I'd have an issue here. I store most of my passwords in LastPass, certainly the infrequently used ones such as ISP details. Now if the ISP is bocking my internet access until I provide my password there's a problem... I can't get to LastPass to get my password without an internet connection... catch 22.
It seems to me that the solution is not to interfere with the service they're providing to me, which is the service I ASKED FOR, in the first place. One can only hope the ISPs are doing this deliberately to piss off customers and create opposition to Davewall.
(I *think* the passwords in the LastPass browser extension are supposedly available offline, but I've never tested this.)
in some areas, doctors are not free to prescribe generics... If the name-brand version of the drug does not exist, then that drug may not be prescribed
What the actual flying ****! Were the lawmakers in bed with big pharma or something? That's ridiculous. What needs fixing there, though, is not anti trust actions against drug companies but stupid, stupid laws.
You'd think health insurers would have kicked up a fuss about this because the bulk of the increased cost must fall on them.
Neither TFS nor TFA state that the new version is any more expensive than the (non-generic) old version. And, even if it is, that isn't the issue they're claiming is a problem. They're claiming that a patent on a subtly different drug will stop generics manufacturers making generics. Which is bollocks, because the new patent will only cover the differences between the old and the new drugs.
I'm going to guess that the reason your on Tribenzor, rather than a generic, is because there's some perceived advantage (either by your or your doctor), not because the evil nasty drug companies are forcing you to be.
an antitrust lawsuit accusing the drug company of forcing patients to switch to the newer version of the widely used medicine to hinder competition from generic manufacturers.
Were the drug company sending hit squads round to take out the doctors that were prescribing generics? Did they launch a tactical air strike on the generics factories? Hijack the lorries carrying the generics?
I'm sorry but, so far as I can tell, manufacturers are free to manufacture the generic, doctors are free to prescribe it and patients are free to take it. I don't see why Actavis should be forced to produce a drug they no longer want to produce and I don't see what this can possibly achieve because once the drug leaves patent protection the generics manufactures will be able to manufacture it regardless and, before then, patients will have to buy the pricier brand-name drug anyway.
(I mean geolocation is something they have always done, not flouting the law. Google haven't made a half arsed attempt at implementing the law, they've implemented a half arsed "law" (if you can call it a law...) as well as it ever can be implemented and far better than it deserved.)
Something they have always done and for which there are many legitimate uses.
And I would be very interested to know when Google (or anyone else) has demonstrated robust, reliable, uncircumventable IP based geolocation because I've never encountered. As I said further up the comments what Google now do (and Amazon and most other large websites) is geolocate you for customer services reasons but you still have the option to view a different page of they get it wrong if you want to for some reason (as someone who's currently an ex-pat I often want to switch between my home country and my country of residence on many websites). The system isn't, and never has been, designed to force people to see a certain page.
google are returning irrelevant/out of date information
That's not subjective at all. I mean if I'm hiring a new CFO I probably think the guys ten year old bankruptcy case is highly relevant. (S)He probably because it's a long time ago and things are different now and he's very liquid and has learnt how to handle his finances. Go on, which one of us is right?
Except Google are already doing that (as you say in your first sentence, before contradicting yourself in your second paragraph). I visit in the UK, it goes to Google.co.uk, Google.co.uk is filtered.
The Amazon analogy is very poor because that's simply a customer service option that can be overridden (by design) when it's wrong/a customer wants to view a different localisation for some reason (afaik any actually restrictions that are applied based on billing address, shipping address or Kindle registration info (the latter of which can be easily changed on the device)). Clearly a solution in that situation is going to apply effectively in the Amazon case will be ineffective in the Google case and vice versa. To achieve what the EU wants to achieve (hiding these results in its jurisdiction) can only be achieved through global censorship.
Of course I think that any company's LOCAL operations (officially registered companies in any given country; offices, servers physically located in any given country; payment processing etc. that uses banks in any given country) should comply with local laws in that jurisdiction. Beyond that the local law of any given country clearly doesn't apply. If the EU start messing these business around too much they will simply leave. Then the EU will have no leverage at all, and it will serve them right.
What's going through the EU's mind right now? "This is clearly futile, not working and doesn't stand a chance in hell of working......so let's do more!"?
I mean, seriously, what will they be doing next? Asking all proxies, VPNs, and TOR to filter "right to be forgotten" search results. All airlines and airports offering international flights will require memory wipers to remove any "right to be forgotten knowledge" from your brain. All libraries, archives, repositories and public records offices will be required to go through old paper copies of documents with tipex...
(Fun fact: "Right to be forgotten" censoring was basically Winston Smith's day job in 1984...)
1) Why not subsidise normal CS degrees then? Or if degrees aren't really dishing out the skills required why not a completely different form of training such as apprenticeships?
2) I agree with most of what you've diagnosed, but I don't think this will solve it. This is too little too late to address the shortage of workers. In my year in A-Levels only one of my friends went on to do CS, the rest of us went in to other fields (despite some of my friends being very talented in, and enjoying that kind of thing). Why? Because mostly people assumed it would be more of the crap we did in school IT. Maybe if I'd had the opportunity to experience some fun (this is probably subjective, but I enjoy the very limited coding my chemistry degree has led me to do), problem solving coding I might have chosen differently (or maybe I wouldn't have; but I suspect a lot of the brightest and most capable students that might consider CS are lost to other fields because school IT is such a joke). (For reference, I went thought the secondary education system 5-10 years ago)
Ignoring the fact that all school age kids already know how to use Windows and Office at least as well as their teachers let's not pretend that being able to use Open Office and Linux would be much use outside the IT world (and, depending on your job, they may not be much use inside it either). Windows and Office is what you needed then to become a generic office drone and it's what you need now. It would make sense to teach it if the kids didn't know it.
When I was at school (proper) typing was probably the most valuable IT skill we were never taught - although I think most kids these days can type fairly efficiently. I think IT would be better to teach some form of basic programming (easy stuff... analysing datasets, automating common tasks... that would be of use in a wide range of jobs) and more conceptual digital literacy required to function well in the modern world (especially when we consider that (some of) these kids will be future politicians, ceos etc.) so they understand how the internet works and don't grow up to become the next Theresa May or Claire Perry.
I'm struggling to understand why this particular group of students should have such a heavily government subsidised education when they claim they can't afford it for the rest of us. Presumably this scheme, in its current form, will never be funded enough to accommodate a substantial proportion of the UK's students.
Don't get me wrong - I fully understand why this scheme may be good from an educational perspective and I think encouraging employers to invest in the education of the next generation of their staff is a good thing, but I don't understand why this apparently needs the remainder funded by government rather than by the student loans system? Surely it would be better to encourage companies to contribute to the education of any students in relevant fields rather than just this special group? Especially as this would have the effect of reducing pressure on the student loans system (which, for many loans, the tax payer will end up coughing up for when the student finds their degree in tourism from the University of Dudley is actually completely worthless). Not only would it be beneficial for employers, students and the taxpayer it would hopefully help weed out all the non-courses, non-universities and students that probably should be following a career path other than university, that are currently subsidised at taxpayers' expense by the SLC, because no company would pay towards the costs of such a student taking such a course at such a university.
As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia.
But then I RTFAed (I know, it's/., no one RTFAs) and
Perth's GMA Garnet will this month send a shipment of heavy mineral sand to Saudi Arabia for sandblasting......the special alluvial sand is suited for sandblasting because it is free of silica, which creates dust that can cause lung cancer and silicosis in workers
Nope, no beaches. But wait, there's more:
Another firm selling a sand-based product to the desert region is NT Prestressing, which has a type of concrete that can be laid quickly, speeding up building
Still no beaches though. Guess I won't be going to Saudi for my beach holiday, I'll have to stick with Aus - and we all know what they think of us Brits...
This is what Newton meant when he talked about standing on the shoulders of giants. These methods, algorithms, computer programmes, techniques etc. enable all the research you hear of. The structure of DNA would never have been solved without all the preceding work on x-ray crystallography, for instance. This is truly a case of credit where credit's due and not something surprising...
British IT education is a joke. An absolute lack of specialist teachers and courses that you'd expect them to be teaching to OAPs at the library being taught to school leavers is the norm. We "learnt" Word, Excel, Powerpoint and, if "lucky", Access. Products that we all (except the teachers) could already use because we were using them for every other subject that we studied. In year 7 (the first year of UK secondary education) we only had IT one in every three weeks and we didn't have it at all in years 8 and 9. For our GNVQ (a form of school leavers (age 16) exam) our teacher admitted he was just there to babysit us (he was a PE teacher) and we followed an online step by step guide to complete the coursework (literally Assignment: Make a Business Card, Step 1: Open Publisher, Step 2: Go to menu x and change the paper size...).
The only friend I know who did a CS degree did not take A-Level (pre-university) IT and my friends that were most talented at IT all did physics degrees. We do loose out massively as a result - I've done a chemistry degree and having been taught programming skill in school would have made many aspects of that course vastly easier and more rewarding, indeed they have to teach programming (C++ in the modules I took) in some of the computational chemistry modules before they can get onto the chemistry.
Programming and other CS skill aren't just useful for those who want to take a CS degree or work in IT they're widely helpful in every day life and close to becoming essential in many fields (science, maths, stats); just about anyone who does an office job would benefit from having these skills. The UK is loosing out, and will continue to loose out, because for a whole generation IT was viewed as an unimportant part of the curriculum and, even now, is mostly taught and organised by people who don't know what they're talking about and think that teaching 16 year olds to use Dreamweaver is the same as teaching them programming.
It's a sad state of affairs for the country that produced the BBC Micro; even the Raspbery Pi, which was supposed to be a modern equivalent of the BBC Micro, is used more by hobbyists than for education.
(Yes, I'm bitter because I missed out on learning an important and useful skill during my schooling simply because the school were too lazy to teach it properly.)
Where I am (Ishikawa pref.) the only places I can use my western credit/debit cards are atms in post offices and atms in 7-11 stores. The majority of shops won't even take Japanese cards; although perhaps my expectations are skewed since back home (London) we're encouraged even to put our bus fairs on credit/debit cards.
That plum wine is SO SO good!
They still have fiat value. If they found themselves unable to use them for their criminal activities they could just cross the border, take them to the nearest bureau de change and swap them for USD or whatever - which makes the proposed move seem rather pointless.
Also I'd say "currencies operate on trust" is an oversimplification - although technically true for government backed fiat currencies. If the majority of the criminal fraternity accept that something has value then it can become a de facto currency - so long as it isn't easily forgeable and exists in only limited supply - no additional trust needed. (Gold is an excellent example of this - outside the electronics and chemistry industries it has little inherent value beyond its rarity yet it is widely used to exchange/store value with no guarantee that anyone else will honour that value, but you know they will.)
Erm... I'm not sure a member country of a currency union can unilaterally withdraw/ban/remove one denomination in its territories; the entire concept is based on a, you know, union of currency between many different states.
Ignoring that obstacle I still don't see how this would work - they could end their status as legal tender but beyond that? How can they stop to individuals that have agreed to use these notes doing business with them? Will they try and make bartering illegal next?
(Writing this I'm currently in Japan where trying to use any form of payment that's not cash (notes/coins) is next to impossible outside the largest shops in the large cities.)
"What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law."
Yeah, how dear people use the fourth and fifth amendments, what do they think it's there for?
Seriously, though, how can he stand there and say there's something wrong with companies responding to a market demand for technology that enables people to protect their rights. Encryption is not a crime, you are innocent until proven guilty, you have the right to remain silent, the government has no right to force you to unlock your door (or decrypt your phone) or to know what's inside unless they're able to show probable cause.
It's probably incredibly naive of me to believe in such quaint ideas though... All hail our benevolent overlords, all hail!
Promises that, I would point out, were made by people without the authority to make them. The only body with the authority to make those bodies was parliament and the only body that can honour them is parliament - and it could equally refuse. Tory backbenchers have already indicated they don't approve of the status quo (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11098825/David-Cameron-faces-Tory-bloodbath-over-unfair-cash-for-Scotland.html). Those promises were never more than (and never could be more than) "this will now be lib/lab/con official policy".
Slashdot Mirror
I'd have an issue here. I store most of my passwords in LastPass, certainly the infrequently used ones such as ISP details. Now if the ISP is bocking my internet access until I provide my password there's a problem... I can't get to LastPass to get my password without an internet connection... catch 22.
It seems to me that the solution is not to interfere with the service they're providing to me, which is the service I ASKED FOR, in the first place. One can only hope the ISPs are doing this deliberately to piss off customers and create opposition to Davewall.
(I *think* the passwords in the LastPass browser extension are supposedly available offline, but I've never tested this.)
in some areas, doctors are not free to prescribe generics ... If the name-brand version of the drug does not exist, then that drug may not be prescribed
What the actual flying ****! Were the lawmakers in bed with big pharma or something? That's ridiculous. What needs fixing there, though, is not anti trust actions against drug companies but stupid, stupid laws.
You'd think health insurers would have kicked up a fuss about this because the bulk of the increased cost must fall on them.
Neither TFS nor TFA state that the new version is any more expensive than the (non-generic) old version. And, even if it is, that isn't the issue they're claiming is a problem. They're claiming that a patent on a subtly different drug will stop generics manufacturers making generics. Which is bollocks, because the new patent will only cover the differences between the old and the new drugs.
I'm going to guess that the reason your on Tribenzor, rather than a generic, is because there's some perceived advantage (either by your or your doctor), not because the evil nasty drug companies are forcing you to be.
an antitrust lawsuit accusing the drug company of forcing patients to switch to the newer version of the widely used medicine to hinder competition from generic manufacturers.
Were the drug company sending hit squads round to take out the doctors that were prescribing generics? Did they launch a tactical air strike on the generics factories? Hijack the lorries carrying the generics?
I'm sorry but, so far as I can tell, manufacturers are free to manufacture the generic, doctors are free to prescribe it and patients are free to take it. I don't see why Actavis should be forced to produce a drug they no longer want to produce and I don't see what this can possibly achieve because once the drug leaves patent protection the generics manufactures will be able to manufacture it regardless and, before then, patients will have to buy the pricier brand-name drug anyway.
Or you still want your data to survive even if the device on which it was collected does not (see Malaysia Airlines Flight 370).
My wrist is not Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
(I mean geolocation is something they have always done, not flouting the law. Google haven't made a half arsed attempt at implementing the law, they've implemented a half arsed "law" (if you can call it a law...) as well as it ever can be implemented and far better than it deserved.)
Something they have always done and for which there are many legitimate uses.
And I would be very interested to know when Google (or anyone else) has demonstrated robust, reliable, uncircumventable IP based geolocation because I've never encountered. As I said further up the comments what Google now do (and Amazon and most other large websites) is geolocate you for customer services reasons but you still have the option to view a different page of they get it wrong if you want to for some reason (as someone who's currently an ex-pat I often want to switch between my home country and my country of residence on many websites). The system isn't, and never has been, designed to force people to see a certain page.
Mod parent up!
google are returning irrelevant/out of date information
That's not subjective at all. I mean if I'm hiring a new CFO I probably think the guys ten year old bankruptcy case is highly relevant. (S)He probably because it's a long time ago and things are different now and he's very liquid and has learnt how to handle his finances. Go on, which one of us is right?
Except Google are already doing that (as you say in your first sentence, before contradicting yourself in your second paragraph). I visit in the UK, it goes to Google.co.uk, Google.co.uk is filtered.
The Amazon analogy is very poor because that's simply a customer service option that can be overridden (by design) when it's wrong/a customer wants to view a different localisation for some reason (afaik any actually restrictions that are applied based on billing address, shipping address or Kindle registration info (the latter of which can be easily changed on the device)). Clearly a solution in that situation is going to apply effectively in the Amazon case will be ineffective in the Google case and vice versa. To achieve what the EU wants to achieve (hiding these results in its jurisdiction) can only be achieved through global censorship.
Of course I think that any company's LOCAL operations (officially registered companies in any given country; offices, servers physically located in any given country; payment processing etc. that uses banks in any given country) should comply with local laws in that jurisdiction. Beyond that the local law of any given country clearly doesn't apply. If the EU start messing these business around too much they will simply leave. Then the EU will have no leverage at all, and it will serve them right.
I mean, seriously, what will they be doing next? Asking all proxies, VPNs, and TOR to filter "right to be forgotten" search results. All airlines and airports offering international flights will require memory wipers to remove any "right to be forgotten knowledge" from your brain. All libraries, archives, repositories and public records offices will be required to go through old paper copies of documents with tipex...
(Fun fact: "Right to be forgotten" censoring was basically Winston Smith's day job in 1984...)
2) I agree with most of what you've diagnosed, but I don't think this will solve it. This is too little too late to address the shortage of workers. In my year in A-Levels only one of my friends went on to do CS, the rest of us went in to other fields (despite some of my friends being very talented in, and enjoying that kind of thing). Why? Because mostly people assumed it would be more of the crap we did in school IT. Maybe if I'd had the opportunity to experience some fun (this is probably subjective, but I enjoy the very limited coding my chemistry degree has led me to do), problem solving coding I might have chosen differently (or maybe I wouldn't have; but I suspect a lot of the brightest and most capable students that might consider CS are lost to other fields because school IT is such a joke). (For reference, I went thought the secondary education system 5-10 years ago)
Ignoring the fact that all school age kids already know how to use Windows and Office at least as well as their teachers let's not pretend that being able to use Open Office and Linux would be much use outside the IT world (and, depending on your job, they may not be much use inside it either). Windows and Office is what you needed then to become a generic office drone and it's what you need now. It would make sense to teach it if the kids didn't know it. When I was at school (proper) typing was probably the most valuable IT skill we were never taught - although I think most kids these days can type fairly efficiently. I think IT would be better to teach some form of basic programming (easy stuff... analysing datasets, automating common tasks... that would be of use in a wide range of jobs) and more conceptual digital literacy required to function well in the modern world (especially when we consider that (some of) these kids will be future politicians, ceos etc.) so they understand how the internet works and don't grow up to become the next Theresa May or Claire Perry.
Don't get me wrong - I fully understand why this scheme may be good from an educational perspective and I think encouraging employers to invest in the education of the next generation of their staff is a good thing, but I don't understand why this apparently needs the remainder funded by government rather than by the student loans system? Surely it would be better to encourage companies to contribute to the education of any students in relevant fields rather than just this special group? Especially as this would have the effect of reducing pressure on the student loans system (which, for many loans, the tax payer will end up coughing up for when the student finds their degree in tourism from the University of Dudley is actually completely worthless). Not only would it be beneficial for employers, students and the taxpayer it would hopefully help weed out all the non-courses, non-universities and students that probably should be following a career path other than university, that are currently subsidised at taxpayers' expense by the SLC, because no company would pay towards the costs of such a student taking such a course at such a university.
Oh, and Dubai isn't in Saudi either... but at least the concrete is going to Dubai, so he got one thing half right!
As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia.
But then I RTFAed (I know, it's /., no one RTFAs) and
Perth's GMA Garnet will this month send a shipment of heavy mineral sand to Saudi Arabia for sandblasting... ...the special alluvial sand is suited for sandblasting because it is free of silica, which creates dust that can cause lung cancer and silicosis in workers
Nope, no beaches. But wait, there's more:
Another firm selling a sand-based product to the desert region is NT Prestressing, which has a type of concrete that can be laid quickly, speeding up building
Still no beaches though. Guess I won't be going to Saudi for my beach holiday, I'll have to stick with Aus - and we all know what they think of us Brits...
This is what Newton meant when he talked about standing on the shoulders of giants. These methods, algorithms, computer programmes, techniques etc. enable all the research you hear of. The structure of DNA would never have been solved without all the preceding work on x-ray crystallography, for instance. This is truly a case of credit where credit's due and not something surprising...
So now, all the people with PIDs of 0, and know about this fiasco, are breaking the law by continuing to use their fake device? (IANAL)
Only if you intend to fool someone into thinking it's real (say you hire them out). Otherwise it's fine. (also IANAL)
The only friend I know who did a CS degree did not take A-Level (pre-university) IT and my friends that were most talented at IT all did physics degrees. We do loose out massively as a result - I've done a chemistry degree and having been taught programming skill in school would have made many aspects of that course vastly easier and more rewarding, indeed they have to teach programming (C++ in the modules I took) in some of the computational chemistry modules before they can get onto the chemistry.
Programming and other CS skill aren't just useful for those who want to take a CS degree or work in IT they're widely helpful in every day life and close to becoming essential in many fields (science, maths, stats); just about anyone who does an office job would benefit from having these skills. The UK is loosing out, and will continue to loose out, because for a whole generation IT was viewed as an unimportant part of the curriculum and, even now, is mostly taught and organised by people who don't know what they're talking about and think that teaching 16 year olds to use Dreamweaver is the same as teaching them programming.
It's a sad state of affairs for the country that produced the BBC Micro; even the Raspbery Pi, which was supposed to be a modern equivalent of the BBC Micro, is used more by hobbyists than for education. (Yes, I'm bitter because I missed out on learning an important and useful skill during my schooling simply because the school were too lazy to teach it properly.)
Where I am (Ishikawa pref.) the only places I can use my western credit/debit cards are atms in post offices and atms in 7-11 stores. The majority of shops won't even take Japanese cards; although perhaps my expectations are skewed since back home (London) we're encouraged even to put our bus fairs on credit/debit cards. That plum wine is SO SO good!
Also I'd say "currencies operate on trust" is an oversimplification - although technically true for government backed fiat currencies. If the majority of the criminal fraternity accept that something has value then it can become a de facto currency - so long as it isn't easily forgeable and exists in only limited supply - no additional trust needed. (Gold is an excellent example of this - outside the electronics and chemistry industries it has little inherent value beyond its rarity yet it is widely used to exchange/store value with no guarantee that anyone else will honour that value, but you know they will.)
Ignoring that obstacle I still don't see how this would work - they could end their status as legal tender but beyond that? How can they stop to individuals that have agreed to use these notes doing business with them? Will they try and make bartering illegal next?
(Writing this I'm currently in Japan where trying to use any form of payment that's not cash (notes/coins) is next to impossible outside the largest shops in the large cities.)
Yeah, how dear people use the fourth and fifth amendments, what do they think it's there for?
Seriously, though, how can he stand there and say there's something wrong with companies responding to a market demand for technology that enables people to protect their rights. Encryption is not a crime, you are innocent until proven guilty, you have the right to remain silent, the government has no right to force you to unlock your door (or decrypt your phone) or to know what's inside unless they're able to show probable cause.
It's probably incredibly naive of me to believe in such quaint ideas though... All hail our benevolent overlords, all hail!
Well it happened to Passepartout in Around the World in Eighty Days... :p
Promises that, I would point out, were made by people without the authority to make them. The only body with the authority to make those bodies was parliament and the only body that can honour them is parliament - and it could equally refuse. Tory backbenchers have already indicated they don't approve of the status quo (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11098825/David-Cameron-faces-Tory-bloodbath-over-unfair-cash-for-Scotland.html). Those promises were never more than (and never could be more than) "this will now be lib/lab/con official policy".