| If your computer seems to be running hot—indicated by all your case fans running so loudly they drown out the traffic—it could mean that the heatsink sitting on top of the CPU is clogged with dust. Of course, you'd feel kinda stupid if that was the case. Especially if you'd been putting up with it for weeks, and just assuming that your computer "ran hot". If this ever did happen, a careful application of a hand vacuum cleaner to the problematic heatsink can work wonders.
All entirely hypothetical, of course. :) | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment   |
| A podcast is, by definition, one or more people talking about a subject that interests you. That's why you went to the trouble of finding out about and subscribing to their show.
It's essentially radio-on-demand, where you choose exactly what you want to listen to, rather than being subject to the programming choices made by others.
With MP3 players, you can literally listen to the shows anywhere, anytime.
Podcasts give you something interesting to listen to (and think about!) during those times when your mind is only superficially engaged: driving, travelling on public transport, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, walking the dog, or any kind of exercise.
If you miss something in the show—due to zoning out, something I seem to be prone to—you can "rewind" (something you can't do with radio).
If a particular episode bores you, you can just skip it.
While you can listen to music instead of podcasts, some people (c'est moi!) often prefer to have something that provides information, entertainment, knowledge, current affairs... all tailored by your choice of what shows you listen to.
If you haven't tried listening to podcasts—a phenomenon that's barely two years old—I highly recommend giving it a go!
(No, I'm not a podcaster, nor in all likelihood ever will be; my talents just don't lie in the direction of entertaining commentary/discussion. I'm enthusiastic about it simply because it's valuable to me, for the reasons I've given.) | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean that either of you is wrong.
As best I have been able to determine, for any given situation or issue there is almost never going to be an answer that is necessarily right or wrong. It may seem right to you, from the point of view of your world view and based upon the current context of the discussion... but that same answer might not make sense to someone else coming at the question from a different angle. There does not appear to be any absolute scale against which one can measure "rightness", and so it all becomes relative.
Once I accepted this, almost any question I face now leads to shades of grey. That's actually good, I suppose, but it's not much help. Any given situation must be dealt with solely on its merits, without any appeal to a higher authority of any kind, almost like solving a problem from first principles every time. Mentally stimulating, but it can become tiresome. One can see the appeal of the more simple-minded organised religions, which provide such a white-bread, simplistic moral framework in which the world is cast in stark black and white. At the same time, such naivety appalls me... actually, it always has, which is perhaps why I've had an almost instinctive revulsion for such religious groups.
I'm not complaining (well, not much, anyway :-). It is far better to see the world for what it is (i.e., really, really complicated), than to be ensconced within a comfortable illusion. We need to experience the world as it really is, without the blinkers and rose-coloured glasses... in all its varying shades of grey. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| This is brilliant (from here):Q: What is the 'Apostrolypse'?
A: The 'Apostrolypse'is a term for the cataclysmic and final collapse of our planet broughton by the misuse of apostrophe by illiterate people, viz., death by apostrophe. Think of it as worse than nuclear fallout: suffocation of all living organisim's by the relentles's rain of gratuitou's apostrophe's, swelling up as toxic aerial miasma...Variant theory: "Apostroluge," or global destruction by deluge; allair-breathing terrestrial creatures are inundated by apostrophes anddie, reminiscent of Noah's flood except that there's no boat. I was actually confirming the plural of schema when I came across this (by the by, apparently "schemas" is generally accepted, versus "schemata"). If you are ever in any doubt about your usage of apostrophes, a visit to the Apostrophe Protection Society should clear things up.
With easy access to dictionary.com—I'm still paying my subscription, 'cause I find it so useful—I find myself checking the meaning of words I put into documents and e-mail, when there's any doubt in my mind about its usage in a particular context. I'll also occasionally check grammar or the more obscure cli·chés if they come up.
While this could be interpreted as ludicrously obsessive, I honestly believe that for communication to be effective, the language employed should conform to the currently-accepted usage. It's a shame that such usage changes over time, but there's only so much one can do. :-) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| As mentioned a couple of weeks back, a group of nutters had predicted the destruction of NYC... which did not (obviously) happen. They still haven't learned their lesson, as they're predicting it again—with a 98% probability of occurring—that NYC is in trouble this coming weekend.
Their faith in this "true bible code" they think they've discovered is remarkable. It allows them to continue to make predictions that never come true. Even the most gullible would begin to question their credibility after so many misses!
It appears that their sincerity cannot be questioned: they really believe this stuff. However, they're just wrong. They could probably find the same kind of patterns, and generate seemingly meaningful predictions, out of atmospheric noise.
I've never understood the idea of faith in something that is logically inconsistent or provably invalid. Believing in something that cannot be proved is one thing, but believing in something that is demonstrably garbage is just plain silly. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| After the most-glorious cliffhanger at the end of season 1, it's been a painful wait for season 2 of Battlestar Galactica to be released on region 4 here in Australia. However, it's not long now! Apparently the region 4 DVD will be released on Wednesday 16 August... just under two months to go.
I've watched the miniseries and season 1 on DVD, and thoroughly enjoyed it. My memories of the original series from when I was much younger are pretty vague, and from what I do remember it was enjoyable but wasn't that compelling; actually, it's kind of mixed up with Buck Rogers :-). The "re-imagined" series is a complex, rich story following a well-defined story arc—a strategy that worked wonderfully with Babylon 5—with a dark, gritty feel... it's truly entertaining. Best small-screen SF in a long while!
Talking of small-screen SF... I've got to say that the first season of the latest Doctor Who really didn't do much for me. My favourite doctor remains incarnation #4 (Tom Baker). The (much) earlier series had a more serious tone, and while there was humour, it was clever and toned down. There was also a surprising amount of violence; it's amazing the kind of bodycount that could be accumulated with so little blood'n'gore, thanks to the prevalent use of energy weapons. The modern versions—from around doctor #6 and onwards—have tended towards the "Benny Hill" side of British comedy (which I despise).
I've heard good things about season 2, with the incarnated-once-more doctor apparently doing a much better job, so I suppose I shouldn't give up hope! | | comments: 16 comments or Leave a comment |
| I just had one of those "oh, sh*t" moments, when I got up to get myself another cup of tea, grabbed my cup from besides my monitor... and managed to spill the dregs onto my PCs case, which is sitting beside my desk. I'd forgotten that I hadn't quite finished it.
To makes matters a worse, the case was open (side access panel removed), as it had been running a little hot and I was going to check its fans, with the possibilitiy of repositioning them to see if that made any difference.
Anyway... I froze as soon as I realised what I'd done (my usual and somewhat unfortunate reaction to something "bad" happening). Luckily, there wasn't much tea to spill, and it landed on top of the case and just beside it, with none appearing to have splashed inside. A few paper towels later, and all is dry once more.
I've previously ruined a keyboard or two with spilled tea... only too easy when engrossed in thinking about something, and then absently reach for it without looking! Maybe I should pay more attention to the world around me. :-) | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| At least at typing, anyway. Doing the on-line test here, on my first (and only) attempt I achieved 91 words per minute, with no errors. Not bad at all!
Oh, but how nerdy is that?
I learned touch typing when I was in year 9 (14 years old), the only guy in a class full of girls. Back in those days (1985!) computers were still relatively uncommon, and so we were taught using manual typewriters. To this day, I still hit the keys a little too hard, which was necessary on a manual. I also still remember with painful clarity when my little finger slipped and got jammed when going for the 'A' key.
Thanks to computers, I get plenty of practise, and hence have maintained my proficiency. Actually, it's turned out to be one of the useful mechanical skills I've learned, as it allows me to write code without taking my eyes off the screen... and is certainly instrumental in helping to achieve that remarkable creative state of "flow", when time seems to fade away and you become totally immersed in the task at hand.
Keyboards don't seem to be going away; while speech recognition is good, it still seems like it will be years before it'll be actually useful. So, if you haven't yet got around to at least thinking about learning to touch type, I really can't recommend it enough! | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| A while ago I wrote a wrapper class in C++ to retrieve and update configuration values, stored as elements in an XML column of an Oracle database table. The Oracle-specific XML syntax was byzantine (well, non-standard), and required a lot of messing around with sqlplus before the correct syntax could be determined. The documentation was almost, but not quite, useful enough. One's own specific needs are almost always never specifically addressed... inevitable, of course, given the near-endless variety of possible applications.
It turns out that my wrapper class has got to work with Microsoft's SQL Server as well... and SQL Server's syntax for XML operations is different to Oracle's. Hauntingly similar, but not quite the same!
Since what I needed to do was quite straightforward, it was reasonably easy to work out what the equivalents were... well, after several hours of wading through Microsoft's help pages and endless experimentation with sqlcmd (SQL Server's equivalent of sqlplus).
Finally, I was almost done; the last operation I needed to do was giving me a somewhat unhelpful error message. I Google'd for it, and got exactly ONE hit... a guy asking why he was getting this particular error... in German! So, crossing my fingers, I read the response—also in German—and as I hoped the SQL snippet supplied was in XPath/XQuery-standardised English notation. That gave me the answer I wanted, and now (after some screwing around) it's all done. Firefox's translation extension did a reasonable job of interpreting the posts, but it wasn't actually necessary to work out what was going on (luckily).
Ah, what fun! Oh, for AI-assisted programming... or at least an AI-enhanced help system! Anything would be better than the usual keyword-based search that is pretty much all you get at the moment. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Since my mid-twenties, I've followed a generally low-fat regime with respect to what I eat. This was a reaction to packing on the kilos after I left Un, which brought back the fear of being the "little fat" kid I was in my childhood. Combined with regular exercise, this kept me fit, healty and my weight stable.
Somewhere under a year ago, I finally started paying attention to low-carb diets; not the insanity of the Atkins regime, but the only-too-clear evidence that the high-joule foods consumed in the West was basically the current cause of the "obesity epidemic". In the US, it seems that almost all products are loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, which besides making the food sickeningly sweet, also drastically upped its energy content. Here in Australia, many of our foods, especially those advertised as low-fat, also had very high sugar content.
Taking that to heart, I thought (or so cleverly) that I would incorporate the low-carb approach into my own diet. So, low carbs meant cutting out sugar-based cereals (a surprising number are very high in sugar), eating less bread, rice and pasta, keeping away from high-energy vegetables (peas and corn), and eating less fruit and avoiding fruit juice (loaded with fructose!). However, I didn't alter anything else, maintaining the low-fat constraint, and continuing with my exercise regime.
I lost weigh—a number of kilos—over several months, until it stabilised at around 53kg (117lbs). Very low for my height of 172.5cm (5' 8"), but since it was staying fairly constant, I assumed that all was well.
It's worth noting that due to my obsessive self-control (an inherent part of my personality), I stuck to my dietary rules without exception. No occasional splashing out on ice cream, fish and chips or fast food; I was eating exactly what I set out to eat (or not eat, as the case may be).
In the following months, I noticed a gradual decrease in energy. It was hard to walk up any kind of slope, and my daily runs were getting to be more of a struggle to finish. I initially wrote this off as just getting old (a little premature at 34-35, perhaps). My mood had also deteriorated, with my sense of humour apparently degraded completely, and my patience and tolerance for others at an all-time low. I eventually went to the doctor, who sent me off to have a blood test.
There were some anomalous results: very low red blood cell and low white blood cell counts, while my iron level was fine. The doctor didn't know what to make of it (or so he said), and I was scheduled to see a hemotologist (blood specialist). As you can imagine, I was dreaming up all kinds of dread causes, and was scaring myself silly.
Then I was directed to a web site by a concerned relative that listed the physical symptoms of anorexia nervosa... and I had almost all of them. The low red and white blood cell counts were there. Even the irritability! At that point, it all became only too clear: my dietary self-control was causing me to starve myself, with the result that my body was literally consuming itself, as it desparately tried to maintain basic functions. I had honestly believed that since my weight was stable, even at a very low level, that I was eating enough. As it turns out, I was completely wrong!
I was utterly appalled at my own stupidity, at what I had been doing to myself.
Rectifying the problem has turned out to be ludicrously easy: start eating, stupid! Within two weeks I was back within the healthy weight range for my height, and I have remained there ever since (around 3-4 months now). My mood improved remarkably, and my energy levels started to return to normal. I am now eating far more sensibly, eating not only enough carbs but fats as well, as I finally realise that healthy eating means a balance (while still eating in moderation).
I didn't have anorexia nervosa, as there did not appear to be any psychological element that was forcing me to eat less; I was simply doing what I thought was right in terms of watching what I ate, never realising just what I was doing to myself. Well, I guess you could categorise the extreme self-control as a little unusual, though that obsessive part of me also assists in making me an effective programmer. Not something I really want to change!
I haven't entirely recovered physically; it's taking a while to come completely good, but generally things are infinitely better and steadily improving. In my case, it wasn't admitting I had a problem that was the first step, it was realising that what I was doing was a problem at all.
Live and learn... | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| At least according to these nutters. One wonders what they will say next week when absolutely nothing happens during the specified period. Well, they do say there's only an 85% of the event occuring... so I guess they'll simply claim that we got lucky!
It is yet another example of how human brains are hard-wired to identify patterns, even when such patterns don't exist; witness the sheer volume of conspiracy theories "out there". We all want to believe! | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| I rarely remember what I dream; however, last night's was particularly vivid and stayed with me. I found myself in the park behind the house where I lived for most of my life (age 10 into my mid-late twenties). Everything was recognisable, but subtly different in many ways. I worked my way around to the front of the house, where I was confronted by what is now my dog, obviously belonging to the current owner. He didn't recognise me. After knocking at the front door, my mother answers, but she clearly doesn't recognise me, and after some questioning it's clear she never had a child with my name.
It ended there. I'm left wondering what my subconscious is trying to tell me... if anything. I wouldn't normally attempt to interpret my dreams, but this was unusual enough to leave me a little shaken. Weird.
Ah, well. Shrug, and get on with my life.
I chose not to renew my LJ subscription. I've paid for two years, but as I never used the extra features that a paid subscription adds in that entire time, it seemed pointless to pay yet again. I've pretty much drifted away from LJ, at least as far as posting goes, though I do try to keep up with friends' postings. My web browsing tends to focus on news and technology sites, while podcasts via my iPod Nano (now there's a device I've got my money's worth from!) fill any time that I'm not doing something that requires concentration (driving, walking, exercising, shopping, chores around the house, mowing). Add work and reading from my endless "to be read" pile of SF/fantasy novels, and you have my life! I really should get outside more, I guess. :-) | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Several of the podcasts listen to are about gaming: tabletop RPGs, boardgames, computer RPGs. I used to spend a reasonable amount of time playing computer games when I was younger, though was rarely able to find anyone to play RPGs with, let alone board/card games. For a long time I thought I wanted to change careers and become a game programmer (rather than a regular... er, "non-game" programmer).
I have slowly come to the realisation that I just don't enjoy gaming anymore. Not solo computer games (RPGs, first-person shooters) nor on-line, multi-user games (not that I ever got into the latter). I now feel that spending time on such activities is ultimately pointless, effectively a complete waste of effort. I'm not really learning anything, or gaining new skills. The only interesting aspect is in exploring a new world and learning its rules, and few games these days are offering anything original enough to make this worthwhile.
So I spend more and more time reading novels, fantasy and SF. One could argue this is also a complete waste of time; however, as mentioned above, what I really enjoy is getting to know somewhere new. Stories are also the most natural learning mechanism that humans have developed, and well-told, well-written novels often do convey real life experience to the reader. Sure, it's not really the most productive use of my time... but then again, what does "productive" really mean? It's what I do for leisure, and remains mentally stimulating and interesting (at least if the author knows what they're doing!).
I have also found that I find active competition to be truly distasteful. I get no satisfaction out of "beating an opponent". It makes me far happier to work with others on a shared goal, to produce as part of a group something more than I could do on my own. While I tend to take too much on myself, especially in my job, that's more because the task really can be best done by me; if others can do their part, then together the sum really is greater than the individual parts. The only kinds of meetings I enjoy are small, with people who know what they're doing, where we're brainstorming a design... when it gets going, it's the most amazing feeling, as ideas get bounced around, debated, and enhanced.
Perhaps that's why I've been turned off most gaming... because ultimately it's just canned competition. I certainly find no enjoyment in any kind of one-on-one games.
Am I mellowing in my old age? Or have I just finally accepted that this is the real me, and there's no longer any point in pretending to be something else? I'm finding that more and more in my life these days... I just can't be bothered with the masks anymore. Take me or leave me, this is who I am. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Thinking that I would come out relatively low on the nerd scale, I thought safe about doing the quiz (another meme, courtesy of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sorceror)...
Hah. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Big Five Test Results | Extroversion (16%) very low which suggests you are extremely reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and private.
Accommodation (42%) moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly selfish, uncooperative, and difficult at the expense of the well being of others.
Orderliness (72%) high which suggests you are overly organized, neat, structured and restrained at the expense too often of flexibility, variety, spontaneity, and fun.
Emotional Stability (52%) medium which suggests you average somewhere in between being calm and resilient and being anxious and reactive.
Inquisitiveness (68%) moderately high which suggests you are intellectual, curious, imaginative but possibly not very practical.
| Take Free Big Five Personality Testpersonality tests by similarminds.com | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| "Knife of Dreams", book 11 of the "Wheel of Time" series, was recently released. I bought it, but decided not to read it until the remainder of the series had come out and I could re-read the whole thing from beginning to end and get some closure. I've read, in one hit, from books 1 through 10 (I came to it late), and am not willing to invest all that time until I know there's not going to be still more coming later.
So, reassuringly enough, it appears that the next book will be the last! This comes from an interview with Robert Jordan, on the "Dragonpage Cover to Cover" podcast (MP3 here).
The interview starts at around 5:20 and finishes at about 27:40. It covers quite a few topics, includes some (minor?) spoilers for "Knife of Dreams", but the pertinent quote from Jordan is "... one more novel... one more, 12th book, and that will be so even if that book has to be 2000 pages in hard-cover and require a luggage cart and a shoulder strap to get it out of the store."
It's (apparently) not that he's sick of it (even if has been doing it for twenty-one years); it's just that he always knew where the story would end up, and he believes one more novel is enough to get from the end of "Knife of Dreams" to the conclusion.
The interview also provided a link to Robert Jordan's blog, which he started around mid-September last year.
Of course, now I just have to wait for him to finish writing book 12... however long that will take. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| It's been a long time since my last post... or so it seems. I appear to have little urge to "blog" anymore; this may change in the future, but is certainly at a low ebb for the present.
Anyway, a quick summary of where I'm at:- I had a week off over xmas and New Year's, which was extremely relaxing and utterly work-free (if unpleasantly hot, as our summer continues to beat down with little mercy)
- I bought another car (my fifth), trading in my Nissan Pulsar (just reaching 3 years old) for a Peugeot 206 XT: it's small, handles beautifully, has excellent pick-up, and is rated as one of the most fuel efficient and environmentally friendly (according to our Green Vehicle Guide)
- My fridge died on the day before I picked up my car; I had a replacement installed by lunchtime (a very nice Fisher and Paykel 440L fridge/freeze combo), though the unexpected expenditure was most unwelcome
- I remain enamoured with my iPod nano, and continue to get tons of use out of it (still only podcasts and radio programmes, of course)
- Back at work this week, and actually enjoyed it, due to having finally got a number of coding tasks that I can sink my teeth into; having been stuck doing higher-level architecture and design for the past year or so, it is so good to be able to actually build software!
- I need new insulation in my roof: whatever's there is pretty ineffective, so I've decided to get whatever the highest rating stuff that is available ASAP; good insulation makes an incredible difference, and is a precursor to aircon (and may make it unnecessary)
So, life continues. Not much has changed, though I have several "irons in the fire" in terms of personal/professional development which I am actively persuing, part of a longer-term plan that may see me re-locate overseas to work for some period of time. If nothing else, these side projects are fun and keep me busy in a non-work manner.
I wish you all a productive, enjoyable and satisfying 2006, and hope that you all are presented with lots of growth opportunities which you are able to take advantage of! | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| What amazes me about physical cosmology is how much understanding of our universe can be derived from an incredibly limited window onto the cosmos.
Think about the data that we have available to us: we create instruments (telescopes of various kinds) that can measure with ever-increasing precision the arrival of photons from all across the electromagnetic spectrum (infrared through visible through ultraviolet, the latter including the part we use for radio and TV transmissions). Since all our instruments are on or around the Earth, that's out point of reference: our window onto the universe.
What makes it truly bizarre is that due to the vast distances involved, even photons must travel for long durations to get here, which means that by looking into the sky we are looking back in time. Because the instruments have become so sensitive (and can thus detect the most attenuated light), this goes as far back as very nearly to the beginning of the universe: 13-14 billion years.
This is counter-intuitive. On Earth, because the speed of light is so fast, and distances are so small, anything we see is effectively happening in real-time. Something happens, we see it immediately, regardless of how away from us it is.
For a given object that we observe in space, its distance from us determines the age of the view of that object. We are seeing it change in "real-time" (as its light continues to stream towards us), but that time can be a very long time ago.
Consider the analogy of a core sample: what scientists do is drill into (say) polar ice, straight down. The further down they go, the older the laid-down ice is. They can thus analyse different layers to get an idea of conditions at different points in history at that geographical location.
Looking into the heavens is equivalent to drilling a core sample into ice at an angle: you can still get information about conditions at different times (the deeper you go, the longer ago), but it's always a different location you're finding out about, since you're never below the same geographical point.
The consequence of this is that, for a given object in the universe, all we can see is what it's doing at a particular point in time. We cannot see it at any other point in its history. Since change on the cosmological scale tends to occur over millions or billions of years, this means that to work out what's going on, we simply have to find different stellar objects that we think are similar but at different stages in their lifecycle, and "join the dots" to work out the process of how those objects were formed, their lifecycle and eventual dissolution.
That cosmologists have managed to come so far in expanding our understanding of the universe is therefore utterly amazing. That said, the number of unanswered questions remain huge (dark matter, dark energy)... certainly enough to keep cosmologists busy for the centuries to come! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I installed Firefox 1.5 shortly after its release yesterday, and discovered (to my dismay) that my favourite extension, SessionSaver, had yet to be officially ported to 1.5.
For those of you who haven't come across it, SessionSaver will restore all open windows/tabs when you re-start Firefox, including page history. It's fantastic, especially if (like me) you open tabs for links that catch your interest, but don't get around to reading them until the next time you switch on your computer. With this extension, you can let them hang around until time permits, without having to bookmark them to come back to (which usually never happens, resulting in a huge list of yet-to-be-investigated URLs).
Anyway, nikolasco has a link to a SessionSaver port that does work on 1.5. I've installed it, and it works fine. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| There was a time when I would never dream of disagreeing with senior co-workers or customer representatives; that was back when I wanted everyone to like me, where the thought of someone saying something nasty to me was deeply troubling. What a nice (weak?) guy I was.
Today I find myself letting rip at our customer reps, who were being (in my humble opinion) somewhat unreasonable. It wasn't incoherent rage—sadly, I have too much self-control for that—but it was certainly expressing just what I thought of their bizarre attempts to resist what was basic common sense. I've never been good at hiding what I feel (my face is only too expressive), and the unbelieving contempt I feel for some of these people is only too evident.
Where is all this anger coming from? I suspect it's a deep-down realisation that my employer and I just aren't getting along at a fundamental level. The company is a lumbering, back-to-the-70s bureaucracy, with as much agility as a particularly large, heavy brick. I'm feeling that I'm losing my professionalism in this place.
How long can I struggle with myself? Why is it so hard to walk away from this hell-hole? Are the golden handcuffs (i.e., a ridiculously high salary) really so entrapping? Fear of change? Sticking with what's safe?
Hell. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Amazon have introduced what they are referring to as the Mechanical Turk, a marketplace for what they refer to as "artificial artificial intelligence": paying humans to perform menial microtasks that is extremely difficult (or impossible) for software to perform, but which our brains can do easily. Any company that needs such data processing performed can set up their software to utilise the web-based API provided by Amazon to supply the tasks and collect the results. Individuals wanting to actually do the tasks interact with the Amazon-provided web pages to do the work.
It's a brilliant idea, though seemed at first to be profoundly disturbing, creating an IT underclass who are willing to actually do such work. And yet, there are vast (in the true sense of the word) numbers of individuals out there with Internet access, from all across the world (I'm thinking of China, India, Eastern Europe) who could make a few dollars out of this scheme. It's doing work that apparently has to be done; so what if it's utterly trivial? How is it different to serving burgers, sweeping streets, emptying garbage? It's not, of course. The fact that you can do the work from literally anywhere on the planet makes it a truly global phenomenon.
Amazon have really hit onto a massive winner, I suspect. It's amazing that Google didn't think of it first! I wonder how soon before they come out with their own spin on the idea (along with Microsoft and Yahoo).
Of course, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out in practise. The most obvious question that occurs to me is how economically viable is it: even if you're paying cents (or less than a cent) per task, given the potential volume of actual tasks that need to be performed, is it cheaper than any other model? Then again, what other model is there? Hiring workers in a third world country to do the work would be one choice... which this scheme effectively does, while entirely eliminating any overhead aside from the actual work itself.
The more I think about, the more amazing it sounds. One to watch! | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| The Star Wars "Force", that is.
I suppose up until now, I'd assumed that it was meant to be a guiding consciousness that directed action, with a "good" and "bad" (light and dark) side. Reading this article, I (finally) realised that the Force was never more than an unaware and neutral supernatural power that could allow a wielder to perform certain acts. The whole "dark side" thing isn't surrendering to a Satan-like influence inherent in the Force itself, but rather giving in to one's own desire for power and control, rather than being a non-judgemental observer and guardian of order (the ideal embraced by the Jedi, though even they seemed to have lost the plot in the dying days of the Republic).
It's so much easier to believe that when we do wrong, it's because we're surrendering to some dark influence; an utterly simplistic worldview that is unfortunately embraced by many. The hard truth is that every one of us has free will, and are making our own choices, in everything that we do. We do not have a in-built tendency to sin; we do as we choose to do. Every act stands on its own merits, or lack thereof.
Weird that it's taken this long for me to realise that Star Wars was saying this all along; I guess it's because I grew up with it, and so I've got assumptions based on my younger self's initial, shallow interpretation of the story (starships and blasters, cool!).
So, I have I just earned my first wisdom tooth (which the dentist discovered yesterday morning at my half-yearly check-up)? Or just proved (again) that I really don't know what I'm talking about? :-)
No black and whites, only endless shades of grey. About the only absolutes are the laws of physics (which we still don't really understand), and even they only apply to this physical reality. Everything else is open to interpretation! I still cling to the (possibly self-deluded) view that upon physical death, if there is a non-physical reality in which we continue to exist (and from whence we came), the answers are all available. Even if that is the case, I strongly suspect that even the "next level up" has its own share of unanswered mysteries. Intellectual curiosity is a truly annoying trait, and yet I wouldn't surrender it for anything. Life would be truly mundane without it! | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| Another link from andrewducker. Not really surprising, as I'm essentially profoundly logical who will entertain notions of spirituality as long as they make sense, and aren't convincingly falsified.
You fit in with:
Humanism
Your ideals mostly resemble that of a Humanist. Although you do not have a lot of faith, you are devoted to making this world better, in the short time that you have to live. Humanists do not generally believe in an afterlife, and therefore, are committed to making the world a better place for themselves and future generations.
20% spiritual.
60% reason-oriented.
|
|
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com
|
| | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| |
5.6
6.6
7.6
5
4
1.4