I agree with you. And I wonder how the working paradigms and, importantly, the tools, got defined as they are. Not a criticism, but the tools that won. In the younger days of interactive computing, there seemed to be an explosion of creativity on how to manipulate, use and present information, in systems like these and others. Then continents arose (Lotus 123, Excel, Visicalc), (Wordstar, Word, etc), Emacs.. Office quantized a lot of domains, I think. It locked us into tools as the standard of productivity tools and human computer interaction patterns. And, the majority of users use these in their productive use of their time.
> I wonder how the working paradigms and, importantly, the tools, got defined as they are.
Answer: The profit motive.
A cheap retort would be that the profit motive has produced so many great things as well. I am comfortable holding two contradicting ideas in my mind at once, but we need to be careful. The history of computer technology development, including all of its most groundbreaking technological discoveries, is overwhelmingly built on top of publicly funded research with no foreseeable path to profit at the time.
Humans are far more driven by the quest for love, justice, dignity, and discovery than profit. Until we reorganize our society accordingly, we can only expect our greatest accomplishments to be exploited and dismembered by the pursuit of profit.
I've been thinking that mastering the 40+ year old awk language for data manipulation would probably not be harder for a regular accountant than mastering Excel formulae. Being good with awk would possibly add a lot of flexibility to that casual data worker's general computer workflow -- for something like 1% of the cost in terms of computation power.
In reality, because of how tools were introduced to them, I guess most accountants never think outside the GUI-based paradigm.
This article talks about two main things. Accepting "help" applies more broadly than engineering or software.
And I agree with his overall goals of his project..I believe the same. We get trapped into this bigger and better and more complicated stacks and the hardware resources required, but you can reach a lot of folks with simplicity and the basics.
If you are working more than 40 hours a week on average for a salaried job then the job is either mis-specified, or the person in the job isn't qualified for the job.
> If you are working more than 40 hours a week on average for a salaried job then the job is either mis-specified, or the person in the job isn't qualified for the job.
This is the comment you replied to. It gave two possibilities if you were working a salaried job over 40 hours a week.
It's not clear to me how to build a business based on RPi availability. And the clones don't seem to be really in the game. Are Raspberry Pis becoming more readily available? I don't see that.
This is a great synopsis of the state of things..thanks for posting. Having all this information on one page really helped me grok all the action this year. It really highlights that there is a lot of activity in this space, which is great to see, because CL continues to be my secret weapon! ;)
The synthetic fuels are made from sources such as hay, which, theoretically is a net neutral to the carbon cycle since the hay's carbon came from the atmosphere already. This approach doesn't contribute additional CO2 to the atmosphere like traditional fuels do. However, not sure what the carbon costs are to create this synthetic fuel so that is a variable in the total carbon gain to the system.
Well, this is not necessarily a bad thing. If it was approachable by a non-IT person in HR, and business rules could be updated without contacting IT and waiting, then more power to them. I have seen this sort of thing developed as a coping mechanism because the official IT team could not be used, either due to time, cost, priority, or whatever. Also, even being in IT, 1 multi thousand line file can be a lot more manageable to work in vs. a dozens of smaller files where it's not clear where to look without being in an IDE.
I agree. These types of fines are relatively small potatoes on the earnings that occurred during this time. Having worked for a large US bank for a large portion of my career, everyone is typically trained yearly in an online course that covers records management practices and what to do. I know this because I was accountable for records management practices at the bank. The other question is, what happened internally? How come internal audit didn't catch this back in 2018-2019 time period?
At the end of the day, it's often more profitable, and in the shareholder's best interest to say I am sorry, vs. actually follow policy. At the end of the day, regardless if the C-level knew about it or not, they are accountable. And even if one of the largest banks in the US has to pay a relatively paltry fine like this, the CEO and the management chains that were participatory in this behavior should forgo bonuses. That will change things. Otherwise, this behavior will continue.
Really good article. My first synth, that I had to save up for as a teen, was a DX7. However, wasn't FM synthesis part of the New England Digital's Synclavier system, which was available in the late 70s? Certainly the DX7 was really the first mass-market commercial offering, but I believe the Synclavier was first to market with frequency modulation. I wonder what the arrangement was with John Chowning, if anything, on this.
> Somewhere in this lull, a tiny Vermont-based synthesizer company aptly named the New England Digital Corporation beat Yamaha to the punch by producing the world’s first digital synthesizer, the “Synclavier.” Though only 20 units were sold at $41,685 each, and they were all reserved for top-notch musicians, Stanford took no chances, and swiftly sued the company for infringing on its FM synthesis patent. From that point forward, the university received a sum of $43 every time a Synclavier was sold.
Yamaha had been working on FM synthesis for a few years already at that point.
The DX7 was the first affordable, fully digital programmable keyboard to hit the market.
Also, technology for digital synthesis was already there, the big game was to avoid patent infringement from other companies.
For example, Casio invented the "Vowel–consonant synthesis" used in their 80s Casiotone keyboards mostly to prevent conflicts with an existing patent from Allen Organs[0]. And later, they came out with the "Phase Distortion Synthesis" as an *alternative* FM synthesis[1].
There's a solo album by Eddie Jobson (circa 1985) "Theme of Secrets", which is an excellent showcase for the Synclavier (IIRC the entire album is done with it).
That's a pretty good record, I still have it. The opening song sounds like a marble falling on a huge sheet of glass. Quite the sound effect for the time.
