It's not just video games. Electronics are "dumbed down" for the american consumer. There are craploads of electronics they sell in Japan and sell like mad that we do not see here.
It's not just electronics either. Look at cars, and how the automatic transmission dominates the market. In most other countries, auto transmissions are rare and actually cost more as an 'optional extra'.
The casino won't necessarily win more money from you if you play poker. Of course, they take their rake, but if you are a semi-comptetent player, you can be a reasonably consistent winner from the other players at the table. The whole 'poker is a game of skill' perspective is one of the arguments being used to try and prevent internet poker being made illegal in the US.
My personal favorite was Jonathan Linden, better known as Johnny Rotten from the popular punk band, the "Sex Pistols." He was detained because "Linden" is phonetically similar to "Ladin."
Jonathan Linden ? Have you youngsters no idea about the old days ? It's John (Joseph) Lydon dammit, Lydon !
Some methdologies develop each subsystem fully then integrate them in a big bang at the end. Agile practitioners develop whatever parts of each subsystem are needed to support the features in the current iteration. If you think of the subsystems as layers, the vertical slice is the part of each layer that is being developed in the current iteration. The features should be prioritized in order of importance, so each iteration is working on the next most important feature or features. The idea behind all this is to always have some sort of working application.
Where this can run into trouble is when a team thinks this means no thought has to be given to the overall architecture of an application. They steam ahead designing small slices of functional code, in the appropriate priority, until they hit a new requirement that suddenly doesn't fit into the existing structure.
In the UK lots of homless people sell a magazine called the Big issue as a method of making some money.. I am not sure if this is something which is done in the states - but they buy the magazines at say 25 pence each and sell then for £1 allowing them to make 75p per magazine sold - this is done to help them get back up and running again. Some of these people though don't look like they need to be selling the magazines - there is a guy who sells this magazine near my office who is always decked out in the latest running shoes which much cost £100 - I can't help but think that we often help the wrong people.
The Big Issue actually originated in the US, but for various reasons was not very successful. The UK model seems to work a lot better. One of the problems the vendors have, however, is when people see them becoming successful, they don't want to contribute anymore ! They take the attitude that if, somehow, you manage to earn enough to get yourself of the streets, you are cheating them by continuing to earn your keep through selling the publication.
I'd say that I have a pretty healthy sense of humor, but I honestly didn't find any of the linked comics or random ones I looked at remotely funny. I can't be alone here.
Seems like a Gary Larson rip-off, but without the humour.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
--Winston Churchill
And he got it right too...
But there are quite a few democtratic variants, all with pro and cons. The US, where I currently reside, has the electoral college. The UK, where I used to reside has 'first-past-the-post', but with more political parties to choose from. Scotland, where I am from originally, has a form of proportional representation (with even more parties to choose from).
As a green card holder, I pay taxes in the US, but can't vote here. As a British citizen, I don't pay taxes in the UK, but am entitled to a postal vote. As a Scotsman born and bred, I don't pay taxes in Scotland, and am not entitled to vote there either.
...don't use guns. At least not according to the latest BBC review http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5040188.stm/. Apparently, dropping chandeliers on the mark is a more artistic way of achieving the perfect kill.
First, these are NOT once-in-a-lifetime events. It is occuring more frequently than is generally known. And as the skies get more crowded, it will happen more.
Interestingly, I attended some training last week where a Harvard prof. was talking about team dynamics. As part of the research his team had performed they discovered that something like 60-70% of 'incidents' occured the first time a flight crew flew together.
The conclusion was that, from a safety perspective, you should keep crew members together in the same team. However, from an economic perspective, the airlines need to constantly rotate crew members to ensure maximum utilization of their time.
Having been too lazy these past few months to uninstall their 'Security Suite' this flaw was the motivation to dump the suckers and stick Free AVG on my system. I always knew the Symantec solution was a resource hog, but didn't realize quite how much until I replaced it.
However, "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code" are certainly better pulp fiction, despite the poor writing style.
If you call taking the opposite oppinion of most respected historians on a hoax from the 1950s "considered research", maybe.
I didn't call it 'considered research', I called it 'pulp fiction'. However, regardless of the underlying theory, there are certainly more facts in it than in 'Digital Fortress' i.e. > 0.
I doubt that would help all that much. I've never read the book, but I read two of his other books in a reading group a few years back. Damn, he has to be one of the worst writers ever. Neither plot made any sense, the 'science' in them (both were considered intelligent novels by the critics which you could learn a lot from) was complete bull, the stories were predictible, the characters flat, the dialog worse than anything from the first three Star Wars movies... If the Da Vinci Code (shouldn't it be The Leonardo Code anyways? Da Vinci was neither his name nor his surname...) was only half as bad as either of those I fully understand what pissed off the Catholic Church.
If you mean books like "Digital Fortress", then I agree - absolutely horrible in every respect. However, "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code" are certainly better pulp fiction, despite the poor writing style.
Or maybe airlines should just offer special areas in the plane for people that do not want to be disturbed. Would you pay 3times the ticket price for a private area free from the rest of humanity? It works on boats and trains. Cheap tickets you sit with everyone else, expensive tickets you got your own space.
Right idea, wrong way round. If you want to sit and yell into your cell phone ("I'M ON THE PLANE !!!!"), then you should pay 3 or 4 times more to sit in an isolated compartment.
But yeah it is an intresting social experiment, how much are people willing to annoy a group for their own needs and how willing is the group to put up with the needs of an individual.
It's been running for the last 10 years or so on, amongst others, Metro-North trains into NYC. The results are pretty conclusive. There are vast amounts of people who are inconsiderate asshats.
If you all your auditors did was read your policies and procedures, and look at your checklists, then they were delinquent. The PCAOB requires that the auditor also performs its own *independent* test of the controls.
Having said that, I agree a lot of the SOX requirements are burdensome to say the least. The biggest problem was that during the first couple of years, the regulators wouldn't come out and say exactly what they though was required to fulfull 404 requirements. As a result, most folks took a conservative approach.
As an example, you are only required to document and test your key controls. A few clients I worked with, however, had decided to document and test every control they could identify in their organization, which resulted in an effort orders of magnitude greater than required.
The thing that's nagging at me is its 'smithycode', not 'smithcode'. Why? It makes it ten characters long which makes me wonder if smithycode is an anagram of anything.
Well it is a (not very clever) anagram of I code myths.
At least in the NYC area. I travel in to the city by train. I usually travel at peak hours when the trains run frequent express services. If I was to come in later and leave later (or earlier), the trains are less frequent and stop at many more stations along the way.
On Wednesday, company officials issued a statement that noted the technology also enables the opposite: allowing viewers to watch television without advertising. The intention was never to force viewers to watch ads against their will, the company said of the technology.
"We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads," the company stated. "It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services."
The company also said it had no plans to use the technology in any of its products.
Philips wanted to provide the technology and seek the patent only as part of the broader developments within the industry, Philips spokesman Andre Manning said.
As well as the dark side, it's power can be used for good.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just video games. Electronics are "dumbed down" for the american consumer. There are craploads of electronics they sell in Japan and sell like mad that we do not see here.
It's not just electronics either. Look at cars, and how the automatic transmission dominates the market. In most other countries, auto transmissions are rare and actually cost more as an 'optional extra'.
The casino won't necessarily win more money from you if you play poker. Of course, they take their rake, but if you are a semi-comptetent player, you can be a reasonably consistent winner from the other players at the table. The whole 'poker is a game of skill' perspective is one of the arguments being used to try and prevent internet poker being made illegal in the US.
Actually, Kmart own Sears
And Citibank owns Sears credit card business - and Sears issues a Mastercard which could be used at KMart.
My personal favorite was Jonathan Linden, better known as Johnny Rotten from the popular punk band, the "Sex Pistols." He was detained because "Linden" is phonetically similar to "Ladin."
Jonathan Linden ? Have you youngsters no idea about the old days ? It's John (Joseph) Lydon dammit, Lydon !
Some methdologies develop each subsystem fully then integrate them in a big bang at the end. Agile practitioners develop whatever parts of each subsystem are needed to support the features in the current iteration. If you think of the subsystems as layers, the vertical slice is the part of each layer that is being developed in the current iteration. The features should be prioritized in order of importance, so each iteration is working on the next most important feature or features. The idea behind all this is to always have some sort of working application.
Where this can run into trouble is when a team thinks this means no thought has to be given to the overall architecture of an application. They steam ahead designing small slices of functional code, in the appropriate priority, until they hit a new requirement that suddenly doesn't fit into the existing structure.
Hell, I usually see stories in the New York Times before I see them on Slashdot.
Slashdot - Yesterday's News, The Day After Tomorrow !
In the UK lots of homless people sell a magazine called the Big issue as a method of making some money.. I am not sure if this is something which is done in the states - but they buy the magazines at say 25 pence each and sell then for £1 allowing them to make 75p per magazine sold - this is done to help them get back up and running again. Some of these people though don't look like they need to be selling the magazines - there is a guy who sells this magazine near my office who is always decked out in the latest running shoes which much cost £100 - I can't help but think that we often help the wrong people.
The Big Issue actually originated in the US, but for various reasons was not very successful. The UK model seems to work a lot better. One of the problems the vendors have, however, is when people see them becoming successful, they don't want to contribute anymore ! They take the attitude that if, somehow, you manage to earn enough to get yourself of the streets, you are cheating them by continuing to earn your keep through selling the publication.
Would it be arrogant to assume that US/UK people make up the largest slice of people here? If not, MPG is a sensible unit to use.
Of course, 1 US Gallon 1 UK Gallon, so MPG needs to be more clearly defined even for the Atlantic Cousins.
I'd say that I have a pretty healthy sense of humor, but I honestly didn't find any of the linked comics or random ones I looked at remotely funny. I can't be alone here.
Seems like a Gary Larson rip-off, but without the humour.
and the activities I participate in are reasonably close by train or car.
Train ? Did you not hear about what happened in Madrid ? If there is one form of transport that is wide open to attack it is the rail service.
But there are quite a few democtratic variants, all with pro and cons. The US, where I currently reside, has the electoral college. The UK, where I used to reside has 'first-past-the-post', but with more political parties to choose from. Scotland, where I am from originally, has a form of proportional representation (with even more parties to choose from).
As a green card holder, I pay taxes in the US, but can't vote here. As a British citizen, I don't pay taxes in the UK, but am entitled to a postal vote. As a Scotsman born and bred, I don't pay taxes in Scotland, and am not entitled to vote there either.
...don't use guns. At least not according to the latest BBC review http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5040188.stm/ . Apparently, dropping chandeliers on the mark is a more artistic way of achieving the perfect kill.
If you don't like the names, make up your own
Web Returns
Web Forever
Web and Robin
The Web and The Furious
Web Begins
Web Trinity
Then when George Lucas gets his hands on these, we can expect the prequels like Archie, Gopher and Cello.
First, these are NOT once-in-a-lifetime events. It is occuring more frequently than is generally known. And as the skies get more crowded, it will happen more.
Interestingly, I attended some training last week where a Harvard prof. was talking about team dynamics. As part of the research his team had performed they discovered that something like 60-70% of 'incidents' occured the first time a flight crew flew together.
The conclusion was that, from a safety perspective, you should keep crew members together in the same team. However, from an economic perspective, the airlines need to constantly rotate crew members to ensure maximum utilization of their time.
Just make sure you're clear on which meal you want.
The diatetic meal is very, very different from the diabetic meal.
And the dianetic one comes with a free e-meter in every pack.
Having been too lazy these past few months to uninstall their 'Security Suite' this flaw was the motivation to dump the suckers and stick Free AVG on my system. I always knew the Symantec solution was a resource hog, but didn't realize quite how much until I replaced it.
Don't tell me everything will be Google(TM) Dell(TM) edition!
I believe this combo is going by the name "Doogle".
However, "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code" are certainly better pulp fiction, despite the poor writing style.
If you call taking the opposite oppinion of most respected historians on a hoax from the 1950s "considered research", maybe.
I didn't call it 'considered research', I called it 'pulp fiction'. However, regardless of the underlying theory, there are certainly more facts in it than in 'Digital Fortress' i.e. > 0.
I doubt that would help all that much. I've never read the book, but I read two of his other books in a reading group a few years back. Damn, he has to be one of the worst writers ever. Neither plot made any sense, the 'science' in them (both were considered intelligent novels by the critics which you could learn a lot from) was complete bull, the stories were predictible, the characters flat, the dialog worse than anything from the first three Star Wars movies... If the Da Vinci Code (shouldn't it be The Leonardo Code anyways? Da Vinci was neither his name nor his surname...) was only half as bad as either of those I fully understand what pissed off the Catholic Church.
If you mean books like "Digital Fortress", then I agree - absolutely horrible in every respect. However, "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code" are certainly better pulp fiction, despite the poor writing style.
Or maybe airlines should just offer special areas in the plane for people that do not want to be disturbed. Would you pay 3times the ticket price for a private area free from the rest of humanity? It works on boats and trains. Cheap tickets you sit with everyone else, expensive tickets you got your own space.
Right idea, wrong way round. If you want to sit and yell into your cell phone ("I'M ON THE PLANE !!!!"), then you should pay 3 or 4 times more to sit in an isolated compartment.
But yeah it is an intresting social experiment, how much are people willing to annoy a group for their own needs and how willing is the group to put up with the needs of an individual.
It's been running for the last 10 years or so on, amongst others, Metro-North trains into NYC. The results are pretty conclusive. There are vast amounts of people who are inconsiderate asshats.
If you all your auditors did was read your policies and procedures, and look at your checklists, then they were delinquent. The PCAOB requires that the auditor also performs its own *independent* test of the controls.
Having said that, I agree a lot of the SOX requirements are burdensome to say the least. The biggest problem was that during the first couple of years, the regulators wouldn't come out and say exactly what they though was required to fulfull 404 requirements. As a result, most folks took a conservative approach.
As an example, you are only required to document and test your key controls. A few clients I worked with, however, had decided to document and test every control they could identify in their organization, which resulted in an effort orders of magnitude greater than required.
The thing that's nagging at me is its 'smithycode', not 'smithcode'. Why? It makes it ten characters long which makes me wonder if smithycode is an anagram of anything.
Well it is a (not very clever) anagram of I code myths .
Did I forget anything?
You forgot that the apparent bad guy is the good guy in the end, and the helpful good non-hero character is the criminal mastermind.
I think you are confusing this with Scooby Doo.
At least in the NYC area. I travel in to the city by train. I usually travel at peak hours when the trains run frequent express services. If I was to come in later and leave later (or earlier), the trains are less frequent and stop at many more stations along the way.
Of course, when I can, I work from home.
On Wednesday, company officials issued a statement that noted the technology also enables the opposite: allowing viewers to watch television without advertising. The intention was never to force viewers to watch ads against their will, the company said of the technology.
"We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads," the company stated. "It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services."
The company also said it had no plans to use the technology in any of its products.
Philips wanted to provide the technology and seek the patent only as part of the broader developments within the industry, Philips spokesman Andre Manning said.
As well as the dark side, it's power can be used for good.