Whatever happened to the basic idea of selling them what they don't got in exchange for what you don't have?
There's a word for it. I think it's "trade." Free or otherwise, although tariffs are an idea so fundamentally unAmerican it's pathetic. If nothing else it implies you can't afford to make a fair deal.
Mate: Ummmmm, sorry Sir. We had to take in a reef. Give us a mo' and we'll patch in the dingy cover to make up for it. Looks like light airs for tomorrow though, so we'll be able to fly everything, including the laundry. Be nice to have some microwaved burritos for chow again.
to hang out with who, when they ask you a personal question, are actually interested in the answer.
If find it very a very effective tool to weed out those that I'm not interested in talking to myself to simply answer the question as asked, instead of iterpreting it as "what's your job?", which is, in most instances, none of their business anyway.
Anyone who wants to talk to me about physics, bicycle racing, trout fishing, folk music Donald Westlake novels or subsitence farming, well, I'll stand the first round.
If someone asks me what I do, and their eyes glaze over when I start talking about R/C car racing, well, they're going to be a bore to talk to anyway.
Go ahead. Do it. What sort of answers are you going to get?
"I'm a web developer," or "I'm a Java programer."
People who answer that question in that manner will generally buy these books, in fact, insist on them. It never occurs to someone who thinks of himself as "a suit" that there is such a thing as *cluefulness,* detached from what he "does."
Publishing a book on cluefulness would smack of "theory" to these people, and theory, to these people, means not practically useful.
Cluefulness for Suits for Dummies, however, the suit can recognize as describing himself to a tee ( although the irony of the accuracy of that description often eludes him). It smacks of being useful, to *him*, without all that extraneous stuff about cluefulness in general.
I mean, really, who would want to waste their valuable time just being clueful, in general?
I've actually seen someone go so far as to state that an undetectable savings adds up world wide, and thus saves *me* frustration and confusion.
"Why yes, we made the red light 0.002 seconds shorter. Sure you don't notice it, but just think how many people drive through that light every day. It adds up to a total savings of ten seconds a day. Wouldn't you like to get home ten seconds quicker?"
I'd like to know what brand of coffee they've been drinking. It must be kick ass stuff.
These are the same people who think saving me ten seconds a day on mouse movement makes me more productive. They don't know me very good, do they? Here's a clue interface optimization guy, mouse movements don't come out of my productive time, they come out of my staring into space and making pointless movements to make it *look* like I'm being productive time.
People aren't machines. If we don't bloody well feel like being productive we'll fuck your efficiency plans every time.
on that crappy game just developing the idea, didn't they?
Everyone does it. Some just catch it earlier than others.
What's more, even in their sucessful games they make a lot of wrong moves and throw out a lot of bad ideas and code that we don't, as the public, see them throwing out.
All that goes into the total overhead of a production. Even a successful game can actually lose money if too many costly mistakes are made in getting there and many revered small houses, with nothing but "success" on their resume, have been suddenly trashed by their corporate masters over the bottom line.
Of course what most of those corporate masters have yet to grasp is the concept of the "status" product. GM hardly makes a dime on Corvettes, but having Corvettes in the line up sold a lot *Chev*ettes. Nissan did away with the "Z" because they were losing money on it, and have had to bring it back because the whole *company* lost tremendously by its absence.
For that matter GE has been looking for a way to do away with their lightbulb business for decades, and haven't been able to figure out how to do it. To the public the entire GE "nation" loses value ( even though profitablity would go *up*) if it doesn't make lightbulbs. I mean, that's what GE *is*, right?
Stop making lightbulbs, stop selling as many financial services too. That's just the way it is.
As it is, Looking Glass is simply gone. Jesus I wish the games companies would buy a clue.
When Theodore developed Sturgeon's Law it wasn't that 90% of all writers are crap that he had in mind. It was that 90% of *everything written* was crap. What he was driving at was that 90% of everything written by a *great* writer was crap, but one of the main differences between a great writer and a hack was that the great writer didn't *publish* the crap.
Thoreau's Journal is one of the most interesting works in literary history because it gives us an inside view into some of this. His journals are full of bits of Walden and other works while still under development. Of course, Old H.D. was a great writer, so even his journal was heavily edited and polished before publication.
This applies to Van Gough as well. We don't see his crap because he himself made sure we didn't.
There's also a story about a king who commissions a drawing of a rooster and when presented with the final bill balks. ..until the artist shows him the trunk full of hundreds of the previous inferior renditions the great artist disposed of before hitting the masterpiece.
The king was paying for the *total* labor required, not just the final product.
So Sony is merely doing what any wise artist, writer or businessman would do. When the first draft goes bad, and then the second and third, on the trash heap it goes.
Crap is as crap does. Admit it before it drags you down to hack status, and at a loss.
That's the true application of Sturgeon's Law for those with any real talent to peddle.
will still put you back fifty bucks, even though it could turn a profit for less than half that.
Just as in the book and movie businesses most games are complete busts, after *first* sucking up years of time and millions of dollars in development.
For the company overall to ever show a profit the ones that *do* hit have to sell for enough to not just make a profit on that one game, but also to cover the losses of all those games they had to develop just to find out *which* one was going to be the winner.
Want major releases to only cost twenty bucks? It's easy, just find an infallible way to predict before development starts which potential projects will be the best sellers.
It's an "easy" way for you to become a multi-millionaire in year or two as well.
I'd only add that if you ride on bike paths you're also a target for inline skaters, joggers, old ladies walking their dogs down the middle of the path, etc., none of whom will be paying attention to right of way rules and all of whom will bitch at *you* for being on the bike path, on a bike. Go figure.
Frankly, I just avoid them like the plague. They're a nasty and dangerous place to ride a bike. I always feel much safer on an eight lane during rush hour than I do on a bike path.
But then I've been "Effective" cycling since before Forester wrote the book, which, since he has, everyone taking up commuting, or any other cycling for that matter, should read.
Because if Open Source is about anything it's about maintaining its security through obscurity.
Right?
And besides, this would be letting them in, and taking them on, on our home turf, where we make the rules and carry all the advantages and have the vast majority of the crowd behind us.
MS are just being wussies to saunter onto the field of battle with those sorts of odds going for them.
Gee, I don't know. Perusing the papers over the past couple of decades that seems to be one of the things they're pretty well stocked up on in Washington.
Hell, they've got so much of it they even let their cigars in on the excess action.
You don't want to spend $300 on a bike. If you do you'll need that $50 a month for maintainence, and have a bike that never runs right anyway.
Spend $750 and you'll spend $50 per *year* on maintainence the first few years. Either save up for it or buy it on credit and make the payments for 6 months. The interest will be minimal on that amount.
Get a hybrid. Insist it be fitted with road tires. You'll hate every minute of pedaling mountain bike tires on the road. Avocet and Ritchey make my favorites. Get kevlar belted tires. They're a bit heavier and ride a bit less smoothly but they really do reduce punctures to a minimum and for a pure commuter it's worth it.
Unfortunately I don't know anyone who's making a real commuter bike at the moment. Trek had a nice one for a year or two, but it's gone now. *Real* commuter bikes don't sell well enough to make it worth a major manufacturers while.
A real commuter bike would have a hybrid frame and brakes, a Shimano 7 speed internally geared hub ( like the old Sturmey-Archers, but better) fenders ( these you can at least add easily) and a custom fitted rear rack ( these you can have made, but it's pricey).
You'll also want a "cargo net" type rack bungee and a bag. The ideal bag would be a "bike messenger" type that's been modified into a sort of laptop case style that can also be mounted on a rear rack. Again, I've seen these, but I don't know anyone actually making them at the moment.
Performance ( a mailorder house out of North Carolina) makes a nice attache/laptop type messenger bag, I use one and wouldn't be without it, but it doesn't rack mount. They also make some decent and moderatly priced pannier type bags as well. ( I've got hundreds of hours of use out of these bags, and expect to get thousands more).
Gloves. don't ride without gloves. I mean it. Nothing ruins a week or two more than having to live them with skinned palms. Trust me, I've determined this empirically.
Well, unless it's having to live with a concussion and cracked skull, I've determined this empirically too, but nobody seems to like the "helmet lecture" so, I've brought up the subject and you'll do what you do.
But the Hayden Planetarium once did a moderately brisk business in selling tickets to the moon. Cheapflights is now reprising that, ummmmm, enterprise:
http://www.cheapflights.com/press/press31.html If you can think of it, someone is trying to, and *has*, sold it.
NEED!? What the hell is "need" anyway? You need to get to your job? Maybe what you "need" is a job closer to home?
"Need" gets to be very, sticky, sticky issue subject to political interpretaion.
And of course the shopping areas *need* needless costomers, or their "needed" employees have no "need" to be there in the first place.
Of course what you really have on the road is a *right* of way.
On your mule I guess, because the only ones who could cogently state a viable reason for the *need* to have motor vehicles in the city are police and emergency services in the first place. So the logical thing to do would be to simply close the city to all nonofficial motor traffic.
Works for me, I'm bicycle mechanic and frame builder. I could use the business, and you could use the exercise.
It's only necessary to be difficult enough to be pointless in practice.
Most data has a time sensitivity attached to it, and most data that doesn't is trivial ( such as your laundry list).
If I encrypt data to hide criminal activity the question to me isn't necessarily if it can be cracked, but whether it can be cracked before the statute of limitations on the crime runs out.
If a war is going to last one year a code that will take 100 years to break is, effectively, unbreakable.
And nevermind the fact that once a code becomes sufficiently hard to break hardly anyone bothers, because at that point it becomes far easier to break the *people* rather than their code.
doesn't work. It just keeps going faster and faster."
It is the perennial cry of the snake oil crowd that the "establishment" won't take their claims seriously. It never, *ever* seems to occur to them that this is because their claims are *provably* whacko. Especially where purely mathmatical structures are concerned.
Most snake oil saleman didn't do very well in math at school, although this personal limitation has never seemed to stand in the way of their being able to seriously cook a set of books to display for the investors.
KFG
Re:We will have a cashless society as soon as. . .
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 1
All countries still have gold.
KFG
We will have a cashless society as soon as. . .
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 1
precious metals have no value.
Trust me on this. The banks and the governments can burn the paper money and even remove the official coinage from the streets, but people will just start trading under the table in *hard* currency with real value as a result.
They always have.
And you thought that guy down the street was a whack job when he started hoarding gold.
Please note the extra zeros at the end of 2000 as opposed to 30.
Believe it or not, they make a difference.
No, not the sort of difference you're talking about, the sort of difference that means the difference between 2467 and 2556 doesn't make a difference, even though the difference between 30 and 60 does.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see any difference. Once you've seen one pink alien cow you've seen them all.
KFG
Whatever happened to the basic idea of selling them what they don't got in exchange for what you don't have?
There's a word for it. I think it's "trade." Free or otherwise, although tariffs are an idea so fundamentally unAmerican it's pathetic. If nothing else it implies you can't afford to make a fair deal.
I seem to recall a story about tea.
KFG
the light at the nav table suddenly go dim?
Mate: Ummmmm, sorry Sir. We had to take in a reef. Give us a mo' and we'll patch in the dingy cover to make up for it. Looks like light airs for tomorrow though, so we'll be able to fly everything, including the laundry. Be nice to have some microwaved burritos for chow again.
KFG
in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then. - Tom Lehrer
KFG
to hang out with who, when they ask you a personal question, are actually interested in the answer.
If find it very a very effective tool to weed out those that I'm not interested in talking to myself to simply answer the question as asked, instead of iterpreting it as "what's your job?", which is, in most instances, none of their business anyway.
Anyone who wants to talk to me about physics, bicycle racing, trout fishing, folk music Donald Westlake novels or subsitence farming, well, I'll stand the first round.
If someone asks me what I do, and their eyes glaze over when I start talking about R/C car racing, well, they're going to be a bore to talk to anyway.
KFG
Go ahead. Do it. What sort of answers are you going to get?
"I'm a web developer," or "I'm a Java programer."
People who answer that question in that manner will generally buy these books, in fact, insist on them. It never occurs to someone who thinks of himself as "a suit" that there is such a thing as *cluefulness,* detached from what he "does."
Publishing a book on cluefulness would smack of "theory" to these people, and theory, to these people, means not practically useful.
Cluefulness for Suits for Dummies, however, the suit can recognize as describing himself to a tee ( although the irony of the accuracy of that description often eludes him). It smacks of being useful, to *him*, without all that extraneous stuff about cluefulness in general.
I mean, really, who would want to waste their valuable time just being clueful, in general?
KFG
I've actually seen someone go so far as to state that an undetectable savings adds up world wide, and thus saves *me* frustration and confusion.
"Why yes, we made the red light 0.002 seconds shorter. Sure you don't notice it, but just think how many people drive through that light every day. It adds up to a total savings of ten seconds a day. Wouldn't you like to get home ten seconds quicker?"
I'd like to know what brand of coffee they've been drinking. It must be kick ass stuff.
These are the same people who think saving me ten seconds a day on mouse movement makes me more productive. They don't know me very good, do they? Here's a clue interface optimization guy, mouse movements don't come out of my productive time, they come out of my staring into space and making pointless movements to make it *look* like I'm being productive time.
People aren't machines. If we don't bloody well feel like being productive we'll fuck your efficiency plans every time.
We always have.
KFG
on that crappy game just developing the idea, didn't they?
Everyone does it. Some just catch it earlier than others.
What's more, even in their sucessful games they make a lot of wrong moves and throw out a lot of bad ideas and code that we don't, as the public, see them throwing out.
All that goes into the total overhead of a production. Even a successful game can actually lose money if too many costly mistakes are made in getting there and many revered small houses, with nothing but "success" on their resume, have been suddenly trashed by their corporate masters over the bottom line.
Of course what most of those corporate masters have yet to grasp is the concept of the "status" product. GM hardly makes a dime on Corvettes, but having Corvettes in the line up sold a lot *Chev*ettes. Nissan did away with the "Z" because they were losing money on it, and have had to bring it back because the whole *company* lost tremendously by its absence.
For that matter GE has been looking for a way to do away with their lightbulb business for decades, and haven't been able to figure out how to do it. To the public the entire GE "nation" loses value ( even though profitablity would go *up*) if it doesn't make lightbulbs. I mean, that's what GE *is*, right?
Stop making lightbulbs, stop selling as many financial services too. That's just the way it is.
As it is, Looking Glass is simply gone. Jesus I wish the games companies would buy a clue.
KFG
When Theodore developed Sturgeon's Law it wasn't that 90% of all writers are crap that he had in mind. It was that 90% of *everything written* was crap. What he was driving at was that 90% of everything written by a *great* writer was crap, but one of the main differences between a great writer and a hack was that the great writer didn't *publish* the crap.
.until the artist shows him the trunk full of hundreds of the previous inferior renditions the great artist disposed of before hitting the masterpiece.
Thoreau's Journal is one of the most interesting works in literary history because it gives us an inside view into some of this. His journals are full of bits of Walden and other works while still under development. Of course, Old H.D. was a great writer, so even his journal was heavily edited and polished before publication.
This applies to Van Gough as well. We don't see his crap because he himself made sure we didn't.
There's also a story about a king who commissions a drawing of a rooster and when presented with the final bill balks. .
The king was paying for the *total* labor required, not just the final product.
So Sony is merely doing what any wise artist, writer or businessman would do. When the first draft goes bad, and then the second and third, on the trash heap it goes.
Crap is as crap does. Admit it before it drags you down to hack status, and at a loss.
That's the true application of Sturgeon's Law for those with any real talent to peddle.
KFG
will still put you back fifty bucks, even though it could turn a profit for less than half that.
Just as in the book and movie businesses most games are complete busts, after *first* sucking up years of time and millions of dollars in development.
For the company overall to ever show a profit the ones that *do* hit have to sell for enough to not just make a profit on that one game, but also to cover the losses of all those games they had to develop just to find out *which* one was going to be the winner.
Want major releases to only cost twenty bucks? It's easy, just find an infallible way to predict before development starts which potential projects will be the best sellers.
It's an "easy" way for you to become a multi-millionaire in year or two as well.
Good luck.
KFG
I'd only add that if you ride on bike paths you're also a target for inline skaters, joggers, old ladies walking their dogs down the middle of the path, etc., none of whom will be paying attention to right of way rules and all of whom will bitch at *you* for being on the bike path, on a bike. Go figure.
Frankly, I just avoid them like the plague. They're a nasty and dangerous place to ride a bike. I always feel much safer on an eight lane during rush hour than I do on a bike path.
But then I've been "Effective" cycling since before Forester wrote the book, which, since he has, everyone taking up commuting, or any other cycling for that matter, should read.
And practice.
KFG
Because if Open Source is about anything it's about maintaining its security through obscurity.
Right?
And besides, this would be letting them in, and taking them on, on our home turf, where we make the rules and carry all the advantages and have the vast majority of the crowd behind us.
MS are just being wussies to saunter onto the field of battle with those sorts of odds going for them.
I mean, we'd be, like, sitting ducks, right?
KFG
Gee, I don't know. Perusing the papers over the past couple of decades that seems to be one of the things they're pretty well stocked up on in Washington.
Hell, they've got so much of it they even let their cigars in on the excess action.
KFG
Does that mean they claim a patent on grep? In 1998?
Does Ken Thompson know about this?
KFG
You don't want to spend $300 on a bike. If you do you'll need that $50 a month for maintainence, and have a bike that never runs right anyway.
Spend $750 and you'll spend $50 per *year* on maintainence the first few years. Either save up for it or buy it on credit and make the payments for 6 months. The interest will be minimal on that amount.
Get a hybrid. Insist it be fitted with road tires. You'll hate every minute of pedaling mountain bike tires on the road. Avocet and Ritchey make my favorites. Get kevlar belted tires. They're a bit heavier and ride a bit less smoothly but they really do reduce punctures to a minimum and for a pure commuter it's worth it.
Unfortunately I don't know anyone who's making a real commuter bike at the moment. Trek had a nice one for a year or two, but it's gone now. *Real* commuter bikes don't sell well enough to make it worth a major manufacturers while.
A real commuter bike would have a hybrid frame and brakes, a Shimano 7 speed internally geared hub ( like the old Sturmey-Archers, but better) fenders ( these you can at least add easily) and a custom fitted rear rack ( these you can have made, but it's pricey).
You'll also want a "cargo net" type rack bungee and a bag. The ideal bag would be a "bike messenger" type that's been modified into a sort of laptop case style that can also be mounted on a rear rack. Again, I've seen these, but I don't know anyone actually making them at the moment.
Performance ( a mailorder house out of North Carolina) makes a nice attache/laptop type messenger bag, I use one and wouldn't be without it, but it doesn't rack mount. They also make some decent and moderatly priced pannier type bags as well. ( I've got hundreds of hours of use out of these bags, and expect to get thousands more).
Gloves. don't ride without gloves. I mean it. Nothing ruins a week or two more than having to live them with skinned palms. Trust me, I've determined this empirically.
Well, unless it's having to live with a concussion and cracked skull, I've determined this empirically too, but nobody seems to like the "helmet lecture" so, I've brought up the subject and you'll do what you do.
KFG
didn't say anything about tax dollars.
KFG
But the Hayden Planetarium once did a moderately brisk business in selling tickets to the moon. Cheapflights is now reprising that, ummmmm, enterprise:
http://www.cheapflights.com/press/press31.html
If you can think of it, someone is trying to, and *has*, sold it.
KFG
in volume?
KFG
NEED!? What the hell is "need" anyway? You need to get to your job? Maybe what you "need" is a job closer to home?
"Need" gets to be very, sticky, sticky issue subject to political interpretaion.
And of course the shopping areas *need* needless costomers, or their "needed" employees have no "need" to be there in the first place.
Of course what you really have on the road is a *right* of way.
On your mule I guess, because the only ones who could cogently state a viable reason for the *need* to have motor vehicles in the city are police and emergency services in the first place. So the logical thing to do would be to simply close the city to all nonofficial motor traffic.
Works for me, I'm bicycle mechanic and frame builder. I could use the business, and you could use the exercise.
KFG
It's only necessary to be difficult enough to be pointless in practice.
Most data has a time sensitivity attached to it, and most data that doesn't is trivial ( such as your laundry list).
If I encrypt data to hide criminal activity the question to me isn't necessarily if it can be cracked, but whether it can be cracked before the statute of limitations on the crime runs out.
If a war is going to last one year a code that will take 100 years to break is, effectively, unbreakable.
And nevermind the fact that once a code becomes sufficiently hard to break hardly anyone bothers, because at that point it becomes far easier to break the *people* rather than their code.
KFG
doesn't work. It just keeps going faster and faster."
It is the perennial cry of the snake oil crowd that the "establishment" won't take their claims seriously. It never, *ever* seems to occur to them that this is because their claims are *provably* whacko. Especially where purely mathmatical structures are concerned.
Most snake oil saleman didn't do very well in math at school, although this personal limitation has never seemed to stand in the way of their being able to seriously cook a set of books to display for the investors.
KFG
All countries still have gold.
KFG
precious metals have no value.
Trust me on this. The banks and the governments can burn the paper money and even remove the official coinage from the streets, but people will just start trading under the table in *hard* currency with real value as a result.
They always have.
And you thought that guy down the street was a whack job when he started hoarding gold.
KFG
Well, for starters, I'd guess they can't spell. Was that really so hard to figure out?
KFG
significant digits.
Please note the extra zeros at the end of 2000 as opposed to 30.
Believe it or not, they make a difference.
No, not the sort of difference you're talking about, the sort of difference that means the difference between 2467 and 2556 doesn't make a difference, even though the difference between 30 and 60 does.
Get the difference?
KFG