I remember my friends when they got their first cars at 18, some of them drove responsibly but a fair proportion of them got up to some very silly things, e.g. driving home down the pavement because they were too drunk to drive on the road, driving around with people on the roof of the car and hanging out the windows, driving under the influence of various drugs ( not often alcohol mind you ) - "Oooh, are the street lights supposed to have massive trails coming off them like that ?", attempting to demonstrate that they were not driving dangerously by swerving around a dual carriageway in the rain and accidentally doing a 180 degree skid onto the pavement etc etc.
I don't think this device would stop any of those kinds of activities and I'm sure my friends weren't alone in being extremely naive about the dangers of roads and cars once they'd passed their test. Luckily everyone is still alive today to tell the tale and are now nice, safe, responsible drivers but getting there has just been a matter or experience and learning which is a process everyone has to go through for themselves.
I think if you take your theory a little further and make the assumption that Superman is in fact a fictional character and lives soley in our imaginations where anything is possible regardless of any laws of physics, or anything else, you may get closer to discovering Supermans true nature.
Well it appears that that fat f*ck Prescott manages to cost us 2 Million a year and he doesn't actually do anything except line his own pockets and hit people. That being the case 40 Million for the whole Royal Family who do seem to work quite hard and bring in a fair amount of money seems like a bargain.
No, it doesn't. You could have the best hammer in the world but if you haven't organised yourself a regular stream of high quality nails and sorted out how you are going to position the wood and ensure the nails end up in the right position to fulfil whatever purpose it is you have in mind then a hammer is not going to be much use to you !.
This is simply because the rest of the world play sensible sports such as football, cricket and rugby. No one cares about weird American bastardisations.
In each case international rugby, cricket and football draws in a huge amount of countries competing with one another which makes the sport far more interesting than simply playing at a national level and certainly improves the game of all the nations involved through increased competition. I think the US does have a football, cricket and rugby team but it is puzzling as to why they are so often so far down the bottom of the pecking order as be invisible.
When I did my Computer Studies A level ( around 14 years ago ) there was very little which was specific to Microsoft or any other IT company, instead we learnt about the way databases, networks, spreadsheets were supposed to work and what you should be using them for in generalities rather than bothering too much with actually using any specific database or wordprocessor.
In a way I think this is much better since you can find yourself having to work with any aspect of computer technology and knowing what it should be capable of doing it is usually pretty easy to work out how it is actually doing it in the case you are dealing with. You usually also end up learning how many Microsoft products don't quite do what you would expect them to do and do other, unexpected things, when you get them to do the things they can do;-)
A few years later when I was unemployed and forced to do an NVQ in various computer technologies it was indeed Microsoft all the way and simply parroting a set of steps necessary to whack some numbers in a spreadsheet/write some letter etc etc. This was laughably easy but I suspect the people on the course coming up against computers for the first time learnt very little that they directly use 8 years later unless they actually managed to work out for themselves why they were doing the steps they were making.
http://www.evesham.com/ was called Evesham Micros and was based in a tiny shop, next to a chip shop I think, just down the road from me and sold games for my spectrum and joysticks.
They seem to have done quite well for themselves since then so it seems some of the smaller retailers who were around could have survived to this day.
This is true, whilst I was buying diving equipment a few years ago I visited a number of shops and all the sales people I spoke to were very knowledgable and helpful. However I suspect they were also paid more and enjoyed enough perks such as access to vast arrays of dive equipment that they cared more about their dealings with customers than a lot of the staff who work in places like Dixons or Currys.
I used to work somewhere where the password policy was to reset it to the day of the week, admittedly these weren't especially powerful accounts but anyone with half a brain and an inclination for mischief could have had a lot of fun.
Goodness me who would have thought it, I suppose I need to rethink my entire policy then. Unless you're a cracker and are just trying some of that social engineering jive I've been reading about and are trying to co-orce me into weaking my network...
I agree, I used to work night shifts on a helpdesk 7PM - 7AM. The company policy was that surfing the internet was banned, downloading and playing network games was definitely banned and playing cricket in the office was absolutely banned.
However although we might be fairly busy until Midnight most nights, especially Sunday nights we would be lucky to get a single call from 1AM - 7AM. Our sole responsibility was to handle phone calls so no phone calls meant nothing to do. I'd challenge anyone to attempt to stay awake at 4AM having sat still infront of a blank screen for the previous 5 hours with absolutely nothing to do. Playing games, surfing the internet and frequent cigarette breaks did keep us awake, alert and interested enough to deal with any calls which did come in properly rather than sleeping through them.
Our bosses bosses were constantly warning us to stop using the internet but luckily our boss said we could do what we liked so long as we did our jobs properly. The most amusing part of this job was watching the sucession of team leaders come in and attempt to enforce some remmenants of company policy and then watch them inevietably begin to fall asleep at 4AM and come to terms with the consequences of annoying the only four people they would be spending 12 hours a night with for the next 6 nights.
I've found the best policy with administrator passwords is to set them as simple and easy to remember as possible rather than using long complicated strings because that is what the crackers are least expecting. I favour things like pass or word
"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you."
What the hell does that mean ? I thought an abyss was something similar to a chasm or large hole, they don't have eyes, they can't stare back at you and even in the unlikely event you did happen across an abyss which had developed eyes and it could stare back at you then what has that got do with monsters, how can you become a monster by finding this unfeasible abyss with eyes which enjoys staring competitions.
I think the scientists have been very hasty in classing this as a platelogicus or whatever they think it is and don't appear to be even considering the possibility it was a large aquatic burrowing mammal easily capable of burrowing through 2KM of mud.
I don't think there's any evidence the flood receded is there, I don't recall God saying that. No, before the flood there was no water at all in the oceans until the fountains of the deep gushed forth and filled them in, the flood on what is today still land was no doubt the boiling and frothing of the waters as they gushed forth and settled down.
Obviously the areas now covered by Ocean were once the domain of the angels who spent there time planting "dinosaur" bones and other "evidence" in there ready for day drilling rigs were invented.
I don't think we need a new OS or a new Desktop, what we really need is for existing applications to be able share each others data effectively be it locally on someones home machine or from sources elsewhere and across different application groups regardless of who has developed it. Right now sharing calendar information from my website and integrating ti into my business calendars and having it available on my phone should be possible but for one reason or another isn't.
It's highly unlikely that companies would bother advertising if it didn't work, it costs them a lot of money to do so.
Ads aren't, mainly, designed to make you rush out to the shops and buy things they are designed so that when you're in shop and you want to buy say a washing powder you choose their washing powder over another washing powder you have never heard of and have no idea how it rates on the getting clothes whiter than white or reducing bobbling or preserving vibrant colours fronts.
No I don't and I'm talking about personal ethics here but whether or not Yahoo! were right or wrong to do what they did.
You think that ethically they weren't but what you think doesn't dictate what Yahoo! can do or make their actions wrong or right.
Yahoo! are acting within the law, the law is supposed to take the ethical concerns of the population into account and in this case you don't think they do so you would therefore be a lot better off by trying to influence the government by finding a way of voting for what you believe in than simply moaning about or boycotting Yahoo!
For every company like Yahoo! which you have heard of which is willing to obey Chinese law there are doubtless several thousand which you haven't heard about but which I presume you think should also cease trading in China. Moaning about Yahoo! isn't going to do a thing about any of those other companies and whilst not totally pointless, since this is stimulating debate at least, is not nearly as effective as some of the actions you could be taking to make the government reflect your viewpoint.
I totally agree that if consumers don't agree with the actions of Yahoo! then they shouldn't use them but the US government is clearly in favour of increasing trade with China so they're not going to do anything other than cheer them on.
The US Government is the responsibility of the US people and if they don't like the way companies are being encouraged to go ahead and make the most of the vast profit opportunities in China then they should do something about their government. A good start would be to stop allowing companies to spend millions of pounds lobbying the government.
The fact that China routinely imprisons, tortures and executes people is an ethical argument against doing business there the question is should Yahoo! be operating in China at all and if they are should they obey Chinese law.
Since the Yahoo! shareholders have allowed them to operate in China and since the US government is happy to allow US companies such as Yahoo! operate in China, both of whom we could consider are aware of the ethical argument against doing so, then by all rational judgement Yahoo! is doing nothing wrong here since both its government and its shareholders have given it a mandate to act as it has.
If you believe its ethically wrong to do business in China then you need to get the US Government to stop US companies trading there and refuse to use these companies yourself.
The problem you face is obviously that the US Government and by extension the US people are perfectly happy, indeed desperate to trade with China pretty much regardless of its human rights record. Personally I think that is a bad thing and governments throughout the world should force China to clean up its act.
Apart from the obvious pure greed motive of countries who are trading with China there is also something to be said that apart from in the unlikely action of a unilateral embargo on China the Chinese are going to carry on doing what they are doing regardless of what we or our governments think.
It seems likely that increased trade and exposure to the West is good for China and its people from a jobs and money perspective and also from the point of view of effecting a slower change of the attitudes of its ruling class and that this might be more effective in the long run than simply refusing to trade with them until they make changes.
This is not a simple black and white issue and its totally pointless to point fingers at Yahoo! for supporting a state which everyone from the government down to the shareholders is obviously doing far more to support.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember my friends when they got their first cars at 18, some of them drove responsibly but a fair proportion of them got up to some very silly things, e.g. driving home down the pavement because they were too drunk to drive on the road, driving around with people on the roof of the car and hanging out the windows, driving under the influence of various drugs ( not often alcohol mind you ) - "Oooh, are the street lights supposed to have massive trails coming off them like that ?", attempting to demonstrate that they were not driving dangerously by swerving around a dual carriageway in the rain and accidentally doing a 180 degree skid onto the pavement etc etc.
I don't think this device would stop any of those kinds of activities and I'm sure my friends weren't alone in being extremely naive about the dangers of roads and cars once they'd passed their test. Luckily everyone is still alive today to tell the tale and are now nice, safe, responsible drivers but getting there has just been a matter or experience and learning which is a process everyone has to go through for themselves.
I think if you take your theory a little further and make the assumption that Superman is in fact a fictional character and lives soley in our imaginations where anything is possible regardless of any laws of physics, or anything else, you may get closer to discovering Supermans true nature.
Well it appears that that fat f*ck Prescott manages to cost us 2 Million a year and he doesn't actually do anything except line his own pockets and hit people. That being the case 40 Million for the whole Royal Family who do seem to work quite hard and bring in a fair amount of money seems like a bargain.
Chris Morris had a giant moral compass, perhaps they can borrow it sometime ?
No, it doesn't. You could have the best hammer in the world but if you haven't organised yourself a regular stream of high quality nails and sorted out how you are going to position the wood and ensure the nails end up in the right position to fulfil whatever purpose it is you have in mind then a hammer is not going to be much use to you !.
Not really, you could have a huge ballon but only fill it with a small amount of helium.
This is simply because the rest of the world play sensible sports such as football, cricket and rugby. No one cares about weird American bastardisations.
In each case international rugby, cricket and football draws in a huge amount of countries competing with one another which makes the sport far more interesting than simply playing at a national level and certainly improves the game of all the nations involved through increased competition. I think the US does have a football, cricket and rugby team but it is puzzling as to why they are so often so far down the bottom of the pecking order as be invisible.
Americans can't play cricket. Enough said I believe.
When I did my Computer Studies A level ( around 14 years ago ) there was very little which was specific to Microsoft or any other IT company, instead we learnt about the way databases, networks, spreadsheets were supposed to work and what you should be using them for in generalities rather than bothering too much with actually using any specific database or wordprocessor.
;-)
In a way I think this is much better since you can find yourself having to work with any aspect of computer technology and knowing what it should be capable of doing it is usually pretty easy to work out how it is actually doing it in the case you are dealing with. You usually also end up learning how many Microsoft products don't quite do what you would expect them to do and do other, unexpected things, when you get them to do the things they can do
A few years later when I was unemployed and forced to do an NVQ in various computer technologies it was indeed Microsoft all the way and simply parroting a set of steps necessary to whack some numbers in a spreadsheet/write some letter etc etc. This was laughably easy but I suspect the people on the course coming up against computers for the first time learnt very little that they directly use 8 years later unless they actually managed to work out for themselves why they were doing the steps they were making.
http://www.evesham.com/ was called Evesham Micros and was based in a tiny shop, next to a chip shop I think, just down the road from me and sold games for my spectrum and joysticks.
They seem to have done quite well for themselves since then so it seems some of the smaller retailers who were around could have survived to this day.
This is true, whilst I was buying diving equipment a few years ago I visited a number of shops and all the sales people I spoke to were very knowledgable and helpful. However I suspect they were also paid more and enjoyed enough perks such as access to vast arrays of dive equipment that they cared more about their dealings with customers than a lot of the staff who work in places like Dixons or Currys.
I used to work somewhere where the password policy was to reset it to the day of the week, admittedly these weren't especially powerful accounts but anyone with half a brain and an inclination for mischief could have had a lot of fun.
Goodness me who would have thought it, I suppose I need to rethink my entire policy then. Unless you're a cracker and are just trying some of that social engineering jive I've been reading about and are trying to co-orce me into weaking my network...
And plumbing, building and wiring are not jobs that can be easily outsourced elsewhere. If I was choosing a career path now I'd be a plumber.
I agree, I used to work night shifts on a helpdesk 7PM - 7AM. The company policy was that surfing the internet was banned, downloading and playing network games was definitely banned and playing cricket in the office was absolutely banned.
However although we might be fairly busy until Midnight most nights, especially Sunday nights we would be lucky to get a single call from 1AM - 7AM. Our sole responsibility was to handle phone calls so no phone calls meant nothing to do. I'd challenge anyone to attempt to stay awake at 4AM having sat still infront of a blank screen for the previous 5 hours with absolutely nothing to do. Playing games, surfing the internet and frequent cigarette breaks did keep us awake, alert and interested enough to deal with any calls which did come in properly rather than sleeping through them.
Our bosses bosses were constantly warning us to stop using the internet but luckily our boss said we could do what we liked so long as we did our jobs properly. The most amusing part of this job was watching the sucession of team leaders come in and attempt to enforce some remmenants of company policy and then watch them inevietably begin to fall asleep at 4AM and come to terms with the consequences of annoying the only four people they would be spending 12 hours a night with for the next 6 nights.
I've found the best policy with administrator passwords is to set them as simple and easy to remember as possible rather than using long complicated strings because that is what the crackers are least expecting. I favour things like pass or word
"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you."
What the hell does that mean ? I thought an abyss was something similar to a chasm or large hole, they don't have eyes, they can't stare back at you and even in the unlikely event you did happen across an abyss which had developed eyes and it could stare back at you then what has that got do with monsters, how can you become a monster by finding this unfeasible abyss with eyes which enjoys staring competitions.
Pure nonsesne I'm afraid.
I think the scientists have been very hasty in classing this as a platelogicus or whatever they think it is and don't appear to be even considering the possibility it was a large aquatic burrowing mammal easily capable of burrowing through 2KM of mud.
I don't think there's any evidence the flood receded is there, I don't recall God saying that. No, before the flood there was no water at all in the oceans until the fountains of the deep gushed forth and filled them in, the flood on what is today still land was no doubt the boiling and frothing of the waters as they gushed forth and settled down.
Obviously the areas now covered by Ocean were once the domain of the angels who spent there time planting "dinosaur" bones and other "evidence" in there ready for day drilling rigs were invented.
I don't think we need a new OS or a new Desktop, what we really need is for existing applications to be able share each others data effectively be it locally on someones home machine or from sources elsewhere and across different application groups regardless of who has developed it. Right now sharing calendar information from my website and integrating ti into my business calendars and having it available on my phone should be possible but for one reason or another isn't.
It's highly unlikely that companies would bother advertising if it didn't work, it costs them a lot of money to do so.
Ads aren't, mainly, designed to make you rush out to the shops and buy things they are designed so that when you're in shop and you want to buy say a washing powder you choose their washing powder over another washing powder you have never heard of and have no idea how it rates on the getting clothes whiter than white or reducing bobbling or preserving vibrant colours fronts.
No I don't and I'm talking about personal ethics here but whether or not Yahoo! were right or wrong to do what they did.
You think that ethically they weren't but what you think doesn't dictate what Yahoo! can do or make their actions wrong or right.
Yahoo! are acting within the law, the law is supposed to take the ethical concerns of the population into account and in this case you don't think they do so you would therefore be a lot better off by trying to influence the government by finding a way of voting for what you believe in than simply moaning about or boycotting Yahoo!
For every company like Yahoo! which you have heard of which is willing to obey Chinese law there are doubtless several thousand which you haven't heard about but which I presume you think should also cease trading in China. Moaning about Yahoo! isn't going to do a thing about any of those other companies and whilst not totally pointless, since this is stimulating debate at least, is not nearly as effective as some of the actions you could be taking to make the government reflect your viewpoint.
1) Advanced English, including technical vocabulary.
2) A high-school education. A *good* high-school education.
3) Exceptional levels of self-motivation
4) ???
5) Profit !
I totally agree that if consumers don't agree with the actions of Yahoo! then they shouldn't use them but the US government is clearly in favour of increasing trade with China so they're not going to do anything other than cheer them on.
The US Government is the responsibility of the US people and if they don't like the way companies are being encouraged to go ahead and make the most of the vast profit opportunities in China then they should do something about their government. A good start would be to stop allowing companies to spend millions of pounds lobbying the government.
The fact that China routinely imprisons, tortures and executes people is an ethical argument against doing business there the question is should Yahoo! be operating in China at all and if they are should they obey Chinese law.
Since the Yahoo! shareholders have allowed them to operate in China and since the US government is happy to allow US companies such as Yahoo! operate in China, both of whom we could consider are aware of the ethical argument against doing so, then by all rational judgement Yahoo! is doing nothing wrong here since both its government and its shareholders have given it a mandate to act as it has.
If you believe its ethically wrong to do business in China then you need to get the US Government to stop US companies trading there and refuse to use these companies yourself.
The problem you face is obviously that the US Government and by extension the US people are perfectly happy, indeed desperate to trade with China pretty much regardless of its human rights record. Personally I think that is a bad thing and governments throughout the world should force China to clean up its act.
Apart from the obvious pure greed motive of countries who are trading with China there is also something to be said that apart from in the unlikely action of a unilateral embargo on China the Chinese are going to carry on doing what they are doing regardless of what we or our governments think.
It seems likely that increased trade and exposure to the West is good for China and its people from a jobs and money perspective and also from the point of view of effecting a slower change of the attitudes of its ruling class and that this might be more effective in the long run than simply refusing to trade with them until they make changes.
This is not a simple black and white issue and its totally pointless to point fingers at Yahoo! for supporting a state which everyone from the government down to the shareholders is obviously doing far more to support.