We might call this "deflective multitasking", where the scheduler switches you over to other tasks as soon as you run into difficulty: trying to remember something, trying to perform a calculation, any sort of challenging task. Deflective multitasking is a natural style to adopt, a consequence of having easy access to many tasks (welcome to the modern day) and having an aversive response to difficulty. Quite natural. But here's one place where "organic" is a bad label to have.
When we keep dodging strenuous mental work our minds atrophy. Focus, recall, calculation all suffer. We grow lamer.
A smarter scheduling method is required for healthy multitasking. Sure, maintain the interrupt sensitivity and context switching skill — those are valuable. But lose the deflectivity.
I think for now I'll try to implement a simple scheduler. 15 minutes per task, no switching. If my brain starts performing better I'll get back to trying a more sophisticated scheduling, honing interrupt sensitivity and context switching, and trying to find sensible moments for switching like actual resource unavailability or alternate task ripeness.
Multitasking is useful. We shouldn't throw out the baby with the brainrot.
Interesting. I feel like there may be some truth to this. Inattention and texting may not necessarily be concomitant. Kind of like how eating a lot of sugary and fatty foods != getting fat. On the other hand, the link is overwhelmingly the tendency.
Ah, it's a matter of degrees, not a binary "I pay attention". Texting doubtlessly impairs your ability to drive to some degree. It just could be that with you texting doesn't impair you badly, and you might have a far greater buffer of driving skill to detract from before things get necessarily dangerous. Numerically this might look like:
You:
95 units of driving skill
-10 units of texting impairment
Average:
70 units of driving skill
-25 units of texting impairment
One thing to keep in mind is that there isn't any rigid cutoff — safety isn't entirely determined by your available attention/skill, but the situation as well. Cruising in light traffic requires maybe 25 units total, easy peasy. So generally people think it's safe for them to text. But shit happens. We all know it. And it happens on the highway. And when it does, it's serious.
25 units - cruising in light traffic
50 units - lane changing in light traffic
65 units - car in front brakes aggressively
70 units - car next lane over attempts to merge into your lane
85 units - car in front slams brakes
Without texting you could have avoided your airbag nose break.
I guess that blue line may look "level" if a person doesn't think about it much.
But upon closer inspection you'll realize that it shows an 8% drop over the year. The same happened in 2007-2008. Just three years more of that kind of drop and you'll lose another quarter of the market.
No, IE doesn't have 90% as GP tried to say. And IE is in fact dropping like a rock (PNG version for those with outdated browsers).
People are learning that IE just isn't cool anymore. And I'm glad of it.
Yeah, and who the hell is going to use Phoenix? I mean, Firebird. Oh, I guess it started getting popular. I mean, Firefox. Gee, I guess... things change.
But screw FLAC since it has no hardware support. If there's no audience, why would vendors opt to build in support? Oh, but I guess FLAC did get more popular. And more people adopted it despite lack of hardware support. Gee, I guess now... there isFLAC hardware support, and adoption rate speeds up because of it.
This phenomenon is similar to voting. Third party candidates are treated as not viable because they're not popular enough, so they don't get votes. But they can't achieve popularity without votes showing their viability... (This particular system, U.S. plurality voting, is fucked, though, as incremental progress is squashed by it being a non-preferential voting system. You can't cast a vote to demonstrate viability without disenfranchising yourself from the current round of political decision.)
We must support IE! The year of the Linux desktop will never come! People are just greedy and you can't be generous! Theora doesn't have hardware support! Blah blah blah!
My opinion? Folks fail to grasp that many, many systems are dynamics. Arrangements of smoothly continuous mutual influence. Instead they see only chickens or eggs, or the lack there of fully-formed ones. It's a misperception driven by erroneous expectation. I'm getting pretty sick of that.
Surprised this hasn't been mentioned. Especially since they're trying to credit T.U.M. with the technique.
Re:Still useful after all these years...
on
Emacs Hits Version 23
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The choice to not learn is yours, and you're the most informed person with regards to the environment (your life) into which such knowledge/skill would fit. That makes you the best judge except that you probably don't know what the benefits are exactly nor the time involved to learn. If you're resistant to learning computer tools (of whichever stripe), perhaps out of perceived lack of benefit or expected difficulty (rigamarole, hassle), that will make learning harder. We all need to beware our preconceived notions. Often we're just fooling ourselves with comforting beliefs... that are wrong... and harmful.
Okay, here's how you version control config files:
ci -l.vimrc
Then you say what's changed. It's really not hard.
As for working in a system administration team v. working alone — it's almost the same. I am a different sysadmin from myself... on different days. I can't remember every change I've made or motivation for it. Version controlled files are a log of activity and intention as well as a way to revert if needed. It's useful, and the time and effort we've spent discussing the matter actually far outweigh the time and effort simply to do it. How much else in our lives is like this? We really need to beware our prejudices. "Granfalloons" may seem small, but the painful truth is that they add up. Good luck.
Re:Still useful after all these years...
on
Emacs Hits Version 23
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Whoa whoa, "not quite how average people think" is one thing, but "not quite sane" is just off.
Average people don't program computers. But programming computers is not insane.
Average Vim or Emacs users may not version control their config files. But doing so is not insane.
Maybe you're not a sysadmin. Version controlling your server application configs is really beneficial. Okay, now extend the concept to version controlling all your application configs. Makes sense.
And if your editor config isn't changing over time, maybe you're also not any kind of sophisticated text editor user. I'm making about 2.5 revisions a year. Every year I learn a few new things about my editor. I imagine this is what happens with most folks who take their tools seriously.
I mean, no offense. It's okay if people aren't uber-serious about the tools they use, surely they can still get things done. But your not seeing the sense in version controlling editor config files should not be mistaken for there being a lack of it.
Say, that's a pretty good idea. Start by limiting the input to DNS-valid characters.
Geez.
For anyone who thinks "Well, I guess there might be some bad CAs out there," please keep in mind that it only requires one of the CAs (or their delegates) that your browser recognizes to make a mistake and you're hosed. Now go look at how many CAs are listed in your browser.
Damnit, it's time to flog this again:
Every time this topic comes around I feel like I should share this thing I've run across: Perspectives.
Basically, "network notaries". Decentralization of (a kind of) authentication.
This is one thing that makes self-signed certs viable for a popular audience.
"Foo is bullshit. Foo is completely arbitrary.... Uh, but Foo is useful when done a certain way..."
While I get the gist of your comment (assuming you don't actually have a self-contradictingly caricaturized model in your head), it seems to me you could have put it more clearly.
It's useful to know when an entity/organization has tendencies. If Microsoft has a history (and/or a nature) that leads you to expect more shitty behavior from them, you have to be smart and act accordingly.
Hating them for their misbehavior is kind of unreasonable. Having a bad opinion of them without clear reasons (case histories, e.g.) is also irrational. Folks are sometimes driven by bandwagons and general hating, and those are surely diseases.
Seeing every detractor as a hater is more stupidity.
I can understand the economic benefit of planned obsolescence (from the producer's perspective), so I see what you're saying there.
Still, I think we've got a paradigm shift going on. And I think that'll mean a big change in reliability levels. I'm interested in seeing what we'll really be getting as far as failure modes. I'm guessing abrupt, total failure will be extremely rare within warranty periods, but that gradual performance loss (depending on usage profile) will be how these things will wear out. But, really, I have no idea and am just talking out my ass.
But as far as farting v. shitting, sure, that's a better analogy. The thing you have to keep in mind that Mike farts a lot. At some point you gotta reconsider having Mike around.
Ah, this is probably what they experienced. They probably zoomed past the dialog and didn't realize it.
Maybe it would be better to have the dialog require the user think. Two buttons to progress to the next screen, "make default browser" and "don't make default browser".
It seems that's really pushing it, though. How many dialog boxes does the user have to fiddle with anyway? If four or less, they can pay enough attention to handle this one dialog.
Puppy Mike is ornery, always causing problems. Puppy Moe is adorable, does many cute things and is very agreeable.
Ornery puppy Mike shits on your carpet. "Bad puppy!"
Adorable puppy Moe — whoops! — also shits on your carpet.
You look back and forth between them, scratch your head, and declare, "You gotta stop bashing EVERYTHING puppy Mike does!"
As if you wanted crap on your carpet at all?
But given Moe's past performance, I'd be surprised if there were in fact crap on your carpet. So maybe you should post a story about it, as recommended.
When you installed Firefox, you specifically sought out the installer, downloaded it and ran it. It's quite a reasonable assumption there that you'd like to use it as your default browser.
I disagree. A browser installation or upgrade should always ask whether you want your default browser changed.
Slashdot Mirror
"computer-mediated reality" / "augmented reality"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyetap
Follow the thread. Comments exist in context.
Well, no. That's more oversimplification.
If you want to get crazily oversimplified, we should be banning radios in cars. And passengers. Any "little" distraction.
"My head hurts, let's do something easier."
The crux of it right there.
We might call this "deflective multitasking", where the scheduler switches you over to other tasks as soon as you run into difficulty: trying to remember something, trying to perform a calculation, any sort of challenging task. Deflective multitasking is a natural style to adopt, a consequence of having easy access to many tasks (welcome to the modern day) and having an aversive response to difficulty. Quite natural. But here's one place where "organic" is a bad label to have.
When we keep dodging strenuous mental work our minds atrophy. Focus, recall, calculation all suffer. We grow lamer.
A smarter scheduling method is required for healthy multitasking. Sure, maintain the interrupt sensitivity and context switching skill — those are valuable. But lose the deflectivity.
I think for now I'll try to implement a simple scheduler. 15 minutes per task, no switching. If my brain starts performing better I'll get back to trying a more sophisticated scheduling, honing interrupt sensitivity and context switching, and trying to find sensible moments for switching like actual resource unavailability or alternate task ripeness.
Multitasking is useful. We shouldn't throw out the baby with the brainrot.
texting != not paying attention
Interesting. I feel like there may be some truth to this. Inattention and texting may not necessarily be concomitant. Kind of like how eating a lot of sugary and fatty foods != getting fat. On the other hand, the link is overwhelmingly the tendency.
Ah, it's a matter of degrees, not a binary "I pay attention". Texting doubtlessly impairs your ability to drive to some degree. It just could be that with you texting doesn't impair you badly, and you might have a far greater buffer of driving skill to detract from before things get necessarily dangerous. Numerically this might look like:
You:
Average:
One thing to keep in mind is that there isn't any rigid cutoff — safety isn't entirely determined by your available attention/skill, but the situation as well. Cruising in light traffic requires maybe 25 units total, easy peasy. So generally people think it's safe for them to text. But shit happens. We all know it. And it happens on the highway. And when it does, it's serious.
Without texting you could have avoided your airbag nose break.
No, we must stop the mutants.
Test for presence of the X-gene and detain them if they test positive.
At least disqualify them from athletic competition for starters.
"No significant change"? WTH.
I guess that blue line may look "level" if a person doesn't think about it much.
But upon closer inspection you'll realize that it shows an 8% drop over the year. The same happened in 2007-2008. Just three years more of that kind of drop and you'll lose another quarter of the market.
No, IE doesn't have 90% as GP tried to say. And IE is in fact dropping like a rock (PNG version for those with outdated browsers).
People are learning that IE just isn't cool anymore. And I'm glad of it.
Yeah, and who the hell is going to use Phoenix? I mean, Firebird. Oh, I guess it started getting popular. I mean, Firefox. Gee, I guess... things change.
But screw FLAC since it has no hardware support. If there's no audience, why would vendors opt to build in support? Oh, but I guess FLAC did get more popular. And more people adopted it despite lack of hardware support. Gee, I guess now... there is FLAC hardware support, and adoption rate speeds up because of it.
This phenomenon is similar to voting. Third party candidates are treated as not viable because they're not popular enough, so they don't get votes. But they can't achieve popularity without votes showing their viability... (This particular system, U.S. plurality voting, is fucked, though, as incremental progress is squashed by it being a non-preferential voting system. You can't cast a vote to demonstrate viability without disenfranchising yourself from the current round of political decision.)
We must support IE! The year of the Linux desktop will never come! People are just greedy and you can't be generous! Theora doesn't have hardware support! Blah blah blah!
My opinion? Folks fail to grasp that many, many systems are dynamics. Arrangements of smoothly continuous mutual influence. Instead they see only chickens or eggs, or the lack there of fully-formed ones. It's a misperception driven by erroneous expectation. I'm getting pretty sick of that.
They have over 90% of the market?
90%? What? That's a bit odd. Really, it's <70% and dropping like a rock.
See for yourself here. (Requires SVG-capable browser.)
This fellow, Paul Rothemund, may have developed this technique before Technische Universitaet Muenchen: http://www.dna.caltech.edu/~pwkr/
Here's a TED speech on it. Gives a more detailed idea of how it's meant to be used for construction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn1snjEtk54
Surprised this hasn't been mentioned. Especially since they're trying to credit T.U.M. with the technique.
The choice to not learn is yours, and you're the most informed person with regards to the environment (your life) into which such knowledge/skill would fit. That makes you the best judge except that you probably don't know what the benefits are exactly nor the time involved to learn. If you're resistant to learning computer tools (of whichever stripe), perhaps out of perceived lack of benefit or expected difficulty (rigamarole, hassle), that will make learning harder. We all need to beware our preconceived notions. Often we're just fooling ourselves with comforting beliefs... that are wrong... and harmful.
Okay, here's how you version control config files:
ci -l .vimrc
Then you say what's changed. It's really not hard.
As for working in a system administration team v. working alone — it's almost the same. I am a different sysadmin from myself... on different days. I can't remember every change I've made or motivation for it. Version controlled files are a log of activity and intention as well as a way to revert if needed. It's useful, and the time and effort we've spent discussing the matter actually far outweigh the time and effort simply to do it. How much else in our lives is like this? We really need to beware our prejudices. "Granfalloons" may seem small, but the painful truth is that they add up. Good luck.
Whoa whoa, "not quite how average people think" is one thing, but "not quite sane" is just off.
Average people don't program computers. But programming computers is not insane.
Average Vim or Emacs users may not version control their config files. But doing so is not insane.
Maybe you're not a sysadmin. Version controlling your server application configs is really beneficial. Okay, now extend the concept to version controlling all your application configs. Makes sense.
And if your editor config isn't changing over time, maybe you're also not any kind of sophisticated text editor user. I'm making about 2.5 revisions a year. Every year I learn a few new things about my editor. I imagine this is what happens with most folks who take their tools seriously.
I mean, no offense. It's okay if people aren't uber-serious about the tools they use, surely they can still get things done. But your not seeing the sense in version controlling editor config files should not be mistaken for there being a lack of it.
\0 isn't a legal character in DNS protocol
Say, that's a pretty good idea. Start by limiting the input to DNS-valid characters.
Geez.
For anyone who thinks "Well, I guess there might be some bad CAs out there," please keep in mind that it only requires one of the CAs (or their delegates) that your browser recognizes to make a mistake and you're hosed. Now go look at how many CAs are listed in your browser.
Damnit, it's time to flog this again:
Every time this topic comes around I feel like I should share this thing I've run across:
Perspectives.
Basically, "network notaries". Decentralization of (a kind of) authentication.
This is one thing that makes self-signed certs viable for a popular audience.
... instead of mere assertions followed by insulting invective?
Yeah, like "This is just pointless narcissism ... furiously wanking ..."
Every time this topic comes around I feel like I should share this thing I've run across: Perspectives.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/
Basically, "network notaries". Decentralization of (a kind of) authentication.
This is one thing that makes self-signed certs viable for a popular audience.
"Foo is bullshit. Foo is completely arbitrary. ... Uh, but Foo is useful when done a certain way..."
While I get the gist of your comment (assuming you don't actually have a self-contradictingly caricaturized model in your head), it seems to me you could have put it more clearly.
It's useful to know when an entity/organization has tendencies. If Microsoft has a history (and/or a nature) that leads you to expect more shitty behavior from them, you have to be smart and act accordingly.
Hating them for their misbehavior is kind of unreasonable. Having a bad opinion of them without clear reasons (case histories, e.g.) is also irrational. Folks are sometimes driven by bandwagons and general hating, and those are surely diseases.
Seeing every detractor as a hater is more stupidity.
I'm just sayin'. Watch your reflexes.
"... it was a clever new viral marketing campaign put on by some guy."
I can understand the economic benefit of planned obsolescence (from the producer's perspective), so I see what you're saying there.
Still, I think we've got a paradigm shift going on. And I think that'll mean a big change in reliability levels. I'm interested in seeing what we'll really be getting as far as failure modes. I'm guessing abrupt, total failure will be extremely rare within warranty periods, but that gradual performance loss (depending on usage profile) will be how these things will wear out. But, really, I have no idea and am just talking out my ass.
You mean it may be naive to expect zero failures with the new drives?
I wouldn't be surprised if the failure profile between moving-parts devices and solid state devices were radically different.
Most likely you ran past the dialog that prompts you about taking the browser as a default.
Yep.
I did the FF3.5 install last night. The very first dialog prompts for whether you want the browser to be the default.
So, no, it's not simply that your story isn't worthy. It's just a lie. A +5 Interesting lie.
I'm reminded of why online forums suck.
And my story isn't story worthy. I fixed it in 2 seconds. Iam just pointing out that this isn't unusual behavior.
I'd say you put yourself in a position of responsibility to post a story after libeling Firefox. Especially since you haven't recanted.
Most likely you ran past the dialog that prompts you about taking the browser as a default.
But as far as farting v. shitting, sure, that's a better analogy. The thing you have to keep in mind that Mike farts a lot. At some point you gotta reconsider having Mike around.
Or you run a risk of detonation.
Ah, this is probably what they experienced. They probably zoomed past the dialog and didn't realize it.
Maybe it would be better to have the dialog require the user think. Two buttons to progress to the next screen, "make default browser" and "don't make default browser".
It seems that's really pushing it, though. How many dialog boxes does the user have to fiddle with anyway? If four or less, they can pay enough attention to handle this one dialog.
Here's a logical fallacy for you:
Puppy Mike is ornery, always causing problems. Puppy Moe is adorable, does many cute things and is very agreeable.
Ornery puppy Mike shits on your carpet. "Bad puppy!"
Adorable puppy Moe — whoops! — also shits on your carpet.
You look back and forth between them, scratch your head, and declare, "You gotta stop bashing EVERYTHING puppy Mike does!"
As if you wanted crap on your carpet at all?
But given Moe's past performance, I'd be surprised if there were in fact crap on your carpet. So maybe you should post a story about it, as recommended.
When you installed Firefox, you specifically sought out the installer, downloaded it and ran it. It's quite a reasonable assumption there that you'd like to use it as your default browser.
I disagree. A browser installation or upgrade should always ask whether you want your default browser changed.
I would expect Mozilla also to agree with this, so I doubt that other poster's claim that FF3.5 presumes to make itself the default browser and would like to see that claim substantiated.