Excerpt from LA Times article about the "Arlington Springs Woman" (I can't find the original online, but I remember reading it a couple of years ago): The new discovery is likely to be controversial in part because many scientists say that the old skeletons found in the past few years around the Western United States do not resemble modern Native Americans. Detailed examinations of the skulls reveal slender faces, narrower brain cavities, high foreheads and slightly protruding chins that are more typical of Caucasoid peoples.
Some of them bear striking resemblance to a very ancient race called the Ainu, a maritime people who were forerunners of Polynesians and long ago occupied Japan and China, Owsley said.
In contrast, Native American people and their ancestors have features common to Eskimos and people of northern Asia, including round, flatter faces and pronounced cheekbones, Owsley said.
Many Native American groups strongly object to the theory that others got here first. In some cases, including one major one in the Northwest, tribes have successfully invoked the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to force researchers to return old skeletons for reburial before they can be tested. Paul Varela, executive director of the Chumash Interpretive Center in Thousand Oaks, said oral traditions passed down through generations of Central Coast Indians confirm that they were the first inhabitants of California.
"If you ask a Chumash person, they will tell you they have been here forever. We've always been here," Varela said.
In part to resolve such questions, UC Davis anthropologist David Glenn Smith said he hopes to begin DNA testing by summer on bones from 18 very old North American skeletons, including the Arlington Springs woman. The testing would go far in determining the ancestry and closest living relatives of America's first inhabitants.
It's not so much management. I've accepted that upper management never has a clue and have learned to deal with them.
My problem is just that I have little interest in the product or the company. I took this job largely because I needed to get out of my previous job (where management was truly clueless and the product was obviously never, ever going to ship). But when it comes down to it, I'm just not interested in the industry that this company is in.
I've been here for more than 5 years now. The entire time has been spent making changes to one product, a product that is built on a code base that is now about 12 years old. It has been cycle after cycle of "add this kind of support" here, and "change it so it works with that device" there. It's been the programming equivalent of putting lug nuts on wheels in an automobile plant.
Add to this that this company is a hardware company - it sells hardware and considers software to be the free toy surprise inside the package. We (software) get treated like the red-headed stepchild and must beg for time on the target systems to test our software. All of their documentation systems and procedures are geared toward supporting hardware. e.g. they can't understand why we don't release our software before testing it.
There was a project to rewrite our product, which was mismanaged. (A contractor was hired to lead it - turned out he talked a good game but couldn't discipline himself to focus on the real job and suffered badly from NIH syndrome.) So now we (the captive employees) have had to support this abortion.
Yeah, I need to get off my behind and get a new job, but I need to find a company I believe in, in an industry that interests me, that sees software as part of the product, rather than a side-effect of producing hardware.
Considering that, as I write this, the price on one of them has passed $22000 and there are still 37 days to go on the auction, a bid in excess of $100000 seems possible.
Heh, I have almost the same story, but totally different.
I always carry a swiss army knife in my briefcase. It has tweezers, a screw driver, etc. Useful little tool for emergencies.
When I flew from LAX to Japan, I put my briefcase through the XRAY machine and had no problem.
When I was leaving Japan, I put my briefcase through XRAY and the operator stopped me, asking "do you have a knife in your briefcase?"
"Yes", I replied.
All hell did not break loose.
She politely informed me that I would have to check the knife as a security item. No alarms went off. They didn't quarantine me. No body-cavity searches. I just opened my briefcase, gave her my knife, and she gave me a claim check.
So my end result was the same as yours, but my experience was different.
So what's the moral of my non-story? Maybe it's the attitude of the person behind the machine that makes the difference?
If you don't trust me to read what you send, why are you sending it?
I can't count the number of times that receipts have saved my rear end.
Someone calls me: "Why didn't you tell me about problem X."
Me: "I did." (checking my archive) "I sent it to you on 2000-07-31 at 13:15, you read it on 2000-08-01 at 09:00."
Someone: (hesitates for a moment) "Can you send it again?"
I think the best way to overcome this is simply to reinstate the requirement that a working prototype (or demonstration) be supplied.
Upon demonstration of something like pie charts, the patent examiner would just say "you've got to be kidding", and stamp a big, red, "REJECTED" on the application.
I also think that invention should be distinguished from the natural evolution of technology. The former could be patentable, the later should not be.
Re:it's a breast implant dammit!@!@#!
on
New iMac Announced
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Hmmm, that would explain that quote from Steve Jobs about wanting to reach out an touch it.
If I'm the first one to think of it, I hereby place the following idea into the public domain:
A URI is sent to the recipient of a document (greeting card, business card, or anything else).
The query part of the URI contains the encoded text of the document itself (note that this encoding can vary anywhere from ROTL-26 to N-bit encryption).
The actual file linked to by the URI (the authority and path parts) is a template for decrypting and displaying the data, possibly, but not necessarily in HTML.
Actually, I've heard that all you have to do is suck in your butt cheeks. Digging a fingernail into your hand works to, but can be seen. An experienced polygraph operator will know that you are not cooperating, but they won't know which are the true and false answers.
And who says that the operators of these machines are going to be experienced?
Wouldn't it be great for a candidate to show up at a press conference to find one of these things, perhaps along with a breathalyzer, sitting on the podium?
If you haven't submitted your program(s) to the International Obfuscated C Code Contest, now is the time : the deadline is December 1st, 2001, there is only two days left
Slashdot Mirror
Excerpt from LA Times article about the "Arlington Springs Woman" (I can't find the original online, but I remember reading it a couple of years ago):
The new discovery is likely to be controversial in part because many
scientists say
that the old skeletons found in the past few years around the Western
United States do
not resemble modern Native Americans. Detailed examinations of the skulls
reveal
slender faces, narrower brain cavities, high foreheads and slightly
protruding chins
that are more typical of Caucasoid peoples.
Some of them bear striking resemblance to a very ancient race called the
Ainu, a
maritime people who were forerunners of Polynesians and long ago occupied Japan
and China, Owsley said.
In contrast, Native American people and their ancestors have features common to
Eskimos and people of northern Asia, including round, flatter faces and
pronounced
cheekbones, Owsley said.
Many Native American groups strongly object to the theory that others got here
first. In some cases, including one major one in the Northwest, tribes have
successfully invoked the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation
Act to force researchers to return old skeletons for reburial before they
can be tested.
Paul Varela, executive director of the Chumash Interpretive Center in Thousand
Oaks, said oral traditions passed down through generations of Central Coast
Indians
confirm that they were the first inhabitants of California.
"If you ask a Chumash person, they will tell you they have been here forever.
We've always been here," Varela said.
In part to resolve such questions, UC Davis anthropologist David Glenn Smith
said he hopes to begin DNA testing by summer on bones from 18 very old North
American skeletons, including the Arlington Springs woman. The testing would go
far in determining the ancestry and closest living relatives of America's first
inhabitants.
It seems that the fact that Microsoft could make this threat and make it sound so dire, is further evidence of Microsoft's monopoly position.
Post links, please!
Such piracy just proves "them" right.
:-)
But he's not a pirate, he's a privateer
It's not so much management. I've accepted that upper management never has a clue and have learned to deal with them.
My problem is just that I have little interest in the product or the company. I took this job largely because I needed to get out of my previous job (where management was truly clueless and the product was obviously never, ever going to ship). But when it comes down to it, I'm just not interested in the industry that this company is in.
I've been here for more than 5 years now. The entire time has been spent making changes to one product, a product that is built on a code base that is now about 12 years old. It has been cycle after cycle of "add this kind of support" here, and "change it so it works with that device" there. It's been the programming equivalent of putting lug nuts on wheels in an automobile plant.
Add to this that this company is a hardware company - it sells hardware and considers software to be the free toy surprise inside the package. We (software) get treated like the red-headed stepchild and must beg for time on the target systems to test our software. All of their documentation systems and procedures are geared toward supporting hardware. e.g. they can't understand why we don't release our software before testing it.
There was a project to rewrite our product, which was mismanaged. (A contractor was hired to lead it - turned out he talked a good game but couldn't discipline himself to focus on the real job and suffered badly from NIH syndrome.) So now we (the captive employees) have had to support this abortion.
Yeah, I need to get off my behind and get a new job, but I need to find a company I believe in, in an industry that interests me, that sees software as part of the product, rather than a side-effect of producing hardware.
Considering that, as I write this, the price on one of them has passed $22000 and there are still 37 days to go on the auction, a bid in excess of $100000 seems possible.
Ever wonder why your dog wants to lick your face?
No, but I do want to puke when it does.
Heh, I have almost the same story, but totally different.
I always carry a swiss army knife in my briefcase. It has tweezers, a screw driver, etc. Useful little tool for emergencies.
When I flew from LAX to Japan, I put my briefcase through the XRAY machine and had no problem.
When I was leaving Japan, I put my briefcase through XRAY and the operator stopped me, asking "do you have a knife in your briefcase?"
"Yes", I replied.
All hell did not break loose.
She politely informed me that I would have to check the knife as a security item. No alarms went off. They didn't quarantine me. No body-cavity searches. I just opened my briefcase, gave her my knife, and she gave me a claim check.
So my end result was the same as yours, but my experience was different.
So what's the moral of my non-story? Maybe it's the attitude of the person behind the machine that makes the difference?
and my partner who was carring a parrot was asked to have the parrot searched
What the heck were they searching for, the nuggets?
Mars Inc.
(Horrible website)
If you don't trust me to read what you send, why are you sending it?
I can't count the number of times that receipts have saved my rear end.
Someone calls me: "Why didn't you tell me about problem X."
Me: "I did." (checking my archive) "I sent it to you on 2000-07-31 at 13:15, you read it on 2000-08-01 at 09:00."
Someone: (hesitates for a moment) "Can you send it again?"
I think the best way to overcome this is simply to reinstate the requirement that a working prototype (or demonstration) be supplied.
Upon demonstration of something like pie charts, the patent examiner would just say "you've got to be kidding", and stamp a big, red, "REJECTED" on the application.
I also think that invention should be distinguished from the natural evolution of technology. The former could be patentable, the later should not be.
Hmmm, that would explain that quote from Steve Jobs about wanting to reach out an touch it.
If I'm the first one to think of it, I hereby place the following idea into the public domain:
. ht ml?thetext=Greetings%20from%20California.%20I%20am %20fine.
A URI is sent to the recipient of a document (greeting card, business card, or anything else).
The query part of the URI contains the encoded text of the document itself (note that this encoding can vary anywhere from ROTL-26 to N-bit encryption).
The actual file linked to by the URI (the authority and path parts) is a template for decrypting and displaying the data, possibly, but not necessarily in HTML.
Example:
http://www.mypostcardco.com/GoldenGateBridgePic
This would create a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge with the text "Greetings from California. I am fine." on it.
Don't forget to add "... using a computer." to every idea you document.
It'll hurt wiping your ass, though.
Actually, I've heard that all you have to do is suck in your butt cheeks. Digging a fingernail into your hand works to, but can be seen. An experienced polygraph operator will know that you are not cooperating, but they won't know which are the true and false answers.
And who says that the operators of these machines are going to be experienced?
Wouldn't it be great for a candidate to show up at a press conference to find one of these things, perhaps along with a breathalyzer, sitting on the podium?
Also actors act as role model for little children making them bright, healthy and law-abiding citizens.
... cocaine... hee-hee-ho-ho-*gasp* (*klunk*)
:-)
Robert Downey Jr.
Would someone please mod the parent as "funny", like the author must've intended?
I wanna hear more about Denise.
Actually, Earlybird launched and went silent after a few days (in 98, I think).
Quickbird 1 blew up during launch.
Maybe we should nominate RMS.
You forgot:
Step 2.a: Hire one or more clueless contractors to jump-start the project.
(Speaking from recent, and painful, experience.)
And yes, we're at step 5 and I'm still working here.
If you haven't submitted your program(s) to the International Obfuscated C Code Contest, now is the time : the deadline is December 1st, 2001, there is only two days left
You mean there's only 'Z' ^ 'J' ^ 18 days left?
I think the author of the Satanic Bible was named Anton LeVey (sp?).
Yeah, the chick from Gilligan's Isle!
I want one too.