Sprint began offering ads right on their cell 'deck' in October.
Observe that even our/. poster has been reprogrammed by our Advertising Overlords. I would welcome them, but they arrived long ago.
You seem to think that a majority of people need to care about something for change to happen. History has proven time and time again that it's the small, vocal minority that winds up dragging the majority behind it.
Well, I agree with you that it is the minority of movers and shakers that eventually catalyzes larger movements in society, but the undercurrents need to build in the general population before the system is sufficiently primed for explosive action. There have been plenty of vocal minorities clamoring about the imminent apocalypse throughout the generations, and very few of them have amounted to much. Then, of course, sometimes the minorities are accurate, but historically this is correlation more than causality.
For your stem cell research thing, I would respond that the ability of a vocal minority to suppress such research successfully is due to a preponderance of apathy in the general population. Observe the changing sentiment toward Bush in the past term with regard to the war. He has been forced to make concession and "rethink the approach" in light of the very strong message sent by a vast majority of people at the polls in the mid-term elections. The subtle erosions of liberty we are currently undergoing hit a few people pretty hard, but not enough people for people to wake up and care. And so on.
Well, to stay on topic here, I agree with you that a minority leads, but I do think that the underpinnings of that leadership are either support by the masses or sufficient apathy by the majority to permit the the success of the minorities ends. As for the original post, the situation in the environment is not sufficiently pressing for those in first world countries with sufficient political influence and economic power to merit consideration. An island sinks. "Who the fuck cares?" Nobody that really matters, and not enough of those that matter very little. When several major United States cities are in imminent danger of being submerged, thus displacing millions, and precipitously devaluing billions of dollars of real estate: then we will care.
Joe Neighbor won't care any sooner than that because he's too busy trying to get his Wii/PS3 at BestBuy that he should have had the foresight to preorder. And so it goes.
Well, that's BS. There are plenty of precedents. Where'd the rainforest go? "OMG, there were like 50% more trees here a decade ago?" Where'd the penguins go? Where'd this species go? Where'd that species go? There are plenty of precedents for things disappearing due to our tampering with the world, and--news flash--Nobody Really Gives a Fuck.
The other day there was an article about the dolphins in China disappearing. Sure we clamour, "OMG, it's terrible. If we don't stop soon, we might be screwed. Aw, but what can we do, it's so hard. So uncertain, so...hey, can I have one of those bagels? Oh, yum." The other day I was talking with a group of 10 people about glacial melting and the rising sea level. They all nodded seriously and said, "Sure, but that is a theory and even then it would only happen in 50 years." I assure you, if I bring up this article, people will look just as serious, and then hop in their Hummer and drive to the gas station so they can go hiking on what used to be ski slopes.
Until about a million people are absolutely, beyond any doubt--beyond even the ability of the most resolutely blind dumbass moron I know's ability to doubt--are going to relocate or drown in their home because of rising sea level...and it has to be a first world country because otherwise, reminder: Nobody Really Gives a Fuck...until that point, I do not really want to hear about it.
Why should we all have to suffer with our feelings of the awful terrible things that will likely happen (but hopefully just after we die happily in our old age so our children can deal with it instead), when elected or otherwise empowered people will never act fast enough to ever avert any true crisis. I say, bring on the disasters. One after another. Because getting some practice at actually dealing with problems just might start building a habit of acting and instill some fear in a real problem, rather than the lurking possibility of a boogeyman or an Osama or little microbes that people will only act on enough to deprive others of their liberties, but never act on enough to actually address the issue since the issue isn't there yet. Isn't it ironic how proactive we are at doing terrible things when faced with a real problem, and how inactive we are at doing the good things? Well, it's not ironic at all. Good things are invariably more work and most people are inherently lazy, which is why 5% of the world has 90% of the wealth, and they wealthy are too busy driving around in hummers.
Real life is not dramatic. Unlike a play or movie, most acts are not prompted by motivation, but by habit. People in power, even good people, exercise their power for the most part mindlessly. Nobody knows this better than children, who have no power of their own and must live in accordance with rules set by others. Many of those rules are set for the childrens' benefit; some for the convenience of their betters; others are there just because they've always been there.
People in power are often mindless, yes. But people with power are anything but mindless. Mindfulness is true power.
The natural corollary to this is that if you use predictive technology to identify people that likely will commit a crime, telling them that they have been identified as a risk is an observation that potentially changes the predicted outcome. I think we might consider doing some analysis and indicating to a person that they are in a category like that. As far as I can see, most people behave because of the fear of being caught, ergo our whole system of policing and issuing tickets for traffic violations. A big psychological tactic in maintaining order is making public examples that keep people fearful (or at least very conscious) of the consequences that they can be and others have been subjected to...
Ok, I still think it is shite to spy on people 24/7 and come up with all these probabilities for them to be naughty (Minority Report, Gattaca, etc.) but I think its an impossibility to prevent this type of analysis because of the ubiquity of data collection mechanisms and analytic tools, so just like with drugs (Prohibition, modern-day drug "wars", etc.), it's probably much better to get the process (surveillance and predictive analysis) out into the open and legislate it rather than try to suppress it.
Sun Tzu say, "Only fight the battles you've already won."
A contract that claims ownership of all creative works (in all areas) while employed will not hold up in court. Carte blanche statements like that are too general. The law will require specific areas of ownership. Otherwise you are in the realm of enslavement and thus far, the laws against that are holding.
You can certainly intimidate someone into signing a document like that, and can threaten to take them to court (and thus possibly get what you want), but it will not hold up if it goes in front of a judge. A company can put a competitive business clause into a contract and you are held to that, but even here the company must stipulate a realistic timeframe. If companies were allowed to enforce a clause that says, "We own all of your IP now and in the future, whether employed by us or not, whether related to our business or not, in perpetuity," the economic and civil liberty consequences would be disasterous.
Anyway, I'm not a lawyer. Then again, quite a few SCOTUS judges including at least one influential head justice were not lawyers or judges. Laws are made by and we are held accountable to them by the people.
It does really sadden me however, that most citizens can no longer go to the courthouse, state their case in plain English, and have a reasonable expectation of a fair outcome in the face of highly-payed, well-educated, corporate lawyers that can navigate through the legal morass that our judicial process has become, and have the training and the money necessary to persuade and manipulate a jury to achieve their desired outcome.
That said, these are just my opinions, but if someone tried to do this to me, I'd get myself in a court, represent myself, and make a simple statement of what I believe and what the situation is, and see if I'm right. And anyway, this is pretty far afield of the original question which talks about sample code. Most people are careful (and all should be) to choose sample code which has no commercial value (in other words, it is just a confirmation of your technical capabilities). Would you bring a piece of sample code to the interview table that could be very lucrative? I hope not; go sell that product yourself. Therefore, if your sample code has no commercial value, it is not "property" and is not in conflict with the IP clause of your employement contract.
Can't you just set up the folders that you want to sync with.Mac and store the files over there? I guess if you have gigs and gigs, you probably aren't backing that up every month anyway. Better to burn all that pr0n...rather, legally purchased iPr0n...rather, legally purchased iTunes content and your family photos and movies onto DVDs for your archives. Really depends what you are backing up, how much of it there is, how frequently and quickly you need to access it, and if you care who sees it.
Ok, I better qualify "knowledge" before I get slammed. By this, I am referring to your understanding of things other than trade secrets and the like. So, your knowledge of.NET, or Java, or Python, or building relational databases, or implemented object-oriented software architectures, or developing in an Agile framework, and so on.
My comment was in the context of code sample, so I'm assuming you're bright enough to not share your knowledge of trade secrets and the like in your code samples,:-).
Just keep an eye on past and current projects for ones that are reasonably self-contained (there are always a few gems that you write while working) and then go home and reimplement it on your own hardware and on your own time. It is perfectly acceptable to use a code sample like this for interview purposes, provided that proprietary information is not present. I have several samples from the past few years which are loosely based on insights that I gained during particular projects. I went home and reworked them into a sample, and it is very fast to do this because most of the thinking work is already complete and you have all of the details in your mind.
You typically sign an agreement that says work that you do on your own time and hardware without any of your previous companies resources is owned by you. Thankfully, companies do not own the knowledge and experience that you gain while working for them. That is yours, and you are free to display it. Indeed, no one would hire any software developers if it were otherwise.
This is likely due to the fact that the only species in the entire world that can extinct any and all species is human beings.
Quips aside, there are a great many examples of symbiosis in the biosphere. Within the constraints of their intellectual capacity, many species also know the value of self-preservation and protecting their young. In our intellect, we recognize that protecting biological diversity ultimately is a manifestation of both self-preservation and protection of our legacy. We are not so different from the rest of the species.
A long time ago, I had a friend who told me that her cat would defend her dog if the dog was threatened (approached by a stranger or an unfamiliar animal). We're not so different from everything else that lives on this planet.
You can have them post up a snapshot every 5 minutes, and browse the current state of your house at any time. I'd just leave DSL running and put a cheap machine with Apache connected to the webcams, and then have them save a snapshot every 5 minutes to a folder you can browse remotely from the internet. You could be a lot more sophisticated if you really wanted to with products on the market (temperature monitoring, scheduled heating of key areas of the house). It depends on the objectives. I'm sure you could prepare the systems of the house for a total shutdown in cold temperature without technology. Close the plumbing off from public utility and drain the pipes, disconnect the eletric systems at the main breakers, that sort of thing. It depends on what you want. Personally, I'd consider renting it out while you are gone. Good source of income, and you get free status monitoring by the tenant, and since the house is heated, you avoid the cold weather issues associated with a long vacancy.
Equality is an abstract goal, not an existing achievement.
I encounter people everyday that begrudge my skills which I have developed through years of diligent effort. They think it is some terrible thing that I might be better than they are at several things, and they strenuously deny the truth to their own misfortune. This is the U.S.A. that I know and have experienced since entering the job market 8 years ago. In martial arts, I have been training for years and I consistently meet people that behave this way, until I knock them on their ass gently, but repeatedly. It is so ingrained in our culture, that equality is right and one person being better than another is wrong, that people repeatedly knocked on their ass (for which they have no way to excuse the outcome) will walk away to train with someone else and claim, "That guy doesn't play by the rules," or "That guy has an attitude," and so on. In other words, they go into completely irrational denial.
If equality were a desirable goal and if it existed, evolution would be completely unnecessary and we would all have the same genetic code. Equality is stagnation and death. Nature knows that equality is retarded and specialization exists to achieve survival advantages ("That's 'better' to you and me."), but our culture denies it and is founded on the phrase, "All men are created equal." Which people apparently interpret as, "All men are create equal, and equal they stay no matter what they do with their lives." The original intent was equality under the law (human rights). Fine, then look at the army as an example. Of necessity, high-ranking officers have more rights and are protected moreso than low-ranking soldiers. Why? Because they are not equal. There is a huge disparity between two such enlisted men in potential to achieve a positive outcome.
Our society is founded on a lie. We're not equal: not genetically, not economically, and not socially. The second lie is that there is something wrong with this idea. There isn't. It is the way of Nature. Is it any wonder that we have a strong current of people trying to overturn evolution in this nation? Sure, many of us educated folk look at this and laugh. "Of course, evolution exists. Look at all the evidence." But it around and tell those same educated folk that some people are better than others. OMG! THE SHITSTORM!
This attitude is what endangers our ability to remain great among all nations. Many of us can readily look at any other nation and claim, "We're the best!" but cannot look at each other and say without pause, "I am better" or "you are better." This makes being great quite difficult because you cannot jump from nothing to greatness in one go. You have to climb all the way up, one "better" at a time.
No, the best thing to do is not to eschew all the trappings of a system that you hate. The best thing to do is to blend with it and then subvert it.
The "give it to the people" idea is very noble, but only from the perspective of people that make absolutely no difference whatsoever insofar as what really occurs in the world. This is because you are one of the powerless. Therefore, you find it noble if someone with access to power does not use it or gives it up. This, you think, is a voluntary choice to embrace the truth: the idealistic notion that people are equal.
But people are not equal. And that is why you think equality is noble. Because you are on the side of the powerless, and being too weak to take power and achieve your goals, you glorify the renunciation of power by the powerful as a way to reach equality with the powerful.
This of course, will never work.
True nobility is stepping up to the responsibility of obtaining and using power beneficently. A noble act would be to effectively market a movie within the parameters of our society and use the proceeds (power) to support programs that have the potential for positive change (beneficence).
Feel free to send me piles of cash for elucidating this topic!
I'd say that a vast majority of us take things lying down, and no small number of us work that way, too! And on that note, I am happily reminded that, study or no, I do have one component that definitely works best straight up--lying down or not.
There's nothing wrong with grinding, providing you can make bread or a cake with it at the end.
Which is my way of saying that repetition has a value, but only so long as that repetition serves the purpose of creating progressively more interesting things. I turned away from WoW a while back because there is no creative gain to the timesink. In other words, I am not improved as a person in any appreciable way. Grinding in that context made my character better, but it failed to make me better...and that is the one unforgivable thing that any game can do. Put your life in a dead end with the false perception of progress.
Second Life and games like that are, in my opinion, the path of the future for all online worlds. You can still have your roleplaying fantasy or science fiction genre, but real longevity will only come when the environment empowers you to create and grow in game and out. Eve Online is a great example of this, and a lot of "grinders" abhor it, but a close look at that game will show that it really teaches you to create, whether for your own small business or for a corporation. Not to go into a lot of detail about any one game, but there is a big distinction between Eve and WoW and the distinction is the capacity for a player to create in world and improve as a real person. I played both for 2 years and my understanding of economics, politics, manufacturing processes, the nature of research and development, corporate management, and small business success increased dramatically from playing a game (in addition to the fun of exploring and fighting enemies that all these games incorporate)! That game was not WoW.:-)
The greater question here is not whether Jon Katz is related to the producers... but whether, in this post-9/11 era, any of us can truly say that we are more than a few degrees of separation from the producers ourselves? And what does that say...
It says that the line between idiocy and intelligence is thin and red.
Begin practicing telekinesis now, before it's too late.
On a more serious note, the Wii controller is very nice for a variety of games because it takes the focus off the hands, but I'm actually wondering if using a controller might actually have some therapeutic value for you. The drawback of most controllers is that the range of motion is, by design, made as small as possible, but with arthritis, what you actually want is fuller range of motion to articulate the joints as fully as possible.
Personally, I think moving to a Wii will be nice for you--and hey, what about games like Dance, Dance, Revolution, which is really great for fitness and does not require your hands at all? Also, I'd say get yourself into some kind of physical activity that uses your hands through a full range of motion. Keeping your hands active is the best way to fight off the effects of arthritis although, yes, it is painful. The alternative is a rapid decent into limited range of motion and a large amount of pain.
In combination with those measures, we're probably not that far from further control innovations like retinal tracking for targetting (Wii is already tracking your controller; it won't be long before we're watching head movement or even hand waving with a wristband). Wii is really paving the way for the entrance of these advancements in controllers, so the future is brighter than you may think! I think you will be able to happily play games for your entire life, if you take some preventative care steps now and ride the wave of technology innovations that are on the way.
I really only care about this news topic when the headline is, "Scientists Create Inexpensive And Amazingly Lifelike Robots With Which You Can Have Insanely Great Sex."
It's a clash between science and Creationists. Billions of other human beings are living on the planet with a set of religious beliefs that peacefully coexist with scientific methods. Most of the luminaries of the past centuries were both scientific and religious. Let's be a little bit more accurate with our headings. It's a class between Evolutionary Scientists and Creationist Christians.
All an end to network neutrality will do is raise the entrance bar to the online-gaming market. The producer of the title will shoulder the initial cost to ensure preferential treatment on the network of their subscribers, and then the producer will recoup the cost in slightly increased subscription fees.
Likely situation: convergence of movie and gaming industries. The movie industry has the huge bankroll necessary to launch a game. Game producers will be sought after just as movie producers are, and game directors will be just as successful movie directors are now.
Mind you, I think that will happen even with network neutrality, but my point is: online-gaming will simply take it in stride if it happens.
More choice is always better, provided the system is not closed. In an open system, the poor choices are weeded out by selection. In the economic context, monopoly is closure and it inhibits or eliminates selection (e.g. a billion options in Word is fine, provided you are free to choose which options you select, up to and including the choice of using an alternative application).
In the color example that you gave, consider the relevance of precise color selection for company branding. My company spent $200,000 two years ago to create a color scheme to be used for all company publications (including software products). This was after spending even more money assessing the potential impact of the change (which was determined to be significant). A similar importance exists in many other industries such as interior design (wallpaper, carpet, etc.).
My point being, more choice is always best. The simple act of you trying to impose a judgement on which categories of choice are valuable is a bad thing because, depending on your ability to effect what is produced, you could potentially eliminate choices of great value to others, based on your own needs and experience. This is why more choice is always better.
This is why a free system is ultimately superior to a restricted one, no matter how well thought out. A free system is one of constant choice motivated by the immediate needs of the situation. A restricted system, no matter how wisely designed, immediately creates the possibility of no longer matching the current situation and is thus immediately less inefficient than a free system. Children rebel, empires fall.
Look at the analogs in the United States. Increasing restrictions on freedom. Ever-growing quantities of legislation (there is a reason we call convoluted and elaborate creations "Byzantine"--that empire collapsed on itself). Simultaneously, the world is moving faster and faster. When knights faced each other with melee weapons (slow), knights ruled the day. When the bow (fast) was created, knights knew fear. When the gun (faster) was created, knights were no more. The weight of their arms became a fatal liability because it limited their choices (mobility).
So there are several seemingly unrelated examples, but they all have the same message. Choice wins. Freedom wins. You can never have too much choice, so long as there is no closure (e.g. "You can choose anything, but that."). Last example: the apple in the Garden of Eden. Why was that choice present? Freedom to choose is the selective process that drives the entire Universe, a Universe of unlimited choices.
Ok, I sort of went off there. I'll come back to Earth shortly. Phew.
Add Sulfur to atmosphere to maintain global temperature.
Greatly decrease the pH of precipitation.
Disrupt world plant ecosystems with soil pH modifications.
People die.
Use a different material; create a different way for people to die.
A parallel: patient is suffering from atherosclerosis. Do you:
A: prescribe a change to the patient's current 50% fat diet, or
B: prescribe medication to balance the muck that the patient is pushing into his vascular system?
A little bit of both, one might say. Well, that is a very costly and risky ("Warning: side-effects may include nausea and death.") approach, which may well become necessary when there is no other option. The reason we typically get to that point of no return is because we consistently refuse to be proactive and solve the problem early and in the right way. "It's just too hard to change my diet." "It's just too hard to cut our emissions. Jobs will be lost. Oh, dear me. Oh! We can start an industry that pumps counterpollutants into the atmosphere. More jobs. More money! More! More!"
Slashdot Mirror
Sprint began offering ads right on their cell 'deck' in October. Observe that even our /. poster has been reprogrammed by our Advertising Overlords. I would welcome them, but they arrived long ago.
Gimme, gimme.
For your stem cell research thing, I would respond that the ability of a vocal minority to suppress such research successfully is due to a preponderance of apathy in the general population. Observe the changing sentiment toward Bush in the past term with regard to the war. He has been forced to make concession and "rethink the approach" in light of the very strong message sent by a vast majority of people at the polls in the mid-term elections. The subtle erosions of liberty we are currently undergoing hit a few people pretty hard, but not enough people for people to wake up and care. And so on.
Well, to stay on topic here, I agree with you that a minority leads, but I do think that the underpinnings of that leadership are either support by the masses or sufficient apathy by the majority to permit the the success of the minorities ends. As for the original post, the situation in the environment is not sufficiently pressing for those in first world countries with sufficient political influence and economic power to merit consideration. An island sinks. "Who the fuck cares?" Nobody that really matters, and not enough of those that matter very little. When several major United States cities are in imminent danger of being submerged, thus displacing millions, and precipitously devaluing billions of dollars of real estate: then we will care.
Joe Neighbor won't care any sooner than that because he's too busy trying to get his Wii/PS3 at BestBuy that he should have had the foresight to preorder. And so it goes.
The other day there was an article about the dolphins in China disappearing. Sure we clamour, "OMG, it's terrible. If we don't stop soon, we might be screwed. Aw, but what can we do, it's so hard. So uncertain, so...hey, can I have one of those bagels? Oh, yum." The other day I was talking with a group of 10 people about glacial melting and the rising sea level. They all nodded seriously and said, "Sure, but that is a theory and even then it would only happen in 50 years." I assure you, if I bring up this article, people will look just as serious, and then hop in their Hummer and drive to the gas station so they can go hiking on what used to be ski slopes.
Until about a million people are absolutely, beyond any doubt--beyond even the ability of the most resolutely blind dumbass moron I know's ability to doubt--are going to relocate or drown in their home because of rising sea level...and it has to be a first world country because otherwise, reminder: Nobody Really Gives a Fuck...until that point, I do not really want to hear about it.
Why should we all have to suffer with our feelings of the awful terrible things that will likely happen (but hopefully just after we die happily in our old age so our children can deal with it instead), when elected or otherwise empowered people will never act fast enough to ever avert any true crisis. I say, bring on the disasters. One after another. Because getting some practice at actually dealing with problems just might start building a habit of acting and instill some fear in a real problem, rather than the lurking possibility of a boogeyman or an Osama or little microbes that people will only act on enough to deprive others of their liberties, but never act on enough to actually address the issue since the issue isn't there yet. Isn't it ironic how proactive we are at doing terrible things when faced with a real problem, and how inactive we are at doing the good things? Well, it's not ironic at all. Good things are invariably more work and most people are inherently lazy, which is why 5% of the world has 90% of the wealth, and they wealthy are too busy driving around in hummers.
Wake me up when we're all drowning.
Ok, I still think it is shite to spy on people 24/7 and come up with all these probabilities for them to be naughty (Minority Report, Gattaca, etc.) but I think its an impossibility to prevent this type of analysis because of the ubiquity of data collection mechanisms and analytic tools, so just like with drugs (Prohibition, modern-day drug "wars", etc.), it's probably much better to get the process (surveillance and predictive analysis) out into the open and legislate it rather than try to suppress it.
Sun Tzu say, "Only fight the battles you've already won."
You can certainly intimidate someone into signing a document like that, and can threaten to take them to court (and thus possibly get what you want), but it will not hold up if it goes in front of a judge. A company can put a competitive business clause into a contract and you are held to that, but even here the company must stipulate a realistic timeframe. If companies were allowed to enforce a clause that says, "We own all of your IP now and in the future, whether employed by us or not, whether related to our business or not, in perpetuity," the economic and civil liberty consequences would be disasterous.
Anyway, I'm not a lawyer. Then again, quite a few SCOTUS judges including at least one influential head justice were not lawyers or judges. Laws are made by and we are held accountable to them by the people.
It does really sadden me however, that most citizens can no longer go to the courthouse, state their case in plain English, and have a reasonable expectation of a fair outcome in the face of highly-payed, well-educated, corporate lawyers that can navigate through the legal morass that our judicial process has become, and have the training and the money necessary to persuade and manipulate a jury to achieve their desired outcome.
That said, these are just my opinions, but if someone tried to do this to me, I'd get myself in a court, represent myself, and make a simple statement of what I believe and what the situation is, and see if I'm right. And anyway, this is pretty far afield of the original question which talks about sample code. Most people are careful (and all should be) to choose sample code which has no commercial value (in other words, it is just a confirmation of your technical capabilities). Would you bring a piece of sample code to the interview table that could be very lucrative? I hope not; go sell that product yourself. Therefore, if your sample code has no commercial value, it is not "property" and is not in conflict with the IP clause of your employement contract.
It is profoundly wrong that something this funny will go unascribed in perpituity.
Can't you just set up the folders that you want to sync with .Mac and store the files over there? I guess if you have gigs and gigs, you probably aren't backing that up every month anyway. Better to burn all that pr0n...rather, legally purchased iPr0n...rather, legally purchased iTunes content and your family photos and movies onto DVDs for your archives. Really depends what you are backing up, how much of it there is, how frequently and quickly you need to access it, and if you care who sees it.
Ok, I better qualify "knowledge" before I get slammed. By this, I am referring to your understanding of things other than trade secrets and the like. So, your knowledge of .NET, or Java, or Python, or building relational databases, or implemented object-oriented software architectures, or developing in an Agile framework, and so on.
My comment was in the context of code sample, so I'm assuming you're bright enough to not share your knowledge of trade secrets and the like in your code samples, :-).
Just keep an eye on past and current projects for ones that are reasonably self-contained (there are always a few gems that you write while working) and then go home and reimplement it on your own hardware and on your own time. It is perfectly acceptable to use a code sample like this for interview purposes, provided that proprietary information is not present. I have several samples from the past few years which are loosely based on insights that I gained during particular projects. I went home and reworked them into a sample, and it is very fast to do this because most of the thinking work is already complete and you have all of the details in your mind.
You typically sign an agreement that says work that you do on your own time and hardware without any of your previous companies resources is owned by you. Thankfully, companies do not own the knowledge and experience that you gain while working for them. That is yours, and you are free to display it. Indeed, no one would hire any software developers if it were otherwise.
This is likely due to the fact that the only species in the entire world that can extinct any and all species is human beings.
Quips aside, there are a great many examples of symbiosis in the biosphere. Within the constraints of their intellectual capacity, many species also know the value of self-preservation and protecting their young. In our intellect, we recognize that protecting biological diversity ultimately is a manifestation of both self-preservation and protection of our legacy. We are not so different from the rest of the species.
A long time ago, I had a friend who told me that her cat would defend her dog if the dog was threatened (approached by a stranger or an unfamiliar animal). We're not so different from everything else that lives on this planet.
You can have them post up a snapshot every 5 minutes, and browse the current state of your house at any time. I'd just leave DSL running and put a cheap machine with Apache connected to the webcams, and then have them save a snapshot every 5 minutes to a folder you can browse remotely from the internet. You could be a lot more sophisticated if you really wanted to with products on the market (temperature monitoring, scheduled heating of key areas of the house). It depends on the objectives. I'm sure you could prepare the systems of the house for a total shutdown in cold temperature without technology. Close the plumbing off from public utility and drain the pipes, disconnect the eletric systems at the main breakers, that sort of thing. It depends on what you want. Personally, I'd consider renting it out while you are gone. Good source of income, and you get free status monitoring by the tenant, and since the house is heated, you avoid the cold weather issues associated with a long vacancy.
I encounter people everyday that begrudge my skills which I have developed through years of diligent effort. They think it is some terrible thing that I might be better than they are at several things, and they strenuously deny the truth to their own misfortune. This is the U.S.A. that I know and have experienced since entering the job market 8 years ago. In martial arts, I have been training for years and I consistently meet people that behave this way, until I knock them on their ass gently, but repeatedly. It is so ingrained in our culture, that equality is right and one person being better than another is wrong, that people repeatedly knocked on their ass (for which they have no way to excuse the outcome) will walk away to train with someone else and claim, "That guy doesn't play by the rules," or "That guy has an attitude," and so on. In other words, they go into completely irrational denial.
If equality were a desirable goal and if it existed, evolution would be completely unnecessary and we would all have the same genetic code. Equality is stagnation and death. Nature knows that equality is retarded and specialization exists to achieve survival advantages ("That's 'better' to you and me."), but our culture denies it and is founded on the phrase, "All men are created equal." Which people apparently interpret as, "All men are create equal, and equal they stay no matter what they do with their lives." The original intent was equality under the law (human rights). Fine, then look at the army as an example. Of necessity, high-ranking officers have more rights and are protected moreso than low-ranking soldiers. Why? Because they are not equal. There is a huge disparity between two such enlisted men in potential to achieve a positive outcome.
Our society is founded on a lie. We're not equal: not genetically, not economically, and not socially. The second lie is that there is something wrong with this idea. There isn't. It is the way of Nature. Is it any wonder that we have a strong current of people trying to overturn evolution in this nation? Sure, many of us educated folk look at this and laugh. "Of course, evolution exists. Look at all the evidence." But it around and tell those same educated folk that some people are better than others. OMG! THE SHITSTORM!
This attitude is what endangers our ability to remain great among all nations. Many of us can readily look at any other nation and claim, "We're the best!" but cannot look at each other and say without pause, "I am better" or "you are better." This makes being great quite difficult because you cannot jump from nothing to greatness in one go. You have to climb all the way up, one "better" at a time.
No, the best thing to do is not to eschew all the trappings of a system that you hate. The best thing to do is to blend with it and then subvert it.
The "give it to the people" idea is very noble, but only from the perspective of people that make absolutely no difference whatsoever insofar as what really occurs in the world. This is because you are one of the powerless. Therefore, you find it noble if someone with access to power does not use it or gives it up. This, you think, is a voluntary choice to embrace the truth: the idealistic notion that people are equal.
But people are not equal. And that is why you think equality is noble. Because you are on the side of the powerless, and being too weak to take power and achieve your goals, you glorify the renunciation of power by the powerful as a way to reach equality with the powerful.
This of course, will never work.
True nobility is stepping up to the responsibility of obtaining and using power beneficently. A noble act would be to effectively market a movie within the parameters of our society and use the proceeds (power) to support programs that have the potential for positive change (beneficence).
Feel free to send me piles of cash for elucidating this topic!
I'd say that a vast majority of us take things lying down, and no small number of us work that way, too! And on that note, I am happily reminded that, study or no, I do have one component that definitely works best straight up--lying down or not.
Which is my way of saying that repetition has a value, but only so long as that repetition serves the purpose of creating progressively more interesting things. I turned away from WoW a while back because there is no creative gain to the timesink. In other words, I am not improved as a person in any appreciable way. Grinding in that context made my character better, but it failed to make me better...and that is the one unforgivable thing that any game can do. Put your life in a dead end with the false perception of progress.
Second Life and games like that are, in my opinion, the path of the future for all online worlds. You can still have your roleplaying fantasy or science fiction genre, but real longevity will only come when the environment empowers you to create and grow in game and out. Eve Online is a great example of this, and a lot of "grinders" abhor it, but a close look at that game will show that it really teaches you to create, whether for your own small business or for a corporation. Not to go into a lot of detail about any one game, but there is a big distinction between Eve and WoW and the distinction is the capacity for a player to create in world and improve as a real person. I played both for 2 years and my understanding of economics, politics, manufacturing processes, the nature of research and development, corporate management, and small business success increased dramatically from playing a game (in addition to the fun of exploring and fighting enemies that all these games incorporate)! That game was not WoW. :-)
It's all about increasing your creative capacity.
On a more serious note, the Wii controller is very nice for a variety of games because it takes the focus off the hands, but I'm actually wondering if using a controller might actually have some therapeutic value for you. The drawback of most controllers is that the range of motion is, by design, made as small as possible, but with arthritis, what you actually want is fuller range of motion to articulate the joints as fully as possible.
Personally, I think moving to a Wii will be nice for you--and hey, what about games like Dance, Dance, Revolution, which is really great for fitness and does not require your hands at all? Also, I'd say get yourself into some kind of physical activity that uses your hands through a full range of motion. Keeping your hands active is the best way to fight off the effects of arthritis although, yes, it is painful. The alternative is a rapid decent into limited range of motion and a large amount of pain.
In combination with those measures, we're probably not that far from further control innovations like retinal tracking for targetting (Wii is already tracking your controller; it won't be long before we're watching head movement or even hand waving with a wristband). Wii is really paving the way for the entrance of these advancements in controllers, so the future is brighter than you may think! I think you will be able to happily play games for your entire life, if you take some preventative care steps now and ride the wave of technology innovations that are on the way.
I really only care about this news topic when the headline is, "Scientists Create Inexpensive And Amazingly Lifelike Robots With Which You Can Have Insanely Great Sex."
It's a clash between science and Creationists. Billions of other human beings are living on the planet with a set of religious beliefs that peacefully coexist with scientific methods. Most of the luminaries of the past centuries were both scientific and religious. Let's be a little bit more accurate with our headings. It's a class between Evolutionary Scientists and Creationist Christians.
My brother is explained...
Likely situation: convergence of movie and gaming industries. The movie industry has the huge bankroll necessary to launch a game. Game producers will be sought after just as movie producers are, and game directors will be just as successful movie directors are now.
Mind you, I think that will happen even with network neutrality, but my point is: online-gaming will simply take it in stride if it happens.
In the color example that you gave, consider the relevance of precise color selection for company branding. My company spent $200,000 two years ago to create a color scheme to be used for all company publications (including software products). This was after spending even more money assessing the potential impact of the change (which was determined to be significant). A similar importance exists in many other industries such as interior design (wallpaper, carpet, etc.).
My point being, more choice is always best. The simple act of you trying to impose a judgement on which categories of choice are valuable is a bad thing because, depending on your ability to effect what is produced, you could potentially eliminate choices of great value to others, based on your own needs and experience. This is why more choice is always better.
This is why a free system is ultimately superior to a restricted one, no matter how well thought out. A free system is one of constant choice motivated by the immediate needs of the situation. A restricted system, no matter how wisely designed, immediately creates the possibility of no longer matching the current situation and is thus immediately less inefficient than a free system. Children rebel, empires fall.
Look at the analogs in the United States. Increasing restrictions on freedom. Ever-growing quantities of legislation (there is a reason we call convoluted and elaborate creations "Byzantine"--that empire collapsed on itself). Simultaneously, the world is moving faster and faster. When knights faced each other with melee weapons (slow), knights ruled the day. When the bow (fast) was created, knights knew fear. When the gun (faster) was created, knights were no more. The weight of their arms became a fatal liability because it limited their choices (mobility).
So there are several seemingly unrelated examples, but they all have the same message. Choice wins. Freedom wins. You can never have too much choice, so long as there is no closure (e.g. "You can choose anything, but that."). Last example: the apple in the Garden of Eden. Why was that choice present? Freedom to choose is the selective process that drives the entire Universe, a Universe of unlimited choices.
Ok, I sort of went off there. I'll come back to Earth shortly. Phew.
- Add Sulfur to atmosphere to maintain global temperature.
- Greatly decrease the pH of precipitation.
- Disrupt world plant ecosystems with soil pH modifications.
- People die.
Use a different material; create a different way for people to die.A parallel: patient is suffering from atherosclerosis. Do you:
- A: prescribe a change to the patient's current 50% fat diet, or
- B: prescribe medication to balance the muck that the patient is pushing into his vascular system?
A little bit of both, one might say. Well, that is a very costly and risky ("Warning: side-effects may include nausea and death.") approach, which may well become necessary when there is no other option. The reason we typically get to that point of no return is because we consistently refuse to be proactive and solve the problem early and in the right way. "It's just too hard to change my diet." "It's just too hard to cut our emissions. Jobs will be lost. Oh, dear me. Oh! We can start an industry that pumps counterpollutants into the atmosphere. More jobs. More money! More! More!"Genius.