This comes up on/. every so often, and I'm summarizing here the advice from a few people who (to me at least) sounded knowledgeable about the topic last time it came up.
Use a strongly contrasting color scheme - this is obvious, black on white is easier to read than orange on red.
Match the background color to the environment - staring at a bright monitor in a dark room is like staring straight at a light bulb - and the reverse can be true too (you get a halo around the monitor burning into your retina). Green on black is probably a brilliant color scheme if you do all your coding in a basement only lit by the blinkenlights of a router, but in a well lit office may not be as good for your eyes.
Limit color edges. Okay, this is where I'm going to paraphrase other people really badly, but here goes. Your eye has separate RGB color cones, and effectively has to match a set of separate red, green, and blue images together. For some people, you can start to see optical effects when there is a strong contract change in different channels - your eye doesn't line up the images correctly, causing a blurry shadow around objects. This is not necessarily visually all the pronounced, but causes eye strain.
Based on this advice I've switched to blue on light beige (#0000C0 on #FFFFC0). It has a strong contrast in two channels, no change in the third, and suits my office (reasonably bright, but lit with non-natural light). So far, this is working well for me.
Statistically this was a win for Clinton because she took 582 delegates, while Obama only took 562 (see here). Given how close the delegate counts are, you could call this a tie.
From the original posters comment it would look like they would agree with you (as would I) that Barack Obama probably woke up this morning felling a lot more positive about how Tuesday went. But statistically Hillary Clinton had the edge.
Each of Barcelona's four cores incorporates a new vector math unit referred to as SSE128
SSE has always been 128bit (the 64bit simd extensions were called MMX). AMD used to funnel the instructions through a 64bit execution unit by splitting the work into two halves, the new core has a full 128bit SSE pipeline so doesn't need split the operations. Nothing new here, just a faster internal implementation. Can this deliver and 80% improvevment in benchmark performance? - quite possibly. Take a look at the Core2 FP perfromance numbers - it also has a full 128bit implementation of SSE.
And separating integer and floating-point schedulers also accelerates this thing called virtualization
Huh. Hardware virtualization affects how the processor handles certain instructions such as priviledged operations. FP instruction execution is unaffected. Virtualized workloads will benefit no more than non-virtualized workloads. Separate issue queues are good but does it specifically benefit virtualization? - no.
Barcelona blacks out power to individual portions of the chip that are idled, from in-core execution units to on-die bus controllers. This hasn't made it into PCs before...
Barcelona is genius, a genuinely new CPU that frees itself entirely of the millstone of the Pentium legacy.
Barcelona is a new CPU, not a doubling of cores and not extensions strapped on here and there.
Barcelona is an Opteron, with a doubling of cores and some extensions strapped on here and there.
I'm not meaning to detract from AMD here - the fact that they have still not had to make any radical changes to the opteron micro-architecture is a testament to the quality of the original design.
They are slightly ahead of the game on virtualization - they're going to beat Intel to nested page tables - but other than that this chip is playing catchup. Overall this is going to be a very nice piece of kit to work with. But nothing radical and new here.
Ironic that this post is modded funny, since I think it might be closest to the mark.
I'd suggest x86-secret & the Reg have got the wrong end of the stick here. SMT is running two threads on one core - try taking "reverse hyperthreading" literally. I'd suggest that AMD are looking at running the one same thread in lock-step on two cores simultaneously. This is not about performance, it is about reliability - AMD looking at the market for big iron (running execution cores in lock-step is the kind of hardware reliability you are looking at on mainframe systems).
The behaviour of a CPU core should be completely deterministic. If the two cores are booted up on the same cycle they should make the same set of I/O requests at the same point, and so long as the system interface satisfies these requests identically an on the same cycle, then the cores should have no reason not to remain in sync with each other until the next point that they both should put out the next, identical pair of I/O requests. If the cores every get out of sync with each other, this indicates an error.
Just speculation of course, but I seem to recall AMD looking into this having been rumoured previously.
As you know we have a company security policy based around frequently changing passwords, in order to keep our Windows network secure.
Previously, as you are all no doubt aware, you were required to change your Windows passwords once every 90 seconds, since NT passwords can be cracked in 100 seconds flat.
Due to recent developments in MS password cracking, we will now be requiring all employees to change their passwords once every 10 seconds, to ensure they remain secure.
We hope this will not detract from productivity, and apologise for any inconvenience it does cause.
Is it not time that someone gets a declaratory judgement to this effect?
IANAL, but as I understand it, if you feel there is a reasonable probability that you are going to be sued then you can seek a delcaratory judgement against the party likely to sue you. This aleviates the fear & anxiety of waiting to be sued, by the court giving a ruling as to who would win the case were you sued.
Surely it is in the interest of one, or a group of, companies to fund a preemptive suit for declaratory judgement against SCO? The fact that they are offering to sell people indemnity against being sued would seem to offer reasonable grounds for them to believe that they might be sued, to say the least.
I do agree with this to a large extent, but whilst I doubt that many people can justify a 3ghz P4 today, it is unlikely that this will remain the case for long.
The most bleeding edge of computers may seem unnecessary now, but it is not too long ago that certain people were pronouncing that 640k of memory would be enough for everyone (and sounding quite reasonable at the time). Keep going back and you'll find other great gems (e.g. the entire computing needs of the U.K. will be provided for by three computer!).
If a 3ghz P4 looks overpowered bear in mind that Sony's goal for the PS3 is rumored to be 1 teraflop.
on-the-fly optimizing of frequently used code... while emulating code that was so infrequently used
Not quite, I don't think. FX!32 took an unusual (but highly effective) approach to dynamic binary translation.
FX!32 used a combination of a runtime engine based around an interpreter, combined with an offline translator running as a windows service on the same machine.
Upon running a program for the first time it was purely interpreted. When the program terminated it shipped the PCs of all functions called to the translation server which translated them in the background as a low priority process. This neatly saves the machine from wasting time translating stuff while you are waiting for your program to run. The next time the program is run it runs translated code where it can, and falling back to the interpreter if it hits new code it hasn't seen before (and, of course, shipping the PCs of any new functions called to the translator on termination, so your library of translated code grows by the next time you run it).
I believe I am right in saying that unlike similar systems (e.g. Dynamo, Crusoe) they do not take the approach of interpreting infrequently used code - instead they take the approach that over time all code ends up being translated.
One of my favourites is linux kernel one, though it may not count as an error message. Linux had frozen while booting, the last line on the screen simple read:
We should be more interested in Mips/Arm chips because there happen to be more of them in use?
That's kinda like saying that food critics should spend their time reviewing McDonalds burgers.
There are interesting things going on with Arm designs (jazelle hardware JVM, Amulet asyncronous designs, etc), but in general the Mips/Arm markets are all about taking simple RISC cores and producing them cheap and running at low power.
Nothing wrong with being more interested in the high end of the market.
As a result Pentium III would out-perform Pentium 4 in some occasion, as the latter tends to lose more instructions when branch-misprediction rate is too high.
Your reasons for the P3 outperformning the P4 don't seem to make a lot of sense.
Take a processor. It hits a branch instruction. While it is working out whether or not to take the branch, it keeps itself busy by executing instructions from one side or other of the branch. It gets it wrong, so when it realizes this, it throws away a bunch of work it has done. Hence branch misprediction it a Bad thing.
Take a second processor, with more pipelines available for instruction issue. Again makes a branch prediction. Since it has more pipelines available it is able to issue more instructions while waiting for the branch to the calculated. Again it gets it wrong, and since it has been able to issue more instructions from after the branch, more are thrown away when it realizes a misprediction has taken place.
The point it that while more instructions are thrown away, this is only because more have been issued, and therefore the fact that you have more pipelines in a new generation does not lead to that processor running slower than previous versions. The increased branch misprediction penalty can only diminish the amount of increased performance that the extra pipelines give you, and not lead to an overall speed decrease, right?
First of all, "There have never been slaves on British soil", seems particularly ironic, since (IIRC) a large proportion of slaves destined for the new world passed through Liverpool docks. Of course his statement is plain wrong; I'd go along with ignorant too.
His post was a little flamey, and he does jump to conclusions a bit too easily, (eg. "It must be because America is so religious..... This almost wholly explains...". But I felt that despite all this the post was the most insightful and informative post last night - in drawing attention (in a somewhat clumsy manner) to the fact that this is not a black and white issue, and that intelegent human beings brought up in the UK are predisposed to react differently to these kind of actions than a US citizen would.
I don't want to get into the subject of religion (big topic, much danger of flames occuring) but the Michigan figures you quote (eg. here) are taken from two surveys, and half of them are taken a decade ago (including the UK figure). Chuch attendance rates in the UK are in an ever accelerating decline, eg see this
article
giving a figure of 7.5% weekly church attendance. Your figure of 27% does not truely reflect the current situation in Britain, and is badly out of date.
On the subject of race relations, your CIA World Factbook is a little out of date - Britain's population was composed of 5-6% ethnic minorities back at the 1990-1991 census, and has a high immigration rate. There are a couple of UK cities currently on the brink of reaching a white minority, and it is predicted that in 15 years time 40% of the youth population will come from ethnic minorities. I think it is fair to say that Britain is one of the most ethnicly diverse and integrated societies, compared with other developed world countries.[*]
Politics is a big topic and I've written too much already, and is very difficult to discuss in these terms (I mean, I've lived in the US, and it is difficult to come up with a metric to compare the level of trust that UK/US citzens feel for their own government. Lets just file this one under cultural difference. From where you stand I am too trusting. From where I stand you are too paranoid. Again, no objective comparison: no black & white situation.
To be brutally honest, I attacked your post because you had hit a score of 5 and called his a troll - and I think seeing this a few too many dumb moderators could have modded his post down to a 2 or less - which I think would have been a shame. The score of the original post currently stands at (Score:4, Flamebait), and I think this is probably an accurate reflection.
G.
[*] please note, I used the term 'one of', and that this is a relative statement, not an absolute one.
Sigh. holding a different opinion is not Trolling. Now what you are doing... bringing up a whole bunch of irrelevant information to blind a few moderators into thinking the parent post is a troll...
The fair, brotherly cops and respectable politicians are the source of enough institutional racism that the UN is getting involved. Your government has investigated the cops and found them guilty of pervasive racial bias. Heck, your own officers don't even believe that their fellow cops are fair or brotherly.
So you give a couple of links the the Steven Laurence case - one case in the last 6 years where the police made a poor job of an investigation - and in this country there was then massive public outcry, and an investigation was held, and changes are being made.
While at the same time there are riots in the US, because your cops are going around shooting black kids themselves. I really don't understand what you hope to prove by bringing this up.
What were you trying to prove? That our police force isn't perfect? - well at least it is making a serious effort to improve.
BTW, the rate of church attendance is more like 44% in the US and 27% in the UK. The University of Michigan has one of the most respected social sciences/statistics departments in the world, so please don't come back here claiming otherwise.
I do not know why the cultural differances exist, so I'm not defending the original claim that this is due to religious differences.
And as far as New Labour and the "Third Way" being responsive to the people... well, it's about as believable as hearing the same thing from Clinton. It is true that the British government isn't bought and sold as brazenly as ours is, but it is just as responsive as any other government when dollars (or pounds, as the case may be) are at issue. When those businesses want to start invading your privacy more brazenly, you can be sure that MI5 will be there to help out.
So... Our govenment ain't perfect. Neither is yours. But this isn't the point.
The point of the original post is just that this all comes down to cultural differences.
What does this mean? Like I said in another post:
I am english, and I believe in gun control. If I had been brought up in the states I would probably believe in the right to bear arms. But I wasn't so I don't.
It's just a cultural difference. Most people on slashdot seem to believe in the right to bear arms. If you are one of them - ask yourself this: The majority of the UK population believe in gun-control - are you really arrogant enough to believe that you must be objectively right and that all these people must just be wrong?
This is not about black and white, one country being right and one country being wrong. You chose to live in a country where you have the right to own a gun and walk down the street without being watched by CCTV cameras, and most US citizens seem agree with you. I choose to live in a country where there is a lower rate of gun-violence, and where I feel that the streets are safer in cities at night, and most UK subjects would seem to prefer this.
The original poster was not trolling - just pointing out this cultural difference.
How does using the Data Protection Act to force a fast-food chain to hand over CCTV footage of you achieve anything other than pissing people off?
Oh sure, I mean, I'm not advogating that anyone reading this should go out and do this. But Mark Thomas's show is funny, and by being funny it gets viewers. To directly answer your question:
"It gets people to watch a show which then puts the DPA to proper use, exposing the questionable behaviour of public servants, and explaining to people a set of civil rights that they may not know they have."
Ahh the police aren't watching you, so its ok then? It a contraced private company so that's better? I think that it's worse esp, since now you have a company that isn't even marginally beholden to the public like the goverment is.
Whoa - this paranoia is going to kill you, I'd hate to have your blood preasure. Now lets slowly put down the crack pipe and talk about this rationally.
CCTV was fitted in an area I used to live in. Not a high crime area - cameras were really fitted for the peace of mind of the elderly (who made up a large slice of the population), but street violence was halved over the first year. The cameras were paid for and fitted by the local council. A friend of a friend was hired as an operator - a bored 17year old kid, working for minimum wage (well, this is before a minimum wage was enforced, but you get the idea). He would go along and sit there, bored out of his little mind, twiddling the joysticks or reading a magazine, just sitting it out. He said that there were only staff rostered to man the cameras half of the time, due to costs.
Okay, so the guys as CESG monitor our comunications. So what? The guys at NSA are monitoring yours - it's all the same thing. Be serious - beyond echelon, there is no great government conspiracy - and the man-hours it would take to spy on the general population with these cameras would be a poor way for the spooks to spend their time.
but lets face it, do I care if Dave at GCHQ knows I've gone down the pub?
Lets face it, does Dave at GCHQ care if you've gone down the pub?
It seems that using CCTV to spy on the general public would be both amazingly man-hour intensive and amazingly dull and pointless, as exercise for GCHQ/CESG/NSA.
Yes it is - using humor and entertainment to put across a serious and definitely non-mainstream political agenda is a very good idea.
Mark Thomas would not get the audience and the platform to speak from if he did not play around and do silly stuff like this. But at the same time he demonstrated the power of the DPA, for example forcing a government department to hand over all the emails on their systems mentioning his name. He exposed a minister requesting a civil servant try to dig up dirt on him (MT). Not exactly the way you would expect a government ministry to spend taxpayers money - launching smear campaigns against stand-up comics.
Slashdot Mirror
This comes up on /. every so often, and I'm summarizing here the advice from a few people who (to me at least) sounded knowledgeable about the topic last time it came up.
Based on this advice I've switched to blue on light beige (#0000C0 on #FFFFC0). It has a strong contrast in two channels, no change in the third, and suits my office (reasonably bright, but lit with non-natural light). So far, this is working well for me.
Can you imagine how good a film WarGames would have been if the protagonist's computer had communicated vocally with the user and displayed maps?
Seriously, "a new paradigm"? - I don't know that is a sensible way to describe an old idea, working.
From the original posters comment it would look like they would agree with you (as would I) that Barack Obama probably woke up this morning felling a lot more positive about how Tuesday went. But statistically Hillary Clinton had the edge.
- Each of Barcelona's four cores incorporates a new vector math unit referred to as SSE128
SSE has always been 128bit (the 64bit simd extensions were called MMX). AMD used to funnel the instructions through a 64bit execution unit by splitting the work into two halves, the new core has a full 128bit SSE pipeline so doesn't need split the operations. Nothing new here, just a faster internal implementation. Can this deliver and 80% improvevment in benchmark performance? - quite possibly. Take a look at the Core2 FP perfromance numbers - it also has a full 128bit implementation of SSE.- And separating integer and floating-point schedulers also accelerates this thing called virtualization
Huh. Hardware virtualization affects how the processor handles certain instructions such as priviledged operations. FP instruction execution is unaffected. Virtualized workloads will benefit no more than non-virtualized workloads. Separate issue queues are good but does it specifically benefit virtualization? - no.- Barcelona blacks out power to individual portions of the chip that are idled, from in-core execution units to on-die bus controllers. This hasn't made it into PCs before
...
Intel call this 'intelligent power capability'.http://www.intel.com/technology/magazine/computin
- Barcelona adds Level 3 cache, a newcomer to the x86
Xeons have featured L3 caches for years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_m- Barcelona is genius, a genuinely new CPU that frees itself entirely of the millstone of the Pentium legacy.
- Barcelona is a new CPU, not a doubling of cores and not extensions strapped on here and there.
Barcelona is an Opteron, with a doubling of cores and some extensions strapped on here and there.I'm not meaning to detract from AMD here - the fact that they have still not had to make any radical changes to the opteron micro-architecture is a testament to the quality of the original design. They are slightly ahead of the game on virtualization - they're going to beat Intel to nested page tables - but other than that this chip is playing catchup. Overall this is going to be a very nice piece of kit to work with. But nothing radical and new here.
G.
I'd suggest x86-secret & the Reg have got the wrong end of the stick here. SMT is running two threads on one core - try taking "reverse hyperthreading" literally. I'd suggest that AMD are looking at running the one same thread in lock-step on two cores simultaneously. This is not about performance, it is about reliability - AMD looking at the market for big iron (running execution cores in lock-step is the kind of hardware reliability you are looking at on mainframe systems).
The behaviour of a CPU core should be completely deterministic. If the two cores are booted up on the same cycle they should make the same set of I/O requests at the same point, and so long as the system interface satisfies these requests identically an on the same cycle, then the cores should have no reason not to remain in sync with each other until the next point that they both should put out the next, identical pair of I/O requests. If the cores every get out of sync with each other, this indicates an error.
Just speculation of course, but I seem to recall AMD looking into this having been rumoured previously.
G.
6,500 + 1,700 = 8,200
So what the hell were the other 71,800 changes submitted? ;-)
I bet a fair few of them were indentation nazis just screwing around with whitespaces...
#define is your friend.
As you know we have a company security policy based around frequently changing passwords, in order to keep our Windows network secure.
Previously, as you are all no doubt aware, you were required to change your Windows passwords once every 90 seconds, since NT passwords can be cracked in 100 seconds flat.
Due to recent developments in MS password cracking, we will now be requiring all employees to change their passwords once every 10 seconds, to ensure they remain secure.
We hope this will not detract from productivity, and apologise for any inconvenience it does cause.
thanks,
Management
IANAL, but as I understand it, if you feel there is a reasonable probability that you are going to be sued then you can seek a delcaratory judgement against the party likely to sue you. This aleviates the fear & anxiety of waiting to be sued, by the court giving a ruling as to who would win the case were you sued.
Surely it is in the interest of one, or a group of, companies to fund a preemptive suit for declaratory judgement against SCO? The fact that they are offering to sell people indemnity against being sued would seem to offer reasonable grounds for them to believe that they might be sued, to say the least.
G.
OSX isn't unix, right? ;-)
- I'd say that depends on the conditions you bring him in under.
Less a question of conditions, more a question of number of pieces...Never was the National Criminal Intelligence Service less aptly named.
The most bleeding edge of computers may seem unnecessary now, but it is not too long ago that certain people were pronouncing that 640k of memory would be enough for everyone (and sounding quite reasonable at the time). Keep going back and you'll find other great gems (e.g. the entire computing needs of the U.K. will be provided for by three computer!).
If a 3ghz P4 looks overpowered bear in mind that Sony's goal for the PS3 is rumored to be 1 teraflop.
- on-the-fly optimizing of frequently used code
... while emulating code that was so infrequently used
Not quite, I don't think. FX!32 took an unusual (but highly effective) approach to dynamic binary translation.FX!32 used a combination of a runtime engine based around an interpreter, combined with an offline translator running as a windows service on the same machine.
Upon running a program for the first time it was purely interpreted. When the program terminated it shipped the PCs of all functions called to the translation server which translated them in the background as a low priority process. This neatly saves the machine from wasting time translating stuff while you are waiting for your program to run. The next time the program is run it runs translated code where it can, and falling back to the interpreter if it hits new code it hasn't seen before (and, of course, shipping the PCs of any new functions called to the translator on termination, so your library of translated code grows by the next time you run it).
I believe I am right in saying that unlike similar systems (e.g. Dynamo, Crusoe) they do not take the approach of interpreting infrequently used code - instead they take the approach that over time all code ends up being translated.
- Testing halt instruction
I guess it workedThat's kinda like saying that food critics should spend their time reviewing McDonalds burgers.
There are interesting things going on with Arm designs (jazelle hardware JVM, Amulet asyncronous designs, etc), but in general the Mips/Arm markets are all about taking simple RISC cores and producing them cheap and running at low power.
Nothing wrong with being more interested in the high end of the market.
G.
- As a result Pentium III would out-perform Pentium 4 in some occasion, as the latter tends to lose more instructions when branch-misprediction rate is too high.
Your reasons for the P3 outperformning the P4 don't seem to make a lot of sense.Take a processor. It hits a branch instruction. While it is working out whether or not to take the branch, it keeps itself busy by executing instructions from one side or other of the branch. It gets it wrong, so when it realizes this, it throws away a bunch of work it has done. Hence branch misprediction it a Bad thing.
Take a second processor, with more pipelines available for instruction issue. Again makes a branch prediction. Since it has more pipelines available it is able to issue more instructions while waiting for the branch to the calculated. Again it gets it wrong, and since it has been able to issue more instructions from after the branch, more are thrown away when it realizes a misprediction has taken place.
The point it that while more instructions are thrown away, this is only because more have been issued, and therefore the fact that you have more pipelines in a new generation does not lead to that processor running slower than previous versions. The increased branch misprediction penalty can only diminish the amount of increased performance that the extra pipelines give you, and not lead to an overall speed decrease, right?
G.
G.
GCC being strict.
long k[]={0,178}; char*p=(char*)&k[1]; main(){while(p---(char*)k) putchar(72+((k[1]>>(p-(char*)k)*2)& 3|(!((p-(char*)k)&1)<<2) ));}
G.
First of all, "There have never been slaves on British soil", seems particularly ironic, since (IIRC) a large proportion of slaves destined for the new world passed through Liverpool docks. Of course his statement is plain wrong; I'd go along with ignorant too.
His post was a little flamey, and he does jump to conclusions a bit too easily, (eg. "It must be because America is so religious..... This almost wholly explains...". But I felt that despite all this the post was the most insightful and informative post last night - in drawing attention (in a somewhat clumsy manner) to the fact that this is not a black and white issue, and that intelegent human beings brought up in the UK are predisposed to react differently to these kind of actions than a US citizen would.
I don't want to get into the subject of religion (big topic, much danger of flames occuring) but the Michigan figures you quote (eg. here) are taken from two surveys, and half of them are taken a decade ago (including the UK figure). Chuch attendance rates in the UK are in an ever accelerating decline, eg see this article giving a figure of 7.5% weekly church attendance. Your figure of 27% does not truely reflect the current situation in Britain, and is badly out of date.
On the subject of race relations, your CIA World Factbook is a little out of date - Britain's population was composed of 5-6% ethnic minorities back at the 1990-1991 census, and has a high immigration rate. There are a couple of UK cities currently on the brink of reaching a white minority, and it is predicted that in 15 years time 40% of the youth population will come from ethnic minorities. I think it is fair to say that Britain is one of the most ethnicly diverse and integrated societies, compared with other developed world countries.[*]
Politics is a big topic and I've written too much already, and is very difficult to discuss in these terms (I mean, I've lived in the US, and it is difficult to come up with a metric to compare the level of trust that UK/US citzens feel for their own government. Lets just file this one under cultural difference. From where you stand I am too trusting. From where I stand you are too paranoid. Again, no objective comparison: no black & white situation.
To be brutally honest, I attacked your post because you had hit a score of 5 and called his a troll - and I think seeing this a few too many dumb moderators could have modded his post down to a 2 or less - which I think would have been a shame. The score of the original post currently stands at (Score:4, Flamebait), and I think this is probably an accurate reflection.
G.
[*] please note, I used the term 'one of', and that this is a relative statement, not an absolute one.
-
The fair, brotherly cops and respectable politicians are the source of enough institutional racism that the UN is getting involved. Your government has investigated the cops and found them guilty of pervasive racial bias. Heck, your own officers don't even believe that their fellow cops are fair or brotherly.
So you give a couple of links the the Steven Laurence case - one case in the last 6 years where the police made a poor job of an investigation - and in this country there was then massive public outcry, and an investigation was held, and changes are being made.While at the same time there are riots in the US, because your cops are going around shooting black kids themselves. I really don't understand what you hope to prove by bringing this up.
What were you trying to prove? That our police force isn't perfect? - well at least it is making a serious effort to improve.
-
BTW, the rate of church attendance is more like 44% in the US and 27% in the UK. The University of Michigan has one of the most respected social sciences/statistics departments in the world, so please don't come back here claiming otherwise.
I do not know why the cultural differances exist, so I'm not defending the original claim that this is due to religious differences.-
And as far as New Labour and the "Third Way" being responsive to the people... well, it's about as believable as hearing the same thing from Clinton. It is true that the British government isn't bought and sold as brazenly as ours is, but it is just as responsive as any other government when dollars (or pounds, as the case may be) are at issue. When those businesses want to start invading your privacy more brazenly, you can be sure that MI5 will be there to help out.
So... Our govenment ain't perfect. Neither is yours. But this isn't the point.The point of the original post is just that this all comes down to cultural differences.
What does this mean?
Like I said in another post:
- I am english, and I believe in gun control. If I had been brought up in the states I would probably believe in the right to bear arms. But I wasn't so I don't.
It's just a cultural difference. Most people on slashdot seem to believe in the right to bear arms. If you are one of them - ask yourself this: The majority of the UK population believe in gun-control - are you really arrogant enough to believe that you must be objectively right and that all these people must just be wrong?This is not about black and white, one country being right and one country being wrong. You chose to live in a country where you have the right to own a gun and walk down the street without being watched by CCTV cameras, and most US citizens seem agree with you. I choose to live in a country where there is a lower rate of gun-violence, and where I feel that the streets are safer in cities at night, and most UK subjects would seem to prefer this.
The original poster was not trolling - just pointing out this cultural difference.
G.
- How does using the Data Protection Act to force a fast-food chain to hand over CCTV footage of you achieve anything other than pissing people off?
Oh sure, I mean, I'm not advogating that anyone reading this should go out and do this. But Mark Thomas's show is funny, and by being funny it gets viewers. To directly answer your question:- "It gets people to watch a show which then puts the DPA to proper use, exposing the questionable behaviour of public servants, and explaining to people a set of civil rights that they may not know they have."
Happy?:-)
-
Ahh the police aren't watching you, so its ok then? It a contraced private company so that's better? I think that it's worse esp, since now you have a company that isn't even marginally beholden to the public like the goverment is.
Whoa - this paranoia is going to kill you, I'd hate to have your blood preasure. Now lets slowly put down the crack pipe and talk about this rationally.CCTV was fitted in an area I used to live in. Not a high crime area - cameras were really fitted for the peace of mind of the elderly (who made up a large slice of the population), but street violence was halved over the first year. The cameras were paid for and fitted by the local council. A friend of a friend was hired as an operator - a bored 17year old kid, working for minimum wage (well, this is before a minimum wage was enforced, but you get the idea). He would go along and sit there, bored out of his little mind, twiddling the joysticks or reading a magazine, just sitting it out. He said that there were only staff rostered to man the cameras half of the time, due to costs.
Okay, so the guys as CESG monitor our comunications. So what? The guys at NSA are monitoring yours - it's all the same thing. Be serious - beyond echelon, there is no great government conspiracy - and the man-hours it would take to spy on the general population with these cameras would be a poor way for the spooks to spend their time.
- but lets face it, do I care if Dave at GCHQ knows I've gone down the pub?
Lets face it, does Dave at GCHQ care if you've gone down the pub?It seems that using CCTV to spy on the general public would be both amazingly man-hour intensive and amazingly dull and pointless, as exercise for GCHQ/CESG/NSA.
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Is that so clever?
Yes it is - using humor and entertainment to put across a serious and definitely non-mainstream political agenda is a very good idea.Mark Thomas would not get the audience and the platform to speak from if he did not play around and do silly stuff like this. But at the same time he demonstrated the power of the DPA, for example forcing a government department to hand over all the emails on their systems mentioning his name. He exposed a minister requesting a civil servant try to dig up dirt on him (MT). Not exactly the way you would expect a government ministry to spend taxpayers money - launching smear campaigns against stand-up comics.
infotainment has its place.