Re:A time of leaps and bounds
on
Secret Empire
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"It still amazes me to think of all of the technological leaps that were taken between 1947 and the early 60's. In less than two decades, we went from piston powered prop planes to aircraft that cruised at Mach 3 to the very edge of space (the U2 and SR-71 travel at such high altitudes that the crews wear suits adapted from the space program)."
Too bad so many people have been convinced that these types of research development projects are still not going on.
There is no way that the military and government would have just gotten to a certain point and stopped their efforts. They still are doing astounding amounts of research and development on secret shit that we will never know about.
but i do agree with the original poster - I dont like to see trailers for movies im interested in.
i specifically watched and read nothing about the two towers before i saw it in the theatre - I only read stories about it afterwards - and i still have not seen the trailer.
man those are some beautiful poitns - but I have a couple of comments on these two:
You have no duty to inform them of past mistakes. If a past mistake is getting in the way of your work, it is often more constructive to ignore the fact that their judgement was flawed in the past, and just point out the ways that your work changes things so that their system needs to change in X way (which incidentally will mitigate their prior bad decision).
You have no duty to inform them of a boneheaded decision outside of your scope of work. If you are hired solely to map out a network and program switches and routers accordingly, and you find out that half their users have blank passwords, that just isn't your problem. You don't have to get involved unless it touches on your scope of work. Note that a contractor usually has a much more limited scope than a salaried employee, so your mileage may vary on this point
Thee two comments seem mutually exclusive...
but - what i want to say is that I really feel that you do in fact have a duty to inform your employer about things that are beneficial to their business workflow - but one thing that is not discussed is personal relationship and timeframe.
Lets say that you work at a company for a month - and they had made some decision to have blank passwords for finance or some group - lets also say that you are on a tense deadline to get project X complete - maybe its not enogugh time to develope a relationship where you can tell them about things that may have a significant impact on their business in the future - but you can definitely make the suggestion in a leaving "post mortem" style eval of the project and your work with recommendations.
but I would say that the longer you stay at a company - the more that pointing this stuff out becomes your duty - as a conscienctious archtect of their system you need to point out NOT bad decision making skills BUT "workflow patterns that conflict with the policy of keeping corporate assets secure".
The thing is that ANY and EVERY good consultant should make concerted efforts to make the environments that they work in better - for evertyone.
If I work with a company, and I am there to look at X part of their busniess workflow - i will specifically spend time looking at the whole picture and overall workflow of the company to determine how they all interrelate so as to find the most efficient method of connecting these business groups together - this will enable me to make much moire informed decisions in my design methods that jsut lookig at the internals of that business cell.
think of it like OSPF network - if you know everything that happens in your area - but know nothing beyong your border connections then you can only make limited information path decisions - but if you really understand the relationship between your cell area and your border peers - then you can really make intelligent decisions on the flow of your business....
First of all I am involved in a very large campus design project - and i am the outside consultant for once. I also am going up against a very entrenched corporate culture - and new management who are trying to establish themselves within the company by making big influencial desicions.
This makes for a rather volitile political environment as the entrenched culture who know exactly what they need and expect from an enterprise network - and the new managment who are looking to make some new innovations that will have major impact (hopefully good) at a low cost in order to impress the exec strata, go head-to-head to prove who has the bigger balls.
and I get to try to help them play happily together.
anyway - here is my take:
1) speak if you know that you are not going to lose the contract if you voice totally perpendicular opinions.
2) speak if you know that there is a general leaning toward looking in the direction you are trying to bring to light - although do it with a little bit more finesse and subtlety than 1.
3) speak if you know that the path being looked at is going to be utter failure - although do it with a LOT more finesse and subtlety as 1 & 2.
4) speak if you know that you have the ear of a person who has more internal influence than you do - but do it in a private meeting or lunch with that person, and make general non-polarizing "industry standard" and "best practices" type statements so as to get the person further on board to an idea shift without challenging entrenched thought directly.
basically those are the path options to look for (with many many variations on them that only you can discern from the perspective of actually dealing with the client and the job)
if you know what you are talking about - and you know that you are on a personal level with those that you work for, where you can openly oppose them without them being petty and taking it personally - then by all means make sure to tell them what they need to hear in order to make the right decision.
the thing that is tough to tell when you are a contractor is when a person who is in a position of authority feels out of their league.
THIS IS VERY VERY IMPORTANT!!!!
if you are dealing with someone who knows that they are outclassed in knowledge or skill - yet they are a decision maker for the company, it can be very very bad or good for you and everyone else.
A person like this will do one of two things:
1) they will make a decision, or develop a vision, based on faulty and incomplete information - but they will stick to this plan TO THE DEATH to make sure that they DON'T come out in the "wrong" as they are fearful of losing their position, job etc...
2) you will have a good rappoir (sp?) with them and they will attach themselves to your ideas and champion (read: parrot) them for you as they really dont have a clue wtf they are talking about - and are counting on their association with you to make them look good.
obviously behavior pattern 2 is more benefuicial to you - but more often than not - behavior pattern 1 is what you will encounter. and this is mostly within larger companies and upper middle management (director level). (although if you look at it closely you will often find that pattern two happenes between two people IN the company - and then the express pattern 1 to outside and internal entities in a joint effort to make themselves sound as though they have a more solid voice - plus it gives them someone to blame in the event of a bad deciscion)
there are ways around these people though. but it takes a little skill and understanding of the corporate mentality.
in order to succeed when faced with a challeging intellectual barrier such as the one described in behavior 1 - you need to have the following tools on your belt;
a great vocabulary - specifically a corporate/exec vocabulary
They did Star Wars it with so little cash flow compared to what they have this time around. So whose to say that it can't be great again, take another step and but another standard in cinematography. I loved Star Wars, it was one of the few films that kept me really intranced with the movie through all of it. I really hoped that Phantom and EPII would do the same, if not i'll be sad.
dont be so pompous - the point that I was making was that there are many many places in the world where diamonds are produced. There are also many many unexploited diamond and other semi-precious stone deposits in the world.
You know, its a fact that bebeers has a monopoly on diamond production - and that is largely due to the fact that many people dont do shit about it. If we as consumers were to get off our asses for once to protest (via non-purchases) of any diamonds for a year - maybe we would create a dent.
the thing is that by just being all "factual" as you are trying to be - you accomplish nothing. by saying "evey profitable business" that doesnt make you sound more intelligent - but more uninformed.
debeers is a monopoly - a recognized monpoly almost all over the world...
restaurants is a poor example in that people NEED to eat - but do we NEED diamons? no... we dont. but to MAKE a market out of people and their desires is one thing - to exploit a mraket out of peoples needs is another.
although I would say that this logic is applicable in theoretical economics - i dont think that its really true in real world applications.
The reason i say this is due to the fact that the idea that the artificial diamond makers are not going to want to give any portion of their market share away to anyone - DeBeers or otherwise. They will want to drive the price up as far as they can jsut like DeBeers did - just because they are not DeBeers does not mean that they are any better.
Any market that shows the potential for great profit gets two things - 1) eager investors 2) unscrupulous business executives.
The whole argument about diamond deposits being geographically localized is debatable in that there seems to be evidence that diamonds are much more widely available and common than reported - and this is the whole reason behind the debeers monopoly - that they have sold the world on the idea that these are rare gems - when in fact they are as common as quartz (which they are just a more refined variety of crystal)....
I dont think that the price of artificial diamonds will stay as low as whatever they may be if all of a sudden there is a new application for them.
The artificial diamond makers will then try to pull a "deBeers" on the mrket - which may cause real ones to either drop or rise in price..
DeBeers cartel will either shorten suply of real ones in order to raise price. If there is a huge flood of artificial diamonds it would cause the already super abundant diamonds to seem more rare.
Another angle might be attempts bhy the diamand-mongers to have some study that shows the properties of "Real" diamonds to be superior to "Immitation" diamonds for the purposes of computer applications.
Yahoo lost - plain an simple. There is no way they can even regain credibility wit hthe people who have watched them grow over the years.
I have had a yahoo mail account since about '96 and in the begining it was a great amil service.
but now they are riddled with ads - they attemtpt to reset your preferences without notifiying you that changes have been made etc..
Their tactics have gotten downright scummy.
for example - I have had DSL at home for about 3 or 4 years now. The whole time I have also used my yahoo account extensively. Recently SBC and Yahoo went into a deal to promote their cobranded DSL service.. now when I log into Yahoo Mail from home - it sees that I am coming from an SBC DSL IP or host - and redirects me to a full page ad for their SBC Yahoo service before letting me into my account.
Now this wouldnt be so bad if I had signed up for DSL on the cobranded package and GOTTEN THE SPECIAL RATE$ - but I have not - I have had DSL since before the deal that they went into, and as far as I am concerned - I should be given the special rate if they are going to force me to watch these ads...
so far my calls to SBC have gotten nowhere.
too bad for yahoo I could care less if they go out of business or not. I sure as hell wont support them.
What do you mean that thought only exists as an abstraction - i would say that thoughts are things. but the problem is our ability to perceive them properly due to their etherial nature. Thoughts a re the sedds which create all that we see. all exists as thought first - then through our application of thought - they become physical.
consciousness is not what we think it is. we think that consciousness is like one dipping the top of your head into the water and believing that you can see all that is in the ocean, and all the ocean is.
We need to redefine the concept of self. the Self exists - and it is greater than a single person - self is not singular - actually the Self is the sum of all that is... we just receive a reflective glimpse of what the Self is. as if we are a conscious drop of water in the ocean - just because we are made all of water does not mean that we are All water.
Same with self - just because we are self aware - we are not all Self.
Slashdot Mirror
Could E-voting cure voter apathy?
[ ] Yes.
[ ] No.
[ ] Abstain.
Next on ask slashdot:
Show us your cool new dwelling modifications...
Like the Type R Toilet!!!
Ya.
It would seem that most people think of slashdot as their personal invisiblog.
Photoshop!
"It still amazes me to think of all of the technological leaps that were taken between 1947 and the early 60's. In less than two decades, we went from piston powered prop planes to aircraft that cruised at Mach 3 to the very edge of space (the U2 and SR-71 travel at such high altitudes that the crews wear suits adapted from the space program)."
Too bad so many people have been convinced that these types of research development projects are still not going on.
There is no way that the military and government would have just gotten to a certain point and stopped their efforts. They still are doing astounding amounts of research and development on secret shit that we will never know about.
ya but it still does nothing for you getting dates *to* movies
I think you meant to say "...the actors just dont have skill..."
For 69.69.69.0/24????
Thats the C I want!
no no no - we're talking about networks here buddy. So its:
Ping me, finger me, 69/8 me!
Yes Varuka - Daddy will get you a job - dont you fret...
BUT I need a Tech JOB now!!
I want a cisco!
I want the job - I want the whole job. Its my tech TV I can see it for me - I WANT IT NOW!!.
its called WALL!!??
OH NO - Natalie Portman has been replaced!
but i do agree with the original poster - I dont like to see trailers for movies im interested in.
i specifically watched and read nothing about the two towers before i saw it in the theatre - I only read stories about it afterwards - and i still have not seen the trailer.
man those are some beautiful poitns - but I have a couple of comments on these two:
You have no duty to inform them of past mistakes. If a past mistake is getting in the way of your work, it is often more constructive to ignore the fact that their judgement was flawed in the past, and just point out the ways that your work changes things so that their system needs to change in X way (which incidentally will mitigate their prior bad decision).
You have no duty to inform them of a boneheaded decision outside of your scope of work. If you are hired solely to map out a network and program switches and routers accordingly, and you find out that half their users have blank passwords, that just isn't your problem. You don't have to get involved unless it touches on your scope of work. Note that a contractor usually has a much more limited scope than a salaried employee, so your mileage may vary on this point
Thee two comments seem mutually exclusive...
but - what i want to say is that I really feel that you do in fact have a duty to inform your employer about things that are beneficial to their business workflow - but one thing that is not discussed is personal relationship and timeframe.
Lets say that you work at a company for a month - and they had made some decision to have blank passwords for finance or some group - lets also say that you are on a tense deadline to get project X complete - maybe its not enogugh time to develope a relationship where you can tell them about things that may have a significant impact on their business in the future - but you can definitely make the suggestion in a leaving "post mortem" style eval of the project and your work with recommendations.
but I would say that the longer you stay at a company - the more that pointing this stuff out becomes your duty - as a conscienctious archtect of their system you need to point out NOT bad decision making skills BUT "workflow patterns that conflict with the policy of keeping corporate assets secure".
The thing is that ANY and EVERY good consultant should make concerted efforts to make the environments that they work in better - for evertyone.
If I work with a company, and I am there to look at X part of their busniess workflow - i will specifically spend time looking at the whole picture and overall workflow of the company to determine how they all interrelate so as to find the most efficient method of connecting these business groups together - this will enable me to make much moire informed decisions in my design methods that jsut lookig at the internals of that business cell.
think of it like OSPF network - if you know everything that happens in your area - but know nothing beyong your border connections then you can only make limited information path decisions - but if you really understand the relationship between your cell area and your border peers - then you can really make intelligent decisions on the flow of your business....
too much sake at sushi... but you getthe point.
I certainly have some IMHOs on this one.
First of all I am involved in a very large campus design project - and i am the outside consultant for once. I also am going up against a very entrenched corporate culture - and new management who are trying to establish themselves within the company by making big influencial desicions.
This makes for a rather volitile political environment as the entrenched culture who know exactly what they need and expect from an enterprise network - and the new managment who are looking to make some new innovations that will have major impact (hopefully good) at a low cost in order to impress the exec strata, go head-to-head to prove who has the bigger balls.
and I get to try to help them play happily together.
anyway - here is my take:
1) speak if you know that you are not going to lose the contract if you voice totally perpendicular opinions.
2) speak if you know that there is a general leaning toward looking in the direction you are trying to bring to light - although do it with a little bit more finesse and subtlety than 1.
3) speak if you know that the path being looked at is going to be utter failure - although do it with a LOT more finesse and subtlety as 1 & 2.
4) speak if you know that you have the ear of a person who has more internal influence than you do - but do it in a private meeting or lunch with that person, and make general non-polarizing "industry standard" and "best practices" type statements so as to get the person further on board to an idea shift without challenging entrenched thought directly.
basically those are the path options to look for (with many many variations on them that only you can discern from the perspective of actually dealing with the client and the job)
if you know what you are talking about - and you know that you are on a personal level with those that you work for, where you can openly oppose them without them being petty and taking it personally - then by all means make sure to tell them what they need to hear in order to make the right decision.
the thing that is tough to tell when you are a contractor is when a person who is in a position of authority feels out of their league.
THIS IS VERY VERY IMPORTANT!!!!
if you are dealing with someone who knows that they are outclassed in knowledge or skill - yet they are a decision maker for the company, it can be very very bad or good for you and everyone else.
A person like this will do one of two things:
1) they will make a decision, or develop a vision, based on faulty and incomplete information - but they will stick to this plan TO THE DEATH to make sure that they DON'T come out in the "wrong" as they are fearful of losing their position, job etc...
2) you will have a good rappoir (sp?) with them and they will attach themselves to your ideas and champion (read: parrot) them for you as they really dont have a clue wtf they are talking about - and are counting on their association with you to make them look good.
obviously behavior pattern 2 is more benefuicial to you - but more often than not - behavior pattern 1 is what you will encounter. and this is mostly within larger companies and upper middle management (director level). (although if you look at it closely you will often find that pattern two happenes between two people IN the company - and then the express pattern 1 to outside and internal entities in a joint effort to make themselves sound as though they have a more solid voice - plus it gives them someone to blame in the event of a bad deciscion)
there are ways around these people though. but it takes a little skill and understanding of the corporate mentality.
in order to succeed when faced with a challeging intellectual barrier such as the one described in behavior 1 - you need to have the following tools on your belt;
a great vocabulary - specifically a corporate/exec vocabulary
some ass kissing skills
a very tho
They did Star Wars it with so little cash flow compared to what they have this time around. So whose to say that it can't be great again, take another step and but another standard in cinematography. I loved Star Wars, it was one of the few films that kept me really intranced with the movie through all of it. I really hoped that Phantom and EPII would do the same, if not i'll be sad.
I was rather drunk when I replied to you there... sorry about that! :)
dont be so pompous - the point that I was making was that there are many many places in the world where diamonds are produced. There are also many many unexploited diamond and other semi-precious stone deposits in the world.
f t io n/articles/diamond_trade/branding.html
take a look here to see some info about diamonds.
You know, its a fact that bebeers has a monopoly on diamond production - and that is largely due to the fact that many people dont do shit about it. If we as consumers were to get off our asses for once to protest (via non-purchases) of any diamonds for a year - maybe we would create a dent.
the thing is that by just being all "factual" as you are trying to be - you accomplish nothing. by saying "evey profitable business" that doesnt make you sound more intelligent - but more uninformed.
debeers is a monopoly - a recognized monpoly almost all over the world...
restaurants is a poor example in that people NEED to eat - but do we NEED diamons? no... we dont. but to MAKE a market out of people and their desires is one thing - to exploit a mraket out of peoples needs is another.
anyway - more on this later....
http://www.agsm.edu.au/~bobm/teaching/MA/M3a.pd
http://www.diamondcuttersintl.com/diamond_educa
Can't put anything in your survival kit without putting in TORGO which is a subsystem of THE MASTER.
so here - LosManos - is what I would put in your survival kit!
although I would say that this logic is applicable in theoretical economics - i dont think that its really true in real world applications.
The reason i say this is due to the fact that the idea that the artificial diamond makers are not going to want to give any portion of their market share away to anyone - DeBeers or otherwise. They will want to drive the price up as far as they can jsut like DeBeers did - just because they are not DeBeers does not mean that they are any better.
Any market that shows the potential for great profit gets two things - 1) eager investors 2) unscrupulous business executives.
The whole argument about diamond deposits being geographically localized is debatable in that there seems to be evidence that diamonds are much more widely available and common than reported - and this is the whole reason behind the debeers monopoly - that they have sold the world on the idea that these are rare gems - when in fact they are as common as quartz (which they are just a more refined variety of crystal)....
I think you meant "Conductive" :P
I dont think that the price of artificial diamonds will stay as low as whatever they may be if all of a sudden there is a new application for them.
The artificial diamond makers will then try to pull a "deBeers" on the mrket - which may cause real ones to either drop or rise in price..
DeBeers cartel will either shorten suply of real ones in order to raise price. If there is a huge flood of artificial diamonds it would cause the already super abundant diamonds to seem more rare.
Another angle might be attempts bhy the diamand-mongers to have some study that shows the properties of "Real" diamonds to be superior to "Immitation" diamonds for the purposes of computer applications.
Yahoo lost - plain an simple. There is no way they can even regain credibility wit hthe people who have watched them grow over the years.
I have had a yahoo mail account since about '96 and in the begining it was a great amil service.
but now they are riddled with ads - they attemtpt to reset your preferences without notifiying you that changes have been made etc..
Their tactics have gotten downright scummy.
for example - I have had DSL at home for about 3 or 4 years now. The whole time I have also used my yahoo account extensively. Recently SBC and Yahoo went into a deal to promote their cobranded DSL service.. now when I log into Yahoo Mail from home - it sees that I am coming from an SBC DSL IP or host - and redirects me to a full page ad for their SBC Yahoo service before letting me into my account.
Now this wouldnt be so bad if I had signed up for DSL on the cobranded package and GOTTEN THE SPECIAL RATE$ - but I have not - I have had DSL since before the deal that they went into, and as far as I am concerned - I should be given the special rate if they are going to force me to watch these ads...
so far my calls to SBC have gotten nowhere.
too bad for yahoo I could care less if they go out of business or not. I sure as hell wont support them.
"Islam Inside"
BOOOM!
your sig.
What do you mean that thought only exists as an abstraction - i would say that thoughts are things. but the problem is our ability to perceive them properly due to their etherial nature. Thoughts a re the sedds which create all that we see. all exists as thought first - then through our application of thought - they become physical.
consciousness is not what we think it is. we think that consciousness is like one dipping the top of your head into the water and believing that you can see all that is in the ocean, and all the ocean is.
We need to redefine the concept of self. the Self exists - and it is greater than a single person - self is not singular - actually the Self is the sum of all that is... we just receive a reflective glimpse of what the Self is.
as if we are a conscious drop of water in the ocean - just because we are made all of water does not mean that we are All water.
Same with self - just because we are self aware - we are not all Self.
actually what they will do is mount mirrors to the bottom of drones flying over the battle field.
then you can bounce your shots off the bottom of the drone to hit targets hiding behind walls!