There already exist open data formats which could be used for ensuring interoperability. All this guff is just to promote the idea of DRM for the wrong reasons.
Whilst I like the idea of signed source code that can only possibly have come from who it says it came from, so that I can choose if or not I want to compile it, I am less keen on the idea of other people being able to tell me what I can do with my equipment.
Imagine that the postal service had a true monopoly on the delivery of
letters and parcels. You wouldn't be allowed to slip a note through your
neighbour's door: you would have to go to the post office, buy a stamp and
deposit it in the box there. You wouldn't be allowed to carry a basket of
food to Grandma's house: you would have to parcel it up, and if Granny
missed the delivery, she would have to trek all the way to the sorting
office to pick up your baking.
If you want to buy goods from a supplier, they have to send them through
the postal service, who will take your payment and ensure that the cost
of the goods is passed on to the supplier. You are not allowed to get in
your car or walk round to the depot and pick the goods up yourself, even if
you pay cash on collection.
Now imagine that somebody just invented a way you could send a message
from almost any computer to almost any other computer. How do you imagine
that the postal service would react to that?
Well, the record companies are basically providing a delivery service
for goods {in this case music} from the performer to the listener. If the
listener chooses to pay neither the record companies' delivery charge, nor
the cost of the goods from the supplier {performer}, the record labels
regard this as stealing.
However, it is my contention that the record companies are more concerned
about their being deprived of the delivery charge than about the artist
being depived of their payment {which on a CD is mere pennies}. Now we come to the crux of the matter. The artist is only missing out on pennies. I would not miss this little amount of money, so what chance is there that they will miss it?
It's unfortunate that things have got the way they have. I could not honestly object to a scheme whereby someone downloading a music file directly paid the artist the money they were asking for -- it would almost certainly be less than the cost of a CD. But you can bet this won't be about paying the performers. The record companies will shamelessly use the image of the starving artist to justify lining their own pockets.
If they're even still around in a few years' time, that is.....
Um, yeah..... I remember now. The first thing alcohol knocks out is the sense of inhibition. I guess the Ritalin must cause some beneficial effect before it starts on enhancing the undesirable ones.
I really must take a week off and remind myself of these things!
I am a UK taxpayer and a firm believer in Open Source.
I pay {a little something towards} the Government's wages.
I object to my money being spent on software when a superior alternative exists at much lower cost. The benefits of Open Source have been extensively pointed out elsewhere. Here I want to examine the malefits {I'm not sure that's a real word but it feels as though it should be} of closed-source {read: Micro$oft} software.
Proprietary File Formats. This would lock software purchasers into an upgrade schedule, and creates interoperability issues.
Closed Source Code. If you don't get to see the source code, how can you possibly know it is secure?
I belive that the Government should have the automatic right to subject the source code of any and all software it uses to expert scrutiny. {I would go so far as to mandate that a copy of the source code to all closed-source software be placed in escrow for dispute resolution purposes - only access to the source code would absolve manufacturers from having to guarantee software. Examining the source code is difficult but not impossible -- a bit like backing up your entire hard drive, which closed source suppliers are keen that we should do in the name of due diligence}. I would expect to see the software manufacurers obliged to permit this as a condition of contract. I also believe that in the vast majority of cases, open source software is eminently suitable for the needs of public bodies and therefore should be used as the de facto standard, unless it can be demonstrated that only a closed source solution is applicable.
Doubtless this won't please Micro$oft, but my firm belief is that the needs of the people come before any corporation's interests. Software suppliers are not above the law. Maybe the Government could cut themselves some slack with the GPL and keep some Government internal software secret where there is a very good reason for doing so -- after all, they do make the rules. And any data made available to the public must be readable using Open Source software -- it is not reasonable to expect members of the public to have access to closed-source software, for a variety of reasons.
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. If you like textured protein, just make it by feeding complex carbohydrates -- the kind human beings can shit out undigested -- to some animal that can metabolise them, wait awhile and eat that animal. Much more natural. Probably even less environmentally damaging than soya processing plants? It doesn't give you the opportunity for mortality-denial, of course. Human being have three different kinds of teeth and a short digestive tract for a reason, for crying out loud. Non-dependence on taurine {you look it up for a change} is just a bonus for short-term survival, and some people get killed by something else first.
Surely the kind of person who thinks caffeine will kill them, is hardly likely to touch a genetically modified plant? Never mind that maize, wheat, barley et al are all genetically modified grass, and cabbages, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and swedes are all genetically modified turnips. OK, in those cases the GM was done the slow way, but evolution is still technically genetic modification.
If ever anyone needed concrete evidence that the world is going stark, raving bonkers, this is surely it. First it was Lucozade Light {for the benefit of foreigners, Lucozade is a high-calorie drink with glucose for an instant energy boost. Table sugar is sucrose, which the body has to hydrolyse into glucose and fructose.} The whole point of Lucozade is to provide quickly-assimilated calories. If you need fewer calories then just drink less; if you still need fluid then dilute it with water.
Not so long ago we ate loads of fried food, fat and sugar, we smoked woodbines, we drank beer and whisky all the time and we didn't die! We weren't all pasty-faced, nesh asthmatics either. Nowadays it is "trendy" to be a health freak, so people latch onto any convenient buzz-words without thinking properly what they mean. Then they drive their cars from the bedroom to the bathroom to the gym, where they pay good money to sit on a fake bike and pedal nowhere. I bet some young mother somewhere is probably bringing up a baby exclusively on soya milk because she thinks breast milk is bad for you.
Last year, in a Tesco supermarket, I found Organic Milk -- available in skimmed and semi-skimmed varieties, but not full cream. So, you go organic to get nothing artificial added, then they go and take something natural away. {it's not that long ago I remember drinking unpasteurised milk - a test of faith in the immune system:) but a worthwhile one}.
What next, decaffeinated Red Bull?
For crying out loud, if you don't like the thought of caffeine, then don't drink coffee! Or drink tea, which contains something that stops your body absorbing caffeine.
Somebody needs to patent a home coffee decaffeinator - and maybe a home milk skimmer/semi-skimmer - to sell to the trendy brigade. Or, failing that, a way of distributing a clue.....
Closed source licences have several inherent problems. One can too easily become "locked-in" to the vendor through abuse of proprietary file formats, among other things.
Were I initiating a government IT purchasing programme, I would begin by mandating that any government department have the right to inspect -- and modify if necessary -- the source code of any software they use. Hell, if I thought it was even remotely workable, I'd insist that no binary executable compiled outside these premises shall be permitted to run herewithin - but then this breaks down because you still need a C compiler to compile anything. Unless you write a complete C interpreter {you can always perform the compilation of the compiler interpretatively} in assembler.
What it comes down to is simply: no corporation's secrets are more important than National Security. If any software vendor refuses to show the source code to the government, just what are they hiding?
An act of parliament that mandates public bodies {who pays their wages again?} to consider all the options before making a purchase is hardly a Bad Thing. The only convincing arguments against it are:
The choice is so vast that more resources would be expended on the act of choosing than on the product chosen
You are the present supplier of a product which is likely to be deemed inferior by the criteria applied for judgement.
If (1), this says: the market is saturated, all software is much of a one-ness, there is nothing to choose between it and you may as well pick the one with the prettiest box. If (2), this says: software suppliers -- or the beneficiaries of, or apologists for, their corruption and selfishness -- are influencing governments.
I can see how this would work..... I have an electric ice-cream maker that works by freezing a container {thin conductive aluminium pan inside plastic bowl containing brine, giving a nice high thermal mass} in the deep freezer overnight, then an electric motor stirs the mixture continuously to prevent lump formation {which would ruin the texture}.
The place I used to work at actually had a liquid-nitrogen-cooled test chamber. Unfortunately, the plumbing did not seem to include a drain valve, otherwise I might have been tempted to help myself to some {if you are going to do this, BTW, drill a small hole in the stopper and cup of your flask so that there is no chance for pressure to build up}. Best demo I've seen was to pour some liquid mercury into a hammer head mould, dip in a stick to act as handle, freeze, and knock in several big nails. Bet they wouldn't be allowed to do that nowadays..... Also, since nitrogen boils at a lower temperature than oxygen, you can use it to distill oxygen from the air. Liquid nitrogen is cool, but liquid oxygen is hot stuff!
You want the frame and the Certificate of Originality, you buy the original. You don't care so much about the frame or the certificate, you just want to look at the picture, you buy a copy. Simple. Brilliant.
Of course, if you have eidetic memory, then you don't even need the photograph..... I wonder what the "intellectual property" brigade would say about that?
My point is that writing a piece of software does not automatically entitle you to a cash reward. If designing, coding and testing weren't reward enough for you then get a proper job instead.
Just because an idea travelled through your mind, does not make you its "owner". Ideas do not belong to anyone. The only workable test for ownership is "who would rightly be annoyed if this was destroyed?" and ideas cannot be destroyed, therefore are not ownable.
Why does nobody "pirate" books, magazines and newspapers? Answer: because there is no saving to be made. It's cheaper to pay for the damn things, or just read them in the store {when you're skint, a fast reader and live in a city with plenty of book stores, it's very possible to do this}.
So it is with Nintendo's weirdy discs. Hard to get hold of, non-standard format, misleading rumours as to how this was achieved {I have heard someone swear blind that NSM used reverse-spinning CDs in pub CD players..... an obvious lie if you've ever watched one doing its thing, but people will fall for anything as this link shows}.
By the time anyone gets through the protection, Nintendo will already have made enough money off the GameCube not to be bothered about people making copies of games.
This is so much a non-story that I can't be bothered to go *ting!* Next please.
Why is it that people don't consider pirating stealing?
Put it this way. If I want a delicious Triple Chocolate Muffin, I could buy one..... Or I could save money by baking my own, using my own ingredients and oven.
Would that be stealing?
So how come you think is it stealing if I make my own game discs using my own blank discs and computer?
Re:My father's Minivan already has this
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 1
The whole of the vehicle's chassis is the negative terminal. If you can find a bit of bare metal handy, of course. Ordinarily you want to keep the leads as short as possible {they're carrying hundreds of amperes}, but the car's chassis has such a low resistance this is hardly important.
Re:For those unfortunate times...
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 1
Very cheap inverters meant for laptops actually stick out about 200V DC. When you rectify the mains you get about (200 * sqrt 2 = 325) V DC. A Laptop uses a switch mode PSU, and will work from anything between 100 and 400 volts, AC or DC, since the first stage is actually a bridge rectifier.
A switch mode power supply, for the uninitiated, consists of an oscillator pushing power through a transformer, but at a much higher frequency than the mains -- several tens of kHz as opposed to 50Hz. This means you can get away with less steel in the core {shorter time in each polarity means less likely to reach magnetic saturation}, but you can't use a traditional laminated core {separate thin sheets of steel insulated with varnish; prevents current flow through the core, which would otherwise cause losses} as it is too lossy at high frequencies. Fortunately, there are modern ferrite alloys that work very well for high-frequency transformer cores.
A well-designed transformer is already a pretty efficient device. Converting AC to DC just requires a bridge rectifier {efficiency gets better with increasing voltage}, DC to AC is harder as it needs an oscillator, but the most inefficiency comes from the output transistors -- again, better with voltage.
It might seem more efficient to keep everything as AC up until the point of use, but the speed of a car's engine is not constant; and since the frequency of AC depends on the spindle speed of the alternator, you will get a frequency varying all over the shop, which will play merry havoc with the efficiency of some systems. So DC is the better compromise.
If you got a decent enough inverter, you could plug in a desktop PC and convert 12V DC -> 230V AC -> 325V DC -> 3.3V DC -> about 1.8V DC.
Only one problem with cinder blocks..... they are actually somewhat inflammable. The value of the energy in power plant ash is less than the cost of recovering it {though one would expect newer plants to make a better job of getting all the heat out of the coal}..... but if you heat it up hot enough, it will start to undergo a chemical reaction with air..... in other words, go on fire.....
Had the Queen acted to prevent the war {she was pretty much the only person in a position to do this} I think that she might have earned some respect throughout the British Commonwealth. She didn't. Well, sooner or later, some country somewhere in the C/W will be holding a referendum on becoming a republic, and they might remember that.
now i basically just cancel any call from a withheld number unless i know i am expecting something.
I have this set up on my landline {BT}. Almost every anonymous call I ever got was a cold caller, so I don't miss them. Also it has the happy side-effect that my Work can't call me, because their switchboard does not send its number. My mobile company {Vodafone} claim not to be able to do it. Fortunately I can do a convincing impression of an automated service telling people that "Anonymous calls are not welcome on this line. If your business is important you may hang up and redial without whithholding your number.":-) Meanwhile there is talk afoot of banning anonymous calls altogether. I can't wait. Did people really use to answer a telephone with no idea who was on the other end of it?
My cellphone is my property. I give out my number to people strictly for the purpose of making legitimate calls. Some faceless corporation telling me about products and services I neither need nor wish to purchase is not, IMHO, a legitimate purpose -- especially when hidden behind a lie that I have won a prize that is probably of lower value than the cost of calling the premium rate number in the message. Additionally, I find the assumption that I would fall for such a cheap stunt highly insulting.
A world without advertisements is entirely possible and well worth working towards.
Yeay! I think I will have to visit Denmark sometime in the near future, just for having cool laws that recognise the difference between a person's private home / telephone / computer is not a public advertising hoarding!
Is Denmark in the EU? If so, maybe there is hope.....
In this country, you pay for your telephone service before you make the calls. This used to be done by means of scratchcards with a unique number; nowadays you can do it from a bank account.
Slashdot Mirror
..... but you're not meant to get it.
.....
There already exist open data formats which could be used for ensuring interoperability. All this guff is just to promote the idea of DRM for the wrong reasons.
Whilst I like the idea of signed source code that can only possibly have come from who it says it came from, so that I can choose if or not I want to compile it, I am less keen on the idea of other people being able to tell me what I can do with my equipment.
Imagine that the postal service had a true monopoly on the delivery of letters and parcels. You wouldn't be allowed to slip a note through your neighbour's door: you would have to go to the post office, buy a stamp and deposit it in the box there. You wouldn't be allowed to carry a basket of food to Grandma's house: you would have to parcel it up, and if Granny missed the delivery, she would have to trek all the way to the sorting office to pick up your baking.
If you want to buy goods from a supplier, they have to send them through the postal service, who will take your payment and ensure that the cost of the goods is passed on to the supplier. You are not allowed to get in your car or walk round to the depot and pick the goods up yourself, even if you pay cash on collection.
Now imagine that somebody just invented a way you could send a message from almost any computer to almost any other computer. How do you imagine that the postal service would react to that?
Well, the record companies are basically providing a delivery service for goods {in this case music} from the performer to the listener. If the listener chooses to pay neither the record companies' delivery charge, nor the cost of the goods from the supplier {performer}, the record labels regard this as stealing.
However, it is my contention that the record companies are more concerned about their being deprived of the delivery charge than about the artist being depived of their payment {which on a CD is mere pennies}. Now we come to the crux of the matter. The artist is only missing out on pennies. I would not miss this little amount of money, so what chance is there that they will miss it?
It's unfortunate that things have got the way they have. I could not honestly object to a scheme whereby someone downloading a music file directly paid the artist the money they were asking for -- it would almost certainly be less than the cost of a CD. But you can bet this won't be about paying the performers. The record companies will shamelessly use the image of the starving artist to justify lining their own pockets.
If they're even still around in a few years' time, that is
Um, yeah ..... I remember now. The first thing alcohol knocks out is the sense of inhibition. I guess the Ritalin must cause some beneficial effect before it starts on enhancing the undesirable ones.
I really must take a week off and remind myself of these things!
I pay {a little something towards} the Government's wages.
I object to my money being spent on software when a superior alternative exists at much lower cost. The benefits of Open Source have been extensively pointed out elsewhere. Here I want to examine the malefits {I'm not sure that's a real word but it feels as though it should be} of closed-source {read: Micro$oft} software.
- Proprietary File Formats. This would lock software purchasers into an upgrade schedule, and creates interoperability issues.
- Closed Source Code. If you don't get to see the source code, how can you possibly know it is secure?
I belive that the Government should have the automatic right to subject the source code of any and all software it uses to expert scrutiny. {I would go so far as to mandate that a copy of the source code to all closed-source software be placed in escrow for dispute resolution purposes - only access to the source code would absolve manufacturers from having to guarantee software. Examining the source code is difficult but not impossible -- a bit like backing up your entire hard drive, which closed source suppliers are keen that we should do in the name of due diligence}. I would expect to see the software manufacurers obliged to permit this as a condition of contract. I also believe that in the vast majority of cases, open source software is eminently suitable for the needs of public bodies and therefore should be used as the de facto standard, unless it can be demonstrated that only a closed source solution is applicable.Doubtless this won't please Micro$oft, but my firm belief is that the needs of the people come before any corporation's interests. Software suppliers are not above the law. Maybe the Government could cut themselves some slack with the GPL and keep some Government internal software secret where there is a very good reason for doing so -- after all, they do make the rules. And any data made available to the public must be readable using Open Source software -- it is not reasonable to expect members of the public to have access to closed-source software, for a variety of reasons.
It would float around forever in tiny droplets in zero-G. You'd have to be verycareful if you were a woman wearing a skirt with no underwear .....
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. If you like textured protein, just make it by feeding complex carbohydrates -- the kind human beings can shit out undigested -- to some animal that can metabolise them, wait awhile and eat that animal. Much more natural. Probably even less environmentally damaging than soya processing plants? It doesn't give you the opportunity for mortality-denial, of course. Human being have three different kinds of teeth and a short digestive tract for a reason, for crying out loud. Non-dependence on taurine {you look it up for a change} is just a bonus for short-term survival, and some people get killed by something else first.
Surely the kind of person who thinks caffeine will kill them, is hardly likely to touch a genetically modified plant? Never mind that maize, wheat, barley et al are all genetically modified grass, and cabbages, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and swedes are all genetically modified turnips. OK, in those cases the GM was done the slow way, but evolution is still technically genetic modification.
:) but a worthwhile one}.
.....
If ever anyone needed concrete evidence that the world is going stark, raving bonkers, this is surely it. First it was Lucozade Light {for the benefit of foreigners, Lucozade is a high-calorie drink with glucose for an instant energy boost. Table sugar is sucrose, which the body has to hydrolyse into glucose and fructose.} The whole point of Lucozade is to provide quickly-assimilated calories. If you need fewer calories then just drink less; if you still need fluid then dilute it with water.
Not so long ago we ate loads of fried food, fat and sugar, we smoked woodbines, we drank beer and whisky all the time and we didn't die! We weren't all pasty-faced, nesh asthmatics either. Nowadays it is "trendy" to be a health freak, so people latch onto any convenient buzz-words without thinking properly what they mean. Then they drive their cars from the bedroom to the bathroom to the gym, where they pay good money to sit on a fake bike and pedal nowhere. I bet some young mother somewhere is probably bringing up a baby exclusively on soya milk because she thinks breast milk is bad for you.
Last year, in a Tesco supermarket, I found Organic Milk -- available in skimmed and semi-skimmed varieties, but not full cream. So, you go organic to get nothing artificial added, then they go and take something natural away. {it's not that long ago I remember drinking unpasteurised milk - a test of faith in the immune system
What next, decaffeinated Red Bull? For crying out loud, if you don't like the thought of caffeine, then don't drink coffee! Or drink tea, which contains something that stops your body absorbing caffeine.
Somebody needs to patent a home coffee decaffeinator - and maybe a home milk skimmer/semi-skimmer - to sell to the trendy brigade. Or, failing that, a way of distributing a clue
I think you are making a valid point there.
Closed source licences have several inherent problems. One can too easily become "locked-in" to the vendor through abuse of proprietary file formats, among other things.
Were I initiating a government IT purchasing programme, I would begin by mandating that any government department have the right to inspect -- and modify if necessary -- the source code of any software they use. Hell, if I thought it was even remotely workable, I'd insist that no binary executable compiled outside these premises shall be permitted to run herewithin - but then this breaks down because you still need a C compiler to compile anything. Unless you write a complete C interpreter {you can always perform the compilation of the compiler interpretatively} in assembler.
What it comes down to is simply: no corporation's secrets are more important than National Security. If any software vendor refuses to show the source code to the government, just what are they hiding?
- The choice is so vast that more resources would be expended on the act of choosing than on the product chosen
- You are the present supplier of a product which is likely to be deemed inferior by the criteria applied for judgement.
If (1), this says: the market is saturated, all software is much of a one-ness, there is nothing to choose between it and you may as well pick the one with the prettiest box. If (2), this says: software suppliers -- or the beneficiaries of, or apologists for, their corruption and selfishness -- are influencing governments.What does the empirical evidence suggest?
I can see how this would work ..... I have an electric ice-cream maker that works by freezing a container {thin conductive aluminium pan inside plastic bowl containing brine, giving a nice high thermal mass} in the deep freezer overnight, then an electric motor stirs the mixture continuously to prevent lump formation {which would ruin the texture}.
..... Also, since nitrogen boils at a lower temperature than oxygen, you can use it to distill oxygen from the air. Liquid nitrogen is cool, but liquid oxygen is hot stuff!
The place I used to work at actually had a liquid-nitrogen-cooled test chamber. Unfortunately, the plumbing did not seem to include a drain valve, otherwise I might have been tempted to help myself to some {if you are going to do this, BTW, drill a small hole in the stopper and cup of your flask so that there is no chance for pressure to build up}. Best demo I've seen was to pour some liquid mercury into a hammer head mould, dip in a stick to act as handle, freeze, and knock in several big nails. Bet they wouldn't be allowed to do that nowadays
I like it and I don't see anything wrong with it.
..... I wonder what the "intellectual property" brigade would say about that?
You want the frame and the Certificate of Originality, you buy the original. You don't care so much about the frame or the certificate, you just want to look at the picture, you buy a copy. Simple. Brilliant.
Of course, if you have eidetic memory, then you don't even need the photograph
My point is that writing a piece of software does not automatically entitle you to a cash reward. If designing, coding and testing weren't reward enough for you then get a proper job instead.
Just because an idea travelled through your mind, does not make you its "owner". Ideas do not belong to anyone. The only workable test for ownership is "who would rightly be annoyed if this was destroyed?" and ideas cannot be destroyed, therefore are not ownable.
Why does nobody "pirate" books, magazines and newspapers? Answer: because there is no saving to be made. It's cheaper to pay for the damn things, or just read them in the store {when you're skint, a fast reader and live in a city with plenty of book stores, it's very possible to do this}.
..... an obvious lie if you've ever watched one doing its thing, but people will fall for anything as this link shows}.
So it is with Nintendo's weirdy discs. Hard to get hold of, non-standard format, misleading rumours as to how this was achieved {I have heard someone swear blind that NSM used reverse-spinning CDs in pub CD players
By the time anyone gets through the protection, Nintendo will already have made enough money off the GameCube not to be bothered about people making copies of games.
This is so much a non-story that I can't be bothered to go *ting!* Next please.
Would that be stealing?
So how come you think is it stealing if I make my own game discs using my own blank discs and computer?
The whole of the vehicle's chassis is the negative terminal. If you can find a bit of bare metal handy, of course. Ordinarily you want to keep the leads as short as possible {they're carrying hundreds of amperes}, but the car's chassis has such a low resistance this is hardly important.
Actually, in base 13, 6 * 9 = 42.
Very cheap inverters meant for laptops actually stick out about 200V DC. When you rectify the mains you get about (200 * sqrt 2 = 325) V DC. A Laptop uses a switch mode PSU, and will work from anything between 100 and 400 volts, AC or DC, since the first stage is actually a bridge rectifier.
A switch mode power supply, for the uninitiated, consists of an oscillator pushing power through a transformer, but at a much higher frequency than the mains -- several tens of kHz as opposed to 50Hz. This means you can get away with less steel in the core {shorter time in each polarity means less likely to reach magnetic saturation}, but you can't use a traditional laminated core {separate thin sheets of steel insulated with varnish; prevents current flow through the core, which would otherwise cause losses} as it is too lossy at high frequencies. Fortunately, there are modern ferrite alloys that work very well for high-frequency transformer cores.
A well-designed transformer is already a pretty efficient device. Converting AC to DC just requires a bridge rectifier {efficiency gets better with increasing voltage}, DC to AC is harder as it needs an oscillator, but the most inefficiency comes from the output transistors -- again, better with voltage.
It might seem more efficient to keep everything as AC up until the point of use, but the speed of a car's engine is not constant; and since the frequency of AC depends on the spindle speed of the alternator, you will get a frequency varying all over the shop, which will play merry havoc with the efficiency of some systems. So DC is the better compromise.
If you got a decent enough inverter, you could plug in a desktop PC and convert 12V DC -> 230V AC -> 325V DC -> 3.3V DC -> about 1.8V DC.
Now that's what I call putting the slash in slashdot effect!
Only one problem with cinder blocks ..... they are actually somewhat inflammable. The value of the energy in power plant ash is less than the cost of recovering it {though one would expect newer plants to make a better job of getting all the heat out of the coal} ..... but if you heat it up hot enough, it will start to undergo a chemical reaction with air ..... in other words, go on fire .....
Yup.
Had the Queen acted to prevent the war {she was pretty much the only person in a position to do this} I think that she might have earned some respect throughout the British Commonwealth. She didn't. Well, sooner or later, some country somewhere in the C/W will be holding a referendum on becoming a republic, and they might remember that.
My cellphone is my property. I give out my number to people strictly for the purpose of making legitimate calls. Some faceless corporation telling me about products and services I neither need nor wish to purchase is not, IMHO, a legitimate purpose -- especially when hidden behind a lie that I have won a prize that is probably of lower value than the cost of calling the premium rate number in the message. Additionally, I find the assumption that I would fall for such a cheap stunt highly insulting.
A world without advertisements is entirely possible and well worth working towards.
Yeay! I think I will have to visit Denmark sometime in the near future, just for having cool laws that recognise the difference between a person's private home / telephone / computer is not a public advertising hoarding!
.....
Is Denmark in the EU? If so, maybe there is hope
So pick a deciduous tree then!
Bill due?
In this country, you pay for your telephone service before you make the calls. This used to be done by means of scratchcards with a unique number; nowadays you can do it from a bank account.