I don't know, to me doing DDR in gym class seems every bit as lame as everything else we had to do in gym class, none of which I was ever interested in in the first place. (Note: I've seen DDR and I also have no interest in playing it.)
I would have been much happier if I could have gotten school credit for all the sports I did do, outside of school -- every winter I skied, every summer, I swam, and all year round I rode horseback. (One summer I was even on the local/provincial/national circuit.) Those were the sports in which I was actually interested, not gymnastics and basketball, field hockey and square dancing... Now I just go to the gym as often as possible, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with my experiences in phys ed in school.
It all comes down to this: Unless you're really, really into something before you do it in school, chances are, anything you do in school (and this applies not just to PE activities but to other things like, say, reading [remember "duty reading"?]) because you have to, you're going to if not outright hate it, then like it a lot less than you would have if you were just doing it on your own.
Duty DDR? --shudder-- Makes me think of all those awful books I hated to read in English class, and I love reading.
...but this may be a place to start undermining that sad home truth. I wish more software companies (like Corel, hint, hint?) would do this.
As a WordPerfect freak (no flames, please, I'm a wordsmith and it's a crafter's tool) who works for a Corel VAR (among other things), I still sit in front of MS-Office all day. Why? Even though my current project is an ideal FrameMaker (or your designated alternate here) job, the guy on the other end wants Word files.
Similarly, when I don't have a job, it's convenient to be able to send resumes from home in Word for the clueless recruiters who can't (or won't) open anything else, since I don't imagine we're ever going to see complete M$/everything else document interoperability anytime before the Tuesday after Doomsday.
Er, could it be that people like what they hear because they only hear what they're given to hear, and not the other way around (that they hear only what they like)? If people actually were exposed to a wide variety of music on the radio, they might suddenly discover that they like other music, besides manufactured factory-farmed "bands" like Britney et al.
Perhaps an example: the Insane Clown Posse, who, although (yes) they're on a major label, have so far managed to sell multiplatinum on several albums with NO commercial airplay whatsoever. On the other hand, I'd say they're the exception that proves (in either sense) the rule.
In any case, a pithy thentiment from the Dead Kennedys keeps playing through my head:
Could it be they put out one too many...lousy records?
Here's a slightly different perspective: I am still relatively new to Linux (>2 years), and I'm just a rank beginner when it comes to programming. I sit in front of a Windows box all day at work because I have to, and I have a Windows box at home, too, mostly for (in)convenience.
Why do I use Red Hat? Why do I use Linux at all? Well, frankly, the more I use Windows, the more I like Linux. It's stable, powerful, non-stupid, (don't even get me started about Stupid Automagical Windoze Tricks) and it does exactly what I need in a way that works well for me. Also, I think the interfaces are fascinating, so I'm writing a paper about them (for the arts/social sciences community) now.
On the other hand, I neither have the skills nor the inclination (yet) to spend hours tweaking and reprogramming config files so that I can get something up and running. I like that it works. I like that I can do what I want with it, and I don't have to tinker with it incessantly.
Sorry if that sounds kind of anti-hackerish (it's not meant so), but I'm still trying to master the basics, and I wouldn't try to drive a Formula 1 racer while on my learner's permit, either.
Ok, sometimes I just can't help feeding the trolls, so here goes...
Ever heard of something called the Precautionary Principle? It's a risk/hazard assessment method becoming common (it's already law for certain things in the EU) for environmental (and other) use around the world, and it looks at ways of minimizing risks, hazards, and above all, harm, which is really what environmentalism is about, not a bleeding-heart slavish devotion to "cute."
As for myself, speaking as at least some kind of an environmentalist, I'm not sure injecting extinct animals back into the ecosystem (which is a very heavy system, go read your systems theory again) is a good idea. At best, it should only happen after a thorough risk/hazard assessment, including long-term second and onward order results modelling, and then only if there's no "reasonable doubt."
On the bright side, it doesn't look as though they're far enough along with this project to warrant serious paranoia...yet.
Oh, and...the thing wasn't a "puddy tat." It was a carnivorous marsupial; hardly the kind of thing I'd want in my bed, and probably not (judging by other marsupials) cute in the least, and it probably got the name "tiger" because of the non-cute tiger-like traits it had (hunting, killing, perhaps?). So, please, a little credit?
Hmm, where do I start citing studies that show the negative effects of negative reinforcement (read: punishment). Maybe
Bonnie, R.J. (1985). The efficacy of law as a paternalistic instrument. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 29, 131-211.
Wilde, G.J.S. (1981). A critical view of countermeasure development and evaluation. In L. Goldberg, Alcohol, drugs and traffic safety. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, pp. 1145-1159.
In short, punishment generally causes people to be more anti-social, resentful, angry, vindictive, and prone to committing acts of sabotage. (Hundreds of years of increasingly punitive laws certainly haven't eliminated crime.)
Pillorying someone never stopped anyone else from doing the same thing (ever read The Scarlet Letter?); it only drove them deeper underground.
Now enough with this ridiculous "mild punishments don't work, so let's punish them more!" attitude. (That poison made me sick; I'm gonna eat more to see if it'll make me better!) In order to stop someone from behaving in a certain way, you have to stop the causes, not the symptoms. People in occupational safety and health have known about this one for years, and I'm not even going to get into the politics behind prisons...
Still, I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Cox has some good things to say about the MPAA's (lack of) distribution system, and their "my way or the highway" attitude when it comes to playing by their rules in the system they built.
Sometimes it's the angry outsiders who get most of the work done, or have you forgotten? If you're an American, I suggest you start with your own Founding Fathers. If not, I'm sure a little cursory research might turn up some more savoury examples for your delectation.
Incidentally, is Alan Cox more or less of an angry outsider than Leif Junker, (the late) Lucio Fulci, and Chas. Balun, all of whom had or have been talking about this stuff for years...?
Well, the Baird Standard System actually was used in Britain, and people watched it, too. Here's a page on early television history (begins with Nipkow in 1884[!]) by one of the foremost television scholars around.
There's much more interesting stuff on this page, including a history of Phonovision, Baird's attempt to record his television experiments;
Oh, ha ha. Just as ONE small example, when Prop. 15 was going down in CA in 1980, the vast majority of the NO ON 15 bankroll came from gun manufacturers, many out of state, NOT from "gun owners" or so-called "2nd Amendment advocates," sorry.
And in case anyone thinks this is OT, the point is (as Deep Throat said), "Follow the money." Usually when you follow the money, you find people with power. For guns, that's Smith & Wesson, Winchester, Beretta USA, et al. For the MPAA and all who sail with them, that's Fox, Warner Bros., Matsushita, Toshiba, Intel and Microsoft, and friends.
"Show me them who's got the money, land, and weapons, and I'll show you them who's got the power" Interrobang
Hey, yes, your brain really *does* rewire itself when something about you changes drastically. I know. I have cerebral palsy, which results from a combination of predisposition, circumstance, and brain damage, and if brains didn't fix their own "short circuits" to a certain extent, I wouldn't have walked into the office this morning, and I wouldn't be typing this to you now. Granted, it takes a hell of a lot of work, stimulation (the important bit), exercise, and determination, but in general, it's possible.
In short, believing that everything in the brain is absolutely hard-and-fast controlled by *one place* and *one place* in your brain alone is nonsense. Some of those places that should control various parts of my body (the "default settings," if you will) are long since dead. Other parts picked up the slack, more or less. I wouldn't mind a little cognitronic jolt to the rest to get up to 100% functionality, though...
Cheers,
Interrobang, upright and striving for a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile of "able-bodied" since 1978
I just finished reading _Johnny Got His Gun_ again this weekend. I can't say it better than Dalton Trumbo, but "freedom" is a pretty nebulous concept, and I'm damn sure I'd rather be alive before anything else.
Frankly, I think that anyone who really wants to start a war has an awful lot of justifying to do, and the last several wars I've been around to see just haven't done it for me. I mean, the old white men who stay safe at home during all these messy little conflicts don't really seem to care about all those people's lives they're callously throwing away, do they? Is life actually worth words we can't actually precisely define?
So take your nebulous ideals and enjoy them for yourself, but don't get annoyed with me/us because we're opposed to the very *idea* of war, which seems to me to be a stupid and useless way to try to solve problems. (Hey, the last war didn't work; let's try it *again*!) Any other human endeavour that proceeded that way would have died out millennia ago.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting substantially different results.
Ok, if there haven't been any good (valid, reliable) studies done on the relative security and merits of Open Source software, perhaps Denning, the alleged security specialist since whenever, should do one. She's got the credentials, and more than likely the knowhow. People would listen if she spoke on the subject (perhaps a bad thing). But probably she's just not interested...
...in which case, she should keep her mouth shut. Ad Verecundiam fallacy, anyone?
Interrobang, wishing I had the wherewithal to do it myself -- any takers?
But I must quibble with a few points. I suppose he knows more about it than I, but does all innovation in a given field necessarily take place on the low end? What about new products that may or may not be higher-end than existing products? (Example: The runaway popularity of SUVs, which are certainly NOT low-end impulse purchases, and newer models of SUVs seem to subscribe to the Micro$oft bloatware model: more, more, more [useless] features and a higher and higher price tag. But people sure buy 'em.)
Secondly, I'm not sure his hypothesis works for all his examples. I'm pretty sure, for instance, that Wal-Mart got where it is by a combination of unscrupulous business tactics and leverage, NOT just by providing the lowest cost per item. I've heard that Wal-Mart pressures its suppliers into giving it the lowest possible price, and generally creates "race to the bottom" conditions wherever it goes.
Third and least important quibble: Fergodssakes, man, if you've got something to say, write it so it's actually readable! "Creative creation"?! I've heard MUCH better phrases for that concept (including "wealth creation"), that DON'T leave one wishing one's office had a shower cubicle. "Leveraging"?! Pleeeease... Is it just me, or are all biz-school types these days just far too in love with the euphony of buzzwordiness?
Nevertheless, I'm going to forward this one on to my entrepreneurial boss. Let him take the advice...and the shower.
First reason: There will never be a better time for it, and going back to school usually only gets harder as you get older.
Second reason: Post-secondary education will also give you the theoretical grounding behind your chosen field(s) of endeavour, which you will find extremely useful once you get out into the Real World[TM] and start doing work. After all, if you know your stuff, picking up tool skills is trivial. Case in point: I am a technical writer. Since I started working, I've used all that abstract stuff I learned in university in practical ways, like through using software I learned on the job.
Third reason: When most employers (mine included) want a minimum of a 3 year degree for data entry jobs (that is to say, scutwork), suddenly that piece of paper can be your best friend.
Fourth reason: Universities and colleges provide excellent opportunities to not only socialize, but to network, pick people's brains, and get into mentoring relationships, co-op programmes, and other helpful Good Things[TM]. Post-secondary education provides a rare combination of opportunities to advance yourself that you just can't get in the workplace, but you have to be smart enough to know where to look and what to do when you find them.
Fifth reason: Work experience! I got a whole year's worth of work experience while doing my one year Master's degree, and my school has co-op programmes in practically everything. There are also a lot of student-oriented part-time jobs around, as well as work-study programmes and the like.
(Shameless plug: Incidentally, if you're concerned about finances, and who isn't, you may want to consider UWaterloo, if you don't mind moving away for awhile. Their CS programme is very good, the tuition is cheap -- especially if you're paying in US$ -- and they offer lots of co-op, bursaries, and other student financial support, as well as a great learning environment.)
Similarly, even though I've technically downloaded some "illegal" MP3s, I had/have no intention of ever buying the whole albums from which they came (you know that phenomenon where you only like ONE song on the whole thing and it's not worth $20 to buy three minutes of good stuff and 45 minutes of junk?)...
...OR I had NO access to the hard copies (for real; it's hard to get Bollywood soundtrack music where I live), so nobody lost ANY sales -- which is the part Valenti, Rosen and friends just don't...get. Wish they'd take an object lesson somewhere here.
The best quotation I found was, "the Verance Watermark is already in commercial use and the
disclosure of any information that might assist others to remove this watermark would seriously jeopardize the technology and the content it protects."
Huh? Wasn't that the point? To prove that it doesn't work? Or maybe it's just another example of that old logical fallacy, "We can't do X because X contradicts what we do."
Does anybody else out there find it a little...um, sinister that a Microsoft puppet/icon/whatever would be saying, "All your base are belong to us?"
Yeah, I laughed. Yeah, it was funny. But then I said, "Heeey...Wait a minute..."
Also, I just have to say I can't believe I was right about that damned paperclip all these years! For years I've been calling that stupid thing "The Lecherous Paperclip" because of the way it winks and wiggles. Then, I go onto this site and see the damned thing "saying," "It looks like you're writing a love letter. Can I see?" I knew that thing was just a rotten voyeur!
Well, it depends on your idea of "no funding." Depending on where you look, how much you look, how much legwork you're willing to do (the critical and overlooked aspect to starting a business is that it's about 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration), you can find some astonishing sources of funding...provided you're willing to work hard to find and secure them. All that without any investor meddling whatsoever.
...unless you count time investment. The catch is, of course, that it's an astonishing amount of work which will probably take you away from coding (or whatever) full-time for days, weeks, or even months at a time. However, it is also a sort of one-shot investment of time.
The ISP to which I used to subscribe got swallowed whole by a giant ISP conglomerate -- with no warning, no notice, no nothing. Just one day, I couldn't log in anymore, then the helpful phone robot told me the line had been disconnected, and when I physically went to their location, they were gone, lock, stock, and barrel (guncotton, too). Three days later, my service inexplicably came back, along with a note saying that my former ISP was now a subsidiary of UnnamedGiantConglom. This seems to be happening a lot where I live.
It particularly made me upset because I'd carefully shopped for a small, local, geek-owned-and-operated service, and now I have a large, unfriendly service staffed by people who seem to know less about their service than I do (which is pretty scary)... I don't even dare ask these folks any Linux configuration questions, whereas previously, I'm sure Rhys in tech support (with the cool voice) or one of the other guys could have helped me out.
Wonder what happened to those gentlefolk... Sigh...
So there's more than one way for an ISP to become a flayed feline.
Japanese people I've met seem to have three things to say about North America:
"I don't like it. Too much sky." (Meaning, of course, 'Too much space.')
"You think this is crowded?"
and "Why are your/*piece of handheld technology, as cell phones*/ so big and clumsy?"
The "space" issue is particularly jarring to those Japanese who somehow wind up touring Canada, a very large country with only 35-ish million people...:)
Oops, I'd better re-install Windows right now! According to you, I'm about two years overdue!
Yeah, you and me both, man. This same recension of Windows, which has been on the machine since I got it (although it was not pre-installed), has never been re-installed. I always find it so perplexing that so many people I know (especially my dad, who seems especially clueless and/or unlucky in this department -- "Oh, something's not working right! Bet if I reinstall Windows it will!") seem to reinstall Windows more often than they change their underwear (guess they're changing their underware instead, haw haw!).
I have no problems with my recension, despite in the interim having taken software off, put software on; having almost completely repartitioned and reformatted the HD in order to make room for and make my Linux partition, and various other bits of clumsy hackery.
Then again, I still think that keeping the MS-brand software level down to a bare minimum (if I didn't have to have Office for work, I wouldn't have any at all) helps, somehow. Could it be that non-MS-brand software is better, more stable, and doesn't screw things up so badly?
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I don't know, to me doing DDR in gym class seems every bit as lame as everything else we had to do in gym class, none of which I was ever interested in in the first place. (Note: I've seen DDR and I also have no interest in playing it.)
I would have been much happier if I could have gotten school credit for all the sports I did do, outside of school -- every winter I skied, every summer, I swam, and all year round I rode horseback. (One summer I was even on the local/provincial/national circuit.) Those were the sports in which I was actually interested, not gymnastics and basketball, field hockey and square dancing... Now I just go to the gym as often as possible, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with my experiences in phys ed in school.
It all comes down to this: Unless you're really, really into something before you do it in school, chances are, anything you do in school (and this applies not just to PE activities but to other things like, say, reading [remember "duty reading"?]) because you have to, you're going to if not outright hate it, then like it a lot less than you would have if you were just doing it on your own.
Duty DDR? --shudder-- Makes me think of all those awful books I hated to read in English class, and I love reading.
...but this may be a place to start undermining that sad home truth. I wish more software companies (like Corel, hint, hint?) would do this.
As a WordPerfect freak (no flames, please, I'm a wordsmith and it's a crafter's tool) who works for a Corel VAR (among other things), I still sit in front of MS-Office all day. Why? Even though my current project is an ideal FrameMaker (or your designated alternate here) job, the guy on the other end wants Word files.
Similarly, when I don't have a job, it's convenient to be able to send resumes from home in Word for the clueless recruiters who can't (or won't) open anything else, since I don't imagine we're ever going to see complete M$/everything else document interoperability anytime before the Tuesday after Doomsday.
After doing so many wrong things they go and do occasional things like this. Argh!! It just means I can't hate them totally unreservedly.
Sparing my 0.0000000000000001% respect for the Harris (Legacy) Tories since 2000.
Er, could it be that people like what they hear because they only hear what they're given to hear, and not the other way around (that they hear only what they like)? If people actually were exposed to a wide variety of music on the radio, they might suddenly discover that they like other music, besides manufactured factory-farmed "bands" like Britney et al.
Perhaps an example: the Insane Clown Posse, who, although (yes) they're on a major label, have so far managed to sell multiplatinum on several albums with NO commercial airplay whatsoever. On the other hand, I'd say they're the exception that proves (in either sense) the rule.
In any case, a pithy thentiment from the Dead Kennedys keeps playing through my head:
Could it be they put out one too many...lousy records?
Who do we tell to get off the air NOW?
Here's a slightly different perspective: I am still relatively new to Linux (>2 years), and I'm just a rank beginner when it comes to programming. I sit in front of a Windows box all day at work because I have to, and I have a Windows box at home, too, mostly for (in)convenience.
Why do I use Red Hat? Why do I use Linux at all? Well, frankly, the more I use Windows, the more I like Linux. It's stable, powerful, non-stupid, (don't even get me started about Stupid Automagical Windoze Tricks) and it does exactly what I need in a way that works well for me. Also, I think the interfaces are fascinating, so I'm writing a paper about them (for the arts/social sciences community) now.
On the other hand, I neither have the skills nor the inclination (yet) to spend hours tweaking and reprogramming config files so that I can get something up and running. I like that it works. I like that I can do what I want with it, and I don't have to tinker with it incessantly.
Sorry if that sounds kind of anti-hackerish (it's not meant so), but I'm still trying to master the basics, and I wouldn't try to drive a Formula 1 racer while on my learner's permit, either.
Ok, sometimes I just can't help feeding the trolls, so here goes...
Ever heard of something called the Precautionary Principle? It's a risk/hazard assessment method becoming common (it's already law for certain things in the EU) for environmental (and other) use around the world, and it looks at ways of minimizing risks, hazards, and above all, harm, which is really what environmentalism is about, not a bleeding-heart slavish devotion to "cute."
As for myself, speaking as at least some kind of an environmentalist, I'm not sure injecting extinct animals back into the ecosystem (which is a very heavy system, go read your systems theory again) is a good idea. At best, it should only happen after a thorough risk/hazard assessment, including long-term second and onward order results modelling, and then only if there's no "reasonable doubt."
On the bright side, it doesn't look as though they're far enough along with this project to warrant serious paranoia...yet.
Oh, and...the thing wasn't a "puddy tat." It was a carnivorous marsupial; hardly the kind of thing I'd want in my bed, and probably not (judging by other marsupials) cute in the least, and it probably got the name "tiger" because of the non-cute tiger-like traits it had (hunting, killing, perhaps?). So, please, a little credit?
Hmm, where do I start citing studies that show the negative effects of negative reinforcement (read: punishment). Maybe
Bonnie, R.J. (1985). The efficacy of law as a paternalistic instrument. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 29, 131-211.
Wilde, G.J.S. (1981). A critical view of countermeasure development and evaluation. In L. Goldberg, Alcohol, drugs and traffic safety. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, pp. 1145-1159.
In short, punishment generally causes people to be more anti-social, resentful, angry, vindictive, and prone to committing acts of sabotage. (Hundreds of years of increasingly punitive laws certainly haven't eliminated crime.)
Pillorying someone never stopped anyone else from doing the same thing (ever read The Scarlet Letter?); it only drove them deeper underground.
Now enough with this ridiculous "mild punishments don't work, so let's punish them more!" attitude. (That poison made me sick; I'm gonna eat more to see if it'll make me better!) In order to stop someone from behaving in a certain way, you have to stop the causes, not the symptoms. People in occupational safety and health have known about this one for years, and I'm not even going to get into the politics behind prisons...
Quibble:
You can't put data on vinyl.
Actually, you can -- well, ok, you can for sure put data on wax discs, and I should think vinyl would be/have been easier. The problem is getting the data off again.
Apparently, for that you need a computer.
Main argument:
Still, I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Cox has some good things to say about the MPAA's (lack of) distribution system, and their "my way or the highway" attitude when it comes to playing by their rules in the system they built.
Sometimes it's the angry outsiders who get most of the work done, or have you forgotten? If you're an American, I suggest you start with your own Founding Fathers. If not, I'm sure a little cursory research might turn up some more savoury examples for your delectation.
Incidentally, is Alan Cox more or less of an angry outsider than Leif Junker, (the late) Lucio Fulci, and Chas. Balun, all of whom had or have been talking about this stuff for years...?
Well, the Baird Standard System actually was used in Britain, and people watched it, too. Here's a page on early television history (begins with Nipkow in 1884[!]) by one of the foremost television scholars around.
There's much more interesting stuff on this page, including a history of Phonovision, Baird's attempt to record his television experiments;
and information on the earliest known recording of broadcast television, which dates from 1933, incidentally somewhat earlier than the Berlin Olympics broadcast in '36...
Granted, we now use an electronic system for television, but where would we have been without the analogue version?
Interrobang, graverobbing dead media since 1996
Oh, ha ha. Just as ONE small example, when Prop. 15 was going down in CA in 1980, the vast majority of the NO ON 15 bankroll came from gun manufacturers, many out of state, NOT from "gun owners" or so-called "2nd Amendment advocates," sorry.
And in case anyone thinks this is OT, the point is (as Deep Throat said), "Follow the money." Usually when you follow the money, you find people with power. For guns, that's Smith & Wesson, Winchester, Beretta USA, et al. For the MPAA and all who sail with them, that's Fox, Warner Bros., Matsushita, Toshiba, Intel and Microsoft, and friends.
"Show me them who's got the money, land, and weapons, and I'll show you them who's got the power" Interrobang
Hey, yes, your brain really *does* rewire itself when something about you changes drastically. I know. I have cerebral palsy, which results from a combination of predisposition, circumstance, and brain damage, and if brains didn't fix their own "short circuits" to a certain extent, I wouldn't have walked into the office this morning, and I wouldn't be typing this to you now. Granted, it takes a hell of a lot of work, stimulation (the important bit), exercise, and determination, but in general, it's possible.
In short, believing that everything in the brain is absolutely hard-and-fast controlled by *one place* and *one place* in your brain alone is nonsense. Some of those places that should control various parts of my body (the "default settings," if you will) are long since dead. Other parts picked up the slack, more or less. I wouldn't mind a little cognitronic jolt to the rest to get up to 100% functionality, though...
Cheers,
Interrobang, upright and striving for a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile of "able-bodied" since 1978
I just finished reading _Johnny Got His Gun_ again this weekend. I can't say it better than Dalton Trumbo, but "freedom" is a pretty nebulous concept, and I'm damn sure I'd rather be alive before anything else.
Frankly, I think that anyone who really wants to start a war has an awful lot of justifying to do, and the last several wars I've been around to see just haven't done it for me. I mean, the old white men who stay safe at home during all these messy little conflicts don't really seem to care about all those people's lives they're callously throwing away, do they? Is life actually worth words we can't actually precisely define?
So take your nebulous ideals and enjoy them for yourself, but don't get annoyed with me/us because we're opposed to the very *idea* of war, which seems to me to be a stupid and useless way to try to solve problems. (Hey, the last war didn't work; let's try it *again*!) Any other human endeavour that proceeded that way would have died out millennia ago.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting substantially different results.
"Better Red Than Dead" Interrobang
Ok, if there haven't been any good (valid, reliable) studies done on the relative security and merits of Open Source software, perhaps Denning, the alleged security specialist since whenever, should do one. She's got the credentials, and more than likely the knowhow. People would listen if she spoke on the subject (perhaps a bad thing). But probably she's just not interested...
...in which case, she should keep her mouth shut. Ad Verecundiam fallacy, anyone?
Interrobang, wishing I had the wherewithal to do it myself -- any takers?
But I must quibble with a few points. I suppose he knows more about it than I, but does all innovation in a given field necessarily take place on the low end? What about new products that may or may not be higher-end than existing products? (Example: The runaway popularity of SUVs, which are certainly NOT low-end impulse purchases, and newer models of SUVs seem to subscribe to the Micro$oft bloatware model: more, more, more [useless] features and a higher and higher price tag. But people sure buy 'em.)
Secondly, I'm not sure his hypothesis works for all his examples. I'm pretty sure, for instance, that Wal-Mart got where it is by a combination of unscrupulous business tactics and leverage, NOT just by providing the lowest cost per item. I've heard that Wal-Mart pressures its suppliers into giving it the lowest possible price, and generally creates "race to the bottom" conditions wherever it goes.
Third and least important quibble: Fergodssakes, man, if you've got something to say, write it so it's actually readable! "Creative creation"?! I've heard MUCH better phrases for that concept (including "wealth creation"), that DON'T leave one wishing one's office had a shower cubicle. "Leveraging"?! Pleeeease... Is it just me, or are all biz-school types these days just far too in love with the euphony of buzzwordiness?
Nevertheless, I'm going to forward this one on to my entrepreneurial boss. Let him take the advice...and the shower.
?!
Go do your post-secondary education.
First reason: There will never be a better time for it, and going back to school usually only gets harder as you get older.
Second reason: Post-secondary education will also give you the theoretical grounding behind your chosen field(s) of endeavour, which you will find extremely useful once you get out into the Real World[TM] and start doing work. After all, if you know your stuff, picking up tool skills is trivial. Case in point: I am a technical writer. Since I started working, I've used all that abstract stuff I learned in university in practical ways, like through using software I learned on the job.
Third reason: When most employers (mine included) want a minimum of a 3 year degree for data entry jobs (that is to say, scutwork), suddenly that piece of paper can be your best friend.
Fourth reason: Universities and colleges provide excellent opportunities to not only socialize, but to network, pick people's brains, and get into mentoring relationships, co-op programmes, and other helpful Good Things[TM]. Post-secondary education provides a rare combination of opportunities to advance yourself that you just can't get in the workplace, but you have to be smart enough to know where to look and what to do when you find them.
Fifth reason: Work experience! I got a whole year's worth of work experience while doing my one year Master's degree, and my school has co-op programmes in practically everything. There are also a lot of student-oriented part-time jobs around, as well as work-study programmes and the like.
(Shameless plug: Incidentally, if you're concerned about finances, and who isn't, you may want to consider UWaterloo, if you don't mind moving away for awhile. Their CS programme is very good, the tuition is cheap -- especially if you're paying in US$ -- and they offer lots of co-op, bursaries, and other student financial support, as well as a great learning environment.)
Interrobang, BA, MA, future PhD
Similarly, even though I've technically downloaded some "illegal" MP3s, I had/have no intention of ever buying the whole albums from which they came (you know that phenomenon where you only like ONE song on the whole thing and it's not worth $20 to buy three minutes of good stuff and 45 minutes of junk?)...
...OR I had NO access to the hard copies (for real; it's hard to get Bollywood soundtrack music where I live), so nobody lost ANY sales -- which is the part Valenti, Rosen and friends just don't...get. Wish they'd take an object lesson somewhere here.
The best quotation I found was, "the Verance Watermark is already in commercial use and the disclosure of any information that might assist others to remove this watermark would seriously jeopardize the technology and the content it protects."
Huh? Wasn't that the point? To prove that it doesn't work? Or maybe it's just another example of that old logical fallacy, "We can't do X because X contradicts what we do."
Join the Petition Against Petitio Ad Principii!
Interrobang, back at last!
Does anybody else out there find it a little...um, sinister that a Microsoft puppet/icon/whatever would be saying, "All your base are belong to us?"
Yeah, I laughed. Yeah, it was funny. But then I said, "Heeey...Wait a minute..."
Also, I just have to say I can't believe I was right about that damned paperclip all these years! For years I've been calling that stupid thing "The Lecherous Paperclip" because of the way it winks and wiggles. Then, I go onto this site and see the damned thing "saying," "It looks like you're writing a love letter. Can I see?" I knew that thing was just a rotten voyeur!
And I *still* think that allowing one word to be trademarked, "PRICELESS", is ludicrous.
Ahh, so is that why the multivolume OED costs so much! They have to pay all those royalties!
Interrobang, who thinks trademarking the word "Priceless" is infringing on freedom of speech. What's next? And[TM]?!
Well, it depends on your idea of "no funding." Depending on where you look, how much you look, how much legwork you're willing to do (the critical and overlooked aspect to starting a business is that it's about 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration), you can find some astonishing sources of funding...provided you're willing to work hard to find and secure them. All that without any investor meddling whatsoever.
...unless you count time investment. The catch is, of course, that it's an astonishing amount of work which will probably take you away from coding (or whatever) full-time for days, weeks, or even months at a time. However, it is also a sort of one-shot investment of time.
...thereupon someone will probably figure out how to phone up and finagle people into unlocking other peoples' cars... The best case scenario is:
:) )
The M.O. gets written up in 2600
Everyone who's anyone laughs about it
and, ergo,
No one does it. Still, I'd prefer not.
(Incidentally, Emmanuel and Interrobang are case studies in what happens when old English majors go bad in the back of the fridge.
The ISP to which I used to subscribe got swallowed whole by a giant ISP conglomerate -- with no warning, no notice, no nothing. Just one day, I couldn't log in anymore, then the helpful phone robot told me the line had been disconnected, and when I physically went to their location, they were gone, lock, stock, and barrel (guncotton, too). Three days later, my service inexplicably came back, along with a note saying that my former ISP was now a subsidiary of UnnamedGiantConglom. This seems to be happening a lot where I live.
It particularly made me upset because I'd carefully shopped for a small, local, geek-owned-and-operated service, and now I have a large, unfriendly service staffed by people who seem to know less about their service than I do (which is pretty scary)... I don't even dare ask these folks any Linux configuration questions, whereas previously, I'm sure Rhys in tech support (with the cool voice) or one of the other guys could have helped me out.
Wonder what happened to those gentlefolk... Sigh...
So there's more than one way for an ISP to become a flayed feline.
Japanese people I've met seem to have three things to say about North America:
/*piece of handheld technology, as cell phones*/ so big and clumsy?"
:)
"I don't like it. Too much sky." (Meaning, of course, 'Too much space.')
"You think this is crowded?"
and "Why are your
The "space" issue is particularly jarring to those Japanese who somehow wind up touring Canada, a very large country with only 35-ish million people...
Oops, I'd better re-install Windows right now! According to you, I'm about two years overdue!
Yeah, you and me both, man. This same recension of Windows, which has been on the machine since I got it (although it was not pre-installed), has never been re-installed. I always find it so perplexing that so many people I know (especially my dad, who seems especially clueless and/or unlucky in this department -- "Oh, something's not working right! Bet if I reinstall Windows it will!") seem to reinstall Windows more often than they change their underwear (guess they're changing their underware instead, haw haw!).
I have no problems with my recension, despite in the interim having taken software off, put software on; having almost completely repartitioned and reformatted the HD in order to make room for and make my Linux partition, and various other bits of clumsy hackery.
Then again, I still think that keeping the MS-brand software level down to a bare minimum (if I didn't have to have Office for work, I wouldn't have any at all) helps, somehow. Could it be that non-MS-brand software is better, more stable, and doesn't screw things up so badly?
I wonder.
...pre-misspelled and everything.
You can find out more here!
Suddenly, job prospects for the dyslexic are looking way up! Wonder what they'll do with old spelling-mavens like me...
Eye en tee ee are are oh bee eh? en gee!