Someone thought for a moment (or maybe longer) on the arbitrariness of the date 21.12.12 ?: I mean the mayans did not know the at the time not yet used calender (I mean the gregorian one), and the date is so nice as 21 December 2012. Look, here in Germany Fasnacht (I refuse to call it Karneval as they do here in "north Germany" ) starts on the 11th of November at 11:11. And we are in the eleventh year of the 21th century! that is a nicer date, don't you think ? That is arbitrariness at its fullest, don't you agree ?. BTW, I know people who were saying that the last day was going to be Dec. 31st 1999, for religious reasons and not y2k related ;-)....
Which leads to an important questions is EOTW going to be relative to local time (as in a sweeping apocalypse) or will it be GMT as in an instantaneous event. I guess that could factor into the time zone issue with the clock.
When traveling on an international flight lasting upwards from 15 to 22 hours, one can stay ahead (or behind) of the sun and the clock and alter time. For example, in traveling to Asia, when I arrived, time had changed by nearly a full day and I was living in the future. In the case of the so-called Apocalypse, you want to go back in time so the reverse path is best to buy you some time, at least a day. Since there are only 24 hours of rotation in the Earth's cycle, this won't buy you any more time than that.
So far in 35 post, we have only gotten 9 projects listed.
#5 Interocitor. I'm building it from a kit.
#6 see a Prop II blinking a LED
#9 Buy more parts and make more clutter.
#24 bubble wrap the Big Brain...
#26 "Bend over and kiss your "snarkus" goodbye."
#28 comfy lawn chair, with a built-in cooler so I can sit back and enjoy the apocalypse. ;-)
#29 world time clock so once it starts, you can track it through several time zones)
#30 End of the World Alarm Clock, which gives you a 1 hour notice that the world is about to end.
#32 Warp Drive
So far #28 is the one I like best, #9 is one I am doing inadvertently, and #26 is what I would advise regardless (since it appears that eventually this applies to everyone everywhere, just not all at the same time).
My project is to teach at least one kid about using a ucontroller. My test for success is if the kid comes back with a device that reads at least one sensor, and controls at least one actuator.
Problem with the end of the world alarm clock is that damn thing will be going off all the time.
So how are you actually supposed to test it without a real end of the world? And how will you know that worked? Unless you happen to be on a different world at the time I guess.
I was going to put "untestable requirements" after a couple of those, but I did not want to clutter the list.
The idea here was to get some data on an observation about society in general. That is, its interesting that a percentage of people seem to operate in the assumption that the world will never end on an overall basis, and so also operate as if it will never end on a person basis.
And still we still see arbitrary "deadlines" in business and professional schedules, and people are expected to (and do behave) as if there is some consequence beyond the date passing. And as a result, people work themselves sick or worse, over something as trivial as an arbitrary calendar date.
I wonder if this tell us anything? (Aside from highlighting my morbid disposition and weak understanding of philosophy).
Deadlines can be very real. If it takes too long to do something it may end up not worth doing.
Bill Gates stated that they probably have a window of opprtunity of 3 months when they started work on the first Microsoft BASIC. He could see that very soon many others would have done the same or similar and the advantage would be gone.
Of course deadlines can be real, the semester starts this day, the play starts at this time, etc; these are handy for synchronizing our activities.
Some also signal severe events, if the patient will die if breathing stops for some many seconds, or bleeding continues for so many minutes etc.
But most of the time, the "window of opportunity" has nothing to do with someone dying, it just means the opportunity has ended. In most case, the people involved do NOT die, and another opportunity will open later. There is seldom any reason to work one's self to death, and the strange thing is how many folks act as there were.
There are many more cases where someone tried for a 3 month window opportunity and did not end up with a microsoft. Just because one individual "won the lottery" on a gamble does not mean anyone else will, or that success (in this case Mr Gates success with the first version of BASIC) was attributable to anything more than dumb luck.
Bill and MS might be an extreme case where it looks like he hit the deadline, beat everyone to market and won the lottery.
However I will argue that companies and individuals are all competing with each other all the time. As the expression goes "there are the quick and there are the dead". We do race against each other.
Of course if you are working yourself to death to hit deadlines such that your employer can reap the rewards and you only avoid being fired that is not a good situation.
I guess "dead from over-work" happens or used to happen more in Japan than in the States, so its not quite as bad around here.
Maybe I have issue with the "there are the quick and there are the dead" mentality. How often to humans or even companies compete where the outcome is "dead"? For humans, its nearly always due to crime or war. For companies, corporate death is nearly always due to management stupidity (poor word choice, I'm rambling here), rather than meeting a given arbitrary deadline. In fact, choosing to expend the effort to meet an arbitrary deadline, rather recognize that some other activity would be more profitable, is the symptom of the poor decision making process that ultimately leads to corporate failure.
Something about the framing things as a zero sum game of individuals versus a cooperative ecosystem of collaborators.
This forum for example. We all tend to work together, and if one of us makes a buck, it doesn't require that another of us to lose a buck. We don't compete, we transact and interact; and we all have various niches, with our own economies of scale; the more we work together, the better the wold becomes.
As 2011 sprints to close and the signs of the apocolypse are being seen (I have to work on an Elton John concert) I have decided that for the sake of humanity I will locate some plans for Dr Who's TARDIS, build one and save us all from .....
Comments
Dave
of every man, woman, and child
the old world has ended
and a new one
has begun
#5 Interocitor. I'm building it from a kit.
#6 see a Prop II blinking a LED
#9 Buy more parts and make more clutter.
#24 bubble wrap the Big Brain...
#26 "Bend over and kiss your "snarkus" goodbye."
#28 comfy lawn chair, with a built-in cooler so I can sit back and enjoy the apocalypse. ;-)
#29 world time clock so once it starts, you can track it through several time zones)
#30 End of the World Alarm Clock, which gives you a 1 hour notice that the world is about to end.
#32 Warp Drive
So far #28 is the one I like best, #9 is one I am doing inadvertently, and #26 is what I would advise regardless (since it appears that eventually this applies to everyone everywhere, just not all at the same time).
My project is to teach at least one kid about using a ucontroller. My test for success is if the kid comes back with a device that reads at least one sensor, and controls at least one actuator.
So how are you actually supposed to test it without a real end of the world? And how will you know that worked? Unless you happen to be on a different world at the time I guess.
The idea here was to get some data on an observation about society in general. That is, its interesting that a percentage of people seem to operate in the assumption that the world will never end on an overall basis, and so also operate as if it will never end on a person basis.
And still we still see arbitrary "deadlines" in business and professional schedules, and people are expected to (and do behave) as if there is some consequence beyond the date passing. And as a result, people work themselves sick or worse, over something as trivial as an arbitrary calendar date.
I wonder if this tell us anything? (Aside from highlighting my morbid disposition and weak understanding of philosophy).
Bill Gates stated that they probably have a window of opprtunity of 3 months when they started work on the first Microsoft BASIC. He could see that very soon many others would have done the same or similar and the advantage would be gone.
Some also signal severe events, if the patient will die if breathing stops for some many seconds, or bleeding continues for so many minutes etc.
But most of the time, the "window of opportunity" has nothing to do with someone dying, it just means the opportunity has ended. In most case, the people involved do NOT die, and another opportunity will open later. There is seldom any reason to work one's self to death, and the strange thing is how many folks act as there were.
There are many more cases where someone tried for a 3 month window opportunity and did not end up with a microsoft. Just because one individual "won the lottery" on a gamble does not mean anyone else will, or that success (in this case Mr Gates success with the first version of BASIC) was attributable to anything more than dumb luck.
However I will argue that companies and individuals are all competing with each other all the time. As the expression goes "there are the quick and there are the dead". We do race against each other.
Of course if you are working yourself to death to hit deadlines such that your employer can reap the rewards and you only avoid being fired that is not a good situation.
Maybe I have issue with the "there are the quick and there are the dead" mentality. How often to humans or even companies compete where the outcome is "dead"? For humans, its nearly always due to crime or war. For companies, corporate death is nearly always due to management stupidity (poor word choice, I'm rambling here), rather than meeting a given arbitrary deadline. In fact, choosing to expend the effort to meet an arbitrary deadline, rather recognize that some other activity would be more profitable, is the symptom of the poor decision making process that ultimately leads to corporate failure.
Something about the framing things as a zero sum game of individuals versus a cooperative ecosystem of collaborators.
This forum for example. We all tend to work together, and if one of us makes a buck, it doesn't require that another of us to lose a buck. We don't compete, we transact and interact; and we all have various niches, with our own economies of scale; the more we work together, the better the wold becomes.