Ireland is about the same distance north as the south of Hudson Bay. Due to the Atlantic currents and coastal climate, it's fairly mild here all year round. Our midlands and indeed hillsides/mountainsides are mostly bog, and not particularly useful for anything (sheep or forestry have only made things worse on the hillsides). It does keep people warm mind you - one of the common heating fuels here is peat briquette - a processed form of peat (less smokey and hotter than turf but similarly slow-burning with lots of ash). We even manage to run some of the most inefficient power stations ever on vast amounts of mechanically harvested turf (needless to say the resulting countryside isn't much use after either - although it can be made quite nice and nature-friendly - just not particularly useful for humans). Also "peat production" provides compost material for gardening too - but despite the large amounts of peat "harvested" each year, and even some amount of exports, it's not exactly a massive moneyspinner.
I suspect thawed out Canadian wilderness would simply be like the Midlands of Ireland - fairly desolate despite the milder temperature.
Not impossible - in fact maybe it'll be more like 1000s. Nanotechnology used to provide a "microblade" surface on the razor's business end. It won't do anything either until you grip the handle, a small electrical charge then being emitted to switch the surface "on".
These will cost €50 for 5 disposable heads - but the high price won't discourage adoption as Tesco will simply discontinue all the cheaper options that make them less profit.
Ireland - GP visit: 60, prescription drugs - cutoff is 130 per month, per household, Accident and Emergency visit - 90 unless referred by a GP, public hospital outpatient visits - 90 charge. Waiting lists for public outpatient procedures can be the better part of a year (private patients are treated in public hospitals and get priority).
Some of us haven't experienced enough EU influence.
People earning 30,000 or even more might be paying no income tax, and yet are "poor" due to having to pay through the nose directly for everything.
There is a difference - the BBC has added vast amounts to British culture that would not have been added by purely private operations. RTÉ does not have such a legacy despite being of a similar vintage.
On the other hand, people in Ireland mostly get all the benefits of the BBC for free - that is surely consolation for having to part-fund RTÉ (unlike the BBC, RTÉ *also* rely significantly on commercial advertising and such - TV viewing is as interrupted as most commercial TV stations).
Of course, without RTÉ, we would have even poorer news and current affairs - for all the miserable quality of RTÉ's offerings, it looks like the BBC in comparison to the commercial offerings of TV3 and Sky News.
Sick kids going to work with their parents? What on earth? If that is common in your area, it's fairly awful! Sick kids here in Ireland mostly rightly get to stay at home, either with a parent already at home (raising a family, running a household) or with a parent who simply takes time off work (certain occupations would be tricky for that, but it would seldom be both parents with such a job). Sometimes the employer might insist on annual leave being used (there is a statutory minimum of 21 days in addition to the public holidays).
If the parents can't even get time off from work to mind a sick child, one has to wonder if they really should have undertaken to raise children with both parents working. It also raises questions about there being sufficient regulation to ensure worker's rights.
NoScript is the more valuable of the addons to me. I'm not trying to block ads per-se, but rather the scripts (often used for ads) that slow down page loads, have to wait for third party servers, load up obnoxious and/or malicious content, etc. And because scripts are sometimes necessary, it's useful being able to whitelist familiar domains.
I've never been enthusiastic about how Firefox handles the whole "extension" issue, and I'm not too trusting of NoScripts update methods or a fan of the frequent updating. But using it is preferable to not, and Adblock is not what I actually require (plus it is blacklist rather than whitelist).
Nevermind rearrange their store, they keep changing their mind as to what products you are allowed to buy (i.e. which ones are even available in their stores), based on what makes them more money or which suppliers have been good boys this week. Tesco I'm looking at you.
Have the probabilities been weighed up of locked cockpit doors theoretically hindering help in an emergency, versus theoretically hindering attacks? Has anyone done any study or reasoning on this at all?
Maybe it's for the best, but I do not feel reassured that it has been a calmly considered rational decision.
As for the change in passenger behaviour - the changes in people's behaviour are exactly what extremists want. It is *not* a positive development even if people's paranoia means they will theoretically be more likely to catch a potential threat. Possibly new rules of engagement for what to do in a dangerous situation are an improvement, but even now these have not been coherently communicated to passengers and crew, definitively tied down or carefully planned (not that you can plan for all eventualities).
Well, one point is that you can still bring small volumes of liquid on board an aircraft, albeit in 100 ml containers in a plastic bag. And indeed larger containers of liquid are not always detected going through X-ray if left in hand luggage. There is no repercussion whatsoever if you are caught trying to bring a large container of liquid through (except that it's taken off you and disposed of haphazardly). How does this magically stop any theoretical liquid plot? Answer - it doesn't, anyone wishing to do one need merely keep trying till they "got lucky".
Hence, it is security theatre.
Even much more serious forbidden items are merely taken off you if detected (the important word being "if"). It would be far better to dispense with the theatre and operate under the assumption that yes someone could have dangerous objects on-board - taking relevant precautions of a sensible feasible level and having established procedures for implementing in emergency.
Security theatre merely helps with the "instilling terror" part of the extremists' plans and the disruption of everyday civilised life.
I'm in Ireland. Last time I heard about it in the news (possibly Euro changeover time), we used the most actual cash per head of population in the EU.
Probably explains why ATMs here in Ireland just dispense large value notes where possible - most European countries I've visited, the ATMs give you change - e.g. 10, 20, 20, 50 for 100 euro/pounds. Here in Ireland, you invariably get two 50s (I often try to "force" the ATMs to give change by asking for 80 or 130). Of course this is also possibly just the Irish banks being lazy cheapskates - maybe the cash-in-transit robberies wouldn't be so common if ATMs were restocked more frequently with lower denomination notes (many ATMs run out of cash by the end of the weekend - and a sports event can ensure people are pretty stuck very quickly!)
I'd be pretty ticked off in Finland about the 5c minimum price fractions. It's simply an incentive to currency devaluation - a very good thing much of the rest of the Eurozone isn't following suit. Can people really not cope with having loose change in their pocket and making up the price of things on the fly when they have change to spend? If nothing else it might help people with their addition/subtraction skills.
It's not like the US where you jump from 1c to 5c (resulting in lots of pennies in change). Having 2c coins means you mostly don't end up with too much complication adding up change and can avoid a surplus of coppers.
Cashless society gives control to others. OK cash is under the control of others, but not so much or in the same way.
People will not give up their cash without a fight, particularly in the current circumstances (not that anyone ever trusted banks, private companies or government).
I for one sincerely hope we never have a cashless society.
The most resilient consumer product I've owned has been Nokia mobile phones. I've had several different models, and invariably end up dropping them at various times (or even sending it flying across the room after fumbling to catch it). I've not had anything worse than scrapes so far from drops. Most common drop at one stage was failing miserably to slot it into a inside jacket pocket - cue drop from over 4 feet!
I recently broke my latest one though, a 6233, by having it in my hip pocket while accidentally trying to walk through a waist-height street bollard that I didn't notice. Unfortunately the top of it slammed right into my leg at the mobile phone - smashing the screen (but not the phone shell). Mind you, a simple €20 LCD replacement got the show on the road again - I've even got the same shell albeit with slight stress marks on the corner of the front of it.
My current Dell laptop has a stressed hinge joint from nothing more than 2 years of opening and closing. It's under 3 year on-site warranty so I must ring up about it.
Re:Neither "won"
on
Why TV Lost
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I agree somewhat with that view, but I think it's jumping too far ahead (and introducing uncertainty as to how things will evolve) to say we'll end up with a hybrid.
I think TVs (the device) will stay a TV (even with a tuner, albeit DTT). However, set-top boxes will become ubiquitous and rather than the current programmatic content, there will be the "appearance" of a pull system (you decide what you want to watch). The broadcast system will merely be used to stream new content to set-top boxes, where it will be stored encrypted on a hard drive, to be accessed through a digital TV-guide style menu. It will look like you are requesting content from the service provider, even though any content you can immediately watch will already be on your set-top box.
I think this is far more realistic than Internet streaming TV (note, it doesn't work, and ISPs will inevitably have to switch to a metered-data system with capped downloads - that or traffic-shaping/bandwidth-limiting to stay in business). Broadcast is a microscopic fraction of the cost of streaming (whether that cost is borne by the content provider - i.e. no net neutrality - the ISP or the end user - ultimately the end user pays somehow - broadcast is the only sensible model).
Torrents will not go away, but I think rather than catching "pirates" the crunch will come as ISPs start restricting their packages. Any ISP not doing this might get customers in the short term, but won't be able to finance the network needed to serve them. Traffic-shaping/bandwidth-limiting and using small print to limit "heavy users" is braindead in my opinion, but from an ISPs perspective it is fairly foolproof and successful to cap downloads on a rolling basis (i.e. not monthly which would result in peaks destroying the network each month start, but each user on their own 30 day rolling cap). No disconnect of people exceeding cap - just limit their bandwidth to e.g. 128kb (until last 30 days is below cap). You also offer deals for people to purchase extra cap allowance.
There will still be competition between ISPs in pricing with this system - theoretically under the capitalist model driving down prices - but it will have to be the pricing model in the future for any ISPs to stay in business (and indeed the longer we go on without this model, the fewer ISPs left in business - resulting in ISPs with a dominant market position).
Of course, there are other variables, such as supplies in urban areas that would be looted. Also barring some extreme act, we would be unlikely to have no governance (e.g. in the event of a catastrophic final economic collapse). Here in Ireland for example, it is likely that electricity could be provided for maybe an hour a day just using native resources and the handful of older hydro/peat power plants we have (of course, here the electricity company is semi-state owned/run, other places may not have that luxury). Many essential services have at least a couple of days grace period (battery/fuel back-up) that may allow further time for emergency measures to ensure native resources can be utilised to keep very basic services going. In a sense, I'd expect Ireland, at least outside Dublin, to be more back in say the 1930s (the era of rural electrification just beginning) than complete collapse of society.
Personally, our approach is to have stockpiles for a week or two of disruption - anything beyond that and we are all pretty stuck anyway! A couple cans of fuel and generator will keep the freezer going (10 mins per hour) and charge the UPS (for broadband/phone) and one laptop (for uncensored outside news). Our telecoms infrastructure has at least a week's back-up (state-run TV/radio plus land-lines, some mobile telecoms and wireless broadband) and a special crisis mode that TV services are switched to in the event of an emergency (tested just a couple weeks ago at 3am).
We probably have native food production to last for a short time (e.g. native power can probably ensure continuation of minimal milk production for example), long enough to switch farm production to essential supplies (probably not enough for anything beyond rudimentary survival for the first year). It would be worse than during WWII though ("The Emergency" as it was called here - the State did go into crisis control-mode, and took direct control of many sectors of society to see us all through it). Undoubtedly many people would be doing manual labour again - e.g. if we kept the peat power stations running and wanted winter fuel, hundreds if not thousands would be in the Midlands cutting turf manually rather than the machine harvesting that occurs at present. Native gas supplies would be used only for essential power/industry - our heating would be switched off (it would be bad - but tolerable for most in the Irish climate).
Particularly with the past threats of nuclear catastrophe, I would expect the US to have plans for a special emergency mode - I suppose with it being a bigger place, not everywhere will be attended to, but I doubt loss of control would be absolute or even the majority of regions.
Who says the way the process works is acceptable? The creation of each embryo is a conscious decision to create a potential individual. Destroying such embryos is not what I would consider acceptable behaviour, even if they are not yet individuals.
Or do you live in a country where a pregnant woman is not regarded with extra care and respect for the unborn, even at early stages?
Why should it be any different as to how one treats embryos not yet implanted?
Your viewpoint is restricted to one geographic region. Here in Ireland, for ordinary houses slate is traditionally used (although nowadays it isn't "real" slate but rather some composite material) or else terracotta.
Wood shingles are not common - probably due to the fact things rot extra-fast here in Ireland. Even if modern treated wood would be fine - it's probably not highly regarded due to ingrained traditional building sentiments.
Going further back, thatch was used, but this was often replaced by corrogated iron (still visible in many places where the old cottages are still used or standing and haven't had extensive work).
Even if that is a valid plan for achieving innovation, it isn't "it". There's a vast amount of madness involved in turning a successful bit of research into a "product" and even more madness getting what should be a good product onto the market. And then you have to try to get people to buy it ("it works" isn't usually enough).
The middle bit seems to be the most difficult, perhaps more so than even achieving the initial research success.
However, I have no firsthand experience in these matters personally, other than being involved in research (without the concerns of what to do with it).
Well, for some of us it's not a case of not using Flash or Javascript, but rather *us* deciding when and where we choose to allow it. I'll happily put up with the occasional ill-loaded page requiring Javascript/Flash enabling and reload (click on noscript icon in the status area and click on the servers I wish to allow, or allow all temporarily), rather than have to put up with the hideous clutter and tracking all over the web.
I have Javascript whitelisted for a quite a number of sites I regularly visit who put it to good use. I can also put up with letting certain semi-trusted organisations have information on what I'm doing on the site as well.
Having NoScript is perfectly sensible - particularly when performing a search on Google for example, and visiting random websites who could not only have malicious Javascript code, but could indeed just have slow-loading broken code.
Most websites load a lot faster (no matter how fast your system/net connection) without having to wait for scripts to load from random third-party ad sites.
I'm sincerely hoping that this current crisis prompts a trend towards following Berlin rather than Boston in my own country, Ireland. However, it looks like we're just going to continue to have the crazed half-way house that is "UK-lite" with dribs and drabs of both US and continental Europe thrown in (usually completely half-baked and potentially allowing us to have the disadvantages of both approaches rather than the advantages).
At least we're in the Eurozone and our government can't meddle their way into us actually becoming like Iceland. The public, despite the Eurosceptic British press imported wholesale now (cheaper than actual Irish reporting on Europe), seem to be realising this, and we fortunately have some chance of passing the Lisbon Treaty now in a second vote.
Well, obviously Firefox does not obstruct the possibility for some other random application to install a Firefox plug-in as part of the install process.
How does a Firefox user have any assurance that it's a good idea for them to manually install a given plug-in in any case?
As far as I can see, it's just because people "like" Firefox that they choose to believe it's all perfect. It's just like Apple, or Google, or $FlavourOfTheYear
This story is as much about Firefox insecurity as Microsoft surrepticiousness in my opinion.
Also the summary is incorrect. Eircom will not be doing any monitoring of users traffic. Record companies will just various means open to them to track illegal downloads over the Internet (the usual shenanigans). They then provide Eircom with IPs that they allege are infringing (I don't think Eircom has to take their word for it - they'll probably just issue warnings/disconnects on the basis of how much downloading is occurring for that IP).
They won't be giving the record companies any private information, or indeed anything at all except presumably some bulk figures on warnings/disconnections.
Eircom probably will not disconnect most people that they are given an IP for by the record companies. They probably won't even send out letters. All they have to do, is do that where the user in question is a heavy user, and they will simulataneously keep the record companies happy, and get rid of a subscriber who is actually a burden on their network.
A small percentage, in Ireland at least, of any ISPs subscribers are heavy users. None of them need to cater for such users, and none of them want to. The only reason they've not done much up till now is lack of a mechanism for getting rid of them.
In any case, there are still alternative options for heavy users in many urban areas. At the very least, they can pay for multiple subscriptions, or extra data past cap limits for the ISPs who do now have a data cap.
Government should *be* us governing ourselves, at least indirectly so (i.e. we either choose those in power, or at the very least do not work to overthrow them).
The fact that various governments have problems is not a reason to downplay the importance of good governance. I for one do not believe it is preferable to have minimal governance - people left to their own devices do their best for themselves, to the detriment of everyone (ultimately, it is self-defeating to serve only oneself - at the very least one ensures a rather miserable society for oneself to live in).
The current economic situation, being an inevitable consequence of the prevalent economic policies of the past decade or two, shows just how flawed the idea of a hands-off government approach is, notwithstanding the fact that we have had previous times showing the myriad ways in which government can interfere incorrectly. The *reasonable* thing would be to try not to replicate those methods of greater government interference. I will certainly agree that it would seem some of the same mistakes are being replicated, mainly due to short-term attempts at quick-fixes. I do however believe we should still seek *correct* greater government interference in the current circumstances.
Slashdot Mirror
Ireland is about the same distance north as the south of Hudson Bay. Due to the Atlantic currents and coastal climate, it's fairly mild here all year round. Our midlands and indeed hillsides/mountainsides are mostly bog, and not particularly useful for anything (sheep or forestry have only made things worse on the hillsides). It does keep people warm mind you - one of the common heating fuels here is peat briquette - a processed form of peat (less smokey and hotter than turf but similarly slow-burning with lots of ash). We even manage to run some of the most inefficient power stations ever on vast amounts of mechanically harvested turf (needless to say the resulting countryside isn't much use after either - although it can be made quite nice and nature-friendly - just not particularly useful for humans). Also "peat production" provides compost material for gardening too - but despite the large amounts of peat "harvested" each year, and even some amount of exports, it's not exactly a massive moneyspinner.
I suspect thawed out Canadian wilderness would simply be like the Midlands of Ireland - fairly desolate despite the milder temperature.
Not impossible - in fact maybe it'll be more like 1000s. Nanotechnology used to provide a "microblade" surface on the razor's business end. It won't do anything either until you grip the handle, a small electrical charge then being emitted to switch the surface "on".
These will cost €50 for 5 disposable heads - but the high price won't discourage adoption as Tesco will simply discontinue all the cheaper options that make them less profit.
Those figures should have euro symbols in front of them. Slashdot is still stuck in pre-1999 currency era.
Ireland - GP visit: 60, prescription drugs - cutoff is 130 per month, per household, Accident and Emergency visit - 90 unless referred by a GP, public hospital outpatient visits - 90 charge. Waiting lists for public outpatient procedures can be the better part of a year (private patients are treated in public hospitals and get priority).
Some of us haven't experienced enough EU influence.
People earning 30,000 or even more might be paying no income tax, and yet are "poor" due to having to pay through the nose directly for everything.
There is a difference - the BBC has added vast amounts to British culture that would not have been added by purely private operations. RTÉ does not have such a legacy despite being of a similar vintage.
On the other hand, people in Ireland mostly get all the benefits of the BBC for free - that is surely consolation for having to part-fund RTÉ (unlike the BBC, RTÉ *also* rely significantly on commercial advertising and such - TV viewing is as interrupted as most commercial TV stations).
Of course, without RTÉ, we would have even poorer news and current affairs - for all the miserable quality of RTÉ's offerings, it looks like the BBC in comparison to the commercial offerings of TV3 and Sky News.
Sick kids going to work with their parents? What on earth? If that is common in your area, it's fairly awful! Sick kids here in Ireland mostly rightly get to stay at home, either with a parent already at home (raising a family, running a household) or with a parent who simply takes time off work (certain occupations would be tricky for that, but it would seldom be both parents with such a job). Sometimes the employer might insist on annual leave being used (there is a statutory minimum of 21 days in addition to the public holidays).
If the parents can't even get time off from work to mind a sick child, one has to wonder if they really should have undertaken to raise children with both parents working. It also raises questions about there being sufficient regulation to ensure worker's rights.
NoScript is the more valuable of the addons to me. I'm not trying to block ads per-se, but rather the scripts (often used for ads) that slow down page loads, have to wait for third party servers, load up obnoxious and/or malicious content, etc. And because scripts are sometimes necessary, it's useful being able to whitelist familiar domains.
I've never been enthusiastic about how Firefox handles the whole "extension" issue, and I'm not too trusting of NoScripts update methods or a fan of the frequent updating. But using it is preferable to not, and Adblock is not what I actually require (plus it is blacklist rather than whitelist).
Nevermind rearrange their store, they keep changing their mind as to what products you are allowed to buy (i.e. which ones are even available in their stores), based on what makes them more money or which suppliers have been good boys this week. Tesco I'm looking at you.
Have the probabilities been weighed up of locked cockpit doors theoretically hindering help in an emergency, versus theoretically hindering attacks? Has anyone done any study or reasoning on this at all?
Maybe it's for the best, but I do not feel reassured that it has been a calmly considered rational decision.
As for the change in passenger behaviour - the changes in people's behaviour are exactly what extremists want. It is *not* a positive development even if people's paranoia means they will theoretically be more likely to catch a potential threat. Possibly new rules of engagement for what to do in a dangerous situation are an improvement, but even now these have not been coherently communicated to passengers and crew, definitively tied down or carefully planned (not that you can plan for all eventualities).
Well, one point is that you can still bring small volumes of liquid on board an aircraft, albeit in 100 ml containers in a plastic bag. And indeed larger containers of liquid are not always detected going through X-ray if left in hand luggage. There is no repercussion whatsoever if you are caught trying to bring a large container of liquid through (except that it's taken off you and disposed of haphazardly). How does this magically stop any theoretical liquid plot? Answer - it doesn't, anyone wishing to do one need merely keep trying till they "got lucky".
Hence, it is security theatre.
Even much more serious forbidden items are merely taken off you if detected (the important word being "if"). It would be far better to dispense with the theatre and operate under the assumption that yes someone could have dangerous objects on-board - taking relevant precautions of a sensible feasible level and having established procedures for implementing in emergency.
Security theatre merely helps with the "instilling terror" part of the extremists' plans and the disruption of everyday civilised life.
I'm in Ireland. Last time I heard about it in the news (possibly Euro changeover time), we used the most actual cash per head of population in the EU.
Probably explains why ATMs here in Ireland just dispense large value notes where possible - most European countries I've visited, the ATMs give you change - e.g. 10, 20, 20, 50 for 100 euro/pounds. Here in Ireland, you invariably get two 50s (I often try to "force" the ATMs to give change by asking for 80 or 130). Of course this is also possibly just the Irish banks being lazy cheapskates - maybe the cash-in-transit robberies wouldn't be so common if ATMs were restocked more frequently with lower denomination notes (many ATMs run out of cash by the end of the weekend - and a sports event can ensure people are pretty stuck very quickly!)
I'd be pretty ticked off in Finland about the 5c minimum price fractions. It's simply an incentive to currency devaluation - a very good thing much of the rest of the Eurozone isn't following suit. Can people really not cope with having loose change in their pocket and making up the price of things on the fly when they have change to spend? If nothing else it might help people with their addition/subtraction skills.
It's not like the US where you jump from 1c to 5c (resulting in lots of pennies in change). Having 2c coins means you mostly don't end up with too much complication adding up change and can avoid a surplus of coppers.
Cashless society gives control to others. OK cash is under the control of others, but not so much or in the same way.
People will not give up their cash without a fight, particularly in the current circumstances (not that anyone ever trusted banks, private companies or government).
I for one sincerely hope we never have a cashless society.
The most resilient consumer product I've owned has been Nokia mobile phones. I've had several different models, and invariably end up dropping them at various times (or even sending it flying across the room after fumbling to catch it). I've not had anything worse than scrapes so far from drops. Most common drop at one stage was failing miserably to slot it into a inside jacket pocket - cue drop from over 4 feet!
I recently broke my latest one though, a 6233, by having it in my hip pocket while accidentally trying to walk through a waist-height street bollard that I didn't notice. Unfortunately the top of it slammed right into my leg at the mobile phone - smashing the screen (but not the phone shell). Mind you, a simple €20 LCD replacement got the show on the road again - I've even got the same shell albeit with slight stress marks on the corner of the front of it.
My current Dell laptop has a stressed hinge joint from nothing more than 2 years of opening and closing. It's under 3 year on-site warranty so I must ring up about it.
I agree somewhat with that view, but I think it's jumping too far ahead (and introducing uncertainty as to how things will evolve) to say we'll end up with a hybrid.
I think TVs (the device) will stay a TV (even with a tuner, albeit DTT). However, set-top boxes will become ubiquitous and rather than the current programmatic content, there will be the "appearance" of a pull system (you decide what you want to watch). The broadcast system will merely be used to stream new content to set-top boxes, where it will be stored encrypted on a hard drive, to be accessed through a digital TV-guide style menu. It will look like you are requesting content from the service provider, even though any content you can immediately watch will already be on your set-top box.
I think this is far more realistic than Internet streaming TV (note, it doesn't work, and ISPs will inevitably have to switch to a metered-data system with capped downloads - that or traffic-shaping/bandwidth-limiting to stay in business). Broadcast is a microscopic fraction of the cost of streaming (whether that cost is borne by the content provider - i.e. no net neutrality - the ISP or the end user - ultimately the end user pays somehow - broadcast is the only sensible model).
Torrents will not go away, but I think rather than catching "pirates" the crunch will come as ISPs start restricting their packages. Any ISP not doing this might get customers in the short term, but won't be able to finance the network needed to serve them. Traffic-shaping/bandwidth-limiting and using small print to limit "heavy users" is braindead in my opinion, but from an ISPs perspective it is fairly foolproof and successful to cap downloads on a rolling basis (i.e. not monthly which would result in peaks destroying the network each month start, but each user on their own 30 day rolling cap). No disconnect of people exceeding cap - just limit their bandwidth to e.g. 128kb (until last 30 days is below cap). You also offer deals for people to purchase extra cap allowance.
There will still be competition between ISPs in pricing with this system - theoretically under the capitalist model driving down prices - but it will have to be the pricing model in the future for any ISPs to stay in business (and indeed the longer we go on without this model, the fewer ISPs left in business - resulting in ISPs with a dominant market position).
Of course, there are other variables, such as supplies in urban areas that would be looted. Also barring some extreme act, we would be unlikely to have no governance (e.g. in the event of a catastrophic final economic collapse). Here in Ireland for example, it is likely that electricity could be provided for maybe an hour a day just using native resources and the handful of older hydro/peat power plants we have (of course, here the electricity company is semi-state owned/run, other places may not have that luxury). Many essential services have at least a couple of days grace period (battery/fuel back-up) that may allow further time for emergency measures to ensure native resources can be utilised to keep very basic services going. In a sense, I'd expect Ireland, at least outside Dublin, to be more back in say the 1930s (the era of rural electrification just beginning) than complete collapse of society.
Personally, our approach is to have stockpiles for a week or two of disruption - anything beyond that and we are all pretty stuck anyway! A couple cans of fuel and generator will keep the freezer going (10 mins per hour) and charge the UPS (for broadband/phone) and one laptop (for uncensored outside news). Our telecoms infrastructure has at least a week's back-up (state-run TV/radio plus land-lines, some mobile telecoms and wireless broadband) and a special crisis mode that TV services are switched to in the event of an emergency (tested just a couple weeks ago at 3am).
We probably have native food production to last for a short time (e.g. native power can probably ensure continuation of minimal milk production for example), long enough to switch farm production to essential supplies (probably not enough for anything beyond rudimentary survival for the first year). It would be worse than during WWII though ("The Emergency" as it was called here - the State did go into crisis control-mode, and took direct control of many sectors of society to see us all through it). Undoubtedly many people would be doing manual labour again - e.g. if we kept the peat power stations running and wanted winter fuel, hundreds if not thousands would be in the Midlands cutting turf manually rather than the machine harvesting that occurs at present. Native gas supplies would be used only for essential power/industry - our heating would be switched off (it would be bad - but tolerable for most in the Irish climate).
Particularly with the past threats of nuclear catastrophe, I would expect the US to have plans for a special emergency mode - I suppose with it being a bigger place, not everywhere will be attended to, but I doubt loss of control would be absolute or even the majority of regions.
Who says the way the process works is acceptable? The creation of each embryo is a conscious decision to create a potential individual. Destroying such embryos is not what I would consider acceptable behaviour, even if they are not yet individuals.
Or do you live in a country where a pregnant woman is not regarded with extra care and respect for the unborn, even at early stages?
Why should it be any different as to how one treats embryos not yet implanted?
Convenience is not an excuse.
Your viewpoint is restricted to one geographic region. Here in Ireland, for ordinary houses slate is traditionally used (although nowadays it isn't "real" slate but rather some composite material) or else terracotta.
Wood shingles are not common - probably due to the fact things rot extra-fast here in Ireland. Even if modern treated wood would be fine - it's probably not highly regarded due to ingrained traditional building sentiments.
Going further back, thatch was used, but this was often replaced by corrogated iron (still visible in many places where the old cottages are still used or standing and haven't had extensive work).
Even if that is a valid plan for achieving innovation, it isn't "it". There's a vast amount of madness involved in turning a successful bit of research into a "product" and even more madness getting what should be a good product onto the market. And then you have to try to get people to buy it ("it works" isn't usually enough).
The middle bit seems to be the most difficult, perhaps more so than even achieving the initial research success.
However, I have no firsthand experience in these matters personally, other than being involved in research (without the concerns of what to do with it).
Well, for some of us it's not a case of not using Flash or Javascript, but rather *us* deciding when and where we choose to allow it. I'll happily put up with the occasional ill-loaded page requiring Javascript/Flash enabling and reload (click on noscript icon in the status area and click on the servers I wish to allow, or allow all temporarily), rather than have to put up with the hideous clutter and tracking all over the web.
I have Javascript whitelisted for a quite a number of sites I regularly visit who put it to good use. I can also put up with letting certain semi-trusted organisations have information on what I'm doing on the site as well.
Having NoScript is perfectly sensible - particularly when performing a search on Google for example, and visiting random websites who could not only have malicious Javascript code, but could indeed just have slow-loading broken code.
Most websites load a lot faster (no matter how fast your system/net connection) without having to wait for scripts to load from random third-party ad sites.
I'm sincerely hoping that this current crisis prompts a trend towards following Berlin rather than Boston in my own country, Ireland. However, it looks like we're just going to continue to have the crazed half-way house that is "UK-lite" with dribs and drabs of both US and continental Europe thrown in (usually completely half-baked and potentially allowing us to have the disadvantages of both approaches rather than the advantages).
At least we're in the Eurozone and our government can't meddle their way into us actually becoming like Iceland. The public, despite the Eurosceptic British press imported wholesale now (cheaper than actual Irish reporting on Europe), seem to be realising this, and we fortunately have some chance of passing the Lisbon Treaty now in a second vote.
Well, obviously Firefox does not obstruct the possibility for some other random application to install a Firefox plug-in as part of the install process.
How does a Firefox user have any assurance that it's a good idea for them to manually install a given plug-in in any case?
As far as I can see, it's just because people "like" Firefox that they choose to believe it's all perfect. It's just like Apple, or Google, or $FlavourOfTheYear
This story is as much about Firefox insecurity as Microsoft surrepticiousness in my opinion.
Also the summary is incorrect. Eircom will not be doing any monitoring of users traffic. Record companies will just various means open to them to track illegal downloads over the Internet (the usual shenanigans). They then provide Eircom with IPs that they allege are infringing (I don't think Eircom has to take their word for it - they'll probably just issue warnings/disconnects on the basis of how much downloading is occurring for that IP).
They won't be giving the record companies any private information, or indeed anything at all except presumably some bulk figures on warnings/disconnections.
Eircom probably will not disconnect most people that they are given an IP for by the record companies. They probably won't even send out letters. All they have to do, is do that where the user in question is a heavy user, and they will simulataneously keep the record companies happy, and get rid of a subscriber who is actually a burden on their network.
A small percentage, in Ireland at least, of any ISPs subscribers are heavy users. None of them need to cater for such users, and none of them want to. The only reason they've not done much up till now is lack of a mechanism for getting rid of them.
In any case, there are still alternative options for heavy users in many urban areas. At the very least, they can pay for multiple subscriptions, or extra data past cap limits for the ISPs who do now have a data cap.
Government should *be* us governing ourselves, at least indirectly so (i.e. we either choose those in power, or at the very least do not work to overthrow them).
The fact that various governments have problems is not a reason to downplay the importance of good governance. I for one do not believe it is preferable to have minimal governance - people left to their own devices do their best for themselves, to the detriment of everyone (ultimately, it is self-defeating to serve only oneself - at the very least one ensures a rather miserable society for oneself to live in).
The current economic situation, being an inevitable consequence of the prevalent economic policies of the past decade or two, shows just how flawed the idea of a hands-off government approach is, notwithstanding the fact that we have had previous times showing the myriad ways in which government can interfere incorrectly. The *reasonable* thing would be to try not to replicate those methods of greater government interference. I will certainly agree that it would seem some of the same mistakes are being replicated, mainly due to short-term attempts at quick-fixes. I do however believe we should still seek *correct* greater government interference in the current circumstances.