And let me guess, the Australian guys in the government that want this, are the sames that scream "dictatorship!!" any time Venezuela, Cuba, or China is mentioned. Hypocrisy
Most of the times, the real reason they ask you to turn your camera/laptop on, is not to see any content, but to make sure that that's indeed a fully functioning camera/laptop, and that you have not swapped the battery with a fake one filled with drugs.
Private is "pay your own bills". While some americans have insurance, other americans like myself prefer to pay cash. ----- Government is paying for your neighbor's healthcare, even if said neighbor was stupid and damaged his liver or his lungs with abusive behaviors (drinking, smoking). That's theft of YOUR money/labor to enrich just one person, and is comparable to how the slaves had their labor stolen in order to enrich the Master.
I think people should pay their OWN bills with their own money, not raid the wallets of their neighbors.
No, sorry, it doesn't work that way. Both paying in cash or with a private insurance, you're not "paying your own bills only". You're paying an amount the private company has decided it pays your bills AND a fraction of other guys bills that are paying $50 a month and suddenly need to get $10000 in medical treatment.
So both with public or private you're paying for someone elses medical bills. Now if we take into account weird, strange concepts like solidarity and human dignity, the balance sky-rockets in favor of a public health system (that btw doesn't forbid private health companies, there are plenty of them here in Europe as well).
You can not "give free stuff" to one person unless you first steal it from another, thereby effectively making the "other" a slave.
I'm always amazed with how so many americans believe that. Almost anywhere in Europe, Universal Health Care systems are just taken for granted.
Could you (or anyone that thinks alike) please explain me the difference between paying a private health insurance and paying a universal system with your taxes??
If you think there are no good ISPs in your area, then you are in a prime location to start up your own ISP.
Yeah, sure. I'm sorry but you've got no idea. When the population density is really low (like in some rural areas), an ISP doesn't make profit. The cost of servers and equipment compared to the return of investment is so low that you'd probably have to wait 80years to stop paying all the equipment and start making money.
I have no idea how it goes in the US, but I'll tell you how it goes in Spain: When a telco wants to deploy in a highly populated area, they are forced by law to choose also a less populated area and give service there. That guarantees that even in remote areas you've got at least an ISP available.
If free market reigned unrestrained, only highly profitable areas would have internet connection and/or rural areas would have to pay outrageous rates for it.
Silly analogy. Just because the military buys a jet with your tax money doesn't mean it's your jet. Or even better, just because the government subsidizes a farm, it doesn't mean you own the farm either.
On the contrary, of course it's "my" jet and "my" farm. At least in a democracy. The fact that we vote to decide who should decide about what to do with the jet and the farm doesn't mean isn't ours.
Yeah, only problem is when those false positives are "checked" by a SWAT team storming the guys house. If you were one of those "false positives" held at gunpoint and then interrogated for 4 hours till the bright minds of the cops/FBI realized they've screwed it up, then I bet you'd change your mind.
Which is what those games do. I played eXteel for some time.
See, you've got a set of "entry level" items, which you get via experience. Then you've got a set of "medium-level" items you buy with cash. And then you've got the "top of the line" items you get with experience too.
This way, lazy/casual gamers can skip the crappy starting items by spending $10, but they still don't become über powerful cos experienced players still win with a combination of playing experience and high level items.
Ultimately I quit playing cos I found it boring that matches are only 8 vs 8, all maps are almost symmetrical and there are no vehicles. Guess I'm too used to BF2 and it's 32vs32 players with commander, squad system, tanks, planes and copters:P
I've lost count of how many time I've been forced to circumvent stupid policies to be able to actually do my job. Cos neither my boss nor myself want to go through the nightmare of calling the stupid IT guys (I work in IT too, it's not an attack against the whole group, only against the ones that are stupid) to tell them let me download latest winscp executable, latest linux ISO, latest spring framework release, etc.
Cos yes, the bright minds at my working place have a blanket ban that prevents downloading every damn.zip,.iso,.exe file.
And of course they also ban every IM program available, even if using it actually would save time and improve productivity, cos we won't have to send a freaking internal email (slow as hell, btw) to just give the other a job related url, a block of code, or whatever.
Yes, I know I should just tell my boss "hey, can't do it, go and tell IT their policy sucks bigtime". But my boss answer is "download it at home and bring it back in your usb". And since I'm not going to spend my free time downloading things for my job, I just circumvent their stupid policies.
So before blindly defending a strict IT policy, make sure it actually makes sense.
I've used TPB for legal torrents as well as the "illegal" ones.
I love the quotation marks there. Do they meant "I've decided that these laws don't apply to me"?
Or maybe he lives in a country where downloading movies and music is not illegal yet (like Spain), or maybe he points to the fact that a.torrent file can never be illegal (it has no copyrighted content by itself).
The only reasonably safe way of organizing a network is through cells, where even if one cell is corrupted, it won't spread to others. This holds true for computer networks too, but few if any applications support such a model. Those that are vaguely similar fail by having the node belong to multiple cells, thus making the impact of subversion much higher.
Then the MAFIAA will say we're organizing terrorist cells and we'll all end up in orange pyjamas sharing cell (as in "prison cell") with a funny guy that insists on kneeling in direction to
Mecca several times a day.
I really hate that FF3 behavior. At my job they have a proxy+fw that acts like a man-in-the-middle. It connects to the webs you want to see, and you connect to the proxy.
The outcome is that every dammed web that uses https gives me that f*ing warning with sec_error_unknown_issuer, cos of course the issuer is the proxy at my job, and the web domain does not match the issuer.
I have reduced the number of clicks required to add the exception to just 3 instead of 4 by editing the config file so it pre-loads the certificate when you click on the "add exception" link. But it's still a PITA.
I wouldn't mind if it was the default behavior but you could change the setting to a less paranoid one. But the fact there's no way to override this setting makes me angry. I want to be able to decide what do I want to trust or not.
Same here. I wanted to visit the US, specially NY, but I'm not willing to go through the stupid process involved.
Some friends of mine went to the US and 1st they had to go through a personal interview where they were asked about their personal relationships ("how long have you been friends?") and other personal information, to which the right answer should be "that's none of your fucking business". Then spend 5 hours in the border answering more stupid questions.
And we're from a country in the "friends list" (we don't even need a visa to enter USA). Don't even want to think about what is for a Chinese or something like that to enter the states.
In Spain the General Attorney issued a 115 pages long letter (in spanish) in 2006 saying basically that although copyright violations are indeed illicit, the Judicial System (which is slow as hell and has many problems) has better things to do (like trying to solve its problems) than processing thousands of cases against individuals for such violations, becoming even slower. The letter told state prosecutors not to pursue these violations, thus living only the civil way for our MAFIAA
But in practice, it also meant that no warrant is going to be issued for identifying any file-sharer (privacy righs > possible civil violation), thus making it impossible for our MAFIAA-like organization, called SGAE, to sue anyone.
Also note that in Spain is only illicit (not illegal) to share music and movies (software is another matter, as in Spain is ruled by different laws) UNLESS you seek profit. Of course next step for our MAFIAA was to try to prove than by downloading a film you're gaining profit cos you got the movie for free (thus saving money). But in what should be tagged as suddenoutbreakofcommonsense judges decided that "seeking profit" was to be applyed in its narrower definition, that is, selling pirated movies and records, and that individuals that downloaded a copy but did not sell it did not qualify as "seeking profit" under spanish legislation. This ruling has been upheld each time our MAFIAA has tried to appeal.
Of course they will probably make another French-like law here and screw us:P
Python is the only language I'm aware of (certainly the only major language) that uses whitespace to define blocks. Thank God. It's a *serious* dealbreaker for me.
That alone is enough for not touching it with a 10-foot pole. How the hell are you going to maintain a 10000 lines program written by someone else in a language that uses whitespace to delimitate blocks?!?!?!
IMO there is no such thing as "Responsible Gun Ownership" for most people. Thats just an utopia, at the same level of "we should ban all arms in the whole world". For each people capable of that, you've got 100 short fused, highly temperamental guys who would put a bullet in the head of a guy they happend to have a traffic accident with.
I think that more guns mean more deaths by accidental discharges, more "criminal takes citizen gun, kills citizen with it".
Most people who have/want to have a gun are not willing to go through the extensive training that should be done to make sure they guy really comprehends the responsibility of having a tool capable of killing a human being with just moving a finger.
Heck! There are tons of cases of police officers killing/injuring people by mistake. And those guys are trained in the use of firearms!! Don't want to know what the untrained would do!
And if everyone and her mother was carrying a 45, police officers would be scared shitless (with a reason) and shoot every civie that makes a sudden move after being stopped for speeding.
In my country and most European countries, the only allowed guns for normal people are hunting rifles and shotguns. Only way of getting a handgun is if you've received death threats (that police consider real) or having a high risk business (like owning a jewelry).
And most people think the law should be more restrictive when issuing licenses for those, as we have too many (too many as in 5 in a year) of "neighbor gets mad at neighbor, shoots him with hunting shotgun" type of crimes in rural areas.
Those crimes are passionate crimes that wouldn't probably happend if the guy didn't have a gun (let's face it: it's way easier to pull the trigger than take a knife and stab your opponent). People advocate for more strict psychological tests before issuing licenses, and limiting the number of licenses per person as well.
As of "outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns", there is very low level of guns-related crimes.
We do have our share of terrorist attacks (mostly with explosives, which are outlawed in the US as well), and our fair share of ex-CCCP military gangs robbing rich people houses with AK47s. But that kind of crimes aren't common, and police (which is allowed to bring out the big guns like G-36 assault rifles if necessary) usually makes a good work keeping those guys at bay. Also note saying that polices solves >95% of manslaughter crimes in the country.
I respect the US constitution and US people, but I must say that I've never ever heard anyone advocating for the right to have arms in Spain (or in any European country for that matter), and no one here really thinks that more guns = more safety. And we do have a nice record in opposing to tyrant governments (Independence war against France), even to the point of Civil War.
#Do you really think a handgun would be any use whatsoever against the armour-plated, tank driving army, should the US populace ever get riled up enough for open revolt?
In one word: Yes.
Ask the Irak insurgents if you don't believe it. They seem to be performing reasonably well against US troops.
Slashdot Mirror
And let me guess, the Australian guys in the government that want this, are the sames that scream "dictatorship!!" any time Venezuela, Cuba, or China is mentioned. Hypocrisy
I run a dodgy Russian website, you insensitive clod!
In my particular case with movies it usually goes along the lines of:
Value: ~5â Cost: 19.95â Result: TPB
Or, in case of videogames... Value: ~30â Cost: 49.95â Result: TPB
As simple as that.
Most of the times, the real reason they ask you to turn your camera/laptop on, is not to see any content, but to make sure that that's indeed a fully functioning camera/laptop, and that you have not swapped the battery with a fake one filled with drugs.
Private is "pay your own bills". While some americans have insurance, other americans like myself prefer to pay cash. ----- Government is paying for your neighbor's healthcare, even if said neighbor was stupid and damaged his liver or his lungs with abusive behaviors (drinking, smoking). That's theft of YOUR money/labor to enrich just one person, and is comparable to how the slaves had their labor stolen in order to enrich the Master.
I think people should pay their OWN bills with their own money, not raid the wallets of their neighbors.
No, sorry, it doesn't work that way. Both paying in cash or with a private insurance, you're not "paying your own bills only". You're paying an amount the private company has decided it pays your bills AND a fraction of other guys bills that are paying $50 a month and suddenly need to get $10000 in medical treatment.
So both with public or private you're paying for someone elses medical bills. Now if we take into account weird, strange concepts like solidarity and human dignity, the balance sky-rockets in favor of a public health system (that btw doesn't forbid private health companies, there are plenty of them here in Europe as well).
You can not "give free stuff" to one person unless you first steal it from another, thereby effectively making the "other" a slave.
I'm always amazed with how so many americans believe that. Almost anywhere in Europe, Universal Health Care systems are just taken for granted.
Could you (or anyone that thinks alike) please explain me the difference between paying a private health insurance and paying a universal system with your taxes??
If you think there are no good ISPs in your area, then you are in a prime location to start up your own ISP.
Yeah, sure. I'm sorry but you've got no idea. When the population density is really low (like in some rural areas), an ISP doesn't make profit. The cost of servers and equipment compared to the return of investment is so low that you'd probably have to wait 80years to stop paying all the equipment and start making money.
I have no idea how it goes in the US, but I'll tell you how it goes in Spain: When a telco wants to deploy in a highly populated area, they are forced by law to choose also a less populated area and give service there. That guarantees that even in remote areas you've got at least an ISP available.
If free market reigned unrestrained, only highly profitable areas would have internet connection and/or rural areas would have to pay outrageous rates for it.
Silly analogy. Just because the military buys a jet with your tax money doesn't mean it's your jet. Or even better, just because the government subsidizes a farm, it doesn't mean you own the farm either.
On the contrary, of course it's "my" jet and "my" farm. At least in a democracy. The fact that we vote to decide who should decide about what to do with the jet and the farm doesn't mean isn't ours.
That crap is already shielded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft
Yeah, only problem is when those false positives are "checked" by a SWAT team storming the guys house. If you were one of those "false positives" held at gunpoint and then interrogated for 4 hours till the bright minds of the cops/FBI realized they've screwed it up, then I bet you'd change your mind.
Which is what those games do. I played eXteel for some time.
:P
See, you've got a set of "entry level" items, which you get via experience. Then you've got a set of "medium-level" items you buy with cash. And then you've got the "top of the line" items you get with experience too.
This way, lazy/casual gamers can skip the crappy starting items by spending $10, but they still don't become über powerful cos experienced players still win with a combination of playing experience and high level items.
Ultimately I quit playing cos I found it boring that matches are only 8 vs 8, all maps are almost symmetrical and there are no vehicles. Guess I'm too used to BF2 and it's 32vs32 players with commander, squad system, tanks, planes and copters
I've lost count of how many time I've been forced to circumvent stupid policies to be able to actually do my job. Cos neither my boss nor myself want to go through the nightmare of calling the stupid IT guys (I work in IT too, it's not an attack against the whole group, only against the ones that are stupid) to tell them let me download latest winscp executable, latest linux ISO, latest spring framework release, etc.
.zip, .iso, .exe file.
Cos yes, the bright minds at my working place have a blanket ban that prevents downloading every damn
And of course they also ban every IM program available, even if using it actually would save time and improve productivity, cos we won't have to send a freaking internal email (slow as hell, btw) to just give the other a job related url, a block of code, or whatever.
Yes, I know I should just tell my boss "hey, can't do it, go and tell IT their policy sucks bigtime". But my boss answer is "download it at home and bring it back in your usb". And since I'm not going to spend my free time downloading things for my job, I just circumvent their stupid policies.
So before blindly defending a strict IT policy, make sure it actually makes sense.
I guess having Unreal Tournament installed in my corporate laptop to use it when I take it to a LAN party is note exactly proper, then?
I've used TPB for legal torrents as well as the "illegal" ones.
I love the quotation marks there. Do they meant "I've decided that these laws don't apply to me"?
Or maybe he lives in a country where downloading movies and music is not illegal yet (like Spain), or maybe he points to the fact that a .torrent file can never be illegal (it has no copyrighted content by itself).
Then the MAFIAA will say we're organizing terrorist cells and we'll all end up in orange pyjamas sharing cell (as in "prison cell") with a funny guy that insists on kneeling in direction to Mecca several times a day.
I really hate that FF3 behavior. At my job they have a proxy+fw that acts like a man-in-the-middle. It connects to the webs you want to see, and you connect to the proxy.
The outcome is that every dammed web that uses https gives me that f*ing warning with sec_error_unknown_issuer, cos of course the issuer is the proxy at my job, and the web domain does not match the issuer.
I have reduced the number of clicks required to add the exception to just 3 instead of 4 by editing the config file so it pre-loads the certificate when you click on the "add exception" link. But it's still a PITA.
I wouldn't mind if it was the default behavior but you could change the setting to a less paranoid one. But the fact there's no way to override this setting makes me angry. I want to be able to decide what do I want to trust or not.
Same here. I wanted to visit the US, specially NY, but I'm not willing to go through the stupid process involved.
Some friends of mine went to the US and 1st they had to go through a personal interview where they were asked about their personal relationships ("how long have you been friends?") and other personal information, to which the right answer should be "that's none of your fucking business". Then spend 5 hours in the border answering more stupid questions.
And we're from a country in the "friends list" (we don't even need a visa to enter USA). Don't even want to think about what is for a Chinese or something like that to enter the states.
Hey! You got a +2 Troll. Good job! I'd try to help you to +5 Troll, but I'm outta mod points :P
In Spain the General Attorney issued a 115 pages long letter (in spanish) in 2006 saying basically that although copyright violations are indeed illicit, the Judicial System (which is slow as hell and has many problems) has better things to do (like trying to solve its problems) than processing thousands of cases against individuals for such violations, becoming even slower. The letter told state prosecutors not to pursue these violations, thus living only the civil way for our MAFIAA
:P
But in practice, it also meant that no warrant is going to be issued for identifying any file-sharer (privacy righs > possible civil violation), thus making it impossible for our MAFIAA-like organization, called SGAE, to sue anyone.
Also note that in Spain is only illicit (not illegal) to share music and movies (software is another matter, as in Spain is ruled by different laws) UNLESS you seek profit. Of course next step for our MAFIAA was to try to prove than by downloading a film you're gaining profit cos you got the movie for free (thus saving money). But in what should be tagged as suddenoutbreakofcommonsense judges decided that "seeking profit" was to be applyed in its narrower definition, that is, selling pirated movies and records, and that individuals that downloaded a copy but did not sell it did not qualify as "seeking profit" under spanish legislation. This ruling has been upheld each time our MAFIAA has tried to appeal.
Of course they will probably make another French-like law here and screw us
And add to the figure all non-IE users that are still forced to use IE for some webs but didn't upgrade IE past 6.x
We all know that Perl is far superior from Java (or at least they guys who use it think so ;)
Programming Languages Hierarchy
J/K
Python is the only language I'm aware of (certainly the only major language) that uses whitespace to define blocks. Thank God. It's a *serious* dealbreaker for me.
That alone is enough for not touching it with a 10-foot pole. How the hell are you going to maintain a 10000 lines program written by someone else in a language that uses whitespace to delimitate blocks?!?!?!
IMO there is no such thing as "Responsible Gun Ownership" for most people. Thats just an utopia, at the same level of "we should ban all arms in the whole world". For each people capable of that, you've got 100 short fused, highly temperamental guys who would put a bullet in the head of a guy they happend to have a traffic accident with.
I think that more guns mean more deaths by accidental discharges, more "criminal takes citizen gun, kills citizen with it".
Most people who have/want to have a gun are not willing to go through the extensive training that should be done to make sure they guy really comprehends the responsibility of having a tool capable of killing a human being with just moving a finger.
Heck! There are tons of cases of police officers killing/injuring people by mistake. And those guys are trained in the use of firearms!! Don't want to know what the untrained would do!
And if everyone and her mother was carrying a 45, police officers would be scared shitless (with a reason) and shoot every civie that makes a sudden move after being stopped for speeding.
But thats my opinion, of course.
Disclaimer: I'm Spanish.
In my country and most European countries, the only allowed guns for normal people are hunting rifles and shotguns. Only way of getting a handgun is if you've received death threats (that police consider real) or having a high risk business (like owning a jewelry).
And most people think the law should be more restrictive when issuing licenses for those, as we have too many (too many as in 5 in a year) of "neighbor gets mad at neighbor, shoots him with hunting shotgun" type of crimes in rural areas. Those crimes are passionate crimes that wouldn't probably happend if the guy didn't have a gun (let's face it: it's way easier to pull the trigger than take a knife and stab your opponent). People advocate for more strict psychological tests before issuing licenses, and limiting the number of licenses per person as well.
As of "outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns", there is very low level of guns-related crimes. We do have our share of terrorist attacks (mostly with explosives, which are outlawed in the US as well), and our fair share of ex-CCCP military gangs robbing rich people houses with AK47s. But that kind of crimes aren't common, and police (which is allowed to bring out the big guns like G-36 assault rifles if necessary) usually makes a good work keeping those guys at bay. Also note saying that polices solves >95% of manslaughter crimes in the country.
I respect the US constitution and US people, but I must say that I've never ever heard anyone advocating for the right to have arms in Spain (or in any European country for that matter), and no one here really thinks that more guns = more safety. And we do have a nice record in opposing to tyrant governments (Independence war against France), even to the point of Civil War.
#Do you really think a handgun would be any use whatsoever against the armour-plated, tank driving army, should the US populace ever get riled up enough for open revolt?
In one word: Yes.
Ask the Irak insurgents if you don't believe it. They seem to be performing reasonably well against US troops.