REALITY CHECK...
Population is not and has not and (IMHO) WILL not be a problem. Why not? Our technology improves faster than our population. I invite those who worry about population density to compare the population densities of, say, Bangladesh (lots of disease, etc., no technology) and suburban Chicago. Check an atlas or almanac so you have an apples-to-apples comparison. Ask yourself why people living in similarly population-dense high-tech and lower-technology areas have different life expectancies, etc. (Blinding flash of the obvious, no?) Being an optimist, I would venture the notion that technology will even solve the nasty pollute-more-than-use problem we here in the U.S. seem to have. Technology has been saving humans from their own idiocy for all of history, despite our tendancy to burn geniuses, pioneers and visionaries at the stake. Cliched but true.
Small businesses fuel the (U.S) economy to a greater extent than large. Small businesses do best with laissez-faire management and motivated workers. As they grow, managers replace founders and innovators. Inertia sets in. By the time the company is "big" and/or (dog forbid) publicly traded "innovation" is a slogan and business plan as well as a practice. Then, some managerial genius notices that the time-to-market cycle of brilliant, innovative technology doesn't line up the the metronome-on-speed quarterly-financial-reporting cycle that American investors know in their heart of hearts is cocked up, but can't seem to leave behind (yes, you, little Maisie-in-the-home-getting-a-dividend-check) and presto - the genius manager gets promoted for shuttering that nasty, inefficient lab. This is not capitalism, or market forces - it is a the triumph of myopic beancounters over producers, and it does suck. This I know - I am an accountant, and I have seen the beast with my own eyes. The only comfort I find is that those who "do" can "do" faster than the Trogs in Suits can screw up. The lab is dead - long live the lab.
After hearing such ado about the Campbell book and its influence on Mr. Lucas, I decided to read the thing for myself. An interesting read, if rather flowery/academic/pedantic. One thing that stood out, however, is how a writer COULD use the conceptual framework Campbell puts forth and "push the right buttons." Yes, dear readers, you can use classic literature and myth to create formulaic fiction. Anyone surprised by this, increase your oxygen intake. As far as Star Wars goes, Mr. Lucas didn't do a particularly good job of developing the archetypes Campell dwells enlessly on, but hey - Star Wars is hardly purely character-driven. If you doubt that, consider this - if the film was set during WWI or WWII, would it be the same big deal it is? Nope - it would be called Saving Private Skywalker. Wait, a formulaic war story...? Hmmmm.....
IMHO, Star Wars is exactly what is looks like - a kickass SciFi serial that set a pretty high benchmark and resurrected Science Fiction as a viable commercial film form.
I note two things for this discussion:
1. Correct assumption is that most "managers" don't know about or care about technology, they want it to work - and elegant, proper code is not a concept they understand because...
2. A public company is tied into equity markets RULED by quarterly and annual results, and even private firms design compensation schemes for management based on quarterly / annual results. If you are the calendars' whipped bee-yotch, even where it makes NO sense (most busines cycles do NOT correspond to hard and fast calendar dates), you will drag all your people down the everything-is-a-firedrill wormhole with you - but they get a different bonus plan. A well-executed plan / project takes time to plan, execute and follow through on. Find a good manager who is allowed and incentivised to plan past the next 90 days and you have found a boss to grab and hold. You will also have to insert another $1.00 to play again.
Drone war "irresistable" ? I don't think so.
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 1
Drone wars are cheap in terms of human capital (lives) but much more costly than trade-in-peacetime. Trade has no economic downside (REAL trade only occurs when two willing and rational parties mutually benefit from dealing with one another. Externalities don't play into the trade-or-war decision except in terms of "bloodthirst"). War, of any flavor, is a financially costly endeavor. Only a truly bloodthirsty society would waste money on a war of conquest-by-drone when peace brought greater wealth. Such a bloodthirsty society would be unlikely to remain at peace long enough for trade to raise that nations' level of wealth sufficiently to allow the development of technology required to start or sustain a drone war. In short, sustained bloodlust is not a survival skill.
1. Companies get dumber as they get bigger. You must work for a pretty big company.
2. Get the resume out there. Look at offers from smaller, less "sexy" companies.
Take your skills into an industry that hasn't really "gotten with the program" technology-wise. You might just find a small company that "gets it" that needs your help to grow. My company, for example, builds and manages warehouses. Gee, sexy (not) - but they are also committed to intelligent IT implementation and use. I came here just over a year ago, and it was the best move I ever made. We don't have enough good people to risk alienating a talented worker. As an added bonus, unsexy industries (like, say, industrial real estate) are slightly more recession-resistant than consulting or high-tech. Good luck!
Having read the rant on Paine and Paine-esque ideas above, I suggest the following:
The problem in any communicative media, whether old-school and exclusive, or new-school and inclusive, is people; specifically, in any forum discussion, people will only tune in if they care and only stay tuned in if they WANT to hear what someone else has to say. Even in the new-media www, individuals with an axe to grind will find themselves ignored by the majority. Individuals who don't care enough about current events to participate will remain happily isolated on the parts of the web devoted to _insert preference here_. The notion that people will self-empower recurs in both extreme democratic (Paine-esque, if you will) and communist mythology (the whole notion of the politically aware and active communal citizenry - the "proletariat"). Frankly, in any societal system, most individuals will choose to live their lives in contented, apathetic isolation. And if that is their choice, more power to them. The discussion about what the Net CAN do should be distinguished from what it IS or SHOULD BE doing to society. The Net has nothing to do with human behavior and everything to do with human potential.
Briefly -
1. Blaming "corporatist" companies for selling censorship software / IT solutions to other countries is ridiculous. Foreign nations are sovereign, and that mean the US can't and should not shove our interpretations of our constitution, or any charter on human rights, down another countries' throat. If the government can't even sanction Saudi Arabia without UN permission (in theory - pay no attention to the Cuba behind the curtain), why should we expect companies to do so? Ahhh... before you flame, read on...
2. Right now, most of Saudi Arabia has no internet access at all. Once they have access, ask yourselves this (you pack of beautiful technophiles, you) - who is more likely to be successful,/.-ers who want to enable the population of SA to enjoy the free net, or the consultants, who bill by the hour, who will be trying frantically to patch "security holes" in their censorship system that turn up as a result of determined virtual freedom fighter/hackers? Let's face it - any solution proposed by any of the Big Strong Consultancies out there is liable to be buggier than Windows95. Saudi Arabia is trying to "protect" their population behind a gauze curtain. Let them try. Once opened, they will discover that the only solution to their "security" problem is absolute repression or US-style openness, and once the population sees the internet, even a little, well, the genie is out and stealing the silverware - repression will be much harder to enforce than it is now.
As an action item, I suggest waiting until the Saudi system is in place, give them a one month grace period, then hack the cr*p out of it.
Globalism, IMHO, at its core, is the process of replacing geographical barriers with philosophical ones. All other related issues flow from this process.
Note: Entrepreneurship sounds GREAT in the current economy - lots of people getting laid off, but most companies still need to get jobs done. Freelancing is a good way to start your own business, especially straight out of school - no mortgage, kids, etc. (hopefully!) so your overhead is lower than many of the newly-unemployed. Plus, you can work like a dog - you will anyway, so it might as well be for yourself.
I sympathize. Here's what I did, and it worked. You may find it useful. I was a Finance and Accy student (zzzz) who took CS classes because they were fascinating. I got a job as an investment analyst, and here's how the three things I studied in college, pretty dull in themselves, got great: business people are technologically and mathematically illiterate, generally speaking. I found ways of applying the thought process that underlies quality software design applies equally well to organizing the way companies take in, store and use information. By becoming the "go to guy" for IT regarding ops and ops regarding IT, I made IT happy (they had a friend in operations) and my boss happy (he got the kind of information he needed without having to deal with IT directly). My company likes it, because this is exactly the sort of job consultants do, but they cost a LOT more. I like it because my face is very well know at many levels and departments - helps job stability. So, in a nutshell - apply your skills in arenas that most CS people don't consider, because no-one tells them there are other places to use them. Romantic? No. Challenging - not in the way, say, pushing the LINUX kernal is, but better than living in "office space". Good luck.
I'm now losing sleep. I have an old iBook - the original Tangerine "clamshell". I am awaiting the arrival of a 128MB RAM upgrade and the OS X 10.1 CD. Do I cancel the CD and live with 9.2? Naive me - I assumed all the press I was reading about OS X being faster, more stable, BSD-based, easier to code for, etc. was all true even on "older" machines. Apple web site said so - call me gullible. Has anyone out there tried running OS X on 128 MB iBook G3 300? Am I hosed? Thanks.
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REALITY CHECK... Population is not and has not and (IMHO) WILL not be a problem. Why not? Our technology improves faster than our population. I invite those who worry about population density to compare the population densities of, say, Bangladesh (lots of disease, etc., no technology) and suburban Chicago. Check an atlas or almanac so you have an apples-to-apples comparison. Ask yourself why people living in similarly population-dense high-tech and lower-technology areas have different life expectancies, etc. (Blinding flash of the obvious, no?) Being an optimist, I would venture the notion that technology will even solve the nasty pollute-more-than-use problem we here in the U.S. seem to have. Technology has been saving humans from their own idiocy for all of history, despite our tendancy to burn geniuses, pioneers and visionaries at the stake. Cliched but true.
Small businesses fuel the (U.S) economy to a greater extent than large. Small businesses do best with laissez-faire management and motivated workers. As they grow, managers replace founders and innovators. Inertia sets in. By the time the company is "big" and/or (dog forbid) publicly traded "innovation" is a slogan and business plan as well as a practice. Then, some managerial genius notices that the time-to-market cycle of brilliant, innovative technology doesn't line up the the metronome-on-speed quarterly-financial-reporting cycle that American investors know in their heart of hearts is cocked up, but can't seem to leave behind (yes, you, little Maisie-in-the-home-getting-a-dividend-check) and presto - the genius manager gets promoted for shuttering that nasty, inefficient lab. This is not capitalism, or market forces - it is a the triumph of myopic beancounters over producers, and it does suck. This I know - I am an accountant, and I have seen the beast with my own eyes. The only comfort I find is that those who "do" can "do" faster than the Trogs in Suits can screw up. The lab is dead - long live the lab.
After hearing such ado about the Campbell book and its influence on Mr. Lucas, I decided to read the thing for myself. An interesting read, if rather flowery/academic/pedantic. One thing that stood out, however, is how a writer COULD use the conceptual framework Campbell puts forth and "push the right buttons." Yes, dear readers, you can use classic literature and myth to create formulaic fiction. Anyone surprised by this, increase your oxygen intake. As far as Star Wars goes, Mr. Lucas didn't do a particularly good job of developing the archetypes Campell dwells enlessly on, but hey - Star Wars is hardly purely character-driven. If you doubt that, consider this - if the film was set during WWI or WWII, would it be the same big deal it is? Nope - it would be called Saving Private Skywalker. Wait, a formulaic war story...? Hmmmm..... IMHO, Star Wars is exactly what is looks like - a kickass SciFi serial that set a pretty high benchmark and resurrected Science Fiction as a viable commercial film form.
I note two things for this discussion: 1. Correct assumption is that most "managers" don't know about or care about technology, they want it to work - and elegant, proper code is not a concept they understand because... 2. A public company is tied into equity markets RULED by quarterly and annual results, and even private firms design compensation schemes for management based on quarterly / annual results. If you are the calendars' whipped bee-yotch, even where it makes NO sense (most busines cycles do NOT correspond to hard and fast calendar dates), you will drag all your people down the everything-is-a-firedrill wormhole with you - but they get a different bonus plan. A well-executed plan / project takes time to plan, execute and follow through on. Find a good manager who is allowed and incentivised to plan past the next 90 days and you have found a boss to grab and hold. You will also have to insert another $1.00 to play again.
Drone wars are cheap in terms of human capital (lives) but much more costly than trade-in-peacetime. Trade has no economic downside (REAL trade only occurs when two willing and rational parties mutually benefit from dealing with one another. Externalities don't play into the trade-or-war decision except in terms of "bloodthirst"). War, of any flavor, is a financially costly endeavor. Only a truly bloodthirsty society would waste money on a war of conquest-by-drone when peace brought greater wealth. Such a bloodthirsty society would be unlikely to remain at peace long enough for trade to raise that nations' level of wealth sufficiently to allow the development of technology required to start or sustain a drone war. In short, sustained bloodlust is not a survival skill.
1. Companies get dumber as they get bigger. You must work for a pretty big company. 2. Get the resume out there. Look at offers from smaller, less "sexy" companies. Take your skills into an industry that hasn't really "gotten with the program" technology-wise. You might just find a small company that "gets it" that needs your help to grow. My company, for example, builds and manages warehouses. Gee, sexy (not) - but they are also committed to intelligent IT implementation and use. I came here just over a year ago, and it was the best move I ever made. We don't have enough good people to risk alienating a talented worker. As an added bonus, unsexy industries (like, say, industrial real estate) are slightly more recession-resistant than consulting or high-tech. Good luck!
Having read the rant on Paine and Paine-esque ideas above, I suggest the following: The problem in any communicative media, whether old-school and exclusive, or new-school and inclusive, is people; specifically, in any forum discussion, people will only tune in if they care and only stay tuned in if they WANT to hear what someone else has to say. Even in the new-media www, individuals with an axe to grind will find themselves ignored by the majority. Individuals who don't care enough about current events to participate will remain happily isolated on the parts of the web devoted to _insert preference here_. The notion that people will self-empower recurs in both extreme democratic (Paine-esque, if you will) and communist mythology (the whole notion of the politically aware and active communal citizenry - the "proletariat"). Frankly, in any societal system, most individuals will choose to live their lives in contented, apathetic isolation. And if that is their choice, more power to them. The discussion about what the Net CAN do should be distinguished from what it IS or SHOULD BE doing to society. The Net has nothing to do with human behavior and everything to do with human potential.
Briefly - 1. Blaming "corporatist" companies for selling censorship software / IT solutions to other countries is ridiculous. Foreign nations are sovereign, and that mean the US can't and should not shove our interpretations of our constitution, or any charter on human rights, down another countries' throat. If the government can't even sanction Saudi Arabia without UN permission (in theory - pay no attention to the Cuba behind the curtain), why should we expect companies to do so? Ahhh... before you flame, read on... 2. Right now, most of Saudi Arabia has no internet access at all. Once they have access, ask yourselves this (you pack of beautiful technophiles, you) - who is more likely to be successful, /.-ers who want to enable the population of SA to enjoy the free net, or the consultants, who bill by the hour, who will be trying frantically to patch "security holes" in their censorship system that turn up as a result of determined virtual freedom fighter/hackers? Let's face it - any solution proposed by any of the Big Strong Consultancies out there is liable to be buggier than Windows95. Saudi Arabia is trying to "protect" their population behind a gauze curtain. Let them try. Once opened, they will discover that the only solution to their "security" problem is absolute repression or US-style openness, and once the population sees the internet, even a little, well, the genie is out and stealing the silverware - repression will be much harder to enforce than it is now.
As an action item, I suggest waiting until the Saudi system is in place, give them a one month grace period, then hack the cr*p out of it.
Globalism, IMHO, at its core, is the process of replacing geographical barriers with philosophical ones. All other related issues flow from this process.
Note: Entrepreneurship sounds GREAT in the current economy - lots of people getting laid off, but most companies still need to get jobs done. Freelancing is a good way to start your own business, especially straight out of school - no mortgage, kids, etc. (hopefully!) so your overhead is lower than many of the newly-unemployed. Plus, you can work like a dog - you will anyway, so it might as well be for yourself.
I sympathize. Here's what I did, and it worked. You may find it useful. I was a Finance and Accy student (zzzz) who took CS classes because they were fascinating. I got a job as an investment analyst, and here's how the three things I studied in college, pretty dull in themselves, got great: business people are technologically and mathematically illiterate, generally speaking. I found ways of applying the thought process that underlies quality software design applies equally well to organizing the way companies take in, store and use information. By becoming the "go to guy" for IT regarding ops and ops regarding IT, I made IT happy (they had a friend in operations) and my boss happy (he got the kind of information he needed without having to deal with IT directly). My company likes it, because this is exactly the sort of job consultants do, but they cost a LOT more. I like it because my face is very well know at many levels and departments - helps job stability. So, in a nutshell - apply your skills in arenas that most CS people don't consider, because no-one tells them there are other places to use them. Romantic? No. Challenging - not in the way, say, pushing the LINUX kernal is, but better than living in "office space". Good luck.
I'm now losing sleep. I have an old iBook - the original Tangerine "clamshell". I am awaiting the arrival of a 128MB RAM upgrade and the OS X 10.1 CD. Do I cancel the CD and live with 9.2? Naive me - I assumed all the press I was reading about OS X being faster, more stable, BSD-based, easier to code for, etc. was all true even on "older" machines. Apple web site said so - call me gullible. Has anyone out there tried running OS X on 128 MB iBook G3 300? Am I hosed? Thanks.