis, I want honest and simple people to do the job. Learn some history and come back to play strawman with me, I can play better than you.
What you imply in your post is that simple==dumb. This is not true.
The dumb guy at top was a joke. The criminals getting elected is continuing the joke.
I always wondered why automated twitter like systems are not used to solve this kind of problem.
Here is what I would like: Have a device which measures the traffic at one point installed all across the highways (Simple IR device looking at the number of passing vehicles per second should do). These devices act as social beings, sharing their data to a server to give out to everyone. They should come cheap, especially while buying in bulk (Make them solar powered, if you want to). Let them transmit the data to the nearest cell phone tower or to a server on the internet. The connectivity should be cheap, it is sending bytes of information. Have the GPS in your car (or your $20 cellphone) receive the 'feed'(or SMS) from the server based on the input route.
I dont think you need an algorithm to predict the travel time, you can just calculate it (Can be done server side too).
The costs in implementing this should be lesser.
I am not an American, but aren't simple and honest folks more trustworthy than a highly educated and dishonest people? I consider myself a part of the latter group, and I want to be led by a guy with a simple and honest plan, frankly. Never trust a guy who is more intelligent than you. Of course, I want the more intelligent guy to work UNDER me, which is better for both of us. Put the dumbest person at the top, and lets steer towards progress.
This is also why I feel more people with criminal records get elected in my country. They were dumb enough to get caught, they will be dumb enough to give me what I want.
Excellent. What you have shown to the slashdot crowd is the difficulties in manufacturing in a way no one has ever done before.
That said, you need to remember that the decision to do so has been made by the company itself. They wanted to take on the risk of manufacturing in China for more profits (or to stay with competition). There is a risk there, make no mistake.
Even when you sell a 'Made in America' laptop for $899, there is a risk that you are taking. The risk is associated with the manufactuing process itself. Dell did nothing to plan against that risk. When the problem appeared, they lied. They cannot be excused.
Summary: They are supposed to do all that AND sell me a laptop at $10, which is my reservation price for any electronic device.
Actually we have a lot of faith in our corruption. Look, its not that I just know that somebody is corrupt, it is also that I know how to use it.
In a previous attempt, this same exercise created many dupes and gave birth to many non existing people. I am talking about iris scanners here, and the officials themselves, top civil servants can be trusted. It is not a bad database design too, remember, we create most of the designs for your systems. It was later found out that a political party created these, and the method was by bribing some of the data collectors.
Every system is corrupt, even this one. If your authorities want to screw you, trust me, they don't need this. This is only for the better.
It is not that India is not on board with the problem. It does not think the proposed solutions would work. I agree that the government interventions in other states are a good way to solve the problem, but it might not work in India (We still have gas subsidized).
India is much like EU with a central government, but poor. Too many ill thought out solutions presented by too many countries, India now does not trust the west much, especially considering the threat that it brings to global power balance.
Who uses watches for the time now? All the technology that has enabled top quality mechanical watches has come to a grinding halt. What would the watch companies do? Do you pity them as well?
Find a way to use the technology and do something better, in fact earn more profits. Even the simplest mechanical watch can now be (and are being) labeled as luxury and sold to gullible buyers. Technology made a commodity useless. Good thinking made the useless commodity a luxury.
Things can be changed here too, and note this, sire, they will in a free market. You are either up to the challenge or somebody more enterprising than you is.
Any MBA should know the opportunity cost of time: If he can ditch this and earn something doing some other work, he is doing a loss. Open source development is a challenge, and challenging tasks need to offer rewards.
I know, most developers wouldn't understand this, but it is no more "I will do stuff because I can". For MBAs, it is (ofcourse I am being generic) "What am I going to get in return for this".
Have an incentive structure in place, attract people who are either devoted to the cause or are interested in things other than money and a few MBAs might actually go work with open source projects.
If I need to explain why an MBA is needed at all, here is what you do: Take a proprietary software (market leader or otherwise), calculate its revenue from the particular product. If you had a decent MBA, you would be in that position and the social impact you could have caused is the revenue, which is saved by customers by not buying the proprietary product.
I am a management student, so have to deal with office products a lot. Where MSOffice win hands down and OO.o loses out is that OO.o is plain ugly. If I have to show my boss a sales plan, I need to highlight a few rows. The colours that are by default provided on it are simply plain ugly. Anybody using those colours to distinguish estimated vs actual sales is going to get a dirty look from the boss.
The defaults in Writer (size, margins,headings, fonts, colours), the ease of accessing formulas in calc, the ease of making a ppt which will win us a contract, these are the things missing from OO.o. I don't care if it is open-source or costs $0, if I can't make a good presentation out of it, bye bye.
Why don't OO.o do a market survey on what are the default colours and themes and fonts people like? What are the functions, menu items that their target segment use? I think with this sort of data, UI changes make more sense, not on simple random ideas by nerds. True, this is a great forum for generating a few ideas, and thats where this post comes in too, but I would be more than happy to see some USEFUL features incorporated as UI changes.
That is not the marketing strategy of Apple now is it? Apple assures you of a great app, for $1. period. It is the market bully now, its shouting to its developers: this is the rate i'm going to sell you at. And behind apple is the huge crowd of mad iPhone users, constantly wanting to do something more with their iPhone. Lose them, and you lose a chance to make a million bucks. Free market with apple constraints, served on a plate for you.
Can you see the monster Apple? Microsoft hasn't got balls this big now.
It is pretty easy to point out privacy concerns, but India is facing real terrorism. Fighting that requires tough measures, and you will find yourself signing up for such a scheme when one of your friends die in such an act.
You also have to trust the capability of the governing agencies in using such data, they couldnt prevent a strike from the seas with loads of intelligence.
Could the western world look at this with a little more empathy? Its not just numbers, they are actual humans.
You are in the 4th quadrant. Companies dont want you too. make yourself either profitable, or loyal, they might consider you. screw that.. unless you buy a car every year, they really dont care about your priorities, because when the time comes, you are going to choose a superior product, and you will choose toyota.
Do you know how diverse and unorganised India is? Technology that connects people will also make terrorists job easier. And its not a once in a decade or millennium business, I call my friends in Bangalore asking were they OK, and they ask me the next day was I OK ( one month ago, and Im not talking about delhi blasts or jaipur blasts)!!
The government has too many troubles tracking explosives, naxalites, terrorists, riots, strikes and all that, the least Indians can do is give it a break. And if people know you well in your neighborhood, you dont need any of that stuff. I havent given this guy in ahmedabad my photo or anything, just told him Im studying at so and so place, and he trusts me.
Nobody is giving up liberties here, the government is trying to catch the unwanted(surplus) liberty from people who can afford it.
I know it is too easy to comment from far away, but a bit of research and contextual familiarity, your opinion might be considered. Or else you are just a westerner warming the chair and giving his opinion.
The survey left a few judgment calls to the reader.
I personally don't like anybody telling me something is good. Give me the raw data, and I can analyze it and will come to my own conclusions. Chances are that if you are sane, and so is everybody else, you will agree with majority.
You nailed it sir. I tried lots of other browsers, including lynx. I am home with mozilla, my live bookmarks work fine, and i can afford to use it as i like , with my work specific extensions.
get me a cooliris on chorme, then we can begin talking. I would download and install chrome though, just for the fun of it.
Slashdot Mirror
I am still on the old commenting style, with none of the JS crap, and /. was a pain on mobile till now. This is a fantastic effort guys. Really love the UI and as a product manager, impressed by the placement of ads. Really good.
Do you know why Intelligent design/God still hangs around? It is because we want to. No, not just the uneducated or unwilling, everyone.
Intelligent design means that we have been created by god, and for a purpose. Evolution means that we are here by an accident, we dont really have to do anything except make babies and have a good time (optional). There is no purpose following evolution.
There is a dissonance here. And that is why people have faith that there is god and he created them. We as a species are not good at handling dissonance.
You have just shown you do not understand anything about god. It is a construct used to explain a lot of phenomenon, predominantly social and personal. It works a lot of times (and explains coincidences pretty nicely :)) and thats why it still exists, even in the greatest minds.
Just because you know more about christianity and its bluffs(?) does not make you an atheist. True atheism is a philosophy, and is very well studied and documented. In fact, it is an integral part of some oriental religions and Hinduism too.
Religion has nothing to with facts, it is belief. As much as people want to know, people will also want to believe. And thats why, religion is never going to die. Check for yourself what you believe, and how much of it is as irrational as religion. I bet you will be surprised.
It is the student's responsibility to learn, and he can make use of whatever tools he has at his disposal to achieve that aim.
On the other hand , and in the real world, a majority (citation needed? I can give you anecdotal evidence from each of my 18 years of classroom education) of the students would be distracted by laptops. Forget laptops, I bite my hand regularly in classes just to keep awake and concentrate on what the soporific prof was talking about. Even a scribbling sound would distract me in his lectures, and I would end up dreaming from scratching to itching to that advert about itches to that model in the ad to that film about a struggling actor to latest movie to upcoming movies to next week plans to booze and sports. In an economics class. This actually happened.
I felt it was the professors reponsibility to stop me from dreaming by atleast pretending to not mumble. But I would be pissed if some other tech, which enables me to take notes, is banned.
All said and done, I wouldn't be too sad to see laptops banned.
Actually it is a cycle. De-centralised to centralised then centralised to de-centralised. A lot of concepts work this way. From political power (Local government to kingdom to local government) to computing (mainframe to data centre to cloud), we see this cycle a lot.
I actually hope that someone does a study of this phenomenon, and finds out an equilibrium which has advantages of de centralisation and centralisation. That would be something.
"I call on the President and his Administration to oppose any effort to transfer control of the Internet to the United Nations or any other international governmental entity ."
It's not over folks. Keep your Tor up and running.
BTW, I really hate it when media spins it to the advertisers. Wonder if an 'open' news site exists. One that gives me plain texts and actual information, not commentary along with facts.
What it means in Diplomatese is that they are going to set up a commiteee first, talk to each and every nation about their preferences, and then create a document, laying the bare minimum regulations that need to be imposed. Of course, some countries will not like this, and will not opt-in. A few will opt in, but the implementation will be so broken, that each country will set up its own regulation mechanism on the top of it. As these clash with the UN, the UN regulation mechanism will be completely broken.
The UN cannot tie its own shoe laces. This will only justify the creation of a government approved 'regulation' process, which is often referred to as cencorship.
The Internet was nice while it lasted.
This.
Wikileaks is there only to serve you and me. It is a leak, not a discovery.
The way I see it, the leaks are not meant to embarrass the governments or bureaucracy. They already know this. Wikileaks works for us. You and me. We see the real stuff what our governments are doing, and if we have a chance, vote for or against the government. If Saudi Arabia was not a kingdom, the ruler would be given the boot. Pakistan now knows what it's government is doing. You guys know what US is trying to do.
Don't play strawman with me.
Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King are honest and simple people. I prefer them. Maybe you would like to be ruled by extremely intellgent and motivated people behind the credit crisis, I want honest and simple people to do the job. Learn some history and come back to play strawman with me, I can play better than you.
What you imply in your post is that simple==dumb. This is not true.
The dumb guy at top was a joke. The criminals getting elected is continuing the joke.
I always wondered why automated twitter like systems are not used to solve this kind of problem.
Here is what I would like: Have a device which measures the traffic at one point installed all across the highways (Simple IR device looking at the number of passing vehicles per second should do). These devices act as social beings, sharing their data to a server to give out to everyone. They should come cheap, especially while buying in bulk (Make them solar powered, if you want to). Let them transmit the data to the nearest cell phone tower or to a server on the internet. The connectivity should be cheap, it is sending bytes of information. Have the GPS in your car (or your $20 cellphone) receive the 'feed'(or SMS) from the server based on the input route.
I dont think you need an algorithm to predict the travel time, you can just calculate it (Can be done server side too).
The costs in implementing this should be lesser.
I am not an American, but aren't simple and honest folks more trustworthy than a highly educated and dishonest people? I consider myself a part of the latter group, and I want to be led by a guy with a simple and honest plan, frankly. Never trust a guy who is more intelligent than you. Of course, I want the more intelligent guy to work UNDER me, which is better for both of us. Put the dumbest person at the top, and lets steer towards progress.
This is also why I feel more people with criminal records get elected in my country. They were dumb enough to get caught, they will be dumb enough to give me what I want.
Excellent. What you have shown to the slashdot crowd is the difficulties in manufacturing in a way no one has ever done before.
That said, you need to remember that the decision to do so has been made by the company itself. They wanted to take on the risk of manufacturing in China for more profits (or to stay with competition). There is a risk there, make no mistake.
Even when you sell a 'Made in America' laptop for $899, there is a risk that you are taking. The risk is associated with the manufactuing process itself. Dell did nothing to plan against that risk. When the problem appeared, they lied. They cannot be excused.
Summary: They are supposed to do all that AND sell me a laptop at $10, which is my reservation price for any electronic device.
Actually we have a lot of faith in our corruption. Look, its not that I just know that somebody is corrupt, it is also that I know how to use it.
In a previous attempt, this same exercise created many dupes and gave birth to many non existing people. I am talking about iris scanners here, and the officials themselves, top civil servants can be trusted. It is not a bad database design too, remember, we create most of the designs for your systems. It was later found out that a political party created these, and the method was by bribing some of the data collectors.
Every system is corrupt, even this one. If your authorities want to screw you, trust me, they don't need this. This is only for the better.
JFGI. He is Asok from IIT Madras.
It is not that India is not on board with the problem. It does not think the proposed solutions would work. I agree that the government interventions in other states are a good way to solve the problem, but it might not work in India (We still have gas subsidized).
India is much like EU with a central government, but poor. Too many ill thought out solutions presented by too many countries, India now does not trust the west much, especially considering the threat that it brings to global power balance.
Who uses watches for the time now? All the technology that has enabled top quality mechanical watches has come to a grinding halt. What would the watch companies do? Do you pity them as well? Find a way to use the technology and do something better, in fact earn more profits. Even the simplest mechanical watch can now be (and are being) labeled as luxury and sold to gullible buyers. Technology made a commodity useless. Good thinking made the useless commodity a luxury. Things can be changed here too, and note this, sire, they will in a free market. You are either up to the challenge or somebody more enterprising than you is.
Any MBA should know the opportunity cost of time: If he can ditch this and earn something doing some other work, he is doing a loss. Open source development is a challenge, and challenging tasks need to offer rewards.
I know, most developers wouldn't understand this, but it is no more "I will do stuff because I can". For MBAs, it is (ofcourse I am being generic) "What am I going to get in return for this".
Have an incentive structure in place, attract people who are either devoted to the cause or are interested in things other than money and a few MBAs might actually go work with open source projects.
If I need to explain why an MBA is needed at all, here is what you do: Take a proprietary software (market leader or otherwise), calculate its revenue from the particular product. If you had a decent MBA, you would be in that position and the social impact you could have caused is the revenue, which is saved by customers by not buying the proprietary product.
I am a management student, so have to deal with office products a lot. Where MSOffice win hands down and OO.o loses out is that OO.o is plain ugly. If I have to show my boss a sales plan, I need to highlight a few rows. The colours that are by default provided on it are simply plain ugly. Anybody using those colours to distinguish estimated vs actual sales is going to get a dirty look from the boss.
The defaults in Writer (size, margins,headings, fonts, colours), the ease of accessing formulas in calc, the ease of making a ppt which will win us a contract, these are the things missing from OO.o. I don't care if it is open-source or costs $0, if I can't make a good presentation out of it, bye bye.
Why don't OO.o do a market survey on what are the default colours and themes and fonts people like? What are the functions, menu items that their target segment use? I think with this sort of data, UI changes make more sense, not on simple random ideas by nerds. True, this is a great forum for generating a few ideas, and thats where this post comes in too, but I would be more than happy to see some USEFUL features incorporated as UI changes.
You created the account just for that post, didn't you?
That is not the marketing strategy of Apple now is it? Apple assures you of a great app, for $1. period. It is the market bully now, its shouting to its developers: this is the rate i'm going to sell you at. And behind apple is the huge crowd of mad iPhone users, constantly wanting to do something more with their iPhone. Lose them, and you lose a chance to make a million bucks. Free market with apple constraints, served on a plate for you.
Can you see the monster Apple? Microsoft hasn't got balls this big now.
It is pretty easy to point out privacy concerns, but India is facing real terrorism. Fighting that requires tough measures, and you will find yourself signing up for such a scheme when one of your friends die in such an act.
You also have to trust the capability of the governing agencies in using such data, they couldnt prevent a strike from the seas with loads of intelligence.
Could the western world look at this with a little more empathy? Its not just numbers, they are actual humans.
Loyalty/Profitability High Low
High 2 1
Low 3 4
You are in the 4th quadrant. Companies dont want you too. make yourself either profitable, or loyal, they might consider you. screw that.. unless you buy a car every year, they really dont care about your priorities, because when the time comes, you are going to choose a superior product, and you will choose toyota.
Do you know how diverse and unorganised India is? Technology that connects people will also make terrorists job easier. And its not a once in a decade or millennium business, I call my friends in Bangalore asking were they OK, and they ask me the next day was I OK ( one month ago, and Im not talking about delhi blasts or jaipur blasts)!!
The government has too many troubles tracking explosives, naxalites, terrorists, riots, strikes and all that, the least Indians can do is give it a break. And if people know you well in your neighborhood, you dont need any of that stuff. I havent given this guy in ahmedabad my photo or anything, just told him Im studying at so and so place, and he trusts me.
Nobody is giving up liberties here, the government is trying to catch the unwanted(surplus) liberty from people who can afford it.
I know it is too easy to comment from far away, but a bit of research and contextual familiarity, your opinion might be considered. Or else you are just a westerner warming the chair and giving his opinion.
The survey left a few judgment calls to the reader. I personally don't like anybody telling me something is good. Give me the raw data, and I can analyze it and will come to my own conclusions. Chances are that if you are sane, and so is everybody else, you will agree with majority.
You nailed it sir. I tried lots of other browsers, including lynx. I am home with mozilla, my live bookmarks work fine, and i can afford to use it as i like , with my work specific extensions. get me a cooliris on chorme, then we can begin talking. I would download and install chrome though, just for the fun of it.