Cool story. Glad your dad is ok. You know the most striking thing to me in this story is the absence of a helicopter.
If Owensboro is big enough to have it's own hospital it's big enough to have a LifeFlight Helicopter.
I've seen them in some pretty rural areas.
A friend of mine recently posted this to her Facebook wall with a comment about people invading privacy and "stealing" her information:
So I asked in the nicest way possible "Did you think the people writing those quizzes were volunteers or worked for some kind of charity? What would you think if this stuff showed up in your inbox? Would you click on it?". Her reply was amazing. She TRUSTED facebook!
How is this even news? It's news because it's a new medium and people seem to need to learn all the old rules over again. There would be zero story here if these quiz offers and games were showing up in people's snail mail boxes. Just recently we've all gotten bored and thoroughly "experienced" with the same phenomenon arriving via email (w1n F1Fty d0llar$! Click here!). I don't know why people need to learn the same lessons over and over again, but they will, and then stories like this will be as dull and "back page" as stories about the mailman bringing junkmail, or nigerians wanting help in your inbox. Kind of sad but I guess that's (most) humans and there's not much to be done about it.
From the summary, doesn't it bother anyone that Nigel Poole isn't the director of anything. He's the director of an adjective or adverb. "Director of Commercial".
Director of Commercial WHAT? Commercial Espionage? Commercial Litigation? Commercial Applications of Research? Or maybe he's Director of Television Commercials? Who can tell?
Really really big numbers can be hard for the human brain to get a grip on. But more to the point, operating at large scales presents problems unique to the scale. Think of baking cookies. Doing this in your kitchen is a familiar thing to most people. But the kitchen method doesn't translate well to an industrial scale. Keebler doesn't use a million gallon bowl and cranes with giant beaters on the end. They don't have ovens the size of a cruise ships. Just because you can make awesome cookies in your kitchen doesn't qualify you one bit to work for Keebler.
Whether it's cookies or scientific inquiry it's a good idea to prepare students to process things on the appropriate scale.
"if I turned your hilariously asymmetric visage into an internet meme, and you became the office joke and punching bag, you'd probably sympathise."
I call BS. You don't lash out and sue. You teach your kid to take lemons and make lemonade out of them.
He probably could have gone on Letterman, ran for class president, and started his own highly successful blog, if his parents wouldn't have been total morons and instead had helped him the right way.
Millions of people of all ages would give their left foot for the kind of spotlight he had on him. He took beautiful lemons and made poison out of them.
> let us assume for the moment that there is a right leaning cable news channel and a chain (singular I assume) of newspapers... how does that compare to the overwhelming number of left leaning networks (plural) and chains of papers (plural again)?
Nowhere else in the world, or at least nowhere that anyone wants to live, would most of the "left leaning media" that you describe be considered "left leaning". The only way to make them appear "left leaning" is for you to stand extremely far to the right.
Heck if you're all the way to The Right then even "Freedom of the Press" becomes a rebellious liberal idea.
Believe it or not I actually have a ton of respect for IT. For 12 years I was IT.
The point is not how hard you or I are to replace. The point is that companies exist to make money. Anyone who throws up enough roadblocks to making money is harming the company and can't (or shouldn't) remain. IT exists to facilitate the people and processes that make money. IT, for the vast majority of companies, is a cost center. If you implement a system or policy that takes time or efficiency away from 5000 users in a profit center you better be prepared for a major shitstorm. Your job is to help them make money. If you're not doing that then paying you becomes a losing scenario for the company, regardless of how hard you are to replace.
>NOBODY successful gives a shit about 60 hours, because they dont count them. They just get things done, and look for more to do.
Spoken like someone with no family (and no other life either).
>purchase YOUR OWN laptop, on which to conduct your personal business
Spoken like someone who enjoys carrying two laptops everywhere.
Thank you Mordac. But you need to get a clue. Your job is to ENABLE the people who make money. Even if I thought carrying two laptops around sounded like fun, having me switch back and forth all evening isn't in anyone's best interest. It's just plain silly. While we're at it, quit pretending I have government secrets on my company laptop. Due diligence means putting a lock on the doors and installing some basic security. It doesn't mean having everyone go through a Maxwell Smart routine to get into the building. The same is true for computers. If you keep passing out hyper restrictive security solutions that rob us of time and reek of your own self-importance then eventually we'll have you replaced. You make no money for the company. Remember?
(no USB access or even no USB ports if they aren't needed)
This sort of mentality drives me up a wall. Let's pretend we're the Pentagon and take half the usefulness out of modern technology before we let our users us it. No thanks. You're a cost center. I make the company money. If I want to plug a cordless mouse into my laptop to make my 60 hour week easier than I'm going to do that. If you can't figure out a way to let me then F@(% YOU. Sorry but that's how most of us feel. This is the laptop I carry with me everywhere and use all the time. It's the one I take on vacation so I can WORK from vacation. So of course I'm going to want to plug a camera into it and use it for personal use. If you want me to treat it like I don't own it then I'll start leaving it at the office and you can take 15-20 hours of my work every week and shove it. You can't have it both ways. The chance that somebody is targeting the company with a non-scan-able customized piece of malware through the jpegs on my camera's SD card is close enough to NIL. Create a white list of file types, scan the thumbdrive or memory card, do whatever you need to do short of turning into Mordac - Preventer of Information Services. And let me get on with my life. And while you're at it take the 95 things in my system tray that slow my machine down to a crawl and send them to oblivion.
The company has unsecured trash dumpsters, unsecured phone lines, an unsecured fax machine sitting in every hallway, and people in the mailroom that make 8 bucks an hour. How about addressing those things and getting some perspective before turning my laptop into a 60-hour per week jail sentence. Thanks.
"Because Tolkien should be free to be adapted and misused by every leach out there, not just the official leaches? You REALLY aren't thinking this through."
Yeah it just sucks that anybody can just adapt and misuse Shakespeare, the Greek tragedies and comedies, Grimm's Fairy Tales, etc. etc. It makes me sick that anybody can just retell Goldilocks or make a cartoon out of Red Riding Hood. I'm so glad we lock down works of art in perpetuity these days./Sarcasm
Our National Religion isn't even the Almighty Dollar. If it were, then you could say the phrase
"A rising tide lifts all ships."
and it wouldn't cause Free Market Conservatives to go into apoplexy.
If I'm an executive in "Corporate America" and I can layoff 5000 workers, save a little bit for the company over the next few quarters, and get the board to give me a few million in reward money, then I'm just doing the job I'm supposed to be doing. But now we have 5000 people who can't afford to buy anything. That's no good in a consumer driven economy.
The top 1 percent of earners now take home 23 percent of total national income. The rest of us are their serfs. We don't mind much during the good times. We have great entertainments. But during the bad times we get mighty riled up and sometimes win elections. We start tossing about ideas with socialistic leanings. What happens then? The Holders of Capital convince enough people that the government is no good. That capitalism is our way of life. So e.g. instead of getting public high speed rail for everyone (similar to how the Interstate system works) we get handouts to Amtrak wanna-be's so they can free-enterprise slow trains and upgrade them as they gain in popularity. Ridiculous. We had that 100 years ago and they're gone for a reason. But I digress.
Unenlightened GREED is our National Religion. Finders Keepers.
"Fault is entirely irrelevant in the decision-making process."
That sounds exactly like somebody who refuses to learn from their own mistakes, or the mistakes of others.
If nobody worried about fault we could happily make the same bad decisions over and over again.
That would surely be double-plus ungood.
"Compressing your timeframe" means that there is a lot more of history that you are doomed to repeat. It's happening right now. We have a war on drugs, 23% of national income going to the top 1% of earners, we've got tons of folks clamoring for a New Deal and public works, we've seen massive corporatization (media & Internet), we're even having our version of the Red Scare, the list goes on. So yes time is compressed. We're repeating much of 1920-1950 and with new technology we're doing it in a fraction of the time for 100x more people. But you sound like you probably have no idea what I'm talking about?
There's a George Orwell quote that would go nicely here.
Oh no I left my phone at home"
- We could go right back and get it.
I think I left it right on the counter
- Do you want to turn around and get it?
I think we just did?!
- Oh shit! Where the hell are we?
What about defining intelligence as the ability to learn? That makes the most sense to me.
That covers the alien with the x-ray vision and thick hide that can learn to scratch messages in the sand, and the baby that can't feed itself but can learn to speak. It should also cover the AI that can't form a coherent sentence to pass a turing test (at the moment), as long as it's good at learning.
Quit trying to make Adult AIs that seem smart and instead make an infantile one that seems like an imbecile but can learn like an infant.
I predict the first true synthetic intelligence will come from somebody who says "Ok I'm all done coding, it doesn't do anything yet, we have to spend a few years raising it."
My dog is impeccably trained. Because he listens almost perfectly, I can "spoil" him without spoiling him. Training was fun for both of us. Many breeds of dog have been bred so that they are happy and pleased to perform and obey. He was trained with rewards, never a bite or slap. He wags his tail when he does a good job. He gets extremely pleased with himself. He does the local agility course alongside the off-duty "pros". He impresses everybody with his good manners.
Granted cats are different. But it's a fact if you had trained yours correctly you'd never need to bite or thwap her. If you're so grandly human, be more clever next time.
Which one produces the more fulfilling relationship, the person who "buys a dog and owns it" or the person who "adopts a dog and cares for him"?
Who has a more loving happily-trained pet? The person who treats their dog or cat like one of the family, or the person who treats their pet like something separate from their family?
We haven't lost the distinction. We've accepted the best metaphor for a mutually fulfilling relationship. My dog thinks I'm the leader of his pack. I'm happy thinking of my dog as my 3rd child, the one with all the fur. We both get to act naturally for the most part while those roles mesh perfectly. We both benefit.
If you don't understand that then please please do NOT become a pet owner. Your pet will feel lousy, act out, mope, resent you, and be a "bad pet". In reality there are no bad pets, just bad owners.**
**Being a good owner starts with the decision of IF and then WHAT EXACTLY to buy. If for instance you buy a pet based solely on appearances, you're most likely to end up with a great looking pet that does not fit with your lifestyle at all. You're screwed before you even get it home. *Adopt* a pet that can become a valued member of your family, or else stay away please. Or maybe a goldfish or hermit crab would be your best choice.
I find it interesting how well dogs are able to understand tone of voice. My dog understands the tone of my voice at least as well as my wife and kids.
I'd be surprised to learn a monkey could do that.
For instance I could say "vegetable" or "spaceship" in the right tone of voice and my dog would react perfectly to the tone and completely ignore the actual word meaning. He even knows when he wants a treat, if I raise my eyebrows at him and give him a look that I expect him to sit. I don't think he's unique among dogs. I do think that in some ways dogs are probably smarter than monkeys. And possible my neighbors.
Hmmm.. so how important is tone of voice in linguistics and language development? More or less important than word order?
Slashdot Mirror
Cool story. Glad your dad is ok.
You know the most striking thing to me in this story is the absence of a helicopter.
If Owensboro is big enough to have it's own hospital it's big enough to have a LifeFlight Helicopter. I've seen them in some pretty rural areas.
Beware Greeks bearing gifts. Thousands of years, same lessons. Sigh.
Stupid slashcode. Link from above: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114187478&from=mobile
A friend of mine recently posted this to her Facebook wall with a comment about people invading privacy and "stealing" her information:
So I asked in the nicest way possible "Did you think the people writing those quizzes were volunteers or worked for some kind of charity? What would you think if this stuff showed up in your inbox? Would you click on it?". Her reply was amazing. She TRUSTED facebook!
How is this even news? It's news because it's a new medium and people seem to need to learn all the old rules over again. There would be zero story here if these quiz offers and games were showing up in people's snail mail boxes. Just recently we've all gotten bored and thoroughly "experienced" with the same phenomenon arriving via email (w1n F1Fty d0llar$! Click here!). I don't know why people need to learn the same lessons over and over again, but they will, and then stories like this will be as dull and "back page" as stories about the mailman bringing junkmail, or nigerians wanting help in your inbox. Kind of sad but I guess that's (most) humans and there's not much to be done about it.
From the summary, doesn't it bother anyone that Nigel Poole isn't the director of anything. He's the director of an adjective or adverb. "Director of Commercial".
Director of Commercial WHAT? Commercial Espionage? Commercial Litigation? Commercial Applications of Research? Or maybe he's Director of Television Commercials? Who can tell?
I don't see the problem.
^Maybe this illustrates the point?
Really really big numbers can be hard for the human brain to get a grip on. But more to the point, operating at large scales presents problems unique to the scale. Think of baking cookies. Doing this in your kitchen is a familiar thing to most people. But the kitchen method doesn't translate well to an industrial scale. Keebler doesn't use a million gallon bowl and cranes with giant beaters on the end. They don't have ovens the size of a cruise ships. Just because you can make awesome cookies in your kitchen doesn't qualify you one bit to work for Keebler.
Whether it's cookies or scientific inquiry it's a good idea to prepare students to process things on the appropriate scale.
"if I turned your hilariously asymmetric visage into an internet meme, and you became the office joke and punching bag, you'd probably sympathise."
I call BS. You don't lash out and sue. You teach your kid to take lemons and make lemonade out of them.
He probably could have gone on Letterman, ran for class president, and started his own highly successful blog, if his parents wouldn't have been total morons and instead had helped him the right way.
Millions of people of all ages would give their left foot for the kind of spotlight he had on him. He took beautiful lemons and made poison out of them.
> let us assume for the moment that there is a right leaning cable news channel and a chain (singular I assume) of newspapers... how does that compare to the overwhelming number of left leaning networks (plural) and chains of papers (plural again)?
Nowhere else in the world, or at least nowhere that anyone wants to live, would most of the "left leaning media" that you describe be considered "left leaning". The only way to make them appear "left leaning" is for you to stand extremely far to the right.
Heck if you're all the way to The Right then even "Freedom of the Press" becomes a rebellious liberal idea.
Believe it or not I actually have a ton of respect for IT. For 12 years I was IT.
The point is not how hard you or I are to replace.
The point is that companies exist to make money. Anyone who throws up enough roadblocks to making money is harming the company and can't (or shouldn't) remain. IT exists to facilitate the people and processes that make money. IT, for the vast majority of companies, is a cost center. If you implement a system or policy that takes time or efficiency away from 5000 users in a profit center you better be prepared for a major shitstorm. Your job is to help them make money. If you're not doing that then paying you becomes a losing scenario for the company, regardless of how hard you are to replace.
>NOBODY successful gives a shit about 60 hours, because they dont count them. They just get things done, and look for more to do.
Spoken like someone with no family (and no other life either).
>purchase YOUR OWN laptop, on which to conduct your personal business
Spoken like someone who enjoys carrying two laptops everywhere.
Thank you Mordac. But you need to get a clue. Your job is to ENABLE the people who make money. Even if I thought carrying two laptops around sounded like fun, having me switch back and forth all evening isn't in anyone's best interest. It's just plain silly. While we're at it, quit pretending I have government secrets on my company laptop. Due diligence means putting a lock on the doors and installing some basic security. It doesn't mean having everyone go through a Maxwell Smart routine to get into the building. The same is true for computers. If you keep passing out hyper restrictive security solutions that rob us of time and reek of your own self-importance then eventually we'll have you replaced. You make no money for the company. Remember?
(no USB access or even no USB ports if they aren't needed)
This sort of mentality drives me up a wall. Let's pretend we're the Pentagon and take half the usefulness out of modern technology before we let our users us it.
No thanks. You're a cost center. I make the company money. If I want to plug a cordless mouse into my laptop to make my 60 hour week easier than I'm going to do that. If you can't figure out a way to let me then F@(% YOU. Sorry but that's how most of us feel. This is the laptop I carry with me everywhere and use all the time. It's the one I take on vacation so I can WORK from vacation. So of course I'm going to want to plug a camera into it and use it for personal use. If you want me to treat it like I don't own it then I'll start leaving it at the office and you can take 15-20 hours of my work every week and shove it. You can't have it both ways. The chance that somebody is targeting the company with a non-scan-able customized piece of malware through the jpegs on my camera's SD card is close enough to NIL. Create a white list of file types, scan the thumbdrive or memory card, do whatever you need to do short of turning into Mordac - Preventer of Information Services. And let me get on with my life. And while you're at it take the 95 things in my system tray that slow my machine down to a crawl and send them to oblivion.
The company has unsecured trash dumpsters, unsecured phone lines, an unsecured fax machine sitting in every hallway, and people in the mailroom that make 8 bucks an hour. How about addressing those things and getting some perspective before turning my laptop into a 60-hour per week jail sentence. Thanks.
"Because Tolkien should be free to be adapted and misused by every leach out there, not just the official leaches? You REALLY aren't thinking this through."
/Sarcasm
Yeah it just sucks that anybody can just adapt and misuse Shakespeare, the Greek tragedies and comedies, Grimm's Fairy Tales, etc. etc. It makes me sick that anybody can just retell Goldilocks or make a cartoon out of Red Riding Hood. I'm so glad we lock down works of art in perpetuity these days.
Our National Religion isn't even the Almighty Dollar. If it were, then you could say the phrase
"A rising tide lifts all ships."
and it wouldn't cause Free Market Conservatives to go into apoplexy.
If I'm an executive in "Corporate America" and I can layoff 5000 workers, save a little bit for the company over the next few quarters, and get the board to give me a few million in reward money, then I'm just doing the job I'm supposed to be doing. But now we have 5000 people who can't afford to buy anything. That's no good in a consumer driven economy.
The top 1 percent of earners now take home 23 percent of total national income. The rest of us are their serfs. We don't mind much during the good times. We have great entertainments. But during the bad times we get mighty riled up and sometimes win elections. We start tossing about ideas with socialistic leanings. What happens then? The Holders of Capital convince enough people that the government is no good. That capitalism is our way of life. So e.g. instead of getting public high speed rail for everyone (similar to how the Interstate system works) we get handouts to Amtrak wanna-be's so they can free-enterprise slow trains and upgrade them as they gain in popularity. Ridiculous. We had that 100 years ago and they're gone for a reason. But I digress.
Unenlightened GREED is our National Religion. Finders Keepers.
Speaking of being doomed to repeat history...
"Fault is entirely irrelevant in the decision-making process."
That sounds exactly like somebody who refuses to learn from their own mistakes, or the mistakes of others. If nobody worried about fault we could happily make the same bad decisions over and over again. That would surely be double-plus ungood.
"Compressing your timeframe" means that there is a lot more of history that you are doomed to repeat. It's happening right now. We have a war on drugs, 23% of national income going to the top 1% of earners, we've got tons of folks clamoring for a New Deal and public works, we've seen massive corporatization (media & Internet), we're even having our version of the Red Scare, the list goes on. So yes time is compressed. We're repeating much of 1920-1950 and with new technology we're doing it in a fraction of the time for 100x more people. But you sound like you probably have no idea what I'm talking about? There's a George Orwell quote that would go nicely here.
You've got news!
Oh no I left my phone at home"
- We could go right back and get it.
I think I left it right on the counter
- Do you want to turn around and get it?
I think we just did?!
- Oh shit! Where the hell are we?
What about defining intelligence as the ability to learn?
That makes the most sense to me. That covers the alien with the x-ray vision and thick hide that can learn to scratch messages in the sand, and the baby that can't feed itself but can learn to speak. It should also cover the AI that can't form a coherent sentence to pass a turing test (at the moment), as long as it's good at learning.
Quit trying to make Adult AIs that seem smart and instead make an infantile one that seems like an imbecile but can learn like an infant.
I predict the first true synthetic intelligence will come from somebody who says "Ok I'm all done coding, it doesn't do anything yet, we have to spend a few years raising it."
Gosh, helpful Verizon... Maybe society is really becoming so mentally limited this type of stuff is needed.
Society has been this way for a long time.
My dog is impeccably trained. Because he listens almost perfectly, I can "spoil" him without spoiling him. Training was fun for both of us. Many breeds of dog have been bred so that they are happy and pleased to perform and obey. He was trained with rewards, never a bite or slap. He wags his tail when he does a good job. He gets extremely pleased with himself. He does the local agility course alongside the off-duty "pros". He impresses everybody with his good manners.
Granted cats are different. But it's a fact if you had trained yours correctly you'd never need to bite or thwap her. If you're so grandly human, be more clever next time.
It seems you've missed mine. It was this:
**We haven't lost the distinction. We've accepted the best metaphor for a mutually fulfilling relationship.**
Most of us who own pets and understand this feel sorry for those of you who don't get it. It's like something in you is sadly broken.
Truly spoken like someone who shouldn't own pets.
Answer the following:
Which one produces the more fulfilling relationship, the person who "buys a dog and owns it" or the person who "adopts a dog and cares for him"?
Who has a more loving happily-trained pet? The person who treats their dog or cat like one of the family, or the person who treats their pet like something separate from their family?
We haven't lost the distinction. We've accepted the best metaphor for a mutually fulfilling relationship. My dog thinks I'm the leader of his pack. I'm happy thinking of my dog as my 3rd child, the one with all the fur. We both get to act naturally for the most part while those roles mesh perfectly. We both benefit.
If you don't understand that then please please do NOT become a pet owner. Your pet will feel lousy, act out, mope, resent you, and be a "bad pet".
In reality there are no bad pets, just bad owners.**
**Being a good owner starts with the decision of IF and then WHAT EXACTLY to buy. If for instance you buy a pet based solely on appearances, you're most likely to end up with a great looking pet that does not fit with your lifestyle at all. You're screwed before you even get it home. *Adopt* a pet that can become a valued member of your family, or else stay away please. Or maybe a goldfish or hermit crab would be your best choice.
You mean photogoober isn't having a lithotomy?
I find it interesting how well dogs are able to understand tone of voice. My dog understands the tone of my voice at least as well as my wife and kids.
I'd be surprised to learn a monkey could do that.
For instance I could say "vegetable" or "spaceship" in the right tone of voice and my dog would react perfectly to the tone and completely ignore the actual word meaning. He even knows when he wants a treat, if I raise my eyebrows at him and give him a look that I expect him to sit. I don't think he's unique among dogs. I do think that in some ways dogs are probably smarter than monkeys. And possible my neighbors.
Hmmm.. so how important is tone of voice in linguistics and language development? More or less important than word order?
What if we want a silly answer?