Posts by uncredited 51 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Nov 2007
> How some totally unqualified nobody managed to round up all those billions in investment money, and conned former cabinet members and generals to sit on the board of her imaginary company I'll never know.
Tell them exactly what they want to hear, either they're going to make loads of money or as is more popular now, they'll save the world!
> And don't try the "hired sysadmins are expensive" bullshit.
Many companies hide the real system administration costs by passing it over to software developers in the "cross-functional teams", so instead of having a couple of competent system administrators you have a whole horde of backend developers with very limited understanding of running and maintaining servers setting up and running "servers" in cloud services.
The developers' time is wasted on effectively working as substandard sysadmins on top of often having to be database administrators as well, but it's fantastic because it's "cloud"
The study seems to have one fundamentally wrong assumption, that the recommendations are only based on what the user views. If that were the case a new user with fresh account that watches one video of a cat would only be recommended cat videos after the first video but that's not what happens.
Google has said that there are multiple factors that are in play, among them is "engagement", which they seem to mean how many users "comment" or "like" videos and based on other studies and content creator's own experiences, "right-wing content" generates more engagement.
Popularity in your region also weighs in heavily, Youtube recommends to me a ridiculous amount of "life-style(*) videos" from the country I live in, even though I systematically ask not to be recommended any of these channels.
(*) Life style - as in "hey, see how much I drank yesterday while wearing the clothes I was given as an advertisement"
"They individually, and over a period of time came to their own conclusions about how to deal with a very influential man, and his frothing supporters, all calling for various people to be hung and the rule of law disobeyed."
This may be what they claim and might even have been true but the timing of these deletes and bans on not just Trump and Parler, doesn't do them any favours and might even get them in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission that specifically bans and punishes group boycotts.
Even Ron Paul was blocked from updating his Facebook page accusing him, of all people, of "repeatedly violating community standards".
Facebook also deleted, without any explanation, several hundred thousand posts from a group consisting of people that have left the democratic party.
This was a political takedown, nothing else.
"it's our fault we get paid less so perhaps it's men's fault they don't get many teaching jobs?"
You've completely missed that this is exactly the point! Men choose not to go for teaching jobs and therefore they don't get teaching jobs, women choose not to go for IT jobs and therefore don't get IT jobs.
If you had bothered to watch the video you'd have seen that it not only cites but interviews researchers that conducted some of the largest social studies ever made on exactly this issue and the results were exactly as Infernoz quoted them: In more gender equal countries women tend to stay away from technical careers such as in IT for the very reason stated above, they chose the career they were interested in.
Polls in Iceland usually have a sample size of around 1,000 people, the same as in most countries I'm told. Apparently sample sizes bigger than that don't give a much better margin of error. I'm not a statistician so I don't know that for sure but considering that sample sizes are similar in Denmark and Sweden as well there's probably something in that.
Well, that capitalist invented the spade, then found the resources (usually money, often from other capitalists) to make the said spade and finally had to travel to the farmer and show him the benefits of using the spade. Of course this is nothing but exploitation of the person that put the spade together and got paid for his time.
Pete 2 said:
"However, the principle still applies: that application design has not kept up with screen layouts and could do with a thorough overhaul to get it into the 21st century."
Maybe going back to the 90s web design and move the menus to a column down the left? No vertical space needed!
> The deep oceans ARE warming rapidly.
> Simple measurable fact from thousands of ARGO bouys.
> http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/AR4WG1SeaSurfaceTemp.jpg?711122
Well four out of five studies on the Argo data seem to indicate the exact opposite...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/new-paper-on-argo-data-trenberths-ocean-heat-still-missing/
I translate it like this:
"Women in general are piss poor at negotiating salaries and will take far lower offers than men which in turn will force the average wages in that particular field down." *
It may not be what the author meant but this is my experience and I'm starting to see it here in Sweden. Programmer salaries are slowly moving downwards at the same time as more women enter the field and when you ask them about their pay you weep silently, knowing what is happening.
* This was actually tested by a union in Iceland about 10 years ago, they posted an ad for a job and called everyone that applied in for an interview. During the interview everyone was asked what salary they requested and the male that asked the lowest was way above the average for the women. The woman that asked for the highest was slightly above the average male and the male that asked the highest wanted close to three times as much as female that had the lowest request.
I've never understood that incredible hard-on people seem to have for Maths as some necessity for Computer Science. I've been working as a programmer for close to 7 years and have yet to see a single math problem requiring more than just basic algebra. Sure Maths can help with logical thinking but far more often what is needed is basic understanding of human behaviour.
"there's a genuine bias against practical cleverness throughout AngloSaxon business culture."
If only that were true only with AngloSaxon business culture! I live and work in Scandinavia and here practical cleverness is frowned up on just as much as anywhere, probably even more. Companies much prefer a silent yes-man that will patch things up with duct-tape and chewing gum rather than solve the real problem at hand.
"The ribbon bar helps users to learn to use Word properly by presenting styles and other core features to them in a more understandable way."
The the way styles were implemented in Word was a complete and utter disaster which is why many of those that actually tried learning to use them gave up and went back to the "bold and italic buttons".
I agree with that it sounds the same but unfortunately in Iceland there are precedents for exactly this. The law itself usually doesn't define the subject but states that the subject is defined in a separate regulation. The problem is that the regulation can be changed at any time by the minister in the given cabinet without the need to consult the parliament or in fact anyone at all. Thus "violent porn" can change to whatever the sitting minister feels like it should and could easily become just "porn" without any need for justification.
First off, the minister in question is male, hardly lesbian as such.
His party got their votes because of three things, knee-jerk reaction to the bank crash, promising to protect Icelandic households after the financial crash and promising to fight against EU membership, these promises didn't last through the election night, before voting was even finished they had reached an agreement with the socialist party to apply for EU membership and one of the first things they did (with help from the socialist party) after getting to power was to hand over one of the banks to hedge funds and venture capitalist groups that have since forced a lot of the very people the party promised to protect, into bankruptcy.
This almost wiped out the party in opinion polls, plummeting from approx. 20% following in the previous election to having recovered to just over 7% just before the "violent porn" play. So I'm far from alone in thinking that this party can't be trusted at all, most of their voters in the previous elections agree on that. The party itself has lost a lot of its members already and the credibility is completely erased.
Icelander's have experienced this party in charge, they don't trust them any more, and most of them are far from "tight thinking hairy chested hetero thinkers". This party has spoken on numerous occasions about the "need" for internet censorship, the current party leader has even seriously suggested a need for an "Internet police" that would be allowed to monitor internet traffic and block unwanted material. This is a totalitarian party by all definitions that is partly controlled by extreme feminist factions that even outspoken Icelandic feminists deny any connection with.
Actually the minister's party is the communist/feminist party in Iceland which alone should raise questions about the "study" conducted by that same minister's work group. This party has repeatedly discussed ideas about the "need" for internet censorship on various subjects ever since the party was founded in the late 1990s and this latest is hardly any surprise.
They've finally realised that hardly anyone in Iceland agrees with their ideas on internet censorship so they've taken to the classic "Think about the children" argument hoping to gain enough support through that. This is simply a "gateway law" that will allow the "violent porn" definition to be widened by a minister at any given time, probably dropping the "violent" part sooner rather than later.
Moneybookers and Dalpay can help you outside USA/UK and their prices didn't compare too badly with PayPal the last time I checked. I have helped a few people set up both systems and as far as I know all of them are quite happy.
There are probably a few other payment processors that aren't too expensive, it's just a question of finding them.
Contrary to most here I welcome this with open arms, I don't even remember when I started using Opera, it's been my browser of choice for so long but I think this could turn out to be extremely positive for Opera as a browser. It could lead to a lot more people using it and as a consequence a lot more sites (read online banks etc.) will be available for Opera.
Acorn had a special folder called "Apps", containing applications, in RISC OS 2 back in 1988 and it's been there in every version of RISC OS since so there's plenty of "prior use" examples and I'm pretty sure that the term "app" as an abbreviation of application is far older than that.
The only reason this "nonsense" is still going on is because of the slow moving beast that the EU judicial system is - Microsoft has dragged this on forever in courts because that tactic usually works, the opposing party just stops bothering and gives up.
Whether or not this will have any effect on the browser wars remains to be seen and is in fact almost completely irrelevant in this case, this is a case against a large corporation attempting to corner a technology and eliminating competitors, not on merit but by abusing a monopoly.
By going all the way, the bureaucrats have managed not only to surprise just about everyone but also managed to show Microsoft and bidding monopolies that the costs will be severe if they don't do as the courts tell them from the very start. There is a legal precedence now that this has gone all the way and other similar issues are more likely to end the same way - the next time a big bully corporation might not be so tempted to try the "bind them in court for years" tactic but to settle early on. Far from me being an EU fan but the EU is big enough to keep big companies like Microsoft in court forever and coming out on top when it has the laws on it's side. In the end the only thing companies like this understand is the huge lawyer bill stacking up so that's the only way to really hurt them.
"Opening the source code would result in more specialized experts on all platforms and likely even better support on diverse platforms."
Now, how many times has this sudden flood of experts resulted in anything more than the "new toy" syndrome where the application is squeezed together on the new platform for minor functionality and then left to die because the original "expert" finds an even newer toy to play with for a while?
This article reminded me to check which Opera version I was running here at work and of course I was one version behind, too many computers to keep track of :)
According to the Opera site, Opera 10 will fix the updating problem, I myself have been waiting for this simply because I'm too lazy to check for an update and almost always rely on the automatic checker.
Interesting test, have a person doing two tasks, neither of which he (or she) is likely to ever have done before, let alone simultaneously and if the person fails this test, assume that he would automatically fail at doing two different tasks, both of which he does several times every single day and quite often both at the same time.
You claim that David Robinsons has no idea how thermodynamics work. Now assuming you have an idea - why don't you explain it to us laymen and point out exactly what he got wrong and how? Explain to us how thermodynamics work instead of just the typical "you don't know what you're talking about" claim repeatedly made by AWarmists without any further explanation. Answers like yours are exactly what made me a sceptic - loud claims without any arguments to support them.
"Besides, if the sceptics are right and the world is warming because of non-anthropogenic factors, that's actually a bigger problem. If human influence is so weak, it means that we're going to have to make _greater_ efforts to stop climate change, not less. That is, if human-caused CO2 levels have a smaller effect than is generally thought then we have to reduce emissions by a lot more than is generally thought if we want to stop a particular amount of warming!"
This goes right up to the top 10 of the most stupid things I have ever read! If the sceptics are right and human influence is so so weak that it hardly registers then it would be absolutely pointless to waste resources trying to lessen the overall effect. A bit like not pissing in the ocean in order to avoid sea level rising when the tide is coming in.
Secondly - there's absolutely no chance what so ever that humans will ever stop climate change and that has nothing to do with whether humans are causing the current global warming or not. The climate will ALWAYS change as long as there is a climate. Humans can lessen their impact but the only way for mankind to stop affecting earth's climate is to pack up and leave earth completely.
The "standard climate change denier stuff" as you call it actually originates from the "humans causing everything" group. How many "deniers" have been accused to be on the payroll of oil companies or the car industry or other heavy industry? It's still standard stuff for most members of The Church of Al Gore. These relentless accusations actually made me start thinking that if this is the main argument for human-caused global warming then maybe this is just another "the earth is flat" argument, if you believe otherwise then you are nothing more than a heathen and should swallow the "truth" without thinking independently.
Now that accusations of corruption have started to flow in the opposite direction the medicine doesn't taste quite as good to those that started administering it.
Of course most of the public don't know about web standards and as a result don't care. They can be made aware by telling them about these standards. Even a short explanation about how this hinders the progress of web sites could be in order. People, by default, don't care about problems they don't know about but if they know about the problem - some of them might start caring.
As before, I suggest this only for non-commercial sites, such as personal blogs etc. to start with because then you are not damaging any business and people most likely are visiting because they already know and trust you.
One way to make more people aware of IE's horrible standards support is simply to design non-commercial sites only with standards in mind and display a prominent message on the site pointing IE users to more standard compliant browsers. Blogs for example could be a good way to do this. Even news sites like The Register could do this if the owners find this to be an annoyance.
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