I like all of the ideas he mentioned, from the uniqueness of each ballot, to the tear off receipt, to the shredding of the plaintext ballot "key". These are great for maintaining anonymity, but what about ballot stuffing? How do you prevent someone that's been dead for a couple months from "voting"? My polling place didn't ask for ID, just my name, I imagine that probably happens quite a bit...
Here's the difference though - with MMOs (and mind you I don't play them), at least you are thinking, developing strategies, and possibly working together with other players to achieve a goal, whether it is a quest to obtain some valuable object or just to level up. Disagree as much as you like, but there are some skills you learn there that are actually somewhat useful in the real world. Even first person shooters help you with hand-eye coordination and physical tactics to move around enemies. What is the goal with Farmville? Isn't just an endless cycle of growing virtual stuff that you possibly paid real money for? I'm pretty sure it's not going to make you a better farmer, because it doesn't teach you anything about ideal growth temperatures and light levels, soil composition and pH, etc. It really does just seem like a time-killer and you may as well be counting blades of grass. Oh wait, I know...it's a "social" game, it must help you with social skills. Right, because you grow a virtual vegetable, and then send someone a non real time impersonal message saying you'd like to give this non-existent item to them as a gift...did I mention Facebook promotes the degeneration of basic social skills like face to face conversation?
It's usually the poor time estimation and "I need this done yesterday" deadlines that undermine us. In software at least, it is somewhat difficult to say, "this problem will take 0.5 days to diagnose/resolve", or, "this feature will take 3 weeks to implement". Project managers are usually either too lazy, too incompetent, or too preoccupied with other things to follow a problem/feature through to it's logical conclusion step by step. And to accurately estimate these things, you really do have to just think them through and break them down into 1 day or less sized tasks. In my experience, giving a developer a task that takes more than 1 day to complete is a surefire way to waste time and ultimately to potential failure. There are exceptions to that, and the guys that shine usually can handle bigger tasks and divide them up just fine themselves, of course. As an analog, if I told you to go build a house, you'd probably (unless you are a general contractor) say, "I don't know how/can't get this done". But if I told you to go get your property surveyed, then to think about how many bedrooms, bathrooms you needed, and then to bring your survey to an architect with your bedroom/bathroom requirements, as well as a rough estimate of your housing budget, you'd prolly be able to do those things and be well on your way to getting your house designed/built.
Agreed - and probably only a large percentage (44%) because Nokia is such a global leader in cellular devices. I don't think people are buying Symbian, they are buying Nokia hardware that happens to run Symbian. It's not like iOS/Android, where people are more entranced with the operating system/user experience than the device it comes on. Symbian has been around for a while, longer than both of it's major competitors. If it's not dying, it's at least not getting the market attention that iOS and Android are...
I agree - the Xbox360 or PS3 is definitely the way to go, especially if you already have one. Can't speak for PS3, but with Xbox360 not only can you stream movies but also music and digital photos. Pair that with online gaming and Netflix and you have a pretty solid package right out of the box, and the box is likely cheaper (and less work) than putting together a mini-PC to do the same task. I think all the latest MS OSs have UPnP support built in, and that's all you need on the server end to get things going. Even with the OSs that don't natively support it, it's easy enough to graft it on ( I've done this for Server 2003 for example).
For argument's sake, let's replace the word "church" with "humanity" in your paragraph:
I'm saying humanity has a messed up history. The history of humanity is a history of genocide against gays, women,...
The history of humanity has been one of a struggle to obtain power, whether it was through religion, war, money, or some other means. Religion, for a time, was a convenient vehicle to get a large number of people on your bandwagon and eliminate the competition. As you mentioned, ignorance and irrationality are bad and do play their role in all of this, but it is naive to assume religion is the root cause, it goes much deeper than that.
I don't know if I agree with your assessment of religion as the root cause of most conflicts. Making a blanket statement like that isn't much better than Hitler's mantra of blaming Jews for all the world's problems. Religion might be a convenient scapegoat, but probably isn't the root cause. In any case, the kind of instinctive reactions to people/animals that look different would have pre-dated Christianity by quite a bit, I'm talking caveman era stuff, where you unexpectedly encounter another being and have a reaction. War is kind of planned, and even then, the uniforms are different on each side:-)
Actually I was not pushing the racial differentiation, simply the difference in how other tribes/groups/animals looked, since it is not just language, culture, and gene pools (which may have been similar for tribes residing close to one another). The tribes differentiated themselves with head dress, face paint, color of clothing, etc. They looked distinct from one another, how pronounced that distinction was is another matter. It still supports the "does not look like me" argument I mentioned in my original post.
You learned the difference - but our ancestors survived because they instinctively associated "does not look like me" with "will kill and/or eat me", not necessarily "wants the exact same thing we need to survive", as the GP mentioned...
Technology, in and of itself, will not improve meetings. Effective management improves meetings.
No. Not having meetings improves meetings:-)
To be serious though, the points you mention are good ones, I'd also like to add, invite a "bad guy" - the bad guy's role will be to kick meeting derailers in the junk:-)
"the EULA is rarely enforced in a fashion most people would notice or would care about."
If this is the case, is there really an issue? If they tried to enforce it, a bunch of people would probably realize they are doing silly things and stop giving them money...
No one is shoving the operating system down your throat, if you don't like the EULA, as mentioned above, switch to an alternative OS. The corporations can only put in "whatever egregious language they want" if you (and a bunch of others) fork over money to them. Stop giving them money, and you'll see how quickly their EULA changes...
I like the comparison to literature and how it illustrates personal preferences, but respectfully disagree with the idea that literature will all eventually converge into very short, efficient, single purpose works. The entire point of literature is to convey some theme(s) through the medium of a story. Stories are not meant to be efficient or singular in purpose or meaning, necessarily. When you read a book, you are along for whatever ride the author wishes to take you on. And it is exactly that ride, not some re-factored or boiled down version, that he/she wants to experience. If you've ever read Cliffnotes instead of an original text, you'll understand. I don't think all literature needs to be more "readable", sometimes it's ok for something to be a little beyond your comfort threshold, it makes your brain work just a little harder, and I think that's a good thing. Unless of course you want all books to read like Green Eggs and Ham:-)
This is a double edged sword - on one hand, I want to agree with you about C# / VB.Net, the large and broad depth of the built in libraries are certainly a win if you don't want to get bogged down in details, like rolling your own RSA encryption/decryption mechanism for example. On the other hand, struggling through those kind of things are part of what makes a programmer "hardened", in my opinion. Additionally, while these managed languages are nice and all, it would also be good to infuse some memory management knowledge into the youngster. If we were talking about math, it would be like learning about geometry proofs. It might be a struggle, and might not be terribly useful, since you really just need the final theorem to do your work, but still a good exercise to go through that thought process, makes some rusty synapses in your brain fire, and what not...
One of my coworkers has tried T-Mobile enough for the both of us. He can't get a signal in the building where we work, or in the apartment he lives in - he has to drive down the street to make a phone call. We live/work within 20 miles of NYC, not in some random bumblefuck, btw. T-mobile probably does have decent coverage in some places, but if it kinda sucks near one of the largest cities in the US, I'm skeptical about overall performance. I am a long time customer of Verizon, and I do know about all the features they lock me out of. They are far from perfect - but the alternatives are either a carrier with much shoddier 3G service or another carrier with the worst nation-wide coverage of the 3, but great customer service. I'm actually complaining about the lack of real options in terms of service providers. I want to be able to make phone calls all the time, and I don't want my calls to get dropped. Unfortunately the only provider that satisfies those requirements where I live is Verizon.
Well yes you are correct in making the European/US GSM band distinction. Not all the phones will work on the US GSM band, but the Tour in particular does...guess it's cheaper to put quad band GSM in those things now.
Actually, all of Verizon's "world" phones have SIM card slots so that your phone will function overseas, where GSM is the standard. My friend's Verizon BB Tour has a SIM card slot and actually lets you choose what network you want to use, he has a prepaid AT&T SIM card in there right now that he can fail over to if there's no Verizon coverage.
In the spirit of discussing FOSS, Linux (I believe, but could be wrong), is still missing support for a bunch of consumer devices, like iPods/iPhones, and digital cameras, etc. And there are a lot of niche apps that just don't work. Let's say I use Solidworks for CAD/CAM drawings, I don't think that will run natively on Linux. That is why a lot of people are not so keen to jump on that bandwagon. Mind you, I happen to run various Windows/Linux distros at home (and every box has Firefox as the default browser)...each has their role/strengths/weaknesses. If the problem is stupid users, then fix stupid users, don't just switch software and expect the problem to go away completely, chances are it will come back to bite you, eventually. I understand that requires more effort, but it's probably more effective in the long run. Or would you rather put a piece of tape over the blinking clock on your VCR?
"Comparing average power consumption is just as valid is comparing energy over a fixed time frame."
Not really. I'm sure your energy usage at 1am differs from that at 8am and 2pm. The only way you can arrive at a reasonable per hour estimate of your energy usage is by at least averaging out a day's usage. If you want to get an even better estimate, you would average out usage over the course of a week, because your usage on a Thursday when you are at work all day is probably a lot different than Saturday when you're home. Your "energy over a fixed time frame" is in fact an hourly AVERAGE consumption rate. An estimate (average) which takes into account a larger data sample (takes more days into account) is going to result in a number that is closer to the actual usage were it to be measured daily and added up. So, using monthly estimates actually yields a result that is more accurate than comparing raw hourly usage, it is not as you state, extra work with nothing to show for it. I would think that, in a discussion of efficiency, you would want to talk about results that are as accurate as possible.
Oh yeah, regular usage month == month when the LHC is on and in use. I am not factually wrong, unless you want to consider months when it is running not regular. Weren't the usage numbers from when it is running the whole point of this discussion?
You guys aren't comparing apples to apples - the website [http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/faq/lhc-energy-consumption.htm] indicates that in terms of energy, the LHC consumes about 130 Giga-watt hours (GWh) per month when it is fully online. Your residential electric bill is on the order of kilo-watt hours. On average, the typical US household used 920 KWh per month in 2006 [http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html], that is equivalent to 0.00092 GWh. 130 GWh / 0.00092 GWh = 141304 average US residences able to be powered off the energy consumed by the LHC during a regular usage month. Hardly millions, but definitely a few decent size towns worth of residences. I'm not making an argument for or against the energy use of LHC, just want to clarify the facts...
Let's face it, even if you were making double or triple that for the duration of your internship (which is what, 3, 6 months, at most?), it's probably not going to make a really big financial impact on your life either way in the long run. However, make sure that the experience you're getting there is making up for the shitty pay, otherwise you're really getting the short end of the stick. Getting some good experience at a high profile company will be good for you and your resume, even if the pay is not so great. When I was in college, I started doing IT work for a small machine shop in Rockland County, NY - those guys started paying me $14/hr, that was 8 years ago. The "professional" that I replaced was an imbecile and had the company accountant physically unplugging the hub and plugging her machine directly to broadband router in order to get Quickbooks updates. He also didn't have any of the machines patched or up to date with virus definitions, and all the machines there were on the verge of hardware failure they were so old. Those guys relied on me a lot, because they were too small to hire anyone else to rely on, so my experience there was great and I learned a bunch of things while bringing their shop up to modern standards. All industries are different, but IT interns have in my experience, at least in the NJ/NY area, made decent money. A friend of mine made $8/hr working for Six Flags when we were in high school (12 years ago). If you have the opportunity to, shop around and see what other offers are out there. You're goal as an intern should be to absorb knowledge/expertise like a sponge, don't worry too much about how much you're making per hour. Still, $8/hr seems really really strange.
Yeah, that also raised a flag for me - 0.5% per year for about 30 years is a 15% increase in number of incidences. The only reason I can see for dismissing this increase is that the population grew by a similar or greater percentage, in which case the overall percentage of incidences probably remained flat or decreased if the population grew at a greater rate than the number of incidences.
I live about a 1/4 mile (1/2 km) from a commercial rail line in the US - I can tell you that at least 10 trains per night of appreciable length pass over that rail and that the rail system is still in heavy use here. Another person already pointed out that rail is much more efficient than trucking for long hauls. The Google Wi-Fi system may be free for us (end users) but not for Google. They don't own any telecom backbone infrastructure, and that traffic has to go through someone's network eventually.
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I like all of the ideas he mentioned, from the uniqueness of each ballot, to the tear off receipt, to the shredding of the plaintext ballot "key". These are great for maintaining anonymity, but what about ballot stuffing? How do you prevent someone that's been dead for a couple months from "voting"? My polling place didn't ask for ID, just my name, I imagine that probably happens quite a bit...
Here's the difference though - with MMOs (and mind you I don't play them), at least you are thinking, developing strategies, and possibly working together with other players to achieve a goal, whether it is a quest to obtain some valuable object or just to level up. Disagree as much as you like, but there are some skills you learn there that are actually somewhat useful in the real world. Even first person shooters help you with hand-eye coordination and physical tactics to move around enemies. What is the goal with Farmville? Isn't just an endless cycle of growing virtual stuff that you possibly paid real money for? I'm pretty sure it's not going to make you a better farmer, because it doesn't teach you anything about ideal growth temperatures and light levels, soil composition and pH, etc. It really does just seem like a time-killer and you may as well be counting blades of grass. Oh wait, I know...it's a "social" game, it must help you with social skills. Right, because you grow a virtual vegetable, and then send someone a non real time impersonal message saying you'd like to give this non-existent item to them as a gift...did I mention Facebook promotes the degeneration of basic social skills like face to face conversation?
It's usually the poor time estimation and "I need this done yesterday" deadlines that undermine us. In software at least, it is somewhat difficult to say, "this problem will take 0.5 days to diagnose/resolve", or, "this feature will take 3 weeks to implement". Project managers are usually either too lazy, too incompetent, or too preoccupied with other things to follow a problem/feature through to it's logical conclusion step by step. And to accurately estimate these things, you really do have to just think them through and break them down into 1 day or less sized tasks. In my experience, giving a developer a task that takes more than 1 day to complete is a surefire way to waste time and ultimately to potential failure. There are exceptions to that, and the guys that shine usually can handle bigger tasks and divide them up just fine themselves, of course. As an analog, if I told you to go build a house, you'd probably (unless you are a general contractor) say, "I don't know how/can't get this done". But if I told you to go get your property surveyed, then to think about how many bedrooms, bathrooms you needed, and then to bring your survey to an architect with your bedroom/bathroom requirements, as well as a rough estimate of your housing budget, you'd prolly be able to do those things and be well on your way to getting your house designed/built.
Agreed - and probably only a large percentage (44%) because Nokia is such a global leader in cellular devices. I don't think people are buying Symbian, they are buying Nokia hardware that happens to run Symbian. It's not like iOS/Android, where people are more entranced with the operating system/user experience than the device it comes on. Symbian has been around for a while, longer than both of it's major competitors. If it's not dying, it's at least not getting the market attention that iOS and Android are...
I agree - the Xbox360 or PS3 is definitely the way to go, especially if you already have one. Can't speak for PS3, but with Xbox360 not only can you stream movies but also music and digital photos. Pair that with online gaming and Netflix and you have a pretty solid package right out of the box, and the box is likely cheaper (and less work) than putting together a mini-PC to do the same task. I think all the latest MS OSs have UPnP support built in, and that's all you need on the server end to get things going. Even with the OSs that don't natively support it, it's easy enough to graft it on ( I've done this for Server 2003 for example).
yet elected by his own circle of peers, instead of by the masses that follow his orders.
Right, because when the masses elect someone, they *never* make a mistake (George W. Bush, twice!)...
For argument's sake, let's replace the word "church" with "humanity" in your paragraph:
I'm saying humanity has a messed up history. The history of humanity is a history of genocide against gays, women,...
The history of humanity has been one of a struggle to obtain power, whether it was through religion, war, money, or some other means. Religion, for a time, was a convenient vehicle to get a large number of people on your bandwagon and eliminate the competition. As you mentioned, ignorance and irrationality are bad and do play their role in all of this, but it is naive to assume religion is the root cause, it goes much deeper than that.
I don't know if I agree with your assessment of religion as the root cause of most conflicts. Making a blanket statement like that isn't much better than Hitler's mantra of blaming Jews for all the world's problems. Religion might be a convenient scapegoat, but probably isn't the root cause. In any case, the kind of instinctive reactions to people/animals that look different would have pre-dated Christianity by quite a bit, I'm talking caveman era stuff, where you unexpectedly encounter another being and have a reaction. War is kind of planned, and even then, the uniforms are different on each side :-)
Actually I was not pushing the racial differentiation, simply the difference in how other tribes/groups/animals looked, since it is not just language, culture, and gene pools (which may have been similar for tribes residing close to one another). The tribes differentiated themselves with head dress, face paint, color of clothing, etc. They looked distinct from one another, how pronounced that distinction was is another matter. It still supports the "does not look like me" argument I mentioned in my original post.
You learned the difference - but our ancestors survived because they instinctively associated "does not look like me" with "will kill and/or eat me", not necessarily "wants the exact same thing we need to survive", as the GP mentioned...
Technology, in and of itself, will not improve meetings. Effective management improves meetings.
No. Not having meetings improves meetings :-)
:-)
To be serious though, the points you mention are good ones, I'd also like to add, invite a "bad guy" - the bad guy's role will be to kick meeting derailers in the junk
"the EULA is rarely enforced in a fashion most people would notice or would care about."
If this is the case, is there really an issue? If they tried to enforce it, a bunch of people would probably realize they are doing silly things and stop giving them money...
"citizens should just bend over and take it."
No one is shoving the operating system down your throat, if you don't like the EULA, as mentioned above, switch to an alternative OS. The corporations can only put in "whatever egregious language they want" if you (and a bunch of others) fork over money to them. Stop giving them money, and you'll see how quickly their EULA changes...
I like the comparison to literature and how it illustrates personal preferences, but respectfully disagree with the idea that literature will all eventually converge into very short, efficient, single purpose works. The entire point of literature is to convey some theme(s) through the medium of a story. Stories are not meant to be efficient or singular in purpose or meaning, necessarily. When you read a book, you are along for whatever ride the author wishes to take you on. And it is exactly that ride, not some re-factored or boiled down version, that he/she wants to experience. If you've ever read Cliffnotes instead of an original text, you'll understand. I don't think all literature needs to be more "readable", sometimes it's ok for something to be a little beyond your comfort threshold, it makes your brain work just a little harder, and I think that's a good thing. Unless of course you want all books to read like Green Eggs and Ham :-)
This is a double edged sword - on one hand, I want to agree with you about C# / VB .Net, the large and broad depth of the built in libraries are certainly a win if you don't want to get bogged down in details, like rolling your own RSA encryption/decryption mechanism for example. On the other hand, struggling through those kind of things are part of what makes a programmer "hardened", in my opinion. Additionally, while these managed languages are nice and all, it would also be good to infuse some memory management knowledge into the youngster. If we were talking about math, it would be like learning about geometry proofs. It might be a struggle, and might not be terribly useful, since you really just need the final theorem to do your work, but still a good exercise to go through that thought process, makes some rusty synapses in your brain fire, and what not...
One of my coworkers has tried T-Mobile enough for the both of us. He can't get a signal in the building where we work, or in the apartment he lives in - he has to drive down the street to make a phone call. We live/work within 20 miles of NYC, not in some random bumblefuck, btw. T-mobile probably does have decent coverage in some places, but if it kinda sucks near one of the largest cities in the US, I'm skeptical about overall performance. I am a long time customer of Verizon, and I do know about all the features they lock me out of. They are far from perfect - but the alternatives are either a carrier with much shoddier 3G service or another carrier with the worst nation-wide coverage of the 3, but great customer service. I'm actually complaining about the lack of real options in terms of service providers. I want to be able to make phone calls all the time, and I don't want my calls to get dropped. Unfortunately the only provider that satisfies those requirements where I live is Verizon.
Well yes you are correct in making the European/US GSM band distinction. Not all the phones will work on the US GSM band, but the Tour in particular does...guess it's cheaper to put quad band GSM in those things now.
My question is - what new carrier are you going to look for? AT&T (bad) or TMobile (worse)?
Actually, all of Verizon's "world" phones have SIM card slots so that your phone will function overseas, where GSM is the standard. My friend's Verizon BB Tour has a SIM card slot and actually lets you choose what network you want to use, he has a prepaid AT&T SIM card in there right now that he can fail over to if there's no Verizon coverage.
In the spirit of discussing FOSS, Linux (I believe, but could be wrong), is still missing support for a bunch of consumer devices, like iPods/iPhones, and digital cameras, etc. And there are a lot of niche apps that just don't work. Let's say I use Solidworks for CAD/CAM drawings, I don't think that will run natively on Linux. That is why a lot of people are not so keen to jump on that bandwagon. Mind you, I happen to run various Windows/Linux distros at home (and every box has Firefox as the default browser)...each has their role/strengths/weaknesses. If the problem is stupid users, then fix stupid users, don't just switch software and expect the problem to go away completely, chances are it will come back to bite you, eventually. I understand that requires more effort, but it's probably more effective in the long run. Or would you rather put a piece of tape over the blinking clock on your VCR?
"Comparing average power consumption is just as valid is comparing energy over a fixed time frame."
Not really. I'm sure your energy usage at 1am differs from that at 8am and 2pm. The only way you can arrive at a reasonable per hour estimate of your energy usage is by at least averaging out a day's usage. If you want to get an even better estimate, you would average out usage over the course of a week, because your usage on a Thursday when you are at work all day is probably a lot different than Saturday when you're home. Your "energy over a fixed time frame" is in fact an hourly AVERAGE consumption rate. An estimate (average) which takes into account a larger data sample (takes more days into account) is going to result in a number that is closer to the actual usage were it to be measured daily and added up. So, using monthly estimates actually yields a result that is more accurate than comparing raw hourly usage, it is not as you state, extra work with nothing to show for it. I would think that, in a discussion of efficiency, you would want to talk about results that are as accurate as possible.
Oh yeah, regular usage month == month when the LHC is on and in use. I am not factually wrong, unless you want to consider months when it is running not regular. Weren't the usage numbers from when it is running the whole point of this discussion?
You guys aren't comparing apples to apples - the website [http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/faq/lhc-energy-consumption.htm] indicates that in terms of energy, the LHC consumes about 130 Giga-watt hours (GWh) per month when it is fully online. Your residential electric bill is on the order of kilo-watt hours. On average, the typical US household used 920 KWh per month in 2006 [http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html], that is equivalent to 0.00092 GWh. 130 GWh / 0.00092 GWh = 141304 average US residences able to be powered off the energy consumed by the LHC during a regular usage month. Hardly millions, but definitely a few decent size towns worth of residences. I'm not making an argument for or against the energy use of LHC, just want to clarify the facts...
Let's face it, even if you were making double or triple that for the duration of your internship (which is what, 3, 6 months, at most?), it's probably not going to make a really big financial impact on your life either way in the long run. However, make sure that the experience you're getting there is making up for the shitty pay, otherwise you're really getting the short end of the stick. Getting some good experience at a high profile company will be good for you and your resume, even if the pay is not so great. When I was in college, I started doing IT work for a small machine shop in Rockland County, NY - those guys started paying me $14/hr, that was 8 years ago. The "professional" that I replaced was an imbecile and had the company accountant physically unplugging the hub and plugging her machine directly to broadband router in order to get Quickbooks updates. He also didn't have any of the machines patched or up to date with virus definitions, and all the machines there were on the verge of hardware failure they were so old. Those guys relied on me a lot, because they were too small to hire anyone else to rely on, so my experience there was great and I learned a bunch of things while bringing their shop up to modern standards. All industries are different, but IT interns have in my experience, at least in the NJ/NY area, made decent money. A friend of mine made $8/hr working for Six Flags when we were in high school (12 years ago). If you have the opportunity to, shop around and see what other offers are out there. You're goal as an intern should be to absorb knowledge/expertise like a sponge, don't worry too much about how much you're making per hour. Still, $8/hr seems really really strange.
Yeah, that also raised a flag for me - 0.5% per year for about 30 years is a 15% increase in number of incidences. The only reason I can see for dismissing this increase is that the population grew by a similar or greater percentage, in which case the overall percentage of incidences probably remained flat or decreased if the population grew at a greater rate than the number of incidences.
I live about a 1/4 mile (1/2 km) from a commercial rail line in the US - I can tell you that at least 10 trains per night of appreciable length pass over that rail and that the rail system is still in heavy use here. Another person already pointed out that rail is much more efficient than trucking for long hauls. The Google Wi-Fi system may be free for us (end users) but not for Google. They don't own any telecom backbone infrastructure, and that traffic has to go through someone's network eventually.