Actually, he's parroting a cultural stereotype. Yes, there are great workers that don't fit the stereotype, but the stereotype is common enough for it to actually be a stereotype.
Have I known workers form India that were awesome? Hell, yes. Have I known workers from India that were patriarchal and biased toward other workers from India because they came from a lower caste than they did? Also, unfortunately, yes.
Its a bit like saying that being in the southern United States in the 50s determined that you were racist. Were there people that weren't racist? Absolutely. Was it common enough that it was a problem? Also absolutely.
Well, he was partially right. Some of voodoo magic is chemical or potion based. See for example zombie powder which is actually a combination of drugs (one to induce a coma in a death-like state and another to make the person pliable and open to suggestion in a trance-like state).
Now if he was talking about voodoo dolls and curses? No, that's bunk. They only work on people that fully believe in it, giving a huge placebo effect that has been scientifically researched and documented. In fact, one scientist when confronted with someone "cursed" and suffering from a life threatening placebo effect had to "uncurse" the man, "curing" him by convincing him he wasn't cursed any more. It wasn't the curse itself that was killing him, but his belief in the curse was so strong that his brain was shutting down his own body.
Funny you should mention this. I used to work for a company that actually made one of these boxes (blinking lights and all) out of painted plywood and put important sounding labels on it like "Main AC", "Generator", "Battery Backup", "Firewall", and "Rack A/B/C" with a simplistic diagram of how the power management system actually worked. They installed it into the server room and hooked a bunch of thick cables to it but didn't actually do anything (the lights were powered by AA batteries).
Occasionally marketing would bring customers (read: CEO/CFO, etc) into the server room to show them the blinking lights to prove that the system was "top notch" and monitored 24/7.
It was later replaced by a wall of monitors showing Nagios graphs that didn't actually measure anything important.
Which was completely true. I was also running Win2k as well, but something to keep in mind was that DirectX / Direct3D wasn't ported to WindowsNT and there were a lot of drivers for video cards and sound cards that wouldn't work with the NT kernel. Win2k was the first NT kernel OS (quickly followed by XP) that had 3D driver support and that was pretty sketchy until XP came out as the new consumer flagship OS and drivers would actually start to work. Win2k was an awesome OS, but it was meant for businesses and corporations, not home users. Home users were intended to use Windows 98 SE (released the year before Win2k) and Windows ME (which was released after Win2k).
"We think that by giving you money, you're either going to be a legitimate competitor again and give us a great return on our investment or else we're going to get our money back when we chop you up into pieces because we own you. You're on limited time to do either."
In other words, someone gave them a loan. How badly BB got shafted by that loan is determined by how desperate they were when they took it. BB either paid them in stock, which means voting power over the company's assets when / if it folds, or else they owe them money and their patent portfolio will be sold to them when BB goes bankrupt to pay the debts.
Yes, it probably would be news. The "Chinese Drywall" scare in 2007/2008 made the news for a few weeks as well.
The only reason this made Slashdot was because its related to GMO. GMO tends to be a hot button for nerds because a fair number of misinformed people will malignly knee-jerk in response to GMO, while people who are more likely to understand GMO tend to be okay with minimal variations or even approve wholeheartedly.
After all, if you disapprove of all GMO, you shouldn't eat orange carrots or else you'll be hypocritical.
The issue isn't that they don't have logs. The issue is that they have no idea who he was when he got the documents. He used his sysadmin privileges and social engineering (read: Give me your password and I'll fix your problem) to get access to a bunch of accounts and passwords that didn't belong to him over a long period of time. They have no way of differentiating between him and legitimate users.
The FDA has a point, though. If the test isn't accurate and gives false negatives or isn't clear about what the results really mean, it can lure people into overconfidence and that can be dangerous if they really are at risk for one of the diseases.
Granted, they probably wouldn't have known about these conditions in the first place, but if, as an example, the rest of their family is known for heart disease due to a genetic defect and they get a false negative, they might be overconfident in their chances for heart disease, leading to possible death because they didn't go to a doctor to get checked out.
I'll agree with the AC. Minecraft with friends has been a lot more fun than the stress of end-game raid night and there are enough creepers, endermen, and lava to keep that thrill of danger going. You can even add mods to make the game more to your flavor of game.
If you're looking only to MMOs, though, my suggestion is to wait a bit. The Elder Scrolls Online is coming out in 2014, as well as Everquest Next and Everquest Next Landmark.
Both games seem promising, with ESO bringing back PVP themes from Dark Age of Camelot in addition to a promised solo focus and EQN/EQNL promising more of a sandbox game with raiding rather than a themepark game like WoW.
Not exactly. Some workplaces mandate that you're not allowed to discuss your salary on penalty of being fired. Typically because some people at the same level are being paid vastly different sums and if they were told what they were being paid, they'd reasonably be upset.
It completely depends upon location and brew. Cuban and Turkish coffee are closer to rocket fuel than traditional medium roast coffee, and have differing amounts of caffeine in them.
...and you can't say "the rest of the world" without giving a country. Almost every country has its own method of preparation. Even differing parts of the US have different preparation methods (New Orleans vs. Miami, for example).
I'd have to agree. The sales people generally have a motto of "Anything is possible. Never say no." and set unreasonable expectations.
Coming from that type of environment, though, I've found that generally anything IS possible, as long as you throw enough resources at it and get creative with how you implement it. The first round may not be pretty, but it'll probably get the job done.
Its the salesperson's job to then go back to the customer and explain why what they want costs an arm and a leg and will take a year and a day, but if implemented correctly and to the satisfaction of the customer, they're usually willing to pay for it.
Just tell him straight out that his code is impossible to read. Follow it by explaining why its hard to understand and ask him to make it human readable and understandable. Give examples, preferably from an authoritative source such as a textbook, of ways that he can change his code.
If he can't (I don't know how to write it any other way!) or won't (I can read it just fine!) then fire him, with justification that his code is impossible to maintain and he's causing the company to lose money in the time it takes to maintain his code.
Either way, your company is going to be in the lurch when the guy leaves and the only documentation left is his shitty legacy code. Better to cut him loose now and replace his bad code with good code.
You may be thinking of Saturday morning cartoons of a few years ago. I got up early this Saturday and decided to go look to see what cartoons were on. Sadly, Doc McStuffins, Rescue Heroes, and Thomas and Friends was the closest thing I could find. Other channels where as a kid I would watch cartoons had paid programming or news.
Sadly, Cartoon Network seems to be one of the only channels that has real cartoons (i.e. ones with a plot that don't bother teaching lessons to preschoolers)
I'm sure they do have the imagery. On someone's hard drive. In a vault.1
Google / Bing have the technology that makes it far easier to implement over the web. Why reinvent the wheel when you can have the professionals do it?
The way Minecraft and the assorted mods are going, in 30 years we'll be building a space ship in Minecraft and then sending it to the fabrication plant to be built.
Your GPU card does more than just output video. The GPUs on these cards are designed for brute force calculations and chugging through numbers. They're designed for physics engines, running through protein folding calculations, and rendering high quality video in real time.
If you want to equate them to a design in the past, think of them as really really really powerful math co-processors. CPUs are designed for short command queues and calculations that are hard to predict the next step, while GPUs are designed for long command queues and easily predictable calculations.
...and we've been using teraflop scale on desktops since 2008.
As someone who also lives in Florida, I can explain.
1. Very little preparation for the type of weather that a hurricane can cause. In Florida, we have storm drains that take away most of the water that a hurricane causes. Add in building codes that require buildings to be designed for hurricanes (typically category 3) and utilities that are designed specifically for hurricanes, and you'll find that down here, things are pretty robust by design. New Jersey and New York didn't have that type of preparation and you had buildings collapse.
2. Record storm surges. In some places, the storm surge was over 13 feet where the harbor was only designed to handle the (then historic record) 12 feet, causing massive flooding.
3. Fires. Gas lines caught fire, causing over 100 homes to burn to the ground.
4. In New Jersey specifically, they had a berm go under water due to the storm surges, causing even more damage.
Ultimately, take a look at the damage predictions and you'll see why its called a superstorm. Wind was only part of the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Swamp, not sandbox.
Actually, he's parroting a cultural stereotype. Yes, there are great workers that don't fit the stereotype, but the stereotype is common enough for it to actually be a stereotype.
Have I known workers form India that were awesome? Hell, yes. Have I known workers from India that were patriarchal and biased toward other workers from India because they came from a lower caste than they did? Also, unfortunately, yes.
Its a bit like saying that being in the southern United States in the 50s determined that you were racist. Were there people that weren't racist? Absolutely. Was it common enough that it was a problem? Also absolutely.
Well, he was partially right. Some of voodoo magic is chemical or potion based. See for example zombie powder which is actually a combination of drugs (one to induce a coma in a death-like state and another to make the person pliable and open to suggestion in a trance-like state).
Now if he was talking about voodoo dolls and curses? No, that's bunk. They only work on people that fully believe in it, giving a huge placebo effect that has been scientifically researched and documented. In fact, one scientist when confronted with someone "cursed" and suffering from a life threatening placebo effect had to "uncurse" the man, "curing" him by convincing him he wasn't cursed any more. It wasn't the curse itself that was killing him, but his belief in the curse was so strong that his brain was shutting down his own body.
Funny you should mention this. I used to work for a company that actually made one of these boxes (blinking lights and all) out of painted plywood and put important sounding labels on it like "Main AC", "Generator", "Battery Backup", "Firewall", and "Rack A/B/C" with a simplistic diagram of how the power management system actually worked. They installed it into the server room and hooked a bunch of thick cables to it but didn't actually do anything (the lights were powered by AA batteries).
Occasionally marketing would bring customers (read: CEO/CFO, etc) into the server room to show them the blinking lights to prove that the system was "top notch" and monitored 24/7.
It was later replaced by a wall of monitors showing Nagios graphs that didn't actually measure anything important.
Which was completely true. I was also running Win2k as well, but something to keep in mind was that DirectX / Direct3D wasn't ported to WindowsNT and there were a lot of drivers for video cards and sound cards that wouldn't work with the NT kernel. Win2k was the first NT kernel OS (quickly followed by XP) that had 3D driver support and that was pretty sketchy until XP came out as the new consumer flagship OS and drivers would actually start to work. Win2k was an awesome OS, but it was meant for businesses and corporations, not home users. Home users were intended to use Windows 98 SE (released the year before Win2k) and Windows ME (which was released after Win2k).
Both business-class OSes and not meant for the home consumer.
"We think that by giving you money, you're either going to be a legitimate competitor again and give us a great return on our investment or else we're going to get our money back when we chop you up into pieces because we own you. You're on limited time to do either."
In other words, someone gave them a loan. How badly BB got shafted by that loan is determined by how desperate they were when they took it. BB either paid them in stock, which means voting power over the company's assets when / if it folds, or else they owe them money and their patent portfolio will be sold to them when BB goes bankrupt to pay the debts.
Yes, it probably would be news. The "Chinese Drywall" scare in 2007/2008 made the news for a few weeks as well.
The only reason this made Slashdot was because its related to GMO. GMO tends to be a hot button for nerds because a fair number of misinformed people will malignly knee-jerk in response to GMO, while people who are more likely to understand GMO tend to be okay with minimal variations or even approve wholeheartedly.
After all, if you disapprove of all GMO, you shouldn't eat orange carrots or else you'll be hypocritical.
The issue isn't that they don't have logs. The issue is that they have no idea who he was when he got the documents. He used his sysadmin privileges and social engineering (read: Give me your password and I'll fix your problem) to get access to a bunch of accounts and passwords that didn't belong to him over a long period of time. They have no way of differentiating between him and legitimate users.
The FDA has a point, though. If the test isn't accurate and gives false negatives or isn't clear about what the results really mean, it can lure people into overconfidence and that can be dangerous if they really are at risk for one of the diseases.
Granted, they probably wouldn't have known about these conditions in the first place, but if, as an example, the rest of their family is known for heart disease due to a genetic defect and they get a false negative, they might be overconfident in their chances for heart disease, leading to possible death because they didn't go to a doctor to get checked out.
I'll agree with the AC. Minecraft with friends has been a lot more fun than the stress of end-game raid night and there are enough creepers, endermen, and lava to keep that thrill of danger going. You can even add mods to make the game more to your flavor of game.
If you're looking only to MMOs, though, my suggestion is to wait a bit. The Elder Scrolls Online is coming out in 2014, as well as Everquest Next and Everquest Next Landmark.
Both games seem promising, with ESO bringing back PVP themes from Dark Age of Camelot in addition to a promised solo focus and EQN/EQNL promising more of a sandbox game with raiding rather than a themepark game like WoW.
....and erased because you commented on the story.
I'm sure the new Madden 2015 or the new Need for Speed for the XBOX One will be the trifecta of poor customer service.
Not exactly. Some workplaces mandate that you're not allowed to discuss your salary on penalty of being fired. Typically because some people at the same level are being paid vastly different sums and if they were told what they were being paid, they'd reasonably be upset.
It completely depends upon location and brew. Cuban and Turkish coffee are closer to rocket fuel than traditional medium roast coffee, and have differing amounts of caffeine in them.
...and you can't say "the rest of the world" without giving a country. Almost every country has its own method of preparation. Even differing parts of the US have different preparation methods (New Orleans vs. Miami, for example).
I'd have to agree. The sales people generally have a motto of "Anything is possible. Never say no." and set unreasonable expectations.
Coming from that type of environment, though, I've found that generally anything IS possible, as long as you throw enough resources at it and get creative with how you implement it. The first round may not be pretty, but it'll probably get the job done.
Its the salesperson's job to then go back to the customer and explain why what they want costs an arm and a leg and will take a year and a day, but if implemented correctly and to the satisfaction of the customer, they're usually willing to pay for it.
Just tell him straight out that his code is impossible to read. Follow it by explaining why its hard to understand and ask him to make it human readable and understandable. Give examples, preferably from an authoritative source such as a textbook, of ways that he can change his code.
If he can't (I don't know how to write it any other way!) or won't (I can read it just fine!) then fire him, with justification that his code is impossible to maintain and he's causing the company to lose money in the time it takes to maintain his code.
Either way, your company is going to be in the lurch when the guy leaves and the only documentation left is his shitty legacy code. Better to cut him loose now and replace his bad code with good code.
You may be thinking of Saturday morning cartoons of a few years ago. I got up early this Saturday and decided to go look to see what cartoons were on. Sadly, Doc McStuffins, Rescue Heroes, and Thomas and Friends was the closest thing I could find. Other channels where as a kid I would watch cartoons had paid programming or news.
Sadly, Cartoon Network seems to be one of the only channels that has real cartoons (i.e. ones with a plot that don't bother teaching lessons to preschoolers)
So now we know where Skynet started.
I'm sure they do have the imagery. On someone's hard drive. In a vault.1
Google / Bing have the technology that makes it far easier to implement over the web. Why reinvent the wheel when you can have the professionals do it?
The way Minecraft and the assorted mods are going, in 30 years we'll be building a space ship in Minecraft and then sending it to the fabrication plant to be built.
Well, upper management may have gotten off with a slap on the wrist and a fine, but a couple middle management guys were charged with manslaughter.
Your GPU card does more than just output video. The GPUs on these cards are designed for brute force calculations and chugging through numbers. They're designed for physics engines, running through protein folding calculations, and rendering high quality video in real time.
If you want to equate them to a design in the past, think of them as really really really powerful math co-processors. CPUs are designed for short command queues and calculations that are hard to predict the next step, while GPUs are designed for long command queues and easily predictable calculations.
...and we've been using teraflop scale on desktops since 2008.
As someone who also lives in Florida, I can explain.
1. Very little preparation for the type of weather that a hurricane can cause. In Florida, we have storm drains that take away most of the water that a hurricane causes. Add in building codes that require buildings to be designed for hurricanes (typically category 3) and utilities that are designed specifically for hurricanes, and you'll find that down here, things are pretty robust by design. New Jersey and New York didn't have that type of preparation and you had buildings collapse.
2. Record storm surges. In some places, the storm surge was over 13 feet where the harbor was only designed to handle the (then historic record) 12 feet, causing massive flooding.
3. Fires. Gas lines caught fire, causing over 100 homes to burn to the ground.
4. In New Jersey specifically, they had a berm go under water due to the storm surges, causing even more damage.
Ultimately, take a look at the damage predictions and you'll see why its called a superstorm. Wind was only part of the issue.
False. That's what multitasking while compiling or testing is for.