Firstly, we have a National Insurance (NI) Number which is equivalent to the US SSN and is used to track your income tax and NI (payroll tax) payments. You don't need one to work, but it makes employed life a lot easier.
Getting an NI number if you're not born here can be difficult. My girlfriend is an EU citizen living in the UK (nearly 2 years) now and stil can't persaude the social security people to give her one. She recently had a letter from the Inland Revenue (IRS-equiv) asking her for her NI number so they can make sure her income tax and NI is correctly accounted for.
<sigh> well at least it shows that Big Brother will always be defeated by good old fashioned British incompetence.
The other ID number we have is the National Health Service (NHS) number. This you get at birth or, if you're not British-born but legally resident, on registration with your local doctor. My girlfriend had no trouble at all getting one - she just presented her EU passport at the surgery and stated that she was living in the area and wanted to register with a doctor, they wrote down the passport details and her new NHS card turned up with mine (you get a new one whenever you change doctor).
Originally a continuation of the old wartime ID card number scheme (ID cards were abolished in 1952) they appear to have changed the NHS numbers recently to a new series - when we moved to London two years ago I got a brand new NHS number in a new format. It appears to bear no relation to my NI number and the govt doesn't, yet, officially do data matching between the two.
Read it here. Section 1 makes reprogramming a phone's unique ID illegal and section 2 makes the possession and supply of devices to that end illegal too.
However, the Act makes it clear that for an offence of possession or supply to stand, intent of unlawful use needs to be proved too. It's pretty much equivalent to the "going equipped for burglary" offence really.
Well, keep an eye on Boeing's plant in Seattle and if something is spotted breaking through the roof and heading straight up, I think we'll have the answer.
Because do we really want to let the universe know we're here? Contact with a more advanced civilisation might have unfortunate repercussions for us - look at the impact contact with the West had on so many indigenous cultures during the ages of exploration and imperialism.
And that's just assuming the ETs are benevolent and simply can't help having the effect on us that we have on a newly contacted tribe in the Amazon. What if the ETs are paranoid about competitor intelligences arising and have a policy of wiping out any new civilisation that pops its head up over the electro-magnetic parapet? That's one of the more pessimistic explanations for the Fermi Paradox.
IIRC when this was first reported Podkletnov claimed the effect was cumulative: two of the disks one above another produced a 4% drop in weight of the object above them.
Megadodo Publications of Ursa Minor Beta have announced that they will be the largest site running Celestia as official beta testers. The software will be used for "research" purposes, sources said.
s/silly foreign scientists/stupid American corps/
on
A Rock Moves In Space
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· Score: 1
NASA, like the rest of the US federal govt, uses metric measurements. The problem was that the contractor, Lockheed IIRC, was using imperial.
Insert obReference to Terry Gilliam's Brazil here.
That's right, there are lots of people involved. I used to live in Winchester, Hampshire, which is right in the middle of one main areas where the circles appear and I knew people who made them. In fact it seems that the only people in southern England who don't know any circle makers are the loonies who think they're made by little green men.
If so your immigration hassles to the UK could be eased as you may qualify for dual citizenship. Ireland is the best know: if you have a parent, grandparent or even in certain circumstances great-grandparent born there (north or south) you will almost certainly qualify for Irish citizenship. My girlfriend is American but had a grandmother from Northern Ireland so once she'd got her Irish passprt she was able to move here to the UK under the rights granted to European Union citizens under the Treaty of Rome and work with next to no problems (well, she's still trying to get an NI number - SSN equiv - but you don't need one to work here, though it makes it slightly easier). As an irish citizen she can even vote in all our elections!
I believe some other European countries have similar deals to Ireland, so it may be worth checking your family tree. BTW, if this does apply to you, don't beleive anyone who tells you that the US does not allow dual citizenship and that you could lose your US citizenship - the old rules that meant that were declared unconstitutional and repealed years ago.
If you can't use that route, be aware that the UK is greatly liberalising work permit rules for skilled workers, and there's still an IT skills shortage in many places here.
I dunno, I love "congresscritter" - I wish we had some similarly contemptuous term for our elected lords and masters here in the UK. "MP" is too neutral and un-perjorative.
One of the organisations that's being given powers to snoop on our communications is the office of the Information Commissioner, whose job is er, to protect the privacy of our communications and prevent the mis-use data held about us.
Let it not be said that the British government doesn't have a sense of humour.
So basically they've decided to erradicate an entire species because they 'got in our way'
Well, I doubt it'd be able to erradicate the species but there's nothing wrong with trying. We did it with smallpox, would you like to have that back? Is there anybody who doesn't think erradicating HIV would be a good idea if we had the means? The diseases spread by the tsetse fly are just as nasty.
The standard required by the National Audit Office and the District Auditor is seven years. In the private sector I'm not sure if there's agreed standard but three years is common IME.
I used to live in Cardiff and it would be well suited for this facility. I see that it's proposed to link the city centre with the former docklands that have been redeveloped as "Cardiff Bay" but suffer by being a good mile and half from the centre with poor public transport links (memories of waiting at Cardiff Bay station late at night whilst the local kids trash it and hoping the train will arrive before they decide to trash me as well).
What's more, for political reasons, the National Assembly has half its operations in the centre, and half at the Bay. and currently has to run a dedicated bureaucrats' bus service between the two during the working day.
The turn up and go aspect would have been ideal for me when I was working in the Bay. No more relying on Valley Lines deciding whether or not to bother to run a train!
I disagree, London no, US suburbia maybe
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
I live in London, and commute by Tube usually. I live ~5 mins walk from my local tube station and work approx the same distance from the station nearest to it, so I don't need one of these to get to or from the tube stations. I'd wager many, probably most, Londoners live and work sufficiently close to tube or surface rail not to need one for that either. Not to mention the lack of space on the average tube train: other commuters would soon get very fed up if even one or two people tried to bring their Segway on to a typically crowded rush-hour tube car.
So what about using it instead of the tube? Well, I live in Walthamstow, which is only tube zone three (of six) and I commute to Green Park in zone one. The distance by road from home to work is about ten miles, so pretty much the range of the device, and at a stated top speed of 12-17mph, I'm going to be lucky to complete my journey in much less than an hour, assuming I can weave my way through the congestion. Via tube door-to-door, when all goes well it takes no more than 35 minutes.
Of course, the tube doesn't always go well, and it's hot, crowded, dirty and expensive when it does, so on a nice summer's day maybe I'd prefer to Segway to work anyway, but most of the time London weather isn't nice enough to want to spend an hour each way in it. Maybe if I lived nearer to work it'd be different, but how many Londoners can afford to live in zones 1 or 2? (okay, the ones that could afford one of these things do!)
However, I was struck by the number of posters from North America who've said things like "this would be great for getting to the convenience store" (it wouldn't be for me or most British city-dwellers as my convenience stores are about two minutes walk away at the end of my street), and having an American girlfriend whose family live in a typical suburban area where everything is just too far to walk but just a short car ride away, I understand what they mean.
So, I don't think I'll be seeing one of these on the streets of Walthamstow any time soon, but maybe I will on the streets of Narragansett, RI, next time we visit.
Re:Begging Questions and Urban Planning
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
So now the problem is not living within scooter range of work, it's living withing scooter range of a mass transit station, and working within scooter range of a mass transit station.
Except that how many mass transits have room for many of their passengers to bring these things on board? I commute on the Victoria line and it's cramped enough that I know I'd be very unpopular with my fellow sardines if I was the only one to bring an IT on board a train. Hell, I've seen near-lynchings of morons trying to bring microscooters onto crowded tube trains as it is.
IIRC the latest research suggests it was the flammable outer envelope of the Hindenburg that was primarily responsible for the disaster, rather than the hydrogen in the gasbags per se.
Not in London (which is where most of the jobs are) unless you're comparing them to really high-rent places in the US.
More pertinently, I doubt very much that this report will have much influence on govt policy here. Read our tabloid media (which is most of it) and you'll learn that the 'net is a den of thieves and perverts, and judging by such ill conceived pieces of legislation as the RIP Act our government, specifically the Home Office that commissioned this research, seems to agree.
I'm sure this report will be ignored and buried, just like all the other research that comes up with findings the UK government and The Sun doesn't agree with is.
So you either turn off your cache (which you can't completely do in Exploder with its 1M minimum, but can thankfully in Netscrape)
You can't turn the cache in IE off but you can make it automatically empty every time IE closes. Just go to the "Advanced" tab of the Options dialogue and scroll down until you find the "security" section where you'll find an "Emoty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed" option. Doesn't delete persistent cookies alas, but it does zap 1x1 bug images.
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, we have a National Insurance (NI) Number which is equivalent to the US SSN and is used to track your income tax and NI (payroll tax) payments. You don't need one to work, but it makes employed life a lot easier.
Getting an NI number if you're not born here can be difficult. My girlfriend is an EU citizen living in the UK (nearly 2 years) now and stil can't persaude the social security people to give her one. She recently had a letter from the Inland Revenue (IRS-equiv) asking her for her NI number so they can make sure her income tax and NI is correctly accounted for.
<sigh> well at least it shows that Big Brother will always be defeated by good old fashioned British incompetence.
The other ID number we have is the National Health Service (NHS) number. This you get at birth or, if you're not British-born but legally resident, on registration with your local doctor. My girlfriend had no trouble at all getting one - she just presented her EU passport at the surgery and stated that she was living in the area and wanted to register with a doctor, they wrote down the passport details and her new NHS card turned up with mine (you get a new one whenever you change doctor).
Originally a continuation of the old wartime ID card number scheme (ID cards were abolished in 1952) they appear to have changed the NHS numbers recently to a new series - when we moved to London two years ago I got a brand new NHS number in a new format. It appears to bear no relation to my NI number and the govt doesn't, yet, officially do data matching between the two.
Read it here. Section 1 makes reprogramming a phone's unique ID illegal and section 2 makes the possession and supply of devices to that end illegal too.
However, the Act makes it clear that for an offence of possession or supply to stand, intent of unlawful use needs to be proved too. It's pretty much equivalent to the "going equipped for burglary" offence really.
Well, keep an eye on Boeing's plant in Seattle and if something is spotted breaking through the roof and heading straight up, I think we'll have the answer.
Because do we really want to let the universe know we're here? Contact with a more advanced civilisation might have unfortunate repercussions for us - look at the impact contact with the West had on so many indigenous cultures during the ages of exploration and imperialism.
And that's just assuming the ETs are benevolent and simply can't help having the effect on us that we have on a newly contacted tribe in the Amazon. What if the ETs are paranoid about competitor intelligences arising and have a policy of wiping out any new civilisation that pops its head up over the electro-magnetic parapet? That's one of the more pessimistic explanations for the Fermi Paradox.
IIRC when this was first reported Podkletnov claimed the effect was cumulative: two of the disks one above another produced a 4% drop in weight of the object above them.
Megadodo Publications of Ursa Minor Beta have announced that they will be the largest site running Celestia as official beta testers. The software will be used for "research" purposes, sources said.
NASA, like the rest of the US federal govt, uses metric measurements. The problem was that the contractor, Lockheed IIRC, was using imperial.
Insert obReference to Terry Gilliam's Brazil here.
That's right, there are lots of people involved. I used to live in Winchester, Hampshire, which is right in the middle of one main areas where the circles appear and I knew people who made them. In fact it seems that the only people in southern England who don't know any circle makers are the loonies who think they're made by little green men.
If so your immigration hassles to the UK could be eased as you may qualify for dual citizenship. Ireland is the best know: if you have a parent, grandparent or even in certain circumstances great-grandparent born there (north or south) you will almost certainly qualify for Irish citizenship. My girlfriend is American but had a grandmother from Northern Ireland so once she'd got her Irish passprt she was able to move here to the UK under the rights granted to European Union citizens under the Treaty of Rome and work with next to no problems (well, she's still trying to get an NI number - SSN equiv - but you don't need one to work here, though it makes it slightly easier). As an irish citizen she can even vote in all our elections!
I believe some other European countries have similar deals to Ireland, so it may be worth checking your family tree. BTW, if this does apply to you, don't beleive anyone who tells you that the US does not allow dual citizenship and that you could lose your US citizenship - the old rules that meant that were declared unconstitutional and repealed years ago.
If you can't use that route, be aware that the UK is greatly liberalising work permit rules for skilled workers, and there's still an IT skills shortage in many places here.
I dunno, I love "congresscritter" - I wish we had some similarly contemptuous term for our elected lords and masters here in the UK. "MP" is too neutral and un-perjorative.
So hopefully the US will recognise that Joseph Swan invented the lightbulb next.
One of the organisations that's being given powers to snoop on our communications is the office of the Information Commissioner, whose job is er, to protect the privacy of our communications and prevent the mis-use data held about us.
Let it not be said that the British government doesn't have a sense of humour.
So basically they've decided to erradicate an entire species because they 'got in our way'
Well, I doubt it'd be able to erradicate the species but there's nothing wrong with trying. We did it with smallpox, would you like to have that back? Is there anybody who doesn't think erradicating HIV would be a good idea if we had the means? The diseases spread by the tsetse fly are just as nasty.
Dunno if the quote is true, but the new coding moratorium is real. My brother works for MSFT and he told me about this last week.
The standard required by the National Audit Office and the District Auditor is seven years. In the private sector I'm not sure if there's agreed standard but three years is common IME.
I used to live in Cardiff and it would be well suited for this facility. I see that it's proposed to link the city centre with the former docklands that have been redeveloped as "Cardiff Bay" but suffer by being a good mile and half from the centre with poor public transport links (memories of waiting at Cardiff Bay station late at night whilst the local kids trash it and hoping the train will arrive before they decide to trash me as well).
What's more, for political reasons, the National Assembly has half its operations in the centre, and half at the Bay. and currently has to run a dedicated bureaucrats' bus service between the two during the working day.
The turn up and go aspect would have been ideal for me when I was working in the Bay. No more relying on Valley Lines deciding whether or not to bother to run a train!
I live in London, and commute by Tube usually. I live ~5 mins walk from my local tube station and work approx the same distance from the station nearest to it, so I don't need one of these to get to or from the tube stations. I'd wager many, probably most, Londoners live and work sufficiently close to tube or surface rail not to need one for that either. Not to mention the lack of space on the average tube train: other commuters would soon get very fed up if even one or two people tried to bring their Segway on to a typically crowded rush-hour tube car.
So what about using it instead of the tube? Well, I live in Walthamstow, which is only tube zone three (of six) and I commute to Green Park in zone one. The distance by road from home to work is about ten miles, so pretty much the range of the device, and at a stated top speed of 12-17mph, I'm going to be lucky to complete my journey in much less than an hour, assuming I can weave my way through the congestion. Via tube door-to-door, when all goes well it takes no more than 35 minutes.
Of course, the tube doesn't always go well, and it's hot, crowded, dirty and expensive when it does, so on a nice summer's day maybe I'd prefer to Segway to work anyway, but most of the time London weather isn't nice enough to want to spend an hour each way in it. Maybe if I lived nearer to work it'd be different, but how many Londoners can afford to live in zones 1 or 2? (okay, the ones that could afford one of these things do!)
However, I was struck by the number of posters from North America who've said things like "this would be great for getting to the convenience store" (it wouldn't be for me or most British city-dwellers as my convenience stores are about two minutes walk away at the end of my street), and having an American girlfriend whose family live in a typical suburban area where everything is just too far to walk but just a short car ride away, I understand what they mean.
So, I don't think I'll be seeing one of these on the streets of Walthamstow any time soon, but maybe I will on the streets of Narragansett, RI, next time we visit.
So now the problem is not living within scooter range of work, it's living withing scooter range of a mass transit station, and working within scooter range of a mass transit station.
Except that how many mass transits have room for many of their passengers to bring these things on board? I commute on the Victoria line and it's cramped enough that I know I'd be very unpopular with my fellow sardines if I was the only one to bring an IT on board a train. Hell, I've seen near-lynchings of morons trying to bring microscooters onto crowded tube trains as it is.
IIRC the latest research suggests it was the flammable outer envelope of the Hindenburg that was primarily responsible for the disaster, rather than the hydrogen in the gasbags per se.
That this case should come to court the day before the Enigma movie opened in the UK.
will be the first SF author to casually drop a reference to the "Podkletnov effect" in their next novel?
Not in London (which is where most of the jobs are) unless you're comparing them to really high-rent places in the US.
More pertinently, I doubt very much that this report will have much influence on govt policy here. Read our tabloid media (which is most of it) and you'll learn that the 'net is a den of thieves and perverts, and judging by such ill conceived pieces of legislation as the RIP Act our government, specifically the Home Office that commissioned this research, seems to agree.
I'm sure this report will be ignored and buried, just like all the other research that comes up with findings the UK government and The Sun doesn't agree with is.
...that according to El Reg, has just bought Alcatel's ADSL modem business
Be very afraid.
So you either turn off your cache (which you can't completely do in Exploder with its 1M minimum, but can thankfully in Netscrape)
You can't turn the cache in IE off but you can make it automatically empty every time IE closes. Just go to the "Advanced" tab of the Options dialogue and scroll down until you find the "security" section where you'll find an "Emoty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed" option. Doesn't delete persistent cookies alas, but it does zap 1x1 bug images.