Re:Someone actually listens to NPR?
on
Penny Arcade On NPR
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The bias is subtle and I imagine unintentional. It is simple things like "the Republican senator from Alaska Ted Stevens has been found guilty...." vs. "The Illinois governor has been charged with....." The most obvious case was when Bush was first elected and he and Clinton were at the same function. "President Clinton and Mr. Bush were at....." It also shows up in story selection. Every Palin slip was replayed gleefully over and over. Biden slips were somehow never mentioned. I didn't vote for either but it was pretty clear who they liked and didn't like.
I should mention that I listen to NPR daily and thoroughly enjoy them. I just take everything they say and run it through my bias filter. I do find it irritating when someone claims they are unbiased. In a way Rush and Hanity are more honest. They never claim to be unbiased. I find it best to get your news from a variety of sources.
That is one of the best team building exercises I have ever been on. It just happened once when I was a middle manager. "Hey, lets go to the bar after work." You can't force it or it is just more work. Have some fun, be yourself, and get loaded enough that you say some things you normally wouldn't(this does not mean making a pass at the decent looking girl on the team). Someone else mentioned taking arrows from both sides. Really the job is about explaining to both sides why they are firing arrows. Get to know your team. Know who is married, how many kids they have and what they are doing outside of work for fun. Even better know what is stressing them outside of work. If they know you care about them as people and show appreciation when they do a good job they will run through walls for you. Realize most people are sheep and would rather have decisions made for them and be willing to do so. Do not confuse this with being stupid. Figure out who are the influencers are. They are the ones leading the crowd. Talk with them, get to be close enough that you can talk them and get them on your team and the rest will follow.
I live in a special corner of the armpit of America known as the Detroit Metro area. Why is it special you may ask? WOW, Comcast, and AT&T offer cable, internet, and VoIP in my neighborhood. I was talking to one of the Comcast sales guys. He said my neighborhood gets 'special' deals because the market is so tough. I was even able to renegotiate our current rate with WOW and had them throw in two extra outlets. 6Mbit connection, VoIP, Digital Cable, extra cable box - $85. I know that just a few miles away Comcast is charging $120 for the same thing. Why you may ask? WOW doesn't reach that far.
hmmmmm........ I was showing my dad the game Homeworld years ago. He had gotten started with CAD on DEC machines the size of file cabinets. He was floored at the games ability to swing the camera around an object on 3 axis and even to change what was the focus of camera to different ships. "This is more advanced then most CAD software I have seen." All for the outrageous price of $40.
I used to support MCI mail. Yes, that one time alternative to regular email. Lawyers loved it since each email was charged. It drastically cut down on spam, hackers and other things that plague email today. By 2001 it was security through obscurity. Yes, that is a terrible security plan but it has worked well for Apple.
Try going down to your local Best Buy and give their towers a serious look. 90% of them have integrated craptastic integrated video. This includes the high end models. I feel bad for someone that doesn't know what they are looking for when they just look at the price tag and think, "This is one of the most expensive machines. My kids should be able to play all their games." They get home and wonder why the hell this expensive machine can't play 3D games.
If you look around you finally find a couple of mid-priced machines with a real video card. They aren't even labeled as "Gaming Machines". When I helped my father-in-law buy his, I mentioned to a sales guy that the mid-priced machine we bought was probably the best machine on the floor. He shook his head and agreed. "They don't want to listen to us."
The slimy factor
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Here is an example from my dad. He was an engineer at a manufacturing plant in the 70's that decided they needed to go to CAD. He was given the project. He started working with DEC and they quoted XXX,XXX.00 as the price for a great system. He took that back to his bosses and they agreed. He goes back to DEC and the salesman starts mentioning things like, "Would you like an OS with that? It will cost XX,XXX.00 more." and "Would you like the special power cord? It will cost an extra XXX.00" They kept this up until the price was now one and a half times the original quote. Dad was getting embarrassed at going back to his bosses over and over asking for more money and finally got mad and started threatening to kill the deal. At this point the salesman mentions that it includes a Rainbow computer (their version of a PC and rather pricey at that) that wouldn't show up on the invoice and could be shipped to any address. That was about the point were Dad exploded.
Crazy thing is he loved DEC computers and still does. He wistfully talks about their ability to multi-task and better file system.
Years later I was caught in an ethical bind and asked him what to do. "You can do the easy thing or you can do the right thing. Doing the right thing might be bad for you in the short term, but you will be able to look back later and feel good about yourself instead of feeling slimy every time your reminded about it."
I took a business ethics class taught by a retired corporate head of human resources. He gave a good explanation of why this is taught in some business schools. "If you think about this now when you have no pressure on you, you stand a much better chance of making the best decision when under pressure and you have to make a snap decision. Don't kid yourself and think these things won't happen to you. They will, and most of the time you will have no time to do any soul searching."
"1. Who gives a fuck about Facebook's DNS problems? Vista is doing the right thing, here, by doing exactly as the DNS server instructs, with a preference toward IPV6 addresses. Any other behavior (including a preference toward IPV4) would be decried as horrifically broken and against progress."
I worked at a software company that had an email server as part of their package. Exchange 5.5 was extremely forgiving of SMTP RFC violations. Our software that sat in front of Exchange was very tight about SMTP. We fielded hundreds of calls about "I used to get this email until we started using your product." It would always turn out that the missing email was in violation of the RFC's. Do you think they wanted to hear that? No, all they cared about was that it worked with Exchange and it didn't work anymore. Exchange 5.5 went on to dominate the market. The software company went belly up.
You can sit on your lofty ivory tower and bitch all you want about it being right, the rest of the world would like to get things done.
I have seen several instances where someone that did a little digging on the back end could easily make the system do what ever they wanted. They become more valuable because they can fix the system when it hiccups. "Customer Joe has a weird charge on it. The system won't let us fix it. What are we going to do?" The guy that knows the backend then goes in and changes it right on the database and is a hero. But if he can fix things then he can also break things and cover it up. It goes back to managements desire to wear blinders. They want to put super locks on the physical doors but give the keys to kingdom on the system to anyone that is willing to help.
I hate fonts that allow O and 0, and 1 and l to look so similar. This has only been a major headache in the computing world for a few decades, no need to change now. I don't care if they are experts, it is stupid and short sighted to continue this mistake.
Before you say anything, I do use a font that sensibly corrects this error.
On my first day in Jr High Chem we had a lab were we made droppers out of glass tubing, a little rubber piece and a bunson burner. Almost everyone got a cut or burn of some kind. But it was an invaluble lesson, "Don't screw around in this class, you will get hurt."
You don't learn to respect matches until you burn your fingers.
(twitch twitch) ACT!2005, bane of my existence. We have gotten to the point of telling users they should just shut down the program every hour or so and perhaps think about doing a reboot while they are at it. One user asked me to look at her computer because it was running so slow. Out of 2gig of memory on her system, ACT! was using 1.5gig. I hate that program. Piece of .... (twitches and mumbles more)
Many of the things that really make lasting changes are things developed for people that are disabled. The classic case is the one handle faucet. It was developed to make it easier for disabled people to turn the water on and adjust the temp. Now they dominate the market.
The breakthrough I noticed recently was robotic arms controlled by monkeys using a direct brain interface. I believe they were monitoring blood flow in the brain as they used controls to manipulate the arms. Eventually they used the monitor to control the arms as the monkeys manipulated the controls. The monkeys figured out that they didn't have to use the controls to move the arms. They were using their thoughts to control the robotic arms.
They think it could lead to much better artificial limbs. I think it will lead to a computer interface without keyboard or mouse.
"What crap. Do you think Orwell had to deal with the crime rate of today's age. NO."
You have got to be kidding me. Next you will be saying, "Only those breaking laws need to fear this kind of thing."
Let me guess. Your one of those that feels society needs to be gently guided to take the proper path? That the sheeple are not bright enough to come in out of the rain without someone telling them to get inside? "If people only really knew then they would do the right thing. Since they don't we will just help them along." Pretty soon "You should really inform us of your neighbors improper comments. They might need to be re-educated." sounds not so sinister.
"Does anyone do this? Has it worked out where you can do a proof of concept that otherwise, without virtualization, you would be confined to whiteboard concepts that no one would listen to?"
This is the best thing about it. I often hear "That might break something." about things like service packs that have been out for a year. Since we lacked a real test bed, often it was easier to not bother worrying. Now , I can throw it up on a virtual environment and say "See, now can we please get kind of up to date?"
Finally someone at a record company gets it.
If other music companies jump in and they don't screw it up....this will be the end of piracy and iTunes as we know them.
Why pirate?
Because its free.
Its free over at Spiralfrog.
But... well... yeah.
Part of why piracy works is because a large group of people say, "Screw the record company, I want a free copy." If you can get a free copy from the record company a huge segment of the the crowd goes away. Your left with a small crowd that want it at a special bitrate in a special format. The smaller that group gets, and it will get smaller, the harder it will be to find the songs you want. The harder it gets to find the songs you want the more people will leave that crowd and go to the the sponsored site.
There will always be a small crowd of pirates, but the huge masses of them will go away because it will be easier to get it through the sponsored site.
Satan needs his parka!
Apple goes to Intel
Dell goes AMD
Next thing you know Vista will ship.
Someone else mentioned Intel trying to strongarm Dell over this. I highly doubt it since Intel is currently in court over this kind of practice right now.
Absolutly, until there is a killer app or some whiz bang feature that people can't get on Windows there will not be a good reason to switch. Read the history of OS/2 if you are in doubt that the better OS sometimes doesn't win.
Two things I thought were interesting.
1. This is version 7.0.5296.0 the version that was leaked on the internet the other day was 7.0..5299.0
2. It hates Live Mail beta. Which surprising to me since this is the public beta. Funny part is that Live Mail seems to like Firefox better. Most of the features are missing but at least you can use it.
Slashdot Mirror
The bias is subtle and I imagine unintentional. It is simple things like "the Republican senator from Alaska Ted Stevens has been found guilty...." vs. "The Illinois governor has been charged with....." ....." It also shows up in story selection. Every Palin slip was replayed gleefully over and over. Biden slips were somehow never mentioned. I didn't vote for either but it was pretty clear who they liked and didn't like.
The most obvious case was when Bush was first elected and he and Clinton were at the same function. "President Clinton and Mr. Bush were at
I should mention that I listen to NPR daily and thoroughly enjoy them. I just take everything they say and run it through my bias filter. I do find it irritating when someone claims they are unbiased. In a way Rush and Hanity are more honest. They never claim to be unbiased. I find it best to get your news from a variety of sources.
That is one of the best team building exercises I have ever been on. It just happened once when I was a middle manager. "Hey, lets go to the bar after work." You can't force it or it is just more work. Have some fun, be yourself, and get loaded enough that you say some things you normally wouldn't(this does not mean making a pass at the decent looking girl on the team). Someone else mentioned taking arrows from both sides. Really the job is about explaining to both sides why they are firing arrows. Get to know your team. Know who is married, how many kids they have and what they are doing outside of work for fun. Even better know what is stressing them outside of work. If they know you care about them as people and show appreciation when they do a good job they will run through walls for you. Realize most people are sheep and would rather have decisions made for them and be willing to do so. Do not confuse this with being stupid. Figure out who are the influencers are. They are the ones leading the crowd. Talk with them, get to be close enough that you can talk them and get them on your team and the rest will follow.
Did I mention getting to know your team? ;-)
I live in a special corner of the armpit of America known as the Detroit Metro area. Why is it special you may ask? WOW, Comcast, and AT&T offer cable, internet, and VoIP in my neighborhood. I was talking to one of the Comcast sales guys. He said my neighborhood gets 'special' deals because the market is so tough. I was even able to renegotiate our current rate with WOW and had them throw in two extra outlets. 6Mbit connection, VoIP, Digital Cable, extra cable box - $85. I know that just a few miles away Comcast is charging $120 for the same thing. Why you may ask? WOW doesn't reach that far.
hmmmmm........ I was showing my dad the game Homeworld years ago. He had gotten started with CAD on DEC machines the size of file cabinets. He was floored at the games ability to swing the camera around an object on 3 axis and even to change what was the focus of camera to different ships. "This is more advanced then most CAD software I have seen." All for the outrageous price of $40.
I used to support MCI mail. Yes, that one time alternative to regular email. Lawyers loved it since each email was charged. It drastically cut down on spam, hackers and other things that plague email today. By 2001 it was security through obscurity. Yes, that is a terrible security plan but it has worked well for Apple.
Try going down to your local Best Buy and give their towers a serious look. 90% of them have integrated craptastic integrated video. This includes the high end models. I feel bad for someone that doesn't know what they are looking for when they just look at the price tag and think, "This is one of the most expensive machines. My kids should be able to play all their games." They get home and wonder why the hell this expensive machine can't play 3D games.
If you look around you finally find a couple of mid-priced machines with a real video card. They aren't even labeled as "Gaming Machines". When I helped my father-in-law buy his, I mentioned to a sales guy that the mid-priced machine we bought was probably the best machine on the floor. He shook his head and agreed. "They don't want to listen to us."
On a side note, it looks like AMD is trying to change this, http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/05/780g-changes-graphics-game
Hat tip to OSnews
Here is an example from my dad. He was an engineer at a manufacturing plant in the 70's that decided they needed to go to CAD. He was given the project. He started working with DEC and they quoted XXX,XXX.00 as the price for a great system. He took that back to his bosses and they agreed. He goes back to DEC and the salesman starts mentioning things like, "Would you like an OS with that? It will cost XX,XXX.00 more." and "Would you like the special power cord? It will cost an extra XXX.00" They kept this up until the price was now one and a half times the original quote. Dad was getting embarrassed at going back to his bosses over and over asking for more money and finally got mad and started threatening to kill the deal. At this point the salesman mentions that it includes a Rainbow computer (their version of a PC and rather pricey at that) that wouldn't show up on the invoice and could be shipped to any address. That was about the point were Dad exploded.
Crazy thing is he loved DEC computers and still does. He wistfully talks about their ability to multi-task and better file system.
Years later I was caught in an ethical bind and asked him what to do. "You can do the easy thing or you can do the right thing. Doing the right thing might be bad for you in the short term, but you will be able to look back later and feel good about yourself instead of feeling slimy every time your reminded about it."
I took a business ethics class taught by a retired corporate head of human resources. He gave a good explanation of why this is taught in some business schools. "If you think about this now when you have no pressure on you, you stand a much better chance of making the best decision when under pressure and you have to make a snap decision. Don't kid yourself and think these things won't happen to you. They will, and most of the time you will have no time to do any soul searching."
"1. Who gives a fuck about Facebook's DNS problems? Vista is doing the right thing, here, by doing exactly as the DNS server instructs, with a preference toward IPV6 addresses. Any other behavior (including a preference toward IPV4) would be decried as horrifically broken and against progress." I worked at a software company that had an email server as part of their package. Exchange 5.5 was extremely forgiving of SMTP RFC violations. Our software that sat in front of Exchange was very tight about SMTP. We fielded hundreds of calls about "I used to get this email until we started using your product." It would always turn out that the missing email was in violation of the RFC's. Do you think they wanted to hear that? No, all they cared about was that it worked with Exchange and it didn't work anymore. Exchange 5.5 went on to dominate the market. The software company went belly up. You can sit on your lofty ivory tower and bitch all you want about it being right, the rest of the world would like to get things done.
I have seen several instances where someone that did a little digging on the back end could easily make the system do what ever they wanted. They become more valuable because they can fix the system when it hiccups. "Customer Joe has a weird charge on it. The system won't let us fix it. What are we going to do?" The guy that knows the backend then goes in and changes it right on the database and is a hero. But if he can fix things then he can also break things and cover it up. It goes back to managements desire to wear blinders. They want to put super locks on the physical doors but give the keys to kingdom on the system to anyone that is willing to help.
He claims to have 2:1 income vs. expenses. Man + Wife + Child != 2 Hell, it doesn't even equal three. I think he is in for a rude awakening.
I hate fonts that allow O and 0, and 1 and l to look so similar. This has only been a major headache in the computing world for a few decades, no need to change now. I don't care if they are experts, it is stupid and short sighted to continue this mistake. Before you say anything, I do use a font that sensibly corrects this error.
OK Mr Nanny,
On my first day in Jr High Chem we had a lab were we made droppers out of glass tubing, a little rubber piece and a bunson burner. Almost everyone got a cut or burn of some kind. But it was an invaluble lesson, "Don't screw around in this class, you will get hurt."
You don't learn to respect matches until you burn your fingers.
(twitch twitch) ACT!2005, bane of my existence. We have gotten to the point of telling users they should just shut down the program every hour or so and perhaps think about doing a reboot while they are at it. One user asked me to look at her computer because it was running so slow. Out of 2gig of memory on her system, ACT! was using 1.5gig. I hate that program. Piece of . ... (twitches and mumbles more)
Many of the things that really make lasting changes are things developed for people that are disabled. The classic case is the one handle faucet. It was developed to make it easier for disabled people to turn the water on and adjust the temp. Now they dominate the market. The breakthrough I noticed recently was robotic arms controlled by monkeys using a direct brain interface. I believe they were monitoring blood flow in the brain as they used controls to manipulate the arms. Eventually they used the monitor to control the arms as the monkeys manipulated the controls. The monkeys figured out that they didn't have to use the controls to move the arms. They were using their thoughts to control the robotic arms. They think it could lead to much better artificial limbs. I think it will lead to a computer interface without keyboard or mouse.
"What crap. Do you think Orwell had to deal with the crime rate of today's age. NO."
You have got to be kidding me. Next you will be saying, "Only those breaking laws need to fear this kind of thing."
Let me guess. Your one of those that feels society needs to be gently guided to take the proper path? That the sheeple are not bright enough to come in out of the rain without someone telling them to get inside? "If people only really knew then they would do the right thing. Since they don't we will just help them along." Pretty soon "You should really inform us of your neighbors improper comments. They might need to be re-educated." sounds not so sinister.
"Does anyone do this? Has it worked out where you can do a proof of concept that otherwise, without virtualization, you would be confined to whiteboard concepts that no one would listen to?"
This is the best thing about it. I often hear "That might break something." about things like service packs that have been out for a year. Since we lacked a real test bed, often it was easier to not bother worrying. Now , I can throw it up on a virtual environment and say "See, now can we please get kind of up to date?"
Snapshots are a godsend.
Finally someone at a record company gets it. If other music companies jump in and they don't screw it up....this will be the end of piracy and iTunes as we know them. Why pirate? Because its free. Its free over at Spiralfrog. But... well... yeah. Part of why piracy works is because a large group of people say, "Screw the record company, I want a free copy." If you can get a free copy from the record company a huge segment of the the crowd goes away. Your left with a small crowd that want it at a special bitrate in a special format. The smaller that group gets, and it will get smaller, the harder it will be to find the songs you want. The harder it gets to find the songs you want the more people will leave that crowd and go to the the sponsored site. There will always be a small crowd of pirates, but the huge masses of them will go away because it will be easier to get it through the sponsored site.
Satan needs his parka! Apple goes to Intel Dell goes AMD Next thing you know Vista will ship. Someone else mentioned Intel trying to strongarm Dell over this. I highly doubt it since Intel is currently in court over this kind of practice right now.
Absolutly, until there is a killer app or some whiz bang feature that people can't get on Windows there will not be a good reason to switch. Read the history of OS/2 if you are in doubt that the better OS sometimes doesn't win.
Two things I thought were interesting. 1. This is version 7.0.5296.0 the version that was leaked on the internet the other day was 7.0..5299.0 2. It hates Live Mail beta. Which surprising to me since this is the public beta. Funny part is that Live Mail seems to like Firefox better. Most of the features are missing but at least you can use it.