I'm struggling to understand why on earth terrorists are still focussed on planes, with all teh security surrounding them now there seems little point even trying, getting explosives on board is largely pointless.
Why not attack coaches or such where there's no security and still a good 80+ people on board? Why not a shopping mall? A cinema? A nightclub?
I'm not trying to suggest they should attack these things of course I'm just trying to get my head around why these terrorists are supposedly going for the hardest target of all when they could get equal publicity/carnage elsewhere?
Is there some alternative goal to attacking aircraft, does an attack on aircraft supposedly have some additional terror factor? is it just to show they can get past even our best attempts at security (or apparently not in this case)?
I have to say unless it's one of the above I can only guess these people are EXTREMELY dumb, that or despite me not being one for conspiracy theories perhaps they do hold some weight? I just simply can't see any logic in an attack on the airways nowadays when there's so many easier targets out there.
To be fair it's not like the UK is the most worrying place for that sort of thing. If you're talking about going abroad then a lot of countries gather far more information on you than the UK does or likely ever will. This type of thing is never going to go live as much as the media likes to sensationalise these type of things, although it's arguable of course that media sensationalism is why it wont go live - people just wont accept it. Even if somehow it did get put into practice the European human rights courts would crush it within seconds (yes Europe IS good for something;)).
When I went to the US last year they insisted on taking my fingerprints and photograph (retina scan I think? Looked like a normal webcam though!) as well as a record of where I was going to be throughout my entire trip there, how much currency I had with me, where I worked, where in the UK I lived etc. I'd never seen a gun before except for in the army cadets, certainly never in a non-military setting for 23 years and a police officer at heathrow with an MP5 (i.e. my whole life to that point) however when I went to the US. In 4 weeks in the US travelling from Sacramento down through California and to Arizona back up to the grand canyon I saw 2 individuals with guns as well as 5 incidents (2 in Sacramento, 3 in Phoenix) of police officers with guns pulled on people in cars - that's 6 more in 4 weeks than I've ever seen in 23 years of living in the UK outside a military setting. Of course, gun crime there is a lot higher also as we well know.
I'll note also that whilst I've seen no display of firearms by anyone in the other countries I've been to I must note that arguably the worst for information gathering and general nastiness of customs officials when I went on holiday was ironically Canada, a country that is supposedly full of friendly people. When I landed in Ottawa and got to immigration I was told to step into the customs office where I was interrogated for 3hrs and asked everything from the password to my laptop which I had in my case through to the amount of money in my bank account, whether I had a criminal record, what my job was, how long I'd worked there, whether I had a girlfriend/wife, why I had two shavers in my suitcase and whether I had any beastiality images on my laptop or digital camera (no seriously, it was hard to keep a straight face on that one). After they realised I really was just there on holiday and not a multi-billionaire, unemployed, shaver murderer importing a hoarde of beastiality porn on my laptop and camera to Canada they let me go on with my holiday, again not without however recording every little detail of my planned trip. Now I'll accept I was probably unlucky, that immigration was looking for someone specific after a tip off maybe (they did pull one other person aside but only for an hour) however again, I'm pretty sure Canadian immigration now still holds far more information on me than they probably should.
The only country I've ever been to that hasn't bothered with personal details was Norway which was a weird experience, it was literally straight off the plane in Narvik and onwards with my whale watching trip.
What I'm getting at here isn't that the UK is some innocent country where the authorities treat us really nicely or that America is a land of spying gun toting maniacs but simply that the parent comment is just simple paranoia, it's worth noting that Europe as a whole has refused to let many countries retain information on European citizens unless said country adheres to European data protection laws so there's a lot more protection out there than articles like in TFA would have you beleive.
The story on the old rumour mill over here was that Amazon was almost single handedly responsible for saving the royal mail in the UK due to the massive increase in revenue it brought with postage of larger packages.
Personally, I don't beleive Amazon would've single handedly saved it, but no doubt it contributed alongside all the other online retailers. I think it'll only get better for postal services and couriers too, it's the high street that should be (Well, "is" rather than "should be" in most cases) worrying as people shift from a culture of high street shopping to having everything delivered by mail.
Odd, I got the info speaking from a customer service rep. just last night, it seems they don't even know themselves what the hours and limits are then. I'll admit he wasn't willing to give me details of what the slowdown actually was too- i.e. whether it was down to the previous max of 2mbps or if it was something much lower.
One of the things I brought up too was the fact the fair useage policy wasn't mentioned in the new contract they sent via the post for the 8mbps service.
Another thing I noticed that was in the contract was a clause where they say they'll hand over my personal details to a third party for investigative purposes or some such clause, I was under the impression that in our country the police are the ones who do investigating, not some random third party company!
Do you know anywhere where Demon users gather forum-wise? It'd be nice to get some numbers behind our want of a proper contract governing the new limitations they wish to impose rather than them doing it as, when and how they feel.
Demon's HomeOffice solution isn't a bad bet, I've been with them years, they're saying they're implementing limitations on their users now they're giving them 8mbps free but when I spoke to them last night to see what limitations would be imposed I was told that 100gb a month would be okay, they said it's people who are maxing their connection constantly for a full month that they'll impose limitations on and even then they wont cut them off, they'll just slow down their connection from 9 - 5.
One thing to note, there's no compromise for intelligent downloading too, honestly there's only so much you can download. If you get a cheap machine you can all share it and whack a bunch of hard disks in it then use that as a server and as a download box, get everyone to do their downloading on that machine so that people don't waste bandwidth downloading duplicates.
...for people like me who were in the AMD/nVidia fanclub? I've always had countless problems with ATI cards both at home and work, generally down to driver issues so I really don't want to switch to ATI, I'd personally rather go the Intel/nVidia route if this will have some adverse effect on using nVidia kit with AMD kit.
I'm not sure this is good for the market either if there is some kind of lock in to ATI if you used Intel, it was kind of nice knowing you could choose between 2 processor manufacturers and 2 graphics chipset manufacturers, now it kinda feels like the choice has been dented somewhat in that you can't mix and match so well.
Hehe, you beat me too it I was thinking the same.
Read the article again though it says the Pharoah had heavenly powers, therefore it's obvious he's actually jesus in disguise and is actually an eternal being and hence DID see the event!
Well that's my explanation anyway and I'm sticking to it:p
The UK has a distance learning University called the Open University, nowadays it's courses are based almost entirely online. It also extends into Europe somewhat and even other parts of the world (www.open.ac.uk btw). You're generally assigned a tutor who you submit assignments to online (or by post for some courses that haven't updated yet) and the only time you really have to leave your house is to attend exams or to go to tutorial sessions if you feel you want/need to (these happen like once every 3 weeks or so for an hour or two) but essentially you could do an entire degree remotely bar the exams.
Now, I can understand your concerns and the OU maybe an exception to the rule but it is proof that distance learning can and does work. Just to demonstrate how well the OU has done, the OU is the biggest University in Europe and also, the OU is responsible for 25% of Masters degrees in the UK. I think the real issue is seperating scam-like online institutions from the distance learning based institutions like the OU that are extremely credible.
Distance learning works for those who have passed the University age and are working full time yet can't afford to give up their job, I'm one of those - I work full time and can't afford to just quit my job and go to Uni for 3years for another degree so I'm doing it with the OU, studying for 30hrs a week I'll be done with my physics degree within 3 years. Also the quality of OU material is absolutely fantastic, it's better than the stuff I've come across at most conventional Unis! I'm biased because the OU has treated me well and I've found it fantastic, and most importantly, it's given me chance to gain a 2nd degree that I'd never have had chance to gain otherwise. I've actually enjoyed it so much I could be tempted to do it again and get a 3rd degree;)
I do realise my experience isn't relevant to the discussion about the social impact, because I did go to a real school, I work a real job and so social skills are gained that way, however when someone makes a blanket statement that they wouldn't hire someone from an online university I feel the point has to be made that online Universities can and do work and that to ignore them in recruitment is ignoring 25% of the UK's Masters degree graduates;)
Dell carries out extremely deceptive marketing practices in the UK, they often advertise on TV and by mailshot really low price laptops and such, however if you phone up for the offer they wont sell you it and will offer you it at a higher price, even if you give the specific offer code. When I spoke to trading standards they acknowledged it's a problem but that as long as they can prove they've sold a few at that price then it doesn't matter if they then try and screw a few thousand other people on it.
Dell definitely needs kicking into shape, their customer support is attrocious and some of the tactics they use are borderline, or at least should be outright illegal.
It's just a shame that trading standards are merely getting them to change license agreement or whatever instead of really doing what needs doing - hitting them where it hurts with fines/legal proceedings as they deserve for their disgusting practices.
£639
Not bad for UK prices I guess, and As usual us Brits are getting charged just over £150 (or ~$250) more than our US counterparts for exactly the same item, rather unamusing!
I was going to get an Apple sometime soon, but I might as well get a MacBook for that. For me it's a choice between being able to game (i.e. paying more for the higher end model with an ATI card in) and portability, this new educational iMac doesn't do gaming and sure as hell isn't portable so it's definetely the MacBook for me (£643 w/student discount). My other choice is to just spend more and get the higher end iMac or get a higher end MacBook.
Again though as has been said above, if you're not getting a high end Mac what's the point in getting a Mac at all when all you'll be doing is using Office or whatever a PC that does the same job is like half the price. There are reasons of course, personally for me I want to be able to make sure my apps are cross platform, but I'm sure those of us with special reasons for Macs specifically are an absolute minority.
I think the point is that whilst it took 19 years for this amount of recovery, the recovery caused by much more minor damage, perhaps by alcohol/drug abuse could be resolved in a much shorter time period. In other words, the brain can potentially work round small amounts of damage such that losing brain cells by doing whatever isn't necessarily a permanent problem.
I'll admit I know jack all about neurology, hell I suck at biology full stop but this seems like a pretty basic concept/idea that can potentially be inferred about what this discovery means.
Personally if P2P was stopped somehow, I'd just dust off my old radio and start listening to that again. Either way I wouldn't be increase profits for the music industry, I never used to before P2P, and I wouldn't do so after if there ever is an after. Music is nice, but I could just as easily live without it, after all at the end of the day there's always going to be pr0n!
It's a shame the old id folks all split off and went their own way really, Carmack is indeed the god of graphics programming but although Romero lost the plot and couldn't hack it on his own, id's games have gone downhill since he left along with the loss of American McGee, Paul Steed and so on. The id story is a perfect example of why a good game needs everything and a demonstration that nowadays good graphics don't make a game.
Prior to this interview going back a few months to when the story originally broke about hime, some of the newspapers in the UK have mentioned that this McKinnon guy is a schizophrenic.
I fail to see a problem here, it just means Englands gonna be as cold as Moscow so us Brits have an excuse to walk round in massive coats drinking vodka.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm struggling to understand why on earth terrorists are still focussed on planes, with all teh security surrounding them now there seems little point even trying, getting explosives on board is largely pointless.
Why not attack coaches or such where there's no security and still a good 80+ people on board? Why not a shopping mall? A cinema? A nightclub?
I'm not trying to suggest they should attack these things of course I'm just trying to get my head around why these terrorists are supposedly going for the hardest target of all when they could get equal publicity/carnage elsewhere?
Is there some alternative goal to attacking aircraft, does an attack on aircraft supposedly have some additional terror factor? is it just to show they can get past even our best attempts at security (or apparently not in this case)?
I have to say unless it's one of the above I can only guess these people are EXTREMELY dumb, that or despite me not being one for conspiracy theories perhaps they do hold some weight? I just simply can't see any logic in an attack on the airways nowadays when there's so many easier targets out there.
To be fair it's not like the UK is the most worrying place for that sort of thing. If you're talking about going abroad then a lot of countries gather far more information on you than the UK does or likely ever will. This type of thing is never going to go live as much as the media likes to sensationalise these type of things, although it's arguable of course that media sensationalism is why it wont go live - people just wont accept it. Even if somehow it did get put into practice the European human rights courts would crush it within seconds (yes Europe IS good for something ;)).
When I went to the US last year they insisted on taking my fingerprints and photograph (retina scan I think? Looked like a normal webcam though!) as well as a record of where I was going to be throughout my entire trip there, how much currency I had with me, where I worked, where in the UK I lived etc. I'd never seen a gun before except for in the army cadets, certainly never in a non-military setting for 23 years and a police officer at heathrow with an MP5 (i.e. my whole life to that point) however when I went to the US. In 4 weeks in the US travelling from Sacramento down through California and to Arizona back up to the grand canyon I saw 2 individuals with guns as well as 5 incidents (2 in Sacramento, 3 in Phoenix) of police officers with guns pulled on people in cars - that's 6 more in 4 weeks than I've ever seen in 23 years of living in the UK outside a military setting. Of course, gun crime there is a lot higher also as we well know.
I'll note also that whilst I've seen no display of firearms by anyone in the other countries I've been to I must note that arguably the worst for information gathering and general nastiness of customs officials when I went on holiday was ironically Canada, a country that is supposedly full of friendly people. When I landed in Ottawa and got to immigration I was told to step into the customs office where I was interrogated for 3hrs and asked everything from the password to my laptop which I had in my case through to the amount of money in my bank account, whether I had a criminal record, what my job was, how long I'd worked there, whether I had a girlfriend/wife, why I had two shavers in my suitcase and whether I had any beastiality images on my laptop or digital camera (no seriously, it was hard to keep a straight face on that one). After they realised I really was just there on holiday and not a multi-billionaire, unemployed, shaver murderer importing a hoarde of beastiality porn on my laptop and camera to Canada they let me go on with my holiday, again not without however recording every little detail of my planned trip. Now I'll accept I was probably unlucky, that immigration was looking for someone specific after a tip off maybe (they did pull one other person aside but only for an hour) however again, I'm pretty sure Canadian immigration now still holds far more information on me than they probably should.
The only country I've ever been to that hasn't bothered with personal details was Norway which was a weird experience, it was literally straight off the plane in Narvik and onwards with my whale watching trip.
What I'm getting at here isn't that the UK is some innocent country where the authorities treat us really nicely or that America is a land of spying gun toting maniacs but simply that the parent comment is just simple paranoia, it's worth noting that Europe as a whole has refused to let many countries retain information on European citizens unless said country adheres to European data protection laws so there's a lot more protection out there than articles like in TFA would have you beleive.
"Besides what is a day when the sun isn't even in existance?"
:p ?
24 hours
The story on the old rumour mill over here was that Amazon was almost single handedly responsible for saving the royal mail in the UK due to the massive increase in revenue it brought with postage of larger packages.
Personally, I don't beleive Amazon would've single handedly saved it, but no doubt it contributed alongside all the other online retailers. I think it'll only get better for postal services and couriers too, it's the high street that should be (Well, "is" rather than "should be" in most cases) worrying as people shift from a culture of high street shopping to having everything delivered by mail.
Odd, I got the info speaking from a customer service rep. just last night, it seems they don't even know themselves what the hours and limits are then. I'll admit he wasn't willing to give me details of what the slowdown actually was too- i.e. whether it was down to the previous max of 2mbps or if it was something much lower.
One of the things I brought up too was the fact the fair useage policy wasn't mentioned in the new contract they sent via the post for the 8mbps service.
Another thing I noticed that was in the contract was a clause where they say they'll hand over my personal details to a third party for investigative purposes or some such clause, I was under the impression that in our country the police are the ones who do investigating, not some random third party company!
Do you know anywhere where Demon users gather forum-wise? It'd be nice to get some numbers behind our want of a proper contract governing the new limitations they wish to impose rather than them doing it as, when and how they feel.
Demon's HomeOffice solution isn't a bad bet, I've been with them years, they're saying they're implementing limitations on their users now they're giving them 8mbps free but when I spoke to them last night to see what limitations would be imposed I was told that 100gb a month would be okay, they said it's people who are maxing their connection constantly for a full month that they'll impose limitations on and even then they wont cut them off, they'll just slow down their connection from 9 - 5.
One thing to note, there's no compromise for intelligent downloading too, honestly there's only so much you can download. If you get a cheap machine you can all share it and whack a bunch of hard disks in it then use that as a server and as a download box, get everyone to do their downloading on that machine so that people don't waste bandwidth downloading duplicates.
...for people like me who were in the AMD/nVidia fanclub? I've always had countless problems with ATI cards both at home and work, generally down to driver issues so I really don't want to switch to ATI, I'd personally rather go the Intel/nVidia route if this will have some adverse effect on using nVidia kit with AMD kit. I'm not sure this is good for the market either if there is some kind of lock in to ATI if you used Intel, it was kind of nice knowing you could choose between 2 processor manufacturers and 2 graphics chipset manufacturers, now it kinda feels like the choice has been dented somewhat in that you can't mix and match so well.
Hehe, you beat me too it I was thinking the same. Read the article again though it says the Pharoah had heavenly powers, therefore it's obvious he's actually jesus in disguise and is actually an eternal being and hence DID see the event! Well that's my explanation anyway and I'm sticking to it :p
The UK has a distance learning University called the Open University, nowadays it's courses are based almost entirely online. It also extends into Europe somewhat and even other parts of the world (www.open.ac.uk btw). You're generally assigned a tutor who you submit assignments to online (or by post for some courses that haven't updated yet) and the only time you really have to leave your house is to attend exams or to go to tutorial sessions if you feel you want/need to (these happen like once every 3 weeks or so for an hour or two) but essentially you could do an entire degree remotely bar the exams. Now, I can understand your concerns and the OU maybe an exception to the rule but it is proof that distance learning can and does work. Just to demonstrate how well the OU has done, the OU is the biggest University in Europe and also, the OU is responsible for 25% of Masters degrees in the UK. I think the real issue is seperating scam-like online institutions from the distance learning based institutions like the OU that are extremely credible. Distance learning works for those who have passed the University age and are working full time yet can't afford to give up their job, I'm one of those - I work full time and can't afford to just quit my job and go to Uni for 3years for another degree so I'm doing it with the OU, studying for 30hrs a week I'll be done with my physics degree within 3 years. Also the quality of OU material is absolutely fantastic, it's better than the stuff I've come across at most conventional Unis! I'm biased because the OU has treated me well and I've found it fantastic, and most importantly, it's given me chance to gain a 2nd degree that I'd never have had chance to gain otherwise. I've actually enjoyed it so much I could be tempted to do it again and get a 3rd degree ;)
I do realise my experience isn't relevant to the discussion about the social impact, because I did go to a real school, I work a real job and so social skills are gained that way, however when someone makes a blanket statement that they wouldn't hire someone from an online university I feel the point has to be made that online Universities can and do work and that to ignore them in recruitment is ignoring 25% of the UK's Masters degree graduates ;)
Dell carries out extremely deceptive marketing practices in the UK, they often advertise on TV and by mailshot really low price laptops and such, however if you phone up for the offer they wont sell you it and will offer you it at a higher price, even if you give the specific offer code. When I spoke to trading standards they acknowledged it's a problem but that as long as they can prove they've sold a few at that price then it doesn't matter if they then try and screw a few thousand other people on it.
Dell definitely needs kicking into shape, their customer support is attrocious and some of the tactics they use are borderline, or at least should be outright illegal.
It's just a shame that trading standards are merely getting them to change license agreement or whatever instead of really doing what needs doing - hitting them where it hurts with fines/legal proceedings as they deserve for their disgusting practices.
£639 Not bad for UK prices I guess, and As usual us Brits are getting charged just over £150 (or ~$250) more than our US counterparts for exactly the same item, rather unamusing! I was going to get an Apple sometime soon, but I might as well get a MacBook for that. For me it's a choice between being able to game (i.e. paying more for the higher end model with an ATI card in) and portability, this new educational iMac doesn't do gaming and sure as hell isn't portable so it's definetely the MacBook for me (£643 w/student discount). My other choice is to just spend more and get the higher end iMac or get a higher end MacBook. Again though as has been said above, if you're not getting a high end Mac what's the point in getting a Mac at all when all you'll be doing is using Office or whatever a PC that does the same job is like half the price. There are reasons of course, personally for me I want to be able to make sure my apps are cross platform, but I'm sure those of us with special reasons for Macs specifically are an absolute minority.
I think the point is that whilst it took 19 years for this amount of recovery, the recovery caused by much more minor damage, perhaps by alcohol/drug abuse could be resolved in a much shorter time period. In other words, the brain can potentially work round small amounts of damage such that losing brain cells by doing whatever isn't necessarily a permanent problem. I'll admit I know jack all about neurology, hell I suck at biology full stop but this seems like a pretty basic concept/idea that can potentially be inferred about what this discovery means.
Personally if P2P was stopped somehow, I'd just dust off my old radio and start listening to that again. Either way I wouldn't be increase profits for the music industry, I never used to before P2P, and I wouldn't do so after if there ever is an after. Music is nice, but I could just as easily live without it, after all at the end of the day there's always going to be pr0n!
It's a shame the old id folks all split off and went their own way really, Carmack is indeed the god of graphics programming but although Romero lost the plot and couldn't hack it on his own, id's games have gone downhill since he left along with the loss of American McGee, Paul Steed and so on. The id story is a perfect example of why a good game needs everything and a demonstration that nowadays good graphics don't make a game.
Prior to this interview going back a few months to when the story originally broke about hime, some of the newspapers in the UK have mentioned that this McKinnon guy is a schizophrenic.
:p
I think that is a pretty decent explanation
Maybe it IS possible to run an ISP in Manchester (UK) after all!
What kind of framerate do you get on that machine when playing Half-Life 2?
I guess it'll be released roughly around the same time as Prey and TeamFortress II?
I fail to see a problem here, it just means Englands gonna be as cold as Moscow so us Brits have an excuse to walk round in massive coats drinking vodka.