The Red Cross and others seem to want to build a war chest so that when a big disaster hits they will be prepared. They take money from big events and hold some of it over for other operations. What bothers me about this is it seems like they don't trust people to donate when something happens.
I have a friend who used to work for one of the large charitable organisations as a statistician. He always said that his org didn't spend the money donated directly, they invested it. I know that sounds Bad and I didn't like the sound of my charity donations going into stocks, until he pointed out that the return on the investments meant that after a while, this strategy meant they ended up with a lot more to spend on charitable works than they could have done if they had just spent the donations. It made such a difference that it would have been irresponsible of them to just go out and spend.
So in some cases, it's not a war chest they're building. It's the charity squeezing as much benefit out of your donation as they possibly can and that, I think, is a very good thing.
By the way, he also said that one-off donations basically just pay for the campaign that solicited them. The campaign also gains them a smaller number of regular payments, and those are what funds good works. So if you're thinking about giving, consider signing up for a monthly payment instead of a one-off. It makes a difference.
In the US, we have a perfectly functional system for overthrowing the government on a periodic basis: voting. You want *actual* change, then actively work to vote out the current regime.
The thing that bothers me here is the illusion that under the current system the populace has any means of control of the government.
I get to cast a single vote once every four or five years. I live in a country with more than 2 political parties, so normally the majority of people's votes aren't for the new ruling party. Whoever gets in is under no obligation to fulfil the promises they made to gain my vote, and in this country at least politicians are notorious for not doing so.
I'd like to believe in your view of the world, truly I would. But from where I'm sitting (GB), it looks very much like I get a five-yearly 1/60,000,000 part of the decision about who gets to do whatever they like for the next four years.
Practically speaking, I wouldn't say I have any more input into the political process through voting than I would have had in a monarchy, and for that reason I cannot agree with your notion that voting brings about *actual* change. It demonstrably doesn't.
I largely agree with what you're saying, the unstoppable momentum of bureaucracy is something that isn't changed easily. I did want to say something about this part though:
Giving them trials is controversial and is causing debate. We can't set the actually dangerous ones free.
If you believe in the principle of presumption of innocence, until there's a trial these people are innocent. Not one of them is "actually dangerous". I know that's an idealistic stance to take, but presumtion of innocence is like freedom of speech; it's meaningless unless you apply it to the situations where you don't want to. If there's evidence and jurisdiction, try them. If not, let them go. It's that simple.
There may well be dangerous people amongst the hundreds or thousands of prisoners we've taken during the Bush wars and setting them free would be a bad thing, but it pales against the evil of keeping hundreds of innocent men imprisoned without trial for years on end. We're supposed to be better than that.
The Chinese government *wants* American values, but cafeteria style. They want free exchange of information so long as it is information leaving America and entering China. They don't want information leaving China or worse yet circulating within China. The Chinese government wants America to be open and pursue classical liberal trade policy while it remains closed and pursues mercantilist policies. It wants America to be true to its respect of sovereign nations, but to forget about every individual's sovereignty over his own opinions. It demands the American not interfere in free markets while the Peoples Liberation Army operates businesses and party official parlay their connections into business wealth.
You know, I'm no expert on international relations so this might just be the media doing a number on me, but what you've written here looks remarkably similar to how the US treats the rest of the world.
I'm not saying the US is better or worse than China, just that a lot of the things that USians appear to think differentiate them from the Chinese actually don't.
It's probably a bit too convenient (and dishonest) to take a "religion" that is widely known to be radical and violent as a prototype for typical religion while ignoring the obvious existence of radical atheists.
Thing is, I don't see the GP singling out any particular religion. From a non-religious person's point of view, they're all inherently dangerous and borderline schizophrenic. You're talking about belief in the existance of non-human entities that tell you to act in certain ways, without being able to produce any evidence of their actual existence. "The voices told me to do it" sounds insane to most people, yet if "God told me to do it" society still considers you sane for some unexplained reason.
I can remember terrorist attacks on the UK by christians, muslims and sikhs within the past 30 years - is it any wonder that everyone, religious or otherwise, has had enough of each religion's continual "We're generally a peaceful group" line?
To run a sovereign state, it is necessary for all systems to be based on free software and to be run on public infrastructure.
Why? It hasn't been that way for the past several thousand years, what makes you think it's necessary now?
If you mean government should be open and transparent then that's what you should be asking for, not demanding without reason that government must use a particular software model.
Just as a comparison with the London Underground, taking any photos on the Underground requires a permit which costs £300 for a two-hour permit
That didn't sound right so I had to check. From tfl.gov.uk:
If you are just passing through, you shouldn't have a problem taking personal snaps, souvenir shots etc, although you must NOT use flash or lights on any of our platforms. However, if you want to spend more than 10-15 minutes at any one station videoing or taking photos, or if they are for professionaluse, you MUST have a permit.
So basically, you only need a permit if you're hanging around doing a proper shoot. Nobody has ever bothered me when I've taken shots while waiting for trains. Quoted because it's a stupid session-based URL, but you can find it under tfl.gov.uk > Help and contact > Search common questions > Tube > Search for "photo" > First result.
Dammit do we have to let the rest of the world own space? Did you hear? There's a lot more space in space than there is land on land. And more resources. There are entire moons made of hydrocarbons.
The thing is, once those people are out there they're not likely to be overly impressed with this idea that folks back on earth "own" their hydrocarbons. That sort of thing didn't work for us Brits and your colonist ancestors, and I wouldn't lay money on it working for the spacers and you.
The best you can hope for is that when they get there they'll still be friendly and let us go and visit from time to time. They'll be governing themselves in their own best interests, just like the rest of us.
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
Whilst this is true, you'd have to be pretty damn lazy to take a bus for a 200yd journey. What the parent doesn't point out is that it's the same price to take the same bus from one side of the city to the other.
I pay 93GBP (~180USD) a month for unlimited travel in zones 1 and 2 on any form of public transport I want to take, from the rush hour tube to the night bus home at 4am, all using the same prepaid oyster card.
Personally, I think that's a bargain and stunningly convenient. And if you're not a londoner and don't want to get a months travel, you can get an anonymous oyster card and just stick a tenner on it at any station so there's no reason not to have one.
Just my prepaid 2 cents. I'm actually rather impressed with the transport here.
Why do they get a free pass here? They don't. If any of my kids ever come home asking about intelligent design, I'll take the time to explain the flaws in the idea in the same way that I'd talk them through the idea that the earth is flat and balanced on turtles (all the way down).
They've made their case, and their arguments don't stand scrutiny. I'm not wasting any more time on this than I do on any other conspiracy theorist barking insanities in the street. That's not the same as a free pass; they're just not worth wasting energy on.
I know most people aren't overly smart about most things (and I'm including myself in that), but we're not entirely stupid.
The Bible tells us the first step began with God because God is the eternally self existent One. Modern science cannot really place the first step. Logic tells us the Universe either created itself, which is absurd, or it was caused by a cause outside of itself or it always existed. Of course, the natural response to that would be that if 'God' can be eternally self existant, why can't the universe? It can't have taken an act of will for god to come into existance because before existance there's no will. And if it didn't take an act of will, then what works for god works for the universe.
So if a god can exist, we don't need it to explain the universe. Which kind of makes the question of its existance moot.
The writers of the Bible claim they were personally told by God, that He is that one who made everything from nothing. This does fit within the framework of logic. It also fits within the framework of dementia - I mean no offense, but if you're not a believer and someone told you that an invisible sky fairy appeared from nowhere, created everything then vanished again, and it's true because this book here says it is, would you take their word for it?
Ummm, what shortcut key drags something to the desktop?...I'll pass on that one, if you don't mind...
You could try Ctrl+C, Windows+D, Ctrl+V, and it should do what you want (the end two are self-explanatory, but Windows+D is the keyboard shortcut to return to the desktop.) Alternatively, Ctrl+C, Windows+E, Home, Ctrl+V works.
Personally, I prefer Windows+M to Windows+D for minimising everything simply because you can then use Windows+Shift+M to restore all the minimised windows. Swings and roundabouts, really...
No, the real problem is that some UK taxpayers don't understand that it costs them the same whether or not anyone else watches the shows too. Not true, I'm afraid. Pretty much all BBC content contains something that someone else owns the rights to, whether that's music, performers rights, imagery or whatever. A licence for UK-only distribution is generally a lot cheaper than worldwide rights.
The BBC has a legal obligation to spend the licence fee in a responsible fashion to provide as much content of the highest quality to the licence fee payer as they can, and that usually means not paying extra for non-uk licensing. Bandwidth costs come into it too, as does the cost of purchasing and maintaining a farm of servers with enough capacity to stream broadband to the whole world.
All these things add up, and they're all things that the BBC shouldn't be spending money on if they could be spending it on something else for the UK audience.
sometimes the story that everyone wants to read... well, everyone has already read it, and do you really need to see it again? Hell yes. It wouldn't be slashdot if we couldn't read it again next week;)
The only IE-only sites I've seen in years were internal corporate intranet applications, and even those are starting to be rare... I'd agree. And I'd like to point out that this is at least partly due to the fact that when I and other slashdot readers, when looking at a job application, see an IE-only web app listed on a CV/resumé, the first word that springs to mind is "incompetent".
Lots of Windows people seem to hate Apple's font rendering, but as a Mac user I prefer it. Windows font rendering seems ugly. Funny you should say that, I'd just changed that on my kit when I read your post.
Probably old news to many here, but try going to your desktop properties, hit the appearance tab > Effects > Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts > Cleartype - ok and apply. Your font rendering should look a hell of a lot better. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it looks like a modern professional job.
I've no idea why that's not turned on by default, because as you say, the default font rendering in Windows is butt ugly.
But seriously, the americans amongst us are fucked.
I have no problem with people disputing "facts" as they're presented; this is the way the civilised world has learnt to look at the options on the table and see which makes most sense in the cold light of day. For example, you might believe in God; I might disagree. We'll have that argument, and you might convert me, I might enlighten you, but either way we should have that debate without fear the that he who comes out on top will fuck over the person whose position doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
You're reaching the point where you're too scared of the fight to raise your point of view, and that makes your idea of freedom of speech irrelevant. I'm posting this because you might be right, I could be wrong, and I'm waiting to hear your point of view.
You're free to say what you think. People are starting to not say it if they think the US government won't like it. I can't begin to express how wrong that is.
There's a control room in each station where all the cameras are continuously monitored. The last time I was in a station where something dodgy happened, I saw 10-12 staff and police running in from all directions within about 15 seconds.
For me, the scary thing is that there are some areas of some stations that *aren't* covered. That's just the tube though, and doesn't say anything about whether cameras in unsupervised areas do anything for safety...
But what does this have to do with nerds? Or stuff that matters?
I'll freely admit that I generally read/. for the 3+ funnies, but I'd usually expect it to be at least vaguely related to *something* technical. This is purely internal US politics, is it not?
I'm sure it's very important to the USians amongst the community, but to be blunt, it matters not a shit to the rest of us.
Perhaps you're looking at the GP's comment the wrong way. "it won't exist unless you pay for it" should be read as "if you don't pay for it, it won't exist" - personally, I could happily live without the bland, unimaginative crap that makes up most of mainstream media, and I'd be happy to not pay for it to make it go away.
That might leave some space for the impassioned and talented people out there who aren't just in it for the money to make their mark...
Where does the misconception that Opera can't do "a lot of Ajax" come from? Ignorance, mainly. Not the common usage of "ignorance" meaning "people are idiots", I just mean that the majority of people don't use Opera and have no experience in building Ajax apps. That's not a personal failing on their part, it's just not within most of our job roles.
It only takes a few people to say they've had problems getting technology X to work in browser Y for the masses to translate the comment into "X doesn't work in Y" and echo the groupthink into every conversation about that technology.
Slashdot Mirror
The Red Cross and others seem to want to build a war chest so that when a big disaster hits they will be prepared. They take money from big events and hold some of it over for other operations. What bothers me about this is it seems like they don't trust people to donate when something happens.
I have a friend who used to work for one of the large charitable organisations as a statistician. He always said that his org didn't spend the money donated directly, they invested it. I know that sounds Bad and I didn't like the sound of my charity donations going into stocks, until he pointed out that the return on the investments meant that after a while, this strategy meant they ended up with a lot more to spend on charitable works than they could have done if they had just spent the donations. It made such a difference that it would have been irresponsible of them to just go out and spend.
So in some cases, it's not a war chest they're building. It's the charity squeezing as much benefit out of your donation as they possibly can and that, I think, is a very good thing.
By the way, he also said that one-off donations basically just pay for the campaign that solicited them. The campaign also gains them a smaller number of regular payments, and those are what funds good works. So if you're thinking about giving, consider signing up for a monthly payment instead of a one-off. It makes a difference.
In the US, we have a perfectly functional system for overthrowing the government on a periodic basis: voting. You want *actual* change, then actively work to vote out the current regime.
The thing that bothers me here is the illusion that under the current system the populace has any means of control of the government.
I get to cast a single vote once every four or five years. I live in a country with more than 2 political parties, so normally the majority of people's votes aren't for the new ruling party. Whoever gets in is under no obligation to fulfil the promises they made to gain my vote, and in this country at least politicians are notorious for not doing so.
I'd like to believe in your view of the world, truly I would. But from where I'm sitting (GB), it looks very much like I get a five-yearly 1/60,000,000 part of the decision about who gets to do whatever they like for the next four years.
Practically speaking, I wouldn't say I have any more input into the political process through voting than I would have had in a monarchy, and for that reason I cannot agree with your notion that voting brings about *actual* change. It demonstrably doesn't.
I largely agree with what you're saying, the unstoppable momentum of bureaucracy is something that isn't changed easily. I did want to say something about this part though:
Giving them trials is controversial and is causing debate. We can't set the actually dangerous ones free.
If you believe in the principle of presumption of innocence, until there's a trial these people are innocent. Not one of them is "actually dangerous". I know that's an idealistic stance to take, but presumtion of innocence is like freedom of speech; it's meaningless unless you apply it to the situations where you don't want to. If there's evidence and jurisdiction, try them. If not, let them go. It's that simple.
There may well be dangerous people amongst the hundreds or thousands of prisoners we've taken during the Bush wars and setting them free would be a bad thing, but it pales against the evil of keeping hundreds of innocent men imprisoned without trial for years on end. We're supposed to be better than that.
The Chinese government *wants* American values, but cafeteria style. They want free exchange of information so long as it is information leaving America and entering China. They don't want information leaving China or worse yet circulating within China. The Chinese government wants America to be open and pursue classical liberal trade policy while it remains closed and pursues mercantilist policies. It wants America to be true to its respect of sovereign nations, but to forget about every individual's sovereignty over his own opinions. It demands the American not interfere in free markets while the Peoples Liberation Army operates businesses and party official parlay their connections into business wealth.
You know, I'm no expert on international relations so this might just be the media doing a number on me, but what you've written here looks remarkably similar to how the US treats the rest of the world.
The US had a unilateral information flow coming from Europe for years until the EU stopped it last year. It still maintains trade embargoes against a variety of countries whilst persuing a policy of protectionism for it's own trade. And the fact that you even have the concept of a "Free speech zone" speaks volumes about the individual's sovereignty over their opinions.
I'm not saying the US is better or worse than China, just that a lot of the things that USians appear to think differentiate them from the Chinese actually don't.
It's probably a bit too convenient (and dishonest) to take a "religion" that is widely known to be radical and violent as a prototype for typical religion while ignoring the obvious existence of radical atheists.
Thing is, I don't see the GP singling out any particular religion. From a non-religious person's point of view, they're all inherently dangerous and borderline schizophrenic. You're talking about belief in the existance of non-human entities that tell you to act in certain ways, without being able to produce any evidence of their actual existence. "The voices told me to do it" sounds insane to most people, yet if "God told me to do it" society still considers you sane for some unexplained reason.
I can remember terrorist attacks on the UK by christians, muslims and sikhs within the past 30 years - is it any wonder that everyone, religious or otherwise, has had enough of each religion's continual "We're generally a peaceful group" line?
To run a sovereign state, it is necessary for all systems to be based on free software and to be run on public infrastructure.
Why? It hasn't been that way for the past several thousand years, what makes you think it's necessary now?
If you mean government should be open and transparent then that's what you should be asking for, not demanding without reason that government must use a particular software model.
Just as a comparison with the London Underground, taking any photos on the Underground requires a permit which costs £300 for a two-hour permit
That didn't sound right so I had to check.
From tfl.gov.uk:
If you are just passing through, you shouldn't have a problem taking personal snaps, souvenir shots etc, although you must NOT use flash or lights on any of our platforms.
However, if you want to spend more than 10-15 minutes at any one station videoing or taking photos, or if they are for professionaluse, you MUST have a permit.
So basically, you only need a permit if you're hanging around doing a proper shoot. Nobody has ever bothered me when I've taken shots while waiting for trains.
Quoted because it's a stupid session-based URL, but you can find it under tfl.gov.uk > Help and contact > Search common questions > Tube > Search for "photo" > First result.
Wow. I've never seen that before. Allow me to share the joy.
Making Seinfeld look good for dummies
Dammit do we have to let the rest of the world own space? Did you hear? There's a lot more space in space than there is land on land. And more resources. There are entire moons made of hydrocarbons.
The thing is, once those people are out there they're not likely to be overly impressed with this idea that folks back on earth "own" their hydrocarbons. That sort of thing didn't work for us Brits and your colonist ancestors, and I wouldn't lay money on it working for the spacers and you.
The best you can hope for is that when they get there they'll still be friendly and let us go and visit from time to time. They'll be governing themselves in their own best interests, just like the rest of us.
So, whaddya reckon chaps? Think Anonymous Coward could succeed Gordon Brown?
I'd vote for you. You're better than the alternative.
Having said that, sticking my left nut in a blender is better than the alternative, so please don't take offense if I try that first.
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
Whilst this is true, you'd have to be pretty damn lazy to take a bus for a 200yd journey. What the parent doesn't point out is that it's the same price to take the same bus from one side of the city to the other.
I pay 93GBP (~180USD) a month for unlimited travel in zones 1 and 2 on any form of public transport I want to take, from the rush hour tube to the night bus home at 4am, all using the same prepaid oyster card.
Personally, I think that's a bargain and stunningly convenient. And if you're not a londoner and don't want to get a months travel, you can get an anonymous oyster card and just stick a tenner on it at any station so there's no reason not to have one.
Just my prepaid 2 cents. I'm actually rather impressed with the transport here.
They've made their case, and their arguments don't stand scrutiny. I'm not wasting any more time on this than I do on any other conspiracy theorist barking insanities in the street. That's not the same as a free pass; they're just not worth wasting energy on.
I know most people aren't overly smart about most things (and I'm including myself in that), but we're not entirely stupid.
So if a god can exist, we don't need it to explain the universe. Which kind of makes the question of its existance moot. The writers of the Bible claim they were personally told by God, that He is that one who made everything from nothing. This does fit within the framework of logic. It also fits within the framework of dementia - I mean no offense, but if you're not a believer and someone told you that an invisible sky fairy appeared from nowhere, created everything then vanished again, and it's true because this book here says it is, would you take their word for it?
You could try Ctrl+C, Windows+D, Ctrl+V, and it should do what you want (the end two are self-explanatory, but Windows+D is the keyboard shortcut to return to the desktop.) Alternatively, Ctrl+C, Windows+E, Home, Ctrl+V works.
Personally, I prefer Windows+M to Windows+D for minimising everything simply because you can then use Windows+Shift+M to restore all the minimised windows. Swings and roundabouts, really...
The BBC has a legal obligation to spend the licence fee in a responsible fashion to provide as much content of the highest quality to the licence fee payer as they can, and that usually means not paying extra for non-uk licensing. Bandwidth costs come into it too, as does the cost of purchasing and maintaining a farm of servers with enough capacity to stream broadband to the whole world.
All these things add up, and they're all things that the BBC shouldn't be spending money on if they could be spending it on something else for the UK audience.
Fuck me. I knew the US was litigious, but you guys actually have personal legal insurance? Holy shit.
Have you guys ever considered that your legal system may be broken if normal people have to pay $500/year just in case someone sues them?
Probably old news to many here, but try going to your desktop properties, hit the appearance tab > Effects > Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts > Cleartype - ok and apply. Your font rendering should look a hell of a lot better. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it looks like a modern professional job.
I've no idea why that's not turned on by default, because as you say, the default font rendering in Windows is butt ugly.
But seriously, the americans amongst us are fucked.
I have no problem with people disputing "facts" as they're presented; this is the way the civilised world has learnt to look at the options on the table and see which makes most sense in the cold light of day. For example, you might believe in God; I might disagree. We'll have that argument, and you might convert me, I might enlighten you, but either way we should have that debate without fear the that he who comes out on top will fuck over the person whose position doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
You're reaching the point where you're too scared of the fight to raise your point of view, and that makes your idea of freedom of speech irrelevant. I'm posting this because you might be right, I could be wrong, and I'm waiting to hear your point of view.
You're free to say what you think. People are starting to not say it if they think the US government won't like it. I can't begin to express how wrong that is.
Actually, they do make you safer.
There's a control room in each station where all the cameras are continuously monitored. The last time I was in a station where something dodgy happened, I saw 10-12 staff and police running in from all directions within about 15 seconds.
For me, the scary thing is that there are some areas of some stations that *aren't* covered. That's just the tube though, and doesn't say anything about whether cameras in unsupervised areas do anything for safety...
But what does this have to do with nerds? Or stuff that matters?
/. for the 3+ funnies, but I'd usually expect it to be at least vaguely related to *something* technical. This is purely internal US politics, is it not?
I'll freely admit that I generally read
I'm sure it's very important to the USians amongst the community, but to be blunt, it matters not a shit to the rest of us.
Perhaps you're looking at the GP's comment the wrong way. "it won't exist unless you pay for it" should be read as "if you don't pay for it, it won't exist" - personally, I could happily live without the bland, unimaginative crap that makes up most of mainstream media, and I'd be happy to not pay for it to make it go away.
That might leave some space for the impassioned and talented people out there who aren't just in it for the money to make their mark...
It only takes a few people to say they've had problems getting technology X to work in browser Y for the masses to translate the comment into "X doesn't work in Y" and echo the groupthink into every conversation about that technology.
It's all very Slashdot 2.0
Who the hell is Bill OReilly? Someone tell me what zone he's in so I can go kick his ass.