I seem to recall a rather more blunt quote, but since I unfortunately cannot find it, the official ICO response to the proposals was:
20 October 2008
ICO statement on the Communications Data Bill
A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said:
"This summer the Information Commissioner called for a public debate on government proposals for the state to retain citizensâ(TM) internet and phone records. The Commissioner warned that it is likely that such a scheme would be a step too far for the British way of life. Creating huge databases containing personal information is never a risk-free option as it is not possible to fully eliminate the danger that the data will fall into the wrong hands. It is therefore of paramount importance that proposals threatening such intrusion into our lives are fully debated. We welcome the fact that the government intends to fully consult the public on any scheme it brings forward. Precise details of the plans are unclear at this stage; the ICO will be studying the proposals once published and responding to the Government's consultation in due course."
Incidentally some may find the ICO's press release list (the source for the above quote) makes for some interesting reading. Surprised there is no follow-up to the debate though, I'd have thought he's try to get his oar in again.
So, it would appear that firstly they sneaked the EU directive in by calling it "commercial" legislation rather than a policing one. This forced themselves to implement it, but allows them to blame it on the EU, even though they were the ones pushing it through there. Back home, they proposed a Bill (which would result in an Act, a "proper" law by "proper" means IMHO), started the normal proposal procedure, but then didn't like what they were hearing so chucked it through as a statutory implement instead. Nice.
Do not have a lawyer send the letters. It is considered unethical for a lawyer to send a letter to the another lawyer's cleint and it is really the client you want to get to.
I have no idea where you're pulling that from, but it's gotta be a place where the sun ain't shining too often.
It's true, though it is as much professional courtesy as ethics.
TMI-2 was built on the final approach path to Harrisburg International Airport, a former U.S. Air Force base, and was therefore beefed-up specifically to withstand the impact of a B-52 hitting the structure at 200 knots. A normal containment would have been breached.
What it does is demonstrate exactly why the public does not trust nuclear energy. Sure, they say the technology is so strong now that we are capable of building an incredibly safe nuclear plant. But people are always being told how safe it is before pretty much any man-made disaster. Here on/. we spend a lot of time talking about how we cannot trust the government nor big companies, and now complaining when they don't?
Whether the technology is all that safe is perhaps something of a moot point. Wherever there are humans involved, there is scope for human error. Again TFA makes this clear. There was nothing wrong with the available technology, the failures were all human.
The scientist in me likes the ideas of NICE. If an operation neither extends life nor increases quality of life, then what's the point in the operation?
Of course, it never works perfectly, but I'd be interested in what the critisms against NICE are?
Namely that in some cases people need treatment that is actually quite effective at both extending life and increasing the quality of it, but that treatment is incredibly expensive.
Of course, NICE has some good counter arguments. It's not a case of saving money, it's a case of someone else telling them that they have a finite amount of money to spend - if one treatment is approved, something else may have to go. A very good argument, but of no comfort at all to the one who's going to die earlier than necessary.
There are some seemingly bizarre situations, like in some cases people have offered to remortgage their homes thus the NHS only has to contribute a reasonable amount. This usually still doesn't fly, because NICE either approves or disapproves treatments. Again, those denied are pretty justified in being extremely upset that for all the taxes they've paid , they don't get treatment because they were picked by the wrong disease.
Part of NICE's function is to reduce how much they get ripped off by the pharmaceutical companies. Just like in any business, someone has to control the costs. Unfortunately, here it involves lives. To be honest, sometimes an ill person has a suspiciously expensive-looking and well-coordinated campaign to get a drug approved.
Frankly NICE has an awful job. Their best hope is to minimise misery, and they have the inherent problem that people will hate them when they say no, but don't even notice when they say yes.
Ultimately the problem is people deserve the treatment but healthy people are only willing to pay so much in taxes.
Note that turbines don't actually require a high wind, IIRC somewhere around 15m/s is optimal. High wind is actually a problem that they need to fit breaks for. Plus there's the tower height: 15m/s at 70-100m is much slower here on the ground. IIRC, the wind is also more reliable offshore. Production capacity for turbines is much more likely to be a problem.
But still, yes there is an element of fickleness. Well firstly, we already gather a lot of weather data so you can diversify away a substantial element of that even while just looking at wind. Bear in mind thatas we stand nuclear/coal/gas plants can have issues that stop them generating power; that's a much more centralised system with fewer players with which to diversify - we already need the excess capacity.
Secondly, wind power isn't going to be the sole source of power. As with much in life, the best approach is a balanced one. Wind where it works best, something else where it doesn't.
We don't need to cut C02 emissions entirely. The planet deals with quite a lot of it just fine, we "only" need to cut out the amount we're producing on top of that. Cut x% off generation, cut x% via efficiency of electrical goods, cut x% by more efficient vehicles, sink x% here and there... A thousand small cuts and all that. And hey if we consume less fuels in the process: we're spending less on imports, are less reliant on foreign countries and/or our own stores are going to last longer for future generations.
"No-win-no-fee" also makes it a low-cost effort to those who could otherwise not afford to defend their good name. The legal aid boards pay lawyers and solicitors to defend poor people in criminal cases, no-win-no-fee is the mechanism for poor people in civil cases.
No-win-no-fee has a much more substantial benefit to the poor than the rich and powerful, who a) can afford the costs anyway and b) are much more likely to be in a position to want to suppress unwanted speech.
The real problem with no-win-no-fee is the level of fee if they win. Since the fee is unreasonable, lawyers will "fish". This also means defendants are more likely to roll over because the hit from losing is too big a risk. People are actually inflating their costs as a means to increase damages and to bully defendants by making their risk of failure intolerable.
A note for American readers: the article may claim that "UK jurisdiction awards the highest damages in Europe", a phrase that clearly implies to everyone that damages are very high here. But it is a common tactic in the UK to pick and choose comparisons with the EU or US, whichever suits, and if anyone leaves one out I would always have to question if that was to avoid, ahem, "confusing the message".
The post reminds me of the parable of the broken window. $20 of wealth is not created. If one book is created and sold for $10 then $10 value is created. The various items purchased along the way merely effects distribution of that $10 value, in the form of currency. To put it another way, you add the value of the book to the $10 currency spent, but forget to subtract that $10 currency which already existed.
It's an easy mistake, evidenced by the need for the parable. But I'll labour the point since it's something of a bugbear of mine, especially since politicians and the media seem to follow the same error.
True, $20 of movement is recorded in the economy, but it's merely a case of cash flowing from one pocket into another. Consider what happens if you paid the $8 to one guy who not only prints, but produces the paper and ink too. Or, how about just passing money to and fro between two companies? Similarly, if once the book is bought the buyer decides the book is only worth $5, the increase in wealth is $5! The other $5 is merely an exchange of wealth from one person to another.
It also shouldn't change GDP, which is "It is the total value of all final goods and services produced in a particular economy". It probably would, but that's a problem of measuring GDP.
and c) everybody who imports your goods and services retaliates with tariffs.
I recall when Bush applied import tariffs to steel in 2002. The EU responded with tariffs designed to be equal in value, but applied them to a selection of goods very carefully picked to do him as much political damage as possible.
Churches get non-profit because they aren't making "profit". Any surplus income over costs *must* be put to the non-profit purposes eventually. As a matter of principle I don't see why newspapers (or any social-benefit organisation) can't do the same thing.
Of course, by definition part of being non-profit is there are no profits to distribute to investors (not that there are any investors either). The option to become non-profit therefore has no benefit to existing for-profit newspapers. Companies operate to "maximise shareholder wealth", converting to non-profit can never assist this - the closest you get is being neutral where the alternative is to liquidate and the company is bankrupt. However at that point becoming non-profit isn't an option either.
That said, people have funny ideas which lead to exceptions. There may well be a wealthy individuals willing to stump up a big donation to turn a bankrupt newspaper company into a solvent non-profit. You also start to get other options like government subsidies, or profitable companies in related industries having to provide some funding (same scenario as public broadcasting). Local papers may be far more willing to pool resources. Newswire services may be able to justify reduced fees to non-profits, and other folks might consider contributions a pro bono thing.
There are various issues to be addressed of course, but there's nothing new there. Any non-profit must follow certain regulations and satisfy certain criteria.
GameSpot have a video of the presentation that the link in the OP is summarising (53mins).
Personally I can't fathom how they can get good quality 720p down a connection 1/3 (5Mbps) of what would be needed for MPEG2 (15Mbps). Nor how they can have low enough latency to process the controls on the server - they mention specially designed servers but they surely can't do so much better with the intertubes than gaming server hosts do already, then there's the fluctuations... I suppose we'll find out when people get onto the beta in summer.
I was under the impression that Great Britain does not censor the internet. ISPs operating within it can, and several do, choose to sign up to a voluntary scheme (which includes ISPs on the board).
Regardless, to my (limited) knowledge filtering is done by blocking certain addresses to the consumer, nothing that would hit through-traffic.
As for snooping, wherever your traffic is passing through, either you have good encryption or someone can look in. Perhaps with varying degrees of (il)legality, as if that matters much.
The thing that confuses me is directors get golden parachutes even when they're kicked out by the shareholders. The rationale is they have a contract for services and there is a contractual obligation to buy them out of it.
Myself and my employer also have a contract for service which gives each other rights and obligations. If I was let go, I would have a month notice.
The problem is the information and power gap between directors and shareholders. Shareholders approve directors and their remuneration but it's a token vote really, it has to be not only absurd but unusually absurd for shareholders to actually vote down a remuneration package. Even if you have your company who is good at this, with strong non-executive directors and so on, they fall into the trap because if you want to attract a good director you have to pay the same or better than all the companies where the shareholders are suckers.
This leaves you with a situation that new directors can negotiate remuneration before their performance can be evaluated, before the shareholders have much reason to be paying attention. Thus they simply lock themselves into a cant-lose package before anyone starts to care. It even becomes a perverse incentive to the shareholders, who become even more reluctant to dismiss a director because it costs so much money to buy them out.
Here in the UK we've had various reports on the situation over the years but IMHO one thing which would make a massive difference is to legally mandate that if shareholders vote out a director the dismissal overrides any contract leaving the director due an average 1 month's salary plus any accrued bonuses.
John Maynard Keynes was a British economist in the early 1900's. He wrote a book called "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" which basically outlined various interventionist policies that the government could employ and what short-term effects they would have on the economy. It was very highly refuted but it gave the government a bunch of easy answers and policies that would ultimately expand government control, yet would be easy to sell to the public. Keynes' work is highly taught by government-subsidized Universities all over the world. Almost anyone taking economics at a University level will be taught "Keynesian Economics".
Unfortunately like so much in academia the true position is inconvenient and far less clear cut than the above implies. Neither Keynesian nor Monetarist theory is proven, both have some support and both have been refuted. Neither is a 'law'. Neither works. Or rather: both work, but to a lesser degree than they advertise and in more limited circumstances. Generally the Western approach is to adopt a relatively Monetarist policy during the good times (largely to control growth and inflation) and leap towards Keynesian during the bad (to counter deflation and inject a short term boost).
Right now, here in the UK the interest rate has been slashed (Monetarist policy) and they're throwing insane money about (Keynesian). Banks still aren't lending, not that it matters much since companies don't want to borrow to invest anyway - guess the Keynesian criticism of monetarist policy was right. But all that spending and we're still in the shit, guess Monetarist criticism of Keynesian policy is also right.
But hang on, what would the position have been without either intervention? It's impossible to say how effective the policies have been because firstly there's no control group and secondly because there's no controls over the experiment anyway - the market already had an expectation of a level of monetarist and Keynesian intervention and the market reflects those expectations even before any announcement is made. You get boosts and falls after announcements only to reflect the difference between the actual and the expectation.
It's worth noting that while criticism of the positive effects of either theory have stood up somewhat, the criticisms of the negatives haven't. Monetarists freaked out at the scale of the interventionist spending, fearing high inflation which would result in a much longer, deeper recession. Not only has that not come to pass, but the fear is now of deflation.
Churchill said if you put two economists in a room they will give you two opinions. What he could have said is you only need one unbiased economist to give you the same two opinions.
The number of sites loading fastest isn't a very good measure, I daresay nobody cares about the number of tiny wins but would be more interested in the overall picture. However totalling up the loading times shows a broadly similar picture anyway:
(Obviously GIGO applies heavily, and various comments show various criticisms, but putting that aside...)
Chrome 1.0: 88.32
FF 3.05: 95.62
IE8: 88.3
Again IE8 comes out in front, albeit to an even tighter margin to Chrome, and FF is shown doing poorly.
Also of interest, especially for constructive use, is how much faster the browsers are in relation to each other for specific pages. There's better statistical analysis but a simple [result-average]/average shows:
Given how many wars were fought in Europe in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, and how many in the second half of the 20th, something must have happened.
If it wasn't US troops, what was it? Why were the horrors of WWII enough to convince Europeans not to fight each other, when the horrors of WWI weren't?
UN. NATO. EC/EU. The atomic bomb. The iron curtain. Long range missiles. Colour television. Materialism. Free trade.
Seems Hitler's ideas won after all. Lets step back a moment and analyze him:
[...]
3) He believed in Rule of law (the Reich laws of racism were based on US laws). So does UK and USA.
4) He refused to prosecute the Reich Police and Armed Forces who violated the law. Tasering police and fasle-evidence-planting police and murdering soldiers go scot-free in UK and USA.
These points in operation are mutually exclusive. The rule of law is that no-one is above the law. Having any exception is by definition incompatible. The rule of law is a matter of fact, he can say he believed in the rule of law but his actions clearly show he did not (which is, perhaps, the point you should be making but fall somewhat short of).
Really people, stop bitching, and start encrypting everything, using bank accounts in countries like Switzerland, and doing everything possible to minimize the data collected on you. Of course, you'll be labeled a terrorist for going "off grid", but if you want privacy anymore these days, you need to control your exposure. You. Personally.
Terrorism was last year, now it's tax evasion. Bank's failure to comply (specifically, the Swiss) means a blacklisting.
someone from the company most likely downloaded a file-sharing program, typically used to exchange music, without realizing the potential problems. 'I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job,
I'm sure he is embarrassed and his job is in question. However that's not what will be freaking out the bosses. This is a systems failure, they should have had prevention and detection controls in place.
This is confidential data. Commercially sensitive data. Military data. There's a duty of care, contractual and legal obligations that lie not on the employee but the company and it's directors for failing to adequately protect it. Even if there's no legal action the company's customers and supplies will have to think twice about dealing with them.
Ha! Just kidding. The employee will get fired, maybe the IT manager too, and those tasked with the duty of care (directors) will carry on unscathed, and the customers and suppliers won't take the slightest bit of notice since hey it's got nothing to do with them.
From a business perspective, an ebook with DRM shares nearly all the main characteristics of a physical book. The risks and your control stays the same, excepting that you lose the risk of over/under printing. Physical books are pretty safe, you can make good judgements of risk, have quote a lot of controls over the risks and balance out what remains: for every fail there's a win. The real work a publisher does is all about managing the fails and wins: slightly more, slightly bigger wins against slighly fewer, slightly smaller fails.
Without DRM, you lose that control. It's a completely new ball game. Suddenly it's all too plausable that the latest Harry Potter turns up a week early on a torrent and utterly decimates sales of your big title. You just lost the balancing item against the risks you took on all your other products: unless twice as many other books succeed as marketing estimated, the company is dead. Just like that.
The book industry is in a different set of circumstances to the music industry. They had no choice whatsoever since the market already beat them to mp3 and the industry had to respond. Their epic fail was to take so long - their worst-case scenario was already happening. In the book industry, electronic formats are still optional because the mp3 of books are simply not there. They still have good influence on the market. They are only fighting competitors, not the market itself. Second hand books are merely comparable to second hand CDs i.e. already factored into the present situation.
Thus for them, DRM ebooks retain the status quo other than to open up a new market and potentially reduce the second-hand market. Result = same + win + win%. DRM-free ebooks offer some benefits to their customers, may further widen the new market but entail a very real risk of arriving at the music industry situation: total loss of control. Result = win + win% + epicfail%.
But there's one caveat. The book industry has the benefit of hindsight from the music, game and to a lesser extent the movie industry. Many people have ideas about fairness and will still pay for things they can illegally get for free. Related to this is iTunes, steam and to a lesser extent, netflix. The service has to compare with the illegal version.
If I was a book publisher, to be honest DRM seems like a very obvious choice unless competing firms do otherwise, there's almost nothing to balance up the extreme risk. If I was publishing music, I have no control anyway: DRM is like locking the front door but leaving the back open, plus my primary competitor is piracy and I have to at least match their level of service and quality.
The important thing here is "to be made available to them upon request".
Recommending the pub install CCTV is sensible advice from the police. Many pubs here use CCTV for their own (valid) reasons, including protecting staff. To some extent literally, as a deterrent, but also to be able to prove what happened in the event of legal dispute - who punched first, the customer or the doorman?
However doing this via the licensing application is not a method of giving advice. It is where formal requirements go. Licensing boards are extremely powerful, it is extremely difficult to fight them, and for a sole proprietor rejection can lead to bankruptcy.
But still, requiring the premises to use CCTV isn't that terrible. It is reasonable to require a security policy and while the policy should be considered as a whole, if you're going to take shortcuts, CCTV is a very common component of a security policy.
But what is disturbing is adding the requirement that the CCTV be made available to the police on request, effectively creating a contractual obligation that bypasses the legal protections such as requiring a warrant. It would be interesting to consider what the situation is regarding this kind of information: is the need for a warrant a restriction placed on police (i.e. they can ONLY demand it with a warrant, hence trying to contract the obligation on the landlord is an illegal term and hence void) or is the warrant worded as a police power (in which case any contractual obligation would be valid and binding).
The situation is entirely different depending on whether the police are able to demand the information, or whether they require the approval of another person of trust to that information (i.e. the landlord or judge).
The Information Commissioner makes some good comments in the article however I think he should spend more of his time emphasising that anyone collecting information is a custodian of that information and hence responsible for it. If some company loses my credit card details, why are they not sued for negligence when my card is abused? Why should the store suffer when they were presented with perfectly valid information by a criminal, so had no reason to suspect foul play?
Consider the "branding" issue: fundamentally what does "open source" tell you about the software? As someone unfamiliar with coding and all these licences, I have no idea what "open source" is supposed to mean beyond the source code being viewable for inspection. I would ask forgiveness for my ignorance, but with 73 incompatible licences I can't imagine it can mean much more than that.
I think that while people are (and should be) free to use whatever licence they wish, there should really only be a few which are encouraged, endorsed and in widespread use. Otherwise it does not carry the advantages from being a standard.
Many responses here seem extremely excessive, especially on a site that is usually quick to criticise going heavy-handed with lawyers. Why go with the weapon of last resort and eliminate all the other options provided for the purpose?
Try being reasonable and diplomatic. That won't limit the heavier options later on and can actually benefit them - here in the UK you are generally expected to extinguish reasonable options before going to court (either way it'll certainly look better).
Try simply explaining that you require the notes to maintain the knowledge for use in later life and have no intention of handing it out to others. Carefully explain that the notes are your property, both physically (you bought the paper) and intellectually, making the position clear but leaving the teacher's own mind to envision the potential for legal action. You DID supply the paper, and there isn't any slide handouts in there, right?
If that still doesn't work, advise the teacher that she should not destroy the notes while you explore other options (being careful to be non-threatening). At this point there may be a more friendly teacher you could approach who may be able to mediate and tactfully resolve this without fuss. People change their minds more readily when it is a friend/colleague/peer presenting their perspective, and where there is minimal consequence from being wrong. Why be all confrontational? This goes both ways: it's an opportunity for YOU to discover you are wrong, in a manner with minimal consequences for you...
If that fails, keep elevating it one step at a time. That would probably involve a parent writing to the teacher, the headteacher and next attending a PTA/PTO meeting.
Still not resolved? No doubt there are still more options and then, ultimately, court and/or newspapers. The intermediate steps will only benefit these options, not reduce them.
Organisations and society in general provide numerous means, checks and balances to sustain your rights. It's such a pity when people ignore them and skip to the option of last resort - courts are supposed to be there only for when society and organisations fail to provide fairness and justice.
Can't these people consider proportionality and appropriateness? Is it really necessary to harm a teachers career and potentially the school for the sake of some notes, without even bothering to make some common sense attempts first?
Typically, a CEO has several subordinate executives, each of whom has specific functional responsibilities.
Common associates includes a chief financial officer (CFO), chief operating officer (COO), chief technical officer (CTO), chief marketing officer (CMO), chief information officer (CIO), chief creative officer (CCO), and a director, or Vice-President of human resources.
Engineers are still in the board room. There's also a bunch of other people in there. A company is an organisation, a "planned, coordinated and purposeful action of human beings to construct or compile a common tangible or intangible product" (Wiki).
All of these people have a huge amount of influence and work to do for the business to succeed. That's why they're all represented in the board room. Why do you assume that the act of coding a piece of software is superior to any of the other organisational activities?
Maybe you aren't in the board room because apparently you have no idea about anything involved in an organisation beyond coding software.
Oh and the suit is nothing more than professional and social etiquette. Don't assume they're earning more or have better prospects, most will never see the board room either.
Don't feel too bad. I am an accountant, not corporate though - I work in a practice that does the year end accounts and so on. Your assumptions are common: staff routinely believe that they earn less than the other guy (I do the payroll reconciliation, often the other guy earns less but simply has better taste in suits), and frequently have little understanding of the business beyond the immediate scope of their own job. I think it's in our nature to believe we are hard-done by, we always look up and complain about we haven't got but forget to look the other way and appreciate what we have. All the while in the fallacy of our own assumptions.
p.s. the VP makes 10x as much money because of his relative bargaining power:
- there's 100x as many competent software engineers available who might settle for the lower pay
- there's 100x more software engineers in the company, paying the VP 10x their salary costs the company the same as paying him nothing and giving the engineers a 10% raise.
- a VP who is better by a small margin has a bigger effect on the company's results than a software engineer who is better by the same margin.
- executives often set the pay and the shareholders merely approve it, he basically needs half of the people who turn up at the AGM to approve it while you probably need about 3 separate managers to each approve a raise.
The substantive impact on food supplies from biofuels comes from food production resources (most obviously land) switching to fuel production. This is irrespective of whether foodstuffs are what is being converted.
It's unlikely the problematic existing algae blooms will be used for fuel. More algae will be created for this use - it will be farmed. The objective is to produce biofuel cheaply, tax-free and without being imported... er, I mean in a way that minimises impact to food production, i.e. intensively and using land poorly suited to food production (likely in tall tanks to boot). TFA appears to assert that algae production is well suited to this, though it's unclear if there is any basis.
Incidentally perhaps, the phosphates causing algae blooms are more usually associated with farming fertilizer than domestic chemicals. Along with artificially produced chemicals, faecal matter is used as fertilizer. Including human slurry.
There seems to be an assumption that we can produce something from nothing. Generally available resources are pretty well utilised, the best you can do is be more efficient. Technological improvements have the potential to improve efficiency through, in this case, production of algae as an alternative to oil if it is more efficient than alternative uses for the resources consumed.
Secondly, efficiency can be achieved through better use of the resources - living closer to work with good public transport and smaller cars when necessary. Why many people seem determined to take a side is beyond me, one camp seems motivated to massage their conscience while continuing an absurdly unsustainable lifestyle, while the other seem oblivious to the needs of the real world. The answer is an efficient, practical balance of technology and better utilisation of resources.
However I don't think we'll see a good balance. Markets are the real decider - oil got expensive and the response was remarkable and vast compared to decades of environmental concern. Currently the only mechanism for factoring in societal costs is if the government introduces a clumsy tax. Research grants and subsidies seem helpful but this artificially picks winners and government is notoriously bad at it. It seems likely the best we can hope for is for oil to get expensive again and stay that way.
*(economics calls all natural resources "land", even the sea)
If this thing can reasonably run XP and Excel, it would be ideal for me when visiting clients for work. I use Open Office personally but it's not an option at work.
I generally use laptops but they tend to either have unproductive small screens or be heavy. Or are particularly expensive and fragile.
Clients can often make a PC available, but then you have, for example:
- software availability/version compatibility
- hassle with logins
- the client's data privacy (they may have confidential data)
- my data privacy (other client's files on that USB stick plugged into the client's networked PC)
- no email
- risk of forgetting to copy the updated file back over to your USB stick
Being able to carry around a ultra light PC which I can simply connect to a monitor and power outlet would be ideal. I'd prefer if it could run from a power cable with batteries removed. Even better if there's an encryption chip so all the data can be safe with minimal performance hit.
However they'd need good keys, and to dump the touchscreen in favour of a numpad. It'd need to be cheap enough and have sufficient encryption that nobody would care even if it was left on a train.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to recall a rather more blunt quote, but since I unfortunately cannot find it, the official ICO response to the proposals was:
Incidentally some may find the ICO's press release list (the source for the above quote) makes for some interesting reading. Surprised there is no follow-up to the debate though, I'd have thought he's try to get his oar in again.
Just kidding. They simply didn't bother with the debate: "Civil libertarians are outraged that the change came into force without a debate in parliament, having been brought in by statutory implement". (statutory instrument info).
So, it would appear that firstly they sneaked the EU directive in by calling it "commercial" legislation rather than a policing one. This forced themselves to implement it, but allows them to blame it on the EU, even though they were the ones pushing it through there. Back home, they proposed a Bill (which would result in an Act, a "proper" law by "proper" means IMHO), started the normal proposal procedure, but then didn't like what they were hearing so chucked it through as a statutory implement instead. Nice.
Oh and by the way, since people seem to be avoiding it, the names of the directives & law are, I think:
UK SI The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009
(Also see Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000)
EU Directive is EU Directive 2006/24/EC[PDF]
(doubtless there's a raft of other legislation of varying degrees of relevance)
Do not have a lawyer send the letters. It is considered unethical for a lawyer to send a letter to the another lawyer's cleint and it is really the client you want to get to. I have no idea where you're pulling that from, but it's gotta be a place where the sun ain't shining too often.
It's true, though it is as much professional courtesy as ethics.
But the result is a fluke, according to TFA:
What it does is demonstrate exactly why the public does not trust nuclear energy. Sure, they say the technology is so strong now that we are capable of building an incredibly safe nuclear plant. But people are always being told how safe it is before pretty much any man-made disaster. Here on /. we spend a lot of time talking about how we cannot trust the government nor big companies, and now complaining when they don't?
Whether the technology is all that safe is perhaps something of a moot point. Wherever there are humans involved, there is scope for human error. Again TFA makes this clear. There was nothing wrong with the available technology, the failures were all human.
Namely that in some cases people need treatment that is actually quite effective at both extending life and increasing the quality of it, but that treatment is incredibly expensive.
Of course, NICE has some good counter arguments. It's not a case of saving money, it's a case of someone else telling them that they have a finite amount of money to spend - if one treatment is approved, something else may have to go. A very good argument, but of no comfort at all to the one who's going to die earlier than necessary.
There are some seemingly bizarre situations, like in some cases people have offered to remortgage their homes thus the NHS only has to contribute a reasonable amount. This usually still doesn't fly, because NICE either approves or disapproves treatments. Again, those denied are pretty justified in being extremely upset that for all the taxes they've paid , they don't get treatment because they were picked by the wrong disease.
Part of NICE's function is to reduce how much they get ripped off by the pharmaceutical companies. Just like in any business, someone has to control the costs. Unfortunately, here it involves lives. To be honest, sometimes an ill person has a suspiciously expensive-looking and well-coordinated campaign to get a drug approved.
Frankly NICE has an awful job. Their best hope is to minimise misery, and they have the inherent problem that people will hate them when they say no, but don't even notice when they say yes.
Ultimately the problem is people deserve the treatment but healthy people are only willing to pay so much in taxes.
Not quite so fickle.
Note that turbines don't actually require a high wind, IIRC somewhere around 15m/s is optimal. High wind is actually a problem that they need to fit breaks for. Plus there's the tower height: 15m/s at 70-100m is much slower here on the ground. IIRC, the wind is also more reliable offshore. Production capacity for turbines is much more likely to be a problem.
But still, yes there is an element of fickleness. Well firstly, we already gather a lot of weather data so you can diversify away a substantial element of that even while just looking at wind. Bear in mind thatas we stand nuclear/coal/gas plants can have issues that stop them generating power; that's a much more centralised system with fewer players with which to diversify - we already need the excess capacity.
Secondly, wind power isn't going to be the sole source of power. As with much in life, the best approach is a balanced one. Wind where it works best, something else where it doesn't.
We don't need to cut C02 emissions entirely. The planet deals with quite a lot of it just fine, we "only" need to cut out the amount we're producing on top of that. Cut x% off generation, cut x% via efficiency of electrical goods, cut x% by more efficient vehicles, sink x% here and there... A thousand small cuts and all that. And hey if we consume less fuels in the process: we're spending less on imports, are less reliant on foreign countries and/or our own stores are going to last longer for future generations.
"No-win-no-fee" also makes it a low-cost effort to those who could otherwise not afford to defend their good name. The legal aid boards pay lawyers and solicitors to defend poor people in criminal cases, no-win-no-fee is the mechanism for poor people in civil cases.
No-win-no-fee has a much more substantial benefit to the poor than the rich and powerful, who a) can afford the costs anyway and b) are much more likely to be in a position to want to suppress unwanted speech.
The real problem with no-win-no-fee is the level of fee if they win. Since the fee is unreasonable, lawyers will "fish". This also means defendants are more likely to roll over because the hit from losing is too big a risk. People are actually inflating their costs as a means to increase damages and to bully defendants by making their risk of failure intolerable.
A note for American readers: the article may claim that "UK jurisdiction awards the highest damages in Europe", a phrase that clearly implies to everyone that damages are very high here. But it is a common tactic in the UK to pick and choose comparisons with the EU or US, whichever suits, and if anyone leaves one out I would always have to question if that was to avoid, ahem, "confusing the message".
The post reminds me of the parable of the broken window. $20 of wealth is not created. If one book is created and sold for $10 then $10 value is created. The various items purchased along the way merely effects distribution of that $10 value, in the form of currency. To put it another way, you add the value of the book to the $10 currency spent, but forget to subtract that $10 currency which already existed.
It's an easy mistake, evidenced by the need for the parable. But I'll labour the point since it's something of a bugbear of mine, especially since politicians and the media seem to follow the same error.
True, $20 of movement is recorded in the economy, but it's merely a case of cash flowing from one pocket into another. Consider what happens if you paid the $8 to one guy who not only prints, but produces the paper and ink too. Or, how about just passing money to and fro between two companies? Similarly, if once the book is bought the buyer decides the book is only worth $5, the increase in wealth is $5! The other $5 is merely an exchange of wealth from one person to another.
It also shouldn't change GDP, which is "It is the total value of all final goods and services produced in a particular economy". It probably would, but that's a problem of measuring GDP.
and c) everybody who imports your goods and services retaliates with tariffs.
I recall when Bush applied import tariffs to steel in 2002. The EU responded with tariffs designed to be equal in value, but applied them to a selection of goods very carefully picked to do him as much political damage as possible.
Churches get non-profit because they aren't making "profit". Any surplus income over costs *must* be put to the non-profit purposes eventually. As a matter of principle I don't see why newspapers (or any social-benefit organisation) can't do the same thing.
Of course, by definition part of being non-profit is there are no profits to distribute to investors (not that there are any investors either). The option to become non-profit therefore has no benefit to existing for-profit newspapers. Companies operate to "maximise shareholder wealth", converting to non-profit can never assist this - the closest you get is being neutral where the alternative is to liquidate and the company is bankrupt. However at that point becoming non-profit isn't an option either.
That said, people have funny ideas which lead to exceptions. There may well be a wealthy individuals willing to stump up a big donation to turn a bankrupt newspaper company into a solvent non-profit. You also start to get other options like government subsidies, or profitable companies in related industries having to provide some funding (same scenario as public broadcasting). Local papers may be far more willing to pool resources. Newswire services may be able to justify reduced fees to non-profits, and other folks might consider contributions a pro bono thing.
There are various issues to be addressed of course, but there's nothing new there. Any non-profit must follow certain regulations and satisfy certain criteria.
GameSpot have a video of the presentation that the link in the OP is summarising (53mins).
Personally I can't fathom how they can get good quality 720p down a connection 1/3 (5Mbps) of what would be needed for MPEG2 (15Mbps). Nor how they can have low enough latency to process the controls on the server - they mention specially designed servers but they surely can't do so much better with the intertubes than gaming server hosts do already, then there's the fluctuations... I suppose we'll find out when people get onto the beta in summer.
I was under the impression that Great Britain does not censor the internet. ISPs operating within it can, and several do, choose to sign up to a voluntary scheme (which includes ISPs on the board).
Regardless, to my (limited) knowledge filtering is done by blocking certain addresses to the consumer, nothing that would hit through-traffic.
As for snooping, wherever your traffic is passing through, either you have good encryption or someone can look in. Perhaps with varying degrees of (il)legality, as if that matters much.
The thing that confuses me is directors get golden parachutes even when they're kicked out by the shareholders. The rationale is they have a contract for services and there is a contractual obligation to buy them out of it.
Myself and my employer also have a contract for service which gives each other rights and obligations. If I was let go, I would have a month notice.
The problem is the information and power gap between directors and shareholders. Shareholders approve directors and their remuneration but it's a token vote really, it has to be not only absurd but unusually absurd for shareholders to actually vote down a remuneration package. Even if you have your company who is good at this, with strong non-executive directors and so on, they fall into the trap because if you want to attract a good director you have to pay the same or better than all the companies where the shareholders are suckers.
This leaves you with a situation that new directors can negotiate remuneration before their performance can be evaluated, before the shareholders have much reason to be paying attention. Thus they simply lock themselves into a cant-lose package before anyone starts to care. It even becomes a perverse incentive to the shareholders, who become even more reluctant to dismiss a director because it costs so much money to buy them out.
Here in the UK we've had various reports on the situation over the years but IMHO one thing which would make a massive difference is to legally mandate that if shareholders vote out a director the dismissal overrides any contract leaving the director due an average 1 month's salary plus any accrued bonuses.
John Maynard Keynes was a British economist in the early 1900's. He wrote a book called "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" which basically outlined various interventionist policies that the government could employ and what short-term effects they would have on the economy. It was very highly refuted but it gave the government a bunch of easy answers and policies that would ultimately expand government control, yet would be easy to sell to the public. Keynes' work is highly taught by government-subsidized Universities all over the world. Almost anyone taking economics at a University level will be taught "Keynesian Economics".
Unfortunately like so much in academia the true position is inconvenient and far less clear cut than the above implies. Neither Keynesian nor Monetarist theory is proven, both have some support and both have been refuted. Neither is a 'law'. Neither works. Or rather: both work, but to a lesser degree than they advertise and in more limited circumstances. Generally the Western approach is to adopt a relatively Monetarist policy during the good times (largely to control growth and inflation) and leap towards Keynesian during the bad (to counter deflation and inject a short term boost).
Right now, here in the UK the interest rate has been slashed (Monetarist policy) and they're throwing insane money about (Keynesian). Banks still aren't lending, not that it matters much since companies don't want to borrow to invest anyway - guess the Keynesian criticism of monetarist policy was right. But all that spending and we're still in the shit, guess Monetarist criticism of Keynesian policy is also right.
But hang on, what would the position have been without either intervention? It's impossible to say how effective the policies have been because firstly there's no control group and secondly because there's no controls over the experiment anyway - the market already had an expectation of a level of monetarist and Keynesian intervention and the market reflects those expectations even before any announcement is made. You get boosts and falls after announcements only to reflect the difference between the actual and the expectation.
It's worth noting that while criticism of the positive effects of either theory have stood up somewhat, the criticisms of the negatives haven't. Monetarists freaked out at the scale of the interventionist spending, fearing high inflation which would result in a much longer, deeper recession. Not only has that not come to pass, but the fear is now of deflation.
Churchill said if you put two economists in a room they will give you two opinions. What he could have said is you only need one unbiased economist to give you the same two opinions.
The number of sites loading fastest isn't a very good measure, I daresay nobody cares about the number of tiny wins but would be more interested in the overall picture. However totalling up the loading times shows a broadly similar picture anyway:
(Obviously GIGO applies heavily, and various comments show various criticisms, but putting that aside...)
Chrome 1.0: 88.32
FF 3.05: 95.62
IE8: 88.3
Again IE8 comes out in front, albeit to an even tighter margin to Chrome, and FF is shown doing poorly.
Also of interest, especially for constructive use, is how much faster the browsers are in relation to each other for specific pages. There's better statistical analysis but a simple [result-average]/average shows:
(/. doesn't seem to like tables html formatting)
Web Site Chrome 1.0 / Firefox 3.05 / Internet Explorer 8
google.com 20.00% / -5.71% / -14.29%
yahoo.com 35.22% / -18.24% / -16.98%
live.com 1.36% / -0.39% / -0.97%
msn.com -29.79% / 23.83% / 5.96%
youtube.com 9.38% / -0.24% / -9.14%
microsoft.com 3.98% / -5.79% / 1.81%
wikipedia.org -17.75% / -8.99% / 26.74%
blogger.com -4.02% / 33.54% / -29.52%
facebook.com 2.91% / 0.97% / -3.88%
qq.com -7.13% / 7.31% / -0.18%
baidu.com -3.89% / 0.92% / 2.97%
myspace.com -43.65% / 46.30% / -2.65%
wordpress.com -28.39% / 19.10% / 9.30%
ebay.com 2.27% / 11.59% / -13.85%
sina.com.cn -17.30% / -3.87% / 21.18%
mozilla.com -5.88% / 12.50% / -6.62%
adobe.com 2.81% / 1.41% / -4.22%
aol.com 14.54% / -2.53% / -12.01%
amazon.com -23.28% / 21.23% / 2.05%
apple.com 4.71% / 27.56% / -32.27%
soso.com 22.49% / -0.50% / -21.98%
xunlei.com -5.39% / 9.68% / -4.29%
163.com -0.07% / -0.87% / 0.94%
google.cn 26.22% / -22.26% / -3.96%
ask.com 14.81% / -6.35% / -8.47%
UN. NATO. EC/EU. The atomic bomb. The iron curtain. Long range missiles. Colour television. Materialism. Free trade.
(In reverse order.)
These points in operation are mutually exclusive. The rule of law is that no-one is above the law. Having any exception is by definition incompatible. The rule of law is a matter of fact, he can say he believed in the rule of law but his actions clearly show he did not (which is, perhaps, the point you should be making but fall somewhat short of).
Terrorism was last year, now it's tax evasion. Bank's failure to comply (specifically, the Swiss) means a blacklisting.
I'm sure he is embarrassed and his job is in question. However that's not what will be freaking out the bosses. This is a systems failure, they should have had prevention and detection controls in place.
This is confidential data. Commercially sensitive data. Military data. There's a duty of care, contractual and legal obligations that lie not on the employee but the company and it's directors for failing to adequately protect it. Even if there's no legal action the company's customers and supplies will have to think twice about dealing with them.
Ha! Just kidding. The employee will get fired, maybe the IT manager too, and those tasked with the duty of care (directors) will carry on unscathed, and the customers and suppliers won't take the slightest bit of notice since hey it's got nothing to do with them.
From a business perspective, an ebook with DRM shares nearly all the main characteristics of a physical book. The risks and your control stays the same, excepting that you lose the risk of over/under printing. Physical books are pretty safe, you can make good judgements of risk, have quote a lot of controls over the risks and balance out what remains: for every fail there's a win. The real work a publisher does is all about managing the fails and wins: slightly more, slightly bigger wins against slighly fewer, slightly smaller fails.
Without DRM, you lose that control. It's a completely new ball game. Suddenly it's all too plausable that the latest Harry Potter turns up a week early on a torrent and utterly decimates sales of your big title. You just lost the balancing item against the risks you took on all your other products: unless twice as many other books succeed as marketing estimated, the company is dead. Just like that.
The book industry is in a different set of circumstances to the music industry. They had no choice whatsoever since the market already beat them to mp3 and the industry had to respond. Their epic fail was to take so long - their worst-case scenario was already happening. In the book industry, electronic formats are still optional because the mp3 of books are simply not there. They still have good influence on the market. They are only fighting competitors, not the market itself. Second hand books are merely comparable to second hand CDs i.e. already factored into the present situation.
Thus for them, DRM ebooks retain the status quo other than to open up a new market and potentially reduce the second-hand market. Result = same + win + win%. DRM-free ebooks offer some benefits to their customers, may further widen the new market but entail a very real risk of arriving at the music industry situation: total loss of control. Result = win + win% + epicfail%.
But there's one caveat. The book industry has the benefit of hindsight from the music, game and to a lesser extent the movie industry. Many people have ideas about fairness and will still pay for things they can illegally get for free. Related to this is iTunes, steam and to a lesser extent, netflix. The service has to compare with the illegal version.
If I was a book publisher, to be honest DRM seems like a very obvious choice unless competing firms do otherwise, there's almost nothing to balance up the extreme risk. If I was publishing music, I have no control anyway: DRM is like locking the front door but leaving the back open, plus my primary competitor is piracy and I have to at least match their level of service and quality.
The important thing here is "to be made available to them upon request".
Recommending the pub install CCTV is sensible advice from the police. Many pubs here use CCTV for their own (valid) reasons, including protecting staff. To some extent literally, as a deterrent, but also to be able to prove what happened in the event of legal dispute - who punched first, the customer or the doorman?
However doing this via the licensing application is not a method of giving advice. It is where formal requirements go. Licensing boards are extremely powerful, it is extremely difficult to fight them, and for a sole proprietor rejection can lead to bankruptcy.
But still, requiring the premises to use CCTV isn't that terrible. It is reasonable to require a security policy and while the policy should be considered as a whole, if you're going to take shortcuts, CCTV is a very common component of a security policy.
But what is disturbing is adding the requirement that the CCTV be made available to the police on request, effectively creating a contractual obligation that bypasses the legal protections such as requiring a warrant. It would be interesting to consider what the situation is regarding this kind of information: is the need for a warrant a restriction placed on police (i.e. they can ONLY demand it with a warrant, hence trying to contract the obligation on the landlord is an illegal term and hence void) or is the warrant worded as a police power (in which case any contractual obligation would be valid and binding).
The situation is entirely different depending on whether the police are able to demand the information, or whether they require the approval of another person of trust to that information (i.e. the landlord or judge).
The Information Commissioner makes some good comments in the article however I think he should spend more of his time emphasising that anyone collecting information is a custodian of that information and hence responsible for it. If some company loses my credit card details, why are they not sued for negligence when my card is abused? Why should the store suffer when they were presented with perfectly valid information by a criminal, so had no reason to suspect foul play?
Consider the "branding" issue: fundamentally what does "open source" tell you about the software? As someone unfamiliar with coding and all these licences, I have no idea what "open source" is supposed to mean beyond the source code being viewable for inspection. I would ask forgiveness for my ignorance, but with 73 incompatible licences I can't imagine it can mean much more than that.
I think that while people are (and should be) free to use whatever licence they wish, there should really only be a few which are encouraged, endorsed and in widespread use. Otherwise it does not carry the advantages from being a standard.
Many responses here seem extremely excessive, especially on a site that is usually quick to criticise going heavy-handed with lawyers. Why go with the weapon of last resort and eliminate all the other options provided for the purpose?
Try being reasonable and diplomatic. That won't limit the heavier options later on and can actually benefit them - here in the UK you are generally expected to extinguish reasonable options before going to court (either way it'll certainly look better).
Try simply explaining that you require the notes to maintain the knowledge for use in later life and have no intention of handing it out to others. Carefully explain that the notes are your property, both physically (you bought the paper) and intellectually, making the position clear but leaving the teacher's own mind to envision the potential for legal action. You DID supply the paper, and there isn't any slide handouts in there, right?
If that still doesn't work, advise the teacher that she should not destroy the notes while you explore other options (being careful to be non-threatening). At this point there may be a more friendly teacher you could approach who may be able to mediate and tactfully resolve this without fuss. People change their minds more readily when it is a friend/colleague/peer presenting their perspective, and where there is minimal consequence from being wrong. Why be all confrontational? This goes both ways: it's an opportunity for YOU to discover you are wrong, in a manner with minimal consequences for you...
If that fails, keep elevating it one step at a time. That would probably involve a parent writing to the teacher, the headteacher and next attending a PTA/PTO meeting.
Still not resolved? No doubt there are still more options and then, ultimately, court and/or newspapers. The intermediate steps will only benefit these options, not reduce them.
Organisations and society in general provide numerous means, checks and balances to sustain your rights. It's such a pity when people ignore them and skip to the option of last resort - courts are supposed to be there only for when society and organisations fail to provide fairness and justice.
Can't these people consider proportionality and appropriateness? Is it really necessary to harm a teachers career and potentially the school for the sake of some notes, without even bothering to make some common sense attempts first?
From Wikipedia:
Engineers are still in the board room. There's also a bunch of other people in there. A company is an organisation, a "planned, coordinated and purposeful action of human beings to construct or compile a common tangible or intangible product" (Wiki).
All of these people have a huge amount of influence and work to do for the business to succeed. That's why they're all represented in the board room. Why do you assume that the act of coding a piece of software is superior to any of the other organisational activities?
Maybe you aren't in the board room because apparently you have no idea about anything involved in an organisation beyond coding software.
Oh and the suit is nothing more than professional and social etiquette. Don't assume they're earning more or have better prospects, most will never see the board room either.
Don't feel too bad. I am an accountant, not corporate though - I work in a practice that does the year end accounts and so on. Your assumptions are common: staff routinely believe that they earn less than the other guy (I do the payroll reconciliation, often the other guy earns less but simply has better taste in suits), and frequently have little understanding of the business beyond the immediate scope of their own job. I think it's in our nature to believe we are hard-done by, we always look up and complain about we haven't got but forget to look the other way and appreciate what we have. All the while in the fallacy of our own assumptions.
p.s. the VP makes 10x as much money because of his relative bargaining power:
- there's 100x as many competent software engineers available who might settle for the lower pay
- there's 100x more software engineers in the company, paying the VP 10x their salary costs the company the same as paying him nothing and giving the engineers a 10% raise.
- a VP who is better by a small margin has a bigger effect on the company's results than a software engineer who is better by the same margin.
- executives often set the pay and the shareholders merely approve it, he basically needs half of the people who turn up at the AGM to approve it while you probably need about 3 separate managers to each approve a raise.
The substantive impact on food supplies from biofuels comes from food production resources (most obviously land) switching to fuel production. This is irrespective of whether foodstuffs are what is being converted.
It's unlikely the problematic existing algae blooms will be used for fuel. More algae will be created for this use - it will be farmed. The objective is to produce biofuel cheaply, tax-free and without being imported... er, I mean in a way that minimises impact to food production, i.e. intensively and using land poorly suited to food production (likely in tall tanks to boot). TFA appears to assert that algae production is well suited to this, though it's unclear if there is any basis.
Incidentally perhaps, the phosphates causing algae blooms are more usually associated with farming fertilizer than domestic chemicals. Along with artificially produced chemicals, faecal matter is used as fertilizer. Including human slurry.
There seems to be an assumption that we can produce something from nothing. Generally available resources are pretty well utilised, the best you can do is be more efficient. Technological improvements have the potential to improve efficiency through, in this case, production of algae as an alternative to oil if it is more efficient than alternative uses for the resources consumed.
Secondly, efficiency can be achieved through better use of the resources - living closer to work with good public transport and smaller cars when necessary. Why many people seem determined to take a side is beyond me, one camp seems motivated to massage their conscience while continuing an absurdly unsustainable lifestyle, while the other seem oblivious to the needs of the real world. The answer is an efficient, practical balance of technology and better utilisation of resources.
However I don't think we'll see a good balance. Markets are the real decider - oil got expensive and the response was remarkable and vast compared to decades of environmental concern. Currently the only mechanism for factoring in societal costs is if the government introduces a clumsy tax. Research grants and subsidies seem helpful but this artificially picks winners and government is notoriously bad at it. It seems likely the best we can hope for is for oil to get expensive again and stay that way.
*(economics calls all natural resources "land", even the sea)
If this thing can reasonably run XP and Excel, it would be ideal for me when visiting clients for work. I use Open Office personally but it's not an option at work.
I generally use laptops but they tend to either have unproductive small screens or be heavy. Or are particularly expensive and fragile.
Clients can often make a PC available, but then you have, for example:
- software availability/version compatibility
- hassle with logins
- the client's data privacy (they may have confidential data)
- my data privacy (other client's files on that USB stick plugged into the client's networked PC)
- no email
- risk of forgetting to copy the updated file back over to your USB stick
Being able to carry around a ultra light PC which I can simply connect to a monitor and power outlet would be ideal. I'd prefer if it could run from a power cable with batteries removed. Even better if there's an encryption chip so all the data can be safe with minimal performance hit.
However they'd need good keys, and to dump the touchscreen in favour of a numpad. It'd need to be cheap enough and have sufficient encryption that nobody would care even if it was left on a train.