Career advice is different from social planning. Yes, as a general rule, your best chance for advancing your career is not to sit on your ass.
On the other hand, it is naive to think that every lost job will be replaced by a better one, solely because you, personally, managed to beat out your coworkers to get the one job that didn't get outsourced, automated, or--to use that lovely british turn of phrase--made redundant.
Mind you, I'm no luddite. I'm not saying we should not try to make IT more autonomic, it will happen whether we like it or not. I do, however, object to the idea that people who lose jobs to automation (let alone outsourcing) do so because they are stupid or lazy, unwilling, or unable (and therefor worthless to society) to gain the skills that we need in this new economy. (as opposed to the last new economy, or the one before that...)
No. A file in the trash is still on your computer (because the trash too is on the computer)
sorry, I should have said "computer", meaning the view you have of the computer using the interface.
No. Emptying the trash erases the file. If they were merely on the floor, they'd be recoverable.
quite literally, emptying the trash removes the remaining (trash) link to a file. When the trash is on the floor, you can no onger find it from your "computer" so it is not recoverable.
Anyway, those are irrelevant to your non-point. My point was, when was the last time you used a real trash can to erase anything?
Erase all data on the disk (but in a reversible way). Exactly like what happens when you drag a folder into the trash.
Real trash cans do not erase things. This is just what somebody told you the trash icon does. Moving a folder to the trash does not erase (teporarily or otherwise) the data, it moves it off of your computer, into the trash can. Emptying the trash can moves it out of the trash can and onto the floor.
Actually, moving the disk icon onto the trash is actually not a bad metaphor for unmounting the drive. At least part of the problem is that people tend to believe that the icons they see are the data, rather than the links that they actually represent. The misunderstanding is particularly noticeable in the filesystems that are mounted to the desktop, since this is the case in which the link-nature of the files typically shows up.
The link misunderstanding has further led to another confuion: that the trash works like rm -r. This actually runs counter to the visual metaphor, so I can only imagine this idea was generated by people who had worked on the command line first, and learned what the trash was for. Moving something into the trash is more like moving it into the trash. Now this doesn't actually affect the contents, but it does tend to affect your ability to get at them.
Stepping back, and relying on the visual metaphor alone, what could dragging the disk into the trash possibly do besides remove the disk from the computer? Now, if the picture was of a shredder, then maybe I would expect it to wipe the drive...
No one likes to loose[sic]... An old coach of mine used to say loosing builds muscle... and character (because it should teach you to have dignity in your loss and to make sure you work hard enough not to loose the next time).
I know it's been said before, and I understand that this is meant as a metaphor, but even as such it really disturbs me. Democracy is NOT a goddamn sport! Its not a spectator sport, and its not a fucking football game.
In games, it is acceptable and good that a team might lose based on arbitrary or error-prone judges or referees. This is beacase games are for fun and entertainment, and its more fun if we don't have to stop the game every five seconds to analyze judging. Also, it underscores the fundamental lack of seriousness of games. Note that, IMHO, any games which do stop every five seconds to watch video tape are about as fun as watching cspan on a slow day.
By contrast, our election process is not intended to be fun to particpate in, or entertaining to watch. It is intended to determine grave matters of governance. We need to be firm about this, because the much of media (right-wing, left-wing, too-dumb-to-care-wing) is making a concerted effort to turn not just these elections, but our whole polotical structure into a televised sport. This is bad for america, and thereore (poor slobs) bad for the rest of the world.
Let me be clear. This is not the media's fault. we pay them to do this to us, and we need to stop. They may be "hurting america", but as long as there's a major market for it, there will always be televsion willing to stoop to our level. Especially in these times, when the seriousness and legitimacy of our democratic process -- if not our whole government -- is being eroded, we need to reject sportsmanship and spectatorism in politics. It demeans us and our government. Contesting an election, and looking into possible fraud is not going to destabiilze the government, or threaten democracy, the constitution itself acknowledges that an election is a complicated process, and has built in time (and lots of it) to figure it out before inauguration day.
Someone won this election. By most accounts, it would seem to have been Bush. The fact of the matter, however, is that there are a lot of people who dispute this, and who rightly suggest that we should probably be absolutely sure of who won the election, before we inaugurate a president. Not addressing this problem is surely a much bigger threat to the stability and legitimacy of the government
you forgot a few steps: 6b. Just as things are looking good for our heros, the ro-beast stransforms or reveals some huge new weapon, which promises to destroy Voltron forever. 6c. FORM BLAZING SWORD
I wish I was able to access my previous posts (even from only a few months ago) just to say 'nya nya nya nya'...
see: http://slashdot.org/~wass
And, incidentally, I hardly think an unimpressive string of 2's counts as being "modded into oblivion", its really much more like being ignored, or perhaps a bit like getting "Two'd".
Ok, so you claim to have read the abstract (and include a broken link to prove it), but did you really read this line:
"The energy source for all modern Hymenoptera is pollen, and since Meliponini do not store honey, there must be a constant source of blooming angiosperms."
or
"Modern Meliponini exhibit dependence upon temperature, time of day, relative humidity, and available flowers for their existence (Fowler, 1979; and Eltz, et al., 2003)"
or
"Angiosperms have also shown to survive also within a temperature band to maintain photosynthesis, Krebs cycle, ect[sic]..."
So to sum up: the relevant tropical honeybee does NOT store honey, so it cannot survive even the shortest winter which its food source cannot also survive. She cites studies of the bees in question to support the thesis that the modern species could not survive such a catastrophe.
As for the claim that the bees (modern and ancient) only look the same, I imagine that as a palentological presentation that evidence is covered in the presentation.
This brings to mind a thought I had while getting my coffee before I went off to vote this morning. What this country needs is privatized, market driven, voting. I mean really, I think we've proven time and time again that the government can't properly run an election. Imagine how much more involved voters would be if they had to pay to vote.
Now, before all you lefties get all bent about it, let me finish. I know you're thinking that paying to vote sounds "undemocratic", perhaps even "unamerican". You're probably thinking that this will lead to the "disenfranchisement" of the poor, but If you knew anything about modern market capitalism, you'd realize that you're really not seeing the whole picture.
While applying market pressure to voting would surely drive up the cost to the point where only the very wealty could afford to vote independantly, this is not the whole story. Most people would, in fact, be able to vote through group rates available from their employers. (Think about it, what major multinational company -- unfairly disenfranchised by our current system -- wouldn't want an army of voters on its side?) Much like we've already done with health care, and providing for the elderly, this would shift the difficulties of the management of democracy itself onto the shoulders of private enterprise. Just imagine the huge improvements in efficiency!
Eventually, this system could rid us entirely of our unnatural, and antiquated dependance on traditional, inefficient governments, and provide quite a boost in productivity. As a citizen of one of the worlds largest computer companies, I am certainly looking forward to it.
----------
In all seriousness, political discussions on slashdot always make me squeamish. It seems that during the bubble, every man woman and child employed or studying in the tech field drank heavily of the free-market koolaid. Understandably, mind you, since it's awfully reassuring to believe in the all-knowing self-regulating market, when you want desperately to beleive that your stock in trade is not unbelievably overvalued. Understandable, too, that it is reassuring for techies to treat the byzantine actions of society as a predictable set of actions by game-theoritically rational agents.
The fact of the matter is, however, that the market has proven time and again (in mild, medium and catastophic flavors) that it simply cannot regulate anything as well as we, as humans who have to suffer through its vagaries, require.
To bring this rant back to topic, voter ignorance comes in lots of colors. People near sensitive voting equiptment should not throw stones.
Slashdot Mirror
Career advice is different from social planning. Yes, as a general rule, your best chance for advancing your career is not to sit on your ass.
On the other hand, it is naive to think that every lost job will be replaced by a better one, solely because you, personally, managed to beat out your coworkers to get the one job that didn't get outsourced, automated, or--to use that lovely british turn of phrase--made redundant.
Mind you, I'm no luddite. I'm not saying we should not try to make IT more autonomic, it will happen whether we like it or not. I do, however, object to the idea that people who lose jobs to automation (let alone outsourcing) do so because they are stupid or lazy, unwilling, or unable (and therefor worthless to society) to gain the skills that we need in this new economy. (as opposed to the last new economy, or the one before that...)
The real problem with OCaml (and modern functional programming in general) is that its too frnech. perhaps if it were called Freedom Programming....
No. A file in the trash is still on your computer (because the trash too is on the computer)
sorry, I should have said "computer", meaning the view you have of the computer using the interface.
No. Emptying the trash erases the file. If they were merely on the floor, they'd be recoverable.
quite literally, emptying the trash removes the remaining (trash) link to a file. When the trash is on the floor, you can no onger find it from your "computer" so it is not recoverable.
Anyway, those are irrelevant to your non-point.
My point was, when was the last time you used a real trash can to erase anything?
your reply underscores my point:
Erase all data on the disk (but in a reversible way). Exactly like what happens when you drag a folder into the trash.
Real trash cans do not erase things. This is just what somebody told you the trash icon does. Moving a folder to the trash does not erase (teporarily or otherwise) the data, it moves it off of your computer, into the trash can. Emptying
the trash can moves it out of the trash can and onto the floor.
Actually, moving the disk icon onto the trash is actually not a bad metaphor for unmounting the drive. At least part of the problem is that people tend to believe that the icons they see are the data, rather than the links that they actually represent. The misunderstanding is particularly noticeable in the filesystems that are mounted to the desktop, since this is the case in which the link-nature of the files typically shows up.
The link misunderstanding has further led to another confuion: that the trash works like rm -r. This actually runs counter to the visual metaphor, so I can only imagine this idea was generated by people who had worked on the command line first, and learned what the trash was for. Moving something into the trash is more like moving it into the trash. Now this doesn't actually affect the contents, but it does tend to affect your ability to get at them.
Stepping back, and relying on the visual metaphor alone, what could dragging the disk into the trash possibly do besides remove the disk from the computer? Now, if the picture was of a shredder, then maybe I would expect it to wipe the drive...
No one likes to loose[sic]... An old coach of mine used to say loosing builds muscle ... and character (because it should teach you to have dignity in your loss and to make sure you work hard enough not to loose the next time).
I know it's been said before, and I understand that this is meant as a metaphor, but even as such it really disturbs me. Democracy is NOT a goddamn sport! Its not a spectator sport, and its not a fucking football game.
In games, it is acceptable and good that a team might lose based on arbitrary or error-prone judges or referees. This is beacase games are for fun and entertainment, and its more fun if we don't have to stop the game every five seconds to analyze judging. Also, it underscores the fundamental lack of seriousness of games. Note that, IMHO, any games which do stop every five seconds to watch video tape are about as fun as watching cspan on a slow day.
By contrast, our election process is not intended to be fun to particpate in, or entertaining to watch. It is intended to determine grave matters of governance. We need to be firm about this, because the much of media (right-wing, left-wing, too-dumb-to-care-wing) is making a concerted effort to turn not just these elections, but our whole polotical structure into a televised sport. This is bad for america, and thereore (poor slobs) bad for the rest of the world.
Let me be clear. This is not the media's fault. we pay them to do this to us, and we need to stop. They may be "hurting america", but as long as there's a major market for it, there will always be televsion willing to stoop to our level. Especially in these times, when the seriousness and legitimacy of our democratic process -- if not our whole government -- is being eroded, we need to reject sportsmanship and spectatorism in politics. It demeans us and our government. Contesting an election, and looking into possible fraud is not going to destabiilze the government, or threaten democracy, the constitution itself acknowledges that an election is a complicated process, and has built in time (and lots of it) to figure it out before inauguration day.
Someone won this election. By most accounts, it would seem to have been Bush. The fact of the matter, however, is that there are a lot of people who dispute this, and who rightly suggest that we should probably be absolutely sure of who won the election, before we inaugurate a president. Not addressing this problem is surely a much bigger threat to the stability and legitimacy of the government
you forgot a few steps:
6b. Just as things are looking good for our heros, the ro-beast stransforms or reveals some huge new weapon, which promises to destroy Voltron forever.
6c. FORM BLAZING SWORD
gotta have the blazing sword.
see: http://slashdot.org/~wass
And, incidentally, I hardly think an unimpressive string of 2's counts as being "modded into oblivion", its really much more like being ignored, or perhaps a bit like getting "Two'd".
Ok, so you claim to have read the abstract (and include a broken link to prove it), but did you really read this line:
"The energy source for all modern Hymenoptera is pollen, and since Meliponini do not store honey, there must be a constant source of blooming angiosperms."
or
"Modern Meliponini exhibit dependence upon temperature, time of day, relative humidity, and available flowers for their existence (Fowler, 1979; and Eltz, et al., 2003)"
or
"Angiosperms have also shown to survive also within a temperature band to maintain photosynthesis, Krebs cycle, ect[sic]..."
So to sum up: the relevant tropical honeybee does NOT store honey, so it cannot survive even the shortest winter which its food source cannot also survive. She cites studies of the bees in question to support the thesis that the modern species could not survive such a catastrophe.
As for the claim that the bees (modern and ancient) only look the same, I imagine that as a palentological presentation that evidence is covered in the presentation.
Does this comment really need to get modded up to five every time it appears?
I mean, sure it's hilarious that our president is an idiotic monkey... oh wait, no it's not.
This brings to mind a thought I had while getting my coffee before I went off to vote this morning. What this country needs is privatized, market driven, voting. I mean really, I think we've proven time and time again that the government can't properly run an election. Imagine how much more involved voters would be if they had to pay to vote.
Now, before all you lefties get all bent about it, let me finish. I know you're thinking that paying to vote sounds "undemocratic", perhaps even "unamerican". You're probably thinking that this will lead to the "disenfranchisement" of the poor, but If you knew anything about modern market capitalism, you'd realize that you're really not seeing the whole picture.
While applying market pressure to voting would surely drive up the cost to the point where only the very wealty could afford to vote independantly, this is not the whole story. Most people would, in fact, be able to vote through group rates available from their employers. (Think about it, what major multinational company -- unfairly disenfranchised by our current system -- wouldn't want an army of voters on its side?) Much like we've already done with health care, and providing for the elderly, this would shift the difficulties of the management of democracy itself onto the shoulders of private enterprise. Just imagine the huge improvements in efficiency!
Eventually, this system could rid us entirely of our unnatural, and antiquated dependance on traditional, inefficient governments, and provide quite a boost in productivity. As a citizen of one of the worlds largest computer companies, I am certainly looking forward to it.
----------
In all seriousness, political discussions on slashdot always make me squeamish. It seems that during the bubble, every man woman and child employed or studying in the tech field drank heavily of the free-market koolaid. Understandably, mind you, since it's awfully reassuring to believe in the all-knowing self-regulating market, when you want desperately to beleive that your stock in trade is not unbelievably overvalued. Understandable, too, that it is reassuring for techies to treat the byzantine actions of society as a predictable set of actions by game-theoritically rational agents.
The fact of the matter is, however, that the market has proven time and again (in mild, medium and catastophic flavors) that it simply cannot regulate anything as well as we, as humans who have to suffer through its vagaries, require.
To bring this rant back to topic, voter ignorance comes in lots of colors. People near sensitive voting equiptment should not throw stones.
News Flash: new "e-commerce" and "search" technologies to hit the internet(s)"
Could this be a new area of tech jobs, setting up and maintaining ecommerce sites, creating search assisting applications
Seriously, was this meant to be sarcastic?
[mod article +5:Funny]