183 karma · joined May 13, 2011
And its good to keep rats busy. They won't wander as freely as they do now and hence eat less insects.
I believe introducing some small wild cat population would be a right thing to do, tho I would like to hear opinions of experts.
Edit: I don't think cats are invasive in the way rats are
I saw it for the first time when my friend brought an windows phone 7 device. I was so fascinated by the Desktop zune, I didn't even properly played the phone itself(I saw it for the first time as well)
People love windows in here, they are very eager to try new versions of windows (Majority of them don't even know that something else exists). Many companies with annual revenue above 1$mln usd use Excell as a primary work station. Nobody heard about Silverlight, MS Courier tablet (even me) and other "failed" MS products. Microsoft is regarded as a safe-bet. Thats what keeps many people from buying macbooks.
Thats said, I believe that majority of the world (those who don't follow tech news) think of Microsoft as they think of Windows- stable, reliable, familiar, indispensable product (company in case of Microsoft itself).
Sony had its own approach to this(citing Yoshide Nakamura): Our company management felt that to prepare the company for the digital network era of the 21 century, it was important to have the most appropriate organizational structure in place. That was the core reason why we created our new structure. Sony is a large company now. Our worldwide consolidated sales are over $56 billion, with 170,000 employees, but in spirit we always try to be small venture company. We want to maintain this, So when Mr.Nabuyuki Idei became president in April 1995, he gave us two slogans: "Regeneration" and "Digital Dream Kids." Thats the spirit of being small and going back to when we started Sony in 1946. So we want to make Sony smaller. Instead of having this huge corporation, he wants to organize Sony into four divisional companies so that a small venture capital spirit can be brought into management
Only one thing I noticed. I am not sure if it is a bug, but please check this page http://pea.rs/forms/multi-left-labels (and apparently same at http://pea.rs/forms/top-labels)
It has some problems with displaying textarea, at least for me it looks like that: http://i.imgur.com/tJKiG.png
I am using Windows 7 with Firefox 9.0.1
I couldn't find the exact citation from the book, but I will try to write down what I remember.
Colvin explains that with an example of Tiger Woods. He says that Tiger never subconsciously hit the ball. When he starts the movement of the arm to hit the ball and someone from the background screams, he can stop his arm halfway, and then after he is no longer distracted, he hits again.
Normally, when a mediocre player starts moving his arm in order to hit the ball, he no longer able to stop halfway through the action of arm swinging. And usually he would miss, because of concentration loss. He addresses that kind of behavior due to automation of some actions. He says that after some action has gotten automated, person performing it has almost no control over it. He also gives example of the professional car drivers and average drivers. Average driver will not be able to control the dangerous situation on the road due to the fact that his actions are almost automated. While professional drivers are able to see the situation much earlier, and steer and break more efficiently, because they are in better control of situation due to less automation of driving action (Less habit more conscious control).
I hope I could convey his words clearly, because I am not a native English speaker
Edit: Regarding programming, I noticed, the more code I write subconsciously, the more stupid bugs I get. Sometimes I write mysql_real_escape_string() instead of mysql_fetch_array() and then wonder whats gone wrong. I even look at the line with this bug for several minutes, until I stop, look away for a bit, and try to switch from autopilot to manual mode. After I fire up my real brain, I spot the bug in seconds, and have a stupid smile for a half second or so :)
Simply putting, if you are coding without stretching yourself, if you don't put much thought in it and do it almost subconsciously you are not learning anything.
He suggest to avoid acquiring habits for the things you want get better at. He supports his words with real life examples. I could relate it to myself, and found his techniques useful in my life. Overall it is a nice read.