There is a lot of hugely inappropriate sexually charged behavior at a lot of tech conferences. I mean, this isn't a revelation, right? And at times it makes being female at a tech conference really unpleasant. (And it often feels unsafe. Not in the least because it often is unsafe.)
Really?!?
Can you give an example? I'd like to know if it's something that happens around me that I'm unaware of, or if it doesn't happen in the kind of conferences I go to (perhaps because of topic, location or cost).
The most violence I've ever seen at a conference is an angry "sssh!".
It seems to me the real problem here is not the purportedly offensive jokes or the public tweet, but that people can actually get fired over a simple joke or tweet (and the law actually allows this).
That's what surprises me most, especially with America's free speech stuff.
Round here, I'm pretty sure the process would be 1. Verbal warning from a manager 2. Written warning, if behaviour doesn't change 3. Final written warning
At each point the employee has to be given a chance to respond to any issues.
You can skip straight to 3 if the situation calls for it, but (from 19, here): "If an employee's first misconduct or unsatisfactory performance is sufficiently serious, it may be appropriate to move directly to a final written warning. This might occur where the employee's actions have had, or are liable to have, a serious or harmful impact on the organisation."
Following: 22. Some acts, termed gross misconduct, are so serious in themselves or have such serious consequences that they may call for dismissal without notice for a first offence. But a fair disciplinary process should always be followed, before dismissing for gross misconduct.
23. Disciplinary rules should give examples of acts which the employer regards as acts of gross misconduct. These may vary according to the nature of the organisation and what it does, but might include things such as theft or fraud, physical violence, gross negligence or serious insubordination.
Scottish attitudes towards the human rights convention and the EU in general are quite different to that of the UK
Could you elaborate on that? Given independence, would the Scottish prefer not to participate on the Council of Europe?
The right-wing media in the UK, and a fair few right-wing politicians, don't like the ECHR. The media because of "immigrants", the politicians because they're rich and get in the way of treating the workers like slaves.
Well if you live in a big city, you are probably familiar with seeing boots on vehicles when you don't pay the parking tickets.
That means something else here.
UK - US vehicle terms Car - Auto[mobile]? (is "auto" old-fashioned?) Lorry - Truck Campervan - Motorhome Pavement - Sidewalk Car park - Parking lot Petrol station (or filling station, service station) - Gas station Railway - Railroad Tram - Streetcar Bogie - Truck [Railway] Truck - [Rail] Wagon Metro / underground [train] - Subway [train]
That ("More Fire Than Blood")... is actually quite good. Thank you!
(I don't like most death metal, but mostly because it has growly lyrics which are impossible to understand and is so loud (compressed) that the whole thing sounds like mush.)
I hereby nominate this post for Slashdot's Most Obfuscated Post Title of the year.
Seriously, the title gives absolutely no clue what the article is about. Not everyone lives in your town, goes to your museum, or listens to your death metal.
Agreed -- The linked article is also from a newspaper only published in London.
The "V&A" (Victoria and Albert Museum) is the least well-known of the three (excellent) free museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London. Most tourists who visit London have probably walked past it on their way to see the dinosaurs (at the Natural History Museum) or see the steam engines / cars / computers (at the Science Museum), but only about half go inside the V&A. It has by far the least appeal for children: art, sculpture, design and fashion -- which probably explains it.
(So, to advertise my city: although accommodation isn't cheap, most of the best (and largest) museums and galleries in London are free to visit. You can see what we stole from the rest of the world in the British Museum, the people who did it in the National Portrait Gallery, the art they liked in the National Gallery, the art they didn't like in the Tate Modern, the boats they used in the National Maritime Museum, the science and industry they invested in in the Science Museum, the clothes they wore in the V&A, the animals they liked to collect in the Natural History Museum, and the things they killed other people with in the Imperial War Museum. However, since it rains nowhere near as much as popular perception abroad suggests, you probably wouldn't want to spend all your time in museums.)
So..., that's another word for "aimed at adolescent males", then?
I think they're into something else by now. Grindcore is perhaps a decade too old for that.
I don't know what that 'something else' is. Brostep? (The video at least features a couple of 12 year olds, but I'm pleased the videos churned out in my adolescence didn't include violently holding up a man to get ice cream.)
I always know when I'm listening to the wrong music, cause it has a "scene".....this works with music, cars, and just about anywhere else the word "scene" is used to indicate hip.
"Scene" essentially means "fans" or "hobbyists". You may as well apply the term to football, fishing, film or philately. Or anything else more than one person has an interest in.
(Can you give an example of music without a scene? One of my colleagues likes going to see operas, but he obviously has other friends who do the same, and they swap recommendations and go to concerts together. That's a 'scene'.)
I'm not sure if it's from a film, but round here whenever someone names a new music genre, we finish our drinks.
("Have you heard of Refrigerated Gore Goblin? They're a new transient math-art glitch dub-rap acidcore psy-d-m jazz group, they played in Dalston last weekend.")
I remember seeing a brass band play in the local church, in about 2000. Flakes of plaster fell from the roof. The church is between 200-1000 years old (Wikipedia is very unclear on this point), so I'm not surprised the V&A is concerned. I wonder why they booked the band in the first place.
I saw Laibach play in the Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern last year. That was a fantastic gig, in what felt like a very appropriate location. The volume didn't matter, I'm sure the building (ex-power station) could withstand it, but the atmosphere was very different to a 'normal' concert though -- no support acts, a *huge* room, lots of Tate sensible people. Napalm Death at the V&A could also have been very strange.
I already have a beagle board and a beagle bone, is there anything the Pi can do that the beagle boards can't?
You can buy four Pis for the price of one Beagleboard. Maybe that means you can do four projects rather than one, but the Pi has a somewhat older CPU.
The only reason for you to get one is if you've made a project with the Beagleboard which doesn't use all its power. You could move the project to a Pi and use the Beagleboard for something else.
Note that the processor in the Pi was designed in 2002 (!), so it's probably not a fair reflection of current ARM chips: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM11
I will still use the Pi, but more for toy/hobby stuff. At the moment it's monitoring my household electricity use (519W), and drawing a nice graph. Not too taxing: 20:31:08 up 14 days, 23:09, 1 user, load average: 0.18, 0.08, 0.06
It's possible whatever driver it needs exists in Linux, but hasn't been included in the kernel you're using. (I'm expecting this situation with a touchscreen I bought: http://engineering-diy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/adding-7inch-display-with-touchscreen.html -- so far it works fine on Ubuntu, but I haven't yet tried it on Raspbian, it's in use for something else.)
How much of it can claim that no part of the software was written by non-US citizens?
That would seem irrelevant for the UK.
There's a document somewhere on the gov.uk website showing examples of where open source software has been used. It's been encouraged for a while, I think this latest change is just a little more emphasis.
My guess is that it's mostly political rah-rah but in reality bureaucrats will find requirements so they get the proprietary platform of their choice anyway.
The previous position was than open source software was to be selected if it was equal (in other respects) with the proprietary system. There was a document showing examples of this, e.g. choose Apache over IIS, showing that many other government departments already used Apache.
I'm not sure exactly what this changes. Possibly just giving a bit more push for the open source solution, but that's a welcome change.
What would be really good is if the government could recognise that there are probably many, many cases of "OSS-X can do everything except feature Y, so let's buy Z", where everyone has the same Y. Paying for Y to be added would be very good value for money.
If you don't enjoy bicycling, it's not going to be worth getting up early and dealing with the hassles involved. In which case, you probably should look for something else that you enjoy and do that instead.
Getting up early?
I cycle to work in torrential rain because I'm generally running late. Cycling takes 15 minutes, the bus takes 20 (longer if it's raining, and more people are using the bus), plus up to 15 to wait for it if I've forgotten what minutes past the hour they leave.
Google says driving takes 10. Maybe it does at 4am on Sunday, but at the times I'd want to go to work it's more like 15-20 (following the bus, essentially).
I swear you're some kind of alien, I can't even work up the motivation to take the stairs in the morning. Anywhere between noon and midnight I don't have any problem exercising, but I only get up at the last possible snooze to get to work on time.
I'm "late" (flexitime, but later than I'd prefer) pretty much every day, but I cycle to work, and usually try and wander round outside at lunchtime.
I cycle at a moderate pace on the way to work, to avoid getting sweaty, but I often go faster on the way home.
That a 2001 census! - 12 years ago! - Things have changed a lot since then. The immigration from Muslim countries have been so intense, and the birthrate of Muslims been so high, that Christians now are just above 50% and still dropping. All the lost percentages have been lost to the Muslim groups.
Something like 12% of people who claim to be religious go to church (or mosque, temple etc) at least once a week. It's a bit higher for Catholics, about 17%.
(The statistic at the top, "According to the 2001 census, there were 41 million Christians in Great Britain, making up almost three quarters of the population (72%)", was often argued to be quite inaccurate. IIRC, the census question was pretty loaded -- I think there were tick-boxes for religions, but you had to write in "no religion".)
Most, possibly all, of Europe starts the week on a Monday.
I was taught an old rhyme when I was a child: Solomon Grundy, Born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Grew worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday. That was the end, Of Solomon Grundy.
(It annoys me slightly if an American calendar shows the weekend split. I often have events across Saturday and Sunday; displaying them is clearer when Saturday and Sunday are adjacent.)
I'm not sure if there are special exceptions, but in the UK if something's "not fit for purpose" you have the right to a refund or (working!) replacement.
Imperial College [of Science, Technology and Medicine, London]. Except it's in London, so there's plenty to do in the rest of the city, including at least 10 other universities, which create a "normal" student culture. No excuse for complaining there's nothing to do, but there's the opportunity to join Anime Society and/or never leave the immediate area if you choose.
(Having said that, cost of living is high in London, so most students - at any university in the city - have chosen the city for the culture and social life, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
There is a lot of hugely inappropriate sexually charged behavior at a lot of tech conferences. I mean, this isn't a revelation, right? And at times it makes being female at a tech conference really unpleasant. (And it often feels unsafe. Not in the least because it often is unsafe.)
Really?!?
Can you give an example? I'd like to know if it's something that happens around me that I'm unaware of, or if it doesn't happen in the kind of conferences I go to (perhaps because of topic, location or cost).
The most violence I've ever seen at a conference is an angry "sssh!".
It seems to me the real problem here is not the purportedly offensive jokes or the public tweet, but that people can actually get fired over a simple joke or tweet (and the law actually allows this).
That's what surprises me most, especially with America's free speech stuff.
Round here, I'm pretty sure the process would be
1. Verbal warning from a manager
2. Written warning, if behaviour doesn't change
3. Final written warning
At each point the employee has to be given a chance to respond to any issues.
You can skip straight to 3 if the situation calls for it, but (from 19, here): "If an employee's first misconduct or unsatisfactory performance is sufficiently serious, it may be appropriate to move directly to a final written warning. This might occur where the employee's actions have had, or are liable to have, a serious or harmful impact on the organisation."
Following:
22. Some acts, termed gross misconduct, are so serious in themselves or have such serious consequences that they may call for dismissal without notice for a first offence. But a fair disciplinary process should always be followed, before dismissing for gross misconduct.
23. Disciplinary rules should give examples of acts which the employer regards as acts of gross misconduct. These may vary according to the nature of the organisation and what it does, but might include things such as theft or fraud, physical violence, gross negligence or serious insubordination.
Scottish attitudes towards the human rights convention and the EU in general are quite different to that of the UK
Could you elaborate on that? Given independence, would the Scottish prefer not to participate on the Council of Europe?
The right-wing media in the UK, and a fair few right-wing politicians, don't like the ECHR. The media because of "immigrants", the politicians because they're rich and get in the way of treating the workers like slaves.
See http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/human-rights/the-human-rights-act/human-rights-act-myths/index.php for some common "misunderstandings".
Well if you live in a big city, you are probably familiar with seeing boots on vehicles when you don't pay the parking tickets.
That means something else here.
UK - US vehicle terms
Car - Auto[mobile]? (is "auto" old-fashioned?)
Lorry - Truck
Campervan - Motorhome
Pavement - Sidewalk
Car park - Parking lot
Petrol station (or filling station, service station) - Gas station
Railway - Railroad
Tram - Streetcar
Bogie - Truck
[Railway] Truck - [Rail] Wagon
Metro / underground [train] - Subway [train]
Boot - Trunk
Bonnet - Hood
Wheel clamp - Boot
Bumper - Fender
Windscreen - Windshield
Tyre - Tire
I'm sure I could think of more, but that'll do...
Anaal Nathrakh.
That ("More Fire Than Blood")... is actually quite good. Thank you!
(I don't like most death metal, but mostly because it has growly lyrics which are impossible to understand and is so loud (compressed) that the whole thing sounds like mush.)
I still prefer folk metal. Particularly if it's silly. :)
I hereby nominate this post for Slashdot's Most Obfuscated Post Title of the year.
Seriously, the title gives absolutely no clue what the article is about. Not everyone lives in your town, goes to your museum, or listens to your death metal.
Agreed -- The linked article is also from a newspaper only published in London.
The "V&A" (Victoria and Albert Museum) is the least well-known of the three (excellent) free museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London. Most tourists who visit London have probably walked past it on their way to see the dinosaurs (at the Natural History Museum) or see the steam engines / cars / computers (at the Science Museum), but only about half go inside the V&A. It has by far the least appeal for children: art, sculpture, design and fashion -- which probably explains it.
(So, to advertise my city: although accommodation isn't cheap, most of the best (and largest) museums and galleries in London are free to visit. You can see what we stole from the rest of the world in the British Museum, the people who did it in the National Portrait Gallery, the art they liked in the National Gallery, the art they didn't like in the Tate Modern, the boats they used in the National Maritime Museum, the science and industry they invested in in the Science Museum, the clothes they wore in the V&A, the animals they liked to collect in the Natural History Museum, and the things they killed other people with in the Imperial War Museum. However, since it rains nowhere near as much as popular perception abroad suggests, you probably wouldn't want to spend all your time in museums.)
So..., that's another word for "aimed at adolescent males", then?
I think they're into something else by now. Grindcore is perhaps a decade too old for that.
I don't know what that 'something else' is. Brostep? (The video at least features a couple of 12 year olds, but I'm pleased the videos churned out in my adolescence didn't include violently holding up a man to get ice cream.)
I always know when I'm listening to the wrong music, cause it has a "scene".....this works with music, cars, and just about anywhere else the word "scene" is used to indicate hip.
"Scene" essentially means "fans" or "hobbyists". You may as well apply the term to football, fishing, film or philately. Or anything else more than one person has an interest in.
(Can you give an example of music without a scene? One of my colleagues likes going to see operas, but he obviously has other friends who do the same, and they swap recommendations and go to concerts together. That's a 'scene'.)
It grew out of the crust scene
I'm not sure if it's from a film, but round here whenever someone names a new music genre, we finish our drinks.
("Have you heard of Refrigerated Gore Goblin? They're a new transient math-art glitch dub-rap acidcore psy-d-m jazz group, they played in Dalston last weekend.")
I remember seeing a brass band play in the local church, in about 2000. Flakes of plaster fell from the roof. The church is between 200-1000 years old (Wikipedia is very unclear on this point), so I'm not surprised the V&A is concerned. I wonder why they booked the band in the first place.
I saw Laibach play in the Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern last year. That was a fantastic gig, in what felt like a very appropriate location. The volume didn't matter, I'm sure the building (ex-power station) could withstand it, but the atmosphere was very different to a 'normal' concert though -- no support acts, a *huge* room, lots of Tate sensible people. Napalm Death at the V&A could also have been very strange.
I already have a beagle board and a beagle bone, is there anything the Pi can do that the beagle boards can't?
You can buy four Pis for the price of one Beagleboard. Maybe that means you can do four projects rather than one, but the Pi has a somewhat older CPU.
The only reason for you to get one is if you've made a project with the Beagleboard which doesn't use all its power. You could move the project to a Pi and use the Beagleboard for something else.
(I don't own a Beagle-anything. See also http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/06/18/ask-an-educator-whats-the-difference-between-arduino-raspberry-pi-beagleboard-etc/ )
Note that the processor in the Pi was designed in 2002 (!), so it's probably not a fair reflection of current ARM chips: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM11
I've bought a Hardkernel Odroid-U2 http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php and plan to replace my webserver. The Pi was almost powerful enough -- it was fine for everything except resizing photographs on demand. The Odroid-U2 has 2GB RAM, and a processor that was released last April ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos_(system_on_chip) "4 Quad", if I follow the description correctly).
I will still use the Pi, but more for toy/hobby stuff. At the moment it's monitoring my household electricity use (519W), and drawing a nice graph. Not too taxing:
20:31:08 up 14 days, 23:09, 1 user, load average: 0.18, 0.08, 0.06
Try the MIDI-to-USB cable on your desktop.
It's possible whatever driver it needs exists in Linux, but hasn't been included in the kernel you're using. (I'm expecting this situation with a touchscreen I bought: http://engineering-diy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/adding-7inch-display-with-touchscreen.html -- so far it works fine on Ubuntu, but I haven't yet tried it on Raspbian, it's in use for something else.)
Mine was £1.45 with free shipping (and unfortunately no tax paid, thanks Amazon): http://www.amazon.co.uk/MicroVillage-PREMIUM-HDMI-Cable-Metre/dp/B000Z6YS6Q/
How much of it can claim that no part of the software was written by non-US citizens?
That would seem irrelevant for the UK.
There's a document somewhere on the gov.uk website showing examples of where open source software has been used. It's been encouraged for a while, I think this latest change is just a little more emphasis.
My guess is that it's mostly political rah-rah but in reality bureaucrats will find requirements so they get the proprietary platform of their choice anyway.
The previous position was than open source software was to be selected if it was equal (in other respects) with the proprietary system. There was a document showing examples of this, e.g. choose Apache over IIS, showing that many other government departments already used Apache.
I'm not sure exactly what this changes. Possibly just giving a bit more push for the open source solution, but that's a welcome change.
What would be really good is if the government could recognise that there are probably many, many cases of "OSS-X can do everything except feature Y, so let's buy Z", where everyone has the same Y. Paying for Y to be added would be very good value for money.
If you don't enjoy bicycling, it's not going to be worth getting up early and dealing with the hassles involved. In which case, you probably should look for something else that you enjoy and do that instead.
Getting up early?
I cycle to work in torrential rain because I'm generally running late. Cycling takes 15 minutes, the bus takes 20 (longer if it's raining, and more people are using the bus), plus up to 15 to wait for it if I've forgotten what minutes past the hour they leave.
Google says driving takes 10. Maybe it does at 4am on Sunday, but at the times I'd want to go to work it's more like 15-20 (following the bus, essentially).
I swear you're some kind of alien, I can't even work up the motivation to take the stairs in the morning. Anywhere between noon and midnight I don't have any problem exercising, but I only get up at the last possible snooze to get to work on time.
I'm "late" (flexitime, but later than I'd prefer) pretty much every day, but I cycle to work, and usually try and wander round outside at lunchtime.
I cycle at a moderate pace on the way to work, to avoid getting sweaty, but I often go faster on the way home.
Umm 1 can of Mt. Dew is 170 calories. http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/nutrition-calories/food/generic/mountain-dew/. Still not great but 700 is a bit off.
That's (presumably) half the bottle/can. Who only drinks half?
From https://www.mountaindewenergy.co.uk/drinks/ the 'serving size' is 250mL, but the bottle is 500mL. 500mL has 240kcal, from 60g of sugar.
That a 2001 census! - 12 years ago! - Things have changed a lot since then. The immigration from Muslim countries have been so intense, and the birthrate of Muslims been so high, that Christians now are just above 50% and still dropping. All the lost percentages have been lost to the Muslim groups.
I don't like the Daily Mail, but they have the best graph: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2246436/Census-2011-religion-data-reveal-4m-fewer-Christians-1-4-atheist.html
It's fairly obvious that the ex-[identified-as]-Christians are now atheist.
Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11297461 for the UK.
Something like 12% of people who claim to be religious go to church (or mosque, temple etc) at least once a week. It's a bit higher for Catholics, about 17%.
(The statistic at the top, "According to the 2001 census, there were 41 million Christians in Great Britain, making up almost three quarters of the population (72%)", was often argued to be quite inaccurate. IIRC, the census question was pretty loaded -- I think there were tick-boxes for religions, but you had to write in "no religion".)
Most, possibly all, of Europe starts the week on a Monday.
I was taught an old rhyme when I was a child:
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end,
Of Solomon Grundy.
(It annoys me slightly if an American calendar shows the weekend split. I often have events across Saturday and Sunday; displaying them is clearer when Saturday and Sunday are adjacent.)
Ah, the rights don't really apply, there's a gap in the law: http://m.computeractive.co.uk/ca/consumer-rights/1931491/isnt-software-covered-undere-sale-act
Can you return it?
I'm not sure if there are special exceptions, but in the UK if something's "not fit for purpose" you have the right to a refund or (working!) replacement.
Imperial College [of Science, Technology and Medicine, London]. Except it's in London, so there's plenty to do in the rest of the city, including at least 10 other universities, which create a "normal" student culture. No excuse for complaining there's nothing to do, but there's the opportunity to join Anime Society and/or never leave the immediate area if you choose.
(Having said that, cost of living is high in London, so most students - at any university in the city - have chosen the city for the culture and social life, etc.)