It won't work unless it is bundled with a smell nullifier (i.e. high-powered filter) - smell molecules have a longer lifespan than the light from monitors, so you would get background noise in no time. (Think of it as an LCD screen with a responsiveness of 10-20 minutes).
This is also necessary because there is whole lot of background noise in a typical situation. I have a really good sense of smell, and right now I can smell the wood of my desk, my leather chair, the plastics from my new router, the paint from where my office was painted three weeks ago, the wrapper from some food I ate a few hours ago, plus any associated human smells and sundry other small smells. I'd guess that this is common, although background for people with less of a sense of smell. You'd have to eliminate it in order to get an effect from any scents introduced.
Yup - you should have added that the user should look up "smart antenna". There are already standards to use this in the government, and the cellular and EMT services have looked at it too.
Needless to say, I have worked with this. It is much cooler than just for cellphones
I have yet to see any animosity towards open source in the military. They like open source because you don't have to wait 6+ months to get the purchase completed for proprietary stuff, and you don't have to worry about license problems when dealing with vendors ( the licenses can become a hostage towards keeping the contract ).
Re:If they have skills, they'll find jobs in NoVA
on
Massive Layoffs At AOL
·
· Score: 1
Hopefully they kept their jobs long enough to refinance their mortgage - otherwise they'll be homeless pretty quickly - this is an expensive place to live. Unemployment will barely cover a typical mortgage or rent. I'm also not sure if they can get a loan secured on their house right now if they are already "laid-off".
Actually, point 5 happens all of the time - at least since I started voting. Interestingly enough - I have had "ballots dissappear" both when Republican and Democrat.
As for Fraud - no, criminals are rarely caught. But this has been happening all of the time. Before this scrutiny of elections, dead people were known to have a very good voting record. In Philadelphia it barely mattered, because the cemetery vote was firmly divided between Republican and Democrat (ah, but if you were third party, well...)
I've already had problems getting email from my government coworkers with spam validators like this. The military really doesn't like broadcasting who their email servers are... So they regularly get sent to Junk Mail.
Anything that gets too large loses site of it's primary goals and becomes it's own environment. Big companies tend to have internal groups that have no connection to the bigger concept of profit, but instead act as if the amount of money the company gets is guaranteed, and the only problem is how big their budget is relative to that "evil department over there". Heck, one defense company I worked for routinely attacked itself and tried to outbid itself one contracts.
The same thing happens in government. Once an organization gets too big, it forgets its initial purpose and starts becoming an internal ecosystem, predators, prey, etc... Look at the infighting revealed between the branches of the FBI in the 911 reports...
Men are used as sex objects too... My wife has dreams of Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing... and then there was the movie Troy, where the only decent eye-candy was the men... C'mon, look at the gratuitious nude Brad Pitt scene... You tell me that wasn't the equivalent of a boob shot...
My wife actually liked Tomb Raider, and the large boobs on Angelina Jolie (fake as they were) - her quote was "She makes us big titted women look good".
Crime in the projects is very simple to understand. The poor are prey. Drug dealers, local small-time criminals, thieves, etc... are predators.
Concentrate the poor in one area, and predators will attack there more often, because they stand a statistically higher chance of getting "prey" instead of the middle class, whom might have a gun or a lawyer or a politician that they know.
Communities help - they can do the same things sparrows do to mob crows or hawks. But they can only do that if allowed - if vigilanties are discouraged, then the predators will take the prey out one-by-one, like a weasel in a hen house.
The arguments that crime is caused by lack of education or money are bullshit. Most people in the ghettos and projects are as law-abiding as people in the suburbs. And even more willing to help each other.
Most drug-dealers and robbers I knew in the ghetto thought of their prey as subhuman and unworthy. That isn't an attitude brought on by poverty. That's the same attitude as the kid who eggs the neighbor's house because he or she "looks weird". But because the police don't stop them in the ghetto, those same kinds of kids go on to raping a senior citizen or killing them.
Your heart is in the right place, but this would end up being used for evil. If you don't have building codes, then slumlords will be able to get away with even more crap then they do now. Remember - all that they have to do is have a monopoly on the land - they can get away with just renting you that and having no govenrmental controls - just look at how much ground rent is in trailer parks in the Northeast.
Now, there are HOA's and "historical associations" that do exactly as you fear - set the standards high enough so that the poor can not live in the area. But that will happen regardles of building standards, since we have set the legal precedent.
White isn't an issue in this - being rich is. If they were rich black or oriental men they'ed still be free. The only reason that there seems to be a corralation with race is that rich people (men and women) whose families have been rich for a long time have more connections will always have it easier. People who are connected with old families because they are famous will also have it easier.
Even if this were not so, federal prison would still be easier for the rich - all they would have to do is pay off enough inmates to protect them.
Besides, how many rapists, killers and gang lords do you think are going to be saying "Damn you Ken Lay, I lost my pension over your Enron dealings?" or "Listen - I am so pissed over the Bhopal incident... I think I'm gonna cut you up."
Notice that they said they used it on dogs carried in by their owners for emergency treatment after they proved it on the 19 dogs, and took care to only use it on animals that had similar injuries to the animals in the original study - they aren't this nice to people in clinical studies (remember the double-blind studies on interferon, where some terminal cancer patients got placebos?), let alone the studies done on people on welfare (there was a medicine used on me as a child that caused a severe allergic reaction - and the doctor refused to let me know what it is, or what it's effects were supposed to be)
I think that the ethical considerations given in the larger clinical study outweigh the potentially bad things done in the smaller study.
I am already taking three pills a day to stay alive (and I'm only 41). I also have had massive dietary and lifestyle changes.
I can deal with it because I know that it isn't forever. The question is "can I stand it for 100 years" not "can I stand it forever". 100 years is the number I use because I know that I will probably die of something else by then.
Now, ask me if I could stand it for 9900 years... I don't think that I'd bother on my own, for myself.
Even with these problems repaired, there are things in my childhood that I might not be able to live with for even 200 years. And I don't think that this is all that uncommon.
The only repair for that would be memory erasure - in which case, after removing all of the threads that led from that trauma, all I'd be an amnesiac with a lot of talents.
The same thing would happen for most people. In 1000 years, do you think that you won't ever be brutally raped? Tortured? Suffer agony enough from an injury that you want to die? Or have to do or see something so terrible that you can't live with it?
I think that it would work the other way around. Once people get to the top, they want to keep what they have because they know that they don't have the strength to get it again. If you knew that you would not physically or mentally degrade, then you wouldn't fear losing as much - because you could always get everything you wanted back.
Now imagine the other extreme - old people seriously bored with everything, wanting something new, some thrill. The "been there, done that" syndrome. Instead of stagnation, a society looking for the newest thrill and exploring every possible avenue of every new idea to mine out the most difference... Leading to reckless change.
It's not always that sinister on the part of the congressman. There are other ways a contractor can get these "contracts":
1. Threaten to close the plant in the congressman's area, causing widespread layoffs - in which case it is the congressman's duty to represent his district and fight to keep the jobs.
2. Be a "sole-source" for something the military needs, like a legacy part - in which case the company can threaten to stop producing the part unless congress gives them enough contract money to make up for their "inconvenience".
I looked into getting a degree in law a short while ago, and noticed the same thing. Another thing to note is that all of the schools I checked into required a minimum of 12 credits per semester for part-time, with a maximum period of years that you could take to get the degree - meaning that I could not try that route, since I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't be placed on travel sometime during the term.
There is one thing that I have wondered - if I take a full course of study using an online law university and then choose to take a full course of study at a recognized university, would I be penalized for it?
Note that the article from Demos indicates that professional amateurs are not new - this is just reversing a trend that started last century when professionals made most of the contributions.
I'd say that the only "new" thing about professional amateurs is that the Internet allows them to publicise their work earlier, allowing us to take advantage of genius before the person dies.
Whether this marginalizes them by forcing them down the conventional paths by responding to feedback from their peers, where previously an amateur would have less feedback and explore the non-utilitarian aspects of an idea, or allows the amateur to expand their idea by meeting more of their ilk, is up for grabs.
Any ideas?
Right - that is why the good polygraph examiners attempt to verify your "levels" of tension, so that they can see if there is enough variation in your responses for the test to be valid.
The same thing would need to be applied in this case as well, so that the relative levels of brain activity could be measured to see if the differences measured are significant or not.
Neither of these tests will work correctly on Narcoleptics.
Okay... so I'm fat because I eat too much, not because I have an inherited auto-immune problem that killed my Thyroid gland which may have been exacerbated by the fact that I grew up in a city with 140 superfund sites (one per four blocks) and the thyroid is the first thing attacked by radiation AND radioactive medical waste was found dumped there often... Nah... couldn't be that, could it? Next thing you'll be saying is that I don't exercise enough to lose weight because I'm lazy, not because because the same condition causes a form of Rheumatoid Arthritis and I also have Asthma... nah... it has to be my fault... Even though I exercised before I was diagnosed until I did minor heart damage, thinking that the problem was that I was too lazy, as the media likes us to believe...
Listen - most problems do not have one cause - they have several. I could just as well say that everyone who is fat has my problem - there is an alarming amount of hypothyroidism in America as well, and autoimmune problems (where the body starts to reject itself) are more common than you think. But that would be over-generalization, which is what you did.
Am I angry about my condition? Yes. Being overweight is the least of my problems. I will die in agony, unless I don't die of "natural" causes, as did my grandmother and as will my mother, unless there is a cure for my condition that I can afford. There is no cure being researched for hypothyroidism. There is no cure being researched (that I know of) for Rheumatoid Arthritis. I don't know of research into a cure for Asthma. And there are some other side-effects of my condition that I was told not to even expect a cure for.
Fortunatly there is a cure for the underlying cause - Autoimmune disorder. It involves stem cells (not from fetuses), but it has a 33% fatality rate, involves chemotherapy and a 5% chance that the problem will reoccur. And so we are back into topic.
Do what one of my friends from Taiwan does - go there to get treated if you are dealing with a major operation or even dental work. It is much cheaper, and of similar quality to what you will get from most insurances in our field (but not the same as what my cousin's husband gets from Campbell's Soup Company - he is horrified by the crappy benefits in our field).
If you can pay for it, American medicine is the best. If you aren't rich - it is equal to many other countries.
Understand that this is not meant to say that American doctors are bad, or incompetent. But many of the doctors I have known had to pay off $250,000.00 in school loans in less than ten years - so don't expect them to be cheap. And most specialists need to take continuing education on top of that - all of which is even more expensive.
There have been quite a few recalls of laptops because of overheating (such as Toshiba) - this could also have an effect in the shortage instead of just "demand".
Fortunatly, I bought an AMD based notebook after 3 laptop meltdowns, and it has had less problems than the Intel ones (even though it is a Compaq, and they have always given me overheating problems before). So I am not going back to Intel based machines ever again.
This was done in two 36 hour days and one 4 hour day, for a couple of months (with partner-based coding too...)
The work is always brilliant, it works, it is incredible - but there are two problems:
1. You have to be at the same concentration level as I and my partner were at during the time we wrote it to understand the code. No one doing maintenence would be at that concentration level. This includes me.
2. The comments in the code were written at that same concentration level, and so they were too arcane to be useful - as an example, "the rising edge of the signal is needed, and the motif button press is at 270 degrees from it in the sequence in the clause, so rotate another 90 degrees by adding a not". Yes, this does describe what I did - but would it help anyone who is reading the comment?
So, I would say that you can do 80 hours a week on a one-time effort - but you will not be able to maintain it - even if you have code reviews, because everyone will be in the same charged state. For games that don't sell, this will work. For games that do sell, it will result in the need to do a complete rewrite every time a new feature is added that is not segregated to to a completely new part of the game (or website, or configuration tool, etc...).
Here's an example (no names will be mentioned, nor when I gave this interview):
Me: Okay, your resume says that you have been doing Java Design work in UML five years.
Applicant: Yes.
Me: Have you worked with any patterns?
Applicant: Yes. I know all of the design patterns.
Me: Can you name a pattern that you have used?
Applicant: Umm....
Me: I know, it can be hard to remember things on an interview... I'll try to help you... how about the one used between a UI and a controller in the back end? It starts with Model...
Applicant: No, I don't remember any. Why the fuck should I have to? I'm not a god-damn encyclopedia! It's not like anyone remembers this shit without a book anyways....
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It won't work unless it is bundled with a smell nullifier (i.e. high-powered filter) - smell molecules have a longer lifespan than the light from monitors, so you would get background noise in no time. (Think of it as an LCD screen with a responsiveness of 10-20 minutes).
This is also necessary because there is whole lot of background noise in a typical situation. I have a really good sense of smell, and right now I can smell the wood of my desk, my leather chair, the plastics from my new router, the paint from where my office was painted three weeks ago, the wrapper from some food I ate a few hours ago, plus any associated human smells and sundry other small smells. I'd guess that this is common, although background for people with less of a sense of smell. You'd have to eliminate it in order to get an effect from any scents introduced.
Yup - you should have added that the user should look up "smart antenna". There are already standards to use this in the government, and the cellular and EMT services have looked at it too.
Needless to say, I have worked with this. It is much cooler than just for cellphones
Mandates work fine, as long as they are in the budget. Anything done outside of the budget isn't allowed to spend money. :-)
I have yet to see any animosity towards open source in the military. They like open source because you don't have to wait 6+ months to get the purchase completed for proprietary stuff, and you don't have to worry about license problems when dealing with vendors ( the licenses can become a hostage towards keeping the contract ).
Hopefully they kept their jobs long enough to refinance their mortgage - otherwise they'll be homeless pretty quickly - this is an expensive place to live. Unemployment will barely cover a typical mortgage or rent. I'm also not sure if they can get a loan secured on their house right now if they are already "laid-off".
Yup - more than a year. A lot more than a year...
Actually, point 5 happens all of the time - at least since I started voting. Interestingly enough - I have had "ballots dissappear" both when Republican and Democrat. As for Fraud - no, criminals are rarely caught. But this has been happening all of the time. Before this scrutiny of elections, dead people were known to have a very good voting record. In Philadelphia it barely mattered, because the cemetery vote was firmly divided between Republican and Democrat (ah, but if you were third party, well...)
I've already had problems getting email from my government coworkers with spam validators like this. The military really doesn't like broadcasting who their email servers are... So they regularly get sent to Junk Mail.
Anything that gets too large loses site of it's primary goals and becomes it's own environment. Big companies tend to have internal groups that have no connection to the bigger concept of profit, but instead act as if the amount of money the company gets is guaranteed, and the only problem is how big their budget is relative to that "evil department over there". Heck, one defense company I worked for routinely attacked itself and tried to outbid itself one contracts.
The same thing happens in government. Once an organization gets too big, it forgets its initial purpose and starts becoming an internal ecosystem, predators, prey, etc... Look at the infighting revealed between the branches of the FBI in the 911 reports...
Men are used as sex objects too... My wife has dreams of Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing... and then there was the movie Troy, where the only decent eye-candy was the men... C'mon, look at the gratuitious nude Brad Pitt scene... You tell me that wasn't the equivalent of a boob shot...
My wife actually liked Tomb Raider, and the large boobs on Angelina Jolie (fake as they were) - her quote was "She makes us big titted women look good".
Crime in the projects is very simple to understand. The poor are prey. Drug dealers, local small-time criminals, thieves, etc... are predators.
Concentrate the poor in one area, and predators will attack there more often, because they stand a statistically higher chance of getting "prey" instead of the middle class, whom might have a gun or a lawyer or a politician that they know.
Communities help - they can do the same things sparrows do to mob crows or hawks. But they can only do that if allowed - if vigilanties are discouraged, then the predators will take the prey out one-by-one, like a weasel in a hen house.
The arguments that crime is caused by lack of education or money are bullshit. Most people in the ghettos and projects are as law-abiding as people in the suburbs. And even more willing to help each other.
Most drug-dealers and robbers I knew in the ghetto thought of their prey as subhuman and unworthy. That isn't an attitude brought on by poverty. That's the same attitude as the kid who eggs the neighbor's house because he or she "looks weird". But because the police don't stop them in the ghetto, those same kinds of kids go on to raping a senior citizen or killing them.
Your heart is in the right place, but this would end up being used for evil. If you don't have building codes, then slumlords will be able to get away with even more crap then they do now. Remember - all that they have to do is have a monopoly on the land - they can get away with just renting you that and having no govenrmental controls - just look at how much ground rent is in trailer parks in the Northeast.
Now, there are HOA's and "historical associations" that do exactly as you fear - set the standards high enough so that the poor can not live in the area. But that will happen regardles of building standards, since we have set the legal precedent.
White isn't an issue in this - being rich is. If they were rich black or oriental men they'ed still be free. The only reason that there seems to be a corralation with race is that rich people (men and women) whose families have been rich for a long time have more connections will always have it easier. People who are connected with old families because they are famous will also have it easier.
Even if this were not so, federal prison would still be easier for the rich - all they would have to do is pay off enough inmates to protect them.
Besides, how many rapists, killers and gang lords do you think are going to be saying "Damn you Ken Lay, I lost my pension over your Enron dealings?" or "Listen - I am so pissed over the Bhopal incident... I think I'm gonna cut you up."
Notice that they said they used it on dogs carried in by their owners for emergency treatment after they proved it on the 19 dogs, and took care to only use it on animals that had similar injuries to the animals in the original study - they aren't this nice to people in clinical studies (remember the double-blind studies on interferon, where some terminal cancer patients got placebos?), let alone the studies done on people on welfare (there was a medicine used on me as a child that caused a severe allergic reaction - and the doctor refused to let me know what it is, or what it's effects were supposed to be)
I think that the ethical considerations given in the larger clinical study outweigh the potentially bad things done in the smaller study.
I am already taking three pills a day to stay alive (and I'm only 41). I also have had massive dietary and lifestyle changes.
I can deal with it because I know that it isn't forever. The question is "can I stand it for 100 years" not "can I stand it forever". 100 years is the number I use because I know that I will probably die of something else by then.
Now, ask me if I could stand it for 9900 years... I don't think that I'd bother on my own, for myself.
Even with these problems repaired, there are things in my childhood that I might not be able to live with for even 200 years. And I don't think that this is all that uncommon.
The only repair for that would be memory erasure - in which case, after removing all of the threads that led from that trauma, all I'd be an amnesiac with a lot of talents.
The same thing would happen for most people. In 1000 years, do you think that you won't ever be brutally raped? Tortured? Suffer agony enough from an injury that you want to die? Or have to do or see something so terrible that you can't live with it?
I think that it would work the other way around. Once people get to the top, they want to keep what they have because they know that they don't have the strength to get it again. If you knew that you would not physically or mentally degrade, then you wouldn't fear losing as much - because you could always get everything you wanted back.
Now imagine the other extreme - old people seriously bored with everything, wanting something new, some thrill. The "been there, done that" syndrome. Instead of stagnation, a society looking for the newest thrill and exploring every possible avenue of every new idea to mine out the most difference... Leading to reckless change.
It's not always that sinister on the part of the congressman. There are other ways a contractor can get these "contracts":
1. Threaten to close the plant in the congressman's area, causing widespread layoffs - in which case it is the congressman's duty to represent his district and fight to keep the jobs.
2. Be a "sole-source" for something the military needs, like a legacy part - in which case the company can threaten to stop producing the part unless congress gives them enough contract money to make up for their "inconvenience".
I looked into getting a degree in law a short while ago, and noticed the same thing. Another thing to note is that all of the schools I checked into required a minimum of 12 credits per semester for part-time, with a maximum period of years that you could take to get the degree - meaning that I could not try that route, since I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't be placed on travel sometime during the term.
There is one thing that I have wondered - if I take a full course of study using an online law university and then choose to take a full course of study at a recognized university, would I be penalized for it?
Note that the article from Demos indicates that professional amateurs are not new - this is just reversing a trend that started last century when professionals made most of the contributions.
I'd say that the only "new" thing about professional amateurs is that the Internet allows them to publicise their work earlier, allowing us to take advantage of genius before the person dies.
Whether this marginalizes them by forcing them down the conventional paths by responding to feedback from their peers, where previously an amateur would have less feedback and explore the non-utilitarian aspects of an idea, or allows the amateur to expand their idea by meeting more of their ilk, is up for grabs.
Any ideas?
Right - that is why the good polygraph examiners attempt to verify your "levels" of tension, so that they can see if there is enough variation in your responses for the test to be valid.
The same thing would need to be applied in this case as well, so that the relative levels of brain activity could be measured to see if the differences measured are significant or not.
Neither of these tests will work correctly on Narcoleptics.
Okay... so I'm fat because I eat too much, not because I have an inherited auto-immune problem that killed my Thyroid gland which may have been exacerbated by the fact that I grew up in a city with 140 superfund sites (one per four blocks) and the thyroid is the first thing attacked by radiation AND radioactive medical waste was found dumped there often... Nah... couldn't be that, could it? Next thing you'll be saying is that I don't exercise enough to lose weight because I'm lazy, not because because the same condition causes a form of Rheumatoid Arthritis and I also have Asthma... nah... it has to be my fault... Even though I exercised before I was diagnosed until I did minor heart damage, thinking that the problem was that I was too lazy, as the media likes us to believe...
Listen - most problems do not have one cause - they have several. I could just as well say that everyone who is fat has my problem - there is an alarming amount of hypothyroidism in America as well, and autoimmune problems (where the body starts to reject itself) are more common than you think. But that would be over-generalization, which is what you did.
Am I angry about my condition? Yes. Being overweight is the least of my problems. I will die in agony, unless I don't die of "natural" causes, as did my grandmother and as will my mother, unless there is a cure for my condition that I can afford. There is no cure being researched for hypothyroidism. There is no cure being researched (that I know of) for Rheumatoid Arthritis. I don't know of research into a cure for Asthma. And there are some other side-effects of my condition that I was told not to even expect a cure for.
Fortunatly there is a cure for the underlying cause - Autoimmune disorder. It involves stem cells (not from fetuses), but it has a 33% fatality rate, involves chemotherapy and a 5% chance that the problem will reoccur. And so we are back into topic.
Do what one of my friends from Taiwan does - go there to get treated if you are dealing with a major operation or even dental work. It is much cheaper, and of similar quality to what you will get from most insurances in our field (but not the same as what my cousin's husband gets from Campbell's Soup Company - he is horrified by the crappy benefits in our field). If you can pay for it, American medicine is the best. If you aren't rich - it is equal to many other countries.
Understand that this is not meant to say that American doctors are bad, or incompetent. But many of the doctors I have known had to pay off $250,000.00 in school loans in less than ten years - so don't expect them to be cheap. And most specialists need to take continuing education on top of that - all of which is even more expensive.
There have been quite a few recalls of laptops because of overheating (such as Toshiba) - this could also have an effect in the shortage instead of just "demand".
Fortunatly, I bought an AMD based notebook after 3 laptop meltdowns, and it has had less problems than the Intel ones (even though it is a Compaq, and they have always given me overheating problems before). So I am not going back to Intel based machines ever again.
This was done in two 36 hour days and one 4 hour day, for a couple of months (with partner-based coding too...)
The work is always brilliant, it works, it is incredible - but there are two problems:
1. You have to be at the same concentration level as I and my partner were at during the time we wrote it to understand the code. No one doing maintenence would be at that concentration level. This includes me.
2. The comments in the code were written at that same concentration level, and so they were too arcane to be useful - as an example, "the rising edge of the signal is needed, and the motif button press is at 270 degrees from it in the sequence in the clause, so rotate another 90 degrees by adding a not". Yes, this does describe what I did - but would it help anyone who is reading the comment?
So, I would say that you can do 80 hours a week on a one-time effort - but you will not be able to maintain it - even if you have code reviews, because everyone will be in the same charged state. For games that don't sell, this will work. For games that do sell, it will result in the need to do a complete rewrite every time a new feature is added that is not segregated to to a completely new part of the game (or website, or configuration tool, etc...).
Here's an example (no names will be mentioned, nor when I gave this interview):
Me: Okay, your resume says that you have been doing Java Design work in UML five years.
Applicant: Yes.
Me: Have you worked with any patterns?
Applicant: Yes. I know all of the design patterns.
Me: Can you name a pattern that you have used?
Applicant: Umm....
Me: I know, it can be hard to remember things on an interview... I'll try to help you... how about the one used between a UI and a controller in the back end? It starts with Model... Applicant: No, I don't remember any. Why the fuck should I have to? I'm not a god-damn encyclopedia! It's not like anyone remembers this shit without a book anyways....
That's pretty typical.