"you are upsetting the contractors" (moved to spreadsheets for 8 months-- then the project went in and failed-- years later management still pissed at him).
"you wrote a program that helped us through a major catastrophe but without permission and it wasn't planned by management" (denied promotion for 3 years until the entire staff went to the new incoming manager and said this guy wasn't getting a promotion and was a single point of failure)
You are correct. That's the blunt of it. They do not want the truth. So don't get upset. Bypass the chain of command at your peril.
The problem is that tighter controls are taking away our ability to secretly fix things. At a publicly held company they are basically down to a line by line audit of our changes now.
I'm wrong, you are right-- things turn out okay. Nothing I can do about it. I'm right, you are wrong-- things turn out bad. Nothing I can do about it. Either case I die nice and happy old age because the really bad "Depression", "WWII", "Black Plague" type stuff is really rare and things rarely turn out as bad as the doomsayers claim.
The only case I really worry about is if I'm wrong and I turn out to be optimistic.
That new fatal diarrhea or the Bird flu or something nasty hits us hard and fast and when I go to the supermarket (as I did in the last Hurricane) and find nothing but a few bottles of V8 (and it wasn't refilled for close to a week- I was damn lucky to have chili and crap in the house). And that hurricane didn't even hit us. The highways were under-designed to move the people out of its way (and everyone panicked after Katrina).
I take reasonable, non-wacko precautions now. I keep 5 gallons of fresh fuel during the season and always keep enough dry & canned food for 2-3 weeks.
It would be good if you turn out to be right in 35 years. For now, you seem more like the guy falling past the window on the fifth floor saying "so far so good!".
1) is where most software and management people both fail. managers refuse inexpensive updates to keep the software robust because there is "No R.O.I." until they then buy or have written a new "wonder package" at much higher expense than the deferred maintenance. Meanwhile developers (and users) design systems that are nice but so expensive they really can't be done.
2) Software, unlike buildings, is constantly changing- and usually it is equivalent to adding new floors onto buildings more than adding new wings. This means as you add more and more floors, the foundation must be made stronger. This work is rarely allowed (see #1) so when you write software, you need the experience to say, "I can inexpensively make this foundation strong enough to handle 3 new floors of upgrades and triple the expected load... however i can see that making it handle 5 times the load is so expensive the project won't happen.
---
So you have such basics as Reasonably normalized data. Abstraction layers so that you can replace a layer without breaking anything. Fields big enough to hold at least 3 digits more than you ever expect to happen in reality. Foundation library classes that are well-defined, obviously reusable- and not too many of them (maybe 80-100 max - more than that and people start rewriting them because they can't find them).
--- the worst bit is that now managers think 1) programmers can maintain skill without actually working on code 2) programmers are generic resources and that a college grad or indian resource can step right in at full productivity. 3) languages and platforms will not expire within 3-4 years because the old mainframe programs never did (but they do today-- they are all so interdependent on each other).
"Given prosperous standard of living, and access to birth control, and women's rights, if nothing else, women start to figure out that having 1 or 2 kids is a lot more fun than having 10."
You are not listening.
Picture birth control as penicillin and humans as bacteria. A group will develop that breeds quickly despite birth control and passes on that trait.
For example, I've known three women who were strippers. The one thing they had in common was that all three of them had four or more children. I've known catholics and among them, several had 4 or more children. (and no, hehe, I'm not drawing any parallels there). I've known a lot of hispanics who also have large families-- not with welfare.
It could be religious- it could be cultural.
I hear that you think bribing women with freedom and goodies will universally lead them to have few children.
I know women who want to have lots of kids more than anything. It makes them happy. And like any reproductively sound trait, that will probably be passed on and their kids will also love having lots of kids more than having TV's and Cable and the latest CD's.
---
Given a population of 2 breeder types and 98 replacement types, in just 20 years, the 2 breeder types are up to 8 out of a population of 108. After 20 more years, they can easily be up to 42 out of 142. After only 60 years,they have a majority of the population and democratically pass laws that benefit their portion of the population. And those things are happening in the real world around the world today. And the trend is accelerated when the "non-breeder" types don't even replace themselves.
---
Anyway.. perhaps I'm overly pessimistic. It doesn't matter either way. I can change the world in some ways, but this is not one of them. Either people will stop breeding and the population will top out, or we will breed to collapse.
I think you are ignoring signs all over the place that humans are overwhelming the earth's ability to regenerate itself with regard to being habitable by humans.
I think you haven't seen how in less than a life time, so many pleasant spots to relax have been overwhelmed, destroyed, and now are rutted and ugly or are fenced off so you can look at them but not be in them.
Just remember, when pessimists tend to have a more accurate view of reality than optimists.
I agree- there is a LOT of uninhabitable land out there. But we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the southwestern united states. All it will take is some kind of minor catastrophe and you could have a million people die.
Everything in our society is tuned to the nth degree. There is very little slack any more.
Abortion. Whatever your position, this is a serious issue worthy of the political heat. Still up for grabs. The degree of socialism. Same. Still up for grabs. The degree of corporatism. They won. Any candidates the corporations do not want are destroyed. The degree of social conservatism and compliance. We can have a free but incoherent society or we can have a coherent but oppressive society. The 50's were a golden era if you were a certain type of person- and hell if you were not and the same could be said for today. The 50's were very coherent, all one people, you knew where you stood even if you stood against the other 97%. Today, there is no 97% to stand against. Just three dozen other 3% factions.
After that it's all about bridges, roads, and cronies. The same as everywhere else.
China is losing a million acres a year to desertification. In Dunhuang, a former Silk Road oasis in the Gobi, the resulting water shortage has become critical. By Clifford Coonan (this in 2007 after reports in 2000 said they had turned the corner and were reducing desertification)
Although the oceans were considered inexhaustible in the last century, many fisheries today show signs of senescence.... But numerous observations contradict this idea [that stopping fishing after collapse helps]. Only 7% of collapsed populations have recuperated their numbers after one generation. The example of codfish in Newfoundland is renowned. Despite a moratorium on codfishing following the collapse of stocks in 1992, the biomasss level remains still lower than that of 20 years ago, and no recovery has been observed.
Population growth in rich societies. http://rickbutts.com/83/is-england-becoming-a-muslim-nation/ The average birth rate for native Englishwomen is 1.1 children per, while the Muslim women's birth rate [in England] is 3.4, or more than triple. By all measures and accounts England will become Muslim in the not to distant future. This is in England. I.e., this population is resistant to lower birth rate effect.
I'm not saying islamic or hispanc are bad people. If it were not them, some other population would be the fastest growing one-- and it would become a larger and larger portion of the population over time.
Now... imagine that one subgroup of humans develops a tendency to have 3 children each even in Norway. In 60 years, that group will probably come to dominate Norway. And Norway is likely to have excess breeder types from other cultures settle in norway when they start exhausting their own countries. Could be catholics, could be islamic, could be some non-religious fertility type group. Who knows. It only takes one.
As they said in Jurassic Park... Life finds a way. With 6 billion of us (already), there will be a group that lives in a modern society yet has a high breeding rate.
In fact, I said nothing we do will prevent that day from coming and I didn't advocate any position.
Anything you *could* advocate would be pretty horrific and immoral.
So we have to go through the die-off, hope we survive as a species, hope it is after we are dead.
There are plenty of locations around the world already where humans bred to the point where they reduced their environment down to dirt- worse than locusts.
It sucks- and people hate to even think about the inevitable. But we get a little more fragile as a society every day. Another type of fishing population collapses or goes up in price so you can't use it as a mainstay food-source every day. A little more land goes bad every day (being a vegetarian is not the ultimate answer either). Another water source is exhausted every day.
And as we pack more people together, we give diseases more chance to turn nasty every day. It gets cheaper to destroy large amounts of other humans every day. We have more people trying to recreate in the same 300 acres of mountain land every day. The effects of earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters are worse every day because of higher population density.
And as I said, there isn't really anything that anyone can do about it.
I look at it, think "yup, humans are going to have some horrific time during the next 30-100 years and there isn't squat I can do about it. Might as well have a few laughs and hope I die first of old age."
I believe we are giving aid to Africa for two reasons. 1) Kind hearted- we don't want them to starve. I think (I hope) it started this way.
2) The not so nice reason. As long as Africa gets aid, it will never ever rise to be a competitor for China, Russia, the US (or smaller countries). It would take about 20 years without aid and Africa would self organize. However the aid keeps local barons strong and prevents the rise of a single nation in Africa.
Teach a man to fish, and he's independent. Give a man a fish each day and he's dependent. Give 3 men out of 100 33 fish each, and that group of 100 is never going to unify.
And the EU (and isreal) are transforming into a muslim state and the US into a hispanic one because the populations with high breeding meme's continue breeding at high rates and supplant the lower breeding populations.
Back in the 1950's Analog science fiction/science fact had an article on making a nuclear bomb. A key factor was that it would depend on having a suicidal construction crew but it was possible back then (basically dynamite and precision metal casting abilities).
So the real tipping point is getting the fissionable materials... not building a bomb from them.
It was lowered because of the oil savings. Then preserved because accidents dropped. As another post in this thread says...
When it was later returned to higher rates, accident rates dropped again. His theory is the requirement for front disc brakes at the time of the oil related speed reduction greatly improved driving safety and hid the increased accident rate for driving 55 (and 65 and 75 all at the same time on the same road) vs 70 (and 75 on the same road).
RIAA still finds judges who believe an I.P. address is more damning than DNA taken in a video of you engaging in the illegal activity. who will find your guilty for downloading "Rolling Stones- Paint it Black.mp3" regardless of the actual contents of that file.
and employees investigators who break the law who accuse dead people. who accuse people who do not own a computer. who accuse people who don't know how to use a computer.
And... it is trivially easy for me, given about 90 seconds access to your computer to load you up with mp3's and porn (and virii). Riaa lawyers have been shown to be weaselly to the point of outright lieing.
---
it's a little hard to win cases with a stupid judge against people who are willing to lie. it usually takes some thing gross like... "I have never owned a computer". And even then, you are probably out $3k for attorney fees which most can't afford. Riaa is also very good at running the second they might lose money leaving you with your own attorney bills. It takes a tough judge to pin them down and stick them with fees.
"If someone says you are trespassing, it is probably best to heed them and turn back. Shotguns are a good indicator of trouble. See Template:Disclaimer."
Sounds like that other thing where you use GPS and leave a bowl with stuff in it.
My blackberry will charge off three chargers i own. My phone ignores the blackberry charger but works off the generic car adapter and the plugin adapter that came with it.
There there is the big game that I was in that came down to me and one other guy. I was part of the hand pistol squad- he was the other team's machine-gunner. He picked up a second machine gun and came running after me. I kneeled down on one knee- balls spewing left, right, above me and into the tree beside me. And hit him dead center of mass from 30-35'.
He was wearing green as I was so this is off topic. But one of my happy lifetime memories. And a lesson- since he had two machine-guns he lost caution and lost.
Slashdot Mirror
The hurricane didn't do any damage (it didn't even rain) and we were without food in the stores for a week.
Things are wonderful. "So far... so good!"
You should feel proud that you were modded by the Great Man!
"you are upsetting the contractors" (moved to spreadsheets for 8 months-- then the project went in and failed-- years later management still pissed at him).
"you wrote a program that helped us through a major catastrophe but without permission and it wasn't planned by management" (denied promotion for 3 years until the entire staff went to the new incoming manager and said this guy wasn't getting a promotion and was a single point of failure)
You are correct. That's the blunt of it. They do not want the truth. So don't get upset. Bypass the chain of command at your peril.
The problem is that tighter controls are taking away our ability to secretly fix things. At a publicly held company they are basically down to a line by line audit of our changes now.
Well... I look at it this way.
I'm wrong, you are right-- things turn out okay. Nothing I can do about it.
I'm right, you are wrong-- things turn out bad. Nothing I can do about it.
Either case I die nice and happy old age because the really bad "Depression", "WWII", "Black Plague" type stuff is really rare and things rarely turn out as bad as the doomsayers claim.
The only case I really worry about is if I'm wrong and I turn out to be optimistic.
That new fatal diarrhea or the Bird flu or something nasty hits us hard and fast and when I go to the supermarket (as I did in the last Hurricane) and find nothing but a few bottles of V8 (and it wasn't refilled for close to a week- I was damn lucky to have chili and crap in the house). And that hurricane didn't even hit us. The highways were under-designed to move the people out of its way (and everyone panicked after Katrina).
I take reasonable, non-wacko precautions now. I keep 5 gallons of fresh fuel during the season and always keep enough dry & canned food for 2-3 weeks.
It would be good if you turn out to be right in 35 years. For now, you seem more like the guy falling past the window on the fifth floor saying "so far so good!".
1) Affordable.
2) Good foundation.
---
1) is where most software and management people both fail.
managers refuse inexpensive updates to keep the software robust because there is "No R.O.I." until they then buy or have written a new "wonder package" at much higher expense than the deferred maintenance.
Meanwhile developers (and users) design systems that are nice but so expensive they really can't be done.
2) Software, unlike buildings, is constantly changing- and usually it is equivalent to adding new floors onto buildings more than adding new wings. This means as you add more and more floors, the foundation must be made stronger. This work is rarely allowed (see #1) so when you write software, you need the experience to say, "I can inexpensively make this foundation strong enough to handle 3 new floors of upgrades and triple the expected load... however i can see that making it handle 5 times the load is so expensive the project won't happen.
---
So you have such basics as
Reasonably normalized data.
Abstraction layers so that you can replace a layer without breaking anything.
Fields big enough to hold at least 3 digits more than you ever expect to happen in reality.
Foundation library classes that are well-defined, obviously reusable- and not too many of them (maybe 80-100 max - more than that and people start rewriting them because they can't find them).
---
the worst bit is that now managers think
1) programmers can maintain skill without actually working on code
2) programmers are generic resources and that a college grad or indian resource can step right in at full productivity.
3) languages and platforms will not expire within 3-4 years because the old mainframe programs never did (but they do today-- they are all so interdependent on each other).
You are so right.
Good programmers are not a generic commodity yet management really really wants them to be.
(really).
"Given prosperous standard of living, and access to birth control, and women's rights, if nothing else, women start to figure out that having 1 or 2 kids is a lot more fun than having 10."
You are not listening.
Picture birth control as penicillin and humans as bacteria.
A group will develop that breeds quickly despite birth control and passes on that trait.
For example, I've known three women who were strippers. The one thing they had in common was that all three of them had four or more children. I've known catholics and among them, several had 4 or more children. (and no, hehe, I'm not drawing any parallels there). I've known a lot of hispanics who also have large families-- not with welfare.
It could be religious- it could be cultural.
I hear that you think bribing women with freedom and goodies will universally lead them to have few children.
I know women who want to have lots of kids more than anything. It makes them happy. And like any reproductively sound trait, that will probably be passed on and their kids will also love having lots of kids more than having TV's and Cable and the latest CD's.
---
Given a population of 2 breeder types and 98 replacement types, in just 20 years, the 2 breeder types are up to 8 out of a population of 108. After 20 more years, they can easily be up to 42 out of 142. After only 60 years,they have a majority of the population and democratically pass laws that benefit their portion of the population. And those things are happening in the real world around the world today. And the trend is accelerated when the "non-breeder" types don't even replace themselves.
---
Anyway.. perhaps I'm overly pessimistic. It doesn't matter either way. I can change the world in some ways, but this is not one of them. Either people will stop breeding and the population will top out, or we will breed to collapse.
I think you are ignoring signs all over the place that humans are overwhelming the earth's ability to regenerate itself with regard to being habitable by humans.
I think you haven't seen how in less than a life time, so many pleasant spots to relax have been overwhelmed, destroyed, and now are rutted and ugly or are fenced off so you can look at them but not be in them.
Just remember, when pessimists tend to have a more accurate view of reality than optimists.
I agree- there is a LOT of uninhabitable land out there. But we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the southwestern united states. All it will take is some kind of minor catastrophe and you could have a million people die.
Everything in our society is tuned to the nth degree. There is very little slack any more.
Abortion. Whatever your position, this is a serious issue worthy of the political heat. Still up for grabs.
The degree of socialism. Same. Still up for grabs.
The degree of corporatism. They won. Any candidates the corporations do not want are destroyed.
The degree of social conservatism and compliance. We can have a free but incoherent society or we can have a coherent but oppressive society. The 50's were a golden era if you were a certain type of person- and hell if you were not and the same could be said for today. The 50's were very coherent, all one people, you knew where you stood even if you stood against the other 97%. Today, there is no 97% to stand against. Just three dozen other 3% factions.
After that it's all about bridges, roads, and cronies. The same as everywhere else.
Touche!
Burn!
Strains are showing in a variety of areas. And that is at current population levels. We intend to double our population as a species.
... But numerous observations contradict this idea [that stopping fishing after collapse helps]. Only 7% of collapsed populations have recuperated their numbers after one generation. The example of codfish in Newfoundland is renowned. Despite a moratorium on codfishing following the collapse of stocks in 1992, the biomasss level remains still lower than that of 20 years ago, and no recovery has been observed.
Desertification
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-gathering-sandstorm-encroaching-desert-missing-water-399653.html
China is losing a million acres a year to desertification. In Dunhuang, a former Silk Road oasis in the Gobi, the resulting water shortage has become critical. By Clifford Coonan (this in 2007 after reports in 2000 said they had turned the corner and were reducing desertification)
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/desertific/
Fishing stock collapse
http://www.mpl.ird.fr/suds-en-ligne/ecosys/ang_ecosys/intro2.htm
From years of "miraculous fishing" to stock collapse
Although the oceans were considered inexhaustible in the last century, many fisheries today show signs of senescence.
Population growth in rich societies.
http://rickbutts.com/83/is-england-becoming-a-muslim-nation/
The average birth rate for native Englishwomen is 1.1 children per, while the Muslim women's birth rate [in England] is 3.4, or more than triple. By all measures and accounts England will become Muslim in the not to distant future.
This is in England. I.e., this population is resistant to lower birth rate effect.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2008-05/2008-05-01-voa19.cfm?CFID=1180756&CFTOKEN=83044121
Hispanics Fastest Growing Minority Group in US
This is in the U.S. I.e., this population is resistant to lower birth rate effect.
I'm not saying islamic or hispanc are bad people. If it were not them, some other population would be the fastest growing one-- and it would become a larger and larger portion of the population over time.
Now... imagine that one subgroup of humans develops a tendency to have 3 children each even in Norway. In 60 years, that group will probably come to dominate Norway. And Norway is likely to have excess breeder types from other cultures settle in norway when they start exhausting their own countries. Could be catholics, could be islamic, could be some non-religious fertility type group. Who knows. It only takes one.
As they said in Jurassic Park... Life finds a way. With 6 billion of us (already), there will be a group that lives in a modern society yet has a high breeding rate.
I didn't say that billions should be killed.
In fact, I said nothing we do will prevent that day from coming and I didn't advocate any position.
Anything you *could* advocate would be pretty horrific and immoral.
So we have to go through the die-off, hope we survive as a species, hope it is after we are dead.
There are plenty of locations around the world already where humans bred to the point where they reduced their environment down to dirt- worse than locusts.
It sucks- and people hate to even think about the inevitable. But we get a little more fragile as a society every day. Another type of fishing population collapses or goes up in price so you can't use it as a mainstay food-source every day. A little more land goes bad every day (being a vegetarian is not the ultimate answer either). Another water source is exhausted every day.
And as we pack more people together, we give diseases more chance to turn nasty every day. It gets cheaper to destroy large amounts of other humans every day. We have more people trying to recreate in the same 300 acres of mountain land every day. The effects of earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters are worse every day because of higher population density.
And as I said, there isn't really anything that anyone can do about it.
I look at it, think "yup, humans are going to have some horrific time during the next 30-100 years and there isn't squat I can do about it. Might as well have a few laughs and hope I die first of old age."
I believe we are giving aid to Africa for two reasons.
1) Kind hearted- we don't want them to starve. I think (I hope) it started this way.
2) The not so nice reason. As long as Africa gets aid, it will never ever rise to be a competitor for China, Russia, the US (or smaller countries). It would take about 20 years without aid and Africa would self organize. However the aid keeps local barons strong and prevents the rise of a single nation in Africa.
Teach a man to fish, and he's independent. Give a man a fish each day and he's dependent. Give 3 men out of 100 33 fish each, and that group of 100 is never going to unify.
And the EU (and isreal) are transforming into a muslim state and the US into a hispanic one because the populations with high breeding meme's continue breeding at high rates and supplant the lower breeding populations.
Back in the 1950's Analog science fiction/science fact had an article on making a nuclear bomb. A key factor was that it would depend on having a suicidal construction crew but it was possible back then (basically dynamite and precision metal casting abilities).
So the real tipping point is getting the fissionable materials... not building a bomb from them.
Golden age... equal people having more kids... equal end of golden age with an even larger die off.
Fundamental problem.. the problem underneath almost every problem is that the world population is already probably double what it should be.
We are pretty much doomed so just enjoy the ride until the end.
No.
It was lowered because of the oil savings. Then preserved because accidents dropped. As another post in this thread says...
When it was later returned to higher rates, accident rates dropped again. His theory is the requirement for front disc brakes at the time of the oil related speed reduction greatly improved driving safety and hid the increased accident rate for driving 55 (and 65 and 75 all at the same time on the same road) vs 70 (and 75 on the same road).
Not sure which side your sarcasm is falling on.
So I'll just point out...
RIAA still finds judges
who believe an I.P. address is more damning than DNA taken in a video of you engaging in the illegal activity.
who will find your guilty for downloading "Rolling Stones- Paint it Black.mp3" regardless of the actual contents of that file.
and employees investigators
who break the law
who accuse dead people.
who accuse people who do not own a computer.
who accuse people who don't know how to use a computer.
And...
it is trivially easy for me, given about 90 seconds access to your computer to load you up with mp3's and porn (and virii).
Riaa lawyers have been shown to be weaselly to the point of outright lieing.
---
it's a little hard to win cases with a stupid judge against people who are willing to lie. it usually takes some thing gross like... "I have never owned a computer".
And even then, you are probably out $3k for attorney fees which most can't afford. Riaa is also very good at running the second they might lose money leaving you with your own attorney bills. It takes a tough judge to pin them down and stick them with fees.
http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Known_Issues
"If someone says you are trespassing, it is probably best to heed them and turn back. Shotguns are a good indicator of trouble. See Template:Disclaimer."
Sounds like that other thing where you use GPS and leave a bowl with stuff in it.
Technically you are correct.
However if he is a member of a minority group, he could probably succeed in some cases.
Because this is impossible to prevent.
My blackberry will charge off three chargers i own. My phone ignores the blackberry charger but works off the generic car adapter and the plugin adapter that came with it.
I'm having a hard time resisting the 4 packs of 2" high figures. I just see miniature battles. but at $8 a pack, it's kinda hefty.
There there is the big game that I was in that came down to me and one other guy. I was part of the hand pistol squad- he was the other team's machine-gunner. He picked up a second machine gun and came running after me. I kneeled down on one knee- balls spewing left, right, above me and into the tree beside me. And hit him dead center of mass from 30-35'.
He was wearing green as I was so this is off topic. But one of my happy lifetime memories. And a lesson- since he had two machine-guns he lost caution and lost.