I refuse to fly as long as airplane and airport security resembles Soviet Russia.
I do the same, I vote with my euros: I'll fly only if it's needed for very important business reasons*, otherwise I just prefer a ship, a train, a bus, or a car.
* Saying 'I refuse to do that' is too restrictive. I am a pragmatist, and sometimes we do have to do things contrary to our preferences, because the world at large has a different modus operandi. I run Debian GNU/Linux as my primary desktop and workstation OS, and it's the only OS on my PC, but I don't erase the preloaded WinXP from my laptops after I create my GNU/Linux partitions, as having the ability to be 100% compatible with the world at large is still necessary, even though I rarely need to boot into Windows.
Why do you post as an AC, by the way? Freedom is something you must sign with your name and be proud for it. If we have to hide when we talk about freedom, then we have already lost our case.
Talking about freedom in Soviet Russia would guarantee you a visit by the KGB. But here in the West we still have some limited freedom. If you self-censor and hide your head under the sand every time you talk about freedom then you help creating a non-free society. Freedom must be used, otherwise you lose it. It is a responsibility of every responsible free individual to show that they are not afraid to use their names when talking about freedom.
The contrarian investing principle can be summarized as being that when the crowd overwhelmingly agrees on something, go the other way
I actually have tried this in my investment strategies. I once tried to go with the flow and lost money. Then I tried to do exactly the opposite, going against the flow, and not only recovered all the money I lost but also got more. Since then, I only go against the flow, and it seems to work okay up to this point, so contrarian investing looks like a reasonable and useful investment strategy, at least according to my experiences.
The book describes market behavior at least as well as Adam Smith's "unseen hand", and may also well describe other aspects of crowd behavior. I had never heard of the "wisdom of crowds" before this posting, but I have heard of the "madness of crowds" for many years.
I do some research on swarm intelligence, and from my study I have developed this opinion: When you have a crowd, it can be intelligent if it uses the correct rules of behaviour, but mad if it does not. Birds, bees, ants, and other animals have probably developed the correct rules of behaviour over millions of years, but humans haven't, so many human crowds are mad and stupid. The Internet and other technologies, however, seems to act as an afterburner, helping social evolution proceed much faster, and therefore also assisting crowds to discover the correct rules of behaviour in various settings. So, a crowd using no technology is likely to be mad and stupid as it acts in 'slow speed' mode and behavioural innovations don't pass quickly among members, while a crowd using mobile phones or wikis is likely to get smart quick leveraging on the 'fast speed' mode provided by technology that allows behavioural innovations to pass from member to member at the speed of light.
That shows self-reliance, certainly...but couldn't a serial killer say exactly the same thing? I care rather a lot about how other people view my personality and behavior; if I didn't, I wouldn't have any friends.
Well, we talk about healthy people here - serial killers aren't healthy. Moreover, serial killers use violence, it's impossible to say "I don't care what people think about me" if you use violence or otherwise disrupt their right to freedom.
I believe people have a right to do whatever they want, but not disrupt the freedom of others. However, in society, people always create problems for free persons... for example, if you state that you don't believe in God then lots of people will come and try make your life difficult, and in certain nations even the government will have a problem with you. People will use violence to convert you, and if they fail they may kill you. This also happens with very simple things such as clothing: If your clothing is slightly outside what people consider normal, they will create problems for you, even though you never created any problem for them (except in extreme cases).
In short, most of people don't respect your freedom. Even if you create problems for no one, someone is going to try to force you to be what they consider normal.
My answer to this is simple: As long as I don't force my own views on other people, I do what I want and I don't give a fsck what people say or think about me.
Note that I consider it perfectly okay to make people unhappy if their unhappiness is the result of their own failure to understand freedom. For example, I do not like body piercing and when I see people with pierced bodies, I feel uncomfortable, but I never said anything or tried to change the opinions of body piercers. It's their body, after all. Likewise, if I want to be agnostic or atheist I can do so, even though I know that some religious people will feel uncomfortable with my choice.
But saying that a serial killer or other psychopath could say the same thing is not acceptable. They have no right to say that, as they actively seek to damage other people and violate their right to live and be free.
the Mac sample is balanced, we're a research company so we have to have a balanced sample.
I just wanted to note that I don't know in your particular case how balanced your sample is. If you have used proper statistical methodologies and have taken all variables into account then your sample ought to be really balanced. I have seen, however, many people who come to quick conclusions from incomplete demographics collected in non-scientific ways, so I just wanted to point out this in my message and I was talking mostly generally and not about your case, since I have no data about your case.
If you have published any free whitepaper on this topic I would like to see it, by the way.
Early on, Wikipedia's first priority was to fill its databank with stuff, and all contributions (other than those breaking policy) were welcome.
And ideally it should still be like this.
Recently, WP is at the stage of more stringent enforcement of policies, as well as guidelines and styleguides
Which is a very Bad Thing, IMO. Wikipedia is still incomplete, and the more paranoid it becomes about 'protecting' its content, the less contributions it's going to get. There is now too much unnesessary bureaucracy on Wikipedia that makes everyone's life very difficult.
I find it strange that it is suggested that logged-in users care about their reputation. I am such a logged-in user and I don't care that much about reputation or what people may think or say about me, even though my Wikipedia account is linked with my real name. I mostly care to improve articles or correct misunderstandings. If I find that in some specific occasion I can make the encyclopedia better at the cost of making 500 people hate me, I won't give a fsck what the people are going to think or say about me, as long as I know very well that my actions are correct. Actually I don't care about reputation in the meatspace, either. I just do what feels good and natural for me. If some people dislike it, that's their problem, not mine, and I don't like changing my behaviour and my personality to suit people's opinions about what is considered socially acceptable or good. For example, in the past it was considered immoral and socially unacceptable not to believe in the church's religion or to believe things that the Pope or other religious leader didn't like. Did this make early scientists immoral? Of course not!
I'm surprised someone actually got money to research this.
Research is useful even if it's obvious. Previously we couldn't cite anyone if we wanted to say that anons who edit once or twice make good edits. Now, thanks to this research, we can. While it's true that these researchers could spend their time and money in better questions, for example examining P=NP, but this research is still useful, if not for everything else, at least for putting it in the references of some other wiki-related research. Now, if I want to write a paper on wikis, I can cite their research and not have to prove it myself. That's a Good Thing. Spending one's time on ground-breaking research is, of course, The Best Thing, but there is still a need for more mundane research.
The key to useful research is its methodological rigour, rather than its conclusions. Everything that is proven scientifically is good for science... even if it's for some commonly known fact such as that rain comes after seeing dark clouds. We may know something intuitively, but that's not science, and good science must be based solely on scientifically proven facts. Therefore the more facts we prove scientifically, the easier it is to make further advances, and other researchers who will work on ground-breaking research later on can still cite the mundane research instead of spending time formalising and proving trivial facts.
Maybe someone will give me money to research if a lower slashdot ID has a correlation to quality of posts....
I would. It sounds like a good research question, even though there are better things to spend one's time, a paper on this topic could still be useful in further research, for citation purposes (so that I can just cite you instead of proving it myself, it saves me time). If you write an academic-quality paper of 12 pages minimum on this topic using quantifiable methodologies and proper statistical methods and it gets published in a reputable academic well-known open access journal under GFDL or other similar free licence, then I will offer you a symbolical 10 EUR donation via PayPal (and more if the paper results in ground-breaking conclusions), unless this exact question (correlation of slashdot ID age and quality of posts) has been dealt in another paper before. That's a real offer, and if you write and publish the paper then just e-mail me (but as I said, if your paper is qualitative, you get nothing).
It should be said that if you sit down and attempt to write a rigourous paper, you will find it much more difficult than it initially sounds like, even for such a trivial topic. You would first have to define what a high-quality post is, and although the Slashdot moderation system may help a bit, you would have to decide whether it would be correct to assume that all high-quality posts get modded up or whether quality is the same as popularity.
We know what browser, OS, connection speed all of our panel is comprised of
People may have multiple PCs. Many nerds maintain a GNU/Linux (or other OS)-based PC and occasionally dual-boot into Windows, or set their browser's userstring to report MSIE, or use some virtualisation/emulation/rewriten API to run Windows programs, or use a second PC or laptop only for the applications that require Windows. So, you may see 100% Windows, while in fact a large percentage of these users primarily use GNU/Linux and would use it to access your content/sites/whatever if you offered that option. Moreover, many customers purposefully avoid products/sites/etc that are Windows-only, even if they do have access to a Windows PC.
Therefore saying "only 1% of our customers seem to use GNU/Linux, so there's no point supporting it" is wrong. You must support GNU/Linux no matter what your user demographics show.
Believe me, Mac use is barely a blip when you take a balanced sample.
That's a self-selected sample, not a balanced sample. If you have a site/product/program/whatever that is primarily supported on Windows, then mostly Windows users will come and use it, and Mac, GNU/Linux, *BSD and other users will purposefully stay away as much as they can. If you open the doors to alternative OSes you will see that the people who use non-MS OSes are too many.
Here in Greece (EU) 100% tax rate is quite common... I wanted batteries for my Flybook subnotebooks and the local representative company here refused to order batteries for me saying the factory has some problem (don't know if it was true, but I am suspicious). I e-mailed the manufacturer in Taiwan, Dialogue Technology, first to notify them of the local representative's claims, and then to ask to import batteries. When my batteries came from Taiwan (Dialogue was very quick and professional in handling the issue for me), they were kept at the local customs here and upfront payment was required (within 3 days!). How much I paid to the customs? About the same as the cost of the batteries plus shipping! The cost was nearly doubled because of the taxes. I have also paid the same taxes (nearly 100%) for academic books I have imported from USA as well as for scientific-documentary DVDs that aren't available in EU. The funny thing is that the government would make much more money if lowered the import taxes, since a more sensible 20-25% import tax would allow people to import more products and more often.
If ever the US or EU propose a Euro-American customs union, I'll be the first to support it as loudly as I can. With China and other Asian countries becoming more powerful and the US sliding into debt, I don't think a future EU-US-Canada union is inconceivable (although by the time it happens China will be developing much more interesting products, and Taiwan already does!).
I remember not even Win95 could copy lots of files... Win98: The same. Win2k: The same. WinXP: The same. 12 years and still the same problem? I really don't remember about Win3.1 or Win286... If ever the Windows code gets open-sourced, lots of programming hackers are going to laugh for years upon seeing the buggy code, I am sure. How come people now have alternativechoices and still use a buggy closed-source OS is beyond me. Poor Windows users... (happily posting from Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 amd64 etch + some lenny).
A tax is a statement by an armed man: Give me your money (to do what I want with it, which I promise you I will use for good purpose) or I'll imprison you or kill you. Taxes are enforced by violence. If violence is a bad thing, then taxes are bad as well. But just as violence can have positive consequences sometimes, eg if used for self-defence against a criminal when attacked and no other methods are available, likewise taxes can have positive consequences as well (funding hospitals, schools, the necessary minimum of national defence, etc). So, taxes aren't good, but sometimes, especially when the government is ruled by sensible people of integrity and character, they are beneficial, either for the whole society or for specific parts of it.
Taxes, however, is not the only way of funding hospitals, schools, etc. If people were less self-centred and understood that the basis of society is co-operation and that a functional society is the key to the evolution and survival of the human species, people would be more willing to fund hospitals, schools, and any other needed service with donations or some form of gift economy. Another way would be to have everything, including hospitals and universities, act as for-profit enterprises, providing for their own survival in a free market economy.
I personally think donations is the best way to fund something, although I recognise that most people avoid donating and prefer to keep as much as they can for themselves. Actually now with the Internet it seems like evolved persons who understand the importance of making donations can more easily support the projects of their choice. Wikipedia seems to attract a good amount of donations, for example. If more people evolve to the point of understanding that they are not alone in this world and everyone gets access to the Internet, then perhaps one day we may not need taxes anymore and fund all services through donations.
Correction: You can do all of the above, even at sea, as long as you're in range of a cell tower on an island. Also, your speed will be limited by the backhaul connection the tower has available to it.
Yes, of course. No tower, no signal. This is a problem for places where density is low and there are too large bodies of sea with no land in between... but here my local geography is quite the opposite: Generally satisfactory tower density with thousands of islands spread everywhere:)
I have used both EGPRS (2.75G 236kbps) and HSDPA (3.5G 3.6mbps and 1.8mbps), as well as plain GPRS (2.5G 53kbps) and UMTS (3G 384kbps), and according to my personal subjective observations: GPRS sucks big time even for browsing, EGPRS is not very different than UMTS in terms of speed but appears to have lower latency, UMTS really sucks because of too much latency, and HSDPA is heaven, as it has much lower latency than UMTS and much higher bandwidth.
In plain user's terms, according to my experience: With GPRS I can read some pages specially made for mobile devices (eg WAP) and I actually do use it sometimes to quickly read some BBC or other news on my phone while I'm standing in a bus, etc. But when I get only GPRS signal on my laptop then I cannot really do anything except some SSH. I have used EGPRS only briefly, but I can say it's satisfactory both for browsing and for SSH, but not for downloading or uploading. UMTS is not very satisfactory for SSH (high latency), but downloading is so-so (uploading still not good), and Web browsing is usually ok. HSDPA is perfect, as it is very good at SSH (lower latency than UMTS) and Web browsing, and also very good at downloading and uploading as well: You can actually be in the middle of the sea on a ship and transfer all your server backups or download a GNU/Linux distro and burn it while you are on an island or a mountain - provided there is coverage and you have enough batteries with you in your backpack or trolley. You can even use a 3G router to connect your LAN to the mobile network as a backup in case your DSL fails.
I actually many times work out of my home office thanks to mobile networks. I pack a laptop and lots of batteries in a backpack or convertible trolley bag, get a ship, and go to explore various islands while working over the 3G connection. I have even mapped the most significant network blackspots in my usual destinations so that I can avoid them. This mobile lifestyle wouldn't be possible without 3G.
Correct: Im in EU and I have connections with all 3G (1.8-3.6 mbps) operators active in my country, because not a single of them is 100% satisfactory in coverage, and there are many places where no one of them covers at all. As an independent professional, without 3G coverage my performance may suffer, so I have to use multiple carriers to do my work.
The big multinationals can bypass the laws. So, in reality, the only thing these laws do is to make the life difficult for the small guys and make it easier for the government to spy on everyone. Why not have an NGO or citizen organisation supported by our donations instead of government bureucracies and red tape? A law defining the general spirit of privacy and privacy policies and making it easy for people to get entitled to remedies in case of privacy breaches would be enough.
I would very much prefer an NGO or citizen organisation funded by donations to create data protection standards and then choose to shop only from companies bearing the NGO's approval logo. Perhaps the only law that's needed is that every citizen has a right to privacy and their data, and before a transaction customer and company must agree to a contract or policy that defines what is going to happen to the personal data involved. If the company does something against the contract then the customer is entitled to various remedies... that's all, so simple. A simple law defining the general spirit of privacy that society has to provide to its members, another simple law defining the general spirit of privacy policies, and one or more independent NGOs (or even just a wiki where citizens can post their stories) to help customers choose the companies that actually care about privacy. It is, of course, true that even NGOs can be eroded by corporate interests or lose their focus to their mission, but I still see no reason to have a great deal of government data protection laws and red tape.
I, as an individual, prefer to be responsible for protecting my own data, rather than having a government nanny creating huge bureaucracies with great costs and making everyone's life difficult and not necessarily more secure. I really do not know much about this particular law, or whether its change was motivated by some multinational (in which case it's bad) or true concern for the costs to small businesses (which is a valid concern), but speaking generally I distrust data protection laws, as they can be used by governments for purposes other than protecting people's data. Yes, some laws are needed, but not too many. (IANAL)
I wouldn't recommend self study through books, as you have nothing pushing you to do the work, such as assignements
Sometimes assignments hinder learning by making the student focus on them rather than on actual learning. However, people who inherently dislike a subject may learn better by preparing for assignments. If you do enjoy a subject, then you don't need assignments, although they are helpful for gaining certification or recognition for your learning from OU or other university.
Your only problem will be doing the exams if you're not in the UK
Open University (which I do recommend) also organises exams in other parts of Europe, often in hotels.
Do you love and enjoy maths? If not, and you need to know maths, then I suggest enrolling to Open University or other course. Another way is to hire a personal tutor to come at your home every weekend or so and teach you.
If you enjoy maths then you can try with a book. You can also go to Wikiversity.
If you know some computer programming, then you can try writing software using maths. Try developing a small graphical application showing a circle and then attempt to create coloured slices in it by using trigonometry, eg like this. Actually programming is full of mathematics and logic, if you know how to look at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean that it would be possible to use not only a phone but also a 3G/HSDPA laptop while flying?
I do the same, I vote with my euros: I'll fly only if it's needed for very important business reasons*, otherwise I just prefer a ship, a train, a bus, or a car.
* Saying 'I refuse to do that' is too restrictive. I am a pragmatist, and sometimes we do have to do things contrary to our preferences, because the world at large has a different modus operandi. I run Debian GNU/Linux as my primary desktop and workstation OS, and it's the only OS on my PC, but I don't erase the preloaded WinXP from my laptops after I create my GNU/Linux partitions, as having the ability to be 100% compatible with the world at large is still necessary, even though I rarely need to boot into Windows.
Why do you post as an AC, by the way? Freedom is something you must sign with your name and be proud for it. If we have to hide when we talk about freedom, then we have already lost our case.
Talking about freedom in Soviet Russia would guarantee you a visit by the KGB. But here in the West we still have some limited freedom. If you self-censor and hide your head under the sand every time you talk about freedom then you help creating a non-free society. Freedom must be used, otherwise you lose it. It is a responsibility of every responsible free individual to show that they are not afraid to use their names when talking about freedom.
I actually have tried this in my investment strategies. I once tried to go with the flow and lost money. Then I tried to do exactly the opposite, going against the flow, and not only recovered all the money I lost but also got more. Since then, I only go against the flow, and it seems to work okay up to this point, so contrarian investing looks like a reasonable and useful investment strategy, at least according to my experiences.
The book describes market behavior at least as well as Adam Smith's "unseen hand", and may also well describe other aspects of crowd behavior. I had never heard of the "wisdom of crowds" before this posting, but I have heard of the "madness of crowds" for many years.I do some research on swarm intelligence, and from my study I have developed this opinion: When you have a crowd, it can be intelligent if it uses the correct rules of behaviour, but mad if it does not. Birds, bees, ants, and other animals have probably developed the correct rules of behaviour over millions of years, but humans haven't, so many human crowds are mad and stupid. The Internet and other technologies, however, seems to act as an afterburner, helping social evolution proceed much faster, and therefore also assisting crowds to discover the correct rules of behaviour in various settings. So, a crowd using no technology is likely to be mad and stupid as it acts in 'slow speed' mode and behavioural innovations don't pass quickly among members, while a crowd using mobile phones or wikis is likely to get smart quick leveraging on the 'fast speed' mode provided by technology that allows behavioural innovations to pass from member to member at the speed of light.
Well, we talk about healthy people here - serial killers aren't healthy. Moreover, serial killers use violence, it's impossible to say "I don't care what people think about me" if you use violence or otherwise disrupt their right to freedom.
I believe people have a right to do whatever they want, but not disrupt the freedom of others. However, in society, people always create problems for free persons... for example, if you state that you don't believe in God then lots of people will come and try make your life difficult, and in certain nations even the government will have a problem with you. People will use violence to convert you, and if they fail they may kill you. This also happens with very simple things such as clothing: If your clothing is slightly outside what people consider normal, they will create problems for you, even though you never created any problem for them (except in extreme cases).
In short, most of people don't respect your freedom. Even if you create problems for no one, someone is going to try to force you to be what they consider normal.
My answer to this is simple: As long as I don't force my own views on other people, I do what I want and I don't give a fsck what people say or think about me.
Note that I consider it perfectly okay to make people unhappy if their unhappiness is the result of their own failure to understand freedom. For example, I do not like body piercing and when I see people with pierced bodies, I feel uncomfortable, but I never said anything or tried to change the opinions of body piercers. It's their body, after all. Likewise, if I want to be agnostic or atheist I can do so, even though I know that some religious people will feel uncomfortable with my choice.
But saying that a serial killer or other psychopath could say the same thing is not acceptable. They have no right to say that, as they actively seek to damage other people and violate their right to live and be free.
I just wanted to note that I don't know in your particular case how balanced your sample is. If you have used proper statistical methodologies and have taken all variables into account then your sample ought to be really balanced. I have seen, however, many people who come to quick conclusions from incomplete demographics collected in non-scientific ways, so I just wanted to point out this in my message and I was talking mostly generally and not about your case, since I have no data about your case.
If you have published any free whitepaper on this topic I would like to see it, by the way.
And ideally it should still be like this.
Recently, WP is at the stage of more stringent enforcement of policies, as well as guidelines and styleguidesWhich is a very Bad Thing, IMO. Wikipedia is still incomplete, and the more paranoid it becomes about 'protecting' its content, the less contributions it's going to get. There is now too much unnesessary bureaucracy on Wikipedia that makes everyone's life very difficult.
Needless to say, I was talking about papers generally, and I don't necessarily agree or condone the particular paper being discussed here.
I find it strange that it is suggested that logged-in users care about their reputation. I am such a logged-in user and I don't care that much about reputation or what people may think or say about me, even though my Wikipedia account is linked with my real name. I mostly care to improve articles or correct misunderstandings. If I find that in some specific occasion I can make the encyclopedia better at the cost of making 500 people hate me, I won't give a fsck what the people are going to think or say about me, as long as I know very well that my actions are correct. Actually I don't care about reputation in the meatspace, either. I just do what feels good and natural for me. If some people dislike it, that's their problem, not mine, and I don't like changing my behaviour and my personality to suit people's opinions about what is considered socially acceptable or good. For example, in the past it was considered immoral and socially unacceptable not to believe in the church's religion or to believe things that the Pope or other religious leader didn't like. Did this make early scientists immoral? Of course not!
Research is useful even if it's obvious. Previously we couldn't cite anyone if we wanted to say that anons who edit once or twice make good edits. Now, thanks to this research, we can. While it's true that these researchers could spend their time and money in better questions, for example examining P=NP, but this research is still useful, if not for everything else, at least for putting it in the references of some other wiki-related research. Now, if I want to write a paper on wikis, I can cite their research and not have to prove it myself. That's a Good Thing. Spending one's time on ground-breaking research is, of course, The Best Thing, but there is still a need for more mundane research.
The key to useful research is its methodological rigour, rather than its conclusions. Everything that is proven scientifically is good for science... even if it's for some commonly known fact such as that rain comes after seeing dark clouds. We may know something intuitively, but that's not science, and good science must be based solely on scientifically proven facts. Therefore the more facts we prove scientifically, the easier it is to make further advances, and other researchers who will work on ground-breaking research later on can still cite the mundane research instead of spending time formalising and proving trivial facts.
Maybe someone will give me money to research if a lower slashdot ID has a correlation to quality of posts....I would. It sounds like a good research question, even though there are better things to spend one's time, a paper on this topic could still be useful in further research, for citation purposes (so that I can just cite you instead of proving it myself, it saves me time). If you write an academic-quality paper of 12 pages minimum on this topic using quantifiable methodologies and proper statistical methods and it gets published in a reputable academic well-known open access journal under GFDL or other similar free licence, then I will offer you a symbolical 10 EUR donation via PayPal (and more if the paper results in ground-breaking conclusions), unless this exact question (correlation of slashdot ID age and quality of posts) has been dealt in another paper before. That's a real offer, and if you write and publish the paper then just e-mail me (but as I said, if your paper is qualitative, you get nothing).
It should be said that if you sit down and attempt to write a rigourous paper, you will find it much more difficult than it initially sounds like, even for such a trivial topic. You would first have to define what a high-quality post is, and although the Slashdot moderation system may help a bit, you would have to decide whether it would be correct to assume that all high-quality posts get modded up or whether quality is the same as popularity.
People may have multiple PCs. Many nerds maintain a GNU/Linux (or other OS)-based PC and occasionally dual-boot into Windows, or set their browser's userstring to report MSIE, or use some virtualisation/emulation/rewriten API to run Windows programs, or use a second PC or laptop only for the applications that require Windows. So, you may see 100% Windows, while in fact a large percentage of these users primarily use GNU/Linux and would use it to access your content/sites/whatever if you offered that option. Moreover, many customers purposefully avoid products/sites/etc that are Windows-only, even if they do have access to a Windows PC.
Therefore saying "only 1% of our customers seem to use GNU/Linux, so there's no point supporting it" is wrong. You must support GNU/Linux no matter what your user demographics show.
Believe me, Mac use is barely a blip when you take a balanced sample.That's a self-selected sample, not a balanced sample. If you have a site/product/program/whatever that is primarily supported on Windows, then mostly Windows users will come and use it, and Mac, GNU/Linux, *BSD and other users will purposefully stay away as much as they can. If you open the doors to alternative OSes you will see that the people who use non-MS OSes are too many.
CEOs, board members, middle-level managers, and supervisors swear as well, not only employees.
Here in Greece (EU) 100% tax rate is quite common... I wanted batteries for my Flybook subnotebooks and the local representative company here refused to order batteries for me saying the factory has some problem (don't know if it was true, but I am suspicious). I e-mailed the manufacturer in Taiwan, Dialogue Technology, first to notify them of the local representative's claims, and then to ask to import batteries. When my batteries came from Taiwan (Dialogue was very quick and professional in handling the issue for me), they were kept at the local customs here and upfront payment was required (within 3 days!). How much I paid to the customs? About the same as the cost of the batteries plus shipping! The cost was nearly doubled because of the taxes. I have also paid the same taxes (nearly 100%) for academic books I have imported from USA as well as for scientific-documentary DVDs that aren't available in EU. The funny thing is that the government would make much more money if lowered the import taxes, since a more sensible 20-25% import tax would allow people to import more products and more often.
If ever the US or EU propose a Euro-American customs union, I'll be the first to support it as loudly as I can. With China and other Asian countries becoming more powerful and the US sliding into debt, I don't think a future EU-US-Canada union is inconceivable (although by the time it happens China will be developing much more interesting products, and Taiwan already does!).
I remember not even Win95 could copy lots of files... Win98: The same. Win2k: The same. WinXP: The same. 12 years and still the same problem? I really don't remember about Win3.1 or Win286... If ever the Windows code gets open-sourced, lots of programming hackers are going to laugh for years upon seeing the buggy code, I am sure. How come people now have alternative choices and still use a buggy closed-source OS is beyond me. Poor Windows users... (happily posting from Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 amd64 etch + some lenny).
A tax is a statement by an armed man: Give me your money (to do what I want with it, which I promise you I will use for good purpose) or I'll imprison you or kill you. Taxes are enforced by violence. If violence is a bad thing, then taxes are bad as well. But just as violence can have positive consequences sometimes, eg if used for self-defence against a criminal when attacked and no other methods are available, likewise taxes can have positive consequences as well (funding hospitals, schools, the necessary minimum of national defence, etc). So, taxes aren't good, but sometimes, especially when the government is ruled by sensible people of integrity and character, they are beneficial, either for the whole society or for specific parts of it.
Taxes, however, is not the only way of funding hospitals, schools, etc. If people were less self-centred and understood that the basis of society is co-operation and that a functional society is the key to the evolution and survival of the human species, people would be more willing to fund hospitals, schools, and any other needed service with donations or some form of gift economy. Another way would be to have everything, including hospitals and universities, act as for-profit enterprises, providing for their own survival in a free market economy.
I personally think donations is the best way to fund something, although I recognise that most people avoid donating and prefer to keep as much as they can for themselves. Actually now with the Internet it seems like evolved persons who understand the importance of making donations can more easily support the projects of their choice. Wikipedia seems to attract a good amount of donations, for example. If more people evolve to the point of understanding that they are not alone in this world and everyone gets access to the Internet, then perhaps one day we may not need taxes anymore and fund all services through donations.
Companies get open source packages and heavily modify them all the time, often without distributing them.
Many people develop software for the sake of it without distributing it.
If I ever become a pornographer I will distribute all my content under the Ms-PL or Ms-RL.
Yes, of course. No tower, no signal. This is a problem for places where density is low and there are too large bodies of sea with no land in between... but here my local geography is quite the opposite: Generally satisfactory tower density with thousands of islands spread everywhere :)
I have used both EGPRS (2.75G 236kbps) and HSDPA (3.5G 3.6mbps and 1.8mbps), as well as plain GPRS (2.5G 53kbps) and UMTS (3G 384kbps), and according to my personal subjective observations: GPRS sucks big time even for browsing, EGPRS is not very different than UMTS in terms of speed but appears to have lower latency, UMTS really sucks because of too much latency, and HSDPA is heaven, as it has much lower latency than UMTS and much higher bandwidth.
In plain user's terms, according to my experience: With GPRS I can read some pages specially made for mobile devices (eg WAP) and I actually do use it sometimes to quickly read some BBC or other news on my phone while I'm standing in a bus, etc. But when I get only GPRS signal on my laptop then I cannot really do anything except some SSH. I have used EGPRS only briefly, but I can say it's satisfactory both for browsing and for SSH, but not for downloading or uploading. UMTS is not very satisfactory for SSH (high latency), but downloading is so-so (uploading still not good), and Web browsing is usually ok. HSDPA is perfect, as it is very good at SSH (lower latency than UMTS) and Web browsing, and also very good at downloading and uploading as well: You can actually be in the middle of the sea on a ship and transfer all your server backups or download a GNU/Linux distro and burn it while you are on an island or a mountain - provided there is coverage and you have enough batteries with you in your backpack or trolley. You can even use a 3G router to connect your LAN to the mobile network as a backup in case your DSL fails.
I actually many times work out of my home office thanks to mobile networks. I pack a laptop and lots of batteries in a backpack or convertible trolley bag, get a ship, and go to explore various islands while working over the 3G connection. I have even mapped the most significant network blackspots in my usual destinations so that I can avoid them. This mobile lifestyle wouldn't be possible without 3G.
Correct: Im in EU and I have connections with all 3G (1.8-3.6 mbps) operators active in my country, because not a single of them is 100% satisfactory in coverage, and there are many places where no one of them covers at all. As an independent professional, without 3G coverage my performance may suffer, so I have to use multiple carriers to do my work.
The big multinationals can bypass the laws. So, in reality, the only thing these laws do is to make the life difficult for the small guys and make it easier for the government to spy on everyone. Why not have an NGO or citizen organisation supported by our donations instead of government bureucracies and red tape? A law defining the general spirit of privacy and privacy policies and making it easy for people to get entitled to remedies in case of privacy breaches would be enough.
I would very much prefer an NGO or citizen organisation funded by donations to create data protection standards and then choose to shop only from companies bearing the NGO's approval logo. Perhaps the only law that's needed is that every citizen has a right to privacy and their data, and before a transaction customer and company must agree to a contract or policy that defines what is going to happen to the personal data involved. If the company does something against the contract then the customer is entitled to various remedies... that's all, so simple. A simple law defining the general spirit of privacy that society has to provide to its members, another simple law defining the general spirit of privacy policies, and one or more independent NGOs (or even just a wiki where citizens can post their stories) to help customers choose the companies that actually care about privacy. It is, of course, true that even NGOs can be eroded by corporate interests or lose their focus to their mission, but I still see no reason to have a great deal of government data protection laws and red tape.
My wrists yell at me not to believe this study. I'm serious, and actually right now that I type this I'm in pain.
I, as an individual, prefer to be responsible for protecting my own data, rather than having a government nanny creating huge bureaucracies with great costs and making everyone's life difficult and not necessarily more secure. I really do not know much about this particular law, or whether its change was motivated by some multinational (in which case it's bad) or true concern for the costs to small businesses (which is a valid concern), but speaking generally I distrust data protection laws, as they can be used by governments for purposes other than protecting people's data. Yes, some laws are needed, but not too many. (IANAL)
Sometimes assignments hinder learning by making the student focus on them rather than on actual learning. However, people who inherently dislike a subject may learn better by preparing for assignments. If you do enjoy a subject, then you don't need assignments, although they are helpful for gaining certification or recognition for your learning from OU or other university.
Your only problem will be doing the exams if you're not in the UKOpen University (which I do recommend) also organises exams in other parts of Europe, often in hotels.
Do you love and enjoy maths? If not, and you need to know maths, then I suggest enrolling to Open University or other course. Another way is to hire a personal tutor to come at your home every weekend or so and teach you.
If you enjoy maths then you can try with a book. You can also go to Wikiversity.
If you know some computer programming, then you can try writing software using maths. Try developing a small graphical application showing a circle and then attempt to create coloured slices in it by using trigonometry, eg like this. Actually programming is full of mathematics and logic, if you know how to look at it.