I work at Microsoft. I am interested in your business ideas. Your ideas clearly demonstrate an in-depth understanding of our marketing and branding focus.
Please swing by Microsoft HQ anytime next week and we will chat.
I'm a fan of the body and mind connection that the Greeks seemed to be fond of. So many things in our world seem to be binary, and 0 ain't shit without the 1. Body isn't anything without the mind, and mind isn't anything without the body.
If you self-identify as a jock, every time you go "huh, what's that" or "that doesn't make sense", you should ask someone smarter than you. Google for it, if you don't feel comfortable. Learn what wikipedia is.
And for all the geeks who think that the previous advice is good, here's the other side of the binary coin:
If you self-identify (lets assume most people are able to correctly group themselves) as a geek, you should get up every morning and run around your block once or twice. You'd be amazed at how much better your brain works during the day. Lift some weights. Learn to kick or throw a ball accurately. It improves cognitive skills. It increases the oxygen flow to your brain. If you can push yourself to run mile after mile, it makes it easy to step up and ask for raises or promotions.
Muscle, brainpower, creativity, all these things. None of them mean anything unless they're powered by hard work. If you hustle, you can make nearly anything happen. But given an equal amount of hard work, I'd rather use the hard work to power my brain. My brain will last longer than my muscle.
How many NFL stars are there over 40? How many engineers, scientists, businesspeople are still rising by the time most athletes are retiring?
Don't believe the stereotypes. Jocks only have it good till they're about 25 (number pulled from my behind). Most jocks have to get old and be sad that the best years of their lives are behind them. But for a geek, we get to spend our whole lives making our brains better and more valuable. Our lives get better with time.
Society rewards and promotes the stupid jock and vilifies and puts down the smart geek. Media further promotes the above stereotypes and problems.
I'd argue that *you* are promoting those stereotypes.
NFL superstars, the darlings of the USA, make millions of dollars per year. And of course, that's nothing compared to the amount they make for sponsorship deals.
But, that's just superstars. The mega mega superstars. Most athletes don't even come near this level.
You say that society rewards the jock and puts down the geek. I'll ignore the fact that you're still using high school stereotypes (it's okay, I used to as well, even after I got out of high school), lets pretend we can easily break down the world into jock versus geek. I'd bet $20 that out of the top 25% wealthiest people in America, most of them make their money via mind, rather than muscle. Once you get out of high school, the whole playing field changes (get it! sports reference?!!). Geeks rule. CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, VP, Board Members, Entrepenuers, investment bankers, innovators, there's a ton of opportunity for brainpower. It's just not in the limelight. How often do you think about the OWNERS of these sports teams? The people that negotiate the deals? The people that design the stadiums?
I've recently come to the understanding that it's fairly easy to convert brainpower into cash. Look at any list of richest people in an area. Muscle doesn't get you anywhere. Muscle is a cheap commodity, like tinfoil. Brainpower, education, and well-directed creativity are all rare and valuable. Brainpower -> cash.
Now, I'm not going to disagree that if there were a better culture among the youth, there'd be even more mindpower produced. We (as a society) should work towards that. But don't forget the body-mind connection (that's a whole tangent I'd rather not go off to right now). I could easily argue that you are anti-athlete, the same way that you feel athletes are anti-intellectual. It's all about finding the balance between the two.
True, it's possible. But -- without being too obvious here -- most changes don't result in the end of society. I'm expecting something far less dramatic. There'll be a gap, more money will be put into achieving tech goals, and it will essentially buy a good attitude out of people who hate their jobs. I'm personally more concerned with the failings of science and proper education in the US.
Seriously. I was reading some of the posts here, and it's not hard to understand how this survey came up with these results. It makes me feel a bit sad that there's people with these attitudes, because they're screwing up for themselves. Just because things are (or _seem_ to be) a certain way right now, they don't stay that way.
Of course the other side of me smiles and thanks them for creating a gap in the market.
I won't argue with the quoted post that complains about a tremendous amount of wealth being accumulated by a few. There's reputable signs and studies pointing to it. But, it can't go on forever, and when the tide turns, there's going to be even better opportunities than there are today. I can't wait.:)
There are no browsers I'm aware of that support the RAW image format, if that's what you meant. The memory overhead would be insane, not to mention file transfer times.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of kids out there that are playing web developer, who don't know that compressing photographs as GIF is bad, or who still use spacer images, or render paragraphs of text using JPGs, so there's room for improving the code that the browser has to handle, but it's not always quite as bad as your post suggests.
That being said, the nesting of tables, which still continues even on mainstream sites, requires a lot of memory to parse. Browser makers do a great job at dealing with the mess of code some people throw at them.
Since it's related to the subject, this is a web proxy I put together that reformats all pages to look like php.net. A friend of mine gave me the idea a while back, and I decided to write it as a fun project.
I figure if a PHP programmer wanted to read some news articles or something on the down-low, this would be a good cover for the casual shoulder surfer. Eventually I'll add a few more templates, and then have a obfuscating web proxy empire!:)
"I think Jon Stewart's opinions will weigh in favor of YouTube."
I bet Mr. Stewart will be thoroughly "briefed" by Viacom Corporate Counsel prior to the deposition about what's an appropriate response in behalf of Mr. Stewart's employer.
I'm sure there will be some discussions like this, and they'll try and explain to him why YouTube is bad for his show. But that being said, once he's under oath, I think he'll give honest opinions.
Jon Stewart's Daily Show (as opposed to Craig Kilbourne's) is one of the pillars that helped build Comedy Central. There's upcoming elections which are his time to shine. Jon Stewart is (at the moment) a hugely public face. Even if his employer tries to tell him what to say, I don't think it'll make much difference.
You should be modded up for your sig alone. I'm getting tired of not being able to use a + in my e-mail, since Gmail will autolabel your incoming mail based on what's after the +.
"I think it's interesting that the 9/11 Report recommended that United States agencies such as the DoD, CIA & FBI learn to share information more freely to overcome terrorism and now they're turning to internet community applications to accomplish that."
I am very suprised by this too. I would really expect them to go after a cheaper and more efficient communication structure. Take pigeons, for example. They are useful in all sorts of ways
I went to eat with a bunch of friends at a mall food court and noticed an optimization problem. All the seats weren't full. Some people who were carrying food were forced to walk around looking for tables while others were 'holding' tables waiting for other members of their party to buy and bring back food.
By essentially creating a semaphore on the tables, the 'holders' were forcing a backlog of 'eaters'. By taking the resource and not using it, they blocked other users who would be ready to use the table immediately. With more 'eaters' coming out of line, the more crowded and backed up the general flow of customers got.
I think you meant that. But yes, that's a good application of Computer Science to a problem. Think about the knowledge in the CompSci field about semaphores, and how they might be applied to solve this food court problem.
To all the people who ever wonder what CompSci is about, and how it's different from IT -- this is nearly it. Applying Maths to solve problems.
It sounds like it's just a bureaucratic (sp?) paperwork shuffle. The money will be available. And if not, I'm sure they can find a few congressmen/women to either put pressure on the DoD or write a bill to specifically authorize the money. No one wants to look either "soft on terror" or "unconcerned about troop safety", so this will all work out. Hell, I'm sure Bush, as CIC, can move the money if needed.
This is what I suspect. Especially since this is a great marketing vehicle (ba-dum!) for Science education in this country, as well as the Armed Forces. I suspect a cash prize for this is well worth the attention it attracts, as compared to other more traditional advertising methods (ie: magazines, tv ads, www banner ads).
The best way to get attention is to do something positive, not just stick ads up everywhere. People ignore ads, but they don't ignore results.
I heard this guy speak at a conference. I was amazingly underwhelmed. He visibly seemed to have no interest in being there, and did not prepare. It was like having a discussion with a troubled teenager about the importance of compound interest and dividends for their 401k.
I felt he was a total jackass, and I know several people who work (worked) for EA (go EA Tiburon) and there's a lot of bad things to say about EA. This guy's demeanor and appearance backed it up. He somewhat reminded me of the stereotype of fraternity members (one former programmer compared EA to a giant frat house, so this resemblance may be more than just passing). During the presentation, he constantly would state what sounded like a fact, and then immediately mumbled "or whatever". I know a thing or two about public speaking, and I'm certian his actions weren't the result of being nervous.
He may be a good business person, but in my opinion, you'd have to be supremely intelligent (which he did not demonstrate during his talk) to outshine his jackass attitude.
The first argument is always that we have to retro fit all our gas stations. I don't understand why this is such a big deal. I think we have gotten so used to the centralized controlled gas industry that we have lost touch. If a new stick of gum comes out the stores put it on the shelf.
If a new stick of gum comes out, you don't have to tear down the store and build a new one to accomodate the new stick of gum. Energy (note I didn't say "gas") stations would have to be built or rebuilt to the design requirements of the particular chemicals they handle. This takes a lot of time and money.
Here's the catch-22. There's not an interest in investing the time and money to build that infrastructure unless there's immediate demand. But no one wants to buy these vehicles until there's an infrastructure to support it.
I personally think vehicles that can take multiple types of fuel are a good idea. It allows people to have daily usable cars, but still endorse and encourage the market for alternate fuels. For example, the vehicles that run on gasoline or the E85 ethanol/gasoline mixture. No one would buy it if it *only* ran on E85, but since it runs on both, the transition to using E85 is easy.
I understand that technically, this isn't easy to do. But it's a path out. Solar panels don't need to power a vehicle, they only need to supply a worthwhile fraction of the power.
There's been discussion of monolithic kernels vs microkernels. Why, in the energy debate, does it seem we're only looking for a monolithic solution instead of microsolutions?
When people talk about Computer Science, they usually mean "programming." There is a difference between CS and programming. Are the companies complaining about a lack of programmers, or research & development Computer Scientists?
I'm about to graduate with a BS in CS, and frankly I don't think it's what people expect. I'm not a *really* qualified programmer, I do have experience with programming, but I've got no industry certifications -- I'm not a software engineer. However, I have been prepared to move onto a Masters in CS, which is when the interesting work starts. A BS by itself doesn't do much, it's too general. But, without it, you couldn't do any of the real CS work.
I think one of the biggest problems with Computer Science is that most people don't know what it means. "Computational Science" is a much better name, since the field is really about finding ways to solve problems. Given information, can you answer a question. That's about as broad a definition as I can think of. Notice there's no mention of code, programming, or computers.
There's a famous quote, "Computer Science has as much to do with computers as Astronomy does with telescopes." I suspect this isn't verbatim, but the meaning is there.
Of course, there's also another catch. The FAX-sending entity probably has a FAX line too. If they're claiming an existing business relationship with you, they can't very well deny you having an existing business relationship with them, now can they? And these new rules allow you to send junk FAXes to entities you have an existing business relationship with, don't they?
Yes, but they have a tendency to either have a machine handle their faxes (so the "mobius fax", a few sheets of black paper taped in a loop, won't be nearly effective), or they will have it set up so that the number does not accept incoming calls.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got no mod points, but if I did, you'd get them.
Freakin' win.
Hello.
I work at Microsoft. I am interested in your business ideas. Your ideas clearly demonstrate an in-depth understanding of our marketing and branding focus.
Please swing by Microsoft HQ anytime next week and we will chat.
Agreed.
I'm a fan of the body and mind connection that the Greeks seemed to be fond of. So many things in our world seem to be binary, and 0 ain't shit without the 1. Body isn't anything without the mind, and mind isn't anything without the body.
If you self-identify as a jock, every time you go "huh, what's that" or "that doesn't make sense", you should ask someone smarter than you. Google for it, if you don't feel comfortable. Learn what wikipedia is.
And for all the geeks who think that the previous advice is good, here's the other side of the binary coin:
If you self-identify (lets assume most people are able to correctly group themselves) as a geek, you should get up every morning and run around your block once or twice. You'd be amazed at how much better your brain works during the day. Lift some weights. Learn to kick or throw a ball accurately. It improves cognitive skills. It increases the oxygen flow to your brain. If you can push yourself to run mile after mile, it makes it easy to step up and ask for raises or promotions.
One thing I forgot to add.
Muscle, brainpower, creativity, all these things. None of them mean anything unless they're powered by hard work. If you hustle, you can make nearly anything happen. But given an equal amount of hard work, I'd rather use the hard work to power my brain. My brain will last longer than my muscle.
How many NFL stars are there over 40? How many engineers, scientists, businesspeople are still rising by the time most athletes are retiring?
Don't believe the stereotypes. Jocks only have it good till they're about 25 (number pulled from my behind). Most jocks have to get old and be sad that the best years of their lives are behind them. But for a geek, we get to spend our whole lives making our brains better and more valuable. Our lives get better with time.
Are you sure that the jocks have it so good?
I'd argue that *you* are promoting those stereotypes.
NFL superstars, the darlings of the USA, make millions of dollars per year. And of course, that's nothing compared to the amount they make for sponsorship deals.
But, that's just superstars. The mega mega superstars. Most athletes don't even come near this level.
You say that society rewards the jock and puts down the geek. I'll ignore the fact that you're still using high school stereotypes (it's okay, I used to as well, even after I got out of high school), lets pretend we can easily break down the world into jock versus geek. I'd bet $20 that out of the top 25% wealthiest people in America, most of them make their money via mind, rather than muscle. Once you get out of high school, the whole playing field changes (get it! sports reference?!!). Geeks rule. CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, VP, Board Members, Entrepenuers, investment bankers, innovators, there's a ton of opportunity for brainpower. It's just not in the limelight. How often do you think about the OWNERS of these sports teams? The people that negotiate the deals? The people that design the stadiums?
I've recently come to the understanding that it's fairly easy to convert brainpower into cash. Look at any list of richest people in an area. Muscle doesn't get you anywhere. Muscle is a cheap commodity, like tinfoil. Brainpower, education, and well-directed creativity are all rare and valuable. Brainpower -> cash.
Now, I'm not going to disagree that if there were a better culture among the youth, there'd be even more mindpower produced. We (as a society) should work towards that. But don't forget the body-mind connection (that's a whole tangent I'd rather not go off to right now). I could easily argue that you are anti-athlete, the same way that you feel athletes are anti-intellectual. It's all about finding the balance between the two.
True, it's possible. But -- without being too obvious here -- most changes don't result in the end of society. I'm expecting something far less dramatic. There'll be a gap, more money will be put into achieving tech goals, and it will essentially buy a good attitude out of people who hate their jobs. I'm personally more concerned with the failings of science and proper education in the US.
And if it all does go downhill, at least I've already ordered my pocketknife with built in flint: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/7f02/
Win!
Seriously. I was reading some of the posts here, and it's not hard to understand how this survey came up with these results. It makes me feel a bit sad that there's people with these attitudes, because they're screwing up for themselves. Just because things are (or _seem_ to be) a certain way right now, they don't stay that way.
:)
Of course the other side of me smiles and thanks them for creating a gap in the market.
I won't argue with the quoted post that complains about a tremendous amount of wealth being accumulated by a few. There's reputable signs and studies pointing to it. But, it can't go on forever, and when the tide turns, there's going to be even better opportunities than there are today. I can't wait.
There are no browsers I'm aware of that support the RAW image format, if that's what you meant. The memory overhead would be insane, not to mention file transfer times.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of kids out there that are playing web developer, who don't know that compressing photographs as GIF is bad, or who still use spacer images, or render paragraphs of text using JPGs, so there's room for improving the code that the browser has to handle, but it's not always quite as bad as your post suggests.
That being said, the nesting of tables, which still continues even on mainstream sites, requires a lot of memory to parse. Browser makers do a great job at dealing with the mess of code some people throw at them.
-- Tim
hahaha
For a minute I was thinking about "Ripley's Believe-it-or-not storing the humanimal hybrids", but still well played.
You should be modded higher.
Since it's related to the subject, this is a web proxy I put together that reformats all pages to look like php.net. A friend of mine gave me the idea a while back, and I decided to write it as a fun project.
:)
http://www.pagedocs.info/
I figure if a PHP programmer wanted to read some news articles or something on the down-low, this would be a good cover for the casual shoulder surfer. Eventually I'll add a few more templates, and then have a obfuscating web proxy empire!
I'm sure there will be some discussions like this, and they'll try and explain to him why YouTube is bad for his show. But that being said, once he's under oath, I think he'll give honest opinions.
Jon Stewart's Daily Show (as opposed to Craig Kilbourne's) is one of the pillars that helped build Comedy Central. There's upcoming elections which are his time to shine. Jon Stewart is (at the moment) a hugely public face. Even if his employer tries to tell him what to say, I don't think it'll make much difference.
$2 billion for a file?! Woah. No wonder Vista is so expensive. There's lots of files in there!
You should be modded up for your sig alone. I'm getting tired of not being able to use a + in my e-mail, since Gmail will autolabel your incoming mail based on what's after the +.
You get mod points from my heart.
BURN!
I nearly cheered at your explanation. Good show.
I am very suprised by this too. I would really expect them to go after a cheaper and more efficient communication structure. Take pigeons, for example. They are useful in all sorts of ways
Yea, I miss it too.
WAIT!!!!!!
I think you meant that. But yes, that's a good application of Computer Science to a problem. Think about the knowledge in the CompSci field about semaphores, and how they might be applied to solve this food court problem.
To all the people who ever wonder what CompSci is about, and how it's different from IT -- this is nearly it. Applying Maths to solve problems.
I'm still laughing. That's hilarious. A+
This is what I suspect. Especially since this is a great marketing vehicle (ba-dum!) for Science education in this country, as well as the Armed Forces. I suspect a cash prize for this is well worth the attention it attracts, as compared to other more traditional advertising methods (ie: magazines, tv ads, www banner ads).
The best way to get attention is to do something positive, not just stick ads up everywhere. People ignore ads, but they don't ignore results.
I heard this guy speak at a conference. I was amazingly underwhelmed. He visibly seemed to have no interest in being there, and did not prepare. It was like having a discussion with a troubled teenager about the importance of compound interest and dividends for their 401k.
I felt he was a total jackass, and I know several people who work (worked) for EA (go EA Tiburon) and there's a lot of bad things to say about EA. This guy's demeanor and appearance backed it up. He somewhat reminded me of the stereotype of fraternity members (one former programmer compared EA to a giant frat house, so this resemblance may be more than just passing). During the presentation, he constantly would state what sounded like a fact, and then immediately mumbled "or whatever". I know a thing or two about public speaking, and I'm certian his actions weren't the result of being nervous.
He may be a good business person, but in my opinion, you'd have to be supremely intelligent (which he did not demonstrate during his talk) to outshine his jackass attitude.
If a new stick of gum comes out, you don't have to tear down the store and build a new one to accomodate the new stick of gum. Energy (note I didn't say "gas") stations would have to be built or rebuilt to the design requirements of the particular chemicals they handle. This takes a lot of time and money.
Here's the catch-22. There's not an interest in investing the time and money to build that infrastructure unless there's immediate demand. But no one wants to buy these vehicles until there's an infrastructure to support it.
I personally think vehicles that can take multiple types of fuel are a good idea. It allows people to have daily usable cars, but still endorse and encourage the market for alternate fuels. For example, the vehicles that run on gasoline or the E85 ethanol/gasoline mixture. No one would buy it if it *only* ran on E85, but since it runs on both, the transition to using E85 is easy.
I understand that technically, this isn't easy to do. But it's a path out. Solar panels don't need to power a vehicle, they only need to supply a worthwhile fraction of the power.
There's been discussion of monolithic kernels vs microkernels. Why, in the energy debate, does it seem we're only looking for a monolithic solution instead of microsolutions?
When people talk about Computer Science, they usually mean "programming." There is a difference between CS and programming. Are the companies complaining about a lack of programmers, or research & development Computer Scientists?
I'm about to graduate with a BS in CS, and frankly I don't think it's what people expect. I'm not a *really* qualified programmer, I do have experience with programming, but I've got no industry certifications -- I'm not a software engineer. However, I have been prepared to move onto a Masters in CS, which is when the interesting work starts. A BS by itself doesn't do much, it's too general. But, without it, you couldn't do any of the real CS work.
I think one of the biggest problems with Computer Science is that most people don't know what it means. "Computational Science" is a much better name, since the field is really about finding ways to solve problems. Given information, can you answer a question. That's about as broad a definition as I can think of. Notice there's no mention of code, programming, or computers.
There's a famous quote, "Computer Science has as much to do with computers as Astronomy does with telescopes." I suspect this isn't verbatim, but the meaning is there.
You haven't read many research papers, have you?
Yes, but they have a tendency to either have a machine handle their faxes (so the "mobius fax", a few sheets of black paper taped in a loop, won't be nearly effective), or they will have it set up so that the number does not accept incoming calls.