You mention birds solving puzzles; I remember seeing a show on squirrels. They had a very complicated setup, with 10 or 12 poles with cones near the bottom (so the squirrels couldn't just climb the poles). They put food at the end, and the squirrels had to navigate the obstacle course.
There were tunnels, "rides" (they hopped on a car which moved downhill to the next pole), doors which only opened a certain way, and even a cooperative feeder where one squirrel had to sit on a lever to open it, and the other could eat.
I was very impressed to see both the problem-solving skills as well as the cooperation in animals as small as squirrels.
I just realized, while reading you post, that you can break Google up into two words: "Go ogle". "Travel and view." "Seek info" (to come back to your other example).
Doubt they thought of that when making the name (it was the pun you said it was on Googol), but it made me smile to see a different way of looking at it.;-)
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Wow, those bureaucrats in procurement are amazing. Seems to me that Windex would be considered a "maintenance" item; at the very least to keep the screens readable. I'm not familiar with Duster but it also sounds like something that would fall under maintenance (keeping dust out of the systems prolongs their lives).
I'm sure you've had these same thoughts, I'm just amazed that whoever is in charge of signing off on your purchases hasn't.
I'm not sure if private messages are possible either. I have used the "Journal" feature which is a little more private than here, but still world-readable.
Please email me at thing1fl at bigfoot dot com so we can continue.
You said it man, every time I get an email with an obvious hoax I do a reply-to-all with a polite explanation (with links) of how to verify a hoax before forwarding something which just doesn't sound right (i.e., the latest being Bill Gates paying you thousands of dollars just for forwarding an email... DAMMIT PEOPLE THINK! This doesn't happen with snail mail, why would it happen with email???) -- links to Google, ways to search "bill gates email hoax", and a few sites which maintain lists of hoaxes (as you mentioned, snopes).
As you said, I like to think I'm having an effect but the effect may be limited to "well I won't send this to HIM any more..." -- which to me is fine, as it keeps the clutter out of my inbox.;-)
Are you currently hiring software people? I apologize for using this forum for something other than "tech talk" but I really like what you have to say and if you have opportunities I'd love to see if we can be mutually beneficial. Thanks.
Another important point, which is a tired cliche, is: "It's not what you know, it's who you know."
It doesn't matter if you have the greatest ideas in the world. If you don't have "friends" in higher places, you probably won't have the opportunity to convey these ideas successfully.
My advice to the asker is to cultivate relationships with your boss, his boss, etc. to the point where you can take them out to lunch and ask them questions about why they're doing what they're doing, without pushing your solution. Once they explain it, perhaps your solution won't seem as valid. Or perhaps it'll be even more valid, in which case (since you've developed a good relationship) you'll be able to ask, "Have you considered X?"
I'm poor these days so I've taken to drinking Natural Ice ($5/12 pack, and it's 5.9%).
Thinking of my gut, I decided to try Natural Ice Light, which conspicuously does not have the alcohol percentage on the label.
I believe it's about half the regular, since I normally drink 6 and I ended up drinking the whole 12 pack! (Yeah, I'm a lush and I need help, but that's a different story...)
And I just got him to land on the wall. Neat trick that. I wish it showed a number or setting for each of the sliders, so we could share setups and view each other's stuff. It's not too hard though: guy in middle, both ramps in middle, position 3, fastest truck, and ramp 1 all the way to the right, ramp 2 all the way to the left. (I just exited and re-tried this and he still landed on top of the wall, but in a different location.)
I've been playing with Stair Dismount as well, and although I can't come close to the high score, I did get a low score of 62. Beat that!;-) (I hit the guy in the leg at low force, and toward the top of the stairs so he wouldn't fall down them...)
I've got it so the guy sits on the roof, slides to the back as the truck goes up the ramps, gets bounced into the air then batted against the wall by the roof of the truck.
Nice. I just did one where the guy goes flying over the wall, off the camera! (If you use camera "3" it will follow him over the wall, sweet.)
If only you could save movies
Check out this guy's scores.dat -- I wasn't able to get it working but he said he could on another machine...
Nope, I downloaded your scores.dat and wasn't able to view them (clicking on "Scores" gave me a blank list). Replacing it with my saved scores.dat brought my scores back. (Can you try installing on another machine and see if your scores.dat works? Perhaps I had an error in the download...)
What impresses me is that someone has managed to get over 203k! See the high score list.
I managed to get the truck to roll over. Didn't crush the guy tho; still working on that.;-)
Drug dealers don't care about the health of other people.
Oh, I don't know about that. Just because someone is providing a good or service for which there is a demand doesn't say anything about whether or not they care about the well-being of their clients. I would imagine the opposite: a drug dealer thrives on repeat business, and therefore wants his customers to live as long as possible.
Even after they knew there was "infringing code", SCO continued to distribute it.
I would say SCO is between a rock and a hard place on this one: if they stop distributing it, then they are in violation of the GPL by not providing sources to people who have purchased the binaries.
However, that doesn't mean they have to keep it on their FTP site for the world to download; they could either password-protect it for their customers' eyes only, or they could snail-mail a CD with it. By letting you and me download the code, they appear to be saying that there are no IP issues with that code.
SCO isn't so big a company that their right and left hands don't know what they're doing, are they?
One of these days, we're going to look at ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbors, and realize that all of us have various synthetic bits [...]
The most obvious of which are eyeglasses. Others have talked about hearing aids and cochlear implants. My grandfather is deaf, and cannot hear anything without his hearing aids. My eyesight is poor, and I could not drive without glasses. Should we both shun our crutches simply because they're artificial? I don't think so. We're a tool-using species, and are constantly trying to create tools that will better our lives.
The transhumanist movement simply extends that idea, and I for one welcome our transhumanist overlords.
PS You referenced "bleeding" -- although you didn't say it, generally they used leeches to perform this. I learned a couple years ago that leech saliva has some healing properties to it. I think it's cool that some "old wives tales" actually have a basis in scientific reality, the more we know.
Also, I agree with the other response to your post, that Luddites will fail, evolutionarily.
Slashdot Mirror
There were tunnels, "rides" (they hopped on a car which moved downhill to the next pole), doors which only opened a certain way, and even a cooperative feeder where one squirrel had to sit on a lever to open it, and the other could eat.
I was very impressed to see both the problem-solving skills as well as the cooperation in animals as small as squirrels.
Doubt they thought of that when making the name (it was the pun you said it was on Googol), but it made me smile to see a different way of looking at it. ;-)
Well, check out Netcraft for BillGates.com...
(I know, I know it's not really his domain...)I'm sure you've had these same thoughts, I'm just amazed that whoever is in charge of signing off on your purchases hasn't.
Please email me at thing1fl at bigfoot dot com so we can continue.
Thanks!
As you said, I like to think I'm having an effect but the effect may be limited to "well I won't send this to HIM any more..." -- which to me is fine, as it keeps the clutter out of my inbox. ;-)
Cheers!
Are you currently hiring software people? I apologize for using this forum for something other than "tech talk" but I really like what you have to say and if you have opportunities I'd love to see if we can be mutually beneficial. Thanks.
It doesn't matter if you have the greatest ideas in the world. If you don't have "friends" in higher places, you probably won't have the opportunity to convey these ideas successfully.
My advice to the asker is to cultivate relationships with your boss, his boss, etc. to the point where you can take them out to lunch and ask them questions about why they're doing what they're doing, without pushing your solution. Once they explain it, perhaps your solution won't seem as valid. Or perhaps it'll be even more valid, in which case (since you've developed a good relationship) you'll be able to ask, "Have you considered X?"
And I, for one, welcome our new nad-punching overlords.
Thinking of my gut, I decided to try Natural Ice Light, which conspicuously does not have the alcohol percentage on the label.
I believe it's about half the regular, since I normally drink 6 and I ended up drinking the whole 12 pack! (Yeah, I'm a lush and I need help, but that's a different story...)
I've been playing with Stair Dismount as well, and although I can't come close to the high score, I did get a low score of 62. Beat that! ;-) (I hit the guy in the leg at low force, and toward the top of the stairs so he wouldn't fall down them...)
Nice. I just did one where the guy goes flying over the wall, off the camera! (If you use camera "3" it will follow him over the wall, sweet.)
Check out this guy's scores.dat -- I wasn't able to get it working but he said he could on another machine...
What impresses me is that someone has managed to get over 203k! See the high score list.
I managed to get the truck to roll over. Didn't crush the guy tho; still working on that. ;-)
Oh, I don't know about that. Just because someone is providing a good or service for which there is a demand doesn't say anything about whether or not they care about the well-being of their clients. I would imagine the opposite: a drug dealer thrives on repeat business, and therefore wants his customers to live as long as possible.
The rest of your points are valid, though.
Those are my relatives, you insensitive clod!
I would say SCO is between a rock and a hard place on this one: if they stop distributing it, then they are in violation of the GPL by not providing sources to people who have purchased the binaries.
However, that doesn't mean they have to keep it on their FTP site for the world to download; they could either password-protect it for their customers' eyes only, or they could snail-mail a CD with it. By letting you and me download the code, they appear to be saying that there are no IP issues with that code.
SCO isn't so big a company that their right and left hands don't know what they're doing, are they?
"rock-in-roll": a rock sandwich!
While I agree, I also feel that this is a great thing.
The vendors who sell OS-less PCs will now be more competitive.
Actually there are references to it that are over 10 years old... (Google is my friend.)
Are you trying to say that, by adding eyeglasses to my face, I am now somehow less than human and shouldn't have rights?
The most obvious of which are eyeglasses. Others have talked about hearing aids and cochlear implants. My grandfather is deaf, and cannot hear anything without his hearing aids. My eyesight is poor, and I could not drive without glasses. Should we both shun our crutches simply because they're artificial? I don't think so. We're a tool-using species, and are constantly trying to create tools that will better our lives.
The transhumanist movement simply extends that idea, and I for one welcome our transhumanist overlords.
PS You referenced "bleeding" -- although you didn't say it, generally they used leeches to perform this. I learned a couple years ago that leech saliva has some healing properties to it. I think it's cool that some "old wives tales" actually have a basis in scientific reality, the more we know.
Also, I agree with the other response to your post, that Luddites will fail, evolutionarily.
Sure, if you like chasing your tail.
Turnabout, on the other hand...
Do the editors have a spell checker? Do they have bosses who care?
The glass house has four bedrooms and two are unoccupied. Is the glass house half-full or half-empty?
It appears that this will do all you ask for (and more!).