What made the Wii the Wii wasn't its graphics, its sound, or its performance. What made the Wii the Wii is its controller system, which was radically different from what game consoles had previously done.
Think about it: the Wii basically said via the way it is controlled that you should play video games standing up and moving around. Compare that to every other game system out before that, which basically said that you should play your video games veged out on the couch.
Nintendo's game systems haven't historically been faster or flashier than their competitors. They're strength has generally been their durability and their innovation.
I'm misunderstanding your post. I thought that after the Revolution the French were wealthy enough to have their own language rather than a stupid accent. Of course, my understanding of the French Revolution comes from the documentary History of the World Part 1.
In practice, the "competitors" can form a tacit agreement to look the other way. Or, even more likely, they discover enough dirt on the other that mutually assured destruction assures that no one will tell on the other.
Thanks for doing your good job and taking it seriously. There are some really good cops like you in every city and town in the country, and that's important to remember whenever a story like this comes up.
As a serious question, do internal affairs squads help prevent this sort of thing? Are there other official measures besides whistleblowers that can help? And what do you recommend the general public do to stop the bad cops that doesn't put good cops at risk?
In the 40's and 50's there was a real risk of folks who were Nazi sympathizers restarting the party and using it to take over the fairly democratic government of West Germany. So the laws against swastikas made perfect sense. Now, any German politician who proposes repealing those laws could easily be accused of trying to bring back the policies of the Third Reich and (thankfully, in my opinion) be promptly voted out of office.
Nazi-ism is and will probably always be a very touchy subject in Germany. Sort of how Confederate symbolism is a very touchy subject in the US. For instance, look at this piece about The Producers getting produced in Berlin.
Disaster avoidance is good, for sure, but that's not what your DR efforts are really for.
Here's the story (fairly well-covered by/. at the time) of why you have a disaster recovery system and plan in place: A university's computing center burned to the ground. The entire place. All the servers, all the onsite backups, all the UPS units, gone. Within 48 hours, they were back up and running. Not at 100% capacity, but they were running.
Seriously--we HAVE public-funded news here in the U.S.--it's just that nobody's interested in listening:-)
Not exactly nobody: NPR news shows get about 20-25 million listeners. PBS news shows (notably the Newshour) gets about 9 million viewers. Are those huge audiences? No, but they're not insignificant either.
It's the Holy Grail of media outlets, because it would get people to pay for something that has been given away for a long time. But it's a delusion as well, since efforts at doing just that have not met with anything remotely like success.
For instance, the New York Times tried to do a "Times Select" paid service with a lot of formerly free content available for the low low price of $10.99 per year or so. It must not have worked, because a few months later all the content that used to be hidden behind the paywall was placed back on the free site.
In other words, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do: go through their clothes and look for loose change.
But you know the telcoms will fight it, and they basically own Congress--so I don't hold out much hope.
The telcos don't own Congress. That's preposterous. Congress is owned by the health insurance companies, the financial companies, the military contracting companies, and the big agribusiness companies. The telcos are at most a minority owner with about 5% control.
Re:Is the work environment for developers unfair?
on
Why Developers Get Fired
·
· Score: 2, Informative
No, it's not fair today. In fact, in most states employment is "at will", which means among other things that if you aren't a member of a protected class of people (and often if you are a member of a protected class) you can be fired for any reason at any time. And therein lies a large part of the problem.
Cops and teachers both have a very significant tool to protect themselves that developers as a rule lack: a union. Yes, I know, a lot of folks think of union regs as pile of bureaucratic BS, and unions as a bunch of corrupt jackasses (sometimes true), but the simple fact is that unions are very frequently a big net benefit to their members. Unions, for instance, are a primary defense that cops and teachers have against unpaid mandatory overtime.
Nurses right now are protected by the low supply and high demand, much like developers were about 15 years ago.
For starters, you won't get anywhere near the same mileage out if you're a programmer with 3 years of experience, because those unlucky folks (according to the various headhunters I chat with on occasion) are considered more-or-less unhireable. And yes, that's having a significant effect on young programmers being able to break into the market.
that was my fault, and I shouldn't be trying to blame them for it
Assume for a moment you're a complete jerk who doesn't care who you throw under a bus in order to further your own career. Your fault or not, I can guarantee you that as a jerk team lead you're going to find some guy on your team to pin the problem on to avoid having the black mark on your record.
Now, assume that you aren't a complete jerk, but you work for a complete jerk. Now when something goes wrong, he's going to throw you under a bus unless you can find someone else to throw under a bus. In that sort of environment, it's very easy for a middle manager to blame one of the team members to protect himself and the rest of the team. And of course, this iterative step can be applied as many times as necessary up and down the chain of command, where a jerk on any level from CEO down to team lead can cause this to happen. This isn't a mere hypothetical. A lot of CEOs are jerks, and got to where they are today by throwing their reports under a bus.
A story to give you an idea: New programmer just started a job at a large insurance company. He had been told to make an adjustment to a report that wound up on the CEOs desk. The adjustment he had been told to make was wrong. Word came down from the CEO - "fire him". Word came back up - he had been on the job 2 weeks and the problem wasn't his fault. Word came down from the CEO - "fire him, or I will find someone who will".
Aye, me be thinkin thar be only one way te keep te copper from te coppers: All must keep to a Code, guidelines if ye will. Three of 'em:
1. Serve the public trust
2. Protect the innocent
3. Uphold the law
4. (Classified)
Of course, if ye landlubbers want true freedom, take to te sea, 'cause it's a pirate life for me.
Doesn't look like it captures the OSS development spirit, to me...
That's probably because it isn't supposed to. It's supposed to allow Microsoft and any other companies who sign on to support it the ability to say "We like open source. We're spending eleventy-billion dollars on supporting an independent open source foundation." By calling it "open source" even if it's not, it succeeds at its PR purpose.
Remember the Halloween Documents? I don't think we have any reason to think that Microsoft has suddenly decided that they should become the next Red Hat.
Well, it's not libelous for 2 reasons: 1. It's not a working link. 2. It's not libelous if it's true (in many jurisdictions). (IANAL, this is silly stuff not legal advice, blah blah blah)
Of course, it's still grounds for getting fired. Aren't you familiar with the "Post Anonymously" option?
On the flip side, thanks to plurality voting in the US you'd also have candidates winning with the support of less than 20% of the electorate (which means less than about 10% of the total population). I don't think that's exactly an improvement.
the moment you have an unquestionable "out" like God any position is defensible.
And that's the big difference between the faiths I mentioned and the faith you had to deal with and rebelled against (quite rightly, IMHO): * In Judaism ideas that are claimed to have come from God are quite questionable. A lot of Jewish teaching comes from the answers to the various creative questions that have come up because of this. * In Buddhism the idea of God is more-or-less irrelevant, and Q&A sessions with masters is the key teaching tool. * In Unitarian Universalism, you're encouraged to come up with your own conception of the nature and/or existence of God, while you uphold a few simple rules of morality like not hurting anyone while you're figuring it all out.
So in all faiths that encourage critical thinking, "God" isn't an unquestionable answer, and good questions are key to seeking knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not "High-Tech Gadgets Can Pose Problems At Mexican Border", it's "High-Tech Gadgets Can Pose Problems At United States Border".
What made the Wii the Wii wasn't its graphics, its sound, or its performance. What made the Wii the Wii is its controller system, which was radically different from what game consoles had previously done.
Think about it: the Wii basically said via the way it is controlled that you should play video games standing up and moving around. Compare that to every other game system out before that, which basically said that you should play your video games veged out on the couch.
Nintendo's game systems haven't historically been faster or flashier than their competitors. They're strength has generally been their durability and their innovation.
I'm misunderstanding your post. I thought that after the Revolution the French were wealthy enough to have their own language rather than a stupid accent. Of course, my understanding of the French Revolution comes from the documentary History of the World Part 1.
Nice in theory, not so much in practice.
In practice, the "competitors" can form a tacit agreement to look the other way. Or, even more likely, they discover enough dirt on the other that mutually assured destruction assures that no one will tell on the other.
Of course, the solution is to just tune the horsepucky out.
Unfortunately, when I tried that on your particular post, I got "9rosk" which isn't particularly useful.
Thanks for doing your good job and taking it seriously. There are some really good cops like you in every city and town in the country, and that's important to remember whenever a story like this comes up.
As a serious question, do internal affairs squads help prevent this sort of thing? Are there other official measures besides whistleblowers that can help? And what do you recommend the general public do to stop the bad cops that doesn't put good cops at risk?
In the 40's and 50's there was a real risk of folks who were Nazi sympathizers restarting the party and using it to take over the fairly democratic government of West Germany. So the laws against swastikas made perfect sense. Now, any German politician who proposes repealing those laws could easily be accused of trying to bring back the policies of the Third Reich and (thankfully, in my opinion) be promptly voted out of office.
Nazi-ism is and will probably always be a very touchy subject in Germany. Sort of how Confederate symbolism is a very touchy subject in the US. For instance, look at this piece about The Producers getting produced in Berlin.
Hey, that milkshake brings all the boys to to yard ...
automatically gives launch authority of the Russian retaliation force to the humans that are lower down on the chain of command.
Which is all well and good except if the lower-echelon commander is worried about the loss of his precious bodily fluids.
Disaster avoidance is good, for sure, but that's not what your DR efforts are really for.
Here's the story (fairly well-covered by /. at the time) of why you have a disaster recovery system and plan in place: A university's computing center burned to the ground. The entire place. All the servers, all the onsite backups, all the UPS units, gone. Within 48 hours, they were back up and running. Not at 100% capacity, but they were running.
Seriously--we HAVE public-funded news here in the U.S.--it's just that nobody's interested in listening :-)
Not exactly nobody: NPR news shows get about 20-25 million listeners. PBS news shows (notably the Newshour) gets about 9 million viewers. Are those huge audiences? No, but they're not insignificant either.
It's the Holy Grail of media outlets, because it would get people to pay for something that has been given away for a long time. But it's a delusion as well, since efforts at doing just that have not met with anything remotely like success.
For instance, the New York Times tried to do a "Times Select" paid service with a lot of formerly free content available for the low low price of $10.99 per year or so. It must not have worked, because a few months later all the content that used to be hidden behind the paywall was placed back on the free site.
Actually, the real lists can be viewed here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/mems.php?party=A&cycle=2010
And here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s
In other words, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do: go through their clothes and look for loose change.
But you know the telcoms will fight it, and they basically own Congress--so I don't hold out much hope.
The telcos don't own Congress. That's preposterous. Congress is owned by the health insurance companies, the financial companies, the military contracting companies, and the big agribusiness companies. The telcos are at most a minority owner with about 5% control.
No, it's not fair today. In fact, in most states employment is "at will", which means among other things that if you aren't a member of a protected class of people (and often if you are a member of a protected class) you can be fired for any reason at any time. And therein lies a large part of the problem.
Cops and teachers both have a very significant tool to protect themselves that developers as a rule lack: a union. Yes, I know, a lot of folks think of union regs as pile of bureaucratic BS, and unions as a bunch of corrupt jackasses (sometimes true), but the simple fact is that unions are very frequently a big net benefit to their members. Unions, for instance, are a primary defense that cops and teachers have against unpaid mandatory overtime.
Nurses right now are protected by the low supply and high demand, much like developers were about 15 years ago.
Oh, and just so I have my bases covered: YMMV
For starters, you won't get anywhere near the same mileage out if you're a programmer with 3 years of experience, because those unlucky folks (according to the various headhunters I chat with on occasion) are considered more-or-less unhireable. And yes, that's having a significant effect on young programmers being able to break into the market.
I think workers at Perot Systems just heard a giant sucking sound.
that was my fault, and I shouldn't be trying to blame them for it
Assume for a moment you're a complete jerk who doesn't care who you throw under a bus in order to further your own career. Your fault or not, I can guarantee you that as a jerk team lead you're going to find some guy on your team to pin the problem on to avoid having the black mark on your record.
Now, assume that you aren't a complete jerk, but you work for a complete jerk. Now when something goes wrong, he's going to throw you under a bus unless you can find someone else to throw under a bus. In that sort of environment, it's very easy for a middle manager to blame one of the team members to protect himself and the rest of the team. And of course, this iterative step can be applied as many times as necessary up and down the chain of command, where a jerk on any level from CEO down to team lead can cause this to happen. This isn't a mere hypothetical. A lot of CEOs are jerks, and got to where they are today by throwing their reports under a bus.
A story to give you an idea: New programmer just started a job at a large insurance company. He had been told to make an adjustment to a report that wound up on the CEOs desk. The adjustment he had been told to make was wrong. Word came down from the CEO - "fire him". Word came back up - he had been on the job 2 weeks and the problem wasn't his fault. Word came down from the CEO - "fire him, or I will find someone who will".
Aye, me be thinkin thar be only one way te keep te copper from te coppers: All must keep to a Code, guidelines if ye will. Three of 'em:
1. Serve the public trust
2. Protect the innocent
3. Uphold the law
4. (Classified)
Of course, if ye landlubbers want true freedom, take to te sea, 'cause it's a pirate life for me.
Are you saying Khan Noonien Singh was wrong when he told Kirk that "It is very cold in space"?
Doesn't look like it captures the OSS development spirit, to me...
That's probably because it isn't supposed to. It's supposed to allow Microsoft and any other companies who sign on to support it the ability to say "We like open source. We're spending eleventy-billion dollars on supporting an independent open source foundation." By calling it "open source" even if it's not, it succeeds at its PR purpose.
Remember the Halloween Documents? I don't think we have any reason to think that Microsoft has suddenly decided that they should become the next Red Hat.
Well, it's not libelous for 2 reasons:
1. It's not a working link.
2. It's not libelous if it's true (in many jurisdictions).
(IANAL, this is silly stuff not legal advice, blah blah blah)
Of course, it's still grounds for getting fired. Aren't you familiar with the "Post Anonymously" option?
On the flip side, thanks to plurality voting in the US you'd also have candidates winning with the support of less than 20% of the electorate (which means less than about 10% of the total population). I don't think that's exactly an improvement.
the moment you have an unquestionable "out" like God any position is defensible.
And that's the big difference between the faiths I mentioned and the faith you had to deal with and rebelled against (quite rightly, IMHO):
* In Judaism ideas that are claimed to have come from God are quite questionable. A lot of Jewish teaching comes from the answers to the various creative questions that have come up because of this.
* In Buddhism the idea of God is more-or-less irrelevant, and Q&A sessions with masters is the key teaching tool.
* In Unitarian Universalism, you're encouraged to come up with your own conception of the nature and/or existence of God, while you uphold a few simple rules of morality like not hurting anyone while you're figuring it all out.
So in all faiths that encourage critical thinking, "God" isn't an unquestionable answer, and good questions are key to seeking knowledge.