I left Australia coming up on 2 years ago, so maybe things have changed, but Optus cable always seemed very good to me. Speeds were consistently reasonable (approx 10Mbit down, 1.5Mbit up), price was $69.95 a month, and it was capped to 12GB a month (with a "bonus" 24GB for offpeak, so if I wanted to download something big, I'd do it off peak, giving me effectively 36GB a month if managed properly). Only downloads were counted towards the limit - uploads were unlimited. If I went over the limit (the 12GB OR the 24GB) my speed would be throttled to theoretically 64Kbit (however NO extra charge), but due to very low latency, it didn't feel too bad unless downloading big stuff (I'd actually actively try to hit my limit every month at around the 29th or so). If I hit the limit early, I'd just call them and get upgraded to the next plan up for that month only (an extra $30 or so, for a fair few more GB).
Now, my plan here in Germany is far superior due to no caps, faster speed and lower price, so I can't really say I'm missing what I had with Optus, but it definitely seems better than that deal you describe on their "Yes Fusion" plan... Can there really be that much discrepancy between their plans? Or have they just gone completely evil and no longer offer the kind of plan I had?
(just to note: I lived in a house in Sydney (Chatswood to be precise), and so getting cable was no problem... I believe it's not so easy in an apartment or some other suburbs/cities)
I, like the GP, also do not own a TV. I DO own a USB TV tuner, but I haven't connected it since I bought it (which I actually did to prove to a friend he didn't need to buy the expensive "Mac" version - the "Windows" version works fine on my Mac).
I actually find the Onion article linked to be quite thought provoking... certainly, the fictional guy they're describing is a complete arse for always going out of his way to mention that he doesn't watch TV, but somehow I still sympathise with the guy anyway. I find it insulting when people expect me to be intimately familiar with celebrities lives (I REALLY don't give a flying fuck), and just annoying when people say things like, "yeh, this is just like that situation on xyz TV show, we should use their solution to this problem!" (ummm... I haven't seen it, please explain the solution...)
The point at the end of the article about five entire days out of a month being wasted watching TV if you watch four hours a day is also quite relevant. There ARE much better things you could do with your time. I recently quit smoking, and any arguments for "it being okay to watch excessive amounts of TV" (note: "excessive amounts") sound very much like my own arguments about why "it was okay for me to smoke" - perhaps there is more than a dot of truth in the whole "TV is an addiction" thing. (and before anyone says that my smoking hurt others as well, whereas excessive TV only harms oneself - I have two points: 1. I never cared that my smoking could harm others; 2. A world of fat, lazy couch potatoes DOES affect me in that the world around me isn't as good as it could be)
(I just re-read the above and I'm not making myself very clear, but nicotine withdrawals are kinda messing with me, and I think MAYBE it's clear enough... please consider all of the above in the context of the rest of it - out of context quotations are almost certain to give a different meaning than was my intention)
Parent is an AC, so may not be noticed by many... just want to voice my logged in agreement.
Take a hallucinate drug (LSD/Psilocybin/Mescaline/...) once or twice a year. Feeds your brain with new exciting information, possibly making it a bit more alert.
Definitely worth doing, however I think the term "feeds your brain with new exciting information" is a little misleading. It's better to say that it gives you new ways to look at things and encourages thinking about things, which is good mental exercise.
Well, if you're still "learning" C#, then there's a good chance that 99.9% of what you're writing will already run flawlessly under mono. It's not until you start doing a lot of tricky and OS specific things that compatibility breaks. Simple thing to do: Download the VMWare image of Suse with Mono installed (or install Mono yourself on a Linux or Mac system) and then just try to run your compiled.NET apps directly. There really isn't much more to it than that.
Tips for maintaining cross platform compatibility in general:
Avoid using hardcoded paths - System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.foo) is useful
Along the same lines, avoid using hardcoded slash or backslash when dealing with paths - System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar should be used instead
Avoid using the Windows registry, Microsoft.Win32.Registry (or anything in the "Microsoft" namespace for that matter)
(obviously) avoid calling native platform libraries - stick to pure.NET (things designed around a specific platform but "usable" on other platforms such as UI stuff (like System.Windows.Forms or GTK#) are okay, but it's good to keep those parts of your code as separate as possible from the "meat" of the program so it is easier to replace them later for a more native feel if you want to)
If using System.Windows.Forms for your UI (i.e. anything you build in the Visual Studio designer bit), keep your Windows controls as "standard" as possible (drag/drop/edit properties) - don't use too much custom stuff (controls you've designed yourself, or highly modified forms of existing controls), since that tends to look worse on other platforms.
I haven't noticed the tableLayout issues you describe, but actually it could be because out of the MANY.NET GUI apps I've written, I've used tableLayout exactly once (and that was in a beta of a project - I got rid of it by release)... but if you're really paranoid about it, just develop using GTK#, and then you don't have to worry about WinForms stuff at all. I do generally use WinForms though as most of the end users of my programs will be on Windows. For cases where I expect users to use something else, I'll do another front end in GTK# (and I've been looking closely at Cocoa# as well), but even for the apps where I don't expect users to use anything but Windows, I'll still run compatibility checks and make release notes about my apps under both MacOSX and a Linux system I have for that purpose.
The problem with nutjob conspiracy theories like "Chemtrails" is that no matter what you do, they'll just revise the theory. If we create a system for getting rid of contrails, they'll just say that the government is now trying to "hide" the chemtrails by making them invisible, but they're still there!
I certainly wouldn't be going alone... this is under the assumption that a small "colony" or research group (at least 20 people, but over 100 preferred) is forming and I get to be a part of it. While it would be my LAST ever move, it'd be big enough that I think I'd be okay with that. One last new group of people to get to know, and a new "culture" would definitely form pretty quickly I'd say.
Moving letters around on the screen (especially once they start wiggling and shifting away from you, and let's face it: everyone hates it when that starts)
Dear god yes... it tends to mean someone slipped acid in to my coffee cup at work again. (actually, not kidding on the "again" part - it has happened to me before!)
Sharks don't have nipples... but if they did, we could probably assume them to be a similar size to the nipples of mammals around their size. A quick check reveals that to be around 1cm "tall" at most, but more generally around 0.8cm. So, you're saying that before I was 24cm long, I was taught about LoCs vs CoLAs? I really doubt that! MAYBE before I was 125 shark nipples high, but that's pretty borderline there.
Yeh, just look how quickly Australia became a republic free from Great Britain's influence~
Of course, even if they were to form a separate nation - no big deal. The Australia comment was sarcasm (hence the sarcasm punctuation), but despite not being "truly" independent, they pretty much are for all reasonable intents and purposes. Their independence hasn't really caused any major problems for the world and I don't see that it'd be any different for a Mars colony. Whether they gain independence through violence or politics is largely irrelevant and we'd just end up with one more nation in our (now interplanetary) civilisation.
All that is rather an aside from the point though - I don't think we'd need to "use" anyone for colonisation... we could just ask, "hey, who wants to go?" and there'll be PLENTY of volunteers. Even though I'd never see anyone I know again, I'd jump at the chance (I've already lived in 5 different countries in my life and pretty much "started again" several times... a new planet is just the next big step from that).
Your choice, on the other hand, is not to use those products if you don't agree with the terms.
Actually, there are many more choices also open to those who do not agree with the terms, such as ignoring the terms, circumventing the protection and then having a large party where everyone runs around singing "DRM Suckxorz".
That was a little tongue-in-cheek perhaps, but really, I agree with you that it absolutely IS the media industry's choice on how to sell their product, but you seem to think that means people should either "accept it and buy the product if they want it" or "not accept it and have nothing to do with the product" - those aren't the only two choices available...
I don't believe in fairies! I don't believe in fairies! I don't believe in fairies! I don't believe in fairies!
(Now, for the theory of Fairy extinction: there used to really be fairies, but they had the best farmland and above actually worked... it's pretty easy to fight a war against a race that you can kill just by not believing in them)
I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or disagreeing with me... I think we agree though - meth is very bad and is not something I agree with, however the simple act of using it is NOT enough to put others at risk. The "typical meth user" does put people at risk, and it is pretty much directly linked to their meth use a lot of the time, but it's their "lifestyle" (of which meth is a big part) that's the problem, not the meth itself. As I mentioned, I've had it once (and never want to have it again) and I didn't magically turn in to a degenerate junkie, or serial killer or anything like that.
As far as E and weed go, I'm definitely with you on that. I can't smoke weed (it basically makes me feel a combination of seasick and extremely tired, with NO good feelings at all, so within seconds of smoking it I'll throw up and pass out (hopefully in that order)), however I'm very much in favour of marijuana legalisation. I also don't like E because amphetamines in general make me very nervous and far too excitable, but given the choice, I'd also vote for legalisation of it with restrictions on sale (licensed, age limited - similar to alcohol). Personally what I DO prefer in the way of altered states, just for reference, is the psychedelics, and I do actively put my word in whereever possible when it comes to the topic of LSD legislation. (other psychedelics are also important and interesting, but I really feel LSD is one of the most amazing and useful substances ever discovered, and has been demonised to the point that it's nearly beyond all reasonable discussion with a lot of people)
I read the previous comment that of all travelers, 99% are needlessly inconenienced
We definitely read it differently then... looking at it again, I think my interpretation is probably more what the poster intended... he/she wrote: "I'm sure that the 99% of innocents who get Probed...", which is talking about the percentage of those that it does effect, rather than the percentage of all people.
but they are such a small number overall that it is almost not relevant
Honestly, it's this kind of attitude that really worries me about people today... It's like saying that only 0.01% of the time that a woman walks through a dark alleyway she gets raped, so we really don't need to care about rape since it's such a small amount. Sure, rape is a completely different league of badness to being inconvenienced at the airport, but the severity isn't what you were debating - what you were debating is the amount that it happens... (keep reading below for my argument against the "low severity" of this issue)
and even if it did affect you (slim chances) the worst that happens is you are slightly inconvenienced. As others ahve already argued, this seems to be a fair tradeoff
A "tradeoff" involves losing something to gain something. I don't see anything being gained, therefore the loss, no matter how small, is too much.
I don't believe in "minor" drug offenses in public. Keep your drugs in your living room, if you must. If you are stupid enough to try and get drugs through an airport, then you deserve to be in that 1% that gets arrested.
I am an LSD user, and enjoy it immensely (in sensible moderation - it's not like I'm tripping all day every day). My taking of LSD impacts you in no way whatsoever and never will. Let's say I have a friend who wants to take a trip with me. He happens to live a thousand km or so away. I could drive it, and not be hassled by anyone at any time, or I could fly and potentially get arrested for the contents of my pocket. Regardless of what you think about drug use or even my particular case that I've presented here, I present it to raise a question: How is it any different whether I fly to visit my friend or drive? Why should the fact that I'm going through an airport make any difference to whether I "deserve to get arrested" (your words) compared to not going through an airport?
Since I look like a respectable early 30s balding businessman most of the time, I'm hardly the kind of guy that gets picked out based on how I look anyway, nor do I live in the US and do my best to avoid visiting there since the crazy regulations started appearing, but that's not the point - even if this NEVER has ANY effect on me whatsoever, I'm strongly against it because of the effect that it has on others and the possibility that some people (such as yourself) are going to bend over and accept this, until eventually the governments eventually realise they can pull damn near anything because of people like you, and we end up with no freedoms left. No, this isn't the worst atrocity against human rights ever committed, nor is it even particular a big deal, but the fact is that every little thing matters and a step in the wrong direction, no matter how small, is still one step further away from where society should be headed.
I think you're looking at it backwards here... you're right that it's 1% of those that get detained that are arrested, which is a vanishingly small number of the overall (in fact, you even make the case that the 99% is a small sample of the overall number), but that's actually not the point.
Think of it this way: out of 100 people that ARE detained, 99 of them are completely innocent and have been needlessly inconvenienced... that's the problem, and it IS an unreasonable tradeoff.
Also, of the 1% arrested, they've not commented on whether any were for the intended purpose of this programme (stopping "terrorists") and the things they HAVE said they've stopped people for are things that probably at least 1% of the population are guilty of anyway (minor drug offences, fake IDs, etc), making this no different than just targetting anyone and everyone.
Unlike alcohol, some drugs cannot be used in moderation
And what about those that can? Especially those that are non-addictive such as LSD?
some instantly and completely get people wasted and make them dangerous to society
There are VERY few drugs that fall in to this category... even very dangerous and hard drugs that are commonly used by criminal types such as Crystal Meth (which I really do NOT think should be legal at all) do NOT make people dangerous to society immediately upon use. I've used it once - didn't like it and don't plan on doing it again, but the point is that I did not go out and do anything bad to anyone just because I was wasted on the stuff. In fact, all I did was sit on my friends couch and go a bit mental for a while. There were several other people there that also used it (and were frequent users of it unlike myself) and they also didn't go out and do anything bad to anyone. While they're not model citizens, they're really not harming anyone other than themselves.
As I said, I don't think crystal meth should be legal because it's just TOO dangerous (the risk is very hard to assess beforehand for most people, and the dangers are too great), but the vast majority of drugs are much less dangerous than that, and fall along the same sorts of lines as alcohol or lesser.
Actually, in programming jobs in the past, I've noticed that employers tend to frown on thinking time.
Hmmm... I hope you've found a better employer since! I spend a good 25% of my day sitting at my desk, leaning back and thinking. A good 50% of that time (so, 12.5% of my working day), my eyes will be closed while sitting that way. My boss knows very well that if he looks in to my office and sees me sitting like that, he should NOT come in and disturb me, since I'm deep in thought about whatever project it is I'm working on.
It would probably be very difficult to distinguish between this and sleeping to be quite honest, but the fact that my work gets done renders it rather moot anyway (for the record, I really am "thinking deeply" rather than "sleeping")
(also if he sees me staring at the screen with my brow furrowed and both hands on the keyboard, that's a "do not disturb" time... "allowed to disturb" times include one hand on mouse, one on keyboard, or while I'm walking to or from the coffee machine (it also used to include while I was at the smoking area having a cigarette, but I quit as of last Friday (which is worse on my productivity than Slashdot could ever be - lack of concentration means it currently takes me 1 hour to come up with a data structure model that would've been 5 minutes before)))
And do people REALLY need color displays? I mean... spreadsheets, email... it's all the same regardless of color.
Until some management type has the brilliant never-before-thought-of idea of inline replying to an email instead of the more "standard" top-replying, but instead of simply using a character such as > to show the original post, he decides his reply will be in red. Then someone else replies in the same fashion with theirs in blue, and so on and so on until there's a thousand bits of rainbow text that you have to try and follow. Then, someone external to the company is using something OTHER than Lotus Notes for email, and their reply comes back with the whole thing in plain ASCII with a simple question at the top asking everyone to please explain how to make sense of it...
Yes, that happened to me earlier this week, and due to a combination of nicotine withdrawal and the sheer idiocy of it, I had a twenty minute rant to one of the responsible parties about proper email conventions, and that no, I don't care if Lotus Notes doesn't do it that way, and that yes, I am right in this case and Lotus Notes is wrong - get over it.
I expect your getting paid to read/reply on slashdot in the same way I am - you're paid for being at work, and are currently at work. The interesting thing here is though that I wouldn't be replying to your post if I weren't at work... right now I'm waiting for someone else to finish doing something before I can carry on, so have nothing better to do until then. If I were at home, I might read slashdot and reply to the occasional post, but definitely nothing as inane and pointless as this particular reply.
The company states I must work a minimum of 38.5 hours per week. They don't state when these hours must be performed, and the building is open 24/7 (as long as I have my pass to show to the door guard at unusual hours). If I really felt like it, I could turn up on Friday at midnight, work 38.5 hours straight, and go home again before the weekend was over, meaning I'd likely never see a single co-worker. In reality, I don't do that, because working 38.5 hours straight would be very unpleasant, and I actually have FAR too much work to do (I've been averaging 52 hour weeks over the last year).
Once we finally get someone else in to help with the workload, I will probably aim around the "9 to 5 from Monday to Friday with an early finish on Friday" that most people in the company do. I am getting sick of mornings in general as well though, so might instead do more of a "10 to 7 Monday to Thursday" kind of thing with a "show up and make sure nothing urgent is happening" on Friday (probably midday to 4 or something like that) - it all depends how I feel at the time really.
I discussed this slashdot article with some co-workers and they honestly couldn't believe there are really companies out there that would be so picky about time (we all conceded that if you're a shift worker and someone else going home on time depends on you being there on time, or your work is only possible between certain hours, then it's important, but if it's neither of these cases, then WHY would a company be so evil as to have a "start time" and "finish time" for employees? This is the work-place, not high school... my day starts when I get here, and finishes when I leave. As long as my work gets done, who cares what hours on the clock that happens to be?
Who walks around with $3,000 dollars in cash in their wallet?
I generally walk around with anywhere up to a little over a thousand euro in my wallet... I get a thousand out of the bank whenever I'm almost out, and then live on that until it runs out again. Not quite $3000, but still significant enough for this kind of con to be effective on some people I'd imagine.
who's going to be so careless as to misplace the wallet?
But yep - there's the rub. Even ignoring the money side of it, I can't imagine ever misplacing my wallet. It's got my credit cards (nothing owing on them, high credit limit), driver's license, pass-card for work, and so much other stuff in it that there's simply no way I go ANYWHERE without it... it's in my pocket, or on my bedside table, simple as that. I'd work on the assumption that any lost wallet has been lost by someone who really doesn't care that much about the contents of it. Any wallet apparently lost with valuable contents (such as $3000) is going to raise serious alarm bells immediately.
Do you really? I actually really, REALLY hope not. "Playing with the idea" is alright (wrong, but nevertheless, alright), but actually believing it would be pretty sad.
It's a cute idea, but it's so far out of the realms of possibility due to the basic physics of what you're describing, the positions and orbits of the planets as they are, and just everything we know about how our solar system formed.
Do you buy generic drugs, or name brand, for example?
Okay, I have to go a little off topic here... what the hell is it with Americans and medications? To answer your question: NEITHER... The last time I bought any kind of medication was last time the doctor prescribed something for a really bad chest infection that I had. That was about 3 years ago, and I took it for 3 days until the infection cleared up. I don't know if it was a "brand name" or not, since all I did was take the prescription to the counter of the pharmacy attached to the medical centre, receive a white box with a chemical name on it (don't recall what exactly) and give them some money.
The company I work for (Konica Minolta) has these as an option on our MFPs (as an authentication system that avoids having to type in usernames/passwords to use the device). We've had them for quite a while now really (I don't pay that much attention to sides of the business that don't affect me, but it's at LEAST 2 years)
Generally we've found that people prefer card readers though.
Slashdot Mirror
I left Australia coming up on 2 years ago, so maybe things have changed, but Optus cable always seemed very good to me. Speeds were consistently reasonable (approx 10Mbit down, 1.5Mbit up), price was $69.95 a month, and it was capped to 12GB a month (with a "bonus" 24GB for offpeak, so if I wanted to download something big, I'd do it off peak, giving me effectively 36GB a month if managed properly). Only downloads were counted towards the limit - uploads were unlimited. If I went over the limit (the 12GB OR the 24GB) my speed would be throttled to theoretically 64Kbit (however NO extra charge), but due to very low latency, it didn't feel too bad unless downloading big stuff (I'd actually actively try to hit my limit every month at around the 29th or so). If I hit the limit early, I'd just call them and get upgraded to the next plan up for that month only (an extra $30 or so, for a fair few more GB).
Now, my plan here in Germany is far superior due to no caps, faster speed and lower price, so I can't really say I'm missing what I had with Optus, but it definitely seems better than that deal you describe on their "Yes Fusion" plan... Can there really be that much discrepancy between their plans? Or have they just gone completely evil and no longer offer the kind of plan I had?
(just to note: I lived in a house in Sydney (Chatswood to be precise), and so getting cable was no problem... I believe it's not so easy in an apartment or some other suburbs/cities)
I, like the GP, also do not own a TV. I DO own a USB TV tuner, but I haven't connected it since I bought it (which I actually did to prove to a friend he didn't need to buy the expensive "Mac" version - the "Windows" version works fine on my Mac).
I actually find the Onion article linked to be quite thought provoking... certainly, the fictional guy they're describing is a complete arse for always going out of his way to mention that he doesn't watch TV, but somehow I still sympathise with the guy anyway. I find it insulting when people expect me to be intimately familiar with celebrities lives (I REALLY don't give a flying fuck), and just annoying when people say things like, "yeh, this is just like that situation on xyz TV show, we should use their solution to this problem!" (ummm... I haven't seen it, please explain the solution...)
The point at the end of the article about five entire days out of a month being wasted watching TV if you watch four hours a day is also quite relevant. There ARE much better things you could do with your time. I recently quit smoking, and any arguments for "it being okay to watch excessive amounts of TV" (note: "excessive amounts") sound very much like my own arguments about why "it was okay for me to smoke" - perhaps there is more than a dot of truth in the whole "TV is an addiction" thing. (and before anyone says that my smoking hurt others as well, whereas excessive TV only harms oneself - I have two points: 1. I never cared that my smoking could harm others; 2. A world of fat, lazy couch potatoes DOES affect me in that the world around me isn't as good as it could be)
(I just re-read the above and I'm not making myself very clear, but nicotine withdrawals are kinda messing with me, and I think MAYBE it's clear enough... please consider all of the above in the context of the rest of it - out of context quotations are almost certain to give a different meaning than was my intention)
Parent is an AC, so may not be noticed by many... just want to voice my logged in agreement.
Take a hallucinate drug (LSD/Psilocybin/Mescaline/...) once or twice a year. Feeds your brain with new exciting information, possibly making it a bit more alert.
Definitely worth doing, however I think the term "feeds your brain with new exciting information" is a little misleading. It's better to say that it gives you new ways to look at things and encourages thinking about things, which is good mental exercise.
Well, if you're still "learning" C#, then there's a good chance that 99.9% of what you're writing will already run flawlessly under mono. It's not until you start doing a lot of tricky and OS specific things that compatibility breaks. Simple thing to do: Download the VMWare image of Suse with Mono installed (or install Mono yourself on a Linux or Mac system) and then just try to run your compiled .NET apps directly. There really isn't much more to it than that.
Tips for maintaining cross platform compatibility in general:
I haven't noticed the tableLayout issues you describe, but actually it could be because out of the MANY .NET GUI apps I've written, I've used tableLayout exactly once (and that was in a beta of a project - I got rid of it by release)... but if you're really paranoid about it, just develop using GTK#, and then you don't have to worry about WinForms stuff at all. I do generally use WinForms though as most of the end users of my programs will be on Windows. For cases where I expect users to use something else, I'll do another front end in GTK# (and I've been looking closely at Cocoa# as well), but even for the apps where I don't expect users to use anything but Windows, I'll still run compatibility checks and make release notes about my apps under both MacOSX and a Linux system I have for that purpose.
The problem with nutjob conspiracy theories like "Chemtrails" is that no matter what you do, they'll just revise the theory. If we create a system for getting rid of contrails, they'll just say that the government is now trying to "hide" the chemtrails by making them invisible, but they're still there!
I certainly wouldn't be going alone... this is under the assumption that a small "colony" or research group (at least 20 people, but over 100 preferred) is forming and I get to be a part of it. While it would be my LAST ever move, it'd be big enough that I think I'd be okay with that. One last new group of people to get to know, and a new "culture" would definitely form pretty quickly I'd say.
Moving letters around on the screen (especially once they start wiggling and shifting away from you, and let's face it: everyone hates it when that starts)
Dear god yes... it tends to mean someone slipped acid in to my coffee cup at work again. (actually, not kidding on the "again" part - it has happened to me before!)
Sharks don't have nipples... but if they did, we could probably assume them to be a similar size to the nipples of mammals around their size. A quick check reveals that to be around 1cm "tall" at most, but more generally around 0.8cm. So, you're saying that before I was 24cm long, I was taught about LoCs vs CoLAs? I really doubt that! MAYBE before I was 125 shark nipples high, but that's pretty borderline there.
Yeh, just look how quickly Australia became a republic free from Great Britain's influence~
Of course, even if they were to form a separate nation - no big deal. The Australia comment was sarcasm (hence the sarcasm punctuation), but despite not being "truly" independent, they pretty much are for all reasonable intents and purposes. Their independence hasn't really caused any major problems for the world and I don't see that it'd be any different for a Mars colony. Whether they gain independence through violence or politics is largely irrelevant and we'd just end up with one more nation in our (now interplanetary) civilisation.
All that is rather an aside from the point though - I don't think we'd need to "use" anyone for colonisation... we could just ask, "hey, who wants to go?" and there'll be PLENTY of volunteers. Even though I'd never see anyone I know again, I'd jump at the chance (I've already lived in 5 different countries in my life and pretty much "started again" several times... a new planet is just the next big step from that).
Your choice, on the other hand, is not to use those products if you don't agree with the terms.
Actually, there are many more choices also open to those who do not agree with the terms, such as ignoring the terms, circumventing the protection and then having a large party where everyone runs around singing "DRM Suckxorz".
That was a little tongue-in-cheek perhaps, but really, I agree with you that it absolutely IS the media industry's choice on how to sell their product, but you seem to think that means people should either "accept it and buy the product if they want it" or "not accept it and have nothing to do with the product" - those aren't the only two choices available...
I don't believe in fairies!
I don't believe in fairies!
I don't believe in fairies!
I don't believe in fairies!
(Now, for the theory of Fairy extinction: there used to really be fairies, but they had the best farmland and above actually worked... it's pretty easy to fight a war against a race that you can kill just by not believing in them)
I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or disagreeing with me... I think we agree though - meth is very bad and is not something I agree with, however the simple act of using it is NOT enough to put others at risk. The "typical meth user" does put people at risk, and it is pretty much directly linked to their meth use a lot of the time, but it's their "lifestyle" (of which meth is a big part) that's the problem, not the meth itself. As I mentioned, I've had it once (and never want to have it again) and I didn't magically turn in to a degenerate junkie, or serial killer or anything like that.
As far as E and weed go, I'm definitely with you on that. I can't smoke weed (it basically makes me feel a combination of seasick and extremely tired, with NO good feelings at all, so within seconds of smoking it I'll throw up and pass out (hopefully in that order)), however I'm very much in favour of marijuana legalisation. I also don't like E because amphetamines in general make me very nervous and far too excitable, but given the choice, I'd also vote for legalisation of it with restrictions on sale (licensed, age limited - similar to alcohol).
Personally what I DO prefer in the way of altered states, just for reference, is the psychedelics, and I do actively put my word in whereever possible when it comes to the topic of LSD legislation. (other psychedelics are also important and interesting, but I really feel LSD is one of the most amazing and useful substances ever discovered, and has been demonised to the point that it's nearly beyond all reasonable discussion with a lot of people)
I read the previous comment that of all travelers, 99% are needlessly inconenienced
We definitely read it differently then... looking at it again, I think my interpretation is probably more what the poster intended... he/she wrote: "I'm sure that the 99% of innocents who get Probed...", which is talking about the percentage of those that it does effect, rather than the percentage of all people.
but they are such a small number overall that it is almost not relevant
Honestly, it's this kind of attitude that really worries me about people today... It's like saying that only 0.01% of the time that a woman walks through a dark alleyway she gets raped, so we really don't need to care about rape since it's such a small amount. Sure, rape is a completely different league of badness to being inconvenienced at the airport, but the severity isn't what you were debating - what you were debating is the amount that it happens... (keep reading below for my argument against the "low severity" of this issue)
and even if it did affect you (slim chances) the worst that happens is you are slightly inconvenienced. As others ahve already argued, this seems to be a fair tradeoff
A "tradeoff" involves losing something to gain something. I don't see anything being gained, therefore the loss, no matter how small, is too much.
I don't believe in "minor" drug offenses in public. Keep your drugs in your living room, if you must. If you are stupid enough to try and get drugs through an airport, then you deserve to be in that 1% that gets arrested.
I am an LSD user, and enjoy it immensely (in sensible moderation - it's not like I'm tripping all day every day). My taking of LSD impacts you in no way whatsoever and never will. Let's say I have a friend who wants to take a trip with me. He happens to live a thousand km or so away. I could drive it, and not be hassled by anyone at any time, or I could fly and potentially get arrested for the contents of my pocket. Regardless of what you think about drug use or even my particular case that I've presented here, I present it to raise a question: How is it any different whether I fly to visit my friend or drive? Why should the fact that I'm going through an airport make any difference to whether I "deserve to get arrested" (your words) compared to not going through an airport?
Since I look like a respectable early 30s balding businessman most of the time, I'm hardly the kind of guy that gets picked out based on how I look anyway, nor do I live in the US and do my best to avoid visiting there since the crazy regulations started appearing, but that's not the point - even if this NEVER has ANY effect on me whatsoever, I'm strongly against it because of the effect that it has on others and the possibility that some people (such as yourself) are going to bend over and accept this, until eventually the governments eventually realise they can pull damn near anything because of people like you, and we end up with no freedoms left. No, this isn't the worst atrocity against human rights ever committed, nor is it even particular a big deal, but the fact is that every little thing matters and a step in the wrong direction, no matter how small, is still one step further away from where society should be headed.
I think you're looking at it backwards here... you're right that it's 1% of those that get detained that are arrested, which is a vanishingly small number of the overall (in fact, you even make the case that the 99% is a small sample of the overall number), but that's actually not the point.
Think of it this way: out of 100 people that ARE detained, 99 of them are completely innocent and have been needlessly inconvenienced... that's the problem, and it IS an unreasonable tradeoff.
Also, of the 1% arrested, they've not commented on whether any were for the intended purpose of this programme (stopping "terrorists") and the things they HAVE said they've stopped people for are things that probably at least 1% of the population are guilty of anyway (minor drug offences, fake IDs, etc), making this no different than just targetting anyone and everyone.
Unlike alcohol, some drugs cannot be used in moderation
And what about those that can? Especially those that are non-addictive such as LSD?
some instantly and completely get people wasted and make them dangerous to society
There are VERY few drugs that fall in to this category... even very dangerous and hard drugs that are commonly used by criminal types such as Crystal Meth (which I really do NOT think should be legal at all) do NOT make people dangerous to society immediately upon use. I've used it once - didn't like it and don't plan on doing it again, but the point is that I did not go out and do anything bad to anyone just because I was wasted on the stuff. In fact, all I did was sit on my friends couch and go a bit mental for a while. There were several other people there that also used it (and were frequent users of it unlike myself) and they also didn't go out and do anything bad to anyone. While they're not model citizens, they're really not harming anyone other than themselves.
As I said, I don't think crystal meth should be legal because it's just TOO dangerous (the risk is very hard to assess beforehand for most people, and the dangers are too great), but the vast majority of drugs are much less dangerous than that, and fall along the same sorts of lines as alcohol or lesser.
Actually, in programming jobs in the past, I've noticed that employers tend to frown on thinking time.
Hmmm... I hope you've found a better employer since! I spend a good 25% of my day sitting at my desk, leaning back and thinking. A good 50% of that time (so, 12.5% of my working day), my eyes will be closed while sitting that way. My boss knows very well that if he looks in to my office and sees me sitting like that, he should NOT come in and disturb me, since I'm deep in thought about whatever project it is I'm working on.
It would probably be very difficult to distinguish between this and sleeping to be quite honest, but the fact that my work gets done renders it rather moot anyway (for the record, I really am "thinking deeply" rather than "sleeping")
(also if he sees me staring at the screen with my brow furrowed and both hands on the keyboard, that's a "do not disturb" time... "allowed to disturb" times include one hand on mouse, one on keyboard, or while I'm walking to or from the coffee machine (it also used to include while I was at the smoking area having a cigarette, but I quit as of last Friday (which is worse on my productivity than Slashdot could ever be - lack of concentration means it currently takes me 1 hour to come up with a data structure model that would've been 5 minutes before)))
And do people REALLY need color displays? I mean... spreadsheets, email... it's all the same regardless of color.
Until some management type has the brilliant never-before-thought-of idea of inline replying to an email instead of the more "standard" top-replying, but instead of simply using a character such as > to show the original post, he decides his reply will be in red. Then someone else replies in the same fashion with theirs in blue, and so on and so on until there's a thousand bits of rainbow text that you have to try and follow. Then, someone external to the company is using something OTHER than Lotus Notes for email, and their reply comes back with the whole thing in plain ASCII with a simple question at the top asking everyone to please explain how to make sense of it...
Yes, that happened to me earlier this week, and due to a combination of nicotine withdrawal and the sheer idiocy of it, I had a twenty minute rant to one of the responsible parties about proper email conventions, and that no, I don't care if Lotus Notes doesn't do it that way, and that yes, I am right in this case and Lotus Notes is wrong - get over it.
Hmmm... I think I need a cigarette...
I expect your getting paid to read/reply on slashdot in the same way I am - you're paid for being at work, and are currently at work. The interesting thing here is though that I wouldn't be replying to your post if I weren't at work... right now I'm waiting for someone else to finish doing something before I can carry on, so have nothing better to do until then. If I were at home, I might read slashdot and reply to the occasional post, but definitely nothing as inane and pointless as this particular reply.
I simply:
1. Sit
2. Work
3. Profit!
The company states I must work a minimum of 38.5 hours per week. They don't state when these hours must be performed, and the building is open 24/7 (as long as I have my pass to show to the door guard at unusual hours). If I really felt like it, I could turn up on Friday at midnight, work 38.5 hours straight, and go home again before the weekend was over, meaning I'd likely never see a single co-worker. In reality, I don't do that, because working 38.5 hours straight would be very unpleasant, and I actually have FAR too much work to do (I've been averaging 52 hour weeks over the last year).
Once we finally get someone else in to help with the workload, I will probably aim around the "9 to 5 from Monday to Friday with an early finish on Friday" that most people in the company do. I am getting sick of mornings in general as well though, so might instead do more of a "10 to 7 Monday to Thursday" kind of thing with a "show up and make sure nothing urgent is happening" on Friday (probably midday to 4 or something like that) - it all depends how I feel at the time really.
I discussed this slashdot article with some co-workers and they honestly couldn't believe there are really companies out there that would be so picky about time (we all conceded that if you're a shift worker and someone else going home on time depends on you being there on time, or your work is only possible between certain hours, then it's important, but if it's neither of these cases, then WHY would a company be so evil as to have a "start time" and "finish time" for employees? This is the work-place, not high school... my day starts when I get here, and finishes when I leave. As long as my work gets done, who cares what hours on the clock that happens to be?
Who walks around with $3,000 dollars in cash in their wallet?
I generally walk around with anywhere up to a little over a thousand euro in my wallet... I get a thousand out of the bank whenever I'm almost out, and then live on that until it runs out again. Not quite $3000, but still significant enough for this kind of con to be effective on some people I'd imagine.
who's going to be so careless as to misplace the wallet?
But yep - there's the rub. Even ignoring the money side of it, I can't imagine ever misplacing my wallet. It's got my credit cards (nothing owing on them, high credit limit), driver's license, pass-card for work, and so much other stuff in it that there's simply no way I go ANYWHERE without it... it's in my pocket, or on my bedside table, simple as that.
I'd work on the assumption that any lost wallet has been lost by someone who really doesn't care that much about the contents of it. Any wallet apparently lost with valuable contents (such as $3000) is going to raise serious alarm bells immediately.
Too far fetched?
Yes...
I believe that...
Do you really? I actually really, REALLY hope not. "Playing with the idea" is alright (wrong, but nevertheless, alright), but actually believing it would be pretty sad.
It's a cute idea, but it's so far out of the realms of possibility due to the basic physics of what you're describing, the positions and orbits of the planets as they are, and just everything we know about how our solar system formed.
Do you buy generic drugs, or name brand, for example?
Okay, I have to go a little off topic here... what the hell is it with Americans and medications? To answer your question: NEITHER... The last time I bought any kind of medication was last time the doctor prescribed something for a really bad chest infection that I had. That was about 3 years ago, and I took it for 3 days until the infection cleared up. I don't know if it was a "brand name" or not, since all I did was take the prescription to the counter of the pharmacy attached to the medical centre, receive a white box with a chemical name on it (don't recall what exactly) and give them some money.
The company I work for (Konica Minolta) has these as an option on our MFPs (as an authentication system that avoids having to type in usernames/passwords to use the device). We've had them for quite a while now really (I don't pay that much attention to sides of the business that don't affect me, but it's at LEAST 2 years)
Generally we've found that people prefer card readers though.
Correct... but the article is written in Dutch, and it's about the Danish company Lego. There's nothing wrong with the summary on that account.