On 08/06/2012 9:57 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>
> Everything can be improved. This is not the same as saying that
> everything is equally optimal.
>

Too deep for me, I am afraid. o_O

>>>> BTW Andrew, have you ever tried to play Grieg's In the hall of the
>>>> mountain king? ;-)
>>>
>>> Actually, yes... I *think* I succeeded.
>>
>> Well done, that man.
>
> I used to love that song, until Altern Towers overused it...

Woosh! That goes right over my head.

And be true to your shelf-ish.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 08/06/2012 9:56 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> There is no magical "tool" which can correctly guess what is hidden
> behind a solid object.

Even if the object is made of glass? :-P

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 08/06/2012 10:04 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 08/06/2012 10:03 PM, Stephen wrote:
>
>> ...and so, ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of the show, and you
>> must agree, it certainly ticked all the boxes - particularly those
>> marked 'terrible' and 'rubbish'...
>
> http://tinyurl.com/28oz8fu
>


That’s the problem, you have all the wrong references.

Unless…

You’re a Geek?

And if you are a geek. Don’t expect to fit in with the muggles. They are 
just as weird but there are more of them.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:03:29 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 08/06/2012 9:53 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:44:01 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>>
>>> On 08/06/2012 8:24 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 20:13:40 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>> And points mean?... :-)
>>>>
>>>> Prizes! :)
>>>
>>> Well, they do say that time flies when you're having fun, and to prove
>>> it I notice my sundial has stopped...
>>
>> That sounds like fun after dark. ;)
>>
>>
> Talking about “After dark”, there is still eight days until TC-RTC
> finishes. ;-)
> 
> ...and so, ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of the show, and you
> must agree, it certainly ticked all the boxes - particularly those
> marked 'terrible' and 'rubbish'...

:)

Are you perhaps hinting that a new series is imminent?

Jim

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On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:56:07 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>> For the average person, it most certainly is possible.  There are tools
>> in the basic/cheap versions of Photoshop to do this sort of thing IIRC.
> 
> There is no magical "tool" which can correctly guess what is hidden
> behind a solid object.

No, but if you have a picture that shows what's behind a solid object, 
then you can in fact mask out the object.

Photoshop also now has a plugin that can do a reasonable fill that looks 
good to do things like remove a tree from the foreground and replace it 
with grass, that kind of thing.  That's much easier than, for example, 
removing people from a picture.

But if you take a series of photos with people walking in front of the 
subject, in general, you can paint people out and replace them with 
what's behind them using data from other shots in the series.

That's how it's done, generally.

> I'm aware that there *are* people who possess the skill to do utterly
> amazing things with photo editors. But that doesn't mean that everybody
> can do this. It's not a question of having a magic "tool"; it's about
> being sufficiently skilful to find ways to trick the eye. From what I've
> seen, few people have such skills.

Well, you are working from a very small sample.

>>> That's my point.
>>>
>>> If you do not have all of the information (the usual case), then
>>> whether your conclusions are correct or not is largely chance.
>>
>> I don't think this is the "usual case".
> 
> Usually what you know about a thing is utterly dwarfed by what you don't
> know. The question is whether you know the important facts - which is
> usually a matter of chance.

That's not been my experience.  It is possible to seek out the important 
facts before making a decision.

Business intelligence systems do exactly that, in fact.

>> Well, no, it's not my intention to say "Andy, you're an idiot" - I hope
>> you know that.  What you do tend to do, though, is start from a very
>> bad premise and then make wild assertions that are not accurate and
>> very easily verifiable.
> 
> Statements like this make me wonder where this vast endless source of
> "easy" counter-examples is... It's as if the entire world knows
> something that I don't.

How to properly use google? <scnr>

>>> I'll see if I can figure out what my password is. (If not, I guess I
>>> can look it up on some Russian forum...)
>>
>> LOL
>>
>> There is a forgotten password link you can use to reset it, of course.
> 
> Nah, it's probably the same password I use for everything else...
> 
> ...oh. ****. >_<

I smell a problem....

>>> Or because - as I already suggested - it's perhaps aimed at somebody
>>> other than me.
>>
>> That's certainly possible, but you are a "job seeker", and that's part
>> of the target audience.
> 
> As I say, I get the impression (I'm not sure precisely why) that it's
> mainly targeted at high-powered business executives in upper management.
> (These are the people who are usually obsessed with "networking", for
> example.) Since I am not one of those people, perhaps this isn't an
> appropriate tool for me, which is why it looks useless when I look at
> it.
> 
> (Alternatively, perhaps I'm just mistaken...)

Yep, you are.  I'm certainly not a 'high powered business executive in 
upper management", but I do happen to have worked with a lot of people in 
several different fields.

>> But jobs typically don't fall out of the sky into your lap (as you
>> know), you have to work to find them (which you also know) and it can
>> be difficult (which you also also know).
> 
> Sure. As I say, last time I looked, there didn't seem to be anything to
> "work at". Once you've filled in all the fields, that's about it. Unless
> they really have /radically/ altered the capabilities of the site...

Well, there's also the question of your unwillingness to go where the 
work is, or your unwillingness to believe that anyone on the planet who 
works a "normal" job makes enough to live on.

Even with plenty of real-life examples demonstrating the opposite.

Heck, I was laid off last May.  I didn't work again until October, and 
it's been contract work ever since.  A couple of really tight months 
financially, but we haven't lost the house and are still paying all the 
bills.

>>> OOC, do you have any factual basis for saying that "millions of people
>>> do use it with some success", beyond the fact that the site still
>>> exists and hasn't gone bankrupt yet? Or is /that/ merely an
>>> assumption? :-P
>>
>> Oooh, he's got teeth, this one does. ;)  That's a fair question.
> 
> Back atcha. ;-)

It always makes me smile when you take a stand on something.  Even when 
the stand isn't necessarily logical in my view.  You have changed in that 
regard, and it's a good change.  :)

>> Look at the number of people I'm connected to.  I follow a number of
>> companies and see people taking positions at new companies that had
>> jobs posted on the site.
> 
> So, there's indirect evidence that some of the people on the site lead
> quite successful careers. That's a correlation, but not necessarily a
> causal relationship.

Sure, it's not a causal relationship - but even if you consider the 
possibility that 0.01% of the people on LinkedIn have successfully used 
it to find work (and that's an extremely conservative estimate), that's 
still 500 people who have found jobs using it just in my network alone.

>> My network (out to three degrees) consists of nearly 5 million people.
> 
> So there's a lot of people /on/ the site.

And it stands to reason if it were a waste of time, people wouldn't spend 
time on the site, would they?  (The point of LinkedIn isn't to waste 
time, it's to build a professional network.  Facebook, OTOH, is 
essentially there for people to waste time on so they can be the 
'product' sold to advertisers - the two aren't really equivalent).

>> Every job search professional I have talked to (recruiters, placement
>> agencies, etc.) has said that networking is something that's generally
>> a good predictor of success in finding employment.
> 
> I don't get the whole "networking" thing. I mean, hypothetically I can
> see why it might work. But I have no idea how you'd go about this in the
> real world, nor do I directly know of any instances where this has been
> a successful approach for somebody. Maybe I haven't seen networking
> succeed because I don't do any networking and I don't know anybody else
> that does, IDK... It just seems a slightly strange concept.

Well, I've had it work for me in the past.  In fact, the contract work 
I'm doing right now is due to networking - I applied for a position with 
a local company, and while I wasn't hired by that company, someone 
external to the company involved in the selection process saw my CV and 
gave me a call for another project she was working on.

I've been working "for" her (as an independent contractor) ever since.

The job before the one I was laid off from (or rather, the company), I 
met a recruiter at a user group meeting who introduced me to the hiring 
manager at the company - and I was originally going to contract to them, 
but they bought the contract out and hired me directly.

So there's two examples.

>>> (Not that a seriously doubt you. But it sounds like exactly the sort
>>> of statement that's easy to casually make and almost impossible to
>>> objectively verify.)
>>
>> See above. :)
> 
> For example, how do you know that "millions" have found it useful? Not,
> say, "thousands"? The number of people on the site is not necessarily
> the number who have actually found it beneficial.

It stands to reason that if it weren't beneficial, people would stop 
using it.  After all, you didn't find it beneficial, and you stopped 
using it.  That's actually a perfectly natural reaction.

So are you assuming you're the only one who stopped using it because you 
didn't find it beneficial?

> In general, I imagine it's quite hard to scientifically quantify this.
> (What counts as "beneficial" or "not beneficial"? How do you put a
> number on that?)

Found something they were looking for using the service.

Jim

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>> http://tinyurl.com/28oz8fu
>
> That’s the problem, you have all the wrong references.
>
> Unless…
>
> You’re a Geek?
>
> And if you are a geek. Don’t expect to fit in with the muggles. They are
> just as weird but there are more of them.

http://tinyurl.com/cjscp68

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>> There is no magical "tool" which can correctly guess what is hidden
>> behind a solid object.
>
> No, but if you have a picture that shows what's behind a solid object,
> then you can in fact mask out the object.

Sure. That I can believe. Doing it from just one photo isn't so easy.

>>> I don't think this is the "usual case".
>>
>> Usually what you know about a thing is utterly dwarfed by what you don't
>> know. The question is whether you know the important facts - which is
>> usually a matter of chance.
>
> That's not been my experience.  It is possible to seek out the important
> facts before making a decision.
>
> Business intelligence systems do exactly that, in fact.

Doesn't BI involve paying vast sums of money to /collect/ the necessary 
information?

>> Statements like this make me wonder where this vast endless source of
>> "easy" counter-examples is... It's as if the entire world knows
>> something that I don't.
>
> How to properly use google?<scnr>

You laugh, but this is actually non-trivial.

If I had a penny for all the times I've been utterly frustrated in my 
efforts to find information using Google, I'd be very rich by now. 
(Obviously I can't think of a single concrete example right now. That 
would be too useful...)

>> As I say, I get the impression (I'm not sure precisely why) that it's
>> mainly targeted at high-powered business executives in upper management.
>> (These are the people who are usually obsessed with "networking", for
>> example.) Since I am not one of those people, perhaps this isn't an
>> appropriate tool for me, which is why it looks useless when I look at
>> it.
>>
>> (Alternatively, perhaps I'm just mistaken...)
>
> Yep, you are.  I'm certainly not a 'high powered business executive in
> upper management", but I do happen to have worked with a lot of people in
> several different fields.

OK, fair enough.

> Well, there's also the question of your unwillingness to go where the
> work is

I live in a city with a population of 200,000 people, and an 
unemployment rate well below the national average. /Clearly/ there are 
jobs here. I just need to find them.

> or your unwillingness to believe that anyone on the planet who
> works a "normal" job makes enough to live on.

Uh, when did I say that?

> Heck, I was laid off last May.  I didn't work again until October, and
> it's been contract work ever since.  A couple of really tight months
> financially, but we haven't lost the house and are still paying all the
> bills.

Then clearly you are a far better person than I am.

One time my sister got laid off. 5 days later, she was on the phone 
complaining that of the 3 written job offers she had received from the 5 
interviews she attended, she couldn't decide which one sounded the nicest.

She went to more interviews in 5 days than I've been to in my entire 
working life. But then, she has skills that people actually want, and 
she apparently knows how to find those people, so...

>>> Oooh, he's got teeth, this one does. ;)  That's a fair question.
>>
>> Back atcha. ;-)
>
> It always makes me smile when you take a stand on something.  Even when
> the stand isn't necessarily logical in my view.  You have changed in that
> regard, and it's a good change.  :)

It's good to be righteous. It's not so good when you're actually wrong. :-/

>> So there's a lot of people /on/ the site.
>
> And it stands to reason if it were a waste of time, people wouldn't spend
> time on the site, would they?  (The point of LinkedIn isn't to waste
> time, it's to build a professional network.  Facebook, OTOH, is
> essentially there for people to waste time on so they can be the
> 'product' sold to advertisers - the two aren't really equivalent).

Yeah, I'm really not seeing how Facebook is still in business. It must 
cost /millions/ to run all those servers. And yet, their idea of 
"targeted adverts" is about as precise as a blunderbuss. It just seems 
like some day somebody is going to figure out the emperor's magical 
invisible suite is actually non-existent...

>> I don't get the whole "networking" thing. I mean, hypothetically I can
>> see why it might work. But I have no idea how you'd go about this in the
>> real world, nor do I directly know of any instances where this has been
>> a successful approach for somebody. Maybe I haven't seen networking
>> succeed because I don't do any networking and I don't know anybody else
>> that does, IDK... It just seems a slightly strange concept.
>
> Well, I've had it work for me in the past.  In fact, the contract work
> I'm doing right now is due to networking - I applied for a position with
> a local company, and while I wasn't hired by that company, someone
> external to the company involved in the selection process saw my CV and
> gave me a call for another project she was working on.
>
> I've been working "for" her (as an independent contractor) ever since.
>
> The job before the one I was laid off from (or rather, the company), I
> met a recruiter at a user group meeting who introduced me to the hiring
> manager at the company - and I was originally going to contract to them,
> but they bought the contract out and hired me directly.
>
> So there's two examples.

OK.

>> For example, how do you know that "millions" have found it useful? Not,
>> say, "thousands"? The number of people on the site is not necessarily
>> the number who have actually found it beneficial.
>
> It stands to reason that if it weren't beneficial, people would stop
> using it.  After all, you didn't find it beneficial, and you stopped
> using it.  That's actually a perfectly natural reaction.
>
> So are you assuming you're the only one who stopped using it because you
> didn't find it beneficial?

We'd need to see numbers for how many people signed up, and how many 
people subsequently left.

My profile is still live on the system. It looks like I'm still a 
Linked-In user. And yet, I haven't used it in 3 years. So don't use /my/ 
presence as an indicator of usefulness.

How many of the other profiles are ghosts? I guess that's the opportune 
question...

Regarding Facebook: How many of those profiles are for somebody's cat? ;-)

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On 08/06/2012 10:30 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>
> Are you perhaps hinting that a new series is imminent?
>

In May the first recordings were done for the 57th series.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 08/06/2012 11:05 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> http://tinyurl.com/28oz8fu
>>
>> That’s the problem, you have all the wrong references.
>>
>> Unless…
>>
>> You’re a Geek?
>>
>> And if you are a geek. Don’t expect to fit in with the muggles. They are
>> just as weird but there are more of them.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/cjscp68

Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Rosencrantz:
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 23:28:33 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 08/06/2012 10:30 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>> Are you perhaps hinting that a new series is imminent?
>>
>>
> In May the first recordings were done for the 57th series.

That's what I remembered hearing - know offhand when they're airing?

Jim

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