I had a choose your own adventure book that was called something like "everlasting adventure" or something to that effect. After going through it for a while and continually getting sent back to pages I had been on before I looked at each page until I found the one that actually ended the adventure. I then went through the book trying to find a page that led to the end page and didn't find one.
Apparently it truly was an adventure that would last forever.
This is obviously offtopic, but even so... *smile*
I took a welding class that was run by a guy out of his home near San Francisco. He had a home made forge. It's not the sort of thing you'll see in a medieval movie though. It's a small metal enclosure that's hooked up to a propane (I think) tank. The interior is padded with a material that looks like attic insulation, but which is able to withstand the heat of the forge.
As I recall, to use it I just turned on the gas and lit it. To use the forge I just stuck a piece of metal into it and held it there with some tongs. After it got white hot, I took it out to shape it. It's really fun to take the hot metal and bend it like it was a stick of butter. After 10 or 20 seconds the metal hardens again.
Why not start up your own company? Or, do contracting work? Just head over to craigslist and apply for some of the one shot projects they have there.
Myself, I'm the other way around. I have a job and lots of money saved away, but I spend most of my spare time working on personal projects like the website I have linked in my sig. (blatant plug alert! *smile*) I work on them with no intention of turning them into money makers, but with some effort I'm sure I could make a little money off of them if it was a priority to me.
If you've been at home for years then why not do the same thing except perhaps concentrate more on the idea of trying to make money with them? Just work on lots of small personal projects. If you accidentally hit on one that can make money then dedicate some time to turning it into something marketable.
It's also true for the OS itself (for most people's uses, it hasn't improved much since NT 4) as well as IE. As a web application developer, that last one is the one I'm always upset about.
OTOH, they've been doing some apparently cool stuff in C#, but I don't use it so it's not really relevant to me.
Maybe a lot of the non 'intellectually curious' folk are working long hours, raising children, and so on.
You mean as opposed to all the married software engineers out there who work long hours and raise children while also being IC? It's such a cop out to say that you're just too busy. People make their own time. If a person doesn't have time to be IC then that person has made the decision to be that way.
Maybe, just maybe, not everyone has the luxury that we do of having the time, energy & mental capacity to be interested in areas outside the domain of their work.
What's the difference between not having the mental capacity to be curious and someone being apathetic? You are your mind.
Maybe some of you lucky people, who have the time & resouces to engage in these fields should try a little sympathy
If someone accidentally slices off their fingers while playing carelessly with knives then I can feel sympathy for that person while at the same time thinking that that person is an idiot. The two judgements are not directly related.
rather than sitting on your high horses and insulting the people who work in the factory that made the twinkie you're eating while you scoff.
You can be a twinkie maker and still be IC. Does that twinkie maker take the time to find out how to improve the efficiency of their job? Do they go and look up the twinkie ingrediants to find out what it is they're making? Do they toss around ideas on how to improve the twinkie to make producing the twinkie cheaper?
Or, does the twinkie maker come in every day, blindly follow instructions, take their paycheck, and then go home and drink beer until they fall asleep? Is each day for that person the same as the previous and next day? Do they seek to alter their situation in any way?
If they do then I have lots of respect for that twinkie maker. If they do not then I'm afraid I'll have to do a little scoffing.
Once again, your loss. Maxi pads are cheap ways to clean up a big mess.
Really? Are you saying that the next time I run out of paper towels I should just buy a bunch of maxi pads? Actually, it would be fun to see the looks I'd get when someone saw a pack of maxi pads on top of my fridge. *laugh*
SUV's are extremely practical for those with 2 or more kids especialy if activities are involved and/or people who haul stuff that needs to stay out of the weather.
I'm not advocating SUV hating, but your reply is a bit silly. You can use a station wagon (or whatever they call 6 seat cars these days) for every reason you just mentioned unless by "haul stuff" you mean hauling firewood (as opposed to just hauling hockey equipment or anything else that'll fit in a station wagon just fine).
Just get the second computer and hook up the second monitor to the first computer. Then let the second computer just sit dead under the desk.
As for productivity, I don't know whether normal users would get a boost, but there's no question whatsoever that programmers do. There's just too much information that's needed to do it all on one without constant tabbing between windows.
If a programmer doesn't get a boost from multiple monitors then that programmer probably isn't all that good. The better you are, the more plates you keep up spinning in the air.
Personally, I have 3 monitors at home and 2 at work. One of the ones at home rotates so I have a nice tall monitor for browsing.
When in college I spent my summers coding. I'm glad I did. The enjoyment I got then was almost as great as the enjoyment I get now from writing code (a decade later).
As has been stated in other replies to my initial message, it is apparently thought that many smokers self medicate by smoking. My mistake was in not thinking about the many other conditions which are treated by stimulants.
I can't say whether or not you have ADHD, but I'd just like to correct a misconception that ADHD just implies a lack of attention. The name is a misnomer. ADHD is really about a lack of ability to control attention. An ADHD person will sometimes hyper focus to the exclusion of everything and sometimes have no ability to feel comfortable continuing to do anything for very long. Obviously, everyone falls somewhere on that sort of scale. It's just when someone hits those extremes too often that it is a problem.
But nicotine is a stimulant just like ADHD medications are. Are you sure that there aren't multiple things going on at the same time here? I don't know anything about the biology, so you may well be right, but I'd be interested in a url to some information on a correlation or lack thereof between ADHD and smoking. Also, what do you mean by increased stress on the brain?
sorry, my uncle just died from lymphoma this weekend, and i keep staring at the cigarette i'm smoking with a pained look.
I've always assumed that most smokers are people with untreated ADHD. Has anyone read anything to indicate whether or not this is the case?
The positive effects of smoking (feeling calmed down and more focused) are the same effects of ADHD medication except, obviously, the medication won't cause cancer, it is given in a dose that is consistent through the entire day, and it is not addictive.
I'd be curious to find out if giving a smoker medication for ADHD would make it easier for them to quit.
It's also amazing how often people respond to the McDonald's coffee thing claiming it is misrepresented. There is absolutely nothing at the page you linked to which in any way sways my opinion that it was a ridiculous lawsuit and a ridiculous amount of money to award.
The only things on that page that is clearly a basis for a lawsuit (to me) are #7 and #8 where the coffee was dropped or spilled onto someone by an employee.
She had the coffee. She knew it was hot. She decided that despite the temperature of the coffee she would put it between her legs. She then got burned. I don't care if the coffee was as hot as the sun. If she knew it was hot when she put it between her legs then it's her fault. I feel bad for her, but I still don't believe she had any reason to sue.
If we're in a thread of anecdote voting then I vote with the gp. Things are great as a software engineer. I work flexible hours, enjoy my job, get paid mucho bucks and like the people I work with. I'm not afraid for my job, but if something happened I have no doubts about getting another one. I'm confident in my skills and have a nest egg put by.
You sound sort of like my brother. He's intelligent and a great guy, but he makes the same mistake that many people make. He's mildly unhappy with his job, but he doesn't want to venture out and get another one.
You mention doctor, lawyer, and accountant as examples of great careers. Sorry, but those jobs suck and one reason for a high salary can be that a job sucks.
I'm sure people would get paid large bundles of cash for sewage swallowing if there was a big need for it. No thank you.
If the two camps could just get past their greed and see that their actions mean both of them will lose revenue, they might rethink their strategies.
I was with you up to that point. We don't want them to see past their greed. We want them to learn that their greed can be fulfilled more fully if they restrict things less.
That's what they're not getting. They believe they can get more money by restricting things more. That may be true for any one specific movie, but it's false overall.
One of the biggest reasons the IBM PC was successful was precisely because it could be hacked. IBM didn't adapt well enough and ended up leaving the PC building business, but they made gobs of money in other areas of the business.
The pure simulation method is unlikely to ever be used in developing an artificial intelligence. And that's just as well, as it wouldn't teach us anything more than just physically reconstructing the object atom by atom. Finding alternative routes to the goal is more likely to be interesting and useful.
Pure simulation may well not be the easiest way to develop machine intelligence, but if it's ever done then it would certainly still be useful. Maybe the intellectual leaps required to develop MI are just too great for the human mind or any technique a human or group of humans can create? The only way to know for sure that that statement is false is to actually create one.
Nonetheless, if we could create an MI by raw imitation without understanding, we would still end up with an MI. Once you have an MI you are on the road to a singularity. A human level MI can be made more intelligent by running it on faster hardware (after all, what does it mean to be intelligent if it's not the ability to take inputs and get results faster than others can). The result is an intelligence that itself can develop faster hardware, etc.
At some point perhaps the MI will become intelligent enough that it can find shortcuts to developing MI which are not based copycatting the methods used by meat intelligences.
Has anyone got any first hand experience trying out some of the recent 3D glasses? I bought a $500 set of 3D glasses about 9 years ago. They sucked, so I returned them.
I might be able to convince myself to get one of those if they actually work with FPSs. Ideally I would use a cordless controller and then stand up and turn my whole body as I moved around.
3D graphics cards aren't what the GP was talking about. If you can't perceive it with your depth perception (meaning different pictures for each eye) then it isn't a true 3D experience.
Every few years I look into buying some 3D glasses that I could use when playing an FPS. About 9 years ago I bought a $500 pair of 3D glasses which had low res LCD displays (one for each eye). It sucked. The resolution was something like 320x200 in each eye and the refresh rate was so low that I got flicker headache after using it for only a short while. I returned it quickly.
A few years ago I got some glasses that wouldn't track your head movements. They were just shutters which allowed you to view the image on the monitor with depth perception. Sadly I never even got those to work at all.
What is available now? A quick gander at various advertisements for 3D glasses makes it look like only incremental improvements have occurred while prices have gone up substantially.
Even so, you'd think that arcades would get their heads out of their asses and start providing some of this stuff.
Well now you're just being silly. Copyright is meant to, among other things, encourage publication of works. Where the work first appears shouldn't be relevant.
Well yes, but there is (or should be) a difference between a public act and publishing something. If I go to a play then obviously I can't just videotape that and rebroadcast it. But, if I see a mime performing a show on the street then I see no reason why I should be restricted from videotaping and rebroadcasting that.
If someone gives a speech or lecture at an event then that could reasonably be seen as copyrightable. But if I stand up on the steps of city hall and read a prepared speech then I see no reason why anyone would need to ask my permission to videotape and rebroadcast it.
He also made that speech in a public place. A speaker in a public place should have no expectation of copyright control over anything they say outside. If someone films me talking with a friend outside the grocery store, do they owe me money if they rebroadcast that conversation?
Obviously, legally I'm wrong here. But from a WTF standpoint I think I'm pretty solid. This is just another unreasonable copyright law.
Perhaps you'd like to launch a lawsuit against google to get your lastname site up higher in the page ranks? There's a service to allow you to do that. Try out S oogle</a>.
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Apparently it truly was an adventure that would last forever.
This is obviously offtopic, but even so... *smile*
I took a welding class that was run by a guy out of his home near San Francisco. He had a home made forge. It's not the sort of thing you'll see in a medieval movie though. It's a small metal enclosure that's hooked up to a propane (I think) tank. The interior is padded with a material that looks like attic insulation, but which is able to withstand the heat of the forge.
As I recall, to use it I just turned on the gas and lit it. To use the forge I just stuck a piece of metal into it and held it there with some tongs. After it got white hot, I took it out to shape it. It's really fun to take the hot metal and bend it like it was a stick of butter. After 10 or 20 seconds the metal hardens again.
Why not start up your own company? Or, do contracting work? Just head over to craigslist and apply for some of the one shot projects they have there.
Myself, I'm the other way around. I have a job and lots of money saved away, but I spend most of my spare time working on personal projects like the website I have linked in my sig. (blatant plug alert! *smile*) I work on them with no intention of turning them into money makers, but with some effort I'm sure I could make a little money off of them if it was a priority to me.
If you've been at home for years then why not do the same thing except perhaps concentrate more on the idea of trying to make money with them? Just work on lots of small personal projects. If you accidentally hit on one that can make money then dedicate some time to turning it into something marketable.
OTOH, they've been doing some apparently cool stuff in C#, but I don't use it so it's not really relevant to me.
You mean as opposed to all the married software engineers out there who work long hours and raise children while also being IC? It's such a cop out to say that you're just too busy. People make their own time. If a person doesn't have time to be IC then that person has made the decision to be that way.
What's the difference between not having the mental capacity to be curious and someone being apathetic? You are your mind.
If someone accidentally slices off their fingers while playing carelessly with knives then I can feel sympathy for that person while at the same time thinking that that person is an idiot. The two judgements are not directly related.
You can be a twinkie maker and still be IC. Does that twinkie maker take the time to find out how to improve the efficiency of their job? Do they go and look up the twinkie ingrediants to find out what it is they're making? Do they toss around ideas on how to improve the twinkie to make producing the twinkie cheaper?
Or, does the twinkie maker come in every day, blindly follow instructions, take their paycheck, and then go home and drink beer until they fall asleep? Is each day for that person the same as the previous and next day? Do they seek to alter their situation in any way?
If they do then I have lots of respect for that twinkie maker. If they do not then I'm afraid I'll have to do a little scoffing.
Really? Are you saying that the next time I run out of paper towels I should just buy a bunch of maxi pads? Actually, it would be fun to see the looks I'd get when someone saw a pack of maxi pads on top of my fridge. *laugh*
Yes they can.
Investors obviously wouldn't like it, but according to that link, microsoft makes 10 million in profit (40 million in revenue) every single day.
Just get the second computer and hook up the second monitor to the first computer. Then let the second computer just sit dead under the desk.
As for productivity, I don't know whether normal users would get a boost, but there's no question whatsoever that programmers do. There's just too much information that's needed to do it all on one without constant tabbing between windows.
If a programmer doesn't get a boost from multiple monitors then that programmer probably isn't all that good. The better you are, the more plates you keep up spinning in the air.
Personally, I have 3 monitors at home and 2 at work. One of the ones at home rotates so I have a nice tall monitor for browsing.
First off, only losers go outside.
When in college I spent my summers coding. I'm glad I did. The enjoyment I got then was almost as great as the enjoyment I get now from writing code (a decade later).
As has been stated in other replies to my initial message, it is apparently thought that many smokers self medicate by smoking. My mistake was in not thinking about the many other conditions which are treated by stimulants.
I can't say whether or not you have ADHD, but I'd just like to correct a misconception that ADHD just implies a lack of attention. The name is a misnomer. ADHD is really about a lack of ability to control attention. An ADHD person will sometimes hyper focus to the exclusion of everything and sometimes have no ability to feel comfortable continuing to do anything for very long. Obviously, everyone falls somewhere on that sort of scale. It's just when someone hits those extremes too often that it is a problem.
But nicotine is a stimulant just like ADHD medications are. Are you sure that there aren't multiple things going on at the same time here? I don't know anything about the biology, so you may well be right, but I'd be interested in a url to some information on a correlation or lack thereof between ADHD and smoking. Also, what do you mean by increased stress on the brain?
I've always assumed that most smokers are people with untreated ADHD. Has anyone read anything to indicate whether or not this is the case?
The positive effects of smoking (feeling calmed down and more focused) are the same effects of ADHD medication except, obviously, the medication won't cause cancer, it is given in a dose that is consistent through the entire day, and it is not addictive.
I'd be curious to find out if giving a smoker medication for ADHD would make it easier for them to quit.
It's also amazing how often people respond to the McDonald's coffee thing claiming it is misrepresented. There is absolutely nothing at the page you linked to which in any way sways my opinion that it was a ridiculous lawsuit and a ridiculous amount of money to award.
The only things on that page that is clearly a basis for a lawsuit (to me) are #7 and #8 where the coffee was dropped or spilled onto someone by an employee.
She had the coffee. She knew it was hot. She decided that despite the temperature of the coffee she would put it between her legs. She then got burned. I don't care if the coffee was as hot as the sun. If she knew it was hot when she put it between her legs then it's her fault. I feel bad for her, but I still don't believe she had any reason to sue.
If we're in a thread of anecdote voting then I vote with the gp. Things are great as a software engineer. I work flexible hours, enjoy my job, get paid mucho bucks and like the people I work with. I'm not afraid for my job, but if something happened I have no doubts about getting another one. I'm confident in my skills and have a nest egg put by.
You sound sort of like my brother. He's intelligent and a great guy, but he makes the same mistake that many people make. He's mildly unhappy with his job, but he doesn't want to venture out and get another one.
You mention doctor, lawyer, and accountant as examples of great careers. Sorry, but those jobs suck and one reason for a high salary can be that a job sucks.
I'm sure people would get paid large bundles of cash for sewage swallowing if there was a big need for it. No thank you.
There are animals that don't die of old age (like some turtles). They only die when they're killed or when disease gets them.
I was with you up to that point. We don't want them to see past their greed. We want them to learn that their greed can be fulfilled more fully if they restrict things less.
That's what they're not getting. They believe they can get more money by restricting things more. That may be true for any one specific movie, but it's false overall.
One of the biggest reasons the IBM PC was successful was precisely because it could be hacked. IBM didn't adapt well enough and ended up leaving the PC building business, but they made gobs of money in other areas of the business.
Pure simulation may well not be the easiest way to develop machine intelligence, but if it's ever done then it would certainly still be useful. Maybe the intellectual leaps required to develop MI are just too great for the human mind or any technique a human or group of humans can create? The only way to know for sure that that statement is false is to actually create one.
Nonetheless, if we could create an MI by raw imitation without understanding, we would still end up with an MI. Once you have an MI you are on the road to a singularity. A human level MI can be made more intelligent by running it on faster hardware (after all, what does it mean to be intelligent if it's not the ability to take inputs and get results faster than others can). The result is an intelligence that itself can develop faster hardware, etc.
At some point perhaps the MI will become intelligent enough that it can find shortcuts to developing MI which are not based copycatting the methods used by meat intelligences.
I just took a look around now. Has anyone tried any of the $1000 glasses like http://www.3dforgames.com/english/product_video3d_ pro.htm?
I might be able to convince myself to get one of those if they actually work with FPSs. Ideally I would use a cordless controller and then stand up and turn my whole body as I moved around.
3D graphics cards aren't what the GP was talking about. If you can't perceive it with your depth perception (meaning different pictures for each eye) then it isn't a true 3D experience.
Every few years I look into buying some 3D glasses that I could use when playing an FPS. About 9 years ago I bought a $500 pair of 3D glasses which had low res LCD displays (one for each eye). It sucked. The resolution was something like 320x200 in each eye and the refresh rate was so low that I got flicker headache after using it for only a short while. I returned it quickly.
A few years ago I got some glasses that wouldn't track your head movements. They were just shutters which allowed you to view the image on the monitor with depth perception. Sadly I never even got those to work at all.
What is available now? A quick gander at various advertisements for 3D glasses makes it look like only incremental improvements have occurred while prices have gone up substantially.
Even so, you'd think that arcades would get their heads out of their asses and start providing some of this stuff.
Well yes, but there is (or should be) a difference between a public act and publishing something. If I go to a play then obviously I can't just videotape that and rebroadcast it. But, if I see a mime performing a show on the street then I see no reason why I should be restricted from videotaping and rebroadcasting that.
If someone gives a speech or lecture at an event then that could reasonably be seen as copyrightable. But if I stand up on the steps of city hall and read a prepared speech then I see no reason why anyone would need to ask my permission to videotape and rebroadcast it.
He also made that speech in a public place. A speaker in a public place should have no expectation of copyright control over anything they say outside. If someone films me talking with a friend outside the grocery store, do they owe me money if they rebroadcast that conversation?
Obviously, legally I'm wrong here. But from a WTF standpoint I think I'm pretty solid. This is just another unreasonable copyright law.
Perhaps you'd like to launch a lawsuit against google to get your lastname site up higher in the page ranks? There's a service to allow you to do that. Try outS oogle</a>.
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