Or perhaps some $ goes to the developer of the idea, and some $ goes to an open-source styled team to do preliminary patent research. Because really, I or any of my peers could do a better job researching tech patents than the USPTO does...
It's not just that he designed it for 50 pounds -- but that Ericsson had a program that asked employees to come up with new patentable ideas, and only rewarded them with a 50 pound bonus. I'm sure this kind of 'bonus program' wasn't part of the daily schedule, but something the employees were asked to do on their own time.
The irony is that they were asking this of R&D geeks that were supposed to be intelligent. This does not speak highly of the quality of Ericsson's HR staff. I wonder if their hiring instructions read something like, "Look for smart but extremely naive and gullible people. Sheep, people, find smart sheep."
So now is somebody going to tell us there is a PIAA (Publishing Industry Association of America) that is going to start suing big anonymous blocks of IP addresses, under the assertion that rampant online piracy is to blame for a large drop in book sales?
Yikes. I'm a statistic. I guess if you count slashdot and cnn.com I read plenty (and if you count HTML code and javascript, I read lots), but for the most part I read very few books since high school. I even avoided nearly all of my college reading. Baaaaad.
So, I've decided to do something about it. I have some weird drive to buy classic books. I don't know why, except that I feel like if I have a book collection I need to include classics. We just moved into a new house, and when I was reshelving these classics I felt awful. We just had our first baby six weeks ago, and it occurred to me that the last thing I want is for Killy to come up to me in a few years and ask, "Daddy, what is this book about?" and me not know.
So, I've assembled a list. I've enlisted the excellent ToDoList (discovered via a recent Slashdot thread....) to keep track, including exporting an HTML file so all my friends can laugh at how much I have left. Some of these books I've read already, and are planning to reread. Others are textbooks that I merely intend to scan through. But most I have never read, and will be enjoying for the first time.
As you can tell, I've only just started the process. I recommend everyone do the same! Read, dammit, read!
Similar for me. I only keep track of my mileage when I'm trips, but my 28 mpg highway rated sedan consistently gets over 30 mpg, and I've hit 33 mpg several times.
I've heard it said that a typical vehicle gets the best mileage at 55 mph, and that for every 5 mph above or below that, subtract 1 mpg. I'm an aggressive accelerator, but I rarely go much over the speed limit any more, so this might be where some of my luck comes from. In fact, the best mileage I've ever gotten was when following my father-in-law when he was driving a moving truck at about 55-60mph the entire stretch from Chicago to Kansas City.
'What we attempt to do in our classes is teach how the hackers think.' Hmmm, perhaps 'Certified Script Kiddie' would be a more accurate designation.
Except then it would be "What we attempt to do in our classes is teach how the script kiddies think." And putting the words "think" and "script kiddie" next to each other like that creates a paradox. Impossible to comprehend, much less teach.
Is that one of the 86.55% of all statistics which are made up on the spot?
Actually, that's the closest statistics I've ever seen to the percentage of spam that I'm measuring -- which is 98.86% This comes from me keeping statistics on my spam for the last 8 months or so. Every time I see one of those 50% or 60% statements, I get green with envy, wishing I just had 60% of my email be spam....
The worst work environment I've had was with the IT group of an options trading company. The entire company (something like twenty-five traders, fifteen IT, five management) worked in the same room. All one big long space, traders at one end, IT at the other. I was sort of an offshoot of the IT department, since I was a temp doing their website, and I ended up in the middle. It was the noisiest environment I've ever worked in. The traders shouted at their phone and at each other all day long, and I had an external door right next to me that people kept going in and out of, letting it cold Chicago winter air.
Having been so miserable there, I started to realize what was important to me: a personal space, with enough privacy that I can successfully ignore everything going on around me. I don't mind cubicles as long as there can still be interaction between team members. Another job I had used clusters of four cubes (especially good for teams of four) with windows in between them. The windows weren't right next to you, but if you leaned back you could talk with your neighbor. Very good for working.
Don't forget the perks though. Another job I had set all of its cubes up around a central foosball table, and there was at least one game every afternoon (though I'd prefer a pool table myself). And yet another job had nightly Quake3/Unreal matches.
Food is also key. Free drinks are a must, and free snacks help a lot too. Keep the fridge stocked with soft drinks and bottled water (and don't forget to have plenty of diet soda options -- geeks don't get much exercise you know). Keep the drawers stocked with hershey's kisses, etc. or whatever holiday-themed treats go with the times.
Sometimes give the workers a special treat! The terrible job environment with the traders wasn't the worst job experience I've had because of the perks and treats. They had the free food/soda. But the best thing was that once they held a Glenlivet whiskey tasting! Lots of fun....
Of course NASA is interested! Rutan's ship took a $20 million investment from Paul Allen to get off the napkin it was first drawn on. And it stands to win only a $10 million prize! NASA's must be hoping they can get work done for half the price.
There's a fairly important and really simple improvement that I'm surprised wasn't covered by this list. Consumers: turn off the 'preview pane' in your email client. Vendors: set the preview pane 'off' as the default when you ship email clients.
The preview pane gets people in so much trouble, especially with Outlook/Express. Without harping over the potential for automatically triggering viruses, a lesser known problem is web bugs. These little images are linked from the email, and when they are retrieved from the server, the spammer is able to record that you've viewed his/her spam. One, this lets the spammer collect statistics, which enables him/her to create a better product -- and why encourage them?
And two, it identifies what email opened the spam, which lets the spammer confirm which addresses are active. If you've viewed the spam, the spammer can put your email on a confirmed-email list, which he/she is then eager to resell at a higher price as opposed to larger lists of unconfirmed addresses.
This is always the first step I recommend to people who complain about the amount of spam they get. This trick won't necessarily reduce your current spam, but it will reduce the accelleration of spam to your inbox.
I am thinking about setting up my own personal mail server for my small business
I'm planning on doing the same thing. When I was hunting for information I found this link, it has plenty of resource information. Maybe it will help you too.
I believe the accepted term is infotainment, and in some cases - docutainment.
I'm sorry, but these are just terms created by people hoping to sound like their profession actually means something.
The actual term is 'crap.'
Now edutainment can, on good days, mean something truly educational and valuable like 'Sesame Street' or 'Square One,' but believe me -- NOT if its on an MTV/Viacom channel....
I was pretty dissappointed by this article. I think it's a terrific idea, but it really needs more depth. Much more.
A sample of only two ISPs!? Statistically, you can't derive any meaningful data from a data set of only two elements. And it's not like you can do a whole lot with only two elements, but why choose only major ISPs? And why only US and UK? It would have been nice to see somewhere around 20-40 elements over a range of several ISP sizes. As many large-scale national ISPs that you can get, at least a dozen regional ISPs, and the rest consisting of (the small and vanishing species of) local ISPs.
Furthermore, I would have liked to see the results from some of the online communities like Geocities that give webspace to users. There just isn't enough detail in this study.
And speaking of little detail, there has also been a lack of attention to detail. Note the following paragraph from the study:
I am writing in response to your e-mail regarding content hosted through xxxxx on one of our free homepage services. You should understand that the content to which you have referred have has been stored on the Lycos system solely at the direction of a xxxx user and has not been initially reviewed, monitored, or edited by xxxx employees.
Oopsie! 'X'ing out almost all of the company mentions just doesn't cut it.
How many people really spend $5,000 on a gaming machine? Mine cost less than $2,000, and I can play UT2k4 and others on it just fine.
If people are going to spend that kind of money, it's not the worst way to do it. I see too many cars on road these days that obviously have thousands and thousands of dollars put into them. Spinning hubcaps, aftermarket mufflers, super-tinted windows, racing stripes, ridiculously tall spoilers, etc. Talk about a real waste of money. How much of this is functional? They're so un-functional, the after-market mufflers are actually designed to NOT MUFFLE!
At least when you buy an expensive gaming computer, you're actually getting additional performance out of the machine.
Im not kidding get a Carry Concealed Weapon Permit.
I prefer a Carry Concealed BFG Permit myself, especially on days where I can't find enough rocket grenades lying around.
County records
on
Open Maps?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I live in Johnson County, Kansas, and they have a very impressive mapping system available online. (it is most functional in IE, but Mozilla etc. will let you do the basics)
You can find individual properties (complete with tax appraisal information, square footage, room count, etc. -- did you know this is all public information?), property lines, estimates acreage, building outlines, etc. You can map water pipes, power lines, fire hydrants -- even many trees are included. Fire stations, parks, museums, streams, neighborhoods (plats), cities, etc. It's all there.
Very impressive! Check and see if your county does the same! I can't tell you how valuable this tool was as we were shopping for a house (we closed yesterday!)
Seriously, have any other/.'ers created their own system?
Yes, I did, but it was before I knew anything about project management. I just kept on thinking of all of these features to put in it -- so it kept on inflating faster and faster, without any of the features getting to a 'finished' point. It turned into an incredibly complicated, and incredibly unpolished project.
I get my taxes done for free after setting up a Samba domain for a local accountant here in my area. Pretty nice if you ask me.
I've got a similar deal. I host my accountant's website, and have offered to redesign his website whenever he would like. In return he handles our personal and business taxes, including the quarterly business statements. A very, very nice deal, as he is a very, very nice person.
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps some $ goes to the developer of the idea, and some $ goes to an open-source styled team to do preliminary patent research. Because really, I or any of my peers could do a better job researching tech patents than the USPTO does...
It's not just that he designed it for 50 pounds -- but that Ericsson had a program that asked employees to come up with new patentable ideas, and only rewarded them with a 50 pound bonus. I'm sure this kind of 'bonus program' wasn't part of the daily schedule, but something the employees were asked to do on their own time.
The irony is that they were asking this of R&D geeks that were supposed to be intelligent. This does not speak highly of the quality of Ericsson's HR staff. I wonder if their hiring instructions read something like, "Look for smart but extremely naive and gullible people. Sheep, people, find smart sheep."
Wow that makes me mad.
So now is somebody going to tell us there is a PIAA (Publishing Industry Association of America) that is going to start suing big anonymous blocks of IP addresses, under the assertion that rampant online piracy is to blame for a large drop in book sales?
Yikes. I'm a statistic. I guess if you count slashdot and cnn.com I read plenty (and if you count HTML code and javascript, I read lots), but for the most part I read very few books since high school. I even avoided nearly all of my college reading. Baaaaad.
So, I've decided to do something about it. I have some weird drive to buy classic books. I don't know why, except that I feel like if I have a book collection I need to include classics. We just moved into a new house, and when I was reshelving these classics I felt awful. We just had our first baby six weeks ago, and it occurred to me that the last thing I want is for Killy to come up to me in a few years and ask, "Daddy, what is this book about?" and me not know.
So, I've assembled a list. I've enlisted the excellent ToDoList (discovered via a recent Slashdot thread....) to keep track, including exporting an HTML file so all my friends can laugh at how much I have left. Some of these books I've read already, and are planning to reread. Others are textbooks that I merely intend to scan through. But most I have never read, and will be enjoying for the first time.
As you can tell, I've only just started the process. I recommend everyone do the same! Read, dammit, read!
...UPS has announced they plan to change their name to "un1tED P4rc3l 53RViC3"
Similar for me. I only keep track of my mileage when I'm trips, but my 28 mpg highway rated sedan consistently gets over 30 mpg, and I've hit 33 mpg several times.
I've heard it said that a typical vehicle gets the best mileage at 55 mph, and that for every 5 mph above or below that, subtract 1 mpg. I'm an aggressive accelerator, but I rarely go much over the speed limit any more, so this might be where some of my luck comes from. In fact, the best mileage I've ever gotten was when following my father-in-law when he was driving a moving truck at about 55-60mph the entire stretch from Chicago to Kansas City.
'What we attempt to do in our classes is teach how the hackers think.' Hmmm, perhaps 'Certified Script Kiddie' would be a more accurate designation.
Except then it would be "What we attempt to do in our classes is teach how the script kiddies think." And putting the words "think" and "script kiddie" next to each other like that creates a paradox. Impossible to comprehend, much less teach.
99.84 percent of all incoming mail is spam
Is that one of the 86.55% of all statistics which are made up on the spot?
Actually, that's the closest statistics I've ever seen to the percentage of spam that I'm measuring -- which is 98.86% This comes from me keeping statistics on my spam for the last 8 months or so. Every time I see one of those 50% or 60% statements, I get green with envy, wishing I just had 60% of my email be spam....
And you people claim to be fans....
Slashdot brought the website down faster than Fox took down the tv show! Now I still can't get my Joss fix....
Or perhaps it was supposed to be a "specie filter", i.e. an innovative device that actually separates you from your money.
Or maybe a specious filter, i.e. something to seperate the good slashdot stories from the ones that turn out to be dumb?
Nah, that would be pushing our luck....
In dutch 'meter' is used for both the measurement result and the measurement device.
And in Chicago, 'meter' is a device that resulted in me having to pay hundreds dollars to park my car.
I'd at least expect the submitter to RTFA...
Yeah, I'm especially curious as to what a "species" filter is. Maybe it lets humans see the projection, but not cats and dogs?
You get a quasi-survival of the fittest.
Now there's a reality show I might actually watch!
The worst work environment I've had was with the IT group of an options trading company. The entire company (something like twenty-five traders, fifteen IT, five management) worked in the same room. All one big long space, traders at one end, IT at the other. I was sort of an offshoot of the IT department, since I was a temp doing their website, and I ended up in the middle. It was the noisiest environment I've ever worked in. The traders shouted at their phone and at each other all day long, and I had an external door right next to me that people kept going in and out of, letting it cold Chicago winter air.
Having been so miserable there, I started to realize what was important to me: a personal space, with enough privacy that I can successfully ignore everything going on around me. I don't mind cubicles as long as there can still be interaction between team members. Another job I had used clusters of four cubes (especially good for teams of four) with windows in between them. The windows weren't right next to you, but if you leaned back you could talk with your neighbor. Very good for working.
Don't forget the perks though. Another job I had set all of its cubes up around a central foosball table, and there was at least one game every afternoon (though I'd prefer a pool table myself). And yet another job had nightly Quake3/Unreal matches.
Food is also key. Free drinks are a must, and free snacks help a lot too. Keep the fridge stocked with soft drinks and bottled water (and don't forget to have plenty of diet soda options -- geeks don't get much exercise you know). Keep the drawers stocked with hershey's kisses, etc. or whatever holiday-themed treats go with the times.
Sometimes give the workers a special treat! The terrible job environment with the traders wasn't the worst job experience I've had because of the perks and treats. They had the free food/soda. But the best thing was that once they held a Glenlivet whiskey tasting! Lots of fun....
Of course NASA is interested! Rutan's ship took a $20 million investment from Paul Allen to get off the napkin it was first drawn on. And it stands to win only a $10 million prize! NASA's must be hoping they can get work done for half the price.
There's a fairly important and really simple improvement that I'm surprised wasn't covered by this list. Consumers: turn off the 'preview pane' in your email client. Vendors: set the preview pane 'off' as the default when you ship email clients.
The preview pane gets people in so much trouble, especially with Outlook/Express. Without harping over the potential for automatically triggering viruses, a lesser known problem is web bugs. These little images are linked from the email, and when they are retrieved from the server, the spammer is able to record that you've viewed his/her spam. One, this lets the spammer collect statistics, which enables him/her to create a better product -- and why encourage them?
And two, it identifies what email opened the spam, which lets the spammer confirm which addresses are active. If you've viewed the spam, the spammer can put your email on a confirmed-email list, which he/she is then eager to resell at a higher price as opposed to larger lists of unconfirmed addresses.
This is always the first step I recommend to people who complain about the amount of spam they get. This trick won't necessarily reduce your current spam, but it will reduce the accelleration of spam to your inbox.
I am thinking about setting up my own personal mail server for my small business
I'm planning on doing the same thing. When I was hunting for information I found this link, it has plenty of resource information. Maybe it will help you too.
I believe the accepted term is infotainment, and in some cases - docutainment.
I'm sorry, but these are just terms created by people hoping to sound like their profession actually means something.
The actual term is 'crap.'
Now edutainment can, on good days, mean something truly educational and valuable like 'Sesame Street' or 'Square One,' but believe me -- NOT if its on an MTV/Viacom channel....
A sample of only two ISPs!? Statistically, you can't derive any meaningful data from a data set of only two elements. And it's not like you can do a whole lot with only two elements, but why choose only major ISPs? And why only US and UK? It would have been nice to see somewhere around 20-40 elements over a range of several ISP sizes. As many large-scale national ISPs that you can get, at least a dozen regional ISPs, and the rest consisting of (the small and vanishing species of) local ISPs.
Furthermore, I would have liked to see the results from some of the online communities like Geocities that give webspace to users. There just isn't enough detail in this study.
And speaking of little detail, there has also been a lack of attention to detail. Note the following paragraph from the study:
Oopsie! 'X'ing out almost all of the company mentions just doesn't cut it.
How many people really spend $5,000 on a gaming machine? Mine cost less than $2,000, and I can play UT2k4 and others on it just fine.
If people are going to spend that kind of money, it's not the worst way to do it. I see too many cars on road these days that obviously have thousands and thousands of dollars put into them. Spinning hubcaps, aftermarket mufflers, super-tinted windows, racing stripes, ridiculously tall spoilers, etc. Talk about a real waste of money. How much of this is functional? They're so un-functional, the after-market mufflers are actually designed to NOT MUFFLE!
At least when you buy an expensive gaming computer, you're actually getting additional performance out of the machine.
...making this possibly the world's first all-artificial movie.
So is the soundtrack done in MIDI?
Im not kidding get a Carry Concealed Weapon Permit.
I prefer a Carry Concealed BFG Permit myself, especially on days where I can't find enough rocket grenades lying around.
I live in Johnson County, Kansas, and they have a very impressive mapping system available online. (it is most functional in IE, but Mozilla etc. will let you do the basics)
You can find individual properties (complete with tax appraisal information, square footage, room count, etc. -- did you know this is all public information?), property lines, estimates acreage, building outlines, etc. You can map water pipes, power lines, fire hydrants -- even many trees are included. Fire stations, parks, museums, streams, neighborhoods (plats), cities, etc. It's all there.
Very impressive! Check and see if your county does the same! I can't tell you how valuable this tool was as we were shopping for a house (we closed yesterday!)
Seriously, have any other /.'ers created their own system?
Yes, I did, but it was before I knew anything about project management. I just kept on thinking of all of these features to put in it -- so it kept on inflating faster and faster, without any of the features getting to a 'finished' point. It turned into an incredibly complicated, and incredibly unpolished project.
I get my taxes done for free after setting up a Samba domain for a local accountant here in my area. Pretty nice if you ask me.
I've got a similar deal. I host my accountant's website, and have offered to redesign his website whenever he would like. In return he handles our personal and business taxes, including the quarterly business statements. A very, very nice deal, as he is a very, very nice person.