Huguenot

I don't know EP. There are many variables that are intrinsically unmeasurable, but there are quantifiable manifestations of them. I ran a sales team ten years ago that was struggling, so we asked customers what made a good account manager, and the persistent idiom was 'trusted'. We couldn't quantify that, so we pushed for more details. The output, to paraphrase was.. 'they answer the phone, and if they don't then someone does who knows them and they call back. They understand my business, they give me solutions when I need them. They walk the talk, and if there's a problem they solve it'. Now that's quantifiable. The team were obliged to register all interest in an enquiry through the reporting system, if they didn't they lost the bonus. Every call had to be answered within 4 rings - about 15 seconds. Every enquiry must have a response within 4 hours, a substantive response within 24 hours, and if issues were irresolvable they needed to be listed and deadlines set inside that deadline. Every enquiry required a completed briefing document, covering every relevant detail, prompting the account managers to probe for more information when it wasn't volunteered. Problems were graded, registered and red flagged. The red flag report had a daily review at senior management level. Lost business had to be reported, the critical issues documented, and were reviewed weekly. Of course, some salespeople twisted the system, but it's easier to fit in after all. Could we target 'trust'? No. But it was the same bastards at the bottom of the list every time, and we fired them for cause. Nine months later we won a national award for quality. More importantly we delivered results to the bottom line. Whatever you may feel about revenue as a goal, the targets worked.

Shorely any voluntary action requires motivation? I accept the 'cynical' sobriquet, but I sustain that you'd need to supply some degree motivation? Writing 3,000 words isn't like tripping over the cat. Any 'mountain climbing' motivations such as 'I wrote it to prove I could' or even 'I wrote it because I enjoyed it' are essentially self serving, and create massive problems with editing. Can you imagine Picasso's response to someone taking a pair of scissors to Guernica because they only liked the horse? Any other motivation involves the conveying of a particular message - and editing plays hell with that too. Ergo editing contributed content is a nightmare? Editing is only easy if content's paid for - because it doesn't impact upon the initial motivation, getting paid.

Is that Cooper or Darlie?

Most people will say thanks for a freebie - the real judgement only arises when they have to open their wallet. I'm sure the content is great, but I think a discussion of its feasability is perfectly valid. The 'contributor' element is interesting; unless you can generate the free content you're going to have to pay someone to create it, and that's where small mags often become dysfunctional. It costs the same to write a 3,000 word article for a local mag as it does for a national. However, a contributor based publication brings its own problems regarding the consistency, quality, relevance and editing. Nobody ever does anything for nothing, and that applies to contributors too. They may be doing it out of vanity, in which case editing is a nightmare, or they're doing it to push an agenda which you may not be aware of. Finally, contributor base content always bites you on the arse: "Arianna Huffington, her website and AOL were on the receiving end of a $105m (?64.5m) lawsuit by a group of angry bloggers unhappy that she sold the Huffington Post for $315m without them being paid a penny. "The class action is led by Jonathan Tasini, a writer and trade unionist, who wrote more than 250 posts for Huffington Post on an unpaid basis until he dropped out shortly after the news and comment site was sold to AOL earlier this year. "Tasini complained that "Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern day slaves on Arianna Huffington's plantation" and said he was bringing the action because "people who create content ... have to be compensated" for their efforts."

How many people are you going to insult UDT? What really is the point of adding an insult onto the end of every post, to people you have never had a dialogue with before? What's with this 'see a stranger, spit in their face' behaviour? That's the kind of thing that get's you banned - not people taking the piss about your identity.

I thought I refuted that mathematically? Pearls to swine.

;-)

I think that was outrageous Damian H, you clearly persecute me you twit, and the girls were all lesbians; it's obvious they all fancied me. Please note quality use of semicolon.

Yes d_c Doesn't matter the government, that was fooked.

And shrink the UK economy by 5%, but that isn't mentioned... ;-)

Although they have a similar name, I'd probably call the mail online the most read 'breasts and soapstars photo gallery' in the world..

Great, a first time poster shares a bunch of barely coherent conspiracy theory nonsense with us all. This one caps it for me: "What some people call "mistakes? of Merkel and Germany at the expense of Euro and European Union are not just ?mistakes?, they are pre-planned war strikes against the peoples of Europe.[...] ?Markets? strike Greece, because Greece is their target. They strike to terrorize Greeks and loot Greece." Woohoo, cretin alert.

::o Good heavens - there's a thing!

Ah, well we weren't to know, and I'm sure no such outcome was intended or katie1997 would have had my number years ago ;-)

Well on the link you provided katie1997 made a couple of lighthearted quips about your similarlity with another member of what I refer to lovingly as the 'lunatic fringe', and when you took offence apologised several times. It seems here only error on that page was saying sorry?

Katie1997, I think UDT is referring to a thread many moons ago initiated by New Nexus, where we entertained ourselves for some hours by trying to guess the real identities behind new posters such as New Nexus and UDT who had peculiar, caricatured (almost comic book) personalities. They were so extraordinary we couldn't believe they were real. I, for one, now think UDT must be a creation of Ted Max so exceptional that we may as well think him real. However, UDT in that 'special' way of thinking he has, assumed we were trying to get him banned. He was of course incorrect, but his paranoia seems to sweep all before it. If I recall correctly, none of the proposed alter egos had actially been banned, although HAL9000 was on one of his holidays....

Walts

Good heavens, a threat straight out of Spooks. UDT's an unintelligence operative too!

Jeremy it wasn't you trying to predict the future value of the Euro by the aura of the graph, so I was agreeing with you! HAL9000, the total perspective vortex may well have extrapolated better results from a fairy cake, but you shouldn't have used the Arg Crystal to mark your path.

I'm totally sympathetic with dyslexia, my operations manager was dyslexic. Not great for man whose job was numbers, but then he was also a savant with web systems for some reason. What I'm not sympathetic with is people who claim to be dyslexic in effort to claim victim status when really all they're suffering from is a typo, or absent mindedness, lack of attention, indifference or just plain laziness. It's impossible to prove if someone is dyslexic or not from reading a forum, but there seem to be a few on here claiming to be dyslexic who exhibit none of the other traits of dyslexia but shoddy spelling, and hold some unattractive opinions they're trying to deflect attention from... ;-)

Without a doubt pan-european political decisions are going to gave a greater impact on this than mathematicians looking for patterns in the aura. Both of the two soothsayers above have been ridiculing city financiers whose expertise is statistically proven to have no impact on the success or not of their trades - and yet now there both claiming they can do it by feeling the woo of the gradient. *shakes head*

UDT will do it, he knows about these things. Why doesn't everyone just do what UDT does? ;-)

:))

People get confused about dyslexia (unwitting pun) - it's not about spelling problems, and those spelling problems which are created are usually quite specific, not general grammatical rules. True dyslexia is much broader than simply confusing or transposing letters, for example mistaking ?b? and ?d.". In general, symptoms of DRD may include: - Difficulty determining the meaning (idea content) of a simple sentence - Difficulty learning to recognize written words - Difficulty rhyming Bad spellers to be claiming dyslexia is as rough on the real sufferers as fat people claiming to have a low metabolism when they wolf 4,000 calories a day.

Well regarding the 6% Spanish bonds thing I think there are several issues, bearing in mind that nobody's asking a company to put all it's money into Spanish bonds - in fact barely a fraction is required to keep Europe running. Firstly pension investments are over 25 years, not 2 weeks, and I think any problems with the Spanish economy over 25 years are going to apply equally to most other developed nations. Secondly is that on a european portfolio Spain would only comprise 6% of total bond purchases to be proportionate, and Greece would only comprise 1% - so a comparatively 'high' risk in Spain or Greece is only a tiny proportion of the overall investment. Finally is 6% high enough? Well it needs to be in line with the risk - do I think there's a 1:20 chance of Spain entering into a massive disorderly default with the attendant debt write offs? No I don't. It looks to me like major institutions may be indifferent to the 20% collapse in economic value they generated themselves 2 years ago, and are now kicking up a stink over bond purchases which may impact their profitability by 0.5% when it suits them. Well, actually, I don't think that at the moment - because they seem to be playing ball.