I think it's even more crucial that today we have religious freedom for all, including the freedom not to worship any god. It's a shame that some people still insist on somehow forcing their religious beliefs and symbols onto others. Please grant other people the same freedoms you want for yourself.
I am forcing my beliefs on you there??? For a start, I am not even religious, I am agnostic. Then, Europe's non-religious heritage is mentioned in the Constitution as well. Lastly, I fail to see why mentioning the role of religions in shaping Europe's history forces people to believe anything. We are not discussing a mention like "This Union, following the Christian Principles,..." or "Under God, we establish...", just a non-exclusive mention of its historical importance, which I indeed believe was one of the crucial factors in shaping out Europe (and certainly not only in positive ways).
And BTW, I am French and takes laicity very seriously. I would be totally opposed to any mentions like the American "under God" or the "In God we trust" in French or European documents, and I am adamantly opposed to having religion influencing politics. I just do not think that rewriting history to fit current beliefs is right, and the current opening statement of the constitution which describes the big influences which shaped Europe without mentioning Christianity is just that.
It annoys me that some are insisting that the (future) EU constitution must stress Europe's Christian roots.
As sites like Stonehenge show, Europe doesn't have Christian roots. It's roots are pagan. Christianity is a foreign religion for Europe. I think we should insist on the constitution stressing Europe's pagan roots. Now that would be cool!
Every thing is foreign at some point - even the pagan cults surrounding Stonehedge probably draw from older pagan cults who appeared and developed outside of Europe;)
Concerning the Constitution, I think Christianity should be mentioned since its role in Europe's history was indeed crucial. However, other religions who played a big role, including paganism (both Greek/Roman and Celtic), Judaism and Islam. Anyway, it's just a historical mention with no legal strength, and thus its effect is just symbolic.
Why worry that we now have a "new toy" to train soldiers?
Humanity has been using war games to train soldiers since the time of sparta. Then, as now, the aim was not to sharpen the fighting skills, but the thinking skills.
My feelings on the war in Baghdad aside, I feel happier that the soldiers being sent into the streets of baghdad will feel less nervous, and therefore less trigger happy
A well trained Army is not a more blood-thirsty army, as a matter of fact, the opposite is porbably true.
Well... I strongly agree on the need for soldiers better trained to handle conflicts like the one in Iraq, but I wonder if the very American approach of using new technology for that is the best. While there is no doubt that for the war itself the US army's hi-tech approach has worked extremely well as the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have clearly shown, when it comes to maintaining order on the ground and fighting militias it has its limits. British troops in Iraq have globally been better able to pacify the cities they are in charge of than US soldiers, and the reason behind their relative success is not more high tech, geeky new technology but on-the-ground experience in similar missions acquired in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. I can't see a simulator replacing real experience in dealing with the population; it's not something you can simulate like an air battle.
Shortly before Carl Sagan died, he wrote an article in Parade Magazine about how he felt this was a bad idea. His premise being that a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this to turn a "near miss" into a direct hit. Which could be potentially far more destructive than a nuke. Obviously he's looking well into the future. But I think he has point.
Far more destructive than a major nuclear power (The US or Russia today, more of them tomorrow) launching all its missiles all over the planet? It seems to me that any nation with the power to change the trajectory of asteroids would likely have a nuclear arsenal sufficient for wiping out the planet. And unlike with asteroids, with a nuclear arsenal a Doctor Strangelove does not need to wait for a rare occasion to destroy the planet.
The key thing to remember is that the people capable of such horrors and the people moving rovers on another planet are different people.
I would love to believe that, but I can't. Remember Von Braun, whose V2 killed thousands of British during WW2 and were the start of the exploration of space? Remember the leaders of the Soviet Union, behind both the first pictures of Earth in space and one of the most oppressive dictatorship ever?
I can't help feeling that between yesterday's terrorists and the scientists operating Spirit and Opportunity, the gap is not as large as I would like to believe.
...I see endless pictures of the senseless Madrid bombings, two hundred civilians killed by madmen for religious or pseudo-political reasons.
How strange a thing is humanity, which is capable of such horrors and yet can move rovers on an other planet and look up in awe at the pale blue dot that is Earth.
Sorry, but comparing electronic voting with the French manual voting system, I must disagree with most of your post... BTW, I have served as a vote-counter, so I know what I am speaking about;)
The benefits of electronic voting are obvious and numerous: real-time tallying,
Results of French elections are usually known a few hours after the votes, and after-voting polls usually give the result right at closure time.
greater security (a staffer couriering a box of ballots could
theoretically manipulate them, but a staffer transmitting an encrypted database is powerless to alter it)
Votes are counted by groups of six persons with representatives of parties checking. Any voter can demand to take part. Results are then communicated by phone to the Interior Ministry, where they are published voting by voting center. Any of the dozens of persons having taken part in the counting can check that they match.
, elimination of ambiguous selections
(eg., "Hanging/Pregnant Chads")
Voters are handed a slip of paper per candidate and an envelop. They vote by placing one of the slip inside the envelop. If there is none or more than one, the vote is invalid. I have yet to see an "ambiguous selections"
less time required per voter,
Voting takes less than a minute on average. I doubt an electronic system would be much faster.
fewer staff required to manage an election, and less paper waste.
You have a point there, though since all of the "staffs" are volunteers the high manpower requirement of the French system is not a financial problem. However this seems to me to be a minor point compared to security and confidentiality.
I am not against electronic voting per see, but it would have to be extremely secure and tested - and the current systems proposed are NOT. And it would have to leave a paper trail - voters who do not have the CS skills to understand electronic security must known that there is a way they can understand to recount votes.
In the meantime, I will gladly stick to a tried and tested system with no sever flaws over shaky electronic systems, even if the latest are "cooler". I find your second paragraph on how we must use electronic voting because everything else is going back to the middle-age worrying BTW - elections are much too important to endanger with a "newer is better, we need the latest gadget" approach.
In England, we have these gutless pedestrian crossings which are too scared to stop traffic if they detect cars approaching, so they wait until there's no traffic around and only then activate the pedestrian sequence.
Cowardly brits!
In Paris, many pedestrians seems to think it's shameful to cross if there are not cars coming from both directions, the faster the better!:p
Is that once you have decoded them, which is a cool, "geek" task, they are in German! And translating German to English or whatever your language is is much less fun and much harder for the average geek;-)
These large hypervelocity cannons will float in space, but once they make a shot there'll be quite a kickback. Watch for space-cannons landing on the moon.
Except that they do not have to launch the rod at a high speed - just fast enough for Earth's gravity to do the rest. A stabiliser of some sort should be enough to prevent the cannon from drifting.
Granted, the proliferation of nuclear weapons terrifies me... but I would say that their deterrent value has been proven.
True, nuclear weapons may have prevented a WW2-like war between the US and the USSR, but is that worthwhile in the long term? Twenty years after WW2, even the most badly hit countries had been rebuilt and the damage more or less repaired.
Now think for a second what a full-scale nuclear war would imply for the planet - two continents totally wasted, nuclear radiations all over the planet, likely a nuclear winter. Humanity might never recover from that - there would obviously be survivors, but in a nuclear winter their long-term chances of survival are dim.
I'll rather have a dozen WW2 than a single full-scale nuclear war, and it's doubtful that nuclear weapons will even prevent that. It's simply not worth the price...
I'm probably going to be -1 trolled into oblivion, but why don't all the people complaining about the NYT simply register and forget about it??
I did that at least three years ago, and with cookies I only ever have to worry about it *once* each time I change browser. And if you are opposed on principle on giving personal info, just put false one.
The whole thing takes about as long as getting the Google link, and you only have to do it once. And I thought geeks were supposed to be efficient;-)
A company sacrificing benefits in order to "built up brand-awarness" hoping to become a distribution giant when "brick-and-mortar" dinosaurs finally vanish, all this in a market when a dozen other companies are betting on conquering exactly the same futur market?
so we can say that the ability of sending and receiving email became one of the things which essentially needed for human life just like proper medicine for example... or at least the benefactors think so...
Two years or so ago I visited Tami Nadu, a poor state in the south of India... Even in the smallest towns (say, 20 inhabitants which is nothing in India), you would find a place offering dirst-cheap internet acces (typically 2 or 3 computers sharing a 33.6k line). People there had taken to using that instead of phone because it was much, much cheaper! It allowed for exemple parents who had a son or daughter studying or working in an other city to contact him at a fraction of the cost of a phone call. It also allowed farmers to have up-to-date information on market price for their product or to ask for the delivery of fertiliser or spare parts for those who had a truck, or to know when one of their relative living in a city had an opening for a temporary job (at a building site, for exemple). It was amazingly useful - and it was not designed for tourists. Though we were happy to use the places, we were often the only foreigners the guy in charge of the place had had for clients this year. And while it was slow, for text emails a 33.6 line is more than enough. You really wanted to kill spammers there though - downloading 50 spam emails using broadband is annoying, but on a shared 33.6k line it's a real pain;-)
People who reacts to article like that by saying that internet is a luxury are missing the fact that basic internet services like emails or simple websites are in practice often the cheapest way to communicate - you get far more information out of your phone line. And even poor farmers in third-world countries need to communicate, if only to the nearest city. Internet is more than just a greater provider of pr0n and pirated music...
The only reason lego charges such outrageous prices for them is because they can.
I think you meant... because they thought they could. Their strategy of "sell a little at outrageous prices to the lego fanatics who will buy them anyway" is a total failure, and what we see today is the sad result:/
Well, if your definition of "carry weight" is "able to influence a list in a local newspaper no one but geeks care about in the first place", that is;-)
According to the official list (http://europa.eu.int/agencies/index_en.htm), the 15 current agencies are located in:
THESSALONIKI, Greece
DUBLIN, Ireland
COPENHAGEN, Danemark
TORINO, Italy
LISBON, Portugal
LONDON, UK
ALICANTE, Spain
BILBAO, Spain
ANGERS, France
LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg
VIENNA, Austria
THESSALONIKI, Greece (again!)
The last three are new and do not have fixed locations yet. So it looks like the EU agencies are in fact concentrated in... THESSALONIKI, Greece! At least one of the new agencies will probably end up in Finland - not quite Sweden but not too far out either;-)
Note that those are EU agencies, working in a specific field, and not EU institutions, like the Commission, the Parliament, or the ECB. The first two belong in Brussel IMHO - placing one in Portugal and the other in Finland would be good "decentralisation", but it would simply multiply traveling expenses.
Bad code on a voting machine = potential to steal the election, but until you have proof please keep your fingerpointing to yourself.
Proof? No, but what looks like frightening bugs in one of the most critical tasks of a democracy, from companies whose owners are heavily involved in politic. Now, that does not necessarily mean that election-rigging is under way, but IMHO it is cause enough for public scrutiny.
Both sides of the political debate here in the States and abroad would love to steal an election.
So what? Should we let them do it, trusting that some sort of balance will be kept by the rigging on both side?
And I concur, it works very well.
The number of persons who would have to cheat to change a vote is high (at least four volunteers, plus the "overseers" from each parties and from the municipality); in addition, the "paper trail" remains behind to allow recounts.
And in presidential elections (with something like forty or fifty million potential voters, so big if not quite US-scale), projections accurate to the % are available the minute the polls close.
It's only drawback is that it require a non-ridiculous number of volunteers, who are (rightly, IMHO) not remunerated.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's even more crucial that today we have religious freedom for all, including the freedom not to worship any god. It's a shame that some people still insist on somehow forcing their religious beliefs and symbols onto others. Please grant other people the same freedoms you want for yourself.
..." or "Under God, we establish ...", just a non-exclusive mention of its historical importance, which I indeed believe was one of the crucial factors in shaping out Europe (and certainly not only in positive ways).
I am forcing my beliefs on you there??? For a start, I am not even religious, I am agnostic. Then, Europe's non-religious heritage is mentioned in the Constitution as well. Lastly, I fail to see why mentioning the role of religions in shaping Europe's history forces people to believe anything. We are not discussing a mention like "This Union, following the Christian Principles,
And BTW, I am French and takes laicity very seriously. I would be totally opposed to any mentions like the American "under God" or the "In God we trust" in French or European documents, and I am adamantly opposed to having religion influencing politics. I just do not think that rewriting history to fit current beliefs is right, and the current opening statement of the constitution which describes the big influences which shaped Europe without mentioning Christianity is just that.
It annoys me that some are insisting that the (future) EU constitution must stress Europe's Christian roots.
;)
As sites like Stonehenge show, Europe doesn't have Christian roots. It's roots are pagan. Christianity is a foreign religion for Europe. I think we should insist on the constitution stressing Europe's pagan roots. Now that would be cool!
Every thing is foreign at some point - even the pagan cults surrounding Stonehedge probably draw from older pagan cults who appeared and developed outside of Europe
Concerning the Constitution, I think Christianity should be mentioned since its role in Europe's history was indeed crucial. However, other religions who played a big role, including paganism (both Greek/Roman and Celtic), Judaism and Islam. Anyway, it's just a historical mention with no legal strength, and thus its effect is just symbolic.
Why worry that we now have a "new toy" to train soldiers?
Humanity has been using war games to train soldiers since the time of sparta. Then, as now, the aim was not to sharpen the fighting skills, but the thinking skills.
My feelings on the war in Baghdad aside, I feel happier that the soldiers being sent into the streets of baghdad will feel less nervous, and therefore less trigger happy
A well trained Army is not a more blood-thirsty army, as a matter of fact, the opposite is porbably true.
Well... I strongly agree on the need for soldiers better trained to handle conflicts like the one in Iraq, but I wonder if the very American approach of using new technology for that is the best. While there is no doubt that for the war itself the US army's hi-tech approach has worked extremely well as the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have clearly shown, when it comes to maintaining order on the ground and fighting militias it has its limits. British troops in Iraq have globally been better able to pacify the cities they are in charge of than US soldiers, and the reason behind their relative success is not more high tech, geeky new technology but on-the-ground experience in similar missions acquired in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. I can't see a simulator replacing real experience in dealing with the population; it's not something you can simulate like an air battle.
Shortly before Carl Sagan died, he wrote an article in Parade Magazine about how he felt this was a bad idea. His premise being that a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this to turn a "near miss" into a direct hit. Which could be potentially far more destructive than a nuke. Obviously he's looking well into the future. But I think he has point.
Far more destructive than a major nuclear power (The US or Russia today, more of them tomorrow) launching all its missiles all over the planet? It seems to me that any nation with the power to change the trajectory of asteroids would likely have a nuclear arsenal sufficient for wiping out the planet. And unlike with asteroids, with a nuclear arsenal a Doctor Strangelove does not need to wait for a rare occasion to destroy the planet.
The key thing to remember is that the people capable of such horrors and the people moving rovers on another planet are different people.
I would love to believe that, but I can't. Remember Von Braun, whose V2 killed thousands of British during WW2 and were the start of the exploration of space? Remember the leaders of the Soviet Union, behind both the first pictures of Earth in space and one of the most oppressive dictatorship ever?
I can't help feeling that between yesterday's terrorists and the scientists operating Spirit and Opportunity, the gap is not as large as I would like to believe.
...I see endless pictures of the senseless Madrid bombings, two hundred civilians killed by madmen for religious or pseudo-political reasons.
How strange a thing is humanity, which is capable of such horrors and yet can move rovers on an other planet and look up in awe at the pale blue dot that is Earth.
Which launch the "counter-attack" on random servers before it's even attacked, just in case.
Sorry, but comparing electronic voting with the French manual voting system, I must disagree with most of your post... BTW, I have served as a vote-counter, so I know what I am speaking about ;)
The benefits of electronic voting are obvious and numerous: real-time tallying,
Results of French elections are usually known a few hours after the votes, and after-voting polls usually give the result right at closure time.
greater security (a staffer couriering a box of ballots could theoretically manipulate them, but a staffer transmitting an encrypted database is powerless to alter it)
Votes are counted by groups of six persons with representatives of parties checking. Any voter can demand to take part. Results are then communicated by phone to the Interior Ministry, where they are published voting by voting center. Any of the dozens of persons having taken part in the counting can check that they match.
, elimination of ambiguous selections (eg., "Hanging/Pregnant Chads")
Voters are handed a slip of paper per candidate and an envelop. They vote by placing one of the slip inside the envelop. If there is none or more than one, the vote is invalid. I have yet to see an "ambiguous selections"
less time required per voter,
Voting takes less than a minute on average. I doubt an electronic system would be much faster.
fewer staff required to manage an election, and less paper waste.
You have a point there, though since all of the "staffs" are volunteers the high manpower requirement of the French system is not a financial problem. However this seems to me to be a minor point compared to security and confidentiality.
I am not against electronic voting per see, but it would have to be extremely secure and tested - and the current systems proposed are NOT. And it would have to leave a paper trail - voters who do not have the CS skills to understand electronic security must known that there is a way they can understand to recount votes.
In the meantime, I will gladly stick to a tried and tested system with no sever flaws over shaky electronic systems, even if the latest are "cooler". I find your second paragraph on how we must use electronic voting because everything else is going back to the middle-age worrying BTW - elections are much too important to endanger with a "newer is better, we need the latest gadget" approach.
In England, we have these gutless pedestrian crossings which are too scared to stop traffic if they detect cars approaching, so they wait until there's no traffic around and only then activate the pedestrian sequence.
:p
Cowardly brits!
In Paris, many pedestrians seems to think it's shameful to cross if there are not cars coming from both directions, the faster the better!
Is that once you have decoded them, which is a cool, "geek" task, they are in German! And translating German to English or whatever your language is is much less fun and much harder for the average geek ;-)
These large hypervelocity cannons will float in space, but once they make a shot there'll be quite a kickback. Watch for space-cannons landing on the moon.
Except that they do not have to launch the rod at a high speed - just fast enough for Earth's gravity to do the rest. A stabiliser of some sort should be enough to prevent the cannon from drifting.
Granted, the proliferation of nuclear weapons terrifies me... but I would say that their deterrent value has been proven.
True, nuclear weapons may have prevented a WW2-like war between the US and the USSR, but is that worthwhile in the long term? Twenty years after WW2, even the most badly hit countries had been rebuilt and the damage more or less repaired.
Now think for a second what a full-scale nuclear war would imply for the planet - two continents totally wasted, nuclear radiations all over the planet, likely a nuclear winter. Humanity might never recover from that - there would obviously be survivors, but in a nuclear winter their long-term chances of survival are dim.
I'll rather have a dozen WW2 than a single full-scale nuclear war, and it's doubtful that nuclear weapons will even prevent that. It's simply not worth the price...
I'm probably going to be -1 trolled into oblivion, but why don't all the people complaining about the NYT simply register and forget about it?? ;-)
I did that at least three years ago, and with cookies I only ever have to worry about it *once* each time I change browser. And if you are opposed on principle on giving personal info, just put false one.
The whole thing takes about as long as getting the Google link, and you only have to do it once. And I thought geeks were supposed to be efficient
Isn't that site missing the main reason for GarageBand's success??
A company sacrificing benefits in order to "built up brand-awarness" hoping to become a distribution giant when "brick-and-mortar" dinosaurs finally vanish, all this in a market when a dozen other companies are betting on conquering exactly the same futur market?
Now why do I have this feeling of deja vue?
I wrote: Even in the smallest towns (say, 20 inhabitants which is nothing in India)
;-)
I meant: Even in the smallest towns (say, 20k inhabitants which is nothing in India)
so we can say that the ability of sending and receiving email became one of the things which essentially needed for human life just like proper medicine for example... or at least the benefactors think so...
;-)
Two years or so ago I visited Tami Nadu, a poor state in the south of India... Even in the smallest towns (say, 20 inhabitants which is nothing in India), you would find a place offering dirst-cheap internet acces (typically 2 or 3 computers sharing a 33.6k line). People there had taken to using that instead of phone because it was much, much cheaper! It allowed for exemple parents who had a son or daughter studying or working in an other city to contact him at a fraction of the cost of a phone call. It also allowed farmers to have up-to-date information on market price for their product or to ask for the delivery of fertiliser or spare parts for those who had a truck, or to know when one of their relative living in a city had an opening for a temporary job (at a building site, for exemple). It was amazingly useful - and it was not designed for tourists. Though we were happy to use the places, we were often the only foreigners the guy in charge of the place had had for clients this year. And while it was slow, for text emails a 33.6 line is more than enough. You really wanted to kill spammers there though - downloading 50 spam emails using broadband is annoying, but on a shared 33.6k line it's a real pain
People who reacts to article like that by saying that internet is a luxury are missing the fact that basic internet services like emails or simple websites are in practice often the cheapest way to communicate - you get far more information out of your phone line. And even poor farmers in third-world countries need to communicate, if only to the nearest city. Internet is more than just a greater provider of pr0n and pirated music...
----------------
HTTP Error 403
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
This error can be caused if the Web server is busy and cannot process your request due to heavy traffic. Please try to connect again later.
Please contact the Web server's administrator if the problem persists.
Yes, I can see that...
Original version:
Question: Which distribution of Linux do most Iraqis use?
Answer: oh, they all use Windows. I think I saw one with Slackware once though.
Slashdot version, with HTML added:
Question: Which distribution of Linux do most Iraqis use?
Answer: oh, they all use Slackware.
What? We edited the question? Of course not! We just added some strategically placed comment tags...
Firsts0rz :-D
This sentence has been detected as being plagiarised from:
Anonymous Coward
Grade: F-
The only reason lego charges such outrageous prices for them is because they can.
:/
I think you meant... because they thought they could. Their strategy of "sell a little at outrageous prices to the lego fanatics who will buy them anyway" is a total failure, and what we see today is the sad result
Goes to show that united geeks carry weight.
;-)
Well, if your definition of "carry weight" is "able to influence a list in a local newspaper no one but geeks care about in the first place", that is
According to the official list (http://europa.eu.int/agencies/index_en.htm), the 15 current agencies are located in:
;-)
THESSALONIKI, Greece
DUBLIN, Ireland
COPENHAGEN, Danemark
TORINO, Italy
LISBON, Portugal
LONDON, UK
ALICANTE, Spain
BILBAO, Spain
ANGERS, France
LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg
VIENNA, Austria
THESSALONIKI, Greece (again!)
The last three are new and do not have fixed locations yet. So it looks like the EU agencies are in fact concentrated in... THESSALONIKI, Greece! At least one of the new agencies will probably end up in Finland - not quite Sweden but not too far out either
Note that those are EU agencies, working in a specific field, and not EU institutions, like the Commission, the Parliament, or the ECB. The first two belong in Brussel IMHO - placing one in Portugal and the other in Finland would be good "decentralisation", but it would simply multiply traveling expenses.
Bad code on a voting machine = potential to steal the election, but until you have proof please keep your fingerpointing to yourself.
Proof? No, but what looks like frightening bugs in one of the most critical tasks of a democracy, from companies whose owners are heavily involved in politic. Now, that does not necessarily mean that election-rigging is under way, but IMHO it is cause enough for public scrutiny.
Both sides of the political debate here in the States and abroad would love to steal an election.
So what? Should we let them do it, trusting that some sort of balance will be kept by the rigging on both side?
And I concur, it works very well.
The number of persons who would have to cheat to change a vote is high (at least four volunteers, plus the "overseers" from each parties and from the municipality); in addition, the "paper trail" remains behind to allow recounts.
And in presidential elections (with something like forty or fifty million potential voters, so big if not quite US-scale), projections accurate to the % are available the minute the polls close.
It's only drawback is that it require a non-ridiculous number of volunteers, who are (rightly, IMHO) not remunerated.