The agents did not simply issue a citation (as your speeding ticket example), or deliver a demand to appear at a hearing.
They demanded, with the force of the US government, that the storekeeper remove the items from her shelves and watched while she complied. This removes opportunities to sell the product WITHOUT due process, simply based on an unverified complaint. Sounds to me like interference in a market, with the govt acting as willing agents.
Moreover, if they really wanted to actually solve the problem, they should have gone after the manufacturer or importer, then down the distribution chain.
This sort of picking on the little guy is just disgusting; they didn't even pick a sizeable retailer. Not only is it the wrong end of the distribution chain, they went after the person least likely to be able to fight.
Petty stupid people with power -- a dangerous combination.
Imagine the scene of someone losing power to their Segway and traveling at 60 mph.
Yes, this could be a serious problem, since they apparently power the machine and the balance mechanism off the same source. Which loses power first, the drive or the balance mechanism? I suspect the drive would lose power first, since it requires more amperage than the sensors and control circuitry.
Nevertheless, I think they'd need a redundant power source, continuously running diagnostics, and forced shutdown (or preferably slowdown) if the balance mechanism starts to lose power or accuracy. Probably would require an entire redundant balance mechanism. But hey, chips are cheap, right?
These guys talk say that "We want to use the technologies we've developed by making our small, hybrid fuel rockets to create new rocket markets."
In another article today on Burt Rutan (link), he talked about how "Lockheed and Boeing will be making very low-cost access to space hardware within 20 years. They just don't know it yet...because they're going to have to."
We're just starting down the path where lower costs allow new users into a market, which increases sales volumes, which further reduces prices by greater efficiencies and amortizing costs over longer prodction runs, which opens up new markets at lower price points, etc...
Without a suspension, the first bump would make that ride would be WAY more intresting than I'd like (can you say 'launch'?)...
Seriously, a 60+ MPH Segway could be very interesting if it had a suspension including tires with sidewall flex, and a somewhat wider track. The gyro/balance system is supposed to take care of the need for a wheelbase, and I expect it could be tuned to be quick and dynamic enough to handle higher speeds (if it isn't already). Add some automated lateral leaning control to the longitudnal leaning control and suspension, and they'd really have something.
One of the biggest mistakes Segway made with the HT was to avoid any hint of association with fun or competition. This was a deliberate and political choice, as part of their efforts to ensure that the HT would be legal for use on sidewalks.
While a good goal, this kind of thinking resulted in a vehicle with no suspension and other constraints. With zero ability to handle potholes and terrain, we saw some over-publicized injuries, and it wound up being banned in some cities anyway.
In contrast, the Centaur is designed for FUN and interesting capabilities -- I like it, and I'm cheering them on with this one! (of course I'd also like to see a lighter and more capable HT with a suspension)
... for the people and companies whose identity is 'stolen' is what is needed.
To leave these people with the burden of proving a negative -- that they didn't do something, is a truly onerous burden, requiring years of wasted time and legal bills.
We need a simple process to prove that it wasn't you, in order to push the responsibility back where it belongs, on the companies whose lax security and verification processes allow these crimes to be perpetrated in the first place.
Perhaps then, they'll get more serious about preventing it.
... that the company whose identity is misused is seen as being responsible for the losses. It is the merchant service providers and banks that should be held fully responsible -- they are the gatekeepers who failed to mind the gate, never checking the imposters' identies or association with the company.
"For all of us, it's a tough business," Steinberg, of Merchant E Services, said. "It's a large, large problem."
No Shit, Sherlock. It may be a large, large problem, but it is your responsibility to solve it. If you can't solve it or handle the losses, you shouldn't be in the business. Period.
Any suggestions on how to keep the losses on the banks and service providers, instead of the businesses?
"If you go to the average tech company, it is the developers and not the accountants or legal department or salesmen who are most likely to have travelled to Nepal or to know about Roman history."
True, some tech folks have interests in everything; they are among the most broadly competent people, and software is merely one of the things that they happen to do well. This broader lifestyle and image should be encouraged.
Unfortunately, this type does not predominate, and the many over-focused types give rise to the stereotype we all know. Note the author's definition of a nerd as "someone who doesn't expend any effort on marketing himself" -- overfocus.
The distinction between the two approaches to life is important, and it is unfortunate that it was glossed over in his article.
Even more important, and more unmentioned, is the fundamental asset that we almost all lack (and I'm no exception), which is an interest in sociopolitical power; We generally view it as a waste of time at best and unethical at worst.
We may be right to value substance, but we are dead right. This is what allows the suits to so mismanage the show, and take (steal) so much of the money. For example, I personally work with one guy who made a few hundred $K in the sale of a company of which he was one of the first 10 employees, but the CEO made $495Million; this wasn't a disparity of technical value, it was one of power management.
What's the fix? It almost seems like it is mutually exclusive -- if you are interested in the real substance of how things work, you aren't interested in power, and vice versa. I suppose we should at least be aware of it...
He's generally right about the trend that people grossly overestimate the effect new revolutionary developments will have in two or three years, and greatly underestimate the effect it will have in 10+ years.
I do take issue with his emphasis on 'nerds' and 'style'. Of course the technically inept manager-types are called 'suits' because their fashion is attempting to hide technical incompetence, and nerds dress down to avoid that. But, its one thing to dress down to repel pretenders, it is another thing to avoid dressing up because you can't pull it off yourself.
He's over-romanticizing and overrating the nerd 'culture', which is essentially an over-focus on one tech competency to the exclusion of all else. Even when 'eccentric' single-minded tech or science types do get rich, they get far less than they would if they were more 'well rounded'. Even the tech-wealthy like BGates are arguably more competent at business and law than they are at tech.
The tech types will always need to develop real competence in broader areas of life and business if they want to be taken seriously. The lack of breadth is what marginalized CTOs and their IT departments. Rather than understanding the business well, finding innovative ways to become more competitve, and selling their vision as strategic peers, they focused on their infrastructure, workload, etc, and so became seen as plumbers, and were outsourced at the first opportunity. There are exceptions, but as a class, we've blown it.
Was it because the suits were too dense to see the opportunities presented, or because CTOs didn't make their innovative strategies heard -- who knows? But the result is the same.
Perhaps the best result is that the competent tech folks go off and form their own businesses, and sell stuff back to the suits at 5x the price; but that still requires much more than just the tech competence he extolls.
"Reading a person on paper (that they wrote) is not a very accurate means for judging a person's intellect or skills. Testing their abilities just to get to the application is a smart thing to do."
Actually, reading things that a person wrote is a VERY accurate way of judging intellect and skills.
When I manage hiring, I explicitly read EVERYTHING that comes in as a work product, not just for its content.
In responding to the advert that specified a "cover letter and resume", did they send the cover letter? Does it say anything interesting? Do the cover letter and resume show good organization, clarity and execution (including grammar and spelling)? If so, they get to the next stage, which may a few essay Qs, which are again similarly evaluated.
OTOH, "intelligence tests" are notoriously difficult to sort from bias and specific knowledge.
I might accept that the owners have a valid interest in offering an actual limited time rental. However, limiting viewing to within 24 hours of starting, or to only a week to view it at all, is too absurdly small to get my business.
Some of us acutally have things to do other than watching the tube. I'll frequently take a whole week to watch a show my ReplayTV recorded, and most shows are just dumped from the buffer unwatched. This is OK for free, but not if I pay!
As usual, the principle could be workable, but they cannot be trusted to be reasonable.
Oh, well... I'm having way too much fun living life to bother playing their stupid games...
I'm all for automotive innovation, but this is bad. (I could only read part of the article due to an unresponsive server, but I think I got the basics..)
This 'PM' thing has all of the hazards of a motorcycle (no surrounding protection, low visibility from other vehicles), with none of the manuverability and power that can allow you to avoid an accident. There's already a name for drivers of this thing -- roadkill.
Then they want us to surrender control to another human? Maybe to someone I really trusted, on a sunny afternoon on the Western part of the Trans-Canadian Highway, when we haven't seen another car for an hour, but any other time? Just what we need -- another thing to encourage driver Inattention -- F'ing idiots!
I suppose if you had a convenience store in your suburban neighborhood, and didn't have to go out on a real road, it might work, but then a bicycle with a basket seems to have about as much cargo space... and you can't even take your kid down to the stand for an ice cream cone...
... then they need to synchronize ALL the lights on a road in a series so that driving at a certain speed will result in the drivers getting all green lights.
Anyone will slow down if they can reliably avoid repeated stop/start cycles. Even when some people don't know about it, the preponderance of those that do generaly makes the traffic flow just fine. I've seen this work in NYC and it is just great.
I second the observations of other posters who noted the problems of this 'punish the speeder' scheme, e.g., creating UNpredictability which increases the risk of accidents, of punishing non-speeders who happen to be near the speeders, etc.
Just because technology allows us to do something new, doesn't mead we should do it every time!
What the author keeps describing, but does not specifically articulate is that the 'situational software' is more implementable and works better because it uses a different set of assumptions in the design.
This set of assumptions is based around what features can be eliminated because of the small group. E.g., they could eliminate a reputation system (a la eBay) because they assume that the set of users already know everyone's reputation.
What is the best code? Code that is never written -- it takes no time to write, runs in zero time and has no bugs! The successful 'situational software' is simply taking advantage of this.
Even with the features that do need to be implemented, it is always easier to solve the specific problem than the general problem. solving general problems well requires very careful thought in the UI and internal design to handle a variety of uses or cases that will be encountered in a scaled app. Just take a set fo fields to enter an address. If you assume only US addresses, it is trivial, but if you want to scale globally, or, heck, just add Canada and Mexico, it suddenly becomes more complex to present and run well.
These sort of situation-specific programs are not new. I'm sure there's hundreds++ of little apps built to track someone's mom's recipies, built with only the measuring system (Us/metric) and searching types that Mom uses, not for general use.
So, it is a good descriptive article as far as it goes, but I think the real issue is how to build toolkits so that the app can be scaleable, but also be efficiently and effectively 'situationalized' for its various sub-audiences, like the apps he describes, not like the "Hello Dave" on the ATM that he properly derides.
Details in NewScientist article
on
Buckyballs Kill Fish
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· Score: 4, Informative
There are some more details here on the mecahnism of the buckyball action.
They found it to be moderately toxic, and to cause damage known as lipid peroxidation. This can impair the normal functioning of cell membranes and has been linked to illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease in humans. They also referred to other studies of both fullerenes and nanotubes causing lung damage.
Satellites are steered constantly to maintain the proper orientation(s) for their task. This is why they have a limited lifespan. When satellites run out of fuel they will just float and tumble uselessly, which is why they are properly de-orbited at the end of life.
Satellites are also steered to avoid space junk (the ~10,000 objects tracked by NORAD, etc.). Steering around a thin cable in a known location would be a simple affair, since a tiny adjustment several orbits in advance of the potential crossing will result in miles of leeway.
Another poster mentioned that the cable will also be moveable.
So, sure, it is work to avoid collisions, but no more work than is already being done by anyone running a satellite today.
... the telecomm companies request that media companies (ususlly movie and TV studios/writers) always use numbers beginning with the 555- exchange, since those are never given out (reserved for internal use, I've heard).
Apparently, this songwriter hadn't heard, or didn't care. Or, he wanted to do a DDOS attack.
Wired News is reporting on DARPA research on extending the time that soldiers can go without food.
"The vision for the Metabolic Dominance Program is to develop novel strategies that exploit and control the mechanisms of energy production, metabolism, and utilization during short periods of deployment requiring unprecedented levels of physical demand. The ultimate goal is to enable superior physical and physiological performance by controlling energy metabolism on demand. An example is continuous peak physical performance and cognitive function for 3 to 5 days, 24 hours per day, without the need for calories."
the Wired Article:
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62297,00. html?tw=wn_tophead_1
the DARPA announcement:
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/solicitations/baa03-02mod 2.htm
Aside from the fact that this is an Indian journal with an obvious bias, we don't even need to go outside the article to find problems with their argument.
Assume that they are right about the $0.58 saved for every dollar spent. This will actually allow US companies to have greater cash flow and capital. Fine.
Of course, now the question is whether that will actually result in new US jobs or not, and what kinds of jobs.
There will probably be some new opportunities for software design and architecture level jobs, and for managers with skills honed to manage offshore-based projects, and these will pay well. But, how many will there be?
More importantly, where will the bulk of this extra cash go? Will it be used to create more jobs here, or just to finance further offshoring, perhaps in some new sector? Of course some of it will go back into the economy in general as corporate spending and investment capital, but those sould go anywhere.
I liked somebody's line that said "if they have access to our jobs, we want access to their cost of living". We do get some of that access with the cheaper products that we can buy, but it obviously goes only so far...
So, anybody have ideas on a SOLUTION to this problem? There are many reasons to be against excess regulation, but do we need regs, tax structure changes, tarrifs, or what? Is there a free-market approach that will work?
Whether this particular plausible story is tue or not, it does illustrate a very real and fundamental flaw in Soviet strategy. Their system did not generate as many breakthroughs as ours, and they at some point decided that it was a good idea to start obtaining Western science and technology through whatever means, which became a widespread practice.
However, the fundamental problem with copying is that you will ALWAYS be behind. The next problem is that if you don't wnat to get even farther behind, you will not take the time to check and re-test the technology that you obtain, thus leaving yourself open to disinformation, trojan horses, etc.
When the history was actually revealed, it turned out that we were far further ahead of the Soviets in almost all areas than anyone suspected. This was partly because western intelligence services had a bias to interpret their scarce data to elevate the Soviet's capabilities (legitimate caution to avoid being blindsided, bureaucratic impeitive to increase budgets, etc), but there wre also some genuine alarms from misread or misleading data.
My favorite was one I heard from a guy that works in the aerospace industry designing satellite and weapons systems, which I believe occurred in the mid-70s. They apparently got some dispersed radar data inticating that a MIG had taken off from Lybia and flown towards Egypt at an almost insane speed, indicating a huge technology breakthru. This data really got the attention of the right people, and of course the engineers in the classified aerospace programs were challenged to explain and beat this achievement. Some weeks later, they figured out that the plane had crashed, and the data was erroneous. But think of the engineers who had to receive this challenge -- talk about outrageous demands from management!
...this is not going to be any serious exercise. Maybe I'm missing something, but the demo showed no significant range of motion being used in ANY muscle. Of course, exercising through the full range of motion is critical to any serious fitness regimen.
It is also possible that the thing is a real hazard. If that back/hip rest is placed a bit too high, and the user suddenly applies a lot of force with one or two legs, the stronger leg muscles could overwhelm the back muscles and cause an injury.
As a lifelong serious competitor currently in training, I would ordinarily be 100% behind this type of development. But, it MUST be done right, and I don't think these guys have it, unless I'm missing something.
One of the most promising things that I saw wasn't even designed as an exercise. It was a large screen video game where the player rode a stationary bike. The scenario was that you had bicycle-powered ornithopter-like aircraft and were involved in a race both around a course and picking off various bonus items. Wonderfully whimsical and well done. To control the craft you pressed the handlebars to turn and pedaled faster or slower to go up or down. Hours of laughs the first time we found it, and fun later.
I can't criticize them because they weren't trying to create an exercise device, but I do bemoan the missed opportunity. This engaging scenario could have helped users exercise HARD for genuinely useful periods. In fact, the one distraction was that the pedals had no resistance, so were a bit harder to control. Ah, but for a generator and a resistive loop controlled by the software...
This statement is dependent entirely upon the context in which you put it. (Of course this is ignoring that this is just trying to get us to proove a negative.) You are heading in the direction of saying that our entire universe from Big Bang to now is just one of zillions of universe-bubbles that randomly pop into and out of existence in a frothing sea of quantum foam, and that the existence of one never matters. (Or some other such world-view)
The problem is, if nothing matters, why do you do ANYTHING? Why did you write that post? Why did you eat food recently? Why have you not starved from not bothering to eat, or why have you not already killed yourself, or someone else for a trivial reason (since it really doesn't matter)?
The evidence is that it does actually matter, although we might not know exactly how.
The evidence also indicates that the things we do matter more when we think about them first, instead of just (re-)acting based on habit, instinct, emotion or whatever. When we think first, our actions tend to cause more change.
To take this to its logical conclusion, if you truly and fully believe what you say, the only ethical thing to do is to kill yourself immediately, so you do no harm to others who do think that things do matter. Short of that, move very far away from anyone.
More realistically, you will likely find thinking to be more productive and happy if you bring it closer in line with the reality that something does matter (to you), you just need to figure out what.
I'd like to have that kind of eyesight
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
"But *I* prefer not to have all our jets crashing should the enemy paint scenes from Hustler on their aircraft."
Our warplanes these days fly at Mach2+ in "supercruise" mode (i.e., do not need afterburners to do it), and have misiles that can kill 'over the horizon'. I.e., the enemy plane is often destroyed before they even know ours are in the area.
I'd love to have the kind of eyesight that could see and be distracted by the 'hustler scene' painted on the target aircraft under those conditions (tho our telemetry does operate at that level, just not in the visual band).
I appreciate your effort at a point, but it would be nice if it has a shread of realism to it.
We have indeed arrived at the old question of upgrading in dynamic language, vs the degrading of sloppy language. It may surprise you to hear that I'm actually quite in favor of the dynamic language concept (and wholeheartedly against the French effots to rollback modern/foreign influences on their language). One of my (relatively unsubstantiated) pet theories is that English is becoming the world's de-facto language precisely because England was overrun so many times (Romans, Saxons, Normans, etc.) that the language became very extensible.
So, how do I find myself arguing on the side of the pedants on this item? It may be partly that I haven't really clearly deliniated the line between changes that enhance the language and changes that degrade it. I'm also not sure that the line will ever be clear, at least not without decades of hindsight.
Thanks to your discussion, I'm thinking that a first cut at this distinction could be to ask if a particular language change is adding any new clarity, brevity, or expression of a new concept or style. If so, then it is an enhancement and should be welcomed. However, if the change simply loses clarity, blurs discinctions or erases historical context, then it should be considered an error to be corected. Is the speaker rifing, or just being sloppy? Of course, pure examples of each will be rare among the interesting cases, but perhaps this might be a useful rule of thumnb.
I must say that I'm intrigued by your argument that the changed version of "intents and purposes" is actually a new word or contraction. I'm sot sure I buy it yet;), but it is interesting.
So, does this make any sense? Do you have any useful way of making these distinctions, or do you just welcome almost all change? And why?
Slashdot Mirror
The agents did not simply issue a citation (as your speeding ticket example), or deliver a demand to appear at a hearing .
They demanded, with the force of the US government, that the storekeeper remove the items from her shelves and watched while she complied. This removes opportunities to sell the product WITHOUT due process, simply based on an unverified complaint. Sounds to me like interference in a market, with the govt acting as willing agents.
Moreover, if they really wanted to actually solve the problem, they should have gone after the manufacturer or importer, then down the distribution chain.
This sort of picking on the little guy is just disgusting; they didn't even pick a sizeable retailer. Not only is it the wrong end of the distribution chain, they went after the person least likely to be able to fight.
Petty stupid people with power -- a dangerous combination.
Imagine the scene of someone losing power to their Segway and traveling at 60 mph.
Yes, this could be a serious problem, since they apparently power the machine and the balance mechanism off the same source. Which loses power first, the drive or the balance mechanism? I suspect the drive would lose power first, since it requires more amperage than the sensors and control circuitry.
Nevertheless, I think they'd need a redundant power source, continuously running diagnostics, and forced shutdown (or preferably slowdown) if the balance mechanism starts to lose power or accuracy. Probably would require an entire redundant balance mechanism. But hey, chips are cheap, right?
These guys talk say that "We want to use the technologies we've developed by making our small, hybrid fuel rockets to create new rocket markets."
In another article today on Burt Rutan (link), he talked about how "Lockheed and Boeing will be making very low-cost access to space hardware within 20 years. They just don't know it yet...because they're going to have to."
We're just starting down the path where lower costs allow new users into a market, which increases sales volumes, which further reduces prices by greater efficiencies and amortizing costs over longer prodction runs, which opens up new markets at lower price points, etc...
Looks good to me!
Without a suspension, the first bump would make that ride would be WAY more intresting than I'd like (can you say 'launch'?)...
Seriously, a 60+ MPH Segway could be very interesting if it had a suspension including tires with sidewall flex, and a somewhat wider track. The gyro/balance system is supposed to take care of the need for a wheelbase, and I expect it could be tuned to be quick and dynamic enough to handle higher speeds (if it isn't already). Add some automated lateral leaning control to the longitudnal leaning control and suspension, and they'd really have something.
One of the biggest mistakes Segway made with the HT was to avoid any hint of association with fun or competition. This was a deliberate and political choice, as part of their efforts to ensure that the HT would be legal for use on sidewalks.
While a good goal, this kind of thinking resulted in a vehicle with no suspension and other constraints. With zero ability to handle potholes and terrain, we saw some over-publicized injuries, and it wound up being banned in some cities anyway.
In contrast, the Centaur is designed for FUN and interesting capabilities -- I like it, and I'm cheering them on with this one! (of course I'd also like to see a lighter and more capable HT with a suspension)
... for the people and companies whose identity is 'stolen' is what is needed.
To leave these people with the burden of proving a negative -- that they didn't do something, is a truly onerous burden, requiring years of wasted time and legal bills.
We need a simple process to prove that it wasn't you, in order to push the responsibility back where it belongs, on the companies whose lax security and verification processes allow these crimes to be perpetrated in the first place.
Perhaps then, they'll get more serious about preventing it.
... that the company whose identity is misused is seen as being responsible for the losses. It is the merchant service providers and banks that should be held fully responsible -- they are the gatekeepers who failed to mind the gate, never checking the imposters' identies or association with the company.
"For all of us, it's a tough business," Steinberg, of Merchant E Services, said. "It's a large, large problem."
No Shit, Sherlock. It may be a large, large problem, but it is your responsibility to solve it. If you can't solve it or handle the losses, you shouldn't be in the business. Period.
Any suggestions on how to keep the losses on the banks and service providers, instead of the businesses?
"If you go to the average tech company, it is the developers and not the accountants or legal department or salesmen who are most likely to have travelled to Nepal or to know about Roman history."
True, some tech folks have interests in everything; they are among the most broadly competent people, and software is merely one of the things that they happen to do well. This broader lifestyle and image should be encouraged.
Unfortunately, this type does not predominate, and the many over-focused types give rise to the stereotype we all know. Note the author's definition of a nerd as "someone who doesn't expend any effort on marketing himself" -- overfocus.
The distinction between the two approaches to life is important, and it is unfortunate that it was glossed over in his article.
Even more important, and more unmentioned, is the fundamental asset that we almost all lack (and I'm no exception), which is an interest in sociopolitical power; We generally view it as a waste of time at best and unethical at worst.
We may be right to value substance, but we are dead right. This is what allows the suits to so mismanage the show, and take (steal) so much of the money. For example, I personally work with one guy who made a few hundred $K in the sale of a company of which he was one of the first 10 employees, but the CEO made $495Million; this wasn't a disparity of technical value, it was one of power management.
What's the fix? It almost seems like it is mutually exclusive -- if you are interested in the real substance of how things work, you aren't interested in power, and vice versa. I suppose we should at least be aware of it...
He's generally right about the trend that people grossly overestimate the effect new revolutionary developments will have in two or three years, and greatly underestimate the effect it will have in 10+ years.
I do take issue with his emphasis on 'nerds' and 'style'. Of course the technically inept manager-types are called 'suits' because their fashion is attempting to hide technical incompetence, and nerds dress down to avoid that. But, its one thing to dress down to repel pretenders, it is another thing to avoid dressing up because you can't pull it off yourself.
He's over-romanticizing and overrating the nerd 'culture', which is essentially an over-focus on one tech competency to the exclusion of all else. Even when 'eccentric' single-minded tech or science types do get rich, they get far less than they would if they were more 'well rounded'. Even the tech-wealthy like BGates are arguably more competent at business and law than they are at tech.
The tech types will always need to develop real competence in broader areas of life and business if they want to be taken seriously. The lack of breadth is what marginalized CTOs and their IT departments. Rather than understanding the business well, finding innovative ways to become more competitve, and selling their vision as strategic peers, they focused on their infrastructure, workload, etc, and so became seen as plumbers, and were outsourced at the first opportunity. There are exceptions, but as a class, we've blown it.
Was it because the suits were too dense to see the opportunities presented, or because CTOs didn't make their innovative strategies heard -- who knows? But the result is the same.
Perhaps the best result is that the competent tech folks go off and form their own businesses, and sell stuff back to the suits at 5x the price; but that still requires much more than just the tech competence he extolls.
It'd be better if he was more clear about that.
"Reading a person on paper (that they wrote) is not a very accurate means for judging a person's intellect or skills. Testing their abilities just to get to the application is a smart thing to do."
Actually, reading things that a person wrote is a VERY accurate way of judging intellect and skills.
When I manage hiring, I explicitly read EVERYTHING that comes in as a work product, not just for its content.
In responding to the advert that specified a "cover letter and resume", did they send the cover letter? Does it say anything interesting? Do the cover letter and resume show good organization, clarity and execution (including grammar and spelling)? If so, they get to the next stage, which may a few essay Qs, which are again similarly evaluated.
OTOH, "intelligence tests" are notoriously difficult to sort from bias and specific knowledge.
...the low limits are absurd.
I might accept that the owners have a valid interest in offering an actual limited time rental. However, limiting viewing to within 24 hours of starting, or to only a week to view it at all, is too absurdly small to get my business.
Some of us acutally have things to do other than watching the tube. I'll frequently take a whole week to watch a show my ReplayTV recorded, and most shows are just dumped from the buffer unwatched. This is OK for free, but not if I pay!
As usual, the principle could be workable, but they cannot be trusted to be reasonable.
Oh, well... I'm having way too much fun living life to bother playing their stupid games...
I'm all for automotive innovation, but this is bad. (I could only read part of the article due to an unresponsive server, but I think I got the basics..)
This 'PM' thing has all of the hazards of a motorcycle (no surrounding protection, low visibility from other vehicles), with none of the manuverability and power that can allow you to avoid an accident. There's already a name for drivers of this thing -- roadkill.
Then they want us to surrender control to another human? Maybe to someone I really trusted, on a sunny afternoon on the Western part of the Trans-Canadian Highway, when we haven't seen another car for an hour, but any other time? Just what we need -- another thing to encourage driver Inattention -- F'ing idiots!
I suppose if you had a convenience store in your suburban neighborhood, and didn't have to go out on a real road, it might work, but then a bicycle with a basket seems to have about as much cargo space... and you can't even take your kid down to the stand for an ice cream cone...
Maybe there's a point, but I don't see it.
... then they need to synchronize ALL the lights on a road in a series so that driving at a certain speed will result in the drivers getting all green lights.
Anyone will slow down if they can reliably avoid repeated stop/start cycles. Even when some people don't know about it, the preponderance of those that do generaly makes the traffic flow just fine. I've seen this work in NYC and it is just great.
I second the observations of other posters who noted the problems of this 'punish the speeder' scheme, e.g., creating UNpredictability which increases the risk of accidents, of punishing non-speeders who happen to be near the speeders, etc.
Just because technology allows us to do something new, doesn't mead we should do it every time!
What the author keeps describing, but does not specifically articulate is that the 'situational software' is more implementable and works better because it uses a different set of assumptions in the design.
This set of assumptions is based around what features can be eliminated because of the small group. E.g., they could eliminate a reputation system (a la eBay) because they assume that the set of users already know everyone's reputation.
What is the best code? Code that is never written -- it takes no time to write, runs in zero time and has no bugs! The successful 'situational software' is simply taking advantage of this.
Even with the features that do need to be implemented, it is always easier to solve the specific problem than the general problem. solving general problems well requires very careful thought in the UI and internal design to handle a variety of uses or cases that will be encountered in a scaled app. Just take a set fo fields to enter an address. If you assume only US addresses, it is trivial, but if you want to scale globally, or, heck, just add Canada and Mexico, it suddenly becomes more complex to present and run well.
These sort of situation-specific programs are not new. I'm sure there's hundreds++ of little apps built to track someone's mom's recipies, built with only the measuring system (Us/metric) and searching types that Mom uses, not for general use.
So, it is a good descriptive article as far as it goes, but I think the real issue is how to build toolkits so that the app can be scaleable, but also be efficiently and effectively 'situationalized' for its various sub-audiences, like the apps he describes, not like the "Hello Dave" on the ATM that he properly derides.
There are some more details here on the mecahnism of the buckyball action.
9 99 94825
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns
They found it to be moderately toxic, and to cause damage known as lipid peroxidation. This can impair the normal functioning of cell membranes and has been linked to illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease in humans. They also referred to other studies of both fullerenes and nanotubes causing lung damage.
Satellites are steered constantly to maintain the proper orientation(s) for their task. This is why they have a limited lifespan. When satellites run out of fuel they will just float and tumble uselessly, which is why they are properly de-orbited at the end of life.
Satellites are also steered to avoid space junk (the ~10,000 objects tracked by NORAD, etc.). Steering around a thin cable in a known location would be a simple affair, since a tiny adjustment several orbits in advance of the potential crossing will result in miles of leeway.
Another poster mentioned that the cable will also be moveable.
So, sure, it is work to avoid collisions, but no more work than is already being done by anyone running a satellite today.
... the telecomm companies request that media companies (ususlly movie and TV studios/writers) always use numbers beginning with the 555- exchange, since those are never given out (reserved for internal use, I've heard).
Apparently, this songwriter hadn't heard, or didn't care. Or, he wanted to do a DDOS attack.
"The vision for the Metabolic Dominance Program is to develop novel strategies that exploit and control the mechanisms of energy production, metabolism, and utilization during short periods of deployment requiring unprecedented levels of physical demand. The ultimate goal is to enable superior physical and physiological performance by controlling energy metabolism on demand. An example is continuous peak physical performance and cognitive function for 3 to 5 days, 24 hours per day, without the need for calories."
the Wired Article:. html?tw=wn_tophead_1
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62297,00
the DARPA announcement:d 2.htm
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/solicitations/baa03-02mo
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Assume that they are right about the $0.58 saved for every dollar spent. This will actually allow US companies to have greater cash flow and capital. Fine.
Of course, now the question is whether that will actually result in new US jobs or not, and what kinds of jobs.
There will probably be some new opportunities for software design and architecture level jobs, and for managers with skills honed to manage offshore-based projects, and these will pay well. But, how many will there be?
More importantly, where will the bulk of this extra cash go? Will it be used to create more jobs here, or just to finance further offshoring, perhaps in some new sector? Of course some of it will go back into the economy in general as corporate spending and investment capital, but those sould go anywhere.
I liked somebody's line that said "if they have access to our jobs, we want access to their cost of living". We do get some of that access with the cheaper products that we can buy, but it obviously goes only so far...
So, anybody have ideas on a SOLUTION to this problem? There are many reasons to be against excess regulation, but do we need regs, tax structure changes, tarrifs, or what? Is there a free-market approach that will work?
Yes, good info! Obviuosly, we can't win everything...
BTW, I like your sig -- "... shall not be infringed" is pretty clear!
Whether this particular plausible story is tue or not, it does illustrate a very real and fundamental flaw in Soviet strategy. Their system did not generate as many breakthroughs as ours, and they at some point decided that it was a good idea to start obtaining Western science and technology through whatever means, which became a widespread practice.
However, the fundamental problem with copying is that you will ALWAYS be behind. The next problem is that if you don't wnat to get even farther behind, you will not take the time to check and re-test the technology that you obtain, thus leaving yourself open to disinformation, trojan horses, etc.
When the history was actually revealed, it turned out that we were far further ahead of the Soviets in almost all areas than anyone suspected. This was partly because western intelligence services had a bias to interpret their scarce data to elevate the Soviet's capabilities (legitimate caution to avoid being blindsided, bureaucratic impeitive to increase budgets, etc), but there wre also some genuine alarms from misread or misleading data.
My favorite was one I heard from a guy that works in the aerospace industry designing satellite and weapons systems, which I believe occurred in the mid-70s. They apparently got some dispersed radar data inticating that a MIG had taken off from Lybia and flown towards Egypt at an almost insane speed, indicating a huge technology breakthru. This data really got the attention of the right people, and of course the engineers in the classified aerospace programs were challenged to explain and beat this achievement. Some weeks later, they figured out that the plane had crashed, and the data was erroneous. But think of the engineers who had to receive this challenge -- talk about outrageous demands from management!
...this is not going to be any serious exercise. Maybe I'm missing something, but the demo showed no significant range of motion being used in ANY muscle. Of course, exercising through the full range of motion is critical to any serious fitness regimen.
It is also possible that the thing is a real hazard. If that back/hip rest is placed a bit too high, and the user suddenly applies a lot of force with one or two legs, the stronger leg muscles could overwhelm the back muscles and cause an injury.
As a lifelong serious competitor currently in training, I would ordinarily be 100% behind this type of development. But, it MUST be done right, and I don't think these guys have it, unless I'm missing something.
One of the most promising things that I saw wasn't even designed as an exercise. It was a large screen video game where the player rode a stationary bike. The scenario was that you had bicycle-powered ornithopter-like aircraft and were involved in a race both around a course and picking off various bonus items. Wonderfully whimsical and well done. To control the craft you pressed the handlebars to turn and pedaled faster or slower to go up or down. Hours of laughs the first time we found it, and fun later.
I can't criticize them because they weren't trying to create an exercise device, but I do bemoan the missed opportunity. This engaging scenario could have helped users exercise HARD for genuinely useful periods. In fact, the one distraction was that the pedals had no resistance, so were a bit harder to control. Ah, but for a generator and a resistive loop controlled by the software...
This statement is dependent entirely upon the context in which you put it. (Of course this is ignoring that this is just trying to get us to proove a negative.) You are heading in the direction of saying that our entire universe from Big Bang to now is just one of zillions of universe-bubbles that randomly pop into and out of existence in a frothing sea of quantum foam, and that the existence of one never matters. (Or some other such world-view)
The problem is, if nothing matters, why do you do ANYTHING? Why did you write that post? Why did you eat food recently? Why have you not starved from not bothering to eat, or why have you not already killed yourself, or someone else for a trivial reason (since it really doesn't matter)?
The evidence is that it does actually matter, although we might not know exactly how.
The evidence also indicates that the things we do matter more when we think about them first, instead of just (re-)acting based on habit, instinct, emotion or whatever. When we think first, our actions tend to cause more change.
To take this to its logical conclusion, if you truly and fully believe what you say, the only ethical thing to do is to kill yourself immediately, so you do no harm to others who do think that things do matter. Short of that, move very far away from anyone.
More realistically, you will likely find thinking to be more productive and happy if you bring it closer in line with the reality that something does matter (to you), you just need to figure out what.
Our warplanes these days fly at Mach2+ in "supercruise" mode (i.e., do not need afterburners to do it), and have misiles that can kill 'over the horizon'. I.e., the enemy plane is often destroyed before they even know ours are in the area.
I'd love to have the kind of eyesight that could see and be distracted by the 'hustler scene' painted on the target aircraft under those conditions (tho our telemetry does operate at that level, just not in the visual band).
I appreciate your effort at a point, but it would be nice if it has a shread of realism to it.
We have indeed arrived at the old question of upgrading in dynamic language, vs the degrading of sloppy language. It may surprise you to hear that I'm actually quite in favor of the dynamic language concept (and wholeheartedly against the French effots to rollback modern/foreign influences on their language). One of my (relatively unsubstantiated) pet theories is that English is becoming the world's de-facto language precisely because England was overrun so many times (Romans, Saxons, Normans, etc.) that the language became very extensible.
;), but it is interesting.
So, how do I find myself arguing on the side of the pedants on this item? It may be partly that I haven't really clearly deliniated the line between changes that enhance the language and changes that degrade it. I'm also not sure that the line will ever be clear, at least not without decades of hindsight.
Thanks to your discussion, I'm thinking that a first cut at this distinction could be to ask if a particular language change is adding any new clarity, brevity, or expression of a new concept or style. If so, then it is an enhancement and should be welcomed. However, if the change simply loses clarity, blurs discinctions or erases historical context, then it should be considered an error to be corected. Is the speaker rifing, or just being sloppy? Of course, pure examples of each will be rare among the interesting cases, but perhaps this might be a useful rule of thumnb.
I must say that I'm intrigued by your argument that the changed version of "intents and purposes" is actually a new word or contraction. I'm sot sure I buy it yet
So, does this make any sense? Do you have any useful way of making these distinctions, or do you just welcome almost all change? And why?