I've followed Wired since its launch in the 90's. Sometimes they've had good articles, but mostly they publish SHOCK science articles. Contrarian articles. Anything to attract attention. Except that when you read the frakking article, you see the scientists/engineer/expert they are talking to is a fringe player that most of his peers thought was wrong and the writer blowing up something that really had no bearing. How many of these great SHOCK and CONTRARIAN articles have panned out over the last 20 years? Precious few. Pop Sci does a much better job.
Wired's writers are so desperate for an attention grabbing story that they will glom on to anything that can be spun into an article that goes against the grain or seems to rebel. They won't do a good job of checking basic facts, they don't investigate if the claims stand up. Hell, they don't even check to see if the logic in their article makes sense -- as per this article. As others pointed out, the article is mostly about pharma and medical science. All the examples I read in that article was about pharma and medical science. The writer ignored things like the mathematics of quantum physics being proved ever more correct, and relativity. The only "science" failing to deliver more results is medicine.
The whole reason medical "science" is failing has been a topic for the last 10 years. Basically it comes down to the industrialization of medical research where university profs spend their days hoping to make a discovery which can be turned into a billion dollar idea for a company. Because of that pressure, other researchers have noticed that a lot of lab results never pan out in production. The current thinking is that over-wishful thinking and too much pressure makes medical researchers take shortcuts with their data to make a discovery seem real or more relevant than it is.
THAT would have been a good article, and the late Omni magazine would have had a good article or two on that. Instead we have Wired: Omni without the good taste.
Even if I didn't have a smart phone from work, I wouldn't spend my own money on a data plan and smartphone. It's nice but not worth the absurd cost here in the States. If I was paid more and had the money to burn, sure, but I have other hobbies and interests that compete for a finite amount of "extra" money after the bills are paid.
Thank you, again, for pointing out why RIM is out of touch. At work, the big push from the user base is to use their consumer iPhone/Android to connect to the corporate network. You might not have it, but there is a very big, very lucrative customer base that wants exactly that -- to use their device for fun & work. The CIO's office gave a presentation about the challenges they face as the user base wants to dump the Blackberries and use their iPhones instead.
The mobile market is not like you; you are a niche (and can be catered to quite profitably). But you can't be a giant and a niche player. RIM has to chose.
Everybody knows it, head hunters know it, employers know it, so why do they carry on asking those "skills"?
Because as Marti Olsen points out, the majority of people are extroverts, and assume anyone who is not like them is defective. So extroverts love brainstorming, group think and other social work environments, so they think everyone should enjoy it and demand it in others.
The right answer is, as other people have said on this thread, balance. Sometimes we should work together, but also sometimes we should leave each other the f--- alone.
But because extroverts tend to be disconnected from facts and experience, they instead remember when they were happiest which was brainstorming sessions or other team activities. Thus they demand it.
To be fair, that's only about 30% of the hiring managers out there. The other 70% actually want people with political skills. The ability to negotiate with people they disagree with, to get people to go along with an idea, to contribute to the group when required instead of being a lone wolf causing problems or sniping. Introverts make excellent politicians in this regard--usually the Karl Rove backroom operator or chief-of-staff. But it's somehow off-putting to state: "Don't be an obstinate asshole who has to get his way and bullies others to achieve his goals -- yes, that means not you, John Bolton." on the job posting.
So just look at "work well with others" and "enjoy team work" to mean you're not a douchebag or a dickhead. It doesn't necessarily mean you are a people person.
The salts used in these reactors are (according to the Wikipedia article):
MSRs can be safer than ordinary light water reactors. Molten salts trap fission products chemically, and react slowly or not at all in air. Also, the fuel salt does not burn in air or water.
As I understand it, they are using more stable fluoride salts like uranium tetraflouride, which is still potentially reactive with water, but much more slowly and is quite manageable, so I hear.
Although, I do admit to having drunk the Kool-Aid on MSR's, so I hope someone more knowledgeable in the chemistry comes along to correct me if my faith is misplaced.:-)
There are newer, better designs like pebble bed, or molten-salt reactors which, when it fails, fails by shutting itself down and locking the radioactive materials in the core. I see some people talking about the thorium cycle reactors above too.
PWR can be safe, but frankly, there are far more effecient, potentially more cost effective and definitely safer designs out there. We have to stop using 1960 light-water reactor designs meant for nuclear submarines.
Is your IT team getting recognition as a line of business unit which adds to the bottom line; or is IT considered a cost center with pay and budgets painfully slashed? Are line of business managers getting bonuses for business operations support you provide; and you get no bonus?
That's a BINGO!
I don't have the time or resources to operate their line of business unit and my own IT unit. If I wanted that responsibility, I would be a company executive.
For the last two years, we've been dutifully reporting the work we do in--at first--one then two separate systems showing that we were, in fact, operating the LoB's business. Still no effect on the higher ups--they didn't even look at the reports. They just saw a big number and thought, "Geez! We should cut costs! I'm sure we can get cheaper labour and that will solve the problem."
Yes, I am trying to escape this asylum. Thank you for asking.:-)
Where I work, us, the IT teams that program and support the applications, often have to tell the employees how the business works. So many people retired in the 2000-2010 that a huge chunk of institutional memory walked out the door. The new folks doing the jobs often don't know how to handle the Once Every Five year situation, etc. I know the company keeps buying these Knowledge Sharing portals, but it seems more like oral history is the primary knowledge transfer.
The corporate standard version for Crystal Reports was so old, the version wasn't even listed on their website.
They were creating classic ASP (not.Net) applications as recently as 2005.
The most recently approved version of Visual Studio is... 2005.
There are still active VB6 programmers in the company.
Most of my department uses VSS 5 (yes 5, not 6).
The main corporate Java web app servers were Java 1.4 until last year.
On the other hand, if you come work for my sub-group, we've recently decided to screw corporate standards. We use mercurial, continuous integration with Hudson, Glassfish, latest version of Eclipse IDE, Java 6 and jQuery. None of this is corporate "approved", but we get high marks from our users!;-)
At my work, the IT department has crippled Outlook e-mail searching because their poor, massively underpowered Exchange server kept crashing under the load. Then, because the XP version of Windows desktop search was slowing boot up times, they crippled that too. Oh yeah, we're not allowed to run any other searching system.
When I search for stuff in GMail, I find it. I rarely use labels as anything other than marking stuff I can safely delete. In Outlook, because of the crippled search, I put things into folders to help Outlook focus its search.
So odd... As you said, when a programmer (like me) wants to program. We CODE!
Games I have played in the last year (which I don't think have anything to do with me being a programmer) in no particular order:
Portal
Starcraft II
Company of Heroes
Dragon Age
Mass Effect 2
I think I play those games for reasons non-programmers play them: they suit my taste & temperment. I think each programmer will have their own list of games they enjoy to play which, again, have nothing to do with being a programmer. 'Cause we can CODE if we want to scratch that itch.;-)
Actually, the vast majority of Ig Noble recipients love it. They have a great sense of humor, and several real Nobel prize winners show up to hand out the awards. The awards are mostly a celebration of the quirky and funny, and an honest celebration of obscure and (seemingly) trivial research.
Although in one case, an Ig Nobel preceded a real Nobel prize: http://boingboing.net/2010/10/05/scientist-wins-both.html
Slashdot Mirror
Did you even read Wikipedia before you posted?
I've followed Wired since its launch in the 90's. Sometimes they've had good articles, but mostly they publish SHOCK science articles. Contrarian articles. Anything to attract attention. Except that when you read the frakking article, you see the scientists/engineer/expert they are talking to is a fringe player that most of his peers thought was wrong and the writer blowing up something that really had no bearing. How many of these great SHOCK and CONTRARIAN articles have panned out over the last 20 years? Precious few. Pop Sci does a much better job.
Wired's writers are so desperate for an attention grabbing story that they will glom on to anything that can be spun into an article that goes against the grain or seems to rebel. They won't do a good job of checking basic facts, they don't investigate if the claims stand up. Hell, they don't even check to see if the logic in their article makes sense -- as per this article. As others pointed out, the article is mostly about pharma and medical science. All the examples I read in that article was about pharma and medical science. The writer ignored things like the mathematics of quantum physics being proved ever more correct, and relativity. The only "science" failing to deliver more results is medicine.
The whole reason medical "science" is failing has been a topic for the last 10 years. Basically it comes down to the industrialization of medical research where university profs spend their days hoping to make a discovery which can be turned into a billion dollar idea for a company. Because of that pressure, other researchers have noticed that a lot of lab results never pan out in production. The current thinking is that over-wishful thinking and too much pressure makes medical researchers take shortcuts with their data to make a discovery seem real or more relevant than it is.
THAT would have been a good article, and the late Omni magazine would have had a good article or two on that. Instead we have Wired: Omni without the good taste.
Can anyone find out if he received any recent campaign contributions and from whom? All I could find was for 2008.
Even if I didn't have a smart phone from work, I wouldn't spend my own money on a data plan and smartphone. It's nice but not worth the absurd cost here in the States. If I was paid more and had the money to burn, sure, but I have other hobbies and interests that compete for a finite amount of "extra" money after the bills are paid.
Thank you, again, for pointing out why RIM is out of touch. At work, the big push from the user base is to use their consumer iPhone/Android to connect to the corporate network. You might not have it, but there is a very big, very lucrative customer base that wants exactly that -- to use their device for fun & work. The CIO's office gave a presentation about the challenges they face as the user base wants to dump the Blackberries and use their iPhones instead.
The mobile market is not like you; you are a niche (and can be catered to quite profitably). But you can't be a giant and a niche player. RIM has to chose.
Because as Marti Olsen points out, the majority of people are extroverts, and assume anyone who is not like them is defective. So extroverts love brainstorming, group think and other social work environments, so they think everyone should enjoy it and demand it in others.
The right answer is, as other people have said on this thread, balance. Sometimes we should work together, but also sometimes we should leave each other the f--- alone.
But because extroverts tend to be disconnected from facts and experience, they instead remember when they were happiest which was brainstorming sessions or other team activities. Thus they demand it.
To be fair, that's only about 30% of the hiring managers out there. The other 70% actually want people with political skills. The ability to negotiate with people they disagree with, to get people to go along with an idea, to contribute to the group when required instead of being a lone wolf causing problems or sniping. Introverts make excellent politicians in this regard--usually the Karl Rove backroom operator or chief-of-staff. But it's somehow off-putting to state: "Don't be an obstinate asshole who has to get his way and bullies others to achieve his goals -- yes, that means not you, John Bolton." on the job posting.
So just look at "work well with others" and "enjoy team work" to mean you're not a douchebag or a dickhead. It doesn't necessarily mean you are a people person.
"No, I'm, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way. "
And reality tv don't forget that.
He wasn't. >_<;
Pfft! They'll just wire up some servos, an arduino and some hobby rocket motors, and it's all good. :-)
The salts used in these reactors are (according to the Wikipedia article):
As I understand it, they are using more stable fluoride salts like uranium tetraflouride, which is still potentially reactive with water, but much more slowly and is quite manageable, so I hear.
Although, I do admit to having drunk the Kool-Aid on MSR's, so I hope someone more knowledgeable in the chemistry comes along to correct me if my faith is misplaced. :-)
There are newer, better designs like pebble bed, or molten-salt reactors which, when it fails, fails by shutting itself down and locking the radioactive materials in the core. I see some people talking about the thorium cycle reactors above too.
PWR can be safe, but frankly, there are far more effecient, potentially more cost effective and definitely safer designs out there. We have to stop using 1960 light-water reactor designs meant for nuclear submarines.
Is your IT team getting recognition as a line of business unit which adds to the bottom line; or is IT considered a cost center with pay and budgets painfully slashed? Are line of business managers getting bonuses for business operations support you provide; and you get no bonus?
That's a BINGO!
I don't have the time or resources to operate their line of business unit and my own IT unit. If I wanted that responsibility, I would be a company executive.
For the last two years, we've been dutifully reporting the work we do in--at first--one then two separate systems showing that we were, in fact, operating the LoB's business. Still no effect on the higher ups--they didn't even look at the reports. They just saw a big number and thought, "Geez! We should cut costs! I'm sure we can get cheaper labour and that will solve the problem."
Yes, I am trying to escape this asylum. Thank you for asking. :-)
Where I work, us, the IT teams that program and support the applications, often have to tell the employees how the business works. So many people retired in the 2000-2010 that a huge chunk of institutional memory walked out the door. The new folks doing the jobs often don't know how to handle the Once Every Five year situation, etc. I know the company keeps buying these Knowledge Sharing portals, but it seems more like oral history is the primary knowledge transfer.
They also terrorized Loyalists, which is why most of them fled to Canada.
What bad habits would one learn from, say, Python?
Indentation as syntax.
I thought you needed to license the protocols in order to use it. Has the EU changed it's mind and made it a proper public infrastructure?
I've been in corporate IT for over 10 years now.
The corporate standard version for Crystal Reports was so old, the version wasn't even listed on their website.
They were creating classic ASP (not .Net) applications as recently as 2005.
The most recently approved version of Visual Studio is... 2005.
There are still active VB6 programmers in the company.
Most of my department uses VSS 5 (yes 5, not 6).
The main corporate Java web app servers were Java 1.4 until last year.
On the other hand, if you come work for my sub-group, we've recently decided to screw corporate standards. We use mercurial, continuous integration with Hudson, Glassfish, latest version of Eclipse IDE, Java 6 and jQuery. None of this is corporate "approved", but we get high marks from our users! ;-)
At my work, the IT department has crippled Outlook e-mail searching because their poor, massively underpowered Exchange server kept crashing under the load. Then, because the XP version of Windows desktop search was slowing boot up times, they crippled that too. Oh yeah, we're not allowed to run any other searching system.
When I search for stuff in GMail, I find it. I rarely use labels as anything other than marking stuff I can safely delete. In Outlook, because of the crippled search, I put things into folders to help Outlook focus its search.
So odd... As you said, when a programmer (like me) wants to program. We CODE!
Games I have played in the last year (which I don't think have anything to do with me being a programmer) in no particular order:
I think I play those games for reasons non-programmers play them: they suit my taste & temperment. I think each programmer will have their own list of games they enjoy to play which, again, have nothing to do with being a programmer. 'Cause we can CODE if we want to scratch that itch. ;-)
SAIC's greatest FAILs:
Wow. The hits just keep coming...
Actually, the vast majority of Ig Noble recipients love it. They have a great sense of humor, and several real Nobel prize winners show up to hand out the awards. The awards are mostly a celebration of the quirky and funny, and an honest celebration of obscure and (seemingly) trivial research. Although in one case, an Ig Nobel preceded a real Nobel prize: http://boingboing.net/2010/10/05/scientist-wins-both.html
Archer, FTW!
Mod parent +1
The vast majority of people will not do that. And then the companies lobby to make it illegal to do that.
Trusted Computing
Why do you think they will stop with applications? Wait until you need permission to install an OS.