My wife is an incredibly competent programmer and loves math, but she doesn't really live for it. She is very happy going nowhere near a computer for days sometimes. She's really into sports and stuff too, which is somewhat anti-geeky in my mind.
I'm happy going nowhere near a computer for days sometimes too. In fact I crave it sometimes. I find a camping trip to be an excellent way to reenergize. Or a few hours in my wood shop.
Does NOT make me less of a geek, though. I'll still think about interrupt handlers or virtual memory in the shower sometimes.
Geek isn't what you do with your time, IMHO. Geek is more about who you are.
Oh no, I wasn't saying torrenting is sneaky. It isn't.
I was suggesting other nefarious uses. Like an open proxy that doesn't keep logs. Or a server for eMule. Or an icecast server with a public uploads folder - the modern day equivalent of pirate radio, just with audience participation. Or some other such thing.
Not that I'd ever advocate such behavior. Oh heavens no.
Oh absolutely! I greatly enjoyed detailing everything I've seen and heard while I was there. Threats, extortion, theft, espionage - all of it.
People would steal product off the lines and use it to bribe/payoff people outside the company for other services. The head of engineering would show up and park his car by the owner's car. Then sneak in back and take a company car back home. Show back up at 4:30 and check to see if everyone was at their desk. And if the owner would go looking for him, he had a patsy in our department that would call him at home and tell him to haul ass back to the office. Sales would rifle through our desks after hours to see what we were working on so they could take credit. We tested that once by making up a bogus project to see how far up the ladder it'd go. The engineering manager had people in his department work on his house for him, after reminding them that he was the final voice of approval for approving all vacation leave.
I could go on and on. And I did to HR - just before I left.
Oh yeah, one more thing I did on my PC. I had a poorly hidden folder named "private stuff". It had thousands of pictures of shovels in it. Thousands. Arranged by type and color and length.
With no explanation.
Just shovels.
That'll leave 'em guessing if they find it. Is it porn? Is it a hobby? Who collects shovels? Is it like Jack Nicholson in The Shining? A modern day internet equivalent of "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy"?
I would rather not burn bridges - you never know if you may want to work at a company where a previous co-worker is employed at.
I agree somewhat. It all depends on the situation though. Some places need a response. You don't need to be nasty (for the very reasons you mention), but sometimes you do need to do something. If only to keep your sanity.
Last place I left was so bad I left without putting in a two week notice. Only time I've ever done that. Showed up late, walked around and personally told everyone I cared about goodbye. Handed my boss typed up instructions on my project and how to use it so the next guy won't be screwed. Gave him my passwords and all that.
Then loaded up my PC, turned on active desktop, set my desktop to Badger Badger Mushroom, and walked out.
BTW the place was a madhouse. This was entirely appropriate behavior. The HR lady who did my exit interview? She was terribly unhappy about my unprofessional exit and lectured me about the appropriate way to quit a job. But. Two months later she went out drinking margaritas at lunchtime with the CFO. And...never came back. Neither of 'em.
It's an example of order in chaos. What you do is to take a bathtub faucet and hook it up to a water source. Then turn it down to a trickle. Eventually you'll get to the nonlinear bit, where the oscillations from the last drop affect when the current drop falls.
Hook up a light beam to time when each drop falls and plot the result.
Then do a sort of second-order plot. With the delta time between drops 1 and 2 on the X axis, and the time between drops 2 and 3 on the Y axis.
It will create a sort of phase space portrait of the system. You'll see attractors form.
If I had the time I'd do it myself. Sounded pretty magical when I read it the first time.
It's not the mass that's the important part. An increase in mass results in a linear increase in kinetic energy. Double the mass? Double the kinetic energy.
It's velocity that's the problem. That term is squared. Double the velocity and you get 4x the energy on impact.
So even a few pounds moving quick enough will make an impressive kaboom. And these satellites weigh in the neighborhood of a ton or so.
So I still stand by it - this would make impressive impacts, easily confused with earthquakes I'm sure.
That being said, the article is rather short in one important area: a suggested mechanism for this sort of inheritance.
Does it really need one?
You can do an experiment, you get results. These results suggest...something. It is able to be duplicated. It follows scientific method and rigor.
The only problem is - most of the methods I can think of this sort of thing using are most decidedly nonscientific. Let's face it - this is closer to philosophy than science. It stands up to testing rigor, but...I just don't see a readily available purely scientific explanation. This experiment seems a little closer to Frank Herbert than modern day science.
For now though, I think it's enough that we can observe this. It suggests interesting things.
The group of workers with more ideas participates in a raffle to receive a prize.
If I was at your company my first thought would be "Oh boy! A chance at being in a group that has a chance of winning a prize! Where do I sign up?"
Come on. Who is going to be enthusiastic about that?
If you want real results, reward everyone who comes up with an idea that gets used. And make it substantial. If you give out a $5 gift certificate, then you're going to get a slew of five dollar ideas.
"a great example of Microsoft's openness to generally license our patents under fair and reasonable terms so long as licensees respect Microsoft intellectual property."
Ha ha yeah, my ass.
What Google has just done is to license PPP from Microsoft. Nice job.
Well, you are discussing a different version of debt destruction than I had in mind.
When I say debt destruction, I mean living within your means and slowly paying down your debt. You know, the whole "pay yourself first" plan. That.
These big businesses that are in trouble need to learn how to do exactly that.
As for the bailout, sure. Go ahead. Have some money. But I'd say that as a term of the loan (yes - loan) you have to open up your books completely to a federal agent for a continual audit until you're in the black. Something similar to chapter 11 bankruptcy. You take the money - you can no longer be an idiot and blow it wherever you please. And you get a live-in babysitter until you are flush again.
Make it a lesson in responsibility. That'll have a better payoff than the money would, in the long run.
I came in here to recommend this very book. Good pick!
The chapter about the dripping bathtub faucet would make an excellent do it yourself experiment. It's very visual and would be something that highschoolers would easily latch on to.
Aside from that it is very readable. It's more like a history book than a math book. Very little actual math in it - more stories of exploration.
I'd recommend it highly to anyone, actually. It's a great read.
I'm not for the bailout either, for many of the same reasons you name. I'd rather they fix the leaks and repair the machinery. Then wait until things recover and heal on their own.
Any time I hear the bailout amount is being lowered I get happy. This is all money that will have to be paid back someday. We don't need more debt in the economy to fix things. We need LESS.
In this case the last 2 years have failed in trying to just let time and debt destruction have a stab at it, so now its time to try a different strategy.
Perhaps I'm missing your point, but exactly what was being done over the last two years that you'd call debt destruction?
Exactly. That's why when I read the headline my first thought was GOOD.
Fixing this problem by taking on more debt is like helping a trauma victim by stabbing him.
As nice as it would be to have the IT sector get a big slice of pork, it's just not in the national interest. And that's how we have to think for the next few years. "What's good for me" will have to take a back seat sometimes to "what's good for the country."
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My wife is an incredibly competent programmer and loves math, but she doesn't really live for it. She is very happy going nowhere near a computer for days sometimes. She's really into sports and stuff too, which is somewhat anti-geeky in my mind.
I'm happy going nowhere near a computer for days sometimes too. In fact I crave it sometimes. I find a camping trip to be an excellent way to reenergize. Or a few hours in my wood shop.
Does NOT make me less of a geek, though. I'll still think about interrupt handlers or virtual memory in the shower sometimes.
Geek isn't what you do with your time, IMHO. Geek is more about who you are.
Oh no, I wasn't saying torrenting is sneaky. It isn't.
I was suggesting other nefarious uses. Like an open proxy that doesn't keep logs. Or a server for eMule. Or an icecast server with a public uploads folder - the modern day equivalent of pirate radio, just with audience participation. Or some other such thing.
Not that I'd ever advocate such behavior. Oh heavens no.
Not torrents per se, but a dinky 100 computer sitting somewhere. Doing something...naughty.
If you get caught you're out 100 bucks. So what? Cheaper than an RIAA settlement letter, for instance.
Not that I'd ever advocate such behavior. Oh heavens no.
Oh absolutely! I greatly enjoyed detailing everything I've seen and heard while I was there. Threats, extortion, theft, espionage - all of it.
People would steal product off the lines and use it to bribe/payoff people outside the company for other services. The head of engineering would show up and park his car by the owner's car. Then sneak in back and take a company car back home. Show back up at 4:30 and check to see if everyone was at their desk. And if the owner would go looking for him, he had a patsy in our department that would call him at home and tell him to haul ass back to the office. Sales would rifle through our desks after hours to see what we were working on so they could take credit. We tested that once by making up a bogus project to see how far up the ladder it'd go. The engineering manager had people in his department work on his house for him, after reminding them that he was the final voice of approval for approving all vacation leave.
I could go on and on. And I did to HR - just before I left.
Oh yeah, one more thing I did on my PC. I had a poorly hidden folder named "private stuff". It had thousands of pictures of shovels in it. Thousands. Arranged by type and color and length.
With no explanation.
Just shovels.
That'll leave 'em guessing if they find it. Is it porn? Is it a hobby? Who collects shovels? Is it like Jack Nicholson in The Shining? A modern day internet equivalent of "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy"?
They'll be talking about me for years.
Using the stripped ends of two wires hooked to an RS232 port to enter it in binary manually. With your tongue.
I would rather not burn bridges - you never know if you may want to work at a company where a previous co-worker is employed at.
I agree somewhat. It all depends on the situation though. Some places need a response. You don't need to be nasty (for the very reasons you mention), but sometimes you do need to do something. If only to keep your sanity.
Last place I left was so bad I left without putting in a two week notice. Only time I've ever done that. Showed up late, walked around and personally told everyone I cared about goodbye. Handed my boss typed up instructions on my project and how to use it so the next guy won't be screwed. Gave him my passwords and all that.
Then loaded up my PC, turned on active desktop, set my desktop to Badger Badger Mushroom, and walked out.
BTW the place was a madhouse. This was entirely appropriate behavior. The HR lady who did my exit interview? She was terribly unhappy about my unprofessional exit and lectured me about the appropriate way to quit a job. But. Two months later she went out drinking margaritas at lunchtime with the CFO. And ...never came back. Neither of 'em.
Write new software that does look good on a cell phone screen.
With X11 up and running, that opens up a large bank of developers that know X and can do that, you know.
But they overpaid them by giving them copies of XP.
Hope the WIPO patent has expired.
Don't worry, it's probably public domain by now.
Unless someone put it to music, that is.
It's from James Gleick's Chaos.
It's an example of order in chaos. What you do is to take a bathtub faucet and hook it up to a water source. Then turn it down to a trickle. Eventually you'll get to the nonlinear bit, where the oscillations from the last drop affect when the current drop falls.
Hook up a light beam to time when each drop falls and plot the result.
Then do a sort of second-order plot. With the delta time between drops 1 and 2 on the X axis, and the time between drops 2 and 3 on the Y axis.
It will create a sort of phase space portrait of the system. You'll see attractors form.
If I had the time I'd do it myself. Sounded pretty magical when I read it the first time.
This is more like locksmiths complaining about the state putting better locks on their own houses.
A lot of things, as it turns out, have these single points of failure that propogate.
I got to experience this one.
Drove down Route 76/80 to NYC while it was happening. One city would be on, another off. No rhyme or reason to it at all.
It's not the mass that's the important part. An increase in mass results in a linear increase in kinetic energy. Double the mass? Double the kinetic energy.
It's velocity that's the problem. That term is squared. Double the velocity and you get 4x the energy on impact.
So even a few pounds moving quick enough will make an impressive kaboom. And these satellites weigh in the neighborhood of a ton or so.
So I still stand by it - this would make impressive impacts, easily confused with earthquakes I'm sure.
That being said, the article is rather short in one important area: a suggested mechanism for this sort of inheritance.
Does it really need one?
You can do an experiment, you get results. These results suggest...something. It is able to be duplicated. It follows scientific method and rigor.
The only problem is - most of the methods I can think of this sort of thing using are most decidedly nonscientific. Let's face it - this is closer to philosophy than science. It stands up to testing rigor, but...I just don't see a readily available purely scientific explanation. This experiment seems a little closer to Frank Herbert than modern day science.
For now though, I think it's enough that we can observe this. It suggests interesting things.
=(1/2)mv^2
If you're near a couple of tons at reentry speed, yeah. I'll bet you'd think it was an earthquake too.
The group of workers with more ideas participates in a raffle to receive a prize.
If I was at your company my first thought would be "Oh boy! A chance at being in a group that has a chance of winning a prize! Where do I sign up?"
Come on. Who is going to be enthusiastic about that?
If you want real results, reward everyone who comes up with an idea that gets used. And make it substantial. If you give out a $5 gift certificate, then you're going to get a slew of five dollar ideas.
I'd like to watch movies from netflix
Ok, so you need this for Netflix.
Any other reasons why you'd want Silverlight?
Honestly, not trolling. Netflix is apparently one reason, and a good one. What are the others?
"a great example of Microsoft's openness to generally license our patents under fair and reasonable terms so long as licensees respect Microsoft intellectual property."
Ha ha yeah, my ass.
What Google has just done is to license PPP from Microsoft. Nice job.
Don't believe me? Read this.
All the "Activesync Protocol" is, is good old PPP.
Well, you are discussing a different version of debt destruction than I had in mind.
When I say debt destruction, I mean living within your means and slowly paying down your debt. You know, the whole "pay yourself first" plan. That.
These big businesses that are in trouble need to learn how to do exactly that.
As for the bailout, sure. Go ahead. Have some money. But I'd say that as a term of the loan (yes - loan) you have to open up your books completely to a federal agent for a continual audit until you're in the black. Something similar to chapter 11 bankruptcy. You take the money - you can no longer be an idiot and blow it wherever you please. And you get a live-in babysitter until you are flush again.
Make it a lesson in responsibility. That'll have a better payoff than the money would, in the long run.
I came in here to recommend this very book. Good pick!
The chapter about the dripping bathtub faucet would make an excellent do it yourself experiment. It's very visual and would be something that highschoolers would easily latch on to.
Aside from that it is very readable. It's more like a history book than a math book. Very little actual math in it - more stories of exploration.
I'd recommend it highly to anyone, actually. It's a great read.
I'm not for the bailout either, for many of the same reasons you name. I'd rather they fix the leaks and repair the machinery. Then wait until things recover and heal on their own.
Any time I hear the bailout amount is being lowered I get happy. This is all money that will have to be paid back someday. We don't need more debt in the economy to fix things. We need LESS.
In this case the last 2 years have failed in trying to just let time and debt destruction have a stab at it, so now its time to try a different strategy.
Perhaps I'm missing your point, but exactly what was being done over the last two years that you'd call debt destruction?
Only time and debt destruction can fix it...
Exactly. That's why when I read the headline my first thought was GOOD.
Fixing this problem by taking on more debt is like helping a trauma victim by stabbing him.
As nice as it would be to have the IT sector get a big slice of pork, it's just not in the national interest. And that's how we have to think for the next few years. "What's good for me" will have to take a back seat sometimes to "what's good for the country."
Why do so many people still get it wrong?
I'm actually pretty relieved to hear that. Thanks.