How to work against them on the same medium? Don't post equal-and-opposite reactions -- this means your message is being controlled by the enemy.
This is so right and probably what the media has failed to do so far. In most of Europe I know there is a degree of press freedom, so they can do what they like, even if their reporting and way of working has a negative effect from the point of view of military strategy (or Cream Wobbly's strategy).
As an example: in both recent occasions when there were daesh-related killings in Paris, the media was quick to interview random people on the street, which resulted in testimonies of the type:
They looked really well equipped!
They had military clothes!
They moved like they knew where they were going and looked professional!
If someone wants to see terrorised populations, then this sort of footage is golden. However, some time after, the press gave little emphasis on other findings. It turned out that:
The first victim during the Charlie attack was random Joe who opened the door to the wrong building, next door to the newspaper offices;
At the first sign of opposition at the Stade de France, the attacked blew himself up, causing very limited damage to others;
Looking at the way Charlie Hebdo attackers walked down the street, they don't look like ninja, they look like people who know they are are not facing armed opposition.
IMHO Media companies and authorities need to work better together to avoid amplifying the effects of the daesh-related violence. It would be a good start to keep "breaking news" from including interviews with terrorised victims. The next step, at a more tactical level, is to make it clear that:
daesh leadership stays in safe places while the young recruits go on suicide missions
if you join daesh, you're cannon fodder
if you are a martyr bride, you're making sexual abuse your fulltime job
Religious bullshitters love recruiting idiots for front line martyrdom. Listen to them at your own peril.
Indeed. In wealthy regions or those that (theoretically) are living in long periods of peace, it is challenging but "interesting" to think Where do we put a few million Dutch? in Germany? In a New-New-Zealand bought from Sweden or Spain?
In poorer regions, it will be a nightmare. Bangladesh is growing fast beyond the current 160M. Even before climate change driven disasters, they already suffer a lot from flooding. Imagine a large % of those 160M+ people need relocating. Terrible stuff - they should be talking to neighbours already to negotiate ways forward
I wonder if this sort of resizing could work on humans. If a human develops fully but ends up at half the size, it would work out well for reducing pollution, food demands, traffic jams and all sorts of other full-sized human problems.
I think that is a moot point with windows 10. Yes, some people will expect anything to work on whatever hardware they own, but then they head to the app store and it is clear that 1) some apps are not available compatible and the store will tell you that you can't download them; 2) there are many applications in the store that are badged as compatible with win32, 64 AND ARM.
Typical Slashdot users will be interested in whether it's a win32, x86 or ARM device but the real customers will behave like those visiting the google play store: first you choose the app, then you get the store to start the install. If it doesn't work, you try another app. Hopefully with universal Windows apps it will be clearer why something does not install.
Interesting that the debate seems to be centred on the Black Cabs of London, omitting the role of TFL (Transport for London = tfl.gov.uk - hint in the URL) and of minicab companies.
Minicabs are normal cars for hire, they don't look like "London taxis", their drivers don't have specific training just for working in London and they can ONLY work via advance bookings. The phone booking requirement is a major difference in relation to official Black Cabs who can stop anywhere when you see them and ask for a ride. The minicab companies are easy to find as they advertise at train stations and leave leaflets and business cards in many businesses and even through home letterboxes. If you are at a major train station, hotel, etc. you'll find a queue of Black Cabs waiting for passengers, the runs are metered and you can fit 5 adults. Some of their seats have a child seat built in, so that's another nice thing about that funny shape of car.
The minicab companies tend to have self-employed drivers. They bring their own car, typically a 4 door saloon or a 7 seat people carrier and they pay the fuel and insurance from their own takings. They also pay the minicab company for the dispatcher service. Some 5 years ago this was something like £90 per week, which means that between car expenses, the insurance and the dispatcher service, there is a lot of money to pay before the driver sees any profit. The insurance is extortionate in London, even more for working in this kind of trade. Memory fails me, but I think I was something like £3000 per year, again, 5 years ago.
So, before Uber and Hailo turn up, there is a very regulated competition between the Black cabs and random drivers trying to make some profit from their old Toyota Avensis even if they don't speak the language very well. The Black cab drivers are notorious for being picky about the areas served, but they do know the inner London boroughs very well - The Knowledge is a real thing, it's like they have all street names and POI in their heads and use satnav mostly for traffic info.
The TFL has a role to play in all this, as they have their name on the licence for both types of taxi business. Probably they take some money from them all. The TFL website is a very good one, for knowing about train, underground and river services, but when it comes to road services, you can find out about buses and road works, the taxi service being quite secondary. That's what I think that they should be working on, rather than having everyone complain and litigate.
The way I see it, the taxi apps reveal something very crucial that disrupts that peaceful coexistence between minicabs and Black cabs: passengers want to know time and place for their ride, like they do for other transport, rather than always get the same answer from the minicab phone dispatcher "they'll be there in 5 minutes". If TFL does not work on providing this service to passengers, then the disruption is that Black Cabs will actually deliver a worse service than minicabs in very important factors: the certainty about when the driver will turn up; the price that will apply; the form of payment available to passengers.
While in the past, minicabs were the shoddier alternative to Black cabs, now "the Knowledge" and being able to hail a taxi from the street become less important. Before, the self-employed driver was sharing a lot of revenue with the mincab company as a barrier to entry, but now they can have more of their costs turn into variable rather than a fixed rent.
From a passenger's point of view, what Boris and TFL should be working on is not protecting the Black taxi trade through more legislation, like the ridiculous proposal that was made last week (discussed on wired.co.uk) that was a set of laws tailored to sabotage Uber. They should have geo-location on all Black cabs right now, and a proper dispatcher service so that people can make bookings through the TFL website and pay with the Oyster card like they can for train, tram, bus and river services. Right now minicabs are changing to become better for passengers, be it with Uber, Hailo or with smaller dispatcher companies. Black cabs could do the same if they wanted.
[...]Engineers: struggle for ages. In pub: Well, we could enable a special testing mode to pass the tests? In work: Shall we do this -> up the chain. Original context is half forgotten. Approved. Changes made. Software specs made. Timebomb implemented.
I'd go one step further and suggest that the pub has people from several auto manufacturers and they realise that the problem is common in the industry, therefore would work out well if everyone used the same solution. This way, when the scandal comes to light, the explanation is "everyone is doing it" and it's best to protect the industry (under the threat of job losses) by changing regulations elsewhere. It's not too different from the LIBOR rates rigging by some UK banks.
I read in the Guardian that there will be re-testing of emissions to ensure that now the numbers will be right. If a few million cars from several manufacturers go up one or two tax tiers and the car manufacturers pay a fine, it's a decent result.
A PC that size? Well there's The dell xps 1820 AIO. Essentially a sort of imac with a battery. Unless you are Hafthor Bjornson, you'll use it your desk and move it other places rather than as a normal tablet...
It's something I never really understood. And it seems to be something that is actually pretty much an US thing. I don't see the same clinging to dress codes over here in Europe.
Interestingly, in the 3 different european countries where I've worked there's always been an employment contract clause about standard of attire. In some places it's loosely enforced, but if it's in the contract, people need to intelligent enough not to get themselves into trouble by looking and making the company look bad.
I think that overall in this thread there's an exaggeration about looking professional meaning there's less time to do the real work. A quick images search for Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and their "humble garage" shows people dressed neatly for work.
If people need more specifics to get with the brief, I'd say that in my experience Dockers-like trousers and a plain shirt (long or short sleeve) always look right, as long as the clothes are clean. The company-issued tie seems to be a specific to manufacturing companies I've visited thus far. I find it funny (in a good way) to see everyone wearing the same tie, funny in the other way when my consultant turns up with the Looney Tunes tie.
Interesting point, but since most smartphones in the world (more than 1Bn of them I suspect) already update their OS and their Apps unless stopped by the user, is there a real liability issue that has not been explored/exploited yet?
Estonia is so far North they have really horrible weather. Free buses are a huge improvement for those on bikes and those walking. For someone driving, it's still a downgrade...
"Understand the connection between body, mind, energy, and spirit and how the interplay between these impact health and disease."
I hope that the University will publish the videos taken during the lectures and of the experiments conducted to show the connections between body, mind, energy and spirit. I think this transparency and level of disclosure will do a lot for the reputation of everyone involved.
How about remote control centres for drones without having high latency connections? I don't know where drones are controlled from, but I imagine there are advantages in reducing the distance to the targeted areas.
My other OS is android and yes it is much slower than before. The constant updates add features that didn't make it to release date and everything is in an unfinished state. Too bad if desktop applications follow this trend.
It installed correctly yesterday on VirtualBox. The new PC arrives later in the week, I'll install it there again and then hope that on the 29th July it will become a permanent licence.
Excellent, I was going to pony up £80 for a new license for the new PC I'm building. Now I'll spend more on the hardware. I hope this works on Virtual Box so I don't mess up my current machine.
I do the same, but buy them 2nd hand on eBay. I haven't sold the physical media after ripping the tracks to MP3, but really if I did it would be undetectable. What's the point of adding complexity to laws that are unenforceable?
It's cheaper than the City, but still not the place to build machines or to have a growing team. I'd say companies need to go to the outside of Cambridge, Oxford, Northampton, Milton Keynes, any place more than 100Km from London to get a warehouse + office space that can be considered affordable. The talent pool will be different but you might get enough people who already moved away from the big city.
Before moving to the East Midlands, I lived in Camberwell (SE) for nearly 2 years and then in Brent (NW) for another 4. That's zone 2 and then Zone 3/4. Both had upsides and downsides, but the transport price was always going up faster than everything else. I could not suggest to anyone to live in a suburb of London in zone 5 or 6 as a cost saving strategy. Your average speed into town is higher than by Tube but if the overground trains are disrupted, you're too far away to have an alternative. When you're home you're too far from London to feel like traveling there to watch a show or something else that you cannot enjoy in the suburbs. I'd say that you either live where you can walk, cycle and use the bus for all your travel, or just move out for good. In the end, I think that the secret to happy London living is to have a highly paid job that allows you not to live/commute there. Just enjoy the ride into the big city every now and again, enjoy the buzz, the touristy things, then make your way back to where you don't spend a huge part of your earnings on housing and transport. London is a special place for me, I would not want to ruin it by feeling stuck there.
My view on this, not being involved in the VC/startup/look_at_me_I'm_an_entrepreneur scene, is that there is a lot of political will to turn some of London into a technological hub, hoping that the money and innovation from Silicon Valley can be reproduced here. The trouble is... London is not cheap as SV used to be when it turned itself into an attractive place for techy companies to set up shop.
A garage in London is not a place to build the new consumer electronics giant, it is a place that is rented for hundreds or even thousands of pounds per month.
I think it's all great that people want more development and growth from high tech, but the "Silicon Roundabout" is not a place where universities, ambitious people with ideas and office space are all in an ideal state suited for new industry to bloom. The Silicon Roundabout is just north of the City of London, the place where there's only mature, cash rich companies and the Bank of England. It's more of a brand that costs a lot of money to join rather than being an organic growth phenomenon.
I'd much rather see the new tech hubs turning up away from London, so that all the techy smart people are not wasting their initial funding on paying extortionate rents and are actually doing what current day teach allows you to do: work from wherever suits you. As a nice side effect, new train routes could get more passengers and overcrowded London routes could get some relief.
Electric guitar manufactures charge a premium for guitars made in the USA.
I noticed that as well. Since I could not tell a good guitar from an excellent one, I've wondered if people are paying the premium for the "made in the USA" tag or whether they do so because there's an actual product difference.
It is my understanding that Japanese and Korean made guitars used to be seen as rubbish knock-offs, but today they carry a more positive reputation. In any case, music and luxury items markets behave differently than consumer electronics. I don't think I'd pay a premium for a Surface table sold as being from 1953 vintage, pre-loved by some of the coolest CEOs of that era and with significant age-related marks.
Slashdot Mirror
How to work against them on the same medium? Don't post equal-and-opposite reactions -- this means your message is being controlled by the enemy.
This is so right and probably what the media has failed to do so far. In most of Europe I know there is a degree of press freedom, so they can do what they like, even if their reporting and way of working has a negative effect from the point of view of military strategy (or Cream Wobbly's strategy).
As an example: in both recent occasions when there were daesh-related killings in Paris, the media was quick to interview random people on the street, which resulted in testimonies of the type:
They moved like they knew where they were going and looked professional!
If someone wants to see terrorised populations, then this sort of footage is golden. However, some time after, the press gave little emphasis on other findings. It turned out that:
IMHO Media companies and authorities need to work better together to avoid amplifying the effects of the daesh-related violence. It would be a good start to keep "breaking news" from including interviews with terrorised victims. The next step, at a more tactical level, is to make it clear that:
We will finally download a car!
other than that, yeah, I suspect that allowing something this important to turn into a rentseeking business is a terrible idea.
Indeed. In wealthy regions or those that (theoretically) are living in long periods of peace, it is challenging but "interesting" to think Where do we put a few million Dutch? in Germany? In a New-New-Zealand bought from Sweden or Spain?
In poorer regions, it will be a nightmare. Bangladesh is growing fast beyond the current 160M. Even before climate change driven disasters, they already suffer a lot from flooding. Imagine a large % of those 160M+ people need relocating. Terrible stuff - they should be talking to neighbours already to negotiate ways forward
I wonder if this sort of resizing could work on humans. If a human develops fully but ends up at half the size, it would work out well for reducing pollution, food demands, traffic jams and all sorts of other full-sized human problems.
I think that is a moot point with windows 10. Yes, some people will expect anything to work on whatever hardware they own, but then they head to the app store and it is clear that 1) some apps are not available compatible and the store will tell you that you can't download them; 2) there are many applications in the store that are badged as compatible with win32, 64 AND ARM.
Typical Slashdot users will be interested in whether it's a win32, x86 or ARM device but the real customers will behave like those visiting the google play store: first you choose the app, then you get the store to start the install. If it doesn't work, you try another app. Hopefully with universal Windows apps it will be clearer why something does not install.
Interesting that the debate seems to be centred on the Black Cabs of London, omitting the role of TFL (Transport for London = tfl.gov.uk - hint in the URL) and of minicab companies.
Minicabs are normal cars for hire, they don't look like "London taxis", their drivers don't have specific training just for working in London and they can ONLY work via advance bookings. The phone booking requirement is a major difference in relation to official Black Cabs who can stop anywhere when you see them and ask for a ride.
The minicab companies are easy to find as they advertise at train stations and leave leaflets and business cards in many businesses and even through home letterboxes. If you are at a major train station, hotel, etc. you'll find a queue of Black Cabs waiting for passengers, the runs are metered and you can fit 5 adults. Some of their seats have a child seat built in, so that's another nice thing about that funny shape of car.
The minicab companies tend to have self-employed drivers. They bring their own car, typically a 4 door saloon or a 7 seat people carrier and they pay the fuel and insurance from their own takings. They also pay the minicab company for the dispatcher service. Some 5 years ago this was something like £90 per week, which means that between car expenses, the insurance and the dispatcher service, there is a lot of money to pay before the driver sees any profit. The insurance is extortionate in London, even more for working in this kind of trade. Memory fails me, but I think I was something like £3000 per year, again, 5 years ago.
So, before Uber and Hailo turn up, there is a very regulated competition between the Black cabs and random drivers trying to make some profit from their old Toyota Avensis even if they don't speak the language very well. The Black cab drivers are notorious for being picky about the areas served, but they do know the inner London boroughs very well - The Knowledge is a real thing, it's like they have all street names and POI in their heads and use satnav mostly for traffic info.
The TFL has a role to play in all this, as they have their name on the licence for both types of taxi business. Probably they take some money from them all. The TFL website is a very good one, for knowing about train, underground and river services, but when it comes to road services, you can find out about buses and road works, the taxi service being quite secondary. That's what I think that they should be working on, rather than having everyone complain and litigate.
The way I see it, the taxi apps reveal something very crucial that disrupts that peaceful coexistence between minicabs and Black cabs: passengers want to know time and place for their ride, like they do for other transport, rather than always get the same answer from the minicab phone dispatcher "they'll be there in 5 minutes".
If TFL does not work on providing this service to passengers, then the disruption is that Black Cabs will actually deliver a worse service than minicabs in very important factors: the certainty about when the driver will turn up; the price that will apply; the form of payment available to passengers.
While in the past, minicabs were the shoddier alternative to Black cabs, now "the Knowledge" and being able to hail a taxi from the street become less important. Before, the self-employed driver was sharing a lot of revenue with the mincab company as a barrier to entry, but now they can have more of their costs turn into variable rather than a fixed rent.
From a passenger's point of view, what Boris and TFL should be working on is not protecting the Black taxi trade through more legislation, like the ridiculous proposal that was made last week (discussed on wired.co.uk) that was a set of laws tailored to sabotage Uber. They should have geo-location on all Black cabs right now, and a proper dispatcher service so that people can make bookings through the TFL website and pay with the Oyster card like they can for train, tram, bus and river services. Right now minicabs are changing to become better for passengers, be it with Uber, Hailo or with smaller dispatcher companies. Black cabs could do the same if they wanted.
[...]Engineers: struggle for ages.
In pub: Well, we could enable a special testing mode to pass the tests?
In work: Shall we do this -> up the chain. Original context is half forgotten. Approved.
Changes made. Software specs made. Timebomb implemented.
I'd go one step further and suggest that the pub has people from several auto manufacturers and they realise that the problem is common in the industry, therefore would work out well if everyone used the same solution. This way, when the scandal comes to light, the explanation is "everyone is doing it" and it's best to protect the industry (under the threat of job losses) by changing regulations elsewhere. It's not too different from the LIBOR rates rigging by some UK banks.
I read in the Guardian that there will be re-testing of emissions to ensure that now the numbers will be right. If a few million cars from several manufacturers go up one or two tax tiers and the car manufacturers pay a fine, it's a decent result.
I couldn't tell from yesterday's post that there were other "must-have" requirements like those. I thought I was being helpful.
A PC that size? Well there's The dell xps 1820 AIO. Essentially a sort of imac with a battery. Unless you are Hafthor Bjornson, you'll use it your desk and move it other places rather than as a normal tablet...
Urgh. That's the worst yoghurt I've ever had.
It's something I never really understood. And it seems to be something that is actually pretty much an US thing. I don't see the same clinging to dress codes over here in Europe.
Interestingly, in the 3 different european countries where I've worked there's always been an employment contract clause about standard of attire. In some places it's loosely enforced, but if it's in the contract, people need to intelligent enough not to get themselves into trouble by looking and making the company look bad.
I think that overall in this thread there's an exaggeration about looking professional meaning there's less time to do the real work. A quick images search for Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and their "humble garage" shows people dressed neatly for work.
If people need more specifics to get with the brief, I'd say that in my experience Dockers-like trousers and a plain shirt (long or short sleeve) always look right, as long as the clothes are clean. The company-issued tie seems to be a specific to manufacturing companies I've visited thus far. I find it funny (in a good way) to see everyone wearing the same tie, funny in the other way when my consultant turns up with the Looney Tunes tie.
Interesting point, but since most smartphones in the world (more than 1Bn of them I suspect) already update their OS and their Apps unless stopped by the user, is there a real liability issue that has not been explored/exploited yet?
Estonia is so far North they have really horrible weather. Free buses are a huge improvement for those on bikes and those walking. For someone driving, it's still a downgrade...
"Understand the connection between body, mind, energy, and spirit and how the interplay between these impact health and disease."
I hope that the University will publish the videos taken during the lectures and of the experiments conducted to show the connections between body, mind, energy and spirit. I think this transparency and level of disclosure will do a lot for the reputation of everyone involved.
How about remote control centres for drones without having high latency connections? I don't know where drones are controlled from, but I imagine there are advantages in reducing the distance to the targeted areas.
My other OS is android and yes it is much slower than before. The constant updates add features that didn't make it to release date and everything is in an unfinished state. Too bad if desktop applications follow this trend.
It installed correctly yesterday on VirtualBox. The new PC arrives later in the week, I'll install it there again and then hope that on the 29th July it will become a permanent licence.
I'm sure that once the product is released the policy will be published in the usual place... https://support.microsoft.com/...
For now, it's a good idea to sign up and start a trial install on VirtualBox or on a real machine.
Excellent, I was going to pony up £80 for a new license for the new PC I'm building. Now I'll spend more on the hardware. I hope this works on Virtual Box so I don't mess up my current machine.
I do the same, but buy them 2nd hand on eBay. I haven't sold the physical media after ripping the tracks to MP3, but really if I did it would be undetectable. What's the point of adding complexity to laws that are unenforceable?
It's cheaper than the City, but still not the place to build machines or to have a growing team. I'd say companies need to go to the outside of Cambridge, Oxford, Northampton, Milton Keynes, any place more than 100Km from London to get a warehouse + office space that can be considered affordable. The talent pool will be different but you might get enough people who already moved away from the big city.
Before moving to the East Midlands, I lived in Camberwell (SE) for nearly 2 years and then in Brent (NW) for another 4. That's zone 2 and then Zone 3/4. Both had upsides and downsides, but the transport price was always going up faster than everything else. I could not suggest to anyone to live in a suburb of London in zone 5 or 6 as a cost saving strategy. Your average speed into town is higher than by Tube but if the overground trains are disrupted, you're too far away to have an alternative. When you're home you're too far from London to feel like traveling there to watch a show or something else that you cannot enjoy in the suburbs. I'd say that you either live where you can walk, cycle and use the bus for all your travel, or just move out for good.
In the end, I think that the secret to happy London living is to have a highly paid job that allows you not to live/commute there. Just enjoy the ride into the big city every now and again, enjoy the buzz, the touristy things, then make your way back to where you don't spend a huge part of your earnings on housing and transport. London is a special place for me, I would not want to ruin it by feeling stuck there.
My view on this, not being involved in the VC/startup/look_at_me_I'm_an_entrepreneur scene, is that there is a lot of political will to turn some of London into a technological hub, hoping that the money and innovation from Silicon Valley can be reproduced here. The trouble is... London is not cheap as SV used to be when it turned itself into an attractive place for techy companies to set up shop.
A garage in London is not a place to build the new consumer electronics giant, it is a place that is rented for hundreds or even thousands of pounds per month.
I think it's all great that people want more development and growth from high tech, but the "Silicon Roundabout" is not a place where universities, ambitious people with ideas and office space are all in an ideal state suited for new industry to bloom. The Silicon Roundabout is just north of the City of London, the place where there's only mature, cash rich companies and the Bank of England. It's more of a brand that costs a lot of money to join rather than being an organic growth phenomenon.
I'd much rather see the new tech hubs turning up away from London, so that all the techy smart people are not wasting their initial funding on paying extortionate rents and are actually doing what current day teach allows you to do: work from wherever suits you. As a nice side effect, new train routes could get more passengers and overcrowded London routes could get some relief.
There's always the mouse, but I think you're missing out on some useful shortcuts.
https://support.microsoft.com/...
I find the Windows Logo + cursor keys particularly useful.
Electric guitar manufactures charge a premium for guitars made in the USA.
I noticed that as well. Since I could not tell a good guitar from an excellent one, I've wondered if people are paying the premium for the "made in the USA" tag or whether they do so because there's an actual product difference.
It is my understanding that Japanese and Korean made guitars used to be seen as rubbish knock-offs, but today they carry a more positive reputation. In any case, music and luxury items markets behave differently than consumer electronics. I don't think I'd pay a premium for a Surface table sold as being from 1953 vintage, pre-loved by some of the coolest CEOs of that era and with significant age-related marks.