This was something I was really interested in when choosing a college major, and thought that I'd get into EE CS and do this. Somehow, I've found myself coding web applications instead.
I'm glad to see somebody's doing it, but man, I think I took a wrong turn somewhere.
Are not many officers of Novell also LDS (i.e. Mormon)?
If Novell officers or concerned LDS brethren complained to Darl's elders, when would the Bishop get envolved.
It's unlikely they would unless McBride is convicted of a serious crime. In which case his church membership would in fact come under review. I've had friends and acquaintances who've had this happen for embezzlement, tax evasion & securities fraud.
And how public is the process?
Usually not at all, though it somewhat depends on how public the crime was. The church generally treats those issues pretty sensitively.
The day I have to take my phone out of pocket to discover that i've been "invited" into a nearby business establishment will be the day I chuck said phone thru the front window of said business establishment.
The moment you get one of these messages, the right thing to do is call them back and say you *thought* about going there, but realized you didn't want to support any business who uses this practice.
If 10 people did that in the first week of such a campaign, I'm sure that it would stop pronto.
You may want to start writing PHP under IIS -- they play pretty well together, you get a few extra windows goodies and keep using a platform you know while preparing to jump to one that may be less familiar.
Lowest common denominator business practices courtesy of Utah.
What, exactly, does this have to do with Utah? Are all Washington state businesses evil? How about California businesses, since there's gotta be a bad apple in there somewhere?
Anyone have any idea how Garageband compares to Soundtrack? From what I can see, they're the same product except for track limitations... and 64 tracks is likely close to the practical limit of processor ability anyhow.
...Voice Over Air. The problem is that it's encumbered by patents related to an intermediate mechanism that's part of telephone, intercome, and remote radio communication.
A friend of mine, though, is working for a company which is working on a technology where you fill a building with another breathable fluid and use that as a mechanical transmission medium stimulated by human vocal cords, and I believe they're looking at a flat one time purchase fee for purchase of the fluid, rather than licensing costs.
I've had both friends and cab/limo passengers use laptops in the front seat while I was driving, and found that this was lots less distracting than female passengers getting naked in the rear seat and shoving their breasts out the windows or over the seat onto my neck.
I was talking with a friend recently about some of the implications of memory erasure, and she said she'd recently discovered that for a number of medical procedures, it's already common practice to administer a drug (other than anaesthesia) that impairs the ability to form memories... she started digging for information about this because (1) resistance to anaesthesia (and therefore a nasty tendency to become partly to fully conscious partway through a procedure) runs in her family, and they'd been looking at the drugs they were given and (2) she's a para, and was interested in legal implications.
I have a theory about this. Geeks in general are interested in things that look impenetrable to others. You want an external hard drive for christmas, or music production software? Besides the fact that those things are somewhat expensive, the details the non-geek would have to become familiar with the get the gift right (heck, to figure out where to purchase such things) are a daunting barrier. So they drop back and punt on the gifts they do understand, or things they see you as needing (for example, maybe they see you wear white socks all the time)....
My own family works pretty much this way, especially my parents, who'd rather buy another set of underwear for me than subject themselves to the fear and confusion they associate with shopping online. But on the other hand, every once in a while they get things exactly right -- like, buying me the LOTR trilogy two years ago... I wouldn't have even asked for it because I hadn't read it since high school and wasn't too into it then, but once I picked it up again I was hooked. And then there's my siblings, who actually have a great sense of style and when they buy me clothes it's great. So this isn't a "poor me" rant.:) It's just an observation. I'll probably never get great geek gifts, and I don't think most geeks will.
Slashdot People *are* Systems Thinkers
on
Systemantics
·
· Score: 1
I'd think that the cynical Slashdot crowd will not learn a great deal from this book... except perhaps gain some ammunition to educate others
Don't you think that much of the slashdot crowd actually would tend towards being a systems thinker? There's those the "virtues" mentioned by Larry Wall -- laziness, hubris, impatience -- and systems appeal to those traits within each of us. We like automating things for the sake of speed and not having to attend to them -- and for the satisfaction of having built the system.:)
But I think a systems thinker *can* be different from a systems person. Systems thinkers can be very aware of the likelihoods of breakdown and the problems inherent in a system and build tolerance for failure and worst case scenarious (as good engineers do). In this respect, while probably as much or more prone to the system siren call as anyone, the tech savvy may be much more likely to respect inherent problems, pitfalls, and limits.
This book is about as useful as 'The art of war', which is to say: not that useful to me. It is an insightful summary of the Blindingly Obvious
Perhaps instead of Blindingly Obvious you might say obvious to the "Beginner's Mind" in the eastern/zen sense. When you are uncluttered with predjudice and aware/attentive/observant, many things in Art of War are obvious. When you're intent on a prize and have come to count on certain assumptions for a long time, you're highly likely to miss many blindingly obvious possibilities and a few similarly obvious realities. The Art of War could be seen as a means to help you return to these sorts of insights again.:)
I've worked as a project manager for a graphic design company -- brochures, business cards, letterhead, postcards, folders, book covers, whatever. And I can tell you that by far, I have had the absolute worst luck sending customers to Kinko's. They don't have equipment for doing die cuts or full-page printing. Often they don't have staff who know what Pantone Colors are or the difference between CMYK and RGB or what an EPS file is (or any vector artwork, for that matter). They're an overgrown copy shop with delusions of grandeur, not a printer. Any real printing services they offer, they outsource, and in either case, you're paying more.
We've had much, much better luck sending customers to Sir Speedy, Alphagraphics, and PIP. If you need to photocopy something, or you're printing a B&W PDF, by all means, go to Kinkos. If you need quality printing, don't touch them.
(And I might also note: don't even set foot in the building with the file. Mail them a PDF with your order, and come in a few hours later. Every time I've tried to use one of their computers to print something, there's been some sort of configuration problem that turned a 5 minute task into an hour. Every time I've given one of their staff a disk with a file on it, a similar event has ensued -- as recently as last night, I took a friend to a Kinkos where she had a three page Word Doc she wanted printed out. We left 45 minutes later with no printed document in hand, and eventually just drove back to my house (half hour away), used antiword, and had the thing in 5 minutes. I don't understand why this is -- I'm sure that we're not the first folks to walk in there with a Word Document, and most of my friends who've gotten jobs at Kinko's have been pretty sharp. But anytime I've done anything other than copy something, I've had a bad experience there.)
I would add that if they're using OSX, they're probably using it for a very specific reason, illustration for example. If all that Mac does is run Illustrator all day, then no, you're not going to need a lot of support calls on it unless something fails.
Fair enough, but to be equally fair enough, you need to consider:
(1) Almost no one doesn't use email and a web browser these days. Even if they are mostly doing design work.
(2) It seems likely to me that most PC users stick to a small subset of applications as well (Office + Web browser and Email).
The designers where I work are also usually running several other applications to boot: Photoshop, Flight Check, Indesign or Quark,
If France and Germany had had their way, there wouldn't be ANY contracts to award in Iraq, so I don't know why they think they are entitled to some now.
Entitlement, Shmentitlement, I don't care if Germany lands all the contracts -- if they can do the best job for the bid price. This stuff is being done with public funding -- want that money used efficiently? Then no-bid contracts aren't the way to do it, and logically, by extension, you want the widest competition for. Including foreign firms.
Of course, if this was really about economic stimulus package for our domestic defense sector... well then, why didn't we just say so when we were planning the whole thing?
It's 2004, practically, and people still die when 1950s failures happen in aircraft.
I remember shortly after Sep 11th, there was a discussion about parachutes for aircraft -- apparently a working concept had been demonstrated for a 737. I'm sure there are other possibilities.
Flying cars are great, but what that will probably do is bring the highway accident rate (combined with the air accident death rate) to our airspace. Unless we get dramatically better at safety, of course.....
Re:Someone had to say it...
on
The Year In Ideas
·
· Score: 3, Funny
After enlisting additional help from a carny weapons designer (Tom Waits -- !!), who contributes such non-lethal devices as Tornado in a Can and a Blame Thrower, they head off to storm Frankenstein's lair.
I work in the Canopy Group office buildings at another (non-evil) company. We're all serviced by Center7 and the last time there was the confirmed/acknowledged DDOS attack we felt it hard. Getting to hosts outside of the building was very difficult all day.
No hiccups today. Center7 did promise last time that they could and would isolate everyone else from SCO, so there is another explanation, but...
Exactly. And the stupid part about it is that they actually have some good names easily within reach. Ogg Vorbis is the name of the codec. It doesn't have to be the name of the "file type". Sorensen? QuickTime. Motion Picture Expert Group layer3? MP3. Ogg Vorbis? Perhaps: XPH audio. Xiph. Xip. Something else, for goodness sake.
the worst assumption many of us are making is that humans are not themselves computers. ...it's not just an assumption. There's some very lively argument over it. Penrose tends to the belief there are some non-computational processes that in the universe and they may underly consciousness.
I'll point out here that I know that some of his arguments aren't watertight and the discussion is definitely in progress -- he knows this, as is evidenced by quotes like this from the article: "With apparently genuine humility, Penrose emphasizes that these ideas should not be called theories yet: be prefers the word 'suggestions.'" But they're as well supported as any other speculations about the nature of consciousness.
Slashdot Mirror
That's quite amazing. Now we need a computer to write music and songs.
It's been done. Bach was an early target. Heck, I was writing melody generators and harmonizers 8 years ago (badly, but I was doing it).
Did you know about Ingo Titze and "Pavarobbotti"?
"I was going to do that?"
This was something I was really interested in when choosing a college major, and thought that I'd get into EE CS and do this. Somehow, I've found myself coding web applications instead.
I'm glad to see somebody's doing it, but man, I think I took a wrong turn somewhere.
Are not many officers of Novell also LDS (i.e. Mormon)?
If Novell officers or concerned LDS brethren complained to Darl's elders, when would the Bishop get envolved.
It's unlikely they would unless McBride is convicted of a serious crime. In which case his church membership would in fact come under review. I've had friends and acquaintances who've had this happen for embezzlement, tax evasion & securities fraud.
And how public is the process?
Usually not at all, though it somewhat depends on how public the crime was. The church generally treats those issues pretty sensitively.
I think you've just pointed out the basis (and the base) for the new "levitating" G5 models.
The day I have to take my phone out of pocket to discover that i've been "invited" into a nearby business establishment will be the day I chuck said phone thru the front window of said business establishment.
The moment you get one of these messages, the right thing to do is call them back and say you *thought* about going there, but realized you didn't want to support any business who uses this practice.
If 10 people did that in the first week of such a campaign, I'm sure that it would stop pronto.
You may want to start writing PHP under IIS -- they play pretty well together, you get a few extra windows goodies and keep using a platform you know while preparing to jump to one that may be less familiar.
Lowest common denominator business practices courtesy of Utah.
What, exactly, does this have to do with Utah? Are all Washington state businesses evil? How about California businesses, since there's gotta be a bad apple in there somewhere?
Anyone have any idea how Garageband compares to Soundtrack? From what I can see, they're the same product except for track limitations... and 64 tracks is likely close to the practical limit of processor ability anyhow.
...Voice Over Air. The problem is that it's encumbered by patents related to an intermediate mechanism that's part of telephone, intercome, and remote radio communication.
A friend of mine, though, is working for a company which is working on a technology where you fill a building with another breathable fluid and use that as a mechanical transmission medium stimulated by human vocal cords, and I believe they're looking at a flat one time purchase fee for purchase of the fluid, rather than licensing costs.
I've had both friends and cab/limo passengers use laptops in the front seat while I was driving, and found that this was lots less distracting than female passengers getting naked in the rear seat and shoving their breasts out the windows or over the seat onto my neck.
;)
And clearly, this should remain legal.
Blessed +5 Dragon Scale Mail, in fact, if you're willing to put up with the -57 aura of sheer geekliness.
I wonder if there's a platform on which you get more browser choice than Mac OS X....
'course, the number of Mac/OS X only browsers sortof makes it cheating...
I was talking with a friend recently about some of the implications of memory erasure, and she said she'd recently discovered that for a number of medical procedures, it's already common practice to administer a drug (other than anaesthesia) that impairs the ability to form memories... she started digging for information about this because (1) resistance to anaesthesia (and therefore a nasty tendency to become partly to fully conscious partway through a procedure) runs in her family, and they'd been looking at the drugs they were given and (2) she's a para, and was interested in legal implications.
Anyone know anything else about this?
I have a theory about this. Geeks in general are interested in things that look impenetrable to others. You want an external hard drive for christmas, or music production software? Besides the fact that those things are somewhat expensive, the details the non-geek would have to become familiar with the get the gift right (heck, to figure out where to purchase such things) are a daunting barrier. So they drop back and punt on the gifts they do understand, or things they see you as needing (for example, maybe they see you wear white socks all the time)....
:) It's just an observation. I'll probably never get great geek gifts, and I don't think most geeks will.
My own family works pretty much this way, especially my parents, who'd rather buy another set of underwear for me than subject themselves to the fear and confusion they associate with shopping online. But on the other hand, every once in a while they get things exactly right -- like, buying me the LOTR trilogy two years ago... I wouldn't have even asked for it because I hadn't read it since high school and wasn't too into it then, but once I picked it up again I was hooked. And then there's my siblings, who actually have a great sense of style and when they buy me clothes it's great. So this isn't a "poor me" rant.
I'd think that the cynical Slashdot crowd will not learn a great deal from this book... except perhaps gain some ammunition to educate others
:)
:)
Don't you think that much of the slashdot crowd actually would tend towards being a systems thinker? There's those the "virtues" mentioned by Larry Wall -- laziness, hubris, impatience -- and systems appeal to those traits within each of us. We like automating things for the sake of speed and not having to attend to them -- and for the satisfaction of having built the system.
But I think a systems thinker *can* be different from a systems person. Systems thinkers can be very aware of the likelihoods of breakdown and the problems inherent in a system and build tolerance for failure and worst case scenarious (as good engineers do). In this respect, while probably as much or more prone to the system siren call as anyone, the tech savvy may be much more likely to respect inherent problems, pitfalls, and limits.
This book is about as useful as 'The art of war', which is to say: not that useful to me. It is an insightful summary of the Blindingly Obvious
Perhaps instead of Blindingly Obvious you might say obvious to the "Beginner's Mind" in the eastern/zen sense. When you are uncluttered with predjudice and aware/attentive/observant, many things in Art of War are obvious. When you're intent on a prize and have come to count on certain assumptions for a long time, you're highly likely to miss many blindingly obvious possibilities and a few similarly obvious realities. The Art of War could be seen as a means to help you return to these sorts of insights again.
I've worked as a project manager for a graphic design company -- brochures, business cards, letterhead, postcards, folders, book covers, whatever. And I can tell you that by far, I have had the absolute worst luck sending customers to Kinko's. They don't have equipment for doing die cuts or full-page printing. Often they don't have staff who know what Pantone Colors are or the difference between CMYK and RGB or what an EPS file is (or any vector artwork, for that matter). They're an overgrown copy shop with delusions of grandeur, not a printer. Any real printing services they offer, they outsource, and in either case, you're paying more.
We've had much, much better luck sending customers to Sir Speedy, Alphagraphics, and PIP. If you need to photocopy something, or you're printing a B&W PDF, by all means, go to Kinkos. If you need quality printing, don't touch them.
(And I might also note: don't even set foot in the building with the file. Mail them a PDF with your order, and come in a few hours later. Every time I've tried to use one of their computers to print something, there's been some sort of configuration problem that turned a 5 minute task into an hour. Every time I've given one of their staff a disk with a file on it, a similar event has ensued -- as recently as last night, I took a friend to a Kinkos where she had a three page Word Doc she wanted printed out. We left 45 minutes later with no printed document in hand, and eventually just drove back to my house (half hour away), used antiword, and had the thing in 5 minutes. I don't understand why this is -- I'm sure that we're not the first folks to walk in there with a Word Document, and most of my friends who've gotten jobs at Kinko's have been pretty sharp. But anytime I've done anything other than copy something, I've had a bad experience there.)
I would add that if they're using OSX, they're probably using it for a very specific reason, illustration for example. If all that Mac does is run Illustrator all day, then no, you're not going to need a lot of support calls on it unless something fails.
Fair enough, but to be equally fair enough, you need to consider:
(1) Almost no one doesn't use email and a web browser these days. Even if they are mostly doing design work.
(2) It seems likely to me that most PC users stick to a small subset of applications as well (Office + Web browser and Email).
The designers where I work are also usually running several other applications to boot: Photoshop, Flight Check, Indesign or Quark,
If France and Germany had had their way, there wouldn't be ANY contracts to award in Iraq, so I don't know why they think they are entitled to some now.
Entitlement, Shmentitlement, I don't care if Germany lands all the contracts -- if they can do the best job for the bid price. This stuff is being done with public funding -- want that money used efficiently? Then no-bid contracts aren't the way to do it, and logically, by extension, you want the widest competition for. Including foreign firms.
Of course, if this was really about economic stimulus package for our domestic defense sector... well then, why didn't we just say so when we were planning the whole thing?
It's 2004, practically, and people still die when 1950s failures happen in aircraft.
I remember shortly after Sep 11th, there was a discussion about parachutes for aircraft -- apparently a working concept had been demonstrated for a 737. I'm sure there are other possibilities.
Flying cars are great, but what that will probably do is bring the highway accident rate (combined with the air accident death rate) to our airspace. Unless we get dramatically better at safety, of course.....
I work in the Canopy Group office buildings at another (non-evil) company. We're all serviced by Center7 and the last time there was the confirmed/acknowledged DDOS attack we felt it hard. Getting to hosts outside of the building was very difficult all day.
No hiccups today. Center7 did promise last time that they could and would isolate everyone else from SCO, so there is another explanation, but...
Exactly. And the stupid part about it is that they actually have some good names easily within reach. Ogg Vorbis is the name of the codec. It doesn't have to be the name of the "file type". Sorensen? QuickTime. Motion Picture Expert Group layer3? MP3. Ogg Vorbis? Perhaps: XPH audio. Xiph. Xip. Something else, for goodness sake.
the worst assumption many of us are making is that humans are not themselves computers. ...it's not just an assumption. There's some very lively argument over it. Penrose tends to the belief there are some non-computational processes that in the universe and they may underly consciousness.
I'll point out here that I know that some of his arguments aren't watertight and the discussion is definitely in progress -- he knows this, as is evidenced by quotes like this from the article: "With apparently genuine humility, Penrose emphasizes that these ideas should not be called theories yet: be prefers the word 'suggestions.'" But they're as well supported as any other speculations about the nature of consciousness.
Perhaps the rise of legitimate online alternatives to piracy -- stores that actually give people what they want -- are a bigger contributor.