problem: managers can't work with abstract concepts
solution: change the concept, make it look like material
I'd rather try to make the manager learn to use abstractions.
I'll assume that you've successfully programmed a computer before, but have you ever been able to teach a manager something useful?
Ah, but managers already do have a grasp of some fairly advanced abstract concepts. Consider, for instance, the clear conception that my manager has of the infinite expanse of free time that I have, or the vanishingly small effort that it would take me to implement his detailed and well-thought-out schemes.
Surely there's no downside to running, as opposed to biking?
There is more wear and tear on the equipment — running is nortoriously bad for your knees. I suppose we could say that you have to factor in, as a sort of externality, the eventual energy cost of assisted mobility for someone with shot knees, on the theory that it would become necessary sooner for runners.
The webcam kinda shot of the port, was an SGI Indy cam type window.
Pretty sure they had a QuickTime player impersonating a video-phone window at one point, complete with progress bar at the bottom as the movie played. Are we thinking of the same scene, with the guy on the phone in the storm? The window widgetry looked very System 7.
Your son's learning to talk has nothing to do with your teaching him [...]
Don't be ridiculous. Of course the teaching has an influence -- you've gone on to say that the child's learning is based on his exposure to the language in his environment, and obviously the teaching forms a part of that environment.
Unless, of course, you're thinking that parental influence magically won't count because of its insufficient academic rarification. "The naïve 'goo-goo' approach of the non-specialist (Foonly 78, inter alia)..."
And anecdotal evidence doesn't really count for anything, anyway.
The cashiers look at people in a funny way when you pay for $60 or $100 of stuff with $20's.
They look at you funny for handing them three to five bills? Where are you shopping? I guess I'm thinking mostly of grocery stores, but I don't remember ever getting a look for handing over a hundred bucks in cash.
This is even with the new Canadian $20 bills with the 'extra' security features.
Our pretty, red fifty dollar bills were widely shunned by merchants year or two ago, after a counterfeiting flap. I think the new fifties have assuaged their fears, because the little hand-lettered notices have disappeared from the checkout lanes. Twenties, though, were never in doubt in my experience.
Insisting that a child remain deaf, when the option exists to allow them to hear at least somewhat, [...]
This is indeed the canonical nutty position when it comes to "deaf culture". But the cochlear implant isn't a no-brainer. For one thing, it involves surgery which has intrinsic risks. For another, you'd want to make sure that appropriate support and social services were still available to the child, and not denied on grounds that the kid's now not "deaf enough" to qualify for sign language or lip-reading instruction, or other forms of assistance in school, for instance.
None of which is to endorse the position of those who have apparently not only made lemonade of their disabilities but insist that everyone should drink it.
[...] just so that they can remain part of "deaf culture", strikes me as being on the same level as those who insist that a black kid who strives to excel academically is betraying his heritage by "acting white".
Or condeming parents for sending a promising black student to a good mostly-white school.
I don't know what server they play on, but the amount of gay bashing and whatnot I see in barrens chats [...]
If Blizzard will allow anti-gay sentiments to fly freely, surely they must allow pro-gay expressions as well.
[...] I can only imagine how much arguing and whatnot would be caused by them boldly proclaiming they're gay in their guild title.
But forbidding it is saying, "Stay in your closet, the bigots were here first," or something similarly silly. It amounts to choosing a side, in any case, and that's something that Blizzard seems to have decided against doing.
I blew up loud enough they heard me all over the store and my permitted 38 was 5 seconds from coming out before she decided she'd give me back the card.
Yeah, I'm sure you've never raised any "red flags" anywhere.
It's called vaporware. It's the main weapon Microsoft uses...
Except that in this case, we're not going to hold off on our Web searching for six months in the vain hope that MS will eventually do a better job.
Searches are free, there's no commitment required, and you do them on a daily basis. When it comes to buying an expensive office automation package, e-mail system, or software development environment, you're looking at a decision that's made every couple of years and with more than a little concern over picking the wrong thing. In that context, the shiny brochureware product can compete for your attention.
...seems that the more civilized and thus artistic a culture becomes, the more words for colors they invent or co-opt.
Thus we can see that interior designers are clearly the most civilized and artistic culture in the world, having at last count no fewer than 174 different words for "off-white".
But hey, let's destroy the world economy and probbaly [sic] the adversity that would spurn [sic] us to find fossil fuel replacements in the first place.
Your raving makes no sense. If reducing pollution is somehow going to destroy the world economy, wouldn't that provide sufficient "adversity" to motivate exploitation of other energy sources?
And how is it that no previous fuel transition caused such catastrophic results? By your alarmist thinking, Londoners should still be heating their homes with soft coal -- "Burn coke? Might as well just hand the Empire over to the French!"
The Slashdot editors often make reading a chore with readers being forced to scan sentences over and over again in an attempt to find a sensible reading.
I wonder if it's the case that they're not very good readers. If reading is a chore for you no matter how good the writing is -- if, in the worst case, you're sounding each word out as you go -- you mite just knot no any bedder. We all, even the best readers among us, can see this at work when it comes to 3L1T3-5P34K: it's all one massive typo anyway, and there's no right or wrong to it.
But Commander Taco isn't suffering from illiteracy. In the case of Slashdot, I'm going to suggest that it's actually down to an under-developed sense of aesthetics. Bad spelling, bad grammar, bad punctuation, and bad typography all jump out and stab you in the eye if you care about them. Since just about every Slashdot story features at least three of those faults, I think that it's safe to say that when it comes to what many of us consider basic courtesies of written communication, Rob is just an Insensitive Clod.
Thunderbird has S/MIME support built in, no plugins needed.
Sure, but as the page you linked to demonstrates, it's still not as easy to use as Qbertino wants. Most obviously, there's no "Make Key" button to click. Instead, there's a multi-step procedure that starts with "Take your XYZ123 Certificate...".
I suppose that you can argue for and against giving a mail client the ability to generate self-signed certificates, which is what having a one-step "Make Key" button implies.
[...] the down arrow is flashing green with a number [...]
[...] the Email-key on your keyboard starts pulsating [...] When you're done, the IM key starts blinking...
And I thought that animated GIFs were annoying: no way I'd want a carnival of winky-lights dancing all over my keyboard, even if having modal key labels turned out to be a good idea.
This'd be a fine replacement for some touch-screens, since you'd get the flexibility of updatable labels with the usability of actual, pressable buttons. But in the case of a general purpose PC keyboard, I'm afraid that I'd find your revolution in human-computer interaction, uh, "revolting".
I would hope that even libertarians recognise that there is a distinct place for government.
You'd hope so, but they're bascially cowboy anarchists. The minimal role that they do see for government is arguably inconsistent with their "fend for yourself" vision of freedom. Why, for instance, should the state protect me from the use of force by others but not from pollution of the air by others? I'm sure that there's a long and complicated answer, but it probably boils down to libertarians' ability to ignore all but the most obvious risks of their governmentless (but somehow magically not entirely lawless) utopia.
While I'll hate the upcoming election, I'll enjoy this law not being passed.
While the bill will die, who of the possible election winners wouldn't cheerfully introduce something similar when law enforcement inevitably lobbies for it again?
The Liberals would be as likely to do so as now.
The Conservatives as led by Stephen Harper don't strike me as more skeptical of the demands of law enforcement than the Liberals.
The NDP won't win; if they were to hold the balance of power in another minority government, they might oppose such a bill on general lefty principles. On the other hand, they might support it as part of a horse-trading deal to get something closer to their hearts passed.
The BQ can't win, but could conceivably hold the balance of power if there's a Liberal blow-out in Québec. We can apply the NDP scenario to such a case.
The election does buy this bill's opponents time to argue against it and extract promises to oppose it from various candidates. It's only a matter of time until something this valuable to law enforcement comes up again.
Engineer: The stored gas has equivalent chemical energy, yes, but it's release is dependent on the oxygen that can be supplied. The absolute worst case scenario is a really big fire.
Actually, the absolute worst-case scenario is a BLEVE, which you Do Not Want. When all of the factors are right, heat from a really big fire boils the LNG in its tank, overwhelming the pressure-relief valve. The valve sends up a shrieking tower of flame as it fails to keep up with the rising pressure, and everything that I've read suggests that you shouldn't stop running while you can still hear it, because what happens next is ugly. The tank ruptures, sending shrapnel flying, and the pressurized gas explodes out, only to discover that it now has an opportunity to catch fire as it's already exploding.
This sort of "meta-explosion" doesn't happen every time some fire gets near a gas tank, of course: it's only the worst case.
That aside, it seems that about once every year or two a house somewhere in North America suffers from a natural gas leak in the basement and subsequent explosion that demolishes the house in question and badly damages the neighbouring dwellings. I've never seen an "enviro-nut" bring that up, though.
Then one day I was near a river and saw haw the water would adapt its flow to accomodate the shape of the rocks and sediment, and it just hit me. How simple!
Just wait'll all the Christians find out that God's an enlightened Taoist.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll assume that you've successfully programmed a computer before, but have you ever been able to teach a manager something useful?
Ah, but managers already do have a grasp of some fairly advanced abstract concepts. Consider, for instance, the clear conception that my manager has of the infinite expanse of free time that I have, or the vanishingly small effort that it would take me to implement his detailed and well-thought-out schemes.
There is more wear and tear on the equipment — running is nortoriously bad for your knees. I suppose we could say that you have to factor in, as a sort of externality, the eventual energy cost of assisted mobility for someone with shot knees, on the theory that it would become necessary sooner for runners.
Pretty sure they had a QuickTime player impersonating a video-phone window at one point, complete with progress bar at the bottom as the movie played. Are we thinking of the same scene, with the guy on the phone in the storm? The window widgetry looked very System 7.
Don't be ridiculous. Of course the teaching has an influence -- you've gone on to say that the child's learning is based on his exposure to the language in his environment, and obviously the teaching forms a part of that environment.
Unless, of course, you're thinking that parental influence magically won't count because of its insufficient academic rarification. "The naïve 'goo-goo' approach of the non-specialist (Foonly 78, inter alia)..."
Yeah, I heard that, once.
Only because you snipped out his first step, which was to boot with the old kernel. I presume that something prevented you from doing so.
They look at you funny for handing them three to five bills? Where are you shopping? I guess I'm thinking mostly of grocery stores, but I don't remember ever getting a look for handing over a hundred bucks in cash.
Our pretty, red fifty dollar bills were widely shunned by merchants year or two ago, after a counterfeiting flap. I think the new fifties have assuaged their fears, because the little hand-lettered notices have disappeared from the checkout lanes. Twenties, though, were never in doubt in my experience.
You do guess correctly. Bring on the smart cards...
This is indeed the canonical nutty position when it comes to "deaf culture". But the cochlear implant isn't a no-brainer. For one thing, it involves surgery which has intrinsic risks. For another, you'd want to make sure that appropriate support and social services were still available to the child, and not denied on grounds that the kid's now not "deaf enough" to qualify for sign language or lip-reading instruction, or other forms of assistance in school, for instance.
None of which is to endorse the position of those who have apparently not only made lemonade of their disabilities but insist that everyone should drink it.
Or condeming parents for sending a promising black student to a good mostly-white school.
Of course it is, you stupid slashdork.
[pause]
Well, you are!
If Blizzard will allow anti-gay sentiments to fly freely, surely they must allow pro-gay expressions as well.
But forbidding it is saying, "Stay in your closet, the bigots were here first," or something similarly silly. It amounts to choosing a side, in any case, and that's something that Blizzard seems to have decided against doing.
Yeah, I'm sure you've never raised any "red flags" anywhere.
Except that in this case, we're not going to hold off on our Web searching for six months in the vain hope that MS will eventually do a better job.
Searches are free, there's no commitment required, and you do them on a daily basis. When it comes to buying an expensive office automation package, e-mail system, or software development environment, you're looking at a decision that's made every couple of years and with more than a little concern over picking the wrong thing. In that context, the shiny brochureware product can compete for your attention.
The "Tactical Iraqi" demo videos are delightfully incomprehensible.
For instance, a 2000-pound Mk 84 bomb is just the way Donald Rumsfeld says, "I feel awkward." Offer him a tasty dolmeh.
Thus we can see that interior designers are clearly the most civilized and artistic culture in the world, having at last count no fewer than 174 different words for "off-white".
Your raving makes no sense. If reducing pollution is somehow going to destroy the world economy, wouldn't that provide sufficient "adversity" to motivate exploitation of other energy sources?
And how is it that no previous fuel transition caused such catastrophic results? By your alarmist thinking, Londoners should still be heating their homes with soft coal -- "Burn coke? Might as well just hand the Empire over to the French!"
I wonder if it's the case that they're not very good readers. If reading is a chore for you no matter how good the writing is -- if, in the worst case, you're sounding each word out as you go -- you mite just knot no any bedder. We all, even the best readers among us, can see this at work when it comes to 3L1T3-5P34K: it's all one massive typo anyway, and there's no right or wrong to it.
But Commander Taco isn't suffering from illiteracy. In the case of Slashdot, I'm going to suggest that it's actually down to an under-developed sense of aesthetics. Bad spelling, bad grammar, bad punctuation, and bad typography all jump out and stab you in the eye if you care about them. Since just about every Slashdot story features at least three of those faults, I think that it's safe to say that when it comes to what many of us consider basic courtesies of written communication, Rob is just an Insensitive Clod.
Sure, but as the page you linked to demonstrates, it's still not as easy to use as Qbertino wants. Most obviously, there's no "Make Key" button to click. Instead, there's a multi-step procedure that starts with "Take your XYZ123 Certificate...".
I suppose that you can argue for and against giving a mail client the ability to generate self-signed certificates, which is what having a one-step "Make Key" button implies.
And I thought that animated GIFs were annoying: no way I'd want a carnival of winky-lights dancing all over my keyboard, even if having modal key labels turned out to be a good idea.
This'd be a fine replacement for some touch-screens, since you'd get the flexibility of updatable labels with the usability of actual, pressable buttons. But in the case of a general purpose PC keyboard, I'm afraid that I'd find your revolution in human-computer interaction, uh, "revolting".
You'd hope so, but they're bascially cowboy anarchists. The minimal role that they do see for government is arguably inconsistent with their "fend for yourself" vision of freedom. Why, for instance, should the state protect me from the use of force by others but not from pollution of the air by others? I'm sure that there's a long and complicated answer, but it probably boils down to libertarians' ability to ignore all but the most obvious risks of their governmentless (but somehow magically not entirely lawless) utopia.
So, how many are you up to this morning, then? Counting me, of course.
While the bill will die, who of the possible election winners wouldn't cheerfully introduce something similar when law enforcement inevitably lobbies for it again?
The election does buy this bill's opponents time to argue against it and extract promises to oppose it from various candidates. It's only a matter of time until something this valuable to law enforcement comes up again.
Actually, no, exploding houses show up in the mainstream press. And I tripped over BLEVEs one day while reading some random, nerdy newsgroup.
I'm finding that I prefer chamomile or olive oil soaps to nasty ol' Irish Spring.
Actually, the absolute worst-case scenario is a BLEVE, which you Do Not Want. When all of the factors are right, heat from a really big fire boils the LNG in its tank, overwhelming the pressure-relief valve. The valve sends up a shrieking tower of flame as it fails to keep up with the rising pressure, and everything that I've read suggests that you shouldn't stop running while you can still hear it, because what happens next is ugly. The tank ruptures, sending shrapnel flying, and the pressurized gas explodes out, only to discover that it now has an opportunity to catch fire as it's already exploding.
This sort of "meta-explosion" doesn't happen every time some fire gets near a gas tank, of course: it's only the worst case.
That aside, it seems that about once every year or two a house somewhere in North America suffers from a natural gas leak in the basement and subsequent explosion that demolishes the house in question and badly damages the neighbouring dwellings. I've never seen an "enviro-nut" bring that up, though.
God writes:
Just wait'll all the Christians find out that God's an enlightened Taoist.