He Really gave to The charity, had the common touch,
And they were Thankful for his patronage.. So They thank You very much,
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
"Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head."
But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
I curse my poverty
I wish that I could be,
I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Richard Cory.
You hate those systems, yet they are still in place, confirming my point.
You were not the buyer of the system. The demand is there (by the buyer). Unfortunately, the technology isn't there for that to be a very good user experience YET. So the USERs don't *all* like them.
(I happen to like these voice recognition systems, and nearly always use voice, as I find working through a button-driven menu very cumbersome on a cell phone. I'm sure neither of us is alone in our preference.)
Actually, the reason we're not there yet is because most people don't want it.
I think you're wrong in this point. The reason we are not there yet is not because of demand. It's because the technology isn't quite good enough yet. It's getting very close, relative to five years ago.
Your argument is comparable to someone in the early 80's saying "The reason computers don't come with mice is because most people don't want it." While it's true that most people didn't want mice for DOS machines, the reason computers didn't come with mice was more a function of the software and the power of the machine. Computers weren't quite powerful enough to handle a GUI, and so powerful software to improve productivity didn't exist, so of course people didn't want it.
Think of how many times you call a company these days, and your call is routed (or possibly handled entirely) by voice recognition software. It is DEFINITELY in demand. People want it. It's just not down to the PC yet.
I have worked in offices among cubes of people who are all on the phone. I imagine it will be a lot like that - productivity will be SO much greater when conversing with your computer, that only the dinosaurs will stick with only mice and keyboards. Same group that is still using no mouse, I suppose.
When PCs and voice recognition provide a truly powerful tool, that's when people will "want it". But the problem is the hardware and software capability right now. Not demand.
The Sun will rise tomorrow (whether over clouds or otherwise).
This is fact.
My assumptions are that you are referring to the appearance of the sun over the horizon as the sun "rising", discounting the obvious (that it's really the motion of the Earth causing this phenomena.)
Tomorrow is defined by the rising of the sun. So the next time the sun rises, it's tomorrow. Now, you could argue that there is "some future day" where the sun will stop rising. But that won't be a new day. That will be part of today.
You could also argue that a "tomorrow" could occur starting at midnight, and then the sun burns out before dawn. However, at the stroke of midnight, the sun is rising somewhere on earth, so this case is handled as well.
The logical analysis of this is: Is the statement "If [tomorrow] then [Sun will rise]" True?. And the truth table specifies that if [tomorrow] is false (i.e. it's today), then whether the sun rises or not, the statement is true.
I've always found that the most effective method of learning code is to inject a random line of code somewhere, and see what breaks. Two techniques: 1) print some official-looking error message, and 2) add a large value (a million or greater) to a number somewhere. Keep a nice chart of what you added, where:
Error 'Format Conversion Error, converting from Y2K to Z2L' added to module x1
Error 'Out of Memory Banks' added to module x2
Error 'Object Expected; found adjective instead' added to module x3
Error 'bitbucket 95% full; please empty' added to module x4
Added 1,000,042 to some random value in module x5
Added 5,555,555 to some random value in module x6
Not only will you learn about the code, you'll make a great impression on your boss, when, within minutes, you are able to resolve some mysterious problem that has never happened before.
Whoa. Let me tell you, it's A LOT more fun making the $20 Million and having your legs to show for it. It takes a little longer than surgery, but well worth the wait.
As my mom would say: If you do something stupid and lose your legs, don't come runnin' to me!
Also because it is so light, it is not retained in the earth's atmosphere at all, and leaks into space (at which point it is irretrievable).
I'm no physicist, but this doesn't seem to be as big of a deal as you make it sound. It seems to me that the only helium atoms that can escape gravitation would be those that are propelled rapidly away from the earth. Most atoms of helium that are released at ground level would bounce upwards, rising toward the top levels of the atmosphere and stick around up there. Random collisions on their way up would probably keep the vast majority of them from being propelled out of earth's gravitational pull.
If we are leaving behind a trail of helium into space, we are probably leaving a trail of other elements as well. And I doubt that there's anything that we are doing at earth's ground level to change that.
but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know jack....
Hey, it takes some guts to go out on a limb. ESPECIALLY in a field where your work can be "proven wrong".
I have a lot of respect for the guy for trying, and for getting SOME of it right. That's more than 99% of the slashdot readers! Where would we be if it weren't for the brave few who publish their works for peer review?
I live in a suburban area, and work in a high tech field, and know very few people who revealed their political feelings in the last 2 presidential elections that did NOT vote for Bush. I'd say I probably know 50 people who revealed their political leanings, and 48 were for Bush.
Go back to Excite and the search engines before: you have a box, and you get a list of 10 results, with a little bit of information accompanying each result. We've just stuck with that.
TR: What has changed?
PN: The scale. There's probably a thousand times more information.
1000x? That's got to be the understatement of the year! If not the understatement of the second.
Behind every sentence is an idea (or several). And an idea can be parsed and stored unambiguously. (Allow me to remove the ambiguity in the previous sentence... there can be a machine readable representation of every idea, in which the representation is unambiguous. Even ambiguous ideas can have an unambiguous representation.)
Check out the language Lojban for just one way to do this.
Please give me some examples of how you would re-do CSS to be "Object Oriented".
OK, here's a shot at it:
class Comment < CommentBox @position =:relative @margin = {.5.em, 0, 1.25.em, 0} @padding = 0 @background = {#696969, url."//images.slashdot.org/commentbox-bg.png",:repeat-x,:left:top} end
class HighlightedComment < Comment @color = #FF0000 end
Hey it's Ruby! gee, that wasn't too hard.
My example is intended to show inheritance and object attributes (which is pretty much all CSS is). You don't have to worry so much about methods (although methods in CSS might facilitate some DHTML, at the risk of messing with the separation of view and logic). The current syntax of CSS is an abomination in my humble opinion. The designers threw out everything that was learned in the last 20 years about good programming language syntax, and left us with a mess.
When I look at CSS specs, I just laugh. In the 90's, Object Orientation was a known technology; how did we end up with such a horrible syntax in CSS? Seems like a simple object orientation with inheritance would have been appropriate, and so effective.
my wife is five years younger than me... I must be a child molester.
hey, yer on slashdot AND you have a woman. You're not a child molester, you're a paradox.
The rule of thumb I always heard was "half your age, plus seven". So a 16 year old is ok if you're 18 or less. At 28, you could have gone down to age 21 without a problem. So dating that 23 year old was not a problem. At 50, you should stick to 32 or above. And an 80 year old shouldn't look below 47. Holds up pretty well.
Four programmers in succession took that job, with bids from $200 to $500 and locations from Ireland to Russia, and none of them produced any working code.
I don't know much about that site, but I assume that you didn't have to pay, then. So truly you got what you paid for (pay zero, get zero). What a hassle though. Did it cost you anything (besides your time)? Listing fees, maybe? Just curious.
I do think there are talented, low cost people out there. Especially in (don't shoot me) India and Russia.
Plus, you might land some rising star. Not that I was necessarily a rising star, but I was so interested in getting job experience that I accepted my first technical "job" and worked TWO entire summers for, no lie, bus fare. Eight+ hours of work, for the cost of my commute (which, at the time, was well under a buck. So an hourly rate of less than a dime.) The way we got by child labor and minimum wage laws was to call it training and volunteer work. Taken advantage of? No way. It was a blast, and gave me unbelievable experience.
And I was ruthless on cranking out projects and not letting a tough problem slow me down. My third summer (different company), I got paid more than twice the hourly rate of any of my friends (working for a software company paid better than flippin' burgers) because I had that experience, and the software company billed me out for about 5 times what they paid me (which was still a VERY competitive rate, and I got numerous requests for follow-up work, so I know I had satisfied customers). Once again, I was paid well, got valuable experience, and the client got cheap rates.
...of course, this was the 70's... But I'm sure there are similar people to be found out there.
And.. believe it or not, I got a call in 1999 from one of those clients who tracked me down on the internet, asking me if my 1970's code was Y2K compliant. OK.. So I produced code for $6/hour that was IN PRODUCTION for 20+ years. "Yeah, I'd be happy to verify Y2K compliance to satisfy your auditor, but my rates have gone up a bit since then...." - That phone call made my day!
Yes, some places like Slashdot have managed to build a public gathering spot and sell some ads around it, but it's quite another to get this crowd to do real, coordinated work.
Ah, the irony. Think about it. Slashdot has people creating content for free (specifically the comments in the forum) that are of high value (as a whole; maybe not this specific comment!). It would be impossible, or prohibitively expensive to pay a team of experts to create the content of this forum.
One of the "Tricks" to the Crowdsourcing phenomenon is to provide a way for users to create value without feeling like they are working. Slashdot has done that to the extent that you have created content (your posting) questioning whether anyone has done this. Tom Sawyer indeed.
Check out the Carnegie Mellon projects, The ESP Game,Peekaboom, and Phetch for more examples where users are providing valuable services FOR FREE while playing a game. Similar to how you and I are creating value for free in this forum with our witty banter. It feels rewarding to post a comment. And it creates a valuable end product for Slashdot.
One "crowdsourced" concept that I find to be totally unethical is the archival of student papers. Force students to submit papers to your service, in the name of plagiarism-checking, and then hold them FOREVER, and build a database of content so that you can use other people's Intellectual Property. The McLean trial starts around January 23rd. Hopefully Slashdot will be covering it.
view a series of inkblots and write down the first and last letters of whatever word they associate with each inkblot. Then they combine the letters to form a password.
If you approach IRC with the attitude that anything you say is public, no problem. You can keep your anonymity, right? Just watch what you say.
The problem is, you can't prevent OTHERS from giving up your anonymity. I had someone mention in a public channel just enough to identify me back in 1996, and that was the day I changed my IRC behavior.
I was just floored to think that all my previous comments in public channels could now be attributed to me, my real life persona. Not that I lied and said a lot that I wouldn't have said in real life, but I just typed with a feeling of anonymity. All of the sudden, I shuttered to think of anything I might have said, thinking it was anonymous.
After that, I changed nicknames every 30 days, and severely limited the personal information that I provided to others.
You can control what YOU say. You can't control what others say.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't attempt your technique.
You lose.
You were not the buyer of the system. The demand is there (by the buyer). Unfortunately, the technology isn't there for that to be a very good user experience YET. So the USERs don't *all* like them.
(I happen to like these voice recognition systems, and nearly always use voice, as I find working through a button-driven menu very cumbersome on a cell phone. I'm sure neither of us is alone in our preference.)
you took a simple joke and imagined yourself wiser.
Your argument is comparable to someone in the early 80's saying "The reason computers don't come with mice is because most people don't want it." While it's true that most people didn't want mice for DOS machines, the reason computers didn't come with mice was more a function of the software and the power of the machine. Computers weren't quite powerful enough to handle a GUI, and so powerful software to improve productivity didn't exist, so of course people didn't want it.
Think of how many times you call a company these days, and your call is routed (or possibly handled entirely) by voice recognition software. It is DEFINITELY in demand. People want it. It's just not down to the PC yet.
I have worked in offices among cubes of people who are all on the phone. I imagine it will be a lot like that - productivity will be SO much greater when conversing with your computer, that only the dinosaurs will stick with only mice and keyboards. Same group that is still using no mouse, I suppose.
When PCs and voice recognition provide a truly powerful tool, that's when people will "want it". But the problem is the hardware and software capability right now. Not demand.
My assumptions are that you are referring to the appearance of the sun over the horizon as the sun "rising", discounting the obvious (that it's really the motion of the Earth causing this phenomena.)
Tomorrow is defined by the rising of the sun. So the next time the sun rises, it's tomorrow. Now, you could argue that there is "some future day" where the sun will stop rising. But that won't be a new day. That will be part of today.
You could also argue that a "tomorrow" could occur starting at midnight, and then the sun burns out before dawn. However, at the stroke of midnight, the sun is rising somewhere on earth, so this case is handled as well.
The logical analysis of this is: Is the statement "If [tomorrow] then [Sun will rise]" True?. And the truth table specifies that if [tomorrow] is false (i.e. it's today), then whether the sun rises or not, the statement is true.
And if I am proven wrong, then we're all dead.
Error 'Format Conversion Error, converting from Y2K to Z2L' added to module x1
Error 'Out of Memory Banks' added to module x2
Error 'Object Expected; found adjective instead' added to module x3
Error 'bitbucket 95% full; please empty' added to module x4
Added 1,000,042 to some random value in module x5
Added 5,555,555 to some random value in module x6
Not only will you learn about the code, you'll make a great impression on your boss, when, within minutes, you are able to resolve some mysterious problem that has never happened before.
I'm glad those pesky kids are impatient. They'll get off my lawn a little quicker.
As my mom would say: If you do something stupid and lose your legs, don't come runnin' to me!
If we are leaving behind a trail of helium into space, we are probably leaving a trail of other elements as well. And I doubt that there's anything that we are doing at earth's ground level to change that.
but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know jack....
I have a lot of respect for the guy for trying, and for getting SOME of it right. That's more than 99% of the slashdot readers! Where would we be if it weren't for the brave few who publish their works for peer review?
I live in a suburban area, and work in a high tech field, and know very few people who revealed their political feelings in the last 2 presidential elections that did NOT vote for Bush. I'd say I probably know 50 people who revealed their political leanings, and 48 were for Bush.
None are farmers.
Check out the language Lojban for just one way to do this.
My example is intended to show inheritance and object attributes (which is pretty much all CSS is). You don't have to worry so much about methods (although methods in CSS might facilitate some DHTML, at the risk of messing with the separation of view and logic). The current syntax of CSS is an abomination in my humble opinion. The designers threw out everything that was learned in the last 20 years about good programming language syntax, and left us with a mess.
When I look at CSS specs, I just laugh. In the 90's, Object Orientation was a known technology; how did we end up with such a horrible syntax in CSS? Seems like a simple object orientation with inheritance would have been appropriate, and so effective.
The rule of thumb I always heard was "half your age, plus seven". So a 16 year old is ok if you're 18 or less. At 28, you could have gone down to age 21 without a problem. So dating that 23 year old was not a problem. At 50, you should stick to 32 or above. And an 80 year old shouldn't look below 47. Holds up pretty well.
I do think there are talented, low cost people out there. Especially in (don't shoot me) India and Russia.
Plus, you might land some rising star. Not that I was necessarily a rising star, but I was so interested in getting job experience that I accepted my first technical "job" and worked TWO entire summers for, no lie, bus fare. Eight+ hours of work, for the cost of my commute (which, at the time, was well under a buck. So an hourly rate of less than a dime.) The way we got by child labor and minimum wage laws was to call it training and volunteer work. Taken advantage of? No way. It was a blast, and gave me unbelievable experience.
And I was ruthless on cranking out projects and not letting a tough problem slow me down. My third summer (different company), I got paid more than twice the hourly rate of any of my friends (working for a software company paid better than flippin' burgers) because I had that experience, and the software company billed me out for about 5 times what they paid me (which was still a VERY competitive rate, and I got numerous requests for follow-up work, so I know I had satisfied customers). Once again, I was paid well, got valuable experience, and the client got cheap rates.
And.. believe it or not, I got a call in 1999 from one of those clients who tracked me down on the internet, asking me if my 1970's code was Y2K compliant. OK.. So I produced code for $6/hour that was IN PRODUCTION for 20+ years. "Yeah, I'd be happy to verify Y2K compliance to satisfy your auditor, but my rates have gone up a bit since then...." - That phone call made my day!
One of the "Tricks" to the Crowdsourcing phenomenon is to provide a way for users to create value without feeling like they are working. Slashdot has done that to the extent that you have created content (your posting) questioning whether anyone has done this. Tom Sawyer indeed.
Check out the Carnegie Mellon projects, The ESP Game, Peekaboom, and Phetch for more examples where users are providing valuable services FOR FREE while playing a game. Similar to how you and I are creating value for free in this forum with our witty banter. It feels rewarding to post a comment. And it creates a valuable end product for Slashdot.
One "crowdsourced" concept that I find to be totally unethical is the archival of student papers. Force students to submit papers to your service, in the name of plagiarism-checking, and then hold them FOREVER, and build a database of content so that you can use other people's Intellectual Property. The McLean trial starts around January 23rd. Hopefully Slashdot will be covering it.
Wait, here's one.
never mind.
The problem is, you can't prevent OTHERS from giving up your anonymity. I had someone mention in a public channel just enough to identify me back in 1996, and that was the day I changed my IRC behavior.
I was just floored to think that all my previous comments in public channels could now be attributed to me, my real life persona. Not that I lied and said a lot that I wouldn't have said in real life, but I just typed with a feeling of anonymity. All of the sudden, I shuttered to think of anything I might have said, thinking it was anonymous.
After that, I changed nicknames every 30 days, and severely limited the personal information that I provided to others.
You can control what YOU say. You can't control what others say.