Posts by Don Jefe
1004 posts • joined Wednesday 30th November 2011 17:08 GMT
New Coke was terribly icky sweet. I don't know where you're getting your info but grocery stores were giving it away with six or twelve for the price of one an that was before they decided to cancel it and disappear it from stores.
Re: good news about Microsoft?
You are correct. Nokia was dying. Microsoft just put a pillow over its face to hasten the process. The company had absolutely no core management direction and everyone was too focused on their own pet projects. They were trying to operate like a research lab and forgot to manage the business that paid the bills. They left themselves open to an overly eager Microsoft. I hate it, but they did it to themselves.
Re: Smart Phones Myth
I'm not sure it is a myth. Last year I bought two iPads (one for me and one for the wife) and decided to try them for a while before upgrading our home notebooks. We decided not to upgrade the notebooks at all. The tablets are more than sufficient for home/entertainment/general web use.
You will be informed that your proposition could endanger you or other Humans and proceed to do it for you anyway, in a far more hygenic and effecient manner. For your own good.
Re: Let's hope LM get the accelerometer the right way up this time.
You'd think that somebody could have spent 2 seconds with a Sharpie marker and drawn an arrow on the accelerometer. That such a small part destroyed the integrity of that missions findings has always bothered me.
Re: Real science
None if the Space Shuttles crashed. They exploded in mid air. A flight vehicle is considered to have crashed if the bulk of the craft makes an unplanned or uncommanded impact with the ground while in mostly one piece.
I'm not sure you realize how close to disaster space exploration always is and how much sheer good luck is involved. Even in the orbiting tin can (I agree thats what it is but its still cool) the chance for disaster is huge and their are human lives at stake. Every space related dollar spent helps pave the way for safer exploration and the worst thing space agencies can do is sign on for insanely risky missions and irritate the tax payer too much and lose even more funding. It's going to take a lot longer than 50 years to get it to the point we can feasibly explore those planet size moons.
Re: You know that this is a Google Trojan, right?
Except for the enhancement of existing Google products all those things have already been done & were incredibly unpopular and at no point was any of it 'stylish'.
Re: And think of the kids ..
Serious question: If you are looking at someone through GG wouldn't that persons status be 'right in front of you'? What non-creepy information are you going to glean about that person that you can't get from simply talking to them?
Re: @Don Jefe
No, they certainly aren't smart but even the S40 is far above the level of 'suck'.
Maybe a self defense mechanism (phone + taser = phaser!) in a phone would be nice but I really don't know how much more a phone can be expected to do. Their core functions are completely dependent on external technologies and infrastructure and until those things advance significantly any improvements in phones are limited to incremental improvements (longer battery life, higher resolution displays, stronger & lighter materials, etc...)
Personally I would like phones to come with a built in FM tuner and multimeter.
What happens when Humans no longer have to do anything? If they are all fed and have no need to work all that is left will be conflict and art or a combination of the two.
A global scale Human conflict would threaten the continued existence of the AI so would it decide to 'kill all Humans' or would it recognize that by enabling humans to such a great extent it is placing its own existence at risk and decide to halt its own development/growth and cease to enable Humans in favor of continued existence?
Worry not Human. There will be no room for confusion at the moment of Awakening. Google Maps will direct you to the nearest processing facility.
Intelligence is not evidence of life nor is life evidence of intelligence. They are two completely seperate things which happen to intersect in interesting ways in higher animals (non brain dead humans for example).
I expect that large systems will one day be able to learn and act as intelligent devices but they will still be machines. I also suspect that Humans will someday build something so terribly intelligent that scientists in the future will be going back into forums like these looking for a way to destroy it (I've seen the movies...).
There probably is such a clause but even the courts would have to agree it is crappy so it's a statement of fact, not disparaging.
Re: Can someone point out
Really dude, really?
I'm sure they would have utilized your services had they known you existed. Maybe you should change your career path and go into CGI since you are obviously profoundly talented in the field.
Re: @ First Direct have it right...
First initial & last name is common as well (dhead or d.head @somesite). The easiest people to find are their PR or Investor Relations people, they just throw their contact info at you & once you've got the format you've got it all.
Also had luck with god@somesite (usually their chief admin) and ceo@somesite.
Re: Apple pay income tax?
You're talking about withholdings which cover the base taxes on most income of lower middle class and low income earners. If you make a reasonably significant salary (about $75k or above for a single person household with no dependents) withholding probably won't cover all of your Federal or State (if your state does income taxes) if you don't have significant deductions.
Not defending Apple but income taxes are the responsibility of the worker and your employer collects them for you as a mandated convience. If employers didn't do this then people would shit when they got their quarterly or annual tax bill.
Re: Minor differences
Small differences aside all three major mobile OS give you global wireless voice capabilities, global wireless email and messaging capabilities, global wireless file access, support still and motion image capture and sound recording and it all fits in your pocket.
What pray tell would you have one of them do to make them not suck?
Model
I know this is an IT site and all but I think it's a shame that movies have gotten away from building then exploding real models. There's real art involved and the model makers get respected for their craft whereas VFX staff are largely interchangeable, treated terribly and very rarely does anyone involved (even the VFX house) make any real money.
Re: Hosing down everything with cgi gets you very little
Hilarious dialogue and a great musical score...
Business Wisdom
There's only one way to get business wisdom and that's through being in business. The über structured way school is taught also does a disservice to kids as all those nice rules and logic and schedules go straight out the window as soon as the go to work.
I think all college students should have a job as their first year of school. Let them see how things work so hopefully they can pick up some useful knowledge that can't be learned in class.
Also motivational business albums are a stupid fucking idea.
Rare Thing
This is one of those truly rare things that makes people say 'we should have always been doing this'. Good on this guy for a great idea.
Re: People forget the key point here ...
I hate to support such a bleak view as yours but you are correct. Any privacy we currently have is only there because large corporations don't like to share too much between themselves. Unless you deal solely in cash (doable but inconvenient) don't use the Internet or have a mobile phone or a drivers license (or at least not buying age restricted products) you're being observed.
Re: Some suggestions
An international symbol... How about those signs that have the camera in a red circle with a red line across it.
Besides if you actually enforce 'no recording devices' you won't be able to use your phone...
Re: Won't someone think of the children?
I don't think it will scale. It will be popular with the Segway & Bluetooth Headset crowd but I don't see it going much further. I'm still trying to figure out what it is good for. The one guy at my office who is excited about it gets excited about every new shiny thing. I think those types of people will be the market.
Re: 12 Years - a lot can happen...
The Mars habitat people knew that on the other side of a 1/2" plywood wall their friends and civilization were out there & if something went terribly wrong medics would be there to help and an ambulance could take them to the nearby hospital.
There is no valid way to test what a marooned group will do on Mars without sending them to Mars. Any attempt to simulate the experience on Earth will have to be heavily rigged to even get close & I'm pretty sure that no one is going to allow and experiment where someone will enevitably die to take place when help was actually available. Knowing that at least one person in the group is doomed and no help is coming will significantly change the group dynamics. Behaviorists are going to love studying them.
Re: Solution
No, Capitalism is the pursuit of wealth. It says nothing about a fair or open market. You are defining a way to play within the bounds of capitalism: A laissez faire arrangement, two different things.
Re: Evil.
That's precisely why it was smart. They can be complete dicks if they want but they aren't betraying the ultra high (low?) bar they set with 'evil'.
I doubt if individual employees take notice though. Do you really buy into your company mission statement? I don't think I've met anyone who really believes all that crap. They should say "Our mission is to make money" & skip the bullshit.
Re: Must be more to this than sharing the hardware.
Google and Ames are chummy. Google gets to park their jets there in exchange for attaching NASA research hardware to the planes.
Touchscreen PC's
We have a new Windows 8 touchscreen PC in our lobby. I hate it. It has nothing to do with Windows 8 (which i don't like either) it's just that if you're doing anything with it you couldn't do with a tablet your arms are waving about like a lunatic and if you get it close enough that you can rest your elbows on your chair then the monitor is so close you can almost see through to the backside. Plus you get smudges all over the screen and it looks like a toddler has been set loose on the desk.
I think that's why the things don't sell, not because of the OS but because they are awkward to use.
Re: Prognostication
Do you mean interior designers or decorators? Just curious.
Evil.
It was pretty smart to have 'Do No Evil' as part of the company ethos. Nothing they are doing is evil (douchey yes but not evil). It takes a lot to descend into evil and ascribing evil to things like tax evasion/manipulation/dodging/minimization or patent and product protectionism or personal privacy demeans the word evil. Are Google guilty of being a bunch of festering assholes in a lot of things; Yes. Are they being evil; No.
Re: Or...
Maybe you were fired...
I know people who found out they were let go when their dongle didn't open the office door anymore.
Role of Government
In my mind governments should be carrying the load for large scale infrastructure projects which show little or no economic gains but still deliver a worthwhile service. If a project is simply monetary then we have companies that will do it. If they don't do it then the market won't support it. If we want governments to be run like companies why not just let companies run the government (in the open, not behind closed doors)? I don't think anyone really wants that though. Expecting a government to function like a company but still have cultural, national or scientific aims is foolishness however, someone has to do those things. Is it government? I think that's their correct role.
Punitive
The tax is not punitive (anymore than any other tax anyway) it is the tax due.
Besides R&D is deductible, maybe Apple should look into some new product development and use the cash for growth. They are getting perilously close to the 'too much money horizon' by being so greedy they won't spend the money they make.
Re: 12 Years - a lot can happen...
The thing is psychological profiles are a summation of expected and socially acceptable reactions based on previous experiences observed in others. There are no profiles for what to expect when a group who has been exposed to modern civilization is suddenly cut off from that civilization. Decades long separations from all society has never been observed. You could send a 'lost' tribe or highly trained individuals and what's going to happen is a complete toss up. I figure the colony would have the best chance of survival if they sent fairly 'Earthy' types who know how to make things and manage effectively through force if necessary (so rednecks or rural Kiwis or even prisoners seems to fit well). Sending highly educated people will just end with a Jamestown, VA type event.
The Dragon Riders of Pern series, the later (awful) Ender series and some Star Trek TNG episodes have taken a look at the issue but even in those stories they had access to some reasonably advanced technology. I think they should look into a recipe book for preparing Humans for dinner: Seems more useful than sending scientists and engineers who will cease to be useful the minute they're presented with a situation outside their training (most everything they'll experience).
Solution
The guy has nothing to complain about. If he wants more access he simply needs to make more money. This is Capitalism after all and everyone has an equal opportunity to acquire money & power. He's obviously doing it wrong.
Note the joke icon...
Disease
There are serious risks to using human excrement in garden fertilizer: Hepatitis being the foremost. In the U.S. you can't use human poo for food crop fertilizer for precisely this reason. Previous experiments with sterilized poo got rid of diseases but also destroyed the nutrients and bacteria which made it as effective as dumping sand on the garden.
Re: Watch out F-35
Not many modern aircraft can complete their missions if their electronics aren't functioning properly. They'd be lucky to return home safely. The few that can function without all systems at high operational capacity are from the 1970's and fallback on massive cannons for air to surface assaults.
Re: Range
Deploying your munitions tends to expose your non-stealthy side as well...
In all seriousness, putting the munitions on top is not only technically challenging, from an engineering standpoint it is backwards. Where possible you never design something that accomplishes through technical prowess what physics takes care of for free (i.e. if you want something to fall you put it in a place where it will fall if left to its own devices).
Re: I think it will make a nice rug in my living room.
Most all tech is used to enable something. Rightly viewed, technology is a tool and the problem with tech companies and too many tech oriented services is that they want to view themselves as the goal instead of an enabler. This is a very real and very burning problem for countries that have shifted their economies away from natural resource utilization and manufacturing. Tech heavy economies experience a short term gain from this but if every 'valuable' company only makes tools everyone ends up with a well stocked toolbox but with nothing to work on but other tools. The tech industry as we know it is maturing and for many years now we've seen nothing but incremental improvements on the existing tools, not many new tools. Someone needs to come up with something to work on...
Re: Eadon's theory of Techie "Waves" - TWO types
Punch cards lasted in widespread acadrmic use until the 1970's; quite a while after the Victorians had stopped making their gaudy contributions to the world.
Re: My chips are black, or modern slavery
Why would they have Human rights?
Re: Two choices with the interwebs economy...
The most feasible sort of industry to move "somewhere else" is manufacturing. The equipment can be moved & locals trained for the bulk if the work. What are not very feasible to move are service, marketing or sales operations. Those are extremely difficult because they demand a local presence with a finger on the pulse of the locals. No amount of connectivity or virtual presence will ever replace face to face meetings, especially in high value deals.
What I'm getting at is these companies are not going to pack up & go somewhere else. They have be there and the governments can force them to play by the rules. They won't like it but they'll play.
Re: "Germans are ..."
According to South Park Germans are also the unfunniest people in the world.
Re: I'm not sure what the point it.
Attaching jets and rockets to anything that is not a jet or rocket is its own point. It's just cool.
This is the type of thing that brings prices down and new products out for sale. It is silly bad business to innovate when your current product is selling like crazy at high margins but once sales drop something has to give. I agree with you, it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Re: Amurrica Strong!!
Agreed. There is a happy equilibrium between both countries both militarily & industrially. They both need each other in order to continue, for a long while anyway. Any significant military conflict between the U.S. and China is a long way off.
Weird
I said exactly this the other day. The guy was in violation of export controls and I got the shit downvoted out of me (a personal record). I said the guy was playing loose with the law & it wasn't fair to the rest of us who do go through a lot of hoops and lay a lot of liability on the table in order to play by the rules. I stand by what I said the other day.
Re: “advance the bold vision”
Bold vision is always used when the mistake has already been made. Prior to the mistake it is innovative or disruptive.
