I'm not claiming to know anything about the laws about this... but from a logical point of view.
Since the employee isn't the person actually recording the call (rather some other company entity NOT part of the conversation), in that case it would be an outside party recording so they would have to tell you no matter what states were involved.
Well it is logical to consider the options of broadband to homes as well, is it not (maybe a bit down the road)? It would be useful in many places where infrustructure is not in place for example.. even if slower than typical broadband in the end if it's faster than POTS and can be in remote locations I see lots of potential places for it's use... I'd heard they were working on this in Australia.
I wasn't on slashdot back then... so I missed that here, but it makes sense... all my friends and I were sending out e-mails and I don't remember where else we were posting anymore.
Yep... I watched someone do it once. It was a new art place that was there one day and gone the next. The guy swiped the card in a fanny pouch type thing as he was walking to the register. I was with 4 other people and no one else noticed what he did. I had my friend cancel the transaction and went to the car and called the police and had him call his CC company to immediatly cancel it as well. It was a big issue in the city I was in and although all my friends knew about the issue none of them caught it.
Lol... true.
Hey does anyone else remember when Geocities changed their member agreement? (this is dating me a bit since it was years ago) There were a ton of complaints and protests, etc from people about what they changed (so they basically owned whatever you put up I think it was phrased). So in that case I guess it proved people DID read the agreement so the figures may be skewed...
And like the AC above mentioned, replying to this one might have been like handing your e-mail to a million spammers... people are much less likely nowadays to reply to odd e-mail requests (for prizes even.. sheesh does that sound spamish) than they used to be.
Hmm... I see how AI research (ANNs specifically) may be benefiting from access to GRIDs... at the moment a computer can process information MUCH faster (in 2001 it was about 10^-9 nanoseconds) than a human brain (10^-3 milliseconds, about a million times slower) however, a human brain can find many things much faster than a computer... because it's parallel (about 10^11 neurons acting as simple processors).
Are you really getting everything you need from it though? Or maybe too much even?
Quick example, TPN typically included Manganese as it is an essential trace element necessary for good nutrition and contained in unrefined cereals and green leafy vegetables. "...the tiniest amount of manganese typically added to TPN is responsible for the same kind of toxic effects on patients with liver failure as have been seen in miners with prolonged exposure to ore, in whom manganese poisoning was first described."
Also, "In addition to thiamine deficiency in both short- and long-term TPN patients, deficiencies of vitamins A, D, and E have been reported."
Although those total nutrition foods are great for people, it's not a good long-term plan at the moment. We still don't know near enough about how the body matabalizes food even (for example glucose levels vary for individual diabetics on different foods because of how their body digests it. So an apple might throw one person off the charts while only mildly effecting another. It's not a science yet, it's still an art.)
I guess there are a few problems with the current IV food and delivery. High blood sugar levels,lose of appetite, disruption of the liver, and a major risk of infection (since it's inserted to a central line germs could be carried strait to the heart). Also, it's hard to get the mix right (and there are some trace elements that we are still learning how important they are).
Besides many people would miss the taste of food.
Thirst seems like the most logical one that we could deal with more quickly. The biggest issue would be having some way of testing how much liquid you needed in your system. Many of the implanted testing for say diabetics have had issues with the body growing around the testing device making it less useful and quickly useless, if it were done in say the blood streem.
Lets say this was used, how would they know if the person was near the person with the restraint? They may be able to keep them away from their house or place of work, but say they know the person is often at other locations and goes to those places instead. So you are now releasing people to potentially cause more problems than if they were in prison or house arrest? If nothing else it may be a false sense of security? To get this to work in more situations, I suppose you would need to have a monitor on both people. At that point you are putting criminals and citizens (maybe with their permission) on tracking systems... which sounds more big-brother worrysome to more people.
Also, what if someone other than the government gets access to where the person is? This would potentially be a target for a crime group (ie rival gang or something), or other types of discrimination (directly or indirectly... maybe tracking people who talk to people tagged?).
lol. I knew I was asking for it.:) Your right each other would make more sense.
I considered asking someone to read it over for silly mistakes since I was harassing grammer nuts, but decided it would take too much time out of someones life to go through the trouble.
You have a good point about it being more streamlined... however, I suspect that since e-mail is easier to send than a memo, fax, etc, etc, there would be more e-mails than the other mediums in the past. Also, more of them seem to be written with less thought put in. You always hear stories about people wishing they hadn't sent that e-mail or how the number errors in e-mails vs memos, etc are so much greater. If there are indead more errors in e-mails, does a poorly written e-mail with various errors take longer to read? (On Slashdot at least, I think that is definitely the case with poor spelling/grammar in posts, since you then must skim past 2 pages of spelling/grammar fanatics arguing with themselves!)
My brother had a combo of extreem dyslexia and hearing loss which caused a lot of problems in school for him. I was lucky enough to have a teacher who took a special interest in him and learned new teaching techniques in order to help him. He is now in university which is honestly something no one expected when he could not read at all for so long. For him RC car magazines were great, it was something he loved and they offered pictures and diagrams which he could understand even when too frustrated with the text, and encuraged him to keep trying. Technology wise, he swares by dragon dictate now and honestly couldn't get by without it. It gave him a way to write when otherwise his writting made no sense. He has also started using the text-to-speech which comes with windows in order to have dificult text read to him on the computer and with the OCR software that comes with (xp? or the new office? I forget what it came built into....) he is talking about scanning in textbooks to be read to him as well... tedious task, but at least he has more options avalible now to him than he did.
First I want to comment how articulate your point was made.:) I guess I jumped to general MMORPGs when families were mentioned since I've only previously thought of that structure fitting easily into those types, rather than the stats based ones or FPS. On a quick read of the articles I missed the part that said implied only in combat settings.
True, there are not a lot of variation to the stat-based combat strategies... maybe inputs are part of the issue (FPS as you mentioned aren't as popular accross the board)? I'm a bit disapointed that the areas of computer and information input hasn't really changed much since computers became popular (heck even the keyboard layout is designed to be restrictive because of old typewritters). You had joysticks (which from what I can tell have lost momentum), mice, and keyboards. The mediums for input are too limited to allow the area to grow easily I think, and alternatives are very costly for only game use. I suppose the systems which allow motion tracking may change this in the future? (or can you picture someone trying to make a DDR combat MMO? Stomp them to death? lol) Maybe voice recognition could be an additional input type to mix it that is currently avalible??? if you can come up with a good way to do it....
Another thought that I've seen but maybe not applied in a creative enough way might be the idea of engery (beyond strength or HPs)... if you have to strategicly decide when to use an attack (because of energy expended) vs when to use another attack... This idea was sorta touched on in some MUDs.... and I don't know where/if outside of them but might allow for more skilled strategy... Also timming of attacks and if the other is hit or not is all so dice roll... if there were an option to change timming at each hit (ie, automatic hit every second, option to hit sooner depending on a click, however spending more energy?) it might allow for more chance to hit or not (smarter fighting interface and a pain to code... but sounds like a fun programming idea). You'd have to make everything smarter though which would suck a lot more bandwidth and computer processing power I guess (another limitation). Has this been done? Not something I've really checked into...
I'd have to at least partially disagree. Many of the aspects haven't changed since farther back.. to MUD days... However I think it IS an area which does have some current improvements (despite its slower growth).
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URU: Myst's online game (fan site) was very different for example a game, which focused on group interaction and problem solving. Saddly, it didn't make it past Beta but many new cutting edge models don't. Its user group was very different from 'typical' MMORPGs... Overall older and very loyal to the game. It's focus wasn't on killing anything at all actually it was more of a history lesson approach (about a fantasy group of people though).
- There.com is also a different type of MMORPG, which has no fighting system at all. It's described as, "There is an online getaway where you can hang out with your friends and meet new ones--all in a lush 3D environment that's yours to explore!" This description is only about the social aspect, however there are other aspects such as users making game objects and clothes for other players to buy so the game economy (although hard like in RL). It can even allow great modelers to make some RL cash (I wouldn't go into it for that since there are honestly only a few who have pulled it off, and the risks are with RL money but it is an interesting concept to explore).
And as far as KillerBetties.com comment "Smedley means twitch combat, is this really skill-based? Sure, it's a skill with controls, but how is mastering controls truly a skill? I'd love to see someone reinvent the meaning of skill-based." I think URU actually could claim to get away from this twitch skill placed model to a degree. Puzzles were more important and then communities based on creating art, fan fiction and poetry, mapping, and history were created which each used other more real-life skill bases. I for example actually know about GIS map systems BECAUSE of the URU fan community who were creating a semi-one for keeping game maps and historic information in. Also There.com is skill-based in other ways as well. Because users can create objects, good artists can sell items and make money in the game. Good marketers can run successful events and sell other's items. Good traders can buy items when listed low and wait till they are high playing sort of stock market game with real money. There are in game 'skills' for things like driving vehicles, etc however honestly the majority of people don't focus on them so much as really just hanging with other users or other 'skills'.
I tried the get up and move to see if that helped me get a job (I didn't have luck finding my first out of college job, where I was)... although I'm getting a lot more interviews here, no offers yet.
if I'm understanding whats being talked about... PDAs have knobs like you are describing and to keep you from hitting it in your pocket it has a lock (sliding switch).
Maybe you don't notice them. A good copy is dificult to notice. With say golf clubs, using a lesser material is how they save the money (and how they were able to tell the difference) with CDs you don't need to use lesser CDs, paper, printing, etc the cost isn't in the item rather the information; which is as everyone probably realizes easy enough for even grandma to copy. Have you caught all the talk about fake flea medicines for pets and how even ones from your vet aren't trustworthy lately? Or the killer fake botox in florida?
Those pirates aren't selling only to people in their own country... they are being imported in various ways and being sold in the US and all over the world. Check out the article done by 60 minutes for more info about it.
...give breathing space for competitors to come up with similar products BEFORE we do.
That's a good point which had me thinking about other similar models which have been done like this.
Other Sample Models/Studies SWOT analysis can be used for internal projects and whole companies. It doesn't provide a final number like this study but it would at least require someone to think about the project from and may help align the sales and development teams. It's a rather simple model and has been developed further by many others but it was sort of like the grandfather to this type of qualitative thought. Porter's Five Forces model again although primarily considered for whole companies or departments could be applied to projects and was created in 1980. Threat of New Entrants could be threats of external companies instead doing the job before you do, or other internal departments/teams doing the project, etc. Power of Suppliers may be other departments or other projects which may change requirements or require extensive red tape slowing the project down. Etc., Etc., Etc. Six Sigma used for project time estimation (which looks like it could be useful for determining if a project is on track and if not if it will then create other problems?
A study on Identifying Best Practices in Information Technology Project Management.
Ya we had one of those real robotic turtles I wanted to add a camera to it and drive it with commands around the school in 3rd or 4th grade... I was so disapointed when she told me she couldn't do that. Although I was programming before that even. Thats a good idea though... very hands on and imediate results for what you program. As many know, Lego makes robots now that you can program. Sounds like fun and lots of learning!
Actually that wasn't my first experience with computers. I remember when Dad came how with a "portable" computer (luggable at best). It had Compaq DOS version 1.02 on it. I just turned 5, so my first game was a game were you picked the upper case or lower case letter that matched the one they were showing. In order to run my games I had to learn the basics. In second grade my school started experimenting with teaching programming at an early age which was quickly traded for typing classes. In 3rd-4th grade we were introduced to LOGO. 3rd-5th I spent more time in typeing type classes working on an elementary school paper. In 4th or 5th grade I actually started programming. I saw the book which was called BASIC on the shelf and decided it must be easy if it's called basic and read it practically cover to cover. After copying a few of the sample programs I began changing them and then starting my own. In 6th the started teaching programming in Qbasic and GWbasic at school which I flew through. In 8th grade I sat with a friend and learned Turbo Pascal over the summer and became a regular BBS poster at a few dial-up BBSes I remember when they finally connected their e-mail accounts to the web, that felt like it took forever to me although they were one of the fastest to do it. And the BBS chatrooms were a regular spot and I still remember saying happy new year to everyone on the BBS when it turned 1992. By the end of 8th grade I was running my own BBS. Also around this time I had found access to the internet through a friend of a friend whos advisor had given him access to an internet account through the school. In 9th grade, I was teaching an advanced turbo pascal class at school and began programming for a MOO. In 10th grade (1993) I was helping programming a VR-MUD world which could be added to a BBS. In 11th grade I was in a university program and had access to the internet which luckily was the same year Netscape came out and I finally saw the WWW with pictures when the systems were upgraded to allow PPP access at the end of that year! I'm up to about 20 programming languages now and the funniest thing about this whole history was that I didn't realize I was constantly on the front-line of technology until looking back just now to compare dates. That was simply when I first learned about something and became interested.
Re:Comprehensive interviews are very important.
on
Defining Google
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· Score: 1
You make some interesting points. For examples, companies that try to 'encourage creativity' are indeed often bit back at for it. Xerox is a great example I can think of, where they encuraged creativity and leadership, which encuraged their employees to split from them to start many great companies because ultimatly they didn't follow through on ideas and products their geniuses were finding/creating (forcing them out to the garages so to speak).
It's Eugenics fallacy: Who are you to judge what a superman is unless you are one yourself? And if you were one, then you don't need to breed competition.
I feel this is a half truth. I'll half agree with you on that, maybe superman wouldn't be able to see another superman since to him he would "normal". However, maybe to really recognize a person's potential, maybe you need someone who excels at telling who a real one is. So if your hireing people aren't super at what they do maybe they won't see it. An example I can see here is a really good scout for any sport. They are individuals who are great at seeing who is the next big thing. And that brings me to the second 1/2... And if you were one, then you don't need to breed competition As I touched on, a great might not see another great and hence, may not see them as any more competition then the next guy (who maybe they could hire 10 of for your price depending how high up you are or where they are looking at outsourcing to). Most real geniuses (who know they are) I have met would be more happy finding a peer to relate to than bother worrying about if they will take their job, since often they are too focused on what they are good at to see the problem. Now a LOT of wanna-bes would be worried that this may be a real genius who would take their job!
That kind of genius will always be found in a garage.
I think I see your point here. Basically a true genius will do what they are good at despite where they are, etc. Although I think there are many we don't see till someone recognizes them as what they are. They aren't all business geniuses or good presenters and many of these would never leave their "garage" without someone "finding them". That said I think there have been geniuses who have been happy to stay in companies so they don't always have to be in a garage. Academia employees some of them I think. Although they may be a bad teacher they live their because their research has merit to the university (which they generally have MUCH more freedom to persue then typical companies allow). And some geniuses get stuck in jobs seemingly unrelated which can spark a creative mind or drive.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not claiming to know anything about the laws about this... but from a logical point of view.
Since the employee isn't the person actually recording the call (rather some other company entity NOT part of the conversation), in that case it would be an outside party recording so they would have to tell you no matter what states were involved.
Well it is logical to consider the options of broadband to homes as well, is it not (maybe a bit down the road)? It would be useful in many places where infrustructure is not in place for example.. even if slower than typical broadband in the end if it's faster than POTS and can be in remote locations I see lots of potential places for it's use... I'd heard they were working on this in Australia.
I wasn't on slashdot back then... so I missed that here, but it makes sense... all my friends and I were sending out e-mails and I don't remember where else we were posting anymore.
Yep... I watched someone do it once. It was a new art place that was there one day and gone the next. The guy swiped the card in a fanny pouch type thing as he was walking to the register. I was with 4 other people and no one else noticed what he did. I had my friend cancel the transaction and went to the car and called the police and had him call his CC company to immediatly cancel it as well. It was a big issue in the city I was in and although all my friends knew about the issue none of them caught it.
Lol... true. Hey does anyone else remember when Geocities changed their member agreement? (this is dating me a bit since it was years ago) There were a ton of complaints and protests, etc from people about what they changed (so they basically owned whatever you put up I think it was phrased). So in that case I guess it proved people DID read the agreement so the figures may be skewed... And like the AC above mentioned, replying to this one might have been like handing your e-mail to a million spammers... people are much less likely nowadays to reply to odd e-mail requests (for prizes even.. sheesh does that sound spamish) than they used to be.
Maybe they are already using it.
Hmm... I see how AI research (ANNs specifically) may be benefiting from access to GRIDs... at the moment a computer can process information MUCH faster (in 2001 it was about 10^-9 nanoseconds) than a human brain (10^-3 milliseconds, about a million times slower) however, a human brain can find many things much faster than a computer... because it's parallel (about 10^11 neurons acting as simple processors).
Are you really getting everything you need from it though? Or maybe too much even?
Quick example, TPN typically included Manganese as it is an essential trace element necessary for good nutrition and contained in unrefined cereals and green leafy vegetables. "...the tiniest amount of manganese typically added to TPN is responsible for the same kind of toxic effects on patients with liver failure as have been seen in miners with prolonged exposure to ore, in whom manganese poisoning was first described."
Also, "In addition to thiamine deficiency in both short- and long-term TPN patients, deficiencies of vitamins A, D, and E have been reported."
Although those total nutrition foods are great for people, it's not a good long-term plan at the moment. We still don't know near enough about how the body matabalizes food even (for example glucose levels vary for individual diabetics on different foods because of how their body digests it. So an apple might throw one person off the charts while only mildly effecting another. It's not a science yet, it's still an art.)
Shocked, I actually looked it up. They did, although ment as a joke to see if they actually read what they were passing bills on. Nope.
I guess there are a few problems with the current IV food and delivery. High blood sugar levels,lose of appetite, disruption of the liver, and a major risk of infection (since it's inserted to a central line germs could be carried strait to the heart). Also, it's hard to get the mix right (and there are some trace elements that we are still learning how important they are).
Besides many people would miss the taste of food.
Thirst seems like the most logical one that we could deal with more quickly. The biggest issue would be having some way of testing how much liquid you needed in your system. Many of the implanted testing for say diabetics have had issues with the body growing around the testing device making it less useful and quickly useless, if it were done in say the blood streem.
Lets say this was used, how would they know if the person was near the person with the restraint? They may be able to keep them away from their house or place of work, but say they know the person is often at other locations and goes to those places instead. So you are now releasing people to potentially cause more problems than if they were in prison or house arrest? If nothing else it may be a false sense of security? To get this to work in more situations, I suppose you would need to have a monitor on both people. At that point you are putting criminals and citizens (maybe with their permission) on tracking systems... which sounds more big-brother worrysome to more people.
Also, what if someone other than the government gets access to where the person is? This would potentially be a target for a crime group (ie rival gang or something), or other types of discrimination (directly or indirectly... maybe tracking people who talk to people tagged?).
lol. I knew I was asking for it. :) Your right each other would make more sense.
I considered asking someone to read it over for silly mistakes since I was harassing grammer nuts, but decided it would take too much time out of someones life to go through the trouble.
Wow... how do you get anything done? ;)
You have a good point about it being more streamlined... however, I suspect that since e-mail is easier to send than a memo, fax, etc, etc, there would be more e-mails than the other mediums in the past. Also, more of them seem to be written with less thought put in. You always hear stories about people wishing they hadn't sent that e-mail or how the number errors in e-mails vs memos, etc are so much greater. If there are indead more errors in e-mails, does a poorly written e-mail with various errors take longer to read? (On Slashdot at least, I think that is definitely the case with poor spelling/grammar in posts, since you then must skim past 2 pages of spelling/grammar fanatics arguing with themselves!)
My brother had a combo of extreem dyslexia and hearing loss which caused a lot of problems in school for him. I was lucky enough to have a teacher who took a special interest in him and learned new teaching techniques in order to help him. He is now in university which is honestly something no one expected when he could not read at all for so long. For him RC car magazines were great, it was something he loved and they offered pictures and diagrams which he could understand even when too frustrated with the text, and encuraged him to keep trying. Technology wise, he swares by dragon dictate now and honestly couldn't get by without it. It gave him a way to write when otherwise his writting made no sense. He has also started using the text-to-speech which comes with windows in order to have dificult text read to him on the computer and with the OCR software that comes with (xp? or the new office? I forget what it came built into....) he is talking about scanning in textbooks to be read to him as well... tedious task, but at least he has more options avalible now to him than he did.
First I want to comment how articulate your point was made. :) I guess I jumped to general MMORPGs when families were mentioned since I've only previously thought of that structure fitting easily into those types, rather than the stats based ones or FPS. On a quick read of the articles I missed the part that said implied only in combat settings.
True, there are not a lot of variation to the stat-based combat strategies... maybe inputs are part of the issue (FPS as you mentioned aren't as popular accross the board)? I'm a bit disapointed that the areas of computer and information input hasn't really changed much since computers became popular (heck even the keyboard layout is designed to be restrictive because of old typewritters). You had joysticks (which from what I can tell have lost momentum), mice, and keyboards. The mediums for input are too limited to allow the area to grow easily I think, and alternatives are very costly for only game use. I suppose the systems which allow motion tracking may change this in the future? (or can you picture someone trying to make a DDR combat MMO? Stomp them to death? lol) Maybe voice recognition could be an additional input type to mix it that is currently avalible??? if you can come up with a good way to do it....
Another thought that I've seen but maybe not applied in a creative enough way might be the idea of engery (beyond strength or HPs)... if you have to strategicly decide when to use an attack (because of energy expended) vs when to use another attack... This idea was sorta touched on in some MUDs.... and I don't know where/if outside of them but might allow for more skilled strategy... Also timming of attacks and if the other is hit or not is all so dice roll... if there were an option to change timming at each hit (ie, automatic hit every second, option to hit sooner depending on a click, however spending more energy?) it might allow for more chance to hit or not (smarter fighting interface and a pain to code... but sounds like a fun programming idea). You'd have to make everything smarter though which would suck a lot more bandwidth and computer processing power I guess (another limitation). Has this been done? Not something I've really checked into...
And as far as KillerBetties.com comment "Smedley means twitch combat, is this really skill-based? Sure, it's a skill with controls, but how is mastering controls truly a skill? I'd love to see someone reinvent the meaning of skill-based." I think URU actually could claim to get away from this twitch skill placed model to a degree. Puzzles were more important and then communities based on creating art, fan fiction and poetry, mapping, and history were created which each used other more real-life skill bases. I for example actually know about GIS map systems BECAUSE of the URU fan community who were creating a semi-one for keeping game maps and historic information in. Also There.com is skill-based in other ways as well. Because users can create objects, good artists can sell items and make money in the game. Good marketers can run successful events and sell other's items. Good traders can buy items when listed low and wait till they are high playing sort of stock market game with real money. There are in game 'skills' for things like driving vehicles, etc however honestly the majority of people don't focus on them so much as really just hanging with other users or other 'skills'.
Besides it was a major virus/etc security risk to people using it really... check out the last paragraph here.
I tried the get up and move to see if that helped me get a job (I didn't have luck finding my first out of college job, where I was)... although I'm getting a lot more interviews here, no offers yet.
are there suggestions to deal with the mousing problem?
if I'm understanding whats being talked about... PDAs have knobs like you are describing and to keep you from hitting it in your pocket it has a lock (sliding switch).
Maybe you don't notice them. A good copy is dificult to notice. With say golf clubs, using a lesser material is how they save the money (and how they were able to tell the difference) with CDs you don't need to use lesser CDs, paper, printing, etc the cost isn't in the item rather the information; which is as everyone probably realizes easy enough for even grandma to copy. Have you caught all the talk about fake flea medicines for pets and how even ones from your vet aren't trustworthy lately? Or the killer fake botox in florida?
Those pirates aren't selling only to people in their own country... they are being imported in various ways and being sold in the US and all over the world. Check out the article done by 60 minutes for more info about it.
...give breathing space for competitors to come up with similar products BEFORE we do.
That's a good point which had me thinking about other similar models which have been done like this.
Other Sample Models/Studies
SWOT analysis can be used for internal projects and whole companies. It doesn't provide a final number like this study but it would at least require someone to think about the project from and may help align the sales and development teams. It's a rather simple model and has been developed further by many others but it was sort of like the grandfather to this type of qualitative thought.
Porter's Five Forces model again although primarily considered for whole companies or departments could be applied to projects and was created in 1980. Threat of New Entrants could be threats of external companies instead doing the job before you do, or other internal departments/teams doing the project, etc. Power of Suppliers may be other departments or other projects which may change requirements or require extensive red tape slowing the project down. Etc., Etc., Etc.
Six Sigma used for project time estimation (which looks like it could be useful for determining if a project is on track and if not if it will then create other problems?
A study on Identifying Best Practices in Information Technology Project Management.
Ya we had one of those real robotic turtles I wanted to add a camera to it and drive it with commands around the school in 3rd or 4th grade... I was so disapointed when she told me she couldn't do that. Although I was programming before that even. Thats a good idea though... very hands on and imediate results for what you program. As many know, Lego makes robots now that you can program. Sounds like fun and lots of learning!
Actually that wasn't my first experience with computers. I remember when Dad came how with a "portable" computer (luggable at best). It had Compaq DOS version 1.02 on it. I just turned 5, so my first game was a game were you picked the upper case or lower case letter that matched the one they were showing. In order to run my games I had to learn the basics. In second grade my school started experimenting with teaching programming at an early age which was quickly traded for typing classes. In 3rd-4th grade we were introduced to LOGO. 3rd-5th I spent more time in typeing type classes working on an elementary school paper. In 4th or 5th grade I actually started programming. I saw the book which was called BASIC on the shelf and decided it must be easy if it's called basic and read it practically cover to cover. After copying a few of the sample programs I began changing them and then starting my own. In 6th the started teaching programming in Qbasic and GWbasic at school which I flew through. In 8th grade I sat with a friend and learned Turbo Pascal over the summer and became a regular BBS poster at a few dial-up BBSes I remember when they finally connected their e-mail accounts to the web, that felt like it took forever to me although they were one of the fastest to do it. And the BBS chatrooms were a regular spot and I still remember saying happy new year to everyone on the BBS when it turned 1992. By the end of 8th grade I was running my own BBS. Also around this time I had found access to the internet through a friend of a friend whos advisor had given him access to an internet account through the school. In 9th grade, I was teaching an advanced turbo pascal class at school and began programming for a MOO. In 10th grade (1993) I was helping programming a VR-MUD world which could be added to a BBS. In 11th grade I was in a university program and had access to the internet which luckily was the same year Netscape came out and I finally saw the WWW with pictures when the systems were upgraded to allow PPP access at the end of that year! I'm up to about 20 programming languages now and the funniest thing about this whole history was that I didn't realize I was constantly on the front-line of technology until looking back just now to compare dates. That was simply when I first learned about something and became interested.
You make some interesting points. For examples, companies that try to 'encourage creativity' are indeed often bit back at for it. Xerox is a great example I can think of, where they encuraged creativity and leadership, which encuraged their employees to split from them to start many great companies because ultimatly they didn't follow through on ideas and products their geniuses were finding/creating (forcing them out to the garages so to speak).
It's Eugenics fallacy: Who are you to judge what a superman is unless you are one yourself? And if you were one, then you don't need to breed competition.
I feel this is a half truth. I'll half agree with you on that, maybe superman wouldn't be able to see another superman since to him he would "normal". However, maybe to really recognize a person's potential, maybe you need someone who excels at telling who a real one is. So if your hireing people aren't super at what they do maybe they won't see it. An example I can see here is a really good scout for any sport. They are individuals who are great at seeing who is the next big thing. And that brings me to the second 1/2... And if you were one, then you don't need to breed competition As I touched on, a great might not see another great and hence, may not see them as any more competition then the next guy (who maybe they could hire 10 of for your price depending how high up you are or where they are looking at outsourcing to). Most real geniuses (who know they are) I have met would be more happy finding a peer to relate to than bother worrying about if they will take their job, since often they are too focused on what they are good at to see the problem. Now a LOT of wanna-bes would be worried that this may be a real genius who would take their job!
That kind of genius will always be found in a garage.
I think I see your point here. Basically a true genius will do what they are good at despite where they are, etc. Although I think there are many we don't see till someone recognizes them as what they are. They aren't all business geniuses or good presenters and many of these would never leave their "garage" without someone "finding them". That said I think there have been geniuses who have been happy to stay in companies so they don't always have to be in a garage. Academia employees some of them I think. Although they may be a bad teacher they live their because their research has merit to the university (which they generally have MUCH more freedom to persue then typical companies allow). And some geniuses get stuck in jobs seemingly unrelated which can spark a creative mind or drive.