The cognitive psychology research says you need something like 10,000 hours of practice to develop the automaticity of an expert.
I'd love to know what that research is based on and how they defined 'expert'. 10,000 hours at 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with two weeks off for holidays and sick days comes out to 6 1/4 years.
Mind you, that leaves no time for doing anything else that might be job related. No reading, no classroom instruction, no meetings, no writing, etc. Yet people become competent in a wide variety of skills in much shorter time frames and can be certified as masters in many fields in roughly 4-6 years.
For example, a good friend of mine was certified as a diesel mechanic for heavy construction equipment in 2 years. He picked up a master's certificate in another couple of years.
When I was in the Navy, I became a pretty good electronic tech after about the same 2 year period, and was running my own shop after 3 more. In my case, I can guarantee I wasn't spending 8 hours a day doing nothing but electronic maintenance. On a good day, I'd average 6-7. On a low day, figure 2. (On bad days, more like 14, but those were special circumstances as nobody can troubleshoot well when they're exhausted.)
So, setting a bar of 10,000 hours as the necessary hands on goal is way too high. Maybe a better question to ask is, what's needed to become competent? Any idea?
I think it's fair to say that a lot of publishers are doing no more than sticking their toe in the water. Still, NightShade has more than 140 books listed and E-Read has over 100. Several of the others have between 6 and a dozen books listed. (I wonder if it was due to authors insisting on their books getting listed that way, or did are they resisting the option?) In any event, I'd say that's considerable progress from virtually no other publishers even willing to consider such a model just a few short years ago.
I've got a better idea: Don't buy from Amazon! There are far too many other online publishers out there that do a better job. Baen, O'Reilly, Smashwords, etc.
As several other posters have pointed out, you are wrong about the lack of improvement in mass transit in the U.S. I live in the Twin Cities. Here,
1) We've had an adequate bus system for decades. 2) We recently built a light rail system between downtown Minneapolis and the airport which exceeded per day ridership estimates for the end of 12 months service in the first month. 3) The rail route is so successful that we've added a commuter train from the northwest suburbs, and 4) The next planned light rail line between Minneapolis and St. Paul was moved up by 18 months. 5) We also have one of the most extensive bike trail systems in the country according to Bicycling Magazine, are considered the #1 Bike City in the U.S. Mind you, this in a state where 5 months a year you're riding your bike in snow. 5) We also have extensive covered walkways called Skyways in both downtown areas so you don't even have to go outside all that much to get around if you don't want to. The some of the Skyways have been in place since at least the mid 1960s.
I'm sorry you have lived in cities where there's such crappy planning. I suggest that if you're that passionate about public transportation, maybe you should consider moving to a city that understands it.
While I respect your point of view, you're starting from a flawed perception of the true state of affairs.
First off, "legitimately" and "legally" are not synonyms. Copyright law has been extended unjustly (IMNSHO) on at least three separate occasions in the past 60 years. Therefore, while copyright holders have a LEGAL right to limit what citizens may do with their material, they do not necessarily have a LEGITIMATE right to enforce them.
Personally, my opinion is that we should roll back copyright terms to the original constitutional limits and patents for software should be non-existent. Software is already more than adequately covered under copyright law as it is.
Second, you're using the misleading term, "IP rights", which conflates three completely separate legal domains; trademark law, patent law, and copyright law. Since each domain is treated very differently in virtually all jurisdictions, they should each be treated separately in any discussion.
Third, you're also conflating copyright infringement, generally a civil matter, with stealing, a criminal offense. While in my view they are both illegal and unethical, they are by no means the same from a legal standpoint and should not be treated as such.
To sum up, your conclusion is wrong because it's based on a faulty understanding of the law.
Sigh. Where's NYCL when you need him? He can explain this much more cogently than I can.
In addition to the plethora of recommendations for Scalzi's "Old Man's War", I would like to recommend John Ringo's Posleen War series. As noted on Wikipedia, it's free online thanks to Baen Publishing's marketing initiatives.
While I have no argument with you that self determination is the best way forward, the automatic assumption that colonialism was an umitigated disaster is also false. See one of my earlier posts discussiong what I found on Gapminder.
I met my wife through Match.Com. We've been together now for just shy of 7 years. I pinged her the day after she had decided decided to pull her profile and let her account lapse. Fortunately, she hadn't yet gotten around to it when my forwarded email arrived in her inbox. She told me later that I intrigued her so much she re-subscribed just to reply.
We spent a week and a lot of emails back and forth before we agreed to meet for a quick dinner date. Three and a half hours into what was supposed to be less than an hour, we knew we were on to something good.:-)
Now, we had several factors working in our favor. First, we were both in our 40s so we had enough life experience to spot the obvious predators. Second, we were both coming off long term first marriages that had failed partially due to a lack of honest communication on our partners' part so we were prepared to be up front about our expectations. Third, both of us were prepared to just let the relationship develop naturally and not force it. Fourth, we had both followed up a few contacts on the site already (she more than me, actually) so we had a pretty good idea about how online communication can sometimes obscure true intent.
My advice would be to treat online dating as just one more option to meeting people. If things click between you and someone else, great! If not, in many ways it's a lot easier to walk away from an online relationship gone bad than, say, someone you met at work, at church, or your favorite local watering hole.
I'm not willing to pay $3 to watch a 27 year old movie. I'm ESPECIALLY not going to do so on top of an $80/year subscription to have the 'privilege' of paying those kinds of ridiculous fees.
Nope, Netflix at $8 or $9 a month is about right for just about everything I want to watch. When I can't find what I want to watch there, Hulu Plus for another $8 a month fills in the holes. (Although I'm finding that my faimly just doesn't care as much about Hulu Plus as I thought they might be.)
Forget using your MythTV box for anything other than a basic media center for serving up your ripped DVDs and CDs. Drop your cable TV subscription and get yourself a Roku instead.:-)
Bingo. This is definitely not a do everything, infinitely survivable means of logistical support. However, if it can beat out a mule for a reasonable price, why not keep a small unit or four around?
I'm seeing a couple of articles about an initial determination by the ITC against Barnes & Noble on its patent misuse defense, and there's quite a lot of spin on the ball, thanks to the usual suspects. They are reading a lot into a title of a sealed document. I see many misstatements.
So I'll explain a little about the process, so you can understand it. For one thing, the title of the sealed ITC initial determination is called an *initial* determination for a reason. It means it isn't final. The final one comes later. Initial determinations can be reviewed by the full ITC if the defendant petitions for review and even one Commissioner says yes.
Litigation isn't like football. It is rarely suddenly over.
Most importantly, the materials and depositions Barnes & Noble is seeking in discovery from Nokia and MOSAID have not yet arrived, although the ITC did grant Barnes & Noble's motion to ask Finland and Canada to provide them, and that's still ongoing, so there is likely more to go, even at the ITC. So with those materials not yet in hand, Microsoft's statement today that this means the defense is meritless is... well... to put it kindly premature. I mean, if a determination is made without the complete record being available, what does it mean?
Well, the mindset for developing a solid back end that never fails no matter what has to be different from that required to develop a solid, easy to navigate UI (or UIs in the case where multiple front ends will be hitting the same back end application). There are very different criteria for success, after all.
So no, I don't think UI work should be delegated to just junior developers. It's a specialty that really should be led by at least one senior developer that has a passion for getting it right along with a talented designer or two. As others have mentioned, letting the designers run the whole show is just as bad (if not worse!) to leaving it in the hands of inexperienced people who are bound to flounder on their own.
Oh, we vets have been speaking out pretty much nonstop since 9/11. We have gotten drowned out, unfortunately, by the likes of Karl Rove, Rupert Murdoch, Rumsfeld, Obama, Bachmann, and all the others who claim to be on our side.:(
As others have mentioned, raw video footage that you shot yourself can chew up tons of space. So can copies of DVDs and Blu-Ray disks. Heck, I've used up about 500 GB on my completely legally purchased library and mine isn't all that large. A typical DVD release is what? 5 GB or so? A typical Blu-Ray release is nearly an order of magnitude more. It doesn't take too many of those before your 1 TB disk is full.
Throw in the fact that games now routinely require 20+ GB EACH and it's easy to see many people chewing up a 1 TB disk and wanting more without ever doing anything even remotely illegal.
Sigh. Your ignorance is appalling. From that oft-quoted and much maligned source, Wikipedia:
John Locke FRS (play/ËlÉ'k/; 29 August 1632 â" 28 October 1704), widely known as the Father of Liberalism,[2][3][4] was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.[5]
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.[6]
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (5 April 1588 â" 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury,[1] was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.[2]
Hobbes was a champion of absolutism for the sovereign but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.[3]
He was one of the founders of modern political philosophy. His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.
In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy.
These gus weren't just economists. They lived at a time when the term probably didn't even exist. What they did, though ( among other things) was lay the foundation of much of Western philosophy and political thought. In case you haven't noticed, that can include discussions of economics now and again. So, an economist showing how rights and freedoms have a direct economic impact is now outside his area of expertise?
Did it ever occur to you that many, Many, MANY issues cross multiple areas of expertise and require multiple points of view? Conversely, did it ever occur to you that an individual could become an expert in more than one field?
Have you ever heard the term, polymath? How about Renaissance Man? No? I think you need to broaden your education a bit.
Heh. The Navy used the same technique and it did work fairly well. However, after a while you can learn to drop into a light doze while standing up.
I still remember waiting for breakfast outside the chow hall, in November, at O' dark thirty. (Mind you, this was at at Great Lakes Naval Training Center outside Chicago.) My entire boot camp company would be asleep on its feet, slowly swaying back and forth while we waited for our turn to go in and chow down.
Second City Television decided to address the Canadian goverment's requirement that Canadian television had to have two minutes of Canadian specific references by letting Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas have free rein. Thus was born that ode to Canadian living, "The Great White North!" (Is that enuff Canadian fer ya, eh?):)
Funny. I just did a quick comparison of Kenya's stats in Gapminder to the dates listed in Wikipedia concerning major Kenyan historical events. From 1800-1922, life expectancy was flat and income was growing. After a 5 year dip in life expectancy from 1922-1927, both rose continuously all the way to 1983. Life expectancy went from 26 to 60.
From 1983-1988, life expectancy was flat again while income per person rose slowly. From 1988-2000, income per person was flat while life expectancy dropped to 52. 2001-2010, both rose again. Life expectancy still hasn't rebounded all the way back to its peak but it's moving in the right direction.
According to Wikipedia, Kenya became a German, then British colonial possession in 1885. It regained its independence in 1963. Based upon the data available, it looks to me as if being a colony was at worst a neutral function of people's lives. If anything, I think a strong case can be made that colonialization was an extremely positive influence for the long term health and well being of its populace. Similar tracks can be seen for virtually every African country that was formed from an old European colony.
Mind you, I'm NOT suggesting that self determination was a mistake. Far from it. I'm merely pointing out that the notion that European colonization of Africa was inherently damaging simply isn't borne out by the facts.
Going WAY off topic here, but there is one major facet that you've forgotten about; healthcare. The U.S. spends nearly twice as much as other industrialized nations for a demonstrably worse result in almost every measure. I've chosen to graph life expectancy versus % of GDP as the most obvious way of highlighting the point, but there are dozens if not hundreds of other variables available to use.
I strongly urge you to spend some time looking at some of the other variables. Watch what happens over time. There is very clearly a correlation between overall health and wellbeing of a nation and its internal politics. Another example that clearly demonstrates this is maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births) versus GDP per capita. Watch what happens in the U.S. after the 1980 and 1996 elections. These are both elections when so-called 'lesser government' ideologues gained additional political power and were able to push their agendas through legislation and manipulating political appointments. Pretty damning results, I'd say.
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I'd love to know what that research is based on and how they defined 'expert'. 10,000 hours at 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with two weeks off for holidays and sick days comes out to 6 1/4 years.
Mind you, that leaves no time for doing anything else that might be job related. No reading, no classroom instruction, no meetings, no writing, etc. Yet people become competent in a wide variety of skills in much shorter time frames and can be certified as masters in many fields in roughly 4-6 years.
For example, a good friend of mine was certified as a diesel mechanic for heavy construction equipment in 2 years. He picked up a master's certificate in another couple of years.
When I was in the Navy, I became a pretty good electronic tech after about the same 2 year period, and was running my own shop after 3 more. In my case, I can guarantee I wasn't spending 8 hours a day doing nothing but electronic maintenance. On a good day, I'd average 6-7. On a low day, figure 2. (On bad days, more like 14, but those were special circumstances as nobody can troubleshoot well when they're exhausted.)
So, setting a bar of 10,000 hours as the necessary hands on goal is way too high. Maybe a better question to ask is, what's needed to become competent? Any idea?
I think it's fair to say that a lot of publishers are doing no more than sticking their toe in the water. Still, NightShade has more than 140 books listed and E-Read has over 100. Several of the others have between 6 and a dozen books listed. (I wonder if it was due to authors insisting on their books getting listed that way, or did are they resisting the option?) In any event, I'd say that's considerable progress from virtually no other publishers even willing to consider such a model just a few short years ago.
Take a look at Baen's ebook website. There are a dozen other publishers listed these days.
You do know that Baen's website now sells books from about a dozen other publishing houses, right? :-)
I've got a better idea: Don't buy from Amazon! There are far too many other online publishers out there that do a better job. Baen, O'Reilly, Smashwords, etc.
As several other posters have pointed out, you are wrong about the lack of improvement in mass transit in the U.S. I live in the Twin Cities. Here,
1) We've had an adequate bus system for decades.
2) We recently built a light rail system between downtown Minneapolis and the airport which exceeded per day ridership estimates for the end of 12 months service in the first month.
3) The rail route is so successful that we've added a commuter train from the northwest suburbs, and
4) The next planned light rail line between Minneapolis and St. Paul was moved up by 18 months.
5) We also have one of the most extensive bike trail systems in the country according to Bicycling Magazine, are considered the #1 Bike City in the U.S. Mind you, this in a state where 5 months a year you're riding your bike in snow.
5) We also have extensive covered walkways called Skyways in both downtown areas so you don't even have to go outside all that much to get around if you don't want to. The some of the Skyways have been in place since at least the mid 1960s.
I'm sorry you have lived in cities where there's such crappy planning. I suggest that if you're that passionate about public transportation, maybe you should consider moving to a city that understands it.
While I respect your point of view, you're starting from a flawed perception of the true state of affairs.
First off, "legitimately" and "legally" are not synonyms. Copyright law has been extended unjustly (IMNSHO) on at least three separate occasions in the past 60 years. Therefore, while copyright holders have a LEGAL right to limit what citizens may do with their material, they do not necessarily have a LEGITIMATE right to enforce them.
Personally, my opinion is that we should roll back copyright terms to the original constitutional limits and patents for software should be non-existent. Software is already more than adequately covered under copyright law as it is.
Second, you're using the misleading term, "IP rights", which conflates three completely separate legal domains; trademark law, patent law, and copyright law. Since each domain is treated very differently in virtually all jurisdictions, they should each be treated separately in any discussion.
Third, you're also conflating copyright infringement, generally a civil matter, with stealing, a criminal offense. While in my view they are both illegal and unethical, they are by no means the same from a legal standpoint and should not be treated as such.
To sum up, your conclusion is wrong because it's based on a faulty understanding of the law.
Sigh. Where's NYCL when you need him? He can explain this much more cogently than I can.
Yes. And yes, we're crazy enough to enjoy it. :)
Next question.
In addition to the plethora of recommendations for Scalzi's "Old Man's War", I would like to recommend John Ringo's Posleen War series. As noted on Wikipedia, it's free online thanks to Baen Publishing's marketing initiatives.
While I have no argument with you that self determination is the best way forward, the automatic assumption that colonialism was an umitigated disaster is also false. See one of my earlier posts discussiong what I found on Gapminder.
I met my wife through Match.Com. We've been together now for just shy of 7 years. I pinged her the day after she had decided decided to pull her profile and let her account lapse. Fortunately, she hadn't yet gotten around to it when my forwarded email arrived in her inbox. She told me later that I intrigued her so much she re-subscribed just to reply.
We spent a week and a lot of emails back and forth before we agreed to meet for a quick dinner date. Three and a half hours into what was supposed to be less than an hour, we knew we were on to something good. :-)
Now, we had several factors working in our favor. First, we were both in our 40s so we had enough life experience to spot the obvious predators. Second, we were both coming off long term first marriages that had failed partially due to a lack of honest communication on our partners' part so we were prepared to be up front about our expectations. Third, both of us were prepared to just let the relationship develop naturally and not force it. Fourth, we had both followed up a few contacts on the site already (she more than me, actually) so we had a pretty good idea about how online communication can sometimes obscure true intent.
My advice would be to treat online dating as just one more option to meeting people. If things click between you and someone else, great! If not, in many ways it's a lot easier to walk away from an online relationship gone bad than, say, someone you met at work, at church, or your favorite local watering hole.
I still say, "Get yourself a Roku." In addition to everything else, it includes Amazon on Demand if you really insist on paying for it.
I'm not willing to pay $3 to watch a 27 year old movie. I'm ESPECIALLY not going to do so on top of an $80/year subscription to have the 'privilege' of paying those kinds of ridiculous fees.
Nope, Netflix at $8 or $9 a month is about right for just about everything I want to watch. When I can't find what I want to watch there, Hulu Plus for another $8 a month fills in the holes. (Although I'm finding that my faimly just doesn't care as much about Hulu Plus as I thought they might be.)
Then there's all the free or cheap movie resources of all kinds to fill up your evenings, specialty channels, streaming music, news, private channels created by the community, and more galore!
Forget using your MythTV box for anything other than a basic media center for serving up your ripped DVDs and CDs. Drop your cable TV subscription and get yourself a Roku instead. :-)
Bingo. This is definitely not a do everything, infinitely survivable means of logistical support. However, if it can beat out a mule for a reasonable price, why not keep a small unit or four around?
before making any assumptions:
Lots more here.
Well, the mindset for developing a solid back end that never fails no matter what has to be different from that required to develop a solid, easy to navigate UI (or UIs in the case where multiple front ends will be hitting the same back end application). There are very different criteria for success, after all.
So no, I don't think UI work should be delegated to just junior developers. It's a specialty that really should be led by at least one senior developer that has a passion for getting it right along with a talented designer or two. As others have mentioned, letting the designers run the whole show is just as bad (if not worse!) to leaving it in the hands of inexperienced people who are bound to flounder on their own.
Oh, we vets have been speaking out pretty much nonstop since 9/11. We have gotten drowned out, unfortunately, by the likes of Karl Rove, Rupert Murdoch, Rumsfeld, Obama, Bachmann, and all the others who claim to be on our side. :(
As others have mentioned, raw video footage that you shot yourself can chew up tons of space. So can copies of DVDs and Blu-Ray disks. Heck, I've used up about 500 GB on my completely legally purchased library and mine isn't all that large. A typical DVD release is what? 5 GB or so? A typical Blu-Ray release is nearly an order of magnitude more. It doesn't take too many of those before your 1 TB disk is full.
Throw in the fact that games now routinely require 20+ GB EACH and it's easy to see many people chewing up a 1 TB disk and wanting more without ever doing anything even remotely illegal.
Sigh. Your ignorance is appalling. From that oft-quoted and much maligned source, Wikipedia:
These gus weren't just economists. They lived at a time when the term probably didn't even exist. What they did, though ( among other things) was lay the foundation of much of Western philosophy and political thought. In case you haven't noticed, that can include discussions of economics now and again. So, an economist showing how rights and freedoms have a direct economic impact is now outside his area of expertise?
Did it ever occur to you that many, Many, MANY issues cross multiple areas of expertise and require multiple points of view? Conversely, did it ever occur to you that an individual could become an expert in more than one field?
Have you ever heard the term, polymath? How about Renaissance Man? No? I think you need to broaden your education a bit.
Heh. The Navy used the same technique and it did work fairly well. However, after a while you can learn to drop into a light doze while standing up.
I still remember waiting for breakfast outside the chow hall, in November, at O' dark thirty. (Mind you, this was at at Great Lakes Naval Training Center outside Chicago.) My entire boot camp company would be asleep on its feet, slowly swaying back and forth while we waited for our turn to go in and chow down.
Yeah, but you've got Powell's Books all over California while I can't find one in the Twin Cities so it balances out. :)
Second City Television decided to address the Canadian goverment's requirement that Canadian television had to have two minutes of Canadian specific references by letting Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas have free rein. Thus was born that ode to Canadian living, "The Great White North!" (Is that enuff Canadian fer ya, eh?) :)
Funny. I just did a quick comparison of Kenya's stats in Gapminder to the dates listed in Wikipedia concerning major Kenyan historical events. From 1800-1922, life expectancy was flat and income was growing. After a 5 year dip in life expectancy from 1922-1927, both rose continuously all the way to 1983. Life expectancy went from 26 to 60.
From 1983-1988, life expectancy was flat again while income per person rose slowly. From 1988-2000, income per person was flat while life expectancy dropped to 52. 2001-2010, both rose again. Life expectancy still hasn't rebounded all the way back to its peak but it's moving in the right direction.
According to Wikipedia, Kenya became a German, then British colonial possession in 1885. It regained its independence in 1963. Based upon the data available, it looks to me as if being a colony was at worst a neutral function of people's lives. If anything, I think a strong case can be made that colonialization was an extremely positive influence for the long term health and well being of its populace. Similar tracks can be seen for virtually every African country that was formed from an old European colony.
Mind you, I'm NOT suggesting that self determination was a mistake. Far from it. I'm merely pointing out that the notion that European colonization of Africa was inherently damaging simply isn't borne out by the facts.
Given the usage, it has to be a term that's fairly commonly known somewhere but I've never seen it.
Going WAY off topic here, but there is one major facet that you've forgotten about; healthcare. The U.S. spends nearly twice as much as other industrialized nations for a demonstrably worse result in almost every measure. I've chosen to graph life expectancy versus % of GDP as the most obvious way of highlighting the point, but there are dozens if not hundreds of other variables available to use.
I strongly urge you to spend some time looking at some of the other variables. Watch what happens over time. There is very clearly a correlation between overall health and wellbeing of a nation and its internal politics. Another example that clearly demonstrates this is maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births) versus GDP per capita. Watch what happens in the U.S. after the 1980 and 1996 elections. These are both elections when so-called 'lesser government' ideologues gained additional political power and were able to push their agendas through legislation and manipulating political appointments. Pretty damning results, I'd say.