Good lord, yes. We definitely are. I can't even begin to list all the Dutch weirdness. Some of it is really good, some of it it really bad, and most of it is really contradictory. I guess it's our drive for constant compromise in a very heterogenous society. (Though lately it's become a lot more polarized. I fear we may start to suck, and eventually perhaps even become boring.)
But the good news is: as long as you are higher educated and have a good income nobody gives a f... if you only talk English.
Let's be honest. We speak English (or something we think resembles English) to everybody. Dutch is practically impossible to learn because no Dutchman will speak it to you.
That's some understatement. Real estate is bloody expensive here. As soon as you cross the border with Germany, housing prices drop by 50%. Even the mortgage crisis hardly put a dent in the housing prices.
Don't be too quick to celebrate. This is a rare positive decision in Dutch politics. For the most part of the past 10 years, Dutch politics have been going down the drain, becoming more polarized, more populist, and more focused on short term silliness. It's still not nearly as bad the the US, but I'd seriously consider moving to Sweden if I wouldn't leave so many friends and family behind.
Exactly. These people need to be locked up. That's the only way to send a clear signal to them and others in a similar position. It doesn't even have to be years. 3 months each is fine by me. Just send a clear message that this is criminal and will be prosecuted.
Few families have houses that large, however (varying per region and country, I'm sure). My parents actually lived with my dad's parents for a short period after they married (which I don't think they did before they married, but I'll ask), where they did have access to their own tiny kitchen. However, the vast majority of houses don't have a second kitchen or bathroom or anything like that.
My grandparents were fortunate enough to have a big house (they weren't rich, but houses just weren't as expensive back then, apparently), but when I moved out, my parents (who had quite a bit more comfortable wealth) had a house that really only fitted a single family, with little room for any kind of independence. Once I moved out, they moved to a house with a larger living room and less/smaller bedrooms. My sister kept living with them for quite long time (until she was 22 I think), but that got increasingly uncomfortable, with loud arguments and all that. At some point it's just time to move out, or you end up like Howard Wollowitz.
you say extreme like it's a bad thing but being extreme on child rape cases is normal. After all, we don't pick a position midway between the "Hang em by the balls" and "Let me fiddle away to my hearts content" and let some little bit of fiddling go unpunished, do we?
Actually, we do pick a middle way. Child rapists are generally not hung by the balls, but merely tried, locked up for some time, and maybe given psychiatric treatment, if the judge deems it necessary.
Extremism is rarely good. Moderation in all things.
I'm against the very principle. Legitimate customers will be restricted in what they can do with their purchase, whereas pirates get higher value. DRM is destroying the market.
Does that fact that he wasn't a successful theologist change the fact that he was one? I don't think anyone denies that his talents and obsessions lay elsewhere.
Oil/coal have operational pollution issues, but they don't have catastrophic failure issues. Yes the Gulf Oil spill was a sort of catastrophic event, but even oil is eaten by microbes. The downsides are limited to a decade or so...and life continues there even during this time. Not great but not nearly on the scale of a nuclear accident.
I disagree. The Gulf Oil spill was at least as bad as Fukishima. Not as bad as Chernobyl perhaps, since it didn't have quite as dramatic an impact on human lives, but the damage to sea life is enormous, and it will take a long time to recover from that.
I'm as much against fission power as the next guy, but it doesn't do anyone any good to overlook the significant dangers of the oil and coal industries. We need to get rid of them all, eventually.
For example, the German decision to get rid of nuclear power plants, as much as I'd love to applaud that decision, is rather premature considering the large number of coal plants they still have.
As for TFA...well...what did anyone expect? Wasn't that like the WORST tsunami and earthquake recorded there in like 100 years? You can only design structures that will last to a reasonable degree. I mean does anyone think if we had a quake the size of the great San Francisco quake close to one of our reactors shit wouldn't get broke? Hell what do you think the damage would be if a tsunami that size hit chemical row in the gulf?
It's a matter of risk management. In 1953, Netherland had a huge flood. After that, we started upgrading our coastal defenses, with the goal that a flood of that scale could only occur once in 10,000 years. 10,000 years is a pretty long time. On a human scale, it basically translates to "never", but as you know, you can never have 100% security, so we have to accept that the rare freak storm/high tide combination that occurs maybe once every interglacial period, might cause a flood. Everything on our coast is designed with this in mind.
In Japan, not so. A few years ago the IAEA gave Japan a warning that several of their coastal reactors were not safe enough. Fukishima was one of them. It may have been the worst earthquake/tsunami of the century, but centuries are not rare. If you expect your nuclear plants to operate for several decades, then you need to design them to withstand even the rare once-in-a-century freak earthquake+tsunami. They didn't.
Know what the dangers are, know what risks you're willing to face, and design for it.
I work 32 hours a week, but I'm still swamped with the care for my kid and other commitments. I still manage to find some time for the occasional game (currently playing The Witcher 2), as well as two table-top RPG groups (one bi-weekly, one monthly). The gaming does put some stress on my schedule, though.
The unlock gesture on my Android phone used to be a curved slide, but since the update to 2.1, it's always been straight slide. Wouldn't google be on safer ground with the curved slide? I kinda liked it.
I've owned two iPods in the past (2nd and 5th gen), one iPhone (got stolen, replaced it with an Android phone), and at two companies I've had Macs. I loved the Macs, and for their time, the iPods were awesome music players (especially the first one!). The iPhone was pretty cool, but unnecessarily limited for a general purpose mobile computer.
I certainly do not buy everything Mac puts out. I prefer Android over iOS. Macs are still cool, but they'll suck as soon as Apple decides to neuter them.
Restricting downloads to their app store would kill the Mac as a development platform, which is exactly the market where it's gotten pretty popular, since it moved to being a full-blown unix.
They just got pulled down to Sony's level. Their security is just as bad given that they have been successfully hacked as well.
It just that their service is so bare-bones, there is nothing to steal.
Security is not about locking every single door you can find. It's about making sure that any sensitive stuff you have is properly locked down. Making sure you don't have anything worth stealing is good security. Storing credit card info on an insecure server is very bad security.
So Nintendo's security is still way better than Sony's. It may not be perfect, but nothing is. At least Nintendo is aware that their security may not be perfect, and they made sure a breach wouldn't compromise sensitive data like credit card numbers.
For unimportant things, I use a 6 character word, all lowercase, no symbols or numbers. But this is only for stuff where I really don't care if it's compromised, like web forums.
Yeah. It's amazing how systems involving real money insist on weak security. My bank seems to be one of the worst. I've been planning to switch to another bank for ages now, but my entire life is tied to this bank account, and I just can't be bothered.
Seriously, if someone has your password hash, it's game over anyway and it doesn't matter if it takes 2 weeks or 2 months to guess the passwords.
Yes it does. Note that the article is mostly about 6, 7, and 8 character passwords. 15 years ago, 8 character passwords were already standard. It's not that much of a surprise that they're easily compromised now. Use 16 character passwords (pass phrases, most likely), and you're okay.
That you never heard of it doesn't mean it never existed, or isn't important. SJGames and IO played an important role in early internet freedom and the founding of EFF. I do hope you've heard of that.
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Good lord, yes. We definitely are. I can't even begin to list all the Dutch weirdness. Some of it is really good, some of it it really bad, and most of it is really contradictory. I guess it's our drive for constant compromise in a very heterogenous society. (Though lately it's become a lot more polarized. I fear we may start to suck, and eventually perhaps even become boring.)
But the good news is: as long as you are higher educated and have a good income nobody gives a f... if you only talk English.
Let's be honest. We speak English (or something we think resembles English) to everybody. Dutch is practically impossible to learn because no Dutchman will speak it to you.
Real estate isn't cheap at all in the NL..
That's some understatement. Real estate is bloody expensive here. As soon as you cross the border with Germany, housing prices drop by 50%. Even the mortgage crisis hardly put a dent in the housing prices.
Don't be too quick to celebrate. This is a rare positive decision in Dutch politics. For the most part of the past 10 years, Dutch politics have been going down the drain, becoming more polarized, more populist, and more focused on short term silliness. It's still not nearly as bad the the US, but I'd seriously consider moving to Sweden if I wouldn't leave so many friends and family behind.
Exactly. These people need to be locked up. That's the only way to send a clear signal to them and others in a similar position. It doesn't even have to be years. 3 months each is fine by me. Just send a clear message that this is criminal and will be prosecuted.
Why? Why is it MY job to pay attention to this? I don't have kids in public school. I don't have time or the inclination to do this.
But you are paying the salaries of people who are spying on kids in their bedroom.
Who cares about union contract if they broke the law? They need to be criminally prosecuted.
Few families have houses that large, however (varying per region and country, I'm sure). My parents actually lived with my dad's parents for a short period after they married (which I don't think they did before they married, but I'll ask), where they did have access to their own tiny kitchen. However, the vast majority of houses don't have a second kitchen or bathroom or anything like that.
My grandparents were fortunate enough to have a big house (they weren't rich, but houses just weren't as expensive back then, apparently), but when I moved out, my parents (who had quite a bit more comfortable wealth) had a house that really only fitted a single family, with little room for any kind of independence. Once I moved out, they moved to a house with a larger living room and less/smaller bedrooms. My sister kept living with them for quite long time (until she was 22 I think), but that got increasingly uncomfortable, with loud arguments and all that. At some point it's just time to move out, or you end up like Howard Wollowitz.
you say extreme like it's a bad thing but being extreme on child rape cases is normal. After all, we don't pick a position midway between the "Hang em by the balls" and "Let me fiddle away to my hearts content" and let some little bit of fiddling go unpunished, do we?
Actually, we do pick a middle way. Child rapists are generally not hung by the balls, but merely tried, locked up for some time, and maybe given psychiatric treatment, if the judge deems it necessary.
Extremism is rarely good. Moderation in all things.
I'm against the very principle. Legitimate customers will be restricted in what they can do with their purchase, whereas pirates get higher value. DRM is destroying the market.
Does that fact that he wasn't a successful theologist change the fact that he was one? I don't think anyone denies that his talents and obsessions lay elsewhere.
Oil/coal have operational pollution issues, but they don't have catastrophic failure issues. Yes the Gulf Oil spill was a sort of catastrophic event, but even oil is eaten by microbes. The downsides are limited to a decade or so...and life continues there even during this time. Not great but not nearly on the scale of a nuclear accident.
I disagree. The Gulf Oil spill was at least as bad as Fukishima. Not as bad as Chernobyl perhaps, since it didn't have quite as dramatic an impact on human lives, but the damage to sea life is enormous, and it will take a long time to recover from that.
I'm as much against fission power as the next guy, but it doesn't do anyone any good to overlook the significant dangers of the oil and coal industries. We need to get rid of them all, eventually.
For example, the German decision to get rid of nuclear power plants, as much as I'd love to applaud that decision, is rather premature considering the large number of coal plants they still have.
As for TFA...well...what did anyone expect? Wasn't that like the WORST tsunami and earthquake recorded there in like 100 years? You can only design structures that will last to a reasonable degree. I mean does anyone think if we had a quake the size of the great San Francisco quake close to one of our reactors shit wouldn't get broke? Hell what do you think the damage would be if a tsunami that size hit chemical row in the gulf?
It's a matter of risk management. In 1953, Netherland had a huge flood. After that, we started upgrading our coastal defenses, with the goal that a flood of that scale could only occur once in 10,000 years. 10,000 years is a pretty long time. On a human scale, it basically translates to "never", but as you know, you can never have 100% security, so we have to accept that the rare freak storm/high tide combination that occurs maybe once every interglacial period, might cause a flood. Everything on our coast is designed with this in mind.
In Japan, not so. A few years ago the IAEA gave Japan a warning that several of their coastal reactors were not safe enough. Fukishima was one of them. It may have been the worst earthquake/tsunami of the century, but centuries are not rare. If you expect your nuclear plants to operate for several decades, then you need to design them to withstand even the rare once-in-a-century freak earthquake+tsunami. They didn't.
Know what the dangers are, know what risks you're willing to face, and design for it.
its up from 34 last year apparently. So gamers are ageing 3 years for every 1.
That's it. I'm quitting.
I work 32 hours a week, but I'm still swamped with the care for my kid and other commitments. I still manage to find some time for the occasional game (currently playing The Witcher 2), as well as two table-top RPG groups (one bi-weekly, one monthly). The gaming does put some stress on my schedule, though.
You can't put a price to adulthood, if you ask me. Not to mention the freedom for both parties involved. (Also, my rent was pretty low.)
The unlock gesture on my Android phone used to be a curved slide, but since the update to 2.1, it's always been straight slide. Wouldn't google be on safer ground with the curved slide? I kinda liked it.
I've owned two iPods in the past (2nd and 5th gen), one iPhone (got stolen, replaced it with an Android phone), and at two companies I've had Macs. I loved the Macs, and for their time, the iPods were awesome music players (especially the first one!). The iPhone was pretty cool, but unnecessarily limited for a general purpose mobile computer.
I certainly do not buy everything Mac puts out. I prefer Android over iOS. Macs are still cool, but they'll suck as soon as Apple decides to neuter them.
No, Microsoft killing Windows would be like Apple killing the iPhone. Apple killing the Mac is more like Microsoft killing Windows Mobile.
Restricting downloads to their app store would kill the Mac as a development platform, which is exactly the market where it's gotten pretty popular, since it moved to being a full-blown unix.
They just got pulled down to Sony's level. Their security is just as bad given that they have been successfully hacked as well.
It just that their service is so bare-bones, there is nothing to steal.
Security is not about locking every single door you can find. It's about making sure that any sensitive stuff you have is properly locked down. Making sure you don't have anything worth stealing is good security. Storing credit card info on an insecure server is very bad security.
So Nintendo's security is still way better than Sony's. It may not be perfect, but nothing is. At least Nintendo is aware that their security may not be perfect, and they made sure a breach wouldn't compromise sensitive data like credit card numbers.
For unimportant things, I use a 6 character word, all lowercase, no symbols or numbers. But this is only for stuff where I really don't care if it's compromised, like web forums.
Yeah. It's amazing how systems involving real money insist on weak security. My bank seems to be one of the worst. I've been planning to switch to another bank for ages now, but my entire life is tied to this bank account, and I just can't be bothered.
Seriously, if someone has your password hash, it's game over anyway and it doesn't matter if it takes 2 weeks or 2 months to guess the passwords.
Yes it does. Note that the article is mostly about 6, 7, and 8 character passwords. 15 years ago, 8 character passwords were already standard. It's not that much of a surprise that they're easily compromised now. Use 16 character passwords (pass phrases, most likely), and you're okay.
That you never heard of it doesn't mean it never existed, or isn't important. SJGames and IO played an important role in early internet freedom and the founding of EFF. I do hope you've heard of that.