It works like that in my country. Both the national governments and the local (city) governments have a majority coalition and an opposition. If a party got some seats and does not like the party who is forming the coalition, then it will be in the opposition.
Where I live, it takes me 5-10 minutes to drive to work. If I took the bus, I would have to first walk to the bus stop, wait for the bus, then walk from the bus stop to the office. It would take me much longer than 10 minutes. As nobody is paying me for that time (or rather, my work hours do not account for the time to get to/from office) I'd rather drive. Especially considering that I can go home for lunch and I can go to a store etc after work or during lunch hours. Oh, and I sometimes have to drive to a client, sometimes delivering heavy servers.
Also, if I get to the bus stop 1 minute late, I have to wait for another bus. If I get to my car 1 minute late, I arrive at work 1 minute late.
Even if the time taken for both options was similar, I would still drive. My car has AC to use in the summer and heat for winter, so even if I am in a traffic jam, I do not get hot or cold. There is no AC for walking to the bus stop and at the bus stop and not all buses have AC. I do not particularly like to be completely drenched in sweat because its 28C outside and I spent 30 minutes (walking to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, in the bus with no AC etc). Even if AC in my car fails, I still can open windows or just use the fan to somewhat cool myself down. Oh and I get to the AC cooled office (or home) faster.
And in my car I can listen to whatever music I like at whatever volume I like.
The only time I would use public transport if it took me at least 5 times longer to drive there, but then I would seriously consider finding a new job in a better accessible location.
While I really dislike moving, I would move out of that place. If I need to go somewhere, I will only walk there if it takes me 5 minutes or less. If not, I'll drive. Even if driving would take longer.
I guess I would walk (or use a bike) to work only if the commute time was taken out of my work time. So, I work 8 to 17, so I go out of my home at 8 and go out of the office at whatever time so I can reach my home by 17. As it is now, I'd rather drive (takes me 5-10 minutes) instead of taking up my own time for a slower method of travel. Oh, I would walk somewhere that takes longer than 5 minutes in the summer only if I had a portable AC - my home has AC, my car has AC and the office has AC - I do not intend on staying anywhere at 28C (or even 25C) temperature for a second more than I absolutely have to.
And if I get into a traffic jam or whatever, it's still better than walking (even if it takes the same amount of time) because I can sit in my car, with AC or heat on and not having it rain on my head.
Which is why you don't leave it unattended if it's visible from outside the car etc. A smaller bag can still have a tablet, money or cigarettes and it could just as likely be stolen.
Never when it involved something like 1% of the size. I also would rather have a sturdy device than one that is 490mm wide rather than 500mm. I would use the same bag for either and neither would fit in my pocket.
I do not know how public acquisition works in the US, but in my country, the government puts out the specifications for whatever they want to buy, get offers and has to choose the cheapest offer that meets the specs.
So, if two companies offered unlimited data service, but one offer was $2 cheaper, then that would be chosen (or the office may be sued by the company who offered the cheaper service).
Which timezone a country belongs to is their choice (the country can ask its own people whether they want permanent summer time or permanent winter time and choose according to that), but the switching is EU-wide, so it makes sense to create a poll to see whether people to for or against switching.
Yep, it certainly is easier to redo the business hours for every company in the country, replace the door signs, etc. Also, if the business hours are written into contracts, then the contracts need changing etc.
Or, we can just say that now we are at GMT+3 instead of GMT+2...
It's OK to have an automatic filter that rejects some posts (as long as the filter works mostly correctly and there are no negative consequences for a false positive). Though in this case they should have had famous public domain texts that are acceptable in the database so that parts of those texts could be posted without triggering the filter.
In my country 5kW is kinda typical for single phase (the breaker tolerates short overloads). I have three phase 10kW line currently, though in practice it is a bit higher (20A breaker for 230V three phase). I am now in proces of upgrading to 20kW which would mean that the breaker is replaced with a 40A one.
As for ISPs - in my country there are quite a few wired ISPs to choose from, so the competition is fierce and because of that we get low prices and no data caps. Situation with mobile internet is a bit different, but I do not remember a wired ISP limiting the amount of data you can transfer in a month (beyond the mbps you pay for) for a long time
Also, my ISP (one of the big ones) sometimes upgrades the connection speed for no extra cost for me. When I first had fiber to my house (about 7 years ago), my connection was 80mbps, then it got upgraded to 300mbps and the price reduced, then it got upgraded to 600mbps with the same price, now it is 1gbps down 600mbps up and the price is still the same - 23EUR/month.
Yes, some of the slimier companies reneged on promises of unlimited bandwidth for a fixed monthly fee but I'm not aware of any power company ever promising unlimited electricity for a fixed monthly fee.
It seems that in my country the power company is very happy that I use a lot of electricity and pay my bills on time. Otherwise I would not get approved for increased line capacity.
I do not know how this works in the USA, but this is how it works where I live.
Wired internet - the ISP sets a limit on the amount of bits you can transfer per second. You can saturate the connection all day, and most ISPs will not do anything about it - only the cheaper ones will, but then again, if you are running servers etc you probably want the more expensive ISP because it is way more reliable than the cheap one.
Electricity - you get limited power, say, 5kW for a residential house. You can ask for more and, if the wires to your house are big enough you will most likely get it. You may get denied if the grid does not have enough capacity in your area.
So, IMO, if the area in TFA does not have enough capacity, then they probably should not have approved 10MW or whatever for the mining farm. Ask for 10MW, do not get it because the grid does not have enough capacity. Not whine that they are using the electricity for mining. If the company was a smelter instead of bitcoin miner, would it make a difference for the power?
Another problem is that the average salary is not much higher than the minimum (400EUR/month minimal salary, ~700EUR/month average) and that includes the salaries of various executives and politicians.
The government raises the minimal salary every so often and that always attracts criticism from small businesses who always say they will not survive this and that large minimal salary serves to eradicate small businesses and leave only the large companies.
The way it is now (at least in my country) is that the minimum wage is not substantially higher than the welfare (if welfare was lower, then it would not be enough to live), as such, for a lot of people it is better to just sit at home and get less money than work full time and get slightly more money.
I understand that part of my tax money goes to support people who are less fortunate than me and I am OK with that. Really. While I hope to never be disabled, I am OK with part of my tax money going to provide the disabled people with a way to live.
However, I am not OK with part of my tax money going to healthy young people who drink alcohol all day, every day.
I think this was one of very few things that the USSR had right. Healthy people did not get welfare, but were guaranteed a job by the state. If you get thrown out of one job, the state will find you another one. You will be working and you will get your 100 or so rubles.
I agree with that and think that the government should guarantee a job (not necessarily a very good one) to everyone who is able to work instead of just paying the unemployed welfare.At least while you are keeping the streets clean or even if just digging a hole every day, it leaves less time for drinking alcohol and doing drugs. Especially if such employees are tested every day and not paid if they are drunk or high.
Alcoholism is quite a big problem in my country and it is usually the unemployed who drink a lot (well, alcoholics usually cannot keep a job or even don't want one), then, when drunk, beat their spouse, children (sometimes to death) or, say, drop a 2 year old boy and a few month old girl down a well.
Pairing human and machine - if you can keep the human alert - is good for safety.
I do not think it is possible to keep the human alert if he does not have anything to do with driving for more than probably 30 minutes.
I mean, normally, you have to constantly do minor adjustments to make the car follow the road (which may not be straight or level), keep distance from other cars etc. This keeps you alert. And it keeps you actually alert, compared to various artificial measures to make you alert (I could push a button every once in a while or slightly wiggle the steering wheel or whatever the computer requires to "prove" I am alert while reading a book).
OTOH, as I understand about Tesla Autopilot, you get to watch the road while doing absolutely nothing, maybe for hours. However, you are expected to notice when the car wants to drive into a lamp post and then react very quickly and stop the car.
Not only it is extremely difficult to do normally, but you also have to second-guess yourself or the car "hmm... it looks like the car is aiming for that lamp post, but the computer will probably fix it as it did 100 times before. No, the lamp post is very close now, I have to stop the car NOW".
I think the only way to keep the human actually alert would be to randomly turn off Autopilot once every 15 minutes or so, then not allowing it to be turned on for at least 5 minutes. But even that may be a problem "OK, 5 minutes are up, Autopilot is on, back to the book".
Then how do defendants get identified by their IP addresses? There is no public IP - subscriber database. You have to ask the ISP to provide the information.
Actually no. When that domain is found to be conducting illegal activities, the police will show a court order to Amazon asking to identify the registrant.
It is the same procedure that is used now to identify people based on their IP addresses. There is no public directory of IP address vs subscriber, however, if you post a bomb threat as a comment on some site, you may get a visit from the police anyway.
The example was for warranty service. Under warranty, the money changes hands between the service center and the manufacturer, the customer is not involved in that transaction, only their appliance is. You only need the customer's telephone number so you can contact them when the repairs are one. You only need the customer's address if you plan on delivering the repaired appliance to them. You no longer need the information after the customer takes his appliance from you.
But yes, if you do out-of-warranty service for the customer then accounting will have the invoice and the payment.
Another example would be web sites that have "full name", "address" as a required fields for registration. If I can type fake info and still have the proper service, then those fields are not really necessary, are they? For example, a company that is not going to deliver any physical object to me does not need my address. A company that is going to deliver a physical object to me, may not need my address anymore after the object is delivered (though I may give consent to store my address so I do not have to type it every time I order something). Ebay sellers, for example, do not need to keep my address after sending out the item - if I order something again, ebay will give them my address again.
As I understand it, those requirements are so that 1) the customer data is not misused and 2) in case your customer database gets leaked, the damage will be less if only the information you need to have is there (and not the name an address of every person your company has ever dealt with)..
You can have a phone directory under the new law, under two conditions: 1. The person has to explicitly give consent for their number to be published (default is "no"). 2. You cannot refuse the phone service if the person chooses to not get listed in the phone directory.
Does the excel file also have the credit card numbers of your customers?
Under the new law you will only be able to handle my personal data for explicitly defined purposes, so, there will probably be a list of employees who can access my data and that list won't include "everyone in the company".
A lot of registrars are already non-compliant with ICANN's wishes to have my name, home address, telephone number and email address listed publicly for anyone to find and send "offers" to. Those evil registrars offer a service, where they remove my data from the public record, for a fee.
The only difference for GDPR is that the "WHOIS privacy" service will have to be free and on by default (as I understand it, there could be further limits as to what data the registrar can keep in its private database). If I am doing something illegal, the police can contact the registrar and get my personal information. There is absolutely no need for my name, home address, email and telephone number to be listed in public. If you think I have committed a crime, contact the police and they will contact the registrar.
WHOIS is like a phone book. I choose to not get listed in either. However, if I call to say that I have planted a bomb, then sure as hell the police will be able to find out my name and address by asking the telephone company.
Slashdot Mirror
It works like that in my country. Both the national governments and the local (city) governments have a majority coalition and an opposition. If a party got some seats and does not like the party who is forming the coalition, then it will be in the opposition.
Where I live, it takes me 5-10 minutes to drive to work. If I took the bus, I would have to first walk to the bus stop, wait for the bus, then walk from the bus stop to the office. It would take me much longer than 10 minutes. As nobody is paying me for that time (or rather, my work hours do not account for the time to get to/from office) I'd rather drive. Especially considering that I can go home for lunch and I can go to a store etc after work or during lunch hours. Oh, and I sometimes have to drive to a client, sometimes delivering heavy servers.
Also, if I get to the bus stop 1 minute late, I have to wait for another bus. If I get to my car 1 minute late, I arrive at work 1 minute late.
Even if the time taken for both options was similar, I would still drive. My car has AC to use in the summer and heat for winter, so even if I am in a traffic jam, I do not get hot or cold. There is no AC for walking to the bus stop and at the bus stop and not all buses have AC. I do not particularly like to be completely drenched in sweat because its 28C outside and I spent 30 minutes (walking to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, in the bus with no AC etc). Even if AC in my car fails, I still can open windows or just use the fan to somewhat cool myself down. Oh and I get to the AC cooled office (or home) faster.
And in my car I can listen to whatever music I like at whatever volume I like.
The only time I would use public transport if it took me at least 5 times longer to drive there, but then I would seriously consider finding a new job in a better accessible location.
While I really dislike moving, I would move out of that place. If I need to go somewhere, I will only walk there if it takes me 5 minutes or less. If not, I'll drive. Even if driving would take longer.
I guess I would walk (or use a bike) to work only if the commute time was taken out of my work time. So, I work 8 to 17, so I go out of my home at 8 and go out of the office at whatever time so I can reach my home by 17. As it is now, I'd rather drive (takes me 5-10 minutes) instead of taking up my own time for a slower method of travel. Oh, I would walk somewhere that takes longer than 5 minutes in the summer only if I had a portable AC - my home has AC, my car has AC and the office has AC - I do not intend on staying anywhere at 28C (or even 25C) temperature for a second more than I absolutely have to.
And if I get into a traffic jam or whatever, it's still better than walking (even if it takes the same amount of time) because I can sit in my car, with AC or heat on and not having it rain on my head.
I think Google could do a test run of this by only providing news links to RussiaToday and similar sites. That should be fun in the EU.
Which is why you don't leave it unattended if it's visible from outside the car etc. A smaller bag can still have a tablet, money or cigarettes and it could just as likely be stolen.
Never when it involved something like 1% of the size. I also would rather have a sturdy device than one that is 490mm wide rather than 500mm. I would use the same bag for either and neither would fit in my pocket.
I do not know how public acquisition works in the US, but in my country, the government puts out the specifications for whatever they want to buy, get offers and has to choose the cheapest offer that meets the specs.
So, if two companies offered unlimited data service, but one offer was $2 cheaper, then that would be chosen (or the office may be sued by the company who offered the cheaper service).
Looks good to me.
Which timezone a country belongs to is their choice (the country can ask its own people whether they want permanent summer time or permanent winter time and choose according to that), but the switching is EU-wide, so it makes sense to create a poll to see whether people to for or against switching.
Lithuania also is pushing for getting rid of the time changes.
Yep, it certainly is easier to redo the business hours for every company in the country, replace the door signs, etc. Also, if the business hours are written into contracts, then the contracts need changing etc.
Or, we can just say that now we are at GMT+3 instead of GMT+2...
It's OK to have an automatic filter that rejects some posts (as long as the filter works mostly correctly and there are no negative consequences for a false positive). Though in this case they should have had famous public domain texts that are acceptable in the database so that parts of those texts could be posted without triggering the filter.
I download some movies etc, but I also have over 100 movies on laserdisc and over 500 records and a smaller CD collection.
Laserdisc, records and CDs do not have DRM or unskippable ads.
In my country 5kW is kinda typical for single phase (the breaker tolerates short overloads). I have three phase 10kW line currently, though in practice it is a bit higher (20A breaker for 230V three phase). I am now in proces of upgrading to 20kW which would mean that the breaker is replaced with a 40A one.
As for ISPs - in my country there are quite a few wired ISPs to choose from, so the competition is fierce and because of that we get low prices and no data caps. Situation with mobile internet is a bit different, but I do not remember a wired ISP limiting the amount of data you can transfer in a month (beyond the mbps you pay for) for a long time
Also, my ISP (one of the big ones) sometimes upgrades the connection speed for no extra cost for me. When I first had fiber to my house (about 7 years ago), my connection was 80mbps, then it got upgraded to 300mbps and the price reduced, then it got upgraded to 600mbps with the same price, now it is 1gbps down 600mbps up and the price is still the same - 23EUR/month.
Yes, some of the slimier companies reneged on promises of unlimited bandwidth for a fixed monthly fee but I'm not aware of any power company ever promising unlimited electricity for a fixed monthly fee.
It seems that in my country the power company is very happy that I use a lot of electricity and pay my bills on time. Otherwise I would not get approved for increased line capacity.
I do not know how this works in the USA, but this is how it works where I live.
Wired internet - the ISP sets a limit on the amount of bits you can transfer per second. You can saturate the connection all day, and most ISPs will not do anything about it - only the cheaper ones will, but then again, if you are running servers etc you probably want the more expensive ISP because it is way more reliable than the cheap one.
Electricity - you get limited power, say, 5kW for a residential house. You can ask for more and, if the wires to your house are big enough you will most likely get it. You may get denied if the grid does not have enough capacity in your area.
So, IMO, if the area in TFA does not have enough capacity, then they probably should not have approved 10MW or whatever for the mining farm. Ask for 10MW, do not get it because the grid does not have enough capacity. Not whine that they are using the electricity for mining. If the company was a smelter instead of bitcoin miner, would it make a difference for the power?
Another problem is that the average salary is not much higher than the minimum (400EUR/month minimal salary, ~700EUR/month average) and that includes the salaries of various executives and politicians.
The government raises the minimal salary every so often and that always attracts criticism from small businesses who always say they will not survive this and that large minimal salary serves to eradicate small businesses and leave only the large companies.
The way it is now (at least in my country) is that the minimum wage is not substantially higher than the welfare (if welfare was lower, then it would not be enough to live), as such, for a lot of people it is better to just sit at home and get less money than work full time and get slightly more money.
I understand that part of my tax money goes to support people who are less fortunate than me and I am OK with that. Really. While I hope to never be disabled, I am OK with part of my tax money going to provide the disabled people with a way to live.
However, I am not OK with part of my tax money going to healthy young people who drink alcohol all day, every day.
I think this was one of very few things that the USSR had right. Healthy people did not get welfare, but were guaranteed a job by the state. If you get thrown out of one job, the state will find you another one. You will be working and you will get your 100 or so rubles.
I agree with that and think that the government should guarantee a job (not necessarily a very good one) to everyone who is able to work instead of just paying the unemployed welfare.At least while you are keeping the streets clean or even if just digging a hole every day, it leaves less time for drinking alcohol and doing drugs. Especially if such employees are tested every day and not paid if they are drunk or high.
Alcoholism is quite a big problem in my country and it is usually the unemployed who drink a lot (well, alcoholics usually cannot keep a job or even don't want one), then, when drunk, beat their spouse, children (sometimes to death) or, say, drop a 2 year old boy and a few month old girl down a well.
Pairing human and machine - if you can keep the human alert - is good for safety.
I do not think it is possible to keep the human alert if he does not have anything to do with driving for more than probably 30 minutes.
I mean, normally, you have to constantly do minor adjustments to make the car follow the road (which may not be straight or level), keep distance from other cars etc. This keeps you alert. And it keeps you actually alert, compared to various artificial measures to make you alert (I could push a button every once in a while or slightly wiggle the steering wheel or whatever the computer requires to "prove" I am alert while reading a book).
OTOH, as I understand about Tesla Autopilot, you get to watch the road while doing absolutely nothing, maybe for hours. However, you are expected to notice when the car wants to drive into a lamp post and then react very quickly and stop the car.
Not only it is extremely difficult to do normally, but you also have to second-guess yourself or the car "hmm... it looks like the car is aiming for that lamp post, but the computer will probably fix it as it did 100 times before. No, the lamp post is very close now, I have to stop the car NOW".
I think the only way to keep the human actually alert would be to randomly turn off Autopilot once every 15 minutes or so, then not allowing it to be turned on for at least 5 minutes. But even that may be a problem "OK, 5 minutes are up, Autopilot is on, back to the book".
Then how do defendants get identified by their IP addresses? There is no public IP - subscriber database. You have to ask the ISP to provide the information.
What is the difference here?
Actually no. When that domain is found to be conducting illegal activities, the police will show a court order to Amazon asking to identify the registrant.
It is the same procedure that is used now to identify people based on their IP addresses. There is no public directory of IP address vs subscriber, however, if you post a bomb threat as a comment on some site, you may get a visit from the police anyway.
The example was for warranty service. Under warranty, the money changes hands between the service center and the manufacturer, the customer is not involved in that transaction, only their appliance is. You only need the customer's telephone number so you can contact them when the repairs are one. You only need the customer's address if you plan on delivering the repaired appliance to them. You no longer need the information after the customer takes his appliance from you.
But yes, if you do out-of-warranty service for the customer then accounting will have the invoice and the payment.
Another example would be web sites that have "full name", "address" as a required fields for registration. If I can type fake info and still have the proper service, then those fields are not really necessary, are they? For example, a company that is not going to deliver any physical object to me does not need my address. A company that is going to deliver a physical object to me, may not need my address anymore after the object is delivered (though I may give consent to store my address so I do not have to type it every time I order something). Ebay sellers, for example, do not need to keep my address after sending out the item - if I order something again, ebay will give them my address again.
As I understand it, those requirements are so that 1) the customer data is not misused and 2) in case your customer database gets leaked, the damage will be less if only the information you need to have is there (and not the name an address of every person your company has ever dealt with)..
You can have a phone directory under the new law, under two conditions:
1. The person has to explicitly give consent for their number to be published (default is "no").
2. You cannot refuse the phone service if the person chooses to not get listed in the phone directory.
Does the excel file also have the credit card numbers of your customers?
Under the new law you will only be able to handle my personal data for explicitly defined purposes, so, there will probably be a list of employees who can access my data and that list won't include "everyone in the company".
Whois privacy is a thing. Most registrars just charge extra for it. I see no problem with making that free and the default option.
What things break in fundamental ways if whois privacy is enabled for everyone for free by default?
A lot of registrars are already non-compliant with ICANN's wishes to have my name, home address, telephone number and email address listed publicly for anyone to find and send "offers" to. Those evil registrars offer a service, where they remove my data from the public record, for a fee.
The only difference for GDPR is that the "WHOIS privacy" service will have to be free and on by default (as I understand it, there could be further limits as to what data the registrar can keep in its private database). If I am doing something illegal, the police can contact the registrar and get my personal information. There is absolutely no need for my name, home address, email and telephone number to be listed in public. If you think I have committed a crime, contact the police and they will contact the registrar.
WHOIS is like a phone book. I choose to not get listed in either. However, if I call to say that I have planted a bomb, then sure as hell the police will be able to find out my name and address by asking the telephone company.