The countries the AC has listed are governed by right-wring governments, one of them more or less a dictatorship, and all of them take down terrorist content and incitements to violence as fast as they can right now, without the need of any EU directive. Turkey has put tens of thousands of citizens into prison under vague terrorist accusations and there are currently, as we speak, EU actions against Hungary and Poland, because their governments have stifled the press and interfered with the judicial system. Last but not least, the UK has enacted extensive internet surveillance laws and is known to barely protect journalists. In a nutshell, these countries belong to those within the EU that are for more censorship, not against it.
So yeah, the AC's post makes zero sense., even if some US Slashdot mods don't understand that.
Well, "Hungry" doesn't exist, Turkey has turned into a full-fledged dictatorship and is not a member of EU anyway, and the Poland government is a bunch of lunatics who have just dismantled their own Supreme Court and erroneously believe in the conspiracy that the Russians have killed their former president. That leaves us with the UK as the only halfway sane actor among the ones you mention, and the majority there already regrets the Brexit according to representative surveys.
He's 77 years, even older than Trump! As much as I like him, I don't think it would be wise for him or his party if he tries again. Wouldn't it be time for the next generation of old farts to make history?
Where did you get this 80% for summertime from, if I may ask? I have contradictory information but also didn't find a complete breakdown of the poll result anywhere. All I've seen is 84% against switching time (the first question).
I participated in the poll. The problem with it is that they first asked whether you want to abolish time switching or keep it. Afterwards they asked separately whether you would like to have summer time or winter time if you're against switching. At least that's the poll I've got in early August, maybe they changed it later. That's why they now have the silly, although almost certainly intended result to abolish switching. Which time zone is chosen, however, is left to each country, and it's very likely that many countries will go the 'easy route' to have permanent winter time. For countries in the south this can be fairly bad, though, and these countries now might even ignore the popular majority because they have to synchronize with neighboring countries.
The poll should have asked for 3 options and nothing else: 1 - keep switching between DST and winter time, 2 - permanent winter time, 3 - permanent summer time.
These are the actual choices in that matter. They didn't ask that way because then the result would have been pretty undecided with a lot of variation between countries, and they wanted to get a popular result they can sell EU-wide. This was an absolutely dishonest survey.
Well, I live in Portugal where permanent wintertime would be pretty bad, both for residents and for tourism. People go to bed late and wake up late, work starts at 9 AM, for some people even at 10 AM, and get back home late. One hour more daylight after work in the evening is important for many people here. Switching to permanent DST is generally the right thing for southern countries. (Of course, there are also people whose mileage differs, but I'm talking about the majority.)
Staying in permanent "summer time" just means you are in another timezone than you claim. So that is plain stupid. Now you don't only have to know which time zone a country is in, you also have to know if they decided to be in permanent summer time or use the normal time associated with the time zone.
As you've stated, permanent DST just means that you're in another time zone. Your rant makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Why did you stock them in the US when the ban is only planned for the EU? Are you planning to travel from Europe to the US every time you need to replace a light bulb?
No, these are social democracies, not socialist countries. Socialism is a pre-form of communism, it's a step before communism in the historical-teleological model that communists have proposed as a natural explanation of human history. Social democracy has historically been opposed to socialism, to communism, and of course also to national socialism and fascism. It's an older tradition of a democratic parliamentary that arose as one of many answers to the "social question" in the unrestricted capitalism of the 19th Century, at a time were child labor was normal and many workers were crippled in factories. Social democracy was already established as a political position in many European countries at the beginning of 20th Century.
Scandinavian social democracy is also kind of special in comparison to others for historical and cultural reasons but I'll stop there.
So the only thing you seem to be wanting is the ability to choose only GMO foods, since some manufacturers may not label their food GMO-free when they otherwise could.
You literally don't know what choice means, and I'm giving up on you. You have presented a whacky argument without presenting any kind of evidence - you were neither able to produce any figures about which percentage of non-GMO food is labelled as such and which percentage isn't nor did you present any other evidence besides anecdotal claims - for something completely different than what I have argued for, and then have chosen to ignore my arguments. It's pointless trying to discuss with you any further, get back when you've learned how to argue.
Excess government regulation when there is no benefit is absurd.
At the risk of repeating myself, the benefit is that the customers will have a guarantee that they get the information they need to make a free and informed choice. Your suggestions ostensibly do not provide such a guarantee, which is why I reject them. It's not absurd at all to ask companies to label food in a way such that customers can find out what's in the package.
The ironic thing about this conversation is that I have personally no problem with buying GMO food, but I'm mature and freedom-loving enough to understand that other people's mileage may differ, that they can make their own decisions and that it's principally not a good idea to patronize costumers by deliberately withholding information from them. To guarantee that no information is withhold and since this is a controversial topic (whether rightly or not) , providing the information on the packaging must be mandatory. I would argue the same way about any such issue. Whenever a large industry lobbies excessively for withholding information from customers, better make damn sure to force them by law to inform their customers.
You can choose to continue to pretend that you don't understand the argument and continue with your ridiculous story ("trust me, I'm a random guy from the Internet, voluntary labeling would work just fine and would not limit individual choices at all") but that doesn't mean I have to take you seriously. I have understood your argument loud and clearly, you have repeated it often enough, and I'm not convinced by it, because I believe, for all of the reasons laid out earlier, that ensuring free customer choice with a labeling requirement is better.
Who are the people who care about that? You realize that it's pretty much just you, right?
Are you always just pulling "data" out of ass like that? I guess that makes you even more credible as a self-proclaimed Internet grocery store expert!/s
On the contrary, it's a very real problem for me because I live in Europe where (1) almost no food is labeled as "non-GMO food" because there is almost no GMO food right now, (2) US corporations and international corporations like Monsanto have been trying for decades to lower EU protection and food labeling standards, last time it was part of secret TTIP negociations to allow GMO food to be imported without labeling, and they will try again, (3) even with higher standards in the EU not buying any US food would not necessarily ensure that I have a free consumer choice because ingredients of products do not need to be labeled in the EU either and they can come from the US - and in the case corn, soy beans and peanuts they often come from the US - , and (4) international corporations that have a vested interest in lowering environmental protection and health standards usually start in the US and then use the lax requirements they've achieved there in order to argue economically against high standards elsewhere.
I want the consumer to be guaranteed to be able to make a free choice, not just to maybe make a free choice at the whim of companies. The only way to guarantee free consumer choice is to fully inform the consumer. As I've said, it's a no-brainer. Another no-brainer: When large corporations are lobbying incessantly not be required to inform the public about something, then something about that stinks.It's not as if there haven't been plenty of scandals in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industry in the past....
If you have a good product, you can surely tell the costumers what it is.
I wasn't arguing for or against nanny states, I was arguing for free consumer choice. Your suggestion does not give customers the choice to buy non-GMO foods, because there is no guarantee that there will be "voluntary labeling of non-GMO food". For a free choice between X and Y, you need to be able to distinguish X from Y. It's a no-brainer.
That's not a cogent argument at all, you are merely patronizing people. A free market requires informed consumers. The analogies you draw are also fundamentally flawed:
- Whether you build a nuclear power plant or not is a political decision, not one made by an individual person, because many people benefit from the power plant and many people would be affected if there is a major incident. Labeling GMO food as such keeps no one from buying it who wants to buy it.
- If you decide for your children that you don't want them to get vaccinated, then you are literally endangering the life of your children and the life of other children who cannot get vaccinated for rare medical reason. By not buying GMO food, you do not endanger anyone's life.
Not buying GMO food is a customer choice just like not buying some food because you don't like the look of its packaging or the logo of the company. If a company doesn't want that to happen, then they are free to offer non-GMO food. Not labeling food is and always has been nefarious, there is simply no cogent argument for not labeling the nature of food ingredients. You can also easily invent compressed codes or put a link to online information on the packaging.
It's a great place to get what you need but cannot afford and you can easily circumvent most blocks by using alternate DNS servers. If that doesn't work, use a VPN!
Happy birthday piratebay!
History has nothing to say about it. Technical, scientific, and cultural development have made massive quantum leaps, our current technical culture with global communication & global trade is not even remotely comparable to anything that has existed before, and there is no sane reason to think that "countries", "nations", or similar arbitrary human artefacts have to repeat the mistakes of the past. On the contrary, the history of cultural development suggests strongly that mankind can shape their own future as they like, just as we shape cities, countries, and all of the rest of our environment to our liking. If you think that skyscrapers are possible, then certainly lasting peace on earth is possible. It's not even very hard to achieve, all you need is a decent amount of economic entanglement, lots of contracts to the mutual benefit of everyone, and a few global players to push it forward.
Note that pretty much all of the past reasons for conquest have long gone in modern, industrialized societies. Resources can be acquired by international trade, war for territory is no longer worth it, and religious superstitions are luckily declining wherever there is technical and economic development.
I'm very conservative, if not precautionary about the intentional genetic alteration of humans precisely for the reason you apparently find it so appealing. (Unless you're trolling or joking, not sure about that.) Serious medical reasons make sense to me but political and moral opinions and world views are the pretty much the worst reasons I could imagine for fundamentally altering human DNA.
That's one of the worse examples and wouldn't convince many people, but the problem is going to be massive once the techniques have been improved. The real problem is that people get their "information" from the most shady sources and tend to switch their brain of. Captain Disillusion's Youtube Channel is a great and entertaining way of becoming more skeptical.
It's also very common to hire people with higher degrees than needed. Back when I was young, one guy at our school was so good he got the highest possible final degree in every discipline. He then went on to study mathematics, where there was a more level playing field for him. Then he became an SAP consultant. Another friend of mine studied physics. He is now working for Siemens in middle management (I presume). I also knew a mathematician who did his Ph.D. in something very complicated I couldn't possibly understand. Then he was hired as a mathematician by an economics professor and told us that he was laughing his hat off at how ridiculously easy the tasks were that the professor wanted him to solve. But the payment was good and it was definitely easier than to try the postdoc grind in mathematics.
In a nutshell, this phenomenon is not limited to CS at all. Many companies prefer to higher people with degrees that give them strong math skills, even if they don't use them in their job.
Slashdot Mirror
And traffic regulations...
The countries the AC has listed are governed by right-wring governments, one of them more or less a dictatorship, and all of them take down terrorist content and incitements to violence as fast as they can right now, without the need of any EU directive. Turkey has put tens of thousands of citizens into prison under vague terrorist accusations and there are currently, as we speak, EU actions against Hungary and Poland, because their governments have stifled the press and interfered with the judicial system. Last but not least, the UK has enacted extensive internet surveillance laws and is known to barely protect journalists. In a nutshell, these countries belong to those within the EU that are for more censorship, not against it.
So yeah, the AC's post makes zero sense., even if some US Slashdot mods don't understand that.
This is decided by judges on the basis of applicable law.
Well, "Hungry" doesn't exist, Turkey has turned into a full-fledged dictatorship and is not a member of EU anyway, and the Poland government is a bunch of lunatics who have just dismantled their own Supreme Court and erroneously believe in the conspiracy that the Russians have killed their former president. That leaves us with the UK as the only halfway sane actor among the ones you mention, and the majority there already regrets the Brexit according to representative surveys.
He's 77 years, even older than Trump! As much as I like him, I don't think it would be wise for him or his party if he tries again. Wouldn't it be time for the next generation of old farts to make history?
Where did you get this 80% for summertime from, if I may ask? I have contradictory information but also didn't find a complete breakdown of the poll result anywhere. All I've seen is 84% against switching time (the first question).
I participated in the poll. The problem with it is that they first asked whether you want to abolish time switching or keep it. Afterwards they asked separately whether you would like to have summer time or winter time if you're against switching. At least that's the poll I've got in early August, maybe they changed it later. That's why they now have the silly, although almost certainly intended result to abolish switching. Which time zone is chosen, however, is left to each country, and it's very likely that many countries will go the 'easy route' to have permanent winter time. For countries in the south this can be fairly bad, though, and these countries now might even ignore the popular majority because they have to synchronize with neighboring countries.
The poll should have asked for 3 options and nothing else: 1 - keep switching between DST and winter time, 2 - permanent winter time, 3 - permanent summer time.
These are the actual choices in that matter. They didn't ask that way because then the result would have been pretty undecided with a lot of variation between countries, and they wanted to get a popular result they can sell EU-wide. This was an absolutely dishonest survey.
Staying in permanent "summer time" just means you are in another timezone than you claim. So that is plain stupid. Now you don't only have to know which time zone a country is in, you also have to know if they decided to be in permanent summer time or use the normal time associated with the time zone.
As you've stated, permanent DST just means that you're in another time zone. Your rant makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Does that mean that when I copy&paste a password it will be put "in the cloud"? :/
How about using another search engine, Sherlock?
To answer your question: because it would be immoral. The end does not justify arbitrary means.
Why did you stock them in the US when the ban is only planned for the EU? Are you planning to travel from Europe to the US every time you need to replace a light bulb?
Or these people could try making a web page.
No, these are social democracies, not socialist countries. Socialism is a pre-form of communism, it's a step before communism in the historical-teleological model that communists have proposed as a natural explanation of human history. Social democracy has historically been opposed to socialism, to communism, and of course also to national socialism and fascism. It's an older tradition of a democratic parliamentary that arose as one of many answers to the "social question" in the unrestricted capitalism of the 19th Century, at a time were child labor was normal and many workers were crippled in factories. Social democracy was already established as a political position in many European countries at the beginning of 20th Century.
Scandinavian social democracy is also kind of special in comparison to others for historical and cultural reasons but I'll stop there.
So the only thing you seem to be wanting is the ability to choose only GMO foods, since some manufacturers may not label their food GMO-free when they otherwise could.
You literally don't know what choice means, and I'm giving up on you. You have presented a whacky argument without presenting any kind of evidence - you were neither able to produce any figures about which percentage of non-GMO food is labelled as such and which percentage isn't nor did you present any other evidence besides anecdotal claims - for something completely different than what I have argued for, and then have chosen to ignore my arguments. It's pointless trying to discuss with you any further, get back when you've learned how to argue.
Excess government regulation when there is no benefit is absurd.
At the risk of repeating myself, the benefit is that the customers will have a guarantee that they get the information they need to make a free and informed choice. Your suggestions ostensibly do not provide such a guarantee, which is why I reject them. It's not absurd at all to ask companies to label food in a way such that customers can find out what's in the package.
The ironic thing about this conversation is that I have personally no problem with buying GMO food, but I'm mature and freedom-loving enough to understand that other people's mileage may differ, that they can make their own decisions and that it's principally not a good idea to patronize costumers by deliberately withholding information from them. To guarantee that no information is withhold and since this is a controversial topic (whether rightly or not) , providing the information on the packaging must be mandatory. I would argue the same way about any such issue. Whenever a large industry lobbies excessively for withholding information from customers, better make damn sure to force them by law to inform their customers.
You can choose to continue to pretend that you don't understand the argument and continue with your ridiculous story ("trust me, I'm a random guy from the Internet, voluntary labeling would work just fine and would not limit individual choices at all") but that doesn't mean I have to take you seriously. I have understood your argument loud and clearly, you have repeated it often enough, and I'm not convinced by it, because I believe, for all of the reasons laid out earlier, that ensuring free customer choice with a labeling requirement is better.
Who are the people who care about that? You realize that it's pretty much just you, right?
Are you always just pulling "data" out of ass like that? I guess that makes you even more credible as a self-proclaimed Internet grocery store expert! /s
On the contrary, it's a very real problem for me because I live in Europe where (1) almost no food is labeled as "non-GMO food" because there is almost no GMO food right now, (2) US corporations and international corporations like Monsanto have been trying for decades to lower EU protection and food labeling standards, last time it was part of secret TTIP negociations to allow GMO food to be imported without labeling, and they will try again, (3) even with higher standards in the EU not buying any US food would not necessarily ensure that I have a free consumer choice because ingredients of products do not need to be labeled in the EU either and they can come from the US - and in the case corn, soy beans and peanuts they often come from the US - , and (4) international corporations that have a vested interest in lowering environmental protection and health standards usually start in the US and then use the lax requirements they've achieved there in order to argue economically against high standards elsewhere.
I want the consumer to be guaranteed to be able to make a free choice, not just to maybe make a free choice at the whim of companies. The only way to guarantee free consumer choice is to fully inform the consumer. As I've said, it's a no-brainer. Another no-brainer: When large corporations are lobbying incessantly not be required to inform the public about something, then something about that stinks.It's not as if there haven't been plenty of scandals in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industry in the past....
If you have a good product, you can surely tell the costumers what it is.
I wasn't arguing for or against nanny states, I was arguing for free consumer choice. Your suggestion does not give customers the choice to buy non-GMO foods, because there is no guarantee that there will be "voluntary labeling of non-GMO food". For a free choice between X and Y, you need to be able to distinguish X from Y. It's a no-brainer.
That's not a cogent argument at all, you are merely patronizing people. A free market requires informed consumers. The analogies you draw are also fundamentally flawed:
- Whether you build a nuclear power plant or not is a political decision, not one made by an individual person, because many people benefit from the power plant and many people would be affected if there is a major incident. Labeling GMO food as such keeps no one from buying it who wants to buy it.
- If you decide for your children that you don't want them to get vaccinated, then you are literally endangering the life of your children and the life of other children who cannot get vaccinated for rare medical reason. By not buying GMO food, you do not endanger anyone's life.
Not buying GMO food is a customer choice just like not buying some food because you don't like the look of its packaging or the logo of the company. If a company doesn't want that to happen, then they are free to offer non-GMO food. Not labeling food is and always has been nefarious, there is simply no cogent argument for not labeling the nature of food ingredients. You can also easily invent compressed codes or put a link to online information on the packaging.
It's a great place to get what you need but cannot afford and you can easily circumvent most blocks by using alternate DNS servers. If that doesn't work, use a VPN! Happy birthday piratebay!
History has nothing to say about it. Technical, scientific, and cultural development have made massive quantum leaps, our current technical culture with global communication & global trade is not even remotely comparable to anything that has existed before, and there is no sane reason to think that "countries", "nations", or similar arbitrary human artefacts have to repeat the mistakes of the past. On the contrary, the history of cultural development suggests strongly that mankind can shape their own future as they like, just as we shape cities, countries, and all of the rest of our environment to our liking. If you think that skyscrapers are possible, then certainly lasting peace on earth is possible. It's not even very hard to achieve, all you need is a decent amount of economic entanglement, lots of contracts to the mutual benefit of everyone, and a few global players to push it forward.
Note that pretty much all of the past reasons for conquest have long gone in modern, industrialized societies. Resources can be acquired by international trade, war for territory is no longer worth it, and religious superstitions are luckily declining wherever there is technical and economic development.
Small local conflicts will be fought but there is no credible major war scenario that can be won by anyone.
I'm very conservative, if not precautionary about the intentional genetic alteration of humans precisely for the reason you apparently find it so appealing. (Unless you're trolling or joking, not sure about that.) Serious medical reasons make sense to me but political and moral opinions and world views are the pretty much the worst reasons I could imagine for fundamentally altering human DNA.
That's one of the worse examples and wouldn't convince many people, but the problem is going to be massive once the techniques have been improved. The real problem is that people get their "information" from the most shady sources and tend to switch their brain of. Captain Disillusion's Youtube Channel is a great and entertaining way of becoming more skeptical.
You could set up correct file access permissions.
It's also very common to hire people with higher degrees than needed. Back when I was young, one guy at our school was so good he got the highest possible final degree in every discipline. He then went on to study mathematics, where there was a more level playing field for him. Then he became an SAP consultant. Another friend of mine studied physics. He is now working for Siemens in middle management (I presume). I also knew a mathematician who did his Ph.D. in something very complicated I couldn't possibly understand. Then he was hired as a mathematician by an economics professor and told us that he was laughing his hat off at how ridiculously easy the tasks were that the professor wanted him to solve. But the payment was good and it was definitely easier than to try the postdoc grind in mathematics.
In a nutshell, this phenomenon is not limited to CS at all. Many companies prefer to higher people with degrees that give them strong math skills, even if they don't use them in their job.