What year are you living in? What site are you posting this garbage to? Your definition of "Friends" only being people you actually see in person on a very regular basis went out solidly with the invention of the telephone and the argument could be made even farther back to any sort of transmittable communication (read: the printed word).
When a friend of yours moves away are they no longer your friend? When your financial situation worsens so you have to work long hours to pay the bills do you de-friend everyone you can no longer get together with daily? (according to your post: apparently) Is the person you have long conversations with every day on-line about all that matters to you any less of a friend than the neighbor you have casual conversation with at the mailbox?
Yes, in my pile of Facebook 'friends' there are definitely people I would consider 'acquaintances'. I've at least limited the pile to people I've known in person but there are people there I don't know that well. That does NOT denigrate the quality of the friendships I have with the rest of the crew and many of them I just don't have the time to see in-person on a regular basis. Besides the time the $$ is a limiting factor given I have friends who are spread across all 50 states and about a dozen countries. Trust me I'd love to see all of them everyday but it's just not possible. That does not make them any less friends.
Check your definition: (I'm not going to copy the entire dictionary here for you but a couple examples): * a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard. * A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts. (You'll like this one) * A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
Most of the rest are more specific (such as the Quakers) but you get the idea... there is no element of proximity or frequency of encounter for any of these and in this modern connected world those elements are not as essential as they once were.
I am not negating the need for physical interaction (aka disconnect and actually experience the real world) but your definition of friend is quite a ways from the reality we live in.
Good comment on the VM side... Run a simple windows VM as a DMZ for new software you want to try out... if it turns out foul then you can always go back a snapshot or two.
Why is this modded "Funny"? This is exactly right no matter how much we may not like it, although I would go as far as to say it is on a different topic.
TFA is referring more to internal users relaying to an internal team who has to fix internal problems. Once you cross the barrier to the outside of the organization to someone who is paying you (usually a very large sum of money) then "Tech Support/IT" transforms into "Customer Service". Customer Service means you need to do whatever you can to fix their problem while keeping them happy and interested in doing possibly more business with you. Frustrating? Yes. Essential to stay in business? Equally if not more Yes.
I got practice using this method just because Microsoft keeps changing the names of things in Windows. Most things tend to stay in somewhat the same place but I can't necessarily remember which version did what based on whatever version is in front of me at the time.
Your example above: M: In the lower left hand corner do you see "Start"? T: No. M: What do you see? T: (Vista and Above)A little colored flag. M: OK.. click that.. now go to Programs. T: (Win7)What? I don't see programs... M: OK.. click in the text box right above the wavy flag and type the following...
I've been able to debug pieces of software I've never used over the phone using the same methodology only usually starting more with: M: Look at the top of your window.. do you see the words "File" or "Edit"... You get the idea...
Dealing with the techno-illiterate comes with practice.. teaching my 90 year old grandma was decent but NOTHING compared to selling computers to the unwashed for a stretch at Best Buy.
Algorithms are great to learn but sadly Ive had little chance to use em in real work, would'nt put too much stock in them for returns. In any case, any algos you need most likely you will learn on the job, if something slows too much. They are however fundamental if you want to be a proper engineer.(In my opinion anyway)
The key I learned in my algo classes was not the specifics of how to do something (aka those things you don't use in real work) BUT how to evaluate how something new is going to run or why it may be running badly.
That is the kind of knowledge that you use everyday while not even explicitly thinking about it most of the time. Big-O.. not just an idea but a may of life:)
It's called Cygwin. It is one of the first things I install on any windows machine I have to develop on (and many that I don't). Off the top of my head it looks something like this:
find./ -name "*.c" -print | grep -v "\.svn" | xargs grep -in "the string im searching for"
With everything but the search string conveniently stored away in a script. I first pieced that together to gain familiarity with a ~200K line project and have used it ever since on much larger ones.
The pressure is even farther away from computers than you say...
I started playing with computers when I was just under 3. May I emphasize the word "play". My parents bought a computer that was primarily a game station (TI-99a) but had this great feature that you could fairly easily program it yourself compared to, say, an Atari or my mom's old pong computer. I think the fact that games were much simpler then actually helped because you could have a lot of fun making this machine do what you wanted it to do instead of some piece of cheese that came out of someone else's head.
Fast forward a pile of years and there are studies and focus groups and fanatical parents that are all upset because kids are spending WAY too much time in front of the computer. "Turn off the computer and go outside and play! Hey.. why don't you and the neighbor kids go down to the park and play *Football!"
Yes, I know, balance is key. You need activity for the body and the brain.. but here are the most vocal members of society getting absolutely pissed that their kids are enjoying spending time in front of the computer. Potential 'cool' nerd say "oh well, I guess I'll go try to be in the NFL instead" Your average/.er doesn't fit this parenting mold, I'd guess, but your average/.er isn't exactly average then, are they?
OR the helium tank may crush a few of them as it is cruising through them, the walls, the cars in the parking lot and the cell phone distracted mega-SUV that just happens to be driving by...
Second: Really.. do you need to include the entire contents in your post?
Third: Is Russia getting sloppy in their old age? If you are going to deny that something has occurred you may want to not have posted a NAVTEX preparing people for it!
I completely disagree. The person who created the application needs to be able to somehow convey the technical details and functionality of said application: True.. BUT everybody has their talents and I've found time and time again that writing great documentation that is clear, consistent, easy to use and understandable by a wide variety of user is very much a talent and usually one the developer doesn't posses. Even if the developer happens to have this talent, they rarely have the proper perspective on the product to document it for a third-party. The best documentation creator is someone with the talents to produce the document and direct access to the developer for the nitty-gritty specifics. They can then document the use of the program from a closer perspective to a outside new user because they at the start are that person BUT they have the access to the developer to fill out the documentation with the details that aren't readily apparent using the app.
This could be a great business model: Customer: The people, companies, open source communities developing products / solutions. Business: A group of talented documentors who work with these groups to create quality documentation.
RTFA It says in the article that "the software was authorized by a previous administration". He did ask (supposedly) and was allowed.
By running all of the school machines at 100% load the school used more power and network then they would have otherwise and so this situation did "cost" them. The fact that he was given approval will probably shield him from any legal action regardless of the 'change of administration'. Where they got the $1M number I'm guessing is straight out of their posteriors but who knows over 10 years what the real delta probably was.. they are just laying the groundwork for a potential lawsuit, restitution or just a cooler news headline.
My favorite part of the article is the fact his wife sounds like she thought he was *directly spending all of his time at work searching for aliens. He should probably tell his wife how his fleet of software toys work. Gave me a good chuckle which is always worth the article read.
Yes... and as I good audio engineer, any recording I mix gets played on a LOT of different devices / formats before it sees the light of day. It's just good practice. The funny part about that is you're working towards the law of averages: I can make a recording sound absolutely perfect on one device (say my professional cans for example) but to make it also sound good on say my studio monitors (not so bad) or my home stereo (worse) or my car stereo (even worse) I have to actually make it sound worse on the first media. Eventually it sounds good on all but it loses some quality on the individual along the way.
Back to the original topic: Yeah... long story short most people have dumb ears. Most people have been damaging their ears with buds or pumpin' systems or rockin' concerts OR were just born with lesser aural capability and so can't hear what I can (heck *I* can't even hear what I once could.. downside of being a sound engineer.. we abuse our ears WAY too much no matter how much we try to protect ourselves) That doesn't mean the difference doesn't matter.
Take a recording with better fidelity played on a decent system and I say anyone's experience improves. They might not know they are hearing it and given a quick side-by-side which most of these experiments are and they will randomly answer the question. (Any of you with glasses will know what I mean... "Is A better, or B?" Sometimes it's clear (say 64K MP3) sometimes not so much (say 256K MP3) and it doesn't matter when the original source sucks to begin with.) anyway... the brain can hear what the conscious can't necessarily pick out and in a listening session your experience will improve whether you consciously know it or not.
Adding in the fact most people have crappy systems (buds, speakers, etc.) just means the worse sound is being reproduced worse. It's still worse.
More importantly.. I know a lot of teachers who can't stand that part of the job. These other teachers can only make money selling their plans because there is a market to buy them. I'd rather a uninspired teacher bought a good lesson plan than inflict a terrible or incomplete one on their students.
Whatever happened to Hypercosm? They weren't a cloud distributed processing engine.. they were high quality rendering via web done efficiently. It seems getting Hypercosm ported to today's mobile devices would be more productive now than streaming pre-rendered images over the tight pipe.
I seem to recall a certain CEO a long time ago saying: “I think there’s a world market for about 5 computers.” The tech has changed (Clouds are replacing Mainframes) but some people are still thinking the same way. There is a certain move in this direction but to say that people will not have their own "local" horsepower sitting around I believe is extrapolating a tech-craze beyond where it is actually going to end up.
Slashdot Mirror
heh... I use google.com to test if a network connection is alive :)
What year are you living in? What site are you posting this garbage to? Your definition of "Friends" only being people you actually see in person on a very regular basis went out solidly with the invention of the telephone and the argument could be made even farther back to any sort of transmittable communication (read: the printed word).
When a friend of yours moves away are they no longer your friend? When your financial situation worsens so you have to work long hours to pay the bills do you de-friend everyone you can no longer get together with daily? (according to your post: apparently) Is the person you have long conversations with every day on-line about all that matters to you any less of a friend than the neighbor you have casual conversation with at the mailbox?
Yes, in my pile of Facebook 'friends' there are definitely people I would consider 'acquaintances'. I've at least limited the pile to people I've known in person but there are people there I don't know that well. That does NOT denigrate the quality of the friendships I have with the rest of the crew and many of them I just don't have the time to see in-person on a regular basis. Besides the time the $$ is a limiting factor given I have friends who are spread across all 50 states and about a dozen countries. Trust me I'd love to see all of them everyday but it's just not possible. That does not make them any less friends.
Check your definition: (I'm not going to copy the entire dictionary here for you but a couple examples):
* a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
* A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
(You'll like this one)
* A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
Most of the rest are more specific (such as the Quakers) but you get the idea... there is no element of proximity or frequency of encounter for any of these and in this modern connected world those elements are not as essential as they once were.
I am not negating the need for physical interaction (aka disconnect and actually experience the real world) but your definition of friend is quite a ways from the reality we live in.
Good comment on the VM side... Run a simple windows VM as a DMZ for new software you want to try out... if it turns out foul then you can always go back a snapshot or two.
Why is this modded "Funny"? This is exactly right no matter how much we may not like it, although I would go as far as to say it is on a different topic.
TFA is referring more to internal users relaying to an internal team who has to fix internal problems. Once you cross the barrier to the outside of the organization to someone who is paying you (usually a very large sum of money) then "Tech Support/IT" transforms into "Customer Service". Customer Service means you need to do whatever you can to fix their problem while keeping them happy and interested in doing possibly more business with you. Frustrating? Yes. Essential to stay in business? Equally if not more Yes.
I got practice using this method just because Microsoft keeps changing the names of things in Windows. Most things tend to stay in somewhat the same place but I can't necessarily remember which version did what based on whatever version is in front of me at the time.
Your example above:
M: In the lower left hand corner do you see "Start"?
T: No.
M: What do you see?
T: (Vista and Above)A little colored flag.
M: OK.. click that.. now go to Programs.
T: (Win7)What? I don't see programs...
M: OK.. click in the text box right above the wavy flag and type the following...
I've been able to debug pieces of software I've never used over the phone using the same methodology only usually starting more with:
M: Look at the top of your window.. do you see the words "File" or "Edit"...
You get the idea...
Dealing with the techno-illiterate comes with practice.. teaching my 90 year old grandma was decent but NOTHING compared to selling computers to the unwashed for a stretch at Best Buy.
Algorithms are great to learn but sadly Ive had little chance to use em in real work, would'nt put too much stock in them for returns.
In any case, any algos you need most likely you will learn on the job, if something slows too much.
They are however fundamental if you want to be a proper engineer.(In my opinion anyway)
The key I learned in my algo classes was not the specifics of how to do something (aka those things you don't use in real work) BUT how to evaluate how something new is going to run or why it may be running badly.
That is the kind of knowledge that you use everyday while not even explicitly thinking about it most of the time. Big-O.. not just an idea but a may of life :)
You really must preface that comment with IANAL... as it stands you are quite wrong. This essay describes in hefty detail mostly why http://www.scribd.com/doc/24956746/DJ-Ettinger-Legal-Status-of-the-IOC
Excerpt: "...they can seek relief as a plaintiff, or be named as a defendant in a sovereign nation's court of law..."
It's called Cygwin. It is one of the first things I install on any windows machine I have to develop on (and many that I don't). Off the top of my head it looks something like this:
find ./ -name "*.c" -print | grep -v "\.svn" | xargs grep -in "the string im searching for"
With everything but the search string conveniently stored away in a script. I first pieced that together to gain familiarity with a ~200K line project and have used it ever since on much larger ones.
No... that would be shoot(huntdown(car(developers)))
True. But that doesn't contradict the point. Apple is making 1984 a reality.. one more locked down device at a time.
The *real question is:
Has anyone ever heard of Terminal Velocity? The record for a human is around half Mach and that takes skill to achieve not just height.
I can't believe no one has mentioned Knight Rider yet... "KITT! Try using microwave jam to stop their vehicle!"
Bah. I bet this one won't even make the cool sound!
They didn't say 160M "sites" they said 160M "users".
If say Google.com or Facebook.com alone were to throw in their numbers to this mix their entire data set would appear as a statistical anomaly.
The pressure is even farther away from computers than you say...
I started playing with computers when I was just under 3. May I emphasize the word "play". My parents bought a computer that was primarily a game station (TI-99a) but had this great feature that you could fairly easily program it yourself compared to, say, an Atari or my mom's old pong computer. I think the fact that games were much simpler then actually helped because you could have a lot of fun making this machine do what you wanted it to do instead of some piece of cheese that came out of someone else's head.
Fast forward a pile of years and there are studies and focus groups and fanatical parents that are all upset because kids are spending WAY too much time in front of the computer. "Turn off the computer and go outside and play! Hey.. why don't you and the neighbor kids go down to the park and play *Football!"
Yes, I know, balance is key. You need activity for the body and the brain.. but here are the most vocal members of society getting absolutely pissed that their kids are enjoying spending time in front of the computer. Potential 'cool' nerd say "oh well, I guess I'll go try to be in the NFL instead" Your average /.er doesn't fit this parenting mold, I'd guess, but your average /.er isn't exactly average then, are they?
OR the helium tank may crush a few of them as it is cruising through them, the walls, the cars in the parking lot and the cell phone distracted mega-SUV that just happens to be driving by...
First of all: Thanks
Second: Really.. do you need to include the entire contents in your post?
Third: Is Russia getting sloppy in their old age? If you are going to deny that something has occurred you may want to not have posted a NAVTEX preparing people for it!
It can't be a laser light show... Pink Floyd was nowhere near Norway when this went down!
I completely disagree. The person who created the application needs to be able to somehow convey the technical details and functionality of said application: True.. BUT everybody has their talents and I've found time and time again that writing great documentation that is clear, consistent, easy to use and understandable by a wide variety of user is very much a talent and usually one the developer doesn't posses. Even if the developer happens to have this talent, they rarely have the proper perspective on the product to document it for a third-party. The best documentation creator is someone with the talents to produce the document and direct access to the developer for the nitty-gritty specifics. They can then document the use of the program from a closer perspective to a outside new user because they at the start are that person BUT they have the access to the developer to fill out the documentation with the details that aren't readily apparent using the app.
This could be a great business model:
Customer: The people, companies, open source communities developing products / solutions.
Business: A group of talented documentors who work with these groups to create quality documentation.
Oh wait.. isn't that what O'Reilly is?
RTFA It says in the article that "the software was authorized by a previous administration". He did ask (supposedly) and was allowed.
By running all of the school machines at 100% load the school used more power and network then they would have otherwise and so this situation did "cost" them. The fact that he was given approval will probably shield him from any legal action regardless of the 'change of administration'. Where they got the $1M number I'm guessing is straight out of their posteriors but who knows over 10 years what the real delta probably was.. they are just laying the groundwork for a potential lawsuit, restitution or just a cooler news headline.
My favorite part of the article is the fact his wife sounds like she thought he was *directly spending all of his time at work searching for aliens. He should probably tell his wife how his fleet of software toys work. Gave me a good chuckle which is always worth the article read.
Why was this modded "Funny"? I find the fact that this comment is WAY too much of a potential reality FAR from funny.
Yes... and as I good audio engineer, any recording I mix gets played on a LOT of different devices / formats before it sees the light of day. It's just good practice. The funny part about that is you're working towards the law of averages: I can make a recording sound absolutely perfect on one device (say my professional cans for example) but to make it also sound good on say my studio monitors (not so bad) or my home stereo (worse) or my car stereo (even worse) I have to actually make it sound worse on the first media. Eventually it sounds good on all but it loses some quality on the individual along the way.
Back to the original topic: Yeah... long story short most people have dumb ears. Most people have been damaging their ears with buds or pumpin' systems or rockin' concerts OR were just born with lesser aural capability and so can't hear what I can (heck *I* can't even hear what I once could.. downside of being a sound engineer.. we abuse our ears WAY too much no matter how much we try to protect ourselves) That doesn't mean the difference doesn't matter.
Take a recording with better fidelity played on a decent system and I say anyone's experience improves. They might not know they are hearing it and given a quick side-by-side which most of these experiments are and they will randomly answer the question. (Any of you with glasses will know what I mean... "Is A better, or B?" Sometimes it's clear (say 64K MP3) sometimes not so much (say 256K MP3) and it doesn't matter when the original source sucks to begin with.) anyway... the brain can hear what the conscious can't necessarily pick out and in a listening session your experience will improve whether you consciously know it or not.
Adding in the fact most people have crappy systems (buds, speakers, etc.) just means the worse sound is being reproduced worse. It's still worse.
More importantly.. I know a lot of teachers who can't stand that part of the job. These other teachers can only make money selling their plans because there is a market to buy them. I'd rather a uninspired teacher bought a good lesson plan than inflict a terrible or incomplete one on their students.
Whatever happened to Hypercosm? They weren't a cloud distributed processing engine.. they were high quality rendering via web done efficiently. It seems getting Hypercosm ported to today's mobile devices would be more productive now than streaming pre-rendered images over the tight pipe.
I seem to recall a certain CEO a long time ago saying: “I think there’s a world market for about 5 computers.” The tech has changed (Clouds are replacing Mainframes) but some people are still thinking the same way. There is a certain move in this direction but to say that people will not have their own "local" horsepower sitting around I believe is extrapolating a tech-craze beyond where it is actually going to end up.
Too bad the cake also has a typo... too bad they don't make a spell checker that supports the ICING standard.