And a quick followup - think about a profession as well researched, as old and rigorous as civil engineering. The engineering of structures. Even in this environment where the concepts are well known, the profession is ancient, snafus happen. There is new metro station in the DC metro area. It is RIFE with problems:
Silver Spring Transit Center to get new layer of concrete to address construction flaws By Bill Turque,September 06, 2013 Washington Post
"The $120 million bus and train hub at Georgia Ave. and Colesville Rd. is more than two years behind schedule and tens of millions of dollars over budget. Issues with concrete — including cracks, insufficient thickness and questions about strength in some areas — have played a major role in the delay." -- Washington Post
I can imagine managers are thinking, "What the hell? How many metro stations are there in this region? In this country?? There's no new concepts here! You people all have P.E's! The processes for design are totally standardized! How could this possibly happen?"
I think the most interesting thought in the article was about the author's observation of contempt between modern managers (in the example in the publishing business) and the engineers who actually create and manage systems.
I know why this is: A vice president of a staffing firm is in my social circle. A group of us were talking about a website idea. The VP and some quasi technical managers assured me that the solution was commoditized - already done before, available off the shelf as components. Nothing new, just need to get qualified people and equipment to plug and play. Very straightforward.
So, while that is technically true... it is an utterly different and vastly more difficult matter to be able to identify the right people and create an environment where they can obtain the right equipment and room to maneuver. So, while the CTO of Google might be able to snap his fingers and create the website in a few weeks, a staffing company doesn't have access to that specific elite experience, or that development environment.
Managers want to look at us - programmers, software engineers - as totally fungible, mere factory robots. Identical units which can quickly be obtained off the shelf and who can then implement a solution as long as it's kind of similar to any existing solution. HOWEVER - we're more like doctors and hospitals, where, despite having the same title, the variation in ability and intelligence and tools is quite high. Think about the medical stories you read about where the person goes through doctor after doctor trying to cure a malady, until they find the right doctor. Or where a person has a rare malady and serendipitously finds a doctor researching this issue and obtains a cure. I think this dynamic exists in all professions but it's quite emphasized in programming.
So, that's why there might be contempt - both sides really don't understand what they're dealing with. Managers looking at people who inexplicably can't just "do it" - they look at programmers like fungible factory robots (I don't say workers because even unskilled labor has variations in ability) turning bolts to put together pre-existing solutions. And programmers thrown into hidebound, designed-to-thwart-change development environments while trying to learn new concepts and put together novel solutions in a designed-to-fail environment.
What about a per-unit comparison of the environmental footprint of ICE cars versus battery-powered cars?
The oil infrastructure to support the US is huge. The battery manufacture infrastructure is not. How does environmental impact work out on a per unit basis? On an aggregate basis, of course the oil infrastructure is dirtier - if for no other reason, it's bigger. But the per-unit comparison will provide an idea of whether an individual electric car is environmentally dirtier than an oil burner.
I haven't seen a really good answer to the question yet.
"So what if rich companies can communicate more widely than you?"
The "so what" is that they have a darned good whack at drowning out all voices but their own. Inherently undemocratic. Money as speech seems, to me, to be taking us closer and closer to an authoritarian system.
It's called "crony capitalism." The system had been growing for a long time, but was only publicly exposed with the financial crisis of 2008.
"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." - Warren Buffett
They are fantastic cameras to keep in a car in case of an accident. Extremely durable. I'd seen them used in fleet vehicles for years. Kept in cars year-round, through the 100+ degree summers and sub-freezing winters. Mine always worked. I had one for years until Polaroid 600 film went away.
Yeah, nowadays many folks have camera phones. But not all. And this is a cheap, durable, reliable way to have a camera in the car at all times.
Unreliable research Trouble at the lab Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not Oct 19th 2013 |From the print edition The Economist
First, the statistics, which if perhaps off-putting are quite crucial. Scientists divide errors into two classes. A type I error is the mistake of thinking something is true when it is not (also known as a “false positive”). A type II error is thinking something is not true when in fact it is (a “false negative”). When testing a specific hypothesis, scientists run statistical checks to work out how likely it would be for data which seem to support the idea to have come about simply by chance. If the likelihood of such a false-positive conclusion is less than 5%, they deem the evidence that the hypothesis is true “statistically significant”. They are thus accepting that one result in 20 will be falsely positive—but one in 20 seems a satisfactorily low rate.
In 2005 John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist from Stanford University, caused a stir with a paper showing why, as a matter of statistical logic, the idea that only one such paper in 20 gives a false-positive result was hugely optimistic. Instead, he argued, “most published research findings are probably false.” As he told the quadrennial International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, held this September in Chicago, the problem has not gone away.
Dr Ioannidis draws his stark conclusion on the basis that the customary approach to statistical significance ignores three things: the “statistical power” of the study (a measure of its ability to avoid type II errors, false negatives in which a real signal is missed in the noise); the unlikeliness of the hypothesis being tested; and the pervasive bias favouring the publication of claims to have found something new.
Sweden, on the other hand, focuses on bringing people who have strayed from the path back into society. Their methods work. However, if anyone in the US wants to employ their methods, they are seen as "soft on crime" at worst. At best, they can't get the funding needed to enact meaningful rehabilitation programs. It is far cheaper (in the short term) and easier to put people in cages compared to education and rehabilitation.
We already tried "Hug and Release" back in the 1970s and 80s. Crime rates had been skyrocketing for a long time. Only when the mid 90s hit, and the country returned to retributive punishments with a vengeance did crime rates start falling again.
This seems to be a pattern. Prisoners rights advocates hold sway, influence the public to forget the offenders' crimes, just look at how handsome they are, crime starts going up. Innocent people are victimized more and more, then finally, society realizes it must remove criminals from society and aggressively pursue criminals in order to lower crime rates. New York is this issue writ large. Only when it unbelievably elected Giuliani did he institute zero tolerance policies which finally brought the crime rate down. I remember the puzzled social commentators just baffled about how Giuliani's policies could possibly work. Darkly amusing.
Almost universally in software development, starting from scratch is a stupid fucking idea repeated by inexperienced developers.
For working, debugged, stable code that looks messy, that's almost always true. But this site failed immediately when put under load.
Now, if the site logic for ONE user is sound, then they could preserve that and put in the infrastructure needed to handle the sheer electricity of thousands of requests per minute. That's what Google is known for, with their vast datacenters and ability to load balance. Oracle is known for databases able to handle high concurrent transaction loads. Red Hat can provide support on a reliable, robust operating system (Linux).
For 654 million dollars, hopefully the government got the logic and blueprints down for how one user is supposed to progress. Now, the folks who know how to handle the sheer electrical volume of the massive numbers of connections can perhaps install that missing, essential portion of the website. IF of course, the design and logic of the site for one user is sound.
"May 18, 1998: The big day. The U.S. Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general file an antitrust suit against Microsoft, charging the company with abusing its market power to thwart competition, including Netscape.
September 6, 2001: U.S. Justice Department says it no longer seeks the breakup of Microsoft and wants to find a quick remedy in the antitrust case. "
As real as working out on a football or soccer field. The concept, method or data must be conveyed to the learner. The learner must work to remember and apply the knowledge. It. Is. Work. Yeah, there are the very gifted for whom it is very easy. But then high athletic achievement is easy for the elite few.
What problem is the tablet supposed to solve, I wonder?
It is important to try and educate the populace. It's good for the society. It's good for the individual. But I get the impression that technology is used as a deflection to try and somehow reduce the effort that memorization and practice demand.
Having said, that, if there is some problem that the portable computer actually solves, then perhaps they should look into the laptops given to soldiers - Panasonic Toughbooks. They talk of "soldier-proofing." They need to talk about "teenager-proofing."
A lot of people change their minds about their activities once they realize that other people don't approve.
By trying to hide his activities, he already know that others don't approve. By threatening the victim with pain in order to get them to do what he wants, he shows he understand human motivations and behavior.
This indicates a normal, or perhaps even above-normal understanding of human behavior. Very far from autistic.
The car is like a predator on the hunt. The inattentive smartphone user is like an oblivious gazelle. Suddenly the car pounces! One less oblivious gazelle on the savannah.
Eventually, selection pressure will weed out the oblivious gazelles, leaving only the alert ones.
Slashdot Mirror
"One man's religion is another man's belly laugh." -- Robert Heinlein
And a quick followup - think about a profession as well researched, as old and rigorous as civil engineering. The engineering of structures. Even in this environment where the concepts are well known, the profession is ancient, snafus happen. There is new metro station in the DC metro area. It is RIFE with problems:
Silver Spring Transit Center to get new layer of concrete to address construction flaws
By Bill Turque,September 06, 2013
Washington Post
"The $120 million bus and train hub at Georgia Ave. and Colesville Rd. is more than two years behind schedule and tens of millions of dollars over budget. Issues with concrete — including cracks, insufficient thickness and questions about strength in some areas — have played a major role in the delay." -- Washington Post
I can imagine managers are thinking, "What the hell? How many metro stations are there in this region? In this country?? There's no new concepts here! You people all have P.E's! The processes for design are totally standardized! How could this possibly happen?"
I know why this is: A vice president of a staffing firm is in my social circle. A group of us were talking about a website idea. The VP and some quasi technical managers assured me that the solution was commoditized - already done before, available off the shelf as components. Nothing new, just need to get qualified people and equipment to plug and play. Very straightforward.
So, while that is technically true... it is an utterly different and vastly more difficult matter to be able to identify the right people and create an environment where they can obtain the right equipment and room to maneuver. So, while the CTO of Google might be able to snap his fingers and create the website in a few weeks, a staffing company doesn't have access to that specific elite experience, or that development environment.
Managers want to look at us - programmers, software engineers - as totally fungible, mere factory robots. Identical units which can quickly be obtained off the shelf and who can then implement a solution as long as it's kind of similar to any existing solution. HOWEVER - we're more like doctors and hospitals, where, despite having the same title, the variation in ability and intelligence and tools is quite high. Think about the medical stories you read about where the person goes through doctor after doctor trying to cure a malady, until they find the right doctor. Or where a person has a rare malady and serendipitously finds a doctor researching this issue and obtains a cure. I think this dynamic exists in all professions but it's quite emphasized in programming.
So, that's why there might be contempt - both sides really don't understand what they're dealing with. Managers looking at people who inexplicably can't just "do it" - they look at programmers like fungible factory robots (I don't say workers because even unskilled labor has variations in ability) turning bolts to put together pre-existing solutions. And programmers thrown into hidebound, designed-to-thwart-change development environments while trying to learn new concepts and put together novel solutions in a designed-to-fail environment.
Google Trends underscores this point.
What about a per-unit comparison of the environmental footprint of ICE cars versus battery-powered cars?
The oil infrastructure to support the US is huge. The battery manufacture infrastructure is not. How does environmental impact work out on a per unit basis? On an aggregate basis, of course the oil infrastructure is dirtier - if for no other reason, it's bigger. But the per-unit comparison will provide an idea of whether an individual electric car is environmentally dirtier than an oil burner.
I haven't seen a really good answer to the question yet.
Electricity generation in the US, by energy source.
"Coal 37%
Natural Gas 30%
Nuclear 19%
Hydropower 7%
Other Renewable 5%
Petroleum 1%"
How long does the battery last before it must be replaced? And will that cost offset any savings I've obtained during the life of the vehicle?
How does the environmental footprint of the battery compare with the environmental footprint of an oil burner?
It's called "crony capitalism." The system had been growing for a long time, but was only publicly exposed with the financial crisis of 2008.
"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." - Warren Buffett
They are fantastic cameras to keep in a car in case of an accident. Extremely durable. I'd seen them used in fleet vehicles for years. Kept in cars year-round, through the 100+ degree summers and sub-freezing winters. Mine always worked. I had one for years until Polaroid 600 film went away.
Yeah, nowadays many folks have camera phones. But not all. And this is a cheap, durable, reliable way to have a camera in the car at all times.
Unreliable research
Trouble at the lab
Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not
Oct 19th 2013 |From the print edition
The Economist
First, the statistics, which if perhaps off-putting are quite crucial. Scientists divide errors into two classes. A type I error is the mistake of thinking something is true when it is not (also known as a “false positive”). A type II error is thinking something is not true when in fact it is (a “false negative”). When testing a specific hypothesis, scientists run statistical checks to work out how likely it would be for data which seem to support the idea to have come about simply by chance. If the likelihood of such a false-positive conclusion is less than 5%, they deem the evidence that the hypothesis is true “statistically significant”. They are thus accepting that one result in 20 will be falsely positive—but one in 20 seems a satisfactorily low rate.
In 2005 John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist from Stanford University, caused a stir with a paper showing why, as a matter of statistical logic, the idea that only one such paper in 20 gives a false-positive result was hugely optimistic. Instead, he argued, “most published research findings are probably false.” As he told the quadrennial International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, held this September in Chicago, the problem has not gone away.
Dr Ioannidis draws his stark conclusion on the basis that the customary approach to statistical significance ignores three things: the “statistical power” of the study (a measure of its ability to avoid type II errors, false negatives in which a real signal is missed in the noise); the unlikeliness of the hypothesis being tested; and the pervasive bias favouring the publication of claims to have found something new.
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble
We already tried "Hug and Release" back in the 1970s and 80s. Crime rates had been skyrocketing for a long time. Only when the mid 90s hit, and the country returned to retributive punishments with a vengeance did crime rates start falling again.
Citation:
1) http://www.bjs.gov/ucrdata/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm - select "United States-total" from the first list box, "Violent Crime Rates" from the second list box, leave date range from 1960 to 2012, and click the "Get Table" button.
This seems to be a pattern. Prisoners rights advocates hold sway, influence the public to forget the offenders' crimes, just look at how handsome they are, crime starts going up. Innocent people are victimized more and more, then finally, society realizes it must remove criminals from society and aggressively pursue criminals in order to lower crime rates. New York is this issue writ large. Only when it unbelievably elected Giuliani did he institute zero tolerance policies which finally brought the crime rate down. I remember the puzzled social commentators just baffled about how Giuliani's policies could possibly work. Darkly amusing.
1) "One Night In Bangkok" by Murray Head, from the musical "Chess."
2) About the song.
3) About the musical.
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine.
To get an idea of the size of these trucks:
1) Overview of the Caterpillar 797B mining dump trucks, at the Albion Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada.
2) The mining shovel which loads (and dwarfs) the 797B.
For working, debugged, stable code that looks messy, that's almost always true. But this site failed immediately when put under load.
Now, if the site logic for ONE user is sound, then they could preserve that and put in the infrastructure needed to handle the sheer electricity of thousands of requests per minute. That's what Google is known for, with their vast datacenters and ability to load balance. Oracle is known for databases able to handle high concurrent transaction loads. Red Hat can provide support on a reliable, robust operating system (Linux).
For 654 million dollars, hopefully the government got the logic and blueprints down for how one user is supposed to progress. Now, the folks who know how to handle the sheer electrical volume of the massive numbers of connections can perhaps install that missing, essential portion of the website. IF of course, the design and logic of the site for one user is sound.
Timeline of the anti-trust case:
"May 18, 1998: The big day. The U.S. Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general file an antitrust suit against Microsoft, charging the company with abusing its market power to thwart competition, including Netscape.
September 6, 2001: U.S. Justice Department says it no longer seeks the breakup of Microsoft and wants to find a quick remedy in the antitrust case. "
Timeline of Microsoft political donations.
Both of you bleed red. But you're the one who gets sent to the front.
OpenSecrets.org - See who's giving & who's getting.
"When everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible."
As real as working out on a football or soccer field. The concept, method or data must be conveyed to the learner. The learner must work to remember and apply the knowledge. It. Is. Work. Yeah, there are the very gifted for whom it is very easy. But then high athletic achievement is easy for the elite few.
What problem is the tablet supposed to solve, I wonder?
It is important to try and educate the populace. It's good for the society. It's good for the individual. But I get the impression that technology is used as a deflection to try and somehow reduce the effort that memorization and practice demand.
Having said, that, if there is some problem that the portable computer actually solves, then perhaps they should look into the laptops given to soldiers - Panasonic Toughbooks. They talk of "soldier-proofing." They need to talk about "teenager-proofing."
Three words: "Miley Cyrus twerked."
Google Trends search term popularity.
Achieving fusion break-even just when a skinny white girl learns to twerk is just wrong place, wrong time, baby.
Re-election rates for Congress over the years: http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php
Kissinger quipped: “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’
They went after the National Association of Realtors. The fifth largest all-time donor to federal politicians since 1989.
When big political donors get upset, politicians will act.
By trying to hide his activities, he already know that others don't approve. By threatening the victim with pain in order to get them to do what he wants, he shows he understand human motivations and behavior.
This indicates a normal, or perhaps even above-normal understanding of human behavior. Very far from autistic.
Relevant: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174
The car is like a predator on the hunt. The inattentive smartphone user is like an oblivious gazelle. Suddenly the car pounces! One less oblivious gazelle on the savannah.
Eventually, selection pressure will weed out the oblivious gazelles, leaving only the alert ones.
Nature is both terrible and beautiful.