IMHO, the governments that allow such research are much more unethical than the professor.
Says who?
Not even the usual "medical ethics boards", that too often seem to be wholly staffed by "Leave well enough alone" people and ardent Christians, agree on this matter.
My ex once worked for an outfit in England that had a service like this for websites.
Yup, our company uses their service on our websites as well. "Click here if you want to talk to us". Very useful
Google's innovation is not the service in itself (it's been around for a few years), but offering the service to their clients to use in Google ads. Pretty slick... I like the way Google works to add value for their advertisers, clients making use of Google ads, and web surfers in general all at the same time.
We are not just wallets to be picked clean in the most expedient way; perhaps it is time to remove the fictional person status from corporations, and make some other legal arrangement that would involve more of an explicit social contract.
Huh? If you think $2.49 for a song on your mobile is too expensive, simply don't buy it. This works well enough; there's no need for silly "social contracts". Better yet, hop over to Itunes and get it for $.99, then download it into your phone. You have a choice, use it.
...and how it is largely responsible for the demise of the odious pop-under ad.
Good! Perhaps they can help us get rid of other annoying ads, such as eye-wrenching Flash animations, or innocent-looking ads that play a sound when you roll the mouse over them. Some of those are bad enough to give you a heart attack if you have the sound turned way up.
If they really feel that privacy is an extinguishable notion, then they should be the ones to suffer that loss of it the very most. If they are unwilling to put up with this intrusion, then they can bloody well stop demanding intrusions on the common citizen.
No, in fact I suspect that politicians will be exempt from this system, perhaps by means of a 'VIP list', that lists license plates not to be sent down to the central servers. Otherwise, a terrorist could hack the system and find out where each politician is, for easy assasination. The current obession with security works for them the same way it works against us.
It's missing The Animated Adventures [wikipedia.org], which Paramount has said they plan on releasing on DVD at some point next year
Of course there's something missing. Later they will release another Ultimate Collection, which includes this animated series but will be missing other crucial material. So you'll have to buy both series to own it all.
It's great because it is always with you. Whenever someone forgets to bring a camera, you got a backup. For that hot girl, that awesome concert, or even to sneak picturs at the museum.
Exactly. What about copying notes from a whiteboard? No need, just snap it with your camera. Want to remember the name of the fabulous wine in a restaurant and you have no pen and paper? No worries, take a picture of the label with your cell phone. I wasn't interested in phone cameras until I got one myself, then I discovered how useful the thing actually is.
I don't want 10 megapixel phone cameras, or really fancy optics with zoom lenses and whatnot, if it will make the phone bulkier. Camera phones are not meant to be a replacement for regular cameras. They're useful for those times you wish you had a camera.
when you're on a boat studying birds on a far away island or working on important and complex physics problems it's a little more difficult to sit down and read through a letter and actually pen a response.
On the contrary, Darwin must have had ages to write all those letters during his long voyage... bird watching was only a small portion of the time spent, for the rest it was a long and boring sea voyage.
You missed the most important gain to be had from a climber with a ground-based energy source. Guess what most of the fuel in a rocket is used for. That's right, most fuel is used to haul up the fuel used to haul up the fuel used to boost the rocket up to escape velocity. With a space elevator, all fuel goes towards lifting the actual payload and climber (minus atmospheric losses).
Especially the stolen work of Udo Kuhnt which they now sell as theirs!
To use the words of the Information-wants-to-be-free movement: "It's not stolen! Mr. Kuhnt is not deprived of his work! It is Copyright infringement, not piracy or theft!"
Actually, if you read the FreeDOS page, the FreeDOS author only requests that Dr. DOS Inc. do something about complying with the GPL. i.e. He's asking them to distribute a copy of the GNU General Public License with the software, and make an offer to provide the source code to anyone who asks, as per the GPL.
So Dr. Dos are not even depriving the original author of any potential income, they are just.... well, what exactly? Freeloading on his work? I thought that what the Creative Commons idea was all about...
The reason 'regular guys' like you vote against environmentalists is your immense ignorance and unwillingness to learn anything. Sorry.
I love the environment but I hate environmentalists. The reason I vote against them is because of their tendency to place politics above science, practicality and common sense. That means conveniently ignoring scientific evidence that goes against their dogma's, falsifying studies if the results are not as dire as to warrant a screaming fit protest, and decrying methods and policies other than their own that may have a similarly good effect on the environment, but a lot less impact on people. I get the feeling that many of these groups are in it to "fight the establishment" and for the power to meddle with people's lives. Professional activists who are activists for the sake of being activist. Most environmentalist groups are guilty of this, up to and including Greenpeace (read up on their approach of the Brent Spar issue).
To be fair, this group of environmentalists seem to be sensible and sensitive to what the Navy needs to do, and are willing to suggest suitable solutions. In most environmentalist circles, even the suggestion that you'd be working with the Navy (instead of against them) is enough to get you socially ostracized (as they have admitted themselves). It's this sort of unproductive, unscientific attitude that makes "guys like me" dislike the environmentalists in general, despite the sincere and useful effort of some of them. Let them remain activists... God forbid they should ever gain any real political power, because it will not be the sensible ones of their number at the helm; it will be the meddlers, dictators and power mongers.
The right-wingers always have an answer as to why it's good to take away someone's job. But it all boils down to their blind worship of big business and a lack of empathy for those who find themselves unemployed or underemployed.
Sure, whereas the left-wingers always have an anwser why someone should be allowed to keep their job no matter what, regardless of realities. They are also remarkably hostile towards those persons who are providing those jobs.
Probably falling in your "right winger" category, I still agree with the rest of your post. No need to turn to name calling to make your point.
Most companies aren't interested in grooming, triggers, etc., they're interested in their bottom line. Unfortunately they don't (typically) associate healthy career paths and directions with business performance.
Actually, most of the companies I have worked for do have good career paths.... except, always, for the IT department. Hell, I work for an IT company and we do not have well defined career paths, unless you're in management or sales.
Not to mention Sid's answer to the question on Free clones... he has no interest in software freedom.
It stands to reason that Sid, being someone who makes his living creating and selling software, is not very interested in software freedom, and wants to retain and enforce the rights to his software. His added value to his games is arguably not the lines of codes, nor the artwork or sound effects, but his creative ideas and game concepts. Naturally he'd be pissed if someone wrote a free cloe of his games.
Treat e-mail as an inbox for tasks
on
Meet The Life Hackers
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Remember those trays people used to have on their desks in the 70's? The ones marked "in" and "out"? You can see how they work in old movies... a clerk sits at his desk, working at a task, and when he finishes it he puts the completed task in the "out" box, and gets the next task from the "in" box.
One of the lessons I learned in dealing with many people and many emails at once, is that you have to treat e-mail a little like an old-fashioned "in"-box. You look at it only after you finish the task you are currently working on. Your inbox requires processing (not just reading): set aside time for this task. It can be twice a day, 5 times a day, or whenever you feel like it; the right moment depends a great deal on the nature of your work. Just as long as you remember that reading email is a task in its own right, and should not be done alongside anything else.
Another good rule to keep is that you have to process the entire inbox, once you get started on it. That's right, it should be empty after you have processed it. If you keep older read items alongside new messages, at some point you'll probably just give up and cry "I get way too much email". Simply process them one by one, each will require one of the following:
1) A short action, say, under 2 minutes. Take this action right away (quick and easy replies, noting appointments in your calendar, things like that).
2) A longer action... anything over 2 minutes or anything that requires a lot of thought. Stick these emails in an "action" folder and get to them later (when you are back into "action" mode).
3) No action. The email can be deleted or archived if it has info you'll need later.
A simple and nicely mindless process... 30 minutes will probably get you through 100 emails, and you will have a good idea about the priority of each of the ones in your action folder.
This is simply about being organised and not allowing interruptions. The hardest thing might be to not read your email while doing other things. Just shut down your email client so you cannot see incoming new mails. If there is something really important, people will call you if you don't respond within 30 minutes, believe me.
Speaking of interruptions... if the nature of your work is such that interruptions can really mess you up (coding springs to mind), turn off e-mail and IM. If you are blessed with a good office phone system, you may also be able to turn your phone off and redirect it to voicemail.
I got this way of dealing with communication tools from the book Getting Things Done; a great book on time management in general. The tips in this book have helped me getting from a state of feeling swamped in work, to feeling relaxed about taking a 2-hour lunch to let some material sink in, or just ignoring emails, things like that. (Yes I am still doing the same amount of work).
There will always be some lonely game creator out on the fringest making something cool that everyone will lap up. When it gets popular though, they'll no longer be an independent though. They'll get bought out.
It's becoming harder though. Back in the days of the C64 and the Amiga, I was technically fully able to create a state-of-the-art game on those platforms. I suck as an artist; I can barely squeeze a recognisable tune out of a keyboard, but on those platforms I could still do the art, music and all of the coding, on my own. In fact I did... my game made it to the stores but never sold a lot, instead of a nice Porsche I got perhaps a 2nd hand Alpha Romeo's worth out of the deal. (I can conveniently blame the producer going bankrupt though:) ). My college flatmate made a game on the Amiga, outdoing several of similar commercial games. (He never sold it but it got him hired at Rockstar).
These days, most types of games need good production values as well as a good concept. Hardly any game can get away with simple graphics like Tetris. You'll need good coders, level designers, artists, musicians, sound effects guys, motion experts... talents that are rarely found in a single person.
To add to that, games are getting more complex in the way of graphics engines, physics engines, and AI as well. It's hard enough to find someone up-to-date in these areas, let alone find someone who can improve on them.
So, you're probably looking at a team of various skills that are not widely available. I'd think these people are likely to be working in the industry already, and not much inclined to work on an extra project, especially not if you're on a typical EA 8 day workweek.
Then again, if you do have a good concept, it might be worth pursuing it, and convincing others to join in. Then hope you get bought out for craploads of cash.:) Nothing wrong with making money.
... unless there are other constraints, such as the king having to turn the chalice k times, eventually. The description specifically states that the king may do so, though.
If there only is a solution that relies on the king flipping the chalice k times, then the prisoners are boned, since the king is not obliged to flip it at all.
If there is a solution that does not rely on the king flipping the chalice k times, then the king (knowing the solution and the complete state of the game) can simply wait until the cup indicates a success, flip it, hide the smug grin on his face, and call in the appropriate prisoner.
Our company has been experimenting with this idea since a year or two, to measure the traffic on smaller "B" roads, that unlike highways do not have traffic measuring equiment built into the asphalt.
Here is a short article (In Dutch, use Babelfish), and the site with the traffic information (Type in the 6 digit number shown into the "log in" box). They obtain phone location data from one or more GSM providers. The data has been filtered so they only get generic location data; no phone numbers or other identifiers are provided.
Sadly, legislation is probably the only way to make software developers--or rather, their companies--more liable. What, you expect the free market to take this one on? Who here honestly expects a company to decide it's competitive to be more liable?
Such liability would be rather impractical. To continue with bad analogies about books and such.... What if?:
- The writer of the book had to learn a new language every month.
- The writed received updates on new means of spelling existing words every week or so.
- The meaning of words and sentences would change depending on the type of glasses worn by the reader.
- Spelling and grammar mattered like it does in software... get one letter or word order wrong, and the meaning changes.
- If any of the above would have changed a chemistry experiment in her book, every kid that read it died, not just one in an inattentive teacher's classroom.
Those are pretty much the conditions under which software engineers work. I bet if these were the rules foor books, she would not be so complacent about liability...
never get discounted phones, you get stuck in a contract, that costs more to break than the phone , always buy unlocked phones and use them with whichever n/w you like.
My phone's about 300 euros retail. I got it for free on a 1-year contract... The savings pretty much pay for a year's worth of subscription and calls, and my calls are cheaper than on a prepaid plan.
Better yet: recently I tried cleaning my phone in the washing machine by leaving it in my trouser pocket. That didn't work out too well. But since I had my suscription for a year (just), I simply renewed for a year and got a new phone out of the deal, free.
If you already have a phone though, you're usually better off getting a 'SIM-only' subscription, which costs virtually nothing.
Incidentally, over here phone companies will unlock your phone after the fixed term of the contract expires. I don't know if there is a law that says they have to, but they always will if you give them a call.
Slashdot Mirror
Not even the usual "medical ethics boards", that too often seem to be wholly staffed by "Leave well enough alone" people and ardent Christians, agree on this matter.
Google's innovation is not the service in itself (it's been around for a few years), but offering the service to their clients to use in Google ads. Pretty slick... I like the way Google works to add value for their advertisers, clients making use of Google ads, and web surfers in general all at the same time.
I thought this was common practice these days.
I don't want 10 megapixel phone cameras, or really fancy optics with zoom lenses and whatnot, if it will make the phone bulkier. Camera phones are not meant to be a replacement for regular cameras. They're useful for those times you wish you had a camera.
So Dr. Dos are not even depriving the original author of any potential income, they are just.... well, what exactly? Freeloading on his work? I thought that what the Creative Commons idea was all about...
Just playing the Devil's advocate here.
To be fair, this group of environmentalists seem to be sensible and sensitive to what the Navy needs to do, and are willing to suggest suitable solutions. In most environmentalist circles, even the suggestion that you'd be working with the Navy (instead of against them) is enough to get you socially ostracized (as they have admitted themselves). It's this sort of unproductive, unscientific attitude that makes "guys like me" dislike the environmentalists in general, despite the sincere and useful effort of some of them. Let them remain activists... God forbid they should ever gain any real political power, because it will not be the sensible ones of their number at the helm; it will be the meddlers, dictators and power mongers.
Probably falling in your "right winger" category, I still agree with the rest of your post. No need to turn to name calling to make your point.
Remember those trays people used to have on their desks in the 70's? The ones marked "in" and "out"? You can see how they work in old movies... a clerk sits at his desk, working at a task, and when he finishes it he puts the completed task in the "out" box, and gets the next task from the "in" box.
One of the lessons I learned in dealing with many people and many emails at once, is that you have to treat e-mail a little like an old-fashioned "in"-box. You look at it only after you finish the task you are currently working on. Your inbox requires processing (not just reading): set aside time for this task. It can be twice a day, 5 times a day, or whenever you feel like it; the right moment depends a great deal on the nature of your work. Just as long as you remember that reading email is a task in its own right, and should not be done alongside anything else.
Another good rule to keep is that you have to process the entire inbox, once you get started on it. That's right, it should be empty after you have processed it. If you keep older read items alongside new messages, at some point you'll probably just give up and cry "I get way too much email". Simply process them one by one, each will require one of the following:
1) A short action, say, under 2 minutes. Take this action right away (quick and easy replies, noting appointments in your calendar, things like that).
2) A longer action... anything over 2 minutes or anything that requires a lot of thought. Stick these emails in an "action" folder and get to them later (when you are back into "action" mode).
3) No action. The email can be deleted or archived if it has info you'll need later.
A simple and nicely mindless process... 30 minutes will probably get you through 100 emails, and you will have a good idea about the priority of each of the ones in your action folder.
This is simply about being organised and not allowing interruptions. The hardest thing might be to not read your email while doing other things. Just shut down your email client so you cannot see incoming new mails. If there is something really important, people will call you if you don't respond within 30 minutes, believe me.
Speaking of interruptions... if the nature of your work is such that interruptions can really mess you up (coding springs to mind), turn off e-mail and IM. If you are blessed with a good office phone system, you may also be able to turn your phone off and redirect it to voicemail.
I got this way of dealing with communication tools from the book Getting Things Done; a great book on time management in general. The tips in this book have helped me getting from a state of feeling swamped in work, to feeling relaxed about taking a 2-hour lunch to let some material sink in, or just ignoring emails, things like that. (Yes I am still doing the same amount of work).
These days, most types of games need good production values as well as a good concept. Hardly any game can get away with simple graphics like Tetris. You'll need good coders, level designers, artists, musicians, sound effects guys, motion experts... talents that are rarely found in a single person.
To add to that, games are getting more complex in the way of graphics engines, physics engines, and AI as well. It's hard enough to find someone up-to-date in these areas, let alone find someone who can improve on them.
So, you're probably looking at a team of various skills that are not widely available. I'd think these people are likely to be working in the industry already, and not much inclined to work on an extra project, especially not if you're on a typical EA 8 day workweek.
Then again, if you do have a good concept, it might be worth pursuing it, and convincing others to join in. Then hope you get bought out for craploads of cash.
... unless there are other constraints, such as the king having to turn the chalice k times, eventually. The description specifically states that the king may do so, though.
If there only is a solution that relies on the king flipping the chalice k times, then the prisoners are boned, since the king is not obliged to flip it at all.
If there is a solution that does not rely on the king flipping the chalice k times, then the king (knowing the solution and the complete state of the game) can simply wait until the cup indicates a success, flip it, hide the smug grin on his face, and call in the appropriate prisoner.
Our company has been experimenting with this idea since a year or two, to measure the traffic on smaller "B" roads, that unlike highways do not have traffic measuring equiment built into the asphalt. Here is a short article (In Dutch, use Babelfish), and the site with the traffic information (Type in the 6 digit number shown into the "log in" box). They obtain phone location data from one or more GSM providers. The data has been filtered so they only get generic location data; no phone numbers or other identifiers are provided.
Honestly, I wasn't that impressed with the series, though it was decent TV fare.
- The writer of the book had to learn a new language every month.
- The writed received updates on new means of spelling existing words every week or so.
- The meaning of words and sentences would change depending on the type of glasses worn by the reader.
- Spelling and grammar mattered like it does in software... get one letter or word order wrong, and the meaning changes.
- If any of the above would have changed a chemistry experiment in her book, every kid that read it died, not just one in an inattentive teacher's classroom.
Those are pretty much the conditions under which software engineers work. I bet if these were the rules foor books, she would not be so complacent about liability...
Better yet: recently I tried cleaning my phone in the washing machine by leaving it in my trouser pocket. That didn't work out too well. But since I had my suscription for a year (just), I simply renewed for a year and got a new phone out of the deal, free. If you already have a phone though, you're usually better off getting a 'SIM-only' subscription, which costs virtually nothing. Incidentally, over here phone companies will unlock your phone after the fixed term of the contract expires. I don't know if there is a law that says they have to, but they always will if you give them a call.