Although the applications are somewhat limited, I really had fun with the concept in some EA Sports games (Tiger Woods in my case) where you could upload a picture of yourself and skin the character. It was pretty easy and looked mostly like me. It was a heck of lot easier than spending 3 hours trying to tune an avatar with sliders. I suppose there's too much opportunity for mischief however for this to make it into MMORPGs.
You know, usually I'm against most government spending programs. They tend to be a huge waste.
But this... It sounds interesting and could actually benefit basic research- something this country sorely needs to support. My (perhaps incorrect) observation is that some groups like the DOE and DARPA tend to allocate funds to valuable research projects rather than pissing money away on terrible administrative database implementations. I guess I should keep in mind that the majority of DOE funding is used to build and maintain our nuclear weapons fleet.
That's potentially a point. I was going off of this dictionary entry that says "Percent can take a singular or plural verb, depending on how the quantity being described is viewed. Very often what determines the form of the verb is the noun nearest to it. Thus one might say Eighty percent of the legislators are going to vote against the bill or Eighty percent of the legislature is set to vote the bill down. In the second sentence the group of legislators is considered as a body, not as individuals. When percent is used without a following prepositional phrase, either a singular or plural verb is acceptable." (answers.com)
I started looking at this thread and gave up based on boredom...:-)
You're right. Percents are plural when the object of "of" is plural. They're singular when the object of "of" is singular. The examples you used are correct, e.g.
50% of humans are male. 50% of the human race is male.
I guess it just depends on whether the writer would say "Warez are found on the internet." or "Warez is found on the internet."
The truth is probably somewhere in between. Unless Sony gets its act together, it is destined to exit the hardware business and become a pure media conglomerate. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen.
It took the Japanese 30 years to dominate the US Auto industry despite the fact that year in / year out they were delivering significantly better value to the consumer. It happened, but not overnight because big brands have a tremendous amount of momentum. It takes the combination of HUGE management mistakes over LONG amounts of time to kill dominant companies. Few people seem to remember these days when GM had like 70% market share and was the envy of the world.
I don't know whether it's true or not, but I have heard that most of the anti-GMO movement in Europe has its history in farm protection. As in, "Let's prevent imports of food by claiming that GM foods are unsafe." The farm trade groups sponsored a tremendous amount of legislation and public advocacy to turn consumers against GM crops so that they wouldn't be bombarded by GM products from Asia, Africa, and the USA.
Roundup is a non-selective herbicide, not a pesticide. Planting "Roundup Ready" crops means I can spray my entire field with a 60-70 foot boom sprayer and not care when it gets all over the post-emergent crop plants. The crop will be immune to the Roundup (glycophospate), and the weeds will die. In the olden days, you had to cultivate between rows to tear up the weeds, and it was pretty much impossible to get at the weeds that were inline with the crop (from a tractor at least).
Nobody who is in marketing believes that. If your brand rep is as a "renegade" then perhaps any publicity is good, but that's only a special case. It's hard to imagine Gerber baby food, or Fisher Price, or Pampers brand managers thinking that any publicity is good.
If you think the US health care system is legitimately "the best", tell me by which measure.
People throw that study number around without actually understanding what was going on. Let me explain a bit about that study, then you can decide if you think you want to continue using the study as evidence of anything.
I've written down the criteria in this form- Criterion (weighting %) : US Ranking, explanation.
Health Level (25%): 24 This is primarily ranking based on life expectancy.
Health Distribution (25%): 32 This is primarily based on child survival rates vs. wealth. You get a bad score if poor kids die while rich kids live.
Responsiveness Level (12.5%): 1 This is based on a survey of health care users about choice of doctor, access to care, quality of care, and outcomes. Generally, when people think about whether they have a "good" health care system or not, these are the criteria they are generally talking about. US ranked 1, Switzerland 2, Luxembourg 3, and Denmark 4.
Responsiveness Distribution (12.5%): 3-38 This looks at the scores of responsiveness above, and cubes the mathematical difference between responsiveness scores of disadvantaged groups vs. all other groups. In this category, the UAE which ranked 30th in responsiveness was ranked number one in distribution of responsiveness. E.G. the disadvantaged got roughly the same care as the advantaged.
Fairness in Financial Contribution (25%): 54-55 Again, measuring the distribution of % of household income going to health care across various economic segments.
Based on this weighting, the aggregate US ranking was 15th. This is the Attainment ranking.
The Performance Ranking is the number you refer to (France 1st, US 37th). It is a calculation which uses a formula much to complicated for me to understand, but essentially they made a model which calculates what they think the life expectancy in the country should be given the expenditures. That is, it's sort of a misnomer- it is not Performance, but Efficiency they are measuring. France scored best because the model created determined that their life expectancy is closest to the theoretical maximum predicted. People (rightly in my opinion) get worked up over this ranking because it's not really based on facts or performance, but actually a prediction of life expectancy. Japan ranks number 1 in the world in life expectancy, but 10th in terms of Efficiency. It doesn't make much sense.
I see several big flaws with this study, but feel free to ignore me if you're looking for ammunition to bash the US health care system: 1) You really have to wonder if life expectancy is the best way to be comparing health care systems. The vast majority of expenditures in the USA are on procedures, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, etc. that are not designed to increase life expectancy. Whether that is the right or not is up for debate, but it does explain why the US scores poorly in efficiency.
2) Distribution of care makes up the bulk of the ranking whereas quality of care and outcomes makes up 12.5%. The US gets bonus points for having the best quality of care when you go to the doctor. We get serious dings for having different quality of care for rich and poor. We also get serious dings for the way our population takes generally poor care of ourselves (smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, etc.). If you think poor care by doctors is the reason for the obesity epidemic, then feel free to believe in this study. Me- I don't know a single person who truly blames doctors or the health care system for our lifestyle choices.
3) This study was done once (in 2000). The methodology was so poorly designed that it wasn't funded again by the WHO. It's not exactly the type of study you want to be throwing around as the definitive ranking on health care systems.
Perhaps your comment is true RE tap water, but I can assure you it is not the same with some foods. I have personally seen fruits and vegetables sorted, and there are definitive differences between the produce that go to brands vs. generics. I know for a fact that Heinz provides the seeds to their growers to ensure quality control and consistency. I'm not sure that I could personally tell the difference in a blind taste test, but the produce is definitely fresher and higher quality when it starts out.
There's a reason why we don't let people with PhD's in Rhetoric publish statistical studies. They think that 15,000 writing samples from Stanford students can be extrapolated to the US population.
Simple? Come on, this is slashdot. We all know how painful and expensive systems integration can be.
I'm not willing to pay an extra dime to be able to play someone on a different console. Unless there are big groups out there who are willing to shell out big bucks to do so, I don't predict this happening anytime in the near future.
These bankers handed out mortgages they KNEW would default, then sold them before it could come around to bite them on the ass.
Actually, that was only in the beginning. The investment banks started out flipping these securities to primarily international investors who were buying up anything and everything that was denominated in American dollars.
After a while, the banks started buying into their own BS and actually holding the securities (which eventually lost value). That is why the banks failed. If the banks were simply acting as brokers, they wouldn't have had serious problems.
I'm confused at what the article is trying to say. Obviously they're upset that "something" is moving from the USA to overseas, but it sounds like IBM is encouraging their consultants to consult overseas, and their researchers to research overseas. Is that really that big of an issue?
I work at a manufacturer that designs and builds stuff in the USA (and to a lesser extent overseas) to ship all over the world. If you want to get into a leadership position, you'd better be prepared to spend 5-10 years of your career outside the US to gain an international perspective. This way you don't have some idiot who's never been outside the US trying to tell the rest of the world why they don't really need what they think they need.
This study was published by the Entertainment Merchants Association, which is a trade group for the retailers who sell and rent games. The members are companies like Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Target, etc. All the posts here read like the publishers are the ones sponsoring this study- eg this is the publishers trying to kill used sales.
I'm not convinced that is the motivation given that the merchants are the primary beneficiaries of used sales. For merchants, in store theft is a huge issue, and I imagine it was a primary motivation for at least starting this study on POS activation.
These guys are looking to a future where downloaded games reduce the need for physical retailers, and I'm sure they are scrambling to ensure their place in the world through whatever means necessary- including some dumb ideas like POS activation.
It is fascinating that Roe vs. Wade occurred at a time when the median was at one of its more conservative moments (as measured by this index).
Plus, if you look at the bottom, the court has been moderate to conservative through the entire duration of this graph. I'm not sure I actually buy into this metric.
It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time
This is really not quite true. I'm very familiar with farm operations, and I can assure you that farmers do not work all the time. There are a couple times of year when you really need to make sure all the field operations get completed in a very short window: e.g. planting and harvesting. Some of the other things can be done in a bigger window: e.g. tilling & spraying. Prior to those times of year you spend your days servicing and rechecking your equipment 3-4 times because the cost of a downed tractor or combine can be enormous. The rest of the year, you could take a part time job or simply do nothing.
Livestock care is a different story, since they pretty much require constant care, but most farmers these days don't handle livestock the way they did 50 years ago when people ran integrated farms.
If we're to step back a few hundred years ago, it was not at all uncommon for serfs and laborers to only work 10 hours a week during offseason. There are plentiful stories of peasants sleeping all winter to conserve calories. They would basically shack up as a family in bed together to conserve heat and minimize the food they required.
The real transition to clocked in time was with the introduction of factories (capital). When a significant portion of the value of a product is derived from the value of the capital, then it makes sense to keep the capital operating as often as possible. You couldn't afford to have the line stop because a worker came in late.
Even then, the 40 hour work week is a relatively recent invention, having only come about in the 1930's through 1950's due to labor organization.
Manufacturing productivity has gone up drastically in the last century, whereas service productivity has not (as much). It still takes as many manhours to get a hair cut today as it did 100 years ago. The scissors used to cut your hair probably take 1/50th the amount of labor they did 100 years ago. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise then, that we've slowly transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, even when you take into account world trade. The USA is still the largest manufacturer in the world, in terms of value produced, so we can't say that the transition is due to "all of our manufacturing base going to China." People have simply decided to allocate their wages towards labor-intensive products (health care, financial, etc.) rather than material goods.
If you actually got into an argument with your boss, then I'm guessing you went about things all wrong in trying to make your point. Some tips of advice for advocating a change of procedure:
1) Don't make this case in front of other people. This has to be behind closed doors. If you bring up something in front of others, it simply looks like you're trying to make the boss look like a bad guy to everyone else, and he/she will get defensive.
2) The easiest job in the world is to be a critic. If you come up with a well reasoned plan, with statistics, etc. that prove your point and propose a new methodology, you're well on your way to getting your way. Half the time subordinates pose a problem to me, they're simply dumping more work on my lap. I try to be reasonable, but it's a heck of a lot easier to approve something if there's a reasonable proposal to work with. Especially if the proposal looks to have a low risk and substantial gain. Not everyone wants to stake their reputation on certain projects.
3) The problem may/may not lie with your boss. He/she may have had this exact discussion with his/her boss and already been shot down.
4) You have to be genuinely motivated to improve your work product. The motivation cannot be "code reviews are a waste of time." If you pose something that way, you're essentially calling your boss an idiot for asking you to do them. Also, your boss is immediately going to be suspicious you're simply trying to reduce your responsibilities.
5) If that fails, you may as well embrace the reviews and dedicate your time to improving the way they are conducted. Spend some time researching what works and what doesn't. Then go to your boss and ask permission to implement some of the best practices. Managers get irritated when people expect them to solve all their problems. Do your best to institutionalize good practices and demonstrate that you're doing things for the good of the company, rather than to free up some time in your day. Do it in the name of "continuous improvement," and you'll be a hero.
6) You usually get two shots to make a pitch for a change. After that, you need to do your best to implement things the way your boss wants them. Anything more, and you're simply challenging his/her authority.
Slashdot Mirror
Although the applications are somewhat limited, I really had fun with the concept in some EA Sports games (Tiger Woods in my case) where you could upload a picture of yourself and skin the character. It was pretty easy and looked mostly like me. It was a heck of lot easier than spending 3 hours trying to tune an avatar with sliders. I suppose there's too much opportunity for mischief however for this to make it into MMORPGs.
You know, usually I'm against most government spending programs. They tend to be a huge waste.
But this... It sounds interesting and could actually benefit basic research- something this country sorely needs to support. My (perhaps incorrect) observation is that some groups like the DOE and DARPA tend to allocate funds to valuable research projects rather than pissing money away on terrible administrative database implementations. I guess I should keep in mind that the majority of DOE funding is used to build and maintain our nuclear weapons fleet.
That's potentially a point. I was going off of this dictionary entry that says "Percent can take a singular or plural verb, depending on how the quantity being described is viewed. Very often what determines the form of the verb is the noun nearest to it. Thus one might say Eighty percent of the legislators are going to vote against the bill or Eighty percent of the legislature is set to vote the bill down. In the second sentence the group of legislators is considered as a body, not as individuals. When percent is used without a following prepositional phrase, either a singular or plural verb is acceptable." (answers.com)
I started looking at this thread and gave up based on boredom... :-)
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=30630
You're right. Percents are plural when the object of "of" is plural. They're singular when the object of "of" is singular. The examples you used are correct, e.g.
50% of humans are male. 50% of the human race is male.
I guess it just depends on whether the writer would say "Warez are found on the internet." or "Warez is found on the internet."
The truth is probably somewhere in between. Unless Sony gets its act together, it is destined to exit the hardware business and become a pure media conglomerate. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen.
It took the Japanese 30 years to dominate the US Auto industry despite the fact that year in / year out they were delivering significantly better value to the consumer. It happened, but not overnight because big brands have a tremendous amount of momentum. It takes the combination of HUGE management mistakes over LONG amounts of time to kill dominant companies. Few people seem to remember these days when GM had like 70% market share and was the envy of the world.
@MILGR, OH SNAP!
The biggest black market in the United States is the sale of unpasteurized milk.
Little known fact- you know all that gang violence on the US-Mexican border? Milk smuggling.
I don't know whether it's true or not, but I have heard that most of the anti-GMO movement in Europe has its history in farm protection. As in, "Let's prevent imports of food by claiming that GM foods are unsafe." The farm trade groups sponsored a tremendous amount of legislation and public advocacy to turn consumers against GM crops so that they wouldn't be bombarded by GM products from Asia, Africa, and the USA.
Roundup is a non-selective herbicide, not a pesticide. Planting "Roundup Ready" crops means I can spray my entire field with a 60-70 foot boom sprayer and not care when it gets all over the post-emergent crop plants. The crop will be immune to the Roundup (glycophospate), and the weeds will die. In the olden days, you had to cultivate between rows to tear up the weeds, and it was pretty much impossible to get at the weeds that were inline with the crop (from a tractor at least).
[Apologies in advance to Wii fans]
It's because most people play Wii Sports for a week, put it on the shelf, and never touch it again...
Nobody who is in marketing believes that. If your brand rep is as a "renegade" then perhaps any publicity is good, but that's only a special case. It's hard to imagine Gerber baby food, or Fisher Price, or Pampers brand managers thinking that any publicity is good.
If you think the US health care system is legitimately "the best", tell me by which measure.
People throw that study number around without actually understanding what was going on. Let me explain a bit about that study, then you can decide if you think you want to continue using the study as evidence of anything.
I've written down the criteria in this form-
Criterion (weighting %) : US Ranking, explanation.
Health Level (25%): 24
This is primarily ranking based on life expectancy.
Health Distribution (25%): 32
This is primarily based on child survival rates vs. wealth. You get a bad score if poor kids die while rich kids live.
Responsiveness Level (12.5%): 1
This is based on a survey of health care users about choice of doctor, access to care, quality of care, and outcomes. Generally, when people think about whether they have a "good" health care system or not, these are the criteria they are generally talking about. US ranked 1, Switzerland 2, Luxembourg 3, and Denmark 4.
Responsiveness Distribution (12.5%): 3-38
This looks at the scores of responsiveness above, and cubes the mathematical difference between responsiveness scores of disadvantaged groups vs. all other groups. In this category, the UAE which ranked 30th in responsiveness was ranked number one in distribution of responsiveness. E.G. the disadvantaged got roughly the same care as the advantaged.
Fairness in Financial Contribution (25%): 54-55
Again, measuring the distribution of % of household income going to health care across various economic segments.
Based on this weighting, the aggregate US ranking was 15th. This is the Attainment ranking.
The Performance Ranking is the number you refer to (France 1st, US 37th). It is a calculation which uses a formula much to complicated for me to understand, but essentially they made a model which calculates what they think the life expectancy in the country should be given the expenditures. That is, it's sort of a misnomer- it is not Performance, but Efficiency they are measuring. France scored best because the model created determined that their life expectancy is closest to the theoretical maximum predicted. People (rightly in my opinion) get worked up over this ranking because it's not really based on facts or performance, but actually a prediction of life expectancy. Japan ranks number 1 in the world in life expectancy, but 10th in terms of Efficiency. It doesn't make much sense.
I see several big flaws with this study, but feel free to ignore me if you're looking for ammunition to bash the US health care system:
1) You really have to wonder if life expectancy is the best way to be comparing health care systems. The vast majority of expenditures in the USA are on procedures, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, etc. that are not designed to increase life expectancy. Whether that is the right or not is up for debate, but it does explain why the US scores poorly in efficiency.
2) Distribution of care makes up the bulk of the ranking whereas quality of care and outcomes makes up 12.5%. The US gets bonus points for having the best quality of care when you go to the doctor. We get serious dings for having different quality of care for rich and poor. We also get serious dings for the way our population takes generally poor care of ourselves (smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, etc.). If you think poor care by doctors is the reason for the obesity epidemic, then feel free to believe in this study. Me- I don't know a single person who truly blames doctors or the health care system for our lifestyle choices.
3) This study was done once (in 2000). The methodology was so poorly designed that it wasn't funded again by the WHO. It's not exactly the type of study you want to be throwing around as the definitive ranking on health care systems.
Perhaps your comment is true RE tap water, but I can assure you it is not the same with some foods. I have personally seen fruits and vegetables sorted, and there are definitive differences between the produce that go to brands vs. generics. I know for a fact that Heinz provides the seeds to their growers to ensure quality control and consistency. I'm not sure that I could personally tell the difference in a blind taste test, but the produce is definitely fresher and higher quality when it starts out.
There's a reason why we don't let people with PhD's in Rhetoric publish statistical studies. They think that 15,000 writing samples from Stanford students can be extrapolated to the US population.
Simple? Come on, this is slashdot. We all know how painful and expensive systems integration can be.
I'm not willing to pay an extra dime to be able to play someone on a different console. Unless there are big groups out there who are willing to shell out big bucks to do so, I don't predict this happening anytime in the near future.
These bankers handed out mortgages they KNEW would default, then sold them before it could come around to bite them on the ass.
Actually, that was only in the beginning. The investment banks started out flipping these securities to primarily international investors who were buying up anything and everything that was denominated in American dollars.
After a while, the banks started buying into their own BS and actually holding the securities (which eventually lost value). That is why the banks failed. If the banks were simply acting as brokers, they wouldn't have had serious problems.
I'm confused at what the article is trying to say. Obviously they're upset that "something" is moving from the USA to overseas, but it sounds like IBM is encouraging their consultants to consult overseas, and their researchers to research overseas. Is that really that big of an issue?
I work at a manufacturer that designs and builds stuff in the USA (and to a lesser extent overseas) to ship all over the world. If you want to get into a leadership position, you'd better be prepared to spend 5-10 years of your career outside the US to gain an international perspective. This way you don't have some idiot who's never been outside the US trying to tell the rest of the world why they don't really need what they think they need.
Agreed. I'm boycotting Apple until they bring back the closed Apple key.
This study was published by the Entertainment Merchants Association, which is a trade group for the retailers who sell and rent games. The members are companies like Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Target, etc. All the posts here read like the publishers are the ones sponsoring this study- eg this is the publishers trying to kill used sales.
I'm not convinced that is the motivation given that the merchants are the primary beneficiaries of used sales. For merchants, in store theft is a huge issue, and I imagine it was a primary motivation for at least starting this study on POS activation.
These guys are looking to a future where downloaded games reduce the need for physical retailers, and I'm sure they are scrambling to ensure their place in the world through whatever means necessary- including some dumb ideas like POS activation.
Did I mention I also have extensive time travel experience and am very familiar with the habits of subsistence farming 10,000 years ago?
You are right, though. Hunter gatherers do sit around a lot, at least based on studies of 'primitive' societies in remote parts of the world.
Good analysis.
It is fascinating that Roe vs. Wade occurred at a time when the median was at one of its more conservative moments (as measured by this index).
Plus, if you look at the bottom, the court has been moderate to conservative through the entire duration of this graph. I'm not sure I actually buy into this metric.
Did you know that there's a direct correlation between the decline of Spirograph and the rise in gang activity?
Think about it.
It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time
This is really not quite true. I'm very familiar with farm operations, and I can assure you that farmers do not work all the time. There are a couple times of year when you really need to make sure all the field operations get completed in a very short window: e.g. planting and harvesting. Some of the other things can be done in a bigger window: e.g. tilling & spraying. Prior to those times of year you spend your days servicing and rechecking your equipment 3-4 times because the cost of a downed tractor or combine can be enormous. The rest of the year, you could take a part time job or simply do nothing.
Livestock care is a different story, since they pretty much require constant care, but most farmers these days don't handle livestock the way they did 50 years ago when people ran integrated farms.
If we're to step back a few hundred years ago, it was not at all uncommon for serfs and laborers to only work 10 hours a week during offseason. There are plentiful stories of peasants sleeping all winter to conserve calories. They would basically shack up as a family in bed together to conserve heat and minimize the food they required.
The real transition to clocked in time was with the introduction of factories (capital). When a significant portion of the value of a product is derived from the value of the capital, then it makes sense to keep the capital operating as often as possible. You couldn't afford to have the line stop because a worker came in late.
Even then, the 40 hour work week is a relatively recent invention, having only come about in the 1930's through 1950's due to labor organization.
Manufacturing productivity has gone up drastically in the last century, whereas service productivity has not (as much). It still takes as many manhours to get a hair cut today as it did 100 years ago. The scissors used to cut your hair probably take 1/50th the amount of labor they did 100 years ago. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise then, that we've slowly transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, even when you take into account world trade. The USA is still the largest manufacturer in the world, in terms of value produced, so we can't say that the transition is due to "all of our manufacturing base going to China." People have simply decided to allocate their wages towards labor-intensive products (health care, financial, etc.) rather than material goods.
Only the ones that fly into it.
Next question...
If you actually got into an argument with your boss, then I'm guessing you went about things all wrong in trying to make your point. Some tips of advice for advocating a change of procedure:
1) Don't make this case in front of other people. This has to be behind closed doors. If you bring up something in front of others, it simply looks like you're trying to make the boss look like a bad guy to everyone else, and he/she will get defensive.
2) The easiest job in the world is to be a critic. If you come up with a well reasoned plan, with statistics, etc. that prove your point and propose a new methodology, you're well on your way to getting your way. Half the time subordinates pose a problem to me, they're simply dumping more work on my lap. I try to be reasonable, but it's a heck of a lot easier to approve something if there's a reasonable proposal to work with. Especially if the proposal looks to have a low risk and substantial gain. Not everyone wants to stake their reputation on certain projects.
3) The problem may/may not lie with your boss. He/she may have had this exact discussion with his/her boss and already been shot down.
4) You have to be genuinely motivated to improve your work product. The motivation cannot be "code reviews are a waste of time." If you pose something that way, you're essentially calling your boss an idiot for asking you to do them. Also, your boss is immediately going to be suspicious you're simply trying to reduce your responsibilities.
5) If that fails, you may as well embrace the reviews and dedicate your time to improving the way they are conducted. Spend some time researching what works and what doesn't. Then go to your boss and ask permission to implement some of the best practices. Managers get irritated when people expect them to solve all their problems. Do your best to institutionalize good practices and demonstrate that you're doing things for the good of the company, rather than to free up some time in your day. Do it in the name of "continuous improvement," and you'll be a hero.
6) You usually get two shots to make a pitch for a change. After that, you need to do your best to implement things the way your boss wants them. Anything more, and you're simply challenging his/her authority.