Some time ago some people managed to show that birds in appropriate conditions (e.g., skinner box type things) could following training on a set of paintings by two painters distinguish between novel paintings as to which of the two painters had painted them. This was roundly mocked in the press as a waste of money, ludicrous idea, waste of money etc. What good is a bird that recognise Monet?
Of course the aim of the work was actually to measure the mechanisms of learning, generalisation and action in response to complex visual stimuli in avian 'models' of various neurological conditions that impair such processes of learning and generalisation. Paintings by certain artists were simply useful stimuli for their purposes. Reading the papers its bloody obvious what the real agenda was but either the journalists couldn't understand them or just didn't bother. Instead they held them up to public ridicule for a news cycle or two, something that I don't doubt impacts on decision makers, politicians and so on.
Of course, once you have the model and you can demonstrate the behavior you can do things to the brain, test the effects of drugs, therapies etc. Of course the press is then full of talk of the end products of that research but have never to my knowledge had the decency to explain their bad reporting of the antecedent research that it was all based upon.
...its irresponsible to ommit the "obvious" recommendations. Simple as that. Where does a paper on the risks of power tool use stand on not saying one should be careful in their handling? The problem is some journalist idiot turns round and says, heh, they did this research into power tool usage and didn't even bother to mention you should be careful with them, how irresponsible. Given that the author of the article shows no understanding of what science is about and for, frankly one can't trust people like that not to think omission of a point isn't a rejection of it.
The most irresponsible writing is that article anyway. Given that in some states popular wisdom is creationism and the presence of extra-terrestrials its foolhardy to make the case that popular wisdom shouldn't be challenged.
I think the US model of trades unions isn't what I recognise in the European context where there is no inflexibility, closed shops are illegal and seniority has no special perks associated with it. So I'd like to suggest they take a look at how, say AMICUS in the UK (who represent amongst others IT workers via the IPTA) operate rather than thinking of the teamsters or the construction unions. I still don't always agree with what they do necessarily but from many posts here and in other stories, I just don't recognise the mindset or the behaviour ascribed to the North American unions (or what Slashdotters imagine those behaviours are) in my own experience.
I'm a member of a union myself, mainly for the discounts on car insurance I can get through them and legal representation coverage (as an academic I work with 'the public', ie. students from a position of power inequality so its useful in case any silly allegations or whatever were made). They also lobby for pay and conditions improvements along with the half dozen or so other unions in the sector. I guess if anything bizarrely unfair happened they'd have my back to some extent. But thats about it. If they strike I don't necessarily have to take part if I don't want to for example. Aside from paying subs I don't perceive any other hassle associated with being in a union. If anything my employer considers it a responsible thing for staff to do; if the worst happened they'd rather deal with an experienced union representative as a first stage in settling what might be a misunderstanding rather than have me turn up at 9am flanked by a lawyer or something.
No mod points but please accept a ghetto +5 insightful from me. I don't know whats with Slashdot lately but it seems that everyday theres a story whining about _some_other_groups union behaviour/industrial relations issue and then a few stories whining about IT working conditions, renumeration and out-sourcing. Can these people put two and two together? Hasn't happened yet...
England was quite often being attacked by Catholic terrorists intent on murdering us with bombs and incendiary devices
I am of course referring to the Irish Republic Army, its not really right to categorise them as "Catholic terrorists". Whilst sectarianism is central to their world view, I didn't mean to imply anything more generally about Catholicism.
True, but Fight Club is pre-9/11, the mighty North American audience wasn't duct taping itself into its basements back then. The world has changed.
Even then it was actually a financial failure.
"Basically, this show wasn't made for an English market. The accent I use has to be understood by an American audience."
The British audience initially suspected she was an American with a speech impediment until we realised the character was supposed to be from Manchester.
its bonfire night (not day) but bravo for even caring enough to mention it. V's costume is based on Guy Fawkes, who as part of a conspiracy attempted to blow up the houses of parliament by placing a large quantity of gunpowder in a cellar underneath them. This was to be ignited on the 5th of November, killing James the 1st as he officially opened that session of parliament. The aim was to incite a Catholic rebellion.
But Fawkes and the conspirators were captured (they tipped off a friend not to go the House on that day but the letter was intercepted) and tortured and, having confessed, were hung, drawn and quartered. On bonfire night its traditional to get a bonfire together and burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes upon it (and have fireworks and so on as well). For those interested in such things theres a number of conspiracy theories about the nature of conspiracy but I won't go into it here.
I mention this only to point out the sort of post-modernist (urgh, sorry) games Moore is playing by having V dress as Guy Fawkes and, well, blow up buildings. He's sort of dressed as the national villain but he's the hero. Only he's a terrorist, which confuses things even more because when V for Vendetta was written England was quite often being attacked by Catholic terrorists intent on murdering us with bombs and incendiary devices, so he had balls of iron in pulling it off really. The further point here being the Englishness of it is central to the understanding the character and the plot. If you try to make it less foreign to non-English people than you run the risk of missing the point, which may or may not be the case in the forthcoming film. Which is why "eggy breakfast" or whatever it is feels like a bad omen.
In an interview I read recently, Moore says something along the lines that he doesn't think there will ever be a market for a film where the hero is an anarchist terrorist. Obviously we don't know whats in the film, but even though its been made I sort of share his skepticism. One wonders if V really does remain a terrorist who goes around blowing up public buildings in the film for no other reason than to make people think and feel freely...seems a little unlikely "in the current climate". My money is on them twisting that element to make it the struggle of the lone hero against the repressive regime, but the subtlety in what V's aims actually are, and the moral ambivalence, will be long gone (if you take out the motivation than V is undiscernable from say Rambo, both blow lots of things up to fight Bad Guys(tm) ). Also, is it really going to begin with the attempted rape of a underage prostitute by the secret police? And can we really trust Elrond to keep the damn mask on all the way through? A flashback (yes, yes, but look how its drawn) or an unmasking would ruin the whole thing. I can't think of many Hollywood stars who'd be prepared to do that as a leading actor (David Prowse will of course always be the exception, but he wasn't as such a Hollywood star, he was the Green Cross Code man!)
As to Hollywood getting England wrong, we are so well used to that, to be honest it barely registers anymore. It was going on long before any of us were born. One sort of grows up realising theres a special mythological England with bizarre Ye Olde customs and behaviour that exists in films and the one you actually live in. But then thats probably true for everyone across the world to some extent. And being the sinister villains rather than the lantern jawed hero is fine with me as well, they always have the best lines anyway. Our accents (e.g., the woman in Frasier...wtf?), our culture and our history are regularly and comprehensively pissed all over in the name of the North American market, but heh, as the Voice of Fate would say:
At the Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port (UK car manufacturers) about ten years ago times were hard, and management tabled job losses. The union objected and at which point someone like you thinks, oh, greed again etc etc. Whining. A free lunch blah blah.
What actually happened was the unions together with the workforce came up with an alternative package of voluntary pay freezes, productivity improvements by cutting some conditions issues about the seperation of night shift work and some other employee efficiency suggestions. This isn't what would happen in backstabbing America where everyone is out for themselves and wants to be the one guy who keeps his job and gets a small pay rise for doing his destitute colleague's work, but at Vauxhalls the workforce via their unions as a whole decided was the better plan. Management agreed to give it a shot and it came to pass.
Result? Today everyone still has a job, there are excellent industrial relations in the plant (so the workers are happy) they have the most efficient car plant in the country (management are happy) and pay was unfrozen as market conditions allowed. Eventually Vauxhalls did have to offshore some of their work...but they didn't close the plant with the strong union, they closed the plant in Luton that had meekly buckled ten years previously. They were inefficient you see and in consolidating their UK activities they'd have needed to hire more people in Luton, at great expense. But thanks to the actions of the unions they had a fully staffed facility in Ellesmere Port to fall back on.
It can work it, I've seen it. Very similar things happened with unions in the steel industry but alas they can't be reported as success stories because in the end no amount of productivity gains could offset the American's predilection for crazy socialist-style protectionism, which is a great shame.
I agree with you about the laughable statement quoted: All unions do today is drive a wedge between employees and management. That wasn't even true at the time of the birth of trades unionism in England when the boss was known to all and wore a big black hat just in case you weren't sure. Further, management themselves are usually in professional unions in Europe, the problem is defence from the boardroom and faceless institutional shareholders whose only contact with the corporation is a cell in their spreadsheet and by definition care only about the bottom line. Health & safety and the implementation of national laws aren't things they care anything at all about.
I think what people in the US object to is the "closed shop". The fact its American synonym is "union shop" speaks volumes. Simply outlaw the closed shop (or if its already outlawed then actively impose the law) and problem solved. Workers representation without the perversions and excesses of American tradesunionism which is barely recognisable as the same thing we have here in the UK. I support trades unions but I must say what I read from the US is a bit shocking (the crap as regards teamsters and construction workers especially). Thats not trades unionism, thats mob rule at the behest of another boss you have to obey. It could be certain unions will need, frankly, dealing with. Thatcher did this in the 1980s in the UK. Its not nice but it can be done.
. Your objection to his analogy, i.e. that raping someone is not comparable to copyright infringement, would have made sense if he were proposing that people who infringed on copyrights should be raped as punishment.
As you have translated for someone else I will return the favour by translating for you... comparing something as distastful as rape to mere copyright infringement even by analogy is distasteful.
Your logic-chopping is neato, but unfortunately what you have there is a flawed analogy, nothing more. Your perspective is predicated on accepting the appropriateneess of a given analogy and in this case it doesn't fly, the two events differ in kind not just degree.
Its not a question of absurdity or anything else. I hope you get my point, using an inappropriate analogy to support a trivial issue is like being a Nazi and running a death camp because you... oops.
is a legally mandated area of analysis in the chemical, heavy industrial, nuclear, transport and defence industries. Theres plenty of work out there. What you say is a truism; HCI is an academic term not used outside. As the grandparent gets right first time, Human Factors (or some variant with the word "safety" in often) is the industrial term, but much of it will be HCI in nature (where its referred to as Human Systems Engineering btw).
I'm beginning to wonder if the pendulum has swung to making underclocking the smarter move. Certainly I've never had as stable, cold and quiet a machine as when "Cool 'n' Quiet" (on my MSI NForce 4) is kicking in (dynamically lowering the multiplier). You might say I should have bought a slower cheaper machine in the first place but just sometimes (DAW stuff, those VSTis can be hungry beasts) I need the grunt, but not all the time.
It wasn't because they were American.
Its because they were in Britain when many millions of British men where overseas being killed and also they were paid more than twice as much as British soldiers were and had access to things like nylon, sweets and so on at American bases. It lead to the GI bride phenomenon.
You are taking a minor social issue (hey, no guy likes the fact he's taken away from his wife and is effectively replaced in his community by someone hideously rich which a direct line to otherwise unobtainable merchandise) and totally misrepresenting it.
We're very grateful for American assistance, but if it had arrived when Churchill had first pleaded for it a lot more lives would have been saved.
...I have a degree in Pysch and a Masters in Eng.
Without wishing to sound like I'm crowing I cannot keep up with the amount of business being put my way. I started off in academia but I was getting so much consultancy pressed on me that in the end it was pointless to fight it (thats actual consultancy not being a contractor btw). Theres a major skill gap in our field, everyone wants safety and HSE (or at least needs someone to sign off on them) but theres hardly anyone to do it. So get a qualification in Ergonomics (whatevers recognised in your territory) and your Psych/CS degree will make more sense.
What is the mission of anti-piracy group that takes other people's (ie. the industry's) money? To reduce piracy. I don't think its as simple as saying they have a vested increase in emphasising the scale of the problem, one might argue that they have an equal vested interest in suggesting that their activities have actually done some good. As noted in another comment above, they've basically hedged their bets by not reporting on the relative increase in software piracy relative to the growth in internet usage (and a more sophisticated analysis might consider the extent of bandwidth growth and the nature of anti-piracy steps being taken, either in terms of copy protection or legislation/punishment in different localities).
In general I'm wary of the general wisdom that suggests that any advocacy organisation is automatically lying by the nature of who they are. Its a standard internet commentator kneejerk response thats as bad as blindly believing whatever you read.
this post comes under the powers of Spec-Ops 31 (Good taste re-education authority). The pair of you are safe this time, but I'd watch your step in future. Any mention of that hack Pratchett and I'll nick the pair of you OK?
[You won't believe this but I am actually posting to you from Swindon]
The landmark destruction thing I only wondered about because the Doctor draws attention to it at one point as being a bit unlikely to have been accidental (and it wasn't, the 'accident' was deliberate as it turned out). Also its not really imagery to accidentlly invoke, I would have thought someone at the BBC would have called it if it wasn't intentional. I didn't really get the TwoJags thing myself to honest, but fair enough.
As to the Dalek, well it does appear to be held by Americans. And Davies has said already that he hoped we'd feel pity for Dalek on one level. I'm wondering if its going to be a 'inhuman (ahem) treatment of our evil enemies is still wrong' kind of thing.
Perhaps what may not go down to well with the Slashdotesque approach to sci-fi is that Dr Who is both a national instituion in the UK and (most importantly to the producers of the present series) a children's programme that adults can enjoy. They've done superbly well in the latter category particularly, the last two episodes having in interesting and satirical plotline that adults can wink at eachother about but also featuring lots of scary aliens, explosions, running about and the longest sustained farting joke I've ever seen, for the kids. Best of all its quite scary in places but scary in a wholesome way. Its traditional to grow up terrified of Dr Who villains (I was, my parents were) and I'm glad to say its been retained in these days of worrying overly "about the children" and the tendency towards 'gross out' horror.
Its hard to put this clearly, but the point of reference for Dr Who isn't Battlestar Galactica or Startrek or Farscape or D&D or whatever. It isn't written by a sci-fi writer (as such), its written by a popular dramatist who writes for TV. Its 40-odd years of Dr Who itself. It more a British thing, more a kid's thing than it is Geek-ghetto thing possibly.
...well I reckon from the trailer and the fact that the last two episodes were thinly veiled 9/11/Bush allegory (destruction of national landmark by flying craft, blamed on pigs(?), weapons of mass destruction, the UN, fat-people-as-villains (ahem) and something about fuel).
We'll know for sure when they start threatening it with dogs and taking polaroids I guess.
I had a dual CPU pentium pro many years ago. For the scientific application I was using it for it was an absolute steal. I think the thing is to differentiate between whats for the consumer and whats for the specialist application. Unfortunately marketers are always keen to initially pretend they are marketing the solution to life the universe and everything when in fact its for a niche audience (or at least early adoption is).
I don't think thats true, or at least not in the sense you mean it. Managers are easy to find, but so are engineers actually (well, engineers are fairly tough, "computer people" a piece of cake). The problem is its very hard to find a good engineer, but its actually far harder to find a good manager and nearly impossible to find good corporate officers. For one thing look at the demographic. Universities churn out good IT people all the time, some of them exceptionally so. You want a senior manager you need someone who has been around for a couple of decades without fucking up, has a track record of delivering results etc. Much harder to recruit, your population is falling by the wayside year in and year out.
I'm in exactly the same position as yourself. Agree 100%. This guy actually wants to wrench the power to do this out of our hands because he thinks a hundred line quicky has to be engineered up to production standards when its only going to be used once or twice. If he was a priest he'd be one of those guys insisting the Bible should stay in Latin and Latin alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Some time ago some people managed to show that birds in appropriate conditions (e.g., skinner box type things) could following training on a set of paintings by two painters distinguish between novel paintings as to which of the two painters had painted them. This was roundly mocked in the press as a waste of money, ludicrous idea, waste of money etc. What good is a bird that recognise Monet?
Of course the aim of the work was actually to measure the mechanisms of learning, generalisation and action in response to complex visual stimuli in avian 'models' of various neurological conditions that impair such processes of learning and generalisation. Paintings by certain artists were simply useful stimuli for their purposes. Reading the papers its bloody obvious what the real agenda was but either the journalists couldn't understand them or just didn't bother. Instead they held them up to public ridicule for a news cycle or two, something that I don't doubt impacts on decision makers, politicians and so on.
Of course, once you have the model and you can demonstrate the behavior you can do things to the brain, test the effects of drugs, therapies etc. Of course the press is then full of talk of the end products of that research but have never to my knowledge had the decency to explain their bad reporting of the antecedent research that it was all based upon.
...its irresponsible to ommit the "obvious" recommendations. Simple as that. Where does a paper on the risks of power tool use stand on not saying one should be careful in their handling? The problem is some journalist idiot turns round and says, heh, they did this research into power tool usage and didn't even bother to mention you should be careful with them, how irresponsible. Given that the author of the article shows no understanding of what science is about and for, frankly one can't trust people like that not to think omission of a point isn't a rejection of it.
The most irresponsible writing is that article anyway. Given that in some states popular wisdom is creationism and the presence of extra-terrestrials its foolhardy to make the case that popular wisdom shouldn't be challenged.
Theres unions and unions.
I think the US model of trades unions isn't what I recognise in the European context where there is no inflexibility, closed shops are illegal and seniority has no special perks associated with it. So I'd like to suggest they take a look at how, say AMICUS in the UK (who represent amongst others IT workers via the IPTA) operate rather than thinking of the teamsters or the construction unions. I still don't always agree with what they do necessarily but from many posts here and in other stories, I just don't recognise the mindset or the behaviour ascribed to the North American unions (or what Slashdotters imagine those behaviours are) in my own experience.
I'm a member of a union myself, mainly for the discounts on car insurance I can get through them and legal representation coverage (as an academic I work with 'the public', ie. students from a position of power inequality so its useful in case any silly allegations or whatever were made). They also lobby for pay and conditions improvements along with the half dozen or so other unions in the sector. I guess if anything bizarrely unfair happened they'd have my back to some extent. But thats about it. If they strike I don't necessarily have to take part if I don't want to for example. Aside from paying subs I don't perceive any other hassle associated with being in a union. If anything my employer considers it a responsible thing for staff to do; if the worst happened they'd rather deal with an experienced union representative as a first stage in settling what might be a misunderstanding rather than have me turn up at 9am flanked by a lawyer or something.
No mod points but please accept a ghetto +5 insightful from me. I don't know whats with Slashdot lately but it seems that everyday theres a story whining about _some_other_groups union behaviour/industrial relations issue and then a few stories whining about IT working conditions, renumeration and out-sourcing. Can these people put two and two together? Hasn't happened yet...
England was quite often being attacked by Catholic terrorists intent on murdering us with bombs and incendiary devices
I am of course referring to the Irish Republic Army, its not really right to categorise them as "Catholic terrorists". Whilst sectarianism is central to their world view, I didn't mean to imply anything more generally about Catholicism.
True, but Fight Club is pre-9/11, the mighty North American audience wasn't duct taping itself into its basements back then. The world has changed. Even then it was actually a financial failure.
From an interview with the Mail on Sunday (UK):
"Basically, this show wasn't made for an English market. The accent I use has to be understood by an American audience."
The British audience initially suspected she was an American with a speech impediment until we realised the character was supposed to be from Manchester.
its bonfire night (not day) but bravo for even caring enough to mention it. V's costume is based on Guy Fawkes, who as part of a conspiracy attempted to blow up the houses of parliament by placing a large quantity of gunpowder in a cellar underneath them. This was to be ignited on the 5th of November, killing James the 1st as he officially opened that session of parliament. The aim was to incite a Catholic rebellion.
But Fawkes and the conspirators were captured (they tipped off a friend not to go the House on that day but the letter was intercepted) and tortured and, having confessed, were hung, drawn and quartered. On bonfire night its traditional to get a bonfire together and burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes upon it (and have fireworks and so on as well). For those interested in such things theres a number of conspiracy theories about the nature of conspiracy but I won't go into it here.
I mention this only to point out the sort of post-modernist (urgh, sorry) games Moore is playing by having V dress as Guy Fawkes and, well, blow up buildings. He's sort of dressed as the national villain but he's the hero. Only he's a terrorist, which confuses things even more because when V for Vendetta was written England was quite often being attacked by Catholic terrorists intent on murdering us with bombs and incendiary devices, so he had balls of iron in pulling it off really. The further point here being the Englishness of it is central to the understanding the character and the plot. If you try to make it less foreign to non-English people than you run the risk of missing the point, which may or may not be the case in the forthcoming film. Which is why "eggy breakfast" or whatever it is feels like a bad omen.
The odd spoiler follows.
In an interview I read recently, Moore says something along the lines that he doesn't think there will ever be a market for a film where the hero is an anarchist terrorist. Obviously we don't know whats in the film, but even though its been made I sort of share his skepticism. One wonders if V really does remain a terrorist who goes around blowing up public buildings in the film for no other reason than to make people think and feel freely...seems a little unlikely "in the current climate". My money is on them twisting that element to make it the struggle of the lone hero against the repressive regime, but the subtlety in what V's aims actually are, and the moral ambivalence, will be long gone (if you take out the motivation than V is undiscernable from say Rambo, both blow lots of things up to fight Bad Guys(tm) ). Also, is it really going to begin with the attempted rape of a underage prostitute by the secret police? And can we really trust Elrond to keep the damn mask on all the way through? A flashback (yes, yes, but look how its drawn) or an unmasking would ruin the whole thing. I can't think of many Hollywood stars who'd be prepared to do that as a leading actor (David Prowse will of course always be the exception, but he wasn't as such a Hollywood star, he was the Green Cross Code man!)
As to Hollywood getting England wrong, we are so well used to that, to be honest it barely registers anymore. It was going on long before any of us were born. One sort of grows up realising theres a special mythological England with bizarre Ye Olde customs and behaviour that exists in films and the one you actually live in. But then thats probably true for everyone across the world to some extent. And being the sinister villains rather than the lantern jawed hero is fine with me as well, they always have the best lines anyway. Our accents (e.g., the woman in Frasier...wtf?), our culture and our history are regularly and comprehensively pissed all over in the name of the North American market, but heh, as the Voice of Fate would say:
England Prevails.
See, thats not necessarily true.
At the Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port (UK car manufacturers) about ten years ago times were hard, and management tabled job losses. The union objected and at which point someone like you thinks, oh, greed again etc etc. Whining. A free lunch blah blah.
What actually happened was the unions together with the workforce came up with an alternative package of voluntary pay freezes, productivity improvements by cutting some conditions issues about the seperation of night shift work and some other employee efficiency suggestions. This isn't what would happen in backstabbing America where everyone is out for themselves and wants to be the one guy who keeps his job and gets a small pay rise for doing his destitute colleague's work, but at Vauxhalls the workforce via their unions as a whole decided was the better plan. Management agreed to give it a shot and it came to pass.
Result? Today everyone still has a job, there are excellent industrial relations in the plant (so the workers are happy) they have the most efficient car plant in the country (management are happy) and pay was unfrozen as market conditions allowed. Eventually Vauxhalls did have to offshore some of their work...but they didn't close the plant with the strong union, they closed the plant in Luton that had meekly buckled ten years previously. They were inefficient you see and in consolidating their UK activities they'd have needed to hire more people in Luton, at great expense. But thanks to the actions of the unions they had a fully staffed facility in Ellesmere Port to fall back on.
It can work it, I've seen it. Very similar things happened with unions in the steel industry but alas they can't be reported as success stories because in the end no amount of productivity gains could offset the American's predilection for crazy socialist-style protectionism, which is a great shame.
I agree with you about the laughable statement quoted: All unions do today is drive a wedge between employees and management. That wasn't even true at the time of the birth of trades unionism in England when the boss was known to all and wore a big black hat just in case you weren't sure. Further, management themselves are usually in professional unions in Europe, the problem is defence from the boardroom and faceless institutional shareholders whose only contact with the corporation is a cell in their spreadsheet and by definition care only about the bottom line. Health & safety and the implementation of national laws aren't things they care anything at all about.
I think what people in the US object to is the "closed shop". The fact its American synonym is "union shop" speaks volumes. Simply outlaw the closed shop (or if its already outlawed then actively impose the law) and problem solved. Workers representation without the perversions and excesses of American tradesunionism which is barely recognisable as the same thing we have here in the UK. I support trades unions but I must say what I read from the US is a bit shocking (the crap as regards teamsters and construction workers especially). Thats not trades unionism, thats mob rule at the behest of another boss you have to obey. It could be certain unions will need, frankly, dealing with. Thatcher did this in the 1980s in the UK. Its not nice but it can be done.
. Your objection to his analogy, i.e. that raping someone is not comparable to copyright infringement, would have made sense if he were proposing that people who infringed on copyrights should be raped as punishment. As you have translated for someone else I will return the favour by translating for you... comparing something as distastful as rape to mere copyright infringement even by analogy is distasteful. Your logic-chopping is neato, but unfortunately what you have there is a flawed analogy, nothing more. Your perspective is predicated on accepting the appropriateneess of a given analogy and in this case it doesn't fly, the two events differ in kind not just degree. Its not a question of absurdity or anything else. I hope you get my point, using an inappropriate analogy to support a trivial issue is like being a Nazi and running a death camp because you... oops.
is a legally mandated area of analysis in the chemical, heavy industrial, nuclear, transport and defence industries. Theres plenty of work out there. What you say is a truism; HCI is an academic term not used outside. As the grandparent gets right first time, Human Factors (or some variant with the word "safety" in often) is the industrial term, but much of it will be HCI in nature (where its referred to as Human Systems Engineering btw).
I'm beginning to wonder if the pendulum has swung to making underclocking the smarter move. Certainly I've never had as stable, cold and quiet a machine as when "Cool 'n' Quiet" (on my MSI NForce 4) is kicking in (dynamically lowering the multiplier). You might say I should have bought a slower cheaper machine in the first place but just sometimes (DAW stuff, those VSTis can be hungry beasts) I need the grunt, but not all the time.
It wasn't because they were American. Its because they were in Britain when many millions of British men where overseas being killed and also they were paid more than twice as much as British soldiers were and had access to things like nylon, sweets and so on at American bases. It lead to the GI bride phenomenon. You are taking a minor social issue (hey, no guy likes the fact he's taken away from his wife and is effectively replaced in his community by someone hideously rich which a direct line to otherwise unobtainable merchandise) and totally misrepresenting it. We're very grateful for American assistance, but if it had arrived when Churchill had first pleaded for it a lot more lives would have been saved.
...I have a degree in Pysch and a Masters in Eng. Without wishing to sound like I'm crowing I cannot keep up with the amount of business being put my way. I started off in academia but I was getting so much consultancy pressed on me that in the end it was pointless to fight it (thats actual consultancy not being a contractor btw). Theres a major skill gap in our field, everyone wants safety and HSE (or at least needs someone to sign off on them) but theres hardly anyone to do it. So get a qualification in Ergonomics (whatevers recognised in your territory) and your Psych/CS degree will make more sense.
How could an unrated comment be "over-rated". Jesus, this moderation system is well up the spout.
What is the mission of anti-piracy group that takes other people's (ie. the industry's) money? To reduce piracy. I don't think its as simple as saying they have a vested increase in emphasising the scale of the problem, one might argue that they have an equal vested interest in suggesting that their activities have actually done some good. As noted in another comment above, they've basically hedged their bets by not reporting on the relative increase in software piracy relative to the growth in internet usage (and a more sophisticated analysis might consider the extent of bandwidth growth and the nature of anti-piracy steps being taken, either in terms of copy protection or legislation/punishment in different localities).
In general I'm wary of the general wisdom that suggests that any advocacy organisation is automatically lying by the nature of who they are. Its a standard internet commentator kneejerk response thats as bad as blindly believing whatever you read.
this post comes under the powers of Spec-Ops 31 (Good taste re-education authority). The pair of you are safe this time, but I'd watch your step in future. Any mention of that hack Pratchett and I'll nick the pair of you OK?
[You won't believe this but I am actually posting to you from Swindon]
The landmark destruction thing I only wondered about because the Doctor draws attention to it at one point as being a bit unlikely to have been accidental (and it wasn't, the 'accident' was deliberate as it turned out). Also its not really imagery to accidentlly invoke, I would have thought someone at the BBC would have called it if it wasn't intentional. I didn't really get the TwoJags thing myself to honest, but fair enough.
As to the Dalek, well it does appear to be held by Americans. And Davies has said already that he hoped we'd feel pity for Dalek on one level. I'm wondering if its going to be a 'inhuman (ahem) treatment of our evil enemies is still wrong' kind of thing.
I've enjoyed it very much.
Perhaps what may not go down to well with the Slashdotesque approach to sci-fi is that Dr Who is both a national instituion in the UK and (most importantly to the producers of the present series) a children's programme that adults can enjoy. They've done superbly well in the latter category particularly, the last two episodes having in interesting and satirical plotline that adults can wink at eachother about but also featuring lots of scary aliens, explosions, running about and the longest sustained farting joke I've ever seen, for the kids. Best of all its quite scary in places but scary in a wholesome way. Its traditional to grow up terrified of Dr Who villains (I was, my parents were) and I'm glad to say its been retained in these days of worrying overly "about the children" and the tendency towards 'gross out' horror.
Its hard to put this clearly, but the point of reference for Dr Who isn't Battlestar Galactica or Startrek or Farscape or D&D or whatever. It isn't written by a sci-fi writer (as such), its written by a popular dramatist who writes for TV. Its 40-odd years of Dr Who itself. It more a British thing, more a kid's thing than it is Geek-ghetto thing possibly.
...well I reckon from the trailer and the fact that the last two episodes were thinly veiled 9/11/Bush allegory (destruction of national landmark by flying craft, blamed on pigs(?), weapons of mass destruction, the UN, fat-people-as-villains (ahem) and something about fuel).
We'll know for sure when they start threatening it with dogs and taking polaroids I guess.
I had a dual CPU pentium pro many years ago. For the scientific application I was using it for it was an absolute steal. I think the thing is to differentiate between whats for the consumer and whats for the specialist application. Unfortunately marketers are always keen to initially pretend they are marketing the solution to life the universe and everything when in fact its for a niche audience (or at least early adoption is).
I don't think thats true, or at least not in the sense you mean it. Managers are easy to find, but so are engineers actually (well, engineers are fairly tough, "computer people" a piece of cake). The problem is its very hard to find a good engineer, but its actually far harder to find a good manager and nearly impossible to find good corporate officers. For one thing look at the demographic. Universities churn out good IT people all the time, some of them exceptionally so. You want a senior manager you need someone who has been around for a couple of decades without fucking up, has a track record of delivering results etc. Much harder to recruit, your population is falling by the wayside year in and year out.
I'm in exactly the same position as yourself. Agree 100%. This guy actually wants to wrench the power to do this out of our hands because he thinks a hundred line quicky has to be engineered up to production standards when its only going to be used once or twice. If he was a priest he'd be one of those guys insisting the Bible should stay in Latin and Latin alone.