Treaties only codify the existing power dynamics, e.g. the UN security council. Doesn't mean they're useless. It's often helpful to have a document that spells out how badly you're screwed.
If you're willing to submit to censorship then you don't really care about what you're producing anyway. Most movies are crap. They fit the formula and that's about it. Most games are crap. They fit the formula and that's about it. You can attempt art that happens to make money, but you can't attempt to make money and create art.
If we aren't careful video games are going to end up like comics/graphic novels. Infantilized bullshit featuring super underwear heroes. If we want video games that fulfill our demand for intelligent content, then we need a few game artists to tell the ESRB to fuck off and stick to their vision. The ESRB doesn't take games seriously, because censors don't take intellectual discourse seriously. Like all censors they'd rather have pleasant than interesting. The problem isn't the ESRB. The problem is that otherwise self-respecting adults take them seriously. If you're willing to be told what to think, do, say, or code and you're not 4 years old, you should be embarrassed.
Why don't we just stop US based companies from doing the censorship? Google and Yahoo are the corporations getting people sent to the Laogai. Cisco and others make the Great Firewall of China possible. It's American companies putting together Chinese police surveillance and control. Anything for a buck I guess.
Moral hazard. Because a corporation can only lose its initial investment, risk/benefit analyses are skewed. I can lose more than my investment and opportunity cost of continued operations because I'd be held liable for damages to others. Individuals are naturally more conservative than corporations when it comes to risk. This is mostly a good thing. Being conservative due to the risk of failure isn't a good thing (a corporation won't starve it fails), but being conservative due to the risk of damaging others is a good thing. Damages don't disappear when the corporation that caused them disappears.
I think I'll incorporate f1055man, LLC so that when I fuck up I can blame it on the corporation.
"hydroponics gardening magazine that some green houses are now staying away from bleach and other chemicals when flushing their systems between crops."
I'm sure the border patrol agents and police will just be jumping at the chance to put a puke covered collar in the back of their car.
It'll also work great for crowd control. Protest #1: popo makes the black bloc puke. Protest #2: black bloc makes everyone puke. Prosecution for unauthorized use would be rather messy as well. I can just imagine a wiseass defendant demanding that they prove it's not just a flashlight.
Actually, I think I'm kind of looking forward to this.
Americans spend their money nice cars, big houses, huge screen tvs. Those kinds of cultural obsessions just don't work in a densely populated country like Japan. There are also millions of wage earners that live with their parents. If I have extra money I start looking for a better apartment, if they have extra money they buy a new gadget. They might make less than me, but since they live with their parents more of their income can go to toys. There might be enough moneyed technophiles in the U.S. to support the iPhone, but there aren't enough to support an entire industry of iPhones.
Hospitals are facing a massive shortage in RNs. There are plenty of qualified candidates. Hospitals spend massive amounts on staffing services (with everyone getting their cut), while their nurses have to do double shifts with too many patients. The stress chases off RNs, so the hospital spends more money on staffing services and the bureaucracy that comes with. It's a vicious cycle, one we're beginning to see in the tech sector. They offer crap wages and benefits so they need to go abroad, making the wages and benefits even crappier. The only people that benefit are the "VP of People" that has to fill out the paperwork.
I went to a pretty good Uni, but maybe 20% of my CS class has programming jobs now (myself not one of them). The prospect of going to work somewhere to make widgets while dealing with the shit from an MBA boss that thinks programming is Office macros, all for crappy pay. Simple economics. Competence in this industry is rewarded with a dead end job and shit pay driven down by the visas. Notice how few visas they request for MBAs. They run HR so they just pay themselves more at the expense of the people actually making shit for the company. Until the nerds of the world (or at least SV) revolt against the useless HR people I'm not going anywhere near the industry.
Role/Responsibilities/Rewards
Management = crappy powerpoint presentations = good money, career advancement, golf on weekdays
Programming/engineering = making the stuff that pays for everyone's mortgage = crap money, dead end job, cubicle farm, overtime
Tough choice.
I love how they say the H1s are based on market salaries. H1s alter the job market by increasing the supply of applicants, reducing the "market rate."
The technology for biodiesel from algae has been around for a long time. If you can put up with Alan Alda, here's a bioreactor at MIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnOSnJJSP5c Raceway ponds (google search spirulina) may be more promising for industrial scale algae farming.
The problem is a lack of existing stakeholders able to make it happen. We already have corn, nuclear, wind, and solar lobbies getting their piece of the government handouts (and public interest), but there aren't many people sitting on massive algae resources and a large bank account. Biodiesel from palms has become big business, especially in Malaysia, but algae will provide a huge improvement in yields.
Yield of Various Plant Oils (Lipids)
Crop / Oil in Liters per hectare
Castor 1413
Sunflower 952
Safflower 779
Palm 5950
Soy 446
Coconut 2689
Algae 100000 (order of magnitude due to large variance in yield by species) http://www.oilgae.com/algae/oil/yield/yield.html
The nice part about using algae is that marginal land (desert or poor soils) can be used, and high nutrient waste streams are excellent feedstocks, e.g. the American southwest and the Salton Sea.
I hate this type of research. It's pointless infinite recursion. It's anthropology with numbers, but at least real anthropologists are willing to accept that their field is purely subjective.
at first I thought this was impossible, but the article mentions that two of the eleven were DOA. Hard to blame DOAs on the user. With a 20% DOA rate this becomes a bit more believable. My guess is they keep sending refurb units that are just crap they get to boot up, but still can't handle real use.
"College kids tend to like it because it's just like college - all of their basic needs are taken care of. In fact, even most of your personal-life can get tied up in Google benefits. Google provides free or subsidized broadband to every employee. Google runs its own, private, bus lines in the Bay Area for employees. Google provides free or subsidized mobile phones. A college kid can literally join Google and, like they did as freshman at university, let Google take care of everything. Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it's hard to think about leaving because of all the "stuff" you'll need to transition and then manage for yourself."
Perks are bad? If Microsoft is hiring people that can't feed themselves if they have to then they got real problems.
"Google has no facility for career growth. Microsoft has more, but could do better. Continuing Microsoft-specific education for things like project management, managing people, communication skills, etc. should be promoted. A structured career plan for each discipline would be great - e.g. training, experiences, milestones, etc. Paths like "Developer to Development Manager" "Developer to Technical Architect" which show what courses and experiences (e.g. being a mentor) are encouraged for the different paths."
This is a philosophical difference, as is Google's lack of structure. Google throws a lot of smart people together and trusts them to work things out without some overpaid consultant giving management tips and designing hierarchical organizational charts.
"Take a cue from Google and loosen up a little about offices. Let people call facilities and have their office painted any color they want. Have the standard office come with a guest chair and a brightly colored Microsoft branded bean-bag chair." I guess they wouldn't appreciate the Che Guevara poster hanging on my office wall, but bean bag chairs for everyone!
"Most IT problems are trivial when you're in a room together ("oh that Ethernet cable is in the wrong port")" Oh, so that's why Windows Task Manager crashed on me yesterday, they employ the mildly retarded.
I own a few hundred cds. I only listen to music at my home computer or with headphones at my computer at work. I haven't bought a cd in years. The only purpose they serve is to get the music from the store to the hard drive of one of my computers. I listen to the music on the cds all the time, but the cds themselves gather dust in my closet.
Sometimes slapping enough people will get them to punch one person. I'm sure slapping the record companies got their RIAA surrogates some nasty phone calls.
You're confused. There is no rule of law in China. It's whatever the random party official says it is at that particular moment. Noncompliance with a party official can result in any number of things, which is exactly why Yahoo doesn't do it. They are moral and ethical cowards. If people can seriously debate whether a censored web search is worth sending people to the gulag (Chinese equivalent: Laogai) then our society is far more fucked up than I thought it was.
Interesting to see who knows who he is and who doesn't. He was on from 50s to mid 60s, a brief stint in the early 70s and then throughout the eighties to early 90s. So as a child of the 80s, I share something in common with the boomers, my parents, but not with my older cousins. If you were born in the 60s or early 70s you probably missed out on something great. My condolences to all of you.
It's also worth mentioning that he not only reached kids through his tv shows, thousands of teachers and later science shows learned from his example as well. So even if you don't know who he is, it's likely your science teachers did. Having influenced millions over the last 50 years, it becomes hard to comprehend just how much of our technological society we owe to Mr. Wizard.
Slashdot Mirror
Treaties only codify the existing power dynamics, e.g. the UN security council. Doesn't mean they're useless. It's often helpful to have a document that spells out how badly you're screwed.
If you're willing to submit to censorship then you don't really care about what you're producing anyway. Most movies are crap. They fit the formula and that's about it. Most games are crap. They fit the formula and that's about it. You can attempt art that happens to make money, but you can't attempt to make money and create art.
If we aren't careful video games are going to end up like comics/graphic novels. Infantilized bullshit featuring super underwear heroes. If we want video games that fulfill our demand for intelligent content, then we need a few game artists to tell the ESRB to fuck off and stick to their vision. The ESRB doesn't take games seriously, because censors don't take intellectual discourse seriously. Like all censors they'd rather have pleasant than interesting. The problem isn't the ESRB. The problem is that otherwise self-respecting adults take them seriously. If you're willing to be told what to think, do, say, or code and you're not 4 years old, you should be embarrassed.
Why don't we just stop US based companies from doing the censorship? Google and Yahoo are the corporations getting people sent to the Laogai. Cisco and others make the Great Firewall of China possible. It's American companies putting together Chinese police surveillance and control. Anything for a buck I guess.
So my Ti/carbon fiber bike is more advanced than the space shuttle? What was the reasoning for that design decision?
Moral hazard. Because a corporation can only lose its initial investment, risk/benefit analyses are skewed.
I can lose more than my investment and opportunity cost of continued operations because I'd be held liable for damages to others. Individuals are naturally more conservative than corporations when it comes to risk. This is mostly a good thing. Being conservative due to the risk of failure isn't a good thing (a corporation won't starve it fails), but being conservative due to the risk of damaging others is a good thing. Damages don't disappear when the corporation that caused them disappears.
I think I'll incorporate f1055man, LLC so that when I fuck up I can blame it on the corporation.
"hydroponics gardening magazine that some green houses are now staying away from bleach and other chemicals when flushing their systems between crops."
You also don't want to be smoking bleach.
I have mod points, but I couldnt find a "-1 TMI"
I'm sure the border patrol agents and police will just be jumping at the chance to put a puke covered collar in the back of their car.
It'll also work great for crowd control. Protest #1: popo makes the black bloc puke.
Protest #2: black bloc makes everyone puke.
Prosecution for unauthorized use would be rather messy as well. I can just imagine a wiseass defendant demanding that they prove it's not just a flashlight.
Actually, I think I'm kind of looking forward to this.
Americans spend their money nice cars, big houses, huge screen tvs. Those kinds of cultural obsessions just don't work in a densely populated country like Japan. There are also millions of wage earners that live with their parents. If I have extra money I start looking for a better apartment, if they have extra money they buy a new gadget. They might make less than me, but since they live with their parents more of their income can go to toys. There might be enough moneyed technophiles in the U.S. to support the iPhone, but there aren't enough to support an entire industry of iPhones.
Hospitals are facing a massive shortage in RNs. There are plenty of qualified candidates. Hospitals spend massive amounts on staffing services (with everyone getting their cut), while their nurses have to do double shifts with too many patients. The stress chases off RNs, so the hospital spends more money on staffing services and the bureaucracy that comes with. It's a vicious cycle, one we're beginning to see in the tech sector. They offer crap wages and benefits so they need to go abroad, making the wages and benefits even crappier. The only people that benefit are the "VP of People" that has to fill out the paperwork.
I went to a pretty good Uni, but maybe 20% of my CS class has programming jobs now (myself not one of them). The prospect of going to work somewhere to make widgets while dealing with the shit from an MBA boss that thinks programming is Office macros, all for crappy pay. Simple economics. Competence in this industry is rewarded with a dead end job and shit pay driven down by the visas. Notice how few visas they request for MBAs. They run HR so they just pay themselves more at the expense of the people actually making shit for the company. Until the nerds of the world (or at least SV) revolt against the useless HR people I'm not going anywhere near the industry.
Role/Responsibilities/Rewards
Management = crappy powerpoint presentations = good money, career advancement, golf on weekdays
Programming/engineering = making the stuff that pays for everyone's mortgage = crap money, dead end job, cubicle farm, overtime
Tough choice.
I love how they say the H1s are based on market salaries. H1s alter the job market by increasing the supply of applicants, reducing the "market rate."
The technology for biodiesel from algae has been around for a long time. If you can put up with Alan Alda, here's a bioreactor at MIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnOSnJJSP5c Raceway ponds (google search spirulina) may be more promising for industrial scale algae farming.
The problem is a lack of existing stakeholders able to make it happen. We already have corn, nuclear, wind, and solar lobbies getting their piece of the government handouts (and public interest), but there aren't many people sitting on massive algae resources and a large bank account. Biodiesel from palms has become big business, especially in Malaysia, but algae will provide a huge improvement in yields.
Yield of Various Plant Oils (Lipids)
Crop / Oil in Liters per hectare
Castor 1413
Sunflower 952
Safflower 779
Palm 5950
Soy 446
Coconut 2689
Algae 100000 (order of magnitude due to large variance in yield by species)
http://www.oilgae.com/algae/oil/yield/yield.html
The nice part about using algae is that marginal land (desert or poor soils) can be used, and high nutrient waste streams are excellent feedstocks, e.g. the American southwest and the Salton Sea.
You walked into that one.
Because a Supreme Court decision that will completely alter how retailing works in the U.S. is so lame.
crap conclusion.
I hate this type of research. It's pointless infinite recursion. It's anthropology with numbers, but at least real anthropologists are willing to accept that their field is purely subjective.
define: human
see human.
at first I thought this was impossible, but the article mentions that two of the eleven were DOA. Hard to blame DOAs on the user. With a 20% DOA rate this becomes a bit more believable. My guess is they keep sending refurb units that are just crap they get to boot up, but still can't handle real use.
I don't work for Google, so maybe they wouldn't appreciate Che either.
"College kids tend to like it because it's just like college - all of their basic needs are taken care of. In fact, even most of your personal-life can get tied up in Google benefits. Google provides free or subsidized broadband to every employee. Google runs its own, private, bus lines in the Bay Area for employees. Google provides free or subsidized mobile phones. A college kid can literally join Google and, like they did as freshman at university, let Google take care of everything. Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it's hard to think about leaving because of all the "stuff" you'll need to transition and then manage for yourself."
Perks are bad? If Microsoft is hiring people that can't feed themselves if they have to then they got real problems.
"Google has no facility for career growth. Microsoft has more, but could do better. Continuing Microsoft-specific education for things like project management, managing people, communication skills, etc. should be promoted. A structured career plan for each discipline would be great - e.g. training, experiences, milestones, etc. Paths like "Developer to Development Manager" "Developer to Technical Architect" which show what courses and experiences (e.g. being a mentor) are encouraged for the different paths."
This is a philosophical difference, as is Google's lack of structure. Google throws a lot of smart people together and trusts them to work things out without some overpaid consultant giving management tips and designing hierarchical organizational charts.
"Take a cue from Google and loosen up a little about offices. Let people call facilities and have their office painted any color they want. Have the standard office come with a guest chair and a brightly colored Microsoft branded bean-bag chair."
I guess they wouldn't appreciate the Che Guevara poster hanging on my office wall, but bean bag chairs for everyone!
"Most IT problems are trivial when you're in a room together ("oh that Ethernet cable is in the wrong port")"
Oh, so that's why Windows Task Manager crashed on me yesterday, they employ the mildly retarded.
+1 troll.
The metamods think your modding sucks? I dunno. Karma's a bitch.
I own a few hundred cds. I only listen to music at my home computer or with headphones at my computer at work. I haven't bought a cd in years. The only purpose they serve is to get the music from the store to the hard drive of one of my computers. I listen to the music on the cds all the time, but the cds themselves gather dust in my closet.
Sometimes slapping enough people will get them to punch one person. I'm sure slapping the record companies got their RIAA surrogates some nasty phone calls.
This story made me happy. Your comment made me very happy. Damn, I wish I had mod points.
A commentary, the angry german kid playing Halo: http://youtube.com/watch?v=kBVmfIUR1DA
You're confused. There is no rule of law in China. It's whatever the random party official says it is at that particular moment. Noncompliance with a party official can result in any number of things, which is exactly why Yahoo doesn't do it. They are moral and ethical cowards. If people can seriously debate whether a censored web search is worth sending people to the gulag (Chinese equivalent: Laogai) then our society is far more fucked up than I thought it was.
Interesting to see who knows who he is and who doesn't. He was on from 50s to mid 60s, a brief stint in the early 70s and then throughout the eighties to early 90s. So as a child of the 80s, I share something in common with the boomers, my parents, but not with my older cousins. If you were born in the 60s or early 70s you probably missed out on something great. My condolences to all of you.
It's also worth mentioning that he not only reached kids through his tv shows, thousands of teachers and later science shows learned from his example as well. So even if you don't know who he is, it's likely your science teachers did. Having influenced millions over the last 50 years, it becomes hard to comprehend just how much of our technological society we owe to Mr. Wizard.