No, it's not satire. It's a genuine critique of a not-new technology. We've already had this capability with other software. This one just looks a bit nicer and they're going to gouge you for money.
Honestly, the real critique was about the concept of using this to hold virtual meetings. The technology and the interface are far too limited to deal with all of the input you'd need in a situation like a meeting. You are either concentrating on one or two avatars to get nuances and gestures and thus miss other people, or you're watching everyone and you might as well just be looking at a text stream or listening to a conference call at that point. (Note - the idea of the text balloons FORCES you to "look" at someone in order to converse with them.)
Now, if they wanted to make this into something useful for meetings then you'd have to make some serious changes to the interface. Personally, I'm not saying that they've created a bad thing, I'm just saying that the suggested alternative use for it won't be at all satisfactory.
My problem with the iso-view and the you can get 20 people onto the screen is that you of course lose any useful information from the GUI at that point. In your UO scenario this was practical because that was the only method you had to conduct the meeting. (Maybe you could have had everyone get an IRC client and decide on a net and a channel...) In that case you were already using a particular interface and were also probably planning on actually doing something in UO at the conclusion of the "meeting".
Personally I've participated in video conferences where you end up looking at essentially a group photo because there are too many people at a site. So, you lose any and all nuance (short of maybe a guy mooning you or collapsing) and you might as well be back on the ol' phone conference.
The whole idea of a GUI and an avatar is to substitute for some of the nuance that you miss with plain text. Well if you zoom back far enough to see 20 avatars then you're going to miss that "wink" or "cringe" anyways.
Think about it, you could have your computer host your house/construct. We'd either need a few central servers to hold the overall landscape or just hobbyists.
Beyond that commercial concerns could setup "real estate" and rent out space for buildings and stuff if you wanted real persistence when your machine is off.
Whoops, I think I've just described another set of web servers and a new browser. Maybe we should work with the Mozilla people...
So, try and run a real meeting.
on
Metaverse Launched?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Get ten to twenty "avatars" and sit them around a virtual conference room table. Now have them start "talking" and all of these baloons start popping up. First off, can you see all of them? If you're on one side of the table how do you see the balloons of the people on your side while watching for balloons of people on the other side?
Great, now who's the poor soul who has to type the transcript of this whole meeting. How are they making sure they get things in the right chronological order. (Certain comments won't make any sense unless they follow the comment they were built upon.)
This sounds like a usable interface for 2 or 3 people working together, but it'll break down real quick as the numbers increase.
(Also, one of the joys of IRC was that you could go AFK to take care of something quickly and then go back and read the 'conversation' that happened while you were out.)
First off, who do we organize? All IT workers or just the programmers?
OK, say it's just the programmers. Do we go after the big "body shops"/consultant companies, the independent contractors, or the in-house programmers?
What about the guy who runs the servers and does a "little bit of programming on the side"? How about the guy in accounting who writes all of their spreadsheets? Is it more practical to organize the server rooms first (after all if THEY go on strike...)?
IT is just too amorphous a thing to try to organize it. Not to mention many people work with computers to avoid socializing.:-D
Finally, what do you do with the open source movement? (After all if you're trying to stop code from being produced...)
Well, fill up the jerry can with some petrol and throw it in the boot!
How about: hero, grinder, sub, hoagie Do you drink soda or pop?
Frankly if that's your stand on things then you're going to miss out on dealing with some incredibly intelligent people. Though I suppose you're allowed to think that.
Personally, I'm gonna nip down to the local and toss a couple of jars down my neck.
I know exactly what an asymptote is. It's a discontinuity in an equation. Usually caused by the equation spiraling off to infinity or an uncalculatable number.
The point is that while you can in fact "represent" a geometrical progression it is still considered to progress off into useless areas quite quickly because of the constant doubling.
You can either reduce the scale of your x-axis so that you have esentially a point source or you'll quickly run off the scale of your y-axis.
Either way, representing a geometric progression beyond a finite number of steps is useless thus the usual method is to represent it running off to infinity.
Of course you're dealing with an abstract notion versus the physical limitations of the real world.
We already know you cannot achieve infinite doublings. Additionally, the scaling up of the Y-axis in order to make even a tiny step on the X-axis gets progressively "worse".
So, yes, theoretically there is no asymptote in a geometric progression. However, for all practical uses there is one quite rapidly.
(Think about going from say infinity-1 to [[infinity - 1] squared] to make the next step on the x-axis.)
There are both vertical and horizontal asymptotes. Look at the Sine, Cosine, and Tangent graphs.
In the case of an exponential function you have slow growth, acceleration, then a rush towards infinity. That final part is the vertical asymptote as you cannot progress further along the horizontal axis.
Ouch. My brain is now full of dust from those old math books...:-}
The main thing here that most people are saying is, "Well, DUH! It's not like they haven't done this before."
As some people have correctly pointed out, the accused was recently slapped down (though not terribly hard) for behavior exactly like this.
Finally, since we're not the body responsible for trying this case we're certainly allowed to think anything we want. As long as the body that actually does resolve this is impartial than that's all that matters.
Cutting a deal with the evil one at least gets you the terms of the contract. (They may be interpretted exteremely literally, but he can't break the words.)
In this case, MS didn't even live up to their end of the contract while (allegedly) actively working to undermine their partner.
The Brain is an interface on top of your current FS. Things like this have been done going back to the days of the Leading Edge Word Processor (separate file to get around the 8.3 naming conventions).
I believe the point that this mad scientist was making was that he's completely replaced the FS with this new database-based one.
It's certainly not innovative, but it's something different I guess.
I think the big problem with teaching abstinence in schools is that most of these schools take it as an excuse to not teach anything else.
They merely say "don't have sex" and consider the case solved. This has to be taught within the context of healthy relationships, sensible precautions, actual dangers (not overhyped, context-less ones), and real options.
It's just simply not enough to merely say "don't do it."
ASP script on a Win2k box, tied to an Access DB, which runs MySQL queries, spitting out XML which is parsed in Director. Does this guy actually realizes what he has written?
The infrastructure that MS has is the OEM's and the Corporate IT heads.
It doesn't matter how many people you have pushing your product by word of mouth. If it doesn't appear "auto-magically" on that new PC that John Q. Public gets from CompUSA/Best Buy/Circuit City/etc. then your chances of making any significant inroads versus MS are essentially zero.
The next best thing we can do is have "convert a newbie" day and everyone rebuild a friend's PC with Linux or other non-MS OS of choice. You will of course have to commit to coming back multiple times when they buy their new camera, printer, scanner, etc. Also, you'll need to make the system dual boot if they're a serious gamer.
MS may have made huge mistakes and continue to "squander opportunities", but as long as people like Michael Dell live in Bill Gates' back pocket then there's not a whole heck of a lot that can be done.
I think your reply was as far to the other side of the issue as the original one was.
There are some serious issues with the (mis)use of H1B visas here in the US. While they are not directly to blame for all of the IT misery that some people are encountering, they are certainly contributing to it.
Examples: resume loading. Most companies wait until the last minute for getting IT workers and then have a laundry list of buzz words that they're looking for on the resumes. They go to these body shops with their list, the shop loads those buzzwords onto a resume and ship out the person. (Yes, they should be interviewed carefully to determine if they actually have the claimed qualifications.) These people can be weeded out, but meanwhile the collection of resumes of experienced people are completely ignored because they don't have those keywords in them.
Second: salary. H1B IT workers generally make less money than their coworkers. Companies hire them because their rates are more attractive and the body shops are taking big cuts from the money that is being paid. And the victims of all this can't do a thing about it. Why? Well, rock the boat and you're stuck on the next one back home. Remember, no work, no reason to stay.
So, both sides (resident programmers and H1B's) are victims in this equation.
The real problem to point the finger at is contract workers. Everything is done with perma-temps now. No loyalty, no job security, no insurance.
Slashdot Mirror
NON damnation agreement?
:-D
Nope, it's definitely a DA.
I had misread that final part there and it was much funnier:
Separating common citizens from French terrorists by bombarding them with McDonalds...
Though I suppose if used often enough on a person a Big Mac no longer is non-lethal.
No, it's not satire. It's a genuine critique of a not-new technology. We've already had this capability with other software. This one just looks a bit nicer and they're going to gouge you for money.
Honestly, the real critique was about the concept of using this to hold virtual meetings. The technology and the interface are far too limited to deal with all of the input you'd need in a situation like a meeting. You are either concentrating on one or two avatars to get nuances and gestures and thus miss other people, or you're watching everyone and you might as well just be looking at a text stream or listening to a conference call at that point. (Note - the idea of the text balloons FORCES you to "look" at someone in order to converse with them.)
Now, if they wanted to make this into something useful for meetings then you'd have to make some serious changes to the interface. Personally, I'm not saying that they've created a bad thing, I'm just saying that the suggested alternative use for it won't be at all satisfactory.
My problem with the iso-view and the you can get 20 people onto the screen is that you of course lose any useful information from the GUI at that point. In your UO scenario this was practical because that was the only method you had to conduct the meeting. (Maybe you could have had everyone get an IRC client and decide on a net and a channel...) In that case you were already using a particular interface and were also probably planning on actually doing something in UO at the conclusion of the "meeting".
Personally I've participated in video conferences where you end up looking at essentially a group photo because there are too many people at a site. So, you lose any and all nuance (short of maybe a guy mooning you or collapsing) and you might as well be back on the ol' phone conference.
The whole idea of a GUI and an avatar is to substitute for some of the nuance that you miss with plain text. Well if you zoom back far enough to see 20 avatars then you're going to miss that "wink" or "cringe" anyways.
Think about it, you could have your computer host your house/construct. We'd either need a few central servers to hold the overall landscape or just hobbyists.
Beyond that commercial concerns could setup "real estate" and rent out space for buildings and stuff if you wanted real persistence when your machine is off.
Whoops, I think I've just described another set of web servers and a new browser. Maybe we should work with the Mozilla people...
Get ten to twenty "avatars" and sit them around a virtual conference room table. Now have them start "talking" and all of these baloons start popping up. First off, can you see all of them? If you're on one side of the table how do you see the balloons of the people on your side while watching for balloons of people on the other side?
Great, now who's the poor soul who has to type the transcript of this whole meeting. How are they making sure they get things in the right chronological order. (Certain comments won't make any sense unless they follow the comment they were built upon.)
This sounds like a usable interface for 2 or 3 people working together, but it'll break down real quick as the numbers increase.
(Also, one of the joys of IRC was that you could go AFK to take care of something quickly and then go back and read the 'conversation' that happened while you were out.)
Well, if you'll just sign here I'll explain it all to you... >:-D
(Yeah, pop culture.)
First off, who do we organize? All IT workers or just the programmers?
:-D
OK, say it's just the programmers. Do we go after the big "body shops"/consultant companies, the independent contractors, or the in-house programmers?
What about the guy who runs the servers and does a "little bit of programming on the side"? How about the guy in accounting who writes all of their spreadsheets? Is it more practical to organize the server rooms first (after all if THEY go on strike...)?
IT is just too amorphous a thing to try to organize it. Not to mention many people work with computers to avoid socializing.
Finally, what do you do with the open source movement? (After all if you're trying to stop code from being produced...)
Well, fill up the jerry can with some petrol and throw it in the boot!
How about: hero, grinder, sub, hoagie
Do you drink soda or pop?
Frankly if that's your stand on things then you're going to miss out on dealing with some incredibly intelligent people. Though I suppose you're allowed to think that.
Personally, I'm gonna nip down to the local and toss a couple of jars down my neck.
Not even.
I know exactly what an asymptote is. It's a discontinuity in an equation. Usually caused by the equation spiraling off to infinity or an uncalculatable number.
The point is that while you can in fact "represent" a geometrical progression it is still considered to progress off into useless areas quite quickly because of the constant doubling.
You can either reduce the scale of your x-axis so that you have esentially a point source or you'll quickly run off the scale of your y-axis.
Either way, representing a geometric progression beyond a finite number of steps is useless thus the usual method is to represent it running off to infinity.
Of course you're dealing with an abstract notion versus the physical limitations of the real world.
We already know you cannot achieve infinite doublings. Additionally, the scaling up of the Y-axis in order to make even a tiny step on the X-axis gets progressively "worse".
So, yes, theoretically there is no asymptote in a geometric progression. However, for all practical uses there is one quite rapidly.
(Think about going from say infinity-1 to [[infinity - 1] squared] to make the next step on the x-axis.)
There are both vertical and horizontal asymptotes. Look at the Sine, Cosine, and Tangent graphs.
:-}
In the case of an exponential function you have slow growth, acceleration, then a rush towards infinity. That final part is the vertical asymptote as you cannot progress further along the horizontal axis.
Ouch. My brain is now full of dust from those old math books...
The main thing here that most people are saying is, "Well, DUH! It's not like they haven't done this before."
As some people have correctly pointed out, the accused was recently slapped down (though not terribly hard) for behavior exactly like this.
Finally, since we're not the body responsible for trying this case we're certainly allowed to think anything we want. As long as the body that actually does resolve this is impartial than that's all that matters.
Cutting a deal with the evil one at least gets you the terms of the contract. (They may be interpretted exteremely literally, but he can't break the words.)
In this case, MS didn't even live up to their end of the contract while (allegedly) actively working to undermine their partner.
After all, it would only be War version 1.0. :-D
Though it would be funny seeing a bunch of subs spelling out '0wn3d' after they opened the Word document containing their battle orders.
I'm apparently not reading too well today. I managed to skip that sentence and zeroed in on the later one about changing libraries.
Consider this a "luxery PC" and the market for these items is generally small, but profitable.
.sig begged for it.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist. I have no tolerance for bad journalism!
Luxury, perhaps? Yeah, it's picking nits but the
If you calculate the whole thing using an old Pentium 90 chip you can probably save yourself millions.
Hmmm, maybe they just forgot to upgrade the accountant PC's over at Enron and WorldCom...
The Brain is an interface on top of your current FS. Things like this have been done going back to the days of the Leading Edge Word Processor (separate file to get around the 8.3 naming conventions).
I believe the point that this mad scientist was making was that he's completely replaced the FS with this new database-based one.
It's certainly not innovative, but it's something different I guess.
I think the big problem with teaching abstinence in schools is that most of these schools take it as an excuse to not teach anything else.
They merely say "don't have sex" and consider the case solved. This has to be taught within the context of healthy relationships, sensible precautions, actual dangers (not overhyped, context-less ones), and real options.
It's just simply not enough to merely say "don't do it."
ASP script on a Win2k box, tied to an Access DB, which runs MySQL queries, spitting out XML which is parsed in Director. Does this guy actually realizes what he has written?
Windows.KNOT?
But they can't search for duplicate articles from a week ago? :-D
"Hi, I'm Gary Gygax and I'm..."
[rolls dice]
"...pleased to meet ya!"
You have to wonder just how many people completely missed that.
The infrastructure that MS has is the OEM's and the Corporate IT heads.
It doesn't matter how many people you have pushing your product by word of mouth. If it doesn't appear "auto-magically" on that new PC that John Q. Public gets from CompUSA/Best Buy/Circuit City/etc. then your chances of making any significant inroads versus MS are essentially zero.
The next best thing we can do is have "convert a newbie" day and everyone rebuild a friend's PC with Linux or other non-MS OS of choice. You will of course have to commit to coming back multiple times when they buy their new camera, printer, scanner, etc. Also, you'll need to make the system dual boot if they're a serious gamer.
MS may have made huge mistakes and continue to "squander opportunities", but as long as people like Michael Dell live in Bill Gates' back pocket then there's not a whole heck of a lot that can be done.
I think your reply was as far to the other side of the issue as the original one was.
There are some serious issues with the (mis)use of H1B visas here in the US. While they are not directly to blame for all of the IT misery that some people are encountering, they are certainly contributing to it.
Examples: resume loading. Most companies wait until the last minute for getting IT workers and then have a laundry list of buzz words that they're looking for on the resumes. They go to these body shops with their list, the shop loads those buzzwords onto a resume and ship out the person. (Yes, they should be interviewed carefully to determine if they actually have the claimed qualifications.) These people can be weeded out, but meanwhile the collection of resumes of experienced people are completely ignored because they don't have those keywords in them.
Second: salary. H1B IT workers generally make less money than their coworkers. Companies hire them because their rates are more attractive and the body shops are taking big cuts from the money that is being paid. And the victims of all this can't do a thing about it. Why? Well, rock the boat and you're stuck on the next one back home. Remember, no work, no reason to stay.
So, both sides (resident programmers and H1B's) are victims in this equation.
The real problem to point the finger at is contract workers. Everything is done with perma-temps now. No loyalty, no job security, no insurance.