...if I still drove, I'd welcome this measure, as long as I get to control when it's put in my car. That way, when one of those morons slammed into me (I am a much better driver than most people here; I don't have a license 'cause I couldn't afford the second &#@* road test), it would show that it wasn't my fault.
Then again, after Mike Harris AND no-fault insurance, maybe it is a bad idea after all...
(The slashdot.org link is to a journal entry I just wrote on the paucity of the local drivers' skills, incidentally.)
Well, according to everything I've been able to find, there's about a 50-50 split attributing it to either, although one Disraeli expert says that they can't source the quotation, and I can't seem to find footnotes for either. I tend to believe Twain because to me it sounds more like Twain than the much more genteel Disraeli.
(Thank you Samuel Clemens.) Well, fortunately, it seems as though a lot of people who use those doctored statistics often wind up hoist on their own petard. Looks like WorldCom's getting there, as was Child Find in an article in the Denver Post that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporters Griego and Kilzer.
There are some spectacularly bad examples in the posting above... I'm not sure anyone ever said there were a million homeless people. However, the widely-criticised (as to methodology) US census survey cited almost half a million, which you can add for yourself here. Also, as to the "statistics" quoted by the poster on sexual orientation, I know that as early as 1972 the University of Guelph's Veterinary and Agricultural Colleges were using the 10% figure in training films (one of which, my friend, a student in another department at the time, narrated) on animal breeding, and in Animal Days, the British naturalist Desmond Morris mentions something similar based on his work with ten-spined sticklebacks (1958). Similar figures seem to hold through all animal species.
The problem seems to be that too many of the general public fall for that same old Ad Verecundiam Fallacy. I think it's a lack of critical thinking skills.
And in this day and age, if a CEO doesn't qualify as an "improper authority"... --smirk--
13.1. Stirred Eggs
From How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao Copyright 1945, 1949 0 1963 by Buwei Yang Chao Published by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. in 1970. ISBN: O-394-71703-1 LCCCN: 73-89692 Vintage Books Edition, April 1972 Pages 133 to 135
Chapter 18 EGGS
13.1. Stirred Eggs
Stirred eggs may be said to be the most everyday dish made by applying the most everyday method to the most everyday material. Learning to stir-fry eggs is the ABC of cooking. As this is the only dish my husband cooks well, and he says that he
either cooks a thing well or not at all I shall let him tell how it is done.
"Obtain:
6 average-sized fresh eggs (for this is the maximum number of eggs 1 have cooked at one time) 3 grammes of cooking salt (or, as an alternative, 4 grammes of table salt) 50 c.c. fresh lard, which will approximately equal the content of 4 level tablespoonfuls 1 plant of Chinese ts'ung (substitute with scallion if ts'ung is unobtainable) about 30 em. long by 7 mm. in average diameter. (This ingredient is optional.)
"Either shell or unshell the eggs by knocking one against another in any order.* Be sure to have a bowl below to catch the contents. With a pair of chopsticks, strike the same with a quick, vigorous motion known as 'beating the eggs.' This motion
should, however, be made repeatedly and not just once. Automatic machines, aptly named as egg-beaters,' have been invented for this purpose.
"Make cross sections of the ts'ung at intervals of about 7.5 mm., making 40 sections altogether. Throw in the ts'ung and the measured amount of salt during the final phase of the 'beating.'
"Heat the lard in a large flat-bottomed pan over a brisk fire until it (the lard) begins to give off a faint trace of smoke. Pour the contents of the bowl into the oil at once.
"The next phase of the operation is the most critical for the successful stir-frying of eggs. When the bottom part of the mixture becomes a puffed-up soft mass on contact with the heat, the upper part will remain quite liquid. Preferably using a thin flat piece of metal attached to a handle, the operator should push the mixture to one side so as to allow the uncooked liquid
portion to flow onto the hot fat on the now exposed portion of the bottom. (Sometimes this may be facilitated by slightly tipping the pan.) Quickly repeat this until abut 90 per cent of the liquid has come in contact with the hot fat and becomes puffed. Then, still using the flat piece of metal, make the entire content of the pan revolve through 180 degrees about a horizontal axis. This delicate operation is known as 'turning it over,' which in the hands of a beginner may easily become a flop.
"It can be done neatly and without waste only after repeated practice with different sets of eggs.
"If the turning over has been successfully carried out, wait for 5 seconds, which is about the time it takes to count from 1 to 12, then transfer the contents to the bowl or a platter, when the dish is said to be done.
"To test whether the cooking has been done properly, observe the person served. If he utters a voiced bilabial nasal consonant with a slow falling intonation, it is good. If he utters the syllable yum in reduplicated form, it is very good."-Y. R. C.
*"Since, when two eggs collide, only one of them will break, it will be necessary to use a seventh egg with which to break the sixth. If, as it may very well happen, the seventh egg breaks firt instead of the sixth, an expedient will be simply to use the seventh one and put away the sixth. An alternate procedure is to delay your numbering system and define that egg as the sixth egg which breaks after the fifth egg."
Mr. Chao was an engineer...and apparently quite as geeky as anyone would wish... Happy cooking!
Just a point to quibble here. While I agree with the poster on most points (such as that you don't know a hijacker until he or she tries to take over a plane), let's get one thing perfectly clear:
Arming people on planes is a bad, bad idea.
Hint: We don't let passengers carry guns, why should pilots be any different?
First of all, guns are more or less inherently dangerous. Some risk (of accidental or mis-targeted discharge) always exists in a situation with firearms. (That's why gun safety courses tell you to handle guns as if they were always loaded, even when they're not.) Add that to a pressurized environment (such as the cabin of a commercial airliner), and you're probably looking at such a policy creating at least one catastrophic explosive decompression incident. (See Charles Perrow on "Normal Accident Theory.")
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, arming pilots (or Air Marshalls) simply means that those guys who want to hijack the plane (remember, you don't know who they are), using the element of surprise can simply overpower the guy with the guns, and hey, voila, they don't need to use boxcutters anymore.
My credentials? My father's a veteran commercial pilot (who once told me he'd jump a potential hijacker and die for it if he thought he could save the plane and everyone on it) and aviation safety officer, so I've been around air travel all my life. I also work in the safety field, and I can assure you, the risk analysis numbers of the "arm the pilots" plan are way, way off, and not in our favour, either. Believe me, there are better ways.
Aiigh! This suddenly reminds me (particularly that juicy, slurpy opening quotation) of those old '50s propaganda items like Appreciate America, where "patriotism" and "being a good American" (whatever that means) are automatically equated with "doing your part" (not incidentally what everyone else is doing).
So let's all be good Americans, well, those of us who are Americans (--points finger--), and spy on our neighbours, secure our piece of cyberspace, and whatever else our fearless leader says we should do, because then those damn Commi^H^H^H^H^Hterrorists won't be able to eat us all up as we sleep in our (all-American) beds at night.
Sure they could use it...but they don't. Does anybody? Not that the satellite menu does much anyway. (Just as I suspect certain parties would like our computers to become.)
Note: I'm not a raving CLI/it's got to be tough or it's crap advocate here. Ease of use is a Good Thing...but dumbing down interfaces so there's only one thing (or one restricted set of things) you can do at any one time is not only bad design, it's extremely limiting. Not to mention frustrating, even for ordinary folks like my mom and dad, who occasionally do find themselves going, "But why can't I...?"
Besides which, the satellite menu thingie is harder to use than its cable equivalent is...or (gasp!) flipping the dial ever was. Net result the same. Except that now there's 250 channels and nothing you want to watch.
Which doesn't precisely apply to computers, except, hmm, Microsoft? Control freaks? Naaah.
Did you folks see that screenshot of the "simple interface"? That thing looks more like the menus on my parents' satellite TV service than a computer interface. Note the preinstalled categories ("My TV," "My Music," etc.), as if "My Documents" and "My Computer" weren't bad enough.
Also, did anybody else catch the marketroid jargon in the puffy-poo press release at microsoft.com? Wow, how many times can they use the word "freedom" in six column inches anyway? This from the same company who's pushing Palladium.
And what was that about a computer going from being "a tool for productivity" (ok, if you say so) to being "a device capable of entertainment, communications and so much more." I don't like either term in that zero-sum equation. (Can't we just define computers as tools or something and leave "productivity" [whatever that's supposed to mean, really] out of it?) It's a little agendist for my taste, and all of that agenda is (natch) Microsoft. (Pardon me for stating the obvious.)
I hate to lapse into darkly paranoid hypotheses here, but is this yet another multitentacled strategy to turn the Internet into TV with fewer moving parts? I don't think I like either term in that zero-sum equation, either...especially since I happen to like being able to create my own content (and look at whatever I want whenever I want), and I mostly quit doing TV years ago.
I think we need a copy of Rep. Boucher around. Up here in Canada, we already have a far too restrictive levy on blank media which benefits our equivalent of the RI/MPAA, and it's kind of a pain to be paying these folks so I can put my files on CD-R to send them to my project boss... grr...
We could also use a copy of Dennis Kucinich around, although (to me) an imperfect copy that would respect the law here in Canada that keeps religious ideology off people's reproductive organs would be better.
But you can't have everything, so the least I can do is hope some people grow spines in the near future.
On the other hand, had I US citizenship (they don't, for some reason, seem to listen to foreign nationals), I would be writing to all the appropriate people. I'm nevertheless concerned, because US policy seems to be a bellweather for trends here at home.
Thanks! Unlike the majority of these TAB (for Temporarily Able-Bodied) posters here, I think this development is really neat. Then again, I think assistive technology is cool (share the wealth with as many folks as possible, and there is more than one kind of digital divide).
For the record, I don't even play Quake; I have a motor-skills type impairment, and I get my tail waxed on a disturbingly frequent basis when I try to play video games -- they're just a little fast for me. (It took me 10 years to learn to touch-type at 60 wpm.) Still, I'm interested in the area, and the paper sounds like something that might hinge on my other areas of interest.
They sure love the word spur, which is derived from the term used to kick the shit out of a horse to get it going. A spur is a sharp instrument worn on the ankle of an abusive cowboy to beat a tired horse into submission.
Hm, I have a pair of 20mm rowel-less Stubben offset stainless steel spurs at home, and I don't remember their being sharp (actually, they're quite blunt), and I'm certainly no "abusive cowboy." On the other hand, I'm an accomplished English-style equestrienne who has had to deal with horses who are more fractious than tired (note: all the spurring in the world won't rouse an exhausted horse), and "kicking the shit" out of the kind of horse who needs spurs is liable to land you face-down in the dirt -- don't laugh, I've seen it happen. A nudge to the nag is usually sufficient...
I will admit that this metaphor of the MPAA's is extremely clumsy. The sense, here, in this case, is more that they're guiding a bunch of testy technologists and cranky consumers into cooperating with them (they haven't quite got curb chains and Kimblewicks on us yet!).
Now, mind you, coercion is still coercion, and I'm not happy about it one bit (chortle chortle). After all, we're not ponies, we're profit.
The only complaint people seem to have is that if the general population buys into this, then we won't get the discount of commodity hardware.
To you "discount of commodity hardware" is the only complaint?! Gee, the vast majority of the complaints I've been seeing (even here on/. where just about everybody is completely politically antithetical to me -- and I'm concerned about the same things!) are things like:
invasion of privacy
erosion of Fair Use Rights
the rights of content creators (my complaint), as opposed to the alleged rights of corporative entities like the RI/MPAA
total Microsoft domination of the OS market through a hardware wedge
the possible virtual elimination/obsolescense of the GPL, and/or (GNU/)Linux
And here's a new one: jurisdictional misuse to enforce the DMCA (a US law which doesn't bind those of us outside the US) through hardware. Do you really think all those big US-based hardware manufacturers will make one version for the US and one for the rest of the world? Heh. In my country, we don't have a DMCA...(yet)
Funny, I don't see any (purely) "money" issues in there at all. Then again, as I've said before, there are some things that just don't come down to money, especially since it's damn hard to put a definitive price tag on rights (whether "inalienable" or not) and freedoms, except maybe (as Tom Jefferson said) "eternal vigilance."
Uh, a lot of the principles of modern kaizen were developed by an American guy named W. Edwards Deming based on the work of a former Bell Labs (another one) employee named Walter Shewhart (who invented something called Statistical Process Control). Granted, Deming did most of his work on the project in Japan, where he went at the request of the US military during the occupation in the '50s, ostensibly to teach the Japanese "American business methods."
However, what the military didn't know or didn't realize was that Deming had some ideas of his own that he'd been trying to get US industry to adopt for years. Most US industry at the time wasn't interested in the concept of systemic quality, however. (Most of them were satisfied with Quality Inspections and an "acceptable defect rate.") The Japanese adopted the idea wholeheartedly, after hearing Deming lecture. The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers, the Japan Management Association, and the Japan Standards Association supported the lectures, along with the US military. Eventually, Japanese scholars like Kaoru Ishikawa added some new ideas (like Quality Circles) to the mix.
In North America, the resulting system is usually called Total Quality Management. It started in Japan, but it started because of W. Edwards Deming, who was really instrumental in turning Japanese productive systems into the powerhouses they are today. (Ask your parents and grandparents about the time when "Made In Japan" meant "This Is Junk.")
On the other hand, to be fair to the Japanese, they adopted the system almost overnight, and used it to become a world manufacturing superpower, more or less, in under 10 years. US industry is still trying to get used to kaizen/TQM, even though the basic system's been around for almost 50 years...
I don't seem to get much spam at all. Maybe it's because I use a couple or three web-based e-mail systems that filter already for me, maybe it's because I don't publicize my e-mail address much, maybe it's because I'm just lucky. I don't know.
That said, the spammers I hate the most are the clueless morons like your average Primericatroids, who hang out on job boards, cull e-mails from posted resumes, and send "contacts" trying to solicit me into their multi-level marketing Ponzi schemes. Most of these people are just clever enough to un-spamproof an e-mail address, but not clever enough NOT to use Hotmail/et al accounts. I get a real evil(?) thrill out of sending those twits trolling for suckers to/dev/null by way of abuse@, which I've done four or five times now.:)
Also, we have hopes that it's a lot easier to make governments pick a standard and stick to it, collectively (as in ISO), although it can be hard to get them to agree, say, ANSI vs CSA standards and so on...
By the way, T-Ranger, my Canadian confrere, most of the Yanks on/. don't know what WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System) is, and that's OSHA (Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act).
When Max Fleischer's studios did this with cel animation 'way back in the '20s and '30s, they called it Rotoscope.:) I seem to remember seeing a really cool short with Cab Calloway drawn as a dancing figure doing his famous shuffle and singing "Saint James Infirm'ry Blues."
Then again, I'm a Luddite who really, genuinely prefers cel animation, and if it ever dies out completely, I'm going to take it up for spite.
...could it be they put out one too many lousy records?
I certainly don't think it's got anything to do with P2P and CDRWs...history repeats itself. In the early '80s, after all, they were blaming the sales slump on video games...
(First two lines are "MTV Get Off the Air!" by the Dead Kennedys, from Frankenchrist.) Should that be RIAA Get Off the Air now?
My boyfriend, Mr. Weird Ideas himself, has actually proposed doing this in the SCA where jousting on horseback for real against live opponents is very much against the rules (shucky-darn; pells are just not as much fun)...
Never mind that Segways are totally out of period for the SCA, and more hype than use anyway...
Here's your friendly/. neighbourhood rhetoric wonk weighing in... I have to wonder what the semantics, grammar, and rhetoric of the Longhorn interface are going to be. In case you're wondering, the underlying ideational structures of the interface create its meaning, and make the difference between dumb and intelligent design, useful and frustrating, easy-to-learn and Adobe;) and so on. So far I haven't been too impressed with much of anything MS, rhetoric-wise. Some pretty impressive people (not just weirdos like me) have also weighed in on the importance of this issue, like:
While I'm not against innovation, I have a hard time imagining that MS could actually come up with something more intelligent than these folks, all of whom, I notice, aren't working for MS. Even Neil Randall, who apparently took some money from MS to do a study works for the University of Waterloo (hi, Neil!).
Maybe I'm just a Jaded Cynic, but I have to wonder.
Any study that "must" take all male volunteers because the results will be 'more stable' or something lacks good methodology. I'm sickeningly reminded of early experiments on treatments for breast cancer, overwhelmingly, almost unanimously conducted on men (who rarely get breast cancer, especially comparative to women) -- so that the (lazy) researchers wouldn't have to compensate for menstrual cycles. Throw them a pity party, 'cause they got their streamers up.
Relatedly, I somehow (why, I don't know) expected better than the spate of sexist comments from further up in this discussion. (Note to sexist comment creeps: Mature men with grown-up attitudes towards women tend to get laid more often than twits. This is The Other Half speaking.)
Not I, says this grammar wonk. I've got a better grasp on grammar than Word does (not hard, if you actually understand things like gerunds and subjunctives), and I'm tired of having to argue with it constantly. Why not switch? Because my project boss won't switch, so my hands are tied.
In fact, Word has very silly grammar checking, and its spell-checker blows diseased goats, too...especialy from the point of view of someone who professionally must keep a dictionary or two AND a thesaurus underhand constantly, and who may have to consult numerous specialized glossaries on any given day besides.
Nasty partisan shot: I like Word Perfect because it's the perfectionist's tool: It shuts up and leaves you alone. (If I have to fix those "you must really want..." MS 'regenerating' defaults one...more...time...)
I Go To Bed Angry and Wake Up Angrier the Next Morning, just like Harlan Ellison, and here're the reasons!
For me to run Linux at work, I need Office. I can't even convince my project boss (1000 km away, more or less) to use FrameMaker for this project, despite its being the Right Tool for the Job.
At home, however... Linux box here I come! (Just moved; computers et al in pieces!)
Ever heard of Hadiqa Kiani? No? Dare you to try to get her stuff on CD -- since it's only available on cassette, and it's damn hard to even find in North America...except online.
Mind, she's only Pakistan's most popular female recording artist, and her first album sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and she's only the second female artist ever to get a promotional contract with Pepsi (the first was Gloria Estefan), but that's not important.
The point is, there IS stuff you just...can't...get any other way, and that's the stuff that most of us (here) get online. Frankly, I would actually rather have a real CD, because I like the liner notes and the album art and all that stuff.
If I put a dollar value (imaginary money?) on everything I did, *I'd* be Bill Gates. Come on, folks, not everything comes down to money, and it's kind of a flaw in our culture, IMNSHO, that nothing is seen as important unless you can dollar-figure quantify it, package it, and sell it.
This argument from above so are you saying those two hours of your time is not worth any money is similar to the MPAA's "lost sales" argument especially in cases where in reality no sales would have actually taken place -- you can't make income off a job you don't have. More simply, if no one is willing to pay you for doing whatever it is you're doing, you can't make money doing it. In that case, you have two options: you can do it for free because you like to (in my case, the concrete example would be "publish for copies"), or you can go off in the corner and sulk.
Incidentally and additionally, the previous poster's argument only makes sense at the individual level, and not at the organizational/business level. Businesses have to do things that will make them money; that's what they're for. However, further deposition into the logical consequenses of that statement leads into politics and ideology, though, and is irrelevant to this comment.
Slashdot Mirror
...if I still drove, I'd welcome this measure, as long as I get to control when it's put in my car. That way, when one of those morons slammed into me (I am a much better driver than most people here; I don't have a license 'cause I couldn't afford the second &#@* road test), it would show that it wasn't my fault.
Then again, after Mike Harris AND no-fault insurance, maybe it is a bad idea after all...
(The slashdot.org link is to a journal entry I just wrote on the paucity of the local drivers' skills, incidentally.)
Well, according to everything I've been able to find, there's about a 50-50 split attributing it to either, although one Disraeli expert says that they can't source the quotation, and I can't seem to find footnotes for either. I tend to believe Twain because to me it sounds more like Twain than the much more genteel Disraeli.
(Thank you Samuel Clemens.) Well, fortunately, it seems as though a lot of people who use those doctored statistics often wind up hoist on their own petard. Looks like WorldCom's getting there, as was Child Find in an article in the Denver Post that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporters Griego and Kilzer.
There are some spectacularly bad examples in the posting above... I'm not sure anyone ever said there were a million homeless people. However, the widely-criticised (as to methodology) US census survey cited almost half a million, which you can add for yourself here. Also, as to the "statistics" quoted by the poster on sexual orientation, I know that as early as 1972 the University of Guelph's Veterinary and Agricultural Colleges were using the 10% figure in training films (one of which, my friend, a student in another department at the time, narrated) on animal breeding, and in Animal Days, the British naturalist Desmond Morris mentions something similar based on his work with ten-spined sticklebacks (1958). Similar figures seem to hold through all animal species.
The problem seems to be that too many of the general public fall for that same old Ad Verecundiam Fallacy. I think it's a lack of critical thinking skills.
And in this day and age, if a CEO doesn't qualify as an "improper authority"... --smirk--
13.1. Stirred Eggs From How to Cook and Eat in Chinese
by Buwei Yang Chao
Copyright 1945, 1949 0 1963 by Buwei Yang Chao
Published by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. in 1970.
ISBN: O-394-71703-1 LCCCN: 73-89692
Vintage Books Edition, April 1972
Pages 133 to 135
Chapter 18 EGGS
13.1. Stirred Eggs
Stirred eggs may be said to be the most everyday dish made by applying the most everyday method to the most everyday material. Learning to stir-fry eggs is the ABC of cooking. As this is the only dish my husband cooks well, and he says that he either cooks a thing well or not at all I shall let him tell how it is done.
"Obtain:
6 average-sized fresh eggs (for this is the maximum number of eggs 1 have cooked at one time)
3 grammes of cooking salt (or, as an alternative, 4 grammes of table salt)
50 c.c. fresh lard, which will approximately equal the content of 4 level tablespoonfuls
1 plant of Chinese ts'ung (substitute with scallion if ts'ung is unobtainable) about 30 em. long by 7 mm. in average diameter. (This ingredient is optional.)
"Either shell or unshell the eggs by knocking one against another in any order.* Be sure to have a bowl below to catch the contents. With a pair of chopsticks, strike the same with a quick, vigorous motion known as 'beating the eggs.' This motion should, however, be made repeatedly and not just once. Automatic machines, aptly named as egg-beaters,' have been invented for this purpose.
"Make cross sections of the ts'ung at intervals of about 7.5 mm., making 40 sections altogether. Throw in the ts'ung and the measured amount of salt during the final phase of the 'beating.'
"Heat the lard in a large flat-bottomed pan over a brisk fire until it (the lard) begins to give off a faint trace of smoke. Pour the contents of the bowl into the oil at once.
"The next phase of the operation is the most critical for the successful stir-frying of eggs. When the bottom part of the mixture becomes a puffed-up soft mass on contact with the heat, the upper part will remain quite liquid. Preferably using a thin flat piece of metal attached to a handle, the operator should push the mixture to one side so as to allow the uncooked liquid portion to flow onto the hot fat on the now exposed portion of the bottom. (Sometimes this may be facilitated by slightly tipping the pan.) Quickly repeat this until abut 90 per cent of the liquid has come in contact with the hot fat and becomes puffed. Then, still using the flat piece of metal, make the entire content of the pan revolve through 180 degrees about a horizontal axis. This delicate operation is known as 'turning it over,' which in the hands of a beginner may easily become a flop.
"It can be done neatly and without waste only after repeated practice with different sets of eggs.
"If the turning over has been successfully carried out, wait for 5 seconds, which is about the time it takes to count from 1 to 12, then transfer the contents to the bowl or a platter, when the dish is said to be done.
"To test whether the cooking has been done properly, observe the person served. If he utters a voiced bilabial nasal consonant with a slow falling intonation, it is good. If he utters the syllable yum in reduplicated form, it is very good."-Y. R. C.
*"Since, when two eggs collide, only one of them will break, it will be necessary to use a seventh egg with which to break the sixth. If, as it may very well happen, the seventh egg breaks firt instead of the sixth, an expedient will be simply to use the seventh one and put away the sixth. An alternate procedure is to delay your numbering system and define that egg as the sixth egg which breaks after the fifth egg."
Mr. Chao was an engineer...and apparently quite as geeky as anyone would wish... Happy cooking!
Just a point to quibble here. While I agree with the poster on most points (such as that you don't know a hijacker until he or she tries to take over a plane), let's get one thing perfectly clear:
Arming people on planes is a bad, bad idea.
Hint: We don't let passengers carry guns, why should pilots be any different?
First of all, guns are more or less inherently dangerous. Some risk (of accidental or mis-targeted discharge) always exists in a situation with firearms. (That's why gun safety courses tell you to handle guns as if they were always loaded, even when they're not.) Add that to a pressurized environment (such as the cabin of a commercial airliner), and you're probably looking at such a policy creating at least one catastrophic explosive decompression incident. (See Charles Perrow on "Normal Accident Theory.")
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, arming pilots (or Air Marshalls) simply means that those guys who want to hijack the plane (remember, you don't know who they are), using the element of surprise can simply overpower the guy with the guns, and hey, voila, they don't need to use boxcutters anymore.
My credentials? My father's a veteran commercial pilot (who once told me he'd jump a potential hijacker and die for it if he thought he could save the plane and everyone on it) and aviation safety officer, so I've been around air travel all my life. I also work in the safety field, and I can assure you, the risk analysis numbers of the "arm the pilots" plan are way, way off, and not in our favour, either. Believe me, there are better ways.
Aiigh! This suddenly reminds me (particularly that juicy, slurpy opening quotation) of those old '50s propaganda items like Appreciate America, where "patriotism" and "being a good American" (whatever that means) are automatically equated with "doing your part" (not incidentally what everyone else is doing).
So let's all be good Americans, well, those of us who are Americans (--points finger--), and spy on our neighbours, secure our piece of cyberspace, and whatever else our fearless leader says we should do, because then those damn Commi^H^H^H^H^Hterrorists won't be able to eat us all up as we sleep in our (all-American) beds at night.
Theme music: "Exhuming McCarthy," REM, Document
Sure they could use it...but they don't. Does anybody? Not that the satellite menu does much anyway. (Just as I suspect certain parties would like our computers to become.)
Note: I'm not a raving CLI/it's got to be tough or it's crap advocate here. Ease of use is a Good Thing...but dumbing down interfaces so there's only one thing (or one restricted set of things) you can do at any one time is not only bad design, it's extremely limiting. Not to mention frustrating, even for ordinary folks like my mom and dad, who occasionally do find themselves going, "But why can't I...?"
Besides which, the satellite menu thingie is harder to use than its cable equivalent is...or (gasp!) flipping the dial ever was. Net result the same. Except that now there's 250 channels and nothing you want to watch.
Which doesn't precisely apply to computers, except, hmm, Microsoft? Control freaks? Naaah.
Did you folks see that screenshot of the "simple interface"? That thing looks more like the menus on my parents' satellite TV service than a computer interface. Note the preinstalled categories ("My TV," "My Music," etc.), as if "My Documents" and "My Computer" weren't bad enough.
Also, did anybody else catch the marketroid jargon in the puffy-poo press release at microsoft.com? Wow, how many times can they use the word "freedom" in six column inches anyway? This from the same company who's pushing Palladium.
And what was that about a computer going from being "a tool for productivity" (ok, if you say so) to being "a device capable of entertainment, communications and so much more." I don't like either term in that zero-sum equation. (Can't we just define computers as tools or something and leave "productivity" [whatever that's supposed to mean, really] out of it?) It's a little agendist for my taste, and all of that agenda is (natch) Microsoft. (Pardon me for stating the obvious.)
I hate to lapse into darkly paranoid hypotheses here, but is this yet another multitentacled strategy to turn the Internet into TV with fewer moving parts? I don't think I like either term in that zero-sum equation, either...especially since I happen to like being able to create my own content (and look at whatever I want whenever I want), and I mostly quit doing TV years ago.
I think we need a copy of Rep. Boucher around. Up here in Canada, we already have a far too restrictive levy on blank media which benefits our equivalent of the RI/MPAA, and it's kind of a pain to be paying these folks so I can put my files on CD-R to send them to my project boss... grr...
We could also use a copy of Dennis Kucinich around, although (to me) an imperfect copy that would respect the law here in Canada that keeps religious ideology off people's reproductive organs would be better.
But you can't have everything, so the least I can do is hope some people grow spines in the near future.
On the other hand, had I US citizenship (they don't, for some reason, seem to listen to foreign nationals), I would be writing to all the appropriate people. I'm nevertheless concerned, because US policy seems to be a bellweather for trends here at home.
Thanks! Unlike the majority of these TAB (for Temporarily Able-Bodied) posters here, I think this development is really neat. Then again, I think assistive technology is cool (share the wealth with as many folks as possible, and there is more than one kind of digital divide).
:)
For the record, I don't even play Quake; I have a motor-skills type impairment, and I get my tail waxed on a disturbingly frequent basis when I try to play video games -- they're just a little fast for me. (It took me 10 years to learn to touch-type at 60 wpm.) Still, I'm interested in the area, and the paper sounds like something that might hinge on my other areas of interest.
Besides, we gimps have to stick together.
They sure love the word spur, which is derived from the term used to kick the shit out of a horse to get it going. A spur is a sharp instrument worn on the ankle of an abusive cowboy to beat a tired horse into submission.
Hm, I have a pair of 20mm rowel-less Stubben offset stainless steel spurs at home, and I don't remember their being sharp (actually, they're quite blunt), and I'm certainly no "abusive cowboy." On the other hand, I'm an accomplished English-style equestrienne who has had to deal with horses who are more fractious than tired (note: all the spurring in the world won't rouse an exhausted horse), and "kicking the shit" out of the kind of horse who needs spurs is liable to land you face-down in the dirt -- don't laugh, I've seen it happen. A nudge to the nag is usually sufficient...
I will admit that this metaphor of the MPAA's is extremely clumsy. The sense, here, in this case, is more that they're guiding a bunch of testy technologists and cranky consumers into cooperating with them (they haven't quite got curb chains and Kimblewicks on us yet!).
Now, mind you, coercion is still coercion, and I'm not happy about it one bit (chortle chortle). After all, we're not ponies, we're profit.
At the average cost for a science-type journal in page fees, probably not. Many journals are already losing money, and/or just barely breaking even.
To you "discount of commodity hardware" is the only complaint?! Gee, the vast majority of the complaints I've been seeing (even here on
invasion of privacy
erosion of Fair Use Rights
the rights of content creators (my complaint), as opposed to the alleged rights of corporative entities like the RI/MPAA
total Microsoft domination of the OS market through a hardware wedge
the possible virtual elimination/obsolescense of the GPL, and/or (GNU/)Linux
And here's a new one: jurisdictional misuse to enforce the DMCA (a US law which doesn't bind those of us outside the US) through hardware. Do you really think all those big US-based hardware manufacturers will make one version for the US and one for the rest of the world? Heh. In my country, we don't have a DMCA...(yet)
Funny, I don't see any (purely) "money" issues in there at all. Then again, as I've said before, there are some things that just don't come down to money, especially since it's damn hard to put a definitive price tag on rights (whether "inalienable" or not) and freedoms, except maybe (as Tom Jefferson said) "eternal vigilance."
Uh, a lot of the principles of modern kaizen were developed by an American guy named W. Edwards Deming based on the work of a former Bell Labs (another one) employee named Walter Shewhart (who invented something called Statistical Process Control). Granted, Deming did most of his work on the project in Japan, where he went at the request of the US military during the occupation in the '50s, ostensibly to teach the Japanese "American business methods."
However, what the military didn't know or didn't realize was that Deming had some ideas of his own that he'd been trying to get US industry to adopt for years. Most US industry at the time wasn't interested in the concept of systemic quality, however. (Most of them were satisfied with Quality Inspections and an "acceptable defect rate.") The Japanese adopted the idea wholeheartedly, after hearing Deming lecture. The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers, the Japan Management Association, and the Japan Standards Association supported the lectures, along with the US military. Eventually, Japanese scholars like Kaoru Ishikawa added some new ideas (like Quality Circles) to the mix.
In North America, the resulting system is usually called Total Quality Management. It started in Japan, but it started because of W. Edwards Deming, who was really instrumental in turning Japanese productive systems into the powerhouses they are today. (Ask your parents and grandparents about the time when "Made In Japan" meant "This Is Junk.")
On the other hand, to be fair to the Japanese, they adopted the system almost overnight, and used it to become a world manufacturing superpower, more or less, in under 10 years. US industry is still trying to get used to kaizen/TQM, even though the basic system's been around for almost 50 years...
I don't seem to get much spam at all. Maybe it's because I use a couple or three web-based e-mail systems that filter already for me, maybe it's because I don't publicize my e-mail address much, maybe it's because I'm just lucky. I don't know.
/dev/null by way of abuse@, which I've done four or five times now. :)
That said, the spammers I hate the most are the clueless morons like your average Primericatroids, who hang out on job boards, cull e-mails from posted resumes, and send "contacts" trying to solicit me into their multi-level marketing Ponzi schemes. Most of these people are just clever enough to un-spamproof an e-mail address, but not clever enough NOT to use Hotmail/et al accounts. I get a real evil(?) thrill out of sending those twits trolling for suckers to
Also, we have hopes that it's a lot easier to make governments pick a standard and stick to it, collectively (as in ISO), although it can be hard to get them to agree, say, ANSI vs CSA standards and so on...
/. don't know what WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System) is, and that's OSHA (Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act).
By the way, T-Ranger, my Canadian confrere, most of the Yanks on
Interrobang, tech writer in OSH&E
When Max Fleischer's studios did this with cel animation 'way back in the '20s and '30s, they called it Rotoscope. :) I seem to remember seeing a really cool short with Cab Calloway drawn as a dancing figure doing his famous shuffle and singing "Saint James Infirm'ry Blues."
Then again, I'm a Luddite who really, genuinely prefers cel animation, and if it ever dies out completely, I'm going to take it up for spite.
...could it be they put out one too many lousy records?
I certainly don't think it's got anything to do with P2P and CDRWs...history repeats itself. In the early '80s, after all, they were blaming the sales slump on video games...
(First two lines are "MTV Get Off the Air!" by the Dead Kennedys, from Frankenchrist.) Should that be RIAA Get Off the Air now?
My boyfriend, Mr. Weird Ideas himself, has actually proposed doing this in the SCA where jousting on horseback for real against live opponents is very much against the rules (shucky-darn; pells are just not as much fun)...
Never mind that Segways are totally out of period for the SCA, and more hype than use anyway...
--shakes head-- Sighhh...
Here's your friendly /. neighbourhood rhetoric wonk weighing in... I have to wonder what the semantics, grammar, and rhetoric of the Longhorn interface are going to be. In case you're wondering, the underlying ideational structures of the interface create its meaning, and make the difference between dumb and intelligent design, useful and frustrating, easy-to-learn and Adobe ;) and so on. So far I haven't been too impressed with much of anything MS, rhetoric-wise. Some pretty impressive people (not just weirdos like me) have also weighed in on the importance of this issue, like:
Terry Winograd
Joseph Goguen
Eben Moglen
Neil Randall
and a bunch of lesser lights including Neil Stephenson.
While I'm not against innovation, I have a hard time imagining that MS could actually come up with something more intelligent than these folks, all of whom, I notice, aren't working for MS. Even Neil Randall, who apparently took some money from MS to do a study works for the University of Waterloo (hi, Neil!).
Maybe I'm just a Jaded Cynic, but I have to wonder.
Any study that "must" take all male volunteers because the results will be 'more stable' or something lacks good methodology. I'm sickeningly reminded of early experiments on treatments for breast cancer, overwhelmingly, almost unanimously conducted on men (who rarely get breast cancer, especially comparative to women) -- so that the (lazy) researchers wouldn't have to compensate for menstrual cycles. Throw them a pity party, 'cause they got their streamers up.
Relatedly, I somehow (why, I don't know) expected better than the spate of sexist comments from further up in this discussion. (Note to sexist comment creeps: Mature men with grown-up attitudes towards women tend to get laid more often than twits. This is The Other Half speaking.)
Disgustedly, Interrobang
Who needs the silly grammar checking anyways.
Not I, says this grammar wonk. I've got a better grasp on grammar than Word does (not hard, if you actually understand things like gerunds and subjunctives), and I'm tired of having to argue with it constantly. Why not switch? Because my project boss won't switch, so my hands are tied.
In fact, Word has very silly grammar checking, and its spell-checker blows diseased goats, too...especialy from the point of view of someone who professionally must keep a dictionary or two AND a thesaurus underhand constantly, and who may have to consult numerous specialized glossaries on any given day besides.
Nasty partisan shot: I like Word Perfect because it's the perfectionist's tool: It shuts up and leaves you alone. (If I have to fix those "you must really want..." MS 'regenerating' defaults one...more...time...)
I Go To Bed Angry and Wake Up Angrier the Next Morning, just like Harlan Ellison, and here're the reasons!
For me to run Linux at work, I need Office. I can't even convince my project boss (1000 km away, more or less) to use FrameMaker for this project, despite its being the Right Tool for the Job.
At home, however... Linux box here I come! (Just moved; computers et al in pieces!)
?!
Ever heard of Hadiqa Kiani? No? Dare you to try to get her stuff on CD -- since it's only available on cassette, and it's damn hard to even find in North America...except online.
Mind, she's only Pakistan's most popular female recording artist, and her first album sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and she's only the second female artist ever to get a promotional contract with Pepsi (the first was Gloria Estefan), but that's not important.
The point is, there IS stuff you just...can't...get any other way, and that's the stuff that most of us (here) get online. Frankly, I would actually rather have a real CD, because I like the liner notes and the album art and all that stuff.
If I put a dollar value (imaginary money?) on everything I did, *I'd* be Bill Gates. Come on, folks, not everything comes down to money, and it's kind of a flaw in our culture, IMNSHO, that nothing is seen as important unless you can dollar-figure quantify it, package it, and sell it.
This argument from above so are you saying those two hours of your time is not worth any money is similar to the MPAA's "lost sales" argument especially in cases where in reality no sales would have actually taken place -- you can't make income off a job you don't have. More simply, if no one is willing to pay you for doing whatever it is you're doing, you can't make money doing it. In that case, you have two options: you can do it for free because you like to (in my case, the concrete example would be "publish for copies"), or you can go off in the corner and sulk.
Incidentally and additionally, the previous poster's argument only makes sense at the individual level, and not at the organizational/business level. Businesses have to do things that will make them money; that's what they're for. However, further deposition into the logical consequenses of that statement leads into politics and ideology, though, and is irrelevant to this comment.