Advertising success is hard to quantify. Lets say a corp, for whatever reason (anecdotal evidence) spends 10% of their revenue on advertising. They'd be pretty convinced that it's working, since... well, they're still in business! They'd also wouldn't want to lower their advertising (to say, 1% of their revenue) since it -might- cut into their sales (again, anecdotal evidence).
They might even increase their advertising dollars, and... by some chance see a spike in their sales (if they see lowered sales, they can attribute it to general economic downturn---why would they -ever- blame advertising?)
This feeds the cycle of uninformed/scared corps pouring money into advertising corps that spam the world with downright annoying ads... and everyone (in such corps) is convinced its working! This also leads to advertising-supercorps like Google---with no hard-evidence that their advertising leads to greater sales.
I've yet to see a corp become successful solely due to google ads. It's always something -else- that drives the actual sales.
they're not. they travel in a straight line....though curved space:-)
I think the best way to think about speed of light isn't ``mass increases, etc'', but to consider things to be -always- moving at speed of light through different dimensions. ie: 4D universe, where you are always in motion, with [x,y,z,t] being your `speed' vector.
The magnitude of this vector is -always- the speed of light. If you stand still in x,y,z, then you're moving at speed of light through time. If you move though x,y,z, then your speed through time slows down. (neat, eh?)
As you move faster though x,y,z, your motion through time slows down (ie: [x,y,z,t] magnitude needs to be speed of light), you need to apply a force in -less- and less time to keep on accelerating though x,y,z. So by the time you get to moving at speed of light (or close to it) in x,y,z, you have no time to apply -any- force (which leads to all those funny views of you having an infinite mass, which is really a wrong way of looking at it).
hope that helps.
There are similarly `simple' views of quantum mechanics. It's all quite intuitive.
I think another issue is that everyone is worried about ``youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills'', but then go ahead and implement that by having students take sociology, history, english composition, ancient literature, critical writing, sex education, etc., classes---while taking time away from Math/Science classes.
In other words, not only are the poor poor because they are irrational and lazy, but also because their are genetically inferior to their rich masters.
It's not about genetics, nor money. It's about the values your family has. If your family values education (ignoring how much money you have), the parents will do -whatever- they can to put their kids through school, college, etc. The said kids will likely do the same to their kids, etc. Naturally, they'll likely be more successful than other folks (and as a result of their values, will usually have more money). Obviously there are exceptions.
On the other hand, if your parents were on welfare since they were pregnant with you, it's quite likely you'll end up in the same boat, and your kids too, etc. (even if there's free school, and amble opportunity to learn). Again, there are exceptions.
Ask yourself, would you care if your kid dropped out of high school? Would you care if your kid didn't go to college? Well, many parents don't. And these values propagate through families/neighborhoods, etc.
That's what bugs me about medicine. What is so freaking expensive? How much do the nurses make? How much do the doctors make? Combine all of the salaries of everyone who visits you during your hospital stay, and it will still be -way- less than your bill...
Equipment? How freaking expensive can it be? Computer technology has advanced quite a bit lately... and it's freaking cheap! I don't get why some stupid sensor has to cost $100k---it's just a sensor with a PC back end.
Medicine? It's just chemicals! Usually pretty cheap chemicals. Heck, your vet can get you the same exact medicine you need much cheaper.
Where do these ridiculous medical bills come from? It's like all medical related fees are blown out of proportion... It's freaking amazing that it's cheaper to fly to another country, see a doctor there, and fly back, than it is to see a doctor here.
Makes you wonder how other countries manage to stay afloat with their socialized medicine.
There is no class of general "uber" programmer that can be brought on to an arbitrary company's internal development project and hit the ground running at a pace 10 or even 2 times that of the standard-fare developers already on the project.
Possibly not on day one. But definitely a few weeks afterwards (ie: domain knowledge). Experienced programmers tend to see subtle things that most people gloss over. Even stupid little things. Those things make one developer more productive than a whole department team combined (especially if those other programmers were primarily hired by HR).
Most projects at most corps have 1 (or maybe 2) developers doing about 90% of the work, and a dozen or so folks on the payroll for the project.
...remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say
Shouldn't meeting be like this? Otherwise they go on for hours and hours without much being accomplished. Also, if you think your corp hired someone mediocre when they hired you, you really got more to worry about...
I think the Google's lawyer isn't very experienced---doesn't understand that being part of the problem is what his job is all about. Apple's lawyer seems to understand that if the system is fixed, their `patent lawyer' jobs will become pointless.
Someone can just walk up to it and smash its sensors with a rock....it is very secure....every alarm triggers THE BOMB....unless someone disconnects both power stations.
One thing I'd add: ability to ``restart'' the md5. ie: if someone alters a few records, you don't want that to screw up 99% of the other correct data. Maybe restart your stream every 20 records, and wrap it inside a similar stream?
Well, the gov -could- provide a signed timestamp service. You send them some text, and they reply with the text + timestamp, digitally signed by their secret key (they can change the key every day [or every few minutes?] if they want).
Would probably take like 5 minutes, and 20 billion dollars in contracting costs, to setup a CGI script like that.
In fact, they could have one per agency (with a requirement that you get at least five signatures from different timezones/states).
You can take all sorts of hashes of your data, and get it signed by the government (with timestamp) every 5 minutes, if you want. Then you cannot alter the data (or it would be very obvious to everyone).
Obviously that wouldn't prevent someone from just plain deleting the whole lot. But then someone could throw away all the CDs (or `lose' tapes...) anyway. ie: If you actually -do- have data, it would be pretty easy to verify when it was created.
I plan on getting one (if/when they come out) solely for word processing on the subway. It's cheap/light/small enough to lug around everywhere. And it's Linux!!! All I really need is bash/vim/perl/pdflatex (maybe gcc & java, if that will all fit on 4gigs). I'd also imagine it's a bit more rugged than an average laptop (ie: no moving parts, except a cpu fan?)---and best of all... if it breaks, you can get a new one for $200:-)
I've been waiting for something like this for a -while-.
I had a similar situation, except when I handed a $20, I got change back as if from a $10! After a long debate with the manager, it took them an hour or so to recount the money in the register to figure it was $10 more. Needless to say, I never went back to that store again.
Hmm... I think you're missing the point of: Banks make a -profit-, and insurance corps also make a -profit-. If they operate well, they should make a nice profit (this is capitalism after all). If they make mistakes and screw up, then they shouldn't! In fact, I'd go as far as to say that if they screw up badly enough they should go out of business! They (not YOU) should take the hit for any programming errors. If they lost $5 million due to a programming error, well, tough luck, they should spend more on QA of their software. It's their fault! Bank software isn't something to save money on!
I'd understand them going after people for -millions- of dollars. But for a few hundred dollars that a buncha individuals were `lucky' enough to stumble on, the bank should've just ate the bill (it's quite likely they'll spend more on lawyers than the ATMs over-dispensed).
I'd imagine it all depends how much money you have in the bank. I'd imagine if you have a >$2m account in the bank, then this `criminal activity' would be referred to as a `misunderstanding' that the bank will only be too happy to bend over to resolve.
Slashdot Mirror
...but was IBM ever a ``David'', and who was the ``Goliath'' ?
Advertising success is hard to quantify. Lets say a corp, for whatever reason (anecdotal evidence) spends 10% of their revenue on advertising. They'd be pretty convinced that it's working, since... well, they're still in business! They'd also wouldn't want to lower their advertising (to say, 1% of their revenue) since it -might- cut into their sales (again, anecdotal evidence).
They might even increase their advertising dollars, and... by some chance see a spike in their sales (if they see lowered sales, they can attribute it to general economic downturn---why would they -ever- blame advertising?)
This feeds the cycle of uninformed/scared corps pouring money into advertising corps that spam the world with downright annoying ads... and everyone (in such corps) is convinced its working! This also leads to advertising-supercorps like Google---with no hard-evidence that their advertising leads to greater sales.
I've yet to see a corp become successful solely due to google ads. It's always something -else- that drives the actual sales.
affected by gravitational fields
:-)
they're not. they travel in a straight line....though curved space
I think the best way to think about speed of light isn't ``mass increases, etc'', but to consider things to be -always- moving at speed of light through different dimensions. ie: 4D universe, where you are always in motion, with [x,y,z,t] being your `speed' vector.
The magnitude of this vector is -always- the speed of light. If you stand still in x,y,z, then you're moving at speed of light through time. If you move though x,y,z, then your speed through time slows down. (neat, eh?)
As you move faster though x,y,z, your motion through time slows down (ie: [x,y,z,t] magnitude needs to be speed of light), you need to apply a force in -less- and less time to keep on accelerating though x,y,z. So by the time you get to moving at speed of light (or close to it) in x,y,z, you have no time to apply -any- force (which leads to all those funny views of you having an infinite mass, which is really a wrong way of looking at it).
hope that helps.
There are similarly `simple' views of quantum mechanics. It's all quite intuitive.
``if you were to "stop" a photon, it would cease to have mass''
How would you stop it? I mean, without absorbing it?
I think another issue is that everyone is worried about ``youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills'', but then go ahead and implement that by having students take sociology, history, english composition, ancient literature, critical writing, sex education, etc., classes---while taking time away from Math/Science classes.
...curiosity kills cats.
Instead of `canceling' out the gravity, why not just average it out across all directions by simply rotating the thing that grows crystals?
Just curious.
...they're willing to pay $50 to $100 dollars per hour for long extended periods
:-)
'cause they charge each and every patient 10x that for their time
Though I doubt it will cost you $500-$1000 if a doctor really spends an hour on you---likely much much more.
In other words, not only are the poor poor because they are irrational and lazy, but also because their are genetically inferior to their rich masters.
It's not about genetics, nor money. It's about the values your family has. If your family values education (ignoring how much money you have), the parents will do -whatever- they can to put their kids through school, college, etc. The said kids will likely do the same to their kids, etc. Naturally, they'll likely be more successful than other folks (and as a result of their values, will usually have more money). Obviously there are exceptions.
On the other hand, if your parents were on welfare since they were pregnant with you, it's quite likely you'll end up in the same boat, and your kids too, etc. (even if there's free school, and amble opportunity to learn). Again, there are exceptions.
Ask yourself, would you care if your kid dropped out of high school? Would you care if your kid didn't go to college? Well, many parents don't. And these values propagate through families/neighborhoods, etc.
...at tens of thousands of dollars a day
That's what bugs me about medicine. What is so freaking expensive? How much do the nurses make? How much do the doctors make? Combine all of the salaries of everyone who visits you during your hospital stay, and it will still be -way- less than your bill...
Equipment? How freaking expensive can it be? Computer technology has advanced quite a bit lately... and it's freaking cheap! I don't get why some stupid sensor has to cost $100k---it's just a sensor with a PC back end.
Medicine? It's just chemicals! Usually pretty cheap chemicals. Heck, your vet can get you the same exact medicine you need much cheaper.
Where do these ridiculous medical bills come from? It's like all medical related fees are blown out of proportion... It's freaking amazing that it's cheaper to fly to another country, see a doctor there, and fly back, than it is to see a doctor here.
Makes you wonder how other countries manage to stay afloat with their socialized medicine.
There is no class of general "uber" programmer that can be brought on to an arbitrary company's internal development project and hit the ground running at a pace 10 or even 2 times that of the standard-fare developers already on the project.
Possibly not on day one. But definitely a few weeks afterwards (ie: domain knowledge). Experienced programmers tend to see subtle things that most people gloss over. Even stupid little things. Those things make one developer more productive than a whole department team combined (especially if those other programmers were primarily hired by HR).
Most projects at most corps have 1 (or maybe 2) developers doing about 90% of the work, and a dozen or so folks on the payroll for the project.
...immediately out of the comprehension of a generalist or a less accomplished programmer
:-)
In other words, write everything in Perl
...remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say
Shouldn't meeting be like this? Otherwise they go on for hours and hours without much being accomplished. Also, if you think your corp hired someone mediocre when they hired you, you really got more to worry about...
I think the Google's lawyer isn't very experienced---doesn't understand that being part of the problem is what his job is all about. Apple's lawyer seems to understand that if the system is fixed, their `patent lawyer' jobs will become pointless.
Someone can just walk up to it and smash its sensors with a rock. ...it is very secure....every alarm triggers THE BOMB....unless someone disconnects both power stations.
(sorry).
Their ``kill switch remote'' is an M16. Simple point and click interface.
Neat.
One thing I'd add: ability to ``restart'' the md5. ie: if someone alters a few records, you don't want that to screw up 99% of the other correct data. Maybe restart your stream every 20 records, and wrap it inside a similar stream?
Well, the gov -could- provide a signed timestamp service. You send them some text, and they reply with the text + timestamp, digitally signed by their secret key (they can change the key every day [or every few minutes?] if they want).
Would probably take like 5 minutes, and 20 billion dollars in contracting costs, to setup a CGI script like that.
In fact, they could have one per agency (with a requirement that you get at least five signatures from different timezones/states).
You can take all sorts of hashes of your data, and get it signed by the government (with timestamp) every 5 minutes, if you want. Then you cannot alter the data (or it would be very obvious to everyone).
Obviously that wouldn't prevent someone from just plain deleting the whole lot. But then someone could throw away all the CDs (or `lose' tapes...) anyway. ie: If you actually -do- have data, it would be pretty easy to verify when it was created.
Why do some people still do this?
They need -something- to do!
I wonder if by 2008, someone really will invent one of these...
I plan on getting one (if/when they come out) solely for word processing on the subway. It's cheap/light/small enough to lug around everywhere. And it's Linux!!! All I really need is bash/vim/perl/pdflatex (maybe gcc & java, if that will all fit on 4gigs). I'd also imagine it's a bit more rugged than an average laptop (ie: no moving parts, except a cpu fan?)---and best of all... if it breaks, you can get a new one for $200 :-)
I've been waiting for something like this for a -while-.
I had a similar situation, except when I handed a $20, I got change back as if from a $10! After a long debate with the manager, it took them an hour or so to recount the money in the register to figure it was $10 more. Needless to say, I never went back to that store again.
Hmm... I think you're missing the point of: Banks make a -profit-, and insurance corps also make a -profit-. If they operate well, they should make a nice profit (this is capitalism after all). If they make mistakes and screw up, then they shouldn't! In fact, I'd go as far as to say that if they screw up badly enough they should go out of business! They (not YOU) should take the hit for any programming errors. If they lost $5 million due to a programming error, well, tough luck, they should spend more on QA of their software. It's their fault! Bank software isn't something to save money on!
I'd understand them going after people for -millions- of dollars. But for a few hundred dollars that a buncha individuals were `lucky' enough to stumble on, the bank should've just ate the bill (it's quite likely they'll spend more on lawyers than the ATMs over-dispensed).
I'd imagine it all depends how much money you have in the bank. I'd imagine if you have a >$2m account in the bank, then this `criminal activity' would be referred to as a `misunderstanding' that the bank will only be too happy to bend over to resolve.
Exactly. They should have a "linux" distribution with a solaris kernel. I'd try that.