Someone told me that they did try Gatso cameras in certain states, but it turned out they had some problems not encountered in Europe. It seems that these cameras make excellent targets to practice ones drive-by shootings on, for one.:p
One easy metric would be to check if a URL claims to point at one domain, but actually links to another. Like this bogus link to www.youcantrustus.org
Heh, the other day I got an email from EA concerning my Ultima Online account, asking me to provide some account details. The URL in the mail pointed to some weird domain I had never heard of, not ea.com or uo.com. Turned out, the email was completely legit... the URL was for some subcontratcor or affiliate of UO. Boy did they regret that, they must have gotten thousands of questions about that.
After all, the UN observers do so well in preventing corruption in other countries.
That is not their job. At most, their job would be to discourage corruption by overseeing the election process. All they really do is observe (hence their job title), and report any irregularities or lack thereof.
It's a US court case, with a US company, covered on a US website.
The company may be US-based, but they have customers in many other countries. These customers have just as much been subject to the issues addressed in this court case. And even though this is a US court case, customers from Australia, New Zealand and some other countries are not excluded from filing a claim. It's only EC residents who are excluded (I wonder why...?)
The parent poster was right to take issue with the word 'everyone'.
Here's RealNetworks press release about this system (called Harmony). They also announced that a public beta version of RealPlayer 10.5, which contains this technology, will be available here tomorrow (Tuesday).
We're going to have to admit sooner or later that your average African or Indian brain can process the simplicity of IT work as well as your average Euro-American IT worker.
Not just average brains doing simple work; R&D work is being offshored as well. Personally, I think it's great. As another poster put it: "You can learn J2EE even if you live in a tent and eat flies". It's great that young people from countries that still mostly have manual and industrial labor, get to learn high-level technical skills, and get a shot at making a decent living doing knowledge work in their own country. Sure, it sucks that this diminishes the market value of my own skill set, but I don't think our jobs or economy should be protected against this cheap labor. I also don't think that our economy will collapse because of this, as some others here predict.
What does worry me is the kind of 'brain drain' that is going on; not technical people leaving the country to work elsewhere, but the facts that working in the field of technology is becoming less and less attractive, and brainy kids are increasingly choosing non-technological studies. Even during the technology boom of a few years ago, technology was held in rather low regard in my country, it wasn't a popular field of study, and wages weren't that great compared to what others with university degrees were making.
I'm not to worried about my own job: every country will have a need for smart technologists doing work that has to be done locally. But it'll be a sad day when we have to import people for that kind of work, because we have stopped breeding them ourselves.
would Amazon benefit by just printing the book, and automatically shipping it, w/o the need for a warehouse, profit from this kind of operation?
I imagine such a machine would allow a business model much like digital photo printing services, where I upload my photos and specify where I want to have them printed.
Who needs Amazon in such a business model? Shipping costs, standing in line for 30 minutes at the post office to pick up my books? Come on... Much easier to order direct from the publisher on-line, and have the book printed at your local library, Kinkos, or book kiosk. Pay when you collect the book.
Of course Amazon would probably get into this business early and act as the middleman between publishers and print shops (which is important since payments will have to be passed along), offer unified on-line searching of all books in existence, and perhaps even sell or lease out the machines:)
There are worms out there that make computers dial expensive premium phone services (phone sex and the like) using their modems. This is a godsend to the guys running phone sex lines... in the past, they had to (and did) break into phone line distribution boxes and install small electronic diallers (or pay a phone company repair guy to do this). Now they can just spread these things from the comfort of their own home. I still have a modem in my computer (for faxing stuff), but the phone line is disconnected when not in use. A normal virus might send my personal data (which is encrypted anyway), or trash my hard drive (which is properly backed-up), but this stuff might run up a god-awful phone bill. And no, phone companies will not refund any of it; they did not even do so in cases where rogue diallers were installed on people's phone lines.
I wouldn't be surprised if the operators of certain sites (usually with the more obnoxious and dubious ads) would stoop to such methods to boost their income from ads.
There are indeed import duties on many goods brought into the EC. Not sure if there is one on mp3 players.
Not that it matters... as someone else pointed out, we Europeans have gotten used to paying more than US citizens, so retailers will just enjoy higher margins on goods that are duty-free. In addition, many goods are protected against parallel imports (excepting personal use). Sometimes it is cheaper to import things from the US, even with shipping, import duty and sales tax added on (taxes are levied on the shipping costs as well, I might add). The other day I ordered something from the US because it was cheaper that way than in any of the shops in Europe... and the friggin' thing was made in Germany! Go figure...
Fifth, why patents in software at all? The field has prospered much more than other technical fields, without having them.
That is the key question we should ask. The only problem is, politicians and industrialists already have the answer: "Most major software companies come from the US, where they have software patents. So there must be something to them there patent thingies". And recently, companies like Philips, Siemens and Nokia spoke out in favor of patents, claiming that all of the 18 billion they spent on R&D annually would go to waste is they didn't get their patents on software.
In light of such baloney and ignorance, it's no use trying to argue rationally.
And you know what? I don't care. Because I've made a choice to deal with this stuff. If you don't want to live with modern society's "privacy invasion", then don't bitch that you can't take part in all the luxuries and services it provides for you. . Don't own a house. Don't own a car. Don't have a credit card.
Excuse me for saying so, but what a cop-out! You're just accepting the way the world works, and walk away from the system. But guess what: you can have reasonable privacy and a car, a house and the other luxuries. It's not an either-or deal: the recent intrusion upon our privacy in the name of fighting terrorism or whatnot, is not a requirement to provide us with luxuries. Don't accept the system and live in it, nor accept the system and opt out. Try and make a change, instead.
I don't mind a credit card company to keep track of my purchases, or my car ownership being registered in some government database. What I do mind is for corporations and governments to do god knows what with that data, and use it for purposes other than the ones it was collected for. One way to ensure this is to accept the system and cop out, hide, disappear like you suggest. Another way is to try and change the system, making sure that there are proper laws to govern what can be done with your data, and to make sure that the government collects only the data it needs to do its job. Our country (the Netherlands) has very strict rules about this: you can ask any company to disclose what data they have stored about you, and the data is not allowed to be used for anything other than its stated purpose. Sure... it's misused sometimes, but at least you'll have a nice legal stick to beat them with if you catch them. Not foolproof, but good enough if you want the nice house, car and other luxuries of our modern society.
People 'bitch and moan', as you call it because they want the system changed, rather than just give up.
As more legislation comes around, the spammers move to countries where nobody cares about the legislation and it all starts again.
That sounds just fine to me. The possibility is remote, but perhaps the UN will come up with a sensible set of laws, which most countries will see fit to ratify. The spammers will probably all hole up in the few countries where spamming remains legal... and at that point, we simply blacklist or cut off those countries. It will then be in the best interest of everyone in that country to adopt anti-spam laws... you can be sure that the citizens, businesses and ISPs of those countries will place tremendous pressure on their governments to ratify the UN laws and get the country back on the Net (and, with any luck, publicly behead the remaining spammers).
The problem with national anti-spam laws is that there will always be another country where spamming is legal. A good UN anti-spam law is the best hope for effective, world wide legislation against spam. I just hope the UN can come up with sensible anti-spam laws, rather than laws that, in addition to outlawing spam,
- decry the occupation of Iraq by US forces,
- condemn the Israeli occupation of the West Bank,
and other such politically motivated statements.
...or rather Godwin's Rule perhaps. Invoking the magic words "The Children" as a justification of your own cause, should automatically result in you losing the argument, and the closing of the discussion.
Incidentally, I'd love Godwin's Rule to be adopted in politics. For a very good reason: when someone makes a comparison to Nazi's or feels a need to protect The Children, you can be sure that the rational part of the discussion is over, and that all that's left is emotions and name calling.
Changing behaviors is the most difficult thing to do. If people staggered the time they leave work and if they could tolerate a little bit of inconvenience of car pooling or riding a bus or train or subway then we might see the traffic ease up.
It's quite easy, actually. Give people an accurate prediction of a traffic jam on their route, and they will detour or postpone the journey. And most people already have an accurate prediction... that nasty jam on the way to work has been there every day for the last 10 years, so why wouldn't it be there today?
Over here, people are already staggering their travel times... the jams used to occur only around 8am, now it's packed solid from 7am to 10am. Transport companies are wising up and scheduling runs in the early afternoons... but even around noon it's not unusual to get stuck in traffic these days. Of course you could go by train... except that they are jam-packed during rush hour (it's more like rush morning anyway).
The best change in lifestyle would be to telecommute, or move closer to work... but it also means that there should be suitable housing near your office. In the 60s and 70s, our government planned exactly the opposite: work in the cities, live in the suburbs (or in 'sleeper towns').
Just 2 comments (at +2) and the server is already dead. A new record? Anyway....
Why use such an expensive camera? There's loads of R/C airplane pilots taking aerial pictures, now that the price for a decent digital camera has dropped. These days, a nice 2-3 megapixel cheapo camera will cost less than the radio gear in a typical plane. Use that rather than one that costs 300 pounds.
So... I won't be contributing to his fund for a new camera. As any aeromodeller will confirm, crashing is part of the hobby.
gnumeric exists. Acknowledge both its existence and superiority in the world of spreadsheets.
Superiority? Almost everyone else uses Excel... and the ability to read other people's spreadsheets is a very important characteristic in most environments where spreadsheets are used.
That's why Planmaker (and OpenOffice to some extent) should scare Microsoft. People may think MS Office stinks, but the pain of having to convert all your existing files, and finding a way to exchange files with your MS Office using business partners will probably deter most users from switching. But if the file compatibility is good enough, there's hardly any reason left not to switch!
Incidentally, that is why I would not at all be surprised if Microsoft has indeed 'sponsored' the proposal brought forward by Ireland for the EU laws on patents, in which it would also be possible to patent file formats.
Maybe it's the time for the US to join the metric world
That'll be the day, when the US adopts such an evil European standard! A French one no less. It won't happen, unless they'll rename kilometers to 'freedom miles' or some such.
I think it should be necessary that your boss is capable of doing your job, if not as well as you can.
Hell no. I want my manager to be a good manager, not a good engineer. He should certainly know what his department workers' jobs entail, how they work, what kind of persons they are, and so on, but he shouldn't have to be able to replace any one of them.
The best IT project manager I ever had was a sociology major with no technology background whatsoever. To his credit, he did try to understand to some degree the technology we worked with on our projects: computers, networking, programming languages, databases... not because he wanted to do our work, but because he wanted to understand it.
MS threatening to sue is equal to them using more FUD to their advantage, hoping mr. Amadeu will shut up and that other MS opponents will decide to lay low. All this for the cost of a few hour's worth of paralegal work.
However, I don't think MS would have any problem with actually sueing mr. Amadeu if he continues to spread his 'lies'... even if their case looks weak. They might desist though, if such a lawsuit would turn into a publicity nightmare: "We cheerfully crush the ones that oppose us!"
Why do they care? God knows, some power trip from having their inane company motto shown every time?
One of the UO guys explained this on Stratics: they got this requirement (preventing people from bypassing the intro movies) handed down to them by the EA legal departments, for "legal reasons having to do with copyright".
PDAs were a gimmick, nothing more. No matter how shiny they got, and no matter how many I owned (which amounted to 3 at one point, a palm V, a palm Vx, and one of those ridiculous Sony Clie jobbers) they still couldn't replace the ease of use a cell phone provided me.
Ever wondered how today's cell phones got to be so useful? If you have ever used the 1st generation phones w/ PDA functionality built in, you will know what I mean. They were hopeless... now there was a gimmick. At the time I thought that such phones would never get anywhere, if the manufacturers would continue to try and build a phone with PDA functionality, rather than a PDA with phone functionality. The latter hasn't exactly happened, but phone companies have learned a lot from PDAs, and phones have become PDAs rather than replaced them.
As for games... no one is arguing that a PDA (or aphone for that matter) is a proper gaming platform. People mostly play games on their PDA to kill time.
Europe has a lot more socialists who aren't fans of Big Business
Socialists, bah! There are plenty of MEP hopefuls who are against US-style software patents; you should be able to find one who espouses your other political convictions as well. If you're Dutch, check here for a ranking. All Dutch MEPs, except the ones from one party, voted against overly broad software patents, so take your pick. The one party that voted for software patents is the VVD party to which Bolkestein belongs. If you remember, he's the commissioner who's been trying every which way to get the new patent law approved, sometimes by blatantly undemocratic means.
The FFII has an overview of the voting track record of the MEPs of all countries, but their site appears to be down at the moment.
br.
If the issue of software patents is important to you, this is the one subject on which it is quite easy to find information, both on the subject itself and on the voting track record of MEPs up for re-election. No matter if you're a green, socialist, conservative or christian-democrat, there will be a candidate to your liking who is also against software patents. Research your choices beforer you step into the voting booth this Sunday! (or today if you're Dutch).
So, I keep on Linux, because I like retaining control over my computer.
I agree... some problems (like some XP boxes that boot up very slowly) elude even Microsoft. I wish Windows would not have all that behind-the-scenes rubbish.
However, I play a lot of games. Sorry to say, but that does mean I am running Windows and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
Slashdot Mirror
One easy metric would be to check if a URL claims to point at one domain, but actually links to another. Like this bogus link to www.youcantrustus.org
Heh, the other day I got an email from EA concerning my Ultima Online account, asking me to provide some account details. The URL in the mail pointed to some weird domain I had never heard of, not ea.com or uo.com. Turned out, the email was completely legit... the URL was for some subcontratcor or affiliate of UO. Boy did they regret that, they must have gotten thousands of questions about that.
The parent poster was right to take issue with the word 'everyone'.
Here's RealNetworks press release about this system (called Harmony). They also announced that a public beta version of RealPlayer 10.5, which contains this technology, will be available here tomorrow (Tuesday).
What does worry me is the kind of 'brain drain' that is going on; not technical people leaving the country to work elsewhere, but the facts that working in the field of technology is becoming less and less attractive, and brainy kids are increasingly choosing non-technological studies. Even during the technology boom of a few years ago, technology was held in rather low regard in my country, it wasn't a popular field of study, and wages weren't that great compared to what others with university degrees were making.
I'm not to worried about my own job: every country will have a need for smart technologists doing work that has to be done locally. But it'll be a sad day when we have to import people for that kind of work, because we have stopped breeding them ourselves.
Of course Amazon would probably get into this business early and act as the middleman between publishers and print shops (which is important since payments will have to be passed along), offer unified on-line searching of all books in existence, and perhaps even sell or lease out the machines
There are worms out there that make computers dial expensive premium phone services (phone sex and the like) using their modems. This is a godsend to the guys running phone sex lines... in the past, they had to (and did) break into phone line distribution boxes and install small electronic diallers (or pay a phone company repair guy to do this). Now they can just spread these things from the comfort of their own home. I still have a modem in my computer (for faxing stuff), but the phone line is disconnected when not in use. A normal virus might send my personal data (which is encrypted anyway), or trash my hard drive (which is properly backed-up), but this stuff might run up a god-awful phone bill. And no, phone companies will not refund any of it; they did not even do so in cases where rogue diallers were installed on people's phone lines.
I wouldn't be surprised if the operators of certain sites (usually with the more obnoxious and dubious ads) would stoop to such methods to boost their income from ads.
There are indeed import duties on many goods brought into the EC. Not sure if there is one on mp3 players.
Not that it matters... as someone else pointed out, we Europeans have gotten used to paying more than US citizens, so retailers will just enjoy higher margins on goods that are duty-free. In addition, many goods are protected against parallel imports (excepting personal use). Sometimes it is cheaper to import things from the US, even with shipping, import duty and sales tax added on (taxes are levied on the shipping costs as well, I might add). The other day I ordered something from the US because it was cheaper that way than in any of the shops in Europe... and the friggin' thing was made in Germany! Go figure...
In light of such baloney and ignorance, it's no use trying to argue rationally.
I don't mind a credit card company to keep track of my purchases, or my car ownership being registered in some government database. What I do mind is for corporations and governments to do god knows what with that data, and use it for purposes other than the ones it was collected for. One way to ensure this is to accept the system and cop out, hide, disappear like you suggest. Another way is to try and change the system, making sure that there are proper laws to govern what can be done with your data, and to make sure that the government collects only the data it needs to do its job. Our country (the Netherlands) has very strict rules about this: you can ask any company to disclose what data they have stored about you, and the data is not allowed to be used for anything other than its stated purpose. Sure... it's misused sometimes, but at least you'll have a nice legal stick to beat them with if you catch them. Not foolproof, but good enough if you want the nice house, car and other luxuries of our modern society.
People 'bitch and moan', as you call it because they want the system changed, rather than just give up.
The problem with national anti-spam laws is that there will always be another country where spamming is legal. A good UN anti-spam law is the best hope for effective, world wide legislation against spam. I just hope the UN can come up with sensible anti-spam laws, rather than laws that, in addition to outlawing spam,
- decry the occupation of Iraq by US forces,
- condemn the Israeli occupation of the West Bank,
and other such politically motivated statements.
Wishful thinking perhaps, but I like to daydream.
...or rather Godwin's Rule perhaps. Invoking the magic words "The Children" as a justification of your own cause, should automatically result in you losing the argument, and the closing of the discussion.
Incidentally, I'd love Godwin's Rule to be adopted in politics. For a very good reason: when someone makes a comparison to Nazi's or feels a need to protect The Children, you can be sure that the rational part of the discussion is over, and that all that's left is emotions and name calling.
Over here, people are already staggering their travel times... the jams used to occur only around 8am, now it's packed solid from 7am to 10am. Transport companies are wising up and scheduling runs in the early afternoons... but even around noon it's not unusual to get stuck in traffic these days. Of course you could go by train... except that they are jam-packed during rush hour (it's more like rush morning anyway).
The best change in lifestyle would be to telecommute, or move closer to work... but it also means that there should be suitable housing near your office. In the 60s and 70s, our government planned exactly the opposite: work in the cities, live in the suburbs (or in 'sleeper towns').
Just 2 comments (at +2) and the server is already dead. A new record? Anyway....
Why use such an expensive camera? There's loads of R/C airplane pilots taking aerial pictures, now that the price for a decent digital camera has dropped. These days, a nice 2-3 megapixel cheapo camera will cost less than the radio gear in a typical plane. Use that rather than one that costs 300 pounds.
So... I won't be contributing to his fund for a new camera. As any aeromodeller will confirm, crashing is part of the hobby.
That's why Planmaker (and OpenOffice to some extent) should scare Microsoft. People may think MS Office stinks, but the pain of having to convert all your existing files, and finding a way to exchange files with your MS Office using business partners will probably deter most users from switching. But if the file compatibility is good enough, there's hardly any reason left not to switch!
Incidentally, that is why I would not at all be surprised if Microsoft has indeed 'sponsored' the proposal brought forward by Ireland for the EU laws on patents, in which it would also be possible to patent file formats.
The best IT project manager I ever had was a sociology major with no technology background whatsoever. To his credit, he did try to understand to some degree the technology we worked with on our projects: computers, networking, programming languages, databases... not because he wanted to do our work, but because he wanted to understand it.
However, I don't think MS would have any problem with actually sueing mr. Amadeu if he continues to spread his 'lies'... even if their case looks weak. They might desist though, if such a lawsuit would turn into a publicity nightmare: "We cheerfully crush the ones that oppose us!"
As for games... no one is arguing that a PDA (or aphone for that matter) is a proper gaming platform. People mostly play games on their PDA to kill time.
The FFII has an overview of the voting track record of the MEPs of all countries, but their site appears to be down at the moment.
br. If the issue of software patents is important to you, this is the one subject on which it is quite easy to find information, both on the subject itself and on the voting track record of MEPs up for re-election. No matter if you're a green, socialist, conservative or christian-democrat, there will be a candidate to your liking who is also against software patents. Research your choices beforer you step into the voting booth this Sunday! (or today if you're Dutch).
However, I play a lot of games. Sorry to say, but that does mean I am running Windows and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.