I don't know what he's doing wrong, but it's not that bad. We have a lamp in the living room called "living room lamp" in Alexa.
She responds perfectly well to "Alexa, turn off the living room lamp". I don't know why he thinks you have to speak dumbed down English to it, you really don't.
The only time I find it struggles is 1) when there's loud background noise - i.e. a film or video game with the volume turned up, and 2) sometimes gets confused with Amazon music commands - if you don't get the words in the exact right order she fails, so for example if there's a public song, album or station with a name the same as one of my playlists you have to be very explicit in ordering - "Alexa, play the playlist x in my music", if I just say "Alexa, play my x playlist" she gets confused and plays the song/album/public station - it's annoying having to stipulate both that I want a playlist, and that it must come from my music library when the latter should be the default place to search and the former could trivially be determined from that search with explicitness only required when the clash occurs within my library. If such a thing doesn't exist in the library THEN go to to the broader archive to search for it.
It doesn't really matter if they have talks or not - Turkey cannot join the EU in it's current state, because to join you have to legally fulfil certain conditions and that's enshrined in the very treaties that underly the existence of the EU in the first place.
The EU's hope is that by continuing talks it'll force Erdogan to backtrack, because he simply has to to join, there's no way to achieve movement on that without getting agreement to change the fundamental treaties that underpin the EU, and that requires referendums in some member states. Getting 27 member states to agree to change the founding legal requirements of the EU to allow a dictatorship in would be hard enough at the best of times, much less when you have to get the people of some countries to agree too when there's so much anti-Turkish sentiment at the moment in the EU anyway since Erdogan decided to declare entire EU states to be nazis.
So long story short, talks or not doesn't matter - the point is that Turkey simply cannot join the EU without sorting itself out, therefore the EU is probably in a better place to try and convince Turkey to change track by keeping that on the table, than by taking it off the table which will give Erdogan all the excuse he needs to carry on Turkey's descent into authoritarianism.
So the GP might not be entirely correct but his point remains all the same - contrary to the OP's implication that the EU is about to let a dictatorship in, that simply cannot happen without every nation and a majority of citizens in some nations agreeing to it and if that happens then the EU is basically fucked regardless, because something weird would've had to have happened for a majority of say, Belgians, to accept free movement of citizens from a middle eastern Islamic dictatorship.
I know that this is a novel concept in this day and age, but some of us are still capable of understanding that closed source doesn't prevent reverse engineering of the product, it merely makes it harder.
Something being closed source doesn't mean it's a closed book, that's why we've had everything from DVD Jon to hacked Playstations over the years.
It doesn't really matter how you want to wriggle out of it, you're saying "Erlang is what OO is meant to be, but it's not OO".
You realise that makes no sense right? If it's not OO, then it's not what OO.
You're caught up on such random vagaries that you completely miss the point of OO - to be able to think about systems as objects, and classes of objects because that's an effective way to map to the real world. Hence why we have the pillars of OO - the very definitions of what an OO language has to support to be able to support object oriented analysis, design, and programming.
I'm sorry that you have a completely nonsensical view of what OO is and why OO is, and why JavaScript isn't by any measure a proper OO implementation, but that's really your problem.
Still what else would I expect from someone who criticises Java whilst defending JavaScript? You're pretty clearly just some script churning amateur. Leave development to us experts, you might break something.
Well, thank you for admitting you were wrong at least, I guess.
Shame you've still decided to bask in wilful ignorance though by refusing to listen to a word anyone else with actual experience of multiple products is telling you, and still amazed you think lock-in is even possible in a product that supports standard SQL and doesn't force you into any extensions (which just about all SQL RDBMS have btw) but hey, you don't know much so I shouldn't be too surprised that you're again mouthing off about something you have no clue about in the name of an unfounded anti-MS rant though I guess.
But there we are again - changing the terms of the discussion, your problem with it now is merely that you're complaining it isn't open source (hint: it's in preview still), and that it has incomplete Linux support.
Yet here is your original post where you apparently didn't make a sweeping comment and where you claim you merely asked a question:
"You've been able to use Python for a while in Postgres [postgresql.org], MySQL [mysqltutorial.org], SQLite [python.org], and even DB2 [ibm.com].
I can't quite figure out why anybody would want to use Microsoft SQL Server."
Want to retract that now? It's pretty clear you're backpedalling - I don't care if you want to ignore me, just don't pretend you're here to learn when you're clearly not interested in that, and just end up backpedalling when you get called out. People like me are more than happy to share our experience with such products, but don't waste our time if you're not willing to listen and are actually just busy being a zealot whilst pretending otherwise.
"So you actually know nothing about MS SQL Server yourself, you just like it because... what?"
This is precisely the point I'm making - you say you want to learn, but you're not listening. I pointed out that I've worked with many other RDBMS in the past. Oracle is unnecessarily convoluted and proprietary just for the sake of trying to sell specialist training, though it is powerful and performant. MySQL is a joke - the very fact it even has (or had) to be bundled with a tool to fix broken datafiles is in itself farcicle, and as I said, in a production environment I saw it collapse for exactly this reason roughly every 3 - 6 months. I've never used DB2, but I've also never heard of anywhere using it in recent years either and frankly even their 3 case studies on their product site are companies I've never heard of. Maybe it's great, who knows, but it's just not a prominent option anymore, and with reduced prominent comes reduced training availability, reduced available skill sets on the market, reduced peer support when things go wrong.
So again, I like MS SQL server because it's stable unlike MySQL, it's easy to use, diagnose, maintain, and debug unlike Oracle, it offers centralised security configuration, as I've explained already, it integrates excellently not just with.NET but is widely and well supported in just about every language's DB framework out there.
On performance it can easily hold it's own against Oracle and PostgreSQL, I'll admit I have seen faster throughput on MySQL, but let's be clear, that's because MySQL cuts corners, and hence why it suffers from data integrity issues. If I wanted to sacrifice any of the ACID principles then I'd use a data storage system that intentionally does that and is designed for that from the outset, rather than because of failure of implementation - e.g. I'd look at a NoSQL solution if that fit my needs.
We use it for massive, massive databases, probably one of the highest use case scenarios you'll see without getting into Google index or Facebook use scale applications and here it does well too, it scales well, and it's easy to scale. We use it in a scenario where we're bound by contract in terms of response times, where any loss of reliability for even a short period can have literally millions of pounds of impact. Microsoft's support has been great - even on their existing closed source version they listen and make product changes based on our feedback, and that of other customers.
Others here have made the point that there's plenty of reasons to hate Microsoft, but SQL server isn't one of them, and that's absolutely true. Microsoft do a lot wrong, but products like Visual Studio, languages like C#, and products like SQL server are prime examples of things they absolutely do right.
I would suggest, rather than assuming you know it all and making sweeping comments about products you do not understand that you turn your thinking around and instead consider that something might be okay until you have reason to think otherwise. Because once again, by jumping to the conclusion that something is bad just because Microsoft, then hating people and childishly making them your foe because they explained why you're wrong, you're making a fool of yourself.
I could jump to conclusion too, I could assume that because you have a relatively high UID that you're probably relatively young and utterly naive, thinking you know better than those of us who have some extensive experience in the industry. I'm not going to do that though because I might be wrong - I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just stressed, and venting your anger here or some such by trolling regardless of your circumstances, but ultimately it doesn't change the fact that you're wrong, and would do well to listen to all those explaining why if you ever want to get anywhere in this industry. A successful career has no room for zealotry and willful ignorance, you simply evaluate the options and take the best one for your use case, as many companies have found, hence the sales figures, that's quite often MS SQL server.
You're making it pretty clear by the fact you can't even answer these questions for yourself that you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.
Even if I do do your research for you wants the point where you're clearly a zealot? The fundamental fact you're making assertions about a peace of software you're demonstrably highlighting you have no idea alone means that any discussion with you is a losing proposition.
If you genuinely had an open mind you wouldn't be calling something you have never used, and have no knowledge of a pointless proposition. The fact you are means any suggestion you're capable of holding an open mind on the topic is already well and truly null and void - an open mind requires you to not jump to conclusions, yet that's the entire premise of your thread here - your conclusions based on zero actual experience of the subject at hand.
If I've learnt anything about Slashdot it's that I have way better ways to spend my time than trying to convince a zealot of the facts, so here's a better idea - fire up Google and go and find the answers to your own question if you care. If you're not going to bother to do that then you merely prove my point - you're not here with an open mind, you're here to spread your zealotry.
"That's lock-in, not a technical advantage, as are most of the other things you list."
Call it what you want, there's real practical benefit in being able to have centralised security configuration. Knowing that when you lock out a user account on the domain, that they also can no longer log into every database server and so on has massive practical benefit.
"Well, and there are several enterprise-grade relational databases that don't come from Microsoft and don't come with Microsoft's strings attached: Oracle, DB2, and Spanner for example."
I already mentioned Oracle, and sure, DB2, though it's a small player. Spanner is neither a true RDBMS, nor used widely in the enterprise.
I get it, you hate Microsoft, that's fine. But don't pretend MS SQL server isn't widely used, and it's widely used for good reason - it's a good product.
Besides, even your argument about vendor lock-in makes no sense. SQL server for Linux is open source, the whole point being that it's easy to migrate to.
The reality is most companies would rather pay for something solid and reliable like MS SQL server that integrates well into the rest of their ecosystem, than have something free but shit like MySQL. As I said before, you may have your own reasons not to want MS SQL, or for just hating Microsoft, fine, but don't expect everyone else to agree with you when some of us actually have a wide range of RDBMS experience and aren't just pulling nonsensical theories about a particular product out of our arses as you clearly are.
Probably because it has deep integration with windows networks and security that most businesses run on, coupled with the fact it's a proven reliable, fast, and highly scalable RDBMS. MySQL for example just isn't reliable, last time I ran it it would corrupt the data store on disk and you had to run a fix tool provided with MySQL to get the server to even start and load your database again.
Beyond that though it has great surrounding services for ETL, analysis, and reporting, coupled with clean and easy integration into the.NET ecosystem (which, as the other article posted recently shows is one of the most prominent languages for financial/enterprise use during the working day). There's also high quality 1st party support available with defined SLAs.
I think the mistake you're making is that you're assuming that because it's not right for you, it's not right for anyone. But you're not everyone, some companies have the cash to blow on software that's proven, and integrates fantastically with their environment. If your budget is zero or near enough then fine, of course MS SQL server isn't for you, but not everyone is doing basic zero budget stuff. There are big businesses out there that need something enterprise grade, and that typically means Oracle, MS SQL.
I suggest you learn a bit about the history and intentions of OO. It's not about message passing, it's about organising data around objects, hence the 3 pillars of OO. They're called the 3 pillars of OO because they're the 3 pillars of OO - the fact you don't even know about their existence really speaks volumes. You may wish to pretend OO is something else but again, that's because you're wrong, not because you're the god you think you are that gets to redefine unilaterally terms for the entire programming community across the globe.
You obviously need some basic computer science education, because you wouldn't even get into university with that level of ignorance of the topic.
OOP stems from Simula, and later Smalltalk - in fact, small talk was the first termed OOP language, hence why those languages that stem from it's ideas are the ones implementing a correct interpretation of OO. The fact you're not aware of this once again highlights why you're exactly the sort of person you cry as bringing the quality of knowledge on Slashdot down - you don't even have a basic grasp of the topic and it's history that you're talking about. You're just saying things because you're a language fanboy, asserting they're right, whilst being actually completely and utterly wrong.
I can see why you're confused on the topic though, Joe Armstrong intentionally misled people like you to allow you to pretend you were doing OO even when he was very clear that you absolutely were not. You basically didn't understand his actual point. Here he explains why they did that, and why Erlang is intentionally not actually OO:
"It could also be the only source for a "subject" of a paragraph or even a sentence within an article that has multiple sources."
But that in itself can be deeply problematic, as one of the biggest problems with The Daily Mail is not that it outright fabricates stories (though it has done that too) but that it over-exagerates the impact of things, makes up numbers, and so on and so forth.
So if the paragraph their quoting has no secondary source other than The Daily Mail, due to The Daily Mail's history there is every chance that that paragraph in itself is singularly sourced from The Daily Mail because it is a fabricated part of the story.
So I'd agree with the GP, that's not really a sufficient excuse to cite it because it's possible it's the only source because what it's saying simply is not true.
"High-skill jobs were what was supposed to replace the lost manufacturing jobs. The idea was to retrain some manufacturing workers, and younger people would get degrees that lead into high-skill jobs.
H1Bs greatly harm that paradigm."
No they don't. The idea that the US can singularly produce the entire top tier of the worlds tech talent is farcical - development of the iPhone and Android etc. was entirely dependent on European talent for example because up to that point European phones were running about 5 years ahead of the North American market technology wise (i.e. my Nokia 7650 in 2002 had a colour screen, installable apps, GPS, etc. - stuff the iPhone didn't get half of until 2008).
As such, for Americans to have enough high skilled jobs to around you need skilled workers from outside, and that's what H1Bs are for.
The real issue is that H1Bs are being approved for low skilled workers - that's a problem with government in approving them for things other than they're intended for, and the companies that abuse them to put forward such submissions.
But if you look at big tech like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook etc. you'll see that their H1B applications are indeed for highly paid, highly skilled workers. As such these companies are bringing skills into the country via H1B that help Americans reach higher levels of skill - the people that get brought across will inevitable pass down knowledge to Americans helping them skill up.
The problem companies are the likes of WiPro, Infosys - i.e. Indian outsourcing firms - and a few fringe American bottom feeders like Disney.
So H1Bs are absolutely necessary for the paradigm - if you believe that America can do it all itself including skilling up to be the world leader, then you're effectively saying that there's something special about the 320 million Americans as human beings over the other 6.9 billion humans out there. That's obviously drivel - and as such believing in and pushing that agenda is the fastest way to ensure you fall behind, because as the rest of the world collaborates more and more, you end up with a closed off knowledge pool that inevitably stagnates.
I'm not saying that to date America hasn't punched above it's weight, of course it has, but lets be clear, it still hasn't even done that alone - it was reliant on the Godels, the Einsteins, the Djikstras, of the world to come to America to do precisely what I've suggested above - spread knowledge and skills. Even with them, things like the World Wide Web were invented at CERN in Europe by a British person.
Your nation is absolutely the global tech leader, but don't believe you have and can do it alone. That's the surest way to lose that mantle.
No it's not, OO has three pillars - encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. JavaScript doesn't let you inherit and encapsulate at the same time - it's one or the other, as such JavaScript's OO is objectively broken in a fundamental way.
JavaScript does OO, but as the GP said, it does it badly, because it's broken.
In contradiction to what you say, the languages you list actually have it right, because they're true OO languages that implement OO properly and thoroughly.
It looks like the issue is that you don't know what OO is - if you think JavaScripts OO is a good implementation, or superior to that in the other languages you listed then the problem is your understanding, not their implementation. This is confirmed in your final paragraph, where you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about what object orientation is and means. You're arguing that you think true OOP is FP, which is entirely nonsensical.
So again, JavaScript's OO is objectively broken based on the fundamental principles of object orientation - you can't rationally argue against that no matter how much you may wish to try. When you do, as you have here, all you've done is demonstrate your complete lack of understanding on this subject.
You're obviously beyond help, but I'll put this here in case you do manage to find some help one day in the future.
In this world there are people who have serious mental health issues, that leads them to have profoundly nonsensical delusions, and leads them to believe in absurd paranoid conspiracies about the world. These people tell themselves they're special, because they've figured it all out man, the secret world order.
But the reality is, you haven't, you just need serious help. You're that guy.
"For example, almost every Hollywood action movie portraits the US military in generally good terms (even if there are individual villains), and quite often they are the ones who save the world. The Pentagon, meanwhile, supports such movies generously with vehicles, equipment and other support. Coincidence?"
Of course it's not a coincidence, but it's not a fucking conspiracy either.
The Pentagon wants money, Hollywood wants to make movies. The fact Hollywood needs somewhere to hire military tech they need for their movies from the only source that movie can be acquired doesn't exactly require rocket science to understand how that then comes about.
But again, your entire premise that Hollywood movies always make the US military out to be heroes is entirely false. Sure you have ultra-patriotic xenophobes like Clint Eastwood making such films, but you have obviously never watched basically any Vietnam era film if you think the US military is only ever shown in a good light - there are a number of films about more recent conflicts that do the same. Again, what there is is a substantial amount of plurality as to how the US military is portrayed in film, but as I said before, you're so caught up in your own anti-US propaganda that all you see is Rambo.
"There are literally books about how the western propaganda system works, who is connected to whom how, who owns the media and why, for examples, there are wars and genocides that you don't find on the evening news even though the body count far exceeds other wars that do get reported."
Yes, there are kooks who will develop conspiracy theories about anything, congratulations on discovering that rather obvious fact.
"Now stop the russiophobic bullshit talk to a person who's not telling you that Russia is right, but that you should worry about being lied to by your own media before you worry about other countries telling lies to their people."
Again, as I said before, I don't need to worry about being lied to by my own media, because there is no "my own media", there is a plurality of media outlets from across the globe, all of which I have access to. It's not Russiophobia, it's a statement of reality that much of the world recognises that Russia is the biggest threat to world peace right now as demonstrated through real actual seizure of sovereign foreign territory - I was against the 2003 Iraq war, but at least there was never a plan to seize it permanently and claim it as actual American soil.
You need to stop restricting yourself to pro-Russian propaganda like RT, when that propaganda is such a tiny minority of the global media landscape.
I've actually been doing R&D into precisely one of the scenarios listed in the summary - using AI techniques for lending (e.g. mortgage) approvals.
The concerns listed are actually part of my focus - how do we get to the bottom of why the decision was made. There are regulatory blocks against simply doing without being able to justify already.
But here's the thing, we can use existing data sets of applications for things like mortgages, coupled with historical data of how the person borrowing the money played out as a customer, not for some ML process because we can't guarantee that future good borrowers will look the same as past good borrowers - you only have to look at the financial crisis where within about six months the profile of what a trustworthy borrower looked like changed substantially. But we can use them to check how the systems we have created in R&D play out, and the net result is that we can see a substantial increase in the ability to determine not just who is likely to pay back a mortgage, but how much a borrower can realistically pay back.
So to answer your question the fact is that AI isn't worse, it's far better, it can help not just avoid bad decisions, but also help ensure people are only borrowing what they can realistically afford. This means that rather than someone approving someone who wont be able to pay back and ends up losing their house, as currently, or denying someone outright because they were asking too much, we can actually make sure people are approved for what they can afford, or told what they should lower their request to for approval rather than flat out rejection.
It wont go anywhere without more work to be able to justify rejections though, as it's human nature to want to know why you were rejected over something.
When I see articles fear mongering over AI nowadays, my natural response to see if those fears are justified by substituting AI with human, and seeing if the problem is present within humans too. If it's an existing problem with humans, and AI is going to make the same or less mistakes than a human in the same circumstance, then I don't see the problem. To cite an example, driverless cars - people say, what if the car gets confused by some edge case and blows up? We shouldn't use driverless cars at all!. I think that's the wrong question, I think expecting absolute perfection from day 1 is absurd, impossible, and going to hold back human progress on this front. The real question is, does implementing this technology mean there'll be less injuries and fatalities on the road? If yes then we're better off. If AI has 100 crashes in 100,000 people a year it seems absurd to not use it because it has 100 crashes, when humans are having maybe 5,000 crashes in 100,000 people in a year.
So your point is exactly right - it's not a question of whether the AI is perfect, it's a question of whether it can do a better job than we can manage currently using humans. We're not at a point where the AI is going to snowball into skynet because we're still talking about things (i.e. mortgage approvals) where appeals to humans are possible, and where we can press the off switch and go back to how we used to do things if we need to. So what if the AI fucks up and rejects someone? As long as they can appeal to a human then there's no issue, and if they can't, then that's not an AI problem, that's a very human political and legislative problem.
"Because we are the subject to propaganda no less than anyone else in the world."
Given that this is the premise of your whole argument and is demonstrably untrue then I don't know what the point in responding to the rest is.
Are you really suggesting the US, UK, Europe et. al. have a secret great firewall like China, and have the same lack of plurality of media? If so you're profoundly deluded. The fact is we are different, we do have less corruption, less propaganda - if you believe we have the same then I suspect you're restricting yourself to an incredibly narrow set of media outlets, but that's not us be bound by propaganda - that's you restricting yourself to your own echo chamber.
I get to read media from all over the world, I get media that stems the whole political spectrum here in the UK as people in the US do as well. I get to read China's view on the Ukraine (Hint: Chinese state media agree it was a Russian shootdown of MH17), I even get to read Russia's own view on it which is almost entirely isolated in being completely at odds with the whole of the rest of the world. The very fact you put the same weight in Russia's viewpoint as that of the whole of the rest of the world highlights the real problem - again, you're stuck in your own pro-Russian echo chamber.
Good luck being Russian and being able to easily access the same plurality of views as you can in the West. You don't know what actual propaganda looks like because you're already so swallowed up in it.
Australia's GDP is 1.5tn, it's coal export industry is worth 0.03tn.
Yes it'd have an impact for sure, but it'd hardly kill their economy altogether.
Importers couldn't merely switch over to other sources because there aren't any other sources that could scale up quick enough to cover the loss of 38% of the market. This would force prices sky high and put coal power out of business across the world because at that point it would be drastically cheaper to just switch to renewables. The idea that you could magically find equivalent to 38% of the world's coal from somewhere else and that there would be no increase in price to force coal power to become financially unviable shows an astounding level of economic ignorance.
Of course, that assumes they went all out and did an overnight ban on it's use and export - even if Australia cut production by 5% it'd be enough to force up drastically the price of coal to make a decent number of coal projects no longer viable. We're already at a point where some renewables are cheaper than coal - helping make that divide even more obvious would make a big difference.
I'm not proposing that they should actually do this of course, because it would leave countries across the globe with blackouts, and it would be an albeit non-fatal shock to the Australian economy (with a spike in unemployment). But the fact is that they could absolutely do something - jack up prices, cut production by at least some degree, tax it and so on to force a much more rapid reduction in the use of coal power than we have currently.
So again, I'll make the same point as before - Australia absolutely could make massive contributions to cutting global emissions and hence act to save their natural heritage simply by using their massive coal market share to make coal increasingly non-viable. If Australia had any sense as a nation they'd be looking to do that whilst considering a replacement industry - renewables, nuclear, whatever. They have the land, resources, and money to do it, they just don't because certain people are comfortable with the money they make from the status quo, and are dinosaurs that can't adapt commercially to newer, cleaner, replacement industries, so they just do what they've always done, lobby as they've always lobbied, and Australia's tourism industry takes a hit as one of it's key draws dies off.
No it really does - it's personal data and they have no legal basis to hand it over on a whim to another company asking for it, whatever the purpose. The days are even gone where a company can verify sickness absence records against a previous employer without your permission - they cannot in a reference even ask how much time you had off sick as it's again classed now as personal information that cannot be arbitrarily handed out.
The only thing an employer can do is demand you provide evidence of your previous salary before employment and not give you the job if you refuse - the same with sickness absence, they could ask you to get your previous employer to verify it in writing and refuse you the job if you don't. I've never heard of this actually happening though for what it's worth.
Your P45 isn't evidence, because you can simply claim that you had a big rise half way through the year, or that you made salary sacrifice for other benefits (such as more annual leave).
I had to undergo enhanced CRB checks and credit reference checks for my current employer because I work in financial services, and whilst I didn't lie about my salary coming here, they still never had access to it because credit checks only disclose credit.
For what it's worth, if you ever get a development job through a recruitment agent the odds are the recruiter will lie about your salary to try and get you what you want anyway when negotiating salary. Recruiters have no qualms about lying because they're such a shady industry and typically the more you get, the more they get so the odds are if you've got a job this way and had your salary expectations met it's because a recruiter lied on your behalf anyway.
The European Data Protection Directive already did a lot to change practices in this area, it's a double edged sword as it means it's hard to find out if someone used to pull loads of sickies, but it also means people have a far great opportunity in European countries to grow their career regardless of the arbitrary nature of their previous salary.
They can't do that, it's illegal, it's a breach of the Data Protection Act.
If they sack you for obtaining information that they have no legal right to obtain then you can take them to an industrial tribunal and get compensated for a small fortune and the Information Commissioner will have a substantial fine to hand out to both parties too.
As long as you put some kind of range in that's genuine no matter how broad then that's all that matters.
When I see a job ad listing with salary as "neg." I read it as "negligible", because that's usually what they mean. I don't even waste my time, usually "negotiable" is code for "We're not going to publish a figure because it's so low, no one would apply, so instead we'll trick them into calling us so that we can try in vain to convince them as to why they should take our role for fuck all money".
You can use this to your advantage - there's no legal duty to give an accurate figure, or in fact, a figure at all. They have no right to access your past salary information to confirm anything either.
As such, when they ask, you can just as well give an inflated figure to try and get an inflated offer.
This is why I don't even bother asking when I hire - I just offer people's salary based on what I believe them to be worth regardless of what they ask for or claim to have been worth previously.
Um, Australia is the biggest coal exporter in the world by quite a margin, so there certainly is something it could do - i.e. stop exporting coal.
Australia has over a 3rd of the global coal market. It wont stop of course though, because money. If only they'd start utilising that desert for renewables, or start using their massive uranium reserves by pushing research into cleaner nuclear, or offering some of that uninhabitable territory for underground nuclear waste disposal instead.
Bit of a wasted opportunity really, but hey, change is hard.
But make no mistake, Australia could single handedly collapse the supply of coal, pushing it's prices up to be unaffordable and forcing a move to renewables, nuclear, and gas, which all avoid to a large degree the warming problem.
Australia is literally selling out it's national heritage and it can only blame itself.
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I don't know what he's doing wrong, but it's not that bad. We have a lamp in the living room called "living room lamp" in Alexa.
She responds perfectly well to "Alexa, turn off the living room lamp". I don't know why he thinks you have to speak dumbed down English to it, you really don't.
The only time I find it struggles is 1) when there's loud background noise - i.e. a film or video game with the volume turned up, and 2) sometimes gets confused with Amazon music commands - if you don't get the words in the exact right order she fails, so for example if there's a public song, album or station with a name the same as one of my playlists you have to be very explicit in ordering - "Alexa, play the playlist x in my music", if I just say "Alexa, play my x playlist" she gets confused and plays the song/album/public station - it's annoying having to stipulate both that I want a playlist, and that it must come from my music library when the latter should be the default place to search and the former could trivially be determined from that search with explicitness only required when the clash occurs within my library. If such a thing doesn't exist in the library THEN go to to the broader archive to search for it.
It doesn't really matter if they have talks or not - Turkey cannot join the EU in it's current state, because to join you have to legally fulfil certain conditions and that's enshrined in the very treaties that underly the existence of the EU in the first place.
The EU's hope is that by continuing talks it'll force Erdogan to backtrack, because he simply has to to join, there's no way to achieve movement on that without getting agreement to change the fundamental treaties that underpin the EU, and that requires referendums in some member states. Getting 27 member states to agree to change the founding legal requirements of the EU to allow a dictatorship in would be hard enough at the best of times, much less when you have to get the people of some countries to agree too when there's so much anti-Turkish sentiment at the moment in the EU anyway since Erdogan decided to declare entire EU states to be nazis.
So long story short, talks or not doesn't matter - the point is that Turkey simply cannot join the EU without sorting itself out, therefore the EU is probably in a better place to try and convince Turkey to change track by keeping that on the table, than by taking it off the table which will give Erdogan all the excuse he needs to carry on Turkey's descent into authoritarianism.
So the GP might not be entirely correct but his point remains all the same - contrary to the OP's implication that the EU is about to let a dictatorship in, that simply cannot happen without every nation and a majority of citizens in some nations agreeing to it and if that happens then the EU is basically fucked regardless, because something weird would've had to have happened for a majority of say, Belgians, to accept free movement of citizens from a middle eastern Islamic dictatorship.
I know that this is a novel concept in this day and age, but some of us are still capable of understanding that closed source doesn't prevent reverse engineering of the product, it merely makes it harder.
Something being closed source doesn't mean it's a closed book, that's why we've had everything from DVD Jon to hacked Playstations over the years.
It doesn't really matter how you want to wriggle out of it, you're saying "Erlang is what OO is meant to be, but it's not OO".
You realise that makes no sense right? If it's not OO, then it's not what OO.
You're caught up on such random vagaries that you completely miss the point of OO - to be able to think about systems as objects, and classes of objects because that's an effective way to map to the real world. Hence why we have the pillars of OO - the very definitions of what an OO language has to support to be able to support object oriented analysis, design, and programming.
I'm sorry that you have a completely nonsensical view of what OO is and why OO is, and why JavaScript isn't by any measure a proper OO implementation, but that's really your problem.
Still what else would I expect from someone who criticises Java whilst defending JavaScript? You're pretty clearly just some script churning amateur. Leave development to us experts, you might break something.
Well, thank you for admitting you were wrong at least, I guess.
Shame you've still decided to bask in wilful ignorance though by refusing to listen to a word anyone else with actual experience of multiple products is telling you, and still amazed you think lock-in is even possible in a product that supports standard SQL and doesn't force you into any extensions (which just about all SQL RDBMS have btw) but hey, you don't know much so I shouldn't be too surprised that you're again mouthing off about something you have no clue about in the name of an unfounded anti-MS rant though I guess.
But there we are again - changing the terms of the discussion, your problem with it now is merely that you're complaining it isn't open source (hint: it's in preview still), and that it has incomplete Linux support.
Yet here is your original post where you apparently didn't make a sweeping comment and where you claim you merely asked a question:
"You've been able to use Python for a while in Postgres [postgresql.org], MySQL [mysqltutorial.org], SQLite [python.org], and even DB2 [ibm.com].
I can't quite figure out why anybody would want to use Microsoft SQL Server."
Want to retract that now? It's pretty clear you're backpedalling - I don't care if you want to ignore me, just don't pretend you're here to learn when you're clearly not interested in that, and just end up backpedalling when you get called out. People like me are more than happy to share our experience with such products, but don't waste our time if you're not willing to listen and are actually just busy being a zealot whilst pretending otherwise.
"So you actually know nothing about MS SQL Server yourself, you just like it because... what?"
This is precisely the point I'm making - you say you want to learn, but you're not listening. I pointed out that I've worked with many other RDBMS in the past. Oracle is unnecessarily convoluted and proprietary just for the sake of trying to sell specialist training, though it is powerful and performant. MySQL is a joke - the very fact it even has (or had) to be bundled with a tool to fix broken datafiles is in itself farcicle, and as I said, in a production environment I saw it collapse for exactly this reason roughly every 3 - 6 months. I've never used DB2, but I've also never heard of anywhere using it in recent years either and frankly even their 3 case studies on their product site are companies I've never heard of. Maybe it's great, who knows, but it's just not a prominent option anymore, and with reduced prominent comes reduced training availability, reduced available skill sets on the market, reduced peer support when things go wrong.
So again, I like MS SQL server because it's stable unlike MySQL, it's easy to use, diagnose, maintain, and debug unlike Oracle, it offers centralised security configuration, as I've explained already, it integrates excellently not just with .NET but is widely and well supported in just about every language's DB framework out there.
On performance it can easily hold it's own against Oracle and PostgreSQL, I'll admit I have seen faster throughput on MySQL, but let's be clear, that's because MySQL cuts corners, and hence why it suffers from data integrity issues. If I wanted to sacrifice any of the ACID principles then I'd use a data storage system that intentionally does that and is designed for that from the outset, rather than because of failure of implementation - e.g. I'd look at a NoSQL solution if that fit my needs.
We use it for massive, massive databases, probably one of the highest use case scenarios you'll see without getting into Google index or Facebook use scale applications and here it does well too, it scales well, and it's easy to scale. We use it in a scenario where we're bound by contract in terms of response times, where any loss of reliability for even a short period can have literally millions of pounds of impact. Microsoft's support has been great - even on their existing closed source version they listen and make product changes based on our feedback, and that of other customers.
Others here have made the point that there's plenty of reasons to hate Microsoft, but SQL server isn't one of them, and that's absolutely true. Microsoft do a lot wrong, but products like Visual Studio, languages like C#, and products like SQL server are prime examples of things they absolutely do right.
I would suggest, rather than assuming you know it all and making sweeping comments about products you do not understand that you turn your thinking around and instead consider that something might be okay until you have reason to think otherwise. Because once again, by jumping to the conclusion that something is bad just because Microsoft, then hating people and childishly making them your foe because they explained why you're wrong, you're making a fool of yourself.
I could jump to conclusion too, I could assume that because you have a relatively high UID that you're probably relatively young and utterly naive, thinking you know better than those of us who have some extensive experience in the industry. I'm not going to do that though because I might be wrong - I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just stressed, and venting your anger here or some such by trolling regardless of your circumstances, but ultimately it doesn't change the fact that you're wrong, and would do well to listen to all those explaining why if you ever want to get anywhere in this industry. A successful career has no room for zealotry and willful ignorance, you simply evaluate the options and take the best one for your use case, as many companies have found, hence the sales figures, that's quite often MS SQL server.
You're making it pretty clear by the fact you can't even answer these questions for yourself that you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.
Even if I do do your research for you wants the point where you're clearly a zealot? The fundamental fact you're making assertions about a peace of software you're demonstrably highlighting you have no idea alone means that any discussion with you is a losing proposition.
If you genuinely had an open mind you wouldn't be calling something you have never used, and have no knowledge of a pointless proposition. The fact you are means any suggestion you're capable of holding an open mind on the topic is already well and truly null and void - an open mind requires you to not jump to conclusions, yet that's the entire premise of your thread here - your conclusions based on zero actual experience of the subject at hand.
If I've learnt anything about Slashdot it's that I have way better ways to spend my time than trying to convince a zealot of the facts, so here's a better idea - fire up Google and go and find the answers to your own question if you care. If you're not going to bother to do that then you merely prove my point - you're not here with an open mind, you're here to spread your zealotry.
"That's lock-in, not a technical advantage, as are most of the other things you list."
Call it what you want, there's real practical benefit in being able to have centralised security configuration. Knowing that when you lock out a user account on the domain, that they also can no longer log into every database server and so on has massive practical benefit.
"Well, and there are several enterprise-grade relational databases that don't come from Microsoft and don't come with Microsoft's strings attached: Oracle, DB2, and Spanner for example."
I already mentioned Oracle, and sure, DB2, though it's a small player. Spanner is neither a true RDBMS, nor used widely in the enterprise.
I get it, you hate Microsoft, that's fine. But don't pretend MS SQL server isn't widely used, and it's widely used for good reason - it's a good product.
Besides, even your argument about vendor lock-in makes no sense. SQL server for Linux is open source, the whole point being that it's easy to migrate to.
The reality is most companies would rather pay for something solid and reliable like MS SQL server that integrates well into the rest of their ecosystem, than have something free but shit like MySQL. As I said before, you may have your own reasons not to want MS SQL, or for just hating Microsoft, fine, but don't expect everyone else to agree with you when some of us actually have a wide range of RDBMS experience and aren't just pulling nonsensical theories about a particular product out of our arses as you clearly are.
Probably because it has deep integration with windows networks and security that most businesses run on, coupled with the fact it's a proven reliable, fast, and highly scalable RDBMS. MySQL for example just isn't reliable, last time I ran it it would corrupt the data store on disk and you had to run a fix tool provided with MySQL to get the server to even start and load your database again.
Beyond that though it has great surrounding services for ETL, analysis, and reporting, coupled with clean and easy integration into the .NET ecosystem (which, as the other article posted recently shows is one of the most prominent languages for financial/enterprise use during the working day). There's also high quality 1st party support available with defined SLAs.
I think the mistake you're making is that you're assuming that because it's not right for you, it's not right for anyone. But you're not everyone, some companies have the cash to blow on software that's proven, and integrates fantastically with their environment. If your budget is zero or near enough then fine, of course MS SQL server isn't for you, but not everyone is doing basic zero budget stuff. There are big businesses out there that need something enterprise grade, and that typically means Oracle, MS SQL.
The two things aren't mutually exclusive, reef doesn't just go from perfect to dead in an instant, the death was caused by damage.
So over 90% of the reef was damaged, 20% of that damaged reef then outright died.
I suggest you learn a bit about the history and intentions of OO. It's not about message passing, it's about organising data around objects, hence the 3 pillars of OO. They're called the 3 pillars of OO because they're the 3 pillars of OO - the fact you don't even know about their existence really speaks volumes. You may wish to pretend OO is something else but again, that's because you're wrong, not because you're the god you think you are that gets to redefine unilaterally terms for the entire programming community across the globe.
You obviously need some basic computer science education, because you wouldn't even get into university with that level of ignorance of the topic.
OOP stems from Simula, and later Smalltalk - in fact, small talk was the first termed OOP language, hence why those languages that stem from it's ideas are the ones implementing a correct interpretation of OO. The fact you're not aware of this once again highlights why you're exactly the sort of person you cry as bringing the quality of knowledge on Slashdot down - you don't even have a basic grasp of the topic and it's history that you're talking about. You're just saying things because you're a language fanboy, asserting they're right, whilst being actually completely and utterly wrong.
I can see why you're confused on the topic though, Joe Armstrong intentionally misled people like you to allow you to pretend you were doing OO even when he was very clear that you absolutely were not. You basically didn't understand his actual point. Here he explains why they did that, and why Erlang is intentionally not actually OO:
http://harmful.cat-v.org/softw...
Enjoy your education, or continue being wrong on the internet. It's really up to you.
"It could also be the only source for a "subject" of a paragraph or even a sentence within an article that has multiple sources."
But that in itself can be deeply problematic, as one of the biggest problems with The Daily Mail is not that it outright fabricates stories (though it has done that too) but that it over-exagerates the impact of things, makes up numbers, and so on and so forth.
So if the paragraph their quoting has no secondary source other than The Daily Mail, due to The Daily Mail's history there is every chance that that paragraph in itself is singularly sourced from The Daily Mail because it is a fabricated part of the story.
So I'd agree with the GP, that's not really a sufficient excuse to cite it because it's possible it's the only source because what it's saying simply is not true.
"High-skill jobs were what was supposed to replace the lost manufacturing jobs. The idea was to retrain some manufacturing workers, and younger people would get degrees that lead into high-skill jobs.
H1Bs greatly harm that paradigm."
No they don't. The idea that the US can singularly produce the entire top tier of the worlds tech talent is farcical - development of the iPhone and Android etc. was entirely dependent on European talent for example because up to that point European phones were running about 5 years ahead of the North American market technology wise (i.e. my Nokia 7650 in 2002 had a colour screen, installable apps, GPS, etc. - stuff the iPhone didn't get half of until 2008).
As such, for Americans to have enough high skilled jobs to around you need skilled workers from outside, and that's what H1Bs are for.
The real issue is that H1Bs are being approved for low skilled workers - that's a problem with government in approving them for things other than they're intended for, and the companies that abuse them to put forward such submissions.
But if you look at big tech like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook etc. you'll see that their H1B applications are indeed for highly paid, highly skilled workers. As such these companies are bringing skills into the country via H1B that help Americans reach higher levels of skill - the people that get brought across will inevitable pass down knowledge to Americans helping them skill up.
The problem companies are the likes of WiPro, Infosys - i.e. Indian outsourcing firms - and a few fringe American bottom feeders like Disney.
So H1Bs are absolutely necessary for the paradigm - if you believe that America can do it all itself including skilling up to be the world leader, then you're effectively saying that there's something special about the 320 million Americans as human beings over the other 6.9 billion humans out there. That's obviously drivel - and as such believing in and pushing that agenda is the fastest way to ensure you fall behind, because as the rest of the world collaborates more and more, you end up with a closed off knowledge pool that inevitably stagnates.
I'm not saying that to date America hasn't punched above it's weight, of course it has, but lets be clear, it still hasn't even done that alone - it was reliant on the Godels, the Einsteins, the Djikstras, of the world to come to America to do precisely what I've suggested above - spread knowledge and skills. Even with them, things like the World Wide Web were invented at CERN in Europe by a British person.
Your nation is absolutely the global tech leader, but don't believe you have and can do it alone. That's the surest way to lose that mantle.
No it's not, OO has three pillars - encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. JavaScript doesn't let you inherit and encapsulate at the same time - it's one or the other, as such JavaScript's OO is objectively broken in a fundamental way.
JavaScript does OO, but as the GP said, it does it badly, because it's broken.
In contradiction to what you say, the languages you list actually have it right, because they're true OO languages that implement OO properly and thoroughly.
It looks like the issue is that you don't know what OO is - if you think JavaScripts OO is a good implementation, or superior to that in the other languages you listed then the problem is your understanding, not their implementation. This is confirmed in your final paragraph, where you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about what object orientation is and means. You're arguing that you think true OOP is FP, which is entirely nonsensical.
So again, JavaScript's OO is objectively broken based on the fundamental principles of object orientation - you can't rationally argue against that no matter how much you may wish to try. When you do, as you have here, all you've done is demonstrate your complete lack of understanding on this subject.
You're obviously beyond help, but I'll put this here in case you do manage to find some help one day in the future.
In this world there are people who have serious mental health issues, that leads them to have profoundly nonsensical delusions, and leads them to believe in absurd paranoid conspiracies about the world. These people tell themselves they're special, because they've figured it all out man, the secret world order.
But the reality is, you haven't, you just need serious help. You're that guy.
"For example, almost every Hollywood action movie portraits the US military in generally good terms (even if there are individual villains), and quite often they are the ones who save the world. The Pentagon, meanwhile, supports such movies generously with vehicles, equipment and other support. Coincidence?"
Of course it's not a coincidence, but it's not a fucking conspiracy either.
The Pentagon wants money, Hollywood wants to make movies. The fact Hollywood needs somewhere to hire military tech they need for their movies from the only source that movie can be acquired doesn't exactly require rocket science to understand how that then comes about.
But again, your entire premise that Hollywood movies always make the US military out to be heroes is entirely false. Sure you have ultra-patriotic xenophobes like Clint Eastwood making such films, but you have obviously never watched basically any Vietnam era film if you think the US military is only ever shown in a good light - there are a number of films about more recent conflicts that do the same. Again, what there is is a substantial amount of plurality as to how the US military is portrayed in film, but as I said before, you're so caught up in your own anti-US propaganda that all you see is Rambo.
"There are literally books about how the western propaganda system works, who is connected to whom how, who owns the media and why, for examples, there are wars and genocides that you don't find on the evening news even though the body count far exceeds other wars that do get reported."
Yes, there are kooks who will develop conspiracy theories about anything, congratulations on discovering that rather obvious fact.
"Now stop the russiophobic bullshit talk to a person who's not telling you that Russia is right, but that you should worry about being lied to by your own media before you worry about other countries telling lies to their people."
Again, as I said before, I don't need to worry about being lied to by my own media, because there is no "my own media", there is a plurality of media outlets from across the globe, all of which I have access to. It's not Russiophobia, it's a statement of reality that much of the world recognises that Russia is the biggest threat to world peace right now as demonstrated through real actual seizure of sovereign foreign territory - I was against the 2003 Iraq war, but at least there was never a plan to seize it permanently and claim it as actual American soil.
You need to stop restricting yourself to pro-Russian propaganda like RT, when that propaganda is such a tiny minority of the global media landscape.
I've actually been doing R&D into precisely one of the scenarios listed in the summary - using AI techniques for lending (e.g. mortgage) approvals.
The concerns listed are actually part of my focus - how do we get to the bottom of why the decision was made. There are regulatory blocks against simply doing without being able to justify already.
But here's the thing, we can use existing data sets of applications for things like mortgages, coupled with historical data of how the person borrowing the money played out as a customer, not for some ML process because we can't guarantee that future good borrowers will look the same as past good borrowers - you only have to look at the financial crisis where within about six months the profile of what a trustworthy borrower looked like changed substantially. But we can use them to check how the systems we have created in R&D play out, and the net result is that we can see a substantial increase in the ability to determine not just who is likely to pay back a mortgage, but how much a borrower can realistically pay back.
So to answer your question the fact is that AI isn't worse, it's far better, it can help not just avoid bad decisions, but also help ensure people are only borrowing what they can realistically afford. This means that rather than someone approving someone who wont be able to pay back and ends up losing their house, as currently, or denying someone outright because they were asking too much, we can actually make sure people are approved for what they can afford, or told what they should lower their request to for approval rather than flat out rejection.
It wont go anywhere without more work to be able to justify rejections though, as it's human nature to want to know why you were rejected over something.
When I see articles fear mongering over AI nowadays, my natural response to see if those fears are justified by substituting AI with human, and seeing if the problem is present within humans too. If it's an existing problem with humans, and AI is going to make the same or less mistakes than a human in the same circumstance, then I don't see the problem. To cite an example, driverless cars - people say, what if the car gets confused by some edge case and blows up? We shouldn't use driverless cars at all!. I think that's the wrong question, I think expecting absolute perfection from day 1 is absurd, impossible, and going to hold back human progress on this front. The real question is, does implementing this technology mean there'll be less injuries and fatalities on the road? If yes then we're better off. If AI has 100 crashes in 100,000 people a year it seems absurd to not use it because it has 100 crashes, when humans are having maybe 5,000 crashes in 100,000 people in a year.
So your point is exactly right - it's not a question of whether the AI is perfect, it's a question of whether it can do a better job than we can manage currently using humans. We're not at a point where the AI is going to snowball into skynet because we're still talking about things (i.e. mortgage approvals) where appeals to humans are possible, and where we can press the off switch and go back to how we used to do things if we need to. So what if the AI fucks up and rejects someone? As long as they can appeal to a human then there's no issue, and if they can't, then that's not an AI problem, that's a very human political and legislative problem.
"Because we are the subject to propaganda no less than anyone else in the world."
Given that this is the premise of your whole argument and is demonstrably untrue then I don't know what the point in responding to the rest is.
Are you really suggesting the US, UK, Europe et. al. have a secret great firewall like China, and have the same lack of plurality of media? If so you're profoundly deluded. The fact is we are different, we do have less corruption, less propaganda - if you believe we have the same then I suspect you're restricting yourself to an incredibly narrow set of media outlets, but that's not us be bound by propaganda - that's you restricting yourself to your own echo chamber.
I get to read media from all over the world, I get media that stems the whole political spectrum here in the UK as people in the US do as well. I get to read China's view on the Ukraine (Hint: Chinese state media agree it was a Russian shootdown of MH17), I even get to read Russia's own view on it which is almost entirely isolated in being completely at odds with the whole of the rest of the world. The very fact you put the same weight in Russia's viewpoint as that of the whole of the rest of the world highlights the real problem - again, you're stuck in your own pro-Russian echo chamber.
Good luck being Russian and being able to easily access the same plurality of views as you can in the West. You don't know what actual propaganda looks like because you're already so swallowed up in it.
Australia's GDP is 1.5tn, it's coal export industry is worth 0.03tn.
Yes it'd have an impact for sure, but it'd hardly kill their economy altogether.
Importers couldn't merely switch over to other sources because there aren't any other sources that could scale up quick enough to cover the loss of 38% of the market. This would force prices sky high and put coal power out of business across the world because at that point it would be drastically cheaper to just switch to renewables. The idea that you could magically find equivalent to 38% of the world's coal from somewhere else and that there would be no increase in price to force coal power to become financially unviable shows an astounding level of economic ignorance.
Of course, that assumes they went all out and did an overnight ban on it's use and export - even if Australia cut production by 5% it'd be enough to force up drastically the price of coal to make a decent number of coal projects no longer viable. We're already at a point where some renewables are cheaper than coal - helping make that divide even more obvious would make a big difference.
I'm not proposing that they should actually do this of course, because it would leave countries across the globe with blackouts, and it would be an albeit non-fatal shock to the Australian economy (with a spike in unemployment). But the fact is that they could absolutely do something - jack up prices, cut production by at least some degree, tax it and so on to force a much more rapid reduction in the use of coal power than we have currently.
So again, I'll make the same point as before - Australia absolutely could make massive contributions to cutting global emissions and hence act to save their natural heritage simply by using their massive coal market share to make coal increasingly non-viable. If Australia had any sense as a nation they'd be looking to do that whilst considering a replacement industry - renewables, nuclear, whatever. They have the land, resources, and money to do it, they just don't because certain people are comfortable with the money they make from the status quo, and are dinosaurs that can't adapt commercially to newer, cleaner, replacement industries, so they just do what they've always done, lobby as they've always lobbied, and Australia's tourism industry takes a hit as one of it's key draws dies off.
No it really does - it's personal data and they have no legal basis to hand it over on a whim to another company asking for it, whatever the purpose. The days are even gone where a company can verify sickness absence records against a previous employer without your permission - they cannot in a reference even ask how much time you had off sick as it's again classed now as personal information that cannot be arbitrarily handed out.
The only thing an employer can do is demand you provide evidence of your previous salary before employment and not give you the job if you refuse - the same with sickness absence, they could ask you to get your previous employer to verify it in writing and refuse you the job if you don't. I've never heard of this actually happening though for what it's worth.
Your P45 isn't evidence, because you can simply claim that you had a big rise half way through the year, or that you made salary sacrifice for other benefits (such as more annual leave).
I had to undergo enhanced CRB checks and credit reference checks for my current employer because I work in financial services, and whilst I didn't lie about my salary coming here, they still never had access to it because credit checks only disclose credit.
For what it's worth, if you ever get a development job through a recruitment agent the odds are the recruiter will lie about your salary to try and get you what you want anyway when negotiating salary. Recruiters have no qualms about lying because they're such a shady industry and typically the more you get, the more they get so the odds are if you've got a job this way and had your salary expectations met it's because a recruiter lied on your behalf anyway.
The European Data Protection Directive already did a lot to change practices in this area, it's a double edged sword as it means it's hard to find out if someone used to pull loads of sickies, but it also means people have a far great opportunity in European countries to grow their career regardless of the arbitrary nature of their previous salary.
They can't do that, it's illegal, it's a breach of the Data Protection Act.
If they sack you for obtaining information that they have no legal right to obtain then you can take them to an industrial tribunal and get compensated for a small fortune and the Information Commissioner will have a substantial fine to hand out to both parties too.
As long as you put some kind of range in that's genuine no matter how broad then that's all that matters.
When I see a job ad listing with salary as "neg." I read it as "negligible", because that's usually what they mean. I don't even waste my time, usually "negotiable" is code for "We're not going to publish a figure because it's so low, no one would apply, so instead we'll trick them into calling us so that we can try in vain to convince them as to why they should take our role for fuck all money".
You can use this to your advantage - there's no legal duty to give an accurate figure, or in fact, a figure at all. They have no right to access your past salary information to confirm anything either.
As such, when they ask, you can just as well give an inflated figure to try and get an inflated offer.
This is why I don't even bother asking when I hire - I just offer people's salary based on what I believe them to be worth regardless of what they ask for or claim to have been worth previously.
Um, Australia is the biggest coal exporter in the world by quite a margin, so there certainly is something it could do - i.e. stop exporting coal.
Australia has over a 3rd of the global coal market. It wont stop of course though, because money. If only they'd start utilising that desert for renewables, or start using their massive uranium reserves by pushing research into cleaner nuclear, or offering some of that uninhabitable territory for underground nuclear waste disposal instead.
Bit of a wasted opportunity really, but hey, change is hard.
But make no mistake, Australia could single handedly collapse the supply of coal, pushing it's prices up to be unaffordable and forcing a move to renewables, nuclear, and gas, which all avoid to a large degree the warming problem.
Australia is literally selling out it's national heritage and it can only blame itself.