We're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving, and going at 900 miles an hour...
I think Monty Python refers to the speed of the Earth's surface at the Equator - but in knots (nautical miles an hour) not statute miles per hour. The Equator is roughly 22,400 nautical miles all around. Divide that by 24, and you get a speed of 933 knots at the equator. The earth's orbital speed would be:
2 * 150,000,000 * pi = 942,477,810km
942,477,810 / 8760 = 107,588 km/h
In miles per hour this is:
107,588 / 1.6 = 67,242 mph - just a touch faster than 900 mph!
270,000 / 67,242 = a sedate 4 times faster than the Earth.
Where I work, we have taken on board many of Humphrey's lessons. We have instituted a process, and we look at quality very seriously. And we need to, as well. Importantly, we manage expectations. Our management doesn't tell the customer "Oh yes, we'll have that for you next week" any more.
Since we started doing this, our defect rate has decreased dramatically. The difference between before having the process and after having it is like night and day. Since we started using a good process, I have seldom worked overtime. Before we had the process, we would be working 60 to 80 hour weeks continuously, but the team as a whole was less productive than it is now.
I don't feel my "creativity" has been stifled. My creativity is now expressed elsewhere. Design is now heavily peer reviewed. Coding is reduced largely to a mechanical implementation of the design, and that's the way it should be. (And the code is peer reviewed, too).
To use a horrible business buzzword, it's a "win-win" situation. Our staff turnover is very low. I've been on the project for five years now, and I'm still happy. Had we carried on as we had before instituting the strict process that we have done, I doubt I would have stayed.
So why would I want wireless net access?
Wouldn't want it for my house - I don't see why a land line isn't appropriate for a box that's too big to move.
Maybe some people DO want it for their house. Where I live (just south of Houston), I can't get cablemodem access and I can't get DSL. I'm not holding my breath to see either of these - I live too far from the exchange, and I don't see the cable company ever putting in cablemodem access in before I leave. It wouldn't surprise me if more people are incapable of being DSL wired/cablemodemed than are capable at this moment in time.
If wireless broadband was in my area right now, it would be my only option. As it stands, living in the technological backwater that I do, I'm stuck with a 56k modem that only gets 42k on a good day.
Keep in mind that the UK is much easier for you to enter because you are Canadian, and hence, part of the British Commonwealth. The US is not. This has many ramifications with regards to immigration into the UK & Other British territories.
Really? I have several US citizen friends who have worked for extended periods in the UK within the last five years. Unlike foreigners coming to work in the US, their spouses were allowed to work, too.
I doubt there's any significant difference between Canadians and US citizens getting work authorization in the UK, bicbw.
Actually, the figure was aggregated between both sites. Overall, virtually all traffic is Windows/IE (including hits from Slashdot - just eyeballing the numbers shows that most Slashdotters run Windows and IE). My aviation site has about a 50-50 split between Linux and Mac (but funnily enough, only since I started posting to Slashdot - before that, Linux hits outnumbered Mac hits by 2 to 1. My Frontier: First Encounters site (a game not available on Mac or Linux) has 4 times as many Linux hits as Mac hits.
Adults still insist they have lessons to teach the next generation. But the young have come to believe, with increasing justification, that their elders know much less than they do, and have little worth passing along yak yak yak yak
This isn't news. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said something like, "When I was 20, my father knew nothing, but by the time I was 25, I was suprised how much he had learned in 5 years" - basically showing that throughout time, the younger generation has always seen the older generation as a useless anachronism until they reach their mid twenties or even thirties? Why do people keep presenting this as "news" or "something wrong with the word" when it's probably been like this since humans advanced enough to have a culture?
Why will BSD as OSX overtake Linux when there are fewer Macs than Linux boxes? According to my website statistics (my two sites are not aimed at any particular OS) I get almost three times as many hits from Linux boxes than Macs....
Unless the Mac suddenly takes off of course, but I'll believe that when I see it!
I find it amazing how much power corporations wield over individuals. We had Tickle-me-Elmo, Star Wars EP1 (remember people lining up weeks in advance?) and now this.
People need to wake up and stop being sheeple. There was an excellent documentary on PBS about this called "Affluenza" - people are so taken in by having to always have the latest - driving themselves into debt and misery because of this. Apparently, although in real terms we earn about twice as much as we did in the 50s, and our houses are twice as big, and we have twice as many toys, we are a lot less happy than when families typically lived in 1000 sq.ft and had only one car, and no color TV. Why can't parents tell their kids "No!" when they demand the latest expensive toy? We are bringing up a generation of spoiled brats. Why is hanging out at the mall cool? Are people's lives really this dull and consumer oriented?
Worse of all, the rampant consumerism of the West (the United States in particular) is unsustainable. Something will give sooner or later - the economy or the environment, or maybe both. People like Sony, to quote Douglas Adams, will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Frankly, I'd much rather play a good old MUD like Shades (been running since 1984) than any console game. The beauty of a text-mud is that you can play it on any ancient box that supports telnet if you're hard up;-)
I don't agree that "Big Science" is destroying human esteem. Scientists are not obsessed by reducing our status (how does revealing how big the universe does that reduce our status?). They are interested in finding the answer to the great question, "Why?" - whether that is studying the learning pattern of chimps or studying how the universe got here. Through this, we may understand more about our own existence.
Personally, I don't have any problem accepting that, on a cosmic scale, all of humanity is microscopically insignificant. It doesn't bother me one bit. Now I'm the first to admit I have a little bit of a big ego, but I'm quite happy with the fact that if I spun in tomorrow, although my Dad would be distraught, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't give a damn.
I'll end this one with an interesting note -- Intel's palmtop CPU chip series is named StrongARM... is that supposed to be some sort of joke?
If I'm not mistaken, the StrongARM isn't an Intel invention. Rather, it's a version of the Acorn Risc Machine processor which first appeared in the Acorn Archimedes during the late 1980s.
ObIntelJoke:
The Pentium's floating point unit is said to comply to IEEE fp standards. If you're on an airplane with a Pentium-powered air data computer, how is IEEE pronounced?
Aieeeeeeeeeeeee!
- America restricts the rights to see nudity and drink alchol from all minors.
Well not quite. What I think is ridiculous about the USA is that it's illegal for an 18-20 year old to drink alcohol, but they can be drafted to die for their country.
IMHO, if you're old enough to die for your country (in actual fact, be forced to die for your country by being drafted as cannonfodder - witness the destruction of a significant number of American teenagers in Vietnam), you're old enough to drink beer.
The problem with Freenet (and Ian Clarke has never really discussed it) is that data that's not accessed a lot will get dropped.
The great thing about the Internet now is that I, as an individual, can publish pretty much anything. I can write music and put it out, I can write fiction and put it out where people can come by and access it. Until the early 90s this was just not possible. If my stuff is not enormously popular - so what - people who enjoy that kind of thing can still get it. I can publish to my heart's content and the few hundred readers can read it. Similarly, I can go and get obscure stuff myself - something that wasn't possible before the internet showed up in its current form due to publishing barriers.
But Freenet will just drop this stuff because it's not popular - and this seems like a retrograde step to me. It re-erects those old barriers to publishing that the Internet is destroying - and eventually, Freenet just holds what the Sheeple want. We end up with a network that's no better than TV or the print press - containing only what's popular. We end up with masses of Britney Spears or Blink 182, but you can't find something like the Bottom Feeders or Bradley N. Litwin.
Could possibly the flextime and ultimate support of the individual rather then the group or "team" be the demise of the dot coms?
I doubt it.
Every part of IBM that I've worked for uses flextime - core hours usually 10:30am until 3pm, and it works very well. And IBM is hardly your dotcom startup. It has been, in my experience, an exceptionally good company to work for.
Sorry to be pedantic, but the century doesn't turn for another month or so - 2000 is the last year of the 20th Century, and 2001 is the first year of the 21st...
A lot of people remember Elite, and Frontier Developments is working on Elite 4 (FE:2 was Elite 2, and FFE was Elite 3). The Elite Club is still under development. At the moment, I'm trying to encourage Frontier Developments to release the FE:2 and FFE sources as opensource.
Yes. The entire Elite series - Elite, Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier: First Encounters.
They have a big fanfiction following, and the Elite Club will soon be offering the source code for FE:2 and FFE. See Frontier Developments website for more info on these games, or see alioth.net for a website set in the fictional Frontier Elite Universe.
This guy gives me hope that there are people who aren't sheeple out there. His school district are obviously populated by sheeple who just tow the line, and believe everything the talking head on the sensationalistic newscast says.
More power to people who make up their own minds and have the courage to stick to their principles.
Ummmm...commuter aircraft are passenger aircraft, too!
Many commuters fly at 18,000+ these days. They are pretty much all turbine powered, and turbines just operate more efficiently at higher altitude. Keeps them above all the VFR traffic too, and helps with weather avoidance.
Commuter airlines are now getting regional jets too, such as the Canadair regional jet and the Embraer offerings and the like. These cruise up with the big boys (FL250 and above), but they typically are doing the longer commuter airline routes.
Commuter aircraft these days are typically things like ATR-42s and bigger. Unless the trip is really short, they usually fly at FL180 (18,000 ft) and above. Turbines are just thermodynamically a lot more efficient higher up. Virtually all commuter airlines are running turboprops. True - Redwing Airlines in Missouri, whose fleet consists of a single piston powered Piper Seneca (unpressurized) aren't going to be flying that high, but the majority of commuter airliners will be up that high so that their turbine engines at least get good fuel economy. The commuter airlines that operate the new regional jets will be up at FL250 (25,000') and higher, rubbing shoulders with their major airline brethren.
Also, ATC is there to serve us, and not the other way around. If you ask, ATC will normally give, especially once you're out of the busy terminal area. ATC in the United States are very good at working with the pilots to get them what they need.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Monty Python refers to the speed of the Earth's surface at the Equator - but in knots (nautical miles an hour) not statute miles per hour. The Equator is roughly 22,400 nautical miles all around. Divide that by 24, and you get a speed of 933 knots at the equator. The earth's orbital speed would be:
2 * 150,000,000 * pi = 942,477,810km
942,477,810 / 8760 = 107,588 km/h
In miles per hour this is:
107,588 / 1.6 = 67,242 mph - just a touch faster than 900 mph!
270,000 / 67,242 = a sedate 4 times faster than the Earth.
Since we started doing this, our defect rate has decreased dramatically. The difference between before having the process and after having it is like night and day. Since we started using a good process, I have seldom worked overtime. Before we had the process, we would be working 60 to 80 hour weeks continuously, but the team as a whole was less productive than it is now.
I don't feel my "creativity" has been stifled. My creativity is now expressed elsewhere. Design is now heavily peer reviewed. Coding is reduced largely to a mechanical implementation of the design, and that's the way it should be. (And the code is peer reviewed, too).
To use a horrible business buzzword, it's a "win-win" situation. Our staff turnover is very low. I've been on the project for five years now, and I'm still happy. Had we carried on as we had before instituting the strict process that we have done, I doubt I would have stayed.
Maybe some people DO want it for their house. Where I live (just south of Houston), I can't get cablemodem access and I can't get DSL. I'm not holding my breath to see either of these - I live too far from the exchange, and I don't see the cable company ever putting in cablemodem access in before I leave. It wouldn't surprise me if more people are incapable of being DSL wired/cablemodemed than are capable at this moment in time.
If wireless broadband was in my area right now, it would be my only option. As it stands, living in the technological backwater that I do, I'm stuck with a 56k modem that only gets 42k on a good day.
Somehow, I managed to keep a straight face in both instances. They asked me completely seriously, too.
Really? I have several US citizen friends who have worked for extended periods in the UK within the last five years. Unlike foreigners coming to work in the US, their spouses were allowed to work, too.
I doubt there's any significant difference between Canadians and US citizens getting work authorization in the UK, bicbw.
No - Windows has 97%. Everything else gets the remaining 3%...
This isn't news. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said something like, "When I was 20, my father knew nothing, but by the time I was 25, I was suprised how much he had learned in 5 years" - basically showing that throughout time, the younger generation has always seen the older generation as a useless anachronism until they reach their mid twenties or even thirties? Why do people keep presenting this as "news" or "something wrong with the word" when it's probably been like this since humans advanced enough to have a culture?
Unless the Mac suddenly takes off of course, but I'll believe that when I see it!
People need to wake up and stop being sheeple. There was an excellent documentary on PBS about this called "Affluenza" - people are so taken in by having to always have the latest - driving themselves into debt and misery because of this. Apparently, although in real terms we earn about twice as much as we did in the 50s, and our houses are twice as big, and we have twice as many toys, we are a lot less happy than when families typically lived in 1000 sq.ft and had only one car, and no color TV. Why can't parents tell their kids "No!" when they demand the latest expensive toy? We are bringing up a generation of spoiled brats. Why is hanging out at the mall cool? Are people's lives really this dull and consumer oriented?
Worse of all, the rampant consumerism of the West (the United States in particular) is unsustainable. Something will give sooner or later - the economy or the environment, or maybe both. People like Sony, to quote Douglas Adams, will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Frankly, I'd much rather play a good old MUD like Shades (been running since 1984) than any console game. The beauty of a text-mud is that you can play it on any ancient box that supports telnet if you're hard up ;-)
Personally, I don't have any problem accepting that, on a cosmic scale, all of humanity is microscopically insignificant. It doesn't bother me one bit. Now I'm the first to admit I have a little bit of a big ego, but I'm quite happy with the fact that if I spun in tomorrow, although my Dad would be distraught, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't give a damn.
I think this song is quite apt:
The Big Cigar Theory
I'll end this one with an interesting note -- Intel's palmtop CPU chip series is named StrongARM... is that supposed to be some sort of joke?
If I'm not mistaken, the StrongARM isn't an Intel invention. Rather, it's a version of the Acorn Risc Machine processor which first appeared in the Acorn Archimedes during the late 1980s.
ObIntelJoke:
The Pentium's floating point unit is said to comply to IEEE fp standards. If you're on an airplane with a Pentium-powered air data computer, how is IEEE pronounced?
Aieeeeeeeeeeeee!
We know how long it took until DeCSS showed up, and the DVD security was broken. How long until signatures are broken?
Well not quite. What I think is ridiculous about the USA is that it's illegal for an 18-20 year old to drink alcohol, but they can be drafted to die for their country.
IMHO, if you're old enough to die for your country (in actual fact, be forced to die for your country by being drafted as cannonfodder - witness the destruction of a significant number of American teenagers in Vietnam), you're old enough to drink beer.
The great thing about the Internet now is that I, as an individual, can publish pretty much anything. I can write music and put it out, I can write fiction and put it out where people can come by and access it. Until the early 90s this was just not possible. If my stuff is not enormously popular - so what - people who enjoy that kind of thing can still get it. I can publish to my heart's content and the few hundred readers can read it. Similarly, I can go and get obscure stuff myself - something that wasn't possible before the internet showed up in its current form due to publishing barriers.
But Freenet will just drop this stuff because it's not popular - and this seems like a retrograde step to me. It re-erects those old barriers to publishing that the Internet is destroying - and eventually, Freenet just holds what the Sheeple want. We end up with a network that's no better than TV or the print press - containing only what's popular. We end up with masses of Britney Spears or Blink 182, but you can't find something like the Bottom Feeders or Bradley N. Litwin.
So to summarize: Automatic for the Sheeple.
The Southern Cross is a well-known constellation in the southern hemisphere - as well known as the Plough/Big Dipper is in the northern hemisphere.
In fact, Australia's flag has the Southern Cross constellation on it, just like Alaska's flag has the Plough/Big Dipper (Ursa major).
I doubt it.
Every part of IBM that I've worked for uses flextime - core hours usually 10:30am until 3pm, and it works very well. And IBM is hardly your dotcom startup. It has been, in my experience, an exceptionally good company to work for.
Sorry to be pedantic, but the century doesn't turn for another month or so - 2000 is the last year of the 20th Century, and 2001 is the first year of the 21st...
Also see the newsgroup alt.fan.elite.
They have a big fanfiction following, and the Elite Club will soon be offering the source code for FE:2 and FFE. See Frontier Developments website for more info on these games, or see alioth.net for a website set in the fictional Frontier Elite Universe.
More power to people who make up their own minds and have the courage to stick to their principles.
Many commuters fly at 18,000+ these days. They are pretty much all turbine powered, and turbines just operate more efficiently at higher altitude. Keeps them above all the VFR traffic too, and helps with weather avoidance.
Commuter airlines are now getting regional jets too, such as the Canadair regional jet and the Embraer offerings and the like. These cruise up with the big boys (FL250 and above), but they typically are doing the longer commuter airline routes.
Commuter aircraft these days are typically things like ATR-42s and bigger. Unless the trip is really short, they usually fly at FL180 (18,000 ft) and above. Turbines are just thermodynamically a lot more efficient higher up. Virtually all commuter airlines are running turboprops. True - Redwing Airlines in Missouri, whose fleet consists of a single piston powered Piper Seneca (unpressurized) aren't going to be flying that high, but the majority of commuter airliners will be up that high so that their turbine engines at least get good fuel economy. The commuter airlines that operate the new regional jets will be up at FL250 (25,000') and higher, rubbing shoulders with their major airline brethren.
Also, ATC is there to serve us, and not the other way around. If you ask, ATC will normally give, especially once you're out of the busy terminal area. ATC in the United States are very good at working with the pilots to get them what they need.
do you even work?
It is said if you enjoy what you do for a living, you'll never work a minute of your life.
I enjoy what I do (s/w dev). Ergo, I haven't worked in years ;-)