[...] And that's the main purpose of democracy; to say to the common man: "You voted for him so it's your fault that he's making fucktarded decisions", or "You voted against him but most people voted for him, so you're wrong".
Or as the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork would put it: "A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault."
In any case, this is not the least bit surprising.. Any system that can be abused will be abused. It's simply a matter of time, access and motivation (greed, in this case). And pretty much any system can be abused. It's kinda like trying to design a fool-proof system.. You just need a more ingenious fool to break it.
But instead of this partisan bash-fest we're seeing in so many comments ("YOUR guys did it!", "YOUR guys have been doing it for longer!"...), you should be focusing on the fact that this story, even moreso than the numerous Diebold debacles, highlights the absolute need for openness and accountability in the election process..
Like I said above, no one's going to find a magic bullet to this problem, because the problem is one of trust and convenience.. You're not inclined to trust election results whenever they don't fit with your expectations, so you want accountability. But at the same time, you want a system that makes it easy to vote (and you seem to have particularly complicated voting procedures), one that can be used by "computer-illiterate" people (so you don't end up marginalizing large sections of the population), basically one that doesn't make voting a pain in the ass.
Such a balance is hard, but can be achieved to a certain degree -- and that is what you should be demanding of your local, State and Federal government. But don't deceive yourself: you'll never be able to completely discard fraud.. Like I said, it's only a matter of time, access and motivation -- which isn't to say you shouldn't go through the motions and at least try to design a system that's "open" and works as intended.. Which is where BOTH parties have consistently failed over the past decade. It's not on their agendas and doesn't seem to be a major preoccupation to either of the two major parties (outside of episodic sabre-rattling when something like this happens -- after that, it's always back to business as usual). Not to mention other less-than-ethical-but-still-absolutely-legal practises like changing the voting districts around so that the demographics favor this candidate/party more than the previous map..
In my country, we still vote on paper ballots.. Ballots that get cast in a ballot box, and then get hand-counted. Technology is involved only in the process of communicating the results to the Electoral Committee. Each party nominates representatives to the circuits where they have lists on the ballots, and the thing is done only with these representatives.. A central government organization with "independent observers/oversight" is in charge or tallying the votes..
And guess what: 11 million in population, about 7-8 million registered voters -- of which about 4-5 million on average actually vote. Voting starts at 8am and ends 7pm. Because one of our islands is on a different timezone than the continent (one hour behind) all projections are banned until 8pm (ie, when their voting assemblies close). Projections at 8pm (usually very accurate), real results start at 8:30pm (before that there isn't enough data). Usually you have all the relevant results in by 10pm.. In most cases ALL results are in no later than 11:30pm (except for absentee and overseas ballots -- those, by constitutional decree get counted at a later date).
Not the fastest system, not very technologically advanced, but works like a charm everytime.. It's very very rare that even suspicions of fraud are raised.
You've hit the nail in the head, as far as I'm concerned.. The "Assistance OFF" mode (that's what they call it) was a seriously bone-headed move on their part. The only thing you could say for it is that it can sometimes give you nice visuals of your acrobatic moves, but it doesn't even begin to mitigate the crap it is to actually fly that way.
It's a stupid gimmick (done mostly for the visuals) and a really moronic way to implement an Expert mode, akin to just making your bullets do less damage and the enemies' more when you raise the difficulty level on a FPS.
It makes even simple manouvering exceedingly difficult because half the time you're trying to determine what exactly is the plane's heading, its roll, pitch (and forget about height -- damn near impossible to determine that) so that you can then translate your stick moves to the action you want to perform. The whole thing feels so detached that it defeats the purpose of a mode where you're supposed to have full control of the aircraft.
Granted, this game was never supposed to be a real simulator.. The market is just not there (Flight Sim is really good, but how many people do you know have it?), so this game was always going to be more arcade than anything else. And let's face it, the same reviewers who ranted about the lack of "realism" (or the fact that it's not a real sim), would bitch if the game forced you to take off from some airstrip, spend most of the mission either heading for your targets or patrolling the empty skies, then take a long, lonely flight path back to land on some other airstrip -- all the while worrying about the likes of fuel and realistic ammo reserves (which reminds me of a really old video game -- Strike Eagle? -- that was exactly like that and yet really kicked ass).
There was always going to be some dumbing down to make the game more "fun", more action-packed and therefore more appealing to the masses, but they could have pulled it off without sacrificing the game mechanics is such a terribly broken way.
I was actually a little disappointed when I heard the feed.. Hadn't expected it to be just a robotic reader spelling out the sequence.
Thought they might have just used the fact that three of the bases start with letters that are also musical notes in the english notation (A, C and G).. Choose a suitable 4th note for Thymine (maybe E, its last letter) and then run it through a midi sampler..
To spice it up, they could do some fun stuff with combinations, for example altering the tempo when you found repetitions of the same base, something for sharp/flat (just to mix it up a bit), etc..
Maybe not the point of this experiment (well, if you can call it that -- this isn't exactly science anyway), but as with the previous graphics experiment, it might even produce some interesting tune somewhere down the line.
As it is, though a nice code hack I'm sure, the result is a tad boring.
No, really.. Why? I can easily see that it IS a milestone, sure, but an _important_ one? Why, exactly?
We're not talking about sales figures here, it's also not a measure of the quality of the title (not that it doesn't have quality, only that "# of multiplayer games served" is hardly a metric for it -- I'm assuming that this is about ONLINE matches, not local single-player ones).. It _could_ mean something in terms of the game's longevity and reaching this mark in 1.5 years could be considered impressive.. But even here, I don't think I've ever seen other publishers announcing the number of online matches played on their games, and how fast they got to THEIR milestones, so again we don't really have that much data to compare this to and therefore no way to determine whether this is indeed impressive or not.
I mean, I keep thinking of the likes of Counter-Strike (both versions of it), Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, to name a few.. All Steam titles, and they regularly publish extensive statistics for the games they host and yet I've never seen them tout this particular metric.
I dunno, it sounds like McDonnalds advertising style to me.. In fact the original announcement post pretty much mimmicks that campaign.
Kudos to Bungie and all, and I can certainly see why THEY are excited, but other than the data they've provided for Halo 2, we really don't have enough to say whether this is truly impressive or just deserving of a lukewarm "well done".
Speaking as a portuguese, I can tell you that the whole "-gate" postfixing is senseless.. It just doesn't carry weight around here as it does over there. I'd wager the submitter knew this, but just added it anyway because a) he/she is "close" to the matter (probably belongs to the group who's denouncing the situation) and therefore takes this issue seriously and b) wanted to exarcerbate the impact of this news piece by way of a commonly used word-gimmick.. After all, your own media abuses the term whenever some sort of scandal crops up.
As far as "-gate" scandals go, there's another one a LOT more prone to getting that tag (allegations of impropriety or downright corruption that may implicate the current Prime-Minister regarding the licensing of a big real estate development when he was Minister for the Environment -- and therefore had specific oversight on these matters), a huge mess. And even THAT didn't get tagged "Freeport-gate". It would mean nothing to the majority of people here, many would probably not even get the historical reference (even with "Frost vs Nixon").
To be honest, and again speaking as a portuguese citizen, this is the first I'm hearing about it (and the first time I've heard about this particular portal, to be frank). As far as I can tell, this relates to a governmental portal for job procurement/hiring.. The "bidding" here either relates to companies wishing to offer services, applying for consulting positions (getting contracts) or for people trying to get employed.
It's obviously a Bad Thing(TM) but I doubt it was done intentionally and even less that MS had anything to do with it. Not that MS is above this, of course, and they do enjoy a cosy relationship with Portugal and portuguese institutions (we're a small country and they're a BIIIIG corporation -- it's "good business" to keep a major player/investor like that happy, however it may sicken me that we need it) but as other posters have pointed out, this is Vortal's own doing.
Silverlight is a new technology and Microsoft has been investing heavily around here.. I personally know many aspiring developers (as well as fully-fledged software engineers) who genuinely think Microsoft is God's gift to software engineering.. And it doesn't help that MS does indeed get some things right now and then.:)
The way I see it, whomever made the decision to use SL (and the ensuing IE-optimized html code -- even the places you can go without Silverlight installed really suck with Firefox, the usability/interoperability is seriously broken) didn't think things through, or honestly felt that Silverlight is the Next Big Thing(TM), and that going with it would be a clever move.
It's another reflection of the worst thing that Microsoft has managed to instill into so many people, often through the deals they broker with education institutions: the mono-culture mentality.. That only Windows matters (in fact, for nearly all non-CS students, Windows is pretty much IT, and even Apple has only recently begun to show up on their mental map). That as long as you develop for THEIR platform and use their technologies, you'll reach that huge percentage of users, the magic Windows OS desktop-share.. And that the rest basically don't matter. It's so sad seeing this happen in the very places that used to be all about inclusion, early adoption of ALL technologies and diversity.
The submitter over-dramatized the impact that this is having over here, but I'm glad that the complaint went through and hope they can coax the European Courts to issue a legally binding EU-wide mandate on interoperability.
Um.. You DO realize that what you refer to as "Big Pharma" are multinational business corps with many research facilities spread throughout the globe, who make extensive use of grant programs to get Universities worldwide to do some of their legwork, and who basically have their hands in pretty much all the "pies". There aren't US "Big Pharma" corps, anymore than there are European "Big Pharma".. They boil down to just a handful of entities who directly own or control hundreds (if not more) of subsidiaries, and they're ALL global players.
Yes, the fact that the previous US President banned research on (embryonic) stem cells did put a wrinkle on the worldwide research being done in the field.. On the one hand, the US market for drugs and medical treatments is too big to ignore, so there was less of an incentive to develop technologies, procedures and know-how on stuff that the big corps might not be able to deploy in such a profitable market (and thus reducing their perceived return on that investment). On the other hand, there are many great minds working in those fields in the US (both native and foreigners), often with ties to education institutions, and it wouldn't be so easy to uproot all those people just so they could send them somewhere where they could legally do/continue research.
So, for the "Big Pharma" it just made sense to look into other venues of research, or for ways to bypass the ban by using other types of cells with which you could eventually get the same results. And in this regard, while I consider the ban to have been a huge mistake (especially the totally bogus reason for said ban), we haven't really lost anything because the other venues pursued would have to be done eventually anyway, all the better that it happened when the corps were so eager to get results that could translate into money.
I don't know if there were (many) other countries following suit on the ban, but I do know that it was and still is a sensitive issue in many countries in Europe, so maybe in the end the money ended up drying in other places too.. But it hasn't been completely abandoned either, as I remember reading several studies published these last 8 years relating to research done on embryonic stem cells.
Directly and indirectly, the US does have a BIG impact in the world in many areas (which is probably why so many of us follow what happens over there so closely -- and become so obnoxiously opinionated).. But don't think others wouldn't step forward to pick up the slack if you guys over there went the Amish way, either.:)
Like I said, this is totally bogus. What I said after that was just an idea to mitigate the impact if this kind of thing can't be prevented (or until it gets overthrown).
Yeah, what you said is indeed creepy. I mean, the whole checking the license plates I can get.. It's YOUR jacket they're looking up, and it might help a cop approach a potentially dangerous individual with added caution. But where in this situation they'd be checking information that pertains to you, every other example mentioned consists of putting you up against every possible outstanding case and see what they can come up with. It's a complete perversion of the presumption of guilt.
I dunno how accurate the cop shows are (any of the CSI series, for example) but it always pissed me off whenever they took a suspect's prints or DNA and used it to check any DB.. I mean, even in the situations where they got a warrant to obtain that information (I don't think they should be able to bully or brow-beat compliance out of you, much less trick you to give up your right to keep that information to yourself -- the tactic of giving you a drink so that they can later attempt to extract DNA or fingerprints from the can is completely underhanded.. if you can't get a judge to sign the order, than you've got no business getting that information), even then, the scope of ANY comparison should be limited to whatever crime you're suspected of, period.
That they can take DNA or fingerprints obtained from a crime scene and check them against a national DB, well, that's honest police work. To subject samples obtained from a suspect to the same treatment is a perversion of the fundamentals of the judicial system (at least in a free, democratic country).
To expand the law so that it allows police and other law enforcement agencies to massively collect data from anyone who just happens to piss them off, is ludicrous and very, very scary.
I get what you're saying but that kind of already exists.. It's called 'Statute of Limitations' and has a limited scope (as in, in some countries a murder case never expires). If this comes into play, I don't think you'll be able to limit the admissibility of that DNA sample beneath the time limit imposed by that offense's Statute of Limitation.
I think this is totally bogus, but if it does go forward, then we'd probably be better off limiting the scope of application of that sample. What I mean is, your DNA collected in connection to any given case cannot be used outside of the scope of that particular case. You shouldn't be able to use it to check for possible matches in outstanding cases (a CLEAR violation of the presumption of innocence and would lead to a "fishing expedition"-gallore).
If it turns out you're guilty, then by all means, if your law allows you to, include it in some national DB.. Until then, you're off the grid. This provides no incentive to keep the data beyond what's strictly needed, and might mean they destroy your sample sooner, rather than later, if you're cleared.
It's funny, you know? In my country we do have a national DB for fingerprints.. We do have a national ID card (that's where you get your fingerprints taken) but the law clearly forbids using THAT database for any sort of criminal investigation purposes. It's assumed it'd mean presuming guilt on the part of the _whole_ population everytime you'd run a search through it. Can't imagine why any other country would proceed differently.
For a minute there I thought I was the only one. All this stuff about "everyone has been affected by now" or "blockers don't work anymore" and I kept thinking "hell, are we talking about the same web here?"
I mean, I highly doubt some of the sites I visit don't have aggressive ads (in fact, I'm reminded of it everytime I'm forced to use IE -- luckily that only happens every once in a while), and I can't remember the last time my FF has given me any pains when it comes to annoying ads.
Most of the time I don't even use NoScript (need it disabled for a number of reasons).
So what's the problem, again? There IS a solution, it's called AdBlockPlus.. Ohh, you mean the somewhat lame, built-in pop-up blockers in (mostly) IE. Well then, I think you've got more serious things to worry about than this. >:)
Lol.. Man, I totally missed it. It's been so long since I've watched the X-Files (refused to watch the last movie, wasn't really too keen on the last few seasons when they suddenly changed the "mythology") that I didn't make the connection. All is clear now!:)
Damn, man.. Yet another patch and yet again it manages to screw something up?! We're either talking some major bad luck or an assinine QC.
I was actually looking forward to playing it on my brand new machine, until it finally came out and everyone started bitching about all the problems they were having. So instead, I took that money, and with the perfect storm of coincidences (huge amazon uk x-mas deal, plus near parity between the sterling pound and the euro at the time) and bought 3 games for my (also brand new) PS3.. And that included the ps3 version of GTAIV.
As for the DLC.. We're probably still talking about Xbox360 exclusive and, not having one, wouldn't make any difference to me. But looking at what's available as DLC on other platforms (mainly the ps3 store) I really don't see myself paying 20-30-or even-40% of normal retail prices for relatively minor additions. But that's just me: when I actually pay for/buy a game at these ridiculous prices (and I actually do that more often now than I did a few years ago -- IF the game is good enough) I feel ripped off if the devs "saved" some stuff that should be included by default, only because they thought they could milk some more green from me.
I'll admit that in some cases, DLC actually does bring a lot to the table (well thought-out episodic releases, for one -- and I mean the real sort, just because they _call_ it episodic, it doesn't mean it is), and I found that the cases where it did work for me, the original game wasn't priced so high, and the DLC is equally priced at a lower point.. But still, seems like every game studio out there at the moment are turning to this, and not thinking it through. Let's see what happens to Gran Turismo 5 when it comes out. Somehow I get the feeling that when they said over 900 cars would be available, they didn't mean _with the actual game_. And being a long time gamer, that really sucks.
Umm.. at the risk of hearing a *woosh* in the next few seconds, I don't think "shadow" (in this context) means what you think it means.
Whenever you hear something like "the shadow minister for foreign affairs", they're referring to the guy (or gal) in the major opposition party who is their current "authority" in the field (in my example, foreign affairs), or at the most, in some cases, the person who's currently in line for that office should the opposition win the next general elections (or equivalent) and form government.
This is not some lower-level, deputy-minister/under-secretary type, who actually works for/in the government that's proposing this bill.
In other words, we're talking about the people who are trying to oust the current government, so it's no surprise that they take whatever opportunity they get to snipe at them. Besides, as others have pointed out above, they're not exactly squeaky-clean in this matter either, having proposed something similar in the past when they were in office (what's worse, they were allegedly doing it as some sort of a back-room deal to advance some other bill).
My sentiments exactly.. Look, I wasn't advocating against the whole thing, and I'm definitely not what you'd call a luddite. Rather, I was pointing out the many caveats that need to be seriously addressed before any major data mining starts.
Keep in mind that ouside of data-mining, there will still be full transmition of EHRs between medical institutions. Say you're on vacation in DC, for a future President's inauguration, for example. You get hit by a car and get admitted to a hospital. Now, aside from all the urgent measures that need to be taken to ensure your survival, there might be vital information that both the EMTs and the doctors need to provide you with treatment that won't kill you (allergies and pre-existing conditions come to mind). They'll need to pull up YOUR records from the system. These records are obviously the whole enchilada and thus, full of personal info, and as such, they'll circulate through the system in its full form. Encrypted or not, for such a widespread system (just counting hospitals, how many points of access would that make?), there would be great deal of "points of entry" for attacks. Just think of what's happened to the DoJ, the DoE, the DoS and the whole thing about malware potentially syphoning sensitive information. Think that won't happen in hospitals?
For the data-mining purposes, the data may well be anonimized, sure.. But at what point will that happen? This is critical. Also, the same patient's medical records need to be traceable for future reference studies. For a lot of purposes, you wouldn't really need to keep track of individual patients, global numbers would more than suffice. But for many other studies, there needs to be a way, a slashdot-like UID, that is unequivocally tied to the same person's medical history. Without that ability to track progress on a per-patient basis, many good things will not be possible.
Now, of course this doesn't mean that you're tracking that _patient_ or even that you'd know who the person was, but for such a system, there would have to be either a method for consistently creating those IDs, such that the same person would be assigned the same number everytime, regardless of all the things that can change throughout one's life, or a DB with an assignment table that kept track of who's who.
This second method would obviously be a major security risk and being that that DB would be in constant use, stripping new data of personal info and slapping that person's UID on it, I just don't think you'd be able to secure it. Not tightly enough.
The smart way to go about it would be to create those UIDs using something like an MD5 hash of the portion of personal data that never changes. The trouble is, when you get right down to it, there's not much data that _isn't_ subject to change. Name, any geographical info, even driver's license can't reliably be used. You'd be stuck with the same stuff that has given so many headaches in the past: SSNs and the like. In other words, the amount of data to be hashed would be small, and the smaller the input, the more exploitable the hash method would be and the more susceptible to brute-forcing the whole thing would become.
In fact, given a simple combination of SSN, and little more info, if you could get your hands on the hash method employed in generating the UIDs, you'd probably be better off just generating all the possible data (after all, you'd know which SSNs are possible, which ones no longer interest you [ie, dead people], and the same could be said of the rest of the data) and then matching the hashes with actual EHRs and voila.. No more patient anonimity.
The problem in my mind isn't the progress of science or society. I do worry about the ever-increasing erosion of privacy, and even moreso with the growing disregard for how important that privacy is. But this also isn't my "beef" here. My problem here is that the people who'll be making the final decisions won't be knowledgeable enough to understand all the potential problems, and unless their (hopefully more knowledgeable) advisors do their jobs, I see this thing being rushed out the door with a security model worse than even the ill-fated Diebold machines.
I know the article was about EHRs in the US, but I was giving my take based on my non-US experience. Remember I talked about interoperability standarts being put forth? I never got to see those in action because I had moved on to another field by then, but the systems I knew of the kind you described were usually provided by the same vendor and did it all..
Most of those products were also developed in-house by the vendor. And even then, sometimes some parts had trouble playing nice with other parts. Transitioning to a different (more modern) system tended to be a serious pain, especially so if you were also switching vendors. I'm assuming that hasn't really changed. Yes, the standards may facilitate the way each system shares information with the others, but the way they STORE the information is critical when you're switching products/vendors and need to convert all the stored data, and the people you're ditching aren't usually very cooperative in that process.
I know doctors over there have many reasons to dislike insurance companies, malpractice insurance premiums being one of them. They also see patients being consistently screwed out of treatments because it's either "not covered" or "experimental" or simply "our doctors don't feel it's necessary", and I'm sure they don't like it. My problem isn't with (most) doctors as they, more than anyone else, understand how critical doctor-patient confidentiality (and the trust it generates) is to their profession.
But if I've kept up with the topic correctly, the plan also contains provisions to have some sort of way to compile data from all possible sources and then proceed to mine it. Now, even if the information that would allow patient identification is removed, this still means that a huge swath of information will be available to anyone who qualifies.
Sure, a whole score of great things can come from this, but I still worry about all that info bouncing around. Doctors may be very good at keeping patient's privacy and have no interest in screwing that up on behalf of, as you put it, "money grubbing (insurance) companies", but at this point, it won't just be them doing the whole privacy-keeping. It'll be the system and its security model. And I just have very little faith that a system that needs to be so widespread will be more secure than other systems that also deal with sensitive information: credit card info, social security records, tax records, etc.. All of which have been consistently cracked/hacked into.
While I would agree with you on most points, as it matches my personal experience with EHR systems (ie. that the systems I've seen in place so far tend to be more secure than the equivalent paper-trail), I think the point most people are trying to get across is that, for the most part, those systems exist as completely separate entities and what little interaction exists between the DBs of those different entities is easy to monitor.. For now.
In my country the majority of health services are provided by the State through State-funded (or public) Medical Institutions. Most of them have, in recent years, deployed their own versions of flow-control, occupation-rates monitoring, stock accounting, resource allocation and (more to the point) patient medical information systems. There are, as you might expect, several vendors out there for these integrated systems and even though most of these institutions are funded primarily by the State, even Medical Institutions that "belong"/operate/form the very same healthcare network (ie, they serve the same population, each on different levels with a small degree of services overlap), you don't usually find them using the same vendor's product. Which basically means they don't usually play well with each other (for example, trying to convert one system's DBs to another because the hospital switched vendors can be a freaking nightmare, don't even get me started on bad DB design!).
To tackle this, interoperability standards were set forth (although I don't exactly know how well _that's_ working).. But the truth is, very few information is actually shared through the systems themselves. There simply isn't a centralized way, much less a centralized database, that can give _anyone_ (doctors, nurses, the patient him/herself or the State) access to all your medical information. You're usually limited to what that particular institution has on file, the file they've built from every visit to their facilities, and whatever files/tests you've brought with you.
This means that you need to supply the rest or (re)do all sorts of tests.. And I agree that in many cases this is the best way to go. It's the way doctors are trained to operate. Blind faith in charts can kill your patient as fast as completely disregarding them.
Back on topic, though, what I believe has most people worrying about this is the whole notion of near-free information flow, and who actually gets to access it, security policies notwithstanding. With a population of a couple hundred million people (far larger than my country's), the volume of information would be gigantic, as would be the flow of information back and forth between medical institutions. To the point where monitoring, let alone investigating, every single apparent breach in data transmition/sharing policy would become impractical. We've seen that happen in other supposedly high-security systems (credit card info, anyone? -- and the corporations actually HAVE an interest in keeping these private!). Add to that the many greedy corporations just itching to make money/sell all sorts of services off of that information (I mean, it's just too good to pass), or to use it to simply refuse you service, and you have a potentially very dangerous situation. I don't think it's a matter of "if" the system is going to be gamed but more of a "when". There's just too much money involved.
Even if there aren't currently any plans to actually centralize the information (even in a "cloud-like" system), or facilitate the hassle-free sharing of information, I'm pretty sure the "special interest groups" would soon find a way to push that through.. It's to their advantage, after all, and it would be just a small change in actual policy. I don't dispute the many benefits that might come of this, but I'm also a cinic and have very little faith in any corporation's "don't be evil" pledges. The further erosion of patient-doctor privilidge, more than anything else, scares the begeezus out of me.
Now science is coming to the aid of line-cutters everywhere.. Though I'm usually not the type of person willing to wait in line for hours (regardless of the reason), seeing someone cutting into a line (however short it may be) really pisses me off.
It's one of those tell-tale things about a person's character. It implies, at the least, that the line-cutter lacks civility, or simply couldn't care less for "social norms". At the most, it's a sign of someone who simply thinks the "rules" do not apply to them, and everything that can get them ahead is fair game. In the latter case, it's also often accompanied with smugness: "stupid idiots waiting in line."
Sure, cutting a line is by no means a serious offense. And in most cases these lines are purely informal, so one could make the argument that cutting the line is a simple display of expedience, and that no rules have been broken.. But seeing as though many of society's rules are entirely unwritten (and often unspoken), such attitude is disruptive to say the least. Not trying to spread FUD here, but it's the kind of thing that when widespread, brings nothing but chaos into even the most simple of things.
I've often thought that half of the athletes in the Olympics simply shouldn't be there.. Getting your ass thoroughly kicked in the qualifying rounds of the single event you participate in, doesn't seem to justify the country's investment. For most, it's just an "experience"; or, if you prefer, a government-sponsored vacation.
A close friend of mine used to be our national champ for a couple of events in swimming.. He was a really good swimmer, very hard-working and dedicated in his training.. and even though he had pretty good times, certainly enough to qualify for the Sydney Olympics, he simply refused to go. His reasoning was that the bar was set too low, and that though a good swimmer, he wouldn't be a match for the world's top swimmers -- hence, he refused to be "cannon fodder" (as he put it), as most athletes competing in the Olympics are.
I'm all for sports and pushing yourself to achieve more, but when an athlete hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell to even place in the top 10, then he shouldn't be there, period.
With that in mind, what your (Danish) Olympic Committee does, when it sets the bar at that level, is ensuring that the athletes who do represent your country in the Olympics, actually stand a chance at achieving something that will make them, and your country, proud. Hell, if the bar is set high enough, then simply qualifying is reason enough to be proud. As it stands, I'm finding it hard to be the least bit proud about my own country's representatives, even though we really had no expectations for them.
All this notwithstanding, the fact that the bar is set low is what makes it possible for so many countries to be present at the Olympics -- for many of the smaller countries, it's the only chance to be seen by the world, and that's probably something worth preserving.
A cycling athlete from my country found himself completely out-of-breath after a race early last year. After consulting a number of specialists, he found out he had developed asthma. Nothing to worry about, said the specialist, as his asthma could be completely controlled with medication.. As a plus, he could continue to compete because the medication is allowed under the International Cycling Union rules.
But not when it comes to the Olympics.. Long story short: even though he had qualified for the Olympics and won Silver Medal at the Athens Olympics, he had no choice but to stay home because IOC rules would have forced him to go without his meds for over a month.
That's.. unbelievable, I guess is the word. Really, there's absolutely no justification for that. You want to call or text someone, you pay for the charges -- period.
The only thing I can see here is when your calling/texting someone who's supposed to be, by their phone's prefix, in a certain area, and that person actually happens to be somewhere else. You'd pay what for all intents and purposes would be the roaming costs.
But assuming you're calling/texting someone with the same prefix as your own number, and both you and the receiver is within the "designated" area, both on the same operator, do you still pay for incoming texts/calls?
The problem I see with most "foreign dogs" like myself, who'll likely find this practice obnoxious like I did, is that we forget how huge your country is, and that you're a Federation of States. I'd imagine that each State has its own operating rules and taxes, and for traffic seemingly going back and forth across several States' lines, using infrastructure owned/operated by different companies, there's additional fees that apply. Depending on the situation, it could make sense charging some of those to the receiving party.
But as we've seen it discussed many times before, the current prices for cellular communications, especially when it comes to text messaging, are already way too high -- to press this further on the people who have no control over what they receive is greedy and just plain wrong.
As the poster above said, Telcoms would not get away with it in most other countries.
[...] believing its the truth that Christ is the Messiah. [...]
Sorry if I sound pedantic but you do realize that what you wrote there is a perfect redundancy, right? I'm pretty sure you equate "Christ" with "Messiah", but I'm not entirely sure you realize they actually ARE the same thing (linguistically speaking). The fact that most people, cloth members included, seem to treat "Christ" as somehow part of Jesus' own name, only serves to make it worse (as far as we know, he was "Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph").
So, to clear it up: both the words "Christ" and "Messiah" mean "anointed (one)". "Messiah" is that expression in hebrew, and "Christ" is a product of "westernization". The word "Messiah" was first translated to Greek as "Khristos" (soft 'K', I believe) and then subsequently translated to the Latin word, "Christum" (after that, it pretty much all goes south, with each nation/language modifying it slightly to suit it).
Also, "messiah" was a word in common usage in Judaism, usually refering to priests, with the nowadays common take (anointed by God) also ocurring several times (to refer to Kings, for example). It became so central to Christianity because the small prophecy in Aramaic which spoke of the "one to come" who would once again lead the "people of God", used it.
So, in much the same way people don't say "Jesus Messiah", but rather "Jesus the Messiah", or even "the Messiah Jesus", we shouldn't say "Jesus Christ" but "Jesus the Christ" or "the Christ Jesus".
FTA, it seems this is a new thing in Canada, but your (cayenne8's) reply seems to imply that where he/she lives it's been SOP for some time.. Is that right?
Are people charged for _incoming_ text messages on the US? Really? Forget the whole "package plan" or whatever -- is _anyone_ being charged for _incoming_ traffic, traffic that someone else originated?
Sorry, that just doesn't make any sense to me. Aside from SMS services you _subscribe_ to (weather, stock quotes, sport results, etc), absolutely no one is charged with SMS they receive where I live.
I mean, I can certainly understand being charged for incoming text messages and phone calls when you're roaming -- most operators here actually allow you to restrict incoming SMS and MMS when you're roaming for that reason alone. But that's it. Whether you have a pretty substancial monthly package plan, or a simple pay-as-you-go service, you most definitely DO NOT pay for incoming traffic, be it text messages or incoming calls. Let alone pay for unsolicited commercial messages that generate profit for that 3rd party (or your operator). I don't know what the actual legal name for that is, but it's ilegal, plain and simple. And believe me, if the terms of service/contract were changed to allow such practise, you'd see an uproar.. As it is, operators already charge way too much for text messaging.
For crying out loud, we even have smaller Cell Phone Operators offering free sms/mms/voice AND video calls FOR FREE within their network for _life_ -- and this is on a run of the mill pay-as-you-go service, NOT some high-priced monthly package. You sign up to their service, pay an initial fee of â10 or something, and then it's standard pay-as-you-go: you charge your phone with how much you want, when you want to charge it.
Thanks for the update.. Shame about the Roadster, though, that one looked it might actually be fun to drive (in addition to looking great).
But it makes sense: they've basically gone back to building only the original concept, instead of trying to make them be something they were not. The original model, now the ForTwo (literally, for 2 people), can actually be comfortable (and this is coming from someone who has trouble feeling comfortable on "normal" cars -- my knees keep bumping on the dashboard), is comparatively affordable, small enough to make it easy to navigate on any urban-like location, particularly good with heavy traffic, and a breeze to park/find parking space. For anyone living in or around cities, looking for a useful personal transportation utility, instead of some sort of status symbol, it's simply ideal.
Link to pictures here. (from the original post here on slashdot)
I don't know which cars you're talking about.. Being an European myself, the only car I can think of that closely resembles the MIT's prototype is the Smart. And even then, only the basic model, the Smart Roadster, for example, has more of a buggy look to it.
Anyway, while I've certainly seen plenty of them around, there even seems to be a tuning cult around them (Smart with a Lamborghini Diablo engine beating a Ferrari), I've yet to see a single one with a bike handle instead of a driving wheel.
But the City Car concept reminds me of the city bike system many European cities have adopted. The idea is basically the same: you have some sort of a sign-up procedure, community card or something like that. With plenty of bike "parks" spread across the city, all you need to do is pick one up from a park near the start point, cycle to the bike park closest to your destination and drop it off.. And it works! The number of people using them in Lyon, for example, really blew my mind. It also raised some issues when, at about 3am, I saw a couple of teenagers driving them while obviously intoxicated.. But I suppose they're bound to get into a lot less trouble than if they were driving a car.
As far as safety is concerned, they were meant to be driven within a city, ie, I seriously doubt they were built for speed, what with those pesky speed limits being the lowest and all. Overall, I've seen some vehicles (a couple of models specially designed for the handicapped come to mind) that seemed way more unsafe/weak than the MIT's prototype.
It might be a really good idea, as long as people don't treat them like crap just because it's not theirs..
I did see the movie and I did read the book. Being a huge SciFi fan, and an avid reader since my childhood, it's no surprise that the book felt so much better to me than the movie. But then again, Carl Sagan was an excellent writer, IMHO.
That being said, keep in mind that Sagan died December the 20th, 1996, and that the movie was released in July, 1997 -- a little over half a year later. Taking into account that movies don't get released the minute all post-production work is done, and that movies of this sort (ie, that have a big bugdet, need some serious CGI effects, etc), get shot at least a year before, it's safe to say that Sagan was very much involved in every aspect of it.
I specifically remember the director/producers saying that their only regret was that Sagan didn't live long enough to actually see the _final_ cut. Which to me means that he was kept in the loop as to what was going on, and was probably aware of all the main changes to his original story.
I understand where you're going with what you said, there are huge plot differences between the book and the movie, but I'm sure you also realize that there are considerable differences between both mediums.
The language, dialogs, and scene delivery _have_ to be different, and I feel that most changes were done in a positive way. Some things annoyed me, sure, but I'd say that any book worth its salt, when read by anyone with an ounce of imagination, will always feel/sound/"look" better in the confines of our own brain than plastered on the big screen, where you'll only get someone's take on it, regardless of how good that take is (case in point, the LotR trilogy -- not nearly as good as the books, which everyone who saw and liked the movies should really read, but still pretty much the best movie adaptation for anything as epic as Tolkien's writing, and quite possibly the best Big Screen rendition of the books that can be done).
Slashdot Mirror
[...] And that's the main purpose of democracy; to say to the common man: "You voted for him so it's your fault that he's making fucktarded decisions", or "You voted against him but most people voted for him, so you're wrong".
Or as the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork would put it: "A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault."
In any case, this is not the least bit surprising.. Any system that can be abused will be abused. It's simply a matter of time, access and motivation (greed, in this case). And pretty much any system can be abused. It's kinda like trying to design a fool-proof system.. You just need a more ingenious fool to break it.
But instead of this partisan bash-fest we're seeing in so many comments ("YOUR guys did it!", "YOUR guys have been doing it for longer!" ...), you should be focusing on the fact that this story, even moreso than the numerous Diebold debacles, highlights the absolute need for openness and accountability in the election process..
Like I said above, no one's going to find a magic bullet to this problem, because the problem is one of trust and convenience.. You're not inclined to trust election results whenever they don't fit with your expectations, so you want accountability. But at the same time, you want a system that makes it easy to vote (and you seem to have particularly complicated voting procedures), one that can be used by "computer-illiterate" people (so you don't end up marginalizing large sections of the population), basically one that doesn't make voting a pain in the ass.
Such a balance is hard, but can be achieved to a certain degree -- and that is what you should be demanding of your local, State and Federal government. But don't deceive yourself: you'll never be able to completely discard fraud.. Like I said, it's only a matter of time, access and motivation -- which isn't to say you shouldn't go through the motions and at least try to design a system that's "open" and works as intended.. Which is where BOTH parties have consistently failed over the past decade. It's not on their agendas and doesn't seem to be a major preoccupation to either of the two major parties (outside of episodic sabre-rattling when something like this happens -- after that, it's always back to business as usual). Not to mention other less-than-ethical-but-still-absolutely-legal practises like changing the voting districts around so that the demographics favor this candidate/party more than the previous map..
In my country, we still vote on paper ballots.. Ballots that get cast in a ballot box, and then get hand-counted. Technology is involved only in the process of communicating the results to the Electoral Committee. Each party nominates representatives to the circuits where they have lists on the ballots, and the thing is done only with these representatives.. A central government organization with "independent observers/oversight" is in charge or tallying the votes..
And guess what: 11 million in population, about 7-8 million registered voters -- of which about 4-5 million on average actually vote. Voting starts at 8am and ends 7pm. Because one of our islands is on a different timezone than the continent (one hour behind) all projections are banned until 8pm (ie, when their voting assemblies close). Projections at 8pm (usually very accurate), real results start at 8:30pm (before that there isn't enough data). Usually you have all the relevant results in by 10pm .. In most cases ALL results are in no later than 11:30pm (except for absentee and overseas ballots -- those, by constitutional decree get counted at a later date).
Not the fastest system, not very technologically advanced, but works like a charm everytime.. It's very very rare that even suspicions of fraud are raised.
Mod parent up!
You've hit the nail in the head, as far as I'm concerned.. The "Assistance OFF" mode (that's what they call it) was a seriously bone-headed move on their part. The only thing you could say for it is that it can sometimes give you nice visuals of your acrobatic moves, but it doesn't even begin to mitigate the crap it is to actually fly that way.
It's a stupid gimmick (done mostly for the visuals) and a really moronic way to implement an Expert mode, akin to just making your bullets do less damage and the enemies' more when you raise the difficulty level on a FPS.
It makes even simple manouvering exceedingly difficult because half the time you're trying to determine what exactly is the plane's heading, its roll, pitch (and forget about height -- damn near impossible to determine that) so that you can then translate your stick moves to the action you want to perform. The whole thing feels so detached that it defeats the purpose of a mode where you're supposed to have full control of the aircraft.
Granted, this game was never supposed to be a real simulator.. The market is just not there (Flight Sim is really good, but how many people do you know have it?), so this game was always going to be more arcade than anything else. And let's face it, the same reviewers who ranted about the lack of "realism" (or the fact that it's not a real sim), would bitch if the game forced you to take off from some airstrip, spend most of the mission either heading for your targets or patrolling the empty skies, then take a long, lonely flight path back to land on some other airstrip -- all the while worrying about the likes of fuel and realistic ammo reserves (which reminds me of a really old video game -- Strike Eagle? -- that was exactly like that and yet really kicked ass).
There was always going to be some dumbing down to make the game more "fun", more action-packed and therefore more appealing to the masses, but they could have pulled it off without sacrificing the game mechanics is such a terribly broken way.
I was actually a little disappointed when I heard the feed.. Hadn't expected it to be just a robotic reader spelling out the sequence.
Thought they might have just used the fact that three of the bases start with letters that are also musical notes in the english notation (A, C and G).. Choose a suitable 4th note for Thymine (maybe E, its last letter) and then run it through a midi sampler..
To spice it up, they could do some fun stuff with combinations, for example altering the tempo when you found repetitions of the same base, something for sharp/flat (just to mix it up a bit), etc..
Maybe not the point of this experiment (well, if you can call it that -- this isn't exactly science anyway), but as with the previous graphics experiment, it might even produce some interesting tune somewhere down the line.
As it is, though a nice code hack I'm sure, the result is a tad boring.
No, really.. Why? I can easily see that it IS a milestone, sure, but an _important_ one? Why, exactly?
We're not talking about sales figures here, it's also not a measure of the quality of the title (not that it doesn't have quality, only that "# of multiplayer games served" is hardly a metric for it -- I'm assuming that this is about ONLINE matches, not local single-player ones).. It _could_ mean something in terms of the game's longevity and reaching this mark in 1.5 years could be considered impressive.. But even here, I don't think I've ever seen other publishers announcing the number of online matches played on their games, and how fast they got to THEIR milestones, so again we don't really have that much data to compare this to and therefore no way to determine whether this is indeed impressive or not.
I mean, I keep thinking of the likes of Counter-Strike (both versions of it), Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, to name a few.. All Steam titles, and they regularly publish extensive statistics for the games they host and yet I've never seen them tout this particular metric.
I dunno, it sounds like McDonnalds advertising style to me.. In fact the original announcement post pretty much mimmicks that campaign.
Kudos to Bungie and all, and I can certainly see why THEY are excited, but other than the data they've provided for Halo 2, we really don't have enough to say whether this is truly impressive or just deserving of a lukewarm "well done".
Speaking as a portuguese, I can tell you that the whole "-gate" postfixing is senseless.. It just doesn't carry weight around here as it does over there. I'd wager the submitter knew this, but just added it anyway because a) he/she is "close" to the matter (probably belongs to the group who's denouncing the situation) and therefore takes this issue seriously and b) wanted to exarcerbate the impact of this news piece by way of a commonly used word-gimmick.. After all, your own media abuses the term whenever some sort of scandal crops up.
As far as "-gate" scandals go, there's another one a LOT more prone to getting that tag (allegations of impropriety or downright corruption that may implicate the current Prime-Minister regarding the licensing of a big real estate development when he was Minister for the Environment -- and therefore had specific oversight on these matters), a huge mess. And even THAT didn't get tagged "Freeport-gate". It would mean nothing to the majority of people here, many would probably not even get the historical reference (even with "Frost vs Nixon").
To be honest, and again speaking as a portuguese citizen, this is the first I'm hearing about it (and the first time I've heard about this particular portal, to be frank). As far as I can tell, this relates to a governmental portal for job procurement/hiring.. The "bidding" here either relates to companies wishing to offer services, applying for consulting positions (getting contracts) or for people trying to get employed.
It's obviously a Bad Thing(TM) but I doubt it was done intentionally and even less that MS had anything to do with it. Not that MS is above this, of course, and they do enjoy a cosy relationship with Portugal and portuguese institutions (we're a small country and they're a BIIIIG corporation -- it's "good business" to keep a major player/investor like that happy, however it may sicken me that we need it) but as other posters have pointed out, this is Vortal's own doing.
Silverlight is a new technology and Microsoft has been investing heavily around here.. I personally know many aspiring developers (as well as fully-fledged software engineers) who genuinely think Microsoft is God's gift to software engineering.. And it doesn't help that MS does indeed get some things right now and then. :)
The way I see it, whomever made the decision to use SL (and the ensuing IE-optimized html code -- even the places you can go without Silverlight installed really suck with Firefox, the usability/interoperability is seriously broken) didn't think things through, or honestly felt that Silverlight is the Next Big Thing(TM), and that going with it would be a clever move.
It's another reflection of the worst thing that Microsoft has managed to instill into so many people, often through the deals they broker with education institutions: the mono-culture mentality.. That only Windows matters (in fact, for nearly all non-CS students, Windows is pretty much IT, and even Apple has only recently begun to show up on their mental map). That as long as you develop for THEIR platform and use their technologies, you'll reach that huge percentage of users, the magic Windows OS desktop-share.. And that the rest basically don't matter. It's so sad seeing this happen in the very places that used to be all about inclusion, early adoption of ALL technologies and diversity.
The submitter over-dramatized the impact that this is having over here, but I'm glad that the complaint went through and hope they can coax the European Courts to issue a legally binding EU-wide mandate on interoperability.
Um.. You DO realize that what you refer to as "Big Pharma" are multinational business corps with many research facilities spread throughout the globe, who make extensive use of grant programs to get Universities worldwide to do some of their legwork, and who basically have their hands in pretty much all the "pies". There aren't US "Big Pharma" corps, anymore than there are European "Big Pharma".. They boil down to just a handful of entities who directly own or control hundreds (if not more) of subsidiaries, and they're ALL global players.
Yes, the fact that the previous US President banned research on (embryonic) stem cells did put a wrinkle on the worldwide research being done in the field.. On the one hand, the US market for drugs and medical treatments is too big to ignore, so there was less of an incentive to develop technologies, procedures and know-how on stuff that the big corps might not be able to deploy in such a profitable market (and thus reducing their perceived return on that investment). On the other hand, there are many great minds working in those fields in the US (both native and foreigners), often with ties to education institutions, and it wouldn't be so easy to uproot all those people just so they could send them somewhere where they could legally do/continue research.
So, for the "Big Pharma" it just made sense to look into other venues of research, or for ways to bypass the ban by using other types of cells with which you could eventually get the same results. And in this regard, while I consider the ban to have been a huge mistake (especially the totally bogus reason for said ban), we haven't really lost anything because the other venues pursued would have to be done eventually anyway, all the better that it happened when the corps were so eager to get results that could translate into money.
I don't know if there were (many) other countries following suit on the ban, but I do know that it was and still is a sensitive issue in many countries in Europe, so maybe in the end the money ended up drying in other places too.. But it hasn't been completely abandoned either, as I remember reading several studies published these last 8 years relating to research done on embryonic stem cells.
Directly and indirectly, the US does have a BIG impact in the world in many areas (which is probably why so many of us follow what happens over there so closely -- and become so obnoxiously opinionated).. But don't think others wouldn't step forward to pick up the slack if you guys over there went the Amish way, either. :)
Like I said, this is totally bogus. What I said after that was just an idea to mitigate the impact if this kind of thing can't be prevented (or until it gets overthrown).
Yeah, what you said is indeed creepy. I mean, the whole checking the license plates I can get.. It's YOUR jacket they're looking up, and it might help a cop approach a potentially dangerous individual with added caution. But where in this situation they'd be checking information that pertains to you, every other example mentioned consists of putting you up against every possible outstanding case and see what they can come up with. It's a complete perversion of the presumption of guilt.
I dunno how accurate the cop shows are (any of the CSI series, for example) but it always pissed me off whenever they took a suspect's prints or DNA and used it to check any DB.. I mean, even in the situations where they got a warrant to obtain that information (I don't think they should be able to bully or brow-beat compliance out of you, much less trick you to give up your right to keep that information to yourself -- the tactic of giving you a drink so that they can later attempt to extract DNA or fingerprints from the can is completely underhanded.. if you can't get a judge to sign the order, than you've got no business getting that information), even then, the scope of ANY comparison should be limited to whatever crime you're suspected of, period.
That they can take DNA or fingerprints obtained from a crime scene and check them against a national DB, well, that's honest police work. To subject samples obtained from a suspect to the same treatment is a perversion of the fundamentals of the judicial system (at least in a free, democratic country).
To expand the law so that it allows police and other law enforcement agencies to massively collect data from anyone who just happens to piss them off, is ludicrous and very, very scary.
I get what you're saying but that kind of already exists.. It's called 'Statute of Limitations' and has a limited scope (as in, in some countries a murder case never expires). If this comes into play, I don't think you'll be able to limit the admissibility of that DNA sample beneath the time limit imposed by that offense's Statute of Limitation.
I think this is totally bogus, but if it does go forward, then we'd probably be better off limiting the scope of application of that sample. What I mean is, your DNA collected in connection to any given case cannot be used outside of the scope of that particular case. You shouldn't be able to use it to check for possible matches in outstanding cases (a CLEAR violation of the presumption of innocence and would lead to a "fishing expedition"-gallore).
If it turns out you're guilty, then by all means, if your law allows you to, include it in some national DB.. Until then, you're off the grid. This provides no incentive to keep the data beyond what's strictly needed, and might mean they destroy your sample sooner, rather than later, if you're cleared.
It's funny, you know? In my country we do have a national DB for fingerprints.. We do have a national ID card (that's where you get your fingerprints taken) but the law clearly forbids using THAT database for any sort of criminal investigation purposes. It's assumed it'd mean presuming guilt on the part of the _whole_ population everytime you'd run a search through it. Can't imagine why any other country would proceed differently.
Thank god!!
For a minute there I thought I was the only one. All this stuff about "everyone has been affected by now" or "blockers don't work anymore" and I kept thinking "hell, are we talking about the same web here?"
I mean, I highly doubt some of the sites I visit don't have aggressive ads (in fact, I'm reminded of it everytime I'm forced to use IE -- luckily that only happens every once in a while), and I can't remember the last time my FF has given me any pains when it comes to annoying ads.
Most of the time I don't even use NoScript (need it disabled for a number of reasons).
So what's the problem, again? There IS a solution, it's called AdBlockPlus.. Ohh, you mean the somewhat lame, built-in pop-up blockers in (mostly) IE. Well then, I think you've got more serious things to worry about than this. >:)
Lol.. Man, I totally missed it. It's been so long since I've watched the X-Files (refused to watch the last movie, wasn't really too keen on the last few seasons when they suddenly changed the "mythology") that I didn't make the connection. All is clear now! :)
Damn, man.. Yet another patch and yet again it manages to screw something up?! We're either talking some major bad luck or an assinine QC.
I was actually looking forward to playing it on my brand new machine, until it finally came out and everyone started bitching about all the problems they were having. So instead, I took that money, and with the perfect storm of coincidences (huge amazon uk x-mas deal, plus near parity between the sterling pound and the euro at the time) and bought 3 games for my (also brand new) PS3.. And that included the ps3 version of GTAIV.
As for the DLC.. We're probably still talking about Xbox360 exclusive and, not having one, wouldn't make any difference to me. But looking at what's available as DLC on other platforms (mainly the ps3 store) I really don't see myself paying 20-30-or even-40% of normal retail prices for relatively minor additions. But that's just me: when I actually pay for/buy a game at these ridiculous prices (and I actually do that more often now than I did a few years ago -- IF the game is good enough) I feel ripped off if the devs "saved" some stuff that should be included by default, only because they thought they could milk some more green from me.
I'll admit that in some cases, DLC actually does bring a lot to the table (well thought-out episodic releases, for one -- and I mean the real sort, just because they _call_ it episodic, it doesn't mean it is), and I found that the cases where it did work for me, the original game wasn't priced so high, and the DLC is equally priced at a lower point.. But still, seems like every game studio out there at the moment are turning to this, and not thinking it through. Let's see what happens to Gran Turismo 5 when it comes out. Somehow I get the feeling that when they said over 900 cars would be available, they didn't mean _with the actual game_. And being a long time gamer, that really sucks.
Umm.. at the risk of hearing a *woosh* in the next few seconds, I don't think "shadow" (in this context) means what you think it means.
Whenever you hear something like "the shadow minister for foreign affairs", they're referring to the guy (or gal) in the major opposition party who is their current "authority" in the field (in my example, foreign affairs), or at the most, in some cases, the person who's currently in line for that office should the opposition win the next general elections (or equivalent) and form government.
This is not some lower-level, deputy-minister/under-secretary type, who actually works for/in the government that's proposing this bill.
In other words, we're talking about the people who are trying to oust the current government, so it's no surprise that they take whatever opportunity they get to snipe at them. Besides, as others have pointed out above, they're not exactly squeaky-clean in this matter either, having proposed something similar in the past when they were in office (what's worse, they were allegedly doing it as some sort of a back-room deal to advance some other bill).
Other than that, couldn't agree more! :)
My sentiments exactly.. Look, I wasn't advocating against the whole thing, and I'm definitely not what you'd call a luddite. Rather, I was pointing out the many caveats that need to be seriously addressed before any major data mining starts.
Keep in mind that ouside of data-mining, there will still be full transmition of EHRs between medical institutions. Say you're on vacation in DC, for a future President's inauguration, for example. You get hit by a car and get admitted to a hospital. Now, aside from all the urgent measures that need to be taken to ensure your survival, there might be vital information that both the EMTs and the doctors need to provide you with treatment that won't kill you (allergies and pre-existing conditions come to mind). They'll need to pull up YOUR records from the system. These records are obviously the whole enchilada and thus, full of personal info, and as such, they'll circulate through the system in its full form. Encrypted or not, for such a widespread system (just counting hospitals, how many points of access would that make?), there would be great deal of "points of entry" for attacks. Just think of what's happened to the DoJ, the DoE, the DoS and the whole thing about malware potentially syphoning sensitive information. Think that won't happen in hospitals?
For the data-mining purposes, the data may well be anonimized, sure.. But at what point will that happen? This is critical. Also, the same patient's medical records need to be traceable for future reference studies. For a lot of purposes, you wouldn't really need to keep track of individual patients, global numbers would more than suffice. But for many other studies, there needs to be a way, a slashdot-like UID, that is unequivocally tied to the same person's medical history. Without that ability to track progress on a per-patient basis, many good things will not be possible.
Now, of course this doesn't mean that you're tracking that _patient_ or even that you'd know who the person was, but for such a system, there would have to be either a method for consistently creating those IDs, such that the same person would be assigned the same number everytime, regardless of all the things that can change throughout one's life, or a DB with an assignment table that kept track of who's who.
This second method would obviously be a major security risk and being that that DB would be in constant use, stripping new data of personal info and slapping that person's UID on it, I just don't think you'd be able to secure it. Not tightly enough.
The smart way to go about it would be to create those UIDs using something like an MD5 hash of the portion of personal data that never changes. The trouble is, when you get right down to it, there's not much data that _isn't_ subject to change. Name, any geographical info, even driver's license can't reliably be used. You'd be stuck with the same stuff that has given so many headaches in the past: SSNs and the like. In other words, the amount of data to be hashed would be small, and the smaller the input, the more exploitable the hash method would be and the more susceptible to brute-forcing the whole thing would become.
In fact, given a simple combination of SSN, and little more info, if you could get your hands on the hash method employed in generating the UIDs, you'd probably be better off just generating all the possible data (after all, you'd know which SSNs are possible, which ones no longer interest you [ie, dead people], and the same could be said of the rest of the data) and then matching the hashes with actual EHRs and voila.. No more patient anonimity.
The problem in my mind isn't the progress of science or society. I do worry about the ever-increasing erosion of privacy, and even moreso with the growing disregard for how important that privacy is. But this also isn't my "beef" here. My problem here is that the people who'll be making the final decisions won't be knowledgeable enough to understand all the potential problems, and unless their (hopefully more knowledgeable) advisors do their jobs, I see this thing being rushed out the door with a security model worse than even the ill-fated Diebold machines.
Nice description, +1 Informative.
I know the article was about EHRs in the US, but I was giving my take based on my non-US experience. Remember I talked about interoperability standarts being put forth? I never got to see those in action because I had moved on to another field by then, but the systems I knew of the kind you described were usually provided by the same vendor and did it all..
Most of those products were also developed in-house by the vendor. And even then, sometimes some parts had trouble playing nice with other parts. Transitioning to a different (more modern) system tended to be a serious pain, especially so if you were also switching vendors. I'm assuming that hasn't really changed. Yes, the standards may facilitate the way each system shares information with the others, but the way they STORE the information is critical when you're switching products/vendors and need to convert all the stored data, and the people you're ditching aren't usually very cooperative in that process.
I know doctors over there have many reasons to dislike insurance companies, malpractice insurance premiums being one of them. They also see patients being consistently screwed out of treatments because it's either "not covered" or "experimental" or simply "our doctors don't feel it's necessary", and I'm sure they don't like it. My problem isn't with (most) doctors as they, more than anyone else, understand how critical doctor-patient confidentiality (and the trust it generates) is to their profession.
But if I've kept up with the topic correctly, the plan also contains provisions to have some sort of way to compile data from all possible sources and then proceed to mine it. Now, even if the information that would allow patient identification is removed, this still means that a huge swath of information will be available to anyone who qualifies.
Sure, a whole score of great things can come from this, but I still worry about all that info bouncing around. Doctors may be very good at keeping patient's privacy and have no interest in screwing that up on behalf of, as you put it, "money grubbing (insurance) companies", but at this point, it won't just be them doing the whole privacy-keeping. It'll be the system and its security model. And I just have very little faith that a system that needs to be so widespread will be more secure than other systems that also deal with sensitive information: credit card info, social security records, tax records, etc.. All of which have been consistently cracked/hacked into.
While I would agree with you on most points, as it matches my personal experience with EHR systems (ie. that the systems I've seen in place so far tend to be more secure than the equivalent paper-trail), I think the point most people are trying to get across is that, for the most part, those systems exist as completely separate entities and what little interaction exists between the DBs of those different entities is easy to monitor.. For now.
In my country the majority of health services are provided by the State through State-funded (or public) Medical Institutions. Most of them have, in recent years, deployed their own versions of flow-control, occupation-rates monitoring, stock accounting, resource allocation and (more to the point) patient medical information systems. There are, as you might expect, several vendors out there for these integrated systems and even though most of these institutions are funded primarily by the State, even Medical Institutions that "belong"/operate/form the very same healthcare network (ie, they serve the same population, each on different levels with a small degree of services overlap), you don't usually find them using the same vendor's product. Which basically means they don't usually play well with each other (for example, trying to convert one system's DBs to another because the hospital switched vendors can be a freaking nightmare, don't even get me started on bad DB design!).
To tackle this, interoperability standards were set forth (although I don't exactly know how well _that's_ working).. But the truth is, very few information is actually shared through the systems themselves. There simply isn't a centralized way, much less a centralized database, that can give _anyone_ (doctors, nurses, the patient him/herself or the State) access to all your medical information. You're usually limited to what that particular institution has on file, the file they've built from every visit to their facilities, and whatever files/tests you've brought with you.
This means that you need to supply the rest or (re)do all sorts of tests.. And I agree that in many cases this is the best way to go. It's the way doctors are trained to operate. Blind faith in charts can kill your patient as fast as completely disregarding them.
Back on topic, though, what I believe has most people worrying about this is the whole notion of near-free information flow, and who actually gets to access it, security policies notwithstanding. With a population of a couple hundred million people (far larger than my country's), the volume of information would be gigantic, as would be the flow of information back and forth between medical institutions. To the point where monitoring, let alone investigating, every single apparent breach in data transmition/sharing policy would become impractical. We've seen that happen in other supposedly high-security systems (credit card info, anyone? -- and the corporations actually HAVE an interest in keeping these private!). Add to that the many greedy corporations just itching to make money/sell all sorts of services off of that information (I mean, it's just too good to pass), or to use it to simply refuse you service, and you have a potentially very dangerous situation. I don't think it's a matter of "if" the system is going to be gamed but more of a "when". There's just too much money involved.
Even if there aren't currently any plans to actually centralize the information (even in a "cloud-like" system), or facilitate the hassle-free sharing of information, I'm pretty sure the "special interest groups" would soon find a way to push that through.. It's to their advantage, after all, and it would be just a small change in actual policy. I don't dispute the many benefits that might come of this, but I'm also a cinic and have very little faith in any corporation's "don't be evil" pledges. The further erosion of patient-doctor privilidge, more than anything else, scares the begeezus out of me.
Oh great!
Now science is coming to the aid of line-cutters everywhere.. Though I'm usually not the type of person willing to wait in line for hours (regardless of the reason), seeing someone cutting into a line (however short it may be) really pisses me off.
It's one of those tell-tale things about a person's character. It implies, at the least, that the line-cutter lacks civility, or simply couldn't care less for "social norms". At the most, it's a sign of someone who simply thinks the "rules" do not apply to them, and everything that can get them ahead is fair game. In the latter case, it's also often accompanied with smugness: "stupid idiots waiting in line."
Sure, cutting a line is by no means a serious offense. And in most cases these lines are purely informal, so one could make the argument that cutting the line is a simple display of expedience, and that no rules have been broken.. But seeing as though many of society's rules are entirely unwritten (and often unspoken), such attitude is disruptive to say the least. Not trying to spread FUD here, but it's the kind of thing that when widespread, brings nothing but chaos into even the most simple of things.
So true.
I've often thought that half of the athletes in the Olympics simply shouldn't be there.. Getting your ass thoroughly kicked in the qualifying rounds of the single event you participate in, doesn't seem to justify the country's investment. For most, it's just an "experience"; or, if you prefer, a government-sponsored vacation.
A close friend of mine used to be our national champ for a couple of events in swimming.. He was a really good swimmer, very hard-working and dedicated in his training.. and even though he had pretty good times, certainly enough to qualify for the Sydney Olympics, he simply refused to go. His reasoning was that the bar was set too low, and that though a good swimmer, he wouldn't be a match for the world's top swimmers -- hence, he refused to be "cannon fodder" (as he put it), as most athletes competing in the Olympics are.
I'm all for sports and pushing yourself to achieve more, but when an athlete hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell to even place in the top 10, then he shouldn't be there, period.
With that in mind, what your (Danish) Olympic Committee does, when it sets the bar at that level, is ensuring that the athletes who do represent your country in the Olympics, actually stand a chance at achieving something that will make them, and your country, proud. Hell, if the bar is set high enough, then simply qualifying is reason enough to be proud. As it stands, I'm finding it hard to be the least bit proud about my own country's representatives, even though we really had no expectations for them.
All this notwithstanding, the fact that the bar is set low is what makes it possible for so many countries to be present at the Olympics -- for many of the smaller countries, it's the only chance to be seen by the world, and that's probably something worth preserving.
Hmm.. Sounds a lot like Roundworld from "The Science of Discworld" books.
Though I doubt it would be as much fun.
Except for asthma medication, or so it seems.
A cycling athlete from my country found himself completely out-of-breath after a race early last year. After consulting a number of specialists, he found out he had developed asthma. Nothing to worry about, said the specialist, as his asthma could be completely controlled with medication.. As a plus, he could continue to compete because the medication is allowed under the International Cycling Union rules.
But not when it comes to the Olympics.. Long story short: even though he had qualified for the Olympics and won Silver Medal at the Athens Olympics, he had no choice but to stay home because IOC rules would have forced him to go without his meds for over a month.
Also replying to the post above:
That's.. unbelievable, I guess is the word. Really, there's absolutely no justification for that. You want to call or text someone, you pay for the charges -- period.
The only thing I can see here is when your calling/texting someone who's supposed to be, by their phone's prefix, in a certain area, and that person actually happens to be somewhere else. You'd pay what for all intents and purposes would be the roaming costs.
But assuming you're calling/texting someone with the same prefix as your own number, and both you and the receiver is within the "designated" area, both on the same operator, do you still pay for incoming texts/calls?
The problem I see with most "foreign dogs" like myself, who'll likely find this practice obnoxious like I did, is that we forget how huge your country is, and that you're a Federation of States. I'd imagine that each State has its own operating rules and taxes, and for traffic seemingly going back and forth across several States' lines, using infrastructure owned/operated by different companies, there's additional fees that apply. Depending on the situation, it could make sense charging some of those to the receiving party.
But as we've seen it discussed many times before, the current prices for cellular communications, especially when it comes to text messaging, are already way too high -- to press this further on the people who have no control over what they receive is greedy and just plain wrong.
As the poster above said, Telcoms would not get away with it in most other countries.
[...] believing its the truth that Christ is the Messiah. [...]
Sorry if I sound pedantic but you do realize that what you wrote there is a perfect redundancy, right? I'm pretty sure you equate "Christ" with "Messiah", but I'm not entirely sure you realize they actually ARE the same thing (linguistically speaking). The fact that most people, cloth members included, seem to treat "Christ" as somehow part of Jesus' own name, only serves to make it worse (as far as we know, he was "Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph").
So, to clear it up: both the words "Christ" and "Messiah" mean "anointed (one)". "Messiah" is that expression in hebrew, and "Christ" is a product of "westernization". The word "Messiah" was first translated to Greek as "Khristos" (soft 'K', I believe) and then subsequently translated to the Latin word, "Christum" (after that, it pretty much all goes south, with each nation/language modifying it slightly to suit it).
Also, "messiah" was a word in common usage in Judaism, usually refering to priests, with the nowadays common take (anointed by God) also ocurring several times (to refer to Kings, for example). It became so central to Christianity because the small prophecy in Aramaic which spoke of the "one to come" who would once again lead the "people of God", used it.
So, in much the same way people don't say "Jesus Messiah", but rather "Jesus the Messiah", or even "the Messiah Jesus", we shouldn't say "Jesus Christ" but "Jesus the Christ" or "the Christ Jesus".
Yeah, I too would like that point made clear.
FTA, it seems this is a new thing in Canada, but your (cayenne8's) reply seems to imply that where he/she lives it's been SOP for some time.. Is that right?
Are people charged for _incoming_ text messages on the US? Really? Forget the whole "package plan" or whatever -- is _anyone_ being charged for _incoming_ traffic, traffic that someone else originated?
Sorry, that just doesn't make any sense to me. Aside from SMS services you _subscribe_ to (weather, stock quotes, sport results, etc), absolutely no one is charged with SMS they receive where I live.
I mean, I can certainly understand being charged for incoming text messages and phone calls when you're roaming -- most operators here actually allow you to restrict incoming SMS and MMS when you're roaming for that reason alone. But that's it. Whether you have a pretty substancial monthly package plan, or a simple pay-as-you-go service, you most definitely DO NOT pay for incoming traffic, be it text messages or incoming calls. Let alone pay for unsolicited commercial messages that generate profit for that 3rd party (or your operator). I don't know what the actual legal name for that is, but it's ilegal, plain and simple. And believe me, if the terms of service/contract were changed to allow such practise, you'd see an uproar.. As it is, operators already charge way too much for text messaging.
For crying out loud, we even have smaller Cell Phone Operators offering free sms/mms/voice AND video calls FOR FREE within their network for _life_ -- and this is on a run of the mill pay-as-you-go service, NOT some high-priced monthly package. You sign up to their service, pay an initial fee of â10 or something, and then it's standard pay-as-you-go: you charge your phone with how much you want, when you want to charge it.
Thanks for the update.. Shame about the Roadster, though, that one looked it might actually be fun to drive (in addition to looking great).
But it makes sense: they've basically gone back to building only the original concept, instead of trying to make them be something they were not. The original model, now the ForTwo (literally, for 2 people), can actually be comfortable (and this is coming from someone who has trouble feeling comfortable on "normal" cars -- my knees keep bumping on the dashboard), is comparatively affordable, small enough to make it easy to navigate on any urban-like location, particularly good with heavy traffic, and a breeze to park/find parking space. For anyone living in or around cities, looking for a useful personal transportation utility, instead of some sort of status symbol, it's simply ideal.
Link to pictures here. (from the original post here on slashdot)
I don't know which cars you're talking about.. Being an European myself, the only car I can think of that closely resembles the MIT's prototype is the Smart. And even then, only the basic model, the Smart Roadster, for example, has more of a buggy look to it.
Anyway, while I've certainly seen plenty of them around, there even seems to be a tuning cult around them (Smart with a Lamborghini Diablo engine beating a Ferrari), I've yet to see a single one with a bike handle instead of a driving wheel.
But the City Car concept reminds me of the city bike system many European cities have adopted. The idea is basically the same: you have some sort of a sign-up procedure, community card or something like that. With plenty of bike "parks" spread across the city, all you need to do is pick one up from a park near the start point, cycle to the bike park closest to your destination and drop it off.. And it works! The number of people using them in Lyon, for example, really blew my mind. It also raised some issues when, at about 3am, I saw a couple of teenagers driving them while obviously intoxicated.. But I suppose they're bound to get into a lot less trouble than if they were driving a car.
As far as safety is concerned, they were meant to be driven within a city, ie, I seriously doubt they were built for speed, what with those pesky speed limits being the lowest and all. Overall, I've seen some vehicles (a couple of models specially designed for the handicapped come to mind) that seemed way more unsafe/weak than the MIT's prototype.
It might be a really good idea, as long as people don't treat them like crap just because it's not theirs..
I did see the movie and I did read the book. Being a huge SciFi fan, and an avid reader since my childhood, it's no surprise that the book felt so much better to me than the movie. But then again, Carl Sagan was an excellent writer, IMHO.
That being said, keep in mind that Sagan died December the 20th, 1996, and that the movie was released in July, 1997 -- a little over half a year later. Taking into account that movies don't get released the minute all post-production work is done, and that movies of this sort (ie, that have a big bugdet, need some serious CGI effects, etc), get shot at least a year before, it's safe to say that Sagan was very much involved in every aspect of it.
I specifically remember the director/producers saying that their only regret was that Sagan didn't live long enough to actually see the _final_ cut. Which to me means that he was kept in the loop as to what was going on, and was probably aware of all the main changes to his original story.
I understand where you're going with what you said, there are huge plot differences between the book and the movie, but I'm sure you also realize that there are considerable differences between both mediums.
The language, dialogs, and scene delivery _have_ to be different, and I feel that most changes were done in a positive way. Some things annoyed me, sure, but I'd say that any book worth its salt, when read by anyone with an ounce of imagination, will always feel/sound/"look" better in the confines of our own brain than plastered on the big screen, where you'll only get someone's take on it, regardless of how good that take is (case in point, the LotR trilogy -- not nearly as good as the books, which everyone who saw and liked the movies should really read, but still pretty much the best movie adaptation for anything as epic as Tolkien's writing, and quite possibly the best Big Screen rendition of the books that can be done).