I actually think it is irrepsonible for healthy talented people to not have kids. Breaks the social contract. Population forcasts continue to collapse and a world with too many pensioners will be ugly - and possibly unavoidable already. Just look at where Japan is headed.
The earth may be limited but there is infinte room in space. As any geek should know.
Games are not so important for adults. The biggest use for games is learning how to learn fast. Maybe you have that down now and your subconsiously just not as interested.
Go make and raise some kids and let them learn some games. That is a fun, rewarding, and quite complex game. All stages of it.
You get a lot of desalinated water in resorts in the med. You can always tell because you can taste the salt in it - and they told us the water purified for touriests was purified 10 times more than the water for the locals. I think getting it down to the point where you cannot taste it is prohibitively expensive with today technology. So I can see why they would want a whole supertanker full of fresh Alaskan water. Of course it might taste a bit oily...
They blocked my account for reasons that were not clear to me, but had to do with being an American living in Germany using a German bank. There was a way to get it unblocked, but it was complicated and not worth my time. I only ever used it for eBay, so I just stopped using eBay. They are just stupid.
I agree with your title and your first few points were good, but then when you started ranting about socialism and conspiracy I got bored. I am pretty sceptical about global warming on the whole, but I find it best to ignore passionate claims by either side.
Passion is for bed, and not really suitable for making scientific judgements.
Electric cars emit much less noise. I think we will need to have a protocol whereby iPods can sense potential collisions and warn the listeners. Cars are getting anti-collision devices and software anyway in the coming years, they shoud expand the protocolls to iPods too. Hmm - maybe I should patent that idea:).
Jeez. There have always been lots of people who are crappy at math. And there still are. This is like reporting about rain. Yes - there is a general decline in math skills, but there has been a compensating advance in IQ and abstract reasoning. Society requires different skills than it used to - and frankly Math has always been of limited use to all but a chosen few. There are admittedly problems with our society, but your average Joe messing up symbolic manipulation is not really one of the biggies, and should not be high on the list of things we are worried about. IMHO.
Header says it all. With the attached big screen and wired internet I keep forgetting it is not a desktop. Also the profile makes it run faster when it is docked.
The opinions here are what one would expect unfortunately.
I have been using Win7 - it is pleasently fast and I know someone who put it on a netbook, worked as well as XP.
It still looks kind of unpolished.
One of Vista's weak points was the AppCompat - the new security model broke too many apps and caused big companies a lot of pain, some to the point where they gave up. But for them Linux or Mac is simply not an option.
It remains to be seen if Win7 offers relief there. I suspect it does not offer much on that front, but even if it were just a little better it would be enough for many big companies to skip Vista.
I love SpaceX, and think they are doing a great job, but I don't know where you got this idea that they continually deliver on their claims on time. If NASA of the 60's had a SpaceX kind of record we would have landed on the moon in something like 1979, not 1969.
However I can only agree that SpaceX seems far superior to the rest of the NASA/Aerospace complex who aren't even willing to look at an idea without spending 100s of million's first.
I imagine that when NASA launches a Falcon 9, they will manage to spend hundreds of millions on themselves somehow as well (you know, planning it, managing it, quality control, etc). Fixed and sunk costs that are now considered to be in the Space Shuttle launch, but will now be transfered to SpaceX and Oribital Sciences.
In fact if I know my NASA, I bet in the end they will somehow make these launches even more expensive than the Shuttle is/was, especially with the economic downturn conveniently justifying practically any expenditure.
In a lot of big orgs it is amazing how expensive it can be to upgrade your hardware, or add to an existing farm. Not because of the hardware cost, but because of all the overhead involved in designing/specifying the setup,ordering, waiting for it to come, getting space for it, installation, patching, backing up, etc.
In fact I've seen several orgs where the cost of a "Virtual Server" is almost as much as a physical one because the cost of all this servicing it is so high. Whether or not this is necessary I don't want to debate here, but it is undeniably the case.
So I think the case for throwing hardware at issues is not as clear cut as this article implies.
Even if you got away with it without being sued, your reputation would be shot. Seems a bit like stealing an aquantance's girlfriend because you can "do her better".
I think you are better off thinking of something new, possibly related so you can leverage your contacts.
Life is more about contacts than skill and knowledge - as you have hopefully noticed by now.
Re:Crap, I just learned the words...
on
Anathem
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· Score: 1
I know, I guess that wasn't obvious from the way I wrote it.
Anything that is normally raised by a mother (or father) is likely to have behavior that can only be learned and is not "instinctive".
That behavior might be necessary for the being to be happy. Or even if it were smart enough to figure these things out by itself, it might just need "company" to be happy - most of us do (well, maybe not your typical/. reader:)).
Crap, I just learned the words...
on
Anathem
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· Score: 1
I found the few new words to be no problem at all, in fact there could have been more, and I liked some of the new ideas there (like the "Steelyard").
Methinks the review is just getting lazy and doesn't want to be inconvienced.
Seriously, spend more time thinking about the big picture, and maybe do POCs to check if you are right (and stay sharp). Hopefully your experience will allow you to determine the right direction without knowing all the little details that younger people can remember better.
This works for me, it works for a lot of "older" people.
Oh, and don't forget plenty of excersize, sleep, sex, and lay off the booze/etc.
There are also memory enhancing drugs if you want to participate in the long-term usage drug trials that they imply.
I think women aren't naturally attracted to CS, but in the past some overcame that because they were smart, it was a challenge and somewhat glamourous.
Now that things like nanotech, genetic engineering are new and cool the smart ones (who like a challenge) have gone elsewhere.
I know I would do something else if I didn't have a family to feed. IT is pretty good at putting food on the table.
The summary is a pretty drastic misrepresentation of the article. Balmer was nowhere near as positive about Google Apps as the summary indicates.
Ok, I guess it is news when someone says anything positive about a competitors product. But Google Apps has a long way to go still before they have a measurable impact on any competitor, let alone Microsoft's Office Juggernaut.
Since many firms outsource, or use contractors, etc, the ration of employees to IT workers is not a very reliable indicator of IT investment. A more interesting one would be how much money a firm spends per worker, this would allow one to compare Chevrons's to Exxon's for example.
Obviously the amount you are willing to spend per employee will depend on the industry and the firms strategy, culture, and many other things too. A dev heavy company like Microsoft or Google will probably count on their own employees doing a lot of the work.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually think it is irrepsonible for healthy talented people to not have kids. Breaks the social contract. Population forcasts continue to collapse and a world with too many pensioners will be ugly - and possibly unavoidable already. Just look at where Japan is headed.
The earth may be limited but there is infinte room in space. As any geek should know.
Games are not so important for adults. The biggest use for games is learning how to learn fast. Maybe you have that down now and your subconsiously just not as interested.
Go make and raise some kids and let them learn some games. That is a fun, rewarding, and quite complex game. All stages of it.
You get a lot of desalinated water in resorts in the med. You can always tell because you can taste the salt in it - and they told us the water purified for touriests was purified 10 times more than the water for the locals. I think getting it down to the point where you cannot taste it is prohibitively expensive with today technology. So I can see why they would want a whole supertanker full of fresh Alaskan water. Of course it might taste a bit oily...
They blocked my account for reasons that were not clear to me, but had to do with being an American living in Germany using a German bank. There was a way to get it unblocked, but it was complicated and not worth my time. I only ever used it for eBay, so I just stopped using eBay.
They are just stupid.
Less would have been more.
I agree with your title and your first few points were good, but then when you started ranting about socialism and conspiracy I got bored. I am pretty sceptical about global warming on the whole, but I find it best to ignore passionate claims by either side.
Passion is for bed, and not really suitable for making scientific judgements.
Electric cars emit much less noise. I think we will need to have a protocol whereby iPods can sense potential collisions and warn the listeners. Cars are getting anti-collision devices and software anyway in the coming years, they shoud expand the protocolls to iPods too. :).
Hmm - maybe I should patent that idea
Why are we reposting an economist article? I would think SlashDot could come up with an article that goes somewhat deeper than this.
Jeez. There have always been lots of people who are crappy at math. And there still are. This is like reporting about rain. Yes - there is a general decline in math skills, but there has been a compensating advance in IQ and abstract reasoning. Society requires different skills than it used to - and frankly Math has always been of limited use to all but a chosen few.
There are admittedly problems with our society, but your average Joe messing up symbolic manipulation is not really one of the biggies, and should not be high on the list of things we are worried about. IMHO.
Header says it all. With the attached big screen and wired internet I keep forgetting it is not a desktop. Also the profile makes it run faster when it is docked.
Not completely true. The most interesting jobs (high tech dev) don't pay anywhere as well as commerical dev crap.
Sigh.
Yes. Coding, and partying. With occastional vacations to nice spots like Thailand or Greece. Kind of like how I spent my 20's ;).
I would do visualization projects of various kinds - all with some heavy math component.
The opinions here are what one would expect unfortunately.
I have been using Win7 - it is pleasently fast and I know someone who put it on a netbook, worked as well as XP.
It still looks kind of unpolished.
One of Vista's weak points was the AppCompat - the new security model broke too many apps and caused big companies a lot of pain, some to the point where they gave up. But for them Linux or Mac is simply not an option.
It remains to be seen if Win7 offers relief there. I suspect it does not offer much on that front, but even if it were just a little better it would be enough for many big companies to skip Vista.
I love SpaceX, and think they are doing a great job, but I don't know where you got this idea that they continually deliver on their claims on time. If NASA of the 60's had a SpaceX kind of record we would have landed on the moon in something like 1979, not 1969.
Some examples are the 3 Falcon 1 failures and this annoncment from 2005; http://www.spacequest.com/Articles/The%20SpaceX%20Falcon%20Will%20Challenge%20Orbital%20Sciences%20.doc/
However I can only agree that SpaceX seems far superior to the rest of the NASA/Aerospace complex who aren't even willing to look at an idea without spending 100s of million's first.
I imagine that when NASA launches a Falcon 9, they will manage to spend hundreds of millions on themselves somehow as well (you know, planning it, managing it, quality control, etc). Fixed and sunk costs that are now considered to be in the Space Shuttle launch, but will now be transfered to SpaceX and Oribital Sciences.
In fact if I know my NASA, I bet in the end they will somehow make these launches even more expensive than the Shuttle is/was, especially with the economic downturn conveniently justifying practically any expenditure.
And no, sadly I am not making a joke.
In a lot of big orgs it is amazing how expensive it can be to upgrade your hardware, or add to an existing farm. Not because of the hardware cost, but because of all the overhead involved in designing/specifying the setup,ordering, waiting for it to come, getting space for it, installation, patching, backing up, etc.
In fact I've seen several orgs where the cost of a "Virtual Server" is almost as much as a physical one because the cost of all this servicing it is so high. Whether or not this is necessary I don't want to debate here, but it is undeniably the case.
So I think the case for throwing hardware at issues is not as clear cut as this article implies.
Even if you got away with it without being sued, your reputation would be shot. Seems a bit like stealing an aquantance's girlfriend because you can "do her better".
I think you are better off thinking of something new, possibly related so you can leverage your contacts.
Life is more about contacts than skill and knowledge - as you have hopefully noticed by now.
I know, I guess that wasn't obvious from the way I wrote it.
Anything that is normally raised by a mother (or father) is likely to have behavior that can only be learned and is not "instinctive".
That behavior might be necessary for the being to be happy. Or even if it were smart enough to figure these things out by itself, it might just need "company" to be happy - most of us do (well, maybe not your typical /. reader :)).
I found the few new words to be no problem at all, in fact there could have been more, and I liked some of the new ideas there (like the "Steelyard").
Methinks the review is just getting lazy and doesn't want to be inconvienced.
Seriously, spend more time thinking about the big picture, and maybe do POCs to check if you are right (and stay sharp). Hopefully your experience will allow you to determine the right direction without knowing all the little details that younger people can remember better.
This works for me, it works for a lot of "older" people.
Oh, and don't forget plenty of excersize, sleep, sex, and lay off the booze/etc.
There are also memory enhancing drugs if you want to participate in the long-term usage drug trials that they imply.
I think women aren't naturally attracted to CS, but in the past some overcame that because they were smart, it was a challenge and somewhat glamourous.
Now that things like nanotech, genetic engineering are new and cool the smart ones (who like a challenge) have gone elsewhere.
I know I would do something else if I didn't have a family to feed. IT is pretty good at putting food on the table.
The summary is a pretty drastic misrepresentation of the article. Balmer was nowhere near as positive about Google Apps as the summary indicates.
Ok, I guess it is news when someone says anything positive about a competitors product. But Google Apps has a long way to go still before they have a measurable impact on any competitor, let alone Microsoft's Office Juggernaut.
BTW, my son loved it when he was 10. Learned a lot while reading in the car on long trips, then applied it when we got back home.
Or "Head First (anything else)" (C# is pretty good). Very engaging, lots of geekey and slightly adult humor. Covers a lot of stuff.
Some of the humor is a bit adult - might not fly in Texas, Missouri or anywhere else prudes have undue influence.
Since many firms outsource, or use contractors, etc, the ration of employees to IT workers is not a very reliable indicator of IT investment. A more interesting one would be how much money a firm spends per worker, this would allow one to compare Chevrons's to Exxon's for example.
Obviously the amount you are willing to spend per employee will depend on the industry and the firms strategy, culture, and many other things too. A dev heavy company like Microsoft or Google will probably count on their own employees doing a lot of the work.