experts aren't

ple practising in fields where we ourselves are experts. Standards in comme rce are too often terrible.

About half the practitioners in any field are below average. Anybody lookin g at other practitioners tends to concentrate on the stuff they've done in the particular sub-field where the inspecting practitioner is particularly expert. The fact that the problem that needed to be solved wasn't in that particular sub-field and consequently didn't need - and didn't get - a stat e-of-the-art solution tends to be less interesting and less obvious.

Nothing in UK culture values stupidity. Their tendency to make class-based judgements does put a lot of upper-class twits into jobs that they aren't a ll that good at, and bars competent people who have detectably lower-class accents or habits from top jobs. They don't actually value stupidity, but t hey don't put enough weight on competence when selecting people for particu lar jobs, and concentrate too much on having somebody who looks a lot like the last person who did the job.

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Virginia Valian talks about why women are slow to get promoted to top jobs in the US, but much the same mechanisms block non-upper-class people from t op jobs in the UK.

nearly always just brainless bull and near zero understanding of the produc ts being sold.

Retail sales isn't a particularly well-paid job, nor rewarding in any other way.

Competent people sometimes do it for a while, until something better comes along, but they don't sell much more than their less competent colleagues, and there's no pressure to pay them enough to keep them in the job.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman
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Don't be silly, or obnoxious. I design and sell electronics for big industry and big science. My life is knowledge and skills.

The problem in the UK is that government

Sounds like a big lack of knowledge and skills.

Welfare from bureaucrats sometimes just seems to help.

If it's a commercial project, if it doesn't work it doesn't sell. If it's a government project, working is optional and generally leads to more funding.

The software simulations of chip designs are done on PCs, which are sort of accidental commercial projects. Run those sims on a Dell under Linux or Windows, all maverick creations.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

What *does* seem to happen remarkably often is *you* being in a minority of one, claiming that everyone *else* is either stupid or mentally ill. It never seems to occur to you that *you* are the one who's totally out of whack. This blindness to your own delusions is symptomatic of schizophrenia or some other perceptional disorder where the sufferer is totally unable to grasp the possibility - even fleetingly - that it's themselves wherein the problem lies. A normal person would question their own sanity, but you never do - and that tells us all we need to know.

Reply to
Cursitor Doom

Give him a break. He obviously has some form of senior-itus.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Reply to
John Larkin

Right, I might agree him, but I skip over all the BS rants/wars. I only stop and read what a few write. If everyone was talking about food or beer it might be different. George H.

Reply to
George Herold

No evidence of that. No evidence of a minority on any particular point. So, why make the claim? There's no way to back up such a statement, it's just trash talk. And rude, and personal.

Reply to
whit3rd

This tends to refer to matters where only the stupid or mentally ill could have a contrary opinion. I'm bored and quixotic enough to point out that yo u are wrong. Entirely sane people don't tend to waste time arguing with nut ters.

It's one of the hypotheses that I frequently entertain, and test for. That' s why I post links to tolerably reliable sources from time to time. You don 't.

Sure. Now think about your own behaviour.

In fact I do. I'm perfectly happy to entertain the idea that I might be wro ng, and if you search my posts for those containing the word "oops" you wil l find a few examples of my admitting being wrong.

Your problem is that you are the abnormal person here, with a depressing su sceptibility for the kind of right wing nonsense that gets published by the Mail or pushed by Julian Barnes. You may find it comforting to think that I am the nutter here, rather than you, but it's another one of your delusio ns.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Whereas John Larkin was born gullible and self-admiring.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

A rather narrow knowledge, and surprisingly limited skills. It's odd that s omebody in your line of business could be scared of designing his own speci al purpose small signal transformers. Outside of that business you do seem to be remarkably ignorant - a gullible sucker for all the nonsense that sho ws up in the Murdoch media.

There are plenty of both around. The people in the UK with the power to dir ect where they are applied don't know enough about where to apply them to a dvance the UK economy, and are more interested in advancing those bits of t he UK economy that advance their particular - largely class-based - interes ts.

The UK government wasn't enthusiastic about spending money in the less pros perous regions of the UK. The bureaucrats in Brussels had evolved a set of rules for distributing economic support that were seen as fair, and the les s prosperous bits of the UK qualified for quite a bit of European economic support. The UK had the knowledge and skills required to be aware that thes e areas would have been a profitable target for government investment, but the areas lacked political power within the UK to make it happen.

Most of them reliably voted Labour, so even Labour governments weren't goin g to spend money their merely to increase the safe majorities of the local Labour MPs.

There's nothing particularly maverick about a Dell computer.Plenty of peopl e realised that making a personal computer in high volume allowed you to se ll it more cheaply than people who manufactured on a smaller scale.

Windows is about as non-maverick as you can get. Bill Gates had the good fo rtune to have his disk operating system blessed by IBM (and subjected to th e attentions of IBM's software quality control people) for the original IBM PC.

Since then it has been a natural monopoly, defended by the usual monopolist techniques.

Linux is a maverick. Quite what created the unpaid cooperative development system that is it's unique strength escapes me. It is bound to be written u p somewhere, but I haven't come across an account of it yet.

The popular Linux magazines that I read provide some insight into the proce ss, but not a lot.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Agreed. A lot of what he says I agree with (and is not even controversial in most settings). But I don't often have the energy to engage in a 200 post back-and-forth on it. It is probably good that someone does, assuming politics is on-topic now.

--

John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

All you do is drone on about politics. You drone on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. You are the worst windbag on this group by far, Bill. BY FAR.

Reply to
Cursitor Doom

And when it involves a "refugee" and it happens in a country like Sweden, it doesn't get reported *at all* in the mainstream media.

Reply to
Cursitor Doom

ts

ge

eople practising in fields where we ourselves are experts. Standards in com merce are too often terrible.

ing at other practitioners tends to concentrate on the stuff they've done in the particular sub-field where the inspecting practitioner is particular ly expert. The fact that the problem that needed to be solved wasn't in tha t particular sub-field and consequently didn't need - and didn't get - a st ate-of-the-art solution tends to be less interesting and less obvious.

In Japan if you go to a paintbrush shop you can reasonably expect the patro n to be an expert. You can reasonably expect them to recommend the best sui ted brush for your particular task. In Britain you can reasonably expect th e patron to know close to nothing, but be ready to bullshit. If you ask for some epecific feature you're likely to get sensible guidance abroad, here it's simply treated as an excuse to talk more bull to get the customer to p ay a higher price, too often with no reuslting advantage. In numerous areas today ignorance and stupdity is respected over real knowledge. This trend very much emerged in the 1960s, and hasn't gone away. Bullshit is seen as t he smart option because it parts customers from some more cash, genuine exp ertise would do much better but is simply not valued significantly.

s nearly always just brainless bull and near zero understanding of the prod ucts being sold.

er way.

s along, but they don't sell much more than their less competent colleague s, and there's no pressure to pay them enough to keep them in the job.

Sure. But it's very basic stuff. When I walk into a shop wanting to buy and ask for xyz too often I don't get 'hang on let me ask the expert' I just g et some moron response. Way too often. Certainly there are welcome exceptio ns, but idiocy rules in the majority of cases.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

If you believe the Mail. But that isn't main-stream media, but rather a source right-wing fantasy.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

I already told you I don't read that worthless rag. Here's yet more evidence of the cover-up from a *proper* newspaper (but since it's not the Washington Post or the New York Times no doubt you'll dismiss it, but rational people can make their own minds up as to who is living in fantasy land).

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This just proves what anyone with any sense (excludes you, Bill) already suspected.

Reply to
Cursitor Doom

he's not going to get it. Ever.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

You missed one block, allow me to fill it in.. "drone on"

Just trying to help.

Reply to
M Philbrook

a

l
s
y

Right wing lunacy does seem to be infectious, but you've got to be really d umb to get infected. The evidence posted here over the years suggests that I'm not that dumb. This is no proof of permanent immunity, but NT is too du mb to work that out for himself.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

He would have been perfect to play the lead character on 'Gilligan's Island'. :(

--
Never piss off an Engineer! 

They don't get mad. 

They don't get even. 

They go for over unity! ;-)
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

y

I wonder why Mike Terrell thinks that. He may have seen Bob Denver (who pla yed the part) but he hasn't seen me. Presumably he likes to think that I am an amiable goof in real life, though that isn't the sort of qualification you need to be able to play one in even a rather unambitious TV show.

Cursitor Doom's complaint seems to be that I'm the only poster quixotic eno ugh to bother pointing out that Cursitor Doom is a gullible twit, but if Cu rsitor Doom was trifle more attentive about his critics he might have notic ed that quite a few people find him contemptible.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

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