It's not a Flash issue, since I can play other Flash content. It's specifically the BBC that causes a problem. I don't know what bit of privacy or security I'd have to relinquish to make it work, but I just won't do it.
Found it: if I disable Adblock Plus the BBC player works. Screw that!
healthy unions are as vital to our economy as healthy companies
And given the fact that they foolishly duplicate the hierarchical structure that leads to their adversaries being so unethical in the first place, they quickly fall victim to the same lack of ethics, as the unethical cream of the crop rises through the ranks and grabs the helm.
Unions become just as corrupt as the corporations and governments that they claim as adversaries, precisely because they collectively behave exactly the same and make the same organizational and, ultimately, ethical mistakes.
I can't watch the video: none of the BBC video content comes through in my Firefox browser, even with a full bypass for NoScript. I get sick and tired of having to disable all sorts of protections for the sake of such proprietary crap, so instead I'll do without... at least until somebody "rips" it to something open source enough that I can watch it. I'd even settle for YouTube (ugh).
Mod this dude up, please. This behavior is exactly why unions should be ad hoc and problem-specific organizations, and be disbanded after the problem is resolved, not linger around for decades afterward like fat parasitic leeches.
The guild is also accused of wanting to profiteer off family bedtime rituals. A lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sarcastically warned that "parents everywhere should be on the lookout for legal papers haling them into court for reading to their kids."
Apparently Mr. Blunt is indeed a greedy bastard: he's too cheap to hire a decent proofreader and incapable of doing the job himself. Not only that, he butchered someone else's words, not his own, in the process. Since it was an EFF LAWYER whose words he butchered, I guess he can expect a response any day now.:-)
Just because SOME "fairy tales" have been demonstrated to contain some degree of historical fact doesn't mean that ALL such stories must therefore also be factual. You're indulging a logical fallacy or two there.
I'm not a hick; I was born in suburbia and now I live in another suburbia. I'm a wannabe hick, because I wish I'd grown up on a farm near a small town, and still hope to live that way. I know a good thing when I observe it. You apparently don't, robably (1044462).
It's the small-town paradigm dragged forward - kicking and screaming - into the Internet age. I say "kicking and screaming" because there were always those malcontents who found their small town "stifling" because it stifled their misbehavior, and just couldn't wait to escape to the big anonymous city where they could indulge themselves. There's a LOT more of that breed now, because we've actually been breeding them selectively. They're the same people who always clamber out of the woodwork at the first mention of anything like this that might reinstill the inhibitions that would make them curb their social miscreance; they're always the first ones to cry foul and cry the loudest.
I'm at least as suspicious as the next guy about big business, but your worry sounds more like paranoia to me rather than just healthy skepticism. These cameras are a chance to revive the small-town ethic that once kept people in line, where "everybody knows your name" and what you've been on about.
It was that simple fear that kept small communities free of the crap that happens in Metropolis. Its absence in metropolitan cities is precisely why there is so much antisocial behavior, of ALL types and severity. The absence of that fear results in no social accountability; it's exactly why people feel able to drive as recklessly and thoughtlessly as they do; if you KNEW that the guy in that car you just cut off knows who you are and that you have friends and family in common, would you feel so empowered to cut him off in the first place? I doubt it, unless you're truly stupid or antisocial.
Having ubiquitous "eyes" everywhere monitored by your extended neighbors is an opportunity to reassert that fear. Are you sure your fear of its alleged abuse isn't really fear that it might actually be effective? What have you been on about lately that you don't want your townsfolk to know?
Your ideas are nice refinements. It really could work, but only if our leaders are are willing to do what we elected them to do: LEAD, rather than control.
The correct use of those cameras is to wire them up to the Internet, and make it so that ANY concerned citizen can monitor the cameras in a Web browser, or perhaps a dedicated app. Leave it up to concerned citizens watching a camera to call the police and report what they have observed. Best of all, give them a tool - Firefox extension? - that lets them record what they're viewing, so they have some form of evidence to give police, not just hearsay.
In the United States we have Neighborhood Watch groups, many of which would no doubt find cameras on every street invaluable: they could sit home warm in their jammies and still help keep their neighborhood safe, instead of being out roaming the streets in the harsh cold with the crooks, risking being shot-at.
That approach would incur no additional municipal cost for monitoring, and any misuse of the cameras would be the responsibility of individual citizens, not Big Brother. Would citizens actually do it? I think they would, in high-crime areas or areas where crime is rising. That approach would be democratic, rather than autocratic.
I have a suggestion to both make those cameras cost effective and remove the Big Brother onus from them at the same time: make their use democratic rather than autocratic. Have you ever heard of Neighborhood Watch? Perhaps you don't have such efforts in the U.K.?
The correct use of those cameras is to wire them up to the Internet, and make it so that ANY concerned citizen can monitor the cameras in a Web browser, or perhaps a dedicated app. Leave it up to concerned citizens watching a camera to call the police and report what they have observed. Best of all, give them a tool - Firefox extension? - that lets them record what they're viewing, so they have some form of evidence to give police, not just hearsay.
That approach would incur no additional municipal cost for monitoring, and any misuse of the cameras would be the responsibility of individual citizens, not Big Brother. Would citizens actually do it? I think they would, in high-crime areas or areas where crime is rising.
You missed my point: ain't it interesting that neither Firefox nor Opera are forced to rely on this "operating system functionality" that is "non-trivial to port" and yet both have "security work" that is the equal of that in IE7?
That specific paragraph in that specific page you referenced is double-speak for:
"We've tied IE7 tightly to new stuff that we embedded in Windows XP, and we don't want to bother UN-embedding that new stuff and including it directly with IE7 so that it can work with Windows 2000... so don't even bother asking!"
That sounds at lot like bundling to me. In this case, they're bundling IE7 with Windows XP to coerce stubborn Windows 2000 users to upgrade to Windows XP, rather than designing IE7 to be STANDALONE like Firefox and Opera which work equally well in either version of Windows.
Addendum: Wouldn't this be yet more fine evidence that Internet Explorer has been and is too closely embedded in the operating system? IE7 won't even install, but Firefox and Opera have no issues at all with Windows 2000 (this is being submitted from FF3). What is it about IE7 that makes it so utterly dependent upon Windows XP?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a Flash issue, since I can play other Flash content. It's specifically the BBC that causes a problem. I don't know what bit of privacy or security I'd have to relinquish to make it work, but I just won't do it.
Found it: if I disable Adblock Plus the BBC player works. Screw that!
Occam's Razor applies here: "HAULING them into court" is the more likely intended phrasing.
And given the fact that they foolishly duplicate the hierarchical structure that leads to their adversaries being so unethical in the first place, they quickly fall victim to the same lack of ethics, as the unethical cream of the crop rises through the ranks and grabs the helm.
Unions become just as corrupt as the corporations and governments that they claim as adversaries, precisely because they collectively behave exactly the same and make the same organizational and, ultimately, ethical mistakes.
Unions don't impress me.
I can't watch the video: none of the BBC video content comes through in my Firefox browser, even with a full bypass for NoScript. I get sick and tired of having to disable all sorts of protections for the sake of such proprietary crap, so instead I'll do without... at least until somebody "rips" it to something open source enough that I can watch it. I'd even settle for YouTube (ugh).
Mod this dude up, please. This behavior is exactly why unions should be ad hoc and problem-specific organizations, and be disbanded after the problem is resolved, not linger around for decades afterward like fat parasitic leeches.
Next to last paragraph of his rant:
Apparently Mr. Blunt is indeed a greedy bastard: he's too cheap to hire a decent proofreader and incapable of doing the job himself. Not only that, he butchered someone else's words, not his own, in the process. Since it was an EFF LAWYER whose words he butchered, I guess he can expect a response any day now. :-)
*LAL*
Somebody's been playing too much Alpha Centauri. Will you quit droning on about it now already?
Why, I see a comment right ^^^ here... absent any redeeming value such as it is, not as 1000th post much less first.
Fail!
Hey, I already have a beowulf cluster of wall-warts! No, wait, make that two clusters. I don't even need to run the furnace this winter!
Just because SOME "fairy tales" have been demonstrated to contain some degree of historical fact doesn't mean that ALL such stories must therefore also be factual. You're indulging a logical fallacy or two there.
Think of the starving journalists!
What's this about a world with no reuters?
I'm not a hick; I was born in suburbia and now I live in another suburbia. I'm a wannabe hick, because I wish I'd grown up on a farm near a small town, and still hope to live that way. I know a good thing when I observe it. You apparently don't, robably (1044462).
It's the small-town paradigm dragged forward - kicking and screaming - into the Internet age. I say "kicking and screaming" because there were always those malcontents who found their small town "stifling" because it stifled their misbehavior, and just couldn't wait to escape to the big anonymous city where they could indulge themselves. There's a LOT more of that breed now, because we've actually been breeding them selectively. They're the same people who always clamber out of the woodwork at the first mention of anything like this that might reinstill the inhibitions that would make them curb their social miscreance; they're always the first ones to cry foul and cry the loudest.
I'm at least as suspicious as the next guy about big business, but your worry sounds more like paranoia to me rather than just healthy skepticism. These cameras are a chance to revive the small-town ethic that once kept people in line, where "everybody knows your name" and what you've been on about.
It was that simple fear that kept small communities free of the crap that happens in Metropolis. Its absence in metropolitan cities is precisely why there is so much antisocial behavior, of ALL types and severity. The absence of that fear results in no social accountability; it's exactly why people feel able to drive as recklessly and thoughtlessly as they do; if you KNEW that the guy in that car you just cut off knows who you are and that you have friends and family in common, would you feel so empowered to cut him off in the first place? I doubt it, unless you're truly stupid or antisocial.
Having ubiquitous "eyes" everywhere monitored by your extended neighbors is an opportunity to reassert that fear. Are you sure your fear of its alleged abuse isn't really fear that it might actually be effective? What have you been on about lately that you don't want your townsfolk to know?
I wouldn't even want to vid-stalk Paris Hilton. Ewww!
Big Mother, in other words?
Your ideas are nice refinements. It really could work, but only if our leaders are are willing to do what we elected them to do: LEAD, rather than control.
The correct use of those cameras is to wire them up to the Internet, and make it so that ANY concerned citizen can monitor the cameras in a Web browser, or perhaps a dedicated app. Leave it up to concerned citizens watching a camera to call the police and report what they have observed. Best of all, give them a tool - Firefox extension? - that lets them record what they're viewing, so they have some form of evidence to give police, not just hearsay.
In the United States we have Neighborhood Watch groups, many of which would no doubt find cameras on every street invaluable: they could sit home warm in their jammies and still help keep their neighborhood safe, instead of being out roaming the streets in the harsh cold with the crooks, risking being shot-at.
That approach would incur no additional municipal cost for monitoring, and any misuse of the cameras would be the responsibility of individual citizens, not Big Brother. Would citizens actually do it? I think they would, in high-crime areas or areas where crime is rising. That approach would be democratic, rather than autocratic.
I have a suggestion to both make those cameras cost effective and remove the Big Brother onus from them at the same time: make their use democratic rather than autocratic. Have you ever heard of Neighborhood Watch? Perhaps you don't have such efforts in the U.K.?
The correct use of those cameras is to wire them up to the Internet, and make it so that ANY concerned citizen can monitor the cameras in a Web browser, or perhaps a dedicated app. Leave it up to concerned citizens watching a camera to call the police and report what they have observed. Best of all, give them a tool - Firefox extension? - that lets them record what they're viewing, so they have some form of evidence to give police, not just hearsay.
That approach would incur no additional municipal cost for monitoring, and any misuse of the cameras would be the responsibility of individual citizens, not Big Brother. Would citizens actually do it? I think they would, in high-crime areas or areas where crime is rising.
... because my wallet has a court injunction against me setting foot anywhere near an iPhone with a for-sale sign on it!
You missed my point: ain't it interesting that neither Firefox nor Opera are forced to rely on this "operating system functionality" that is "non-trivial to port" and yet both have "security work" that is the equal of that in IE7?
That specific paragraph in that specific page you referenced is double-speak for:
"We've tied IE7 tightly to new stuff that we embedded in Windows XP, and we don't want to bother UN-embedding that new stuff and including it directly with IE7 so that it can work with Windows 2000... so don't even bother asking!"
That sounds at lot like bundling to me. In this case, they're bundling IE7 with Windows XP to coerce stubborn Windows 2000 users to upgrade to Windows XP, rather than designing IE7 to be STANDALONE like Firefox and Opera which work equally well in either version of Windows.
Trust me... you can find it! It's nearly as big as Ireland itself.
Addendum: Wouldn't this be yet more fine evidence that Internet Explorer has been and is too closely embedded in the operating system? IE7 won't even install, but Firefox and Opera have no issues at all with Windows 2000 (this is being submitted from FF3). What is it about IE7 that makes it so utterly dependent upon Windows XP?