If they want to prove otherwise, they've got some work to do !
I fail to understand how purchasing a wifi adaptor from a third party vendor, who bought from a distributor, who bought from a manufacturer who will have had to conform and pay any patent fees applicable, suddenly becomes the problem of someone who had no part in its' manufacture.
Then again, I'm in the UK, and we haven't got quite *that* mad yet.
Nah, from experience, Human Resources personnel are worth less than a dollop of dog poop - at least with 12 of them you could pretend they were fertilizer, and at least then they'd have some use.
For what it's worth, I've been in touch with other MPs offices this week regarding someone in London who had all their benefits stopped.
No money for food (she'd eaten twice in 12 days), she's disabled and unable to walk anywhere to try to get any help (her nearest foodbank was 7 miles away), no electricity and no gas to keep warm.
The council, DWP, and GP (who could have given her a prescription for Sustain, a food substitute, until she resolved the issue) amongst
others like the utility companies, all blanked her.
This IS the position people are being put in, and the state of the country's welfare system in 2012, and she isn't the first person I've
heard of left in that position.
I was working in Central London in a very well paid job that I’d had for about a year. I was struck down with a spontaneous genetic degenerative disease that I had no idea I had. I continued working though liver and kidney failure for the best part of a year. Every time I had liver failure, I went to hospital and returned immediately to work less 20% use of my liver. I did this three times and now have 40% total use of my liver.
After a year, and an accumulation of another two autoimmune diseases (arthritis being one) I was fired from my job. I was forced to apply for ESA, which I did.
I had someone fill in their forms as I said what to put and 13 weeks later I was told to come in for an assessment. The first one, I asked them not to put any pressure on my liver or kidneys when they wanted to do their exam because they were both very inflamed and I had severe cirrhosis of the liver. When the ‘doctor’ did the exam, she put pressure on me and I vomited on the floor. Unfortunately, when I vomit, I wet myself. I didn’t have a change of clothes so as I was going home I had to travel through London with vomit covered and pee covered clothes.
The second time I had to go, my kidneys were almost completely failing. I’d only been out of hospital a few days and my husband and I travelled through London to Atos again. Whilst waiting, I went to the bathroom and whilst in the bathroom a lot of blood was filling up the toilet. I stood up and the blood didn’t stop. My damaged kidneys were giving up. I fell onto the floor, dizzy through blood loss and I rang my husband (in the waiting room). He came in, took one look at me and shouted to the reception to call an ambulance.
The receptionist came in, shook her head and flushed the loo and told me to clear up the blood. She then told me that under absolute no circumstances could I rebook my appointment with their assessor and if I chose to leave in an ambulance then my ESA would be stopped as I would be marked down as a non-attendance. My husband pleaded with her and asked if there was anyone we could see now and she said no.
We sat in the waiting room for another half an hour blood soaking through my trousers and onto their chair. I was assessed by an assessor who seemed to be concerned more with the chair I was sat on than the fact I was bleeding and went through the questions. Another half an hour later, we finished and we asked her to ring an ambulance. 'I’m not a bloody receptionist' was her reply.
We went back through to reception where they refused to call an ambulance so we did, and I was taken to hospital.
They said that I was in the same condition as the previous assessment 3 months previous. They assessed me for the WRA group again.
When I got home and was feeling better I wrote a letter of complaint, which never responded to.
About 18 months after that, I wrote to the DWP and told them that I felt my condition had worsened enough to warrant a move to the Support Group. I added all of the evidence. They sent another ESA50. (That’s another thing. My husband and I have filled out over 10 of these. 5 sent by recorded delivery yet they claim they never got them. Hmmm...)
I told them under no circumstances was I attending their offices again, they can come to me if they feel that I need to be assessed again. They reassessed me again and put me into the Support Group six months ago. No ESA50s have arrived since but I am dreading the receipt of another one. Same fight, another day.
If I was a multimillionaire (as he almost certainly is), and my liberty was at such a severe risk, I wouldn't be offering piddling amounts like this to get to the bottom of the problem.
Sure, in Belize it's probably the equivalent of 10 years' pay for the average worker, but is that all he thinks his credibility and freedom are worth ?
The original game was not his only foray into the Elite "universe" - he also came out with Frontier, and IIRC Frontier: First Encounters, although I'm not a fan of Newtonian physics just to move your damn ship.
That said, I'd much rather give my money to Ian Bell (the other author of Elite) instead, no strings attached, no promise of a potential project required. As far as I know, Ian Bell hasn't threatened lawsuits over copyright (unlike David Braben).
As far as AAA game development goes, you could do worse right now than checking out Natural Selection 2 - created by a tiny team, who started it using the Source engine, but found it wasn't capable of what they wanted - so they wrote their own - from scratch, and it looks *beautiful*.
How about Microsoft spend $5 Billion of their own "money", by providing all educational institutions with free software, including their entire catalogue* and operating systems.
*without forcing them to use a particular derision^HH revision of the OS, so if they prefer Win7, they don't have to use any botched attempts at a "new improved interface"
They'll still have business and regular consumers to sell their crap to.
My comments are based on my experiences a couple of years ago, but...
Avira had very good detection, but was also very prone to throwing up warnings for anything that had a word like "keygen" in the title, whether the file was infected by anything or not. It also threw up an advert for itself every sodding time it updated.
AVG was a nightmare, I used to sort "broken" PCs for people on a regular basis, and *every single machine* I was called to look at that had AVG installed had at *least* two live viruses in memory.
Personally, I steer people towards Avast (it's pretty unobtrusive overall), with a good detection rate across the spectrum of attack vectors, but supplement this with Spybot Search & Destroy (the "immunize" option is worth doing), Malwarebytes AntiMalware, and BrightFort SpywareBlaster (formerly Javacoolsoftware) - which, like the immunize option on Spybot S&D, blocks activex exploits.
Unless you're really unlucky, a quick scan every couple of weeks "just to be sure" with Malwarebytes should be all you need to do then to keep your system ticking along nicely.
I'm also in the camp of "ditch IE" in favour of Firefox or Chrome, with the Adblock Plus plugin.
Natural Selection 2 (to be released shortly) comes with everything you need to create your own mod - and coding for it is about as easy as possible because it's in LUA.
It's practically unheard of that a developer shares the development cycle for over two years with it's fans, and includes *all* the game source code as part of the package. There are over 400 videos showing the progress from the beginning if you search youtube for NS2HD
This kickstarter notion came a couple of years after I bought into the development of Natural Selection 2 - in that time it's gone from being a bit rough and ready, to really quite enjoyable and playable, even though some features are still under development prior to the game being fully released this summer.
So, for the grand sum of $40, i've been playtesting and helping to bug squish for the sequel to the game that kept me absolutely hooked for over 9 years - the original game was a free mod, and for the enjoyment it gave me over such an extended period, I saw it more as a "thank you" to the developers, whether the new game ever got released or not.
Unknown Worlds Entertainment (UWE) are a very small team, and their development has been very open, through forums, twitter, IRC, videos, and have solicited and used many ideas from the pre-orderers - many people who pre-ordered have done more than just buy into the game, they've actually written their own code to fix bugs / improve gameplay characteristics, submitted it to the UWE team, who have included it in the game.
Having just been diagnosed with Aspergers at the age of 42, I have first-hand experiences of the daily issues we encounter, but if I can just correct your terminology - ASD stands for Autistic Spectrum Disorder - it's not a disease, you can't catch it (although there are thought to be links with certain immunisations, where symptoms appear overnight for some people who are later given a diagnosis of autism / ASD, and in some cases the strain of engineered bacteria used to carry the immunisation has been found in spinal fluid, where it should *never* appear).
Studies of the brain are now starting to show that autism, along with several other "behavioural conditions" such as ADHD or learning disabilities like dyslexia, are closely related - the brain has developed in such a way that it functions atypically, and these changes can be seen on both a physical (post-mortem) and "MRI scan" level.
People on the "spectrum" may have deficits in a varied range of abilities, senses, social skills, among others. They call it a spectrum because any of these capabilities can be anywhere in the range from normal to non-existant.
Slashdot Mirror
Kthnxbai
If they want to prove otherwise, they've got some work to do !
I fail to understand how purchasing a wifi adaptor from a third party vendor, who bought from a distributor, who bought from a manufacturer who will have had to conform and pay any patent fees applicable, suddenly becomes the problem of someone who had no part in its' manufacture.
Then again, I'm in the UK, and we haven't got quite *that* mad yet.
...you want her to play online games with you ?
Don't you think she's already got enough to deal with ?
Perhaps if you moved back home and helped share some of the childcare / household responsibilities, she'd have a chance...
Nah, from experience, Human Resources personnel are worth less than a dollop of dog poop - at least with 12 of them you could pretend they were fertilizer, and at least then they'd have some use.
(copied from an email to my MP about someone else a couple of weeks ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKdKzalMhXc
For what it's worth, I've been in touch with other MPs offices this week regarding someone in London who had all their benefits stopped.
No money for food (she'd eaten twice in 12 days), she's disabled and unable to walk anywhere to try to get any help (her nearest foodbank was 7 miles away), no electricity and no gas to keep warm.
The council, DWP, and GP (who could have given her a prescription for Sustain, a food substitute, until she resolved the issue) amongst others like the utility companies, all blanked her.
This IS the position people are being put in, and the state of the country's welfare system in 2012, and she isn't the first person I've heard of left in that position.
The government are proposing a "20 metre rule" - if you can move 20 metres by *any* means, you're not disabled "enough" to get disability benefits.
I know this person.
"From someone who wishes to remain anonymous."
My experience with Atos:
I was working in Central London in a very well paid job that I’d had for about a year. I was struck down with a spontaneous genetic degenerative disease that I had no idea I had. I continued working though liver and kidney failure for the best part of a year. Every time I had liver failure, I went to hospital and returned immediately to work less 20% use of my liver. I did this three times and now have 40% total use of my liver.
After a year, and an accumulation of another two autoimmune diseases (arthritis being one) I was fired from my job. I was forced to apply for ESA, which I did.
I had someone fill in their forms as I said what to put and 13 weeks later I was told to come in for an assessment. The first one, I asked them not to put any pressure on my liver or kidneys when they wanted to do their exam because they were both very inflamed and I had severe cirrhosis of the liver. When the ‘doctor’ did the exam, she put pressure on me and I vomited on the floor. Unfortunately, when I vomit, I wet myself. I didn’t have a change of clothes so as I was going home I had to travel through London with vomit covered and pee covered clothes.
The second time I had to go, my kidneys were almost completely failing. I’d only been out of hospital a few days and my husband and I travelled through London to Atos again. Whilst waiting, I went to the bathroom and whilst in the bathroom a lot of blood was filling up the toilet. I stood up and the blood didn’t stop. My damaged kidneys were giving up. I fell onto the floor, dizzy through blood loss and I rang my husband (in the waiting room). He came in, took one look at me and shouted to the reception to call an ambulance.
The receptionist came in, shook her head and flushed the loo and told me to clear up the blood. She then told me that under absolute no circumstances could I rebook my appointment with their assessor and if I chose to leave in an ambulance then my ESA would be stopped as I would be marked down as a non-attendance. My husband pleaded with her and asked if there was anyone we could see now and she said no.
We sat in the waiting room for another half an hour blood soaking through my trousers and onto their chair. I was assessed by an assessor who seemed to be concerned more with the chair I was sat on than the fact I was bleeding and went through the questions. Another half an hour later, we finished and we asked her to ring an ambulance. 'I’m not a bloody receptionist' was her reply.
We went back through to reception where they refused to call an ambulance so we did, and I was taken to hospital.
They said that I was in the same condition as the previous assessment 3 months previous. They assessed me for the WRA group again.
When I got home and was feeling better I wrote a letter of complaint, which never responded to.
About 18 months after that, I wrote to the DWP and told them that I felt my condition had worsened enough to warrant a move to the Support Group. I added all of the evidence. They sent another ESA50. (That’s another thing. My husband and I have filled out over 10 of these. 5 sent by recorded delivery yet they claim they never got them. Hmmm...)
I told them under no circumstances was I attending their offices again, they can come to me if they feel that I need to be assessed again. They reassessed me again and put me into the Support Group six months ago. No ESA50s have arrived since but I am dreading the receipt of another one. Same fight, another day.
You owe everything your country produces (and more) to China, so just change to using the Yuan :-p
It'd be far more lucrative to sell to China alone, and let the yanks buy it from them...
"Pizza and donuts would result in arrest."
Especially if you hadn't eaten the donuts yet.
If I was a multimillionaire (as he almost certainly is), and my liberty was at such a severe risk, I wouldn't be offering piddling amounts like this to get to the bottom of the problem. Sure, in Belize it's probably the equivalent of 10 years' pay for the average worker, but is that all he thinks his credibility and freedom are worth ?
They didn't fire the woman responsible for Microsoft BOB either, look where that got her...
The original game was not his only foray into the Elite "universe" - he also came out with Frontier, and IIRC Frontier: First Encounters, although I'm not a fan of Newtonian physics just to move your damn ship.
That said, I'd much rather give my money to Ian Bell (the other author of Elite) instead, no strings attached, no promise of a potential project required. As far as I know, Ian Bell hasn't threatened lawsuits over copyright (unlike David Braben).
As far as AAA game development goes, you could do worse right now than checking out Natural Selection 2 - created by a tiny team, who started it using the Source engine, but found it wasn't capable of what they wanted - so they wrote their own - from scratch, and it looks *beautiful*.
How about Microsoft spend $5 Billion of their own "money", by providing all educational institutions with free software, including their entire catalogue* and operating systems.
*without forcing them to use a particular derision^HH revision of the OS, so if they prefer Win7, they don't have to use any botched attempts at a "new improved interface"
They'll still have business and regular consumers to sell their crap to.
My comments are based on my experiences a couple of years ago, but...
Avira had very good detection, but was also very prone to throwing up warnings for anything that had a word like "keygen" in the title, whether the file was infected by anything or not. It also threw up an advert for itself every sodding time it updated.
AVG was a nightmare, I used to sort "broken" PCs for people on a regular basis, and *every single machine* I was called to look at that had AVG installed had at *least* two live viruses in memory.
Personally, I steer people towards Avast (it's pretty unobtrusive overall), with a good detection rate across the spectrum of attack vectors, but supplement this with Spybot Search & Destroy (the "immunize" option is worth doing), Malwarebytes AntiMalware, and BrightFort SpywareBlaster (formerly Javacoolsoftware) - which, like the immunize option on Spybot S&D, blocks activex exploits.
Unless you're really unlucky, a quick scan every couple of weeks "just to be sure" with Malwarebytes should be all you need to do then to keep your system ticking along nicely.
I'm also in the camp of "ditch IE" in favour of Firefox or Chrome, with the Adblock Plus plugin.
Natural Selection 2 (to be released shortly) comes with everything you need to create your own mod - and coding for it is about as easy as possible because it's in LUA.
It's practically unheard of that a developer shares the development cycle for over two years with it's fans, and includes *all* the game source code as part of the package. There are over 400 videos showing the progress from the beginning if you search youtube for NS2HD
http://www.naturalselection2.com/
http://play4dead.com/ns2
http://www.youtube.com/user/NaturalSelection2HD
Many members of the community are active developers, and have had their own mods officially included in the game.
This kickstarter notion came a couple of years after I bought into the development of Natural Selection 2 - in that time it's gone from being a bit rough and ready, to really quite enjoyable and playable, even though some features are still under development prior to the game being fully released this summer. So, for the grand sum of $40, i've been playtesting and helping to bug squish for the sequel to the game that kept me absolutely hooked for over 9 years - the original game was a free mod, and for the enjoyment it gave me over such an extended period, I saw it more as a "thank you" to the developers, whether the new game ever got released or not. Unknown Worlds Entertainment (UWE) are a very small team, and their development has been very open, through forums, twitter, IRC, videos, and have solicited and used many ideas from the pre-orderers - many people who pre-ordered have done more than just buy into the game, they've actually written their own code to fix bugs / improve gameplay characteristics, submitted it to the UWE team, who have included it in the game.
Having just been diagnosed with Aspergers at the age of 42, I have first-hand experiences of the daily issues we encounter, but if I can just correct your terminology - ASD stands for Autistic Spectrum Disorder - it's not a disease, you can't catch it (although there are thought to be links with certain immunisations, where symptoms appear overnight for some people who are later given a diagnosis of autism / ASD, and in some cases the strain of engineered bacteria used to carry the immunisation has been found in spinal fluid, where it should *never* appear). Studies of the brain are now starting to show that autism, along with several other "behavioural conditions" such as ADHD or learning disabilities like dyslexia, are closely related - the brain has developed in such a way that it functions atypically, and these changes can be seen on both a physical (post-mortem) and "MRI scan" level. People on the "spectrum" may have deficits in a varied range of abilities, senses, social skills, among others. They call it a spectrum because any of these capabilities can be anywhere in the range from normal to non-existant.