Just for fun, here's a test ( "Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test" ) for about $60.
test writeup excerpt: "You should know your Vitamin D blood level. Life Extension offers a reliable vitamin D blood test at a fraction of what most commercial blood labs charge. Optimal blood levels of vitamin D are often far greater than the standard reference range."
Just as an aside, in case you haven't had your bloodwork done, it can be a useful benchmark health-wise.
"Blood Tests A to Z" Ordering a test this way may be less headache than talking a doctor or insurance company into doing the same.
Some things to consider for Women and Men.
btw - I have no stake in LEF.ORG, I just find their tests and articles useful. Since we are talking Vitamin-D, for example, if you know anyone supplementing calcium then this is worth reading: "Brittle Bones and Hardened Arteries: The Hidden Link".
Executing? Perhaps you meant electrocuting (shocking) for science, as per this: Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures .
A fascinating read, and yeah it has creepy implications about what people can do. Something everybody should know about.
Excerpt: The experiment... measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience
You make an excellent point. Reminds me of the experiments where a person was made to think they were executing someone in the name of science. While a part of me keeps saying the brainwashed are weak, I need to remember I'm probably not any stronger and am deluding myself to think otherwise.
About the the "clay" you use for sculpting (I've always thought of you as an artist + sculptor):
Any tech you wished was mainstream, or maybe soon to invented, that you'd like to sculpt with?
Any older more retro components that are limiting what projects you'd like to do?
p.s. Love your work, followed for a while here & engadget.
Pop quiz: what are the chances that somebody practicing social engineering and penetration testing would place the tantalizing results of this amazing DEFCON exercise just one click away inside of the super-secure never been exploited format known as PDF?
*shrug* A bit of paranoia seems like cheap insurance.
This caught my eye 3 months ago: I was pleasantly surprised to see an article like this in the Wall Street Journal (which I had thought of as more of a mouthpiece for conservative oil interests and thus opposed to this sort of news):
excerpt: U.S. Corn Belt Expands to North"Warmer Climate, Hardier Seeds Help Crop Gain on Wheat, North Dakota's Staple
RUGBY, N.D.—Wheat has long dominated the windswept farm fields of the northern Great Plains. But increasingly, farmers here are switching to corn, reflecting how climate change, advancements in biotechnology and high corn prices are pushing the nation's Corn Belt northward.
...
The shift, which is occurring in northern Minnesota and Canada's Manitoba province as well, shows how warming temperatures and hardier seeds are enabling farmers to grow corn in areas once deemed inhospitable to the crop."
That is a fair point r.e. reboot vs. data access.
I was thinking of what could give the op a performance boost while staying on a ramen budget.
*shrug* without knowing more it is really hard to say.
And I would beg/buy/borrow/steal a modest SSD to run the OS on, you can probably get both for $100 or so.
Keep your data sets on the slower spinning-rust drives.
If he's going to keep the data sets on the spindles then I see no reason at all to invest in a SSD. All calculation takes place in ram, it is loaded and written to spindles... Yeah the computer will boot in 15 seconds instead of 75, but how often is this thing going to be rebooted?
In order to realize all possible performance from your hardware, I would suggest linux over XP.
With xeons going 64-bit around 2005, it would have to be really old to be only 32 bit.
And even if it was an ancient 32-bit only xeon, XP is still going to have issues using more than 3.5 gb ram.
XP process management seems weak to me compared to the linux side of things.
I don't have a favorite brand of linux to recommend; I would ask your professors and fellow researchers if they have a preference (because they are going to be your go-to support crew).
In any event, I would try to max out the ram your specific motherboard can handle.
And I would beg/buy/borrow/steal a modest SSD to run the OS on, you can probably get both for $100 or so.
Keep your data sets on the slower spinning-rust drives.
One especially insightful response I saw above was asking about what kind of computation you're running.
The python guys are probably right.
I suspect your problems with VB is it will be single-threaded, and (I'm not a VB developer, I've just had to cope with it from time to time) not so generous with efficient data types.
I've had some awful experiences trying to run multi-threaded procsses on XP and Java.
I think you'd get better results from ditching XP.
Your actual language doesn't matter as does some parallel-capability.
Finally, the good news: almost anything is certain to be better than running VB in XP.
The fact that you could implement your solution VB suggests that it is not crazy complex.
Doing it in raw C will be a pain because you'll have to code your own process management.
I'd be very interested in seeing if numpy or perhaps "R" can do the math that you need.
Do follow up and let us know what you end up doing.
turns out on the professor's web page Emmanuel Candes, there is a link to Some old talks that shows an example of the kind of transforms / cleanup they're talking about (they're lengthy PDFs, but worth skimming if you're curious about the kidns of images). Nothing like real world pictures; synthetic examples with some shapes (almost like something you could mock up with MS Paint), but the premise is rather interesting.
And I just saw this like on the Candes web page above: this does have some interesting more real-world pictures. Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples (wired, 2010)
This! is the kind of article I joined slashdot to find out about.
I wish there was a way to mod actual articles +1 or -1 instead of just modding comments; or to at least toss the submitter a karma point or something.
What if they remove the organism's ability to synthesize lysine? That should make them dependent on supplements for survival; thus easy to control. After all, what could go wrong?
Management at my company seems to think that our developers can get extra work done if they work extra long days.
Your management's "thinking" is nothing new.
*shrug*
What you're really asking is how to deal with your management.
So here, check out Death March by Yourdon. This will answer all your questions (as well as things you didn't think to ask), with more wisdom and insight than you're likely to find via "Ask Slashdot."
It will also give you some perspective to make informed decisions about your options.
The reviews on Amazon will tell you if this is a book for you.
You raise some good points. I don't use Facebook because I don't like being a product. I make a modest effort to avoid web tracking (firefox w/collusion, request policy, noscript). I run bleachbit once a month or so.
The email thing bothers me because I don't see that I have much control over it.
A side effect of my thinking about this is I end up being depressed about where things are going.
Just for fun, let me add an oprtion or two to your well-reasoned choices:
[_] Check this for a smart phone that doesn't require linking with an "adword-enabled" email account (maybe I need to return to iphone).
[_] Check this for an option to opt out with pay-for-service email.
And just for fun, let's look a step or two further down the road:
[_] Check this for HR+ Candidate Profile to receive a summary Adword Profile of your possible new hire(s), including hobby and special interest profiles and daily web-surfing profiles (time range + web sites).
[_] Check this for Law Enforcement Deluxe Monitoring to receive push notification
[_] Check this for Tax Audit Assist to correlate email geocoding with our sophisticated content analysis and find anomalies.
I can see how this could be a storyline from StarTrek ("Yes, on Fernginar we USED to believe in privacy. But then we realized that privacy was Unprofitable!")
But aren't talking about some stupid story.
...what's the base problem here? Discarding the notion that "someone" is reading your e-mail (which obviously isn't the case) what's the actual objection?
Are you sure nobody is reading peoples emails?
In the data analysis I work with, people look at overall statistical measures and then drill down into various aspects of the data until they're looking at raw data points (e.g. original email text in this case).
*shrug*
But reading my email text isn't what bothers me quite so much as having basically a complete audit log of everyone's online activity to slice & dice. Huh. Maybe the future is already here and I'm worrying about things I can't control.
Given:
A private e-mail to an actual physical "girl."
A perl script that scans both sent and received e-mail for keywords
A user that wants free e-mail
I see a result where instead of the gmail account holder getting adds for:
Trackable dog collars, snail bait, Lorcaserin, insurance quotes, mega-muscle-growth supplements
He might instead get ads. for:
Newegg computer components, engagement rings, restaurant two-fers, concert tickets
This feels like a win. If the scanning were optional and there was pair of radio buttons
[_] Check this for random useless ads.
[_] Check this for useful adds derived from keyword scans of your e-mail
I would check the box on the bottom. Would you? Why/Not?
I'd prefer to check the box that says
[_] Don't be Big Brother, don't track everything I do. I'll even pay extra to not be counted. (And yeah, I understand why that choice doesn't explicitly appear anywhere in the world we live in.)
Given all of that, if advertisements are unavoidable I'd prefer random advertisements that are totally untargeted to who I am and what I do. I know, I know, that is "unprofitable" for the service providers and merchants.
True... both google & patent office are amoral if anything, but certainly not insane - this will be quite profitable for google.
From a non-patent point of view, this email thing seriously creeps me out.
I wonder if the Google CFO's business card says "Chief Ferengi Officer".
*shrug* That is probably true for any large company.
So anyway... now that lavabit is gone, what is a good way to go for private email ?
Patents are, and should be, about technical issues only, legality and ethics does not enter into the decision over whether something is patentable.
Gore seems better than most politicians to me; he is smarter than the average, or at least more well read than average. In the popular media it seems a bit like the nerdy kid that everyone enjoys picking on back in school
In fact, say scientists, there have already been hurricanes strong enough to qualify as Category 6s. They'd define those as having sustained winds over 175 or 180 mph. A couple told me they'd measured close to 200 mph on a few occasions.
I'm not saying you're wrong; there is some valuable perspective to your observation.
However, you're necessarily taking a short-term view.
Consider this:
The largest problem facing Planet Earth is foolish shortsighted decisions by power holders (e.g. governments, corporations).
By the time many decision makers achieve power, their lives are half over (e.g. ages 50+, which is what most group photos of congress, legislative bodies and various boards-of-directors look like). So why do they care if the environment gets messed up, or energy costs increase a few %ge points. They won't be around in 100 years, so it is easy to think "NOT MY PROBLEM. ALSO, WONT GET ME REELECTED."
But what if they were around in 100 years, or 200 years? And what if their constituents had a Lonnggg memory?
*shrug* Gift or not, all I'm saying is longer-term enlightened self interest could be a force for helping our species make better decisions. In oh so many ways it seems like humans are short sighted fools.
What would life be like if people lived for 200 years on average, maybe some to 300 years.
Would many humans be in such a hurry to make Allah or Jehova or whatever $DEITY happy so they can hang out with the other cool kids afterlife? Or would they have an enlightened self-interest to take more of an interest in what happens here?
Perhaps if people lived longer they might say:
"Hmm... if global warming is a problem in 100 years maybe we should plan for it?"
"Hmmm... maybe we don't want to flush our water supply / aquifers away for some temporary fracking oil profit?"
"Hmm... maybe increasing education funding to help new people make the world a better place is a good idea?"
Hmm... maybe there is long-term benefit to developing human capital? (Instead of freaking out about next quarter's profits - oh noes teh stoks dropping!)
"Hmm... maybe that 20 year mission to pluto, or a 100 year mission to alpha centauri aren't so crazy after all?"
"Hmm... 100 years to colonize mars? What the hell, let's try it."
"Hmm... maybe I do have time to learn Chinese (or insert $LANGAUGE here) and go visit that land, just because it would be fun."
(Economically, opportunity costs decrease as available time (a resource) increases. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to consider other short-term/long-term decisions that might be better made from a long-term perspective).
If my lifespan was 300 years instead of maybe 80ish, I like to think I'd be taking a longer term view about what I do today and what I plan for in the future.
At any rate, I don't want to distract you from savoring the gift of your mortality.
I'm just pondering other options...
You take it correctly.
I use a treadmill desk, and when I really need to think deeply about something (for example, intricate code logic), I end up stopping walking while I think through the details.
*shrug* Try debugging something on a treadmill and let me know how it goes; of course, your mileage may vary.
I take it walking and talking are not considered two task at once. Unless you mean high-level tasks (ie the ones we are conscious about, not like walking and such).
It trades one addiction for others: religion, caffeine, and nicotine.
It trades personal responsibility for not drinking, and thus drinking, to an imaginary higher power.
Quite glib; your implied point is "it" is worthless because it just swaps addictions.
I haven't seen a definition of addiction yet, so I'll suggest this:
Someone is addicted if they repeatedly make damage-causing choices, to the point where normal life is unsustainable (e.g. cant hold a job, arrested, or maybe death).
Now instead of a question of "Addiction" it becomes a question of Sustainability: how long can somebody carry on?
Some people carry on for a full lifetime with whatever. No problem, I'd say they're not addicted.
Other people have trouble sustaining after a while.
As for "trading one addiction for another", think of it as damage control.
Different behaviors have different time frames to their consequences.
Some things, like meth or heroin, can lead to severe consequences quickly (think Trainspotting).
Alcohol tends to be longer-term maintainable; often drinkers can sustain for years, possibly even decades. Eventually health issues (like liver damage, possibly fatal), judgement issues (drunk driving, possibly fatal), and other "consequences" (getting fired, divorced, passing out in risky situations) tend to make life unsustainable.
Marijuana is perhaps more sustainable than alcohol and other drugs.
Now, let's talk about some of the other "addictions" that you're concerned about.
Coffee? (Oh noes, they iz addixted to caffeen!!) WTF! Coffee is arguably completely sustainable, it doesn't cause damage to the user or to others.
Cigarettes? *shrug* I don't know about that one but damage-wise, but it is probably safer for somebody to smoke than to routinely make poor decisions because they're blackout drunk.
Sex? (Oh noes, they are sleepn roundz!) This is pretty sustainable; arguably healthier than lots of alcohol / chemical "entertainment" options. Do actually you have a problem with people engaging in sex?
Look... whatever behavior you're thinking about, try thinking of it in terms of sustainability. Maybe some of these things are "just" substitute addictions"... but is that reallyso bad?
r.e. cult similarities, yeah - that is a reasonable observation.
Other social groups (where "social" means 2+ humans) utilize the same mechanisms that work for cults.
In other words, many groups (like political parties, organized religion, sports fans, various work teams, boy scouts, girl scouts,...) all use similar social mechanisms ; the "human bios" if you will.
Some of the groups hack the human bios in a way that causes more damage than others.
*shrug* If people are lucky, they are raised around the less-damaging groups.
Your surprise at being affected is actually very interesting: I take that to show how just how fundamental the human bios is to people; usually people don't think about "breathing" or "seeing" - lots of neural hardware just works to make those processes happen. Why should social dynamics (my "bios" metaphor) be any more obvious, or have any less neural hardware, than other processes?
My AA story...
In college, I attended an AA meeting as a requirement for a Psychology class. I wan't an alcoholic or even on the path to alcoholism; I just needed to fulfill the requirement and "attend an AA meeting" was the easiest way to do that....
I left that meeting on an emotional high. The only way I can describe it is that it was like finding out you had a whole branch of your family that been searching for you for years, and now you've been reunited and your new family just accepts you with -- not just open arms -- but with a tangible joy that you've finally joined them. It was awesome! And then I got about 50 feet out the door and said to myself "You just got hooked by a cult!"
I was shocked because I had always assumed that I was 100% absolutely immune to cults. I had read stories about people who were brainwashed into joining them and thought that I -- with my intelligence and my skepticism and my stable family life -- could never fall for something like that. But I had only been there for two hours and they had hooked me. Had I been less intelligent or cynical or more lonely maybe I wouldn't ever have realized what was happening.
So I completely agree with AC's suggestion that AA is a cult; but I disagree that this is in any way a bad thing.
This is what I was going to say. I'd pay for well researched news on major events instead of the speculation and opinion sites put out in the first 30 seconds of hearing about something.
If you're looking for well researched articles etc. try The Economist.
Or if you want a daily newspaper, try The Wall Street Journal.
*shrug* I find them worth paying for.
otoh, if this thread is just a rant-fest about how most news sources are lame...
*shrug* while I don't disagree, that observation isn't newsworthy.
You'd probably liquefy the pumpkin before it got airborne.
You're gonna need something fairly rugged to get launched out of this thing.
True, I'd drop a little money on a kickstarter for this just for the entertainment value.
That being said, I really really want to see video of things like pumpkins being fired out of this... that would be awesome... the pumpkin rail gun.;-)
Wedel has found new work. He has been employed for about a year as a quality engineer for a large eye care/pharma company.
Ask about outsourcing, Wedel said it has "affected just about anyone with a technical degree -- it's purely business getting its way with government. Lobbyists have bamboozled our politicians into thinking we have a shortage of qualified engineers and that we need to import more via the H-1B -- simply not true.
So far, posts are being a bit harsh.
The only serious criticism I would offer is they chose the wrong audience for an interview like this: I suspect slashdot is more about practicing technologists & hobbyists, Kusnetsky's observations seemed like they'd be more useful to CIO-level, enterprise architects, or perhaps non-techies that need to cope with clouds.
I thought Kusnetsky made some useful distinctions; "cloud = buzzword marketing" vs. "cloud what's different", and who in reality is actually doing cloud things. Kusnetsky was also concerned about how to measure what people are actually doing at an industry level; I thought that was interesting, since (as a practitioner) I tend to focus on specific projects, one implementation at a time. *shrug* they're looking at the "cloud thing" from a different perspective than I do, which I thought was interesting.
r.e. the Dilbert Example (remembered: Dilbert: "Do you want red or blue database?" vs. actual (dilbert: "What color do you want that database?" Boss: "I think Mauve has the most ram."), it was a fine point - it got the idea across (e.g. sometimes management runs with trade-magazine fads without understanding it), even if he didn't correctly quote canonical Scott Adams.
execution: the sound was rough, especially bad on the interviwer's side (very hard to understand what Roblimio was saying). That made it harder to watch than it needed to be. I probably won't recommend this video to anybody because the content was rough enough it wasn't worth trying to sift through and find gems of ideas... maybe the transcript will be better.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll just leave this here; it may offer the OP some inspiration: tom mabe / telemarketer / crime scene.
Just for fun, here's a test ( "Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test" ) for about $60.
test writeup excerpt: "You should know your Vitamin D blood level. Life Extension offers a reliable vitamin D blood test at a fraction of what most commercial blood labs charge. Optimal blood levels of vitamin D are often far greater than the standard reference range."
Just as an aside, in case you haven't had your bloodwork done, it can be a useful benchmark health-wise. "Blood Tests A to Z"
Ordering a test this way may be less headache than talking a doctor or insurance company into doing the same.
Some things to consider for Women and Men.
btw - I have no stake in LEF.ORG, I just find their tests and articles useful. Since we are talking Vitamin-D, for example, if you know anyone supplementing calcium then this is worth reading: "Brittle Bones and Hardened Arteries: The Hidden Link".
A fascinating read, and yeah it has creepy implications about what people can do. Something everybody should know about.
Excerpt: The experiment... measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience
You make an excellent point. Reminds me of the experiments where a person was made to think they were executing someone in the name of science. While a part of me keeps saying the brainwashed are weak, I need to remember I'm probably not any stronger and am deluding myself to think otherwise.
About the the "clay" you use for sculpting (I've always thought of you as an artist + sculptor): Any tech you wished was mainstream, or maybe soon to invented, that you'd like to sculpt with? Any older more retro components that are limiting what projects you'd like to do? p.s. Love your work, followed for a while here & engadget.
Pop quiz: what are the chances that somebody practicing social engineering and penetration testing would place the tantalizing results of this amazing DEFCON exercise just one click away inside of the super-secure never been exploited format known as PDF?
*shrug* A bit of paranoia seems like cheap insurance.
excerpt:
U.S. Corn Belt Expands to North "Warmer Climate, Hardier Seeds Help Crop Gain on Wheat, North Dakota's Staple
RUGBY, N.D.—Wheat has long dominated the windswept farm fields of the northern Great Plains. But increasingly, farmers here are switching to corn, reflecting how climate change, advancements in biotechnology and high corn prices are pushing the nation's Corn Belt northward.
...
The shift, which is occurring in northern Minnesota and Canada's Manitoba province as well, shows how warming temperatures and hardier seeds are enabling farmers to grow corn in areas once deemed inhospitable to the crop."
I was thinking of what could give the op a performance boost while staying on a ramen budget.
*shrug* without knowing more it is really hard to say.
And I would beg/buy/borrow/steal a modest SSD to run the OS on, you can probably get both for $100 or so. Keep your data sets on the slower spinning-rust drives.
If he's going to keep the data sets on the spindles then I see no reason at all to invest in a SSD. All calculation takes place in ram, it is loaded and written to spindles... Yeah the computer will boot in 15 seconds instead of 75, but how often is this thing going to be rebooted?
In order to realize all possible performance from your hardware, I would suggest linux over XP.
With xeons going 64-bit around 2005, it would have to be really old to be only 32 bit.
And even if it was an ancient 32-bit only xeon, XP is still going to have issues using more than 3.5 gb ram.
XP process management seems weak to me compared to the linux side of things.
I don't have a favorite brand of linux to recommend; I would ask your professors and fellow researchers if they have a preference (because they are going to be your go-to support crew).
In any event, I would try to max out the ram your specific motherboard can handle.
And I would beg/buy/borrow/steal a modest SSD to run the OS on, you can probably get both for $100 or so.
Keep your data sets on the slower spinning-rust drives.
One especially insightful response I saw above was asking about what kind of computation you're running.
The python guys are probably right.
I suspect your problems with VB is it will be single-threaded, and (I'm not a VB developer, I've just had to cope with it from time to time) not so generous with efficient data types.
I've had some awful experiences trying to run multi-threaded procsses on XP and Java.
I think you'd get better results from ditching XP.
Your actual language doesn't matter as does some parallel-capability.
Finally, the good news: almost anything is certain to be better than running VB in XP.
The fact that you could implement your solution VB suggests that it is not crazy complex.
Doing it in raw C will be a pain because you'll have to code your own process management.
I'd be very interested in seeing if numpy or perhaps "R" can do the math that you need.
Do follow up and let us know what you end up doing.
turns out on the professor's web page Emmanuel Candes, there is a link to Some old talks that shows an example of the kind of transforms / cleanup they're talking about (they're lengthy PDFs, but worth skimming if you're curious about the kidns of images). Nothing like real world pictures; synthetic examples with some shapes (almost like something you could mock up with MS Paint), but the premise is rather interesting.
And I just saw this like on the Candes web page above: this does have some interesting more real-world pictures. Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples (wired, 2010)
This! is the kind of article I joined slashdot to find out about.
I wish there was a way to mod actual articles +1 or -1 instead of just modding comments; or to at least toss the submitter a karma point or something.
that was pretty clever; thanks for the link
What if they remove the organism's ability to synthesize lysine? That should make them dependent on supplements for survival; thus easy to control. After all, what could go wrong?
Management at my company seems to think that our developers can get extra work done if they work extra long days.
Your management's "thinking" is nothing new.
*shrug*
What you're really asking is how to deal with your management.
So here, check out Death March by Yourdon.
This will answer all your questions (as well as things you didn't think to ask), with more wisdom and insight than you're likely to find via "Ask Slashdot."
It will also give you some perspective to make informed decisions about your options.
The reviews on Amazon will tell you if this is a book for you.
The email thing bothers me because I don't see that I have much control over it.
A side effect of my thinking about this is I end up being depressed about where things are going.
Just for fun, let me add an oprtion or two to your well-reasoned choices:
[_] Check this for a smart phone that doesn't require linking with an "adword-enabled" email account (maybe I need to return to iphone).
[_] Check this for an option to opt out with pay-for-service email.
And just for fun, let's look a step or two further down the road:
[_] Check this for HR+ Candidate Profile to receive a summary Adword Profile of your possible new hire(s), including hobby and special interest profiles and daily web-surfing profiles (time range + web sites).
[_] Check this for Law Enforcement Deluxe Monitoring to receive push notification
[_] Check this for Tax Audit Assist to correlate email geocoding with our sophisticated content analysis and find anomalies.
I can see how this could be a storyline from StarTrek ("Yes, on Fernginar we USED to believe in privacy. But then we realized that privacy was Unprofitable!")
But aren't talking about some stupid story.
...what's the base problem here? Discarding the notion that "someone" is reading your e-mail (which obviously isn't the case) what's the actual objection?
Are you sure nobody is reading peoples emails?
In the data analysis I work with, people look at overall statistical measures and then drill down into various aspects of the data until they're looking at raw data points (e.g. original email text in this case).
*shrug*
But reading my email text isn't what bothers me quite so much as having basically a complete audit log of everyone's online activity to slice & dice. Huh. Maybe the future is already here and I'm worrying about things I can't control.
Given: A private e-mail to an actual physical "girl." A perl script that scans both sent and received e-mail for keywords A user that wants free e-mail
I see a result where instead of the gmail account holder getting adds for: Trackable dog collars, snail bait, Lorcaserin, insurance quotes, mega-muscle-growth supplements
He might instead get ads. for: Newegg computer components, engagement rings, restaurant two-fers, concert tickets
This feels like a win. If the scanning were optional and there was pair of radio buttons
[_] Check this for random useless ads. [_] Check this for useful adds derived from keyword scans of your e-mail
I would check the box on the bottom. Would you? Why/Not?
I'd prefer to check the box that says
[_] Don't be Big Brother, don't track everything I do. I'll even pay extra to not be counted. (And yeah, I understand why that choice doesn't explicitly appear anywhere in the world we live in.)
Given all of that, if advertisements are unavoidable I'd prefer random advertisements that are totally untargeted to who I am and what I do. I know, I know, that is "unprofitable" for the service providers and merchants.
From a non-patent point of view, this email thing seriously creeps me out.
I wonder if the Google CFO's business card says "Chief Ferengi Officer".
*shrug* That is probably true for any large company.
So anyway... now that lavabit is gone, what is a good way to go for private email ?
Patents are, and should be, about technical issues only, legality and ethics does not enter into the decision over whether something is patentable.
This link works.
DOH! Thanks
As for the hurricanes: consider this 2006 article from abcnews: Category 6 Hurricanes? They've Happened
Excerpt:
In fact, say scientists, there have already been hurricanes strong enough to qualify as Category 6s. They'd define those as having sustained winds over 175 or 180 mph. A couple told me they'd measured close to 200 mph on a few occasions.
I'm not saying you're wrong; there is some valuable perspective to your observation.
However, you're necessarily taking a short-term view.
Consider this:
The largest problem facing Planet Earth is foolish shortsighted decisions by power holders (e.g. governments, corporations).
By the time many decision makers achieve power, their lives are half over (e.g. ages 50+, which is what most group photos of congress, legislative bodies and various boards-of-directors look like). So why do they care if the environment gets messed up, or energy costs increase a few %ge points. They won't be around in 100 years, so it is easy to think "NOT MY PROBLEM. ALSO, WONT GET ME REELECTED."
But what if they were around in 100 years, or 200 years? And what if their constituents had a Lonnggg memory?
*shrug* Gift or not, all I'm saying is longer-term enlightened self interest could be a force for helping our species make better decisions. In oh so many ways it seems like humans are short sighted fools.
What would life be like if people lived for 200 years on average, maybe some to 300 years.
Would many humans be in such a hurry to make Allah or Jehova or whatever $DEITY happy so they can hang out with the other cool kids afterlife? Or would they have an enlightened self-interest to take more of an interest in what happens here?
Perhaps if people lived longer they might say:
"Hmm... if global warming is a problem in 100 years maybe we should plan for it?"
"Hmmm... maybe we don't want to flush our water supply / aquifers away for some temporary fracking oil profit?"
"Hmm... maybe increasing education funding to help new people make the world a better place is a good idea?"
Hmm... maybe there is long-term benefit to developing human capital? (Instead of freaking out about next quarter's profits - oh noes teh stoks dropping!)
"Hmm... maybe that 20 year mission to pluto, or a 100 year mission to alpha centauri aren't so crazy after all?"
"Hmm... 100 years to colonize mars? What the hell, let's try it."
"Hmm... maybe I do have time to learn Chinese (or insert $LANGAUGE here) and go visit that land, just because it would be fun."
(Economically, opportunity costs decrease as available time (a resource) increases. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to consider other short-term/long-term decisions that might be better made from a long-term perspective).
If my lifespan was 300 years instead of maybe 80ish, I like to think I'd be taking a longer term view about what I do today and what I plan for in the future.
At any rate, I don't want to distract you from savoring the gift of your mortality.
I'm just pondering other options...
I use a treadmill desk, and when I really need to think deeply about something (for example, intricate code logic), I end up stopping walking while I think through the details.
*shrug* Try debugging something on a treadmill and let me know how it goes; of course, your mileage may vary.
I take it walking and talking are not considered two task at once. Unless you mean high-level tasks (ie the ones we are conscious about, not like walking and such).
It trades one addiction for others: religion, caffeine, and nicotine. It trades personal responsibility for not drinking, and thus drinking, to an imaginary higher power.
Quite glib; your implied point is "it" is worthless because it just swaps addictions.
I haven't seen a definition of addiction yet, so I'll suggest this:
Someone is addicted if they repeatedly make damage-causing choices, to the point where normal life is unsustainable (e.g. cant hold a job, arrested, or maybe death).
Now instead of a question of "Addiction" it becomes a question of Sustainability: how long can somebody carry on?
Some people carry on for a full lifetime with whatever. No problem, I'd say they're not addicted.
Other people have trouble sustaining after a while.
As for "trading one addiction for another", think of it as damage control.
Different behaviors have different time frames to their consequences.
Some things, like meth or heroin, can lead to severe consequences quickly (think Trainspotting).
Alcohol tends to be longer-term maintainable; often drinkers can sustain for years, possibly even decades. Eventually health issues (like liver damage, possibly fatal), judgement issues (drunk driving, possibly fatal), and other "consequences" (getting fired, divorced, passing out in risky situations) tend to make life unsustainable.
Marijuana is perhaps more sustainable than alcohol and other drugs.
Now, let's talk about some of the other "addictions" that you're concerned about.
Coffee? (Oh noes, they iz addixted to caffeen!!) WTF! Coffee is arguably completely sustainable, it doesn't cause damage to the user or to others.
Cigarettes? *shrug* I don't know about that one but damage-wise, but it is probably safer for somebody to smoke than to routinely make poor decisions because they're blackout drunk.
Sex? (Oh noes, they are sleepn roundz!) This is pretty sustainable; arguably healthier than lots of alcohol / chemical "entertainment" options. Do actually you have a problem with people engaging in sex?
Look... whatever behavior you're thinking about, try thinking of it in terms of sustainability. Maybe some of these things are "just" substitute addictions"... but is that really so bad?
Other social groups (where "social" means 2+ humans) utilize the same mechanisms that work for cults.
In other words, many groups (like political parties, organized religion, sports fans, various work teams, boy scouts, girl scouts,
Some of the groups hack the human bios in a way that causes more damage than others.
*shrug* If people are lucky, they are raised around the less-damaging groups.
Your surprise at being affected is actually very interesting: I take that to show how just how fundamental the human bios is to people; usually people don't think about "breathing" or "seeing" - lots of neural hardware just works to make those processes happen. Why should social dynamics (my "bios" metaphor) be any more obvious, or have any less neural hardware, than other processes?
My AA story... ...
In college, I attended an AA meeting as a requirement for a Psychology class. I wan't an alcoholic or even on the path to alcoholism; I just needed to fulfill the requirement and "attend an AA meeting" was the easiest way to do that.
I left that meeting on an emotional high. The only way I can describe it is that it was like finding out you had a whole branch of your family that been searching for you for years, and now you've been reunited and your new family just accepts you with -- not just open arms -- but with a tangible joy that you've finally joined them. It was awesome! And then I got about 50 feet out the door and said to myself "You just got hooked by a cult!"
I was shocked because I had always assumed that I was 100% absolutely immune to cults. I had read stories about people who were brainwashed into joining them and thought that I -- with my intelligence and my skepticism and my stable family life -- could never fall for something like that. But I had only been there for two hours and they had hooked me. Had I been less intelligent or cynical or more lonely maybe I wouldn't ever have realized what was happening.
So I completely agree with AC's suggestion that AA is a cult; but I disagree that this is in any way a bad thing.
This is what I was going to say. I'd pay for well researched news on major events instead of the speculation and opinion sites put out in the first 30 seconds of hearing about something.
If you're looking for well researched articles etc. try The Economist.
Or if you want a daily newspaper, try The Wall Street Journal.
*shrug* I find them worth paying for.
otoh, if this thread is just a rant-fest about how most news sources are lame...
*shrug* while I don't disagree, that observation isn't newsworthy.
You'd probably liquefy the pumpkin before it got airborne.
You're gonna need something fairly rugged to get launched out of this thing.
True, I'd drop a little money on a kickstarter for this just for the entertainment value.
That being said, I really really want to see video of things like pumpkins being fired out of this ... that would be awesome ... the pumpkin rail gun. ;-)
Wedel has found new work. He has been employed for about a year as a quality engineer for a large eye care/pharma company.
Ask about outsourcing, Wedel said it has "affected just about anyone with a technical degree -- it's purely business getting its way with government. Lobbyists have bamboozled our politicians into thinking we have a shortage of qualified engineers and that we need to import more via the H-1B -- simply not true.
So far, posts are being a bit harsh.
The only serious criticism I would offer is they chose the wrong audience for an interview like this: I suspect slashdot is more about practicing technologists & hobbyists, Kusnetsky's observations seemed like they'd be more useful to CIO-level, enterprise architects, or perhaps non-techies that need to cope with clouds.
I thought Kusnetsky made some useful distinctions; "cloud = buzzword marketing" vs. "cloud what's different", and who in reality is actually doing cloud things. Kusnetsky was also concerned about how to measure what people are actually doing at an industry level; I thought that was interesting, since (as a practitioner) I tend to focus on specific projects, one implementation at a time. *shrug* they're looking at the "cloud thing" from a different perspective than I do, which I thought was interesting.
r.e. the Dilbert Example (remembered: Dilbert: "Do you want red or blue database?" vs. actual (dilbert: "What color do you want that database?" Boss: "I think Mauve has the most ram."), it was a fine point - it got the idea across (e.g. sometimes management runs with trade-magazine fads without understanding it), even if he didn't correctly quote canonical Scott Adams.
execution: the sound was rough, especially bad on the interviwer's side (very hard to understand what Roblimio was saying). That made it harder to watch than it needed to be. I probably won't recommend this video to anybody because the content was rough enough it wasn't worth trying to sift through and find gems of ideas... maybe the transcript will be better.