As for trade, there are companies that like the fact that multiple currencies are in use - because they are able to make money by moving money around the different currencies.
I guess you're not from a business background. No company likes the fact that there are multiple currencies - it means uncertainty. Many companies have multiple currency accounts to try to counteract currency movements to reduce the uncertainty.
Let me explain it this way. You as a Brit sell a product to, say, the USA. It costs you £5 to make, you sell it for $15. The dollar weakens (in case you haven't noticed, it just has quite considerably). Either you have to charge more for your product (making it less competitive with products produced within the USA, because of course the currency change doesn't affect them), or you make less profit. Here's the crunch - you have no control over currency fluctuations. One day you could be making a profit, the next day a loss, due to something completely out of your control. Now are you seriously going to argue that this is something that businesses like?
Umm, I thought it was kinda obvious that the papers have thier own agendas
There's a huge difference between the press voicing their opinions about things and deliberately lying to or misleading their readership, which is what happens in the UK these days unfortunately.
This is a rare 'carrot' for UK residents, more used the threat of monetory union and other unpleasent symptoms of a united Europe.
Unpleasent? You obviously don't travel or trade between European countries often.
Here's a hint. 75% of the press in the UK is owned by three men. Those three men are anti-europe, and are using their control over the UK press to sway public opinion away from Europe. If you read The Sun, The Telegraph, The Times or The Daily Mirror (amongst others) then be aware that they have an agenda to feed you with negative propaganda about Europe. As a UK citizen who now spends most of his time "in Europe" I must say that my previous (and in retrospect naive) view of England as having an quality, open and honest press has changed considerably over the last five years. It is dishonest and manipulative. Don't fall for it.
1) Buy a big block of telephone numbers and direct them all to a single telephone 2) Put them all on the "do not call" list 3) But phone by swimming pool. Sit in pool with cool drink. 4) Wait... 5) Profit!
I've been using Sendmail for a few months on various web sites, and can't say I'm very impressed with it.
A frequent request I get from users is for them to be able to add new pop accounts themselves and set-up their own forwards and auto-responders, but it seems to be increadably difficult to do this via, for instance, PHP. For a package that is so popular I find it amazing that it is so complex and difficult to automate/program.
To summarise, I think sendmail is crap and hope that the sooner it dies the better!
You want them to be more woken up? Not me. The USA is acting likes it's on a caffine and sugar high at the moment.
USA Hey, maybe we should bomb Syria? Or Iran? You know, for world peace?
Rest of world Erm. Let's just think about it for a bit, shall we?
USA What?! [Crazy stare] Are you threatening me? Huh, huh? I thought you were my friend? Well you're no friend of mine. You want a fight? Huh? Huh? I can take you all on...
I, for one, would prefer the USA to take a bit of a nap, rather than being woken up!
It's really not difficult to set up your own company in the UK. Also, you don't have to live in the UK to be director of a company based in the UK.
Having your own company gives you much more flexibility than just working for a single employer. It also gives you more flexibility with regards to how you pay your taxes.
Where you live can be transparent to your clients - you can have a UK-based address with someone to answer and redirect your phone calls quite cheaply. Your clients don't necessarily need to know you're coding whilst sitting by the pool with a cool drink in the south of France or wherever. Go for it.
Just because a few people are so lucky to be on somone's payroll to develop OSS does not mean that writing OSS pays. For the most part it is working pro bono.
Make a list of all major OSS projects. See how many are done mainly by volunteers. Here's a few to get you started:
Linux Kernel Kde Gnome Mozilla OpenOffice Apache M ySQL Postgres
It would be great for a country the population of India to listen and follow their leaders urging, but I seriously doubt in a country where many are trying to break free of poverty that they will work for next to nothing on OSS
You assume that
working on OSS == working for nothing.
Take a look at the kernel development list. You will find that nearly everyone working on the kernel is employed by a big IT company.
Similarly with most other successful OSS projects. IBM has lots of people working on open source. Ditto RedHat, Suse, HP, Sun, AOL and others. I think it is time we dropped this idea that OSS programmers all do it for free - it isn't the case.
Common wisdom [..] says that the right approach to all problems is to use a standard. This common wisdom has no basis in fact or history, and is curtailing innovation and rewarding bad behavior in our industry.
So true. The world would be a much better place without standards...
Man: Hello shopkeeper, I'd like to buy some cheese please.
Shopkeeper: Fine sir. How much do you want?
Man: 500 grams.
Shopkeeper: Sorry sir. We don't use grams here. We use flogborts.
Man: What's a flogbort?
Shopkeeper: It's our own system. Much better than grams. I'll explain..
Man: Don't bother. How many grams to a flogbort?
Shopkeeper: A6NG8
Man: What?
Shopkeeper: Sorry sir, we don't use decimal either. We have our own system. I have a diagram somewhere...
Man: Listen, just give me one dollars worth.
Shopkeeper: A dollars worth? I'm afraid we don't accept dollars...
Note this bloke is from france which is in europe, but a backwater in most things!;)
That's right! We in the UK have an increadible insight into France and the rest of Europe, due to the unbiased, honest reporting of our wonderful press. Those Europeans are trying to take away 1,000 years of British sovereignty, because, erm, they're jealous of us. Or something. No, I've got it! They're backwards and so need to reign the UK in with silly straight banana rules to be able to compete with us. After all, the UK has the largest economy in Europe, because we don't have silly European laws. Probably.
Has anyone proven that a well-managed web site actually generates business?
Do you really need to ask that these days? Think about it.
Imagine, you want to buy, say, a fancy hat. How imagine two companies, one with a big web site with pictures and descriptions of all their fancy hats, and one with a single crappy web page that says "We sell fancy hats" and a phone number. Who would get your business?
I used have to expound the virtues of web sites to pointy-haired bossed five years ago, but now they mostly get it. I am suprised to find someone today on Slashdot - of all places - that apparently doesn't, and gets modded as insightful for it!
I don't know - when I read this, I got the same feeling of "bleh" I get when I think about genetic engineered corn and machine-pressed hamburger patties.
Anyway, I don't understand how Aznar's party suing the students could be seen as outrageous. In Spain, publicly calling someone a murderer is libel, and not something you can do lightly. Is this different in the UK? Could a British newspaper call Tony Blair a murderer without fear of being sued?
There are libel laws in the UK, but it is the context of this case that make it outrageous. This was a political party suing citizens for making a political statement. In the UK, that kind of action would be unthinkable. Political speech is well protected by law, and it is unlikely any court in the UK would side with a politician in this type of case. As an example, a famous British journalist interviewing Henry Kissenger a while ago told him that he thought he was a war criminal. I guess that journalist would now be in jail if he was in Spain!
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. I've read Aznar's party has sued the authors of a web site (who are college students, not a political lecturer) for calling them murderers. Maybe you're talking about something else, or maybe you're misinformed again.
Hopefully not misinformed! They actually tried to sue the college lecturer who registered the domain name. In his defence, he said that it was the students that did it, not him. Anyway, I find it amazing that a political party sues citizens in this manner in Spain. In the UK such an action would be viewed as outrageous.
Still, I'd say the parent is being deliberately misleading when it suggests that Aznar is trying to hinder political separatism by promoving the illegalization of AuB.
No, I'm not being deliberately misleading. I think there is a real cause for concern when a very significant number of politicians are "black listed" from politics without due process.
In fact, "practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned" is an outright lie.
Not a lie, but having read a bit more about it I accept that the statement is factually incorrect. But I wasn't trying to mislead.
There are also good reasons to illegalize AuB.
I think illegalizing political parties is very dangerous. In a democracy with freedom of speech, there should be parties that represent the whole political spectrum, even extremes that you don't necessarily agree with. The acts that terrorists perform are illegal and they should be punished accordingly. But terrorism should not be used as an excuse to stifle political discourse, and there is little doubt in my mind that Aznar is doing exactly that. I think even you (who I guess supports Aznar) would find the example of Aznar's party trying to send a political lecturer to jail for having a web site critisicing the war in Iraq incomprehensible in a modern democracy.
From an interview with the article's author on CNN:
Jeeze, you're being a bit selective with the interview there. Did you read the whole thing? If you read the whole thing it does give a very different impression than just that selective statement.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe now we won't be firing at ourselves the majority of the time...
Yourselves? Don't you mean your British and Australian allies? And journalists of course.
You still have quality papers :p Im portuguese and read the Guardian daily.
Yep, the Guardian is good. And the BBC. The Independent can be good too.
As for trade, there are companies that like the fact that multiple currencies are in use - because they are able to make money by moving money around the different currencies.
I guess you're not from a business background. No company likes the fact that there are multiple currencies - it means uncertainty. Many companies have multiple currency accounts to try to counteract currency movements to reduce the uncertainty.
Let me explain it this way. You as a Brit sell a product to, say, the USA. It costs you £5 to make, you sell it for $15. The dollar weakens (in case you haven't noticed, it just has quite considerably). Either you have to charge more for your product (making it less competitive with products produced within the USA, because of course the currency change doesn't affect them), or you make less profit. Here's the crunch - you have no control over currency fluctuations. One day you could be making a profit, the next day a loss, due to something completely out of your control. Now are you seriously going to argue that this is something that businesses like?
Umm, I thought it was kinda obvious that the papers have thier own agendas
There's a huge difference between the press voicing their opinions about things and deliberately lying to or misleading their readership, which is what happens in the UK these days unfortunately.
This is a rare 'carrot' for UK residents, more used the threat of monetory union and other unpleasent symptoms of a united Europe.
Unpleasent? You obviously don't travel or trade between European countries often.
Here's a hint. 75% of the press in the UK is owned by three men. Those three men are anti-europe, and are using their control over the UK press to sway public opinion away from Europe. If you read The Sun, The Telegraph, The Times or The Daily Mirror (amongst others) then be aware that they have an agenda to feed you with negative propaganda about Europe. As a UK citizen who now spends most of his time "in Europe" I must say that my previous (and in retrospect naive) view of England as having an quality, open and honest press has changed considerably over the last five years. It is dishonest and manipulative. Don't fall for it.
Here's an idea:
1) Buy a big block of telephone numbers and direct them all to a single telephone
2) Put them all on the "do not call" list
3) But phone by swimming pool. Sit in pool with cool drink.
4) Wait...
5) Profit!
What about misdialed numbers? It happens. $11,000 could do serious damage to a mom & pop business.
I've been using Sendmail for a few months on various web sites, and can't say I'm very impressed with it.
A frequent request I get from users is for them to be able to add new pop accounts themselves and set-up their own forwards and auto-responders, but it seems to be increadably difficult to do this via, for instance, PHP. For a package that is so popular I find it amazing that it is so complex and difficult to automate/program.
To summarise, I think sendmail is crap and hope that the sooner it dies the better!
twenty something direct violations of international law
Can you have a bigger violation of international law than invading another country without provocation?
or at least, wake them up
You want them to be more woken up? Not me. The USA is acting likes it's on a caffine and sugar high at the moment.
USA Hey, maybe we should bomb Syria? Or Iran? You know, for world peace?
Rest of world Erm. Let's just think about it for a bit, shall we?
USA What?! [Crazy stare] Are you threatening me? Huh, huh? I thought you were my friend? Well you're no friend of mine. You want a fight? Huh? Huh? I can take you all on...
I, for one, would prefer the USA to take a bit of a nap, rather than being woken up!
It's really not difficult to set up your own company in the UK. Also, you don't have to live in the UK to be director of a company based in the UK.
Having your own company gives you much more flexibility than just working for a single employer. It also gives you more flexibility with regards to how you pay your taxes.
Where you live can be transparent to your clients - you can have a UK-based address with someone to answer and redirect your phone calls quite cheaply. Your clients don't necessarily need to know you're coding whilst sitting by the pool with a cool drink in the south of France or wherever. Go for it.
Just because a few people are so lucky to be on somone's payroll to develop OSS does not mean that writing OSS pays. For the most part it is working pro bono.
M ySQL
Make a list of all major OSS projects. See how many are done mainly by volunteers. Here's a few to get you started:
Linux Kernel
Kde
Gnome
Mozilla
OpenOffice
Apache
Postgres
A transcript of the conversation:
Indian President:Yes, we are very interested in OSS. We think it could be a very good way for us to stimulate the local IT industry.
Bill Gates: Uh, like huh! [Slaps forehead] You're like being totally random now! You, like, just don't get it!
President: My advisers tell me that OSS can be more secure because we can study the source, rather than security through obscurity.
Bill Gates: You are like, really wrong there! It's like you're so obviously wrong. The, like, Open Source is completely insecure.
President: Apparently, Linux is a very secure and stable operating system.
Bill Gates: [Going red] Like no way! That's just not! No! Like, that sucks so much!
President: Well, we are doing trials...
Bill Gates [Furious] You idiot! You suck big time! Sucker! Asswipe! [Runs away crying]
It would be great for a country the population of India to listen and follow their leaders urging, but I seriously doubt in a country where many are trying to break free of poverty that they will work for next to nothing on OSS
You assume that
working on OSS == working for nothing.
Take a look at the kernel development list. You will find that nearly everyone working on the kernel is employed by a big IT company.
Similarly with most other successful OSS projects. IBM has lots of people working on open source. Ditto RedHat, Suse, HP, Sun, AOL and others. I think it is time we dropped this idea that OSS programmers all do it for free - it isn't the case.
Shopkeeper: A dollars worth? I'm afraid we don't accept dollars...
Man [Angry]: Dammit! Just give me 4N flogborts of cheese then!
Shopkeeper: Ah. We'll have to order it if you want that much Sir. We could have it for you by Four Uppity One on Snorbsday. Is that ok?
Man slams door leaving cheese shop
Shopkeeper [calling after him]: Whippitydee to you Sir! [Under his breath] Snobblefocker.
Common wisdom [..] says that the right approach to all problems is to use a standard. This common wisdom has no basis in fact or history, and is curtailing innovation and rewarding bad behavior in our industry.
So true. The world would be a much better place without standards...
Man: Hello shopkeeper, I'd like to buy some cheese please.
Shopkeeper: Fine sir. How much do you want?
Man: 500 grams.
Shopkeeper: Sorry sir. We don't use grams here. We use flogborts.
Man: What's a flogbort?
Shopkeeper: It's our own system. Much better than grams. I'll explain..
Man: Don't bother. How many grams to a flogbort?
Shopkeeper: A6NG8
Man: What?
Shopkeeper: Sorry sir, we don't use decimal either. We have our own system. I have a diagram somewhere...
Man: Listen, just give me one dollars worth.
Shopkeeper: A dollars worth? I'm afraid we don't accept dollars...
etc. etc.
If you want to stay on your little island: go ahead.
And btw, Germany is by far the biggest economy in Europe.
Hey Bozo, I was being sarcastic. I was writing in the style of a British euro-hater. It's called "humour".
Note this bloke is from france which is in europe, but a backwater in most things! ;)
That's right! We in the UK have an increadible insight into France and the rest of Europe, due to the unbiased, honest reporting of our wonderful press. Those Europeans are trying to take away 1,000 years of British sovereignty, because, erm, they're jealous of us. Or something. No, I've got it! They're backwards and so need to reign the UK in with silly straight banana rules to be able to compete with us. After all, the UK has the largest economy in Europe, because we don't have silly European laws. Probably.
God bless the Queen. And Bush.
Has anyone proven that a well-managed web site actually generates business?
Do you really need to ask that these days? Think about it.
Imagine, you want to buy, say, a fancy hat. How imagine two companies, one with a big web site with pictures and descriptions of all their fancy hats, and one with a single crappy web page that says "We sell fancy hats" and a phone number. Who would get your business?
I used have to expound the virtues of web sites to pointy-haired bossed five years ago, but now they mostly get it. I am suprised to find someone today on Slashdot - of all places - that apparently doesn't, and gets modded as insightful for it!
I don't know - when I read this, I got the same feeling of "bleh" I get when I think about genetic engineered corn and machine-pressed hamburger patties.
It's not just you!
Anyway, I don't understand how Aznar's party suing the students could be seen as outrageous. In Spain, publicly calling someone a murderer is libel, and not something you can do lightly. Is this different in the UK? Could a British newspaper call Tony Blair a murderer without fear of being sued?
There are libel laws in the UK, but it is the context of this case that make it outrageous. This was a political party suing citizens for making a political statement. In the UK, that kind of action would be unthinkable. Political speech is well protected by law, and it is unlikely any court in the UK would side with a politician in this type of case. As an example, a famous British journalist interviewing Henry Kissenger a while ago told him that he thought he was a war criminal. I guess that journalist would now be in jail if he was in Spain!
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. I've read Aznar's party has sued the authors of a web site (who are college students, not a political lecturer) for calling them murderers. Maybe you're talking about something else, or maybe you're misinformed again.
Hopefully not misinformed! They actually tried to sue the college lecturer who registered the domain name. In his defence, he said that it was the students that did it, not him. Anyway, I find it amazing that a political party sues citizens in this manner in Spain. In the UK such an action would be viewed as outrageous.
Still, I'd say the parent is being deliberately misleading when it suggests that Aznar is trying to hinder political separatism by promoving the illegalization of AuB.
No, I'm not being deliberately misleading. I think there is a real cause for concern when a very significant number of politicians are "black listed" from politics without due process.
In fact, "practically any political party that is pro-independance for the Basque country is now banned" is an outright lie.
Not a lie, but having read a bit more about it I accept that the statement is factually incorrect. But I wasn't trying to mislead.
There are also good reasons to illegalize AuB.
I think illegalizing political parties is very dangerous. In a democracy with freedom of speech, there should be parties that represent the whole political spectrum, even extremes that you don't necessarily agree with. The acts that terrorists perform are illegal and they should be punished accordingly. But terrorism should not be used as an excuse to stifle political discourse, and there is little doubt in my mind that Aznar is doing exactly that. I think even you (who I guess supports Aznar) would find the example of Aznar's party trying to send a political lecturer to jail for having a web site critisicing the war in Iraq incomprehensible in a modern democracy.
despite the fact that the US military refuses to ever comment on Lynch's injuries (as it would be against the Privacy Act to do so),
Erm... If it is against the Privacy Act to comment on injuries, why did they say that Lynch had been shot and stabbed in the first place..?
From an interview with the article's author on CNN:
Jeeze, you're being a bit selective with the interview there. Did you read the whole thing? If you read the whole thing it does give a very different impression than just that selective statement.
a bit in the North-West of Spain
Sorry that should have read North-East.