My guess is that they only do it because they got some pretty severe threats from the EU behind the scenes.
Not even behinds the scenes. The GDPR-rules that will be implemented by 25 May 2018 stipulates, among other thing, that any organization that collects or process data about EU citizens must get consent and inform the individual about what is collected and how it will be used. The fine for non-compliance is up to 20,000,000 EUR or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. Not exactly peanuts. A good guess is that this is a preparatory move to ensure that they are complying with this when it hits.
Yes, there are some legitimate problems with GMOs, but they are legal issues, not health or environmental ones, and no one is talking about the alternative: More fertilizer, more water, more land use, more fuel to get less food.
Regardless of this, why shouldn't food be labeled with that it is? If you want to buy genetically modified products since they're less environmentally straining, or for other reasons like higher nutrient values or such, you must have labels to be able to make this choice. If want to stay away from genetically modified products due to being afraid of potential harm, or other reasons, you must also have labels to be able to make this choice. What your choice or reasons are is irrelevant to the question of labeling food. Without relevant labeling, you have no freedom to choose what you eat.
I don't understand the problem with simply specifying what they are selling? And as a consumer, regardless of if you are for or against the creation, use and spread of genetically modified organisms, why would you ever not want your food labeled with what it is? For instance, where I live, food is usually labeled with where it has been produced and where it's been packaged. Since I think needlessly long transports of goods are idiotic, I tend to buy as locally produced and handled meat and vegetables as possible, even if it sometimes is a bit more expensive due to my country's high cost of labor and strict regulations on how you are allowed to treat your animals and what pesticides you allowed to use. If the food hadn't been labeled, I wouldn't have the freedom of choosing where I want my food produced and packaged. Same thing with actively genemanipulated food. If it isn't labeled, I am not free to choose if I want to buy "naturally" breed products or if I want to buy genetically modified products. That freedom is dependent on the producers informing me of what they're selling me.
It ought to be obvious for any sane person that the one who authorized the deployment of the autonomous weapon must be held criminally responsible for any civilian casualties or war crimes this authorization leads to.
Shouldn't we as scientists be more careful with our words, and say that dark matter is BELIEVED to make up more of the universe than does visible matter, based on our current leading theories?
A very good point, and one that often is missed when talking about scientific subject. But one also has to differentiate between what is reported that a scientist, a group of scientists, or a scientific study says, and what they actually say. Quite often, what is reported is a complete misinterpretation of what was said, or is being intentionally made wrong in order to make a sensationalistic headline.
One other thing that is often missed or ignored by media reporting on scientific matters is that there often are different possible explanations, and that different scientists work on different studies of the same thing at the same time and might come to conflicting conclusions that are both as probable. Scientists or science is often referred to as one coherent group with one mind. =P
By not eating or drinking a lot of sugar or sweeteners all the time, you will also rather quickly remove your "resistance" to sweetness, so you'll automatically start to avoid a lot of food simply because it tastes horrible due to being way to sweet.
Overall...no, I'm not for outrageous fines for folks that are rich. It seems lately, for some reason, so many out there are treating wealth as something evil and bad.
Having fines for breaking the law being a percentage of your income isn't about punishing rich people for being rich. It's about having the fine being a deterrent to crime. If a fine is 0.00001% of your yearly income, you might not really care if you are fined or not. If a fine is 10% of your yearly income, you might be more reluctant to break the law that would give you said fine.
What I always wonder when I read about laser weapons is how they affect unprotected eyes of people in the vicinity of the weapon or the target. When laser weaponry is finally deployed in military forces and used in places where you can not be certain that civilians aren't in the area, will said military then be making civilians blind? If so, laser weapons should be made illegal.
Or is the range at which the laser is damaging to eyes so small that it isn't a problem?
The service aspect is not all positive.. With a vendor built, a component failure means a 2 week minimum turnaround where you're out of a machine.
This is why many professionals choose to either buy equipment that comes with, or pay a little bit extra for, 3 year on-site next business day hardware service that includes replacement parts. The key here is "on-site". Unfortunately for people who uses software that require OS X, Apple doesn't offer this.
Well. Showing that they're capable of non-trivial engineering feats, like launching payload into Mars orbit, might create more international business for local industries. So it might be good for more than creating patriotic feelings in the populace.
There are also studies that indicate that you should not get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, but should wake up for an hour during the night. Apparently, some argue that this is how we evolved to sleep an thus this should be the most healthy way. The only reference I could find on short notice is the Wikipedia article on Segmented sleep
2560x1440, 2560x1600 and 2560x1080 are the exact same amount of horizontal space. If you can get 2 or 3 pages side by side on a 2560x1080 screen, you can also get in on a 2560x1600 screen. And a 2560x1440 screen usually cost the same as a 2560x1080, so you pay the same for less pixels.
One thing that many people overlook when they voluntary bring their own hardware to work is that when it breaks or is worn out, it's their own responsibility.
For instance, if you use your private laptop 8 hours a day at work and the fan or battery is worn out after a year, it's your own responsibility.
Or, if you bring your laptop to work and it breaks, it's also your own responsibility. You'll have to pay for repairs or a new laptop yourself.
Unless, of course, if you have a contract with your employer about them taking responsibility for private equipment.
3. Products that can not be resold are not bought by anyone, so the companies that insist on selling such products either disappear from the market or change their business model.
The problem is that this options requires people to actually not buy, for instance, games that can not be resold.
I had similar issues with a USB3 pcie card. I don't remember the chip-model but the problem was solved by switching to another card made by another OEM. This one had the same chip and used the same driver, so I assume either a faulty card or a faulty design was to blame.
I converted my main workstation at work to windows 8 a week ago, mostly in order to learn and get used to it. While there indeed is a bit of a hassle to change some of the habits from xp, vista and 7 to fit 8, and I really dislike the start panel that has replaced the start menu, it's not really a big deal. I've put my 20 or so most used applications in the taskbar and pinned my most used folders and files into the respective taskbar icons and changed my "click start menu and open the file or folder"-habit into a "right click the taskbar icon and open the file or folder"-habit. Also, I've installed regular windows applications as replacements for all the standard windows 8 applications, like vlc instead of the full screen windows 8 movie player, acrobat reader instead of the full screen windows 8 pdf-viewer, etc. To be honest, I haven't used the start panel at all this entire week, except for going to the desktop after logging in.
On one hand, I've not really seen any of the horrible downsides with windows 8 that everyone talks about. On the other hand, I haven't seen many improvements over windows 7 yet. The new task manager and the new file-copy graph windows are awesome though.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that they only do it because they got some pretty severe threats from the EU behind the scenes.
Not even behinds the scenes. The GDPR-rules that will be implemented by 25 May 2018 stipulates, among other thing, that any organization that collects or process data about EU citizens must get consent and inform the individual about what is collected and how it will be used.
The fine for non-compliance is up to 20,000,000 EUR or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. Not exactly peanuts.
A good guess is that this is a preparatory move to ensure that they are complying with this when it hits.
Next should be something akin to "Ångkokt Ål" or "Ångerful Åländare".
Yes, there are some legitimate problems with GMOs, but they are legal issues, not health or environmental ones, and no one is talking about the alternative: More fertilizer, more water, more land use, more fuel to get less food.
Regardless of this, why shouldn't food be labeled with that it is?
If you want to buy genetically modified products since they're less environmentally straining, or for other reasons like higher nutrient values or such, you must have labels to be able to make this choice.
If want to stay away from genetically modified products due to being afraid of potential harm, or other reasons, you must also have labels to be able to make this choice.
What your choice or reasons are is irrelevant to the question of labeling food. Without relevant labeling, you have no freedom to choose what you eat.
I don't understand the problem with simply specifying what they are selling?
And as a consumer, regardless of if you are for or against the creation, use and spread of genetically modified organisms, why would you ever not want your food labeled with what it is?
For instance, where I live, food is usually labeled with where it has been produced and where it's been packaged. Since I think needlessly long transports of goods are idiotic, I tend to buy as locally produced and handled meat and vegetables as possible, even if it sometimes is a bit more expensive due to my country's high cost of labor and strict regulations on how you are allowed to treat your animals and what pesticides you allowed to use.
If the food hadn't been labeled, I wouldn't have the freedom of choosing where I want my food produced and packaged.
Same thing with actively genemanipulated food. If it isn't labeled, I am not free to choose if I want to buy "naturally" breed products or if I want to buy genetically modified products. That freedom is dependent on the producers informing me of what they're selling me.
It ought to be obvious for any sane person that the one who authorized the deployment of the autonomous weapon must be held criminally responsible for any civilian casualties or war crimes this authorization leads to.
Shouldn't we as scientists be more careful with our words, and say that dark matter is BELIEVED to make up more of the universe than does visible matter, based on our current leading theories?
A very good point, and one that often is missed when talking about scientific subject.
But one also has to differentiate between what is reported that a scientist, a group of scientists, or a scientific study says, and what they actually say.
Quite often, what is reported is a complete misinterpretation of what was said, or is being intentionally made wrong in order to make a sensationalistic headline.
One other thing that is often missed or ignored by media reporting on scientific matters is that there often are different possible explanations, and that different scientists work on different studies of the same thing at the same time and might come to conflicting conclusions that are both as probable.
Scientists or science is often referred to as one coherent group with one mind. =P
By not eating or drinking a lot of sugar or sweeteners all the time, you will also rather quickly remove your "resistance" to sweetness, so you'll automatically start to avoid a lot of food simply because it tastes horrible due to being way to sweet.
Overall...no, I'm not for outrageous fines for folks that are rich. It seems lately, for some reason, so many out there are treating wealth as something evil and bad.
Having fines for breaking the law being a percentage of your income isn't about punishing rich people for being rich.
It's about having the fine being a deterrent to crime.
If a fine is 0.00001% of your yearly income, you might not really care if you are fined or not.
If a fine is 10% of your yearly income, you might be more reluctant to break the law that would give you said fine.
What I always wonder when I read about laser weapons is how they affect unprotected eyes of people in the vicinity of the weapon or the target.
When laser weaponry is finally deployed in military forces and used in places where you can not be certain that civilians aren't in the area, will said military then be making civilians blind?
If so, laser weapons should be made illegal.
Or is the range at which the laser is damaging to eyes so small that it isn't a problem?
This is why you should have off-site data duplication.
The service aspect is not all positive.. With a vendor built, a component failure means a 2 week minimum turnaround where you're out of a machine.
This is why many professionals choose to either buy equipment that comes with, or pay a little bit extra for, 3 year on-site next business day hardware service that includes replacement parts.
The key here is "on-site". Unfortunately for people who uses software that require OS X, Apple doesn't offer this.
Well. Showing that they're capable of non-trivial engineering feats, like launching payload into Mars orbit, might create more international business for local industries. So it might be good for more than creating patriotic feelings in the populace.
There are also studies that indicate that you should not get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, but should wake up for an hour during the night.
Apparently, some argue that this is how we evolved to sleep an thus this should be the most healthy way.
The only reference I could find on short notice is the Wikipedia article on Segmented sleep
2560x1440, 2560x1600 and 2560x1080 are the exact same amount of horizontal space.
If you can get 2 or 3 pages side by side on a 2560x1080 screen, you can also get in on a 2560x1600 screen.
And a 2560x1440 screen usually cost the same as a 2560x1080, so you pay the same for less pixels.
Here's a film depicting the problem:
Badgers badgers badgers!
Or, while in desktop, Alt+F4 for shutting down.
One thing that many people overlook when they voluntary bring their own hardware to work is that when it breaks or is worn out, it's their own responsibility.
For instance, if you use your private laptop 8 hours a day at work and the fan or battery is worn out after a year, it's your own responsibility.
Or, if you bring your laptop to work and it breaks, it's also your own responsibility.
You'll have to pay for repairs or a new laptop yourself.
Unless, of course, if you have a contract with your employer about them taking responsibility for private equipment.
...you just described what "artificially limited" means in this case.
I'd say option three is best.
3. Products that can not be resold are not bought by anyone, so the companies that insist on selling such products either disappear from the market or change their business model.
The problem is that this options requires people to actually not buy, for instance, games that can not be resold.
Try looking at HP, Dell and Lenovo.
For instance, here's a few of the ones from HP, Simply filter on "Operating System: Windows 7 (64 bit)":
http://h20386.www2.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=B0C30EA&opt=ABU&sel=PCNB
http://h20386.www2.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=B8W13AA&opt=ABU&sel=PBNB
http://h20386.www2.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=H4P02ET&opt=ABU&sel=PBNB
http://h20386.www2.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=C5A68ET&opt=ABU&sel=PBNB
Similarly, I found a whole bunch of Thinkpads from Lenovo which ships with Windows 7 after searching for about 1 minute.
The easy solution is to simply not buy the product if you think it's bad.
Ford: "So, we got ourselves a life-signs detector."
Sheppard: "We can name it later."
I had similar issues with a USB3 pcie card. I don't remember the chip-model but the problem was solved by switching to another card made by another OEM. This one had the same chip and used the same driver, so I assume either a faulty card or a faulty design was to blame.
Building giant, expensive, vibration sensitive equipment in an area prone to earthquakes seems like a bad call in the long run.
I converted my main workstation at work to windows 8 a week ago, mostly in order to learn and get used to it.
While there indeed is a bit of a hassle to change some of the habits from xp, vista and 7 to fit 8, and I really dislike the start panel that has replaced the start menu, it's not really a big deal.
I've put my 20 or so most used applications in the taskbar and pinned my most used folders and files into the respective taskbar icons and changed my "click start menu and open the file or folder"-habit into a "right click the taskbar icon and open the file or folder"-habit.
Also, I've installed regular windows applications as replacements for all the standard windows 8 applications, like vlc instead of the full screen windows 8 movie player, acrobat reader instead of the full screen windows 8 pdf-viewer, etc.
To be honest, I haven't used the start panel at all this entire week, except for going to the desktop after logging in.
On one hand, I've not really seen any of the horrible downsides with windows 8 that everyone talks about. On the other hand, I haven't seen many improvements over windows 7 yet. The new task manager and the new file-copy graph windows are awesome though.