In the EU we have a right to our own data. Essentially, you cannot spam me legally, unless I ask you to. Many of my American friends have told me it can't work - but it does very well.
Once people trust that the information they hand out will only be used by that group then many people become quite happy to allow spam - on the subjects that interest them. This also includes paper and phone marketing (basically any Direct Marketing is covered under the Data Protection Act 1998).
I get direct marketing from a range of websites, and no spam to my work address at all. That's because I've never given it to a US-based company (who could then hand it out to the world). I use a hotmail account for Americans because I know it's going to be spammed.
I realise the US constitution didn't cover privacy as it was an entirely alien concept at the time - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have the right!
If the US could get a privacy law, the volume of spam would crash. ALL of the spam I get is offering me US-based products - NOT ONE EMAIL is from a european company (even if they've got EU addresses they've ripped off).
Ok. Just because the spam comes from outside the US doesn't mean it's not from a company that operates in the USA. If you are getting mortgage offers with prices in dollars, then a US-based law is going to apply to them.
...only being sent to the US. With privacy laws in the US, the companies in Finland wouldn't be allowed to use your information without your permission - hence you have opt-in for all information (phone/email/fax/sms) messaging. Instead, the world knows anything goes in the USA so we can spam you as much as you like and not break the law. Get privacy laws (regain your freedom) and then watch your inbox empty.
This wouldn't happen. Anyone who lives in the EU: check your emails - are any sent from EU nations? NO.
If the US would stop this stupid insistence on your personal details being everyone else's property but your own - then we wouldn't have to put up with so much sh*te being sent to our inbox about mortgages on another continent.
I hope the EU goes through with the (jokey) threat to find and list the names of the people breaking the law - so if they ever take a holiday to Paris, we can be waiting.
This shows a truly worrying attitude. So many of the new staff where I work don't see problems - because they can't get a feel for solutions in advance. They don't have the basic skills to vaguely guess a result - so they trust whatever comes out of the PC - even when it's total garbage.
Yes, doing it in spreadsheets is far more efficient. But if you cannot see where the fault is with the result, you will hand over stupid work as though it's correct.
Basic maths and literacy are utterly essential or you cannot function in any higher level job (e.g. technical support - not management obviously!). You will rely on the spreadsheet and not understand why you don't get promoted. It will be because you keep handing over documents that are full of errors.
The last thing a boss wants is to check every part of their subordinates work...and I have to. It's a damning indictment of our education system but the junior staff don't even understand what I'm going on about - and I'm only 27.
...Works a treat on my 4 mile ride into work each morning. I've bought 4 compact flash cards and put 3-4 albums on each so I always have a huge choice of music... Next stop is the 512MB CF card so I can upload a huge amount of music and leave it running on Random play!
Not a problem. As long as the phone is "unlocked" (i.e. not allocated to another service) then you can simply swap the SIM card across. I do this every weekend I go climbing - swapping my T68i for a Siemens M35i (ruggedised) so I don't screw up the pretty phone when I sit on it. I've never had a problem swapping the SIM into Nokia Data Cards (GSM PCMCIA cardphones) either.
That's not legal in the UK as cell stations are licenced under the Wireless Telegraphy Act. They would have to build their network under licence - and then would be able to buy normal IMEI equipped phones anyway. There is no legitimate use of a reprogrammed phone in public use... The ONLY time they are legitimately reprogrammed is by the phone developers - who have a clear exemption under the act (you just have to register to become exempt - but can then still be prosecuted if you break the exemption by committing fraud).
This is not about phone theft. This is about taking the IMEI number from you (by scanning for it with the right equipment) and then fraudulently using your phone service without your permission. There is normally no way to prove the fraud (In my case the first I knew was when my pre-pay went dead in the middle of a call and the operator said I had been calling Nigeria all day. If you have a contract phone you can be hit with bills for thousands of £££). It is easy to prove a phone has an incorrect IMEI (reprogrammed) - so police can prosecute without needing to catch the criminal committing the fraud red-handed. They don't need sophisticated equipment to track and id the callers - which they would with trying to prove an IMEI fraud was in progress.
I live in London and I think this is possibly going to be a good thing. I travel about four and a half miles to work each day. In the car, it used to take me three quarters of an hour if I left at 7:30am. For a person used to the traffic on the anywhere else it is just unbelieveable. I am serious when I say that I live in the bit of North London that Londoners percieve to have "free flowing traffic"! I am not joking on this. 11 miles an hour is the best you can get in London. In the zone that the mayor is proposing to cordon off the peak average speed is three miles per hour. Just read that again if you don't live in the UK. London is choking to death on cars.
I now ride my bicycle and in the 6 months I've been doing it I get to work much faster (28 minutes including riding up Muswell Hill!) but I have been smashed off twice by w**kers too frustrated to notice the bicycle in front of them. Anything that reduces the numbers of cars so buses can function and the remainder can flow is a good thing.
It's a vicious circle, and something has to be done to break the cycle (pun intended!). I'm interested in the subject and I've not heard of any alternatives that make sense in terms of London's particular mess.
The only thing I am disappointed about is the size of the zone isn't as large as it could be. Still, for a first-time-anywhere experiment it's damn ambitious.
Essentially we do. The problem is simply the volume of people using the system. Since the railway was privatised the volume of users has more than doubled. With no increase in rolling stock. Imagine being packed in so tightly that women in the centre of the carriage have been crushed unconscious. I have been in a carriage where that happened (Hertford East to Liverpool St for any Londoners reading this). As an added insult, the increase in the amount of "traffic management" (i.e. pedestrian shite so that the children of the ignorant stop throwing themselves into the traffic) has slowed the average speed of the traffic now to 11mph. This has contributed to a drastic drop in the numbers of bus users. A vicious circle that makes everything worse for people living here. This kind of mismanagement (mainly by local government) has meant a lot of people can point to other cities and say "they have a centralised traffic policy - and it works". That's what we mean when we want a proper infrastructure - we have the roads/rails/tubes but run them in an utterly amateur way.
Concorde is very noisy at takeoff and landing. That stops it being used at nearly all airports. Basically it was only a political deal that allowed any flights at all between the UK, France and the USA.
I am really surprised that no-one has mentioned this so I'll do it. The Californian deregulation was based almost directly on the UK model. A lot of politicians and civil servants were sent here to study the way we broke down the old monopolies. Problem was, almost immediately after deregulation in the UK, the major flaws were noticed and so a second round of legislation was pushed through (with pretty much everyone's approval as the energy companies really didn't want things to get out of hand - Britain still has a habit of nationalising and destroying anything that gets in the electorate's way).
What surprised me and The Economist (I can't find the article on economist.com) was that California didn't follow suit - but tried to stick with the original scheme. Adding all kinds of silly schemes won't fix the structural problems California has - only legislative changes can restore a "level playing field" for producers, distributors and consumers.
If not? Well, enjoy those brownouts (and being the laughing stock of the entire planet...). You'll find it's just playing with the deckchairs while the Titanic carries on slurping in the water...
I'm surprised to see the attitude of some of the US-based comments. Most of the (rich) world has changed it's habits. When 80+ percent (including children) of the population have a mobile phone, you literally feel cut off without one. I wouldn't have a social life without mine as no-one would be able to find me to arrange times and places.
So why doesn't the US mirror the rest of us? Here's my thoughts.
1. Caller Pays. Until recently the major US telcos still insisted on charging for making and receiving mobile calls. BAD move... If you have to pay to get a call, it immediately puts you on the back foot - you don't want to get it when a page is free, and hardly makes you want to get a mobile - they feel expensive! (Even if charges are much higher everywhere else in the world).
2. Telco intransigence. It's only recently that Short Message Service was introduced across US operators... Wha? This was introduced with GSM in the 80's. As I understand it, only because the European operators make such a killing from SMS have the US telcos taken a solid look.
The US operators have taken a "we're different (i.e. American) so we'll ignore the world" attitude and ignored the developments made in the rest of the world. How do you think Nokia et al. have been able to dominate the industry? It's not exactly normal that the world ends up looking to a Finnish firm for technology leadership. They got ahead by doing just the sort of things that we hope the PC industry will do:
Agree standards and stick to them. Interoperate and co-operate.
I think the US is just on the edge of the society-wide change that being constantly connected (by voice) brings. I can only barely remember what it used to be like to have to find a phone to ring round a variety of voicemail boxes trying to get in contact with someone.
This was pushed hard by Extreme and NTK.net for the last few weeks. I'm glad I went, the chatbot++ discussion was enjoyable (in the "take it Outside" fringe event in the pub next door).
Freeman Dyson rules!
(especially when he shit on just about everything the crowd enthused about!)
One of the most fascinating things about Mindstorms is the thought about kids playing with these as they grew up. Twenty years ago we were playing with the first home computers, something everyone dismissed as an expensive, pointless hobby. Sound familiar?
Will this be the point that future historians point to to say "here was when the mainstream robotics revolution started"?
Remember, their "first" rockets were second generation boosters. They don't have to develop every engine from first principles - just watching footage of the engines on a shuttle tells you a lot (e.g. safe ignition systems - how many men died or were injured in the 40's and 50's learning that?).
They do have the old soviet habit of not telling people about a launch unless it's successful - that way, if it turns into a cremation, they don't admit anything until it stops being news (usually a few months for the "kremlinologists" of the sino-aerospace industries).
Cost-wise it's only a little more expensive than their current programme for ICBMS. As always there are huge spinoffs from one to the other. Also, they simply can get hold of open-source documents from NASA... Once it's been done - they just have to copy.
Even space suits are way cheaper than the original Apollo versions (and available on the open market from Russia too!).
The lunar lander had already landed - where do you think the regolith dust had already been blown to?
I can't believe how long this utterly stupid conspiracy theory has survived. Do you honestly think that the USSR didn't monitor the telemetry (and didn't check to see where it was coming from)?
How much of a propaganda coup would they have had if they could have shouted "burbank soundstage!"
Have you tried British Standard BS7799? I think it has been turned into an ISO standard (or is underway). It defines how to turn your organisation into a secure/reliable environment - and more importantly how to prove that it is. It takes into account the fact that systems change, and that they are not reliable - and helps you work around/knock down the risks to a level you are comfortable with. It is used mainly for companies - but I don't see why it couldn't be used for any organisation (read: ship-board network/control system). In fact, get in touch with them on http://www.bsi-global.com and see if they would be interested in defining a sea-borne computing standard (they do that kind of thing with private firms as long as the standard becomes public domain...).
Alternatively, call a manufacturing network supplier. Think about the kind of reliability that Ford or GM requires on the assembly line - they don't allow any crashes! (har har har) There are (as usual) several competing standards which could be converted to nautical use.
I find this deeply worrying. How can you ignore the sheer volume of evidence that points to evolution with a couple of glib references to poorly understood rules-of-thumb? Complete order? Where?
Us Brits have been seeing attacks for a while because of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Shows and public events don't have to ban bags or act in the unfocussed way we have seen in the last month or so. Why doesn't the US learn from the rest of the world how to live with terrorism the way we have?
For example: everywhere in public in the UK if you see an unattended bag you immediately tell a guard/porter/security guard/policeman/someone-with-a-sash-on-that-looks- vaguely-official. Then you move a long way away immediately. No-one apart from American backpackers leaves a bag unattended in the UK and the Americans only do it once when they are arrested under anti-terrorism laws.
Like so many things, little changes to behaviour make all of the difference - there are no bins in railway stations and malls, and those in the high street are bomb-proofed up to about 2kg of semtex (way above the amount needed to bring a Pan-Am Jumbo down on Lockerbie). If you have litter, you take it home or just drop it - as there is nowhere to put it.
It's things like that rather than USA PATRIOT which keep you safe(er).
Come on you guys! Learn from those who have been living with this for three decades!
Slashdot Mirror
In the EU we have a right to our own data. Essentially, you cannot spam me legally, unless I ask you to. Many of my American friends have told me it can't work - but it does very well. Once people trust that the information they hand out will only be used by that group then many people become quite happy to allow spam - on the subjects that interest them. This also includes paper and phone marketing (basically any Direct Marketing is covered under the Data Protection Act 1998). I get direct marketing from a range of websites, and no spam to my work address at all. That's because I've never given it to a US-based company (who could then hand it out to the world). I use a hotmail account for Americans because I know it's going to be spammed. I realise the US constitution didn't cover privacy as it was an entirely alien concept at the time - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have the right! If the US could get a privacy law, the volume of spam would crash. ALL of the spam I get is offering me US-based products - NOT ONE EMAIL is from a european company (even if they've got EU addresses they've ripped off).
Ok. Just because the spam comes from outside the US doesn't mean it's not from a company that operates in the USA. If you are getting mortgage offers with prices in dollars, then a US-based law is going to apply to them.
...only being sent to the US. With privacy laws in the US, the companies in Finland wouldn't be allowed to use your information without your permission - hence you have opt-in for all information (phone/email/fax/sms) messaging. Instead, the world knows anything goes in the USA so we can spam you as much as you like and not break the law. Get privacy laws (regain your freedom) and then watch your inbox empty.
Sorry, I meant companies in EU nations - not badly configured mail relays in EU nations... EU companies can't send spam - you have to ask for it.
This wouldn't happen. Anyone who lives in the EU: check your emails - are any sent from EU nations? NO. If the US would stop this stupid insistence on your personal details being everyone else's property but your own - then we wouldn't have to put up with so much sh*te being sent to our inbox about mortgages on another continent. I hope the EU goes through with the (jokey) threat to find and list the names of the people breaking the law - so if they ever take a holiday to Paris, we can be waiting.
This shows a truly worrying attitude. So many of the new staff where I work don't see problems - because they can't get a feel for solutions in advance. They don't have the basic skills to vaguely guess a result - so they trust whatever comes out of the PC - even when it's total garbage. Yes, doing it in spreadsheets is far more efficient. But if you cannot see where the fault is with the result, you will hand over stupid work as though it's correct. Basic maths and literacy are utterly essential or you cannot function in any higher level job (e.g. technical support - not management obviously!). You will rely on the spreadsheet and not understand why you don't get promoted. It will be because you keep handing over documents that are full of errors. The last thing a boss wants is to check every part of their subordinates work...and I have to. It's a damning indictment of our education system but the junior staff don't even understand what I'm going on about - and I'm only 27.
...Works a treat on my 4 mile ride into work each morning. I've bought 4 compact flash cards and put 3-4 albums on each so I always have a huge choice of music... Next stop is the 512MB CF card so I can upload a huge amount of music and leave it running on Random play!
All the patent clerks are sitting at home trying to think about new fundamental theories of the universe...
Not a problem. As long as the phone is "unlocked" (i.e. not allocated to another service) then you can simply swap the SIM card across. I do this every weekend I go climbing - swapping my T68i for a Siemens M35i (ruggedised) so I don't screw up the pretty phone when I sit on it.
I've never had a problem swapping the SIM into Nokia Data Cards (GSM PCMCIA cardphones) either.
That's not legal in the UK as cell stations are licenced under the Wireless Telegraphy Act. They would have to build their network under licence - and then would be able to buy normal IMEI equipped phones anyway. There is no legitimate use of a reprogrammed phone in public use...
The ONLY time they are legitimately reprogrammed is by the phone developers - who have a clear exemption under the act (you just have to register to become exempt - but can then still be prosecuted if you break the exemption by committing fraud).
This is not about phone theft. This is about taking the IMEI number from you (by scanning for it with the right equipment) and then fraudulently using your phone service without your permission. There is normally no way to prove the fraud (In my case the first I knew was when my pre-pay went dead in the middle of a call and the operator said I had been calling Nigeria all day. If you have a contract phone you can be hit with bills for thousands of £££).
It is easy to prove a phone has an incorrect IMEI (reprogrammed) - so police can prosecute without needing to catch the criminal committing the fraud red-handed. They don't need sophisticated equipment to track and id the callers - which they would with trying to prove an IMEI fraud was in progress.
Duuuuuhhhhh.
Of course you would, because Boeing makes a few hundred and a car manufacturer makes several MILLION. Think before you type?
I live in London and I think this is possibly going to be a good thing. I travel about four and a half miles to work each day. In the car, it used to take me three quarters of an hour if I left at 7:30am. For a person used to the traffic on the anywhere else it is just unbelieveable. I am serious when I say that I live in the bit of North London that Londoners percieve to have "free flowing traffic"! I am not joking on this. 11 miles an hour is the best you can get in London. In the zone that the mayor is proposing to cordon off the peak average speed is three miles per hour. Just read that again if you don't live in the UK. London is choking to death on cars.
I now ride my bicycle and in the 6 months I've been doing it I get to work much faster (28 minutes including riding up Muswell Hill!) but I have been smashed off twice by w**kers too frustrated to notice the bicycle in front of them. Anything that reduces the numbers of cars so buses can function and the remainder can flow is a good thing.
It's a vicious circle, and something has to be done to break the cycle (pun intended!). I'm interested in the subject and I've not heard of any alternatives that make sense in terms of London's particular mess.
The only thing I am disappointed about is the size of the zone isn't as large as it could be. Still, for a first-time-anywhere experiment it's damn ambitious.
Essentially we do. The problem is simply the volume of people using the system. Since the railway was privatised the volume of users has more than doubled. With no increase in rolling stock. Imagine being packed in so tightly that women in the centre of the carriage have been crushed unconscious. I have been in a carriage where that happened (Hertford East to Liverpool St for any Londoners reading this).
As an added insult, the increase in the amount of "traffic management" (i.e. pedestrian shite so that the children of the ignorant stop throwing themselves into the traffic) has slowed the average speed of the traffic now to 11mph. This has contributed to a drastic drop in the numbers of bus users. A vicious circle that makes everything worse for people living here.
This kind of mismanagement (mainly by local government) has meant a lot of people can point to other cities and say "they have a centralised traffic policy - and it works". That's what we mean when we want a proper infrastructure - we have the roads/rails/tubes but run them in an utterly amateur way.
Concorde is very noisy at takeoff and landing. That stops it being used at nearly all airports. Basically it was only a political deal that allowed any flights at all between the UK, France and the USA.
I am really surprised that no-one has mentioned this so I'll do it. The Californian deregulation was based almost directly on the UK model. A lot of politicians and civil servants were sent here to study the way we broke down the old monopolies. Problem was, almost immediately after deregulation in the UK, the major flaws were noticed and so a second round of legislation was pushed through (with pretty much everyone's approval as the energy companies really didn't want things to get out of hand - Britain still has a habit of nationalising and destroying anything that gets in the electorate's way).
What surprised me and The Economist (I can't find the article on economist.com) was that California didn't follow suit - but tried to stick with the original scheme. Adding all kinds of silly schemes won't fix the structural problems California has - only legislative changes can restore a "level playing field" for producers, distributors and consumers.
If not? Well, enjoy those brownouts (and being the laughing stock of the entire planet...). You'll find it's just playing with the deckchairs while the Titanic carries on slurping in the water...
I'm surprised to see the attitude of some of the US-based comments. Most of the (rich) world has changed it's habits. When 80+ percent (including children) of the population have a mobile phone, you literally feel cut off without one. I wouldn't have a social life without mine as no-one would be able to find me to arrange times and places.
So why doesn't the US mirror the rest of us? Here's my thoughts.
1. Caller Pays. Until recently the major US telcos still insisted on charging for making and receiving mobile calls. BAD move... If you have to pay to get a call, it immediately puts you on the back foot - you don't want to get it when a page is free, and hardly makes you want to get a mobile - they feel expensive! (Even if charges are much higher everywhere else in the world).
2. Telco intransigence. It's only recently that Short Message Service was introduced across US operators... Wha? This was introduced with GSM in the 80's. As I understand it, only because the European operators make such a killing from SMS have the US telcos taken a solid look.
The US operators have taken a "we're different (i.e. American) so we'll ignore the world" attitude and ignored the developments made in the rest of the world. How do you think Nokia et al. have been able to dominate the industry? It's not exactly normal that the world ends up looking to a Finnish firm for technology leadership. They got ahead by doing just the sort of things that we hope the PC industry will do:
Agree standards and stick to them.
Interoperate and co-operate.
I think the US is just on the edge of the society-wide change that being constantly connected (by voice) brings. I can only barely remember what it used to be like to have to find a phone to ring round a variety of voicemail boxes trying to get in contact with someone.
This was pushed hard by Extreme and NTK.net for the last few weeks. I'm glad I went, the chatbot++ discussion was enjoyable (in the "take it Outside" fringe event in the pub next door).
Freeman Dyson rules!
(especially when he shit on just about everything the crowd enthused about!)
I have the hots for Sarah... I think that's why they threw me out... D'oh.
One of the most fascinating things about Mindstorms is the thought about kids playing with these as they grew up. Twenty years ago we were playing with the first home computers, something everyone dismissed as an expensive, pointless hobby. Sound familiar?
Will this be the point that future historians point to to say "here was when the mainstream robotics revolution started"?
Remember, their "first" rockets were second generation boosters. They don't have to develop every engine from first principles - just watching footage of the engines on a shuttle tells you a lot (e.g. safe ignition systems - how many men died or were injured in the 40's and 50's learning that?).
They do have the old soviet habit of not telling people about a launch unless it's successful - that way, if it turns into a cremation, they don't admit anything until it stops being news (usually a few months for the "kremlinologists" of the sino-aerospace industries).
Cost-wise it's only a little more expensive than their current programme for ICBMS. As always there are huge spinoffs from one to the other. Also, they simply can get hold of open-source documents from NASA... Once it's been done - they just have to copy.
Even space suits are way cheaper than the original Apollo versions (and available on the open market from Russia too!).
Duuuuhhhhh.
The lunar lander had already landed - where do you think the regolith dust had already been blown to?
I can't believe how long this utterly stupid conspiracy theory has survived. Do you honestly think that the USSR didn't monitor the telemetry (and didn't check to see where it was coming from)?
How much of a propaganda coup would they have had if they could have shouted "burbank soundstage!"
Have you tried British Standard BS7799? I think it has been turned into an ISO standard (or is underway). It defines how to turn your organisation into a secure/reliable environment - and more importantly how to prove that it is. It takes into account the fact that systems change, and that they are not reliable - and helps you work around/knock down the risks to a level you are comfortable with. It is used mainly for companies - but I don't see why it couldn't be used for any organisation (read: ship-board network/control system). In fact, get in touch with them on http://www.bsi-global.com and see if they would be interested in defining a sea-borne computing standard (they do that kind of thing with private firms as long as the standard becomes public domain...).
Alternatively, call a manufacturing network supplier. Think about the kind of reliability that Ford or GM requires on the assembly line - they don't allow any crashes! (har har har) There are (as usual) several competing standards which could be converted to nautical use.
I find this deeply worrying. How can you ignore the sheer volume of evidence that points to evolution with a couple of glib references to poorly understood rules-of-thumb? Complete order? Where?
Us Brits have been seeing attacks for a while because of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Shows and public events don't have to ban bags or act in the unfocussed way we have seen in the last month or so. Why doesn't the US learn from the rest of the world how to live with terrorism the way we have?
For example: everywhere in public in the UK if you see an unattended bag you immediately tell a guard/porter/security guard/policeman/someone-with-a-sash-on-that-looks- vaguely-official. Then you move a long way away immediately. No-one apart from American backpackers leaves a bag unattended in the UK and the Americans only do it once when they are arrested under anti-terrorism laws.
Like so many things, little changes to behaviour make all of the difference - there are no bins in railway stations and malls, and those in the high street are bomb-proofed up to about 2kg of semtex (way above the amount needed to bring a Pan-Am Jumbo down on Lockerbie). If you have litter, you take it home or just drop it - as there is nowhere to put it.
It's things like that rather than USA PATRIOT which keep you safe(er).
Come on you guys! Learn from those who have been living with this for three decades!