>> to the five people still listening to broadcast radio
In the UK 43m people listen to the radio each week. Out of 60m population.
Three quarters of them listen to BBC radio, but three quarters of them also listen to commercial radio stations. There's a lot of radio listening going on out there.
In my job I use powerpoint. A lot. When I have 20-30 minutes to explain a multi-million pound IT change to the board, when it's going to have negative impacts on certain director's areas, where my recommendation is politically unacceptable to at least three separate interest groups in the organisation, I need to be able to - convey very complex information very quickly - put big headline statements in the view of the decision makers - reinforce those statements by providing additional information and clarification - back up everything with headline cost/benefit analysis - provide (but not present) the detail behind that analysis
Powerpoint actually helps me focus on the message, on providing simple visuals I can talk around, on make clear bold statements. I like to think I'm good at presenting and speaking, and my subject matter is based on hard technical analysis, experience and expertise, and sums up the work of an entire team.
I could use a whiteboard but then the board members couldn't take it away with them afterwards, they'd have to wait for me to draw things, I'd have to remember everything to draw, and I'd be too busy drawing to talk to them.
Powerpoint rocks if used properly. Professional use of the tool is very different to sticking in some bullet points and reading through them, or animating a picture that doesn't convey useful information.
However, I'd agree with many other people here: Teach children to read and write, and how to prepare a report/speech, and how to speak confidently and effectively in public. Only then teach them how to use Powerpoint as an aid.
I used to skip lectures and photocopy the notes from a more diligent student a few days before the exam. To be fair, sometimes I did attend lectures - everyone has to sleep some time.
Powerpoint slides would've made life even easier for me. I'm very up for that advancement.
No. They do the relationship building between the people getting pissed off that you aren't delivering what they want, and your team, which is probably getting pissed off right back for equally valid reasons.
This interface between internal business customers and their IT teams can break down into open warfare. I've seen it, and it's fun to watch, but only from a safe distance (and preferably a competitor company).
The big IT product companies (Oracle, Microsoft, BEA, etc) have business relationship managers who keep their clients (other companies) happy and contented and informed, and smooth over any issues. A relationship manager within a company is doing the same role, just to internal customers not external ones.
You may have heard them described as Account Managers, or some other term. But the role definitely exists; the extent of the role and the degree to which its shared across the IT teams is often an indicator of the IT health of an organisation.
You're calling someone named 'fred' an estrogen dripping bitch?
Ignore the aggressively sarcastic tone of the comment and read the underlying sad truth - women in IT can rapidly rise.
Whether that's novelty value, greater social skills (more important for senior IT staff than junior grade programmers) or because they've found themselves in the wrong job and are trying to move up the ladder to a better one, who knows. But anecdotally his story does ring true.
Nonetheless, if there is a market for images of violent sexual acts then there will be people keen to service that market.
That means that merely providing demand for the images will lead directly to a greater degree of violence against unwilling participants.
It's the child pornography argument all over again. Owning an image of a child being abused isn't in itself an act causing harm to that child. Demonstrating demand for such images results in children being abused. Hence the illegality of child abuse images.
Substitute "sex slave" for "child" and I'm sure you can see the parallel.
The big difference here is that it is possible to satiate demand for violent sexual imagery using only consenting adults. That is where my query regarding provenance ceases to be idiotic. If you can guarantee all your images contain only consenting adults, I'm quite happy for you to fill a few terabytes with them. If.
1 - non-gamers are no longer the largest segment of the market 2 - social gamers ARE having a social life 3 - how is getting drunk in a bar more fulfilling than engaging in interactive challenging entertainment?
have you ever tried getting through on the phone to someone programming with headphones on.
shit, half the time they don't even register the phone ringing. the other half the time they don't want to break their flow. hell, if it's important the caller will leave voicemail or send an email.
email on the other hand can be dealt with when a natural pause is reached.
Are you certain of the provenance of all the images? Sex slavery is endemic even in the western world, with victims forced to engage in sexual acts for money.
Filming or photographing sexual violence against such victims is both trivial, non-consensual and can go way beyond limits acceptable to that participant.
Although showing that movie to someone can be - a chap in Scotland got done for showing an arab beheading video on his mobile phone to a woman because she was offended by it.
(This despite her saying in advance he couldn't possibly offend her)
I was also under the impression that genuine 'snuff' movies are also illegal in the UK. Obviously fake ones aren't, or several Hollywood films would be banned. Which is also going to make wording a law against sexual violent imagery very interesting.
To make your analogy more perfect, consider yourself to be in a room with two doors and you want to get out. One is open, but if you go through it, someone will punch you in the face. The other is locked.
Someone offers to throw a key to the lock through the window. Do you: - get punched in the face - use the key
As for not purchasing the music for an unsupported platform, why should I be prevented from buying just because iTunes doesn't sell music specifically in a format it supports? Maybe said device includes a DAB radio tuner, satellite TV reception and full PDA and mobile phone functionality in a pocket-sized form factor. That's an attractive device, but if it doesn't support Apple's DRM then I can't use legitimately purchased music on it directly. So given the choice I'll remove the DRM rather than re-encode the music in a lossy manner - see analogy above relating to getting punched in the face.
All of which is irrelevant and merely a direct response to your fatuous arguments. The real question is, why are you so strongly against people making these choices for themselves?
Newspaper articles and editorials are not admitted as evidence in the criminal trial. Yet they do influence people.
Can you guarantee to find twelve people that haven't read any newspapers, seen any TV, accessed the Internet, spoken to friends that have, for a series of trials? In a cost effective manner? And prevent those people from doing any of those things throughout a several month trial?
That's what you'd have to do.
The current system does place impositions on the media. They are time-constrained limitations and I feel the thing being protected - a fair trial - is more important than the media's right to sensationalise stories.
The facts can and are being reported - 25 people arrested, 13 (or so) charged. As evidence is presented at the trial transcripts are allowed to be published. Once the trial is concluded the media can have a field day sensationalising every aspect of it.
The public are not being lied to, being misled. The accused have a better chance of a fair trial. If the evidence is there, it will actually mean a greater chance of conviction. If convicted, a greater certainty that it is a just and correct decision.
I completely concur with that. I only started playing Oblivion at the weekend and I immediately ran into that issue.
Worse still, I do tend to be a min-max gamer out of instinct - I'm naturally analytical, I examine data points and seek to optimise. It makes it excellent at my job and means that even without too much forethought I get close to optimal character creation in games.
So faced with Oblivion's mechanics, and especially having read about the levelling issue, it's fairly obvious that keeping important skills as minor skills and raising them without raising level is the way to get ahead of the curve. Further than that, because skills raise on use, leaving the computer on with a spell-cast on a repeat key macro is the efficient sensible way to raise that particular magic skill.
That's also obviously going to imbalance the game, and so fails to optimise another factor - how much fun I can have.
My response has been to play for around 10 hours with the normal system, make sure I haven't misinterpreted it, and switch to a user-created mod that completely revamps the levelling aspect of the game.
Now there are areas where I'll be decimated by the local wildlife, let alone the nasty things in caves and ruins. When I'm high enough level to take those on, the areas I'm sticking to now will be exceedingly simple to stroll through. So there is that sense of achievement, and progress, and need for caution in the world.
It also means that I now have my main combat skills as my main skills. This means that my ability in combat will be closely tied to my level.
It's a shame that the game designers didn't put more thought and effort into the skills and levelling mechanism. The rest of the game is extremely good, but the balance between skills and levels and how you gain skills just doesn't make sense.
Thing is, I want a good stable fast internet connection.
NTL give me one.
That's what I'm paying for, that's what I've got. I can't really complain.
If it kept going wrong, the customer support issue would be a massive one. If it had poor contention ratios, that would be a massive issue. If they hadn't improved the speed of the service in response to the DSL market changes then that might have become a reason to switch.
As it is, I don't have to contact NTL, I do have a stable fast connection, and I'm happy to keep paying for it.
My understanding is that allofmp3.com does pay for the music it sells to you.
If this guy had been going to a third world country, buying legitimate copies at $49 apiece, shipping them to the US and selling them for $99 (which is the equivalent of what allofmp3.com does) then I would wholeheartedly support his actions.
Since he pirated the software and sold it I don't.
I suspect that if this were a story about music piracy, the guys writing "They're big companies, no harm, no foul" would be modded entirely dependent on whether it was music piracy, or whether it was use of economic arbitrage to undercut the cartel driven premium pricing in the US.
I have 10mbit from NTL. I've had their broadband since 2000, and since 2001 it's been very stable and very good.
The 10mbit is can get slow at times. The other day my download speeds dropped to 800kbytes/sec - although I guess that might have been the server at the other end
Their customer support is atrocious. Getting their service can involve some nasty teething issues. Once it's in, up and running it's good enough that I'm not even considering switching to DSL, even though I could nominally get a faster connection for less cash.
Probably depends if you're within a few yards of your locks or an obvious and sensible route between them. If you're en-route then having the tools secured in a toolkit and not loose in your pocket will also help.
If you're using the tools on a lock that might not be your own at 4am in another town while a mate legs it noisily away from the nice policeman then you're going to need a very skilled lawyer to represent this as a sensible reason;)
Being caught in possession of those tools in the UK is an explicit criminal offence unless you can demonstrate clear and objectively sensible reason for having them (such as being a locksmith by trade).
Oh please. That thing's slow to accelerate (compared to several production cars, let alone production motorbikes) and adding another engine will massively damage its weight. Its top speed is practically pedestrian - my French family saloon can go as fast.
Incidentally, how do you define a 'right hand turn'? Not that turning matters on a straight-line speed record (although keeping the thing in a straight line becomes interesting - Andy Green had the wheel turned to full lock trying to keep in a straight line on the land speed record run).
Slashdot Mirror
>> to the five people still listening to broadcast radio
In the UK 43m people listen to the radio each week. Out of 60m population.
Three quarters of them listen to BBC radio, but three quarters of them also listen to commercial radio stations. There's a lot of radio listening going on out there.
This I completely agree with.
In my job I use powerpoint. A lot. When I have 20-30 minutes to explain a multi-million pound IT change to the board, when it's going to have negative impacts on certain director's areas, where my recommendation is politically unacceptable to at least three separate interest groups in the organisation, I need to be able to
- convey very complex information very quickly
- put big headline statements in the view of the decision makers
- reinforce those statements by providing additional information and clarification
- back up everything with headline cost/benefit analysis
- provide (but not present) the detail behind that analysis
Powerpoint actually helps me focus on the message, on providing simple visuals I can talk around, on make clear bold statements. I like to think I'm good at presenting and speaking, and my subject matter is based on hard technical analysis, experience and expertise, and sums up the work of an entire team.
I could use a whiteboard but then the board members couldn't take it away with them afterwards, they'd have to wait for me to draw things, I'd have to remember everything to draw, and I'd be too busy drawing to talk to them.
Powerpoint rocks if used properly. Professional use of the tool is very different to sticking in some bullet points and reading through them, or animating a picture that doesn't convey useful information.
However, I'd agree with many other people here: Teach children to read and write, and how to prepare a report/speech, and how to speak confidently and effectively in public. Only then teach them how to use Powerpoint as an aid.
Whoa, you took notes at university?
I used to skip lectures and photocopy the notes from a more diligent student a few days before the exam. To be fair, sometimes I did attend lectures - everyone has to sleep some time.
Powerpoint slides would've made life even easier for me. I'm very up for that advancement.
No. They do the relationship building between the people getting pissed off that you aren't delivering what they want, and your team, which is probably getting pissed off right back for equally valid reasons.
This interface between internal business customers and their IT teams can break down into open warfare. I've seen it, and it's fun to watch, but only from a safe distance (and preferably a competitor company).
The big IT product companies (Oracle, Microsoft, BEA, etc) have business relationship managers who keep their clients (other companies) happy and contented and informed, and smooth over any issues. A relationship manager within a company is doing the same role, just to internal customers not external ones.
You may have heard them described as Account Managers, or some other term. But the role definitely exists; the extent of the role and the degree to which its shared across the IT teams is often an indicator of the IT health of an organisation.
You're calling someone named 'fred' an estrogen dripping bitch?
Ignore the aggressively sarcastic tone of the comment and read the underlying sad truth - women in IT can rapidly rise.
Whether that's novelty value, greater social skills (more important for senior IT staff than junior grade programmers) or because they've found themselves in the wrong job and are trying to move up the ladder to a better one, who knows. But anecdotally his story does ring true.
Nonetheless, if there is a market for images of violent sexual acts then there will be people keen to service that market.
That means that merely providing demand for the images will lead directly to a greater degree of violence against unwilling participants.
It's the child pornography argument all over again. Owning an image of a child being abused isn't in itself an act causing harm to that child. Demonstrating demand for such images results in children being abused. Hence the illegality of child abuse images.
Substitute "sex slave" for "child" and I'm sure you can see the parallel.
The big difference here is that it is possible to satiate demand for violent sexual imagery using only consenting adults. That is where my query regarding provenance ceases to be idiotic. If you can guarantee all your images contain only consenting adults, I'm quite happy for you to fill a few terabytes with them. If.
>> better yet, buy music in a format that you actually want to use instead of blaming the seller for not giving it to you for free.
Which is exactly what I do. I never bought into the iTunes DRM shit to start with. But I do have some sympathy for those that did.
1 - non-gamers are no longer the largest segment of the market
2 - social gamers ARE having a social life
3 - how is getting drunk in a bar more fulfilling than engaging in interactive challenging entertainment?
At risk of starting a flame war, doesn't the GTA franchise recognise different American social groups?
I know those Chicos keep bloody shooting at me!
have you ever tried getting through on the phone to someone programming with headphones on.
shit, half the time they don't even register the phone ringing. the other half the time they don't want to break their flow. hell, if it's important the caller will leave voicemail or send an email.
email on the other hand can be dealt with when a natural pause is reached.
You assume the adults are consenting.
Are you certain of the provenance of all the images? Sex slavery is endemic even in the western world, with victims forced to engage in sexual acts for money.
Filming or photographing sexual violence against such victims is both trivial, non-consensual and can go way beyond limits acceptable to that participant.
Although showing that movie to someone can be - a chap in Scotland got done for showing an arab beheading video on his mobile phone to a woman because she was offended by it.
(This despite her saying in advance he couldn't possibly offend her)
I was also under the impression that genuine 'snuff' movies are also illegal in the UK. Obviously fake ones aren't, or several Hollywood films would be banned. Which is also going to make wording a law against sexual violent imagery very interesting.
Actually those semantics could get very important if the DMCA starts getting involved.
To make your analogy more perfect, consider yourself to be in a room with two doors and you want to get out. One is open, but if you go through it, someone will punch you in the face. The other is locked.
Someone offers to throw a key to the lock through the window. Do you:
- get punched in the face
- use the key
As for not purchasing the music for an unsupported platform, why should I be prevented from buying just because iTunes doesn't sell music specifically in a format it supports? Maybe said device includes a DAB radio tuner, satellite TV reception and full PDA and mobile phone functionality in a pocket-sized form factor. That's an attractive device, but if it doesn't support Apple's DRM then I can't use legitimately purchased music on it directly. So given the choice I'll remove the DRM rather than re-encode the music in a lossy manner - see analogy above relating to getting punched in the face.
All of which is irrelevant and merely a direct response to your fatuous arguments. The real question is, why are you so strongly against people making these choices for themselves?
>> Thank you for consuming more than your share. The rest of us apprciate it.
I've made a conscious decision to never have children. My impact on the planet will end far far sooner than anybody that has children.
Choose condoms, the pill and abortion, if you're really serious about reducing human impact on the planet.
Newspaper articles and editorials are not admitted as evidence in the criminal trial. Yet they do influence people.
Can you guarantee to find twelve people that haven't read any newspapers, seen any TV, accessed the Internet, spoken to friends that have, for a series of trials? In a cost effective manner? And prevent those people from doing any of those things throughout a several month trial?
That's what you'd have to do.
The current system does place impositions on the media. They are time-constrained limitations and I feel the thing being protected - a fair trial - is more important than the media's right to sensationalise stories.
The facts can and are being reported - 25 people arrested, 13 (or so) charged. As evidence is presented at the trial transcripts are allowed to be published. Once the trial is concluded the media can have a field day sensationalising every aspect of it.
The public are not being lied to, being misled. The accused have a better chance of a fair trial. If the evidence is there, it will actually mean a greater chance of conviction. If convicted, a greater certainty that it is a just and correct decision.
Or don't you want these things?
In the UK we do have a free press. The press are at full liberty to publish everything the NYT published. This includes the NYT.
The restriction is that they can't publish it until judicial proceedings have completed. This is to help ensure a fair trial for the accused.
That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I completely concur with that. I only started playing Oblivion at the weekend and I immediately ran into that issue.
Worse still, I do tend to be a min-max gamer out of instinct - I'm naturally analytical, I examine data points and seek to optimise. It makes it excellent at my job and means that even without too much forethought I get close to optimal character creation in games.
So faced with Oblivion's mechanics, and especially having read about the levelling issue, it's fairly obvious that keeping important skills as minor skills and raising them without raising level is the way to get ahead of the curve. Further than that, because skills raise on use, leaving the computer on with a spell-cast on a repeat key macro is the efficient sensible way to raise that particular magic skill.
That's also obviously going to imbalance the game, and so fails to optimise another factor - how much fun I can have.
My response has been to play for around 10 hours with the normal system, make sure I haven't misinterpreted it, and switch to a user-created mod that completely revamps the levelling aspect of the game.
Now there are areas where I'll be decimated by the local wildlife, let alone the nasty things in caves and ruins. When I'm high enough level to take those on, the areas I'm sticking to now will be exceedingly simple to stroll through. So there is that sense of achievement, and progress, and need for caution in the world.
It also means that I now have my main combat skills as my main skills. This means that my ability in combat will be closely tied to my level.
It's a shame that the game designers didn't put more thought and effort into the skills and levelling mechanism. The rest of the game is extremely good, but the balance between skills and levels and how you gain skills just doesn't make sense.
Thing is, I want a good stable fast internet connection.
NTL give me one.
That's what I'm paying for, that's what I've got. I can't really complain.
If it kept going wrong, the customer support issue would be a massive one. If it had poor contention ratios, that would be a massive issue. If they hadn't improved the speed of the service in response to the DSL market changes then that might have become a reason to switch.
As it is, I don't have to contact NTL, I do have a stable fast connection, and I'm happy to keep paying for it.
You try and impose a punishment like that on me, there are going to be dead people.
"The degree of civilization in a society is measured by the way it treats its prisoners."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My understanding is that allofmp3.com does pay for the music it sells to you.
If this guy had been going to a third world country, buying legitimate copies at $49 apiece, shipping them to the US and selling them for $99 (which is the equivalent of what allofmp3.com does) then I would wholeheartedly support his actions.
Since he pirated the software and sold it I don't.
I suspect that if this were a story about music piracy, the guys writing "They're big companies, no harm, no foul" would be modded entirely dependent on whether it was music piracy, or whether it was use of economic arbitrage to undercut the cartel driven premium pricing in the US.
I have 10mbit from NTL. I've had their broadband since 2000, and since 2001 it's been very stable and very good.
The 10mbit is can get slow at times. The other day my download speeds dropped to 800kbytes/sec - although I guess that might have been the server at the other end
Their customer support is atrocious. Getting their service can involve some nasty teething issues. Once it's in, up and running it's good enough that I'm not even considering switching to DSL, even though I could nominally get a faster connection for less cash.
Probably depends if you're within a few yards of your locks or an obvious and sensible route between them. If you're en-route then having the tools secured in a toolkit and not loose in your pocket will also help.
If you're using the tools on a lock that might not be your own at 4am in another town while a mate legs it noisily away from the nice policeman then you're going to need a very skilled lawyer to represent this as a sensible reason
Being caught in possession of those tools in the UK is an explicit criminal offence unless you can demonstrate clear and objectively sensible reason for having them (such as being a locksmith by trade).
Oh please. That thing's slow to accelerate (compared to several production cars, let alone production motorbikes) and adding another engine will massively damage its weight. Its top speed is practically pedestrian - my French family saloon can go as fast.
Incidentally, how do you define a 'right hand turn'? Not that turning matters on a straight-line speed record (although keeping the thing in a straight line becomes interesting - Andy Green had the wheel turned to full lock trying to keep in a straight line on the land speed record run).