I imagine if your BMI was unusually high because of a high amount of muscle, then they would make an exception.
However I am curious about your numbers.
If anything I workout more than what you describe, but have about 17 percent body fat (according to some device a doctor used on me) and a BMI of 24.4 (74 kg and 174 cm). Ridiculously, this is almost overweight but nothing like the numbers you describe.
In order to get to 29.7 I would have to get to 90 kg, that is 16 kg more than now and I cannot imaging adding that in muscle (I would sink).
Suspicously cool? What does this reveal about your stereotypes?
Anyway, I would say you are "suspiciously unimaginative" to be a Slashdot reader. A real nerd would go look up everyone who did 4 EVA walks and make a guess as to who it is.
Maybe I didn't read it carefully, but I think his math in that last example is all wrong. It seemed wrong to me. I didn't see how that kind of adjustment could amplify the difference the way it did.
I get the following:
The guy who answers 1 correctly and guesses at 99 ends up with an expected score of 1 + 49.5 -24.75 = 25.75
The guy who answers 2 correctly and guesses at 98 ends up with an expected score of 1 + 49.0 -24.5 = 26.5
I have exactly the opposite experience. I am way more organized now than ever before in my life, and it is because I can track appointments, contacts, and e-mail in Outlook, and sync them to my WM5 phone, and stay up-to-date even though I travel about 60 percent of the time.
It is way cool being more ogranized than my partner, who is naturally organized, but not so tech-oriented. Who knows, I might have even gotten good grades in school if I had had one of these things long ago.
It could be better of course, the phone hangs about once a week for no apparent reason (reminds me of Win 3.1 or 95), it is really not a very good phone, and the battery life is less than 2 days always even though I really do not phone much (but I do sync a lot).
But the upsides are brilliant, being organized and in-touch no matter where I am is invaluable.
I am sure I could do this with Blackberry too (they pioneered this after all), but we have an Outlook/Exchange setup. I am sceptical that an iPhone will be any better than WM5 for someone who is tied to that monolith, as are most enterprises to my experience.
I am sure the iPhone will be a mediocre phone. But it might be fine for hipsters who don't need to co-ordinate with many people. It certainly looks cool, and will probably do a great job playing music.
Ballmer is not the best techie that Microsoft has to offer, and at Microsoft his tenure has been marked by little brilliance in that area. It has been more a time of conservitism and consolidation, albeit a rather sucessful one to judge by the numbers. Sucessful but uninspiring.
He is very smart (didn't I read somewhere that he had 1600 SATs?). I think there would be a better place for him in a cabinet then the Technology remit. That job I would offer to a Jobs or a Gates, those guys clearly understand future technologies.
1) It is non-intrusive, and is delivered when the phone becomes available. I use it all the time when I am traveling, or trying to reach someone else who is traveling. Phoning requires both parties to be available simultaniously. E-mail requires them to login and connect.
2) It is easy to build a complicated culture around abreviations, symbols, etc. This makes it interesting.
3) A lot of adults "don't get it" (like my wife, and apparently you). This automatically makes it cool.
Interestingly my kids don't send me text messages, they just send to their friends. I guess I am not cool even though I do use text messages:)
Microsoft has been playing this game since its inception, back when everyone else was introducing copy protection (in the 80's), MS didn't because they were well aware of the positive marketing impact of piracy.
This is a strategy that works well in growing markets.
The problem is that now that they have a 95+ lock on many markets and a truly stupdendously large revenue stream from them. The only way to grow revenue in those markets is by increasing the proportion of legal copies.
That this runs counter to the best strategy in their many growing markets is clear to everyone, but is simply one of those internal battles/contractions that every large company must live with.
They should have been broken up, then things would be clearer for the pieces.
One problem is that Microsoft's best leaders (the ones getting the work done) tend to stay out of the limelight and not generate any kind of cult following. And the visible ones have failed to inspire, except for maybe Bach.
For example Gates bailed (probably got tired of being killed in the media for being evil), Ballmer is used up and was always more of a sales guy (i.e. no cred), Kevin Turner seems to be a hick shopkeeper who is little loved in MSFT (hiring him is starting to look like Balmer's biggest mistake), and Ray Ozzie, who MS put a lot of hope into, has disappeared for years and no one has a clue what he is doing.
OTOH the machine keeps cranking out products that dominate their market; their revenue and profits have accordingly doubled in the last 5 years. Hard to see the failure really. I have been told by Microserfs that they do not consider Linux or Apple to be a threat anymore, and are concentrating solely on Google, with a wary eye on a resurgent Oracle.
Top-level management maybe. But the low-level and mid-management get wasted in the same proportion as the workers (obviously, what else can you do with them?).
In fact it is quite common to get rid of them first, or only get rid of them ("flatten the heirarchy"-type reorgs). Believe me I know what I am talking about. I will never let my tech skill lapse again:)
It was a terrible article (the quote from Einstein is absolutly ludicrous... why 4 years? And what did he know about bees anyway? I wouldn't ask the greatest bee specialist in the work about what he thought about the cosmological constant...).
I guess one should take it a serious look though. Best would be without braindead journalists eager to kick up a fuss.
Except Microsoft has made huge inroads in the Enterprise Server Market, and while they might never get the monopoly there that they have on the desktop, it is a big and growing business for them.
Xbox is doing okay too. Linux didn't stop either of those initiatives.
The old evil Microsoft who killed and/or bought competitors at every turn may be dead, but MS is here to stay for a long time. And they are growing at a repectible clip for the 3rd largest company in existence (by capitalization).
They are just not scary to innovators any more, I think that they are so big that most things innovators come up with is just too small to interest them.
And they have much more to "gain" by defending their own markets, then by conquering new ones.
I am a bit too tipsy to count, but as far as I can tell *none* of the replies here agree with the title of this post, and about half of them take the drastic (that is, drastic for a slashdot audience) stand that MS is a better choice than the Apple.
MS has made a lot of changes over the years to make their OS enterprise friendlier, it continues with Vista, and I don't think Apple has really even started down that road. I think that for a big enterprise there is not other choice than Windows, or maybe a customized, carefully designed Linux distribution. But I don't see anybody doing the latter yet.
I figure one time pads are still safe, as long as the pad is as long as the message. And quantum generated ones should be quite convenient too, and unsniffable.
Think about it, if you tried all decryption possiblities, some should decrypt to an intelligble message that is the wrong one. You need to know the pad to know which message was sent.
This is exactly my point. There are still many contradictions and alternate theories to be chased down yet. I don't think this will actually be settled for another decade or two.
Anybody who claims that Global Warming has been decided is just not being intellectually honest. That is the real "Inconvenient Truth". Having to live with uncertainty.
That is not to say we should not try and slow down our burning of fossil fuels. There is nothing *good* about that (that I can think of anyway), regardless if it is driving Global Warming or not.
"The Scientists", i.e. only if you agree with the global warming dogma, are you a scientist?
"There is no debate amoung legitimate scientists"?
You sure don't sound like a scientist to me.
A real scientist knows that you can prove no theory, only disprove one. The evidence for global warming is strong, but I personally do not find it overwhelming, and the issue has become very politicized. We've seen many theories flip-flop in in the past (cold fusion, ice ages, continental drift, magnetic monopoles, business cycles to name a few). I have a hunch that global warming is on weaker ground than Al Gore (inventor of the Internet) would like.
The effect of the sun on our temperatures is now getting a lot of attention from "illegitimate scientists". I am curious to see what they conclude.
For the record I also believe the jury is still out.
Serious scientists know you cannot prove theories, you can only disprove them. And win a lot of recognition by doing so. Now that the mainstream believes in Global Warming, there is a noticible upswing in research tying to disprove GW, and a lot of resistence from those who now have a vested interest in the theory staying on top. Should get interesting now, and informative. I am hoping for better weather forcasts as a side effect:)
Policy should be clear anyway. There are enough reasons to move away from fossil fuels without GW.
Language evolves. It is a very interesting topic. English itself is a kind of bastardized German, French, Latin, Scandinavian conglomerate that has evolved a set of "rules", that are not very consistent (if you have every studied Spanish or German seriously you know what I mean), and not really worth defending very hard.
I correct my kids when they use ungramatical language because I want them to know the difference, but I certainly don't get bent out of shape if they speak that way to their peers; that would be stupid since peer acceptance is hugely important to their happyness and development.
Language will change, and you will encounter new forms of it that seem incorrect as long as the language lives. And English is very alive these days.
You still have to have that initial investment however. In the OSS world today it is "free" due to the enthusiasm of that world. I personally doubt that enthusiasm will last forever (though it might outlast our lifetimes); it can be thought of as an investment, and the question is if the payback (often only the "cool" factor) is sufficient in the long run.
However I suppose if the anticipated tertiary profits were large and definite enough there is nothing stopping conventional investment from creating OSS products. Some do this already (like IBM), but is it increasing?
What does creating something, throwing it out there as OSS, and cashing in on the custom work get you that a more conventional closed model does not? Buzz that cannot be bought maybe?
Slashdot Mirror
"if you are 10% body fat and 250 pounds, you will live a significantly shorter life than someone that is 190 lbs and 10% bodyfat"
So big people don't live as long? That is the first time I have heard anything like this. Got any links to support that statement?
Also why do you think you should be charged more for a shorted expected lifetime? I don't see the logic there.
I imagine if your BMI was unusually high because of a high amount of muscle, then they would make an exception.
However I am curious about your numbers.
If anything I workout more than what you describe, but have about 17 percent body fat (according to some device a doctor used on me) and a BMI of 24.4 (74 kg and 174 cm). Ridiculously, this is almost overweight but nothing like the numbers you describe.
In order to get to 29.7 I would have to get to 90 kg, that is 16 kg more than now and I cannot imaging adding that in muscle (I would sink).
Suspicously cool? What does this reveal about your stereotypes?
Anyway, I would say you are "suspiciously unimaginative" to be a Slashdot reader. A real nerd would go look up everyone who did 4 EVA walks and make a guess as to who it is.
Maybe I didn't read it carefully, but I think his math in that last example is all wrong. It seemed wrong to me. I didn't see how that kind of adjustment could amplify the difference the way it did.
I get the following:
The guy who answers 1 correctly and guesses at 99 ends up with an expected score of 1 + 49.5 -24.75 = 25.75
The guy who answers 2 correctly and guesses at 98 ends up with an expected score of 1 + 49.0 -24.5 = 26.5
This is obvious, right?
I have exactly the opposite experience. I am way more organized now than ever before in my life, and it is because I can track appointments, contacts, and e-mail in Outlook, and sync them to my WM5 phone, and stay up-to-date even though I travel about 60 percent of the time.
It is way cool being more ogranized than my partner, who is naturally organized, but not so tech-oriented. Who knows, I might have even gotten good grades in school if I had had one of these things long ago.
It could be better of course, the phone hangs about once a week for no apparent reason (reminds me of Win 3.1 or 95), it is really not a very good phone, and the battery life is less than 2 days always even though I really do not phone much (but I do sync a lot).
But the upsides are brilliant, being organized and in-touch no matter where I am is invaluable.
I am sure I could do this with Blackberry too (they pioneered this after all), but we have an Outlook/Exchange setup. I am sceptical that an iPhone will be any better than WM5 for someone who is tied to that monolith, as are most enterprises to my experience.
I am sure the iPhone will be a mediocre phone. But it might be fine for hipsters who don't need to co-ordinate with many people. It certainly looks cool, and will probably do a great job playing music.
I think these "physicists" just wanted to hang out in the Canaries, a very nice holiday resort.
Real physicists work in cold and rainy places with lots of ugly cheap concrete buildings. Everyone knows that.
I won't believe this until it gets reproed somewhere less glamourous.
Ballmer is not the best techie that Microsoft has to offer, and at Microsoft his tenure has been marked by little brilliance in that area. It has been more a time of conservitism and consolidation, albeit a rather sucessful one to judge by the numbers. Sucessful but uninspiring.
He is very smart (didn't I read somewhere that he had 1600 SATs?). I think there would be a better place for him in a cabinet then the Technology remit. That job I would offer to a Jobs or a Gates, those guys clearly understand future technologies.
Its popular for a lot of reasons:
:)
1) It is non-intrusive, and is delivered when the phone becomes available. I use it all the time when I am traveling, or trying to reach someone else who is traveling. Phoning requires both parties to be available simultaniously. E-mail requires them to login and connect.
2) It is easy to build a complicated culture around abreviations, symbols, etc. This makes it interesting.
3) A lot of adults "don't get it" (like my wife, and apparently you). This automatically makes it cool.
Interestingly my kids don't send me text messages, they just send to their friends. I guess I am not cool even though I do use text messages
Microsoft has been playing this game since its inception, back when everyone else was introducing copy protection (in the 80's), MS didn't because they were well aware of the positive marketing impact of piracy.
This is a strategy that works well in growing markets.
The problem is that now that they have a 95+ lock on many markets and a truly stupdendously large revenue stream from them. The only way to grow revenue in those markets is by increasing the proportion of legal copies.
That this runs counter to the best strategy in their many growing markets is clear to everyone, but is simply one of those internal battles/contractions that every large company must live with.
They should have been broken up, then things would be clearer for the pieces.
One problem is that Microsoft's best leaders (the ones getting the work done) tend to stay out of the limelight and not generate any kind of cult following. And the visible ones have failed to inspire, except for maybe Bach.
For example Gates bailed (probably got tired of being killed in the media for being evil), Ballmer is used up and was always more of a sales guy (i.e. no cred), Kevin Turner seems to be a hick shopkeeper who is little loved in MSFT (hiring him is starting to look like Balmer's biggest mistake), and Ray Ozzie, who MS put a lot of hope into, has disappeared for years and no one has a clue what he is doing.
OTOH the machine keeps cranking out products that dominate their market; their revenue and profits have accordingly doubled in the last 5 years. Hard to see the failure really. I have been told by Microserfs that they do not consider Linux or Apple to be a threat anymore, and are concentrating solely on Google, with a wary eye on a resurgent Oracle.
Very interesting. Didn't realize that RICO was so draconian.
Another case of lawmakers throwing out the baby with the bathwater, SARBOX comes to mind as well.
Top-level management maybe. But the low-level and mid-management get wasted in the same proportion as the workers (obviously, what else can you do with them?).
:)
In fact it is quite common to get rid of them first, or only get rid of them ("flatten the heirarchy"-type reorgs). Believe me I know what I am talking about. I will never let my tech skill lapse again
It was a terrible article (the quote from Einstein is absolutly ludicrous ... why 4 years? And what did he know about bees anyway? I wouldn't ask the greatest bee specialist in the work about what he thought about the cosmological constant...).
I guess one should take it a serious look though. Best would be without braindead journalists eager to kick up a fuss.
Except Microsoft has made huge inroads in the Enterprise Server Market, and while they might never get the monopoly there that they have on the desktop, it is a big and growing business for them.
Xbox is doing okay too. Linux didn't stop either of those initiatives.
The old evil Microsoft who killed and/or bought competitors at every turn may be dead, but MS is here to stay for a long time. And they are growing at a repectible clip for the 3rd largest company in existence (by capitalization).
They are just not scary to innovators any more, I think that they are so big that most things innovators come up with is just too small to interest them.
And they have much more to "gain" by defending their own markets, then by conquering new ones.
I guess this means that MS shares activation data with their OEMs? That seems kind of surprising to me.
But I can't think of a concrete reason why they should not, unless it violates some Data Protection Laws or something.
Still bothers me though...
Of course one *could* also argue that voting, driving, drinking alcohol, smoking, and having sex have nothing to do with being liable for crimes.
So how do they know you really formatted it, and aren't using Vista Home.
This is kind of evil. I think Google should reward this guy too.
Of course then they would have less money for the gourmet food for their employees.
I am a bit too tipsy to count, but as far as I can tell *none* of the replies here agree with the title of this post, and about half of them take the drastic (that is, drastic for a slashdot audience) stand that MS is a better choice than the Apple.
MS has made a lot of changes over the years to make their OS enterprise friendlier, it continues with Vista, and I don't think Apple has really even started down that road. I think that for a big enterprise there is not other choice than Windows, or maybe a customized, carefully designed Linux distribution. But I don't see anybody doing the latter yet.
Not all.
I figure one time pads are still safe, as long as the pad is as long as the message. And quantum generated ones should be quite convenient too, and unsniffable.
Think about it, if you tried all decryption possiblities, some should decrypt to an intelligble message that is the wrong one. You need to know the pad to know which message was sent.
Or have I missed something here.
This is exactly my point. There are still many contradictions and alternate theories to be chased down yet. I don't think this will actually be settled for another decade or two.
Anybody who claims that Global Warming has been decided is just not being intellectually honest. That is the real "Inconvenient Truth". Having to live with uncertainty.
That is not to say we should not try and slow down our burning of fossil fuels. There is nothing *good* about that (that I can think of anyway), regardless if it is driving Global Warming or not.
"The Scientists", i.e. only if you agree with the global warming dogma, are you a scientist?
"There is no debate amoung legitimate scientists"?
You sure don't sound like a scientist to me.
A real scientist knows that you can prove no theory, only disprove one. The evidence for global warming is strong, but I personally do not find it overwhelming, and the issue has become very politicized. We've seen many theories flip-flop in in the past (cold fusion, ice ages, continental drift, magnetic monopoles, business cycles to name a few). I have a hunch that global warming is on weaker ground than Al Gore (inventor of the Internet) would like.
The effect of the sun on our temperatures is now getting a lot of attention from "illegitimate scientists". I am curious to see what they conclude.
For the record I also believe the jury is still out.
:)
Serious scientists know you cannot prove theories, you can only disprove them. And win a lot of recognition by doing so. Now that the mainstream believes in Global Warming, there is a noticible upswing in research tying to disprove GW, and a lot of resistence from those who now have a vested interest in the theory staying on top. Should get interesting now, and informative. I am hoping for better weather forcasts as a side effect
Policy should be clear anyway. There are enough reasons to move away from fossil fuels without GW.
Language evolves. It is a very interesting topic. English itself is a kind of bastardized German, French, Latin, Scandinavian conglomerate that has evolved a set of "rules", that are not very consistent (if you have every studied Spanish or German seriously you know what I mean), and not really worth defending very hard.
I correct my kids when they use ungramatical language because I want them to know the difference, but I certainly don't get bent out of shape if they speak that way to their peers; that would be stupid since peer acceptance is hugely important to their happyness and development.
Language will change, and you will encounter new forms of it that seem incorrect as long as the language lives. And English is very alive these days.
So deal with it.
You still have to have that initial investment however. In the OSS world today it is "free" due to the enthusiasm of that world. I personally doubt that enthusiasm will last forever (though it might outlast our lifetimes); it can be thought of as an investment, and the question is if the payback (often only the "cool" factor) is sufficient in the long run.
However I suppose if the anticipated tertiary profits were large and definite enough there is nothing stopping conventional investment from creating OSS products. Some do this already (like IBM), but is it increasing?
What does creating something, throwing it out there as OSS, and cashing in on the custom work get you that a more conventional closed model does not? Buzz that cannot be bought maybe?