Exactly, if someone will pay $10k for a watch, and I know a lot of people with Rolex's, then why not an Apple watch? I'm sure Rolex is top-notch, but when you pay more than $100 for a watch you're paying for something beyond anything relating to keeping time. I hear all these crazy numbers about accuracy, but there is no practical value for that, you're really just buying a status symbol. So while the Apple watch does in fact do more than keep time, it's more or less irrelevant as you're paying for a label and a look anyway. Also, clearly you have a large amount of disposable income.
Finally, and this should be obvious to slashdot, helping rich people part with their money is generally good for 99% of all other people. If anything, we should be trying to identify and sell MORE overpriced needful things.
I guess I don't see how you can classify suicidal ideation as necessarily a symptom of a problem. It falls into roughly three categories for me: a) people who want to commit suicide because they're dying a slow, painful death and/or their quality of life is low; b) people who want to commit suicide because, after analyzing the situation and their needs for happiness, do not feel they can find happiness in a reasonable time frame; c) people who want to commit suicide because of some mental/chemical imbalance that could be repaired, and if repaired would give them a happy life.
Category "C" is the one which we'd like to jump in front of people and stop them, and give therapy a chance. In terms of category "a" and "b", I'd say we should facilitate it, offer a quick, painless way to go. The only trick is before we offer them the way out, we try o detect "c", and ensure that plans are in place to deal with financial & familial upheaval.
People look at suicide as a bad thing, I think primarily due to religious or traditional concerns, but I think that's a cruel mistake.
There is absolutely never an excuse for saying someone wants more than they are worth, you are always wrong, 100% of the time. From janitor, to the CEO with the $500k/yr package and unspecified parachute, if you are in a position where you need to work for a salary, you are almost assuredly selling your skills for far below what you should be making.
The sooner we all just accept this fait accompli, the better our collective lives will be. This also includes standing behind the guy who makes way more than you do, when he's striking/or otherwise playing hardball for more cash.
Ah yes, I want a piece of crap Asus for $800. Much like there is software so bad I wouldn't pirate it, there is hardware so bad I wouldn't take it for free.
The same people who hate google glass, and any of a dozen other things they've decided aren't cool. This is banning something because its "not cool". Personally I think selfie sticks are incredibly idiotic, but I am happy to think that loudly in my head and ignore people using them, unless they're hitting me with one it really doesn't involve me.
Not only that, we do it on purpose so we get "fired" from the laundry chore in the first place. Of course I'm absolutely positive they do the same when it comes to yard work, so we end up there...
If it's in the washing machine, it's dishes, wash it. If it's in the hamper it's clothes, wash it.
Tons of things can go wrong, especially if you have kids. Then you call in the human to fix it. But 90% of the time it goes right and hopefully it outweighs the down time.
Learning how to "program" for many of us on this website means something entirely different for "programming" to non-technical people. I would wager that most non-technical people want to issue a series of fixed instructions to perform a series of actions and are looking for the big lever. They're not looking to write beautiful, well crafted code, that is efficient, maintainable and extensible.
Learning a language to someone like this very much IS learning to program, to the extent they care. And it's good to know what to recommend such people. Previously I'd say something like "Visual Basic", and flog myself quietly afterwards, but in practice it's the best choice available, although still too involved for the intended application. I definitely would prefer something not microsoft to say so we can finally let that company die the death it so richly deserves.
That said I'm not sure R answers the needs, but I haven't examined it carefully.
Given that I never heard of "Spocking" before these articles, and now that I have heard of it wished I was Canadian and had a ready supply of $5 bills, I wondered if their intent wasn't contrary to the stated purpose.
I will have to settle on "Bill Murray"ing US $5 bills for now.
I assure you, in my line of work not only does HR not want care about your long term viability, it sure as hell doesn't want you taking time off work* to be at the gym. They'll happily juice your husk until it can no longer serve the shareholder and toss it out in the new Environmentally Friendly (TM) Compost Heap. Given the endless legions of unemployed and the opportunity to tap the limitless H1-B market, they're guaranteed to have employees!
*By time off work I mean any point in a 24 hour day.
Blatant extortion. He's not trying to make the world better, he was trying to hold these people hostage for some bucks precisely because of our attitude about sex. If there is a hell, he belongs there.
This is great advice, where were you when they imposed emissions controls on cars!
People were like: "I'm tired of all the dirt in the air" You could have been like: "So don't use air..."...and now we could be swimming through NY's atmosphere!
It's the penny-wise pound-foolish issue when engineers and developers are forced to be mindful of schedules and business objectives. We in essence become as brain damanged as our managers, and start behaving irrationally.
It's well known we have absolutely no capacity to estimate schedule accurately, but we do have the "gut feel". If your gut says that it will take a day to implement functionality, assume it's a week and just do it, it's trivial. If it says 2 weeks, it's actually 2 months plus three squirrel years and a llama month divided by e^-jwt, maybe spend a day or two evaluating options. If it feels like 6 months, try very hard to find something OTS, because this may become the project you're working on when you retire (which in todays parlance means: you die in your swivel chair of old age).
You could of course be entirely wrong. Last week in fact I decided modifying a script to do what I need would take at least a month, had an epiphany in the shower and had it done in 6 hours. Guts have failed even Homer Simpson. But unless someone comes along who has been-there-done-that with a better option, and who demonstrates he' serious by NOT trying to railroad you in a meeting, but in fact just walks by the cube and says "hey, use this", you're usually better off trying it out yourself. At worst you waste some time but learn the problem, and how to best evaluate other solutions that come up.
Don't even need that. I made pong for the TI-82 instead of paying attention in calculus class in high school, my "AI" could not be beat. Because it's really easy to do things when you can precisely calculate vectors and positions... It's actually harder to have something that makes human-like mistakes.
I don't think actual breakout or space invaders would be significantly harder.
This is exactly what I do and it works fine. The gym rats laugh but it hardly matters, what matters is the yearly physical and the readout of numbers. As long as those are good, I'm doing enough.
I agree with this more than OP. Rational, ethical thought should be the cornerstone of any technical minded person. Rational to arrive at the most optimal data driven solution, ethical to ensure that the solution doesn't sound like "Well if we kill all the sick people, disease will be eliminated". Empathy, specifically for geek girls, is dangerous, she's going to face an uphill battle by her peers who are going to be afraid of her, threatened by her, and pressure her to drop to the level where they can compete in whatever way they comprehend it. The only way she'll steer clear is to govern basic human empathy with rationalism and clear thought, and it will still be very hard.
In general, empathy and compassion are dangerous when not heavily moderated by clear thinking and not entirely noble. If I gave all my money to N poor today, there'd be N+1 poor tomorrow. If I gave some of my money to the poor every day, there's be N slightly less poor tomorrow. Wealth is productivity, some of us have greater capacity for productivity than others. Truly helping others is much, much harder than empathy.
The Sony eReader (haven't tried the Nook) and the Kindle non-Fire's are also very easy on the eyes. You can read them in the gym or wherever just as easily as a dead tree, but wipe them clean, they won't absorb sweat.
I can understand not wanting to read on phones/iPads/computer displays sometimes, they can give headaches and in my case mild nausea if I'm in the gym or something like that. I'm very sensitive to this sort of thing, but I think to a degree everyone gets fatigued by computer displays. In addition to being somewhat less distracting, these eReaders are just easier on your eyes...
But I'm not, and eBooks are awesome. I don't have physical space for dead trees in my house, and I can't imagine millenials are doing any better. Let's face it, most stuff we read for pleasure doesn't need to be recalled with anything other than casual clarity. We're not hanging on to carefully wordsmithed literature, we're reading mass market fiction with a good story but relatively low literary value.
Publishers need to return their money to the shareholders so the rest of the world can get on with life.
Doctors are telling us to keep our children away from peanuts, eggs, and various other foods until two years of age. Then we're supposed to introduce them one at a time, with a few weeks between to monitor results & possible outbreaks. Even if no one in the family has any such allergies.
I'm sure it's not just me, almost every friend across the US with kids in our approximate age range have talked about the same things. I wonder if the people who write this stuff are paying attention...
Don't compare salaries for one job against salaries for another job. $87k for an (electrical/computer) engineer is exceptionally low, generally 5 years xp max. I have seen H1B justifier req's out there where they offer that salary to 10-15 year people who make almost twice that, and obviously turn it down.
This is pure FUD, of the "those people make more than me, so fuck them" variety. But H1B continues to be a huge problem and deterrent for people in the country to be in the field, and has the salary lowering effect we expect it would have.
I'm not confident I can worship in this cult of genius. History is full of geniuses who amounted to nothing because they were either too far ahead of their time, or too irrelevant to the needs of mainstream population. The ones that end up mattering are simply in the right place at the right time, and were able to take advantage of desperation.
Turing's machine may not have been built if Hitler weren't about to destroy Britain, or if Enigma was not also exceptionally well crafted. Turing's machine probably wouldn't have been built if a thousand mediocre people could brute force enigma, in fact. If you've ever used a laptop or a smart phone built in China (you have), you're using hte product of a ton of marginalized labor minimally employed, rather than much more sophisticated robotic lines and basically work that very smart people might be doing, if there was money in it.
Mediocrity employed en masse is quite powerful, and frequently frustrates many geniuses.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly, if someone will pay $10k for a watch, and I know a lot of people with Rolex's, then why not an Apple watch? I'm sure Rolex is top-notch, but when you pay more than $100 for a watch you're paying for something beyond anything relating to keeping time. I hear all these crazy numbers about accuracy, but there is no practical value for that, you're really just buying a status symbol. So while the Apple watch does in fact do more than keep time, it's more or less irrelevant as you're paying for a label and a look anyway. Also, clearly you have a large amount of disposable income.
Finally, and this should be obvious to slashdot, helping rich people part with their money is generally good for 99% of all other people. If anything, we should be trying to identify and sell MORE overpriced needful things.
I guess I don't see how you can classify suicidal ideation as necessarily a symptom of a problem. It falls into roughly three categories for me: a) people who want to commit suicide because they're dying a slow, painful death and/or their quality of life is low; b) people who want to commit suicide because, after analyzing the situation and their needs for happiness, do not feel they can find happiness in a reasonable time frame; c) people who want to commit suicide because of some mental/chemical imbalance that could be repaired, and if repaired would give them a happy life.
Category "C" is the one which we'd like to jump in front of people and stop them, and give therapy a chance. In terms of category "a" and "b", I'd say we should facilitate it, offer a quick, painless way to go. The only trick is before we offer them the way out, we try o detect "c", and ensure that plans are in place to deal with financial & familial upheaval.
People look at suicide as a bad thing, I think primarily due to religious or traditional concerns, but I think that's a cruel mistake.
There is absolutely never an excuse for saying someone wants more than they are worth, you are always wrong, 100% of the time. From janitor, to the CEO with the $500k/yr package and unspecified parachute, if you are in a position where you need to work for a salary, you are almost assuredly selling your skills for far below what you should be making.
The sooner we all just accept this fait accompli, the better our collective lives will be. This also includes standing behind the guy who makes way more than you do, when he's striking/or otherwise playing hardball for more cash.
Not only that, wages would be shooting upwards at unsustainable rates. Not seeing that either.
Ah yes, I want a piece of crap Asus for $800. Much like there is software so bad I wouldn't pirate it, there is hardware so bad I wouldn't take it for free.
The same people who hate google glass, and any of a dozen other things they've decided aren't cool. This is banning something because its "not cool". Personally I think selfie sticks are incredibly idiotic, but I am happy to think that loudly in my head and ignore people using them, unless they're hitting me with one it really doesn't involve me.
Not only that, we do it on purpose so we get "fired" from the laundry chore in the first place. Of course I'm absolutely positive they do the same when it comes to yard work, so we end up there...
If it's in the washing machine, it's dishes, wash it.
If it's in the hamper it's clothes, wash it.
Tons of things can go wrong, especially if you have kids. Then you call in the human to fix it. But 90% of the time it goes right and hopefully it outweighs the down time.
Learning how to "program" for many of us on this website means something entirely different for "programming" to non-technical people. I would wager that most non-technical people want to issue a series of fixed instructions to perform a series of actions and are looking for the big lever. They're not looking to write beautiful, well crafted code, that is efficient, maintainable and extensible.
Learning a language to someone like this very much IS learning to program, to the extent they care. And it's good to know what to recommend such people. Previously I'd say something like "Visual Basic", and flog myself quietly afterwards, but in practice it's the best choice available, although still too involved for the intended application. I definitely would prefer something not microsoft to say so we can finally let that company die the death it so richly deserves.
That said I'm not sure R answers the needs, but I haven't examined it carefully.
Analyzing the local Walmart is probably going to demonstrate an example of selection bias.
Given that I never heard of "Spocking" before these articles, and now that I have heard of it wished I was Canadian and had a ready supply of $5 bills, I wondered if their intent wasn't contrary to the stated purpose.
I will have to settle on "Bill Murray"ing US $5 bills for now.
I assure you, in my line of work not only does HR not want care about your long term viability, it sure as hell doesn't want you taking time off work* to be at the gym. They'll happily juice your husk until it can no longer serve the shareholder and toss it out in the new Environmentally Friendly (TM) Compost Heap. Given the endless legions of unemployed and the opportunity to tap the limitless H1-B market, they're guaranteed to have employees!
*By time off work I mean any point in a 24 hour day.
The "We Look For Things To Make Us Stop" Act
Blatant extortion. He's not trying to make the world better, he was trying to hold these people hostage for some bucks precisely because of our attitude about sex. If there is a hell, he belongs there.
This is great advice, where were you when they imposed emissions controls on cars!
People were like: "I'm tired of all the dirt in the air" ...and now we could be swimming through NY's atmosphere!
You could have been like: "So don't use air..."
To be fair, they do that anyway.
It's the penny-wise pound-foolish issue when engineers and developers are forced to be mindful of schedules and business objectives. We in essence become as brain damanged as our managers, and start behaving irrationally.
It's well known we have absolutely no capacity to estimate schedule accurately, but we do have the "gut feel". If your gut says that it will take a day to implement functionality, assume it's a week and just do it, it's trivial. If it says 2 weeks, it's actually 2 months plus three squirrel years and a llama month divided by e^-jwt, maybe spend a day or two evaluating options. If it feels like 6 months, try very hard to find something OTS, because this may become the project you're working on when you retire (which in todays parlance means: you die in your swivel chair of old age).
You could of course be entirely wrong. Last week in fact I decided modifying a script to do what I need would take at least a month, had an epiphany in the shower and had it done in 6 hours. Guts have failed even Homer Simpson. But unless someone comes along who has been-there-done-that with a better option, and who demonstrates he' serious by NOT trying to railroad you in a meeting, but in fact just walks by the cube and says "hey, use this", you're usually better off trying it out yourself. At worst you waste some time but learn the problem, and how to best evaluate other solutions that come up.
Don't even need that. I made pong for the TI-82 instead of paying attention in calculus class in high school, my "AI" could not be beat. Because it's really easy to do things when you can precisely calculate vectors and positions... It's actually harder to have something that makes human-like mistakes.
I don't think actual breakout or space invaders would be significantly harder.
This is exactly what I do and it works fine. The gym rats laugh but it hardly matters, what matters is the yearly physical and the readout of numbers. As long as those are good, I'm doing enough.
I agree with this more than OP. Rational, ethical thought should be the cornerstone of any technical minded person. Rational to arrive at the most optimal data driven solution, ethical to ensure that the solution doesn't sound like "Well if we kill all the sick people, disease will be eliminated". Empathy, specifically for geek girls, is dangerous, she's going to face an uphill battle by her peers who are going to be afraid of her, threatened by her, and pressure her to drop to the level where they can compete in whatever way they comprehend it. The only way she'll steer clear is to govern basic human empathy with rationalism and clear thought, and it will still be very hard.
In general, empathy and compassion are dangerous when not heavily moderated by clear thinking and not entirely noble. If I gave all my money to N poor today, there'd be N+1 poor tomorrow. If I gave some of my money to the poor every day, there's be N slightly less poor tomorrow. Wealth is productivity, some of us have greater capacity for productivity than others. Truly helping others is much, much harder than empathy.
The Sony eReader (haven't tried the Nook) and the Kindle non-Fire's are also very easy on the eyes. You can read them in the gym or wherever just as easily as a dead tree, but wipe them clean, they won't absorb sweat.
I can understand not wanting to read on phones/iPads/computer displays sometimes, they can give headaches and in my case mild nausea if I'm in the gym or something like that. I'm very sensitive to this sort of thing, but I think to a degree everyone gets fatigued by computer displays. In addition to being somewhat less distracting, these eReaders are just easier on your eyes...
But I'm not, and eBooks are awesome. I don't have physical space for dead trees in my house, and I can't imagine millenials are doing any better. Let's face it, most stuff we read for pleasure doesn't need to be recalled with anything other than casual clarity. We're not hanging on to carefully wordsmithed literature, we're reading mass market fiction with a good story but relatively low literary value.
Publishers need to return their money to the shareholders so the rest of the world can get on with life.
Doctors are telling us to keep our children away from peanuts, eggs, and various other foods until two years of age. Then we're supposed to introduce them one at a time, with a few weeks between to monitor results & possible outbreaks. Even if no one in the family has any such allergies.
I'm sure it's not just me, almost every friend across the US with kids in our approximate age range have talked about the same things. I wonder if the people who write this stuff are paying attention...
Don't compare salaries for one job against salaries for another job. $87k for an (electrical/computer) engineer is exceptionally low, generally 5 years xp max. I have seen H1B justifier req's out there where they offer that salary to 10-15 year people who make almost twice that, and obviously turn it down.
This is pure FUD, of the "those people make more than me, so fuck them" variety. But H1B continues to be a huge problem and deterrent for people in the country to be in the field, and has the salary lowering effect we expect it would have.
I'm not confident I can worship in this cult of genius. History is full of geniuses who amounted to nothing because they were either too far ahead of their time, or too irrelevant to the needs of mainstream population. The ones that end up mattering are simply in the right place at the right time, and were able to take advantage of desperation.
Turing's machine may not have been built if Hitler weren't about to destroy Britain, or if Enigma was not also exceptionally well crafted. Turing's machine probably wouldn't have been built if a thousand mediocre people could brute force enigma, in fact. If you've ever used a laptop or a smart phone built in China (you have), you're using hte product of a ton of marginalized labor minimally employed, rather than much more sophisticated robotic lines and basically work that very smart people might be doing, if there was money in it.
Mediocrity employed en masse is quite powerful, and frequently frustrates many geniuses.