Sounds like they got ripped off in the first place.
True, especially since we have the same toilets here (Berlin, Germany). IIRC they were installed for free, the deal being that the toilet operator uses the outside walls for advertising. And gets 50c per pee, but I doubt that this covers the expenses.
AFAICT we don't have any problems with drugs and prostitution on these toilets, in case you're curious.
Its not the fault of the system that americans stuff their faces with double whoppers meals, super-sized coca-colas and serving sizes at restaurants that could feed a horse.
Yes it is. I'd even say that this is the essence of the system: Make the people consume more than they actually need.
The people in China and Cuba are actually quite slender.
That's the capitalist system, not the health system, of course.
This is typical, someone looks at a foreign company, gloms onto something that meets a preconceived notion, then declare that's the reason they are successful.
Completely ignoring other facts, like why other companies are failing, or the mountains of successful project ran by people with no practical working knowledge of what their people do.
That's why I wrote amongst others. In fact, there are a lot more reasons for Toyota's success (you might want to google go-and-see or stop-and-fix). But these were not the issue here. My point is that managers who believe they can just manage anything and don't need to know the details of the work are just plain fools.
And this is the result of thorough analysis, not a preconceived notion.
The irony of course is that if they actually get jobs in the sector, this will be how they actually work anyway.
While this is most probably true, it doesn't justify outsourcing your course work (even though some readers might think so).
I attended a course on Scrum by Craig Larman recently, where brought utterly convincing arguments for what he called the Toyota Way, which, amongst others, requires that managers are excellent workers, not just administrators. If you want to tell people to do something, and if you want to judge their work, you need to know just as much about their work as they do.
That's one of the reasons why Toyota became the most successful car manufacturer in the world, and surely SW people can learn a lot from them.
My company is actually far from it. Our managers can't really make informed decisions, and this just so sucks.
The first day will probably be boring. Showing you where the stuff is any safety concerns you may do a simple experiment that you already did in high school.
Well, not quite. I had a lot of fun on the first day of my chemistry lab. The first words the lab manager said were these: "Do not stick your pipette into the large bottle with 1-molar hydrochloric acid because you'd spoil it. Pour some of it into another vessel and pull it from there. Whoever is caught putting his pipette into the bottle is immediately thrown out. Period."
Before the first day was over, 4 out of 30 were asked to come back next year if they really, really thought it'd be a good idea. Huh.
So pay attention. That's my advice to you. If you think something is boring, you might be in the wrong place.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
although God alone knows why it would want to.
The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
harmful electron buildup in the wires.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
The wikipedia ''community'' is already split by languages: An article that is almost unanimously accepted in the English wikipedia might be a candidate for deletion in the German version, where the laws are somewhat stricter.
The French wikipedia is usually even pickier about qualité; I witnessed some articles disappear there without so much of a discussion. What ever happened to laisser-aller?
All the time I have little flashes of realization or inspiration.
Full ack. I still remember vividly how I went to bed one day after hours of fruitless pondering over that day's differential geometry lecture, then woke up in the middle of the night and suddenly *knew* what it was all about. Before, it was all just meaningless equations and symbols, which had suddenly turned into images of familiar places and faces, sort of. (Yeah, I know, people sometimes call me weird.)
Of course you can say that this moment of 'revelation' was nothing by itself, but only the last step in a chain of hard work. But still, it was just far out and a joy to behold.
There is probably some air on the prices, but not as much as the author of the article makes you think.
I work in a SW company and once talked to a representative of a GSM provider over the lunch in a pause of a workshop. He told me (and he didn't tell me it's a trade secret) that the entire SMS messaging in their network was handled by one single Sun workstation.
IIRC it had cost about a million Euro (most of which was the price of SW) and just sits there, generating a revenue of roughly a million Euro per day. Maintenance costs: almost zero. Network load: almost zero, because messages are transmitted only in pauses between calls. Modulo New Year, nationwide televoting or football world cup, of course, where the assumption of a few messages between a few calls is no longer valid.
I think it is all about atmosphere: The rumpling, crackling and popping of a vinyl record is just more cozy. I can't get used to the beginning of Pink Floyd's "Shine on you crazy diamond" without the recurring pop that gets louder with every revolution, then vanishes.
It's like smoking in bars. They outlawed it here in Germany starting January 1st this year. And even though I don't smoke, the first time I went to a smoke-free bar I felt that something was missing: atmosphere. It is not the same any more.
Running Linux will simply make you a greater suspect - in the current environment, you obviously must have something to hide.
This has already happened. I mean, not literally Linux, but possessing software that can be useful to computer criminals is already illegal in Germany (since October). Like, e.g. Wireshark (http://wireshark.org/).
So if you're a network admin and examine your network using suspicious tools, you're halfway in prison.
I don't think the price for a *legal* copy of Windows is 'below $1' anywhere in the world. [...] most of the business software was legal; of course, people pirated everything for their home machines.
This is probably true, however I don't think OLPC competes with business SW, but rather with pirated SW (or having no computer at all).
And I saw large quantities of not-quite-legal copies of every imaginable piece of SW sold on Indian bazaars for a couple of rupees (which is <<$1).
I assume they will have to drop the regular license price of $90 to something not one half the cost of the laptop.
The price people pay for Windows in 3rd world countries is nowhere near $90. AFAIK, it's rather below $1. So there is absolutely no loss for M$ to buy a decent amount of XOs, put XP on them and resell them at no extra charge.
Certain applications requireing a specific version of Java to work - real fun when you have a user who's job functions involve two websites that require different versions, else they don't work.
I heard rumours about such problems, too, but never actually found such a case myself (oh well, maybe 8 years ago when Java was less mature), even though I use Java a lot and (being a Java developer myself) frequently look for Java applets to see what's out there.
I always upgrade almost immediately to the latest version, and since Sun has been striving for backwards compatibility for a while now, it just works.
Could you give me an example where an applet absolutely requires a certain version?
... I can expect a dawn raid from armed police/soldiers to take back my Airfix model?
Ha, they can't seize mine! I burnt it some 25 years ago in a failed launch attempt. It caught fire and died (somewhat) gracefully. Maybe gunpowder is not suited to propel plastic vehicles after all.
When I started working on my diplom in experimental physics, I wondered why the professor who headed the institute never ever entered the room where his supposedly favourite experiment stood, namely the Scanning Cathdoluminescence Microscope a.k.a. the CL.
When I asked one of the elders, he told me the story:
The CL It is mainly a scanning electron microscope where the electron beam is used to excite light from a semiconductor.
If you know a bit about SEMs, you know that they require a vacuum to operate. And if you know about luminescence, you know that you can increase the amount of light coming from the sample if you cool it down, preferably to 4K using liquid Helium.
This of course means that you need an even better vacuum, for insulation and because otherwise everything (!) in there would freeze on the sample and cover it instantly with a layer of frozen air, water and whatnot.
This vacuum was ensured by a huge conglomerate of pumps, cryotraps, shutters, airlocks etc. and carefully monitored over months and years.
Until one day said professor entered the room, saying "Hey, what's going?" and casually leaning his back on --- the BIG RED BUTTON!
Disaster ensued:
darkness fell upon the room (only the exit sign stayed on),
hydraulic locks slammed shut,
air gargled backwards through the oily backing pumps,
turbomolecular pumps loudly whined from 10k rpm to 0,
emergency valves tried to vent parts of the machine with specially cleaned nitrogene,
the helium boiled and the exhaust meter rotated like mad,
and --- because the insulating vacuum was gone and air humidity condensed on the hull --- the beloved CL quickly turned into a huge ice block, sitting in the center of the room.
This lead to violent cursing, a month of trying to re-establish acceptable conditions in and around the CL and a life-long exile for Prof. Smart Guy. He never dared enter the room. Even when he showed the room to visitors (Nobel prize bearers, kings and prime ministers), he carefully avoided crossing the threshold.
The BIG RED BUTTON, of course, was secured with a cuff, crafted by our technician to be nearly invisible (to pass the yearly security audit).
That comment is not quite correct. Read the follow-ups: extradition is allowed to other EU countries and international courts only, and only under a couple of further conditions, e.g. only if he won't face an unfair trial.
And I'm unsure if this condition can be fulfilled in the US at all; I remember someone describing the US legal system as: "Trial: A dozen laymen decides who has the better lawyer."
At least this is news to me, because German law explicitly prohibits extraditing German citizens to other countries. Instead, they are punished here (in DE) by a German court according to German law. You wouldn't want to be extradited to Singapore for spitting chewing gum on the pavement, or to Saudi-Arabia for jacking off.
This is quite clearly a study on USA population -assuming the term "Americans" refers to the people in the USA. The Americans are not representative in matters of belief. Americans tend to believe more in God then say Europeans. Unless by miracle genes mutated in the Americans, the study is limited in that it does not seem to rule out cultural inclinations.
I reckon this is where the other part of evolution kicks in: The strong belief of Americans is a consequence of selection, not mutation. Think: Mayflower, etc. The early settlers in America were religious fundamentalists^H^H^H^Hrefugees, and their (presumably already mutated) genes dominate the gene pool of the US.
...and their traditions, so it might not be an example of genetic selection after all.
But there is another example of genetic difference between America and Europe due to selection: I read somewhere (sorry, too long ago, can't cite any source) that the ratio of people with myopia is considerably lower in the US than in Europe. With all those dangers (gunfights, bears etc.) in the Wild West, survival would have depended a lot on good eyesight.
Anyway: I remember when George W Bush claimed he was on a mission from God against the Taliban and Saddam. This statement would have earned a European president a sure ticket into retirement (if not asylum).
Last time I've checked, the wavelength used in the microwave is about 12.5 cm. Sure, the bacteria are much smaller than that, but is it at all relevant?
Actually, the parent does say why it is relevant: there will be areas in the minima of the standing wave that won't heat sufficently to kill the microbes.
The microwave radiation in the oven is a standing wave. This means there are areas where the radiation is (close to) zero, and the buggers there won't be heated, even if they contain water. Put a sufficiently large chocolate bar into the microwave oven for some seconds and observe the patterns of solid and soft chocolate. Then eat the chocolate, of course.
The water (steam) is needed to average the heat out over the whole sponge to kill all bacteria in it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like they got ripped off in the first place.
True, especially since we have the same toilets here (Berlin, Germany). IIRC they were installed for free, the deal being that the toilet operator uses the outside walls for advertising. And gets 50c per pee, but I doubt that this covers the expenses.
AFAICT we don't have any problems with drugs and prostitution on these toilets, in case you're curious.
Its not the fault of the system that americans stuff their faces with double whoppers meals, super-sized coca-colas and serving sizes at restaurants that could feed a horse.
Yes it is. I'd even say that this is the essence of the system: Make the people consume more than they actually need.
The people in China and Cuba are actually quite slender.
That's the capitalist system, not the health system, of course.
Except he's wrong.
This is typical, someone looks at a foreign company, gloms onto something that meets a preconceived notion, then declare that's the reason they are successful.
Completely ignoring other facts, like why other companies are failing, or the mountains of successful project ran by people with no practical working knowledge of what their people do.
That's why I wrote amongst others. In fact, there are a lot more reasons for Toyota's success (you might want to google go-and-see or stop-and-fix). But these were not the issue here. My point is that managers who believe they can just manage anything and don't need to know the details of the work are just plain fools.
And this is the result of thorough analysis, not a preconceived notion.
I attended a course on Scrum by Craig Larman recently, where brought utterly convincing arguments for what he called the Toyota Way, which, amongst others, requires that managers are excellent workers, not just administrators. If you want to tell people to do something, and if you want to judge their work, you need to know just as much about their work as they do.
That's one of the reasons why Toyota became the most successful car manufacturer in the world, and surely SW people can learn a lot from them.
My company is actually far from it. Our managers can't really make informed decisions, and this just so sucks.
Well, not quite. I had a lot of fun on the first day of my chemistry lab. The first words the lab manager said were these: "Do not stick your pipette into the large bottle with 1-molar hydrochloric acid because you'd spoil it. Pour some of it into another vessel and pull it from there. Whoever is caught putting his pipette into the bottle is immediately thrown out. Period."
Before the first day was over, 4 out of 30 were asked to come back next year if they really, really thought it'd be a good idea. Huh.
So pay attention. That's my advice to you. If you think something is boring, you might be in the wrong place.
$ fortune -m "electron buildup"
The French wikipedia is usually even pickier about qualité; I witnessed some articles disappear there without so much of a discussion. What ever happened to laisser-aller?
I only wish they had made a song about how to meet and seduce girls (no, the Penis song is not much help, except for the basics).
Of course you can say that this moment of 'revelation' was nothing by itself, but only the last step in a chain of hard work. But still, it was just far out and a joy to behold.
IIRC it had cost about a million Euro (most of which was the price of SW) and just sits there, generating a revenue of roughly a million Euro per day. Maintenance costs: almost zero. Network load: almost zero, because messages are transmitted only in pauses between calls. Modulo New Year, nationwide televoting or football world cup, of course, where the assumption of a few messages between a few calls is no longer valid.
It's like smoking in bars. They outlawed it here in Germany starting January 1st this year. And even though I don't smoke, the first time I went to a smoke-free bar I felt that something was missing: atmosphere. It is not the same any more.
Cyrillic is a script, not a language. We are not speaking Latin here, do we?
I heard rumours about such problems, too, but never actually found such a case myself (oh well, maybe 8 years ago when Java was less mature), even though I use Java a lot and (being a Java developer myself) frequently look for Java applets to see what's out there.
I always upgrade almost immediately to the latest version, and since Sun has been striving for backwards compatibility for a while now, it just works.
Could you give me an example where an applet absolutely requires a certain version?
LOL. Alt+F4 and it's gone.
Ha, they can't seize mine! I burnt it some 25 years ago in a failed launch attempt. It caught fire and died (somewhat) gracefully. Maybe gunpowder is not suited to propel plastic vehicles after all.
When I asked one of the elders, he told me the story:
The CL It is mainly a scanning electron microscope where the electron beam is used to excite light from a semiconductor.
If you know a bit about SEMs, you know that they require a vacuum to operate. And if you know about luminescence, you know that you can increase the amount of light coming from the sample if you cool it down, preferably to 4K using liquid Helium.
This of course means that you need an even better vacuum, for insulation and because otherwise everything (!) in there would freeze on the sample and cover it instantly with a layer of frozen air, water and whatnot.
This vacuum was ensured by a huge conglomerate of pumps, cryotraps, shutters, airlocks etc. and carefully monitored over months and years.
Until one day said professor entered the room, saying "Hey, what's going?" and casually leaning his back on --- the BIG RED BUTTON!
Disaster ensued:
- darkness fell upon the room (only the exit sign stayed on),
- hydraulic locks slammed shut,
- air gargled backwards through the oily backing pumps,
- turbomolecular pumps loudly whined from 10k rpm to 0,
- emergency valves tried to vent parts of the machine with specially cleaned nitrogene,
- the helium boiled and the exhaust meter rotated like mad,
- and --- because the insulating vacuum was gone and air humidity condensed on the hull --- the beloved CL quickly turned into a huge ice block, sitting in the center of the room.
This lead to violent cursing, a month of trying to re-establish acceptable conditions in and around the CL and a life-long exile for Prof. Smart Guy. He never dared enter the room. Even when he showed the room to visitors (Nobel prize bearers, kings and prime ministers), he carefully avoided crossing the threshold.The BIG RED BUTTON, of course, was secured with a cuff, crafted by our technician to be nearly invisible (to pass the yearly security audit).
And I'm unsure if this condition can be fulfilled in the US at all; I remember someone describing the US legal system as: "Trial: A dozen laymen decides who has the better lawyer."
At least this is news to me, because German law explicitly prohibits extraditing German citizens to other countries. Instead, they are punished here (in DE) by a German court according to German law. You wouldn't want to be extradited to Singapore for spitting chewing gum on the pavement, or to Saudi-Arabia for jacking off.
Nothing new here, move along. Obviously the NASA has only stumbled across a couple of nive round moholes dug by the first hundred.
I reckon this is where the other part of evolution kicks in: The strong belief of Americans is a consequence of selection, not mutation. Think: Mayflower, etc. The early settlers in America were religious fundamentalists^H^H^H^Hrefugees, and their (presumably already mutated) genes dominate the gene pool of the US.
But there is another example of genetic difference between America and Europe due to selection: I read somewhere (sorry, too long ago, can't cite any source) that the ratio of people with myopia is considerably lower in the US than in Europe. With all those dangers (gunfights, bears etc.) in the Wild West, survival would have depended a lot on good eyesight.
Anyway: I remember when George W Bush claimed he was on a mission from God against the Taliban and Saddam. This statement would have earned a European president a sure ticket into retirement (if not asylum).
Actually, the parent does say why it is relevant: there will be areas in the minima of the standing wave that won't heat sufficently to kill the microbes.
The microwave radiation in the oven is a standing wave. This means there are areas where the radiation is (close to) zero, and the buggers there won't be heated, even if they contain water. Put a sufficiently large chocolate bar into the microwave oven for some seconds and observe the patterns of solid and soft chocolate. Then eat the chocolate, of course.
The water (steam) is needed to average the heat out over the whole sponge to kill all bacteria in it.