I've had a couple of management consultants tell me that if you want to move into management, it's better to change jobs
By "management consultants" I presume we're talking about recruitment agencies. They have a vested interest in getting people to move jobs and will frequently say anything to make their case. Not only do they earn a huge commission from placing a person with a new company, they then have prior knowledge of a vacancy at the old company and will try to fill that one, too.
It certainly used to be common, that the route to promotion was to change company. However, these days with so few places hiring and the loss of (in the civilised world, at least) job security when taking a position with a new company, the advantages may not be as great as they were - though still better than having to wait for someone in your existing company to die, before you can move one step up the ladder.
Although why a techie would want to move into management is a question worth asking. Generally management jobs pay better, but they carry greater risk. At least when you're producing stuff, or even just solving problems, you have an inherent value to your employer - they can see and count what you do. As a manager, your value is not directly quantifiable and in most cases imaginary. That makes the position much harder to justify and much easier to cut when times are tough. Management jobs are also harder to get at the interview stage, since there will be many candidates applying: none of which will have any quantifiable skills that would justify their employment. That makes the selection process a lottery (which could work in your favour, if you're not very good).
So, it's a high-risk/medum reward strategy. The "consultants" advising you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by having you switch jobs. You could, possibly, go back to a technical job if the management career doesn't work out - although you'll probably find that the position you left will be filled by someone earning less than you did, so you'll probably take a drop in pay if you can scramble back in. It's not a career choice I'd make and most management positions are incredibly dull and unrewarding.
So, you're a head of division at a hospital? How the hell can you expect anyone else to work by the rules when you blatantly break them yourself? Seriously, I'd maybe expect a new employee, who is still waiting for a clue-transplant to try a stunt like that - once, until they get carpeted by someone in your position.
You don't appear to understand why a hospital needs everything to be done by the book. To get to a HoD position you must have been in the business a while, so I can only wonder what other rules you've broken during that time. But it sounds like you just don't understand the basic principles and really shouldn't be working in a place like that. The decent thing would be to leave, now. Before your acts get discovered and before your actions cause serious problems.
Most of these 20++MBit/sec are not intended for use by a single connection. In fact most circuits will have bottlenecks somewhere down the line that prevent you getting anywhere near your nominal data rate on a single connection. These deals are intended for multi-user (i.e. families) where the children are playing Wii, downloading "art", video chatting etc. and other people are watching a streamed movie and backing up their work - all at the same time. It's surprising how much bandwidth that all sucks up and if it's a nightly event then, yes: you can hit the monthly cap very quickly, when you have 5 people hacking at it for several nights a week.
Yes, I understand - however I'm proposing that "Y" would only be blocked in geographies where the "X" view predominated. All the "X"-ers could use Facebook "safe" in the knowledge that their values/feelings/religion/ethics/scruples/prejudices weren't being debased/criticised/titillated/subverted/mocked/parodied or abused while the rest of the world could carry on regardless, without those blocks in place.
The thing we must consider is that China is currently the single largest user base on the planet. India with its 1Bn+ people will soon be the second. Once these massive, single states get to organise their people on the internet it will be very easy for them to impose their attitudes on everybody - just by sheer force of numbers. So they would have the largest number of volunteer censors - possibly state sponsored - and everybody else would have to dance to the "dictatorship of the majority".
What I'm proposing is that FB and other global internet presences could segment contentious content so that the people who object to it - or at least the region they are in, will feel like they have "won" by having stuff banned and everybody else who doesn't have strong (or opposing) views would not be affected.
The system as described does not appear to cater for situations where a post/article is grossly offensive to an identifiable group or minority, but is meaningless to the majority. So if something is flagged that honks off a lot of people in Uzbekistan (for example) or america (for another example) should the "judges" not also come from that cultural group (the honkees?)? Without that filter, most people who knew nothing about the circumstances of the article would not be in a position to make a considered judgement - or they might even vote the complaint down for their own political reasons.
Although you can't expect people to identify themselves as being knowledgeable about every conflict, argument, religious view, political wrangling or moral panic you could choose individuals from the same timezone and hemisphere that the complaints originate from (and maybe only ban the offending piece in that geography - unless more complaints are received from outside).
Forget about "total energy budgets" and such things. When companies say they are replacing hardware to save energy costs, they are talking about their energy costs. The manufacturers are welcome to cut their own energy usage and pocket the savings, but businesses don't care about that.
Sine it costs roughly £1 per year for every Watt of a 24*7*365 machine (and more if you have cooling costs, too) the cost of powering a box can easily exceed the purchase cost - even without playing accountancy games such as using depreciation to reduce tax liability. So if an estate of PCs or servers can be replaced by newer, more efficient hardware, the simple financial case is easy to make. That you can then also claim to be saving the planet is a nice afterthought - but that's all it is.
What's even better is if you can cite your new, energy efficient, datacentre in a country with cheap energy and cheaper staff. It's got nothing to do with saving the planet, even if that sounds nice in the annual report.
A team is all about trust. Each member trusts the other members to do what they say they will, in order to meet their shared targets. (If your team members only have individual targets, that's not a team: it's merely a group of individuals who report to the same person. However, that's what most people mean by a team - do you?)
Now, trust comes in many forms but the most important one requires that you actually know the people involved. Contrary to popular websites marketing, you never really know someone until you've spent time in their presence and you can't do that via email, "friending" them or even across a video connection. You actually, really, do have to be in the same room as them: see how they talk naturally, know their interests, strengths, weaknesses, dislikes, aspirations and find some common ground.
So, bringing them to your country gets a little bit of the way. But you really need to get people out to them - so they're the home team, too. If your people aren't willing to do this, then they don't really have much in the way of commitment to a global team - they're probably either doing it simply to have a "follow the sun" support operation, or so they can pay the foreigners paltry rates. A truly global team is not a cost-saving measure or something to be done on the cheap. It requires money, time and effort to make it work. You do all have passports, don't you?
AFAIK the only Sci-Fi show still being made is Dr Who,
You can't really class Dr Who as SF (unless SF == spaceships) as it doesn't contain any science - sonic screwdrivers notwithstanding. The two genres it's closest to are horror and pantomime.
There is a series screening at present (at least in some parts of the world) called The Event. Since it's got aliens in it (at least I presume they're aliens - I only watched about 20 minutes) that would qualify.
You're so wrong. The whole point of a story is continuity: from the start of the story to the end - which you can't have if people keep dying. In fact killing off characters is a cheap literary device used to increase suspense. But it only works if it is a truly extraordinary an unexpected event, so should only used as a last resort. If the author hasn't got the imagination to think of any other ways to introduce suspense into the story - then it's an admission of failure in the craft of writing.
Obviously there are genres that delight in killing sprees and gore-fests. However they are specific styles of writing and are closer to pornography that literature, in the response they evoke in the reader.
Capitalism isn't the issue there. The issue is focusing on what you do best. For the russians, (and the europeans, to a lesser extent) their space industry can trace its lineage back to the first manned rockets in the early 60's. Sure, there have been refinements, upgrades and innovation since then - russian rocket engines being a good example. Whereas the american approach seems to be: develop a project for a specific goal, achieve that goal, throw away the technology, go on to start again for the next project.
That's great for the industry, but terrible for the users and really only tells you where the true power lies and who the benefits are for.
A line of sight weapon is only useful if you can see the enema. If they happen to be distant enough that the earth gets in the way, you've got nothing. Meanwhile, they can still fire shells at you which follow a nice, ballistic trajectory. Whether of not the laser weapon is accurate enough, powerful enough or lucky enough to hit a small, supersonic target will be an interesting experiment. I await the results with a non-zero (barely), positive interest.
Afterthought: presumably the torpedo manufacturers aren't too worried, either.
What would have happened if the Russians had invented TV? Nothing different. What would have happened if the French had been the first to the South Pole? Apart from the penguins speaking french, nothing.
Being first actually confers very little commercial advantage (just look at the first web browser - much good it did them, or the first personal computer). So far was geographical firsts goes: unless there's something there which can be exploited, even less benefit. The only reasons the americans went to the Moon was as a catch-up. Once it had been proved possible, there was no reason to go back (nothing to exploit).
The only possible difference might be that the money spent on the 1960s space programme could have financed another war somewhere - so I suppose there was a side-benefit to exploring space, after all.
So QM is hard. That doesn't really matter. Even though it is science (albeit on the borders) it is not something that the ordinary person observes every day and there needs to be explained to them. However the things they/we do see everyday can easily be explained by science - and the scientific explanation holds up to a level of rigour and rationality that "alternative" explanations do not.
For that reason alone, we can say that science is "true". We can even use school-level science to make predictions and then test those predictions with school-level equipment. That is another thing that faith based views of the world cannot do. It's only when scientists start talking in abstract terms, about things that a person cannot see, touch, hear or taste that things get a little more detached from reality. However, for the average person who's only knowledge of TV is that when you press the button on the remote control - the set comes on is concerned, that's good enough and more satisfactory than other explanations.
So for this to be effective, you have to aim fairly precisely at someone's eyeball. Presuming they aren't cooperating by standing stock-still with their eyes open and looking at you, the chances of managing a "hit" before they do whatever it is you would prefer they didn't must be quite small.
Although the article doesn't say: the assumption is that this would be a hand-held weapon, much like a taser or revolver, so the operator would need even more luck at hitting their intended target than with (say) a vehicle mounted or sandbagged device. Also, those configurations wouldn't have the flexibility to "control" multiple people in a fast developing situation.
If this ever gets into development, I think I'd invest in a pair of laser-protection goggles and a large mirror if i ever felt tempted to put myself in a location with somehting like this would be used against me.
I doubt that all the different influencers are cumulative. I have a sneaking suspicion that if people are indecisive (and receptive) enough to be influenced by a "worm" during a TV debate, that influence will only last up until the next influencer gets hold of them.
Unless one single party has the ability to pound away at the electorate, to the exclusion of all other parties and opinions then I doubt that anything except the final exhortation to "vote for me" that they see on the way to the polling station, will have any lasting effect. Elections are like athletics: it doesn't matter who's in the lead at any time, except right at the end.
Why would they? Simple, because the driver has consciously not used a device that could have avoided the accident/death. if that doesn't jack up the punitive damages I can't see what would. Just look through the history of injury claims (especially in rabidly litigious countries) and you'll see that claims for pure accidents (or what society is willing to call an accident/act of god) are much lower than claims awarded where there is negligence. Eschewing a safety device is the highest form of negligence, so people who do it will quickly become uninsurable.
As soon as it is proven that computers cause fewer accidents than people do, the rates for manual insurance will rocket. Just like it's now impossible for a teenage man (and when the non sex discrimination rules kick in, teenage women, too) to get any insured for less than several thousand £££'s, so it will be for drivers who wish to be in control, themselves. SO while the law may allow people to drive, it will soon be impractical for reasons of cost. Shortly after that it will become socially irresponsible and after that people will start to wonder why anyone would ever want to. It'll take a decade ot two, but sooner or later the only place people will be allowed to control cars themselves will be on private race-tracks next door to hospitals - provided you can afford the medical care.
You include a Black Box that records 360 degree video (maybe buffering the last 30 seconds). That way accidents can be replayed and there can be no doubt where, or with whom, blame lies. I think once it can be shown that in (almost) all cases the fault lies away from the computer then the feature will become accepted, just like seatbelts and airbags are now.
It seems pretty obvious that the cost of this system will see it installed in high-end vehicles first: lorries and vans (and possibly luxury cars) before it trickles down to the ordinary domestic car. Personally I'd be far happier knowing that the articulated behind me was being controlled by a machine than by a sleep--deprived driver, who may or may not speak the language and is probably more concerned with finding the motorway exit sign, than observing the stopping distance to my vehicle - which is only 2% of its weight.
What I think americans want the most is for things to continue exactly as they are at present. I.e. with enough energy being imported to keep them in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. Not having to worry about the piling up of debt that strategy brings, not having to worry that there are other countries who would also like a similar slice of the pie and not having to worry about the long term consequences.
Sadly several things are going to bite them in the ass (lucky it's such a large one), which will cause a huge change in that lifestyle. They can either start dealing with it now, in the hope that the gradual change won't be too traumatic or they can think of it like a diet: "We'll start tomorrow - pass the deep-fried lard." So far, all indications are that they are, for the most part, happy to continue singing to themselves, with their hands firmly over their ears so they can't hear all the warnings and protestations that are getting louder all the time.
The only outcome that appears feasible is that one day there won't be any more gas in the tank, or electricity in the socket. Only then will they start to consider what should have been started 50 years earlier - when the TVs are all blank and there's nothing to keep them diverted and entertained any longer.
Without new reactors, the old ones will be kept in service for longer. So instead of having new installations - complete with all the design improvements and safety features that have been invented in the past few decades, the old reactors from the 70s and 80s will have to be kept running for longer - well past their original design life.
The alternative is to switch them off, and go back to using oil and gas from foreign sources and coal fired stations. While people *think* nuclear is unsafe, coal mining is *proven* to be unsafe. Just consider the number of miners killed every year.
Somehow, public opinion has managed to come up with the worst possible solution, by not thinking through the consequences of the soundbite press and media and knee-jerk decisions it promotes.
Wold an engineer have let the finance industry get into the mess it is in now? I don't think so. Engineers are trained to think defensively - what could go wrong? what would happen if... ? They also are trained to understand numbers and (I suspect) have an innate talent for knowing when someone's trying to bullsh!t them.
All bankers care about is more money for me!. I would suspect that engineers, and most scientist have a much better altruistic background, sense of integrity and can see further than the end of their wallets.
For these reasons I suggest that the best thing we could do would be to inject some science and engineering skills and disciplines into the finance industry.
The big problem then is whether the bankers all start doing genetic or nuclear research and kill us all off with some of their famous screwups. Maybe it would be better to just get rid of them altogether.
First responders and others trained in giving assistance in emergency (medical) situations are often trained not to treat first the people who are crying out loudest for help - but to consider the quiet, comatose ones as being more seriously in aid of help. Maybe this system would be better used to prioritise the cool, calm, considered callers rather than the hyperactive, hysterical ones.
Slashdot Mirror
glue the plane together from A4 sized pieces of "paper"
Haven't you heard of Origami?
I've had a couple of management consultants tell me that if you want to move into management, it's better to change jobs
By "management consultants" I presume we're talking about recruitment agencies. They have a vested interest in getting people to move jobs and will frequently say anything to make their case. Not only do they earn a huge commission from placing a person with a new company, they then have prior knowledge of a vacancy at the old company and will try to fill that one, too.
It certainly used to be common, that the route to promotion was to change company. However, these days with so few places hiring and the loss of (in the civilised world, at least) job security when taking a position with a new company, the advantages may not be as great as they were - though still better than having to wait for someone in your existing company to die, before you can move one step up the ladder.
Although why a techie would want to move into management is a question worth asking. Generally management jobs pay better, but they carry greater risk. At least when you're producing stuff, or even just solving problems, you have an inherent value to your employer - they can see and count what you do. As a manager, your value is not directly quantifiable and in most cases imaginary. That makes the position much harder to justify and much easier to cut when times are tough. Management jobs are also harder to get at the interview stage, since there will be many candidates applying: none of which will have any quantifiable skills that would justify their employment. That makes the selection process a lottery (which could work in your favour, if you're not very good).
So, it's a high-risk/medum reward strategy. The "consultants" advising you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by having you switch jobs. You could, possibly, go back to a technical job if the management career doesn't work out - although you'll probably find that the position you left will be filled by someone earning less than you did, so you'll probably take a drop in pay if you can scramble back in. It's not a career choice I'd make and most management positions are incredibly dull and unrewarding.
You don't appear to understand why a hospital needs everything to be done by the book. To get to a HoD position you must have been in the business a while, so I can only wonder what other rules you've broken during that time. But it sounds like you just don't understand the basic principles and really shouldn't be working in a place like that. The decent thing would be to leave, now. Before your acts get discovered and before your actions cause serious problems.
Most of these 20++MBit/sec are not intended for use by a single connection. In fact most circuits will have bottlenecks somewhere down the line that prevent you getting anywhere near your nominal data rate on a single connection. These deals are intended for multi-user (i.e. families) where the children are playing Wii, downloading "art", video chatting etc. and other people are watching a streamed movie and backing up their work - all at the same time. It's surprising how much bandwidth that all sucks up and if it's a nightly event then, yes: you can hit the monthly cap very quickly, when you have 5 people hacking at it for several nights a week.
The thing we must consider is that China is currently the single largest user base on the planet. India with its 1Bn+ people will soon be the second. Once these massive, single states get to organise their people on the internet it will be very easy for them to impose their attitudes on everybody - just by sheer force of numbers. So they would have the largest number of volunteer censors - possibly state sponsored - and everybody else would have to dance to the "dictatorship of the majority".
What I'm proposing is that FB and other global internet presences could segment contentious content so that the people who object to it - or at least the region they are in, will feel like they have "won" by having stuff banned and everybody else who doesn't have strong (or opposing) views would not be affected.
Although you can't expect people to identify themselves as being knowledgeable about every conflict, argument, religious view, political wrangling or moral panic you could choose individuals from the same timezone and hemisphere that the complaints originate from (and maybe only ban the offending piece in that geography - unless more complaints are received from outside).
Sine it costs roughly £1 per year for every Watt of a 24*7*365 machine (and more if you have cooling costs, too) the cost of powering a box can easily exceed the purchase cost - even without playing accountancy games such as using depreciation to reduce tax liability. So if an estate of PCs or servers can be replaced by newer, more efficient hardware, the simple financial case is easy to make. That you can then also claim to be saving the planet is a nice afterthought - but that's all it is.
What's even better is if you can cite your new, energy efficient, datacentre in a country with cheap energy and cheaper staff. It's got nothing to do with saving the planet, even if that sounds nice in the annual report.
Now, trust comes in many forms but the most important one requires that you actually know the people involved. Contrary to popular websites marketing, you never really know someone until you've spent time in their presence and you can't do that via email, "friending" them or even across a video connection. You actually, really, do have to be in the same room as them: see how they talk naturally, know their interests, strengths, weaknesses, dislikes, aspirations and find some common ground.
So, bringing them to your country gets a little bit of the way. But you really need to get people out to them - so they're the home team, too. If your people aren't willing to do this, then they don't really have much in the way of commitment to a global team - they're probably either doing it simply to have a "follow the sun" support operation, or so they can pay the foreigners paltry rates. A truly global team is not a cost-saving measure or something to be done on the cheap. It requires money, time and effort to make it work. You do all have passports, don't you?
AFAIK the only Sci-Fi show still being made is Dr Who,
You can't really class Dr Who as SF (unless SF == spaceships) as it doesn't contain any science - sonic screwdrivers notwithstanding. The two genres it's closest to are horror and pantomime.
There is a series screening at present (at least in some parts of the world) called The Event. Since it's got aliens in it (at least I presume they're aliens - I only watched about 20 minutes) that would qualify.
Obviously there are genres that delight in killing sprees and gore-fests. However they are specific styles of writing and are closer to pornography that literature, in the response they evoke in the reader.
It depends how far away your eye is from it. The claim stands.
Bab Shaw's book Light of Other Days makes a very good case for why something like this should NEVER be developed.
We could learn a thing or two about capitalism
Capitalism isn't the issue there. The issue is focusing on what you do best. For the russians, (and the europeans, to a lesser extent) their space industry can trace its lineage back to the first manned rockets in the early 60's. Sure, there have been refinements, upgrades and innovation since then - russian rocket engines being a good example. Whereas the american approach seems to be: develop a project for a specific goal, achieve that goal, throw away the technology, go on to start again for the next project.
That's great for the industry, but terrible for the users and really only tells you where the true power lies and who the benefits are for.
Afterthought: presumably the torpedo manufacturers aren't too worried, either.
Being first actually confers very little commercial advantage (just look at the first web browser - much good it did them, or the first personal computer). So far was geographical firsts goes: unless there's something there which can be exploited, even less benefit. The only reasons the americans went to the Moon was as a catch-up. Once it had been proved possible, there was no reason to go back (nothing to exploit).
The only possible difference might be that the money spent on the 1960s space programme could have financed another war somewhere - so I suppose there was a side-benefit to exploring space, after all.
For that reason alone, we can say that science is "true". We can even use school-level science to make predictions and then test those predictions with school-level equipment. That is another thing that faith based views of the world cannot do. It's only when scientists start talking in abstract terms, about things that a person cannot see, touch, hear or taste that things get a little more detached from reality. However, for the average person who's only knowledge of TV is that when you press the button on the remote control - the set comes on is concerned, that's good enough and more satisfactory than other explanations.
The adjustable beam is typically one degree wide
So for this to be effective, you have to aim fairly precisely at someone's eyeball. Presuming they aren't cooperating by standing stock-still with their eyes open and looking at you, the chances of managing a "hit" before they do whatever it is you would prefer they didn't must be quite small.
Although the article doesn't say: the assumption is that this would be a hand-held weapon, much like a taser or revolver, so the operator would need even more luck at hitting their intended target than with (say) a vehicle mounted or sandbagged device. Also, those configurations wouldn't have the flexibility to "control" multiple people in a fast developing situation.
If this ever gets into development, I think I'd invest in a pair of laser-protection goggles and a large mirror if i ever felt tempted to put myself in a location with somehting like this would be used against me.
Unless one single party has the ability to pound away at the electorate, to the exclusion of all other parties and opinions then I doubt that anything except the final exhortation to "vote for me" that they see on the way to the polling station, will have any lasting effect. Elections are like athletics: it doesn't matter who's in the lead at any time, except right at the end.
Why would they? Simple, because the driver has consciously not used a device that could have avoided the accident/death. if that doesn't jack up the punitive damages I can't see what would. Just look through the history of injury claims (especially in rabidly litigious countries) and you'll see that claims for pure accidents (or what society is willing to call an accident/act of god) are much lower than claims awarded where there is negligence. Eschewing a safety device is the highest form of negligence, so people who do it will quickly become uninsurable.
As soon as it is proven that computers cause fewer accidents than people do, the rates for manual insurance will rocket. Just like it's now impossible for a teenage man (and when the non sex discrimination rules kick in, teenage women, too) to get any insured for less than several thousand £££'s, so it will be for drivers who wish to be in control, themselves. SO while the law may allow people to drive, it will soon be impractical for reasons of cost. Shortly after that it will become socially irresponsible and after that people will start to wonder why anyone would ever want to. It'll take a decade ot two, but sooner or later the only place people will be allowed to control cars themselves will be on private race-tracks next door to hospitals - provided you can afford the medical care.
It seems pretty obvious that the cost of this system will see it installed in high-end vehicles first: lorries and vans (and possibly luxury cars) before it trickles down to the ordinary domestic car. Personally I'd be far happier knowing that the articulated behind me was being controlled by a machine than by a sleep--deprived driver, who may or may not speak the language and is probably more concerned with finding the motorway exit sign, than observing the stopping distance to my vehicle - which is only 2% of its weight.
We claim we want energy independence
What I think americans want the most is for things to continue exactly as they are at present. I.e. with enough energy being imported to keep them in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. Not having to worry about the piling up of debt that strategy brings, not having to worry that there are other countries who would also like a similar slice of the pie and not having to worry about the long term consequences.
Sadly several things are going to bite them in the ass (lucky it's such a large one), which will cause a huge change in that lifestyle. They can either start dealing with it now, in the hope that the gradual change won't be too traumatic or they can think of it like a diet: "We'll start tomorrow - pass the deep-fried lard." So far, all indications are that they are, for the most part, happy to continue singing to themselves, with their hands firmly over their ears so they can't hear all the warnings and protestations that are getting louder all the time.
The only outcome that appears feasible is that one day there won't be any more gas in the tank, or electricity in the socket. Only then will they start to consider what should have been started 50 years earlier - when the TVs are all blank and there's nothing to keep them diverted and entertained any longer.
The alternative is to switch them off, and go back to using oil and gas from foreign sources and coal fired stations. While people *think* nuclear is unsafe, coal mining is *proven* to be unsafe. Just consider the number of miners killed every year.
Somehow, public opinion has managed to come up with the worst possible solution, by not thinking through the consequences of the soundbite press and media and knee-jerk decisions it promotes.
All bankers care about is more money for me!. I would suspect that engineers, and most scientist have a much better altruistic background, sense of integrity and can see further than the end of their wallets.
For these reasons I suggest that the best thing we could do would be to inject some science and engineering skills and disciplines into the finance industry.
The big problem then is whether the bankers all start doing genetic or nuclear research and kill us all off with some of their famous screwups. Maybe it would be better to just get rid of them altogether.
First responders and others trained in giving assistance in emergency (medical) situations are often trained not to treat first the people who are crying out loudest for help - but to consider the quiet, comatose ones as being more seriously in aid of help. Maybe this system would be better used to prioritise the cool, calm, considered callers rather than the hyperactive, hysterical ones.