Also speaking from experience, I work between 40 and 50 hours a week. I occasionally respond to an email in the evening, if I notice it and it's easily addressed. Otherwise I leave it until morning. Performance reviews are peer driven, and I've never even *heard* of anyone getting negative marks for taking vacation, let alone having it happen to me. I'm respected and trusted by my largely highly competent peers, and nobody expects me to kill myself working. Sure, sometimes there are emergencies and crunch times, and there are crappy parts of every job, but this is a *very* good place to work.
My perspective may be colored by too much science fiction.
I defined sentience as something like human-level self awareness and intelligence, and assumed that definition was more or less universal. However, at least according to Wikipedia, there's plenty of precedent for the way you're using it.
I think there's a philosophical (or at least semantic) argument buried in there, but it doesn't really matter in relation to your original point that animals can suffer, which is perfectly valid.
Please accept my apology for the derail. It wasn't really relevant and I tend toward the pedantic.;)
Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but since when is the definition of sentience "can experience suffering"? Because an animal can feel pain and fear does not necessarily make them sentient. Sentience is not a prerequisite for the application of ethics.
I had a severe dislike for corporate politics because it irritated me. Now I'd welcome it and play the game, knowing my frustration was due to a genetic condition.
Third variables, also called confounding variables, are variables in an experiment that are not accounted for.
HTH. HAND, you smug asshole.
Wow. I'm guessing you use Facebook a lot, too, right?. I encourage you to read up after you finish posting the status update about how uncomfortable that stick is.
'I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied.'
I think she's lying about not using Facebook.
Re:Should have used PHP.
on
Twitter On Scala
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That's fine for the vast majority of web applications, but you clearly don't understand the scale of the traffic a site like Twitter receives. What do you do when one database machine, no matter how fast, isn't enough? When your load balancer gets overloaded? How about handling that massive search index?
Even a site as simple as Twitter will present you with problems you never expected once it gets that popular. Starting off with something like you suggested is exactly what gets them in the mess they're in now. It must be designed for parallelism and scalability or it will fall over.
That said, if it's properly designed, you can probably make it work in any language, although you can dramatically reduce the number of production machines it takes if you have an efficient compiler/interpreter.
Maybe God is everywhere, aware of us, and simply choosing not to communicate.
Disproving Goddeductively is the opposite of science. The lack of easily obtained evidence for God's existence is far from damning given the area that we are capable of observing with any real scrutiny.
Funny how an argument makes sense in one context but not so much in another. I'm not stating anything about the existence or non-existence of aliens or God, but rather that the argument of "they might exist because you can't prove they don't" is not a very good one.
Re:Hey, remember when Ender's Game was good?
on
Ender in Exile
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· Score: 4, Funny
"basic Mormon tenants"
Those are the best kind. Always out proselytizing so there's hardy any wear on the apartment.
The fact of the matter is that very few independent programmers make it big.
I think that's exactly the mentality many developers are trying to escape by "going rogue". Many of them would be happy making a modest living, never "making it big", while creating the games they want to make.
There is another article in the same issue of Escapist that describes the history of Kingdom of Loathing. Nobody's getting rich there, but they jobs a ton of game developers would kill to have.
While GMail may be unacceptable for business communications in a company of 100+ employees Why? I work for Google, so I'm not entirely impartial, but we use Gmail here with well over 10k employees, and it is by far the best corporate email experience I've had. I'm on several high-volume mailing lists which I have permanently archived and can search through immediately.
With Google Apps, nobody knows your domain is using Gmail, so there's no appearance of unprofessionalism to external companies.
For most large companies, email is not their main focus. It's just a distraction, something they need in order to do their real business. I'd think that offloading that headache would be a relief.
"...maybe just an attempt to slam the big-name Inet companies"
Yup, that's pretty much what Valleywag is. Sometimes funny, but mostly just a troll blog that tries to get on Slashdot by badmouthing big tech companies.
Duh, of course you're right. I did some quick math and figured you could get over 800 megabytes in two hours, and thought, "That should fit a DVD perfectly." I'm still living in the stone age of the CD.
To be fair, the 1 megabit/second speed they want is fast enough to stream DVD quality video, so I don't think compression is going to be an issue. Of course, that just exacerbates the bandwidth issue, but this isn't exactly targeted at the 56k modem user.
It looks like a search for pretty much any "adult" terms comes up blank after a few letters. Seems like there's a censor word list, because certainly many of these terms would return plenty of results.
I recently came across JotSpot (still in beta), which allows users to work with all sorts of structured data in addition to the traditional free-form wiki text.
It's a cool example of what might be the "next-generation" style of wiki.
(speaking about the US here, no experience with UK)
1. They get paid a LOT more than minimum wage. Maybe 5 years ago. Now, I'd say it's more, but I wouldn't say a LOT more (see #4 below).
2. They usually get to work in a climate controlled office. OK, fine.
3. They usually get to sit down. When they're not running to put out a fire, or crawling under desks, or cutting their arms up on server racks (at least in smaller companies).
4. They generally don't have to punch a time clock. That's because they generally are working a hell of a lot more than 40 hours a week. Maybe punching a time clock would be a good way to bring attention to the gross amounts of unpaid overtime.
For those who don't RTFA
on
How to Podcast
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· Score: 3, Informative
and start talking about FCC implications, this has nothing to do with broadcasting. It's a way to distribute radio show-type content TO an ipod, not from it. The distribution mechanism is nothing more interesting than downloading an mp3 specified in an rss feed.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. I don't know which Google you worked for.
Also speaking from experience, I work between 40 and 50 hours a week. I occasionally respond to an email in the evening, if I notice it and it's easily addressed. Otherwise I leave it until morning. Performance reviews are peer driven, and I've never even *heard* of anyone getting negative marks for taking vacation, let alone having it happen to me. I'm respected and trusted by my largely highly competent peers, and nobody expects me to kill myself working. Sure, sometimes there are emergencies and crunch times, and there are crappy parts of every job, but this is a *very* good place to work.
My perspective may be colored by too much science fiction.
I defined sentience as something like human-level self awareness and intelligence, and assumed that definition was more or less universal. However, at least according to Wikipedia, there's plenty of precedent for the way you're using it.
I think there's a philosophical (or at least semantic) argument buried in there, but it doesn't really matter in relation to your original point that animals can suffer, which is perfectly valid.
Please accept my apology for the derail. It wasn't really relevant and I tend toward the pedantic. ;)
Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but since when is the definition of sentience "can experience suffering"? Because an animal can feel pain and fear does not necessarily make them sentient. Sentience is not a prerequisite for the application of ethics.
I had a severe dislike for corporate politics because it irritated me. Now I'd welcome it and play the game, knowing my frustration was due to a genetic condition.
You know, that may just indicate good sense.
Those are the best kind! (Haven't you ever searched through a stack of used textbooks searching for the one with good notes and highlighting?)
Us three skinny white guys walked at a rapid pace in the direction of the circle.
Offensive to pedants and grammar Nazis, too! "WE three skinny white guys." Seriously, my eyeballs are twitching after reading that.
For those who(m?)...
...I know this from English class.
Maybe you should have paid more attention to the basics ;)
Wow. I'm guessing you use Facebook a lot, too, right?. I encourage you to read up after you finish posting the status update about how uncomfortable that stick is.
'I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied.'
I think she's lying about not using Facebook.
That's fine for the vast majority of web applications, but you clearly don't understand the scale of the traffic a site like Twitter receives. What do you do when one database machine, no matter how fast, isn't enough? When your load balancer gets overloaded? How about handling that massive search index?
Even a site as simple as Twitter will present you with problems you never expected once it gets that popular. Starting off with something like you suggested is exactly what gets them in the mess they're in now. It must be designed for parallelism and scalability or it will fall over.
That said, if it's properly designed, you can probably make it work in any language, although you can dramatically reduce the number of production machines it takes if you have an efficient compiler/interpreter.
Maybe God is everywhere, aware of us, and simply choosing not to communicate.
Disproving God deductively is the opposite of science. The lack of easily obtained evidence for God's existence is far from damning given the area that we are capable of observing with any real scrutiny.
Funny how an argument makes sense in one context but not so much in another. I'm not stating anything about the existence or non-existence of aliens or God, but rather that the argument of "they might exist because you can't prove they don't" is not a very good one.
"basic Mormon tenants"
Those are the best kind. Always out proselytizing so there's hardy any wear on the apartment.
The fact of the matter is that very few independent programmers make it big.
I think that's exactly the mentality many developers are trying to escape by "going rogue". Many of them would be happy making a modest living, never "making it big", while creating the games they want to make.
There is another article in the same issue of Escapist that describes the history of Kingdom of Loathing. Nobody's getting rich there, but they jobs a ton of game developers would kill to have.
Yes, lets physicaly harm the week.
That must be what they mean by saying, "I'm going to smack you into next Sunday!"
With Google Apps, nobody knows your domain is using Gmail, so there's no appearance of unprofessionalism to external companies.
For most large companies, email is not their main focus. It's just a distraction, something they need in order to do their real business. I'd think that offloading that headache would be a relief.
"...maybe just an attempt to slam the big-name Inet companies"
Yup, that's pretty much what Valleywag is. Sometimes funny, but mostly just a troll blog that tries to get on Slashdot by badmouthing big tech companies.
Duh, of course you're right. I did some quick math and figured you could get over 800 megabytes in two hours, and thought, "That should fit a DVD perfectly." I'm still living in the stone age of the CD.
To be fair, the 1 megabit/second speed they want is fast enough to stream DVD quality video, so I don't think compression is going to be an issue. Of course, that just exacerbates the bandwidth issue, but this isn't exactly targeted at the 56k modem user.
It looks like a search for pretty much any "adult" terms comes up blank after a few letters. Seems like there's a censor word list, because certainly many of these terms would return plenty of results.
No, an XSS exploit allows javascript to be run, which can be used to grab cookies and send them off somewhere else. This is potentially a HUGE hole.
I recently came across JotSpot (still in beta), which allows users to work with all sorts of structured data in addition to the traditional free-form wiki text.
It's a cool example of what might be the "next-generation" style of wiki.
How about a nice game of chess?
I dunno... if your boss bought in to MySQL, then he may be the suggestible type.
(speaking about the US here, no experience with UK)
1. They get paid a LOT more than minimum wage.
Maybe 5 years ago. Now, I'd say it's more, but I wouldn't say a LOT more (see #4 below).
2. They usually get to work in a climate controlled office.
OK, fine.
3. They usually get to sit down.
When they're not running to put out a fire, or crawling under desks, or cutting their arms up on server racks (at least in smaller companies).
4. They generally don't have to punch a time clock.
That's because they generally are working a hell of a lot more than 40 hours a week. Maybe punching a time clock would be a good way to bring attention to the gross amounts of unpaid overtime.
and start talking about FCC implications, this has nothing to do with broadcasting. It's a way to distribute radio show-type content TO an ipod, not from it. The distribution mechanism is nothing more interesting than downloading an mp3 specified in an rss feed.