I'm getting my MBA and many of my profs do everything digitally from accepting research papers, to sending out syllabi to arranging meetings via e-mail.
One thing that I have learned, especially when giving a presentation is that if anything goes wrong, its your fault.
Powerpoint doesn't work? Its your fault. Didn't embed that YouTube video correctly? Its your fault. Your laptop can't talk to the projector? Its your fault. The Projector doesn't work? Its your fault.
If you aren't professional enough to have your research paper backed up on a thumbdrive, a second laptop for your group presentation, or even/gasp!/ a paper copy, ITS YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT.
Welcome to being a professional in the 21st century, where using technology is necessary, but knowing what to do when it fails is smart.
"According to the Nobel prize committee, a hypothetical one-metre-square hammock of perfect graphene could support a four-kilogram cat - the hammock would weigh 0.77 milligrams, less than a cat's whisker, and would be virtually invisible." - Richard Van Noorden, Nature Magazine
I'm glad that someone is addressing the need for invisible cat hammocks. FINALLY!
I am a follower of "that Jesus guy" and while I am very skeptical of the prediction, I made sure to ask an atheist friend of mine to feed my cat after I ascend. I mean, it would be pretty dickish of me to leave my cat to starve, wouldn't it? After all, it will only be for 6 months until the complete end of the world.
I'm so glad that in America our media conglomerates have taken upon themselves the duty to define and police our beloved characters. I shudder to think what would happen in 300 years if Mickey Mouse was allowed to move into public domain. We'd probably have those damn, dirty Canadians trying to say that he lived in Ottawa or something.
Peter Jackson was able to get very good visual effects on the LotR trilogy because he used camera tricks rather than digital editing to achieve the illusion of a world populated by big and little people.
The technique called "foreshortening" was used quite a bit, like when Gandalf first sits with Bilbo and has tea in his kitchen. The actors were there, but the set was arranged and props and actors placed so that Bilbo was farther away from the camera than Gandalf, and therefore appeared little while Gandalf was 'human sized'. Its a simple gimmick and worked great. Using a 3D camera setup may not work with this unless you deliberately went frame by frame and edited the 3D in afterward since shooting it with multiple cameras would cancel out the single-perspective trick of foreshortening.
I'm a blue-collar guy who is currently enrolled in a part-time MBA program that is designed for working adults, and the rest of them are white collar. Whenever the courses require PowerPoint, the slides flow freely and in dizzying density and volume. I, on the other hand, gave the best presentation of my life without a single slide, and even when I need to use them, I limit myself to 3-5 slides. Working on team projects, I often need to talk down my colleagues who think that more slides = better presentation. One guy had 13 slides for a four minute presentation, other times people are trying to cram spreadsheets into slides and expecting the audience to be able to pick out some kind of useful information. If it were up to me, I'd always do it without the slides. Once I master public speaking that way, I'll maybe consider using PowerPoint.
I want a good all-in-one reader. PDFs, CBR/CBZ files, Word or Open Office documents... etc. Sure, throw in a media player, but I really just want a book replacement. Most of the ones on the market are limited in scope and frankly, TOO SMALL. Make the screen a standard paper size, make it able to read all kinds of formats, and I will be a happy, happy man.
Wouldn't being a sound sleeper be a liability in the Darwin game? I would think that waking up when there's unusual stimuli would be something helpful to keep from being lunch for a nocturnal predator.
At first, I thought, "FINALLY! They're addressing the problem!" Then I read the body of the post and my hopes were dashed.
WHEN WILL THEY FINALLY LISTEN!!!
Italian gesture-based interfaces would be fraught with problems.
Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.
Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson (to Gregory): Is the law of our side if I say ay?
Gregory: No.
Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you sir; but I bite my thumb, sir.
Gregory: Do you quarrel, sir?
Abraham: Quarrel, sir? No, sir.
I was perfectly happy using OpenOffice for all my home needs, but then when I started up a master's program, I could digitally submit assignments (depending on the prof) for most of my courses. The only problem was that even though I would save things in OpenOffice so that they would be readable on MS products, not a single one of my professors could get them to open, and weren't really interested in going through any additional steps aside from double-clicking to open them up. So, because I needed to submit deliverables in a format that they could read, I was forced to purchase MS Office. Ribbons bleh.
I know a guy who, after a trip to China a couple years ago, decided to start up an electric bike business in Portland, Oregon which is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US. He originally wanted to import the bikes from China, but due to trade restrictions, he couldn't bring in bikes which he could sell here for $US400-600 and instead had to fill his new shop with US and European models that cost 3 to 5 times more.
He did his research, so it wasn't like the Chinese bikes were painted with lead and made by slave labor or anything. Anyone have any idea why electric bikes would be on the import no-no list?
I can't remember things when I'm standing. I think its because I keep all my thoughts in my lap and when I stand up, they fall on the floor and roll under the desk.
When shopping for MBA programs, I was surprised how few of them were completely devoid of any kind of engineering management options. I don't see engineering and management as mutually exclusive skills, and I would like to be able to understand both so I can lead a group of techies to be as efficient and effective as possible. Managing tech people is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from managing a sales force, but most MBA programs don't seem to recognize the fact that having someone who understands the money/paperwork/organizational side of things may not be sufficient in a manufacturing or technical service environment.
Since I couldn't move to another town near the school with the ideal program, I chose a program that I felt would at least give me the management side of things, and I'll have to do a bit more work to make sure that I can work well with engineers. Not all of us are lucky to have a boss who is a techie also gifted in management.
Motivating tech people is much more than the occasional pizza party or free coffee mugs, it often takes effort to explain why a certain goal or project is important to the organization rather than simply saying "do it because I said so". Most employees respond better when they're informed this way, but tech people tend to be more interested the "why" of things - that's why they're tech people!
Its no secret that when the economy goes south, management philosophy becomes much more "conservative" which means that managers revert back to a stragey of cracking the whip to get results rather than more modern philosophies involving team dynamics, encouraging self-regulation by employees, and so forth. The old-school tactics are easier to explain to the uninitiated shareholders or board members whereas touchy-feely empowerment strategies don't have a x=y effect on a balance sheet.
I'm coming from the hourly IT support side of things and moving into management (getting an MBA in the process) and the traps that managers fall into when dealing with shrunken budgets and raised expectations are so blatantly obvious to me that I'm having a real hard time not grabbing my superiors (who're by no means techies) by the collars and shaking some sense into them. We're in a transitional period of history, IMO (did I mention I'm a historian too?) where the status of employees as resources rather than liabilities is in danger from too many people thinking that better/faster/cheaper can apply to people as well as processes.
I checked the article to be sure, and yep, it says that those CHARGED will have their names published on Twitter. So, even if you are found not guilty, you are going to be publicly named as a DUI offender before you even get a chance to clear your name.
I'm not trying to excuse drunk drivers, but for some reason, its seen as ok to make those charged or convicted of DUIs out to be the scum of the earth, wantonly careening down the roadways, seeking out innocents to mow down, when in fact most people who get DUIs are just ordinary joes who made a bad decision while not in the best state of mind.
The idea that it is somehow ok to humiliate people who are supposedly INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY seems like a prelude to a morality police state.
Who's influential? The rich.
Who's not? The poor.
In American capitalism, we are told that we can vote with our dollars to determine an organization's success or failure. Apparently, Microsoft feels that a poll tax is necessary.
Just as large corporations can use their money to exert disproportionate influence on the local or national political scene, now in marketing decisions the influence of a rich person will hold more weight than the 'common man' who makes up the majority of the market.
Only recently have we even acknowledged that women are not inherently inferior to men, so is it so much of a surprise to learn that there is a strong cultural gender bias in favor of men being superior in intelligence?
In my own family, my mother is a medical doctor, while my father never made it through college, and despite this reversal, I have caught myself falling into the same traps and patterns that society at large puts out as truth that women are inferior to men in certain fields of study, if not all intellectual pursuits.
I am practically a professional light-bulb changer, so I will say that in my non-scientific, non-measured, purely anecdotal experience, that CFLs put out a lot more heat than LEDs. Scads less than incandescents, but still, the ballast in the base of a CFL warms up quite a bit during operation, often growing too hot to touch when the glass spiral is still plenty cool. If you're concerned about minimizing heat, go LED.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm getting my MBA and many of my profs do everything digitally from accepting research papers, to sending out syllabi to arranging meetings via e-mail.
/gasp!/ a paper copy, ITS YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT.
One thing that I have learned, especially when giving a presentation is that if anything goes wrong, its your fault.
Powerpoint doesn't work? Its your fault. Didn't embed that YouTube video correctly? Its your fault. Your laptop can't talk to the projector? Its your fault. The Projector doesn't work? Its your fault.
If you aren't professional enough to have your research paper backed up on a thumbdrive, a second laptop for your group presentation, or even
Welcome to being a professional in the 21st century, where using technology is necessary, but knowing what to do when it fails is smart.
I think they're one of the states that have a sign on the back that says, "Frequent stops, do not follow."
"According to the Nobel prize committee, a hypothetical one-metre-square hammock of perfect graphene could support a four-kilogram cat - the hammock would weigh 0.77 milligrams, less than a cat's whisker, and would be virtually invisible." - Richard Van Noorden, Nature Magazine
I'm glad that someone is addressing the need for invisible cat hammocks. FINALLY!
I am a follower of "that Jesus guy" and while I am very skeptical of the prediction, I made sure to ask an atheist friend of mine to feed my cat after I ascend. I mean, it would be pretty dickish of me to leave my cat to starve, wouldn't it? After all, it will only be for 6 months until the complete end of the world.
I'm so glad that in America our media conglomerates have taken upon themselves the duty to define and police our beloved characters. I shudder to think what would happen in 300 years if Mickey Mouse was allowed to move into public domain. We'd probably have those damn, dirty Canadians trying to say that he lived in Ottawa or something.
I was afraid ERP meant Erotic Role Playing.
Wish the article would have cleared this up better.
Peter Jackson was able to get very good visual effects on the LotR trilogy because he used camera tricks rather than digital editing to achieve the illusion of a world populated by big and little people.
The technique called "foreshortening" was used quite a bit, like when Gandalf first sits with Bilbo and has tea in his kitchen. The actors were there, but the set was arranged and props and actors placed so that Bilbo was farther away from the camera than Gandalf, and therefore appeared little while Gandalf was 'human sized'. Its a simple gimmick and worked great. Using a 3D camera setup may not work with this unless you deliberately went frame by frame and edited the 3D in afterward since shooting it with multiple cameras would cancel out the single-perspective trick of foreshortening.
I'm a blue-collar guy who is currently enrolled in a part-time MBA program that is designed for working adults, and the rest of them are white collar. Whenever the courses require PowerPoint, the slides flow freely and in dizzying density and volume.
I, on the other hand, gave the best presentation of my life without a single slide, and even when I need to use them, I limit myself to 3-5 slides. Working on team projects, I often need to talk down my colleagues who think that more slides = better presentation. One guy had 13 slides for a four minute presentation, other times people are trying to cram spreadsheets into slides and expecting the audience to be able to pick out some kind of useful information.
If it were up to me, I'd always do it without the slides. Once I master public speaking that way, I'll maybe consider using PowerPoint.
I want a good all-in-one reader. PDFs, CBR/CBZ files, Word or Open Office documents... etc. Sure, throw in a media player, but I really just want a book replacement. Most of the ones on the market are limited in scope and frankly, TOO SMALL. Make the screen a standard paper size, make it able to read all kinds of formats, and I will be a happy, happy man.
Oh, and make it cheap.
Wouldn't being a sound sleeper be a liability in the Darwin game? I would think that waking up when there's unusual stimuli would be something helpful to keep from being lunch for a nocturnal predator.
At first, I thought, "FINALLY! They're addressing the problem!" Then I read the body of the post and my hopes were dashed.
WHEN WILL THEY FINALLY LISTEN!!!
Italian gesture-based interfaces would be fraught with problems.
Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.
Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson (to Gregory): Is the law of our side if I say ay?
Gregory: No.
Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you sir; but I bite my thumb, sir.
Gregory: Do you quarrel, sir?
Abraham: Quarrel, sir? No, sir.
welcome our new silkworm overlords. You wouldn't think that they would pass up a chance to control our brains by pooping silk into them, would you?
What about advanced social skills for MEEEEEEEEEEE?
I was perfectly happy using OpenOffice for all my home needs, but then when I started up a master's program, I could digitally submit assignments (depending on the prof) for most of my courses. The only problem was that even though I would save things in OpenOffice so that they would be readable on MS products, not a single one of my professors could get them to open, and weren't really interested in going through any additional steps aside from double-clicking to open them up. So, because I needed to submit deliverables in a format that they could read, I was forced to purchase MS Office. Ribbons bleh.
I know a guy who, after a trip to China a couple years ago, decided to start up an electric bike business in Portland, Oregon which is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US. He originally wanted to import the bikes from China, but due to trade restrictions, he couldn't bring in bikes which he could sell here for $US400-600 and instead had to fill his new shop with US and European models that cost 3 to 5 times more.
He did his research, so it wasn't like the Chinese bikes were painted with lead and made by slave labor or anything. Anyone have any idea why electric bikes would be on the import no-no list?
I can't remember things when I'm standing. I think its because I keep all my thoughts in my lap and when I stand up, they fall on the floor and roll under the desk.
It keeps the hot side hot and the cold side cold.
sigh... I'm old.
When shopping for MBA programs, I was surprised how few of them were completely devoid of any kind of engineering management options. I don't see engineering and management as mutually exclusive skills, and I would like to be able to understand both so I can lead a group of techies to be as efficient and effective as possible. Managing tech people is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from managing a sales force, but most MBA programs don't seem to recognize the fact that having someone who understands the money/paperwork/organizational side of things may not be sufficient in a manufacturing or technical service environment.
Since I couldn't move to another town near the school with the ideal program, I chose a program that I felt would at least give me the management side of things, and I'll have to do a bit more work to make sure that I can work well with engineers. Not all of us are lucky to have a boss who is a techie also gifted in management.
Motivating tech people is much more than the occasional pizza party or free coffee mugs, it often takes effort to explain why a certain goal or project is important to the organization rather than simply saying "do it because I said so". Most employees respond better when they're informed this way, but tech people tend to be more interested the "why" of things - that's why they're tech people!
Its no secret that when the economy goes south, management philosophy becomes much more "conservative" which means that managers revert back to a stragey of cracking the whip to get results rather than more modern philosophies involving team dynamics, encouraging self-regulation by employees, and so forth. The old-school tactics are easier to explain to the uninitiated shareholders or board members whereas touchy-feely empowerment strategies don't have a x=y effect on a balance sheet.
I'm coming from the hourly IT support side of things and moving into management (getting an MBA in the process) and the traps that managers fall into when dealing with shrunken budgets and raised expectations are so blatantly obvious to me that I'm having a real hard time not grabbing my superiors (who're by no means techies) by the collars and shaking some sense into them. We're in a transitional period of history, IMO (did I mention I'm a historian too?) where the status of employees as resources rather than liabilities is in danger from too many people thinking that better/faster/cheaper can apply to people as well as processes.
I checked the article to be sure, and yep, it says that those CHARGED will have their names published on Twitter. So, even if you are found not guilty, you are going to be publicly named as a DUI offender before you even get a chance to clear your name.
I'm not trying to excuse drunk drivers, but for some reason, its seen as ok to make those charged or convicted of DUIs out to be the scum of the earth, wantonly careening down the roadways, seeking out innocents to mow down, when in fact most people who get DUIs are just ordinary joes who made a bad decision while not in the best state of mind.
The idea that it is somehow ok to humiliate people who are supposedly INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY seems like a prelude to a morality police state.
Who's influential? The rich.
Who's not? The poor.
In American capitalism, we are told that we can vote with our dollars to determine an organization's success or failure. Apparently, Microsoft feels that a poll tax is necessary.
Just as large corporations can use their money to exert disproportionate influence on the local or national political scene, now in marketing decisions the influence of a rich person will hold more weight than the 'common man' who makes up the majority of the market.
Only recently have we even acknowledged that women are not inherently inferior to men, so is it so much of a surprise to learn that there is a strong cultural gender bias in favor of men being superior in intelligence?
In my own family, my mother is a medical doctor, while my father never made it through college, and despite this reversal, I have caught myself falling into the same traps and patterns that society at large puts out as truth that women are inferior to men in certain fields of study, if not all intellectual pursuits.
I am practically a professional light-bulb changer, so I will say that in my non-scientific, non-measured, purely anecdotal experience, that CFLs put out a lot more heat than LEDs. Scads less than incandescents, but still, the ballast in the base of a CFL warms up quite a bit during operation, often growing too hot to touch when the glass spiral is still plenty cool. If you're concerned about minimizing heat, go LED.
The agriculture regulatory agencies want to have their say in the matter so they can include gold farming in the next Five Year Plan.