That's the same false "choice" being suggested in Europe: we are offered a choice between *this* EU, with lack of democratic oversight, officials that are appointed rather than elected, and drunken would-be despots like Juncker in charge... or no EU, which means war (which was the thread made during several EU related referenda: vote against, and "the lights will go out")
This is the same thing: suggesting that a government with sweeping powers to spy on and control its citizens is the only alternative to anarchy and chaos, and that Snowden's actions threatened the stability brought about by the Panopticon.
Simple: ISPs would start throttling traffic when it hits x% of capacity (on a certain segment/ subnet). They can do so by applying some algorithm to allot bandwidth, e.g. people using a lot (at that moment) get cut 30%, people using less get cut 10%, and people using only a little are left alone. Your priority settings will determine which part of your traffic gets cut. If you set everything to high priority, everything will get cut equally. In other words, it's like QoS but it gets applied at the subscriber level rather than the network level.
Of course this idea will fail for a much simpler reason: giving subscribers control means that ISPs cannot double dip by selling preferential treatment to content providers with deep pockets.
Not sure how much respect avid Pokemon Go players really deserve. Players have been found chasing Pokemon on train tracks, we've had bus drivers playing the game while driving, and a few municipalities that these Pokemon seem to favor for some reason have been forced to put up traffic signs like these to warn motorists about pedestrians who might be paying less than adequate attention. (Sadly some people are "catching" these unusual road signs as well).
And I hate those buttons with a passion. Too often I pick up the device and accidentally tap one of those buttons; something that pretty much never happens with my iPhone's physical Home button (though moving the power button from the top to the side on the iPhone 6 was a mistake). Presumably/hopefully Apple will use the 3D touch feature to require a somewhat forceful press of the virtual Home button before it reacts.
That's excellent advice in general. When I was single, I used to eat loads of processed foods and microwave dinners... and I gained a lot of weight that way. At some point I started paying attention to what was in that food: tons of sugar and fats along with other crap. I kept eating the same dishes (pizza, Chinese and Indonesian dishes, meat veg and potatoes mostly) in the same quantities, but all of it home cooked from fresh ingredients from there on in. Made my own salad dressing and mayonnaise when I felt like it too (easy and takes only a few minutes). And I lost that weight, effortlessly.
Also, stay away from "light" products. In a lot of cases that just means they've added extra sugar instead of fat. Just as bad as the real deal, and tastes worse.
If I unknowingly buy a stolen car and the police find out, I lose the car.
I don't suddenly have to pay an additional fee for having the car for 6 months.
Different countries, different laws. If you unknowingly buy stolen goods in the Netherlands, you get to keep them.
If you're having to hire people through HR, here's a tip: check their filters. At one point I was doing technical interviews with job candidates who passed whatever filter HR applied, and I got access to the "reject bin" as well. In some cases I queried HR about those rejects, e.g. I saw a pretty good match who got rejected because he had no certificate for Agile (as a team member, not a scrum master or anything like that). Checking HR filters also means being very careful when specifying must-haves or nice-to-haves for a job opening: each of those can, by themselves, turn into a reason to reject a candidate. Don't be tempted to add a bunch of criteria to the list if they are not essential to the job or to functioning in the organisation.
Passing over better candidates in favor of people with autism is just as flawed. I applaud the general idea behind this, i.e. "Maybe we should look more carefully at different qualities that make people successful in different jobs. And perhaps that requires a different hiring strategy and management approach". But I can easily see this being carried out in the sloppy, lazy, half arsed manner that is so typical for HR. "Autists make good coders (according to Gartner or whatever), let's hire some of them". Or worse: "Statistically, a lot of good coders score high on the autism scale, so let's factor that in". It's called Human Resources but they like to turn everything into metrics, policy, and procedure. And my guess is that this policy will be dropped by the wayside as soon as middle management figures out that autists actually do need a very different management style and career path, one that doesn't fit their "best practises".
It's not about change but about ambiguity. Most muslims insist that the only valid version of the koran is in Arabic (and all copies I've seen will have the original Arabic printed next to the translation). That's for a good reason: the ambiguity in the original language is lost in translation. I have 2 copies, each with different (in many cases fundamentally different) interpretations of the original text.
IIRC Genesis was more akin to nano-engineering on a planetary scale, taking the target apart and reassembling it into preprogrammed forms, including life-forms. Not all that implausible in context... except of course the glaring deus ex machina that is the "Genesis energy", used to imbue life, and miraculously bringing Spock back from the dead.
The claim holds true. Neither the EU itself nor its organs such as the Human Rights commission, nor many of its member states like my own home country, treat free speech in the same way as the US do. Proposals to make criticism of ("insulting") religion punishable have been floated in Brussels. They haven't passed, but the fact that these proposals have even been raised and considered instead of the submitters being ran out of town on a rail in tar and feathers is telling. My own country still had laws against blasphemy and lese majeste; they are hardly ever enforced or even invoked, but they are there. Free speech in my country boils down to there being no censorship prior to publication. Post publication they can still prosecute you, and there's a whole bunch of stuff you're not allowed to say according to the law.
False positives? Or too many true positives? Some crazy guy might take a beefy drone, and add a semi auto shotgun, a gimbal, and facial recognition software (one that recognizes any face, like the auto focus feature in many cameras). Release a swarm of these in a crowded place and sit back to watch the mayhem. All this stuff is pretty much off the shelf already, and the hard part of assembling such a thing (integration) is well within the capability of a determined hobbyist these days. A manual version has already been done; a while back some idiot mounted a shotgun on an RC helicopter, check YT...
Why should we (I am a European too) accept these banks? Because we have for ages, since long before there was an EU. These banks may have to meet some requirements first, they may have to apply for banking licenses in the EU, but that's hardly different from the time before the EU either. Those bankers are crapping their paints, but for different reasons. As for the rest, there's no reason why the EU and the UK can't work out normal trade agreements, to mutual benefit.
"The EU" doesn't want to punish the UK, a few eurocrats in Brussels and guys like Drunker might want to in order to scare others into staying, but a couple of leaders like Merkel and Hollande have already sat them down hard.
Reminds me of the story of iRobot (or some other robot company). They wanted to make an industrial floor cleaning robot, but cleaning floors involves 3 passes (pouring wax, buffing, and something else). Not wanting to build 3 robots, they came up with one that did all 3 operations in one pass. When they showed off the robot at a trade show, people were much impressed. And then asked "could you take out that computer, and mount a handle so the janitor can push the machine around?". Turns out building supervisors didn't want robots, they wanted a janitor to clean and at the same time keep an eye on the place and make small repairs.
Read the short story "Manna" (free book). In the story, most countries evolve into a somewhat dystopian jobless society. People get a minimum income, most of that being provided in kind: government housing with free TV and a cafeteria serving palatable food. But no hopes of ever doing better, no opportunities for other activities of leisure, and after a while you can imagine those benefits will get cut: less meal choices, singles will now have to share their room. And you are not allowed to leave the compound anymore either.
It all comes down to the question Marx posed: who owns the means of production? Who owns the robots? That may well gravitate to private owners, while governments increasingly struggle to balance their budget and provide for a growing number of unemployed, while income from natural resources is running out fast. And then what? You'd kind of hope the megacorps will go under with us since they'd have no one left to sell to. But even if we end up owning the robots collectively, you're still likely to end up with a centrally planned, communist society, nominally designed for efficiency rather than comfort, like the world in "This Perfect Day"
True, you shouldn't go in with the expectation of easy riches, just make sure you get your bit when it does hit. About those options, here's a decent article on the subject. In a nutshell: make sure your options vest early and permanently (the latter is what screwed those FB people IIRC). Check the terms, and negotiate: in contrast to big companies where HR have nailed down renumeration and benefits to the last decimal in a rule book, startups have considerable leeway to meet your terms, especially if what you ask for doesn't translate into an immediate cash outlay for them.
I disagree. If you want to be paid well and on the dot, go work for a regular company. Working for a startup is a different proposition: it's stress, long hours, and a crap salary (some pay top dollar to attract top talent, but only if they are exceptionally well funded, and you do need to be a recognized top talent to get in. Most pay crap). It's not everyone's cup of tea, but some people thrive in such an environment. I've done it and it's great, but very demanding. I'd do it again but I'll probably be more selective next time round.
In a startup, what you're working towards with your co-workers is a big payday. And when that day arrives you do want your slice. If working for a startup is your thing, make sure you get the pay you need to get by, but do get those stock options. And make sure those options cannot easily be taken away. They often can, like so many potential multimillionaires at FaceBook found out when the Zuck fired them just before heir options vested.
I wouldn't worry: it's not the American taxpayer but Apple customers footing this bill. And they already charge more in Europe (taking VAT into account).
Anyway, if this ends up with Ireland receiving €11G and TTIP tanking as a result, I'd say that is an *awesome* win for Europe. As it stands, TTIP is already on shaky ground as more European countries get pissed of at the one-sided nature of the treaty and the fact that the USA is willing to concede only minor points. There's only a few people and companies that stand to gain from TTIP, the rest already made it abundantly clear they don't want that crap.
The real question is: what does the letter of the law say about tax deals being ruled unlawful? Tax law can be very funny like that, and what seems fair and logical in normal dealings with the government can be stood on its head as soon as taxes are involved.
"Call him? You really want to call the general to confirm these orders? At this late hour? Sure, go ahead. Here, use my phone, it's your neck". I thought that only worked in movies...
But seriously, in a large company like that I wouldn't expect such large transactions (or even small ones) to happen without prior authorization in the ERP system. The finance guys won't transfer even a handful of euros without having the beneficiary in the system or if there is no PO and invoice, or transfer order (or whatever these things are called). Email by itself should not be considered sufficient authorization, ever, certainly not an email that also contains the request and bank details.
They are completely different things. Suicide is a victimless crime (no, I'm not going to count the bereaved as a wronged party), homicide is not. Suicide is also legal in most countries, even if knowingly providing the means to commit suicide isn't. Lumping suicides and homicides together as "Americans killing Americans with guns" is semantically correct, but it's deceitful. Having said that, I do agree that the terrorist threat has been blown out of proportion.
They won't take away phones, but many countries have, or are considering, requiring customers to provide ID and be registered when buying prepaid SIMs. Which works great because no criminal or terrorist ever carries fake ID, and they never have any friends who can buy the SIMs for them.
I was pleasantly surprised at the way Mexico handled this. They started registering prepaid SIMs but stopped doing that after a few years, because studies showed that it had not helped prevent or prosecute any crime. Isn't that the way any such measures should be handled? Weigh the downsides against expected results, then actually evaluate those outcomes, and repeal the measure if it doesn't deliver.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the same false "choice" being suggested in Europe: we are offered a choice between *this* EU, with lack of democratic oversight, officials that are appointed rather than elected, and drunken would-be despots like Juncker in charge... or no EU, which means war (which was the thread made during several EU related referenda: vote against, and "the lights will go out")
This is the same thing: suggesting that a government with sweeping powers to spy on and control its citizens is the only alternative to anarchy and chaos, and that Snowden's actions threatened the stability brought about by the Panopticon.
Simple: ISPs would start throttling traffic when it hits x% of capacity (on a certain segment/ subnet). They can do so by applying some algorithm to allot bandwidth, e.g. people using a lot (at that moment) get cut 30%, people using less get cut 10%, and people using only a little are left alone. Your priority settings will determine which part of your traffic gets cut. If you set everything to high priority, everything will get cut equally. In other words, it's like QoS but it gets applied at the subscriber level rather than the network level.
Of course this idea will fail for a much simpler reason: giving subscribers control means that ISPs cannot double dip by selling preferential treatment to content providers with deep pockets.
Not sure how much respect avid Pokemon Go players really deserve. Players have been found chasing Pokemon on train tracks, we've had bus drivers playing the game while driving, and a few municipalities that these Pokemon seem to favor for some reason have been forced to put up traffic signs like these to warn motorists about pedestrians who might be paying less than adequate attention. (Sadly some people are "catching" these unusual road signs as well).
And I hate those buttons with a passion. Too often I pick up the device and accidentally tap one of those buttons; something that pretty much never happens with my iPhone's physical Home button (though moving the power button from the top to the side on the iPhone 6 was a mistake). Presumably/hopefully Apple will use the 3D touch feature to require a somewhat forceful press of the virtual Home button before it reacts.
That's excellent advice in general. When I was single, I used to eat loads of processed foods and microwave dinners... and I gained a lot of weight that way. At some point I started paying attention to what was in that food: tons of sugar and fats along with other crap. I kept eating the same dishes (pizza, Chinese and Indonesian dishes, meat veg and potatoes mostly) in the same quantities, but all of it home cooked from fresh ingredients from there on in. Made my own salad dressing and mayonnaise when I felt like it too (easy and takes only a few minutes). And I lost that weight, effortlessly.
Also, stay away from "light" products. In a lot of cases that just means they've added extra sugar instead of fat. Just as bad as the real deal, and tastes worse.
If I unknowingly buy a stolen car and the police find out, I lose the car. I don't suddenly have to pay an additional fee for having the car for 6 months.
Different countries, different laws. If you unknowingly buy stolen goods in the Netherlands, you get to keep them.
If you're having to hire people through HR, here's a tip: check their filters. At one point I was doing technical interviews with job candidates who passed whatever filter HR applied, and I got access to the "reject bin" as well. In some cases I queried HR about those rejects, e.g. I saw a pretty good match who got rejected because he had no certificate for Agile (as a team member, not a scrum master or anything like that). Checking HR filters also means being very careful when specifying must-haves or nice-to-haves for a job opening: each of those can, by themselves, turn into a reason to reject a candidate. Don't be tempted to add a bunch of criteria to the list if they are not essential to the job or to functioning in the organisation.
Passing over better candidates in favor of people with autism is just as flawed. I applaud the general idea behind this, i.e. "Maybe we should look more carefully at different qualities that make people successful in different jobs. And perhaps that requires a different hiring strategy and management approach". But I can easily see this being carried out in the sloppy, lazy, half arsed manner that is so typical for HR. "Autists make good coders (according to Gartner or whatever), let's hire some of them". Or worse: "Statistically, a lot of good coders score high on the autism scale, so let's factor that in". It's called Human Resources but they like to turn everything into metrics, policy, and procedure. And my guess is that this policy will be dropped by the wayside as soon as middle management figures out that autists actually do need a very different management style and career path, one that doesn't fit their "best practises".
It's not about change but about ambiguity. Most muslims insist that the only valid version of the koran is in Arabic (and all copies I've seen will have the original Arabic printed next to the translation). That's for a good reason: the ambiguity in the original language is lost in translation. I have 2 copies, each with different (in many cases fundamentally different) interpretations of the original text.
IIRC Genesis was more akin to nano-engineering on a planetary scale, taking the target apart and reassembling it into preprogrammed forms, including life-forms. Not all that implausible in context... except of course the glaring deus ex machina that is the "Genesis energy", used to imbue life, and miraculously bringing Spock back from the dead.
He's right. Early Arabic is a wonderfully ambiguous language; something that is a valuable asset to any religious text.
The claim holds true. Neither the EU itself nor its organs such as the Human Rights commission, nor many of its member states like my own home country, treat free speech in the same way as the US do. Proposals to make criticism of ("insulting") religion punishable have been floated in Brussels. They haven't passed, but the fact that these proposals have even been raised and considered instead of the submitters being ran out of town on a rail in tar and feathers is telling. My own country still had laws against blasphemy and lese majeste; they are hardly ever enforced or even invoked, but they are there. Free speech in my country boils down to there being no censorship prior to publication. Post publication they can still prosecute you, and there's a whole bunch of stuff you're not allowed to say according to the law.
False positives? Or too many true positives? Some crazy guy might take a beefy drone, and add a semi auto shotgun, a gimbal, and facial recognition software (one that recognizes any face, like the auto focus feature in many cameras). Release a swarm of these in a crowded place and sit back to watch the mayhem. All this stuff is pretty much off the shelf already, and the hard part of assembling such a thing (integration) is well within the capability of a determined hobbyist these days. A manual version has already been done; a while back some idiot mounted a shotgun on an RC helicopter, check YT...
Why should we (I am a European too) accept these banks? Because we have for ages, since long before there was an EU. These banks may have to meet some requirements first, they may have to apply for banking licenses in the EU, but that's hardly different from the time before the EU either. Those bankers are crapping their paints, but for different reasons. As for the rest, there's no reason why the EU and the UK can't work out normal trade agreements, to mutual benefit.
"The EU" doesn't want to punish the UK, a few eurocrats in Brussels and guys like Drunker might want to in order to scare others into staying, but a couple of leaders like Merkel and Hollande have already sat them down hard.
Reminds me of the story of iRobot (or some other robot company). They wanted to make an industrial floor cleaning robot, but cleaning floors involves 3 passes (pouring wax, buffing, and something else). Not wanting to build 3 robots, they came up with one that did all 3 operations in one pass. When they showed off the robot at a trade show, people were much impressed. And then asked "could you take out that computer, and mount a handle so the janitor can push the machine around?". Turns out building supervisors didn't want robots, they wanted a janitor to clean and at the same time keep an eye on the place and make small repairs.
Read the short story "Manna" (free book). In the story, most countries evolve into a somewhat dystopian jobless society. People get a minimum income, most of that being provided in kind: government housing with free TV and a cafeteria serving palatable food. But no hopes of ever doing better, no opportunities for other activities of leisure, and after a while you can imagine those benefits will get cut: less meal choices, singles will now have to share their room. And you are not allowed to leave the compound anymore either.
It all comes down to the question Marx posed: who owns the means of production? Who owns the robots? That may well gravitate to private owners, while governments increasingly struggle to balance their budget and provide for a growing number of unemployed, while income from natural resources is running out fast. And then what? You'd kind of hope the megacorps will go under with us since they'd have no one left to sell to. But even if we end up owning the robots collectively, you're still likely to end up with a centrally planned, communist society, nominally designed for efficiency rather than comfort, like the world in "This Perfect Day"
I swear I read that as "Creator calls out YouTube for demonising videos" the first time.
True, you shouldn't go in with the expectation of easy riches, just make sure you get your bit when it does hit. About those options, here's a decent article on the subject. In a nutshell: make sure your options vest early and permanently (the latter is what screwed those FB people IIRC). Check the terms, and negotiate: in contrast to big companies where HR have nailed down renumeration and benefits to the last decimal in a rule book, startups have considerable leeway to meet your terms, especially if what you ask for doesn't translate into an immediate cash outlay for them.
I disagree. If you want to be paid well and on the dot, go work for a regular company. Working for a startup is a different proposition: it's stress, long hours, and a crap salary (some pay top dollar to attract top talent, but only if they are exceptionally well funded, and you do need to be a recognized top talent to get in. Most pay crap). It's not everyone's cup of tea, but some people thrive in such an environment. I've done it and it's great, but very demanding. I'd do it again but I'll probably be more selective next time round.
In a startup, what you're working towards with your co-workers is a big payday. And when that day arrives you do want your slice. If working for a startup is your thing, make sure you get the pay you need to get by, but do get those stock options. And make sure those options cannot easily be taken away. They often can, like so many potential multimillionaires at FaceBook found out when the Zuck fired them just before heir options vested.
I wouldn't worry: it's not the American taxpayer but Apple customers footing this bill. And they already charge more in Europe (taking VAT into account).
Anyway, if this ends up with Ireland receiving €11G and TTIP tanking as a result, I'd say that is an *awesome* win for Europe. As it stands, TTIP is already on shaky ground as more European countries get pissed of at the one-sided nature of the treaty and the fact that the USA is willing to concede only minor points. There's only a few people and companies that stand to gain from TTIP, the rest already made it abundantly clear they don't want that crap.
The real question is: what does the letter of the law say about tax deals being ruled unlawful? Tax law can be very funny like that, and what seems fair and logical in normal dealings with the government can be stood on its head as soon as taxes are involved.
"Call him? You really want to call the general to confirm these orders? At this late hour? Sure, go ahead. Here, use my phone, it's your neck". I thought that only worked in movies...
But seriously, in a large company like that I wouldn't expect such large transactions (or even small ones) to happen without prior authorization in the ERP system. The finance guys won't transfer even a handful of euros without having the beneficiary in the system or if there is no PO and invoice, or transfer order (or whatever these things are called). Email by itself should not be considered sufficient authorization, ever, certainly not an email that also contains the request and bank details.
They are completely different things. Suicide is a victimless crime (no, I'm not going to count the bereaved as a wronged party), homicide is not. Suicide is also legal in most countries, even if knowingly providing the means to commit suicide isn't. Lumping suicides and homicides together as "Americans killing Americans with guns" is semantically correct, but it's deceitful. Having said that, I do agree that the terrorist threat has been blown out of proportion.
They won't take away phones, but many countries have, or are considering, requiring customers to provide ID and be registered when buying prepaid SIMs. Which works great because no criminal or terrorist ever carries fake ID, and they never have any friends who can buy the SIMs for them.
I was pleasantly surprised at the way Mexico handled this. They started registering prepaid SIMs but stopped doing that after a few years, because studies showed that it had not helped prevent or prosecute any crime. Isn't that the way any such measures should be handled? Weigh the downsides against expected results, then actually evaluate those outcomes, and repeal the measure if it doesn't deliver.