WE CAN WELL understand the view of the Department for Education and Employment Overseas Labour Service that positions for research support staff should only go to people from other countries if no good European candidate can be found. But there seems to be some confusion on how to interpret this.
A researcher at Imperial College, London, recently advertised a position for a research assistant. One candidate really stood out from the shortlist: not only did she have excellent grades and glowing references, but she had also completed an undergraduate project in the researcher鈥檚 own laboratory. So she was already at home with the subject and he knew that she was capable, hardworking and intelligent. She was clearly the best candidate. Here鈥檚 the rub 鈥� she was non-European, so she needed a work permit from the DfEE.
But after three months of deliberation, the department refused her a permit. While she might be the best candidate for the position, the bureaucrats said, 鈥渟he was not the most suitable鈥�. They couldn鈥檛 fault her grades or references; it was the relevant experience in the lab that raised objections. 鈥淭hat,鈥� it seemed, 鈥済ave her an unfair advantage.鈥�
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Foreigners should bear this in mind. If you want to get a job in a research lab and you have all the relevant qualifications, go and get a job as a minicab driver first. That, according to the DfEE, would be much more 鈥渇air鈥� and 鈥渟uitable鈥�.
ONE OF David Franklin鈥檚 hobbies is keeping what he calls 鈥渉umour archives鈥�. He was looking through one of his old ones the other day when he rediscovered a collection of comments by tetchy American professors on student papers.
鈥淚 am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top,鈥� wrote a professor of English at Ohio University.
鈥淲hat鈥檚 page one, a preemptive strike?鈥� asked a professor of communication at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
鈥淭he 鈥楢鈥� is for content, the 鈥榤inus鈥� is for not typing it. Don鈥檛 ever do this to my eyes again,鈥� complained a colleague in the Ramapo College philosophy department.
鈥淚 think your opinions are reasonable, except for the one about my mental instability,鈥� a psychology professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut protested.
Other comments were anonymous. We particularly liked: 鈥淣ot only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree,鈥� from a 鈥淢r W鈥�, and the utterly damning 鈥淚 am not sure what this is, but an 鈥楩鈥� would only dignify it鈥�.
READER David Levine writes to tell us that his wife recently received a free CD-ROM with a computer magazine. The CD had a warning printed on it: 鈥淭he use of this CD is governed by a license agreement found on this CD. Read the terms and conditions of the agreement before using this CD. By using this CD, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of the agreement.
Levine says he tried holding the CD up to the light to read the terms and conditions before using it, but this didn鈥檛 help.
THE VISIBLE Woman/Man project aims to recreate the human body in cyberspace as a medical research tool. A laudable and fascinating endeavour, Feedback feels. But couldn鈥檛 this boast about the project be couched in slightly more elegant terms? 鈥淲e now have the capability to put a high-quality cadaver on every desktop in the world,鈥� a project researcher announced recently.
ACCORDING to the Californian company DVD Software, playing computer games at work costs the US some $50 billion a year in lost productivity, assuming 40 million users spend 30 minutes a week playing games at an average cost of $50 an hour. So DVD has come up with a product to spoil everyone鈥檚 fun.
UnGame, Investor鈥檚 Business Daily tells us, is a software package that finds and eliminates games on network servers and hard drives. It can identify 3100 kinds of games and will root them out, even when their file names have been disguised. Feedback, who always disapproves of frivolity, can only applaud.
AT A RECENT meeting of the Royal Television Society, members swapped tales of technical nonsense spun by ignorant or opportunist sales staff.
Modern TV sets have a system called Fastext, which cuts the time it takes for a page of text to appear on screen after the number has been keyed in. The set has a large digital memory which stores pages as they are transmitted so that they are ready for rapid access. An RTS member asked the sales assistant in a large electronics store why the set he was demonstrating still showed a long delay on some pages.
The salesman should have explained that the set had a budget memory which could only store a few selected pages, and the customer was keying in different ones. Instead the young man maintained that 鈥渢here is only one aerial on the shop roof and it is feeding a lot of sets on display, so the signal is much slower getting through to them鈥�.
This prompted another RTS member to recall how he had seen an early sales demonstration of 625-line TV in the 1960s, and had complained that it did not look much better than the old 405-line system previously used in the UK. 鈥淭hat, sir,鈥� said the salesman, 鈥渋s because they are still test transmissions, and the BBC is broadcasting only 300 of the lines.鈥�
LONDON鈥橲 underground system can be as inventive as British Rail in dreaming up daft excuses for delays in its service. Only the other day, Feedback was impressed by an announcement at Watford station that the 07.45 to Aldgate was cancelled due to vomit on a seat (the wrong kind of vomit, presumably).
Now the staff at Northwood station have taken to telling passengers about delays they can expect in the future. On a nice wipe-clean board, they write the time the cancelled train would normally arrive, its destination, the reasons why it won鈥檛 arrive and an explanation in brackets for the slow witted.
One morning last week there were two such announcements. They read: 鈥�0800 Baker Street 鈥� Trip failure (a safety brake type of thingy)鈥� and 鈥�0805 Watford 鈥� Crew incomplete (driver buggered off)鈥�.
They certainly don鈥檛 mince their words up in Northwood.