Much this will depend on whether or not our Internet connections are considered commodities or utilities.
If Comcast and other cable companies want to consdier connectivity a commodity, it would mean that Comcast is essentially providing the information we're accessing and have a say in exercising control over what we can have.
Personally, I would prefer our Internet access be regulated as a utility, like water and electricity. The water and electric companies do not generally limit or restrict our access to water or electricity except in exceptional circumstances like a severe water shortage or power grid failure. As a public utility, ISPs should not be in the business of censoring what traverses their networks or favoring certain content over others except as prescribed by law (e.g. the earlier post that mentioned giving bittorrent packets a lower priority but not throttling them completely).
However, if we adopt a utility model that does not allow ISPs to charge based on content, it may also allow ISPs to charge based on metered usage, just like we pay for water and electricity. Part of the regulator's job is to ensure those charges are fair and equitable.
Either way, the days of low-cost flat-rate free-flowing Internet service may be numbered.
This rasies a basic question: Which state can collect a tax on an Internet-based sale, the state where the seller operates or the state where the consumer makes the purchase?
Let's say I live in Vermont and I buy a song from iTunes, which is based in California.
Vermont claims that people owe it sales tax because they're in Vermont and buying something in another state that they could be buying here. If a Vermont resident goes to another state with no or lower sales tax to buy a car, Vermont requires that they pay Vermont's sales tax equal to the difference between the two when they register it in Vermont. There's also a section on Vermont tax returns that asks state residents to estimate the sales tax we would have paid if we'd bought something locally instead of through a Web site that, at present, implies that if they buy music through iTunes they should be paying state tax on the purchase.
The California proposal seems to think consumers are going, in a virtual sense, to California to buy my music. Because the transaction happens in California, they want to collect tax.
The Vermont requirement is apparently widely ignored and impossible to enforce unless the out-of-state business collects the tax for it. The California proposal would be enforceable only as long as the iTunes music store is hosted there. It would likely be moved off-shore if this proposal passes.
This will likely take Federal legislation or a Supreme Court decision defining the basis for where a tax is levied: on the location of the consumer or the location of the business. If the former, every business with a Web presence will have to incorporate 50+ different tax rules based on customer location, possibly more if they serve international customers.
It would be simpler would be to tax where the business is located, but then most states would object to the revenue loss and businesses would move their Web operations to states with low or no sales tax or off-shore (which would then likely cause Congress to pass legislation allowing states to tax their residents for out-of-state purchases anyway).
As always, it's about money which is of course is the root of all evil, which makes us a really evil society.
I preferred the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series to the original movie for one simple reason: Lynch had it rain on Arrakis at the end of the movie. Worse, he had Paul make it rain. It was an unforgiveable departure from the Herbert's story.
That said, the movie was great movie-making with, for the most part, an outstanding cast and perfomances. But I agree that it would really take more than one movie to relate the first book properly. The first three books could (and probably should) be done as a four-movie series:
1. Dune: Arrakis
2. Dune: Prophet
3. Dune: Messiah
4. Dune: Children of Dune...and maybe even a fifth movie...
5. Dune: God Emperor of Dune
Split the first book into two movies and then one movie each for the remaining stories.
Just please don't make it rain on Arrakis again. It was beyond silly.
Defining what can be patented should be fairly straightforward but we keep getting tied in knots.
A "cash register" is a patentable device. It is a physical construct that performs a specific work function. Its inventors deserve compensation for its invention.
Using a cash register to calculate and record a business transaction is a method of conducting business. No one should be able to patent the idea that you use a cash register to conduct business becuase that use is obvious and implied in the original intent of the device.
If we apply this to something like the Amazon "one-click" patent, the specific software application that acts as the mechanism for conducting the sale may deserve some protection. However, the idea of letting a customer buy something by clicking once, does not.
My position, in short, is that functional constructs (physical or virtual) deserve protection but ideas about the use of a construct does not.
That seems a simple enough practical definition, but I'm sure there's some problem with it that someone will feel compelled to expose.
I have a 20" Sony Trinitron I acquired used 21 years ago. The picture is still great. My wife keeps hoping it will die at some point so she can buy a better-looking TV for the bedroom, but it refuses to die or degrade. It is proof you can build good, reliable, lasting technology if you want to.
The old sensor program uses wired sensors, not wireless. SBI wanted wireless on the theory that wireless is more modern, therefore better.
That said, The old system can tell you when something is walking nearby and whether it's on two legs or four. It works just fine.
There are some political reasons CBP went with Boeing. For one thing, the old system was designed by INS. Under the current regime in DHS, if it was an INS program, it is a reminder of the Bad Old Days. In general, I do not praise old INS systems, but actively seek to bury them. In this case, however, the old INS system's sensor data is the only reason Boeing's system can produce anything at all.
The government hires contractors, in theory, to provide skills in areas like emerging technologies where the government civil service system isn't responsive enough to provide skilled workers at the time you need them. Also, contractors don't come with the baggage of managing civil service employees. They don't file union grievances or require annual appraisals. If you don't like one, you tell the company to send you another one. They're much easier to manage than Feds.
The problem is that after a while you don't have anyone left in house with current skills unless you hire the contractor's employees into government, which happens more often than you might think. My new boss, for example, used to be a contractor.
We need contractors. Too many people in house have obsolete or atrophied skill sets. The civil service system can't provide all the employees we need with the skills we need when we need them. But there's a difference between adding contract-based employees to a staff and turning control of a project or program to a contractor. That's where we are with too many government programs today -- we outsourced both the job and the responsibility for it. The concept breaks down when an organization starts depending too heavily on contracted help to do its thinking. Like any mercenaries, vendors will ultimately look after their own interests first and the public's interest second. If they are looking after the public's interest, it's generally to also serve their own.
We already have more people in prison, both in terms of percentage of population and quantity, than any other country on the planet, including such glorious examples of freedom and democracy as China and Russia. Now you want to add another 11 million people to the prison system?
It would only work if we let GM, Ford, and Chrysler use prison labor to build cars for free. Or if we let mining companies use prison labor down in the mines. Or some similar plan that lets US companies take advantage of the low cost labor they'd lose if we arrest and imprison all the illegal immigrants.
The sad thing is that some of the imprisoned would be better off under this system than they were in their home countries. At least they'll get fed three times a day and have a warm place to sleep.
I work for DHS and a friend of mine runs a small program that's been managing sensors on the border for 25 years.
Boeing was hired as the project's integrator and instead of subcontracting or working with the existing systems tried to do everything themselves. Why? To keep as much money for themselves, of course. They ignored, at first, all the existing systems and tried to replace them with proprietary technology that would anchor them into govermnent contracts in perpetuity.
They failed. Now they have to rely on refined data from a government-developed system to produce any results at all. This is a pattern I've seen in 26 years of working for the government: we hire an outside vendor who comes in and has to rely on our knowledge to make anything work. In a lot of cases they get us to do much of their work for them. The vendor's employees get huge bonuses and we get downsized. Granted there are times where if you don't bring in someone from the outside nothing will change, but the number of times internal staff saves the vendor's ass has been, in my experience, much higher than the other way around.
Sometimes it's better to spend your money on what your own staff can do instead of just assuming that an outside vendor will automatically develop something better. For some reason, too many executives undervalue the abilities of their own people and hire big names like Boeing for many times what it would have cost to develop better systems in house. The Secure Border Initiative is apparently one of them.
Afgan cellular companies have three choices: 1) keep the towers running 24 hours a day, 2) give into the Taliban, or 3) say they're not going to comply but then contract AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint to manage their systems, which in terms of service pretty would much achieve the same result as option 2.
I have two children, aged 14 and 12. I leave the discussion of intimate topics with my 12-year old daughter to my wife. My 14-year old son and I have had several discussions about sex, pornography, drugs, alcohol, and other topics parents should discuss with their teenage children. I cannot be staring over my son's shoulder 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, so I have done the best I can to make sure I can trust him to make good choices on his own. I do keep track of where he is, who he hangs out with, and what his interests are. We talk about something--news, school, sports, movies, games, books--every day.
Based on what I know of my son, I trust him to make good choices. My daughter, too.
I agree, it's not simple. It takes commitment, patience, and in my son's case a genuine interest in listening to the latest 47 reasons why Chuck Norris and Brett Favre are the two most awesome people on the planet. But since my children will eventually choose my nursing home, I consider good parenting a good investment.
Interesting idea, but I don't think Google meets the definition of a content provider or distributor in the traditional sense, as they do not make a conscious decision to carry specific content like the video store does. They display all the content that qualifies based on the search terms and the systems operating parameters, but the primary factors are the user's search term choices. Google doesn't generally return any results we don't tell it to.
I don't thump people with books. It's bad for the book.
Besides, if I wanted maximum thumping effect, I'd use my leather-bound copy of The Lord of the Rings. It's larger, heavier, and both more useful and entertaining.
Lessig, assuming he runs and is elected as a Democrat, would provide a massive counterweight to the Republican's Adam Putnam (R-FL) on technology issues, not to mention any other current Reps living off the largesse of the intellectual propery community (RIAA, MPAA, Business Software Alliance, etc.).
I hope he runs. We need more legislators with practical life experiences who are not only experts in particular disciplines, but know enough about legal or scientific methods to form intelligent opinion based on facts on other subjects instead of voting the way the polls or campaign contributors tell them to.
We can't mine Titan or any other intra-solar or interstellar body as long as we're bound by three dimensions. Until we figure out a way to either fold space or create wormholes and use them to establish direct connection between here and other places, we'll be slower than snails (or even glaciers) as far as space travel is concerned.
Call me when you've evolved a Third Stage Navigator or found our StarGate.
...North Atlantic '86 and The Bard's Tale (I and II). They were the games that made me buy my first Apple (a IIc). I played them on a IIe in the library almost every day until it closed. I finally decided if I was going to save the world from Soviet or magical domination, I'd better get a computer at home so I could devote myself to the cause.
In my case, playing games led to buying a computer, which led to an interest in how computers worked, which led to a change in career from administrator to self-taught computer hobbyist to organizational computer guru, a masters degree in information resource management, and a whole new career over the last 15 years as a technology manager. All becuase I got hooked on a couple of computer games.
I wonder just how many other computer-addicted people (e.g./.ers) were snared by similar "gateway" software?
Oh well -- at least I don't sell PDAs on street corners near schools.
I've seen a lot of responses here on why (or why not) to docuement a process, but I think the original question was more about "how" to document a process.
Without going into a mind-numbing level of detail, here are some initial thoughts:
1. Processes are generally either transactions or transformations. In a transactional process, two parties exchange things (items, services, money, etc.). In a transformation, you take certain resources (parts, money, skill, time, etc.) and use them to create a product (car, computer, software, legislation, etc.)
2. Basic process modeling (which is based on classical General System Theory) deals with four main areas: Inputs, Outputs, Mechanisms, and Controls. In essence: what goes in, what comes out, what tools we use to change what goes in to what comes out, and the rules that govern our work behavior while do the changing. Your documentation should cover at least these four things, particularly for tranformational processes.
3. Use both text and pictures. Defining a process means agreeing on a common lexicon. The word "requirement," for example, cannot mean different things to different people if you expect a consistent result. Define everything in plain text first and only then start drawing relational or flow diagrams.
4. Outcomes and ouputs are different. An output is generally an object (physical or virtual). Outcomes, on the other hand, are based on expectations. You can produce an output that does not meet the expected outcome of a process. In this sense, outcomes are generally more important, as simply producing an output that meets technical specifications may not solve the business problem it was intended to address.
5. Don't get tied to one way of modeling or one modeling tool. Most complex processes will require a mix of modeling techniques. I recommend the following subject areas as a start: Unified Modeling Language (UML), Critical Path, Queuing, Interactive Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) Definition (IDEF) Languages (in particuler, IDEF-0 and IDEF-3), flow diagraming, Object Process Methodology, and the Zachman Schema. Some of these have specific uses and others, like Zachman, provide a more of a general framework.
6. Finally, start small. Don't try to do a gigantic process all at once. Break it down into its component activities and, within activities, specific tasks. It's like eating an elephant: one bite at a time.
I'll add at this point that I started seriously studying process modeling about 14 years ago and I still learn something new at least monthly about the subject.
The most frustrating thing you'll encounter is that it can take many hours to fully model something that many people can do without thinking in a few seconds. If you want a fun exercise with a relatively limited set of variables, try modeling how a football quarterback makes a decision on a pass play with time routes between four receivers who all potentially come open in a particular order within a six-second period.
Once again we have a commercial entity who, instead of using digital media as a gateway to selling their product, prefer to shut down anything they don't control directly.
How many younger people who play games almost exclusively online have ever played Scrabble or Boggle? Why would a company like Hasbro want to shut down a site that might actually inspire some online gamers to go buy a physical copy of the game?
It's really not fair to just pick one, because different game types have different influences.
First gaming experience: "Blitzkreig," a hexagonal-board battle game. Later played quite a few other classic hex games, like Richthofen's War, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Borodino, etc.
First video game: Pong, in a friend's basement. Wasn't impressed.
First college gaming experience: RPG: Tunnels & Trolls, and later D&D.
First arcade video game experience: Space invaders also came out while I was in college, but the first arcade video game that really grabbed me was Galaga.
Favorite gaming experience: Diplomacy. Started playing it in college. No game comes close for me, video, RPG or board. Too bad it's so darn hard to find six other players willing to devote the time to play it properly.
I still play video games, but perfer RPG or turn-based games to shooters. Once you turn 50, you just don't have the eye-hand coordination any more.
...the speed at which humans work and the Graphical User Interface.
We are the main limiting factor in any system. Computers are theoretically designed to meet human expectations of response times. However, How much overall variation in response have we noticed between the response on a 386 running MSDOS and Windows 3.1 15 years ago and a 2 Gig Pentium running XP today? Maybe compilers run faster, but everyday tasks like word-processing or e-mail seem to run at about the same speed from a user perspective. If we designed systems to respond faster we'd likely confuse or annoy most of the current computer-using populace.
From a GUI perspective, the "modern" GUI is full of speed bumbs. Very little has changed since the original Macintosh design (or the original Xerox design, for that matter) except to add more menues, buttons and widgets that make it even harder to develop a reflexive capability in navigating the desktop. Hotkeys are still the fastest way to activate functions, but most people I know stil use the mouse and menus even for simple things like cutting and pasting text. You'd think someone would have developed a way to use screen corners plus keys to activate functions, but other than activating or disabling a Mac's screensaver no GUI designer has used the only four points on the monitor anyone can find while blindfolded to automate functions. Every time we take our eyes off what we're working on we lose "visual attention," which causes a loss of concentration. How many of us can hit any button in a window in any interface without looking? The way GUIs have stagnated under the guise of providing "familiarity" simply adds to our limitations.
Senators Harry Reid, Patrick Leahy, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, Susan Collins, Carl Levins (and apparently every other Democratic senator) expressed concern today that all of their ATM bank cards stopped working today. Their credit unions declined to comment for this story. When asked about the problem, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell replied, "I don't know. Mine still works just fine."
Response time is important. To most users, the interface is 99.9% of the system; they don't care what's under the hood.
Here's a question that might be worth considering: Have computer OS makers kept the response of computers relatively constant by accident or design? We've gotten used to working a a particular pace that, at least according to this article, hasn't changed significantly in 20 years. Once you accept that pace as the norm, you either don't think to try to change it or avoid changing it so you don't get out of your rhythm.
One aspect of indirect control, from a behavioral standpoint, is that we can feel in control of a situation merely by being able to predict when something will happen. If a computer responds faster than we can keep up, it might be a little disconcerting.
Then again, I'm inclined to think that it's accidental. Has anyone ever told you an app ran too fast?
Slashdot Mirror
Much this will depend on whether or not our Internet connections are considered commodities or utilities.
If Comcast and other cable companies want to consdier connectivity a commodity, it would mean that Comcast is essentially providing the information we're accessing and have a say in exercising control over what we can have.
Personally, I would prefer our Internet access be regulated as a utility, like water and electricity. The water and electric companies do not generally limit or restrict our access to water or electricity except in exceptional circumstances like a severe water shortage or power grid failure. As a public utility, ISPs should not be in the business of censoring what traverses their networks or favoring certain content over others except as prescribed by law (e.g. the earlier post that mentioned giving bittorrent packets a lower priority but not throttling them completely).
However, if we adopt a utility model that does not allow ISPs to charge based on content, it may also allow ISPs to charge based on metered usage, just like we pay for water and electricity. Part of the regulator's job is to ensure those charges are fair and equitable.
Either way, the days of low-cost flat-rate free-flowing Internet service may be numbered.
This rasies a basic question: Which state can collect a tax on an Internet-based sale, the state where the seller operates or the state where the consumer makes the purchase?
Let's say I live in Vermont and I buy a song from iTunes, which is based in California.
Vermont claims that people owe it sales tax because they're in Vermont and buying something in another state that they could be buying here. If a Vermont resident goes to another state with no or lower sales tax to buy a car, Vermont requires that they pay Vermont's sales tax equal to the difference between the two when they register it in Vermont. There's also a section on Vermont tax returns that asks state residents to estimate the sales tax we would have paid if we'd bought something locally instead of through a Web site that, at present, implies that if they buy music through iTunes they should be paying state tax on the purchase.
The California proposal seems to think consumers are going, in a virtual sense, to California to buy my music. Because the transaction happens in California, they want to collect tax.
The Vermont requirement is apparently widely ignored and impossible to enforce unless the out-of-state business collects the tax for it. The California proposal would be enforceable only as long as the iTunes music store is hosted there. It would likely be moved off-shore if this proposal passes.
This will likely take Federal legislation or a Supreme Court decision defining the basis for where a tax is levied: on the location of the consumer or the location of the business. If the former, every business with a Web presence will have to incorporate 50+ different tax rules based on customer location, possibly more if they serve international customers.
It would be simpler would be to tax where the business is located, but then most states would object to the revenue loss and businesses would move their Web operations to states with low or no sales tax or off-shore (which would then likely cause Congress to pass legislation allowing states to tax their residents for out-of-state purchases anyway).
As always, it's about money which is of course is the root of all evil, which makes us a really evil society.
I preferred the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series to the original movie for one simple reason: Lynch had it rain on Arrakis at the end of the movie. Worse, he had Paul make it rain. It was an unforgiveable departure from the Herbert's story.
...and maybe even a fifth movie...
That said, the movie was great movie-making with, for the most part, an outstanding cast and perfomances. But I agree that it would really take more than one movie to relate the first book properly. The first three books could (and probably should) be done as a four-movie series:
1. Dune: Arrakis
2. Dune: Prophet
3. Dune: Messiah
4. Dune: Children of Dune
5. Dune: God Emperor of Dune
Split the first book into two movies and then one movie each for the remaining stories.
Just please don't make it rain on Arrakis again. It was beyond silly.
Defining what can be patented should be fairly straightforward but we keep getting tied in knots.
A "cash register" is a patentable device. It is a physical construct that performs a specific work function. Its inventors deserve compensation for its invention.
Using a cash register to calculate and record a business transaction is a method of conducting business. No one should be able to patent the idea that you use a cash register to conduct business becuase that use is obvious and implied in the original intent of the device.
If we apply this to something like the Amazon "one-click" patent, the specific software application that acts as the mechanism for conducting the sale may deserve some protection. However, the idea of letting a customer buy something by clicking once, does not.
My position, in short, is that functional constructs (physical or virtual) deserve protection but ideas about the use of a construct does not.
That seems a simple enough practical definition, but I'm sure there's some problem with it that someone will feel compelled to expose.
I have a 20" Sony Trinitron I acquired used 21 years ago. The picture is still great. My wife keeps hoping it will die at some point so she can buy a better-looking TV for the bedroom, but it refuses to die or degrade. It is proof you can build good, reliable, lasting technology if you want to.
Oops, I forgot to add the "sarcasm tag" to my prison suggestion. :)
:/
At least my suggestion is more humane than the earlier poster who suggesting shooting them.
The old sensor program uses wired sensors, not wireless. SBI wanted wireless on the theory that wireless is more modern, therefore better.
That said, The old system can tell you when something is walking nearby and whether it's on two legs or four. It works just fine.
There are some political reasons CBP went with Boeing. For one thing, the old system was designed by INS. Under the current regime in DHS, if it was an INS program, it is a reminder of the Bad Old Days. In general, I do not praise old INS systems, but actively seek to bury them. In this case, however, the old INS system's sensor data is the only reason Boeing's system can produce anything at all.
The government hires contractors, in theory, to provide skills in areas like emerging technologies where the government civil service system isn't responsive enough to provide skilled workers at the time you need them. Also, contractors don't come with the baggage of managing civil service employees. They don't file union grievances or require annual appraisals. If you don't like one, you tell the company to send you another one. They're much easier to manage than Feds.
The problem is that after a while you don't have anyone left in house with current skills unless you hire the contractor's employees into government, which happens more often than you might think. My new boss, for example, used to be a contractor.
We need contractors. Too many people in house have obsolete or atrophied skill sets. The civil service system can't provide all the employees we need with the skills we need when we need them. But there's a difference between adding contract-based employees to a staff and turning control of a project or program to a contractor. That's where we are with too many government programs today -- we outsourced both the job and the responsibility for it. The concept breaks down when an organization starts depending too heavily on contracted help to do its thinking. Like any mercenaries, vendors will ultimately look after their own interests first and the public's interest second. If they are looking after the public's interest, it's generally to also serve their own.
We already have more people in prison, both in terms of percentage of population and quantity, than any other country on the planet, including such glorious examples of freedom and democracy as China and Russia. Now you want to add another 11 million people to the prison system?
It would only work if we let GM, Ford, and Chrysler use prison labor to build cars for free. Or if we let mining companies use prison labor down in the mines. Or some similar plan that lets US companies take advantage of the low cost labor they'd lose if we arrest and imprison all the illegal immigrants.
The sad thing is that some of the imprisoned would be better off under this system than they were in their home countries. At least they'll get fed three times a day and have a warm place to sleep.
I work for DHS and a friend of mine runs a small program that's been managing sensors on the border for 25 years.
Boeing was hired as the project's integrator and instead of subcontracting or working with the existing systems tried to do everything themselves. Why? To keep as much money for themselves, of course. They ignored, at first, all the existing systems and tried to replace them with proprietary technology that would anchor them into govermnent contracts in perpetuity.
They failed. Now they have to rely on refined data from a government-developed system to produce any results at all. This is a pattern I've seen in 26 years of working for the government: we hire an outside vendor who comes in and has to rely on our knowledge to make anything work. In a lot of cases they get us to do much of their work for them. The vendor's employees get huge bonuses and we get downsized. Granted there are times where if you don't bring in someone from the outside nothing will change, but the number of times internal staff saves the vendor's ass has been, in my experience, much higher than the other way around.
Sometimes it's better to spend your money on what your own staff can do instead of just assuming that an outside vendor will automatically develop something better. For some reason, too many executives undervalue the abilities of their own people and hire big names like Boeing for many times what it would have cost to develop better systems in house. The Secure Border Initiative is apparently one of them.
The Taliban may be concerned that US forces are using the cell towers as a passive rader system to track their movements, as described here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_42/b3854113.htm
Afgan cellular companies have three choices: 1) keep the towers running 24 hours a day, 2) give into the Taliban, or 3) say they're not going to comply but then contract AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint to manage their systems, which in terms of service pretty would much achieve the same result as option 2.
I have two children, aged 14 and 12. I leave the discussion of intimate topics with my 12-year old daughter to my wife. My 14-year old son and I have had several discussions about sex, pornography, drugs, alcohol, and other topics parents should discuss with their teenage children. I cannot be staring over my son's shoulder 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, so I have done the best I can to make sure I can trust him to make good choices on his own. I do keep track of where he is, who he hangs out with, and what his interests are. We talk about something--news, school, sports, movies, games, books--every day.
Based on what I know of my son, I trust him to make good choices. My daughter, too.
I agree, it's not simple. It takes commitment, patience, and in my son's case a genuine interest in listening to the latest 47 reasons why Chuck Norris and Brett Favre are the two most awesome people on the planet. But since my children will eventually choose my nursing home, I consider good parenting a good investment.
Interesting idea, but I don't think Google meets the definition of a content provider or distributor in the traditional sense, as they do not make a conscious decision to carry specific content like the video store does. They display all the content that qualifies based on the search terms and the systems operating parameters, but the primary factors are the user's search term choices. Google doesn't generally return any results we don't tell it to.
I don't thump people with books. It's bad for the book.
Besides, if I wanted maximum thumping effect, I'd use my leather-bound copy of The Lord of the Rings. It's larger, heavier, and both more useful and entertaining.
Did Hirsch just say that the online porn industry is doing more to protect minors from porn than Google or Yahoo?
Isn't that a lot like the Mafia saying they're doing more to protect people from criminals than the police?
And, as absurd as it sounds, are those statements maybe more correct than we'd like?
Trying to make search engine providers responsible for regulating online behavior is Nannyism taken to absurd lengths.
Teach your children to make good choices, turn them loose, and be available to them when they need you.
Lessig, assuming he runs and is elected as a Democrat, would provide a massive counterweight to the Republican's Adam Putnam (R-FL) on technology issues, not to mention any other current Reps living off the largesse of the intellectual propery community (RIAA, MPAA, Business Software Alliance, etc.).
I hope he runs. We need more legislators with practical life experiences who are not only experts in particular disciplines, but know enough about legal or scientific methods to form intelligent opinion based on facts on other subjects instead of voting the way the polls or campaign contributors tell them to.
We can't mine Titan or any other intra-solar or interstellar body as long as we're bound by three dimensions. Until we figure out a way to either fold space or create wormholes and use them to establish direct connection between here and other places, we'll be slower than snails (or even glaciers) as far as space travel is concerned.
Call me when you've evolved a Third Stage Navigator or found our StarGate.
...North Atlantic '86 and The Bard's Tale (I and II). They were the games that made me buy my first Apple (a IIc). I played them on a IIe in the library almost every day until it closed. I finally decided if I was going to save the world from Soviet or magical domination, I'd better get a computer at home so I could devote myself to the cause.
/.ers) were snared by similar "gateway" software?
In my case, playing games led to buying a computer, which led to an interest in how computers worked, which led to a change in career from administrator to self-taught computer hobbyist to organizational computer guru, a masters degree in information resource management, and a whole new career over the last 15 years as a technology manager. All becuase I got hooked on a couple of computer games.
I wonder just how many other computer-addicted people (e.g.
Oh well -- at least I don't sell PDAs on street corners near schools.
I've seen a lot of responses here on why (or why not) to docuement a process, but I think the original question was more about "how" to document a process.
Without going into a mind-numbing level of detail, here are some initial thoughts:
1. Processes are generally either transactions or transformations. In a transactional process, two parties exchange things (items, services, money, etc.). In a transformation, you take certain resources (parts, money, skill, time, etc.) and use them to create a product (car, computer, software, legislation, etc.)
2. Basic process modeling (which is based on classical General System Theory) deals with four main areas: Inputs, Outputs, Mechanisms, and Controls. In essence: what goes in, what comes out, what tools we use to change what goes in to what comes out, and the rules that govern our work behavior while do the changing. Your documentation should cover at least these four things, particularly for tranformational processes.
3. Use both text and pictures. Defining a process means agreeing on a common lexicon. The word "requirement," for example, cannot mean different things to different people if you expect a consistent result. Define everything in plain text first and only then start drawing relational or flow diagrams.
4. Outcomes and ouputs are different. An output is generally an object (physical or virtual). Outcomes, on the other hand, are based on expectations. You can produce an output that does not meet the expected outcome of a process. In this sense, outcomes are generally more important, as simply producing an output that meets technical specifications may not solve the business problem it was intended to address.
5. Don't get tied to one way of modeling or one modeling tool. Most complex processes will require a mix of modeling techniques. I recommend the following subject areas as a start: Unified Modeling Language (UML), Critical Path, Queuing, Interactive Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) Definition (IDEF) Languages (in particuler, IDEF-0 and IDEF-3), flow diagraming, Object Process Methodology, and the Zachman Schema. Some of these have specific uses and others, like Zachman, provide a more of a general framework.
6. Finally, start small. Don't try to do a gigantic process all at once. Break it down into its component activities and, within activities, specific tasks. It's like eating an elephant: one bite at a time.
I'll add at this point that I started seriously studying process modeling about 14 years ago and I still learn something new at least monthly about the subject.
The most frustrating thing you'll encounter is that it can take many hours to fully model something that many people can do without thinking in a few seconds. If you want a fun exercise with a relatively limited set of variables, try modeling how a football quarterback makes a decision on a pass play with time routes between four receivers who all potentially come open in a particular order within a six-second period.
Hope that helps.
Once again we have a commercial entity who, instead of using digital media as a gateway to selling their product, prefer to shut down anything they don't control directly.
How many younger people who play games almost exclusively online have ever played Scrabble or Boggle? Why would a company like Hasbro want to shut down a site that might actually inspire some online gamers to go buy a physical copy of the game?
Other than chronic business myopia, that is.
It's really not fair to just pick one, because different game types have different influences.
First gaming experience: "Blitzkreig," a hexagonal-board battle game. Later played quite a few other classic hex games, like Richthofen's War, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Borodino, etc.
First video game: Pong, in a friend's basement. Wasn't impressed.
First college gaming experience: RPG: Tunnels & Trolls, and later D&D.
First arcade video game experience: Space invaders also came out while I was in college, but the first arcade video game that really grabbed me was Galaga.
Favorite gaming experience: Diplomacy. Started playing it in college. No game comes close for me, video, RPG or board. Too bad it's so darn hard to find six other players willing to devote the time to play it properly.
I still play video games, but perfer RPG or turn-based games to shooters. Once you turn 50, you just don't have the eye-hand coordination any more.
(I can still beat my son at Madden '08, though!)
...the speed at which humans work and the Graphical User Interface.
We are the main limiting factor in any system. Computers are theoretically designed to meet human expectations of response times. However, How much overall variation in response have we noticed between the response on a 386 running MSDOS and Windows 3.1 15 years ago and a 2 Gig Pentium running XP today? Maybe compilers run faster, but everyday tasks like word-processing or e-mail seem to run at about the same speed from a user perspective. If we designed systems to respond faster we'd likely confuse or annoy most of the current computer-using populace.
From a GUI perspective, the "modern" GUI is full of speed bumbs. Very little has changed since the original Macintosh design (or the original Xerox design, for that matter) except to add more menues, buttons and widgets that make it even harder to develop a reflexive capability in navigating the desktop. Hotkeys are still the fastest way to activate functions, but most people I know stil use the mouse and menus even for simple things like cutting and pasting text. You'd think someone would have developed a way to use screen corners plus keys to activate functions, but other than activating or disabling a Mac's screensaver no GUI designer has used the only four points on the monitor anyone can find while blindfolded to automate functions. Every time we take our eyes off what we're working on we lose "visual attention," which causes a loss of concentration. How many of us can hit any button in a window in any interface without looking? The way GUIs have stagnated under the guise of providing "familiarity" simply adds to our limitations.
We are the weakest link.
...just take her little brother to see the movie?
Senators Harry Reid, Patrick Leahy, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, Susan Collins, Carl Levins (and apparently every other Democratic senator) expressed concern today that all of their ATM bank cards stopped working today. Their credit unions declined to comment for this story. When asked about the problem, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell replied, "I don't know. Mine still works just fine."
Response time is important. To most users, the interface is 99.9% of the system; they don't care what's under the hood.
Here's a question that might be worth considering: Have computer OS makers kept the response of computers relatively constant by accident or design? We've gotten used to working a a particular pace that, at least according to this article, hasn't changed significantly in 20 years. Once you accept that pace as the norm, you either don't think to try to change it or avoid changing it so you don't get out of your rhythm.
One aspect of indirect control, from a behavioral standpoint, is that we can feel in control of a situation merely by being able to predict when something will happen. If a computer responds faster than we can keep up, it might be a little disconcerting.
Then again, I'm inclined to think that it's accidental. Has anyone ever told you an app ran too fast?
Maybe if he'd only done XXX and Riddick. But have you seen The Pacifier? I'll never be able to take Vin seriously again. :/