Smart Guy Wanted: Self-reliant thinker with excellent trouble-shooting skills and the ability to creatively add value in ways no one else has ever thought of. Must have the social skills to effectively communicate the complete and utter stupidity of a planned action to the originator of that action, while simultaneously conceiving of and evangelizing a viable alternative, and doing so without appearing to be threatening in any way.
Must also be able to leap small buildings - this requirement is mandatory, there's quite a distance between the data center and the offices...
You'll never, ever see this position advertised. Not because it's not a good idea, but because every boss thinks that he's The Smart Guy. He wouldn't be "boss" otherwise. Right?
This is almost right - I think a more accurate portrayal is that every boss expects to be the smart guy, but is afraid to find out... Turns out I'm the 'Smart Girl' at my company - talk about fun... but then one of my oh-so-smart ideas was turned into a product, and suddenly, I was 'the boss' and 'the smart girl'. BOOM - the fact that I was the go-to person was overshadowed by the fact that I was a lousy, lousy project manager (unix geeks and microsoft project are a bad, bad combo, blech)... and yet, a group of undeniably intelligent professionals were unwilling to TELL me how much I sucked, so if I hadn't had the wits to figure it out myself, I'd still be inflicting my sad management skills upon their poor heads.
It's easy to be delusional, if you have no-one to help - I think that no boss can also be the smart guy - it's a contradiction in terms (-:... actually, what you REALLY need is for all of your employees to possess that little bit of wit and vision that lets them look outside of normal operating parameters, and see what could be...
Heh, yeah, I'll put that on our next job posting, and see what kind of resumes come in (-:
you whitelist some servers does not have to mean that you have to blacklist all the others. If AT&T really means to do this, they will learn the hard way when their business suffers.
There are several initiatives underway to use DNS to authenticate SMTP transactions: this seems like a good way to avoid the nastiness described by the parent poster...
The article really does sound like this request is an emergency response to a specific threat - The intent seems to me to be more of a temporary bandaid solution than an attempt to alter the very fabric of email as we know it (-:
I have this theory on geeks and style. I think that we're afraid. For us, logic and functionality are easy, we can have confidence in them, they are a cornerstone to our careers, and our life outlooks. But style is different. Subjective. It is possible to make a great effort at style, whether it is in designing a GUI or dressing for dinner, that fails miserably.
And that's scary. And our natural pragmatism makes it easy to scoff at, and whenever we see something with style and no substance, it seems to validate our argument.
So many geeks reject anything considered to be superfluous. That is great - but remember, rejection of all style, is still a style in and of itself...
Yah, ok perhaps I'm overstating things to evoke a reaction (call me troll if you wish).... but when I see the curmudgeon-ish posts dissing the book because it talks about something that nobody needs in the world, all I can think is "I fear thou protesteth too much"....
Pixie
My hubby is a music freak - we tried to go the computer route with our desktop system about 2 years ago - it was nasty! It took an ungodly amount of configuration, not to mention having to buy scsi disk and whacks of memory.
At the end of it, I became tired of having to play sysadmin at home every night, and so we bought a digital music station. This station is not much bigger than a large laptop, and although it probably has nothing more than a 386 inside, there are no worries about what kind of sound card it has, whether the disks are raided - it was designed to work together, and it does the job admirably. The cost of the station was equivalent at the time to a low-end PC system, which ended up being a lot cheaper than upgrading everything to the high-end components seemingly required to run upper-end music software. My computer is now free for my use again (yay!) and my hubby can simply make music, without the hassle (and best of all, he can RTFM himself, without his computer-geek wife).
Those ideas make sense to me, but I think there are still missing pieces:
1. The classic PKI problem - How do you _guarantee_ that the e-vote cast was actually submitted by the person to whom it belongs? Can you prevent the sale/trade of e-votes from occuring? Can you prevent a hacker from subsuming the identities of thousands of people and voting for them? In theory, if the anonymizing proxy does its job, those votes should not be traceable.
2. I think that we have to design with the idea that, given the opportunity, the government will abuse its responsibility. How can we as citizens be sure that there isn't a back-door in the anonymizing proxy which gives mr. president a list of anyone who voted in a certain way? Or perhaps there is no back-door, but given the logfiles of all of the systems, perhaps it is possible to painstakingly reconstruct the origin and content of a particular vote... and even if the technology actually IS secure and foolproof, how do convince a paranoid public of this?
This doesn't even take into consideration the thorny problem of 'registering' everyone in the first place... eek.
The parent post has a point: Sure, political organizations seem stronger because they can more easily disseminate information, but really, if 100,000 people read about your rally in kansas city, but only 200 people can physically show up, have you really gained much from the other 999,800 surfers?
What interested me about Gosling's interview, was the claim that the technology exists today for everyone to vote online. I think this is disingenious, personally, to say that the only things standing in the way are societal problems: Yep, if we would just all let ourselves be given a number (unique identifier), and if we all promised to only use our own number when voting, and if none of us minded if our voting patterns were traced, graphed, and known to the world, the technology would work just nifty-like...
Two things have to happen before society will accept online voting -
1. we have to be able to guarantee that each citizen can vote once and only once, and that the voting citizen is who they say they are.
2. we have to be able to guarantee that the content of a user's vote can never be linked to the identity of the voter.
Does that technology exist now? Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but I don't think so...
The main premise of this article is that somehow the Taguchi method is going to take the 'art' out of advertising by using a scientific approach.
Then the article blathers on about how "Taguchi Method can take a project with thousands, even millions of combinations of variables and quickly reduce it to a couple dozen simple experiments".
Completely glossed over is the definition of the control factors in the first place! How does the Taguchi method help you to figure out what exact subjective concept about a given advertisement could be a "degrading factor" in the first place... that seems like the challenging part to me, the rest is just spreadsheets and focus group results, not exactly cutting-edge stuff.
The parent post is absolutely right, this is not an analysis, it is an ad: Robert X. Cringely, the day that I can quote you as saying any technology is "a bloody miracle" is the day your credibility hits the toilet. Why don't you team up with Cher and sell some skin cream...
Yes, the big problem is your social skills, but maybe not in the way you think.
This whole concept of a girl being in your reach is something that guys do that I don't understand. I will admit to you that there are very few geeks that I find attractive, but it's mostly because of that exact attitude.
I don't know how to say this and not sound stupid, but you are worthy of anything that you believe you are worthy of. Having been through a computer science degree in a major university, where I was one of very few girls, I have seen it all, and there are a few things that I can guarantee:
confident girls won't date guys who don't have a basic level of confidence themselves
by judging someone "out of your reach" you are by definition not confident in your abilities
what most guys don't get, is that by judging a woman "within your reach", if she suspects that you have that whole system of "reach" to start with, you are wrecking your chances. Nobody wants to be a consolation prize, or the "best" that can be hoped for.
So, WTF, right? Here's the truth (according to me, for whatever that's worth) - I am not attracted to someone who fearfully calculates their chances with me - I want someone who believes that if they want me they can have me. If you can look me in the eye, with no apology for who you are, and better yet, if I can see a gleam of intelligence and humor there too... well that's about the most attractive thing I can dream of, intellectually and emotionally. Getting to the place where you can do that is the hard part - for myself, it's taken a long time. But the rewards are plentiful.
I'd have to guess, that if you wanted to meet geek chicks, you're already in the right place...
As for hot and single, I guess you'll actually have to talk to them and find out, hmm? Did you actually want to talk to a geek, or were you just looking for porno pics of someone with big jugs, playing with a slide rule in interesting ways?
It's funny, I tend to get modded up when I identify myself as a geek-girl, so if that phenomenon holds true for others like me, wouldn't that mean that when you surf at a decent threshold, you should have a good chance of meeting one of us?
BTW - full disclosure: not single (or looking), just trying to find out if you geek-boys really want what you say you want...
So Popular Enterprises' complaint is not that VeriSign is cybersquatting, but that they're doing it more effectively without letting others have a slice of the pie?
No, I think their complaint is that Verisign is in charge of baking the pies in the first place... it's hard to develop market share for your product, if users are diverted upstream.
I think that only people who have never fired a gun could imagine that a video game is good training... here's a perfect example: I can walk into an arcade, and finish the game "Time Crisis" (a shooting game which uses a foot pedal to reload/duck, and a plastic handgun). It takes a long time, and, maybe because I'm a girl, people will often stop to watch.
They ask me if I'm a cop, or a handgun expert. They make comments about not getting in my way. It is people like these who believe that video games are training zombie killers...
NEWSFLASH! The bad guys are always in the SAME PLACE. I am holding a plastic replica of a gun that is much lighter than a real gun, and which has no recoil. I don't physically have to duck, or fumble to load ammunition while being shot at. I may shoot at running targets, but generally, their speed is constant, and they are not running towards me or away, only across the screen. I know which of the bad guys, in which uniforms, can kill me instantly, and which can only wound me slightly. I also never have to look behind me...
Anyone who believes that my knowledge and skill in Time Crisis could allow me to pick up an actual gun and use it any kind of useful way, is a flippin maroon. Yep, it's about as stupid as imagining that GTA is teaching children how to steal cars, and race them with skill and technique....
As if.
Yesterday, the VIM site was participating in the protest, but today, Bram has posted that the vote has been postponed due to overwhelming protest, and points to ffii.org for more information! And yet, when I go to ffii.org, I don't see any information about anything being postponed...
Anybody have more details on this? Egads, life would be a shade darker without VIM on my laptop )-:
Wow, it isn't like all us Slashdot posters are judgemental, or anything...
As a GIRL who is a GEEK and relatively socially conscious, but also a DIAMOND owner, I guess I really represent the minority here (-:
Let's see here:
1) Some smart women like diamonds. I swear. In fact, I know quite a few of them personally.
2) If you are really planning to meet girls based on their gem preferences, you are a LOSER.
3) Canadian diamonds are a very cool alternative - they come with a lasered serial number and logo on the girdle of the diamond - perfect for us tech-geek girls
4) I personally had no desire to have a diamond when we first started ring shopping, but it was my husband-to-be who felt it was a good idea - so don't give me all that bullshit that the guys can see through the marketing stuff, while the girls dreamily suck it all in.
5) I would take an artificial diamond over a real one in a second - a symbol of technological acheivement and science - that sparkles? It's perfect!
Slashdot Mirror
Smart Guy Wanted: Self-reliant thinker with excellent trouble-shooting skills and the ability to creatively add value in ways no one else has ever thought of. Must have the social skills to effectively communicate the complete and utter stupidity of a planned action to the originator of that action, while simultaneously conceiving of and evangelizing a viable alternative, and doing so without appearing to be threatening in any way.
Must also be able to leap small buildings - this requirement is mandatory, there's quite a distance between the data center and the offices...
*grin*
Pixie
This is almost right - I think a more accurate portrayal is that every boss expects to be the smart guy, but is afraid to find out ... Turns out I'm the 'Smart Girl' at my company - talk about fun ... but then one of my oh-so-smart ideas was turned into a product, and suddenly, I was 'the boss' and 'the smart girl'. BOOM - the fact that I was the go-to person was overshadowed by the fact that I was a lousy, lousy project manager (unix geeks and microsoft project are a bad, bad combo, blech)... and yet, a group of undeniably intelligent professionals were unwilling to TELL me how much I sucked, so if I hadn't had the wits to figure it out myself, I'd still be inflicting my sad management skills upon their poor heads.
It's easy to be delusional, if you have no-one to help - I think that no boss can also be the smart guy - it's a contradiction in terms (-:... actually, what you REALLY need is for all of your employees to possess that little bit of wit and vision that lets them look outside of normal operating parameters, and see what could be...
Heh, yeah, I'll put that on our next job posting, and see what kind of resumes come in (-:
Pixie
There are several initiatives underway to use DNS to authenticate SMTP transactions: this seems like a good way to avoid the nastiness described by the parent poster...
- http://spf.pobox.com/draft-mengwong-spf-01.txt
- http://www.pan-am.ca/draft-ietf-asrg-dsprotocol-0
0 .txt
- http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-danisch
- dns-rr-smtp-03.txt
The article really does sound like this request is an emergency response to a specific threat - The intent seems to me to be more of a temporary bandaid solution than an attempt to alter the very fabric of email as we know it (-:Pixie
I have this theory on geeks and style. I think that we're afraid. For us, logic and functionality are easy, we can have confidence in them, they are a cornerstone to our careers, and our life outlooks. But style is different. Subjective. It is possible to make a great effort at style, whether it is in designing a GUI or dressing for dinner, that fails miserably. And that's scary. And our natural pragmatism makes it easy to scoff at, and whenever we see something with style and no substance, it seems to validate our argument. So many geeks reject anything considered to be superfluous. That is great - but remember, rejection of all style, is still a style in and of itself... Yah, ok perhaps I'm overstating things to evoke a reaction (call me troll if you wish).... but when I see the curmudgeon-ish posts dissing the book because it talks about something that nobody needs in the world, all I can think is "I fear thou protesteth too much" ....
Pixie
At the end of it, I became tired of having to play sysadmin at home every night, and so we bought a digital music station. This station is not much bigger than a large laptop, and although it probably has nothing more than a 386 inside, there are no worries about what kind of sound card it has, whether the disks are raided - it was designed to work together, and it does the job admirably. The cost of the station was equivalent at the time to a low-end PC system, which ended up being a lot cheaper than upgrading everything to the high-end components seemingly required to run upper-end music software. My computer is now free for my use again (yay!) and my hubby can simply make music, without the hassle (and best of all, he can RTFM himself, without his computer-geek wife).
Pixie
1. The classic PKI problem - How do you _guarantee_ that the e-vote cast was actually submitted by the person to whom it belongs? Can you prevent the sale/trade of e-votes from occuring? Can you prevent a hacker from subsuming the identities of thousands of people and voting for them? In theory, if the anonymizing proxy does its job, those votes should not be traceable.
2. I think that we have to design with the idea that, given the opportunity, the government will abuse its responsibility. How can we as citizens be sure that there isn't a back-door in the anonymizing proxy which gives mr. president a list of anyone who voted in a certain way? Or perhaps there is no back-door, but given the logfiles of all of the systems, perhaps it is possible to painstakingly reconstruct the origin and content of a particular vote... and even if the technology actually IS secure and foolproof, how do convince a paranoid public of this?
This doesn't even take into consideration the thorny problem of 'registering' everyone in the first place... eek.
What interested me about Gosling's interview, was the claim that the technology exists today for everyone to vote online. I think this is disingenious, personally, to say that the only things standing in the way are societal problems: Yep, if we would just all let ourselves be given a number (unique identifier), and if we all promised to only use our own number when voting, and if none of us minded if our voting patterns were traced, graphed, and known to the world, the technology would work just nifty-like...
Two things have to happen before society will accept online voting -
-
1. we have to be able to guarantee that each citizen can vote once and only once, and that the voting citizen is who they say they are.
-
2. we have to be able to guarantee that the content of a user's vote can never be linked to the identity of the voter.
Does that technology exist now? Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but I don't think so...pixie
Then the article blathers on about how "Taguchi Method can take a project with thousands, even millions of combinations of variables and quickly reduce it to a couple dozen simple experiments".
Completely glossed over is the definition of the control factors in the first place! How does the Taguchi method help you to figure out what exact subjective concept about a given advertisement could be a "degrading factor" in the first place... that seems like the challenging part to me, the rest is just spreadsheets and focus group results, not exactly cutting-edge stuff.
The parent post is absolutely right, this is not an analysis, it is an ad: Robert X. Cringely, the day that I can quote you as saying any technology is "a bloody miracle" is the day your credibility hits the toilet. Why don't you team up with Cher and sell some skin cream...
pixie
This whole concept of a girl being in your reach is something that guys do that I don't understand. I will admit to you that there are very few geeks that I find attractive, but it's mostly because of that exact attitude.
I don't know how to say this and not sound stupid, but you are worthy of anything that you believe you are worthy of. Having been through a computer science degree in a major university, where I was one of very few girls, I have seen it all, and there are a few things that I can guarantee:
- confident girls won't date guys who don't have a basic level of confidence themselves
- by judging someone "out of your reach" you are by definition not confident in your abilities
- what most guys don't get, is that by judging a woman "within your reach", if she suspects that you have that whole system of "reach" to start with, you are wrecking your chances. Nobody wants to be a consolation prize, or the "best" that can be hoped for.
So, WTF, right? Here's the truth (according to me, for whatever that's worth) - I am not attracted to someone who fearfully calculates their chances with me - I want someone who believes that if they want me they can have me. If you can look me in the eye, with no apology for who you are, and better yet, if I can see a gleam of intelligence and humor there too... well that's about the most attractive thing I can dream of, intellectually and emotionally. Getting to the place where you can do that is the hard part - for myself, it's taken a long time. But the rewards are plentiful.pixie
As for hot and single, I guess you'll actually have to talk to them and find out, hmm? Did you actually want to talk to a geek, or were you just looking for porno pics of someone with big jugs, playing with a slide rule in interesting ways?
It's funny, I tend to get modded up when I identify myself as a geek-girl, so if that phenomenon holds true for others like me, wouldn't that mean that when you surf at a decent threshold, you should have a good chance of meeting one of us?
BTW - full disclosure: not single (or looking), just trying to find out if you geek-boys really want what you say you want...
pixie
No, I think their complaint is that Verisign is in charge of baking the pies in the first place... it's hard to develop market share for your product, if users are diverted upstream.
Hmm, I guess no one will be modding the parent up, the stupid girl can't even spell "candidate"... doh.
They ask me if I'm a cop, or a handgun expert. They make comments about not getting in my way. It is people like these who believe that video games are training zombie killers...
NEWSFLASH! The bad guys are always in the SAME PLACE. I am holding a plastic replica of a gun that is much lighter than a real gun, and which has no recoil. I don't physically have to duck, or fumble to load ammunition while being shot at. I may shoot at running targets, but generally, their speed is constant, and they are not running towards me or away, only across the screen. I know which of the bad guys, in which uniforms, can kill me instantly, and which can only wound me slightly. I also never have to look behind me...
Anyone who believes that my knowledge and skill in Time Crisis could allow me to pick up an actual gun and use it any kind of useful way, is a flippin maroon. Yep, it's about as stupid as imagining that GTA is teaching children how to steal cars, and race them with skill and technique.... As if.
Yesterday, the VIM site was participating in the protest, but today, Bram has posted that the vote has been postponed due to overwhelming protest, and points to ffii.org for more information! And yet, when I go to ffii.org, I don't see any information about anything being postponed... Anybody have more details on this? Egads, life would be a shade darker without VIM on my laptop )-:
Wow, it isn't like all us Slashdot posters are judgemental, or anything... As a GIRL who is a GEEK and relatively socially conscious, but also a DIAMOND owner, I guess I really represent the minority here (-: Let's see here: 1) Some smart women like diamonds. I swear. In fact, I know quite a few of them personally. 2) If you are really planning to meet girls based on their gem preferences, you are a LOSER. 3) Canadian diamonds are a very cool alternative - they come with a lasered serial number and logo on the girdle of the diamond - perfect for us tech-geek girls 4) I personally had no desire to have a diamond when we first started ring shopping, but it was my husband-to-be who felt it was a good idea - so don't give me all that bullshit that the guys can see through the marketing stuff, while the girls dreamily suck it all in. 5) I would take an artificial diamond over a real one in a second - a symbol of technological acheivement and science - that sparkles? It's perfect!