Well, not exactly FUD, but certainly wilfully misinterpretation.
If you read the linked-to guide, it is primarily talking about situations in which an employee of the foundation has a relationship with someone who is a beneficiary, or potential beneficiary of the foundation.
Remember that a large part of the foundation's work is to give other organisations money. Obviously they need to ensure that conflicts of interest are known about and that people aren't using their influence to get money passed on to their loved ones. In their position, it would be madness not to have a policy like that, and I'm sure most similar organisations have something similar.
The document is mainly about relationships with people external to the company, but there is a small section about coworker romances. That section makes it quite clear that disclosure of office romances is only encouraged in situations where a conflict of interest could be a problem. The guideline is really very reasonable:
When deciding what kind of relationships should be disclosed, consider the situation from the perspective of an outsider and whether the relationship is of such a nature that it could raise an allegation of an apparent or actual conflict of interest, and then err on the side of transparency, as disclosure helps to alleviate or avoid future misunderstandings.
I assume then they would be talking about relationships where for instance the career advancement of one partner would be decided by the other partner in the relationship.
Nowhere in the document does it seek to discourage such workplace relationships.
The poster is just trying to whip up a bit of anti-Gates feeling out of thin air.
All of this would be so much easier if the drinking age was lowered to something a little more sensible, like 18. It seems odd to me that adults should not be allowed to drink at an age when they can drive, smoke, get married, have sex, have children, buy a gun, start a career as a porn star etc.
China and India have over a billion people each. The economic force of such numbers mean that realistically THEY should be the superpowers, not us. But they (in my lifetime) will not dare challenge the authority of the U.S. because they know that we have a millitary that can take them back to the stone ages if they cross us.
But by 'Military' you basically mean nuclear weapons. The US could never win a conventional war against China. As for nukes, both China and India are nuclear capable. At the moment they don't appear to have sufficient range to send those nukes to the US, but expect that to change soon, especially with the development of China's space program. It won't be long before China can assure Mutual Destruction with the US.
From the artice: The theory's creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England... "People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence..."
I'm amused that he singles out academics, teachers and scientists - pretty much the exact description of people he has in his department. Not that I wish to suggest that the fine fellows at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne are in any way immature (I did my Bachelor's degree there), but I can't help thinking that his paper is by implication not exactly flattering to them.
Presumably though that's just a case of setting things up right? i.e. if you set the maximum throttle setting to be, say, 60% of the rated maximum of the engine, it wouldn't be such a problem?
This is why tables were popularized in the first place. The lay-person who just wanted to throw up a personal web page had neither the time, nor the inclination to learn CSS, so they resorted to the easiest possible manner of positioning things the way they wanted: tables.
No, it's because back then (when Netscape 3 came out), tables were the only way to do it. CSS wasn't implemented in any browsers for a while after that, and the early CSS implementations were pretty buggy.
But how long have you been doing table layouts? And you expect to catch up to that level of experience with CSS in a couple of days?
But tables are way, way easier to learn than css layout is.
Where would you be if you had stuck with the first programming language you ever learnt instead of facing the learning curve and accepting that in the beginning, some things are going to be more difficult until you get a bit of experience in the new language?
It's called priorities. There are a whole bunch of more interesting things I'd like to learn rather than CSS, and I still won't even get time to learn most of them. If a table does the job (albeit roughly), it does the job.
I'm a web developer too, and I think the exact opposite. Take a look in any bookshop lately. How many books are teaching table layouts these days? How many books are teaching CSS layouts these days?
But that's the great thing: you don't need a damn book to learn how to use tables.
You'll get no arguments from me about the merits of CSS, but one thing I don't like about it is that it's a lot harder to pick up, especially for layout. Now sure, if you do web stuff for a living - big deal. You learn what you gotta learn. But if you just need to knock a page together now and then sticking in some tables is a hell of a lot easier.
I found books published by the state of Texas that said the *worst* following distance was 2 seconds. That's the following distance that guarantees the worst possible crash. At closer distances, the two cars strike with less force, even though they are both moving. At longer distances, the following car is slowing and the front car is stopped, lessening the impact.
I don't think that 'you're safer if you're closer than 2 seconds away' tells the whole story. When you rear-end the car in front, yes, the impact may be less. However, that's only assuming the car in front hasn't hit anything yet. Once it does, the people in front of you will suffer even more because of your selfishness. Their car will be travelling faster due to your ramming them, and the inertia of your two combined cars will cause a more damaging crash when they do in the end hit something. So it may work out better for you, but substantially worse for the poor sod you crash into, you insensitive clod!
But how big is the PIN? If it's anything like a credit card PIN, it'll only be 4 numbers or so. There's nothing stopping Google trying every PIN combination, which they could do in the blink of an eye.
I don't think Industrial Design is a lost art - it's just that for really good Industrial Design, it's an expensive art. Apple can afford it, especially as it's essential to their image. Cases like these just don't warrant the kind of spending you'd need to get a really good look.
Also, they're a bit scuppered (when compared to Apple) by the standard ATX form factor...
I suspect the reason you don't get very good reception is because the manufacturers are unwilling to make large phones with big aerials any more. If size doesn't bother you, some phones still have a sockets for an external aerial...
Ignore all these fools telling you to use emacs or vi. Your audience will be used to using Windows programs, and if (as you say) they've been doing VB or C++, they've probably been using Visual Studio anyway. You might as well let them continue. If you try and force vi or emacs on them you'll be wasting valuable time teaching a cryptic and outdated UI. Leave them with what they're used to for editing. Anything else will just get in the way.
Maybe because you too were a kid once, and the kids that you wish 'not to put up with' will be the ones that keep the country going once you're old and decrepit?
I doubt the PS2 will be abandoned within a year. They've only just stopped producing the PSOne, FFS!
No, there'll still be new PS2 games coming out for a couple of years yet - the installed base is huge, so it doesn't make sense for publishers to jump ship too early to the PS3 until the installed base for it gets bigger. Even when the number of new titles begins to taper off, there'll still be a huge back-catalogue of secondhand games to be gotten cheaply.
I see it like this: PS2 games won't start to taper off until the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008. There'll still be quite a few titles coming out for a year after that. It wouldn't surprise me if there are still a few games trickling out in 2009! If you buy a PS2 now, that's still 2.5 years of new software to look forward to. Combine that with the huge back-catalogue, (much of it available very cheaply or secondhand) and it makes a lot of sense, especially if you don't have a HD TV or are a bit strapped for cash.
Regardless of the forum, the reality is that if you're not paying for support, then you can't assume that anybody owes you anything
You should be able to assume that they owe you a little civility, at least.
Otherwise it's like putting up a sign reading 'Free Beer samples' and then shouting at anyone who turns up that they're fucking dickheads for thinking that they could possibly receive any free beer.
There'll always be a market for standalone mp3 players, but I think the article is right to suggest that that market is going to get squeezed by mobile phones, mainly at the low end.
My Wife's new mobile phone has half a gig of memory in it which she can store songs on, and she can upgrade it with a memory stick if she wishes. The phone came free with a new phone contract and she's not paying any more that she was on her old plan.
So she's basically set up with an mp3 player without having to spend any more money than she would have anyway. Sure, she'll probably get a memory stick to boost the capacity, but that'll still not cost her that much, and considerably less than an iPod nano with a similar capacity would.
Now, I'm sure all of you with high-capacity iPods are scoffing at my Wife's meagre storage space on her phone, but many people just don't need that high capacity. My current mp3 player (A Rio Carbon) holds 5Gb, and I don't have any space problems on it. It'll not be long before phones with a similar capacity are commonplace.
So for those who don't require high capacity, a phone with mp3 playing is going to be an obvious choice; especially as you then only have one object to carry around.
I think it's interesting to compare it with low-end cameras and PDAs; Camera phones nowadays are approaching the quality that they can be a reasonable replacement for the low-end pocket point-and-shoot cameras, and phones now do many of the simpler functions of a PDA. Those who wish for a large collection of music at their fingertips will stick with their iPods, but many others (and I suspect this is a large chunk of the market) will migrate to mobile phones.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not exactly FUD, but certainly wilfully misinterpretation.
If you read the linked-to guide, it is primarily talking about situations in which an employee of the foundation has a relationship with someone who is a beneficiary, or potential beneficiary of the foundation.
Remember that a large part of the foundation's work is to give other organisations money. Obviously they need to ensure that conflicts of interest are known about and that people aren't using their influence to get money passed on to their loved ones. In their position, it would be madness not to have a policy like that, and I'm sure most similar organisations have something similar.
The document is mainly about relationships with people external to the company, but there is a small section about coworker romances. That section makes it quite clear that disclosure of office romances is only encouraged in situations where a conflict of interest could be a problem. The guideline is really very reasonable:
When deciding what kind of relationships should be disclosed, consider the situation from the perspective of an outsider and whether the relationship is of such a nature that it could raise an allegation of an apparent or actual conflict of interest, and then err on the side of transparency, as disclosure helps to alleviate or avoid future misunderstandings.
I assume then they would be talking about relationships where for instance the career advancement of one partner would be decided by the other partner in the relationship.
Nowhere in the document does it seek to discourage such workplace relationships.
The poster is just trying to whip up a bit of anti-Gates feeling out of thin air.
Nothing to see here, move along!
All of this would be so much easier if the drinking age was lowered to something a little more sensible, like 18. It seems odd to me that adults should not be allowed to drink at an age when they can drive, smoke, get married, have sex, have children, buy a gun, start a career as a porn star etc.
Feh.
Kids these days!
To be fair, though; responsibility is not the same thing as hardship.
China and India have over a billion people each. The economic force of such numbers mean that realistically THEY should be the superpowers, not us. But they (in my lifetime) will not dare challenge the authority of the U.S. because they know that we have a millitary that can take them back to the stone ages if they cross us.
But by 'Military' you basically mean nuclear weapons. The US could never win a conventional war against China. As for nukes, both China and India are nuclear capable. At the moment they don't appear to have sufficient range to send those nukes to the US, but expect that to change soon, especially with the development of China's space program. It won't be long before China can assure Mutual Destruction with the US.
From the artice:
The theory's creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England...
"People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence..."
I'm amused that he singles out academics, teachers and scientists - pretty much the exact description of people he has in his department. Not that I wish to suggest that the fine fellows at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne are in any way immature (I did my Bachelor's degree there), but I can't help thinking that his paper is by implication not exactly flattering to them.
If I were a guessing man, I'd be betting it's because they're having trouble getting their H.264 codec performant on the PS3.
I'd say that's rather unlikely - I'm quite convinced that the Cell has more than enough grunt to do H.264 decoding.
It would be interesting to know what the real reason is, though.
Presumably though that's just a case of setting things up right? i.e. if you set the maximum throttle setting to be, say, 60% of the rated maximum of the engine, it wouldn't be such a problem?
Okay - I've just seen this link in a post further down. Looks like that kind of wage is not uncommon.
However, I'd still say it's not a decent wage.
These people make decent money
I'm sorry, but $50/month is not decent money, by pretty much anyone's standards.
The GDP per captia in China is $6,800, 11 times what those factory workers are earning.
This is why tables were popularized in the first place. The lay-person who just wanted to throw up a personal web page had neither the time, nor the inclination to learn CSS, so they resorted to the easiest possible manner of positioning things the way they wanted: tables.
No, it's because back then (when Netscape 3 came out), tables were the only way to do it. CSS wasn't implemented in any browsers for a while after that, and the early CSS implementations were pretty buggy.
In which case they'll hire a professional rather than one of us schmucks who just wants to kick up a quick site.
But how long have you been doing table layouts? And you expect to catch up to that level of experience with CSS in a couple of days?
But tables are way, way easier to learn than css layout is.
Where would you be if you had stuck with the first programming language you ever learnt instead of facing the learning curve and accepting that in the beginning, some things are going to be more difficult until you get a bit of experience in the new language?
It's called priorities. There are a whole bunch of more interesting things I'd like to learn rather than CSS, and I still won't even get time to learn most of them. If a table does the job (albeit roughly), it does the job.
I'm a web developer too, and I think the exact opposite. Take a look in any bookshop lately. How many books are teaching table layouts these days? How many books are teaching CSS layouts these days?
But that's the great thing: you don't need a damn book to learn how to use tables.
You'll get no arguments from me about the merits of CSS, but one thing I don't like about it is that it's a lot harder to pick up, especially for layout. Now sure, if you do web stuff for a living - big deal. You learn what you gotta learn. But if you just need to knock a page together now and then sticking in some tables is a hell of a lot easier.
I found books published by the state of Texas that said the *worst* following distance was 2 seconds. That's the following distance that guarantees the worst possible crash. At closer distances, the two cars strike with less force, even though they are both moving. At longer distances, the following car is slowing and the front car is stopped, lessening the impact.
I don't think that 'you're safer if you're closer than 2 seconds away' tells the whole story. When you rear-end the car in front, yes, the impact may be less. However, that's only assuming the car in front hasn't hit anything yet. Once it does, the people in front of you will suffer even more because of your selfishness. Their car will be travelling faster due to your ramming them, and the inertia of your two combined cars will cause a more damaging crash when they do in the end hit something. So it may work out better for you, but substantially worse for the poor sod you crash into, you insensitive clod!
It would be interesting to try superlueing the magnet to your fingernail...
But how big is the PIN? If it's anything like a credit card PIN, it'll only be 4 numbers or so. There's nothing stopping Google trying every PIN combination, which they could do in the blink of an eye.
I don't think Industrial Design is a lost art - it's just that for really good Industrial Design, it's an expensive art. Apple can afford it, especially as it's essential to their image. Cases like these just don't warrant the kind of spending you'd need to get a really good look.
Also, they're a bit scuppered (when compared to Apple) by the standard ATX form factor...
I suspect the reason you don't get very good reception is because the manufacturers are unwilling to make large phones with big aerials any more. If size doesn't bother you, some phones still have a sockets for an external aerial...
Ignore all these fools telling you to use emacs or vi. Your audience will be used to using Windows programs, and if (as you say) they've been doing VB or C++, they've probably been using Visual Studio anyway. You might as well let them continue. If you try and force vi or emacs on them you'll be wasting valuable time teaching a cryptic and outdated UI. Leave them with what they're used to for editing. Anything else will just get in the way.
Interesting. All my daughters think Lego Mindstorms is pretty neat.
Maybe because you too were a kid once, and the kids that you wish 'not to put up with' will be the ones that keep the country going once you're old and decrepit?
I doubt the PS2 will be abandoned within a year. They've only just stopped producing the PSOne, FFS!
No, there'll still be new PS2 games coming out for a couple of years yet - the installed base is huge, so it doesn't make sense for publishers to jump ship too early to the PS3 until the installed base for it gets bigger. Even when the number of new titles begins to taper off, there'll still be a huge back-catalogue of secondhand games to be gotten cheaply.
I see it like this: PS2 games won't start to taper off until the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008. There'll still be quite a few titles coming out for a year after that. It wouldn't surprise me if there are still a few games trickling out in 2009! If you buy a PS2 now, that's still 2.5 years of new software to look forward to. Combine that with the huge back-catalogue, (much of it available very cheaply or secondhand) and it makes a lot of sense, especially if you don't have a HD TV or are a bit strapped for cash.
Regardless of the forum, the reality is that if you're not paying for support, then you can't assume that anybody owes you anything
You should be able to assume that they owe you a little civility, at least.
Otherwise it's like putting up a sign reading 'Free Beer samples' and then shouting at anyone who turns up that they're fucking dickheads for thinking that they could possibly receive any free beer.
There'll always be a market for standalone mp3 players, but I think the article is right to suggest that that market is going to get squeezed by mobile phones, mainly at the low end.
My Wife's new mobile phone has half a gig of memory in it which she can store songs on, and she can upgrade it with a memory stick if she wishes. The phone came free with a new phone contract and she's not paying any more that she was on her old plan.
So she's basically set up with an mp3 player without having to spend any more money than she would have anyway. Sure, she'll probably get a memory stick to boost the capacity, but that'll still not cost her that much, and considerably less than an iPod nano with a similar capacity would.
Now, I'm sure all of you with high-capacity iPods are scoffing at my Wife's meagre storage space on her phone, but many people just don't need that high capacity. My current mp3 player (A Rio Carbon) holds 5Gb, and I don't have any space problems on it. It'll not be long before phones with a similar capacity are commonplace.
So for those who don't require high capacity, a phone with mp3 playing is going to be an obvious choice; especially as you then only have one object to carry around.
I think it's interesting to compare it with low-end cameras and PDAs; Camera phones nowadays are approaching the quality that they can be a reasonable replacement for the low-end pocket point-and-shoot cameras, and phones now do many of the simpler functions of a PDA. Those who wish for a large collection of music at their fingertips will stick with their iPods, but many others (and I suspect this is a large chunk of the market) will migrate to mobile phones.