At the end of spicy supper at an Indian restaurant we were given little zip-lock bags with very tiny, very brilliant seeds inside them. My brothers and I had not encountered these before and were somewhat at loss.
“Are we supposed to eat them, or plant them in our garden?” “I don’t know. But, you sure don’t want to get pulled over by a policeman with these in your car.”
(Everyone tries some)
“Hmm. Like licking a 2x4.” “Like licking a _treated_ 2x4.”
They were good, but very, very different.
The ”President of the Internet” has written a great article on The Art and Science of a Great Team. I’ve lead an incredible team before (although it was “only” a computer game team ) and what Dan James says rings very true. In fact I was going through writing this post, and commenting on each individual point. Unfortunately, it just looked like “exactly”, “same with us”, and “we did that”. Instead, let me ask a question.
I was a part of a great team before starting my own great team. Several of the people that were on my great team, started their own teams that turned into great ones. I wonder if “teams” are hereditary. Dan, were you a part of a great team sometime before you started silverorange?
Probably the most controversial statement is that “you can’t make it happen”. Why not? I know you can’t get a team by declaring that you have a team, but a person who has been on a great team before can probably create a situation that a great team can form in. When you know how a great team acts, you can act in that way yourself.
I said I would not just say, “Yeah, that’s true”, but here I go.
“By putting a team up on a pedestal at the start you are placing expectations on a team that ruins the creativity, the wonder, and the fun.” - This one seems counter-intuitive, but is true. I had to leave my “Team” because I did not have that much time for computer games. Later on the team decide to reform. They deliberately choose a different name, so that no one would have expectations and they would not have anything to “live up to” while they were becoming a team. They now have another outstanding team.
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a “DestroyBaghdad” procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a “DestroyCity” procedure, to which “Baghdad” could be given as a parameter. —Nathaniel S. Borenstein
Or he would add a Destroy() method to the City class…
A few years ago I was reading a rant on why the LAV III was a Bad Thing and why RPG’s were Good Things. When I realized I could pull up causalities by type, it got me curious about what is killing us.
Here’s a graph of US deaths to hostile action since 05/04/03. Out of a total of 254 deaths, 112 of them were from just IED’s and RPG’s.
(Of course casualty numbers in this war are on a different scale than some past wars. For comparason: If the allied troops were to continue to die at the rate of allied deaths in Iraq last month, to be somewhere near the deaths of the French during the battle of Verdun in the first world war, would require to conflict to continue for another 375 years!)
<p><blockquote><br />
We journey farther afield, and the famous fort of Douaumont is pointed out. The storming of Fort Douaumont, gunless and unmanned, was a military operation of little value. A number of the Brandenburgers climbed into the gunless fort, and some of them were still there on March 6th, supplied precariously with food by their comrades at night.
<p>They were practically surrounded by the French, whose Headquarters Staff regarded the whole incident as a simple episode in the give-and-take of war. The announcement of the fall of Fort Douaumont to the world evinces the great anxiety of the Germans to magnify anything concerning Verdun into a great event. It should also cause people to apply a grain of salt to German official communiques before swallowing them. <br />
<p>(In actuality, ten german soldiers climbed into one of the most modern French fortresses, and <a href="http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Base/3495/FVerdun15a.html">captured</a> it. Even though the fort was under fire, most of the garrison was in the lecture room. It was estimated that the French lost 100,000 men trying to retake the fort.)</p>
In past wars, guessing wrongly at the number men the enemy has lost has resulted in some really stupid strategical decisions. It’s amazing that you can pull up an exact count (even drilling down into by day, or cause) of allied casualties in the second gulf war.
If I were a soldier, World War One would be, I think, the last war I would want to be involved in. Recruiting messages that say the army is “fun” or a “good education” drive me nuts. So much disconnectedness between the message of this poster and reality.
The Mydoom virus underscores one key difference between the two systems. OS X comes with a default setting that requires a login name and password before it allows any new software to be installed on a given computer. With this default, no Mac user needs to worry about inadvertently clicking on e-mail attachments carrying virus software. – BusinessWeek
You only need to enter a password to install certain programs, not all. And you don’t have to enter any password to run a program.
Not everything in OS X is secure. The relatively short length of the passwords for accessing individual accounts isn’t a good thing
That was fixed a while ago. I think.
Don’t believe everything you see in print. ;)