From TFA, we conclude that the degree of disappointment is inversely proportional to the exposure to hype you got.
It seems that the real problem was how badly Microsoft marketing managed the release of Origami, giving too little information at a time, which causes people to guesstimate wildly.
Despite this obvious rant, the only thing I liked in TFA is how I misread the sentence:
Microsoft collaborated with Intel to create Origami, which combines a tablet edition of Windows XP with a pen-based tablet computer similar in specification to a laptop.
For a split second, I read:
Microsoft collaborated with Intel to create Origami, which combines a tablet edition of Windows XP with a pen-based toilet computer similar in specification to a laptop.
What do you do with a toilet computer? How (and where) do you put the pen away????
You're right on the money. The problem with statistics is how badly people use it to support their own preconceptions, instead of letting data talk by itself. And if I ignore the groups you mentioned, there will not be much left, since those doing serious statistics are often unable (or dramatically challenged) to present the results in a palatable manner to the general public.
Actually, what amazes me is how Lotus Notes is well marketed for such a piece of shit. Maybe that's what MS is after: skills to reinforce their corporate sales. Not technology, not simplicity, not design.
It calculates STATISTICS based on how often certain formations are used, what attacks, defenses are constructed, and analyzes weakneses based on previous performances.
And finally, thanks to your comment, I have an opportunity to rant on my disbelief in statistics. Because, as seen today, Brazil won not because it was better on the field as the statistics and patterns might show. Brazil won due to their incredible luck. Not their technique, not their tactics. Australia had a more convincing game attitude throughout the entire match, effectively neutralized Brazil's attack and midfielders. Ronaldo had another crappy game, along with Adriano, and the entire team has a very hard time trying to play as an ensemble instead of sparse players forced to wear the same team colors.
Statistics won't capture the immense disbelief in the Brazilian coach, Parreira. He's an exceedingly stubborn man and will likely refuse to change the initial lineup for the next match against Japan. Statistics make it look like Brazil is a favorite for the cup, but my money right now is on Argentina (did someone watch their amazing 6-0?).
Therefore, I my point is that soccer is a sport of outliers. Averages and frequencies actually mean little given all the variables around the game (referees that do not have a clear view of a controversial play, players who use malice to fool all referees, etc.) The possibility of outliers is at the heart of soccer, that's why FIFA refuses to give a, say, US football treatment on the game of soccer. Perhaps a better treatment of soccer will make use of Bayesian statistics or some Montecarlo thingie. We'll see.
DISCLAIMER: I live on Brazil and followed through all classifying matches and am afraid that Brazil won't make to the end due to the immense hubris Parreira might bring on us.
Silica is also used as a food additive, primarily as a flow agent in powdered foods, or to absorb water (see the ingredients list for Burger King). Silica is also naturally present in the cell walls of various plants (including edible ones) to strengthen their structural integrity.
The twist on SiO2 is that is seems to be necessary for the body as a micronutrient of sorts. According to this:
Observations in humans indicated that various conditions such as
lung diseases, chronic diseases and especially growth retardation in
children were associated with silicon deficiency. Therefore he
recommended silicon therapy for conditions characterized by under-
developed and/or damaged mesenchymal tissues (Monceaux, 1973).
So, as long as you don't powder your ramen and inhale it, you'll be OK. But if you do inhale it, you'll have other more pressing problems to deal rather than concerning over SiO2....
The article goes on to say that about 100 nations have some form of ID card. Is your country one of them?
Yes. Brazil has a national ID card.
What concerns were raised? How were they addressed?
Can't really tell. National ID cards have always been here, at least since 1930 (that's the earliest speciment I've seen)
Have welfare fraud and other identity-related crimes decreased?
Absolutely not. Welfare fraud is rampant as ever and identity theft is way so much easier when all you need is to steal a single number.
Have National ID cards improved or deteriorated conditions where you live?
Don't know. Living standards around here have varield wildly over the last 20 years and it is impossible to correlate that with ID cards.
Now, some random details. ID cards here only gives a little more certainty over someone's identity, since it's an offical (think notarized) document with a photograph. It's legal for anyone to ask for the ID card on a commercial transaction, for instance, and that makes ID verification processes go much more smoother (due to the non-repudiation.) There's a lot of other numbers we have to deal with on our daily life: social security, financial operation and tax ID, voter ID, passport, driver's license number, work permit number, professional syndicate ID. Therefore, the ID number by itself is the least of our problems.
OTOH the number hell is our final line of defense. It raises the cost of a successful ID theft or a welfare fraud. But the same mess make it easy to fraud as well, since some numbers do not have standard formats across city or state borders.
I conclude that, while the national ID thing is not a bad thing by and on itself, the concentration of many different government services on a single point of failure can have catastrophic results.
Although there is people doing interesting work (specially in the southern Brazilian states, like Parana and Rio Grande do Sul), the bulk of the commercial IT work being done here is just application deployment as well. Coming in a close second place is the customization of said software so it fits the unique (actually, weird) Brazilian laws and business processes.
I was just thinking of leaving IT because I came to realize that in Brazil, big money from IT only comes from sales. Yes, there's a lot of clueless pointy-haired people selling flashy stuff. Which is really annoying because most of the times the programming staff takes the hit, since the sellers end up promising way too much more than the software can actually do.
In the other hand, customization does not pay nearly as well because commercial programmers are extremely cheap here, since managers DO refuse to increase the pay of these professionals -- think as an implicit cartel run by the companies to fix wages in a low level. Also, incredible Brazilian taxes make it very hard for companies to keep good, seasoned programmers in their permanent IT staff, so we usually end up with the mediocre ones, as the really bright ones switch fields (most of them) or go work abroad.
My top demotivator for the change is the inherent weird feel of using PostgreSQL. Call me flamebait, but the problem is that it is just not MySQL.
For instance, database manipulation is done directly via the command line (yes, screw the shiny GUIs). You run a program that somehow sets the environment and retains the password somewhere establishing a session or something like thant, and then you use other programs that take SQL as parameters. Table creation from the command line is downright unnatural. In MySQL you have a contained enviroment, the MySQL client, and you have special (non-standard) SQL to deal with the database. It took me almost a week to get this concept difference and it was very frustrating.
Some concepts also do not translate easily for MySQL users. Postgres terminology for certain things is completely different (academic, some might say). There's a learning curve, for sure.
For people coming from Clipper, DBase and Access, MySQL "feels" more natural than Postgres. If they're given a choice, they'll stick with MySQL until someone comes up with a book like "Postgres for MySQL users". Until then, oh well.
I think that Google seeded this news into Slashdot so that they could get a cheap stress test for their platform.
I've been trying to use it for the last 30 minutes and all I get is a nice Oops! page:
Google Page Creator is having a little trouble right now.
This is not because of anything you did; it's just a little hiccup in our system that will hopefully go away soon. We apologize for the inconvenience, and recommend you try reloading this page.
We need a more active accident avoidance system and other systems to reduce the need for driver intervention. If the driver wants to be less involved in the act of driving, the vehicle will naturally need to take up the slack.
The only safe way to do that is to make the vehicle to park itself and shut the engine down. Or the vehicle could eject the driver into any mass transportation system as soon as it detects less involvement of the driver.
The registry thing definitely needs a backup solution (or something that can be rolled back). For everything else, given the current sizes of disks, I predict a revival of tape backup technologies. Travan tapes can get to 400GB a pop, so they seem a reasonable solution.
I create a project around it and submit to Sourceforge as a GPL project. Someone might get interested in the stuff and the APIs could have a chance to have a life of their own.
Once in Sourceforge, you get CVS and all the goodies. Better than using GMail for it.
As for the cassette thing, it went more or less like this:
LIST 10 REM GENERIC LOADER PROGRAM 20 PRINT "Loading game... come back in 6 minutes!" 30 BLOAD "CAS:", &H9000 40 BLOAD "CAS:", R Ok RUN Loading game... come back in 6 minutes!
Actually, I used a Brazilian MSX (we're stuck with MSX 1.1b, MSX 2.0 and up was only available via hardware hacking and some cartridges). This was around 1987. I had a huge library of tape games and I remember spending hours cleaning the cassette deck using some special alcohol. Copying apps and games was relatively easy, all you needed was a double-deck cassette unit.
Then, I got my first 3 1/2" disk drive. 720kb! MSX-DOS! It took me a long, long time to grasp the concept of a disk operating system (why can't I do a for loop in this DOS thing?) and there were special commands that allowed you to switch to and from DOS and BASIC enviroments. You couldn't directly run games from the DOS enviroment, unless they were made specifically for it, so maybe that was the reason I never got the concept of DOS until I got my first 386.
At the same time, I got my first dot-matrix printer. 8-pin printhead, 40 characters per second. Impressive graphics (at 72 DPI). The ribbon cable was really new, never had seen a flat cable before.
MSX audio (with its 3 channel PSG unit) also delivered much superior sound than the extant Apple ][. MSX was the machine of the future. Or so I thought.
Oh well, didn't RTFA, but I think that the "warm jacuzzi" feeling he describes is just the feeling of his brain going numb. Weeks ago, we discussed the effects of sleep and productivity and, guess what, waking up is just as mentally impairing as being drunk.
On the other hand, I noticed that when I take short, deep naps during long, crowded and boring meetings, I often feel more relaxed than if I did my regular 8 hrs sleep. Maybe this has to do with the interruption of sleep right before REM, or something like that..
I guess the objective is to have Google publish the list and make it accessible to people OUTSIDE China.
Of course, there would be a problem with chinese traveling abroad, but nothing too extreme that cannot be solved via economic or military retaliation against offending countries (forbidding chinese nationals access to Internet in a foreign country).... but who knows?
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that the real problem was how badly Microsoft marketing managed the release of Origami, giving too little information at a time, which causes people to guesstimate wildly.
Despite this obvious rant, the only thing I liked in TFA is how I misread the sentence:
For a split second, I read:
What do you do with a toilet computer? How (and where) do you put the pen away????You're right on the money. The problem with statistics is how badly people use it to support their own preconceptions, instead of letting data talk by itself. And if I ignore the groups you mentioned, there will not be much left, since those doing serious statistics are often unable (or dramatically challenged) to present the results in a palatable manner to the general public.
Actually, what amazes me is how Lotus Notes is well marketed for such a piece of shit. Maybe that's what MS is after: skills to reinforce their corporate sales. Not technology, not simplicity, not design.
And finally, thanks to your comment, I have an opportunity to rant on my disbelief in statistics. Because, as seen today, Brazil won not because it was better on the field as the statistics and patterns might show. Brazil won due to their incredible luck. Not their technique, not their tactics. Australia had a more convincing game attitude throughout the entire match, effectively neutralized Brazil's attack and midfielders. Ronaldo had another crappy game, along with Adriano, and the entire team has a very hard time trying to play as an ensemble instead of sparse players forced to wear the same team colors.
Statistics won't capture the immense disbelief in the Brazilian coach, Parreira. He's an exceedingly stubborn man and will likely refuse to change the initial lineup for the next match against Japan. Statistics make it look like Brazil is a favorite for the cup, but my money right now is on Argentina (did someone watch their amazing 6-0?).
Therefore, I my point is that soccer is a sport of outliers. Averages and frequencies actually mean little given all the variables around the game (referees that do not have a clear view of a controversial play, players who use malice to fool all referees, etc.) The possibility of outliers is at the heart of soccer, that's why FIFA refuses to give a, say, US football treatment on the game of soccer. Perhaps a better treatment of soccer will make use of Bayesian statistics or some Montecarlo thingie. We'll see.
DISCLAIMER: I live on Brazil and followed through all classifying matches and am afraid that Brazil won't make to the end due to the immense hubris Parreira might bring on us.
maybe someday I can microwave food with some leds instead of that big, ugly magnetron?
Definitely, a killer advice!
Now, some random details. ID cards here only gives a little more certainty over someone's identity, since it's an offical (think notarized) document with a photograph. It's legal for anyone to ask for the ID card on a commercial transaction, for instance, and that makes ID verification processes go much more smoother (due to the non-repudiation.) There's a lot of other numbers we have to deal with on our daily life: social security, financial operation and tax ID, voter ID, passport, driver's license number, work permit number, professional syndicate ID. Therefore, the ID number by itself is the least of our problems.
OTOH the number hell is our final line of defense. It raises the cost of a successful ID theft or a welfare fraud. But the same mess make it easy to fraud as well, since some numbers do not have standard formats across city or state borders.
I conclude that, while the national ID thing is not a bad thing by and on itself, the concentration of many different government services on a single point of failure can have catastrophic results.
oh! oh! what about esr? lol!
does Taco has something to do with all the cats on Flickr's Explore page??? It only shows CATS! CATS!
So, let me present another secret of the successful Linux development cycle: a lot of lone, self-managed programmers.
I was just thinking of leaving IT because I came to realize that in Brazil, big money from IT only comes from sales. Yes, there's a lot of clueless pointy-haired people selling flashy stuff. Which is really annoying because most of the times the programming staff takes the hit, since the sellers end up promising way too much more than the software can actually do.
In the other hand, customization does not pay nearly as well because commercial programmers are extremely cheap here, since managers DO refuse to increase the pay of these professionals -- think as an implicit cartel run by the companies to fix wages in a low level. Also, incredible Brazilian taxes make it very hard for companies to keep good, seasoned programmers in their permanent IT staff, so we usually end up with the mediocre ones, as the really bright ones switch fields (most of them) or go work abroad.
Every problem has a solution! 8^)
For instance, database manipulation is done directly via the command line (yes, screw the shiny GUIs). You run a program that somehow sets the environment and retains the password somewhere establishing a session or something like thant, and then you use other programs that take SQL as parameters. Table creation from the command line is downright unnatural. In MySQL you have a contained enviroment, the MySQL client, and you have special (non-standard) SQL to deal with the database. It took me almost a week to get this concept difference and it was very frustrating.
Some concepts also do not translate easily for MySQL users. Postgres terminology for certain things is completely different (academic, some might say). There's a learning curve, for sure.
For people coming from Clipper, DBase and Access, MySQL "feels" more natural than Postgres. If they're given a choice, they'll stick with MySQL until someone comes up with a book like "Postgres for MySQL users". Until then, oh well.
Give us something we really want to see and you'll revert this "unfavourable" trend!
I've been trying to use it for the last 30 minutes and all I get is a nice Oops! page:
At least, I know it is not my fault (or is it???)
The registry thing definitely needs a backup solution (or something that can be rolled back). For everything else, given the current sizes of disks, I predict a revival of tape backup technologies. Travan tapes can get to 400GB a pop, so they seem a reasonable solution.
Once in Sourceforge, you get CVS and all the goodies. Better than using GMail for it.
As for the cassette thing, it went more or less like this:
Actually, I used a Brazilian MSX (we're stuck with MSX 1.1b, MSX 2.0 and up was only available via hardware hacking and some cartridges). This was around 1987. I had a huge library of tape games and I remember spending hours cleaning the cassette deck using some special alcohol. Copying apps and games was relatively easy, all you needed was a double-deck cassette unit.
Then, I got my first 3 1/2" disk drive. 720kb! MSX-DOS! It took me a long, long time to grasp the concept of a disk operating system (why can't I do a for loop in this DOS thing?) and there were special commands that allowed you to switch to and from DOS and BASIC enviroments. You couldn't directly run games from the DOS enviroment, unless they were made specifically for it, so maybe that was the reason I never got the concept of DOS until I got my first 386.
At the same time, I got my first dot-matrix printer. 8-pin printhead, 40 characters per second. Impressive graphics (at 72 DPI). The ribbon cable was really new, never had seen a flat cable before.
MSX audio (with its 3 channel PSG unit) also delivered much superior sound than the extant Apple ][. MSX was the machine of the future. Or so I thought.
Business partnerships, anyone?
On the other hand, I noticed that when I take short, deep naps during long, crowded and boring meetings, I often feel more relaxed than if I did my regular 8 hrs sleep. Maybe this has to do with the interruption of sleep right before REM, or something like that..
Of course, there would be a problem with chinese traveling abroad, but nothing too extreme that cannot be solved via economic or military retaliation against offending countries (forbidding chinese nationals access to Internet in a foreign country).... but who knows?
So, basically, "convince yourself that you like what you do and you'll find happiness"?!