I remember the daydreams about how robots would do all the work and people would lead lives of leisure. Instead we work harder to try and keep up with the machines we built. Those daydreams were still going into the 80's.
I remember that too. Not robots particularly, but computers to do the paperwork and automated machines to do the labour. Just a few humans would need to work a few hours per week on maintenance. Sociologists writing in periodicals such as New Society, New Scientist and the more serious Sunday newspapers used to say that the main worry for the future was to keep the millions of idle, bored people from getting into mischief.
That state of affairs could be almost practicable by now. But what has happened is that millions of non-jobs have been created instead. In the West there is now a vast marketing industry, half of it competing against and neutralising the other half. There is a vast "Health and Safety" industry, wherein billions of pounds/dollars (=economic product) is spent on possible saving a few lives. There are industries created around the enforcement of political correctness (my local council has a significant equal opportunities department).
My father lived a cycling distance from work, but now vast amounts of wealth are frittered away by millions of people commuting daily the sort of mileage that my father would have considered an annual holiday journey. He cycled to work with no thought of being "green", the idea didn't exist then, but being "green" today is another new industry that sucks up vast amounts of wealth - don't get me started on that subject please.
The rapid, rapid education and rise of geeks of color is a "petri dish" for film, art, photography, software development (see MEST in Ghana), blood banks, laughter, tears, hugs, etc. Yes, cyber crime will increase, like everything else will increase.
Fascinating, but this discussion is about cyber crime, not about the other stuff you mention.
To an extent maybe but I KNOW I don't want someone who smokes Matchmaking can weed out the chaff
I agree. Some people seem to think that "the computer chooses your partener" and are horrified by that - "Marriages are made in heaven, you know!".
When I was using these agencies (depending how they worked) I simply contacted every girl of about the right age, was shorter than me, lived within 50 miles and did not smoke. Oddly, most of those who seemed most suited did not reply. I actually got on best with girls who might have been thought well below my social and intellectual level. They tended to be less bossy, less demanding, and tended to get straight to the point of what they wanted - or did not want. OTOH more intelligent girls seemed to start a slow and elaborate negotiation as to what our relationship was about.
Also, the less intellectual girls took more care with their appearance - they were sexier - perhaps because that was their best card to play in life. I swear they usually had bigger tits too.
You meet interesting people when doing interesting things, when 'meeting people' is the interesting thing you do to meet people conversations can get very short.
You sound just like my mother.
Let's define "meeting" as having a social conversation lasting at least 30 seconds. Perhaps you could tell us your secret of how you meet such people, because just "doing interesting things" doesn't do it. I have done plenty of interesting things (interesting to me at least) - yacht racing, cycle racing, driven a train, photography, rifle shooting, been a lieutenant in the Navy, driven an armoured vehicle..... The girls/women I saw around in those situations (IF there were any at all - usually not) were not there to find a partner but because they were actually interested in the activity itself. They certainly were not interested in me - like "Get lost, I'm here to sail a yacht, not to talk to you". Or they are there to be with their husband/BF. In any case, any eligible females in those situations have always been outnumbered by males at least 4:1 in my experience, so there are always going to be enough males (already married or not) more charming than I am to occupy any girls.
As someone else said here, once you have met, how you met does not matter. Why should it make any difference whether you meet at the yacht club or through a dating website? Do couples who have met at yacht clubs talk to each other about nothing but yachts all their lives? I know they don't. No more than I just talk about internet dating with GF's I have met that way.
I asked your secret : I'll tell you mine. I have never met any girl (30 second or more conversation, remember) other than through dating agencies (excepting one or two whores who approached me in foreign bars while in the Navy). I found that if I approach a girl they ignore my existence if they are polite, or tell me to fuck off if they are not. I can't explain it, considering some of the shits you see them consorting with; I don't even think I am that bad looking. So I don't even try that any more. Odd thing is that when I do get to know a girl through a dating agency of some kind, they actually quite like me, and I have met some dishy girls that way. There seems to be a barrier to get over first; overcoming that barrier is what online dating does. YMMV.
Trisquel is a very bad choice for trying to wean people off Windows. It is FSF stuff in the strictest sense - no proprietory stuff whatever. Although I have never tried it myself, and don't want to, I quote from a review of it in Linux Format magazine's Christmas issue (LXF 165):-
" [It uses] ABrouser. This is a respin of Firefox to make it more free, and it has been redirected to an add-ons store with only free software. You may find your hardware does not work quite as well... but what's a bit of computing efficiency compared to the price of freedom?"
I think that "your hardware does not work quite as well" most likely an understatement, and the bit about "compared to the price of freedom" (knowing LXF magazine's sense of humour) is thinly veiled sarcasm. I once tried an open video driver instead of a proprietory one in the disto that I use and it was truly awful. In other words, Trisquel is going to leave any Windows user who tries it frustrated - and confirmed in their prejudice that Linux is an inferior OS. They should be handing out Mepis or Mint, not Trisquel, and leave the political agenda until later.
I think that fear of attracting attention is very misguided. Civilisations capable of mass interstellar travel automatically have much better opportunities to pursue... than to go torment younger single-planet civs.
Who said anything about tormenting? The Vogons did not destroy earth to torment, but for practical reasons. They were described as "Not cruel, just callous". I destroy wasp nests, but not to torment them. I recently trapped a dozen mice in my attic; I actually felt sorry for them, they look cute, but knew that if I let them be they would be taking over the house.
Such an advanced civilisation might see us as we see an ants nest. And don't depend on talking our way out of it, reasoning with them. They would be on a totally different mental wavelength. Most higher animals on Earth talk to each other (that is what "birdsong" is for example), and we have lived for thousands of years alongside them, yet most people will not even accept that they do so - let alone listen.
If you like cheap keyboards just fine, then by all means, do that. Some prefer the older ones, and that's ok too.
I tend to live at my PC and over the years it just became so tedious keeping a good keyboard clean and working well. Now I just get whatever is cheapest
A quality keyboard (quality anything IMHO) can be dismantled with real screws, cleaned and re-assembled and ends up like new. I use a 20 year old IBM AT keyboard that I clean about once every 2-3 years (I don't eat over it either). It is superb to use and worth the hour spent. Most modern keyboards are utter rubbish, and I have thrown quite a few away (like you get with new PCs) after trying a few keystrokes. What a waste of resources. It is like the difference between riding a quality bike and a riding cheap Chinese-made commuter hack, no matter how new and clean that hack is. If you are happy with the hack then I am happy for you.
All the pro-nuclear people can receive a gov't stipend to have some of it burried in their back yards.
I am pro-nuclear and would have no objection to it being vertically under my back yard at the appropriate shielding depth. No stipend necessary.
However, I'd be concerned about the traffic generated, so I would want its entrance sited a long way away, thanks. And the stuff delivered by rail - that's a another condition. I am far more concerned about road accidents, traffic noise and general traffic nuisance, as road accidents kill hundreds of people (sorry, I just checked, it is thousands) every day around the world, than nuclear waste.
If you are in marketing, it is you who is the leach. I pay for my internet access and dont want you riding on my bandwidth.
I remember when most "sites" were bulletin boards and they were not that bad for the time. There were mostly free apart from the phone call, for which I still pay the equivalent today. There were plenty of them on many topics, without adverts, and they mostly kept relevant to the topic.
I have several web sites which are free, have no adverts, and anyone is welcome to visit. I pay for the hosting which is actually quite cheap. Here is one. As it happens it is about Mrs Thatcher who also believed that nothing could or should exist unless it was commercialised.
I have no objection to web sites which are meant as advertising, such as when I want a new camera I go to camera shop web sites to see what they have got. The internet will always exist for such sites.
You might wanna find out what actually happened in the US before laying on too much sanctimony.
We've tried to replace the dollar with coins three times so far, and it's failed.
Being in the UK where the pound note was replaced by a coin about 15 years ago, amid much moaning from some, I do not understand what is meant by "failed". So what happened? Did people throw them away when given them (in change or payement)? Or did they refuse the transaction entirely (and then do without the business)? Historically, there was great difficulty getting people to accept notes in the first place rather than coin; so what irony!
In the UK, the pound coins just started appearing to the public in change from shops, and notes just disappeared over a timescale of a few weeks because, when they passed through a bank, the bank withdrew them (as they would withdraw worn-out notes). In fact once the process started people became reluctant to accept a pound note because they did not want to get stuck with it (although banks would accept them for a long time after).
Personally, I always find money very acceptable.. Yes, anyone could "refuse to accept" coins like they can alway "refuse to accept" cars, the Internet, electricity, the sun, rain, whatever.....
It's not about clicking the ads, it's about the impressions. Oftentimes the ads are about increasing awareness of a brand's existence.
You (or the marketing droids) are assuming that being aware of their existance will make people buy those brands more. But my reaction to being pissed off by intrusive adverts, and that of most other people I know, is to avoid those brands if at all possible.
For example my dinner was once interrupted by a phone call from "Talk-Talk" (a UK phone company) trying to get me to switch to them as a provider. At first he masqueraded in a subtle way as being from my existing company, and I had never heard of Talk-Talk before so I did not realise it was a different company. So I wasted nearly a minute before I realised it was a sales call and told him to f##k off and die. It left me shaking with anger and there is no way I would ever EVER deal with Talk-Talk after that.
FTFA:-
Could browser ad blocking one day... jeopardise...the primary business models of many online and new media businesses?
I sincerely hope so. The alternative is that it degenerates into a shopping interface
what is also concerning is that Europe seems to be under threat from immigration from countries with ultra conservative values such as Pakistan.because fertility rates in Europe are far too low, below replacement level, there is a real danger of as well Europeans headed towards extinction, unless Europeans start having more children and stop allowing in this immigration invasion that is destroying Europe, by rapidly reproducing muslims.
Europeans having more children would not stop this immigration because so many people in Europe, particularly politicians and generally "bosses", think the more people the better. They want a constant supply of new people being fed in at the bottom to do shit-shovelling jobs for peanuts. And then more again, when the previous lot better themselves and they in turn join the ranks of those demanding new shit shovellers.
The situation is like running faster and faster along a tight-rope trying not to fall off, but that cannot last. One day soon we will hit the wall. These people also argue efficiencies of scale, but we have passed that point long ago. I would say the optimum population for the UK would be 20 million at the most. People already spend a great deal of their effort and resources simply struggling against the pressure of numbers. Time spent in trafic jams and queues are obvious examples. Also some things can never be scaled up - land area and natural resources.
"Political Correctness" - top oxymoron of the 21st century! How did those two words even get into the same phrase/sentence orignally?
It was originally introduced as a joke phrase, as a way of ridiculing those who preached and practised it. So it was deliberately ridiculous, as you observe. However, when those who preach and practise it heard the phrase, being so disconnected from reality they failed to recognise it as a joke at their expense and, thinking the phrase was rather good, began to use it themselves. Then eventually they did realise it was a joke against them and they now avoid it.
Anything that follows from the premise "if we had done (something other than what we did)" is necessarily speculation. The only question is how good the speculation is...
Indeed. That does forbid speculation though, and we should not abandon attempting to learn lessons from history.
The fact of the matter is, Britain did not get into the war to "try to help the French (and Poland)". They did it to try to save themselves. Whether it was necessary or not is unknown, but nation-states aren't known for committing to expensive (in both lives and money) tasks for altruistic reasons. Britain did what it did because it thought that was what was best for Britain
The immediate reason Britain declared war on Germany was because, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Britain had promised to "help" Poland if they were invaded too. In September Germany did just that, so Britain's "help" took the form of declaring war and despatching some token long distance air raids against strategic targets in the east of Germany. Here is a reference if you need it:-
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany." [Neville Chamberlain, 3 Sept 1939]
They did not do it "to save themselves". Britain was under no threat at the time. What is true about your statement is that it was not altruistic. Poland itself did not have a very savoury regime anyway. Britain was simply following its traditional European strategy of "balance of power" - ie supporting the weaker side to stop any one power becoming dominant (irrespective of principles), knowing that if things did go pear-shaped it could retreat to its nearly unassailable position behind the Channel. In this case it was supporting Poland and France against the militarily resurgent Germany. In th event, things went perfectly to the textbook - the weaker side collapsed anyway and Britain did retreat to behind the channel.
Nice theory, but when you get to the "we now know" part, it makes me question if you understand what "know" means. Much of what you said might be true, but we most certainly don't "know" any of it.
What I said was "We now know that Hitler's obsessions were largely against communists and Jewry, and the UK was not part of it." Do you need a reference for those being Hitler's obsessions? I should have put it more strongly in that diplomats should have known it back then too, if they had taken the trouble to read "Mein Kampf" for example or listened to his speeches properly. Funny thing was that Churchill was also an obsessed anti-communist. Just after WW1 he despatched British troops (with questionable authorisation) to assist the White Russians against the Reds. He and Stalin were hardly on speaking terms at the WWII conferences with the result that Stalin would really only negotiate with Roosevelt - and ran rings around that sick old man (one of his own aides was of the opinion that Roosevelt was not taking much in) who conceeded far too much to Stalin - to Churchill's despair.
Lets not forget that hitler and stalin made a deal to split eastern europe between them..... and that hitler broke said deal. Making a deal with the devil doesn't gaurantee they won't turn on you after
Why do people keep talking about needing a "deal" with Hitler, and Hitler needing to keep to it. You do not need a "deal". You can do nothing, but stay cautious.
Did Switzerland do a deal with Hitler? Portugal? Argentina? China? An invasion of Britain even if Hitler had really wanted it would have been about as likely to succeed as an invasion of China, given the control Britain had over the English Channel.
Did hitler really admire the british or did he just want us out of the way for a while so he could deal with other things? since he is dead we will never know for sure.
Yes, he did. In a speech he made to senior German Officers after cancelling the plans to invade Britain, he made this clear, praising Britain for running its empire effectively etc. It astonished some of his audience.
Hitler was in admiration of the British and sought an aliance prior to WWII. Our (at least) freedom could've easily be secured without a fight.
Uhm, perhaps you should look at certain other countries and how their agreements with Hitler worked out for them, before you decide that it would have been such a grand idea to trust him;-)
I have always failed to understand this much voiced argument. If Britain had not declared war on Germany (in honour of a promise to defend Poland which was utterly impractical to keep), it does not mean you had to "trust" him. Britain would not have needed to scrap its navy and dismiss its army. It could have maintained a position of neutral distrust, and should have done IMHO.
In fact Britain was militarily stronger just before the war than it was after Dunkirk. Its catastrophic involvement in trying to help the French (and Poland !) severly weakened it, not least in the loss of most of its army's equipment and troop morale. Britain was left MORE in Hitler's trust as a result. It seems that even then, after Dunkirk, Hitler withdrew from the idea of invading Britain partly because of that admiration factor mentioned by the GP poster. He would ideally have liked Germany to rule the Continent while Britain continued to run its empire (very effectively, he thought) as a useful trading partner for raw materials.
Those other countries you mention were just a land march away for the German army, then one of the most effective land forces the World has ever seen. The existence of the English Channel and the British navy (which was 4-5 times the size of the German navy) made those other invasions irrelevant to the UK however. Goering's boast of making Britain vulnerable to invasion purely by the Luftwaffe was never more practical than a boast and it degenerated into a battle of attrition between two air forces.
That is not to say that my parents and grandparents were not convinced that Hitler's main aim and obsession in life was to destroy them. Nothing would ever have convinced tham otherwise. We now know that Hitler's obsessions were largely against communists and Jewry, and the UK was not part of it.
A friend of mine saw a similar filming at a yacht harbour while he was painting his boat.
The film team of about 30 people arrived at about 11am. They spent about an hour flaffing around setting things up. Or some of them did while the others watched. Then at midday they opened a van that had been closed until then and out came camp chairs, tables, and a dozen hampers of the most luxurious picnic he had ever seen - white table cloths, silver cutlery, bottles of wine and what looked like salads with smoked salmon, rollmop herrings etc. Lunch took until about 2.30. Then they did some filming for a couple of hours.
The buzz was that it was for a TV series, and he went out of his way to watch the relevant episode a few months later, wondering if he would see himself and his boat in the background. What there was of the harbour scene was a two second fast sweeping view of the harbour followed by about 30 seconds of talking heads with the background de-focussed.
The cost of things goes down all the time.... If you adjust for inflation, you have to work to find examples of things that have increased in price.
Yes, some things have become spectacularly cheap but they tend to be things, especially high tech things, that can be manufactured by slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H workers in China or India in exchange for a handful of rice. How the hell else does anybody make a keyboard for under 5 GBP [Ref Amazon for examples]?
But there are plenty of things that have risen spectacularly in real terms in the UK anyway. Examples are obvious here:- Any basic materials such as timber, paint and metal; low tech components such as screws; land; housing; furniture; the better sorts of food; car spares. I won't go on.
Basically, there is an increasing world population competing for diminishing raw materials. The many hands (involving people like Chinese with lower expectations - FTTB!!!!) mean that making things gets cheaper but the stuff it is made from gets dearer. This will get worse as time goes on, especially as the expectations of those Chinese, Indians and whoever else rise. Note that high tech stuff tends not to involve much material which is why it can be so cheap, unlike furniture for example.
Furniture is interesting. I have some old stuff I have broken up to supply myself for woodwork. Furniture from before about the 1950's might look old fashioned but I find it was of vastly superior quality to today's stuff. Such as solid hardwood timber drawer bottoms (not even plywood , let alone chipboard). My working class parents and their parents bought this stuff, but to buy such well-made stuff today would cost vastly more than 95% of the population could afford or want to, even if they could find it.
I have had a look myself and reckon you could find enough free porn to watch it for several hundred hours every day. A lot of it is 2 minute excerpts with links to try to get you to paying sites, but there is also plenty of 20-60 minute stuff with no strings attached.
How can you loose a phone while showing it off to all your friends in a bar?
Its already been knocked off in China so whats the big deal?
Can I have one?
And how can you not ask at the bar you were in if they found your phone for over 24 hours? Unless you wanted somebody to "find" it.
And WTF is a guy with a commercially secret document/plad/prototype on his person doing hanging around in a drinking establishment? It should have been Office -> car -> home -> car -> office
Slashdot Mirror
I remember the daydreams about how robots would do all the work and people would lead lives of leisure. Instead we work harder to try and keep up with the machines we built. Those daydreams were still going into the 80's.
I remember that too. Not robots particularly, but computers to do the paperwork and automated machines to do the labour. Just a few humans would need to work a few hours per week on maintenance. Sociologists writing in periodicals such as New Society, New Scientist and the more serious Sunday newspapers used to say that the main worry for the future was to keep the millions of idle, bored people from getting into mischief.
That state of affairs could be almost practicable by now. But what has happened is that millions of non-jobs have been created instead. In the West there is now a vast marketing industry, half of it competing against and neutralising the other half. There is a vast "Health and Safety" industry, wherein billions of pounds/dollars (=economic product) is spent on possible saving a few lives. There are industries created around the enforcement of political correctness (my local council has a significant equal opportunities department).
My father lived a cycling distance from work, but now vast amounts of wealth are frittered away by millions of people commuting daily the sort of mileage that my father would have considered an annual holiday journey. He cycled to work with no thought of being "green", the idea didn't exist then, but being "green" today is another new industry that sucks up vast amounts of wealth - don't get me started on that subject please.
The rapid, rapid education and rise of geeks of color is a "petri dish" for film, art, photography, software development (see MEST in Ghana), blood banks, laughter, tears, hugs, etc. Yes, cyber crime will increase, like everything else will increase.
Fascinating, but this discussion is about cyber crime, not about the other stuff you mention.
To an extent maybe but I KNOW I don't want someone who smokes Matchmaking can weed out the chaff
I agree. Some people seem to think that "the computer chooses your partener" and are horrified by that - "Marriages are made in heaven, you know!".
When I was using these agencies (depending how they worked) I simply contacted every girl of about the right age, was shorter than me, lived within 50 miles and did not smoke. Oddly, most of those who seemed most suited did not reply. I actually got on best with girls who might have been thought well below my social and intellectual level. They tended to be less bossy, less demanding, and tended to get straight to the point of what they wanted - or did not want. OTOH more intelligent girls seemed to start a slow and elaborate negotiation as to what our relationship was about.
Also, the less intellectual girls took more care with their appearance - they were sexier - perhaps because that was their best card to play in life. I swear they usually had bigger tits too.
You meet interesting people when doing interesting things, when 'meeting people' is the interesting thing you do to meet people conversations can get very short.
You sound just like my mother.
Let's define "meeting" as having a social conversation lasting at least 30 seconds. Perhaps you could tell us your secret of how you meet such people, because just "doing interesting things" doesn't do it. I have done plenty of interesting things (interesting to me at least) - yacht racing, cycle racing, driven a train, photography, rifle shooting, been a lieutenant in the Navy, driven an armoured vehicle..... The girls/women I saw around in those situations (IF there were any at all - usually not) were not there to find a partner but because they were actually interested in the activity itself. They certainly were not interested in me - like "Get lost, I'm here to sail a yacht, not to talk to you". Or they are there to be with their husband/BF. In any case, any eligible females in those situations have always been outnumbered by males at least 4:1 in my experience, so there are always going to be enough males (already married or not) more charming than I am to occupy any girls.
As someone else said here, once you have met, how you met does not matter. Why should it make any difference whether you meet at the yacht club or through a dating website? Do couples who have met at yacht clubs talk to each other about nothing but yachts all their lives? I know they don't. No more than I just talk about internet dating with GF's I have met that way.
I asked your secret : I'll tell you mine. I have never met any girl (30 second or more conversation, remember) other than through dating agencies (excepting one or two whores who approached me in foreign bars while in the Navy). I found that if I approach a girl they ignore my existence if they are polite, or tell me to fuck off if they are not. I can't explain it, considering some of the shits you see them consorting with; I don't even think I am that bad looking. So I don't even try that any more. Odd thing is that when I do get to know a girl through a dating agency of some kind, they actually quite like me, and I have met some dishy girls that way. There seems to be a barrier to get over first; overcoming that barrier is what online dating does. YMMV.
Trisquel is a very bad choice for trying to wean people off Windows. It is FSF stuff in the strictest sense - no proprietory stuff whatever. Although I have never tried it myself, and don't want to, I quote from a review of it in Linux Format magazine's Christmas issue (LXF 165) :-
... but what's a bit of computing efficiency compared to the price of freedom?"
" [It uses] ABrouser. This is a respin of Firefox to make it more free, and it has been redirected to an add-ons store with only free software. You may find your hardware does not work quite as well
I think that "your hardware does not work quite as well" most likely an understatement, and the bit about "compared to the price of freedom" (knowing LXF magazine's sense of humour) is thinly veiled sarcasm. I once tried an open video driver instead of a proprietory one in the disto that I use and it was truly awful. In other words, Trisquel is going to leave any Windows user who tries it frustrated - and confirmed in their prejudice that Linux is an inferior OS. They should be handing out Mepis or Mint, not Trisquel, and leave the political agenda until later.
I think that fear of attracting attention is very misguided. Civilisations capable of mass interstellar travel automatically have much better opportunities to pursue ... than to go torment younger single-planet civs.
Who said anything about tormenting? The Vogons did not destroy earth to torment, but for practical reasons. They were described as "Not cruel, just callous". I destroy wasp nests, but not to torment them. I recently trapped a dozen mice in my attic; I actually felt sorry for them, they look cute, but knew that if I let them be they would be taking over the house.
Such an advanced civilisation might see us as we see an ants nest. And don't depend on talking our way out of it, reasoning with them. They would be on a totally different mental wavelength. Most higher animals on Earth talk to each other (that is what "birdsong" is for example), and we have lived for thousands of years alongside them, yet most people will not even accept that they do so - let alone listen.
So you thought that Win8 was infinitely better?
John Lennon != Vladimir Lenin
or John Lennon != Jimmy Saville, but he was a POS anyway.
If you like cheap keyboards just fine, then by all means, do that. Some prefer the older ones, and that's ok too.
I tend to live at my PC and over the years it just became so tedious keeping a good keyboard clean and working well. Now I just get whatever is cheapest
A quality keyboard (quality anything IMHO) can be dismantled with real screws, cleaned and re-assembled and ends up like new. I use a 20 year old IBM AT keyboard that I clean about once every 2-3 years (I don't eat over it either). It is superb to use and worth the hour spent. Most modern keyboards are utter rubbish, and I have thrown quite a few away (like you get with new PCs) after trying a few keystrokes. What a waste of resources. It is like the difference between riding a quality bike and a riding cheap Chinese-made commuter hack, no matter how new and clean that hack is. If you are happy with the hack then I am happy for you.
All the pro-nuclear people can receive a gov't stipend to have some of it burried in their back yards.
I am pro-nuclear and would have no objection to it being vertically under my back yard at the appropriate shielding depth. No stipend necessary.
However, I'd be concerned about the traffic generated, so I would want its entrance sited a long way away, thanks. And the stuff delivered by rail - that's a another condition. I am far more concerned about road accidents, traffic noise and general traffic nuisance, as road accidents kill hundreds of people (sorry, I just checked, it is thousands) every day around the world, than nuclear waste.
$749,999 is to pay the lawyer. The damage was $1.
If you are in marketing, it is you who is the leach. I pay for my internet access and dont want you riding on my bandwidth.
I remember when most "sites" were bulletin boards and they were not that bad for the time. There were mostly free apart from the phone call, for which I still pay the equivalent today. There were plenty of them on many topics, without adverts, and they mostly kept relevant to the topic.
I have several web sites which are free, have no adverts, and anyone is welcome to visit. I pay for the hosting which is actually quite cheap. Here is one. As it happens it is about Mrs Thatcher who also believed that nothing could or should exist unless it was commercialised.
I have no objection to web sites which are meant as advertising, such as when I want a new camera I go to camera shop web sites to see what they have got. The internet will always exist for such sites.
From TFA : "We're all familiar with ads that seem to follow you around as you go from one website to another"
Speak for yourself moon_unit2. I never notice the adverts
You might wanna find out what actually happened in the US before laying on too much sanctimony.
We've tried to replace the dollar with coins three times so far, and it's failed.
Being in the UK where the pound note was replaced by a coin about 15 years ago, amid much moaning from some, I do not understand what is meant by "failed". So what happened? Did people throw them away when given them (in change or payement)? Or did they refuse the transaction entirely (and then do without the business)? Historically, there was great difficulty getting people to accept notes in the first place rather than coin; so what irony!
.....
In the UK, the pound coins just started appearing to the public in change from shops, and notes just disappeared over a timescale of a few weeks because, when they passed through a bank, the bank withdrew them (as they would withdraw worn-out notes). In fact once the process started people became reluctant to accept a pound note because they did not want to get stuck with it (although banks would accept them for a long time after).
Personally, I always find money very acceptable.. Yes, anyone could "refuse to accept" coins like they can alway "refuse to accept" cars, the Internet, electricity, the sun, rain, whatever
It's not about clicking the ads, it's about the impressions. Oftentimes the ads are about increasing awareness of a brand's existence.
You (or the marketing droids) are assuming that being aware of their existance will make people buy those brands more. But my reaction to being pissed off by intrusive adverts, and that of most other people I know, is to avoid those brands if at all possible.
:-
For example my dinner was once interrupted by a phone call from "Talk-Talk" (a UK phone company) trying to get me to switch to them as a provider. At first he masqueraded in a subtle way as being from my existing company, and I had never heard of Talk-Talk before so I did not realise it was a different company. So I wasted nearly a minute before I realised it was a sales call and told him to f##k off and die. It left me shaking with anger and there is no way I would ever EVER deal with Talk-Talk after that.
FTFA
Could browser ad blocking one day ... jeopardise ...the primary business models of many online and new media businesses?
I sincerely hope so. The alternative is that it degenerates into a shopping interface
what is also concerning is that Europe seems to be under threat from immigration from countries with ultra conservative values such as Pakistan.because fertility rates in Europe are far too low, below replacement level, there is a real danger of as well Europeans headed towards extinction, unless Europeans start having more children and stop allowing in this immigration invasion that is destroying Europe, by rapidly reproducing muslims.
Europeans having more children would not stop this immigration because so many people in Europe, particularly politicians and generally "bosses", think the more people the better. They want a constant supply of new people being fed in at the bottom to do shit-shovelling jobs for peanuts. And then more again, when the previous lot better themselves and they in turn join the ranks of those demanding new shit shovellers.
The situation is like running faster and faster along a tight-rope trying not to fall off, but that cannot last. One day soon we will hit the wall. These people also argue efficiencies of scale, but we have passed that point long ago. I would say the optimum population for the UK would be 20 million at the most. People already spend a great deal of their effort and resources simply struggling against the pressure of numbers. Time spent in trafic jams and queues are obvious examples. Also some things can never be scaled up - land area and natural resources.
"Political Correctness" - top oxymoron of the 21st century! How did those two words even get into the same phrase/sentence orignally?
It was originally introduced as a joke phrase, as a way of ridiculing those who preached and practised it. So it was deliberately ridiculous, as you observe. However, when those who preach and practise it heard the phrase, being so disconnected from reality they failed to recognise it as a joke at their expense and, thinking the phrase was rather good, began to use it themselves. Then eventually they did realise it was a joke against them and they now avoid it.
Anything that follows from the premise "if we had done (something other than what we did)" is necessarily speculation. The only question is how good the speculation is...
Indeed. That does forbid speculation though, and we should not abandon attempting to learn lessons from history.
The fact of the matter is, Britain did not get into the war to "try to help the French (and Poland)". They did it to try to save themselves. Whether it was necessary or not is unknown, but nation-states aren't known for committing to expensive (in both lives and money) tasks for altruistic reasons. Britain did what it did because it thought that was what was best for Britain
The immediate reason Britain declared war on Germany was because, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Britain had promised to "help" Poland if they were invaded too. In September Germany did just that, so Britain's "help" took the form of declaring war and despatching some token long distance air raids against strategic targets in the east of Germany. Here is a reference if you need it :-
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany." [Neville Chamberlain, 3 Sept 1939]
They did not do it "to save themselves". Britain was under no threat at the time. What is true about your statement is that it was not altruistic. Poland itself did not have a very savoury regime anyway. Britain was simply following its traditional European strategy of "balance of power" - ie supporting the weaker side to stop any one power becoming dominant (irrespective of principles), knowing that if things did go pear-shaped it could retreat to its nearly unassailable position behind the Channel. In this case it was supporting Poland and France against the militarily resurgent Germany. In th event, things went perfectly to the textbook - the weaker side collapsed anyway and Britain did retreat to behind the channel.
Nice theory, but when you get to the "we now know" part, it makes me question if you understand what "know" means. Much of what you said might be true, but we most certainly don't "know" any of it.
What I said was "We now know that Hitler's obsessions were largely against communists and Jewry, and the UK was not part of it." Do you need a reference for those being Hitler's obsessions? I should have put it more strongly in that diplomats should have known it back then too, if they had taken the trouble to read "Mein Kampf" for example or listened to his speeches properly. Funny thing was that Churchill was also an obsessed anti-communist. Just after WW1 he despatched British troops (with questionable authorisation) to assist the White Russians against the Reds. He and Stalin were hardly on speaking terms at the WWII conferences with the result that Stalin would really only negotiate with Roosevelt - and ran rings around that sick old man (one of his own aides was of the opinion that Roosevelt was not taking much in) who conceeded far too much to Stalin - to Churchill's despair.
Of course Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other minorities would have gone to work camps or extermination camps,
No, this did not necessarily happen in countries allied with Germany, only so far as their leaders chose it. These were alliances, not annexations.
Lets not forget that hitler and stalin made a deal to split eastern europe between them..... and that hitler broke said deal. Making a deal with the devil doesn't gaurantee they won't turn on you after
Why do people keep talking about needing a "deal" with Hitler, and Hitler needing to keep to it. You do not need a "deal". You can do nothing, but stay cautious.
Did Switzerland do a deal with Hitler? Portugal? Argentina? China? An invasion of Britain even if Hitler had really wanted it would have been about as likely to succeed as an invasion of China, given the control Britain had over the English Channel.
Did hitler really admire the british or did he just want us out of the way for a while so he could deal with other things? since he is dead we will never know for sure.
Yes, he did. In a speech he made to senior German Officers after cancelling the plans to invade Britain, he made this clear, praising Britain for running its empire effectively etc. It astonished some of his audience.
Hitler was in admiration of the British and sought an aliance prior to WWII. Our (at least) freedom could've easily be secured without a fight.
Uhm, perhaps you should look at certain other countries and how their agreements with Hitler worked out for them, before you decide that it would have been such a grand idea to trust him ;-)
I have always failed to understand this much voiced argument. If Britain had not declared war on Germany (in honour of a promise to defend Poland which was utterly impractical to keep), it does not mean you had to "trust" him. Britain would not have needed to scrap its navy and dismiss its army. It could have maintained a position of neutral distrust, and should have done IMHO.
In fact Britain was militarily stronger just before the war than it was after Dunkirk. Its catastrophic involvement in trying to help the French (and Poland !) severly weakened it, not least in the loss of most of its army's equipment and troop morale. Britain was left MORE in Hitler's trust as a result. It seems that even then, after Dunkirk, Hitler withdrew from the idea of invading Britain partly because of that admiration factor mentioned by the GP poster. He would ideally have liked Germany to rule the Continent while Britain continued to run its empire (very effectively, he thought) as a useful trading partner for raw materials.
Those other countries you mention were just a land march away for the German army, then one of the most effective land forces the World has ever seen. The existence of the English Channel and the British navy (which was 4-5 times the size of the German navy) made those other invasions irrelevant to the UK however. Goering's boast of making Britain vulnerable to invasion purely by the Luftwaffe was never more practical than a boast and it degenerated into a battle of attrition between two air forces.
That is not to say that my parents and grandparents were not convinced that Hitler's main aim and obsession in life was to destroy them. Nothing would ever have convinced tham otherwise. We now know that Hitler's obsessions were largely against communists and Jewry, and the UK was not part of it.
A friend of mine saw a similar filming at a yacht harbour while he was painting his boat.
The film team of about 30 people arrived at about 11am. They spent about an hour flaffing around setting things up. Or some of them did while the others watched. Then at midday they opened a van that had been closed until then and out came camp chairs, tables, and a dozen hampers of the most luxurious picnic he had ever seen - white table cloths, silver cutlery, bottles of wine and what looked like salads with smoked salmon, rollmop herrings etc. Lunch took until about 2.30. Then they did some filming for a couple of hours.
The buzz was that it was for a TV series, and he went out of his way to watch the relevant episode a few months later, wondering if he would see himself and his boat in the background. What there was of the harbour scene was a two second fast sweeping view of the harbour followed by about 30 seconds of talking heads with the background de-focussed.
The cost of things goes down all the time.... If you adjust for inflation, you have to work to find examples of things that have increased in price.
Yes, some things have become spectacularly cheap but they tend to be things, especially high tech things, that can be manufactured by slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H workers in China or India in exchange for a handful of rice. How the hell else does anybody make a keyboard for under 5 GBP [Ref Amazon for examples]?
:- Any basic materials such as timber, paint and metal; low tech components such as screws; land; housing; furniture; the better sorts of food; car spares. I won't go on.
But there are plenty of things that have risen spectacularly in real terms in the UK anyway. Examples are obvious here
Basically, there is an increasing world population competing for diminishing raw materials. The many hands (involving people like Chinese with lower expectations - FTTB!!!!) mean that making things gets cheaper but the stuff it is made from gets dearer. This will get worse as time goes on, especially as the expectations of those Chinese, Indians and whoever else rise. Note that high tech stuff tends not to involve much material which is why it can be so cheap, unlike furniture for example.
Furniture is interesting. I have some old stuff I have broken up to supply myself for woodwork. Furniture from before about the 1950's might look old fashioned but I find it was of vastly superior quality to today's stuff. Such as solid hardwood timber drawer bottoms (not even plywood , let alone chipboard). My working class parents and their parents bought this stuff, but to buy such well-made stuff today would cost vastly more than 95% of the population could afford or want to, even if they could find it.
I have had a look myself and reckon you could find enough free porn to watch it for several hundred hours every day. A lot of it is 2 minute excerpts with links to try to get you to paying sites, but there is also plenty of 20-60 minute stuff with no strings attached.
Three Questions.
How can you loose a phone while showing it off to all your friends in a bar?
Its already been knocked off in China so whats the big deal?
Can I have one?
And how can you not ask at the bar you were in if they found your phone for over 24 hours? Unless you wanted somebody to "find" it.
And WTF is a guy with a commercially secret document/plad/prototype on his person doing hanging around in a drinking establishment? It should have been Office -> car -> home -> car -> office