In a similar case recently, a woman was charged £4900(c. US$10000 at the time) by Vodafone because she used a 3g internet connection to watch the Apprentice on iPlayer from France. Vodafone waived the charges in the end.
Be careful when swinging around allegations about Europe. I can't think of any large, western European country subject to revisionism (unless you're a holocaust denier, in which case I'd class you as the revisionist). In Britain if anything our history lessons are more an extended rant on how crappy we were to everyone else and ourselves.
This is the continent with the Netherlands and Scandinavia on it, remember. While Britain, France and Germany have their foibles, you don't get anything like you get with Japan and WWII.
I suppose it's not technically an engine problem, but it's fairly related. It's just bad luck that you happened to write that two days after the report came out.
Interesting, I had guessed as much but hadn't had it spelled out. Seems a bit of a lunatic way to run it to me, why doesn't a state have an exemption in its state sales tax so as not to undermine local business? After all, surely a firm should relocate to somewhere with a low population (e.g. Wyoming) and avoid places like California or New York like the plague, as this would maximise its target tax-free* market?
I had one more thought about this; as one scheme goes out in the open, a new one will be forming in the shadows. Accountability is not what these people want.
Oh please. Labour have increased taxes, introduced more pay for the public sector, expanded the public sector, introduced minimum wage and increased benefits. They've part-nationalised the railways, nationalised a bank and look for all the world as though they're about to nationalise mortgages. If that's not a left-wing agenda, what the hell is?
Besides, the Lib Dems under Clegg/Cable are Liberal, not left. They just agree with personal freedom, which bizarrely makes them perceived as left-wing (even more bizarre since Labour has created one new criminal offence for every day they've been in office).
Interesting reply. It's nice to get this sort of thing out in the open, but the case of the British DNA database has left me feeling somewhat powerless in the grasp of an over-zealous-yet-strangely-ineffective police state (introduced by our country's socialists, I hasten to add, before people start trying to blame the right).
I'd be shocked if other Western governments, or at least their security services, didn't do something similar. The CIA and MI5 have been known to do this sort of thing in the past, especially during WWII and the cold war. At least the French know about theirs.
In Britain they can take and keep your DNA if you're suspected of a crime, even if you've been acquitted. Many suspect this is why there were so many accusations of breaches of public order at this year's Notting Hill; the Met wanted the DNA of black Londoners.
The concept of a soul is more like phlogiston, that magic substance that had to gain more and more bizarre properties so people could keep it (after all, you can *see* it so it must be there).
I think the time when a soul can be accepted as a reasonable explanation of phenomena by rational individuals has long since passed. If you believe in it as an article of faith, I have no problem with that, but don't pretend it's a scientific theory.
p.s. I've never bought into dark energy either, sounds too much like bullshit. One day I could be proved wrong though...
Exactly. The first time I heard this argument I thought it was weak appeasement, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Better restricted influence than none whatsoever.
Don't knock it, it worked for the US auto ind...oh
on
Should IT Unionize?
·
· Score: 1
...all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union[?]
You can do the latter if you desire to hasten the former.
The google one in TFA is not the Chromium one, but instead;
Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service.
Which seems to me actually to be fairly reasonable. I know Slashdotters hate any kind of censorship, but if I were Google I'd want the right to take stuff off my branded sites for any reason I wanted without fear of lawsuits. What if someone posts copyrighted material or pornography on youtube and someone complains? They can take them down and sort out the rights and wrongs afterwards. The important thing is, the brand is protected.
I do trust Google not to abuse this clause because of something else that Slashdotters tend to neglect; people who want to make money today will, as a rule, want to make money tomorrow too.
You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of User Submissions that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in User Comments are perpetual and irrevocable
So they can keep it, but not watch it, broadcast it or transfer it elsewhere? Seems to me this is just to make sure you can't sue them for not wiping the file from their servers the nanosecond you tell them to.
They don't really support Mac and Linux now, and haven't (that I can remember). Even before the advent of iPlayer, radio was available via WMP or *shudder* Realplayer.
But the tech which "supports" Mac and Linux now is what they'd have done anyway if they only supported Windows.
Why should the British people give things away for free outside Britain?
Besides, the BBC don't own everything that has been produced or broadcast by them. Often the institution is supposed to provide a platform for young talents to develop (e.g. world class comedy) or generate high quality news and current affairs reporting (which *is* given away free globally).
I'm not a huge fan of the license fee; there doesn't seem to be much public service broadcasting at the moment and the news does get a bit of a pro-Labour bias at the moment (which is quite an achievement, really). But I can't chose to stop paying for it and still watch TV, as I can (and do) for ITV.
See here (Torygraph via Guido, with relevant thanks). Essentially the issue is that there aren't many pro-EU establishment blogs (because even an ardent Europhile like myself finds it impossible to justify things like the CAP or the fact that the Eurocracy hasn't had its accounts signed off, via the Adam Smith Institute).
The European Union has already taken corrupt and borderline illegal action to suppress an anti-fraud journalist, Hans-Martin Tillack, working for Der Stern, because he had the audacity to protect whistle blowers on the Eurostat scandal.
Let me rephrase that... Time is priceless. You can't put a value to it.
A fundamental point of disagreement; time is easy to value. How much someone will pay you for yours, for example. What value you're willing to sell yours at. Seems self-evident and most people put a value on their time on a daily basis by showing up to work.
How many people are going to want to commute between the two? There's not *that* many reasons to make a journey between Shanghai and Beijing, especially as the majority of the combined c.34 million will be factory workers or other low-to-mid grade workers who have no real need to make that journey, let alone on a daily basis.
I'm not sure why you've decided to conflate this project with the Three Gorges Dam. I hadn't, and you can't say that one was a good use of capital so therefore the other must be; that's not logical as there's almost nothing in common except sheer scale.
...they need huge projects just to sustain present living and working conditions of people living there.
I would question this too; if you were an average Beijinger or Shanghainese, would you rather the Chinese government spent that money on a high speed rail link or on a pollution prevention programme? I know which would increase their quality of life more. In my native UK the standard (and emotive) unit of government waste is children's hospitals, to give another example of alternative investment opportunities.
Regarding projects like the ISS or the Internet, you are quite correct about the lack of commercial use for the ISS thus far and the Internet in its early days, but I remind you of space tourism and Google; these projects may start with government investment, but they explode when the private sector gets its hands on them. I'm not sure, however, that it's a valid comparison. After all, it's not exactly a proof-of-concept thing. Things that might go like space exploration or the internet are renewable energy sources or novel materials. Railways have been pretty firmly proved as a concept.
Finally, I'd note that the Hubble Space Telescope and ISS were of high pure scientific value; something that a society does have to decide how highly it will value. Railways are not of scientific value. The engineering experience is good, granted, but good CCS engineering experience would be far more valuable to China in the future, and saleable worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
In the European Union, thanks to Commission intervention, mobile firms *have* to text you to inform you of rates whenever you arrive in a new state.
Roaming is something of a scandal over here in the EU, where we pay astonishing fees to use our phones a couple of hundred miles away with the same company we're signed on to at home. The European Commission has acted against roaming charges before now.
In a similar case recently, a woman was charged £4900(c. US$10000 at the time) by Vodafone because she used a 3g internet connection to watch the Apprentice on iPlayer from France. Vodafone waived the charges in the end.
Be careful when swinging around allegations about Europe. I can't think of any large, western European country subject to revisionism (unless you're a holocaust denier, in which case I'd class you as the revisionist). In Britain if anything our history lessons are more an extended rant on how crappy we were to everyone else and ourselves.
This is the continent with the Netherlands and Scandinavia on it, remember. While Britain, France and Germany have their foibles, you don't get anything like you get with Japan and WWII.
Not that I disagree, but:
Ice in Fuel Caused Heathrow Crash
I suppose it's not technically an engine problem, but it's fairly related. It's just bad luck that you happened to write that two days after the report came out.
I love Mozilla's bug reporting systems. It takes a few moments, dead easy, and they make it really easy as soon as you start using the betas.
People can complain about bugs all they like, but unless they're reported they'll never be fixed. Developers aren't psychic.
Interesting, I had guessed as much but hadn't had it spelled out. Seems a bit of a lunatic way to run it to me, why doesn't a state have an exemption in its state sales tax so as not to undermine local business? After all, surely a firm should relocate to somewhere with a low population (e.g. Wyoming) and avoid places like California or New York like the plague, as this would maximise its target tax-free* market?
*de facto, not de jure.
I had one more thought about this; as one scheme goes out in the open, a new one will be forming in the shadows. Accountability is not what these people want.
Oh please. Labour have increased taxes, introduced more pay for the public sector, expanded the public sector, introduced minimum wage and increased benefits. They've part-nationalised the railways, nationalised a bank and look for all the world as though they're about to nationalise mortgages. If that's not a left-wing agenda, what the hell is?
Besides, the Lib Dems under Clegg/Cable are Liberal, not left. They just agree with personal freedom, which bizarrely makes them perceived as left-wing (even more bizarre since Labour has created one new criminal offence for every day they've been in office).
Not my CIA and FBI, I'm British. :p
Interesting reply. It's nice to get this sort of thing out in the open, but the case of the British DNA database has left me feeling somewhat powerless in the grasp of an over-zealous-yet-strangely-ineffective police state (introduced by our country's socialists, I hasten to add, before people start trying to blame the right).
I'd be shocked if other Western governments, or at least their security services, didn't do something similar. The CIA and MI5 have been known to do this sort of thing in the past, especially during WWII and the cold war. At least the French know about theirs.
In Britain they can take and keep your DNA if you're suspected of a crime, even if you've been acquitted. Many suspect this is why there were so many accusations of breaches of public order at this year's Notting Hill; the Met wanted the DNA of black Londoners.
The concept of a soul is more like phlogiston, that magic substance that had to gain more and more bizarre properties so people could keep it (after all, you can *see* it so it must be there).
I think the time when a soul can be accepted as a reasonable explanation of phenomena by rational individuals has long since passed. If you believe in it as an article of faith, I have no problem with that, but don't pretend it's a scientific theory.
p.s. I've never bought into dark energy either, sounds too much like bullshit. One day I could be proved wrong though...
But it's easy to blame it on women on Slashdot! There are none here to correct you...
I think "Zoology" actually.
DVD-A solved a problem that didn't exist, and satisfied a gap in the market which never materialised.
Exactly. The first time I heard this argument I thought it was weak appeasement, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Better restricted influence than none whatsoever.
...all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union[?]
You can do the latter if you desire to hasten the former.
The google one in TFA is not the Chromium one, but instead;
Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service.
Which seems to me actually to be fairly reasonable. I know Slashdotters hate any kind of censorship, but if I were Google I'd want the right to take stuff off my branded sites for any reason I wanted without fear of lawsuits. What if someone posts copyrighted material or pornography on youtube and someone complains? They can take them down and sort out the rights and wrongs afterwards. The important thing is, the brand is protected.
I do trust Google not to abuse this clause because of something else that Slashdotters tend to neglect; people who want to make money today will, as a rule, want to make money tomorrow too.
This may have been modded funny, but is actually rather insightful.
You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of User Submissions that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in User Comments are perpetual and irrevocable
So they can keep it, but not watch it, broadcast it or transfer it elsewhere? Seems to me this is just to make sure you can't sue them for not wiping the file from their servers the nanosecond you tell them to.
They don't really support Mac and Linux now, and haven't (that I can remember). Even before the advent of iPlayer, radio was available via WMP or *shudder* Realplayer.
But the tech which "supports" Mac and Linux now is what they'd have done anyway if they only supported Windows.
Why should the British people give things away for free outside Britain?
Besides, the BBC don't own everything that has been produced or broadcast by them. Often the institution is supposed to provide a platform for young talents to develop (e.g. world class comedy) or generate high quality news and current affairs reporting (which *is* given away free globally).
I'm not a huge fan of the license fee; there doesn't seem to be much public service broadcasting at the moment and the news does get a bit of a pro-Labour bias at the moment (which is quite an achievement, really). But I can't chose to stop paying for it and still watch TV, as I can (and do) for ITV.
See here (Torygraph via Guido, with relevant thanks). Essentially the issue is that there aren't many pro-EU establishment blogs (because even an ardent Europhile like myself finds it impossible to justify things like the CAP or the fact that the Eurocracy hasn't had its accounts signed off, via the Adam Smith Institute).
The European Union has already taken corrupt and borderline illegal action to suppress an anti-fraud journalist, Hans-Martin Tillack, working for Der Stern, because he had the audacity to protect whistle blowers on the Eurostat scandal.
I read this on the main page. It was laid out with
"Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to
and then a new line, which I was certain was going to start with the word "kill".
Also, they could be a small business, which would mean they might not be used to this kind of transaction.
Let me rephrase that... Time is priceless. You can't put a value to it.
A fundamental point of disagreement; time is easy to value. How much someone will pay you for yours, for example. What value you're willing to sell yours at. Seems self-evident and most people put a value on their time on a daily basis by showing up to work.
How many people are going to want to commute between the two? There's not *that* many reasons to make a journey between Shanghai and Beijing, especially as the majority of the combined c.34 million will be factory workers or other low-to-mid grade workers who have no real need to make that journey, let alone on a daily basis.
I'm not sure why you've decided to conflate this project with the Three Gorges Dam. I hadn't, and you can't say that one was a good use of capital so therefore the other must be; that's not logical as there's almost nothing in common except sheer scale.
...they need huge projects just to sustain present living and working conditions of people living there.
I would question this too; if you were an average Beijinger or Shanghainese, would you rather the Chinese government spent that money on a high speed rail link or on a pollution prevention programme? I know which would increase their quality of life more. In my native UK the standard (and emotive) unit of government waste is children's hospitals, to give another example of alternative investment opportunities.
Regarding projects like the ISS or the Internet, you are quite correct about the lack of commercial use for the ISS thus far and the Internet in its early days, but I remind you of space tourism and Google; these projects may start with government investment, but they explode when the private sector gets its hands on them. I'm not sure, however, that it's a valid comparison. After all, it's not exactly a proof-of-concept thing. Things that might go like space exploration or the internet are renewable energy sources or novel materials. Railways have been pretty firmly proved as a concept.
Finally, I'd note that the Hubble Space Telescope and ISS were of high pure scientific value; something that a society does have to decide how highly it will value. Railways are not of scientific value. The engineering experience is good, granted, but good CCS engineering experience would be far more valuable to China in the future, and saleable worldwide.