Not benign - there's nothing much benign about malaria, for instance. It's not about not affecting your host, it's about not killing it, and that's true of malware as much as it is of a biological parasite.
If it wasn't for outsourcing to places of lower labour costs (or no labour costs at all when machines take over from men), we'd probably all still be subsistence farmers. It's just a question of moving with the times. There'll always be somebody who's willing and qualified to do a job for less than the man who's doing it at the minute, whether it's in the same town/state/country or a different one. And there'll always be an employer who'll take him on to save costs.
So where does that leave the guy who's just been priced out of the market? Well, he can sit around and moan about all the jobs being shipped out. Or he can get up and do something to differentiate himself from the people competing for his job. Get more qualifications, go somewhere where his skills are in greater demand, whatever.
It's just a fact of life that the demands of the labour market are going to change over time. What was a well-paid, secure job eventually becomes cheap labour. If you don't want to get carried downstream, you've got to swim against the tide and develop the skills which are in demand by the market. Short-term, there'll always be losers, but overall everyone benefits in the end.
If you start throwing up barriers, you end up isolated and backward and eventually the whole thing collapses in on you.
They used to come round fairly regularly at my previous employer - once every 18 months or so at the most. The odds of you as an individual getting picked on were fairly low, as there were 3000-odd people there, and they announced in advance which groups they would be targeting, prompting a frantic rush to make sure everything was in order. I never got done by them myself.
Needless to say, they were the most boring bunch of fuckers you could ever meet in your life, sitting there with their check lists asking you to show them evidence that you had a valid process in place for this, that and the other. I'll never understand what motivates a person to earn a living by picking holes in other people's work and never producing anything of any worth themselves. Anyway, after a couple of days of mind-numbing interrogation, they'd issue a report on what needs to be improved based on what they'd seen. They never found anything significant enough to take the certification away, but I suppose everybody can always do a bit better.
So yes, they do exist. But you're quite right that ISO 9001 compliance is usually a facade thrown together days before the inspectors weigh in, and hastily torn down again once they're gone so people can get back to Getting Stuff Done.
Free at the point of use. So you don't have to worry yourself sick about what will happen if you get sick. A healthy populace is in everyone's interest, and worth shelling out for. I mean, surely even the most bloody-minded capitalist plutocrat would agree that if your workforce isn't in good health, it isn't productive?
I'm only theorising here, but a big part of the reason for the Speccy's popularity in the UK was because it was cheap compared with the C64. Most people couldn't justify spending all that money on a computer in the days when they were little more than interesting curiosities. In the same way that your first car's usually an old rustbucket, your first computer was a Spectrum. And everybody develops an irrational love for their first car, right?
Technically it was utter turd by comparison, with its attribute clash and non-existent sound chip meaning you had to interrupt the CPU to produce beepy noises whilst the C64 had the fantastic SID, but we Brits love a plucky underdog, and this inferiority made the humble Speccy a very endearing machine in a funny sort of way, and "Uncle" Clive Sinclair a legend in the eyes of a generation of a certain age. Amstrad, on the other hand, were despised by an awful lot of people for what they did to Sinclair. To this day I've never bought anything the cheapskate bastards have made, in fact.
Anyway, in America your computer-buying public probably had a bit more money and could afford to splash out on a C64. Plus you don't really do the underdog thing like us, do you?
I'm not sure, but I think that's down to the shops. If it sits on the shelf for months on end, they need to charge more for it than things that they turn over quickly, because at the end of the day they can only keep so many CDs in stock, and that floor space costs money.
Of course, it's all wrong. Here in the UK there's a smallish chain of shops called Fopp whose USP is that they always have hundreds of great albums for five or seven pounds. So you go in and you buy half a dozen CDs you didn't know you wanted, and they're the very same CDs that are gathering dust in the Virgin Megastore up the road.
And the beauty of this is that it's self-perpetuating - you buy a CD just to see if it's any good, and because it's so cheap it's no big deal if it's not. You find you like it, you go back and buy that artist or label's entire back catalogue. Fopp's worse than a crack dealer, basically.
Heh. Check the pasty, white, deluded American thinking he can come to Europe without every man jack that sees him coming tutting and muttering "fucking Yanks" under his breath...
I don't mean any offence by this at all, but most Americans are a total self-awareness vacuum when it comes to matters such as this. You can always spot them in the UK because they're wearing raincoats, no matter what the weather. Nobody else wears raincoats. And then there's the size thing. And the loud thing. And...
It's quite endearing, really. Like when your country cousin joins you in the big city for a night out.
I disagree. American TV shows are noticeably less sharp-looking compared with what's produced this side of the pond. And I don't think it's solely down to whatever they do to make the signal PAL-compatible - watching TV in America, it looked pretty similar. It's even apparent with live broadcasts - the 2002 World Cup, played in Japan and South Korea, both NTSC companies, produced far worse pictures than those from this year's European Championships in Portugal.
I find that digital TV totally goes to pieces when showing something with coloured studio lights, such as a musical performance on Top Of The Pops or something like that. The screen goes blocky as hell and it doesn't seem to like the purples and blues these lights tend to give off. It's a total mess. I don't know if there's anything that can be done to sort it out, but putting such an obviously flawed system into widespread deployment seems pretty stupid to me.
Throttle by wire's mostly about emissions control. It sits between your foot and the engine and it has the final say what happens to the fuel mixture. If you suddenly boot it, it won't just open the throttle wide like a mechanical throttle, as this would be liable to result in unburnt fuel, which plays hell with your catalytic converter. It'll do things in a slightly more controlled manner which you'll hardly even notice.
Steer-by-wire would mean you could eliminate all the complicated power-assisted steering mechanicals, I suppose, and thus make the car slightly more economical, and less prone to mechanical failure. Plus, to change the gearing of the system would be a matter of flicking a switch, so I suppose you could use the same component in different cars by changing the parameters, leading to economies of scale in the manufacturing. Of course, it would have no steering feel whatsoever, but Joe Public doesn't care, and doesn't seem to understand that feeling what's under your tyres can come in quite handy when trying to drive in adverse conditions.
That, plus it's a legal requirement in the EU for there to be a physical connection between the steering wheel and the steered wheels. Which is why your joystick-type control systems developed by the likes of Mercedes-Benz haven't come to market.
How did he manage that? Where was this? As I understand it, if you go over 170-something, you're going so fast that a Gatso camera can't actually get two shots of you to show how fast you were going.
Heard about the Swedish guy who got a parking ticket in England for his snowmobile - in the summer? Here.
I'd say it's heard considerably more often than "good American car" anyway. It's funny how US car sales are virtually non-existent in Europe and Japan, where there's a wide choice of vastly superior machinery, isn't it?
Furthermore, Renault own Nissan, who I believe shift quite a few cars Stateside. Nissans don't break down. Ever.
Don't they have some sort of roadworthiness test in the US (which is where I'm assuming you are)? If you tried that here (UK), and an inspector saw what you'd done, you simply wouldn't be allowed to put the car on the road.
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Not benign - there's nothing much benign about malaria, for instance. It's not about not affecting your host, it's about not killing it, and that's true of malware as much as it is of a biological parasite.
Bollocks.
If it wasn't for outsourcing to places of lower labour costs (or no labour costs at all when machines take over from men), we'd probably all still be subsistence farmers. It's just a question of moving with the times. There'll always be somebody who's willing and qualified to do a job for less than the man who's doing it at the minute, whether it's in the same town/state/country or a different one. And there'll always be an employer who'll take him on to save costs.
So where does that leave the guy who's just been priced out of the market? Well, he can sit around and moan about all the jobs being shipped out. Or he can get up and do something to differentiate himself from the people competing for his job. Get more qualifications, go somewhere where his skills are in greater demand, whatever.
It's just a fact of life that the demands of the labour market are going to change over time. What was a well-paid, secure job eventually becomes cheap labour. If you don't want to get carried downstream, you've got to swim against the tide and develop the skills which are in demand by the market. Short-term, there'll always be losers, but overall everyone benefits in the end.
If you start throwing up barriers, you end up isolated and backward and eventually the whole thing collapses in on you.
They used to come round fairly regularly at my previous employer - once every 18 months or so at the most. The odds of you as an individual getting picked on were fairly low, as there were 3000-odd people there, and they announced in advance which groups they would be targeting, prompting a frantic rush to make sure everything was in order. I never got done by them myself.
Needless to say, they were the most boring bunch of fuckers you could ever meet in your life, sitting there with their check lists asking you to show them evidence that you had a valid process in place for this, that and the other. I'll never understand what motivates a person to earn a living by picking holes in other people's work and never producing anything of any worth themselves. Anyway, after a couple of days of mind-numbing interrogation, they'd issue a report on what needs to be improved based on what they'd seen. They never found anything significant enough to take the certification away, but I suppose everybody can always do a bit better.
So yes, they do exist. But you're quite right that ISO 9001 compliance is usually a facade thrown together days before the inspectors weigh in, and hastily torn down again once they're gone so people can get back to Getting Stuff Done.
Christ, man. Don't you think there's enough dummies acting in Hollywood as it is, without making it even easier for them?
Is it "Gypsy Woman" by Crystal Waters?
Spies? One time pads? Pah. I reckon it's just a giant game of bingo for sailors...
I prefer the cardboard cases myself. They're prettier, and they don't shatter when you stand on them.
Free at the point of use. So you don't have to worry yourself sick about what will happen if you get sick. A healthy populace is in everyone's interest, and worth shelling out for. I mean, surely even the most bloody-minded capitalist plutocrat would agree that if your workforce isn't in good health, it isn't productive?
Why? This guy's in a responsible position, he should be more careful. The buck stops with him.
I'm only theorising here, but a big part of the reason for the Speccy's popularity in the UK was because it was cheap compared with the C64. Most people couldn't justify spending all that money on a computer in the days when they were little more than interesting curiosities. In the same way that your first car's usually an old rustbucket, your first computer was a Spectrum. And everybody develops an irrational love for their first car, right?
Technically it was utter turd by comparison, with its attribute clash and non-existent sound chip meaning you had to interrupt the CPU to produce beepy noises whilst the C64 had the fantastic SID, but we Brits love a plucky underdog, and this inferiority made the humble Speccy a very endearing machine in a funny sort of way, and "Uncle" Clive Sinclair a legend in the eyes of a generation of a certain age. Amstrad, on the other hand, were despised by an awful lot of people for what they did to Sinclair. To this day I've never bought anything the cheapskate bastards have made, in fact.
Anyway, in America your computer-buying public probably had a bit more money and could afford to splash out on a C64. Plus you don't really do the underdog thing like us, do you?
I'm not sure, but I think that's down to the shops. If it sits on the shelf for months on end, they need to charge more for it than things that they turn over quickly, because at the end of the day they can only keep so many CDs in stock, and that floor space costs money.
Of course, it's all wrong. Here in the UK there's a smallish chain of shops called Fopp whose USP is that they always have hundreds of great albums for five or seven pounds. So you go in and you buy half a dozen CDs you didn't know you wanted, and they're the very same CDs that are gathering dust in the Virgin Megastore up the road.
And the beauty of this is that it's self-perpetuating - you buy a CD just to see if it's any good, and because it's so cheap it's no big deal if it's not. You find you like it, you go back and buy that artist or label's entire back catalogue. Fopp's worse than a crack dealer, basically.
Heh. Check the pasty, white, deluded American thinking he can come to Europe without every man jack that sees him coming tutting and muttering "fucking Yanks" under his breath...
I don't mean any offence by this at all, but most Americans are a total self-awareness vacuum when it comes to matters such as this. You can always spot them in the UK because they're wearing raincoats, no matter what the weather. Nobody else wears raincoats. And then there's the size thing. And the loud thing. And...
It's quite endearing, really. Like when your country cousin joins you in the big city for a night out.
I disagree. American TV shows are noticeably less sharp-looking compared with what's produced this side of the pond. And I don't think it's solely down to whatever they do to make the signal PAL-compatible - watching TV in America, it looked pretty similar. It's even apparent with live broadcasts - the 2002 World Cup, played in Japan and South Korea, both NTSC companies, produced far worse pictures than those from this year's European Championships in Portugal.
I find that digital TV totally goes to pieces when showing something with coloured studio lights, such as a musical performance on Top Of The Pops or something like that. The screen goes blocky as hell and it doesn't seem to like the purples and blues these lights tend to give off. It's a total mess. I don't know if there's anything that can be done to sort it out, but putting such an obviously flawed system into widespread deployment seems pretty stupid to me.
I'll be able to get into porn sites by the, er, back door?
Throttle by wire's mostly about emissions control. It sits between your foot and the engine and it has the final say what happens to the fuel mixture. If you suddenly boot it, it won't just open the throttle wide like a mechanical throttle, as this would be liable to result in unburnt fuel, which plays hell with your catalytic converter. It'll do things in a slightly more controlled manner which you'll hardly even notice.
Steer-by-wire would mean you could eliminate all the complicated power-assisted steering mechanicals, I suppose, and thus make the car slightly more economical, and less prone to mechanical failure. Plus, to change the gearing of the system would be a matter of flicking a switch, so I suppose you could use the same component in different cars by changing the parameters, leading to economies of scale in the manufacturing. Of course, it would have no steering feel whatsoever, but Joe Public doesn't care, and doesn't seem to understand that feeling what's under your tyres can come in quite handy when trying to drive in adverse conditions.
That, plus it's a legal requirement in the EU for there to be a physical connection between the steering wheel and the steered wheels. Which is why your joystick-type control systems developed by the likes of Mercedes-Benz haven't come to market.
Interesting answer. Thanks.
Get thee to bleep.com. LAME-encoded MP3s, no DRM nonsense. Brilliant.
How did he manage that? Where was this? As I understand it, if you go over 170-something, you're going so fast that a Gatso camera can't actually get two shots of you to show how fast you were going.
Heard about the Swedish guy who got a parking ticket in England for his snowmobile - in the summer? Here.
I'd say it's heard considerably more often than "good American car" anyway. It's funny how US car sales are virtually non-existent in Europe and Japan, where there's a wide choice of vastly superior machinery, isn't it?
Furthermore, Renault own Nissan, who I believe shift quite a few cars Stateside. Nissans don't break down. Ever.
Don't they have some sort of roadworthiness test in the US (which is where I'm assuming you are)? If you tried that here (UK), and an inspector saw what you'd done, you simply wouldn't be allowed to put the car on the road.
Way offtopic here - but why would you want to find a safe vaccine for a disease which has been officially eradicated?
You drove a Daihatsu for five hours at a stretch? How's your hearing now? ;)
I know they aren't too popular, but they must've sold more than two...