the store owners cut costs associated with staff and make bigger profits BUT you now have a lot of people who used to work now becoming unemployed.
Fair enough a checkout operator is not the best job in the world but it does provide employment for some - in addition to their pay they get social and other benefits which they wouldn't get on the dole.
And when the staff are dismissed, who pays their unemployment benefit and other welfare costs? You & me via our taxes.
At the 'bottom of the pile' benefit scroungers are rightly condemned, but those at the top who are effectively getting us to subsidise their increasing profits and income are lauded.
If I had mod points I'd mark this as the most insightful response on the topic -- but then I'd be unable to add to it.
I agree with all that's said but would extend it to include the "filter bubble" effect that Facebook, Google etc seem to amplify: it's likely that each person sees more and more from sources that FB/G's algorithms deem to be "interesting" to them and fewer and fewer views that disagree. This tends to reinforce opinions in a way that 'older' sources could not do.
I know that some newspapers and TV companies had biased agendas (and claimed that they were pure and the problem lay with the others) but even so they were less able to focus content so closely as today's use of tracking and big data allows.
There used to be a joke :
How do you know when a politician's telling lies? their lips move.
Sadly this is no joke all too true in 2016. You can drive round with policy promises on the side of a bus and then the morning after the vote (less than 12 hours after the count) say "it was only an aspiration" and walk away from them with no apparent loss of face (indeed some promotion/reward instead).
And people wonder why cynicism is on the increase.
" It wouldn't be possible for Amazon to check every item from every seller. "
Why not? I don't suppose Amazon offer trading spots rent free - some form of vendor checks would be reasonable and covered by the fees charged.
What value is Amazon adding? Might just as well allow sale of perpetual motion machines and then say "not us - we're just passing trades through - don't expect us to check whether they're real or not".
If I wanted a low price but with the risk of dealing with a shifty and unreliable supplier I could go to the local flea market or car boot sale.
The item was advertised and sold as a UK spec phone. The manufacturer then claimed that this was not the case. This is a clear case of misrepresentation by Amazon (who presented the item, showed the description on their site, took payment and acted as middleman).
I am just as annoyed by Huawei as Amazon. Neither has covered themselves in glory and they both stand in stark contrast to other suppliers.
"..... as the company tries to get more people comfortable with doing more of their shopping online...."
Amazon is on my personal "back of the queue list" and I'll not willingly use them in future having been badly let down.
Word of warning to others to stop being burnt. DO NOT buy through Amazon Marketplace.
If your item develops a fault and the trader refuses to answer you're completely out of luck.
Amazon (despite taking payment and giving an order number) claim that it's nothing to do with them and won't help; the bank won't reverse charges as they say the issue is with the trader but Amazon took payment [and thus there's no clear payment path] and the item supplier won't honour warranty because the item was not bought through a UK approved channel.
If Amazon put as much effort into customer services (and paid what is for them a small amount but a not insignificant amount for me) as they do into tax dodging, I'd be singing their praises. As it is they've lost a long term customer who is dissuading other friends and family members from using them.
The question was simplistic (and to most nerds one which could only be answered "it depends") as it did not clearly give enough information to base a reasoned judgement.
Consider this: if the vote had been the other way round - would those who were in favour of exit but lost be happy if the government tried to push through "hard remain" (full Schengen agreement, adoption of the euro....) with no parliamentary oversight because "remain means remain - it's the will of the people".
Whatever your views, this was a colossal muddle with a poorly informed electorate voting with no clear idea of what the outcome meant and subjected to lies and propaganda from all sides.
It is not "informed consent" by any stretch of the imagination.
A better approach would be either a fine grained set of questions on key issues (so that Parliament can prioritise negotiating strategies) or a "ranking" type vote on desired outcomes.
Mandatory voting (with a 'Whatever - I can't be bothered" option) would ensure that a comprehensive view was obtained rather than just those who were sufficiently motivated to go out and vote.
I'll try to explain (as an ordinary citizen - not a constituional expert).
The UK has a representative democracy which elects members to the House of Commons and a non-elected second chamber (House of Lords) which is supposed to act as a review/checking body. Many people do not like the non-elected part of this, but it is what it is. Both houses notionally advise the monarch who makes the law; these days it is a nicety and she basically rubber stamps everything but she is supposed to be a non-party-political figurehead.
Parliament = House of Commons + House of Lords. In other words all elected members of parliament [in the commons] and all memebers of the lords IRRESPECTIVE OF PARTY
Government = Ruling party (or coalition) - effectively whoever has the most seats in the commons.
The Government proposes laws but they have to be approved by Parliament as a whole; this puts a first level of check in the system unless one party has an overwhelming majority as there has to be appeal not only to the opposition but also moderate members of the ruling party.
For a few, specific cases the Queen can act without parliamentary sanction -- in reality this means that the Prime Minister (leader of the government/ruling party) can act without putting it to a parliamentary vote. After the recent wars in Iraq, Libya... there is a groundswell of opinion to limit this prerogative.
Now what's happened with Brexit is that there was a referendum. Under UK constitution a referendum is only advisory and there to inform parliament (though in reality it directs action as going against the will of the people is not a good idea). In this case the margin was very close and there have been people calling foul (esp. as one of the campaign promises, widely advertised was reneged upon the day after the count).
David Cameron, the Prime Minister at the time, said he would stand by the result; he's since cut and run. We now have a PM that nobody has voted for (and who is introducing things not in the election manifesto). This is seen as a democratic deficit by many.
Many MPs are remainers, many people are having second thoughts and a lot of people are complaining that the terms of the exit were never spelt out before the vote.
The exit terms are to be negotiated. The current government do not want parliament to have a vote. This has been challenged in court.
One of the big ironies was that a key feature in the debate was to move from "unelected rule and lack of parliamentary sovereignty" -- and now the same people are fighting against these principles in court.
In short - it's a typical British cock-up. We lead the world in muddle and confusion; meanwhile the economy is going down the pan through all of the uncertainty.
âoeThe best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.â â Winston S. Churchill
If approached by a researcher I may thell them *a* password in exchange for chocolate - whether it's a valid one or not would be a matter for my conscience [is my deception greater than theirs? are the consequences of my lie better/worse than their planned action?...]
If you're running your own Apache / nginx server on your machine *it* will end up trying to respond to the Facebook redirects. Annoying -- though the log files do give visibility of just how many calls are made !
I replaced the 127.0.0.1 with 10.0.0.0 instead - guaranteed not to route across the Internet.
At the risk of waking up a certain regular "contributor" to Slashdot... add in doubleclick to the list as well:-)
I'm not sure what your perspective of the problem is but for me the UI is fine. It's clean, simple and does what is expected; I can live wthout fancy colour schemes, gradients, customised icons...
I'd like to thank the developers for providing and supporting an excellent product (tried others but keep coming back to VLC on all platforms).
The only question I have (and it is trivial I know) is what is the significance of the traffic cone as the icon?
I can't find the reference but I do recall the earlier story. I also recall someone trying to get the company to accept his son and his associated student loan debts [plus provide said son with food, shelter...] - the company refused and I believe he threatened to take them to court for not honouring their contractual obligations.
Not sure how it ended up - but if a few highly publicised cases showed how companies weaseled out of their side of a bargain perhaps we could end up with more equitable and sane contract terms.
Perhaps that's too much to ask - maybe just settle for clear, simple expressions
Something like:
You give us money - we graciously let you use (not own) our stuff - we don't guarantee that it will work or that we'll support it - you can't bank on it working in the future (esp. if we decide to break it to force you to buy an upgrade) - if you even dare to think about looking at what you've rented we will bankrupt you - and "all your data are belong to us"
I have search history, location history.... all turned off so I get a 'nothing to see here' level of output.
Does this mean that Google is genuinely not collecting my history? or is it more likely that they are and my opting out merely sets a flag used by the presentation layer to send back an empty set?
There are also some national and local laws which govern the size of parking bays (to prevent exploiative charging by painting impossibly small spaces). If these are not observed then there is a technical defence against some charges.
There was a spot on one of the local BBC news recently about two men who were spending their retirement measuring various car parks as some local authorities had repainted the lines to squeeze in a few more places and were then issuing fines for "not parking properly" ie within the marked bays.
Although it's good to see their spirit in challenging authority, it was hard to have too much sympathy with owners of oversized vehicles who could clearly afford to spend seriously large amounts on them (both purchase and low fuel economy) yet were moaning over loss of access to low cost parking spaces.
If it's at all innovative or useful it will end-of-life itself (like Buzz, iGoogle, Wave, Glasses...).
Either that or it will get into the AI equivalent of navel gazing and recursively analyse how to sell adverts to itself whilst spying on all the messages used by other instantiations.
I agree that this is a good scheme - I use a variation of it myself.
In addition, to allow different passwords for different sites, I'd suggest adding a character in the middle so in your case Swbi99iTa5o becomes Swbi99SiTa5o for Slashdot, Swbi99GiTa5o for Google.... bonus marks if you use the second or third letter rather than the initial.
Changing the odd letter for a punctuation mark also helps for those sites that demand non alphanumeric characters - eg Swbi99iTa5o becomes Swbi99iT@5o
Just use the daily finance / economic forecasts and predictions of the impacts on personal budgets, jobs, immigration.... that are being spouted by both sides of the current BREXIT** debate.
This can be generalised to any politician's promises but the current round are particularly egregious.
As is often the case, Terry Pratchett had some wise/comic insights which are relevant.
"How Vetinari himself ascended to the Patricianship is a story yet untold. It is known that his advice was heeded by Snapcase's administration on at least one occasion: when a 20p bounty on rat tails was introduced to combat a serious rodent infestation, but threatened to drain the treasury dry without curtailing the rats' numbers. Vetinari's suggestion to "tax the rat farms" provided an early demonstration of his shrewd political insight. "
I also pay for multiple commercial channels that I never watch.
They do not work for nothing so they get paid for by advertisers.
Advertisers are also not benificent charities and they get paid for by their customers (eg supermarkets, car companies...)
The companies get their money from the end customer - ie individuals like me.
So... I end up paying more in my daily purchases to fund multiple levels of payments (each of which is abstracting their own profits).
Personally I think the BBC is good value for money and the fact that it doesn't need to worry about dancing to the tune of corporate bosses is worth the licence fee alone. As it is also attacked from both sides of the political spectrum it is also doing a fair job of balance (unlike the worst of the right wing press that seeks to destroy the most competent competitor)
This is likely to flare up and disappear just as quickly
To put things in context:
1) The UK Government has a TERRIBLE track record in terms of IT projects; the chances of this initiative going beyond blowing a few million on starting up another failed project are slim
2) This is part of a manifesto promise by the Tories. They have to be seen to discuss it. They can then decide it's too difficult and blame "Johnny Foreigner" for the problems. It's part of the "something must be done!" - we've done 'something' - job done! syndrome. Whether the 'something' done has any effect or not doesn't matter; the box has been ticked.
3) It's in reaction to certain areas of the news media [though to call the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers stretches way beyond credulity]. Certain parts of the UK establishment have fixed, knee jerk reactions against anything post 1950. Before others get too smug, this is more or less the sort of behaviour that would result in other countries where their particular sensitivities were challenged (e.g. wake me up when an atheist has a serious chance of running for US president)
4) Look at it as an opportunity for certain sections of society to vent feelings and then move on. Rather like a letting a child get a tantrum out of their system and then learning that the world hasn't changed to suit them after all. Actually this is true of a lot of issues - they are very rarely as extreme as some folks on Slashdot would like to believe.
Finally, as for the comments that people should take responsibility for what they/their children view - I agree. That said, there are far worse things on line [in my world view] such as severe violence that I would consider much more deserving of concern.
I don't know for sure but I bet this was part of a penny pinching cost analysis up front.
I recall when moving to a new site setting aside some time/budget to ensure that every cable was labelled (so, for example, we could trace ethernet from port on switch to patch panel to underfloor cable to floor jack to desk cabling to desk port) and set up a simple database to keep the details.
Work was killed off by accountants as an expensive luxury, after all cables didn't move often did they?
Fast forward to a minor flood under the false floor taking out some (but not all) systems. Fortunately some of them were in the finance and commercial group.
Suddenly it was "why can't you reconnect me NOW??". Money was paid for an 'after the event' recording of wiring by external people (which cost about 5 times the 'saving' up front).
Still at least it was better than a LONG time ago [Vax and VT220 era] when I saw one person labelling connections by yanking out an RS232 cable from a patch panel, waiting for a call "My terminal's died", asking which room they were in and making up a label and then plugging it back with "I think that may fix it" and getting pathetically grateful responses in return.
Some years ago (when cloud was still to become a commonplace term) some of my colleagues were setting up a marketing initiative on the grounds of identifying opportunities, planning and doing initial analyses.
The internal name for this activity was Cloud Opportunity Workshop.
I was asked to create a rapid prototype** tool for tracking various actions before, during and after the go-to-market engagements. For want of a better name [OK due to my mischievous nature] I called it the Planning Analysis Tool.
It was only when the flyer returned from graphics (and before it went to print) that the marketing team realised that the acronym appeared in big letters as COWPAT -- a veritable piece of bulls__t.
The name was changed before it got to the sales team.
(In the UK at least, the dried up remains of cow faeces is known as a cowpat)
** In other words, do it yesterday for minimum cost and with no hardware/software budget
How that happens with a broken, first past the post gerrymandered constituency boundaries "democracy" is another debate entirely.
Also agree with the point about police attitudes.
Cameras are the latest in the "ooh look, new technology, that'll save some costs!" approach - not only in policing but also endemic in most organisations [public and private].
What I was trying to say was that cameras are not as prevalent - and even less useful - as some people (esp. in US) have been led to believe and (b) that it's not a black and white issue** - not all cameras are 'spying' and even fewer are used by 'the authorities' and (c) the general public here would (as a rule) prefer to have cameras in shops etc. to allow miscreants to be punished when caught than risk alternatives such as being injured/killed by an overenthusiastic armed response.
**ironic really as most CCTV cameras are black and white rather than colour for operation in low light levels.
Firstly, the vast majority of cameras are privately owned, looking at back doors, stock rooms, car parks... Police etc have to request copies of videos (with a warrant if the owner doesn't want to hand over and/or their insurance company doesn't insist as part of the settlement following an incident) This must be good for the Slashdot crowd because private==good and government==bad and the cameras wouldn't be there if it weren't for market forces (i.e. lower insurance premiums)
Secondly, although there are large numbers, many are dummies or of such poor quality that they're less than useful (see the footage shown on Crimewatch** and other TV shows). In one previous project, I've seen the images from safety cameras looking at dangerous rail crossings and you'd be hard pushed to tell if it's a man or woman in the picture, let alone distinguish facial details [to be fair it was mainly an infra red image to allow usage at night, but as a means of detecting who was acting dangerously/stupidly it's no good].
Thirdly- the figures often quoted were from a small and not very scientific study by looking at one or two streets and extrapolating. This has as much validity as saying the population of the US is over 6 times that of the world -- by taking the population density of New York and multiplying by the land area of the US.
There is a debate to be had on mass surveillance - but cheap shots on poor foundations do not help anyone. The world is a lot more nuanced than stereotypes and slogans.
**Monthly TV show that appeals for help / witnesses in unsolved crimes -- local equivalents exist elsewhere
Slashdot Mirror
Who benefits?
the store owners cut costs associated with staff and make bigger profits BUT you now have a lot of people who used to work now becoming unemployed.
Fair enough a checkout operator is not the best job in the world but it does provide employment for some - in addition to their pay they get social and other benefits which they wouldn't get on the dole.
And when the staff are dismissed, who pays their unemployment benefit and other welfare costs? You & me via our taxes.
At the 'bottom of the pile' benefit scroungers are rightly condemned, but those at the top who are effectively getting us to subsidise their increasing profits and income are lauded.
If I had mod points I'd mark this as the most insightful response on the topic -- but then I'd be unable to add to it.
I agree with all that's said but would extend it to include the "filter bubble" effect that Facebook, Google etc seem to amplify: it's likely that each person sees more and more from sources that FB/G's algorithms deem to be "interesting" to them and fewer and fewer views that disagree. This tends to reinforce opinions in a way that 'older' sources could not do.
I know that some newspapers and TV companies had biased agendas (and claimed that they were pure and the problem lay with the others) but even so they were less able to focus content so closely as today's use of tracking and big data allows.
There used to be a joke :
How do you know when a politician's telling lies? their lips move.
Sadly this is no joke all too true in 2016. You can drive round with policy promises on the side of a bus and then the morning after the vote (less than 12 hours after the count) say "it was only an aspiration" and walk away from them with no apparent loss of face (indeed some promotion/reward instead).
And people wonder why cynicism is on the increase.
" It wouldn't be possible for Amazon to check every item from every seller. "
Why not? I don't suppose Amazon offer trading spots rent free - some form of vendor checks would be reasonable and covered by the fees charged.
What value is Amazon adding?
Might just as well allow sale of perpetual motion machines and then say "not us - we're just passing trades through - don't expect us to check whether they're real or not".
If I wanted a low price but with the risk of dealing with a shifty and unreliable supplier I could go to the local flea market or car boot sale.
The item was advertised and sold as a UK spec phone. The manufacturer then claimed that this was not the case. This is a clear case of misrepresentation by Amazon (who presented the item, showed the description on their site, took payment and acted as middleman).
I am just as annoyed by Huawei as Amazon. Neither has covered themselves in glory and they both stand in stark contrast to other suppliers.
"..... as the company tries to get more people comfortable with doing more of their shopping online ...."
Amazon is on my personal "back of the queue list" and I'll not willingly use them in future having been badly let down.
Word of warning to others to stop being burnt.
DO NOT buy through Amazon Marketplace.
If your item develops a fault and the trader refuses to answer you're completely out of luck.
Amazon (despite taking payment and giving an order number) claim that it's nothing to do with them and won't help; the bank won't reverse charges as they say the issue is with the trader but Amazon took payment [and thus there's no clear payment path] and the item supplier won't honour warranty because the item was not bought through a UK approved channel.
If Amazon put as much effort into customer services (and paid what is for them a small amount but a not insignificant amount for me) as they do into tax dodging, I'd be singing their praises. As it is they've lost a long term customer who is dissuading other friends and family members from using them.
Yes - it's an indication
The question was simplistic (and to most nerds one which could only be answered "it depends") as it did not clearly give enough information to base a reasoned judgement.
Consider this: if the vote had been the other way round - would those who were in favour of exit but lost be happy if the government tried to push through "hard remain" (full Schengen agreement, adoption of the euro....) with no parliamentary oversight because "remain means remain - it's the will of the people".
Whatever your views, this was a colossal muddle with a poorly informed electorate voting with no clear idea of what the outcome meant and subjected to lies and propaganda from all sides.
It is not "informed consent" by any stretch of the imagination.
A better approach would be either a fine grained set of questions on key issues (so that Parliament can prioritise negotiating strategies) or a "ranking" type vote on desired outcomes.
Mandatory voting (with a 'Whatever - I can't be bothered" option) would ensure that a comprehensive view was obtained rather than just those who were sufficiently motivated to go out and vote.
I'll try to explain (as an ordinary citizen - not a constituional expert).
The UK has a representative democracy which elects members to the House of Commons and a non-elected second chamber (House of Lords) which is supposed to act as a review/checking body. Many people do not like the non-elected part of this, but it is what it is. Both houses notionally advise the monarch who makes the law; these days it is a nicety and she basically rubber stamps everything but she is supposed to be a non-party-political figurehead.
Parliament = House of Commons + House of Lords. In other words all elected members of parliament [in the commons] and all memebers of the lords IRRESPECTIVE OF PARTY
Government = Ruling party (or coalition) - effectively whoever has the most seats in the commons.
The Government proposes laws but they have to be approved by Parliament as a whole; this puts a first level of check in the system unless one party has an overwhelming majority as there has to be appeal not only to the opposition but also moderate members of the ruling party.
For a few, specific cases the Queen can act without parliamentary sanction -- in reality this means that the Prime Minister (leader of the government/ruling party) can act without putting it to a parliamentary vote. After the recent wars in Iraq, Libya ... there is a groundswell of opinion to limit this prerogative.
Now what's happened with Brexit is that there was a referendum. Under UK constitution a referendum is only advisory and there to inform parliament (though in reality it directs action as going against the will of the people is not a good idea). In this case the margin was very close and there have been people calling foul (esp. as one of the campaign promises, widely advertised was reneged upon the day after the count).
David Cameron, the Prime Minister at the time, said he would stand by the result; he's since cut and run. We now have a PM that nobody has voted for (and who is introducing things not in the election manifesto). This is seen as a democratic deficit by many.
Many MPs are remainers, many people are having second thoughts and a lot of people are complaining that the terms of the exit were never spelt out before the vote.
The exit terms are to be negotiated. The current government do not want parliament to have a vote. This has been challenged in court.
One of the big ironies was that a key feature in the debate was to move from "unelected rule and lack of parliamentary sovereignty" -- and now the same people are fighting against these principles in court.
In short - it's a typical British cock-up. We lead the world in muddle and confusion; meanwhile the economy is going down the pan through all of the uncertainty.
âoeThe best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.â â Winston S. Churchill
Do you know if they're telling the truth?
If approached by a researcher I may thell them *a* password in exchange for chocolate - whether it's a valid one or not would be a matter for my conscience [is my deception greater than theirs? are the consequences of my lie better/worse than their planned action? ...]
If you're running your own Apache / nginx server on your machine *it* will end up trying to respond to the Facebook redirects. Annoying -- though the log files do give visibility of just how many calls are made !
I replaced the 127.0.0.1 with 10.0.0.0 instead - guaranteed not to route across the Internet.
At the risk of waking up a certain regular "contributor" to Slashdot ... add in doubleclick to the list as well :-)
I'm not sure what your perspective of the problem is but for me the UI is fine. It's clean, simple and does what is expected; I can live wthout fancy colour schemes, gradients, customised icons...
I'd like to thank the developers for providing and supporting an excellent product (tried others but keep coming back to VLC on all platforms).
The only question I have (and it is trivial I know) is what is the significance of the traffic cone as the icon?
I can't find the reference but I do recall the earlier story. I also recall someone trying to get the company to accept his son and his associated student loan debts [plus provide said son with food, shelter...] - the company refused and I believe he threatened to take them to court for not honouring their contractual obligations.
Not sure how it ended up - but if a few highly publicised cases showed how companies weaseled out of their side of a bargain perhaps we could end up with more equitable and sane contract terms.
Perhaps that's too much to ask - maybe just settle for clear, simple expressions
Something like:
You give us money - we graciously let you use (not own) our stuff - we don't guarantee that it will work or that we'll support it - you can't bank on it working in the future (esp. if we decide to break it to force you to buy an upgrade) - if you even dare to think about looking at what you've rented we will bankrupt you - and "all your data are belong to us"
I have search history, location history.... all turned off so I get a 'nothing to see here' level of output.
Does this mean that Google is genuinely not collecting my history? or is it more likely that they are and my opting out merely sets a flag used by the presentation layer to send back an empty set?
I'd be surprised if it were not the latter.
There are also some national and local laws which govern the size of parking bays (to prevent exploiative charging by painting impossibly small spaces). If these are not observed then there is a technical defence against some charges.
There was a spot on one of the local BBC news recently about two men who were spending their retirement measuring various car parks as some local authorities had repainted the lines to squeeze in a few more places and were then issuing fines for "not parking properly" ie within the marked bays.
Although it's good to see their spirit in challenging authority, it was hard to have too much sympathy with owners of oversized vehicles who could clearly afford to spend seriously large amounts on them (both purchase and low fuel economy) yet were moaning over loss of access to low cost parking spaces.
I understand the sentiment but do you honestly believe that they don't already have it?
Don't bother -
If it's at all innovative or useful it will end-of-life itself (like Buzz, iGoogle, Wave, Glasses...).
Either that or it will get into the AI equivalent of navel gazing and recursively analyse how to sell adverts to itself whilst spying on all the messages used by other instantiations.
I agree that this is a good scheme - I use a variation of it myself.
In addition, to allow different passwords for different sites, I'd suggest adding a character in the middle so in your case Swbi99iTa5o becomes Swbi99SiTa5o for Slashdot, Swbi99GiTa5o for Google.... bonus marks if you use the second or third letter rather than the initial.
Changing the odd letter for a punctuation mark also helps for those sites that demand non alphanumeric characters - eg Swbi99iTa5o becomes Swbi99iT@5o
Just use the daily finance / economic forecasts and predictions of the impacts on personal budgets, jobs, immigration.... that are being spouted by both sides of the current BREXIT** debate.
This can be generalised to any politician's promises but the current round are particularly egregious.
** Referendum for UK to leave/remain in the EU
As is often the case, Terry Pratchett had some wise/comic insights which are relevant.
"How Vetinari himself ascended to the Patricianship is a story yet untold. It is known that his advice was heeded by Snapcase's administration on at least one occasion: when a 20p bounty on rat tails was introduced to combat a serious rodent infestation, but threatened to drain the treasury dry without curtailing the rats' numbers. Vetinari's suggestion to "tax the rat farms" provided an early demonstration of his shrewd political insight. "
It's not 1 : 1 comparable but I find that Zim is a pretty good tool on Linux for similar notes.
The fact that it stores the info in flat text files also makes it easier to manage data directly if you should so choose.
see http://zim-wiki.org/
I also pay for multiple commercial channels that I never watch.
They do not work for nothing so they get paid for by advertisers.
Advertisers are also not benificent charities and they get paid for by their customers (eg supermarkets, car companies...)
The companies get their money from the end customer - ie individuals like me.
So ... I end up paying more in my daily purchases to fund multiple levels of payments (each of which is abstracting their own profits).
Personally I think the BBC is good value for money and the fact that it doesn't need to worry about dancing to the tune of corporate bosses is worth the licence fee alone. As it is also attacked from both sides of the political spectrum it is also doing a fair job of balance (unlike the worst of the right wing press that seeks to destroy the most competent competitor)
This is likely to flare up and disappear just as quickly
To put things in context:
1) The UK Government has a TERRIBLE track record in terms of IT projects; the chances of this initiative going beyond blowing a few million on starting up another failed project are slim
2) This is part of a manifesto promise by the Tories. They have to be seen to discuss it. They can then decide it's too difficult and blame "Johnny Foreigner" for the problems.
It's part of the "something must be done!" - we've done 'something' - job done! syndrome. Whether the 'something' done has any effect or not doesn't matter; the box has been ticked.
3) It's in reaction to certain areas of the news media [though to call the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers stretches way beyond credulity]. Certain parts of the UK establishment have fixed, knee jerk reactions against anything post 1950.
Before others get too smug, this is more or less the sort of behaviour that would result in other countries where their particular sensitivities were challenged (e.g. wake me up when an atheist has a serious chance of running for US president)
4) Look at it as an opportunity for certain sections of society to vent feelings and then move on. Rather like a letting a child get a tantrum out of their system and then learning that the world hasn't changed to suit them after all. Actually this is true of a lot of issues - they are very rarely as extreme as some folks on Slashdot would like to believe.
Finally, as for the comments that people should take responsibility for what they/their children view - I agree. That said, there are far worse things on line [in my world view] such as severe violence that I would consider much more deserving of concern.
I don't know for sure but I bet this was part of a penny pinching cost analysis up front.
I recall when moving to a new site setting aside some time/budget to ensure that every cable was labelled (so, for example, we could trace ethernet from port on switch to patch panel to underfloor cable to floor jack to desk cabling to desk port) and set up a simple database to keep the details.
Work was killed off by accountants as an expensive luxury, after all cables didn't move often did they?
Fast forward to a minor flood under the false floor taking out some (but not all) systems. Fortunately some of them were in the finance and commercial group.
Suddenly it was "why can't you reconnect me NOW??". Money was paid for an 'after the event' recording of wiring by external people (which cost about 5 times the 'saving' up front).
Still at least it was better than a LONG time ago [Vax and VT220 era] when I saw one person labelling connections by yanking out an RS232 cable from a patch panel, waiting for a call "My terminal's died", asking which room they were in and making up a label and then plugging it back with "I think that may fix it" and getting pathetically grateful responses in return.
Slightly off-topic but...
Some years ago (when cloud was still to become a commonplace term) some of my colleagues were setting up a marketing initiative on the grounds of identifying opportunities, planning and doing initial analyses.
The internal name for this activity was Cloud Opportunity Workshop.
I was asked to create a rapid prototype** tool for tracking various actions before, during and after the go-to-market engagements. For want of a better name [OK due to my mischievous nature] I called it the Planning Analysis Tool.
It was only when the flyer returned from graphics (and before it went to print) that the marketing team realised that the acronym appeared in big letters as COWPAT -- a veritable piece of bulls__t.
The name was changed before it got to the sales team.
(In the UK at least, the dried up remains of cow faeces is known as a cowpat)
** In other words, do it yesterday for minimum cost and with no hardware/software budget
Absolutely agree that we have idiots in charge.
How that happens with a broken, first past the post gerrymandered constituency boundaries "democracy" is another debate entirely.
Also agree with the point about police attitudes.
Cameras are the latest in the "ooh look, new technology, that'll save some costs!" approach - not only in policing but also endemic in most organisations [public and private].
What I was trying to say was that cameras are not as prevalent - and even less useful - as some people (esp. in US) have been led to believe and (b) that it's not a black and white issue** - not all cameras are 'spying' and even fewer are used by 'the authorities' and (c) the general public here would (as a rule) prefer to have cameras in shops etc. to allow miscreants to be punished when caught than risk alternatives such as being injured/killed by an overenthusiastic armed response.
**ironic really as most CCTV cameras are black and white rather than colour for operation in low light levels.
When will this meme ever die?
Firstly, the vast majority of cameras are privately owned, looking at back doors, stock rooms, car parks... Police etc have to request copies of videos (with a warrant if the owner doesn't want to hand over and/or their insurance company doesn't insist as part of the settlement following an incident)
This must be good for the Slashdot crowd because private==good and government==bad and the cameras wouldn't be there if it weren't for market forces (i.e. lower insurance premiums)
Secondly, although there are large numbers, many are dummies or of such poor quality that they're less than useful (see the footage shown on Crimewatch** and other TV shows). In one previous project, I've seen the images from safety cameras looking at dangerous rail crossings and you'd be hard pushed to tell if it's a man or woman in the picture, let alone distinguish facial details [to be fair it was mainly an infra red image to allow usage at night, but as a means of detecting who was acting dangerously/stupidly it's no good].
Thirdly- the figures often quoted were from a small and not very scientific study by looking at one or two streets and extrapolating.
This has as much validity as saying the population of the US is over 6 times that of the world -- by taking the population density of New York and multiplying by the land area of the US.
There is a debate to be had on mass surveillance - but cheap shots on poor foundations do not help anyone. The world is a lot more nuanced than stereotypes and slogans.
**Monthly TV show that appeals for help / witnesses in unsolved crimes -- local equivalents exist elsewhere