"They said they improved G+. Nope. I looked, it's still there."
Actually, to be honest, I do have one account that I've used to make a YouTube comment. I don't know much else beyond that. I can't really say if it's good or bad. Slashdot and other forums is about as much "social media" as I get.
This does not appear to be true. I've got a G+ account (I've never used it - I once was high and wanted to make a comment on YouTube because someone was wrong on the internet) and my real name is sure as hell not attached to that account, in any way, shape, or form.
Err... You know, it's not about the direct value of the electricity stored but what that electricity is capable of. If that electricity can keep your server farm going for a while longer, as a form of redundancy, and you're making a few million dollars per hour at that server farm then it's money well spent. It's nice to complain and all but it's better, I think, to look at the entirety of the picture before making such complaints.
Just because you're poor and unimaginative does not mean the rest of the world is as enlightened as you are. The question is not, how much is the power worth to you? The question is how much is the power worth to you when you have none?
There's a tendency towards revisionist history, here on Slashdot. Sometimes, for whatever reason, that appears to be aimed at NASA with an alarming frequency. I have no idea what the motivations are, nor do I understand the reasoning behind it. It's unfortunate, it really is. I can still think of justification for a space-bus, regardless of costs. And yes, yes I am aware of the risks to life. I'm not a coward, I don't freak out when someone loses a life. It happens and will continue to happen. If we let fear prevent us from our goals then what's the point of having goals?
Waterfall was, as I recall, not very effective - I'm sort of familiar with the idea but never used it and didn't know anyone who did. Why would one need a meeting to determine who did what? Is there no manager involved? What's wrong with an email, phone call, or just a visit to the other guy's office and seeing what's up? We (they) had meetings but not these frequent meetings which appear to be (from almost all accounts) nothing short of a blame-game.
I must be missing something. I suspect it has to do with business size. We had, at the end, about 200 employees when I sold the company. (A bit over that amount, around 220 as I recall.) Of these, maybe 1/4 were programmers - the dev team. Maybe a bit more. I don't have the numbers handy to check. We had a similar number (probably a bit less) in the ops team - though there was some cross-over. Then we had some who would maintain but they weren't really the developers. Then we had QA. Then sales, consultants, secretarial, etc...
Maybe we were too small to be able to be that formal? *shrugs* They all kind of naturally fell into groups. Tasks were assigned and shit got done. I've been to a lot of meetings and the vast majority seemed like a waste of time. We didn't have those, not too many of them at any rate. I guess we had some break-room unofficial meetings where a group might get together with another or just send a few guys to hash some shit out? Is it like that only more formal?
From the descriptions here it sounds like wasting time and trying to blame other people.
I always like reading these predictions. Do you have a favorite escrow service? If so, would you be interested in making a wager - payout available on the first day of 2040? Make it worth my while and set it up. I'll accept any wager of 10,000 USD and higher. You can rescind your bet, at any time, with a 50% penalty - so long as the same option applies to me. I will need to vet the escrow service, prior to agreement, but I'm willing to do a 1:1 bet of $10,000 or more. It'll help you buy filtration devices for your family, if you win. If you'll put up $50,000 or higher then I'll offer you 100:125 odds. I'm willing to use any reputable escrow account of your choosing. Simply let me know when you've put the money up. It'll do your family some good and would be the responsible thing to do, for your family. You love your family, right? This is a certainty, right?
I'm not an AC and I'm standing by my opinion. Let's see if you're willing to do the same.
I think it would depend wildly on the subject matter. If, say, Brian Cox were (somehow?) doing a documentary on which soda tasted better then I'd probably stop watching if he were wearing a Coke shirt. Then again, at this point, it's so absurd that I might just watch it for the amusement value. I'm not a huge fan of covert attempts to manipulate me. If you want to do so then, by all means, do so - I'm okay with that. Just do it and be upfront about it and I'm okay.
Err... If that makes any sense. Slipping repeated Coke products into the background or something? No thanks. Perhaps a "program sponsored by Coke" is okay - like PBS used to be before they went full five (or more) minutes of "not ads" at the start and end of a program.:( Hell, if they openly state they're sponsored by Coke and he wears a shirt then I'd be okay with it. (The shirt and hat weren't really the best examples, in hindsight. But I'll run with 'em now.)
So long as it's open then I don't think I'd mind, too much. Just don't try to manipulate me behind my back. There's a reason I don't watch TV and that's ads and lack of content but it's primarily ads. I'm willing to watch stupid shit. I don't want to be bombarded with stupider shit (like ads) constantly while doing so.
I was an early (I mean very early) adopter of ad blocking on the internet. Think Windows 95 days (I'd not yet been exposed to Linux, that was a couple of years later when I bought RedHat and then a copy of Slackware) and I was using some software (name forgotten) that ran as a proxy server (no, not that one) and it ate ads based on sizes and domains. I could add sizes to it and I could insert the URL of actual addresses as well as it supported wildcards.
It was kind of neat and only like five bucks. I've long since forgotten the name of the application, however. It was lost in a strange electro-magnetic incident that I've mentioned before but never figured it out.
I had a lightning strike right next to the house - it hit and split a tree in the driveway. I had lots of media that just went blank. Hard drives that weren't connected to anything were killed. Floppies and zip disks were killed. Things that weren't even in boxes got killed - simply deleted. No partition tables, no anything. Some data was able to be recovered but, alas, the ad munching software was not and the name is forever lost to me. It's not the proxy one that everyone tells me about when I mention this story.:/ It had a yellow icon in the system tray.
Or, instead of being embarrassed, they spin it as if they're innocent victims and being oppressed, silenced, and poorly treated minorities who are simply trying to do the work of God. It may actually have the effect of making people more inclined to join them.
Yip. Stop depending on other people to censor/tailor your content. Yes, it means you see shit posts. Oh well... Move on or waste your daily allotment of posts on a reply to them. If you can't handle reading at -1 then, well, you probably don't belong here. The only value in hiding the -1 posts is, from what I can see, is keeping them from being scraped by a search engine.
Are you new here? We're experts on EVERY subject and we know better than anyone else. If you did it, you did it wrong. It doesn't even matter what you eat - we know best and we'll tell you how you're wrong.
I see more and more sites telling me that they won't serve content unless I disable my adblocking software. They even are helpful enough to tell me how to disable it. That might be motivation enough for Random Joe to simply uninstall it. "Man, I really want to see this cat video!" If he says and sees that often enough, he may just remove it entirely.
Even before I install Opera - I install AdBlock Plus. Then I go to download Opera. I even do this with live sessions running from USB. Then, with Opera, I install ABP and I'm on my way from there. Often, I'll then toss uMatrix and grab the config file from Dropbox and be done with it - for live sessions that will be active for a while.
I'd estimate that 99% of what I watch are documentaries. If I see Brian Cox drinking a Coke and wearing a Nike hat and a shirt that says 'Disney' on it then, well, I'll probably stop watching. I don't even have OTA television hooked up at home. I did have satellite for a while but I got rid of that because I never watched it. I haven't really watched much "television" since the middle of the 1980s. They started having too many damned commercials, way back then, and I tired of it. The internet has been awesome for me. I get a playlist of streams going and I'm all set for hours. They're passive entertainment that plays in the background while I'm doing other things. I don't even really actively watch most of them (for some definition of actively) but they're something passive and in the background. I'll often play them as I'm going to sleep and I might catch an hour or two of those at night but I'm usually still doing something else.
I finally have my uMatrix configured well enough that I can disable Ghostery and Disconnect. I've not yet removed them but they are disabled. I don't whitelist any domains. I take the time to go through and add the settings for each sub as needed until I get the level of functionality that I need. I then keep it saved in a folder that gets synced to Dropbox. I can pull it and use it on any other box. So far, so good.
Yes, it takes some work but that's okay. Once it's done, it's done. I don't always get the full functionality of some sites. That's okay too. If I frequently visit the site then I'll configure specifically for that site. It doesn't take that long and being able to back it up for importing on other systems is nice.
I dunno... I have a stalker that pops up once in a while. Just think of it as you having the power to control them and it does your ego some good. They're just powerless, sad, people who feel obliged (and entitled) to voice their opinions in an effort to control you. The reality is, you control them. Just a few packets, some ones and zeros, and you can control their behavior. It's titillating.
Am I missing something or is this retarded? It sounds a bit like waterfall only less useful and more time wasting. I'm hoping that I'm missing something. As I lack any familiarity with this, I decided to check Wikipedia and it doesn't appear that I am missing anything important. This does not appear to be a bright idea. It doesn't even look good "on paper," to me.
Your post appears to be an underrated reply. I started off micro-managing and generally being in the way - preventing them from doing what they needed to do. Fortunately, for me, I had hired smart people who were willing to tell me to shut the hell up and get out of the way. It was a bruising for my ego but was a good thing, and a required thing, in the end.
I've trotted this line out before, it's probably close to verbatim: "Code comments go in the code, not on coffee soaked index cards on your desk, asshole." Or something along those lines. It was around that time that I turned my code base over and very seldom helped after that. They rewrote it all, in time, and it was much better for it. I hired them to do things that I could not.
I think more folks need to realize this and, from your post, I'm guessing that you have.
Hmm... Actually, I think we've been saying this backwards for years. You want a high signal to noise ratio. The lower the signal to noise ratio, the more difficult it is to filter out the noise. An SNR = 0 means, essentially, that the noise is the same level as the signal, thus it is harder to filter for. A higher SNR, say 10, is "good" in that you get more signal than you do noise.
So, in your case, you had a lower signal to noise ratio because there was more noise than there could have been. Even knowing better, I too have said it that way for years and I've seen lots of other people state it backwards just like you and I. A while back, maybe a few weeks ago, I saw an intelligent poster mention it and I thought they had it backwards. Being wise enough to know when to look before leaping, I did some thinking and I did some searching.
It turns out, I'm now pretty sure, we've been saying it backwards. I've dug out another link, this wasn't the one that I read, and will cite it here: http://www.pcmag.com/encyclope...
You *want* a high signal to noise ratio. (Think about it.) You want more signal than noise. I wonder if there's a negative? Where there's more noise than signal? Maybe we can just call it a NSR. I'd guess an SNR -4 would be that there's four times more noise than signal but I don't think I've ever heard it expressed that way. Hmm... Google indicates there's a negative SNR (expressed in dB) but I clicked through nary a single result.
I've left this tab open for a while. It's a lot to digest. I feel obligated to reply but I've yet to process it all and don't like making uninformed opinions. I'm inclined to agree, it seems to make sense. It fits what I know of history, fairly well. So, unfortunately, for now, you get, "Thanks and that will require some thought."
I may, indeed, reply later - if such is okay. For now? I've read it three times, in full. I'm still pondering. I'll leave the tab open and refer to it again in a while (again) and see what comes to mind with some fresh thoughts. It sounds, well, either too simple or too conspiratorial. I'm not sure which, at this point, and can't put my finger on it. While I'm inclined to accept it at face value, frankly, it just looks too nicely packaged.
I'm familiar with waterfall but this other stuff is still fairly new to me - I was out of the industry in total some 8 years ago and did fewer tech things as time progressed prior to that. I've heard the words and I've even looked up the definitions. It seems retarded.
However, what the hell just happened to setting some guidelines and getting the fuck out of the way?
You go to devs and say, "I need this." They say, "Okay. We'll let you know." They come and say, "It will take this long and we need this." You give them this and wait that long. They come give you the original this.
Pay them well, give them articulated goals, give them the tools they need, and get the fuck out of the way. It took me some time to learn this but, well, it worked for me. It doesn't seem very complicated. In my case it was just a matter of realizing that I'd hired them for a reason and trusting them to "take good care of my baby." They had meetings, they did stuff. I gave them money, they built stuff. I dare say, it worked out well.
This thought exercise requires that we don't kill innocents. (I know, I know, but bear with me.) How do you propose we will kill just the IS soldiers and supporters?
I read your other link, I didn't watch the video so I'm assuming the description is accurate. I kind of like the idea of America walking softly and carrying a big stick. Let's let Europe play with their problem. Either way, it's not like anyone will try my suggestion so we're safe there. I still think it might be interesting to see the results. Maybe they'd settle down? Maybe they'd not try to be expansionists and make us kill them all. Getting the innocent out and those who want to leave out would be a good start. After that, I suppose, we could always renege on our deal and just bomb the hell out of them.
We have never tried it. With the varied stipulations, it may work. Let's assume that the killing of innocents is considered unreasonable, even if just a thought exercise. What options do we have remaining?
I've never once bought any fertilizer. I take the tractor over and load up a wagon with cow poop. I till that into the soil and I'm good so far. I also eat those cows and pigs. I eat deer and moose. I eat fish. When I'm home, the vast majority of my food is something I've personally be involved with at a very high level. I've not only learned to butcher, I can do a number of cuts fairly well now, but I've learned many techniques to preserve my food.
Considering that the neighbors are aging, older than I, and will be handing their farm to their child when they pass - it's also likely that I'll technically own a farm in the future. I'll likely be purchasing it and employing a local couple to live there and work the farm on my behalf. The plan is kind of, sort of, in place already up to, and including, the male half of the local couple already working on the farm and both of them living there while the lady half still works in the village at the school.
So, there's a lot that I don't know but I know that I've never - directly, purchased fertilizer. I don't think they buy any either but I am not home to ask and an email to them will go unanswered for quite some time. I am pretty sure they don't buy any. I suppose they buy some food for the animals but a lot of that is grown as well. I guess buying the food can be extrapolated to buying fertilizer?
Slashdot Mirror
To paraphrase someone's signature (I forget who);
"They said they improved G+. Nope. I looked, it's still there."
Actually, to be honest, I do have one account that I've used to make a YouTube comment. I don't know much else beyond that. I can't really say if it's good or bad. Slashdot and other forums is about as much "social media" as I get.
This does not appear to be true. I've got a G+ account (I've never used it - I once was high and wanted to make a comment on YouTube because someone was wrong on the internet) and my real name is sure as hell not attached to that account, in any way, shape, or form.
Err... You know, it's not about the direct value of the electricity stored but what that electricity is capable of. If that electricity can keep your server farm going for a while longer, as a form of redundancy, and you're making a few million dollars per hour at that server farm then it's money well spent. It's nice to complain and all but it's better, I think, to look at the entirety of the picture before making such complaints.
Just because you're poor and unimaginative does not mean the rest of the world is as enlightened as you are. The question is not, how much is the power worth to you? The question is how much is the power worth to you when you have none?
Well, they did have an album called, "High Voltage."
There's a tendency towards revisionist history, here on Slashdot. Sometimes, for whatever reason, that appears to be aimed at NASA with an alarming frequency. I have no idea what the motivations are, nor do I understand the reasoning behind it. It's unfortunate, it really is. I can still think of justification for a space-bus, regardless of costs. And yes, yes I am aware of the risks to life. I'm not a coward, I don't freak out when someone loses a life. It happens and will continue to happen. If we let fear prevent us from our goals then what's the point of having goals?
Waterfall was, as I recall, not very effective - I'm sort of familiar with the idea but never used it and didn't know anyone who did. Why would one need a meeting to determine who did what? Is there no manager involved? What's wrong with an email, phone call, or just a visit to the other guy's office and seeing what's up? We (they) had meetings but not these frequent meetings which appear to be (from almost all accounts) nothing short of a blame-game.
I must be missing something. I suspect it has to do with business size. We had, at the end, about 200 employees when I sold the company. (A bit over that amount, around 220 as I recall.) Of these, maybe 1/4 were programmers - the dev team. Maybe a bit more. I don't have the numbers handy to check. We had a similar number (probably a bit less) in the ops team - though there was some cross-over. Then we had some who would maintain but they weren't really the developers. Then we had QA. Then sales, consultants, secretarial, etc...
Maybe we were too small to be able to be that formal? *shrugs* They all kind of naturally fell into groups. Tasks were assigned and shit got done. I've been to a lot of meetings and the vast majority seemed like a waste of time. We didn't have those, not too many of them at any rate. I guess we had some break-room unofficial meetings where a group might get together with another or just send a few guys to hash some shit out? Is it like that only more formal?
From the descriptions here it sounds like wasting time and trying to blame other people.
I always like reading these predictions. Do you have a favorite escrow service? If so, would you be interested in making a wager - payout available on the first day of 2040? Make it worth my while and set it up. I'll accept any wager of 10,000 USD and higher. You can rescind your bet, at any time, with a 50% penalty - so long as the same option applies to me. I will need to vet the escrow service, prior to agreement, but I'm willing to do a 1:1 bet of $10,000 or more. It'll help you buy filtration devices for your family, if you win. If you'll put up $50,000 or higher then I'll offer you 100:125 odds. I'm willing to use any reputable escrow account of your choosing. Simply let me know when you've put the money up. It'll do your family some good and would be the responsible thing to do, for your family. You love your family, right? This is a certainty, right?
I'm not an AC and I'm standing by my opinion. Let's see if you're willing to do the same.
I dunno... The astronauts that repaired the Hubble might not have been able to do so on any other platform that was available at the time.
Now, all we need is how to fit a greased up Europa up your ass and the circle will be complete.
I think it would depend wildly on the subject matter. If, say, Brian Cox were (somehow?) doing a documentary on which soda tasted better then I'd probably stop watching if he were wearing a Coke shirt. Then again, at this point, it's so absurd that I might just watch it for the amusement value. I'm not a huge fan of covert attempts to manipulate me. If you want to do so then, by all means, do so - I'm okay with that. Just do it and be upfront about it and I'm okay.
Err... If that makes any sense. Slipping repeated Coke products into the background or something? No thanks. Perhaps a "program sponsored by Coke" is okay - like PBS used to be before they went full five (or more) minutes of "not ads" at the start and end of a program. :( Hell, if they openly state they're sponsored by Coke and he wears a shirt then I'd be okay with it. (The shirt and hat weren't really the best examples, in hindsight. But I'll run with 'em now.)
So long as it's open then I don't think I'd mind, too much. Just don't try to manipulate me behind my back. There's a reason I don't watch TV and that's ads and lack of content but it's primarily ads. I'm willing to watch stupid shit. I don't want to be bombarded with stupider shit (like ads) constantly while doing so.
I was an early (I mean very early) adopter of ad blocking on the internet. Think Windows 95 days (I'd not yet been exposed to Linux, that was a couple of years later when I bought RedHat and then a copy of Slackware) and I was using some software (name forgotten) that ran as a proxy server (no, not that one) and it ate ads based on sizes and domains. I could add sizes to it and I could insert the URL of actual addresses as well as it supported wildcards.
I could block:
example.com/image.jpg/
example.com/ads/*
example.com/*
etc...
It was kind of neat and only like five bucks. I've long since forgotten the name of the application, however. It was lost in a strange electro-magnetic incident that I've mentioned before but never figured it out.
I had a lightning strike right next to the house - it hit and split a tree in the driveway. I had lots of media that just went blank. Hard drives that weren't connected to anything were killed. Floppies and zip disks were killed. Things that weren't even in boxes got killed - simply deleted. No partition tables, no anything. Some data was able to be recovered but, alas, the ad munching software was not and the name is forever lost to me. It's not the proxy one that everyone tells me about when I mention this story. :/ It had a yellow icon in the system tray.
*sighs*
Or, instead of being embarrassed, they spin it as if they're innocent victims and being oppressed, silenced, and poorly treated minorities who are simply trying to do the work of God. It may actually have the effect of making people more inclined to join them.
Yip. Stop depending on other people to censor/tailor your content. Yes, it means you see shit posts. Oh well... Move on or waste your daily allotment of posts on a reply to them. If you can't handle reading at -1 then, well, you probably don't belong here. The only value in hiding the -1 posts is, from what I can see, is keeping them from being scraped by a search engine.
Are you new here? We're experts on EVERY subject and we know better than anyone else. If you did it, you did it wrong. It doesn't even matter what you eat - we know best and we'll tell you how you're wrong.
It's what we do.
I see more and more sites telling me that they won't serve content unless I disable my adblocking software. They even are helpful enough to tell me how to disable it. That might be motivation enough for Random Joe to simply uninstall it. "Man, I really want to see this cat video!" If he says and sees that often enough, he may just remove it entirely.
Even before I install Opera - I install AdBlock Plus. Then I go to download Opera. I even do this with live sessions running from USB. Then, with Opera, I install ABP and I'm on my way from there. Often, I'll then toss uMatrix and grab the config file from Dropbox and be done with it - for live sessions that will be active for a while.
I'd estimate that 99% of what I watch are documentaries. If I see Brian Cox drinking a Coke and wearing a Nike hat and a shirt that says 'Disney' on it then, well, I'll probably stop watching. I don't even have OTA television hooked up at home. I did have satellite for a while but I got rid of that because I never watched it. I haven't really watched much "television" since the middle of the 1980s. They started having too many damned commercials, way back then, and I tired of it. The internet has been awesome for me. I get a playlist of streams going and I'm all set for hours. They're passive entertainment that plays in the background while I'm doing other things. I don't even really actively watch most of them (for some definition of actively) but they're something passive and in the background. I'll often play them as I'm going to sleep and I might catch an hour or two of those at night but I'm usually still doing something else.
I finally have my uMatrix configured well enough that I can disable Ghostery and Disconnect. I've not yet removed them but they are disabled. I don't whitelist any domains. I take the time to go through and add the settings for each sub as needed until I get the level of functionality that I need. I then keep it saved in a folder that gets synced to Dropbox. I can pull it and use it on any other box. So far, so good.
Yes, it takes some work but that's okay. Once it's done, it's done. I don't always get the full functionality of some sites. That's okay too. If I frequently visit the site then I'll configure specifically for that site. It doesn't take that long and being able to back it up for importing on other systems is nice.
I dunno... I have a stalker that pops up once in a while. Just think of it as you having the power to control them and it does your ego some good. They're just powerless, sad, people who feel obliged (and entitled) to voice their opinions in an effort to control you. The reality is, you control them. Just a few packets, some ones and zeros, and you can control their behavior. It's titillating.
Am I missing something or is this retarded? It sounds a bit like waterfall only less useful and more time wasting. I'm hoping that I'm missing something. As I lack any familiarity with this, I decided to check Wikipedia and it doesn't appear that I am missing anything important. This does not appear to be a bright idea. It doesn't even look good "on paper," to me.
Your post appears to be an underrated reply. I started off micro-managing and generally being in the way - preventing them from doing what they needed to do. Fortunately, for me, I had hired smart people who were willing to tell me to shut the hell up and get out of the way. It was a bruising for my ego but was a good thing, and a required thing, in the end.
I've trotted this line out before, it's probably close to verbatim: "Code comments go in the code, not on coffee soaked index cards on your desk, asshole." Or something along those lines. It was around that time that I turned my code base over and very seldom helped after that. They rewrote it all, in time, and it was much better for it. I hired them to do things that I could not.
I think more folks need to realize this and, from your post, I'm guessing that you have.
Hmm... Actually, I think we've been saying this backwards for years. You want a high signal to noise ratio. The lower the signal to noise ratio, the more difficult it is to filter out the noise. An SNR = 0 means, essentially, that the noise is the same level as the signal, thus it is harder to filter for. A higher SNR, say 10, is "good" in that you get more signal than you do noise.
So, in your case, you had a lower signal to noise ratio because there was more noise than there could have been. Even knowing better, I too have said it that way for years and I've seen lots of other people state it backwards just like you and I. A while back, maybe a few weeks ago, I saw an intelligent poster mention it and I thought they had it backwards. Being wise enough to know when to look before leaping, I did some thinking and I did some searching.
It turns out, I'm now pretty sure, we've been saying it backwards. I've dug out another link, this wasn't the one that I read, and will cite it here:
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclope...
You *want* a high signal to noise ratio. (Think about it.) You want more signal than noise. I wonder if there's a negative? Where there's more noise than signal? Maybe we can just call it a NSR. I'd guess an SNR -4 would be that there's four times more noise than signal but I don't think I've ever heard it expressed that way. Hmm... Google indicates there's a negative SNR (expressed in dB) but I clicked through nary a single result.
I've left this tab open for a while. It's a lot to digest. I feel obligated to reply but I've yet to process it all and don't like making uninformed opinions. I'm inclined to agree, it seems to make sense. It fits what I know of history, fairly well. So, unfortunately, for now, you get, "Thanks and that will require some thought."
I may, indeed, reply later - if such is okay. For now? I've read it three times, in full. I'm still pondering. I'll leave the tab open and refer to it again in a while (again) and see what comes to mind with some fresh thoughts. It sounds, well, either too simple or too conspiratorial. I'm not sure which, at this point, and can't put my finger on it. While I'm inclined to accept it at face value, frankly, it just looks too nicely packaged.
I'm not sure if that makes sense or not.
I'm familiar with waterfall but this other stuff is still fairly new to me - I was out of the industry in total some 8 years ago and did fewer tech things as time progressed prior to that. I've heard the words and I've even looked up the definitions. It seems retarded.
However, what the hell just happened to setting some guidelines and getting the fuck out of the way?
You go to devs and say, "I need this."
They say, "Okay. We'll let you know."
They come and say, "It will take this long and we need this."
You give them this and wait that long.
They come give you the original this.
Pay them well, give them articulated goals, give them the tools they need, and get the fuck out of the way. It took me some time to learn this but, well, it worked for me. It doesn't seem very complicated. In my case it was just a matter of realizing that I'd hired them for a reason and trusting them to "take good care of my baby." They had meetings, they did stuff. I gave them money, they built stuff. I dare say, it worked out well.
This thought exercise requires that we don't kill innocents. (I know, I know, but bear with me.) How do you propose we will kill just the IS soldiers and supporters?
I read your other link, I didn't watch the video so I'm assuming the description is accurate. I kind of like the idea of America walking softly and carrying a big stick. Let's let Europe play with their problem. Either way, it's not like anyone will try my suggestion so we're safe there. I still think it might be interesting to see the results. Maybe they'd settle down? Maybe they'd not try to be expansionists and make us kill them all. Getting the innocent out and those who want to leave out would be a good start. After that, I suppose, we could always renege on our deal and just bomb the hell out of them.
We have never tried it. With the varied stipulations, it may work. Let's assume that the killing of innocents is considered unreasonable, even if just a thought exercise. What options do we have remaining?
I've never once bought any fertilizer. I take the tractor over and load up a wagon with cow poop. I till that into the soil and I'm good so far. I also eat those cows and pigs. I eat deer and moose. I eat fish. When I'm home, the vast majority of my food is something I've personally be involved with at a very high level. I've not only learned to butcher, I can do a number of cuts fairly well now, but I've learned many techniques to preserve my food.
Considering that the neighbors are aging, older than I, and will be handing their farm to their child when they pass - it's also likely that I'll technically own a farm in the future. I'll likely be purchasing it and employing a local couple to live there and work the farm on my behalf. The plan is kind of, sort of, in place already up to, and including, the male half of the local couple already working on the farm and both of them living there while the lady half still works in the village at the school.
So, there's a lot that I don't know but I know that I've never - directly, purchased fertilizer. I don't think they buy any either but I am not home to ask and an email to them will go unanswered for quite some time. I am pretty sure they don't buy any. I suppose they buy some food for the animals but a lot of that is grown as well. I guess buying the food can be extrapolated to buying fertilizer?