"Create a pool of government funded money that goes towards software, and give everyone a vote for which projects they think are important."
Sweet. Jesus. That's the most stupid idea I've heard in a long time, have you seen the public lately? You'd essentially be distributing money based on what the media thought was most important at the time, and to whoever could organise the best lobbying.
At least if you charge for individual pieces of software then you can be sure that people will at least (for the most part) be putting their money into what they need over what they want or what they think they want.
Indeed, or the cretins who make a video of themselves posing by their superbikes, followed on board shots of themselves topping 150 up the motorway, and are then surprised when the police come knocking....
Self incrimination is generally seen as a "bad idea" on the whole.
Sounds reasonable. They're a corporation, they're not there to make a good OS, they're there to make money - if the two coincide then so much the better for the consumer, but nobody's forcing you to part with your money!
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 1
"The 4 accidents I've been in have all been low-speed accidents (under 40mph). 3 of which were driver or vehicle failure ahead of me"
Hate to break it to you, but if you haven't left enough room to react and stop before you hit the car in front of you, regardless of what happens to it, that's your error, not theirs. The Highway Code stopping distances are fairly accurate, but hardly anyone leaves that much distance as they always think that they SURELY don't need that much room. Until something like 1 or 3 happens and disabuses them of that belief.
Granted, there's no getting out of number 2, having experienced something similar myself (no room to stop, nowhere to swerve, just brace for impact...)
There's a fairly fundamental difference between working hard and spending more time in the office.
A few years ago I was working (in the UK) with a couple of other development offices, one in the US, and one in the Netherlands.
By far the Americans spent the most time in the office, they would be in at 7 in the morning, I'd check my mails the next day and they'd been having meetings and asking questions well into the early evening. The Dutch office by contrast was 9 to 5, by which I mean that, en masse, they were in at 9, and left at 5 regardless of what was going on.
I was once in a conference call with both groups which started to run over, and the Dutch team leader simply cut in and said "It's 5pm, we're leaving now, we'll pick this up tomorrow" rendering the American manager completely speechless.
The thing was, though they were doing pretty much two variations on the same bit of software, the Dutch guys were continually getting further and further ahead of schedule, whilst the Americans were falling further and further behind.
This may or may not be indicitive of general working practices in these countries, but it certainly taught me not to confuse work with time spent at work...
If the aim was just to combine vehicle taxes, it would be far easier and require far less infrastructure to just eliminate road tax and whack some extra on petrol, with a few toll roads like the M6 in particularly bad spots - this would also provide an extra incentive for fuel efficiency...
They actually say on the site that they considered providing a "sign against"/nosign option, but decided that that would just equate to some kind of limited, unrepresentative vote which would confuse the issue, so they resorted to following the same format as paper petitions and simply giving people the option to create a counter petition if they disagreed.
...frequently, as a primary school teacher in a former coal mining village with a low level of parental education, a moderate amount of borderline inbreeding and a high proportion of itinerant gypsy pupils whose parents would treat the school as free childcare for the 6 months that they stayed in the area:
"The day that how well these little toerags do determines how much I get paid, is the day I get out of teaching"
As you say, "why spend cash on a huge campaign". I'm in the UK, I have seen no advertising so far regarding the forthcoming white PSP, yet here I am, now fully informed, looking at Sony adverts on the net of my own volition, and quite possibly preparing to inform my friends about them in the pub this evening. Once the discussion is over regarding whether the adverts were ill-conceived, or whether it's a case of overly PC Americans busybodies, the fact will remain; we know that a white PSP will be along soon.
If that's not succesful marketing, I don't know what is.
I really, really, don't give a toss if it is, it's not like anyone's ever going to know that I've done it unless I tell them, and when I can get a 2GB card off ebay for about the same as 2 recently released UMDs (£35) there's only one sensible way to go...
Oh, it sounds so easy, just don't eat wheat, rye, barley or oats. Then you start to realise how many things contain wheatflour, or are made in places that also handle wheatflour, or contain things like vinegar and modified starch which may come from wheat.
I'm not Coeliac but my flatmate is, so whenever I cook I'm very careful, and am constantly amazed at the things that you find to contain gluten...
That said, you are right, there is a solution, and it works, so there are worse allergies (at least you're not going to require a shot of adrenaline directly into your heart or anything if you accidentaly eat a donut)
Fear the pain of literary criticism no longer!
"I'm dyslexic, you insensitive clod!", "You should judge what I'm saying, not how I'm saying it, grammar nazi!", "my English is still better than your Romanian!", "It's teh interweb, u dont hav 2 rite pRop3r!"
All argument-winning responses when someone's picked you up on the fact that your post reads like the febrile ramblings of an illiterate goat.
Engineering documents such as requirements and specifications have quite different demands than your average work document - clarity, consistency and completeness are absolutely key.
If you write anything in a way which is vague, someone will need to know the detail, if you leave anything open to interpretation, someone will interpret it differently. As you say, using the passive voice can help you paper over a few cracks and make things look complete, but it can allow some problems through the net which will then need to be addressed at a later, more inconvenient time.
Simply writing the specs properly should highlight - to you and anybody else - anything which still needs to be defined.
However, this is all far easier to say than do;) Anyway, writing good requirements is a course all in itself, and though a sound foundation in written English can help, it's not the be all and end all...
I know what you mean, for both my BSc. and MSc. (in the UK) the tutors provided copies of course notes, course materials, journal articles, test questions, etc. in their lectures and tutorials.
There was a reading list, but you could often get copies from the library, and it was entirely up to you whether you wanted to buy a book, or thought you could find sufficient background information through other means.
Indeed, I'm happy to admit that until I read through this discussion , I was completely and blisfully ignorant of the fact that the DSL acronym was meant something computer related outside of it's usual usage.
Now I must live throught the next five minutes with the annoying thought that some wierdy beardy code monkey no doubt thought that it would be highly amusing to confusingly give the same acronym to his stupid little distro which no person with more sense than time will ever use...
The moral of this story? Just because there's something to know, doesn't mean it's worth knowing!
Of course the similarities outweigh the differences, they're all controllers for games consoles which you hold in your hands, almost all of which have had, and will have, buttons and d-pads/sticks on somewhere - it's like saying that the similarities between a mini and a ferrari outweigh the differences!
Within the realm of controllers, they're quite different.
Ah, I remember the English version well, with Dirty Den, Mellinda Messenger and a dwarf.
The episode where a well endowed female contestant in a low cut jumpsuit had to climb along a greased pole to get some kind of clue, with very interesting camera angles, still haunts my dreams...
I'm just installing the game as I type, I bought it because I liked the first game, and because I'd rather spend 18 quid on play.com getting the nice collectors box set than waiting for a dodgy copy to download via torrent.
Finding out that I don't need to put in the serial code if I don't want to is just an added bonus which can only endear them to me as a publisher.
I dread reinstalling games as it always involves digging through various boxes looking for manuals and such....overpriced games which require CD's and serial numbers and such are far more likely to find their way onto my bittorrent client than games that treat me like I'm not a thieving toerag!
I've seen more pretentious stories (usually in Wired), but this one is particularly painful, and would be right at home in Private Eye's "Pseud's Corner"!
Slashdot Mirror
"Create a pool of government funded money that goes towards software, and give everyone a vote for which projects they think are important."
Sweet. Jesus. That's the most stupid idea I've heard in a long time, have you seen the public lately? You'd essentially be distributing money based on what the media thought was most important at the time, and to whoever could organise the best lobbying.
At least if you charge for individual pieces of software then you can be sure that people will at least (for the most part) be putting their money into what they need over what they want or what they think they want.
Indeed, or the cretins who make a video of themselves posing by their superbikes, followed on board shots of themselves topping 150 up the motorway, and are then surprised when the police come knocking....
Self incrimination is generally seen as a "bad idea" on the whole.
Sounds reasonable. They're a corporation, they're not there to make a good OS, they're there to make money - if the two coincide then so much the better for the consumer, but nobody's forcing you to part with your money!
"The 4 accidents I've been in have all been low-speed accidents (under 40mph). 3 of which were driver or vehicle failure ahead of me"
Hate to break it to you, but if you haven't left enough room to react and stop before you hit the car in front of you, regardless of what happens to it, that's your error, not theirs. The Highway Code stopping distances are fairly accurate, but hardly anyone leaves that much distance as they always think that they SURELY don't need that much room. Until something like 1 or 3 happens and disabuses them of that belief.
Granted, there's no getting out of number 2, having experienced something similar myself (no room to stop, nowhere to swerve, just brace for impact...)
There's a fairly fundamental difference between working hard and spending more time in the office.
A few years ago I was working (in the UK) with a couple of other development offices, one in the US, and one in the Netherlands.
By far the Americans spent the most time in the office, they would be in at 7 in the morning, I'd check my mails the next day and they'd been having meetings and asking questions well into the early evening.
The Dutch office by contrast was 9 to 5, by which I mean that, en masse, they were in at 9, and left at 5 regardless of what was going on.
I was once in a conference call with both groups which started to run over, and the Dutch team leader simply cut in and said "It's 5pm, we're leaving now, we'll pick this up tomorrow" rendering the American manager completely speechless.
The thing was, though they were doing pretty much two variations on the same bit of software, the Dutch guys were continually getting further and further ahead of schedule, whilst the Americans were falling further and further behind.
This may or may not be indicitive of general working practices in these countries, but it certainly taught me not to confuse work with time spent at work...
If the aim was just to combine vehicle taxes, it would be far easier and require far less infrastructure to just eliminate road tax and whack some extra on petrol, with a few toll roads like the M6 in particularly bad spots - this would also provide an extra incentive for fuel efficiency...
They actually say on the site that they considered providing a "sign against"/nosign option, but decided that that would just equate to some kind of limited, unrepresentative vote which would confuse the issue, so they resorted to following the same format as paper petitions and simply giving people the option to create a counter petition if they disagreed.
Now now, calm down, I'm sure that the original poster is anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulations...
...frequently, as a primary school teacher in a former coal mining village with a low level of parental education, a moderate amount of borderline inbreeding and a high proportion of itinerant gypsy pupils whose parents would treat the school as free childcare for the 6 months that they stayed in the area:
"The day that how well these little toerags do determines how much I get paid, is the day I get out of teaching"
They don't need to, they just need to stay better at it than them.
As you say, "why spend cash on a huge campaign". I'm in the UK, I have seen no advertising so far regarding the forthcoming white PSP, yet here I am, now fully informed, looking at Sony adverts on the net of my own volition, and quite possibly preparing to inform my friends about them in the pub this evening. Once the discussion is over regarding whether the adverts were ill-conceived, or whether it's a case of overly PC Americans busybodies, the fact will remain; we know that a white PSP will be along soon.
If that's not succesful marketing, I don't know what is.
I really, really, don't give a toss if it is, it's not like anyone's ever going to know that I've done it unless I tell them, and when I can get a 2GB card off ebay for about the same as 2 recently released UMDs (£35) there's only one sensible way to go...
Tell you what, when you find a "Just, Equal, Competitive Free-market Capitalist Society", let me know and we shall see if you're right...
Oh, it sounds so easy, just don't eat wheat, rye, barley or oats. Then you start to realise how many things contain wheatflour, or are made in places that also handle wheatflour, or contain things like vinegar and modified starch which may come from wheat.
I'm not Coeliac but my flatmate is, so whenever I cook I'm very careful, and am constantly amazed at the things that you find to contain gluten...
That said, you are right, there is a solution, and it works, so there are worse allergies (at least you're not going to require a shot of adrenaline directly into your heart or anything if you accidentaly eat a donut)
You jest, but:9 98&feedId=drugs-alcohol_rss20
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn8
Fear the pain of literary criticism no longer! "I'm dyslexic, you insensitive clod!", "You should judge what I'm saying, not how I'm saying it, grammar nazi!", "my English is still better than your Romanian!", "It's teh interweb, u dont hav 2 rite pRop3r!" All argument-winning responses when someone's picked you up on the fact that your post reads like the febrile ramblings of an illiterate goat.
Engineering documents such as requirements and specifications have quite different demands than your average work document - clarity, consistency and completeness are absolutely key.
;) Anyway, writing good requirements is a course all in itself, and though a sound foundation in written English can help, it's not the be all and end all...
If you write anything in a way which is vague, someone will need to know the detail, if you leave anything open to interpretation, someone will interpret it differently. As you say, using the passive voice can help you paper over a few cracks and make things look complete, but it can allow some problems through the net which will then need to be addressed at a later, more inconvenient time.
Simply writing the specs properly should highlight - to you and anybody else - anything which still needs to be defined.
However, this is all far easier to say than do
I know what you mean, for both my BSc. and MSc. (in the UK) the tutors provided copies of course notes, course materials, journal articles, test questions, etc. in their lectures and tutorials.
There was a reading list, but you could often get copies from the library, and it was entirely up to you whether you wanted to buy a book, or thought you could find sufficient background information through other means.
Sweet Jesus, this might actually be Lucent's road to their first profit in 5 years ;)
Indeed, I'm happy to admit that until I read through this discussion , I was completely and blisfully ignorant of the fact that the DSL acronym was meant something computer related outside of it's usual usage.
Now I must live throught the next five minutes with the annoying thought that some wierdy beardy code monkey no doubt thought that it would be highly amusing to confusingly give the same acronym to his stupid little distro which no person with more sense than time will ever use...
The moral of this story? Just because there's something to know, doesn't mean it's worth knowing!
> It's generally ill-advised to fire those staff members who actually
> bring in revenue.
It's never stopped Lucent before, why do you think the share price hasn't been over $5 for the last 5 years!
Of course the similarities outweigh the differences, they're all controllers for games consoles which you hold in your hands, almost all of which have had, and will have, buttons and d-pads/sticks on somewhere - it's like saying that the similarities between a mini and a ferrari outweigh the differences!
Within the realm of controllers, they're quite different.
16MB? 16MB? I would've killed for 16MB. Young people today, don't know they're born, etc, etc...
Ah, I remember the English version well, with Dirty Den, Mellinda Messenger and a dwarf.
The episode where a well endowed female contestant in a low cut jumpsuit had to climb along a greased pole to get some kind of clue, with very interesting camera angles, still haunts my dreams...
I'm just installing the game as I type, I bought it because I liked the first game, and because I'd rather spend 18 quid on play.com getting the nice collectors box set than waiting for a dodgy copy to download via torrent.
Finding out that I don't need to put in the serial code if I don't want to is just an added bonus which can only endear them to me as a publisher.
I dread reinstalling games as it always involves digging through various boxes looking for manuals and such....overpriced games which require CD's and serial numbers and such are far more likely to find their way onto my bittorrent client than games that treat me like I'm not a thieving toerag!
I've seen more pretentious stories (usually in Wired), but this one is particularly painful, and would be right at home in Private Eye's "Pseud's Corner"!