A lot of people use cards for payment because they don't have to have a pile of cash, it's sort of quick (so long as the bank network doesn't go down), you can track payments, but there are very serious downsides that these people who are pushing the so called cashless society do not want to consider and definitely do now want to tell people about.
1. You can track all payments. Fine if you're dopey person parroting the state's "Nothing to hide nothing to fear" nonsense, but that means they will know everything about you, what newspaper you buy, did you buy a sex toy, did you give your grandchildren a bit of birthday money. 2. You lose all control of your wealth. What I mean is, instead of having an ability to buy what you want with cash, the moment it's all electronic, the government can stop you existing by freezing your access to electronic "money". Good luck to eating / paying bills without money. This can be extended so you vote the right way in elections nothing happens, and raid your account as punishment if you voted "the wrong way". 3. With no cash, at a moment's notice, the government can decide it will raid all your bank / savings accounts for x%, just like the European Central Bank did to Cyprus - they called that state crime a "bail-in". Noticed how the US economy is $19Trillion+ in debt, reduce it by raiding your accounts one day, you won't have a say in it. 4. With electronic "money", there is NOTHING to stop the banks and card providers suddenly increasing their transaction fees. Want to protest about it? Too late, you have no alternate way of paying for anything,. 5. Much is made of the ability to track transactions, with the claim you can stop money laundering. This is false. If a drug dealer for example has a suitcase of $20 bills, it's going to weigh a lot, and attract a lot of attention. But in the electronic world, at a press of a button, that same amount of money can be sent around the world any number of times, cleaning it. Nobody does it? Just ask HSBC (and other banks) who where caught doing just that, laundering money for drug cartels. 6. Cash funds crimes and terrorism? It's far easier to move electronic "money" around to fund terrorism, just ask governments and banks and stock exchanges, they do it daily.
So before people think what a great idea going cashless is, you better be prepared to sign your life away to being totally controlled, and not cry about it when it is.
Central Banks will do whatever it takes to keep people hooked into their system, so once they axe cash to huge uproar, it will be easy to control everyone at the touch of a button, something they cannot do as long as cash and the metaphorical cash under mattress survives.
The so called "bail in" that the ECB did to Cyprus circa 2013 was a test to see how easy it would be to raid people's bank / savings accounts once cash is axed, and if the bankers and governments could get away with it (they did).
Intel is in bed with Microsoft to remove competition from other non Microsoft Operating Systems - that is, Linux etc. from being installed on users computers. This is what the whole "trusted computing" concept is all about, nothing to do with security, but to stop competitors. Intel and Microsoft want a nice cosy cartel like Apple has to stop competition. The problem is, our politicians are corrupt, as are the courts. They refuse to do anything about his cartel.
Just this week Microsoft has said they will stop Windows 10 upgrades (except security), on more devices using certain Intel processors. Either buy a new system, or see your machine die.
When will Google release a working version of Google Earth that doesn't have the libraries it includes, which interfere with the already existing libraries on a machine, meaning 98% of the time, Google Earth crashes on start up?
Just an FYI, the City Of London police are rogue, they are not real police, they are above any other UK law, they are not regulated by anyone like all other UK police forces are. In short, they do what the hell they like. They should never have been allowed to start, let alone be outside the control of / accountable to the public. They also seem to protect The City's worldwide money laundering.
We've got to do something to stop Internet Providers criminal activity. In the UK, ISP BT hacked their customers website traffic, changing the pages they were expecting to see, and inserting the adverts BT wanted you to see instead. This went to court, and despite this practice breaking many laws in hacking / interception of communications, identity fraud etc, somehow, the court let off BT with a slap - no prison time for anyone involved in this criminal activity. Read the saga about Phorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, the courts side with the criminal activity of ISPs, we better educate people to wise up on their privacy online, not just from the state / spies, but their own ISPs.
Maybe do that to the developers of Periscope, who seem to think that when you're orientated landscape and you start broadcasting, your video that's saved to the device is not in 1920x1080 landscape, but 320 x 578 portrait, the whole video is tilted 90 degrees. Because of the massive loss of pixels, any correction back to landscape shows the video in terrible picture quality. If you don't live stream with Periscope, the landscape video records in full HD, in landscape.
The internet providers just opened themselves up to being sued for aiding and abetting the copyright cartels Everyone knows how many fake claims these copyright cartels make on a Youtube upload, they get no repercussions for their claims, but you have to deal with their lies. We also know these corporations have no problem in stealing YOUR content, then telling you to get lost. Time to abolish copyright law and stop this protectionist cartel.
It would be nice if The Guardian produced a list for the average person of the most popular software that has known backdoors like Skype, so people can see how compromised they are under pretext of "tackling terrorism".
The "piracy problem" is a sideshow, Hollywood (and music / TV industry) always wants more cocaine to shove up its, and politicians collective nose, while they all collude to sell defective products that the pirates fix (removing DRM from DVD / BluRay / data CDs passed of as Red Book Standard audio CDs etc).
Instead of adding new features (probably nobody wanted anyway), fix the bugs / features that you have. For years now, when typing a text document, the blinking icon where you are vanishes for no reason, it makes selecting text more difficult when you need to go back and add / delete / edit a word, or select chunks of text. If you're scrolling, then good luck finding where you are on the page without the missing blinker.
Secondly, Why does the page layout in writer STILL not show a dotted border for the boundary of the entire page / multi-column container? All you see is the corners - of no help at all.
Firstly, I hope they pick some easy to encode / decode format like DV with PCM audio for archival. It's not space efficient like MP4, but it's less destructive on the information being digitised. I used DV on my VHS tapes.
On another point, isn't this what people are using Youtube for, as a big archive... oh, but the users haven't paid the copyright cartel their cocaine money the film/tv/record industry shoves up it's collective nose, so the uploads get "monotonized", blocked, or entire Youtube channel gets deleted.
London has a congestion charge, which is a con, nothing to do with congestion, it's a straightforward tax, which is why most embassies in London do not pay it. London now has spy cameras looking at number plates to see if you're a "polluter", real reason is just to collect lovely data on drivers for the police and spies etc.
The new London mayor Sadiq Khan is short of money because he made an election promise to freeze public transport fares, that's impossible to keep without slashing services. Then there's the UKP38m (so far) stolen from taxpayer's for a pedestrian bridge nobody wants, and has no use whatsoever apart from to the corporations that want it as their taxpayer funded plaything.
So, instead of thinking about this as getting back at VW for their emissions cheating, it's just a tax rise to plug black holes in the mayors fraudulent spending.
I dumped ripping to MP3 years ago, I use FLAC. Only reason to use MP3 is because most car stereos are dumb that they can't use FLAC or PCM-WAV, same reason for many pocket "MP3" players. Smart mobile phones can mostly read the formats, but their sound is dreadful.
If only online music stores would kill off MP3 for formats like FLAC.
After getting rid of Flash from my Linux install, I don't want a browser to have it built in. Why can't Firefox just fix all the problems and user UI screw-ups they've done in recent years?
Luddites? Yeah, so more wireless crap that needs charging, and the phone didn't get a bigger battery, just make it thinner so even more recharges. Progress?
It's meaningless marketing. How does anyone think they will ever get the same kind of photograph a 35mm sensor does, as a pin head sensor on a mobile phone has?
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A lot of people use cards for payment because they don't have to have a pile of cash, it's sort of quick (so long as the bank network doesn't go down), you can track payments, but there are very serious downsides that these people who are pushing the so called cashless society do not want to consider and definitely do now want to tell people about.
1. You can track all payments. Fine if you're dopey person parroting the state's "Nothing to hide nothing to fear" nonsense, but that means they will know everything about you, what newspaper you buy, did you buy a sex toy, did you give your grandchildren a bit of birthday money.
2. You lose all control of your wealth. What I mean is, instead of having an ability to buy what you want with cash, the moment it's all electronic, the government can stop you existing by freezing your access to electronic "money". Good luck to eating / paying bills without money. This can be extended so you vote the right way in elections nothing happens, and raid your account as punishment if you voted "the wrong way".
3. With no cash, at a moment's notice, the government can decide it will raid all your bank / savings accounts for x%, just like the European Central Bank did to Cyprus - they called that state crime a "bail-in". Noticed how the US economy is $19Trillion+ in debt, reduce it by raiding your accounts one day, you won't have a say in it.
4. With electronic "money", there is NOTHING to stop the banks and card providers suddenly increasing their transaction fees. Want to protest about it? Too late, you have no alternate way of paying for anything,.
5. Much is made of the ability to track transactions, with the claim you can stop money laundering. This is false. If a drug dealer for example has a suitcase of $20 bills, it's going to weigh a lot, and attract a lot of attention. But in the electronic world, at a press of a button, that same amount of money can be sent around the world any number of times, cleaning it. Nobody does it? Just ask HSBC (and other banks) who where caught doing just that, laundering money for drug cartels.
6. Cash funds crimes and terrorism? It's far easier to move electronic "money" around to fund terrorism, just ask governments and banks and stock exchanges, they do it daily.
So before people think what a great idea going cashless is, you better be prepared to sign your life away to being totally controlled, and not cry about it when it is.
Central Banks will do whatever it takes to keep people hooked into their system, so once they axe cash to huge uproar, it will be easy to control everyone at the touch of a button, something they cannot do as long as cash and the metaphorical cash under mattress survives.
The so called "bail in" that the ECB did to Cyprus circa 2013 was a test to see how easy it would be to raid people's bank / savings accounts once cash is axed, and if the bankers and governments could get away with it (they did).
They might get along better than Siri and Cortana...... :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Intel is in bed with Microsoft to remove competition from other non Microsoft Operating Systems - that is, Linux etc. from being installed on users computers. This is what the whole "trusted computing" concept is all about, nothing to do with security, but to stop competitors. Intel and Microsoft want a nice cosy cartel like Apple has to stop competition. The problem is, our politicians are corrupt, as are the courts. They refuse to do anything about his cartel.
Just this week Microsoft has said they will stop Windows 10 upgrades (except security), on more devices using certain Intel processors. Either buy a new system, or see your machine die.
I'm not interested in another "black box" you can't disassemble or look into / improve for your own needs.
When will Google release a working version of Google Earth that doesn't have the libraries it includes, which interfere with the already existing libraries on a machine, meaning 98% of the time, Google Earth crashes on start up?
So Facebook learnt from the Microsoft playbook on how to destroy a competitor, and give the people nothing but garbage in return.
Just an FYI, the City Of London police are rogue, they are not real police, they are above any other UK law, they are not regulated by anyone like all other UK police forces are. In short, they do what the hell they like. They should never have been allowed to start, let alone be outside the control of / accountable to the public. They also seem to protect The City's worldwide money laundering.
We've got to do something to stop Internet Providers criminal activity. In the UK, ISP BT hacked their customers website traffic, changing the pages they were expecting to see, and inserting the adverts BT wanted you to see instead. This went to court, and despite this practice breaking many laws in hacking / interception of communications, identity fraud etc, somehow, the court let off BT with a slap - no prison time for anyone involved in this criminal activity. Read the saga about Phorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, the courts side with the criminal activity of ISPs, we better educate people to wise up on their privacy online, not just from the state / spies, but their own ISPs.
It's the spies just updating the software for the latest backdoors.
Maybe do that to the developers of Periscope, who seem to think that when you're orientated landscape and you start broadcasting, your video that's saved to the device is not in 1920x1080 landscape, but 320 x 578 portrait, the whole video is tilted 90 degrees. Because of the massive loss of pixels, any correction back to landscape shows the video in terrible picture quality. If you don't live stream with Periscope, the landscape video records in full HD, in landscape.
HTC axed the headphone jack so they could install even more bloatware you can't uninstall?
104 new pieces of space junk to track.
The internet providers just opened themselves up to being sued for aiding and abetting the copyright cartels Everyone knows how many fake claims these copyright cartels make on a Youtube upload, they get no repercussions for their claims, but you have to deal with their lies. We also know these corporations have no problem in stealing YOUR content, then telling you to get lost. Time to abolish copyright law and stop this protectionist cartel.
It would be nice if The Guardian produced a list for the average person of the most popular software that has known backdoors like Skype, so people can see how compromised they are under pretext of "tackling terrorism".
The "piracy problem" is a sideshow, Hollywood (and music / TV industry) always wants more cocaine to shove up its, and politicians collective nose, while they all collude to sell defective products that the pirates fix (removing DRM from DVD / BluRay / data CDs passed of as Red Book Standard audio CDs etc).
Or the title should read "Good year for the copyright cartel after buying off more politicians and judges with brown envelopes".
Instead of adding new features (probably nobody wanted anyway), fix the bugs / features that you have. For years now, when typing a text document, the blinking icon where you are vanishes for no reason, it makes selecting text more difficult when you need to go back and add / delete / edit a word, or select chunks of text. If you're scrolling, then good luck finding where you are on the page without the missing blinker.
Secondly, Why does the page layout in writer STILL not show a dotted border for the boundary of the entire page / multi-column container? All you see is the corners - of no help at all.
Firstly, I hope they pick some easy to encode / decode format like DV with PCM audio for archival. It's not space efficient like MP4, but it's less destructive on the information being digitised. I used DV on my VHS tapes.
On another point, isn't this what people are using Youtube for, as a big archive... oh, but the users haven't paid the copyright cartel their cocaine money the film/tv/record industry shoves up it's collective nose, so the uploads get "monotonized", blocked, or entire Youtube channel gets deleted.
Give up sex for better online security... so people will stop visiting porn websites?
London has a congestion charge, which is a con, nothing to do with congestion, it's a straightforward tax, which is why most embassies in London do not pay it. London now has spy cameras looking at number plates to see if you're a "polluter", real reason is just to collect lovely data on drivers for the police and spies etc.
The new London mayor Sadiq Khan is short of money because he made an election promise to freeze public transport fares, that's impossible to keep without slashing services. Then there's the UKP38m (so far) stolen from taxpayer's for a pedestrian bridge nobody wants, and has no use whatsoever apart from to the corporations that want it as their taxpayer funded plaything.
So, instead of thinking about this as getting back at VW for their emissions cheating, it's just a tax rise to plug black holes in the mayors fraudulent spending.
I dumped ripping to MP3 years ago, I use FLAC. Only reason to use MP3 is because most car stereos are dumb that they can't use FLAC or PCM-WAV, same reason for many pocket "MP3" players. Smart mobile phones can mostly read the formats, but their sound is dreadful.
If only online music stores would kill off MP3 for formats like FLAC.
After getting rid of Flash from my Linux install, I don't want a browser to have it built in. Why can't Firefox just fix all the problems and user UI screw-ups they've done in recent years?
Luddites? Yeah, so more wireless crap that needs charging, and the phone didn't get a bigger battery, just make it thinner so even more recharges. Progress?
It's meaningless marketing. How does anyone think they will ever get the same kind of photograph a 35mm sensor does, as a pin head sensor on a mobile phone has?