Yeah, but that's bobbins though, isn't it?
There's a reason airplane cockpits are designed the way they are. There's a reason nuclear power station control surfaces are designed the way they are. In fact there's a very good reason why anything that could really go bang has input devices that are designed to diminish the possibility of user error.
Just saying "pay attention" isn't enough. No-one, not you, certainly not me, can attend exactly to what they're doing for every second of every minute of every day.
Even further than that, this article in the New York Times argues that it was only because of the FBW system in the A320 that the miracle on the Hudson was even possible. The author argues it wasn't just human intervention but computer assisted human intervention that allowed all those people to escape.
I take your point, but the Large Hadron Collider is the pre-eminent technological achievement of our civilisation. It knocks the complexity of the moon landings into a cocked hat and operates at energy frequencies intended to rip the very fabric of space apart. It's the most complicated and wondrous machine ever built by our, and possibly by any species, and we're doing all this to understand the processes that govern life, the universe and everything.
That, my friend, is what gods do.
I think a little "are we there yet?" journalism is forgiveable in that context.
Christ on a bike. See. This is the problem with you people. Frankly, if someone appears on my borders having travelled thousands of miles, with little money and no knowledge of the native language yet can pick up local customs and prejudices well enough to game a complicated system that intelligent people put in place precisely to stop them then who cares whether they're "genuine refugees"? That level of motivation and energy is welcome in any society I'm part of because it's precisely those qualities that create the milk and honey you're so fond of! Don't you understand? Geographic and social mobility is good! Stasis is bad! Change is good! How is that difficult? Gah! And double Gah! I'm sick of being exposed to this puerile nonsense day after day after day. Maybe you're right. Maybe we should be more draconian. I just hope that if we are, the powers-that-be make it as hard to leave as it'll become to enter. That way you can live in the economic, social and demographic backwater you create.
It's a shame most people are shrieking fools nowadays as otherwise we might be able to construct a meaningful dialogue regarding the best way to manage immigration. That way English classes for migrants wouldn't be first on the altar of economic sacrifice, limiting their ability to integrate and compounding the us-and-them mentality that strangles any debate at birth. Immigration does raise complex question but it is beneficial and if people would just drop their belief in their god-given right to do whatever the fuck they want to poor people in other countries without the burden of consequences ever dropping in their lap then perhaps we could step out of the handbasket and head upwards rather than downwards for once.
I'm not sure I see the distinction you're trying to make. One is a link to copyrighted material one isn't. They're chalk and cheese and I have no problem with either, but you're making the mistake of thinking that everyone who uses bittorrent is a freeloading scumbag whose raison d'etre is to rip off creators the world over. They're not.
I use bittorrent to help me find new material. I'm not in the slightest bit embarrassed by that. Why should I be? I don't give a flying one what other people use it for but I suspect more use it in a similar manner to me than the record companies would ever admit to. I consider that a responsible usage of file sharing technology and if you don't agree, perhaps you can explain to me at what point it isn't.
The IFPI and their hateful, hateful ilk have not lost a single unit sale because I've used unauthorised sources. In fact, if it wasn't for those unauthorised sources, I'd never have made a lot of my purchases in the first place. Up until today, I'd recommend bands to people and burn them CDs of things I liked. I'd big up bands that I'd come across and be a cheerleader to anyone I knew for their material. As of today, that ceases. The IFPI lose out because the people I know buy fewer records. The artists lose out because the people I know may not want to go to their shows. I lose out because I love music. And why? Because the music companies want to enforce stone age business practices on a 21st century technology. Well. As I said in my original post. Fuck them. If you want to be their apologist, then fine, but by doing so you bear more responsibility for killing music than the pirates do.
The people who run the Pirate Bay have been jailed for "assisting making available copyrighted content", meaning that they linked to copyrighted material? Fuck. That's the very basis of the internet. How can this judgement stand? If this is upheld, none of us are safe. Not Youtube, not Google, not anyone. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of file sharing, how can people be jailed for just linking to material? This is about the worst decision the courts could have made. Fuck you Sweden. Fuck you IFPI and fuck you all the recording artists that are signed to the companies who belong to you. I hope you all rot. It hurts but I'll never give you another unit of my hard earned currency again. I had no issue with paying for music I liked as long as you didn't make me pay for music I didn't. The internet allowed me to do that with greater freedom than ever before and now you jail people who facilitate my search for good music. You've already shut down the OLGA resource, denying thousands of would be guitarists a valuable resource for learning, you've already ripped thousands of music videos from youtube, and now you do this. Well thankyou. A better illustration of the way corporate whores set the legal policy of elected governments I could not find. Not that you'll care because you've brainwashed an entire generation into thinking your reality is the only reality. A generation who grow up believing sharing is wrong. Well. Good luck with that. Eventually you and all your kind will bleed yourself dry and when that happens, I'll make a point of playing poor quality MP3s of popular chart music over your graves and laugh at the irony of the damage you've wrought to the internet in order to protect the artistic integrity of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Jesus. I made a joke on here a few days ago using a line from an Alanis Morrisette song. I'll probably be next up for a stint in the big house.
Actually, according to Article 1 of Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, white phosphorous, as an obscurant, is legal, white phosphorous as an anti-personnel weapon against military targets outside of civilian areas is a grey area, usage in civilian areas or against civilians is verboten. Last time I looked, most of Fallujah was a civilian area. Of course, since the United States never signed up to the UN agreement the debate is moot anyway, even if the US's own documentation states, "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets.". Still, I'm sure the powers that be thought everything was just tickety-boo, given they absolutely denied using the substance until found out.
So this is flamebait why? The US Army did use white phosphorous in Fallujah and did so even according to the US Army themselves. White phosphorous is a terrible substance that "melts people's bodies down to the bone", and requires significant moral gymnastics/cowardice* to justify as a weapon of war. I think it's only reasonable that, as an American soldier, the option to deploy banned weapons against the enemy be an option, just as it should be possible to win the game by not ever going to war on half-truths and lies disseminated by a blatantly evil and corrupt administration.
(* Delete as appropriate)
Funny? Funny?! Dammit, this is my country. That'd only be funny if the statement was made by someone in the United States who also makes reference to tubes. Or possibly in Belgium where its unlikely anyone outside of Wallonia would care anyway.
Why oh why isn't there a "Wingnut-politican-in-position-of-alarming-power-makes-statement-that-appears-so-far-out-of-touch-with-the-populace-that-she-seems-certifiable-yet-when-you-look-into-it-seems-to-accurately-reflect-what-the-vast-majority-of-the-citizenship-are-actually-thinking-and-makes-you-want-to-machine-gun-80%-of-them-to-death" modifier?
Is it because it won't fit in the combo box? Is that why?
In weird ways they do. Check out this study from Stanford University.
Essentially it shows that concepts of personal space survive in online games, so the idea that WOW might be a useful insight into real world behaviour is valid.
I couldn't care less whether anyone cares about me, my life or what I do. What I do care about is the mindset that allows anyone to permenantly record me, at any point, for whatever reason they choose, and then not only distribute, but profit on it. There's a world of difference that you seem to miss in having your information viewed and in having it recorded permenantly. Things about me that get recorded forever, I want to consent to before the fact not after the fact, because it's easier to say "no" than it is to say "stop". It's the corollary to the truism that it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. You can sit there and say that there's no issue at stake, but both me and the UK government disagree, otherwise it wouldn't have invented a Data Protection Act including the clause, "Before publishing photographs of identifiable people on the Internet you must tell the individuals concerned what you intend to do with the photographs and obtain their consent.". Even the morons in power know that people should have a right to privacy, even if it is Mom's Big Search Engine who wants to ride roughshod over it.
You want a good reason why people should have a right to privacy? Look at the teacher who lost her job over that stupid drunken Myspace photo. How many people are doing things that might be frowned on in those photos? Lose your job because you're seen to be doing something "wrong"? Bzzzt. Sorry, you're outta there! Like it or not, Google is now officially a big fucking corporation, and BFC's have a shocking record in looking out for individual rights. Look, I know privacy is dying. I just want it to die at the same time, at the same level, for everybody, otherwise we're in for a pretty nasty ride.
Thanks for putting your finger on exactly what was making me so uneasy about this. It's not the cameras or the thought of someone watching, it's the thought of someone watching AND making these images available to everyone, everywhere, all the time
Once you get away from the kneejerk 'OMFGWTFROFL stupid lawsuit, stupid woman, stupid cat' response, there's an important issue at stake. I sure as hell don't want pictures of me broadcast over the net without my permission. Doubly so if the perpetrators are making money off that, however small my contribution may be. To me, crystallising that moment of my life without my permission takes it out of the public domain and into your domain. If any of you want to come watch me engage in my daily activities, that's cool, at least until I call the cops or slap you upside the head, but don't you dare broadcast those images without my permission.
And just in case you're wondering about the depths the Mail is prepared to stoop to bash the popular demon of political correctness, have a look at the following brief selection of lies they perpetrated just before Christmas. The Mail and its readers are scum.
I read something insightful on Slashdot recently that suggested whenever you read something so inflammatory that you just have to comment, then you're only hearing half the story. When you click the link in the summary, please bear in mind that the Daily Mail, or The Daily Heil as its often referred to, is the most rabid of Britain's unpleasant right wing press with a history of making up and exaggerating facts in order to appease the xenophobic, homophobic, narrow-minded, bigoted, evil little people that make up their core audience.
Plus the story is dated the 2nd of April so I'm not sure what the submitter was trying to achieve other than to provoke the flamefest that will inevitably ensue.
No, wait! I've got it! Goddamn, I'm a genius. Why not put the INNOCENT people in prison. That way there'll be plenty of room for the law abiding and plenty of room for us copyright infringing, foreigner associating, freedom valuing, evolution accepting, internet surfing no-goodniks in the hellbound moral cesspit that is society today. Problem solved.
During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force."
That's shocking. What sort of Draconian employment termination policies are in action here? Removed from federal service by the air force? Usually, I'd just have a quiet word to let the employee know their services are no longer required.
"Security, escort Mullins from the office. Yes, of course I mean with the F-16s..."
I want longer life! I want another hundred years! I want another thousand years! Who are these people that don't want extra time? Damn them. How sadly unimaginitive. Zest for life is not the preserve of the inexperienced, it's the preserve of those with a love of culture, of learning or hell, just of life. With immortality, the true vista of human experience and knowledge opens up to you, and all you can say is bleh?
I'll have their years if they don't, because I sure as hell can fill it and never be bored. Not for an hour, not for a minute, not even for a second. Maybe one day in ten thousand years, I might think yes, I've done enough, I'm jaded and I'm tired. My time is over. But until then screw mortality. I want to choose when I go, not capricious fate or some particulate gene who has no idea what it's like to be me.
The point is that these cameras don't represent a greater invasion of privacy than many other forms of CCTV. What people are missing is that they represent the time at which society has finally become so irresponsible, so frightened and so cowed that we're outsourcing our last duties to ourselves to the government. The issues that these things are intended to address, the littering, the graffiti, the vandalism, aren't criminal problems, they're societal problems to be policed and actioned by communities themselves, and devolving this power to government appointed behaviour watchdogs is frankly, terrifying. Once the people lose the power to police themselves, once their relationship to government mutates into "Stop that", "Put that down", "Pick that up" paternalism, they lose. I lose. You lose.
You talk about big brother? Talking CCTV cameras are more pointedly "big brother" than any other initiative proposed by this illiberal, dishonest government. After all, what does it mean? Big brother is not someone who stops you congregating in groups for legitimate protest, nor does he lock up foreigners without trial, sentence or judgement. No. This is Big Brother in all his attentive, caring, protective, advising, paternal, loving, Orwellian glory. Why vote anyone else citizen? Why go anywhere else citizen? We love you citizen. Now, stop slacking and get back to work. It's for your own good, you know.
You insensitive clod! I'm writing this from the local prison and let me tell you what a hellhole English prisons have become. My lattes have been growing ever more tepid, the prisoner ration of fifteen cuban maidens a month has been reduced to twelve and the prison bar doesn't even serve the Chateau Laffite '73 any more. Not since those E Wing Philistines had their way. Barbarians, to a man. I mean I've spoken to the maitre'd about it but what will he do? I'll tell you what he'll do. He'll just shrug in that gallic way Pierre has and reply, "Oh, monseiur prisoner #297848, don't be so silly, non? The '71 is a far superior wine in almost every way. Can't you feel the French sun in every sip?"
And you call this cushy. I'm supposed to live with fraudsters, ne-er-do-wells and malefactors who consider the easy charms of a '71 preferable to the more challenging '73?
Methinks the person more likely to suffer an imminent outsource related surprise is you, not the original poster.
Having worked in several organisations who've used outsourcing, the first ones to go are usually the ones with the technical, day to day programming skills while the ones who remain are the ones who understand the business processes. Hell, I've got a CS degree from a good university. Big wow. You know what? I've barely used any of it since I graduated. Have I ever been, or do I consider myself in danger of being outsourced? No. Have I seen lots and lots of coal-face technical jobs outsourced? Yes. I'm not knocking a CS degree, but in general, it seems the likelihood of being outsourced is directly correlational with the level of dependence your position has on knowing pointer operations, memory management, algorithmic theory and data structures.
I think you're wrong. Not only that, but I also think your comments are dismissive and patronising. Most people are capable of performing complex tasks pretty competently, especially if they're motivated enough to get involved in a collaborative journalistic venture. As noted above, the Fiji coup attempt on Wikipedia was covered about as quickly and accurately as on regular news outlets. And since when was professionalism journalism held up to be some shining beacon of honesty and trust anyway? I'd guess that there are more news outlets whose professional journalistic integrity can be questioned than not.
I'm not saying that collaborative journalism is bound to succeed, or even likely to succeed, but dismissing it as you do seems pretty blinkered.
I think the reason the BBC 'gets it' is mostly due to the fact it's a government (Well, licence fee paying) funded organisation. The bottom line for the BBC is that everyone in the world could download their shows and they'd *still* have enough funding to make the same programs year after year after year.
And if you like Charlie Brooker, make sure to check out what he has to say about Macs!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but that's bobbins though, isn't it? There's a reason airplane cockpits are designed the way they are. There's a reason nuclear power station control surfaces are designed the way they are. In fact there's a very good reason why anything that could really go bang has input devices that are designed to diminish the possibility of user error.
Just saying "pay attention" isn't enough. No-one, not you, certainly not me, can attend exactly to what they're doing for every second of every minute of every day.
"we litterally spent man weeks together at customer sites"
Yeah, so, ummm, I have this "old colleague of mine"...
Even further than that, this article in the New York Times argues that it was only because of the FBW system in the A320 that the miracle on the Hudson was even possible. The author argues it wasn't just human intervention but computer assisted human intervention that allowed all those people to escape.
I take your point, but the Large Hadron Collider is the pre-eminent technological achievement of our civilisation. It knocks the complexity of the moon landings into a cocked hat and operates at energy frequencies intended to rip the very fabric of space apart. It's the most complicated and wondrous machine ever built by our, and possibly by any species, and we're doing all this to understand the processes that govern life, the universe and everything.
That, my friend, is what gods do.
I think a little "are we there yet?" journalism is forgiveable in that context.
Christ on a bike. See. This is the problem with you people. Frankly, if someone appears on my borders having travelled thousands of miles, with little money and no knowledge of the native language yet can pick up local customs and prejudices well enough to game a complicated system that intelligent people put in place precisely to stop them then who cares whether they're "genuine refugees"? That level of motivation and energy is welcome in any society I'm part of because it's precisely those qualities that create the milk and honey you're so fond of! Don't you understand? Geographic and social mobility is good! Stasis is bad! Change is good! How is that difficult? Gah! And double Gah! I'm sick of being exposed to this puerile nonsense day after day after day. Maybe you're right. Maybe we should be more draconian. I just hope that if we are, the powers-that-be make it as hard to leave as it'll become to enter. That way you can live in the economic, social and demographic backwater you create. It's a shame most people are shrieking fools nowadays as otherwise we might be able to construct a meaningful dialogue regarding the best way to manage immigration. That way English classes for migrants wouldn't be first on the altar of economic sacrifice, limiting their ability to integrate and compounding the us-and-them mentality that strangles any debate at birth. Immigration does raise complex question but it is beneficial and if people would just drop their belief in their god-given right to do whatever the fuck they want to poor people in other countries without the burden of consequences ever dropping in their lap then perhaps we could step out of the handbasket and head upwards rather than downwards for once.
Yeah. Well. I made a facetious throwaway comment. I'm sure no-one ever got hassled for using copyrighted material in ways that weren't intended by their creator.
I'm not sure I see the distinction you're trying to make. One is a link to copyrighted material one isn't. They're chalk and cheese and I have no problem with either, but you're making the mistake of thinking that everyone who uses bittorrent is a freeloading scumbag whose raison d'etre is to rip off creators the world over. They're not. I use bittorrent to help me find new material. I'm not in the slightest bit embarrassed by that. Why should I be? I don't give a flying one what other people use it for but I suspect more use it in a similar manner to me than the record companies would ever admit to. I consider that a responsible usage of file sharing technology and if you don't agree, perhaps you can explain to me at what point it isn't.
The IFPI and their hateful, hateful ilk have not lost a single unit sale because I've used unauthorised sources. In fact, if it wasn't for those unauthorised sources, I'd never have made a lot of my purchases in the first place. Up until today, I'd recommend bands to people and burn them CDs of things I liked. I'd big up bands that I'd come across and be a cheerleader to anyone I knew for their material. As of today, that ceases. The IFPI lose out because the people I know buy fewer records. The artists lose out because the people I know may not want to go to their shows. I lose out because I love music. And why? Because the music companies want to enforce stone age business practices on a 21st century technology. Well. As I said in my original post. Fuck them. If you want to be their apologist, then fine, but by doing so you bear more responsibility for killing music than the pirates do.
The people who run the Pirate Bay have been jailed for "assisting making available copyrighted content", meaning that they linked to copyrighted material? Fuck. That's the very basis of the internet. How can this judgement stand? If this is upheld, none of us are safe. Not Youtube, not Google, not anyone. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of file sharing, how can people be jailed for just linking to material? This is about the worst decision the courts could have made. Fuck you Sweden. Fuck you IFPI and fuck you all the recording artists that are signed to the companies who belong to you. I hope you all rot. It hurts but I'll never give you another unit of my hard earned currency again. I had no issue with paying for music I liked as long as you didn't make me pay for music I didn't. The internet allowed me to do that with greater freedom than ever before and now you jail people who facilitate my search for good music. You've already shut down the OLGA resource, denying thousands of would be guitarists a valuable resource for learning, you've already ripped thousands of music videos from youtube, and now you do this. Well thankyou. A better illustration of the way corporate whores set the legal policy of elected governments I could not find. Not that you'll care because you've brainwashed an entire generation into thinking your reality is the only reality. A generation who grow up believing sharing is wrong. Well. Good luck with that. Eventually you and all your kind will bleed yourself dry and when that happens, I'll make a point of playing poor quality MP3s of popular chart music over your graves and laugh at the irony of the damage you've wrought to the internet in order to protect the artistic integrity of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Jesus. I made a joke on here a few days ago using a line from an Alanis Morrisette song. I'll probably be next up for a stint in the big house.
It's like rai--ai--ain, on your wedding day...
Actually, according to Article 1 of Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, white phosphorous, as an obscurant, is legal, white phosphorous as an anti-personnel weapon against military targets outside of civilian areas is a grey area, usage in civilian areas or against civilians is verboten. Last time I looked, most of Fallujah was a civilian area. Of course, since the United States never signed up to the UN agreement the debate is moot anyway, even if the US's own documentation states, "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets.". Still, I'm sure the powers that be thought everything was just tickety-boo, given they absolutely denied using the substance until found out.
So this is flamebait why? The US Army did use white phosphorous in Fallujah and did so even according to the US Army themselves. White phosphorous is a terrible substance that "melts people's bodies down to the bone", and requires significant moral gymnastics/cowardice* to justify as a weapon of war. I think it's only reasonable that, as an American soldier, the option to deploy banned weapons against the enemy be an option, just as it should be possible to win the game by not ever going to war on half-truths and lies disseminated by a blatantly evil and corrupt administration. (* Delete as appropriate)
Funny? Funny?! Dammit, this is my country. That'd only be funny if the statement was made by someone in the United States who also makes reference to tubes. Or possibly in Belgium where its unlikely anyone outside of Wallonia would care anyway.
Why oh why isn't there a "Wingnut-politican-in-position-of-alarming-power-makes-statement-that-appears-so-far-out-of-touch-with-the-populace-that-she-seems-certifiable-yet-when-you-look-into-it-seems-to-accurately-reflect-what-the-vast-majority-of-the-citizenship-are-actually-thinking-and-makes-you-want-to-machine-gun-80%-of-them-to-death" modifier?
Is it because it won't fit in the combo box? Is that why?
In weird ways they do. Check out this study from Stanford University.
Essentially it shows that concepts of personal space survive in online games, so the idea that WOW might be a useful insight into real world behaviour is valid.
I couldn't care less whether anyone cares about me, my life or what I do. What I do care about is the mindset that allows anyone to permenantly record me, at any point, for whatever reason they choose, and then not only distribute, but profit on it. There's a world of difference that you seem to miss in having your information viewed and in having it recorded permenantly. Things about me that get recorded forever, I want to consent to before the fact not after the fact, because it's easier to say "no" than it is to say "stop". It's the corollary to the truism that it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. You can sit there and say that there's no issue at stake, but both me and the UK government disagree, otherwise it wouldn't have invented a Data Protection Act including the clause, "Before publishing photographs of identifiable people on the Internet you must tell the individuals concerned what you intend to do with the photographs and obtain their consent.". Even the morons in power know that people should have a right to privacy, even if it is Mom's Big Search Engine who wants to ride roughshod over it.
You want a good reason why people should have a right to privacy? Look at the teacher who lost her job over that stupid drunken Myspace photo. How many people are doing things that might be frowned on in those photos? Lose your job because you're seen to be doing something "wrong"? Bzzzt. Sorry, you're outta there! Like it or not, Google is now officially a big fucking corporation, and BFC's have a shocking record in looking out for individual rights. Look, I know privacy is dying. I just want it to die at the same time, at the same level, for everybody, otherwise we're in for a pretty nasty ride.
Thanks for putting your finger on exactly what was making me so uneasy about this. It's not the cameras or the thought of someone watching, it's the thought of someone watching AND making these images available to everyone, everywhere, all the time
Once you get away from the kneejerk 'OMFGWTFROFL stupid lawsuit, stupid woman, stupid cat' response, there's an important issue at stake. I sure as hell don't want pictures of me broadcast over the net without my permission. Doubly so if the perpetrators are making money off that, however small my contribution may be. To me, crystallising that moment of my life without my permission takes it out of the public domain and into your domain. If any of you want to come watch me engage in my daily activities, that's cool, at least until I call the cops or slap you upside the head, but don't you dare broadcast those images without my permission.
And just in case you're wondering about the depths the Mail is prepared to stoop to bash the popular demon of political correctness, have a look at the following brief selection of lies they perpetrated just before Christmas. The Mail and its readers are scum.
I read something insightful on Slashdot recently that suggested whenever you read something so inflammatory that you just have to comment, then you're only hearing half the story. When you click the link in the summary, please bear in mind that the Daily Mail, or The Daily Heil as its often referred to, is the most rabid of Britain's unpleasant right wing press with a history of making up and exaggerating facts in order to appease the xenophobic, homophobic, narrow-minded, bigoted, evil little people that make up their core audience.
Plus the story is dated the 2nd of April so I'm not sure what the submitter was trying to achieve other than to provoke the flamefest that will inevitably ensue.
No, wait! I've got it! Goddamn, I'm a genius. Why not put the INNOCENT people in prison. That way there'll be plenty of room for the law abiding and plenty of room for us copyright infringing, foreigner associating, freedom valuing, evolution accepting, internet surfing no-goodniks in the hellbound moral cesspit that is society today. Problem solved.
Next!
During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force."
That's shocking. What sort of Draconian employment termination policies are in action here? Removed from federal service by the air force? Usually, I'd just have a quiet word to let the employee know their services are no longer required.
"Security, escort Mullins from the office. Yes, of course I mean with the F-16s..."
Gah! This argument always infuriates me!
I want longer life! I want another hundred years! I want another thousand years! Who are these people that don't want extra time? Damn them. How sadly unimaginitive. Zest for life is not the preserve of the inexperienced, it's the preserve of those with a love of culture, of learning or hell, just of life. With immortality, the true vista of human experience and knowledge opens up to you, and all you can say is bleh?
I'll have their years if they don't, because I sure as hell can fill it and never be bored. Not for an hour, not for a minute, not even for a second. Maybe one day in ten thousand years, I might think yes, I've done enough, I'm jaded and I'm tired. My time is over. But until then screw mortality. I want to choose when I go, not capricious fate or some particulate gene who has no idea what it's like to be me.
Science willing, one day it will be.
The point is that these cameras don't represent a greater invasion of privacy than many other forms of CCTV. What people are missing is that they represent the time at which society has finally become so irresponsible, so frightened and so cowed that we're outsourcing our last duties to ourselves to the government. The issues that these things are intended to address, the littering, the graffiti, the vandalism, aren't criminal problems, they're societal problems to be policed and actioned by communities themselves, and devolving this power to government appointed behaviour watchdogs is frankly, terrifying. Once the people lose the power to police themselves, once their relationship to government mutates into "Stop that", "Put that down", "Pick that up" paternalism, they lose. I lose. You lose.
You talk about big brother? Talking CCTV cameras are more pointedly "big brother" than any other initiative proposed by this illiberal, dishonest government. After all, what does it mean? Big brother is not someone who stops you congregating in groups for legitimate protest, nor does he lock up foreigners without trial, sentence or judgement. No. This is Big Brother in all his attentive, caring, protective, advising, paternal, loving, Orwellian glory. Why vote anyone else citizen? Why go anywhere else citizen? We love you citizen. Now, stop slacking and get back to work. It's for your own good, you know.
You insensitive clod! I'm writing this from the local prison and let me tell you what a hellhole English prisons have become. My lattes have been growing ever more tepid, the prisoner ration of fifteen cuban maidens a month has been reduced to twelve and the prison bar doesn't even serve the Chateau Laffite '73 any more. Not since those E Wing Philistines had their way. Barbarians, to a man. I mean I've spoken to the maitre'd about it but what will he do? I'll tell you what he'll do. He'll just shrug in that gallic way Pierre has and reply, "Oh, monseiur prisoner #297848, don't be so silly, non? The '71 is a far superior wine in almost every way. Can't you feel the French sun in every sip?"
And you call this cushy. I'm supposed to live with fraudsters, ne-er-do-wells and malefactors who consider the easy charms of a '71 preferable to the more challenging '73?
You, sir, are worse than Hitler.
Methinks the person more likely to suffer an imminent outsource related surprise is you, not the original poster.
Having worked in several organisations who've used outsourcing, the first ones to go are usually the ones with the technical, day to day programming skills while the ones who remain are the ones who understand the business processes. Hell, I've got a CS degree from a good university. Big wow. You know what? I've barely used any of it since I graduated. Have I ever been, or do I consider myself in danger of being outsourced? No. Have I seen lots and lots of coal-face technical jobs outsourced? Yes. I'm not knocking a CS degree, but in general, it seems the likelihood of being outsourced is directly correlational with the level of dependence your position has on knowing pointer operations, memory management, algorithmic theory and data structures.
I think you're wrong. Not only that, but I also think your comments are dismissive and patronising. Most people are capable of performing complex tasks pretty competently, especially if they're motivated enough to get involved in a collaborative journalistic venture. As noted above, the Fiji coup attempt on Wikipedia was covered about as quickly and accurately as on regular news outlets. And since when was professionalism journalism held up to be some shining beacon of honesty and trust anyway? I'd guess that there are more news outlets whose professional journalistic integrity can be questioned than not.
I'm not saying that collaborative journalism is bound to succeed, or even likely to succeed, but dismissing it as you do seems pretty blinkered.
I think the reason the BBC 'gets it' is mostly due to the fact it's a government (Well, licence fee paying) funded organisation. The bottom line for the BBC is that everyone in the world could download their shows and they'd *still* have enough funding to make the same programs year after year after year.
And if you like Charlie Brooker, make sure to check out what he has to say about Macs!
*Ping*