Yeah, no. See, as humanity progresses technologically, certain other parts of it have failed to keep pace. Law, for instance. Ethics, for one. I could go on.
One thing we do need to fix, as much as it pains me to say this (I really do not want to be on this planet), are the, ahem, education methods. I am not talking about the partisan bullshit about whether sex-ed gets taught that year, or whether religion is allowed in the classroom, or whether the teacher's union is (probably) robbing us blind. I'm talking about the pure mediocrity of what is winding its way out of those systems these days, and the seeming inability of anyone to fix it. I'm beginning to suspect that it's because they simply do not know what is broken, which in of itself is a cause for concern.
Just a giant fucking waste of time and energy. Like driving a new Porsche into the family pool.
It takes years of abuse to achieve dis-motivation. Anyone telling you otherwise is probably a part of the problem (and thus blind to their own poison).
Something like that. Valve's model probably works because the people they employ are both highly intelligent and flexible -> adapting to a non-hierarchical pattern is somewhat trivial to them.
For everyone else, the hierarchy method is instilled in motor memory. To find out what I mean, go and talk to a recruiter, next time you can, and ask what they think about programmers earning more than their managers. They think it's wrong. Now, imagine how Valve pays people. Yeah, that's the difference.
Some people have the "I am hiring a friend to help me work my farm" method to business, and some people have the "I am hiring serfs to work my land" method to business. The pay typically reflects that, as well as the output.
So what will happen? Well, a few managers will read this blurb, and try to copy the idea within, into their company. Except their company will want to do it 'their way,' and modify it a tiny bit; the modification will be the same old hierarchical model we've come to know and love, but now with an 'open door policy' and maybe 'jazz corner' for people to play music in...which used to be a part of the kitchen. Slowly, after a few failed attempts to get it right, the whole thing will be forgotten, and swept under the rug. And back to working the land like sharecroppers!
Nonsense. Consider where these populations are growing: undeveloped countries. They have a lot of developing to go, including of their food / resources, before they hit any kind of wall. Today they harvest by hand, tomorrow by machine.
Famine, as always, will be an act of politics and mismanagement.
The myopic person views their microcosm as indicative of the greater whole. They typically could not be more wrong.
The declining birth-rates are in populations where such population controls / methods / pamphletting has been put into action. Elsewhere, far away from these influences, other populations continue to explode. The first group wishes to convince the second group to cut down on reproduction, the second group realizes that it has no reason to negotiate with a dwindling power that bet it all on what may turn out to be faulty data. In either case, the second group maintains a distinct advantage over the first group, which will realize its mistakes too late to amend them.
It will be interesting to be a white person who is a minority in a country where they were formerly a majority.
Laptop -> portable computer, been around for years. Netbook -> mini-sized laptop, unlikely to have an optical drive. Ultrabook -> laptop without an optical drive.
On one hand, the resolution is impressive, and always on the 'I want' list. On the other hand, the lack of dedicated video card, small storage space, USB 2.0 ports...ouch. I writing this comment on a laptop from HP, that I bought several months ago, whose specs, with the exception of that resolution, somewhat trounce this thing, for the same price. I've upgraded mine, so it has 16GB of RAM, and a 240 GB SSD, but still, it came with 8 GB of RAM, which is 4 more than this thing from Google...and it's not like the i5 is a 32-bit processor or that RAM is expensive.
Unless I am missing something, it looks very expensive, and underpowered. It looks like a laptop, with the hardware of a netbook, save the disk space you expect from a tablet. And they're charging prices like it's mid-level laptop. *shudders*
Now, it makes sense in that Google is an internet company, not a hardware company, and their strategy is to tether you as closely as possible to their existing services to make as much money as possible. Still, from a freedom perspective, as well as a bang for your buck perspective, this thing is a little weak if you have even one IT guy in house. On the other hand, perhaps this is part of the glorious revolution, where the masses pay for 32KB upgrades to their POP3 accounts, because they really, really are that kind of a terrible people, while the techs who are screaming about this are silenced with checks suddenly appearing in the mail for undisclosed, but potentially eye-popping, amounts, as well as gainful employment at these companies. A serious ethical dilemma, on par with being a defense contractor. But if the universe truly has gone mad, and is desperate to pay good money for little in return...yeah, I'd still probably have a problem with it.
See, we want programmers for around $40K, and, damn it, they are asking for more than that! Don't they realize that we consider them a trade now? So what if they went to university for four years to be a Computer Scientist or Software Engineer. We want what we want for the price we want. That's why we want to business school, and slept through all those classes! And what a fine job we have done piloting the US economy! Yes sir, no bailouts or scandals anywhere on the horizon!
New rule: companies may no longer hold a green card over a candidate in an effort to lower their salaries. Immigrants are free to compete with natives, but only on a level playing field. None of this "we'll sponsor you if you act like a good slave for wages 50% of the natives."
Or some people just like the way it feels when held in one hand, reading an article, while eating their breakfast with the other.
Holding a tablet, no matter how light, just isn't the same.
Plus anyone will annoy someone else while holding a tablet; they may not do so while reading a newspaper ("Talking to me during newspaper time is expressly forbidden"). With a tablet, well, they may not know when you are or are not reading the online newspaper, so they will inevitably interrupt you.
On that note, I miss the old Wall St. Journal. I liked the wider paper, among other things. Now I have to find a way to get a daily delivery of Le Monde to my door-step, and it appears to be something of a trial.
Yes, and the people currently at the table do not want that to happen, because of Lincoln. In short, no US president will ever let any of the states leave under peaceful circumstances, because to do so would be to fail the Union; Lincoln was extremely...useful in setting that precedent.
So, the SSOA (Soviet States of America) is where we are headed. Not because of Obama or socialism or Democrats or Progressives; but because of what has been quietly creeping up behind them. Turning a glass eye to what has been become a relentless nightmare with regards to the police / TSA / national security...this will not end well.
Because the various government officials are not the true holders of power? They just like to think they are. They are given a little power over a small realm, just enough to do their jobs or participate in some minor corruption, not enough to have any major effect on anything, which they then send the next forty years of their life defending. And they are so inundated with that defense, that they never realize how used they are, until they retire; at which point they are already removed, and too old to change anything, not that anyone would really believe great uncle Ben's stories (he has Dementia, you know).
Think about it. If you or I were running a government, one of our first aims would be to figure out what the absolute truth is, then develop a framework based off of it, so we could, I don't know, build something that was worthwhile? But as per the nature of our NFL political system, people are not interested in finding out the most atomic of truths, not interested in anything of the sort; to them, it's just a game, pick a side, wear a jersey, and hope the hometown team wins. It has become...capitalism, without the rules; socialism, without the people.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that many of the worst atrocities in history have been achieved when a majority decides that it answers to no one, and can trample everyone else because. These out of control groups then continue onwards, until they trample outside their little designated fiefdom, bringing down the wrath of other, normally otherwise-occupied groups, who then send them back to the stone age / sell them into slavery.
In short, it's the idiots approach to power. "Once we have the power, then we'll be unstoppable" -> yeah, that's what the previous guy (whom you just overthrew) thought. Now, you'll attempt to solidify your base of power so you can't be easily removed, and WE'RE DONE HERE! (said in the South Park banker's voice). Like no one else has ever thought of that before, nor seen it backfire with such ferocity that veteran soldiers go into hiding.
Mind you, I'm all for new takes on things, trying out new strategies to see what happens, but doing the same thing over and over again is pure madness. And I'd prefer to leave early on those days, with a doctor's note for something.
Think about that statement. The areas where people want to use 'clouds' are areas where they are not designed to handle. It's like using a plane's prop as an egg-beater. The people who see this in action are trying to correct the misapplication, but the people making these decisions have an attention span measured in microseconds. They think IT is trying to save their own jobs (possibly), without realizing that IT is trying to prevent (yet another) management fiasco. Why would IT want to stop this fiasco, even if they end up on top afterwards because of it? Because it's a complete waste of seven months of their time, and millions of dollars, doing something which they will never be adequately reimbursed for. No one wants to spend 6 months of their weekends trying to write a parser to get the data from the cloud people back into the company database, because the original contract never stipulated being able to migrate that data back if everything fell through.
Of course, the people looking into clouds would know that, right? That they can get their data in and out of it, and even change providers in a pinch if they need to, right? Because otherwise they would have migrated the company to a platform that is impossible for them to move off of, and their new 'friends' can ramp up prices as much as they like, holding the data hostage the entire time.
Indeed. It's fascinating to see companies outsource / try to remove the various people in their companies with the greatest of problem solving skills. It looks like an attempt at a decapitation strike. Strange, since if companies went through with much of this outsourcing, they'd eventually collapse from within. They'd have giant security holes everywhere, with no one of any capacity to patch them up.
Here's a solution -> hire a bunch of BOFHs to do your security for you. True, you have to keep them happy, but the upside is that security could never be tighter / more fatal for anyone trying to crack your network.
In other words, go find some out of work network admins, the older the better, and employ them in this capacity. They know how to make things pretty air-tight (usually), but are rarely directed to do so (because people HATE it when security is ramped up to Defcon 0; it makes getting work done somewhat difficult, but in theory, very secure). They will, in theory, employ several different strategies to secure their networks, to the insane point of watching the bits crawl across the wire with human eyes to detect patterns that shouldn't be there. There is no magic wand for network security -> if you want to keep humans (and AIs) out, you need to employ comparable assets.
Yes, but that does not alter the fact that many of these bills, introduced to Western society, are totally at odds with its professed values.
Allow me to show you: "We fought a world wide war to bring democracy / freedom / etc. to people who had it stolen from them / have never had the chance to experience it themselves, against totalitarian dictators / nazis / facists / etc. Skipping ahead to item two on today's agenda, the Chiquita / Dole / etc. corporation would like to overthrow a South American government, duly elected by its people, so that we can buy our bananas for less; btw, we'll be installing a dictatorship in place of whatever they have there right now, it's going to be total hell for those unfortunate people. All in favor, say 'Aye.' *pause* The motions carries!"
Let's face it: that's f*cked up. And it's not like that kind of behavior has stopped recently -> it has only accelerated, like we're on a tight schedule to f*ck things up as much as possible before we leave this planet. Now, I am not an environmentalist, but I have to pause when I think about these kinds of actions -> they are not good according to anyone who has not had an ethicetomy. Plus I hate being lied to, as much as anyone else, especially when it's the all powerful 'lie by omission' being played.
Wait, wait, wait. A BIOS flash should (almost) completely erase the BIOS, then reprogram it.
Are you telling me that some companies use incremental BIOS upgrades? And why?
This is particularly worrying to me, as I have a SuperMicro L8i SAS controller I just installed in my main machine, and LSI is apparently behind the chipset.
I would. But then, when given the opportunity, I prefer to not give into possible fears, and only deal with the definites. Giving into paranoia...well, that's the end of the line for you.
An American might be involved in something, or they might not. But it destroys an legitimacy a government might have if it goes around blindly killing anyone that might be a threat to it -> for many reasons, but the least of which, is that it becomes easily manipulated into doing someone else's dirty work. Hell, if I am having an amoral weekend, I might fabricate some evidence to get a few people killed, and the people at the DoD will totally buy it. All I have to do is sprinkle some radioactive dust on a person's luggage / belongings, and put together some official looking paperwork from a foreign government, and chances are, the US government will be eating out of the palm of my hand, attacking any number of people, to my amoral delight. Because let's be honest, without a trial by jury, the bar for evidence is quite low. And to be honest, with the bar set so low these days, it's hard not to want to 'test' just how low it truly is...I wonder if I could convince them to bomb a playground for fear of a chemical weapon somewhere in the vicinity?
As for the 'threats' facing America today....what new weapons or tactics are there that justify these new policies? We've had nuclear threats for at least four decades thus far....biological / chemical threats for equally as long....and asymmetric warfare for much longer than any of those. There isn't anything new, but someone keeps ratcheting up the responses. And innocents keep getting caught in the cross-fire...something which seems to hold no water with whomever is directing these advances.
And 9/11? Come on. It's a one-time, somewhat unrepeatable event. So many fails in there.
Slashdot Mirror
You know how you do a lot of jobs, even though they only take a few seconds, and aren't a part of any formal job description...? Yeah. Like that.
Do I need to quote Fight Club? You are not your job. You are not the clothes you wear, nor the place where you sleep.
Indeed. He left out the inflation of currency. That one is always a sure sign of empire death.
Yeah, no. See, as humanity progresses technologically, certain other parts of it have failed to keep pace. Law, for instance. Ethics, for one. I could go on.
One thing we do need to fix, as much as it pains me to say this (I really do not want to be on this planet), are the, ahem, education methods. I am not talking about the partisan bullshit about whether sex-ed gets taught that year, or whether religion is allowed in the classroom, or whether the teacher's union is (probably) robbing us blind. I'm talking about the pure mediocrity of what is winding its way out of those systems these days, and the seeming inability of anyone to fix it. I'm beginning to suspect that it's because they simply do not know what is broken, which in of itself is a cause for concern.
Just a giant fucking waste of time and energy. Like driving a new Porsche into the family pool.
Unless the thing you are attempting to create requires 1.5 billion dollars in parts. At which point, 1 billion is quite different from 2 billion.
It takes years of abuse to achieve dis-motivation. Anyone telling you otherwise is probably a part of the problem (and thus blind to their own poison).
Something like that. Valve's model probably works because the people they employ are both highly intelligent and flexible -> adapting to a non-hierarchical pattern is somewhat trivial to them.
For everyone else, the hierarchy method is instilled in motor memory. To find out what I mean, go and talk to a recruiter, next time you can, and ask what they think about programmers earning more than their managers. They think it's wrong. Now, imagine how Valve pays people. Yeah, that's the difference.
Some people have the "I am hiring a friend to help me work my farm" method to business, and some people have the "I am hiring serfs to work my land" method to business. The pay typically reflects that, as well as the output.
So what will happen? Well, a few managers will read this blurb, and try to copy the idea within, into their company. Except their company will want to do it 'their way,' and modify it a tiny bit; the modification will be the same old hierarchical model we've come to know and love, but now with an 'open door policy' and maybe 'jazz corner' for people to play music in...which used to be a part of the kitchen. Slowly, after a few failed attempts to get it right, the whole thing will be forgotten, and swept under the rug. And back to working the land like sharecroppers!
My first response is "Certainly that will work."
Ok, so who wants to print the "This is a bit, this is a byte" slides, and send them to the judge, so he can find the error of his ways?
Nonsense. Consider where these populations are growing: undeveloped countries. They have a lot of developing to go, including of their food / resources, before they hit any kind of wall. Today they harvest by hand, tomorrow by machine.
Famine, as always, will be an act of politics and mismanagement.
The myopic person views their microcosm as indicative of the greater whole. They typically could not be more wrong.
The declining birth-rates are in populations where such population controls / methods / pamphletting has been put into action. Elsewhere, far away from these influences, other populations continue to explode. The first group wishes to convince the second group to cut down on reproduction, the second group realizes that it has no reason to negotiate with a dwindling power that bet it all on what may turn out to be faulty data. In either case, the second group maintains a distinct advantage over the first group, which will realize its mistakes too late to amend them.
It will be interesting to be a white person who is a minority in a country where they were formerly a majority.
The meetings will continue until something gets done around here.
Laptop -> portable computer, been around for years.
Netbook -> mini-sized laptop, unlikely to have an optical drive.
Ultrabook -> laptop without an optical drive.
I'm not really sure what it is, to be honest.
On one hand, the resolution is impressive, and always on the 'I want' list. On the other hand, the lack of dedicated video card, small storage space, USB 2.0 ports...ouch. I writing this comment on a laptop from HP, that I bought several months ago, whose specs, with the exception of that resolution, somewhat trounce this thing, for the same price. I've upgraded mine, so it has 16GB of RAM, and a 240 GB SSD, but still, it came with 8 GB of RAM, which is 4 more than this thing from Google...and it's not like the i5 is a 32-bit processor or that RAM is expensive.
Unless I am missing something, it looks very expensive, and underpowered. It looks like a laptop, with the hardware of a netbook, save the disk space you expect from a tablet. And they're charging prices like it's mid-level laptop. *shudders*
Now, it makes sense in that Google is an internet company, not a hardware company, and their strategy is to tether you as closely as possible to their existing services to make as much money as possible. Still, from a freedom perspective, as well as a bang for your buck perspective, this thing is a little weak if you have even one IT guy in house. On the other hand, perhaps this is part of the glorious revolution, where the masses pay for 32KB upgrades to their POP3 accounts, because they really, really are that kind of a terrible people, while the techs who are screaming about this are silenced with checks suddenly appearing in the mail for undisclosed, but potentially eye-popping, amounts, as well as gainful employment at these companies. A serious ethical dilemma, on par with being a defense contractor. But if the universe truly has gone mad, and is desperate to pay good money for little in return...yeah, I'd still probably have a problem with it.
See, we want programmers for around $40K, and, damn it, they are asking for more than that! Don't they realize that we consider them a trade now? So what if they went to university for four years to be a Computer Scientist or Software Engineer. We want what we want for the price we want. That's why we want to business school, and slept through all those classes! And what a fine job we have done piloting the US economy! Yes sir, no bailouts or scandals anywhere on the horizon!
New rule: companies may no longer hold a green card over a candidate in an effort to lower their salaries. Immigrants are free to compete with natives, but only on a level playing field. None of this "we'll sponsor you if you act like a good slave for wages 50% of the natives."
Or some people just like the way it feels when held in one hand, reading an article, while eating their breakfast with the other.
Holding a tablet, no matter how light, just isn't the same.
Plus anyone will annoy someone else while holding a tablet; they may not do so while reading a newspaper ("Talking to me during newspaper time is expressly forbidden"). With a tablet, well, they may not know when you are or are not reading the online newspaper, so they will inevitably interrupt you.
On that note, I miss the old Wall St. Journal. I liked the wider paper, among other things. Now I have to find a way to get a daily delivery of Le Monde to my door-step, and it appears to be something of a trial.
Yes, and the people currently at the table do not want that to happen, because of Lincoln. In short, no US president will ever let any of the states leave under peaceful circumstances, because to do so would be to fail the Union; Lincoln was extremely...useful in setting that precedent.
So, the SSOA (Soviet States of America) is where we are headed. Not because of Obama or socialism or Democrats or Progressives; but because of what has been quietly creeping up behind them. Turning a glass eye to what has been become a relentless nightmare with regards to the police / TSA / national security...this will not end well.
Because the various government officials are not the true holders of power? They just like to think they are. They are given a little power over a small realm, just enough to do their jobs or participate in some minor corruption, not enough to have any major effect on anything, which they then send the next forty years of their life defending. And they are so inundated with that defense, that they never realize how used they are, until they retire; at which point they are already removed, and too old to change anything, not that anyone would really believe great uncle Ben's stories (he has Dementia, you know).
Think about it. If you or I were running a government, one of our first aims would be to figure out what the absolute truth is, then develop a framework based off of it, so we could, I don't know, build something that was worthwhile? But as per the nature of our NFL political system, people are not interested in finding out the most atomic of truths, not interested in anything of the sort; to them, it's just a game, pick a side, wear a jersey, and hope the hometown team wins. It has become...capitalism, without the rules; socialism, without the people.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that many of the worst atrocities in history have been achieved when a majority decides that it answers to no one, and can trample everyone else because. These out of control groups then continue onwards, until they trample outside their little designated fiefdom, bringing down the wrath of other, normally otherwise-occupied groups, who then send them back to the stone age / sell them into slavery.
In short, it's the idiots approach to power. "Once we have the power, then we'll be unstoppable" -> yeah, that's what the previous guy (whom you just overthrew) thought. Now, you'll attempt to solidify your base of power so you can't be easily removed, and WE'RE DONE HERE! (said in the South Park banker's voice). Like no one else has ever thought of that before, nor seen it backfire with such ferocity that veteran soldiers go into hiding.
Mind you, I'm all for new takes on things, trying out new strategies to see what happens, but doing the same thing over and over again is pure madness. And I'd prefer to leave early on those days, with a doctor's note for something.
Right, because they're doing such a bang-up job, that many of their constituents would have trouble programming a VCR to display the time correctly.
That's not a feature, it's a bug.
The 'T' in STEM stands for technology, which (I)nformation (T)echnology is.
Think about that statement. The areas where people want to use 'clouds' are areas where they are not designed to handle. It's like using a plane's prop as an egg-beater. The people who see this in action are trying to correct the misapplication, but the people making these decisions have an attention span measured in microseconds. They think IT is trying to save their own jobs (possibly), without realizing that IT is trying to prevent (yet another) management fiasco. Why would IT want to stop this fiasco, even if they end up on top afterwards because of it? Because it's a complete waste of seven months of their time, and millions of dollars, doing something which they will never be adequately reimbursed for. No one wants to spend 6 months of their weekends trying to write a parser to get the data from the cloud people back into the company database, because the original contract never stipulated being able to migrate that data back if everything fell through.
Of course, the people looking into clouds would know that, right? That they can get their data in and out of it, and even change providers in a pinch if they need to, right? Because otherwise they would have migrated the company to a platform that is impossible for them to move off of, and their new 'friends' can ramp up prices as much as they like, holding the data hostage the entire time.
Indeed. It's fascinating to see companies outsource / try to remove the various people in their companies with the greatest of problem solving skills. It looks like an attempt at a decapitation strike. Strange, since if companies went through with much of this outsourcing, they'd eventually collapse from within. They'd have giant security holes everywhere, with no one of any capacity to patch them up.
Here's a solution -> hire a bunch of BOFHs to do your security for you. True, you have to keep them happy, but the upside is that security could never be tighter / more fatal for anyone trying to crack your network.
In other words, go find some out of work network admins, the older the better, and employ them in this capacity. They know how to make things pretty air-tight (usually), but are rarely directed to do so (because people HATE it when security is ramped up to Defcon 0; it makes getting work done somewhat difficult, but in theory, very secure). They will, in theory, employ several different strategies to secure their networks, to the insane point of watching the bits crawl across the wire with human eyes to detect patterns that shouldn't be there. There is no magic wand for network security -> if you want to keep humans (and AIs) out, you need to employ comparable assets.
Yes, but that does not alter the fact that many of these bills, introduced to Western society, are totally at odds with its professed values.
Allow me to show you: "We fought a world wide war to bring democracy / freedom / etc. to people who had it stolen from them / have never had the chance to experience it themselves, against totalitarian dictators / nazis / facists / etc. Skipping ahead to item two on today's agenda, the Chiquita / Dole / etc. corporation would like to overthrow a South American government, duly elected by its people, so that we can buy our bananas for less; btw, we'll be installing a dictatorship in place of whatever they have there right now, it's going to be total hell for those unfortunate people. All in favor, say 'Aye.' *pause* The motions carries!"
Let's face it: that's f*cked up. And it's not like that kind of behavior has stopped recently -> it has only accelerated, like we're on a tight schedule to f*ck things up as much as possible before we leave this planet. Now, I am not an environmentalist, but I have to pause when I think about these kinds of actions -> they are not good according to anyone who has not had an ethicetomy. Plus I hate being lied to, as much as anyone else, especially when it's the all powerful 'lie by omission' being played.
Wait, wait, wait. A BIOS flash should (almost) completely erase the BIOS, then reprogram it.
Are you telling me that some companies use incremental BIOS upgrades? And why?
This is particularly worrying to me, as I have a SuperMicro L8i SAS controller I just installed in my main machine, and LSI is apparently behind the chipset.
I would. But then, when given the opportunity, I prefer to not give into possible fears, and only deal with the definites. Giving into paranoia...well, that's the end of the line for you.
An American might be involved in something, or they might not. But it destroys an legitimacy a government might have if it goes around blindly killing anyone that might be a threat to it -> for many reasons, but the least of which, is that it becomes easily manipulated into doing someone else's dirty work. Hell, if I am having an amoral weekend, I might fabricate some evidence to get a few people killed, and the people at the DoD will totally buy it. All I have to do is sprinkle some radioactive dust on a person's luggage / belongings, and put together some official looking paperwork from a foreign government, and chances are, the US government will be eating out of the palm of my hand, attacking any number of people, to my amoral delight. Because let's be honest, without a trial by jury, the bar for evidence is quite low. And to be honest, with the bar set so low these days, it's hard not to want to 'test' just how low it truly is...I wonder if I could convince them to bomb a playground for fear of a chemical weapon somewhere in the vicinity?
As for the 'threats' facing America today....what new weapons or tactics are there that justify these new policies? We've had nuclear threats for at least four decades thus far....biological / chemical threats for equally as long....and asymmetric warfare for much longer than any of those. There isn't anything new, but someone keeps ratcheting up the responses. And innocents keep getting caught in the cross-fire...something which seems to hold no water with whomever is directing these advances.
And 9/11? Come on. It's a one-time, somewhat unrepeatable event. So many fails in there.