...i've done each of steps in isolation and have full confidence that i could pull it off.
I graduated in 1981 with the same skill set. I've worked with enough people in these fields to have full confidence that I could not pull it off. At least not well. And certainly not by myself. As that great philospher, "Dirty" Harry Calahan said, "A man's gotta know his limitations..."
What creates terrorists is a belief that their own cause is right enough and that the personal rewards will be high enough that they are willing to sacrifice others (and/or their own) lives in actions that defend or further their beliefs. The causal beliefs can be political, religious, or economic in nature or due to simple irrationality. Any particular slight against the belief can then be a trigger for the resulting action. Today, religion seems to be the cause of most irrational actions. Read Sam Harris' The End of Faith for more on the psychological basis of terrorism and other irrational actions.
What is you brilliant alternative resolution to that situation?
How about they actually count the votes? The SC should have decreed a fair recount method (national, statewide, or local) given a decent timeframe, said it was binding, and said go to it. Only in this country would someone think that not knowing who the next president was two months plus before transfer of power was a constitutional crisis. And before you go spouting off about how it would have taken too long, think of what you would have been saying if the court decided the other guy won. Just remember that election decisions you think are peachy for your guy had better be peachy for when they get decided for the other guy too. One thing that history shows is that no one stays in power forever.
The fact that the court decided to ignore the factual information available (i.e., the votes) and went with a narrow interpretation of the state law was a recipe for disaster and one of the main reasons why the court also ruled that the decision was not to be used as precident for other decisions. So was it a good decision? No. And I think the justices recognized that, too.
Welch's rule was to grade your players and go with the A's.
This was absolutely the case. Every year GE would rank their employees and the bottom 10% were out. It didn't matter if you did an acceptable job, if you were in the bottom 10%, you were gone. The same way with management - there was an up or out bias in the managerial rank. If you didn't keep swimming upstream, pretty soon, you'd find yourself in the dead 10%. At a divisional level, this was true also. If there was not a clear, short-term path to being #1 or #2 in your industry niche, your division was sold. Other companies have tried to replicate this ranking structure, but most have not been quite as devoted to it. They called him Neutron Jack, because of the buildings he'd empty of people with only the structures remaining. Of course, now that he's gone, people are wondering if what he did was good for GE (or even the shareholders), but I believe that business history will show that Jack was ruthless, but fair (except to himself... there he was a bit more than fair:-).
Funny... Folks like Sklansky, Pat Harrington, Jesus Ferguson, etc. disagree with you (Hell, Annie Duke lives in my neighborhood. I saw her on the street and asked her once. She disagrees with you, too). Even though you have a net PEV, you're still gambling. Even though you're gambling smart, you're still gambling. Even though there seems to be an innumerable supply of fish in the world, you are still gambling.
I do NOT like to play blackjack or other games where I do not have an advantage.
Commendable, easier on your bankroll, perhaps even smart (unless you can count without detection). But, even so, when you play poker, you are wagering on the outcome of a random event. You are gambling. Your line may be a "politically correct" argument (and it's one I've used before, too), but don't delude yourself.
A more accurate analogy would be if Sears owned Visa and banned MasterCard and American Express purchases.
When Sears Financial Services owned Discover, they wanted to do exactly this, but the retail arm convinced them that they'd lose money on doing so. So, the retail arm only discouragedthe use of other cards by asking if the customer wanted to pay with their Discover card.
The moral of the story - corporations are dicks. All of them. If you think all of this stuff with net neutrality and this little piece of nastiness on the part of eBay is interesting, you haven't seen anything yet. The Congress has declared itself open to the highest bidder. Companies no longer are controlled by the rule of law - that can be changed by a well-placed contribution. As such, the only thing that controls these behemoths are their own kind. That's why Comcast & AT&T are in a giant pissing match with Google; that's why eBay is bitch slapping the Goog, too. Eventually, when the corps figure out that they're spending too much making their own lives hard, they band together to form some ogliopy, but until then, my only recommendation is to stay out of the jungle - when elephants wrestle, pygmies get trampled. Either that or vote. Whatever...
The trouble is that Sarbanes-Oxley puts restrictions on law abiding citizens never implicated in crimes.
Duhhh. Isn't that what all laws and regulations do? It's basically saying, "We think that you're a law-abiding citizen, but we don't want you to do X. In fact, we don't want you to do X so much that, if you do X, here's what we're going to do to you."
Everybody is law-abiding until they break the law. And, after they pay their debt to society, they're law abiding again (unless they break the law again).
I wonder if proper body and vehicle armor is cheaper than prosthetics, multiple surgeries, psychological counseling, and a lifetime of subsequent health problems.
That's interesting. I wonder instead whether not invading countries that pose absolutely no threat to us is cheaper than proper body and vehicle armor. But that's just me... Oh wait, it's not. It's a majority of the American people.
Yeah, but you need the health insurance because as the ice caps melt, the polar bears that don't drown are coming down from the Arctic to chew your ass.
Thanks to this bullshit (read: pension plans) the City of San Diego is for all practical purposes bankrupt.
Uh, excuse me? Last time I heard, the main reason that SD was bankrupt was because the folks in charge of investing the money in the SD public employee pension fund did a piss poor job of investing (mainly by focusing large amounts of money on derivative contracts). Blaming this on the employees is incredibly stupid. Or do you think that employees don't have the right to ask for pensions? Top level execs seem to have no problem doing this (last I heard Jack Welch was getting millions of dollars a year in pension benefits from GE; he's not the only one). But I guess they're entitled.
It's really just adolescent rebellion (and hubris), to think you are smarter than the several thousand generations before you...
Well, actually, we are. We have much more knowledge about the world around us. We (even though it doesn't seem so very often) make and use better models of human behavior and decision making. It's called science (both physical and social) and it seems to make us advance a bit more quickly than those in thrall of rules handed down from superstitious tribes a few thousand years ago are comfortable with. So they yell that we aren't smarter (though we are) and they accuse us of hubris. I guess I say that if this is the same hubris that led us away from slavery and is leading us towards treating all people (be they of a different color, sex, or sexual orientation) as equal, then I hope that we hubristically make the most of our opportunity.
Criticizing one's collegues, no matter how good it might feel at the moment, is not usually seen as a particularly mature thing to do. Why do I get the feeling that this might not be the most reliable person to go to for opinions on maturity?
Q: Why are academic squables so vicious and petty? A: Because the stakes are so small.
Have you noticed that the Greek Empire fell? Or that the Roman Emipire fell? Or that there are many other societies where generations worked hard to build up what future generations squandered and lost due to their complacency?
And do you think that this will be the empire to turn that around? Empires die not because of internal moral decay, but because they build themselves on an economic model of unlimited expansion (which looks fairly likely at the beginning of empire). When the expansion stops, there is no more capital left to buy weaponry or soldiers to defend the empire from its (rather disgruntled) controlled subjects and the outer regions revolt, leading to a feedback cycle of shrinkage. There really is no issue of morality (except for those at the top who become less and less moral in their desire to grab more and more of a shrinking pie), just economics, baby... just economics.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn. And I thought it was ink for ink jet refills!
Hey! We're starting at the Congressional level this year! And if that works,we may not have to wait until 2008...
I graduated in 1981 with the same skill set. I've worked with enough people in these fields to have full confidence that I could not pull it off. At least not well. And certainly not by myself. As that great philospher, "Dirty" Harry Calahan said, "A man's gotta know his limitations..."
What creates terrorists is a belief that their own cause is right enough and that the personal rewards will be high enough that they are willing to sacrifice others (and/or their own) lives in actions that defend or further their beliefs. The causal beliefs can be political, religious, or economic in nature or due to simple irrationality. Any particular slight against the belief can then be a trigger for the resulting action. Today, religion seems to be the cause of most irrational actions. Read Sam Harris' The End of Faith for more on the psychological basis of terrorism and other irrational actions.
How about they actually count the votes? The SC should have decreed a fair recount method (national, statewide, or local) given a decent timeframe, said it was binding, and said go to it. Only in this country would someone think that not knowing who the next president was two months plus before transfer of power was a constitutional crisis. And before you go spouting off about how it would have taken too long, think of what you would have been saying if the court decided the other guy won. Just remember that election decisions you think are peachy for your guy had better be peachy for when they get decided for the other guy too. One thing that history shows is that no one stays in power forever.
The fact that the court decided to ignore the factual information available (i.e., the votes) and went with a narrow interpretation of the state law was a recipe for disaster and one of the main reasons why the court also ruled that the decision was not to be used as precident for other decisions. So was it a good decision? No. And I think the justices recognized that, too.
Oooooh! Somebody woke up cwanky this mowning. What's the matter? Bad bottle of milk?
If the "semantic web" is going to take off, then we need semantics, and pronto.
as:
If the "semantic web" is going to take off, then we need semantics, and porno.
How realistic does the chance have to be? Could we just stick a skyrocket up your ass, light it, and watch :-)?
This was absolutely the case. Every year GE would rank their employees and the bottom 10% were out. It didn't matter if you did an acceptable job, if you were in the bottom 10%, you were gone. The same way with management - there was an up or out bias in the managerial rank. If you didn't keep swimming upstream, pretty soon, you'd find yourself in the dead 10%. At a divisional level, this was true also. If there was not a clear, short-term path to being #1 or #2 in your industry niche, your division was sold. Other companies have tried to replicate this ranking structure, but most have not been quite as devoted to it. They called him Neutron Jack, because of the buildings he'd empty of people with only the structures remaining. Of course, now that he's gone, people are wondering if what he did was good for GE (or even the shareholders), but I believe that business history will show that Jack was ruthless, but fair (except to himself... there he was a bit more than fair :-).
That sounds like gambling. And, online at that. And someone's spent $8-9B on it?! Sounds like it's time to make a law against that sort of thing...
Funny... Folks like Sklansky, Pat Harrington, Jesus Ferguson, etc. disagree with you (Hell, Annie Duke lives in my neighborhood. I saw her on the street and asked her once. She disagrees with you, too). Even though you have a net PEV, you're still gambling. Even though you're gambling smart, you're still gambling. Even though there seems to be an innumerable supply of fish in the world, you are still gambling.
I do NOT like to play blackjack or other games where I do not have an advantage.
Commendable, easier on your bankroll, perhaps even smart (unless you can count without detection). But, even so, when you play poker, you are wagering on the outcome of a random event. You are gambling. Your line may be a "politically correct" argument (and it's one I've used before, too), but don't delude yourself.
Hey! I think you're being unfair to Caterpillar here. Maybe Whirlpool, too. There's still some tech in both their products.
Wish I could still say the same about HP.
When Sears Financial Services owned Discover, they wanted to do exactly this, but the retail arm convinced them that they'd lose money on doing so. So, the retail arm only discouragedthe use of other cards by asking if the customer wanted to pay with their Discover card.
The moral of the story - corporations are dicks. All of them. If you think all of this stuff with net neutrality and this little piece of nastiness on the part of eBay is interesting, you haven't seen anything yet. The Congress has declared itself open to the highest bidder. Companies no longer are controlled by the rule of law - that can be changed by a well-placed contribution. As such, the only thing that controls these behemoths are their own kind. That's why Comcast & AT&T are in a giant pissing match with Google; that's why eBay is bitch slapping the Goog, too. Eventually, when the corps figure out that they're spending too much making their own lives hard, they band together to form some ogliopy, but until then, my only recommendation is to stay out of the jungle - when elephants wrestle, pygmies get trampled. Either that or vote. Whatever...
Actually, most terrorists in the US have been southern white Christians (I mean, if you count that whole Civil War thing). Damn Johnny Reb traitors.
Duhhh. Isn't that what all laws and regulations do? It's basically saying, "We think that you're a law-abiding citizen, but we don't want you to do X. In fact, we don't want you to do X so much that, if you do X, here's what we're going to do to you."
Everybody is law-abiding until they break the law. And, after they pay their debt to society, they're law abiding again (unless they break the law again).
Or do you want anarchy?
That's interesting. I wonder instead whether not invading countries that pose absolutely no threat to us is cheaper than proper body and vehicle armor. But that's just me... Oh wait, it's not. It's a majority of the American people.
If I can't usually state what I mean clearly and accurately, how do you know I don't mean what I really say?
Why waste your time? Haven't you heard? He doesn't matter anymore.
Yeah, but you need the health insurance because as the ice caps melt, the polar bears that don't drown are coming down from the Arctic to chew your ass.
Uh, excuse me? Last time I heard, the main reason that SD was bankrupt was because the folks in charge of investing the money in the SD public employee pension fund did a piss poor job of investing (mainly by focusing large amounts of money on derivative contracts). Blaming this on the employees is incredibly stupid. Or do you think that employees don't have the right to ask for pensions? Top level execs seem to have no problem doing this (last I heard Jack Welch was getting millions of dollars a year in pension benefits from GE; he's not the only one). But I guess they're entitled.
Well, actually, we are. We have much more knowledge about the world around us. We (even though it doesn't seem so very often) make and use better models of human behavior and decision making. It's called science (both physical and social) and it seems to make us advance a bit more quickly than those in thrall of rules handed down from superstitious tribes a few thousand years ago are comfortable with. So they yell that we aren't smarter (though we are) and they accuse us of hubris. I guess I say that if this is the same hubris that led us away from slavery and is leading us towards treating all people (be they of a different color, sex, or sexual orientation) as equal, then I hope that we hubristically make the most of our opportunity.
Criticizing one's collegues, no matter how good it might feel at the moment, is not usually seen as a particularly mature thing to do. Why do I get the feeling that this might not be the most reliable person to go to for opinions on maturity?
Q: Why are academic squables so vicious and petty?
A: Because the stakes are so small.
Think about it...
And do you think that this will be the empire to turn that around? Empires die not because of internal moral decay, but because they build themselves on an economic model of unlimited expansion (which looks fairly likely at the beginning of empire). When the expansion stops, there is no more capital left to buy weaponry or soldiers to defend the empire from its (rather disgruntled) controlled subjects and the outer regions revolt, leading to a feedback cycle of shrinkage. There really is no issue of morality (except for those at the top who become less and less moral in their desire to grab more and more of a shrinking pie), just economics, baby... just economics.
Excuse me? I thought the phrase would be "full of emacs...".
(And for those of you who are humor-impaired, I do realize that neither would use any FLOPS because they would both be optimized into L1: jmp L1).