Hugh Jackman just wouldnt be right....

..Lets be realistic here 007 *must* be British, an Aussie in the role is just all wrong...

and while we're on the subject of Hugh - What kind of parent names their kid "Hugh" when their lastname begins with a J??? Did they think it was funny that his name is always pronounced "Huge 'Ackman" ??

Isnt it a shame that we cant phone in and vote to have various programs "evicted" from the TV schedules?

Likewise the "Regatta" pub in Brisbane has one-way glass urinals that look out from the upstairs over the main street below.. you can watch people walk past below and pretend to pee on them!
[ April 07, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

I have a feeling applause was given when I landed in Cuzco on a flight from Lima back in '98...

The flight was traumatic for me:

We got up and left our hostel in central Lima at some ridiculously early time in the morning to give us plenty of time to get to the airport, we wandered the deserted streets for a while looking in vain for a taxi until we eventually managed to flag down a guy in a rusted out VW beetle. We climbed in and he did his best to get to the airport despite the inside of teh car being full of exhaust fumes and the brakes clearly not working at all (which very nearly led to our demise at one set of traffic lights). Eventually we got to the airrport with plenty of time to spare and checked in all our stuff. We were feeling confident and happy now that we had boarding passses and seemed reasonably sure that the flight was going to actually happen and we did have seats! - All we had to do was wait a couple of hours to see what gate to board at... So we sat... and listened... and watched the screens.... theres was no mention of our flight on the screens, and announcements were all in spanish - but we listened out for any details we could make out (we could just about communicate what we needed to in broken spanish - but listening to garbled PA announcements was a real test).... After several hours (we knew these flights had a reputation for being unreliable and very delayed, so we were prepared for a wait) we heard our flight number mentioned on an announcement so decided to move towards the boarding gates in the hope of getting more information. We found a gate with our flight number marked up on it and loads of people standing around - so once again we settled believing that things must be OK...
A couple of minutes later a life-saving German gentleman approached me and said "Are you Adrian? Trying to get to Cuzco? - I think they've been calling your name over the PA system for the last 15 minutes!". We stood up and approached the desk where staff were looking busy. They looked at us grabbed our boarding passes and pointed out the door at a plane, montioning us to run! We sprinted to the plane lept up the stairs and the stewardess slammed the door shut behind us immediately. I swear the plane was taxiing toward the runway before we had a chance to sit down!

So - like I said at the beginning of this post I *think* the pilot was applauded for landing at Cuzco, but its not what I remember most about that journey! - Moral of the story - if you dont understand the system and arent good at the local language in a strange airport KEEP ASKING WHATS GOING ON!!!

Interesting yes - but will it work as well as the 70's radio series of the 80's TV series?

Cast looks good:
Steven Fry seems to fit well as the voice of the book
Martin Freeman seems like he can do a pretty good job as the straight, but confused man - so he should be able to be a reasonable Arthur.
Alan Rickman is a perfect Marvin!

I just hope it stands up to the rigours of comparison! Either way it'll surely be one of the biggest movies of the year!
[ April 04, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/

so finally Hollywood have decided to take on yet another literary classic - will it be a quality job inspiring a new generation of enthusiasm for Douglas Adams - or will it be a shameless 'hack' job?....
[ April 04, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
Loo instead of Restroom

Why "restroom"? Its not as if you go in there for a rest is it? They dont have comfy sofas and newspapers to read do they? :roll:

I thought "bathroom" was a bit of a prissy euphamistic mis-nomer (theres no bath in any 'bathroom' in restaurants, bars, clubs or theatres I've ever been in), but "restroom" takes things one step further and avoids referencing any embarassing plumbing appliances altogether! - makes me laugh everytime I hear it!

Never been much of a "Loo" person myself - I prefer a straight forward honest old-fashioned "Toilet" !
[ April 03, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
Like I stated before: Just an imperial standard I'm afraid

What are you afraid of?

I dont see the difference... A British style plug and socket is no less universal than european plugs and neither design is any more objectively better than any other.

What exactly do you mean by "imperial"?
I thought "Imperial" was a term used to describe measurement standards that were originaly based on "natural" measures:
inch=thumb size
ft=foot length
yard=stride length
league=distance an amry can march in 'x' amount of time etc...
pint=?? nice amount to drink?
pound=weight of the average [something]??

by comparison a "metric" measure is one where units are all nicely divisible by 10s and interelated:
1km=1000m=100cm
10cmx10cmx10cm of water = 1kg = 1ltr etc etc etc..

European or British plug and socket designs are both equally arbitrary and are in no way "imperial" or "metric"... and since both designs have been widely taken up across various large parts of the globe I dont think either one can be described as "superior" in any way!

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
but still the UK plug can't be used anywhere else because of its outlandish design

Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Malaysia, Singapore... to name the just places I've been to so far..... in fact of all the places I've holidayed in in the last 5 years the UK plug is by far the most common!! (certainly a whole lot more universal than our stupid Australian plugs that cant go ANYWHERE at all!
)..

of course if you never leave mainland Europe then your european plugs seem like the "worlds standard"... but get onto different continents and it all changes!

More seriously...

If you are intrigued by who wins these "Idol" competitions you have to remember an important factor. Who votes?

The best singer/performer is not necessarily going to win - the one who can persuadde people to vote will. I dont know the actual stats - but I'd imagine a HUGE percentage of the voting population is in the teenage girl demographic and that this effects the competition enormously.

An interesting fact is that Anmerican Idol has toll-free phone numbers, so gets a large number of callers. In "Australian Idol" calls cost premium rates and so you get a poll of the "stupid and gullable"!! (Who wants to pay for a TV program you dont NEED to pay for?) I suspect this further swings the voting demographic even heavier towards the teenagers who havent developed their full and proper defence mechanisms and a sense of cynicism for such money making schemes!

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
3. America finally figured out they have the power and are voting for the worst because, well, they can.

errr.... hmmm.... SHHHHH!!! the thread might well be deleted if you point this out!!!


Remember we try not to talk about elections and politics here!! People get upset!

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
...Most of the world now can accept Europlugs, either native or through modifications to the existing sockets.

I do not believe this....

Try jamming one of your europlugs into an Australian socket... good luck!

according to the website linked to in my earlier post there are more than 13 different global standards for power sockets.. and as far as I can see perhaps 5 of them might be capable of accepting each others plugs...

of course when you say "modifications to existing sockets" if you mean ripping out the whole socket and putting in a new face-plate altogether then you are quite correct in the ANY plug can be used (including UK).

....and then theres the question of gender equality:

Recently a group of women tried to argue a case for sex discrimination throughout the hairdressing industry, pointing out that the price of womens and mens cuts was often different at the same salon.

To me this is ridiculous - I spend $15 on 10 minutes of work and have never once returned for a 'touch-up', never have expensive product applied to my head and generally am a very easy customer... I'm am led to believe that this is not uncommon for male customers (although I accept that there are plenty of exceptions - the *norm* is for a low-maintenance, quick transaction)

With a female haircut the norm is a *much* longer appointment time (think >600% increase), much greater use of expensive hair product, and much greater chance of complaint and retrun visit to fix up 'problem'.

As it is my guy will do perhaps 8 hair 'cuts' in an hour earning him $120 - More than a decent wage, (twice what I could get as a java-contractor) - and no doubt enough to cover his business rental overheads, particularly as his wife cuts at the same rate. (Theres no way these guys need a tip to survive!)

All in all I'm reasonably offended that my haircut is still no less than 1/7th the cost of my wifes! (If the costs were the same I'd get myself a set of shears and indulge in some highly cost-effective self-maintanence)

Amazing the differences in culture....

Here in Australia tipping is a geernal no-no. If I tried to give a tip when I got my hair cut (AU$15 for <10 minutes work), the poor guy would be confused and quite possibly offended!

In many circumstances offering a tip is like suggesting "Gee- you must be desperate if you're prepared to do this kind of work! - I feel sorry for you"..

The reality in Australia is that hairdressing is actually a regarded as a good job - often self-employed, low-stress (That said, there is a nationwide shortage and hairdressing is TOP of the list of "desired professions" to get skills-based migrants from the Dept. of Immigration).....

In restaurants waiting staff are paid an appropriate wage (usually above the specified award wage minimums set by government)and tipping is not unversal or even common - I would offer a small tip (<10%) If I feel the service was 'above and beyond' expectation and the waiter/waitress was particularly friendly or helpful, but if the service is merely satisfactory then I regard tipping as unnecessary.

Theres a bit of a feeling that if a tip is expected, then the establishment is indulging in "false advertising". If the menu says my dinner is going to cost me $20, I want to pay $20 for it - If the staff are going to get shitty because I didnt pay them $25, then they should show $25 as the price!

Originally posted by Jason Menard:


Ever watched television at 25fps vs 30fps? Ugh! And yes, I can tell the difference. I have no doubt that this was the primary factor Edison or Tesla or whoever had in mind when 60 cycles was chosen as the standard.

yeah yeah - so NTSC has a highly higher frame rate than PAL, With moderately modern TVs now being 100Hz models its not really so much of an issue is it? (and although NTSC has faster frames it has fewer lines - so you win some, lose some..)

Interestingly enough, US cinemas aparently have a frame rate of 24x2=48Hz as compared with the 25x2=50Hz in European ones....

Originally posted by Jason Menard:
Yes, Japan also uses the standard 110vac. Their problem is they use the odd non-standard 50hz instead of a more sensible 60hz.

Sensible???

I'm not sure why one AC frequency should be any more sensible than any other! I may have gently teased about the US always inventing its own standards instead of sharing with ROW - but Actually I do appreciate that there are many standards across the world, each valid in its own way.

Mains supply Voltage usually falls into 1 of 2 camps 230-250V(UK, Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa) or 100-110V(US and it seems Japan!)

Frequency also varies between 50 and 60Hz aroudn the world but by FAR the most common standrad is the 240V 50Hz...


Discussion of power standards and handy colour coded map

Remember the UK also has a weird habit of not adhering to international standards for electrical plugs.

I dont care at all what shape the plug is on the end, its easy enough to cut it off and fit one that fits the sockets in your location. And anyway who says UK plugs arent standard? They fit all the outlets throughout Africa - so doesnt that make them an international standard?!



( oh dear - this seems to have degenerated into another international pissing contest! )


Someone smart in the IT industry once said, "The best thing about universal standards is theres so many different ones to chose from!"

After many yeasr of faithful service my old stereo Marantz amplifier finally gave up and its crackling dry solder infested selector switch drove me to investigate replacing my audio system!

I looked around and it seems that best value-for-money AV Recievers in my price range that meet my quality requirements are by Yamaha (with Denon being slightly out of price range).

After doing a few listening tests and reading some product reviews and generally making myself an informed consumer, I did what any impoverished purchaser would do and searched the wold for the best price - and I have uncovered an evil conspiracy to keep Australian consumers swamped with "low-end" gear!

[Model numbers provided just for those who are interested - but are not crucial to the debate!]

The Yamaha RX-V750 retails for AU$1400
In the UK the same box is GBP350 (~AU$850)
Un the USA its close to US$420 (~AU$600)

Why is this so???!!

I've read reviews from Americans talking about how its worth paying the extra $100 for features on the RX-V2500 but that particular box is priced at AU$2500 so whilst it may be worth paying US$100 extra for the better spec'd box, a differential of AU$1000 makes it a ridiculous proposition!

Why should Australians have to pay twice as much as Americans for their ASIAN manufactured gear? Its *almost* worth buying in the UK and getting stuff shipped (cant buy in USA 'due to the US's habit for non-adherence to international standards like voltage.. [which surely should make US gear MORE expensive not less?! ])

Can anyone offer me a reasonable and rational explanation of why this kind of price differential exists?



(FYI: I found a retailer the other side of Australia who did have a special and managed to persuade my local hifi dealer to price match so I've got the price down to AU$1150. Massive reduction but still nearly twice as much the US price!)

Originally posted by Mapraputa Is:
The population of San Francisco's Chinatown practices unknown for me kind of martial arts. It is called "walking on the street". ..

There is a similar, more cerebral martial art that get splayed on public transport all over the world and I used to play on the London Underground:

"The Eye Game"

Object: To observe your oponent and establish dominance in a mental Selection and Pre-amble: Select a random passenger and allow your gaze to fix on them. Assess their size strength, mental state, dress standards etc etc - formulate an entire bizare fantasy world that they live in... DO NOT avert your eyes or get distracted.
Bout: A bout occurs when your opponents looks up and their gaze meets your own, they become aware of your attention. The winner of the bout is the participant who looks away last!!

Some 'fights' are over after just one bout, many go on bout after bout!!

I found that the vast majority of players are very bad at this game and will look away instantly,... interestingly enough they become curious and want to see who is looking at them, but rarely have the courage to square up and take a longer look at whoever was staring at them!
[ March 24, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

Another thread someone mentioned getting paid $90K a year for doing their job..

I was thinking gee that sounds like a lot - but then a realised that they were talking US$90 (not AU$ as my brain asutomatically thinks) - So I did a quick mental conversion and realised that in fact US$90K is an *obscene* amount to get paid (> 200% of a good "Senior Developer" wage here in sunny Qld)...

..but then of course I'm not taking into account the cost of living in the area that the US$90K was quoted (area in fact wasnt specified). and I have no data to help me with that comparison.

Given that all these cost of living factors are not clearly defined I think we need to better express money in terms we can all understand. I remember reading somewhere about the "Big Mac index" which compares cost of living by the amount of local currency required to purchase a McD's burger - but perhaps there are other indexes of other globally known consumer items that would be useful measures:

Salary Standard Unit "Toyota Corolla":
IT Support: about 1.5 Toyota Corollas a year?
Junior Developer: approx 2-3 Toyota Corollas a year?
Senior Developer: 3 - 4 Corollas


Exchange rate of course would from place to place which makes the difference indexes very interesting:

Australia: 1 Corolla = 7000 BigMacs (btw: I'm guessing these)
UK: 1 Corolla = 10,000 BigMacs?

What about the exchange rate of Corollas->2Bedroom Apartments?
Brisbane: 12?
London: 20?

Do you think that any of these indicese are likely to be a more reasonable way to compare monetary amounts than these arbitrary currency units we currently use?

Originally posted by Ben Souther:
In "Brave New World", (copyright 1932), Aldous Huxley predicted that music composed by humans would be replaced by machine generated pulses -- loud and endlessly repetitive. That people would gather in clubs to flail around to it as a precursor to loveless sex.

Damn - I missed out on the loveless sex!

Originally posted by John Smith:
Well, let's listen to this piece, titled "Flute and Guitar". I would argue that it's far from being "metronomic", and in fact, if I didn't tell you that it was generated by a mathematical formula, it may as well pass as one of the Mozart pieces, may it not? Well, the guitar gives it away.

[ March 23, 2005: Message edited by: John Smith ]

Fantastic... that had me in stitches!! - Takes me back to those stupid contemporary music lectures and the insanely silly extracts we had to listen to! (I particularly love the 'authentic' sounding guitar chords)

Yeah thats all well and good if you want totally metronomic ambient noise - but formulaic methods of generating music have never managed to create the nuances that come from human input.

[forgive the following digression!]
Schoenberg (early 20th Century) suggested that all reasonable tunes using western harmonic structures had been written, so devised a method of "serial" music which meant specifying all 12 notes in a given order and not replaying one until all the others had appeared. He wrote a few bits of music using this technique - and although interesting as an idea, the output is utterly unlistenable to (unless you're a freaky music lecturer like I had back in uni and you want to torture your students! )

Anyway - the idea caught on a little and a few composers experimented with the idea extending the ordering method to cover not only note pitch, but also note duration and note volume... I challenge anyone here to listen to any serial music and not laugh at it! - Its a clear case of clever artistic ideas being more important than the output.

I'd worry that the same will be true of your auto-music generator - an interesting idea - but one that would produce characterless unlistenable junk! (thats even assuming you can manage to code such complex issues as generating meaningful lyrics to songs, getting natural feeling(i.e. non-metronomic) timings and finding that mysterious indefinable factor that is called "groove", "swing" or "energy" etc etc depending on which musical social circles you frequent...

If you want to proceed I suggest you split your porject into 3 phases:
1) Poetry generator - Input favourite song lyrics, novels, poems, movie scripts etc etc and use your analysis of these to formulate complex rules about what kind of language you like to hear, whatkind of imagery you like and what high level ideas seem to intrigue you. Use this data to generate song lyrics. (At this stage you can test the system easily to see if the output produces the right kinda stuff you want in your songs without worrying too much about the complex musical side of the application).

2) Music generator - tell the system what music you like and let it compose suitable music. Note - at this stage the output shoudl be printed sheet music or sound "scteches" so that musicians can be used to inject appropriate performer nuasnce and interpretation.

Assuming all is well and you think your music is onto a winner
3) Recording generator - uses input from phase 1) and 2) and introduces actual sounds, (including voice synthesis ) with real performer interpretation. Perhaps further parameters of 'Performer mood' could be provided to give a bit of colour to the recording (Live stadia event performance is always different from big festival, small intimate club venue or cheesy mainstream TV chat-show gig etc etc).

To my mind, each one of these stages is WAAAY beyond the limits of current understanding, so coming up with any of these algorithms seems a bit far fetched to me!

Even in logical tasks like playing chess we IT professionals dont surpass the human experts - How can we expect to take such a complex and indefinable thing like 'art' and program our way to success?

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
..Such a population would likely be several hundred animals, multiply that by the typical size of the homerange of a predator that size and you end up with something pretty large and certainly encroaching on human habitats.
There'd have been proof positive decades ago. Footprints, dead animals, remains from kills (remember this was the top predator on the island, the only one powerful enough to bring down cattle and sheep), faeces.
None such were ever recorded that weren't frauds.

Ahhhh - but there is a great deal of untamed wilderness in Tasmania, so who's to say that they couldnt exist outside of human habitation areas? Its only recently that wilderness & recreation have started to occupy the same space, so there are vast areas that have had very few human visitors. Add to that the possibility of shyness being bred into Thylacines (evolution has a habit of making species we hunt very keen to remain undetected) - and whose to say they couldnt have just ducked down out of the way on the rare occassions someone walked past?

And footprints, prey and faeces have all been reported occassionaly over the years - its just none have been verified. Theres a difference between 'unverified" and "fraudulent".

On the whole I think you're probably right - theres probably none of these critters left... but we can still dream cant we?


....bring on the cloning project!!! (Sydney Museum have a well preserved Thylacine infant, from which DNA could be extracted. Some have suggested implanting into a Tassie-Devil egg (Jurassic Park style) could revive the Thylacine and start a captive breeding program!!

Recent reports suggest a German tourist captured a photograph of what may be a Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger). Could Thylacines have survived undetected for nearly 70 years? (Last known Thylacine was in Hobart zoo in 1937 after last known wild sighting in 1933).

Wouldnt it be great?

More info on Thylacine s

Such a shame that the worlds only large carnivorous marsupial was hunted so efficiently!
[ March 22, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

ahhh - you mean an automated record shop clerk! (N.B. You need a decent record shop for this to work)

customer: I like "X, "Y" and "Z" - but am looking for something different - Can you give me any hints?

store clerk: Have you heard any "A"? They're new on the scene but their work has been compared with "X". Or perhaps some old classic "B" might be worth listening to?


Of course in this internet age such personal interactions are increasingly rare, so if you're an Amazon customer just check out the "Customers who bought this also bought" section.

The only difference in the system you are proposing is the *generation* of music. Unfortunately computer composed music has a long and distinguished history of being total garbage, so unless you really think you can magically invent a decent "groove algorithm" then I'd stick to the $90K job

([insert jealous rant about the non-existence of IT jobs with anywhere close to that kind of salary around here])

Originally posted by Axel Janssen:
..
Won't the soccer world cup 2010 take place in South Africa?
Soccer world cup is comparable to olympics and it lasts double the time.
I am sure South Africa could manage it.

http://www.fifa.com/en/worldcup/index/0,3360,101476,00.html?comp=WF&year=2010&articleid=101476

Indeed - South Africa *is* to host 2010!
..and then since 2002 was Asian(Korea) and 2006 European(Germany) we can loook forward to 2014 being South American and 2018 maybe even coming to Australia! (yippee I'll start saving for tickets today!)

Surely this sort of rotation means that theres less fighting for hosting and therefore less money gets wasted on expensive bid preparation and bribing of officials (which seems to be the Olympic way).

Hi,

I just performed an ill-advised upgrade on our WebSphere5.1 servers to 6.0.

Everything was working fine, and after a bit of effort - most things are now working - but I have one jsp that fails can anyone suggest why?:

The error message is:
"Unmatched end tag found while parsing jsp. Expected jsp:root found html:html[{LINENUM}]"



Is there somewhere in WAS6 where I need to can a lower JSP spec or something so that this can parse in the same way it did in WAS5.1?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Originally posted by Jason Menard:
South America: not likely any time soon. Africa: not likely in our lifetime.

I think Cape Town would be capable of hosting Olympics - South Africa have a proven history of succesfully hosting large sporting events without any trouble (security being the only concern that one could have with S.A) and only a cruel twist of fate (Oceania representaive abstaining 'cos he didnt like all the political dealing going on) denied them hosting the 2006 World Cup [Football for those of you who were wondering].

Brazil would also be capable of hosting a big event and I would have thought Rio would be a great place for Olympics.

As others have said - if Athens can be held up as an example city then why not either of these 2 dynamic, exciting and desirable locations?
[ March 21, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

I think the Olympics, being the premiere forum for international sport, are pretty well respected. ... It seems that what they are looking for when they pick the sites to hold the Olympic are: infrastructure, both for guests (hotels, transportation, etc...) and the competitions (arenas, suitable locations to hold all events, etc...); someplace that tourists would want to go; a place where security arrangements will be comfortable for all involved (removes numerous countries from contention).

That said there are plenty of places that can fulfill those basic criteria and beyond that the decision is largely one of political diplomacy. Perhaps the IOC should adopt a policy similar to FIFA (who administer the worlds largest sporting event every 4 yrs - Football World Cup) and adopt a strict continental rotation. Using that logic we're long overdue for an Olympics in Africa or South America!

Here in Brisbane there is no debate about how to handle the sun. We have the highest melanoma rate in the world and "sun-smarts" is a *very* serious issue taught to our kids from pre-school onwards. Unfortunately the message doesnt always get through and which our beach-loving culture here there are kids every year who have bits of their body hacked off just to remove nasty cancers! (Yes its not just old people who've spent YEARS in the sun who get melanoma)

In USA the chances over a lifetime of getting melanoma are about 1:80. Here in Queensland that ratio drops to a scarey 1:14 !!!

The message that has been promoted for many years now is "Slip,slop slap" - Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat. failure to take these basic precautions is considered foolhardy. For anyone who works outdoors sunscreen (and all sun protection gear) is required to be worn by most employers (failure to do so would be a breach of workplace health & safety regulations) - and all such equipment is tax deductable if used for work.

As far as ther previous posters comments about UVA and UVB are concerned - get a decent sunblock - There are good sunblocks that work on both UVA&B. Interestingly enough sunblock here is almost all "Factor 30SPF" and only rarely can anything less than that be found. Other parts of the world I've seen "factor 2SPF" - which is surely just like cooking oil?!

Personally, I'm not a big fan of appying the slime - so I tend to hover around in the shade a lot - but when I'm in the sun I'll take the slime over amputation or death any day of the week!!
[ March 20, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

Originally posted by John Smith:

1. Would you prefer to own a $20,000 car while others own cars worth $30,000 or more
2. Or would you prefer to own a $10,000 while others own cars worth $3,000 or less.


Sorry, I still don't get it. From your formulation above, it seems what you are asking is "Would you rather be poor or rich?". I don't see any "luxury vs status" content here. Perhaps the confusion is that status often goes with luxury. That is, when one pays a lot of money for luxury, it gives one a certain status.

The point he's making is not whether you are rich or not in absolute terms but relative to your neighbours - would you rather be the poorest guy in a rich neighbourhood having an expensive car - but the worst on the street(i.e. low status but high luxury), or would you prefer to be the richest guy in a poor neighbourhood, driving a reasonable car where everyone else on the street has an old bomb (i.e. high status, low luxury)...

Originally posted by Gerald Davis:
Ok, I will dumb it down for you.

1.Would you prefer to live in an area where everybody live in mansions while you only live in 3-bedroom house.
2.Would you like to live in an area where everybody lives in a studio apartment while you live in a 2-bedroom apartment.

Thats not really the choice that we have though is it?
In reality we're more likely to have the following choice:

1.Would you prefer to live in an area where everybody live in tidy repectable mansions with good schools etc etc while you can only afford a crummy 2 bed apartment
- or -.
2.Would you like to live in an area where everybody lives in a crappy 2 bed apartments and because the area is so run-down and undesirable you can afford a decent sized 4 bedroom house.

You could argue that in option 1 you have LOW status locally - but HIGH(er) status on the larger scale due to the areas desirability. With option 2 you have HIGH status localy - but lower status on the large scale..

Do we compare/compete with our direct neighbours? or our peers across a wider community???

In the end although most of us would like to say we are uneffected by snobbery, I suspect most of us would rather live in the worst house in a good neighbourhood than the best house in a bad neighbourhood! - Even if it does mean we get less tangible asset for our money!...

If I look at my own position I have:
The most run down house in the street
a middle-standard street for the suburb
in one of the better suburbs in the city..
in one of the most comfortable cities in the country
in arguably the most livable country in the world...

So despite being bottom of the pecking order locally on a small scale - I'd guess my social standing relative to my peers (using a very crude tool for measuring such things)increases as I look at a larger and larger definitions of community...
[ March 13, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

Originally posted by Peter Rooke:
"34C ... and sunny...." - It's cold (1C) in [Northern] England, would you swap!

After months of hot sweaty nights and sizzling pressure cooker days - YES!!!

Do you have the faintest idea how hard it is to do simple things when its 34C outside? My garden has grown into a jungle 'cos its too hot and sticky to go out and chop things down after about 8am each day and certain types of trash we have to keep in the freezer until bin collection day to stop our entire suburb from stinking of rotten food!
We turn on the cold tap in the shower and you have to wait 2 minutes for the water to cool down before stepping in or you get scalded!! (our pipes run through the roof).

Bring on winter!!! (actually things have cooled down a bit the last couple of weeks and things are becoming bearable once more!)

Give me a couple of weeks of cool refreshing weather any day!!
I long for the winter mornings (now a distant memory from years ago) when things sparkle with the glistening of frost and a deep breath seems to pour envigorating freshness right through your entire body!


...Having said all that - I remember plenty of miserable, grey, wet days back in UK dreaming of hot sunny weather! so I'm sure its just a case of "grass is always greener" (although I can categorically state that the actually the grass here *IS* greener 'cos the hot humid weather seems to suit extremely lush plant-life )

Funny stuff weather....

As a brit living in Australia, I find my fascination with the weather has taken a new twist:

1) BBC website has weather forecaasts for teh entire world. However, when I pull up the 5-day forecast from Brisbane Australia it seems to almost always be 3 or 4C hotter than the prediction made by the Australian Bureau of Met!
today for example the AusBOM predicts: Sunny 28C, BBC says: Sunny 31C.

Do the BBC get data from somewhere with bad models? or is there some sinister agenda to try and persuade UK residents that everywhere else is warmer than it actually is?

2) Windchill: we all understand that when its cold a bit of a breeze makes you feel _very_ cold and miserable - so the weather forecasters have factored this in and report a conveniently 'adjusted for windchill' temperature - i.e. what its gonna feel like. This is great... very handy for awll you cold-climate people out there...

Now my suggestion is that we need a "hummidity-factor" adjusted temperature for hot weather reporting! Its no good telling me that its going to 32C today - 32C and 20% hummidty can be quite pleasant, 32C and 85% however is completely debilitating! In fact over xmas in Australia we can pretty much safely say its gonna be hot everywhere... The only question that should be addressed by the forecasters ('cos its what actually effects how comfortable we are) is how humid will it be? - but they RARELY tell us - instead they focus on telling us that yet again it will be 34C ... and sunny.... <yawn>
[ March 06, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

Why should being an IT professional and being able to atrract women be mutualy exclusive?

In my various capacities as Musician, IT professional, unemployed bum etc etc I havent noticed my career (or lack thereof) being at all relevant to whether or not I could talk to people, enjoy peoples company or engage in interesting and amusing conversation...

If someone is so shallow as to avoid getting to know someone purely on the basis of a popular sterotype image of their profession then you're probably better off without them..

However, I would say that if being an IT professional has any impact at all when being introduced it would more than likely be a positive detail since in the eyes of most of the coderanch, IT Professions=economically viable, stable employed, regular hours.... by comparison as a musician I had patchy income at best, worked the most unsociable hours and had to travel all over the place, so despite occasional interest in my "exciting" lifestyle, forming meaningful relationships was actually quite hard work!

If you are having trouble "picking up chicks" then perhaps you ought to look at how you meet, treat and talk to people instead of blaming an arbitrary insignificant detail of who you are (i.e. your chosen profession!)

[hint: use of the term "chick" is probably not doing you any favours]

Originally posted by John Todd:
Well, I'm just 22 years old ....

Just you wait!....

At 22 everyone I knew was enjoying life and nobody I knew (with the exception of one seemingly strange girl, who rapidly became my ex-girlfriend) hated the idea of 'settling down' and having children - we were clearly going to be a generation of independant, free-spirited, cashed-up party animals....

of course now with that same group of people being 33, I know less than a handful of people who arent parents (and even those are increasingly desperate to try and have kids)!

It seems that after 10 years of working/travelling the globe/partying and generally searching in vain for something fulfilling in life we've all found our reason to get up in the morning - and its great.

I'm not sure what the 'benefits of downward social mobility' are, unless you mean the ability for a successful person to fall on the arse. I don't think there is much benefit to that, but don't think there should be any action taken to stop it.

Benefits of downward social mobility are that it enables other to be involved in upward social mobility and therefore enables society to "exchange" wealthy-but-useless people for the poor-but-useful.

As for the rest of the birth rate stuff, it assumes a static economy in which, in order to gain someone else must lose. Thankfully that does not resemble the economy of industrialized nations.

Wether the economy as whole is growing or shrinking - we CANNOT all be in the top 20%(or pick any other arbitrary number) of earners - so the only way to enable people to 'earn' their way into the top 20% of earners is to ensure that either people fall out of the top (which doesnt happen all that often since people with money are quite good at ensuring their children arent any worse off than them) - OR for there to be a disparity in birth rates as indicated above!

If you believe that society is continually getting richer of course[an extremely dubious belief], then its entirely possible that everyone can improve their income and ALL feel like winners - but I would argue that since we have a tendency to measure our individual social standing against our neighbours that any such 'enriching' of society as a whole is irrelevant to a discussion about social climbing.

Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
Really!

My reaction to the commercials has always been that, without a filter, the vacuumed-up dust (not the sand or large fleas, just the little allergeneic stuff) must end up back in the air of the room, from where it will settle in half a day. Is this not so?

What do you mean "without a filter"? Ours has some amazing 'HEPA' filter that has been rated by various international "Asthma foundation" groups to filter out particles far finer than any 'normal' vacuum cleaner. The cyclinder(about 2 or 3ltrs?) on our dyson gets emptied approximately twice every time we vacuum our house (average 4 bedroom house) - Thats a LOT of dust - and WAAAAY more than our previous vacuum cleaner would pick up after 20 full cleans..

Once you've cleaned with a Dyson I cant see how you could ever go back to anything else - It'd just feel dirty!! It may cost 5 times as much as another vacuum cleaner - but it removes WAAAY more than 5 times as much dirt! When we bought it I was dubious about it justifying the price tag but the sales guy gave us a "Try it for a week, if you dont like it we'll refund" type deal... After 1 week there was NO WAY I was going to let that thing go!

..and as for Daves assertion that Dysons fall apart... 2 years so far and no damage at all... still looks and works like new!

Originally posted by Dave Lenton:
Are there any other things which are incorrectly known by their brand name instead of the correct term? Tarmac and biro are the only ones I can think of.

Biro - (original manufacturer of ballpoint pens in UK)
Bique (sp?) - (original manufacturer of ballpoint pens in France!)
'Lux - Vacuum cleaner in New Zealand (abreviated 'Electrolux')
Esky - Australian coolbox/chiller box manufacturer
Gladwrap - Australian clingfilm
Walkman - !
[ March 02, 2005: Message edited by: Adrian Wallace ]

Originally posted by Frank Silbermann:
No hard and fast rules apply to every family. But if you're asking what is best for the _typical_ family (whatever that is), then:

One child per family is social suicide. Two children per family is slow social suicide. When financially successful people under-reproduce and let the poor take up the slack, then children on the average are condemned to grow up in poverty.

It should be the reverse, where affluent people have more children and poor people have fewer -- not only will that be better for the children, but the material goods of society (e.g. western luxuries) will be more evenly distributed.

[caution - semiantagonistic content ahead, intended to trigger debate but not offend ]
ahh but Frank consider this:
In our society we demand that everyone has oportunities to achieve upward social mobility (strangely enough we are far less keen on promoting the benfits of downward social mobility). By ensuring that the higher social strata of society have a small birth rate we make room for social climbers from the 'lower' social strata. The chance of social climbing gives the poorer members of society hope that they too can achieve improvements in their position within the cuirrent social structure.

If as you are suggesting the affluent became more reproductive than the poor, then the chances of succesfully climbing the social ladder from a poor background would be dramtically reduced. The removal of the chance of social success could result in alienation of the poor from societies structure with them seeing no potential benefit in belonging to society and result in rejection of society and a revolutionary uprising!!!