One thing that shall be understood is that driving a car on a public highway is **NOT** a private act, and thus expectations of household privacy cannot apply.
Furthermore, driving is a **PRIVILEGE** granted by the governments who own the roads, and they are free to implement whatever management methods to manage the use of the roads, up to and including the tracking of every single vehicle.
Locating stolen vehicles is only one benefit of the whole system; effective road capacity surveys could be conducted instantaneously, to help planning road expansion and/or maintenance.
Road congestion could also be monitored automagically, and drivers could also be suggested alternative routes to avoid tie-ups.
Congestion pricing could also be effected easily with that system, and it could even be adjusted according to different uses; for example, someone who takes his car to go half a mile away three times a day could be charged a nuisance fee whereas the tourist who comes from several hundreds of kilometers for the first time in his life would not be.
Service fleet owners could also, by paying a fee, monitor the location of their vehicle for better management of their fleets.
Car renters could also charge according to the location the cars are used. The possibilities are endless and go beyond what has been suggested so far.
Just to go a little further, most people do not understand the concept of "operating system". I've tried talking to people about it before, and it's weird, but and I've even had to explain to people before that there's a difference between "the system" and "an application".
It's easy. The application is the piece of machinery you're using to do your work, and the operating system is the whole factory building and infrastructure, supplying the machinery with power and raw materials, and taking out the finished work.
ng to give out passwords to higher-ups is not always the wrong thing to do. If you are the network admin, and your job is to maintain security of the network, wouldn't it be reasonable to refuse to hand out passwords to people outside of the network administration roles?
There is the likelyhood the boss won't secure the information properly.
* I work as a software developer for an eScience research project
* I work from home, as do most of the people on our project, including my boss
* We do all our work online, using standard ADSL connections
* I don't own a car, I use public transport (mostly train) when I need to go to meetings
This is all very nice and sweet, but you can't have your cake and eat it. Why should city dwellers pay extra for your remote lifestlyle? Do you live in a village (which could conceivably be wired) or out in the boondocks???
a lot of the people in our remote areas are doing something called "farming", which is rather important just at the moment; they are exporters rather than consumers of energy sources. We actually need to encourage more people to go and live there, because at the moment they all want to live in London. We have just had revealed a £3 billion gap in funding for the £7 billion of repairs the London Underground mass transport system needs.
Farmers, of course, need to be in the countryside; that is where their business is.
But do advertising account executives or telephone sanitizers who work in the cities NEED to be in the boondocks??? It is quite doubtful, as their remote location needs extensive transportation, and that transportation puts enormous stress on infrastructure, energy dependance and also the planet. Not to mention that building new houses over fields make those fields no longer available for agriculture.
And if you have transit funding gaps, this only means that the budget administration has been woefully deficient, and that the general transportation policy has not been very sound nor sustainable, not to mention that the priorities might have not been oriented properly. The only logical outcome is to raise taxes accordingly.
Do the boondocks **HAVE** to be wholly wired to the hilt? I mean, those people have deliberately chosen an energically-wasteful and ecologically dubious lifestyle. And with increasing pressure put on the environment precisely by the transportation needed for those people, why should they not be penalized for their willful choice, instead of having those made wiser choice having to foot their connection bill?
Just remember that this is the governing party that has allowed an innocent man (Maher Arar) to be renditioned and tortured in Syria via the United States on poor and mistaken evidence that he was a terrorist, and then tried to cover it up by denying any fault
Er, no. It was the liberals who let Ahar to be deported to Syria. Granted, the tories will give even less a shit about that, but here the blame squarely lies with the liberals and, most importantly, the Royal Corrupt Maudit Police.
By the way, I'm part cajun (see the name). We're the ones that had the good sense to leave both France AND Canada.
You did not leave France/Canada by your own volition, you were deported en masse by the britshit in 1755. Yes, the britshit conducted the first modern ethnic cleansing.
Leave it to the cheese-eating surrender monkeys to have a problem with a law that so obviously helps in the War on Turr (tm).
We don't hate freedom. We just don't trust people to be nice to others; this is why we have a big State that makes sure no one can take undue advantage of others.
We don't have freedom, we have liberty: by insuring that no one can crush someone else, we insure that they are free to do whatever they want without hurting anyone else. Like being able to speak against a big company without fear of being sued into oblivion. Being able to denounce working conditions without being fired. This is true liberty.
Liberty is not having the freedom to enslave or drive other people by the nose to kow-tow your line.
In the past, we have thoroughly been screwed by free entrepreneurs who had no problem using THEIR liberty to enslave others in company towns. So we gave ourselves strong governments that make sure that the free entrepreneurs will not crush their workers.
A true liberty is one that can be enjoyed by everyone, not just the rich, like in the USA.
The auto workers, who have watched 90% of their jobs go to Mexico, Japan, China, Korea, and India. The auto jobs that are here (and aren't in danger of being lost by imminent bankruptcy of GM, Ford, and Chrysler) are the non-union jobs from Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. These companies have been downsizing their workforce, but in case you didn't notice cars and trucks aren't selling very well right now, so there's less demand. Gee, the manufacturers who are able to respond to demand are doing OK, and the ones who have inflexible union rules prohibiting that are almost bankrupt. Nope. No pattern there at all.
The textile workers, who have watched 100% of their jobs go to Thailand, Malaysia, and China.
Indeed there is a pattern. Allowing companies to cut jobs and import stuff without import duties to protect local industries so they can stay competitive (it's called a "level playing field") is the pattern that sent the jobs in the turd-world.
If the government had done it's job of protecting the people, there would have been no big sucking sound of jobs heading south, but the US government doesn't protect the people, it only protect companies' bottom-lines.
If a branch manager gets involved in loan officer activity it is merely to flaunt his authority to remove obsticles for the loan officer, which is what a manager should do.
Oh, yes, pesky obstacles like those who prevent one from issuing a $385,000 subprime mortgage to a $22,000 per year janitor?
For more than thirty years I have endured my sheep of parents getting shafted left and right, and whenever I wanted to point out they were shafted and that they happenned to have right, I was laughed-off.
It seems that law enforcement sees itself as more and more godlike when it comes to assume power over mere mortals they are investigating. This arrogance has to be stopped dead, because if left to themselves, they will expect total compliance and disclosure upon request to anyone without any safeguard whatsoever against abuse.
We have to resist indomitably, in order to drive the point home that our information is not a plaything to be rummaged through at will; if the administration of justice suffers for it, better let a criminal escape than harass an innocent.
It is QUITE FUCKING SPECIOUS for counties to deny access to records of APPROVED coffee machines,
The problem is the multiplicity of little governments, like cities and counties with extra-wide jurisdiction.
That's a pernicious effect of the US constitution that by being vague about who has jurisdiction over what, allows a deliberate power-grab by little governments who should not have such extensive power in the first place.
I mean, why the fuck a county should regulate coffee machines instead of the state???
The real solution to this problem, the only solution that could ever be enforced, would be a legal requirement that cash registers have temper evident seals and run a OS with verified security (EAL 4+), and signed software. Unfortunately, even a mention of that would get heavy lobbying against, accusations of communist sympathies, etc.
The government's latest anti-zapper effort would oblige restaurants to connect an independent computerized device to their cash registers, making it more difficult to conceal or alter sales data.
Easier to track fraud
The machine records sales information, then stores it in a secure independent environment. Every sales transaction that is completed will have a unique digital signature, which will be printed on a bill with a bar code. It is hoped the measure will make it easier for Revenue Quebec to analyze sales data for tell-tale evidence of tax fraud. The government plans to implement the recorders as a pilot project with volunteer restaurant operators throughout the province, including Quebec City and Montreal, in November 2009 to determine that they work properly. The following year, the device would then gradually be phased in over a 12-month period, following which all restaurant operators would be required to have it connected up. The government will be shouldering the cost of the machine itself, as well as for its installation. Revenue Quebec says the measures are being taken with the cooperation of the Quebec Restauranteurs Association, the Conseil des chaînes de restaurants du Québec, the Association of Hoteliers of Quebec and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Until about 20 years ago, Québec had no sales tax on restaurant meals under a given amount (something on the order of $3.50 -- often, waitresses made two invoices below the cuttoff amount so the client would not be charged taxes). So, light lunches eaten by little worker bees would not be taxed but heavy business lunches eaten by fat executives would be.
Eventually, some very senior bureaucrat very high up in the revenue department became pissed that his premium restaurant food would be taxed and not the lowlives below him in the civil service food chain, so he rescinded the tax exemption for cheaper proletarian meals, which actually failed to bring significant additional revenue, given the extra administrative costs.
This put a bigger burden on smaller restaurants, effectively throwing some out of business, and the non-touristic restauration industry has yet to recover from that downset. So the zapper software came into existence.
Those programs would simply slog through the transactions of the day, discarding most who were paid cash, and had no alcohol (because alcohol sales also have to be tallied precisely).
The core of the problem is there is no duty to recycle.
Do it, smartly. Use the "invisible head of the free market" to do it.
There is a town in New-York State where recycling is totally gratuit ("free" -- free as in beer). The city will supply you with all the bins you need, and will gladly pick them up at your place.
Garbage, however, has to be put in a special, city-issued garbage bag. Bags are sold at about $12 each (which is the reported cost of treating a garbage bag in the landfill). Of course, not using the $12 bag brings you a $100 fine.
So everyone recycles there, without having to use an army of curtain twitchers.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing that shall be understood is that driving a car on a public highway is **NOT** a private act, and thus expectations of household privacy cannot apply.
Furthermore, driving is a **PRIVILEGE** granted by the governments who own the roads, and they are free to implement whatever management methods to manage the use of the roads, up to and including the tracking of every single vehicle.
Locating stolen vehicles is only one benefit of the whole system; effective road capacity surveys could be conducted instantaneously, to help planning road expansion and/or maintenance.
Road congestion could also be monitored automagically, and drivers could also be suggested alternative routes to avoid tie-ups.
Congestion pricing could also be effected easily with that system, and it could even be adjusted according to different uses; for example, someone who takes his car to go half a mile away three times a day could be charged a nuisance fee whereas the tourist who comes from several hundreds of kilometers for the first time in his life would not be.
Service fleet owners could also, by paying a fee, monitor the location of their vehicle for better management of their fleets.
Car renters could also charge according to the location the cars are used. The possibilities are endless and go beyond what has been suggested so far.
They don't look at your portfolio (you have one, right?)?
Heck, when I was coding COBOL 25 years ago, I was using OO techniques without even knowing it!
It's easy. The application is the piece of machinery you're using to do your work, and the operating system is the whole factory building and infrastructure, supplying the machinery with power and raw materials, and taking out the finished work.
There is the likelyhood the boss won't secure the information properly.
Case in point, a canadian cabinet minister recently had to resign because he misplaced a classified document.
This is all very nice and sweet, but you can't have your cake and eat it. Why should city dwellers pay extra for your remote lifestlyle? Do you live in a village (which could conceivably be wired) or out in the boondocks???
Farmers, of course, need to be in the countryside; that is where their business is.
But do advertising account executives or telephone sanitizers who work in the cities NEED to be in the boondocks??? It is quite doubtful, as their remote location needs extensive transportation, and that transportation puts enormous stress on infrastructure, energy dependance and also the planet. Not to mention that building new houses over fields make those fields no longer available for agriculture.
And if you have transit funding gaps, this only means that the budget administration has been woefully deficient, and that the general transportation policy has not been very sound nor sustainable, not to mention that the priorities might have not been oriented properly. The only logical outcome is to raise taxes accordingly.
Do the boondocks **HAVE** to be wholly wired to the hilt? I mean, those people have deliberately chosen an energically-wasteful and ecologically dubious lifestyle. And with increasing pressure put on the environment precisely by the transportation needed for those people, why should they not be penalized for their willful choice, instead of having those made wiser choice having to foot their connection bill?
When everyone is a criminal, nobody is.
Er, no. It was the liberals who let Ahar to be deported to Syria. Granted, the tories will give even less a shit about that, but here the blame squarely lies with the liberals and, most importantly, the Royal Corrupt Maudit Police.
You did not leave France/Canada by your own volition, you were deported en masse by the britshit in 1755. Yes, the britshit conducted the first modern ethnic cleansing.
We don't hate freedom. We just don't trust people to be nice to others; this is why we have a big State that makes sure no one can take undue advantage of others.
We don't have freedom, we have liberty: by insuring that no one can crush someone else, we insure that they are free to do whatever they want without hurting anyone else. Like being able to speak against a big company without fear of being sued into oblivion. Being able to denounce working conditions without being fired. This is true liberty.
Liberty is not having the freedom to enslave or drive other people by the nose to kow-tow your line.
In the past, we have thoroughly been screwed by free entrepreneurs who had no problem using THEIR liberty to enslave others in company towns. So we gave ourselves strong governments that make sure that the free entrepreneurs will not crush their workers.
A true liberty is one that can be enjoyed by everyone, not just the rich, like in the USA.
If he was doing a joke/parody, he wouldn't have posted as A/C.
Indeed there is a pattern. Allowing companies to cut jobs and import stuff without import duties to protect local industries so they can stay competitive (it's called a "level playing field") is the pattern that sent the jobs in the turd-world.
If the government had done it's job of protecting the people, there would have been no big sucking sound of jobs heading south, but the US government doesn't protect the people, it only protect companies' bottom-lines.
Oh, yes, pesky obstacles like those who prevent one from issuing a $385,000 subprime mortgage to a $22,000 per year janitor?
For more than thirty years I have endured my sheep of parents getting shafted left and right, and whenever I wanted to point out they were shafted and that they happenned to have right, I was laughed-off.
It seems that law enforcement sees itself as more and more godlike when it comes to assume power over mere mortals they are investigating. This arrogance has to be stopped dead, because if left to themselves, they will expect total compliance and disclosure upon request to anyone without any safeguard whatsoever against abuse.
We have to resist indomitably, in order to drive the point home that our information is not a plaything to be rummaged through at will; if the administration of justice suffers for it, better let a criminal escape than harass an innocent.
The problem is the multiplicity of little governments, like cities and counties with extra-wide jurisdiction.
That's a pernicious effect of the US constitution that by being vague about who has jurisdiction over what, allows a deliberate power-grab by little governments who should not have such extensive power in the first place.
I mean, why the fuck a county should regulate coffee machines instead of the state???
Youngling!
This is Slashdot. For fair and balanced reporting, go to the New-York Times.
Well, Windoze, too is a POS...
Don't laugh, it's already been done.
Don't laugh: it's already been done:
And the alteration of the computer records is also prohibited.
Until about 20 years ago, Québec had no sales tax on restaurant meals under a given amount (something on the order of $3.50 -- often, waitresses made two invoices below the cuttoff amount so the client would not be charged taxes). So, light lunches eaten by little worker bees would not be taxed but heavy business lunches eaten by fat executives would be.
Eventually, some very senior bureaucrat very high up in the revenue department became pissed that his premium restaurant food would be taxed and not the lowlives below him in the civil service food chain, so he rescinded the tax exemption for cheaper proletarian meals, which actually failed to bring significant additional revenue, given the extra administrative costs.
This put a bigger burden on smaller restaurants, effectively throwing some out of business, and the non-touristic restauration industry has yet to recover from that downset. So the zapper software came into existence.
Those programs would simply slog through the transactions of the day, discarding most who were paid cash, and had no alcohol (because alcohol sales also have to be tallied precisely).
Do it, smartly. Use the "invisible head of the free market" to do it.
There is a town in New-York State where recycling is totally gratuit ("free" -- free as in beer). The city will supply you with all the bins you need, and will gladly pick them up at your place.
Garbage, however, has to be put in a special, city-issued garbage bag. Bags are sold at about $12 each (which is the reported cost of treating a garbage bag in the landfill). Of course, not using the $12 bag brings you a $100 fine.
So everyone recycles there, without having to use an army of curtain twitchers.