Teleconferencing simply isn't as effective as in-person meeting. Happenstance meetings in hallways tend to accomplish a lot more than structured periodic gatherings. The ability to lean over and chat with a coworker about a problem is superior to using email or your phone.
And then there's people like me, who simply need a distinct work environment to be mentally in 'work mode'. I can (and have) worked from home, but unless I have something fascinating to focus on, I tend to be less productive outside the office.
All of this is human nature, and it's unlikely to change.
I wasn't talking about it being a more successful action for Twitter, but for the presumably disgruntled employee's attempt at symbolically damaging Trump.
And I assume if you're a disgruntled employee, actually destroying the company on your way out counts as a win, too.
Nicolae Ceausescu had double-digit approval ratings when he was executed (And oddly enough, today about half the rural population and a third of the urban population of Romania would vote for him if he weren't busy being dead).
The leader always has some support, if only because there are selfish and immoral people prospering under the regime.
It would have been much more effective if they'd banned the account for violating TOS rather than deleting it.
It would have been a bit more embarrassing for Twitter to handle, and I'm guessing the reason it took only 11 minutes to notice was some notification system that was triggered when a billion hits went to the same dead link. Maybe if the site had been serving up a banned user message, it would have taken longer to notice.
My local university apparently has a lot of prostitutes, but that's mainly an option for reasonably attractive straight girls and gay men... or those willing to fake it, I suppose.
As a straight male, I did manual labour from age 16 to save up for university. Maybe crime would have been a better option, but unfortunately I was raised with ethics and morals.
Crime is OK if you use the proceeds for education. This seems like a bad precedent to set, especially with computer crime. It's not like we don't already have bunches of script kiddies imagining they're fighting a just cause while committing computer crimes.
So many talented but ethically-challenged kids out there can look at this and say, "Well, if I don't get caught I'm rich and if I do I get probation. Yay, free tuition!"
Actually, I believe current thought is that pyramids weren't built by slave labour, and Egypt had the wealth to afford it when they didn't need their farmers in the fields.
I mean, yeah, I'm sure a lot of people died because workplace safety standards weren't really a thing then, but I don't think it was due to throwing away the lives of whip-driven slaves.
> in countries where there is endemic corruption the blockchain criteria are met.
Except you either restrict who can authenticate transactions or you run the risk of someone dumping a bunch of nodes on the network and taking control. And confirmed transaction or not, you're still depending on honest data entry.
They've shown mathematical proof that one particular concept for defeating the symptoms of aging won't work.
Obviously, no matter what you do eventually entropy wins... but there's no law of physics of which I'm aware that shows you can't re-engineer biology from scratch to make it much more entropy-resistant.
It's just really, really, really difficult. However, we already have examples of organisms that are highly cancer resistant, and others that live extremely long lives compared to ours, so we know even without a fundamental re-engineering there's a lot of room for improvement just copying what already exists in nature.
>Seriously, arguing against global warning or trying to debunk it really is in the same league as flat earth theory or the idea that the earth is at the center of the solar system.
Some of the deniers have evolved their position to specifically deny anthropogenic climate change, asserting that it's solar cycles or some other periodic effect.
At it's heart, it is an argument against responsibility and action, not the fact of climate change itself.
They haven't quite caught on to the idea yet that even if we're not changing the climate, we might want to fight any natural long term change that will harm us. It'll be interesting to see the next evolution of the denier camp's position.
My experience over the last 40 years would seem to support a warming trend - but that doesn't matter as there could be a perfectly logical explanation for a local trend that has nothing to do with global climate change. Or my recollection could be faulty for a variety of reasons.
Give me a generally accepted climate model interpreted by an expert and confirmed against known records, with a reasonable explanation of where the model is weak and its anticipated predictive accuracy... that's worth far more in planning for the future than my memories of weather past.
I would love to see futuristic affordable super-fast transport become a thing in my lifetime. However, I strongly suspect the whole hyperloop fad will burn out due to economic infeasibility, and a few places will get badly burned when their initial investments into implementing this ultimately go nowhere.
It would be interesting to build an induction road for electric vehicles, to have the descending vehicles boost the power of the ascending ones.
Upbound traffic could draw power from the road to reduce battery drain, while downward traffic could dump power into the road from regenerative breaking keeping them below the speed limit. And throw in a couple of commercial battery installations to keep things steadier.
In essence, average out the power requirements (less losses in the road and vehicle systems).
>Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.
You need to put down your manifesto, because you're frothing at the mouth as badly as the 'capitalism is not just the best solution, it is the only solution' crowd.
Capitalism has delivered incredible economic growth and technological advancement to the human race, as it is the only large scale economic system we've developed so far that rewards individual effort.
Having said that, it has no inherent controls against parasitic actors abusing the system to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of the population. That is where a democratic government implementing regulations comes in, and the success of that government and its regulations will determine how well society as a whole benefits from being fundamentally capitalist.
VR should definitely go away until we can produce a direct neural interface (I don't see solid holograms and force fields ever being a thing, so no holodecks for us).
On the other hand, I'm quite enthusiastic about AR. I already wear glasses anyway, and would not mind a computer generated overlay for reality.
I'd love to see OOTS animated, in more or less the same style as the webcomic is drawn. Great story, great humour, and absolutely no need to get at all fancy with the art.
Erfworld, not so much. It would need some 'higher end' animation, and I don't think the plot would work so well with a mixed audience. It'd go more to the niche of RPG min-maxers, because the story is mostly about figuring out the mechanics of an RPG world and optimizing for them. That's not a huge audience without a lot of more general humour to pad things out.
But I hope they get a say in the plot but NOT the storyboarding.
The comic is engaging enough that I hate the irregular updates because I'm always waiting in anticipation of the next one, but some of the artwork completely fails to communicate what's happening.
It's funny you mention that, because as much as I think subdividing a modern nation is a far worse idea than trying to fix its internal divisions... I'm starting to think that maybe the US states would be happier if they were organized into two or three different entities instead of all under the same federal government. There's about 30% of the nation that can't reconcile its politics with the other 70%.
>the minority get out voted and have to suck it up or leave.
People really don't like becoming Displaced Persons. Ultimately this comes down to how willing people are to use force.
>that requires a willingness to negotiate in good faith.
Usually they believe they are, but ALSO usually both sides have issues on which they are inflexible, and they're seldom issues the other side is willing to make concessions on.
>This is something that all modern countries are going to have to come to grips with.
As the city-state died, we're seeing the nation-state dying in favour of larger political entities. If the Information Age lasts and global trade persists, I think eventually we'll all have cultures and legal systems that are fundamentally compatible. Maybe even a world government, but I don't really think that's necessary as long as everyone's agreed on basic common standards that are enforced locally.
Deliberately trying to go backwards is a good way to end up in a backwater, and in my opinion it's desired by people who want to rigidly enforce their arbitrary cultural standards on everyone else. They're seeking cultural purity (and sometimes racial or religious purity) and local superiority at the expense of others, instead of embracing the idea that everyone on this planet is a human being and should be given equal rights to be who they want to be within the limits required to maintain a stable society.
We kind of have some experience with this in Canada... the problem will be the separatists who want full autonomy (fine) will not care if they drag non-separatists with them (not fine), and likely won't even respect the concept of parts of their region separating from them to stay with Spain (also not fine).
Spain kind of has a responsibility to the citizens of the region who DON'T want to go (even if there's only one of them, because they don't have a lot of responsibility for those who are at least technically traitors due to acts of sedition).
And if you magically get all that sorted out, there's still the endless bickering over how to divide up Spain - borders, debt share, citizenship rights, trade agreements, government pensions... every single item on the list (including bajillions of items I've likely overlooked) has the potential to bring the two sides to civil war.
>This would be a good thing to sell policies for, though
Why not? There's Rapture insurance to pay for sinners to care for your pets after God brings you home in the End of Times. (AfterTheRapturePetCare.com). I would hope that most of their sales are 'for the lulz' and a silly certificate, but I'd not be surprised to find they have sincere customers as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Teleconferencing simply isn't as effective as in-person meeting. Happenstance meetings in hallways tend to accomplish a lot more than structured periodic gatherings. The ability to lean over and chat with a coworker about a problem is superior to using email or your phone.
And then there's people like me, who simply need a distinct work environment to be mentally in 'work mode'. I can (and have) worked from home, but unless I have something fascinating to focus on, I tend to be less productive outside the office.
All of this is human nature, and it's unlikely to change.
I wasn't talking about it being a more successful action for Twitter, but for the presumably disgruntled employee's attempt at symbolically damaging Trump.
And I assume if you're a disgruntled employee, actually destroying the company on your way out counts as a win, too.
>It would be tough for it to drop.
Nicolae Ceausescu had double-digit approval ratings when he was executed (And oddly enough, today about half the rural population and a third of the urban population of Romania would vote for him if he weren't busy being dead).
The leader always has some support, if only because there are selfish and immoral people prospering under the regime.
It would have been much more effective if they'd banned the account for violating TOS rather than deleting it.
It would have been a bit more embarrassing for Twitter to handle, and I'm guessing the reason it took only 11 minutes to notice was some notification system that was triggered when a billion hits went to the same dead link. Maybe if the site had been serving up a banned user message, it would have taken longer to notice.
My local university apparently has a lot of prostitutes, but that's mainly an option for reasonably attractive straight girls and gay men... or those willing to fake it, I suppose.
As a straight male, I did manual labour from age 16 to save up for university. Maybe crime would have been a better option, but unfortunately I was raised with ethics and morals.
Crime is OK if you use the proceeds for education. This seems like a bad precedent to set, especially with computer crime. It's not like we don't already have bunches of script kiddies imagining they're fighting a just cause while committing computer crimes.
So many talented but ethically-challenged kids out there can look at this and say, "Well, if I don't get caught I'm rich and if I do I get probation. Yay, free tuition!"
That's actually not so bad, because you simply plant more trees and the problem takes care of itself.
It's long term carbon release of previously sequestered carbon that's the issue.
Actually, I believe current thought is that pyramids weren't built by slave labour, and Egypt had the wealth to afford it when they didn't need their farmers in the fields.
I mean, yeah, I'm sure a lot of people died because workplace safety standards weren't really a thing then, but I don't think it was due to throwing away the lives of whip-driven slaves.
> in countries where there is endemic corruption the blockchain criteria are met.
Except you either restrict who can authenticate transactions or you run the risk of someone dumping a bunch of nodes on the network and taking control. And confirmed transaction or not, you're still depending on honest data entry.
Corruption is always possible.
They've shown mathematical proof that one particular concept for defeating the symptoms of aging won't work.
Obviously, no matter what you do eventually entropy wins... but there's no law of physics of which I'm aware that shows you can't re-engineer biology from scratch to make it much more entropy-resistant.
It's just really, really, really difficult. However, we already have examples of organisms that are highly cancer resistant, and others that live extremely long lives compared to ours, so we know even without a fundamental re-engineering there's a lot of room for improvement just copying what already exists in nature.
To the best of my knowledge, it was a space freighter that had been sabotaged by cyborgs.
Clearing the way for human evolution was merely a pleasant but unexpected consequence.
>Seriously, arguing against global warning or trying to debunk it really is in the same league as flat earth theory or the idea that the earth is at the center of the solar system.
Some of the deniers have evolved their position to specifically deny anthropogenic climate change, asserting that it's solar cycles or some other periodic effect.
At it's heart, it is an argument against responsibility and action, not the fact of climate change itself.
They haven't quite caught on to the idea yet that even if we're not changing the climate, we might want to fight any natural long term change that will harm us. It'll be interesting to see the next evolution of the denier camp's position.
My experience over the last 40 years would seem to support a warming trend - but that doesn't matter as there could be a perfectly logical explanation for a local trend that has nothing to do with global climate change. Or my recollection could be faulty for a variety of reasons.
Give me a generally accepted climate model interpreted by an expert and confirmed against known records, with a reasonable explanation of where the model is weak and its anticipated predictive accuracy... that's worth far more in planning for the future than my memories of weather past.
Monorail... monorail... monorail!
I would love to see futuristic affordable super-fast transport become a thing in my lifetime. However, I strongly suspect the whole hyperloop fad will burn out due to economic infeasibility, and a few places will get badly burned when their initial investments into implementing this ultimately go nowhere.
It would be interesting to build an induction road for electric vehicles, to have the descending vehicles boost the power of the ascending ones.
Upbound traffic could draw power from the road to reduce battery drain, while downward traffic could dump power into the road from regenerative breaking keeping them below the speed limit. And throw in a couple of commercial battery installations to keep things steadier.
In essence, average out the power requirements (less losses in the road and vehicle systems).
>Psychopathic capitalism will deliver us nothing but extinction.
You need to put down your manifesto, because you're frothing at the mouth as badly as the 'capitalism is not just the best solution, it is the only solution' crowd.
Capitalism has delivered incredible economic growth and technological advancement to the human race, as it is the only large scale economic system we've developed so far that rewards individual effort.
Having said that, it has no inherent controls against parasitic actors abusing the system to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of the population. That is where a democratic government implementing regulations comes in, and the success of that government and its regulations will determine how well society as a whole benefits from being fundamentally capitalist.
>They know this guy is crazy right? I mean, hey, tortured artists are a thing, but he had a breakdown.
Buy the rights to animate it (including the rights to ongoing use of the content of the webcomic), leave him the rights to the webcomic format.
The artist gets a payday, but isn't a risk to the animated product.
>And it's not just D&D tropes, it's subverting those tropes.
I think the world can handle 'silly prey creatures decide to stand up for themselves and become heroes'.
If HarmonQuest can get an audience and two seasons, I'm pretty sure Goblins is good for a couple itself.
>AI is the next VR.
VR should definitely go away until we can produce a direct neural interface (I don't see solid holograms and force fields ever being a thing, so no holodecks for us).
On the other hand, I'm quite enthusiastic about AR. I already wear glasses anyway, and would not mind a computer generated overlay for reality.
Probably. Also, you just destroyed several hours of my evening...
I'd love to see OOTS animated, in more or less the same style as the webcomic is drawn. Great story, great humour, and absolutely no need to get at all fancy with the art.
Erfworld, not so much. It would need some 'higher end' animation, and I don't think the plot would work so well with a mixed audience. It'd go more to the niche of RPG min-maxers, because the story is mostly about figuring out the mechanics of an RPG world and optimizing for them. That's not a huge audience without a lot of more general humour to pad things out.
But I hope they get a say in the plot but NOT the storyboarding.
The comic is engaging enough that I hate the irregular updates because I'm always waiting in anticipation of the next one, but some of the artwork completely fails to communicate what's happening.
It's funny you mention that, because as much as I think subdividing a modern nation is a far worse idea than trying to fix its internal divisions... I'm starting to think that maybe the US states would be happier if they were organized into two or three different entities instead of all under the same federal government. There's about 30% of the nation that can't reconcile its politics with the other 70%.
>the minority get out voted and have to suck it up or leave.
People really don't like becoming Displaced Persons. Ultimately this comes down to how willing people are to use force.
>that requires a willingness to negotiate in good faith.
Usually they believe they are, but ALSO usually both sides have issues on which they are inflexible, and they're seldom issues the other side is willing to make concessions on.
>This is something that all modern countries are going to have to come to grips with.
As the city-state died, we're seeing the nation-state dying in favour of larger political entities. If the Information Age lasts and global trade persists, I think eventually we'll all have cultures and legal systems that are fundamentally compatible. Maybe even a world government, but I don't really think that's necessary as long as everyone's agreed on basic common standards that are enforced locally.
Deliberately trying to go backwards is a good way to end up in a backwater, and in my opinion it's desired by people who want to rigidly enforce their arbitrary cultural standards on everyone else. They're seeking cultural purity (and sometimes racial or religious purity) and local superiority at the expense of others, instead of embracing the idea that everyone on this planet is a human being and should be given equal rights to be who they want to be within the limits required to maintain a stable society.
We kind of have some experience with this in Canada... the problem will be the separatists who want full autonomy (fine) will not care if they drag non-separatists with them (not fine), and likely won't even respect the concept of parts of their region separating from them to stay with Spain (also not fine).
Spain kind of has a responsibility to the citizens of the region who DON'T want to go (even if there's only one of them, because they don't have a lot of responsibility for those who are at least technically traitors due to acts of sedition).
And if you magically get all that sorted out, there's still the endless bickering over how to divide up Spain - borders, debt share, citizenship rights, trade agreements, government pensions... every single item on the list (including bajillions of items I've likely overlooked) has the potential to bring the two sides to civil war.
>This would be a good thing to sell policies for, though
Why not? There's Rapture insurance to pay for sinners to care for your pets after God brings you home in the End of Times. (AfterTheRapturePetCare.com). I would hope that most of their sales are 'for the lulz' and a silly certificate, but I'd not be surprised to find they have sincere customers as well.