It can sound like common sense but as with many thing the devil is in the detail.
Consider cleaning parks for example. That's going to be a local council responsibility in the UK but in many cases the council probably contract it out to a private company. So within the current framework, if people on benefits are made to do the work then the private enterprise is getting the money for the contract but has lower labour costs. Who becomes the parasite then?
In principle I have no objection to people on benefits having to carry out some civic function but I am very opposed to any private enterprise profiting as a result. That's why I am opposed to the current UK Workfare scheme. It's not creating jobs; it's just allowing private enterprise to get free labour, in effect making them government subsidised. If they're getting taxpayer funded labour, then I as a taxpayer should get a vote at their AGM.
And this AC post excellently defines to our non-UK colleagues, exactly how a reader of the Daily Mail thinks. They think that things like the ECtHR do nothing but prevent us deporting scrounging asylum seekers without giving any thought to how it's absence could affect the government's treatment of each and every citizen of the country.
Well, maybe Chinese today and for the next couple of years.
But when labour costs start to rise in China where is the next place that the big multi-nationals will seek to keep their cost base as low as possible? If you can determine that and then learn the local language then you could reap big rewards when the off-shoring goes there.
Of course you can always just go for the long game. Eventually that low labour cost will be found in English speaking countries.
Given that significantly more than half that list is 20th century or later dates and the lead time to impending apocalypse seems to be getting shorter it is certain that it will rapidly grow. 2222 will eventually be on it. As will 2221 and 2223 and every year.
In replying to that sequence of posts you also forgot to add that slashdot is forever populated by anonymous cowards who *always* know that the current widely accepted theory for *any* scientific discipline is wrong and that whatever arbitrary replacement is eventually dreamed up (I don't think they ever understand what "evidence based" means) for it will also be wrong.
Fair point, but O'Neill cylinders have artificial gravity via centrifugal force on their inner surfaces. Research point for someone there to see how much that changes things, but even setting up a workable environment for, say mice, to investigate the effects will probably cost quite a bit.
While there might actually be respondents who believe themselves to be disciples of Jedi principles, the other 99.999% would have just seen a facebook friend post, "Hey! Wouldn't it be funny if we all put Jedi on the census form as our religion".
I found a more interesting blog post at the time about Lockheed Martin having a fixed price contract to collate the census data and if enough people answered honestly but took measures that would interfere with the automated form scanning, then the costs incurred in manually processing the forms would hit their projected profit a bit.
I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.
The meme is more widespread than that because certain media outlets supporting a conservative agenda will perpetuate the idea at every opportunity so that many taxpayers will believe that the single, most significant reason for a country's economic woes is down to people living it large on welfare.
So long as the ruling elite can keep the in-fighting going among the people who massively outnumber them then they don't have to worry about attention being focused on them.
No wonder. They managed to fit a formula to a single number sequence of 6 values.
I'm sure that with modern computation, a formula could be calculated for just about any arbitrary sequence of 6 values. If that is possible then that would be deserving of being titled "a law".
Which got me thinking... if you're going to deploy helicopters against civilian food rioters[1] then it's probably better to have them under machine control rather than a pilot who is likely to come from a civilian background.
[1] Sadly, I don't think that this is an impossibility, even in developed nations.
Good luck then. If it ever does become a commonplace transportation then some lazy and unintelligent legislator is just gong to deem it the same as fixed wing aircraft because they both, like, go into the sky, and therefore subject to the same restrictions.
Our politicians are just as corrupt and self-serving as yours. They just have to work within a different framework. Which they must find galling; I bet many wish they were as rich as US politicians.
facebook [...] is unlikely that your screen will fill with crap telling you how cool usher or rihanna is over and over
Doesn't that rather depend on your friendlist?
Actually I can't really fault the musical tastes of mine but I do wonder how many of them are going to fill time after Facebook and Zynga part company.
Problem is that for most people it doesn't gel with their personal experience.
If The Scotsman newspaper runs this news then it's a guarantee that for a couple of days following the article the letters page would be full of "It was snowing here; so much for global warming" and "But I saw ice on the ground this morning" and similar variants.
And yes, I know it's my own fault for reading the letters page in The Scotsman.
Granted, but the point I was trying to make is that we know there was definitely life on the Antarctic continent before it became glaciated. Regardless of what environmental changes the other places might have gone through over the millennia, we cannot yet be certain that they ever supported life.
Maybe Curiosity will find evidence on Mars but it's going to be a long time until that question can be answered for the gas giant moons.
Slashdot Mirror
It can sound like common sense but as with many thing the devil is in the detail.
Consider cleaning parks for example. That's going to be a local council responsibility in the UK but in many cases the council probably contract it out to a private company. So within the current framework, if people on benefits are made to do the work then the private enterprise is getting the money for the contract but has lower labour costs. Who becomes the parasite then?
In principle I have no objection to people on benefits having to carry out some civic function but I am very opposed to any private enterprise profiting as a result. That's why I am opposed to the current UK Workfare scheme. It's not creating jobs; it's just allowing private enterprise to get free labour, in effect making them government subsidised. If they're getting taxpayer funded labour, then I as a taxpayer should get a vote at their AGM.
And this AC post excellently defines to our non-UK colleagues, exactly how a reader of the Daily Mail thinks. They think that things like the ECtHR do nothing but prevent us deporting scrounging asylum seekers without giving any thought to how it's absence could affect the government's treatment of each and every citizen of the country.
Well, maybe Chinese today and for the next couple of years.
But when labour costs start to rise in China where is the next place that the big multi-nationals will seek to keep their cost base as low as possible? If you can determine that and then learn the local language then you could reap big rewards when the off-shoring goes there.
Of course you can always just go for the long game. Eventually that low labour cost will be found in English speaking countries.
Given that significantly more than half that list is 20th century or later dates and the lead time to impending apocalypse seems to be getting shorter it is certain that it will rapidly grow. 2222 will eventually be on it. As will 2221 and 2223 and every year.
In replying to that sequence of posts you also forgot to add that slashdot is forever populated by anonymous cowards who *always* know that the current widely accepted theory for *any* scientific discipline is wrong and that whatever arbitrary replacement is eventually dreamed up (I don't think they ever understand what "evidence based" means) for it will also be wrong.
Fair point, but O'Neill cylinders have artificial gravity via centrifugal force on their inner surfaces. Research point for someone there to see how much that changes things, but even setting up a workable environment for, say mice, to investigate the effects will probably cost quite a bit.
While there might actually be respondents who believe themselves to be disciples of Jedi principles, the other 99.999% would have just seen a facebook friend post, "Hey! Wouldn't it be funny if we all put Jedi on the census form as our religion".
I found a more interesting blog post at the time about Lockheed Martin having a fixed price contract to collate the census data and if enough people answered honestly but took measures that would interfere with the automated form scanning, then the costs incurred in manually processing the forms would hit their projected profit a bit.
I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.
The meme is more widespread than that because certain media outlets supporting a conservative agenda will perpetuate the idea at every opportunity so that many taxpayers will believe that the single, most significant reason for a country's economic woes is down to people living it large on welfare.
So long as the ruling elite can keep the in-fighting going among the people who massively outnumber them then they don't have to worry about attention being focused on them.
I wonder if there is a study on the rate of definite infection by disease among those in an open-plan office space versus those in a personal office.
It might be that those promoting a "come in, or else" policy might be relatively unlikely to personally suffer any consequence of it.
No wonder. They managed to fit a formula to a single number sequence of 6 values.
I'm sure that with modern computation, a formula could be calculated for just about any arbitrary sequence of 6 values. If that is possible then that would be deserving of being titled "a law".
Which got me thinking... if you're going to deploy helicopters against civilian food rioters[1] then it's probably better to have them under machine control rather than a pilot who is likely to come from a civilian background.
[1] Sadly, I don't think that this is an impossibility, even in developed nations.
But if they don't have pilots who are they going to make contenders in an execution that's fronted as a TV game show?
Good luck then. If it ever does become a commonplace transportation then some lazy and unintelligent legislator is just gong to deem it the same as fixed wing aircraft because they both, like, go into the sky, and therefore subject to the same restrictions.
However, as a large semi-stationary platform it would be ideal.
For whom?
In pondering this, I see many more sinister applications than civilian ones.
Sure you can.
Our politicians are just as corrupt and self-serving as yours. They just have to work within a different framework. Which they must find galling; I bet many wish they were as rich as US politicians.
There might have been long enough for some primitive life, but probably not long enough for oil or other fossil fuels.
Could be okay for mineral resources, I guess.
facebook [...] is unlikely that your screen will fill with crap telling you how cool usher or rihanna is over and over
Doesn't that rather depend on your friendlist?
Actually I can't really fault the musical tastes of mine but I do wonder how many of them are going to fill time after Facebook and Zynga part company.
Problem is that for most people it doesn't gel with their personal experience.
If The Scotsman newspaper runs this news then it's a guarantee that for a couple of days following the article the letters page would be full of "It was snowing here; so much for global warming" and "But I saw ice on the ground this morning" and similar variants.
And yes, I know it's my own fault for reading the letters page in The Scotsman.
Quick, find patents for mobile devices and just add "on a flexible screen" and file a new one.
That's all it takes to get approval, right?
By "people", do you mean the extraterrestrial explorers investigating the remains of a civilization?
If they can push past the Big Pharma sales reps already surrounding them.
I think that defining a limit on how long that you send them into space for is a bit optional.
As is giving them space suits first.
Would that mean if Liz (you know, the queen) ever visited the US, the border people would say "Right, hand over the encryption keys"?
Granted, but the point I was trying to make is that we know there was definitely life on the Antarctic continent before it became glaciated. Regardless of what environmental changes the other places might have gone through over the millennia, we cannot yet be certain that they ever supported life.
Maybe Curiosity will find evidence on Mars but it's going to be a long time until that question can be answered for the gas giant moons.
Hang on...
Does this mean that the raters can view porn and claim that it's on the clock?