You should go watch Jeff Hawkins TED talk on HTMs (hierarchical temporal memory) . It's old-ish (over 5 years), but he's referenced in the article and he founded the Redwood Neuroscience institute. You should be able to also find a white paper or two on HTMs. Jeff's theoretical model of the brain may have changed some in the last 5 years (I don't know, I haven't been paying attention), but HTMs were basically a hierarchical structure of nodes, with one layer feeding up to the layer above it. The nodes weren't traditional simple NN nodes. Each "node" was fairly complex and did two things: 1) it looked at the pattern of data on its inputs and assigned it a label (if it saw the same pattern again, it would get the same label), and 2) it kept track of the sequence of patterns overtime and the node's final output would be a value that represented the sequence with the highest probability. Nodes higher in the network would then take these values as their input, etc, etc. Higher nodes, when they determined "i think we're seeing a cat", could push down this prediction to lower nodes in order to help train the lower nodes (I think). Anyway, the point was that the "nodes" in Jeff's model were not simple NN nodes – they were complex (actually implemented as a bayesian network, iirc), and then these complex nodes were wired together into a hierarchy. Jeff does a great job of arguing that his model is actually more biologically accurate than simple NNs. Anyway, it's good to see these ideas getting some good funding behind them. They always seemed "right" to me.
On employee gets a task done in 2 hours and blows off the rest of the day pursuing their own interests. Another takes 4 hours, but comes back to get another task that they also complete the same day. Who's the rock star? The first guy is a prima-dona and should be fired. The first guy is who Yahoo will be more than happy if they decide to look for other employment. Who knows maybe that guy will land a job at a competitor. Even better –let them start destroying that company from the inside out.
Context matters. You say you wouldn't give a single fuck. Okay. It's your startup you've got $300k funding, five employees, and something like a 12 month runway to prove your business before you run out of money. Do you still not care if your team is wasting 75% of those 12 months?
What you're describing is exactly what is broken about Yahoo!'s culture. Likely many people from the individual contributors up through management think like you. And guess what? Yahoo's got a limited runway to fix things and start becoming relavent again. And they have to figure out how to get people to realize that getting as much done as possible in an eight hour day is very important when you've got a limited runway.
I think what you state is exactly the problem, and PoolOfThought addressed it above. When they're working remotely, it's harder to tell that they only worked two hours and wasted six. They still finished their task, and you still think they're a rock star unless you somehow know that the task should have only taken a couple hours (which in our line of work its very hard to know). Maybe all your reports are awesome and immediately let you know/checkin as soon as they're done to get more work, but many people aren't that way. Can you still slack off at work? Sure. I know people that take off the afternoon to run errands for half the day when they finish a task in the morning. When you work from home, it's easier to do this habitually and then to rationalize it as okay because you're getting all your work done. You are, but you're also not getting as many assignments as you could.
When he gave his theory why the iPhone4 drops more calls than the 3GS he says its because people already had bumpers. How does a bumper help reception on the 3GS? The 3GS's antenna isn't external, so you can't touch it. Having a bumper or not wouldn't make any difference at all.
Lame theory Steve.
Wow. I kinda think that this post proves the previous guy's point exactly. Specifically, where you say that you can configure KDE to basically look like OSX. If you think that a KDE theme is all you need to get the user experience of OSX you're just being silly. If it's "good enough" for you, then you are exactly the person too close to things to see how bad they suck. Further backing up the original guys post is the fact that you are modded so high. I am not sure there is an easy way to cure what appears to be an epidemic of "bad taste" among *nix users. I don't think there is a pill or anything:)
The vague pronoun "them" above had me momentarily confused. I thought you were trying to imply that google wants these people in order to get access to their offspring. Hum, maybe they are.
I am not too terribly sure Jobs is going to care as much as we think he is about piracy. At least not in the foreseeable future (5 years or so). Most Apple users are very loyal and have no problem paying the apple premium. That won't change immediately with the move to x86. If every geek in the world (including those in college or highschool) starts pirating osx, great! All that will mean is more mind share for apple, which means a greater chance that more and more products will be coming to their platform. Also, in my experience people eventually do grow up and stop stealing/infringing - either they start using open source or they buy macs:) Or in my case, both. Anyway, if all the geeks in the world are running pirated copies of mac osx they'll be that much more likely to recommend it to friends and family.
How does the GPL come into play with application specific extensions? For example, DLL-based stored procedures (not uncommon in database systems, but I know nothing about Ingres). I know you have legal problems if you try to link to a GPL'd library (thus, viral), but what if a GPL'd application links (or dynamically loads) to your proprietary, application-specific library?
...the stock market will climb higher, and higher, and will never crash. You'd be crazy not to dump your entire life savings into the stock market in general and google in particular. We're all going to be rich!
PC emulation software has existed on macs for a while, and while dual booting one of these things with XP would be neat, imo it will be even more interesting to run PC software directly under os x without the overhead of instruction translation. heck, maybe apple will help take wine to the next level...
Another change that has occurred is that computer hardware has become much less expensive. This results in a relative increase in the cost of computer professionals. Since business is always looking to drive down costs, and since the cost involved in hardware has dropped so much, the computer professionals are seen (by MBAs and the like) as the next item whose cost needs to be reduced. This is very obvious in the whole offshoring thing. As long as revenues don't dip too much, cost will continue to be driven down by demanding cheaper and cheaper resources...
In grade school I would miss simple questions because I was always trying to take into consideration much more than the question ever intended. Usually once the answer is revealed, I would say "oh, is that all they wanted." This led to a lot of second guessing later in life. I do, however, tend to do alright in the "real world" since taking as many things into consideration usually makes for a better outcome (design or whatever).
No capitalism isn't perfect, but it is the break down of democracy that is going to bring about the "endgame" (whatever that is). Economists have known for a Long Time (TM) that capitalism isn't perfect especially when you're trying to take into consideration things like the environment. The market may be real efficient at producing "X" to the detriment of the environment. Capitalism has also always given rise to monopolies which due to the erosion of competition are horribly inefficient. Further, markets don't always rise up to serve all of societies needs (i.e. where it's not efficient to do so). Flu vaccines are tricky to make and the risk is great when compared with opportunity cost, so firms choose to not serve the societies need for flu vaccines. And finally the market short-coming most slashdotters probably care about, market economies tend to de-emphasize expenditures on things like research (usually due to over-emphasis on short-term monatary gains). In all these cases the government is needed to make capitalism "work". "Work" not just efficiently in a monatary sense but also in a way that is socially and environmentally acceptable. The problem is, the current concensus in Washington D.C. is that markets are perfect and that any inefficiencies are the fault of government medling.
No, I think it is more a luxury to not have to worry about where your next meal is going to come from. You've got the time and energy to pontificate because you're not using it all up just trying to survive. When you do grow up, and most likely get to go to college, take a course in sociology - you clearly don't understand what it takes to reach the point of "self actualization".
um, it isn't just the morning after pill. regular birth control pills can also cause a fertilized egg from being successfully implanted in the uterus. "the pill" does several things to prevent becoming pregnant, this is one of three "countermeasures" (can't remember the other two - you can google for 'em). i was raised in an evangelical church and it really is annoying that all those "pro-lifers" are running around on the pill...
I think he should have said that the "softball" questions on his show was merely a satire of the type of questions asked by real news shows. At least that's how I take it when I see Stewart interview politicians and he asks obsured questions like "so, how are you adjusting to life on the campaign trail?" (not an actual quote but just an example). The fact that politicians don't mind going on his show because they know he's not going to ask any difficult questions is simply a furthering of the satire in my mind. In the crossfire interview one of the hosts gets upset that he didn't ask kerry any tough questions - Stewart should have just said "now you know how I feel when I watch crossfire." Its a satirical news show!! You should experience an exaggerated version of what Stewart feels when he watches the source he is satiring.
Slashdot Mirror
You should go watch Jeff Hawkins TED talk on HTMs (hierarchical temporal memory) . It's old-ish (over 5 years), but he's referenced in the article and he founded the Redwood Neuroscience institute. You should be able to also find a white paper or two on HTMs. Jeff's theoretical model of the brain may have changed some in the last 5 years (I don't know, I haven't been paying attention), but HTMs were basically a hierarchical structure of nodes, with one layer feeding up to the layer above it. The nodes weren't traditional simple NN nodes. Each "node" was fairly complex and did two things: 1) it looked at the pattern of data on its inputs and assigned it a label (if it saw the same pattern again, it would get the same label), and 2) it kept track of the sequence of patterns overtime and the node's final output would be a value that represented the sequence with the highest probability. Nodes higher in the network would then take these values as their input, etc, etc. Higher nodes, when they determined "i think we're seeing a cat", could push down this prediction to lower nodes in order to help train the lower nodes (I think). Anyway, the point was that the "nodes" in Jeff's model were not simple NN nodes – they were complex (actually implemented as a bayesian network, iirc), and then these complex nodes were wired together into a hierarchy. Jeff does a great job of arguing that his model is actually more biologically accurate than simple NNs. Anyway, it's good to see these ideas getting some good funding behind them. They always seemed "right" to me.
On employee gets a task done in 2 hours and blows off the rest of the day pursuing their own interests. Another takes 4 hours, but comes back to get another task that they also complete the same day. Who's the rock star? The first guy is a prima-dona and should be fired. The first guy is who Yahoo will be more than happy if they decide to look for other employment. Who knows maybe that guy will land a job at a competitor. Even better –let them start destroying that company from the inside out.
Context matters. You say you wouldn't give a single fuck. Okay. It's your startup you've got $300k funding, five employees, and something like a 12 month runway to prove your business before you run out of money. Do you still not care if your team is wasting 75% of those 12 months? What you're describing is exactly what is broken about Yahoo!'s culture. Likely many people from the individual contributors up through management think like you. And guess what? Yahoo's got a limited runway to fix things and start becoming relavent again. And they have to figure out how to get people to realize that getting as much done as possible in an eight hour day is very important when you've got a limited runway.
I think what you state is exactly the problem, and PoolOfThought addressed it above. When they're working remotely, it's harder to tell that they only worked two hours and wasted six. They still finished their task, and you still think they're a rock star unless you somehow know that the task should have only taken a couple hours (which in our line of work its very hard to know). Maybe all your reports are awesome and immediately let you know/checkin as soon as they're done to get more work, but many people aren't that way. Can you still slack off at work? Sure. I know people that take off the afternoon to run errands for half the day when they finish a task in the morning. When you work from home, it's easier to do this habitually and then to rationalize it as okay because you're getting all your work done. You are, but you're also not getting as many assignments as you could.
Yes, all those self-righteous wannabe-rich. AKA: everyone.
When he gave his theory why the iPhone4 drops more calls than the 3GS he says its because people already had bumpers. How does a bumper help reception on the 3GS? The 3GS's antenna isn't external, so you can't touch it. Having a bumper or not wouldn't make any difference at all. Lame theory Steve.
by Foley, van Dam, et. al.
I think LOST is more like Giligan's Island actually.
Wow. I kinda think that this post proves the previous guy's point exactly. Specifically, where you say that you can configure KDE to basically look like OSX. If you think that a KDE theme is all you need to get the user experience of OSX you're just being silly. If it's "good enough" for you, then you are exactly the person too close to things to see how bad they suck. Further backing up the original guys post is the fact that you are modded so high. I am not sure there is an easy way to cure what appears to be an epidemic of "bad taste" among *nix users. I don't think there is a pill or anything :)
The vague pronoun "them" above had me momentarily confused. I thought you were trying to imply that google wants these people in order to get access to their offspring. Hum, maybe they are.
I could be wrong. ;)
I am not too terribly sure Jobs is going to care as much as we think he is about piracy. At least not in the foreseeable future (5 years or so). Most Apple users are very loyal and have no problem paying the apple premium. That won't change immediately with the move to x86. If every geek in the world (including those in college or highschool) starts pirating osx, great! All that will mean is more mind share for apple, which means a greater chance that more and more products will be coming to their platform. Also, in my experience people eventually do grow up and stop stealing/infringing - either they start using open source or they buy macs :) Or in my case, both. Anyway, if all the geeks in the world are running pirated copies of mac osx they'll be that much more likely to recommend it to friends and family.
How does the GPL come into play with application specific extensions? For example, DLL-based stored procedures (not uncommon in database systems, but I know nothing about Ingres). I know you have legal problems if you try to link to a GPL'd library (thus, viral), but what if a GPL'd application links (or dynamically loads) to your proprietary, application-specific library?
...the stock market will climb higher, and higher, and will never crash. You'd be crazy not to dump your entire life savings into the stock market in general and google in particular. We're all going to be rich!
PC emulation software has existed on macs for a while, and while dual booting one of these things with XP would be neat, imo it will be even more interesting to run PC software directly under os x without the overhead of instruction translation. heck, maybe apple will help take wine to the next level...
Another change that has occurred is that computer hardware has become much less expensive. This results in a relative increase in the cost of computer professionals. Since business is always looking to drive down costs, and since the cost involved in hardware has dropped so much, the computer professionals are seen (by MBAs and the like) as the next item whose cost needs to be reduced. This is very obvious in the whole offshoring thing. As long as revenues don't dip too much, cost will continue to be driven down by demanding cheaper and cheaper resources...
In grade school I would miss simple questions because I was always trying to take into consideration much more than the question ever intended. Usually once the answer is revealed, I would say "oh, is that all they wanted." This led to a lot of second guessing later in life. I do, however, tend to do alright in the "real world" since taking as many things into consideration usually makes for a better outcome (design or whatever).
No capitalism isn't perfect, but it is the break down of democracy that is going to bring about the "endgame" (whatever that is). Economists have known for a Long Time (TM) that capitalism isn't perfect especially when you're trying to take into consideration things like the environment. The market may be real efficient at producing "X" to the detriment of the environment. Capitalism has also always given rise to monopolies which due to the erosion of competition are horribly inefficient. Further, markets don't always rise up to serve all of societies needs (i.e. where it's not efficient to do so). Flu vaccines are tricky to make and the risk is great when compared with opportunity cost, so firms choose to not serve the societies need for flu vaccines. And finally the market short-coming most slashdotters probably care about, market economies tend to de-emphasize expenditures on things like research (usually due to over-emphasis on short-term monatary gains). In all these cases the government is needed to make capitalism "work". "Work" not just efficiently in a monatary sense but also in a way that is socially and environmentally acceptable. The problem is, the current concensus in Washington D.C. is that markets are perfect and that any inefficiencies are the fault of government medling.
That reminds me. I wish there was a way to get 5.1 audio out of the mini.
No, I think it is more a luxury to not have to worry about where your next meal is going to come from. You've got the time and energy to pontificate because you're not using it all up just trying to survive. When you do grow up, and most likely get to go to college, take a course in sociology - you clearly don't understand what it takes to reach the point of "self actualization".
what if all the slashdot readers out there pooled their ms shares? i know i own some through my 401k...not that that could be easily pooled...
Since 950 wasn't enough for you, Colgate-Palmolive Co. announced today they would layoff 4,400 from their 78 plants around the world.
oh pahleeze....who wants to hear what an atheist has to say about abortion ;)
um, it isn't just the morning after pill. regular birth control pills can also cause a fertilized egg from being successfully implanted in the uterus. "the pill" does several things to prevent becoming pregnant, this is one of three "countermeasures" (can't remember the other two - you can google for 'em). i was raised in an evangelical church and it really is annoying that all those "pro-lifers" are running around on the pill...
I think he should have said that the "softball" questions on his show was merely a satire of the type of questions asked by real news shows. At least that's how I take it when I see Stewart interview politicians and he asks obsured questions like "so, how are you adjusting to life on the campaign trail?" (not an actual quote but just an example). The fact that politicians don't mind going on his show because they know he's not going to ask any difficult questions is simply a furthering of the satire in my mind. In the crossfire interview one of the hosts gets upset that he didn't ask kerry any tough questions - Stewart should have just said "now you know how I feel when I watch crossfire." Its a satirical news show!! You should experience an exaggerated version of what Stewart feels when he watches the source he is satiring.