This is not what you asked for, but it is an article summarizing the results of a number of studies (with references) plus the article writer's own personal experience.
Here is a different study that looked at the differences between complex interruptions and simple interruptions during the execution of a complex task. Bear in mind that the "complex task" was nowhere near as complex as various programming tasks can be. They found a complex task interrupted by a simple task generally cost about 4 minutes to get back into the task, and a complex task interrupted by another complex task took close to 8 minutes to get back into the task. An interesting affect they noted, however, was that when a complex task was interrupted by another complex task, when the person went back to the main task they made fewer errors for a time. That was not the case for a simple interruption.
Agreed, if you can't do private offices, semi-private cubes aren't bad as long as the sound barrier is solid. Collaboration software makes working in teams pretty easy, you could actually do a reasonable job with people across the country that way. There isn't any real need to be face to face when talking about code, and in fact there are a lot of things that can be distracting.
I saw a video recently (I'm pretty sure it's an old video) of some people sitting around a table just like the OP's boss suggested. One guy's phone is ringing, and the guy is just ignoring it. Suddenly the guy across from him at the table loses it, throws something at the guy (I think it was his phone), then dives across the table to get at the guy who won't answer his stupid telephone. He tackles the rude office mate and proceeds to beat the living shit out of him.
It would be a much, much, much better idea to give everybody a little bit of privacy and use some sort of collaboration software instead. Cubicals with high walls is fine, and you can keep the group pretty close together to make direct, verbal communication and small pow-wows easy. A set of cubicals surrounding a collaboration table would probably be the best mix of privacy and accessibility.
Congratulations! You've just committed the well known (though still often used) fallacy known as "Poisoning the Well".
Just because the National Post is a dirt-bag organization (I have no idea if they are or aren't, just making a point) does not have any bearing on the validity of their statements.
It does not mean you can dismiss their statements out of hand, it simply means you need to approach their "facts" with a healthy dose of skepticism. The less trustworthy they are, the bigger your dose.;)
This same fallacy is often committed on Slashdot with regards to Fox News. In other forums this happens with CNN and MS-NBC or the BBC, or just about any newspaper or news magazine or news organization. Having a bias does not invalidate the arguments at all, and merely claiming that they have a bias does not invalidate any of their arguments either. It is disingenuous to dismiss an argument out of hand for no reason other than the source of the argument.
I've seen those Greenland ice core temperature graphs; they don't look good for AGW alarmists, which is probably why you never see them. They show that temperatures were significantly warmer about 15 thousand years ago than they are today, followed by a slow, steady decline. There is a significant dip that coincides with the "Little Ice Age", then a fast rise to current levels, which are still within the limits of the original steady decline, if a touch on the high side.
They basically show little to no link between humans and climate, at least for the European area, which is where you would naturally expect to see it the most (though if temperatures continue to rise for too much longer, that goes bust).
The core data for the 50 thousand years prior to that is even more impressive - temperatures changed by massive amounts over the course of hundreds of years. The temperature readings for the last 15 thousand years are a bunch of short peaks and valleys, showing the temperature fluctuations, while during the ice age temperature changes were much smoother but much more drastic. It's no wonder so many species went extinct (including several species of humans).
Frankly, I'd much rather have the minor fluctuations of a warm period than the steady but drastic changes of a cold period. To give you an analogy, it's like the difference in frequency of AM radio compared to FM - One is long and smooth with huge variations, the other is tighter with small but very quick fluctuations.
You can't verify the results without all the data, so a partial release is about as worthless as no release at all.
That has been the problem, it's not joe-public who needs the data, it's scientists who have not been allowed to view all the data, which hamstrings the entire peer-review process. You can't review their methods if you don't have access to the data they used, plain and simple.
Ah, so I suppose the 650 climatologists who spoke out against the IPCC report at the Climate Summit last January don't understand all this fancy "science" stuff, huh?
The debate is far from over, regardless of what any environmental evangelists or political activists tell you. This goes for both the AGW alarmists and the AGW deniers, though it's the alarmists who have been pushing to get laws passed while they have the advantage. Beware anybody in science who says "the debate is over". They're definitely lying, and they're probably trying to pull one over on you.
Like leaving data out that wasn't used in the analysis?
There happen to be a lot of questions about exactly why such a large chunk of data was collected and then left out of the study. There are plenty of valid reasons, but "we didn't want to" isn't really one of them.
No, in order for a rational person to consider it to be the most correct understanding to date (science always advances) it has to explain everything better than any other theory.
You still must recognize that it is wrong. It's like Relativity, we know for a fact it is wrong, but it explains almost everything, so we use it.
AGW predicts global temperature trends for the last 150 years pretty accurately. It does not accurately predict the global temperature trends for the last thousand years, and it gets worse the further back you go, so we know we can't rely on it for future predictions beyond a relatively small number of years. I'd trust AGW out 50-100 years at the very most, beyond that it's useless.
Before we start basing law on this stuff, how about we get something that is a little more accurate, yeah? Another 5-10 years would be wonderful, just look at what we've learned in the last 10 years. Another 10 years and we could probably have something that accounts for most all the data.
a)The Medieval Warm Period is based on European records; it thus could be a local phenomenon, rather than a global one.
That was true ten years ago, today records from Australia and Africa (and others) show similar warming trends in the Medieval time period, confirming that it was a global event.
b) It has been hypothesized by William Ruddiman that the depopulation caused by the Black Death led to lower anthropogenic CO2; the Little Ice Age would thus be a short-term reversal of global warming, which would in fact reinforce the AGW theory. It is necessary to emphasize that this is only a hypothesis.
It has been pretty well established that the Little Ice Age was caused by a sudden release of glacial meltwater from North America rushing into the Gulf Stream, which brings warm water from the equator north to warm the European coastal waters. This influx of cold water effectively shut down the Gulf Stream until the glacial ice receded far enough north that it was no longer flushing cold water into the Gulf Coast.
Which do you think had a bigger effect, a halted Gulf Stream, or millions of dead people (who happen to release CO2 into the soil and air as they rot, btw)? There are also studies that suggest this event had a significant impact on global temperatures, but that would only be natural given a 300+ year cold period - the majority of the temperature changes were local.
This was a local event, but it was also completely natural and a result of the previous ice age and sudden spike in global temperatures. By the way, the global temperature spike 16 thousand years ago makes the current temperature rise irrelevant, and it happened during a time when there were all of 5 million humans in the world. There are obviously much larger forces at work than a little bit of CO2. Besides, there are a lot more people in Europe during the MWP, yet there are a number of studies on Europe's climate that suggest it was significantly warmer prior to the Little Ice Age than it is now. They didn't even have a significant level of fossile fuel burning like we do today. Doesn't that kinda put a crimp in AGW, at least regarding that time period?
I believe gravity is happening, but we shouldn't go around saying its because mass bends space until more data comes in.
Except the "mass bends space" model works a hell of a lot better than anything else, so given your own statements should we not be using that until something suggests otherwise?
The real crux of the whole thing is that science is never "finished", and anybody who tells you "the debate is over" regarding anything scientific in nature is a charlatan and is probably selling something.
Gravity is an absolutely perfect example, and we know a hell of a lot more about it than we do about Earth's long term climate mechanisms. Do we really want to be setting laws based on a field of science that is, at best, in its early adolescence? Frankly, I'd suggest we just use caution and wait until we know more, instead of setting draconian laws based on incomplete science. And yes, despite the mountains of data collected, climate science is still very incomplete.
We do know the effect of greenhouse gasses, and that we are pumping an unprecedented level of them, on a continuous basis, into the atmosphere, and that the environment is warming.
That's the thing, we do know we are affecting present temperature change, what we don't know is whether or not that has any serious impact on long-term climate.
For example, we know for a fact that there was a period in Earth's history where oxygen levels were around 2% and CO2 levels were closer to the present day Oxygen levels of 20%. We also know for a fact that there have been significant ice ages (10-50 thousand years in length) in recent geological history (as early as 16 thousand years ago). Current climate models do not accurately predict these climate changes given present conditions and working backwards, how the hell are we supposed to trust them to predict future climate as a result of present conditions and trends?
There is also very little evidence to suggest that increased temperatures - even significant increases - are detrimental to earth's ecosystem when taken as a whole. The hottest periods in Earth's history have also been the most productive, with most mass extinctions occurring during cold periods.
In light of that, why are we freaking out? Yes, we have a duty to be responsible with Earth's resources, but we should not be over-reacting. We have plenty of time to figure out how far we can go before we go too far. We certainly aren't there yet.
It would stand on its own, were the media to actually report what the data says.
The only way they can do that is if these guys actually release the data, which they don't do likely because it will be ripped to shreds by other scientists. What you end up with are conspiracy theories instead.
Anyone who was alive during the 70s should see distinct similarities between this disinformation campaign and the once vehement claims that there was "no definitive link" between tobacco use and cancer.
Anybody alive during the 70's should also remember a distinct similarity between the vehement AGW campaign and what was then a vehement AGC (Anthropogenic Global Cooling) campaign.
Give it another 30 years and we'll be on to something else entirely. Such is the way with science, it's politics that fuck everything up.
Apparently Apple uses "Display PDF", which is essentially the same thing. They just don't allow you to actually scale the DPI for some reason, or it still doesn't scale correctly, I forget which. In any case, it's broken.
What we want is a screen that displays all of the elements at a higher DPI. That requires two things: a higher hardware resolution (the actual physical pixels per inch - this is the highest DPI you can use), and an operating system that will scale all elements on the screen to match that DPI.
What we have now is a 300dpi monitor and an OS that displays elements at 96DPI - the result is all the element are ultra tiny and just as jagged as they have always been. If you could get 300dpi elements on a 300dpi screen, your monitor would look like a medium quality printed page, which is fantastically better than what we see now.
It's much more of a software problem than a hardware problem - if an OS won't show 300dpi elements, why bother making a 300dpi capable monitor?
The answer to all this is pretty simple, but would be difficult to pull off in one fell swoop. That is vector graphics for all screen elements. If we quit using pixel formats and started using scalable vectors for everything from fonts to window boarders, this would not be an issue, and it would be pretty easy to make the case for ultra-high resolution monitors. Even the most under-powered modern system has the capabilities to make this happen, so why not?
It would also make it easy for developers to keep styles consistent across many resolutions, and that has to be a good thing.
I don't know if you know this, but Feudalism is a form of government and economic system (kinda like Communism). It generally has a Monarch, but there is no reason it can't have an Oligarchy or Republic at its head instead.
Many Muslims are in a situation similar to what we went through with Crusades and the like.
I don't know if you know this, but the Crusades began because Muslims were slaughtering Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.
See a pattern?
Now, you're absolutely right that after that part was over the Crusaders came back and started killing "non-believers" in Europe and the like, but the Muslims were at the heart of the Crusades. They've been at the heart of all violence in the Middle East for at least the last thousand years, and a lot of countries down there are not much different than they were a thousand years ago.
Yeah, you need to work on your reading comprehension a little. That article says cost per ad is higher for Hulu, but revenue per thousand viewers is higher for Network TV. In other words, Network TV is not as profitable.
It also says nothing of how many people actually watch Hulu vs Network TV, but given that current internet ad spending for shows is about 5% of what it is for Network TV, and CPMs for most premium internet sites are higher than their network counterpart, I'd imagine Network TV viewership is much, much higher.
Again, it seemed like this was a joke, poking fun at the whole censorship thing.
It wasn't, hence the reason Matt and Trey, the creators of SouthPark, are pissed at CC for censoring it. RTFA man, or even RTFS. The speech was about intimidation and fear, which makes censoring it out of fear due to intimidation incredibly ironic.
You haven't watched nearly enough SouthPark man, I seriously doubt there is a single religion they haven't insulted. The spend most of their time on the big ones, but they spread the "love" quite a lot.
The “threat” from Muslim extremists is ridiculously low. Negligible even.
(ftfy)
The threat to you is low, the threat to CC and Matt and Trey is very, very high. That's what the scores of death threats they've been getting are all about.
Generally when someone sends you a death threat, the threat level goes way up from negligible. When a hundred people threaten you, you hire a security detail, because it's entirely possible that someone will try.
CC just pussed out is all, Matt and Trey were ready to take on all comers.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not what you asked for, but it is an article summarizing the results of a number of studies (with references) plus the article writer's own personal experience.
Here is a different study that looked at the differences between complex interruptions and simple interruptions during the execution of a complex task. Bear in mind that the "complex task" was nowhere near as complex as various programming tasks can be. They found a complex task interrupted by a simple task generally cost about 4 minutes to get back into the task, and a complex task interrupted by another complex task took close to 8 minutes to get back into the task. An interesting affect they noted, however, was that when a complex task was interrupted by another complex task, when the person went back to the main task they made fewer errors for a time. That was not the case for a simple interruption.
Agreed, if you can't do private offices, semi-private cubes aren't bad as long as the sound barrier is solid. Collaboration software makes working in teams pretty easy, you could actually do a reasonable job with people across the country that way. There isn't any real need to be face to face when talking about code, and in fact there are a lot of things that can be distracting.
I saw a video recently (I'm pretty sure it's an old video) of some people sitting around a table just like the OP's boss suggested. One guy's phone is ringing, and the guy is just ignoring it. Suddenly the guy across from him at the table loses it, throws something at the guy (I think it was his phone), then dives across the table to get at the guy who won't answer his stupid telephone. He tackles the rude office mate and proceeds to beat the living shit out of him.
It would be a much, much, much better idea to give everybody a little bit of privacy and use some sort of collaboration software instead. Cubicals with high walls is fine, and you can keep the group pretty close together to make direct, verbal communication and small pow-wows easy. A set of cubicals surrounding a collaboration table would probably be the best mix of privacy and accessibility.
Congratulations! You've just committed the well known (though still often used) fallacy known as "Poisoning the Well".
Just because the National Post is a dirt-bag organization (I have no idea if they are or aren't, just making a point) does not have any bearing on the validity of their statements.
It does not mean you can dismiss their statements out of hand, it simply means you need to approach their "facts" with a healthy dose of skepticism. The less trustworthy they are, the bigger your dose. ;)
This same fallacy is often committed on Slashdot with regards to Fox News. In other forums this happens with CNN and MS-NBC or the BBC, or just about any newspaper or news magazine or news organization. Having a bias does not invalidate the arguments at all, and merely claiming that they have a bias does not invalidate any of their arguments either. It is disingenuous to dismiss an argument out of hand for no reason other than the source of the argument.
I've seen those Greenland ice core temperature graphs; they don't look good for AGW alarmists, which is probably why you never see them. They show that temperatures were significantly warmer about 15 thousand years ago than they are today, followed by a slow, steady decline. There is a significant dip that coincides with the "Little Ice Age", then a fast rise to current levels, which are still within the limits of the original steady decline, if a touch on the high side.
They basically show little to no link between humans and climate, at least for the European area, which is where you would naturally expect to see it the most (though if temperatures continue to rise for too much longer, that goes bust).
The core data for the 50 thousand years prior to that is even more impressive - temperatures changed by massive amounts over the course of hundreds of years. The temperature readings for the last 15 thousand years are a bunch of short peaks and valleys, showing the temperature fluctuations, while during the ice age temperature changes were much smoother but much more drastic. It's no wonder so many species went extinct (including several species of humans).
Frankly, I'd much rather have the minor fluctuations of a warm period than the steady but drastic changes of a cold period. To give you an analogy, it's like the difference in frequency of AM radio compared to FM - One is long and smooth with huge variations, the other is tighter with small but very quick fluctuations.
You can't verify the results without all the data, so a partial release is about as worthless as no release at all.
That has been the problem, it's not joe-public who needs the data, it's scientists who have not been allowed to view all the data, which hamstrings the entire peer-review process. You can't review their methods if you don't have access to the data they used, plain and simple.
Ah, so I suppose the 650 climatologists who spoke out against the IPCC report at the Climate Summit last January don't understand all this fancy "science" stuff, huh?
The debate is far from over, regardless of what any environmental evangelists or political activists tell you. This goes for both the AGW alarmists and the AGW deniers, though it's the alarmists who have been pushing to get laws passed while they have the advantage. Beware anybody in science who says "the debate is over". They're definitely lying, and they're probably trying to pull one over on you.
Like leaving data out that wasn't used in the analysis?
There happen to be a lot of questions about exactly why such a large chunk of data was collected and then left out of the study. There are plenty of valid reasons, but "we didn't want to" isn't really one of them.
No, in order for a rational person to consider it to be the most correct understanding to date (science always advances) it has to explain everything better than any other theory.
You still must recognize that it is wrong. It's like Relativity, we know for a fact it is wrong, but it explains almost everything, so we use it.
AGW predicts global temperature trends for the last 150 years pretty accurately. It does not accurately predict the global temperature trends for the last thousand years, and it gets worse the further back you go, so we know we can't rely on it for future predictions beyond a relatively small number of years. I'd trust AGW out 50-100 years at the very most, beyond that it's useless.
Before we start basing law on this stuff, how about we get something that is a little more accurate, yeah? Another 5-10 years would be wonderful, just look at what we've learned in the last 10 years. Another 10 years and we could probably have something that accounts for most all the data.
a)The Medieval Warm Period is based on European records; it thus could be a local phenomenon, rather than a global one.
That was true ten years ago, today records from Australia and Africa (and others) show similar warming trends in the Medieval time period, confirming that it was a global event.
b) It has been hypothesized by William Ruddiman that the depopulation caused by the Black Death led to lower anthropogenic CO2; the Little Ice Age would thus be a short-term reversal of global warming, which would in fact reinforce the AGW theory. It is necessary to emphasize that this is only a hypothesis.
It has been pretty well established that the Little Ice Age was caused by a sudden release of glacial meltwater from North America rushing into the Gulf Stream, which brings warm water from the equator north to warm the European coastal waters. This influx of cold water effectively shut down the Gulf Stream until the glacial ice receded far enough north that it was no longer flushing cold water into the Gulf Coast.
Which do you think had a bigger effect, a halted Gulf Stream, or millions of dead people (who happen to release CO2 into the soil and air as they rot, btw)? There are also studies that suggest this event had a significant impact on global temperatures, but that would only be natural given a 300+ year cold period - the majority of the temperature changes were local.
This was a local event, but it was also completely natural and a result of the previous ice age and sudden spike in global temperatures. By the way, the global temperature spike 16 thousand years ago makes the current temperature rise irrelevant, and it happened during a time when there were all of 5 million humans in the world. There are obviously much larger forces at work than a little bit of CO2. Besides, there are a lot more people in Europe during the MWP, yet there are a number of studies on Europe's climate that suggest it was significantly warmer prior to the Little Ice Age than it is now. They didn't even have a significant level of fossile fuel burning like we do today. Doesn't that kinda put a crimp in AGW, at least regarding that time period?
I believe gravity is happening, but we shouldn't go around saying its because mass bends space until more data comes in.
Except the "mass bends space" model works a hell of a lot better than anything else, so given your own statements should we not be using that until something suggests otherwise?
The real crux of the whole thing is that science is never "finished", and anybody who tells you "the debate is over" regarding anything scientific in nature is a charlatan and is probably selling something.
Gravity is an absolutely perfect example, and we know a hell of a lot more about it than we do about Earth's long term climate mechanisms. Do we really want to be setting laws based on a field of science that is, at best, in its early adolescence? Frankly, I'd suggest we just use caution and wait until we know more, instead of setting draconian laws based on incomplete science. And yes, despite the mountains of data collected, climate science is still very incomplete.
We do know the effect of greenhouse gasses, and that we are pumping an unprecedented level of them, on a continuous basis, into the atmosphere, and that the environment is warming.
That's the thing, we do know we are affecting present temperature change, what we don't know is whether or not that has any serious impact on long-term climate.
For example, we know for a fact that there was a period in Earth's history where oxygen levels were around 2% and CO2 levels were closer to the present day Oxygen levels of 20%. We also know for a fact that there have been significant ice ages (10-50 thousand years in length) in recent geological history (as early as 16 thousand years ago). Current climate models do not accurately predict these climate changes given present conditions and working backwards, how the hell are we supposed to trust them to predict future climate as a result of present conditions and trends?
There is also very little evidence to suggest that increased temperatures - even significant increases - are detrimental to earth's ecosystem when taken as a whole. The hottest periods in Earth's history have also been the most productive, with most mass extinctions occurring during cold periods.
In light of that, why are we freaking out? Yes, we have a duty to be responsible with Earth's resources, but we should not be over-reacting. We have plenty of time to figure out how far we can go before we go too far. We certainly aren't there yet.
It would stand on its own, were the media to actually report what the data says.
The only way they can do that is if these guys actually release the data, which they don't do likely because it will be ripped to shreds by other scientists. What you end up with are conspiracy theories instead.
Anyone who was alive during the 70s should see distinct similarities between this disinformation campaign and the once vehement claims that there was "no definitive link" between tobacco use and cancer.
Anybody alive during the 70's should also remember a distinct similarity between the vehement AGW campaign and what was then a vehement AGC (Anthropogenic Global Cooling) campaign.
Give it another 30 years and we'll be on to something else entirely. Such is the way with science, it's politics that fuck everything up.
Apparently Apple uses "Display PDF", which is essentially the same thing. They just don't allow you to actually scale the DPI for some reason, or it still doesn't scale correctly, I forget which. In any case, it's broken.
You're missing the point.
What we want is a screen that displays all of the elements at a higher DPI. That requires two things: a higher hardware resolution (the actual physical pixels per inch - this is the highest DPI you can use), and an operating system that will scale all elements on the screen to match that DPI.
What we have now is a 300dpi monitor and an OS that displays elements at 96DPI - the result is all the element are ultra tiny and just as jagged as they have always been. If you could get 300dpi elements on a 300dpi screen, your monitor would look like a medium quality printed page, which is fantastically better than what we see now.
It's much more of a software problem than a hardware problem - if an OS won't show 300dpi elements, why bother making a 300dpi capable monitor?
The answer to all this is pretty simple, but would be difficult to pull off in one fell swoop. That is vector graphics for all screen elements. If we quit using pixel formats and started using scalable vectors for everything from fonts to window boarders, this would not be an issue, and it would be pretty easy to make the case for ultra-high resolution monitors. Even the most under-powered modern system has the capabilities to make this happen, so why not?
It would also make it easy for developers to keep styles consistent across many resolutions, and that has to be a good thing.
Wow, you really can't tell that guy spelled it "Juice" on purpose?
How stupid are you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_Muslim
They aren't fake, they're just dumbasses. Saying "Death to all Juice" was a pussy's way of making a death threat, not some parody or joke.
That's three in the last 50 years.
I can give you more than that with regards to Islam in the last year.
Way to prove the wrong point man. ;)
I don't know if you know this, but Feudalism is a form of government and economic system (kinda like Communism). It generally has a Monarch, but there is no reason it can't have an Oligarchy or Republic at its head instead.
Many Muslims are in a situation similar to what we went through with Crusades and the like.
I don't know if you know this, but the Crusades began because Muslims were slaughtering Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.
See a pattern?
Now, you're absolutely right that after that part was over the Crusaders came back and started killing "non-believers" in Europe and the like, but the Muslims were at the heart of the Crusades. They've been at the heart of all violence in the Middle East for at least the last thousand years, and a lot of countries down there are not much different than they were a thousand years ago.
Network TV is not as profitable.
Damn, missed that little fuckup - should be Hulu is not as profitable.
Yeah, you need to work on your reading comprehension a little. That article says cost per ad is higher for Hulu, but revenue per thousand viewers is higher for Network TV. In other words, Network TV is not as profitable.
It also says nothing of how many people actually watch Hulu vs Network TV, but given that current internet ad spending for shows is about 5% of what it is for Network TV, and CPMs for most premium internet sites are higher than their network counterpart, I'd imagine Network TV viewership is much, much higher.
Again, it seemed like this was a joke, poking fun at the whole censorship thing.
It wasn't, hence the reason Matt and Trey, the creators of SouthPark, are pissed at CC for censoring it. RTFA man, or even RTFS. The speech was about intimidation and fear, which makes censoring it out of fear due to intimidation incredibly ironic.
You haven't watched nearly enough SouthPark man, I seriously doubt there is a single religion they haven't insulted. The spend most of their time on the big ones, but they spread the "love" quite a lot.
The “threat” from Muslim extremists is ridiculously low. Negligible even.
(ftfy)
The threat to you is low, the threat to CC and Matt and Trey is very, very high. That's what the scores of death threats they've been getting are all about.
Generally when someone sends you a death threat, the threat level goes way up from negligible. When a hundred people threaten you, you hire a security detail, because it's entirely possible that someone will try.
CC just pussed out is all, Matt and Trey were ready to take on all comers.
Is she back up here? I had no idea...