Exactly. This would be a dream job - coming up with applications for doctors within MSF to work together more effectively, or better document their ideas and innovations to improve the organizations' effectiveness and emergency medicine in crisis situations.
So is that one emerging consensus? Enterprise-level work for a great organization (that isn't technology-based)?
I understand where you're coming from. I'm not looking to go out in the field & heroically save lives. What I'm looking for is a mission-driven organization that does bold, important work that I can contribute to, maybe one that's technology-based, maybe not. I thought using MSF's name in the subject of this question would make that clear but it's obviously been a distraction instead.
There's actually been a few good suggestions so far, ones which I may not have found on my own, like Benetech and HRDAG. Frankly, it's also good to know that there's not a plethora of organizations in tech out there doing good, important work that I'm just oblivious to.
I think you're being sarcastic, but this is actually helpful. I go for years forgetting that/. has a job board.
Having said that, I was looking for some out of the box suggestions, which I've gotten a few of - like HRDAG in the parent comment. Keep 'em coming!
You're right that I'm looking for a career. Having said that, a non-profit job would be fine. (as long as it paid a living wage for the bay area) (I know)
I agree that tech skills can be abstract for people whose needs are concrete and urgent. That's why I'm hoping to find a job (not volunteer service for now) that does use technology, or at least my skills, to further humanitarian goals. Any other leads?
My experience, too. I submitted this question last night and only found out it got posted when I got a message from a kind soul who went by "Poo Poop" telling me I was already on Slashdot. Because I happened to be up at 6am (getting ready to teach at 8) I was able to get a few posts in, but only after about 70 other folks beat me to it. A few of those early posts - including some by folks who didn't seem to read my question clearly - got modded up to 5 by the time I logged in. Even after I replied to them to clarify, later posters are only replying to those original, misunderstood posts, not to my clarifications. Maybe in the future Slashdot could give you a 1-hour heads up that your question is about to go live? If I had had some warning, and this post had gone up during PST business hours, I think the quality of information would've gone up dramatically.
That's exactly one of the models I'm thinking about. I'll take a close look at what you've been doing - especially if you say it's been successful without pissing anyone off.
To be clear, the e-book will always be available for a free download. I believe in making my work available to everyone who needs it, that's what my Kickstarter backers supported, and piracy always wins anyway. The question is, how can I generate revenue while a free version exists?
The freedom was a huge incentive. If nothing else, I get to make my book beautiful, while other educational publishers are putting some of the fugliest covers on god's green earth on their author's books. (Think I exaggerate? Look at this. Just look at it.)
With this project no one made me change the focus, or put in language I didn't like, or otherwise force a change for no good reason. If nothing else I'll have more leverage going into a traditional publishing situation next time, because I won't be a first-time author anymore.
I did not know that Amazon doubled their commission if the same book is available for less elsewhere. Do you think they'd still charge the 70% if I added a little bonus content to the paid Amazon version? I'm thinking a short chapter on how I design curriculum, etc.
Honestly? I think I'd be pissed, too. If I go that route I'll try to make it extra clear in the product description - and besides, if anyone hears about my e-book, they first think they'll probably hear is that it's available for free.
Thanks for actually checking my Kickstarter page, although it's on me for not realizing my post had made Ask Slashdot.
I'm definitely going to use this book as a way to put myself out there as an education consultant. I don't know if I'll ever have enough high-traffic content to support an ad-based webs site, but that sounds intriguing, too.
I've been deeply inspired by the open source movement - I've been running Linux since 2001 - bit adapting it to what I have to offer has been a challenge.
It's clear Zion's been rebuilt at least once. At the end the architect tells neo to choose 16 men and 7 women for the new Zion. These are the people who become the ruling counsel for Zion.
Think about it; at the beginning, Neo asks why all of them are old. It's because they've all been there since the beginning. The guy he's talking to knows what's happened before. That's why he brings up the mutual dependence of man and machine to him, in a roundabout way, without having a cut and dry answer. Finally, it explains why the counsel is in favor of sending neo to the fortune teller; that's the only way the cycle that created them can continue.
These people don't necessarily reproduce to populate Zion. They have a few kids, sure. And it takes them awhile to build the technology to get into the Matrix, at which point they start to rescue people from the Matrix, who are likely going to be younger than them. (then again, the people in the matrix don't get wiped out each time, so there are people in there who predate Zion and are older than the selected counselors.)
Why the mythology around Zion, and morpheus talking about how it's 100 years old? Because that's the mythology the ruling counsel has created.
It's not just a question of changing the waves, but the pattern of erosion on the nearby beaches/cliffs/whatever. Most coasts have reached a kind of equilibrium with the waves that hit it. When you change something (say, put in giant concrete breakers) you'll often get much greater erosion than before.
Need I say that we don't have reliable methods of modeling erosion?
Not to dismiss this as a possibility for outlying communities, but nothing comes free.
1) Before we cheer on the good corporate ethics of Google, let's remember that this is a company just like any other. Their goal is to make a profit, not benefit the community. Right now they'll profit more by not tainting their search results. But there's nothing to stop them from changing their minds and selling out later.
2) There's also nothing stopping another company from buying them out in the future and changing their advertisment/search results policy.
3) The article said that E-Bay pays 10-11 cents per click-through to their site. Why not write a script that repeatedly goes to the site through Yahoo? You'd tie up their bandwidth and cost them a fortune.
4) Lastly, what's to stop microsoft from paying top dollar for searches including the words "Linux," "open source," and "monopoly"?
Here's an article from the Washington Post about how a bill in Virginia to recommend families turn off their TVs for a week and talk to each other was basically killed instantly, in large part because of lobbying from the entertainment industry.
But the unanimous vote by the Rules Committee against the resolution to promote TV-Turnoff Week also reflected the growing clout of the broadcast industry, which lobbied each lawmaker to vote against the measure.
The sucker who proposed the bill had the termerity to include part of sweeps week! If the industry is willing to shut down a non-binding suggestion that people spend more time with each other and less watching crap,we can't overestimate how hard they'll try to legislate their way to victory.
Just because the treaty was ratified by 177 countries doesn't mean it was democratic. After all, what does the US do if we don't like other countries' policies? We strongarm investors to suck all their capital out of the country until they do what we tell them to. And if they go along with our policies, we reward them (or at least their corrupt leaders) with massive loans from the World Bank or IMF.
The point is that these policies are getting more universal and more severe. Take a look at the article last week about the Chinese government's firewall built by eager US corporations. We're getting to the point where the internet no longer guarantees that information will be free (like speech or beer).
Between laws enforcing intellectual property, technology that can monitor and censor internet traffic, and governments cracking down on terrorism and digital theft, we risk losing the promise of the internet.
International treaties like this one are as important to the slashdot community as anything Bill Gates or George Bush does.
(Now we just have to find effective ways to fight back)
When you read articles about court decisions, you have to remember that a reporter is quoting the two or three juicy sentences in dozens of pages of dry legal text.
While Patel's logic, as quoted by Wired, might not impress you, you might want to check the full text of this decision.
This is especially true of Supreme Court decisions, which usually have hundreds of pages of decisions from the majority and individual justices. The press makes them look like a single issue decides the case, but that's almost never true.
While the comic book analysis seems useless, the more of our interactions are on-line, the more we can analyze them the same way. How connected are slashdotters compared to kuro5hin users? To WashingtonPost.com readers?
There's a lot to be said for how modern society, and the internet, lead to the fragmentation of society. This methodology of this study could be a way to analyze how those fragments come back together again.
(Also, I think secret identities are part of why the clusers are smaller in the Marvel Universe. Does Aunt May know Captain America? Doubtful.)
My understanding is that a settlement is _not_ an admission or wrongdoing. So while this settlement may give moral support to others, it won't give you legal leverage against a music label in the future. (the whole point of a settlement is that it's cheaper and quicker than going to court, and since no legal decision is made, no precedent is set)
Second, it's not clear how much the label can get away with if their CDs give consumers explicit warning. People will just "avoid" CDs that are hobbled? There are five music labels that control the industry, from signing artists to what gets produced and distributed to what gets played on the radio.
Courtney Love, Tom Petty and others are suing those labels on the basis that their contracts for artists are basically identical - and uniformly screw the artist. We could be looking at a parallel situation here.
The point here isn't whether you have the right to criticize something, but how that right trumps the government's rights to censor it - even if they use "neutral" means.
In this case the government was trying to keep drivers safe (or property values up...) by forbidding signs. But the Canadian courts said the guy's right to criticize, and the right of others to have access to it, trumped those laws. This might not extend too much into computer issues, but for a lot of folks out there who don't get all their news on-line it makes a big difference.
In the US, political speech is the most protected kind of speech (obscenity/porn being least protected). BUTT, there are still many places that forbid you from posting flyers up on telephone poles, postering, etc.
Those laws make it hard for shallow-pocketed grassroots groups to get the word out. If the only legal way to put out your perspective is on a billboard, how many perspectives will we get?
We can make fun of Canada all we want, and I'll be the first to, but this ruling, in its own little way, is a victory for the little guy.
This whole thing smells like PR for NASA so they can get an adequate budget. Using IR cameras to measure global warming, measuring the changes in the icecaps, that makes sense. But a big dorm-room poster? This is right up there with putting a camera on the Mars rover. Neat, but what did it accomplish?
What bugs me is that the Earth is made to look prettier than it is. Where are the cities? If you didn't know better, you'd think the planet's one big grassy plain with a desert in the middle. It's clear they made cosmetic touch-ups, right down to the cloud photos they chose to make the photo look more "typical."
And while it's great to see the planet without any clouds, if by "clouds" you mean "smog and pollution," then you might as well be editing out cities. You just don't end up with a meaningful view of the planet if you leave out how we've changed it.
This doesn't appear to be a useful, or even honest, project. It's more of a publicity stunt.
A lot of people who helped develop Be probably want to do the same thing again. If they can force MS to let PC manufacturers install other OSes on their machines, it'll give the former Be-folks another shot at making a fortune. (and maybe Palm has the same aspirations, for that matter)
Whether they'll be successful is another story altogether...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. This would be a dream job - coming up with applications for doctors within MSF to work together more effectively, or better document their ideas and innovations to improve the organizations' effectiveness and emergency medicine in crisis situations. So is that one emerging consensus? Enterprise-level work for a great organization (that isn't technology-based)?
I understand where you're coming from. I'm not looking to go out in the field & heroically save lives. What I'm looking for is a mission-driven organization that does bold, important work that I can contribute to, maybe one that's technology-based, maybe not. I thought using MSF's name in the subject of this question would make that clear but it's obviously been a distraction instead. There's actually been a few good suggestions so far, ones which I may not have found on my own, like Benetech and HRDAG. Frankly, it's also good to know that there's not a plethora of organizations in tech out there doing good, important work that I'm just oblivious to.
I think you're being sarcastic, but this is actually helpful. I go for years forgetting that /. has a job board.
Having said that, I was looking for some out of the box suggestions, which I've gotten a few of - like HRDAG in the parent comment. Keep 'em coming!
You're right that I'm looking for a career. Having said that, a non-profit job would be fine. (as long as it paid a living wage for the bay area) (I know)
I agree that tech skills can be abstract for people whose needs are concrete and urgent. That's why I'm hoping to find a job (not volunteer service for now) that does use technology, or at least my skills, to further humanitarian goals. Any other leads?
My experience, too. I submitted this question last night and only found out it got posted when I got a message from a kind soul who went by "Poo Poop" telling me I was already on Slashdot. Because I happened to be up at 6am (getting ready to teach at 8) I was able to get a few posts in, but only after about 70 other folks beat me to it. A few of those early posts - including some by folks who didn't seem to read my question clearly - got modded up to 5 by the time I logged in. Even after I replied to them to clarify, later posters are only replying to those original, misunderstood posts, not to my clarifications. Maybe in the future Slashdot could give you a 1-hour heads up that your question is about to go live? If I had had some warning, and this post had gone up during PST business hours, I think the quality of information would've gone up dramatically.
That's exactly one of the models I'm thinking about. I'll take a close look at what you've been doing - especially if you say it's been successful without pissing anyone off.
To be clear, the e-book will always be available for a free download. I believe in making my work available to everyone who needs it, that's what my Kickstarter backers supported, and piracy always wins anyway. The question is, how can I generate revenue while a free version exists?
The freedom was a huge incentive. If nothing else, I get to make my book beautiful, while other educational publishers are putting some of the fugliest covers on god's green earth on their author's books. (Think I exaggerate? Look at this. Just look at it.) With this project no one made me change the focus, or put in language I didn't like, or otherwise force a change for no good reason. If nothing else I'll have more leverage going into a traditional publishing situation next time, because I won't be a first-time author anymore.
I did not know that Amazon doubled their commission if the same book is available for less elsewhere. Do you think they'd still charge the 70% if I added a little bonus content to the paid Amazon version? I'm thinking a short chapter on how I design curriculum, etc.
Honestly? I think I'd be pissed, too. If I go that route I'll try to make it extra clear in the product description - and besides, if anyone hears about my e-book, they first think they'll probably hear is that it's available for free.
Thanks for actually checking my Kickstarter page, although it's on me for not realizing my post had made Ask Slashdot. I'm definitely going to use this book as a way to put myself out there as an education consultant. I don't know if I'll ever have enough high-traffic content to support an ad-based webs site, but that sounds intriguing, too. I've been deeply inspired by the open source movement - I've been running Linux since 2001 - bit adapting it to what I have to offer has been a challenge.
Huge Spoiler...
It's clear Zion's been rebuilt at least once. At the end the architect tells neo to choose 16 men and 7 women for the new Zion. These are the people who become the ruling counsel for Zion.
Think about it; at the beginning, Neo asks why all of them are old. It's because they've all been there since the beginning. The guy he's talking to knows what's happened before. That's why he brings up the mutual dependence of man and machine to him, in a roundabout way, without having a cut and dry answer. Finally, it explains why the counsel is in favor of sending neo to the fortune teller; that's the only way the cycle that created them can continue.
These people don't necessarily reproduce to populate Zion. They have a few kids, sure. And it takes them awhile to build the technology to get into the Matrix, at which point they start to rescue people from the Matrix, who are likely going to be younger than them. (then again, the people in the matrix don't get wiped out each time, so there are people in there who predate Zion and are older than the selected counselors.)
Why the mythology around Zion, and morpheus talking about how it's 100 years old? Because that's the mythology the ruling counsel has created.
They probably create it every time.
It's not just a question of changing the waves, but the pattern of erosion on the nearby beaches/cliffs/whatever. Most coasts have reached a kind of equilibrium with the waves that hit it. When you change something (say, put in giant concrete breakers) you'll often get much greater erosion than before.
Need I say that we don't have reliable methods of modeling erosion?
Not to dismiss this as a possibility for outlying communities, but nothing comes free.
1) Before we cheer on the good corporate ethics of Google, let's remember that this is a company just like any other. Their goal is to make a profit, not benefit the community. Right now they'll profit more by not tainting their search results. But there's nothing to stop them from changing their minds and selling out later.
2) There's also nothing stopping another company from buying them out in the future and changing their advertisment/search results policy.
3) The article said that E-Bay pays 10-11 cents per click-through to their site. Why not write a script that repeatedly goes to the site through Yahoo? You'd tie up their bandwidth and cost them a fortune.
4) Lastly, what's to stop microsoft from paying top dollar for searches including the words "Linux," "open source," and "monopoly"?
Here's an article from the Washington Post about how a bill in Virginia to recommend families turn off their TVs for a week and talk to each other was basically killed instantly, in large part because of lobbying from the entertainment industry.
But the unanimous vote by the Rules Committee against the resolution to promote TV-Turnoff Week also reflected the growing clout of the broadcast industry, which lobbied each lawmaker to vote against the measure.
The sucker who proposed the bill had the termerity to include part of sweeps week! If the industry is willing to shut down a non-binding suggestion that people spend more time with each other and less watching crap,we can't overestimate how hard they'll try to legislate their way to victory.
Just because the treaty was ratified by 177 countries doesn't mean it was democratic. After all, what does the US do if we don't like other countries' policies? We strongarm investors to suck all their capital out of the country until they do what we tell them to. And if they go along with our policies, we reward them (or at least their corrupt leaders) with massive loans from the World Bank or IMF.
The point is that these policies are getting more universal and more severe. Take a look at the article last week about the Chinese government's firewall built by eager US corporations. We're getting to the point where the internet no longer guarantees that information will be free (like speech or beer).
Between laws enforcing intellectual property, technology that can monitor and censor internet traffic, and governments cracking down on terrorism and digital theft, we risk losing the promise of the internet.
International treaties like this one are as important to the slashdot community as anything Bill Gates or George Bush does.
(Now we just have to find effective ways to fight back)
When you read articles about court decisions, you have to remember that a reporter is quoting the two or three juicy sentences in dozens of pages of dry legal text.
While Patel's logic, as quoted by Wired, might not impress you, you might want to check the full text of this decision.
This is especially true of Supreme Court decisions, which usually have hundreds of pages of decisions from the majority and individual justices. The press makes them look like a single issue decides the case, but that's almost never true.
Look past the flashy quotes, dude.
While the comic book analysis seems useless, the more of our interactions are on-line, the more we can analyze them the same way. How connected are slashdotters compared to kuro5hin users? To WashingtonPost.com readers?
There's a lot to be said for how modern society, and the internet, lead to the fragmentation of society. This methodology of this study could be a way to analyze how those fragments come back together again.
(Also, I think secret identities are part of why the clusers are smaller in the Marvel Universe. Does Aunt May know Captain America? Doubtful.)
IANAL, but two points on this:
My understanding is that a settlement is _not_ an admission or wrongdoing. So while this settlement may give moral support to others, it won't give you legal leverage against a music label in the future. (the whole point of a settlement is that it's cheaper and quicker than going to court, and since no legal decision is made, no precedent is set)
Second, it's not clear how much the label can get away with if their CDs give consumers explicit warning. People will just "avoid" CDs that are hobbled? There are five music labels that control the industry, from signing artists to what gets produced and distributed to what gets played on the radio.
Courtney Love, Tom Petty and others are suing those labels on the basis that their contracts for artists are basically identical - and uniformly screw the artist. We could be looking at a parallel situation here.
The point here isn't whether you have the right to criticize something, but how that right trumps the government's rights to censor it - even if they use "neutral" means.
In this case the government was trying to keep drivers safe (or property values up...) by forbidding signs. But the Canadian courts said the guy's right to criticize, and the right of others to have access to it, trumped those laws. This might not extend too much into computer issues, but for a lot of folks out there who don't get all their news on-line it makes a big difference.
In the US, political speech is the most protected kind of speech (obscenity/porn being least protected). BUTT, there are still many places that forbid you from posting flyers up on telephone poles, postering, etc.
Those laws make it hard for shallow-pocketed grassroots groups to get the word out. If the only legal way to put out your perspective is on a billboard, how many perspectives will we get?
We can make fun of Canada all we want, and I'll be the first to, but this ruling, in its own little way, is a victory for the little guy.
This whole thing smells like PR for NASA so they can get an adequate budget. Using IR cameras to measure global warming, measuring the changes in the icecaps, that makes sense. But a big dorm-room poster? This is right up there with putting a camera on the Mars rover. Neat, but what did it accomplish?
What bugs me is that the Earth is made to look prettier than it is. Where are the cities? If you didn't know better, you'd think the planet's one big grassy plain with a desert in the middle. It's clear they made cosmetic touch-ups, right down to the cloud photos they chose to make the photo look more "typical."
And while it's great to see the planet without any clouds, if by "clouds" you mean "smog and pollution," then you might as well be editing out cities. You just don't end up with a meaningful view of the planet if you leave out how we've changed it.
This doesn't appear to be a useful, or even honest, project. It's more of a publicity stunt.
A lot of people who helped develop Be probably want to do the same thing again. If they can force MS to let PC manufacturers install other OSes on their machines, it'll give the former Be-folks another shot at making a fortune. (and maybe Palm has the same aspirations, for that matter)
Whether they'll be successful is another story altogether...