I often tell non-Norwegians that my first name is pronounced "howcome". That's close, but not quite.
I understand that people can get aggravated trying to get others to pronounce their names, but it always comes across as incredibly condescending when they do that "You can't really pronounce my name but here's a comical substitute!" thing. (The most egregious was in Clinton's first campaign, when George Stephanopolous was telling people to pronounce his last name "stuffinenvelopes".)
Especially in a multicultural country, people are used to learning unfamiliar names. If I can handle Thai, Cambodian or Hindi names, I can deal with a damn Norwegian!
I'm a roboticist and I have to take issue with this sample bias.
Sure, I'm not making assertions about market share at all. (I don't have the slightest idea, and you and some others replying clearly do.) I'm just saying that the use of Windows in robotics is hardly as unprecedented as the link makes it sound.
I'm prepared to accept that there are plenty of programming systems for automation that are Windows-based, but actual robots?
Most "robots" *are* just automated devices, not Commander Data-like sentient androids. Take this Quadra 3 SPE, for example. (Note: Windows-based!)
That's why I always laugh when people here spout off about Asimov's Laws in connection with industrial robotics. It's like complaining that your toaster oven should know not to burn you.
And no, despite the timing, it's not a case of the company's engineers taking Microsoft on a crazy tangent now that Bill Gates is shifting away from his day-to-day oversight.
What "crazy tangent"? Every robotic system I've ever worked with was controlled by software running on Windows (or DOS).
I don't think you need to invoke anything specifc about Asians -- you can't "just open" a new Princeton or Oxford any more than you can do it for Fudan or Keio.
Now, I'm sure there are exceptions but I think that it would be an interesting survey to compare people who work in dirty grimy environments with people who work in corporate America.
IIRC, the original study that popularized this idea compared Germans who grew up in cities and on farms and found a lower rate of allergies in the latter.
As for this mouse study -- lab mice and wild mice are extremely different animals, as lab mouse strains (which used to be pet mouse strains) as have been selected for two hundred years to grow in close quarters. It's very hard to distinguish environmental and genetic effects in this case.
The difference in cost between broadband options seems to be the primary motivator for consumer spending, reports News.com. Frugal consumers are opting for the lower-priced DSL options, while those with more money to spend on services are opting for cable modems.
OK, if that qualifies as news, I think it's time to shut the computer down and start the weekend...
It seems like a lot of work to go to and not give the spreadsheet a credible name, unlessthe hax0rs are targeting camelCase users. Why not use "2007 Budget.xls" or "Vacation days.xls" or "World Cup Pool.xls"?
And finally, if you spend someone else's money on someone else, you don't care how much you spend, and you don't care how well it is spent.
I think you're illustrating your own point! It's easy for you to look at hundreds of millions of dollars flying out of my bonus pool and shrug and say "Who is John Galt?" But *I* care!!!!
I'm not sure you're right anyway. (Remember that this isn't personal income tax -- you reduce your taxable income just as effectively by wasting a million dollars on a useless project as you do by giving it to a non-profit.) But in any case, paying taxes on money beats the hell out of throwing it out the window.
Sure, I understand the rationale for it. The question is whether there's an alternate budgeting system that doesn't create an incentive to hold an end-of-year blowout. I can't believe no economist has ever taken a shot at this problem.
Instead of coming up with better ways to waste money at the end of the fiscal year (incidentally, everybody's fiscal year doesn't necessarily end in June):
Does anyone's company have a practice that eliminates the incentive to waste money this way in the first place? The amount of money thrown away in this fashion is staggering and it happens in pretty much every organization, private or public. Surely some accountant, finance head or game theorist has come up with a solution, or at least an improvement, no?
Heh, I'm so accustomed to "You mistyped..." as the preface to Snotty (and usually misspelled) Nerd Sarcasm, it took a moment to realize that you were being genuinely helpful!
Homer: Son, you tried, and you failed. The lesson is: Never Try.
Usually a good lesson, but in this case -- Mini-Microsoft's obsession wasn't towels, it was the stack ranking system, which has just been changed, almost certainly due to his/her high-profile complaining. I'd call that a pretty big success, to change a core HR policy in a company of that size.
I never found Scoble interesting, but his major goal seemed to be to become An Important Blogger. Which he now is (by blogostandards of "important"). So the lesson is Blog, And Get Everything You Blogowant!
They're kind of like the BOFH, really, only they use expulsion and no graduation rather than killing people - they consider it their job to keep the network running smoothly, and if it means kicking people off and expelling them / denying graduation / etc., they'll do it - because they only need to worry about the network, not the people.
Err, yeah... Two things:
1) If I may gently offer some advice -- being smarter than other people doesn't mean you always have to get your way. I get your technical point, but it's their network, not yours. Honestly, you'd be wise to learn that lesson now before you have to learn it with much more serious consequences in the future.
2) You seem to have had good intentions, if rather poor judgment. The intentions of the guy in the original question are left unclear, and I'm inclined to assume poorly about them.
In my IANAL-And-He's-Not-Telling-Us-The-Whole-Story opinion:
1) The kid and his friends were repeatedly and systematically violating school rules, and can certainly be punished.
2) The precise ultimatum that the school gave him is probably not within the school's power to make.
3) The question is how much effort and money he's willing to expend in court on a grey area case, when the school would be perfectly within bounds to give him a clearly legal and much more serious punishment.
4) I don't get what the US government's role in this is supposed to be.
I'm generally a Barlow fan, but that's some of the most poorestly chosen words in the history of language.
I don't think they're "poorestly chosen" at all -- Barlow views it as a flattering bit of analogy and it never occurred to him that anyone else wouldn't.
People laughed at me for not bothering to switch from a.out, but who's laughing now? Go enjoy your fancy new 1.0 kernel in prison, losers! And take that newfangled glibc with you!
However, if it's indeed business reasons, one would have to wonder why Microsoft, Yahoo, et al have not been pulling out too.
Google's image (and stock valuation) are based heavily around the company's halo. They're a lot more sensitive to criticism of their integrity than Yahoo is, let alone Microsoft.
That said, I'll still give them credit for doing the right thing, should they actually do it. I do wonder if all the hyper-fanboys who were talking about how Google is saving China, so providing censored search results is Not Evil and bowing to pressure to not do so would be Evil, are going to criticize them should they leave.
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I understand that people can get aggravated trying to get others to pronounce their names, but it always comes across as incredibly condescending when they do that "You can't really pronounce my name but here's a comical substitute!" thing. (The most egregious was in Clinton's first campaign, when George Stephanopolous was telling people to pronounce his last name "stuffinenvelopes".)
Especially in a multicultural country, people are used to learning unfamiliar names. If I can handle Thai, Cambodian or Hindi names, I can deal with a damn Norwegian!
Sure, I'm not making assertions about market share at all. (I don't have the slightest idea, and you and some others replying clearly do.) I'm just saying that the use of Windows in robotics is hardly as unprecedented as the link makes it sound.
Most "robots" *are* just automated devices, not Commander Data-like sentient androids. Take this Quadra 3 SPE, for example. (Note: Windows-based!)
That's why I always laugh when people here spout off about Asimov's Laws in connection with industrial robotics. It's like complaining that your toaster oven should know not to burn you.
What "crazy tangent"? Every robotic system I've ever worked with was controlled by software running on Windows (or DOS).
I don't think you need to invoke anything specifc about Asians -- you can't "just open" a new Princeton or Oxford any more than you can do it for Fudan or Keio.
IIRC, the original study that popularized this idea compared Germans who grew up in cities and on farms and found a lower rate of allergies in the latter.
As for this mouse study -- lab mice and wild mice are extremely different animals, as lab mouse strains (which used to be pet mouse strains) as have been selected for two hundred years to grow in close quarters. It's very hard to distinguish environmental and genetic effects in this case.
Errr, actually it's deserving of ridicule for two reasons, and both of us missed the second -- "Lotus Notus"?
That sentence is certainly deserving of ridicule, but I think you're missing why...
OK, if that qualifies as news, I think it's time to shut the computer down and start the weekend...
It seems like a lot of work to go to and not give the spreadsheet a credible name, unlessthe hax0rs are targeting camelCase users. Why not use "2007 Budget.xls" or "Vacation days.xls" or "World Cup Pool.xls"?
I think you're illustrating your own point! It's easy for you to look at hundreds of millions of dollars flying out of my bonus pool and shrug and say "Who is John Galt?" But *I* care!!!!
I'm not sure you're right anyway. (Remember that this isn't personal income tax -- you reduce your taxable income just as effectively by wasting a million dollars on a useless project as you do by giving it to a non-profit.) But in any case, paying taxes on money beats the hell out of throwing it out the window.
Sure, I understand the rationale for it. The question is whether there's an alternate budgeting system that doesn't create an incentive to hold an end-of-year blowout. I can't believe no economist has ever taken a shot at this problem.
Does anyone's company have a practice that eliminates the incentive to waste money this way in the first place? The amount of money thrown away in this fashion is staggering and it happens in pretty much every organization, private or public. Surely some accountant, finance head or game theorist has come up with a solution, or at least an improvement, no?
Wow! That's pretty much what I got on my last employee evaluation, so you know it must be a hell of a book.
Heh, I'm so accustomed to "You mistyped..." as the preface to Snotty (and usually misspelled) Nerd Sarcasm, it took a moment to realize that you were being genuinely helpful!
That's what I had understood "But either way, they don't get their way..." to mean -- maybe I misunderstood.
But it certainly was a memorable few blogodays!
Usually a good lesson, but in this case -- Mini-Microsoft's obsession wasn't towels, it was the stack ranking system, which has just been changed, almost certainly due to his/her high-profile complaining. I'd call that a pretty big success, to change a core HR policy in a company of that size.
I never found Scoble interesting, but his major goal seemed to be to become An Important Blogger. Which he now is (by blogostandards of "important"). So the lesson is Blog, And Get Everything You Blogowant!
Err, yeah... Two things:
1) If I may gently offer some advice -- being smarter than other people doesn't mean you always have to get your way. I get your technical point, but it's their network, not yours. Honestly, you'd be wise to learn that lesson now before you have to learn it with much more serious consequences in the future.
2) You seem to have had good intentions, if rather poor judgment. The intentions of the guy in the original question are left unclear, and I'm inclined to assume poorly about them.
In my IANAL-And-He's-Not-Telling-Us-The-Whole-Story opinion:
1) The kid and his friends were repeatedly and systematically violating school rules, and can certainly be punished.
2) The precise ultimatum that the school gave him is probably not within the school's power to make.
3) The question is how much effort and money he's willing to expend in court on a grey area case, when the school would be perfectly within bounds to give him a clearly legal and much more serious punishment.
4) I don't get what the US government's role in this is supposed to be.
I don't think they're "poorestly chosen" at all -- Barlow views it as a flattering bit of analogy and it never occurred to him that anyone else wouldn't.
People laughed at me for not bothering to switch from a.out, but who's laughing now? Go enjoy your fancy new 1.0 kernel in prison, losers! And take that newfangled glibc with you!
With the latter, the 20% difference is at least plausible; if the former, I agree that it's absurd.
Google's image (and stock valuation) are based heavily around the company's halo. They're a lot more sensitive to criticism of their integrity than Yahoo is, let alone Microsoft.
That said, I'll still give them credit for doing the right thing, should they actually do it. I do wonder if all the hyper-fanboys who were talking about how Google is saving China, so providing censored search results is Not Evil and bowing to pressure to not do so would be Evil, are going to criticize them should they leave.