Slashdot Mirror

There's a lot of ignorance about the incident and about India here. I don't know whether they are legally liable in the US, but their conduct is questionable. I am utterly amazed how they have avoided harsh criticism in the twittery world of people looking desperately for something to be outraged about.

In a country notorious for being incredibly unsafe for women, they made these claims (http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/in-mumbai-it-bragged-our-quality-checks-most-rigorous/):

"“Globally and especially in India, Uber is working towards making urban transit safer for women. Let me tell you, it’s one of our biggest concerns and we’re doing a number of things to drive that agenda. “In addition to their individual employers screening them, each of our driver partners are put through a rigorous quality control process, that is implemented religiously across the country even before a partner gets behind the wheel of your vehicle. In fact screening for safe drivers is just the beginning of our safety efforts. ”Our process includes prospective and routine checks of drivers’ license and vehicle records to ensure ongoing safe driving. Unlike the taxi industry, our background checking process and standards are so detailed, it is often more rigorous than what is required to become a taxi driver. Moreover, most of our partners are introduced to us via our preferred partners, which means that someone in the system has to vouch for their track record, creating a referral system of trust.”

They hired a driver with a long criminal record based on a forged police certificate. http://timesofindia.indiatimes...? No way in hell does an unverified piece of paper count as a comprehensive background check in India, and you would damn well know that before making claims like the ones above. Especially when you specifically claim to provide a safe option for women.

Then they ignored a complaint about the same driver by a female customer days before the rape: https://au.news.yahoo.com/worl...

I cannot go on about the kind of red flags this should have set off.

Also, http://www.dnaindia.com/india/...

"Uber users can see the name, photo and phone number of the driver when booking a cab. However, in this case, the driver's phone was not registered in his name making it harder to trace him."

Their GPS tracking works via the drivers phone and the customers phone with the app installed. It's worthless, anyone who wants to circumvent it can.

They came to a country where women desperately need a safe mode of transport, made explicit claims about providing a safe service for women, and were utterly callous and negligent and deceptive.

As I said, I don't know about legal liability, but please find out more before making 'cars don't rape people, people do' posts.

All the sources I have quoted are newspapers with very decent standards of journalism. Don't go by the page 3 stuff on their sites - major Indian newspapers often have tabloid page 3 crap comparable to the worst tabloids, but their journalistic standards while far from impeccable are way better than say Fox News.

[[citation needed]]

"If a stage has three big climbs, we'd expect riders to burn off anything between 8,000 to 10,000 calories per day," said Child.

But hey, he's only a nutritionist actually working on the tour.

India has more than nuclear weapons. It has nuclear armed neighbors (Pakistan, China) with designs on its territory. One of those neighbors, Pakistan, has fought several wars against India, and has been both a host and sponsor of terrorism against India. Pakistan is riddled with terrorists and faces an insurgency by Islamists of the Taliban flavor for control of the country, and ultimately its nuclear weapons. India is not far from Afghanistan, long a hot bed of extremist Islam and terrorists. India has fought skirmishes against the Chinese army in the past, and Chinese troops have occupied territory claimed by India. India also has an insurgency in part of the country by Maoist guerillas. (That would be Mao as in Chairman Mao, former leader of the People's Republic of China.) There is little distance separating India from Iran. Iran is a major sponsor of Islamist extremists, and terrorism world wide. Iran also has long range missiles, and has been found to have developed plans for a nuclear warhead that would fit their missiles. Iran is currently refining uranium on a growing number of centrifuges. Another neighbor is Myanmar nee Burma, which was reported to be developing nuclear weapons with cooperation from North Korea (which also isn't that far away).

Now India as well as China has long range ballistic missiles: Signs of an Asian Arms Buildup in India’s Missile Test. Pakistan has medium and intermediate range missiles.

India is developing a missile defense system: India to have shield from missiles of 5,000 km range

India, as well as China, is buying and building aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.

Nearly all European nations resist nuclear weapons. Many Europeans and Americans resist missile defense. Europe's defenses have been shrinking massively since the end of the Cold War. The next century may be very interesting indeed. Some may find it humbling.

Science does not bother with gaining most knowledge. [...] What is the average mass of a fart? Scientists start every process with a hypothesis

You'd be surprised. Some global warming hypotheses include the greenhouse contribution of methane waste from the digestive tracts of livestock.

US external debt is quite a bit smaller than it's GDP. Perhaps about 25% of GDP. Total gross government debt is 107% of GDP but a lot if that is debt from one part of the government to another.

Also nobody really knows what the Chinese government debt is because their statistics are completely unreliable. I've seen claims that local government debt is several times what the published government debt is.

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/1392108/comment-china-s-public-debt-a-damocles-sword

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/business/global/06iht-yuan06.html?_r=0

I had mod points, and I was planning on use them all on this discussion, but as no one said what I wish to say, I'll spend them elsewhere. Here it goes.

You claim that the Raspberry Pi proves Doctorow wrong. Well, tablet computers prove him right. And smartphones, too. These are the two personal computer forms which dominate today's market, and will continue to dominate in the future. The market for laptops is shrinking while the market for tablets has increased 42%, according to some estimates Apple is becoming the world's dominant computer platform, with the dominant product being a closed, locked-down, walled garden of a personal computer.

And what about your home router? It's also a general purpose computer, which has been locked down hard to force you to not fiddle with it. The same applies to NAS and even some external HDs.

If that isn't enough, take a look at every chinese trinket toy which is sold on ebay. I'm referring to stuff such as MP3 players, media players, tablets, video game consoles and all of the sort. You can't fiddle with their software, you can't tweak their OS, you can only use them until it gets bricked. I personally have purchased a cheap, 20 dollar MP3 player with a neat color display which, at the time, put my cellphone to shame, and the damned thing could only be used to display song names and play tetris. And it was a full blown computer, which had a SD card reader.

My media player is also a general purpose computer, which has been castrated by my cable provider. My TV is also a general purpose computer, complete with HDMI input plugs, SD card reader and USB plug. It runs linux, too. But I can't do shit with it. It's from Sony, which also sells other personal computers, such as the Playstation line, playstation portable and playstation vita. And you can't do shit with them, either.

This is what Doctorow is warning about. And you said he has been proven wrong? How?

So no, Raspberry Pi does not prove him wrong. No matter how cool it is or how open it has been designed, it is a very specific product for a very specific market. There is a risk it will be put in the same category as a multitester, oscilloscopes and pulse generators: technical tools which only the technically literate are interested in using. That is, true general purpose computers are being relegated to something that only the fools at the local modern incantation of the homebrew computer club are even interested with, and this is very dangerous.

This artificial limitation already plagues the software development world, where compilers are seen as scary stuff which only technical people care to have. I've seen police reports where they claimed that the target of the raid was somehow a hacker and a pirate because he had linux on his computer, as a dual boot. People already accept these absurd views on computers. They perceive locked down computers as something which is desirable and here to stay, and the hardware vendors are already taking advantage of that ignorance and lack of insight.

The path to a computing world where all computers are tight-down walled gardens is already set, and if we don't acknowledge it and do something prevent this disaster to happen then it will happen. And it will happen in the near future.

I'm sorry I was busy installing 3rd party code on my phone with a apk package installer app that runs without having to root my phone, did you say something?

I had mod points, and I was planning on use them all on this discussion, but as no one said what I wish to say, I'll spend them elsewhere. Here it goes.

You claim that the Raspberry Pi proves Doctorow wrong. Well, tablet computers prove him right. And smartphones, too. These are the two personal computer forms which dominate today's market, and will continue to dominate in the future. The market for laptops is shrinking while the market for tablets has increased 42%, according to some estimates Apple is becoming the world's dominant computer platform, with the dominant product being a closed, locked-down, walled garden of a personal computer.

And what about your home router? It's also a general purpose computer, which has been locked down hard to force you to not fiddle with it. The same applies to NAS and even some external HDs.

If that isn't enough, take a look at every chinese trinket toy which is sold on ebay. I'm referring to stuff such as MP3 players, media players, tablets, video game consoles and all of the sort. You can't fiddle with their software, you can't tweak their OS, you can only use them until it gets bricked. I personally have purchased a cheap, 20 dollar MP3 player with a neat color display which, at the time, put my cellphone to shame, and the damned thing could only be used to display song names and play tetris. And it was a full blown computer, which had a SD card reader.

My media player is also a general purpose computer, which has been castrated by my cable provider. My TV is also a general purpose computer, complete with HDMI input plugs, SD card reader and USB plug. It runs linux, too. But I can't do shit with it. It's from Sony, which also sells other personal computers, such as the Playstation line, playstation portable and playstation vita. And you can't do shit with them, either.

This is what Doctorow is warning about. And you said he has been proven wrong? How?

So no, Raspberry Pi does not prove him wrong. No matter how cool it is or how open it has been designed, it is a very specific product for a very specific market. There is a risk it will be put in the same category as a multitester, oscilloscopes and pulse generators: technical tools which only the technically literate are interested in using. That is, true general purpose computers are being relegated to something that only the fools at the local modern incantation of the homebrew computer club are even interested with, and this is very dangerous.

This artificial limitation already plagues the software development world, where compilers are seen as scary stuff which only technical people care to have. I've seen police reports where they claimed that the target of the raid was somehow a hacker and a pirate because he had linux on his computer, as a dual boot. People already accept these absurd views on computers. They perceive locked down computers as something which is desirable and here to stay, and the hardware vendors are already taking advantage of that ignorance and lack of insight.

The path to a computing world where all computers are tight-down walled gardens is already set, and if we don't acknowledge it and do something prevent this disaster to happen then it will happen. And it will happen in the near future.

The government of India is pretty ill-prepared and inefficient for such events. The first instinct of most citizens is that they need to take things in their own hands. Within moments of the blasts, the people around the affected areas had immediately started getting help, getting cars to take victims to nearby hospitals, even managing traffic. The police and the ambulances arrived almost 30 mins later followed by a bunch of politicians who started the blame game. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/slideshow_mumbai-blasts-5-most-stupid-things-our-politicians-said_1565822-5#top

Yeah, the metro in New Delhi is driverless, too.

Uhh ... I live here (New Delhi) and no, the DMRC trains aren't driverless.
Included are some links that tell about an accident that happened when a driver did something stupid.

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_driver-started-metro-train-before-getting-signal-dmrc_1282211

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/driver-started-metro-train-before-getting-signal-dmrc/501738/2

Isn’t it sort of just plain old common sense to not post videos of yourself doing illegal stuff on the internet?

Or at least making sure that you aren’t identifiable... and consider that people have been identified by their shoes...

The logic jump from there being possible organic matter on the moon, to the near-assumption that this organic matter is life-based or life-supporting was apparently made by the writer of the original article http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_indian-scientists-detect-signs-of-life-on-moon_1322785

While a lay person such as the reporter may claim ignorance of the difference between "carbon-based matter" and "carbon-based matter that supports or has come from live organisms", I am truly surprised at just how many non-humorous posts we have here on /. about life in space/on the moon/new intelligences etc.

...making mine detection a snap

I dunno, sounds like a sales pitch to me... you should have either written it in all caps Billy Mays style or said, "Made in Scotland... you know the Scottish make good stuff"

Reguardless, the article has already been /.ed so here are some other sources: Discover, Treehugger, and DNA

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1190142

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00004/protest120206_4781t.jpg

http://atangledweb.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/muslim_protest_2.jpg

http://www.goofigure.com/images/library/muslim_protest_1.jpg

http://www.goofigure.com/images/library/muslim_protest_7.jpg

He's no Hillary, but he's a civil rights lightweight. He voted for the renewal of the patriot act. As far as I'm concerned, that knocks him out of the running. Only one current senator is worthy of consideration for the office, and that's Fiengold (as long as he's not some IP law fascist). He's the only one who stood up and said "no" the first time around, so to hell with all the rest. They're either gutless or evil.

  The text of Putin's statement was published in English by official russian press agency

  He said:

  " Death is always tragic. I present my condolences to the friends and the family of Mr. Litvinenko. As far as I know, the postmortem report does not say it was a violent death. If that is so, there is no reason for such suggestions , he told a Friday press conference after the Russia-EU summit ...."

If the note was really written before the death of Mr. Litvinenko, I wonder why they did not make it public while he was still alive, Putin said. If the note appeared after the death, what comments can be made? People who did that are not the Lord, while Mr. Litvinenko is not Lazarus. It is a pity that such tragic events as death are being used for political provocative acts, he said.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=11 018098&PageNum=0

      " effects indistinguishable from cancer "

  That I doubt. The effects of Polonium on human organs are well known

" From 1945 through 1947 Manhattan Project researchers injected .... five human subjects with polonium .."

    It could have escaped the attention of an average coroner, but it is not a good 'undetectable poison'

The physical half-life of d 210Po is 138.38 days

getting it is hard and it's choice points to state sponsored terrorism

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1066031

    Similar to the Anthrax Attacks, only thing we know for sure is that there is a group, or groups
with access to controlled substances, able and willing to kill

  and that public reaction to their crimes are used to point fingers.

  If that is the motive, or only motive, we do not know

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Using_green _algae_to_produce_hydrogen_from_sunlight_and_water _via_photosynthesis
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1029553& CatID=5

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1057970

Yahoo has cancelled plans for a "time capsule" ceremony at pyramids in Mexico, citing concerns regarding possible damage to the ancient site.

"The position of INAH is that after evaluating all the technical and operational aspects, it would be very difficult to move forward with this endeavour," Yahoo said in a release.

"Therefore, we have decided to move the location of the event. For now, we are focused on collecting as many unique and interesting contributions as possible from around the globe."

INAH: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (National Institute of Antropology and History).

I don't doubt your ability to cherry-pick details that (when presented out of context) make Iraq look sinister. However, I have to base my conclusions on the survey's main results, which you are welcome to read for youself. In short, while the Iraqi government were no angels, they weren't a significant threat to the US either.

It's better to go in and mitigate a possibly overstated risk than to hand some reactors and nuclear fuel over to a little pot-bellied, dog-eating dictator and wake up ~10 years later to a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Funny you should mention that... that's exactly what we woke up this morning. So by your own measure, Bush's foreign policy has failed us.

I'll put the Bush record of mitigating world threats up against the Clinton record any time, anywhere. Maybe you won't, but clear-thinking people will compare the two and realize that in times of consequence such as these, it's not safe to vote Democrat.

Clear-thinking people look not only at the imagined hazards of voting Democrat, but also at the actual damage incurred by inept Republican policies. You can wave your arms about what you think Democrats might do, but we know for a fact what Republicans done: they've started, bungled, and lost an unnecessary war. As far as what the American public thinks about that, I think you'll find out in November.

Thanks for the sarcasm.
Note that the earlier comment wasnt about only the savings.
Anyways, since the question is about savings, let me try to elaborate (just on the savings aspect of it).

In this case, I was talking about India, where money *do* matter.
The election in India puts a huge burden on the exchequer, around 1000 Cr Rupees, which is a huge amount.
With that savings, the election commision actually had a lot more police posted for previous election, and that election was considered amongst the best run by a huge margin.

In developing countries, these sort of money does matter.
It allows for a better run election and a better run economy.

Nope, World Bank says ... India was the 12th Wealthiest nation in 2005 - here

TELUGU / Andhra Domination in the US

An article about Bush's visit to Hyderabad, & the Telugu diaspora in America

Bush's decision to choose Hyderabad over other Indian tech hubs like Bangalore, Pune comes close on the heels of the city bagging the $3bn Fab City project by the AMD-SemIndia consortium. Bush has also announced setting up of a new US consulate in Hyderabad, since the Andhra Pradesh state contributes majority of the Indian techies visiting US.

Majority of the people in India's technology world speak TELUGU.
Hence, this mellifluous language, which is also known as 'Italian of the East', should be the appropriate choice, if you want to learn an Indian language

Quite in tune with an earlier comment ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=14181474&sid=1 70151 ).

Bush's decision to choose Hyderabad over other Indian tech hubs like Bangalore, Pune comes close on the heels of the city bagging the $3bn Fab City project by the AMD-SemIndia consortium. Bush has also announced setting up of a new US consulate in Hyderabad, since the Andhra Pradesh state contributes majority of the Indian techies visiting US.

Telugu is now the largest spoken Indian language in the Silicon Valley / SF Bay Area. An article about Bush's visit to Hyderabad, & the Telugu diaspora in America