Democracy is more than 'just' free elections, you also need an independent judiciary and that's one of the elements missing in countries like Venezuela or Egypt.
I would even hazard to postulate a one-party government is lacking in democratic principles...
Absolutely, Linux is since years quite ready for the desktop.
Unity might be a bit of a FU for people that want control of their desktop but otherwise it 'just works', personally I wouldn't do without KDE..
Last year while leaving Jakarta, Indonesia, I noticed a small screen on the front of the immigration officer's boot that showed a stuck Grub screen, on the adjacent boots this screen displayed some security information for people leaving the country.
When my boss travels he has a USB thumb drive with Grub installed on it's mbr, the company's IT locked down computer has Kubuntu installed on an encrypted partition and whenever he feels like doing some private stuff, banking, browsing, private mail, he boots up to Linux with the USB drive inserted. So far IT has been too dumb to realise what it is:)
Oh yes, and then there is this little thing called the Hippocratic Oath, it is a scary thought that only 50% of British physicians actually swear it compared to 98% in the USofA and other developed nations.
Though this oath does not carry legal weight many Dutch doctors refused to corporate with a similar computer database exactly because they feared their oath would be breached if they did.
Exactly, there are plausible arguments to open such databases but even then, medical secrecy is in the Western World the way we used to know it before 9/11 a rather absolute thing and needs serious oversight before it is allowed to be breached, if ever.
One of the reasons is early legislatures recognised people would feel uncertain if they could be fair and open with their doctor unless such secrecy was guaranteed.
I'm wasting some mod points replying on your writings because you are very wrong.
Private data, and can it get more private than medical information? is per EU law yours and will always stay yours.
This is not the USofA where a corp can legally sell your stuff, not even in the case of bankruptcy.
Now even EU law has some exceptions to this rule and law enforcement is one of them but it would still require judicial (court) oversight, no blanket trawling.
Rather cynical is this idea is promoted by the same Cameron government that complains the Brussels's 'meddling' in it's internal affairs is wrong and needs to be stopped!
Just an example, the user ID can give a reasonable indication if an account has been made specially for the occasion, not necessarily bad in itself but in case of a curious reply it might give rise to the conclusion the account holder is a troll.
In case there's discussion about historical facts someone with a lower ID might actually have been around at the time which can carry weight.
I haven't seen the quoted article but can very much believe the story.
Slashdot patrons are a very discerning kind of consumer, they're not going to put up with advertisers flogging bullshit.
This obviously makes it hard for the typical Ad-agency boy to figure out what will pay the bills.
Over many years of internet use I've acquired a blind eye for advertisements and am perfectly capable of ignoring them without the use of adblocks, the exception is Flash, it's generally uncalled for and usually in bad taste but there's no need to block it, the client is a plug-in malware magnet and I've chosen to not install it.
Because I greatly appreciate the services rendered by Slashdot I've always declined the kind offer to switch off advertising.
Weird, I've now seen quite a few comments about a huge font but on this computer (Kubuntu with Firefox) I don't see much difference between the old and new re. fonts, maybe it's Windows/IE thing?
As a matter of fact, I see about the same amount of information per page even though it seems the beta pages are rather empty.
The rest of the beta is a different discussion, the lack of a proper time stamp, the missing links to previous posts etc.
They forget about other EU nations parliaments and only mention their own 'House of Commons'.
More significantly they forget about the EU parliament.
Had The Telegraph serious worries about this EU police group they would have included opinions from other EU member states.
Further these discussions are not 'secret', at best they are confidential, not exactly unusual for police matters and concerning our security.
But this proposal is indeed a move to the unwanted and unnecessary, yet totally along the lines of the present Cameron government, Cameron has already proven he'll support any increase in surveillance 'for the good of our children'.
So for me no surprise what-so-ever the UK police and 'Home Office Mandarins' have signed off on it, as a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised the forces promoting this idea are mainly British...
Slashdot Mirror
I would even hazard to postulate a one-party government is lacking in democratic principles...
Unity might be a bit of a FU for people that want control of their desktop but otherwise it 'just works', personally I wouldn't do without KDE..
Last year while leaving Jakarta, Indonesia, I noticed a small screen on the front of the immigration officer's boot that showed a stuck Grub screen, on the adjacent boots this screen displayed some security information for people leaving the country.
When my boss travels he has a USB thumb drive with Grub installed on it's mbr, the company's IT locked down computer has Kubuntu installed on an encrypted partition and whenever he feels like doing some private stuff, banking, browsing, private mail, he boots up to Linux with the USB drive inserted. :)
So far IT has been too dumb to realise what it is
Though this oath does not carry legal weight many Dutch doctors refused to corporate with a similar computer database exactly because they feared their oath would be breached if they did.
One of the reasons is early legislatures recognised people would feel uncertain if they could be fair and open with their doctor unless such secrecy was guaranteed.
Private data, and can it get more private than medical information? is per EU law yours and will always stay yours.
This is not the USofA where a corp can legally sell your stuff, not even in the case of bankruptcy.
Now even EU law has some exceptions to this rule and law enforcement is one of them but it would still require judicial (court) oversight, no blanket trawling.
Rather cynical is this idea is promoted by the same Cameron government that complains the Brussels's 'meddling' in it's internal affairs is wrong and needs to be stopped!
The value might be billions of Dollars but the public funding is certainly in Rubles...
Weird, exactly what I was thinking earlier today...
But there's a difference between registering with your real name and posting with it, the last is not what Eternal September enforces.
In case there's discussion about historical facts someone with a lower ID might actually have been around at the time which can carry weight.
This ID is a somewhat useful indication of how long the commenter has been around here.
And btw, the header remained empty until I copied and pasted the content, including the Re: This must be a badly labelled Alpha :)
Slashdot patrons are a very discerning kind of consumer, they're not going to put up with advertisers flogging bullshit.
This obviously makes it hard for the typical Ad-agency boy to figure out what will pay the bills.
Over many years of internet use I've acquired a blind eye for advertisements and am perfectly capable of ignoring them without the use of adblocks, the exception is Flash, it's generally uncalled for and usually in bad taste but there's no need to block it, the client is a plug-in malware magnet and I've chosen to not install it.
Because I greatly appreciate the services rendered by Slashdot I've always declined the kind offer to switch off advertising.
As a matter of fact, I see about the same amount of information per page even though it seems the beta pages are rather empty.
The rest of the beta is a different discussion, the lack of a proper time stamp, the missing links to previous posts etc.
At least with the mobile version you can easily switch to the regular one, well at least we still can.
I've got the two versions in adjacent tabs and they don't even have the same comments!
As if two separate databases are being used.
We were recently shopping around for new suppliers for our Scada system and one brought a really neat system that runs on...Silverlight!
Or we could just ban all travel.
More significantly they forget about the EU parliament.
Had The Telegraph serious worries about this EU police group they would have included opinions from other EU member states.
Further these discussions are not 'secret', at best they are confidential, not exactly unusual for police matters and concerning our security.
But this proposal is indeed a move to the unwanted and unnecessary, yet totally along the lines of the present Cameron government, Cameron has already proven he'll support any increase in surveillance 'for the good of our children'.
So for me no surprise what-so-ever the UK police and 'Home Office Mandarins' have signed off on it, as a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised the forces promoting this idea are mainly British...
Yet it is the way we express the capacity of batteries...
But it's a second consideration after good Linux compatibility.
That's local and not Global, just like the (short) cold spell in the US
Ah you must be American for you've never heard of guys like Stalin or Mao.
But meta data isn't data, or so we're told.
But the KDE port to Win8 is on it's way.
http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/ecall-automated-emergency-call-road-accidents-mandatory-cars-2015