There are more than enough examples of ridiculous amounts being spent on not much more than popularity or a whim. Why is it so surprising people are willing to spend a lot on legendary and very rare instruments from several hundreds of years ago? Maybe our modern-day instruments can hold up to those legends simply because today violin makers are standing on the shoulders of giants like Stradivari? A brand-new violin still costs a fortune and the most famous violin-makers today still select their clients very strictly. You essentially have to apply to even be allowed to pay them all that money.
And without trying to be too "voodoo" about this but as a musician myself, I am wondering just what kind of effect this privilege of playing such a rare instrument could have on the violinist. Maybe part of the "myth" is simply that the feel-good knowledge of playing one of the most legendary instruments out there can slightly improve an artists performance to push it to where "magic" happens? World-class athletes do all sorts of "magic" to push themselves beyond their limits, to get just a slightly better performance. Why should the same not be true for performing star musicians?
Real world examples: in certain towns in Austria the red-green phases are synced up to the speed limits in such a way that you will continue having "green" when you stay within the limit.
In the Netherlands, speed limits on the freeways are set to prevent traffic jams from building up and people are quite likely to follow the limits because they know they won't get stuck in jams that way.
So, can someone explain to me why whaling is such a very bad thing the whole Western world has to get in an uproar - yet destroying huge portions of the rain forest and endangering species living in it to breed cattle or grow soy is ok? It's not like our culinary preferences are not endangering other species and destroying their natural habitats. But when it's whales, all of a sudden it matters?
Oh and he has been the victim of investigations since the 90s. First for telephone fraud, then for (you guessed it) copyright violation by running a BBS to distribute "warez" and he promptly ratted on everyone in the scene just to get a better deal for himself.
Then he went on to swindle the German "TÜV" out of money by selling them a company he had "built" which turned out to be a complete lemon.
Then he was found guilty for fraud and insider trading concerning "letsbuyit.com".
He has a long history of dirt and selling people close to him out.
Entertaining? Maybe. An egotistical, megalomaniac criminal? Definitely. Do not let the current news coverage of him blind you like that. He has been doing basically the same kind of scams for more than two decades now and it was nothing but a PR stunt to appear as the "internet savior" when people mostly have forgotten about his criminal activities.
Why is everyone being so negative in here?
on
Hacking Charisma
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Let's not focus on the website layout, the unnecessarily long article, her looks or what you might think you know about "sociopaths" and all managers clearly being manipulative swindlers. She is not teaching people to "mind fuck" others, she is not some "NLP" pushing sociopath. Essentially she is offering a pragmatic approach to overcoming your own anxieties or to calm down a competitive temper. She helps to make certain situations more pleasant for the client and is not pushing tools how to "one-up" conversation partners. So she suggests meditation and a mental exercise of focusing on a relaxing situation (the puppy, or kayaking) and she successfully sells that to some people? Well, good for her! You might think there is little information or "skill" there and you might be right, the point is it can still be damn hard to make a transformation of habits and ways you might have had for a long time and what a good coach does is help you along the way.
I really do not understand the negative responses in here. Yes her message might be pretty simple and "duh!" but at least she has some interesting connections to scientific theories and like I said above, transformations like that are not only about identifying and then "simply" fixing what's wrong.
I would much rather be coached by someone like her instead of some bullshit NLP training where you are taught how to mind-fuck your victim into scratching his left ear with his right hand, literally.
Especially in that case this isn't a very smart move at all. Once you tell a lie like that, your best bet is to stick with it until the bitter end. "Suddenly" discovering a couple of million in hope of folks then looking the other way sounds so absolutely ridiculous of a plan, I honestly doubt that is what they were trying to do. Even if the noose is getting tighter around their necks. They simply cannot be so very delusional.
Why do gigantic oil companies like that get government money to clean up the mess these companies themselves carelessly created in the first place? It is their fault these spills happened, they should be held fully responsible for what they did.
EVE is generally the coolest on the "meta level" of the game. The interface is not great, most people who seriously play it use a lot of tools outside of EVE anyway and practically all organization and communication happens outside of EVE as well. Playing a fleet battle in EVE is mind-numbing boring even when it is just a few hundred ships and unless you are in a titan, you are more or less cannon fodder and won't have very glorious stories to tell. And 90% of the time you have no idea what is going on until later because restricting information flow is one of the key concepts of EVE. So, yes, it is WAY cooler to be reading about what was ACTUALLY going on instead of being one more or less tiny little grunt on the front line.
And in order not to be one of those tiny grunts, it takes a lot of learning the game and the universe inside out and crawling the ranks... EVE is so cool in so many ways but it is much too close to real life and real life jobs and being forced to do certain things to actually make it a fun distraction. Seriously playing EVE is more like having a second job with lots of rules, caveats and social climbing.
Also, Zuckerberg is the only user on facebook whom you CANNOT block. Try it. The site will give you some error and tell you to "try later" but it has not worked in the one or two years I have been trying.
You are referring to an article he wrote about an "old version" of his mix. Several issues have been fixed in the mean time, fiber was one of those things, lack of sulfur was the other. Those are the two I am aware of but it seems there were additional tweaks. TFA essentially links to an old entry.
Because from the point of view of a bank these are not technical challenges and the decisions are not made by people who really understand all the technical details nor do these technical details matter that much. No, really. In banking you have some "standards" and ways how things "always worked" and many of those hark back to the "good ol' days" and the reason nobody changes any of that is because the whole recertification, documentation and roll-out processes involved in doing that could easily cost more than the actual technical project for doing it. So if there is no painful reason to do it, they will happily pay a bit to keep what they have instead of doing a full-blown replacement of everything.
There are a ton of regulations you have to be compliant to and all these old, crappy machines running old software were once modern when they got certified and ever since then everybody still sticks with them because of that and I don't think there are many competitor offering more technologically "sexy" solutions anyway since there does not seem to be a market for it. Just look at how many banking systems are still running on mainframes and were written in COBOL by the retiring breed of mainframe-gurus.
He IS doing something, he brought it to wider attention by getting it on the/. frontpage; if we were serious-business and this was the news, he would be getting paid as a PR guy. Raising public awareness like that can be a good way of putting a bit of pressure on gigantic corporations.
Overestimating the importance of a "job"
on
If I Had a Hammer
·
· Score: 1
Saying "because labor is so important to a person's identity and dignity" is not only not true it is also quite backwards thinking in the face of talking about a "second machine age". It is not a job that actually matters to people, it is their pay to sustain their lifestyle. Without the need for that, people do not need "a job" but they desire something "to do" which is quite different from "a job" you do for the pay and maybe, maybe because you are one of the lucky ones who actually enjoy what they are doing.
A "second machine age" should free people up from having to work for a living and allow everyone a stable life so you can focus on doing what you actually enjoy and what really matters to you.
The art of managing is an ART and it's a very delicate task.
This is spot-on and the main reason and explanation why so much management training just completely fails by teaching people "KISS" and "SMART" 4-bullet-point tools so solve absolutely-every-situation-ever(tm). A lot of things can make and break your role as a good manager but nothing will do it faster than blindly following 4 steps without having a single "managerial" bone in your body.
I welcome restrictions on who can comment and what someone can say such that we raise the signal to noise ratio and tone down the inanity, the crazy and the spam.
You are actually surprisingly right - but you are making a perfect case for good moderators doing their job well, and not for giving up anonymity.
It is absolutely trivial to create fake IDs on facebook and g+ and none of this will stop professional astro-turfers nor will it deter trolls.
You have got to be on to something because, see, this also works equally well as it does for the summary!
"Given that the parliament is not violating laws it is clear that Assange or his associates would have to have installed recording devices or wiretaps on US helicopters in Iraq". Undeniable right there!
Your main issue is: in every single sentence you told us you said "I want", "I need" something to essentially make the situation better for you and your co-workers and you want the company to spend money for that. This is completely useless since all they hear is you asking for a favor to make your life and your job easier for YOU, and you presented mildly or barely business-relevant arguments as a justification for that but your main points were presented about YOU and your team. It is not an issue for management if you and your coworkers are overworked as long as things are still running; they will brush that off as "the geeks are just whining" or "times are tough but it will get better". It obviously has not been an issue so far that certain projects got delayed. And "we could do better" is something managers don't care about because it is universally always true even if you are the leader in that area.
You mean well but you are selling it completely wrong. If you really want to work on bettering the situation then you got to learn to play politics and understand business and partially go against what feels natural for a tech. That means you need to establish an actual issue in the managers' minds first. This could mean weeks, months if not years of pointing to an issue when it pops up and showing how it affected the business in a negative way. But be warned, nobody likes bad news and to be constantly nagged, so you will need tact. It could be done opportunistically, piggy-backing a crisis. Bob in accounting not being able to start his Excel fast enough is not such an issue. Losing a client because your infrastructure could not provide the necessary information is a very real cause to do something. The whole network being down and nobody being able to access their emails for two days because your only network admin was sick or on vacation is a very serious business risk to consider. If you have shady ethics then such an incident can work wonders if management really does not understand how serious the situation is of not having a backup admin for vital infrastructure. Managers love their emails, that is a point they will instantly understand.
Don't tell them what they should do, show them the real business-relevant issues and be prepared for them to completely ignore it despite all the sense you are making - running a business means constantly balancing more or less serious issues with very serious issues and crises and often getting it wrong and if there is no money then your issues could be severe but they still might be unable to do anything because there simply is no money. If they do listen, be ready to make suggestions and keep things simple and clear. There is a very descriptive saying, "pictures for kids and executives", that is how simple and clear you should keep it. Never argue with "too much work".
Technically quite dangerous. Imagine you are riding a powerful motorcycle well within the speed limit, if you crank the throttle too much when cornering you will slip as many novice riders will tell you is their worst fear. Without ESP and without any other help that Porsche basically lays the same power into your hands. It could probably even spin on the spot like the old 911s did if you let go of the clutch too quickly. A "hair trigger" gas pedal and "it bites your head off" for mistakes means this car needs to be handled correctly regardless of speed.
This boils down to: if the driver wants to drive a Carrera GT because he thinks it is "cool" then they should only hand them to you if you have the necessary training; if you don't, well then it should be mandatory ESP and other stabilizing chips to keep novice drivers from killing themselves and others. This is probably a very European way of viewing things but I stand by it. You don't hand a loaded gun to a kid who has no idea about gun safety.
Don't get me wrong, I fully blame the driver for obviously being unable to handle his car but I think before handing people a car like that you should make sure they are able to drive it and understand their ride because they are putting other drivers and pedestrians in danger as well.
To add to those numbers: Norway has about 5 million people, wikipedia lists a total of 26,200 as "active personal". Typical Norwegian cuisine has a strong focus on game and fish which they can source locally, thus cutting out those dishes means literally nothing in terms of CO2 footprint.
No, it absolutely would not. All those vegetables and other ingredients had to come from somewhere and our food industry just throws things away when they are expired and then they make just as much as before. A "meatless" day per week is ridiculous and useless, all it will do is slightly increase the amount of meat that gets thrown out on this day.
I have no idea why you as an end user need 24bit or ultra high sampling rates, that is just something Neil Young tries to push on to people but it has been shown to be useless and worst case it is harmful. And in independent listener tests done by heise the AAC codec clearly outperformed both MP3 and OGG.
Slashdot Mirror
There are more than enough examples of ridiculous amounts being spent on not much more than popularity or a whim. Why is it so surprising people are willing to spend a lot on legendary and very rare instruments from several hundreds of years ago?
Maybe our modern-day instruments can hold up to those legends simply because today violin makers are standing on the shoulders of giants like Stradivari? A brand-new violin still costs a fortune and the most famous violin-makers today still select their clients very strictly. You essentially have to apply to even be allowed to pay them all that money.
And without trying to be too "voodoo" about this but as a musician myself, I am wondering just what kind of effect this privilege of playing such a rare instrument could have on the violinist. Maybe part of the "myth" is simply that the feel-good knowledge of playing one of the most legendary instruments out there can slightly improve an artists performance to push it to where "magic" happens?
World-class athletes do all sorts of "magic" to push themselves beyond their limits, to get just a slightly better performance. Why should the same not be true for performing star musicians?
Real world examples: in certain towns in Austria the red-green phases are synced up to the speed limits in such a way that you will continue having "green" when you stay within the limit.
In the Netherlands, speed limits on the freeways are set to prevent traffic jams from building up and people are quite likely to follow the limits because they know they won't get stuck in jams that way.
He was also vegan, made it on Times' cover and was indeed considered charismatic back then.
So, can someone explain to me why whaling is such a very bad thing the whole Western world has to get in an uproar - yet destroying huge portions of the rain forest and endangering species living in it to breed cattle or grow soy is ok? It's not like our culinary preferences are not endangering other species and destroying their natural habitats.
But when it's whales, all of a sudden it matters?
Oh and he has been the victim of investigations since the 90s. First for telephone fraud, then for (you guessed it) copyright violation by running a BBS to distribute "warez" and he promptly ratted on everyone in the scene just to get a better deal for himself.
Then he went on to swindle the German "TÜV" out of money by selling them a company he had "built" which turned out to be a complete lemon.
Then he was found guilty for fraud and insider trading concerning "letsbuyit.com".
He has a long history of dirt and selling people close to him out.
Entertaining? Maybe. An egotistical, megalomaniac criminal? Definitely. Do not let the current news coverage of him blind you like that. He has been doing basically the same kind of scams for more than two decades now and it was nothing but a PR stunt to appear as the "internet savior" when people mostly have forgotten about his criminal activities.
Let's not focus on the website layout, the unnecessarily long article, her looks or what you might think you know about "sociopaths" and all managers clearly being manipulative swindlers.
She is not teaching people to "mind fuck" others, she is not some "NLP" pushing sociopath. Essentially she is offering a pragmatic approach to overcoming your own anxieties or to calm down a competitive temper. She helps to make certain situations more pleasant for the client and is not pushing tools how to "one-up" conversation partners.
So she suggests meditation and a mental exercise of focusing on a relaxing situation (the puppy, or kayaking) and she successfully sells that to some people? Well, good for her! You might think there is little information or "skill" there and you might be right, the point is it can still be damn hard to make a transformation of habits and ways you might have had for a long time and what a good coach does is help you along the way.
I really do not understand the negative responses in here. Yes her message might be pretty simple and "duh!" but at least she has some interesting connections to scientific theories and like I said above, transformations like that are not only about identifying and then "simply" fixing what's wrong.
I would much rather be coached by someone like her instead of some bullshit NLP training where you are taught how to mind-fuck your victim into scratching his left ear with his right hand, literally.
Go post your latest frags directly to facebook!
Especially in that case this isn't a very smart move at all. Once you tell a lie like that, your best bet is to stick with it until the bitter end.
"Suddenly" discovering a couple of million in hope of folks then looking the other way sounds so absolutely ridiculous of a plan, I honestly doubt that is what they were trying to do. Even if the noose is getting tighter around their necks. They simply cannot be so very delusional.
Why do gigantic oil companies like that get government money to clean up the mess these companies themselves carelessly created in the first place? It is their fault these spills happened, they should be held fully responsible for what they did.
Simple: just upgrade to the IntelliLink Centurion package!
EVE is generally the coolest on the "meta level" of the game. The interface is not great, most people who seriously play it use a lot of tools outside of EVE anyway and practically all organization and communication happens outside of EVE as well. Playing a fleet battle in EVE is mind-numbing boring even when it is just a few hundred ships and unless you are in a titan, you are more or less cannon fodder and won't have very glorious stories to tell. And 90% of the time you have no idea what is going on until later because restricting information flow is one of the key concepts of EVE. So, yes, it is WAY cooler to be reading about what was ACTUALLY going on instead of being one more or less tiny little grunt on the front line.
And in order not to be one of those tiny grunts, it takes a lot of learning the game and the universe inside out and crawling the ranks... EVE is so cool in so many ways but it is much too close to real life and real life jobs and being forced to do certain things to actually make it a fun distraction. Seriously playing EVE is more like having a second job with lots of rules, caveats and social climbing.
Also, Zuckerberg is the only user on facebook whom you CANNOT block. Try it. The site will give you some error and tell you to "try later" but it has not worked in the one or two years I have been trying.
You are referring to an article he wrote about an "old version" of his mix. Several issues have been fixed in the mean time, fiber was one of those things, lack of sulfur was the other. Those are the two I am aware of but it seems there were additional tweaks. TFA essentially links to an old entry.
Because from the point of view of a bank these are not technical challenges and the decisions are not made by people who really understand all the technical details nor do these technical details matter that much. No, really. In banking you have some "standards" and ways how things "always worked" and many of those hark back to the "good ol' days" and the reason nobody changes any of that is because the whole recertification, documentation and roll-out processes involved in doing that could easily cost more than the actual technical project for doing it. So if there is no painful reason to do it, they will happily pay a bit to keep what they have instead of doing a full-blown replacement of everything.
There are a ton of regulations you have to be compliant to and all these old, crappy machines running old software were once modern when they got certified and ever since then everybody still sticks with them because of that and I don't think there are many competitor offering more technologically "sexy" solutions anyway since there does not seem to be a market for it. Just look at how many banking systems are still running on mainframes and were written in COBOL by the retiring breed of mainframe-gurus.
He IS doing something, he brought it to wider attention by getting it on the /. frontpage; if we were serious-business and this was the news, he would be getting paid as a PR guy. Raising public awareness like that can be a good way of putting a bit of pressure on gigantic corporations.
Saying "because labor is so important to a person's identity and dignity" is not only not true it is also quite backwards thinking in the face of talking about a "second machine age". It is not a job that actually matters to people, it is their pay to sustain their lifestyle. Without the need for that, people do not need "a job" but they desire something "to do" which is quite different from "a job" you do for the pay and maybe, maybe because you are one of the lucky ones who actually enjoy what they are doing.
A "second machine age" should free people up from having to work for a living and allow everyone a stable life so you can focus on doing what you actually enjoy and what really matters to you.
The art of managing is an ART and it's a very delicate task.
This is spot-on and the main reason and explanation why so much management training just completely fails by teaching people "KISS" and "SMART" 4-bullet-point tools so solve absolutely-every-situation-ever(tm). A lot of things can make and break your role as a good manager but nothing will do it faster than blindly following 4 steps without having a single "managerial" bone in your body.
And TFA is clearly nothing but a publicity stunt.
I welcome restrictions on who can comment and what someone can say such that we raise the signal to noise ratio and tone down the inanity, the crazy and the spam.
You are actually surprisingly right - but you are making a perfect case for good moderators doing their job well, and not for giving up anonymity.
It is absolutely trivial to create fake IDs on facebook and g+ and none of this will stop professional astro-turfers nor will it deter trolls.
You have got to be on to something because, see, this also works equally well as it does for the summary!
"Given that the parliament is not violating laws it is clear that Assange or his associates would have to have installed recording devices or wiretaps on US helicopters in Iraq". Undeniable right there!
Your main issue is: in every single sentence you told us you said "I want", "I need" something to essentially make the situation better for you and your co-workers and you want the company to spend money for that. This is completely useless since all they hear is you asking for a favor to make your life and your job easier for YOU, and you presented mildly or barely business-relevant arguments as a justification for that but your main points were presented about YOU and your team. It is not an issue for management if you and your coworkers are overworked as long as things are still running; they will brush that off as "the geeks are just whining" or "times are tough but it will get better". It obviously has not been an issue so far that certain projects got delayed. And "we could do better" is something managers don't care about because it is universally always true even if you are the leader in that area.
You mean well but you are selling it completely wrong. If you really want to work on bettering the situation then you got to learn to play politics and understand business and partially go against what feels natural for a tech. That means you need to establish an actual issue in the managers' minds first. This could mean weeks, months if not years of pointing to an issue when it pops up and showing how it affected the business in a negative way. But be warned, nobody likes bad news and to be constantly nagged, so you will need tact. It could be done opportunistically, piggy-backing a crisis. Bob in accounting not being able to start his Excel fast enough is not such an issue. Losing a client because your infrastructure could not provide the necessary information is a very real cause to do something. The whole network being down and nobody being able to access their emails for two days because your only network admin was sick or on vacation is a very serious business risk to consider. If you have shady ethics then such an incident can work wonders if management really does not understand how serious the situation is of not having a backup admin for vital infrastructure. Managers love their emails, that is a point they will instantly understand.
Don't tell them what they should do, show them the real business-relevant issues and be prepared for them to completely ignore it despite all the sense you are making - running a business means constantly balancing more or less serious issues with very serious issues and crises and often getting it wrong and if there is no money then your issues could be severe but they still might be unable to do anything because there simply is no money. If they do listen, be ready to make suggestions and keep things simple and clear. There is a very descriptive saying, "pictures for kids and executives", that is how simple and clear you should keep it. Never argue with "too much work".
Technically quite dangerous. Imagine you are riding a powerful motorcycle well within the speed limit, if you crank the throttle too much when cornering you will slip as many novice riders will tell you is their worst fear. Without ESP and without any other help that Porsche basically lays the same power into your hands. It could probably even spin on the spot like the old 911s did if you let go of the clutch too quickly. A "hair trigger" gas pedal and "it bites your head off" for mistakes means this car needs to be handled correctly regardless of speed.
This boils down to: if the driver wants to drive a Carrera GT because he thinks it is "cool" then they should only hand them to you if you have the necessary training; if you don't, well then it should be mandatory ESP and other stabilizing chips to keep novice drivers from killing themselves and others. This is probably a very European way of viewing things but I stand by it. You don't hand a loaded gun to a kid who has no idea about gun safety.
Don't get me wrong, I fully blame the driver for obviously being unable to handle his car but I think before handing people a car like that you should make sure they are able to drive it and understand their ride because they are putting other drivers and pedestrians in danger as well.
To add to those numbers: Norway has about 5 million people, wikipedia lists a total of 26,200 as "active personal". Typical Norwegian cuisine has a strong focus on game and fish which they can source locally, thus cutting out those dishes means literally nothing in terms of CO2 footprint.
No, it absolutely would not. All those vegetables and other ingredients had to come from somewhere and our food industry just throws things away when they are expired and then they make just as much as before. A "meatless" day per week is ridiculous and useless, all it will do is slightly increase the amount of meat that gets thrown out on this day.
I have no idea why you as an end user need 24bit or ultra high sampling rates, that is just something Neil Young tries to push on to people but it has been shown to be useless and worst case it is harmful.
And in independent listener tests done by heise the AAC codec clearly outperformed both MP3 and OGG.
Rather from a guy named "Klaus", claiming to be a German spy in a gold fish body!