Imagine the media fallout if those 1,600 people were killed by radiation.
Imagine a world where sometimes, people just stuck to the facts.
To be fair, the GP used the magic word "media". In my not so humble cynical experience, while people may be able to stick to facts, that is not something very likely to happen to the media.
Germans are not gods or geniuses or superior [as they wanted you to believe back in the day]. They're just fucking, shitting humans, like everyone else. This German Ubermenchen myth has to go.
Agreed, we're not. But knowing how to spell Übermenschen is pretty awesome too.
"She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical."
I don't believe a word she says. I think she's one of those anti-AI types and is just using the sex/exploitation angle as an obfuscating excuse to quell the one branch of the industry that is likely to pass the Turing test first.
The farthest we can reach in our "communication" with vegetation is when we plant, water, or fertilize it, but it is evident that messages transmitted across an SQ gap of 10 points or more cannot be very meaningful. What, then, could an SQ +50 Superbeing possibly have to say to us?
How about: "Here, have some water and fertilizer. I'll be back in a few of your puny so-called millennia when you are ready for The Harvest. You look delicious, by the way."
Spy Industry - seems about right, because I believe it involves massive amounts of money.
Those TLA guys should probably take some lessons from NASA. I mean, when was the last time you saw a movie with a spy that was actually a nice guy and not a complete MFing AH to anyone vaguely on his wrong side AND anyone getting caught in between? I mean, it's nice and all to watch Liam Neeson beating up another bunch of guys, but that's not exactly the type of person I want to have watching over my shoulder while I post new Facebook updates.
The company had around 500 employees, mostly doing contracting work at various locations (but also quite some numbers at the head office). They had a dedicated team of three people (one male, two females, fairly young all of them - and with the CEO's wife occasionally adding her weight there) responsible for social media, the company magazine (hard-copy), organizing various competitions and events (and to be honest, helping out with some HR functions, like getting new employees introduced). I guess the idea was to help "unify" the workforce that would otherwise have little contact outside their own project groups. Company "meetings" (at least twice a year) where usually held at some nigh club, with a short CEO presentation, and then a lot of free food, booze and loud music. (Now I ride motorcycle, so I don't touch booze; I don't particularly like loud music - lets me feel very disconnected from all those people around me that I am supposed to socialize with.)
So while I eagerly and dutifully attended the first event or so, I soon started to avoid those events, or leave as soon as politely possible. In general, I started to feel somewhat alienated from the company culture due to that what the "social troika" projected, which was very non-technical and generally on a more ("let's party") superficial level than I really had time for. My eyes were finally opened when I took part in some competition, became one of around 20 finalists, was invited to some off-site event (involving, as you may guess, food, (some) booze and socializing), and my project manager didn't want to let me off for those 4 hours - seemed that company culture wasn't part of his project team's culture, after all. Now, this event was quite heavy with CxOs/assorted other directors/spouses etc. - not people you'd really want to snub. On the other hand, they probably were the ones that could afford a morning away from work:-)
I think that the difference with your anecdote is that this team was hired for the purpose, they didn't grow into it. So the mileage results may differ... (Still, kudos for trying.)
After a while, I started to realize that the company tries very hard (and probably successfully - it worked on me initially) to market itself as THE place to work. (Free office snacks, and Youtube videos with actual employees speaking in the most glowing terms of it, come to mind). But I did notice after a few months that people generally had some gripes with working conditions (if asked in less-guarded moments), and that shifting people between projects on short notice and without much explanation did manage to mask some of the turnover. But you know, turnover isn't that much of a problem if you constantly have bright young things knocking at your door that are eager to prove that they are one of "the best" working at "the best" company, regardless of all the all-nighters, bad legacy code and environmental systems, procedural BS, and all the other ills one reads about on/. . It's almost like the emperor's new clothes, and nobody dares point out that he is naked.
I always just "lock" my luggage with a basic zip tie. Not meant to stop the TSA from getting in, but lets me know they did.
Earlier this year I had my first visit to the USA since 2001. Not usually having to bother with all things TSA on my side of the ocean, I enquired from an US-based travel agent about the desirability of a TSA-logoed locking device. She also recommended the ziplock/cable tie approach, which I followed without problems (nail clipper to trim, extras in the top of the bag).
The ziplock alone of course does not prevent loss. But it does look cheap (in the derogatory sense of the word), especially if used in combination with some older cheap generic worn-in luggage. Don't make it look worthwhile to see what can be pilfered from it. Lastly of course you don't pack anything in it that will set you back a nontrivial amount to replace or even some serious sentimental heartbreak - you've got carry-on for those items (scanners can see through locked bags after all, so what do you show them?). So it's more an exercise in risk lowering rather than risk elimination.
Where I come from, the saying is that you don't need to run faster than the lion - only faster than the slowest guy in your hunting party. I imagine the slowest guy being the one trying to show off with material possessions, and having that super-expensive TSA lock on his shiny underpants container.
That's what The Fantastic Summary alluded to. "Apparently, using the Internet to share Copyrighted materials at no personal profit is a more serious crime than selling copyrighted works for profit on physical media."
What is/. coming to? First Beta, then in-feed polls, now the summary's content gets forced on us even when we do not want to read the articles or summaries, but only the content????
A relative's son was also diagnosed with "lazy eye" and got the eye patch and exercises. However, he also was a bit lazy doing those. The solution was to provide him with an air rifle fitted with a collimator sight (requires both eyes looking at the same spot to aim) - of course together with strict safety/responsibility training. Seems to have done the trick. As a side effect, the pre-teen lad has gradually been introduced to "real" fire arms, and is now one of the best shots at his dad's shooting club even in competition with adults. Seems that the self-esteem from a "real" accomplishment is valuable: he is on the quiet side but happy and confident, not cocky or moody, seems not having any need to prove anything.
Looking back at a few previous employers, I could just shake my head at the practical test one had to perform as part of the interview process, but which tested skills (Java programming) not related to anything one actually did on the job. After some months on the job, you realize that to stay current, you will either need to do a lot of reading (hahaha - those play examples seldom scratch deeper than the surface of some of the stuff needed for actual worthwhile enterprise stuff) or work somewhere else (hahaha - it is likely that you will find out only some time after the interviews that this shop is actually more of the same old).
* EJBs? You mean that pesky indirection shell that we have between our back-end and our front-end (containing all logic, including anything resembling business rules), just because somebody read that one has to have a three-tier-architecture?
* Concurrency? Apart from all the application server constructs that all but hide that, never seen something like that used in the last decade or so.
* Streams, Lambdas, generics, foreach loops? You mean to tell me you actually got around to upgrading your "tried and tested" application server that "just works" to a recent version?
* Unit tests? Documentation? You mean like all that legacy outsource-generated drivel masquerading as code is so generously endowed with?
And come on, those things are still fairly run of the mill... As I passed the weeks doing freshman-level hacking at my new employer (spoken about in awe and envy even by recruiters who didn't try to place my there, and the company that tried very hard to have some sort of googlesque atmosphere by giving out free snacks, having generous free-drinks parties, and a conspicuous social media campaign extolling themselves as an employer of choice) only my frustration (and waistline) grew...
I think one of the best things an employer can do is make it's employees more employable (by exposure to practical experience, not theoretical learning only). As paradoxical as that may sound, that would probably make me less inclined to leave their employ. (But I'm only speaking for myself.)
Most commenters here seem concerned with calculations needed to be done while constructing some software (usually not very much). I think that is maybe the wrong level of thinking about the post.
One of the fundamental skills needed when programming involves abstract thinking: generalizing algorithms (very basic example: not only detecting the maximum of two ints, but also the maximum when you have 0, 1, or many ints - or any numeric type for that matter). For this you need to be able to recognize patterns - one many levels, not only for a variable number of items, but certain code constructs, all the way up to architectural constructs. (Between a function taking a variable amount of input, and Go4 patterns, there is a range of issues where you might become a much faster/less error-prone programmer if you start constructing utility functions, use generics/streams/lambda functions etc.) Then there is induction ( [correctness of] later results depending on preceding results).
I believe a lot of these are similar to the disciplines one needs to perform formal algebra, trigonometry, logic, discrete maths, etc. To be sure, mathematics never was my favourite subject, and perhaps one should spend more time thinking about the similarities between programming and maths to make a more rigorous argument and much less "gut-feely" than the previous paragraph. However, I feel that the 3 years of maths training I went through at college was not wasted, even if I never consciously employ any of the concrete fields of study in my job.
In the same vein, one could also argue that music and maths have similar interplays, e.g. the similarity and differences of "themes" as found especially in classical music, relationships between various pitches, and more. Then there is the concept of concurrency once you start to move beyond a simple melody line....
In short, I'd certainly recommend formal training in mathematics, as well as at least some music beyond being a consumer, to anyone wanting to become a programmer.
Interested people might want to go read up on melatonin: how it is produced most effectively, and what its effects are on health. Obviously, it is an area that still requires a lot of study to be conclusive, but I suspect that this hormone plays a large part in the effect demonstrated in this study.
And the simple solution to that, from the terrorist point of view, is just to use either a willing suicide bomber (there seem to be plenty of those) or an unknowing patsy.
I'd guess for a first try, I'd put a suitably bound large dog or pig in the passenger seat.
Oh wait, I think I might have just restated your suggestion.
In an idealist world, a person would be allowed to own machinery of whatever type.
Killed someone? Then a court gets to decide if it was a justified killing or not. Justified killings usually involve self-defense, or as one of the parties in a war.
The means used for the killing should not be subject to law, whether an unlawfully possessed firearm, or even a makeshift dagger made out of a broken bottle. The idea is to sanction the act of unlawful killing. If one prone to kill unlawfully can not get his/her paws on a firearm made from unobtainium, a baseball bat may be substituted, and where would that leave the Holy Sport? What about a naturally-occurring stone conveniently situated by mother nature - are we now going to remove all rocks larger than 2 inch diameter from a jurisdiction? So you rather try to control the action (with the assumption that it sprouted out of free will/willful choice), instead of an inanimate, free-will-less, self-unaware object/machine.
So I guess the above principle is much too short and full of common sense to ever be implemented rigorously. (And yes, I do know that there are nuances to it even if applied as set out above.) My excuse: IANAL.
Slashdot Mirror
Last I checked, it was a landlocked country, so why do they have a "Maritime" service????
:
:
Yes, it is intended to poke fun at people who confuse Austria with Australia.
Imagine the media fallout if those 1,600 people were killed by radiation.
Imagine a world where sometimes, people just stuck to the facts.
To be fair, the GP used the magic word "media". In my not so humble cynical experience, while people may be able to stick to facts, that is not something very likely to happen to the media.
The space station got an advanced screening.
http://www.theguardian.com/fil...
The parent poster, therefore, must be an astronaut.
Puts a whole new spin on "walking out".
Germans are not gods or geniuses or superior [as they wanted you to believe back in the day]. They're just fucking, shitting humans, like everyone else. This German Ubermenchen myth has to go.
Agreed, we're not. But knowing how to spell Übermenschen is pretty awesome too.
Misusing Ethernet To Kill Computer Infrastructure Dead
After reading that, I should have already realized this is just going to redundantly restate something obvious.
I mean, do you know of anything that's not dead after being killed?
"Allegiance" is such a harsh-sounding word. I prefer "inertia-induced lock in".
"She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical."
I don't believe a word she says. I think she's one of those anti-AI types and is just using the sex/exploitation angle as an obfuscating excuse to quell the one branch of the industry that is likely to pass the Turing test first.
The farthest we can reach in our "communication" with vegetation is when we plant, water, or fertilize it, but it is evident that messages transmitted across an SQ gap of 10 points or more cannot be very meaningful. What, then, could an SQ +50 Superbeing possibly have to say to us?
How about: "Here, have some water and fertilizer. I'll be back in a few of your puny so-called millennia when you are ready for The Harvest. You look delicious, by the way."
Spy Industry - seems about right, because I believe it involves massive amounts of money.
Those TLA guys should probably take some lessons from NASA. I mean, when was the last time you saw a movie with a spy that was actually a nice guy and not a complete MFing AH to anyone vaguely on his wrong side AND anyone getting caught in between? I mean, it's nice and all to watch Liam Neeson beating up another bunch of guys, but that's not exactly the type of person I want to have watching over my shoulder while I post new Facebook updates.
My previous employer anecdote:
The company had around 500 employees, mostly doing contracting work at various locations (but also quite some numbers at the head office). They had a dedicated team of three people (one male, two females, fairly young all of them - and with the CEO's wife occasionally adding her weight there) responsible for social media, the company magazine (hard-copy), organizing various competitions and events (and to be honest, helping out with some HR functions, like getting new employees introduced). I guess the idea was to help "unify" the workforce that would otherwise have little contact outside their own project groups. Company "meetings" (at least twice a year) where usually held at some nigh club, with a short CEO presentation, and then a lot of free food, booze and loud music. (Now I ride motorcycle, so I don't touch booze; I don't particularly like loud music - lets me feel very disconnected from all those people around me that I am supposed to socialize with.)
So while I eagerly and dutifully attended the first event or so, I soon started to avoid those events, or leave as soon as politely possible. In general, I started to feel somewhat alienated from the company culture due to that what the "social troika" projected, which was very non-technical and generally on a more ("let's party") superficial level than I really had time for. My eyes were finally opened when I took part in some competition, became one of around 20 finalists, was invited to some off-site event (involving, as you may guess, food, (some) booze and socializing), and my project manager didn't want to let me off for those 4 hours - seemed that company culture wasn't part of his project team's culture, after all. Now, this event was quite heavy with CxOs/assorted other directors/spouses etc. - not people you'd really want to snub. On the other hand, they probably were the ones that could afford a morning away from work :-)
I think that the difference with your anecdote is that this team was hired for the purpose, they didn't grow into it. So the mileage results may differ... (Still, kudos for trying.)
After a while, I started to realize that the company tries very hard (and probably successfully - it worked on me initially) to market itself as THE place to work. (Free office snacks, and Youtube videos with actual employees speaking in the most glowing terms of it, come to mind). But I did notice after a few months that people generally had some gripes with working conditions (if asked in less-guarded moments), and that shifting people between projects on short notice and without much explanation did manage to mask some of the turnover. But you know, turnover isn't that much of a problem if you constantly have bright young things knocking at your door that are eager to prove that they are one of "the best" working at "the best" company, regardless of all the all-nighters, bad legacy code and environmental systems, procedural BS, and all the other ills one reads about on /. . It's almost like the emperor's new clothes, and nobody dares point out that he is naked.
I'm not working there any more.
I always just "lock" my luggage with a basic zip tie. Not meant to stop the TSA from getting in, but lets me know they did.
Earlier this year I had my first visit to the USA since 2001. Not usually having to bother with all things TSA on my side of the ocean, I enquired from an US-based travel agent about the desirability of a TSA-logoed locking device. She also recommended the ziplock/cable tie approach, which I followed without problems (nail clipper to trim, extras in the top of the bag).
The ziplock alone of course does not prevent loss. But it does look cheap (in the derogatory sense of the word), especially if used in combination with some older cheap generic worn-in luggage. Don't make it look worthwhile to see what can be pilfered from it. Lastly of course you don't pack anything in it that will set you back a nontrivial amount to replace or even some serious sentimental heartbreak - you've got carry-on for those items (scanners can see through locked bags after all, so what do you show them?). So it's more an exercise in risk lowering rather than risk elimination.
Where I come from, the saying is that you don't need to run faster than the lion - only faster than the slowest guy in your hunting party. I imagine the slowest guy being the one trying to show off with material possessions, and having that super-expensive TSA lock on his shiny underpants container.
Some years ago I got a box of assorted random colour cable ties. Had like 20 each of about 10 different colours. Good luck matching those.
Unless the thief got the same sort of box....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_cloning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC_%28cat%29
Now you can understand why so many people were on Office 2003 for so long.
Were?
... it means you basically can't get a decent job anymore.
Well, I guess if you work at the DoL you are already past the stage where "a decent job" is very high on your priorities list.
That's what The Fantastic Summary alluded to. "Apparently, using the Internet to share Copyrighted materials at no personal profit is a more serious crime than selling copyrighted works for profit on physical media."
What is /. coming to? First Beta, then in-feed polls, now the summary's content gets forced on us even when we do not want to read the articles or summaries, but only the content????
... that buck stopped there.
A relative's son was also diagnosed with "lazy eye" and got the eye patch and exercises. However, he also was a bit lazy doing those. The solution was to provide him with an air rifle fitted with a collimator sight (requires both eyes looking at the same spot to aim) - of course together with strict safety/responsibility training. Seems to have done the trick. As a side effect, the pre-teen lad has gradually been introduced to "real" fire arms, and is now one of the best shots at his dad's shooting club even in competition with adults. Seems that the self-esteem from a "real" accomplishment is valuable: he is on the quiet side but happy and confident, not cocky or moody, seems not having any need to prove anything.
Looking back at a few previous employers, I could just shake my head at the practical test one had to perform as part of the interview process, but which tested skills (Java programming) not related to anything one actually did on the job. After some months on the job, you realize that to stay current, you will either need to do a lot of reading (hahaha - those play examples seldom scratch deeper than the surface of some of the stuff needed for actual worthwhile enterprise stuff) or work somewhere else (hahaha - it is likely that you will find out only some time after the interviews that this shop is actually more of the same old).
* EJBs? You mean that pesky indirection shell that we have between our back-end and our front-end (containing all logic, including anything resembling business rules), just because somebody read that one has to have a three-tier-architecture?
* Concurrency? Apart from all the application server constructs that all but hide that, never seen something like that used in the last decade or so.
* Streams, Lambdas, generics, foreach loops? You mean to tell me you actually got around to upgrading your "tried and tested" application server that "just works" to a recent version?
* Unit tests? Documentation? You mean like all that legacy outsource-generated drivel masquerading as code is so generously endowed with?
And come on, those things are still fairly run of the mill... As I passed the weeks doing freshman-level hacking at my new employer (spoken about in awe and envy even by recruiters who didn't try to place my there, and the company that tried very hard to have some sort of googlesque atmosphere by giving out free snacks, having generous free-drinks parties, and a conspicuous social media campaign extolling themselves as an employer of choice) only my frustration (and waistline) grew...
I think one of the best things an employer can do is make it's employees more employable (by exposure to practical experience, not theoretical learning only). As paradoxical as that may sound, that would probably make me less inclined to leave their employ. (But I'm only speaking for myself.)
Most commenters here seem concerned with calculations needed to be done while constructing some software (usually not very much). I think that is maybe the wrong level of thinking about the post.
One of the fundamental skills needed when programming involves abstract thinking: generalizing algorithms (very basic example: not only detecting the maximum of two ints, but also the maximum when you have 0, 1, or many ints - or any numeric type for that matter). For this you need to be able to recognize patterns - one many levels, not only for a variable number of items, but certain code constructs, all the way up to architectural constructs. (Between a function taking a variable amount of input, and Go4 patterns, there is a range of issues where you might become a much faster/less error-prone programmer if you start constructing utility functions, use generics/streams/lambda functions etc.) Then there is induction ( [correctness of] later results depending on preceding results).
I believe a lot of these are similar to the disciplines one needs to perform formal algebra, trigonometry, logic, discrete maths, etc. To be sure, mathematics never was my favourite subject, and perhaps one should spend more time thinking about the similarities between programming and maths to make a more rigorous argument and much less "gut-feely" than the previous paragraph. However, I feel that the 3 years of maths training I went through at college was not wasted, even if I never consciously employ any of the concrete fields of study in my job.
In the same vein, one could also argue that music and maths have similar interplays, e.g. the similarity and differences of "themes" as found especially in classical music, relationships between various pitches, and more. Then there is the concept of concurrency once you start to move beyond a simple melody line....
In short, I'd certainly recommend formal training in mathematics, as well as at least some music beyond being a consumer, to anyone wanting to become a programmer.
The Sakha facility has the world's largest collection of frozen ancient animal carcasses and remains.....
I'd say that qualifies as cool.
Interested people might want to go read up on melatonin: how it is produced most effectively, and what its effects are on health. Obviously, it is an area that still requires a lot of study to be conclusive, but I suspect that this hormone plays a large part in the effect demonstrated in this study.
And the simple solution to that, from the terrorist point of view, is just to use either a willing suicide bomber (there seem to be plenty of those) or an unknowing patsy.
I'd guess for a first try, I'd put a suitably bound large dog or pig in the passenger seat.
Oh wait, I think I might have just restated your suggestion.
This. Is why I think you americans may already have a winner for your next presidential election.
In an idealist world, a person would be allowed to own machinery of whatever type.
Killed someone? Then a court gets to decide if it was a justified killing or not. Justified killings usually involve self-defense, or as one of the parties in a war.
The means used for the killing should not be subject to law, whether an unlawfully possessed firearm, or even a makeshift dagger made out of a broken bottle. The idea is to sanction the act of unlawful killing. If one prone to kill unlawfully can not get his/her paws on a firearm made from unobtainium, a baseball bat may be substituted, and where would that leave the Holy Sport? What about a naturally-occurring stone conveniently situated by mother nature - are we now going to remove all rocks larger than 2 inch diameter from a jurisdiction? So you rather try to control the action (with the assumption that it sprouted out of free will/willful choice), instead of an inanimate, free-will-less, self-unaware object/machine.
So I guess the above principle is much too short and full of common sense to ever be implemented rigorously. (And yes, I do know that there are nuances to it even if applied as set out above.) My excuse: IANAL.