I absolutely hate the "others have died so you have a moral obligation to vote" line, as it's never said except to install some form of guilt trip, so I reject it on sight (or, ahem, "site", I suppose:)
Is there any way in which cybercafes could be used for the purposes of voting too, just for those who can't affort and/or don't have machinery & modem of their own?
Now that's public "transport" I'd like to see invested in: a computer on every street corner:8]
With due respect, that's rubbish. Admittedly I'm relatively uninspired to vote, to "do my bit for the country" or however you want to put it. And no, I don't have any feelings of guilt about this either. Politics bores more stupid.
However, there are other reasons whereby it hasn't happene: by the time I've crawled in from my "9-5" job at 7pm (having got up at 7.30am to get there too), there's no way I'm going to slope out, walk all the way across town to find some poxy voting booth, all when the politicians involved have showed no interest in getting my vote nor in coming to see me, for an entire year (never mind run-up to elections, they don't even do that).
If the government were to get off its ass and enable those of us who do ever so occasionally feel the urge to click a button, it might just happen. This is probably a good thing.
And besides which, I think politics is about as useful, if not less so, than a/. poll anyway:8) ~Tim --
In the UK, we do have this 'Data Protection Act' and if folks really want to, they can demand a company reveals all the data stored about them, not necessarily immediately and maybe at microscopic charge. It can also be legally required to be accurate as well.
As far as national identity cards go, I'm all for removing the demand for having quite so much plastic in pocket, as long as it can be done securely (well, SSL-based online ordering beats handing a credit card to a waiter any day; if the replacement plastic supports a suitable encryption mechanism I'd be happy), I don't mind having things making life easier.
What is the problem even if data is sold on to others? More people know a bit about me and I get slightly less thick salespeople calling me... It's not as though I have anything to hide that I can't PGP-encrypt!:) ~Tim --
Off the thread though: Yet again we're told to put a url through Babelfish.
I think it would be nicer if instead of just giving a URL for Babelfish, folks pasted a link to the translated document just to save cut&paste in X in netscape problems... I need more windows open than I want to work around it. And of course, the results of the translation are not phenomenal...
Hmmm. I'm not convinced it's necessarily only a publicity stunt. I think if they end up with 'an organisation' to do the work then it's only a good thing. Go SuSE!:8)
FWIW I used to have problems with MS Outlook and the PGP for Windows from www.pgpi.com. Every so often a mail would come through and trying to open it would cause a GPF in outlook as the plugin DLL died, dunno why. It was not fun having auto-preview enabled, as this also involved 'opening' the mail!
This was outlook in the days of IE4 and PGP5.5 - might be different now, but be on your guard:)
My feeling is that Linux is Linux and it will continue, unabated, in the presence or absence of business. That a cluster of businesses gather in its wake doesn't matter.
I'm not so convinced. It wouldn't be linux if there were no community to it, that's for sure - a pretty bizarre community, with all flavours of advocate from sensible to raving fundamentalist, but there's a generally sociable feeling amongst the slightly calmer ones of us:)
If this were to disappear, it wouldn't be a linux industry, just more commercial clap-trap.
I think the advent of MP3 has provoked a necessary debate about the pricing of music media to the general public.
Given I have a few CDs and tapes lying around in my flat, and occasionally have visitors seeing them, will these folks next want to charge for these? (An analogous situation to putting up links to sites which merely contain music links.)
I think the whole music industry needs a hefty review. Who's up to the job?:)
Yes, I also have one or two complaints with Demon. I wasn't asked whether I wanted my tenner a month to provide more Quake servers - so to get a letter one month saying "yippeee your tenner a month now goes even further" annoyed me greatly.
As far as these 'links might also be deflammatory' goes:
Demon should stop infringing everyone's right to free speech, or I really *will* desert them this time;
a lot of people should have higher humour tolerance factors. I'm not saying anything here about this specific case but in general, things that should be net.humour are too-often misunderstood.
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I absolutely hate the "others have died so you have a moral obligation to vote" line, as it's never said except to install some form of guilt trip, so I reject it on sight (or, ahem, "site", I suppose
Is there any way in which cybercafes could be used for the purposes of voting too, just for those who can't affort and/or don't have machinery & modem of their own?
Now that's public "transport" I'd like to see invested in: a computer on every street corner
~Tim
--
With due respect, that's rubbish.
/. poll anyway :8)
Admittedly I'm relatively uninspired to vote, to "do my bit for the country" or however you want to put it. And no, I don't have any feelings of guilt about this either. Politics bores more stupid.
However, there are other reasons whereby it hasn't happene: by the time I've crawled in from my "9-5" job at 7pm (having got up at 7.30am to get there too), there's no way I'm going to slope out, walk all the way across town to find some poxy voting booth, all when the politicians involved have showed no interest in getting my vote nor in coming to see me, for an entire year (never mind run-up to elections, they don't even do that).
If the government were to get off its ass and enable those of us who do ever so occasionally feel the urge to click a button, it might just happen. This is probably a good thing.
And besides which, I think politics is about as useful, if not less so, than a
~Tim
--
Aha, are you by any chance American? :)
:)
In the UK, we do have this 'Data Protection Act' and if folks really want to, they can demand a company reveals all the data stored about them, not necessarily immediately and maybe at microscopic charge. It can also be legally required to be accurate as well.
As far as national identity cards go, I'm all for removing the demand for having quite so much plastic in pocket, as long as it can be done securely (well, SSL-based online ordering beats handing a credit card to a waiter any day; if the replacement plastic supports a suitable encryption mechanism I'd be happy), I don't mind having things making life easier.
What is the problem even if data is sold on to others? More people know a bit about me and I get slightly less thick salespeople calling me...
It's not as though I have anything to hide that I can't PGP-encrypt!
~Tim
--
I didn't think businesses had morals...
:8]
Don't feed the trolls
~Tim
--
Off the thread though: Yet again we're told to put a url through Babelfish.
I think it would be nicer if instead of just giving a URL for Babelfish, folks pasted a link to the translated document just to save cut&paste in X in netscape problems... I need more windows open than I want to work around it.
And of course, the results of the translation are not phenomenal...
~Tim
--
Hmmm. :8)
;8)
I'm not convinced it's necessarily only a publicity stunt. I think if they end up with 'an organisation' to do the work then it's only a good thing.
Go SuSE!
(Guess which distro I run...
~Tim
--
FWIW I used to have problems with MS Outlook and the PGP for Windows from www.pgpi.com. Every so often a mail would come through and trying to open it would cause a GPF in outlook as the plugin DLL died, dunno why. It was not fun having auto-preview enabled, as this also involved 'opening' the mail!
:)
This was outlook in the days of IE4 and PGP5.5 - might be different now, but be on your guard
~Tim
~Tim
--
I'm not so convinced. It wouldn't be linux if there were no community to it, that's for sure - a pretty bizarre community, with all flavours of advocate from sensible to raving fundamentalist, but there's a generally sociable feeling amongst the slightly calmer ones of us
If this were to disappear, it wouldn't be a linux industry, just more commercial clap-trap.
~PigleT
~Tim
--
I think the advent of MP3 has provoked a necessary debate about the pricing of music media to the general public.
Given I have a few CDs and tapes lying around in my flat, and occasionally have visitors seeing them, will these folks next want to charge for these? (An analogous situation to putting up links to sites which merely contain music links.)
I think the whole music industry needs a hefty review. Who's up to the job?
~Tim
~Tim
--
Absolutely.
:)
Who is this Metcalfe chap, anyway? (Or should I say, "was"?
I wasn't asked whether I wanted my tenner a month to provide more Quake servers - so to get a letter one month saying "yippeee your tenner a month now goes even further" annoyed me greatly.
As far as these 'links might also be deflammatory' goes:
Hmmm. Is it not possible to run Gnome atop the KDE :)
for the best of both worlds?