I think he means the plug that goes into the AC power outlet itself.
Yep, that was one of my gripes. The other was the power adapters. I know nothing about electronics, but wouldn't it be possible to have a house with two circuits, one with big plugs for the stuff that needs more power, and another with little plugs which where the electricity has already been 'transformed' (yes, I'm really that clueless) for all the other stuff.
Talking about connectors, one thing that really mades me mad is the amount of power supply adapters we have to have these days. My office floor is littered with them, for net routers, printer, laptops, displays, mobiles etc. etc. Why can't we have two circuits? And for that matter, why are electric plugs so big. In the UK the are enormous. Many things these days only take a tiny bit of power - can't we have smaller electrical plugs? On my travels it seems that in the rest of the world electrical plugs are pretty big too. Is there anywhere with little dainty ones and without huge power adapters? Japan perhaps?
Careful! You'll be branded a hippy liberal eurotrash socialist communist America-hating appeaser (or some combination of those) if you say negative things about the good old US of A!;-)
Clearly the majority of voters feel so, as it's been Thatcher, Major (Tory), and Blair (Labour emulating Tory policies) since 1980.
Well, I'm not sure I'd entirely agree. I think Tony Blairs policys are extremely different to Thatchers - his 'third way' which balances free market economics and the social contract. Personally I think he's got it (mostly) right. If you think 'Blairism' is like 'Thatcherism' then you have a very bad memory!
PubJames, you need to move to North Korea you fucking anti-american communist. That, or shot.
Dear Anonymous,
Wow. What brought that on? I am not a communist, I'm not sure what gave you that idea. Nor am I anti-American, but juding by your anonymous tirade you would like to turn me into one!
...I'd just be happy to see a situation where broadband is actually available in this area. At the moment, despite the fact that I'm happy to pay for it, there's no company which will actually supply it to this area. Bah, the UK can really suck sometimes:/
The wonders of free market economics. Blame Thatcher. In just fifteen years the UK has become the country with the worst rail and health systems in Europe. I read in the papers today (I don't live in the UK) that the UK is now 'de-privitising' the rail system. What an expensive experiment Thatcherism has turned out to be.
Whilst I'm ranting about the UK, here's a funny thing. Apparently most people in the UK think that the Euro is a "rip-off" and will result in higher prices for Brits if they enter. And this is the country where almost everything is more expensive than the rest of Europe! People travel to France to buy wine and Germany to buy cars, because they're so expensive in the UK!
Ok rant over. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about the UK. It's just that some things look weird when you're on the outside.
Freedom and the USA
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A question. Why is it that there seem to be many Americans that believe that the USA invented the concepts of democracy, freedom and liberty? The issue comes up time and time again. Is it something that is taught in schools in the USA?
It is suprising (not to say a little annoying) for many outside the US to hear this opinion expressed repeatedly by Americans. Democracy, feedom and liberty are ideas have been around since the Greeks, and probably before. There have been democratic governments in parts of Europe for over 800 years.
So can we please drop this idea that America invented freedom? It's just a tad irritating.
Isn't it possible there are facts waiting to be found that prove the existence of a creator?
I guess you could say it is possible. And I expect if something was unearthed that proved the existance of a God, then you'd find a lot of people start to believe, even scientists. But the fact of the matter is that no such proof exists, nor is there ever likely to be such proof.
The Catholic Church preaches evolution as fact NOT creationism.
Is that true? If it is then it is a fairly recent phenomenon. I remember that a couple of years ago the Pope kind of hinted that Catholics need to have an open mind about evolution, but some people I know who went to Catholic schools were taught that evolution was wrong.
It's cultural. Biblical literalism is not a widely held belief in any Western country other than the US.
I'd agree with this. There are lots of people who believe in God in Europe, but most don't find any conflict between their religious beliefs and science.
Is there actually any point in my addressing any of your questions? Is there any point in someone who believes in evolution discussing it with a Creationist at all?
You have blind faith. You can answer any question with "God did it!" You don't have to give any other reason. The rest of us however need to think about our beliefs, and we can't just fall back on blind faith.
Or actually, may be that's the best response. May be you could understand that. So here's my response to your questions:
I don't have to answer your questions because I have blind faith that evolution is true. I don't need any proof and I don't need to explain things, just my blind faith that it is true.;-)
This story will no doubt generate some Creationism vs. evolution debates.
I have a question. Do creationists realise that their beliefs are really only a USA phenomenon? I've not seem much evidence of creationism anywhere else in the "first world". Just thought I'd ask because perhaps some American creationists think this is a hot issue all over the world. It's not.
This is an example of what I think of as "Wired journalism". Everything is new, exciting, revolutionary. No historical perspective is given - there is no historic continuum, everything is a new. Of course in the real world very few things are a revolution, things change slowly, most ideas have been around for centuries but every new generation thinks it's got all the good ideas.
Where is the wise analysis from journalists with a historical perspective and knowledge outside their tiny specialisms? I'm getting bored of all this sensationalist stuff.
If you don't like their rules you can be sure they can find someone else to fill your sandals.
Backwards thinking again. If you don't like their rules, you should go work for someone else. If then can find another idiot that doesn't mind being treated like a kid then that's fine by me.
what about smoking crack on company time ? would u agree with that?
Erm. No. I wouldn't agree with that. I expect to be treated like an adult because I can act like an adult. If a company employs idiots and potheads then they deserve everything they get.
The time you spend at work, you ought to be working, not sending personal email, making personal calls, or anything besides work-related stuff.
Stuff that nonsense. This is exactly the kind of crappy mentality that made me become self-employed.
If my employer feels the need to treat me like a child, then I'll go work for someone else (which is what I have done, now I work for me). Stand up for yourselves people -- don't let your employers treat you like children! It's your life!
Fact is [..], the US is the leader in technological development>/i>
But is it really?
I think that Americans gets a disorted view of the importance of the USAs contribution to technology because the USA is so big, so the comparisons between, say, the USA and individual European countries are not really valid. (There is also the tendency for Americans to just assume that all technologies come from America, whereas that isn't the case). A more valid comparison would be to compare innovations from the USA with the whole of Europe, for example. Or alternatively, come up with an "innovations per capita" score. If you did that, I'm sure you would find that the USA isn't the centre of innovation that many Americans think it is.
It just struck me that the USA is increasingly seems to be getting behind when it comes to new technology.
Broadband is just one example where the USA lags behind other parts of the first world. Mobile telephones is another where the Euros and Japanese seem to be in the lead. With technologies such as Digital Cameras, Camcorders, DVD etc. Japan seems to be clearly in the lead. The XBox is trying to catch up with the Japanese PlayStation and Gamecube. With cars, it seems that the Germans increasingly have the lead.
Thinking through all the technology I have, hardly any of it is American. My laptop is Sony. My mobile phone is Ericcson. My car is German. My watch is Swiss. My DVD, television, Playstation, PDA etc. are all Japanese. My building architechture is European. About the only American technology I have is a HP printer.
The funny thing is that this is probably going to provoke a load of responses from Americans saying what bullshit it is to suggest that the USA does not lead the world in technology and it will probably get modded down to -1. Go on then. Whatever.
And no, Japan at least is NOT technologically ahead of the US. Not even close.
As a European I hope I can give an unbiased viewpoint to your USA/Japan technology mud-slinging match. Here's my opinion:
All the cool toys and gadgets seem to come out of Japan. Americans just copy them. But Americans make fancier bombs and guns and stuff to kill people than Japan.
About ten years ago I used to work in WordPerfect support. It amazes me that MS Word still doesn't have some of the features that WordPerfect had back then.
One thing that I think a lot of people don't realise about MS Word is how crappy it is at formatting text. It seems to lack basic automatic formating features like proper kerning, widows and orphans etc. Compare a document created with Word to one created with WordPerfect and there is a huge difference in the quality of appearance. And this is the word processor that practically the whole world uses - it's just amazing.
6. You came in to the first meeting and it was obvious you made heavy use of terms like 'clueless' when dealing with people who know their business very well. They figured you for a hotdog renegade who they'd never be able to communicate properly with.
Yes, I always like to start meetings with potential clients by telling them that they are cluess idiots. I am embarrassed by my obvious lack of professionalism and your very evident maturity.
Seriously, this is Slashdot. I don't really worry about how my comments are perceived here - it's like the staff smoking room. Some clients are clueless, and you're a smug git.
After much hoo-ha, meetings, requirements gathering, countless billable hours, and the generation of untold linear yards of documentation, they finally decided to build something quite similar to our first prototype.
I can believe this. An organisation I once worked for wanted an IT-based staff directory to replace the paper one which was becoming increasingly costly to keep up to date. This was in about 1996. I put togther one exactly meeting their requirements using perl and html in a couple of days. The CIO (who was a very senoir grey-haired-suit who liked to talk down to the junior IT staff) looked at it and said, "How many days did you waste doing that? I suppose it can be used as a protoype to show the bidding companies when we put it out to contract..." Eventually they decided to get an IBM shop to implement it with Lotus Notes. After much expense, many months and countless meetings, they had their system.
Meanwhile, I had sneakily put the version I created on the intranet, and many staff were using it. Of course the CIO didn't know anything about it because he didn't pay much attention to the intranet - thinking it was just a toy put together by the junior IT staff that was going to be replaced by Notes in the future.
He decided to unveil the Notes system at a huge meeting with all staff present. The IT Manager thought it would be his moment of glory. He did a slick presentation, including saying how much he had spent on the development and how leading-edge it was. He then demoed it and asked for questions. When the mic was going round the hall, staff were asking things like "why have you spent so much money on this to copy what we've already got?", and "that looks much more difficult to use than the current system, what's the point?" etc.
He successfully deflected the first few questions with management-speak, but the staff detected they were being bullshitted and got increasingly angry with his answers. He dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole until he had bring the meeting to a premature end and leave in a hurry.
It was one of the most joyous moments of my professional career. It was a complete disaster for the CIO. His contract wasn't renewed a few months later. I was promoted.
They eventually got rid of Notes, and they're using the system I developed to this day.
There have been a lot of responses to this from people saying that the reason this guy's bid was rejected was probably because he was amateurish or wasn't good enough, or couldn't offer support, or whatever.
At my company, we have an approach to business that is unfortunately rare in the IT industry. We are honest with our clients. We think it is better business to get a client and keep them for ten years than to make a fast buck on a single contract.
This approach has cost us business in the past (but also is good long term - we have an extremely high client retention rate). But one thing is for sure, when we have lost a client because of this approach it has always been because the client doesn't know what they are doing.
Example. About six months ago we bid for a job against several other companies, incuding an IBM shop. We spent a long time listening to the client and finding out exactly what they needed, and then wrote a proposal which fulfilled their requirements along with an honest costing of the work involved. The IBM shop gave them an off-the-shelf proposal that was actually completely inappropriate for their requirements, and was costed at about five times what we quoted, and was the highest bid.
IBM won. When I quized the CIO (a clueless PHB) about why they chose the IBM shop, it had nothing to do with the contents of their proposal at all. The CIO didn't understand it. He went for their bid just because it was IBM.
Second example. A client approached us and wanted two different web sites created for promotions. Again, we did a proposal, and said that their web hosting requirements would be adequately covered by one of the standard packages from a company like Verio. The competiting proposal contained costing for buying and installation of in-house web servers, as well as an upgrade of the company's network connection to support the site. This meant that their bid was twice as high as ours, had a very high on-going cost, would cause them loads of hassel, had implications for their network security etc. etc. However, they couldn't believe that a $40 a month hosting package could possibly do what they required, when the competing company was saying that they needed to spend tens of thousands dollars on hosting. Again, the main issue was that they didn't have the internal experience or knowledge to assess the proposals.
We almost lost it because of the hosting issue. I persuaded the company that the best way ahead was for them to give us half the job, and the competing company the other half.
With the hosted web site, they have never had any problems. It's always up, and it does the job. Their internal web server has caused them loads of headaches and expense which I'm sure you can imagine.
Because we won their confidence, this company now gives us all their IT development work, and we practically write their IT strategy for them.
Sometimes, when a CIO accepts the highest bid, it is because he doesn't know what he is doing and feels safest with the highest bid.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he means the plug that goes into the AC power outlet itself.
Yep, that was one of my gripes. The other was the power adapters. I know nothing about electronics, but wouldn't it be possible to have a house with two circuits, one with big plugs for the stuff that needs more power, and another with little plugs which where the electricity has already been 'transformed' (yes, I'm really that clueless) for all the other stuff.
Talking about connectors, one thing that really mades me mad is the amount of power supply adapters we have to have these days. My office floor is littered with them, for net routers, printer, laptops, displays, mobiles etc. etc. Why can't we have two circuits? And for that matter, why are electric plugs so big. In the UK the are enormous. Many things these days only take a tiny bit of power - can't we have smaller electrical plugs? On my travels it seems that in the rest of the world electrical plugs are pretty big too. Is there anywhere with little dainty ones and without huge power adapters? Japan perhaps?
Anyone know where you can get one of these in the UK?
Don't even get me started on the states though.
;-)
Careful! You'll be branded a hippy liberal eurotrash socialist communist America-hating appeaser (or some combination of those) if you say negative things about the good old US of A!
Clearly the majority of voters feel so, as it's been Thatcher, Major (Tory), and Blair (Labour emulating Tory policies) since 1980.
Well, I'm not sure I'd entirely agree. I think Tony Blairs policys are extremely different to Thatchers - his 'third way' which balances free market economics and the social contract. Personally I think he's got it (mostly) right. If you think 'Blairism' is like 'Thatcherism' then you have a very bad memory!
PubJames, you need to move to North Korea you fucking anti-american communist. That, or shot.
Dear Anonymous,
Wow. What brought that on? I am not a communist, I'm not sure what gave you that idea. Nor am I anti-American, but juding by your anonymous tirade you would like to turn me into one!
Bah, the UK can really suck sometimes
The wonders of free market economics. Blame Thatcher. In just fifteen years the UK has become the country with the worst rail and health systems in Europe. I read in the papers today (I don't live in the UK) that the UK is now 'de-privitising' the rail system. What an expensive experiment Thatcherism has turned out to be.
Whilst I'm ranting about the UK, here's a funny thing. Apparently most people in the UK think that the Euro is a "rip-off" and will result in higher prices for Brits if they enter. And this is the country where almost everything is more expensive than the rest of Europe! People travel to France to buy wine and Germany to buy cars, because they're so expensive in the UK!
Ok rant over. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about the UK. It's just that some things look weird when you're on the outside.
A question. Why is it that there seem to be many Americans that believe that the USA invented the concepts of democracy, freedom and liberty? The issue comes up time and time again. Is it something that is taught in schools in the USA?
It is suprising (not to say a little annoying) for many outside the US to hear this opinion expressed repeatedly by Americans. Democracy, feedom and liberty are ideas have been around since the Greeks, and probably before. There have been democratic governments in parts of Europe for over 800 years.
So can we please drop this idea that America invented freedom? It's just a tad irritating.
Isn't it possible there are facts waiting to be found that prove the existence of a creator?
I guess you could say it is possible. And I expect if something was unearthed that proved the existance of a God, then you'd find a lot of people start to believe, even scientists. But the fact of the matter is that no such proof exists, nor is there ever likely to be such proof.
The Catholic Church preaches evolution as fact NOT creationism.
Is that true? If it is then it is a fairly recent phenomenon. I remember that a couple of years ago the Pope kind of hinted that Catholics need to have an open mind about evolution, but some people I know who went to Catholic schools were taught that evolution was wrong.
It's cultural. Biblical literalism is not a widely held belief in any Western country other than the US.
I'd agree with this. There are lots of people who believe in God in Europe, but most don't find any conflict between their religious beliefs and science.
Is there actually any point in my addressing any of your questions? Is there any point in someone who believes in evolution discussing it with a Creationist at all?
;-)
You have blind faith. You can answer any question with "God did it!" You don't have to give any other reason. The rest of us however need to think about our beliefs, and we can't just fall back on blind faith.
Or actually, may be that's the best response. May be you could understand that. So here's my response to your questions:
I don't have to answer your questions because I have blind faith that evolution is true. I don't need any proof and I don't need to explain things, just my blind faith that it is true.
This story will no doubt generate some Creationism vs. evolution debates.
I have a question. Do creationists realise that their beliefs are really only a USA phenomenon? I've not seem much evidence of creationism anywhere else in the "first world". Just thought I'd ask because perhaps some American creationists think this is a hot issue all over the world. It's not.
This is an example of what I think of as "Wired journalism". Everything is new, exciting, revolutionary. No historical perspective is given - there is no historic continuum, everything is a new. Of course in the real world very few things are a revolution, things change slowly, most ideas have been around for centuries but every new generation thinks it's got all the good ideas.
Where is the wise analysis from journalists with a historical perspective and knowledge outside their tiny specialisms? I'm getting bored of all this sensationalist stuff.
I resent the automatic implication that if you smoke pot at home, you must do so at work, too.
That wasn't really implied. I have nothing against pot, in fact I smoke the stuff myself. But I draw the line at smoking it at work!
If you don't like their rules you can be sure they can find someone else to fill your sandals.
Backwards thinking again. If you don't like their rules, you should go work for someone else. If then can find another idiot that doesn't mind being treated like a kid then that's fine by me.
what about smoking crack on company time ? would u agree with that?
Erm. No. I wouldn't agree with that. I expect to be treated like an adult because I can act like an adult. If a company employs idiots and potheads then they deserve everything they get.
The time you spend at work, you ought to be working, not sending personal email, making personal calls, or anything besides work-related stuff.
Stuff that nonsense. This is exactly the kind of crappy mentality that made me become self-employed.
If my employer feels the need to treat me like a child, then I'll go work for someone else (which is what I have done, now I work for me). Stand up for yourselves people -- don't let your employers treat you like children! It's your
life!
Fact is [..], the US is the leader in technological development>/i>
But is it really?
I think that Americans gets a disorted view of the importance of the USAs contribution to technology because the USA is so big, so the comparisons between, say, the USA and individual European countries are not really valid. (There is also the tendency for Americans to just assume that all technologies come from America, whereas that isn't the case). A more valid comparison would be to compare innovations from the USA with the whole of Europe, for example. Or alternatively, come up with an "innovations per capita" score. If you did that, I'm sure you would find that the USA isn't the centre of innovation that many Americans think it is.
It just struck me that the USA is increasingly seems to be getting behind when it comes to new technology.
Broadband is just one example where the USA lags behind other parts of the first world. Mobile telephones is another where the Euros and Japanese seem to be in the lead. With technologies such as Digital Cameras, Camcorders, DVD etc. Japan seems to be clearly in the lead. The XBox is trying to catch up with the Japanese PlayStation and Gamecube. With cars, it seems that the Germans increasingly have the lead.
Thinking through all the technology I have, hardly any of it is American. My laptop is Sony. My mobile phone is Ericcson. My car is German. My watch is Swiss. My DVD, television, Playstation, PDA etc. are all Japanese. My building architechture is European. About the only American technology I have is a HP printer.
The funny thing is that this is probably going to provoke a load of responses from Americans saying what bullshit it is to suggest that the USA does not lead the world in technology and it will probably get modded down to -1. Go on then. Whatever.
And no, Japan at least is NOT technologically ahead of the US. Not even close.
;-)
As a European I hope I can give an unbiased viewpoint to your USA/Japan technology mud-slinging match. Here's my opinion:
All the cool toys and gadgets seem to come out of Japan. Americans just copy them. But Americans make fancier bombs and guns and stuff to kill people than Japan.
I hope that helps.
About ten years ago I used to work in WordPerfect support. It amazes me that MS Word still doesn't have some of the features that WordPerfect had back then.
One thing that I think a lot of people don't realise about MS Word is how crappy it is at formatting text. It seems to lack basic automatic formating features like proper kerning, widows and orphans etc. Compare a document created with Word to one created with WordPerfect and there is a huge difference in the quality of appearance. And this is the word processor that practically the whole world uses - it's just amazing.
6. You came in to the first meeting and it was obvious you made heavy use of terms like 'clueless' when dealing with people who know their business very well. They figured you for a hotdog renegade who they'd never be able to communicate properly with.
Yes, I always like to start meetings with potential clients by telling them that they are cluess idiots. I am embarrassed by my obvious lack of professionalism and your very evident maturity.
Seriously, this is Slashdot. I don't really worry about how my comments are perceived here - it's like the staff smoking room. Some clients are clueless, and you're a smug git.
After much hoo-ha, meetings, requirements gathering, countless billable hours, and the generation of untold linear yards of documentation, they finally decided to build something quite similar to our first prototype.
I can believe this. An organisation I once worked for wanted an IT-based staff directory to replace the paper one which was becoming increasingly costly to keep up to date. This was in about 1996. I put togther one exactly meeting their requirements using perl and html in a couple of days. The CIO (who was a very senoir grey-haired-suit who liked to talk down to the junior IT staff) looked at it and said, "How many days did you waste doing that? I suppose it can be used as a protoype to show the bidding companies when we put it out to contract..." Eventually they decided to get an IBM shop to implement it with Lotus Notes. After much expense, many months and countless meetings, they had their system.
Meanwhile, I had sneakily put the version I created on the intranet, and many staff were using it. Of course the CIO didn't know anything about it because he didn't pay much attention to the intranet - thinking it was just a toy put together by the junior IT staff that was going to be replaced by Notes in the future.
He decided to unveil the Notes system at a huge meeting with all staff present. The IT Manager thought it would be his moment of glory. He did a slick presentation, including saying how much he had spent on the development and how leading-edge it was. He then demoed it and asked for questions. When the mic was going round the hall, staff were asking things like "why have you spent so much money on this to copy what we've already got?", and "that looks much more difficult to use than the current system, what's the point?" etc.
He successfully deflected the first few questions with management-speak, but the staff detected they were being bullshitted and got increasingly angry with his answers. He dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole until he had bring the meeting to a premature end and leave in a hurry.
It was one of the most joyous moments of my professional career. It was a complete disaster for the CIO. His contract wasn't renewed a few months later. I was promoted.
They eventually got rid of Notes, and they're using the system I developed to this day.
5) The decision maker is clueless and so chose the highest bid because it looked like the safest one.
There have been a lot of responses to this from people saying that the reason this guy's bid was rejected was probably because he was amateurish or wasn't good enough, or couldn't offer support, or whatever.
At my company, we have an approach to business that is unfortunately rare in the IT industry. We are honest with our clients. We think it is better business to get a client and keep them for ten years than to make a fast buck on a single contract.
This approach has cost us business in the past (but also is good long term - we have an extremely high client retention rate). But one thing is for sure, when we have lost a client because of this approach it has always been because the client doesn't know what they are doing.
Example. About six months ago we bid for a job against several other companies, incuding an IBM shop. We spent a long time listening to the client and finding out exactly what they needed, and then wrote a proposal which fulfilled their requirements along with an honest costing of the work involved. The IBM shop gave them an off-the-shelf proposal that was actually completely inappropriate for their requirements, and was costed at about five times what we quoted, and was the highest bid.
IBM won. When I quized the CIO (a clueless PHB) about why they chose the IBM shop, it had nothing to do with the contents of their proposal at all. The CIO didn't understand it. He went for their bid just because it was IBM.
Second example. A client approached us and wanted two different web sites created for promotions. Again, we did a proposal, and said that their web hosting requirements would be adequately covered by one of the standard packages from a company like Verio. The competiting proposal contained costing for buying and installation of in-house web servers, as well as an upgrade of the company's network connection to support the site. This meant that their bid was twice as high as ours, had a very high on-going cost, would cause them loads of hassel, had implications for their network security etc. etc. However, they couldn't believe that a $40 a month hosting package could possibly do what they required, when the competing company was saying that they needed to spend tens of thousands dollars on hosting. Again, the main issue was that they didn't have the internal experience or knowledge to assess the proposals.
We almost lost it because of the hosting issue. I persuaded the company that the best way ahead was for them to give us half the job, and the competing company the other half.
With the hosted web site, they have never had any problems. It's always up, and it does the job. Their internal web server has caused them loads of headaches and expense which I'm sure you can imagine.
Because we won their confidence, this company now gives us all their IT development work, and we practically write their IT strategy for them.
Sometimes, when a CIO accepts the highest bid, it is because he doesn't know what he is doing and feels safest with the highest bid.