Not saying the U.S. system is better (I just lost all my savings paying my wife's health costs) but I'm not sure if I ever wish to be treated in an NHS hospital.
If a UK citizen wanted to piss away their life savings on healthcare, they could do just that, as private healthcare is also available in the UK. It's very cheap too, as it has to compete with the NHS and out culture isn't (yet) as litigious.
In any case, medical error is responsible for between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths in the US every year, so there would be plenty of fodder for a US version of the Daily Fail.
And which mission is the one trying to prevent another entire generation in that region from falling under the control of a bunch of medieval-minded religious thugs...
Neither. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have exactly as much to do with women, education and religious freedom as they have to do with exploring Mars.
Concorde was a British/French vanity project to make up for their (highly justified) feelings of inferiority to the USSR and the USA during the space race.
What utter jingoistic bollocks. The US and USSR both tried and failed to build supersonic transport.
Manned space flight was just as much a vanity project.
Yes throwing an error would be better than an inconsistent or, for some developers at least judging by the comments, an illogical result.
If you pass a string to number_format(), php generates a warning.
People whine about php being inconsistent, then when they make changes to make it more consistent, people whine.
They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
The fine individual who reported the 'bug':
Has warnings turned off in his php config (OK for production, but stupid for development)
Jumps two major versions of php without reading the documentation (this change is the first item on the upgrade notes for php 5.3)
Is passing around strings and expecting them to behave like numbers in an application for tax and retirement planning.
And surely the biggest WTF of the lot: He thinks that redirecting calls to number_format to a wrapper function will be hard to get through his 'change-request-release environment', but running and maintaining a private fork of php will be no problem
But it would appear the PHP devs don't think like that and instead like to preach that their arbitrary way of doing things is better than some other arbitrary way of doing things.
There's enough to criticise about php without attacking a straw man.
I expect you mean the ANPR cameras that check for valid tax and insurance. These are always accompanied by signs letting you know they're there, just like speed cameras.
Firstly, they are not all accompanied by signs. Many trunk roads have fixed ANPR cameras which aren't marked. All the police's traffic cars (including unmarked cars) have ANPR cameras and don't have any signs. Even back in 2010 there were over 4000 ANPR cameras operating with absolutely no regulatory oversight.
Secondly, the cameras are hardly just used to "check for valid tax and insurance". Some are operated by the Ministry of Defence, FFS. Every plate checked has its location, time (and in many cases a photo) stored on the ANPR database. This data is held 'routinely' for two years, but you can bet your bottom dollar it's held in perpetuity if you are a suspected 'person of interest'. If it was just for checking tax and insurance there would be no need to store data for anyone who was taxed and insured.
The 'tax and insurance' excuse is just like the terrorist/child pornographer excuse. If you disagree with widespread invasion of privacy by the state you must be untaxed or uninsured, right?
Nothing happened; the press still use sensationalism and the people are still subject to about the same level of surveillance as in most other First World countries.
How would you know? Under the RIP Act, the authorities can monitor any and all private communications without a warrant from a judge (merely with permission from -- for example -- "any customs officer designated for the purposes by the Commissioners of Revenue and Customs"), and no figures on how many people have been affected are available.
Well, Microsoft is one of those companies that only think long term. In fact, most of what Google does is to gain quick profit and ditch the projects that fail with that.
Elspeth Rosamund Morton Howe (Baroness Howe of Idlicote in her own right and and Lady Howe of Aberavon because she's the wife of Baron Howe of Aberavon) is 80 years old.
This might give everyone a clue as to why she's got no idea about the net, or about the wide acceptance of pornography in mainstream culture.
Thankfully, this bill has no chance of passing, as there's no money in it for any of Cameron's cronies. Anyway, I can't think of a single bill from the last ten years that started in the House of Lords that became law, never mind one from a cross-bencher.
BTW: she was created a baroness, and her husband was created a baron; they're not hereditary peers, and her father was the noted architect and writer Philip Morton Shand, so putting it down to inbreeding rather than her simply being out-of-touch, over-privileged and superannuated is maybe a bit harsh!
We worry about Iran because they are something new, a nuke possessing country who may not be subject to MAD. In the end the 'godless commies' had one thing going for them in the world peace issues of the Cold War. They wanted to rule the world but they didn't really want to 'win' by being the last survivor in a post apocolypse scenario, the party leaders liked the good life and wanted to keep living it, especially since they didn't much believe in an afterlife to be rewarded in for wiping out the enemy in this one for.
We just don't know if Iran would be so constrained. We pretty much have to take Ajad at his word that he doesn't give a crap if atomic hellfire rains down on him after his rightous jihad of nuking Israel and the US, as we would be fools not to...
This 'Ajad' chappy (who he?) sounds completely unlike the previous US president who believed he was living in "the end times" and that the second coming of Christ would result in 'armageddon': a battle against the Antichrist in the Middle East!
Also, I'm pretty sure that Ahmadinejad hasn't threatened to nuke the US or Israel, as he claims that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons.
A country burning off scads of natural gas because they don't consider it valuable enough to capture and use probably doesn't actually need nuke power plants for electricity generation.
LOL. Where did you get that one? Iran gets more than half of its energy from natural gas, and has the third largest consumption in the world after the US and Russia. It also has to import some to meet its needs!
These corrupt 'terrorism' acts aren't even worth my contempt. And regardless of the fact that the American's 1st amendment is toothless, at least free speech is codified into law there
With its slander and libel laws on top of the terrorism acts, the UK doesn't even come close.
Perhaps you are right about the common-law interpretation of libel. But there IS free speech in the UK, codified into law. It may be more free in the US, but it does exist in the UK.
This is a free speech issue.
No, this is NOT a free speech issue. Free speech is the freedom to speak freely without government interference. If this dweeb had been the publisher of the bomb-making instructions then you might have a point. But he is not. His freedom of speech has not been curtailed.
In the UK you are free to drink a beer in the street or a park. We consider this to be an essential method of self-expression. You are not free to do so in much of the US. Ergo there is no free speech in the US. An equally silly statement.
Being able to use information for nefarious purposes doesn't make it any less so. Yeah, he might be acquitted, but he has to go through hell to get there. Who's going to compensate him for lost time and money, eh? None of what I am saying means the government can't observe his actions, but gathering information is perfectly within his rights. It's time to put the dogs on a leash
You are of course familiar with the Detroit Sleeper Cell? Convicted of terrorism, to wit: recording a home movie at Disneyland. Convicted and acquitted on appeal. Not considered by anyone to ever have been a 'free speech issue'.
Oh well, gotta remember that the UK has no real free speech rights codified into law.. for what that's worth..
Please don't conflate a real shitty law with a fictitious old canard.
The UK has the Human Rights Act, of which article 10 guarantees free speech. Before this, rights to free speech were part of common law dating back centuries.
If you mean "the UK has no absolute free speech rights" you are correct. Try making threats against the President's life to see if you have absolute free speech rights.
But this case has nothing to do with free speech. He was convicted under section 58 of the Terrorism Act, which proscribes "collect[ing] or mak[ing] a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Bullshit, of course (a tube map is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism), but not a free speech issue.
People convicted in similar cases have been acquitted on appeal where the prosecution cannot show that the defendant intended to commit a specific act of terrorism. Wannabe terrorists, IOW. Doubtless this goofball will be acquitted on appeal too, but that won't be so widely reported, and if it is, the government have an excuse to pass more draconian 'anti-terrorist' laws.
Don't miss the fact that this legislation predates 9/11.
There has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years. The Earth is not getting hotter, it got hotter and then, a decade and a half ago, it stopped.
The first sentence is true, yet the second sentence is false.
Here's my favourite of the many debunkings of this myth. The third graph is particularly compelling, and will be even more compelling when the data for 2011 is added.
So here are two requirements for those wishing to conclude that global warming has stopped based on the interview with Phil Jones:
1. Accept the backwards logic that allows global warming to keep on stopping while temperatures keep on rising. 2. Ignore the real question of whether the last 15 years is consistent with a continued warming trend (which it is).
So no, global warming has not stopped. It takes some serious wishful thinking to say that it has.
Slashdot Mirror
As a citizen and former resident of the UK, I can assure you that it is not the most civilised nation on earth.
For confirmation, visit pretty much any town -- Guildford for example -- on a Saturday night!
Not saying the U.S. system is better (I just lost all my savings paying my wife's health costs) but I'm not sure if I ever wish to be treated in an NHS hospital.
If a UK citizen wanted to piss away their life savings on healthcare, they could do just that, as private healthcare is also available in the UK. It's very cheap too, as it has to compete with the NHS and out culture isn't (yet) as litigious.
In any case, medical error is responsible for between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths in the US every year, so there would be plenty of fodder for a US version of the Daily Fail.
And which mission is the one trying to prevent another entire generation in that region from falling under the control of a bunch of medieval-minded religious thugs...
Neither. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have exactly as much to do with women, education and religious freedom as they have to do with exploring Mars.
Which is to say, nothing at all.
...but the law doesn't require threats of violence for an arrest to be made.
Nothing requires arrests to be made, but surely threats of violence are by their nature 'menacing'?
Concorde was a British/French vanity project to make up for their (highly justified) feelings of inferiority to the USSR and the USA during the space race.
What utter jingoistic bollocks. The US and USSR both tried and failed to build supersonic transport.
Manned space flight was just as much a vanity project.
It's worth noting that McDonald's staff in Europe is mostly uneducated non-European immigrants from the Middle East or North Africa (MENA)
It appears to me from the photos that at least two out the three assailants are white, as are the three people you can see working behind the counter.
But don't let the facts stand in the way of your bigotry!
Heineken-only bars everywhere?
Here in Lyon, France there are a lot of Kronenbourg-only bars!
Far, far worse.
Thankfully, decent Belgian beer is pretty easy to find.
why did the Bakers go out on a limb, change course, and agree to an all-stock sale at the last minute?
Here are a couple of theories:
They wanted to stay involved with the technology (it was their "third child" after all). More stock == more control.
-- and/or --
L&H told them that their share price would rocket once they had Dragon's technology, so they would make more money by taking stock.
Truthiness is a perfectly cromulent word, even if the poster hasn't quite used it correctly.
Make it a breaking change, bump the major version up, force people to upgrade through obsolescence and we would be in a much better situation.
I completely agree. But look at the butt hurt over the fix to number_format() et al.
They really are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
Yes throwing an error would be better than an inconsistent or, for some developers at least judging by the comments, an illogical result.
If you pass a string to number_format(), php generates a warning.
People whine about php being inconsistent, then when they make changes to make it more consistent, people whine.
They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
The fine individual who reported the 'bug':
But it would appear the PHP devs don't think like that and instead like to preach that their arbitrary way of doing things is better than some other arbitrary way of doing things.
There's enough to criticise about php without attacking a straw man.
Silently failing is one of PHP's most common and egregious sins.
It doesn't silently fail. It generates a warning:
Warning: number_format() expects parameter 1 to be double, string given in /foo/bar/baz.php on line X
I'd rather it fail and fail loudly, so bugs like this can get fixed during development.
Which is why you don't disable warnings.
Maybe you want php to treat warnings as errors? No problem:
set_error_handler().
I expect you mean the ANPR cameras that check for valid tax and insurance. These are always accompanied by signs letting you know they're there, just like speed cameras.
Firstly, they are not all accompanied by signs. Many trunk roads have fixed ANPR cameras which aren't marked. All the police's traffic cars (including unmarked cars) have ANPR cameras and don't have any signs. Even back in 2010 there were over 4000 ANPR cameras operating with absolutely no regulatory oversight.
Secondly, the cameras are hardly just used to "check for valid tax and insurance". Some are operated by the Ministry of Defence, FFS. Every plate checked has its location, time (and in many cases a photo) stored on the ANPR database. This data is held 'routinely' for two years, but you can bet your bottom dollar it's held in perpetuity if you are a suspected 'person of interest'. If it was just for checking tax and insurance there would be no need to store data for anyone who was taxed and insured.
Nor would there be stories like the one where an 84 year old peace protester with no criminal record is tugged because the ANPR database flags him as “of interest to public order unit Sussex”. The story goes on say that Sussex Police alone record over 1.2 million car positions a day.
The 'tax and insurance' excuse is just like the terrorist/child pornographer excuse. If you disagree with widespread invasion of privacy by the state you must be untaxed or uninsured, right?
Nothing happened; the press still use sensationalism and the people are still subject to about the same level of surveillance as in most other First World countries.
How would you know? Under the RIP Act, the authorities can monitor any and all private communications without a warrant from a judge (merely with permission from -- for example -- "any customs officer designated for the purposes by the Commissioners of Revenue and Customs"), and no figures on how many people have been affected are available.
I predict UK will see a surge in AWStats usage, plus a resurgence of very long URLs (including old-style web bugs with very long URLs).
This wouldn't get around the law. Non-cookie based tracking is also covered.
The media may call it the 'Cookie law', but the article title's "No tracking law" is more accurate.
Well, Microsoft is one of those companies that only think long term. In fact, most of what Google does is to gain quick profit and ditch the projects that fail with that.
I give you.... ...the Microsoft Kin!
Launched May 13, 2010.
Discontinued June 30, 2010.
Now that's what I call long-term thinking!
In any case, he's a man named François Hollande.
I guess timothy omitted the cedilla for fear that slashcode would mangle it.
The European system is a major contributor to the current problems in Europe
Germany seems to be doing OK, and they have strong labour protection laws.
In Greece, on the other hand, an employer can terminate any employment for any reason whatsoever with a month's notice. Not helped Greece much.
and it is also a major contributor to the fact that innovation, development and other important functions haven't worked in Europe since before WWII.
LOL.
Europe is going to (have to) change these laws. They are absurd.
Different countries in Europe have different employment laws.
If people in European countries think their laws are absurd, they can show it at the ballot box.
The question is, does anyone really want or need a light for their Kindle?
Yes.
To me, it's already like a magic book. A magic book that lights up has got to be better!
Elspeth Rosamund Morton Howe (Baroness Howe of Idlicote in her own right and and Lady Howe of Aberavon because she's the wife of Baron Howe of Aberavon) is 80 years old.
This might give everyone a clue as to why she's got no idea about the net, or about the wide acceptance of pornography in mainstream culture.
Thankfully, this bill has no chance of passing, as there's no money in it for any of Cameron's cronies. Anyway, I can't think of a single bill from the last ten years that started in the House of Lords that became law, never mind one from a cross-bencher.
BTW: she was created a baroness, and her husband was created a baron; they're not hereditary peers, and her father was the noted architect and writer Philip Morton Shand, so putting it down to inbreeding rather than her simply being out-of-touch, over-privileged and superannuated is maybe a bit harsh!
We're the only country on the planet that's not in a recession right now.
What/quoi?
Canada: 0.9% GDP growth last quarter.
US: 2.8%
India: 6.9%
China: 9.8%
More...
We worry about Iran because they are something new, a nuke possessing country who may not be subject to MAD. In the end the 'godless commies' had one thing going for them in the world peace issues of the Cold War. They wanted to rule the world but they didn't really want to 'win' by being the last survivor in a post apocolypse scenario, the party leaders liked the good life and wanted to keep living it, especially since they didn't much believe in an afterlife to be rewarded in for wiping out the enemy in this one for.
We just don't know if Iran would be so constrained. We pretty much have to take Ajad at his word that he doesn't give a crap if atomic hellfire rains down on him after his rightous jihad of nuking Israel and the US, as we would be fools not to...
This 'Ajad' chappy (who he?) sounds completely unlike the previous US president who believed he was living in "the end times" and that the second coming of Christ would result in 'armageddon': a battle against the Antichrist in the Middle East!
Also, I'm pretty sure that Ahmadinejad hasn't threatened to nuke the US or Israel, as he claims that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons.
A country burning off scads of natural gas because they don't consider it valuable enough to capture and use probably doesn't actually need nuke power plants for electricity generation.
LOL. Where did you get that one? Iran gets more than half of its energy from natural gas, and has the third largest consumption in the world after the US and Russia. It also has to import some to meet its needs!
These corrupt 'terrorism' acts aren't even worth my contempt. And regardless of the fact that the American's 1st amendment is toothless, at least free speech is codified into law there
No, you're still wrong. Free speech in the UK. Codified into law..
With its slander and libel laws on top of the terrorism acts, the UK doesn't even come close.
Perhaps you are right about the common-law interpretation of libel. But there IS free speech in the UK, codified into law. It may be more free in the US, but it does exist in the UK.
This is a free speech issue.
No, this is NOT a free speech issue. Free speech is the freedom to speak freely without government interference. If this dweeb had been the publisher of the bomb-making instructions then you might have a point. But he is not. His freedom of speech has not been curtailed.
In the UK you are free to drink a beer in the street or a park. We consider this to be an essential method of self-expression. You are not free to do so in much of the US. Ergo there is no free speech in the US. An equally silly statement.
Being able to use information for nefarious purposes doesn't make it any less so. Yeah, he might be acquitted, but he has to go through hell to get there. Who's going to compensate him for lost time and money, eh? None of what I am saying means the government can't observe his actions, but gathering information is perfectly within his rights. It's time to put the dogs on a leash
You are of course familiar with the Detroit Sleeper Cell? Convicted of terrorism, to wit: recording a home movie at Disneyland. Convicted and acquitted on appeal. Not considered by anyone to ever have been a 'free speech issue'.
Oh well, gotta remember that the UK has no real free speech rights codified into law.. for what that's worth..
Please don't conflate a real shitty law with a fictitious old canard.
The UK has the Human Rights Act, of which article 10 guarantees free speech. Before this, rights to free speech were part of common law dating back centuries.
If you mean "the UK has no absolute free speech rights" you are correct. Try making threats against the President's life to see if you have absolute free speech rights.
But this case has nothing to do with free speech. He was convicted under section 58 of the Terrorism Act, which proscribes "collect[ing] or mak[ing] a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Bullshit, of course (a tube map is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism), but not a free speech issue.
People convicted in similar cases have been acquitted on appeal where the prosecution cannot show that the defendant intended to commit a specific act of terrorism. Wannabe terrorists, IOW. Doubtless this goofball will be acquitted on appeal too, but that won't be so widely reported, and if it is, the government have an excuse to pass more draconian 'anti-terrorist' laws.
Don't miss the fact that this legislation predates 9/11.
The first sentence is true, yet the second sentence is false.
Here's my favourite of the many debunkings of this myth. The third graph is particularly compelling, and will be even more compelling when the data for 2011 is added.
Got a source for that?
This is a big story here in France but I've not heard that claim.