Actually, in UK English the name of the letter H is pronounced "aitch", giving "aitch-tee-em-el", which takes "an" as the preceding indefinite article.
To aspirate H as "haitch" is considered common (as in plebeian) enough to have been frequently used in humorous short stories for the purpose of emphasising the stupidity of a policeman taking down a name and address. But we English are a bunch of stuck-up ponces after all:-)
Cheers. As a web developer, I get annoyed by the way graphic designers fail to understand the medium in which they are working, and produce such things. I have to admit that it's a good looking Flash site, I just feel it's better to do it using simple stuff. I know I was a bit OTT with the "tell them" comment, but I've just got back from the pub, so my "be reasonable and act in a courteous manner to others" filter is set a bit lower than normal:-(
BTW, I do agree with the actual content of your post. OTOH, I agree with the parent as well. Definitely closing time:-)
you will find that most of the anomalies were produced in an uncommon frequency
Actually, one of the two frequencies used in the UK's cellular phone network (see details of networks). (Also used throughout Europe.) Not surprising that it's of concern to the UK CAA.
Unless they decide it was your own fault you got fired, in which case you get treated exactly the same as if you resigned.
They will contact your former employer to check you're not lying as well... one time I got laid off, my former boss called me to ask what I'd said, just to make sure I didn't lose any money:-)
Oh, and if you're entitled, it's only the first 3 days for which you don't get paid. Still takes about 3 weeks for any claim to be sorted out; can be up to 3 months if there's 4 million on the dole at the same time (ah, the eighties...).
Your post illustrates my point beautifully. The bad journalism on academic studies spreads misinformation all over the place. In short, you got trolled by a journalist.
As my quote was from the CAA's own press office, perhaps you should let them know that their employees are propagating misinformation about their work, paid for out of their funding;-) Seriously, in an organization like the CAA, the trained journalist in the press office is going to be knowledgeable in technical matters, and will work with the originators of the report to ensure that his press release is not misleading, and does not misrepresent the facts. This isn't some guy who got taken off reporting the local jumble sale.
If you read the report on the study you will find that the sentence you quoted is wholly incorrect.
Seems to me that it was a reasonable precis of the following text from the report's Executive Summary:
The following anomalies were seen at interference levels above 30 volts/metre, a level that
can be produced by a cellphone operating at maximum power and located 30cms from the
victim equipment or its wiring harness.
Compass froze or overshot actual magnetic bearing.
Instability of indicators.
Digital VOR navigation bearing display errors up to 5 degrees.
VOR navigation To/From indicator reversal.
VOR and ILS course deviation indicator errors with and without a failure flag.
Reduced sensitivity of the ILS Localiser receiver.
Background noise on audio outputs.
So, in what way "wholly incorrect"? At the very least, the last 5 words of my original quote are directly from that final bullet point. Or are the people who collaborated on the report supposed to have put misinformation in their Executive Summary? They're scientists, not Dilbert.
The experiments did not test cell phone equipment, and the equipment they did use was used in ways in which cell phones would not be.
From the report, Test Strategy (Section 2.2):
The strategy of this second phase involved exposing aircraft avionic equipment,
installed on a rack assembly inside a screened test chamber, to increasing levels of
interference from simulated cellphone transmissions. The objectives were to identify
any anomalies, caused by the equivalent of an intentional cellphone transmission,
such as misleading indications, false warnings of unsafe conditions, degraded
performance, and audio noise, then to note the level of interference causing each
observed anomaly.
Note that the "simulated cellphone transmissions" were produced by cellphone signal generators provided by Vodafone and built by Hewlett Packard - presumably the same "cellphone signal generators" as used in cellphones (see Acknowledgements, Executive Summary, Annex 4: Test Equipment Details, and Annex 7: Test Team Members). What, did you expect them to hang around hoping their Mum would call? The test signals were specifically designed to be "the equivalent of an intentional cellphone transmission".
The latest study found that the use of mobile telephones can adversely affect navigation and communication functions, producing significant errors on instrument displays and background noise on audio outputs.
Sounds like disruption to me:-)
(Note: as pointed out elsewhere on this topic, "mobile phone" in UK English == "cell phone" in US English.)
The whole point of the common law is that each case is considered independently of others, and that if what Parliament comes out with is screwed, the principles of common law can be appealed to to prove that it's wrong.
IANAL, but if this thread carries on much longer, I might as well become one;-)
If The Law is going to be good enough for us to live under it, it's going to have to be a lot better than some piece of software that can run on 9 operating systems; it's going to have to be able to operate correctly taking into account the circumstances of 6,298,069,909 (and counting) people. That's why we don't leave it to computers - and why we have to remember that there's Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, VMS, RSTS, and all those other systems - or, to step out of the analogy, people - out there.
BTW, anybody know why "HTML Formatted"/. filters out standard HTML character entities? I wanted to put ™ or ™ after "The Law" there, and it wouldn't let me:-(
Lets & through fine. Maybe it's a legal thing;-)
By definition, common law is not written down anywhere; it is the principles underlying written law. Once it is written down, it becomes statute.
You are correct in saying that the "common law wife" stuff is bollocks, but common law is the foundation of the British legal system.
I welcome our statutory right to appeal to the ECHR, but (AFAIK) that only applies to human rights issues. I don't like the idea of the Govenment using that route to remove our common law rights, although I'm not aware of that happening yet - in fact I think (but don't know) that that may be ruled out.
(I also welcome the opportunity to use "that that" as a valid part of a sentence, but I used to write 6502 assembler, so I'm just odd.)
No, this was pretty much standard circa 1979 - 1980. One would hope that times have changed, but once accountants get involved, backed up by lawyers, who knows?
Perhaps we could create a metric: how much better are book deals now than 25 years ago:-)
If your friend's publishers didn't seek to recover the advance, maybe it just means that they regard young tech book writers diffferently than the way they look at middle aged fiction writers.
On the off chance, who were your friends publishers;-)
Maybe it's just time for the US to move to get rid of this common law nonsense and assume legislation as the sole source of law.
If we can't write bug-free code, I certainly don't imagine legislators can produce bug-free legislation.
The primary purpose of common law is to allow for errors and omissions in legislation to be corrected by recourse to common sense and long-accepted principles in interpretation of that legislation. Lose the common law, and you lose the last vestiges of freedom.
For example: in the UK all public highways are property of the Crown ("the Queen's Highway"). The right of ordinary citizens to use public highways ("right of way") is primarily enshrined in common law. Thus any law which could be interpreted by the police as permitting them to deny right of way to certain people on grounds of societal prejudice could be overturned on the grounds that such interpretation (and possibly the legislation itself) was contrary to common law.
Of course, in practice a case may be dragged all the way to the House of Lords ( == highest court) over a period of years before such a ruling is made, but it's nice to know that a magistrates' court ( == lowest court) can't just say "That's what it says in the book, so you can't appeal".
Perhaps the money should have come out of whomever's salary it was that made the mistake of deciding it was worth publishing your father's book
Not really a mistake; sales of previous books had been good (second print run within 3 weeks, etc.), and he had a good track record in TV and radio drama. Nothing's guaranteed in publishing, though.
FWIW, when I was a kid, I used to get lots of free comics, because he'd written the script for stories in them:-)
Oh, and I'm sure his deal wasn't crap: his agent also represented famous names like Frederick Forsyth (Day of the Jackal et. al.), and he could easily pay back the dosh from the money made by selling an option on the film rights of a previous book to Swifty Lazar.
Yes, that was basically the way the deal was structured, but they could claw back the part of the advance that wasn't covered by royalties due on sales. As I mention elsewhere, this was around 1980, and I can't remember if it was his UK or US publisher, nor can I recall if he still had a tie-in to that publisher for subsequent works.
It was either Hodder & Stoughton, one of the leading UK publishers (this was around 1980; they've long since become part of some conglomerate), or it may have been his American publishers, Viking Press - one of the US's biggest, I believe.
I saw the correspondence, so I know this to be true. Perhaps it was done this way because the publisher didn't have automatic rights over his next book. Not certain (IANA agent), but that was how it was done back then.
Either way, the fact that an artist has received an advance is often misunderstood, as by the original poster. If that advance isn't covered by royalties on sales, then the publisher will claw it back if they possibly can. Maybe that's why they bring out a "greatest hits" album and give it lots of advertising whenever a recording artist dies;-)
Yes, but if the record companies don't make that advance back from sales, they recover it from the artist. Same with any publishers' advance; my father once had to pay back about 1000 GBP after disappointing sales of one of his books. That was on a 3000 GBP advance.
About 12 years ago I knew a band who had several records out, and had just returned to the UK from their second successful tour of the States. They were all signing on the dole. Heck, they came and played in a pub where I worked, in return for 10 GBP per head and free beer.
The rock'n'roll lifestyle isn't all it's cracked up to be...
No, I certainly don't think ESR corrupt; a little overenthusiastic, but his intellectual honesty can't be questioned.
As far as journalists taking over the world goes: back in 1997, Martin Bell, a former BBC war correspondent, stood as an independent anti-corruption candidate in an English constituency whose Conservative MP had been implicated in the receipt of brown envelopes containing large sums of money in return for asking questions in the House. The journalist won by a landslide, and served for four years as an exemplary constituency MP. (He also stuck to his promise not to stand again in that constituency when the next election came.)
This might suggest that it could be a sucessful approach if the denizens of Fleet Street took over the world - until you remember that Anne Robinson used to be a journalist:-)
But I think the NTK folk should stick to compiling their exellent newsletter. Nobody does it better.
NTK is a news site - a rather unusual one, but still news. Your suggestion is analogous to saying "Hey, BBC/NBC/CNN/(insert news outfit here) shouldn't whine about corrupt politicians; why don't they take over the government themselves?"
It isn't a reporter's job to assume the duties of those on whose failings she reports.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, in UK English the name of the letter H is pronounced "aitch", giving "aitch-tee-em-el", which takes "an" as the preceding indefinite article.
To aspirate H as "haitch" is considered common (as in plebeian) enough to have been frequently used in humorous short stories for the purpose of emphasising the stupidity of a policeman taking down a name and address. But we English are a bunch of stuck-up ponces after all :-)
TTFN
Cheers. As a web developer, I get annoyed by the way graphic designers fail to understand the medium in which they are working, and produce such things. I have to admit that it's a good looking Flash site, I just feel it's better to do it using simple stuff. I know I was a bit OTT with the "tell them" comment, but I've just got back from the pub, so my "be reasonable and act in a courteous manner to others" filter is set a bit lower than normal :-(
BTW, I do agree with the actual content of your post. OTOH, I agree with the parent as well. Definitely closing time :-)
That WTC site in your sig sucks. Can't you link to an HTML equivalent? Oh no, there isn't one.
Bandwidth-wasting garbage. Tell them to get a grip, if you like them so much.
Mod me flamebait, it had to be said.
Actually, one of the two frequencies used in the UK's cellular phone network (see details of networks). (Also used throughout Europe.) Not surprising that it's of concern to the UK CAA.
Unless they decide it was your own fault you got fired, in which case you get treated exactly the same as if you resigned.
They will contact your former employer to check you're not lying as well... one time I got laid off, my former boss called me to ask what I'd said, just to make sure I didn't lose any money :-)
Oh, and if you're entitled, it's only the first 3 days for which you don't get paid. Still takes about 3 weeks for any claim to be sorted out; can be up to 3 months if there's 4 million on the dole at the same time (ah, the eighties...).
Wow, I really want to meet their investors :-)
Is that why film credits these days always seem to include a "foley operator" ;-)
As my quote was from the CAA's own press office, perhaps you should let them know that their employees are propagating misinformation about their work, paid for out of their funding ;-) Seriously, in an organization like the CAA, the trained journalist in the press office is going to be knowledgeable in technical matters, and will work with the originators of the report to ensure that his press release is not misleading, and does not misrepresent the facts. This isn't some guy who got taken off reporting the local jumble sale.
Seems to me that it was a reasonable precis of the following text from the report's Executive Summary:
So, in what way "wholly incorrect"? At the very least, the last 5 words of my original quote are directly from that final bullet point. Or are the people who collaborated on the report supposed to have put misinformation in their Executive Summary? They're scientists, not Dilbert.
From the report, Test Strategy (Section 2.2):
Note that the "simulated cellphone transmissions" were produced by cellphone signal generators provided by Vodafone and built by Hewlett Packard - presumably the same "cellphone signal generators" as used in cellphones (see Acknowledgements, Executive Summary, Annex 4: Test Equipment Details, and Annex 7: Test Team Members). What, did you expect them to hang around hoping their Mum would call? The test signals were specifically designed to be "the equivalent of an intentional cellphone transmission".
So your point is...?
From the CAA article:
Sounds like disruption to me :-)
(Note: as pointed out elsewhere on this topic, "mobile phone" in UK English == "cell phone" in US English.)
RTFA
It has been determined; that's the point of the item.
The whole point of the common law is that each case is considered independently of others, and that if what Parliament comes out with is screwed, the principles of common law can be appealed to to prove that it's wrong.
IANAL, but if this thread carries on much longer, I might as well become one65,536 laws, actually :-)
If The Law is going to be good enough for us to live under it, it's going to have to be a lot better than some piece of software that can run on 9 operating systems; it's going to have to be able to operate correctly taking into account the circumstances of 6,298,069,909 (and counting) people. That's why we don't leave it to computers - and why we have to remember that there's Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, VMS, RSTS, and all those other systems - or, to step out of the analogy, people - out there.
BTW, anybody know why "HTML Formatted" /. filters out standard HTML character entities? I wanted to put ™ or ™ after "The Law" there, and it wouldn't let me :-(
Lets & through fine. Maybe it's a legal thing ;-)
You should have tried the beer ;-)
By definition, common law is not written down anywhere; it is the principles underlying written law. Once it is written down, it becomes statute.
You are correct in saying that the "common law wife" stuff is bollocks, but common law is the foundation of the British legal system.
I welcome our statutory right to appeal to the ECHR, but (AFAIK) that only applies to human rights issues. I don't like the idea of the Govenment using that route to remove our common law rights, although I'm not aware of that happening yet - in fact I think (but don't know) that that may be ruled out.
(I also welcome the opportunity to use "that that" as a valid part of a sentence, but I used to write 6502 assembler, so I'm just odd.)
No, this was pretty much standard circa 1979 - 1980. One would hope that times have changed, but once accountants get involved, backed up by lawyers, who knows?
Perhaps we could create a metric: how much better are book deals now than 25 years ago :-)
If your friend's publishers didn't seek to recover the advance, maybe it just means that they regard young tech book writers diffferently than the way they look at middle aged fiction writers.
On the off chance, who were your friends publishers ;-)
If we can't write bug-free code, I certainly don't imagine legislators can produce bug-free legislation.
The primary purpose of common law is to allow for errors and omissions in legislation to be corrected by recourse to common sense and long-accepted principles in interpretation of that legislation. Lose the common law, and you lose the last vestiges of freedom.
For example: in the UK all public highways are property of the Crown ("the Queen's Highway"). The right of ordinary citizens to use public highways ("right of way") is primarily enshrined in common law. Thus any law which could be interpreted by the police as permitting them to deny right of way to certain people on grounds of societal prejudice could be overturned on the grounds that such interpretation (and possibly the legislation itself) was contrary to common law.
Of course, in practice a case may be dragged all the way to the House of Lords ( == highest court) over a period of years before such a ruling is made, but it's nice to know that a magistrates' court ( == lowest court) can't just say "That's what it says in the book, so you can't appeal".
Not really a mistake; sales of previous books had been good (second print run within 3 weeks, etc.), and he had a good track record in TV and radio drama. Nothing's guaranteed in publishing, though.
FWIW, when I was a kid, I used to get lots of free comics, because he'd written the script for stories in them :-)
Oh, and I'm sure his deal wasn't crap: his agent also represented famous names like Frederick Forsyth ( Day of the Jackal et. al.), and he could easily pay back the dosh from the money made by selling an option on the film rights of a previous book to Swifty Lazar.
Yes, that was basically the way the deal was structured, but they could claw back the part of the advance that wasn't covered by royalties due on sales. As I mention elsewhere, this was around 1980, and I can't remember if it was his UK or US publisher, nor can I recall if he still had a tie-in to that publisher for subsequent works.
It was either Hodder & Stoughton, one of the leading UK publishers (this was around 1980; they've long since become part of some conglomerate), or it may have been his American publishers, Viking Press - one of the US's biggest, I believe.
I saw the correspondence, so I know this to be true. Perhaps it was done this way because the publisher didn't have automatic rights over his next book. Not certain (IANA agent), but that was how it was done back then.
Either way, the fact that an artist has received an advance is often misunderstood, as by the original poster. If that advance isn't covered by royalties on sales, then the publisher will claw it back if they possibly can. Maybe that's why they bring out a "greatest hits" album and give it lots of advertising whenever a recording artist dies ;-)
Oh great, the guy launches an appeal, and it gets Slashdotted.
You've been kicked in one ball, now let's do the other...
Yes, but if the record companies don't make that advance back from sales, they recover it from the artist. Same with any publishers' advance; my father once had to pay back about 1000 GBP after disappointing sales of one of his books. That was on a 3000 GBP advance.
About 12 years ago I knew a band who had several records out, and had just returned to the UK from their second successful tour of the States. They were all signing on the dole. Heck, they came and played in a pub where I worked, in return for 10 GBP per head and free beer.
The rock'n'roll lifestyle isn't all it's cracked up to be...
No, I certainly don't think ESR corrupt; a little overenthusiastic, but his intellectual honesty can't be questioned.
As far as journalists taking over the world goes: back in 1997, Martin Bell, a former BBC war correspondent, stood as an independent anti-corruption candidate in an English constituency whose Conservative MP had been implicated in the receipt of brown envelopes containing large sums of money in return for asking questions in the House. The journalist won by a landslide, and served for four years as an exemplary constituency MP. (He also stuck to his promise not to stand again in that constituency when the next election came.)
This might suggest that it could be a sucessful approach if the denizens of Fleet Street took over the world - until you remember that Anne Robinson used to be a journalist :-)
But I think the NTK folk should stick to compiling their exellent newsletter. Nobody does it better.
NTK is a news site - a rather unusual one, but still news. Your suggestion is analogous to saying "Hey, BBC/NBC/CNN/(insert news outfit here) shouldn't whine about corrupt politicians; why don't they take over the government themselves?"
It isn't a reporter's job to assume the duties of those on whose failings she reports.
Most obviously, they can't even use soft hyphens:
Center ... community ... shortcomings
happen to be the first three unnecessarily hyphenated words I found.
YMMV :-)