I think you misspelled "fewer cars." In most places, building more roads is not an option (at any cost). Amen. I think the GP is smoking crack. It wouldn't be physically possible to build more roads in Birmingham without invoking a 5th dimension (they have already expanded into the 3rd, with the M6 being elevated). You could, I guess, demolish some of the buildings to make new roads, but the more buildings you demolish the less people will need to use the roads to get there. Though some people would say that the more of Birmingham demolished the better...
Well of course, didn't you know? Microsoft is the universe's largest and most accessible source of evil! Almost all evil can be traced back to Redmond, VA if you look hard enough.
Most of the rest of the extant evil originates in the A&R divisions of major record labels, with a smaller but significant portion directly attributable to Celine Dion.
Recent surveys suggest that as many as one in four Britons have been affected by [ID fraud]. In 2007 more than 185,000 cases of identity theft were identified by Cifas, the UK's fraud prevention service
WTF? One in four? are you insane? that would be 15 million people. Does that really seem likely? Anecdotally I know substantialy more than four people and *none* of them have had their identity stolen. They are still the same people I used to know (although with ID theft the way it is who can tell?).
OK, Cifas (whoever they are) pursued 185k cases last year. There are 65M people in the uk. 65,000,000 - 185,000 = 65,000,000 (rounded up). That is not 25%, more like 0.025%. If they can only identify 0.1% of the fraud what are they actually doing? I know the gubment wastes money, but that is crazy.
In 2008, however, it's hot Web 2.0 startups like Flickr and MySpace that can offer those kinds of perks and incentives. No, in 2004 Flickr and MySpace were hot Web 2.0 startups. Now they are owned by multi-million dollar corporations and I'm pretty sure their secretaries aren't getting millions of stock options.
Also, Web 2.0? wtf is that about? Didn't that buzzword die like two years ago? Is this publication for real?
If you don't advertise no-one knows about your product or service. How would you get your car fixed without advertising? Walk round randomly asking people until you find a mechanic? How would you know if he was screwing you without getting a price from a competitor? That's a second person you'd have to try and find by word of mouth. This may take a while.
I'm afraid advertising is a fundamental part of any economy in which labour is divided. Except one in which the state provides everything. And I hear that's not popular in certain parts.
Having said that, it does need restraint and some standards, expecially in this day and age when it's very cheap to reach a very large number of people (eg spam). Another problem is that what is acceptable in one country is not acceptable in others. What is taken as normal in, for example, the US (bad mouthing competitors) or France (breasts) would not be acceptable in the UK and we have strict trading standards laws to enforce that. Unfortunately you can't enforce them on the web.
It is ironic that most people here who hate marketing don't sign their own checks. That's what always makes me laugh. How do they think their employer gets the money to pay their wages? (those in academia and public service excepted of course)
Ah yes but there are two sets of conflicting rules. If you break the cartel laws you get a slap on the wrist and a token fine: if you break the stock market rules you get flogged naked along wall st, then de-listed and permanently blackballed. I think it's obvious which route they *really* want you to take...
When people say, "Google just does advertising," what they're really saying is, "what has Google done for me this week that I didn't know about last week." No, what they're saying is that the only way Google makes hard cash is by selling advertising space. Nothing on your list makes them any money.
Of course making money isn't the most important thing in life. Unless you're a publicly listed company with shareholders to please. Which they are.
Now they're public it's inevitable that Sergei and Larry's little projects are going to become vehicles to sell more ad space. The fact that they make life slightly more interesting to the rest of us is irrelevant to (most of) their shareholders.
As I recall it was mainly invented because galaxies spin a lot faster than we think they should. But in most of science if the observation doesn't match your theory, you change your theory, not the observation.
Experimental methods for confirming dark matter seem to have failed (WIMPS) so we're just left with observations that don't match our theory. Go figure.
Having said that, Dark matter is at least slightly more plausible than dark energy, and string theory makes them both look like fundamental tenets of physics (I still can't believe that so many otherwise bright people are allowed to waste their life, and good research grants, on something that is so clearly hokum).
woah.
perhaps the previous generation realized how horrible government run education and health-care systems are? Clearly your family never had problems paying for your health care then. Upper middle class? Perhaps white? Male? Only child?
Yes, my employer takes the brunt of the bill, but it's part of my incentive package, and my salary is lower than it might be Well duh, that's how "free" health care works. The employer pays a levy (National Insurance in the UK) to fund the health system. The employee also pays a bit but it's small compared to what the employer pays (it's a capped amount that is equivalent to about 1-3% of the total salary for most people. The employer pays about 5%). Of course as it's state mandated you don't need to worry about employers withdrawing it or losing it if you move jobs. Also as the health system is not making a profit and is "buying in bulk" the healthcare costs are much lower than in the US so the proportion of your "real" salary going towards it is much lower.
don't fool yourself into thinking you aren't paying it with your 50% income tax and whatever ridiculous VAT you pay Check your figures. Income tax is currently 22% and coming down to 20% next month. There are also no state or city income taxes, though there is a non-income related local council tax which is what most people are complaining about when they moan about taxes.
VAT is 17.5%, which is higher than most US sales taxes but there is no state income tax.
The GGP poster was whinging about NHS dentists, which is the moan a la mode at the moment. This particular problem was caused by the present government (in for 11 years) looking across the water and deciding that the US was a paragon of healthcare goodness and deciding to emulate it by letting all the dentists go private. Of course they all realised that if they did that simultaneously they could quadruple their fees and still have customers, as there was no free alternative. So that's what they did. A great example of the invisible hand of the free market at work, making things better for all.
The UK is no shangri-la but it's nice to know that when you fall ill you won't have to rely on some health insurance guy's bonus sheet to find out whether you get fixed or not.
Are there no protests about this sort of thing in the UK? Do the people not care? Or are they already so afraid of being singled out that they'd rather stay silent? If you'd RTFA you would have seen that that is the point of the story.
As an aside, this and most other stories of this ilk you read on slashdot are about London. London != the UK. The are only 8m people in London, the other 55 million of us live our daily lives quietly estatic that we don't have to worry about Oyster Cards or Congestion Charges, tube stations or jellied eels; it's unlikely our local police force will shoot us on the way to work and speed cameras are the only things likely to surveil us; People don't push us out of the way in the street and there is no one selling the Evening Standard. Yes, Not London is actually fairly nice. Except for the weather.
I wonder where they got the 17 million stat from? Is that the number of Oyster cards ever issued? Given that there are only 8 million people in the whole of Greater London (which is the only city the oyster card exists) and only some of them (i've no idea how many but I'd guess about 50%) use public transport that seems a touch high to be current users.
Possible, just insanely expensive. From the wiki wallah:
O'Neill's reference design... consists of two counter-rotating cylinders each two miles (3 km) in radius, and twenty miles (30 km) long
I'm not going to do the maths, but you can imagine how much metal goes into a 3x20 mile long cylinder. Now imagine cutting that up into 20x5 metre sections and launching it into space. It might take a while.
I think we need to invent smelting in space before we can try these things, not to mention doing some proper research into closed ecosystems.
What is so expensive about cotton? Is it the amount for land used? Is it because of transportation costs? Nothing is particularly expensive about cotton, but to compete in the world market they have to sell it cheaper that it's produced in, say, Benin. Obviously they can't do it that in the US (baseline costs are just too high), so they get subsidies that mean they sell it cheaper than the production cost.
Maybe, the cotton growers need to enact some serious business reforms. Well that's what everyone else says, but the cotton farmers and their elected representatives disagree.
Slashdot Mirror
Pointing out my obvious grammatical errors doesn't make you a big man. Nor does it invalidate my point.
PS Have you ever noticed how close E is to W on the keyboard?
It's true, anyone who disagrees with slash-think is astroturfing. TOW THE PARTY LINE GODDAMN YOU! CONFORM HARDER!
Great, but who puts either Vista or XP on a proliant server?
Well of course, didn't you know? Microsoft is the universe's largest and most accessible source of evil! Almost all evil can be traced back to Redmond, VA if you look hard enough.
Most of the rest of the extant evil originates in the A&R divisions of major record labels, with a smaller but significant portion directly attributable to Celine Dion.
WTF? One in four? are you insane? that would be 15 million people. Does that really seem likely? Anecdotally I know substantialy more than four people and *none* of them have had their identity stolen. They are still the same people I used to know (although with ID theft the way it is who can tell?).
OK, Cifas (whoever they are) pursued 185k cases last year. There are 65M people in the uk. 65,000,000 - 185,000 = 65,000,000 (rounded up). That is not 25%, more like 0.025%. If they can only identify 0.1% of the fraud what are they actually doing? I know the gubment wastes money, but that is crazy.
Also, Web 2.0? wtf is that about? Didn't that buzzword die like two years ago? Is this publication for real?
So why does everyone keep using it?
If you don't advertise no-one knows about your product or service. How would you get your car fixed without advertising? Walk round randomly asking people until you find a mechanic? How would you know if he was screwing you without getting a price from a competitor? That's a second person you'd have to try and find by word of mouth. This may take a while.
I'm afraid advertising is a fundamental part of any economy in which labour is divided. Except one in which the state provides everything. And I hear that's not popular in certain parts.
Having said that, it does need restraint and some standards, expecially in this day and age when it's very cheap to reach a very large number of people (eg spam). Another problem is that what is acceptable in one country is not acceptable in others. What is taken as normal in, for example, the US (bad mouthing competitors) or France (breasts) would not be acceptable in the UK and we have strict trading standards laws to enforce that. Unfortunately you can't enforce them on the web.
Ah yes but there are two sets of conflicting rules. If you break the cartel laws you get a slap on the wrist and a token fine: if you break the stock market rules you get flogged naked along wall st, then de-listed and permanently blackballed. I think it's obvious which route they *really* want you to take...
Go check a map. Iceland is close to Amsterdam in the same way Anchorage is close to New York.
Of course making money isn't the most important thing in life. Unless you're a publicly listed company with shareholders to please. Which they are.
Now they're public it's inevitable that Sergei and Larry's little projects are going to become vehicles to sell more ad space. The fact that they make life slightly more interesting to the rest of us is irrelevant to (most of) their shareholders.
No, you need to lose the Else from that stmt...
Experimental methods for confirming dark matter seem to have failed (WIMPS) so we're just left with observations that don't match our theory. Go figure.
Having said that, Dark matter is at least slightly more plausible than dark energy, and string theory makes them both look like fundamental tenets of physics (I still can't believe that so many otherwise bright people are allowed to waste their life, and good research grants, on something that is so clearly hokum).
Any sane person would not be using fortran at all...
The GGP poster was whinging about NHS dentists, which is the moan a la mode at the moment. This particular problem was caused by the present government (in for 11 years) looking across the water and deciding that the US was a paragon of healthcare goodness and deciding to emulate it by letting all the dentists go private. Of course they all realised that if they did that simultaneously they could quadruple their fees and still have customers, as there was no free alternative. So that's what they did. A great example of the invisible hand of the free market at work, making things better for all.
The UK is no shangri-la but it's nice to know that when you fall ill you won't have to rely on some health insurance guy's bonus sheet to find out whether you get fixed or not.
you got beer on my screen
As an aside, this and most other stories of this ilk you read on slashdot are about London. London != the UK. The are only 8m people in London, the other 55 million of us live our daily lives quietly estatic that we don't have to worry about Oyster Cards or Congestion Charges, tube stations or jellied eels; it's unlikely our local police force will shoot us on the way to work and speed cameras are the only things likely to surveil us; People don't push us out of the way in the street and there is no one selling the Evening Standard. Yes, Not London is actually fairly nice. Except for the weather.
I wonder where they got the 17 million stat from? Is that the number of Oyster cards ever issued? Given that there are only 8 million people in the whole of Greater London (which is the only city the oyster card exists) and only some of them (i've no idea how many but I'd guess about 50%) use public transport that seems a touch high to be current users.
I'm not going to do the maths, but you can imagine how much metal goes into a 3x20 mile long cylinder. Now imagine cutting that up into 20x5 metre sections and launching it into space. It might take a while.
I think we need to invent smelting in space before we can try these things, not to mention doing some proper research into closed ecosystems.
global: involving the entire earth; not limited or provincial in scope
monopoly: A situation in which a single company owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service
As for the other items, READ A BOOK! Indeed. I can recommend:yeah, but I couldn't think of the correct phrase and that sounds good ;)