Can we make this the new standard for cubes? I would kill to have a roof on mine so I wouldn't have those god damn flourescent lights shining on me giving me eyestrain all day. Hello? I work on computers staring at monitors all day, I don't need the light of 1,000 suns glaring in my eyes from a light placed jjjuuuuuussssttttt....PERFECTLY....so that there is no shadow from my big ass head on my eyes. Sometimes I turn off the lights in the lab and people act like I need to be committed...
The most fascinating thing about this discussion is that the question of sentience comes up now that we see a robot able to move in more human-like ways and do more human-like things. Our ability to create AI, the speed at which machines are able to process information, the ability of machines to "think" on their own is no different than yesterday, yet all you have to do is show/.ers a machine that can run and the question of sentience comes up.
I am not disagreeing with bringing this up. In fact, I have worried about that kind of thing before. It seems like it's all nonsense and we can igore it, but at SOME point we might not be able to ignore it, and how do we know when that point occurs? However, I think it's an interesting insight into ourselves that a machine being able to mimmick some of the basic movements we take for granted inspires such deep discussion. Why is it that movement inspires this discussion? Aern't there things that the machines in the rack in your datacenter do that imply sentience moer than this machine being able to move like us? Just food for thought.
Ansel loooooved fuckin with his pictures in the darkroom. So I think he would have liked the easy manipulation of photographs. I've always had a special place in my heart for getting it right in the camera...all my double expures are done in camera...never on the enlarger. He wasn't like that...so I think he would have loved how much he could manipulate the images on the computer.
However I think what people have said about size is key. Digital isn't there yet in terms of pixels. I think Ansel would still be shooting with his large format today...but a few more years down the line he might have gone digital.
When I realized I had a spare 400mhz machine and was given a Radeon 7500 for free...I got very excited. Then I realized the machine was too slow for the Windows software, and Linux has major hangups using Radeons for capture for whatever reason. This is killing me!!
I haven't read the article (I'm not paying $7 to read a steaming pile of bullshit), but I don't need to read it to know what it's all about and why...
From what I gather his argument is that IT is becoming a commodity like office supplies, etc. and that it's not worth spending/innovating because the returns won't be worth it. This is more or less what I would expect from a "business guy" who doesn't know jack shit about the IT industry or what's going on in it. I work for a healthcare company that is making major leaps and bounds in IT that will have real results in terms of PATIENT CARE...i.e. improving the quality of patient care. Oh and, by the way, some of those initiatives will reduce the cost of healthcare while improving the quality. I can name you a bunch of examples just from my company of how IT will be having a major impact on people's lives. I guess this guy won't care about how IT can help doctors do their jobs better until it's his family member in the hospital...sure hope he doesn't go to a hospital where the people in charge take his worthless advice.
That's just the healthcare industry. There is still TONS of ground to cover in fields like security...not just incremental improvements but entire new services. Think of the ramifications if we are able to develop digital signatures that are actually trustworthy: that will open up TONS of new possibilities and services that people can provide on line, in adddition to vastly improving the types of services we already have.
Beyond that, there are the cultural ramifications. I know it's not cool to think about anything more than making rich guys richer in the business world in America today, but if we want to stop the downward spiral towards a culture of greed and dumbness that America is in we might have to change that attitude. We have just started to see the changes that IT has caused in the way we meet people and interact. WHO we are able to build relationships with has changed completely as has the nature of those relationships. I can't even begin to tell you how much I have learned, how many people that I would have *no* idea about that I have met on line. That kind of stuff is life changing and may help us avoid the disaster that we are accelerating towards in terms of our relationship to ourselves and to the rest of the world. There is still much ground to cover in this arena...again, we have only scratched the surface of this.
It sucks that this article is getting so much attention because, really, it's not worthy of it. It's just another shortsighted article written about an industry about which the author knows nothing. These business guys love to see their name in print and that's all this is. What's depressing is that someone who could be in charge of such a supposedly prestigious magazine could be so short sighted. I guess vision is a commodity in short supply in the US these days. That's unfortunate and does not bode well for our future considering that all of our production type jobs are going off shore.
I'm sure there will be those who dismiss my line of thinking as geek-over-optimism, but that's missing the point. I seriously doubt people like the author have a good enough grasp on the technology to see the ramifications. You can see it a lot of times in the difference between younger IT people who grew up with the technology and those who got into it later in life. There is an intrinsic understanding there that you just can't learn without growing up with it. That level of understanding allows you to get some grasp on how much potential this technology has...even if the exact form of it is still a mystery. There are plenty of examples why he is wrong today...think about all the areas we have not even explored yet. I don't blame the author for being a product of a non-IT generation but I do blame him for running his mouth about a subject about which he obviously knows 0. His words carry weight and he is throwing that weight in the wrong direction.
Yea you would think so. This is the first in what I ahve been predicting to be a long line of complication with sending work that deals with sensitive materials overseas. Of course no one in a position of power thinks about these issues until they come back to bite them in the ass.
Not that that means anything will be done of course. I'm sure we'll just have to learn to live with this kind of thing because it's "no big deal".
He acknowledged that the US wants to keep space peaceful
ROTFLMAO! How long before the preemtpive strikes on anyone with a space program begin? The US government, at least the current one, is not interested in keeping anything peaceful...anyone see that dude on 6 minutes II the other night?
>The conservatives (at least Bush and the Republican Party)
STOP! There's your problem right there. The Republicans we have nowadays are not conservatives. Slaves to the rich? Yes. Members of the oligarchy that runs our country? Yes. Conservative in terms of their morals? Yes. But not politically conservative.
The problem we have in this country right now is that both the democrats and reoublicans are dedicated to preserving the lifestyle of the rich, promoting their interests, fattening their wallets with brib^h^h^h^hcampaign contributions, and just generally helping themselves while ignoring the will of their constituency. The reason they're able to do this is because we are dumb and ignorant and don't pay any attention to what's going on. They're busy taking bribes from the RIAA (and no I'm not in favor of stealing music), busting Chong for selling bongs over the internet, and starting wars based on evidence that doesn't exist while we're too concerned with whether that old skank Madonna kissed brittany longer than she kissed Chistina. Our culture is a culture of greed and dumbness and until/unless that changes we will continue to spiral downwards and the middle class will fall to the lower class and we will all be a bunch of miserable assholes who sit around and complain about the fact that we didn't protect our rights and pay more attention when we had the chance.
As far as this article is concerned, I see nothing of any value here. I see nothing that will do anything that has any effect on what the author was trying to address...his "suggestions" were completely irrelevant and stupid for the reasons many have already stated.
We have a big problem in this country in terms of labor going overseas, H1b's taking our jobs, and no new jobs being created. The reason for the last two items is that the government protects the interests of big businesses and props them up even when they are not economically viable despite taxpayer interests. Companies that are not economically viable (record labels, MCI, etc.) should not be propped up with government money and protections. If the companies are operating criminally, then the executives should be jailed and all their assets seized. This isn't hard, it's capitalism and it works. The problem is that, Democrat OR Republican, no one wants capitalism anymore...they want capitalism with protections for all their rich friends (HEY LOOK AT THAT AL GORE AND GEORGE BUSH ARE BOTH OLD WHITE GUYS WHOSE FATHERS WERE IN POLITICS...I CAN'T BELIEVE THE INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE!!!!). Our economy and our status as a world power isn't going to survive this, and if anyone thinks we can continue on the track we're on and still maintain they are crazy.
As far as IT jobs going over seas, that's a problem I don't have an answer to, other than creating more jobs and getting rid of old, dead businesses to make way for new industries. however the situation, in the short term, seems so dire, that I would depart from my libertarian ideals to embrace it in order to cover my own ass, as long as it didn't accelerate us towards the socialist state we are fast becoming in the long term.
Yes, the human cost is terrible. I have lost work, and I empathize. However, what do you propose US businesses do?
Fair enough, but we have to figure SOMETHING out. I'm usually pretty libertarian in my beliefs but massive unemployment or having the US go so far down hill that people outsource to _us_ because it's cheap is not an option. People look at the situation in the US and think it will be OK because it's the US. Unfortunately our future is by no means guaranteed. We can't have the level of unemployment we have now, much less more, and expect to remain a world power...much less a technology and industry leader.
If you lost a job to an Indian IT worker, I suggest you *compete* instead of *whine*.
That's real cute...maybe I can pay my half of the $1600/month in rent i was paying on the $10,000 a year an indian worker gets. Wait though, I can't even afford the half of the $800/month in rent I am paying now that I have been forced to move after more than a year of unemployment on that kind of money.
As far as H1b's, I'll take whatever they're surviving on in this country...sign me up...I'll report for work as soon as my no-benefits contract ends.
...someone still has the money to develop this. This is without a doubt the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Whoever wasted money on developing this is an idiot...although smoehow I have the feeling that someone else will be dumb enough to buy it. Completely pointless...black goggles and a headset will do the same thing. Why do you need to be isolated from physical input while on the phone....sosososososososososososo stupid.
And I won't call you an idiot, I'll just call you shortsighted.
Who gives a crap about any of this. The fact is that we are headed for disaster in terms of the employment situation in this country. We cannot ship jobs overseas while allowing even more people to come into the country and take jobs which there are CLEARLY people already here to fill. It has nothing to do with the race of people involved, it has nothing to do with the country of origin of the immigrants, it just has to do with the number of people who live here and would like to continue livng here.
Our economy is in the crapper and that taints our discussions because a lot of us are unemployed or doing contract work that will soon end and leave us jobless again. The fact is though that a.) we need jobs for the people who are already here in order for an economic recovery to happen and b.) even if the economy struggles back to life, significantly more people than jobs is not a viable situation unless you want crime and suicide and crazed dope fiends pounding on the windows of your Mercedes as you drive back to the million dollar home that sending your development tasks to India bought you. "D" is the only way that people are going to ahve jobs again if we don't do something about this situation.
Personally I'm not really so into the idea of rampant unemployment turning the US into a 3rd world country again, but that's just me.
> such bullshit. it used to be so easy when you could tell friends and family to just buy a dell.
Word to that!
I dunno, replacing mobos and reusing the case and all that enver really bothered me that much...maybe because I *never have enough machines...case PSU and mobo stay together and get pressed into other service (servers firewalls etc) but I def understand what you're saying.
This is unbelievable. These companies expect us to abide by these agreements but don't even take them seriously themselves. If anyone had paid even the slightest bit of attention to this situation at the factory they would have realized the circular logic of this. The god damned lawyers want us to abide by these things, but even they realize that no one reads them. They make such a big deal about the fact that you are entering into an agreement when you click okay, and yet are not even capable of providing you a copy of that agreement to read. Fuck these companies.
I have recommended Dell systems to people looking for the cheap, easy, pre-set-up computer for a long time. I have done this because I ahve some *excellent* Dell systems...one that is nearly 8 years old, runs 24/7/365 and is still on it's original IBM HDD. Now Dell has started in with the integrated soundcards, the garbage hardware, and now totally unfeasable click through agreements. I'm sure I have sold more than a few Dells in my time with my recommendations (and no one has ever complained) but they will not be selling any more as a result of my recommendations. This is the last straw.
Actually I like "Prosumer" it sums up the "Spending more money makes me smarter than 'regular people' but I'm not a professional!" market...MY market!
Seriously though...amateur creative photographers have different requirements than pro's or consumers...Prosumer sounds irritating but it does do a good job of describing a certain segment of the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we make this the new standard for cubes? I would kill to have a roof on mine so I wouldn't have those god damn flourescent lights shining on me giving me eyestrain all day. Hello? I work on computers staring at monitors all day, I don't need the light of 1,000 suns glaring in my eyes from a light placed jjjuuuuuussssttttt....PERFECTLY....so that there is no shadow from my big ass head on my eyes. Sometimes I turn off the lights in the lab and people act like I need to be committed...
The most fascinating thing about this discussion is that the question of sentience comes up now that we see a robot able to move in more human-like ways and do more human-like things. Our ability to create AI, the speed at which machines are able to process information, the ability of machines to "think" on their own is no different than yesterday, yet all you have to do is show /.ers a machine that can run and the question of sentience comes up.
I am not disagreeing with bringing this up. In fact, I have worried about that kind of thing before. It seems like it's all nonsense and we can igore it, but at SOME point we might not be able to ignore it, and how do we know when that point occurs? However, I think it's an interesting insight into ourselves that a machine being able to mimmick some of the basic movements we take for granted inspires such deep discussion. Why is it that movement inspires this discussion? Aern't there things that the machines in the rack in your datacenter do that imply sentience moer than this machine being able to move like us? Just food for thought.
Ansel loooooved fuckin with his pictures in the darkroom. So I think he would have liked the easy manipulation of photographs. I've always had a special place in my heart for getting it right in the camera...all my double expures are done in camera...never on the enlarger. He wasn't like that...so I think he would have loved how much he could manipulate the images on the computer. However I think what people have said about size is key. Digital isn't there yet in terms of pixels. I think Ansel would still be shooting with his large format today...but a few more years down the line he might have gone digital.
When I realized I had a spare 400mhz machine and was given a Radeon 7500 for free...I got very excited. Then I realized the machine was too slow for the Windows software, and Linux has major hangups using Radeons for capture for whatever reason. This is killing me!!
Been waiting for a chance to vent about this...
I haven't read the article (I'm not paying $7 to read a steaming pile of bullshit), but I don't need to read it to know what it's all about and why...
From what I gather his argument is that IT is becoming a commodity like office supplies, etc. and that it's not worth spending/innovating because the returns won't be worth it. This is more or less what I would expect from a "business guy" who doesn't know jack shit about the IT industry or what's going on in it. I work for a healthcare company that is making major leaps and bounds in IT that will have real results in terms of PATIENT CARE...i.e. improving the quality of patient care. Oh and, by the way, some of those initiatives will reduce the cost of healthcare while improving the quality. I can name you a bunch of examples just from my company of how IT will be having a major impact on people's lives. I guess this guy won't care about how IT can help doctors do their jobs better until it's his family member in the hospital...sure hope he doesn't go to a hospital where the people in charge take his worthless advice.
That's just the healthcare industry. There is still TONS of ground to cover in fields like security...not just incremental improvements but entire new services. Think of the ramifications if we are able to develop digital signatures that are actually trustworthy: that will open up TONS of new possibilities and services that people can provide on line, in adddition to vastly improving the types of services we already have.
Beyond that, there are the cultural ramifications. I know it's not cool to think about anything more than making rich guys richer in the business world in America today, but if we want to stop the downward spiral towards a culture of greed and dumbness that America is in we might have to change that attitude. We have just started to see the changes that IT has caused in the way we meet people and interact. WHO we are able to build relationships with has changed completely as has the nature of those relationships. I can't even begin to tell you how much I have learned, how many people that I would have *no* idea about that I have met on line. That kind of stuff is life changing and may help us avoid the disaster that we are accelerating towards in terms of our relationship to ourselves and to the rest of the world. There is still much ground to cover in this arena...again, we have only scratched the surface of this.
It sucks that this article is getting so much attention because, really, it's not worthy of it. It's just another shortsighted article written about an industry about which the author knows nothing. These business guys love to see their name in print and that's all this is. What's depressing is that someone who could be in charge of such a supposedly prestigious magazine could be so short sighted. I guess vision is a commodity in short supply in the US these days. That's unfortunate and does not bode well for our future considering that all of our production type jobs are going off shore.
I'm sure there will be those who dismiss my line of thinking as geek-over-optimism, but that's missing the point. I seriously doubt people like the author have a good enough grasp on the technology to see the ramifications. You can see it a lot of times in the difference between younger IT people who grew up with the technology and those who got into it later in life. There is an intrinsic understanding there that you just can't learn without growing up with it. That level of understanding allows you to get some grasp on how much potential this technology has...even if the exact form of it is still a mystery. There are plenty of examples why he is wrong today...think about all the areas we have not even explored yet. I don't blame the author for being a product of a non-IT generation but I do blame him for running his mouth about a subject about which he obviously knows 0. His words carry weight and he is throwing that weight in the wrong direction.
Yea you would think so. This is the first in what I ahve been predicting to be a long line of complication with sending work that deals with sensitive materials overseas. Of course no one in a position of power thinks about these issues until they come back to bite them in the ass.
Not that that means anything will be done of course. I'm sure we'll just have to learn to live with this kind of thing because it's "no big deal".
He acknowledged that the US wants to keep space peaceful
ROTFLMAO! How long before the preemtpive strikes on anyone with a space program begin? The US government, at least the current one, is not interested in keeping anything peaceful...anyone see that dude on 6 minutes II the other night?
>The conservatives (at least Bush and the Republican Party)
STOP! There's your problem right there. The Republicans we have nowadays are not conservatives. Slaves to the rich? Yes. Members of the oligarchy that runs our country? Yes. Conservative in terms of their morals? Yes. But not politically conservative.
The problem we have in this country right now is that both the democrats and reoublicans are dedicated to preserving the lifestyle of the rich, promoting their interests, fattening their wallets with brib^h^h^h^hcampaign contributions, and just generally helping themselves while ignoring the will of their constituency. The reason they're able to do this is because we are dumb and ignorant and don't pay any attention to what's going on. They're busy taking bribes from the RIAA (and no I'm not in favor of stealing music), busting Chong for selling bongs over the internet, and starting wars based on evidence that doesn't exist while we're too concerned with whether that old skank Madonna kissed brittany longer than she kissed Chistina. Our culture is a culture of greed and dumbness and until/unless that changes we will continue to spiral downwards and the middle class will fall to the lower class and we will all be a bunch of miserable assholes who sit around and complain about the fact that we didn't protect our rights and pay more attention when we had the chance.
As far as this article is concerned, I see nothing of any value here. I see nothing that will do anything that has any effect on what the author was trying to address...his "suggestions" were completely irrelevant and stupid for the reasons many have already stated.
We have a big problem in this country in terms of labor going overseas, H1b's taking our jobs, and no new jobs being created. The reason for the last two items is that the government protects the interests of big businesses and props them up even when they are not economically viable despite taxpayer interests. Companies that are not economically viable (record labels, MCI, etc.) should not be propped up with government money and protections. If the companies are operating criminally, then the executives should be jailed and all their assets seized. This isn't hard, it's capitalism and it works. The problem is that, Democrat OR Republican, no one wants capitalism anymore...they want capitalism with protections for all their rich friends (HEY LOOK AT THAT AL GORE AND GEORGE BUSH ARE BOTH OLD WHITE GUYS WHOSE FATHERS WERE IN POLITICS...I CAN'T BELIEVE THE INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE!!!!). Our economy and our status as a world power isn't going to survive this, and if anyone thinks we can continue on the track we're on and still maintain they are crazy.
As far as IT jobs going over seas, that's a problem I don't have an answer to, other than creating more jobs and getting rid of old, dead businesses to make way for new industries. however the situation, in the short term, seems so dire, that I would depart from my libertarian ideals to embrace it in order to cover my own ass, as long as it didn't accelerate us towards the socialist state we are fast becoming in the long term.
Yes, the human cost is terrible. I have lost work, and I empathize. However, what do you propose US businesses do?
Fair enough, but we have to figure SOMETHING out. I'm usually pretty libertarian in my beliefs but massive unemployment or having the US go so far down hill that people outsource to _us_ because it's cheap is not an option. People look at the situation in the US and think it will be OK because it's the US. Unfortunately our future is by no means guaranteed. We can't have the level of unemployment we have now, much less more, and expect to remain a world power...much less a technology and industry leader.
We need to figure SOMEthing out...
If you lost a job to an Indian IT worker, I suggest you *compete* instead of *whine*.
That's real cute...maybe I can pay my half of the $1600/month in rent i was paying on the $10,000 a year an indian worker gets. Wait though, I can't even afford the half of the $800/month in rent I am paying now that I have been forced to move after more than a year of unemployment on that kind of money.
As far as H1b's, I'll take whatever they're surviving on in this country...sign me up...I'll report for work as soon as my no-benefits contract ends.
...someone still has the money to develop this. This is without a doubt the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Whoever wasted money on developing this is an idiot...although smoehow I have the feeling that someone else will be dumb enough to buy it. Completely pointless...black goggles and a headset will do the same thing. Why do you need to be isolated from physical input while on the phone....sosososososososososososo stupid.
And I won't call you an idiot, I'll just call you shortsighted. Who gives a crap about any of this. The fact is that we are headed for disaster in terms of the employment situation in this country. We cannot ship jobs overseas while allowing even more people to come into the country and take jobs which there are CLEARLY people already here to fill. It has nothing to do with the race of people involved, it has nothing to do with the country of origin of the immigrants, it just has to do with the number of people who live here and would like to continue livng here. Our economy is in the crapper and that taints our discussions because a lot of us are unemployed or doing contract work that will soon end and leave us jobless again. The fact is though that a.) we need jobs for the people who are already here in order for an economic recovery to happen and b.) even if the economy struggles back to life, significantly more people than jobs is not a viable situation unless you want crime and suicide and crazed dope fiends pounding on the windows of your Mercedes as you drive back to the million dollar home that sending your development tasks to India bought you. "D" is the only way that people are going to ahve jobs again if we don't do something about this situation. Personally I'm not really so into the idea of rampant unemployment turning the US into a 3rd world country again, but that's just me.
> such bullshit. it used to be so easy when you could tell friends and family to just buy a dell. Word to that! I dunno, replacing mobos and reusing the case and all that enver really bothered me that much...maybe because I *never have enough machines...case PSU and mobo stay together and get pressed into other service (servers firewalls etc) but I def understand what you're saying.
This is unbelievable. These companies expect us to abide by these agreements but don't even take them seriously themselves. If anyone had paid even the slightest bit of attention to this situation at the factory they would have realized the circular logic of this. The god damned lawyers want us to abide by these things, but even they realize that no one reads them. They make such a big deal about the fact that you are entering into an agreement when you click okay, and yet are not even capable of providing you a copy of that agreement to read. Fuck these companies. I have recommended Dell systems to people looking for the cheap, easy, pre-set-up computer for a long time. I have done this because I ahve some *excellent* Dell systems...one that is nearly 8 years old, runs 24/7/365 and is still on it's original IBM HDD. Now Dell has started in with the integrated soundcards, the garbage hardware, and now totally unfeasable click through agreements. I'm sure I have sold more than a few Dells in my time with my recommendations (and no one has ever complained) but they will not be selling any more as a result of my recommendations. This is the last straw.
...and yet you still won't be able to print pictures at resolutions as large as you can go to with a Beseler...
Actually I like "Prosumer" it sums up the "Spending more money makes me smarter than 'regular people' but I'm not a professional!" market...MY market! Seriously though...amateur creative photographers have different requirements than pro's or consumers...Prosumer sounds irritating but it does do a good job of describing a certain segment of the market.