That's because the major semantic information is sometimes not transmitted in the form of words, but uses out-of-band channels that males normally ignore or downplay:)
Start paying attention to vocal intonation, body language, facial expression, and go read a whole lot of female-vs-male-psych information written by women in order to get the cultural delta (yes, there is one) to use as a base referent.
Of course, the OP's suggested setup still has a number of SPOFs - the single router, and possibly a single PC and single Cat5 cable.
Ideally, you'd want two routers, each connected to both WAN points and each other, at least two PCs, and for each computer to have a separate phsyical network connection to each router box.
This isn't as silly as it sounds, if the PCs are laptops or have cheap wireless cards, and the routers also have wireless (or are multiplexed to a pair of WAPs).
If you want really silly, have two or more separate servers running a single failoverable multiprocessor session across them, and use the PCs as simple remote terminals to the session. That way, even if a PC explodes in the middle of a complex bit of work, the other PC can pick up the same session without any data loss.
Make sure to have multiple physical RAID servers for storage. And a UPS which can run everything, in case the broken component turns out to be the grid power supply. Which probably means that you'd want at least one of the WAN links to be satellite...
Content submitted to the internet, especially recent content, showcases at least a couple of the submitter's skills. Spelling, grammar and general communication for starters. Depending on the context, it may also give strong hints about skills such as programming, and personality traits such as their views on NDAs or certain industries. Some people even display and discuss hobby projects related to their line of work, and this can also give insight.
Not to mention that if you're an ambitious or desperate small-to-medium employer looking to sign some contracts with major players, and an applicant's Facebook page shows that they personally know or have worked with certain big names, you might be more likely to offer them a job. Not because they can type faster or make better coffee, but because they might be able to open up new business opportunities for you.
More worringly, what if an applicant has applied at a company which has razor-thin operating margins or paranoid HR/legal departments, and the applicant's MySpace page lists the fact that they have assorted medical conditions requiring special equipment or time off, or details the multiple detrimental lawsuits they've launched against former employers? It might not affect the _quality_ of their work, but they sure as heck aren't going to get hired.
I remember one place where the helpdesk team amused itself by running idiot-level searches on user home directories and simply deleting everything that a user might be too afraid to request restored.
Of course, this was a 2000-user federal government department, so simply searching for *porn*.jpg and the like used to return so many hits that it maxed out the search function on the Win98 workstation that had been set aside for the purpose. It had to be set aside because new material made it onto the user partitions faster than the workstation could delete it, even working 12+ hours per day.
We really should have scripted it, I guess - but there was too much else going on at the time. Oh well.
For the next stage, simulate a small chunk of the internet and play Core Wars with the programs which actually run. Breed them to end up with the fastest, deadliest, fastest-transmitting, hardest-to-catch sucka on the planet. Tell management that you advise against them connecting their personal laptops to the cluster...
The problem with Bill wasn't that he made IT look nerdy, it was that he made it look obscenely profitable. As a result, IT became the new 'doctor/lawyer' for a while, with undecided kids choosing it (or having it pushed on them) because people thought there were automatically huge dollar signs involved.
Thus the huge wave of people not really suited to IT who washed into the industry, hung around for a couple of years, and washed out again once reality bit. The remnants are still plodding along in the boring, entry-level jobs that no-one else wants, and may well stay there for the next twenty-five years.
The guys working the Help Desk are generally there because they either a) are too stupid to do anything else, b) are totally devoid of experience and have to put in their 2 years or so of Help Desk work just to get something on the resumé, or c) happen to be in an oversaturated area where there simply are no other jobs available.
I worked various helpdesks for around ten years, and I have to say that I saw this becoming more and more the case. When I started out, I worked in places where a helpdesk job needed a bunch of skills tests, demonstrated familiarity with the local SOE, and about three months' training on top of that. And then you got to be God for anyone under the executive level. Most of the job was network monitoring, server tweaking, and catching and repairing faults before anyone was caught by the impact. You needed top-notch f2f, written and spoken communication skills, and were often called upon to be the IT trainer for new staff.
These days, any given Helpdesk seems to employ the otherwise unemployable - mumbling illiterates who can't tell an elbow from an ASIC.
On the plus side, if I ever went back into IT, I'd be able to demand close to six figures just for Helpdesk work - because I'm the only guy with that much experience on the job, and as far as I can tell, the ability to set up a top-quality helpdesk or repair a failing one is epic-level rare even amongst those who style themselves helpdesk managers.
"See here," they said, "the laws, they need need a dozen items more,
Five donors want these updates, so we'll roll it out the door.
We couldn't care that folks out in the real world might complain,
When heavy-handed corp'rate kickbacks make them sweat and strain.
We want to boost our egos, so we bought the lobby's best -
We want it now, so bypass all those checks and silly tests.
There's nothing that could cause a pause, or wander from our line;
We took a peek, the code is ones and zeroes, so it's fine."
Interesting... I wonder how possible it would be to effectively create a micro-machine-shop? Something of a size between a small room and a suitcase, which could be plugged into an outlet, given suitable scrap metal, and spit out the parts for a copy of itself? Even if it needed to be plugged into a standard PC to act as CPU, storage, and optional internet connection for downloads?
(Bonus points if it comes with the absolute minimum number of parts to build the other parts of itself until it can self-replicate. And one of the more popular base-level programs might churn out a micro-assembly line as another PC peripheral, so that the whole thing can make the parts AND put them together. Follow it up with building some materials sensors and scanners, upgrades for the basic starter-kit parts, etc etc... using this bootstrap process, how small could the initial 'seed' device be?)
I can see advantages to using aircraft-durable cloth over a metal or carbon-fibre 'mesh' skin. The solid materials of the hull, plus any shapechanging elements, don't have to look aesthetic any more - they just have the one job to do. Put a skin over them, and the car can then look like anything you want it to, as well as protecting the harder layers from dirt and dents.
Double advantage - if anything *does* manage to put a hole in the fabric - and that would probably be something which could punch through most modern car skins anyway - the cloth panel is easier, cheaper, and faster to replace.
About the only disadvantage I can see is cloth skins possibly not being as long-term durable and shape-retaining as current hardskins. Is the original cloth covering still going to be shiny and wrinkle-free after 20 years' exposure to the weather, high speeds, and microcollisions with gravel, twigs etc, or will it be sagging? Especially if it's being continually stretched about by shapechanging elements like headlight covers and seamless doors, or being faded by having strong light shone through it?
Weird - last time I checked locally, quality PC suppliers would charge certain amounts for each component, an optional charge for assembling and hardware-testing the result, and then an additional optional charge for installing and configuring the OS of your choice, with a further charge if the OS wasn't a free one.
It was cheapest to simply order the parts, next cheapest to order an assembled PC, third-cheapest to have a free OS installed and set up, and most expensive to have a commercial-OS PC which would be running out of the box, as it were.
Of course, that was from dedicated vendors, not department stores or beige-box pushers.
Locally, we have the situation where the upcoming speedtrap locations for the day are printed in the morning newspaper and announced on morning and afternoon radio, the latter including to-the-minute updates as phoned in by motorists.
Effectively, this means that the police can strongly control traffic speed in the two miles leading up to a given location for up to an hour, simply by turning up and pointing a hairdryer at traffic for a few minutes.
Alter patents back to requiring a physical device and a completely new idea or significant demonstrable improvement over current devices.
Then patents, copyrights, and trademarks all can go on the geometric increase in fee system. I'd base it more on e than powers of ten, though. Start at $1 for the first year. That'll give $8103 for the tenth year, which is reasonable, but $178 million for the 20th year and 4 trillion for the 30th year. An inventor or writer could probably scrape up enough to cover their best work for ten years, but only the most profitable devices or media would make it beyond 20.
And by that point, the original rights-holder should be in a position to not only dominate all spin-offs, but have the greatest experience with the original idea - who would be better placed to consult or produce the best-quality public-domain versions?
Sure, Disney would swallow their own tongue, but Hollywood in general would be too busy feasting on the 15-to-20-year-old bonanza that they wouldn't have to pay the original creators to use. They might balance each other out. Then there's the bump in business which would result from the nullification of all existing patents which were not physical in nature or were not accompanied by a physical demonstration device. Free concepts and algorithms for everyone!
I guess it wouldn't work to ask around the development team and see if anyone wants to put on an accent for a week and make $20K?
Then again, what are the chances that someone at a video game company would have experience in roleplaying, imitations, SCA characterization etc? Naah...
The patent office, at least as of a few years ago, patented multiple perpetual motion machines every year, either because they didn't read the application or because they didn't know that it was physically impossible.
This wouldn't bug me, as long as the application was accompanied by a fully operational example:)
More generally, it's not up to the patent office to determine what is or isn't officially possible, as long as there's a physical device producing the correct results for the appropriate inputs. And if a device/effect is impossible, what's the harm in issuing a patent for it anyway? If it's ever challenged by someone who says that their Perpetuatron works while Professor Frink's Watts Up device doesn't, *and* the originally patented device has not been put into production, then the two claims can be tested against each other in an independent lab to see if the patent should be transferred.
- that they will be working onsite at the company, using only randomized variations of the real data, and will not have access to noncompany equipment or the internet. Writable media of any kind is disallowed. Their workstations will have read-only CD/DVD capability and no working USB, serial or parallel ports. They may request upgrades to the existing capacities of the machines (CPU power, additional RAM or disk, extra workstations or servers) but not add extra capacities. They may bring in their own software. The equipment they are given will be airgapped from the company network. The randomized company data will be supplied on DVD or CD.
Slashdot Mirror
Start paying attention to vocal intonation, body language, facial expression, and go read a whole lot of female-vs-male-psych information written by women in order to get the cultural delta (yes, there is one) to use as a base referent.
Telepathy doesn't hurt either ;)
Inventor of the walk-in wallet?
Sales figures for Vista vs downloads for Firefox :)
Finally, humans will be able to use a mouse AND keep two hands on the keyboard, or develop the skill to scrape a dinner plate into a flip-top bin!
Ideally, you'd want two routers, each connected to both WAN points and each other, at least two PCs, and for each computer to have a separate phsyical network connection to each router box.
This isn't as silly as it sounds, if the PCs are laptops or have cheap wireless cards, and the routers also have wireless (or are multiplexed to a pair of WAPs).
If you want really silly, have two or more separate servers running a single failoverable multiprocessor session across them, and use the PCs as simple remote terminals to the session. That way, even if a PC explodes in the middle of a complex bit of work, the other PC can pick up the same session without any data loss.
Make sure to have multiple physical RAID servers for storage. And a UPS which can run everything, in case the broken component turns out to be the grid power supply. Which probably means that you'd want at least one of the WAN links to be satellite...
Not to mention that if you're an ambitious or desperate small-to-medium employer looking to sign some contracts with major players, and an applicant's Facebook page shows that they personally know or have worked with certain big names, you might be more likely to offer them a job. Not because they can type faster or make better coffee, but because they might be able to open up new business opportunities for you.
More worringly, what if an applicant has applied at a company which has razor-thin operating margins or paranoid HR/legal departments, and the applicant's MySpace page lists the fact that they have assorted medical conditions requiring special equipment or time off, or details the multiple detrimental lawsuits they've launched against former employers? It might not affect the _quality_ of their work, but they sure as heck aren't going to get hired.
Is that a Funvee or a Humdrumvee?
Of course, this was a 2000-user federal government department, so simply searching for *porn*.jpg and the like used to return so many hits that it maxed out the search function on the Win98 workstation that had been set aside for the purpose. It had to be set aside because new material made it onto the user partitions faster than the workstation could delete it, even working 12+ hours per day.
We really should have scripted it, I guess - but there was too much else going on at the time. Oh well.
For the next stage, simulate a small chunk of the internet and play Core Wars with the programs which actually run. Breed them to end up with the fastest, deadliest, fastest-transmitting, hardest-to-catch sucka on the planet. Tell management that you advise against them connecting their personal laptops to the cluster...
Thus the huge wave of people not really suited to IT who washed into the industry, hung around for a couple of years, and washed out again once reality bit. The remnants are still plodding along in the boring, entry-level jobs that no-one else wants, and may well stay there for the next twenty-five years.
I worked various helpdesks for around ten years, and I have to say that I saw this becoming more and more the case. When I started out, I worked in places where a helpdesk job needed a bunch of skills tests, demonstrated familiarity with the local SOE, and about three months' training on top of that. And then you got to be God for anyone under the executive level. Most of the job was network monitoring, server tweaking, and catching and repairing faults before anyone was caught by the impact. You needed top-notch f2f, written and spoken communication skills, and were often called upon to be the IT trainer for new staff.
These days, any given Helpdesk seems to employ the otherwise unemployable - mumbling illiterates who can't tell an elbow from an ASIC.
On the plus side, if I ever went back into IT, I'd be able to demand close to six figures just for Helpdesk work - because I'm the only guy with that much experience on the job, and as far as I can tell, the ability to set up a top-quality helpdesk or repair a failing one is epic-level rare even amongst those who style themselves helpdesk managers.
(Mmm, consultancy work.)
I'm just waiting for his coffin to explode into a rain of acid-spewing alien velociraptor robots... on fire.
"See here," they said, "the laws, they need need a dozen items more,
Five donors want these updates, so we'll roll it out the door.
We couldn't care that folks out in the real world might complain,
When heavy-handed corp'rate kickbacks make them sweat and strain.
We want to boost our egos, so we bought the lobby's best -
We want it now, so bypass all those checks and silly tests.
There's nothing that could cause a pause, or wander from our line;
We took a peek, the code is ones and zeroes, so it's fine."
(Bonus points if it comes with the absolute minimum number of parts to build the other parts of itself until it can self-replicate. And one of the more popular base-level programs might churn out a micro-assembly line as another PC peripheral, so that the whole thing can make the parts AND put them together. Follow it up with building some materials sensors and scanners, upgrades for the basic starter-kit parts, etc etc... using this bootstrap process, how small could the initial 'seed' device be?)
We need to send MacGyver.
Pah! Just have all the uneducated people stand on each other's shoulders! That'd reach the moon!
Stashed under the pilot's seat aboard the Liberator?
Double advantage - if anything *does* manage to put a hole in the fabric - and that would probably be something which could punch through most modern car skins anyway - the cloth panel is easier, cheaper, and faster to replace.
About the only disadvantage I can see is cloth skins possibly not being as long-term durable and shape-retaining as current hardskins. Is the original cloth covering still going to be shiny and wrinkle-free after 20 years' exposure to the weather, high speeds, and microcollisions with gravel, twigs etc, or will it be sagging? Especially if it's being continually stretched about by shapechanging elements like headlight covers and seamless doors, or being faded by having strong light shone through it?
It was cheapest to simply order the parts, next cheapest to order an assembled PC, third-cheapest to have a free OS installed and set up, and most expensive to have a commercial-OS PC which would be running out of the box, as it were.
Of course, that was from dedicated vendors, not department stores or beige-box pushers.
Effectively, this means that the police can strongly control traffic speed in the two miles leading up to a given location for up to an hour, simply by turning up and pointing a hairdryer at traffic for a few minutes.
Then patents, copyrights, and trademarks all can go on the geometric increase in fee system. I'd base it more on e than powers of ten, though. Start at $1 for the first year. That'll give $8103 for the tenth year, which is reasonable, but $178 million for the 20th year and 4 trillion for the 30th year. An inventor or writer could probably scrape up enough to cover their best work for ten years, but only the most profitable devices or media would make it beyond 20.
And by that point, the original rights-holder should be in a position to not only dominate all spin-offs, but have the greatest experience with the original idea - who would be better placed to consult or produce the best-quality public-domain versions?
Sure, Disney would swallow their own tongue, but Hollywood in general would be too busy feasting on the 15-to-20-year-old bonanza that they wouldn't have to pay the original creators to use. They might balance each other out. Then there's the bump in business which would result from the nullification of all existing patents which were not physical in nature or were not accompanied by a physical demonstration device. Free concepts and algorithms for everyone!
Telecommute :)
Then again, what are the chances that someone at a video game company would have experience in roleplaying, imitations, SCA characterization etc? Naah...
This wouldn't bug me, as long as the application was accompanied by a fully operational example :)
More generally, it's not up to the patent office to determine what is or isn't officially possible, as long as there's a physical device producing the correct results for the appropriate inputs. And if a device/effect is impossible, what's the harm in issuing a patent for it anyway? If it's ever challenged by someone who says that their Perpetuatron works while Professor Frink's Watts Up device doesn't, *and* the originally patented device has not been put into production, then the two claims can be tested against each other in an independent lab to see if the patent should be transferred.
No cameras.