For those who don't know, the guide to school in America and England:
America - England
Math - Maths Science - Sciences Art - Arts Gym - Gyms Lunch - Lunches Recess - Recesses Detention - Detentions
Nobody said our rules had to make sense. The whole point of english is that the exception makes the rule. If the US has a problem with this, they should have learn French instead:)
All this is is stupid admins doing stupid things story and those are dime a dozen.
I'll say. I have been looking at using memcached in conjunction with the mod_auth memcache module. I know it exists and have done very cursory investigation. I do not have a working prototype yet but I do know my predecessor built one a year or so ago. My very cursory glance already made it startlingly clear that this would be an issue, any competent sysadmin really should have spotted the same thing.
Firstly, if you want to be taken seriously you need to learn about paragraphs. Reading a big block of text hurts most peoples eyes.
Secondly, this website is not about saving the cost of a stamp. It is about making it trivially easy to send an email to your MP over an issue the website organisers think matters. If the issue is actually important to someone and their MP has a say in it, then chances are they will find a way to make their MP listen. This website is about making it so easy to contact your MP that you will contact them regardless of how important it is just because it is so easy.
This is probably why the MP cant be arsed to read these emails. Most people using this site probably have no idea who their MP is, they probably didn't even vote. The site makes it easy to lookup who your MP is by postcode and them send him an email without you actually caring enough about the issue at hand to do this if it was not so easy. There area great many things that matter to me but I am not actually bothered about many of them enough to write to my MP since I know his time is limited.
If they changed the site so it allowed you to look up you MP then forced you to type your own email I would not have such an issue with it. But this site even has a stock email for you to send so it requires almost no thought at all to send. The site also does not at any time ask you to verify you are registered to vote or even of voting age. A 14 year old child can use this to email a coherent letter to his MP that is indistinguishable from a letter of a legitimate constituent.
I also note that the site itself has a decidedly left wing bias. All the current campaigns are things I vaguely agree with, but I have a feeling this particular MP (being a Conservative) does not give two shits about. Also bear in mind that he is the MP for Esher and Walton. This is a very leafy area in Surrey. I very much doubt the average local resident who votes in this area gives a crap about the left wing issues posted on 38 Degrees.
The MP in question does have a website and a blog. Here is a link:
He covers why he has asked for this on his blog. If anyone actually wants to talk to him about these issues and you are a constituent, then you can always turn up at one of his surgeries and talk to him in person.
The problem is this. If I work by my schedule (awake 11:00, sleep 03:00), I'm fine. If I force myself to wake up at say 7am, I'm a zombie until noon, and exhausted for the rest of the day. It worked fine when I was a kid.
Nothing has changed since you were a kid, you just have settled into a different rhythm. All you need to do to get onto the same 9-5 pattern as everyone else is force yourself onto it. That means getting up at 7am everyday until your body is used to it. It might take a month, it might take 6 months but eventually your body will realise this is what you have to deal with and deal with it.
I used to be in a very similar situation to you, I think everyone who has had a period of being to set their own hours naturally ends up setting them slightly later the 9 till 5 working norm. If you ever do get yourself a regular 9-5 job though, your body will settle into to it in no time what so ever.
Bear in mind that I very much doubt the silly working hours that we have standardised on would be most peoples first choice, but we have just forced our body into that pattern because most other people in our vicinity do it.
They can't teach anything else, most "computer science" teach I had in highschool was almost computer iliterate, shit, I even had a programming teacher in college who was typing with 2 fingers.
Maybe you are just arrogant? It is a common problem among techies, I know I suffered from it in my youth and it did me no favours.
I am now a 36 year old software developer and the big thing I have learnt is how little I know. This is the same in many fields though since each answer always brings with it more questions. The best advice I can give you is to queitly learn as much as you can. Even though your teachers might know nothing about what you think they should know about, you be damn sure they know something and you never know when that something might be useful.
PS - I still type with 2 fingers as I am not willing to take the short term hit on productivity in order to change the habit of the last 27 years (I learnt to code on the ZX Spectrum, not great code granted but it was a start)
That's an interesting point of view, but as a customer, what say do I get in this I wonder.
The same say you get in all matter regarding your custom. You can choose to take it else where.
The only other option is to try writing to the company and complaining, but you might as well write to Santa saying you didn't like a present you got at Christmas for all the good it will do.
This is not really evil is it? They are merely caving in to the telecom industries demands. Not challenging something that some else is doing is hardly evil. Cowardly it may be but that is very different from evil.
If you have to buy it, you would be silly to not use it. So, after a time, the vast majority of people are going to use the government health care system. This in turn is going to cause a shift in the insurance industry from private health insurance to private health supplemental insurance. So because of market forces there eventually won't even be private insurance available, because there will be no demand.
This is all speculation. The truth is that many people will always buy private health insurance so when they are ill they actually get to recover in a nice hospital with their own room. In the case of non-emergency health issues, you also get treated instantly in a private hospital but that is not guaranteed under the NHS.
So, moral of the story? America is not the United Kingdom. Government healthcare is not equivalent in all countries in all the world. Your health care system is not going to be anything like ours, so your anecdotal comments of what you have in the United Kingdom are irrelevant in discussing the American government health care.
Your right, but the comment I replied to did not say anything about being specific to the US health system. It was talking about all private health care since he was replying to a post saying "many parts of the world have universal healthcare".
I saw a large amount of republican bullshit being spouted about our health system and it is obvious that many people in the US believed it despite a large percentage being pure fiction. I did talk about the US media for this reason since that is where I saw this poorly sourced drivel being broadcast.
I have never tried to talk about the US healthcare system since I have never used it yet. If I do I will most likely have decent cover anyway since I have damn good travel insurance for when I go overseas anyway.
My main complaint about the UK system is that it does not require this and will cover foreign citizens over here who need emergency treatment.
You know what would be 'fair' to everyone. Have everyone pay taxes for healthcare and education. Just like today. But if you choose not to use the public monopoly, you get a per capita voucher to spend wherever you want.
The new conservative government we have in the UK is looking at bringing in exactly the system you describe for education.
With regard to Healthcare though it is a little more complex as you will always be entitled to treatment under the state system, whereas private health insurers may well hike your premiums astronomically or simply refuse to cover you if you become seriously ill with something that requires long term treatment.
You should certainly be able to get money off you private health insurance or individual treatments but having that final fall back for if all else fails does have a monetary value. It is also worth remembering that private health insurance in Britain never covers certain medical treatments like childbirth which the person has a say in whether they need. Far fewer people use private clinics as they have to cough up the cash even if they have private emergency cover.
My main point though is simple and still stands, a public health care system is certainly not a monopoly. You can always use private healthcare if you are willing to pay. What it does do though is force private insurers to keep their premiums low since they are competing with a free system. That is certainly not a free market, but since I do not work for a private health care insurer I only gain from this so thoroughly support it:)
Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?
Indeed - and it's also funny that these people seem to have no problem with the vast amounts of money the US Government spends on a socialised military.
Screw that, if the free market is so great then why did we just bail out all the banks. I thought the free market meant that businesses were allowed to fail, not come begging for tax dollars when they lost shit loads of cash on dodgy investments in overvalued property.
Only if you believe the drivel forced down your neck by the US media.
Government healthcare is NOT monopoly healthcare or "no choice healthcare". Here in the UK I have the option of being treated on the NHS (government) or I can go private, it is entirely up to me.
Here are some useful links to anyone interested in private healthcare in the UK:
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
So whether this counts as stealing all really comes down to whether we are going to allow intellectual property to be a type of property. Sounds like and interesting debate but it is still a complete waste of time.
The reality is that when all the people here advocating watching a stream without paying for the content grow up and get a job producing something that can be easily digitised they will realise it is not so hot when people do this and then do not pay you for your work. Hell, maybe it is too expensive, but then so is my rent so I need to make money somehow.
In both cases the seller gets to set the price of what they produce, that is simply how capitalism works, regardless of whether it is data or a physical item being sold. If something is priced too high, nobody buys it and the seller has to reduce the price. If enough people do buy it though, then the seller does not need to drop the price.
I hated these concepts when I was a poor student though, since I had no money and everything like this seemed to expensive. I lived on that much per month, now I can spend it in a week easy.
Now going back to the case at hand: Security researchers generally spend exceeding long hours doing what they do, for many years before they get any good. Then even after they discover something noteworthy they also have to spend time rehearsing their talk at the show. Then they have to travel there, probably at great expense via air from another country. So after investing all that time in something, should they not be able to get some return on that time investment?
Because generally they only want to install one database server, and it's hard to get by without offering MySQL (a number of common FOSS PHP scripts depend on it, for example).
There are actually other reasons too. First is that Postgre is a bit of a joke in the commercial world and very rarely used. It is the same reason that everyone uses windows desktops, it is imply much easier to find programmers who are comfortable with MySQL than with Postgre. Hopefully this will change now that it is ditching its reputation as being too slow for commercial use.
As for calculators, they should not be allowed on exams at all, or in classrooms. Math is not about pushing buttons, and if every math problem (even in physics and chemistry) a student encountered required them to find a solution without the assistance of a calculator, we would not have to water down math exams just to ensure that more than 50% of the students pass (maybe I am being a bit optimistic about the extra practice...).
You are obviously to young to know that engineers have always used calculators. Before these new fangled electronic things people used slide rules, they could do almosy as much as a modern calculator.
I use cash for most of my transactions anyway. I don't see any reason to force small businesses to pay a 2-5% tax on my purchase just so I can avoid paying for it until next month.
Not sure about where you live, but here in the UK credit cards also give you insurance for the item purchased since they bought the item. If I buy expensive PC bits I use my credit card so if the company I buy off go broke before sending me the goods I get a refund from the bank. That is damn ass handy.
I also like not carrying very much cash around due to my fondness for getting drunk and then walking home.
You can play Counter strike with bots, but I don't think you'll see many people playing it that way. I still think it will be firmly in the minority.
I actually know of a lot of adults who do exactly this. They cant be bothered playing online due to all the people who have too much time to dedicate to being FPS ninjas. I have always found that if you are not willing to dedicate an hour per day to playing online games you will probably not get that much enjoyment out of it due to the insane amount of dieing you do for very little killing.
An hour per day might not sound like much, but with a full time job, travelling to work, family, sleep and other commitments finding that hour can be hard. I used to spend at least 2 hours per day gaming, and pretty much all day at weekends. Battletracker lists my longest session on AA2 as 10 hours straight. (http://battletracker.com/playerstats/aao/289831/-GuNS-Nohax/)
Now I have a girlfriend and a job I barely fit in an hour a day to learn BFBC2. Even this hour is partly at the expense of boozing with my mates after work. If I ever have kids I am fairly sure the gaming will have to be knocked on the head for more than an hour per week, let alone per day.
However some people still love FPS games, even though they cannot keep the ninja reactions tuned. So they set an army of bots up where they can tune them to make them a challenge but not impossible.
In my youth I used to use the bots on UT for training, try playing against 5 or 6 of them all set to "Godlike" on a small map.
As soon as I download them via POP3 into Thunderbird. But then, I'm paranoid regarding my data and don't wish to leave it on hardware that I don't own and control.
I on the other hand view anyone who really wants to view my entire email history as completely demented and think they deserve to read the decades worth of drivel that I have accumulated as punishment for being nosy.
To be honest though, I know my bank accumulate all the data of everything I have ever bought. I know there are various secretive credit reference agencies that store all sorts of data about me. I can only ask them to send me a copy, I cannot legally stop them unless they hold inaccurate information . I know there also know there are more shady companies the illegally hold data about my political affiliations and allow potential employers to search it.
I know that there are millions of other ways big companies snoop on my life and I have given up worrying about it. It is unfortunate but we have to realise we have almost no privacy left in this digital age. We can try and minimise our exposure, but I have long since just decided I am happy for people to know most things about me.
My real name is VERY similar to my slashdot ID so anyone who knew me would instantly realise who I am from this or any other post.
Wow, I stand corrected. I should have guessed from your name. As a fellow European then, do you really want some far off nation to be responsible for your protection or would you rather do it yourself?
Then why don't you undo it in Anderlecht and Schaarbeek first ?
Because as a Brit, it is none of my business. But if Brussels is really so under the thumb of Sharia Law how the hell did the people who actually lived there first let this happen? There must still be a sizeable non-muslim population, surely they should be able to stand up to any attempt to impose Sharia Law?
If they are unwilling to however, then that is different and the solution is not to beg for someone to do it for them. The solution is to stand up and be counted and concince everyone else to.
I'm told similar situations exist in Antwerp and "Mechelen", though I haven't actually seen it. One Jewish Belgian from Antwerp we interviewed for a job did attest to the open violence Jews encounter in Antwerp at the hands of muslims.
Are you sure it was just at the hands of muslims? A friend I knew who lived there said it was becoming a haven of right-wing anti jewish sentiment from christians too. If you ever saw either first hand though, would you interfere? I know from experience that in my youth I did and it made me feel alive if nothing else.
All I can say with certainty as that I have been all over France, Germany and Spain and I have never followed Sharia Law and I never will. I have many friends of different religions even though I am as atheist as they come. I have no problem with anyone following a religion unless they try to force it upon me, at which point I will resist to the last.
Say, what is the German translation of "we didn't know" again ?
Of course they knew. The few Germans I know though would never let this happen again but maybe they are not a representative sample. I truly do not know.
Maybe us in Britain are unique in our outlook in this way, but I hope not for all our sake. The only long term solution in a world where most wars end in mutually assured destruction is for us to end all wars.
Slashdot Mirror
When English learned French, it really drifted away from German.
Wow, nice to someone knows their languages. Touche sir.
For those who don't know, the guide to school in America and England:
America - England
Math - Maths
Science - Sciences
Art - Arts
Gym - Gyms
Lunch - Lunches
Recess - Recesses
Detention - Detentions
Nobody said our rules had to make sense. The whole point of english is that the exception makes the rule. If the US has a problem with this, they should have learn French instead :)
All this is is stupid admins doing stupid things story and those are dime a dozen.
I'll say. I have been looking at using memcached in conjunction with the mod_auth memcache module. I know it exists and have done very cursory investigation. I do not have a working prototype yet but I do know my predecessor built one a year or so ago. My very cursory glance already made it startlingly clear that this would be an issue, any competent sysadmin really should have spotted the same thing.
14 terabits over 160km? does tony abbot's advisors do any research?
Sort of. His advisers went and asked Telestra what they thought.
Firstly, if you want to be taken seriously you need to learn about paragraphs. Reading a big block of text hurts most peoples eyes.
Secondly, this website is not about saving the cost of a stamp. It is about making it trivially easy to send an email to your MP over an issue the website organisers think matters. If the issue is actually important to someone and their MP has a say in it, then chances are they will find a way to make their MP listen. This website is about making it so easy to contact your MP that you will contact them regardless of how important it is just because it is so easy.
This is probably why the MP cant be arsed to read these emails. Most people using this site probably have no idea who their MP is, they probably didn't even vote. The site makes it easy to lookup who your MP is by postcode and them send him an email without you actually caring enough about the issue at hand to do this if it was not so easy. There area great many things that matter to me but I am not actually bothered about many of them enough to write to my MP since I know his time is limited.
If they changed the site so it allowed you to look up you MP then forced you to type your own email I would not have such an issue with it. But this site even has a stock email for you to send so it requires almost no thought at all to send. The site also does not at any time ask you to verify you are registered to vote or even of voting age. A 14 year old child can use this to email a coherent letter to his MP that is indistinguishable from a letter of a legitimate constituent.
I also note that the site itself has a decidedly left wing bias. All the current campaigns are things I vaguely agree with, but I have a feeling this particular MP (being a Conservative) does not give two shits about. Also bear in mind that he is the MP for Esher and Walton. This is a very leafy area in Surrey. I very much doubt the average local resident who votes in this area gives a crap about the left wing issues posted on 38 Degrees.
The MP in question does have a website and a blog. Here is a link:
http://www.dominicraab.com/dom_s_blog.html
He covers why he has asked for this on his blog. If anyone actually wants to talk to him about these issues and you are a constituent, then you can always turn up at one of his surgeries and talk to him in person.
The problem is this. If I work by my schedule (awake 11:00, sleep 03:00), I'm fine. If I force myself to wake up at say 7am, I'm a zombie until noon, and exhausted for the rest of the day. It worked fine when I was a kid.
Nothing has changed since you were a kid, you just have settled into a different rhythm. All you need to do to get onto the same 9-5 pattern as everyone else is force yourself onto it. That means getting up at 7am everyday until your body is used to it. It might take a month, it might take 6 months but eventually your body will realise this is what you have to deal with and deal with it.
I used to be in a very similar situation to you, I think everyone who has had a period of being to set their own hours naturally ends up setting them slightly later the 9 till 5 working norm. If you ever do get yourself a regular 9-5 job though, your body will settle into to it in no time what so ever.
Bear in mind that I very much doubt the silly working hours that we have standardised on would be most peoples first choice, but we have just forced our body into that pattern because most other people in our vicinity do it.
They can't teach anything else, most "computer science" teach I had in highschool was almost computer iliterate, shit, I even had a programming teacher in college who was typing with 2 fingers.
Maybe you are just arrogant? It is a common problem among techies, I know I suffered from it in my youth and it did me no favours.
I am now a 36 year old software developer and the big thing I have learnt is how little I know. This is the same in many fields though since each answer always brings with it more questions. The best advice I can give you is to queitly learn as much as you can. Even though your teachers might know nothing about what you think they should know about, you be damn sure they know something and you never know when that something might be useful.
PS - I still type with 2 fingers as I am not willing to take the short term hit on productivity in order to change the habit of the last 27 years (I learnt to code on the ZX Spectrum, not great code granted but it was a start)
That's an interesting point of view, but as a customer, what say do I get in this I wonder.
The same say you get in all matter regarding your custom. You can choose to take it else where.
The only other option is to try writing to the company and complaining, but you might as well write to Santa saying you didn't like a present you got at Christmas for all the good it will do.
What ever happened to Do No Evil
This is not really evil is it? They are merely caving in to the telecom industries demands. Not challenging something that some else is doing is hardly evil. Cowardly it may be but that is very different from evil.
Standardisation is never "hyper-rapid".
I am going to hunt down and kill the next person who uses "hyper-rapid" in this thread :)
hyper rapid
lol, try saying "very fast" and then maybe normal people will take you seriously :)
If you have to buy it, you would be silly to not use it. So, after a time, the vast majority of people are going to use the government health care system. This in turn is going to cause a shift in the insurance industry from private health insurance to private health supplemental insurance. So because of market forces there eventually won't even be private insurance available, because there will be no demand.
This is all speculation. The truth is that many people will always buy private health insurance so when they are ill they actually get to recover in a nice hospital with their own room. In the case of non-emergency health issues, you also get treated instantly in a private hospital but that is not guaranteed under the NHS.
So, moral of the story? America is not the United Kingdom. Government healthcare is not equivalent in all countries in all the world. Your health care system is not going to be anything like ours, so your anecdotal comments of what you have in the United Kingdom are irrelevant in discussing the American government health care.
Your right, but the comment I replied to did not say anything about being specific to the US health system. It was talking about all private health care since he was replying to a post saying "many parts of the world have universal healthcare".
I saw a large amount of republican bullshit being spouted about our health system and it is obvious that many people in the US believed it despite a large percentage being pure fiction. I did talk about the US media for this reason since that is where I saw this poorly sourced drivel being broadcast.
I have never tried to talk about the US healthcare system since I have never used it yet. If I do I will most likely have decent cover anyway since I have damn good travel insurance for when I go overseas anyway.
My main complaint about the UK system is that it does not require this and will cover foreign citizens over here who need emergency treatment.
You know what would be 'fair' to everyone. Have everyone pay taxes for healthcare and education. Just like today.
But if you choose not to use the public monopoly, you get a per capita voucher to spend wherever you want.
The new conservative government we have in the UK is looking at bringing in exactly the system you describe for education.
With regard to Healthcare though it is a little more complex as you will always be entitled to treatment under the state system, whereas private health insurers may well hike your premiums astronomically or simply refuse to cover you if you become seriously ill with something that requires long term treatment.
You should certainly be able to get money off you private health insurance or individual treatments but having that final fall back for if all else fails does have a monetary value. It is also worth remembering that private health insurance in Britain never covers certain medical treatments like childbirth which the person has a say in whether they need. Far fewer people use private clinics as they have to cough up the cash even if they have private emergency cover.
My main point though is simple and still stands, a public health care system is certainly not a monopoly. You can always use private healthcare if you are willing to pay. What it does do though is force private insurers to keep their premiums low since they are competing with a free system. That is certainly not a free market, but since I do not work for a private health care insurer I only gain from this so thoroughly support it :)
Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?
Indeed - and it's also funny that these people seem to have no problem with the vast amounts of money the US Government spends on a socialised military.
Screw that, if the free market is so great then why did we just bail out all the banks. I thought the free market meant that businesses were allowed to fail, not come begging for tax dollars when they lost shit loads of cash on dodgy investments in overvalued property.
Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare.
Only if you believe the drivel forced down your neck by the US media.
Government healthcare is NOT monopoly healthcare or "no choice healthcare". Here in the UK I have the option of being treated on the NHS (government) or I can go private, it is entirely up to me.
Here are some useful links to anyone interested in private healthcare in the UK:
http://www.spirehealthcare.com/
http://www.bupa.co.uk/
http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/
Unfortunately I still have to pay for the government healthcare out of my taxes but that is not what you were complaining about at all was it?
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
So whether this counts as stealing all really comes down to whether we are going to allow intellectual property to be a type of property. Sounds like and interesting debate but it is still a complete waste of time.
The reality is that when all the people here advocating watching a stream without paying for the content grow up and get a job producing something that can be easily digitised they will realise it is not so hot when people do this and then do not pay you for your work. Hell, maybe it is too expensive, but then so is my rent so I need to make money somehow.
In both cases the seller gets to set the price of what they produce, that is simply how capitalism works, regardless of whether it is data or a physical item being sold. If something is priced too high, nobody buys it and the seller has to reduce the price. If enough people do buy it though, then the seller does not need to drop the price.
I hated these concepts when I was a poor student though, since I had no money and everything like this seemed to expensive. I lived on that much per month, now I can spend it in a week easy.
Now going back to the case at hand: Security researchers generally spend exceeding long hours doing what they do, for many years before they get any good. Then even after they discover something noteworthy they also have to spend time rehearsing their talk at the show. Then they have to travel there, probably at great expense via air from another country. So after investing all that time in something, should they not be able to get some return on that time investment?
Why is that?
Because generally they only want to install one database server, and it's hard to get by without offering MySQL (a number of common FOSS PHP scripts depend on it, for example).
There are actually other reasons too. First is that Postgre is a bit of a joke in the commercial world and very rarely used. It is the same reason that everyone uses windows desktops, it is imply much easier to find programmers who are comfortable with MySQL than with Postgre. Hopefully this will change now that it is ditching its reputation as being too slow for commercial use.
The taxes paid by the FF industry...dwarf the subsidies they receive, however.
Any evidence to back this up? Or are you just guessing?
As for calculators, they should not be allowed on exams at all, or in classrooms. Math is not about pushing buttons, and if every math problem (even in physics and chemistry) a student encountered required them to find a solution without the assistance of a calculator, we would not have to water down math exams just to ensure that more than 50% of the students pass (maybe I am being a bit optimistic about the extra practice...).
You are obviously to young to know that engineers have always used calculators. Before these new fangled electronic things people used slide rules, they could do almosy as much as a modern calculator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule
I use cash for most of my transactions anyway. I don't see any reason to force small businesses to pay a 2-5% tax on my purchase just so I can avoid paying for it until next month.
Not sure about where you live, but here in the UK credit cards also give you insurance for the item purchased since they bought the item. If I buy expensive PC bits I use my credit card so if the company I buy off go broke before sending me the goods I get a refund from the bank. That is damn ass handy.
I also like not carrying very much cash around due to my fondness for getting drunk and then walking home.
You can play Counter strike with bots, but I don't think you'll see many people playing it that way. I still think it will be firmly in the minority.
I actually know of a lot of adults who do exactly this. They cant be bothered playing online due to all the people who have too much time to dedicate to being FPS ninjas. I have always found that if you are not willing to dedicate an hour per day to playing online games you will probably not get that much enjoyment out of it due to the insane amount of dieing you do for very little killing.
An hour per day might not sound like much, but with a full time job, travelling to work, family, sleep and other commitments finding that hour can be hard. I used to spend at least 2 hours per day gaming, and pretty much all day at weekends. Battletracker lists my longest session on AA2 as 10 hours straight. (http://battletracker.com/playerstats/aao/289831/-GuNS-Nohax/)
Now I have a girlfriend and a job I barely fit in an hour a day to learn BFBC2. Even this hour is partly at the expense of boozing with my mates after work. If I ever have kids I am fairly sure the gaming will have to be knocked on the head for more than an hour per week, let alone per day.
However some people still love FPS games, even though they cannot keep the ninja reactions tuned. So they set an army of bots up where they can tune them to make them a challenge but not impossible.
In my youth I used to use the bots on UT for training, try playing against 5 or 6 of them all set to "Godlike" on a small map.
Good for you. I'm not.
Then go live in a cave and give up making all financial transactions with anything other than cash. Sorry, but that is the world we live in.
As soon as I download them via POP3 into Thunderbird. But then, I'm paranoid regarding my data and don't wish to leave it on hardware that I don't own and control.
I on the other hand view anyone who really wants to view my entire email history as completely demented and think they deserve to read the decades worth of drivel that I have accumulated as punishment for being nosy.
To be honest though, I know my bank accumulate all the data of everything I have ever bought. I know there are various secretive credit reference agencies that store all sorts of data about me. I can only ask them to send me a copy, I cannot legally stop them unless they hold inaccurate information . I know there also know there are more shady companies the illegally hold data about my political affiliations and allow potential employers to search it.
I know that there are millions of other ways big companies snoop on my life and I have given up worrying about it. It is unfortunate but we have to realise we have almost no privacy left in this digital age. We can try and minimise our exposure, but I have long since just decided I am happy for people to know most things about me.
My real name is VERY similar to my slashdot ID so anyone who knew me would instantly realise who I am from this or any other post.
Here are a few interesting links:
http://www.peoplecheck.co.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_check
http://background-check-services-review.toptenreviews.com/
This company has been closed down last year but I bet there are others:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/27/construction-worker-blacklist-database1
from snooping via this sort of BS too ... right?
It is trivially esy to avoid this sort of snooping: Use bing. Nobody forces you to use google as a search engine.
Actually I live in Brussels.
Wow, I stand corrected. I should have guessed from your name. As a fellow European then, do you really want some far off nation to be responsible for your protection or would you rather do it yourself?
Then why don't you undo it in Anderlecht and Schaarbeek first ?
Because as a Brit, it is none of my business. But if Brussels is really so under the thumb of Sharia Law how the hell did the people who actually lived there first let this happen? There must still be a sizeable non-muslim population, surely they should be able to stand up to any attempt to impose Sharia Law?
If they are unwilling to however, then that is different and the solution is not to beg for someone to do it for them. The solution is to stand up and be counted and concince everyone else to.
I'm told similar situations exist in Antwerp and "Mechelen", though I haven't actually seen it. One Jewish Belgian from Antwerp we interviewed for a job did attest to the open violence Jews encounter in Antwerp at the hands of muslims.
Are you sure it was just at the hands of muslims? A friend I knew who lived there said it was becoming a haven of right-wing anti jewish sentiment from christians too. If you ever saw either first hand though, would you interfere? I know from experience that in my youth I did and it made me feel alive if nothing else.
All I can say with certainty as that I have been all over France, Germany and Spain and I have never followed Sharia Law and I never will. I have many friends of different religions even though I am as atheist as they come. I have no problem with anyone following a religion unless they try to force it upon me, at which point I will resist to the last.
Say, what is the German translation of "we didn't know" again ?
Of course they knew. The few Germans I know though would never let this happen again but maybe they are not a representative sample. I truly do not know.
Maybe us in Britain are unique in our outlook in this way, but I hope not for all our sake. The only long term solution in a world where most wars end in mutually assured destruction is for us to end all wars.