On the other hand... I installed fedora on my laptop (from ~2006). It went flawlessly.
I went to install windows7 on it. Oh, wait. There are no drivers available. Stuck with no touchpad scrolling, the incorrect resolution, no hotkeys... Google around, some users of similar models report that the vista ones work, if you install them in the right order, manually downloading each from the vendor's site one at a time with fancy file names like SODAL-BLAH-nnnn.exe.
Lately it is really easier for me to install Fedora or Ubuntu than Windows. I'm not sure its because Linux got easier, either...
I'm in a very small company. I am the youngest employee. I'm not certain of the exact age difference, but I suspect I'm on the order of 25 years younger than the next youngest employee.
This company was founded by people who all worked at another place and started their own show. They are all doing things they would never have dreamed of doing 3 years ago, let alone 10. There is blogging, talk of twitter, talk of facebook... social media is one of the new favorite words of the president.
I don't think the generation gap really drives the technology change. Sure, young people may be able to change faster, but old people can still get it when it makes sense to.
That said, I wish there were some younger people around... it's hard to relate to their discussions about kids, houses, etc...
Indeed, I'm the youngest person at this particular office and I dread going to group lunches and having to hear about husbands, kids, mortgage payments, and other stuff I just don't deal with at this point.
The biggest thing for me is having to pretend...this false maturity is tiring. Definitely not a good sign, but yeah. At least, around folks your own age you can let loose a bit.
On the other hand, having older folks around (who are the same ages of my parents in my case), gives me room for lots of great advice about the stuff I don't care about now like kids, houses, cars, etc. from folks that aren't my parents.
It's a balancing act--be sure to keep up with folks your age outside the office. And when you're at work, if you can, catch up with somebody who's like-minded, even if they're older...they're not mutually-exclusive.
Indeed, I'm the youngest person at this particular office and I dread going to group lunches and having to hear about husbands, kids, mortgage payments, and other stuff I just don't deal with at this point.
I remember thinking this, exactly!
And then I remember a few years later, having to pretend I was still interested in younger peoples' stories about drinking, clubbing, getting high and dating - when I really wasn't at all anymore. Strange - once I loved that stuff and couldn't imagine not loving it... and then it just got boring.
Still later (right now actually) my wife and I have made a big effort to branch out and maintain friendships with people everywhere from a decade younger to a decade older than us. I think it's been a pretty big positive change in our lives fwiw.
...younger peoples' stories about drinking, clubbing, getting high and dating - when I really wasn't at all anymore. Strange - once I loved that stuff and couldn't imagine not loving it... and then it just got boring.
Do you think those things got boring as a result of doing them too much? i.e. do you subscribe to the idea that you can "get it out of your system" while you're young? Or do you think it's more a result of age? Once your friends start getting married, you feel the need to settle down too?
I'm asking because this subject has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm 25 and don't really feel like I've "gotten it out of my system. On the other hand, I feel like I've kind of started down the "settling down" road in such a way that I can't really be 21 again. Any thoughts or words of wisdom?
I can definitely relate to this sentiment. I started working in an office environment at 18, and have been moving up in position exponentially since then. At 22 I'm now in a position where I'm senior (in that I am a developer, and the people "below" me are junior developers) to a few developers. The first 2 companies I worked at were large enterprises (50k+ employees) where i'm sure I was either one of or the youngest working there. Age become a particularly complex issue when I was 19, and working in a lab. Often I would experience age harassment from a QA lead (who was later fired...) Things got a lot easier after I turned 21 though. Still I find it easier to get work done If I ignore the subject of age as much as possible... unless one of my coworkers has discovered my HN username, I do not believe anyone other than HR knows my age at my current company.
Did you watch the video? They suggested using fishing nets to gather the hay, bringing it to lined dumpsters at beaches and ports and then using it in incinerators with woodchips/etc to get energy from it.
Who knows if it would work out that well, but that's the idea.
The idea has potential, and it's certainly worth experimenting with while the opportunity is there. This will not be the last oil spill. If BP, DOE, and MMS were smart, they would slip these guys a few hundred thousand to a couple of million in funding to do some prototype testing in the field under realistic conditions.
(Conspiracy Theory) Embrace and extinguish? I'm no expert on the numbers but neither seems to be on top of the market. If they can 'work together' they could perhaps change this situation or at least improve it in their favor.
If they're making money licensing patents to competitors, then it doesn't really matter if they have a competing product coming out. They either make money or make money... its just where it comes from that changes.
Not sure why this is novel... mobile comunication has been possible for many years, cell phones didn't invent it. Walkie talkies, etc all existed long before cellular phones. In fact, I would argue walkie talkies are closer to what he was talking about since it didn't involve going to some cell tower. The two devices just communicate together.
It's novel because unlike us, Tesla was a product of a time when telegraph, telephone, radio and distributed electricity were still new. It's easy - even obvious - to note in retrospect how a disruptive technology or cluster of technologies plays out, in part because we are ourselves a product of the environment in which we grew up and formed our ideas about how things work.
By contrast, it's visionary to be able to understand the full implications of a new technology that disrupts the environment in which we formed our ideas. In Tesla's case, not only did he understand the implications of that technology, but he actually invented much of the technology himself.
It would be no less remarkable if Gutenberg invented the printing press and then used it to print tracts explaining how his press was going to undermine the Catholic Church's monopoly gatekeeper status and launch an explosion in the rate and density of accumulated human knowledge.
Sure, his idea is definitely interesting considering the time, but the article is not. Like I say, he didn't just predict mobile phones, he predicted mobile communication which has been possible much longer than the phone version.
It feels just a little more novel when you consider just how late into last century sci-fi stories were getting written with little or no notion of universal mobile communication.
(Some excuses may be made on the grounds of story flow and building a comprehensible universe, but that's weak sci-fi).
If I'm reading a magazine that has advertisements that is fine. They help cover the costs of production. If I join a club and they sell my information (where I live, who referred me, what actions I perform in the club) to another company that is an entirely different matter.
Tracking via cookies/pixels,etc is getting pretty invasive too. When google does it, it is just as bad. Look at Buzz, have we already forgotten the outrage when it came out?
"If I join a club and they sell my information (where I live, who referred me, what actions I perform in the club) to another company that is an entirely different matter."
I agree, and it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand: facebook does not do this, and never has.
Facebook sells targetted advertising: advertisers can direct ads at various demographic groups, like age ranges, genders, and geographic locales. Advertisers do not get any identifying data about users who see or click on their ads as part of the package.
I just finished reading Robert Harris' "Pompeii" which I started a couple days before the Iceland Volcano started putting out ash. Now the aqueduct breaks. Very strange coincidence... I hope my brain isn't projecting the content of the stuff I'm reading...
Luckily I live just outside the boil water area though.
Personally, I wouldn't try to build a brain like ours. Sure we have nice passions, and deep insight frequently. But there is so much badness possible with our brains. Take for instance the "cognitive cars" if we built a brain like ours, how long would it take for it to get road rage?
I would like a brain that was not like ours. I'd like something capable of deep insight and critical thinking, but nothing like a human brain.
I went to install windows7 on it. Oh, wait. There are no drivers available. Stuck with no touchpad scrolling, the incorrect resolution, no hotkeys... Google around, some users of similar models report that the vista ones work, if you install them in the right order, manually downloading each from the vendor's site one at a time with fancy file names like SODAL-BLAH-nnnn.exe.
Lately it is really easier for me to install Fedora or Ubuntu than Windows. I'm not sure its because Linux got easier, either...