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Why Working Remotely Needs To Make a Comeback 455

Posted by Soulskill from the because-commuting-sucks dept.
silentbrad writes sends this excerpt from a blog post about the history of working from home: "Remote working has existed for centuries. And now is the perfect time for its comeback. ... Prior to the Industrial Revolution, goods were manufactured by contracting individual craftsmen who worked out of their homes. The merchant would drum up sales, and would coordinate the production with at-home sub-contractors. ... This all changed with the Industrial Revolution: production was centralized in factories and cities. For merchant capitalists, this made sense: it was cheaper and more efficient to produce goods in one place, with machinery. ... We've been in the Information Age for at least 25 years. We've made huge leaps in technology. Many of us would describe ourselves as Knowledge Workers: we don't work in factories, we work at desks in front of glowing screens. We don't make goods with physical materials, but rather things made out of bits. The great thing about bits + the internet is that the materials and means needed for production aren't dependent on location. But here's the funny thing: the way work is organized hasn't changed. Despite all these advances, most of us still work in central offices. Employees leave their computer-equipped homes and drive long distances to work at computer-equipped offices. ... CEOs, like Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Apple's Steve Jobs, think that a central office fosters more innovation and productivity. I think they're wrong. We're still early in the research, but recent studies seem to dispute their claim. ... Managers have developed centuries worth of habits based on the central workplace. The hallmarks of office work (meetings, cubicle workstations, colocation) need to be seen for what they are: traditions we've kept alive since the Industrial Revolution. We need to question these institutions: are they really more innovative and efficient?"
Space

Rogue Satellite Shuts Down US Weather Services 202

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ambush-backstab-vanish dept.
radioweather writes "On Sunday, the drifting rogue 'zombie' Galaxy 15 satellite with a stuck transmitter interfered with the satellite data distribution system used by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), effectively shutting down data sharing between NWS offices nationwide, as well as weather support groups for the US Air force. This left many forecasters without data, imagery, and maps. Interference from Galaxy 15 affected transmissions of the SES-1 Satellite, which not only serves NOAA with data relay services, but also is used to feed TV programming into virtually every cable network in the US. NOAA's Network Control Facility reports that the computer system affected was NOAA's Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) used to issue forecasts and weather bulletins which uses the weather data feed. They also state the problem is likely to recur again this month before the satellite drifts out of range and eventually dies due to battery depletion."

Comment 64-Bit (Score 4, Interesting) 1213

by DarkSarin (#32511058) Attached to: Time To Dump XP?

The main reason, in my mind, to upgrade is being able to effectively use 64-bit machines fully--and have more than 4GB of RAM.

Yes you need new machines to do this, but really, if you are buying NEW machines, you should probably upgrade. The question then becomes a matter of whether or not new machines are worthwhile. Your old machines may be still serviceable, but would newer machines result in getting work done enough faster to offset (even partially) the cost of the upgrade.

In many cases, the answer is no--a LOT of secretaries & folks that mainly do word processing are better off just staying where they are--their machines are fast enough for what they do, and additional RAM & extra cores aren't going to make a difference.

That said, if you are doing statistical analysis, engineering, graphic design, programming (and compiling), and a number of other jobs, then you should ABSOLUTELY be on a very aggressive upgrade schedule. Additionally, 8GB of RAM is more than just a good idea for many of those jobs--some of them should be stuffing as MUCH memory as they can into their machines so that they can do their jobs more efficiently.

In any work setting the bottleneck for employee performance should not be the environment or resources, but rather human capacities. That's the ideal. Obviously cost of achieving that and other considerations prevent most companies from getting to the point where that's true--but it should be the goal.

So either move to Win7-x64 OR move to another 64-bit OS with lots of power & memory in the hardware. Staying where you are only makes sense if you are doing mostly word processing.

Comment Re:Flash Sideways (Score 1) 955

by DarkSarin (#32323694) Attached to: <em>Lost</em> Ends

All I can gather from the last episode was that everything that was presented, happened to the characters. It wasn't a dream, etc. They did get stranded on the island, they did get off it and they did return.

The flash sideways scenes had no specific date/time associated with them. In fact, from what I can tell, it was actually some time in the future as it was a type of purgatory where all the dead "friends" meet up to realize they are actually dead and need to move on. So in that sense, it's in the future but really time has/had no meaning there.

So, no questions were answered, except, in the end, they get to spend eternity together and I'm guessing Hugo passed the torch onto some unknown heir. The island probably lives on with more people going there to figure out who gets to protect the place.

I'm still baffled by what the deal with Walt was and what did Juliet mean by "it worked" with her last words (nuke incident)?

Agg.. I suppose if you assume the show had to end last night, I guess they did an ok job. I wasn't left saying "WTF?" but I certainly didn't feel like I was looking at a completed jigsaw puzzle either.

You weren't? Cause I certainly was. My wife found it moving and touching and all that, but in the end, I'm just left wishing I has SOME FREAKING ANSWERS!!!!!! To ANYTHING IMPORTANT!!!!

The Dharma initiative? Gone--no explanations. The Light? No answers. The OTHER Light? Lame--and NOT an answer. The Island? Nope, not a single REAL answer. The Others? Nope, not a single answer! How did Jacob learn more about the island? Nope, nothing (in fact this question wasn't even RAISED until late season 6, so...). Who is the woman that killed Jacob's real mom? (Again a late-coming question).

Answers in general--NOPE!!

SO screw all this...I'm officially ticked at the waste of time it all was...

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