I believe that, at this point, you get a new passport (under UK law, at least, you are required to update your passport if your appearance changes - biometrics would just be another facet of your 'appearence').
Only in very unusual circumstances (such as loosing one's passport). Do you mean, perhaps, visas?
If you mean that people should only be allowed into the US on pre-accepted visas, well, OK, but I (as a citizen of the European Union) can move freely between 15 (and soon to be 25) countries with ease, and normally without a check of my passport in the first place (unless travel is by air, that is, as there aren't European terminals as well as international ones), and in practice, also into and out of Switzerland - I once went from Austria -> Switzerland -> Italy -> France -> Switzerland -> Germany -> France -> United Kingdom, and only got my passport checked on arrival in the UK.
It is widely believed that this freedom of movement has benefitted the EU's member states greatly (especially economically), and that security has, if anything, been increase, by concentrating on intelligence rather than rote scanning of all incomers. Why could this system of trusted others be kept in use in the US/.
Earlier this year when homeland security reported a new secure VISA system, this was what I had in mind - iris and fingerprint data along with the usual photo & dental records on one smart card.
It's good to know that your government takes your personal opinion so seriously.
Then the Bush admin went ahead and put a year (or more) delay into whatever they do think was secure, supposedly so as not to disturb the busy european terro^h^h^h^h, er, tourist season. I guess keeping citizens safe isn't real big on Bush's agenda.
Or, just perhaps, given that the US is in effect demanding that all other countries do what it wants, it was giving them a little bit more reasonable an ammount of time to implement a system that has little point beyond jingoistic technobable-like 'look, look, we're doing something, please re-elect us' politico-speak.
I think it just makes sense to push for a full biometric smart card for an international VISA/passport system.
Possibly, but if it's too US-led, people will see it (however correctly) as an attempt to erode their sovereignty in favour of America.
We have the technology, we have the knowledge, we have the money, and every country that participates fully will be a little safer.
You might have the money, but does, say, Rwanda, or Indonesia? Can there not be made an argument that this is effectively protectionism as to the kind of people economically 'allowed' in to the country to conduct business, &c.?
Take this along with full background checks and no 'favored' nation nonsense.
Apart from the obvious cost implications, well, countried get 'favored' status for a reason - they have (what are regarded as) 'sufficiently' thorough security on the other side. Indeed, having seen my fair share of airport security, I'd say that the laxest I ever saw was for a (domestic, but even so) flight from Denver to Washington (pretty much nothing beyond my bag getting spot-checked for explosives' residues), as compared to a flight out of Sri Lanka (including what felt like a highly competent mandatory body pat-down - thrice - and canon emplacements around the airport).
Limit diplomatic passes to only those people needing them and yank it if the person even gets a jaywalking ticket.
Yeah, sure, let's dispose of several hundred years of diplomacy because it's a system that can be exploited.
You either get seriously tough on security, or admit defeat. You can't show you are securing the country if kids can still buy pot, crack and smack.
Yes, because it's well known that kids who do drugs grow up to die in terrorist-related activitiy. What?
Back on-topic, I see no reason for people to object to the use of computer-read, rather than human-read, biometric data (height 182 cm, weight 72 kg is biometric data, after all), as long as it is used for a reasonably good, but not necessarily perfect, confirmation of identity - after all, if the data matches, all that means is that the person is who the database says they are claiming to be, but not necessarily who they actually are...
Indeed, the figures are almost certainly wrong. FWIW, the old LHC experiments (of which there were 6, I think) would generate raw data at about a few gigabytes every 10ms, so their raw data requirements are really quite, well, astronomical:-). Of course, this data then had to be immediately processed, as there was far too much of it to record as such. The 'machine room' at CERN is just amazing - still has the NSA-mandated guard posts from when the SGIs, Crays, and so on that they had were export-licenced 'munitions' (though, when I asked about off-site back-up, the guide looked at me as if I were mad to suggest such an extravagance). As the whole point of the new collider experiment is to gather data over shorter time spans in greater detail at higher energy levels, I would imagine (but ICBW) that the raw data rates, and also the needed storage requirements, are going to be just plain silly...
Yes, Minister is out on DVD (well, the first two series; the third series is coming out at the end of September). Don't know if they're available outside the UK, though.
This is a diagram showing the BBC's overall network architecture.
This is a set of graphs of their current RealMedia throughput usage.
This is a set of graphs of their current overall Internet throughput.
When I was last transferring flights in Dubai, I bought a few CDs in the airport (as I hadn't brought enough with me to entertain myself on the flight, and they were cheap-ish, at about USD11, IIRC), and they have stickers on them saying 'Not for use outside UAE and Saudi Arabia'. Well, neither myself nor the CDs are in the Middle East anymore...
Does this mean I should destroy these CDs?
Trillian supports using AIM, ICQ, MSN, IRC, and Yahoo messenger, all at the same time. Always has.
And, as of the up-coming new version (available RSN), also Trillian, and, well, anything else you or someone else wants to write a plug-in for...
What you can't do is use two accounts on the same service at once. You can't be logged into AIM twice.
Umm. I'm not sure this is true. You can't use multiple contact lists for multiple accounts on the same service (again, a coming-soon feature), but you can definitely use multiple accounts on at least MSN and ICQ at once (and I suppose thus all of them, as it'd be a bit disingenuous to only support it for two of the 5 transports).
Sorry, but that's not entirely true. The EU is funded from VAT, and it wants the money; whether the money comes from sales to local or foreign companies is very much a secondary concern. This will avoid a tax loophole, nothing more (that is, that customs don't have the man-power to manually check every single non-VAT-registered import shipment).
Of course, on another note, VAT isn't a flat tax in many (most?) EU countries, but varies from product to product (for example, books in the UK are VAT-free, clothing is at 5%, and most other things are at 17.5%)..../P.
OK, yes, I know, replying to such a ridiculously underinformed and laughable 'rant' seems to give it a level of legitimacy that it certainly doesn't deserve, but, FFS, Gulf War Part The First took place in 1991, not 1994.
I woulda demoted the guy, but at least I got to see him get a righteous chewing-out.
I disagree. If I were the alien, I would have killed myself; if nothing else, when there's nothing left to do and no other form of protest possible, denying others of what they see as a 'valuable resource' is effective way of getting away from it all... It is not feasable to describe a social system that discriminates against others based on nothing except sex as a 'culture', and I, for one, do in no way respect such barabaric socio-ethnic groupings.
nothing will ever provide the DD 5.1, DTS, and 6.1(7.1???) sound quality of real DVDs
Except, oh, Ogg Vorbis. It supports up to 256 channels (IIRC), and my decoder understands it having lots of channels, and sends them off to my speaker system just fine. Thus my rips have AC3 as well as multi- & dual-channel Ogg Vorbis for the audio tracks.
You know, there's a limit to the extent that rockets capable of taking reasonably large masses into orbit can differ without being sub-optimal;-). But I do see what you mean...
The NYC system is open 24-7-365 (not 20-7-364 like the London system)
Ah, yes, that's because the NYC system, being newer, has 4 tunnels per track (2 in each direction), whereas London's only has 2 (1 in each direction), so, when there's a problem with a tunnel, the NYC system just uses the other one, but all of London's works have to be carried out in the 4 hours the system is shut down...
I can't stand the Picadilly line subway cars, I'm fairly short and my head almost hits the top of them
Err... all of London's trains are the same height... Well, at least, on the Picadilly, Northern, Victoria, Circle, District, Jubilee, and Central lines. Don't know about the Metropolitan or otherwise lines, though.
Back slightly on topic, the increase in passengers for London's system, thought to be only ~30,000, will be easily coped with...
Err... Have you heard of seperation of executive and legislature? *.parliament.uk is a cross-party independent web-site to do with the Commons, the Lords, and general matters of legislation, as opposed to execution of law and formulation of government policy. Of course, there's HMSO.gov.uk, which is the printer of *.parliament.uk... Ah well.;-)
... is the best in the world. It's wonderful, superb, fantastic, beautiful. By far the best assembler I've ever used (I've used 68k, PPC, x86, PIC, ZX80 and 6502, and perhaps some more). And RiscOS is/was a fantastic OS (font anti-aliasing from the late '80s, etc.), with the best editor ever, which is currently nearly completely ported to 32-bit status.
ISTR it was made by Electrolux, who are, I think, an Anglo-Sweedish consumer electronics conglomerate. This was ~ '97, so the term "first intelligent 'floor vac'" seems to jar a little, but hey...
Average film > 2 hours = 7200 seconds; assuming constant bandwidth @ 1Mbps gives a size >=~ 858 MeB per film. I suppose you could go lower than DVD quality, but personally I just dump VOBs to my harddisc, as ripping to a compression algorithm like DiVX takes far too long, so 'two movies on 1 CD' sounds, well, a bit far fetched...
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Um, I'm pretty sure that that's grads, actually :-)
I believe that, at this point, you get a new passport (under UK law, at least, you are required to update your passport if your appearance changes - biometrics would just be another facet of your 'appearence').
Only in very unusual circumstances (such as loosing one's passport). Do you mean, perhaps, visas?
If you mean that people should only be allowed into the US on pre-accepted visas, well, OK, but I (as a citizen of the European Union) can move freely between 15 (and soon to be 25) countries with ease, and normally without a check of my passport in the first place (unless travel is by air, that is, as there aren't European terminals as well as international ones), and in practice, also into and out of Switzerland - I once went from Austria -> Switzerland -> Italy -> France -> Switzerland -> Germany -> France -> United Kingdom, and only got my passport checked on arrival in the UK.
It is widely believed that this freedom of movement has benefitted the EU's member states greatly (especially economically), and that security has, if anything, been increase, by concentrating on intelligence rather than rote scanning of all incomers. Why could this system of trusted others be kept in use in the US/.
It's good to know that your government takes your personal opinion so seriously.
Or, just perhaps, given that the US is in effect demanding that all other countries do what it wants, it was giving them a little bit more reasonable an ammount of time to implement a system that has little point beyond jingoistic technobable-like 'look, look, we're doing something, please re-elect us' politico-speak.
Possibly, but if it's too US-led, people will see it (however correctly) as an attempt to erode their sovereignty in favour of America.
You might have the money, but does, say, Rwanda, or Indonesia? Can there not be made an argument that this is effectively protectionism as to the kind of people economically 'allowed' in to the country to conduct business, &c.?
Apart from the obvious cost implications, well, countried get 'favored' status for a reason - they have (what are regarded as) 'sufficiently' thorough security on the other side. Indeed, having seen my fair share of airport security, I'd say that the laxest I ever saw was for a (domestic, but even so) flight from Denver to Washington (pretty much nothing beyond my bag getting spot-checked for explosives' residues), as compared to a flight out of Sri Lanka (including what felt like a highly competent mandatory body pat-down - thrice - and canon emplacements around the airport).
Yeah, sure, let's dispose of several hundred years of diplomacy because it's a system that can be exploited.
You either get seriously tough on security, or admit defeat. You can't show you are securing the country if kids can still buy pot, crack and smack.
Yes, because it's well known that kids who do drugs grow up to die in terrorist-related activitiy. What?
Back on-topic, I see no reason for people to object to the use of computer-read, rather than human-read, biometric data (height 182 cm, weight 72 kg is biometric data, after all), as long as it is used for a reasonably good, but not necessarily perfect, confirmation of identity - after all, if the data matches, all that means is that the person is who the database says they are claiming to be, but not necessarily who they actually are...
Indeed, the figures are almost certainly wrong. FWIW, the old LHC experiments (of which there were 6, I think) would generate raw data at about a few gigabytes every 10ms, so their raw data requirements are really quite, well, astronomical :-). Of course, this data then had to be immediately processed, as there was far too much of it to record as such. The 'machine room' at CERN is just amazing - still has the NSA-mandated guard posts from when the SGIs, Crays, and so on that they had were export-licenced 'munitions' (though, when I asked about off-site back-up, the guide looked at me as if I were mad to suggest such an extravagance). As the whole point of the new collider experiment is to gather data over shorter time spans in greater detail at higher energy levels, I would imagine (but ICBW) that the raw data rates, and also the needed storage requirements, are going to be just plain silly...
Err... 'Tis we Brits who should be apologising, I believe. Not that we'd actually want to take the credit for that abomination...
7,172,036 as of the last census (see this).
Yes, Minister is out on DVD (well, the first two series; the third series is coming out at the end of September). Don't know if they're available outside the UK, though.
This is a diagram showing the BBC's overall network architecture.
This is a set of graphs of their current RealMedia throughput usage.
This is a set of graphs of their current overall Internet throughput.
When I was last transferring flights in Dubai, I bought a few CDs in the airport (as I hadn't brought enough with me to entertain myself on the flight, and they were cheap-ish, at about USD11, IIRC), and they have stickers on them saying 'Not for use outside UAE and Saudi Arabia'. Well, neither myself nor the CDs are in the Middle East anymore... Does this mean I should destroy these CDs?
And, as of the up-coming new version (available RSN), also Trillian, and, well, anything else you or someone else wants to write a plug-in for...
Umm. I'm not sure this is true. You can't use multiple contact lists for multiple accounts on the same service (again, a coming-soon feature), but you can definitely use multiple accounts on at least MSN and ICQ at once (and I suppose thus all of them, as it'd be a bit disingenuous to only support it for two of the 5 transports).
Sorry, but that's not entirely true. The EU is funded from VAT, and it wants the money; whether the money comes from sales to local or foreign companies is very much a secondary concern. This will avoid a tax loophole, nothing more (that is, that customs don't have the man-power to manually check every single non-VAT-registered import shipment).
Of course, on another note, VAT isn't a flat tax in many (most?) EU countries, but varies from product to product (for example, books in the UK are VAT-free, clothing is at 5%, and most other things are at 17.5%)..../P.
OK, yes, I know, replying to such a ridiculously underinformed and laughable 'rant' seems to give it a level of legitimacy that it certainly doesn't deserve, but, FFS, Gulf War Part The First took place in 1991, not 1994.
I disagree. If I were the alien, I would have killed myself; if nothing else, when there's nothing left to do and no other form of protest possible, denying others of what they see as a 'valuable resource' is effective way of getting away from it all... It is not feasable to describe a social system that discriminates against others based on nothing except sex as a 'culture', and I, for one, do in no way respect such barabaric socio-ethnic groupings.
Interesting. In the UK (and, indeed, Europe generally), it would be:
"You want me to pay so that you can have the honour of talking to me? [Expletive] off!"
Difference of attitude, I guess :-)
Yes, quite noticably so.
Except, oh, Ogg Vorbis. It supports up to 256 channels (IIRC), and my decoder understands it having lots of channels, and sends them off to my speaker system just fine. Thus my rips have AC3 as well as multi- & dual-channel Ogg Vorbis for the audio tracks.
[Point-to-point versus trunked/switched flying routes]
Yeah, but given that I live near Heathrow, and it's the busiest international airport in the world, either 'system' works for me :-)
Hate to say this, but that's liberalism... You can be a conservative liberal, yes, but the two most certainly do not go hand-in-hand.
For reference: the Titan III that took Mars 1 into space vs. the BBC's picture of the Arianne 4. I think the Arianne 4 has 4 SRBs, not 2, though.
You know, there's a limit to the extent that rockets capable of taking reasonably large masses into orbit can differ without being sub-optimal ;-). But I do see what you mean...
Ah, yes, that's because the NYC system, being newer, has 4 tunnels per track (2 in each direction), whereas London's only has 2 (1 in each direction), so, when there's a problem with a tunnel, the NYC system just uses the other one, but all of London's works have to be carried out in the 4 hours the system is shut down...
Err... all of London's trains are the same height... Well, at least, on the Picadilly, Northern, Victoria, Circle, District, Jubilee, and Central lines. Don't know about the Metropolitan or otherwise lines, though.
Back slightly on topic, the increase in passengers for London's system, thought to be only ~30,000, will be easily coped with...
Agreed, wholeheartedly :-)
Err... Have you heard of seperation of executive and legislature? *.parliament.uk is a cross-party independent web-site to do with the Commons, the Lords, and general matters of legislation, as opposed to execution of law and formulation of government policy. Of course, there's HMSO.gov.uk, which is the printer of *.parliament.uk... Ah well.;-)
... is the best in the world. It's wonderful, superb, fantastic, beautiful. By far the best assembler I've ever used (I've used 68k, PPC, x86, PIC, ZX80 and 6502, and perhaps some more). And RiscOS is/was a fantastic OS (font anti-aliasing from the late '80s, etc.), with the best editor ever, which is currently nearly completely ported to 32-bit status.
ISTR it was made by Electrolux, who are, I think, an Anglo-Sweedish consumer electronics conglomerate. This was ~ '97, so the term "first intelligent 'floor vac'" seems to jar a little, but hey...
Average film > 2 hours = 7200 seconds; assuming constant bandwidth @ 1Mbps gives a size >=~ 858 MeB per film. I suppose you could go lower than DVD quality, but personally I just dump VOBs to my harddisc, as ripping to a compression algorithm like DiVX takes far too long, so 'two movies on 1 CD' sounds, well, a bit far fetched...