I am a European and I hope they will fight this. I also hope they will not win that fight and decide to close down shop in Europe. And nothing of value was lost.
Many of the things are strong enough. Not strong, but strong enough to do it's duty. When you move and it survives, you where lucky, but don't count on it. That way you won't be disappointed when it breaks.
I had the choice to take insurance from a Sicilian Family business. I once did not pay and I could choose to keep my left or my right knee cap, All my fault. I should not have signed the contract.
I went to a course in social rights in Belgium and learned how it is from the employers point of view. They started with "You can put ANYTHING in a contract, but that does not make it legal." Half of the 10 day course was saying this and explain why some things where illegal or different from what people think. e.g. the part that says that you are not allowed to work at a competitor? The amount is what the company has to pay. All the employee needs to do is say 'I was not allowed to take a job, give me the monies..' and start working at a slightly different job. That is if he earned enough, otherwise he can still work there AND get the monies. The other half was them saying "Things change so much every month, just contact us and we will sort it out". Small part was "We do the salary calculation for the company, we are there for them, not for the employees. Keep that in mind if you have issues." Another right you can not sign off is the amount of hours you are allowed to work. Many in especially management get extra holidays, but will be expected to work more hours. That is not true. They still have the same rights. You can not wave away those rights. That is not up to you.
From what I read, US Unions are not so much unions as they are guilds. That is they are there to protect the jobs and/or trade, not so much the people.
In Belgium there are a few that are like that as well, but most are generic unions. That is: you go to a union and pay your monthly fee. You can do that when you are 18, I think. You then go and work in any company you like. Nobody will ask you if you are union or not, because nobody cares. Companies larger than 50 employees must have union representatives. These will be from different unions.
The reason I joined a union was when I was let go, they will take care of all the paper work concerning unemployment. It was let go on a Friday and joined the union on a Monday with my papers in hand.
I am now with the same union for many years over many companies in different functions and types of companies.
Now the (elected) union representatives in companies is a different matter. They are extremely hard to fire and they abuse that by slacking off. Luckily not all of them are like that.
And again, nobody here will ask if you are in a Union, because they do not care. As long as the company follows the rules, there is no issue and if they don't, you could join at that moment anyway if you do not take other steps, like taking a specialized lawyer. (They have to be specialized, otherwise they won't know)
And that is your problem right there. In the US you need to have credit to get credit. In Belgium they will look at your net income, deduct living money, deduct credits/loans that are already open IF they exist and the rest you can get a loan/credit. A credit card will be counted as the highest minimal payment per month. e.g. on a 10.000EUR card that would be e.g. 400EUR, so even if you did not use the card or if you use it completely, it will be calculated as 400EUR as that is the POSSIBLE payback you could do.
No credits? That is the best situation. They will look if you are single or not, children at charge, or not. Say you earn 1500 per month. Rent is 750, They deduct e.g. 600 for food and clothes. That leave 150 that can be used for credit. Your debit card will be there and that would be probably 50EUR, leaving you 100EUR for credit. That would be a credit card for e.g. 2000. After that, no more credit for you.
And if you are on the blacklist and you make 20.000 per month that you can prove and have 7 homes that are paid in full, you can not get a 500EUR credit card. No credit for you. After a year you will be removed from the blacklist. Go get a pre-paid card and good luck renting a car or booking a hotel.
EC cards are debit cards. In Belgium they are Bank Contact or now called Maestro. Schufa is BNB in Belgium.
The thing is: who has access to the information and what do they see? In Belgium it is only the official credit companies and banks. They only see essential information. e.g. not the names of the other companies. Also when you close a credit, three months later it will be not visible anymore, so no history. Just current info.
Many people buy on credit. Not as bad as in the US, but plenty people do. However it is also pretty normal to just use the credit card as a debit card. i.e. pay it back 100% at the end of the month.
Cash is used a lot more in Germany than in e.g. Belgium or the Nordic countries.
Debit cards in Belgium can be set to let the account go below 0. Standard in Belgium and has to be turned of by request. Also: if you are longer than 3 months below 0 on your account, you will not get a credit for at least a year, even if that amount is something like 15 cents. That would mean you can not buy your house.
Something similar exists in The Netherlands, but not in Luxembourg.
In Belgium credits are all collected at the National bank. You can find information yourself with all the loans, credits and debit cards for yourself.
If you are a credit company or a bank you MUST first look if there are no mentioning as late payments (meaning 3 months late payment) as that means you are not allowed to give people a credit. You MUST put the new loan on it as other banks and credit companies can see it. All these companies can see is the amount of the loan, monthly max payment and some other essential info to calculate if there is enough to allow a credit or not. You do not even see the name of the other companies. Only credit companies and banks will get access to that data. So if you are a landlord: no go. Anybody else? No go!
It is fast and easy and secure. If you give a credit to somebody who should not have gotten one (e.g. he was on the black list) the risk is 100% for the company. If he does not pay for whatever reason, you have no way of getting your money back, except hoping he pays back. If you do that too many times, your license will be gone (after several steps)
But what if I buy a car? Well, if you buy a new car, you either go to a bank or they will have a credit company. Otherwise they can not give you a loan. Second hand car from a small dealer? Go to the bank. Buying a tv on credit for 500EUR in a store? Sure, they will work together with a credit company. Credit is done by the credit company who gives the money to the store, not by the store itself. They will let you sign the paper, but will never see the information why it was refused. They will just see a go or no-go. Give a tv without a go? Well, that comes out of the pocket of the store.
And in Belgium the credit card companies are not even allowed to analyze on how you spend your money, so no "We see you buy things online, we have a special card for that". Credit companies and banks are also not allowed to do checks on the national bank to see if a customer could have a credit increase so they can send an offer. The request has to come from the customer (some specific, non-marketing exceptions exist). e.g. not: we see it is possible, but if you want we can see if it is possible.
Most likely they will use DNS blocking, like they do in other places. Easy to just use an open DNS server. Plenty around, even if you do not want to give Google even more data. One of the lists
Or just use your own DNS server, like bind. The latter would be not a real solution for many. Why is there no 'single PC' DNS server available? Only listen to localhost and does the resolving for everything that is not in the hosts file.
Yeah, because that was always a top priority: users privacy. That is way you MUST use your own name, because they are concerned. Or perhaps they are just worried that the states can take that data without paying for it.
Yes, something should have done years ago, but nobody cared enough. The companies knew and they did not care, so fuck em.
And they will know how to influence your behavior. The ads that where done on Facebook by the Russians is the the start.
Puppet masters seems to be a nice job for the future till AI takes over there as well.
Control used to be done by guns and force. It is much more subtle now. Instead of barking at the sheep, you just guide them. You are one of the dogs in this scenario. The ones with real power is the farmer that is interested in having their flock docile so it will give more meat and wool.
You can screw over 143.000.000 people without any issue, but when you screw over a few people with insider trading info, you are going to jail. Also see that asswipe that increased prices for medicine times 900. Steal from the poor, not an issue. Steal from the rich, we have laws against that.
But I guess that giving power and money to the 1% is the only alternative of not becoming a socialist, because that would be worse, right? (That was sarcasm)
I do not understand point three. It is as if somebody cures AIDS and you say, "but what about the rest of the diseases?" as if it isn't a good idea to do one thing at a time.
I would like to know what SHOULD be handled by a touch screen for a driver. As much as how I hate the 17 million buttons and how it makes it look like a fighter jet, I rather have a safe car than a good looking interior.
I am trying my best to come up with one thing where a touch screen in a car would be a good idea. Not a nice idea, but a good idea.
And they probably also tried to keep others home by saying Clinton already had won or let them vote third party.
And people ALWAYS vote with their feelings. In Belgium we have a gazillion political parties. We have websites where you can answer questions to see what party is closest to your ideas. You can put weight on these answers. No matter the answer, people will still vote their party because reasons.
On TV there once was a politician who filled it out and his ideas where better aligned with a different party. He still decided to stay at that party, even if changing parties is not that uncommon.
The fact that the US has a "winner takes all" as well as a de facto two party system (because of it) makes it all a bit easier. You just need to fool some of the people some of the time.
Most likely, yes. That is what they can do. Remember when the ad companies told us it would be great to have personalized ads? This is it.
And no, you are not immune to it, neither am I. Even if you are not on Facebook, people around you will have opinions and that will also influence you. (Yes, it will.)
There are a lot of ways you could influence people. Say you tell them that candidate A is sure to win, there will be some people that won't bother to go and vote, because their candidate already won. That will not be enough, but when you to a lot of it and it is already close, then it might just be the drop that overflows the bucket.
This is not "Vote MY candidate" or "Do not vote the other candidate". This is more somebody saying he heard of a very nice pizza place during the morning meeting and pizza is ordered for the next lunch meeting.
So yes, most likely you watched different campaigns, because that is the point of personalized advertisement.
Reminds me of a letter I saw that was send to the local Belgian MAFIAA that said (paraphrasing here) "If you do not fuck off with filing complaints to grandma's for sharing a copy, we will find you and we will kill you" However they also said "If there are people who make money of copies, we are glad to help you."
I know how the US hates to do things as they are in the rest of the world (Metric, PIN for cards,...) yet her just some info how we handle credit info and data in Belgium. 1) You need an official ID (We have one, but you could use other things that are official as well to make this work. Drivers license, presentation at city hall with a code,...) These can be lost and replaced. https://www.checkdoc.be/ to see if they are valid or not 2) All credits and loans are kept by the National Bank of Belgium 3) To access the data and you are not the person you must be a credit company or a bank 4) You will see limited data (not even who has given the credit and/or loan). Just enough to calculate/see if you can give a loan/credit or not. 5) Give credit to somebody who should not get one, YOU are responsible. If they don't pay back for whatever reason, YOU pay. 6) Give too many people credit if you are not allowed (or do not follow other procedures) and your license to do so is gone and you can close down.
If you are not a credit company or bank, you will NOT get access to the data. Updates are done via secure connections, signed XML and fixed IP only. (At least last time I looked into it)
And at a certain point, when the hungry and poor got fed up, they threw out the rich. Because most people do not care that much to be rich, they care to be able to care for their families.
The thing is that when robots replace people, the only one that gains anything is the owner. If a robot reduces work by 50% it will not mean we get to work 50% less, it means that 50% of the people get nothing and 1 person gets that 50%. So the difference between the rich and the poor is suddenly a lot more.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't like it. Don't do business here. That is also what is told to EU companies http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r...
I am a European and I hope they will fight this. I also hope they will not win that fight and decide to close down shop in Europe. And nothing of value was lost.
Many of the things are strong enough. Not strong, but strong enough to do it's duty. When you move and it survives, you where lucky, but don't count on it. That way you won't be disappointed when it breaks.
They didn't.
I had the choice to take insurance from a Sicilian Family business. I once did not pay and I could choose to keep my left or my right knee cap, All my fault. I should not have signed the contract.
I went to a course in social rights in Belgium and learned how it is from the employers point of view. They started with "You can put ANYTHING in a contract, but that does not make it legal." Half of the 10 day course was saying this and explain why some things where illegal or different from what people think. e.g. the part that says that you are not allowed to work at a competitor? The amount is what the company has to pay. All the employee needs to do is say 'I was not allowed to take a job, give me the monies..' and start working at a slightly different job. That is if he earned enough, otherwise he can still work there AND get the monies.
The other half was them saying "Things change so much every month, just contact us and we will sort it out". Small part was "We do the salary calculation for the company, we are there for them, not for the employees. Keep that in mind if you have issues."
Another right you can not sign off is the amount of hours you are allowed to work. Many in especially management get extra holidays, but will be expected to work more hours. That is not true. They still have the same rights. You can not wave away those rights. That is not up to you.
From what I read, US Unions are not so much unions as they are guilds. That is they are there to protect the jobs and/or trade, not so much the people.
In Belgium there are a few that are like that as well, but most are generic unions. That is: you go to a union and pay your monthly fee. You can do that when you are 18, I think.
You then go and work in any company you like. Nobody will ask you if you are union or not, because nobody cares. Companies larger than 50 employees must have union representatives. These will be from different unions.
The reason I joined a union was when I was let go, they will take care of all the paper work concerning unemployment. It was let go on a Friday and joined the union on a Monday with my papers in hand.
I am now with the same union for many years over many companies in different functions and types of companies.
Now the (elected) union representatives in companies is a different matter. They are extremely hard to fire and they abuse that by slacking off. Luckily not all of them are like that.
And again, nobody here will ask if you are in a Union, because they do not care. As long as the company follows the rules, there is no issue and if they don't, you could join at that moment anyway if you do not take other steps, like taking a specialized lawyer. (They have to be specialized, otherwise they won't know)
That is still a huge percentage. Basically they say "Do not use it if you look like somebody else" sounds like "You are holding it wrong".
It is, it is just that those odds are met in about 80% of the cases. In other words: in 20% of the time it works all the time.
And that is your problem right there. In the US you need to have credit to get credit. In Belgium they will look at your net income, deduct living money, deduct credits/loans that are already open IF they exist and the rest you can get a loan/credit.
A credit card will be counted as the highest minimal payment per month. e.g. on a 10.000EUR card that would be e.g. 400EUR, so even if you did not use the card or if you use it completely, it will be calculated as 400EUR as that is the POSSIBLE payback you could do.
No credits? That is the best situation.
They will look if you are single or not, children at charge, or not.
Say you earn 1500 per month. Rent is 750, They deduct e.g. 600 for food and clothes. That leave 150 that can be used for credit. Your debit card will be there and that would be probably 50EUR, leaving you 100EUR for credit. That would be a credit card for e.g. 2000. After that, no more credit for you.
And if you are on the blacklist and you make 20.000 per month that you can prove and have 7 homes that are paid in full, you can not get a 500EUR credit card. No credit for you. After a year you will be removed from the blacklist. Go get a pre-paid card and good luck renting a car or booking a hotel.
EC cards are debit cards. In Belgium they are Bank Contact or now called Maestro.
Schufa is BNB in Belgium.
The thing is: who has access to the information and what do they see?
In Belgium it is only the official credit companies and banks. They only see essential information. e.g. not the names of the other companies.
Also when you close a credit, three months later it will be not visible anymore, so no history. Just current info.
Many people buy on credit. Not as bad as in the US, but plenty people do. However it is also pretty normal to just use the credit card as a debit card. i.e. pay it back 100% at the end of the month.
Cash is used a lot more in Germany than in e.g. Belgium or the Nordic countries.
Debit cards in Belgium can be set to let the account go below 0. Standard in Belgium and has to be turned of by request. Also: if you are longer than 3 months below 0 on your account, you will not get a credit for at least a year, even if that amount is something like 15 cents. That would mean you can not buy your house.
Something similar exists in The Netherlands, but not in Luxembourg.
In Belgium credits are all collected at the National bank. You can find information yourself with all the loans, credits and debit cards for yourself.
If you are a credit company or a bank you MUST first look if there are no mentioning as late payments (meaning 3 months late payment) as that means you are not allowed to give people a credit.
You MUST put the new loan on it as other banks and credit companies can see it.
All these companies can see is the amount of the loan, monthly max payment and some other essential info to calculate if there is enough to allow a credit or not.
You do not even see the name of the other companies.
Only credit companies and banks will get access to that data. So if you are a landlord: no go. Anybody else? No go!
It is fast and easy and secure. If you give a credit to somebody who should not have gotten one (e.g. he was on the black list) the risk is 100% for the company. If he does not pay for whatever reason, you have no way of getting your money back, except hoping he pays back. If you do that too many times, your license will be gone (after several steps)
But what if I buy a car? Well, if you buy a new car, you either go to a bank or they will have a credit company. Otherwise they can not give you a loan. Second hand car from a small dealer? Go to the bank. Buying a tv on credit for 500EUR in a store? Sure, they will work together with a credit company. Credit is done by the credit company who gives the money to the store, not by the store itself. They will let you sign the paper, but will never see the information why it was refused. They will just see a go or no-go. Give a tv without a go? Well, that comes out of the pocket of the store.
And in Belgium the credit card companies are not even allowed to analyze on how you spend your money, so no "We see you buy things online, we have a special card for that". Credit companies and banks are also not allowed to do checks on the national bank to see if a customer could have a credit increase so they can send an offer. The request has to come from the customer (some specific, non-marketing exceptions exist).
e.g. not: we see it is possible, but if you want we can see if it is possible.
Most likely they will use DNS blocking, like they do in other places. Easy to just use an open DNS server. Plenty around, even if you do not want to give Google even more data.
One of the lists
Or just use your own DNS server, like bind. The latter would be not a real solution for many.
Why is there no 'single PC' DNS server available? Only listen to localhost and does the resolving for everything that is not in the hosts file.
Yeah, because that was always a top priority: users privacy. That is way you MUST use your own name, because they are concerned.
Or perhaps they are just worried that the states can take that data without paying for it.
Yes, something should have done years ago, but nobody cared enough. The companies knew and they did not care, so fuck em.
First they came for the immigrants, but I do not do anything, because I am not an immigrant.
If the NSA can read everything, why not the rest of the world.
And they will know how to influence your behavior. The ads that where done on Facebook by the Russians is the the start.
Puppet masters seems to be a nice job for the future till AI takes over there as well.
Control used to be done by guns and force. It is much more subtle now. Instead of barking at the sheep, you just guide them.
You are one of the dogs in this scenario. The ones with real power is the farmer that is interested in having their flock docile so it will give more meat and wool.
You can screw over 143.000.000 people without any issue, but when you screw over a few people with insider trading info, you are going to jail.
Also see that asswipe that increased prices for medicine times 900. Steal from the poor, not an issue. Steal from the rich, we have laws against that.
But I guess that giving power and money to the 1% is the only alternative of not becoming a socialist, because that would be worse, right? (That was sarcasm)
I do not understand point three. It is as if somebody cures AIDS and you say, "but what about the rest of the diseases?" as if it isn't a good idea to do one thing at a time.
I would like to know what SHOULD be handled by a touch screen for a driver. As much as how I hate the 17 million buttons and how it makes it look like a fighter jet, I rather have a safe car than a good looking interior.
I am trying my best to come up with one thing where a touch screen in a car would be a good idea. Not a nice idea, but a good idea.
And they probably also tried to keep others home by saying Clinton already had won or let them vote third party.
And people ALWAYS vote with their feelings. In Belgium we have a gazillion political parties. We have websites where you can answer questions to see what party is closest to your ideas. You can put weight on these answers. No matter the answer, people will still vote their party because reasons.
On TV there once was a politician who filled it out and his ideas where better aligned with a different party. He still decided to stay at that party, even if changing parties is not that uncommon.
The fact that the US has a "winner takes all" as well as a de facto two party system (because of it) makes it all a bit easier. You just need to fool some of the people some of the time.
Most likely, yes. That is what they can do. Remember when the ad companies told us it would be great to have personalized ads? This is it.
And no, you are not immune to it, neither am I. Even if you are not on Facebook, people around you will have opinions and that will also influence you. (Yes, it will.)
There are a lot of ways you could influence people. Say you tell them that candidate A is sure to win, there will be some people that won't bother to go and vote, because their candidate already won. That will not be enough, but when you to a lot of it and it is already close, then it might just be the drop that overflows the bucket.
This is not "Vote MY candidate" or "Do not vote the other candidate". This is more somebody saying he heard of a very nice pizza place during the morning meeting and pizza is ordered for the next lunch meeting.
So yes, most likely you watched different campaigns, because that is the point of personalized advertisement.
Reminds me of a letter I saw that was send to the local Belgian MAFIAA that said (paraphrasing here) "If you do not fuck off with filing complaints to grandma's for sharing a copy, we will find you and we will kill you" However they also said "If there are people who make money of copies, we are glad to help you."
I know how the US hates to do things as they are in the rest of the world (Metric, PIN for cards, ...) yet her just some info how we handle credit info and data in Belgium. ...) These can be lost and replaced. https://www.checkdoc.be/ to see if they are valid or not
1) You need an official ID (We have one, but you could use other things that are official as well to make this work. Drivers license, presentation at city hall with a code,
2) All credits and loans are kept by the National Bank of Belgium
3) To access the data and you are not the person you must be a credit company or a bank
4) You will see limited data (not even who has given the credit and/or loan). Just enough to calculate/see if you can give a loan/credit or not.
5) Give credit to somebody who should not get one, YOU are responsible. If they don't pay back for whatever reason, YOU pay.
6) Give too many people credit if you are not allowed (or do not follow other procedures) and your license to do so is gone and you can close down.
If you are not a credit company or bank, you will NOT get access to the data. Updates are done via secure connections, signed XML and fixed IP only. (At least last time I looked into it)
And at a certain point, when the hungry and poor got fed up, they threw out the rich. Because most people do not care that much to be rich, they care to be able to care for their families.
The thing is that when robots replace people, the only one that gains anything is the owner. If a robot reduces work by 50% it will not mean we get to work 50% less, it means that 50% of the people get nothing and 1 person gets that 50%.
So the difference between the rich and the poor is suddenly a lot more.