[ Home | Articles | Account | People | Projects | FAQ ] Name: Charles Stewart
Member since: 2000-09-19 22:55:04
Last Login: 2009-07-03 19:47:57
Homepage: http://www.textproof.com
Notes: Contribute to free software? Well...
I'm a freelance copy-editor and consultant working from Berlin, working mainly for academic publishers in medicine, linguistics and mathematical sciences. Until May 2006 I was a post-doctoral theoretical computer scientist. I use and promote in my work many free software tools, such as pdftex, Gnu ghostscript and libart.
I'm in a 18 year love-hate relationship with UNIX, and I've been using GNU utilities since my very first days. I've been aware of Linux since about 1994, but only took the plunge of using it in early 1999. Today I use Debian Linux linux and FreeBSD most days, though I'm mostly using a non-free OS to provide my GUI...
I've been coding for 25 years (started on a Sinclair ZX80) but mostly for personal consumption or a few of my close colleagues. I have rather a preference for functional languages, though I use C, C++, Java and Objective C when they are appropriate, and I make a lot of use of Tcl for system admin tasks. I haven't made much in the way of substantial contributions to important free software projects.
My contact info is available from my website, linked to above. I post comments more often to Lambda the Ultimate than here; I don't often crosspost.
30 Jun 2009 (updated 30 Jun 2009 at 14:23 UTC) »
I wrote an LtU story, The irreducible physicality of security properties; key point related to abstraction: "Security is non-modular: Programming languages and software engineering practices can ensure that software possesses properties helpful to security, but the properties are only meaningful in the context of a strategy to ensure a computer system satisfies its security policy".
17 Jun 2009 (updated 17 Jun 2009 at 10:28 UTC) »
hypatia (again): Thanks. I think this may be useful for one of my clients. A good way to think about the big idea behind alternative talk structures is in terms of what story does it tell. This bridges the gap between thinking about what ideas you what the audience to take away and what kind of things you need to say to them and in what order.
12 Jun 2009 (updated 13 Jun 2009 at 11:56 UTC) »
I've sent them an email, on the off chance that they might respond.
Postscript — And another one: catvinslate spamming lucentinfotech.com, a web development company that offers SEO services. And also based in India. I guess it's not obvious to every web- service industrialist why this behaviour makes an SEO company look like they don't understand SEO very well.
I'd link to create nofollow links to these, but the Advogato html munger drops rel tags. I think this is a mistake for non-observer accounts, but maybe there are rel tags that we should discourage.
6 May 2009 (updated 15 May 2009 at 12:24 UTC) »
After hanging out on the Internet for a while, you almost stop realizing how low-quality the content is. I'm generalizing here, but I include this very journal, and in fact, this very article, in my generalization. I think I'm a pretty decent writer, but there's no doubt in my mind: a professional editor can help you say the same thing, only better. ... The end result is odd: reduced publishing costs should leave more money for editing and fact checking. Instead, people think those costs should drop at the same speed, which is unreasonable unless you cut quality.and ends by asking of would-be readers: Would you pay more for quality, edited work? Really?
I think that this question is posed to the wrong class of people. When I buy a book, I will consider my money ill-spent if the writing is poor, and am quite likely not to read much of it. So there, yes, I would certainly pay more for an adequately edited book than for an inadequately edited book. Lots of other readers seem to think so, which is why we are not seeing quite the same economic pressure on book copy-editors than on newspaper copy-editors [1].
But for most classes of writing, it is not principally the reader who loses out from poor-quality editing, but the author. If readers of a weblog find it hard going, they will unsubscribe. The reader will not think twice about it; the author will be asking themself: why doesn't all that hard, content-creating work attract readers? If you want to attract more readers, better writing quality is important, and indeed the copy-editing mailing lists do receive reports from editors who have weblog-editing gigs, likely because edited weblogs attract more organic links, and so more revenue-generating traffic.
And for your book? Lousy editing attracts lousy reviews, which hurts sales, which hurts the author's reputation and the publishing house's sales (relatively few authors are motivated principally by royalties). Just where the most profitable mean avoiding both overly-injured sales and unaffordable editing costs is, the publishing industry has yet to figure out.
[1]: It says a lot when John McIntyre, former president of the American Copy Editor's Society, loses his job at the Baltimore Sun.
Male managers receive more specialist training for promotion than female managers from the start of their careers and benefit from more support in new roles, an international study by DDI, a talent management consultancy, reveals today.This suggests that the "slippery pole" is a better explanation of low representation of women at executive levels than the "glass ceiling". The same thing goes on in academia; I'd be interested to see independent investigation into this latter phenomenon.
Starting at junior management level, 28 per cent more men than women receive specialist development via high-potential groups or “talent pools”, according to data from 10,000 business leaders in 376 organisations. At executive level, 50 per cent more men than women get such help. Women, who also receive less support in career transitions such as promotions, may not be aware of discrimination, as selection processes and mentor schemes are “shrouded in secrecy”, says the report, Holding Women Back.
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