Mindset
There is some hope .. after all on the green front. Maybe the big and established car companies get some inspiration from this, or from the good old Tesla. <p> <a href="http://ww2.autoscout24.de/magazine/mz_search.aspx?article=67323">ww2.autoscout24.de/magazine/mz_search.aspx?article=67323</a> I would probably buy one. </p> <p> A big thanks to Michael for the link. </p>
energy from ocean currents
Very very good article. <p> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html">www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html</a> </p> <p> This, combined with simple solarthermal power generation is the future. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.desertec.org/concept.html">www.desertec.org/concept.html</a> </p>
Task boundaries using a classifier
Also worth reading: <a href="http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/11/finding-task-boundaries-in-search-logs.html">glinden.blogspot.com/2008/11/finding-task-boundaries-in-search-logs.html</a>
Near duplicate detection
Clever. Recommended reading. <p> <a href="http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/08/clever-method-of-near-duplicate.html">glinden.blogspot.com/2008/08/clever-method-of-near-duplicate.html</a> </p>
New forum for Latinos living around lake Starnberg
La idea es juntar a todos los latinoamericanos y personas de habla hispana que vivan en la zona de Starnberger See y alrededores y tengan ganas de compartir experiencias con otros hermanos. <p> <a href="http://s2.elforo.de/latinosensta/">s2.elforo.de/latinosensta/</a> </p>
memcache-client vs memcached
OK, on OS-X, the memcached gem is much faster. On gentoo it hardly matters which one you use. <p> <a href="http://seattlerb.rubyforge.org/memcache-client/">seattlerb.rubyforge.org/memcache-client/</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/memcached/files/README.html">blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/memcached/files/README.html</a> </p>
Facebook in reality
A big thanks to Mathieu for emailing me this link :-). <p> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs">www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs</a> </p>
Beautiful Alesund in Norway
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/3049746673_c3bfcd0c83_m.jpg"> <p> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/%C3%A5lesund/">www.flickr.com/photos/tags/%C3%A5lesund/</a> </p>
ruby wanted on the nvidia tesla
<a href="http://www.nvidia.com/object/personal_supercomputing.html">www.nvidia.com/object/personal_supercomputing.html</a> <p> I wish ruby were running on this baby :-). </p> <p> <a href="http://groups.google.de/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/537ffd4925320cf5">groups.google.de/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/537ffd4925320cf5</a> </p> <p> <img src="http://m94asr.mypictur.es/get_file?path=/tutzing/img-1379.jpg"> </p>
Einstein's messy desk
as I am such a chaotic person myself, I like it :-). <p> <img src="http://i33.tinypic.com/14avkw2.jpg"> </p>
Third base: fast and easy date/datetime class
The Ruby standard Date class tries to be all things to all people. While it does a decent job, it&#8217;s slow enough to be the bottleneck in some applications. If we decide not to care about the Date of Calendar Reform and the fact that the Astronomical Julian Date differs from the Julian Date, much of the complexity of Ruby&#8217;s standard Date/DateTime class can be removed, and there can be significant improvements in speed. <p> <a href="http://third-base.rubyforge.org/">third-base.rubyforge.org/</a> </p>
Updated gold silver watch
Tom updated the gold silver watch. <p> Volatility has increased, esp. in the FX and commodities. </p> <p> Check out the graphs .. dollar vs oil (expect the next bang here, but in the opposite direction). </p> <p> Gold still looks pretty good in EUR and GBP. </p> <p> <a href="http://gold.approximity.com/since1999/Gold_EUR.html">gold.approximity.com/since1999/Gold_EUR.html</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://gold.approximity.com/gold-silver_watch.html">gold.approximity.com/gold-silver_watch.html</a> </p>
Mysites reviews on mashable
tags: desktop, mashable, multimedia, mysites, review, web <p> <a href="http://mashable.com/2008/09/25/mysites/">mashable.com/2008/09/25/mysites/</a> </p>
Nice post by John Carter in the XP-ML.
One of my favourite authors at the moment is Nassim Nicholas Taleb. <p> So he mostly speaks about finance, because that&#8217;s what he knows, but underneath he is mostly talking about statistics and risk. And that is what we all deal with. </p> <p> His previous book &quot;The Black Swan&quot; in some senses wasn&#8217;t very useful&#8230; it can be abbreviated as &quot;We are really Bad at prediction, much worse than you believe.&quot; </p> <p> His latest essay is actually quite handy. It provides a map of where we are going to be startlingly Bad at predicting. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html">www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html</a> </p> <p> Many Agilisto&#8217;s will say, &quot;Yip, he is right, thats why our practices work&quot;. </p> <p> Others may look at Taleb&#8217;s essay and get an &quot;Aha!&quot; moment and finally realize why some of the Agile practices work. </p> <p> He suggests you divide problems on the basis of moments of a random variable. </p> <p> If your decision is a &quot;yes/no&quot; choice, it is simple. Will the project be finished by the 5th of December 2008? </p> <p> If your question is based on the value of a random variable, it is more complex. What will be the completion date of the project? </p> <p> If your question is based on a higher moment of a random variable, it is very complex. What will be the ROI of a project? </p> <p> Then look at the nature of the randomness&#8230; Is it fat tailed, or well behaved? </p> <p> For non-statistical types a probability distribution can be fat or thin tailed. The one you learned about in the stats course you have mostly forgotten was a thin tailed one. (Gauss / Normal distribution). </p> <p> Odds on if you did any stats course they went on for hours about thin tailed distributions, because they can do the mathematics for them. </p> <p> Unfortunately most real world distributions are fat tailed. </p> <p> If you have a 1000 guys in the company, the average weight of employees is simply not going to shift by much if you employ the fattest guy in the world. (Fat guys come from a thin tail probability distribution.) </p> <p> If you look at a 1000 random project case studies, the average project overrun is going to massively shift if you add the worlds largest project overrun. </p> <p> ie. Things like food requirements for project workers are random variables from what Taleb calls &quot;mediocristan&quot;. </p> <p> Things like time to completion are from &quot;extremistan&quot;. </p> <p> So if divide your problems in to quadrants like this.&#8230; </p> <pre> Simple Payoffs | Complex (Higher Moment) payoffs Thin tail distribution Predictable | Less predictable Fat tail distribution Less predictable | You're utterly stuffed. </pre> <p> Exercise for the Reader&#8230; </p> <p> 1) Catalogue the random variables in your work situation and categorise them as from mediocristan or extremistan. </p> <p> eg. Time to complete an item of work - Extremistan </p> <p> Programmer Productivity - Very high variance, but probably Mediocristan. </p> <p> Security Risks - Extremistan. (No valid distribution on attack models, motivations etc.) </p> <p> Exchange Rate fluctuations - Extremistan </p> <p> Programmer Defect rates - Not sure. Maybe mediocristan for simple monothreaded programs. &#8230; </p>
Welcome in service hell!
Imagine this .. I buy a mac mini online .. all goes well .. I get a confirmation code and wait and wait an no parcel arrives .. then I login and see the order is cancelled. Do you think they would bother to email or call me to tell me that they cancelled the order? Thank you Apple.
Javascript, Flash and Facebook-API developers wanted
MySites is growing its team. If you are interested as a freelancer or pemanent, remote or onsite, drop Ramine an email ramine at mysit.es <p> MySites is a finish company, but the team comes from all over Europe. </p> <p> Looking forward to hear from you, </p> <pre> -A </pre>
Wikipedia saturated
<a href="http://oc-co.org/?p=124">oc-co.org/?p=124</a>
Mysites postings
The original posting: <p> <a href="http://startupmeme.com/watch-out-mobile-me-and-mesh-mysites-has-it-all-getting-more/">startupmeme.com/watch-out-mobile-me-and-mesh-mysites-has-it-all-getting-more/</a> </p> <p> On digg: </p> <p> <a href="http://tinyurl.com/58gx7m">tinyurl.com/58gx7m</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.reddit.com/comments/6um7x/mysites_the_hottest_finnish_invention_since_sauna/">www.reddit.com/comments/6um7x/mysites_the_hottest_finnish_invention_since_sauna/</a> </p>
Adobe Flex developer wanted - remote or onsite
Either as free lancer or permanently employed we need a Flex guru or an advanced Flex developer that likes challenges. <p> We have several projects in New York and Munich. </p> <p> A small international team in an agile setting is waiting for you developing applications that scale to millions of users. </p> <p> As usual, we care about experience, communication skills and simply the desire to excel and not page-long CVs. </p> <p> If interested, please email me at armin at personifi dot com. Please no Word docs, only .txt or pdf or put it all in a simple email. </p> <p> Next time we ask for some GNU Flex developers .. :-) </p> <p> <img src="http://www.approximity.com/~armin/BeerHelpsForRubyWorldDomination.jpg"> </p>
MySites versus the Facebook and Google App Engine
<a href="http://mysitesdevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/07/mysites-services-v-facebook-and-google.html">mysitesdevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/07/mysites-services-v-facebook-and-google.html</a>


and experience has shown that it cannot respond rapidly enough to a changing environment. Thus the traditional structure must be replaced by project management, or other temporary structures that are highly organic and can respond very rapidly as situations develop inside and outside the company.

Project has long been discussed by corporate executives and academics as one of the several workable possibilities for organizational forms of the future that could integrate complex efforts and reduce bureaucracy. The acceptance of project has not been easy, however. Many executives are not willing to acept change and are inflexible when it comes to adapting to a different environment.

The project approach requires a departure from the traditional business organizational form, which is basically vertical and which emphasizes a strong superior- subordinate relationship.Project can mean different things to different people. Quite often, people misunderstand the concept because they have ongoing projects within their company and feel that they are using project to control these activities.

Project is really designed to make better use of existing resources by getting work to flow horizontally as well as vertically within the company. Almost everyone agree that the best way to reduce or minimize risks is for the organization to plan better. Since project is one of the best methodologies to foster better planning, it is little wonder that more organizations are accepting project as a way of life.

All organizational theories and philosophies have undergone a dramatic change in recent years with the emergence of the project approach to management. Because project is an outgrowth of system management, it is only fitting these underlying principles of general system that a theory can be described.

Simply stated, general systems theory can be classified as a approach that attempts to integrate and unify scientific information across many fields of knowledge. System theory attempts to solve problems by looking at the total picture, rather than through analysis of the individual components.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleJoe.com

Stefano Sandano is a project expert and if you want to know more about managing projects you can see his online resource at www.management-project.net

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