Cops would rather chase drug kingpins or bank robbers.
Which is probably what they should be doing as those types of crimes are an actual harm to society, that often get people hurt or killed. But now, thanks to the greed and stubbornness of a few rich bastards in Hollywood, our tax dollars fund a police force that spends it's time ensuring movies get sold by the right people, rather than spending it's time protecting the public that it is swore to protect. Go figure.
The huge downside to instant communication, and instant gratification from it, is that we fail to realize that half of our thoughts aren't important...
That is one of the most well-phrased things I have ever read on Slashdot. Well done, sir.
To be productive when doing design you need long periods of uninterrupted thought. Twitter by its nature is intrusive and interruptive.
Yes
I don’t need tweets popping up with trivial interruptions like ‘Walking the dog’ or ‘Baking cookies, and I’m out of vanilla extract!’ I have actual, real work to do.
Yes.
I think what turns engineers off is how pretentious Twitter seems.
A Thousand Times Yes!
Twitter makes the implicit assumption, by its very nature, that I care about all the little details of the lives of those that I chose to subscribe to. Frankly, I don't. Twitterers assume, for fuck only knows what reason, that everyone wants to know what it is they have to say, or what it is they are doing. Well guess what, engineers don't. Engineers spend their lives solving problems. We have to look at difficult situations and come up with fixes through limited resources. We have all had our best ideas shot full of holes by colleagues. We have seen our best designs shot down in flames by managers that don't have a friggin' clue. We, the engineers, learn very early in life what the word humility means. We understand that nobody cares what we have to say, what we are doing, or what our feelings are unless those things, by whatever device, provide some kind of practical solution.
Why do engineers hate Twitter? It's simple: Twitter provides fuel to the notion that you and your thoughts/ideas/actions matter. Engineers are forged from a cynical flame that tells us ours don't. So in our opinion, neither do yours.
Well, after the last season in the franchise, I don't either. I have better things to do with my time than watch a bunch of pseudo-retarded drama queens run around on a spaceship and cry together. Fucking fail.
do they really think they can hobble the internet for the sake of their continued unneeded existence?
They've managed to so far...and nobody but some vocal folks on slashdot seem to make much of a fuss about it. I mean, hell, look what the MAFIAA did to Pandora (that service sucks now in case you haven't touched it lately) and that was a pretty mainstream service. It used to be that you could use Pandora to find all sorts of little niche bands, advertisement free, and listen to it for hours on end. These days, you get some obnoxious crap ad every time you change your station, the diversity of music seems to have decreased terribly, and the beta version of Pandora for the desktop is nowhere to be found (and I used to have it installed and running just fine).
So there you have a service that not just nerds, but many people, use and enjoy. The copyright cartels get a hold of it and mangle it. Some people whined, but nothing got done about it. And now one of the best pieces of the internet that existed is a shadow of its former self. So, do they really think they can hobble the internet? Probably, all evidence seems to show that they've gotten away with it so far.
Well, technically both Delta and Atlas were developed to be private enterprise vehicles, but they ended up costing enough per launch that nobody beside the USAF, NASA, and a few other US companies wanted to use them. In other words, the international lifters ended up being cheaper.
Anyways, that aside, I am not sure what point you are trying to make, but it does reaffirm what the parent was arguing. Delta and Atlas were developed by Boeing and Lockheed respectively. They were not, in any way, developed by NASA. Also, NASA does not currently control or oversee the ULA launch programs that currently utilize Delta and Atlas. As such, those two lifters are evidence of the exact point the parent is trying to make. NASA does not design and launch good launch vehicles anymore (Saturn is history). The private companies in the US do. If anything, ULA is evidence of this...
So again, I am not sure what point you are trying to make...
...with the 787 and outsourced it to pretty much every ZIP code on the planet [zimbio.com] leading to years of delay.
Heh, that reminded me of one of the projects I worked on when I was at Lockheed Martin. We had posters and paraphernalia that we would give to visitors that bragged about how our subcontractor's subcontractor's subcontractors were located in 47 of the 50 United States. When I went on a tour of one of the other facilities, and one of the VPs was proudly bragging about how that was a great achievement, I asked what effect such distribution had on transportation and infrastructure costs to the project. That one question earned me a dirty look and a well-rehearsed line about how transportation costs were trivial compared to the budget of the entire project....I had to bite my lip to keep back a quip about how the entire project was, technically speaking, over budget and behind schedule, so such a distinction seemed trivial....
Needless to say, I didn't fit in so well at that company.
At that point you really need to be paying very close attention to what's going on on the road (yes, that means watching quite a few cars ahead).
You need to be doing that anyways. Letting a computer (a rangefinder) tell you how much of your attention should be dedicated to the road is precisely the kind of lazy driving that A) gets people killed and B) requires the enforcement of arbitrary, batshit-insane laws that designed to ensure stupid people don't kill themselves. Do yourself a favor, turn off the rangefinder, go take a motorcycle safety course, learn how to ride a motorcycle, and learn how to remain alert to all of your surroundings for the entirety of your trip. It saves the rest of us the burden of having to compensate for your lack of inattention because your rangefinder isn't squealing at you.
Does watching snake handlers on television make you want to go hunt up a rattler and start juggling it??
I found this to be an interesting statement to make your point because I have snagged a live rattler or two (in fact, my roomate has trapped 6 this summer alone). See, I grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada (California side) and spent countless hours friggin' about in the back country (as has my roomate). That said, we grew up being taught to identify rattle snakes, where to look for them, and what to do when you find them. As such, when we see them, while we respect them, our first instinct isn't, "OMG run away!" In fact, it's kind of fun to see if you can snag them with a stick or a grapple or whatever you happen to have on you. Sure, sometimes if they are in a particularly dangerous place, you just shoot them, but that's not the point. The point is, while we respect rattle snakes, we don't flee from them or go out of our way to plan around them. We just deal with them.
That said, I would wager that a lot of these amateurs are locals who have grown up in Tornado Alley. They've probably seen quite a few storms. They've probably learned, over their lives, what kind of weather patterns to look for. They probably know the roads better than anyone. And they probably respect the storms plenty well. However, since they grew up with tornadoes as part of their lives, they don't immediately think to run away in fear and scream, "OMG ze storm is coming!" I don't mean to be an apologist and say they have some divine right to make a nuisance of themselves. Frankly, some of them probably do some incredibly stupid shit. However, making the assumption that all of these amateurs are A) stupid and/or B) lacking respect for the storms is probably entirely unfounded.
As a disclaimer, I didn't really think of it like this until you made the rattle snake reference because it made me chuckle since, frankly, I don't fear rattle snakes. I'll bet these amateur storm chasers, similarly, don't fear tornadoes
(For the record, I am not saying locals never get bit by rattlers.Sometimes they do. Likewise, sometimes these amateur storm chasers probably get stuck in a bad place at a bad time. The real lesson is that, for any given activity that people can partake in, there will be some number of stupid/unlucky people that get the short end of the stick).
It's funny, the local video rental store in my hometown used to rent out VHS and DVD's for 3 days for $1.00 a pop. Then Blockbuster moved in and put them out of town because they had a better selection and a membership card. Now the Red Box is putting Blockbuster out of business because it doesn't have as huge of a selection or a membership and it rents DVD's for $1.00 a pop. What is it that folk tend to say about pendulums and cyclical nature and what not again?
Every time one of these solar cell tech. stories come out, I look forward to digging up the specific details of the technology and am left wanting. It seems like no researchers offer any insight into the lifetime of their new, super-duper technology. They very rarely list a W/kg or W/m^2 figure. Hell, they don't even talk about the largest/smallest wafers that can be cut using the new technology. It's extremely frustrating. As an engineer that wants to look into, 'What could new solar tech actually do for my design?' In terms of mass, area, design lifetime, etc, we are never given the opportunity because the only technical details published is the efficiency factor./Yawn
Well that's what I was wondering...if he was making a reference to to social behavior of humanity. In that case, it would probably be more appropriate to say that humanity has a social bias, rather than reality. However, since I wasn't sure what he was going for I figured I'd ask...hopefully he gets back from lunch soon.
Hmmmm. Well I didn't really put much effort into making my case, but you still ignored my point entirely. Whether or not, 'cowboy values,' are the products of other cultural lineage (which, I have no doubt, they are) has little to do with my assertion that those same frontiersmen, pioneers, colonial settlers, etc. were, during their respective time periods, considered members of an underclass (or, at the very best, an alternative class). Either way, they were not members of an elite social order. Yet, their values (self-reliance, etc.) have survived into modern day in a very powerful manner. Much of the dichotomy in modern American politics between the, 'elite, intellectuals,' and the, 'simpleton redneck cowboys,' can be understood by observing the existence of the prevalence of those pioneering values in modern American culture. Furthermore, your assertion that movies like High Noon, and for that matter, much cowboy art, simply are ever-further romantic projections of Western development just goes to underscore my original point that the art of the underclass sometimes does survive. It may not be mainstream art, but it certainly does survive. That was my main point.
I would also protest your notion that Native Americans had little influence on the spirit of western settlers. As a fellow who grew up in a damn small, behind-the-times gold-rush town, I can personally attest to knowing numerous folk who are genuine cowboys (no, really, I know guys that have been in shootouts over gold-panning territory disputes) and the general appreciation/integration of Native American culture that they display in their everyday lives.
And for the record, I do not consider, 'cowboy values,' or for that matter cowboy anything to be a derogatory comment when placed in the proper context. That same pioneering spirit that drove the cowboys a century ago is a very important part of modern American culture and I consider it something to be celebrated. That's just a personal remark though.
Remember kids, the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover is watching everything you do... and so is Mark Elliot Zuckerberg.
You see folk! I always said my life would make a good reality TV show. You all made fun of me, but obviously these fellows Hoover and Zuckerberg were/are men of taste and class. Ha!
Now excuse me while I go beg for attention on the street by dressing skimpily in the cold night air.
Interesting assertion. Perhaps that was true in the case that you refer too, but it is not true in the case of America. By all rights, the pioneer/cowboy archetype/culture was considered an underclass...as compared to the Southern Dandies and the Yankee Industrialists. Yet, cowboy values and culture are still a very inherent part of our national identity. Or did you think all that self-made, independent, rugged, manly huff and puff that we Americans put up was just a bunch of bullshit we pulled out of thin air? When it comes down to it, things like stoicism, scrutiny, skepticism, and mistrust as as rampant as they are in American culture because of the cultural values of an older underclass, the cowboy (and they got a lot of those values from the Native Americans, which were very much considered an underclass in terms of American society).
Slashdot Mirror
Cops would rather chase drug kingpins or bank robbers.
Which is probably what they should be doing as those types of crimes are an actual harm to society, that often get people hurt or killed. But now, thanks to the greed and stubbornness of a few rich bastards in Hollywood, our tax dollars fund a police force that spends it's time ensuring movies get sold by the right people, rather than spending it's time protecting the public that it is swore to protect. Go figure.
The huge downside to instant communication, and instant gratification from it, is that we fail to realize that half of our thoughts aren't important...
That is one of the most well-phrased things I have ever read on Slashdot. Well done, sir.
To be productive when doing design you need long periods of uninterrupted thought. Twitter by its nature is intrusive and interruptive.
Yes
I don’t need tweets popping up with trivial interruptions like ‘Walking the dog’ or ‘Baking cookies, and I’m out of vanilla extract!’ I have actual, real work to do.
Yes.
I think what turns engineers off is how pretentious Twitter seems.
A Thousand Times Yes!
Twitter makes the implicit assumption, by its very nature, that I care about all the little details of the lives of those that I chose to subscribe to. Frankly, I don't. Twitterers assume, for fuck only knows what reason, that everyone wants to know what it is they have to say, or what it is they are doing. Well guess what, engineers don't. Engineers spend their lives solving problems. We have to look at difficult situations and come up with fixes through limited resources. We have all had our best ideas shot full of holes by colleagues. We have seen our best designs shot down in flames by managers that don't have a friggin' clue. We, the engineers, learn very early in life what the word humility means. We understand that nobody cares what we have to say, what we are doing, or what our feelings are unless those things, by whatever device, provide some kind of practical solution.
Why do engineers hate Twitter? It's simple: Twitter provides fuel to the notion that you and your thoughts/ideas/actions matter. Engineers are forged from a cynical flame that tells us ours don't. So in our opinion, neither do yours.
You don't watch stargate?!
Well, after the last season in the franchise, I don't either. I have better things to do with my time than watch a bunch of pseudo-retarded drama queens run around on a spaceship and cry together. Fucking fail.
do they really think they can hobble the internet for the sake of their continued unneeded existence?
They've managed to so far...and nobody but some vocal folks on slashdot seem to make much of a fuss about it. I mean, hell, look what the MAFIAA did to Pandora (that service sucks now in case you haven't touched it lately) and that was a pretty mainstream service. It used to be that you could use Pandora to find all sorts of little niche bands, advertisement free, and listen to it for hours on end. These days, you get some obnoxious crap ad every time you change your station, the diversity of music seems to have decreased terribly, and the beta version of Pandora for the desktop is nowhere to be found (and I used to have it installed and running just fine).
So there you have a service that not just nerds, but many people, use and enjoy. The copyright cartels get a hold of it and mangle it. Some people whined, but nothing got done about it. And now one of the best pieces of the internet that existed is a shadow of its former self. So, do they really think they can hobble the internet? Probably, all evidence seems to show that they've gotten away with it so far.
...drawn from existing players in the industry ...
Players which have the freedom to do good engineering now that they have been liberated from the oppressive heel of congressional funding.
Well, technically both Delta and Atlas were developed to be private enterprise vehicles, but they ended up costing enough per launch that nobody beside the USAF, NASA, and a few other US companies wanted to use them. In other words, the international lifters ended up being cheaper.
Anyways, that aside, I am not sure what point you are trying to make, but it does reaffirm what the parent was arguing. Delta and Atlas were developed by Boeing and Lockheed respectively. They were not, in any way, developed by NASA. Also, NASA does not currently control or oversee the ULA launch programs that currently utilize Delta and Atlas. As such, those two lifters are evidence of the exact point the parent is trying to make. NASA does not design and launch good launch vehicles anymore (Saturn is history). The private companies in the US do. If anything, ULA is evidence of this...
So again, I am not sure what point you are trying to make...
...with the 787 and outsourced it to pretty much every ZIP code on the planet [zimbio.com] leading to years of delay.
Heh, that reminded me of one of the projects I worked on when I was at Lockheed Martin. We had posters and paraphernalia that we would give to visitors that bragged about how our subcontractor's subcontractor's subcontractors were located in 47 of the 50 United States. When I went on a tour of one of the other facilities, and one of the VPs was proudly bragging about how that was a great achievement, I asked what effect such distribution had on transportation and infrastructure costs to the project. That one question earned me a dirty look and a well-rehearsed line about how transportation costs were trivial compared to the budget of the entire project....I had to bite my lip to keep back a quip about how the entire project was, technically speaking, over budget and behind schedule, so such a distinction seemed trivial....
Needless to say, I didn't fit in so well at that company.
...it makes me want to knock the smug bastard's teeth out of his head.
You know, sometimes that's precisely what needs to be done....just sayin'.
At that point you really need to be paying very close attention to what's going on on the road (yes, that means watching quite a few cars ahead).
You need to be doing that anyways. Letting a computer (a rangefinder) tell you how much of your attention should be dedicated to the road is precisely the kind of lazy driving that A) gets people killed and B) requires the enforcement of arbitrary, batshit-insane laws that designed to ensure stupid people don't kill themselves. Do yourself a favor, turn off the rangefinder, go take a motorcycle safety course, learn how to ride a motorcycle, and learn how to remain alert to all of your surroundings for the entirety of your trip. It saves the rest of us the burden of having to compensate for your lack of inattention because your rangefinder isn't squealing at you.
...but if the method can be scaled up, the batteries may provide the power needed for applications like electric cars.
And it's that one big damn, 'if,' that actually prevents most technologies like this from seeing commercial production/practical application.
Does watching snake handlers on television make you want to go hunt up a rattler and start juggling it??
I found this to be an interesting statement to make your point because I have snagged a live rattler or two (in fact, my roomate has trapped 6 this summer alone). See, I grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada (California side) and spent countless hours friggin' about in the back country (as has my roomate). That said, we grew up being taught to identify rattle snakes, where to look for them, and what to do when you find them. As such, when we see them, while we respect them, our first instinct isn't, "OMG run away!" In fact, it's kind of fun to see if you can snag them with a stick or a grapple or whatever you happen to have on you. Sure, sometimes if they are in a particularly dangerous place, you just shoot them, but that's not the point. The point is, while we respect rattle snakes, we don't flee from them or go out of our way to plan around them. We just deal with them.
That said, I would wager that a lot of these amateurs are locals who have grown up in Tornado Alley. They've probably seen quite a few storms. They've probably learned, over their lives, what kind of weather patterns to look for. They probably know the roads better than anyone. And they probably respect the storms plenty well. However, since they grew up with tornadoes as part of their lives, they don't immediately think to run away in fear and scream, "OMG ze storm is coming!" I don't mean to be an apologist and say they have some divine right to make a nuisance of themselves. Frankly, some of them probably do some incredibly stupid shit. However, making the assumption that all of these amateurs are A) stupid and/or B) lacking respect for the storms is probably entirely unfounded.
As a disclaimer, I didn't really think of it like this until you made the rattle snake reference because it made me chuckle since, frankly, I don't fear rattle snakes. I'll bet these amateur storm chasers, similarly, don't fear tornadoes
(For the record, I am not saying locals never get bit by rattlers.Sometimes they do. Likewise, sometimes these amateur storm chasers probably get stuck in a bad place at a bad time. The real lesson is that, for any given activity that people can partake in, there will be some number of stupid/unlucky people that get the short end of the stick).
It's funny, the local video rental store in my hometown used to rent out VHS and DVD's for 3 days for $1.00 a pop. Then Blockbuster moved in and put them out of town because they had a better selection and a membership card. Now the Red Box is putting Blockbuster out of business because it doesn't have as huge of a selection or a membership and it rents DVD's for $1.00 a pop. What is it that folk tend to say about pendulums and cyclical nature and what not again?
Every time one of these solar cell tech. stories come out, I look forward to digging up the specific details of the technology and am left wanting. It seems like no researchers offer any insight into the lifetime of their new, super-duper technology. They very rarely list a W/kg or W/m^2 figure. Hell, they don't even talk about the largest/smallest wafers that can be cut using the new technology. It's extremely frustrating. As an engineer that wants to look into, 'What could new solar tech actually do for my design?' In terms of mass, area, design lifetime, etc, we are never given the opportunity because the only technical details published is the efficiency factor. /Yawn
Here are a few more sources for info. regarding the contract...posted for no other reason than my own annoyance with Inhabitat =P
DOE Press Release with Media Contact Number
Sustainable Business Blog, apparently the initial plant will produce 49.5 MW in capacity
Home website of NGP, the contract winner
Write up from EON, with quite a bit more info, including contact info. for various parties involved.
Well that's what I was wondering...if he was making a reference to to social behavior of humanity. In that case, it would probably be more appropriate to say that humanity has a social bias, rather than reality. However, since I wasn't sure what he was going for I figured I'd ask...hopefully he gets back from lunch soon.
Was I the only one surprised at how low 37% seems?
Oh! So you guys are trying to compete with us Yanks on that side of the drink. =P
I'm just curious, what exactly did you mean by this comment?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I am just not sure what you're trying to state by saying reality has a bias.
Hmmmm. Well I didn't really put much effort into making my case, but you still ignored my point entirely. Whether or not, 'cowboy values,' are the products of other cultural lineage (which, I have no doubt, they are) has little to do with my assertion that those same frontiersmen, pioneers, colonial settlers, etc. were, during their respective time periods, considered members of an underclass (or, at the very best, an alternative class). Either way, they were not members of an elite social order. Yet, their values (self-reliance, etc.) have survived into modern day in a very powerful manner. Much of the dichotomy in modern American politics between the, 'elite, intellectuals,' and the, 'simpleton redneck cowboys,' can be understood by observing the existence of the prevalence of those pioneering values in modern American culture. Furthermore, your assertion that movies like High Noon, and for that matter, much cowboy art, simply are ever-further romantic projections of Western development just goes to underscore my original point that the art of the underclass sometimes does survive. It may not be mainstream art, but it certainly does survive. That was my main point.
I would also protest your notion that Native Americans had little influence on the spirit of western settlers. As a fellow who grew up in a damn small, behind-the-times gold-rush town, I can personally attest to knowing numerous folk who are genuine cowboys (no, really, I know guys that have been in shootouts over gold-panning territory disputes) and the general appreciation/integration of Native American culture that they display in their everyday lives.
And for the record, I do not consider, 'cowboy values,' or for that matter cowboy anything to be a derogatory comment when placed in the proper context. That same pioneering spirit that drove the cowboys a century ago is a very important part of modern American culture and I consider it something to be celebrated. That's just a personal remark though.
Remember kids, the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover is watching everything you do ... and so is Mark Elliot Zuckerberg.
You see folk! I always said my life would make a good reality TV show. You all made fun of me, but obviously these fellows Hoover and Zuckerberg were/are men of taste and class. Ha!
Now excuse me while I go beg for attention on the street by dressing skimpily in the cold night air.
Interesting assertion. Perhaps that was true in the case that you refer too, but it is not true in the case of America. By all rights, the pioneer/cowboy archetype/culture was considered an underclass...as compared to the Southern Dandies and the Yankee Industrialists. Yet, cowboy values and culture are still a very inherent part of our national identity. Or did you think all that self-made, independent, rugged, manly huff and puff that we Americans put up was just a bunch of bullshit we pulled out of thin air? When it comes down to it, things like stoicism, scrutiny, skepticism, and mistrust as as rampant as they are in American culture because of the cultural values of an older underclass, the cowboy (and they got a lot of those values from the Native Americans, which were very much considered an underclass in terms of American society).
I swear, if I ever meet Hugh Grant, I'm going to strangle that motherfucker with his own ascot.
I hope you're not bluffing...for all our sakes.
That's a fair assessment.
But I would feel a little silly as a grown man playing a Mario or Kirby game.
Sucks for you. Those are usually the only types of games that girls want to play multiplayer with men on.