You apparently missed the part where I said "unless it was legitimate to assume that the mail contained a weapon". Anthrax is a weapon.
This is a red herring anyway. Did Bush say that all opened mail would be fully analyzed for chemical or biological weapons? The goal is to extend Presidential power (which is a stated objective of the VP), danger to the state is just an excuse.
There's a big difference between the "reputation as a congregation of geniuses" and the possible reality of it. We've never really known if this was true or not or whether a collection of geniuses increases the probability of having a great company. We know Google is successful, has a lot of money, and talks a lot about how smart they are (explicitly or implicitly), but other companies have done just as well without the genius claims.
You hit the nail on the head. Like nearly all methods for hiring people, it's an open loop system. In order to to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach you'd have to monitor those you hired and those who you rejected to determine their relative performance. This is pretty much impossible to do, but the difficulty of testing an algorithm doesn't eliminate the fact that an untested one may very well be worthless.
This is just the same hit-or-miss approach everyone uses dressed up in psuedo-scientific garb.
The problem with Exigent circumstances as it might apply to mail is that unless it was legitimate to assume that the mail contained a weapon, there really can't be an immediate risk of serious harm because conventional mail by its very nature can't carry an immediate threat.
Perhaps, but the GP post isn't an example of it. Bush's signing statements would carry the same legal weight if he wrote them on toilet paper before wiping his ass.
"We can't know the future, so you have to consider hypothetical situations, and take a guess at their probability of happening and their associated costs. That's not "cherry-picking", it's picking the areas that you think will be of concern to your company."
Yes, what you describe isn't "cherry-picking" but it also doesn't describe what the poster was doing. He was considering only the hypothetical situations that supported his point of view while a sucessful businessperson would let the analysis drive the conclusions.
I wouldn't go too far with the hardware analogy. Synchronization in digital hardware is needed because of the unequal delays in different gate paths and determining the worst case timing is trivial by comparison to a similar calculation on software functions. On modern PC's caches can cause significant timing variations so synchronization based on time intervals would be quite problematical. Of course, one could probably choose a time interval so long that these variations would be swallowed, but you'd have to be willing to waste a lot of cycles which would defeat the purpose of adding multiple cores.
Doctors and Lawyers don't work a lot of extra hours without pay like engineers and programmers do, so if Doctors and Lawyers are the gold standard for "Highly skilled people", I guess engineers and programmers don't qualify
"They do not show whether someone is lying, or telling the truth. They do however show if someone is becoming stressed. They should not be relied upon, as some people can learn to control some of the variables at will."
You should have stopped at the first sentence quoted above. Since polygraphs can't show whether someone is lying, it's irelevent whether some people can learn to control some of the variables. In any case, I suspect the "stressed" argument is a circular one, we "know" the subject is stressed because we define stress as an increase in blood pressure etc. It still doesn't correlate with what the subject is thinking unless there's some mind-reading going on.
That would make the NSA and the CIA not only silly, but stupid. Most people buy their foreign goods at Walmart, thus the correct answer to the question is something like: "No, it's Walmart who gives money to a foreign organization, not me."
The fact is that telling the government a secret during a security investigation (as often required) significantly increases the probability that you will be blackmailed since many more people has access to the information (they could be 1000's of people who have access to the information). So the government's approach may actually increase the chance that classified materials are obtained through blackmail.
So we have to read the whole document just to find that it is FUD after all. If you think that document proves your point, tell us exactly what your point is and then quote the part of the document that supports it.
Sure you can make any unsubstantiated claim you want about the future, but the fact is that if MS wanted these DRM horror stories to play out they don't need Vista to do it, they could just put it in a service pack for XP and 2000.
The fact is that there isn't any good business reason for MS to do this. There is, however, a business case for allowing DRM'd content to play on Windows. If it turns out nobody buys DRM'd conent, that MS will have just wasted the effort.
Sure, but the point is that you can't prove it won't happen. I was just illustrating the flaw of any argument that attempts to prove that X will happen simply because nobody can prove X won't happen.
Well, somebody is certainly downloading a lot of music from iTunes and I don't find it credible that most of it is for making CDs. Perhaps you don't realize that iPod customers aren't exclusively geeks or even young people, there are plenty of older customers who are used to paying for their music as well.
I never said the lock-in was 100%, but there is lock-in and there's no evidence that it's hurting the sales of iPods. In fact, it's probably increasing sales since there is nothing as extensive as iTunes available for the iPod's competitors. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense: there's no logical reason why Apple would make iTunes downloads incompatible with competing devices unless they wanted to prop-up sales of the iPod. No doubt the margin for the iPod is signicantly greater than that of iTunes downloads.
"Have you ever been involved in actual product development?"
Yes, for over 20 years. Since you bring it up, how many years of product development do you have?
"That's why the get the big bucks, but if some unexpected glitch causes Vista to spuriously trash the quality of your product on the final production run, 5 minutes before the courier has to get back to his truck, even catching the glitch might not be enough to save your ass."
Ah, yes, the hypothetical glitch rears it's ugly head once again. The great thing about the HG is that you don't need Vista or any particular OS or system because the glitch always does exactly what the personal proposing it imagines.
"Unprotected media might be unaffected by Vista DRM, but the only way to find out for sure is to risk your (possibly multi-million dollar) project and see if it turns out OK."
You've never heard of pilot project or testing? I imagine you'd only risk some worthless sample and a few hours of your time to find out "if it turns out OK".
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it the Slashdotters hate copyright and patents .. unless Apple is the holder of the IP.
You apparently missed the part where I said "unless it was legitimate to assume that the mail contained a weapon". Anthrax is a weapon.
This is a red herring anyway. Did Bush say that all opened mail would be fully analyzed for chemical or biological weapons? The goal is to extend Presidential power (which is a stated objective of the VP), danger to the state is just an excuse.
There's a big difference between the "reputation as a congregation of geniuses" and the possible reality of it. We've never really known if this was true or not or whether a collection of geniuses increases the probability of having a great company. We know Google is successful, has a lot of money, and talks a lot about how smart they are (explicitly or implicitly), but other companies have done just as well without the genius claims.
Why? Has somebody found a correlation between high IQ and the ability to sell Internet Ads?
You hit the nail on the head. Like nearly all methods for hiring people, it's an open loop system. In order to to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach you'd have to monitor those you hired and those who you rejected to determine their relative performance. This is pretty much impossible to do, but the difficulty of testing an algorithm doesn't eliminate the fact that an untested one may very well be worthless.
This is just the same hit-or-miss approach everyone uses dressed up in psuedo-scientific garb.
The problem with Exigent circumstances as it might apply to mail is that unless it was legitimate to assume that the mail contained a weapon, there really can't be an immediate risk of serious harm because conventional mail by its very nature can't carry an immediate threat.
They could just flip a coin.
This is the sort of thing that happens when a company has tons of money and can't figure out what to do with it all.
Slashdotters 2006: Office sucks, I'd never use it
Slashdotters 2007: Office 2007 changed the UI so I'm not going to use it anymore.
Perhaps, but the GP post isn't an example of it. Bush's signing statements would carry the same legal weight if he wrote them on toilet paper before wiping his ass.
"We can't know the future, so you have to consider hypothetical situations, and take a guess at their probability of happening and their associated costs. That's not "cherry-picking", it's picking the areas that you think will be of concern to your company."
Yes, what you describe isn't "cherry-picking" but it also doesn't describe what the poster was doing. He was considering only the hypothetical situations that supported his point of view while a sucessful businessperson would let the analysis drive the conclusions.
I wouldn't go too far with the hardware analogy. Synchronization in digital hardware is needed because of the unequal delays in different gate paths and determining the worst case timing is trivial by comparison to a similar calculation on software functions. On modern PC's caches can cause significant timing variations so synchronization based on time intervals would be quite problematical. Of course, one could probably choose a time interval so long that these variations would be swallowed, but you'd have to be willing to waste a lot of cycles which would defeat the purpose of adding multiple cores.
Doctors and Lawyers don't work a lot of extra hours without pay like engineers and programmers do, so if Doctors and Lawyers are the gold standard for "Highly skilled people", I guess engineers and programmers don't qualify
"They do not show whether someone is lying, or telling the truth. They do however show if someone is becoming stressed. They should not be relied upon, as some people can learn to control some of the variables at will."
You should have stopped at the first sentence quoted above. Since polygraphs can't show whether someone is lying, it's irelevent whether some people can learn to control some of the variables. In any case, I suspect the "stressed" argument is a circular one, we "know" the subject is stressed because we define stress as an increase in blood pressure etc. It still doesn't correlate with what the subject is thinking unless there's some mind-reading going on.
That would make the NSA and the CIA not only silly, but stupid. Most people buy their foreign goods at Walmart, thus the correct answer to the question is something like: "No, it's Walmart who gives money to a foreign organization, not me."
The fact is that telling the government a secret during a security investigation (as often required) significantly increases the probability that you will be blackmailed since many more people has access to the information (they could be 1000's of people who have access to the information). So the government's approach may actually increase the chance that classified materials are obtained through blackmail.
So we have to read the whole document just to find that it is FUD after all. If you think that document proves your point, tell us exactly what your point is and then quote the part of the document that supports it.
You seem to be unsure whether you think it's a glitch or not. What is the "intentional but poorly thought out behavior" you're referring to?
1 - the discussion was about Vista
2 - you present no evidence and then insult me
MS isn't going to put Windows at risk (potentially losing sales or being sued) for the paltry sums that the content industry can cough up.
Sure you can make any unsubstantiated claim you want about the future, but the fact is that if MS wanted these DRM horror stories to play out they don't need Vista to do it, they could just put it in a service pack for XP and 2000.
The fact is that there isn't any good business reason for MS to do this. There is, however, a business case for allowing DRM'd content to play on Windows. If it turns out nobody buys DRM'd conent, that MS will have just wasted the effort.
Sure, but the point is that you can't prove it won't happen. I was just illustrating the flaw of any argument that attempts to prove that X will happen simply because nobody can prove X won't happen.
"Prove that this defect in the Zune will not be "back-ported" to Vista. (Answer: You can't."
Prove that this defect in the Zune will not be "back-ported" to Linux. (Answer: You can't.)
I don't worry about not being able to prove something is not going to happen when there's zero evidence that it will.
Well, somebody is certainly downloading a lot of music from iTunes and I don't find it credible that most of it is for making CDs. Perhaps you don't realize that iPod customers aren't exclusively geeks or even young people, there are plenty of older customers who are used to paying for their music as well.
I never said the lock-in was 100%, but there is lock-in and there's no evidence that it's hurting the sales of iPods. In fact, it's probably increasing sales since there is nothing as extensive as iTunes available for the iPod's competitors. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense: there's no logical reason why Apple would make iTunes downloads incompatible with competing devices unless they wanted to prop-up sales of the iPod. No doubt the margin for the iPod is signicantly greater than that of iTunes downloads.
"Have you ever been involved in actual product development?"
Yes, for over 20 years. Since you bring it up, how many years of product development do you have?
"That's why the get the big bucks, but if some unexpected glitch causes Vista to spuriously trash the quality of your product on the final production run, 5 minutes before the courier has to get back to his truck, even catching the glitch might not be enough to save your ass."
Ah, yes, the hypothetical glitch rears it's ugly head once again. The great thing about the HG is that you don't need Vista or any particular OS or system because the glitch always does exactly what the personal proposing it imagines.
"Unprotected media might be unaffected by Vista DRM, but the only way to find out for sure is to risk your (possibly multi-million dollar) project and see if it turns out OK."
You've never heard of pilot project or testing? I imagine you'd only risk some worthless sample and a few hours of your time to find out "if it turns out OK".