Are you being dense on purpose? Suicide bombers are the exception, not the norm. Even so, they are desperate attempts to undermine the opposition at whatever cost, even the ultimate personal harm to self.
Your arguments are wonderful in a society of abundance, but fail miserable when resource scarcity can be a reality. That is basic economics.
You're missing my point. I am not discounting that cooperation is infinitely preferable to conflict. However, to ignore the fact that a fellow human being (or a society) is a competitor to the same resource is ingenuous at best.
One can cooperate while being fully cognizant of the fact that when it comes to resource scarcity, there could be a conflict for a limited resource.
Ha! I remember a quote from Dune, where Frank Herbert states that the biggest competitor in any environment is a member of your own species. Think about it -- you're after the same resources, you've the same basic needs, and often, your survival could be at the expense of another.
Sure, it's easy not to think about that in a society that's rich and abundant with resources. But in a resource-strapped society? All bets are out the window. If you look at human history, you'll see that conflicts have happened at least as often as cooperation. Why do you think our history is plagued with warfare?
And even today, look at the less developed regions of the world. Do you think the people are fighting over pieces of land with oil and diamonds for no apparent reason?
The whole concept of the human society being one big and happy family is great to think about when the wants are few and the needs available plenty. Wait and watch once things start getting scarce (and it will happen, with our population), and it will be a whole different story. And it is far from a modern concept -- while social darwinism as it is espoused by popular media and our corporations may be absolute rubbish, the idea that human societies are all somehow benign entities is sheer nonsense. The only reason we cooperate is because it's in our favor. If not, all bets are out the window.
And oh, you could also try a program like P90X or Insanity. Get a copy on your iPad or iPhone, and you can take it anywhere. Some of their exercises (such as Plyometrics or Kenpo) do not even require any equipment. Even when they do, it's pretty minimal. Plus, the challenge of tracking to goals and working out to the video makes it possible for you to do it without any company and still remain interested.
This is a good point. I enjoy doing weights (mostly because I set goals, and it's fun trying to beat them), but I don't enjoy cardio. So, I try to substitute that with activities (e.g. tennis or soccer).
The other thing I do is rock climbing. It can be intense, and gives you a full body workout. It can be pretty amazing, and your entire body feels like jelly when you're done.
This is actually true. That's one of the reasons I hate doing weights in the morning -- before you know it, you've worked out for an hour and you're only half-way through your circuit, and you've to get dressed and head out to work.
Running or being on the elliptical, on the other hand, feels much longer than it really is.
Actually, I'd recommend good workout music. While it's a question of personal preference, I've found certain genres of music to be more uplifting for working out than others (e.g. hip hop with good rhythm and beats is great).
It would also depend on what you're doing. A significant part of working your muscle groups involves concentrating more on using certain muscles over others. For example, when doing your lower back, it is easy to lose concentration and work your core or your legs, but it takes focus to ensure that the right muscle group gets the workout. I'm not sure I could listen to a book or a podcast when I'm doing anything other than cardio, but YMMV.
This is silly. At the age of 65, my father won a half-marathon. If you ate healthy and worked out regularly, you will be in the peak of your health even when you're older. Both my parents have no diabetes, no heart problems, and are generally quite healthy for their age. The only health issue they seem to have is a mild onset of arthritis.
Can you find an activity or a sport you could participate in? A softball league or an ultimate frisbee league? Or a pick up game of soccer? Otherwise, there's always Craigslist!:-)
As someone who is always on the road, I often have this problem, but it's usually easier to find people to do activities with when you're playing a sport (no matter how bad you are at it).
The other thing is to take up an interesting and new hobby (e.g. I've been thinking of doing boxing for fun, just every Saturday for an hour). Even if it's one day a week, I know there will be someone at the ring, and it helps you get into a groove. As you start doing better, you will start participating in activities to support your performance in the sport (e.g. when I used to play soccer or tennis, I would run regularly; with boxing, I'm hoping to start lifting more).
Also, I'm not sure how feasible this is, but we've a dog -- my wife enjoys running with the dog because it's good company, and it's a lot of fun.
As someone who works out on a regular basis (an hour or two on most days), I will let you in on a little secret: working out is fun.
Sure, when you first get started, it feels tedious. Pointless, even. But once you start seeing the changes in your body, it becomes addictive.
For instance, most days, I can't wait to get done with work and hit the gym. Ever heard of the runner's high? Working out makes you feel great when you're done with it -- you feel euphoria when you're working out, and a feeling of accomplishment when you're done with it. But the trick is to keep at it.
In the short term, you'll feel more awake, sleep better (deeper REM sleep), and eat better (seriously, once I started working out regularly, I just started craving a wider variety of food than I'd usually eat -- more vegetables and protein, less carbs).
After a few months, you will see serious physical changes in your body that, if not anything else, helps with your vanity.:-) Plus, there's nothing quite like having a girl check you out -- it's a great feeling. As my wife is wont to say, there's nothing that women like more than a buff geek. Beauty and the brains -- can't beat that.
You can do it for any number of reasons, but you will eventually get to a point when you'll be doing it because it is fun. Once you get there, you'll look back and wonder why you didn't do it all these years. Trust me, it's worth it.
Well, the taxes are only one part of it. Investment can happen in many ways, including time and energy.
I am part of a community outreach to help poorer kids with their education (e.g. tutoring, showing them the benefits of a good education etc). One striking indicator of economic tiers is also the amount of time the parents spend with their kids doing activities, from simply going out to play baseball to taking them to the library or a public museum. A lot of the parents are simply unwilling to spend time with their kids - they come back from work, and watch TV and drink a beer. Reading and library memberships? Activities with their kids? Nope.
Hell, we asked for parents to take their kids out to the beach to fly kites a couple of times a month, and half couldn't be bothered to do it. In stark contrast, well educated parents belonging to a better economic demographic almost always ensure that their kids read, and even get them to learn something new (usually musical instruments, especially Asian parents; ballet and karate seem to be other favorites). Board games are also fairly common.
The point is, if you are unwilling to spend time with your kids, it will show in their educational performance and attitudes. And that is the difference.
Well, it is the geniuses who are going to cure cancer.
The point is, focusing on mediocrity will get you just that. How about spending the time and effort across the board, rather than ignoring one segment in favor of another?
But the reverse is also to be considered. There are neighborhoods where people are willing to pay high taxes because there are good school districts (or perhaps, the vice versa). There is often genuine concern that others could reap the benefit of a good education without essentially having to pay for it.
Economically speaking, that's a free rider problem. If too many school districts allowed people from elsewhere to enroll, then what is the incentive of those who live there to pay more taxes for education? Consider Massachusetts - most school districts in the Greater Boston area are quite good, but there are a few that are outstanding because the residents and the schools have taken it upon themselves to work with the universities to get the brightest and the best teachers. When people argue that students from other parts of town be allowed to be educated in these schools, the indignation of the parents is quite understandable.
Some of the concerns are certainly demographic related - realistically speaking, an upper middle class parent is going to be uncomfortable if their kids had classmates whose parents are in the clink for selling meth. Unfortunate, yes. But the biggest problem is that at the end of the day, a certain section of the population is willing to invest in their kids education - they are willing to pay as much as needed in taxes, and spend time and effort in ensuring that the system works. Others, not so much. While it is really unfortunate for some parents of limited income, they can always make up for it in other ways (e.g. public libraries and books, camps). But at the end of the day, the children end up paying the price, and there is no good way to fix the problem.
Rare individuals make for great stories but you can't base your entire education system on them.
And by stating that, you are inherently biasing your system against people who may be capable but unwilling (or even unaware of being able) to spend a fifth of the time to get things done.
That is the problem with catering to the lowest common denominator - you bring everything down to the level of the least capable. On the other hand, if you set the bar high enough, at least everyone will aspire to something better. What was it about reaching for the stars again? That's right.
Let's face it. People do better when they are pushed to their limits. Even doing calculus in high-school, if we were given 2 hours to solve something, most people goofed off for an hour, and did them all in an hour. If we were all given half hour, odds are that we'd have pushed ourselves, and even if all the problems weren't solved, we'd have at least given our peak performance. Much easier to grade on a curve, too.
I couldn't agree with this more. And especially as a UX focused PM, I cannot stress how important it is that you step away from the code and look at the UI and how it really looks in an objective, customer-centric fashion.
I'm the co-founder of a startup (shameless plug: Deal Umpire), and one of our hardest problems has been getting good UX people. I wouldn't trust most backend developers with good, usable design because they assume that the users should be "smart enough" and do not realize that most websites aren't usable enough.
UX is the most important part of a site because that is what your customers judge you by -- and it simply does not matter if you can contribute to code or not, as long as you get the big picture.
So, seriously -- stick to your core competency, and to hell with the coding. Having interviewed developers, PMs, and UX designers, I have to say that you probably bring a very unique skill set that most companies would love to have. Keep that. There's nothing magical or spectacular about coding.
It puts the iPad in the position of the MacBook Air, which is to say that it will have a low market saturation, unlike the iPhone.
As someone who owns not one but two MacBook Airs (and an iPad), I think the MBA is great for a certain target demographic.
I'm a consultant and an entrepreneur, and I travel a lot. In the past couple of years, I've probably flown around 350,000 miles (at least).
I love the MacBook Air because it's light and easy to carry. Yes, the battery life is a pain, but when it comes to sheer size and weight, it is simply unbeatable.
You cannot do any kind of work on an iPad. It's simply not going to work, even with the keyboard. Trust me, I've tried. The MBA, on the other hand, has the size and makeup of a table with the functionality and capability of a full notebook. That's what makes it worthwhile, IMO.
For most people, the MBA is a toy. But when you're running through airports, every gram counts.
A close-to-complete social map, for example, should be fairly doable to construct, just from observing who calls eachothers or send SMS to eachothers, you can even assign fairly accurate weights to the relationships based on frequency of call/sms and frequency and duration of being in the same spots.
I would have agreed with that a couple of years ago. But in the more recent past, I've been using social media sites and IM (using my phone, no less) for the same. In fact, while I was in college and high-school, it was mostly IM and email chains. So, the "closeness" determination by SMS/calls would look a little skewed, since they would all be work related calls.
That's the problem with the law -- you cannot qualify "...in the process of committing a crime" because that implies intent (and someone could claim that they were misconstrued). So, the law would effectively framed such that giving someone information to help them is a crime, qualifying the nature of the information (but never the situation). And then, you're screwed.
When one studies Reagan's policies (stated versus actual) and his pitiable excuse for economics, one realizes just how horrible a president he was, and how a good chunk of the problems we see today can be traced back to his administration. I suppose that's what you get for electing an actor as a president.
This is the man who waned to eliminate the Department of Education and implemented standardized tests as a way of measuring "intelligence", which has screwed up the American educational system to this day.
And this was the man who kept quiet about the AIDS epidemic for the longest time, as if being silent would make it go away.
Should one of those nasties broken out when he'd been in power, he'd have just pulled an ostrich and pretended that nothing happened.
I've always thought about this -- how about a distributed storage network? Anyone using this needs to have a dedicated line and allocate at least 1 GB of their personal storage, and in return, they get 0.5 GB of distributed storage. The idea is similar to a P2P network, only, the data is distributed and redundant across every peer on the network (hence the reason you only get half of what you put in). As long as the encryption is quite secure, and there's a central server tracking the users, it should be fairly straightforward to build. Participants could even be ranked in terms of reliability, and less reliable users can be kicked off the grid (i.e. if you're trying to freeload on the system by not staying connected).
I see a lot of big words, but no real reason. You think high school teachers, cops, and public officials did not do keg stands in college? Or that none of them partied?
Damaging someone's credibility amongst a certain stuck-up demographic need not impair their ability to do their jobs -- I'm curious to see how you made that connection.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you being dense on purpose? Suicide bombers are the exception, not the norm. Even so, they are desperate attempts to undermine the opposition at whatever cost, even the ultimate personal harm to self.
Your arguments are wonderful in a society of abundance, but fail miserable when resource scarcity can be a reality. That is basic economics.
You're missing my point. I am not discounting that cooperation is infinitely preferable to conflict. However, to ignore the fact that a fellow human being (or a society) is a competitor to the same resource is ingenuous at best.
One can cooperate while being fully cognizant of the fact that when it comes to resource scarcity, there could be a conflict for a limited resource.
Ha! I remember a quote from Dune, where Frank Herbert states that the biggest competitor in any environment is a member of your own species. Think about it -- you're after the same resources, you've the same basic needs, and often, your survival could be at the expense of another.
Sure, it's easy not to think about that in a society that's rich and abundant with resources. But in a resource-strapped society? All bets are out the window. If you look at human history, you'll see that conflicts have happened at least as often as cooperation. Why do you think our history is plagued with warfare?
And even today, look at the less developed regions of the world. Do you think the people are fighting over pieces of land with oil and diamonds for no apparent reason?
The whole concept of the human society being one big and happy family is great to think about when the wants are few and the needs available plenty. Wait and watch once things start getting scarce (and it will happen, with our population), and it will be a whole different story. And it is far from a modern concept -- while social darwinism as it is espoused by popular media and our corporations may be absolute rubbish, the idea that human societies are all somehow benign entities is sheer nonsense. The only reason we cooperate is because it's in our favor. If not, all bets are out the window.
And oh, you could also try a program like P90X or Insanity. Get a copy on your iPad or iPhone, and you can take it anywhere. Some of their exercises (such as Plyometrics or Kenpo) do not even require any equipment. Even when they do, it's pretty minimal. Plus, the challenge of tracking to goals and working out to the video makes it possible for you to do it without any company and still remain interested.
This is a good point. I enjoy doing weights (mostly because I set goals, and it's fun trying to beat them), but I don't enjoy cardio. So, I try to substitute that with activities (e.g. tennis or soccer).
The other thing I do is rock climbing. It can be intense, and gives you a full body workout. It can be pretty amazing, and your entire body feels like jelly when you're done.
This is actually true. That's one of the reasons I hate doing weights in the morning -- before you know it, you've worked out for an hour and you're only half-way through your circuit, and you've to get dressed and head out to work.
Running or being on the elliptical, on the other hand, feels much longer than it really is.
Actually, I'd recommend good workout music. While it's a question of personal preference, I've found certain genres of music to be more uplifting for working out than others (e.g. hip hop with good rhythm and beats is great).
It would also depend on what you're doing. A significant part of working your muscle groups involves concentrating more on using certain muscles over others. For example, when doing your lower back, it is easy to lose concentration and work your core or your legs, but it takes focus to ensure that the right muscle group gets the workout. I'm not sure I could listen to a book or a podcast when I'm doing anything other than cardio, but YMMV.
This is silly. At the age of 65, my father won a half-marathon. If you ate healthy and worked out regularly, you will be in the peak of your health even when you're older. Both my parents have no diabetes, no heart problems, and are generally quite healthy for their age. The only health issue they seem to have is a mild onset of arthritis.
Can you find an activity or a sport you could participate in? A softball league or an ultimate frisbee league? Or a pick up game of soccer? Otherwise, there's always Craigslist! :-)
As someone who is always on the road, I often have this problem, but it's usually easier to find people to do activities with when you're playing a sport (no matter how bad you are at it).
The other thing is to take up an interesting and new hobby (e.g. I've been thinking of doing boxing for fun, just every Saturday for an hour). Even if it's one day a week, I know there will be someone at the ring, and it helps you get into a groove. As you start doing better, you will start participating in activities to support your performance in the sport (e.g. when I used to play soccer or tennis, I would run regularly; with boxing, I'm hoping to start lifting more).
Also, I'm not sure how feasible this is, but we've a dog -- my wife enjoys running with the dog because it's good company, and it's a lot of fun.
As someone who works out on a regular basis (an hour or two on most days), I will let you in on a little secret: working out is fun.
Sure, when you first get started, it feels tedious. Pointless, even. But once you start seeing the changes in your body, it becomes addictive.
For instance, most days, I can't wait to get done with work and hit the gym. Ever heard of the runner's high? Working out makes you feel great when you're done with it -- you feel euphoria when you're working out, and a feeling of accomplishment when you're done with it. But the trick is to keep at it.
In the short term, you'll feel more awake, sleep better (deeper REM sleep), and eat better (seriously, once I started working out regularly, I just started craving a wider variety of food than I'd usually eat -- more vegetables and protein, less carbs).
After a few months, you will see serious physical changes in your body that, if not anything else, helps with your vanity. :-) Plus, there's nothing quite like having a girl check you out -- it's a great feeling. As my wife is wont to say, there's nothing that women like more than a buff geek. Beauty and the brains -- can't beat that.
You can do it for any number of reasons, but you will eventually get to a point when you'll be doing it because it is fun. Once you get there, you'll look back and wonder why you didn't do it all these years. Trust me, it's worth it.
Clearly, you should have spent more time in your English classes.
Well, the taxes are only one part of it. Investment can happen in many ways, including time and energy.
I am part of a community outreach to help poorer kids with their education (e.g. tutoring, showing them the benefits of a good education etc). One striking indicator of economic tiers is also the amount of time the parents spend with their kids doing activities, from simply going out to play baseball to taking them to the library or a public museum. A lot of the parents are simply unwilling to spend time with their kids - they come back from work, and watch TV and drink a beer. Reading and library memberships? Activities with their kids? Nope.
Hell, we asked for parents to take their kids out to the beach to fly kites a couple of times a month, and half couldn't be bothered to do it. In stark contrast, well educated parents belonging to a better economic demographic almost always ensure that their kids read, and even get them to learn something new (usually musical instruments, especially Asian parents; ballet and karate seem to be other favorites). Board games are also fairly common.
The point is, if you are unwilling to spend time with your kids, it will show in their educational performance and attitudes. And that is the difference.
Well, it is the geniuses who are going to cure cancer.
The point is, focusing on mediocrity will get you just that. How about spending the time and effort across the board, rather than ignoring one segment in favor of another?
But the reverse is also to be considered. There are neighborhoods where people are willing to pay high taxes because there are good school districts (or perhaps, the vice versa). There is often genuine concern that others could reap the benefit of a good education without essentially having to pay for it.
Economically speaking, that's a free rider problem. If too many school districts allowed people from elsewhere to enroll, then what is the incentive of those who live there to pay more taxes for education? Consider Massachusetts - most school districts in the Greater Boston area are quite good, but there are a few that are outstanding because the residents and the schools have taken it upon themselves to work with the universities to get the brightest and the best teachers. When people argue that students from other parts of town be allowed to be educated in these schools, the indignation of the parents is quite understandable.
Some of the concerns are certainly demographic related - realistically speaking, an upper middle class parent is going to be uncomfortable if their kids had classmates whose parents are in the clink for selling meth. Unfortunate, yes. But the biggest problem is that at the end of the day, a certain section of the population is willing to invest in their kids education - they are willing to pay as much as needed in taxes, and spend time and effort in ensuring that the system works. Others, not so much. While it is really unfortunate for some parents of limited income, they can always make up for it in other ways (e.g. public libraries and books, camps). But at the end of the day, the children end up paying the price, and there is no good way to fix the problem.
And by stating that, you are inherently biasing your system against people who may be capable but unwilling (or even unaware of being able) to spend a fifth of the time to get things done.
That is the problem with catering to the lowest common denominator - you bring everything down to the level of the least capable. On the other hand, if you set the bar high enough, at least everyone will aspire to something better. What was it about reaching for the stars again? That's right.
Let's face it. People do better when they are pushed to their limits. Even doing calculus in high-school, if we were given 2 hours to solve something, most people goofed off for an hour, and did them all in an hour. If we were all given half hour, odds are that we'd have pushed ourselves, and even if all the problems weren't solved, we'd have at least given our peak performance. Much easier to grade on a curve, too.
I couldn't agree with this more. And especially as a UX focused PM, I cannot stress how important it is that you step away from the code and look at the UI and how it really looks in an objective, customer-centric fashion.
I'm the co-founder of a startup (shameless plug: Deal Umpire), and one of our hardest problems has been getting good UX people. I wouldn't trust most backend developers with good, usable design because they assume that the users should be "smart enough" and do not realize that most websites aren't usable enough.
UX is the most important part of a site because that is what your customers judge you by -- and it simply does not matter if you can contribute to code or not, as long as you get the big picture.
So, seriously -- stick to your core competency, and to hell with the coding. Having interviewed developers, PMs, and UX designers, I have to say that you probably bring a very unique skill set that most companies would love to have. Keep that. There's nothing magical or spectacular about coding.
For a second, I was wondering if Jon Katz was back, and if this was a rehash of the supposed "Afghan miracle" from a bygone era.
As someone who owns not one but two MacBook Airs (and an iPad), I think the MBA is great for a certain target demographic.
I'm a consultant and an entrepreneur, and I travel a lot. In the past couple of years, I've probably flown around 350,000 miles (at least).
I love the MacBook Air because it's light and easy to carry. Yes, the battery life is a pain, but when it comes to sheer size and weight, it is simply unbeatable.
You cannot do any kind of work on an iPad. It's simply not going to work, even with the keyboard. Trust me, I've tried. The MBA, on the other hand, has the size and makeup of a table with the functionality and capability of a full notebook. That's what makes it worthwhile, IMO.
For most people, the MBA is a toy. But when you're running through airports, every gram counts.
I would have agreed with that a couple of years ago. But in the more recent past, I've been using social media sites and IM (using my phone, no less) for the same. In fact, while I was in college and high-school, it was mostly IM and email chains. So, the "closeness" determination by SMS/calls would look a little skewed, since they would all be work related calls.
That's the problem with the law -- you cannot qualify "...in the process of committing a crime" because that implies intent (and someone could claim that they were misconstrued). So, the law would effectively framed such that giving someone information to help them is a crime, qualifying the nature of the information (but never the situation). And then, you're screwed.
It looks like a modification of VSP, which is not known to have a particularly high thrust-to-weight ratio.
Rain -- as in rain on someone's parade.
When one studies Reagan's policies (stated versus actual) and his pitiable excuse for economics, one realizes just how horrible a president he was, and how a good chunk of the problems we see today can be traced back to his administration. I suppose that's what you get for electing an actor as a president.
This is the man who waned to eliminate the Department of Education and implemented standardized tests as a way of measuring "intelligence", which has screwed up the American educational system to this day.
And this was the man who kept quiet about the AIDS epidemic for the longest time, as if being silent would make it go away.
Should one of those nasties broken out when he'd been in power, he'd have just pulled an ostrich and pretended that nothing happened.
I've always thought about this -- how about a distributed storage network? Anyone using this needs to have a dedicated line and allocate at least 1 GB of their personal storage, and in return, they get 0.5 GB of distributed storage. The idea is similar to a P2P network, only, the data is distributed and redundant across every peer on the network (hence the reason you only get half of what you put in). As long as the encryption is quite secure, and there's a central server tracking the users, it should be fairly straightforward to build. Participants could even be ranked in terms of reliability, and less reliable users can be kicked off the grid (i.e. if you're trying to freeload on the system by not staying connected).
I see a lot of big words, but no real reason. You think high school teachers, cops, and public officials did not do keg stands in college? Or that none of them partied?
Damaging someone's credibility amongst a certain stuck-up demographic need not impair their ability to do their jobs -- I'm curious to see how you made that connection.