Trimming the IT budget intelligently takes time and effort, and a lot of upper management does not want to deal with this. They have a "just get it done" mentality, and get kudos for the money they save each year and not necessarily for making smart decisions about how they got the budget down.
At my SO's company, they have an IT VP who deliberately overspent on equipment last year (they had a good business case for new hardware, but she bought WAY more than what anyone was asking for) so that she could dramatically cut expenses this year by getting rid of the equipment that they didn't need in the first place.
She got a nice bonus for her ability to save the company money. Apparently, she has a long history of moves like this.
The value of IT for a company is very hard to measure in the face of this kind of behaviour.
WinVi is awesome. I use it for all my Windoze platform programming needs.
Having both Windows and Vi commands is a terrific feature, especially you switch platforms frequently. It always takes me a little while to re-adjust, and having both options available simultaneously is fantastic.
And it's free, in many important senses of the word.
I work in Marketing and part of my job is occaisionally analyzing the results of our eval surveys. I think far more people provide false answers out of laziness than out of deliberate lying.
I think this because we use this data (in part) to analyze the effectiveness of our magazine ads in order to budget accordingly. For a long time, one of the magazines, beginning with the letter A had been getting really good results from the eval survey. So we put more money into ads and articles for that magazine, but didn't notice any increase in evaluation downloads.
Then we changed the order of the magazine dropdown, and suddenly, no one was picking that magazine. (Now we regularly rotate the list.)
Yes, there is quite a bit of false data -- lots of people who work at Foo or Test -- but I think it's mostly people trying to get to the survey quickly and not people trying to protect their privacy.
As a programmer-turned-product manager, I know this, but unfortunately, can't do much about it to help my R&D team.
If I want magazine ads, I need to have those complete 2 months in advance -- no changes. If I have existing or potential customers who are waiting for a new version of our software before buying, I need to tell them when it will be ready so that they can accommodate us into their timelines. "It'll be ready when it's ready" is generally not an acceptable answer.
We put in buffer time for our releases, but at some point we have to commit to a time frame to someone. If our dev time exceeds estimates, we (at best) look bad or (at worst) lose a lot of sales -- if we can't deliver, customers will go elsewhere.
I sympathasize with our dev team, and (depending on the situation) I'm willing to move the release date or drop features if we needed, but sometimes the cost of making those adjustments is huge. At some point, I need an accurate estimate.
I understand the problem, but it still doesn't help anything. Frustration on both sides still.
That is how it works in the real world. The numbers are essentially meaningless, but the bean counters and suits have to justify their existance somehow:-)
As a programmer gone suit, (got tired of marketing minions telling me what to do, so I became one) I'd like to expand on this.
In my ideal world, developers wouldn't have deadlines. They'd tell me when they believe they can finish, and as we approached that day they'd tell me how likely it is that they could finish by then, and we'd move the day forward accordingly until we reached some reasonable threshhold of bug-free. Then we'd release.
But it's not my ideal world. If I want any magazine ads for this product, or prominent product reviews, the PR team needs at least 2 months notice. If the product release slips too much after the ads go out, we get angry people who go off and buy our competitors products.
Plus, my job depends on my estimates for sales. Products don't get released unless I can justify that the new product will bring in X number of dollars in Qn. If the release date slips, we can't sell the product -- or we sell a bug-laden piece of crap that no one will buy. Then the salespeople don't make their quotas. Then the company doesn't make it's expected revenue. We're a private, self-funded company, so this means our planned expenditures suddenly go out of whack. Then we lose money, and my head goes on the chopping block (with a worst-case scenario of layoffs) -- all because someone said "two weeks and bullshitted from there."
There is room for flexibility and risk management here -- if I know in advance that something may slip, I can figure out how to mitigate that. But that depends on the development team giving me reasonably meaningful numbers, and letting me know when that changes. I can't manage risk unless I can assess the impact, and time is a huge factor in that.
I know there are some really bad business/marketing folk who set a completely arbitrary deadlines -- I've had then before, and I work with one of them now. Good suits don't set deadlines that aren't feasible, and are flexible enough to move that deadline when necessary. But there comes a point where it's not possible to move the deadline. Without being able to trust our developers to give reasonable estimates on time, we can't function.
You can also use PIPEDA to stop Canadian companies from telemarketing you. Under PIPEDA, you have the right to know where they got your personal information from, who they may have given it to, what they have on you, etc. You must also consent to how they intend to use your personal information, and you may revoke consent at any time.
Currently, this only applies to federal companies, but as of 2004 (I think -- verify on the Privacy Commissioner's site) this will apply provincially.
It's worked for me. Plus, the moment you say "Under my rights as defined by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, I first demand to know where you got my personal information from, and second, I do not give my consent to have this information used for telemarketing purposes. By the way, who is your privacy officer -- you do know that under the auspices of the act you are legally required to have one and to provide me with his or her contact information for privacy complaints?" the telemarketer on the phone has visions of lawsuits and takes you off the lists.
Sklyarov's software "facilitates theft, and makes it less likely that e-books will soon become a popular reading format."
Heartily disagree with the American Association of Publishers here. Sklyarov's software facilitates theft and makes it MORE likely that e-books will soon become a popular reading format.
Compare with print for a second:
Publishers are under mistaken impression that people LIKE the way book prices have been increasing and WANT to pay for it. Have you seen the prices on that new, larger paperback format? It's scarcely cheaper than the hardcover verison. And unfortunately, many of my favourite authors' books are exclusively published in this format -- sure, it make a nice-looking book, but it's often 2-3 times the price of the old paperback format. I really don't care about the pretty cover -- I just want the read the words inside.
I'm a book lover. I have a hard time entering a bookstore without blowing my book-buying budget. I spend more on novels than food. I spend more on books than computer components. (I spend more on books than I can really afford.) As much as I believe the authors of books should be compensated, if I could get copies to keep for life for free I'd probably go for it.
Look at software -- few private individual users have legal copies of all their software. Most often, it was copied or installed off a friend's CD. Yes, it's illegal, but it's unlikely that home users will be caught, so people do it because software is expensive. If this was true with paper books (prefer to read off paper than a screen) I would do it. I'd still buy books, but not as many.
I imagine that the same is true for e-books -- after all the tech issues are resolved satisfactorily.
In older spiritualities, pagan, native american, etc, menstruation was seen as sacred and a way for women to connect with their inner selves. It's sad that it as seen as nothing
more than an inconvenience now.
I agree with you in that I feel that the older spiritualities did much more to celebrate womanhood as a whole. Part of this often inculded a culture around menstruation.
But celebrating menstruation alone is not the same as celebrating womanhood.
I'm much more concerned that modern cultures don't respect (let alone celebrate) my thoughts, my feelings, my view of the world, my approach to problem solving, the complexities of my relationships with others, my desires, etc. Celebrating my period is low on my list of priorities.
My inner self and I do connect regularly, but I don't need to be on my period to do so. I meditate. Or I write. Or I talk to people about what I think the real differences are between men and women, and it turn learn more about myself as a woman.
Now a little more respect for menstruation and its associated problems would be nice. Like when friends of mine are so overcome with the pain of severe menstrual cramps that they can't move, reactions like "it can't be that bad." are rather demeaning. Being able to talk about this openly in mixed company without all the men covering their ears and saying "Too much information." would be a real step forward.
I have no problem with women who choose to stop having their periods -- I don't really want to have mine. Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I have to enjoy my backaches, my painful bloating, my inability to rely on my emotions for a week (I'm usually very down to earth, but while PMS'ing I cry easily -- which can be very problematic at work), my frequent urination, etc., -- and I have mild symptons. I can celebrate being female in general, without celebrating this particular aspect of my biology.
There's a very big difference between using means to stop having periods, and treating menstruation as this dark, embarrassing, secret, shameful thing that we aren't supposed to let anyone be aware of, except in whispered euphemisms. This is a normal thing, but yet it is not talked about as one -- and I don't see a desire to desire to stop something normal as being inconsistant with wanting to discuss it normally. Ovulation is a normal thing, but birth constrol stops this -- and birth control is increasingly being discussed normally.
Natural part of life? Of course it is. Now please treat it like one.
Many existing forms of hormonal birth control stop or greatly reduce menstruation (and its lovely side-effects) already. The Pill is often used on women who have severe cramps, and usually greatly reduces flow. (It's been described as going from a gush to a drizzle.) Similarly, Depo-Provara (the Shot -- a needle every 3 months) has a very common side-effect of stopping menstruation completely. While both of these have problems associated with long-term use, this article doesn't tell me what I'd really like to know -- how is this better than my current choices?
The stopping menstruation without stopping ovulation does sound interesting, but I have to wonder about its side-effects. Without the build-up in the uterus, couldn't this lead to more ectopic pregnancies? And if you were to become pregnant while on this drug, how would you know? (It's very dangerous, for example, to take birth control pills while pregnant.) And couldn't the continued use of this drug while pregnant have adverse side-effects?
I applaud their goal of trying to reduce endometriosis and the number of hysterectomies performed (both my mother and my mother-in-law underwent this) but I worry about this as a lifestyle choice.
Frankly, I'd like to see some more work on developing birth control for men. My SO and I don't want children. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at doing things on a schedule. I was on the pill -- but after a few months I started forgetting to take them so often that it became useless. I can barely remember to get my oil changed every 3 months, let alone get a shot -- and I hate doctors anyway. And the Norplant (implant which provides birth control for 5 years) has some extremely adverse side-effects. (Most women experience CONSTANT bleeding.) My SO, however, is much more organized; I'd trust him to take a pill every day over me. Unfortunately, there's nothing available.
Thinking back to my single life, though, I don't think I'd ever be able to trust any guy who said "Relax babe -- I'm on the pill"
In a sense, this member.xml file he proposes sounds similar to a cookie. Something would have to be in play to ensure that all the sites don't have access to the all the data in that file.
Phrased another way, I think the problem (though not an insurmountable one) in the this plan is that the file "contains all the information I wish to make public." This assumes that I wish to make the same information available to different groups.
So while I'm open to giving out my real name and official email address to, say, a job search site, I'd rather not make that available on slashdot. (Not that it's hard to figure out.) Similarly, many people -- myself included -- may be willing to give out information such as gender, race, etc., in some places, (for example, an online dating service), but would not want that information available to potential employers.
Yes, measures could be put in place to ensure that access is restricted, but keeping all that info in one file makes me a little uneasy -- too much like a cookie for comfort. I'd like something stricter.
Now I can die happy knowing that shower curtains get sucked inward due to a small hurricane. I love science! We could be spending research time finding a way to get 500 miles to a gallon instead of worrying about showers.
Think of it as an indirect approach. For example, I was reading somewhere (cannot recall the source, but it was some magazine) about a scientist who decided to figure out why it was that coffee spills always dried with a dark ring around the outside. A whole lot of research later, science now knows a lot more about how molecules interact in fluids, which has led to practical applications such as (among many others that I cannot remember) fast-drying paint.
Many people make the same argument you're making about fields like pure mathematics -- the research doesn't always have any immediate practical value. But the knowledge often makes itself valuable in everyday life in unanticipated ways. How do you really know if a particular scientific "discovery" is useful unless you know what that discovery is in advance?
It's a disturbing trend nowadays that believes research time should only be spent on immediately practical applications. The pursuit of pure knowledge, or even simple curiousity, is increasingly pushed to the side. Yes, research is time-consuming and often expensive, but to solely measure the value of attaining knowledge based on its immediately foreseeable applications is (IMO) somewhat short-sighted.
Now I admit, I have no idea how knowing that a shower creates a small huricane will become personally useful to me. But that does not mean that some aspect of this will not become useful in the future.
Science is about what is observable, and to their credit, the authors admit this in the very next paragraph. But to state that a decision to believe only in the observable is tantamount to an act of "faith" is silly.
I disgree with you here. Science is a system of beliefs, and it dominates our current belief system to such a degree that it's difficult to recognize that it is a belief. (Similarly, 1000 years ago in Europe, Christianity dominated the system of beliefs to such a degree that it was difficult to recognize that it was a belief.)
See, in this time, we've defined what is true to be that which is observable through our senses and/or is provable through the scientific method. That which is not provable we have defined to be bunk. The evidence that this definition is the best is part of the definition itself, since "evidence" is part of the definition of "provable" -- it's the axiom from which you start. This definition of what is true and real is as arbitrary as the Ancient Greek belief that the gods controlled everything. Your own statements show this belief of yours:
It isn't "faith" to believe that our behaviors are a result of complex natural phenomena--it is a refusal to place credence in that which is unobservable, and therefore undefendable.
The thing is, someone starting from a different basis for defining what is true could say the exact same thing for their own system and believe it as much as you do. Because the scientific belief system came after other known systems does not necessarily make it better. Similarly, whatever systems come after science will not necessarily be better either -- merely different. And neither person of any two different systems can believe the other is any more right -- just as I'm sure you'll decide that what I'm saying is bunk.
There is nothing I can say that will (under your definition of truth and provability) show you the truth in what I'm saying, so go ahead and tell me I'm full of it.
In the meantime, you might (if you haven't already) want to read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged -- you'll probably find that the philosophy makes a lot of sense to you. (It makes me shudder.)
British Columbia has a half-decent privacy law. nowhere else does. the federal privacy commissioner only regulates what the government does.
Actually, the phase-in plan for PIPEDA states (don't remember exactly where) that all provinces must either implement a PIPEDA-like law by 2004, or else PIPEDA will apply provincially. I believe Quebec has this already, and I know Ontario is working on it. I don't recall if the federal Privacy Commissioner will preside over this, or if each province will have to appoint one.
But you're probably right -- these laws may not have much to do with PI practises. (There are exceptions for "law enforcement" purposes; I don't know how PI stuff fits into this.)
Does the privacy commish actually have teeth ? Here in the States we have 'self-policed' privacy laws which of course mean they apply to us as citizens but not to the corp's:(
Take a look at the links above. The Privacy Act applies specifically to government and public sector entities. PIPEDA applies specifically to corporations.
The Commissioner can audit government and corporations, and investigate complaints. It is illegal to interfere with such an audit or investigation.
Unfortunately, the problem with a government funded Internet infrastructure is that you have to
abide by government rules.
Yes, including Laws, like the Privacy Act (Public Sector) and PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act -- Private Sector.)
In Canada, we have a Privacy Commissioner to help prevent violations to personal privacy from both the government and corporations. The Commissioner acts as a privacy watchdog -- the role is non-partisan.
Back in college, a guy I was chatting with at a keg party handed me a business card that said:
Smile if you want to sleep with me.
I burst out laughing.
I'm not going to tell you if it worked as a pick-up or not, but it beats "don't I know you from somewhere", or (as is more common for geeks) nothing at all.
Perhaps we're all looking for pictures of Playmate Shannon Tweed, who was born in Newfoundland.
Or model/actress Natasha Henstridge, who was also born in Newfoundland and then moved to a trailer park in Fort MacMurray, Alberta. (Is that a step up, down, or sideways?)
Pardon my Ontarian thinking, but somehow, I'm just amused by the whole idea of being born in Newfoundland.
But yet these same people cannot read their prospectuses, and/or talke additional time to educate themselves in stock option trading and intricasies.
Right on.
A company is not trying to dupe you into anything. If we're all such smart geeks, then we should all ASK and LEARN about these things before trading in steady income for them. You have every opportunity in the world to learn about stock options and how they work and estimate how likely it is that they will become valuable.
Companies offer options on the assumption that they will be successful. A less-now, more-later scenario. Before you join, research the company and its market and make your own determination on how successful the company could be. Then decide if the options are worth it.
Marketing folk do this kind of analysis all the time. I've done it, and it's not that hard to make a reasonable guess. (Naturally, you can't be 100% sure -- weird things happen.)
It's not the company's fault if you get burned on options you didn't research beforehand.
Modifications such as moving to a new operating system, modifying the business logic, adding a web interface, moving to Unicode etc, shouldn't affect more than perhaps 10-20% (to grab figures at random) of a decently built software system.
You assume most software is decently built. More often than not that's not the case. Many existing systems are not flexible enough to withstand modifications.
This also assumes the the existing system is documented, and therefore the programmers can figure out which part does what, how it will affect the rest of the system, and why things were written the way they are. Once again, this is also not the case. If there are docs, they are almost always out of date.
When faced with such a mess as this, it's often just easier to rebuild from scratch.
I started doing yoga when I was 7 and unaware of the physical benefits, stopped for a long time and went back a few years ago. I've had a lot of different yoga teachers. Some were great and some were clueless.
This is probably true of all forms of excercise, but with yoga, it is VITAL that you learn from a good teacher. Many of the postures in yoga are deceptively powerful (because the work the muscle in both directions simultaneously.) This is particularly true for the postures in a newer style of yoga that they call "power yoga"
If you don't do the postures properly, or with sensible modifications, you WILL hurt yourself. You may not feel anything at the time, but you will pull and possibly damage your muscles in ways you did not realise were possible. Thus, unless you are very aware of your body and your muscles, don't even think about learning yoga from a video.
It's highly unlikely that you will be able to do every posture to its full extent. A good yoga teacher will watch what you're doing and help you modify and correct yourself so that you get benefit without hurting yourself. A good teacher will also carefully explain which parts of the body are at work so that you can gain a better awareness of what you are doing to yourself.
Yoga is very individual -- everyone has different physical abilities, and so most postures and movements must be modified (to increase or decrease the intensity) to match your own needs. A good teacher is aware of this, but there are many bad ones who aren't.
I think yoga is one of the best things you can do for yourself, but I know too many people who say "Yeah, I tried yoga, but the next day I hurt so much I couldn't move." Yoga should not be this painful, and whoever you learn from should help you ensure this.
Slashdot Mirror
Trimming the IT budget intelligently takes time and effort, and a lot of upper management does not want to deal with this. They have a "just get it done" mentality, and get kudos for the money they save each year and not necessarily for making smart decisions about how they got the budget down.
At my SO's company, they have an IT VP who deliberately overspent on equipment last year (they had a good business case for new hardware, but she bought WAY more than what anyone was asking for) so that she could dramatically cut expenses this year by getting rid of the equipment that they didn't need in the first place.
She got a nice bonus for her ability to save the company money. Apparently, she has a long history of moves like this.
The value of IT for a company is very hard to measure in the face of this kind of behaviour.
WinVi is awesome. I use it for all my Windoze platform programming needs.
Having both Windows and Vi commands is a terrific feature, especially you switch platforms frequently. It always takes me a little while to re-adjust, and having both options available simultaneously is fantastic.
And it's free, in many important senses of the word.
I work in Marketing and part of my job is occaisionally analyzing the results of our eval surveys. I think far more people provide false answers out of laziness than out of deliberate lying.
I think this because we use this data (in part) to analyze the effectiveness of our magazine ads in order to budget accordingly. For a long time, one of the magazines, beginning with the letter A had been getting really good results from the eval survey. So we put more money into ads and articles for that magazine, but didn't notice any increase in evaluation downloads.
Then we changed the order of the magazine dropdown, and suddenly, no one was picking that magazine. (Now we regularly rotate the list.)
Yes, there is quite a bit of false data -- lots of people who work at Foo or Test -- but I think it's mostly people trying to get to the survey quickly and not people trying to protect their privacy.
As a programmer-turned-product manager, I know this, but unfortunately, can't do much about it to help my R&D team.
If I want magazine ads, I need to have those complete 2 months in advance -- no changes. If I have existing or potential customers who are waiting for a new version of our software before buying, I need to tell them when it will be ready so that they can accommodate us into their timelines. "It'll be ready when it's ready" is generally not an acceptable answer.
We put in buffer time for our releases, but at some point we have to commit to a time frame to someone. If our dev time exceeds estimates, we (at best) look bad or (at worst) lose a lot of sales -- if we can't deliver, customers will go elsewhere.
I sympathasize with our dev team, and (depending on the situation) I'm willing to move the release date or drop features if we needed, but sometimes the cost of making those adjustments is huge. At some point, I need an accurate estimate.
I understand the problem, but it still doesn't help anything. Frustration on both sides still.
That is how it works in the real world. The numbers are essentially meaningless, but the bean counters and suits have to justify their existance somehow :-)
As a programmer gone suit, (got tired of marketing minions telling me what to do, so I became one) I'd like to expand on this.
In my ideal world, developers wouldn't have deadlines. They'd tell me when they believe they can finish, and as we approached that day they'd tell me how likely it is that they could finish by then, and we'd move the day forward accordingly until we reached some reasonable threshhold of bug-free. Then we'd release.
But it's not my ideal world. If I want any magazine ads for this product, or prominent product reviews, the PR team needs at least 2 months notice. If the product release slips too much after the ads go out, we get angry people who go off and buy our competitors products.
Plus, my job depends on my estimates for sales. Products don't get released unless I can justify that the new product will bring in X number of dollars in Qn. If the release date slips, we can't sell the product -- or we sell a bug-laden piece of crap that no one will buy. Then the salespeople don't make their quotas. Then the company doesn't make it's expected revenue. We're a private, self-funded company, so this means our planned expenditures suddenly go out of whack. Then we lose money, and my head goes on the chopping block (with a worst-case scenario of layoffs) -- all because someone said "two weeks and bullshitted from there."
There is room for flexibility and risk management here -- if I know in advance that something may slip, I can figure out how to mitigate that. But that depends on the development team giving me reasonably meaningful numbers, and letting me know when that changes. I can't manage risk unless I can assess the impact, and time is a huge factor in that.
I know there are some really bad business/marketing folk who set a completely arbitrary deadlines -- I've had then before, and I work with one of them now. Good suits don't set deadlines that aren't feasible, and are flexible enough to move that deadline when necessary. But there comes a point where it's not possible to move the deadline. Without being able to trust our developers to give reasonable estimates on time, we can't function.
You can also use PIPEDA to stop Canadian companies from telemarketing you. Under PIPEDA, you have the right to know where they got your personal information from, who they may have given it to, what they have on you, etc. You must also consent to how they intend to use your personal information, and you may revoke consent at any time.
Currently, this only applies to federal companies, but as of 2004 (I think -- verify on the Privacy Commissioner's site) this will apply provincially.
It's worked for me. Plus, the moment you say "Under my rights as defined by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, I first demand to know where you got my personal information from, and second, I do not give my consent to have this information used for telemarketing purposes. By the way, who is your privacy officer -- you do know that under the auspices of the act you are legally required to have one and to provide me with his or her contact information for privacy complaints?" the telemarketer on the phone has visions of lawsuits and takes you off the lists.
The law is a intimidating and powerful thing.
Sklyarov's software "facilitates theft, and makes it less likely that e-books will soon become a popular reading format."
Heartily disagree with the American Association of Publishers here. Sklyarov's software facilitates theft and makes it MORE likely that e-books will soon become a popular reading format.
Compare with print for a second:
Publishers are under mistaken impression that people LIKE the way book prices have been increasing and WANT to pay for it. Have you seen the prices on that new, larger paperback format? It's scarcely cheaper than the hardcover verison. And unfortunately, many of my favourite authors' books are exclusively published in this format -- sure, it make a nice-looking book, but it's often 2-3 times the price of the old paperback format. I really don't care about the pretty cover -- I just want the read the words inside.
I'm a book lover. I have a hard time entering a bookstore without blowing my book-buying budget. I spend more on novels than food. I spend more on books than computer components. (I spend more on books than I can really afford.) As much as I believe the authors of books should be compensated, if I could get copies to keep for life for free I'd probably go for it.
Look at software -- few private individual users have legal copies of all their software. Most often, it was copied or installed off a friend's CD. Yes, it's illegal, but it's unlikely that home users will be caught, so people do it because software is expensive. If this was true with paper books (prefer to read off paper than a screen) I would do it. I'd still buy books, but not as many.
I imagine that the same is true for e-books -- after all the tech issues are resolved satisfactorily.
In older spiritualities, pagan, native american, etc, menstruation was seen as sacred and a way for women to connect with their inner selves. It's sad that it as seen as nothing more than an inconvenience now.
I agree with you in that I feel that the older spiritualities did much more to celebrate womanhood as a whole. Part of this often inculded a culture around menstruation.
But celebrating menstruation alone is not the same as celebrating womanhood.
I'm much more concerned that modern cultures don't respect (let alone celebrate) my thoughts, my feelings, my view of the world, my approach to problem solving, the complexities of my relationships with others, my desires, etc. Celebrating my period is low on my list of priorities.
My inner self and I do connect regularly, but I don't need to be on my period to do so. I meditate. Or I write. Or I talk to people about what I think the real differences are between men and women, and it turn learn more about myself as a woman.
Now a little more respect for menstruation and its associated problems would be nice. Like when friends of mine are so overcome with the pain of severe menstrual cramps that they can't move, reactions like "it can't be that bad." are rather demeaning. Being able to talk about this openly in mixed company without all the men covering their ears and saying "Too much information." would be a real step forward.
I have no problem with women who choose to stop having their periods -- I don't really want to have mine. Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I have to enjoy my backaches, my painful bloating, my inability to rely on my emotions for a week (I'm usually very down to earth, but while PMS'ing I cry easily -- which can be very problematic at work), my frequent urination, etc., -- and I have mild symptons. I can celebrate being female in general, without celebrating this particular aspect of my biology.
There's a very big difference between using means to stop having periods, and treating menstruation as this dark, embarrassing, secret, shameful thing that we aren't supposed to let anyone be aware of, except in whispered euphemisms. This is a normal thing, but yet it is not talked about as one -- and I don't see a desire to desire to stop something normal as being inconsistant with wanting to discuss it normally. Ovulation is a normal thing, but birth constrol stops this -- and birth control is increasingly being discussed normally.
Natural part of life? Of course it is. Now please treat it like one.
Regarding both forms of this drug:
Many existing forms of hormonal birth control stop or greatly reduce menstruation (and its lovely side-effects) already. The Pill is often used on women who have severe cramps, and usually greatly reduces flow. (It's been described as going from a gush to a drizzle.) Similarly, Depo-Provara (the Shot -- a needle every 3 months) has a very common side-effect of stopping menstruation completely. While both of these have problems associated with long-term use, this article doesn't tell me what I'd really like to know -- how is this better than my current choices?
The stopping menstruation without stopping ovulation does sound interesting, but I have to wonder about its side-effects. Without the build-up in the uterus, couldn't this lead to more ectopic pregnancies? And if you were to become pregnant while on this drug, how would you know? (It's very dangerous, for example, to take birth control pills while pregnant.) And couldn't the continued use of this drug while pregnant have adverse side-effects?
I applaud their goal of trying to reduce endometriosis and the number of hysterectomies performed (both my mother and my mother-in-law underwent this) but I worry about this as a lifestyle choice.
Frankly, I'd like to see some more work on developing birth control for men. My SO and I don't want children. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at doing things on a schedule. I was on the pill -- but after a few months I started forgetting to take them so often that it became useless. I can barely remember to get my oil changed every 3 months, let alone get a shot -- and I hate doctors anyway. And the Norplant (implant which provides birth control for 5 years) has some extremely adverse side-effects. (Most women experience CONSTANT bleeding.) My SO, however, is much more organized; I'd trust him to take a pill every day over me. Unfortunately, there's nothing available.
Thinking back to my single life, though, I don't think I'd ever be able to trust any guy who said "Relax babe -- I'm on the pill"
In a sense, this member.xml file he proposes sounds similar to a cookie. Something would have to be in play to ensure that all the sites don't have access to the all the data in that file.
Phrased another way, I think the problem (though not an insurmountable one) in the this plan is that the file "contains all the information I wish to make public." This assumes that I wish to make the same information available to different groups.
So while I'm open to giving out my real name and official email address to, say, a job search site, I'd rather not make that available on slashdot. (Not that it's hard to figure out.) Similarly, many people -- myself included -- may be willing to give out information such as gender, race, etc., in some places, (for example, an online dating service), but would not want that information available to potential employers.
Yes, measures could be put in place to ensure that access is restricted, but keeping all that info in one file makes me a little uneasy -- too much like a cookie for comfort. I'd like something stricter.
Or (d) Many slashdot readers are trying to get their two cents in before they get buried way down at comment #932 or something.
Such is the path to karma whoring.... Even Taco suggests posting early to increase karma.
Perhaps there should be some kind of time delay between introducing the article and allowing comments?
My own research suggests that the likelyhood of the shower curtain being attracted to your skin is directly proportional to the amout of scum on it.
Here's a neat trick: try CLEANING your shower curtain.
After that, try the same cleaning trick on the rest of your bathroom.
Now I can die happy knowing that shower curtains get sucked inward due to a small hurricane. I love science! We could be spending research time finding a way to get 500 miles to a gallon instead of worrying about showers.
Think of it as an indirect approach. For example, I was reading somewhere (cannot recall the source, but it was some magazine) about a scientist who decided to figure out why it was that coffee spills always dried with a dark ring around the outside. A whole lot of research later, science now knows a lot more about how molecules interact in fluids, which has led to practical applications such as (among many others that I cannot remember) fast-drying paint.
Many people make the same argument you're making about fields like pure mathematics -- the research doesn't always have any immediate practical value. But the knowledge often makes itself valuable in everyday life in unanticipated ways. How do you really know if a particular scientific "discovery" is useful unless you know what that discovery is in advance?
It's a disturbing trend nowadays that believes research time should only be spent on immediately practical applications. The pursuit of pure knowledge, or even simple curiousity, is increasingly pushed to the side. Yes, research is time-consuming and often expensive, but to solely measure the value of attaining knowledge based on its immediately foreseeable applications is (IMO) somewhat short-sighted.
Now I admit, I have no idea how knowing that a shower creates a small huricane will become personally useful to me. But that does not mean that some aspect of this will not become useful in the future.
I will now prove, using extremely shaky methods, that "Blow-by-Blow Account of the OSDN Outage" by Roblimo is, in fact, an epic myth.
I believe you forgot "Mysterious nature of the Hero's birth/origin"
Though I'm sure we'd all rather not know that one.
Science is about what is observable, and to their credit, the authors admit this in the very next paragraph. But to state that a decision to believe only in the observable is tantamount to an act of "faith" is silly.
I disgree with you here. Science is a system of beliefs, and it dominates our current belief system to such a degree that it's difficult to recognize that it is a belief. (Similarly, 1000 years ago in Europe, Christianity dominated the system of beliefs to such a degree that it was difficult to recognize that it was a belief.)
See, in this time, we've defined what is true to be that which is observable through our senses and/or is provable through the scientific method. That which is not provable we have defined to be bunk. The evidence that this definition is the best is part of the definition itself, since "evidence" is part of the definition of "provable" -- it's the axiom from which you start. This definition of what is true and real is as arbitrary as the Ancient Greek belief that the gods controlled everything. Your own statements show this belief of yours:
It isn't "faith" to believe that our behaviors are a result of complex natural phenomena--it is a refusal to place credence in that which is unobservable, and therefore undefendable.
The thing is, someone starting from a different basis for defining what is true could say the exact same thing for their own system and believe it as much as you do. Because the scientific belief system came after other known systems does not necessarily make it better. Similarly, whatever systems come after science will not necessarily be better either -- merely different. And neither person of any two different systems can believe the other is any more right -- just as I'm sure you'll decide that what I'm saying is bunk.
There is nothing I can say that will (under your definition of truth and provability) show you the truth in what I'm saying, so go ahead and tell me I'm full of it.
In the meantime, you might (if you haven't already) want to read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged -- you'll probably find that the philosophy makes a lot of sense to you. (It makes me shudder.)
British Columbia has a half-decent privacy law. nowhere else does. the federal privacy commissioner only regulates what the government does.
Actually, the phase-in plan for PIPEDA states (don't remember exactly where) that all provinces must either implement a PIPEDA-like law by 2004, or else PIPEDA will apply provincially. I believe Quebec has this already, and I know Ontario is working on it. I don't recall if the federal Privacy Commissioner will preside over this, or if each province will have to appoint one.
But you're probably right -- these laws may not have much to do with PI practises. (There are exceptions for "law enforcement" purposes; I don't know how PI stuff fits into this.)
I still think it's a step in the right direction.
This week's poll indicates (so far) 2% attendance at Hamburger U.
A forewarning, perhaps?
Does the privacy commish actually have teeth ? :(
Here in the States we have 'self-policed' privacy laws which of course mean they apply to us as citizens but not to the corp's
Take a look at the links above. The Privacy Act applies specifically to government and public sector entities. PIPEDA applies specifically to corporations.
The Commissioner can audit government and corporations, and investigate complaints. It is illegal to interfere with such an audit or investigation.
Unfortunately, the problem with a government funded Internet infrastructure is that you have to abide by government rules.
Yes, including Laws, like the Privacy Act (Public Sector) and PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act -- Private Sector.)
In Canada, we have a Privacy Commissioner to help prevent violations to personal privacy from both the government and corporations. The Commissioner acts as a privacy watchdog -- the role is non-partisan.
It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.
Back in college, a guy I was chatting with at a keg party handed me a business card that said:
Smile if you want to sleep with me.
I burst out laughing.
I'm not going to tell you if it worked as a pick-up or not, but it beats "don't I know you from somewhere", or (as is more common for geeks) nothing at all.
Perhaps we're all looking for pictures of Playmate Shannon Tweed, who was born in Newfoundland.
Or model/actress Natasha Henstridge, who was also born in Newfoundland and then moved to a trailer park in Fort MacMurray, Alberta. (Is that a step up, down, or sideways?)
Pardon my Ontarian thinking, but somehow, I'm just amused by the whole idea of being born in Newfoundland.
But yet these same people cannot read their prospectuses, and/or talke additional time to educate themselves in stock option trading and intricasies.
Right on.
A company is not trying to dupe you into anything. If we're all such smart geeks, then we should all ASK and LEARN about these things before trading in steady income for them. You have every opportunity in the world to learn about stock options and how they work and estimate how likely it is that they will become valuable.
Companies offer options on the assumption that they will be successful. A less-now, more-later scenario. Before you join, research the company and its market and make your own determination on how successful the company could be. Then decide if the options are worth it.
Marketing folk do this kind of analysis all the time. I've done it, and it's not that hard to make a reasonable guess. (Naturally, you can't be 100% sure -- weird things happen.)
It's not the company's fault if you get burned on options you didn't research beforehand.
Modifications such as moving to a new operating system, modifying the business logic, adding a web interface, moving to Unicode etc, shouldn't affect more than perhaps 10-20% (to grab figures at random) of a decently built software system.
You assume most software is decently built. More often than not that's not the case. Many existing systems are not flexible enough to withstand modifications.
This also assumes the the existing system is documented, and therefore the programmers can figure out which part does what, how it will affect the rest of the system, and why things were written the way they are. Once again, this is also not the case. If there are docs, they are almost always out of date.
When faced with such a mess as this, it's often just easier to rebuild from scratch.
I started doing yoga when I was 7 and unaware of the physical benefits, stopped for a long time and went back a few years ago. I've had a lot of different yoga teachers. Some were great and some were clueless.
This is probably true of all forms of excercise, but with yoga, it is VITAL that you learn from a good teacher. Many of the postures in yoga are deceptively powerful (because the work the muscle in both directions simultaneously.) This is particularly true for the postures in a newer style of yoga that they call "power yoga"
If you don't do the postures properly, or with sensible modifications, you WILL hurt yourself. You may not feel anything at the time, but you will pull and possibly damage your muscles in ways you did not realise were possible. Thus, unless you are very aware of your body and your muscles, don't even think about learning yoga from a video.
It's highly unlikely that you will be able to do every posture to its full extent. A good yoga teacher will watch what you're doing and help you modify and correct yourself so that you get benefit without hurting yourself. A good teacher will also carefully explain which parts of the body are at work so that you can gain a better awareness of what you are doing to yourself.
Yoga is very individual -- everyone has different physical abilities, and so most postures and movements must be modified (to increase or decrease the intensity) to match your own needs. A good teacher is aware of this, but there are many bad ones who aren't.
I think yoga is one of the best things you can do for yourself, but I know too many people who say "Yeah, I tried yoga, but the next day I hurt so much I couldn't move." Yoga should not be this painful, and whoever you learn from should help you ensure this.
I'm still waiting for the compressed-air car to come North America.
IMO, the air-powered car is one of the best ideas in a long time.