The Lib Dems are more idealistic and tend to put a lot of value on civil liberties, and the Tories tend to be less outright authoritarian than New Labour. I'm inclined to believe that the Lib Dems will twist the Tories' arms on some of the more unpleasant abuses of civil liberties, and that the Tories will give in to them in exchange for backing in some more right-wing financial moves.
In terms of stop and search, it was in use until ruled illegal by the European court of human rights in January this year, and I was under the impression that there was an ongoing appeal that was started by Labour. Do you have a link to the Lib-Con promise to reintroduce the powers, as I'd be interested to see what they've said on the matter.
Thank God we don't have any smart terrorists... the kind who would, say, cause a security alert at an airport in order to have it evacuated and then set off the car-bomb parked outside (away from all the security, checks, police officers with guns, etc.), in the open-air, right where 10,000 people just got evacuated to.
Depending on who you listen to, that's pretty much the tactic used in the Omagh bombing, although with a crowded street rather than an airport.
I didn't realise that it was like this, and it sounds like a damn shame that those are the conditions you had to work in, but would you also agree that the officer in question (and those in similar cases) seems to have an attitude problem?
You say the police are "expected 99% of the time to generally do what they think is right and then look it up afterwards", which is certainly not optimal, but is somewhat understandable. What I don't see, however, is what genuine harm the officer thought was being done by someone photographing a public parade. Using the 'everyone might be a terrorist' argument just leads to the conclusion that nobody can be trusted with cameras, and beyond that I can't see why he was stopped.
Really? From what I can see in the article, the officer made up several untrue 'laws' throughout the encounter.
Even if the photographer happened to be in technical breach of some all-encompassing terror law, it could easily be argued that the way the officer handled it shows a desire to arrest for any old 'crime' rather than an actual response to a threat, not to mention worrying ignorance of the law. The letter of the law is not the only thing that matters, in theory at least, intent comes into the matter too.
Get one of the best tattoo artists in your area (if not the country or world) Finalize a design then wait a minimum of six months to get it.
Absolutely agreed. I'm always surprised at the number of people who just drop in to a local tattoo place - not to say that the local shop might not have some brilliant artists, just that if I'm going to have something for the next 50 or 60 years then I'm quite happy to save for a few years and fly out to the best artist I can find.
There's no logical problem with those two ideas coexisting. One could easily argue that the MPAA paying the creators as a one-off isn't the problem, but the MPAA then turning around and demanding perpetual payments in the name of the creators, who will see next to nothing from these payments, is a problem.
That said, I happen to believe that copyright (and the income stream that arises from it) is a good thing, but that terms are exaggerated grossly beyond their usefulness. I can't think of a scalable model off the top of my head that would allow sensible compensation to all involved with the making of a film (sensible being defined as 'enough to cover costs and provide enough profit to encourage further work') from a single set of payments. About 15 years, however, (as it was originally, I believe) is a perfectly sensible time to cover those criteria without locking work away from the public. I also think that the major studios (and the MPAA as their representatives) wield far too much power compared to their usefulness, and that power is tied to their grip on the existing back catalogue of media and their assurances of excessively long copyright on future works.
I absolutely agree with you, but I would add that the illegal sites will always be able to provide the same (or better) product for less. The distribution costs will remain similar, but only one side also has to pay for the film's production.
That said, however, the current crop of legal products on the market still leave a huge amount to be desired. I think many people's ingrained sense of morality would push them to pay a little more for legit content, but if and only if it's also available instantly, of equivalent quality, plays on pretty much anything (standard Xvid encoding is good), and doesn't self destruct (no DRM for purchase, or completely transparent DRM to enforce time limits for rentals).
But it's pretty hard to find anything directly in Christian theology that suggests Christians are supposed to try to impose these standards on non-Christians.
There are plenty of concrete examples, the laws on sex toys in some of the predominantly Christian US states being the first that spring to mind, of Christian sensibilities being forced on the population at large. Same goes for the occasional Christian nutjob who kills an abortion clinic worker. In a slightly more broad context, evangelism is directly intended to change the behaviour of non-Christians, although I suppose that you could argue that by making them become Christians they are no longer part of their original group.
Both religions are following the same template, but the reaction in Islamic countries appears more extreme. It seems that the difference in the reaction owes more to how developed the country is than to the predominant religion, though. It just happens to be the case that many less-developed middle eastern countries are predominantly Muslim while much of the west is Christian. Look at the brutality carried out in the name of Christianity in some African nations for further evidence of this.
There is some evidence to show that non-ionising radiation can cause eye problems (I heard it described once as 'cooking them like an egg white', but I don't know how accurate that analogy is). I don't think that's possible with the power levels coming out of a phone, though.
Plenty of banks don't provide this tech, and those that do tend to treat it as infallible (i.e. the blame automatically rests on the customer if the account is compromised).
Kevin Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" contains several examples of using social engineering to overcome multi-factor authentication such as this, and while they may not be worth the effort for bulk-attack phishing, they could easily have a worthwhile payoff if used against a wealthy target.
Even simpler is the option of using the phished information to drive a good old fashioned offline attack. Jeremy Clarkson posted his account number and sort code publicly in an effort to show that they were not sensitive information (they're on every cheque you hand out, so you'd certainly hope they aren't). He had £500 transferred from his account to charity without his consent - a fairly benign demonstration, but a proof of concept nonetheless.
I think it's sensible to make a separation between phishing and other spam. If you click on an email advertising V14GR4, I'm quite happy to stamp 'Moron' across your forehead and be done with it. I wouldn't be nearly so hard on someone who gets a message which is identical to previous correspondence from their bank, but contains a link to l|oydstsb.com rather than lloydstsb.com, for example.
Of course, even the best phishing email is useless against a well educated user, and I think the 25% figure sounds very high, but I can somewhat sympathise with those who fall for a well-crafted phishing scam in a way that I can't for those who end up on the wrong end of a semi-literate 419 email.
The fact that sites like PayPal sometimes do send out real messages with all the hallmarks of a scam also serves to confuse issues. I seem to recall that this site is, in fact, legit.
This laser has an awful lot more chance of doing permanent harm to an innocent bystander than anything on United Nuclear.
The most dangerous thing they sell is probably the enormous magnets, and even they are most likely to just leave the owner with a broken bone or two. Sure, if you eat a chunk of uranium or light thermite in the kitchen sink you're going to do yourself some harm, but the chances of injuring others are relatively slim. I have little interest in protecting people from themselves. It's much easier, however, to accidentally reflect a 1W laser off a bit of shiny metal and leave someone down the road with serious, permanent eye damage.
I'm not going as far as to say these should be banned - I'm very much of the opinion that there are too many restrictions on what we can and can't do already, but I'd place "instant, near invisible blinding hazard at significant distance" as something to be a lot more cautious of than most.
Your criticisms seem somewhat fair, but you must admit they're fairly niche. Sure, pissing off even that niche might not be considered worthwhile if the only advantage were "the right to see when their newscaster needs more makeup and a shave", as you put it, but the increased picture quality is almost an ancillary benefit. The main point is the vast swathes of spectrum that are now free for new and interesting uses - something that I would consider worth the minor sacrifice to a small segment of the market.
Good suggestion, although I'd say that if you're replacing the VCR (and thus teaching new menus and settings anyway) it's probably easier to just go for a proper DVR instead. Newegg has a tuner/DVR for $140. Throw in a decent sized hard drive and you've got everything covered in one box for $200, and a device that (IMO) is altogether more elegant than a VCR or DVD Recorder.
I bought my TV in 2002, and it's served me well - except now that I'm thinking of dumping cable, I wonder if I can still get a converter box?
The boxes are cheap and abundant - starting from about $20 according to The Almighty Google.
As others have mentioned, though, digital does degrade less gracefully than analogue, so you're probably right in thinking that you'll lose a couple of the weaker stations.
Yeah, I did a double take the first time I heard from them, assuming that it was just a different trading name for one of the registrars I actually do use - it didn't take me long to confirm that it was nothing to do with anyone I purchase from (the rather excessive prices were the first clue!) but it was still misleading enough that I had to check.
I must admit that I do feel a little bit of satisfaction knowing that they're paying to send several pieces of snail mail across the Atlantic to me every year.
Friend of mine has the most annoying product ever. Whenever it updates itself, it plays a recording of a voice saying "virus database updated". So we'll just be sitting there and hear that.
Yes, but it also gives you the opportunity to say "Thank you, computer, that will be all" like you're in Star Trek.
Wait... What do you mean I'm the only one who does that? Guys?
It's even in terms of wages, but requires a very significant upfront investment in the automation tech. I'd guess they want to be paying less overall in wages, otherwise they'll never amortize the cost of the robots.
In either case, they would only be making this move if they believed it would leave them more profitable overall.
It doesn't. I don't see anybody claiming it does. It makes money for those who created the system. Might not be the most noble goal, but it's sure as hell a sensible one to go for.
Yes. If you consider the stock market to be a tool to enable investment and growth, it's fairly substantially broken. Not totally useless in achieving those ends, by any means, but certainly broken when considered in that context.
Since you or I don't have the power to fix the system, it seems a lot more prudent to exploit it than to ignore it.
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The Lib Dems are more idealistic and tend to put a lot of value on civil liberties, and the Tories tend to be less outright authoritarian than New Labour. I'm inclined to believe that the Lib Dems will twist the Tories' arms on some of the more unpleasant abuses of civil liberties, and that the Tories will give in to them in exchange for backing in some more right-wing financial moves.
In terms of stop and search, it was in use until ruled illegal by the European court of human rights in January this year, and I was under the impression that there was an ongoing appeal that was started by Labour. Do you have a link to the Lib-Con promise to reintroduce the powers, as I'd be interested to see what they've said on the matter.
Thank God we don't have any smart terrorists... the kind who would, say, cause a security alert at an airport in order to have it evacuated and then set off the car-bomb parked outside (away from all the security, checks, police officers with guns, etc.), in the open-air, right where 10,000 people just got evacuated to.
Depending on who you listen to, that's pretty much the tactic used in the Omagh bombing, although with a crowded street rather than an airport.
I didn't realise that it was like this, and it sounds like a damn shame that those are the conditions you had to work in, but would you also agree that the officer in question (and those in similar cases) seems to have an attitude problem?
You say the police are "expected 99% of the time to generally do what they think is right and then look it up afterwards", which is certainly not optimal, but is somewhat understandable. What I don't see, however, is what genuine harm the officer thought was being done by someone photographing a public parade. Using the 'everyone might be a terrorist' argument just leads to the conclusion that nobody can be trusted with cameras, and beyond that I can't see why he was stopped.
Really? From what I can see in the article, the officer made up several untrue 'laws' throughout the encounter.
Even if the photographer happened to be in technical breach of some all-encompassing terror law, it could easily be argued that the way the officer handled it shows a desire to arrest for any old 'crime' rather than an actual response to a threat, not to mention worrying ignorance of the law. The letter of the law is not the only thing that matters, in theory at least, intent comes into the matter too.
It's not a fusor, it's a polywell reactor.
If anyone was wondering, that appears to be a Schrödinger equation.
Get one of the best tattoo artists in your area (if not the country or world)
Finalize a design then wait a minimum of six months to get it.
Absolutely agreed. I'm always surprised at the number of people who just drop in to a local tattoo place - not to say that the local shop might not have some brilliant artists, just that if I'm going to have something for the next 50 or 60 years then I'm quite happy to save for a few years and fly out to the best artist I can find.
There's no logical problem with those two ideas coexisting. One could easily argue that the MPAA paying the creators as a one-off isn't the problem, but the MPAA then turning around and demanding perpetual payments in the name of the creators, who will see next to nothing from these payments, is a problem.
That said, I happen to believe that copyright (and the income stream that arises from it) is a good thing, but that terms are exaggerated grossly beyond their usefulness. I can't think of a scalable model off the top of my head that would allow sensible compensation to all involved with the making of a film (sensible being defined as 'enough to cover costs and provide enough profit to encourage further work') from a single set of payments. About 15 years, however, (as it was originally, I believe) is a perfectly sensible time to cover those criteria without locking work away from the public. I also think that the major studios (and the MPAA as their representatives) wield far too much power compared to their usefulness, and that power is tied to their grip on the existing back catalogue of media and their assurances of excessively long copyright on future works.
I absolutely agree with you, but I would add that the illegal sites will always be able to provide the same (or better) product for less. The distribution costs will remain similar, but only one side also has to pay for the film's production.
That said, however, the current crop of legal products on the market still leave a huge amount to be desired. I think many people's ingrained sense of morality would push them to pay a little more for legit content, but if and only if it's also available instantly, of equivalent quality, plays on pretty much anything (standard Xvid encoding is good), and doesn't self destruct (no DRM for purchase, or completely transparent DRM to enforce time limits for rentals).
But it's pretty hard to find anything directly in Christian theology that suggests Christians are supposed to try to impose these standards on non-Christians.
There are plenty of concrete examples, the laws on sex toys in some of the predominantly Christian US states being the first that spring to mind, of Christian sensibilities being forced on the population at large. Same goes for the occasional Christian nutjob who kills an abortion clinic worker. In a slightly more broad context, evangelism is directly intended to change the behaviour of non-Christians, although I suppose that you could argue that by making them become Christians they are no longer part of their original group.
Both religions are following the same template, but the reaction in Islamic countries appears more extreme. It seems that the difference in the reaction owes more to how developed the country is than to the predominant religion, though. It just happens to be the case that many less-developed middle eastern countries are predominantly Muslim while much of the west is Christian. Look at the brutality carried out in the name of Christianity in some African nations for further evidence of this.
OTOH, someone in a university environment is quite likely to be covered by site licenses already on those two, thus making the effective cost zero.
There is some evidence to show that non-ionising radiation can cause eye problems (I heard it described once as 'cooking them like an egg white', but I don't know how accurate that analogy is). I don't think that's possible with the power levels coming out of a phone, though.
Plenty of banks don't provide this tech, and those that do tend to treat it as infallible (i.e. the blame automatically rests on the customer if the account is compromised).
Kevin Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" contains several examples of using social engineering to overcome multi-factor authentication such as this, and while they may not be worth the effort for bulk-attack phishing, they could easily have a worthwhile payoff if used against a wealthy target.
Even simpler is the option of using the phished information to drive a good old fashioned offline attack. Jeremy Clarkson posted his account number and sort code publicly in an effort to show that they were not sensitive information (they're on every cheque you hand out, so you'd certainly hope they aren't). He had £500 transferred from his account to charity without his consent - a fairly benign demonstration, but a proof of concept nonetheless.
I think it's sensible to make a separation between phishing and other spam. If you click on an email advertising V14GR4, I'm quite happy to stamp 'Moron' across your forehead and be done with it. I wouldn't be nearly so hard on someone who gets a message which is identical to previous correspondence from their bank, but contains a link to l|oydstsb.com rather than lloydstsb.com, for example.
Of course, even the best phishing email is useless against a well educated user, and I think the 25% figure sounds very high, but I can somewhat sympathise with those who fall for a well-crafted phishing scam in a way that I can't for those who end up on the wrong end of a semi-literate 419 email.
The fact that sites like PayPal sometimes do send out real messages with all the hallmarks of a scam also serves to confuse issues. I seem to recall that this site is, in fact, legit.
Just be careful of how reflective that glass is - blinding everyone standing behind you might not go down so well...
This laser has an awful lot more chance of doing permanent harm to an innocent bystander than anything on United Nuclear.
The most dangerous thing they sell is probably the enormous magnets, and even they are most likely to just leave the owner with a broken bone or two. Sure, if you eat a chunk of uranium or light thermite in the kitchen sink you're going to do yourself some harm, but the chances of injuring others are relatively slim. I have little interest in protecting people from themselves. It's much easier, however, to accidentally reflect a 1W laser off a bit of shiny metal and leave someone down the road with serious, permanent eye damage.
I'm not going as far as to say these should be banned - I'm very much of the opinion that there are too many restrictions on what we can and can't do already, but I'd place "instant, near invisible blinding hazard at significant distance" as something to be a lot more cautious of than most.
Your criticisms seem somewhat fair, but you must admit they're fairly niche. Sure, pissing off even that niche might not be considered worthwhile if the only advantage were "the right to see when their newscaster needs more makeup and a shave", as you put it, but the increased picture quality is almost an ancillary benefit. The main point is the vast swathes of spectrum that are now free for new and interesting uses - something that I would consider worth the minor sacrifice to a small segment of the market.
Good suggestion, although I'd say that if you're replacing the VCR (and thus teaching new menus and settings anyway) it's probably easier to just go for a proper DVR instead. Newegg has a tuner/DVR for $140. Throw in a decent sized hard drive and you've got everything covered in one box for $200, and a device that (IMO) is altogether more elegant than a VCR or DVD Recorder.
I bought my TV in 2002, and it's served me well - except now that I'm thinking of dumping cable, I wonder if I can still get a converter box?
The boxes are cheap and abundant - starting from about $20 according to The Almighty Google.
As others have mentioned, though, digital does degrade less gracefully than analogue, so you're probably right in thinking that you'll lose a couple of the weaker stations.
Yeah, I did a double take the first time I heard from them, assuming that it was just a different trading name for one of the registrars I actually do use - it didn't take me long to confirm that it was nothing to do with anyone I purchase from (the rather excessive prices were the first clue!) but it was still misleading enough that I had to check.
I must admit that I do feel a little bit of satisfaction knowing that they're paying to send several pieces of snail mail across the Atlantic to me every year.
Friend of mine has the most annoying product ever. Whenever it updates itself, it plays a recording of a voice saying "virus database updated". So we'll just be sitting there and hear that.
Yes, but it also gives you the opportunity to say "Thank you, computer, that will be all" like you're in Star Trek.
Wait... What do you mean I'm the only one who does that? Guys?
It's even in terms of wages, but requires a very significant upfront investment in the automation tech. I'd guess they want to be paying less overall in wages, otherwise they'll never amortize the cost of the robots.
In either case, they would only be making this move if they believed it would leave them more profitable overall.
It doesn't. I don't see anybody claiming it does. It makes money for those who created the system. Might not be the most noble goal, but it's sure as hell a sensible one to go for.
Yes. If you consider the stock market to be a tool to enable investment and growth, it's fairly substantially broken. Not totally useless in achieving those ends, by any means, but certainly broken when considered in that context.
Since you or I don't have the power to fix the system, it seems a lot more prudent to exploit it than to ignore it.
On a very much related note...