Would you say, "don't use email" if a bunch of providers out there started making the contents of your email public? Or how about if your bank started to publish your account balance - would it be your fault for having used on-line banking?
I would say "don't use email provider ", or "don't use bank ".
There are other social networking sites other than Facebook (dozens still current, hundreds been and gone). If people ditched companies that treated them badly, some of their competitors would eventually get big enough to topple them. Hell, Facebook did that to the likes of MySpace, and Twitter is arguably doing the same thing to Facebook now.
Oh, sorry to double post, but I'll add my own citation. FY 2012 Department of Transportation Budget: Federal Highway Administration = $70.5B Federal Transit Administration = $22.4B Federal Railroad Administration = $8.3B Federal Aviation Administration = $18.7B http://www.dot.gov/budget/2012/fy2012budgethighlights.pdf
Ignoring other forms of subsidy (of which there could be many), this puts government spending on rail at less than half that of aviation, just over 10% of roads.
I'd be interested in a citation on that, if you have one. Bearing in mind airlines have been bailed out in the last decade, government owned airports, government funded TSA and FAA, and the fuel tax regime, there are an awful lot of subsidies out there for air travel to compare with.
We could also talk about the subsidies provided to road transport. With the vast majority of roads being free to use (not toll roads), and with road taxes generally not covering maintenance of the road network, it must be in receipt of a fare old whack of tax payer money too.
(Again, not that I'm against any of that- just that it's not fair to compare the modes of transport without considering it).
The airline industry receives large and generous tax subsidies, and still costs as much as it does. I'm not against the subsidies per se, seeing as air travel is a vital utility. But complaining about rail services not being profitable, and advocating air travel instead, is somewhat misleading.
All of which basically mean "cheaper". Which is nice, but hardly a game changer. Whether I pay £1.50 or £2.00 for a bus ticket does no, to me, denote whether I'm living in a futuristic utopia.
(I've not RTFA (surprise), but I've heard this guy touting the idea before).
One of the problems this is supposed to solve is the time/energy wasted in breaking to zero from 150mph and speeding back up again at every stop. The consequences of which are that high speed trains tend to have a very small number of stops, in order to keep the journey time decent. Theoretically, this idea could mean high speed trains that can "stop" at every tiny station on the route and still be fast and efficient.
It sounds like a massively complicated (and incredibly expensive) solution to a not particularly severe problem. It sounds (And would be) very cool, but it'd probably be more effective just to develop more efficient trains with better acceleration and breaking.
140 years still isn't exactly forever. My future grandchildren might still be alive then. If not, their children probably will. If with reduced consumption we could take that to 300 years, I'd feel a lot more comfortable that I can ignore it...
It's probably safe to assume that a car with 10 years and 200,000 miles on the clock has been used pretty much as intensively as any normal user (my car is 1 year older than that, and is only on half that many miles). What usage pattern would you need to adopt in order to knacker the battery in the way you describe?
So, it looks like a giant blue monster out of the darker parts of Japanese adult animation, sounds like dance music played on cheap speakers, walks slowly, and, with that size:weight ratio, probably doesn't do well on windy days. Its "walk on water" demo was a little painful, too.
It's very cool, but I don't envy the guy who has to put together the sales pitch.
Free cloud storage with syncing software preinstalled with the distro. What's not to like? (Aside from the fact it's a cloud service at all- which many people seem surprisingly at ease with).
I don't use it, because I can't think of a reason to. But if you must have 5GB of data in cloud service, I can't see any reason why not Ubuntu One.
On a modern car American-style car, you don't operate the gear box directly (automatic), and you don't control the throttle directly (it's digitally managed), and the breaks are assisted (ABS), and the steering might (in a luxury model) have tracking sensors, and there might be cruise control of varying levels of sophistication. You're still the operator though- you just have to do less to operate the vehicle.
If you drive an automatic car, you'll still be the operator- it's just you'll be doing far less actual things to operate it. Seeing as the automatic cars I've seen demoed are all built for instantaneous manual override by the driver, I'd say that the vehicle's actions are still the responsibility of the driver.
Basically, I'm going to give you a [citation needed] on the statement:
You can't be charged with any sort of driving if you have no legal duty to drive this car.
You're legally obliged to do whatever the law obliges you to do. Unless there's a law somewhere that say that you can't be charged with driving felonies if the car is sufficiently automatic, then I don't buy it.
The precedent is reasonably solid. First you'd determine which vehicle is in the wrong, the same as you would now. The at-fault-car's owner will need to foot the bill as per the current set up (most likely via their insurance company). If the driver believes they were only at fault because someone else is also at fault (the car's manufacturer, the highways agency, etc.), they can launch a law suit against them.
It's no different really to if you crash because your steering malfunctions. You're "at fault", as the driver of the car that crashed, but you could sue your manufacturer or mechanic for selling you a duff car in the first place.
I don't think there's anyone called "gryffwd" (Google comes up with zero results), but technically that would be phonetically regular in Welsh. Would be pronounced "Griffuhd" or something along those lines (although I'm rubbish with Welsh phonics).
I would have assumed that a major water utility would have employed some IT specialists to run their IT systems (that is, "some of us"). I sincerely doubt that the SCADA system was installed and administered by a sewage treatment chemist.
There really is no excuse for it; I very much hope the idiot in charge of their IT security is fired.
In my country, unemployment is 2.5 million, and total job vacancies are 90,000. Average number of people going for each job is 9. Even the least desirable jobs (street sweeper, toilet cleaner, etc.) are currently getting more than 4 applicants per position. For those people, getting a job simply is going to take time.
While true, it wouldn't take long to rectify that if the will power were there. It isn't at the moment, and there won't be while the US law stays basically similar to global law. But if US law goes too far off the beaten path, that'd be all the incentive that companies would need...
So tell me- does The Sun's Page 3 count as porn (when you can buy it without age restriction)? What about "lad's mags", which are basically a whole magazine of page 3? What about a movie with a sex scene in it? A movie which is all sex scenes (i.e. softcore porn)? Maybe just harcore porn- but what's that? Just sexual penetration? Oral sex? What about lots of explicit breast-massaging? Sadomasochism, with lots of whips and whatnot, but no conventional sex?
Different governments will have categorized which of these things are porn and which aren't- but I bet you'll struggle to find a universal definition. The government of the Netherlands and the government of Iran probably don't have definitions that particularly agree.
In my jurisdiction at least, it is statutory rape if you have sex with someone under the relevant age (16). It doesn't matter if they consented or not. It might even have been their idea! It is still, by definition, rape, and you will go to prison for it.
There have even been cases where a boy of 16 years and one month might have sex with his girlfriend, aged 15 years and 11 months, and still be tried and punished for rape.
As for "child porn" that doesn't involve actual sex- it'd almost certainly fall under one of the other categories of child abuse (which is hardly less unsavoury).
Indeedy. I'll tell you what I did to navigate to Slashdot today. I clicked "new tab", then I clicked in the address bar, and then I typed the letter "S". Slashdot being bookmarked or in my recent history (I forget) means that it is one of the top 4 or 5 sites in the autocomplete box. The odds of me actually needing to type out the full URL is slim these days.
I see all software (open source included) as a tool. You have it to do something. If it does something a person wants, they'll like it.
My parents' old desktop PC recently died an electrical death. They own a laptop, but my mum in particular says she prefers a desktop PC for doing proper office work on. So we rifled through our collective back catalogue of computing odds and sods, and I built them a new Frankenstein's computer. It being of very old pedigree, and them already owning a Windows 7 laptop, I decided to pop Xubuntu on it (which is of course loaded full of open source software). My parents love it for what it is; not because they're suddenly Linux enthusiasts, but because it works a treat, is free, and they find it satisfying to reuse hardware that would barely run XP. They like it because it's a tool that works.
I wouldn't want open source software as a Xmas gift. I like Open Office (or Libre Office nowadays) because it works for me. I like sparkplugs- I own a bunch of sparkplugs (inside my car). I am pleased with the existence of these sparkplugs, and will buy them again if ever I need to. But that doesn't mean I want sparkplugs as a stocking filler this year...
Why? Companies will use whatever is cheapest and easiest. All services are no-name at the beginning.
If a big game company (Activision, say) wanted to release a game for Linux, they'd set about figuring out what's the easiest way of doing it- standalone, through an existing service, or in partnership with someone like Steam. They'll pick whatever comes out top. No reason why a "no-name" startup like Desura won't be picked, if the price and facilities offered are right.
Hell, most big game companies would feel happy enough to sell their game through multiple channels. I can pick up the same games on Steam, GamersGate, Game.com, and all sorts of websites- the developers don't care who makes the sale, as long as they get the sale. By that logic, there's no reason why they wouldn't use Desura (if, as above, the particulars suited them) in addition to any other services that become available (e.g., Steam for Linux).
Steam would kill Desura by stealing their customer base, not by stealing their titles.
In the UK, obviously medicine IS getting paid for. But it's free at point of use (minus a flat-rate prescription charge for medicine from pharmacies). As most funding comes out of taxes, you're already paying for your medicine (whether you use it or not).
It's a good system in many respects. But it does remove an obvious barrier to a person going into their doctor's office and demanding a course of antibiotics for the disease they believe they've got after reading Wikipedia. If you knew you had to fork out £500 for it, you'd probably be a little more frugal.
Leg joints would be just as knackered by abrasive dust, unless you could 100% filter it out (the same as for wheels). All moving parts would have essentially the same problem.
As I've already posted, the Saturn V (which the Falcon Heavy is only just comparable to) was designed to carry 3 men and a small suite of science experiments to the moon (and only land two of them). There's so much difference between that and building an industrial, permanent outpost that it's mind boggling.
Slashdot Mirror
Would you say, "don't use email" if a bunch of providers out there started making the contents of your email public? Or how about if your bank started to publish your account balance - would it be your fault for having used on-line banking?
I would say "don't use email provider ", or "don't use bank ".
There are other social networking sites other than Facebook (dozens still current, hundreds been and gone). If people ditched companies that treated them badly, some of their competitors would eventually get big enough to topple them. Hell, Facebook did that to the likes of MySpace, and Twitter is arguably doing the same thing to Facebook now.
NoScript to the rescue again, I guess.
Oh, sorry to double post, but I'll add my own citation.
FY 2012 Department of Transportation Budget:
Federal Highway Administration = $70.5B
Federal Transit Administration = $22.4B
Federal Railroad Administration = $8.3B
Federal Aviation Administration = $18.7B
http://www.dot.gov/budget/2012/fy2012budgethighlights.pdf
Ignoring other forms of subsidy (of which there could be many), this puts government spending on rail at less than half that of aviation, just over 10% of roads.
I'd be interested in a citation on that, if you have one. Bearing in mind airlines have been bailed out in the last decade, government owned airports, government funded TSA and FAA, and the fuel tax regime, there are an awful lot of subsidies out there for air travel to compare with.
We could also talk about the subsidies provided to road transport. With the vast majority of roads being free to use (not toll roads), and with road taxes generally not covering maintenance of the road network, it must be in receipt of a fare old whack of tax payer money too.
(Again, not that I'm against any of that- just that it's not fair to compare the modes of transport without considering it).
The airline industry receives large and generous tax subsidies, and still costs as much as it does. I'm not against the subsidies per se, seeing as air travel is a vital utility. But complaining about rail services not being profitable, and advocating air travel instead, is somewhat misleading.
All of which basically mean "cheaper". Which is nice, but hardly a game changer. Whether I pay £1.50 or £2.00 for a bus ticket does no, to me, denote whether I'm living in a futuristic utopia.
(I've not RTFA (surprise), but I've heard this guy touting the idea before).
One of the problems this is supposed to solve is the time/energy wasted in breaking to zero from 150mph and speeding back up again at every stop. The consequences of which are that high speed trains tend to have a very small number of stops, in order to keep the journey time decent. Theoretically, this idea could mean high speed trains that can "stop" at every tiny station on the route and still be fast and efficient.
It sounds like a massively complicated (and incredibly expensive) solution to a not particularly severe problem. It sounds (And would be) very cool, but it'd probably be more effective just to develop more efficient trains with better acceleration and breaking.
140 years still isn't exactly forever. My future grandchildren might still be alive then. If not, their children probably will. If with reduced consumption we could take that to 300 years, I'd feel a lot more comfortable that I can ignore it...
It's probably safe to assume that a car with 10 years and 200,000 miles on the clock has been used pretty much as intensively as any normal user (my car is 1 year older than that, and is only on half that many miles). What usage pattern would you need to adopt in order to knacker the battery in the way you describe?
So, it looks like a giant blue monster out of the darker parts of Japanese adult animation, sounds like dance music played on cheap speakers, walks slowly, and, with that size:weight ratio, probably doesn't do well on windy days. Its "walk on water" demo was a little painful, too.
It's very cool, but I don't envy the guy who has to put together the sales pitch.
Free cloud storage with syncing software preinstalled with the distro. What's not to like? (Aside from the fact it's a cloud service at all- which many people seem surprisingly at ease with).
I don't use it, because I can't think of a reason to. But if you must have 5GB of data in cloud service, I can't see any reason why not Ubuntu One.
On a modern car American-style car, you don't operate the gear box directly (automatic), and you don't control the throttle directly (it's digitally managed), and the breaks are assisted (ABS), and the steering might (in a luxury model) have tracking sensors, and there might be cruise control of varying levels of sophistication. You're still the operator though- you just have to do less to operate the vehicle.
If you drive an automatic car, you'll still be the operator- it's just you'll be doing far less actual things to operate it. Seeing as the automatic cars I've seen demoed are all built for instantaneous manual override by the driver, I'd say that the vehicle's actions are still the responsibility of the driver.
Basically, I'm going to give you a [citation needed] on the statement:
You can't be charged with any sort of driving if you have no legal duty to drive this car.
You're legally obliged to do whatever the law obliges you to do. Unless there's a law somewhere that say that you can't be charged with driving felonies if the car is sufficiently automatic, then I don't buy it.
The precedent is reasonably solid. First you'd determine which vehicle is in the wrong, the same as you would now. The at-fault-car's owner will need to foot the bill as per the current set up (most likely via their insurance company). If the driver believes they were only at fault because someone else is also at fault (the car's manufacturer, the highways agency, etc.), they can launch a law suit against them.
It's no different really to if you crash because your steering malfunctions. You're "at fault", as the driver of the car that crashed, but you could sue your manufacturer or mechanic for selling you a duff car in the first place.
I don't think there's anyone called "gryffwd" (Google comes up with zero results), but technically that would be phonetically regular in Welsh. Would be pronounced "Griffuhd" or something along those lines (although I'm rubbish with Welsh phonics).
I would have assumed that a major water utility would have employed some IT specialists to run their IT systems (that is, "some of us"). I sincerely doubt that the SCADA system was installed and administered by a sewage treatment chemist.
There really is no excuse for it; I very much hope the idiot in charge of their IT security is fired.
It must be nice to be you, 'eh?
In my country, unemployment is 2.5 million, and total job vacancies are 90,000. Average number of people going for each job is 9. Even the least desirable jobs (street sweeper, toilet cleaner, etc.) are currently getting more than 4 applicants per position. For those people, getting a job simply is going to take time.
While true, it wouldn't take long to rectify that if the will power were there. It isn't at the moment, and there won't be while the US law stays basically similar to global law. But if US law goes too far off the beaten path, that'd be all the incentive that companies would need...
So tell me- does The Sun's Page 3 count as porn (when you can buy it without age restriction)? What about "lad's mags", which are basically a whole magazine of page 3? What about a movie with a sex scene in it? A movie which is all sex scenes (i.e. softcore porn)? Maybe just harcore porn- but what's that? Just sexual penetration? Oral sex? What about lots of explicit breast-massaging? Sadomasochism, with lots of whips and whatnot, but no conventional sex?
Different governments will have categorized which of these things are porn and which aren't- but I bet you'll struggle to find a universal definition. The government of the Netherlands and the government of Iran probably don't have definitions that particularly agree.
In my jurisdiction at least, it is statutory rape if you have sex with someone under the relevant age (16). It doesn't matter if they consented or not. It might even have been their idea! It is still, by definition, rape, and you will go to prison for it.
There have even been cases where a boy of 16 years and one month might have sex with his girlfriend, aged 15 years and 11 months, and still be tried and punished for rape.
As for "child porn" that doesn't involve actual sex- it'd almost certainly fall under one of the other categories of child abuse (which is hardly less unsavoury).
Indeedy. I'll tell you what I did to navigate to Slashdot today. I clicked "new tab", then I clicked in the address bar, and then I typed the letter "S". Slashdot being bookmarked or in my recent history (I forget) means that it is one of the top 4 or 5 sites in the autocomplete box. The odds of me actually needing to type out the full URL is slim these days.
I see all software (open source included) as a tool. You have it to do something. If it does something a person wants, they'll like it.
My parents' old desktop PC recently died an electrical death. They own a laptop, but my mum in particular says she prefers a desktop PC for doing proper office work on. So we rifled through our collective back catalogue of computing odds and sods, and I built them a new Frankenstein's computer. It being of very old pedigree, and them already owning a Windows 7 laptop, I decided to pop Xubuntu on it (which is of course loaded full of open source software). My parents love it for what it is; not because they're suddenly Linux enthusiasts, but because it works a treat, is free, and they find it satisfying to reuse hardware that would barely run XP. They like it because it's a tool that works.
I wouldn't want open source software as a Xmas gift. I like Open Office (or Libre Office nowadays) because it works for me. I like sparkplugs- I own a bunch of sparkplugs (inside my car). I am pleased with the existence of these sparkplugs, and will buy them again if ever I need to. But that doesn't mean I want sparkplugs as a stocking filler this year...
Why? Companies will use whatever is cheapest and easiest. All services are no-name at the beginning.
If a big game company (Activision, say) wanted to release a game for Linux, they'd set about figuring out what's the easiest way of doing it- standalone, through an existing service, or in partnership with someone like Steam. They'll pick whatever comes out top. No reason why a "no-name" startup like Desura won't be picked, if the price and facilities offered are right.
Hell, most big game companies would feel happy enough to sell their game through multiple channels. I can pick up the same games on Steam, GamersGate, Game.com, and all sorts of websites- the developers don't care who makes the sale, as long as they get the sale. By that logic, there's no reason why they wouldn't use Desura (if, as above, the particulars suited them) in addition to any other services that become available (e.g., Steam for Linux).
Steam would kill Desura by stealing their customer base, not by stealing their titles.
In the UK, obviously medicine IS getting paid for. But it's free at point of use (minus a flat-rate prescription charge for medicine from pharmacies). As most funding comes out of taxes, you're already paying for your medicine (whether you use it or not).
It's a good system in many respects. But it does remove an obvious barrier to a person going into their doctor's office and demanding a course of antibiotics for the disease they believe they've got after reading Wikipedia. If you knew you had to fork out £500 for it, you'd probably be a little more frugal.
Leg joints would be just as knackered by abrasive dust, unless you could 100% filter it out (the same as for wheels). All moving parts would have essentially the same problem.
As I've already posted, the Saturn V (which the Falcon Heavy is only just comparable to) was designed to carry 3 men and a small suite of science experiments to the moon (and only land two of them). There's so much difference between that and building an industrial, permanent outpost that it's mind boggling.
It IS doable. But not in 8 years, with no money.