A friend spent a year at a US university about a decade back. He said one of the annoying things was that it was insisted that he was "African-American", when he regarded himself as "Black British", but more annoying was trying to get officials to understand why this was not correct based on his level of melanin.
1) The Gate Gourmet workers were British citizens of Asian origin (mainly Sikhs I think)
2) The part-time staff were temps employed through Blue Arrow, presumably legally resident and employed in the UK.
The Gate Gourmet staff went on strike at the use of the temps. This is was not the legal process for striking,as opposed to being illegal, they commited no crime but lost the legal protection they would have had if they had called a ballot. The management then summarily dismissed them(plus workers on holiday and off sick).
Staff at BA, who had worked with these people for years and many were relatives, then went on strike. Again this was not legal.
The outsouring issue here is the relationship between BA and GG, nothing to do with the country or nationality of the workers.
"Forty-five percent of U.K. IT workers want more general business skills; 40% said management and leadership training would help them achieve their potential; and 55% want to hone their IT-specific abilities."
This survey is by Skillsoft, who supply outsourced training at my employer and who I spent 3 days trying to convince that the training course I requested was the I actually needed. You can imagine this helps my job satisfaction.
At present in the UK there is no requirement to carry an ID card. The basis of UK law is that everything is permitted unless specifically prohibited (reverse is true in many countries) and one is free to go about one's business without having to identfy yourself.
The major problem is that there is no good reason for introducing ID cards. The Home Office makes arguements in favour that do not stand up.
Briefly, they won't prevent terrorism, they won't prevent benefit fraud, it won't cut down on illegal working, they will criminalise a large number of the population who won't carry them on principle, and it will cost a minimum of GBP6 billion (over $10 billion).
In short it's been the wet dream of the Civil Service here to have a massive database on everyone for decades(and its the database rather than the cards that's the worry). September 11th provided the excuse. The amount of scope creep here is terrifying.
I work in an IT role where I am only expected to work a 35 hour week, anything over this gets paid overtime, and I get 6 weeks annual leave.
I'm not in a union, but my industry (banking) is heavily unionised in the UK and these conditions arise due to the power of the unions - trouble is the 2 recognised unions seem to spend more time fighting each other than standing up for the workers - which is why I haven't joined, but get a bit of a free ride at the moment.
I don't see how easy it is to negotiate an individual package when your company employs 70,000+ workers and only cares about filling the roles with a compentent (not necessarily outstanding) person - kinda handicaps the individuals negotiating ability.
Ahh the traditional waterfall approach, focused on the programmer.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting the programmer doesn't play a key role in software development, but this seems to suggest that they are the only ones that matter.
How about consideration of
i) The requirements - analysis of what is needed expressed in a clear, complete, concise and comprehensive manner (very hard to do and so seldom done) - put QA first not last, reviews and inspections of the documentation pays off.
ii) Testers - testing independent of the programmers at the system, integration and user acceptance level. It's hard to be objective about what you write yourself, especially if the code works perfectly well but doesn't do what was specified. Testers require a different skill set to programmers.
iii) The end users - reliability for an end user may depend on different criteria - on one level as long as the software does it's job in a satisfactory manner reliability may be secondary to functionality and usability. If reliability was so highly prized there would be many more mainframe systems being developed using green screen terminals.
And yes, I am a QA consultant - someone needs to fight the testers corner.
US Mini-Nukes and Chemical Weapons Usage
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The US is seeking to increase it's nuclear arsenal and to have first use of non-lethal chemical weapons?, a breach of the Chemical Weapons convention. These are the same non-lethal chemicals as used by the Russian military to kill over 100 people in the theatre siege.
The Pentagon has asked the US Congress to lift a 10-year ban on developing small nuclear warheads, or "mini-nukes", in one of the most overt steps President George Bush's administration has taken towards building a new atomic arsenal. Buried in the defence department's 2004 budget proposals, sent to congressional committees this week, was a single-line statement that marks a sharp change in US nuclear policy.
It calls on the legislature to "rescind the prohibition on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons".
If passed by Congress, the measure would represent an important victory for radicals in the administration, who believe the US arsenal needs to be made more "usable", and therefore a more meaningful deterrent, to "rogue states" that have weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
A Pentagon official said yesterday the research ban on smaller warheads "has negatively affected US government efforts to support the national strategy to counter WMD, and undercuts efforts that could strengthen our ability to deter or respond to new or emerging threats".
Democrats fought off earlier Republican attempts to lift the ban on researching and developing warheads under five kilotons (a third of the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), fearing they would lead to an end to the US moratorium on nuclear testing, and to a new arms race.
If civilian GPS is degraded outside the Gulf region it's going to affect boats.
SCUBA divers going wreck diving would be affected - it can be hard enough to find a wreck if it isn't bouyed using GPS without introducing an error factor of 100m-300m.
Have pleasant memories of using a GPS unit as a giant etch-a-sketch on a RIB with twin 80 horsepower outboards. (I know, not responsible but fun)
No arguement that there are legitimate uses for file sharing (though I imagine the majority of files shared are MP3s)
So for the sake of arguement, the RIAA should be applauded if and only if it went after those with MP3s who did not possess that material in any other legitimate format, be it CD, Tape, Vinyl, 8-Track, etc? After all it'd be copyright infringment, and we'd all be laughing at the fools who thought they'd get away with it.
Though I have to say I'm slightly puzzled by the consensus here that it is wrong not to pay for content and the 'victims' deserved all they get, but elsewhere on Slashdot there is outrage when action is taken against filesharers. When is copyright material not copyright material?
Cost is a very important issue here. We all curse MS and the stability of Windows, but stability comes at a price - would Windows have achieved the pentration that it has if it was 3x as expensive? Windows is usable and somewhat unstable, Linux less than usable and more stable.
I work for a specialist consultancy that only do QA and software testing. The majority of our work is either where the software is business critical or where the client has sufficient funds that they prefer to pay for assurance over the quality of their code - often both. Unfortunately testing is neither cheap nor fast.
It should be seen as part of the cost of development not as an unneccesary overhead, but many people don't view it that way.
So this arguement is the old one of "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about"?
At the moment in the UK the police have to obtain a warant from a judge if they wish to tap a phone. This will not apply to internet communications, and as such this piece of legislation is a blanket permission for police to potentially intercept and read all email without judicial oversight (I don't wish to get into a discussion over whether this is technically possible).
The chimera of paedophilia and terrorism is used as justification for all types of intrusive legislation - these are all covered under existing legislation.
For comprehensive coverage of the RIP legislation see
Not sure I understand why this is such a big deal - is it just because they managed to do it with a keg of beer?
In the Science museum in London there is a Coke can with a special adaptor that IIRC was used on one of the moon shots, so late 60s or early 70s (Coke thought it would be good publicity) - if the adaptor worked with a can of Coke it would surely work with a can of beer. BTW the astronauts said that Coke was strangely unsatisfying in zero-G - tasted odd.
Assumuing the payment was for machines for whicht they couldn't prove that they had licences then spending the money on converting to Linux wouldn't have been possible.
The fact remains that they were running a commercial product on machines without proof that they were licenced to do so - a payment to MS would have been in order even if they changed all machines in the city to Linux the next day since they had used the software.
It installs itself as part of the latest version of Real Player - there doesn't seem to be an opportunity to not install it, nor are you told that it is being installed.
The new reading room of the British Library is actually quite nice to use, and the old one was too cramped in the middle of the British Museum. The construction project may have been mishandled and could have been better specified, but the end result is pretty impressive inside.
The problem is that there is no public access to the library. To get a readers card you need to demonstrate a need for it - which means access is generally limited to academics, postgraduate students, and undergraduates studying with the Open University.
Putting the Guttenberg Bible online is a good thing - shows what can be done, and gets good publicity for the British Library.
Also there would be copyright issues with converting hundreds of thousands of books - the greatest demand would be for modern texts, but the only ones that could be converted are the older ones. Great for the arts and historians but possibly difficult to justify the cost if they are accessed rarely.
Slashdot Mirror
A friend spent a year at a US university about a decade back. He said one of the annoying things was that it was insisted that he was "African-American", when he regarded himself as "Black British", but more annoying was trying to get officials to understand why this was not correct based on his level of melanin.
Not really the case.
1) The Gate Gourmet workers were British citizens of Asian origin (mainly Sikhs I think)
2) The part-time staff were temps employed through Blue Arrow, presumably legally resident and employed in the UK.
The Gate Gourmet staff went on strike at the use of the temps. This is was not the legal process for striking,as opposed to being illegal, they commited no crime but lost the legal protection they would have had if they had called a ballot. The management then summarily dismissed them(plus workers on holiday and off sick).
Staff at BA, who had worked with these people for years and many were relatives, then went on strike. Again this was not legal.
The outsouring issue here is the relationship between BA and GG, nothing to do with the country or nationality of the workers.
King Rat was an early work, haven't read Perido Street Station, loved "The Scar", thought "Iron Council" was good but flawed.
Agree about Richard Morgan, but I'd have thought the nomination would be for "Woken Furies".
From the article
"Forty-five percent of U.K. IT workers want more general business skills; 40% said management and leadership training would help them achieve their potential; and 55% want to hone their IT-specific abilities."
This survey is by Skillsoft, who supply outsourced training at my employer and who I spent 3 days trying to convince that the training course I requested was the I actually needed. You can imagine this helps my job satisfaction.
Under the UK Extradition Act of 2003 the US does not have to show any evidence at the extradition hearing.
The fact that he has been charged in a US court is sufficient, so I wouldn't bet on the judge ruling as you say.
The converse does not apply to UK extradition requests to the USA.
This has been applied to 3 bankers involved in the Enron fraud.
The major problem is that there is no good reason for introducing ID cards. The Home Office makes arguements in favour that do not stand up.
Briefly, they won't prevent terrorism, they won't prevent benefit fraud, it won't cut down on illegal working, they will criminalise a large number of the population who won't carry them on principle, and it will cost a minimum of GBP6 billion (over $10 billion).
In short it's been the wet dream of the Civil Service here to have a massive database on everyone for decades(and its the database rather than the cards that's the worry). September 11th provided the excuse. The amount of scope creep here is terrifying.
For detailed analysis start at www.stand.org.uk
I'm not in a union, but my industry (banking) is heavily unionised in the UK and these conditions arise due to the power of the unions - trouble is the 2 recognised unions seem to spend more time fighting each other than standing up for the workers - which is why I haven't joined, but get a bit of a free ride at the moment.
I don't see how easy it is to negotiate an individual package when your company employs 70,000+ workers and only cares about filling the roles with a compentent (not necessarily outstanding) person - kinda handicaps the individuals negotiating ability.
You missed the fax preference service.
Useful when you get fax calls on a new land line from a commercial fax bureau. More than a little annoying at 4am in the morning.
Well, Welsh rugby needs saving at the moment, but their soccer team is doing ok.
Ah you meant Whales.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting the programmer doesn't play a key role in software development, but this seems to suggest that they are the only ones that matter.
How about consideration of
i) The requirements - analysis of what is needed expressed in a clear, complete, concise and comprehensive manner (very hard to do and so seldom done) - put QA first not last, reviews and inspections of the documentation pays off.
ii) Testers - testing independent of the programmers at the system, integration and user acceptance level. It's hard to be objective about what you write yourself, especially if the code works perfectly well but doesn't do what was specified. Testers require a different skill set to programmers.
iii) The end users - reliability for an end user may depend on different criteria - on one level as long as the software does it's job in a satisfactory manner reliability may be secondary to functionality and usability. If reliability was so highly prized there would be many more mainframe systems being developed using green screen terminals.
And yes, I am a QA consultant - someone needs to fight the testers corner.
The Guardian, Friday 7 March 2003
The Pentagon has asked the US Congress to lift a 10-year ban on developing small nuclear warheads, or "mini-nukes", in one of the most overt steps President George Bush's administration has taken towards building a new atomic arsenal.
Buried in the defence department's 2004 budget proposals, sent to congressional committees this week, was a single-line statement that marks a sharp change in US nuclear policy.
It calls on the legislature to "rescind the prohibition on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons".
If passed by Congress, the measure would represent an important victory for radicals in the administration, who believe the US arsenal needs to be made more "usable", and therefore a more meaningful deterrent, to "rogue states" that have weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
A Pentagon official said yesterday the research ban on smaller warheads "has negatively affected US government efforts to support the national strategy to counter WMD, and undercuts efforts that could strengthen our ability to deter or respond to new or emerging threats".
Democrats fought off earlier Republican attempts to lift the ban on researching and developing warheads under five kilotons (a third of the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), fearing they would lead to an end to the US moratorium on nuclear testing, and to a new arms race.
I heard about this about an hour before this was posted here. Amazon messed up on 2 different iPaqs - the HP1910 was also up for c £23.
Couldn't get to the checkout with one of at that price either since the entire site froze. Well, I had to try
The Register has this story
If civilian GPS is degraded outside the Gulf region it's going to affect boats.
SCUBA divers going wreck diving would be affected - it can be hard enough to find a wreck if it isn't bouyed using GPS without introducing an error factor of 100m-300m.
Have pleasant memories of using a GPS unit as a giant etch-a-sketch on a RIB with twin 80 horsepower outboards. (I know, not responsible but fun)
No arguement that there are legitimate uses for file sharing (though I imagine the majority of files shared are MP3s)
So for the sake of arguement, the RIAA should be applauded if and only if it went after those with MP3s who did not possess that material in any other legitimate format, be it CD, Tape, Vinyl, 8-Track, etc? After all it'd be copyright infringment, and we'd all be laughing at the fools who thought they'd get away with it.
As the saying goes.
Though I have to say I'm slightly puzzled by the consensus here that it is wrong not to pay for content and the 'victims' deserved all they get, but elsewhere on Slashdot there is outrage when action is taken against filesharers. When is copyright material not copyright material?
I work for a specialist consultancy that only do QA and software testing. The majority of our work is either where the software is business critical or where the client has sufficient funds that they prefer to pay for assurance over the quality of their code - often both. Unfortunately testing is neither cheap nor fast.
It should be seen as part of the cost of development not as an unneccesary overhead, but many people don't view it that way.
At the moment in the UK the police have to obtain a warant from a judge if they wish to tap a phone. This will not apply to internet communications, and as such this piece of legislation is a blanket permission for police to potentially intercept and read all email without judicial oversight (I don't wish to get into a discussion over whether this is technically possible).
The chimera of paedophilia and terrorism is used as justification for all types of intrusive legislation - these are all covered under existing legislation.
For comprehensive coverage of the RIP legislation see
In the Science museum in London there is a Coke can with a special adaptor that IIRC was used on one of the moon shots, so late 60s or early 70s (Coke thought it would be good publicity) - if the adaptor worked with a can of Coke it would surely work with a can of beer. BTW the astronauts said that Coke was strangely unsatisfying in zero-G - tasted odd.
Read the page - it is waiting on Alcatel to clear it - more info is on the boards at www.adslguide.org.uk
The fact remains that they were running a commercial product on machines without proof that they were licenced to do so - a payment to MS would have been in order even if they changed all machines in the city to Linux the next day since they had used the software.
The currency is the Markka, but they have signed up to the Euro.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/14971.html
Thankfully my firewall caught it.
Which is actually a number of books (4?) that relate the gospels. Quite beautiful really.
I presume that the reason it isn't online is due to the profit motive. Which of course doesn't preclude it being placed online at a future date
The problem is that there is no public access to the library. To get a readers card you need to demonstrate a need for it - which means access is generally limited to academics, postgraduate students, and undergraduates studying with the Open University.
Putting the Guttenberg Bible online is a good thing - shows what can be done, and gets good publicity for the British Library.
Also there would be copyright issues with converting hundreds of thousands of books - the greatest demand would be for modern texts, but the only ones that could be converted are the older ones. Great for the arts and historians but possibly difficult to justify the cost if they are accessed rarely.