Re:Why this is important
(Score:2)
by raoul666 (870362) Alter Relationship on Tuesday January 10, @05:46PM (#14440993)
I heard someone say once: science tells us how, religion tells us why.
It is more like engineering tells us "how" and science tells us "why". (things work as they do). To be fair, I think you meant "why" as in "intent". Not every situation has one.
"Researchers at CalTech have discovered how bees fly, putting one more nail in the coffin of Intelligent Design. From the article: 'People in the ID community have said that we don't even know how bees fly... We were finally able to put this one to rest. We do have the tools to understand bee flight and we can use science to understand the world around us.'"
It may be one more nail in the coffin of "Intelligent Design" ( the spin term for "creationism" ), but that coffin will never be nailed shut until science finds a cheap cure for cognitive dissonance that can be administered involuntarily and on a mass scale
create a/. staging area, where us, the real users, can rate stories, and let us decide what makes it to the front page... The the RPs and BBs of the world will only show up when their linkback page is actually relevent and useful...
Great idea! It would also save the editors a lot of work.
Longterm reader's thoughts (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @10:36AM (#14435853)
- listen to us more. I hate to say it, but Slashdot is more our site than "yours". We submit the stories, we have almost every piece of content on the site.
As a forum owner myself ( not slashdot ) and as someone who has had a lot of stories rejected from slashdot for no apparent (good) reason I think it would be nice to be listened to more, but I heartily disagree with the reason you give.
The person who pays the bills and who puts work into a forum has ownership and nobody else.
It may be the guests who go to a party in a private home who make that party great, but they don't "own" the house that the party is in and they would certainly be out of line telling the host how to run the party.
Yes, it would be nice, it would be smart for the host to listen, but s/he has no obligation.
Don't overlook the obvious in taking care of yourself. Full nights, of regular sleep, at set times. Plenty of fresh water. Good nutrition. Exercise. Stress relief. Being moderate with stimulants and intoxicants.
If this sounds glib I have been notorious for reading in poor light since I was a kid. I have been in the IT field since my late 20's. Everyone in my family has vision issues except for me and I am in "the old age of my youth", cough cough, as Churchill put it.
I made it a point to do those things, especially the good nutrition with eating vegetables and the regular sleep.
Another person who got sick on the ill effects of a modern American life has decided to do the same thing. He decided to walk across the US to cure his lifestyle induced weight problem. The ultimate iteration of the gym coach's "walk it off":
I also held onto an old PII running win 98 and then linux ( red hat, then suse, then knoppix ).
My conclusion, yes, you get both windows and linux to run on older systems, but the user should be careful about assumptions s/he might have in regards to the word "run".
I hate to say it, but windows seemed a little ( only a little ) bit more spry on older systems than the KDE or GNOME.
If you get out of the GUI both run better, but of course, linux can offer a complete system in shell mode.
However, very few people patient enough to use a PC like that who aren't dirt poor would be interested in doing that.
If I ran Microsoft, I would make a lot of changes but first I would not make badges with an opposing colour scheme. Everyone should have the same badge, eliminating the psychological effect of being an 'outsider' or 'not really part of the same team.' One less thing to worry about and one less possibility for employees to become divisive and uncooperative.
Maybe Microsoft wants the employees divided from each other. That way they cannot team up on MS.
I almost yelled "YES!" out loud when Graham theorized that startups got more done in the same amount of time for lack of interruptions.
I have worked for companies that just did not get ( or care ) that doing programming is a bit like doing math homework. It requires sustained attention and being allowed to sink into the problem. Being interrupted and forced to switch tasks loses that valuable momentum.
It sucks for productivity and quality and it also stresses the person trying to do the work.
On the other hand I worked for a startup where it was just 4 guys working mostly independently on laptops with our desks pushed together. We laughed and talked frequently during the day. Despite that we all got a lot of work done and had a lot of fun. We were allowed to focus on a task until it was done.
I actually read Graham's article . In a nutshell, I agree with Graham.
He isn't saying anything time management authors have not been saying for decades.
Instead of calling it "setting priorities" he renames it "good procrastination".
The big secret still left unanswered and what everyone wants to know is how to get over "bad procrastination", no matter how you decide to rename it.
I heard a comment recently that struck me as being insightful. That people procrastinate out of fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, perfectionism, etc.
Sounds intriguiging, I guess like everything else applying it takes work. I guess I will do that later ( ha ha ha ).
Well, I actually read Paul Grahms article...the whole thing.
I think his points are spot on, but I think he is repackaging time management by calling it "good procrastination". At least time management as defined by Alan Lakien, one of the founders of time management (ISBN: 0451167724).
Grahm describes "good procrastination" as putting off small, low reward tasks to do important big tasks. That concept is as old as the hills in time management where it is called "setting priorities".
It isn't a revelation to anyone, what is a mystery is "why"? Why do I/you/people put off doing things they want to get done and know are important?
I've read some interesting points that procrastination is a fear ( of failure or of success ) avoiding technique.
It makes sense, when I avoid working on something I tend to sweep it under my mental rug, very fast, like I want to avoid even acknowledging what I am doing. Like a senator leaving a dominatrix's dungeon
I found this article to be very interesting:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-200308 23-000001.html
Cable TV is quite different than when it first came out. When I have access to it cable seems to be very similar to what broadcast tv used to be. Mostly crap with a few bright spots. Now they have commercials too, as well as calls for "standards"(censorship).
It seems like cable has much of the type of content broadcast used to have ( minus some provocative things). It is all just moving from one place to another with the big difference being that people now have to pay for the crap they used to watch for free.
The hope is that cable tv will be more responsive to viewers...nothing speaks as loud as people letting subscriptions lapse. Then again, I can't see Joe Average giving up television no matter how much he complains about it.
Did it occur to you that this really is news to people in the UK, who also read Slashdot or follow FireFox developments?
The UK is the second greatest market for both Slashdot and Dell, so reporting this only makes sense.
I didn't say reporting it did not make sense. I said it is not significant. Firefox and other things do not come preinstalled on consumer desktops because Microsoft will not allow it.
It is one thing for exceptions to happen outside of the consumer desktop market or in other countries. Places that are not 100% Microsoft's home turf.
The U.K. is not microsofts home turf. The United States is. That is why firefox being preinstalled on a consumer desktop there would be significant news.
It would mean that Microsoft has lost a substantial amount of power over pc manufacturers/distributiors.
That was pretty much what my original post said, which was on topic for this thread, but some childish person modded it as "troll".
In a nutshell he did not like the thought, though it belonged in this thread.
"Bad man, go away!" was essentially the response.
I mean no offense to you, but firefox preinstalled on consumer desktops in the U.K. just does not have the significance that it would have had happening in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Because science is based on observable and reproducible evidence with the simplest explanation to describe it all ( Occam's razor ).
Belief in a deity is based on faith. Faith is accepting something as true without having sufficient evidence to prove it as true.
No offense. You asked a straight forward question and I gave you my opinion which I hope was a straight forward, non-personally offensive answer.
Um, because people want cheap products AND a job so they can actually buy those products?
As a forum owner myself ( not slashdot ) and as someone who has had a lot of stories rejected from slashdot for no apparent (good) reason I think it would be nice to be listened to more, but I heartily disagree with the reason you give.
The person who pays the bills and who puts work into a forum has ownership and nobody else.
It may be the guests who go to a party in a private home who make that party great, but they don't "own" the house that the party is in and they would certainly be out of line telling the host how to run the party.
Yes, it would be nice, it would be smart for the host to listen, but s/he has no obligation.
People who get stories rejected would gripe a lot less if they got a told a reason for their story being rejected.
It doesn't have to be a time consuming endeavor.
Provide a drop down list to editors of various, brief, common reasons. ie "1 missing url, 2 off topic, etc... "
Don't overlook the obvious in taking care of yourself. Full nights, of regular sleep, at set times. Plenty of fresh water. Good nutrition. Exercise. Stress relief. Being moderate with stimulants and intoxicants.
If this sounds glib I have been notorious for reading in poor light since I was a kid. I have been in the IT field since my late 20's. Everyone in my family has vision issues except for me and I am in "the old age of my youth", cough cough, as Churchill put it.
I made it a point to do those things, especially the good nutrition with eating vegetables and the regular sleep.
The intent of the medium should be considered in these kind of laws.
Blogs are public with an implicit invitation ( unless comments are shut off ) by the owner to contact the owner to share your views.
That is not the same with a phone.
Another person who got sick on the ill effects of a modern American life has decided to do the same thing. He decided to walk across the US to cure his lifestyle induced weight problem. The ultimate iteration of the gym coach's "walk it off":
http://www.fatmanwalking.com/
I also held onto an old PII running win 98 and then linux ( red hat, then suse, then knoppix ).
My conclusion, yes, you get both windows and linux to run on older systems, but the user should be careful about assumptions s/he might have in regards to the word "run".
I hate to say it, but windows seemed a little ( only a little ) bit more spry on older systems than the KDE or GNOME.
If you get out of the GUI both run better, but of course, linux can offer a complete system in shell mode.
However, very few people patient enough to use a PC like that who aren't dirt poor would be interested in doing that.
Now there is hufu, the healthy human flesh alternative for the ethically inclined cannibal: http://www.eathufu.com/faq.asp
IBM can't even stamp out SCO, we haven't seen an end to that yet, so there is no way they could be a threat to MS
A good addition to his punishment would be to publish his name, crime, email address,photo and phone number on some prominent billboards.
To put it succinctly:
YAY!
Vaporware is always a killer app. Nobody advertises an application that doesn't exist yet as merely being a decent app that will do a job.
Vaporware is always hyped as a killer app.
If portable OO can be this small, why isn't that the regular version of OO? Fewer features?
I don't use much beyond the basic functionality of OO anyway. Maybe I should just use the portable version on my home PC
I'm sorry for the Chinese, I think the pornographers are going to kick their ass.
Were they looking for I.T. jobs?
I almost yelled "YES!" out loud when Graham theorized that startups got more done in the same amount of time for lack of interruptions.
I have worked for companies that just did not get ( or care ) that doing programming is a bit like doing math homework. It requires sustained attention and being allowed to sink into the problem. Being interrupted and forced to switch tasks loses that valuable momentum.
It sucks for productivity and quality and it also stresses the person trying to do the work.
On the other hand I worked for a startup where it was just 4 guys working mostly independently on laptops with our desks pushed together. We laughed and talked frequently during the day. Despite that we all got a lot of work done and had a lot of fun. We were allowed to focus on a task until it was done.
I actually read Graham's article . In a nutshell, I agree with Graham.
8 23-000001.html
He isn't saying anything time management authors have not been saying for decades.
Instead of calling it "setting priorities" he renames it "good procrastination".
The big secret still left unanswered and what everyone wants to know is how to get over "bad procrastination", no matter how you decide to rename it.
I heard a comment recently that struck me as being insightful. That people procrastinate out of fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, perfectionism, etc.
Sounds intriguiging, I guess like everything else applying it takes work. I guess I will do that later ( ha ha ha ).
Here is an interesting pop psyche article I found out about that via google:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20030
Well, I actually read Paul Grahms article...the whole thing. I think his points are spot on, but I think he is repackaging time management by calling it "good procrastination". At least time management as defined by Alan Lakien, one of the founders of time management (ISBN: 0451167724). Grahm describes "good procrastination" as putting off small, low reward tasks to do important big tasks. That concept is as old as the hills in time management where it is called "setting priorities". It isn't a revelation to anyone, what is a mystery is "why"? Why do I/you/people put off doing things they want to get done and know are important? I've read some interesting points that procrastination is a fear ( of failure or of success ) avoiding technique. It makes sense, when I avoid working on something I tend to sweep it under my mental rug, very fast, like I want to avoid even acknowledging what I am doing. Like a senator leaving a dominatrix's dungeon I found this article to be very interesting: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-200308 23-000001.html
Cable TV is quite different than when it first came out. When I have access to it cable seems to be very similar to what broadcast tv used to be. Mostly crap with a few bright spots. Now they have commercials too, as well as calls for "standards"(censorship). It seems like cable has much of the type of content broadcast used to have ( minus some provocative things). It is all just moving from one place to another with the big difference being that people now have to pay for the crap they used to watch for free. The hope is that cable tv will be more responsive to viewers...nothing speaks as loud as people letting subscriptions lapse. Then again, I can't see Joe Average giving up television no matter how much he complains about it.
I didn't say reporting it did not make sense. I said it is not significant. Firefox and other things do not come preinstalled on consumer desktops because Microsoft will not allow it.
It is one thing for exceptions to happen outside of the consumer desktop market or in other countries. Places that are not 100% Microsoft's home turf.
The U.K. is not microsofts home turf. The United States is. That is why firefox being preinstalled on a consumer desktop there would be significant news.
It would mean that Microsoft has lost a substantial amount of power over pc manufacturers/distributiors.
That was pretty much what my original post said, which was on topic for this thread, but some childish person modded it as "troll".
In a nutshell he did not like the thought, though it belonged in this thread.
"Bad man, go away!" was essentially the response.
I mean no offense to you, but firefox preinstalled on consumer desktops in the U.K. just does not have the significance that it would have had happening in the US.