Contents

1. US Navy Was Ordered To Listen For Martian Broadcast
2. Google Voice Controls Giant LED Display
3. Esquire Launches First Augmented Reality Magazine
4. NASA Reproduces a Building Block of Life In the Lab
5. Murdoch To Explore Blocking Google Searches
6. What Computer Science Can Teach Economics
7. How Do You Evaluate a Data Center?
8. Oracle Outlines Plans for Sun Products, Casts Doubt on NetBeans
9. Researchers Neutralize Parkinson’s Dopamine Killers
10. MIT Grad To Make Digital “SixthSense” Open Source
11. The Big Questions
12. “Road Trains” Ready To Roll
13. Japan Eyes Solar Station In Space
14. Reporting To Executives
15. Verizon Droid Tethering Comes At a Hefty Price
16. Why Doesn’t Exercise Lead To Weight Loss?

LHC - by Tablizer (Score: 2, Funny) Thread

Message received: “This is the Large Hadron Collider from the future. Do not attempt to [static…] last warning.”

Re:LHC - by Ukab the Great (Score: 2) Thread

”…use the LHC to distill vodka. It makes terrible vodka…”

This is good science - by JoshuaZ (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
This is good science. In 1924 we didn’t have any strong reasons to think that there wasn’t intelligent life on Mars. If anything, the evidence seemed to favor the other direction. Moreover, simply having ships listen in wouldn’t have cost that much money. So this was an experiment with potentially very high pay-off compared to the resources it took. This does lead to some interesting ideas for a scifi story in which they do find signals. NaNoWriMo anyone?

Man, - by Tablizer (Score: 3, Funny) Thread

what I wouldn’t give to be able to put a transmitter on Mars and fuck with them. “Bring me all your pretty girls and best beers or face destruction, puny Earthlings! And spell out ‘Earth is Stupid’ with your battleships so we can spot it from space.”

Not Mars - by Max Littlemore (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope 
Earth. 
Yip yip yip yip yip yip. 
Huh! Look. Aaaawwwwww. Radio. 
Radio. 
Yip yip yip yip yip. 
Radio 
Uhuh, uhuh, Radio. Yipyipyipyipyip.

Re:nice little hack but… - by Chryana (Score: 2) Thread

Oh yes, and the poster’s link is to the company website, so he’s definitely affiliated with them.

Why 5x24? - by Yvan256 (Score: 2) Thread

Why isn’t it 24x5? Isn’t it always X before Y? Ex: it’s 1024x768, not 768x1024…

Whoa dude - by Zouden (Score: 2) Thread

“Imagine using the same display for monitoring server uptime, or RSS feeds!”

I’m trying to imagine it, man, but it’s BLOWING MY FREAKIN’ MIND.

Wait, I thought this article was about using voice control with the display, not the display itself (which is ancient).

Naughty talk - by Mishotaki (Score: 3, Funny) Thread
So… you can ask your computer for porn?

Google’s speech recognition is uncannily good - by rolfwind (Score: 3, Interesting) Thread

Of course, they have been using Goog-411 to improve it, and Google Voice will only accelerate that (on the plus side, I don’t need a landline at all anymore with cheap international calls)… but Google’s voice search on the iphone is much better than I could ask of it.

If they came out with a voice recognition product, the field currently dominated by the mediocre Dragon Naturally Speaking, I’m sure they could completely kill the competition.

Sounds like someone has never heard of . . . - by rev_sanchez (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
a little periodical called High Times.

But it’s still clunky and silly - by NoSleepDemon (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread
I fail to see what’s so impressive about the magazine, they seem to have taken ‘save PINs from bottle caps of Coke and enter them online to win!!’ to a whole new silly level. Claiming that this is somehow augmented reality is ridiculous. Why would I want to buy a magazine and then hold it up to my PC? If I’m reading a magazine I don’t have my PC handy, if I’m reading stuff on the web then I don’t want to have my magazine handy. And I hear I have to download some spiffy software too? Why not just have the whole thing online? Ugh, this is almost as bad as when some tool decided to call Fear Factory’s sound ‘Terrorkore’, almost, but not quite.

Re:But it’s still clunky and silly - by sexconker (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

There’s nothing impressive.

1: It’s not augmented reality - it’s a shitty flash site that scans a 2D barcode using your webcam and gives you some shitty ads and “content” deemed to shitty to go in the magazine proper.

2: Even if there WAS an aspect of augmented reality - augmented reality is shit. The ONLY area where augmented reality can ever be not shit is applying an overlay over a recorded image (or sound, I guess). Though this is only ever useful if it can be made completely dynamic.

Useful: A pair of glasses that tags the people in the board room with names and titles, since you can’t be assed to remember their fucking names.

Useful: A car HUD that projects 2D tags on stuff as you drive by. That highway sign could have tags that always face you head on, with a larger font, etc. That gas station? Nobody buys premium - replace the whole price sign with the fucking cheapo price, so you can actually see it from far enough away to get off in time. Color code it based on prices further along your route, if one is planned. Again, the tag would always be facing you head on.

Useful: Headphones you lock onto your kids heads so you can swear all you want and have it get bleeped out. (Though I guess this would be more of a demented reality.)

Fun: Some games where characters dynamically react to real-world environs.

Shitty: Some games where characters simply appear with standard scripted animations as an overlay of a video of real-world environs (see that shitty PS3 card game).

Super shitty: Delivering fucking scripted ads based on real-world environs.

We’re miles away from useful augmented reality, and we’re going in the wrong direction. We’re using it as a gate to shitty ad content, when it should be used to generate useful contextual content, or at least fun shit for games/porn.

That buzzing sound you hear… - by syousef (Score: 3, Funny) Thread

…is Buzzword Compliance Magazine.

Re:Bah - by Interoperable (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

You may not be in their target audience.

Possible Interpretations… - by interactive_civilian (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

I have a feeling that this will lead to the speculation that Earth was therefore seeded with fundamental biomolecules from space and this paved the way for life to begin on Earth. I hope people don’t jump to this conclusion too quickly. Personally, I find it unlikely and think there is a more likely interpretation, which I will get to in a moment. The reason this is unlikely is that just having biomolecules is not enough to start life processes. Especially in the time frame when life is hypothesized to have originated (~3.8Gya), as the surface of the Earth was completely covered by ocean at that time, and any seeding of organic molecules from external sources runs into the concentration problem: the problem of getting enough of the right molecules in the right place with the right concentration and the right inputs of energy and raw materials for biochemistry to begin. Any such seeding from external sources would end up very dilute, and biomolecules would likely break down before they could be gathered in sufficient concentrations.

Personally, one possible interpretation which I prefer is that these findings (and similar ones of finding amino acids in comets and such) indicate that organic biomolecules are fairly common and will form anywhere you have C, O, H, N, S, etc and energy. Not only would this indicate that biomolecules could form fairly easily on Earth, but that they are common in the universe, and organic life may arise just about anywhere you have an input of energy and raw materials and a way of concentrating those molecules so they will react and form self-organizing and self-replicating biochemistry.

My current favorite hypothesis about the origins of life on Earth are those championed by Martin and Russell. They hypothesize that life on Earth began and alkaline hydrothermal vents in the ocean, around which porous rocks of iron and nickel sulfide would form semi-permeable cell-like compartments in which basic organic molecules formed by the geochemistry of the vent could concentrate and react with each other. Raw materials would be constantly input from the vent, and there would be a constant energy gradient in the form of heat, pH, and proton-motive force. This neatly solves several problems of many hypotheses of abiogenesis: the energy problems, the raw materials problem, and the concentration problem to name a few. They outline the overall picture of going from geochemistry to biochemistry to prokaryotes to eukaryotes in this 2003 paper:

On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 29 January 2003 vol. 358 no. 1429 59-85

They further clarify the possible pathways for a shift from geochemistry to biochemistry in this 2006 paper:

On the origin of biochemistry at an alkaline hydrothermal vent - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 29 October 2007 vol. 362 no. 1486 1887-1926

A search for either of those followed by clicking on the “Cited By” link on Google Scholar will yield many papers, including some actual experiments supporting them, which expand and clarify these hypotheses. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in the possible origins of life on Earth, as well as perhaps some ideas of what to look for when looking for life elsewhere.

Anyway, point being, this is fantastic work by NASA, and an excellent example of showing that these molecules can form naturally. Just be careful about drawing any definite conclusions from them other than the simple conclusion that Uracil can form in these natural conditions, and possibly or probably others.

Re:Ah, Uracil! - by MightyMartian (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Uh, no. They pretty much deny a number of facts. What they deny will change over time, and often will change depending on the audience. I have had Creationists deny in one moment any evolution beyond species variation, then the next claim that some degree of macroevolution is possible, then in the next try to rearend Biblical “kinds” into genuses and families. In fact, the only thing that Creationists can be counted on to declare as “fact” is that no matter how much evolution is going on, men and apes are not related.

Re:An Application? - by interkin3tic (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

Sure. Picture this: you really need some uracil, but don’t have a lot of scratch to buy it. You’re out of luck, right? WRONG! Got some pyrimidine, ice, and a source of UV light? Guess what? THAT’S ALL YOU NEED!

With all the money you’ll save with this, maybe you could treat yourself to some fancypants store-bought cytosine.

Re:An Application? - by mweather (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
On a cosmological timescale, if the separate parts are capable of coming together, then their existence makes that event an inevitability.

Re:An Application? - by Chris Burke (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

It’s heading towards understanding the origins of life on earth and anywhere else it may have arisen or came from.

If you need an application to appreciate that, then we have very little in common, but uh it could help in our search for life on other planets, creating useful life-like things on earth, and hey why not some medical applications? Geeze who cares at this point? Not I. This is basic research of the most important kind. Who knows what could result?

The reason he wants to do this - by CaroKann (Score: 4, Informative) Thread
Here is another article that goes into a little more detail.  
 
The crux of the matter seems to be the fact “readers who randomly reach a page via an internet search hold little value to advertisers.” Apparently advertisers want to know some demographic details about the people who read the articles, details that are available with paying subscribers. “Who knows who they are or where they are. They don’t suddenly become loyal readers of our content.” states Mr. Murdoch of Google news click-throughs.  
 
Mr. Murdoch also claims that there is simply not enough advertising money in the world to make all news websites profitable. He realises that the number of visitors will decrease, but states that he would prefer to have fewer readers who pay to many readers who don’t.

Rephrase what he wants - by Todd Knarr (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

There’s a department store. It probably carries a lot of merchandise. But the store owner wants everybody to pay him a fee to walk through the front door. And he wants the local papers to not say what he carries, or what he’s got on sale this week. He feels that he should be the only one getting paid for anything that mentions his merchandise.

Would you bother going to his store? Or would you go to the Target or Wal-Mart that’s happy to have a flyer in the paper listing everything they’ve got on sale this week.

Yeah, thought so.

It’s your right to be stupid and wrong-headed, Mr. Murdoch. Everyone has that gods-given right. But don’t come whining to us when your plan fails to go the way you want it to go. We, after all, never signed any agreement saying we’d only behave the way you want.

Re:Rephrase what he wants - by Dunbal (Score: 4, Informative) Thread

Cute analogy - except, it’s not even his stuff.

Murdoch does not “create” anything (propaganda aside). He’s only “reporting” things that happen. Guess what… other people can do that too. “News” reporting is a dying art and rightly so. Back in the day, no one knew what was happening in Zimbabwe. You had to pay a professional team to fly there (or take a boat, a couple centuries ago). They would “report” the current events and either mail, telegraph, telex or eventually send the “story” in through radio or a satellite TV link. All of this cost money, and news companies had to sell a lot of advertising to cover costs.

But guess what? Times have changed. Now anyone with a cell phone and internet access can provide “breaking news”. How often do I see CNN or other “news” channels showing the EXACT same video that was on LiveLeak. Except of course they “blur out” the LiveLeak logo (yeah, you try and do that to THEIR content and see how many lawyers you get on your ass). Frankly there’s no value in “syndicated” news anymore. Firstly, they’re almost always behind the internet, secondly, their reporting is always biased, and thirdly - I really don’t want to watch the damned ads.

Freeze him out - by icebike (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

If I were Google, I’d just cut all his sites off for a month and let them see how far their click-revenue falls off.

No google news, No search results, nothing.

The guy asked for it, so give it to him.

Re:Freeze him out - by liquidsin (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

as funny as that would be, i don’t want to see google getting into the habit of cutting off *anyone*. as long as the information is indexable, they should display it. let murdoch be a baby and block it from his own end with robots.txt if he wants, but don’t play childish games with children. they should just ignore him.

Nice setup - by istartedi (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

What can CS teach ECON?

How to crash routinely and have people shrug it off as normal.

Its easy! - by Monkeedude1212 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

The general solution to poker is to end the game with everyone elses money to make yourself richer. Some people have already applied this strategy to the economy.

Only works with real money - by Chemisor (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Once you factor debt and fractional reserves into the picture, the game changes quite a bit. The current crisis is that the players bet WAY more than they had, and they are all afraid to call, since they secretly know that EVERYBODY is bluffing. So the game (and the stock market) keeps going up as the players trying to outbluff each other with “I’ll see your billion and raise you three more”. And it will keep going up until somebody has to actually put something of value in the pot.

another intersection of CS and econ - by WhiteDragon (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

Here’s a proof that detecting “toxic assets” is impossible (or at least NP)

Hayek - by homer_s (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
By showing that some common game-theoretical problems are so hard that they’d take the lifetime of the universe to solve, Daskalakis is suggesting that they can’t accurately represent what happens in the real world.  
 
Hayek showed that about 50 years ago: 
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” (The Fatal Conceit, p. 76) 
 
Unfortunately, there is a lot of designing going on right now.

I’m going to turn this around. - by NoNsense (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

I am the Director of Operations for our DC. When we give tours, I explain the following (pseudo order of the tour):

- Begin with the history of the building, when it was built (1995), why it was build (result of Andrew in 1992), and how it is constructed (twin T, poured tilt wall).

Infastructure: 
- Take you through the gen room, show you it is internal to the building, show you the roofing structure from the inside, explain the N+1 redundancy, the hours on the gens, when they are ready for maintenance, how they are maintained, by whom (the vendor), how the diesel is stored, supplied, duration of fuel at max and current loads. Explain conduct before a hurricane or lockdown, how we go off grid 24hours ahead of a storm, mention our various contracts for after storm refill and our straining / refill schedule. 
- Take you to the switch gear room, explain the dual feeds from the power company, how the switch gear works, show you the three main bus breakers, show you the numerous other breakers for various sub panels, etc. Explain and show you the spare breakers we have in case replacement is needed. 
- Take you to the cooling tower area, explain the piping, the amount of water flowing, the number of pumps, how many are needed, the switching schedule, explain the N+1 capacity and overall capability of the towers, explain maintenance, show you the replacement pumps in stock, explain the concept of condensed water cooling if needed. 
- Take you through the UPS and battery rooms, explain the needed KW capacity, what the UPSs back up and what they do not. Show the various distribution breakers out to floor, their capacity, the static switches, bypass, explain the battery capacity, type of cells, number of cells, number of strings, last time the jars were replaced and how they are maintained. Explain max capacity of the load vs time. Answer questions relevant to switching from utility->UPS->generator and back.

Raised floor: 
- Take walk on raised floor, explain connectivity, vendors, path diversity we have, how the circuits are protected. Show them network gear, dual everything, how we protect from a LAN or WAN outage, and specific network devices we have for DDoS, Load Balancing, Distribution, Aggregation. Explain how telco and others deliver DS0 to OC-12 capacity, offer information on cross connections regarding copper, fiber, coax. Explain our offerings (dedicated servers up to 5K sq ft cages) and ask what they are interested in. 
- Explain below the floor, size of raise, that power and network is delivered under, what are on level one trays, level two trays, and the piping for cooling. Show the PDU units and how they related to the breakers in the previous rooms. Show them the cooling panel and leads out to CRAC units, explain the cooling capacity, plans for future cooling, explain hot/cold aisle fundamentals, and temperature goals. At this point, there are usually more questions about vented tiles, power types available and overall floor density in watts/sq ft. 
- Explain the fire detection / mitigation system, monitoring of PDU’s, CRAC units, and FM200. Explain the maintenance of the fire system, show them the fire marshal inspection logs and the panels that alert the police and fire departments (both on floor and in our security office in front). 
- While finishing the walk on the floor, show cameras, explain process to bring in and remove equipment, tell them the retention on the video, explain the rounds the guards make, the access list updates and changes.

NOC: 
- At this point we’re back to the front of the building, go into the NOC, explain what we are monitoring (connectivity, weather, scheduled jobs, etc). Introduce NOC and security staff, explain they will always get a person if they call, submit a test ticket from a e-mail on my phone, they will see the alerts light up and the pager for the NOC will signal. The final steps are to introduce them to security and then I’ll lead the customer(s) to the conference room so they can continue the conversation with the sales associate.

The sales person is normally with us. During the tour we will explain our SAS certifications and disclose any other NDA information. I see two types of tours, the first is the discovery tour, which is when a company or government entity is on a fact finding mission to see if we are close to their needs, then they talk with the SA. The other type (more common) are the tours taken after the agreement has been worked out and this is the final “sales” procedure. Our facility really sells itself. Once on tour, most sign up (if they are serious) within 24 hours. I probably missed a few things, so if you want me to follow up I can. For me, everything I present are things the customer NEEDS to know before installing in my building.

John

Word of mouth - by tomhudson (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Find someone you trust who’s already a customer. Word of mouth beats any number of white papers or studies or guarantees.

i ran a junky data center - by digitalsushi (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

I ran a data center long, long ago. My sales guy knew it wasn’t going to pan out and threw me to the wolves. He asked me to start the tour, and then he took a long lunch to miss it.

The guys I gave the tour to seemed very intelligent. They only spent about 60 seconds on our data center. The instant they saw the carpet, their eyebrows were up. When I didn’t lie to them that there was no diesel generator on the other side of the (secretly dead) batteries, they did exactly what they should have and stormed out without saying thanks.

Just off the top of my head - by Critical Facilities (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Well first of all, I don’t know that I’d write any of those things off as “simple”. But some other points worth looking into would be:

1. Raised Floor Height 
   Cable Management (over or under floor) 
   Cooling Capacity and Redundancy 
   Power Quality (not just redundancy) 
   Age and Condition of Electrical Hardware (ATSs, STSs, UPSs, Generators) 
   Outage/Uptime History 
   Fire Suppression System and Smoke Detection System 
   Maintenance records 
   Maintenance records 
   Maintenance records

Re:Just off the top of my head - by Sandbags (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

- Raised floor is certainly important, and a given. Check 
- Cable management above AND below the floor. This is not an either-or… Check 
- Cooling capacity is hard to judge, should be scalable. Redundancy is often overlooked but is often even more important that capacity… Check 
- Power quality: never seen a big datacenter without a Liebert, or at least UPS in every rack. Power does not have the be contitioned except between the UPS and the machines/devices. A whole data center power conditioner is often more efficient, but unnecessary for the little guys. either way - check. 
- Age is irrelevent as long as it’s under support. If it’s not, replace it. Generators need to be run several times a year to validate their condition, and also to grease the innards… See too many good generators get kicked on and fail an hour later because the oil hand’t been changed in 3 years… 
- Outages should be tracked, by system, rack row, and power distro. When system seem to be going down more frequently in one area, there’s usually an underlying reason… As Google recently proved as well for us all, do not ASSUME all is well, routine disgnostics including memory scans should be performed on ALL hardware. Even ECC RAM deteriorates with age (rapidly) and needs to be part of a maintenance testing and replacement policy - Check. 
- Fire suppression is usually part of your building codes, and a given, as is the routine checks (at least anually) by law.

In addition, we deploy: 
- Man traps on all enterences to data centers. You go in one door, it closes, then you authenticate to a second door. A pressure plate ensures only one person goes in/out at a time (and it it’s tripped, a scurity guy looking at a screen has to override). 
- Full 24x7 video surveilance of the data centers. 
- in/out logs for all equipment. To take a device in/out of a datacenter requires it being logged in a book (by a designated person). This is for anything the size of a disk/tape and larger. All drive bays are audited nightly by security and if drives go missing, security reviews the access logs and server room security footage to see who might have taken them. 
- clear and consistent labeling systems for rack, shelves, cables and systems. 
- pre-cable just about everything to row level redundant switches, and have no cabling from server to other servers not passed through a rack/row switch first. Row switches connect to distro switches. This ensures cabling is simple, and predictable. 
- Colorcoded cabling: we use 1 color for redundant cabling (indicating their should be 2 of these connected to the server at all times, and to seperate cards in the backplane and seperate switches to boot), a seperate color for generic gigabit connections, another color for DS View, another color the out management network(s), another color for heartbeat cables, and yet another for non-ethernet (T1/PRI/etc). Other colors are used in some areas to designate 100m connections, special connectivity, or security enclave barriers, and non-fiber switch-to-switch connections. Every cable is labled at both ends and every 6-8 feet inbetween. 
- FULLY REDUNDANT POWER. It’s not enough to have clean poewr, and good UPS and a generator. In a large datacenter (more than a few rows, or anything truly mission critical), you should have 2 seperate power companies, 2 seperate generators, and 2 fully segregated power systems at the datcenter, room, row, and rack levels. in each datacenter we use 2 Liebert mains, each row has a seperate distribution unit connected to a differnt main, and each rack has 4 PDUs (2 to each distro). Every server is connected to 2 seperat PDUs, run all the way back to 2 completely independent power grids. For a deployment of 50 servers or so this is big time overkill. We have over 3500 servers, we need this… We can not rely on a PSU failure taking out racks at a time which may server dozens of other systems each.

Oracle is a big Eclipse supporter too - OEPE - by jambay (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
Disclaimer - I work for Oracle and came from the BEA Systems acquisition.

My personal opinion is that Oracle is very dedicated to the entire Eclipse ecosystem as well as to JDeveloper. It’s about choice. There is an entire free download product that is continually being enhanced called the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (Oh-Pee is how we say it within Oracle). In fact I believe it was one of the first, if not the first commercial IDE to support the latest Eclipse 3.5 Galileo. http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/enterprise-pack-for-eclipse/index.html OEPE is targeted for Java and JEE developers and is mostly about supporting the Java standards. Additionally, the majority of the TopLink code was donated as the EclipseLink project and is currently the JPA reference implementation. Just take a look at the presence has at the next Eclipse conference and I think you will see that Oracle is committed to Eclipse. http://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/

When you get into the “upper-stack” components like SOA Suite for integration and WebCenter Suite for enterprise portal development, and Oracle’s Application Development Framework (ADF) that Oracle strongly recommends JDeveloper. Those products have been based on JDeveloper for a long time and the user-experience developing for those products is extremely smooth because Oracle can influence everything about the IDE. If you want to do Java and JEE development in JDeveloper, you can do that too. It’s your choice.

JDeveloper is great… - by wandazulu (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

…if you want to interact with Oracle products. I tried really hard to use it, even using it as both a Java IDE and a PL/SQL IDE and, while yes, it does work, I found it too slow and clunky to just “bang out some code” when you need to write up a throwaway program really really fast.

But, like I said, if you want total interaction with your database or app server (assuming that app server is oc4j), then I suppose, if you have to use only a single tool, I guess, well, shrug, I guess it’s better than nothing…I guess.

Netbeans just isn’t there - by mapnjd (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Unfortunately for Netbeans zealots, it has never caught up with Eclipse. It may have surpassed it temporarily for certain apps (think Grails support - but look at STS 2.2.0). It’s also not as good as IntelliJ IDEA (previously, always non-free).

Yes, both Netbeans and Eclipse are also RCP platforms, but how many real Netbeans platform apps are there? (The Nokia one on the web site is vapourware - yes it shows a real customer RAN - without their permission, I should add! - but it’s never been a product delivered to customers). Real Eclipse RCP apps do exist (XMind, Lotus Smartsuite…). Realistically, they both over good RCP platforms (one pure Java, one SWT) but Oracle won’t really care about that.

As for JDeveloper - well it’s a typical Oracle product - if you’re in an Oracle house, it’s pretty good, but no, it’s not got a large userbase or community supporting it.

Oracle should let Netbeans drift off into open source land. Perhaps it’ll thrive? I don’t know. JDeveloper’s functionality should be ported to Eclipse (along with SQL Developer, while we’re at it).

Oracle are great at giving you tools once you’ve signed up for the ride, and why not rebase your products on the best? Which in my opinion is Eclipse.

Re:Netbeans just isn’t there - by Joseph Lam (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

Netbeans isn’t there in terms of industry backing and support (which is what we hope Oracle will provide). As far as the software itself is concerned I find it to be at least as good if not better than Eclipse. It’s been significantly improved over the last couple of years from version 4.x to 6.x. There are two things that I like it better than Eclipse: 
- it’s 100% Java and runs fine on anything that has a JVM (Eclipse’s SWT has platform specific dependencies which prevented me from using it on 64bit machines, it took ages for it to have proper x64 support) 
- better developer experience because of a cleaner and sensibly chosen set of plug-ins that all work out-of-the-box with no dependency hell (Eclipse plug-ins is a mess unless you pay for commercially packaged versions like MyEclipse)

Re:Netbeans just isn’t there - by Deth_Master (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Hmm, as a java development platform (and as a C/C++ development IDE) it is unrivaled by Eclipse. Things seem to work so much smoother in netbeans. You don’t have to configure the shit out of it to use it. Most stuff follows the convention over configuration principle. At least that’s the way it seems to me 
Every time I use eclipse I’m surprised at the exceptional amount of options there are to do something simple. I rarely use them. Most of the options could be done with a couple bits of typing anyway. 
As for the RCP stuff, I don’t particularly care about that. I think eclipse has the upper hand in that stuff, as that’s what it was designed to be in the first place, unlike Netbeans, which was designed to be a Java IDE.

Re:Skepticism may be warranted, here. - by reverseengineer (Score: 4, Informative) Thread
“Protein kinase C” is really at least 10 different proteins in humans- “isozymes” that have similar function, but different structures and different regulation mechanisms. All of the protein kinaseC variant belong to the larger class of serine/threonine kinases (about 100 different enzymes), and all the work that any of those enzymes do is to add a phosphate group to a serine or threonine amino acid on a protein. That role is important because protein phosphorylation is used as a molecular switch to activate or deactivate a protein. There’s nothing special about this particular protein kinase-C isozyme, other than the target it phosphorylates.  
 
Presumably, the target of this particular kinase C form is involved in the apoptosis pathway for dopamine-releasing neurons, so keeping the molecular switch from being turned on could prevent the cell death from being carried out. Since the structures of isozymes are different, you could develop a drug that knocks out this variant of PKC without turning off PKC globally.  
 
However, preventing apoptosis of neurons, while possibly leading to an effective treatment, still does not address why brain cells would feel the need to kill themselves. For instance, in at least some Parkinson’s patients, neurons suffer from a buildup of improperly folded protein called alpha-synuclein (compare amyloid and tau in Alzheimer’s, prions in prion diseases). (However, overall there are many possible causes of Parkinson’s and related syndromes, including unknown causes.) Cell suicide is meant as a protective measure for the remaining cells so they are not in turn poisoned by the output of misfolded proteins. What happens when you turn off apoptosis, and cells which turn “sick” are no longer able to die?

Re:Skepticism may be warranted, here. - by Pedrito (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
I’m not so sure “neutralizing” this kinase-C will result in any miracle cures, as the protein happens to have a lot of other uses in the body, per wikipedia:  
 
First of all, there isn’t just one Protein Kinase C. There are a number of different versions with different jobs. Hence the list of the various isozymes in the article. The one in question is Protein Kinase C delta (PKC), and is NOT covered in the wikipedia article. 
 
PKC mediates apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in certain dopamine producing neurons. By blocking the enzyme, you can prevent the apoptosis. Reading some of Dr. Kanthasamy’s papers, it’s clear that he’s already found some agents that do this in animal models. This is, of course, a long way from human trials (10 years if things go well, I believe is what he said in the article). But this is very promising avenue of research. 
 
What I can’t figure out is why this is recent news. Dr. Kanthasamy has clearly been following this line of research for a few years. There’s a 2007 paper entitled Neuroprotective Effect of Protein Kinase C{delta} Inhibitor Rottlerin in Cell Culture and Animal Models of Parkinson’s Disease, so clearly he had already connected PKC with PD and was already investigating agents to block it.

Hmm, how safe is safe enough? - by afidel (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
Since the disease leads to paralysis then death how safe does it have to be to be effective? If the cure kills 5% of the people that take it I would think that will be less than the 10 year delay in getting a “perfect” cure out of the lab and through FDA testing.

Re:Hmm, how safe is safe enough? - by sonnejw0 (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Protein Kinase C is a key enzyme activated by many very different pathways involved in many different functions across the board. Blocking it will affect innumerable systems. 
 
Saying Protein Kinase C is the key to neutralizing Parkinson’s Diseases is like saying Money is the key to the Financial Crisis. … Duh.  
 
The clinical effects of Parkinson’s Disease are the result of neuron death. You can’t reverse the effects. Even if you induce neuronal growth, the brain will have to relearn the connections it needs to make, which took a lifetime to form. Forget about playing the piano again. You’ll have to relearn to play (although you’ll still have the conceptual knowledge).

Re:huh? - by icebike (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

It might do it for you if you had the disease.

If the side effects are more tolerable than the disease itself most people would opt to use the medicine. Waiting for perfect solutions has never really worked, especially for diseases that slowly rob you of any ability to manage your daily life.

Media Lab? Unless it comes from the 1st floor… - by snsh (Score: 3, Interesting) Thread
The stuff that comes out of upper floors of the Media Lab generally don’t commercialize well. Anyone remember Charmed Technologies? A couple of grads from the same group tried to commercialize wearable computers - the company didn’t survive the bubble collapsing. The first floor of the Media Lab is different; they’re more like traditional researchers and work on things like e-ink. But the upper floors generate demo after demo, that look cute and generate press, but not much commercial value.

lol - by charliemopps11 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
I’ve never gotten paid for anything I’ve written. I give it all away. The reward is called “Pride” As a society we simply need to find a way to make sure people like Pranav Mistry have gainful employment while they devlop things like this. As long as I have a decent job that pays my bills and afords me the time to work on software, I will continue to do so. But when employment barely pays my rent and my managers expect me to come in early and work late to the point that I have no time to do anything rewarding at all, everyone suffers because I can not continue to work on things that may or may not be profitable in the end. In my opinion the biggest obstacle in the way of innovation is profit.

*sigh* - by inviolet (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread

The sixth sense is accelleration. Sensory data is provided by the semicircular canals and is interpreted as sensations, therefore it deserves the title of ‘sense’. Proprioception may also qualify, even though it is a derived/calculated sense.

I give this example to my children to teach the important fact that most every person and most every textbook on Earth can be clearly and demonstrably wrong about something obvious.

paid to the canard? - by poetmatt (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread

Is it me, or does this expression make almost no sense? Regardless of the intent I don’t get why it follows with “that open source and innovation are incompatible, for all time.”

Can someone translate this expression about canard?

Re:paid to the canard? - by icebike (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

The writer assumes this single example totally undermines the argument that “Open Source and Innovation are incompatible”.

First, its a strawman argument. Nobody has said that innovation is incompatible with open source, at least no one has made a compelling case.

Second its a presumption of importance way beyond the merits of the case. It is neither the first nor the most important open-sourcing of a potentially lucrative idea.

This is Slashdot. You have to expect a certain amount of grandiosity in the story excerpts.

Landsberg’s last book annoyed me enough - by rbrander (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

I read his “More Sex is Safer Sex” and spent about half of it muttering “but you’re ignoring a relevant factor…”.

I see that the reviews at the Amazon page for that book:

http://www.amazon.com/More-Sex-Safer-Unconventional-Economics/dp/1416532226/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2 …agree with my assessment. Give the first couple a quick skim before buying this one. Many of his arguments read like he started off with the intention of writing somethingn entertainingly contrarian and counter-intuitive, then assembled an argument to defend it. And, of course, a book author has the advantage of only taking on arguments that he himself allows in the book, gets to decide which factors of the problem are relevant, and so on.

I did pass the test the reviewer offers here: I had specific points at which I disagreed with his argument. But I didn’t find that fun; it’s no fun halting all agreement with an argument at step 4 and having to go on and read steps 5-9 while holding a little asterisk in your head that says “none of this matters because 4 is clearly wrong”.

As an example, the heart of his “more sex is safer sex” argument used in the title is that overall risk is reduced if *certain* *people*, those with lower odds of having disease, have more sex. Then the people they have sex with are having safer sex than if with someone else. Alas, it rests on the contention that if the “safer” people have more sex, every act *displaces* another sexual interaction - the possibility that simply more sex will occur, the added interactions being safer, but *not* displacing a less-safe one, is not allowed for. Recommending that certain prudent people have more sex, while assuming that the amount of total sex in the world will remain a constant, is not, to my mind, a safe assumption. But it wasn’t slashdot; all I could do was sit there, frustrated at my inability to argue with the book.

So I’ll give this one a miss. Thanks anyway.

Free will ain’t no argument against time travel! - by Dr. Manhattan (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread

Basically you have a situation where there is a physics question (are CTCs possible, and if so, how would they work?), where one of the strongest arguments available is based on the assumption of free will (the feeling that older-me can *choose* freely to warn younger-me away from the CTC).

From my own far-too-long-and-obsessive meditation on time travel:

A lot of people don’t like this model because it would seem to eliminate any possibility of free will. Personally, I don’t particularly worry about whether I have free will or not. If I do have free will, then I don’t have to worry about it. If I don’t, then there’s no point in worrying about it. Either way…

But this model doesn’t necessarily pose problems for free will. Consider normal ideas about time and free will. Your parents freely chose to have you, right? At the very least, their free choices led them to the point where they did have you, though hopefully they were happy about it.

Now, assuming no time travel, those choices cannot now be changed, right? They cannot now decide not to have had you. The moment of choice was back then, somewhere in the past. Once that choice was made, it was fixed. Assuming free will, it was not totally determined by what led up to it in some physical deterministic sense, but once made it could not be changed. This is not a constraint on free will.

Now, just by adding in time travel we needn’t change anything about this. Choices are freely made at the moment they are decided. It’s just that now it’s possible to know what those free choices “were” at a point in time “before” the choice “will be” made. (English again forces us to use strange tenses to speak about this. Oh, well.) Remember, in this model, there is no privileged point we can pick out and call ‘the present’. Every moment is past to some instants, future to others. Every moment is a “present”.

(Note that some people use this idea to reconcile the idea of God knowing what we will do with the notion of free will. God, existing outside of time, doesn’t ordain what people do, It just sees them doing it. I only bring it up to point out that lots of people have no problem in principle with the idea that they both have free will and yet someone knows with certainty what they will do. I don’t see why it’s any different if someone besides a God has that knowledge…)

If you see a movie of yourself from the future doing certain things tomorrow, from a certain perspective it doesn’t mean that you are “fated” to do those things. It just means that you know, when that time comes around, that doing those things will seem to you to be the best available choice.

Perhaps the future choice seems silly, or even terrible. Well, can’t you think of a moment where you’ve made a choice, and then later (perhaps only a second later) thought, “What was I thinking?” The fact that it seems unlikely to you that you will make that choice doesn’t mean that you won’t make it. People do things they never expected to do, even said they wouldn’t do, all the time.

“Big” question? - by CannonballHead (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

It’s a “big” question to ask why there are atheistic best sellers?

Of course not. The question is, do most adults believe some of the tenets?

Ah yes. The “you have to have an open mind” argument. I guess evolution, global warming, and government health care debates, on the other hand, really ARE settled beyond discussion. [/sarcasm]. Seriously though - I know many major religions are of the gnostic type… hvae to have higher knowledge, enlightened, etc. But what exactly does “beyond discussion” mean? Not doubting/convinced? It seems that not-being-in-doubt and being-convinced are feelings reserved for atheists, now. Only someone dogmatically believing in the non-existence of an entity are allowed to be sure of their belief. Which is odd, since most logicians will tell you that it is much harder to prove non-existence than it is to prove existence. I wonder why Landsburg didn’t mention that? Seems like that is a “big question” - why are many logicians and scientists atheists, since they are so careful not to deny existence of other things that we don’t even have evidence for; they simply understand that denying existence is a big logical step in that you have to disprove every possible existence first. When it comes to the supernatural/God though, they are quite willing to believe in a non-existence and not be open to discussion. Why does Landsburg only pick on those who are convinced, perhaps illogically, that God does exist?

Incidentally, you can be illogically convinced to believe an correct thing, and you can be logically convinced to believe an incorrect thing. Logic is an argument; what you logically deduce or induce from makes a big difference, as your premise may be wrong, thus your conclusion could be wrong as well.

Most people don’t behave like there is death at all. Most people don’t want to talk about death, don’t want to hear about death, and don’t even want to think about death. Many people “defy” death and live like they won’t die. I guess that means death doesn’t actually exist! Cool!

So without seeing any numbers and going entirely on the basis of logical deductions from unproved and perhaps disputed premises, you are coming to new conclusions on what people actually believe - without asking them.

Re:Protectionism - by vlm (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread

Yes, when the wage difference is due to social engineering governmental policies. Tariffs balance those differences out, thus creating a free(-er) market.

So, there is little need for US and German automakers to put tariffs on each other, because those governments are approximately, more or less equal. (I am sorry if I just insulted the entire German slashdot readership, my defense is its true, at least relative to my other example)

However, everything that China exports to the USA desperately needs USA import tariffs because the Chinese government actively encourages activities that the US government wisely will not permit USA companies to use, such as slave labor, no environmental controls at all, no worker safety regulations, limited/no health care (admittedly somewhat applies to USA), no product liability, no IP laws at all, industrial espionage is permitted (if not encouraged), etc.

Can’t have a free market, when the players aren’t equally free (or at least brought to mostly the same level by tariffs)

Re:Protectionism - by vlm (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread

OK I’m an amateur at both, I’ll give it a try in support:

OK, if it were a free market between equal players, you’d have a point. But it is not, because at least some players in the market are not free (the Chinese) and some players are kept ignorant thus cannot play the game fairly (the USA). The $80 camera was made in a facility that is at least semi-environmentally sound and respects at least some human rights, and the Chinese one is made by slaves working in an ecological disaster. We pretend that is unacceptable for humans to live like the Chinese, at least its unacceptable if they are Americans. So either its OK to save money by skipping all those human rights things, in which case we should do the same here (please don’t be that stupid), or the Chinese are not humans like us (please don’t be that stupid). Protectionist tariffs level the playing field at least partially, and are therefore critical economically for a free, libertarian market.

Re:Train Wreck - by nutshell42 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
OK - imagine this scenario: a large number of very intelligent specialists work for years on this idea and the necessary tech is implemented in every European car and noone ever thought of the 100% obvious first-problem-any-person-would-come-up-with-when-introduced-to-this-idea problem smitty777 discovered with the vast power of his uber-brain. European roads then become deathtraps, depopulating the continent like it’s 1349.

I’m just sayin, every /. article with new ideas gets swamped by people stating absolutely obvious problems as if the people working on that project were all functionally retarded. I said the same thing just a few days ago but this article really brought the geniuses out of the woodwork like I haven’t seen in some time.

I was driving … - by PPH (Score: 4, Funny) Thread
… on I-94 to Minneapolis, but I fell asleep and missed the exit by 150 miles.

Reminds me of a dream I once had - by The Archon V2.0 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
The scene: A road that was winding its way along a treacherous landscape (think Wile E. Coyote’s home turf).

A generic couple were standing by the side of road, which was basically a piece of flat pavement cut into the side of a mountain. They were watching a garage inventor/scientist type explain his latest invention, a motorized luggage carrier. Sort of a motorcycle sidecar or luggage unit for people who didn’t want to change the visual impact of their motorbike. It was an independent unit, had its own motor and fuel, and required only a slight modification to the motorcycle in the form of a radio transmitter. After that, it basically mimicked the motions of the “master” motorcycle.

Garage inventor gets on his bike, fires it up, and drives off. Sure enough, the other device (which I recall looking a lot like a large cooler on wheels) fired up by itself and followed. A few minutes later, the garage inventor loops back and drives by. Getting cocky, he waves at the couple. Unfortunately, he hits a rock and with only one hand on the handlebars, can’t recover. He loses control, and drives off the side of the cliff. An unpleasant “crunch” is heard below.

Moments later, the motorized luggage holder comes along and dutifully throws itself off the cliff as well. A second “crunch” is heard.

The couple look down at the carnage and then leave.

road trains are stupid. - by girlintraining (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread

You’re handing control over to another driver, who may very well decide not to brake and cause a five car pileup, or worse. Also, there’s no way to know the mechanical status of the vehicle — what if one of them blows a tire, or runs out of gas, or the engine seizes?

What you should do is create a dedicated lane that is controlled entirely by computer, and you program your exit/entry point at that time, and let the signal and control computers handle traffic management. If an unauthorized vehicle enters the lane, sensors will immediately detect it, alert nearby drivers (and disengage), and send the police to go catch captain speedy pants and send him to a pants-down facility. Computers also do a much better job of fuel consumption and control… I mean, it’d basically be a packet-switched network, but with cars instead of pieces of data. It’s a relatively benign IT problem.

As well, vehicle breakdowns would be handled a lot better because the system would be tied directly to the onboard computer and navigation systems: Just like lorries/semi-trucks operating on the road today. Having spoken to a commercial truck driver, I can tell you that the computer often knows about mechanical problems before the driver does, and their systems are pre-programmed to alert a dispatcher, who will send a rescue/repair vehicle out in situ.

Re:road trains are stupid. - by Arthur Grumbine (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

Hey! Here on /. we use car analogies to explain computer technology - not vice-versa!!

UN/America needs to do this now - by WindBourne (Score: 3, Interesting) Thread
If we remain in Afghanistan to stop AQ, then getting supplies into there is hard. A big part of this is fuel for electric power. This is the ideal situation for a small 10-50 MW space generator to beam it into bases, esp. forward bases. We can cut the power to the base, if it is taken. In addition, it prevents fuel from being used as a weapon. We could easily have a small version available within 2 years. 
 
In addition, this same idea could be used in the US and other locations to beam 10 MWs into disaster locations. The ability to bring in say 1 MW into multiple locations within 1 hour would make a HUGE difference in say hurricane, earthquake, or even another 9/11.

. . . laser satellite with a shark crew . . . - by PolygamousRanchKid (Score: 5, Funny) Thread

. . . meanwhile, some space experts have questioned Japan’s plans for a shark crew.

A NASA spokesman commented, “I’m just not exactly sure, but something seems not quite right with a laser satellite to be crewed by sharks.”

A Japan space agency spokesman countered, “Sharks don’t sleep, so we will be sure that they are always paying attention to the sensitive instruments, 24/7. And they don’t get cancer, because of some mysterious substance in their cartilage. Sharks have survived for millions of years in the oceans of the Earth. Outer space is the next logical challenge for them.”

Old news - by commodore64_love (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread

I read this… uh two weeks ago? All the same things we said back then still apply (you’ll lose ~99% of your power over the 20,000 mile beaming distance), et cetera, et cetera. Highly inefficient.

Now maybe if they converted the solar to hydrogen first, and then used that to fuel spaceships to colonize Mars and other planets, it might make sense.

(shrug). Whatever. I think mankind is about to experience a major energy drought. The last two centuries were built-upon the solar power captured over 100 million years (by evergreens). Now it’s almost all gone. We won’t die-out of course, but life in the 2100s might look a lot like life in the 1700s (cold homes, very little travel, and dark nights).

Re:Old news - by MobyDisk (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

Losing 99% of the power? Why? You can beam the power down using wavelengths that are not absorbed by the atmosphere.

Re:Old news - by jeffmeden (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread

So, who is going to volunteer to put a bunch of water into orbit?

What I do … - by Grayputer (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

Alrighty, I AM a CTO of a 20 person company with a single admin and here is what I’m interested in.

1 - problems and their resolution

2 - potential issues

3 - time sinks.

So I get info on: 
What broke last week and how did we fix it: a list of hardware software outages, their root causes, the fix applied, whether that fix is a long term of short term fix, if short term, a recommendation for a long term solution

Issues that my admin sees as ‘near term’ problems (2 months): list of systems low on resources (disk, cpu, ram, …), applications that have repeat issues, upgrades that are due and are non trivial (potential downtime, critical app where the ‘upgrade gone wrong’ may lead to down time, …), etc. This includes a list of any planned downtime and a description of the planned downtime (including ‘the plan’/timetable of events) so I can remind or co-ordinate with others.

Issues that my admin sees as ‘mid term’ problems (12 months): list of systems due for replacement, applications/OSes that are near end of life, need for additional hardware (network switches, firewall upgrades, …), etc

Any single issue that he spent more than an hour on or anything he is repeatedly spending time on, those are my definition of time sink.

Why am I interested in those specific items: 
    Items in category 1 are apt to come up in conversation with my boss. They are also items I need to monitor to ensure that the systems, applications, and yes the admin staff, are not causing the company headaches.

Items in categories 2 and 3 fall into planning and budget issues that I need to plan for, or co-ordinate with others.

Category 3 also allows me to eventually understand that application A or staff member B or ‘department’ C are killing us and I need to find a better way for the company to work. It also allows me a better understanding of whether the week is an anomaly or if I need additional admin staff or training.

None of this is in a rigid format, so no I can’t forward you a template :). It is currently done via office visits/conversations, emails, and hallway conversations. That is working and I see no need for a more rigid structure unless we start to have communications issues. When we do, I’ll setup a more formal status reporting system (currently, if it ain’t broke …).

Bottom line, in a small company, single admin case where that admin reports to the CTO, the CTO is effectively the systems/IT manager as well as the development manager, the CTO or corporate level planner, and the executive level consultant/evangelist on IT matters to the CEO and CFO. I do NOT necessarily expect the admin to be an IT manager, being an admin is frequently hard enough. However, that ‘department’ is not my only concern so to some extent the admin needs to summarize stuff and not ship me logs/raw data, I have too many hats.

Does that help?

Honestly, as little as possible!! - by ErichTheRed (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

I’ve worked in large and small companies, and the one unifying truth of executive communication is that they do not want details. In their mind, they hired you to take care of the details, If you say you need $100,000 to increase bandwidth at remote locations, you had better have a one or two sentence explanation about how this is going to make them money or help them make money. If they want to see a utilization chart or two, have that ready, but you’re going to be tuned out if you launch into a long explanation.

I’m not an MBA, but my guess would be that they teach MBAs to focus on strategy and leadership, and to hire people to do the nuts-and-bolts work. Same goes for small business owners, but double — they’re doing crazy 120 hour weeks growing the business - why would they want to listen to a report from the guy they hired to make sure they wouldn’t have to deal with “all that IT stuff?”

As long as you keep that in mind, reports to executives will go well. Short, simple, money- or productivity-focused explanations, very little technical information, etc. Think like they are thinking — “Why am I paying for this?” “How does this make me money or keep me from losing money?”

20 person company + executives + reports??? - by Anonymous Coward (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

You work for a 20 person company that has executives and reports? What kind of company is this? My experience (as a sys admin and with simultaneous IT support) has taught me that reports are for shareholders’ piece of minds unless you work for a really large company. And if you’re a private company then the shareholders are the partners/founders and you should just talk to them like as needed.

Focus on the business… - by LibertineR (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
and not so much the technology.

Show how the various systems and services directly support Business operations and overall goals like profitability, customer service ratings, etc..

Point out wherever technology is a business hindrance or obstacle, and provide multiple options for systems or software integration to alleviate the problem.

In short, use the opportunity to remind the execs that IT is more than a cost-center, and how its proper usage can enhance profitability.

Careful though; if you do too good a job, they might make you a (gasp) manager, and then of course, you are screwed.

My experience - by br00tus (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

I started working at an organization a while back and I would file a trouble ticket whenever I came across something broken, even if it was unimportant and with an overflowing workload might not be done for a while. A manager was hired after a while who decided to use the trouble ticket system as a meter of progress for tasks done. When he announced this, I immediately closed all of these types of tickets, saved them locally on my machine, and even went into the database so as to delete all vestiges of these tickets. I began only creating tickets when I knew a task would probably be done on-time and quickly. The manager was canned after about two years there - the thing that saved him for so long is that his manager changed three times while he was there, the third one axed him.

What management wants to see is that their investment in you is getting results. If they spend X amount of dollars on something, they want to see how it is helping the company or whatever. Show how successful your projects have been, how your uptime rate is always increasing etc. Use lots of colorful charts, lists with 20 goals and “accomplished” next to 18 of them and “partially accomplished” next to the other two. That type of crap. I mean, if management wants this nonsense from the sysadmin, you’re in Dilbert land already.

In France in 1968 there was a massive general strike, with workers taking over factories and the like, and De Gaulle even planned contingencies to leave France and invade it at some future point with the French army and possibly NATO support. One of the wall posters of that time said “The boss needs you, you don’t need the boss”. Sometimes I think these exercises are more to psychologically mess with you than anything. You do all the work and create all the wealth, the bosses and shareholders don’t do anything and collect salaries and profits. By making you do a pointless exercise like this to justify yourself to them, they’re putting the idea out of your head of the reverse - of why *they* are necessary to the company. After 13 years in this industry, I’m becoming convinced that the dumb, pointless things management makes you do does have some strange psychological point along these lines. I’ve quit agreeing with my co-workers that these presentations are dumb and pointless, I think they do have a point - keeping us disciplined, from requesting sane hours and on-call rotation and all of that.

PC World Has it out for the Droid - by limaxray (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
I’m convinced PC World has it out for the Droid and has only been carrying negative articles about it. This article is particularly misleading. First of all, the unlimited phone data plan IS unlimited - it’s the tethering, WAN card, Mifi, etc plans that are limited to 5GB a month. Just head over to the Verizon website and check out the fine print. Now the catch is if they think you’re tethering without a tether plan (which is really easy to do) they’ll charge you for tethering. So if you use 10GB a month of phone data (which, lets be honest here, is not realistic using just your phone) they’ll hit you for tethering. 
 
Next, the $15 a month for Exchange is if you’re an enterprise customer. I’m not really sure what that means - if they host the account for you, or handle some extra securtity stuff, or what - but if you’re just average Joe user with your own personal account, you won’t need to pay it. There is no problem using Exchange with the regular personal data plan. 
 
These facts can easily be confirmed by checking out Verizon’s website, but the boys over at PCWorld are too busy making out with their iPhones to do any fact checking.

Wrong Information - by noc007 (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
This crap has been circling the web and it’s not completely accurate. With the $30 and $45 data plans for smartphones, you get unlimited data for the phone itself. If you want to tether, it’s an additional $30 for the $30 plan or $15 for the $45 plan and will allow you 5GB of tethered data and unlimited on the phone. In any case, if you want to tether and be within their TOS, you need to pay $60. It’s still possible to tether without the extra cost and their software, it’s just not within their TOS  
 
The difference between the $30 and $45 data plan isn’t documented well and leads to a lot of confusion. I fault VZW for not getting this strait. All the $45 gets you is access their WirelessSync service and supposedly allow you to do Exchange ActiveSync within the TOS. The $30 plan CAN DO Exchange ActiveSync, but it’s supposedly not ok within their poorly documented TOS and every VZW employee will tell you that you need the $45 plan if you’re going to do Exchange ActiveSync.  
 
If you do use a lot of data on your phone, VZW can cancel your data account according to their TOS. I’ve used >5GB/month without a peep from VZW and any additional charge on my bill. It has been said in HoFo, if the data usage is extreme by VZW opionion, they could consider that your must be doing something that’s violating the TOS. If VZW was smart, they wouldn’t do much canceling since they’re launching a bunch of Android phones and saying streaming YouTube and music is ok, which obviously will soak up a lot of bandwidth.  
 
I suggest that Pickens and the article author do some fact checking before publishing assumptions and hearsay.

Summary is dead wrong - by ericrost (Score: 5, Informative) Thread

The data plan is, in fact, unlimited. I go over 5 GB a month on my current Verizon phone regularly. This is no different. Tethering specifically has a 5 GB limit which is stated in the contract for it. There are also readily available hacks to make tethering work on an Android phone.

Re:Summary is dead wrong - by nvrrobx (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread

The summary is not wrong. You may be lucky to not be caught, but my brother and his wife were - they had an absolutely outrageous bill.

They were suckered in by Verizon’s “unlimited” wording. They lived in rural Texas where no other form of broadband (except satellite) was feasible. They got the USB modem and used it, until the first month’s bill showed up for nearly $1000. (The wife loves her MySpace and Facebook and YouTube)

You can claim it’s their fault all you want, but expecting non-computer savvy people to understand what 5GB is, and the fact that it’s not “unlimited” like they state is deceiving and unethical.

Re:Summary is dead wrong - by Rich0 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread

Indeed - almost all of the cell providers should be fined for deceptive trade practices the way they sucker people into huge bills - all agreed to in fine print.

All of this would be fixed by a very simple law - anybody ought to be able to set a limit on their monthly bill. If I call up evilphoneco and tell them that my cell phone bill is capped at $90 per month, then I don’t care WHAT services I consume - they can’t charge me more than $90 per month. It is their job to keep me from using services I haven’t paid for - not my job to avoid accidentally incurring them. And no incurring of debts either - if they deliver me $10k worth of services they can bill me $90 once and then we’re even.

Oh, the second part of that law would be that everybody’s cap starts out at whatever their basic monthly rate is. Unless somebody specifically requests a higher limit they couldn’t be charged for any “optional” services.

And no giving people limited choices like $10/month or unlimited only. People should be able to name their own limits as arbitrarily as they’d like.

It seems like phone companies depend on people making $500 mistakes with their cell phones, and they almost count on people doing it. They get zero mercy when it happens. At best they might be offered an option for $10 per month to cap their bill. That should NOT be something that costs money.

Or be fat and focus on LIVING - by RevWaldo (Score: 2) Thread
Seriously. Far too many fat people basically think that their life is on hold until they lose weight. “Once I get skinny, everything’s gonna change.” This is, of course, fucked.  
 
I’ve been fat pretty much my whole life (currently 260 on a 5’11’’ frame). I (quite truthfully) eat a pretty sane diet, rarely drink (maybe a beer or two a week), don’t smoke and get moderate exercise (biking, walking, etc.) (And I don’t own a game console, or a car for that matter.) I probably could be thinner if I hit the gym for an hour or two and stuck to a 1800 calorie diet every day for the next 50-100 years. But I’d rather just live my life, thanks. 
 
This isn’t to say I haven’t tried in the past. Not too long ago for about a year and a half I used to bike commute (10 miles each way) and hit the nearby gym for some additional workout (I needed the gym to shower anyway.) I did lose some weight during that time but nothing dramatic - I was still a fat guy. But I bike-commuted mainly because it was fun, not just to lose weight. When my company changed offices bike commuting was no longer practical, so I also stopped hitting the gym. I still get my biking in on the weekends, because biking’s still fun. 
 
My advice if you’re fat - and it took me far to long to accept this myself - is to go live your life. Get out of the house. Have fun. Meet people. Be adventurous. Hang out. volunteer. Buy good-looking clothes that fit well. Go dancing. Go to the beach. If anyone snickers at you doing something that’s considered strictly at thin-person activity, just say “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.” and keep going. If you’re fat and doing all this already, more power to you. 
 
And since this is one of the main objectives with weight loss: If you’re single, go out on dates. Again, seriously. Fat people date, have sex, fall in love, etc. etc. all the time. Heterosexually speaking, there are plenty of women who don’t mind if a guy’s big. There are even plenty who like big guys. And there are certainly plenty of guys who like or don’t mind big women (Raises hand!) You can look online, natch, but don’t be afraid to give someone you like the eye. Ask them out. If you get the brush off or get shot down, well it happens to skinny people too. And remember that nothing is sadder than a fat person who hates others for being fat. Karma can be a bitch. 
 
If you’re looking to get exercise and eat better, go for it. But don’t let an image of a skinny you dominate your life. Be one of those many people out there living long, happy, loving, fulfilled lives. Who also happen to be fat.

Re:It’s the hormones that control fattening, not f - by evilviper (Score: 3) Thread

Finally he shows how fat has been wrongfully vilified over the past 50 years, and so if you take fat (high-density energy storage) out of the diet, it is replaced with carbs, and that itself is what triggers the storage system.

In theory, practice doesn’t matter…

In practice, many studies have been done, and none have shown notably higher weight loss from low card diets than from low fat diets.

In practice, reducing the amount of calories you eat will cause you to lose weight. Carbs, fat, doesn’t matter.

BURN BABY, BURN - by Talisman (Score: 3, Insightful) Thread

I have gone through large weight swings at different periods throughout my life. I was ectomorphic growing up, and matured into a mesomorph. Because my job is IT, I’m sedentary for long periods of time, and as such, will accumulate fat, especially given that in my mid-30’s I still eat just like I did in my mid-teens.

Due to my particular personality - mild OCD, extremely impatient - I am very, very good at modifying the way I look in short periods of time. I lost 19 pounds in a week, just to prove a point. I ate 3 hard boiled eggs per day, 1 slice of whole wheat toast, lots of water, lots of coffee, and never stopped chewing sugarfree gum. I also exercised for 4-5 hours per day. It takes incredible willpower. It absolutely sucks. You’ll feel like shit. But it does work.

Swimmers who cross the English Channel and Florida Straits also lose huge amounts of weight in very short periods of time. Susie Maroney lost 22 pounds in just over a day when she swam from Cuba to Key West. Not all of it fat, to be sure, but a lot of it was.

Much hype was made about Michael Phelps’ diet when he trains. He consumes between 10,000 - 12,000 calories per day while training. So imagine your daily food intake, and quadruple it. That’s how much he eats. And that’s just to prevent him from losing weight. He has to eat that much to stay the same.

I also freedive. Freedivers are some of the leanest athletes in the world. They tend to stay away from gyms as too much muscle burns too much oxygen. The repeated depletion and replenishment of O2 across the cell membrane really burns the calories. After a 4-day freediving training session off the coast of Florida, I had lost 6 pounds of fat in 4 days.

As others have noted, most people feel like they’re doing a lot of exercise, but they simply aren’t.

Exercise absolutely works. Just just aren’t doing it intensely enough or long enough if you aren’t burning fat.

because you need to eat less to lose weight? - by js3 (Score: 3, Insightful) Thread

I lost 25 pounds this year, and it mostly came from a diet change. Excersizing is great, and can speed things up but the biggest factor to losing weight and keeping it off was just eating less. Cut out the crap like snacks and pop soda, try to “feel hungry” more often it won’t kill you. Excersize makes you look great and develop some muscule but that alone won’t take off the weight until you change your diet.

Sociopath - by torstenvl (Score: 3, Informative) Thread

This post is extremely misleading and dangerous. Why anyone would want to propagate this lie is beyond me.

Exercise does lead to weight loss. The article cited clearly says it does. It’s just that a small amount of exercise — aerobic exercise for short periods over a mere three months, without strength training or diet changes — is less effective than you’d want it to be. Well duh. But even in those circumstances, with all those factors stacked against weight loss, the participants still lost some weight.

A counterexample: A mildly overweight or average person, who has no heart problems and is otherwise healthy, can engage in much more vigorous exercise. An hour on the elliptical can burn approximately 700 calories. An hour in an intense gym routine can burn more (ever see those ads for LA Boxing touting the one-hour 1000 calorie workout?). Lets say you do an hour of 700-calorie cardio every morning and dont change your diet. That’s an additional 3500 calories you’re burning per workweek. If you give yourself weekends off and don’t change your diet and don’t strength train, you’re still losing a pound a week, mostly of fat. If you add in proper diet — not calorie restriction per se but just switching from soda to water or cutting out one or two greasy meals a week — you’re doing better. Add in strength training and you’re be doing amazingly.

But it’s not enough to just diet. The health benefits of good cardiovascular health and muscle strength are important in their own right. Things like the Hacker’s Diet work to lose weight, but they are very unhealthy, even possibly dangerous. It condones a quantitative instead qualitative approach; the Hacker’s Diet seems to take the position that you can eat microwave pizzas for every meal as long as you keep it under about 2000 calories. What it doesn’t tell you is that in the process you’ll be failing to provide muscular support for an aging skeletal system, adding cholesterol to your body, hardening your arteries, and atrophying major muscles.

Signal to Noise ratio over time