I'm not an IT person, but I'd suggest, before you go to management, you optimize the department.
You mention that you are taking on projects you don't have a chance to even start. Also you talk about mundane tasks preventing you from working on other projects. You should make sure that, given your current resources, you are working on the right tasks. Start saying no to the least important things. Only take on tasks that you know you can complete. If what you say is true then thats already a big improvement.
Think carefully about this, and discuss it with your manager and other departments before you implement, because you are going to get a lot of pushback. Your approach should be "we want to start focusing on critical work, we don't have the resource to work on your project now". Absolutely, don't use it as a play for more staff or you'll find yourself in trouble.
Only go to management with a request for more staff when you can show a benefit to the company. A list of additional tasks that you could take on and what their impact would be for example.
Yes, text messaging in Japan is fragmented. Its often impossible to text between carriers and my Japanese carrier offered no capability to send or receive texts overseas.
When the earthquake hit power and phone service became largely unusable pretty quickly (somewhere between Tokyo and the quake). However, I was able to send a facebook post from my Japanese style smartphone that hit a fair number of my friends and family telling them we were OK before everything went down. I rarely used it for day to day stuff since it wasn't all that useable, but for this application is was perfect.
The reason I didn't compare scooters is because thats not what most people take to work. But I might have done well to recommend people consider scooters instead of or along with bicycles.
Its rather interesting that the numbers for bicycles and cars are closer than I had though (except my banana number which is way off). This guy suggests, with numbers to support for USA conditions, that walking and driving are not too far separated for same distance trips.
And that bicycling is about twice as efficient as single passenger car trips in fuel efficient cars.
So riding to work is still a good thing, especially if it doubles as part of your exercise habit. But is nowhere near as good idea as riding somewhere in your recreational time, where time and not distance might be more of a factor. And sharing a car might be more efficient that riding a bike.
Honestly speaking, I still have a slightly hard time believing it. But I don't have a better story. The whole thing does bear a bit more investigation.
I think its hard to infer that I'm an idiot for simple stating an opinion counter to yours.
I don't know why you suggest riding a bicycle is more environmentally expensive than driving a car. Lets play with the numbers shall we?
A bunch of banana's costs about $2 where I live. Lets assume that the component cost of bananas in terms of fuel is close to 100%. That would mean that to produce those bananas less than $2 of fuel was been spent. Probably much less, but lets keep the number at $2.
Lets assume you drive a fuel efficient vehicle. I'll give you 40 mpg. Lets say that your round trip drive to work is 20 miles. Lets price petrol about $2 a gallon.
Lets also a assume that I eat an extra 2 bananas over my friends who drive to work. I believe it to be less than that. Lets say there are 6 bananas in a bunch.
So your driving to work costs:
20 miles / 40 mpg = 1/2 a gallon a day. (plus your car maintenance expenses)
My costs of riding to work:
$2 a bunch * 1/3 of a bunch a day / $2 a gallon = 1/3 of a gallon a day. (plus the cost of maintaining my bicycle.
Now I would contend that you might well drive a more expensive vehicle than that, I eat less than 2 bananas a day to drive my bicycle, the environmental cost of producing a banana is less than 100% of its total cost, there are more than 6 bananas in a bunch of bananas where I live and that the mileage related costs of maintaining a car vs. a bicycle are relevant. I admit I do own a car so I can't claim all the production costs of a car as an advantage. Also I admit that it is possible that the environmental cost of making a banana _could_ be more than 100% of its cost in fuel, but I don't think so. I'm not sure about the cost of fuel, but I think if that is higher (as it is in banana producing nations like Brazil and India) that works to strengthen bicycles advantage too since it would mean using less fuel to make the banana at that price.
But anyway, bicycles are cheaper. Probably much, much cheaper, but even giving you _every_ benefit of the doubt bicycles win.
cheers,
david
PS. Most upsetting of all is you force me to sound like a rabid greeny just to argue a ridiculous contention with you. I'm not, I'm just a person who would like to personally do something about a problem that I judge to be real. On the other hand thank you for forcing me to do the exercise, I thought it might turn out to be many orders of magnitude better, but now I think I can just say riding a bicycle is much better.
What the hell do you think? Muscle energy isn't free energy, it comes from food, and food is anything but green energy.
Are you seriously suggesting that riding a bike to work and driving your car to work have a similar impact on global warming? Or are you just suggesting that leaving the solution to our duck lobbing scientist friends is preferable to doing something yourself?
Driving your car to work does release carbon into the environment that was not there last year. Riding your bike does not. The reduction of carbon in the environment is behind the discussion of carbon capture.
So your idea of saving the world is downscaling the economy and living like Cubans?
No, I do however suggest that our living environment is more important than our economy. If its necessary for me to make some changes to my life in order to reduce global warming then thats OK with me. People repeatedly accept changes to their life to improve the economy.
Your hostility to a proposal to actually make some personal changes is exactly the attitude that I sought to highlight in my previous post. In my post I meant to say that people could take action to help with the situation or they could wait for the scientists and government to solve the problem.
Without dismissing the value of research, I'd say we already know what we can do today with today's available tools to reduce our impact on the warming of the planet.
Stories like this make us feel better that we are doing more to combat global warming. But actually, if we rode our bike to work, bought less stuff and used things that required less power then we'd be making a positive difference.
Or we could wait for researchers and government to come up with a silver bullet. Human interest, feel good articles like this don't make me think this is imminent.
I know opinions like this aren't popular on Slashdot where its more important to find a way to justify upgrading the next gadget. But really, if its no the intelligent, wealthy population of the planet who will lead us to a solution by example, exactly who is it?
If you believe that gamers use games to stay up to date on new technology you'll believe anything.
The only thing a study that says gamers are wealthy and more likely to invest in new technology and movie tickets confirms is that IGN would like to attract advertisers.
I don't see why this is marked flaimbait. Its exactly what humanity is thinking. Its not that "Nature is overrated" its that its been rated as less important than many other things. At least the poster is honestly expressing the thought that most are acting out.
A Recent report estimates that approaching 30% of species might extinct. Let that be an exaggeration but the fact remains many environments are being destroyed. In the meantime , we all remain more interested in the horsepower of our sports car, the power of our new computer or the taste of tomorrow's exotic dinner out.
Not only that but less than a billion of us have really reached anything like our potential for destroying the environment. But a couple of billion Chinese and Indians are about to catch up. What do you think it will be like when we are 3 times as effective?
Of course I'm hoping for a technological solution, failing that I'm hoping things don't meltdown before I get old and die (I don't really want to live in a concrete bunker thanks). I don't have much faith in people to react and change in time.
It seems like the only thing that Slashdot knows about China is they are stealing our jobs, repress their citizens and now they have had an earthquake.
Mr. Collins is working for an outsourcing company. I'm willing to be that the reason he got the job was the fact that he understand the language, and perhaps more importantly, the culture of that company's customers.
In my experience there is a tremendous demand for such skills all over Asia. There are great opportunities to do something fun, interesting and very beneficial to your career over there, especially for young people who haven't put down deep roots at home yet. Most people don't do it though.
Judging from all the cynical posts here you'd think this was another kick in the face to Linux.
As far as I can see this is great news. This is major PC vendors acknowledging that there is a market that they would like to better serve and asking their suppliers to help them do it.
Do you really expect them to say, "sorry if it doesn't have open source drivers we won't buy it?" Sorry, thats just not going to happen today. But it will never ever happen, without this step happening first. Thats the way business works.
You mean all we have to do is stop users from clicking on deceptive links?
It sounds so simple, why didn't anybody do this before?
The fact is users have already proven they can't learn to avoid these scams. And its getting harder, not easier to avoid them. One day it might be me who falls below the geek intelligence threshold and becomes the victim. Hats off to Paypal!
Of course if they restrict my browser of choice, I'll have a choice to make. I'll either use a different browser or use another on line payment method.
I don't know if its common practice in Japan. But at the place I work they shut down nearly everything at night. The last person out the door has to complete a check list which is mostly about throwing breakers. There are a couple of breakers that are not to be shut down and those are marked and obvious. If you leave with something that is going to take a long time to complete running on your computer its trivial to get it left on via the checklist. If you're first in in the morning you quickly get to know where the breakers are that control the electricity that you want are.
Those of you who don't live in Japan might not be aware that as this rule is about to go into effect there has also been a large increase in random inspection of foreigner's immigration documents in Japan (Alien Registration Card).
Japan has never needed much encouragement to associate criminal behavior with foreigners. But I think in this case of fingerprinting we have the USA to thank. Its been almost satisfying to hear my American friends squealing about this. But not quite, two wrongs don't make a right and in any case, I lose twice now once now.
Back on track.... Anybody who thinks that this information won't be swapped backwards and forwards between countries is a moron. At some point a lot of this information will find its way into a common database.
You may want to check that "can line up at the Japanese Citizen counters" benefit too. I believe thats out the window when this change goes into effect.
There are devices that do this kind of thing already. They are called Intravascular Ultrasound. They are mounted on a catheter and they generate a 360 degree view. Its largely used for looking at vessel lining, though some work has been done with it in the heart chambers.
To my knowledge, which may be wrong, they do not measure flow (Doppler), it would usually not be effective since the plane of the image is perpendicular to the catheter. Since flow is normally parallel to the catheter the Doppler effect could not be used effectively. Anyway there are other catheter based devices that can measure flow I think. (the forward firing feature of this transducer might be used for Doppler measurements).
The only really interesting thing I see about this is the potential to have it no attached to the catheter. Swallowing or perhaps insertion near a site. But since this is a press release, they are only working in a glass of water and they make no statement about how to get the data out when its not attached to a catheter I'd have to say this is pie in the sky at this stage.
First of all, I can't agree that the idea is doomed to failure. There have been instances of successful education in the past and it might just happen again!
Secondly, I agree with everybody who says make it interesting and make it relevant.
My favourite piece of science writing, which I consider excellent (though I haven't finished it yet), is Bill Bryson's "A short History of Nearly Everything". It might be fun to ask the students to contrast this book and its style with sicence books they are using in their other classes. There are of course many science fiction examples worth looking at too. We had some of them in our reading list when I went to school but they were always discussed as fiction books never as science books.
And watching our words and actions is a bad thing? You'd rather have the right to "act human" every now and then? I'm guessing you mean "act human" towards other people rather than have other people act human towards you?
In days gone by we all lived and acted surrounded by people we knew. In those days there were social rules that governed our behavior. Things like integrity, honesty and compassion were valued. Today, we think nothing of breaking the law, lying to get what we want or crossing to the other side of the road to avoid an injured person. (so long as we don't get caught)
I believe people should be striving to live lives they are proud to have scrutinized. And I'd like to think its with publicly available information (like google maps).
Actually, I can forgive you for most bad actions. But that doesn't mean ignoring it through secrecy and anonymity makes it OK.
The fact that public officials will sometimes "be human" does not invalidate the idea. I am calling for people to be more accountable for their actions and I think that naturally we should ask public officials to do the same. They should be called to higher standards because they have more impact. When an official lies or makes inappropriate use of public authority they should be evaluated and if the action is unforgivable then they should be removed. I have noticed that places that expect less from their public officials seem to get less. (I know you could argue which is the cause and which is the effect). (I feel the same way about members of public companies).
It probably seems and unrealistic idea. But I am happier with: "I act with integrity, am compassionate and ask others to do the same" than "I really get away with a lot".
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not an IT person, but I'd suggest, before you go to management, you optimize the department.
You mention that you are taking on projects you don't have a chance to even start. Also you talk about mundane tasks preventing you from working on other projects. You should make sure that, given your current resources, you are working on the right tasks. Start saying no to the least important things. Only take on tasks that you know you can complete. If what you say is true then thats already a big improvement.
Think carefully about this, and discuss it with your manager and other departments before you implement, because you are going to get a lot of pushback. Your approach should be "we want to start focusing on critical work, we don't have the resource to work on your project now". Absolutely, don't use it as a play for more staff or you'll find yourself in trouble.
Only go to management with a request for more staff when you can show a benefit to the company. A list of additional tasks that you could take on and what their impact would be for example.
Try this:
http://www.google.com/doodles/douglas-adams-61st-birthday
Yes, text messaging in Japan is fragmented. Its often impossible to text between carriers and my Japanese carrier offered no capability to send or receive texts overseas.
When the earthquake hit power and phone service became largely unusable pretty quickly (somewhere between Tokyo and the quake). However, I was able to send a facebook post from my Japanese style smartphone that hit a fair number of my friends and family telling them we were OK before everything went down. I rarely used it for day to day stuff since it wasn't all that useable, but for this application is was perfect.
Shinjuku
Not to mention the Yodobashi camera store (more of a complex really) in Shinkjuko will blow your mind.
Yeah, the word is: here maybe 4PM.
Here in Tochigi it was strong, but not frightening. My first time under a table! Lots of stone walls fallen over in my neighborhood.
According to wife, supermarkets are rather bare today.
My neighbour got SMS text messages from the heart of the disaster zone yesterday. Phone calls impossible.
Here in Tochigi just north of Tokyo and south of Fukushima (where the reactors are) the blackouts have been cancelled (or perhaps postponed).
cheers, david
The reason I didn't compare scooters is because thats not what most people take to work. But I might have done well to recommend people consider scooters instead of or along with bicycles.
Its rather interesting that the numbers for bicycles and cars are closer than I had though (except my banana number which is way off). This guy suggests, with numbers to support for USA conditions, that walking and driving are not too far separated for same distance trips.
And that bicycling is about twice as efficient as single passenger car trips in fuel efficient cars.
So riding to work is still a good thing, especially if it doubles as part of your exercise habit. But is nowhere near as good idea as riding somewhere in your recreational time, where time and not distance might be more of a factor. And sharing a car might be more efficient that riding a bike.
Honestly speaking, I still have a slightly hard time believing it. But I don't have a better story. The whole thing does bear a bit more investigation.
cheers,
david
I think its hard to infer that I'm an idiot for simple stating an opinion counter to yours.
I don't know why you suggest riding a bicycle is more environmentally expensive than driving a car. Lets play with the numbers shall we?
A bunch of banana's costs about $2 where I live. Lets assume that the component cost of bananas in terms of fuel is close to 100%. That would mean that to produce those bananas less than $2 of fuel was been spent. Probably much less, but lets keep the number at $2.
Lets assume you drive a fuel efficient vehicle. I'll give you 40 mpg. Lets say that your round trip drive to work is 20 miles. Lets price petrol about $2 a gallon.
Lets also a assume that I eat an extra 2 bananas over my friends who drive to work. I believe it to be less than that. Lets say there are 6 bananas in a bunch. So your driving to work costs:
20 miles / 40 mpg = 1/2 a gallon a day. (plus your car maintenance expenses)
My costs of riding to work:
$2 a bunch * 1/3 of a bunch a day / $2 a gallon = 1/3 of a gallon a day. (plus the cost of maintaining my bicycle.
Now I would contend that you might well drive a more expensive vehicle than that, I eat less than 2 bananas a day to drive my bicycle, the environmental cost of producing a banana is less than 100% of its total cost, there are more than 6 bananas in a bunch of bananas where I live and that the mileage related costs of maintaining a car vs. a bicycle are relevant. I admit I do own a car so I can't claim all the production costs of a car as an advantage. Also I admit that it is possible that the environmental cost of making a banana _could_ be more than 100% of its cost in fuel, but I don't think so. I'm not sure about the cost of fuel, but I think if that is higher (as it is in banana producing nations like Brazil and India) that works to strengthen bicycles advantage too since it would mean using less fuel to make the banana at that price.
But anyway, bicycles are cheaper. Probably much, much cheaper, but even giving you _every_ benefit of the doubt bicycles win.
cheers,
david
PS. Most upsetting of all is you force me to sound like a rabid greeny just to argue a ridiculous contention with you. I'm not, I'm just a person who would like to personally do something about a problem that I judge to be real. On the other hand thank you for forcing me to do the exercise, I thought it might turn out to be many orders of magnitude better, but now I think I can just say riding a bicycle is much better.
What the hell do you think? Muscle energy isn't free energy, it comes from food, and food is anything but green energy.
Are you seriously suggesting that riding a bike to work and driving your car to work have a similar impact on global warming? Or are you just suggesting that leaving the solution to our duck lobbing scientist friends is preferable to doing something yourself?
Driving your car to work does release carbon into the environment that was not there last year. Riding your bike does not. The reduction of carbon in the environment is behind the discussion of carbon capture.
So your idea of saving the world is downscaling the economy and living like Cubans?
No, I do however suggest that our living environment is more important than our economy. If its necessary for me to make some changes to my life in order to reduce global warming then thats OK with me. People repeatedly accept changes to their life to improve the economy.
Your hostility to a proposal to actually make some personal changes is exactly the attitude that I sought to highlight in my previous post. In my post I meant to say that people could take action to help with the situation or they could wait for the scientists and government to solve the problem.
Without dismissing the value of research, I'd say we already know what we can do today with today's available tools to reduce our impact on the warming of the planet.
Stories like this make us feel better that we are doing more to combat global warming. But actually, if we rode our bike to work, bought less stuff and used things that required less power then we'd be making a positive difference.
Or we could wait for researchers and government to come up with a silver bullet. Human interest, feel good articles like this don't make me think this is imminent.
I know opinions like this aren't popular on Slashdot where its more important to find a way to justify upgrading the next gadget. But really, if its no the intelligent, wealthy population of the planet who will lead us to a solution by example, exactly who is it?
cheers,
david
If you believe that gamers use games to stay up to date on new technology you'll believe anything.
The only thing a study that says gamers are wealthy and more likely to invest in new technology and movie tickets confirms is that IGN would like to attract advertisers.
I don't see why this is marked flaimbait. Its exactly what humanity is thinking. Its not that "Nature is overrated" its that its been rated as less important than many other things. At least the poster is honestly expressing the thought that most are acting out.
A Recent report estimates that approaching 30% of species might extinct. Let that be an exaggeration but the fact remains many environments are being destroyed. In the meantime , we all remain more interested in the horsepower of our sports car, the power of our new computer or the taste of tomorrow's exotic dinner out.
Not only that but less than a billion of us have really reached anything like our potential for destroying the environment. But a couple of billion Chinese and Indians are about to catch up. What do you think it will be like when we are 3 times as effective?
Of course I'm hoping for a technological solution, failing that I'm hoping things don't meltdown before I get old and die (I don't really want to live in a concrete bunker thanks). I don't have much faith in people to react and change in time.
cheers,
david
It seems like the only thing that Slashdot knows about China is they are stealing our jobs, repress their citizens and now they have had an earthquake.
Mr. Collins is working for an outsourcing company. I'm willing to be that the reason he got the job was the fact that he understand the language, and perhaps more importantly, the culture of that company's customers.
In my experience there is a tremendous demand for such skills all over Asia. There are great opportunities to do something fun, interesting and very beneficial to your career over there, especially for young people who haven't put down deep roots at home yet. Most people don't do it though.
cheers,
david
Judging from all the cynical posts here you'd think this was another kick in the face to Linux.
As far as I can see this is great news. This is major PC vendors acknowledging that there is a market that they would like to better serve and asking their suppliers to help them do it.
Do you really expect them to say, "sorry if it doesn't have open source drivers we won't buy it?" Sorry, thats just not going to happen today. But it will never ever happen, without this step happening first. Thats the way business works.
You mean all we have to do is stop users from clicking on deceptive links?
It sounds so simple, why didn't anybody do this before?
The fact is users have already proven they can't learn to avoid these scams. And its getting harder, not easier to avoid them. One day it might be me who falls below the geek intelligence threshold and becomes the victim. Hats off to Paypal!
Of course if they restrict my browser of choice, I'll have a choice to make. I'll either use a different browser or use another on line payment method.
In a single article we have patents, taxes, freedom and driving.
Not only that, the reviewer managed (through an excellent summary) to work in discrimination too.
This is the best slashdot article evar!
I don't know if its common practice in Japan. But at the place I work they shut down nearly everything at night. The last person out the door has to complete a check list which is mostly about throwing breakers. There are a couple of breakers that are not to be shut down and those are marked and obvious. If you leave with something that is going to take a long time to complete running on your computer its trivial to get it left on via the checklist. If you're first in in the morning you quickly get to know where the breakers are that control the electricity that you want are.
I'm glad they do it that way.
Those of you who don't live in Japan might not be aware that as this rule is about to go into effect there has also been a large increase in random inspection of foreigner's immigration documents in Japan (Alien Registration Card).
Japan has never needed much encouragement to associate criminal behavior with foreigners. But I think in this case of fingerprinting we have the USA to thank. Its been almost satisfying to hear my American friends squealing about this. But not quite, two wrongs don't make a right and in any case, I lose twice now once now.
Back on track.... Anybody who thinks that this information won't be swapped backwards and forwards between countries is a moron. At some point a lot of this information will find its way into a common database.
cheers,
David
You may want to check that "can line up at the Japanese Citizen counters" benefit too. I believe thats out the window when this change goes into effect.
cheers,
David
There are devices that do this kind of thing already. They are called Intravascular Ultrasound. They are mounted on a catheter and they generate a 360 degree view. Its largely used for looking at vessel lining, though some work has been done with it in the heart chambers.
To my knowledge, which may be wrong, they do not measure flow (Doppler), it would usually not be effective since the plane of the image is perpendicular to the catheter. Since flow is normally parallel to the catheter the Doppler effect could not be used effectively. Anyway there are other catheter based devices that can measure flow I think. (the forward firing feature of this transducer might be used for Doppler measurements).
The only really interesting thing I see about this is the potential to have it no attached to the catheter. Swallowing or perhaps insertion near a site. But since this is a press release, they are only working in a glass of water and they make no statement about how to get the data out when its not attached to a catheter I'd have to say this is pie in the sky at this stage.
I've been using Virtualbank for 6 years (roughly). I am extremely happy with their service. http://virtualbank.com/
First of all, I can't agree that the idea is doomed to failure. There have been instances of successful education in the past and it might just happen again!
Secondly, I agree with everybody who says make it interesting and make it relevant.
My favourite piece of science writing, which I consider excellent (though I haven't finished it yet), is Bill Bryson's "A short History of Nearly Everything". It might be fun to ask the students to contrast this book and its style with sicence books they are using in their other classes. There are of course many science fiction examples worth looking at too. We had some of them in our reading list when I went to school but they were always discussed as fiction books never as science books.
And watching our words and actions is a bad thing? You'd rather have the right to "act human" every now and then? I'm guessing you mean "act human" towards other people rather than have other people act human towards you?
In days gone by we all lived and acted surrounded by people we knew. In those days there were social rules that governed our behavior. Things like integrity, honesty and compassion were valued. Today, we think nothing of breaking the law, lying to get what we want or crossing to the other side of the road to avoid an injured person. (so long as we don't get caught)
I believe people should be striving to live lives they are proud to have scrutinized. And I'd like to think its with publicly available information (like google maps).
Actually, I can forgive you for most bad actions. But that doesn't mean ignoring it through secrecy and anonymity makes it OK.
The fact that public officials will sometimes "be human" does not invalidate the idea. I am calling for people to be more accountable for their actions and I think that naturally we should ask public officials to do the same. They should be called to higher standards because they have more impact. When an official lies or makes inappropriate use of public authority they should be evaluated and if the action is unforgivable then they should be removed. I have noticed that places that expect less from their public officials seem to get less. (I know you could argue which is the cause and which is the effect). (I feel the same way about members of public companies).
It probably seems and unrealistic idea. But I am happier with: "I act with integrity, am compassionate and ask others to do the same" than "I really get away with a lot".
cheers, David