He's a US politician. Offer him enough cash and he'll let you do anything you want with that cream pie...yes, yes, even the thing with the Sailor Moon costume.
So what's the big deal? The Netherlands has had a digital ID card for doing business with the government for years already. Now perhaps you enjoy standing in a line somewhere, but I prefer handling my business from the comfort of my chair, at any time of the day that is convenient for me and at a total lower cost to the taxpayer.
Now I don't quite see the point of RFID either, but being able to handle one's affairs over a distance sounds...convenient.
Little history lesson about my own country(one north from Belgium):
Back when most of the cable infrastructure was put down, it was owned and operated by government(local ones).
Later on when "privatize! privatize!" was all the rage, this infrastructure was *sold* to the current cable companies, in quite a few cases in exchange for part or full ownership of the company, meaning that although it was ran as a business all the profits would still flow back to local government.
Right now we're seriously looking at breaking up the cable market to get more competition in but alas...once something is in the private sector that is a heck of lot harder to do. So either we(we being "the people") buy the stuff back or we find an alternative.
And...for the record, I can pick from, oh, 15 different ISP's or so. Currently running a 50/5 connection with no bandwidth cap except for a reasonable use policy which is actually reasonable. Unless I start downloading in the TB range for several months in a row...noone's gonna notice.
I do however think that as developers get better at nutruring addiction and creating ever more immersive worlds, it's going to develop into an increasingly serious problem that will need addressing at some point.
We deal with it the same way we deal with people addicted to other things. Once they fuck up their lives enough we take away all their freedoms and responsibilities, stick them somewhere where they can't get to whatever it is they're addicted to and then bring them back into society one step at a time till they've proven they're responsible enough to go back to being productive citizens again.
In all fairness, the tobacco industries were sued for:
- withholding information on and downright lying about the addictiveness of nicotine. - withholding information on and downright lying about the health consequences of smoking. - adding artificial agents to make the product even more addictive. - targeting their product at children while knowing damn well what smoking does to kids.
Selling an addictive product is one thing. Lying to congress, marketing at those who are considered incompetent(children) is an entirely different ballgame.
In your country, I do not. However, I do not live in your country, I live in mine. Guess what, I *do* have a reasonable expectation to privacy, even in public.
and autism-like behavior is obvious enough that you can narrow down the group of people you're going to test significiantly before you start testing.
Ahhh, so that's why it took till my early twenties before someone even thought of looking in that direction. It was too obvious?;-)
Honestly, considering the amount of people that get the Aspergers tag slapped on them these days, acting like a jackass is already enough for the "obvious" conclusion that it must be autism-related.
Says who? Insofar as science fiction can be said to have a purpose at all, it seems to boil down to "take the human race and inject really spiffy technology, aliens and other assorted funkiness. Shake for 5 seconds and wrap a storyline around what happens".
Your employer is not your friend. Your co-workers are not your friends. They do not deserve loyalty.
Hmm, odd. I consider many of my co-workers to be close friends. And for some reason my employer has this weird attitude that by making sure I remain a happy healthy individual I will somehow yield a better return on investment than if I were to be treated as a disposable asset.
Just because the corporate world in the US has turned into an all out abuse fest does not mean the same applies to other parts of the world. The ability to look beyond the next quarter's profits has not quite been exterminated yet, despite the best efforts of BA programs.
Believe it or not, but every now and then my washing machine actually has a software crash, and I need to...you guessed it...turn it off and then back on again.
Lately I've been giving it the same treatment as my pc though(erratic yelling followed by encouraging words and lots of "now look at what you made me do"'s) and she...I mean it's been behaving a bit better.
I'm curious... do these speed issues pertain only to certain countries? or certain technologies?
Here in the Netherlands to my knowledge no one advertises using "up to" doublespeak the way it's done in the US and UK. Then again we have well over a dozen ISP's to pick from on the phoneline front and there's more breaking into the cable market as we speak, so any corp trying to pull a stunt like that would start losing customers rather quickly.
Speaking for myself, my ISP says I get 50/5 and so far I have yet to see it be any less than that, assuming whatever is on the other side can actually spit out the bits at that speed.
When some serious crime is committed against you, you will want revenge and theres nothing you can say or do that will stop that.
There are lots of thing that I want on an instinctual level. When I see a very attractive woman walking on the street I'd really like to have sex with her. When I hear someone spouting ignorant nonsense I'd very much like to bring my fist into sharp contact with their nose.
We're not animals. We have the ability to think rationally and make a conscious decision to not give in the reptile riding on the back of a monkey. Well, most of us anyway. Whether we actually do so is mostly a matter of choice.
Why little black books? Use something that we all have and are all paranoid about...our wallets. Something the size and shape of a creditcard should do the trick nicely. Heck, make it look like the fake stuff you get to show off the features of the wallet.
Or, alternatively, tell us you were serious so we can add you to the "ignorant fuck that'll guzzle down anything Fox squirts down his throat" list.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some Defcon to play...and I think I'll play the Russians today. any particular US cities you'd like me to refrain from nuking?
Then again, our unions tend to be reasonable. When a company is truly in dire straits we don't negotiate pay rises, we investigate whether taking a temporary pay hit would make it possible for the company to stay afloat so everyone can keep their jobs.
I suppose it's a cultural thing. From what I've seen the Danes are much like the Dutch in that they opt for reasonable discussion and compromise instead of going for the throat.
Ask people why they voted a certain way and the vast majority of people voted because of a few "key" issues, issues like abortion, global warming, stem cell research, wars, taxes, etc.
Is that why they voted X or Y, or just the justification they use for voting whatever it was their parents voted on? Most of the political analysis of the US I've seen seems to indicate that the better part of the country pretty much always votes the same party, with a relatively smaller amount of swing votes that need to be pandered to in order to seal the win, which is one of the reasons the nuts on the fringes get such a disproportionate amount of attention.
They also enjoy making up new double words (like 'nude shock', 'sex attack' or 'death cheese'.)
Do they also provide instruction on where to obtain these...nude attacks and death cheeses? Who needs sharks with friggin's laser beams attached to their heads when you can have killer cheese?
And no, just using milk from China to make it doesn't count, I'm talking cheese that bites back, baby!
In the netherlands as well as in belgium we're seeing a huge surge of electrically assisted bicycles lately. You still have to pedal but the experience is like going downwind all the time. Especially for the folks in their 50's and 60's this means they can pop down to to town, get groceries etc. and still get some exercise and fresh air instead of having to take the car.
For those of us having to travel to work it means being able to take a bicycle for distances up to, say, 5 miles without excessive sweating.
Slashdot Mirror
He's a US politician. Offer him enough cash and he'll let you do anything you want with that cream pie...yes, yes, even the thing with the Sailor Moon costume.
So what's the big deal? The Netherlands has had a digital ID card for doing business with the government for years already. Now perhaps you enjoy standing in a line somewhere, but I prefer handling my business from the comfort of my chair, at any time of the day that is convenient for me and at a total lower cost to the taxpayer.
Now I don't quite see the point of RFID either, but being able to handle one's affairs over a distance sounds...convenient.
I bought a digital download game last night...15 gigs of game and 5 gigs of patches later...
Heck, I picked up 3 games from www.gog.com last week, 4.7 gigs total as well. (those guys have 1 big pipe btw, easily made it to 50Mb)
Little history lesson about my own country(one north from Belgium):
Back when most of the cable infrastructure was put down, it was owned and operated by government(local ones).
Later on when "privatize! privatize!" was all the rage, this infrastructure was *sold* to the current cable companies, in quite a few cases in exchange for part or full ownership of the company, meaning that although it was ran as a business all the profits would still flow back to local government.
Right now we're seriously looking at breaking up the cable market to get more competition in but alas...once something is in the private sector that is a heck of lot harder to do. So either we(we being "the people") buy the stuff back or we find an alternative.
And...for the record, I can pick from, oh, 15 different ISP's or so. Currently running a 50/5 connection with no bandwidth cap except for a reasonable use policy which is actually reasonable. Unless I start downloading in the TB range for several months in a row...noone's gonna notice.
I do however think that as developers get better at nutruring addiction and creating ever more immersive worlds, it's going to develop into an increasingly serious problem that will need addressing at some point.
We deal with it the same way we deal with people addicted to other things. Once they fuck up their lives enough we take away all their freedoms and responsibilities, stick them somewhere where they can't get to whatever it is they're addicted to and then bring them back into society one step at a time till they've proven they're responsible enough to go back to being productive citizens again.
In all fairness, the tobacco industries were sued for:
- withholding information on and downright lying about the addictiveness of nicotine.
- withholding information on and downright lying about the health consequences of smoking.
- adding artificial agents to make the product even more addictive.
- targeting their product at children while knowing damn well what smoking does to kids.
Selling an addictive product is one thing. Lying to congress, marketing at those who are considered incompetent(children) is an entirely different ballgame.
In your country, I do not. However, I do not live in your country, I live in mine. Guess what, I *do* have a reasonable expectation to privacy, even in public.
That's not a sport, that's barbarism, and has no business in a civilized society.
Nonsense. We're talking 2 consenting adults here. Noone's holding a gun to their heads forcing them to box.
American Football is a ball game played on foot, and thus is very much a type of football.
So any game that involves one or more balls and allows its players to touch the ground with their feet qualifies as football? ;-)
Roland Garros is gonna be so much more fun next year...
and autism-like behavior is obvious enough that you can narrow down the group of people you're going to test significiantly before you start testing.
Ahhh, so that's why it took till my early twenties before someone even thought of looking in that direction. It was too obvious? ;-)
Honestly, considering the amount of people that get the Aspergers tag slapped on them these days, acting like a jackass is already enough for the "obvious" conclusion that it must be autism-related.
Says who? Insofar as science fiction can be said to have a purpose at all, it seems to boil down to "take the human race and inject really spiffy technology, aliens and other assorted funkiness. Shake for 5 seconds and wrap a storyline around what happens".
Your employer is not your friend. Your co-workers are not your friends. They do not deserve loyalty.
Hmm, odd. I consider many of my co-workers to be close friends. And for some reason my employer has this weird attitude that by making sure I remain a happy healthy individual I will somehow yield a better return on investment than if I were to be treated as a disposable asset.
Just because the corporate world in the US has turned into an all out abuse fest does not mean the same applies to other parts of the world. The ability to look beyond the next quarter's profits has not quite been exterminated yet, despite the best efforts of BA programs.
Believe it or not, but every now and then my washing machine actually has a software crash, and I need to...you guessed it...turn it off and then back on again.
Lately I've been giving it the same treatment as my pc though(erratic yelling followed by encouraging words and lots of "now look at what you made me do"'s) and she...I mean it's been behaving a bit better.
I'm curious... do these speed issues pertain only to certain countries? or certain technologies?
Here in the Netherlands to my knowledge no one advertises using "up to" doublespeak the way it's done in the US and UK. Then again we have well over a dozen ISP's to pick from on the phoneline front and there's more breaking into the cable market as we speak, so any corp trying to pull a stunt like that would start losing customers rather quickly.
Speaking for myself, my ISP says I get 50/5 and so far I have yet to see it be any less than that, assuming whatever is on the other side can actually spit out the bits at that speed.
Actually...yes on all those accounts.
In pretty much all those cases I prefer the new purchase to match whatever I already own, including looks.
When some serious crime is committed against you, you will want revenge and theres nothing you can say or do that will stop that.
There are lots of thing that I want on an instinctual level. When I see a very attractive woman walking on the street I'd really like to have sex with her. When I hear someone spouting ignorant nonsense I'd very much like to bring my fist into sharp contact with their nose.
We're not animals. We have the ability to think rationally and make a conscious decision to not give in the reptile riding on the back of a monkey. Well, most of us anyway. Whether we actually do so is mostly a matter of choice.
Why little black books? Use something that we all have and are all paranoid about...our wallets. Something the size and shape of a creditcard should do the trick nicely. Heck, make it look like the fake stuff you get to show off the features of the wallet.
Please, pretty please tell us you're joking?
Or, alternatively, tell us you were serious so we can add you to the "ignorant fuck that'll guzzle down anything Fox squirts down his throat" list.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some Defcon to play...and I think I'll play the Russians today. any particular US cities you'd like me to refrain from nuking?
Unless they are claiming he is using faith healing to fix computers (more effective then the geek squad yes) They have no business complaining.
First, we must exorcize the demon Beelzebuddy.
Then, to stave off the fires of Hell must we install the Holy watercooling.
And finally shall I recreate your hard-drive in the image of the father, the son and the holy Norton Ghost.
Halleluja, it boots, praise the LILO!
Greek God Squad.
Hmmm...scantily clad muscular young men and women going around "fixing computers".
If you'll excuse me...I have a business plan to file.
Then again, our unions tend to be reasonable. When a company is truly in dire straits we don't negotiate pay rises, we investigate whether taking a temporary pay hit would make it possible for the company to stay afloat so everyone can keep their jobs.
I suppose it's a cultural thing. From what I've seen the Danes are much like the Dutch in that they opt for reasonable discussion and compromise instead of going for the throat.
Ask people why they voted a certain way and the vast majority of people voted because of a few "key" issues, issues like abortion, global warming, stem cell research, wars, taxes, etc.
Is that why they voted X or Y, or just the justification they use for voting whatever it was their parents voted on? Most of the political analysis of the US I've seen seems to indicate that the better part of the country pretty much always votes the same party, with a relatively smaller amount of swing votes that need to be pandered to in order to seal the win, which is one of the reasons the nuts on the fringes get such a disproportionate amount of attention.
They also enjoy making up new double words (like 'nude shock', 'sex attack' or 'death cheese'.)
Do they also provide instruction on where to obtain these...nude attacks and death cheeses? Who needs sharks with friggin's laser beams attached to their heads when you can have killer cheese?
And no, just using milk from China to make it doesn't count, I'm talking cheese that bites back, baby!
In the netherlands as well as in belgium we're seeing a huge surge of electrically assisted bicycles lately. You still have to pedal but the experience is like going downwind all the time. Especially for the folks in their 50's and 60's this means they can pop down to to town, get groceries etc. and still get some exercise and fresh air instead of having to take the car.
For those of us having to travel to work it means being able to take a bicycle for distances up to, say, 5 miles without excessive sweating.
And...your leg muscles get strong enough to lift your significant other in the air for extended amounts of time....
Hey, gotta put some benefits that are immediately visible in there ;-)