So very true. Human Resources Departments are the biggest single barrier to progress on Earth. They are often filled with defective individuals with all sorts of complexes and psychological problems (I wander what percentage of HR workers are clinically obese? High, I'd think). Nobody, nobody, ever wanted to grow up to work in HR. You only work there if you can't do much else.
They are holding employees back, they are holding whole corporations back back hiring people who fit into check lists. They are holding back invention by homogenizing the workplace.
Engineers with the lowest rated performance usually get that rating because they are thorough, methodical and diligent. In other words, they keep the poor code the other engineers write from making it into the shipping version. These are not the kind of people you want to fire.
The best performers typically sacrifice aspects of the job which aren't rated in order to achieve that rating. For example, they might write unmaintainable or difficult-to-understand code; may reinvent the wheel; might write code which is far more complicated than needed. While they meet their rated goals, their long term costs may exceed the benefit.
In most corporations that is most surely true. And therein you have the intrinsic problem with large organizations. "Performance" is almost always monetized incorrectly, with a very narrow view -- direct costs usually. Quality is hard to measure. It is however, quite possible.
Innocence? Since when was Twitter innocent. They've been guilty of insidious viral marketing for about a year. They've basically been spamming everything and anything they can to get the Twitter name out there.
So, this is poetic justice. Probably it was some forum user who had simply had enough of their sock puppetry that hacked them. The fact that their infrastucture has never been up to the task they needed it for, probably only made it easier to hack.
It is just another overvalued site that is most likely never to survive the current recession anyway.
The Great Depression was also the source of real rise of Hollywood. The current recession is hopefully a godsend to those of us who are filmmakers. Movies are a safer investment than property right now.
Permission to photograph has been needed in UK Underground stations for decades. I ran into this problem in Glasgow Underground in the early 80s. It's for safety reasons (at least originally -- the risk of flash distracting the driver, or the photographer accidentally pushing a passenger off the platform while being distracted.)
And in theory, to use a tripod anywhere in the UK you need permission from the local authorities.
here in the UK we have the British Transport Police, who police the railways and so forth, and are real cops.
Well, "real" is relative. While UK Transport Police have similar powers to normal police, they have lower entry requirements. They are, to all intents and purposes, failed cops.
You might try his imdb page instead. Most of the wikipedia article is stolen from there anyway (like almost all film / tv / actor bios on wikipedia) But at least all the info on imdb is verified -- unlike wikipedia.
What the hell is wrong with that woman? More to the point, what the hell is wrong with us? In any sane society a person like that would've been strung up from a lamppost a long time ago.
I think what is wrong with Citizen Smith is clear. If you look at her, she's a woman who is neither attractive nor intelligent. She's obese too. I wold guarantee she was unpopular in school. Her brooding resentment of her then peers has resulted in her current state of mind -- revenge. Her weight denotes her greediness and her insecurity. She's now taking it all out on the rest of us -- the people she's hated since she was a little girl.
Why anyone voted for such an obviously flawed person is beyond me. Now she's in power, she has flourished under the Neues Arbeit Regime much as Himmler and Goebbels did under Hitler, and for the same reasons.
As to the lamppost, ultimately that may be where we are headed. Dictatorships always fall eventually, and usually bloodily. She most surely would be one of the first against the wall.
IE 7, Opera, and Firefox are all pretty similar from a normal end-user perspective.
No. Here's why. Two words: adblock, flashblock.
No other single innovation on the web has changed my whole experience of the web. Casual user or not. The web is truly awful without these essential tools.
Actually as far as a medium to large organization is concerned, OpenOffice wouldn't be free in accounting terms. There would be training and admin costs on top of that -- which would initially be high. Training is expensive, and there would be a re-productivity curve for employees too, and thus a resultant increased cost again. It's probably a show stopper for many companies. While they do have to pay licences etc for MS Office, they don't really need to provide training in most corporations as Office knowledge is an expected skill to have, and most IT depts are familiar with it too.
Which brings me to the fact that the real key to having the oft-heralded Year Of Linux, is to have a Year of the Office Replacement first. (I'm not sure that Open Office is currently anywhere near that happening). MS Office / Exchange are the whole key to Microsoft's dominance, not the OS. Find a viable solution for that, and Linux will follow.
Excuse me, but don't they have free speech in the UK?
No. There is categorically no legal right to free speech in the UK. There is also no right to remain silent either. In the 1980's the UK government censored the voices of the IRA (for good old fashioned terrorism reasons). This resulted in TV stations trying to get around it with a loophole, by using the voices of actors.
Also, if you remain silent in court this can be assumed as evidence of guilt.
People assume the UK has always been free, however in truth it never has been. It's just that recently it has become terrifyingly unfree, and becoming more so every day that the Neues Arbeit Regime remains in power.
Yeah... as a professional filmmaker, the "HD" abilities of SLR's is a little interesting. I'm all for new advances in tech, and allowing new people and new ideas to enter the field more easily. I can see some situations where this could be useful. For example, an SLR 10mm lens is vastly cheaper than that equivalent for a professional video camera. For (very) short scenes, this could be useful. It may be also useful for tight spaces or for action sequences to have the SLR.
However, the grandiose claims in the article that this will result in lots of arty movies from pro photographers is probably nonsense. The quality of the "HD" from these cameras is not yet really at a professional standard. And stills photography and motion picture photography are really quite different skills. (I guess it might result in long, boring static shots from still photographers, who think this is arty though -- gawd help us all.)
Plus the fact, one of the main differences in conversations you have between professional filmmakers and amateurs, is that amateurs always boast about their gear, and want to talk tech. Whereas professionals talk about light quality, camera moves, filters, gobos, and creative things you can do with fairy lights, ikea lamp shades, skateboards and tennis balls.
A million videos on Youtube are conclusive proof that you can have all the tech you want, but if you don't understand light and camera moves, you will produce low quality crap.
However, for those who have talent and new ideas, these cameras could be helpful.
There's several reasons why magazines and other media look back at this time of year (or any time of the year, for a top 10 kind of thing)
1. It's easy to do. At this time of year, journalists have better things to do than research and write new things. Top 10s are copy-paste jobs.
2. Ad revenue. Top 10's are almost always viral marketing. There's always a few WTF? entries. Those are the ones that the whole article is built around to sock-puppet promote.
3. They are controversial. So, they drive up hits.
4. Oddly, people like them. They are very popular content.
I suspect that very few Chrome users are former Safari users. Just simply because Safari has very little penetration outwith Mac users, and Chrome isn't available for Mac.
Personally, I can't wait until Chrome is available for Mac. I will be switching from Firefox pretty quickly. Firefox has never worked well on the Mac, although the current version is much better than the horrid mess that was Firefox 2.0.
I don't see any issue with Google competing with Mozilla on this. May the best browser win. If they build the best product they can (i.e. not bloated with awesomebar-esque gimmicks), then people will choose that browser. It's why I switched to Firefox in the first place. And why I will switch away from it, when something better becomes available.
I wonder if someone called King Canute works for Warner Brothers.
Admittedly, there is an upside to this, if it removes the many thousands of "video" slideshows from Youtube. You know the ones: lots of pics of a celebrity, unrelated music track, and tagged spammed into oblivion. You click on it thinking it's what you are looking for and... no...
Video is video. Slideshows aren't. Someone should set up Powerpointtube. Ken Burns has a lot to answer for.
Ad revenue cannot and should not sustain newspapers or television.
Utter and complete nonsense. Almost every TV company in the free world is ad supported. Most usually successfully, until recently anyway. You are aware that many TV executives get paid in the millions?
The only reason Newspapers and TV companies are struggling is because they are failing to take advantage of new technology. They cling to 1950's business models -- Neilsen ratings, distribution and syndication methods that have remained unchanged for decades. And they're catering to parochial local audiences -- completely failing to understand global reach.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that there are not TV companies broadcasting shows to global language groups, regardless of nationality. There is no reason people in Australia, nor the UK should wait 3-6-12 months to see new shows first broadcast in the US. There is no reason -- in a global world with international companies that deals can't be struck with advertisers to reach audiences better. The internet allows then to target market, and understand audiences much better than the print, and cathode ray based media. This will even allow cult and special interest shows to be saved, and not canceled too early in their run -- since they will be counting on a global audience -- not just an unrepresentative sample in one country.
There is money to be made out there from supporting entertainment by advertising. MORE money than is currently being utilized. It is entirely their own fault that Newspapers and TV nets are struggling. The sooner they realize we've all moved in the 21st Century the better.
It's wise to trust nothing really. Mainstream media is in many ways much more honest than Wikipedia. Most Media nets have their politics front and center. You know where they are coming from.
The trouble with wikipedia is that, it continually (fraudulently) touts itself as reliable, free and an information source that "anyone" can edit (a blatant lie -- they ban people every day for the unexplained self-concocted reason of "vandalism" (and ban anyone else who happens to be part of that dynamic IP address block too.)). Wikipedia is probably more biased and controlled in many cases -- especially in topical or sensitive areas -- than any media outlet or journalist. You don't know who the wikipedians are, nor what their agenda is, but you do know that many of them have been proven to be corrupt.
In contrast, you know exactly where Bill O'Reilly is coming from. I trust him more than anyone on wikipedia. Because I know what he's about.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent insightful.
So very true. Human Resources Departments are the biggest single barrier to progress on Earth. They are often filled with defective individuals with all sorts of complexes and psychological problems (I wander what percentage of HR workers are clinically obese? High, I'd think). Nobody, nobody, ever wanted to grow up to work in HR. You only work there if you can't do much else.
They are holding employees back, they are holding whole corporations back back hiring people who fit into check lists. They are holding back invention by homogenizing the workplace.
No small wonder employees steal.
I'm referring to Twitter. Whose marketing dept should probably be the first against the wall in any revolution.
In most corporations that is most surely true. And therein you have the intrinsic problem with large organizations. "Performance" is almost always monetized incorrectly, with a very narrow view -- direct costs usually. Quality is hard to measure. It is however, quite possible.
Innocence? Since when was Twitter innocent. They've been guilty of insidious viral marketing for about a year. They've basically been spamming everything and anything they can to get the Twitter name out there.
So, this is poetic justice. Probably it was some forum user who had simply had enough of their sock puppetry that hacked them. The fact that their infrastucture has never been up to the task they needed it for, probably only made it easier to hack.
It is just another overvalued site that is most likely never to survive the current recession anyway.
I bet the Vista development team are increasingly nervous.
The Great Depression was also the source of real rise of Hollywood. The current recession is hopefully a godsend to those of us who are filmmakers. Movies are a safer investment than property right now.
Permission to photograph has been needed in UK Underground stations for decades. I ran into this problem in Glasgow Underground in the early 80s. It's for safety reasons (at least originally -- the risk of flash distracting the driver, or the photographer accidentally pushing a passenger off the platform while being distracted.)
And in theory, to use a tripod anywhere in the UK you need permission from the local authorities.
Well, "real" is relative. While UK Transport Police have similar powers to normal police, they have lower entry requirements. They are, to all intents and purposes, failed cops.
You might try his imdb page instead. Most of the wikipedia article is stolen from there anyway (like almost all film / tv / actor bios on wikipedia) But at least all the info on imdb is verified -- unlike wikipedia.
I always thought that Clippy was born out of one of Ballmer's experiments in the basement of the Microsoft lair.
One night during a bad storm a customer support rep disappeared, and a kitten, and a chair... next day, Clippy was born.
Something along those lines?
I think what is wrong with Citizen Smith is clear. If you look at her, she's a woman who is neither attractive nor intelligent. She's obese too. I wold guarantee she was unpopular in school. Her brooding resentment of her then peers has resulted in her current state of mind -- revenge. Her weight denotes her greediness and her insecurity. She's now taking it all out on the rest of us -- the people she's hated since she was a little girl.
Why anyone voted for such an obviously flawed person is beyond me. Now she's in power, she has flourished under the Neues Arbeit Regime much as Himmler and Goebbels did under Hitler, and for the same reasons.
As to the lamppost, ultimately that may be where we are headed. Dictatorships always fall eventually, and usually bloodily. She most surely would be one of the first against the wall.
So basically what this article is really saying is, that by 2020 the West's gradual transition to total fascism will be near completion.
No. Here's why. Two words: adblock, flashblock.
No other single innovation on the web has changed my whole experience of the web. Casual user or not. The web is truly awful without these essential tools.
Hey! I'm a sick pervert, you insensitive clod!
Actually as far as a medium to large organization is concerned, OpenOffice wouldn't be free in accounting terms. There would be training and admin costs on top of that -- which would initially be high. Training is expensive, and there would be a re-productivity curve for employees too, and thus a resultant increased cost again. It's probably a show stopper for many companies. While they do have to pay licences etc for MS Office, they don't really need to provide training in most corporations as Office knowledge is an expected skill to have, and most IT depts are familiar with it too.
Which brings me to the fact that the real key to having the oft-heralded Year Of Linux, is to have a Year of the Office Replacement first. (I'm not sure that Open Office is currently anywhere near that happening). MS Office / Exchange are the whole key to Microsoft's dominance, not the OS. Find a viable solution for that, and Linux will follow.
Boobies, nah, I'm an (_!_) man.
No. There is categorically no legal right to free speech in the UK. There is also no right to remain silent either. In the 1980's the UK government censored the voices of the IRA (for good old fashioned terrorism reasons). This resulted in TV stations trying to get around it with a loophole, by using the voices of actors.
Also, if you remain silent in court this can be assumed as evidence of guilt.
People assume the UK has always been free, however in truth it never has been. It's just that recently it has become terrifyingly unfree, and becoming more so every day that the Neues Arbeit Regime remains in power.
It hasn't been 30 years. It's been 31. The movie was released on 25th May 1977 in the US, and 27th October 1977 in Australia.
Yeah... as a professional filmmaker, the "HD" abilities of SLR's is a little interesting. I'm all for new advances in tech, and allowing new people and new ideas to enter the field more easily. I can see some situations where this could be useful. For example, an SLR 10mm lens is vastly cheaper than that equivalent for a professional video camera. For (very) short scenes, this could be useful. It may be also useful for tight spaces or for action sequences to have the SLR.
However, the grandiose claims in the article that this will result in lots of arty movies from pro photographers is probably nonsense. The quality of the "HD" from these cameras is not yet really at a professional standard. And stills photography and motion picture photography are really quite different skills. (I guess it might result in long, boring static shots from still photographers, who think this is arty though -- gawd help us all.)
Plus the fact, one of the main differences in conversations you have between professional filmmakers and amateurs, is that amateurs always boast about their gear, and want to talk tech. Whereas professionals talk about light quality, camera moves, filters, gobos, and creative things you can do with fairy lights, ikea lamp shades, skateboards and tennis balls.
A million videos on Youtube are conclusive proof that you can have all the tech you want, but if you don't understand light and camera moves, you will produce low quality crap.
However, for those who have talent and new ideas, these cameras could be helpful.
There's several reasons why magazines and other media look back at this time of year (or any time of the year, for a top 10 kind of thing)
1. It's easy to do. At this time of year, journalists have better things to do than research and write new things. Top 10s are copy-paste jobs.
2. Ad revenue. Top 10's are almost always viral marketing. There's always a few WTF? entries. Those are the ones that the whole article is built around to sock-puppet promote.
3. They are controversial. So, they drive up hits.
4. Oddly, people like them. They are very popular content.
I suspect that very few Chrome users are former Safari users. Just simply because Safari has very little penetration outwith Mac users, and Chrome isn't available for Mac.
Personally, I can't wait until Chrome is available for Mac. I will be switching from Firefox pretty quickly. Firefox has never worked well on the Mac, although the current version is much better than the horrid mess that was Firefox 2.0.
I don't see any issue with Google competing with Mozilla on this. May the best browser win. If they build the best product they can (i.e. not bloated with awesomebar-esque gimmicks), then people will choose that browser. It's why I switched to Firefox in the first place. And why I will switch away from it, when something better becomes available.
Citizens of Orwellstralia, it's about time you rose up and revolted. It may be already too late.
I wonder if someone called King Canute works for Warner Brothers.
Admittedly, there is an upside to this, if it removes the many thousands of "video" slideshows from Youtube. You know the ones: lots of pics of a celebrity, unrelated music track, and tagged spammed into oblivion. You click on it thinking it's what you are looking for and... no...
Video is video. Slideshows aren't. Someone should set up Powerpointtube. Ken Burns has a lot to answer for.
Utter and complete nonsense. Almost every TV company in the free world is ad supported. Most usually successfully, until recently anyway. You are aware that many TV executives get paid in the millions?
The only reason Newspapers and TV companies are struggling is because they are failing to take advantage of new technology. They cling to 1950's business models -- Neilsen ratings, distribution and syndication methods that have remained unchanged for decades. And they're catering to parochial local audiences -- completely failing to understand global reach.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that there are not TV companies broadcasting shows to global language groups, regardless of nationality. There is no reason people in Australia, nor the UK should wait 3-6-12 months to see new shows first broadcast in the US. There is no reason -- in a global world with international companies that deals can't be struck with advertisers to reach audiences better. The internet allows then to target market, and understand audiences much better than the print, and cathode ray based media. This will even allow cult and special interest shows to be saved, and not canceled too early in their run -- since they will be counting on a global audience -- not just an unrepresentative sample in one country.
There is money to be made out there from supporting entertainment by advertising. MORE money than is currently being utilized. It is entirely their own fault that Newspapers and TV nets are struggling. The sooner they realize we've all moved in the 21st Century the better.
That's not very wise.
It's wise to trust nothing really. Mainstream media is in many ways much more honest than Wikipedia. Most Media nets have their politics front and center. You know where they are coming from.
The trouble with wikipedia is that, it continually (fraudulently) touts itself as reliable, free and an information source that "anyone" can edit (a blatant lie -- they ban people every day for the unexplained self-concocted reason of "vandalism" (and ban anyone else who happens to be part of that dynamic IP address block too.)). Wikipedia is probably more biased and controlled in many cases -- especially in topical or sensitive areas -- than any media outlet or journalist. You don't know who the wikipedians are, nor what their agenda is, but you do know that many of them have been proven to be corrupt.
In contrast, you know exactly where Bill O'Reilly is coming from. I trust him more than anyone on wikipedia. Because I know what he's about.