Mott thinks GM has too many IT people running and supporting the business and not enough doing new development.
"We're really upside down on that when 75% of the people are spending their time trying to make sure the same thing happens today that happened yesterday," he says.
This is simply stunning - no sarcasm here, either.
I'm just saying this this is perhaps the smartest thing I've heard from a CIO.
Ever.
Damn, this Mott dude sounds like the Anti Dilbert.
Depending on how your grandfather's arthritis treatments are going, this book might help him get the arthritis in check:
The New Arthritis Breakthrough (book)
Arthritis sufferers that I have talked with have described rheumatologist reactions to AP (Antibiotic Protocol) ranging from "Couldn't hurt, might help" to actively hostile to the idea. In my family, the rheumatologist we're working with is (fortunately) in the former camp.
I've done some research on this AP treatment and I don't see how it could hurt - at all. One of the things they suggest is Minocycline (which is used for teenagers to treat acne (excerpt: "This antibiotic has been in use since the 1970's and is a great acne therapy")
Anyway, check out what people say about it (check the reviews on Amazon), or this site: roadback.org for some more background info (roadback.org's discussion forum is pretty good).
The thing of it is, mainstream medicine doesn't have an arthritis cure. Their conventional arthritis "treatments" are just about symptom management and do nothing to deal with the underlying I just can't think of much good to say about things like gold salts, plaquenil, prednisone, methotrexate.
One last thing to consider, if grandfather's arthritis isn't cripplingly bad (yet), why not try to get the jump on it?
(Ok, one more last-last thing: if your grandfather is on prednisone be hugely careful if he decides to stop taking it; it is really important to taper at a reasonable (slow) pace to give his adrenal glands time to come back online, cutting off suddenly from larger doses can be fatal. If this applies to his situation, his health care advocate needs to do some research before starting to cut back).
I would personally skip the movies for a while; "Wrath of Khan" and "Save The Wales / Nuclear Wessles" movies are fun, but largely because the fan-base knew the characters and enjoyed seeing the actors back in the saddle.
Your friends will enjoy the moves a lot more after they absorb the chemistry; McCoy + Spock don't really hit their stride until the end of the first season. Anyway, while people with no background in StarTrek certainly can enjoy the movies, people with some background in StarTrek will enjoy the movies at least twice as much. (I say it is worth the wait; you asked for how to best introduce your friends to Star Trek... so realizing there is no need to rush anything will help you do a better job with that introduction).
TOS stories are (mostly) all well done.
And the concepts are ground breaking when you consider they were presented in 1968.
Some of the social points are astonishing; equality, moral dilemmas, and so on - especially(!) when you compare them to other shows that were airing in the late 60's early 70's. (Myself, I like using TOS as a mirror to get a glimpse of that generation's culture.)
So... maybe show them 3 TOS episodes then leave it at that; more than that will risk burning them out.
If they like TOS they'll follow up on their own, or come back for more "home video nights." (And if you can do it, go with the re-mastered TOS; they really do look nicely done).
Maybe for a later "video night" in a do a few TNG episodes. Or they may be grooving on working through TOS. *shrug* Either way, at that point, they will ask for more or just politely nod and focus on other things.
Lastly, and this could be the most important part, show some restraint in pacing and tempo with what you play for your friends. And express interest in what your audience likes and is passionate about; you might find something new that you like, and you will almost certainly learn more about your friends.
All Udacity courses are free and will remain free, it is the certification, or level of certification which will eventually cost money.
(this excerpt was from 2nd page, about half way down in the question: The recent Forbes Magazine’s article title on Udacity read “$100 for a masters degree” is that a reasonable estimate ? )
This is cool because the material will be available even to very cash poor people, and I will likely look into classes here I'd never think about paying for at a conventional school.
jellomizer wrote:
The only way you can get $100 for a degree in education is to mass produce it. Pre-Recorded Lectures, Online articles, Mutable choice tests, all done online. Now granted some colleges nearly teach like that, a professor with a well practiced rehearsed lectures, then you do you multiple choice tests, then you got your class credit...
btw, JM: I agree with your points about delivery & cost cutting.
When the Khan Academy has come up past discussions, people often talk about the idea of "flipping classes" so lectures are on the students time and class sessions are collaborative help sessions roughly like you describe (e.g. hybrid).
All very cool, I'm excited by the potential this offers.
jellomizer wrote:
While you may learn, and can get accreditation. It creates a culture of mediocre education. This takes out some of the human elements that are both good and bad. If you are able being able to be noticed by a professor and working with them on his research, having your work properly critiqued.
When I went to college for Computer Science, I came in already knowing how to program, and I was working programming, but I wanted to learn more then just the core requirements, I wanted to learn the nuances. While some students in my class who passed they got the basics, I was able to use education and the work directly with my professors to hone my skills and make me better. I know I used up more then $100 expense on my education.
However I think a hybrid approach would be a good match. There are some classes, that I didn't like spending thousands of dollars on, just because I had to take them, I would much rather pay a lower rate, and take the mediocre online class to get the credit, and save some money. But save the classes I am actually interested in with live people and professors.
but I am willing to pay a $500 price premium to any company that is willing to sell me a laptop that has a standard sized keyboard. I type 50 pages of text or code per week. IT IS WORTH IT TO ME.
To my knowledge, no such thing exists.
For your consideration:
Dell's Precision line of laptops has some models with comfortable full-size keyboards. I'm typing this on a Dell M6400 which is nice to type on; full-size keys (plus backlit, nice in projector low-light situations), and a 10-key keypad and a real row of FN-keys at the top (although the fn-keys are maybe 70% the size of the other keys).
Relevant to the original topic, the screen is 1900x1200. It is a gorgeous screen for a laptop.
Anyway, having added some SSD's (SATA2) in it, the machine is quite responsive (I have this one maxed out at 16gb ram, but that is comfortable to work with for a while). Downsides = big, heavy, and the power supply is the size + weight of a six pack (ok, maybe half that volume but it is huge). If you want a good keyboard + horse power + really nice display and great storage options (in addition to the two internal sata hdd slots, I added a 750gb drive in a optical-bay caddy since I almost never use DVD's these days) so I'm pretty well set for storage. (As an aside, this machine was built by Foxcon - I've taken it down to the motherboard a few times for various upgrades and replacements and - I have to say - Foxcon did *nice* work).
I'm going to use this another year or so then see if I can find something similar that has can use internal PCIe SSD(s) - I want to bypass sata and go for a PCIe x4 or x8 device (*shrug* I haven't seen that in a laptop yet for storage, but when that comes out it will be time to upgrade).
For a laptop, this one has a pretty sweet keyboard. You can find used ones on ebay at very affordable prices these days, thought I might suggest the M6500 or later because the M6400 doesn't have a function mPCIe slot. Study up on the various screen options, CPU options, GPU options (I've been pleased with the Quadro FX 2700m) so you understand the exact configuration you're getting.
*shrug* I'm just sayin, you can find laptops with nice keyboards if you look around a little.
Producer: Watch this. A.W.E.S.O.M-O, given the current trends of the movie going public, can you come up with an idea for a movie that will break $100 million box office?
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: [Cartman]Um... Okay, how about this: Adam Sandler is like in love with some girl. But it turns out that the girl is actually a golden retriever or something.
Mitch: Oh! Perfect!
Executive: We'll call it "Puppy Love".
Mitch: Give us another movie idea, A.W.E.S.O.M.-O.
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Um... How about this: Adam Sandler inherits like, a billion dollars, but first he has to become a boxer or something.
Mitch: "Punch Drunk Billionaire".
......
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Movie idea #2,305: Adam Sandler is trapped on a deserted island and falls in love with a coconut.
Producer: Great. Great, A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. Uh, guys, take a break. I need a minute alone with A.W.E.S.O.M.-O.
Executive: Okay.
Producer: You are an incredible robot, A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. I was just wondering, are you by chance a *pleasure* model?
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: What?
Producer: Have you been programmed to satisfy urges of humans?
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: A.W.E.S.O.M.-O does not understand.
Producer: Let me show you what I mean.
Butters: [on the phone] Yeah, we're having a great time, Aunt Nellie. The movie studio guys are real nice.
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Lame!
[bursts out of the board room, followed by a pants-less Producer]
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Not cool! Total lame!
You spec could honestly be stronger.
What threats do you want to secure against? What scenarios do you want to avoid? Do you want to ensure against virus protection? Lost devices? (e.g. oh noes! our client list is on wikileaks!) Locking down data?
For bonus points, what are the top three things your "reps" need to do?
Just make calls? Or do texting? Or access web mail? Or...?
And how many "reps" are there today? How many will there be next year?
And what is your logistics model? Everybody at the same physical workplace? Distributed "virtual" office? Different countries? Different languages?
Does your phone need to integrate with any of your workflow software?
Try writing up five or six hundred words on the above to enhance your question - I'm sure you'll get some useful advice if you do that.
Ok, I'll give you kick ass frame rates - but only 3D? How about 11D?
"M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified."
The physical universe has a pretty good framerate -- about 8.3*10^16fps, according to Planck -- and it's in 3D too!
Great idea; we'll call it Fog Bank
"Put your Cloud's feet back on the ground with New FogBank LocalServers(tm)!
Your all new revolutionary In-House Cloud"
"the cloud" is just dumb terminals all over again. After businesses make a bunch of money on the cloud they will then start selling local solutions again to try and mitigate problems with being on the cloud.
Don't think github. Think about other interesting Ruby on Rails sites. Suppose you could access them all quiet-like. For a longgg time. For example: 1: Basecamp 2: Twitter 3: Hulu 4: Groupon 5: Justin.tv 6: Shopify 7: Campfire 8: Penny Arcade 9: Guitar Hero 10: Wayfaring (from a 2011 top-ten list of RR sites: http://www.railshosting.org/the-top-10-sites-built-with-ruby-on-rails )
Based on TFA I thought the hack was more about a default flaw with Ruby on Rails key signing, not anything that was specific to github.
Because of its distributed and decentralized nature, it would be very difficult to sneak any changes into a project or its history undetected. Every other copy of the project repo will begin screaming "foul play" when their developers try to sync.
The real question is whether other more nefarious individuals preceded him undetected.
Some (possibly obvious) points; 1) this is about as close to backing up atoms (physical things) as we can get in 2012. Suppose a fire, or nuke, or whatever, takes out the originals (I for one would be grateful to have "just" replicas).
2) The data points & measurements will surely be of interest to historians & scholars.
3) I would love to see the scans in a high rez 3d display; could drive useful virtual reality tech. I don't have days (weeks?) to visit the actual museum. And if I ever do get the opportunity to go, I would love to preview the collection and come up with a short list of what I want to look at in person.
4) Self funding: I suspect the Smithsonian doesn't have as much budget as they might wish. The museum could sell replicas. I wold love to be able buy a nice bit of sculpture or history to display. I'd love to see the patent office do this for some of their old-school "models".
my interest in a museum has never been to see a reproduction of an historical achievement. I've no interest in seeing a photograph of the first telephone, nor in seeing a model of the first telephone, nor in seeing a drawing of the first telephone, nor an impressionist painting of the first telephone, nor a spot-on to-the-micron reproduction of the first telephone.
my interest in a museum is to see the first telephone. Not something created ten minutes ago for me to see, but something created ages ago as an achievement.
I could care less about the reproduction. Actually, that's a lie. I'd feel ripped off by it.
Quite frankly, I'd be upset to hear that my country spent good money to create the reproduction, store the reproduction, and hide the original from me.
show me the original, or destroy the original because it can't be shown.
firewrought, that is a very valid point r.e. simple / complex.
I totally haven't thought about Ted Nelson for a long time.
The TFA got me googling "hypertext".:-)
Anyway, thanks for the wired article - that is very interesting (hell, Xanadu makes Duke Nukem Forever look like a lightning-fast sprint-to-market).
From the Wired article (I think this is in the 4-years after his ACM presentation in 1965):
He (Ted) moved quickly into the most complex theoretical territory, asking questions that still challenge hypertext designers today. For instance, if you change a document, what happens to all the links that go in and out? Can you edit a document but preserve its links? What happens when you follow a link to a paragraph that has been erased?
The best technical answer I have seen to these questions thus far is "Don't do that!":-)
The notion of concept identity reminds me of what the OWL / ontology "web2.0" crowd is working on, and possibly Cyc.
And the data warehousing / olap people are sort of working on the "dimensions" thing to offer different perspectives on raw data (albeit from a limitted and brittle set of dimensions).
I'm not saying Ted has it all figured out; just that he is looking further than the practitioners (which is understandable, since he isn't a programmer, he doesn't have to worry about messy implementation details:-) ).
Anyway. This was a nice diversion -- I wouldn't have thought about any of this today if it hadn't been for the sensationalistic TFA (Oh Noes Hypertext is Dead?!).
I am looking forward to seeing what "hypertext" means in 2022.
Cool - thanks for the reference; I wasn't familiar with Infinite Jest.
It looks interesting!
An interesting question "the fine article" didn't address is, "What makes a story linear vs non-linear?"
Actually TFA (author = Dylan Kinnet?) only talked about hypertext in general terms, and didn't say anything about how hypertext might be a good thing for litereature, just that somebody made some noise about it during the time of The First.Com Crash.
Dylan did mention a few practical reasons why hypertext isn't useful in literature, which basically boil down to "hypertext is still young."
But Dylan's choice of title for TFA, "The Death Of Hypertext" is at best sensationalistic. Hypertext is far from dead.
The kindest thing I can think of to say about TFA is (to borrow Pauli's observation) is to say that "It's not even wrong."
Hmm.
A more useful title would be "Why Aren't Hypertext Novels Commercially Popular?"
excerpt from Dylan's list of hypertext literature: http://nocategories.net/hypertext
"A House Without Walls" is made out of one thread of the story I told with my first Hypertext. "A House Without Walls" is an allusion to the Orpheus myth. Two young lovers enter a psychological hell of their own making and attempt to escape. The narrative is designed to be read on an electronic device. It contains links, providing the reader a variety of disjointed paths through the text.
(empahsis added)
Since "A Hours Without Walls" is only a $1, maybe I'll check it out and see if I can gain more insight about why hypertext literature isn't taking the world by storm. Maybe. (Wow! "Disjointed paths through a text about a psychological hell of their own making" you say? Sounds great!)
As for nonlinearity....
It is worth specifying which dimension's linearity we're talking about.
The obvious dimension one is the story's timeline - as created by the writer (or story's timelines in a presumably non-linear work).
Another dimension is the timeline of the story as perceived by the reader.
While I'm not a mystery-novel fan, I have heard some people like reading the "surprise ending" first and then going back to the beginning of the book.
*shrug* That is non-linear, kind of sort of.
The other use for hypertext I can see to add footnotes, but that just seems like "FootNotes 2.0" - the medium for written word (things like ereaders & tablets) needs at another decade or two to find its ubiquitous formats (and it won't be just one format).
Maybe somebody will come up with an awesome "multiple points of view" genre where every character's arc + interactions w/other characters & events is traced out and the reader can "browse" around "story space". *shrug* Maybe.
1) Hypertext might not be ready yet.
Do you believe hypertext is done evolving? (hint: the creator of word hypertext, Ted Nelson, doesn't think so - see quote, below).
Hypertext is still very young compared to writing. Our species has been working on writing for over 5,000 years, and on hypertext for about 60 years (original memex article, 1945 (a fascinating read, btw - worth ten minutes of your time)
2) Who even likes non-linear stories?
Show me any medium where non-linear fiction is popular. Did you actually enjoyMemento? There are precious few examples of popular non-linear fiction in any medium, including hypertext. (by "precious few" I mean that percentage-wise you can round the amount of non-linear works down to zero and still be reasonably close to the actual number).
3) Non-linear may just be too much work to read? (related to 2)
Humans love stories, but they have significant processing limitations. Fiction is supposed to be entertaining (or at least interesting). (Hypothesis: reading non-linear fiction requires too much work to be fun, so nobody likes it.)
4) What if you are looking in the wrong place for non-linear "fiction".
Try here with games like Adventure, A History for your fiction.
Or possibly here: simulation games In these cases, "fiction" has proven very popular indeed.
("But, But, that isn't serious fiction!"
*shrug* Maybe not.
But then again, maybe games and simulations are simply what non-linear fiction looks like.
Centuries from now, scholars may be studying the ground breaking work of great non-linear authors likeWilliam Crowther and John Carmack in much the same way that visionary creatives like Shakespeare and Mary Shelly are studied today.
So... about the evolution of HyperText: Ted Nelson, the creator of the term hypertext, was unimpressed with HTML:(excerpt from here)
Trying to fix HTML is like trying to graft arms and legs onto hamburger. There's got to be something better-- but XML is the same thing and worse. EMBEDDED MARKUP IS A CANCER. (See my article "Embedded Markup Considered Harmful", WWW Journal, 1997 or 1998.)
The Web is a special effects race, FANFARES ON SPREADSHEETS! JUST WHAT WE NEED!. (Instead of dealing with the important structure issues-- structure, continuity, persistence of material, side-by-side intercomparison, showing what things are the same.) This is cosmetics instead of medicine. We are reliving the font madness of the eighties, a tangent which did nothing to help the structure that users need who are trying to manage content.
The Xanadu® project did not "fail to invent HTML". HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT-- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.The "Browser" is an extremely silly concept-- a window for looking sequentially at a large parallel structure. It does not show this structure in a useful way.
(emphasis added).
Ted raises some interesting points; it is hard for me to think that HTML is the be-all and end-all of information.
I don't know that his "zigzag" thing is ever going to get traction, but
The mistake you make is thinking that such an intelligent idea would be used by a group of people who think that holding a handgun sideways is a good thing.
Simple - cage match. This is a political problem, not a technology problem.
So: Invite your stakeholders to a Priority Planning Meeting (this is the 'cage match') and tell them:
1) Here is the list of invited stakeholders (name names).
2) If your priorities aren't important enough to come to the meeting, they'll be rated unimportant.
3) Come prepared to convince your peers why your projects are more important than theirs.
4) Your choices will set the project priorities for the next month (or week, or quarter.. some multiple of your iterations).
5) List the projects that are "on the table", along with their respective stakeholder(s) and your team's "cost" estimates.
*shrug* Then let them hash it out.
Agile fans would call this a kind of planning game; you'll probably make more progress telling your stakeholders it is a Priority Planning Meeting.
The smart ones will line up political support and make deals before the meeting.
Pro-tip: if you don't know who your stakeholders are, you have bigger problems than you are aware of. Seek professional help and with a qualified consultant to help you find out who they are.
Other random bits of advice:
A) Don't try to make everybody happy.
Even if it were possible (which it isn't), that simply isn't your job.
Your job is to allocate scarce dev resources to best serve company goals.
B) Verify with your boss that your job is to Allocate scarce dev resources to best serve company goals before holding the meeting, and let your boss know what you're planning so they don't get blind sided by it (that makes bosses unhappy).
C) There is a very real chance that everyone will be unhappy. Throw the unhappy people a bone and ask them to give you additional funding options: "Ok, so if your project is so important, what budget will cover it?" Then you have more options about how to get things done.
D) Work out (in advance) how to choose the winning projects: you could hope for consensus (100% unanimous agreement) but... a more practical method might be to give everybody one vote, or N-votes based on their %ge of their operating budget. Also work out how to handle tie-breaking; perhaps recruiting an arguably neutral third party, like the "Product Visionary" or someone, so you stay out of that hot-seat.
Some (possibly obvious) points for you to consider:
If the "digitial assets" have significant monetary value: ask your lawyer. (the "digital assets" probably have low monetary value, or you wouldn't be asking about them here.)
If the "digitial assets" have significant sentimental value: burn yourself a copy, hand them over to your future-ex, and sincerely say "Thank you for the wonderful memories."
(Just out of curiosity on my part, what kind of advice did you expect to get without actually describing the nature and value of the "digital assets"?)
Lastly, consider this: how important is it for you to win?
Divorces can be ugly. I've seen friends destroy each others sanity and inflict long-term damage on their souls in order to "win" and "be right"
Five years from now, would you rather be busy enjoying a new chapter in your life or sipping daily from a nasty glass of old & bitter resentments?
Wikipedia tells us that "The ork is a demon of Tyrol alpine folklore. He lives on mountains, Almen, rock holes, or valleys. It warns the noble game of hunters, or can be savage and bring geisser to the cattle. It was feared like the aufhocker."excerpt from Ork (folklore) So clearly Orking Cows means to bring geisser to cattle.
Obviously.
(Oh, and watch out for aufhocking.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just saying this this is perhaps the smartest thing I've heard from a CIO.
Ever.
Damn, this Mott dude sounds like the Anti Dilbert.
You mean the Anti-PHB. ;-)
Mott thinks GM has too many IT people running and supporting the business and not enough doing new development.
"We're really upside down on that when 75% of the people are spending their time trying to make sure the same thing happens today that happened yesterday," he says.
This is simply stunning - no sarcasm here, either.
I'm just saying this this is perhaps the smartest thing I've heard from a CIO.
Ever.
Damn, this Mott dude sounds like the Anti Dilbert.
I wish there was a way to add "Likes" to articles, this one deserves a +1 cool.
Arthritis sufferers that I have talked with have described rheumatologist reactions to AP (Antibiotic Protocol) ranging from "Couldn't hurt, might help" to actively hostile to the idea. In my family, the rheumatologist we're working with is (fortunately) in the former camp.
I've done some research on this AP treatment and I don't see how it could hurt - at all. One of the things they suggest is Minocycline (which is used for teenagers to treat acne (excerpt: "This antibiotic has been in use since the 1970's and is a great acne therapy")
Anyway, check out what people say about it (check the reviews on Amazon), or this site: roadback.org for some more background info (roadback.org's discussion forum is pretty good).
The thing of it is, mainstream medicine doesn't have an arthritis cure. Their conventional arthritis "treatments" are just about symptom management and do nothing to deal with the underlying
I just can't think of much good to say about things like gold salts, plaquenil, prednisone, methotrexate.
One last thing to consider, if grandfather's arthritis isn't cripplingly bad (yet), why not try to get the jump on it?
(Ok, one more last-last thing: if your grandfather is on prednisone be hugely careful if he decides to stop taking it; it is really important to taper at a reasonable (slow) pace to give his adrenal glands time to come back online, cutting off suddenly from larger doses can be fatal. If this applies to his situation, his health care advocate needs to do some research before starting to cut back).
Your friends will enjoy the moves a lot more after they absorb the chemistry; McCoy + Spock don't really hit their stride until the end of the first season. Anyway, while people with no background in StarTrek certainly can enjoy the movies, people with some background in StarTrek will enjoy the movies at least twice as much. (I say it is worth the wait; you asked for how to best introduce your friends to Star Trek... so realizing there is no need to rush anything will help you do a better job with that introduction).
TOS stories are (mostly) all well done. And the concepts are ground breaking when you consider they were presented in 1968. Some of the social points are astonishing; equality, moral dilemmas, and so on - especially(!) when you compare them to other shows that were airing in the late 60's early 70's. (Myself, I like using TOS as a mirror to get a glimpse of that generation's culture.)
So... maybe show them 3 TOS episodes then leave it at that; more than that will risk burning them out. If they like TOS they'll follow up on their own, or come back for more "home video nights." (And if you can do it, go with the re-mastered TOS; they really do look nicely done).
Maybe for a later "video night" in a do a few TNG episodes. Or they may be grooving on working through TOS. *shrug* Either way, at that point, they will ask for more or just politely nod and focus on other things.
Lastly, and this could be the most important part, show some restraint in pacing and tempo with what you play for your friends. And express interest in what your audience likes and is passionate about; you might find something new that you like, and you will almost certainly learn more about your friends.
From TFA (p.2):
All Udacity courses are free and will remain free, it is the certification, or level of certification which will eventually cost money.
(this excerpt was from 2nd page, about half way down in the question: The recent Forbes Magazine’s article title on Udacity read “$100 for a masters degree” is that a reasonable estimate ? )
This is cool because the material will be available even to very cash poor people, and I will likely look into classes here I'd never think about paying for at a conventional school.
jellomizer wrote:
The only way you can get $100 for a degree in education is to mass produce it. Pre-Recorded Lectures, Online articles, Mutable choice tests, all done online. Now granted some colleges nearly teach like that, a professor with a well practiced rehearsed lectures, then you do you multiple choice tests, then you got your class credit...
btw, JM: I agree with your points about delivery & cost cutting. When the Khan Academy has come up past discussions, people often talk about the idea of "flipping classes" so lectures are on the students time and class sessions are collaborative help sessions roughly like you describe (e.g. hybrid).
All very cool, I'm excited by the potential this offers.
jellomizer wrote:
While you may learn, and can get accreditation. It creates a culture of mediocre education. This takes out some of the human elements that are both good and bad. If you are able being able to be noticed by a professor and working with them on his research, having your work properly critiqued. When I went to college for Computer Science, I came in already knowing how to program, and I was working programming, but I wanted to learn more then just the core requirements, I wanted to learn the nuances. While some students in my class who passed they got the basics, I was able to use education and the work directly with my professors to hone my skills and make me better. I know I used up more then $100 expense on my education.
However I think a hybrid approach would be a good match. There are some classes, that I didn't like spending thousands of dollars on, just because I had to take them, I would much rather pay a lower rate, and take the mediocre online class to get the credit, and save some money. But save the classes I am actually interested in with live people and professors.
but I am willing to pay a $500 price premium to any company that is willing to sell me a laptop that has a standard sized keyboard. I type 50 pages of text or code per week. IT IS WORTH IT TO ME.
To my knowledge, no such thing exists.
For your consideration:
Dell's Precision line of laptops has some models with comfortable full-size keyboards. I'm typing this on a Dell M6400 which is nice to type on; full-size keys (plus backlit, nice in projector low-light situations), and a 10-key keypad and a real row of FN-keys at the top (although the fn-keys are maybe 70% the size of the other keys).
Relevant to the original topic, the screen is 1900x1200. It is a gorgeous screen for a laptop.
Anyway, having added some SSD's (SATA2) in it, the machine is quite responsive (I have this one maxed out at 16gb ram, but that is comfortable to work with for a while). Downsides = big, heavy, and the power supply is the size + weight of a six pack (ok, maybe half that volume but it is huge). If you want a good keyboard + horse power + really nice display and great storage options (in addition to the two internal sata hdd slots, I added a 750gb drive in a optical-bay caddy since I almost never use DVD's these days) so I'm pretty well set for storage. (As an aside, this machine was built by Foxcon - I've taken it down to the motherboard a few times for various upgrades and replacements and - I have to say - Foxcon did *nice* work).
I'm going to use this another year or so then see if I can find something similar that has can use internal PCIe SSD(s) - I want to bypass sata and go for a PCIe x4 or x8 device (*shrug* I haven't seen that in a laptop yet for storage, but when that comes out it will be time to upgrade).
For a laptop, this one has a pretty sweet keyboard. You can find used ones on ebay at very affordable prices these days, thought I might suggest the M6500 or later because the M6400 doesn't have a function mPCIe slot. Study up on the various screen options, CPU options, GPU options (I've been pleased with the Quadro FX 2700m) so you understand the exact configuration you're getting.
*shrug* I'm just sayin, you can find laptops with nice keyboards if you look around a little.
Speaking of Adm Sandler... A.W.E.S.O.M-O quotes ( link to that southpark episode )
Producer: Watch this. A.W.E.S.O.M-O, given the current trends of the movie going public, can you come up with an idea for a movie that will break $100 million box office?
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: [Cartman]Um... Okay, how about this: Adam Sandler is like in love with some girl. But it turns out that the girl is actually a golden retriever or something.
Mitch: Oh! Perfect!
Executive: We'll call it "Puppy Love".
Mitch: Give us another movie idea, A.W.E.S.O.M.-O.
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Um... How about this: Adam Sandler inherits like, a billion dollars, but first he has to become a boxer or something.
Mitch: "Punch Drunk Billionaire".
......
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Movie idea #2,305: Adam Sandler is trapped on a deserted island and falls in love with a coconut.
Producer: Great. Great, A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. Uh, guys, take a break. I need a minute alone with A.W.E.S.O.M.-O.
Executive: Okay.
Producer: You are an incredible robot, A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. I was just wondering, are you by chance a *pleasure* model?
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: What?
Producer: Have you been programmed to satisfy urges of humans?
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: A.W.E.S.O.M.-O does not understand.
Producer: Let me show you what I mean.
Butters: [on the phone] Yeah, we're having a great time, Aunt Nellie. The movie studio guys are real nice.
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Lame!
[bursts out of the board room, followed by a pants-less Producer]
A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Not cool! Total lame!
You spec could honestly be stronger.
What threats do you want to secure against? What scenarios do you want to avoid? Do you want to ensure against virus protection? Lost devices? (e.g. oh noes! our client list is on wikileaks!) Locking down data?
For bonus points, what are the top three things your "reps" need to do?
Just make calls? Or do texting? Or access web mail? Or...?
And how many "reps" are there today? How many will there be next year?
And what is your logistics model? Everybody at the same physical workplace? Distributed "virtual" office? Different countries? Different languages?
Does your phone need to integrate with any of your workflow software?
Try writing up five or six hundred words on the above to enhance your question - I'm sure you'll get some useful advice if you do that.
fwiw, I'm having fun learning Clojure.
fyi: Programming Clojure (2nd edition) by Stuart Halloway and Aaron Bedra
"M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified."
The physical universe has a pretty good framerate -- about 8.3*10^16fps, according to Planck -- and it's in 3D too!
Your cousin would like this :-) http://www.digyourowngrave.com/tom-mabe-telemarketer-crime-scene-prank/
"Put your Cloud's feet back on the ground with New FogBank LocalServers(tm)!
Your all new revolutionary In-House Cloud"
"the cloud" is just dumb terminals all over again. After businesses make a bunch of money on the cloud they will then start selling local solutions again to try and mitigate problems with being on the cloud.
Based on TFA I thought the hack was more about a default flaw with Ruby on Rails key signing, not anything that was specific to github.
Because of its distributed and decentralized nature, it would be very difficult to sneak any changes into a project or its history undetected. Every other copy of the project repo will begin screaming "foul play" when their developers try to sync.
The real question is whether other more nefarious individuals preceded him undetected.
2) The data points & measurements will surely be of interest to historians & scholars.
3) I would love to see the scans in a high rez 3d display; could drive useful virtual reality tech. I don't have days (weeks?) to visit the actual museum. And if I ever do get the opportunity to go, I would love to preview the collection and come up with a short list of what I want to look at in person.
4) Self funding: I suspect the Smithsonian doesn't have as much budget as they might wish. The museum could sell replicas. I wold love to be able buy a nice bit of sculpture or history to display. I'd love to see the patent office do this for some of their old-school "models".
my interest in a museum has never been to see a reproduction of an historical achievement. I've no interest in seeing a photograph of the first telephone, nor in seeing a model of the first telephone, nor in seeing a drawing of the first telephone, nor an impressionist painting of the first telephone, nor a spot-on to-the-micron reproduction of the first telephone.
my interest in a museum is to see the first telephone. Not something created ten minutes ago for me to see, but something created ages ago as an achievement.
I could care less about the reproduction. Actually, that's a lie. I'd feel ripped off by it.
Quite frankly, I'd be upset to hear that my country spent good money to create the reproduction, store the reproduction, and hide the original from me.
show me the original, or destroy the original because it can't be shown.
I totally haven't thought about Ted Nelson for a long time.
The TFA got me googling "hypertext".
Anyway, thanks for the wired article - that is very interesting (hell, Xanadu makes Duke Nukem Forever look like a lightning-fast sprint-to-market). From the Wired article (I think this is in the 4-years after his ACM presentation in 1965):
He (Ted) moved quickly into the most complex theoretical territory, asking questions that still challenge hypertext designers today. For instance, if you change a document, what happens to all the links that go in and out? Can you edit a document but preserve its links? What happens when you follow a link to a paragraph that has been erased?
The best technical answer I have seen to these questions thus far is "Don't do that!" :-)
:-) ).
The notion of concept identity reminds me of what the OWL / ontology "web2.0" crowd is working on, and possibly Cyc.
And the data warehousing / olap people are sort of working on the "dimensions" thing to offer different perspectives on raw data (albeit from a limitted and brittle set of dimensions).
I'm not saying Ted has it all figured out; just that he is looking further than the practitioners (which is understandable, since he isn't a programmer, he doesn't have to worry about messy implementation details
Anyway. This was a nice diversion -- I wouldn't have thought about any of this today if it hadn't been for the sensationalistic TFA (Oh Noes Hypertext is Dead?!).
I am looking forward to seeing what "hypertext" means in 2022.
Cool - mod parent "+1 Useful" :-)
r.e. Tree Style Tab
I started writing my post when there were like eight posts on this topic, so I think I missed yours.
What I think is really interesting about TFA is the author Dylan Kinnett seems to have put some real effort into writing actual non-game hypertext fiction (e.g. books with links).
I wonder if Dylan has ever thought of games. (I'm guessing not.)
*shrug* Maybe they would enjoy writing story arcs for games.
As I stated in another thread in this article: gaming.
It looks interesting!
An interesting question "the fine article" didn't address is, "What makes a story linear vs non-linear?"
Actually TFA (author = Dylan Kinnet?) only talked about hypertext in general terms, and didn't say anything about how hypertext might be a good thing for litereature, just that somebody made some noise about it during the time of The First
Dylan did mention a few practical reasons why hypertext isn't useful in literature, which basically boil down to "hypertext is still young."
But Dylan's choice of title for TFA, "The Death Of Hypertext" is at best sensationalistic. Hypertext is far from dead.
The kindest thing I can think of to say about TFA is (to borrow Pauli's observation) is to say that "It's not even wrong."
Hmm.
A more useful title would be "Why Aren't Hypertext Novels Commercially Popular?" excerpt from Dylan's list of hypertext literature: http://nocategories.net/hypertext
"A House Without Walls" is made out of one thread of the story I told with my first Hypertext. "A House Without Walls" is an allusion to the Orpheus myth. Two young lovers enter a psychological hell of their own making and attempt to escape. The narrative is designed to be read on an electronic device. It contains links, providing the reader a variety of disjointed paths through the text.
(empahsis added)
Since "A Hours Without Walls" is only a $1, maybe I'll check it out and see if I can gain more insight about why hypertext literature isn't taking the world by storm. Maybe. (Wow! "Disjointed paths through a text about a psychological hell of their own making" you say? Sounds great!)
As for nonlinearity....
It is worth specifying which dimension's linearity we're talking about.
The obvious dimension one is the story's timeline - as created by the writer (or story's timelines in a presumably non-linear work).
Another dimension is the timeline of the story as perceived by the reader.
While I'm not a mystery-novel fan, I have heard some people like reading the "surprise ending" first and then going back to the beginning of the book.
*shrug* That is non-linear, kind of sort of.
The other use for hypertext I can see to add footnotes, but that just seems like "FootNotes 2.0" - the medium for written word (things like ereaders & tablets) needs at another decade or two to find its ubiquitous formats (and it won't be just one format).
Maybe somebody will come up with an awesome "multiple points of view" genre where every character's arc + interactions w/other characters & events is traced out and the reader can "browse" around "story space". *shrug* Maybe.
Do you believe hypertext is done evolving? (hint: the creator of word hypertext, Ted Nelson, doesn't think so - see quote, below).
Hypertext is still very young compared to writing. Our species has been working on writing for over 5,000 years, and on hypertext for about 60 years (original memex article, 1945 (a fascinating read, btw - worth ten minutes of your time)
2) Who even likes non-linear stories?
Show me any medium where non-linear fiction is popular. Did you actually enjoy Memento? There are precious few examples of popular non-linear fiction in any medium, including hypertext. (by "precious few" I mean that percentage-wise you can round the amount of non-linear works down to zero and still be reasonably close to the actual number).
3) Non-linear may just be too much work to read? (related to 2)
Humans love stories, but they have significant processing limitations. Fiction is supposed to be entertaining (or at least interesting). (Hypothesis: reading non-linear fiction requires too much work to be fun, so nobody likes it.)
4) What if you are looking in the wrong place for non-linear "fiction".
Try here with games like Adventure, A History for your fiction.
Or possibly here: simulation games
In these cases, "fiction" has proven very popular indeed.
("But, But, that isn't serious fiction!"
*shrug* Maybe not.
But then again, maybe games and simulations are simply what non-linear fiction looks like.
Centuries from now, scholars may be studying the ground breaking work of great non-linear authors likeWilliam Crowther and John Carmack in much the same way that visionary creatives like Shakespeare and Mary Shelly are studied today.
So... about the evolution of HyperText:
Ted Nelson, the creator of the term hypertext, was unimpressed with HTML:(excerpt from here)
Trying to fix HTML is like trying to graft arms and legs onto hamburger. There's got to be something better-- but XML is the same thing and worse. EMBEDDED MARKUP IS A CANCER. (See my article "Embedded Markup Considered Harmful", WWW Journal, 1997 or 1998.) The Web is a special effects race, FANFARES ON SPREADSHEETS! JUST WHAT WE NEED!. (Instead of dealing with the important structure issues-- structure, continuity, persistence of material, side-by-side intercomparison, showing what things are the same.) This is cosmetics instead of medicine. We are reliving the font madness of the eighties, a tangent which did nothing to help the structure that users need who are trying to manage content. The Xanadu® project did not "fail to invent HTML". HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT-- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management. The "Browser" is an extremely silly concept-- a window for looking sequentially at a large parallel structure. It does not show this structure in a useful way.
(emphasis added).
Ted raises some interesting points; it is hard for me to think that HTML is the be-all and end-all of information.
I don't know that his "zigzag" thing is ever going to get traction, but
The mistake you make is thinking that such an intelligent idea would be used by a group of people who think that holding a handgun sideways is a good thing.
Simple - cage match. This is a political problem, not a technology problem.
So: Invite your stakeholders to a Priority Planning Meeting (this is the 'cage match') and tell them:
1) Here is the list of invited stakeholders (name names).
2) If your priorities aren't important enough to come to the meeting, they'll be rated unimportant.
3) Come prepared to convince your peers why your projects are more important than theirs.
4) Your choices will set the project priorities for the next month (or week, or quarter.. some multiple of your iterations).
5) List the projects that are "on the table", along with their respective stakeholder(s) and your team's "cost" estimates.
*shrug* Then let them hash it out.
Agile fans would call this a kind of planning game; you'll probably make more progress telling your stakeholders it is a Priority Planning Meeting.
The smart ones will line up political support and make deals before the meeting.
Pro-tip: if you don't know who your stakeholders are, you have bigger problems than you are aware of. Seek professional help and with a qualified consultant to help you find out who they are.
Other random bits of advice:
A) Don't try to make everybody happy.
Even if it were possible (which it isn't), that simply isn't your job.
Your job is to allocate scarce dev resources to best serve company goals.
B) Verify with your boss that your job is to Allocate scarce dev resources to best serve company goals before holding the meeting, and let your boss know what you're planning so they don't get blind sided by it (that makes bosses unhappy).
C) There is a very real chance that everyone will be unhappy. Throw the unhappy people a bone and ask them to give you additional funding options: "Ok, so if your project is so important, what budget will cover it?" Then you have more options about how to get things done.
D) Work out (in advance) how to choose the winning projects: you could hope for consensus (100% unanimous agreement) but... a more practical method might be to give everybody one vote, or N-votes based on their %ge of their operating budget. Also work out how to handle tie-breaking; perhaps recruiting an arguably neutral third party, like the "Product Visionary" or someone, so you stay out of that hot-seat.
Some (possibly obvious) points for you to consider:
If the "digitial assets" have significant monetary value: ask your lawyer. (the "digital assets" probably have low monetary value, or you wouldn't be asking about them here.)
If the "digitial assets" have significant sentimental value: burn yourself a copy, hand them over to your future-ex, and sincerely say "Thank you for the wonderful memories."
(Just out of curiosity on my part, what kind of advice did you expect to get without actually describing the nature and value of the "digital assets"?)
Lastly, consider this: how important is it for you to win?
Divorces can be ugly. I've seen friends destroy each others sanity and inflict long-term damage on their souls in order to "win" and "be right"
Five years from now, would you rather be busy enjoying a new chapter in your life or sipping daily from a nasty glass of old & bitter resentments?
So clearly Orking Cows means to bring geisser to cattle.
Obviously.
(Oh, and watch out for aufhocking.)
What exactly is Orking a Cow?
Did you just propose killing 6 billion people?
Sorry I'm willing to try almost ANY other option.