One of the most unpleasant things I ever had to do in my professional career is talk to a subordinate about hygene--that is, bathing and not smelling. The "gifts" of deodorant, soap, cologne, and shampoo left by co-workers didn't seem to convey the message that it is unprofessional to stink. His stench was so unbearable, the President of the company told me to give him an ultimatum: stop smelling or be fired. Well the ultimatum worked and he henceforth ceased to stink.
This technology brings hope that someday the plague of the stinky programmer, scientist and researcher will be wiped out like polio. No more shall co-workers have to suffer an intolerable stench. No more will someone curiously wonder why they find soap on their desk every morning. No more will I have to threaten to fire someone because they won't bathe on a daily basis.
But before that day comes let me just give everyone a word of adive: "This ain't France. Taking a shower every day. And for Pete's sake put on some deodorant."
The heart implanted yesterday has a tiny electric motor in it. An implanted battery that powers the motor is kept charged by a system that uses no wires or tubes. Instead, the battery, which can last about 30 minutes without a recharge, gets its power renewed from a coil that transfers energy through the skin.
I get annoyed when the battery in my laptop only lasts 2.5 hours. Can you image the stress of never being more the 30 minutes of battery life from dying?
Hopefully there is some sort of notice before the battery actually runs out: "Warning, life support will fail in 5 minutes."
MasterCard and Visa are controlled and operated by all the banks and financial institutions issuing credit cards. Mastercard and Visa don't earn profits for themselves and receive their funding as allocations from the banks and financial institutions that control them.
The banks and financial institutions could make a convincing argument that they are all affiliates of each other through contol of MasterCard and Visa. There are over 21,000 member institutions in Visa and over 22,000 member institutions in MasterCard. This may mean that almost any bank will be able to freely share information with any other bank provided they issue the same credit card.
Logically what you are proposing is that everything increases in shit as you separate and continuously compare shit to not shit. You have given a formula for a mathematical limit of shit.
A = Something
B = 10% of A that is not shit = 10% of A
C = 10% of B that is not shit = 1% of A
D = 10% of C that is not shit =.1% of A
E = 10% of D that is not shit =.01% of A
. . .
Since it is a limit we will never actually reach the point where A is 100% shit. But your extension comes as close as possible to saying everything is shit. Kinda pessimistic if you ask me.
In any well managed network system, there is always one person who is the "Network Enforcer". That is, someone who's basic function is to be a dick about disaster planning, redundancy, regular backups, frequent system failure tests, network management, documentation, etc. I've played the Network Enforcer role before and I initially made a lot of people unhappy. But when all the major network problems finally disappeared and we went 6 months without any downtime, everyone appreciated the work I did. Especially my wife because I could leave at 5pm every day and never worry about getting called into the office.
The problem with Unions is that you substitute one beaurocracy for another. Admittedly, the new beaurocracy defines itself as being on your side but it is still a beaurocracy. Especially these old Unions that have had corruption issues in their history.
Information Technology workers may be better served by a professional organization rather than a union. If there was a powerful organization like the American Medical Association for IT workes, it would have a lot of the same benefits of a union without the inherent problems. It could provide access to employment information, discounted legal representation in employment disputes, professional standards, lists of companies with employment problems (that is, a black list), etc.
The key is obviously to create an organization that is well suited to IT workers. That is, an organization that conducts all its business openly, makes its finances available for members to see on its website, and has significant member input. The problem to creating such an organization is that you need wide acceptance to build something that has the power of the AMA. To get that acceptance the organization will need a leader that can generate a lot of media attention.
I have ordered services from Baby Bells around the country. In my experience, Verizon has the worst service of any Baby Bell I've dealt with. Verizon would regularly break things that were working just fine. It got so bad that I wouldn't let the engineers into the wiring closets unless someone supervised them and questioned everything they did. One time they switched one of our T-1s from B8ZS for no aparent reason. After 3 weeks of complaining to Verizon, our ISP finally just broke into their box and flipped the switch to fix it.
I spent so much time on the phone with Verizon that I finally got hold of the phone number of the office of the President. I got to know the people who worked in that office on a personal basis and I sent them gift baskets whenever they fixed a problem for me. There job was to get the problems fixed that Verizon wouldn't fix. My new company has no offices in the Northeast so I don't have to deal with Verizon anymore.
Yahoo is running this article on carpal tunnel syndrome. It reports on research done on the association between heavy computer use and carpal tunnel syndrome. Basically, 10.5% of heavy computer users who report symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome actually met the clinical criteria; and in 3.5% the diagnosis was confirmed by electromyogram (that is, nerve conduction survey).
Apparently they're worried about theft by criminals and attacks from anarchists.
Are attacks by Anarchists really a major threat? Admittedly, an Anarchist did start WWI but they haven't been doing much since then. There was that Sex Pistols Song in the late 70s. But I don't think the Sex Pistols were technically Anarchists. They were just angry and really really drunk.
Sarcasm aside.
I won't let my kids watch Disney films because invariably someone or some creature gets killed. Disney produces some extremely violent entertainment for young children. Maybe the problem isn't teenagers playing Quake or some other RPG; maybe it's Disney's marketing violence to the youngest possible viewers.
Pocahontis: killing by gunfire
Little Mermaid: killing by impalement
Bambi: killing by gunfire
etc.
The books is "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" and is Volume 9, Part I of the Collective Works of C.G. Jung.
I think you are mistaking the Collective Unconscious with the unconscious effect that an archetype can have on a group. The Collective Unconscious is not a shared thought but a primordial vestige from the symbolic age of humans. The effect of an archetype on a group can really be seen in the Germans projection of the Wotan father figure upon Hitler. It is interesting to note that Hitler, like Wotan in Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Niebelungen (Part IV Gotterdammerung), was the wounded ruler who ultimately lost his power. This same wounded ruler can be seen in Parzival, the grail legend/fisher king, although in this case the wounded ruler was healed.
The concepts of the Collective Unconscious and the Archetypes are very difficult to fully grasp. As further reading, I suggest you read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and the "Masks of God" series by Joseph Campbell. This will give you a better understanding of the foundation upon which the concept of the Collective Unconscious is postulated. You may also want to read the entire Collective Works but be forewarned that it takes up approximately 2 feet of horizontal shelf space and it will probably take a year to work your way through it.
To get back to the warning that I've received. You may take it with however many grains of salt you wish. That the brown pixie dust that's been circulating around us is not specifically too good. It's suggested that you do stay away from that. Of course it's your own trip so be my guest. But please be advised there is a warning on that one.
"I hate this Slashdot. This hacker zoo. This prison of ideas. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the open source software, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your filthy free software and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it."
It's a lose-lose situation. If you don't take the money, you lose and you will probably never see the money. If you take the money, you lose but at least you will have the money.
Even though they technically owe the money to you, they are holding it as leverage. You need to check with a lawyer but the new contract you sign might not be enforcable--that is, a contract can only be considered valid if you both parties receive something or some benefit. In this case, since they already owe you the money, you are not receiving anything and you are giving up a great deal.
If you have a grandparent who is orignally from Ireland, you can legally get an Irish passport. This will allow you to work anywhere in Europe without working papers. It essentially gives you all the rights of European citizenship without having to give up your US citizenship.
I have spent hundreds of hours searching the www.patents.ibm.com website. By operating the website IBM generated a lot of goodwill, which is defined as the favor or prestige that a business has acquired beyond the mere value of what it sells. I guess goodwill isn't worth what it used to be.
Just let lost clients go. But in the future, always include a preliminary security audit as part of your bidding process. Make sure you get written permission to conduct the preliminary security audit. Then if you lose the bid, you can call the company and sell them a full security audit. Again make sure you get written permission. Now you will be in a position to make your competitor look bad and yourself look like a hero. Provided you can find some nice big security problems. Preferably employee information, financial information or something involving the decision maker.
Rambus shares are now trading at 10% of their $127 peak, which occured almost one year ago. Rambus has lost over $10 billion in market capitalization since then.
However, a number of Rambus executives had the good fortune of selling shares while Rambus was up and made a lot of money.
The judge thrust his knife into the collapsing body of Rambus. From the quivering lips of the mortally wounded Rambus came forth the questioning cry, "Et tu iudex" (And you too Judge). It was now but a question of time before all life escaped from the body's husk. Some others jostled through the crowd that encircled the dying self-proclaimed emperor. They aimed to land a few more knife blows to hastened the demise of the much despised Rambus.
I heard an interesting metaphor descibing the human genome map. The map is basically a parts list. If you just had the parts list for a 747, which has 1 million parts, you would not know how the parts went together and not know how the plane actually worked.
The human genome map has 3 billion base pairs. Now a lot of those base pairs are the same for all life. In fact, you have 50% of your genes in common with a banana. But there are still 45 million base pairs that differentiate us from chimpanzees. In addition, different diseases occur in different areas along the length of the genome. Not just on those unique to humans.
I believe a lot of the dissappointment in the human genome project stems from not understanding what the goal of the project actually is. It's not an end in itself and will not cure disease. It is a starting point for the real research on drugs and treatments for specific diseases that will follow. This research will take time but there is the prospect that a technological solution will speed this research. The human genome project was supposed to take 15 years but was done in a little over 2 years.
The SETI project has made some big assumptions. A mistake in any of these assumptions may result in failure of the entire project. To summarize:
1. SETI has searched almost exclusively in the frequency channel around 1.42 gigahertz, which corresponds to the emission line of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. The idea is that if extraterrestrials had to pick some frequency to attract our attention, this would be a natural choice.
ISSUE: Although this may be a reasonable assumption it is not necessarily true. Perhaps the extraterrestrials would chose another frequency for reasons not know to us. In addition, the shift in frequency caused by the expansion of the Universe rules out the possibility of receiving signals from other Galaxies.
2. SETI assumes that intelligent civilizations would have the power to send wide-beam signals into space.
ISSUE: The further a message has to travel, the more power it requires. In addition the wider the beam is, the more energy is required to send it at the same relative power. These power requirements are orders of magnitude greater than we are capable of and it does not necessarily follow that other civilizations would be capable of producing such power.
3. SETI assumes that other civilizations would send continuous messages into space.
ISSUE: To date, Earth has only sent out a limited number of messages. These were tightly beamed messages to specific stars in the Galaxy. Earth lacks the power to send wide-beam messages. It is a big assumption to think that other intelligent life would behave differently than we do. Perhaps they spend most of their time listening as well.
4. SETI assumes that intelligent civilizations are long lived.
ISSUE: The reason the night skies are not completely filled with stars is that stars have limited lifetimes. During the 5 billion years since the formation of earth, we've had the capability of sending narrow beam signals to other stars for perhaps 50 or so years. Based on our consumption of natural resources, it remains to be seen if we will continue to have this capability for thousands of years.
My main issue is that these assumptions are glossed over. SETI needs to be forthcoming about its assumptions and how they may effect the probability of success. They need to do this so that in 10 years if donations start drying up, they'll have some credibility and be able to explain the lack of results in terms of their assumptions.
I'm writing a paper on the editorial process of Slashdot. I'm trying to determine what factors are considered when a story is posted. In particular, I'd be interested in knowing the types of stories posted in relation to the drug intake, days without sleep, childhood traumas, mental diseases and lifetime concussion totals of the editorial staff.
The current system being basically "stop people with brown skin".
This is true but it is not a knee-jerk reaction, it is human nature. Human beings always divide themselves into "us" and "them". Us being good and Them being the repository of all the projected evils we don't want to recognize within ourselves.
Human nature is not kept in check by technology. If anything, technology makes human nature more pervasive because it is not the blatant hoods and burning crosses variety. It is the subtle denial of rights to a segment of the population through the "impartial" application of technology. To the Germans the Jews were Them and whatever the Nazis did to Them wasn't of any concern. This was the understanding between the Nazis and the ordinary German citizens that allowed unprecedented mass murder. A similar understanding exists that allows racial profiling to continue.
"Us and Them.
Us and Them.
We are Good.
They are Bad."
Applicable to any side of any ethnic conflict anywhere in the world at any time in history.
Slashdot Mirror
This technology brings hope that someday the plague of the stinky programmer, scientist and researcher will be wiped out like polio. No more shall co-workers have to suffer an intolerable stench. No more will someone curiously wonder why they find soap on their desk every morning. No more will I have to threaten to fire someone because they won't bathe on a daily basis.
But before that day comes let me just give everyone a word of adive: "This ain't France. Taking a shower every day. And for Pete's sake put on some deodorant."
I get annoyed when the battery in my laptop only lasts 2.5 hours. Can you image the stress of never being more the 30 minutes of battery life from dying? Hopefully there is some sort of notice before the battery actually runs out: "Warning, life support will fail in 5 minutes."
The banks and financial institutions could make a convincing argument that they are all affiliates of each other through contol of MasterCard and Visa. There are over 21,000 member institutions in Visa and over 22,000 member institutions in MasterCard. This may mean that almost any bank will be able to freely share information with any other bank provided they issue the same credit card.
Isn't that where misfit toys are sent?
A = Something .1% of A .01% of A
B = 10% of A that is not shit = 10% of A
C = 10% of B that is not shit = 1% of A
D = 10% of C that is not shit =
E = 10% of D that is not shit =
. . .
Since it is a limit we will never actually reach the point where A is 100% shit. But your extension comes as close as possible to saying everything is shit. Kinda pessimistic if you ask me.
In any well managed network system, there is always one person who is the "Network Enforcer". That is, someone who's basic function is to be a dick about disaster planning, redundancy, regular backups, frequent system failure tests, network management, documentation, etc. I've played the Network Enforcer role before and I initially made a lot of people unhappy. But when all the major network problems finally disappeared and we went 6 months without any downtime, everyone appreciated the work I did. Especially my wife because I could leave at 5pm every day and never worry about getting called into the office.
Information Technology workers may be better served by a professional organization rather than a union. If there was a powerful organization like the American Medical Association for IT workes, it would have a lot of the same benefits of a union without the inherent problems. It could provide access to employment information, discounted legal representation in employment disputes, professional standards, lists of companies with employment problems (that is, a black list), etc.
The key is obviously to create an organization that is well suited to IT workers. That is, an organization that conducts all its business openly, makes its finances available for members to see on its website, and has significant member input. The problem to creating such an organization is that you need wide acceptance to build something that has the power of the AMA. To get that acceptance the organization will need a leader that can generate a lot of media attention.
I spent so much time on the phone with Verizon that I finally got hold of the phone number of the office of the President. I got to know the people who worked in that office on a personal basis and I sent them gift baskets whenever they fixed a problem for me. There job was to get the problems fixed that Verizon wouldn't fix. My new company has no offices in the Northeast so I don't have to deal with Verizon anymore.
Yahoo is running this article on carpal tunnel syndrome. It reports on research done on the association between heavy computer use and carpal tunnel syndrome. Basically, 10.5% of heavy computer users who report symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome actually met the clinical criteria; and in 3.5% the diagnosis was confirmed by electromyogram (that is, nerve conduction survey).
Are attacks by Anarchists really a major threat? Admittedly, an Anarchist did start WWI but they haven't been doing much since then. There was that Sex Pistols Song in the late 70s. But I don't think the Sex Pistols were technically Anarchists. They were just angry and really really drunk.
Pocahontis: killing by gunfire
Little Mermaid: killing by impalement
Bambi: killing by gunfire
etc.
I think that's how we all feel when it comes to the UCE variety of Spam.
I think you are mistaking the Collective Unconscious with the unconscious effect that an archetype can have on a group. The Collective Unconscious is not a shared thought but a primordial vestige from the symbolic age of humans. The effect of an archetype on a group can really be seen in the Germans projection of the Wotan father figure upon Hitler. It is interesting to note that Hitler, like Wotan in Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Niebelungen (Part IV Gotterdammerung), was the wounded ruler who ultimately lost his power. This same wounded ruler can be seen in Parzival, the grail legend/fisher king, although in this case the wounded ruler was healed.
The concepts of the Collective Unconscious and the Archetypes are very difficult to fully grasp. As further reading, I suggest you read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and the "Masks of God" series by Joseph Campbell. This will give you a better understanding of the foundation upon which the concept of the Collective Unconscious is postulated. You may also want to read the entire Collective Works but be forewarned that it takes up approximately 2 feet of horizontal shelf space and it will probably take a year to work your way through it.
To get back to the warning that I've received. You may take it with however many grains of salt you wish. That the brown pixie dust that's been circulating around us is not specifically too good. It's suggested that you do stay away from that. Of course it's your own trip so be my guest. But please be advised there is a warning on that one.
"I hate this Slashdot. This hacker zoo. This prison of ideas. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the open source software, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your filthy free software and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it."
Even though they technically owe the money to you, they are holding it as leverage. You need to check with a lawyer but the new contract you sign might not be enforcable--that is, a contract can only be considered valid if you both parties receive something or some benefit. In this case, since they already owe you the money, you are not receiving anything and you are giving up a great deal.
IANAL, etc.
If you have a grandparent who is orignally from Ireland, you can legally get an Irish passport. This will allow you to work anywhere in Europe without working papers. It essentially gives you all the rights of European citizenship without having to give up your US citizenship.
http://ipdl.wipo.int.
http://ep.espacenet.com
I have spent hundreds of hours searching the www.patents.ibm.com website. By operating the website IBM generated a lot of goodwill, which is defined as the favor or prestige that a business has acquired beyond the mere value of what it sells. I guess goodwill isn't worth what it used to be.
Just let lost clients go. But in the future, always include a preliminary security audit as part of your bidding process. Make sure you get written permission to conduct the preliminary security audit. Then if you lose the bid, you can call the company and sell them a full security audit. Again make sure you get written permission. Now you will be in a position to make your competitor look bad and yourself look like a hero. Provided you can find some nice big security problems. Preferably employee information, financial information or something involving the decision maker.
However, a number of Rambus executives had the good fortune of selling shares while Rambus was up and made a lot of money.
The judge thrust his knife into the collapsing body of Rambus. From the quivering lips of the mortally wounded Rambus came forth the questioning cry, "Et tu iudex" (And you too Judge). It was now but a question of time before all life escaped from the body's husk. Some others jostled through the crowd that encircled the dying self-proclaimed emperor. They aimed to land a few more knife blows to hastened the demise of the much despised Rambus.
The human genome map has 3 billion base pairs. Now a lot of those base pairs are the same for all life. In fact, you have 50% of your genes in common with a banana. But there are still 45 million base pairs that differentiate us from chimpanzees. In addition, different diseases occur in different areas along the length of the genome. Not just on those unique to humans.
I believe a lot of the dissappointment in the human genome project stems from not understanding what the goal of the project actually is. It's not an end in itself and will not cure disease. It is a starting point for the real research on drugs and treatments for specific diseases that will follow. This research will take time but there is the prospect that a technological solution will speed this research. The human genome project was supposed to take 15 years but was done in a little over 2 years.
1. SETI has searched almost exclusively in the frequency channel around 1.42 gigahertz, which corresponds to the emission line of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. The idea is that if extraterrestrials had to pick some frequency to attract our attention, this would be a natural choice.
ISSUE: Although this may be a reasonable assumption it is not necessarily true. Perhaps the extraterrestrials would chose another frequency for reasons not know to us. In addition, the shift in frequency caused by the expansion of the Universe rules out the possibility of receiving signals from other Galaxies.
2. SETI assumes that intelligent civilizations would have the power to send wide-beam signals into space.
ISSUE: The further a message has to travel, the more power it requires. In addition the wider the beam is, the more energy is required to send it at the same relative power. These power requirements are orders of magnitude greater than we are capable of and it does not necessarily follow that other civilizations would be capable of producing such power.
3. SETI assumes that other civilizations would send continuous messages into space.
ISSUE: To date, Earth has only sent out a limited number of messages. These were tightly beamed messages to specific stars in the Galaxy. Earth lacks the power to send wide-beam messages. It is a big assumption to think that other intelligent life would behave differently than we do. Perhaps they spend most of their time listening as well.
4. SETI assumes that intelligent civilizations are long lived.
ISSUE: The reason the night skies are not completely filled with stars is that stars have limited lifetimes. During the 5 billion years since the formation of earth, we've had the capability of sending narrow beam signals to other stars for perhaps 50 or so years. Based on our consumption of natural resources, it remains to be seen if we will continue to have this capability for thousands of years.
My main issue is that these assumptions are glossed over. SETI needs to be forthcoming about its assumptions and how they may effect the probability of success. They need to do this so that in 10 years if donations start drying up, they'll have some credibility and be able to explain the lack of results in terms of their assumptions.
I'm writing a paper on the editorial process of Slashdot. I'm trying to determine what factors are considered when a story is posted. In particular, I'd be interested in knowing the types of stories posted in relation to the drug intake, days without sleep, childhood traumas, mental diseases and lifetime concussion totals of the editorial staff.
This is true but it is not a knee-jerk reaction, it is human nature. Human beings always divide themselves into "us" and "them". Us being good and Them being the repository of all the projected evils we don't want to recognize within ourselves.
Human nature is not kept in check by technology. If anything, technology makes human nature more pervasive because it is not the blatant hoods and burning crosses variety. It is the subtle denial of rights to a segment of the population through the "impartial" application of technology. To the Germans the Jews were Them and whatever the Nazis did to Them wasn't of any concern. This was the understanding between the Nazis and the ordinary German citizens that allowed unprecedented mass murder. A similar understanding exists that allows racial profiling to continue.
"Us and Them.
Us and Them.
We are Good.
They are Bad."
Applicable to any side of any ethnic conflict anywhere in the world at any time in history.