It's like when someone's favorite music artist stops making the type of music that they like and they're all upset that he/she could do such a thing like stop doing what they like. Their response should be, he/she has done such great things; they have more than earned their right to do whatever they want with their life, a right that we all have anyway.
Hiring star engineers seems to just be for bragging rights not for what they will likely contribute to the compay. It is generally the case that top people in the sciences are the top in their field for one or a few contributions and they usually don't contribute much more to the science outside of managerial administration after they are recognized as being star people. This is pretty much the same for developers and other fields. There's not much incentive to continue to be innovative once you've had a big success and everyone is praising your old work.
From this perspective, hiring someone as a "Microsoft Distinguished Engineer" for something that they did outside of Microsoft seems like a boneheaded thing to do and is very likely setting him and the rest of his new team up for failure. He's going into an environment where most people are right away going to think of him as some sort of uber-engineer and are not likely to challenge him.
is the experiment reproducible by other people with other equipment?
But alas, like so many other AI experiments, they probably wouldn't dare release the details of their experiment. So this will probably never rise to the level of credibility even if it does work.
That's pretty similar to my experience. For me, in grade school the girls were generally much better at math than the guys. I remember competing with them to do the most and best homework and they were blowing me and the other guys away. Same deal in high school. Only until college did I see more guys good at math. In college physics most of the good students were women. Now in my programming shop there is one woman that always gets the super complicated projects because she is better at working with complexity than the rest of us.
I guess it is rare. I just don't see it when people say men are better at math and engineering, etc. My experience better supports the opposite conclusion.
I've been doing the same sort of thing for about 8 months now. I fell I'm pretty good at this multitasking thing and I enjoyed it. But overall I enjoy being able to focus on one task until I'm done more.
Almost a year ago I noticed there was someone at work that was a lot less stressed than I was doing the exact same thing but with more responsibility than I have while getting more done. I started watching him very carefully to see if I could figure out why. I found that he doesn't somehow work harder or more or even better but he just doesn't drop everything right away like most of us in the group do when a new email or random thing comes up. I later started to try it and I got sort of hooked on it.
After doing it for a while, interestingly, it's not so much the quality of my work has changed (at least right now) but the time that it takes to do it is shorter and the reduction in my overall stress level is amazing. I feel more enriched by my work and whatever else I do now. I have time to absorb the experience; while I do it and after. It took some time before my stress level went down (4 or 5 months) and it did feel odd when I first noticed it. I kept feeling like I forgot something, probably because I was so used to always having something to worry about that I thought that there should always be something for me to worry about. I still feel this often times. Not that there is no stress in my life now it's just not over all the little things as well. When you really know that you don't have to read and respond to every new new email or change what you are doing because of a random phone call you sort of go off-alert. Before it was like being on-call 24-7 which is sort of like being on the half-ready all the time. You never know when some new thing is going to require your attention. It could be now, or now, or now.
The big change in my mind is the level of control that I feel I have. The feeling that I really can manage all these little interruptions and that I can make my own decisions about what is important to do and what can wait. I sort of let all the interruptions run my life, so much so that I never really got around to doing what I wanted or sometimes even what I needed to do. And if something important does come up then I don't feel bad about dropping the now unimportant task that I was doing for later. The reality, at least for me now, is that I can't really do more than one thing at a time, at least not well, so there is little reason to try if I don't have to.
A side note is the number of emails I get a day where the person is expecting a response that day has gone way down. Lately it's now like 0-4 where it was like around 25 before. I think people get a sense that you can't be bothered for every little thing and that you actually have got a job to do and responsibilities to tend to.
I have to say, if you try this be curious to people, just don't all of a suddenly stop responding to people. Explane the situation to them, before the interruption even happens if possible. I did this by deliberately thinking in terms of, "I'm working on X right now so if I now work on this new thing Y then X will probably slip, so which is more important?" You have to communicate that question so it's understandable but still be as flexible as you have been. In the end it's okay if you do Y and you think X is more important, but the real point is that you want to get away from doing both at the same time. Just really think about that question "which is more important?" not automatically, "I'll just do both and get one task for free." Although, remember that sometimes you can get one for free if one is very simple task like when you walk to the store and carry on a conversation at that same time. Make it clear that you are considering that point to the others involved and that the real aim is for the benefit of the work and all involved not just you, that will probably get you no-where. I really think that this is true. This transition takes time and above all really think about it, if it doesn't feel right to do this then maybe it's not right or that it's not right for you right now. Mulitasking has it's own rewards but there are other ways of doing things.
Military force or the threat of force is essentially a repression of people's freedom.
To say that you are protecting freedom by really protecting the freedom of America's elite at the cost of the freedom of the rest of the world is straight hypocrisy.
Remember that when you work for a company and make something for them they are paying you for your work and time. It is known that your work for them is owned by the company and not owned by you.
This is far from the same thing as a company taking work from you when you are not affiliated with them.
I find my self "checking in" often times too. The funny thing is that after I've had a couple of beers that I'm way more focused on the conversation. I feel more a part of it somehow. With the beer there's a feeling of ownership that I don't often recognize. Maybe this a vote for medication although I'm pretty skeptical about medications in general.
In my mind I think of this state of being "checked out" and focusing on something else more of a distraction of an interesting thing in the back of my mind than a boredom of the subject matter. In fact the more complex the subject the harder it is for me to focus on it, all things being equal.
Another idea I have is that it is just my simple ego that is driving me away from the conversation at hand. That perhaps I feel like my thoughts are more important than what people have to say. This is a rather interesting conclusion when you look at the current pop psychology that tells us that we can all become someone famous or important. Maybe I never let go of this.
Sometimes I think I may have ADD/ADHD or what-have-you but I don't really care because it is something that enhances my life as well as hinders it. It's a pretty good trade off when I can manage it.
All that being said, I feel really bad for those people that cannot manage it more than some of the time. I do have bad days sometimes and it can be truely depressing. I sometimes feel like my life is spinning out of control and at my own hands. But usually I'm just confused as to what happened to the time and how could I forget to do something that is really important to me.
By this logic we should put armed soldiers at banks, government offices, and possibly all public places. I believe the risk of military force being used against public citizens is a greater danger (whether intentionally or by accident) than that of protecting an airport or other import building from a terrorist attack.
I seem to remember Gore Vidal saying that the term "terrorist" has no legal definition. Though that was a couple of years ago. Let's hope there is at least a proper legal definition for it by now.
This is probably not a bad thing, it's just a hard time for the project. From what I've read here it seems like this is the first step in exercising of an important principle of open source development.
5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
A bad thing would be if the core team just held on to the baton without interest in the project. Sounds like that they already have done this for a time and possibly have caused a little damage. Now is the time for this project to heal.
True true. Unions are needed. Arguably needed in every profession skilled or unskilled.
How about this scenario: Every 5 to 10 years or so a company could lay off a few top level programmers with 10+ years experience each then hire new programmers just out of school. Could even increase head-count at a lower cost if needed. Not to mention that it's easier to con younger engineers usually work longer hours because they don't have families yet.
People have been talking forever about a techie union and with good reason. But chances are it's going to take something like what's in the article before the techie mass rises up to come together.
Not that it's all gravy in our industry right now. It's pretty scary when I think of all my techie friends and techie ex-coworkers (and techie people that I meet on the street for crying out loud) that have been out of work for 6-12 months or more.
While I haven't been laid off, sometimes I feel like I could loose my job at any day without notice. I sure wouldn't be surprised if it happened (but I'd be in shock of course). I don't think I could prevent that from happening if it was to happen. I don't feel that it would be linked to my performance in any way. It'd just be a cost cutting measure. So all I can do is save my money and quietly prepare for it to happen some day.
Anyone else out there "quietly preparing" for the pink slip?
An interesting thing is that if the RIAA embraced downloading music with some sort of industry standard business model (read: iTunes) from the beginning rather than trying to fight it they could have been "riding the wave" of the new tech. If marketed correctly they could have a new distribution channel and have greater control over the market in the "internet medium". Most consumers would just think of the big label distro sites when they want to download music off of the net.
Right now music on the internet must seem like a big danger sign to the average consumer -- a sign that reads something like: "Danger! do not download music EVER or you will be punished to the full extent of the law in our chosen state. If you are reading this we are watching you right now.".
Perhaps by the time that the RIAA decides to go with full-tilt distribution of music on the internet most honest consumers are going to be too afraid of downloading songs from anyone.
A consumer's thought process: "Who's to say that the song I legitimately purchased then downloaded off of a record distributor's site last month is not going to get me sued by the record label that provided internet distribution rights to said distributer? They might think I got it from a friend. Better just delete it off my computer and go buy the full CD with all the other lame songs on it. That's the safe bet."
I just installed gentoo. I found it not too tough to setup when you follow the directions on their site. Can take a long time to install and it took me some effort to figure out get it all working with my hardware. It was tough at times but it was a blast! Now I feel like I have a lot more understanding of and control over the configuration of Linux than I ever did with RedHat.
I'd recommend gentoo if you've been using RedHat on a basic level for a while (like I was) and you want to take this opportunity to challenge yourself a bit and learn more about how to really start configuring Linux.
I'm always baffled when someone gets great software/music/movies from a company/group/artist and then gets pissed at the company/group/artist when they decide to quit and do something else. Nothing can go on forever and more than that, in my opinion, RedHat has more than earned the right to do what they think is best for them. They've done some really great stuff in their product and for the industry as a whole (and it's not like RedHat is completely dead on the desktop anyway).
Let's hope the best for them in their future endeavors.
Slashdot Mirror
In a way, it really does benefit their customers. As a publicly traded company their primary customers are their stock-holders.
In addition to the cord I now can have have a recharger pad to take up space as well.
It's like when someone's favorite music artist stops making the type of music that they like and they're all upset that he/she could do such a thing like stop doing what they like. Their response should be, he/she has done such great things; they have more than earned their right to do whatever they want with their life, a right that we all have anyway.
From this perspective, hiring someone as a "Microsoft Distinguished Engineer" for something that they did outside of Microsoft seems like a boneheaded thing to do and is very likely setting him and the rest of his new team up for failure. He's going into an environment where most people are right away going to think of him as some sort of uber-engineer and are not likely to challenge him.
But alas, like so many other AI experiments, they probably wouldn't dare release the details of their experiment. So this will probably never rise to the level of credibility even if it does work.
I guess it is rare. I just don't see it when people say men are better at math and engineering, etc. My experience better supports the opposite conclusion.
Almost a year ago I noticed there was someone at work that was a lot less stressed than I was doing the exact same thing but with more responsibility than I have while getting more done. I started watching him very carefully to see if I could figure out why. I found that he doesn't somehow work harder or more or even better but he just doesn't drop everything right away like most of us in the group do when a new email or random thing comes up. I later started to try it and I got sort of hooked on it.
After doing it for a while, interestingly, it's not so much the quality of my work has changed (at least right now) but the time that it takes to do it is shorter and the reduction in my overall stress level is amazing. I feel more enriched by my work and whatever else I do now. I have time to absorb the experience; while I do it and after. It took some time before my stress level went down (4 or 5 months) and it did feel odd when I first noticed it. I kept feeling like I forgot something, probably because I was so used to always having something to worry about that I thought that there should always be something for me to worry about. I still feel this often times. Not that there is no stress in my life now it's just not over all the little things as well. When you really know that you don't have to read and respond to every new new email or change what you are doing because of a random phone call you sort of go off-alert. Before it was like being on-call 24-7 which is sort of like being on the half-ready all the time. You never know when some new thing is going to require your attention. It could be now, or now, or now.
The big change in my mind is the level of control that I feel I have. The feeling that I really can manage all these little interruptions and that I can make my own decisions about what is important to do and what can wait. I sort of let all the interruptions run my life, so much so that I never really got around to doing what I wanted or sometimes even what I needed to do. And if something important does come up then I don't feel bad about dropping the now unimportant task that I was doing for later. The reality, at least for me now, is that I can't really do more than one thing at a time, at least not well, so there is little reason to try if I don't have to.
A side note is the number of emails I get a day where the person is expecting a response that day has gone way down. Lately it's now like 0-4 where it was like around 25 before. I think people get a sense that you can't be bothered for every little thing and that you actually have got a job to do and responsibilities to tend to.
I have to say, if you try this be curious to people, just don't all of a suddenly stop responding to people. Explane the situation to them, before the interruption even happens if possible. I did this by deliberately thinking in terms of, "I'm working on X right now so if I now work on this new thing Y then X will probably slip, so which is more important?" You have to communicate that question so it's understandable but still be as flexible as you have been. In the end it's okay if you do Y and you think X is more important, but the real point is that you want to get away from doing both at the same time. Just really think about that question "which is more important?" not automatically, "I'll just do both and get one task for free." Although, remember that sometimes you can get one for free if one is very simple task like when you walk to the store and carry on a conversation at that same time. Make it clear that you are considering that point to the others involved and that the real aim is for the benefit of the work and all involved not just you, that will probably get you no-where. I really think that this is true. This transition takes time and above all really think about it, if it doesn't feel right to do this then maybe it's not right or that it's not right for you right now. Mulitasking has it's own rewards but there are other ways of doing things.
We should also shut down the phone system because people can use it to share pirated ideas.
Military force or the threat of force is essentially a repression of people's freedom.
To say that you are protecting freedom by really protecting the freedom of America's elite at the cost of the freedom of the rest of the world is straight hypocrisy.
Remember that when you work for a company and make something for them they are paying you for your work and time. It is known that your work for them is owned by the company and not owned by you.
This is far from the same thing as a company taking work from you when you are not affiliated with them.
I find my self "checking in" often times too. The funny thing is that after I've had a couple of beers that I'm way more focused on the conversation. I feel more a part of it somehow. With the beer there's a feeling of ownership that I don't often recognize. Maybe this a vote for medication although I'm pretty skeptical about medications in general.
In my mind I think of this state of being "checked out" and focusing on something else more of a distraction of an interesting thing in the back of my mind than a boredom of the subject matter. In fact the more complex the subject the harder it is for me to focus on it, all things being equal.
Another idea I have is that it is just my simple ego that is driving me away from the conversation at hand. That perhaps I feel like my thoughts are more important than what people have to say. This is a rather interesting conclusion when you look at the current pop psychology that tells us that we can all become someone famous or important. Maybe I never let go of this.
Sometimes I think I may have ADD/ADHD or what-have-you but I don't really care because it is something that enhances my life as well as hinders it. It's a pretty good trade off when I can manage it.
All that being said, I feel really bad for those people that cannot manage it more than some of the time. I do have bad days sometimes and it can be truely depressing. I sometimes feel like my life is spinning out of control and at my own hands. But usually I'm just confused as to what happened to the time and how could I forget to do something that is really important to me.
By this logic we should put armed soldiers at banks, government offices, and possibly all public places. I believe the risk of military force being used against public citizens is a greater danger (whether intentionally or by accident) than that of protecting an airport or other import building from a terrorist attack.
I seem to remember Gore Vidal saying that the term "terrorist" has no legal definition. Though that was a couple of years ago. Let's hope there is at least a proper legal definition for it by now.
From CatB (ESR):
A bad thing would be if the core team just held on to the baton without interest in the project. Sounds like that they already have done this for a time and possibly have caused a little damage. Now is the time for this project to heal.or possibly AI PCI cards? that could be sweet if somebody could nail down a possible AI API for that. perhaps based on neural-nets and/or fuzzy logic
How about this scenario: Every 5 to 10 years or so a company could lay off a few top level programmers with 10+ years experience each then hire new programmers just out of school. Could even increase head-count at a lower cost if needed. Not to mention that it's easier to con younger engineers usually work longer hours because they don't have families yet.
People have been talking forever about a techie union and with good reason. But chances are it's going to take something like what's in the article before the techie mass rises up to come together.
Not that it's all gravy in our industry right now. It's pretty scary when I think of all my techie friends and techie ex-coworkers (and techie people that I meet on the street for crying out loud) that have been out of work for 6-12 months or more.
While I haven't been laid off, sometimes I feel like I could loose my job at any day without notice. I sure wouldn't be surprised if it happened (but I'd be in shock of course). I don't think I could prevent that from happening if it was to happen. I don't feel that it would be linked to my performance in any way. It'd just be a cost cutting measure. So all I can do is save my money and quietly prepare for it to happen some day.
Anyone else out there "quietly preparing" for the pink slip?
or tenure
Right now music on the internet must seem like a big danger sign to the average consumer -- a sign that reads something like: "Danger! do not download music EVER or you will be punished to the full extent of the law in our chosen state. If you are reading this we are watching you right now.".
Perhaps by the time that the RIAA decides to go with full-tilt distribution of music on the internet most honest consumers are going to be too afraid of downloading songs from anyone.
A consumer's thought process: "Who's to say that the song I legitimately purchased then downloaded off of a record distributor's site last month is not going to get me sued by the record label that provided internet distribution rights to said distributer? They might think I got it from a friend. Better just delete it off my computer and go buy the full CD with all the other lame songs on it. That's the safe bet."
I'd recommend gentoo if you've been using RedHat on a basic level for a while (like I was) and you want to take this opportunity to challenge yourself a bit and learn more about how to really start configuring Linux.
very well put.
another way to put it..
Everyone can write a novel, but it takes good writer to write a good novel.
I'm always baffled when someone gets great software/music/movies from a company/group/artist and then gets pissed at the company/group/artist when they decide to quit and do something else. Nothing can go on forever and more than that, in my opinion, RedHat has more than earned the right to do what they think is best for them. They've done some really great stuff in their product and for the industry as a whole (and it's not like RedHat is completely dead on the desktop anyway).
Let's hope the best for them in their future endeavors.