If someone is good at something, ferchrissake KEEP THEM THERE!
I see that finishing a project appears to be a foreign concept to you.
-jcr
Project != Product
Obviously one will finish work on a particular software release, and move on to the next one. But there are usually multiple product lines within a company, and the infrastructure for each can be dramatically different (even using the same tools/languages). It can take weeks to get up to speed, not to mention working your way into a new team dynamic.
IMHO the grand-parent is talking about switching product lines, which is clearly what the original questioner's company is contemplating when they talk about standardizing tool-sets. As someone who gets switched around a lot, I can tell you that it *does* impact productivity significantly --and I'm better at adapting than most (which is why they keep switching me...).
If you're North American, I would think that Spanish and/or French would be the most logical choices.
The main argument for Spanish is its ubiquity. Not only are there all those latino immigrants here, but with the exception of Brazil, pretty much all of Central and South America speak Spanish. It's also relatively easy to learn, as the spelling is simple and the pronunciation straightforward based on the spelling.
The main argument for French is that of all the Europeans, they are the least likely to be satisfied with speaking English with you. Yes, they are language snobs, and that has implications for dealing with them. As others have pointed out, Germans and other Europeans tend to learn English and are eager to practice it; the French, not so much. And of course you've got some Quebecois up North to justify it as a new-world language (although they almost certainly *will* speak English as well).
Keep in mind that if you don't use it, you'll lose it; I took 3 years of Spanish in high school, and now I can barely order off of a tex-mex menu...
RTFA, the title of this article should be "Maneuvering a virtual vehicle with a mouse while distracted...".
Big difference between that and actually driving, starting with the level of experience. Even people who play driving games generally do so with a wheel or a gamepad, not a mouse/trackball, so this would be an unfamiliar task for just about everyone.
The fact that their performance suffered on the unfamiliar task while performing a familiar one (talking) isn't surprising. The problem is that it doesn't really translate to the driving scenario, unless you're 16 and just got your license.
I for one have a fairly sophisticated "auto-pilot" that makes routine driving tasks automatic, and allows me to concentrate on watching out for unusual traffic events, etc. That automatic mental process is just as well ingrained as listening to a conversation, IMHO, which could make a big difference in the results. But it only applies to real (or realistic?) driving --not to lying on a table and "driving" with a mouse.
Depends; if they bump up the resolution enough you don't really lose any vertical space, assuming your eyesight's good. The problem is that at least at first, they were keeping the same horizontal resolution and cutting down on the vertical rez. So you can get two pages/files/apps side by side, but you still have to scroll more in each one.
The other problem I've had is that larger widescreen laptops like mine don't fit in standard laptop bags. I had to either strip the side-padding out of one or use a bag that wasn't designed for laptops to begin with...
I had a similar decision to make, although the more well-rounded school was a university with an actual Engineering School. I'm not sure I wuld have taken CS from a pure liberal-arts college; but then I guess it's possible to have a decent CS program without the surrounding Engineering disciplines, as long as you're not planning to go into Embedded (hardware-oriented) Programming.
Anyway, I chose the well-rounded school, renowned for their Med, Law, and Business programs more than anything. The tech school is renowned for Engineering, of course. Both are good schools.
Aside from some unique personal concerns, my reasons for choosing the University over the Tech school were:
1) The Tech school had a reputation for "weeding out" Eng. students; the University, while challenging, doesn't go out of its way to eliminate students just to reduce class sizes...
2) I wasn't certain that I wanted engineering; there was a possibility that I'd decide to switch to pure science (physics), and the University was stronger (or at least better known) in its Science programs.
3) In general, I figured that if I left the Engineering school for any reason, I'd be better off taking regular liberal-arts classes at the University, which was more well-known; the liberal-arts programs at the Tech school were pretty sad by comparison, and having anything but an engineering major from that school wouldn't impress anyone on a resume'. Meanwhile, if I stayed in Engineering, the general name recognition of the University would probably make up for its lack of stature in the Engineering world specifically (in retrospect I don't know if that's true or not; hard to say).
I wound up graduating with a EE degree; this was before they had hybrid Computer Eng. degrees at either school, which would best represent what I really wanted to do. I *should* have majored in CS, but that's another story...
My main problem now is that I work in an all-Engineer office in a city closer to the Tech school. So I'm the only University grad/fan in the office, while up to half of the employees are Tech fans --and their football team has gotten much better of late... Otherwise I haven't had any problems, although admittedly I haven't had to job-search that often.
Reminds me of Plato's arguments in "The Republic": Ordinary Tyrannical gov't == Bad, but unfettered Democracy is also Bad. So what you need is to put the *right* people in charge...
Of course, just as with Plato, the "right people" are defined as those in the speaker's own peer group (philosophers, internet "experts"). How convenient!
What all the "Wal-mart DVD players are cheaper" posters are missing is that the upconversion on those players is mostly crap. If you've got an HDTV that has good internal scaling then all you need is progressive-scan; but some displays *need* a good quality upscaler, and the Wal-Mart brands are largely worthless for that (heck, even the models sold in CC/BB are only mediocre, usually).
Personally, I bought an HD-A2 when the price dropped below that of the OPPO players, which are widely considered the cream of the crop in upscaling DVD players. Many reviews on AV discussion boards indicated that the Tosh HD-DVD players were(/are) at least equal to the OPPOs, plus you got HD-DVD as a bonus. Meanwhile the only thing I sacrificed was support for formats like DVD-A/SACD on the OPPO, which I didn't plan to use anyway.
Of course that was before the format "died", so there was at least the *possibility* that the HD-DVD portion would be useful going forward. But if I were looking at it now, I'd much rather have a $60 "HD-A3 than a $30 Wal-mart brand just for the upconverting function...
If you want someone to program the low-level guts, look for a EE with some programming experience, or a Computer Engineer. CS major programs just aren't designed for that kind of work.
My company understood this ten years ago. I'm a EE major with a computer "concentration", which is typical of who we were hiring back then for programming work; we hired very few pure CS majors at the time.
When I started, we made home-grown OSes (or lived without them!) and had to really try for efficiency. Now, with modern processing power, we run Linux or an off-the-shelf RTOS, and program applications in much the same way as a PC programmer. Aside from interfacing with the peripheral hardware, we don't do much that's uniquely "embedded" anymore, and efficiency only really matters in a few specific areas. So now we can hire CS majors to do most kinds of work.
What truly time/space crunched design we do have mostly occurs in the specialty FPGAs, which are still largely the domain of EEs.
Makes sense in a way. In many tribal situations, the men go on long hunting trips. Sometimes the hunt lasts for days, as they track an animal like a boar and try to trap it. If men were easily bored or distracted during this time, the tribe would go without meat. So it makes sense that men would be wired to "obsess" on one activity for long periods if there is a reward involved.
And for those seeing this as an attack against men, just look at it another way: women lack the brain wiring that gives us guys the tenacity to stick with an arduous, but ultimately rewarding, task for long periods of time...
Years ago, my employers used a local computer shop to supply and service our office computers. This shop was somewhat unique in that they dealt with both new and used computer parts.
Once, an engineer's hard drive went bad, and it was replaced by said shop. A few months later we had a new hire, and ordered a new computer for him. Imagine our surprise when the new guy's "new" computer turned up with the other engineer's data on it!
The core of his thesis is that a cellular-level metabolic disorder caused over time by consumption of concentrated and rapidly available carbohydrates, and the insulin spikes they provoke, is the cause not only of obesity but also of type II diabetes.
This first part is pretty well accepted these days...
Briefly, fat cells become too good at extracting glucose from the blood and storing it. This results in cellular-level semi-starvation in other body tissues, expressed at the organismic level by eating more and exercising less.
But Type II Diabetes occurs because the fat cells become worse at removing and storing blood glucose, leading to a rise in overall blood glucose levels. So that whole explanation is backwards.
From TFA: "The researchers caution that a study like theirs cannot speak to cause and effect. They do not yet know, precisely, what it is about being underweight, for instance, that increases the death rate from everything except heart disease and cancer. Researchers tried to rule out those who were thin, because they might have been already sick. They also ruled out smokers, and the results did not change."
We've got one of these monstrosities going up in my town, designed by a Gehry "disciple". Looks just like a typical Gehry piece, with the incongruous addition of a Louvre-style glass pyramid sticking out at a weird angle. It's being jammed into a tight space right next to the freeway (hello blinding reflections) and is just totally out of in the otherwise very traditional downtown landscape.
If these boxes cost so much, how are you subsidizing the cost for all the boxes rented to customers? $10 or $15 bucks a month wouldn't allow you break even in a reasonable amount of time.
Actually, many biblical scholars believe that entire passage to be a later addition to the text, so there's no need to reinterpret it in order to dispute its tolerant message.
I resisted using adblock for a long time. But finally I got tired of waiting endlessly for a page to finish loading because the banner ad server wasn't keeping up. There were many sites where it was clear that everything else on the page had loaded almost immediately, yet I couldn't interact with the content because it was waiting on that one ad. Sometimes it would even time out and leave the page in a useless state. Using adblock solved these problems for me.
I've found at least one track where I could clearly hear the difference at 320kbps. Try The Killers - "Mr. Brightside". Continuous cymbals in the background, slightly distorted by an effect applied to the track; basically an MP3 encoder's worst nightmare. The MP3 cymbals are smeared and mushy compared to the CD source.
I was even able to pick out the MP3 when I initially thought I was listening to the CD, so it wasn't just my imagination.
That said, with most tracks I can't hear any difference, and I still the "awe" effect of good sound on good recordings with good playback equipment. Then again, I've been to one too many rock concerts, so I can't hear much above 15kHz; YMMV.
I had to dump my last "bar" phone because even with Keyguard turned on, it was still managing to dial 911 every now and then! Apparently there's a vulcan-nerve-pinch to active emergency dialing, and it overrides the keyguard...
Makes sense, really, since if you're in a real emergency you probably don't have the presence of mind to do the unlock sequence and the emergency sequence; but it made the phone not only useless but actually dangerous for me (eventually the police would have lost patience with me...). I replaced it with a flip-phone, no problems since.
So this is (was) the #2 VoIP company behind Vonage? So why is it that I've never even heard of them?! Granted, I've never actually gone shopping for VoIP service. But I am involved in the telecomm/datacom industry, so you'd think I would have at least heard the name.
Perhaps lack of visibility was part of their problem...?
My understanding is that this specifically weakens the link between certain traumatic memories and the fear response. The experiments said nothing about the ability to experience fear for other reasons, such as a current perceived danger. The only thing shown to be affected was the immediate, automatic burst of fear/anxiety linked to certain memory triggers.
This would be directly applicable to PTSD patients, and might also help with certain phobias. But calling it a "cure for fear" is premature at best, and probably downright misleading. Note that most other news outlets have used headlines like "[cure|treatment] for PTSD" rather than the rather sensational headline chosen here.
(This is not to say that such a treatment wouldn't have a potential for abuse, however...)
As you might imagine, our neutral internet is far more bandwidth-intensive;
"Our neutral internet"? Obviously the OP doesn't realize that ISPs are already managing network flow, and have been since such management technologies first became available to them. Colleges and other ISPs already try to identify and downgrade bandwidth-intensive torrents and such (if not block them outright), and cable ISPs already give special priority to their own network services (cable-co. VoIP plans, etc.).
This then brings up another point: There are two different issues being lumped together under the "net neutrality" name. The first is simply traffic-shaping and bandwidth management in general; the second is allowing ISPs to charge individual content providers for higher priority within their networks. One is already in place, and is often (but not always) a very good thing. The other is objectionable on several fronts.
I think most people who advocate "net neutrality" are objecting to the second issue, whereas most pro-telco arguments (including this AT&T study) are focused on the first issue.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone is good at something, ferchrissake KEEP THEM THERE!
I see that finishing a project appears to be a foreign concept to you.
-jcr
Project != Product
Obviously one will finish work on a particular software release, and move on to the next one. But there are usually multiple product lines within a company, and the infrastructure for each can be dramatically different (even using the same tools/languages). It can take weeks to get up to speed, not to mention working your way into a new team dynamic.
IMHO the grand-parent is talking about switching product lines, which is clearly what the original questioner's company is contemplating when they talk about standardizing tool-sets. As someone who gets switched around a lot, I can tell you that it *does* impact productivity significantly --and I'm better at adapting than most (which is why they keep switching me...).
If you're North American, I would think that Spanish and/or French would be the most logical choices.
The main argument for Spanish is its ubiquity. Not only are there all those latino immigrants here, but with the exception of Brazil, pretty much all of Central and South America speak Spanish. It's also relatively easy to learn, as the spelling is simple and the pronunciation straightforward based on the spelling.
The main argument for French is that of all the Europeans, they are the least likely to be satisfied with speaking English with you. Yes, they are language snobs, and that has implications for dealing with them. As others have pointed out, Germans and other Europeans tend to learn English and are eager to practice it; the French, not so much. And of course you've got some Quebecois up North to justify it as a new-world language (although they almost certainly *will* speak English as well).
Keep in mind that if you don't use it, you'll lose it; I took 3 years of Spanish in high school, and now I can barely order off of a tex-mex menu...
RTFA, the title of this article should be "Maneuvering a virtual vehicle with a mouse while distracted...".
Big difference between that and actually driving, starting with the level of experience. Even people who play driving games generally do so with a wheel or a gamepad, not a mouse/trackball, so this would be an unfamiliar task for just about everyone.
The fact that their performance suffered on the unfamiliar task while performing a familiar one (talking) isn't surprising. The problem is that it doesn't really translate to the driving scenario, unless you're 16 and just got your license.
I for one have a fairly sophisticated "auto-pilot" that makes routine driving tasks automatic, and allows me to concentrate on watching out for unusual traffic events, etc. That automatic mental process is just as well ingrained as listening to a conversation, IMHO, which could make a big difference in the results. But it only applies to real (or realistic?) driving --not to lying on a table and "driving" with a mouse.
I'd settle for one of these:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/9447/
One tenth the price, and it'll bring you beer!
Depends; if they bump up the resolution enough you don't really lose any vertical space, assuming your eyesight's good. The problem is that at least at first, they were keeping the same horizontal resolution and cutting down on the vertical rez. So you can get two pages/files/apps side by side, but you still have to scroll more in each one.
The other problem I've had is that larger widescreen laptops like mine don't fit in standard laptop bags. I had to either strip the side-padding out of one or use a bag that wasn't designed for laptops to begin with...
Nope.
I had a similar decision to make, although the more well-rounded school was a university with an actual Engineering School. I'm not sure I wuld have taken CS from a pure liberal-arts college; but then I guess it's possible to have a decent CS program without the surrounding Engineering disciplines, as long as you're not planning to go into Embedded (hardware-oriented) Programming.
Anyway, I chose the well-rounded school, renowned for their Med, Law, and Business programs more than anything. The tech school is renowned for Engineering, of course. Both are good schools.
Aside from some unique personal concerns, my reasons for choosing the University over the Tech school were:
1) The Tech school had a reputation for "weeding out" Eng. students; the University, while challenging, doesn't go out of its way to eliminate students just to reduce class sizes...
2) I wasn't certain that I wanted engineering; there was a possibility that I'd decide to switch to pure science (physics), and the University was stronger (or at least better known) in its Science programs.
3) In general, I figured that if I left the Engineering school for any reason, I'd be better off taking regular liberal-arts classes at the University, which was more well-known; the liberal-arts programs at the Tech school were pretty sad by comparison, and having anything but an engineering major from that school wouldn't impress anyone on a resume'. Meanwhile, if I stayed in Engineering, the general name recognition of the University would probably make up for its lack of stature in the Engineering world specifically (in retrospect I don't know if that's true or not; hard to say).
I wound up graduating with a EE degree; this was before they had hybrid Computer Eng. degrees at either school, which would best represent what I really wanted to do. I *should* have majored in CS, but that's another story...
My main problem now is that I work in an all-Engineer office in a city closer to the Tech school. So I'm the only University grad/fan in the office, while up to half of the employees are Tech fans --and their football team has gotten much better of late... Otherwise I haven't had any problems, although admittedly I haven't had to job-search that often.
Reminds me of Plato's arguments in "The Republic": Ordinary Tyrannical gov't == Bad, but unfettered Democracy is also Bad. So what you need is to put the *right* people in charge...
Of course, just as with Plato, the "right people" are defined as those in the speaker's own peer group (philosophers, internet "experts"). How convenient!
What all the "Wal-mart DVD players are cheaper" posters are missing is that the upconversion on those players is mostly crap. If you've got an HDTV that has good internal scaling then all you need is progressive-scan; but some displays *need* a good quality upscaler, and the Wal-Mart brands are largely worthless for that (heck, even the models sold in CC/BB are only mediocre, usually).
Personally, I bought an HD-A2 when the price dropped below that of the OPPO players, which are widely considered the cream of the crop in upscaling DVD players. Many reviews on AV discussion boards indicated that the Tosh HD-DVD players were(/are) at least equal to the OPPOs, plus you got HD-DVD as a bonus. Meanwhile the only thing I sacrificed was support for formats like DVD-A/SACD on the OPPO, which I didn't plan to use anyway.
Of course that was before the format "died", so there was at least the *possibility* that the HD-DVD portion would be useful going forward. But if I were looking at it now, I'd much rather have a $60 "HD-A3 than a $30 Wal-mart brand just for the upconverting function...
If you want someone to program the low-level guts, look for a EE with some programming experience, or a Computer Engineer. CS major programs just aren't designed for that kind of work.
My company understood this ten years ago. I'm a EE major with a computer "concentration", which is typical of who we were hiring back then for programming work; we hired very few pure CS majors at the time.
When I started, we made home-grown OSes (or lived without them!) and had to really try for efficiency. Now, with modern processing power, we run Linux or an off-the-shelf RTOS, and program applications in much the same way as a PC programmer. Aside from interfacing with the peripheral hardware, we don't do much that's uniquely "embedded" anymore, and efficiency only really matters in a few specific areas. So now we can hire CS majors to do most kinds of work.
What truly time/space crunched design we do have mostly occurs in the specialty FPGAs, which are still largely the domain of EEs.
Makes sense in a way. In many tribal situations, the men go on long hunting trips. Sometimes the hunt lasts for days, as they track an animal like a boar and try to trap it. If men were easily bored or distracted during this time, the tribe would go without meat. So it makes sense that men would be wired to "obsess" on one activity for long periods if there is a reward involved.
And for those seeing this as an attack against men, just look at it another way: women lack the brain wiring that gives us guys the tenacity to stick with an arduous, but ultimately rewarding, task for long periods of time...
Years ago, my employers used a local computer shop to supply and service our office computers. This shop was somewhat unique in that they dealt with both new and used computer parts.
Once, an engineer's hard drive went bad, and it was replaced by said shop. A few months later we had a new hire, and ordered a new computer for him. Imagine our surprise when the new guy's "new" computer turned up with the other engineer's data on it!
But Type II Diabetes occurs because the fat cells become worse at removing and storing blood glucose, leading to a rise in overall blood glucose levels. So that whole explanation is backwards.
Why is /. still posting this dreck? Dvorak is a troll, pure and simple. The sooner we start ignoring him, the sooner he'll go away.
From TFA: "The researchers caution that a study like theirs cannot speak to cause and effect. They do not yet know, precisely, what it is about being underweight, for instance, that increases the death rate from everything except heart disease and cancer. Researchers tried to rule out those who were thin, because they might have been already sick. They also ruled out smokers, and the results did not change."
We've got one of these monstrosities going up in my town, designed by a Gehry "disciple". Looks just like a typical Gehry piece, with the incongruous addition of a Louvre-style glass pyramid sticking out at a weird angle. It's being jammed into a tight space right next to the freeway (hello blinding reflections) and is just totally out of in the otherwise very traditional downtown landscape.
2. Cat flusher
3. Cat feeder/waterer
4. electronic dog door
5. Dog feeder/waterer
If these boxes cost so much, how are you subsidizing the cost for all the boxes rented to customers? $10 or $15 bucks a month wouldn't allow you break even in a reasonable amount of time.
Actually, many biblical scholars believe that entire passage to be a later addition to the text, so there's no need to reinterpret it in order to dispute its tolerant message.
I resisted using adblock for a long time. But finally I got tired of waiting endlessly for a page to finish loading because the banner ad server wasn't keeping up. There were many sites where it was clear that everything else on the page had loaded almost immediately, yet I couldn't interact with the content because it was waiting on that one ad. Sometimes it would even time out and leave the page in a useless state. Using adblock solved these problems for me.
I've found at least one track where I could clearly hear the difference at 320kbps. Try The Killers - "Mr. Brightside". Continuous cymbals in the background, slightly distorted by an effect applied to the track; basically an MP3 encoder's worst nightmare. The MP3 cymbals are smeared and mushy compared to the CD source.
I was even able to pick out the MP3 when I initially thought I was listening to the CD, so it wasn't just my imagination.
That said, with most tracks I can't hear any difference, and I still the "awe" effect of good sound on good recordings with good playback equipment. Then again, I've been to one too many rock concerts, so I can't hear much above 15kHz; YMMV.
I had to dump my last "bar" phone because even with Keyguard turned on, it was still managing to dial 911 every now and then! Apparently there's a vulcan-nerve-pinch to active emergency dialing, and it overrides the keyguard...
Makes sense, really, since if you're in a real emergency you probably don't have the presence of mind to do the unlock sequence and the emergency sequence; but it made the phone not only useless but actually dangerous for me (eventually the police would have lost patience with me...). I replaced it with a flip-phone, no problems since.
So this is (was) the #2 VoIP company behind Vonage? So why is it that I've never even heard of them?! Granted, I've never actually gone shopping for VoIP service. But I am involved in the telecomm/datacom industry, so you'd think I would have at least heard the name.
Perhaps lack of visibility was part of their problem...?
My understanding is that this specifically weakens the link between certain traumatic memories and the fear response. The experiments said nothing about the ability to experience fear for other reasons, such as a current perceived danger. The only thing shown to be affected was the immediate, automatic burst of fear/anxiety linked to certain memory triggers.
This would be directly applicable to PTSD patients, and might also help with certain phobias. But calling it a "cure for fear" is premature at best, and probably downright misleading. Note that most other news outlets have used headlines like "[cure|treatment] for PTSD" rather than the rather sensational headline chosen here.
(This is not to say that such a treatment wouldn't have a potential for abuse, however...)
"Our neutral internet"? Obviously the OP doesn't realize that ISPs are already managing network flow, and have been since such management technologies first became available to them. Colleges and other ISPs already try to identify and downgrade bandwidth-intensive torrents and such (if not block them outright), and cable ISPs already give special priority to their own network services (cable-co. VoIP plans, etc.).
This then brings up another point: There are two different issues being lumped together under the "net neutrality" name. The first is simply traffic-shaping and bandwidth management in general; the second is allowing ISPs to charge individual content providers for higher priority within their networks. One is already in place, and is often (but not always) a very good thing. The other is objectionable on several fronts.
I think most people who advocate "net neutrality" are objecting to the second issue, whereas most pro-telco arguments (including this AT&T study) are focused on the first issue.