If you had actually read the article you would know that his design doesn't use gears, instead using some kind of pin in slot mechanism that doesn't change ratios as it wears. There are incidental gears for the display, but these don't affect the time keeping.
The problem is that you are equating productivity with good living. The french may be happier, and when it comes to the crunch that is far more valuable than a few percent on a bottom line. The US productivity is high mainly due to the poor bottom end wages and the large amount of slave^WH1B and illegal immigrant labour.
Unemployment is very much due to automation - in the past most of the work was labour intensive (farming, manufacture, construction). Now most of those jobs have become oversight type jobs (driving a huge computer guided tractor, watching over an automated factory, using pre-fab parts and connecting them with power tools). As a result most of the work these days is make-work things like 'financial planner', 'middle manager' and 'telemarketter' - none of which is really necessary except to maintain growth at all costs.
I don't believe you about the healthcare. My experience of median healthcare in the US is that it is very poor - waiting several hours just to see a doctor; offpeak. Perhaps you are very well off and can afford top private healthcare (though I doubt anyone in that position would be posting on slashdot). The other problem I noticed with the US healthcare system is that it is strong on symptomatic cures, the doctors wanted to give me a pill for every ailment when a change in diet was far more effective (high blood pressure).
Considering the advances in automation, why shouldn't everyone work less hours each week. Do you think there is any good reason to spend more than a third of your waking hours doing a mostly pointless job? I'm sure that there is enough money floating around that we could all work 20 hour weeks with the same median wage and get the same amount of actual work done - I reckon most people waste more than half their work time anyway.
US healthcare, even the expensive stuff, is shit. If you believe otherwise you have never left the country.
(regarding median French pay, I don't believe it is any lower, PPP adjusted, than the median in the US; especially considering the shitty pay that most US people in hospitalities get!)
Ok, but "TheRealSlimShady" said: 'It also takes time to become skilled, especially enough to pick up another project, read the code and then code a new feature for it. Frankly that's actually a reasonably significant time investment that most people simply won't have time to make. I know I'd rather spend my time making music than learning to code so I can implement a feature...'
Yet you have pointed out that musicians are often interested in programming. That was my original point really, that musicians are likely be the sort who do sit down and work on music software. Just be wary of seeing obvious patterns, some of the computer scientists I work with see 'patterns' in everyone elses' behaviour and tell them how they behave is so obvious etc. In practice this pisses off the listener, and the proposer is often wrong.
Thanks for your comment, now back to writing music!
I didn't say everyone. However, in my experience, people who are creative, intelligent and want to do it have no trouble. I think the big problem is that many potential developers are too busy playing one-up on slashdot.
Not true. We used sodipodi as a starting point, but the code as long since diverged, and very little of sodipodi remains. A lot of recent work involves removing the remaining vestiges.
BByak, one of the lead developers for Inkscape knew nothing of programming until he wanted a better tool for his graphics business. He simply started with something simple, and learned the kinds of patterns needed for writing programs. It's not that hard if you are an intelligent, creative person. Try it sometime, you'll be surprised.
(all the musicians in my band are computer programmers or scientists - and that is purely coincidental)
You've just told me that your 10VA wall wart produces more heat than your > 35W computer. I don't believe you. You are probably confused because the wall wart is cooled passively through an insulator, whereas your computer has fans and heatsinks.
The only problem with this is that the blood test has no more found the cause than ticking off symptoms on a list finds the cause. Medicine is filled with stories about confusing correlation with causation (c.v. this year's nobel prize for finding the cause of gastric ulcers). And I think that most psychological problems are indeed software or environmental, it's just that we aren't very good at finding the bugs. (it's all very well fixing the foundations, but it may be that the problem with the house is that it is built in a swamp)
I agree that a robust test for these diseases are important, but I have two concerns. Firstly, existing pharma treatments for anxiety are basically useless - consisting of chemically hitting the patient on the head repeatedly until they are too concussed to know whether they are anxious or not. The current trend is to prescribe various 'anti-depressants', which have no conclusive evidence that they work better than placebo, and leave the patient on them for weeks at a time.
Secondly, this blood test means that a new symptomatic treatment is likely to be developed. The pharma companies will design a drug which nullifies the effect measured with the blood test, and will then proclaim loudly that they have cured anxiety. And sell lots of lifetime supplies of some random chemical with no useful effect.
Incidently, I spent a year with GAD treated with the usual pointless chemicals before curing myself with kava, reliable sleep and CBT. Kava is fantastic for anxiety, btw - it is not habit forming, has a noticable effect within half an hour and gives you wonderful lucid dreams:) Pity it is banned from sale in most countries.
How does square pixels allow true WYSIWYG? The screen representation is still an approximation (unless you are printing on a B&W printer with 72DPI). One thing that we've learnt since is that tall pixels are better value, as the human eye needs greater horizontal resolution than vertical (c.v. cleartype, lcd mode in freetype, or whatever). I would rather have a 2:1 tall-pixel display than a/2:/2 once the resolution goes above 100dpi - better visual resolution for a given investment in pixels. Quickdraw even supported non-square pixels in the original firmware.
(And IBM PCs had square pixels in some modes too in 1985)
"Carbon is one of the 4 components for life (C,H,O,N)."
You mean apart from phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chlorine, iron, cobalt, chromium, copper, iodine, manganese, selenium, zinc, and molybdenum. And probably a few more we don't understand.
Ok, how do I interpret the original statement "It is exponentially harder to have a superior that actually understands this, and is capable of both properly delegating and managing the complexity.".
What is the domain? (you say productivity unit, measured in multiplications?) What is the range (hardness? measured in mohs? GPa?)? We only have three data points - status quo; superior that understands; superior that understands and is capable of properly delegating and managing the complexity - so we expect some exponential to fit (A, Ab Ab^2) any positive monotonic sequence.
The installation in question provides enough energy on average to power the electrical needs of the house. It is not just cute, it is a valid solution.
I have a little box under my house that plugs into the wall socket, it takes 24V DC and puts out the 240V in phase and everything. It cost me $1000. And it's not a mass produced device yet - if everyone had one I bet they would be cheaper than UPSs.
The technical term is "Grid interactive inverter" - google it.
We already do this on a suburban block using solar panels. And our neighbours all think it's a great idea (they even bought their own panels and use our inverter to match into the grid). I can only assume you live in a really unfriendly area. Perhaps when you hear generator you're thinking of one of those silly petrol powered noise makers? That's not what the article is talking about - most CHP systems are as noisy as a new fridge and live in the basement.
Slashdot Mirror
true.
If you had actually read the article you would know that his design doesn't use gears, instead using some kind of pin in slot mechanism that doesn't change ratios as it wears. There are incidental gears for the display, but these don't affect the time keeping.
"One cent, which deposited at 3% annualy compounded interest, will be $9*19^99 in a mere 7,943 years."
Which will almost be enough to buy a can of coke.
The problem is that you are equating productivity with good living. The french may be happier, and when it comes to the crunch that is far more valuable than a few percent on a bottom line. The US productivity is high mainly due to the poor bottom end wages and the large amount of slave^WH1B and illegal immigrant labour.
Unemployment is very much due to automation - in the past most of the work was labour intensive (farming, manufacture, construction). Now most of those jobs have become oversight type jobs (driving a huge computer guided tractor, watching over an automated factory, using pre-fab parts and connecting them with power tools). As a result most of the work these days is make-work things like 'financial planner', 'middle manager' and 'telemarketter' - none of which is really necessary except to maintain growth at all costs.
I don't believe you about the healthcare. My experience of median healthcare in the US is that it is very poor - waiting several hours just to see a doctor; offpeak. Perhaps you are very well off and can afford top private healthcare (though I doubt anyone in that position would be posting on slashdot). The other problem I noticed with the US healthcare system is that it is strong on symptomatic cures, the doctors wanted to give me a pill for every ailment when a change in diet was far more effective (high blood pressure).
Considering the advances in automation, why shouldn't everyone work less hours each week. Do you think there is any good reason to spend more than a third of your waking hours doing a mostly pointless job? I'm sure that there is enough money floating around that we could all work 20 hour weeks with the same median wage and get the same amount of actual work done - I reckon most people waste more than half their work time anyway.
US healthcare, even the expensive stuff, is shit. If you believe otherwise you have never left the country.
(regarding median French pay, I don't believe it is any lower, PPP adjusted, than the median in the US; especially considering the shitty pay that most US people in hospitalities get!)
Ok, but "TheRealSlimShady" said: 'It also takes time to become skilled, especially enough to pick up another project, read the code and then code a new feature for it. Frankly that's actually a reasonably significant time investment that most people simply won't have time to make. I know I'd rather spend my time making music than learning to code so I can implement a feature...'
Yet you have pointed out that musicians are often interested in programming. That was my original point really, that musicians are likely be the sort who do sit down and work on music software. Just be wary of seeing obvious patterns, some of the computer scientists I work with see 'patterns' in everyone elses' behaviour and tell them how they behave is so obvious etc. In practice this pisses off the listener, and the proposer is often wrong.
Thanks for your comment, now back to writing music!
You might be interested in Lambert's W function.
I didn't say everyone. However, in my experience, people who are creative, intelligent and want to do it have no trouble. I think the big problem is that many potential developers are too busy playing one-up on slashdot.
Not true. We used sodipodi as a starting point, but the code as long since diverged, and very little of sodipodi remains. A lot of recent work involves removing the remaining vestiges.
Oh? What is the pattern then?
BByak, one of the lead developers for Inkscape knew nothing of programming until he wanted a better tool for his graphics business. He simply started with something simple, and learned the kinds of patterns needed for writing programs. It's not that hard if you are an intelligent, creative person. Try it sometime, you'll be surprised.
(all the musicians in my band are computer programmers or scientists - and that is purely coincidental)
You've just told me that your 10VA wall wart produces more heat than your > 35W computer. I don't believe you. You are probably confused because the wall wart is cooled passively through an insulator, whereas your computer has fans and heatsinks.
My soldering iron is only 25W.
"You would then need an AC->DC converter on board the device you want to charge."
They're called diodes, and they cost less than a 10th of a cent in volume.
The only problem with this is that the blood test has no more found the cause than ticking off symptoms on a list finds the cause. Medicine is filled with stories about confusing correlation with causation (c.v. this year's nobel prize for finding the cause of gastric ulcers). And I think that most psychological problems are indeed software or environmental, it's just that we aren't very good at finding the bugs. (it's all very well fixing the foundations, but it may be that the problem with the house is that it is built in a swamp)
I agree that a robust test for these diseases are important, but I have two concerns. Firstly, existing pharma treatments for anxiety are basically useless - consisting of chemically hitting the patient on the head repeatedly until they are too concussed to know whether they are anxious or not. The current trend is to prescribe various 'anti-depressants', which have no conclusive evidence that they work better than placebo, and leave the patient on them for weeks at a time.
:) Pity it is banned from sale in most countries.
Secondly, this blood test means that a new symptomatic treatment is likely to be developed. The pharma companies will design a drug which nullifies the effect measured with the blood test, and will then proclaim loudly that they have cured anxiety. And sell lots of lifetime supplies of some random chemical with no useful effect.
Incidently, I spent a year with GAD treated with the usual pointless chemicals before curing myself with kava, reliable sleep and CBT. Kava is fantastic for anxiety, btw - it is not habit forming, has a noticable effect within half an hour and gives you wonderful lucid dreams
How does square pixels allow true WYSIWYG? The screen representation is still an approximation (unless you are printing on a B&W printer with 72DPI). One thing that we've learnt since is that tall pixels are better value, as the human eye needs greater horizontal resolution than vertical (c.v. cleartype, lcd mode in freetype, or whatever). I would rather have a 2:1 tall-pixel display than a /2:/2 once the resolution goes above 100dpi - better visual resolution for a given investment in pixels. Quickdraw even supported non-square pixels in the original firmware.
(And IBM PCs had square pixels in some modes too in 1985)
"Carbon is one of the 4 components for life (C,H,O,N)."
You mean apart from phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, chlorine, iron, cobalt, chromium, copper, iodine, manganese, selenium, zinc, and molybdenum. And probably a few more we don't understand.
Ok, how do I interpret the original statement "It is exponentially harder to have a superior that actually understands this, and is capable of both properly delegating and managing the complexity.".
What is the domain? (you say productivity unit, measured in multiplications?) What is the range (hardness? measured in mohs? GPa?)? We only have three data points - status quo; superior that understands; superior that understands and is capable of properly delegating and managing the complexity - so we expect some exponential to fit (A, Ab Ab^2) any positive monotonic sequence.
TIA
What does 'exponentially harder' mean exactly?
A classic explanation is "producing a baby in one month using 9 women".
FYI, I'm getting similar numbers for a knitting blog site I that sys-admin. firefox is only 45% for me though.
Check out qcad. I use it for all my CNC work now. It is commercial software, but licenced under GPL. Yes, it reads DXF.
The installation in question provides enough energy on average to power the electrical needs of the house. It is not just cute, it is a valid solution.
I have a little box under my house that plugs into the wall socket, it takes 24V DC and puts out the 240V in phase and everything. It cost me $1000. And it's not a mass produced device yet - if everyone had one I bet they would be cheaper than UPSs.
The technical term is "Grid interactive inverter" - google it.
We already do this on a suburban block using solar panels. And our neighbours all think it's a great idea (they even bought their own panels and use our inverter to match into the grid). I can only assume you live in a really unfriendly area. Perhaps when you hear generator you're thinking of one of those silly petrol powered noise makers? That's not what the article is talking about - most CHP systems are as noisy as a new fridge and live in the basement.