If you ever invent a political system where such thing is possible, I strongly suggest you keep it to yourself.
Because if you even whisper about it, you going to vanish. Essentially all the powerful people in the world like the current system very much, especially because they can run through things that are in direct opposition of public interests using their political puppets, and still get those puppets re-elected a few years down the road instead of having to invest in new ones.
Generally, the letters to major politicians around the world (in democratic countries) are read by a small time member(s) their staff. When same issue starts coming up in sufficient amount of letters, they take it to their boss, usually chief of staff.
And if the chief of staff the amount to be sufficient to matter, he takes it to the politician. As a result, only few such issues raised by electorate is ever given any attention by the actual politician - however this also works in other direction, meaning that issues that do reach politicians' ears are usually taken with a significant degree of seriousness.
You can only assume that it was indeed the AMOUNT of letters in this case, i.e. enough people caring about the issue to complain to actually reach politicians' ears and to make them CARE.
On that topic, I ran a vanilla XP (no service packs) until 2008. Zero virii.
Firewall + anti-virus + only 3 users, all of whom weren't computer illiterate.
Often it's not the OS, it's the users or admin. That said, on an office machine, updates would be pretty much mandatory. But then, with huge amount of machines, wouldn't it be more sensible for China to fork their own linux distro for government usage?
So, by your own admission, the "people's democracies" of the former Warsaw pact are in fact a brilliant and shining example of democracy? As well as Democratic People's Republic of Korea?
Seriously, get your head out of your ass. PR calling things exact opposites of what they are doesn't make things whose names they usurp equal their actions. If you live in the modern times and still haven't learned this, I have a lot of land on the Moon to sell you.
Point of major parts of foundation is not to function as walls and ceilings. You can change as you go, adapting to conditions you list. Nontheless certain cornerstones need to remain absolute.
Problem is, where do you draw the penalty and how? In the current system, the penalty is actually rather decent in many countries - you're required to pay the reasonable costs of winner's litigation. In obviously frivolous filings, you also often have a right to file a complaint against that party and ask for additional compensation (i.e. lost wages).
But if you start handing out actual penalties, what will stop, say, a major company essentially sink all minor claims against it by lobbying for harsh enough punishment to deter filing?
The requirement of effort to bring the case forward is obvious. However when you start limiting WHO can bring the grievance to attention, where do you draw the line?
History is full of examples where such limits were quickly subverted to serve various interests. Which is why it's much better to have a system with minimal penalties, and where anyone can bring a case forward, and suffer the inefficiency, rather then limit it and risk sinking into tyrannical justice system that only serves certain interests in a matter of a few decades.
Your quarrel is with the US implementation of the system (which is massively flawed). Not with the principle, which is a cornerstone of Western justice system.
The entire point of functional, working justice system is that ANYONE, regardless of how deep in the wrong you think they are is allowed to bring their grievances to it.
Another merit of a functional justice system is that it also denies petitions of such parties AFTER considering them. Not before.
The comparison would be flawed for a reason. Radon's actual radioactivity is very low - the danger lies in the fact that it collects in lungs because it's heavier then air, and irradiates tissue from inside.
On the other hand, ionising radiation from the Sun is purely gamma radiation with source at the Sun itself - the moment you leave the heights, it drops due to atmospheric filtering. It also irradiates you across all tissues, rather then focusing on lungs alone.
None of the listed countries come even close to desirable launch areas. Essentially the best location for launch is at equator.
The point being made is that private interests could build a space center in one of the equatorial countries in Africa or Central America. While unrealistic in current political and financial climate, it would be doable, and they would even have a meaningful advantage over existing launch sites because of location allowing for less energy needed per launched tonnage.
I live in one such region, and I'm not denying it - it's calculated that a very significant number of lung cancer cases around here in people who live on the ground floor or basement levels is caused by radon in the air.
Point remains however that radon generally only causes lung cancer in meaningful numbers after extremely long exposure (tens of years). When talking about ambient background radiation, spikes because of radon are extremely rare to my knowledge, with radon being a natural product of uranium's spontaneous fission, so amounts of radon in the air inside basements (where concentration is highest) is usually stable.
Radon actually causing radiation poisoning (rather then functioning only as a carcinogenic) is usually only possible by going unprotected into an abandoned, unventilated uranium mine where radon222 concentration would be extremely high.
I'm not seeing the conflict with my statement above. Grandparent essentially bitched that "everyone who supports nuclear power is...".
I have it on good authority that only a very small fraction of these people had anything to do with Three Mile Island incident. We can certainly say that all three major nuclear incidents talked about here (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima) have been largely caused by significant breaches in operating procedures and protocols. That doesn't mean that nuclear power, or all people who support it are demons of some sort, as grandparent paints it.
Hell, if you want to go down that road, let's talk chemical industry and Bopal. It alone has more victims that all civilian nuclear-power related incidents and accidents together. Even ignoring Bopal, the toxic waste alone kills more every year then aforementioned total of nuclear power of all times. Does that mean that chemical industry is some sort of evil boogeyman and all who support it are "liars, scum and their apologists"?
There is a difference between actual acts of the government, and image government wants to project. It's the same for essentially all superpowers.
Tsernobyl was an excellent case of such behaviour. The lack of attention early on which presented the reality of government's level of caring for its people, and complete and utter "look at how good we are towards our heroic people" 180 turn later.
I'm arguing with someone who is apparently so fanatical in his beliefs, that he/she will not even bother to entertain a thought that those who think otherwise have any worth as humans beings, as mentined by you. I suppose you are correct, I cannot get any lower then that. After all, there is an ancient saying: "Never argue with an idiot, he'll take you down to his level, then beat you with his experience".
For your argument to be correct, we'd have to have a statistically significant list of cases of people travelling from sea level to Mexico City and suffering symptoms of minor radiation poisoning (cellular decay exceeding body's ability to "clean up" the damage before toxic levels are reached).
We'd also see very significant health problems from people flying long haul (ionising radiation at ~10.000m where most commercial flights cruise is vastly higher then any city on the planet).
Problem is, there isn't any evidence to suggest that any of said activities cause damage because of radiation spike. Which in turn suggests that our bodies' self-repair mechanisms either adapt extremely fast, or they are designed to compensate for such damage even at normal activity levels.
Actually it's not radon, it's the actual background radiation from Sun. The biggest filter against ionising (read: harmful) radiation from the Sun is atmosphere, and the higher city is located, the more ionising radiation from space is among the background radiation.
A great example of this is Mexico City. When the "highly elevated" radiation levels were talked about in Tokyo, and streets were largely deserted because of the scaremongering... radiation levels were approximately HALF of those in Mexico City at that same day. And it was just a normal day in Mexico City, with no unusual factors raising radiation levels.
That is the example of hysteric media destroying the economy. And in this light, yes, the measures are understandable (and culturally acceptable at least in Japan).
When anyone opposing you in any way is branded "liars, scum and apologists", you're essentially admitting that you will accept no one but those who share your opinion.
Which is quite possibly the worst kind of violation of spirit of western democracy itself, to deny even a possibility of consensus or agreement by demonising the opposition.
If you deny this, you're beyond naive. Soviets cared for specific parts of their public image in the West to the point of mania, as it provided them with a large amount of idealistic people as potential agents.
Vast majority of "critical people" in the company wouldn't be able to define what "data access" is in the way you reference it. They don't care either, as it's not part of their job description. An frankly, having seen what they have to work with, I understand why. The intricate details of their work look just as arcane to me as IT's work must look to them.
Point is, there's no need for win98 as you reference it - XP runs pretty much all legacy 16-bit stuff good enough, and being 7 years old most of the arcane stuff has already been made to work with XP.
Same cannot be said about 7 - not by a long shot. And that is the main problem why no one sane lets IT upgrade key personnel that don't specifically request 7.
In what way does it matter? If a user who is in important, or even key position in a company suffers from reduced efficiency because of the upgrade, it's your head that will roll when he/she complains to the boss.
Slashdot Mirror
If you ever invent a political system where such thing is possible, I strongly suggest you keep it to yourself.
Because if you even whisper about it, you going to vanish. Essentially all the powerful people in the world like the current system very much, especially because they can run through things that are in direct opposition of public interests using their political puppets, and still get those puppets re-elected a few years down the road instead of having to invest in new ones.
Generally, the letters to major politicians around the world (in democratic countries) are read by a small time member(s) their staff. When same issue starts coming up in sufficient amount of letters, they take it to their boss, usually chief of staff.
And if the chief of staff the amount to be sufficient to matter, he takes it to the politician. As a result, only few such issues raised by electorate is ever given any attention by the actual politician - however this also works in other direction, meaning that issues that do reach politicians' ears are usually taken with a significant degree of seriousness.
You can only assume that it was indeed the AMOUNT of letters in this case, i.e. enough people caring about the issue to complain to actually reach politicians' ears and to make them CARE.
On that topic, I ran a vanilla XP (no service packs) until 2008. Zero virii.
Firewall + anti-virus + only 3 users, all of whom weren't computer illiterate.
Often it's not the OS, it's the users or admin. That said, on an office machine, updates would be pretty much mandatory. But then, with huge amount of machines, wouldn't it be more sensible for China to fork their own linux distro for government usage?
So, by your own admission, the "people's democracies" of the former Warsaw pact are in fact a brilliant and shining example of democracy? As well as Democratic People's Republic of Korea?
Seriously, get your head out of your ass. PR calling things exact opposites of what they are doesn't make things whose names they usurp equal their actions. If you live in the modern times and still haven't learned this, I have a lot of land on the Moon to sell you.
Funny mod my ass. That is as insightful and informative as slashdot will ever be.
Honestly, as long as I can easily revert back to whatever interface I want, it's viewable as just another potential UI alongside others.
You can see these in XP if you're using process explorer (and if you're not, GTFO slashdot and leave your geek card before you leave).
Select svchost.exe you want to know about > properties > services.
It has a save feature that saves last two minutes of its existence, so it can relive its death countless times!
Point of major parts of foundation is not to function as walls and ceilings. You can change as you go, adapting to conditions you list. Nontheless certain cornerstones need to remain absolute.
Refer to: US constitution.
Problem is, where do you draw the penalty and how? In the current system, the penalty is actually rather decent in many countries - you're required to pay the reasonable costs of winner's litigation. In obviously frivolous filings, you also often have a right to file a complaint against that party and ask for additional compensation (i.e. lost wages).
But if you start handing out actual penalties, what will stop, say, a major company essentially sink all minor claims against it by lobbying for harsh enough punishment to deter filing?
The requirement of effort to bring the case forward is obvious. However when you start limiting WHO can bring the grievance to attention, where do you draw the line?
History is full of examples where such limits were quickly subverted to serve various interests. Which is why it's much better to have a system with minimal penalties, and where anyone can bring a case forward, and suffer the inefficiency, rather then limit it and risk sinking into tyrannical justice system that only serves certain interests in a matter of a few decades.
Your quarrel is with the US implementation of the system (which is massively flawed). Not with the principle, which is a cornerstone of Western justice system.
The entire point of functional, working justice system is that ANYONE, regardless of how deep in the wrong you think they are is allowed to bring their grievances to it.
Another merit of a functional justice system is that it also denies petitions of such parties AFTER considering them. Not before.
The comparison would be flawed for a reason. Radon's actual radioactivity is very low - the danger lies in the fact that it collects in lungs because it's heavier then air, and irradiates tissue from inside.
On the other hand, ionising radiation from the Sun is purely gamma radiation with source at the Sun itself - the moment you leave the heights, it drops due to atmospheric filtering. It also irradiates you across all tissues, rather then focusing on lungs alone.
None of the listed countries come even close to desirable launch areas. Essentially the best location for launch is at equator.
The point being made is that private interests could build a space center in one of the equatorial countries in Africa or Central America. While unrealistic in current political and financial climate, it would be doable, and they would even have a meaningful advantage over existing launch sites because of location allowing for less energy needed per launched tonnage.
I live in one such region, and I'm not denying it - it's calculated that a very significant number of lung cancer cases around here in people who live on the ground floor or basement levels is caused by radon in the air.
Point remains however that radon generally only causes lung cancer in meaningful numbers after extremely long exposure (tens of years). When talking about ambient background radiation, spikes because of radon are extremely rare to my knowledge, with radon being a natural product of uranium's spontaneous fission, so amounts of radon in the air inside basements (where concentration is highest) is usually stable.
Radon actually causing radiation poisoning (rather then functioning only as a carcinogenic) is usually only possible by going unprotected into an abandoned, unventilated uranium mine where radon222 concentration would be extremely high.
I'm not seeing the conflict with my statement above. Grandparent essentially bitched that "everyone who supports nuclear power is...".
I have it on good authority that only a very small fraction of these people had anything to do with Three Mile Island incident. We can certainly say that all three major nuclear incidents talked about here (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima) have been largely caused by significant breaches in operating procedures and protocols. That doesn't mean that nuclear power, or all people who support it are demons of some sort, as grandparent paints it.
Hell, if you want to go down that road, let's talk chemical industry and Bopal. It alone has more victims that all civilian nuclear-power related incidents and accidents together. Even ignoring Bopal, the toxic waste alone kills more every year then aforementioned total of nuclear power of all times. Does that mean that chemical industry is some sort of evil boogeyman and all who support it are "liars, scum and their apologists"?
There is a difference between actual acts of the government, and image government wants to project. It's the same for essentially all superpowers.
Tsernobyl was an excellent case of such behaviour. The lack of attention early on which presented the reality of government's level of caring for its people, and complete and utter "look at how good we are towards our heroic people" 180 turn later.
I'm arguing with someone who is apparently so fanatical in his beliefs, that he/she will not even bother to entertain a thought that those who think otherwise have any worth as humans beings, as mentined by you. I suppose you are correct, I cannot get any lower then that. After all, there is an ancient saying: "Never argue with an idiot, he'll take you down to his level, then beat you with his experience".
The saying was correct. You won.
For your argument to be correct, we'd have to have a statistically significant list of cases of people travelling from sea level to Mexico City and suffering symptoms of minor radiation poisoning (cellular decay exceeding body's ability to "clean up" the damage before toxic levels are reached).
We'd also see very significant health problems from people flying long haul (ionising radiation at ~10.000m where most commercial flights cruise is vastly higher then any city on the planet).
Problem is, there isn't any evidence to suggest that any of said activities cause damage because of radiation spike. Which in turn suggests that our bodies' self-repair mechanisms either adapt extremely fast, or they are designed to compensate for such damage even at normal activity levels.
Actually it's not radon, it's the actual background radiation from Sun. The biggest filter against ionising (read: harmful) radiation from the Sun is atmosphere, and the higher city is located, the more ionising radiation from space is among the background radiation.
A great example of this is Mexico City. When the "highly elevated" radiation levels were talked about in Tokyo, and streets were largely deserted because of the scaremongering... radiation levels were approximately HALF of those in Mexico City at that same day. And it was just a normal day in Mexico City, with no unusual factors raising radiation levels.
That is the example of hysteric media destroying the economy. And in this light, yes, the measures are understandable (and culturally acceptable at least in Japan).
When anyone opposing you in any way is branded "liars, scum and apologists", you're essentially admitting that you will accept no one but those who share your opinion.
Which is quite possibly the worst kind of violation of spirit of western democracy itself, to deny even a possibility of consensus or agreement by demonising the opposition.
If you deny this, you're beyond naive. Soviets cared for specific parts of their public image in the West to the point of mania, as it provided them with a large amount of idealistic people as potential agents.
Vast majority of "critical people" in the company wouldn't be able to define what "data access" is in the way you reference it. They don't care either, as it's not part of their job description. An frankly, having seen what they have to work with, I understand why. The intricate details of their work look just as arcane to me as IT's work must look to them.
Point is, there's no need for win98 as you reference it - XP runs pretty much all legacy 16-bit stuff good enough, and being 7 years old most of the arcane stuff has already been made to work with XP.
Same cannot be said about 7 - not by a long shot. And that is the main problem why no one sane lets IT upgrade key personnel that don't specifically request 7.
In what way does it matter? If a user who is in important, or even key position in a company suffers from reduced efficiency because of the upgrade, it's your head that will roll when he/she complains to the boss.