And there it gets tricky. The problem is that under international sanctions NK is not allowed to develop missile technology (and the key difference between a rocket and a missile boils down to the payload).
It indeed would be interesting to see how far they really are, but I do suspect that they have not much really to brag about as in developed by themselves. They took existing designs, scaled them up (I wouldn't be surprised if that is with outside help), made some improvements, and tried them out. Some failed, now finally one worked. A significant feat nonetheless.
The problem is that "primitive design" is often read as "poor design" by non-technical people. Primitive designs may be pretty good in themselves, and work quite well, but have become obsoleted by more advanced designs. Now in how far the NK rocket design is obsolete I don't know, the article mentions at least the Russians use the same fuels to launch stuff into orbit.
And of course it's being played down. Many people don't want to see up to the fact that this country managed to put an object in orbit (didn't stay there long though), which places them in a quite short list of countries that did so too.
That said I'd much rather they'd put that much effort in actually feeding their own population. For example by getting their farming going again, instead of having to rely heavily on outside supplies.
It matters: because only with the right technology you can actually launch a bomb across the ocean. Getting to orbit pretty much implies you can do it of course, the getting there part at least, analysing the technology further will let you know how well the thing was made (gives ideas on reliability and controllability), how much was imported and how much was their own work, etc. Being able to build such a rocket all by themselves means a greater threat than if everything is imported - imports can be blocked.
Also it gives an idea on how advanced their technology really is, which in turn gives an idea on their overall capabilities. If they build advanced rockets, they likely build advanced versions of other weapons too. The article mentioned they used a light-weight titanium alloy for the tank, instead of steel - showing they have access to that alloy.
The fuels used are also interesting. They use RFNA for oxidiser which can be stored at room temperature, making it not only easier to use as fuel in a rocket, it also makes it suitable as fuel for a missile which has to sit ready to launch for a long period of time. This may mean they are developing dual-use technology, it may also mean that they don't have the technology to use the more effient cryogenic fuels and have to simplify the design.
Analysing their technology can also indicate how well they can control their rockets - important for both space launches and dropping bombs on target. It seems they manage control pretty well considering they actually got an object in orbit, which is quite a feat. The obvious next step would of course be an object that stays in orbit.
No matter what, analysing the debris can tell you a lot. And that's why they're fishing up those debris parts now.
For the few times I have to fly I often spend some time getting the best options.
First check the aggregator sites for available flights/schedules, see which liners offer services, and direct or with change/stop-over.
For regional flights, I'd also check the schedules of relevant airports to see if there are any other liners serving the route: sometimes gives more options, especially for the low-budget liners that are not listed on those aggregator sites.
Decide which liners are most interesting, then check available flights and prices on liner's own web sites, indeed often gives better price to book directly. And if so, I will book directly instead of via the travel agent.
I think it's quite well known these days that most liners let you book directly for same cost or cheaper than travel agents, so one should at least check out that option.
This is what I really appreciate about Singapore Airlines. Quite some years ago they unilaterally decided to advertise only all-in prices, and they are still one of the few liners that do this (in Asia it's still common practice to advertise base rates, excluding all fuel surcharges and whatnot that easily add well in excess of 40% to the price, or was that 40% of the final price...).
As a result their advertised rates look high, but at least no surprises there. I've always hated this practice of air fare advertising - especially with those fuel surcharges and so nowadays.
The city of Amsterdam is built on top of millions of wooden poles, no concrete around them, just dirt and water. The reason they do not rot is (like what will happen at least to the bottom of a well) is that they are completely submerged. Lowering the water table under the city would have disastrous effects.
In what way could an app store be GLP-incompatible?
What I can think of mostly is the distribution of the source. Providing a download link in some kind of "about" screen should take care of that part. So what am I missing?
As a Linux user who spends quite some time fiddling at the command prompt this still sounds pretty daunting. Especially the part of having to renew those credentials (which I assume requires doing some kind of online registration to create them?) every month sounds tedious and irritating.
That's sensible, for the lack of anything resembling a Linux distribution's repository for Windows. I've before been told here on/. that "Google is your repository/app centre" - i.e. search for the software on Google and download it. That's just the way it goes in the Windows world. And to get Firefox, I happen to know to go to getfirefox.com but if I need say a pdf reader (not that bloated pos from Acrobat) then I'd also just go to Google, and select one or two of the top rated results, download it, run it, and hope for the best.
And Windows users have learned in the past that everything needs to be root to run properly... well that's by know more or less solved, still many users will run as root just because that's what they're used to, and it's convenient of course.
Just had a look at the photos and I'm convinced this is not a first time invention. This must be the result of a lot of previous attempts, just looking at how the wooden parts are connected: pin in hole, and another pin to prevent it from falling out again. That's technology that's still being used in wood construction.
Very likely these people were building wells and other wood constructions for quite some time already., this looks rather advanced It's just that wood doesn't preserve very well, so most will be lost by now., and we don't have any older and more primitive examples of such construction.
No surprise though that what is found is a well, as wells are of course rather like to fill up with dirt and end up under water, preserving the wood.
With the big difference that Geocities actually let you set up your own web page. As in, you got iirc 5 MB of disk space, and a URL. That's what they gave you. And with that you could <blink>set up your own web site!</blink>
Lots of crap. But some really cool stuff appeared, too.
Well Indian should be the easiest to learn. It sounds very much like English, you just have to learn how they twist it and you're good. I don't understand your remark of "there is no English" as they really all speak the same whacky form of English.
When you look at the surface of the earth, in the metropolean areas. Japan has lots of countryside as well, and most of it will be underground anyway. Land costs are anyway small compared to the cost of building the perfectly aligned tunnels and equipment.
This is indeed one of the big issues with the Internet: it is so international, that existing legal frameworks and international legal agreements do not usually apply.
Until the Internet, most services were linked somehow to a geographic location. You buy a book from your local book store, if there is an issue then you go back to that book store, and claim your rights under your local laws. However if you order a book from Amazon in the US, and there is an issue, which law applies? The US law of the warehouse where the book's order is processed? Or your local law where the credit card used for payment is registered? Or the location of where the Amazon server that handled your order is located, which may be a third jurisdiction? You usually don't even know where the server is located, to make it even trickier.
Just like Facebook: if there servers are all located in Ireland (I have no idea if this is actually the case) and a German user logs on to these servers, then does Irish law apply to their service, or does German law apply? This is a rather tricky question, one that is not easy to answer - I don't know of any existing international agreements on such situations - where part of the problem is to determine actual the location of a user, plus the fact that a user may now log in from Germany, tomorrow from Poland and the day after from France just by travelling around.
Now Facebook requires users to log in using their real name, actively deleting known fake accounts (at least, that's what they say). Germany wants them to drop that requirement for German users. What first has to be figured out, is whether the German law applies. If so, that's going to be troublesome for Facebook as there are another two dozen or so countries in Europe each with their own laws regarding use of real names, privacy, data retention, and whatnot. It may also not be technically possible to reliably figure out where a user is from.
You say "technically possible" - that probably applies to the actual use of pseudonyms. The question here, is not the use of pseudonyms as such, but the requirement of using real names. Setting (and enforcing) such a requirement on a case by case basis may be technically really hard, and requiring Facebook to completely drop this requirement all over the world is quite obviously unreasonable.
Privacy means you're allowed to hide what you do. Not necessarily to hide who you are.
So requiring real names does not, as such, infringe privacy - if you put stuff on-line for everyone to see, there is no reason to expect any privacy. If you don't want the world to know all about your life, don't put it on-line, keep it for yourself.
The only thing a "right to privacy" may help you with is that if you mark certain posts on Facebook as something like "private", "invite only" or "friends only", that Facebook makes good effort to enforce this, and will not without explicit consent, change this later as they do now.
But anyway long story short: if you want privacy, don't post your life on-line, pseudonym or no pseudonym.
I'm curious (really) if German ecommerce sites have to accept nicknames along with credit card numbers (and deal with chargebacks if there's fraud).
No need.
There is no need to even have a login at a site to be able to pay with your credit card. Or you could log in using your (real) name, and use the credit card of another person.
Those things are no problem for web sites, if only because the name as written on my credit card does not match the name that I normally use (my middle name is included, and the order is different).
i.e. Wong Tse Mei could be known to Chinese friends as "Mei Mei", English speaking friends as "Sally"...
Indeed they do it like that, but the "Mei Mei" version is rather colloquial and primarily used for children, and the English name "Sally" would be used by most Chinese speaking friends as well. The short-hand version would more likely become "Ah-Mei" - it is so often that I have been told to "ask for ah-something" when I was looking for say the person in charge of a scrap yard, or a construction site, or shop.
And Wong being the surname, on many Western web sites this name would become "Tse Mei Wong" (I have no idea how Facebook this really handles - never tried). An order not used in normal life, very confusing to see that appear.
In case of official forms it's easy and unambiguous: "the name as it appears on your Hong Kong ID card". And that's got a very strict order of "surname, given names" with all given names fully written out.
Users are followed and profiled by other means than their names: by the content of their comments and posts, groups they subscribe to, "like"s, other web sites (with Facebook "like" button in place) they visit, and probably a few other means that I can't think of.
The actual name attached to the account should be quite irrelevant in that matter. It's merely psychological - a "real name" (whatever that may mean) would denote an individual, and a "fake name" not? Most people using nicknames tend to use the same handle across various web sites, exactly so other people can recognise them, and those handles tend to be more unique than real names anyway.
One of the big questions is: what's in a name? What is someone's real name? When you introduce yourself to someone, you give a name. Is that your real name? Everyone will assume it is, without questioning it. But as a matter of fact I know people that go around by a nickname instead of their real name - usually a shorthand of their actual name, that they don't like, but a nickname nonetheless. A friend of mine once called me, introducing herself with her real name (which I heard before but never use - we always used a nickname), and basically I recognised her mostly by voice. The name on her passport is not the name her friends know best.
In Hong Kong it's even more so: all the locals have a Chinese name, written surname first - which sites like Facebook tend to mess up as they use the Western format of given name first. Many also go by an English name, which they actually use mostly in daily life, yet many never bother to register that English name on their passports. That makes it a nickname, yet also the name friends and business associate will know first and foremost.
For myself as my surname tends to be nearly impossible to pronounce for the locals, I usually just give them my first name to address me. That's hard enough to pronounce for them. And many will use that as were it my last name (adding "mister" in front). And for e.g. writing cheques, I must add my middle name as well - a name that I normally never use.
Then there is the issue of many people carrying the same name. My name is relatively unique do to a fairly rare surname, and my first name was not used much in my generation. So you see a name, but is that the John Doe you know from the bar, or another John Doe?
And finally names can be changed, legally, at will. Kim Dotcom from Megaupload fame is an example, and recently on Slashdot the mention of an American man who sold his name to the highest bidder, and for the next year he'll go by another name before assuming his original name again (or taking on yet another name).
It all comes down to a name being just a label, a way to recognise a person. Whether that label is the same as in that person's passport, that's not so relevant to their friends. They know a guy called "Bill", even when it says "William" in their passports. The argument that names must be "real names" to have people find their friends online, breaks down badly in those cases. A person is who they say they are, and no legal document or whatever is going to change that.
WIndows servers provide more job security than Linux servers for the sysadmins. Just sitting down with your legs on your desk (because everything Just Works) doesn't look good for most managers.
They are idealists, have their opinion, and will seek as much publicity as they can with that opinion. Now they certainly will do good work within their niche, those strong opinions are not usually a reflection of the overall community.
And that's not about government funding (which they normally get for their real activities such as manning a child abuse report hotline), those remarks are to get private funding, which comes from people that have the same strong opinions, and think that by donating to like-minded groups they can make a difference.
Blocking torrents was targeted at blocking people from accessing outright illegal material.
Porn (most of it at least) is afaik not illegal in the UK.
And that is a key difference. Also the torrent block is non-optional: it applies to all subscribers. The porn block would be optional (albeit probably on an opt-out basis).
And yes I know those blocks are generally ineffective, but that's not the point here.
Slashdot Mirror
And there it gets tricky. The problem is that under international sanctions NK is not allowed to develop missile technology (and the key difference between a rocket and a missile boils down to the payload).
It indeed would be interesting to see how far they really are, but I do suspect that they have not much really to brag about as in developed by themselves. They took existing designs, scaled them up (I wouldn't be surprised if that is with outside help), made some improvements, and tried them out. Some failed, now finally one worked. A significant feat nonetheless.
The problem is that "primitive design" is often read as "poor design" by non-technical people. Primitive designs may be pretty good in themselves, and work quite well, but have become obsoleted by more advanced designs. Now in how far the NK rocket design is obsolete I don't know, the article mentions at least the Russians use the same fuels to launch stuff into orbit.
And of course it's being played down. Many people don't want to see up to the fact that this country managed to put an object in orbit (didn't stay there long though), which places them in a quite short list of countries that did so too.
That said I'd much rather they'd put that much effort in actually feeding their own population. For example by getting their farming going again, instead of having to rely heavily on outside supplies.
It matters: because only with the right technology you can actually launch a bomb across the ocean. Getting to orbit pretty much implies you can do it of course, the getting there part at least, analysing the technology further will let you know how well the thing was made (gives ideas on reliability and controllability), how much was imported and how much was their own work, etc. Being able to build such a rocket all by themselves means a greater threat than if everything is imported - imports can be blocked.
Also it gives an idea on how advanced their technology really is, which in turn gives an idea on their overall capabilities. If they build advanced rockets, they likely build advanced versions of other weapons too. The article mentioned they used a light-weight titanium alloy for the tank, instead of steel - showing they have access to that alloy.
The fuels used are also interesting. They use RFNA for oxidiser which can be stored at room temperature, making it not only easier to use as fuel in a rocket, it also makes it suitable as fuel for a missile which has to sit ready to launch for a long period of time. This may mean they are developing dual-use technology, it may also mean that they don't have the technology to use the more effient cryogenic fuels and have to simplify the design.
Analysing their technology can also indicate how well they can control their rockets - important for both space launches and dropping bombs on target. It seems they manage control pretty well considering they actually got an object in orbit, which is quite a feat. The obvious next step would of course be an object that stays in orbit.
No matter what, analysing the debris can tell you a lot. And that's why they're fishing up those debris parts now.
For the few times I have to fly I often spend some time getting the best options.
First check the aggregator sites for available flights/schedules, see which liners offer services, and direct or with change/stop-over.
For regional flights, I'd also check the schedules of relevant airports to see if there are any other liners serving the route: sometimes gives more options, especially for the low-budget liners that are not listed on those aggregator sites.
Decide which liners are most interesting, then check available flights and prices on liner's own web sites, indeed often gives better price to book directly. And if so, I will book directly instead of via the travel agent.
I think it's quite well known these days that most liners let you book directly for same cost or cheaper than travel agents, so one should at least check out that option.
This is what I really appreciate about Singapore Airlines. Quite some years ago they unilaterally decided to advertise only all-in prices, and they are still one of the few liners that do this (in Asia it's still common practice to advertise base rates, excluding all fuel surcharges and whatnot that easily add well in excess of 40% to the price, or was that 40% of the final price...).
As a result their advertised rates look high, but at least no surprises there. I've always hated this practice of air fare advertising - especially with those fuel surcharges and so nowadays.
The city of Amsterdam is built on top of millions of wooden poles, no concrete around them, just dirt and water. The reason they do not rot is (like what will happen at least to the bottom of a well) is that they are completely submerged. Lowering the water table under the city would have disastrous effects.
In what way could an app store be GLP-incompatible?
What I can think of mostly is the distribution of the source. Providing a download link in some kind of "about" screen should take care of that part. So what am I missing?
As a Linux user who spends quite some time fiddling at the command prompt this still sounds pretty daunting. Especially the part of having to renew those credentials (which I assume requires doing some kind of online registration to create them?) every month sounds tedious and irritating.
Doesn't Windows 8 have the option of using alternative app stores, like Android?
That's sensible, for the lack of anything resembling a Linux distribution's repository for Windows. I've before been told here on /. that "Google is your repository/app centre" - i.e. search for the software on Google and download it. That's just the way it goes in the Windows world. And to get Firefox, I happen to know to go to getfirefox.com but if I need say a pdf reader (not that bloated pos from Acrobat) then I'd also just go to Google, and select one or two of the top rated results, download it, run it, and hope for the best.
And Windows users have learned in the past that everything needs to be root to run properly... well that's by know more or less solved, still many users will run as root just because that's what they're used to, and it's convenient of course.
Just had a look at the photos and I'm convinced this is not a first time invention. This must be the result of a lot of previous attempts, just looking at how the wooden parts are connected: pin in hole, and another pin to prevent it from falling out again. That's technology that's still being used in wood construction.
Very likely these people were building wells and other wood constructions for quite some time already., this looks rather advanced It's just that wood doesn't preserve very well, so most will be lost by now., and we don't have any older and more primitive examples of such construction.
No surprise though that what is found is a well, as wells are of course rather like to fill up with dirt and end up under water, preserving the wood.
Welcome back Geocities!
With the big difference that Geocities actually let you set up your own web page. As in, you got iirc 5 MB of disk space, and a URL. That's what they gave you. And with that you could <blink>set up your own web site!</blink>
Lots of crap. But some really cool stuff appeared, too.
Damn, suddenly I'm feeling old :-)
Well Indian should be the easiest to learn. It sounds very much like English, you just have to learn how they twist it and you're good. I don't understand your remark of "there is no English" as they really all speak the same whacky form of English.
When you look at the surface of the earth, in the metropolean areas. Japan has lots of countryside as well, and most of it will be underground anyway. Land costs are anyway small compared to the cost of building the perfectly aligned tunnels and equipment.
You miss the point entirely.
AC suggests to allow users to have an pseudonym (aka anonymous) account against payment. Yet the payment will negate the anonymity.
This is indeed one of the big issues with the Internet: it is so international, that existing legal frameworks and international legal agreements do not usually apply.
Until the Internet, most services were linked somehow to a geographic location. You buy a book from your local book store, if there is an issue then you go back to that book store, and claim your rights under your local laws. However if you order a book from Amazon in the US, and there is an issue, which law applies? The US law of the warehouse where the book's order is processed? Or your local law where the credit card used for payment is registered? Or the location of where the Amazon server that handled your order is located, which may be a third jurisdiction? You usually don't even know where the server is located, to make it even trickier.
Just like Facebook: if there servers are all located in Ireland (I have no idea if this is actually the case) and a German user logs on to these servers, then does Irish law apply to their service, or does German law apply? This is a rather tricky question, one that is not easy to answer - I don't know of any existing international agreements on such situations - where part of the problem is to determine actual the location of a user, plus the fact that a user may now log in from Germany, tomorrow from Poland and the day after from France just by travelling around.
Now Facebook requires users to log in using their real name, actively deleting known fake accounts (at least, that's what they say). Germany wants them to drop that requirement for German users. What first has to be figured out, is whether the German law applies. If so, that's going to be troublesome for Facebook as there are another two dozen or so countries in Europe each with their own laws regarding use of real names, privacy, data retention, and whatnot. It may also not be technically possible to reliably figure out where a user is from.
You say "technically possible" - that probably applies to the actual use of pseudonyms. The question here, is not the use of pseudonyms as such, but the requirement of using real names. Setting (and enforcing) such a requirement on a case by case basis may be technically really hard, and requiring Facebook to completely drop this requirement all over the world is quite obviously unreasonable.
Privacy means you're allowed to hide what you do. Not necessarily to hide who you are.
So requiring real names does not, as such, infringe privacy - if you put stuff on-line for everyone to see, there is no reason to expect any privacy. If you don't want the world to know all about your life, don't put it on-line, keep it for yourself.
The only thing a "right to privacy" may help you with is that if you mark certain posts on Facebook as something like "private", "invite only" or "friends only", that Facebook makes good effort to enforce this, and will not without explicit consent, change this later as they do now.
But anyway long story short: if you want privacy, don't post your life on-line, pseudonym or no pseudonym.
And how are they going to arrange payment, without breaking the anonymity?
I'm curious (really) if German ecommerce sites have to accept nicknames along with credit card numbers (and deal with chargebacks if there's fraud).
No need.
There is no need to even have a login at a site to be able to pay with your credit card. Or you could log in using your (real) name, and use the credit card of another person.
Those things are no problem for web sites, if only because the name as written on my credit card does not match the name that I normally use (my middle name is included, and the order is different).
i.e. Wong Tse Mei could be known to Chinese friends as "Mei Mei", English speaking friends as "Sally"...
Indeed they do it like that, but the "Mei Mei" version is rather colloquial and primarily used for children, and the English name "Sally" would be used by most Chinese speaking friends as well. The short-hand version would more likely become "Ah-Mei" - it is so often that I have been told to "ask for ah-something" when I was looking for say the person in charge of a scrap yard, or a construction site, or shop.
And Wong being the surname, on many Western web sites this name would become "Tse Mei Wong" (I have no idea how Facebook this really handles - never tried). An order not used in normal life, very confusing to see that appear.
In case of official forms it's easy and unambiguous: "the name as it appears on your Hong Kong ID card". And that's got a very strict order of "surname, given names" with all given names fully written out.
How does a fake name cause an issue there?
Users are followed and profiled by other means than their names: by the content of their comments and posts, groups they subscribe to, "like"s, other web sites (with Facebook "like" button in place) they visit, and probably a few other means that I can't think of.
The actual name attached to the account should be quite irrelevant in that matter. It's merely psychological - a "real name" (whatever that may mean) would denote an individual, and a "fake name" not? Most people using nicknames tend to use the same handle across various web sites, exactly so other people can recognise them, and those handles tend to be more unique than real names anyway.
One of the big questions is: what's in a name? What is someone's real name? When you introduce yourself to someone, you give a name. Is that your real name? Everyone will assume it is, without questioning it. But as a matter of fact I know people that go around by a nickname instead of their real name - usually a shorthand of their actual name, that they don't like, but a nickname nonetheless. A friend of mine once called me, introducing herself with her real name (which I heard before but never use - we always used a nickname), and basically I recognised her mostly by voice. The name on her passport is not the name her friends know best.
In Hong Kong it's even more so: all the locals have a Chinese name, written surname first - which sites like Facebook tend to mess up as they use the Western format of given name first. Many also go by an English name, which they actually use mostly in daily life, yet many never bother to register that English name on their passports. That makes it a nickname, yet also the name friends and business associate will know first and foremost.
For myself as my surname tends to be nearly impossible to pronounce for the locals, I usually just give them my first name to address me. That's hard enough to pronounce for them. And many will use that as were it my last name (adding "mister" in front). And for e.g. writing cheques, I must add my middle name as well - a name that I normally never use.
Then there is the issue of many people carrying the same name. My name is relatively unique do to a fairly rare surname, and my first name was not used much in my generation. So you see a name, but is that the John Doe you know from the bar, or another John Doe?
And finally names can be changed, legally, at will. Kim Dotcom from Megaupload fame is an example, and recently on Slashdot the mention of an American man who sold his name to the highest bidder, and for the next year he'll go by another name before assuming his original name again (or taking on yet another name).
It all comes down to a name being just a label, a way to recognise a person. Whether that label is the same as in that person's passport, that's not so relevant to their friends. They know a guy called "Bill", even when it says "William" in their passports. The argument that names must be "real names" to have people find their friends online, breaks down badly in those cases. A person is who they say they are, and no legal document or whatever is going to change that.
WIndows servers provide more job security than Linux servers for the sysadmins. Just sitting down with your legs on your desk (because everything Just Works) doesn't look good for most managers.
They are idealists, have their opinion, and will seek as much publicity as they can with that opinion. Now they certainly will do good work within their niche, those strong opinions are not usually a reflection of the overall community.
And that's not about government funding (which they normally get for their real activities such as manning a child abuse report hotline), those remarks are to get private funding, which comes from people that have the same strong opinions, and think that by donating to like-minded groups they can make a difference.
Blocking torrents was targeted at blocking people from accessing outright illegal material.
Porn (most of it at least) is afaik not illegal in the UK.
And that is a key difference. Also the torrent block is non-optional: it applies to all subscribers. The porn block would be optional (albeit probably on an opt-out basis).
And yes I know those blocks are generally ineffective, but that's not the point here.