Once you saw a house somewhere in a movie or in a magazine and you thought: "That's the house I would like".
But most of the times it finished there or it began in a way and finished in a disaster, with thirty different styles that very seldom matched...
But now, you can virtually build your house and seeing it growing and trying all the features and seeing if they match, if you like them, if they look nice and most than anything, knowing in the lowest detail how much it is going to cost you.
Isn't that a dream?
For example, do you fancy to see Log Home Plans and then decide among many which one is the one that suits you?
Or do you like to dream about luxury home Plans and choose among a 3,680 square feet
3 Bedrooms, 3.5 Baths home and a 3,264 square feet 4 Bedrooms, 3.5 Baths luxury house?
You can choose among Traditional, European, Victorian, Colonial or Mediterranean style, formal and informal living, pool areas, many bedrooms and baths, study or library, media rooms and whatever you can dream...
But if you feel happier with Ranch House Plans inspired by Spanish-American homes in the Southwest,19th century style (this is my style), you have no problems.
There it is: your future beautiful house.
Mine is Plan #592-007d-0150.
Living space - 2,420 SF Bedrooms - 4 Bathrooms - 3.5.
It includes a fireplace with flanking shelves, a bay window (very English Georgian style).Many excellent features in the kitchen, if you care for cooking, a breakfast area with adjoining covered patio for eating in the garden...
What could ask more?
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Do you want to be succesful? Build weapons
Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center has won a $14.4 million contract to continue development of its unmanned ground vehicle technology for the US army.
The team says that the majority of the budget will go towards updating Crusher, a 6.5 tonne, unmanned support vehicle it developed in 2006.
However, the university also has a mandate to prove that autonomous ground vehicles are feasible in future combat situations, with the army supplying additional funds depending on progress.
"We're delighted that the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) will play a key role in showing how advanced autonomous vehicles work in Future Combat Systems settings," says NREC Director John Bares.
"Our goal will be to develop, integrate and test a high-performance unmanned ground vehicle with the most up-to-date mobility and autonomy technologies."
The award follows the university's recent success in the DARPA challenge, a competition designed to inspire innovation in the creation of driverless ground vehicles.
Carnegie Mellon's entry, nicknamed Boss, scooped top prize by successful driving around a ghost town in California without crashing.
PC Pro
The team says that the majority of the budget will go towards updating Crusher, a 6.5 tonne, unmanned support vehicle it developed in 2006.
However, the university also has a mandate to prove that autonomous ground vehicles are feasible in future combat situations, with the army supplying additional funds depending on progress.
"We're delighted that the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) will play a key role in showing how advanced autonomous vehicles work in Future Combat Systems settings," says NREC Director John Bares.
"Our goal will be to develop, integrate and test a high-performance unmanned ground vehicle with the most up-to-date mobility and autonomy technologies."
The award follows the university's recent success in the DARPA challenge, a competition designed to inspire innovation in the creation of driverless ground vehicles.
Carnegie Mellon's entry, nicknamed Boss, scooped top prize by successful driving around a ghost town in California without crashing.
PC Pro
"Bad Credit" doesn't mean a "Bad Future"
What does really kill the Economy?
Is the thought that things are going worse and tomorrow will be a sad day.
In other words, it doesn't matter what is today, it matters you hope in a better future.
This is a "glooming" period for US, since the number of "bad credit" consumers is dramatically growing.
But that doesn't mean that the future has to be like the present.
If you can still get credit, in spite of that "bad", very often you have the chance to change your life.
Because everybody can make mistakes and everybody learns more from mistakes than from right behavior.
But how to choose among the many offers?
At BadCreditOffers you will find the guide tobad credit loans and will be able to compare many bad credit offers and choose the one that best suits you.
Their expert staff continuously monitors the credit marketplace to bring consumers the best "bad credit" offers available.
And if many already were able to solve their problems in this way, why shouldn't you?
Is the thought that things are going worse and tomorrow will be a sad day.
In other words, it doesn't matter what is today, it matters you hope in a better future.
This is a "glooming" period for US, since the number of "bad credit" consumers is dramatically growing.
But that doesn't mean that the future has to be like the present.
If you can still get credit, in spite of that "bad", very often you have the chance to change your life.
Because everybody can make mistakes and everybody learns more from mistakes than from right behavior.
But how to choose among the many offers?
At BadCreditOffers you will find the guide tobad credit loans and will be able to compare many bad credit offers and choose the one that best suits you.
Their expert staff continuously monitors the credit marketplace to bring consumers the best "bad credit" offers available.
And if many already were able to solve their problems in this way, why shouldn't you?
"Words are pegs to hang ideas on"
Some say....
1. If you're too open minded, your brains would fall out.
2. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of cheques.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the wais change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
25. Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.
Chuckles
1. If you're too open minded, your brains would fall out.
2. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of cheques.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the wais change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
25. Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.
Chuckles
Big and small go "social"
Large companies have periodically gone through wrenching change in the way that IBM did. Technology companies have been particularly prone to these large “transformations” as the period of sustainable advantage is so short. However what is historically different today is how many companies and industries are going through a wrenching transformation.
Helping Fortune 500 companies to make this kind of transformation is what companies such as Accenture and IBM do. They drive change all the way from strategic Board level objectives down to business process outsourcing. At one point a BSG spokesman said something as an aside along the lines of “of course we don’t want to be another Accenture” but at some level they appear to be aiming to get into that game.
From the Web 2.0 perspective, we see this as Enterprise 2.0 - the use of Blogs, Wikis and social networking type tools within the Enterprise. BSG appear to want to play in this space but were careful to downplay the technology and stress the strategic business drivers. This is smart from their perspective as the technology will increasingly be either a) open source b) priced at consumer levels or c) bundled into the “stack” of a big vendor such as Oracle, SAP or IBM.
The one aspect of change that BSG and the panel they assembled seemed most concerned with was the generational change. They are looking at the Net Generation (the people who Don Tapscot described in his earlier book Growing Up Digital). It was slightly surreal to listen to lots of Baby Boomers in suits using “corporate-speak” describe their teenage children multitasking homework, iPod, Facebook and IM with TV in the background. Their point was that this is how the Net Generation will expect to work and Fortune 500 companies need to find ways to attract the best and brightest talent from this generation.
This is such a superficial view of what matters to this generation. Like every other generation they are simply impatient to make a difference and the communication tools are pretty incidental.
We are still at the early stages of Enterprise 2.0. Most enterprise technologies go through three overlapping waves of adoption (you can map these to Crossing the Chasm):
1. Media Wave. This is when you make money from seminars, workshops and research reports.
2. Lighthouse projects. These are often “skunk works” projects done for very little cost, under the corporate radar. There is not a lot of revenue in this phase, but the leading vendors are identified here.
3. Rollout. This is when the big money is made. This is when one sees lots of M&A and roll-ups to create scale.
The fundamental issue is that the reduction in transaction cost enabled by the Internet reduces the value of scale and vertical integration that characterise Fortune 500 companies. This will level the playing field for smaller companies that trade together in semi-formal networks.
The lesson for start-ups who currently sell into consumer markets but would like to get more adoption in large companies? Don’t do anything different would be my advice. The new forms of communication will all get adoption under the corporate radar. As long as you have a model that is not dependent totally on advertising (i.e. you have an “ad free” version for a subscription fee) people will sign up with a credit card and expense it.
Liberally taken by Bernard Lunn
Helping Fortune 500 companies to make this kind of transformation is what companies such as Accenture and IBM do. They drive change all the way from strategic Board level objectives down to business process outsourcing. At one point a BSG spokesman said something as an aside along the lines of “of course we don’t want to be another Accenture” but at some level they appear to be aiming to get into that game.
From the Web 2.0 perspective, we see this as Enterprise 2.0 - the use of Blogs, Wikis and social networking type tools within the Enterprise. BSG appear to want to play in this space but were careful to downplay the technology and stress the strategic business drivers. This is smart from their perspective as the technology will increasingly be either a) open source b) priced at consumer levels or c) bundled into the “stack” of a big vendor such as Oracle, SAP or IBM.
The one aspect of change that BSG and the panel they assembled seemed most concerned with was the generational change. They are looking at the Net Generation (the people who Don Tapscot described in his earlier book Growing Up Digital). It was slightly surreal to listen to lots of Baby Boomers in suits using “corporate-speak” describe their teenage children multitasking homework, iPod, Facebook and IM with TV in the background. Their point was that this is how the Net Generation will expect to work and Fortune 500 companies need to find ways to attract the best and brightest talent from this generation.
This is such a superficial view of what matters to this generation. Like every other generation they are simply impatient to make a difference and the communication tools are pretty incidental.
We are still at the early stages of Enterprise 2.0. Most enterprise technologies go through three overlapping waves of adoption (you can map these to Crossing the Chasm):
1. Media Wave. This is when you make money from seminars, workshops and research reports.
2. Lighthouse projects. These are often “skunk works” projects done for very little cost, under the corporate radar. There is not a lot of revenue in this phase, but the leading vendors are identified here.
3. Rollout. This is when the big money is made. This is when one sees lots of M&A and roll-ups to create scale.
The fundamental issue is that the reduction in transaction cost enabled by the Internet reduces the value of scale and vertical integration that characterise Fortune 500 companies. This will level the playing field for smaller companies that trade together in semi-formal networks.
The lesson for start-ups who currently sell into consumer markets but would like to get more adoption in large companies? Don’t do anything different would be my advice. The new forms of communication will all get adoption under the corporate radar. As long as you have a model that is not dependent totally on advertising (i.e. you have an “ad free” version for a subscription fee) people will sign up with a credit card and expense it.
Liberally taken by Bernard Lunn
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