Yep. Banks have stalled on smart chip cards for long enough. And why don't you need a password for credit cards yet:P
Even for online banking, it would be a good think if laptops/computers came with a built-in smartchip reader.. So even if someone steals your password, they still need your physical card to do banking...even online banking.
But of course, they're waiting for the cost of fraud to be greater than the cost of deploying the new systems.
90% of people would love to take transit to work. Like most people, there is no transit to get from my home to my work in a reasonable time. Now lets look a bit into the future here...
In 5-10 years, plugin hybrids are going to be the norm. This mean car pollution is not going to be a problem for a daily commute (50-60k). So lets put that out of the way.
So the only real reason to use this is traffic. I already use a toll road to get to work. It's nice, convenient, and costs an arm and a leg. But I'm fine with it. I wouldn't mind if all roads were tolled. BUT...here's a big BUT...if you want drivers to pay the full cost of driving, then please let public transit users pay the full cost of transit.
I'm sorry, I don't appreciate paying an arm and a leg for my toll highway every morning, while I subsidize public transit. let public transit users pay the whole cost, and maybe subsidize low-income families with a cheaper rate.
The key to successful transit. People don't use public transit because it is cheaper. they use it because its more convenient.
I totally agree with net neutrality when it comes to billing. I pay to access the internet. Google pays to access the internet. Google doesn't need to pay more because it serves huge amounts of data. They've already paid, and I've already paid and I'm the one requesting the data. That is something that must be maintained.
I think providers should be forced to have 2 types of billing system. managed: here, they manage your bandwidth for you. Your email, IM, browsing, P2P, VOIP is all regulated at their end. Of course P2P is slowed down to make way for IM, VOIP, gaming...
unmanaged: here they charge you by the MB for your different QOS levels. (this must be monitored to make sure it is the true cost...and not jacked up compared to the managed)
But managed connections is not as simple as it sounds. your example of VOIP packets is not as simple. How do you know something is voip? What about encryption? What if a P2P program hides its data as VOIP?
it could be a typical correlation != causation issue. However, it doesn't attribute all violent crime to lead, just a portion of it and that is in itself quite rational.
Lead is a substance that does alter the brain and has numerous other effects. It is quite possible that with lead exposure, a significant minority of the population would have nervous damage causing behavioral issues. This would especially be true if people did not have a good social environment. The lead would 'push' them over the edge so to speak.
Actually probably the safest technology is interac online. I use it where possible (ncix.com) for example. The store gives you an account number.
When you want to pay for an item, you log on to your BANK'S WEBSITE. Type in the account number and the bill. and you pay
The retailer never sees your banking information The retailer never sees your password (Even in encrypted form)
I wish the credit card companies would do this.
Not to mention force credit cards to have a pin and a smartchip. But I guess right now the cost of that is greater than the cost of fraud, so they don't do it.
The health care system is the USA is hardly capitalist. It's almost never capitalist.
1. Health care is regulated: only doctors may prescribe / treat. That is a government regulated monopoly. It would be like the government saying only government certified mechanics can change your oil. Could you imagine how expensive that would make things? The only thing worse than a government monopoly (as in Canadian healthcare) is a government monopoly with the ability to charge like the free market (like the US healthcare system). How about we deregulate healthcare so nurses, pharmacists...can treat people. If you really must, reserve surgeries to doctors. Truth be told, I've yet to receive any real treatment/diagnosis from my family doctor that I don't think a well qualified nurse could have given. Granted I'm young, but that's the point, if this were purely capitalistic, when I want the expertise of a doctor, i would pay to see one. When I don't, a nurse would do just fine.
2. The USA does have medicaid...this is hardly purely capitalist. 3. The sale of drugs is restricted (similar to 1).
Indeed, the entire health industry is built around a lack of free market.
You can't argue with that one. The best DVD player I ever bought was a dirt cheap one from walmart.
But I guess what is the hype here? Go to your local grocery store. You will see Cheerios...and next to it will be Cereal O's or some other generic brand. I'm sure Cheerios did all the research and development and taste testing...and these cheap knockoffs copy it!!!
Or how about since MS has not been mentioned and this is Slashdot:P They do all the r&d and testing and come out with MS Office, and those darm open source programmers just copy MS Office.
Unless this Chinese firm stole the source code, it's fair game, and there's nothing at all wrong about this...except...it's China. The alternative to allowing this is too scary. We'd have to copyright, trademark and patent everything. The 'Open' menu item under the 'File' menu would be restricted. Combing oats and honey in a bunchies would be restricted:)
Big firms need to hold their ground based on marketing their brand name and quality. Given the stories about toothpaste being made in China...I'm pretty sure most of us would be willing to pay for the brand name Colgate if we could be sure of the quality (I'm checking where it's made the next time)
multicast doesn't mean you get all the channels at once. All it means is the video server only sends out 1 packet (1 stream). That packet is then duplicated as needed along the path. It saves bandwidth for the routers along the way. But at the end, you (as the set top box) receive the same amount of information.
For unicast, it would mean sending N packet for N number of users right from the video server. That's just not practical.
We could teach people to do many things, but they won't. However, we can most certainly encourage them to do things. We could do the following.
1. Time the lights so you can coast through them 2. Add timers to lights to let drivers know how how long until the light changes. 3. Add systems to cars...for example add cruise control that adjusts to the car infront on you.
----------- But at the end of the day, driving is a dog eat dog world. People race to the red light to be first because they think the guy that would be in front of them is going to be a slow idiot. So who cares about coasting as when you are in first, you are in control.
This of course is just my little opinon. I love open source application.
Firefox, gaim, gvim...
But when it comes to a linux distribution, it just never feels whole.
I've got kubuntu at home (started off as ubuntu), and I just can't stand all the options.
Consider adding/removing programs. I count about 3 package managers installed plus the add/remove programs. Sometimes one will complain it can't do something and it tells me to use another package manager.
I could go on about text editors...but I'm sure we can all think about a million and one examples.
I could go on, but the simple answer is choice is great, but managing choice is hard.
'The core' is not an absolute term. it's an abstract concept upon which applications are based and the system is managed. The core is much more than just the kernel.
Windows has a dictatorship at its core. But you have the choice of any application. The applications can depend on this dictatorship at the core. If you really want to play around, you can get around the windows core (for example, you can easily replace the explorer shell).
Linux is free in the core and free at the application level. The applications cannot depend on the core. This leads to multiple 'cores'.
I take issue with the author's suggestion that windows does not provide choice. It most definitely provides choice. I can do a search on the internet for windows text editor and get a million choices. Even for development, there's plenty of choices. The key is the separate between the 'core' and the 'application'. This is something linux does poorly, when in reality this should be its strength. Why does KDE needs to tie everything together (shell, webrowser, text editor, word processor...) all K'd:). And then GNOME has its own set. Sure, you're not forced to use them mutually exclusively, but they're so tied together with their components, its like they're 2 'cores'.
Women are given opportunities a plenty in engineering and computer science. How much more a push would they like?
There's no barrier to university. In fact most universities will give a spot to a women even if she's not the best student.
There's no barrier in the work place. Every employer I've ever worked with has tries to hire women.
Here's the hint, they just can't find enough good ones. The majority seems to be eastern european women and asian women. Some of whom are very good programmers.
There's enough people who can't program already doing it:) Let's not lower the bar again.
How about, instead of lower the bar at university, we actually strengthen mathematics and science at the elementary and grade school levels. Oh I forgot, we had to lower those as well so that people would be interested in those well.
While we're at it, let's make sure 50% child care workers are men, 50% of nurses are men, 50% of secretaries are men, 50% of garbage collectors are women... This is ridiculous. Give people the freedom to do whatever they want...beyond that, leave people to their own choices.
So you want the nerds to not feel bullied in the gym class with all the kids being stronger and faster than them.
Yet, you want to take the kids who are not so intelligent in math/computers and force them to sit through 'boring' classes where all the nerds have the answers and they get to feel stupid.
How very kind and patriotic of you to want to beat China this way.
We need to stop looking at institutions for all our solutions. Some kids will make better athletes. Some will be better engineers/scientists. Some will be better trades people. Some will be better social workers...Stop trying to make everyone the same. It fails and only leads to the lowest common denominator.
Math gets dummed down for the stupid kids. Play gets reduced because some weak kid hurt his arm on the playground and his whiny mother complains. Sports get dummed down because nerds feel bad they can't do as well...
That my good man is why we're 'losing' to China. The kids have no drive. Everything has to be handed to us and no sacrifices must be made. It's our high quality of life that leads to our downfall. It all started with those in the 60-80s who demanded a quality of life far exceeding what they could afford.
It's good to be a failure and fall once in a while. You might actually learn something that way.
You can say that again.
I also went to a school in a non-western country. But it was an old British Colony. I came to Canada in grade 5 and I didn't learn much for the next 4 years, especially in mathematics and I guarantee you my teachers were not paid that well. Now, we definitely did not spend the whole day working as you apparently did in Taiwan.
Then again, they didn't do any fancy entertaining lessons or pointless homework. You went to school to learn and you did. Not because school is fun, but because it had to be done. I know it's a strange concept. If we acted up; well lets just say a little force was used.
I'm not for making students full of drones and beating them into submission. However, I think Western schools/society have just gone to the extreme. No amount of teaching is going to fix this problem. I'd much rather see the money spent on social workers and that outside of schools to set these kids and parents right. I personally believe the younger elementary years should emphasize discipline and fundamentals a lot more. Then you can open up in the later years. You can't build a house without a foundation.
Yes, there are plenty of people in private sector who get by slacking.
The difference?
1. It's not my tax dollars. I could care less if people at company X are slacking. I'm not forced to fund them.
2. The market regulates it. A lot of idiots got hired at Nortel during the dot com boom. When the market went down...they trimmed all the slackers. If you don't have the right people and hire slackers, then you're not going to be able to make a good product, and the market will take care of you. This just doesn't exist in government jobs. They just hold your students, transit, security under threat of strike.
On another point, I actually went through teachers college and taught several terms. It is all about the union and not about the students.
I've talked to union reps and teachers.
"We need to get more people with higher degrees. We raise our status and pay that way"
The need for teachers with masters degrees or better education has nothing to do with the students. It has to do with them being able to go to government and say "look, we have X people with masters degrees, they deserve more pay."
Yes, I saw some good teachers. But many just taught straight from the guide book. I wonder what planning they did?
Education is a commodity in the education system:)
There is never a benefit analysis done. Teachers take courses because if they take such and such, they get more pay. It's a scam. There have been several scandals on the issue.
It's the same in the rest of the government. You don't get paid for what you do, but for what the 'status' is.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. :P
Banks have stalled on smart chip cards for long enough. And why don't you need a password for credit cards yet
Even for online banking, it would be a good think if laptops/computers came with a built-in smartchip reader.. So even if someone steals your password, they still need your physical card to do banking...even online banking.
But of course, they're waiting for the cost of fraud to be greater than the cost of deploying the new systems.
90% of people would love to take transit to work. Like most people, there is no transit to get from my home to my work in a reasonable time. Now lets look a bit into the future here...
In 5-10 years, plugin hybrids are going to be the norm. This mean car pollution is not going to be a problem for a daily commute (50-60k). So lets put that out of the way.
So the only real reason to use this is traffic. I already use a toll road to get to work. It's nice, convenient, and costs an arm and a leg. But I'm fine with it. I wouldn't mind if all roads were tolled. BUT...here's a big BUT...if you want drivers to pay the full cost of driving, then please let public transit users pay the full cost of transit.
I'm sorry, I don't appreciate paying an arm and a leg for my toll highway every morning, while I subsidize public transit. let public transit users pay the whole cost, and maybe subsidize low-income families with a cheaper rate.
The key to successful transit. People don't use public transit because it is cheaper. they use it because its more convenient.
I totally agree with net neutrality when it comes to billing. I pay to access the internet. Google pays to access the internet. Google doesn't need to pay more because it serves huge amounts of data. They've already paid, and I've already paid and I'm the one requesting the data. That is something that must be maintained.
I think providers should be forced to have 2 types of billing system.
managed: here, they manage your bandwidth for you. Your email, IM, browsing, P2P, VOIP is all regulated at their end. Of course P2P is slowed down to make way for IM, VOIP, gaming...
unmanaged: here they charge you by the MB for your different QOS levels. (this must be monitored to make sure it is the true cost...and not jacked up compared to the managed)
But managed connections is not as simple as it sounds. your example of VOIP packets is not as simple. How do you know something is voip? What about encryption? What if a P2P program hides its data as VOIP?
it could be a typical correlation != causation issue.
However, it doesn't attribute all violent crime to lead, just a portion of it and that is in itself quite rational.
Lead is a substance that does alter the brain and has numerous other effects. It is quite possible that with lead exposure, a significant minority of the population would have nervous damage causing behavioral issues. This would especially be true if people did not have a good social environment. The lead would 'push' them over the edge so to speak.
Actually probably the safest technology is interac online. I use it where possible (ncix.com) for example.
The store gives you an account number.
When you want to pay for an item, you log on to your BANK'S WEBSITE.
Type in the account number and the bill. and you pay
The retailer never sees your banking information
The retailer never sees your password (Even in encrypted form)
I wish the credit card companies would do this.
Not to mention force credit cards to have a pin and a smartchip.
But I guess right now the cost of that is greater than the cost of fraud, so they don't do it.
The health care system is the USA is hardly capitalist. It's almost never capitalist.
1. Health care is regulated: only doctors may prescribe / treat. That is a government regulated monopoly. It would be like the government saying only government certified mechanics can change your oil. Could you imagine how expensive that would make things? The only thing worse than a government monopoly (as in Canadian healthcare) is a government monopoly with the ability to charge like the free market (like the US healthcare system). How about we deregulate healthcare so nurses, pharmacists...can treat people. If you really must, reserve surgeries to doctors. Truth be told, I've yet to receive any real treatment/diagnosis from my family doctor that I don't think a well qualified nurse could have given. Granted I'm young, but that's the point, if this were purely capitalistic, when I want the expertise of a doctor, i would pay to see one. When I don't, a nurse would do just fine.
2. The USA does have medicaid...this is hardly purely capitalist.
3. The sale of drugs is restricted (similar to 1).
Indeed, the entire health industry is built around a lack of free market.
You can't argue with that one.
:P
:)
The best DVD player I ever bought was a dirt cheap one from walmart.
But I guess what is the hype here?
Go to your local grocery store. You will see Cheerios...and next to it will be Cereal O's or some other generic brand.
I'm sure Cheerios did all the research and development and taste testing...and these cheap knockoffs copy it!!!
Or how about since MS has not been mentioned and this is Slashdot
They do all the r&d and testing and come out with MS Office, and those darm open source programmers just copy MS Office.
Unless this Chinese firm stole the source code, it's fair game, and there's nothing at all wrong about this...except...it's China.
The alternative to allowing this is too scary. We'd have to copyright, trademark and patent everything. The 'Open' menu item under the 'File' menu would be restricted. Combing oats and honey in a bunchies would be restricted
Big firms need to hold their ground based on marketing their brand name and quality. Given the stories about toothpaste being made in China...I'm pretty sure most of us would be willing to pay for the brand name Colgate if we could be sure of the quality (I'm checking where it's made the next time)
I work in multicast actually :)
multicast doesn't mean you get all the channels at once.
All it means is the video server only sends out 1 packet (1 stream). That packet is then duplicated as needed along the path. It saves bandwidth for the routers along the way. But at the end, you (as the set top box) receive the same amount of information.
For unicast, it would mean sending N packet for N number of users right from the video server. That's just not practical.
We could teach people to do many things, but they won't. However, we can most certainly encourage them to do things. We could do the following.
1. Time the lights so you can coast through them
2. Add timers to lights to let drivers know how how long until the light changes.
3. Add systems to cars...for example add cruise control that adjusts to the car infront on you.
-----------
But at the end of the day, driving is a dog eat dog world. People race to the red light to be first because they think the guy that would be in front of them is going to be a slow idiot. So who cares about coasting as when you are in first, you are in control.
This of course is just my little opinon. I love open source application. Firefox, gaim, gvim... But when it comes to a linux distribution, it just never feels whole. I've got kubuntu at home (started off as ubuntu), and I just can't stand all the options. Consider adding/removing programs. I count about 3 package managers installed plus the add/remove programs. Sometimes one will complain it can't do something and it tells me to use another package manager. I could go on about text editors...but I'm sure we can all think about a million and one examples. I could go on, but the simple answer is choice is great, but managing choice is hard. 'The core' is not an absolute term. it's an abstract concept upon which applications are based and the system is managed. The core is much more than just the kernel. Windows has a dictatorship at its core. But you have the choice of any application. The applications can depend on this dictatorship at the core. If you really want to play around, you can get around the windows core (for example, you can easily replace the explorer shell). Linux is free in the core and free at the application level. The applications cannot depend on the core. This leads to multiple 'cores'. I take issue with the author's suggestion that windows does not provide choice. It most definitely provides choice. I can do a search on the internet for windows text editor and get a million choices. Even for development, there's plenty of choices. The key is the separate between the 'core' and the 'application'. This is something linux does poorly, when in reality this should be its strength. Why does KDE needs to tie everything together (shell, webrowser, text editor, word processor...) all K'd :). And then GNOME has its own set. Sure, you're not forced to use them mutually exclusively, but they're so tied together with their components, its like they're 2 'cores'.
Women are given opportunities a plenty in engineering and computer science. How much more a push would they like? There's no barrier to university. In fact most universities will give a spot to a women even if she's not the best student. There's no barrier in the work place. Every employer I've ever worked with has tries to hire women. Here's the hint, they just can't find enough good ones. The majority seems to be eastern european women and asian women. Some of whom are very good programmers. There's enough people who can't program already doing it :) Let's not lower the bar again.
How about, instead of lower the bar at university, we actually strengthen mathematics and science at the elementary and grade school levels. Oh I forgot, we had to lower those as well so that people would be interested in those well.
While we're at it, let's make sure 50% child care workers are men, 50% of nurses are men, 50% of secretaries are men, 50% of garbage collectors are women... This is ridiculous. Give people the freedom to do whatever they want...beyond that, leave people to their own choices.
So you want the nerds to not feel bullied in the gym class with all the kids being stronger and faster than them.
Yet, you want to take the kids who are not so intelligent in math/computers and force them to sit through 'boring' classes where all the nerds have the answers and they get to feel stupid.
How very kind and patriotic of you to want to beat China this way.
We need to stop looking at institutions for all our solutions. Some kids will make better athletes. Some will be better engineers/scientists. Some will be better trades people. Some will be better social workers...Stop trying to make everyone the same. It fails and only leads to the lowest common denominator.
Math gets dummed down for the stupid kids. Play gets reduced because some weak kid hurt his arm on the playground and his whiny mother complains. Sports get dummed down because nerds feel bad they can't do as well...
That my good man is why we're 'losing' to China. The kids have no drive. Everything has to be handed to us and no sacrifices must be made. It's our high quality of life that leads to our downfall. It all started with those in the 60-80s who demanded a quality of life far exceeding what they could afford.
It's good to be a failure and fall once in a while. You might actually learn something that way.
You can say that again. I also went to a school in a non-western country. But it was an old British Colony. I came to Canada in grade 5 and I didn't learn much for the next 4 years, especially in mathematics and I guarantee you my teachers were not paid that well. Now, we definitely did not spend the whole day working as you apparently did in Taiwan. Then again, they didn't do any fancy entertaining lessons or pointless homework. You went to school to learn and you did. Not because school is fun, but because it had to be done. I know it's a strange concept. If we acted up; well lets just say a little force was used. I'm not for making students full of drones and beating them into submission. However, I think Western schools/society have just gone to the extreme. No amount of teaching is going to fix this problem. I'd much rather see the money spent on social workers and that outside of schools to set these kids and parents right. I personally believe the younger elementary years should emphasize discipline and fundamentals a lot more. Then you can open up in the later years. You can't build a house without a foundation.
Yes, there are plenty of people in private sector who get by slacking. The difference? 1. It's not my tax dollars. I could care less if people at company X are slacking. I'm not forced to fund them. 2. The market regulates it. A lot of idiots got hired at Nortel during the dot com boom. When the market went down...they trimmed all the slackers. If you don't have the right people and hire slackers, then you're not going to be able to make a good product, and the market will take care of you. This just doesn't exist in government jobs. They just hold your students, transit, security under threat of strike. On another point, I actually went through teachers college and taught several terms. It is all about the union and not about the students. I've talked to union reps and teachers. "We need to get more people with higher degrees. We raise our status and pay that way" The need for teachers with masters degrees or better education has nothing to do with the students. It has to do with them being able to go to government and say "look, we have X people with masters degrees, they deserve more pay." Yes, I saw some good teachers. But many just taught straight from the guide book. I wonder what planning they did? Education is a commodity in the education system :)
There is never a benefit analysis done. Teachers take courses because if they take such and such, they get more pay. It's a scam. There have been several scandals on the issue.
It's the same in the rest of the government. You don't get paid for what you do, but for what the 'status' is.