Of course, if your only source of information is a glorified cartoon whose every word, gesture and twitch is controlled by its owner, you can be lied to on a level that surely has totalitarians drooling like a hungry dog at a barbecue.
Not sure if you are talking about these Chinese ones or the current US news readers.
I love to drive. I really, absolutely love to drive. During my vacations I will fly somewhere, rent a car and spend 3 hours in the morning and 3 hurs in the afternoon driving. I really love it.
That said: I hate commuting in a car. I hate it. To me it is wasted time. I do not even own a car anymore. I still rent cars during the holidays. Flying in Europe is pretty cheap, even when I avoid the real cheap airlines.
I use Cambio as car sharing. Once a week I take a car for 2 hours to do my weekly shopping. And if I have time, I can take one for a day during the weekend.
As the company pays my public transport 100% (not uncommon in Belgium. I believe 50% is required by law) it is all money not spend. By selling my car I save easily 200-250EUR per month in the car devaluation, insurance, taxes, fuel and maintenance.
The commute now for me from door to door is just under 1 hour. With a car it is over an hour and up to 1.5 hours on more busy days. If there is no traffic (e.g. on a Sunday) it would be 20 minutes by car, door to door.
As an extra, If I decide to have a drink after work, I do not have to stick to water. I can drink one of the many great Belgian Beers, take the train home and be safe.
I really love driving. The smaller the car, the more I like it (as long as it isn't a "sportscar") I hate standing still.
What is natural about "Noon is midday"? The closest thing that comes to mind is a sun dial. Andc that is human made. And even then that would be off almost everywhere, except on a few lines.
If we would follow the "natural midday", we would have have 60 different time zones where we have only one now. Want more precision? Then you will have even more.
The reason the timezones we have now started was so train companies would be able to run n time. The times where not that much different, yet a few minutes was enough.
So we changed a while ago from "Natural midday" to "Artificial midday" where we not only look at where the average midday is, but also where the state or country lines are, as it would be inconvenient otherwise.
The time that the local church told you when midday was, based on the sun, is long behind us,.
I live in Belgium. If I want I can do my own health insurance. In fact I have and the company pays for it. It covers single room occupancy and longer paymemt and more when I am sick over a longer period.
Without it, you still get healthcare and a minimal wage, but eXtra insurance is always possible.
Hey we are less communist than Canada. Who knew? (Thanks for liberating the EU and not moaning about it.)
I umderstand that he shoild go, but is there any legal reason he must go? It is not a court, so is there a legal reason he must appear? And if not, what are the consequences?
Honest question, as I have no idea snd it is important to the discussion.
Step one. Understand that addiction is a desease. Step two. Understand that prevention is cheaper than treatment. That means that people should go more often to a doctor. Now you have people who will refuse to go to a doctor or hospital, because they can not afford it. Next it is too late to aactually do something about it AND it will cost way more.
The average age in the US is in decline for a reason. Not stagnating, declining.
But first they came for the homeless and I did nothing...
I know. If I were homeless, I would travel south to where it is much warmer in the winter and North in the summer. (What do you mean "with what money would I travel"?)
I live in a country where voting is obligatory (Belgium). You can be required to sit in the voting office for the whole day.
Friend of mine was asked to do that. He showed up drunk. He was excused. This was many, many years ago. So what happens is that they are short handed. The first person who came in was forced to take a seat for the rest of the day. Yeah, do not go voting early.:-D
Generally they will go after lawyers first. Then after teachers. They also look at a specific age, well, year of birth. If that does not bring in enough people, they will start picking people at random.
Obviously many people will try to get out of going to vote, especially because it is on a Sunday. However you need proof and your job will most likely not give it to you that you need to work if you don't.
If you travel, you will show the bill and travel papers to prove you traveled.
You might think this is all wrong. The other side is that people can not be harassed into not going to vote. You still can vote blank.
So them not agreeing with copyright is a good thing, right? Or is it bad, because it isn't American. I am on the "Copyrights and patents are bad, mmkay?" side of things and as it has been proven that giving them a finger, they will take the whole arm (It used to be 14 years, Now it is 'till hell freezes over') I rather have no patents and copyrights.
And the few individuals who jump through the whole process of e.g patenting are either screwed out of it very soon. Others do not even play the game and take their free energy ideas to their grave.
There will be a few who are both great inventors AND great businessmen. They will find a way to make money of their invention either way.
As promised, bit more time to explain the process for thoise who never witnessed it.
Bit of context: The election I took part in was a so called "social election" in Belgium. Every company with more than 50 employees has these. It is to elect union representatives. Everybody is alloweds to vote, regardless if you are a Union member or not. These are Unions, not Guilds, so that means that there are multiple unions that will have members that can be elected. In everything it is a "normal" election, be it that it is limited per company. Company I worked for was a midsaized company with around 1.000 empoyees.
Before the elections, people who will. be unable to attend the voting where the voting booths are and are still willing to vote, can do so remotely by letter.
A meetingroom was truned into the voting station. Union representatives where not allwed inside that room during the voting. In Belgium everybody has an ID, so that makes it all a bit easier.
So what happens is that there is a row of people who sit at a table. The first person takes the ID and tells the name to a second person, who looks at a list. They cross of the name. A third person gives them the ballot when a voting boot is empty. First person hands over the ID to the third person. When the third person hands over the ballot, the ID is given to a fourth person.
The person goes to a voting booth with a ballot. Does his voting, folds the ballot, comes out and put the ballot in a sealed box. If that poerson comes out and shows his vote, the ballot is NOT alloweed into the voting box, as the vote is no longer anonymous. (Could be that he was forced to vote for X). Somebody at the box sees that the folding is done correctly.
Person goes to the 4th person on the table to retrieve his ID. A figth person cxrossed that of on a list.
Oncxe the voting is over, the Union representatives are allowed to enter the room to observe the proces. At that moment a box with the envelopes of the people who voted by letter is opened and all the envelopes placed on a table. These envelopes have the identification of people who voted.
The name (or ID, not sure anymore) is called. When it is found it is crossed off the first list AND the second list and the envelope is opened. In that envelope has to be a second envelope with the ballot (probably). If there is a name on it or other makrings that would maken an ID possible, the envelope is destoyed as the vote won't be anonymous anymore.
After all the envelopes are opened. The second envelope will be opened one by one, verified if it is a ballot or not and placed into the ballot box.
The lists are verified and sealed for future reference, if needed (Placed in an envelope and signatures on it)
One that is done, the ballot box is opened and all the ballots are placed on the table. The counting starts by looking who the vote was for. If a ballot is not valid, it is counted as well as not valid.
Non-valid ballots or ballots that are unclear are verified bt several people, including the Union representatives. Each ballot is placed first per Union (one for not valid votes) and next each party is devided per person.
When all is in several piles, it is counted again at least twice wile counting aloud. Well, twice if there are no errors. We had to do that last process 4 times, till the error was 2 not accounted votes.
Took us a few hours and exept for the fact that people who voted by letter could be influnced, I thought the whole process to be pretty safe. As this was several years ago, I could have forgotten some details, however I really understood WHY the process was so tedious. It was open AND anonymous all the way.
As a sidenote: you could force people not to vote by whatever means. To get arround that, real elections (not those for Unions) are a must in Belgium. Everybody MUST vote. No, that is not correct., As voting is anonymous, there is no must to vote, there is a must to show up.
I was once a participant in the manusl voting process as a non-voter in that process. It was boring, tedious and took 100times more than an electronic vote.
Italso neeeded 10 times more people. In a later post I will get into details. For all the downsides, I prefere voting by paper by a huge margin. In no way or form do I trust electronic voting.
Remember a friend of mine who learned COBOL at university, because they would need people with that knowledge for the Y2K problem.
Minor issue was that he would be finnished with the study in 2002. Yeah, he dropped out.
Luckily that was still the time you where a wizzkid if you could start up a computer. Many IT managers where selected/apointed, because they answerd positive on the question who knew what Internet was. "So you know the Internet? You are now our InterneT (that is what IT stands for) Manager for our company. See that all the computers are connected by next week." They where the people who called and asked to change the private IP ranges, because they had mistyped 192.168.x.y on all their machines and did not want to retype all 500 of them by walking to each and every machine and change the IP adress. (Wish I was kidding)
It does not matter if it uses more energy. It matters if the cost is worthwhile. Look at e.g. aluminium. That uses a shitload of electricity to to turn Bauxite into aluminium. Yet people still make money of it.
Not only that. People also walk less. A lot less. When I used to have a car, I walked 10m to my car, drove to work. Parked right next to the elevator. Walked 10m to the elevator.
Without a car, I walk 500m to the train station, 500m to the metro station, 100 to the elevator. So I walk already a LOT more. So the carfumes are correlation, not causation.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure if you are talking about these Chinese ones or the current US news readers.
I love to drive. I really, absolutely love to drive. During my vacations I will fly somewhere, rent a car and spend 3 hours in the morning and 3 hurs in the afternoon driving. I really love it.
That said: I hate commuting in a car. I hate it. To me it is wasted time. I do not even own a car anymore. I still rent cars during the holidays. Flying in Europe is pretty cheap, even when I avoid the real cheap airlines.
I use Cambio as car sharing. Once a week I take a car for 2 hours to do my weekly shopping. And if I have time, I can take one for a day during the weekend.
As the company pays my public transport 100% (not uncommon in Belgium. I believe 50% is required by law) it is all money not spend. By selling my car I save easily 200-250EUR per month in the car devaluation, insurance, taxes, fuel and maintenance.
The commute now for me from door to door is just under 1 hour. With a car it is over an hour and up to 1.5 hours on more busy days. If there is no traffic (e.g. on a Sunday) it would be 20 minutes by car, door to door.
As an extra, If I decide to have a drink after work, I do not have to stick to water. I can drink one of the many great Belgian Beers, take the train home and be safe.
I really love driving. The smaller the car, the more I like it (as long as it isn't a "sportscar") I hate standing still.
Or go in the opposite direction and change it so PC's get faster faster.
The chipmakers do not follow Moore's Law. Moore's Law follows the chipmakers.
The do not do it "to keep up" to that law. There is no "Moore's Judge" that will spite them if they do not do it.
What is natural about "Noon is midday"? The closest thing that comes to mind is a sun dial. Andc that is human made. And even then that would be off almost everywhere, except on a few lines.
If we would follow the "natural midday", we would have have 60 different time zones where we have only one now. Want more precision? Then you will have even more.
The reason the timezones we have now started was so train companies would be able to run n time. The times where not that much different, yet a few minutes was enough.
So we changed a while ago from "Natural midday" to "Artificial midday" where we not only look at where the average midday is, but also where the state or country lines are, as it would be inconvenient otherwise.
The time that the local church told you when midday was, based on the sun, is long behind us,.
Don't change your car clock while driving. Problem solved.
I would go for Tibet as an example as neither Vietnam, not Taiwan are currently invaded.
They might have been, but that is standard in world history. Any country that had anything to offer has been invaded in the past.
Like cash? And overseeing is possible if the payment is not done by them. Theycould apply the same rules as SEPA.
So you say competition is bad? Are you working for Putin?
I live in Belgium. If I want I can do my own health insurance. In fact I have and the company pays for it.
It covers single room occupancy and longer paymemt and more when I am sick over a longer period.
Without it, you still get healthcare and a minimal wage, but eXtra insurance is always possible.
Hey we are less communist than Canada. Who knew? (Thanks for liberating the EU and not moaning about it.)
I umderstand that he shoild go, but is there any legal reason he must go? It is not a court, so is there a legal reason he must appear? And if not, what are the consequences?
Honest question, as I have no idea snd it is important to the discussion.
Step one. Understand that addiction is a desease.
Step two. Understand that prevention is cheaper than treatment. That means that people should go more often to a doctor.
Now you have people who will refuse to go to a doctor or hospital, because they can not afford it.
Next it is too late to aactually do something about it AND it will cost way more.
The average age in the US is in decline for a reason. Not stagnating, declining.
But first they came for the homeless and I did nothing ...
I know. If I were homeless, I would travel south to where it is much warmer in the winter and North in the summer. (What do you mean "with what money would I travel"?)
Everybody must vote in Belgium and look out how our beer and chocolate turned out.
The reason behind obliged voting is that way you can not prevent people to go and vote.
They still can vote "blank". And not sure that only have "fanboys" vote is a great idea either.
I live in a country where voting is obligatory (Belgium). You can be required to sit in the voting office for the whole day.
Friend of mine was asked to do that. He showed up drunk. He was excused. This was many, many years ago. So what happens is that they are short handed. The first person who came in was forced to take a seat for the rest of the day. Yeah, do not go voting early. :-D
Generally they will go after lawyers first. Then after teachers. They also look at a specific age, well, year of birth. If that does not bring in enough people, they will start picking people at random.
Obviously many people will try to get out of going to vote, especially because it is on a Sunday. However you need proof and your job will most likely not give it to you that you need to work if you don't.
If you travel, you will show the bill and travel papers to prove you traveled.
You might think this is all wrong. The other side is that people can not be harassed into not going to vote. You still can vote blank.
As you exclude this specific case, I would like to know what cases the US has the moral high-ground. (or almost any other country in the world. )
So them not agreeing with copyright is a good thing, right? Or is it bad, because it isn't American.
I am on the "Copyrights and patents are bad, mmkay?" side of things and as it has been proven that giving them a finger, they will take the whole arm (It used to be 14 years, Now it is 'till hell freezes over') I rather have no patents and copyrights.
And the few individuals who jump through the whole process of e.g patenting are either screwed out of it very soon. Others do not even play the game and take their free energy ideas to their grave.
There will be a few who are both great inventors AND great businessmen. They will find a way to make money of their invention either way.
As promised, bit more time to explain the process for thoise who never witnessed it.
Bit of context: The election I took part in was a so called "social election" in Belgium. Every company with more than 50 employees has these. It is to elect union representatives. Everybody is alloweds to vote, regardless if you are a Union member or not. These are Unions, not Guilds, so that means that there are multiple unions that will have members that can be elected.
In everything it is a "normal" election, be it that it is limited per company. Company I worked for was a midsaized company with around 1.000 empoyees.
Before the elections, people who will. be unable to attend the voting where the voting booths are and are still willing to vote, can do so remotely by letter.
A meetingroom was truned into the voting station. Union representatives where not allwed inside that room during the voting. In Belgium everybody has an ID, so that makes it all a bit easier.
So what happens is that there is a row of people who sit at a table. The first person takes the ID and tells the name to a second person, who looks at a list. They cross of the name. A third person gives them the ballot when a voting boot is empty. First person hands over the ID to the third person. When the third person hands over the ballot, the ID is given to a fourth person.
The person goes to a voting booth with a ballot. Does his voting, folds the ballot, comes out and put the ballot in a sealed box.
If that poerson comes out and shows his vote, the ballot is NOT alloweed into the voting box, as the vote is no longer anonymous. (Could be that he was forced to vote for X). Somebody at the box sees that the folding is done correctly.
Person goes to the 4th person on the table to retrieve his ID. A figth person cxrossed that of on a list.
Oncxe the voting is over, the Union representatives are allowed to enter the room to observe the proces. At that moment a box with the envelopes of the people who voted by letter is opened and all the envelopes placed on a table. These envelopes have the identification of people who voted.
The name (or ID, not sure anymore) is called. When it is found it is crossed off the first list AND the second list and the envelope is opened.
In that envelope has to be a second envelope with the ballot (probably). If there is a name on it or other makrings that would maken an ID possible, the envelope is destoyed as the vote won't be anonymous anymore.
After all the envelopes are opened. The second envelope will be opened one by one, verified if it is a ballot or not and placed into the ballot box.
The lists are verified and sealed for future reference, if needed (Placed in an envelope and signatures on it)
One that is done, the ballot box is opened and all the ballots are placed on the table. The counting starts by looking who the vote was for. If a ballot is not valid, it is counted as well as not valid.
Non-valid ballots or ballots that are unclear are verified bt several people, including the Union representatives. Each ballot is placed first per Union (one for not valid votes) and next each party is devided per person.
When all is in several piles, it is counted again at least twice wile counting aloud. Well, twice if there are no errors. We had to do that last process 4 times, till the error was 2 not accounted votes.
Took us a few hours and exept for the fact that people who voted by letter could be influnced, I thought the whole process to be pretty safe. As this was several years ago, I could have forgotten some details, however I really understood WHY the process was so tedious. It was open AND anonymous all the way.
As a sidenote: you could force people not to vote by whatever means. To get arround that, real elections (not those for Unions) are a must in Belgium. Everybody MUST vote. No, that is not correct., As voting is anonymous, there is no must to vote, there is a must to show up.
Unfortunately, they now have electronic voting
Thanks for the correction. As English is my third language, I appoligize profusely when I make such errors. I should know better.
I was once a participant in the manusl voting process as a non-voter in that process. It was boring, tedious and took 100times more than an electronic vote.
Italso neeeded 10 times more people. In a later post I will get into details. For all the downsides, I prefere voting by paper by a huge margin. In no way or form do I trust electronic voting.
Remember a friend of mine who learned COBOL at university, because they would need people with that knowledge for the Y2K problem.
Minor issue was that he would be finnished with the study in 2002. Yeah, he dropped out.
Luckily that was still the time you where a wizzkid if you could start up a computer. Many IT managers where selected/apointed, because they answerd positive on the question who knew what Internet was.
"So you know the Internet? You are now our InterneT (that is what IT stands for) Manager for our company. See that all the computers are connected by next week." They where the people who called and asked to change the private IP ranges, because they had mistyped 192.168.x.y on all their machines and did not want to retype all 500 of them by walking to each and every machine and change the IP adress. (Wish I was kidding)
And many businesses have pre-printed papers that include opening hours fr e.g. a helpdesk.
It does not matter if it uses more energy. It matters if the cost is worthwhile. Look at e.g. aluminium. That uses a shitload of electricity to to turn Bauxite into aluminium. Yet people still make money of it.
Not only that. People also walk less. A lot less. When I used to have a car, I walked 10m to my car, drove to work. Parked right next to the elevator. Walked 10m to the elevator.
Without a car, I walk 500m to the train station, 500m to the metro station, 100 to the elevator. So I walk already a LOT more. So the carfumes are correlation, not causation.
But the sugar is a HUGE factor as well.