"When it gets down to it--talking trade balances here--once we've brain-drained all our technology to other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here, once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel, once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would call prosperity--y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anybody else: music/movies/microcode (software)/high-speed pizza delivery."
I'm not a computer scientist, but even if I were I don't think I'd dismiss the computing done in the humanities as fluffy or trivial.
When I was at Michigan State University I worked with their Humanities Computing unit Matrix. A lot of the work they did humanities-wise was preservation of spoken and visual texts and making those texts available to scholars digitally. The interest here is obvious for linguists working in oral histories. Some of those tapes have barely been played more than to be transcribed. It's great that they're getting digitized and made available to people online.
Computing wise, the thing that interested me most in their work is how complicated it is to come up with accurate and helpful metadata to describe the stuff that's getting digitized and cataloged. They work pretty hard to make sure that these texts will be easily searchable and usefully listed for the people that will be using them to write dissertations.
This is a nice simple recipe that will come out best if you have the BIG George Foreman Grill.
1 pack hotdogs (cheapest available)
1 bag flour tortillas
1-4 hunk(s various) cheese
bottle of Frank's Red Hot
Make quesadillas like you normally would if you were only making them with cheese (i.e., melt cheese between 2 tortillas on a skillet).
While cheese is melting, prepare 1 hotdog per quesadilla... 3 minutes or so on your George Foreman Grill.
Wrap quesadilla around hot dog, fill remaining space in quesadilla with FRH.
In many cases, however, a read through the theory will save you a lot of time
I think it's valuable to do reading in things other than technical manuals to get a handle on the forces that shape and are shaped by the technology that IT professionals help shape. I know I'm playing fast and loose with the context of the quote I put above, but I really think that computer professionals benefit a lot by reading about how the law and technology influence each other (and how one sometimes outpaces the other and the ramifications that can have).
To that end, I'll recommend anything written by Lawrence Lessig until I'm blue in the face. The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace go really far in illuminating what (to anyone without Lessigs years of education and practical application) can seem like randomly occuring and chaotic changes in policy and technology.
I also think that being able to speak about history and law in technology contexts is a good career move, especially for those of us who aren't the most talented coders. Business, government and education all waste millions every year because they lack the foresight to come up with good IT policy. There's a lot of change to be made here, but it takes more than just technical knowledge to do it right.
Reading these things, honestly, I'm sure the only thing that ever makes anybody unhappy in this life is starting a family. I live in a major metropolitan area and I make between 15-30k a year (depending on freelance stuff, etc.). I don't have expensive tastes in anything really... buy a new bike every other year, new computer every other year and an old one every year just to play with. Still manage to sack a little bit away every now and then.
But I think that what's really happening is that I'm buying into the new American dream::"live in the city because you're young... things happen there and you're still able to handle it". Things happen there and you can handle it. If I did the same job I do in Fargo, ND (which would be hard) I would be rich beyond my wildest dreams because I wouldn't have rock shows and random city stuff to spend my money on. "They're raising rent again? That sucks. Guess I'll have to pick up some hours waiting tables or a few more freelance editing gigs." When I look at the lives those heartland folks are living (and I type this from Minneapolis, MN...), it looks to me like they're sacrificing opportunity for monetary gain for "homeland security," or just being sure they'll always have a patch of ground on which they can pitch a tent. On the other hand, I feel like all I really have is my mobility. I have some gear that I'd need to sell if things got tight, but really if this town dries up for me I can be on the road in a couple of days... 2 weeks tops. If I had kids or a wife, I don't know what I'd do if the job I was working suddenly ended...
Does anybody else feel like that's the life they've been living for a while? Interchangable part in a city full of the same? This life definitely has certain rewards, but it's obviously not good enough for the folks in the stories the NYT is printing. Does it suck to be a bachelor right now, or is it so great it just throws off NYT's angle?
Actually, it looks to me (judging by the color scheme on the site) that the winner listed on those pages is the winner of the MTV opinion polls. Is that the same thing as the winner of the actual award?
If they're different then this might just be a case of lousy web design rather than a case of bad management (of course, those two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive either... hm.)
This would make a wonderful example for a usability test.
This is a point where I think what we call a bug is really a feature.
How else is the director going to convey to the audience the fact that the party on the other side of the line has abruptly ended the call? A click might be too subtle and silence doesn't do anything to tell us MJ hung up.
I think this is something that's just become kind of a narrative convention for movie phone conversations that allows the director to show us what's going on without giving us the cheesy split screen. I mean, if he was talking on the cell phone we wouldn't be able to hear MJ's voice either, but we can.
Remember... they're telling a story. Sometimes you need to make changes in technology to make the story go smoothly.
Tom Waits' new label Anti is streaming both his upcoming releases for the days before they're released next Tuesday. I listened to the first one and after two songs I was on CDNow placing my preorder.
Now that's what I call increasing music purchasing. I haven't bought a CD since February and it took 8 minutes for me to go buy two that aren't even out yet.
They're great records too, if you're into Tom Waits.
I can honestly say that my use of P2P and music sharing has increased my purchasing of some of the music I buy, but I think it's cut to zero the my purchasing of others.
The difference seems to be in whether or not musicians are "radio friendly" or not, though I don't think I consider that too consciously while I'm in the record store. I'm definitely sure though that getting music online made me buy music from some lesser known bands that I hadn't heard of before. In the case of a woman named Neko Case in particular, a friend of mine new I liked Kelly Hogan and burned me a couple of her mp3s. I loved her music and now I own two of her records. That's pretty typical.
Stuff that I hear on the radio, I'll pull it off mIRC if I want to hear it while I'm in the office, but the radio doesn't convince me to buy music anyway. Why buy it if you can hear it on the radio?
This genre of game is far from dead. The reason we don't see the text interface for controlling characters any more is that there are better ways of doing it. Check out the Resident evil series, Final Fantasy series, this is the evolution.
That's nonsense. What you're saying is like comparing the movie Airplane to something like, I don't know, Pitch Black. One is a silly story that's meant to hang hilarious sight gags and funny little details on. The other is a silly story that's meant to hang cheap scares and stunning special effects on.
This isn't to say that these two things aren't similar; they are. But I don't think they're the same kind of game at all. They're both fun, but RE/FF are definitely not the modern-day continuation of the Space Quest series. Does anybody even make funny games anymore?
I'm not a manager of any kind, but it seems to me that a lot of the griping that programmers do has a lot to do with management having either unrealistic or completely insane expectations of what a project can be capable of or when it can be finished. What about a book (series?) that explains things (sysadmin tasks, programming best practices, open source tools and their benefits/costs) in such a way as to give a guy or girl with an MBA enough of a vocabulary to deal with their programming staff in a halfway literate way.
I bet that this would at least sell like hotcakes, but it might change the world! What a great White Elephant gift...
Perhaps it would be easiest to claim that the bug they're reporting or the feature that's been left out is your original work and your properly. I suppose that that might make anything they might point out their intellectual property and also a derivative work. That way they wouldn't be poaching your stuff out from under you and they'd have full rights to their worthless little idea. Even the losers win.
I was wondering if anybody else here thought the statue at the Turing Memorial in Manchester is just a little bit morbid? Honestly, I was offended at first and the statue made me think more deeply about the many populations that owe Turing a debt of gratitude, but still... Maybe looking at the apple was just a little bit too much for me. Couldn't he have had a book TOO?
Even though I don't work for them, I feel compelled to tell you all that ANYTHING from American Science & Surplus is an excellent stocking stuffer. I've been buying off-the-wall presents from them for years. Models of robots, magnets, goofy pieces of plastic and odd parts from electric gadgets.
Geeks that like to have lots of odd shit around that they might someday hook together to make something that blinks or hums will have a great time with anything from these guys.
Plus it's surplus, so the stuff is practically free! Cheaper than an iPod, certainly.
Shouldn't it also give you the power of flight? At the very least, mine would need to incorporate a batrope-type grapnel/winch gadget that I could use to pull myself out of frightening situations.
I know this isn't necessarily the Qwest layoff that I'm about to mention, but hang on anyway...
Northwest just laid of a about 1500 workers too (http://www.msnbc.com/news/555872.asp), and Minneapolis is feeling that pretty badly. Northwest airlines is one of the biggest employers in Minnesota, so most of those people left from here. That sucks for a lot of people, and there's not much anybody can do but find new work, but I heard last night on NPR that the Airline Pilots Union is making one of their biggest priorities in the new airline security debates the priveleged consideration of people with general airline experience (flight attendants, former pilots, etc.) for jobs as air marshalls or FAA airport security jobs.
It's tough to apply this to IT, I know, but it's impressive to see this union actually taking such a broad view of the work they do, linking new political and old labour issues so well. I mean, who's looking out for those Qwest empoyees? Will they get any kind of prior consideration or notification if they're applying to other industry jobs, or will they just get undercut by recent college grads that'll work for less?
Wait a minute... so buying items and character levels in Everquest or Diablo is a bad investment?
Actually, this sort of makes me think of the arguments of an old professor of mine who was a really faithful Trotskyist. His take on the stock market was that people were buying and selling things at an inflated value... inflated to the point that things that don't really exist (goods and services) become extremely valuable simply based on a promise that may or may not ever be fulfilled. And even if the promise is fulfilled, who's to say that the fulfillment of the promise will even be worth anything in that bizarre future capitalism?
Can anybody else imagine the potential for this with WinAmp visualizations? Getting stoned and watching music on the computer will never be the same...
Seems to me that somebody tried this a couple years ago for PC games and the general consensus was that the thing sucked for two reasons.
1. It tracked twists of your head, which seems cool for flight sims and stuff until you realize your monitor isn't bolted to your face and it's very difficult to play a game without looking at it.
2. Your neck gets tired a lot faster than your wrist, and your eyes get tired even faster than that when you're forcing them to stay locked on a monitor while you twist and tilt your head.
Slashdot Mirror
matrix
I'm not a computer scientist, but even if I were I don't think I'd dismiss the computing done in the humanities as fluffy or trivial.
When I was at Michigan State University I worked with their Humanities Computing unit Matrix. A lot of the work they did humanities-wise was preservation of spoken and visual texts and making those texts available to scholars digitally. The interest here is obvious for linguists working in oral histories. Some of those tapes have barely been played more than to be transcribed. It's great that they're getting digitized and made available to people online.
Computing wise, the thing that interested me most in their work is how complicated it is to come up with accurate and helpful metadata to describe the stuff that's getting digitized and cataloged. They work pretty hard to make sure that these texts will be easily searchable and usefully listed for the people that will be using them to write dissertations.
This is a nice simple recipe that will come out best if you have the BIG George Foreman Grill.
Make quesadillas like you normally would if you were only making them with cheese (i.e., melt cheese between 2 tortillas on a skillet).
While cheese is melting, prepare 1 hotdog per quesadilla... 3 minutes or so on your George Foreman Grill.
Wrap quesadilla around hot dog, fill remaining space in quesadilla with FRH.
so tasty.
I am here to help you.
Please do not resist me.
I think it's valuable to do reading in things other than technical manuals to get a handle on the forces that shape and are shaped by the technology that IT professionals help shape. I know I'm playing fast and loose with the context of the quote I put above, but I really think that computer professionals benefit a lot by reading about how the law and technology influence each other (and how one sometimes outpaces the other and the ramifications that can have).
To that end, I'll recommend anything written by Lawrence Lessig until I'm blue in the face. The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace go really far in illuminating what (to anyone without Lessigs years of education and practical application) can seem like randomly occuring and chaotic changes in policy and technology.
I also think that being able to speak about history and law in technology contexts is a good career move, especially for those of us who aren't the most talented coders. Business, government and education all waste millions every year because they lack the foresight to come up with good IT policy. There's a lot of change to be made here, but it takes more than just technical knowledge to do it right.
Reading these things, honestly, I'm sure the only thing that ever makes anybody unhappy in this life is starting a family. I live in a major metropolitan area and I make between 15-30k a year (depending on freelance stuff, etc.). I don't have expensive tastes in anything really... buy a new bike every other year, new computer every other year and an old one every year just to play with. Still manage to sack a little bit away every now and then.
:"live in the city because you're young... things happen there and you're still able to handle it". Things happen there and you can handle it. If I did the same job I do in Fargo, ND (which would be hard) I would be rich beyond my wildest dreams because I wouldn't have rock shows and random city stuff to spend my money on. "They're raising rent again? That sucks. Guess I'll have to pick up some hours waiting tables or a few more freelance editing gigs." When I look at the lives those heartland folks are living (and I type this from Minneapolis, MN...), it looks to me like they're sacrificing opportunity for monetary gain for "homeland security," or just being sure they'll always have a patch of ground on which they can pitch a tent. On the other hand, I feel like all I really have is my mobility. I have some gear that I'd need to sell if things got tight, but really if this town dries up for me I can be on the road in a couple of days... 2 weeks tops. If I had kids or a wife, I don't know what I'd do if the job I was working suddenly ended...
But I think that what's really happening is that I'm buying into the new American dream:
Does anybody else feel like that's the life they've been living for a while? Interchangable part in a city full of the same? This life definitely has certain rewards, but it's obviously not good enough for the folks in the stories the NYT is printing. Does it suck to be a bachelor right now, or is it so great it just throws off NYT's angle?
Actually, it looks to me (judging by the color scheme on the site) that the winner listed on those pages is the winner of the MTV opinion polls. Is that the same thing as the winner of the actual award?
If they're different then this might just be a case of lousy web design rather than a case of bad management (of course, those two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive either... hm.)
This would make a wonderful example for a usability test.
This is a point where I think what we call a bug is really a feature.
How else is the director going to convey to the audience the fact that the party on the other side of the line has abruptly ended the call? A click might be too subtle and silence doesn't do anything to tell us MJ hung up.
I think this is something that's just become kind of a narrative convention for movie phone conversations that allows the director to show us what's going on without giving us the cheesy split screen. I mean, if he was talking on the cell phone we wouldn't be able to hear MJ's voice either, but we can.
Remember... they're telling a story. Sometimes you need to make changes in technology to make the story go smoothly.
Tom Waits' new label Anti is streaming both his upcoming releases for the days before they're released next Tuesday. I listened to the first one and after two songs I was on CDNow placing my preorder.
Now that's what I call increasing music purchasing. I haven't bought a CD since February and it took 8 minutes for me to go buy two that aren't even out yet.
They're great records too, if you're into Tom Waits.
I can honestly say that my use of P2P and music sharing has increased my purchasing of some of the music I buy, but I think it's cut to zero the my purchasing of others.
The difference seems to be in whether or not musicians are "radio friendly" or not, though I don't think I consider that too consciously while I'm in the record store. I'm definitely sure though that getting music online made me buy music from some lesser known bands that I hadn't heard of before. In the case of a woman named Neko Case in particular, a friend of mine new I liked Kelly Hogan and burned me a couple of her mp3s. I loved her music and now I own two of her records. That's pretty typical.
Stuff that I hear on the radio, I'll pull it off mIRC if I want to hear it while I'm in the office, but the radio doesn't convince me to buy music anyway. Why buy it if you can hear it on the radio?
is that they aren't really molotov cocktails until you light them and throw them. Until then they're just bottles with gas in them.
Yes, Taco. Yes I will.
Wait a minute... who's Kathleen?
Is it ridiculous to hope that this will put some pressure on those grassfuckers at Lucasarts to revive Sam 'n Max?
Space Quest is among the greatest comedy games ever made, but Sam and Max: Hit the Road is without a doubt the best of all time.
That's nonsense. What you're saying is like comparing the movie Airplane to something like, I don't know, Pitch Black. One is a silly story that's meant to hang hilarious sight gags and funny little details on. The other is a silly story that's meant to hang cheap scares and stunning special effects on.
This isn't to say that these two things aren't similar; they are. But I don't think they're the same kind of game at all. They're both fun, but RE/FF are definitely not the modern-day continuation of the Space Quest series. Does anybody even make funny games anymore?
I'm not a manager of any kind, but it seems to me that a lot of the griping that programmers do has a lot to do with management having either unrealistic or completely insane expectations of what a project can be capable of or when it can be finished. What about a book (series?) that explains things (sysadmin tasks, programming best practices, open source tools and their benefits/costs) in such a way as to give a guy or girl with an MBA enough of a vocabulary to deal with their programming staff in a halfway literate way.
I bet that this would at least sell like hotcakes, but it might change the world! What a great White Elephant gift...
Perhaps it would be easiest to claim that the bug they're reporting or the feature that's been left out is your original work and your properly. I suppose that that might make anything they might point out their intellectual property and also a derivative work. That way they wouldn't be poaching your stuff out from under you and they'd have full rights to their worthless little idea. Even the losers win.
I was wondering if anybody else here thought the statue at the Turing Memorial in Manchester is just a little bit morbid? Honestly, I was offended at first and the statue made me think more deeply about the many populations that owe Turing a debt of gratitude, but still... Maybe looking at the apple was just a little bit too much for me. Couldn't he have had a book TOO?
Even though I don't work for them, I feel compelled to tell you all that ANYTHING from American Science & Surplus is an excellent stocking stuffer. I've been buying off-the-wall presents from them for years. Models of robots, magnets, goofy pieces of plastic and odd parts from electric gadgets.
Geeks that like to have lots of odd shit around that they might someday hook together to make something that blinks or hums will have a great time with anything from these guys.
Plus it's surplus, so the stuff is practically free! Cheaper than an iPod, certainly.
Shouldn't it also give you the power of flight? At the very least, mine would need to incorporate a batrope-type grapnel/winch gadget that I could use to pull myself out of frightening situations.
I know this isn't necessarily the Qwest layoff that I'm about to mention, but hang on anyway...
Northwest just laid of a about 1500 workers too (http://www.msnbc.com/news/555872.asp), and Minneapolis is feeling that pretty badly. Northwest airlines is one of the biggest employers in Minnesota, so most of those people left from here. That sucks for a lot of people, and there's not much anybody can do but find new work, but I heard last night on NPR that the Airline Pilots Union is making one of their biggest priorities in the new airline security debates the priveleged consideration of people with general airline experience (flight attendants, former pilots, etc.) for jobs as air marshalls or FAA airport security jobs.
It's tough to apply this to IT, I know, but it's impressive to see this union actually taking such a broad view of the work they do, linking new political and old labour issues so well. I mean, who's looking out for those Qwest empoyees? Will they get any kind of prior consideration or notification if they're applying to other industry jobs, or will they just get undercut by recent college grads that'll work for less?
Wait a minute... so buying items and character levels in Everquest or Diablo is a bad investment?
Actually, this sort of makes me think of the arguments of an old professor of mine who was a really faithful Trotskyist. His take on the stock market was that people were buying and selling things at an inflated value... inflated to the point that things that don't really exist (goods and services) become extremely valuable simply based on a promise that may or may not ever be fulfilled. And even if the promise is fulfilled, who's to say that the fulfillment of the promise will even be worth anything in that bizarre future capitalism?
Can anybody else imagine the potential for this with WinAmp visualizations? Getting stoned and watching music on the computer will never be the same...
Seems to me that somebody tried this a couple years ago for PC games and the general consensus was that the thing sucked for two reasons. 1. It tracked twists of your head, which seems cool for flight sims and stuff until you realize your monitor isn't bolted to your face and it's very difficult to play a game without looking at it. 2. Your neck gets tired a lot faster than your wrist, and your eyes get tired even faster than that when you're forcing them to stay locked on a monitor while you twist and tilt your head.