*sigh* If they'd just stop making the gadgets *too small*, there'd be enough room, not just for the pitiful handful of controls we get now, but a *proper* set of controls. I want equipment I can wrap my whole hand around without covering up any inputs, outputs, or controls. I don't *care* that it won't fit in a shirt pocket, since that's already filled by my Day-Timer.
And, I want to see the error rates on these movement recognition thingines. Have you *ever* seen a non-totally-broken keyboard report the wrong keypress? I haven't.
You can't be loyal to a company, because it isn't anyone and can't care one way or the other. You can be loyal to *people*, some of whom find gainful work for you, and arrange for equipment and supplies you need to do it, and go to bat for you at budget time. In other words, people who are loyal to *you*.
Without trying to guess who threw the first punch, I'll just quietly observe that loyalty is typically given for loyalty. Like the old adage: "to have a friend, be a friend." Employers and employees who want loyalty should meditate on this.
I'm still trying to imagine how I'll speak or handwrite just 1,000 lines of code without any transcription errors.
(No, I won't be clicking and dragging shiny icons or even text fragments. My creative side doesn't work that way, and I'm not alone. Besides, what happens when I want to express an idea that's not on the palette?)
Can't jail a corporation? Why not? The bigwigs arrive one morning to find the HQ's doors under court seal. Open the door, go to jail for contempt.
The trouble with this is that it punishes the stockholders (who could be your pension, your insurance, or your grandmother) while the actual decision makers just bail and go somewhere else to do it all again. Corporations don't make decisions; people do, and it's the decision makers whose behavior needs reformation.
(The stockholders aren't the decision makers; they get one decision a year, with no certainty of the consequences. Owners can be victims of unscrupulous officers just as much as anyone else.)
Yeah, the first thing that leaped out at me was, "a *home-based business* beat out a sizable corporation by *costing the corporation too much*?" That's someone to remember.
Yes, relating to one another "over the phone" is different. Unless I actually wish to touch someone, it is *better*. Email is better still since I can go back and edit stuff before sending it. I really like the way that electronic communication pares away so much of the junk that I don't use anyway, but which would demand brainpower regardless.
I provide IT services too, and 99 times out of a hundred what I do works as well from home or my desk as it would onsite. Obviously we can't install equipment over the phone, but much is so doable remotely that I'm lazy enough to ssh into a server that's just across the hall rather than get up and go tickle its actual keyboard. We've got other people in place to do the hardware stuff. (I've actually used rdesktop to work with a Windows box that's less than 2m away, rather than shift my chair. The wheels are bad, okay?:-)
"three [h]ours in check-in and security lanes...."
I don't know where that airport is. Last time I flew, I obediently arrived 90 minutes before boarding and spent 80 minutes in the departure lounge. I think it's just a scam to sell more cheesy paperbacks and oversized sweet rolls.
The difference is that an unborn baby can't *see* that he's floating. I recall an experiment which showed that quite young infants had an apparently wired-in fear of drop-offs (put the baby on a table with a half-glass top and see him scramble for the other half).
This would seem to require a sense of which way is down, so maybe they would be *less* upset than older passengers when there isn't any "down".
Reforming fossil fuel also puts in more energy/mole than the hydrogen will give back. The energy you could've gotten by burning the fossil fuel goes in, and the energy you can get from burning just the hydrogen comes out. Also subtract process energy and minor inefficiencies. Unless you also burn the carbon, you are throwing a lot of the original energy away. (Remember, burning carbon is evil.)
Please think twice the next time you want to write "create energy". There's a conservation principle which says we can't do that. We can liberate energy bound in various systems, that's all.
So, will we be seeing Heinlein's mail rockets too?
I wonder if the additional speed will really be worth the additional cost. If I need to be somewhere else for business purposes, the only important parts of my presence can arrive in milliseconds via telephone, or even television if someone can think of a convincing reason to see me.
To me, travel itself is painful and boring, and I don't see much difference between being subjected to transportation for 12 hours or three. Let me know when I can step into a transfer booth, insert coin, dial a number, and step out in Düsseldorf.
I'm far more interested in riding SS3 to some orbital facility of interest, since there's no other (affordable) way for me to get there.
"So the "US" is to blame simply because the movies are created here?"
It's much simpler than that. The U.S. is to blame. Period. Doesn't matter what it is; if someone doesn't like it, the U.S. is to blame. Don't you read the papers?
Every time I read something like this, my first thought is: how long before we need to add a new top layer to organize them all, so one can figure out what to ask for?
My second thought: eh, how would that help? It's just a mess anyway.
My third: forget trying to figure it all out, and go with a Query By Example style a la X.500. Tell the system everything you know and let it give you a list of "probables".
Right now, if the name isn't instantly obvious, I just look up the entity on AltaVista and wade through all the sponsored "hits" until I find something that looks appropriate. But a multi-attribute search ought to be able to weed out the junk better than a dumb text search.
Agreed, partial studies make the product look bad to you and me. The difference with Open Source is that we can look inside and see what it really is, and if we don't, someone else will and cannot be forbidden to tell us all about it. Besides, for $0.00 you can just try it and see.
So, we can find out what the product is really like and ignore fluffy "studies". Meanwhile, however, the decisions are often made by people who believe in "studies", so having some that promote what you already know by more reliable means couldn't hurt when you are looking for management buy-in.
If you have a good manager, your professional opinion should be enough. If you have the other sort, and you need Linux, to be allowed to do what you know is right will require a pro-Linux snowjob just as heavy as the anti-Linux snowjob coming from elsewhere. You don't have to believe either one as long as the decision is correct. That's a rotten way to have to do business, I know.
I guess they are talking money -- the article never really says what that 36% is 36% *of*.
My guess is that Microsoft will point to all the stuff they didn't bother to measure and chant "flawed study" until the headache goes away.
I wonder how much saving accrues from not spending a week diving in the docset to find an answer to a single question that should come up all the time?
I thought the problem was that turning on a cell phone would instantly make the airplane fall out of the sky as all the avionic gear fails. I guess the airlines have cycled out all of the broken designs now?
(Sitting here thinking about the _Far Side_ cartoon showing a switch on one passenger's armrest: "Wings Stay On/Wings Fall Off")
Well, I wasn't talking about the sort of voodoo "management science" you see in Dilbert, but real methodologies for making as certain as possible that important things have been (a) identified, and (b) provided for in the schedules and procedures.
NASA does seem to have a problem with treating astronauts the way that airlines treat pilots or navies treat ships' commanders. I guess the situation is waiting for someone with the sand to send a note saying, "sorry, this bird will not lift until the following problems are squared away. By order of the captain." Too many inspections and decisions are made by people who won't be going.
Yes, a space mission is hideously complex. So was taking a ship out of contact with civilization for months at a time, yet one person (who *was* going) saw that it all got done and made the final decision. Despite knowing far less about what would or could happen than we know about manned space flight today, those ships usually came back.
Actually I find it kind of reassuring, in a way. We've seen on several occasions, of late, that the big danger in space is not BEMs, cosmic rays, catastrophic equipment failure, novel physical or mental maladies, or unanticipated technical problems; it's that nobody was assigned to check something and so nobody checked it. We have centuries of management science to help us with problems like that.
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*sigh* If they'd just stop making the gadgets *too small*, there'd be enough room, not just for the pitiful handful of controls we get now, but a *proper* set of controls. I want equipment I can wrap my whole hand around without covering up any inputs, outputs, or controls. I don't *care* that it won't fit in a shirt pocket, since that's already filled by my Day-Timer.
And, I want to see the error rates on these movement recognition thingines. Have you *ever* seen a non-totally-broken keyboard report the wrong keypress? I haven't.
You can't be loyal to a company, because it isn't anyone and can't care one way or the other. You can be loyal to *people*, some of whom find gainful work for you, and arrange for equipment and supplies you need to do it, and go to bat for you at budget time. In other words, people who are loyal to *you*.
"Or do you think the entire world is controlled by Americans??"
:-)
Everyone else seems to think so; why shouldn't we think so?
Indeed, when someone chants, "question authority," my favorite response is, "okay, why?" :-)
There is no country called, "America". There's one named, "the United States of America".
Without trying to guess who threw the first punch, I'll just quietly observe that loyalty is typically given for loyalty. Like the old adage: "to have a friend, be a friend." Employers and employees who want loyalty should meditate on this.
Shee, they should have picked a more secure medium, like sticking cleartext notes on the back of the boss' jacket.
I'm still trying to imagine how I'll speak or handwrite just 1,000 lines of code without any transcription errors.
(No, I won't be clicking and dragging shiny icons or even text fragments. My creative side doesn't work that way, and I'm not alone. Besides, what happens when I want to express an idea that's not on the palette?)
Can't jail a corporation? Why not? The bigwigs arrive one morning to find the HQ's doors under court seal. Open the door, go to jail for contempt.
The trouble with this is that it punishes the stockholders (who could be your pension, your insurance, or your grandmother) while the actual decision makers just bail and go somewhere else to do it all again. Corporations don't make decisions; people do, and it's the decision makers whose behavior needs reformation.
(The stockholders aren't the decision makers; they get one decision a year, with no certainty of the consequences. Owners can be victims of unscrupulous officers just as much as anyone else.)
Yeah, the first thing that leaped out at me was, "a *home-based business* beat out a sizable corporation by *costing the corporation too much*?" That's someone to remember.
Yes, relating to one another "over the phone" is different. Unless I actually wish to touch someone, it is *better*. Email is better still since I can go back and edit stuff before sending it. I really like the way that electronic communication pares away so much of the junk that I don't use anyway, but which would demand brainpower regardless.
:-)
I provide IT services too, and 99 times out of a hundred what I do works as well from home or my desk as it would onsite. Obviously we can't install equipment over the phone, but much is so doable remotely that I'm lazy enough to ssh into a server that's just across the hall rather than get up and go tickle its actual keyboard. We've got other people in place to do the hardware stuff. (I've actually used rdesktop to work with a Windows box that's less than 2m away, rather than shift my chair. The wheels are bad, okay?
"three [h]ours in check-in and security lanes...."
I don't know where that airport is. Last time I flew, I obediently arrived 90 minutes before boarding and spent 80 minutes in the departure lounge. I think it's just a scam to sell more cheesy paperbacks and oversized sweet rolls.
The difference is that an unborn baby can't *see* that he's floating. I recall an experiment which showed that quite young infants had an apparently wired-in fear of drop-offs (put the baby on a table with a half-glass top and see him scramble for the other half).
This would seem to require a sense of which way is down, so maybe they would be *less* upset than older passengers when there isn't any "down".
Here we go again.
Reforming fossil fuel also puts in more energy/mole than the hydrogen will give back. The energy you could've gotten by burning the fossil fuel goes in, and the energy you can get from burning just the hydrogen comes out. Also subtract process energy and minor inefficiencies. Unless you also burn the carbon, you are throwing a lot of the original energy away. (Remember, burning carbon is evil.)
Please think twice the next time you want to write "create energy". There's a conservation principle which says we can't do that. We can liberate energy bound in various systems, that's all.
So, will we be seeing Heinlein's mail rockets too?
I wonder if the additional speed will really be worth the additional cost. If I need to be somewhere else for business purposes, the only important parts of my presence can arrive in milliseconds via telephone, or even television if someone can think of a convincing reason to see me.
To me, travel itself is painful and boring, and I don't see much difference between being subjected to transportation for 12 hours or three. Let me know when I can step into a transfer booth, insert coin, dial a number, and step out in Düsseldorf.
I'm far more interested in riding SS3 to some orbital facility of interest, since there's no other (affordable) way for me to get there.
Indeed. If you think music should be free, create some free music. Ditto movies, etc.
Actually, I want a society in which the *artist* gets to decide the terms under which other people experience his art.
You might be amazed at how few people who actually create stuff don't care what happens after they create it.
"So the "US" is to blame simply because the movies are created here?"
It's much simpler than that. The U.S. is to blame. Period. Doesn't matter what it is; if someone doesn't like it, the U.S. is to blame. Don't you read the papers?
Every time I read something like this, my first thought is: how long before we need to add a new top layer to organize them all, so one can figure out what to ask for?
My second thought: eh, how would that help? It's just a mess anyway.
My third: forget trying to figure it all out, and go with a Query By Example style a la X.500. Tell the system everything you know and let it give you a list of "probables".
Right now, if the name isn't instantly obvious, I just look up the entity on AltaVista and wade through all the sponsored "hits" until I find something that looks appropriate. But a multi-attribute search ought to be able to weed out the junk better than a dumb text search.
Agreed, partial studies make the product look bad to you and me. The difference with Open Source is that we can look inside and see what it really is, and if we don't, someone else will and cannot be forbidden to tell us all about it. Besides, for $0.00 you can just try it and see.
So, we can find out what the product is really like and ignore fluffy "studies". Meanwhile, however, the decisions are often made by people who believe in "studies", so having some that promote what you already know by more reliable means couldn't hurt when you are looking for management buy-in.
If you have a good manager, your professional opinion should be enough. If you have the other sort, and you need Linux, to be allowed to do what you know is right will require a pro-Linux snowjob just as heavy as the anti-Linux snowjob coming from elsewhere. You don't have to believe either one as long as the decision is correct. That's a rotten way to have to do business, I know.
I guess they are talking money -- the article never really says what that 36% is 36% *of*.
My guess is that Microsoft will point to all the stuff they didn't bother to measure and chant "flawed study" until the headache goes away.
I wonder how much saving accrues from not spending a week diving in the docset to find an answer to a single question that should come up all the time?
I thought the problem was that turning on a cell phone would instantly make the airplane fall out of the sky as all the avionic gear fails. I guess the airlines have cycled out all of the broken designs now?
(Sitting here thinking about the _Far Side_ cartoon showing a switch on one passenger's armrest: "Wings Stay On/Wings Fall Off")
So now Oracle customers too can look forward to spending five years installing a single release of a single product?
Well, I wasn't talking about the sort of voodoo "management science" you see in Dilbert, but real methodologies for making as certain as possible that important things have been (a) identified, and (b) provided for in the schedules and procedures.
NASA does seem to have a problem with treating astronauts the way that airlines treat pilots or navies treat ships' commanders. I guess the situation is waiting for someone with the sand to send a note saying, "sorry, this bird will not lift until the following problems are squared away. By order of the captain." Too many inspections and decisions are made by people who won't be going.
Yes, a space mission is hideously complex. So was taking a ship out of contact with civilization for months at a time, yet one person (who *was* going) saw that it all got done and made the final decision. Despite knowing far less about what would or could happen than we know about manned space flight today, those ships usually came back.
Actually I find it kind of reassuring, in a way. We've seen on several occasions, of late, that the big danger in space is not BEMs, cosmic rays, catastrophic equipment failure, novel physical or mental maladies, or unanticipated technical problems; it's that nobody was assigned to check something and so nobody checked it. We have centuries of management science to help us with problems like that.