The BBC have been requesting pictures and video from members of the public for some time now. They have a couple of dedicated numbers set up, and also encourage people to email things through the website. I suppose they stand more chance of getting that killer photo with thousands of members of the public looking for it too.
The first time I saw this used was probably the 7/7 attacks in London - many of the first pictures came from mobile phones, and were much more effective at capturing the atmosphere around the photograph than many of the professional photographer's photos.
That's the sort of head in the sand approach that gets you sacked. I'm all for encouraging Microsoft to support standards properly, but lets face it, for every site that's broken on IE there will be 1000 others that work just fine and your site will lose traffic and business because users see your site as broken.
I want my site to conform to standards, and look right in all major browsers. Contrary to popular belief, this is perfectly possible giving the best of all worlds.
Game developers aren't missing out on much of a market share by not supporting Linux (or even the Mac). You might tell me that 2% of computer users own (and use) a Linux box, and that's great, but what percentage of that 2% also has a Windows box readily accessible in the same house? I'd be willing to be that's close to 90%, especially in the category of people that's likely to buy games. That leaves a whopping 0.2% of people who might want to buy a game that's ported to Linux and use it on their Linux box.
Some more dodgy maths here; the game sells 1 million units, and sales could have been increased 0.2% by porting to Linux, increasing sales by 2000 units. It's therefore not commercially viable to port a game to Linux based on the maths for a single game alone. You can perhaps make a good case for increasing income over a period of time, but not on the stats for one game alone.
While I'm sure this is very pretty and sounds good, there have to be durability issues with storing all your data on a piece of paper. At least if I spill my coffee over a CD I know it will work again once I've dried it off - doing this with a bit of paper is a little more problematic.
It should be highlighted that a lot of this is media speculation. Nationwide did not deny that 11 million customer records were on the laptop, but they did not confirm it either - I know it makes a good headline but sensationalism should be avoided until the facts are known.
The truth is probably that Nationwide just doesn't know exactly what they've lost.
It is important to realise that not everything you read on Slashdot is entirely accurate - and this is where your examples seems to come from. I'm not saying that Britain isn't a surveillance society (I personally don't think it is, I'm British but I don't like in London, so my experience is limited). However, I do think that the story about passports was sensationalist. Other things I agree with you more on.
In today's society, it is natural for the public to dislike politicians - and especially on the internet it is true that the people who feel aggrieved go an air their views. The people who are satisfied however don't bother, and you rarely hear from them. That's not because no one is satisfied, it's because they have no motivation to go and tell the world how they feel.
It is frankly not possible for a government to satisfy everyone, or even 50% of people in most circumstances. Governments do exacerbate the problem through their general attitude towards what the people think, but even the most perfect government on earth in a free society would see more complaints than endorsements.
Slashdot Mirror
The BBC have been requesting pictures and video from members of the public for some time now. They have a couple of dedicated numbers set up, and also encourage people to email things through the website. I suppose they stand more chance of getting that killer photo with thousands of members of the public looking for it too.
The first time I saw this used was probably the 7/7 attacks in London - many of the first pictures came from mobile phones, and were much more effective at capturing the atmosphere around the photograph than many of the professional photographer's photos.
That's the sort of head in the sand approach that gets you sacked. I'm all for encouraging Microsoft to support standards properly, but lets face it, for every site that's broken on IE there will be 1000 others that work just fine and your site will lose traffic and business because users see your site as broken.
I want my site to conform to standards, and look right in all major browsers. Contrary to popular belief, this is perfectly possible giving the best of all worlds.
Game developers aren't missing out on much of a market share by not supporting Linux (or even the Mac). You might tell me that 2% of computer users own (and use) a Linux box, and that's great, but what percentage of that 2% also has a Windows box readily accessible in the same house? I'd be willing to be that's close to 90%, especially in the category of people that's likely to buy games. That leaves a whopping 0.2% of people who might want to buy a game that's ported to Linux and use it on their Linux box.
Some more dodgy maths here; the game sells 1 million units, and sales could have been increased 0.2% by porting to Linux, increasing sales by 2000 units. It's therefore not commercially viable to port a game to Linux based on the maths for a single game alone. You can perhaps make a good case for increasing income over a period of time, but not on the stats for one game alone.
I would imagine that $1.3m will go a long way in China, he probably doesn't need that student status anymore anyway.
While I'm sure this is very pretty and sounds good, there have to be durability issues with storing all your data on a piece of paper. At least if I spill my coffee over a CD I know it will work again once I've dried it off - doing this with a bit of paper is a little more problematic.
It should be highlighted that a lot of this is media speculation. Nationwide did not deny that 11 million customer records were on the laptop, but they did not confirm it either - I know it makes a good headline but sensationalism should be avoided until the facts are known.
The truth is probably that Nationwide just doesn't know exactly what they've lost.
It is important to realise that not everything you read on Slashdot is entirely accurate - and this is where your examples seems to come from. I'm not saying that Britain isn't a surveillance society (I personally don't think it is, I'm British but I don't like in London, so my experience is limited). However, I do think that the story about passports was sensationalist. Other things I agree with you more on.
In today's society, it is natural for the public to dislike politicians - and especially on the internet it is true that the people who feel aggrieved go an air their views. The people who are satisfied however don't bother, and you rarely hear from them. That's not because no one is satisfied, it's because they have no motivation to go and tell the world how they feel.
It is frankly not possible for a government to satisfy everyone, or even 50% of people in most circumstances. Governments do exacerbate the problem through their general attitude towards what the people think, but even the most perfect government on earth in a free society would see more complaints than endorsements.