-
cats rule
nogutsnoglory blog-
If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite variety in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. [Charles Darwin (1859) On the Origin of Species]
-
“It is essential to such a government, that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.” James Madison -
All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. -Benjamin Franklin - IO9
- OMG it's the Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark trailer! December 7, 2013Possibly the greatest epic in Syfy Movie of the Week history is coming soon — and we've got the trailer! This time, there is a GIANT SHARK ROBOT.Read more... […]
- We secret our vessels here, in the lee of the magnetic field December 7, 2013In the most remote crags of the ice-buried mountains of the southern ice cap, the pirate crew had a safe house. Read more...
- All the fake movies that we really want to see December 7, 2013From re-imagining James Bonds' retirement plan (to make and market his own line of artisan sorbets, naturally) to finally giving us the Robocop reboot that we really want to see, these fake movie posters are all perfect. Read more...
- Therapy, Vampire Diaries-Style! December 7, 2013Is this clip the most ludicrous thing you've ever seen, or just one of the most ludicrous things? It's Stefan's therapy session from last night's Vampire Diaries, and it's Exhibit A for why I still love this show. Read more... […]
- First scientific paper to be released in Elvish, Dwarvish and English December 7, 2013University of Bristol climate scientist Dan Lunt, writing under the name Radagast the Brown, released a paper today where he used powerful supercomputers to model the climate of Middle Earth. So of course he had to release it in Dwarvish, Elvish and English. He made some fascinating scientific observations, too.Read more...
- OMG it's the Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark trailer! December 7, 2013
- Make Blog
- Maker’s Portfolio Video Becomes Touching Remembrance December 7, 2013
- Let’s Talk 3D Printing with Children December 7, 2013
- In The Shed: Shiny! New! Ultimaker 2! December 6, 2013
- Weekend Projects HOA – License Plate Guitar LIVE NOW! December 6, 2013
- Hacker Convention EHSM Issues Call for Proposals December 6, 2013
- Weird Universe
Category Archives: technology
It’s always a people problem
Gerald M. Weinberg – poly-math with a focus on: systems theory, project management, software development, management consulting, creative writing, and humanism.
The Second Law of Consulting:
No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problemMarvin’s Corollary:
Whatever the client is doing, advise something else.Body Language Advice:
When you point a finger at someone, notice where the other three fingers are pointed.The Five-Minute Rule:
Clients always know how to solve their problems, and always tell the solution in the first five minutes.Gerald Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Amazon
Used copies start at $4.00. It’s a classic. I came to understand right away that Weinberg’s viewpoint resonates with some avenues of practical ancient wisdom. I count Gerald Weinberg as one my ‘main guys’ as far his being a prime influence on my own thinking about systems and group relations in organizations. His most notable work was first published in 1975, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking. It’s a cornerstone for any cybernetician.
Chapters Two and Three can stand-alone, and, they should be read by every intellectually precocious ninth grader.
Chapter 2. The Approach
• Organism, Analogy, and Vitalism
• The Scientist and His Categories
• The Main Article of General
Systems Faith
• The Nature of General Systems
Laws
• Varieties of Systems Thinking
Chapter 3. System and Illusion
• A System Is a Way of Looking at
the World
• Absolute and Relative Thinking
• A System Is a Set
• Observers and Observations
• The Principle of Indifference
Jerry turned 80 today. Happy birthday.
Posted in adult learning, social psychology, technology
Tagged consulting, general systems theory, Gerald M. Weinberg
Leave a comment
Smile, You’re On Candid Everything
This came up on my Google+ feed. My first thought was, ‘smile for the cameras.’ All of ‘em
My hot tip of the day is: duckduckgo, the anonymous search engine one might use if privacy is a concern.
cartoonist: Chris Slane
Meh Capture
I’d like to see an infographic that measured disillusionment with the various modalities, across the various internet tribes in the first world. I’d like to see the break down by age cohort and by gender. The internet grows, the illegal , or not, snooping grows, the waves of noise (as opposed to signal,) grows.
Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil; heroine and advocate for freedom of communication
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has called off a state visit to Washington next month in a row over allegations of US espionage. BBC
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been accused of intercepting emails and messages from Ms Rousseff, her aides and state oil company, Petrobras.
The allegations were based on documents leaked by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
President Barack Obama had promised to investigate the incident.
The White House said he had telephoned Ms Rousseff on Monday to discuss the matter.
The allegations of widespread espionage against Brazilian citizens were first published in July by Rio de Janeiro-based journalist Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for the British Guardian newspaper.
Mr Greenwald alleged that the NSA accessed all internet content that Ms Rousseff had visited online.
The Brazilian president was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Her decision to cancel (or officially, to postpone) the Washington visit will be seized upon by some as an act of petty nationalism.
Some Brazilian business leaders, worried by the precarious economic climate, will question the wisdom of antagonising such an important business ally as the US.
But the political pressure was greater still. There was fury in Brazil, not only at the revelation that the president’s own conversations and communications may have been spied upon by the NSA but that US interests were allegedly involved in blatant economic espionage against major Brazilian interests, including Petrobras.
Dilma Rousseff will have been wary of feelings of ordinary Brazilians had her Washington trip gone ahead. The perception here in Brazil is that the Obama administration has yet to give an adequate response or an apology.
The documents, according to the report, were part of an NSA case study showing how data could be intelligently filtered.
Earlier this month, another report by Mr Greenwald on Globo Television alleged that the NSA had illegally accessed data from Petrobras.
The company is due next month to carry out an important auction for exploration rights of an oil field off the Rio de Janeiro state coast.
Ms Rousseff has said that if the accusations are proven it means the NSA was involved in “industrial espionage”.
Posted in cultural contradictions, technology
Leave a comment
Starry Nights (app)
Stefan Gets the Last Word
One of the elements in play on Google+ is vigorous Apple hating. Google and Google fanfolk have replaced Microsoft and its Win nerds to become the ideologically situated antagonists of all things Cupertino. It’s amusing.
What’s curious is how pitched the competition is when looked at as a race between arrogant juggernauts.
I am not very tempted by Android because Chrome is such a laughably incapable browser. For example, for four years users have been requesting Google make it possible to sort bookmarks in Chrome. When the developers accomplished this feature this year, did they provide a way to sort by date? No. Ever tried out Google’s open source support?
Meanwhile, Apple has for almost a decade been working on making their system software across all their platforms user-unfriendly and more opaque.
Etc.. Neck and neck.
The Jobs of a Lifetime
So we went to Atari and said, `Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, `No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, `Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’ Steve Jobs
My friend Pilch laid an original Macintosh on me in 1985. He had received the cube-shaped computer as a gift from his employer, Burroughs, taken it out of its box, played around with it, and then, upon giving it to me, pronounced it “a toy.”
I used my freebee Macintosh for seven years. In 1988 I met its designer, Jerry Manock. He was a customer of the high-end seating company I worked at. He tried to convince my boss to junk the office IBM PC. No dice. The only benefit from this episode was that I learned MS-DOS. I could always go home to my computer, the one you could just turn on and get to work/play.
Over the years I went back and forth this way, between the office PC and the home Mac. (Through the nineties I also kept up with Apple’s technology by using the computer center at Middlebury College stocked with up-to-date machines.) I cannot imagine anybody being in this situation and not favoring the easier-to-use Mac computer.
Still, ‘whatever floats your boat’ was my attitude. After returning to Cleveland, I used hand-me-down Macs supplied by mom, Macintosh Plus, LC, LC III; my partner’s PPC 638; a Powerbook 140 given to me by a friend. Finally, in 1998 I bought my first brand new Apple computer, a G3. My first recording was produced on it in 2000-2001. Next, in 2003, came a refurbished Mirrored Drawers dual-boot PPC. It was the platform for my second recording, and my first OSX machine. I used it until I bought my first Macbook in late 2009.
That Macbook died a horrid death last year when I plugged its charger into a shorted house circuit. Yet, I ran out and picked up a MacBook Pro laptop, upon which i am typing this recollection.
Except for the MacBook I slaughtered, and the G3 that I scavenged for drives, all my legacy computers remain in my personal Apple Museum, and, presumably each one of the six could be started up tomorrow.
I will always associate Steve Jobs with Apple Computers rather than with the revolutionary media appliances and vertical industries he helped bring forth. When he returned to Apple in 1997, he, soon enough, saved the company, and, in effect, saved it from itself. Given this personal association, the contemporary 12 core Mac Pro at $5,000, draws the line all the way back to the original Macintosh, with its 128k of memory, and 400k floppy discs.
Yet, revolutionizing computing while sitting won’t be the capstone on his legacy.
