The problem is it takes too much effort to steal an election if you use paper, duh!
Only under some circumstances. If, as the British government has done, you actively push the idea of postal voting, and get your party activists to distribute, collect and 'help' people complete their voting forms, then it becomes a lot easier. The only problem is that they got rumbled last time they tried this, and there are a lot of irritating people now looking out for any clear discrepancies in postal voting behaviour.
Happily, the introduction of opaque and arbitrary electronic counting systems seems to be making it easier to mask such anomalies.
How the hell can any school know so little about children but have them for so long..
It's much the same in the UK, and I'll bet there's the dank and clammy hand of the insurance industry behind this. To be fair, schools are probably wistfully nostalgic of the days when they could spend money on books and stuff, rather than having to shell out for lawyers every time some chancer with a bruised kid hires a shyster. This sort of initiative is probabably a desperate attempt to reclaim those halcyon days, regardless of how ridiculous it looks. They'll lose, naturally, but democracy seems to involve letting insurance companies dictate the rules of acceptable behaviour. In theory, this should be left to legislators, but they've got less money and don't seem able to hire the talent.
They are related to the dog simply because they are dog cells (and most dogs are genetically very similar), they just happen to be cancerous, transmissible and genetically identical dog cells. Tumour cells are usually aberrant (mutant) cells from the host animal that don't differentiate (i.e. turn into the right sort of cells for the tissue they are in) and don't regulate their division (i.e. they multiply without restraint). That's what makes them cancerous. And because most of them don't look anything special to the immune system, they don't get rejected.
Contagious cancers aren't a new idea, but the transmission methods aren't very clear. This research clarifies an important element of the process that will be useful in defining healthcare strategies for both animals and humans. Happily, health organizations are well used to managing such threats, and once sex has joined smoking as an unacceptable activity, we'll wonder what all the fuss was about.
Collaboration is when people work on the same project. Email allows people to work on the same project from lots of different places, using whatever software they choose that can send email. The telephone is much the same.
Computer-based collaboration solutions are a supposed step up, providing nice rich environments, and theoretically removing some of the burden on other systems. However, they don't come ready-to-roll. They come as a box of tools, each of which needs configuring. Now, because users do not know what this stuff is supposed to do, or even that it exists, IT departments and/or vendors who get appointed to deploy the stuff don't get much in the way of a workable list of requirements.
Before long, you either have a dog's dinner or a white elephant. As exemplified by a solution like Lotus Notes which often ends up being used exclusively as an email client, even though email isn't its strong point.
That said, there are lots examples of successful collaborative solutions. Slashdot is collaborative, flickr is collaborative, Wikipedia is collaborative, CVS is collaborative. They are all very successful. So, I don't think it's the concept, the software or the learning curve that makes for failure. It's not the proprietaryness of them either. In fact I have seen a commercial solution work well - but it did need literally months of training and internal marketing, and was developed with extensive input from representatives from each working group and department.
My view is that failure is made simply because these solutions are imposed on a workforces that didn't ask for them by managements that, although they may know how the software works, have no good idea of how their employees work, and not much interest in finding out.
This is the third time that I know of that they've tried this Belarussian provision. The House of Lords (the 'revising' chamber, that used to be stuffed to the rafters with accidents of birth and which is now stuffed to the rafters with accidents of money) have tried to insist a 'sunset' clause - being that, after a certain time, any such legislation automatically lapses, without success.
But seeing as the Civil Contingencies Act provides for the current Prime Minister to (a) declare a state of emergency and (b) once declared, amend any law he likes e.g. any requirement for democratic elections, this would seem redundant, unless it's the Chancellor that wants to be President for Life.
Happily, living in the UK means that I can make such claims without fear of
The quickest start would be to go to the information commissioner's website (http://www.esd.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/ and see if your employer is registered to process employee data.
Chances are they might be. If they're not, then you've got them. Failing that, they should (though it is not a legal requirement) comply with the codes of practice (http://tinyurl.com/dlwqr [www.ico.gov.uk]). The first paragraph of which points out that guidance on targeted surveillance of employees is 'forthcoming', so you might have to wait a bit if that's what you're worried about.
If you're really impatient, you could report them to the Information Commissioner anyway. This is quite simple, and, providing you can prove (a) it is their intention to use captured images illicitly (b) pictures of you in an office constitute significant personal information and (c) that the cameras aren't be used for monitoring the 'security of the premises' or for 'public and employee safety', it would seem you've got a cast-iron case.
In the end, it is at times absolutely necessary that complete strangers can contact us without prior warning. If we don't have email for this role, then we need something similar to replace it.
I have a front door.
OK. The UK Government are going to build a huge National Identity Register, with around 50 things on it, from Social Security Numbers to biometrics (Yes, that's right. Everything in one place.)
To pay for this, they're going to compel passport applicants to buy a special ID card, too, which will be quite expensive.
The reason this is worrying is that the UK Government has a bad record on databases (it recently had at least £15m nicked because 'hackers' got hold of the personal details of several thousand civil servants, which were then used to, among other things, authorize welfare payments to nefarious parties.)
The flaw in your argument is that you're assuming that, should the entry in the National Register be changed by accident or otherwise, you will be able to prove it's wrong. As the card is merely a reflection of the register, and outside Government control most of the time, I reckon they'll believe the register over the card every time and, because Everything's in the same place, you won't even be able to wave a mitigating fuel bill (which is the current Identity Document of choice in the UK).
And topical, too. I hadn't considered the nature of evolution for upwards of a week, and it is important to keep these things in the forefront of public consciousness. Even here in the UK, without constant scrutiny of the urgent details of the comparatively recent Darwinian theory of Evolution, buses wouldn't run, power plants would fall quiet and unprovoked creationists would pray peacefully.
The
Highway Code (a bunch of guidelines, some of which have legal backing) suggest that motorists give way to them, but there doesn't seem to be any specific offence that someone who fails to let an emergency vehicle pass can be charged with.
An interesting, if iffy, article. Bottom line is that conventional fuels are supposedly running out, and governments of all persuasions are trying to find ways of making money out of it before supply constraints naturally raise the price.
A cynic might suggest that the proclaimed scarcity of fuel, a lack of investment in alternatives and a proposal to raise fuel taxes are somehow related.
The Economist fails to point out the reason for the blockade of domestic oil depots in the UK, or that its major consequence was the abandonment of the UK's fuel 'escalator' tax (a small but steadily rising tax on petrol) - the very thing it proposes as a solution to rising demand.
If you really don't want to be beholden to manipulative and exploitative governments, temperamental cartels and environmentally-dubious multinationals, then buy a push-bike and some warm clothes.
"The reason why this scrambling stuff works is that for the most part it maintains the graphic 'shape' of the words. We read words and phases not by looking at the letters but for recongnising the shape of the words."
Up to a point. There's an abstract from June this year that concludes that "we never learn to see a word as a feature".
This might help explain why character-based (non-alphabetical) written languages have survived longer than any of those with alphabets.
"..., you have to be wearing this for that to work etc. Then there's the batteries, washing, changes in fashion, worn out clothing etc."
Assuming a 'thin-client' model, this mightn't be a problem. Energy could be supplied ambiently (thermal or kinetic), washing can be done using supercritical CO2, fashion is probably irrelevant to the target market and well-built clothing typically has a lifespan greater or equal to 5 years in normal use.
What you haven't taken into account is the inevitability of moth-borne DoS attacks.
However, overall, the effect will be beneficial to insurance industry and so, despite the problems, wearable computing for the masses is clearly both economically and morally viable.
What currency is this tenner in?
I'm not sure why DoubleClick is being pursued here. They are accused of participating in a 'diabolical' scheme to hoodwink the unwary, the evidence cited being their claim that their software can match appropriate ads to particular user types.
DoubleClick's claims are actually a bit vague. In my experience, they have difficulty narrowing things down to a specific continent. They can, however, limit the number of times an ad is sent to a specific IP address, and 'rotate' a bunch of ads so that they're shown preferentially, according to which get the best click-through rates.
However, DoubleClick rarely see any of the ads that go through their system, especially now they seem to have outsourced their ad-trafficking units to other firms, and certainly don't censor them (that's left to the publishers).
DART (their trafficking system) allows both advertisers and publishers to set up ad campaigns themselves - often only the advertiser (or their agent) and the publisher (or their network) will ever see an ad before it's published. And because everythings 'dynamic', advertisers can change ads after publishers have 'approved' them (though the latest version of DART does allow publishers to prevent this).
I think this is a bit like if I sued my ISP for forwarding all the spam I get.
Which might be worth bearing in mind if this class action succeeds.
I'm sure it is. Us British are all for hoaxes. Although the British Annual Hoax Shipping Date is traditionally April 1st, Microsoft equally traditionally maintains a broad margin on shipping dates.
As the Guardian article states, they're not allowed (Data Protection Act) to keep the pictures/data of anyone who's not immediately identified as a known criminal.
However, at the same time, the UK government is putting together special laws to force ISPs to retain all user data for up to six years - getting round the Data Protection Act via ISP T&Cs.
If they were really going to start some 1984 nonsense, they'd need to change the local laws, first. Does London have bye-laws?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is it takes too much effort to steal an election if you use paper, duh!
Only under some circumstances. If, as the British government has done, you actively push the idea of postal voting, and get your party activists to distribute, collect and 'help' people complete their voting forms, then it becomes a lot easier. The only problem is that they got rumbled last time they tried this, and there are a lot of irritating people now looking out for any clear discrepancies in postal voting behaviour.
Happily, the introduction of opaque and arbitrary electronic counting systems seems to be making it easier to mask such anomalies.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/5357990 .stm
How the hell can any school know so little about children but have them for so long..
It's much the same in the UK, and I'll bet there's the dank and clammy hand of the insurance industry behind this. To be fair, schools are probably wistfully nostalgic of the days when they could spend money on books and stuff, rather than having to shell out for lawyers every time some chancer with a bruised kid hires a shyster. This sort of initiative is probabably a desperate attempt to reclaim those halcyon days, regardless of how ridiculous it looks. They'll lose, naturally, but democracy seems to involve letting insurance companies dictate the rules of acceptable behaviour. In theory, this should be left to legislators, but they've got less money and don't seem able to hire the talent.
Folk with unhappy childhoods crave consistency. Sequels (usually) provide consistency. The piece is run on a site for older, primarily US. gamers.
Next story: Tortoises run slowly.
Contagious cancers aren't a new idea, but the transmission methods aren't very clear. This research clarifies an important element of the process that will be useful in defining healthcare strategies for both animals and humans. Happily, health organizations are well used to managing such threats, and once sex has joined smoking as an unacceptable activity, we'll wonder what all the fuss was about.
Collaboration is when people work on the same project. Email allows people to work on the same project from lots of different places, using whatever software they choose that can send email. The telephone is much the same.
Computer-based collaboration solutions are a supposed step up, providing nice rich environments, and theoretically removing some of the burden on other systems. However, they don't come ready-to-roll. They come as a box of tools, each of which needs configuring. Now, because users do not know what this stuff is supposed to do, or even that it exists, IT departments and/or vendors who get appointed to deploy the stuff don't get much in the way of a workable list of requirements.
Before long, you either have a dog's dinner or a white elephant. As exemplified by a solution like Lotus Notes which often ends up being used exclusively as an email client, even though email isn't its strong point.
That said, there are lots examples of successful collaborative solutions. Slashdot is collaborative, flickr is collaborative, Wikipedia is collaborative, CVS is collaborative. They are all very successful. So, I don't think it's the concept, the software or the learning curve that makes for failure. It's not the proprietaryness of them either. In fact I have seen a commercial solution work well - but it did need literally months of training and internal marketing, and was developed with extensive input from representatives from each working group and department.
My view is that failure is made simply because these solutions are imposed on a workforces that didn't ask for them by managements that, although they may know how the software works, have no good idea of how their employees work, and not much interest in finding out.
But seeing as the Civil Contingencies Act provides for the current Prime Minister to (a) declare a state of emergency and (b) once declared, amend any law he likes e.g. any requirement for democratic elections, this would seem redundant, unless it's the Chancellor that wants to be President for Life.
Happily, living in the UK means that I can make such claims without fear of
Except that, unlike us buttoned-up Brits, when Australians go on strike they take offence if anyone notices.
The quickest start would be to go to the information commissioner's website (http://www.esd.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/ and see if your employer is registered to process employee data. Chances are they might be. If they're not, then you've got them. Failing that, they should (though it is not a legal requirement) comply with the codes of practice (http://tinyurl.com/dlwqr [www.ico.gov.uk]). The first paragraph of which points out that guidance on targeted surveillance of employees is 'forthcoming', so you might have to wait a bit if that's what you're worried about. If you're really impatient, you could report them to the Information Commissioner anyway. This is quite simple, and, providing you can prove (a) it is their intention to use captured images illicitly (b) pictures of you in an office constitute significant personal information and (c) that the cameras aren't be used for monitoring the 'security of the premises' or for 'public and employee safety', it would seem you've got a cast-iron case.
In the end, it is at times absolutely necessary that complete strangers can contact us without prior warning. If we don't have email for this role, then we need something similar to replace it. I have a front door.
OK. The UK Government are going to build a huge National Identity Register, with around 50 things on it, from Social Security Numbers to biometrics (Yes, that's right. Everything in one place.)
To pay for this, they're going to compel passport applicants to buy a special ID card, too, which will be quite expensive.
The reason this is worrying is that the UK Government has a bad record on databases (it recently had at least £15m nicked because 'hackers' got hold of the personal details of several thousand civil servants, which were then used to, among other things, authorize welfare payments to nefarious parties.)
The flaw in your argument is that you're assuming that, should the entry in the National Register be changed by accident or otherwise, you will be able to prove it's wrong. As the card is merely a reflection of the register, and outside Government control most of the time, I reckon they'll believe the register over the card every time and, because Everything's in the same place, you won't even be able to wave a mitigating fuel bill (which is the current Identity Document of choice in the UK).
And topical, too. I hadn't considered the nature of evolution for upwards of a week, and it is important to keep these things in the forefront of public consciousness. Even here in the UK, without constant scrutiny of the urgent details of the comparatively recent Darwinian theory of Evolution, buses wouldn't run, power plants would fall quiet and unprovoked creationists would pray peacefully.
The Highway Code (a bunch of guidelines, some of which have legal backing) suggest that motorists give way to them, but there doesn't seem to be any specific offence that someone who fails to let an emergency vehicle pass can be charged with.
A cynic might suggest that the proclaimed scarcity of fuel, a lack of investment in alternatives and a proposal to raise fuel taxes are somehow related.
The Economist fails to point out the reason for the blockade of domestic oil depots in the UK, or that its major consequence was the abandonment of the UK's fuel 'escalator' tax (a small but steadily rising tax on petrol) - the very thing it proposes as a solution to rising demand.
If you really don't want to be beholden to manipulative and exploitative governments, temperamental cartels and environmentally-dubious multinationals, then buy a push-bike and some warm clothes.
Up to a point. There's an abstract from June this year that concludes that "we never learn to see a word as a feature".
This might help explain why character-based (non-alphabetical) written languages have survived longer than any of those with alphabets.
"..., you have to be wearing this for that to work etc. Then there's the batteries, washing, changes in fashion, worn out clothing etc." Assuming a 'thin-client' model, this mightn't be a problem. Energy could be supplied ambiently (thermal or kinetic), washing can be done using supercritical CO2, fashion is probably irrelevant to the target market and well-built clothing typically has a lifespan greater or equal to 5 years in normal use. What you haven't taken into account is the inevitability of moth-borne DoS attacks. However, overall, the effect will be beneficial to insurance industry and so, despite the problems, wearable computing for the masses is clearly both economically and morally viable. What currency is this tenner in?
I'm not sure why DoubleClick is being pursued here. They are accused of participating in a 'diabolical' scheme to hoodwink the unwary, the evidence cited being their claim that their software can match appropriate ads to particular user types. DoubleClick's claims are actually a bit vague. In my experience, they have difficulty narrowing things down to a specific continent. They can, however, limit the number of times an ad is sent to a specific IP address, and 'rotate' a bunch of ads so that they're shown preferentially, according to which get the best click-through rates. However, DoubleClick rarely see any of the ads that go through their system, especially now they seem to have outsourced their ad-trafficking units to other firms, and certainly don't censor them (that's left to the publishers). DART (their trafficking system) allows both advertisers and publishers to set up ad campaigns themselves - often only the advertiser (or their agent) and the publisher (or their network) will ever see an ad before it's published. And because everythings 'dynamic', advertisers can change ads after publishers have 'approved' them (though the latest version of DART does allow publishers to prevent this). I think this is a bit like if I sued my ISP for forwarding all the spam I get. Which might be worth bearing in mind if this class action succeeds.
I'm sure it is. Us British are all for hoaxes. Although the British Annual Hoax Shipping Date is traditionally April 1st, Microsoft equally traditionally maintains a broad margin on shipping dates.
However, at the same time, the UK government is putting together special laws to force ISPs to retain all user data for up to six years - getting round the Data Protection Act via ISP T&Cs.
If they were really going to start some 1984 nonsense, they'd need to change the local laws, first. Does London have bye-laws?