This one was not easy to solve. Running SuSE SLES 11.3 as guest in VirtualBox 4.2.18 on an otherwise entirely stable host (Linux 3.11.0 running Ubuntu 13.10), my 64 bit SLES VMs would randomly just “stuck”, consuming full CPU usage on the host system for the cores I had assigned to them. If not touched, they would remain in that state forever. Netconsole to another host did not reveal anything of value. All other machines (about 20 at the same time on any normal day) would continue running with no issues. So what was so special about SLES that made these machines hang?
We’re responsible for our children. So when suddenly, for someone happens to note a “smoking gun” like here, for severe birth defects, and the official position is to advise people to “take your folic acid” – while there is a very much smoking gun in the vicinity, in this case of Yakima, WA, this makes up for an unbelievable story.
This is amazing: A simple URL call allows you to bypass the login. What’s more interesting is how he got there.
I am probably overly abusing Better Touch Tool. As an example, while reading a book in Full Screen mode with Skim, I want to create different types of annotations but I do not want to use the menu or even the keyboard to switch annotation types. I want to keep my hand on the trackpad and do what’s needed – including saving. The issue I saw is that when using gestures, I’m not quite sure whether they actually were executed. Adding today the “save” operation, I definitely needed a simple way to display a notification on whether the given action has been performed. Enter Growl. And a very simple Apple Script that displays, using Growl, what ever has been passed on the command line. The script is given below; here’s how it works.
I’m just reading Schermerhorn et al. There’s an interesting chapter on innovation which captures the topic of flexibility vs. rigidity, or exploration vs. exploitation, that I’ve recently discussed with a group of research fellows in the context of the dichotomy of exploration vs. exploitation: “too much emphasis on exploration will yield a whole list of potential ideas for new products and processes to new clients and customers in new markets, but little pay-off . . . Conversely, an emphasis on exploitation stresses control and evolutionary development. Such exploitation can be planned with tight budgets, careful forecasts, and steady implementation. It is often much easier to stress exploitation because most organizations have a structure and culture that emphasize stability and control.” (2010, pp. 381–382)
For a well-formatted version, see here .
What is required—and why—to establish a balance between flexibility and stringent order to enable a company to be receptive to innovation? And what focus areas should be considered for implementing such change?
This paper is organized as follows: section 2 contextualizes innovation with organizational culture, innovation and change, the findings of which section 3 utilizes to explore why and how to allow for flexibility and change. Section 4 brings in some of the author’s own experiences, and section 5 concludes.
Even though BibDesk has a very useful “Cite Tray” from which you can drag and drop your citations to the document you’re writing, what I consistently end up doing is to use, always, mostly the same format. As an example, I may be saying something like as \citeauthor{Nott:2014} said so eloquently, “repetitions are a sign of laziness.” (\citeyear[10]{Nott:2010}) So in essence, I am dragging and dropping twice, and am then entering (or not) the page I’m quoting from. And as repetitions are obviously a sign of laziness in the sense that for just too long I’m too lazy to automate the process, it took me probably 5,000 citation marks until I decided to do this in a better way using a nice dialog box that fetches the relevant information from the currently selected article in BibDesk, asks for the page number and finally copies the correct citation key to the clipboard:
I just saw that the audio recording of Douglas Adams, attached the transcript of his speech on biota.org is pointing to archive.org. So I’m just going to host a copy of this marvelous talk, along with its transcript. Original credits, of course, go to biota.org.
| Click here for the audio recording: |
Transcript:
Is there an Artificial God?
In honour of Douglas’ memory, Biota.org presents the transcript of his speech at Digital Biota 2, held at Magdelene College Cambridge, in September 1998. I would like to thank Steve Grand for providing this to us. Douglas presented this ”off the cuff” which only magnifies his true genius in our eyes. — Bruce Damer
This was originally billed as a debate only because I was a bit anxious coming here. I didn’t think I was going to have time to prepare anything and also, in a room full of such luminaries, I thought ‘what could I, as an amateur, possibly have to say’? So I thought I would settle for a debate. But after having been here for a couple of days, I realised you’re just a bunch of guys! It’s been rife with ideas and I’ve had so many myself through talking with and listening to people that I’d thought what I’d do was stand up and have an argument and debate with myself. I’ll talk for a while and hope sufficiently to provoke and inflame opinion that there’ll be an outburst of chair- throwing at the end.
Field-tested for over three years now, this hack will set you back about 5$ and make your lawn mower go straight up hill 45°. Sorry for the portrait format, but it is apparently awesome enough that it was even featured in Honey Bee (I’m active in the Honey Bee network of India that “has been the source of pollination and cross-pollination of ideas, creativity and grassroots genius” (Gupta, 2013) contributing hacks such as using wood screws to allow a lawn mower running up-hill (Nott, 2013, p. 23).
Here is the video. Also features Swiss mountains, Swiss cows, Google (my dog, not the search engine) in the corner of the image at one point, and entirely incorrect gardening footwear.
References