Better check whether the state's budget problems are due to a slightly excessive allocation to Cyberdyne Systems via front companies or dummy government departments.
I'm in a 3rd world country and the top bosses in my ex-company outsourced some work to India.
A number of those guys were paid more or about the same as us, but most of them weren't very good at what we required them to do. They might have been much better at "VB/Java business apps".
Our experience with them was they'd say "Yes" but too often it won't be true. Honesty is important when you are trying to get technical things done (diplomacy is important when you are trying to get political things done;) ).
FWIW their ex-chairman is now in prison for massive fraud.
Uh, but he's wrong! From his own link, the Taiwanese workers are earning about USD1150 per MONTH (which is actually not bad in the 3rd world country I'm in[1]).
The _FIRST_ sentence says it: "The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564".
If the average US person can't figure out the difference between years and months, or have poor reading comprehension, or can't be bothered to check stuff properly, it's no surprise US bosses are outsourcing to other countries.
So what if those 3rd world workers are crap. No point paying far more for just as crap (or worse).
And guess what, many of these "3rd world" workers aren't that crap.
I've shown some kids these videos and told them that that's the sort of competition they'll be facing (more so as countries like Vietnam start getting into it as well).
[1] FWIW, I'm a cheap worker (relative to the USA) in a 3rd world country. But hey at least I can read, spell and do basic math (with help from Google:) ). I can even write some simple perl and python code...
China's just not the benchmark people should use for "grading" Governments.
US voters can certainly select more than two parties. In fact if all the voters who were eligible but didn't vote, actually voted for the same one party, that party would have won.
Yes the first past the post system sucks, but naturally the Two Parties aren't going to change that- why should they? Between the two of them, they got >97% of all the votes in the past two elections.
Who really cares about contact databases? They're just a bunch of public info - stuff in business cards. Unless Agnes Cleaners is a CIA front company it'll be no big deal.
It's likely that their customers already list themselves on the "Agnes Cleaners Facebook fan page" and post stuff like "hey I'm going to Florida, but I've changed the locks - stupid lock broke, so you can find the key under the doormat".
Most people don't care about secrecy. And in most cases it doesn't matter, because fortunately most people don't pick a _petty_crook_ career (the smart amoral/evil people pick careers which allow them to _legally_ take lots of money from stupid people).
If the contact databases got destroyed or became inaccessible it could affect their business. Agnes Cleaners might care about that. But they don't need crypto for that - just decent backups.
And a mathematician would just write a paper proving it can be done and how, and another would describe measuring such flagpoles in nonEuclidean space:).
An engineer would just look at it and say "it's roughly about 30 feet or 9 metres" or google for specs for that particular flagpole.
Modern man in effect eats a fair bit of oil and coal. It allows them to generate light, travel great distances fast etc.My car consumes about as much in $$$ terms as I do per month.
But yeah, being a superhuman could be fun:).
What you might want in addition to your lightbeams and electric zapping superpowers is the ability to use energy from an external power source to power your anaerobic metabolic modes = e.g. you can sprint and not get tired[1] till you run out of energy from that power source.
While power armor and exoskeletons might help do the same thing, the augmentation I'm talking about could be a bit more discreet and less "in your face".
> minor factor which in testing was argued away as insignificant or negligible will become significant when the product is deployed on such scales as are applicable to food production.
That's the thing about medicine testing, food testing and vaccine testing.
For some stuff it's fine that "only" a very small percentage have problems with it. You take that medicine/procedure only if you have an existing problem that's worse than the medication. If your problem has a > 90% chance of killing or crippling you, and the medicine has a 2% chance, the decision is easy.
But for stuff which millions will take when they don't have an existing problem it's no longer so simple. The safety levels may have to be much higher.
Well if you were a 50+ year old CEO in the 1960-1970s, you'd be satisfying the unions back then (thus get things moving and save your job), and hardly anyone blames you in 2010 when the company goes bust. So why care?
It's similar on a country scale. There is a temptation in democracies for politicians to bribe the voters with money from the voters AND future generations of voters.
That's why smoking and obesity is good in some cases - these "costs" tend to die off earlier, rather than collect $$$ for extra decades and then eventually die of something that's still expensive (and paid by the medical plan too;) ).
I have category subdomains in them (it's all wildcarded so I can use all sorts of names and they'll still hit the same mailserver).
This makes it harder for the spammers to figure out which subdomain to strip. They strip off too much - the spam goes to my dns hosting provider instead, who probably doesn't read it:).
If I get spam that includes enough subdomains, I can more easily filter them away (or give them a higher spamminess score).
Spam to buy@viagra.<mydomain> won't be a big problem.
So far I haven't needed to do fancy spam filtering yet with this sort of email account. Whereas I've had to do spam filtering with some other email accounts.
I use an iframe loaded from an app I wrote on my webserver.
Nowadays the iframe doesn't get loaded by default by most email programs or webmail apps. But if they do save it onto their computer and someone opens it with a browser, typically[1] the browser will load the iframe from a url that may look something like http://googlehr.mycategory.mydomain/apps/cvapp/googlehr
Then I will know: The User Agent of the browser. The IP address.
Depending on the scenario, I can also get a notification, and I could then text chat with the person reading my CV (that is if they notice the web chat window in the iframe). One headhunter was a bit surprised when that happened:).
If I'm not interested in live interaction, that part of the CV shows up blank.
[1] By default on most Windows computers, the "My Computer" security zone is not set to high security, opening my CV in non-high security levels allows the iframe stuff to work. On some of my computers the "My Computer" security zone is set to a higher security level, this does break some WinXP stuff, but it's fine in Classic Mode. You can google for how to display the "My Computer" zone. Or if you have WinXP Pro or equivalent you could set it using the group policy stuff.
If the phone is cheap enough, as long as I can recover (and quickly+easily backup) data in the phone (SIM, messages, contacts, etc), I don't care so much if it breaks after a truck rolls over it, or a BBC reporter is unleashed on it.
You could then buy two phones, and have one as a spare. I think it'll work out cheaper that way than buying a special ruggedized phone.
There are also the past commitments the companies made like hefty pension schemes.
If your company never got itself into those, costs are lower. Otherwise you might find that one worker has to be productive enough to pay for 2 retirees, (as well as the CEO's cut;) ).
For example if I'm applying to Google it could be something like:
googlehr@google.mydomain
That way if my CV gets passed around later on, I might have an idea of who did it.
My CV is also typically in html. It looks about the same on most browsers, but depending on the circumstances the reader might see different content. I might also get notification that someone is reading my CV:).
So far I guess I'm lucky that it hasn't stopped me from getting jobs:).
One area where FireFox (or even IE) is better than Chrome is in the tab handling.
Chrome should ALWAYS open up new tabs adjacent to the source tab, but it doesn't! At least as of recent versions I've got (maybe they've fixed it by now).
Chrome's tab handling is terrible for me. If I'm on tab "A" and open up a new tab with "middle click", it opens up tab "B" adjacent to "A", which is good BUT the next new tab is adjacent to "B", not "A"! And the next is adjacent to "C".
This sucks in a major way.
Why? Because if I open up a few new tabs from various tabs, and I ask people to predict where the next new tab is going to appear, most of them CANNOT predict where it will appear. Those that do will need to keep in their heads the history of the tabs. So it is not much better than random in practice.
Where the latest new tab appears is important. It's the one you finally decide you want to read NOW - the rest you didn't mind reading later.
I agree that Firefox is slow. It takes ages to launch - it's a badly designed browser that's been patched up over the years to be better.
Slashdot Mirror
> I know I'm able to produce around a kilowatt for 5 minutes or so at a time, and can sustain 500W practically indefinitely.
Maybe you can beat Lance Armstrong and the others:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/weekinreview/24kola.html
There's probably plenty of stuff that still requires IE6 to work.
For example: HP's iLO stuff appears to be very browser type, version and configuration sensitive. We've had some problems using HP iLO with IE8.
Yes it works with IE7, but in our company the class of machines that upgraded to IE7 would be on IE8 by now (or would soon be).
The rest would still be on IE6.
Better check whether the state's budget problems are due to a slightly excessive allocation to Cyberdyne Systems via front companies or dummy government departments.
I'm in a 3rd world country and the top bosses in my ex-company outsourced some work to India.
;) ).
A number of those guys were paid more or about the same as us, but most of them weren't very good at what we required them to do. They might have been much better at "VB/Java business apps".
Our experience with them was they'd say "Yes" but too often it won't be true. Honesty is important when you are trying to get technical things done (diplomacy is important when you are trying to get political things done
FWIW their ex-chairman is now in prison for massive fraud.
Because they were busy wasting too many doses on people without preexisting medical conditions?
> Currently we have 'transformational' government. I've tried telling them that transformational isn't even a word.
Like that'll help. They're more a Decepticonal Government.
I guess there's a subtle difference between earning a living and making a killing :).
Uh, but he's wrong! From his own link, the Taiwanese workers are earning about USD1150 per MONTH (which is actually not bad in the 3rd world country I'm in[1]).
The _FIRST_ sentence says it: "The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564".
Google says 36564 Taiwanese dollars is about USD1150 : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=36564+TWD+in+usd&btnG=Search&meta=
If the average US person can't figure out the difference between years and months, or have poor reading comprehension, or can't be bothered to check stuff properly, it's no surprise US bosses are outsourcing to other countries.
So what if those 3rd world workers are crap. No point paying far more for just as crap (or worse).
And guess what, many of these "3rd world" workers aren't that crap.
See: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=185
I've shown some kids these videos and told them that that's the sort of competition they'll be facing (more so as countries like Vietnam start getting into it as well).
[1] FWIW, I'm a cheap worker (relative to the USA) in a 3rd world country. But hey at least I can read, spell and do basic math (with help from Google :) ). I can even write some simple perl and python code...
1) Free laptops
2) Catching stupid/ignorant people
3) Looking busy
It definite IS better than China.
China's just not the benchmark people should use for "grading" Governments.
US voters can certainly select more than two parties. In fact if all the voters who were eligible but didn't vote, actually voted for the same one party, that party would have won.
Yes the first past the post system sucks, but naturally the Two Parties aren't going to change that- why should they? Between the two of them, they got >97% of all the votes in the past two elections.
> left4dead and borderlands pioneering (and mmo's of course)
Doom had coop more than 15 years ago.
Who really cares about contact databases? They're just a bunch of public info - stuff in business cards. Unless Agnes Cleaners is a CIA front company it'll be no big deal.
It's likely that their customers already list themselves on the "Agnes Cleaners Facebook fan page" and post stuff like "hey I'm going to Florida, but I've changed the locks - stupid lock broke, so you can find the key under the doormat".
Most people don't care about secrecy. And in most cases it doesn't matter, because fortunately most people don't pick a _petty_crook_ career (the smart amoral/evil people pick careers which allow them to _legally_ take lots of money from stupid people).
If the contact databases got destroyed or became inaccessible it could affect their business. Agnes Cleaners might care about that. But they don't need crypto for that - just decent backups.
I thought a physicist would use the shadow and the angle, or use other techniques listed in: http://science.howstuffworks.com/question379.htm
And a mathematician would just write a paper proving it can be done and how, and another would describe measuring such flagpoles in nonEuclidean space :).
An engineer would just look at it and say "it's roughly about 30 feet or 9 metres" or google for specs for that particular flagpole.
Modern man in effect eats a fair bit of oil and coal. It allows them to generate light, travel great distances fast etc.My car consumes about as much in $$$ terms as I do per month.
But yeah, being a superhuman could be fun :).
What you might want in addition to your lightbeams and electric zapping superpowers is the ability to use energy from an external power source to power your anaerobic metabolic modes = e.g. you can sprint and not get tired[1] till you run out of energy from that power source.
While power armor and exoskeletons might help do the same thing, the augmentation I'm talking about could be a bit more discreet and less "in your face".
[1] You probably need a better cooling mechanism though than just sweating: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore_pr.html
Cheetahs can run very fast, but a big limiting factor appears to be overheating.
> minor factor which in testing was argued away as insignificant or negligible will become significant when the product is deployed on such scales as are applicable to food production.
That's the thing about medicine testing, food testing and vaccine testing.
For some stuff it's fine that "only" a very small percentage have problems with it. You take that medicine/procedure only if you have an existing problem that's worse than the medication. If your problem has a > 90% chance of killing or crippling you, and the medicine has a 2% chance, the decision is easy.
But for stuff which millions will take when they don't have an existing problem it's no longer so simple. The safety levels may have to be much higher.
One that doesn't produce "Do not look at beam with remaining eye" jokes.
;).
Just a lame attempt at light humour
Which is closer? Star Office or Kingsoft Office? :)
Well if you were a 50+ year old CEO in the 1960-1970s, you'd be satisfying the unions back then (thus get things moving and save your job), and hardly anyone blames you in 2010 when the company goes bust. So why care?
;) ).
It's similar on a country scale. There is a temptation in democracies for politicians to bribe the voters with money from the voters AND future generations of voters.
That's why smoking and obesity is good in some cases - these "costs" tend to die off earlier, rather than collect $$$ for extra decades and then eventually die of something that's still expensive (and paid by the medical plan too
I suppose if I ever have problems getting a job due to that I'd just put a note: "Yes that email address is valid and goes to me and not you".
In other usage cases - potential "get spam" email addresses, if the spammers think it's not valid, that makes it better.
is not a simple two level "mydomain.tld".
:).
I have category subdomains in them (it's all wildcarded so I can use all sorts of names and they'll still hit the same mailserver).
This makes it harder for the spammers to figure out which subdomain to strip. They strip off too much - the spam goes to my dns hosting provider instead, who probably doesn't read it
If I get spam that includes enough subdomains, I can more easily filter them away (or give them a higher spamminess score).
Spam to buy@viagra.<mydomain> won't be a big problem.
So far I haven't needed to do fancy spam filtering yet with this sort of email account. Whereas I've had to do spam filtering with some other email accounts.
I use an iframe loaded from an app I wrote on my webserver.
:).
Nowadays the iframe doesn't get loaded by default by most email programs or webmail apps. But if they do save it onto their computer and someone opens it with a browser, typically[1] the browser will load the iframe from a url that may look something like http://googlehr.mycategory.mydomain/apps/cvapp/googlehr
Then I will know:
The User Agent of the browser.
The IP address.
Depending on the scenario, I can also get a notification, and I could then text chat with the person reading my CV (that is if they notice the web chat window in the iframe). One headhunter was a bit surprised when that happened
If I'm not interested in live interaction, that part of the CV shows up blank.
[1] By default on most Windows computers, the "My Computer" security zone is not set to high security, opening my CV in non-high security levels allows the iframe stuff to work. On some of my computers the "My Computer" security zone is set to a higher security level, this does break some WinXP stuff, but it's fine in Classic Mode. You can google for how to display the "My Computer" zone. Or if you have WinXP Pro or equivalent you could set it using the group policy stuff.
If the phone is cheap enough, as long as I can recover (and quickly+easily backup) data in the phone (SIM, messages, contacts, etc), I don't care so much if it breaks after a truck rolls over it, or a BBC reporter is unleashed on it.
You could then buy two phones, and have one as a spare. I think it'll work out cheaper that way than buying a special ruggedized phone.
There are also the past commitments the companies made like hefty pension schemes.
;) ).
If your company never got itself into those, costs are lower. Otherwise you might find that one worker has to be productive enough to pay for 2 retirees, (as well as the CEO's cut
On my CVs I use:
:).
:).
<recipient tag>@<tag>.<mydomain>
For example if I'm applying to Google it could be something like:
googlehr@google.mydomain
That way if my CV gets passed around later on, I might have an idea of who did it.
My CV is also typically in html. It looks about the same on most browsers, but depending on the circumstances the reader might see different content. I might also get notification that someone is reading my CV
So far I guess I'm lucky that it hasn't stopped me from getting jobs
One area where FireFox (or even IE) is better than Chrome is in the tab handling.
Chrome should ALWAYS open up new tabs adjacent to the source tab, but it doesn't! At least as of recent versions I've got (maybe they've fixed it by now).
Chrome's tab handling is terrible for me. If I'm on tab "A" and open up a new tab with "middle click", it opens up tab "B" adjacent to "A", which is good BUT the next new tab is adjacent to "B", not "A"! And the next is adjacent to "C".
This sucks in a major way.
Why? Because if I open up a few new tabs from various tabs, and I ask people to predict where the next new tab is going to appear, most of them CANNOT predict where it will appear. Those that do will need to keep in their heads the history of the tabs. So it is not much better than random in practice.
Where the latest new tab appears is important. It's the one you finally decide you want to read NOW - the rest you didn't mind reading later.
I agree that Firefox is slow. It takes ages to launch - it's a badly designed browser that's been patched up over the years to be better.