How many lives could be saved in the USA alone by free flu vaccines? How many are killed from gun-related shootings? Traffic deaths?... Come on, terrorism is hardly noticeable in the big scheme of deaths.
You're asking the wrong question. It's how many rich, powerful people's lives could be saved that interests most rich, powerful people.
You would be surprised how many fat people think clothes are keeping you from realizing it. I overheard a lady at work tell a coworker that she likes sweats because they hide her fat roll. She has to top 300 pounds, and her belly hangs over her pants.
There's a difference between knowing someone's fat, and being disgusted because you see it in detail. Your co-worker might be delusional, and think her sweats are a magic fat cloaking device. However it's much more likely she simply likes the fact that people don't get the full detailed, and in this society off-putting, view.
They can go through all your data, they can "mistakenly" put you on a danger list, they can force you to leave random stuff behind, and the one thing the politicians take issue with is the one device that might actually make security FASTER because OMG BOOBIES.
Since "OMG BOOBIES" is no big deal to someone as enlightened as you, you should have no objection posting topless pictures of your mother, grandmother, sister, female cousins, girlfriend or spouse, right? Oh not the same thing, too wide an audience? How about you email them to me and I'll just share them with a few select colleges?
For the nay-saysers, speed isn't implicitly causing accidents, poor driving and/or unforseen circumstances are.
Most drivers are poor. That's the reality. Unforeseen cirumstances happen ever day. That too is reality. Lowering the speed people drive at mitigates both of these because it allows poor drivers more time to react to unforeseen circumstances. This works within reason. You get diminishing returns as you lower the speed limit more and more. Eventually you're trying to cater for people that drive so poorly they shouldn't be on the road.
I hate to break it to you, but customers don't know what they need. They can tell you what they WANT, but often, that's not what they NEED, and their feedback tends to be anecdotal or garbage data.
I hate to break it to you, but deciding what your customer needs based on your own rather biased point of view and your own tainted motivations is usually not in their best interest.
Their feedback, though, is secondary to actual physical metrics that can be obtained by either watching them use the product or through automated data gathering techniques. These can often reveal patterns that the users are unaware of, and allow you to improve the product....and if you let them know they're part of an experiment, I see no problem. When you start experimenting with people to further your own goals, without telling them, you're on a slippery slope to hell.
A few people seem to be implying some kind of ethical issue with this practice, but try as I might I don't see the problem.
Try harder.
It's not as if they're subjecting customers to some kind of degrading experience (despite the slashdot headline). So the site loads slightly slow, or the page is a little less optimised, or the waitstaff are a bit slower. How is this at all unethical?
Instead of serving the customer as best you can, you are using them as guinea pigs. You're slightly inconveniencing them to further your own goals, and you're probably not telling them that they're part of an experiment. All these things are of course minor, but if you truly can't see why it's a problem or why there might be a slippery slope I hope you're never in a position of power.
How much inconvenience is okay? If you were to cause someone mild physical discomfort to further your own goals, is that okay? How about brief but less mild pain? What about severe pain with no side effects? What about severe recurring pain? How about removing a limb? Where is that line for you? Who gave you any right to decide where the line is in the first place?
It sounds absurd because what you're saying is absurd.
Perhaps you think it's fine and ethical to run experiments on your customers. To me THAT sounds absurd, so I highlighted this in a way that someone without a sense of humour can't possibly appreciate.
So I've got a $BIGNUM of screws to screw in and I could use either a screwdriver or a power tool, which I don't know how to use yet. Clearly the screwdriver is the superior option, because I have better things to do than wasting my time learning tool
Well since we're talking bad analogies now...
If it takes you weeks to learn the power tool or $BIGNUM = 12, I suggest you're wasting your time with the power tool. (I also suggest you have bigger issues). Also if the power tool is a chainsaw, I'd recommend you don't try to use it to screw those screws in.
If I were running a fast food restaurant one of the first things it would make sense to do is pick groups of customer to punch in the face instead of giving them their order. It's all for a good cause. We want to know just how much abuse they'll take before they go down the road to the competition. That will help us figure out how good our food is. Now did you want a fries with that burger? *PUNCH* How about a *PUNCH* drink?
Wolfram is located a few blocks from me in Champaign Illinois
My condolences. Perhaps if you manage to wait until he's out of town, you'd be able to find someone who doesn't know to sell your house to. If he's around he'll be sure to let them know who he is.
Numerics never was Microsoft's expertise and you better look elsewhere. If I were an advisor or examining your theses, I'd run your data through professional software (yes, I'm saying Excel isn't "professional statistics software").
Excel was my tool of choice when doing simple algebraic problems for the duration of my Astronomy Masters. It did brilliantly. I got straight HDs on all subjects except History of Astronomy (for which a misunderstanding with the lecturer over requirements). I never found a bug in Excel, despite always re-checking and sanity checking everything before handing it in. It doesn't matter if you're using an abacus, a hand calculator, Excel, or Mathematica. You have to check that the answers make sense. If I was consistently finding Excel bugs, I'd have ditched it.
That tells me 2 things: 1. You don't value your own time. Presumably you have nothing better to do than waste time learning a tool. 2. You don't value my time. I KNOW I have better things to do.
So you've just put yourself down and disrespected me also. Do you think I'm going to put a lot of weight on what you think?
All things being equal, I gladly shop with the people who took a little time to do the small things right.
There's the rub. All things aren't usually equal. The person with the most skill and knowledge on a topic, may or may not have experience with professional publishing tools. I'll take a well written Word doc over a well formatted book any day, if the content is better.
The chances of your wife being 'deeply beautiful' are almost nil. So yes you are sucking up to your wife. And no men don't gradually find girls they live with to be more and more attractive over time. On the other hand, women find men they like to be more attractive than they really are
Spoken like someone who goes home and inflates his lover.
It's all a matter of your point of view. We can all be either disgusting drooling snotty ape like creatures, or divine beings.
I think the MRI would find I preferred rotten turnip to Angelina Jolie. I think she's got no class. The term trailer trash comes to mind.
I actually do love my wife (who doesn't read this board, so this isn't some big suck up) but there would be plenty of celebs (and a few rotten vegies) that'd come closer than Jolie would.
How about you first start out by not developing a game based on an on-going war. For example, had the technology existed, I would not be developing a WW2 game in the middle of f-ing WW2!!!
So it's okay to wage a war, kill thousands or millions of innocent people etc., but it's not okay to make a game about it. Personally I think that's fucking ridiculous. I'm sure the first thing a soldier's concerned about is whether or not someone's made a game out of their hellish experience when they're fighting that war. The explosions and bloodshed are just a minor point.
Just because YOU weren't part of WW2 or Korea or Vietnam, that doesn't mean there weren't vetrans of those wars alive to see games and unfair one sided documentaries made about them. I didn't hear much complaint from these people. Once again perhaps its because they fought a real war and have a grasp on what is and isn't important. They are therefore uninclined to waste time bitching about a video game.
Dictionary definitions don't help your argument here. When you see a sensationalised article about daydreaming being good for work, people don't start thinking about free thinking sessions. Are you disputing that?
What you're describing simply is not daydreaming as known in the common idiom.
Again, I'm just a poor player. The real question is whether anyone is going to fund UNIX Internals in the future or will the engineers at Apple be forced to glue it all together from thousands of little posts on mailing lists.
You manipulative TROLL! Have you had a look at some of the quality work that is freely online? It most certainly is not all funded by a book publisher, nor is it all scattered in thousands of little posts. There are MANY free books available. There are plenty more that are out of copyright and available for no money. Not everyone writes books for money. Perhaps there'd be less of a deluge of garbage books if only those that wrote because they genuinely wanted to write bothered. There is NO danger of what you're describing EVER happening. You might as well suggest that people will go mute if no one pays them to speak.
I did start out thinking you were sincere but frankly I'm tired of your whining. You'd probably also complain if you found your book in a public library and it had been borrowed too many times for your liking.
How many books have you read without contributing to the author's wealth?
Slashdot Mirror
How many lives could be saved in the USA alone by free flu vaccines? How many are killed from gun-related shootings? Traffic deaths? ... Come on, terrorism is hardly noticeable in the big scheme of deaths.
You're asking the wrong question. It's how many rich, powerful people's lives could be saved that interests most rich, powerful people.
You would be surprised how many fat people think clothes are keeping you from realizing it. I overheard a lady at work tell a coworker that she likes sweats because they hide her fat roll. She has to top 300 pounds, and her belly hangs over her pants.
There's a difference between knowing someone's fat, and being disgusted because you see it in detail. Your co-worker might be delusional, and think her sweats are a magic fat cloaking device. However it's much more likely she simply likes the fact that people don't get the full detailed, and in this society off-putting, view.
They can go through all your data, they can "mistakenly" put you on a danger list, they can force you to leave random stuff behind, and the one thing the politicians take issue with is the one device that might actually make security FASTER because OMG BOOBIES.
Since "OMG BOOBIES" is no big deal to someone as enlightened as you, you should have no objection posting topless pictures of your mother, grandmother, sister, female cousins, girlfriend or spouse, right? Oh not the same thing, too wide an audience? How about you email them to me and I'll just share them with a few select colleges?
For the nay-saysers, speed isn't implicitly causing accidents, poor driving and/or unforseen circumstances are.
Most drivers are poor. That's the reality. Unforeseen cirumstances happen ever day. That too is reality. Lowering the speed people drive at mitigates both of these because it allows poor drivers more time to react to unforeseen circumstances. This works within reason. You get diminishing returns as you lower the speed limit more and more. Eventually you're trying to cater for people that drive so poorly they shouldn't be on the road.
I hate to break it to you, but customers don't know what they need. They can tell you what they WANT, but often, that's not what they NEED, and their feedback tends to be anecdotal or garbage data.
I hate to break it to you, but deciding what your customer needs based on your own rather biased point of view and your own tainted motivations is usually not in their best interest.
Their feedback, though, is secondary to actual physical metrics that can be obtained by either watching them use the product or through automated data gathering techniques. These can often reveal patterns that the users are unaware of, and allow you to improve the product. ...and if you let them know they're part of an experiment, I see no problem. When you start experimenting with people to further your own goals, without telling them, you're on a slippery slope to hell.
A few people seem to be implying some kind of ethical issue with this practice, but try as I might I don't see the problem.
Try harder.
It's not as if they're subjecting customers to some kind of degrading experience (despite the slashdot headline). So the site loads slightly slow, or the page is a little less optimised, or the waitstaff are a bit slower. How is this at all unethical?
Instead of serving the customer as best you can, you are using them as guinea pigs. You're slightly inconveniencing them to further your own goals, and you're probably not telling them that they're part of an experiment. All these things are of course minor, but if you truly can't see why it's a problem or why there might be a slippery slope I hope you're never in a position of power.
How much inconvenience is okay? If you were to cause someone mild physical discomfort to further your own goals, is that okay? How about brief but less mild pain? What about severe pain with no side effects? What about severe recurring pain? How about removing a limb? Where is that line for you? Who gave you any right to decide where the line is in the first place?
It sounds absurd because what you're saying is absurd.
Perhaps you think it's fine and ethical to run experiments on your customers. To me THAT sounds absurd, so I highlighted this in a way that someone without a sense of humour can't possibly appreciate.
So I've got a $BIGNUM of screws to screw in and I could use either a screwdriver or a power tool, which I don't know how to use yet.
Clearly the screwdriver is the superior option, because I have better things to do than wasting my time learning tool
Well since we're talking bad analogies now...
If it takes you weeks to learn the power tool or $BIGNUM = 12, I suggest you're wasting your time with the power tool. (I also suggest you have bigger issues). Also if the power tool is a chainsaw, I'd recommend you don't try to use it to screw those screws in.
If I were running a fast food restaurant one of the first things it would make sense to do is pick groups of customer to punch in the face instead of giving them their order. It's all for a good cause. We want to know just how much abuse they'll take before they go down the road to the competition. That will help us figure out how good our food is. Now did you want a fries with that burger? *PUNCH* How about a *PUNCH* drink?
See how absurd it sounds?
Wolfram is located a few blocks from me in Champaign Illinois
My condolences. Perhaps if you manage to wait until he's out of town, you'd be able to find someone who doesn't know to sell your house to. If he's around he'll be sure to let them know who he is.
Sadly, he's not even a new kind of blowhard.
In contrast, if you enter 2 + 2 into Google you get:
2 + 2 = 4
Much less verbose and to the point.
Numerics never was Microsoft's expertise and you better look elsewhere. If I were an advisor or examining your theses, I'd run your data through professional software (yes, I'm saying Excel isn't "professional statistics software").
Excel was my tool of choice when doing simple algebraic problems for the duration of my Astronomy Masters. It did brilliantly. I got straight HDs on all subjects except History of Astronomy (for which a misunderstanding with the lecturer over requirements). I never found a bug in Excel, despite always re-checking and sanity checking everything before handing it in. It doesn't matter if you're using an abacus, a hand calculator, Excel, or Mathematica. You have to check that the answers make sense. If I was consistently finding Excel bugs, I'd have ditched it.
What's a scientest?
A scientest is someone who works in a scients departmint, duh.
Apparently, he hasn't read the advanced chapter on configuring the spell check addon in LaTex.
And it cost nothing but time to learn
That tells me 2 things:
1. You don't value your own time. Presumably you have nothing better to do than waste time learning a tool.
2. You don't value my time. I KNOW I have better things to do.
So you've just put yourself down and disrespected me also. Do you think I'm going to put a lot of weight on what you think?
All things being equal, I gladly shop with the people who took a little time to do the small things right.
There's the rub. All things aren't usually equal. The person with the most skill and knowledge on a topic, may or may not have experience with professional publishing tools. I'll take a well written Word doc over a well formatted book any day, if the content is better.
Nope, I don't approve of many people's lifestyle. Fortunately they don't need my approval. Angelina, on the other hand, is a fruit loop. Totally nuts.
Did you just say you were more sexually attracted to rotten vegetables than a woman?
Well I guess you could classify her as a woman....just.
The chances of your wife being 'deeply beautiful' are almost nil. So yes you are sucking up to your wife. And no men don't gradually find girls they live with to be more and more attractive over time. On the other hand, women find men they like to be more attractive than they really are
Spoken like someone who goes home and inflates his lover.
It's all a matter of your point of view. We can all be either disgusting drooling snotty ape like creatures, or divine beings.
I love my wife and she is deeply beautiful (also doesn't read slashdot) but that doesn't stop Angelina from being hot.
No, what stops her from being hot is that she doesn't look good and has mental health issues.
I think the MRI would find I preferred rotten turnip to Angelina Jolie. I think she's got no class. The term trailer trash comes to mind.
I actually do love my wife (who doesn't read this board, so this isn't some big suck up) but there would be plenty of celebs (and a few rotten vegies) that'd come closer than Jolie would.
1. A sinecure
2. "Working" from home
3. A fat paycheck
You don't get these coding though. Think an ex-politician, a diplomat, or perhaps CEO of a failed bank.
How about you first start out by not developing a game based on an on-going war. For example, had the technology existed, I would not be developing a WW2 game in the middle of f-ing WW2!!!
So it's okay to wage a war, kill thousands or millions of innocent people etc., but it's not okay to make a game about it. Personally I think that's fucking ridiculous. I'm sure the first thing a soldier's concerned about is whether or not someone's made a game out of their hellish experience when they're fighting that war. The explosions and bloodshed are just a minor point.
Just because YOU weren't part of WW2 or Korea or Vietnam, that doesn't mean there weren't vetrans of those wars alive to see games and unfair one sided documentaries made about them. I didn't hear much complaint from these people. Once again perhaps its because they fought a real war and have a grasp on what is and isn't important. They are therefore uninclined to waste time bitching about a video game.
Dictionary definitions don't help your argument here. When you see a sensationalised article about daydreaming being good for work, people don't start thinking about free thinking sessions. Are you disputing that?
What you're describing simply is not daydreaming as known in the common idiom.
Again, I'm just a poor player. The real question is whether anyone is going to fund UNIX Internals in the future or will the engineers at Apple be forced to glue it all together from thousands of little posts on mailing lists.
You manipulative TROLL! Have you had a look at some of the quality work that is freely online? It most certainly is not all funded by a book publisher, nor is it all scattered in thousands of little posts. There are MANY free books available. There are plenty more that are out of copyright and available for no money. Not everyone writes books for money. Perhaps there'd be less of a deluge of garbage books if only those that wrote because they genuinely wanted to write bothered. There is NO danger of what you're describing EVER happening. You might as well suggest that people will go mute if no one pays them to speak.
I did start out thinking you were sincere but frankly I'm tired of your whining. You'd probably also complain if you found your book in a public library and it had been borrowed too many times for your liking.
How many books have you read without contributing to the author's wealth?