Posts by Lucy Stewart
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To a point, Lord Copper. In it's defence, it covers the whole spectrum of anything that is remotely 'science', from psychology, to biology, to chemistry, to climate, to...particle physics. Every week. Frankly, if you can get your head round all the info it crams in in any single issue before the next one is on the shelves, you're doing better than me.
I find it's quite useful for keeping an eye on general goings-on in other fields, or at least what is shiny and media-attention-friendly in other fields; I can usually go look up the actual paper if I'm interested in the detail. It's definitely pop science, but anyone reading it is going to have a significantly better understanding of science than anyone who doesn't, so I'll call that a win.
I don't know that I can back the "tell them to trust peer review" idea of journalism, however; I have read some appalling peer reviewed papers, including, very recently, a genetic association study with a case n=37. To put that in perspective, there has been some not unpersuasive suggestion that any genetic association study with an n of less than 10,000 may be ultimately time-wasting. You're better off getting an expert in the field to explain the paper to you; it's both more helpful and a good test, in that if the finding is that important and they can't explain why it's well or badly-researched, they're probably not very expert.
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Why not be completely brave, transform Nightline into must-see late night telly rather than a showcase for young hotties?
At this point I'd be happy with "transform Nightline into half-an-hour of actual new content, instead of half-an-hour of highlights from clips you played at 6pm".
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And I'm sure you could name or be a phone call away from naming all the name suppressed celebrities I mentioned, your station in life being more equal than say, mine, for instance.
Dude. Grow up.
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Talk to anyone who works in IT operations - I am not one of them - and they will tell you the problems iPhones present in the business context. They are not made to integrate into existing systems.
If they're selling millions just for personal use, do Apple really care?
And if it's not just for personal use - then do you consider it vaguely possible they might work as business tools for people who aren't you?
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You could almost postulate that a better story would have had the Springboks losing to the multi-racial world-famous team and learning valuable lessons about what they could aspire to be, etc, etc - more of your Cool Runnings-type ending. Or, even, a story which had them realising that the All Blacks would be difficult to beat because of their racial-harmony-blah-fishcakes, and then beating them at their own game, as it were, by being awesome and overcoming their divisions.
But I can't imagine a good sports movie where the opposition are, as you seem to describe them being in this one, just sort of irrelevant.
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This is a bit nonsense. `Linux' isn't a body like Apple that could be expected to take responsibility for paying developers. (Linux as a thing that acts probably means the kernel email list, but that's not really sensible.)
And, actually, 70-95% of Linux development is done by paid developers. Someone's clearly making money there...
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In June 2007 when the iPhone was launched I collected a long list of “not impressed”, “meh”, “big deal”, “style over substance”, “it’s all hype”, “my HTC TyTN can do more”, “what a disappointment”, “majorly underwhelmed” and similar reactions.
I was just remembering that. You'd barely know it these days, though.
I thought the Kindle was in fact available in NZ. I was spammed by Amazon on this very subject not two weeks ago.
No; they just released it to something like 100 countries, but not New Zealand. (Or Canada, Singapore, Turkey, China and Argentina, to be fair.) I think it's something to do with negotiations regarding book rights; it's still sucktastic.
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Intriguingly, Apple board has been in a battle with the company's shareholders over sustainability -- the shareholders want an independent sustainability board to scrutinise the company's operations, even at the expense of maximising their own returns.
Is that even legal in the States, considering their really creepy corporate laws? They're obliged to maximise profits no matter what.
I'm not being a Luddite here -- I can easily imagine people for whom downloading a pile of papers or tech manuals that, by their very nature, end up quickly becoming obsolete dust traps in dead tree form would be a boon.
In computer science, publication is pretty much a good indication of irrelevance. By the time you've written it up, submitted it to a journal, had it reviewed, and had it published, it's usually out of date. Which doesn't mean it's totally useless, but...
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(As a side-bar, I'd like to proffer this note for the costume designer of the next post-apocalytic disaster show. Bureaucrats that have just survived the end of the world aren't likely to make a top priority of laying in a supply of power suits and keeping them immaculately dry-cleaned.)
But if they don't, how will anyone know they're bureaucrats?
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Well, I guess the blueprints are out there already:
http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/187962-ipants_original.jpg</quote>
Clearly designed for men, doesn't count.