"Nobody"? I'm 22, and know "how many ounces there are in a pound, pounds in a stone, or inches in a foot, or pints in a gallon". DISPROVED!!:o) Disclaimer, I had a physics teacher who lamented the demise of the slide rule;o)
At the moment, is it illegal to sell products with both SI and imperial units?
I know that I got a shock a couple of weeks ago, my housemate asked me how many pounds there were in a kilogram. I was in the kitchen, so the first thing I did was, from previous experience, open up my cupboard and look at a packet of sugar. I couldn't believe there wasn't dual labelling, bummer.
I will be recreating this project as of Friday night after my dissertation is handed in. I will be outside Kitty O'Hanlons in the zeroth Plymouth with a pen-torch. Post below with your requests and I will do my best to mimic them in my drunken stupor.
Having had some (little) experience with people in the corporate world, I can honestly say that I wouldn't try and sell them on the idea of a product using, or even mentioning, the product's mascot. When IBM pushes GNU/Linux, I'm pretty sure *they* don't use Tux as a major selling point, and I'm willing to bet that they don't mention it at all.
There is no reason to include images of Tux or the BSD daemon when advocating the use of GNU/Linux or *BSD to others.If *I*, and I should think most technical people, were writing an executive summary, assessing the appropriateness of a product in a business context I wouldn't even consider the mascot, I'd dismiss it as the irrelevance that it is. In *my* opinion, it neither adds nor detracts from a project's credibility.
There are many more pertinent reasons why GNU/Linux is not ready to beat Windows on the desktop, valid technical reasons with basis in fact.
The seagull was drawn by a child, and it's meant to appeal to children. Not only that, but if the OO.org Edu program has a friendly mascot that appeals to children, teachers may be more likely to see it as more appropriate for children than MS Office.
I mentioned elsewhere, it matters not that we think the seagull looks "drug-crazed", I don't know many children who know what a drug-crazed person looks like. Do you think the girl who drew it was thinking about drug-crazed seagulls?:o)
However, I'm beginning to see that the children won't ever get to make their own innocent assumptions about the seagull because teachers and parents will be projecting their own interpretations onto a child's drawing. That is a valid point, and I think that maybe a non "drug-crazed" seagull might be more appropriate after all. I was wrong.
I apologise if I came over a little strong before but I still maintain that there's no reason why a project, again, least of all an educational project, should not have a "cutesy" mascot.
P.S.
I agree wholeheartedly on the gesture it's making, as others have mentioned. If it's obscene in some cultures, maybe it should be changed...
It was on my Dilbert desk calendar on the 16th December last year...my birthday:o)
The PHB says they should do the same with engineers and the final frame is Wally (and Alice IIRC) walking away from the meeting with a cup of coffee saying "Why is it my ideas only sound good when they apply to other people?" or something to that effect.
It was drawn by a child(just..hey Andrea, how you doin'?;o)
If a child draws a picture of a seagull and it looks stoned, then in all probability, you're projecting your own thoughts onto an innocent drawing. Anyone who thinks "hey that bird looks stoned" is not going to be negatively influenced by it. Go ask a room full of 8 year olds to describe that picture and I can gaurantee that they won't make any reference to drugs or sex.
Simple, fish are a metaphor for documents in general, and by using a seagull, we're one step removed from the process of finding the fi....ok, so I have no idea either.
Why should it look any more like a perverted psychopath in Brazil than it would anywhere else? Do you have special filters on your monitors or something?
Clippy is easily hidden? Right, ok. All we need to know now is how to hide that damn Tux mascot...could someone please give me instructions because I cannot seem to do it by myself. It takes up my entire monitor with its stupid yellow beak.
In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.
When I open up Open Office, even for the first time, I'm not eye-raped by a cutesy mascot asking me if it can help. That practice is patented by Microsoft I believe. Moreover, the images of Tux that I do have on my machine are all in directories about 5 levels deep.
I don't see the problem with having a mascot, least of all for an educational program. KIDS LOVE THAT CUTESY CRAP!
There are myriad reasons why GNU/Linux isn't successful on the desktop, blindly attributing it to cutesy mascots is at best short-sighted, and at worst, extremely fucking stupid.
This was brought to you, not by blind open source advocacy, but by logical thought.
Ha!! You fool...you see, passports are easily forged and bought. Have you learnt nothing from Fuhrer Blunkett? These new identity cards will be impossible to forge!
Just because identity theft has been an ever-increasing industry in recent years, doesn't mean that criminals are getting better at it, and these new ID cards will stop them forever!
Every night I lay awake, thinking about all the thousands of criminals languishing in prison. their identities unknown. Moreover, when we get these new ID cards, all the criminals can have their cards marked to reflect that they're criminals. How better to decide whether to arrest or shoot someone who's out after curfew?
Count me in on the island deal, dude, these are scary times we're living in...
Somewhere along the line, the government has to take some responsibility for the failure of a project. At a guess, I imagine the problem is that they don't understand the problem well enough to differentiate between the hucksters and the Good Guys. Couple that with the lowest-bid-regardless-of-quality syndrome and you have a recipe for disaster.
The fact that the government is willing to toss this money to the lowest bidder and just hope for the best rather than investing it in a larger police force, or better hospitals is...well...it's just crappy.
Well, now I'm confused. Changing the rules after the fact is confusing you see. Your definition is good, and if it's correct then I humbly apologise for being so trollish sir. Until some suitably respected authority confirms your definition, I shall have to call shenanigoats.
If people (that's you GP) would stop propounding on incorrect use of the language, those of us who quietly continue to use it correctly could do so without idiots telling us that we should conform to the majority.
Personally, I don't care if you call 1024 bytes a Gimlibyte.;o)
This article at The Reg does a very good job assessing the intelligence of the fuckwads surveyed.
asked why they favour ID cards, the largest number (33 per cent) say because it will help prevent illegal immigration. Catching criminals is next (21 per cent), then helping you prove who you are (20 per cent), then prevention of identity theft, then consolidation of ID on one card, then prevention of terrorism (16 per cent).
On 14 September he blurted out a muddled sentence on the Today programme. The Government, he said, would have to consider 'how far anyone should expect to go in a democracy in being able to identify, being able to co-operate in terms of surveillance'. He returned to the Home Office to discover that the police and everyone else was against him. The 1997 Labour Government examined ID cards but decided, as Mike O'Brien, the former Home Office Minister, said, that they were 'unreliable in proving identity and damaged the relationship between the public and the police'. There were 'more effective things to spend our money on'.
Remember Hitler's socialist worker's party? They appealed to the lowest common denominator with FUD about parasitic races weakening his vision for a pure race too. They had the full support of the people too.
This really sickens me, people are willing to waste millions and millions of pounds on an ID card which I expect will run over-budget (because the government couldn't implement an IT solution if all our lives depended on it), and all because they think it will help get rid of a bunch of dirty foreigners who don't have no right to be here no how and reduce crime.
Slashdot Mirror
Je ne sais quoi. 'Tard. :o)
"Nobody"? I'm 22, and know "how many ounces there are in a pound, pounds in a stone, or inches in a foot, or pints in a gallon". DISPROVED!! :o) Disclaimer, I had a physics teacher who lamented the demise of the slide rule ;o)
At the moment, is it illegal to sell products with both SI and imperial units?
I know that I got a shock a couple of weeks ago, my housemate asked me how many pounds there were in a kilogram. I was in the kitchen, so the first thing I did was, from previous experience, open up my cupboard and look at a packet of sugar. I couldn't believe there wasn't dual labelling, bummer.
I will be recreating this project as of Friday night after my dissertation is handed in. I will be outside Kitty O'Hanlons in the zeroth Plymouth with a pen-torch. Post below with your requests and I will do my best to mimic them in my drunken stupor.
Ranger Park the Park Ranger: It should say top quality exercycle for sale, and could you put top quality in bold? You can't...o.k., whatever.
Having had some (little) experience with people in the corporate world, I can honestly say that I wouldn't try and sell them on the idea of a product using, or even mentioning, the product's mascot. When IBM pushes GNU/Linux, I'm pretty sure *they* don't use Tux as a major selling point, and I'm willing to bet that they don't mention it at all.
:o)
There is no reason to include images of Tux or the BSD daemon when advocating the use of GNU/Linux or *BSD to others.If *I*, and I should think most technical people, were writing an executive summary, assessing the appropriateness of a product in a business context I wouldn't even consider the mascot, I'd dismiss it as the irrelevance that it is. In *my* opinion, it neither adds nor detracts from a project's credibility.
There are many more pertinent reasons why GNU/Linux is not ready to beat Windows on the desktop, valid technical reasons with basis in fact.
The seagull was drawn by a child, and it's meant to appeal to children. Not only that, but if the OO.org Edu program has a friendly mascot that appeals to children, teachers may be more likely to see it as more appropriate for children than MS Office.
I mentioned elsewhere, it matters not that we think the seagull looks "drug-crazed", I don't know many children who know what a drug-crazed person looks like. Do you think the girl who drew it was thinking about drug-crazed seagulls?
However, I'm beginning to see that the children won't ever get to make their own innocent assumptions about the seagull because teachers and parents will be projecting their own interpretations onto a child's drawing. That is a valid point, and I think that maybe a non "drug-crazed" seagull might be more appropriate after all. I was wrong.
I apologise if I came over a little strong before but I still maintain that there's no reason why a project, again, least of all an educational project, should not have a "cutesy" mascot.
P.S.
I agree wholeheartedly on the gesture it's making, as others have mentioned. If it's obscene in some cultures, maybe it should be changed...
It was on my Dilbert desk calendar on the 16th December last year...my birthday :o)
The PHB says they should do the same with engineers and the final frame is Wally (and Alice IIRC) walking away from the meeting with a cup of coffee saying "Why is it my ideas only sound good when they apply to other people?" or something to that effect.
It was drawn by a child(just..hey Andrea, how you doin'?;o)
If a child draws a picture of a seagull and it looks stoned, then in all probability, you're projecting your own thoughts onto an innocent drawing. Anyone who thinks "hey that bird looks stoned" is not going to be negatively influenced by it. Go ask a room full of 8 year olds to describe that picture and I can gaurantee that they won't make any reference to drugs or sex.
Simple, fish are a metaphor for documents in general, and by using a seagull, we're one step removed from the process of finding the fi....ok, so I have no idea either.
Should think before I post, I didn't get what you meant when you said "OK" gesture...but still, what does that mean in Brazil?
Why should it look any more like a perverted psychopath in Brazil than it would anywhere else? Do you have special filters on your monitors or something?
Honest question.
Who is Summer?? PICS?!
Kids in suits? No....NOOOO!! Bugsy Malone flashbacks!!!!
Clippy is easily hidden? Right, ok. All we need to know now is how to hide that damn Tux mascot...could someone please give me instructions because I cannot seem to do it by myself. It takes up my entire monitor with its stupid yellow beak.
In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.
When I open up Open Office, even for the first time, I'm not eye-raped by a cutesy mascot asking me if it can help. That practice is patented by Microsoft I believe. Moreover, the images of Tux that I do have on my machine are all in directories about 5 levels deep.
I don't see the problem with having a mascot, least of all for an educational program. KIDS LOVE THAT CUTESY CRAP!
There are myriad reasons why GNU/Linux isn't successful on the desktop, blindly attributing it to cutesy mascots is at best short-sighted, and at worst, extremely fucking stupid.
This was brought to you, not by blind open source advocacy, but by logical thought.
Photoshop isn't Free. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Why not use the GIMP?
You're currently modded funny, but I don't get it!!:.(
Ha!! You fool...you see, passports are easily forged and bought. Have you learnt nothing from Fuhrer Blunkett? These new identity cards will be impossible to forge!
Just because identity theft has been an ever-increasing industry in recent years, doesn't mean that criminals are getting better at it, and these new ID cards will stop them forever!
Every night I lay awake, thinking about all the thousands of criminals languishing in prison. their identities unknown. Moreover, when we get these new ID cards, all the criminals can have their cards marked to reflect that they're criminals. How better to decide whether to arrest or shoot someone who's out after curfew?
Count me in on the island deal, dude, these are scary times we're living in...
Somewhere along the line, the government has to take some responsibility for the failure of a project. At a guess, I imagine the problem is that they don't understand the problem well enough to differentiate between the hucksters and the Good Guys. Couple that with the lowest-bid-regardless-of-quality syndrome and you have a recipe for disaster.
The fact that the government is willing to toss this money to the lowest bidder and just hope for the best rather than investing it in a larger police force, or better hospitals is...well...it's just crappy.
Well, then I humbly apologise sir! Knew there was a reason you were on my friends list. :o)
Well, now I'm confused. Changing the rules after the fact is confusing you see. Your definition is good, and if it's correct then I humbly apologise for being so trollish sir. Until some suitably respected authority confirms your definition, I shall have to call shenanigoats.
If people (that's you GP) would stop propounding on incorrect use of the language, those of us who quietly continue to use it correctly could do so without idiots telling us that we should conform to the majority.
;o)
Personally, I don't care if you call 1024 bytes a Gimlibyte.
The fuck-up trying to rail-road Britain into a national ID card is blind, I can't think of many greater dangers...
Apparently, the people who don't give a shit about politics can vote when it suits them: linky-linky.
IF YOU DRIVE CLOCKWISE THIS PROBLEM DOES NOT ARISE. :o)
Apologies for all caps, btw, but I think most people could grasp what he was getting at...
Expect one of these over-zealous posts in the near future.
Now listen to what a twat Blunkett really is: Remember Hitler's socialist worker's party? They appealed to the lowest common denominator with FUD about parasitic races weakening his vision for a pure race too. They had the full support of the people too.
This really sickens me, people are willing to waste millions and millions of pounds on an ID card which I expect will run over-budget (because the government couldn't implement an IT solution if all our lives depended on it), and all because they think it will help get rid of a bunch of dirty foreigners who don't have no right to be here no how and reduce crime.
Maybe I am being melodramatic, maybe not.
Not to nitpick, but I believe that the PM was against the national ID scheme until a short while ago...