I think that's what they lost. the level of innovation that happened in the garage, and through the '90's was impressive. And then they dropped their focus on innovation to become another run-of-the-mill, PC company and quickly crashed-and-burned.
I'm familiar with HP on the instrument side before it was spun off to Agilent. At that point in time, it was an impressive organization. Strong focus on innovation, ethical, and a solid program for employees. On these three points, I believe the current rendition of HP is batting zero.
Re: Further Erosion - Hey, I was just trying to be polite;>)
Re: Android - Exactly. My guess is that there's a 'bit' of financial consideration in jumping ship, but anyone with talent has a strong desire to see their stuff in action; who knows the outcome with HP at this point.
I think the bigger picture here is the further erosion of HP. From one of the stellar tech companies only a few years back, to right now in an impressive tail-spin. If you have talent, and you want the opportunity to see it to fruition, are you going to choose HP or Google?
A number of years ago, I was out to dinner with a few friends and the girl who's now my wife (proof that women will marry nearly regardless of the underlying issues); I have no idea what I had said back then, but they looked at one another with the comment "if he were to go insane, how'd we know?"
Sounds like you're in the same category.
If you're familiar with Hitchhiker's Guide and the other books of the trilogy, I always felt close to Zaphod from the stand-point of his "nudgings" from his subconscious. I've been considered intelligent by some, but mostly I listen to whatever my subconscious tells me. Once in a while, I can puzzle it out after-the-fact, but I learned a long time ago, my subconscious had a lot more going for it than my conscious mind. Faced with a problem, my best course of action is to go away and get distracted for a while. The answer would "appear". I suspect this would worry some folks, but if that's been how it always has been, you learn to go with the flow.
I've never been good at linear thinking, as you describe. Back when I was writing things out in school with pen or pencil on paper, it would quickly turn into a puzzle with inserted words, and sentences, side thoughts scribbled in the margins, etc. The advent of word processing (yes, I predate that indispensable tool of the computer age) was a monumental break-through. Though there was a lot of editing to get a thought down straight, at least I could simply stick the word or phrase where it needed to go. Before that it was note cards. Start writing sentence by sentence, and then move them around. And then onto a final copy (similar to your trick with post-its).
My problem has never been allowing the mind to wander, it's always been chasing the damn thing down and getting to to do something constructive. Think outside the box they say, but what if you were born without one?
How do you poor blokes survive.
By the way, what is "Game of Thrones".
And my answer is to your last line (I can't quite believe the world we live in) is to do my damnedest to ignore it.
Greg
What is most impressive of this dialog is how well versed most of the commenters are in the LENR = Cold Fusion = Snake Oil. The mentioned research is not from Rossi (and this is an area not worth arguing, but simply waiting to see if he brings a product to market) but from NASA's website, generally considered a fairly reputable organization.
Could the issue be that we have had instances of "Cold Fusion" where the researcher did not understand which aspects of his experiment were critical and therefore did not define them for subsequent researchers to be able to validate the result? The level of visceral response on the topic in general is ill-serving the debate as a whole. Starting at the "beginning", could Fleischmann and Pons measured a LENR event, but did not understand the parameters which allowed the reaction to take place.
With the small but consistent error in the results, what I have not seen is how you know that this isn't a measurement that the distance did not change.
Not likely. There can't be that many 3-legged mule like species in the Universe.
(If you understand the post, then understand that I know that I'm wrong, a bit of artistic license taken here.)
I've considered the demise of these critters, and though there is evidence that climate change was part of the problem for them, it does appear that human hunting also played a large role. Now, that's the part I find most interesting, if you were a primitive hunter, why would you go after something that could easily squash you like the proverbial bug??? Only one decent answer to this puzzle; they must have tasted GREAT!! Who want's to join my investors for the First American Mammoth Burgers and Bar???
There was an article a while back in Nature
At least for pigs, an aseptic environment for the piglet, actually leads to a less healthy individual. Researcher Denise Kelly (University of Aberdeen, UK) explains that for the study, piglets were divided equally between an outdoor environment, and indoor environment, and one where they were fed a diet high in antibiotics. The outdoor raised pigs intestinal tracts had a significantly higher population of "healthy" bacteria than their indoor raised brethren. Further, the indoor piglets gene expressed more genes for T-cell formation while the indoor raised pigs had more genes related to inflammatory immune response.
Kelly also explains that the pig is a good model for this type of research due to similarities between the organisms found in human and pig guts and their comparable size in organs."
A somewhat more disturbing article was published by the National Research Council (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12528) showing potential linkage between the chemical class called phthalates and decreased size of male testes. The article reports that the EPA needs to study the impact of phthalates as demasculinizing agents on male reproductive organs. Phtlalates are ubiquitous in the environment due to their use as a plasticizer. Traditionally the EPA has studied the effects of pollutants individually rather than as a class. The impact on exposure is permanent causing developmental problems (and if you want to see what an atrophied rat testicle looks ).
There also growing concern that this class of chemicals are actually impacting the ratio of male to female births. A decent summary is posted on .
As an analytical chemist working in the environmental industry, one of the challenges with this issue is that the concentrations we are attempting to measure are absurdly (though potentially significant) low. It is not uncommon for the studies to be needing levels of detection in the low parts per trillion range. Because we are not simply dealing with outright mortality (its fairly easy to tell when all the fish in a river are suddenly floating belly-up) and instead trying to understanding fairly subtle changes in the endocrine system of the impacted species (including homo sapiens) the issue is significantly more difficult to understand and address (slow shifts in the ratio of males-to-females)."
To me, the most important aspect of the satellite was more of a demonstration of capability. It was able to overcome significant problems (damage to solar panels, etc) and complete its mission. Much of future utilization of space will likely be via robotic and remote systems. As a initial effort in this direction, it was impressively successful, not as much in what it accomplished, but more in what it overcame.
What strikes me is that as we gain a better understanding space, the more bizarre we discover it to be. In this case, we have proposed theories on how what we are now seeing may have come into existence, but the author is clear that we are only choosing which is less implausible. With the same consideration, I've wondered if we will recognize life if we found it.
"unburleyvable" pointed out an important point here (wish I had some mod points), this isn't the first time around with price fixing with this stuff. I for one think that something new has to be applied to the situation based upon track record. It would seem that their perspective (manufacturer's) after getting caught must be that the point isn't not to do it (price fix) but not to get caught doing it.
For what its worth; no clue why you've been mod'ed down to "0" as flamebait. Your point may be disagreeable to some, but its a valid point to bring forward.
AS much as I agree with this overall sentiment, I have a significant issue with the lack of parental responsibility; if the parent doesn't want little Johnny playing this stuff; don't buy it! Parenting isn't about being your kids best friend; it's about being a parent; and if you're doing your job, the little buggers are going to be angry and pissed, and say stuff like "but all the other kids have them". I have a very good word, which my kids (6) did learn and more importantly come to understand the finer subtlety of the word "BULLSHIT". A second good word is simply "No".
The problem I have with nearly all of the first person shooter games, is that you're nearly invulnerable. And in the real world you're killing real people. One of my kids had been over at a friends house (middle school age) and when they wandered back to mine they had been playing one of the current first person shooter WWII games. And it was great fun. So, I called the kid's house, got permission, and had them watch a few episodes of "Band of Brothers", and made them listen to the commentary of the guys who were there.
I guess the question to the cognitive neuroscientist is; why the fuck are so many parents; not parenting? What type of dementia do we suffer as a society that we for whatever reason believe that giving a kid whatever he asks for is the right thing to do?
For those involved in technology, one of our flaws is the level of expectation we have for the average citizen to be able to cope with. I recall a security expert stating that the average person should be able to memorize a ridiculously large number of random passwords. I developed a strong understanding of controlling memory allocation (back in the early '90's) on PC's, not for some esoteric application, but to get the games my preschoolers were playing to work.
It led me to the perspective, that all things being equal, it is fairly easy to argue, that for the home computer market, the "good-guy" lost (as in Apple vs DOS and Windows PCs) simply because Apple did not expect the level of user expertize and intervention to get the things to work.
So, with this situation, though the/. crowd will not be having issues with this aspect of maintaining your PC, it's a lot to ask someone with less expertise. If you consider this perspective, it may be more understandable how and why there are so many PC's doing double-duty as part of "Bot-Nets".
As a parent, I agree with your point, that parents need to parent, and not look to the schools and society to do their job. This goes from what TV (and amount) they watch, clothes they wear, video games they play. Do we need video game ratings if the parent simply said no if they disapproved of the game they were playing? when any of my kids are spending too much time either watching TV, or video games, I'll set up a log, and it'll be 1:1 with whatever I feel the kid needs more of, this has been anything from studying, reading, "getting your butt outside", to exercising. And by the way, I do check that they were outside and not simply wandered off to a friends house to play video games there.
At the same time, rules (even if somewhat arbitrary) for a parent are a good indicator on the level of responsibility a kid is ready for. A curfew is a good indicator if the kid is capable of paying attention to time and being able to get themselves home on the agreed upon time. A kid that can handle this somewhat arbitrary objective, can probably be capable of handling more. Same as checking in on an agreed upon time, going where they say (and yes, you need to check, but you'd better be ready for when they're not where they said they'd be). If a kid ready to drive if they don't have enough self-discipline to get home on time or check in when they're supposed to?
Sorry, but the British approach to security is getting way to close to Orwell's 1984. Seems he may have simply been off by a few decades. Between the level of public video surveillance and now armed flying robots, they'll soon have two way TV's that don't turn off (though a lot of folks leave their PC on, and have a video camera on their monitor already) complete with one channel, and a better understanding of INGSOC.(Posted a moment ago anonymously by accident.)
Slashdot Mirror
I think that's what they lost. the level of innovation that happened in the garage, and through the '90's was impressive. And then they dropped their focus on innovation to become another run-of-the-mill, PC company and quickly crashed-and-burned.
I'm familiar with HP on the instrument side before it was spun off to Agilent. At that point in time, it was an impressive organization. Strong focus on innovation, ethical, and a solid program for employees. On these three points, I believe the current rendition of HP is batting zero.
Re: Further Erosion - Hey, I was just trying to be polite ;>)
Re: Android - Exactly. My guess is that there's a 'bit' of financial consideration in jumping ship, but anyone with talent has a strong desire to see their stuff in action; who knows the outcome with HP at this point.
I think the bigger picture here is the further erosion of HP. From one of the stellar tech companies only a few years back, to right now in an impressive tail-spin. If you have talent, and you want the opportunity to see it to fruition, are you going to choose HP or Google?
A number of years ago, I was out to dinner with a few friends and the girl who's now my wife (proof that women will marry nearly regardless of the underlying issues); I have no idea what I had said back then, but they looked at one another with the comment "if he were to go insane, how'd we know?" Sounds like you're in the same category. If you're familiar with Hitchhiker's Guide and the other books of the trilogy, I always felt close to Zaphod from the stand-point of his "nudgings" from his subconscious. I've been considered intelligent by some, but mostly I listen to whatever my subconscious tells me. Once in a while, I can puzzle it out after-the-fact, but I learned a long time ago, my subconscious had a lot more going for it than my conscious mind. Faced with a problem, my best course of action is to go away and get distracted for a while. The answer would "appear". I suspect this would worry some folks, but if that's been how it always has been, you learn to go with the flow.
I've never been good at linear thinking, as you describe. Back when I was writing things out in school with pen or pencil on paper, it would quickly turn into a puzzle with inserted words, and sentences, side thoughts scribbled in the margins, etc. The advent of word processing (yes, I predate that indispensable tool of the computer age) was a monumental break-through. Though there was a lot of editing to get a thought down straight, at least I could simply stick the word or phrase where it needed to go. Before that it was note cards. Start writing sentence by sentence, and then move them around. And then onto a final copy (similar to your trick with post-its).
Greg
Sure, but if you're 57, how do you differentiate between my current and traditional thought process and the onset of senility???
My problem has never been allowing the mind to wander, it's always been chasing the damn thing down and getting to to do something constructive. Think outside the box they say, but what if you were born without one?
How do you poor blokes survive. By the way, what is "Game of Thrones". And my answer is to your last line (I can't quite believe the world we live in) is to do my damnedest to ignore it. Greg
What is most impressive of this dialog is how well versed most of the commenters are in the LENR = Cold Fusion = Snake Oil. The mentioned research is not from Rossi (and this is an area not worth arguing, but simply waiting to see if he brings a product to market) but from NASA's website, generally considered a fairly reputable organization.
Could the issue be that we have had instances of "Cold Fusion" where the researcher did not understand which aspects of his experiment were critical and therefore did not define them for subsequent researchers to be able to validate the result? The level of visceral response on the topic in general is ill-serving the debate as a whole. Starting at the "beginning", could Fleischmann and Pons measured a LENR event, but did not understand the parameters which allowed the reaction to take place.
Sorry, much better read than I was. Clearly an idea barking up the wrong tree (or sub-atomic particle).
With the small but consistent error in the results, what I have not seen is how you know that this isn't a measurement that the distance did not change.
I'll take you up on the bet, we just need to figure out how we find ourselves in the same to to even up.
See: http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/05/07/1757206/Titan-May-Have-Water-Ocean-Under-the-Surface The more we study Titan, the more likely the subsurface ocean seems and in my personal perspective the more bizarre; Methane - Ice - Water - Rock???
Not likely. There can't be that many 3-legged mule like species in the Universe. (If you understand the post, then understand that I know that I'm wrong, a bit of artistic license taken here.)
I've considered the demise of these critters, and though there is evidence that climate change was part of the problem for them, it does appear that human hunting also played a large role. Now, that's the part I find most interesting, if you were a primitive hunter, why would you go after something that could easily squash you like the proverbial bug??? Only one decent answer to this puzzle; they must have tasted GREAT!! Who want's to join my investors for the First American Mammoth Burgers and Bar???
There was an article a while back in Nature
At least for pigs, an aseptic environment for the piglet, actually leads to a less healthy individual. Researcher Denise Kelly (University of Aberdeen, UK) explains that for the study, piglets were divided equally between an outdoor environment, and indoor environment, and one where they were fed a diet high in antibiotics. The outdoor raised pigs intestinal tracts had a significantly higher population of "healthy" bacteria than their indoor raised brethren. Further, the indoor piglets gene expressed more genes for T-cell formation while the indoor raised pigs had more genes related to inflammatory immune response.
Kelly also explains that the pig is a good model for this type of research due to similarities between the organisms found in human and pig guts and their comparable size in organs."
Now about EDC's (Endocrine Disrupting Compounds) had an article a while ago by pickins. Basically these compounds have been shown to feminize males.
A somewhat more disturbing article was published by the National Research Council (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12528) showing potential linkage between the chemical class called phthalates and decreased size of male testes. The article reports that the EPA needs to study the impact of phthalates as demasculinizing agents on male reproductive organs. Phtlalates are ubiquitous in the environment due to their use as a plasticizer. Traditionally the EPA has studied the effects of pollutants individually rather than as a class. The impact on exposure is permanent causing developmental problems (and if you want to see what an atrophied rat testicle looks ).
There also growing concern that this class of chemicals are actually impacting the ratio of male to female births. A decent summary is posted on .
As an analytical chemist working in the environmental industry, one of the challenges with this issue is that the concentrations we are attempting to measure are absurdly (though potentially significant) low. It is not uncommon for the studies to be needing levels of detection in the low parts per trillion range. Because we are not simply dealing with outright mortality (its fairly easy to tell when all the fish in a river are suddenly floating belly-up) and instead trying to understanding fairly subtle changes in the endocrine system of the impacted species (including homo sapiens) the issue is significantly more difficult to understand and address (slow shifts in the ratio of males-to-females)."
To me, the most important aspect of the satellite was more of a demonstration of capability. It was able to overcome significant problems (damage to solar panels, etc) and complete its mission. Much of future utilization of space will likely be via robotic and remote systems. As a initial effort in this direction, it was impressively successful, not as much in what it accomplished, but more in what it overcame.
What strikes me is that as we gain a better understanding space, the more bizarre we discover it to be. In this case, we have proposed theories on how what we are now seeing may have come into existence, but the author is clear that we are only choosing which is less implausible. With the same consideration, I've wondered if we will recognize life if we found it.
"unburleyvable" pointed out an important point here (wish I had some mod points), this isn't the first time around with price fixing with this stuff. I for one think that something new has to be applied to the situation based upon track record. It would seem that their perspective (manufacturer's) after getting caught must be that the point isn't not to do it (price fix) but not to get caught doing it.
Greg
For what its worth; no clue why you've been mod'ed down to "0" as flamebait. Your point may be disagreeable to some, but its a valid point to bring forward.
No clue why modded to "Redundant"; posted anonymously, but it was my first sentiment.
AS much as I agree with this overall sentiment, I have a significant issue with the lack of parental responsibility; if the parent doesn't want little Johnny playing this stuff; don't buy it! Parenting isn't about being your kids best friend; it's about being a parent; and if you're doing your job, the little buggers are going to be angry and pissed, and say stuff like "but all the other kids have them". I have a very good word, which my kids (6) did learn and more importantly come to understand the finer subtlety of the word "BULLSHIT". A second good word is simply "No".
The problem I have with nearly all of the first person shooter games, is that you're nearly invulnerable. And in the real world you're killing real people. One of my kids had been over at a friends house (middle school age) and when they wandered back to mine they had been playing one of the current first person shooter WWII games. And it was great fun. So, I called the kid's house, got permission, and had them watch a few episodes of "Band of Brothers", and made them listen to the commentary of the guys who were there.
I guess the question to the cognitive neuroscientist is; why the fuck are so many parents; not parenting? What type of dementia do we suffer as a society that we for whatever reason believe that giving a kid whatever he asks for is the right thing to do?
For those involved in technology, one of our flaws is the level of expectation we have for the average citizen to be able to cope with. I recall a security expert stating that the average person should be able to memorize a ridiculously large number of random passwords. I developed a strong understanding of controlling memory allocation (back in the early '90's) on PC's, not for some esoteric application, but to get the games my preschoolers were playing to work.
/. crowd will not be having issues with this aspect of maintaining your PC, it's a lot to ask someone with less expertise. If you consider this perspective, it may be more understandable how and why there are so many PC's doing double-duty as part of "Bot-Nets".
It led me to the perspective, that all things being equal, it is fairly easy to argue, that for the home computer market, the "good-guy" lost (as in Apple vs DOS and Windows PCs) simply because Apple did not expect the level of user expertize and intervention to get the things to work.
So, with this situation, though the
As a parent, I agree with your point, that parents need to parent, and not look to the schools and society to do their job. This goes from what TV (and amount) they watch, clothes they wear, video games they play. Do we need video game ratings if the parent simply said no if they disapproved of the game they were playing? when any of my kids are spending too much time either watching TV, or video games, I'll set up a log, and it'll be 1:1 with whatever I feel the kid needs more of, this has been anything from studying, reading, "getting your butt outside", to exercising. And by the way, I do check that they were outside and not simply wandered off to a friends house to play video games there.
At the same time, rules (even if somewhat arbitrary) for a parent are a good indicator on the level of responsibility a kid is ready for. A curfew is a good indicator if the kid is capable of paying attention to time and being able to get themselves home on the agreed upon time. A kid that can handle this somewhat arbitrary objective, can probably be capable of handling more. Same as checking in on an agreed upon time, going where they say (and yes, you need to check, but you'd better be ready for when they're not where they said they'd be). If a kid ready to drive if they don't have enough self-discipline to get home on time or check in when they're supposed to?
Sorry, but the British approach to security is getting way to close to Orwell's 1984. Seems he may have simply been off by a few decades. Between the level of public video surveillance and now armed flying robots, they'll soon have two way TV's that don't turn off (though a lot of folks leave their PC on, and have a video camera on their monitor already) complete with one channel, and a better understanding of INGSOC.(Posted a moment ago anonymously by accident.)