Sure they are ! If the projects are talked about at all, they miss deadlines more commonly than not.
When was the Dreamliner *supposed* to have it's first flight ? When where the first 20 supposed to be delivered ? When should the F35 be operational ? How many planes should be delivered by 2015. What should each plane cost ?
Projects take longer, cost more, and deliver less than hoped for. This happens regularly, indeed it's much more common than the opposite of a project that's completed before deadline, with more than promised features, under budget.
Anyone who's ever renovated a kitchen knows this. It's not news.
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. No production isn't generally linear: it is generally *sub*linear.
Making 1000 of something, generally costs LESS than 4 times the price of 250 of the thing, not *more* than 4 times.
It's true that making 10000 in an efficient will likely take longer than making 250 - because the more efficient production requires a longer and more complicated setup-phase, but there's no problem putting this in the kickstarter-description: "The first batch will be 250 items, if we get more backers, then we'll make additional batches as required..... "
You don't need to detect individual waves. The thing is, electrical hum is supposed to be spot-on 50hz or 60hz (depending on your location), but in reality it drifts around slightly with 50Hz or 60Hz being the *average* frequency. You might have several seconds of 50.01 hz followed by a minute of 49.998 hz and so on.
In other words, if you plot frequency versus time you don't get a straight line at 50 hz, but a line that rise and fall over time while staying on the average very near the goal-frequency.
People worry about the spectacular but unlikely rather than the common but nonremarkable. They worry about events that kill many people at once, in one location, especially if it involves explosions or words like "bioweapon" "chemical" or "radiation". (they aren't aware that water is a chemical or that light is "radiation")
Sitting on your coach. Eating too much sugar. Getting too little exercice. Smoking. These things are dangerous.
Terrorists, on the other hand, are essentially noise - unless you're living in something close to a war-zone, but even in Afghanistan or places like that, terrorism likely isn't among the top cauces of death.
True. I live in a country where the rights of corporations and the rights of average people are somewhat more balanced than in USA. Ofcourse the population of USA doesn't want any of that, they call it "socialism" and turn away in disgust.
The way I see it, they've made their bed and now gets to sleep in it.
You don't get overtime in Norway either if you're in a independent position, but this is interpreted strictly. Basically, if someone could complain to you if you worked too *few* hours in some month, then they also get the priviledge of paying you overtime whenever you work to *many* hours in some month.
That's not true. When I'm on call I: have to be sober, have to get the phone, have to be within 20 minutes of work, have to show up promptly if something happens, have to have childcare taken care of so that I'm not tied down. None of that is now true 24x7.
It's true that my boss may call me. If he does, time spent is rounded up, an hour is added and it's overtime at 150%, in other words, a 5-minute telephone-conversation with me costs him 3 hours pay. At that rate, he doesn't call unless it genuinely IS important, and at that rate, I don't mind.
For long calls you want a good-quality headset. These exist for both Skype, for mobile phones, and for traditional desk-phones, so this is really no argument at all in favor of any of them.
Why ? Because sometimes it's cheaper. Because employees like smartphones and it might thus help employee-retention. Because it increases flexibility since you can be reached even if not at your desk.
Where's the "screwing over" ? I've got a company-paid mobile phone, and up until now ain't seen it.
encryption*SOFTWARE* was classified as munitions and restricted, meanwhile free speech laws meant that printed words could very seldom be stopped.
I was part of exporting PGP from USA legally, by way of printing the (zipped, uuencoded + checksums) source-code, mailing it physically to norway, scanning it, OCRing it and manually proofreading all lines where the checksum failed.
It's seldom worth it to hedge against 1:2 odds. Hedging is fundamentally a sort of insurance, and since there's costs involved you only want to insure against risks you can't afford to carry yourself.
If there's a 1:10000 chance that you $1M house will be completely destroyed in a year, the expected loss is $100/year. Yet it's still worth it to purchase $300 insurance - because few can afford to shoulder the potential $1M loss.
If, on the other hand, there's a 75% chance that Obama will win, and you believe it's 80% likely this will cost your company $1M, hedging against it doesn't help you much. The expected loss is 0.75 * 0.8 * 1M = 0.6M
A split-in-the-middle hedge could thus at best convert your 60% chance of 1M loss into a 100% chance of 600K loss, in practice it'd do somewhat worse than that since hedging is never free. That's probably not going to be worth it.
You could be surprisedd - Venera 7 - all the way back in 1970 successfully landed on the surface of Venus, and transmitted data back for 23 minutes before dying (somewhat prematurely because of a partial parachute-fail during landing)
Al told, more than a dozen spacecraft has since then returned data after being inside venus atmosphere, and a handful of them has done so after having landed on the surface.
Read a SF-book once, whose name I've forgotten. But it had a charming law:
Parliament must approve all wars. Whenever parliament approves a war, everyone parliament-member who voted in favor of the war, is executed.
The logic was that nobody has the right to decide that some issue is important enough that -others- should die over it, without -themselves- being willing to suffer the same consequence.
On the topic of cannibalism, Arne Ness once opined that in his opinion, it'd be a significant step forward morally if we would refrain from killing more people than we intend to eat.
Yeah I know that in principle dealing with corporations is voluntarily, and this *does* make a difference. But in a world where infrastructure is increasingly privatized and monopolized, doing so has high social and practical costs.
Let's say I don't want VISA anywhere in my finances. I'm not aware of -any- Norwegian bank whose debit-cards aren't also visa-cards, quite possibly it'd thus mean foregoing paying with plastic alltogether, and foregoing ATMs too, in favor of withdrawing money in the actual bank, with extremely limited opening-hours, and high fees. (in contrast to ATM-withdrawal or in-store-plastic-payment which is free)
Let's say I don't want Facebook. Thing is, in a world where 95%+ of my peers use *precisely* that for sharing information on their lives, and for stuff like inviting people to parties, what's the social cost for this decision ?
The village square and the village market used to be publicly owned spaces, with free speech. Todays village square and village market are named Facebook and Ebay, they're privately owned and your freedoms are limited to those which are profitable for the owners.
I'd be in favor of less government, if I thought that the alternative was more freedom. Sadly, I don't. To me it seems the alternative is more power to privately owned corporations instead. The solution doesn't tend to be "let's stop doing that", instead the solution tends to be "let's privatize that!"
This is indeed a blind spot in USA. Many, perhaps even most, see government as fundamentally opposed to their interests, while giving corporations a free pass - despite the fact that government atleast in principle represents the interests of the people while corporations represents the interests of the owners. (which are a tiny fraction of the people)
Google and Facebook knows more about our private lives than the government does, yet this seems to bother nobody. It's true that you can opt out of those - but it's also true that network-effects make social media a natural monopoly.
It's not that simple in practice. Wealthy and poor people tend to break -different- laws, and it's thus hard to say if the law proscribes the same punishment for equally serious transgressions.
What's worse, stealing a car, or manipulating financial records to benefit your own wallet while befrauding investors to the tune of $1 million ? Who's more likely to do actual jail-time ?
X6550. It shows up in Linux as 16 cores, but that is because of hyperthreading, there's 8 actual cores, if I understood things correctly.
Yes that CPU *today* costs as much as a good laptop, but the way things are going with cpu-prices and performance, you're likely to get those kinds of cpus in sub-$1000 laptops in just a few years. You already get quad-core I7-cpus with hyperthreading in $1500 laptops.
*shrug* Todays "top of the line" is tomorrows facebook-renderer. I've got an 8-core CPU, and didn't even want one, it was just a side-effect of buying a reasonable-speced machine on other factors (that I -did- care about) and the 8 cores being standard in a workstation in that performance-range. If there'd been a $25 off for half-the-cores option I'd gladly have taken it, but there wasn't. (yes I know I could roll-my-own)
Most people prefer being surrounded by happy people instead of being surrounded by suffering unhappy people. Thus working to create more happiness in your surroundings is entirely rational even for a perfectly selfish person.
Everyone I know did a decade ago, today 90%+ of all transactions, 95%+ if you go by money-value not "count of transactions" is done by card, i.e a system that lets VISA, your bank and the store track precisely who you are and what you buy.
There's a few people above 50 who still shop with cash, but they're a dying breed.
Slashdot Mirror
"purpose" ? Whose purpose ? Surely you're not implying that nature as such has a purpose ?
Sure they are ! If the projects are talked about at all, they miss deadlines more commonly than not.
When was the Dreamliner *supposed* to have it's first flight ? When where the first 20 supposed to be delivered ? When should the F35 be operational ? How many planes should be delivered by 2015. What should each plane cost ?
Projects take longer, cost more, and deliver less than hoped for. This happens regularly, indeed it's much more common than the opposite of a project that's completed before deadline, with more than promised features, under budget.
Anyone who's ever renovated a kitchen knows this. It's not news.
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. No production isn't generally linear: it is generally *sub*linear.
Making 1000 of something, generally costs LESS than 4 times the price of 250 of the thing, not *more* than 4 times.
It's true that making 10000 in an efficient will likely take longer than making 250 - because the more efficient production requires a longer and more complicated setup-phase, but there's no problem putting this in the kickstarter-description: "The first batch will be 250 items, if we get more backers, then we'll make additional batches as required ..... "
You don't need to detect individual waves. The thing is, electrical hum is supposed to be spot-on 50hz or 60hz (depending on your location), but in reality it drifts around slightly with 50Hz or 60Hz being the *average* frequency. You might have several seconds of 50.01 hz followed by a minute of 49.998 hz and so on.
In other words, if you plot frequency versus time you don't get a straight line at 50 hz, but a line that rise and fall over time while staying on the average very near the goal-frequency.
People worry about the spectacular but unlikely rather than the common but nonremarkable. They worry about events that kill many people at once, in one location, especially if it involves explosions or words like "bioweapon" "chemical" or "radiation". (they aren't aware that water is a chemical or that light is "radiation")
Sitting on your coach. Eating too much sugar. Getting too little exercice. Smoking. These things are dangerous.
Terrorists, on the other hand, are essentially noise - unless you're living in something close to a war-zone, but even in Afghanistan or places like that, terrorism likely isn't among the top cauces of death.
True. I live in a country where the rights of corporations and the rights of average people are somewhat more balanced than in USA. Ofcourse the population of USA doesn't want any of that, they call it "socialism" and turn away in disgust.
The way I see it, they've made their bed and now gets to sleep in it.
You don't get overtime in Norway either if you're in a independent position, but this is interpreted strictly. Basically, if someone could complain to you if you worked too *few* hours in some month, then they also get the priviledge of paying you overtime whenever you work to *many* hours in some month.
That's not true. When I'm on call I: have to be sober, have to get the phone, have to be within 20 minutes of work, have to show up promptly if something happens, have to have childcare taken care of so that I'm not tied down. None of that is now true 24x7.
It's true that my boss may call me. If he does, time spent is rounded up, an hour is added and it's overtime at 150%, in other words, a 5-minute telephone-conversation with me costs him 3 hours pay. At that rate, he doesn't call unless it genuinely IS important, and at that rate, I don't mind.
So what's the catch ?
For long calls you want a good-quality headset. These exist for both Skype, for mobile phones, and for traditional desk-phones, so this is really no argument at all in favor of any of them.
Why ? Because sometimes it's cheaper. Because employees like smartphones and it might thus help employee-retention. Because it increases flexibility since you can be reached even if not at your desk.
Where's the "screwing over" ? I've got a company-paid mobile phone, and up until now ain't seen it.
I still have the envelope, containing the 50 pages of source-code that I proofread. (it was spread over a few dozen volunteers)
True !
Fun Fact
encryption*SOFTWARE* was classified as munitions and restricted, meanwhile free speech laws meant that printed words could very seldom be stopped.
I was part of exporting PGP from USA legally, by way of printing the (zipped, uuencoded + checksums) source-code, mailing it physically to norway, scanning it, OCRing it and manually proofreading all lines where the checksum failed.
It's seldom worth it to hedge against 1:2 odds. Hedging is fundamentally a sort of insurance, and since there's costs involved you only want to insure against risks you can't afford to carry yourself.
If there's a 1:10000 chance that you $1M house will be completely destroyed in a year, the expected loss is $100/year. Yet it's still worth it to purchase $300 insurance - because few can afford to shoulder the potential $1M loss.
If, on the other hand, there's a 75% chance that Obama will win, and you believe it's 80% likely this will cost your company $1M, hedging against it doesn't help you much. The expected loss is 0.75 * 0.8 * 1M = 0.6M
A split-in-the-middle hedge could thus at best convert your 60% chance of 1M loss into a 100% chance of 600K loss, in practice it'd do somewhat worse than that since hedging is never free. That's probably not going to be worth it.
You could be surprisedd - Venera 7 - all the way back in 1970 successfully landed on the surface of Venus, and transmitted data back for 23 minutes before dying (somewhat prematurely because of a partial parachute-fail during landing)
Al told, more than a dozen spacecraft has since then returned data after being inside venus atmosphere, and a handful of them has done so after having landed on the surface.
Yeah, now that you mention it Rama sounds like a likely candidate. Pretty sure it was -not- Enders Game.
Read a SF-book once, whose name I've forgotten. But it had a charming law:
Parliament must approve all wars. Whenever parliament approves a war, everyone parliament-member who voted in favor of the war, is executed.
The logic was that nobody has the right to decide that some issue is important enough that -others- should die over it, without -themselves- being willing to suffer the same consequence.
On the topic of cannibalism, Arne Ness once opined that in his opinion, it'd be a significant step forward morally if we would refrain from killing more people than we intend to eat.
That is true.
But it's also true that while the government *can* kill you, they're fairly *unlikely* to.
Meanwhile Facebook *can* use all the information you give them for their own personal profit -- and they're *very* likely to do precisely that.
Yeah I know that in principle dealing with corporations is voluntarily, and this *does* make a difference. But in a world where infrastructure is increasingly privatized and monopolized, doing so has high social and practical costs.
Let's say I don't want VISA anywhere in my finances. I'm not aware of -any- Norwegian bank whose debit-cards aren't also visa-cards, quite possibly it'd thus mean foregoing paying with plastic alltogether, and foregoing ATMs too, in favor of withdrawing money in the actual bank, with extremely limited opening-hours, and high fees. (in contrast to ATM-withdrawal or in-store-plastic-payment which is free)
Let's say I don't want Facebook. Thing is, in a world where 95%+ of my peers use *precisely* that for sharing information on their lives, and for stuff like inviting people to parties, what's the social cost for this decision ?
The village square and the village market used to be publicly owned spaces, with free speech. Todays village square and village market are named Facebook and Ebay, they're privately owned and your freedoms are limited to those which are profitable for the owners.
I'd be in favor of less government, if I thought that the alternative was more freedom. Sadly, I don't. To me it seems the alternative is more power to privately owned corporations instead. The solution doesn't tend to be "let's stop doing that", instead the solution tends to be "let's privatize that!"
This is indeed a blind spot in USA. Many, perhaps even most, see government as fundamentally opposed to their interests, while giving corporations a free pass - despite the fact that government atleast in principle represents the interests of the people while corporations represents the interests of the owners. (which are a tiny fraction of the people)
Google and Facebook knows more about our private lives than the government does, yet this seems to bother nobody. It's true that you can opt out of those - but it's also true that network-effects make social media a natural monopoly.
It's not that simple in practice. Wealthy and poor people tend to break -different- laws, and it's thus hard to say if the law proscribes the same punishment for equally serious transgressions.
What's worse, stealing a car, or manipulating financial records to benefit your own wallet while befrauding investors to the tune of $1 million ? Who's more likely to do actual jail-time ?
X6550. It shows up in Linux as 16 cores, but that is because of hyperthreading, there's 8 actual cores, if I understood things correctly.
Yes that CPU *today* costs as much as a good laptop, but the way things are going with cpu-prices and performance, you're likely to get those kinds of cpus in sub-$1000 laptops in just a few years. You already get quad-core I7-cpus with hyperthreading in $1500 laptops.
*shrug* Todays "top of the line" is tomorrows facebook-renderer. I've got an 8-core CPU, and didn't even want one, it was just a side-effect of buying a reasonable-speced machine on other factors (that I -did- care about) and the 8 cores being standard in a workstation in that performance-range. If there'd been a $25 off for half-the-cores option I'd gladly have taken it, but there wasn't. (yes I know I could roll-my-own)
Most people prefer being surrounded by happy people instead of being surrounded by suffering unhappy people. Thus working to create more happiness in your surroundings is entirely rational even for a perfectly selfish person.
Everyone I know did a decade ago, today 90%+ of all transactions, 95%+ if you go by money-value not "count of transactions" is done by card, i.e a system that lets VISA, your bank and the store track precisely who you are and what you buy.
There's a few people above 50 who still shop with cash, but they're a dying breed.
Not "most", but more than a third of americans are obese, yes. If the trend holds, it'll be "most" in another decade.