I thought the quality was decent until 2003. The programmers I knew seemed to be "masters degree" level intelligence working in bachelor degree jobs.
Since they they have declined and there is a preponderance high school graduate level intelligence combined poor work ethics (on call person doesn't respond for a few hours instead of within 15 minutes... forget to do work... don't seem to think of things until you instruct them that they need to do so- and then sometimes it takes repeating two or three times before it sticks.)
Just because a programmer is cheaper, they do not magically gain subject area expertise. They are a reasonable programmer who can implement good specifications. You can have a person with subject area knowledge psuedo-code and test the program and get a quality result, for 1/3 the money and about 150% of the time.
The problem at my company is they assume the timeline will be the same and schedule accordingly. Writing the requirements down precisely enough that an ignorant programmer can implement them is hard and time consuming.
I have enjoyed playing more than I enjoy DMing but....I've been a DM since 1978.
I currently have two active campaigns.
I enjoy my games because... I set up a wide but shallow environment and let the players drive the direction of the campaign. I develop in depth as they focus on an area. I have secret cards that the players draw at the start of play. Only the individual player knows what is on their card. The cards let them break the rules, automatically succeed, etc. It produces a "movie" feel with unexpected twists and turns. I use my own material but based on stereotypes as a guide. (Someday they'll figure out that the goblins in the plane of earth are all Carol Channing). I have unique aspects in the world that the players struggle with, then accept, then internalize, and then the magic happens as they become immersed in the world and make logical decisions based on alien worldsets. This is a very cool aspects. Their fear and awe of "the makers" took years to build up.
The games scale to level 36 and we have a metric of 2 levels per year if they are pushing reasonably hard and taking risks. There are a lot of rules on top of the old Cyclopedia D&D. I hit on some concepts years before they were added to D&D or appeared in MMorgs (like continuing hit dice all the way up). I set up this huge spreadsheet way back at the beginning and calculated damage vs hit points all the way up so it's all balanced.
One group is currently wandering around the plane of earth.
The other group is in the sky tree Jisturel in Elthilil, the city of the sleeping king in the plan of Leveroan. It's an adventure they have been at for over 3 years. They are about 60% of the way through. It was supposed to be "this is too tough- and too boring to ever finish-- all those who came before you got to about a fifth of the way up the tree and gave up". For some reason, they took this as a challenge.
Each has a host of NPC's associated with them- relatives, minor enemies, friends. They keep getting harrassed by this old turtle like wizard who wants their help but isn't permitted to say exactly how they can help him.
I like the legends concept of a simpler character and less equipment. I have some complicated rules systems for the gearheads but simpler players can get 95% of the same thing in a simple version of each rules type.
Sometimes, it's really about helpless rage and a desire to strike back at the other person despite the costs.
It doesn't matter if you lose too. You were losing anyway. This way you both lose.
The superbug is one of the more likely doomsday scenarios- both naturally or artificially. The cost to develop these bugs is probably within the scope of a billionaire now. Once it gets down to where someone with 10 million bucks can do it, it seems very likely to happen.
I do not think it will peak. Instead, I think it will continue to grow until it collapses.
It could be war or a significant disaster over a very brittle and complex system that has no slack left in it. It might be a plague. The plague wouldn't kill more than 2% directly but might disrupt the systems. Whatever the trigger is, the real cause will be a population 4x to 5x over the true carrying capacity of the planet.
Losses of up to 90% since the deaths would probably overshoot 1x.
Yes. It's very pessimistic. I don't think the population will peak. If there is any part of the human population which breeds at a higher rate, it will come to dominate the population over time. Right now in america, there are people who choose lower standards of living so they can have more children and they have children at significantly over 2 children per family.
There are large parts of the world that will die off when we stop feeding them because they have destroyed their own land and we kept feeding them so they wouldn't starve and they continued to increase in population. There is nothing left but dirt and humans.
I suppose we could find a way to artificially make food directly from energy.
Quality of life has already been dropping for most for the last 30 years. 4 billion was too many to sustain. We have been killing the oceans, destroying the top soil, exhausting resources that took millions of years to create for decades.
We can't stop people from breeding so it is going to end in extremely ugly fashion within the next 100 years with most the world like Africa.
Another response said 1st world countries only had a small rate of growth so we didn't have to fear exponential growth. I think they understand the term exponential growth. Only the end point matters- if the max capacity of the planet is 17 billion- and we are growing at 100% per generation we get to it sooner. But at 1%, we still get to it.
All it would take is a major war and disruption of deliveries and a couple billion people could die in a few years.
Nothing will change until we have a major die off. Probably not then- because by the time that happens, the capacity will have been overshot and the carrying capacity will be a fraction of the number of people alive at that point.
In any population- the subpopulation which breeds faster will come to dominate the population. It doesn't matter if a subset prefers color TV's. The group that prefers to have big families will become the dominant population.
They are finding alternatives to the rare doping elements.
I don't think energy production will be a problem in the end. The end problem is population density and total population.
Anyone with a house can slap panels on the roof sufficient to reduce power generation needs by 75%. 100% if they use batteries (which are highly unrenewable - 7 years and they are toast under very good conditions- less under bad conditions).
But apartment buildings don't have enough surface area for the residents power needs.
It does seem like solar and wind energy would not increase the net heat- because that is already in the environment. Releasing stored energy (coal, oil, uranium) would increase the net heat.
At our current energy usage growth rates, the planet is the temperature of boiling water before 2500.
This has nothing to do with global warming. It's just a fact that as you use energy, it flows into the environment. Just like a 100 watt lightbulb also warms up the room, 7 billion people worth of devices releasing energy warm up the planet faster than it can radiate the heat into space.
Instant play should be the wave of the future- but if they charge more than first class mail, then mailing remains an option. I.e. Stars wanting 1000% more for their content in 1 year.
Netflix was profitable with disks. It was a great deal with instant play.
Next thing, it will be $90 a month like other cable stations and not worth the money.
You realize that adjusted for inflation... costing double or even triple is a drop in price.
A house in 1978 which sold for $13,000 now costs $150,000. Bread which was 50 cents is now $5 bucks. In 1980 the median annual income was about 17k. in 2010 the median annual income was about 46k.
I don't know why so little zonks you. I have friends who have 2-3 joints (yes-- joints purchased pre-rolled) a day and those cost about $1 each - a fraction of booze. They are not zonked for hours and still do their jobs. I can't comment on my own usage in a public forum. Perhaps I do, perhaps I don't.
Your experience is clearly different. Perhaps a different part of the country.
If you look at drug articles for other drugs, they show a consistent of claiming this is more pure/powerful than ever before but the percentage of purity quoted is about the same going back to the 80's.
They also claim that this particular bust will put a serious dent in the drug and raise prices. But the prices have dropped consistently since the early 80's.
Think about this on pot.
If you want to get stoned (drunk), then you would need to use less of it as it became more potent. Which would reduce demand. In the early 80's it took about 1 joint to become stoned and it lasted 2-3 hours. Today, it takes about 1 joint to become stoned and it lasts 2-3 hours. Interesting?
If pot were so much more powerful- then wouldn't tiny amounts get you stoned for much longer periods of time?
One change that *does* appear to have occurred is an emphasis on THC over cannabinoids. Which is too bad. Because THC just makes you feel stoned while the cannabinoids are what makes you giggly, happy, and goofy. I.e. the fun part of the high. I'm not sure on the growing period. I hadn't heard they could grow it faster. That's interesting.
I'm not saying there are not high THC varietals out there. But in those cases- two puffs and you are done. I mean- you do not drink absinth the same way you drink wine. You do not drink everclear the same way you drink beer.
Now-- pot is pretty healthy to begin with but the healthiest way to consume it is to use an oil or butter to steep off the active agents and cook it into food. Otherwise you risk a 2% increase in the rate of emphysema which you really don 't want.
A note on alchohol. Of any kind. It appears to seriously reduce strokes and heart attacks and arterial diseases. So if you are at risk of those- having a drink (women) or two (men) a day helps. Going over that tends to produce booze related problems.
Just make everything over 6 months old available for a reasonable fixed subscription price and you will have no piracy, have simpler accounting (like when long distance calls became less expensive to give away unlimited than to track the calls).
$20 a month for all songs that have been out 6 months. $20 a month for all books that have been out 6 months. $20 a month for all movies that have been out 6 months.
You could probably push one of those categories up to $30 or $40.
You might miss some on the high end (cable people paying $120 a month) but you pick up a lot on the low end (who now pirate or do without). The current model is crazy.
There is a high benefit to being able to reliably use this model. I don't have enough room in my house to keep all the dvd's books and cd's. I've been getting rid of them for the last five years.
In addition to really high government salaries (which didn't used to be true and made cheap government services possible) we also have unreasonable pensions (which also didn't used to be true).
Where we used to have the equivalent of a $40k annual pension, we now have a $158k annual pension. It's going to bankrupt a lot of municipalities.
A reasonable level of taxation is about 20-25% if you are not giving health care and maybe 10% more for a social insurance plan and 10% more for national health care.
Our current tax levels are over 40% and we have no health care and a failing social insurance plan.
Meanwhile, our senators are getting fabulous pensions and healthcare after only 10 years on the job (less than 2 terms).
Slashdot Mirror
Restaurant managers are notable as one of few groups of people who work longer hours than IT.
I thought the quality was decent until 2003. The programmers I knew seemed to be "masters degree" level intelligence working in bachelor degree jobs.
Since they they have declined and there is a preponderance high school graduate level intelligence combined poor work ethics (on call person doesn't respond for a few hours instead of within 15 minutes... forget to do work... don't seem to think of things until you instruct them that they need to do so- and then sometimes it takes repeating two or three times before it sticks.)
I've seen it work and deliver quality work.
It's a little slower and cheaper.
Just because a programmer is cheaper, they do not magically gain subject area expertise. They are a reasonable programmer who can implement good specifications. You can have a person with subject area knowledge psuedo-code and test the program and get a quality result, for 1/3 the money and about 150% of the time.
The problem at my company is they assume the timeline will be the same and schedule accordingly. Writing the requirements down precisely enough that an ignorant programmer can implement them is hard and time consuming.
I have enjoyed playing more than I enjoy DMing but....I've been a DM since 1978.
I currently have two active campaigns.
I enjoy my games because...
I set up a wide but shallow environment and let the players drive the direction of the campaign.
I develop in depth as they focus on an area.
I have secret cards that the players draw at the start of play. Only the individual player knows what is on their card. The cards let them break the rules, automatically succeed, etc. It produces a "movie" feel with unexpected twists and turns.
I use my own material but based on stereotypes as a guide. (Someday they'll figure out that the goblins in the plane of earth are all Carol Channing).
I have unique aspects in the world that the players struggle with, then accept, then internalize, and then the magic happens as they become immersed in the world and make logical decisions based on alien worldsets. This is a very cool aspects. Their fear and awe of "the makers" took years to build up.
The games scale to level 36 and we have a metric of 2 levels per year if they are pushing reasonably hard and taking risks. There are a lot of rules on top of the old Cyclopedia D&D. I hit on some concepts years before they were added to D&D or appeared in MMorgs (like continuing hit dice all the way up). I set up this huge spreadsheet way back at the beginning and calculated damage vs hit points all the way up so it's all balanced.
One group is currently wandering around the plane of earth.
The other group is in the sky tree Jisturel in Elthilil, the city of the sleeping king in the plan of Leveroan. It's an adventure they have been at for over 3 years. They are about 60% of the way through. It was supposed to be "this is too tough- and too boring to ever finish-- all those who came before you got to about a fifth of the way up the tree and gave up". For some reason, they took this as a challenge.
Each has a host of NPC's associated with them- relatives, minor enemies, friends. They keep getting harrassed by this old turtle like wizard who wants their help but isn't permitted to say exactly how they can help him.
I like the legends concept of a simpler character and less equipment. I have some complicated rules systems for the gearheads but simpler players can get 95% of the same thing in a simple version of each rules type.
I like being a GM tho.
Sometimes, it's really about helpless rage and a desire to strike back at the other person despite the costs.
It doesn't matter if you lose too. You were losing anyway. This way you both lose.
The superbug is one of the more likely doomsday scenarios- both naturally or artificially. The cost to develop these bugs is probably within the scope of a billionaire now. Once it gets down to where someone with 10 million bucks can do it, it seems very likely to happen.
Diseases mutate.
A lot.
When I was just rereading this I saw it could be read that way as well.
I do not think it will plateau or level out at a set value.
I think it will grow until the day commences a precipitous collapse.
I'm not a doomsday person... I don't think we can do anything to change the outcome...and it just seems so obvious I wonder why everyone can't see it.
I do not think it will peak.
Instead, I think it will continue to grow until it collapses.
It could be war or a significant disaster over a very brittle and complex system that has no slack left in it. It might be a plague. The plague wouldn't kill more than 2% directly but might disrupt the systems. Whatever the trigger is, the real cause will be a population 4x to 5x over the true carrying capacity of the planet.
Losses of up to 90% since the deaths would probably overshoot 1x.
Yes. It's very pessimistic. I don't think the population will peak. If there is any part of the human population which breeds at a higher rate, it will come to dominate the population over time. Right now in america, there are people who choose lower standards of living so they can have more children and they have children at significantly over 2 children per family.
There are large parts of the world that will die off when we stop feeding them because they have destroyed their own land and we kept feeding them so they wouldn't starve and they continued to increase in population. There is nothing left but dirt and humans.
I suppose we could find a way to artificially make food directly from energy.
No. Obviously not. That wasn't my point.
We have too many people. We are going to trade quantity of life for quality of life.
And then in the end, it won't matter because we'll out breed even that capacity and things will fall apart in an extremely ugly way.
And there is nothing you or I can or anyone else can do to stop it.
Quality of life has already been dropping for most for the last 30 years. 4 billion was too many to sustain. We have been killing the oceans, destroying the top soil, exhausting resources that took millions of years to create for decades.
We can't stop people from breeding so it is going to end in extremely ugly fashion within the next 100 years with most the world like Africa.
Another response said 1st world countries only had a small rate of growth so we didn't have to fear exponential growth. I think they understand the term exponential growth. Only the end point matters- if the max capacity of the planet is 17 billion- and we are growing at 100% per generation we get to it sooner. But at 1%, we still get to it.
All it would take is a major war and disruption of deliveries and a couple billion people could die in a few years.
Nothing will change until we have a major die off. Probably not then- because by the time that happens, the capacity will have been overshot and the carrying capacity will be a fraction of the number of people alive at that point.
In any population- the subpopulation which breeds faster will come to dominate the population. It doesn't matter if a subset prefers color TV's. The group that prefers to have big families will become the dominant population.
The article alludes to that and says that the new models will use 90% less water.
Like most humans, they probably ignored/missed constraints in the first iteration because they saw the water as an "unlimited" resource.
They are finding alternatives to the rare doping elements.
I don't think energy production will be a problem in the end. The end problem is population density and total population.
Anyone with a house can slap panels on the roof sufficient to reduce power generation needs by 75%. 100% if they use batteries (which are highly unrenewable - 7 years and they are toast under very good conditions- less under bad conditions).
But apartment buildings don't have enough surface area for the residents power needs.
It does seem like solar and wind energy would not increase the net heat- because that is already in the environment. Releasing stored energy (coal, oil, uranium) would increase the net heat.
There are 7 billion people on the planet.
Way too many.
At our current energy usage growth rates, the planet is the temperature of boiling water before 2500.
This has nothing to do with global warming. It's just a fact that as you use energy, it flows into the environment. Just like a 100 watt lightbulb also warms up the room, 7 billion people worth of devices releasing energy warm up the planet faster than it can radiate the heat into space.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/08/02/2315207/limits-on-growth-of-energy-use-and-economies
Red box has no selection.
Instant play should be the wave of the future- but if they charge more than first class mail, then mailing remains an option. I.e. Stars wanting 1000% more for their content in 1 year.
Netflix was profitable with disks. It was a great deal with instant play.
Next thing, it will be $90 a month like other cable stations and not worth the money.
I rate shows i like and netflix has recommended a lot of films I would have never seen which I liked a lot.
For example: 12:01, "Cottage to Let", (a lot of 1950's war/spy movies), A lot of anime I would not have otherwise heard of.
So that's worth considering.
You realize that adjusted for inflation... costing double or even triple is a drop in price.
A house in 1978 which sold for $13,000 now costs $150,000.
Bread which was 50 cents is now $5 bucks.
In 1980 the median annual income was about 17k.
in 2010 the median annual income was about 46k.
I don't know why so little zonks you. I have friends who have 2-3 joints (yes-- joints purchased pre-rolled) a day and those cost about $1 each - a fraction of booze. They are not zonked for hours and still do their jobs. I can't comment on my own usage in a public forum. Perhaps I do, perhaps I don't.
Your experience is clearly different. Perhaps a different part of the country.
My perception is that the 50's to the 90's were a period where justices (liberal or conservative) respected precedent even if they disagreed with it.
Since Reagan, the conservative justice are willing to regularly turn over very long standing precedents.
That is partially propaganda and partially true.
If you look at drug articles for other drugs, they show a consistent of claiming this is more pure/powerful than ever before but the percentage of purity quoted is about the same going back to the 80's.
They also claim that this particular bust will put a serious dent in the drug and raise prices. But the prices have dropped consistently since the early 80's.
Think about this on pot.
If you want to get stoned (drunk), then you would need to use less of it as it became more potent. Which would reduce demand. In the early 80's it took about 1 joint to become stoned and it lasted 2-3 hours. Today, it takes about 1 joint to become stoned and it lasts 2-3 hours. Interesting?
If pot were so much more powerful- then wouldn't tiny amounts get you stoned for much longer periods of time?
One change that *does* appear to have occurred is an emphasis on THC over cannabinoids. Which is too bad. Because THC just makes you feel stoned while the cannabinoids are what makes you giggly, happy, and goofy. I.e. the fun part of the high.
I'm not sure on the growing period. I hadn't heard they could grow it faster. That's interesting.
I'm not saying there are not high THC varietals out there. But in those cases- two puffs and you are done. I mean- you do not drink absinth the same way you drink wine. You do not drink everclear the same way you drink beer.
Now-- pot is pretty healthy to begin with but the healthiest way to consume it is to use an oil or butter to steep off the active agents and cook it into food. Otherwise you risk a 2% increase in the rate of emphysema which you really don 't want.
A note on alchohol. Of any kind. It appears to seriously reduce strokes and heart attacks and arterial diseases. So if you are at risk of those- having a drink (women) or two (men) a day helps. Going over that tends to produce booze related problems.
Cheers
Ha ha ha.
Your statement fits the line of reasoning to a "T".
Irony is a pirated DVD that retains the warnings.
Just make everything over 6 months old available for a reasonable fixed subscription price and you will have no piracy, have simpler accounting (like when long distance calls became less expensive to give away unlimited than to track the calls).
$20 a month for all songs that have been out 6 months.
$20 a month for all books that have been out 6 months.
$20 a month for all movies that have been out 6 months.
You could probably push one of those categories up to $30 or $40.
You might miss some on the high end (cable people paying $120 a month) but you pick up a lot on the low end (who now pirate or do without). The current model is crazy.
There is a high benefit to being able to reliably use this model. I don't have enough room in my house to keep all the dvd's books and cd's. I've been getting rid of them for the last five years.
Except at the point that they figure out some approach like... moving your money out of banks into credit unions.
Or things get violent. I think the violence is still a couple years away.
In addition to really high government salaries (which didn't used to be true and made cheap government services possible) we also have unreasonable pensions (which also didn't used to be true).
Where we used to have the equivalent of a $40k annual pension, we now have a $158k annual pension. It's going to bankrupt a lot of municipalities.
A reasonable level of taxation is about 20-25% if you are not giving health care and maybe 10% more for a social insurance plan and 10% more for national health care.
Our current tax levels are over 40% and we have no health care and a failing social insurance plan.
Meanwhile, our senators are getting fabulous pensions and healthcare after only 10 years on the job (less than 2 terms).
Oh and universities have repeatedly busted people for cheating on multiple choice using pagers and then cell phones.
One professor also told of an attempt to bribe him... $50 in the blue book.
He related how he told the entire class... "I'm not saying I can't be bribed... but $50 is not my price."