The question was asking about "a team of self-motivated software developers".
The answer (leaving aside the contradictory point that members of a team can't be self-motivated they're either motivated by the team, or by themselves) is that the job of a manager is to manage them, so technical skills are unnecessary.
Management is a separate discipline, with its own skills. It's not being a sort if super-programmer who's been promoted. They are almost always the worst sorts of managers. In this case it is the job of the manager to ensure the "motivation" is directed towards the project's goals rather than towards goofing around on the "interesting" and "self-motivating" parts.
That is the only way to make sure all the other IMPORTANT parts of the project are executed properly, not merely the coding. So the job of any manager is to control the sheep, or programmers, to make sure they are all going in the same direction, not being "self-motivated" all over the place, wherever their interest or motivation takes them.
the best places to get real news... is the foreign press
A foreign news service is without doubt the best source of relevant, hard, news (some might even say impartial news) about any given country. Provided you choose a source that has no agenda, enmity or axe to grind they will only report stuff that is important - rather than however much padding is needed to fill the next 15 minutes of rolling news - before the whole vapid cycle starts again.
News is mostly entertainment, anyway
on
The Rise of Hoax News
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Most news stories get selected for their "viewer friendliness". Ones with graphic visuals are chosen over those that are abstract and intangible. The more gore (with a lower case G) the better and if you can get children and animals into the story, the better.
So really there is no such thing as hoax news - just stories that aren't true. However, since hardly any of the reported news has any effect on the people watching it - and even less of it is something they could do anything about: whether they know about it, or not - it's mostly irrelevant what gets reported.
That appears to be the opinions of the news broadcasters. The object is not so much to inform, but to get the proportion of the population that still believes in "news" (which is diminishing every day as stories become more trivial and inconsequential) to watch the advertisements before, during and after the show. And it is a show.
Spending over $300k/yr on whatever the hell these people do. I wonder what they add to the bottom line (surely a better basis for calculating rewards).
The headline says CEOs but the study was about a different topic.
The more interesting question is whoch one would you (or a venture capitalist) be more willing to lend $10 mil to, if they both submitted the same proposal and had the same business track record.
Non-conformity might be trendy in academia, where all the students think they're special and unique - just like everyone else does [ thanks despair.com ] but I'd be more willing to trust my life savings to someone who was predictable and appeared "solid" than a non-conformist with possibly "alternative" ideas about diligence, fiscal responsibility and commercial success. Whether that transltaes to a specific dress-code is an interesting question - but not one answered by the study.
Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk
People who bought a product once. They've been told their support will end. They've been told it will become less secure (if they understand what that means). It's not Microsoft's problem any more.
It would be better if commercial software was sold with a ticking clock built in. After "X" number of years (or months for Apple), the product just stops. Wont boot, won't run. No getarounds, hacks or fixes - just dies. Obviously there will need to be a totally "in your face" way of reminding customers that this will happen and for the advertising to be absolutely unequivocal before the product is purchased, but you don't expect a packet of cereal to last forever, why should you expect software to, either?
Are these outdated specs worth your privacy and freedom?"
Having one of these won't assure you of either freedom or privacy. Hell, I doubt that it's even possible to have any sort of internet presence these days that would not be snooped, analysed, spamed or copied. So I can't really see the point to extolling privacy as a software attribute - when there are so many leaky stages after your stuff leaves whatever hardware you're using: free or not.
If the american economy bombs, who will repay all the debt the chinese hold? If there was such a "cataclysmic" financial crash and the USA defaulted on its loans, then the trillions and trillions of dollars owed by the USA becomes junk. How would that help China?
Further, with their biggest customer deep in the mire, who would they sell their goods to? The same goods they depend on for revenue to keep their own growth moving forward?
This has got to be the dumbest scare story, no: xenophobic, boogy-man, fiction to come out this year (and it has lots of competition). Although the american debt is a big drag on its economy, it's also so large that it's a problem for the debt holders, too. They are in just as much trouble if the value of that debt drops and therefore have an interest in making sure the USA does not crash and burn - despite what some scared, bigoted and ill-informed media commentators might think.
As infirmity and frailness take hold, being able to operate a mouse can become a major limitation. Whether that's due to the poor design of cursor/GUI interactions or simply the inability to double-click fast enough, being able to press a mouse button for "long" periods during click'n'drag - or some other physical limitation. However I have noticed with elderly relatives that they dislike "mousey" operations. Point and press is simpler as it doesn't involve and speed related movements.
It would be interesting to wonder whether the original mouse researchers / GUI implementors would have taken the same route and produced the products that todays peripherals are based on if any of them had physical limitations, such as arthritis.
Surely the reason a few countries impose such levels of tax is because there is so much fraud, tax evasion and avoidance going on?
If all the people paid what was an honest and reasonable proportion of tax, the "take" would be higher and the authorities would not have to extort monies from the few cases that they discovered and the low-hanging fruit (usually foreigners who were either brought up to be honest or don't know all the plays)
In those cases, Bitcoin is just another way of avoiding taxes, thus making the problem (of collecting a fair rate of tax) even more difficult.
But all the bashing of the Bitcoin concept is disappointing
All it amounts to is an individual holds an asset. They can transfer part or all of that asset to another individual without going through a governemnt monitored agency.
Ho hum
People have been using gold in exactly that way since humanity started bartering. The concept is thousands of years old. The only thing that is novel with Bitcoin is the implementation - not the concept. And we have yet to have all the problems, weakenesses and drawbacks of this system come to light. For the one thing we can guarantee is that there will NEVER be a foolproof, faultless and totally secure "financial" system - there's too much (illicit) money to be made).
The only thing keeping it afloat is other people believing the same fairy story.
But with "real" money, that fairy story is the credibility of the issuer - which rises and falls, but is damped by the inertia of the sheer volume of currency being transacted. Bitcoin has no issuer and therefore its only value is the confidence that its holders have that they will be able to exchange it at a reasonable rate. However there aren't billions of Bitcoin being traded and there's neither openness nor transparency regarding the future supply (i.e. Bitcoin inflation) so whatever "value" it trades at is difficult to rationalise and harder to predict.
So yes, it may be trading at a given value this minute, but that could be markedly different: up or down - no-one can say, tomorrow or in an hour's time.
Fix the volatility issue and it might be something that has some real-world use.But I wouldn't like to save for my oension in Bitcoins.
It's not about denying personal information to others, it's about how they use or misuse it once they have it - and making sure they only get the stuff you want them to have.
You can start by decreasing the amount of data you give away, for free. A second step would be to start reading the EULAs, Ts & Cs, and other annoyances that come between you and ACCEPT and make wiser decisions about which ones you choose. You can falsify some stuff with impunity (does that website really need you phone number or address - or will any random selection of words and numbers do) and you can start using cash again and having multiple bank and credit card accounts (but don't veer into the world of fraud). Just be aware that you'll never shake off the determined tracker / stalker, but hey: you don't have to make it easy for them, either.
Other than that, cultivate a nickname, nom de plume, start using your mother's maiden name, or just become known in all your social circles as JACKSON. You could also make sure you give your children very, very common names - rather than trying to be unique (like everyone else), so that name searches will throw up so many hits that hand-checking is impractical.
Apart from that, make sure you have several varied social media accounts (if you really must have any at all) rather than just the stipulated one - and grow a beard, if you can.
Similarly, the USA could divert money form its space (or defence) budget to "fix" Detroit and all the other poverty-stricken, bankrupt, towns in the country.
What resources? The only natural "resource" the Moon has is being most of the way out of the Earth's gravity well. If there had been anything of value (once the cost of getting to it and shipping it back had been subtracted) there would be permanent Moon bases already... maybe even ones that are considering declaring independence from their over-taxing overlords.
It's a common misconception that information is not scarce. In fact information is so rare that people hardly ever recognise it.
What we do have is a surfeit of data, or more correctly: noise.
People or systems that can separate the data from the noise are definitely worth paying for. People who can derive information from that data are to be valued. The problem is that apart form information being scarce, individulas and organisations that can recognise information are even scarcer.
Bits, by themselves are nothing. Most of them have negative value as they require effort to remove them from the useful stuff. Think mining: you have to churn through huge amounts of ore to get a few flecks of gold.
it [Linux Format] has a similar circulation to the venerable New Statesman (24,910)
But the New Statesman doesn't fill its nagazine with month-old stories, interchangable reviews of gadgets that give the impression all the reviewer has ever done is read the publicity material (and hardly ever give a negative reiew, for fear the advertisers will pull the plug, or they won't be given any more free goodies). The NS doesn't continually recycle "How To" articles intended for newbies to the political process.
In short LF is just an advertising tool, coupled with an attempt to fill the gap left by the lack of Linux documentation and instruction. The New Statesman (leaving aside its political slant, which I don't hold but can still respect) on the other hand provides insightful comment, analysis and in-depth pieces written by experts. As I say, I don't hold with its left-wing views (no matter whi its guest editor is), but it seems to offer its readers more than the trivial and shallow content that LF perpetually pushes out,
I just visited the US last week, and was surprised at the level of civility I experienced there.
That's my experience too. Sure, you meet the occasional 'hole. But they are everywhere and not confined to any particular country (which is a pity: we could leave them all there together). I do have a theory that one of the factors that influences the politeness of americans as individuals is not knowing if the person they are talking to is carrying a gun, or not.
The one thing that defines a free man, is the right to keep and bear arms
The ONE THING? So nobody is free unless they have the right to a gun? So nobody in any other country, who doesn't have a gun-carrying laws possiby be free?
C'mon. Just a little common sense or a second of thought would make it obvious that the statement has no truth to it whatsoever.
No, it's not the position that corrupts. It's the system that requires either candidate, who is successful at getting his name on the ballot paper, to screw-over, lie, back-stab and manipulate, in order to get there. No honest person would ever make it through the selection process. Nor would they ever be able to bring themselves to do all the things necessary to raise the millions of $$ needed to win (or: rather, buy) the campaign.
The USA used to have the USSR to keep it in check and provide a limit to the US's more paranoid actions against foreign countries it imagined might harm it. Now that the USSR is no more, the USA allows it's fear and insecurity to run rampant and bomb the crap out of every little thing that gives it nightmares - whether rational or not.
First of all: the amount of stuff people have. The more you have, the more you are afraid of losing it - and the more jealously you guard it.
Second: guns. Having a gun is a sign you are afraid. What are you afraid of? Ans: all the other people with guns.
There is no easy answer to these problems as they are deeply rooted in human nature and are probably survival instints. Just ones that were developed as cavemen but have now got way out of control.
Slashdot Mirror
The answer (leaving aside the contradictory point that members of a team can't be self-motivated they're either motivated by the team, or by themselves) is that the job of a manager is to manage them, so technical skills are unnecessary.
Management is a separate discipline, with its own skills. It's not being a sort if super-programmer who's been promoted. They are almost always the worst sorts of managers. In this case it is the job of the manager to ensure the "motivation" is directed towards the project's goals rather than towards goofing around on the "interesting" and "self-motivating" parts.
That is the only way to make sure all the other IMPORTANT parts of the project are executed properly, not merely the coding. So the job of any manager is to control the sheep, or programmers, to make sure they are all going in the same direction, not being "self-motivated" all over the place, wherever their interest or motivation takes them.
I really, truly, honestly, brain-explodingly do not know what else to say here. Holy crap
I think the polite thing to say would be "Welcome to the world of computing. How did you like your first day?"
the best places to get real news ... is the foreign press
A foreign news service is without doubt the best source of relevant, hard, news (some might even say impartial news) about any given country. Provided you choose a source that has no agenda, enmity or axe to grind they will only report stuff that is important - rather than however much padding is needed to fill the next 15 minutes of rolling news - before the whole vapid cycle starts again.
So really there is no such thing as hoax news - just stories that aren't true. However, since hardly any of the reported news has any effect on the people watching it - and even less of it is something they could do anything about: whether they know about it, or not - it's mostly irrelevant what gets reported.
That appears to be the opinions of the news broadcasters. The object is not so much to inform, but to get the proportion of the population that still believes in "news" (which is diminishing every day as stories become more trivial and inconsequential) to watch the advertisements before, during and after the show. And it is a show.
Spending over $300k/yr on whatever the hell these people do. I wonder what they add to the bottom line (surely a better basis for calculating rewards).
The more interesting question is whoch one would you (or a venture capitalist) be more willing to lend $10 mil to, if they both submitted the same proposal and had the same business track record. Non-conformity might be trendy in academia, where all the students think they're special and unique - just like everyone else does [ thanks despair.com ] but I'd be more willing to trust my life savings to someone who was predictable and appeared "solid" than a non-conformist with possibly "alternative" ideas about diligence, fiscal responsibility and commercial success. Whether that transltaes to a specific dress-code is an interesting question - but not one answered by the study.
Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk
People who bought a product once. They've been told their support will end. They've been told it will become less secure (if they understand what that means). It's not Microsoft's problem any more.
It would be better if commercial software was sold with a ticking clock built in. After "X" number of years (or months for Apple), the product just stops. Wont boot, won't run. No getarounds, hacks or fixes - just dies. Obviously there will need to be a totally "in your face" way of reminding customers that this will happen and for the advertising to be absolutely unequivocal before the product is purchased, but you don't expect a packet of cereal to last forever, why should you expect software to, either?
Are these outdated specs worth your privacy and freedom?"
Having one of these won't assure you of either freedom or privacy. Hell, I doubt that it's even possible to have any sort of internet presence these days that would not be snooped, analysed, spamed or copied. So I can't really see the point to extolling privacy as a software attribute - when there are so many leaky stages after your stuff leaves whatever hardware you're using: free or not.
Further, with their biggest customer deep in the mire, who would they sell their goods to? The same goods they depend on for revenue to keep their own growth moving forward?
This has got to be the dumbest scare story, no: xenophobic, boogy-man, fiction to come out this year (and it has lots of competition). Although the american debt is a big drag on its economy, it's also so large that it's a problem for the debt holders, too. They are in just as much trouble if the value of that debt drops and therefore have an interest in making sure the USA does not crash and burn - despite what some scared, bigoted and ill-informed media commentators might think.
but I don't want him to hit a limitation.
As infirmity and frailness take hold, being able to operate a mouse can become a major limitation. Whether that's due to the poor design of cursor/GUI interactions or simply the inability to double-click fast enough, being able to press a mouse button for "long" periods during click'n'drag - or some other physical limitation. However I have noticed with elderly relatives that they dislike "mousey" operations. Point and press is simpler as it doesn't involve and speed related movements.
It would be interesting to wonder whether the original mouse researchers / GUI implementors would have taken the same route and produced the products that todays peripherals are based on if any of them had physical limitations, such as arthritis.
If all the people paid what was an honest and reasonable proportion of tax, the "take" would be higher and the authorities would not have to extort monies from the few cases that they discovered and the low-hanging fruit (usually foreigners who were either brought up to be honest or don't know all the plays)
In those cases, Bitcoin is just another way of avoiding taxes, thus making the problem (of collecting a fair rate of tax) even more difficult.
But all the bashing of the Bitcoin concept is disappointing
All it amounts to is an individual holds an asset. They can transfer part or all of that asset to another individual without going through a governemnt monitored agency.
Ho hum
People have been using gold in exactly that way since humanity started bartering. The concept is thousands of years old. The only thing that is novel with Bitcoin is the implementation - not the concept. And we have yet to have all the problems, weakenesses and drawbacks of this system come to light. For the one thing we can guarantee is that there will NEVER be a foolproof, faultless and totally secure "financial" system - there's too much (illicit) money to be made).
The only thing keeping it afloat is other people believing the same fairy story.
But with "real" money, that fairy story is the credibility of the issuer - which rises and falls, but is damped by the inertia of the sheer volume of currency being transacted. Bitcoin has no issuer and therefore its only value is the confidence that its holders have that they will be able to exchange it at a reasonable rate. However there aren't billions of Bitcoin being traded and there's neither openness nor transparency regarding the future supply (i.e. Bitcoin inflation) so whatever "value" it trades at is difficult to rationalise and harder to predict.
So yes, it may be trading at a given value this minute, but that could be markedly different: up or down - no-one can say, tomorrow or in an hour's time.
Fix the volatility issue and it might be something that has some real-world use.But I wouldn't like to save for my oension in Bitcoins.
You can start by decreasing the amount of data you give away, for free. A second step would be to start reading the EULAs, Ts & Cs, and other annoyances that come between you and ACCEPT and make wiser decisions about which ones you choose. You can falsify some stuff with impunity (does that website really need you phone number or address - or will any random selection of words and numbers do) and you can start using cash again and having multiple bank and credit card accounts (but don't veer into the world of fraud). Just be aware that you'll never shake off the determined tracker / stalker, but hey: you don't have to make it easy for them, either.
Other than that, cultivate a nickname, nom de plume, start using your mother's maiden name, or just become known in all your social circles as JACKSON. You could also make sure you give your children very, very common names - rather than trying to be unique (like everyone else), so that name searches will throw up so many hits that hand-checking is impractical.
Apart from that, make sure you have several varied social media accounts (if you really must have any at all) rather than just the stipulated one - and grow a beard, if you can.
Similarly, the USA could divert money form its space (or defence) budget to "fix" Detroit and all the other poverty-stricken, bankrupt, towns in the country.
begin sending back resources
What resources? The only natural "resource" the Moon has is being most of the way out of the Earth's gravity well. If there had been anything of value (once the cost of getting to it and shipping it back had been subtracted) there would be permanent Moon bases already ... maybe even ones that are considering declaring independence from their over-taxing overlords.
information is scarce
It's a common misconception that information is not scarce. In fact information is so rare that people hardly ever recognise it.
What we do have is a surfeit of data, or more correctly: noise.
People or systems that can separate the data from the noise are definitely worth paying for. People who can derive information from that data are to be valued. The problem is that apart form information being scarce, individulas and organisations that can recognise information are even scarcer.
Bits, by themselves are nothing. Most of them have negative value as they require effort to remove them from the useful stuff. Think mining: you have to churn through huge amounts of ore to get a few flecks of gold.
it [Linux Format] has a similar circulation to the venerable New Statesman (24,910)
But the New Statesman doesn't fill its nagazine with month-old stories, interchangable reviews of gadgets that give the impression all the reviewer has ever done is read the publicity material (and hardly ever give a negative reiew, for fear the advertisers will pull the plug, or they won't be given any more free goodies). The NS doesn't continually recycle "How To" articles intended for newbies to the political process.
In short LF is just an advertising tool, coupled with an attempt to fill the gap left by the lack of Linux documentation and instruction. The New Statesman (leaving aside its political slant, which I don't hold but can still respect) on the other hand provides insightful comment, analysis and in-depth pieces written by experts. As I say, I don't hold with its left-wing views (no matter whi its guest editor is), but it seems to offer its readers more than the trivial and shallow content that LF perpetually pushes out,
With shades of The Man Who Sold the Moon, this guy can have my piece at the rate in the title. Just send me the cheque.
I just visited the US last week, and was surprised at the level of civility I experienced there.
That's my experience too. Sure, you meet the occasional 'hole. But they are everywhere and not confined to any particular country (which is a pity: we could leave them all there together). I do have a theory that one of the factors that influences the politeness of americans as individuals is not knowing if the person they are talking to is carrying a gun, or not.
The one thing that defines a free man, is the right to keep and bear arms
The ONE THING? So nobody is free unless they have the right to a gun? So nobody in any other country, who doesn't have a gun-carrying laws possiby be free?
C'mon. Just a little common sense or a second of thought would make it obvious that the statement has no truth to it whatsoever.
No, it's not the position that corrupts. It's the system that requires either candidate, who is successful at getting his name on the ballot paper, to screw-over, lie, back-stab and manipulate, in order to get there. No honest person would ever make it through the selection process. Nor would they ever be able to bring themselves to do all the things necessary to raise the millions of $$ needed to win (or: rather, buy) the campaign.
there has not been any real big change
The USA used to have the USSR to keep it in check and provide a limit to the US's more paranoid actions against foreign countries it imagined might harm it. Now that the USSR is no more, the USA allows it's fear and insecurity to run rampant and bomb the crap out of every little thing that gives it nightmares - whether rational or not.
Second: guns. Having a gun is a sign you are afraid. What are you afraid of? Ans: all the other people with guns.
There is no easy answer to these problems as they are deeply rooted in human nature and are probably survival instints. Just ones that were developed as cavemen but have now got way out of control.
Yes, that was pretty apparent to any viewer outside america