The industrial revolution is driven by man's ability to harness energy. So far that's all been fossil fuel and has limited what we can do - and how fast we can do it.
That phase of the industrial revolution is still going strong and has nothing to do with electronics, electricity or computers. Those developments are a completely different strand of development, and (themselves) have barely started, either.
The next phase of human-kinds development is when we break out, past the limitations (both of availability and rate of generation) of fossil fuels into a new era where there is MORE energy available to each human. Probably several times more energy.
However, if you really want to talk about computers, then we're still in the pre-condensing boiler stage. We can make computing devices that seem pretty powerful (because we have nothing better to compare them with), but they're not particularly powerful, complex or scalable. Also, it's debatable whether there is anything on the horizon (quantum, possibly - but it seems to be a hellishly complicated way to do things and needs a lot of supporting structure, compared to, say, the human brain) to take us to the next phase.
So, no. We have NOT come to the end of IR3, we're still firmly stuck in the first industrial revolution, probably for another 50 - 100 years until we get our asses into gear and get past fossil fuels. Computing also seems firmly stuck on the bottom rung, with no promising technologies to move up, past the limitations of current semiconductor processors and logic-gate based architectures.
The predictions say nothing about what we'll be using. They only guess at what will be possible. Flying cars are "possible" (we call them helicopters), but they aren't used by everyday people. The IBM predictions are typical ivory tower statements that have no commercial credibility.
Maybe IBM is saving the what will be predictions for itself.
Some large companies have a liason department who's job is to help small contractors to "deal" with the larger organisation. Check if there's any such thing with your problem company.
Second idea is to simply sell the debt to a factoring outfit. You'll only get a percentage of the headline figure, but the loss should be written off for tax purposes (small comfort).
Never forget there are plenty of ways to deliver a nuke - a freight container being a good choice. Even with anti-nuke scanners (a sure sign that the method is credible) it would be easy to overload the warning systems by spreading a little radioactive waste on the outside of several thousand containers. Just over-fly a container ship with a crop sprayer would be enough.
Even if the NKians did want to deliver a nuke by missile, an EMP burst would be just as effective as a ground strike and wold need very little accuracy. Let's not forget that since the NKians have very little electricity generation, a retailatory attack in kind would have very little effect on them.
Whatever answers they give you, don't make the mistake of thinking that they're "all part of the game". Instead write them down and enter them into the formal record of the interview. Then at any later time, when whichever manager you get fails to live up to a statement they made during the interview, you'll have the material to "prove" they lied during the interview and can therefore be sacked.
One last question you should use to end the interview: "Has everything you've told me been the truth?" but it's best not to ask that to the manager you want!
All he needs to do is to continue to cater to anyone that wants to thumb their nose at Europe/US and he'll be fine.
Hardly "fine". He's voluntarily locked himself into a small building with no possibility of travelling elsewhere. Apart from the occasional announcement like this one, and internet access he may as well be in jail. At least then (provided he's not rendered to the USA) he'll know when he's free to get out.
The same situation happened with German unification. WG undertook a massive (Trillion $$$ +) programme of investment in the former East Germany and I expect that S. Korea will, some day, do the same with the north. The great thing about these sorts of programmes is that they really ARE investment programmes, not aid or just costs. The investment pays back when the newly unified country creates masses of extra jobs doing the reconstruction, installing infrastructure and then making better use of the newly acquired territory.
NK is hopelessly inefficient, not lazy. Once the people there get access to modern techniques and equipment we can fully expect them to start producing much more than they do at present. Within a generation they'll be growing at 10% p.a. for decades - just like China did, when the restrictions faded away.
disabled by a country that trades 400b per YEAR with it?
The USs biggest strategic weakness is its indebtedness and addiction to consumer goods. Keep thinking deeper about that and you'll come to the realisation about how wars are fought in the 21st century. No country has to start attacking the US physically, they just have to cut off the supply of whatever goodies (electronics, drugs, energy - for now, rare-earths, cheap labour) they supply to american markets and the citizens themselves will force regime change in the United States.
It won't even hurt the supplier as there are now plenty of alternative markets they can fulfill. Relying on a military, to fight for poorly explained causes in places no american has heard of is an increasingly lost cause. Hitting your target in it's soft underbelly is virtually painless, very effective and none of your own people suffer.
Yes, there's merit in what you say.
Just like restaurants tend to cluster together (the best place to open a restaurant is next to another restaurant) so it is with en-masse IT. However, that doesn't argue for having that IT development in a high cost country, when there are hundreds of excellently trained IT staff in the very same city that hosts the hardware production, too.
Hint: that isn't where I live - probably not where you live, either. Long ago all the manu's worked out it was 4x cheaper to make stuff overseas than here. Software's heading the same way for the same reasons.
IT is basically just a commodity skill these days. You buy in as much (measured in heads) as you need. You expect to be able to shop around, globally, for the cheapest cost per head.
There's no longer any need (well: almost no need) for a code-writer to be present in any particular geographical area, so long as where they are has reliable internet, stable government and degree level education. After that, it's simply a case of who is willing to do the job for the least amount of money.
The wonder is why there are still SO MANY programming jobs in costly, western countries - not that they pay so little.
Either there should be no lawyers among the 80,000 or they should ALL be.
One group stands a chance of establishing a utopian society, the other would, at least, be doing all us earthlings a huge favour.
There's no guarantee that THIS calculator (if it can even be classed as a calculator) would be allowed into exams. Most exams are there to gauge a student's level of knowledge, judgement or analytical skills, not their data processing ability.
Everybody who writes software knows there are two distinct parts to the job
There's the fun part: writing code, showing off your mental agility, creating stuff, adding the features you would want (and that are easy to do)
Then there's the work part: everything else: the testing, integration, support and documentation.
People love doing the creative bit - they'd probably even pay their employers to let them make software. However they hate every other aspect of producing a professional product. So whenever possible, the maximum amount of time will be spent writing code, adding features and the absolute minimum that they can get away with will be spent producing the least amount of testing, support material, bug fixes and "productising" - after all we (sorry: they) are software developers, not any of those other, lesser, jobs - and work should be FUN, not hard.
I guess you only bothered to read the short words.
I'll type this slowly, so you can keep up. The statement "power 5 houses for 2 hours" makes little sense, since power consumption is not at a constant level throughout the day (or even in a week). Some hours use more power than other hours. Thus, overnight, when people are sleeping, that 10kW*Hr stack will be enough to keep many houses running for many more hours. However, at peak demand: morning, when everyone gets up or maybe evening, then a 10kW*Hr supply would NOT last as long, since more people in more households would be using more than the average amount of electricity.
As a consequence, the bald statement "5 houses for 2 hours" is meaningless, unless WHICH 2 hours is stipulated.
If you turn off heating and air conditioning you should be using a lot less than 10kW
No. Our house uses gas for heating and cooking, we live in a country that doesn't need a/c and the daily electricity consumption: lights, computers, washing, kettle, TVs, microwave, fridge comes to about 9kW*Hr per day.
The idea that a stack of 10kW*Hr batteries could power 5 houses for 2 hours is what happens when you apply statistics without any common sense. During the night, those batteries could power lots more houses (like ours) for much longer. However come waking up time, when every household uses an electric shower for each resident, kettles, toasters and lighting and I doubt you'd get 1 house for 20 minutes out of that many batteries - assuming they didn't fail under that load.
If the individual in question could not do the work and made lots of mistakes, then it should already be within the skill-set of the remaining staff to fix the problem. If not, then the sackee doesn't sound like they were any worse than the remaining staff.
If they were evil: did some bad things, sabotaged the operations, stole money/data/reputation etc. then your security people should be able to detect the weaknesses ('cos if they were good, yet evil, they'd still be working; undetected). If not, then it sounds like you have a secondary problem as well. Consider yourself top have just been the target of an unscheduled audit - oh yes: you failed.
However the one thing you should do is to review your hiring procedures.
A lot of people think they perform better, or are more attractive, or that other people are more attractive (an affliction known as beer goggles) when under the influence of something. All that happens in fact is that their judgement is impaired. There's no reason to think that the application of other mood/mind altering substances: dope, caffeine etc. would improve a mental performance more than it would cloud their judgement. They may well think it improves their programming skills, but that's just another case of poor judgement.
I wouldn't say coding is hard. However, it does require a certain level of mental discipline and the ability to organise one's thoughts. The problem with older coders is that they tend to just get the job done. Quietly, without fuss or drama. (At least, I do) Whereas the young 'uns make a big deal about working late, pulling all-nighters ('cos they're on FB all day) and turning a project into a crisis. That means they get all the attention and the spotlight, which makes them look like superheros when they squeak in with a clean compile just milliseconds before the delivery deadline.
... is s potential security (and national security{in terms of infrastructure}) issue
Although in reality the weakness is self-inflicted. If a government suspects that there are security holes and flaws in critical network security systems the stupidest, dumbest thing they could possibly do is to place critical national infrastructure on that network,
In that case, it's no use blaming some "foreign" company. The fault lies squarely at home with whoever made the decision to expose critical systems - and keeping them exposed. Once the security problems have been discovered, it is somewhere between criminal negligence and treason to permit them to remain in that state of vulnerability.
Of course we all know, through history and experience, that the most frequent threats are home-grown.
The photo shows a text console. if that's all it will do, it's worthless.
Write a story when all the Chromebook's features, functions and peripherals work with X and a desktop. THEN you've got a story. Right now they've got nothing of value.
That's correct. Although since it's illegal to own a transmitter for frequencies you don't hold a licence to transmit on (and nobody holds a licence to transmit on "from 100 megaherz [sic] to 6 gigaherz") these proposed SDRs would have a big problem getting any sort of electrical conformance/approval certificate for sale in most countries.
Slashdot Mirror
The industrial revolution is driven by man's ability to harness energy. So far that's all been fossil fuel and has limited what we can do - and how fast we can do it.
That phase of the industrial revolution is still going strong and has nothing to do with electronics, electricity or computers. Those developments are a completely different strand of development, and (themselves) have barely started, either.
The next phase of human-kinds development is when we break out, past the limitations (both of availability and rate of generation) of fossil fuels into a new era where there is MORE energy available to each human. Probably several times more energy.
However, if you really want to talk about computers, then we're still in the pre-condensing boiler stage. We can make computing devices that seem pretty powerful (because we have nothing better to compare them with), but they're not particularly powerful, complex or scalable. Also, it's debatable whether there is anything on the horizon (quantum, possibly - but it seems to be a hellishly complicated way to do things and needs a lot of supporting structure, compared to, say, the human brain) to take us to the next phase.
So, no. We have NOT come to the end of IR3, we're still firmly stuck in the first industrial revolution, probably for another 50 - 100 years until we get our asses into gear and get past fossil fuels. Computing also seems firmly stuck on the bottom rung, with no promising technologies to move up, past the limitations of current semiconductor processors and logic-gate based architectures.
Maybe IBM is saving the what will be predictions for itself.
Second idea is to simply sell the debt to a factoring outfit. You'll only get a percentage of the headline figure, but the loss should be written off for tax purposes (small comfort).
If anything, the lecturers and academics should be the ones who have to sign in and prove they are doing the work the students are paying them for.
Never forget there are plenty of ways to deliver a nuke - a freight container being a good choice. Even with anti-nuke scanners (a sure sign that the method is credible) it would be easy to overload the warning systems by spreading a little radioactive waste on the outside of several thousand containers. Just over-fly a container ship with a crop sprayer would be enough.
Even if the NKians did want to deliver a nuke by missile, an EMP burst would be just as effective as a ground strike and wold need very little accuracy. Let's not forget that since the NKians have very little electricity generation, a retailatory attack in kind would have very little effect on them.
One last question you should use to end the interview: "Has everything you've told me been the truth?" but it's best not to ask that to the manager you want!
All he needs to do is to continue to cater to anyone that wants to thumb their nose at Europe/US and he'll be fine.
Hardly "fine". He's voluntarily locked himself into a small building with no possibility of travelling elsewhere. Apart from the occasional announcement like this one, and internet access he may as well be in jail. At least then (provided he's not rendered to the USA) he'll know when he's free to get out.
NK is hopelessly inefficient, not lazy. Once the people there get access to modern techniques and equipment we can fully expect them to start producing much more than they do at present. Within a generation they'll be growing at 10% p.a. for decades - just like China did, when the restrictions faded away.
disabled by a country that trades 400b per YEAR with it?
The USs biggest strategic weakness is its indebtedness and addiction to consumer goods. Keep thinking deeper about that and you'll come to the realisation about how wars are fought in the 21st century. No country has to start attacking the US physically, they just have to cut off the supply of whatever goodies (electronics, drugs, energy - for now, rare-earths, cheap labour) they supply to american markets and the citizens themselves will force regime change in the United States.
It won't even hurt the supplier as there are now plenty of alternative markets they can fulfill. Relying on a military, to fight for poorly explained causes in places no american has heard of is an increasingly lost cause. Hitting your target in it's soft underbelly is virtually painless, very effective and none of your own people suffer.
Yes, there's merit in what you say. Just like restaurants tend to cluster together (the best place to open a restaurant is next to another restaurant) so it is with en-masse IT. However, that doesn't argue for having that IT development in a high cost country, when there are hundreds of excellently trained IT staff in the very same city that hosts the hardware production, too. Hint: that isn't where I live - probably not where you live, either. Long ago all the manu's worked out it was 4x cheaper to make stuff overseas than here. Software's heading the same way for the same reasons.
There's no longer any need (well: almost no need) for a code-writer to be present in any particular geographical area, so long as where they are has reliable internet, stable government and degree level education. After that, it's simply a case of who is willing to do the job for the least amount of money.
The wonder is why there are still SO MANY programming jobs in costly, western countries - not that they pay so little.
Either there should be no lawyers among the 80,000 or they should ALL be. One group stands a chance of establishing a utopian society, the other would, at least, be doing all us earthlings a huge favour.
There's no guarantee that THIS calculator (if it can even be classed as a calculator) would be allowed into exams. Most exams are there to gauge a student's level of knowledge, judgement or analytical skills, not their data processing ability.
Oh bum. Wrong thread
There's the fun part: writing code, showing off your mental agility, creating stuff, adding the features you would want (and that are easy to do)
Then there's the work part: everything else: the testing, integration, support and documentation.
People love doing the creative bit - they'd probably even pay their employers to let them make software. However they hate every other aspect of producing a professional product. So whenever possible, the maximum amount of time will be spent writing code, adding features and the absolute minimum that they can get away with will be spent producing the least amount of testing, support material, bug fixes and "productising" - after all we (sorry: they) are software developers, not any of those other, lesser, jobs - and work should be FUN, not hard.
I'll type this slowly, so you can keep up. The statement "power 5 houses for 2 hours" makes little sense, since power consumption is not at a constant level throughout the day (or even in a week). Some hours use more power than other hours. Thus, overnight, when people are sleeping, that 10kW*Hr stack will be enough to keep many houses running for many more hours. However, at peak demand: morning, when everyone gets up or maybe evening, then a 10kW*Hr supply would NOT last as long, since more people in more households would be using more than the average amount of electricity.
As a consequence, the bald statement "5 houses for 2 hours" is meaningless, unless WHICH 2 hours is stipulated.
If you turn off heating and air conditioning you should be using a lot less than 10kW
No. Our house uses gas for heating and cooking, we live in a country that doesn't need a/c and the daily electricity consumption: lights, computers, washing, kettle, TVs, microwave, fridge comes to about 9kW*Hr per day.
The idea that a stack of 10kW*Hr batteries could power 5 houses for 2 hours is what happens when you apply statistics without any common sense. During the night, those batteries could power lots more houses (like ours) for much longer. However come waking up time, when every household uses an electric shower for each resident, kettles, toasters and lighting and I doubt you'd get 1 house for 20 minutes out of that many batteries - assuming they didn't fail under that load.
If they were evil: did some bad things, sabotaged the operations, stole money/data/reputation etc. then your security people should be able to detect the weaknesses ('cos if they were good, yet evil, they'd still be working; undetected). If not, then it sounds like you have a secondary problem as well. Consider yourself top have just been the target of an unscheduled audit - oh yes: you failed.
However the one thing you should do is to review your hiring procedures.
A lot of people think they perform better, or are more attractive, or that other people are more attractive (an affliction known as beer goggles) when under the influence of something. All that happens in fact is that their judgement is impaired. There's no reason to think that the application of other mood/mind altering substances: dope, caffeine etc. would improve a mental performance more than it would cloud their judgement. They may well think it improves their programming skills, but that's just another case of poor judgement.
I wouldn't say coding is hard. However, it does require a certain level of mental discipline and the ability to organise one's thoughts. The problem with older coders is that they tend to just get the job done. Quietly, without fuss or drama. (At least, I do) Whereas the young 'uns make a big deal about working late, pulling all-nighters ('cos they're on FB all day) and turning a project into a crisis. That means they get all the attention and the spotlight, which makes them look like superheros when they squeak in with a clean compile just milliseconds before the delivery deadline.
I wonder if the chinese will impose an export ban, preventing anyone "leaking" their technology to the USA?
... is s potential security (and national security{in terms of infrastructure}) issue
Although in reality the weakness is self-inflicted. If a government suspects that there are security holes and flaws in critical network security systems the stupidest, dumbest thing they could possibly do is to place critical national infrastructure on that network,
In that case, it's no use blaming some "foreign" company. The fault lies squarely at home with whoever made the decision to expose critical systems - and keeping them exposed. Once the security problems have been discovered, it is somewhere between criminal negligence and treason to permit them to remain in that state of vulnerability.
Of course we all know, through history and experience, that the most frequent threats are home-grown.
Surely if we really were more intelligent, we'd know the answer to the question "why are IQ scores improving?"
Write a story when all the Chromebook's features, functions and peripherals work with X and a desktop. THEN you've got a story. Right now they've got nothing of value.
They can't transmit though.
That's correct. Although since it's illegal to own a transmitter for frequencies you don't hold a licence to transmit on (and nobody holds a licence to transmit on "from 100 megaherz [sic] to 6 gigaherz") these proposed SDRs would have a big problem getting any sort of electrical conformance/approval certificate for sale in most countries.