With our FPTP system, they will be unable to elect any MPs to parliament unless they can get several dozen thousand votes in a single constituency (average of about 70,000 voters per constituency). They need to be number 1 in a race already crammed with popular mainstream parties.
In my current constituency, the winner won with less than 35% of the vote, with under 15,000 votes, so it may be possible to make an impact in hotly contested areas. Maybe not straight away, but even taking votes away from the larger parties will start to get some notice.
However, such a fringe openion will never stand a chance in the 2 party systems of the US and UK.
There are 3 main parties in the UK (not 2, although two are larger than the other one). There are also a number of smaller parties that do get a few seats at elections, particularly for Wales and Scotland. That doesn't mean it is easy for a smaller party to get a seat, however.
Art matters, but not all art matters. The fact that my high school creative writing assignments are lost to the ages will not affect humanity in the slightest. Keeping things just for the sake of keeping them is a waste.
While this may be true now, it might not be in the future. A large quantity of High School assignments might be immensely useful to a future historian or researcher.
Half a century ago the BBC decided that their copies of early episodes of Doctor Who weren't worth keeping. They have since wished that they had kept them. Hindsight is like that.
I'd be all in favour of the Pirate Party to let their representatives vote as they please on issues that do not touch the main topics of the party. But here in Germany, the lack of a "proper programme" and the uncertainty of how the party would vote on other aspects than copyright issues has been one of the big stumbling blocks for the party (that democracy itself might be an issue does not even occur to the people here). The "Pirates" are seen as the ones who "don't have the answers". It's not that other parties would *have* "the answers" (as you see from Merkels course in the past year), but, regrettably, it is important to claim to have them!
The Pirate Party in the UK is currently in the middle of a large policy consultation process where they have asked the wider UK population about issue that are important to them, in order to investigate an expanded base of policies (ones that are both suggested by people and voted on my members, as opposed to just made up to win favours)
In the last elections they were also emphasising the lack of a Party Whip [1], which meant their representatives would be free to actually represent their constituents, and vote how they feel they should.
[1] In UK politics, some parties have something called a Whip which enforces members of a party to vote a certain way (according to the "party line"), even if they otherwise wouldn't.
Many salaried positions actually forbid you from engaging in other work without the company's permission. The idea is that if you are being paid salary, you are on the clock 24/7, so technically you shouldn't be working for anyone else.
(My employer has no such policy, fortunately. But my previous one did.)
I am in a salaried position (in the UK) - they only expect me to work the set hour/week defined in the contract. There was something in the contract about not doing similar work outside of the job, but I checked and that was only if it was specifically related to what I actually do, as opposed to the generic work I do (programming) - so I'm fine to do Open Source coding in my spare time, for example.
The only time I've heard of someone being on the clock "24/7" was as part of being on call (and they got paid extra for it).
So we're reduced to putting in stupid blockquotes so everyone can see who we're replying to.
Using quotes is particuarly handy for meta-moderation, where you are given a random selection of comments, all not within their original context. Quotes somewhat helps this as you can see what is being replied to without having to hunt it down as it can be relevant.
Except in the US of A, where you can be President with less than 50% of the total votes, of course, due to a meaningless system (to the rest of the world, at least) of delegates.
The UK laughs at your 'less than 50%', when its last 'majority' government was elected with around 22% of the votes.
And how many political parties does the UK have?
Three major ones with some smaller ones (in England at least). Scotland and Wales have some of their own parties which are more popular there, but only run there.
Back in UK for Christmas and I was shocked at how long the adverts last. Looking at ITV2 tonight, Oceans Twelve runs from 10pm to 12.30pm. IMDB tells me run time is 125 minutes. So 1/2hr, or 20%, of the film is adverts. Makes it impossible to enjoy a film.
Phillip.
The adverts on shows from the USA are still pretty long. There is a show my girlfriend likes (a BBC show) that lasts for a full hour. As the show was popular, a US company brought the rights to do their version, using the name and format, and one of the conditions of this was that the sows produced by the US company could be shown in the UK.
My girlfriend was watching one of these US versions a month or so ago - the entire show was about 30 minutes (in full, no adverts as it was on the BBC), and every now and then there would be a voice over repeating what had just happened in the last scene that was shown just moments before (it really reminded me of that Mitchell and Webb Gift Shop sketch).
I was about to ask if anyone had a list of places that did this (so I know if I were to go to one whether I needed to turn my phone off or not bring it), but found this in the Guardian article:
However the company refused to say how many shopping centres in the UK used the technology or identify any of those that had installed it. The company only said that it was used in seven countries.
I may see if I can find out about my local one, or just go with a default of not having my phone (either on or with me at all)
He's a subscriber, so it's not surprising he has first post. Is anything even remotely critical of Android on Slashdot these days automatically considered an Apple or MS shill?
The negative moderations of the OP are downright psychotic. There's nothing trollish about it at all, and it's backed by linked evidence. If only the majority of Slashdot comments put in the effort.
It looks suspicious becuase, in an article about having a standard visual appearence, they seem to be talking about hardware fragmentation instead (or at least not really mentioning the visual aspect - i.e. the main point of the article) and mobile web usage.
While it might all be very interesting, in this context it is argubly Offtopic. Not proof of a shill, but that doesn't make it any less offtopic.
The quote at the top was used to indicate that it is somehow going to increase fragmentation, whereas it seems to imply the opposite to me; the developer has more control over what they want their app to look like (either fit into the current phone theme so it doesn't look out of place, or use the standard one so it looks the same on all phones). Both are valid options, depending on how the developer their product to be used.
In order for Google to find a string, rather than having it search for each individual word, you need the quotes. Searching for "paypal sucks", quotes included, yields 187,000 results.
This doesn't invalidate your argument though, seeing as how "paypal is the best", quotes included, yields 32.9 million results.
Even then, it sounds like the start of some marketing blurb that could be duplicated on many sites, something along the likes of "PayPal is the best online payment system..." could be added to instances of a PayPal payment add on for a site (assuming the site operator has just copied and pasted some standard JavaScript or similar).
To be thourough, it would be prudent to search for a variety of phrases and compare them (for example PayPal is the [best|great|awesome] and PayPal [sucks|blows|screwed me|is rubbish|is untrustworthy]) - using quotes included as you pointed out, of course. This would reduce the impact of a bad context (what if a lot of results returned were actually for "PayPal is the best at stealing your money"?), SEO poisoning, cultural/language differences, etc.
And, you can bring it camping or have it in an emergency pack. It might not be immediately useful, but it's great (I expect) if you can plan its usage a day ahead of time.
I use one as an emergency torch (in case there is a power cut for example), just left underneath the window so it gets a lot of sun
I was hoping they would develop a solar powered torchlight!
I've had one of those for years. Solar panel on the torch charges the battery, battery used to light torch when you need to use it. Handy as a general emergency torch around the house so I don't have to worry about finding the batteries are dead if there is a power cut.
I have Pay as you Go (in the UK). I think the way mine works is that it is some charge for data, but the max is £1 per day (i.e. I don't pay more than £1 in a day if I am using it). It is possible to use less than the £1 with light browsing, but I get up to it fairly quickly, and after the £1 limit has been met, you don't pay more but still get to use data (I think there is a max of something like 50MB/day, maybe more, I have only once got close to reaching it). I don't use the internet on my phone too often so I'm sure there are better plans I could be getting, but this seems good enough for my (admitidally fairly light) usage.
Real journalists are supposed to push their own views. That is an integral part of journalism.
The original news link is from the BBC, which is required to be as un-biased as possible when reporting news.
Any bias and pushed viewpoints are from the submitter of the article to slashdot (arguably irrelevant to the actual article and just added to push their viewpoint further). Whether someone who submits a link from an actual news source and adds their own biased commentary to slashdot is a Real journalist is also up for detate (but risks invoking the True Scottsman fallacy)
Then in another 5 years, the fee doubles. 5 more years it doubles again...
Yes, and in practice that means individual authors get 10 years of copyright while cooperations get 70 years (or whatever). I simply don't see how such a scheme could end up not punishing the individual author and have little to no effect on big cooperations.
Depends where the fee goes. It could be set up to fund small/independent arts programs, for example.
they simply could not imagine that a credit card user could have his account set to automatically pay-off in full from a flush bank account.
Actually that's a bad idea. Much better to catch mistakes or fraud before the money's left your account than to have to fight to get it back.
I have something set up like that. The way it works for me is that they take the amount spent on the credit card in that month (say October), and have that as the outstanding amount owed (assuming you don't have anything else owed). You have until the end of the next month before you can start paying it off (and it does not accrue interest in this time), however. So if I buy something in October, it is not paid off until a month or two later (depending on when it was used).
For example, the last time I used my card was the end of November, and all the outstanding amount from that month was only just paid off. This gave me one month (in the case of something brought at the end of November) to check for fraud, and almost two months for something brought at the start of November. There are not many things that I use that I would pay for something and not get it in over a month, so it is adequate time to check for any problems (for me, anyway).
(This is in the UK, so I can't speak for any other countries)
Many of the responses Siri is giving that people call "attitude" or "AI" are actually just hard coded responses to specific questions. I'm pretty fucking sure Google is capable of doing that too.
I thought Google was not just capable but well know for its various Easter Eggs (recently I have seen the search for "let it snow", "do a barrel roll" and the walking directions from The Shire to Mordor)
Why are political donations not anonymous? If the politicians do not know who gave the money, they can not be bribed.
Politician: Hi there, how are you today?
Lobbyist: Oh, I'm fine thanks. By the way, you know that anonymous $50,000 contribution your campaign received last week?
Politician: Yes, what of it?
Lobbyist: If you want another one next month, please vote for $bill.
Lobbyist 2 (later): Oh hi, you know that anonymous $50,000 contribution your campaign received last week?
Politician: Yeah, from Lobbyist1...
Lobbyist 2: Nah, he goes around implying he donated, but actualy doesn't. If you appreciate donations such as that, I would like to talk to you about $bill2...
Nonetheless that means that the bank is storing your password in either plaintext or some form of reversible encryption. Were it hashed on their end they'd only be able to validate the entire password or nothing at all.
Could they encrypt/hash each character separately? So instead of one password field in a database, they have one field for each character of the password. Then each character is matched with the corresponding field. Or would encrypting/hashing a single character make the process fairly pointless? (I'm not a security expert so am mainly asking out of curiosity)
Which is why I DVR the TV shows I like and watch them later while skipping the commercials. One hour TV shows are like 40 minutes (and getting shorter) now.
There is a TV show made by the BBC that my girlfriend likes to watch - it is about an hour long. As it was popular, a USA based series of the show was made in the USA. When shown in the UK (on the BBC), it was half an hour long (and a noticable portion of it was just repeating what was said in the last scene).
I'm with you on that. I was disappointed when I went there and they didn't list all the linux distro's I'm constantly seeding.
I do find it funny though, they do list Pioneer One. That's right, shame on me for sharing a TV show that was made to be shared.
lol.
I didn't think the site was about shaming; reading some of the links on the site (the privacy policy is somewhat amusing) they say they had the idea as a proof of concept, and implemented it to see if it would work, and thought they may as well make it accessible.
I checked the other day when I first saw this, and just now. They didn't have anything for me, even though I have also been sharing the Pioneer One show, and a load of stuff from Jamendo.
"Fresh scans of the missing material have been made by the National Archives of Australia and will be incorporated into the restored episodes ahead of a DVD release."
If they're missing, how can the National Archives of Australia be scanning them?
They were previously missing and now have a better version.
There have also been some of the old missing episodes available online, using photo stills and audio tape recordings of episodes, as opposed to the original broadcast.
Slashdot Mirror
With our FPTP system, they will be unable to elect any MPs to parliament unless they can get several dozen thousand votes in a single constituency (average of about 70,000 voters per constituency). They need to be number 1 in a race already crammed with popular mainstream parties.
In my current constituency, the winner won with less than 35% of the vote, with under 15,000 votes, so it may be possible to make an impact in hotly contested areas. Maybe not straight away, but even taking votes away from the larger parties will start to get some notice.
However, such a fringe openion will never stand a chance in the 2 party systems of the US and UK.
There are 3 main parties in the UK (not 2, although two are larger than the other one). There are also a number of smaller parties that do get a few seats at elections, particularly for Wales and Scotland. That doesn't mean it is easy for a smaller party to get a seat, however.
Art matters, but not all art matters. The fact that my high school creative writing assignments are lost to the ages will not affect humanity in the slightest. Keeping things just for the sake of keeping them is a waste.
While this may be true now, it might not be in the future. A large quantity of High School assignments might be immensely useful to a future historian or researcher.
Half a century ago the BBC decided that their copies of early episodes of Doctor Who weren't worth keeping. They have since wished that they had kept them. Hindsight is like that.
I'd be all in favour of the Pirate Party to let their representatives vote as they please on issues that do not touch the main topics of the party. But here in Germany, the lack of a "proper programme" and the uncertainty of how the party would vote on other aspects than copyright issues has been one of the big stumbling blocks for the party (that democracy itself might be an issue does not even occur to the people here). The "Pirates" are seen as the ones who "don't have the answers". It's not that other parties would *have* "the answers" (as you see from Merkels course in the past year), but, regrettably, it is important to claim to have them!
The Pirate Party in the UK is currently in the middle of a large policy consultation process where they have asked the wider UK population about issue that are important to them, in order to investigate an expanded base of policies (ones that are both suggested by people and voted on my members, as opposed to just made up to win favours)
In the last elections they were also emphasising the lack of a Party Whip [1], which meant their representatives would be free to actually represent their constituents, and vote how they feel they should.
[1] In UK politics, some parties have something called a Whip which enforces members of a party to vote a certain way (according to the "party line"), even if they otherwise wouldn't.
Many salaried positions actually forbid you from engaging in other work without the company's permission. The idea is that if you are being paid salary, you are on the clock 24/7, so technically you shouldn't be working for anyone else.
(My employer has no such policy, fortunately. But my previous one did.)
I am in a salaried position (in the UK) - they only expect me to work the set hour/week defined in the contract. There was something in the contract about not doing similar work outside of the job, but I checked and that was only if it was specifically related to what I actually do, as opposed to the generic work I do (programming) - so I'm fine to do Open Source coding in my spare time, for example.
The only time I've heard of someone being on the clock "24/7" was as part of being on call (and they got paid extra for it).
So we're reduced to putting in stupid blockquotes so everyone can see who we're replying to.
Using quotes is particuarly handy for meta-moderation, where you are given a random selection of comments, all not within their original context. Quotes somewhat helps this as you can see what is being replied to without having to hunt it down as it can be relevant.
Except in the US of A, where you can be President with less than 50% of the total votes, of course, due to a meaningless system (to the rest of the world, at least) of delegates.
The UK laughs at your 'less than 50%', when its last 'majority' government was elected with around 22% of the votes.
And how many political parties does the UK have?
Three major ones with some smaller ones (in England at least). Scotland and Wales have some of their own parties which are more popular there, but only run there.
Back in UK for Christmas and I was shocked at how long the adverts last. Looking at ITV2 tonight, Oceans Twelve runs from 10pm to 12.30pm. IMDB tells me run time is 125 minutes. So 1/2hr, or 20%, of the film is adverts. Makes it impossible to enjoy a film.
Phillip.
The adverts on shows from the USA are still pretty long. There is a show my girlfriend likes (a BBC show) that lasts for a full hour. As the show was popular, a US company brought the rights to do their version, using the name and format, and one of the conditions of this was that the sows produced by the US company could be shown in the UK.
My girlfriend was watching one of these US versions a month or so ago - the entire show was about 30 minutes (in full, no adverts as it was on the BBC), and every now and then there would be a voice over repeating what had just happened in the last scene that was shown just moments before (it really reminded me of that Mitchell and Webb Gift Shop sketch).
It'll get sold to an insurance company eventually. They'll check how much junk you eat, then they'll screw you on your health cover.
Not as much of a problem in the UK, but there are other issues.
I was about to ask if anyone had a list of places that did this (so I know if I were to go to one whether I needed to turn my phone off or not bring it), but found this in the Guardian article:
However the company refused to say how many shopping centres in the UK used the technology or identify any of those that had installed it. The company only said that it was used in seven countries.
I may see if I can find out about my local one, or just go with a default of not having my phone (either on or with me at all)
He's a subscriber, so it's not surprising he has first post. Is anything even remotely critical of Android on Slashdot these days automatically considered an Apple or MS shill?
The negative moderations of the OP are downright psychotic. There's nothing trollish about it at all, and it's backed by linked evidence. If only the majority of Slashdot comments put in the effort.
It looks suspicious becuase, in an article about having a standard visual appearence, they seem to be talking about hardware fragmentation instead (or at least not really mentioning the visual aspect - i.e. the main point of the article) and mobile web usage.
While it might all be very interesting, in this context it is argubly Offtopic. Not proof of a shill, but that doesn't make it any less offtopic.
The quote at the top was used to indicate that it is somehow going to increase fragmentation, whereas it seems to imply the opposite to me; the developer has more control over what they want their app to look like (either fit into the current phone theme so it doesn't look out of place, or use the standard one so it looks the same on all phones). Both are valid options, depending on how the developer their product to be used.
In order for Google to find a string, rather than having it search for each individual word, you need the quotes. Searching for "paypal sucks", quotes included, yields 187,000 results.
This doesn't invalidate your argument though, seeing as how "paypal is the best", quotes included, yields 32.9 million results.
Even then, it sounds like the start of some marketing blurb that could be duplicated on many sites, something along the likes of "PayPal is the best online payment system..." could be added to instances of a PayPal payment add on for a site (assuming the site operator has just copied and pasted some standard JavaScript or similar).
To be thourough, it would be prudent to search for a variety of phrases and compare them (for example PayPal is the [best|great|awesome] and PayPal [sucks|blows|screwed me|is rubbish|is untrustworthy]) - using quotes included as you pointed out, of course. This would reduce the impact of a bad context (what if a lot of results returned were actually for "PayPal is the best at stealing your money"?), SEO poisoning, cultural/language differences, etc.
And, you can bring it camping or have it in an emergency pack. It might not be immediately useful, but it's great (I expect) if you can plan its usage a day ahead of time.
I use one as an emergency torch (in case there is a power cut for example), just left underneath the window so it gets a lot of sun
Oh.
I was hoping they would develop a solar powered torchlight!
I've had one of those for years. Solar panel on the torch charges the battery, battery used to light torch when you need to use it. Handy as a general emergency torch around the house so I don't have to worry about finding the batteries are dead if there is a power cut.
What does pay-as-you-go data run these days?
I have Pay as you Go (in the UK). I think the way mine works is that it is some charge for data, but the max is £1 per day (i.e. I don't pay more than £1 in a day if I am using it). It is possible to use less than the £1 with light browsing, but I get up to it fairly quickly, and after the £1 limit has been met, you don't pay more but still get to use data (I think there is a max of something like 50MB/day, maybe more, I have only once got close to reaching it). I don't use the internet on my phone too often so I'm sure there are better plans I could be getting, but this seems good enough for my (admitidally fairly light) usage.
Real journalists are supposed to push their own views. That is an integral part of journalism.
The original news link is from the BBC, which is required to be as un-biased as possible when reporting news.
Any bias and pushed viewpoints are from the submitter of the article to slashdot (arguably irrelevant to the actual article and just added to push their viewpoint further). Whether someone who submits a link from an actual news source and adds their own biased commentary to slashdot is a Real journalist is also up for detate (but risks invoking the True Scottsman fallacy)
Then in another 5 years, the fee doubles. 5 more years it doubles again...
Yes, and in practice that means individual authors get 10 years of copyright while cooperations get 70 years (or whatever). I simply don't see how such a scheme could end up not punishing the individual author and have little to no effect on big cooperations.
Depends where the fee goes. It could be set up to fund small/independent arts programs, for example.
Actually that's a bad idea. Much better to catch mistakes or fraud before the money's left your account than to have to fight to get it back.
I have something set up like that. The way it works for me is that they take the amount spent on the credit card in that month (say October), and have that as the outstanding amount owed (assuming you don't have anything else owed). You have until the end of the next month before you can start paying it off (and it does not accrue interest in this time), however. So if I buy something in October, it is not paid off until a month or two later (depending on when it was used).
For example, the last time I used my card was the end of November, and all the outstanding amount from that month was only just paid off. This gave me one month (in the case of something brought at the end of November) to check for fraud, and almost two months for something brought at the start of November. There are not many things that I use that I would pay for something and not get it in over a month, so it is adequate time to check for any problems (for me, anyway).
(This is in the UK, so I can't speak for any other countries)
Many of the responses Siri is giving that people call "attitude" or "AI" are actually just hard coded responses to specific questions. I'm pretty fucking sure Google is capable of doing that too.
I thought Google was not just capable but well know for its various Easter Eggs (recently I have seen the search for "let it snow", "do a barrel roll" and the walking directions from The Shire to Mordor)
Why are political donations not anonymous? If the politicians do not know who gave the money, they can not be bribed.
Politician: Hi there, how are you today?
Lobbyist: Oh, I'm fine thanks. By the way, you know that anonymous $50,000 contribution your campaign received last week?
Politician: Yes, what of it?
Lobbyist: If you want another one next month, please vote for $bill.
Lobbyist 2 (later): Oh hi, you know that anonymous $50,000 contribution your campaign received last week?
Politician: Yeah, from Lobbyist1...
Lobbyist 2: Nah, he goes around implying he donated, but actualy doesn't. If you appreciate donations such as that, I would like to talk to you about $bill2...
OK, that makes sense, thank you for the insight :)
Nonetheless that means that the bank is storing your password in either plaintext or some form of reversible encryption. Were it hashed on their end they'd only be able to validate the entire password or nothing at all.
Could they encrypt/hash each character separately? So instead of one password field in a database, they have one field for each character of the password. Then each character is matched with the corresponding field. Or would encrypting/hashing a single character make the process fairly pointless? (I'm not a security expert so am mainly asking out of curiosity)
Which is why I DVR the TV shows I like and watch them later while skipping the commercials. One hour TV shows are like 40 minutes (and getting shorter) now.
There is a TV show made by the BBC that my girlfriend likes to watch - it is about an hour long. As it was popular, a USA based series of the show was made in the USA. When shown in the UK (on the BBC), it was half an hour long (and a noticable portion of it was just repeating what was said in the last scene).
I'm with you on that. I was disappointed when I went there and they didn't list all the linux distro's I'm constantly seeding. I do find it funny though, they do list Pioneer One. That's right, shame on me for sharing a TV show that was made to be shared. lol.
I didn't think the site was about shaming; reading some of the links on the site (the privacy policy is somewhat amusing) they say they had the idea as a proof of concept, and implemented it to see if it would work, and thought they may as well make it accessible.
I checked the other day when I first saw this, and just now. They didn't have anything for me, even though I have also been sharing the Pioneer One show, and a load of stuff from Jamendo.
"Fresh scans of the missing material have been made by the National Archives of Australia and will be incorporated into the restored episodes ahead of a DVD release."
If they're missing, how can the National Archives of Australia be scanning them?
They were previously missing and now have a better version.
There have also been some of the old missing episodes available online, using photo stills and audio tape recordings of episodes, as opposed to the original broadcast.