I won't argue the storage point, but who uses their phone as an mp3 player? I have an mp3 player for that.
I used to listen to podcasts on my computer, then decided to listen to them on my phone, as I can get them automatically downloaded. Saves a lot of time downloading them myself, and even more time if I had to update an MP3 player every week.
Aside from the main three, you've then got a choice of incoherent extremists (like UKIP, the BNP, or the various Communist variants) or single issue parties (like the Greens or Pirates).
Last I heard the Pirate Party UK were looking to expand their policies, to avoid the single issue problem, and the Greens expanded from a single issue a while ago.
You can put people in your circles that are just email contacts. They'll get invited of course, but you can happily post things to them.
That's part of the problem. If I use G+ and my friend uses G+, let's connect. But if I use G+, and my friend doesn't, I want to be able to tell.
By "they'll get invited" I read "they'll get spammed." I don't like spamming my friends.
Since I couldn't tell through the site who used G+ and who just happened to have some other Google account, I gave up on adding to my circles.
When you post to a circle that has someone not using Google+, it says "Also email X people" as a checkbox option. You could send one post to everyone as a notification of your use (including emailing non-Google+ users), and then uncheck it after that to not bother anyone who didn't create an account. You can choose this on a per-post basis, so you can email everyone not using Google+ again if you are posting something particularly important that you want to share.
A new social network, to topple Facebook, has to both replace Facebook functionally *and* capture a huge number of users across a broad range of social strata. (Just capturing the tech elite and next-best-thing adopters won't cut it anymore due to deep and broad penetration of Facebook.) That's a tall order, even for Google.
Have a look in the "Explore" section of Google+ (I think it used to be called "What's Hot"). The things that are popular is not all tech elite stuff. I would say one of the larger groups of people who use Google+ are people interested in photography, there is a lot about that on there.
Years back when I first joined Facebook, the first thing someone posted on my wall was something on the lines of "This is lame, not as good as MySpace".
But I think the argument falls down for music. Sure, following the 'services' argument, performers can make a living (in theory) by performing the music. But not all song-writers are also performers. So in this case, how would RMS propose that a songwriter get reimbursed? What about the people involved in the production of music, e.g. sound engineers.
Not all music created is created to be sold to consumers directly. For example, if you're producing a play, film, TV series etc., it is likely they you would want some professionals to write and record some songs/music, just like you would want some professional make up artists, professional costume designers, etc.
If that actually happened, then they should have just made it do 23:59:59 twice instead of crashing all the computers. I would like somebody to give me a concrete reason why any computer system should actually crash because of a lost second.
If you send 23:59:59 twice, you have the same second in the system twice, which can potentially cause issues with logs. If everything is timestamped to the second/millisecond, how can you be sure an event happened in the first 23:59:59 second, or the second (or subsequent) 23:59:59 second?
I think your previous requirements are available, possibly in the UK at least:
It would be illegal to have phone contracts longer than 2 months. I know little about the company myself, but a work colleague was telling me this morning about a mobile network that offers one month rolling contracts. I myself have been on Pay-As-You-Go for years, so have never had a contract to worry about having to stick with. As mentioned, I can just put in another SIM card if I decide to. Not a legal requirement, but an available choice for customers.
You could sell a subscriber a phone, but it would be a separate cost Here you can buy phones separately, it doesn't have to be from a carrier. I guess some carriers do sell and bundle phones with contracts, but you can still buy one from someone else if you don't want to do that - again the customer has the choice.
and you must support phones you don't sell. Using SIM cards, carriers do support phones they don't sell, I think they support all phones that accept SIM cards. The SIM card I am using is one I first got back when phones didn't have a colour screen, or a camera, or internet access. The only thing that might stop this would be that some phones from carriers are locked to that carrier (it is possible to unlock them for use on other carriers usually), but the issue there is with the phone not allowing support, as opposed to the carrier not supporting the phone. Again, you can buy unlocked phones.
As mentioned, Ghostery is available in Chrome. So is one called "collusion" that shows you what sites you visit are communication with other ones. There is also a recently added option to "block known tracking sites".
It's not the fact that someone buys scent free stuff. It's the fact that someone changes their behavior. They have figured that in some high percentage of cases, if a customer starts buying scent free detergent, more fruit, and stops buying booze, that person is pregnant.
I would suspect "recently brought pregnancy test" and "stops buying sanitary products" would also be a good indicator.
If he has charges against him, then he should go and fight those charges in court.
Unless something has changed in the last day or so, he doesn't have charges against him.
Before he left the country he asked if he was required for any questioning, and was told that he wasn't and was free to leave the country. So he did. Then someone else took over the case and asked him for him back.
At the same time if Sweden wants to just interview him why not send a couple of officers over to the UK, talk to him and if he is not convincing then extradite him to face charges? However this I can put down to incompetence/bureaucratic stupidity.
Good question. I remember reading that Assange was more than happy to talk to a Swedish investigator in the UK, either by one coming to him, or via video link. For some reason the Swedish investigators did not want to do this.
One of the things _none_ of these bots do well is abstract reasoning. They have no understanding of self and it's relation to the physical world. As such a simple sentence like "If you and I are holding hands, whose hand am I holding?" will send them in to a nonsensical spiral. We are still no-where _near_ a convincing "chat human" and these articles always make it seem like we're but a few short lines of code away from sex bots that can fulfil all our interaction needs.
Try the sentence above with any chatbot you like. It's an instant killer. Hell, I'd be happy if someone would just add it to their "rote replies" DB so it answered correctly. The first time that happens I think I'll call over in amazement.
I tried the question "What is the fourth word in this sentence?", but didn't get a useful response.
For crying out loud, I asked "How old are you?" It said, as expected, "Thirteen".
But when I said "When is your birthday?" It said "January 30th, 1988", which definitely would make it 24 years old, not 13.
I thought one of the first rules you teach kids about using the internet is to not disclose any personal information;-) Remember that some people (not just kids) sign up to things online saying they were born on 1st Janurary 1900 or a similar default date.
The BBC collects its license fee itself. If you don't feel like funding the BBC, don't buy a TV.
Pedantic mode: You need to pay a license if you have any device that you use to watch or record programs as they are being broadcast (which can include computers, phones etc.). You can have a TV and not pay the license fee if you do not use it to watch programs as they are being broadcast - I didn't pay it when I was a student because I only used my TV to watch DVDs and play a games console (I didn't even have an aerial). Source: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-if-a-tv-licence-is-not-needed-top12/
The Russian government likely tells RT what to say. The BBC frequently says things the the UK government doesn't want broadcast and has to take the BBC to court because it has no control over what the BBC says beyond "we might recommend to the independent review body that they cut your funding in 2016".
The BBC is also one of the few places to report on news about criticism to itself. The most recent example if reporting on a story about a presenter of one of its TV shows engaging in tax evasion. Contrast to, for example, newspapers reporting the bad things being uncovered by rival papers in the Levison enquiry, but omitting to mention anything uncovered about themselves.
I guess this is my confusion over the increasing reliance on advertising, and the decreasing educational programming and replacement with reality television over the years.
Have you tried the other BBC channels outside One and Two? I think BBC Four has a lot of the educational stuff now - I may be wrong here, I always go through iPlayer to watch anything, but recently I watched a program where some scientists discussed plans for a probe exploring the solar system, and my partner watched a short series on the role of women in British history. QI is a very popular show (and is on either BBC One or Two) that seems to educate a lot of people.
The greatest achievement, of course, is Underrated Karma. +5 Interesting of +5 Insightful is not that rare. However how often have you seen +5 without a qualifier?
I think Underrated/Overrated karma isn't affected by meta-moderation, so some might use it as a way to try and shape early discussion without risking losing mod points later on when more people read later and moderate correctly.
Hobby Lobby started putting out Christmas decorations this month. In June. I've decided not to shop there until they take them down.
Clintons (a greetings card shop in the UK) had Christmas cards out at the start of this month, which I thought odd, but then I realised that they had recently gone into administration so were probably trying to shift any existing stock they had.
Over the past 18 months or so, I've been watching TNG with my (now) almost-14 year old daughter. To start things off we shot through the first 6 films, then switched to TNG. Having recently finished TNG we've flipped back to the films (from Generations onwards) and are about to watch Insurrection. Due to time constraints (she's also chewing her way through Buffy* plus normal evening TV) we only did 'highlights' of TNG - about 10-12 episodes per season picked by me. I tried to ensure that all the key episodes were watched and that each character had enough screen time to develop over the seven seasons (interestingly, Seasons 6 and 7 are on reflection, almost all about Data).
Her stand-out TNG moment so far are the Four Lights scenes in Chain of Command. Her favourite character is unsurprisingly Data**.
Not sure where to go next to be honest, thinking of doing ENT - mainly because I've only seen it through once, so a revisit would be nice for me too.
As far as Star Trek (2009) stands - I really didn't gel with it. Can't put my finger on what was wrong, but it definitely isn't proper Trek for me.:(
* Thankfully she hates Twilight:D
** SPOILER ALERT: The end of Nemesis is really going to hit her HARD.:/
Oh while, I'm at it - on topic for the OP: Almost 13 years ago I went to a house party. On the shelf there was a limited edition numbered box set of the first 5 Trek films on VHS so I asked whose it was. I'm now rapidly approaching my 10 year wedding anniversary with the owner of those tapes, and she is my soulmate, my inner trill, and a woman who loves Sci-Fi even more than I do.:D
My girlfriend got me into Star Trek with TNG; Data was my favourite too. After that we watched Voyager, which she liked (a show that actually had a strong female lead appealed to her when she was growing up watching it).
I saw Star Trek 2009 once, it seemed very "Star Trek-y" and covered a number of the tropes and interactions that I would have expected, however I thought the plot was rubbish. My girlfriend didn't like it because she said "Kirk kept on getting his ass handed to him", which is unlike what she expects of Kirk, and the big red ball just seemed like a stupid plot device.
It was quite sad. I worked at a place for a while that had a fax service and she was coming in every day looking for her fax from her benefactors. She was doing this for weeks. I tried to get her help, even called the local police and they talked to her, but she was insisting that it was real.
I have a friend who works in a bank, she said they had an old lady come in trying to send money out of the country so someone would send her some purebred cats or something. They tried to tell her it looked a lot like a scam, but she kept on saying she thought it was legitimate (even when the money was to be sent from a different country the cats were coming from). In the end they couldn't really do much as it was her money to send where she wanted.
They would get zero on my business as i would take my business elsewhere if someone tried that stunt with me. It is as bad as demanding i have flash installed to buy stuff, which i also refuse to do, and take my business to their competition.
Remember we are the customer, and we are the reason you exist.
I guess if every IE 7 user does this, the site no longer has to support IE 7 (due to no IE 7 users), which means they don't have to spend extra making their website work in IE 7, so they would still sort of benefit by a reduction in costs.
England doesn't tax its citizens once you have lived abroad for long enough.
I was reading an article that claimed that one wealthy businessperson avoided paying some of their tax in the UK by flying their private plane out over international waters so they could claim they owed less tax because they had resided in the UK for less than some number of days. So it might not even be the living abroad - just the not living in the UK.
What about the UK? I have heard horror stories about their taxes.
I'm a Brit living in the US, and the only tax I pay is to the US government - federal, state and city! Also, the tax system in the UK is considerably easier to operate within as an employee, as your employer handles your deductions and the Inland Revenue calculate how much you owe/are owed. Apart from a few fringe cases, I have never known anyone who was owed money to / was owed money by the Inland Revenue at the end of the year, so I guess the employers know exactly how much to deduct.
I've had money owed to me from the Inland Revenue, and known other who have also been owed. In my case, I worked full time for half a year (and another half of the next tax year), and in each case I paid tax as though I had been working for the whole year (I guess thats just the way the system is set up, I don't know if this is just the company or standard for the UK). I got it back at the end of the tax year (pretty painlessly, I just called up and said I think I paid more tax than I should have done, they checked and sent me a cheque).
Other ways I've known are usually to do with getting the wrong tax code (often being assigned an "emergency" one when starting a new job), someone changed job and their tax code said they were working at two jobs and it took a while for it to be updated.
Now though I haven't had issues with over/under paid tax, but I work full time for the whole year and, like you said, employers know how much to deduct.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know how long the playlist of 16gb of music goes for? Plenty between syncs.
I have my phone set up to download podcasts to listen to. I've not synced the phone in months because it updates itself automatically.
I won't argue the storage point, but who uses their phone as an mp3 player? I have an mp3 player for that.
I used to listen to podcasts on my computer, then decided to listen to them on my phone, as I can get them automatically downloaded. Saves a lot of time downloading them myself, and even more time if I had to update an MP3 player every week.
Why are you searching for expert sex changes?
Well, you wouldn't want an amateur one...
Aside from the main three, you've then got a choice of incoherent extremists (like UKIP, the BNP, or the various Communist variants) or single issue parties (like the Greens or Pirates).
Last I heard the Pirate Party UK were looking to expand their policies, to avoid the single issue problem, and the Greens expanded from a single issue a while ago.
You can put people in your circles that are just email contacts. They'll get invited of course, but you can happily post things to them.
That's part of the problem. If I use G+ and my friend uses G+, let's connect. But if I use G+, and my friend doesn't, I want to be able to tell.
By "they'll get invited" I read "they'll get spammed." I don't like spamming my friends.
Since I couldn't tell through the site who used G+ and who just happened to have some other Google account, I gave up on adding to my circles.
When you post to a circle that has someone not using Google+, it says "Also email X people" as a checkbox option. You could send one post to everyone as a notification of your use (including emailing non-Google+ users), and then uncheck it after that to not bother anyone who didn't create an account. You can choose this on a per-post basis, so you can email everyone not using Google+ again if you are posting something particularly important that you want to share.
A new social network, to topple Facebook, has to both replace Facebook functionally *and* capture a huge number of users across a broad range of social strata. (Just capturing the tech elite and next-best-thing adopters won't cut it anymore due to deep and broad penetration of Facebook.) That's a tall order, even for Google.
Have a look in the "Explore" section of Google+ (I think it used to be called "What's Hot"). The things that are popular is not all tech elite stuff. I would say one of the larger groups of people who use Google+ are people interested in photography, there is a lot about that on there.
Years back when I first joined Facebook, the first thing someone posted on my wall was something on the lines of "This is lame, not as good as MySpace".
But I think the argument falls down for music. Sure, following the 'services' argument, performers can make a living (in theory) by performing the music. But not all song-writers are also performers. So in this case, how would RMS propose that a songwriter get reimbursed? What about the people involved in the production of music, e.g. sound engineers.
Not all music created is created to be sold to consumers directly. For example, if you're producing a play, film, TV series etc., it is likely they you would want some professionals to write and record some songs/music, just like you would want some professional make up artists, professional costume designers, etc.
If that actually happened, then they should have just made it do 23:59:59 twice instead of crashing all the computers. I would like somebody to give me a concrete reason why any computer system should actually crash because of a lost second.
If you send 23:59:59 twice, you have the same second in the system twice, which can potentially cause issues with logs. If everything is timestamped to the second/millisecond, how can you be sure an event happened in the first 23:59:59 second, or the second (or subsequent) 23:59:59 second?
I think your previous requirements are available, possibly in the UK at least:
It would be illegal to have phone contracts longer than 2 months.
I know little about the company myself, but a work colleague was telling me this morning about a mobile network that offers one month rolling contracts. I myself have been on Pay-As-You-Go for years, so have never had a contract to worry about having to stick with. As mentioned, I can just put in another SIM card if I decide to. Not a legal requirement, but an available choice for customers.
You could sell a subscriber a phone, but it would be a separate cost
Here you can buy phones separately, it doesn't have to be from a carrier. I guess some carriers do sell and bundle phones with contracts, but you can still buy one from someone else if you don't want to do that - again the customer has the choice.
and you must support phones you don't sell.
Using SIM cards, carriers do support phones they don't sell, I think they support all phones that accept SIM cards. The SIM card I am using is one I first got back when phones didn't have a colour screen, or a camera, or internet access. The only thing that might stop this would be that some phones from carriers are locked to that carrier (it is possible to unlock them for use on other carriers usually), but the issue there is with the phone not allowing support, as opposed to the carrier not supporting the phone. Again, you can buy unlocked phones.
As mentioned, Ghostery is available in Chrome. So is one called "collusion" that shows you what sites you visit are communication with other ones. There is also a recently added option to "block known tracking sites".
It's not the fact that someone buys scent free stuff. It's the fact that someone changes their behavior. They have figured that in some high percentage of cases, if a customer starts buying scent free detergent, more fruit, and stops buying booze, that person is pregnant.
I would suspect "recently brought pregnancy test" and "stops buying sanitary products" would also be a good indicator.
He's being charged in Sweden, not in the US, and he is almost certainly not going to face US charges.
Is he being charged in Sweden? He was wanted for questioning only the last time I read about this story; no charges had been brought at that time.
If he has charges against him, then he should go and fight those charges in court.
Unless something has changed in the last day or so, he doesn't have charges against him.
Before he left the country he asked if he was required for any questioning, and was told that he wasn't and was free to leave the country. So he did. Then someone else took over the case and asked him for him back.
At the same time if Sweden wants to just interview him why not send a couple of officers over to the UK, talk to him and if he is not convincing then extradite him to face charges? However this I can put down to incompetence/bureaucratic stupidity.
Good question. I remember reading that Assange was more than happy to talk to a Swedish investigator in the UK, either by one coming to him, or via video link. For some reason the Swedish investigators did not want to do this.
One of the things _none_ of these bots do well is abstract reasoning. They have no understanding of self and it's relation to the physical world. As such a simple sentence like "If you and I are holding hands, whose hand am I holding?" will send them in to a nonsensical spiral. We are still no-where _near_ a convincing "chat human" and these articles always make it seem like we're but a few short lines of code away from sex bots that can fulfil all our interaction needs.
Try the sentence above with any chatbot you like. It's an instant killer. Hell, I'd be happy if someone would just add it to their "rote replies" DB so it answered correctly. The first time that happens I think I'll call over in amazement.
I tried the question "What is the fourth word in this sentence?", but didn't get a useful response.
For crying out loud, I asked "How old are you?" It said, as expected, "Thirteen".
But when I said "When is your birthday?" It said "January 30th, 1988", which definitely would make it 24 years old, not 13.
I thought one of the first rules you teach kids about using the internet is to not disclose any personal information ;-) Remember that some people (not just kids) sign up to things online saying they were born on 1st Janurary 1900 or a similar default date.
The BBC collects its license fee itself. If you don't feel like funding the BBC, don't buy a TV.
Pedantic mode: You need to pay a license if you have any device that you use to watch or record programs as they are being broadcast (which can include computers, phones etc.). You can have a TV and not pay the license fee if you do not use it to watch programs as they are being broadcast - I didn't pay it when I was a student because I only used my TV to watch DVDs and play a games console (I didn't even have an aerial). Source: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-if-a-tv-licence-is-not-needed-top12/
The Russian government likely tells RT what to say. The BBC frequently says things the the UK government doesn't want broadcast and has to take the BBC to court because it has no control over what the BBC says beyond "we might recommend to the independent review body that they cut your funding in 2016".
The BBC is also one of the few places to report on news about criticism to itself. The most recent example if reporting on a story about a presenter of one of its TV shows engaging in tax evasion. Contrast to, for example, newspapers reporting the bad things being uncovered by rival papers in the Levison enquiry, but omitting to mention anything uncovered about themselves.
I guess this is my confusion over the increasing reliance on advertising, and the decreasing educational programming and replacement with reality television over the years.
Have you tried the other BBC channels outside One and Two? I think BBC Four has a lot of the educational stuff now - I may be wrong here, I always go through iPlayer to watch anything, but recently I watched a program where some scientists discussed plans for a probe exploring the solar system, and my partner watched a short series on the role of women in British history. QI is a very popular show (and is on either BBC One or Two) that seems to educate a lot of people.
The greatest achievement, of course, is Underrated Karma. +5 Interesting of +5 Insightful is not that rare. However how often have you seen +5 without a qualifier?
I think Underrated/Overrated karma isn't affected by meta-moderation, so some might use it as a way to try and shape early discussion without risking losing mod points later on when more people read later and moderate correctly.
Hobby Lobby started putting out Christmas decorations this month. In June. I've decided not to shop there until they take them down.
Clintons (a greetings card shop in the UK) had Christmas cards out at the start of this month, which I thought odd, but then I realised that they had recently gone into administration so were probably trying to shift any existing stock they had.
Over the past 18 months or so, I've been watching TNG with my (now) almost-14 year old daughter. To start things off we shot through the first 6 films, then switched to TNG. Having recently finished TNG we've flipped back to the films (from Generations onwards) and are about to watch Insurrection. Due to time constraints (she's also chewing her way through Buffy* plus normal evening TV) we only did 'highlights' of TNG - about 10-12 episodes per season picked by me. I tried to ensure that all the key episodes were watched and that each character had enough screen time to develop over the seven seasons (interestingly, Seasons 6 and 7 are on reflection, almost all about Data).
Her stand-out TNG moment so far are the Four Lights scenes in Chain of Command. Her favourite character is unsurprisingly Data**.
Not sure where to go next to be honest, thinking of doing ENT - mainly because I've only seen it through once, so a revisit would be nice for me too.
As far as Star Trek (2009) stands - I really didn't gel with it. Can't put my finger on what was wrong, but it definitely isn't proper Trek for me. :(
* Thankfully she hates Twilight :D
** SPOILER ALERT: The end of Nemesis is really going to hit her HARD. :/
Oh while, I'm at it - on topic for the OP: Almost 13 years ago I went to a house party. On the shelf there was a limited edition numbered box set of the first 5 Trek films on VHS so I asked whose it was. I'm now rapidly approaching my 10 year wedding anniversary with the owner of those tapes, and she is my soulmate, my inner trill, and a woman who loves Sci-Fi even more than I do. :D
My girlfriend got me into Star Trek with TNG; Data was my favourite too. After that we watched Voyager, which she liked (a show that actually had a strong female lead appealed to her when she was growing up watching it).
I saw Star Trek 2009 once, it seemed very "Star Trek-y" and covered a number of the tropes and interactions that I would have expected, however I thought the plot was rubbish. My girlfriend didn't like it because she said "Kirk kept on getting his ass handed to him", which is unlike what she expects of Kirk, and the big red ball just seemed like a stupid plot device.
It was quite sad. I worked at a place for a while that had a fax service and she was coming in every day looking for her fax from her benefactors. She was doing this for weeks. I tried to get her help, even called the local police and they talked to her, but she was insisting that it was real.
I have a friend who works in a bank, she said they had an old lady come in trying to send money out of the country so someone would send her some purebred cats or something. They tried to tell her it looked a lot like a scam, but she kept on saying she thought it was legitimate (even when the money was to be sent from a different country the cats were coming from). In the end they couldn't really do much as it was her money to send where she wanted.
They would get zero on my business as i would take my business elsewhere if someone tried that stunt with me. It is as bad as demanding i have flash installed to buy stuff, which i also refuse to do, and take my business to their competition.
Remember we are the customer, and we are the reason you exist.
I guess if every IE 7 user does this, the site no longer has to support IE 7 (due to no IE 7 users), which means they don't have to spend extra making their website work in IE 7, so they would still sort of benefit by a reduction in costs.
England doesn't tax its citizens once you have lived abroad for long enough.
I was reading an article that claimed that one wealthy businessperson avoided paying some of their tax in the UK by flying their private plane out over international waters so they could claim they owed less tax because they had resided in the UK for less than some number of days. So it might not even be the living abroad - just the not living in the UK.
What about the UK? I have heard horror stories about their taxes.
I'm a Brit living in the US, and the only tax I pay is to the US government - federal, state and city! Also, the tax system in the UK is considerably easier to operate within as an employee, as your employer handles your deductions and the Inland Revenue calculate how much you owe/are owed. Apart from a few fringe cases, I have never known anyone who was owed money to / was owed money by the Inland Revenue at the end of the year, so I guess the employers know exactly how much to deduct.
I've had money owed to me from the Inland Revenue, and known other who have also been owed. In my case, I worked full time for half a year (and another half of the next tax year), and in each case I paid tax as though I had been working for the whole year (I guess thats just the way the system is set up, I don't know if this is just the company or standard for the UK). I got it back at the end of the tax year (pretty painlessly, I just called up and said I think I paid more tax than I should have done, they checked and sent me a cheque).
Other ways I've known are usually to do with getting the wrong tax code (often being assigned an "emergency" one when starting a new job), someone changed job and their tax code said they were working at two jobs and it took a while for it to be updated.
Now though I haven't had issues with over/under paid tax, but I work full time for the whole year and, like you said, employers know how much to deduct.