"You're also pretty damn arrogant - and ignorant - if you think your Prius - or my Suburban - makes a whit of difference to this "climate." "
If we are talking of only 1 car vs 1 car in the context of a planet. Yep your right. However we are talking billions of people. With a good portion of those driving cars now. Most of which are P.O.S. spewing god knows what. So Mr. I'm not arrogant or ignorant the facts are you as an individual are a piece of the puzzle. It's only the truly selfish that refuse contribute to others. You however have decided Take from others. Hybrids are in the millions of sales now and climbing fast. The save huge amounts of petrol. The two together account for a noticeable change in the emissions.
Lets take you feeble brain back a few decades. To the days before emission standards. I suspect you are fresh out of diapers so you might not remember this. Do you recall standing anywhere in a big city. Choking on the fumes from the cars. Do you remember the soot that was over everything. Do you remember that god awful haze over the city 24/7. Well for the most part cities are escaping this. Why emission standards forcing cars to clean up. Guess what the job still isn't done. We managed to attack the stuff we can see. Now we have to go after rest of the crap coming out of cars.
So yes it does make a "whit" of difference if you drive one vehicle over another.
And now to cut off a line of retort This style of argument that people so often use these days of well "why should I they don't." Is how kids in school argue. It's not how mature people argue. Ones that can understand the full consequences of their actions.
Dropping IE 6 is definitely something we all should promote and do. IE 7 no chance as of yet.
I work in Enterprise and I constantly see ie6 numbers of 10% of users. Lots of people say that's enough to justify that we continue to support it. I counter with. How much cost are we devoting to ie6 bug fixing? How much is ie 6 costing us in lost capability holding back the entire site? How often have we put our users in jeopardy when a dodgy add sneaks through our add provider? How much money have we lost because ie6 regression testing slowed product release.
I content that we should not only drop support. We should actually redirect them to and upgrade or you get no access page.
The pennies that ie6 users provide my customers is simply not enough to justify the costs. The business guys always get pissed when I bring up the topic of dropping any cash stream no matter how small.
As individuals we pretty much all share the same goal of seeing man on another planet. Personally I'd love to walk on Mars.
However when it comes to making money the bigger the rock the less likely it's a target for "exploitation". Gravity wells mean expensive. So most of the planets are no go zones. If not all of them. Moons are a maybe. Floating rocks much more likely.
Unfortunately I don't think any of us will see another human land on any planet including the moon. I wish it weren't true. But in this day and age it's no longer about national pride, it's about dollars. Man only made it to the moon because the US and USSR were in a pissing match. Our only hope now to see another man on the moon is to see the same pissing match between China, India and Japan.
Space for the foreseeable future is the domain of robots. This will persist until the economics change. Either the value of a human drops to the point where we can send them up to work in unbelievable danger or the volume of product being developed in space can justify local human supervision. Personally I'm hoping humans don't drop in value.
Zero grav changes all the rules. Smelting for example is basically a completely different science / art. The processing of metal is going to be very very tricky. Metal processing is going to require heat extremes, containment, centrifugal separation techniques. To do this on volume is definitely the trick. ( I want that patent. )
The lighter elements are more likely to be our first targets. H2 O2 C etc. As refining them to pure form is "relatively" easy. Making use of the resultant product is also "relatively" straight forward.
As for water/ice yep. Critically important. More than just the obvious that everyone has been told. Ice is probably one of the best shields for particle and radiation that we can assemble in very little time. A massive block of ice floating near mars all of a sudden becomes the protective shell of a solar space craft and the foundation for the life support systems required to house man. So yes ice is massively important. Important if we want to be up there too:)
The current issue is heavy lift. This is the struggle we have had for a few decades.
Once we can lift LOTS of equipment and personal we need into high earth orbit things start to change. Why? Well we can finally start lifting equipment that can finally start to live off of the environment. Currently the only thing we extract in space is solar radiation. Why? Well we simply can not lift equipment that can harvest the matter that exists in space. Why can't we? Well it's bloody expensive. Case in point the International Space station. This is a science platform. One that has a very hard time sampling it's environment let alone harvesting it.
We need to be able to lift devices that can land on rocks, asteroids, moons, and planets. From there extract resources and deliver those resource to orbital devices that can process them for further use. The use is NOT for return to earth. But rather to supplement the resources for subsequent space missions. Once this feedback loop starts to take hold the cost of subsequent space exploration deeper into the solar system and beyond drops radically. The trick is to only lift the bare minimum into orbit with the majority of supplies being extracted from the local environment.
With luck the feedback loop of resources will eventually start to spill back to earth. At some point the harvesting in space will exceed the space born demands for resources. At this point we start to see a viable return resources to earth policy. The loop starts to close.
It will take time before the returns start to exceed the lift in cost. Only at the point where return exceeds lift cost can we state we are a space born culture. Because at this point we explode into space.
Sorry All I see is an appropriate application of scientific method.
They limited the number of parameters in order to understand the effect when other parameters are altered.
If rigged means well defined then yes it was rigged. I prefer the proper words "well defined".
Sorry still haven't said or found anything to sway me on "driving and using the phone is MORONIC" belief. All you have claimed is that it's rigged. That is your total 100% argument.
It takes me all of 5 seconds to find on google 100's of reports papers articles about how dumb using the phone while driving is. On the flip side I find next to nothing except for rants that say it's OK. No one is fullish enough it seems to report that using a phone while driving improves your abilities.
And to be honest I don't understand why you have such a passion for this belief of yours. Possibly where you live it is still legal to operate a phone while driving. I say enjoy it while you can. Cause those days are numbered.
( I'm going to bet that you can't help yourself. You are so stubborn and have to always be right and have the last say that you will actually respond to this. This is officially a troll post.:) )
That fact is the cell/mobile phone not matter how it is operated is a distraction. You can plain and simple shut it off. It is something we have complete control over.
We do not have complete control over the children you have mentioned. Un-fortunately this distraction will be part of many peoples driving lives. And it does cause accidents.
If we were to combine the duel distraction of phone and children in a car then I would dare say that the driver is completely negligent.
Driving a car is not a rite. It is a privilege. You are operating something that can kill, and cause serious harm in fractions of a second. Society has forgotten this.
Drinking and driving is not evil, it's Moronic. The same goes for usage of a phone while driving. Both of these you as a driver have complete 100% control over.
The cell/mobile phone is a wonderful invention. I personally have 2. It is not an evil artifact. There is a time and place to use it. And it's not while driving.
Lets put it this way. I will never feel the guilt of killing my son because I crashed the car while talking on the phone. I will never say "If I had only not answered the phone." I'm am simply not that selfish to put other lives at risk just so I can get the satisfaction of some inane phone conversation. Why? Because I do not ever talk on the phone while driving.
If we are speaking strictly about programming then I can't see a difference in earning for those levels of education.
Personally I would never ever higher a phd for a programing role. I'm hard pressed to higher a grad student. Why? To specialized already lacking the breadth knowledge that most industries now require.
Also add to that, that almost every educational institution on the planet has watered down the comp sci type degrees so that they can pump out graduates. The overall quality of graduates is falling rapidly. Masters and phd graduates are even worse. They expect more money than I make day 1 and still haven't the faintest clue what the company does.
If you go to an interview at least google the damn company and find out what they do.
I can believe 54,000 grand. I can't believe 100,000 grand. Of course there is some super nerd that is going to get that. Same guy that wrecked the curve in class.
I think in general the hangover of the recession will mean that the industries are going to be a lot more picky about who they higher and pay them less relatively. If you are good at "programming" then you will make good money. I can't really cook. I can make a few good dishes. But I am not going to be pulling down a 6-7 figure salary doing it. I might make a 40k range kinda wage cooking cause that is my ability / skill level. Same goes for programming. I see it every day. You can spot the good ones from a mile off. You can also spot the bad ones.
Are you honestly saying that the use of a blue tooth headset makes driving a car while using a phone as safe as driving a car while not on the phone?
You then proceed to point out that the iPhone/JesusPhone actually has distracting issues for a driver. And then you admit it caused you too loose focus on the road.
There is no safe way to use a phone and drive PERIOD.
This is all like saying while in the bar. "Well I had 2 drinks my first 30 min, Then about 1 ever 30 min after that. But my last one was a coke. So I should be good to drive in 10 minutes." If you play drink math you are not good to drive. It's simple. Don't drink/use phone/have sex/cook a pasta dinner while driving.
People get upset at me because I don't answer the phone the nano second it rings. They actually do not understand my response. "Sorry I was driving and I had to pull off the road."
First off small town anywhere doesn't have mass transit. That's just dumb.
Mass transit is for areas with large population centers. I'm thinking the US has a few of those. So spread out eh? It has nothing to do with spread out. It has to do with regional density and the cost of gas. The US blatantly keeps the local price of gas low. Lots of reasons. I'll mention a couple I know. One of the biggest industries in the US is auto making. Cheap gas buys votes, how many times has it been used as a political chip during elections?
The US plain and simple doesn't have a lot of "public" transport because no political leader wants to be the one that spend huge on a dead end public sector project. It's political suicide. Lets face it. Any city that does invest is going to lose money. Why? The regional/state/federal plans do not support it. Thus the cost is HUGE. Secondly you have the mindset of the people. US peoples first reaction is to grab the car keys. It's not to walk the 3 blocks. It is VERY hard to break this habit.
Now a few cities have had no choice but to invest. New York being notable. Chicago making a name for itself. Why? Well density overcame the price of gas in the equation.
Montreal in Canada has a "decent" public transport system compared to a lot of similar size US cities. Hell Athens has a darn good public transport system. And Greece is not exactly known as a world economic powerhouse.
No really there are no excuses for the US not to have public transport. Once the price of gas starts to rocket again all of a sudden you will start seeing cities in the US trying to figure out public transport solutions. It has NOTHING to do with "spread out".
1. Don't use a cell/mobile while driving. 2. Don't text on a cell/mobile while driving. 3. Don't check email on a cell/mobile while driving.
4. ( I debated about making this #1 ) Don't talk on the phone in the toilet.
5. A customer that has come to your store/shop/business in person takes PRIORITY over a fat lazy ass on the phone.
6. "HELLO HELLO HELLO, I can't hear you I'm on the train...... I THINK I LOST YOU.... CAN YOU HEAR ME.... I'll CALL YOU ONCE I'm OUT OF THE TUNNEL" means you are a moron for even trying to use the phone on the train in a tunnel. hang it up.
Speaking as someone that has lived all over the world and done extensive amounts of work in the US in Software.
First off. Every Country/Region needs to understand that if they make the conditions unfavorable for mid-long term business operations for software development the software shop will move. ( The whole concept of outsourcing ).
For quite a long time now we have seen the migration of LARGE data centers to cost effective, dependable locations. Data centers have different criteria than a software shop but they show us an interesting parallel to software development. Chicago used to be one of the data centers capitals of the world. It's not exactly known for that now. Why? Unfriendly local taxation, cost of power, reliability of power, migrating network backbones away from region. What I'm saying is data centers moved away from Chicago because the conditions became unfavorable.
Software development is even more vulnerable. In the last 24 months I have had contract development done in Vietnam, Brazil, Sri Lanka, India, France and NONE in the United states. All because of factors like. Cost, Time to Market availability of resource etc.
Other factors do have impact. In the example above kernels. The issue here is the concentration of specialized developer staff. Is a major factor. For several years San Fran was the "only" place to set up a software shop of any kind. Not so any more. Why? Partly the specialized skill spread out.
Several of the driving factors for migration away from the US are. Cost of staff, Cost of facilities, Cost of power, legal over head, governmental regulatory encumbrance. ( Basically all of them are money )
Do not for one second believe that what you see on the ground now for jobs and company shops in the US will remain so in 2-5-10 years time. Taxation in the United states will most likely climb. Taxes go up expensive jobs will flee. I have seen dramatic shifts in the IT world over the decades, boom bust, migration and dispersal. A lot of local changes had to do with government and taxation.
A common joke around my office circle is. "How do you make a project over run and never deliver? Get an IBM project manager from the States on the job." It may or may not be true. But it does reflect the sentiment that is out there. Basically the rest of the world does not look to the United States first for development.
So you the future leaders of the US software industry. You need to really pull your finger out of that dark hole it's in and start doing something to improve the reputation, the viability, the cost of software development in the United States. Cause if you don't wave good buy to another white collar high paying industry. As someone else said. The US made this mess and now the US needs to dig them selves out of it. This statement is also true for other locations on the planet as well. India for example is facing a very nasty fall in the software industry if conditions don't improve for companies.
100% Agree. The simple fact is if I encrypt it here I can't un-encrypt it there. Translation. My hard disk uses version 1.5.3.6.3.222.43..56666.333 of software BLOTZO.supersafe.org and nothing else I own does. My HD goes cactus I'm screwed.
I simply can't trust that I can recover from a failure. Even if I carry the magic secret key to the encryption.
It'll cost "me" more to recover than to have stolen.
P.S. I will go down on assault charges the next time some moron un-plugs my usb drive without safely ejecting it.
Your comments make it sound like a conductor like copper leaks like a device made to radiate watts. Far from the truth, power companies try as hard as they ca to distribute power with minimal radial loss. Why? it saves money.
This tech on the other hand is quite the opposite. It makes more money the better it can "radiate" power to a device.
So drawing a parallel is not appropriate as they have opposite goals in design.
At the moment the power output is relatively low. 5 watts ish. Lets think about this. This is BROADCAST POWER. It's going to leak into everything around it. There will be no such thing as 95% efficient transfer of power. So where does this residual power go. Well into everything around it. The closer something is the more it will receive.
Very simple chemistry here. Entropy increase with energy. Entropy can simple be defined as the desire of a substance to reach it most random and natural state. ( There is probably a more accurate definition than that. ) AKA Entropy is all about things BREAKING DOWN. So if we add energy to a "thing" it ultimately will break down faster.
I'm sorry but I don't want to be walking around in yet more energy radiation fields. Especially one designed to transmit POWER AKA ENERGY.
5 watts gives way to 10 watts gives away to 25 watts gives away to stupid amounts of power. As "improvements" and legislation allow higher and higher output.
This also strikes me as the most un-green tech out there. Simply a device that radiates POWER.
Your correct in your statement "convincing business people or even practicing scientists with it is futile". It is if you try and show them everything.
You sorta have to pull out metrics and measures that have a practical analogy in the "business" at hand. Something so well defined that it is hard to mis-interpret and abuse. This is power point slide you show them. You can have the hairy scary slide if you wish. But no one will look at it. As a matter of fact the meeting is over once you do show the statistical meat slide. It's like an off switch in peoples heads. They see that and they will respond to nothing other than phone calls and the meeting end time buzzer.
K.I.S.S. == Keep It Simple Stupid. Must always be applied to any stats presentation or explanation to ANYONE ELSE.
I hear you, I do performance engineering of web based systems. The developers, the managers, the testers, the architects all have no clue. You are correct here.
However if you can not present your "theory" of how to do something in a dumbed down enough format then who cares. Because the pretty graph is pointless. It will be mis-interpreted, mis-understood, and mis-used.
All the stats theory on the planet will not get you passed the dumb manager or developer. don't loose sleep of this. There is no point. Simply find metrics in your analysis procedure that do mean something to these people. They may not be the total picture but they are something. Build a reputation for being correct by starting with simple things. You are always going to but heads with a know it all developer / architect / manager. Fine let them go off and waste money and time. They will be found out as morons in time. You do your thing and simply become the guy to ask about performance and how to do this.
Being understated and consistently showing above average results for your work is how you will rise up. Being and A-hole about it is not going to help anyone. As a matter of fact I would can your butt for being a D#ck.
Seriously. This is the sort of thing twitter is really good at.
It's not knowing what Britney is eating for breakfast. Or how much a SKANK Malinda next door is. Or how much a bastard Billy is, oh but he's such a hunk. Or what color Aston K's turds are.
Slashdot Mirror
"You're also pretty damn arrogant - and ignorant - if you think your Prius - or my Suburban - makes a whit of difference to this "climate." "
If we are talking of only 1 car vs 1 car in the context of a planet. Yep your right.
However we are talking billions of people. With a good portion of those driving cars now. Most of which are P.O.S. spewing god knows what. So Mr. I'm not arrogant or ignorant the facts are you as an individual are a piece of the puzzle. It's only the truly selfish that refuse contribute to others. You however have decided Take from others. Hybrids are in the millions of sales now and climbing fast. The save huge amounts of petrol. The two together account for a noticeable change in the emissions.
Lets take you feeble brain back a few decades. To the days before emission standards. I suspect you are fresh out of diapers so you might not remember this. Do you recall standing anywhere in a big city. Choking on the fumes from the cars. Do you remember the soot that was over everything. Do you remember that god awful haze over the city 24/7. Well for the most part cities are escaping this. Why emission standards forcing cars to clean up. Guess what the job still isn't done. We managed to attack the stuff we can see. Now we have to go after rest of the crap coming out of cars.
So yes it does make a "whit" of difference if you drive one vehicle over another.
And now to cut off a line of retort
This style of argument that people so often use these days of well "why should I they don't." Is how kids in school argue. It's not how mature people argue. Ones that can understand the full consequences of their actions.
Oh who marked that parent Article a Troll? It's not a troll it's entertainment.
That was funny. Nice work.
Dropping IE 6 is definitely something we all should promote and do. IE 7 no chance as of yet.
I work in Enterprise and I constantly see ie6 numbers of 10% of users. Lots of people say that's enough to justify that we continue to support it. I counter with. How much cost are we devoting to ie6 bug fixing? How much is ie 6 costing us in lost capability holding back the entire site? How often have we put our users in jeopardy when a dodgy add sneaks through our add provider? How much money have we lost because ie6 regression testing slowed product release.
I content that we should not only drop support. We should actually redirect them to and upgrade or you get no access page.
The pennies that ie6 users provide my customers is simply not enough to justify the costs. The business guys always get pissed when I bring up the topic of dropping any cash stream no matter how small.
As individuals we pretty much all share the same goal of seeing man on another planet. Personally I'd love to walk on Mars.
However when it comes to making money the bigger the rock the less likely it's a target for "exploitation". Gravity wells mean expensive. So most of the planets are no go zones. If not all of them. Moons are a maybe. Floating rocks much more likely.
Unfortunately I don't think any of us will see another human land on any planet including the moon. I wish it weren't true. But in this day and age it's no longer about national pride, it's about dollars. Man only made it to the moon because the US and USSR were in a pissing match. Our only hope now to see another man on the moon is to see the same pissing match between China, India and Japan.
Space for the foreseeable future is the domain of robots. This will persist until the economics change. Either the value of a human drops to the point where we can send them up to work in unbelievable danger or the volume of product being developed in space can justify local human supervision. Personally I'm hoping humans don't drop in value.
Zero grav changes all the rules. Smelting for example is basically a completely different science / art. The processing of metal is going to be very very tricky. Metal processing is going to require heat extremes, containment, centrifugal separation techniques. To do this on volume is definitely the trick. ( I want that patent. )
The lighter elements are more likely to be our first targets. H2 O2 C etc. As refining them to pure form is "relatively" easy. Making use of the resultant product is also "relatively" straight forward.
As for water/ice yep. Critically important. More than just the obvious that everyone has been told. Ice is probably one of the best shields for particle and radiation that we can assemble in very little time. A massive block of ice floating near mars all of a sudden becomes the protective shell of a solar space craft and the foundation for the life support systems required to house man. So yes ice is massively important. Important if we want to be up there too :)
The current issue is heavy lift. This is the struggle we have had for a few decades.
Once we can lift LOTS of equipment and personal we need into high earth orbit things start to change. Why? Well we can finally start lifting equipment that can finally start to live off of the environment. Currently the only thing we extract in space is solar radiation. Why? Well we simply can not lift equipment that can harvest the matter that exists in space. Why can't we? Well it's bloody expensive. Case in point the International Space station. This is a science platform. One that has a very hard time sampling it's environment let alone harvesting it.
We need to be able to lift devices that can land on rocks, asteroids, moons, and planets. From there extract resources and deliver those resource to orbital devices that can process them for further use. The use is NOT for return to earth. But rather to supplement the resources for subsequent space missions. Once this feedback loop starts to take hold the cost of subsequent space exploration deeper into the solar system and beyond drops radically. The trick is to only lift the bare minimum into orbit with the majority of supplies being extracted from the local environment.
With luck the feedback loop of resources will eventually start to spill back to earth. At some point the harvesting in space will exceed the space born demands for resources. At this point we start to see a viable return resources to earth policy. The loop starts to close.
It will take time before the returns start to exceed the lift in cost. Only at the point where return exceeds lift cost can we state we are a space born culture. Because at this point we explode into space.
Sorry All I see is an appropriate application of scientific method.
They limited the number of parameters in order to understand the effect when other parameters are altered.
If rigged means well defined then yes it was rigged. I prefer the proper words "well defined".
Sorry still haven't said or found anything to sway me on "driving and using the phone is MORONIC" belief. All you have claimed is that it's rigged. That is your total 100% argument.
It takes me all of 5 seconds to find on google 100's of reports papers articles about how dumb using the phone while driving is. On the flip side I find next to nothing except for rants that say it's OK. No one is fullish enough it seems to report that using a phone while driving improves your abilities.
And to be honest I don't understand why you have such a passion for this belief of yours. Possibly where you live it is still legal to operate a phone while driving. I say enjoy it while you can. Cause those days are numbered.
( I'm going to bet that you can't help yourself. You are so stubborn and have to always be right and have the last say that you will actually respond to this. This is officially a troll post. :) )
OK I'll bite.
Where is the proof this is a rigged study?
I'm in software. I freely admit my spelling and grammar skills SUCK. :)
I hope to hell it doesn't take a University graduate to show me up on those fronts.
That fact is the cell/mobile phone not matter how it is operated is a distraction. You can plain and simple shut it off. It is something we have complete control over.
We do not have complete control over the children you have mentioned. Un-fortunately this distraction will be part of many peoples driving lives. And it does cause accidents.
If we were to combine the duel distraction of phone and children in a car then I would dare say that the driver is completely negligent.
Driving a car is not a rite. It is a privilege. You are operating something that can kill, and cause serious harm in fractions of a second. Society has forgotten this.
Drinking and driving is not evil, it's Moronic. The same goes for usage of a phone while driving. Both of these you as a driver have complete 100% control over.
The cell/mobile phone is a wonderful invention. I personally have 2. It is not an evil artifact. There is a time and place to use it. And it's not while driving.
Lets put it this way. I will never feel the guilt of killing my son because I crashed the car while talking on the phone. I will never say "If I had only not answered the phone." I'm am simply not that selfish to put other lives at risk just so I can get the satisfaction of some inane phone conversation. Why? Because I do not ever talk on the phone while driving.
If we are speaking strictly about programming then I can't see a difference in earning for those levels of education.
Personally I would never ever higher a phd for a programing role. I'm hard pressed to higher a grad student. Why? To specialized already lacking the breadth knowledge that most industries now require.
Also add to that, that almost every educational institution on the planet has watered down the comp sci type degrees so that they can pump out graduates. The overall quality of graduates is falling rapidly. Masters and phd graduates are even worse. They expect more money than I make day 1 and still haven't the faintest clue what the company does.
If you go to an interview at least google the damn company and find out what they do.
I can believe 54,000 grand. I can't believe 100,000 grand. Of course there is some super nerd that is going to get that. Same guy that wrecked the curve in class.
I think in general the hangover of the recession will mean that the industries are going to be a lot more picky about who they higher and pay them less relatively. If you are good at "programming" then you will make good money. I can't really cook. I can make a few good dishes. But I am not going to be pulling down a 6-7 figure salary doing it. I might make a 40k range kinda wage cooking cause that is my ability / skill level. Same goes for programming. I see it every day. You can spot the good ones from a mile off. You can also spot the bad ones.
DON'T USE A PHONE WHILE DRIVING PERIOD YOU IDIOT!
Are you honestly saying that the use of a blue tooth headset makes driving a car while using a phone as safe as driving a car while not on the phone?
You then proceed to point out that the iPhone/JesusPhone actually has distracting issues for a driver. And then you admit it caused you too loose focus on the road.
There is no safe way to use a phone and drive PERIOD.
This is all like saying while in the bar. "Well I had 2 drinks my first 30 min, Then about 1 ever 30 min after that. But my last one was a coke. So I should be good to drive in 10 minutes." If you play drink math you are not good to drive. It's simple. Don't drink/use phone/have sex/cook a pasta dinner while driving.
People get upset at me because I don't answer the phone the nano second it rings. They actually do not understand my response. "Sorry I was driving and I had to pull off the road."
STOP USING THE PHONE AND DRIVING!
I'm not distracted. I'm disturbed and a bit freaked out.
How the HELL did I get up here? I was in the bar ... now I'm talking to god knows who from on top of my car.
( Mentally start going backward trying to figure out who spiked my drink. All I can remember is "Nice rack, Ohh nicer rack etc." I'm such an ass )
Oh crap, Am I wearing pants? Oh thank god I am.
( Wallet, check )
( house keys, check )
( Quick self body pat down assessing damage, good all good )
( Quick glance around the parking lot. Nope no one saw me. That's good Very good. )
TAXI
First off small town anywhere doesn't have mass transit. That's just dumb.
Mass transit is for areas with large population centers. I'm thinking the US has a few of those. So spread out eh? It has nothing to do with spread out. It has to do with regional density and the cost of gas. The US blatantly keeps the local price of gas low. Lots of reasons. I'll mention a couple I know. One of the biggest industries in the US is auto making. Cheap gas buys votes, how many times has it been used as a political chip during elections?
The US plain and simple doesn't have a lot of "public" transport because no political leader wants to be the one that spend huge on a dead end public sector project. It's political suicide. Lets face it. Any city that does invest is going to lose money. Why? The regional/state/federal plans do not support it. Thus the cost is HUGE. Secondly you have the mindset of the people. US peoples first reaction is to grab the car keys. It's not to walk the 3 blocks. It is VERY hard to break this habit.
Now a few cities have had no choice but to invest. New York being notable. Chicago making a name for itself. Why? Well density overcame the price of gas in the equation.
Montreal in Canada has a "decent" public transport system compared to a lot of similar size US cities. Hell Athens has a darn good public transport system. And Greece is not exactly known as a world economic powerhouse.
No really there are no excuses for the US not to have public transport. Once the price of gas starts to rocket again all of a sudden you will start seeing cities in the US trying to figure out public transport solutions. It has NOTHING to do with "spread out".
My list.
1. Don't use a cell/mobile while driving.
2. Don't text on a cell/mobile while driving.
3. Don't check email on a cell/mobile while driving.
4. ( I debated about making this #1 ) Don't talk on the phone in the toilet.
5. A customer that has come to your store/shop/business in person takes PRIORITY over a fat lazy ass on the phone.
6. "HELLO HELLO HELLO, I can't hear you I'm on the train. ..... I THINK I LOST YOU .... CAN YOU HEAR ME .... I'll CALL YOU ONCE I'm OUT OF THE TUNNEL" means you are a moron for even trying to use the phone on the train in a tunnel. hang it up.
Speaking as someone that has lived all over the world and done extensive amounts of work in the US in Software.
First off. Every Country/Region needs to understand that if they make the conditions unfavorable for mid-long term business operations for software development the software shop will move. ( The whole concept of outsourcing ).
For quite a long time now we have seen the migration of LARGE data centers to cost effective, dependable locations. Data centers have different criteria than a software shop but they show us an interesting parallel to software development. Chicago used to be one of the data centers capitals of the world. It's not exactly known for that now. Why? Unfriendly local taxation, cost of power, reliability of power, migrating network backbones away from region. What I'm saying is data centers moved away from Chicago because the conditions became unfavorable.
Software development is even more vulnerable. In the last 24 months I have had contract development done in Vietnam, Brazil, Sri Lanka, India, France and NONE in the United states. All because of factors like. Cost, Time to Market availability of resource etc.
Other factors do have impact. In the example above kernels. The issue here is the concentration of specialized developer staff. Is a major factor. For several years San Fran was the "only" place to set up a software shop of any kind. Not so any more. Why? Partly the specialized skill spread out.
Several of the driving factors for migration away from the US are. Cost of staff, Cost of facilities, Cost of power, legal over head, governmental regulatory encumbrance. ( Basically all of them are money )
Do not for one second believe that what you see on the ground now for jobs and company shops in the US will remain so in 2-5-10 years time. Taxation in the United states will most likely climb. Taxes go up expensive jobs will flee. I have seen dramatic shifts in the IT world over the decades, boom bust, migration and dispersal. A lot of local changes had to do with government and taxation.
A common joke around my office circle is. "How do you make a project over run and never deliver? Get an IBM project manager from the States on the job." It may or may not be true. But it does reflect the sentiment that is out there. Basically the rest of the world does not look to the United States first for development.
So you the future leaders of the US software industry. You need to really pull your finger out of that dark hole it's in and start doing something to improve the reputation, the viability, the cost of software development in the United States. Cause if you don't wave good buy to another white collar high paying industry. As someone else said. The US made this mess and now the US needs to dig them selves out of it. This statement is also true for other locations on the planet as well. India for example is facing a very nasty fall in the software industry if conditions don't improve for companies.
100% Agree. The simple fact is if I encrypt it here I can't un-encrypt it there. Translation. My hard disk uses version 1.5.3.6.3.222.43..56666.333 of software BLOTZO.supersafe.org and nothing else I own does. My HD goes cactus I'm screwed.
I simply can't trust that I can recover from a failure. Even if I carry the magic secret key to the encryption.
It'll cost "me" more to recover than to have stolen.
P.S. I will go down on assault charges the next time some moron un-plugs my usb drive without safely ejecting it.
I'm a consultant. I have honestly NEVER encountered any user at any company encrypting disk/usb/cd/dvd/email.
Exactly where does this BS stat come from again?
Your comments make it sound like a conductor like copper leaks like a device made to radiate watts. Far from the truth, power companies try as hard as they ca to distribute power with minimal radial loss. Why? it saves money.
This tech on the other hand is quite the opposite. It makes more money the better it can "radiate" power to a device.
So drawing a parallel is not appropriate as they have opposite goals in design.
OK does any one else see this as completely nuts?
At the moment the power output is relatively low. 5 watts ish. Lets think about this. This is BROADCAST POWER. It's going to leak into everything around it. There will be no such thing as 95% efficient transfer of power. So where does this residual power go. Well into everything around it. The closer something is the more it will receive.
Very simple chemistry here. Entropy increase with energy. Entropy can simple be defined as the desire of a substance to reach it most random and natural state. ( There is probably a more accurate definition than that. ) AKA Entropy is all about things BREAKING DOWN. So if we add energy to a "thing" it ultimately will break down faster.
I'm sorry but I don't want to be walking around in yet more energy radiation fields. Especially one designed to transmit POWER AKA ENERGY.
5 watts gives way to 10 watts gives away to 25 watts gives away to stupid amounts of power. As "improvements" and legislation allow higher and higher output.
This also strikes me as the most un-green tech out there. Simply a device that radiates POWER.
Your correct in your statement "convincing business people or even practicing scientists with it is futile". It is if you try and show them everything.
You sorta have to pull out metrics and measures that have a practical analogy in the "business" at hand. Something so well defined that it is hard to mis-interpret and abuse. This is power point slide you show them. You can have the hairy scary slide if you wish. But no one will look at it. As a matter of fact the meeting is over once you do show the statistical meat slide. It's like an off switch in peoples heads. They see that and they will respond to nothing other than phone calls and the meeting end time buzzer.
K.I.S.S. == Keep It Simple Stupid. Must always be applied to any stats presentation or explanation to ANYONE ELSE.
Degrees or Degree?
and how does your sisters education reflect on you? She's the stats person not you.
I hear you, I do performance engineering of web based systems. The developers, the managers, the testers, the architects all have no clue. You are correct here.
However if you can not present your "theory" of how to do something in a dumbed down enough format then who cares. Because the pretty graph is pointless. It will be mis-interpreted, mis-understood, and mis-used.
All the stats theory on the planet will not get you passed the dumb manager or developer. don't loose sleep of this. There is no point. Simply find metrics in your analysis procedure that do mean something to these people. They may not be the total picture but they are something. Build a reputation for being correct by starting with simple things. You are always going to but heads with a know it all developer / architect / manager. Fine let them go off and waste money and time. They will be found out as morons in time. You do your thing and simply become the guy to ask about performance and how to do this.
Being understated and consistently showing above average results for your work is how you will rise up. Being and A-hole about it is not going to help anyone. As a matter of fact I would can your butt for being a D#ck.
So you loose your phone and you are screwed?
Seriously. This is the sort of thing twitter is really good at.
It's not knowing what Britney is eating for breakfast. Or how much a SKANK Malinda next door is. Or how much a bastard Billy is, oh but he's such a hunk. Or what color Aston K's turds are.
Thank goodness twitter popularity is dying.