It's not like people are hording money that would have been spent on DVDs. The money is still flowing through the economy. So this is hardly a bad thing for the economy as a whole, it just means that other sectors of the economy are earning more money.
Religion is a scientific theory that has neither been proved nor disproved to my knowledge.
I could speculate all day on whether or not it is fact but from what I've read, I will make a few statements. It seems that Religion was invented to satisfy some things we could not explain. This doesn't mean it's wrong or right although some people will contend that it is most probably wrong.
As the summary points out, few (if any) of Religion's propositions can be tested or even observed. So it is simply an unknown right now. We cannot measure the Religion so how can we prove if they exist or they don't? We simply can't yet.
A good analogy would be Bohr's early assumptions about the atom [utk.edu]. They were wrong but they were a step in the right direction. In hindsight, we see this now but we don't know what the future holds for Religion. I'm just glad there are people out there thinking outside the box.
Do not fret, however, as scientists have been very resourceful at proving/disproving theories. I submit, for example, the exercise of determining the diameter of the building blocks of matter. Scientists had the idea to fill up one cubic milliletre of oil and dump it on top of a trough of water with a roller across the top. As the oil spread out, they moved the roller further down the trough. Once they started to see non-reflective parts of the water, they moved it back until they agreed the oil was completely spread out to the best of their abilities. Using this area, they determined how thick a molecule of oil could be without precision tools!
Similar ingenious tests have been devised to easily find the diameter of the earth at sunset on a beach with a yard stick or ruler.
So even though we may never be able to measure these Religion, there are still some options left to explore to record properties that may prove/disprove their existence. We're merely in the very early stages of the scientific process.
Let us be excited about Religion, even if it is wrong it sure is interesting. Nothing's wrong with a scientist who dreams, is there?
To be fair though, you have to look at it as an opportune expense. The energy would be spent in any case, but is this the most efficient use or process?
Like you samples, it takes a lot of energy/emissions to create a solar array. That 'wasted' energy reduces the total life cycle energy performance of solar arrays. But is the final performance better or worse than a coal burning alternative? And depending on what life cycle? (Energy, longevity, emissions, cost, prof fit, etc...)
It takes a lot of energy to create nuclear fuel, to keep a nuclear plant operating, and to dispose of (err, not to dispose of in the US's case) spent nuclear fuel, but the amount of energy created by the plant can offset that amount greatly.
As compared to alternative fuels like ethanol (in the US!) where you are looking at barely breaking even once you consider the fuel and chemicals required to grow the feed stock, process the fuel, and transport the fuel.
And Google does business in some kind of inter-dimensional utopia zone?
Hardly, but what happens if the latest update to Google Maps gets delayed by 2 months? Not much.
What happens if the latest update to my invoicing system gets delayed by 2 months? 30 million dollars in liability.
One of the projects that was poorly planed out prior to my employment here had a business need to go live in 6 months from when I was hired. There was other 3rd party software going into place, agreements with partner companies, and the expectations of our customers. Regardless of what great features we wanted to add, we needed to have the system running in 6 months. Failing to have that system in place would have cost the company probably half a million dollars a day.
Is that to say that working here is a joyless shit-hole? Hardly! I love my job, I'm working with management to improve our project management system, I get plenty of coding time, and it's a nice laid back and humorous environment.
I completely agree with you that developers don't have to be at every meeting, but bringing one along from time to time can cut off problems and bring up issues that may have been missed other times.
I also agree, that free of leashes we can do some brutally awesome things. But in the majority of corporate worlds, that just isn't an option. As much as I'd love to create a custom leasing solution designed to directly mimic the exceptionally complex business needs of my organization, they can not afford the multi-year investment it would take. They wouldn't even be able to afford (in time) the business requirements gathering and analysis that would be required to build such a system.
The more I learn about project management, the more critical I can see it as being. I've been involved in successful projects, and unsuccessful projects. And as a programmer I couldn't ever really explain why a project failed. The code was good, the app was maturing, features were solid, bugs were few, and yet they failed. After learning more about project management I can see how much more there is outside of coding and deployments. Some of the failed projects were doomed from day one, not because of an single person's failure, but because of a total lack of direction, guidance, and management.
Now pull your head out of the toilet of fanboyism and try to imagine applying non-proffitable project management to a company that doesn't have huge sums of money to loose while looking for another cash cow. The vast majority of developers work in businesses that are not IT companies. Companies where there are deadlines, budgets, time constraints, and customers.
As I said, I would love to experience the Google workstyle, but it is only applicable in places like Google. Do not expect the same kind of environment working for H&R Block.
Interesting unintended consequences could occur. What happens if Wal-mart, Bestbut, and CompUSA all drop PC videogames due to online digital sales? Specificly, to the ESRB, and the ratings of those games. Right now, you need an ESRB rating to get into Wal-mart, but you don't for digital sales. Any online retailer with decent traffic can make the sale. The question is, will online retailer put the same pressure on producers for ESRB ratings as companies like Wal-mart and Bestbuy?
Is there any Google app that is truly profitable other than Google Search and Adds?
As you mentioned, with their huge amount of capital, they can afford highly in-efficient project management. I pity the fool who tries to introduce this management style into a smaller organization with budgetary concerns and uncontrollable deadlines. Not that I wouldn't mind working in their environment one bit. Either as a coder, or as a PM.
Why would he punch you? Unless he is acting under orders, he would likely get in MORE trouble by starting a fight with a civilian. When I was active duty, sure I disagreed with a handful of protestors, but putting up with insults is a lot more pleasant than a 90/90 brig and restriction stint.
As an enlisted member of the armed forces (ie: Private, Private First Class, Specialist, Lance Corporal, Corporal, Sergeant, etc...) you swear an oath to the officers in your command.
As an officer in the armed forces (ie: Luitenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, etc...) you swear an oath to the Constitution.
So while the private may agree that Rumsfield is a moron, they are still expected to follow their officers. The important question is what is the common opinion in the O-club?
But this type of IT organization is not limited to games. I work for a very successful business equipment solution company, and it used to be almost exactly as the GP described. I say Used To because the top brass finally realized that IT was blowing money like crazy. Now they have an 80% turn over rate in 2 years on the network side of the house, 30% on the apps side, budget cut backs, staffing cutbacks, and all round low moral. I recently wrapped up a pair of BSs in IT and Technology Management. I've been working hard to implement project management procedures, and get some kind of order in the shop, but my supervisor is content in code & fix mode, and my manager is 3 years from retirement and has no idea what IT Alignment is. And this has hardly been limited to this company, I have worked for enough organizations to know that this is the more common approach to IT, not the exception. And that is why I'm trying to move from Code Monkey (tm) and Project Management.
I think that's what this project would prove. We are not the sum of things we experience, we are the sum of things we believe to have experienced. Our persona is much more dependant on our interpretation of events that it is on the actual events themselves. Memories is also a bad choice as our interpretations at any given point may help to shape our persona, but in the future, we may have no memory of that interpretation.
Toss into that the whole nurture/nature argument, so genetic predisposition, physiological effects, and social expectations, and you might get closer to a "calculation" of who we are.
Ringdev's Razor: "When there are two possible explanations for a given situation, one that requires a large amount of knowledge, skill, and luck, and another that requires gross incompetence; go with the incompetence explanation."
Seeing as how this was the 2nd post in the thread, it's kinda hard for it to be duplicating something when his point is entirely different than the first post.
Now, maybe I'm a bit jaded. But seeing this kind of drivel on/. rather irritates me. The poster could have asked "What Open Source SSL VPN solutions are available?" but instead he asked for a "free" as in cash solution. Excuse me for being one of the millions of people world wide who feed their families by working hard to provide a professional solution to you.
If you want to go open source, that's fine, go open source. But don't sit here and beg for handouts while insulting those of us who make it our life's work to create software. You want free, I want to pay my mortgage.
Is this just a bit over the top? The wording of the cease and desist letter is vague enough that they could replace "PodCast Ready" (an LLC) any company or product name that contains the word "Pod", or any word that is "phonetically similar" to Pod. Not to mention that they have a trademark pending for the word "Pod" even though the have no product, branch, or line under the name "Pod".
It's crap like this that would make me buy a Zen and call it my "F!Pod".
If you assume that that 500m trip is made "cruising" on a rather efficient DC system, you could probably run about.3kWh/mile. At.3kWh/m for 500 miles you would need 150kWh worth of energy. That would put you at about 16.7 cents ($0.167) per kWh.
150kWh puts you at 1.8MW in 5 minutes. Which would be 7.5kA @ 240V or 3kA @ 600V. I'm going to take a guess that your average house hold wiring isn't going to like that kind of draw.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not like people are hording money that would have been spent on DVDs. The money is still flowing through the economy. So this is hardly a bad thing for the economy as a whole, it just means that other sectors of the economy are earning more money.
-Rick
Oh man, if they bring U3 over my wife is going to demand that we buy one.
-Rick
You totally diserve a +1 funny for that! heh
-Rick
Religion is a scientific theory that has neither been proved nor disproved to my knowledge.
I could speculate all day on whether or not it is fact but from what I've read, I will make a few statements. It seems that Religion was invented to satisfy some things we could not explain. This doesn't mean it's wrong or right although some people will contend that it is most probably wrong.
As the summary points out, few (if any) of Religion's propositions can be tested or even observed. So it is simply an unknown right now. We cannot measure the Religion so how can we prove if they exist or they don't? We simply can't yet.
A good analogy would be Bohr's early assumptions about the atom [utk.edu]. They were wrong but they were a step in the right direction. In hindsight, we see this now but we don't know what the future holds for Religion. I'm just glad there are people out there thinking outside the box.
Do not fret, however, as scientists have been very resourceful at proving/disproving theories. I submit, for example, the exercise of determining the diameter of the building blocks of matter. Scientists had the idea to fill up one cubic milliletre of oil and dump it on top of a trough of water with a roller across the top. As the oil spread out, they moved the roller further down the trough. Once they started to see non-reflective parts of the water, they moved it back until they agreed the oil was completely spread out to the best of their abilities. Using this area, they determined how thick a molecule of oil could be without precision tools!
Similar ingenious tests have been devised to easily find the diameter of the earth at sunset on a beach with a yard stick or ruler.
So even though we may never be able to measure these Religion, there are still some options left to explore to record properties that may prove/disprove their existence. We're merely in the very early stages of the scientific process.
Let us be excited about Religion, even if it is wrong it sure is interesting. Nothing's wrong with a scientist who dreams, is there?
To be fair though, you have to look at it as an opportune expense. The energy would be spent in any case, but is this the most efficient use or process?
Like you samples, it takes a lot of energy/emissions to create a solar array. That 'wasted' energy reduces the total life cycle energy performance of solar arrays. But is the final performance better or worse than a coal burning alternative? And depending on what life cycle? (Energy, longevity, emissions, cost, prof fit, etc...)
It takes a lot of energy to create nuclear fuel, to keep a nuclear plant operating, and to dispose of (err, not to dispose of in the US's case) spent nuclear fuel, but the amount of energy created by the plant can offset that amount greatly.
As compared to alternative fuels like ethanol (in the US!) where you are looking at barely breaking even once you consider the fuel and chemicals required to grow the feed stock, process the fuel, and transport the fuel.
-Rick
but this is still going to be one hell of a bill.
-Rick
And Google does business in some kind of inter-dimensional utopia zone?
Hardly, but what happens if the latest update to Google Maps gets delayed by 2 months? Not much.
What happens if the latest update to my invoicing system gets delayed by 2 months? 30 million dollars in liability.
One of the projects that was poorly planed out prior to my employment here had a business need to go live in 6 months from when I was hired. There was other 3rd party software going into place, agreements with partner companies, and the expectations of our customers. Regardless of what great features we wanted to add, we needed to have the system running in 6 months. Failing to have that system in place would have cost the company probably half a million dollars a day.
Is that to say that working here is a joyless shit-hole? Hardly! I love my job, I'm working with management to improve our project management system, I get plenty of coding time, and it's a nice laid back and humorous environment.
-Rick
I completely agree with you that developers don't have to be at every meeting, but bringing one along from time to time can cut off problems and bring up issues that may have been missed other times.
I also agree, that free of leashes we can do some brutally awesome things. But in the majority of corporate worlds, that just isn't an option. As much as I'd love to create a custom leasing solution designed to directly mimic the exceptionally complex business needs of my organization, they can not afford the multi-year investment it would take. They wouldn't even be able to afford (in time) the business requirements gathering and analysis that would be required to build such a system.
The more I learn about project management, the more critical I can see it as being. I've been involved in successful projects, and unsuccessful projects. And as a programmer I couldn't ever really explain why a project failed. The code was good, the app was maturing, features were solid, bugs were few, and yet they failed. After learning more about project management I can see how much more there is outside of coding and deployments. Some of the failed projects were doomed from day one, not because of an single person's failure, but because of a total lack of direction, guidance, and management.
-Rick
Brilliantly thought out. and well said. /golfclap
Now pull your head out of the toilet of fanboyism and try to imagine applying non-proffitable project management to a company that doesn't have huge sums of money to loose while looking for another cash cow. The vast majority of developers work in businesses that are not IT companies. Companies where there are deadlines, budgets, time constraints, and customers.
As I said, I would love to experience the Google workstyle, but it is only applicable in places like Google. Do not expect the same kind of environment working for H&R Block.
-Rick
Interesting unintended consequences could occur. What happens if Wal-mart, Bestbut, and CompUSA all drop PC videogames due to online digital sales? Specificly, to the ESRB, and the ratings of those games. Right now, you need an ESRB rating to get into Wal-mart, but you don't for digital sales. Any online retailer with decent traffic can make the sale. The question is, will online retailer put the same pressure on producers for ESRB ratings as companies like Wal-mart and Bestbuy?
-Rick
Thankfully though, Constitutional Amendments have much more legal force, and are (usually) longer lasting than social expectations.
-Rick
Thanks for the correction, it's been a few years since I've had to worry about those oaths.
-Rick
Is there any Google app that is truly profitable other than Google Search and Adds?
As you mentioned, with their huge amount of capital, they can afford highly in-efficient project management. I pity the fool who tries to introduce this management style into a smaller organization with budgetary concerns and uncontrollable deadlines. Not that I wouldn't mind working in their environment one bit. Either as a coder, or as a PM.
-Rick
Why would he punch you? Unless he is acting under orders, he would likely get in MORE trouble by starting a fight with a civilian. When I was active duty, sure I disagreed with a handful of protestors, but putting up with insults is a lot more pleasant than a 90/90 brig and restriction stint.
-Rick
As an enlisted member of the armed forces (ie: Private, Private First Class, Specialist, Lance Corporal, Corporal, Sergeant, etc...) you swear an oath to the officers in your command.
As an officer in the armed forces (ie: Luitenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, etc...) you swear an oath to the Constitution.
So while the private may agree that Rumsfield is a moron, they are still expected to follow their officers. The important question is what is the common opinion in the O-club?
-Rick
But this type of IT organization is not limited to games. I work for a very successful business equipment solution company, and it used to be almost exactly as the GP described. I say Used To because the top brass finally realized that IT was blowing money like crazy. Now they have an 80% turn over rate in 2 years on the network side of the house, 30% on the apps side, budget cut backs, staffing cutbacks, and all round low moral. I recently wrapped up a pair of BSs in IT and Technology Management. I've been working hard to implement project management procedures, and get some kind of order in the shop, but my supervisor is content in code & fix mode, and my manager is 3 years from retirement and has no idea what IT Alignment is. And this has hardly been limited to this company, I have worked for enough organizations to know that this is the more common approach to IT, not the exception. And that is why I'm trying to move from Code Monkey (tm) and Project Management.
-Rick
I think that's what this project would prove. We are not the sum of things we experience, we are the sum of things we believe to have experienced. Our persona is much more dependant on our interpretation of events that it is on the actual events themselves. Memories is also a bad choice as our interpretations at any given point may help to shape our persona, but in the future, we may have no memory of that interpretation.
Toss into that the whole nurture/nature argument, so genetic predisposition, physiological effects, and social expectations, and you might get closer to a "calculation" of who we are.
-Rick
But in this case, those 80 underfed chickens will have lasers strapped to their heads.
-Rick
Ringdev's Razor: "When there are two possible explanations for a given situation, one that requires a large amount of knowledge, skill, and luck, and another that requires gross incompetence; go with the incompetence explanation."
-Rick
Redundant: Repeated or duplicated unnecessarily.
Seeing as how this was the 2nd post in the thread, it's kinda hard for it to be duplicating something when his point is entirely different than the first post.
-Rick
Now, maybe I'm a bit jaded. But seeing this kind of drivel on /. rather irritates me. The poster could have asked "What Open Source SSL VPN solutions are available?" but instead he asked for a "free" as in cash solution. Excuse me for being one of the millions of people world wide who feed their families by working hard to provide a professional solution to you.
If you want to go open source, that's fine, go open source. But don't sit here and beg for handouts while insulting those of us who make it our life's work to create software. You want free, I want to pay my mortgage.
-Rick
I ask you to cease and desist use of the trade mark 'ucking' and any words that may be phonetically similar to it, as I have a trade mark pending.
-Rick
Is this just a bit over the top? The wording of the cease and desist letter is vague enough that they could replace "PodCast Ready" (an LLC) any company or product name that contains the word "Pod", or any word that is "phonetically similar" to Pod. Not to mention that they have a trademark pending for the word "Pod" even though the have no product, branch, or line under the name "Pod".
It's crap like this that would make me buy a Zen and call it my "F!Pod".
-Rick
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=deta il&aid=1559571&group_id=4421&atid=354421
-Rick
If you assume that that 500m trip is made "cruising" on a rather efficient DC system, you could probably run about .3kWh/mile. At .3kWh/m for 500 miles you would need 150kWh worth of energy. That would put you at about 16.7 cents ($0.167) per kWh.
150kWh puts you at 1.8MW in 5 minutes. Which would be 7.5kA @ 240V or 3kA @ 600V. I'm going to take a guess that your average house hold wiring isn't going to like that kind of draw.
-Rick