I read this earlier, and at first glance it's counter-intuitive. Why would older languages have more phonemes and not less? That's a lot more sounds to have to learn and be able to physically reproduce. I presume the extra physical difficulty was a substitute for the extra intelligence required to couple many phonemes together to make new meanings. So perhaps a single utterance was used to mean food, another sound for sleep, etc, so that each phoneme meant just one thing? Then it was small step to take the phoneme for food, add a hand gesture to it and that meant eat. Eventually that gesture was replaced with another phoneme, thus you had two phonemes combined like "food + action" meaning to eat. As humans became more intelligent they ditched the hard to produce sounds and used groups of easier to product phonemes instead? I'm not a linguist and the article doesn't talk about any of this sort of thing, but it makes sense to me.
will have more variations where it came about, and it actually makes intuitive sense. That's because the rate of change of will be slower than the rate of movement of the carriers (in this case people.) Example: Where are the most variations of English found? That's right, England. Go around on a train and talk to the locals, each area has it's own distinct accent. Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester. Very near each other, but different accents.
Go to America, and talk to people. They mostly came from a few regions of Britain, and those accents have spread (and changed a bit) over a huge expanse of North America. Can you tell the difference between a person from Seattle and San Fran? They quite a lot further apart from the mentioned cities in England.
Same goes with human haplotypes. More varied in Africa. Less in Polynesia.
So, there's two categories of things you need. You need equipment/services to make it possible. And you need to create a sense of "team" among the members, which is harder to do when you're not in the same room.
Stuff: -campfirenow.com. A web-chat for multiple users, where you can see what you missed while you weren't logged in.- -Webcams. There's still such a thing as body language. -Project management software. We use fogbugz to track dev projects. Whatever you industry is, you might want something similar, because you can't just lean over and explain the issues to your team members. Also, it's good to have a record of issues so you don't forget. -Various kinds of shared desktop software. You'll want to be able to show people things, instead of just typing out descriptions. -Extra desks. We have extra desks for team members who work from home. If they come in, they won't be homeless, sitting on a tripod, and working on a 10 year old machine.
Teambuilding: -Try to meet for socials now and again, wherever you are in the world. Paintball/Steak/Strippers, depends on what people want to do, but don't skimp on money. You don't want people to feel like they're just sitting in front of their computer taking orders from a web page. -Sometimes, you'll need people to actually work together. Looming deadlines and important launches will benefit from flying people in to work face-to-face. -Generally, the more life-like contact, the better. I've seen offices where remote users were on webcam, able to join in the banter.
This is precisely correct. Everyone is free to pursue happiness. As many of you Slashdotters know, if there's one thing that everyone needs, it's sex. Why doesn't the government provide you with this? Because you'd need the cooperation of other people, who would not necessarily want to cooperate.
Quick vehicles, large livable buildings and females covered in grease are not culture.
Are you kidding me? Why are those things not culture? Isn't it up to each person to decide what the appreciate in life, and try to get it without forcing others to give up theirs? Or is everyone happy with having "culture" defined for them?
Exceptional people go to these schools. That's why the high achievers tend to come from those schools.
Didn't George W. Bush come from Harvard? This seems to illustrate the point rolfwind was trying to make.
He's exceptionally well connected. The school picks people who will do well. This mainly means picking people who are good at learning stuff and applying it in various fields. But you get a few legacies and other people who will "inherit high achievement", unreasonable as it may seem. Point still stands. The schools pick the winners.
I guess it's just a predictable defence mechanism. Some moderately intelligent types at school used to do it: each time they'd finished a test, they'd proudly announce to everyone (particularly those who they regarded as competitors) how easy it was; telling them the answers to all the questions they were confident about. You know what? This sort of person never reached the top. That place was reserved to (i) the quietly confident - the real genius types who had no insecurity they needed to make up for; and (ii) the fairly talented who also happened to be extremely hard-working (and had no time for such nonsense).
I always found it amusing when someone said the test was easy. Because of course, they'd never get it all right.
Actually, the people who annoyed me the most were the ones who'd go "oh, it was really difficult, I think I might have barely passed" and ended up getting 100% anyway. Humble motherfuckers.
I seem to recall some Latin oath at matriculation at Oxford back in the day (1999). I don't have a firstborn yet, but I guess we'll see what happens...
"Knowledge isn't worth as much as people seem to think; at its heart, it's just trivia. What matters is the ability to think, and that doesn't change from generation to generation."
Disagree. For example, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes about this a lot -- the evidence is that critical thinking and deep domain knowledge go hand-in-hand. Knowing the details about what you're researching give you more vocabulary, greater context, and more connections to see the "big picture". That is, thinking has to be thinking *about something*, and the more practice in the details of any given problem domain make a big difference.
"There's no such thing as critical thinking 'skills.' There are strategies that aid critical thinking—but these can only take one's thinking to the precipice, no further. Then what? Critical thinking depends on knowing relevant content very well—and thinking about it, repeatedly, in critical ways." -- Intro to "Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?" (http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2007/index.cfm)
This is one of those things that seems so glaringly obvious, I don't know how anyone can separate knowledge from thinking. It makes me cringe every time I hear about kids being taught how to think and be creative instead of "just knowledge". It's like trying to design a Lego castle without having ever felt a block in your hand.
Places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, more often than not, is more about getting to learn the right people rather than just subjects. Some people people try to network/schmooze a million other people in some pathetic attempt to advance, going to these schools allows you access to colleague that will be in the advanced ranks in coming years and have them see you as one of their own.
Of course, exceptional people can overcome that, but that requires extra work, and comparing 2 people who are pretty much the same, the one who went to the right schools has a definite advantage. Another aspect of that is the old "nobody got fired for buying IBM" type thinking.
Exceptional people go to these schools. That's why the high achievers tend to come from those schools.
WTF? Who's gonna not have the will to survive? Isn't screaming in fear an indication of this desire?
There's a difference between the will to live and the will to survive. Survival means you live by reasoning, determination, training, and actions. Living simply means you continue to breathe until you are found. The will to survive is the mental conditioning of your mind to survive no matter what man, nature, or luck throws at you. Never underestimate the power of the mind.
That's about as useful as saying "whoever wants it more will win the game", along with a list of other mind-over-matter clichés.
You don't get bonus points for "but he survived to feel the impact" on your autopsy report.
There is no effing achievement for that!
Meh, I'd rather not be put down in my sleep like an ailing pet, thanks. More seriously though, the will to survive is probably the single most important factor in any survival situation, closely followed by knowledge of what to do in your environment. Its shocking how many people just give up, lie down and die, sometimes when help was close at hand. Keeping your spirits up is vital, even if you've just been sucked out of a plane!:D
WTF? Who's gonna not have the will to survive? Isn't screaming in fear an indication of this desire?
I suppose I might as well start the game by saying nothing would have been much different. Getting first to the moon would still have been a matter of prestige, so why wouldn't that contest have happened? And would it change who got there first? IIRC the soviets weren't that close, having some issues with the willingness to back the project, and one of the main designers passing away. Here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Moonshot
...Are the lawmakers that arrogant that they think they can understand the basics of software development in about one sitting, when an engineer have to study the subject for several years?
Well, yes. Lawmakers and judges always think then can decide on things they don't understand. Otherwise everything would be decided by guilds. Might be a good thing, btw.
How is the judge going to learn enough about Java, in a way that is unbiased by the lawyers for each side, in a few weeks, to make a sensible decision? Doesn't he need to know a fair bit about how Java code is used, who uses it, what for, etc?
Not knowledgeable about ST, but isn't he an engine room guy? As a guy with a Masters in Engineering, I feel I should remark that certain people who are called Engineers are actually mechanics. Not a slight to mechanics, just saying it takes a long time and effort to get this degree, and a dude who happens to sit in a spaceship can call himself one? (Or a train for that matter. Or a guy who fixes your fridge.)
Also, the times I've seen "Engineers" in ST, they seem to be operators rather than designers. Sure, sometimes they come up with novel uses from whatever resources are available, which I suppose is engineering, but really, they're users, not designers.
Add to this all the inconvenience of being followed around all day by researchers documenting her every move, hoping to catch any mating procedures on film.
I always wondered what Attenborough on Humans would sound like... "And here... he buys her a drink. Alas, this time she drinks it... has a second look... and gives him the wrong number..."
The final bill was only for a few pounds, but the lady on the phone actually said they couldn't make us pay. Also, overseas redirect would cost quite a bit, on a monthly basis. Not really reasonable to ask someone to do when they're not expecting any mail at all.
1) They've been trying to bill my firm for a couple of years. They've screwed up the bill each time, and the mailing list of people involved in this rather simple task grew to over 50. 2) We've been quoted 69 days to get a line into an office. That's just the quote. It's now been about 4 months. 3) I tried to pay my final bill for my landline at home, telling them I'd left the country. It turns out they aren't able to send the final bill to other countries. The lady on the phone basically said they'd send the bill to the vacant flat, and we could as well ignore it.
I've never seen this many staff and man-hours spent on doing anything so badly, ever.
The guy in the article describes it a little differently. He ended up losing his family, becoming addicted to various substances and had a price on his head when he finally left.
That said, I wonder why they don't use smaller, simpler, unmanned subs. Making a submersible liveable for a crew of 6 seems like a whole lot of resource and engineering overhead when they can probably get a few people to bang out gps-only navigation. It's not like they don't have access to clever people to get the job done.
I don't know much about the drugs business, but I get the feeling they try to pack huge amounts of stuff in each shipment. Probably beats having loads of individual trucks, which one might use if one was in a legit business. The problem, of course, is you're betting a lot on each shipment going through. Can you imagine losing 250M worth of dope because something went wrong with the nav system? They probably want real people on board to make sure everything goes to plan, and in order to navigate the vagaries of illicit drug delivery. You know, stay submerged an extra day if you sniff trouble, that kind of thing. Also, you need real people doing the delivery in order to confirm receipt.
Another important thing to remember is the relative cost of labour vs capital. You can get a moderately cheap engineer plus some cheap guys from an impoverished background to sit on a boat, or you can get an expensive guy with a degree to build you an expensive piece of kit. I suppose the balance will tip for someone...
In principle though, I can see where you're coming from. I wouldn't be surprised if some drug baron hadn't already started trials with automated vessels.
Slashdot Mirror
I read this earlier, and at first glance it's counter-intuitive. Why would older languages have more phonemes and not less? That's a lot more sounds to have to learn and be able to physically reproduce. I presume the extra physical difficulty was a substitute for the extra intelligence required to couple many phonemes together to make new meanings. So perhaps a single utterance was used to mean food, another sound for sleep, etc, so that each phoneme meant just one thing? Then it was small step to take the phoneme for food, add a hand gesture to it and that meant eat. Eventually that gesture was replaced with another phoneme, thus you had two phonemes combined like "food + action" meaning to eat. As humans became more intelligent they ditched the hard to produce sounds and used groups of easier to product phonemes instead? I'm not a linguist and the article doesn't talk about any of this sort of thing, but it makes sense to me.
will have more variations where it came about, and it actually makes intuitive sense. That's because the rate of change of will be slower than the rate of movement of the carriers (in this case people.) Example: Where are the most variations of English found? That's right, England. Go around on a train and talk to the locals, each area has it's own distinct accent. Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester. Very near each other, but different accents.
Go to America, and talk to people. They mostly came from a few regions of Britain, and those accents have spread (and changed a bit) over a huge expanse of North America. Can you tell the difference between a person from Seattle and San Fran? They quite a lot further apart from the mentioned cities in England.
Same goes with human haplotypes. More varied in Africa. Less in Polynesia.
So, there's two categories of things you need. You need equipment/services to make it possible. And you need to create a sense of "team" among the members, which is harder to do when you're not in the same room.
Stuff:
-campfirenow.com. A web-chat for multiple users, where you can see what you missed while you weren't logged in.-
-Webcams. There's still such a thing as body language.
-Project management software. We use fogbugz to track dev projects. Whatever you industry is, you might want something similar, because you can't just lean over and explain the issues to your team members. Also, it's good to have a record of issues so you don't forget.
-Various kinds of shared desktop software. You'll want to be able to show people things, instead of just typing out descriptions.
-Extra desks. We have extra desks for team members who work from home. If they come in, they won't be homeless, sitting on a tripod, and working on a 10 year old machine.
Teambuilding:
-Try to meet for socials now and again, wherever you are in the world. Paintball/Steak/Strippers, depends on what people want to do, but don't skimp on money. You don't want people to feel like they're just sitting in front of their computer taking orders from a web page.
-Sometimes, you'll need people to actually work together. Looming deadlines and important launches will benefit from flying people in to work face-to-face.
-Generally, the more life-like contact, the better. I've seen offices where remote users were on webcam, able to join in the banter.
This is precisely correct. Everyone is free to pursue happiness. As many of you Slashdotters know, if there's one thing that everyone needs, it's sex. Why doesn't the government provide you with this? Because you'd need the cooperation of other people, who would not necessarily want to cooperate.
So you merely think that people should not be forced OFF the web once on it, rather than helped onto it when off it? I'd agree with that.
Quick vehicles, large livable buildings and females covered in grease are not culture.
Are you kidding me? Why are those things not culture? Isn't it up to each person to decide what the appreciate in life, and try to get it without forcing others to give up theirs? Or is everyone happy with having "culture" defined for them?
Not to be pedantic or anything, but isn't 1 + i at a 45deg angle to 3?
Nepotism or not, Yale and Harvard still backed a winner.
Exceptional people go to these schools. That's why the high achievers tend to come from those schools.
Didn't George W. Bush come from Harvard?
This seems to illustrate the point rolfwind was trying to make.
He's exceptionally well connected. The school picks people who will do well. This mainly means picking people who are good at learning stuff and applying it in various fields. But you get a few legacies and other people who will "inherit high achievement", unreasonable as it may seem. Point still stands. The schools pick the winners.
President's of course, are not high achievers? Where's your point?
I guess it's just a predictable defence mechanism. Some moderately intelligent types at school used to do it: each time they'd finished a test, they'd proudly announce to everyone (particularly those who they regarded as competitors) how easy it was; telling them the answers to all the questions they were confident about. You know what? This sort of person never reached the top. That place was reserved to (i) the quietly confident - the real genius types who had no insecurity they needed to make up for; and (ii) the fairly talented who also happened to be extremely hard-working (and had no time for such nonsense).
I always found it amusing when someone said the test was easy. Because of course, they'd never get it all right.
Actually, the people who annoyed me the most were the ones who'd go "oh, it was really difficult, I think I might have barely passed" and ended up getting 100% anyway. Humble motherfuckers.
I seem to recall some Latin oath at matriculation at Oxford back in the day (1999). I don't have a firstborn yet, but I guess we'll see what happens...
"Knowledge isn't worth as much as people seem to think; at its heart, it's just trivia. What matters is the ability to think, and that doesn't change from generation to generation."
Disagree. For example, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes about this a lot -- the evidence is that critical thinking and deep domain knowledge go hand-in-hand. Knowing the details about what you're researching give you more vocabulary, greater context, and more connections to see the "big picture". That is, thinking has to be thinking *about something*, and the more practice in the details of any given problem domain make a big difference.
"There's no such thing as critical thinking 'skills.' There are strategies that aid critical thinking—but these can only take one's thinking to the precipice, no further. Then what? Critical thinking depends on knowing relevant content very well—and thinking about it, repeatedly, in critical ways." -- Intro to "Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?" (http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2007/index.cfm)
This is one of those things that seems so glaringly obvious, I don't know how anyone can separate knowledge from thinking. It makes me cringe every time I hear about kids being taught how to think and be creative instead of "just knowledge". It's like trying to design a Lego castle without having ever felt a block in your hand.
Places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, more often than not, is more about getting to learn the right people rather than just subjects. Some people people try to network/schmooze a million other people in some pathetic attempt to advance, going to these schools allows you access to colleague that will be in the advanced ranks in coming years and have them see you as one of their own.
Right now, most SC justices are from Yale/Harvard despite the fact that most SC justices historically never even graduated from law school:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2010/0511/Elena-Kagan-not-a-judge-Well-at-least-she-went-to-law-school
Of course, exceptional people can overcome that, but that requires extra work, and comparing 2 people who are pretty much the same, the one who went to the right schools has a definite advantage. Another aspect of that is the old "nobody got fired for buying IBM" type thinking.
Exceptional people go to these schools. That's why the high achievers tend to come from those schools.
WTF? Who's gonna not have the will to survive? Isn't screaming in fear an indication of this desire?
There's a difference between the will to live and the will to survive. Survival means you live by reasoning, determination, training, and actions. Living simply means you continue to breathe until you are found. The will to survive is the mental conditioning of your mind to survive no matter what man, nature, or luck throws at you. Never underestimate the power of the mind.
That's about as useful as saying "whoever wants it more will win the game", along with a list of other mind-over-matter clichés.
You don't get bonus points for "but he survived to feel the impact" on your autopsy report.
There is no effing achievement for that!
Meh, I'd rather not be put down in my sleep like an ailing pet, thanks. More seriously though, the will to survive is probably the single most important factor in any survival situation, closely followed by knowledge of what to do in your environment. Its shocking how many people just give up, lie down and die, sometimes when help was close at hand. Keeping your spirits up is vital, even if you've just been sucked out of a plane! :D
WTF? Who's gonna not have the will to survive? Isn't screaming in fear an indication of this desire?
I suppose I might as well start the game by saying nothing would have been much different. Getting first to the moon would still have been a matter of prestige, so why wouldn't that contest have happened? And would it change who got there first? IIRC the soviets weren't that close, having some issues with the willingness to back the project, and one of the main designers passing away. Here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Moonshot
Not knowledgeable about ST,
Get out. Now. Your kind is not welcome here.
I swear I have a temporary nerd permit (pending Manga test written in Klingon)! Please let me stay!
...Are the lawmakers that arrogant that they think they can understand the basics of software development in about one sitting, when an engineer have to study the subject for several years?
Well, yes. Lawmakers and judges always think then can decide on things they don't understand. Otherwise everything would be decided by guilds. Might be a good thing, btw.
How is the judge going to learn enough about Java, in a way that is unbiased by the lawyers for each side, in a few weeks, to make a sensible decision? Doesn't he need to know a fair bit about how Java code is used, who uses it, what for, etc?
Not knowledgeable about ST, but isn't he an engine room guy? As a guy with a Masters in Engineering, I feel I should remark that certain people who are called Engineers are actually mechanics. Not a slight to mechanics, just saying it takes a long time and effort to get this degree, and a dude who happens to sit in a spaceship can call himself one? (Or a train for that matter. Or a guy who fixes your fridge.)
Also, the times I've seen "Engineers" in ST, they seem to be operators rather than designers. Sure, sometimes they come up with novel uses from whatever resources are available, which I suppose is engineering, but really, they're users, not designers.
Add to this all the inconvenience of being followed around all day by researchers documenting her every move, hoping to catch any mating procedures on film.
I always wondered what Attenborough on Humans would sound like... "And here... he buys her a drink. Alas, this time she drinks it... has a second look... and gives him the wrong number..."
The final bill was only for a few pounds, but the lady on the phone actually said they couldn't make us pay. Also, overseas redirect would cost quite a bit, on a monthly basis. Not really reasonable to ask someone to do when they're not expecting any mail at all.
It will be a steaming pile of crap.
1) They've been trying to bill my firm for a couple of years. They've screwed up the bill each time, and the mailing list of people involved in this rather simple task grew to over 50.
2) We've been quoted 69 days to get a line into an office. That's just the quote. It's now been about 4 months.
3) I tried to pay my final bill for my landline at home, telling them I'd left the country. It turns out they aren't able to send the final bill to other countries. The lady on the phone basically said they'd send the bill to the vacant flat, and we could as well ignore it.
I've never seen this many staff and man-hours spent on doing anything so badly, ever.
The guy in the article describes it a little differently. He ended up losing his family, becoming addicted to various substances and had a price on his head when he finally left.
That said, I wonder why they don't use smaller, simpler, unmanned subs. Making a submersible liveable for a crew of 6 seems like a whole lot of resource and engineering overhead when they can probably get a few people to bang out gps-only navigation. It's not like they don't have access to clever people to get the job done.
I don't know much about the drugs business, but I get the feeling they try to pack huge amounts of stuff in each shipment. Probably beats having loads of individual trucks, which one might use if one was in a legit business. The problem, of course, is you're betting a lot on each shipment going through. Can you imagine losing 250M worth of dope because something went wrong with the nav system? They probably want real people on board to make sure everything goes to plan, and in order to navigate the vagaries of illicit drug delivery. You know, stay submerged an extra day if you sniff trouble, that kind of thing. Also, you need real people doing the delivery in order to confirm receipt.
Another important thing to remember is the relative cost of labour vs capital. You can get a moderately cheap engineer plus some cheap guys from an impoverished background to sit on a boat, or you can get an expensive guy with a degree to build you an expensive piece of kit. I suppose the balance will tip for someone...
In principle though, I can see where you're coming from. I wouldn't be surprised if some drug baron hadn't already started trials with automated vessels.
Sounds like the kind of thing that takes more than a few engineers to build. I wonder what toys they hand out at recruitment fairs?