They come to accept this as a norm. Citizens become jaded and stick to the rote path that would not make them stand out from the norm. This is a large problem for Russia's economy.
Putin and Medvedev have been repeating over and over how innovation is important for Russia's future (I'm not certain how much they believe that actually); and more ironically how innovation is in Russia's blood and has defined its whole history. But I don't see many people willing to innovate. It's not even a problem of stifling bureaucracy, or corrupt officials, or some mafia extortions. Simply, majority of people are not willing to think outside the box, or to put any effort to bring their ideas to mass market.
Since this story is starting to make an international splash, my prediction is that there will be another, very public, investigation and trial (ordered by "the very top"). Putin or Medvedev will give a speech about importance of fighting corruption. They will convict some front men as scape goats and the real puppet masters will get a slap on the wrist.
It just struck me how nonchalant he had to be to start the first manned space flight in history of humanity with word "Poyehaly". As if he was taking a road-trip to the nearby town.
I like the idea of keeping people closer to what they are good at. However I'm afraid this strategy will backfire on your employees if they are forced to leave to another company for whatever reason. In an environment where every company does not have this flat hierarchy it is strange to see a person who has spent 10 years in one place and has not advanced to some managerial position. New employer will think that he is unfit in some way (even though the opposite is the case) and will probably not even give the person a chance to explain themselves.
Could the forms be a security measure? Is it really smart for your company employees to be opening hundreds of PDF and Word files sent from random strangers?
This is a horrible page design. It literally took me minutes to figure out where the main content of the post is and where are the navigation and info links. Add to that the fact that the first link I clicked in the main post turned out to be an embedded ad.
Have you ever had a situation where you are pulling to open the door from one side and another person, unknowingly, pushing it from the other (happens often for me). I wonder what awkward position the guy on the inside would end up in in this case.
Besides other good things about shifting teacher's work from lecturing to actually spending time with kids that were mentioned here, I would like to point out that some teachers are really bad lecturers. My most vivid impressions are from early collage math courses but it is as valid for high school as well. The professor can lead the lecture at million words a minute constantly erasing the board so you don't have the time to copy the material, let alone let it sink in. The professor can have heavy accent, so you spend most of you attention just trying to understand his words.
That would also explain their link to the SETI project at http://37signals.com/37.
Edit: just noticed that it's also on 37th page of the site. Delightful.
A little off topic, but the way text is handled in this blog threw me off. The links are more prominent that the main text, they actually look the way main text should look.
Is there a (harmless) chemical that reacts in some visible way to radio waves? It would be interesting to spray that in the street and see a 3d representation of all different signals in the air.
I'm disappointed at the general trend of ranking shopping sites higher than review and information sites when searching for a product name. If I'm looking for some products, most likely I need information about it, and I don't need to be bombarded by what equates to the circulars. If I want to buy it I can go directly to Amazon's site or any other online store. I think results from shopping sites should be kept inside the Shopping search (unless they also contain product reviews I suppose.)
NHTSA has been convinced all along that there are no real issues with the cars and the commissioned study was really just for show. NASA is the best agency to tap for this (read superstars of science and engineering). Average Joe on the radio is not going to go "they got NASA for this? Why?", he's going to say "NASA! Wow, they really mean business now"
Doesn't an idea have to have been implemented for it to count as prior art? If not, there seems to be a problem for the future. When everybody blogs and tweets their most mundane thoughts, the chance that your new invention has already been described (but not implemented) in some form of media accessible by public is very large.
Maybe the problem is expectation of privacy when we act in a public sphere (The Internet). Imagine a situation without a computer where a murder suspect with an insanity plea was seen weeks in advance browsing a gun store and asking really specific questions of the clerk. He was acting in public space and has no expectations of privacy.
Should we amuse that any unsecured, unencrypted activity is equivalent to doing it in public and if we want privacy than we should encrypt our communications? Maybe there should be an easy to use mode in browsers which encrypt your traffic. Any information stored on your computer would be treated as private in the same way as mail correspondence is.
Also, the judges should really be careful and demand that any search history evidence presented before them should really be relevant to the case. Just because I was curious at one point how much a handgun would cost, does not necessarily mean I am guilty of the murder that I am accused of. The evidence should be persistent and without doubt linked to the crime.
He said there is a potential for violation if DOT and the public were misled by "engineering-quality work"- even if the authors did not claim to be engineers.
I might be too literal here, but if you did not intend to mislead anyone, why should you be responsible for how "the public" interprets your work.
On the other side, the article mentions the double bind women are in: they are generally treated as "non-technical" and so need to use tricks to get others to pay attention to what they are saying, yet these trick that end up being interpreted as flirting and sexual advances.
It would be nice to be able to zoom in and out to see more or less at a time. In general, this concept lands itself well for Google maps API where you model your board as a map and it handles scrolling and zooming for you.