If you're just going from checkout to car park then bags are ridiculous anyway... Bags are designed to be carried by the handles, once you put them down (ie in your car) the contents often spill out, and if not when you put them down then by the time you've driven round a few corners or through some potholes then the contents of those bags will be scattered around your car. What we need are BOXES... Supermarkets used to keep piles of empty boxes near the checkouts, and we could put or goods in those... They fit into the car better, they don't spill their contents so easily etc. Bags are only useful when you're travelling on foot., i will always use boxes if possible when i visit the supermarket by car.
Having to carry around bags just incase you might want to use them is a fairly significant inconvenience. Also while the thin free ones are easier to carry, they are also more easily damaged.
Plastic bags also have other uses, for instance i use them as rubbish bags and when they're full tie them up and put them into a larger bin outside. Compared to full size garbage bags, smaller bags occupy less space in the house, and fill up quicker so they have less time to start to smell.
On the other hand, packaging in stores is getting far more annoying than it was years ago... If i go shopping in the car i would prefer to use boxes than plastic bags. Supermarkets used to have a pile of empty boxes near the tills that you could put your shopping in, and boxes slide into the back of a car much more easily and don't tip over spilling their contents. Stores get their stock delivered in boxes, and any given supermarket will be discarding hundreds of empty boxes every day.
And then the actual packaging on goods is often excessive, which then means it needs more bags/boxes to put it in... And don't even get me started on blister packaging, that should be banned.
Wanting to work remotely is probably putting potential employers off too... A lot of people can't understand how someone can work remotely, and just assume they're sitting around playing games all day. They would rather see you sitting at a desk so they think you're working, even if you might be sitting there using slashdot all day.
Killing someone is also actively harming them, wether by killing them you are harming them more or less than allowing them to live in pain is highly subjective and down to the individual case.
While i agree that people should be allowed to kill themselves should they wish to die (and should state this in advance incase they end up in a situation where they are physically unable to express their desire to die), it has to be the choice of the individual and not their family or doctors. Were I a doctor, i'd not want to help someone kill themselves unless i was 100% sure it was what they explicitly wanted, you would be left with a feeling of guilt knowing that you may have murdered someone against their will... Otherwise i would assume that their survival instinct is in tact and they would want to remain alive.
Exactly, it shouldn't be what Scott or the doctors want, it should be down to what his father wants... And if he's no longer capable of making or expressing his desires, then we have to go based on what he stated he would want when he was able to say so. If he has never expressed a desire to die rather than go on living in pain, then it isn't anyone else's decision to end his life. And as for the talk of torture, if he truly was as far gone as the article claims it's unlikely that he was actually experiencing any of that pain.
Having a locked box on open display screams "I HAVE SOMETHING VALUABLE IN HERE WORTH STEALING"... It may make your goods slightly harder to steal, but it also makes it more likely that someone would want to steal them. If i regularly had valuables in my car i'd want to both lock them up and hide them from view.
I also tend to leave compartments open when i leave the car, to show that there's nothing in them. I have had car windows smashed in the past by people who went looking through the various compartments (which were empty so they got nothing)...
If nations were small and people were free to move between them, its likely that the popular nations would very quickly become over populated and collapse, while a small number of dictators would each have their own small private nation.
That may well be a "selling point" of democracy, but in most existing democracies it serves to do little more than to fool the masses into thinking they actually have any say. In many systems there are only 2 parties who have any chance of "winning", and both of them are basically the same. They are both keen to maintain the status quo and have no qualms about handing over to their sister party for a few years because they know that's far preferable to a true revolution which would likely result in them never having power again.
Well it's down to luck with a hereditary monarchy... The ruler is there because he was born as the son of the previous ruler... You could get a benevolent ruler, or you could get a dictator. Family traits will come into it too, so it depends how the first monarch in the family got to his position.
On the other hand, a democratic system encourages and rewards those who are power hungry and greedy to fight their way to the top.
We also tend to have a mix of the two systems, and end up getting the worst of both. Only those from the ruling class will ever succeed at politics, and those who may potentially be benevolent are unlikely to be ruthless enough to get to the top, such that we always end up with the most power hungry.
A currency where every transaction can be analyzez and data mined by anyone... That puts everyone on a level playing field. With traditional currency only a small group of organisations can get access to transaction data, which includes the NSA but doesn't include you.
Something being vague and subjective actually makes it MORE of a risk from a security and business continuity standpoint... Cost is well understood, and easy to assess the negatives of higher costs... Making your business dependent on something you have no control of is very dangerous, you need to be able to have as much control as possible, you need to know how your data is stored and you need to have an exit strategy - that is a plan in place should the existing infrastructure fail or need to be replaced for whatever reason. Using software controlled by a single supplier is a HUGE risk in this scenario, especially when YOUR data is stored in formats also controlled by that supplier and which are difficult to migrate to something else.
What if your supplier goes bankrupt? What if they discontinue the product you depend on? What if they change the product in ways that are detrimental to your business? What if your supplier decides to expand into your area of business, becoming your competitor? What if they decide to increase prices? What if they stop supporting the version you currently use?
All of these are risks which are outside of your control and difficult to manage, if you have the sourcecode under a suitably liberal license then the worst case is that you can maintain it yourself or pay someone else to do so. Wether you do or not depends on other factors such as the importance of the software/data, the size of your organisation, how many others are in the same boat and can pool resources etc but having the option available means that you are always better off than with proprietary software where you don't have these options at all.
Many companies maintain software for many reasons other than a direct desire to sell that software for profit... The idea that the only way to get compensated is to sell the software is ridiculous.
Some write code for their own use, and then contribute that code to others. It's worth it because you need those changes, and you don't lose anything by allowing others to use them too. Some write software because it helps them sell other products or services - classic example being hardware drivers. Some write software to learn, for fun or because its part of their studies.
1, This is no different to proprietary software. Or in many cases no training is done and users are expected to just get on with it, which can also happen in both cases.
2, Most software is very mature at this stage, it's unlikely that you will need many new features. Stagnation is actually a good thing with mature software, because in many cases the changes a vendor would make at best don't benefit you and at worst are actually detrimental to you. Just look at all the users running old versions of windows and msoffice for an example of this.
That said it's better to have the option there should you ever need it, and with open source you always have the option to develop the features you require yourself. You can also pool your resources with other users who have similar requirements to you, which is basically how proprietary vendors work only your cutting out the profit for the middlemen and thus doing things more efficiently.
You also don't have to manage a team to maintain the software, you always have the option of paying someone else to supply and maintain the open source software for you, again this is an option thats available to you but that you don't have to use. You have a choice of multiple suppliers too, something that proprietary software rarely gives you.
The bottom line is that while all software *can* be expensive, FOSS always offers more flexibility than proprietary software and there is no inherent advantage whatsoever in single-vendor proprietary software over open source.
Well the idea that you need an engineering degree to be an engineer isn't an ideal situation either...
It is quite possible to scrape through a degree course while being incompetent at the job. People with degrees don't necessarily have any real experience, and could easily be incompetent as a result. The requirement to have a degree discriminates against those who lack the financial resources to go to an appropriate university. It is quite possible to obtain degrees through corruption too.
What you need is a more pragmatic system, where people get the job based on their personal ability and will to learn, not based on the bits of paper or friends they acquired. And everyone who's just starting out should work under someone more experienced, it is extremely useful to learn from someone experienced on the job.
I don't know about other areas, but for technical roles i would much rather recruit someone who's spent their time hacking in their parents basement because they have a genuine interest in the subject than someone who has crammed their way through a bunch of exams because they see money at the end of it.
Training is not so cut and dry... Going from MSO 2003 to MSO 2007 or later is a bigger change than MSO2003 to OOo.
Users are also not as stupid as people make out, sure they will likely complain if you change the software from under them but at the end of the day they have to do their job so they will put up with whatever you give them. Users often detest the software they're forced to use at work, the idea that users are perfectly happy with existing commercial software and will suddenly have big problems with open source is a fallacy.
Not so long ago users got along just fine with wordperfect for dos, they learned how to use the keyboard shortcuts because their jobs demanded it. If you gave people latex they would get used to it after an initial period of complaining, and you'll find that your staff help each other with such things.
As recently as a couple of years ago (and possibly still today), office workers at a large retail store near here were expected to read work related emails using the text based pine program... Users did so without problems, and such an interface had the side effect of severely reducing the risk of email borne malware.
Companies frequently implement new software and provide no training whatsoever, users are simply expected to pick it up as they go along. Lots of companies have bespoke applications for which there is no publicly available training material or courses. And while some software is potentially extremely complex, most users don't ever touch the majority of features and have no reason to ever learn them.
When it comes to long term costs let's face it, most common software has done everything users need for many years... MSO1997 can serve the needs of the vast majority of office workers, web browsers have changed a lot under the hood but the UI has changed very little, email really hasn't changed either.
The best thing for business is software where at least the interface users see remains consistent, and only gets updated with under the hood improvements and security/bugfixes. For an OS you want a consistent UI, with underlying performance improvements and hardware support... For an office suite you want the existing feature set and UI with just bugfixes, and for a browser you can improve the rendering engine to support new standards while keeping the UI consistent.
MS seem intent on constantly changing the UI, and part of that is down to users not wanting to fork out for upgrades if they can't see any visible changes. But in this case what benefits vendors most certainly does not benefit users, which is why vendors also want to move towards a subscription model.
Then it goes to show that obamacare has been implemented very badly... You don't get people in established EU countries who can't afford healthcare, it's simply provided. Obama wanted to implement a much better system than what he's ended up with, but the proposals got watered down due to political fighting.
Having a *better* user experience is not what matters, Apple have offered a better user experience for many years and yet they are still a small niche...
It's extremely hard to compete against an entrenched supplier, being better and cheaper isn't enough you have to fight to get noticed and this is very difficult especially when there aren't large organisations putting money behind advertising. People have to know about and give your new system a fair try before they will realise it's better, getting people to give it a try is the hardest bit.
The phone market was very different, buyers were already used to competition between different software suppliers, and used to buying a new completely different phone when their contract expires so its very easy to get people to try your new system.
Only a small fraction of people understand the technology enough to know that proof is required, not only proof that encryption is being used but also that its implemented correctly and the keys are securely stored.
The vast majority of people will just read the marketing literature and assume that yahoo aren't trying to mislead them. They don't understand how these things work and don't care to, they simply put blind trust in what they're being told.
The simplest concern is the way sites are authenticated by certificate authorities... Some of those certificate authorities are under US jurisdiction and thus beholden to the NSA, and others are under the jurisdiction of other governments who may well want to do the same thing.
And do you trust all the ssl certificate authorities? How many of those are based in the US and thus fall under the jurisdiction of the NSA? Come to think of it so does yahoo, who's to say the government wont simply demand that they hand over all their keys?
No, some restaurant menus are actually in flash which is even worse than pdf... At least the pdf files will view on most mobiles, flash is completely unusable. Several restaurants have lost my custom because their menus were in flash.
A good proportion of the danger is caused by those drugs being illegal... When you buy alcohol from a legitimate source, you know that there are laws regulating what can be sold... When you buy illegal drugs from a guy on the street you have no idea how they were produced, or what other chemicals are mixed in with them.
The same thing happens with counterfeit alcohol, you get various industrial alcohols which are intended for industrial use and not human consumption, as well as other noxious chemicals mixed in, and these illegally produced alcohols are often far more dangerous than the regulated shop bought stuff.
If other drugs were legal, there would be legal sources where the ingredients are known and regulated so they would be safer for the users. You'd completely gut the illegal drugs market as there would be significantly less demand and far less profit. The stigma of drug use would be gone, so users would be more likely to seek help, police resources could be diverted to other things, drug prices would be lower so addicts would be less desperate (less likely to commit other crimes and more likely to get help) and there would be tax revenue coming in from the sale of drugs.
Crime rates would be down, not only because drug possession would no longer be illegal but also the crimes *caused* by drugs such as people stealing to fund their habit, and violence between drug dealers.
The only people who wouldn't benefit from such a setup are those who currently profit from selling drugs on the black market.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're just going from checkout to car park then bags are ridiculous anyway... Bags are designed to be carried by the handles, once you put them down (ie in your car) the contents often spill out, and if not when you put them down then by the time you've driven round a few corners or through some potholes then the contents of those bags will be scattered around your car.
What we need are BOXES... Supermarkets used to keep piles of empty boxes near the checkouts, and we could put or goods in those... They fit into the car better, they don't spill their contents so easily etc.
Bags are only useful when you're travelling on foot., i will always use boxes if possible when i visit the supermarket by car.
Having to carry around bags just incase you might want to use them is a fairly significant inconvenience. Also while the thin free ones are easier to carry, they are also more easily damaged.
Plastic bags also have other uses, for instance i use them as rubbish bags and when they're full tie them up and put them into a larger bin outside. Compared to full size garbage bags, smaller bags occupy less space in the house, and fill up quicker so they have less time to start to smell.
On the other hand, packaging in stores is getting far more annoying than it was years ago...
If i go shopping in the car i would prefer to use boxes than plastic bags. Supermarkets used to have a pile of empty boxes near the tills that you could put your shopping in, and boxes slide into the back of a car much more easily and don't tip over spilling their contents. Stores get their stock delivered in boxes, and any given supermarket will be discarding hundreds of empty boxes every day.
And then the actual packaging on goods is often excessive, which then means it needs more bags/boxes to put it in... And don't even get me started on blister packaging, that should be banned.
Wanting to work remotely is probably putting potential employers off too... A lot of people can't understand how someone can work remotely, and just assume they're sitting around playing games all day. They would rather see you sitting at a desk so they think you're working, even if you might be sitting there using slashdot all day.
Killing someone is also actively harming them, wether by killing them you are harming them more or less than allowing them to live in pain is highly subjective and down to the individual case.
While i agree that people should be allowed to kill themselves should they wish to die (and should state this in advance incase they end up in a situation where they are physically unable to express their desire to die), it has to be the choice of the individual and not their family or doctors. Were I a doctor, i'd not want to help someone kill themselves unless i was 100% sure it was what they explicitly wanted, you would be left with a feeling of guilt knowing that you may have murdered someone against their will... Otherwise i would assume that their survival instinct is in tact and they would want to remain alive.
Exactly, it shouldn't be what Scott or the doctors want, it should be down to what his father wants... And if he's no longer capable of making or expressing his desires, then we have to go based on what he stated he would want when he was able to say so.
If he has never expressed a desire to die rather than go on living in pain, then it isn't anyone else's decision to end his life. And as for the talk of torture, if he truly was as far gone as the article claims it's unlikely that he was actually experiencing any of that pain.
Having a locked box on open display screams "I HAVE SOMETHING VALUABLE IN HERE WORTH STEALING"... It may make your goods slightly harder to steal, but it also makes it more likely that someone would want to steal them.
If i regularly had valuables in my car i'd want to both lock them up and hide them from view.
I also tend to leave compartments open when i leave the car, to show that there's nothing in them. I have had car windows smashed in the past by people who went looking through the various compartments (which were empty so they got nothing)...
Well saying that you spent $200k of police resources (ie taxpayers money) to bust a guy who made $50k of drugs wouldnt go down so well.
If nations were small and people were free to move between them, its likely that the popular nations would very quickly become over populated and collapse, while a small number of dictators would each have their own small private nation.
That may well be a "selling point" of democracy, but in most existing democracies it serves to do little more than to fool the masses into thinking they actually have any say.
In many systems there are only 2 parties who have any chance of "winning", and both of them are basically the same. They are both keen to maintain the status quo and have no qualms about handing over to their sister party for a few years because they know that's far preferable to a true revolution which would likely result in them never having power again.
Well it's down to luck with a hereditary monarchy... The ruler is there because he was born as the son of the previous ruler... You could get a benevolent ruler, or you could get a dictator. Family traits will come into it too, so it depends how the first monarch in the family got to his position.
On the other hand, a democratic system encourages and rewards those who are power hungry and greedy to fight their way to the top.
We also tend to have a mix of the two systems, and end up getting the worst of both. Only those from the ruling class will ever succeed at politics, and those who may potentially be benevolent are unlikely to be ruthless enough to get to the top, such that we always end up with the most power hungry.
A currency where every transaction can be analyzez and data mined by anyone... That puts everyone on a level playing field.
With traditional currency only a small group of organisations can get access to transaction data, which includes the NSA but doesn't include you.
There was a story recently about how yahoo did fight such a demand, lost, and were forced to keep it a secret...
Something being vague and subjective actually makes it MORE of a risk from a security and business continuity standpoint... Cost is well understood, and easy to assess the negatives of higher costs...
Making your business dependent on something you have no control of is very dangerous, you need to be able to have as much control as possible, you need to know how your data is stored and you need to have an exit strategy - that is a plan in place should the existing infrastructure fail or need to be replaced for whatever reason. Using software controlled by a single supplier is a HUGE risk in this scenario, especially when YOUR data is stored in formats also controlled by that supplier and which are difficult to migrate to something else.
What if your supplier goes bankrupt? What if they discontinue the product you depend on? What if they change the product in ways that are detrimental to your business? What if your supplier decides to expand into your area of business, becoming your competitor? What if they decide to increase prices? What if they stop supporting the version you currently use?
All of these are risks which are outside of your control and difficult to manage, if you have the sourcecode under a suitably liberal license then the worst case is that you can maintain it yourself or pay someone else to do so. Wether you do or not depends on other factors such as the importance of the software/data, the size of your organisation, how many others are in the same boat and can pool resources etc but having the option available means that you are always better off than with proprietary software where you don't have these options at all.
Many companies maintain software for many reasons other than a direct desire to sell that software for profit... The idea that the only way to get compensated is to sell the software is ridiculous.
Some write code for their own use, and then contribute that code to others. It's worth it because you need those changes, and you don't lose anything by allowing others to use them too.
Some write software because it helps them sell other products or services - classic example being hardware drivers.
Some write software to learn, for fun or because its part of their studies.
1, This is no different to proprietary software. Or in many cases no training is done and users are expected to just get on with it, which can also happen in both cases.
2, Most software is very mature at this stage, it's unlikely that you will need many new features. Stagnation is actually a good thing with mature software, because in many cases the changes a vendor would make at best don't benefit you and at worst are actually detrimental to you. Just look at all the users running old versions of windows and msoffice for an example of this.
That said it's better to have the option there should you ever need it, and with open source you always have the option to develop the features you require yourself. You can also pool your resources with other users who have similar requirements to you, which is basically how proprietary vendors work only your cutting out the profit for the middlemen and thus doing things more efficiently.
You also don't have to manage a team to maintain the software, you always have the option of paying someone else to supply and maintain the open source software for you, again this is an option thats available to you but that you don't have to use. You have a choice of multiple suppliers too, something that proprietary software rarely gives you.
The bottom line is that while all software *can* be expensive, FOSS always offers more flexibility than proprietary software and there is no inherent advantage whatsoever in single-vendor proprietary software over open source.
Well the idea that you need an engineering degree to be an engineer isn't an ideal situation either...
It is quite possible to scrape through a degree course while being incompetent at the job.
People with degrees don't necessarily have any real experience, and could easily be incompetent as a result.
The requirement to have a degree discriminates against those who lack the financial resources to go to an appropriate university.
It is quite possible to obtain degrees through corruption too.
What you need is a more pragmatic system, where people get the job based on their personal ability and will to learn, not based on the bits of paper or friends they acquired.
And everyone who's just starting out should work under someone more experienced, it is extremely useful to learn from someone experienced on the job.
I don't know about other areas, but for technical roles i would much rather recruit someone who's spent their time hacking in their parents basement because they have a genuine interest in the subject than someone who has crammed their way through a bunch of exams because they see money at the end of it.
Training is not so cut and dry... Going from MSO 2003 to MSO 2007 or later is a bigger change than MSO2003 to OOo.
Users are also not as stupid as people make out, sure they will likely complain if you change the software from under them but at the end of the day they have to do their job so they will put up with whatever you give them. Users often detest the software they're forced to use at work, the idea that users are perfectly happy with existing commercial software and will suddenly have big problems with open source is a fallacy.
Not so long ago users got along just fine with wordperfect for dos, they learned how to use the keyboard shortcuts because their jobs demanded it. If you gave people latex they would get used to it after an initial period of complaining, and you'll find that your staff help each other with such things.
As recently as a couple of years ago (and possibly still today), office workers at a large retail store near here were expected to read work related emails using the text based pine program... Users did so without problems, and such an interface had the side effect of severely reducing the risk of email borne malware.
Companies frequently implement new software and provide no training whatsoever, users are simply expected to pick it up as they go along. Lots of companies have bespoke applications for which there is no publicly available training material or courses. And while some software is potentially extremely complex, most users don't ever touch the majority of features and have no reason to ever learn them.
When it comes to long term costs let's face it, most common software has done everything users need for many years... MSO1997 can serve the needs of the vast majority of office workers, web browsers have changed a lot under the hood but the UI has changed very little, email really hasn't changed either.
The best thing for business is software where at least the interface users see remains consistent, and only gets updated with under the hood improvements and security/bugfixes. For an OS you want a consistent UI, with underlying performance improvements and hardware support... For an office suite you want the existing feature set and UI with just bugfixes, and for a browser you can improve the rendering engine to support new standards while keeping the UI consistent.
MS seem intent on constantly changing the UI, and part of that is down to users not wanting to fork out for upgrades if they can't see any visible changes. But in this case what benefits vendors most certainly does not benefit users, which is why vendors also want to move towards a subscription model.
Then it goes to show that obamacare has been implemented very badly... You don't get people in established EU countries who can't afford healthcare, it's simply provided. Obama wanted to implement a much better system than what he's ended up with, but the proposals got watered down due to political fighting.
Having a *better* user experience is not what matters, Apple have offered a better user experience for many years and yet they are still a small niche...
It's extremely hard to compete against an entrenched supplier, being better and cheaper isn't enough you have to fight to get noticed and this is very difficult especially when there aren't large organisations putting money behind advertising. People have to know about and give your new system a fair try before they will realise it's better, getting people to give it a try is the hardest bit.
The phone market was very different, buyers were already used to competition between different software suppliers, and used to buying a new completely different phone when their contract expires so its very easy to get people to try your new system.
Only a small fraction of people understand the technology enough to know that proof is required, not only proof that encryption is being used but also that its implemented correctly and the keys are securely stored.
The vast majority of people will just read the marketing literature and assume that yahoo aren't trying to mislead them. They don't understand how these things work and don't care to, they simply put blind trust in what they're being told.
The simplest concern is the way sites are authenticated by certificate authorities... Some of those certificate authorities are under US jurisdiction and thus beholden to the NSA, and others are under the jurisdiction of other governments who may well want to do the same thing.
And do you trust all the ssl certificate authorities? How many of those are based in the US and thus fall under the jurisdiction of the NSA? Come to think of it so does yahoo, who's to say the government wont simply demand that they hand over all their keys?
Like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2066828/Bugatti-Veyron-owner-gets-ticket-parking-disabled-space-Essex.html
No, some restaurant menus are actually in flash which is even worse than pdf... At least the pdf files will view on most mobiles, flash is completely unusable.
Several restaurants have lost my custom because their menus were in flash.
A good proportion of the danger is caused by those drugs being illegal...
When you buy alcohol from a legitimate source, you know that there are laws regulating what can be sold... When you buy illegal drugs from a guy on the street you have no idea how they were produced, or what other chemicals are mixed in with them.
The same thing happens with counterfeit alcohol, you get various industrial alcohols which are intended for industrial use and not human consumption, as well as other noxious chemicals mixed in, and these illegally produced alcohols are often far more dangerous than the regulated shop bought stuff.
If other drugs were legal, there would be legal sources where the ingredients are known and regulated so they would be safer for the users. You'd completely gut the illegal drugs market as there would be significantly less demand and far less profit. The stigma of drug use would be gone, so users would be more likely to seek help, police resources could be diverted to other things, drug prices would be lower so addicts would be less desperate (less likely to commit other crimes and more likely to get help) and there would be tax revenue coming in from the sale of drugs.
Crime rates would be down, not only because drug possession would no longer be illegal but also the crimes *caused* by drugs such as people stealing to fund their habit, and violence between drug dealers.
The only people who wouldn't benefit from such a setup are those who currently profit from selling drugs on the black market.