Well they cant charge me til i'm driving about 77mph so it's not that much of a big deal to people here
This is wrong unfortunately, they *can* charge you but tend not to. My sister received six points for doing 72mph. And only that. Not wreckless driving or anything else, but just speeding. The 10% thing is a general rule, but don't take it as Gospel.
As for the undertaking, I am not doubting that in your case it was unjustified, but I do find that drivers that sit in the outside lane when they could pull in to let a faster (even if obviously limit-breaking) car past tend to cause annoyance and sometimes accidents. And if it was on the M1 on Saturday or Sunday, and you drive a Blue BMW, then it was probably me, cause that Blue BMW really pissed me off having not pulled back in after pulling out in front of me..;-)
/OT
Digression aside, my thought is though that just as there are people that won't plug DIMMs in, just in case, and believe in their ability to drive faster whether they can or not, there are people that can design their own motherboards and recompile their own kernels, but would scare the shit out of you or me if we were their passenger.
The people that feel that driving at 85mph+ is within their capabilities probably includes a section of people that do not believe they are able to change an air filter in case they damage it. People using the internet is therefore analogously(for want of a real word) going to contain a section of people that whilst fully capable of partaking, wouldn't have the confidence to add memory to what they see as a closed box with warning labels not to open on it!
I don't think this is a language issue at all, but about power hungry law enforcement officers showing themselves feeling the need to continue to justify their existance. For me, the problem is not with the Law itself, such as 101 or whichever, but the method of enforcement. The Language Police seem to be the 'Nazis' in most cases and not the general public, whether in Montreal, Quebec, Trois Rivieries, Magog or wherever. I mean, asking MacDonalds (amongst others) to change their sign because of the apostrophe that doesn't exist in French? I cannot see the point. It's not as though they are using the Apostrophe on menus instead, or causing mass confusion amongst the francophones to occur, asking "Qu'est que ca?" I think they are being discredited by this sort of action as to how intelligent/educated they are.
Secondly, the PQ seem to be extending this battle for the sake of it, because it keeps them in power. For the population outside of Montreal that mainly do not speak English, the propoganda that is used installs a fear of the Anglephones, and I cannot blame them for voting for a party that claims will prevent the immediate conversion to English, that is inferred will happen by voting for any other party.
It seems to me that this particular story is just one example of the Language Police being overzealous, and in this case plain ignorant of how the web works. Certainly any site that wants the business will provide a French translation, but going after sites that don't provide a translation will just isolate Quebec even more. If a site isn't supplying a French translation and is in Quebec, it just has to move, and that will lose taxes for it whether it is a province or a country.
I am not a Quebecer, nor Canadian, or American, but have lived in Montreal for a year, so I was intrigued seeing what occurred. And that was just my take on it. And now I live in The Netherlands, where virtually everyone speaks English, although their second language is German, and no-one thinks that Dutch is threatened. Another reason why it makes me wonder whether it is *really* about language in Quebec...
Here is a link to the paper to be published in Nature magazine.
This sounds to me something like when the hairs on the back of the neck stand up when sensing danger. Is this something mammals have as well, as dogs also have hair that stands up when they sense danger, but has been overshadowed by our other senses, or would that be a reaction rather than a stimulus as the article implies is the case for the cockroach?
Hopefully the better programmers will be in the Office Suite section, after all, once IE and Office start getting moved to other OSes, the DOS extender versions of Windows won't have much of a long term future, even that of what was planned for them by Microsoft themselves...
Or am I just dreaming thinking that I could see Word and Excel on other OSes apart from Windows and MacOS? That is the reason so many people stick to Windows isn't it?
Indeed you are right as this is what I seen as well: I was searching for news of this from about 10:30 CET when it hit us.
I don't use the preview pane after seeing that attached.vbs files do run automagically in some cases depending on the user settings of IE4/5 and Outlook.
Having read/. a while, I know enough so that nothing runs automagically on Outlook or IE5 which I am forced to use by the company..
Just a shame that the company doesn't have time to educate users even about all this Nokia/Ericsson free phone crap that has been going on.
We'll see tomorrow just how much this has affected, shame I'll be in Ibiza..;-)
We have people running 98 and 2000 and it came from both. There is a setting depending on the Internet zone you have assigned as to whether it automatically runs the HTML scripting.
At the end of the script is the HTML code and of course this runs in the preview pane, via the OLE wscript file in the Windows directory. Sooo glad I don't use it, and have my Internet zones set up so that scripts don't run except in those sites I allow..
It seems that the HTML code at the end of the E-mail (not the attachment) tries to open the attachment via Active Scripting..
It says in the header of the HTML.. "simple but i think this is good..."
Is this a half finished virus, because it looks it to me. Some kid in school half written it, shows his friend, who then sets it free before it is finished properly...
Yes, I got suspicious after one, but I had received 54 copies within two minutes, by which time I had mailed our sysadmins to shut down our servers sharpish.
The problem is that if the preview pane is open in Outlook, the script runs without you even opening the mail. Fortunately I don't use such silly things..;-)
I swear so many people who are brought up in the west have totally ignorant views of what it means to be poor in a poor country.
Yes, I agree. But by your stereotyping you fall into this category yourself. Not EVERY third world country resident doesn't have food, doesn't have clothes or no water, etc.
When I was in Kenya (admittedly one of the richer third world countries but still desperate in places) about three months ago, I realised that it is not just the people affected by the famines that live there, but there is some educated and knowledgable people also who want to learn as much as they can so that they can escape the poverty.
Should we worry about these countries getting the internet and computers AS WELL as the problems they have at the moment? Yes. Should they always be trying to catch up with us, the people who have everything? Why should they be? Perhaps if they got access to computers and the internet there could be an upsurge in the economies, because perhaps they would be able to make money from selling their wares via an e-commerce site.
Coming from England, but having spent a year in Montreal, I can see both sides. And I liked it there, despite my own problems with understanding Quebecois.
Law 101 was very needed, and has done a lot to improve what I understand to have been a bad situation twenty years ago. Not so much any more, as almost all Anglophones are bilingual, and shame on those that are not.
However, to me it is not the law that is wrong or persecuting people but the way it is enforced by the language police who do seem to revel in persecution. I mean, c'mon, having a discussion about banning the 'McDonalds' sign because it is English? The point is..? In France it is still called McDonalds, even if government agencies here have to use new words for E-mail and download...;-)
And I think this is relevant to the Audio Home Recording Act, because as you say what the RIAA really wants is to strip the customer of their rights and hand them to those companies the customers are paying! They don't want a 'tolerance' of any kind, and the language police in Quebec seem to operate the same way.
Otherwise why is it Eaton's had to have signs in Montreal saying Eatons (which would obviously annoy the grammar police here in Slashdot)and why do the residents of Point Clare out on the West Island get so much trouble about having a sign in English first and THEN French?
But what really annoys me about the record/electronic companies is their half-hearted attempts to stop piracy. Take SCMS used by the Minidisc or DAT format. It stops an optical copy of a copy of a minidisc or DAT. Good for the record companies. Stops someone making a copy of a copy of something they are trying to sell. Fair enough. But when it comes to me making a copy of a copy of some music I MADE I can't do it, because the SCMS is not intelligent enough to know that it didn't come from a pre-recorded disc or source.
Anyway... Not like you can't get round it. Later, Mash
The gravitational attraction of a black hole 'pulls' everything past the event horizon, so that it can no longer escape, and once past the matter travels at the speed of light to the singularity. But since we cannot define what is actually happening inside a black hole (afaik), spagghetification being just one theory, couldn't it be possible that the singularity is SO small, that nothing ever hits it, thus shooting past or around it, and therefore just bouncing around inside the black hole in a Brownian motion type way? Or alternately, doing a spirograph pattern orbit around it? Would this explain why not ALL the galaxies we observe seem to be moving away from us, even if most are? Would this also not explain why they are not moving at a (relative) speed of light, as they are constantly changing direction, as are we?
Alternatively, couldn't we be inside an Antimatter Black Hole, with lots of other matter, which would still have a gravitational pull, but an opposite attraction to the singularity, but of course all the antimatter inside, which is helping to expand the Black Hole is moving at the speed of light so we can't see it?
Just a thought. Please correct me on the holes in this theory..;-)
Thank you Captian Obvious. Of course, the Chinese don't have the same buying power, so I don't think this is going to be an issue real soon.
Okay, I can see what it looks like, but I meant along the lines of what the government in Beijing would let them buy via the web, as I had the blocking of web sites in mind. There will still be a percentage of chinese that do have the same amount of buying power as you meant it otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford the computer in the first place. The great majority of Chinese don't even know what the internet is, let alone can afford a computer, but I wasn't talking about these.
Yeah, but stop thinking in terms of percentages: that is twice the population of Belgium, four times the poulation of Ireland, Norway, and about a third of the population of the UK.
Think about it, if the same percentage of Chinese got on line as Americans, all of a sudden the Americans would be in the minority, and then the focus of e-commerce would quickly shift, of course, assuming they had the same buying power.
And if it continued at the same rate, that wouldn't take too long too happen... Although I suppose this unlikely to happen unless the system for the non-English speaking is workable. Does anyone know how this would translate website address's cause IIRC chinese script is by word rather than letter?
I wonder if that "Hi, I kiss you web site" would translate in to Chinese....?
I have to agree, but I wonder whether it is also because people have less to do, they have more time to get pissed off with stupid little things. Someone cutting me up whilst I drive to work pisses me off no end, but I forget that I am lucky enough to own a car, which means I don't have to wake up at 5am to walk to work which is a nice air conditioned office with a water cooler etc.
Going to third world countries really brought this home to me, as when you talk to people there, they talk of their family and their job, and their home, because they are the important things, and they have nothing else.
On a separate note, I can only think of one good reason why you might want kitchen appliances connected to the net, and that is so that the machine can sense when something is going wrong, and send an alarm to a service company. Course, hackers would start charging their services out to the cowboy firms that come to your house and look at your connected appliance, shake their head, and declare "I didn't think it would be this bad..."
So what do you think? A good application, or have I missed The Bad Thing(TM) about this?
Agreeing with you about the convenience of the Palm Pilot and other PDA's but...
I'm not up on the current exchange rates but I think that's about £170. This is considerably less than what you think they cost and there are cheaper models available
Unfortunately most electronic hardware (and software) is about the same price in pounds as it is in dollars thus something that cost $250 in the US will be closer to £250, which is why I bought my Palm in the States, and a number of other things.
Surprisingly to me, one piece of equipment that IS cheaper in the UK is Minidisc equipment/software.. (Which are much more useful than an MP3 player imo..)
Re:Not all stupid, not all true
on
Dumb Laws
·
· Score: 1
Okay, completely offtopic, but what the hell!
Being British, all I can say is that Ireland did suffer under British oppression for a very long time. Being annexed and then starved is not something that any one would want. I wasn't taught that at school at all, and only learnt of it once I was at University with a knowledgable Irish girl.
But, in the last twenty years, I would say that Northern Ireland has suffered the most followed by Mainland Britain. It's not Ireland's fault, but Britain's itself for moving so many Protestants to the province in the first place. It was a religious/freedom war, but that finished a long time ago. The modern paramilitaries are very different from Michael Collins. Now it is 'something else'. Alledgedly the beatings are still going on from both sides. I worked in Eire for a few months last year and was warned not to make an appearance in the province simply because I was English. I took the advice. I hope that peace will happen there.
Back ontopic though, I think that New York's laws have to be the best. The first couple are excellent..
Actually, working in Europe and working in the UK is very different if you are in the ERP area: I work for a company that has offices all over Europe and America/Canada, and the UK rates are much higher than elsewhere in the world. As for your rates, I get more than that in a permanent position, and I only have 18 months experience! Like you I am riding the SAP wave while I can, cause it ain't going to last forever... "I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" Picasso.
I can see enourmous potential for some fun with this sort of thing. Know anyone that uses their keyboard more than the mouse? While they are off getting a coffee, if you could set up an audio file to kick in when their hand goes near the thing... 8-)
Mash. "I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" Picasso.
Echelon was never even going to intercept these mails IMO. It is more likely to be scanning mails that cross US boundaries, or partner boundaries than those within. If this is wrong, surely the Oklahoma bombing would have been detected via a phone conversation or two.. Has anyone stopped to think why the Australian government acknowledged the existance is possibly because it does not have a very high success rate? To me, this makes sense if you think that they are BOUND to be a part of it and yet it is not giving the results they would expect for them? There maybe billions and billions of communications going around this world every day, but not all of them are from/to multi-trillion [insert your preference of dollar/pound/euro etc]companies or pretargetted 'terrorist' (quotes because who defines terrorist?) organisations. After all has SETI found intelligent life yet? There's billions and billions of stars, and there is evidence that extra-terrestrial life exists but... Okay, terrorist activities are slightly different as we have the pictures of destruction but there is evidence that future terrorist activity exists... Maybe the technology is there, but the software hasn't been written yet. Perhaps crackers/hackers are being targetted so that they can write the software!;8-) Either way, despite supposedly living in a world of free speech, this seems to prove that perhaps the politicians are just a smoke screen to who is really in charge. Colour me chilled. Mash. "I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" Picasso.
Slashdot Mirror
Well they cant charge me til i'm driving about 77mph so it's not that much of a big deal to people here
This is wrong unfortunately, they *can* charge you but tend not to. My sister received six points for doing 72mph. And only that. Not wreckless driving or anything else, but just speeding. The 10% thing is a general rule, but don't take it as Gospel.
As for the undertaking, I am not doubting that in your case it was unjustified, but I do find that drivers that sit in the outside lane when they could pull in to let a faster (even if obviously limit-breaking) car past tend to cause annoyance and sometimes accidents. And if it was on the M1 on Saturday or Sunday, and you drive a Blue BMW, then it was probably me, cause that Blue BMW really pissed me off having not pulled back in after pulling out in front of me.. ;-)
/OT
Digression aside, my thought is though that just as there are people that won't plug DIMMs in, just in case, and believe in their ability to drive faster whether they can or not, there are people that can design their own motherboards and recompile their own kernels, but would scare the shit out of you or me if we were their passenger.
The people that feel that driving at 85mph+ is within their capabilities probably includes a section of people that do not believe they are able to change an air filter in case they damage it. People using the internet is therefore analogously(for want of a real word) going to contain a section of people that whilst fully capable of partaking, wouldn't have the confidence to add memory to what they see as a closed box with warning labels not to open on it!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Secondly, the PQ seem to be extending this battle for the sake of it, because it keeps them in power. For the population outside of Montreal that mainly do not speak English, the propoganda that is used installs a fear of the Anglephones, and I cannot blame them for voting for a party that claims will prevent the immediate conversion to English, that is inferred will happen by voting for any other party.
It seems to me that this particular story is just one example of the Language Police being overzealous, and in this case plain ignorant of how the web works. Certainly any site that wants the business will provide a French translation, but going after sites that don't provide a translation will just isolate Quebec even more. If a site isn't supplying a French translation and is in Quebec, it just has to move, and that will lose taxes for it whether it is a province or a country.
I am not a Quebecer, nor Canadian, or American, but have lived in Montreal for a year, so I was intrigued seeing what occurred. And that was just my take on it. And now I live in The Netherlands, where virtually everyone speaks English, although their second language is German, and no-one thinks that Dutch is threatened. Another reason why it makes me wonder whether it is *really* about language in Quebec...
~ ~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This sounds to me something like when the hairs on the back of the neck stand up when sensing danger. Is this something mammals have as well, as dogs also have hair that stands up when they sense danger, but has been overshadowed by our other senses, or would that be a reaction rather than a stimulus as the article implies is the case for the cockroach?
~ ~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
the contractors that make laptops for Dell (I forget the name)
If you could find out the name, and tell us, then you might get above the zero and get read....
And I could get a decent laptop with a shiny 'COMPUTER' badge as well... ;-)
Mash
~ ~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hopefully the better programmers will be in the Office Suite section, after all, once IE and Office start getting moved to other OSes, the DOS extender versions of Windows won't have much of a long term future, even that of what was planned for them by Microsoft themselves...
~ ~~~
Or am I just dreaming thinking that I could see Word and Excel on other OSes apart from Windows and MacOS? That is the reason so many people stick to Windows isn't it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After the worldwide strike of the "I LOVE YOU VIRUS", reports are already coming in that the virus is mutating into several variants.
... usually hits around midnight
....." virus .... usually hits about 2am
..... careful, it's a sly one.
... Now do you want me to call a cab for you?"
~ ~~~
Within the next few hours, expect to see:
The original "I love you" virus
The "I like you a lot" virus
The "You're nice, but I just want to be friends" virus
The "Its not you, its me" virus
The "Look, it was just a date...don't get clingy" virus
The "Okay, I think its best if we don't have anymore contact" virus
The "It was late, I was drunk, you were easy" virus
The "Stop calling me, you unfeeling prick" virus
The "That's it, I hate you and your stupid cat" virus
Plus:
The "No, I Reeaallllyyyy Like You" Virus
The "You're Beawfullll
The "Nothing has to happen. I just want to wake up with you in my arms" virus
The "You're OK but I was wondering if your friend is single" virus
The "Of course I'll phone you
.......... hmmm, that'll hit anytime between 3am & noon.
Yet to have caffeine, seemed funny at the time...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Indeed you are right as this is what I seen as well: I was searching for news of this from about 10:30 CET when it hit us.
.vbs files do run automagically in some cases depending on the user settings of IE4/5 and Outlook.
/. a while, I know enough so that nothing runs automagically on Outlook or IE5 which I am forced to use by the company..
;-)
~ ~~~
I don't use the preview pane after seeing that attached
Having read
Just a shame that the company doesn't have time to educate users even about all this Nokia/Ericsson free phone crap that has been going on.
We'll see tomorrow just how much this has affected, shame I'll be in Ibiza..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We have people running 98 and 2000 and it came from both. There is a setting depending on the Internet zone you have assigned as to whether it automatically runs the HTML scripting.
~ ~~~
At the end of the script is the HTML code and of course this runs in the preview pane, via the OLE wscript file in the Windows directory. Sooo glad I don't use it, and have my Internet zones set up so that scripts don't run except in those sites I allow..
It seems that the HTML code at the end of the E-mail (not the attachment) tries to open the attachment via Active Scripting..
It says in the header of the HTML.. "simple but i think this is good..."
Is this a half finished virus, because it looks it to me. Some kid in school half written it, shows his friend, who then sets it free before it is finished properly...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Found this link to the script, which seems to be in an odd place...
http://www.olen.net/LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT
It is not the VB script that would run in IE. Strange place for it to be though I thought...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, I got suspicious after one, but I had received 54 copies within two minutes, by which time I had mailed our sysadmins to shut down our servers sharpish.
;-)
~ ~~~
The problem is that if the preview pane is open in Outlook, the script runs without you even opening the mail. Fortunately I don't use such silly things..
Did like the "i hate go to school" though..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I swear so many people who are brought up in the west have totally ignorant views of what it means to be poor in a poor country.
Yes, I agree. But by your stereotyping you fall into this category yourself. Not EVERY third world country resident doesn't have food, doesn't have clothes or no water, etc.
When I was in Kenya (admittedly one of the richer third world countries but still desperate in places) about three months ago, I realised that it is not just the people affected by the famines that live there, but there is some educated and knowledgable people also who want to learn as much as they can so that they can escape the poverty.
Should we worry about these countries getting the internet and computers AS WELL as the problems they have at the moment? Yes. Should they always be trying to catch up with us, the people who have everything? Why should they be? Perhaps if they got access to computers and the internet there could be an upsurge in the economies, because perhaps they would be able to make money from selling their wares via an e-commerce site.
Please, get down off that there high horse.
Mash
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coming from England, but having spent a year in Montreal, I can see both sides. And I liked it there, despite my own problems with understanding Quebecois.
;-)
Law 101 was very needed, and has done a lot to improve what I understand to have been a bad situation twenty years ago. Not so much any more, as almost all Anglophones are bilingual, and shame on those that are not.
However, to me it is not the law that is wrong or persecuting people but the way it is enforced by the language police who do seem to revel in persecution. I mean, c'mon, having a discussion about banning the 'McDonalds' sign because it is English? The point is..? In France it is still called McDonalds, even if government agencies here have to use new words for E-mail and download...
And I think this is relevant to the Audio Home Recording Act, because as you say what the RIAA really wants is to strip the customer of their rights and hand them to those companies the customers are paying! They don't want a 'tolerance' of any kind, and the language police in Quebec seem to operate the same way.
Otherwise why is it Eaton's had to have signs in Montreal saying Eatons (which would obviously annoy the grammar police here in Slashdot)and why do the residents of Point Clare out on the West Island get so much trouble about having a sign in English first and THEN French?
But what really annoys me about the record/electronic companies is their half-hearted attempts to stop piracy. Take SCMS used by the Minidisc or DAT format. It stops an optical copy of a copy of a minidisc or DAT. Good for the record companies. Stops someone making a copy of a copy of something they are trying to sell. Fair enough. But when it comes to me making a copy of a copy of some music I MADE I can't do it, because the SCMS is not intelligent enough to know that it didn't come from a pre-recorded disc or source.
Anyway... Not like you can't get round it. Later, Mash
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, so a question so that I can understand...
;-)
The gravitational attraction of a black hole 'pulls' everything past the event horizon, so that it can no longer escape, and once past the matter travels at the speed of light to the singularity. But since we cannot define what is actually happening inside a black hole (afaik), spagghetification being just one theory, couldn't it be possible that the singularity is SO small, that nothing ever hits it, thus shooting past or around it, and therefore just bouncing around inside the black hole in a Brownian motion type way? Or alternately, doing a spirograph pattern orbit around it? Would this explain why not ALL the galaxies we observe seem to be moving away from us, even if most are? Would this also not explain why they are not moving at a (relative) speed of light, as they are constantly changing direction, as are we?
Alternatively, couldn't we be inside an Antimatter Black Hole, with lots of other matter, which would still have a gravitational pull, but an opposite attraction to the singularity, but of course all the antimatter inside, which is helping to expand the Black Hole is moving at the speed of light so we can't see it?
Just a thought. Please correct me on the holes in this theory..
Cheers, Mash.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you Captian Obvious. Of course, the Chinese don't have the same buying power, so I don't think this is going to be an issue real soon.
Okay, I can see what it looks like, but I meant along the lines of what the government in Beijing would let them buy via the web, as I had the blocking of web sites in mind. There will still be a percentage of chinese that do have the same amount of buying power as you meant it otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford the computer in the first place. The great majority of Chinese don't even know what the internet is, let alone can afford a computer, but I wasn't talking about these.
Yeah, but stop thinking in terms of percentages: that is twice the population of Belgium, four times the poulation of Ireland, Norway, and about a third of the population of the UK.
Think about it, if the same percentage of Chinese got on line as Americans, all of a sudden the Americans would be in the minority, and then the focus of e-commerce would quickly shift, of course, assuming they had the same buying power.
And if it continued at the same rate, that wouldn't take too long too happen... Although I suppose this unlikely to happen unless the system for the non-English speaking is workable. Does anyone know how this would translate website address's cause IIRC chinese script is by word rather than letter?
I wonder if that "Hi, I kiss you web site" would translate in to Chinese....?
I have to agree, but I wonder whether it is also because people have less to do, they have more time to get pissed off with stupid little things. Someone cutting me up whilst I drive to work pisses me off no end, but I forget that I am lucky enough to own a car, which means I don't have to wake up at 5am to walk to work which is a nice air conditioned office with a water cooler etc.
Going to third world countries really brought this home to me, as when you talk to people there, they talk of their family and their job, and their home, because they are the important things, and they have nothing else.
On a separate note, I can only think of one good reason why you might want kitchen appliances connected to the net, and that is so that the machine can sense when something is going wrong, and send an alarm to a service company. Course, hackers would start charging their services out to the cowboy firms that come to your house and look at your connected appliance, shake their head, and declare "I didn't think it would be this bad..."
So what do you think? A good application, or have I missed The Bad Thing(TM) about this?
Agreeing with you about the convenience of the Palm Pilot and other PDA's but...
I'm not up on the current exchange rates but I think that's about £170. This is considerably less than what you think they cost and there are cheaper models available
Unfortunately most electronic hardware (and software) is about the same price in pounds as it is in dollars thus something that cost $250 in the US will be closer to £250, which is why I bought my Palm in the States, and a number of other things.
Surprisingly to me, one piece of equipment that IS cheaper in the UK is Minidisc equipment/software.. (Which are much more useful than an MP3 player imo..)
Okay, completely offtopic, but what the hell!
Being British, all I can say is that Ireland did suffer under British oppression for a very long time. Being annexed and then starved is not something that any one would want. I wasn't taught that at school at all, and only learnt of it once I was at University with a knowledgable Irish girl.
But, in the last twenty years, I would say that Northern Ireland has suffered the most followed by Mainland Britain. It's not Ireland's fault, but Britain's itself for moving so many Protestants to the province in the first place. It was a religious/freedom war, but that finished a long time ago. The modern paramilitaries are very different from Michael Collins. Now it is 'something else'. Alledgedly the beatings are still going on from both sides. I worked in Eire for a few months last year and was warned not to make an appearance in the province simply because I was English. I took the advice. I hope that peace will happen there.
Back ontopic though, I think that New York's laws have to be the best. The first couple are excellent..
Actually, working in Europe and working in the UK is very different if you are in the ERP area: I work for a company that has offices all over Europe and America/Canada, and the UK rates are much higher than elsewhere in the world. As for your rates, I get more than that in a permanent position, and I only have 18 months experience!
Like you I am riding the SAP wave while I can, cause it ain't going to last forever...
"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" Picasso.
I can see enourmous potential for some fun with this sort of thing. Know anyone that uses their keyboard more than the mouse? While they are off getting a coffee, if you could set up an audio file to kick in when their hand goes near the thing... 8-)
Mash.
"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" Picasso.
Echelon was never even going to intercept these mails IMO. It is more likely to be scanning mails that cross US boundaries, or partner boundaries than those within. If this is wrong, surely the Oklahoma bombing would have been detected via a phone conversation or two.. Has anyone stopped to think why the Australian government acknowledged the existance is possibly because it does not have a very high success rate? To me, this makes sense if you think that they are BOUND to be a part of it and yet it is not giving the results they would expect for them? There maybe billions and billions of communications going around this world every day, but not all of them are from/to multi-trillion [insert your preference of dollar/pound/euro etc]companies or pretargetted 'terrorist' (quotes because who defines terrorist?) organisations. After all has SETI found intelligent life yet? There's billions and billions of stars, and there is evidence that extra-terrestrial life exists but... Okay, terrorist activities are slightly different as we have the pictures of destruction but there is evidence that future terrorist activity exists... Maybe the technology is there, but the software hasn't been written yet. Perhaps crackers/hackers are being targetted so that they can write the software! ;8-) Either way, despite supposedly living in a world of free speech, this seems to prove that perhaps the politicians are just a smoke screen to who is really in charge. Colour me chilled. Mash.
"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them" Picasso.