Who said anything about Ireland? The title says "Irish", and to have Irish nationality you have to live in Republic of Ireland. If you live in Belfast then you are British. Ergo the post title is incorrect.
Install 'cookieswap' in Firefox. I use it to switch between my 'Friends' and my 'Family' Facebook profiles. Though I will probably ditch them both for Google+ as it seems far more convenient with the Circles.
That's not really going to happen now, is it. It only happens for genocidal war criminals or serial killers. Though if the police contact me with information on my mobile phone that was stolen a few years ago I will be happy to revise my opinion.
See all comments above about KeePassX. It's childs play. It's not a browser plugin, it's an app you can run on any OS including mobile. It's a better solution than you are suggesting. If somebody can handle the concept of a purse or wallet, they can understand KeePassX.
I have no idea whether Bitcoin will work or not, but you spend more than 5 minutes thinking about it then you see it appears as good as any other currency. You can use Bitcoin to pay taxes or government fees, just the exchange rate is dependent on the intermediary currency your government accepts. I've paid French taxes using British sterling, just the bank exchanged currency behind the scenes. Same with Bitcoin.
The dollar seems more like Chuck-e-Cheese tokens than Bitcoin, as the government or Chuck-e-Cheese can print off as many notes as they want. Bitcoin is different in that there is no single issuing body that can manipulate the currency.
I also don't see a problem with lending or borrowing Bitcoins. It's just another currency. If I had spare Bitcoins and a friend wanted to borrow some, I would have no problem lending them and I would expect him to pay me the same number back later.
Hence I think your conclusions are wrong, both logically and empirically. On the first alternative, your arguments appear naive and mostly provably wrong. If I have $500 of Bitcoin at current rates, and a $500 tax bill, I will be able to pay my bill as there are currently enough people trading Bitcoins to ensure my tax bill gets paid. Looking at the structure of currency issuing it can be seen the dollar is more similar to Chuck-e-cheese tokens than Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't encourage deflation compared to fiat currencies as can be seen from the historic values to date, and it is not inevitable it will do so thanks to the micro-cents that can be traded (others have argued this in similar threads). Finally borrowing or lending money is foolish in any currency if you can avoid it.
The second half of your conclusion is also wrong in that it is a scam designed to reward early adopters, any more than the housing market is a scam or in fact any commodity than increases in value over time. I don't see the rich list full of Bitcoin millionares. The early adopters that saw their Bitcoins shoot from a couple of cents to $1 sold thinking they had made a killing. Those that bought at $1 and sold at $10 thought the same. See a lot of previous posts in threads with early adopters saying, "If only I'd kept a few coins back". But it's good they didn't, as hoarding hinders a currency. You are viewing Bitcoin as an investment vehicle instead of the currency it was designed to be. Sure I'd liked to have bought a house for £5,000 that my parents could have, instead of the £500,000 it will cost me today, but I get on with my life rather than being bitter at the "early adopters". If enough people want to use the currency it will work. If everybody is obsessed with trying to game it and nobody uses it then it won't.
You are confused. Defending a currency is not the same as forcing somebody to accept it. Your grocer is not obliged to accept the notes printed by the government, as they are not obliged to accept Bitcoin.
That doesn't make any sense. Why is it bad judgment to accept Bitcoin? Those that gave Bitcoin did so probably because they weren't going to donate cash in dollars or another currency, ergo they haven't lost anything.
So they got something for free. And decided not to cash it in so lost nothing. Big deal. If they don't want free money then that is their prerogative.
If you live in such a crappy country, why don't you move? There are plenty of other countries that a few digital graffiti artists can't turn into an Orwellian society.
If you are talking about the US dollar, there are far more than that... in many countries around the world people only want to be paid in dollars as their own paper currency is worthless.
The bits of paper are only worth what people believe it is worth. And those pieces of paper may be backed by millions of people prepared to work for them but only locally... I have a draw full of bits of paper from different countries that are useless to me at the moment.
That's a poor analogy. A woman in a provocative outfit isn't holding the personal details of millions of other people. Presumably your belongings in your house don't either, and if you have a laptop that does and the details are not encrypted then I WOULD hold you responsible if it was stolen.
It will be interesting to see the "Eve Online Protection Legislation". You are a bit like those that say RMS is destroying Linux, because his extremist views are off-putting to the business community. Well whether you agree with him or not you can't shut him up. You might scream that these kids hacking high-profile web sites are ruining the good work of Anonymous, but they are NOT Anonymous and nobody has any control over them.
Stop running scared. LulzSec will probably trip up at some point, and they will have had their fun and will face their punishment. In the mean time the government aren't going to be rounding up IT people, bar-coding them, and sending them to the gas chambers. Despite popular conception, there is a good chance that there are people in law enforcement intelligent enough to chase the actual law-breakers and bring them to justice. So quit the hysteria.
Amazing that no matter how many times people explain Anon there are still people like artor3. They are obviously deaf. Various misc may form splinter groups for lulz, but the causes that gain most traction tend to be just ones as most people are fairly decent. Anyway the dating prank is pretty tame compared to many. Odd argument that some hidden camera joke is false flag compared to hacking the Senate web site, that just doesn't make any sense.
I read it as "I, cozzbp, am a pathetic coward" but your description is good too. We have laws, LulzSec committed a criminal act, but if you are afraid that a few random teenagers will inspire Orwellian legislation then the problem is with the government not with LulzSec. The responsible citizens have to stand up to both cyber-bullies AND to power-mongers. If you yanks can still not have guns legislated against, after all that's happened, then allowing cyber legislation to screw you over is just sheer laziness.
Would somebody like to point out that they don't CAUSE accidents because people slam on their brakes - that's due, exclusively, to already-bad drivers
In theory yes, in practice not necessarily so. If people do something completely unpredictable then there is additional brain lag to comprehend that the person is not touching their brake and continuing as you would expect but coming to a complete stop for no apparent reason.
One time I was on a motorway in the middle lane, following a car at 130km/h, and the guy in front of me braked to a complete stop for absolutely no reason. And his brakes were better than mine. I might have just been able to stop, possibly not, fortunately there was a gap in the outside lane I could swerve into. I still remember that split second of disbelief before switching from lightly pressing the brake to full on evasive maneuvers. Same with braking for cameras, they will accelerate to jump the light so you time your braking to stop on the white line. When they suddenly brake your confusion on why they would do may delay your realisation you need to adjust your own braking.
If you want somebody to rear end you, go to a round-about and then as soon as you start pulling out suddenly brake to a stop. The person behind will assume you are still pulling out and instead look sideways to see if it is still clear whilst pulling out himself. Seen it happen plenty of times.
The people who argue against traffic cameras are probably the same ones who also argued recently that knowing the locations of DUI checkpoints somehow makes the streets safer.
I haven't read that one yet but it makes sense to me. If I knew they were testing drivers for alcohol on my route back, then I would ensure the person driving the car back doesn't drink. Otherwise if you don't know where they are who cares if they are doing a test? The chance of getting caught on some random road are incredibly small.
The cameras make mistakes all the time. In my area they flash even if you aren't moving, if at any time your front tyre rolls 1cm over the arbitrary flash limit somewhere near the white line. It took ages for the council to finally admit this was true. It is mistaken that you jumped a light if an ambulance comes up behind and makes you move out of the way.
These people really just want to protect their "right" to break the law.
When you grow up, you will find life is more than just being a robot and following the rules the adults set up for you. If I found a member of my family died because some idiot refused to jump the light to let an ambulance past, I would be pretty pissed off. Traffic laws are there to help guide how we should get along with each other, after all we are throwing several tons of steel around at lethal speeds, but they are not rules set in stone to be used to squeeze money out of people that are not endangering anybody else. Rules are not a substitute for common sense. If you ignore the rule it's useless, if you apply it to the letter rather than the spirit it becomes counter-productive, the way is somewhere in between.
They are popping up all over Nice in France. The question was asked what happens if you have to move out of the way of an ambulance. The reply was tough luck, get still get a fine and have to pay it. Down here it's just seen as easy money. Also they tend to flash even if you are not moving. It happens if you happen to just roll your wheels an inch over the line and are stationary.
The stuff we had in Acorn's RiscOS back in the 80's. The ability to hold down the right mouse button on any scroll bar to be able to pan around a window by moving the mouse. Being able to drop files onto different apps on the task bar to do different things, a feature that is starting to come into Ubuntu Unity. Not having this stupid Filer dialog that Linux copied from Windows, where you have to re-navigate your entire file system every time you want to save a file.
One thing I miss from my old 80's mobile... the ability to have it turn off at a certain hour and then turn on again automatically in the morning.
Agree that Intel have little incentive now. Before it made sense to hedge their bets when the OS of their main partner Microsoft had been a dismal failure and one of the largest mobile handset manufacturers in the world had thrown their weight behind Meego. Even at the risk of raising the ire of one of their best partners in the previous couple of decades, the volume of Nokia sales was too hard to ignore.
Now with the only mobile manufacturer committed to MeeGo paid off to kill it, why would Intel continue? They don't make phones. They certainly aren't a software company set up to compete with Google and its Android OS. The fastest rising star in mobile phones Samsung is committed to Bada and Android. Blackberry have committed to QNX.
Acorn computers have had x86 emulators for ARM around 20 years also. Nothing to stop Intel building ARM processors though, they have a license for StrongARM they inherited from DEC all those years ago.
Replacing Evolution with Thunderbird is a good idea, though they should also include Lightning. Shame Spicebird died a long time ago, that would have been a brilliant app.
Firefox to Chrome? I doubt it as Chrome can't really block ads.
Switching to LightDM is good, not that most of us will really notice much.
Déjà Dup? Why not. Removing Computer Janitor and PiTiVi because they are buggy? Again why not. OpenShot sounds a better default video editor anyway. Dropping LibreOffice? Probably a bad idea as a poster above pointed out, beginners will want to be able to click on a.doc and have it open.
The key thing is getting Unity debugged and polished. Very exciting new interface. Love the idea of the progress meters and notifications on the task bar, plus being able to drag files onto it. Hopefully it will eventually make it up to the usability level of Kubuntu.
Slashdot Mirror
Who said anything about Ireland? The title says "Irish", and to have Irish nationality you have to live in Republic of Ireland. If you live in Belfast then you are British. Ergo the post title is incorrect.
Phillip.
Install 'cookieswap' in Firefox. I use it to switch between my 'Friends' and my 'Family' Facebook profiles. Though I will probably ditch them both for Google+ as it seems far more convenient with the Circles.
Phillip.
On the contrary, it shows people still waste their time on Slashdot in 2078.
Phillip.
That's not really going to happen now, is it. It only happens for genocidal war criminals or serial killers. Though if the police contact me with information on my mobile phone that was stolen a few years ago I will be happy to revise my opinion.
Phillip.
See all comments above about KeePassX. It's childs play. It's not a browser plugin, it's an app you can run on any OS including mobile. It's a better solution than you are suggesting. If somebody can handle the concept of a purse or wallet, they can understand KeePassX.
Phillip.
It is funny that so many people on Slashdot really thought that LulzSec was going to get away with taunting world governments.
Did you even ready the article? It says that so far there is no connection between the arrest and LulzSec.
Phillip.
I have no idea whether Bitcoin will work or not, but you spend more than 5 minutes thinking about it then you see it appears as good as any other currency. You can use Bitcoin to pay taxes or government fees, just the exchange rate is dependent on the intermediary currency your government accepts. I've paid French taxes using British sterling, just the bank exchanged currency behind the scenes. Same with Bitcoin.
The dollar seems more like Chuck-e-Cheese tokens than Bitcoin, as the government or Chuck-e-Cheese can print off as many notes as they want. Bitcoin is different in that there is no single issuing body that can manipulate the currency.
I also don't see a problem with lending or borrowing Bitcoins. It's just another currency. If I had spare Bitcoins and a friend wanted to borrow some, I would have no problem lending them and I would expect him to pay me the same number back later.
Hence I think your conclusions are wrong, both logically and empirically. On the first alternative, your arguments appear naive and mostly provably wrong. If I have $500 of Bitcoin at current rates, and a $500 tax bill, I will be able to pay my bill as there are currently enough people trading Bitcoins to ensure my tax bill gets paid. Looking at the structure of currency issuing it can be seen the dollar is more similar to Chuck-e-cheese tokens than Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't encourage deflation compared to fiat currencies as can be seen from the historic values to date, and it is not inevitable it will do so thanks to the micro-cents that can be traded (others have argued this in similar threads). Finally borrowing or lending money is foolish in any currency if you can avoid it.
The second half of your conclusion is also wrong in that it is a scam designed to reward early adopters, any more than the housing market is a scam or in fact any commodity than increases in value over time. I don't see the rich list full of Bitcoin millionares. The early adopters that saw their Bitcoins shoot from a couple of cents to $1 sold thinking they had made a killing. Those that bought at $1 and sold at $10 thought the same. See a lot of previous posts in threads with early adopters saying, "If only I'd kept a few coins back". But it's good they didn't, as hoarding hinders a currency. You are viewing Bitcoin as an investment vehicle instead of the currency it was designed to be. Sure I'd liked to have bought a house for £5,000 that my parents could have, instead of the £500,000 it will cost me today, but I get on with my life rather than being bitter at the "early adopters". If enough people want to use the currency it will work. If everybody is obsessed with trying to game it and nobody uses it then it won't.
Phillip.
You are confused. Defending a currency is not the same as forcing somebody to accept it. Your grocer is not obliged to accept the notes printed by the government, as they are not obliged to accept Bitcoin.
Phillip.
That doesn't make any sense. Why is it bad judgment to accept Bitcoin? Those that gave Bitcoin did so probably because they weren't going to donate cash in dollars or another currency, ergo they haven't lost anything.
So they got something for free. And decided not to cash it in so lost nothing. Big deal. If they don't want free money then that is their prerogative.
Phillip.
If you live in such a crappy country, why don't you move? There are plenty of other countries that a few digital graffiti artists can't turn into an Orwellian society.
Phillip.
If you are talking about the US dollar, there are far more than that... in many countries around the world people only want to be paid in dollars as their own paper currency is worthless.
The bits of paper are only worth what people believe it is worth. And those pieces of paper may be backed by millions of people prepared to work for them but only locally... I have a draw full of bits of paper from different countries that are useless to me at the moment.
Phillip.
That's a poor analogy. A woman in a provocative outfit isn't holding the personal details of millions of other people. Presumably your belongings in your house don't either, and if you have a laptop that does and the details are not encrypted then I WOULD hold you responsible if it was stolen.
tldr; not the same logic
Phillip.
It will be interesting to see the "Eve Online Protection Legislation". You are a bit like those that say RMS is destroying Linux, because his extremist views are off-putting to the business community. Well whether you agree with him or not you can't shut him up. You might scream that these kids hacking high-profile web sites are ruining the good work of Anonymous, but they are NOT Anonymous and nobody has any control over them.
Stop running scared. LulzSec will probably trip up at some point, and they will have had their fun and will face their punishment. In the mean time the government aren't going to be rounding up IT people, bar-coding them, and sending them to the gas chambers. Despite popular conception, there is a good chance that there are people in law enforcement intelligent enough to chase the actual law-breakers and bring them to justice. So quit the hysteria.
Phillip.
Bah, they should just switch to Vendetta Online instead.
Phillip.
Amazing that no matter how many times people explain Anon there are still people like artor3. They are obviously deaf. Various misc may form splinter groups for lulz, but the causes that gain most traction tend to be just ones as most people are fairly decent. Anyway the dating prank is pretty tame compared to many. Odd argument that some hidden camera joke is false flag compared to hacking the Senate web site, that just doesn't make any sense.
Phillip.
I read it as "I, cozzbp, am a pathetic coward" but your description is good too. We have laws, LulzSec committed a criminal act, but if you are afraid that a few random teenagers will inspire Orwellian legislation then the problem is with the government not with LulzSec. The responsible citizens have to stand up to both cyber-bullies AND to power-mongers. If you yanks can still not have guns legislated against, after all that's happened, then allowing cyber legislation to screw you over is just sheer laziness.
Phillip.
Breaking in to get information to help political prisoners? White hat.
I would say it is somebody wearing a black hat riding a white horse...
Phillip.
So how much is that in human lives?
I think $1.5M could save quite a few human lives in LA (intensive care units, etc) but probably a lot more if given in aid to Africa.
Phillip.
Would somebody like to point out that they don't CAUSE accidents because people slam on their brakes - that's due, exclusively, to already-bad drivers
In theory yes, in practice not necessarily so. If people do something completely unpredictable then there is additional brain lag to comprehend that the person is not touching their brake and continuing as you would expect but coming to a complete stop for no apparent reason.
One time I was on a motorway in the middle lane, following a car at 130km/h, and the guy in front of me braked to a complete stop for absolutely no reason. And his brakes were better than mine. I might have just been able to stop, possibly not, fortunately there was a gap in the outside lane I could swerve into. I still remember that split second of disbelief before switching from lightly pressing the brake to full on evasive maneuvers. Same with braking for cameras, they will accelerate to jump the light so you time your braking to stop on the white line. When they suddenly brake your confusion on why they would do may delay your realisation you need to adjust your own braking.
If you want somebody to rear end you, go to a round-about and then as soon as you start pulling out suddenly brake to a stop. The person behind will assume you are still pulling out and instead look sideways to see if it is still clear whilst pulling out himself. Seen it happen plenty of times.
Phillip.
The people who argue against traffic cameras are probably the same ones who also argued recently that knowing the locations of DUI checkpoints somehow makes the streets safer.
I haven't read that one yet but it makes sense to me. If I knew they were testing drivers for alcohol on my route back, then I would ensure the person driving the car back doesn't drink. Otherwise if you don't know where they are who cares if they are doing a test? The chance of getting caught on some random road are incredibly small.
The cameras make mistakes all the time. In my area they flash even if you aren't moving, if at any time your front tyre rolls 1cm over the arbitrary flash limit somewhere near the white line. It took ages for the council to finally admit this was true. It is mistaken that you jumped a light if an ambulance comes up behind and makes you move out of the way.
These people really just want to protect their "right" to break the law.
When you grow up, you will find life is more than just being a robot and following the rules the adults set up for you. If I found a member of my family died because some idiot refused to jump the light to let an ambulance past, I would be pretty pissed off. Traffic laws are there to help guide how we should get along with each other, after all we are throwing several tons of steel around at lethal speeds, but they are not rules set in stone to be used to squeeze money out of people that are not endangering anybody else. Rules are not a substitute for common sense. If you ignore the rule it's useless, if you apply it to the letter rather than the spirit it becomes counter-productive, the way is somewhere in between.
Phillip.
They are popping up all over Nice in France. The question was asked what happens if you have to move out of the way of an ambulance. The reply was tough luck, get still get a fine and have to pay it. Down here it's just seen as easy money. Also they tend to flash even if you are not moving. It happens if you happen to just roll your wheels an inch over the line and are stationary.
Phillip.
The stuff we had in Acorn's RiscOS back in the 80's. The ability to hold down the right mouse button on any scroll bar to be able to pan around a window by moving the mouse. Being able to drop files onto different apps on the task bar to do different things, a feature that is starting to come into Ubuntu Unity. Not having this stupid Filer dialog that Linux copied from Windows, where you have to re-navigate your entire file system every time you want to save a file.
One thing I miss from my old 80's mobile... the ability to have it turn off at a certain hour and then turn on again automatically in the morning.
Phillip.
Agree that Intel have little incentive now. Before it made sense to hedge their bets when the OS of their main partner Microsoft had been a dismal failure and one of the largest mobile handset manufacturers in the world had thrown their weight behind Meego. Even at the risk of raising the ire of one of their best partners in the previous couple of decades, the volume of Nokia sales was too hard to ignore.
Now with the only mobile manufacturer committed to MeeGo paid off to kill it, why would Intel continue? They don't make phones. They certainly aren't a software company set up to compete with Google and its Android OS. The fastest rising star in mobile phones Samsung is committed to Bada and Android. Blackberry have committed to QNX.
Seems pretty dead to me. Shame as I wanted one.
Phillip.
Acorn computers have had x86 emulators for ARM around 20 years also. Nothing to stop Intel building ARM processors though, they have a license for StrongARM they inherited from DEC all those years ago.
Phillip.
Replacing Evolution with Thunderbird is a good idea, though they should also include Lightning. Shame Spicebird died a long time ago, that would have been a brilliant app.
Firefox to Chrome? I doubt it as Chrome can't really block ads.
Switching to LightDM is good, not that most of us will really notice much.
Déjà Dup? Why not. Removing Computer Janitor and PiTiVi because they are buggy? Again why not. OpenShot sounds a better default video editor anyway. Dropping LibreOffice? Probably a bad idea as a poster above pointed out, beginners will want to be able to click on a .doc and have it open.
The key thing is getting Unity debugged and polished. Very exciting new interface. Love the idea of the progress meters and notifications on the task bar, plus being able to drag files onto it. Hopefully it will eventually make it up to the usability level of Kubuntu.
Phillip.