It's more a shot at microsoft's testing and or being out of touch with users. More likely it's a random case of idiot manager who liked clippy beyond any form of logic and all empirical evidence.
Seriously, start your product and look at clippy, doesn't it piss you off too? How do you not see things like that. Even if you didn't, how about beta testing. When 50,000 emails show up on day 2 headed "KILL THE DAMN PAPERCLIP THINGY" how do you not notice.
I mean these people need to learn how to listen to focus groups better or do surveys or something. Has anyone ever wished for more useless features in any microsoft product? Most people want existing pieces of "functionality" to disappear. When I install a new MS product the first thing I do is a survey of the things that will piss me off today and every day till I figure out how to kill them. This is prior to even starting a new file or whatever.
It's because the last time Nintendo faced Sony in a market they owned they got their ass handed to them on a plate. Back then Sony wasn't even a credible gaming company, they came practically out of thin air.
Sony has a track record of landing with seriously solid systems, games and marketing to back it up. So far, when sony has said it's going to deliver something, they have come up with everything they said at a minimum if not more. Nintendo on the other hand has been showing up to the christmas party in a halloween costume. They're there, and they have something all right, but no one knows quite why they brought that or who asked them to bring it. Management at Nintendo is borderline retarded these days. They have market dominance from old markets from previous management or something and they're just keeping what they've got. They do not appear to be capable of responding to an actual threat of any kind. The entry of a real contender could easily half their market share. Sony has so many good titles from ps1 and ps2 that if it even hinted it might open a porting option to handheld Nintendo may as well find something else to sell.
Microsoft meanwhile was never more than a joke in the gaming market. They were never considered to have a possibility of producing the software quality needed to compete in the console market. I've seen microsoft products and god knows I don't wanna use that stuff for fun.^^ They'll be around a while no doubt. If for no reason than they can flush buckets of money down the drain to keep their crap around. But they will never dominate consoles. M$ is like the antichrist of software quality and every conceivable measure of performance (unless you're looking for maximum resource consumption).
Agreed 100%. Sony opened ps1 by taking the exclusive rights to the next FF. That was the death of Nintendo. Nintendo walked away from the serious RPG market for all intents and purposes. That was just stupid.
Nintendo had one shot to come back with it's N64 and they showed up with a bunch of pansy pastel colour games that no one 12-30 would be caught dead looking at let alone buying. They had absolutely nothing that could be classified as anything other than an "alternative choice" game. As in something you play when you've had too much of the real games. You have two types of games, the violent/fast ones, and the rpg's and puzzle games (basically strategy over adrenaline). Nintendo walked away from or lost the major rpg's and put up a set of slow non violent games which fit neither market. I was a hardcore Nintendo fan right up to the PS. Nintendo just lost their grip on everything they once gave to gamers. Today they are the exact opposite of what they were when people loved them.
You could say that 35% of Sony's success came from Sony's efforts and the securing of FF and Twisted Metal etc for PS1. The rest was more about Nintendo shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly while closing their eyes to what they were doing to their players.
PS2 came out and sure it had little going for it, nothing but goodwill. I bought a PS2 because of the goodwill I had for Sony that carried over from PS1 and FF. It was really nice that the PS2 played PS1 games so I could ditch my old console. Honestly I have been less than thrilled with the ps2 titles. Summoner was interesting, the FF games are still there, but there is nothing special or original about ps2 games. Even regardless I am still happy with my purchase. Whether they got all their ducks in a row with the ps2 or not, Sony currently has the mentality that will lead to a great future for their gamers. I trust them to continue to make what I want to see, they have earned that trust with their decisions so far. Nintendo needs to fire the top half of their staff and replace it with something totally new, more attuned to the players, and better motivated.
Only thing I ever liked on radio was those late night mystery/spook/etc shows from when radio first started. Some radio station around here still plays old recordings of "the Whistler" and a bunch of better ones I can't remember the names tho. *That* was cool. They managed to build up good suspense with the lack of visual aids enhancing it. Hell, they even played the ads from back then. It didn't even bother me since they had the actors read them so they weren't intrusive in the general mood that had been created.
Sometimes not being able to see is a benefit depending on what you're doing. It's definitely good for suspense. Still, it's a shame that the radio shows have to go back to the 50's or 60's or whatever to find this kind of content. As far as I know, no one has made anything similar since. Personally don't care for "compelling and creative" though. That works better on TV where you can see it.
If you're a radio producer, how about starting up something like that suspense stuff again? Doesn't necessarily have to be old-fashioned (read: feel free to use modern higher-quality sound effects, and read ads from modern day products). Can't be that hard or expensive to pay a bunch of out of work actors to read some scripts. For that matter, can't be too hard to pay an out of work journalist or something to write their scripts. For that matter, post an ad in a newspaper or University for submissions. Some people might do it just for fame or credit.
I'll bet other radio stations would pay for your content if you do. They would if they were smart. Dunno if radio has syndication or what. But even just cold-calling would probably create something similar really fast. Not a lot of original stuff out there these days. Just a bunch of a**holes playing practical jokes, phoning random people and talking about crap nobody cares about.
Please somebody do it. And if you do, please give a call to the radio stations in Vancouver, Canada and offer them some.
There is not this cultural difference that you think there is, you just have not yet come to accept that money rules
the north american continent. The reason it's called North American is because you are fucking owned by Americans...
You so sure about that? Sure, money is important. But that is one of the biggest differences between us. I'd say in Canada we worship money but not to the exclusion of all else like in the US. I like to think of our approach as more of a long-term view. What I see out of the US is a lot of short-term thinking, especially lately. Let's summarize in these points/questions.
If you could get $10,000 tomorrow but it would cost you all your friends and goodwill would you take it? If you're an American at heart, you answer yes.
Point 2. Here in Canada we regularly face issues when money tries to dominate us. Take hockey, our unofficial national sport. The NHL specifically. There has long been a trend of rising wages, and financial problems of Canadian clubs (basically if a Canadian club hits the bottom of the rankings, it'll be gone the next year). One of the financial differences stems from the fact that we make our clubs pay for their arenas, where in the US that gets subsidized. Makes it hard for our clubs to turn a profit and stay competitive against US clubs, or so they say. I seem to remember the clubs asking for tax breaks and such for the arenas. At the cost of possibly losing our sport, we were opting for no. It's all a principle thing. If it becomes about money, then the US can have it. We'll build something from the ground up to replace it. Even our cherished sport. The reason it is cherished is not because it generates hot dog sales.
Also, I'm pretty sure "North American" doesn't exclusively refer to the US. You adopted the American term from the continent, not the other way around. Kind of like declaring yourself to be a human, or from Earth. Good to see education is alive and well in the *US of A* (think about that for a sec). Sorry. I had to.
Maybe, if we can see your point, and you can understand the causes of our situation, we will be able to work together (as we will eventually have to do) to find amenable solutions to the problems that give rise to belligerent telemarketers. But until Canadians can realize that, Americans will never be able to see past your perceived cultural virginity to be able to find a truly workable solution.
You refer to learning to work together and creating solutions etc. However, I like our relationship now, and don't really desire for it to change. I just don't see the problems you imply are there. If you mean you can't be bothered to absorb us until we get over our "values" and worship money then I hope you'll be disappointed. I for one don't want to get over my values, and I would submit that your worship of money is what creates your telemarketing problem (among others). If you developed substantial values (in addition to the value of money), maybe your problems would go away on their own (perhaps we do see the causes of your situation...).
Hope that war doesn't try to solve the problems first.
What the hell are you implying? Or is that just your sig that you use for all occassions. Could be either these days.;) Are you suggesting that you would murder Canadians in an effort to help us learn to worship money. Thanks. Buddy.
If the project was done as part of a job it would be viewed as positively as any other related work experience. But this is more of an extension of their current job. Very much like belonging to industry related people networking organizations. There are benefits of that type of thing for the company as well.
However, I am very unlikely to do more than take a cursory glance at your open source code itself. If it looks like the language I'll believe that you've used it at least at a modest level. I don't expect to try to prove any more than you've seen the language before in an interview process. Ultimately, if you can't code and code well, you won't last 4 weeks. It's not that painful for the company, and it doesn't happen that often.
Also, I structure my interview process to discover whether a candidate has coded before through other means. You can't count on everyone bringing code samples. I guess all I'm saying is that although theoretically it gives me the possibility of looking more in-depth into the exact level of your programming abilities, in practice I won't be doing that anyway.
In my case, the total time I spend considering an applicant amounts to around 3 hours while enduring constant distractions. That includes reading the resume, preparing for the interview, doing the interview (usually an hour), reviewing cursory information like code samples, and discussing the attributes of the candidate with others involved in the hiring process.
I am very busy, and HR tasks don't even make my top 10 list of responsibilities. My projects were months behind before we started working on them. Spending half a day finding and reviewing someone's code is usually not the best use of my time. Especially when all it tells me is that the person can code.
I care very little whether the code is brilliant or not. In fact, I see that thought process as undesirable. I don't want brilliant code. I want cost-effective sustainable code that does the job well and has few problems. Perhaps you mean the same thing and I'm misinterpreting your statement. However, there is a tendency for coders to think complex and cool is somehow better. It's more fun perhaps. But generally it's less stable, and more difficult for other programmers to maintain or alter. It also usually costs more in time, effort and problems than something straightforward. Also, a focus on "brilliant coding" sounds a lot like ignoring the social aspects of programming. It makes it sound like if you can live in a closet and put out "brilliantly complex code" without interacting with team members, that is somehow okay. Team players and good personalities capable of handling stress well are far more important than the quality of your code. Poor coding quality can usually be improved with process (design and code reviews, coding standards), and even if not we'll just ensure that the tasks you're given are tasks where that doesn't matter so much. Core coding requiring higher quality will be redirected to others if it's a problem for you.
Then again. We are a business software type of shop. We aren't trying to break large numbers of technical barriers (except perhaps volume processing). Perhaps "brilliance" is far more valuable in a place where you're inventing something that "can't be done". Take my comments as not representing everything that's out there for sure. It helps if you understand the environment you're applying to. Business application development is a very bottom line kind of business. Results are rarely enough. If you don't have predictable, verifiable milestones along the way, managers start pissing themselves. "Brilliant coding" rarely produces such milestones on regular intervals.
but I think I'll catch on to this twisted game soon enough. The question, however, is how do you maintain a sense of optimism in spite of all this?
Develop an exceedingly evil sense of humour along with your co-workers. We went through so many rounds of lay-offs that we started to joke it was another round everytime we had a corporate meeting?
Someone says -- "Where's the accountant? In the bathroom or did he not make the cut this week?" -- Laughter from employees... dead silence from management. He'd been fired along with others.
Started to refer to it as the "corporate survivor series".
Another thing that helped was thinking of our company as a revolving door. We were letting good people go, every one that placed in a different company was a potential contact for when you needed a job. You wouldn't even have to say why you left, they'd already know.
Haven't had cable TV in 4 years. Haven't missed it. Actually believe my quality of life went _up_. Apparently a lot of people spent those 4 years watching something called "Survivor" and it's 800 clones. Was it worth it? Doesn't sound like it.
Even at my company open source dev would not go over well. It's not a slacker thing, it's a lack of focus thing.
It wouldn't get you filtered out immediately, but it would be a thing we'd watch for. Basically it would add subtle tests to your interview to see if you would focus on our problems or spend your nights forgetting our issues and coming to work thinking about other things. Answer every question I ask with an example from the same open source project you spent 35 hours working on last we and you're not getting the job. We don't need people with confused priorities who may overwork themselves in their off hours. I'd feel a lot better if I knew you weren't going to work on any such projects during your employment with us. Putting it down as historical achievements is better than a currently active one, but not much. For us, it would earn you nothing, and could be used against you. Even if you do it, leave it off your resume if you have anything else.
Your point about meeting difficult deadlines in open source is not a good one either and I wouldn't mention that in an interview at my company. I don't want there to be two deadlines next Friday, one for my project and one for your open source project. It's not a competition I want to have. You're hired to make my deadlines in preference to all others.
Also, if you hijack my interview to get me involved in the design and implementation of your personal pet project, I will feel justified in not hiring you as you're already demonstrating what I feared. I like people who can get involved. I don't like people that are already involved in the wrong thing.
Worst of all, I'm a coder, not an hr person. I care because if you drop the ball because you needed to work on an external project (paid or not) then I'll be the one picking it up for you in my off-hours. Hell, if I wanted to code in my off-hours I'd rather take up a cool open source project of my own than do your work for you.
2)Take over the emerging Chinese domestic market across the board.
3)Make huge cash over there as their economy booms.
4)Make a second wave of huge cash after their exchange rate skyrockets.
5)Hire "competent" managers from here and send them to work all over your company right before selling it to assure it's slow snowballing destruction (slow so the effects won't be associated with you).
6)Take all your money back here.
7)Buy everything.
8)Rewrite the rules so that the economy doesn't suck in this way, and can't ever again.
4 years ago my company lost 95% of it's revenue generating contracts (programming consulting at the time) in a 3 month period, 35-40% went to India. As an added insult we had to train them while laying off our staff, and keep 1 person around on an el cheapo retainer just in case they screwed up badly down there and needed help. We helped ensure there was no risk to them while they screwed us. Course, since then we rebuilt and have recovered significantly by creating different products. But man did that period of time suck. Remember that 10% isn't evenly spread out.
They don't count kids, retired persons, or anyone not actively trying to find a job. Give up looking and you fall into the latter category. As for what they do. Some live off their savings, go back to school, travel, become a stay-at-home parent, or whatever. We had a guy at my work quit and paint things for himself for a year and a half (living off savings) before looking for work again. Bit stressed out.
I've gotten to the point where I wonder if I couldn't make something really cool happen on my own. Except of course I'm on salary so I end up working around 2 times what I should for the job. Add to that significant travel expectations and I just have no time to advance any ideas or any side ventures on my own.
Given my skill sets I'm sitting down and telling myself I need to leave the corporate world and go my own way. I even have a large cushion of cash to fall back on. Plus my significant hours have resulted in a minimalist livestyle anyway. I estimate I could live for 5 years on my current savings at my current lifestyle, less the costs of other activities I take up (especially significant if you try to start a business). I just don't have time to piece it together while working. And I'm pissing away valuable years if I try.
Only one thing holding me back. My attachment to having a stable respectable job that pays decently. All the skills are there, I could easily acquire support from skilled friends in any profession I could want. I could probably scrape together 50-100K for starting money if I begged a bit without approaching professional lenders. But it's pretty hard to actually quit to do nothing and take a huge "risk" on possibilities coming through. I'm much more the type of person to try to set it all up before I quit, but I just can't seem to get the time together for that unless I quit first.
Anybody want to post a couple formulas? How about the ones you'd need to relate 25 tesla's to mass that it could pull or lift. I'd settle for something that translates it to force.
You can pull ions straight out of space. No need to bring your own fuel. Think of it like a submarine powered by water. That's also why they're good for long-term missions. Infinite fuel. You can just leave the pedal to the metal the whole trip. Granted, your acceleration sucks, but it doesn't stop.
I remember a dilbert cartoon about people paying for fat pipes for much the same reason.
It will happen. You don't need friction, you just need ass-kicking "manouvering thrusters" on every side.
You can have your stupid tie fighters. I'm waiting for the xwing with "shields". Who the hell builds a space fighter and relies on non-regenerating "armour". Although, maybe I'd be up for the TIE++ model depending on how long shields take. You know, the one made out of carbon nanotubes with backup nanobot repair packs.
"these brilliant folks"
You assume.
Simple difference. Most virus writers you hear about aren't really programmers. They're hobbiests, often high school/early U types. That's also why most viruses aren't that significant, obvious, mostly just jamming networks, email, and annoying computer users. Every now and then you'll have to reinstall something. That's mostly because the people that write them suck. They're learning and having fun playing "hacker" and exploring an api set or two. They rank right up there with phreaks (phone hackers). It's kind of neat, but it isn't really skilled per se. At least not relative to what a good programmer could do if they had a mind to.
I picture spammers as "technologically savvy" pyramid scheme types. You know, those people who sell Amway and crap. Why would someone do that? For the promise of quick and easy money with little effort and not having to join a formal corporation. Real businesspeople don't get involved in pathetic crap like that. It feels better to earn a real living, even if it is harder. Same thing with programmers and virus writers I guess.
Most spamming seems at least peripherally related to making money and earning a living, albeit a modest living. When you're on the bottom of society and have few other prospects, or the ones you did have didn't turn out, why not do spam? Someone above suggested many live in mobile homes. Maybe it's just a group of decently bright people from lower class backgrounds who weren't able to break into the job market in a satisfactory way. Maybe they couldn't afford schooling, and came from poor families or whatever. Maybe spamming is some kind of attempt to seize a bit of the respect and a piece of the type of semi-stable employment they could've had if things had worked out a little better for them.
Course, before I get all mushy for the slimy-types. I'm also sure that there are other types of spammers who do it for evil. There are predatory people out there who will do things and take any advantages they can if they think they can get away with. Money is money. Whether you're ripping off grandmothers or stealing from a bank it's all good. Those types have no excuses and get no sympathies. Need to attend some ethics courses while staying at the local big house.
Yup. Basically at my current job I signed the original employment agreement accepting their offer then they pulled a bunch of IP docs out as a "second wave" of contracts. That second wave included signing over everything from actual code to mere design or technique work that I created on my spare time. Don't recall the list of what I signed over, but it was about 7 or so lines long of comma separated items and I remember being pretty sure they covered anything I or any of my family members or decendants would ever create. Not mentioned prior of course. I'm a new grad at that point. What do I say? No I don't want your $42K job right out of school with options and unbelievable benefits because I want to be ideological?
It wasn't presented as an arguable point. It's more like refusing to give a SIN (Canada's version of SSN) or something. The contract is done and now you're just fulfilling the legal necessities of implementing it. Welcome to non-competition docs, global intellectual property agreements etc. I believe prior to that in interviews all I ever agreed to was making myself available to travel at the drop of a hat. Then a few months later after my work became critical I found carrying a pager and cell phone and being accessible 24/7 to any of 150 people ranging from co-workers to customers to suddenly be a new job requirement. That one still pisses me off. We're having huge disagreements about whether I need to be carrying a cell phone on *_vacations_*.
We've got a real big brother drive on these days. It's basically an extension of some kind of super customer service model.
All that "customer relationship" and "customer partnership" focus of the last few years is coming back to haunt us. That's where you no longer just sell a product and walk away anymore. Now you basically live with them, answer phone calls at 2am for the next 20 years because you sold them a blender and they were lonely and couldn't remember if frappe was faster than chop.
In this new great scheme, your company sells the friendship of their employees to the customer for free. Therefore if you aren't there for a customer, even on your own time, you the employee are at fault. Even if they phone at 2am for some stupid reason.
Heaven forbid you should critize a customer on your own time, esp. publically. That's a clear violation of the corporate ass-kissing policy.
There is some justification for it though. Customers that like your employees are more likely to throw your company bones, and what's not to love about a company that makes it's employees all wipe your ass for you on their personal time if you choose.
But still, it just isn't right. Just because our companies CAN take our personalities from us doesn't mean they should. Basically, being a part of a corporation means subsuming your identity and adopting a corporate face mask in it's place. You are their personal avatar and the face of the company. It doesn't matter how stupid the customer is. The worst part is that it doesn't result in the company making more money either. Just the opposite, you end up doing nearly everything for free while getting little from customers in return.
Should really be something in the basic human rights section of the constitution for not having to hide your identity for not being perfect. I'm unsure of what the wording should be, but showing displeasure, not looking happy at all times, and generally having a perfect serving robot personality should not be cause for dismissal within limits.
It will be a sad day when everyone is that terrified of being unpleasant for even a moment that they have to hide their personality outside of the confines of their home, or perhaps not even there....
It had an awesome book called "Planet Under Stress" edited by Constance Mungall & Digby McLaren for the Royal Society of Canada, oxford university press. I'd seriously recommend picking it up for anyone interested.
It basically had a far greater scientific based analysis than anything you'll see in any public forum on this topic (as in, it covered a lot of actual research and accepted knowledge about what is actually happening rather than what everyone guesses based on temp readings taken on airport tarmacs). It covered other environmental issues as well.
Anyway, it had a big section on global warming cycles. Apparently there is a massive shift that has occurred at infrequent intervals in the past. Basically the whole dynamic of ocean currents shifts in a radical way, and if I recall correctly, they were stating this coincided with a shift in the direction of the Earth's magnetic field (side note: I wonder what that'll screw up). Something about historically preserved magnetized rock along the ocean floor which shows the shift in the magnetic field of the planet as well as indicating massive ocean current change.
Anyway, I believe a major if not THE major heat sink in the ocean is near northern canada off the east coast. (Hence not surprising you would notice climate change there first, natural or not). That's apparently where the cold forces the incoming water to dive substantially and it triggers this whole huge mechanism which greatly affects not only the climate levels, but also the climate regions (aka where the tropical regions are etc). Essentially the direction that warm water travels over a large potion of the globe as it goes to cold water basically ends there.
This is a naturally (as in this used to happen before humans) weakening process which degrades over time and eventually flips in apparently a radically fast shift. Eventually the cold can't force the hot water down anymore and the entire ocean current system changes when it breaks. Now the hot water goes elsewhere, changing the hot/cold regions of the world around a bit (consider the heat waves generated by an al nino current or whatever, imagine that on a global scale current shift), we don't know what the revised current system looks like, just that the old current motion breaks, presumably it finds a new cold point to focus on, or else a hot point becomes dominant and pushes water rather than pulls. In any case, this could result in a flip of our climate quite substantially. And it may be a long term mostly unfixable thingy (unless you have a way to chill the ocean, pull off a couple thousand years worth of built up heat and can reset the ocean current directions back how it was).
Anyway, seems to me that greenhouse gases are pretty piddly stuff compared to what has naturally been happening to our oceans. From arguments I hear greenhouse gas theories are mostly full of crap anyway. The change in the greenhouse gases is a massive equilibrium system, and the reverse effects are significant enough that they eventually (thousand years) break the heat effects and begin a global chilling (our planet has survived this before). Releasing greenhouse gases triggers counter effects on an increasing scale. I believe I've heard at least a half dozen substantially contending reverse effects that will trigger one after the other as this goes up and the latter ones could quite likely reverse the whole effect. Starts with greenhouse gases actually reflect some of the heat we would have received back out to space, goes through a few more phases (too lazy to look them up again), ends up with ocean algae dying off which triggers a massive reduction in natural greenhouse gas emissions etc. Hell, I added one of my own after that, maybe rise the temp enough and it'll trigger volcano eruptions like st helens which'll coat the earth's atmosphere with powdered rock for a while shutting out the sun to cool it off. (Take a high temp system under pr
Took an elective course on environmental change once.
It had an awesome book called "Planet Under Stress" edited by Constance Mungall & Digby McLaren for the Royal Society of Canada, oxford university press. I'd seriously recommend picking it up for anyone interested.
It basically had a far greater scientific based analysis than anything you'll see in any public forum on this topic (as in, it covered a lot of actual research and accepted knowledge about what is actually happening rather than what everyone guesses based on temp readings taken on airport tarmacs). It covered other environmental issues as well.
Anyway, it had a big section on global warming cycles. Apparently there is a massive shift that has occurred at infrequent intervals in the past. Basically the whole dynamic of ocean currents shifts in a radical way, and if I recall correctly, they were stating this coincided with a shift in the direction of the Earth's magnetic field (side note: I wonder what that'll screw up). Something about historically preserved magnetized rock along the ocean floor which shows the shift in the magnetic field of the planet as well as indicating massive ocean current change.
Anyway, I believe a major if not THE major heat sink in the ocean is near northern canada off the east coast. (Hence not surprising you would notice climate change there first, natural or not). That's apparently where the cold forces the incoming water to dive substantially and it triggers this whole huge mechanism which greatly affects not only the climate levels, but also the climate regions (aka where the tropical regions are etc). Essentially the direction that warm water travels over a large potion of the globe as it goes to cold water basically ends there.
This is a naturally (as in this used to happen before humans) weakening process which degrades over time and eventually flips in apparently a radically fast shift. Eventually the cold can't force the hot water down anymore and the entire ocean current system changes when it breaks. Now the hot water goes elsewhere, changing the hot/cold regions of the world around a bit (consider the heat waves generated by an al nino current or whatever, imagine that on a global scale current shift), we don't know what the revised current system looks like, just that the old current motion breaks, presumably it finds a new cold point to focus on, or else a hot point becomes dominant and pushes water rather than pulls. In any case, this could result in a flip of our climate quite substantially. And it may be a long term mostly unfixable thingy (unless you have a way to chill the ocean, pull off a couple thousand years worth of built up heat and can reset the ocean current directions back how it was).
Anyway, seems to me that greenhouse gases are pretty piddly stuff compared to what has naturally been happening to our oceans. From arguments I hear greenhouse gas theories are mostly full of crap anyway. The change in the greenhouse gases is a massive equilibrium system, and the reverse effects are significant enough that they eventually (thousand years) break the heat effects and begin a global chilling (our planet has survived this before). Releasing greenhouse gases triggers counter effects on an increasing scale. I believe I've heard at least a half dozen substantially contending reverse effects that will trigger one after the other as this goes up and the latter ones could quite likely reverse the whole effect. Starts with greenhouse gases actually reflect some of the heat we would have received back out to space, goes through a few more phases (too lazy to look them up again), ends up with ocean algae dying off which triggers a massive reduction in natural greenhouse gas emissions etc. Hell, I added one of my own after that, maybe rise the temp enough and it'll trigger volcano eruptions like st helens which'll coat the earth's atmosphere with powdered rock for a while shutting out the sun to cool it off. (Take a high temp system under pressure which occasionally breaks through anyway, in
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Damn you I want to cry. I clicked on your link only to find the place that invested in my company and worse yet what you say is true. >
It's more a shot at microsoft's testing and or being out of touch with users. More likely it's a random case of idiot manager who liked clippy beyond any form of logic and all empirical evidence.
Seriously, start your product and look at clippy, doesn't it piss you off too? How do you not see things like that. Even if you didn't, how about beta testing. When 50,000 emails show up on day 2 headed "KILL THE DAMN PAPERCLIP THINGY" how do you not notice.
I mean these people need to learn how to listen to focus groups better or do surveys or something. Has anyone ever wished for more useless features in any microsoft product? Most people want existing pieces of "functionality" to disappear. When I install a new MS product the first thing I do is a survey of the things that will piss me off today and every day till I figure out how to kill them. This is prior to even starting a new file or whatever.
It's because the last time Nintendo faced Sony in a market they owned they got their ass handed to them on a plate. Back then Sony wasn't even a credible gaming company, they came practically out of thin air.
Sony has a track record of landing with seriously solid systems, games and marketing to back it up. So far, when sony has said it's going to deliver something, they have come up with everything they said at a minimum if not more. Nintendo on the other hand has been showing up to the christmas party in a halloween costume. They're there, and they have something all right, but no one knows quite why they brought that or who asked them to bring it. Management at Nintendo is borderline retarded these days. They have market dominance from old markets from previous management or something and they're just keeping what they've got. They do not appear to be capable of responding to an actual threat of any kind. The entry of a real contender could easily half their market share. Sony has so many good titles from ps1 and ps2 that if it even hinted it might open a porting option to handheld Nintendo may as well find something else to sell.
Microsoft meanwhile was never more than a joke in the gaming market. They were never considered to have a possibility of producing the software quality needed to compete in the console market. I've seen microsoft products and god knows I don't wanna use that stuff for fun.^^ They'll be around a while no doubt. If for no reason than they can flush buckets of money down the drain to keep their crap around. But they will never dominate consoles. M$ is like the antichrist of software quality and every conceivable measure of performance (unless you're looking for maximum resource consumption).
Agreed 100%. Sony opened ps1 by taking the exclusive rights to the next FF. That was the death of Nintendo. Nintendo walked away from the serious RPG market for all intents and purposes. That was just stupid. Nintendo had one shot to come back with it's N64 and they showed up with a bunch of pansy pastel colour games that no one 12-30 would be caught dead looking at let alone buying. They had absolutely nothing that could be classified as anything other than an "alternative choice" game. As in something you play when you've had too much of the real games. You have two types of games, the violent/fast ones, and the rpg's and puzzle games (basically strategy over adrenaline). Nintendo walked away from or lost the major rpg's and put up a set of slow non violent games which fit neither market. I was a hardcore Nintendo fan right up to the PS. Nintendo just lost their grip on everything they once gave to gamers. Today they are the exact opposite of what they were when people loved them. You could say that 35% of Sony's success came from Sony's efforts and the securing of FF and Twisted Metal etc for PS1. The rest was more about Nintendo shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly while closing their eyes to what they were doing to their players. PS2 came out and sure it had little going for it, nothing but goodwill. I bought a PS2 because of the goodwill I had for Sony that carried over from PS1 and FF. It was really nice that the PS2 played PS1 games so I could ditch my old console. Honestly I have been less than thrilled with the ps2 titles. Summoner was interesting, the FF games are still there, but there is nothing special or original about ps2 games. Even regardless I am still happy with my purchase. Whether they got all their ducks in a row with the ps2 or not, Sony currently has the mentality that will lead to a great future for their gamers. I trust them to continue to make what I want to see, they have earned that trust with their decisions so far. Nintendo needs to fire the top half of their staff and replace it with something totally new, more attuned to the players, and better motivated.
Sometimes not being able to see is a benefit depending on what you're doing. It's definitely good for suspense. Still, it's a shame that the radio shows have to go back to the 50's or 60's or whatever to find this kind of content. As far as I know, no one has made anything similar since. Personally don't care for "compelling and creative" though. That works better on TV where you can see it.
If you're a radio producer, how about starting up something like that suspense stuff again? Doesn't necessarily have to be old-fashioned (read: feel free to use modern higher-quality sound effects, and read ads from modern day products). Can't be that hard or expensive to pay a bunch of out of work actors to read some scripts. For that matter, can't be too hard to pay an out of work journalist or something to write their scripts. For that matter, post an ad in a newspaper or University for submissions. Some people might do it just for fame or credit.
I'll bet other radio stations would pay for your content if you do. They would if they were smart. Dunno if radio has syndication or what. But even just cold-calling would probably create something similar really fast. Not a lot of original stuff out there these days. Just a bunch of a**holes playing practical jokes, phoning random people and talking about crap nobody cares about.
Please somebody do it. And if you do, please give a call to the radio stations in Vancouver, Canada and offer them some.
You try hitting something as far away as Earth. Ever played snooker? ;>
You so sure about that? Sure, money is important. But that is one of the biggest differences between us. I'd say in Canada we worship money but not to the exclusion of all else like in the US. I like to think of our approach as more of a long-term view. What I see out of the US is a lot of short-term thinking, especially lately. Let's summarize in these points/questions.
If you could get $10,000 tomorrow but it would cost you all your friends and goodwill would you take it? If you're an American at heart, you answer yes.
Point 2. Here in Canada we regularly face issues when money tries to dominate us. Take hockey, our unofficial national sport. The NHL specifically. There has long been a trend of rising wages, and financial problems of Canadian clubs (basically if a Canadian club hits the bottom of the rankings, it'll be gone the next year). One of the financial differences stems from the fact that we make our clubs pay for their arenas, where in the US that gets subsidized. Makes it hard for our clubs to turn a profit and stay competitive against US clubs, or so they say. I seem to remember the clubs asking for tax breaks and such for the arenas. At the cost of possibly losing our sport, we were opting for no. It's all a principle thing. If it becomes about money, then the US can have it. We'll build something from the ground up to replace it. Even our cherished sport. The reason it is cherished is not because it generates hot dog sales.
Also, I'm pretty sure "North American" doesn't exclusively refer to the US. You adopted the American term from the continent, not the other way around. Kind of like declaring yourself to be a human, or from Earth. Good to see education is alive and well in the *US of A* (think about that for a sec). Sorry. I had to.
Maybe, if we can see your point, and you can understand the causes of our situation, we will be able to work together (as we will eventually have to do) to find amenable solutions to the problems that give rise to belligerent telemarketers. But until Canadians can realize that, Americans will never be able to see past your perceived cultural virginity to be able to find a truly workable solution.
You refer to learning to work together and creating solutions etc. However, I like our relationship now, and don't really desire for it to change. I just don't see the problems you imply are there. If you mean you can't be bothered to absorb us until we get over our "values" and worship money then I hope you'll be disappointed. I for one don't want to get over my values, and I would submit that your worship of money is what creates your telemarketing problem (among others). If you developed substantial values (in addition to the value of money), maybe your problems would go away on their own (perhaps we do see the causes of your situation...).
Hope that war doesn't try to solve the problems first.
What the hell are you implying? Or is that just your sig that you use for all occassions. Could be either these days. ;) Are you suggesting that you would murder Canadians in an effort to help us learn to worship money. Thanks. Buddy.
However, I am very unlikely to do more than take a cursory glance at your open source code itself. If it looks like the language I'll believe that you've used it at least at a modest level. I don't expect to try to prove any more than you've seen the language before in an interview process. Ultimately, if you can't code and code well, you won't last 4 weeks. It's not that painful for the company, and it doesn't happen that often.
Also, I structure my interview process to discover whether a candidate has coded before through other means. You can't count on everyone bringing code samples. I guess all I'm saying is that although theoretically it gives me the possibility of looking more in-depth into the exact level of your programming abilities, in practice I won't be doing that anyway.
In my case, the total time I spend considering an applicant amounts to around 3 hours while enduring constant distractions. That includes reading the resume, preparing for the interview, doing the interview (usually an hour), reviewing cursory information like code samples, and discussing the attributes of the candidate with others involved in the hiring process.
I am very busy, and HR tasks don't even make my top 10 list of responsibilities. My projects were months behind before we started working on them. Spending half a day finding and reviewing someone's code is usually not the best use of my time. Especially when all it tells me is that the person can code.
I care very little whether the code is brilliant or not. In fact, I see that thought process as undesirable. I don't want brilliant code. I want cost-effective sustainable code that does the job well and has few problems. Perhaps you mean the same thing and I'm misinterpreting your statement. However, there is a tendency for coders to think complex and cool is somehow better. It's more fun perhaps. But generally it's less stable, and more difficult for other programmers to maintain or alter. It also usually costs more in time, effort and problems than something straightforward. Also, a focus on "brilliant coding" sounds a lot like ignoring the social aspects of programming. It makes it sound like if you can live in a closet and put out "brilliantly complex code" without interacting with team members, that is somehow okay. Team players and good personalities capable of handling stress well are far more important than the quality of your code. Poor coding quality can usually be improved with process (design and code reviews, coding standards), and even if not we'll just ensure that the tasks you're given are tasks where that doesn't matter so much. Core coding requiring higher quality will be redirected to others if it's a problem for you.
Then again. We are a business software type of shop. We aren't trying to break large numbers of technical barriers (except perhaps volume processing). Perhaps "brilliance" is far more valuable in a place where you're inventing something that "can't be done". Take my comments as not representing everything that's out there for sure. It helps if you understand the environment you're applying to. Business application development is a very bottom line kind of business. Results are rarely enough. If you don't have predictable, verifiable milestones along the way, managers start pissing themselves. "Brilliant coding" rarely produces such milestones on regular intervals.
That's my take anyway.
Develop an exceedingly evil sense of humour along with your co-workers. We went through so many rounds of lay-offs that we started to joke it was another round everytime we had a corporate meeting?
Someone says -- "Where's the accountant? In the bathroom or did he not make the cut this week?" -- Laughter from employees... dead silence from management. He'd been fired along with others.
Started to refer to it as the "corporate survivor series".
Another thing that helped was thinking of our company as a revolving door. We were letting good people go, every one that placed in a different company was a potential contact for when you needed a job. You wouldn't even have to say why you left, they'd already know.
Haven't had cable TV in 4 years. Haven't missed it. Actually believe my quality of life went _up_. Apparently a lot of people spent those 4 years watching something called "Survivor" and it's 800 clones. Was it worth it? Doesn't sound like it.
It wouldn't get you filtered out immediately, but it would be a thing we'd watch for. Basically it would add subtle tests to your interview to see if you would focus on our problems or spend your nights forgetting our issues and coming to work thinking about other things. Answer every question I ask with an example from the same open source project you spent 35 hours working on last we and you're not getting the job. We don't need people with confused priorities who may overwork themselves in their off hours. I'd feel a lot better if I knew you weren't going to work on any such projects during your employment with us. Putting it down as historical achievements is better than a currently active one, but not much. For us, it would earn you nothing, and could be used against you. Even if you do it, leave it off your resume if you have anything else.
Your point about meeting difficult deadlines in open source is not a good one either and I wouldn't mention that in an interview at my company. I don't want there to be two deadlines next Friday, one for my project and one for your open source project. It's not a competition I want to have. You're hired to make my deadlines in preference to all others.
Also, if you hijack my interview to get me involved in the design and implementation of your personal pet project, I will feel justified in not hiring you as you're already demonstrating what I feared. I like people who can get involved. I don't like people that are already involved in the wrong thing.
Worst of all, I'm a coder, not an hr person. I care because if you drop the ball because you needed to work on an external project (paid or not) then I'll be the one picking it up for you in my off-hours. Hell, if I wanted to code in my off-hours I'd rather take up a cool open source project of my own than do your work for you.
2)Take over the emerging Chinese domestic market across the board.
3)Make huge cash over there as their economy booms.
4)Make a second wave of huge cash after their exchange rate skyrockets.
5)Hire "competent" managers from here and send them to work all over your company right before selling it to assure it's slow snowballing destruction (slow so the effects won't be associated with you).
6)Take all your money back here.
7)Buy everything.
8)Rewrite the rules so that the economy doesn't suck in this way, and can't ever again.
4 years ago my company lost 95% of it's revenue generating contracts (programming consulting at the time) in a 3 month period, 35-40% went to India. As an added insult we had to train them while laying off our staff, and keep 1 person around on an el cheapo retainer just in case they screwed up badly down there and needed help. We helped ensure there was no risk to them while they screwed us. Course, since then we rebuilt and have recovered significantly by creating different products. But man did that period of time suck. Remember that 10% isn't evenly spread out.
They don't count kids, retired persons, or anyone not actively trying to find a job. Give up looking and you fall into the latter category. As for what they do. Some live off their savings, go back to school, travel, become a stay-at-home parent, or whatever. We had a guy at my work quit and paint things for himself for a year and a half (living off savings) before looking for work again. Bit stressed out.
Given my skill sets I'm sitting down and telling myself I need to leave the corporate world and go my own way. I even have a large cushion of cash to fall back on. Plus my significant hours have resulted in a minimalist livestyle anyway. I estimate I could live for 5 years on my current savings at my current lifestyle, less the costs of other activities I take up (especially significant if you try to start a business). I just don't have time to piece it together while working. And I'm pissing away valuable years if I try.
Only one thing holding me back. My attachment to having a stable respectable job that pays decently. All the skills are there, I could easily acquire support from skilled friends in any profession I could want. I could probably scrape together 50-100K for starting money if I begged a bit without approaching professional lenders. But it's pretty hard to actually quit to do nothing and take a huge "risk" on possibilities coming through. I'm much more the type of person to try to set it all up before I quit, but I just can't seem to get the time together for that unless I quit first.
Anybody else? Could YOU quit?
Anybody want to post a couple formulas? How about the ones you'd need to relate 25 tesla's to mass that it could pull or lift. I'd settle for something that translates it to force.
You can pull ions straight out of space. No need to bring your own fuel. Think of it like a submarine powered by water. That's also why they're good for long-term missions. Infinite fuel. You can just leave the pedal to the metal the whole trip. Granted, your acceleration sucks, but it doesn't stop.
It will happen. You don't need friction, you just need ass-kicking "manouvering thrusters" on every side.
You can have your stupid tie fighters. I'm waiting for the xwing with "shields". Who the hell builds a space fighter and relies on non-regenerating "armour". Although, maybe I'd be up for the TIE++ model depending on how long shields take. You know, the one made out of carbon nanotubes with backup nanobot repair packs.
I picture spammers as "technologically savvy" pyramid scheme types. You know, those people who sell Amway and crap. Why would someone do that? For the promise of quick and easy money with little effort and not having to join a formal corporation. Real businesspeople don't get involved in pathetic crap like that. It feels better to earn a real living, even if it is harder. Same thing with programmers and virus writers I guess.
Most spamming seems at least peripherally related to making money and earning a living, albeit a modest living. When you're on the bottom of society and have few other prospects, or the ones you did have didn't turn out, why not do spam? Someone above suggested many live in mobile homes. Maybe it's just a group of decently bright people from lower class backgrounds who weren't able to break into the job market in a satisfactory way. Maybe they couldn't afford schooling, and came from poor families or whatever. Maybe spamming is some kind of attempt to seize a bit of the respect and a piece of the type of semi-stable employment they could've had if things had worked out a little better for them.
Course, before I get all mushy for the slimy-types. I'm also sure that there are other types of spammers who do it for evil. There are predatory people out there who will do things and take any advantages they can if they think they can get away with. Money is money. Whether you're ripping off grandmothers or stealing from a bank it's all good. Those types have no excuses and get no sympathies. Need to attend some ethics courses while staying at the local big house.
It wasn't presented as an arguable point. It's more like refusing to give a SIN (Canada's version of SSN) or something. The contract is done and now you're just fulfilling the legal necessities of implementing it. Welcome to non-competition docs, global intellectual property agreements etc. I believe prior to that in interviews all I ever agreed to was making myself available to travel at the drop of a hat. Then a few months later after my work became critical I found carrying a pager and cell phone and being accessible 24/7 to any of 150 people ranging from co-workers to customers to suddenly be a new job requirement. That one still pisses me off. We're having huge disagreements about whether I need to be carrying a cell phone on *_vacations_*.
All that "customer relationship" and "customer partnership" focus of the last few years is coming back to haunt us. That's where you no longer just sell a product and walk away anymore. Now you basically live with them, answer phone calls at 2am for the next 20 years because you sold them a blender and they were lonely and couldn't remember if frappe was faster than chop.
In this new great scheme, your company sells the friendship of their employees to the customer for free. Therefore if you aren't there for a customer, even on your own time, you the employee are at fault. Even if they phone at 2am for some stupid reason.
Heaven forbid you should critize a customer on your own time, esp. publically. That's a clear violation of the corporate ass-kissing policy.
There is some justification for it though. Customers that like your employees are more likely to throw your company bones, and what's not to love about a company that makes it's employees all wipe your ass for you on their personal time if you choose.
But still, it just isn't right. Just because our companies CAN take our personalities from us doesn't mean they should. Basically, being a part of a corporation means subsuming your identity and adopting a corporate face mask in it's place. You are their personal avatar and the face of the company. It doesn't matter how stupid the customer is. The worst part is that it doesn't result in the company making more money either. Just the opposite, you end up doing nearly everything for free while getting little from customers in return.
Should really be something in the basic human rights section of the constitution for not having to hide your identity for not being perfect. I'm unsure of what the wording should be, but showing displeasure, not looking happy at all times, and generally having a perfect serving robot personality should not be cause for dismissal within limits.
It will be a sad day when everyone is that terrified of being unpleasant for even a moment that they have to hide their personality outside of the confines of their home, or perhaps not even there....
Sheesh.
It had an awesome book called "Planet Under Stress" edited by Constance Mungall & Digby McLaren for the Royal Society of Canada, oxford university press. I'd seriously recommend picking it up for anyone interested.
It basically had a far greater scientific based analysis than anything you'll see in any public forum on this topic (as in, it covered a lot of actual research and accepted knowledge about what is actually happening rather than what everyone guesses based on temp readings taken on airport tarmacs). It covered other environmental issues as well.
Anyway, it had a big section on global warming cycles. Apparently there is a massive shift that has occurred at infrequent intervals in the past. Basically the whole dynamic of ocean currents shifts in a radical way, and if I recall correctly, they were stating this coincided with a shift in the direction of the Earth's magnetic field (side note: I wonder what that'll screw up). Something about historically preserved magnetized rock along the ocean floor which shows the shift in the magnetic field of the planet as well as indicating massive ocean current change.
Anyway, I believe a major if not THE major heat sink in the ocean is near northern canada off the east coast. (Hence not surprising you would notice climate change there first, natural or not). That's apparently where the cold forces the incoming water to dive substantially and it triggers this whole huge mechanism which greatly affects not only the climate levels, but also the climate regions (aka where the tropical regions are etc). Essentially the direction that warm water travels over a large potion of the globe as it goes to cold water basically ends there.
This is a naturally (as in this used to happen before humans) weakening process which degrades over time and eventually flips in apparently a radically fast shift. Eventually the cold can't force the hot water down anymore and the entire ocean current system changes when it breaks. Now the hot water goes elsewhere, changing the hot/cold regions of the world around a bit (consider the heat waves generated by an al nino current or whatever, imagine that on a global scale current shift), we don't know what the revised current system looks like, just that the old current motion breaks, presumably it finds a new cold point to focus on, or else a hot point becomes dominant and pushes water rather than pulls. In any case, this could result in a flip of our climate quite substantially. And it may be a long term mostly unfixable thingy (unless you have a way to chill the ocean, pull off a couple thousand years worth of built up heat and can reset the ocean current directions back how it was).
Anyway, seems to me that greenhouse gases are pretty piddly stuff compared to what has naturally been happening to our oceans. From arguments I hear greenhouse gas theories are mostly full of crap anyway. The change in the greenhouse gases is a massive equilibrium system, and the reverse effects are significant enough that they eventually (thousand years) break the heat effects and begin a global chilling (our planet has survived this before). Releasing greenhouse gases triggers counter effects on an increasing scale. I believe I've heard at least a half dozen substantially contending reverse effects that will trigger one after the other as this goes up and the latter ones could quite likely reverse the whole effect. Starts with greenhouse gases actually reflect some of the heat we would have received back out to space, goes through a few more phases (too lazy to look them up again), ends up with ocean algae dying off which triggers a massive reduction in natural greenhouse gas emissions etc. Hell, I added one of my own after that, maybe rise the temp enough and it'll trigger volcano eruptions like st helens which'll coat the earth's atmosphere with powdered rock for a while shutting out the sun to cool it off. (Take a high temp system under pr
Took an elective course on environmental change once. It had an awesome book called "Planet Under Stress" edited by Constance Mungall & Digby McLaren for the Royal Society of Canada, oxford university press. I'd seriously recommend picking it up for anyone interested. It basically had a far greater scientific based analysis than anything you'll see in any public forum on this topic (as in, it covered a lot of actual research and accepted knowledge about what is actually happening rather than what everyone guesses based on temp readings taken on airport tarmacs). It covered other environmental issues as well. Anyway, it had a big section on global warming cycles. Apparently there is a massive shift that has occurred at infrequent intervals in the past. Basically the whole dynamic of ocean currents shifts in a radical way, and if I recall correctly, they were stating this coincided with a shift in the direction of the Earth's magnetic field (side note: I wonder what that'll screw up). Something about historically preserved magnetized rock along the ocean floor which shows the shift in the magnetic field of the planet as well as indicating massive ocean current change. Anyway, I believe a major if not THE major heat sink in the ocean is near northern canada off the east coast. (Hence not surprising you would notice climate change there first, natural or not). That's apparently where the cold forces the incoming water to dive substantially and it triggers this whole huge mechanism which greatly affects not only the climate levels, but also the climate regions (aka where the tropical regions are etc). Essentially the direction that warm water travels over a large potion of the globe as it goes to cold water basically ends there. This is a naturally (as in this used to happen before humans) weakening process which degrades over time and eventually flips in apparently a radically fast shift. Eventually the cold can't force the hot water down anymore and the entire ocean current system changes when it breaks. Now the hot water goes elsewhere, changing the hot/cold regions of the world around a bit (consider the heat waves generated by an al nino current or whatever, imagine that on a global scale current shift), we don't know what the revised current system looks like, just that the old current motion breaks, presumably it finds a new cold point to focus on, or else a hot point becomes dominant and pushes water rather than pulls. In any case, this could result in a flip of our climate quite substantially. And it may be a long term mostly unfixable thingy (unless you have a way to chill the ocean, pull off a couple thousand years worth of built up heat and can reset the ocean current directions back how it was). Anyway, seems to me that greenhouse gases are pretty piddly stuff compared to what has naturally been happening to our oceans. From arguments I hear greenhouse gas theories are mostly full of crap anyway. The change in the greenhouse gases is a massive equilibrium system, and the reverse effects are significant enough that they eventually (thousand years) break the heat effects and begin a global chilling (our planet has survived this before). Releasing greenhouse gases triggers counter effects on an increasing scale. I believe I've heard at least a half dozen substantially contending reverse effects that will trigger one after the other as this goes up and the latter ones could quite likely reverse the whole effect. Starts with greenhouse gases actually reflect some of the heat we would have received back out to space, goes through a few more phases (too lazy to look them up again), ends up with ocean algae dying off which triggers a massive reduction in natural greenhouse gas emissions etc. Hell, I added one of my own after that, maybe rise the temp enough and it'll trigger volcano eruptions like st helens which'll coat the earth's atmosphere with powdered rock for a while shutting out the sun to cool it off. (Take a high temp system under pressure which occasionally breaks through anyway, in