tldr: green manufacturing needs to be 10x cheaper than status quo to get businesses to change.
The consumer "green" movement didn't really ramp up until a combination of technological advances (for example, making CFLs not suck) and convenient market distortions (in the form of government incentives, tax credits, grants, etc.) combined to make it stupid to not "go green" with your consumer purchases. While some manufacturers have embraced the idea of environmentally-friendly manufacturing (for example, if you believe Subaru's marketing), there are not sufficient market distortions in place to make a business want to spend the capital necessary to retool manufacturing lines.
I think the fact that there is a lot of technology being manufactured in China is actually beneficial. China has the ability to force their industry to make certain changes, and they have recently started to adopt policies that are designed to make their industrial base more sustainable.
Therefore, they would probably agree that it's likely the office of the President would willfully sodomize any survielance(sp?)law with signing statements and executive orders.
It says something about our community when we're sure how to spell sodomize but not surveillance.
Apple doesn't need to get into more home and businesses. They're printing money. Their margins are fantastic. They are incredibly successful, and they don't need flail about trying to increase market share in a commodity market.
If that operating system is on the desktop and servers of your goverment, which provides services to you and the entire nation... well, do you think that has an effect on people's lives?
Amen. Regardless of how abhorrent the situation is, it's not clear that anyone wants to be "saved" from Windows. *Especially* because you're not going to be around on a regular basis, please invest some time up front to get this right. Unfortunately, this means you're going to have to have some meetings.
1. Who are the stakeholders? Parents, teachers, administrators (headmaster/principal). Kids too, but don't invite them to the meetings-- they wiggle too much. 2. Figure out their perception of the "as-is" state of affairs. Understand what bugs them about the current set up. 3. Try to elicit what their ideal situation would be. They probably don't know. Dream with them. 4. Have another meeting. In this meeting, review what they said was bugging them, and how you're going to fix that. They will probably ask lots of dumb questions. Smile and be patient. 5. Prioritize your deployment: figure out who gets what first. You might want to try a pilot roll-out to one or two technically savvy teachers (or easily trainable). Get them up to speed. 6. NOW do the main roll out. 7. Make a website/blog of what you're doing and plug it with the school, other schools, parents, and so forth. Good resume fodder, *and* you get a nice warm fuzzy feeling.
The Point is that while the selection of distribution and building the image is the "fun" part, you run the risk of totally screwing these kids of you take their marginally functional computers and convert them into non-functional computers (think of the children!). Spend time on the boring, sales-y stuff first so you don't waste *your* time building X when they really need Y.
Just because you're feeling grumpy doesn't mean it's a meaningless acronym.
Take a poll, pick any population of 100. Ask them to pick one of these as an "IT job":
a) archeologist b) librarian c) IBM systems administrator
Who wants to take bets on which one is going to get the most votes?
It's not "over simplifying", it's using an accepted shorthand idea with the understanding that the audience will get the connotations. English is not, nor should be, 100% explicit.
I'll grant that what he calls "Critical Path Analysis" is just another way of Activity Sequencing, or restating his whole point for the chapter- focus on what's important... which is just a restatement of Covey, which is a derivative of Carnegie... etc. That doesn't mean it's a bad read. The focus on the soft skills of a manager is important (and germane considering the/. audience).
There are lots of people who think it's perfectly fine to conduct life via email... they might need to hear that you need to drag people in front of a whiteboard to really hash out issues.
And, it's called "The Art of Project Management", not "Live PMI or Die!".
Want to know what's mandatory reading?
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics Dale Carnegie: How to Make Friends and Influence People Steven Covey: 7 Habits...
Haven't read the Fast forward MBA, but based on your recommendation I think I'll give it a miss.
Whether you like it or not, "cracked" and "hacked" have already been defined for us. For all important matters (restriction of life, liberty, and property), these are the rules.
I encourage everyone to participate more actively in the Democratic Process, otherwise mediocrity rules.
I think it's becoming more common, at least for certain professions (I'm in field service). I work 100% out of my home office, and go into my local regional office for lunches, meetings, etc. on a semi-occasional basis.
The key really is the nature of your job. Even if video-conferencing really takes off, I think that the prestige of travelling to meet someone and actually talking to them FTF gives your relationship with that person a special dimension. Certain job classes (management, sales) are all about relationships. We could infer, then, that Linus will be doing a lot more touchy-feely stuff, walking the halls, talking to people, etc., and less dev, which is fine because there are lots of people who can code but few who can lead coders.
If most people don't install their own operating systems, then why is ease of linux installation a requirement?
Why does linux have to be more simple than windows? Why not just as simple? Why is linux more complicated? It has a GUI, and a menu bar... a user could go their entire life without having to open a shell. Which is assuming, of course, that typing commands is harder than pointing and clicking, which isn't necessarily true, either... there's a lot of bad GUIs out there, man.
Work for a defense contractor. They can't outsource national security. Of course, you have to be able to get a clearance, but we're all nerds, right?? How weird can... um... oh.
The big problem with this question are the assumptions it makes:
1. Cost is the overriding factor 2. Work is of equal quality
Now I'll grant that even if 2 isn't true now, it could eventually be. That still leaves 1, and it's a biggie. Cost is not the overriding factor for every decision. Not for daily life, not for business. There are always other factors to consider.
I call bullshit. Which jobs mr. Coward? Even better give me names and I'll do your fact-checking for you.
Tech support- If you call technical support within the U.S., you get the U.S. offices.
Engineering- based in MN, with developers in CA and other locations in the U.S.
Now personally I would love to see executive management jobs shipped to India... we could probably get a CEO for about $30,000... now *that* would be some serious cost savings.
Disclaimer- I am an SGI employee, but opinions posted are mine and do not represent anything official from SGI, yadda yadda...
The Matrix doesn't contain any of those labels, and really doesn't cover many ideas. Let's face it, it doesn't even make sense. What, was he supposed to have had some sort of psychic power over the computer? He wasn't hacking into the system in any way we'd recognize; the fact that the world was computer simulated in no way explained Neo's ability to break the rules at will.
Actually, The Matrix contained several important ideas, most of them epistemological (for those of you without much exposure to philosophy, epistemology means the theory of knowledge).
1. Descarte's problem. Descarte (a.k.a the "I think therefore I am" guy) went through this entire reductive thought experiment where he reasoned that even if he was in a permanent dream state and an "evil demon" was just feeding him sensory data, he would still have to exist. This problem has been rephrased by more contemporary philosophers as the "brain in a vat" theory.
2. Godel's theorem. Godel was an early 20th century mathematician who theorized that (paraphrasing and simplifying here) within every logical system there exists a problem that cannot be proven by the rules of that system. To prove this problem, you have to (in effect) transcend the system and create more rules. This theory was proved, btw (although you could get into a recursive arguement here, but I'll skip that). Neo was a living embodiment of Godel's theorem. He transcended the rules of the logical set (his universe) and created new rules.
3. The problem of other minds. I know I have a mind, but how do I know that you have a mind?
These are the major topics, IMO. It also touched nicely on some assumptions about causation and answers the age old question, why are we here (To feed the computer, naturally)?
"My God has a bigger d**k than your God!"
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 1
How is atheism responsible for deaths? If you do not accept God, you can make no claim that one moral framework is any better than another.
BZZT! WRONG! Not believing in God does not automatically disqualify a person from a moral debate. God is absolutely NOT necessary for morality, especially the Judaeo-Christian god. There's a lot of Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Pagans, Satanists, and people who worship Alan Greenspan (not necessarily in any particular order) who would disagree. They all have a moral framework, and they don't believe in God.
Therefore,you are perfectly within your rights to develop philosophies such as those of Stalin, Mao and Hitler, because any moral philosophy is as good as anyother.
Therefore, you are completely wrong. Any arguement from a false premise is a false arguement. Or have they stopped teaching logic at Oxford?
Question: Isn't it much more difficult to trademark a surname, if impossible? I.e. doesn't a trademark have to be unique?
For example: Bob's Air Conditioning Repair. Cannot be tm'd because there is nothing unique about this. Compare with Kleenex (tm), which is essentially a made-up word that has no meaning other than it is the brand name of a popular brand of facial tissue?
Reporters reporting on what other reporters are doing. Happens when they've spun every conceivable angle and exhausted every conceivable source: they broaden their scope and comment on the commentators. Soon, you have a gigantic media circle-jerk. Remind you of anyone?;-)
BTW-not starting a Katz-bashing thread, just commenting on his methodology.
If I were a microsoft shareholder, what would concern me more were if The recent allegations of financial fraud were true. Most of Bill's wealth is in stock options. If MS became a nickel stock overnight... that alone would send brokers jumping out of their windows (no pun intended).
His article about his relationship with his wife rings very true, whether you meet her online or off. Don't look for someone like you! I have two examples: my friend's wife and my own.
Caveat: I'm going to mention women a lot. Let us not confuse women with girls. They may both have breasts, but a girl won't give guys like us the time of day. High school is full of girls. College is mostly full of girls. You will eventually meet a woman. This is, of course, assuming that you are a man and not a guy.
My friend is a hard-core geek. He met his wife on a BBS. The chats moved to phone calls, which moved to frequent air travel (she was in Missouri, he in Maryland), which moved to me standing next to him at the altar holding the ring (thanks for that, bud). Yes, she used a BBS, but she is nothing like him, and they like it this way.
My wife is nothing like me, either. We met IRL, introduced by mutual friends. We are nothing alike either, which is to say that she's not a geek either. Like many women, she can use a computer, but she doesn't obsess about technology the way I do. This is a Good Thing.
When I want to geek out, I call up my other geek friends (the same ones I've had since High School), and we sit around, drink beer, play MtG, and talk about what was on slashdot that day.
The Point: It doesn't matter where you meet them, it just matters that you do. It's good to have overlapping interests, but they don't all need to overlap. It's better if they don't. There is nothing you can do that will impress a woman. It's what you are that attracts them to you. The great thing about a woman is that they can look at a man and say to themselves "well, he needs a little work, but there's something there worth having." That is why it works.
There's a joke that's been circulating for a while that pretty much sums up the situation. I'm sure most of you have seen it, but I'll reprint it here for your convenience. If you don't like it, just give me a -1.:-) ----- A programmer is walking to a pizza parlor to pick up some grub for a (typical) geek-out marathon. On the way there, he sees a frog sitting by the side of the path. As he passes the frog, the frog speaks to him in a sultry female voice:
"Hey! I'm actually a beautiful woman, but an evil witch has cast a spell on me and turned me into a frog! If you give me a kiss to turn me back to a woman, i'll be your love slave for a night!"
The programmer stops, picks up the frog, smiles, and puts the frog in his pocket.
A few minutes later, he hears the frog yelling from his pocket, so he takes it out again.
"Alright, I'll make it a month!"
The programmer smiles, pats the frog on the head, and sticks it back in his pocket.
A few minutes later, the frog begins to yell again, so he pulls it out.
"Ok, ok, I'll marry you and be your love slave forever, just KISS ME!"
The programmer chukles to himself and starts to put the frog back in his pocket when the frog says, "WAIT! What's wrong with you? I've offered to be your love slave forever! WHY WON'T YOU KISS ME?"
The programmer speaks:
"Look, I'm a coder. I don't have time for sex or a girlfriend, but a talking frog is pretty damn cool."
Slashdot Mirror
tldr: green manufacturing needs to be 10x cheaper than status quo to get businesses to change.
The consumer "green" movement didn't really ramp up until a combination of technological advances (for example, making CFLs not suck) and convenient market distortions (in the form of government incentives, tax credits, grants, etc.) combined to make it stupid to not "go green" with your consumer purchases. While some manufacturers have embraced the idea of environmentally-friendly manufacturing (for example, if you believe Subaru's marketing), there are not sufficient market distortions in place to make a business want to spend the capital necessary to retool manufacturing lines.
I think the fact that there is a lot of technology being manufactured in China is actually beneficial. China has the ability to force their industry to make certain changes, and they have recently started to adopt policies that are designed to make their industrial base more sustainable.
Therefore, they would probably agree that it's likely the office of the President would willfully sodomize any survielance(sp?)law with signing statements and executive orders.
It says something about our community when we're sure how to spell sodomize but not surveillance.
Apple doesn't need to get into more home and businesses. They're printing money. Their margins are fantastic. They are incredibly successful, and they don't need flail about trying to increase market share in a commodity market.
Ahem:
/.
1. I, for one, welcome our new solid-state Overlords.
2. Yes, but how well does it run Linux?
3. Yes, but how well does it run World of Warcraft?
Please resume the normal, high-signal discussion.
Oh wait, this is
If that operating system is on the desktop and servers of your goverment, which provides services to you and the entire nation... well, do you think that has an effect on people's lives?
Amen. Regardless of how abhorrent the situation is, it's not clear that anyone wants to be "saved" from Windows. *Especially* because you're not going to be around on a regular basis, please invest some time up front to get this right. Unfortunately, this means you're going to have to have some meetings.
1. Who are the stakeholders? Parents, teachers, administrators (headmaster/principal). Kids too, but don't invite them to the meetings-- they wiggle too much.
2. Figure out their perception of the "as-is" state of affairs. Understand what bugs them about the current set up.
3. Try to elicit what their ideal situation would be. They probably don't know. Dream with them.
4. Have another meeting. In this meeting, review what they said was bugging them, and how you're going to fix that. They will probably ask lots of dumb questions. Smile and be patient.
5. Prioritize your deployment: figure out who gets what first. You might want to try a pilot roll-out to one or two technically savvy teachers (or easily trainable). Get them up to speed.
6. NOW do the main roll out.
7. Make a website/blog of what you're doing and plug it with the school, other schools, parents, and so forth. Good resume fodder, *and* you get a nice warm fuzzy feeling.
The Point is that while the selection of distribution and building the image is the "fun" part, you run the risk of totally screwing these kids of you take their marginally functional computers and convert them into non-functional computers (think of the children!). Spend time on the boring, sales-y stuff first so you don't waste *your* time building X when they really need Y.
So we have a case where paranoid reactionist scare mongering has turned out to not have the results predicted occur, but in fact the opposite?
Must be a corner case.
Just because you're feeling grumpy doesn't mean it's a meaningless acronym.
Take a poll, pick any population of 100. Ask them to pick one of these as an "IT job":
a) archeologist
b) librarian
c) IBM systems administrator
Who wants to take bets on which one is going to get the most votes?
It's not "over simplifying", it's using an accepted shorthand idea with the understanding that the audience will get the connotations. English is not, nor should be, 100% explicit.
You know, there is life outside of the PMBOK.
/. audience).
I'll grant that what he calls "Critical Path Analysis" is just another way of Activity Sequencing, or restating his whole point for the chapter- focus on what's important... which is just a restatement of Covey, which is a derivative of Carnegie... etc. That doesn't mean it's a bad read. The focus on the soft skills of a manager is important (and germane considering the
There are lots of people who think it's perfectly fine to conduct life via email... they might need to hear that you need to drag people in front of a whiteboard to really hash out issues.
And, it's called "The Art of Project Management", not "Live PMI or Die!".
Want to know what's mandatory reading?
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
Dale Carnegie: How to Make Friends and Influence People
Steven Covey: 7 Habits...
Haven't read the Fast forward MBA, but based on your recommendation I think I'll give it a miss.
Whether you like it or not, "cracked" and "hacked" have already been defined for us. For all important matters (restriction of life, liberty, and property), these are the rules.
I encourage everyone to participate more actively in the Democratic Process, otherwise mediocrity rules.
Does it come pre-loaded with spam? Because if not, no sale, bucko.
I think it's becoming more common, at least for certain professions (I'm in field service). I work 100% out of my home office, and go into my local regional office for lunches, meetings, etc. on a semi-occasional basis.
The key really is the nature of your job. Even if video-conferencing really takes off, I think that the prestige of travelling to meet someone and actually talking to them FTF gives your relationship with that person a special dimension. Certain job classes (management, sales) are all about relationships. We could infer, then, that Linus will be doing a lot more touchy-feely stuff, walking the halls, talking to people, etc., and less dev, which is fine because there are lots of people who can code but few who can lead coders.
My threshold is set at 2 and I still have to read all you unfunny bastards. Mod points != reliable judge of funny.
Jeezus.
If most people don't install their own operating systems, then why is ease of linux installation a requirement?
Why does linux have to be more simple than windows? Why not just as simple? Why is linux more complicated? It has a GUI, and a menu bar... a user could go their entire life without having to open a shell. Which is assuming, of course, that typing commands is harder than pointing and clicking, which isn't necessarily true, either... there's a lot of bad GUIs out there, man.
Work for a defense contractor. They can't outsource national security. Of course, you have to be able to get a clearance, but we're all nerds, right?? How weird can... um... oh.
The big problem with this question are the assumptions it makes:
1. Cost is the overriding factor
2. Work is of equal quality
Now I'll grant that even if 2 isn't true now, it could eventually be. That still leaves 1, and it's a biggie. Cost is not the overriding factor for every decision. Not for daily life, not for business. There are always other factors to consider.
I call bullshit. Which jobs mr. Coward? Even better give me names and I'll do your fact-checking for you.
... now *that* would be some serious cost savings.
Tech support- If you call technical support within the U.S., you get the U.S. offices.
Engineering- based in MN, with developers in CA and other locations in the U.S.
Now personally I would love to see executive management jobs shipped to India... we could probably get a CEO for about $30,000
Disclaimer- I am an SGI employee, but opinions posted are mine and do not represent anything official from SGI, yadda yadda...
We got a voicemail from someone who was playing with a beta system about a month ago and IIRC it was ~70 fps or so.
*legal disclaimer*
I work for SGI, and I haven't played with the system yet, and it was about a month ago.
The Matrix doesn't contain any of those labels, and really doesn't cover many ideas. Let's face it, it doesn't even make sense. What, was he supposed to have had some sort of psychic power over the computer? He wasn't hacking into the system in any way we'd recognize; the fact that the world was computer simulated in no way explained Neo's ability to break the rules at will.
Actually, The Matrix contained several important ideas, most of them epistemological (for those of you without much exposure to philosophy, epistemology means the theory of knowledge).
1. Descarte's problem. Descarte (a.k.a the "I think therefore I am" guy) went through this entire reductive thought experiment where he reasoned that even if he was in a permanent dream state and an "evil demon" was just feeding him sensory data, he would still have to exist. This problem has been rephrased by more contemporary philosophers as the "brain in a vat" theory.
2. Godel's theorem. Godel was an early 20th century mathematician who theorized that (paraphrasing and simplifying here) within every logical system there exists a problem that cannot be proven by the rules of that system. To prove this problem, you have to (in effect) transcend the system and create more rules. This theory was proved, btw (although you could get into a recursive arguement here, but I'll skip that). Neo was a living embodiment of Godel's theorem. He transcended the rules of the logical set (his universe) and created new rules.
3. The problem of other minds. I know I have a mind, but how do I know that you have a mind?
These are the major topics, IMO. It also touched nicely on some assumptions about causation and answers the age old question, why are we here (To feed the computer, naturally)?
How is atheism responsible for deaths? If you do not accept God, you can make no claim that one moral framework is any better than another.
BZZT! WRONG! Not believing in God does not automatically disqualify a person from a moral debate. God is absolutely NOT necessary for morality, especially the Judaeo-Christian god. There's a lot of Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Pagans, Satanists, and people who worship Alan Greenspan (not necessarily in any particular order) who would disagree. They all have a moral framework, and they don't believe in God.
Therefore,you are perfectly within your rights to develop philosophies such as those of Stalin, Mao and Hitler, because any moral philosophy is as good as anyother.
Therefore, you are completely wrong. Any arguement from a false premise is a false arguement. Or have they stopped teaching logic at Oxford?
--GPAny toys for my toy... although this year I am lobbying for the Titanium sliding hard case over at Palm Gear H.Q. Price is $99.95.
Question: Isn't it much more difficult to trademark a surname, if impossible? I.e. doesn't a trademark have to be unique?
For example: Bob's Air Conditioning Repair. Cannot be tm'd because there is nothing unique about this. Compare with Kleenex (tm), which is essentially a made-up word that has no meaning other than it is the brand name of a popular brand of facial tissue?
Reporters reporting on what other reporters are doing. Happens when they've spun every conceivable angle and exhausted every conceivable source: they broaden their scope and comment on the commentators. Soon, you have a gigantic media circle-jerk. Remind you of anyone? ;-)
BTW-not starting a Katz-bashing thread, just commenting on his methodology.
If I were a microsoft shareholder, what would concern me more were if The recent allegations of financial fraud were true. Most of Bill's wealth is in stock options. If MS became a nickel stock overnight... that alone would send brokers jumping out of their windows (no pun intended).
His article about his relationship with his wife rings very true, whether you meet her online or off. Don't look for someone like you! I have two examples: my friend's wife and my own.
Caveat: I'm going to mention women a lot. Let us not confuse women with girls. They may both have breasts, but a girl won't give guys like us the time of day. High school is full of girls. College is mostly full of girls. You will eventually meet a woman. This is, of course, assuming that you are a man and not a guy.
My friend is a hard-core geek. He met his wife on a BBS. The chats moved to phone calls, which moved to frequent air travel (she was in Missouri, he in Maryland), which moved to me standing next to him at the altar holding the ring (thanks for that, bud). Yes, she used a BBS, but she is nothing like him, and they like it this way.
My wife is nothing like me, either. We met IRL, introduced by mutual friends. We are nothing alike either, which is to say that she's not a geek either. Like many women, she can use a computer, but she doesn't obsess about technology the way I do. This is a Good Thing.
When I want to geek out, I call up my other geek friends (the same ones I've had since High School), and we sit around, drink beer, play MtG, and talk about what was on slashdot that day.
The Point: It doesn't matter where you meet them, it just matters that you do. It's good to have overlapping interests, but they don't all need to overlap. It's better if they don't. There is nothing you can do that will impress a woman. It's what you are that attracts them to you. The great thing about a woman is that they can look at a man and say to themselves "well, he needs a little work, but there's something there worth having." That is why it works.
There's a joke that's been circulating for a while that pretty much sums up the situation. I'm sure most of you have seen it, but I'll reprint it here for your convenience. If you don't like it, just give me a -1. :-)
-----
A programmer is walking to a pizza parlor to pick up some grub for a (typical) geek-out marathon. On the way there, he sees a frog sitting by the side of the path. As he passes the frog, the frog speaks to him in a sultry female voice:
"Hey! I'm actually a beautiful woman, but an evil witch has cast a spell on me and turned me into a frog! If you give me a kiss to turn me back to a woman, i'll be your love slave for a night!"
The programmer stops, picks up the frog, smiles, and puts the frog in his pocket.
A few minutes later, he hears the frog yelling from his pocket, so he takes it out again.
"Alright, I'll make it a month!"
The programmer smiles, pats the frog on the head, and sticks it back in his pocket.
A few minutes later, the frog begins to yell again, so he pulls it out.
"Ok, ok, I'll marry you and be your love slave forever, just KISS ME!"
The programmer chukles to himself and starts to put the frog back in his pocket when the frog says, "WAIT! What's wrong with you? I've offered to be your love slave forever! WHY WON'T YOU KISS ME?"
The programmer speaks:
"Look, I'm a coder. I don't have time for sex or a girlfriend, but a talking frog is pretty damn cool."
---
In every good joke, there's a hint of truth.
--GP