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I just find it odd that the examples we can see are often projects that were started by emperors, which would have then had little impediments either monetarily, or hiring the best cement mixers, etc.

I don't find it odd. Even if the best cement was available for 'the middle class', how likely is it that an average house survives 2000 years? Nobody would demolish the colosseum to build the next bypass road, but the house of Nonimportus Averageus?

You are ignoring a third possibility, that making good cement was something that you had to be part of a guild to learn.. and guilds can be very protective of their trade secrets. That's why there is very little written down.

I know of guilds in the middle ages, but have no idea if and how common they were in ancient Rome. But the Roman empire existed for more than 1000 years. Now, the perfect cement might not have existed from year one on, but if the mixture was a guild secret, this guild still must have kept their secret for several hundred years.... this really would be an impressive feat. Even for today.

I just find it odd that the examples we can see are often projects that were started by emperors, which would have then had little impediments either monetarily, or hiring the best cement mixers, etc.

You are ignoring a third possibility, that making good cement was something that you had to be part of a guild to learn.. and guilds can be very protective of their trade secrets. That's why there is very little written down.

The Roman 'science' certainly was very advanced. Far superior than what came in the middle ages. However, I really doubt the Romans had the slightest idea what they were doing. Real material science came centuries later. So what they did came from trial and error.

I posted a link to a history of concrete:http://matse1.matse.illinois.edu/concrete/hist.html

Used pozzolana cement from Pozzuoli, Italy near Mt. Vesuvius to build the Appian Way, Roman baths, the Coliseum and Pantheon in Rome, and the Pont du Gard aqueduct in south France. They used lime as a cementitious material. Pliny reported a mortar mixture of 1 part lime to 4 parts sand. Vitruvius reported a 2 parts pozzolana to 1 part lime. Animal fat, milk, and blood were used as admixtures (substances added to cement to increase the properties.) These structures still exist today!

Fat? Milk? Blood? Oh, I am sure those materials really play an important role in the cement's durability. But I am also quite sure, that initially they were added for some sacrificial reasons. Not because the Romans knew that this really improved the cement. Furthermore the used material are natural materials. The composition of almost all natural materials vary a bit. Then: 1 part of lime and 4 parts of sand. Or 2 parts of pozzolana and 1 part lime... to what precision? Does it make a difference if it is 1.95 parts of pozzolana and 1.05 parts of lime? Does it make a difference where the lime came from? With all respect for the Roman accomplishments, but it is very unlikely that their cement had over centuries always the same quality.

IMHO this means either the allowed production tolerance is quite high, so that natural variations don't matter much for the cement's quality. Then it is surprising that the exact formula got lost. Or the allowed production tolerance is quite low, but this would support the theory that the Romans, too, did not always get it right and we only see the results where more or less by coincidence the mixture was perfect.

While I don't disagree that your premise may be correct, what makes you think that a society noted for its obsession with bureaucracy and incredible ability to organize (look where they built, and how they managed to keep garrisons weeks from Rome supplied) would not have had some recipe for cement, but that the amount of work or scarcity of materials prevented it from being used always?

http://matse1.matse.illinois.edu/concrete/hist.html

300 BC - 476 AD
RomansUsed pozzolana cement from Pozzuoli, Italy near Mt. Vesuvius to build the Appian Way, Roman baths, the Coliseum and Pantheon in Rome, and the Pont du Gard aqueduct in south France. They used lime as a cementitious material. Pliny reported a mortar mixture of 1 part lime to 4 parts sand. Vitruvius reported a 2 parts pozzolana to 1 part lime. Animal fat, milk, and blood were used as admixtures (substances added to cement to increase the properties.) These structures still exist today!

Too bad....To really have durable structures, sacrifices to the gods have to be made. So virgin instead of animal blood. Damn... now way we ever can reproduce the Roman cement now.

Btw.... just kidding. ;-)

NOT helping. That is scary stuff

Yeah, but not a SINGLE concrete building we've built in the past 50 years has lasted 2000 years, so we're clearly doing something wrong.

"Paranoia is rife. You hear everyone talking."

U Think that iz bad? Try this on for sIze:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badbios

I DOUBLE dare you

This is not about productivity it is about control

No issues as long as she is in there with the grits :)

Facebook and I divorced a while back. No arguments over things or money cause I am freeeeeee

At one place my desk was in the middle of the office, so the bay had a lane on either side, with finance people on one side and helpdesk teams on the other. OMFG. Finance people _talk_, laugh, hold mini meetings, then for 2 months work their asses off running around stressed as hell. Think of working next to bipoar monkeys. The helpdesk people need space. Away from devs.

So...they should accept your beliefs as valid so you don't have to accept theirs?

When you advocate the death of a subgroup of the herd based only on selfishness and hate, the whole herd is better off without you.

Yup. It's still interesting to study the buildings that lasted 2000 years however, because replicating that particular mixture is probably a good idea.

Do I really need to be a Roman architect/builder?
Read this:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/09/counterintuitive-world

False conclusions are very common in many areas. I think it is the same with Roman cement.
You see what remained after 2000 years. But of course you don't see anymore what crumbled
after 50 years.

FreeBSD was once solid and good. 4.x series was really stable and I never experienced any problems. Then they begun with way too big changes and there was not even one version I would not see problems and panics with.

I guess it matters what you use it for. I switched from Linux to FBSD as my main OS of choice after yet another root vulnerability in Linux 2.2.19. On the desktop, Linux is better: more driver support, more applications etc. As a server though, FreeBSD outruns every other OS I've worked with. I once managed to squeeze a webhoster's server farm of 8 racks full of 1U servers into two racks of FreeBSD boxes, same hardware.

Did they go downhill? Perhaps a bit. I don't like the new pkg tool (every frikkin' time I want a small package I'm first download 4 megs of repository and a mandatory update for pkg itself), and graphical applications are still quite sucky. On the server-side however, I've haven't seen that issue. I haven't had a box go down in years.

FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE (GENERIC) #0: Sun Feb 24 19:59:52 UTC 2008

[falken@doos ~]$ uptime
8:03PM up 795 days, 39 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.02, 0.02, 0.01
[falken@doos ~]$

Seriously, try that with Linux.

everything was lunchroom style - the entire suite was one big room.

Have you been to the Facebook campus in Menlo Park lately?

Construction is fine, if you don't mind working outside, exposed to extreme elements, from 200F degrees in the desert in direct sunlight, to -40F degrees plus wind-chill and rain up north. And also if you don't mind working crazy shifts, driving crazy distances to each new job, or having to pick-up and move 500 miles away on one day's notice. I've seen it, first-hand, many, many times.

While your IT career may involve some of that, mine has been mostly M-F, 8-5, with only 5% overtime from on-call and whatnot, and most every day at the same office, indoors. While your list of issues is quite true and resonates, I expect everyone in any job thinks everyone else's jobs are better than theirs, somehow. Everyone simply overlooks the non-obvious ways those other jobs are actually a lot worse (at least in some ways), which is why the "grass is always greener".

I wonder if it really does represent a higher return on real estate. If you can pack in 20% more people, but their productivity drops by 21%, you're losing out.

Perhaps he was tired of getting shit for being considerate and going outside. A lot of people make comments about taking many breaks, etc.

I've worked in Silicon Valley for about thirty years.

I've done a lot of consulting and contracting. So I've seen a lot of environments. Hundreds, maybe over a thousand if one includes all the interviews I've gone on.

In general, everyone still uses cubes, because you can pack people closer that way and maximize your return on real estate.

When things get crowded I've seen people crowded two or even three into a cube engineered for one (Fritz Companies, Wells Fargo come to mind).

When rooms with doors are available they go to managers first, and software developers second. For some reason the programming that we do in Operations to automate their infrastructure doesn't count as 'software development'; and so quality suffers. But they don't care. We are all replaceable, anyway.

In companies that don't do software development, programmers aren't called software developers, and they don't get offices, either. Large banks, for instance. Maybe that explains a few things.

Competition for corners and spaces with windows is always fierce. Enlightened management arrange things so that these resources are used for corridors so that no competition occurs ( but these same enlightened people still end up with corner offices, with windows, and fabulous, relaxing views, somehow).

The WORST I ever SAW was a place called Fort Point Partners, in downtown San Francisco - the company built Java-based websites for their clients, around the turn of the century.

Their web developers were seated, with their assigned laptops, at what were, for lack of a better phrase, lunchroom tables - long rows of tables with chairs on both sides of each row of tables, so that people faced one another as they ate, er, uh, developed software and websites - I kid you not.

The WORST place I ever WORKED was Zuora, in Redwood Shores. The company was dominated by Asian investors, so maybe that had something to do with it - but, again, everything was lunchroom style - the entire suite was one big room.

(Maybe Zuora was actually worse than Fort Point Partners - after all, I actually had to WORK at Zuora, where I just happened to SEE the workspace of the Fort Point Partners, while doing some work for them - but I still remember the horror I felt.)

EVERYONE at Zuora - except the executives, of course, who had offices, with doors - sat at a desk ... which faced another desk, and was framed by two more desks, left and right ... as was the desk across from each person.

I suspect there were cameras somewhere, monitoring us all, that required unobstructed line-of-sight to every worker's screen. Call me paranoid if it makes you feel better.No other explanation made quite as much sense.

My team were supposed to be maintaining the operability of Zuora's current infrastructure, while also architecting Zuora's next-generation infrastructure.

But it was an interruption-rich environment ... to put it mildly. One hundred fifty people - customer support, technical support, sales, management - all in one large room, all having phone conversations at the same time ... all fighting over two or three small conference rooms, which were usually monopolized by salesmen and managers. It was insane.

I think the worst part of the experience was the ship's bell that Zuora's Sales Department had mounted, on a wall, and insisted on striking, hard, every time they made a sale. I'm sure that was great at motivating the salespeople, and rendered more tangible, the value being added by the Sales department - but at what cost to the rest of the company?

Can you imagine trying to design a forty-story hospital, that people's lives are going to depend upon, in the fire-fighting vehicle bay of a busy firehouse - say, in New York City? That's what it felt like to be a systems architect at Zuora.

So what's the best place I ever worked at? Well, for a short period, Oracle gave all of their systems administrators - all twenty or so - offices of their own, on 4OP4, back in the early 1990s. It was really nice. I gave Oracle 16- and 20-hour days, seven days a week.

My management, in MIS, returned the favor, by accusing me of sexually harassing a junior coworker, via electronic mail ... then, refused to show me the email ... then, terminated me. Nice folks. I hear the sysadmins all lost their offices not too long afterwards.

(See http://web.archive.org/web/20040609092145/http://www.orafraud.org/Oracle/terminator.html for details. Oracle has never disputed the facts, as presented. And Larry just got shoved off the board of directors again, for the Oregon fiasco - which is quite properly being regarded as a possible RICO case. Food for thought.)

For about a month, while I was at Hambrecht & Quist, my boss's boss moved out of the corner office with the fabulous view - and, since we were all moving up a few floors in a few weeks ... I asked if I, and a few other sysadmins, could take over the corner office.

Permission was granted. For a few weeks I enjoyed a view looking straight up Market Street, all the way up to the Twin Peaks, starting from somewhere around Pine and Bush streets. It was really nice, man.

(A big thanks to Gary ... and Norm, and Jim, too - I SO miss having cool, fun IT management. Age and wisdom have been replaced by smug 30-year-olds with MBAs, and the world is not a better place as a result.)

... I have gradually realized that construction workers get better pay, better working conditions, better representation at the bargaining table, and probably have more fun than software developers, sysadmins and database administrators, too.

(And, yes, I've seen the movie,'Office Space', thanks.)

So if you're thinking about entering the IT industry ... I'd advise you to learn construction, with an emphasis on robotics and architectural design ... so that you can move up, as manual labor is phased out.

It's simply not worth the hassle to struggle to keep up with rapidly changing software, increasingly expensive certifications, increasingly indifferent employers, increasingly complex interoperability issues, shrinking training budgets, a lack of commitment to anything longer than a three-month relationship, subject to change, incredible laundry lists of requirements that go on, and on, and on, and on, and the bunglers that call themselves recruiters, whom are one's only path to employment, today.

In the article, he does the numbers and concludes that there aren't enough serious podcasters to support "pro" quality podcast-creation software, at USD $200/copy. However, there are lots of listeners, millions according to the earlier article linked.

What if the podcasters all asked their listeners to donate a buck to a kickstarter so that they could waste less time doing audio gymnastics and more time generating interesting shows. Set the goal high and promise a few versions on the initial funding so there is enough time and feedback to work out the major bugs and give it a decent user interface. Offer the resulting software at a very low price ($10-20?) to raise the quality bar for everyone (creators and listeners).

Are you speaking from experience.. you were a Roman architect/builder?

I can top that. In one company one of the 'nicer' colleagues really thought it ok to smoke in an open office. The boss did not care, he was a very heavy smoker himself. It was the only time when I left a project before its time.

All it takes is for one exhibitionist, loud mouth, megaphone personality

In a previous company, they had this brilliant idea of putting marketing guys right next to the developers and they never shut up all day, either on phone or "quick team meetings" etc. I had to go to the sub-zero server room to get anything done.

Open plan sucks bad. It's now one of my main criteria when assesing a job offer.

I have worked in a few open offices and visited many. They can range from very bad to sort of okay. If designed correctly with teams organised to compliment each other it can be quite good. This never happens, or is ripped apart within a few years.

Paranoia is rife. You hear everyone talking. Everyone can see everyone else's monitors which tends to end up that you watch someone across the floor surf the net all day. All it takes is for one exhibitionist, loud mouth, megaphone personality or uncontrolled cackler and your work becomes. punctuated. by. sound. which. is. really. annoying. Nothing can be said which hasn't been said before. It sucks.

If you have never experienced an open plan office then be thankful and do what you can to avoid them.

For all the things Romans got wrong (lead pipes anyone?) did you know we're still using a less advanced concrete than they did? Consider some of the massive structures in Rome that have passed the test of time, lasting for more than 2000 years. The typical concrete that we use in construction starts to degrade after only 50 years.

People, who make and repeat this claim, fall for some kind of selection bias. Actually there was no 'the Roman cement'. Mixing cement was no hard science back then. I doubt that even two batches were identical. So yes... some structures last more than 2000 years. But how many structures are gone because they did not even last 50 years? Erm... no one knows... because they are not there anymore. What we are seeing now are structures where the mixture was more or less coincidentally right and environmental factors were favourable so the structures survived.

It's amazing that we were able to reduce all these interactions to just these 4 equations. It's a shame everyone knows Einstein but only physicists know Maxwell.

EDIT: I love that the engineers got offended. :D

...and there will only be Hot Grits in the stocking.

That... is so terrible it is Good. I commend you, Sir

Lots of people know about Maxwell and his silver hammer...

Uh, I'm an electrical engineer, but I know that in general relativistic form, they collapse into one tensor equation. Do I get bonus points for reading Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler? Or am I derided for not knowing what string theory says about them?

" It's a shame everyone knows Einstein but only physicists know Maxwell."

You just have too little faith in the American public. Everyone knows that Einstein does bagels, and us old farts know that Maxwell is Agent 86!

I guess it is really "Deb - Ian" now, but form your list I like "Justian" it's easy to say, easy to remember and a little tongue-in-cheek

Yep, non-feminists need not apply to debian. Only fucking cunt worshipers allowed.

Reiser did nothing wrong

only physicists know Maxwell

Hey! I'm an engineer! [insert jokes about insensitive clods and Howard Wolowitz here]

Maybe this article was like a honeypot for A/C trolls, who have vowed to wage war on each other.

And nothing of value was lost.

Xmas is dead

looking back at the text, maybe I should have put a link to the equations themselves (but they're in the article ;-)):

the well-known 4 equations that we all read once

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations

Comment was used for testing more obscure, utf-8 chars. They were all stripped. I thought they were legit, but probably not needed. No one really speaks those languages much these days.

Yes.

Xfce is still powered by gtk2, isn't it?

Disagree about the ease in pronouncing. If it were on a Chinese menu, sure I'd probably pronounce it correctly. But English is my first language, and its pronunciation rules are F'd up beyond belief. Its completely out of context in a tech setting, and you can be certain that many people will mispronounce it, just like every other name for things we have. So while its no worse than others, its certainly not any better.

I were him, after the divorce I would've renamed it "Dorkian" or "Dumbian" as a reminder.

And, in so demonstrating your emotional maturity, you'll also avoid the complications that accompany remarrying!

Yeah, it sounds like crappy code from someone with an axe to grind (and the axe is not the lack of ASCII slot machines).
From a SN comment:
It's being presented as just some poor coder being rejected for being disliked, but the code itself has stuff like ASCII spam of "Just Say No To Women's Rights" as a response to certain user input,
See the full comment here: http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4994&cid=119286

I agree with 100% certainty in all probability and posibility. So... what are we going to do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0 - Linux Pronunciation. Hope this helps, I'd say it sounds like lin-icks myself.