Fair comment, but that's because our health-care system is knackered and has been run into the ground by the government for years. Nothing to do with the information systems, everything to do with under-funding and heavy-handed, bureaucratic micro-management, usually based on political knee-jerk responses to the latest media orgy.
Any UK resident who's had dealings with the NHS (National Health Service) will tell you the same: no problems with records, information management or any of that. It's just the provision and availability that's a post-code (zip-code) lottery. Don't even get me started on trying to find a dentist in this country...
This has been in place in many other countries for years, including the UK where - for all the bureaucracy and wastage of the NPfIT initiative - it's been largely successful.
The system isn't perfect, and human error is the main source of problems and breaches (as ever), but the benefits have so vastly outweighed the risks that I'm surprised this is even being debated.
Most importantly, all the problems envisaged by critics have already been anticipated, encountered and (largely) overcome in other countries. Take a look outside your borders and learn a few things. Find out what works and what doesn't, and use the mistakes of others to build a better system. Just don't start panicking over nothing. This is not a pioneering initiative, in global terms.
Fully concur with your first paragraph - the summary doesn't mention that key fact; the article is about British telecomms only.
How that leads into your second paragraph, though, is quite beyond me. Whoever posted (or edited) the summary was stupidly vague, but the article itself - and the reporter - is quite clear about the location of the services in question, even though it's a UK tech-site to begin with.
I'm not suggesting reporters on this side of the pond never make the arrogant mistakes to which you allude, but I'd say the article refutes rather than supports your posit.
How many stories like this do we have to read? When will the internets finally be recognised as a medium rather than an entity?
As soon as government agencies begin to properly recognise this fact, they will be able to operate within the medium, making use of its strengths and weaknesses, instead of fearing it the whole damned time. Did it never occur that social networking sites offer an excellent means of infiltrating "would-be terrorist" networks? Anonymity works both ways.
This discussion says a lot about the cultural bias of/.
I recall a study on car-purchasing preference in Japan, and "facial expression" came up a lot. I forget the exact details of the study but a quick Google will show you that this is not a new idea by any stretch.
Anyway, the result was a strong preference among the Japanese for cars with a "cute" or "friendly" expression. This is why Toyotas tend to have upturned front grilles - it looks like a smile. Hence it is less popular in the west. In eastern countries it is very popular, for exactly the same reason.
So yeah, 40 people, in one western country. I don't even know why I'm bothering to grace it with a reply...
Good questions, I agree. Still, solar generation requires no additional material once it's going - how often would you have to supply fissile material to a fusion reactor? What if the launch is delayed/fails? Does that mean a moon-base full of people with bad haircuts and skin-tight body-suits will freeze to death? You could keep shipping solar arrays up along with the rest of the constructions, such that energy supply scales permanently with demand.
I appreciate there are issues with solar, but aren't they dwarfed by the issues around fission?
I'm hoping someone can explain to me why the far better-established and easily-maintained option of Solar Power isn't first on the list.
I mean: negligible atmosphere, established support-structure (the ground), 100% predictable yield, negligible material costs after setup, and land-area isn't such a big issue... can't really think of a better case for it.
I know they produce stylish, compact and inexpensive wall-linings for fusion reactors, but the self-assembly is a fucking nightmare, and you always end up spending at least fifty quid on candles too.
IANAHistorian, but I've been given to understand that faith wasn't diminished by the Black Death, and you'd be hard pressed in the centuries that followed to find anyone in Britain who professed anything other than Christian faith. If anything people became more devout during and after the event - as tends to happen during any crisis. Consider that those who survived probably considered their survival a miracle in the first place...
My understanding is that the economic impact of massive devastation to the working population was the real cause of change. Church and State were almost one and the same during that time, and so the church wielded an incredible amount of power over the daily material lives of the commoners. All land was owned either by the church or by nobles who were closely tied to it, and all workers were essentially beholden to the land-owners to earn a living, grow food etc - and the land-owners pretty much dictated the law and punishment too.
When the population suddenly declined (about a third was lost), there were not enough workers to work the land and such. The balance of power shifted - not massively, but perceptibly - towards the workers. The iron grip was relaxed slightly, and this is what caused the increase in rebellion and unrest. Faith had not diminished, but the power to enforce arbitrary rule had.
It wasn't that the events had shaken people's faith and made them dissatisfied - no doubt they always felt that way. It was that the church/state was somewhat less able to repress their will.
I played DF (and TLJ) for the first time over the last week, and the story - especially in Dreamfall - was one of the most impressive qualities.
However, I have one serious criticism: for every minute of cutscene, there were maybe two minutes of gameplay - and this high level of hand-holding increased towards the end. Pretty much the entire last 20-30 minutes of the game was cut-scene, and I quickly lost the sense of immersion and attachment I'd tried to build up.
Seriously, there was a small handful of creative problem-solving set pieces, and most of the rest was either cut-scene or entirely prescriptive "gameplay". Given that it wasn't a long game, it ended up feeling as though someone had written a script for a film, and then tried to cram a game in the edges. Which was a shame, because the engine and dynamics were superb.
So while I won't criticise Tornquist's ability to tell a good story or create a compelling character, I would seriously question his authority on having the story "interact with other aspects of the game".
The problem is not that they WILL inspect all data, but that they CAN. Once it's enshrined in law that the govt has the right to snoop on every communication you have, you have no comeback. It's a significant step - some might say THE step - towards a totalitarian police-state.
It's not unfeasible for the government to start maintaining an SMS-text dossier on every citizen, for example - just try encrypting those. And that's just with current technology. The proposal will only become more invasive and far-reaching in its consequences as monitoring and data-interrogation technology improves.
To be frank; as a UK resident, this scares the shit out of me.
Ooookay, anyone getting a "Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex" vibe from this whole thread? Seriously, if you were all in a virtual-reality chat room instead of/. this would be the Laughing Man discussion down to a T...
I agree that Banks does everything with superlative talent: the dwarfing sense of scale in Feersum Enjinn was overpowering; the incredibly funny hiatus of "Absence of Gravitas" in Look To Windward is brilliant comic relief; the sickeningly, subtly dark themes of Use Of Weapons still give me chills and make it one of my favourite books of all time.
Something I think should be said of almost all of Banks' novels, sci-fi or otherwise, is that he expertly uses mystery as an enticement. There is always some puzzle, some incongruity in the plot that is revealed spectacularly at the end, and usually brings the whole book into a new focus. Some people may find that gimmicky, but for me it's what makes his writing so addictive.
Banks is a profoundly intelligent author, whose prose, plots, pace and characters make the act of reading a significant pleasure. I'm really looking forward to Matter.
If a government wants to introduce something like this against opposition, they simply have to make it non-compulsory but inconvenient NOT to adopt the measure.
You can get about without a passport or driving license, you can purchase goods without using your SmartCard - but why make life so difficult for yourself when, with just a couple of concessionary biometric measures, you can take the easy path?
There's never any need to convince the masses that something is a good idea; just convince the individual that it's not worth fighting.
Am I preaching? Hell no. When these things get introduced in the UK I'll grumble like hell and offer my vocal support to anyone who opposes the new identity scheme (whatever guise it eventually takes), but at the end of the day...
Is anyone surprised by this "revelation"? How many of the great innovations of their time were invented by two or more parties, completely independently and almost simultaneously? Powered flight, steam-engines, internal combustion engine, radio transmission...
Quite apart from the "10% inspiration, 90% perspiration" adage, most of the big technological advances are widely understood to have come about simply because it was their time - the foundations were in place, the need was there, and one of society's more creative and industrious members put the two together. That's called progress, people.
A third-party HL2 mod/level that demonstrated impeccable level design was Minerva. People may wax lyrical about the feel and flow of the gameplay, but the physical layout for this was astounding.
Every nook and cranny of the layout was used superbly. When you see the actual map for the level(s), you realise just how small it is and think "No way - I spent a fantastic hour in that room..."
Modability, fine - if people want to fuck about with the game after they've bought it, that's their choice. Maybe good things will come of it, I dunno.
But online multiplay? For Deus Ex?? There are good online mulitplayers, and then there is Deus Ex. One of the reasons the original was so good is that it was such an intensely protagonist-driven FPS, with massive scope for different, less combative styles of play. An absolutely critical element was that you got to generate your own unfair advantages - many of them non-combat biased - by making intelligent choices. Trying to shoe-horn decent MP into that idea would break one or the other - they're just so profoundly incompatible.
I appreciate that MP is popular, enduring, en-vogue, but seriously, it has its place!
Slashdot Mirror
Fair comment, but that's because our health-care system is knackered and has been run into the ground by the government for years. Nothing to do with the information systems, everything to do with under-funding and heavy-handed, bureaucratic micro-management, usually based on political knee-jerk responses to the latest media orgy.
Any UK resident who's had dealings with the NHS (National Health Service) will tell you the same: no problems with records, information management or any of that. It's just the provision and availability that's a post-code (zip-code) lottery. Don't even get me started on trying to find a dentist in this country...
I use Lego rather than Duplo. Compatibility with my existing devices may be a problem.
[Insert distro "build" pun here]
This has been in place in many other countries for years, including the UK where - for all the bureaucracy and wastage of the NPfIT initiative - it's been largely successful.
The system isn't perfect, and human error is the main source of problems and breaches (as ever), but the benefits have so vastly outweighed the risks that I'm surprised this is even being debated.
Most importantly, all the problems envisaged by critics have already been anticipated, encountered and (largely) overcome in other countries. Take a look outside your borders and learn a few things. Find out what works and what doesn't, and use the mistakes of others to build a better system. Just don't start panicking over nothing. This is not a pioneering initiative, in global terms.
You mean something like this?
Jacqui Smith can go to hell - I can just imagine her eyes lighting up as she read 1984...
Fully concur with your first paragraph - the summary doesn't mention that key fact; the article is about British telecomms only.
How that leads into your second paragraph, though, is quite beyond me. Whoever posted (or edited) the summary was stupidly vague, but the article itself - and the reporter - is quite clear about the location of the services in question, even though it's a UK tech-site to begin with.
I'm not suggesting reporters on this side of the pond never make the arrogant mistakes to which you allude, but I'd say the article refutes rather than supports your posit.
How many stories like this do we have to read? When will the internets finally be recognised as a medium rather than an entity?
As soon as government agencies begin to properly recognise this fact, they will be able to operate within the medium, making use of its strengths and weaknesses, instead of fearing it the whole damned time. Did it never occur that social networking sites offer an excellent means of infiltrating "would-be terrorist" networks? Anonymity works both ways.
Just my 0.02.
This discussion says a lot about the cultural bias of /.
I recall a study on car-purchasing preference in Japan, and "facial expression" came up a lot. I forget the exact details of the study but a quick Google will show you that this is not a new idea by any stretch.
Anyway, the result was a strong preference among the Japanese for cars with a "cute" or "friendly" expression. This is why Toyotas tend to have upturned front grilles - it looks like a smile. Hence it is less popular in the west. In eastern countries it is very popular, for exactly the same reason.
So yeah, 40 people, in one western country. I don't even know why I'm bothering to grace it with a reply...
Good questions, I agree. Still, solar generation requires no additional material once it's going - how often would you have to supply fissile material to a fusion reactor? What if the launch is delayed/fails? Does that mean a moon-base full of people with bad haircuts and skin-tight body-suits will freeze to death? You could keep shipping solar arrays up along with the rest of the constructions, such that energy supply scales permanently with demand.
I appreciate there are issues with solar, but aren't they dwarfed by the issues around fission?
I'm hoping someone can explain to me why the far better-established and easily-maintained option of Solar Power isn't first on the list.
I mean: negligible atmosphere, established support-structure (the ground), 100% predictable yield, negligible material costs after setup, and land-area isn't such a big issue... can't really think of a better case for it.
I know they produce stylish, compact and inexpensive wall-linings for fusion reactors, but the self-assembly is a fucking nightmare, and you always end up spending at least fifty quid on candles too.
IANAHistorian, but I've been given to understand that faith wasn't diminished by the Black Death, and you'd be hard pressed in the centuries that followed to find anyone in Britain who professed anything other than Christian faith. If anything people became more devout during and after the event - as tends to happen during any crisis. Consider that those who survived probably considered their survival a miracle in the first place...
My understanding is that the economic impact of massive devastation to the working population was the real cause of change. Church and State were almost one and the same during that time, and so the church wielded an incredible amount of power over the daily material lives of the commoners. All land was owned either by the church or by nobles who were closely tied to it, and all workers were essentially beholden to the land-owners to earn a living, grow food etc - and the land-owners pretty much dictated the law and punishment too.
When the population suddenly declined (about a third was lost), there were not enough workers to work the land and such. The balance of power shifted - not massively, but perceptibly - towards the workers. The iron grip was relaxed slightly, and this is what caused the increase in rebellion and unrest. Faith had not diminished, but the power to enforce arbitrary rule had.
It wasn't that the events had shaken people's faith and made them dissatisfied - no doubt they always felt that way. It was that the church/state was somewhat less able to repress their will.
Already been suggested by Ofcom's Consumer Panel for exactly those reasons.
However, I have one serious criticism: for every minute of cutscene, there were maybe two minutes of gameplay - and this high level of hand-holding increased towards the end. Pretty much the entire last 20-30 minutes of the game was cut-scene, and I quickly lost the sense of immersion and attachment I'd tried to build up.
Seriously, there was a small handful of creative problem-solving set pieces, and most of the rest was either cut-scene or entirely prescriptive "gameplay". Given that it wasn't a long game, it ended up feeling as though someone had written a script for a film, and then tried to cram a game in the edges. Which was a shame, because the engine and dynamics were superb.
So while I won't criticise Tornquist's ability to tell a good story or create a compelling character, I would seriously question his authority on having the story "interact with other aspects of the game".
It's not unfeasible for the government to start maintaining an SMS-text dossier on every citizen, for example - just try encrypting those. And that's just with current technology. The proposal will only become more invasive and far-reaching in its consequences as monitoring and data-interrogation technology improves.
To be frank; as a UK resident, this scares the shit out of me.
Ooookay, anyone getting a "Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex" vibe from this whole thread? Seriously, if you were all in a virtual-reality chat room instead of /. this would be the Laughing Man discussion down to a T...
It was Against a Dark Background.
I agree that Banks does everything with superlative talent: the dwarfing sense of scale in Feersum Enjinn was overpowering; the incredibly funny hiatus of "Absence of Gravitas" in Look To Windward is brilliant comic relief; the sickeningly, subtly dark themes of Use Of Weapons still give me chills and make it one of my favourite books of all time.
Something I think should be said of almost all of Banks' novels, sci-fi or otherwise, is that he expertly uses mystery as an enticement. There is always some puzzle, some incongruity in the plot that is revealed spectacularly at the end, and usually brings the whole book into a new focus. Some people may find that gimmicky, but for me it's what makes his writing so addictive.
Banks is a profoundly intelligent author, whose prose, plots, pace and characters make the act of reading a significant pleasure. I'm really looking forward to Matter.
Ornithopters are 0/2 Flying Artifacts, so they don't have any offensive capability as they are...
Ah, sorry, wrong geek-culture.
You can get about without a passport or driving license, you can purchase goods without using your SmartCard - but why make life so difficult for yourself when, with just a couple of concessionary biometric measures, you can take the easy path?
There's never any need to convince the masses that something is a good idea; just convince the individual that it's not worth fighting.
Am I preaching? Hell no. When these things get introduced in the UK I'll grumble like hell and offer my vocal support to anyone who opposes the new identity scheme (whatever guise it eventually takes), but at the end of the day...
It gave me the confidence I needed to make the switch, and I think it'll do the same for you...
Quite apart from the "10% inspiration, 90% perspiration" adage, most of the big technological advances are widely understood to have come about simply because it was their time - the foundations were in place, the need was there, and one of society's more creative and industrious members put the two together. That's called progress, people.
Every nook and cranny of the layout was used superbly. When you see the actual map for the level(s), you realise just how small it is and think "No way - I spent a fantastic hour in that room..."
Just sayin'.
Modability, fine - if people want to fuck about with the game after they've bought it, that's their choice. Maybe good things will come of it, I dunno.
But online multiplay? For Deus Ex?? There are good online mulitplayers, and then there is Deus Ex. One of the reasons the original was so good is that it was such an intensely protagonist-driven FPS, with massive scope for different, less combative styles of play. An absolutely critical element was that you got to generate your own unfair advantages - many of them non-combat biased - by making intelligent choices. Trying to shoe-horn decent MP into that idea would break one or the other - they're just so profoundly incompatible.
I appreciate that MP is popular, enduring, en-vogue, but seriously, it has its place!
Who goes out of their way to rate "Anal Whores 3" online?
Which is actually a really good answer. Smacks of "Evolution versus Intelligent Design".