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Submission + - Inventer of the Mouse dies at 88 (bbc.co.uk)

aitikin writes: "The inventor of the computer mouse, Doug Engelbart, has died aged 88.

Engelbart developed the tool in the 1960s as a wooden shell covering two metal wheels, patenting it long before the mouse's widespread use.

He also worked on early incarnations of email, word processing and video teleconferences at a California research institute.

The state's Computer History Museum was notified of his death by his daughter, Christina, in an email."

Comment For years... (Score 4, Insightful) 305

Having done a fair amount of interviewing and hiring, I knew the day that the big G called me that I had to say no.

What baffles me is that Google "could" have looked at the history of hiring and found this out many years ago. I took classes with the HR director at Southwest Airlines, who themselves had recorded and performed the same evaluation of hiring practices since the 60's. They too found that technical skill was only a minor indicator of success. Southwest found that personal intent, ethics and attitude were bigger drivers of success than technical expertise.

In fact, many companies have done these long-term studies before, and found similar results. There are volumes and volumes of studies... so why did the "big data" company ignore the data? It's just ridiculous!

I can just imagine that Google has a big problem now...

Comment Re:Pie in the sky (Score 1) 696

It's sad to see good empirical evidence casually tossed by the wayside because it doesn't "fit" with your world view. I find it highly irrational that real possible solutions are ignored, while "pie in the sky" ideas such as carbon-taxes are foisted upon economies.

Instead of Carbon Taxes, perhaps you'd be interested in another form of carbon reduction? I'm sure it's right down your alley.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I

Comment Re:Depends on the bitrate (Score 4, Informative) 749

10 years ago, MP3 encoders couldn't encode decent cymbals and saxophones below 384kbps... it was just a stream of high pitched garbage.

These days they're both really good encoders. I still prefer AAC over MP3 just because the high freq nuances are better captured, but at AAC@256 and MP3@320, the differences are practically imperceptible to my ears.

The only time I'd look at lossless music is for Orchestral pieces. Compressed pieces still sound flattened and don't have the wideness because there's a lot more overtones, harmonics and variety of tones in live recordings. Microphones, recordings and engineering have adjusted in the past 5 years to compensate - so recent pieces are not too bad however.

Like anything, it's best to just try a few different methods and see what sounds best to you.

Comment Re:Reversed in America? (Score 1) 758

Take New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles as examples. Don't get me wrong, I like those places and I like the people that live there. But all too often many of them tell me how screwed up education is, how the city is corrupt, and how taxes are destroying their way of life. You'll hear this from the advantaged people as much as from the poor and disadvantaged people.

On the other hand, places like Texas have less polar education quality, the cities are still corrupt, but the taxes are lower (yeah!). The conservatives often vote against policies that seem crazy to the liberals. They won't pay for better schools, they don't want new city halls, and they could care less about hospital improvements. The reason I've heard from many conservatives is that most often in the past, such funds went to administration, capital and profit rather than actual improvements.

In a nutshell, political leanings don't matter, the only thing that matters is liberty and freedom. Being able to choose where, how and what you live is more important than planning, administration and politics that grows out of the established leadership. Those that choose to can make the life they want in a vast array of places and opportunities offered in the world. Different places allow similar people to fit better and be happy together. When one group becomes too powerful and attempts to impose their worldview on others you create more divisive and intrusive governments.

Comment Putting on my tinfoil sci-fi hat... (Score 1) 197

And if they had something better than Radio or Light, then why would they use inefficient slow tech?

Scientists are discovering physics and material hacks all the time, so the possibility of "instantaneous" communication is growing stronger. University labs are producing some interesting results that seem to skirt along the edges of information theory and quantum theory. It's unlikely, but possible. Check back in a hundred years or so...

Comment Awesome... (Score 3, Interesting) 102

As someone who has lived and worked in iPhone and Android land since the beginnings, I'm excited to see something new. Don't get me wrong - I like my iPhone and android for what they are - but having the option of getting into the code and fixing the stupid is a great incentive for me to switch.

Comment Re:Random Randomization (Score 1) 371

That's true - but I also think a lot of really smart people dabble in conspiracy theories. You won't see many of them pulling together a movement, but mainly they watch and attempt to verify things that seem interesting.

In other words - conspiracy theories are just wild-ass guesses. In some limited circumstances, it's a start for deeper researching of topics. Most of the real conspiracies are leaked or eeked out by conversations with real people, not conspiracy boards.

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