Depends how one defines "obsessed". Every company nowadays pays lip service to processes and the various ISO standards. Few have gotten it right to make it work for them instead of putting more (red tape) strain on people.
It's not that the prospective employer needs to follow it strictly or even agree with it - however it (amongst others) might be a pointer to how much management in the company know about computer science. And yes, some people might find it acceptable to work in an environment where "project management" boils down to "put more pressure on the programmer when the deadline is close", regardless of how realistic the deadline was from the start, whether the specifications where complete and unambiguous, how much they were changed 3 days before the deadline.... Been there done that. No, scrap that, am doing that right now, on a nice Sunday in the office....
What level of the Capability Maturity Model would your organisation reach?
Some probable answers:
Say what?, never heard of it, etc. - Probably a cowboy coding shop. Nice and exciting for starters, but will suck the life out of you sooner or later.
Level X - generally good, since someone realizes that programming is not only about churning out code, and has already done something about it. Follow-up questions: for how long have they been at that level? What actions are in place for increasing it?
Probably level x, but we don't care enough to care / too much paperwork / etc. - Be careful. Slightly more informed than the 1., but not enough and thus all the more dangerous for it.
Probably level X, but we have this system in place that we feel works better for us - Good, because someone is using his brains. Could also be a pitfall because of reinventing-of-wheels-syndrome.
The Combine are frequently shown as harsh rulers over the citizens...., suppressing dissent with brutality, policing using violence... Unreservedly check
using invasive surgery... Nah, nothing of the sort. Oh wait, does bilateral lobotomy via government-owned broadcaster count?
to transform humans into either soldiers or slaves. No, no soldiers.
The atmosphere generated by the dystopian Combine state has been praised by reviewers... Yep, favourite fawning fodder for foreign media for some time.
although the artificial intelligence of the transhuman Combine characters was thought to be inferior to that of other characters... Check
Where I live there's an indoor shooting range with a projection system. I remember one afternoon in the late nineties when a couple of us went and had a huge amount of good, clean, violent fun with the street battle scene from the movie Heat - must have been a year or two after it was released.
After that I've often wondered how one could go about creating a 3-D projection system for total immersion. One of the walls I ran into was the problem of running onto a wall:-) And then soon after, paintball took off....
OK, after reading comments I actually went back to read the fine article. Some points that struck me:
This study seems to have been only a review of 55 studies on the subject from the past 50 years. 107 studies have been rejected (and thus not included in the review).
Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association said they were disappointed with the conclusions.
"The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences.
The methodology is not really clear, but the study seems to only have looked at the amount of certain nutrients contained in foods. It has not looked at the overall chemical makeup, which would also take into account harmful substances.
It's only my guess, but to really know whether certain foods have certain health benefits, is to feed said foods to a group of people over a period of time and compare their health before&after or to that of a control group. Assuming that certain nutrient quantities amount to good health, is basically saying you can be healthy by stocking up in the supplements aisle of your supermarket - and that has been disproven for some instances already.
Continuing the Mellchett quote: "Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review.
I imagine that's purely because it's the "luxury line" for the produce aisle
I buy a lot of fresh produce. I've often found that the organic product in my country's luxury chain (comparable perhaps to UK's Marks&Spencer) has a comparable or even lower price than the non-organic equivalent at the supermarket chain, and is invariably fresher and lasts longer (which is also important to a bachelor). Of course, this will vary for other locations.
On a slight tangent, I've also started to buy organic, non-pasteurised, non-homogenised milk at a diary farm on the way between my house and work - lower price than the same quantity at the supermarket, and with easily twice the fridge life (even compared to UHT/long life). Also nice for natural lactobacillus fermentation products - you just leave it at room temperature and it curdles instead of putrefying.
Best of all of course is the garden-grown organic variety. No air freight from halfway across the globe, and anything fresher is still growing, as they say. Also has lots of secondary health and financial benefits like getting exercise in the fresh air and not needing to pay a gym for that.
why, in the devil's briefcase, do most public restrooms have doors that you have to pull when your hands are wet from washing them?
Then do as most of my colleagues do, and DON'T wash your hands - then you don't need to pull with wet hands.
(Yeah, I know. I keep a bottle of alcohol in my drawer to wipe my keyboard and mouse whenever someone else has worked on my computer. And I avoid shaking hands.)
My guess would be no, since if a machine can recognize a bad translation, it would probably also be able to use the same techniques to provide a better one - or at the least, come up with a number of translations then choose the best one from the bunch using the technique.
On the other hand, there is a potentially slippery slope here for the acceptability of: suicide --> assisted suicide --> encouraged suicide --> eugenics.
Oh, I think I should have included "Profit!!!" somewhere on that list....
Well, since tigers are going extinct, it should be obvious that they don't have much use of said body part. Why not have someone else have it who puts more value on it?
I'm just kidding, right. But it's still ironic. Maybe someone should tell them about rabbits.
cats and dogs are smarter than we give them credit for, when they look at you, they are thinking about something it's not just a vacant look.
I'm considering all these anecdotes, about cats and dogs actually being pretty smart, surfacing more and more. One didn't hear those kind of stories when I was little. So I'm wondering: perhaps it's all relative, and it's people who are getting dumber and dumber?
I didn't want to rob anyone of the opportunity to discover this for themselves;-)
Jesus is the Word of God (see Rev 19:13, John 1:1-18).
One should keep in mind the distinction between "scripture" on the one hand and "word" on the other. While Scripture (The Bible as we know it today) does contain messages (wordS) from God to people, it would be a bit presumptuous to claim that it contains all the words and nothing but the words of God:
Some sections report the messages of people contrary to God's message, or the messages of false prophets that they falsely claimed to be from God (one shouldn't read these sections in isolation, one needs to read the sections in context with the text before and after to discover God's message regarding the situation).
We sometimes read that "God spoke to someone" or "the word of God came to someone" but it is not reported what those words where. So we do not know those words of God.
The New Testament scriptures where not available to the very first Christian converts as the word of God (gospel message) came to them orally from the apostles (Acts etc.). As the epistles (missionary letters) where being written and sent to assemblies, those Christians obviously had access to that very limited part of the New Testament - although it seems that assemblies forwarded at least some of the letters to other assemblies so that it could be read there too (Colossians 4:16). (Did those converts lack anything spiritually speaking because they did not have access to the whole collection of scriptures that we have today? I don't think so.)
The section about Jesus' temptation in the desert is an interesting case study where the Satan quotes Scriptures which arguably are also the words of God, but where the APPLICATION is shown to be in error.
The Scriptures contain passages that obviously are not to be taken literally but figuratively - and how beautifully poetic the language can be! - e.g. Jesus being a door, his flesh being bread, the pillars on which the earth stands being shaken, the land of Israel having four corners, the seas having roads for the fish to travel, the sun living in a tent, etc. etc. (It's obviously wrong to take a part of one verse as God's literal word and deduct scientific teaching from it - it's again meant to be read in context to discover the message that the author wanted to communicate to the readers.)
(sorry, I'm too lazy to look up all the references for the above statements - exercise for the reader and all that.)
In 2 Corinthians 3:5-18 Paul argues that the letter alone (written word, scripture) is dead, that the Holy Spirit is needed to make it understandable in its correct meaning (in Christ) and thus impart Life to the reader. Satan used Scripture without the Holy Spirit, with the obvious intention to cause spiritual death.
Before his crucifixion Jesus did not say to his disciples: I leave you the Scriptures to teach you, He left the Holy Ghost to "teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." (John 14:16-27)
I think it's a basic human trait that people want security, therefore a rules-based religion is so attractive and great effort is expended to systematize religion (Calvin). This explains the emphasis on Scripture, which takes the uncertainty factor of the Spirit out of the equation and replaces it with learning (and so misses the whole point of Jesus' ministry, trying to bring Christians back under a system that closely resembles the pharisaical system of Jesus' time).
I was brought up in the belief that the Bible was the "Word of God" too - until I took a bible program (e-sword.net being an accessible one) and searched for the phrase "word of god". No, the Bible is just a pointer to the Word of God.
it has been mathematically proven that math, and all science based on it has one of 2 properties
(1) it is flat-out wrong
(2) it describes only a minutely small part of the real world (which obviously implies that something "more advanced" than (current) maths governs the universe)
Could you provide some links for more detail on this?
All I can say is that Phillipe "The Mouse" Gaston must be careful not to get entangled in those cables, or get embroiled in a fight with one of the subs, next time he escapes via sewers. (OK, OK, so my geography and history sux, but the facts should never subtract from a good Hollywood story.)
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Depends how one defines "obsessed". Every company nowadays pays lip service to processes and the various ISO standards. Few have gotten it right to make it work for them instead of putting more (red tape) strain on people.
Each question has it's potential risks....
It's not that the prospective employer needs to follow it strictly or even agree with it - however it (amongst others) might be a pointer to how much management in the company know about computer science. And yes, some people might find it acceptable to work in an environment where "project management" boils down to "put more pressure on the programmer when the deadline is close", regardless of how realistic the deadline was from the start, whether the specifications where complete and unambiguous, how much they were changed 3 days before the deadline.... Been there done that. No, scrap that, am doing that right now, on a nice Sunday in the office....
What level of the Capability Maturity Model would your organisation reach?
Some probable answers:
Personally I would prefer 2., but YMMV.
I must confess that as I'm not a Half-Life gamer, I had to refer to Wikipedia. Quoting:
Let's just say the resemblance is eerie....
Where I live there's an indoor shooting range with a projection system. I remember one afternoon in the late nineties when a couple of us went and had a huge amount of good, clean, violent fun with the street battle scene from the movie Heat - must have been a year or two after it was released.
After that I've often wondered how one could go about creating a 3-D projection system for total immersion. One of the walls I ran into was the problem of running onto a wall :-) And then soon after, paintball took off....
... where walls, accelerometers and all that fancy stuff is optional.
That's what they get for telling me about "reuse" when I was taught OO. But you must admit, the part about wiping the keyboard is a good alibi.
OK, after reading comments I actually went back to read the fine article. Some points that struck me:
Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association said they were disappointed with the conclusions.
"The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences.
Continuing the Mellchett quote: "Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review.
I buy a lot of fresh produce. I've often found that the organic product in my country's luxury chain (comparable perhaps to UK's Marks&Spencer) has a comparable or even lower price than the non-organic equivalent at the supermarket chain, and is invariably fresher and lasts longer (which is also important to a bachelor). Of course, this will vary for other locations.
On a slight tangent, I've also started to buy organic, non-pasteurised, non-homogenised milk at a diary farm on the way between my house and work - lower price than the same quantity at the supermarket, and with easily twice the fridge life (even compared to UHT/long life). Also nice for natural lactobacillus fermentation products - you just leave it at room temperature and it curdles instead of putrefying.
Best of all of course is the garden-grown organic variety. No air freight from halfway across the globe, and anything fresher is still growing, as they say. Also has lots of secondary health and financial benefits like getting exercise in the fresh air and not needing to pay a gym for that.
Then do as most of my colleagues do, and DON'T wash your hands - then you don't need to pull with wet hands.
(Yeah, I know. I keep a bottle of alcohol in my drawer to wipe my keyboard and mouse whenever someone else has worked on my computer. And I avoid shaking hands.)
It will be an arms race all over again.
Never read anything about haloes in the Bible. And I'm a big fan of that literature.
Don't hold your breath though. Chances of much of that pipe capacity reaching any of us bottom-feeding cash cows aren't that great.
(written from another place that has something seriously wrong with it.)
On the other hand, there is a potentially slippery slope here for the acceptability of: suicide --> assisted suicide --> encouraged suicide --> eugenics.
Oh, I think I should have included "Profit!!!" somewhere on that list....
Well, since tigers are going extinct, it should be obvious that they don't have much use of said body part. Why not have someone else have it who puts more value on it?
I'm just kidding, right. But it's still ironic. Maybe someone should tell them about rabbits.
It's probably a dupe. Or else it will be slashdotted by everyone going to view it.
I'm considering all these anecdotes, about cats and dogs actually being pretty smart, surfacing more and more. One didn't hear those kind of stories when I was little. So I'm wondering: perhaps it's all relative, and it's people who are getting dumber and dumber?
As a male, I resent your use of the word "man" in that sentence. May I suggest you use "stuff"?
Also, this seems a good option only if the course is set to the shortest route to the sun.
I didn't want to rob anyone of the opportunity to discover this for themselves ;-)
Jesus is the Word of God (see Rev 19:13, John 1:1-18).
One should keep in mind the distinction between "scripture" on the one hand and "word" on the other. While Scripture (The Bible as we know it today) does contain messages (wordS) from God to people, it would be a bit presumptuous to claim that it contains all the words and nothing but the words of God:
(sorry, I'm too lazy to look up all the references for the above statements - exercise for the reader and all that.)
In 2 Corinthians 3:5-18 Paul argues that the letter alone (written word, scripture) is dead, that the Holy Spirit is needed to make it understandable in its correct meaning (in Christ) and thus impart Life to the reader. Satan used Scripture without the Holy Spirit, with the obvious intention to cause spiritual death.
Before his crucifixion Jesus did not say to his disciples: I leave you the Scriptures to teach you, He left the Holy Ghost to "teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." (John 14:16-27)
I think it's a basic human trait that people want security, therefore a rules-based religion is so attractive and great effort is expended to systematize religion (Calvin). This explains the emphasis on Scripture, which takes the uncertainty factor of the Spirit out of the equation and replaces it with learning (and so misses the whole point of Jesus' ministry, trying to bring Christians back under a system that closely resembles the pharisaical system of Jesus' time).
I was brought up in the belief that the Bible was the "Word of God" too - until I took a bible program (e-sword.net being an accessible one) and searched for the phrase "word of god". No, the Bible is just a pointer to the Word of God.
Could you provide some links for more detail on this?
Not that I'm a fan of rap in general. But I do not think that I should take my moral guidance from rap musicians.
All I can say is that Phillipe "The Mouse" Gaston must be careful not to get entangled in those cables, or get embroiled in a fight with one of the subs, next time he escapes via sewers. (OK, OK, so my geography and history sux, but the facts should never subtract from a good Hollywood story.)
You've got that spot on. I spend a lot of time thinking about moving my butt out of bed. Especially now that it's winter here in the southern hemi.