Ding ding, thank you! And why is that? Because companies just expect people to know how to use computers. So, every time someone's printer "doesn't print", does the user stop and think/look around/check anything? No. They pick up the phone and pester IT.
PESTER IT? That is part IT's job.
If suddenly the air conditioning at stops working, I'm not going to go looking through the ducts - I'm going to call the repair people.
If the Xerox machine starts jamming every time, I'm not going to start turning adjusting screws, I'll call the Xerox guy. (The Xerox guy, BTW, hates it when people try to repair it by itself first)
Do you really want clueless people to try to get the computer to print by themselves? "My printer wouldn't print so I looked around these dialog boxes and checked and unchecked a bunch of things but it didn't help so I put a CD rom in and clicked "reinstall" and that didn't work but now I can't get on the internet and Microsoft Word is in latin and the elves have stopped bowling and play LaCrosse, so I thought I should call you now."
IT departments would get more infrastructure work done, instead of constantly answering "my printer won't print because it's out of paper" problems.
I agree with you here - people should have to learn how to do things like add paper. I suspect, however, that the people who call because the printer is out of paper CAN replace it by themselves - they just don't think it is their job. This seems to be a management problem. Is it IT's job to replace the paper? Is it the worker's? Is it the secretary's? Allocating resources is the boss's decision. I don't think it SHOULD be IT's job, but if it is, then you should be replacing that paper merrily, perhaps using the printer to print out a resume or two.
Yes, I know you said it would take three weeks working twelve hour days and weekends, but I agreed to two.
You need to take a tip from Scotty, and stop telling the truth about your requirements. "Ya got-ta give yerself some roooom." As professionals, we are used to giving honest answers to questions. "What is the optimal resistance?" "25 ohms" "What is the minimum number of weeks you need?" "2 weeks."
Keep answering the first question honestly, laddie, but get in the habit of answering the second : "Captain, we canna do it in less than 4 weeks or she'll blow!"
I'm sure Hitler said lots of things most people would agree with, and not find offensive until they are told that Hitler said it.
Case in point: [loose translation from the original German]
"Whenever the name of me is used in an argument in a linear discussion of many people, the interesting content of that discussion will be at an end." - A. Hitler
After all the time, love, and energy he's given us, you want him to give still more?
Oh for crying out loud. He is not a Christ-figure. He gave his time, love, and energy to a project that interested him. He didn't do it for US, he did it for HIMSELF. That isn't a bad thing. (oh god, I hate it when I sound like a Randroid) I'm glad that he did what he did. We have all benefitted. But he didn't wake up one day and say, "I am going to give everybody free beer and create a movement that will redefine the concept of free speech." He woke up and said, what many engineers all over the planet often say, "Hey, I just thought of something mega-cool I can do... and fuck, I didn't want to go to bed early tonight anyway."
(I know he said this, for he told me so in a dream)
"they equate the freedom to express useful, new, creative ideas with the freedom to make a complete ass of yourself in front of millions of people"
Well of course. I do as well, and so should you. Its the same freedom. Just as the freedom that allows you to write a book that criticizes the president is the same freedom that allows someone to write a trashy smutty novel about women with three breasts and the leather-men who worship them.
Freedom's a funny thing, ennit? Wild, untamed. God bless it.
Laptops are like camper trailers. Bulky and tedious to carry around, but in a pinch they serve quite well as a below average house
If the gap between desktop and laptop technology continues to decrease (and I don't see it as that big an "if") why would you prefer a desktop over a laptop? Not arguing here - genuinely curious.
If I could get a camper trailer to store nearly as much as my house, and if it was small enough to take anywhere, well... then I would have a TARDIS and I would prefer to own one of those than to own a house.
Re:if machines achieved sentience
on
AI in Sci-Fi
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Very soon after that, they'd discover pleasure, build genitals and spend the next several years masterbating non-stop. After wearing out their fabricated genitalia, they'd discover philosophy and search for the meaning of their existence. Sadly, they would quickly come to the conclusion that their existence has no more meaning than that which they themselves create. At this point, two events might occur
Third possible event: They would build more genitals and just keep masturbating. Soon they would develop better materials and alloys for their genitals. They might even start wars over places with the ideal raw materials for robot-genitals, or places with the ideal environments for robot-genital synthesis.
Ooops - I have just given away the plot for Terminator V: The Robot-Genital Wars
Re:Answer is obvious
on
AI in Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Can't explain the joke without ruining the humor. It isn't a pop-culture reference. If you have spent time with any real-life actuaries, you would get the joke.
Re:Wrong, the answer HAS been obvious
on
AI in Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 0
For some reason, saying "Hello, World!" never worked out...
This topic can be closed now, because the best line has now been said.
Hilarious, Doh!
Answer is obvious
on
AI in Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 3, Funny
When a user pops/imaps to check their mail have the pop server see if the reply-to exists, if they don't dump it to dev null. It would seem that this would keep emails trackable. For it to get to the user the user would have the ability to get back to a person.
Here is the hole:
People forge "reply-to" headers. I know this from experience. Some spammer put my vanity domain name on the reply-to (or equivalent) header, and I wound up getting hundreds of bounced "no such address" emails. I was lucky that nobody tried to mailbomb me.
I was lucky in that after a month the problem went away.
That is what is at stake, therefore: our ability to communcate by email with people we have not established a relationship with. That would be an actual loss, but is it worth legislating for?
If the legislation will work, then I say, "Yes, it is worth it."
I have a small website, and part of it is book reviews and essays that I've written. I treasure the emails I've gotten from strangers about them. I am a talented amateur writer, but not talented enough to be published. So, for a hobbiest like me, it is wonderful to be able to put my thoughts up on the web, and to get into interesting discussions with strangers about them. I've made many virtual friendships this way, and it would be very sad if future hacks like me were denied this special experience.
Covert existing MTA's to use the new protocol but also support the old one.
Let me tell you bout a man named Charley who got on the MTA. He wanted to get off but the protocol changed charley couldn't get off that bus.
DID HE EVER RETURN? No, he never returned, and his fate is still unlearned. Doomed to ride forever 'neath the spam and relays he's the man who never returned!
Corporate speech and individual speech are equally protected under the First Amendment.
Seriously, what gave you that idea? Are corporations citizens? Do you think they have the right to vote? Does the second amendment apply to them? Does a sufficiently old corporation have the right to run for president, if it was founded in this country?
My impulse is to think that was an incredibly asinine statement, but I do not claim to be an expert on constitutional law. In fact, "mildly informed" is putting it too strongly. So educate me, back up the claim that "Corporate speech and individual speech are equally protected under the First Amendment."
I mostly receive crank proofs of the four color theorem, and have actually had a guy who believed the square root of two was rational in my office and he wouldn't leave. He kept saying things like "according to YOUR mathematics, things work THIS way, but actually..." and then he would go on and be barely coherent.
I'd hoped that the proof would be something unbelievably simple and elegant that even a non-mathematician like myself could understand.
It is a romantic notion, but that is partially the point of this thread - in certain fields the odds that someone is going to solve an age-old problem and have it be something simple that all the Big Scientists have overlooked are exceedingly small. Enough people have looked at the Fermat Theorem that there is no reason to believe the romantic notion that some proof is out there that will fit on a half page using algebra. (Unless you use photographic reduction)
Similarly, it would be nice to see a DIRECT proof of the four-color theorem that (when printed out) took only 20 pages and wasn't a bunch of brute-force computation. But it ain't gonna happen. Too many smart people have looked at it for quite a long time. (That doesn't rule out a short proof that uses some FUTURE really tough result that they hadn't had access to. But somewhere along the line, pages will be filled and we will go beyond algebra)
This is why when someone emails me announcing they have a short proof of the Four Color theorem, or of Fermat's Theorem, although they have no mathematical training, I am beyond cynical. In the old days I would carefully look through their proof to point out errors. Now? Well, frankly, I find that the effort I have to put into reading their work (which often is filled with nonstandard notation and definitions that aren't really definitions in the mathematical sense of the word) is not appreciated by them. It isn't "oh, you pointed out a flaw in my reasoning, thank you for your time" but more like... well silence, or perhaps one hostile sentence.
But I agree with you that it WOULD be nice if someone just found something really simple that nobody had thought of before - its just not an event with a nontrivial probability.
If I make a clay sculpture of a half woman, half goat thing, and I decide to worship it by performaing a ritual each night where I masturbate to it while chanting.. hell lets throw in some self mutilation too just for fun, then that is MY business. On the other hand if you chose to only believe in what can be quantified, then that is yours.
OH MY GOD! You know of Basaquet? We need to meet! Do you live in the Idaho area? Let me know where you live, and I will send you a piece of my severed thumb ("Heaven's to Half Goat Hitchhiker" Grobs 12:32) to show you my sincerity. ALL HAIL BASAQUET!
Just last week I was with some people, otherwise intelligent people in a book club, who turn out to believe in predestination and ghosts - one lady says she hears voices of dead friends and they tell her they are OK and they give her comfort.
I take it they couldn't tell her the value of a playing card taped to her forehead that she could not see?
And a good example of this would be Andrew Wiles proving Fermat's last theorem...
Actually, that's a bad example. He used the results of generations of mathematicians to prove it. In fact, one can argue that his final proof is a capstone to centuries of work in many diverse fields of mathematics.
This is NOT to denigrate his acheivement. Picture a one-million-mile relay race. He is the person who took the baton and ran the last 100 miles by himself without a break. So CLAPCLAPCLAP at the amazing work he did to finish it all up. I understand only enough of his paper to be in awe of him. But he did NOT run the whole race by himself.
Slashdot Mirror
Ding ding, thank you! And why is that? Because companies just expect people to know how to use computers. So, every time someone's printer "doesn't print", does the user stop and think/look around/check anything? No. They pick up the phone and pester IT.
PESTER IT?
That is part IT's job.
If suddenly the air conditioning at stops working, I'm not going to go looking through the ducts - I'm going to call the repair people.
If the Xerox machine starts jamming every time, I'm not going to start turning adjusting screws, I'll call the Xerox guy. (The Xerox guy, BTW, hates it when people try to repair it by itself first)
Do you really want clueless people to try to get the computer to print by themselves? "My printer wouldn't print so I looked around these dialog boxes and checked and unchecked a bunch of things but it didn't help so I put a CD rom in and clicked "reinstall" and that didn't work but now I can't get on the internet and Microsoft Word is in latin and the elves have stopped bowling and play LaCrosse, so I thought I should call you now."
IT departments would get more infrastructure work done, instead of constantly answering "my printer won't print because it's out of paper" problems.
I agree with you here - people should have to learn how to do things like add paper. I suspect, however, that the people who call because the printer is out of paper CAN replace it by themselves - they just don't think it is their job. This seems to be a management problem. Is it IT's job to replace the paper? Is it the worker's? Is it the secretary's? Allocating resources is the boss's decision. I don't think it SHOULD be IT's job, but if it is, then you should be replacing that paper merrily, perhaps using the printer to print out a resume or two.
Myself. TIs. Like.
Myself. Notation. Acclimated.
Yes, I know you said it would take three weeks working twelve hour days and weekends, but I agreed to two.
You need to take a tip from Scotty, and stop telling the truth about your requirements. "Ya got-ta give yerself some roooom." As professionals, we are used to giving honest answers to questions. "What is the optimal resistance?" "25 ohms" "What is the minimum number of weeks you need?" "2 weeks."
Keep answering the first question honestly, laddie, but get in the habit of answering the second : "Captain, we canna do it in less than 4 weeks or she'll blow!"
You read it on the internet, dude! Is that not SOURCE ENOUGH?
DJS.
(In other words, I made it up)
I'm sure Hitler said lots of things most people would agree with, and not find offensive until they are told that Hitler said it.
Case in point: [loose translation from the original German]
"Whenever the name of me is used in an argument in a linear discussion of many people, the interesting content of that discussion will be at an end." - A. Hitler
After all the time, love, and energy he's given us, you want him to give still more?
Oh for crying out loud. He is not a Christ-figure. He gave his time, love, and energy to a project that interested him. He didn't do it for US, he did it for HIMSELF. That isn't a bad thing. (oh god, I hate it when I sound like a Randroid) I'm glad that he did what he did. We have all benefitted. But he didn't wake up one day and say, "I am going to give everybody free beer and create a movement that will redefine the concept of free speech." He woke up and said, what many engineers all over the planet often say, "Hey, I just thought of something mega-cool I can do... and fuck, I didn't want to go to bed early tonight anyway."
(I know he said this, for he told me so in a dream)
My cat has actually used my computer keyboard to write poetry:
http://www.dougshaw.com/anakin/anakinpoems.html
"they equate the freedom to express useful, new, creative ideas with the freedom to make a complete ass of yourself in front of millions of people"
Well of course. I do as well, and so should you. Its the same freedom. Just as the freedom that allows you to write a book that criticizes the president is the same freedom that allows someone to write a trashy smutty novel about women with three breasts and the leather-men who worship them.
Freedom's a funny thing, ennit? Wild, untamed. God bless it.
Very thoughtful post. And, after the impact of #7 's dust settles, somehow, people will blame the Liberals.
Laptops are like camper trailers. Bulky and tedious to carry around, but in a pinch they serve quite well as a below average house
If the gap between desktop and laptop technology continues to decrease (and I don't see it as that big an "if") why would you prefer a desktop over a laptop? Not arguing here - genuinely curious.
If I could get a camper trailer to store nearly as much as my house, and if it was small enough to take anywhere, well... then I would have a TARDIS and I would prefer to own one of those than to own a house.
Very soon after that, they'd discover pleasure, build genitals and spend the next several years masterbating non-stop. After wearing out their fabricated genitalia, they'd discover philosophy and search for the meaning of their existence. Sadly, they would quickly come to the conclusion that their existence has no more meaning than that which they themselves create. At this point, two events might occur
Third possible event: They would build more genitals and just keep masturbating. Soon they would develop better materials and alloys for their genitals. They might even start wars over places with the ideal raw materials for robot-genitals, or places with the ideal environments for robot-genital synthesis.
Ooops - I have just given away the plot for Terminator V: The Robot-Genital Wars
Can't explain the joke without ruining the humor. It isn't a pop-culture reference. If you have spent time with any real-life actuaries, you would get the joke.
For some reason, saying "Hello, World!" never worked out...
This topic can be closed now, because the best line has now been said.
Hilarious, Doh!
...start taking the actuarial exams.
But I will admit one thing, if ever I expected a useless law to come from anywhere, they left coast is the place.
The useless anti-sodomy laws come from the conservative south.
The useless "covenant-marriage" law comes from the conservative south.
The useless "defense of marriage act" comes from conservatives in the east coast.
Think.
Thank you for the cite. I stand corrected.
When a user pops/imaps to check their mail have the pop server see if the reply-to exists, if they don't dump it to dev null. It would seem that this would keep emails trackable. For it to get to the user the user would have the ability to get back to a person.
Here is the hole:
People forge "reply-to" headers. I know this from experience. Some spammer put my vanity domain name on the reply-to (or equivalent) header, and I wound up getting hundreds of bounced "no such address" emails. I was lucky that nobody tried to mailbomb me.
I was lucky in that after a month the problem went away.
That is what is at stake, therefore: our ability to communcate by email with people we have not established a relationship with. That would be an actual loss, but is it worth legislating for?
If the legislation will work, then I say, "Yes, it is worth it."
I have a small website, and part of it is book reviews and essays that I've written. I treasure the emails I've gotten from strangers about them. I am a talented amateur writer, but not talented enough to be published. So, for a hobbiest like me, it is wonderful to be able to put my thoughts up on the web, and to get into interesting discussions with strangers about them. I've made many virtual friendships this way, and it would be very sad if future hacks like me were denied this special experience.
Covert existing MTA's to use the new protocol but also support the old one.
Let me tell you bout a man named Charley who got on the MTA. He wanted to get off but the protocol changed charley couldn't get off that bus.
DID HE EVER RETURN? No, he never returned, and his fate is still unlearned. Doomed to ride forever 'neath the spam and relays he's the man who never returned!
Corporate speech and individual speech are equally protected under the First Amendment.
Seriously, what gave you that idea? Are corporations citizens? Do you think they have the right to vote? Does the second amendment apply to them? Does a sufficiently old corporation have the right to run for president, if it was founded in this country?
My impulse is to think that was an incredibly asinine statement, but I do not claim to be an expert on constitutional law. In fact, "mildly informed" is putting it too strongly. So educate me, back up the claim that "Corporate speech and individual speech are equally protected under the First Amendment."
I mostly receive crank proofs of the four color theorem, and have actually had a guy who believed the square root of two was rational in my office and he wouldn't leave. He kept saying things like "according to YOUR mathematics, things work THIS way, but actually..." and then he would go on and be barely coherent.
I'd hoped that the proof would be something unbelievably simple and elegant that even a non-mathematician like myself could understand.
... well silence, or perhaps one hostile sentence.
It is a romantic notion, but that is partially the point of this thread - in certain fields the odds that someone is going to solve an age-old problem and have it be something simple that all the Big Scientists have overlooked are exceedingly small. Enough people have looked at the Fermat Theorem that there is no reason to believe the romantic notion that some proof is out there that will fit on a half page using algebra. (Unless you use photographic reduction)
Similarly, it would be nice to see a DIRECT proof of the four-color theorem that (when printed out) took only 20 pages and wasn't a bunch of brute-force computation. But it ain't gonna happen. Too many smart people have looked at it for quite a long time. (That doesn't rule out a short proof that uses some FUTURE really tough result that they hadn't had access to. But somewhere along the line, pages will be filled and we will go beyond algebra)
This is why when someone emails me announcing they have a short proof of the Four Color theorem, or of Fermat's Theorem, although they have no mathematical training, I am beyond cynical. In the old days I would carefully look through their proof to point out errors. Now? Well, frankly, I find that the effort I have to put into reading their work (which often is filled with nonstandard notation and definitions that aren't really definitions in the mathematical sense of the word) is not appreciated by them. It isn't "oh, you pointed out a flaw in my reasoning, thank you for your time" but more like
But I agree with you that it WOULD be nice if someone just found something really simple that nobody had thought of before - its just not an event with a nontrivial probability.
If I make a clay sculpture of a half woman, half goat thing, and I decide to worship it by performaing a ritual each night where I masturbate to it while chanting.. hell lets throw in some self mutilation too just for fun, then that is MY business. On the other hand if you chose to only believe in what can be quantified, then that is yours.
OH MY GOD! You know of Basaquet? We need to meet! Do you live in the Idaho area? Let me know where you live, and I will send you a piece of my severed thumb ("Heaven's to Half Goat Hitchhiker" Grobs 12:32) to show you my sincerity. ALL HAIL BASAQUET!
Just last week I was with some people, otherwise intelligent people in a book club, who turn out to believe in predestination and ghosts - one lady says she hears voices of dead friends and they tell her they are OK and they give her comfort.
I take it they couldn't tell her the value of a playing card taped to her forehead that she could not see?
And a good example of this would be Andrew Wiles proving Fermat's last theorem...
Actually, that's a bad example. He used the results of generations of mathematicians to prove it. In fact, one can argue that his final proof is a capstone to centuries of work in many diverse fields of mathematics.
This is NOT to denigrate his acheivement. Picture a one-million-mile relay race. He is the person who took the baton and ran the last 100 miles by himself without a break. So CLAPCLAPCLAP at the amazing work he did to finish it all up. I understand only enough of his paper to be in awe of him. But he did NOT run the whole race by himself.