Someone I once worked with put it best regarding living in London, there are two groups of people, there are those who have lived there for a short time, i.e. only a year or two who think it's the best thing ever because they've not yet exhausted all the attractions, and then there are the people who lived there all their lives, and know that once the attractions are done, and you've eaten at all the cool places to eat, it's an incredibly shit city to live in. I suppose you're right, you can add the ultra-rich as a third category who will love it because they have the money to paper over it's problems (i.e. they can get their kids out of there and send them to private school, they have chauffeurs so don't have to deal with overcrowded transport, and they can have a country home to get some actual fresh air on weekends).
It's anyone's guess why Cameron chose London as the UK's tech hub, when London inherently writes off a good portion of the UK's population as willing candidates either because they can't afford to live there, or simply don't want to live in a shit hole. Cambridge was always the obvious choice, but there are other lesser considered yet far better choices too that have rapidly growing tech scenes that have developed naturally without need for government intervention to try and force it as London's "silicon roundabout" has (e.g. Bristol, Sheffield, Edinburgh).
Other capital cities like Ottawa and Wellington might not have as much upfront to do as London, but at least they're places you'd actually want to live if you had a choice and are the sorts of places you'd actually want to bring up children.
I don't know about the US, but it's similarly a sham in the UK.
I have two phone lines, the second always got spam calls, it was obviously a line some idiot had plastered everywhere and then given up only for BT to re-assign it to me, luckily I only have that line for my secondary internet connection so there's no phone on it anymore anyway.
But when I initially did have a phone, I asked BT how they intended to resolve the issue given that it was receiving junk calls through no fault of my own. The short answer is, they refused to unless I pay them money - fat chance given that it wasn't a problem I caused. The long answer is that there are actually two types of withheld number - there's a number withheld within the UK, which BT can see, but doesn't get passed to me, the owner of the line, there's a withheld number of foreign origin - they can tell where the call comes from, but not the original number. Both these types of blocked numbers can be differentiated at the customer's end point. I asked therefore, if they could simply block all calls from India, because I frankly have no interest in talking to anyone from there, and was told I could only block all international calls, or none at all, and as much as I'd like to prevent my mother in law from Canada ever calling, that wasn't an option because the other half would have something to say about that. Oh, and I'd have to pay them for the privilege, again, bearing in mind this was a problem of their making, not mine.
I similarly asked whether any of the withheld number calls I listed as unsolicited were from the UK and was told that they were, I asked what the numbers were but was told for data protection reasons they couldn't give me them, this was troubling for two reasons. Firstly, companies aren't protected by the data protection act and these were commercial calls, and secondly companies have a legal obligation to make their contact number available now.
But there was a common theme throughout the discussions - they couldn't do anything, unless I pay them more, whether a few pounds a month to block at their end, or about £130 for their fancy new BT phone that can magically block these things.
So it seemed perfectly clear that at least here in the UK, BT has everything it needs to help solve the problem, it could tell you details of companies calling you using hidden numbers if it wanted, and it could detect and block calls from certain countries if it wanted. Similarly, it could use market-led approaches to the problem, it could charge penalty costs to route calls from problem countries. India would soon get it's criminal call centre industry in line, if it's legitimate call centre industry was put at commercial risk.
But as it stands, it's just too easy for them to make money from making sure the problem remains a problem, they're making a fortune charging people for simple features that should be part of the already astoundingly high £17 a month line rental, and there's too much profit in charging for phones with built in filtering functionality such as whitelists.
So yes, solutions are already either widely available, or technically or even commercially trivial to implement. What's missing is the will for telcos to solve the problem when they're allowed to share the profit for it. This is unfortunately I suspect something that will not change without legislation.
Western involvement in Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO. All Western support for Ukraine has been done by sovereign nations in an individual capacity.
Being a member of NATO does not remove Britain or America's sovereignty in the exact same way that Russia invading Ukraine does not remove Ukraine's sovereignty in being able to ask for the assistance of sovereign Western nations.
Unlike Russia, Western countries in Ukraine have been explicitly invited there as sovereign nations, by a sovereign nation.
The only NATO response to the crisis has been to bolster NATO forces in NATO member states and to comment on the security implications of the situation and how they might eventually impact NATO.
You seem desperate to criticise the West here, but the only problem state here is Russia in that it has invaded and even annexed part of a foreign sovereign state. This isn't Afghanistan or Iraq where NATO and the West really did fuck up in overstepping their mark. The West is wholly in the right on this one.
The reason they didn't have it originally is simply because Sony and Microsoft both rushed their consoles to market not wanting the other to benefit from first mover status.
Both consoles have been regularly adding new functionality and features the old consoles had but the new ones didn't, the X1 at least now goes over and above the featureset of the 360, but given the positive feedback they've had from adding new features, and not stopping when they simply reached par, I'm not overly surprised they've decided to throw this in given that they're second place behind Sony right now.
I don't think any conspiracy theory of trying to make people buy new consoles is really needed when they didn't even have things like 3D Bluray support despite supporting Bluray playback, and lacked many other social features that were important parts of the 360's ecosystem.
The fact is, they just couldn't get their full wishlist done for release, that much was pretty clear by the state of features on release. Now it seems they can, and they've reached far enough down the wishlist to hit backwards compatibility, that's all that's really happened here.
Once someone has been exposed as a spy, they can't really be used as such again, because you simply have no idea who the country they were spying on and have been exposed to have told that that person is a spy.
It'd just be far too risky to put them back out in the field, the best you can do is bring them back home and give them a desk job there, at which point there's no problem in outing them because it gives credibility to the argument.
Even if you say, well, he's been spying on Russia, they hate ISIS, we hate ISIS, so we'll use this person as an anti-ISIS spy you're taking too much of a risk with that agents life because you still have absolutely no idea if anyone in Russia that knows about this spy has still leaked information about them to someone who isn't so unfriendly towards ISIS. What if the Russians let the Syrians know about this spy they've outed, and some Syrian who then knows gets captured by ISIS and tortured for information?
When a spy is done in the field because they've been unmasked, they're done for good in the field and with good reason.
Greenwald is right, the fact they're saying that some people have effectively had their spying careers shut down - because that's what being found out by even one nation implies, without giving any evidence that that's actually happened, means that such claims are as good as worthless. If any such agents have indeed been unmasked then they're now sat back safely in the US/UK with a desk job requiring no identity protection.
But the problem is it's not the corporations lying here, it's the people who wrote the article. As I pointed out, there was never any suggestion that most of those games would be out yet.
What lie have they told here exactly?
One by one, the games they're complaining about:
Dance Central Spotlight - Released Ori and the Blind Forest - Released Phantom Dust - Delayed because subcontracted developers failed to meet contract Crackdown - Always a 2016 release, still on track Scalebound - No release date ever given Forza Horizon 2 - Released Sunset Overdrive - Released Project Spark - Released Halo 5: Guardians - To be released on time in September Fable Legends - No release date ever given
Entwined - Released Bloodborne - Released LittleBigPlanet 3 - Released Abzu - No release date ever given Let It Die - Delayed Uncharted 4: A Thiefâ(TM)s End - Delayed The Order: 1886 - Released No Manâ(TM)s Sky - No release date ever given
There are actually only 3 broken promises in there, out of 18 titles. I don't think that's terribly bad and is far better than the industry norm.
I'd rather the journalists just stop lying for page hits above all else quite frankly. I think that's a far far bigger problem in the industry than absolutely anything else.
Yes, the same is true of Nintendo also. In fact, you can stretch it all the way to companies like Valve on the PC too.
The fact is that 1st party console titles, and titles from top developers like Valve are of consistently higher quality than those from other publishers.
The fact they take their time and even cancel stuff that is sub-par should not be seen as a bad thing. This is probably one of the weakest attempts at console bashing to date on Slashdot, games like TF2 on the PC underwent countless cancellations, revisions, and restarts before they finally saw the light of day as decent and successful titles.
Worse, the article is even complaining that some titles that haven't come out yet aren't out yet, even though it was never once suggested they'd be out yet. Take Crackdown for example in the Microsoft article- Crackdown was never ever meant to be anything other than a 2016 release, so why is it a problem that it's not out yet?
This article seems to be complaining that some sections of the industry are actually taking their time and doing things properly, when those sections of the industry - MGS, Sony 1st party titles, Nintendo 1st party titles, Valve's own titles, Blizzards own titles and so forth where development takes a long time but the titles are consistently good are exactly what the industry needs more of, not less of.
These articles are exactly why we get broken games - because some 'tards think it's more important to have a completely forgettable broken game that fails to deliver now, instead of a great game that we'll remember fondly for years after it's released in two or three more years time.
I'm not saying it's not a concern, I'm not saying it's not a problem. I'm saying going after the people who have neither the time nor the budget, nor the technical skills to operate this sort of thing is pointless, when you should instead be focussing on the government organisations that can do this - i.e. the people who will actually be running it.
The problem is that our general police forces are for the most part actually quite good and reasonable in the UK. My point is that importing the "fuck the police" attitude from the US to here is unhelpful when they're not the problem.
I firmly believe that if there's a problem then the solution is to find the facts, and attack it from an informed viewpoint. I think all the clutter of people crying out their pet conspiracy theories gets in the way of people who actually know the details from arguing their point that something is bad, because those doing bad can just deflect it as being just another one of the nuts.
When you start throwing out things that are wholly unsubstantiated, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on. If you focus on the facts, you stand much more of a chance. Rather than asking a police chief who has no fucking idea about these things, people should be pursuing their MPs to get a firm answer as to who is behind it, and if it turns out that it is actually the Met you then find out how they're paying for this massive nationwide database. When it becomes clear that it must be through some secret shadow fund, because their transparent budget does not contain any such provision, then the next step is to pressure your MPs into finding out why the fuck police forces have shadow funding. I suspect you'll never get that far though, because I don't think police forces do have shadow funding - that's a security services thing, and hence likely the people that really should be being pursued over this.
So yes I agree it's a problem, I agree with you entirely on that. I just don't think you can get to the bottom of it by harassing random public servants with completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
That's a far cry though from having their own database that also tracks and compares location data and even links it all up to car number plates, and does so nationally. If they had their own database then they wouldn't even need to partner with 3rd parties to do the job for them in the case of stolen phones like in this scheme:
You mention innocent people on the DNA database, you realise that's almost a dead horse now right? Yes, the police still retain temporarily the DNA records for some innocent people, but I assure you, there aren't "millions" of people in England (Scotland doesn't allow retention of any innocents DNA) that have been arrested for crimes like rape but not found guilty. There are thousands at best, and their records go after 3 years. Everyone else on there isn't innocent, they've been found guilty. Whilst I don't defend having innocents on there, it's hardly the problem it was under Brown and Blair's increasingly authoritarian police state. You're right that more needs to be done, but crying "millions of innocent people" just makes you sound like a paranoid crackpot because it's patently false nowadays.
I'd be more worried about other things now, like the fact they're building a database of mugshots of innocent people by paying them off £10 at a time for their new electronic lineup system without informing them that those mugshots may be used for other purposes, like development of facial recognition cameras.
There seems little point criticising police over things that are made up when you can criticise the security services and police for things that we know for a fact are not made up and are real actual problems.
Because the fact is, our standard police forces can't deal with the things they're meant to be dealing with as is, hence why certain things have become defacto legalised because they don't have time to deal with them.
The idea that they've then got time to dick around doing something like mass spying on top makes little sense.
Any such spying would typically be carried out by the security services, or by one of the new pseudo security forces that are effectively national police agencies like SOCA or whatever name they're going by nowadays.
So frankly I believe Hogan-Howe, I don't think it's his guys doing this, I think he's probably exactly right when he says it's nothing to do with him and his force. I think they genuinely have neither the resources or the will to do this.
That doesn't mean it's not another branch of the government of course, and it most likely is. When he refuses to comment it's probably because he knows it's nothing to do with him and doesn't want anything to do with the political debate of who is doing it or the rights and wrongs of it.
Frankly, whoever approached the met to ask who is operating them approached the wrong person. It's like asking the chief of a hospital why some members of parliament support homeopathy. How the fuck are they meant to know why they support what they do and vote for what they do? it effects them but they have no real control over it, nor can they say why the MPs think or do what they do. It's a question best put to the MPs themselves, not some unrelated chief of a hospital.
Except that's not what happened here. Okay, yes, that's the SJW story being peddled to you, but it's not even remotely what he said.
What he said was a joke about his inability to avoid falling in love, and others having fallen in love with him, coupled with subsequent crying when he criticises the work of those people. It was a commentary on the fact that when those people cry, he, no one else, he, is unable to continue criticising legitimately.
It was a joke about love in the workplace, and his inability to continue to objectively critique someone in the face of either them loving him, or him loving them and them crying if he does. This is a common type of British humour known as self-deprecation. If you don't get it that's fine, but don't pretend this guy is pretending it's a global widespread problem that needs some extreme solution.
He hasn't called for segregation or any such nonsense, it's the SJW's that have shown their true hypocritical colours by assuming that that's the actual solution to the problem in the joke he made. The solution could just as well be that he grow a pair, but for some reason only the SJW's seem to have jumped to some extreme conclusion about segregation, which says an awful fuck load more about them than it does about this guy.
Given that this guy is married to a female in a related scientific field to him, he could very well be talking about a very personal experience of meeting his wife in the lab. He clearly said "my trouble with girls" - it's clearly a reference to his own shortcomings rather than some extreme suggestion of a general problem needing segregation.
So give the guy a break, he's done nothing wrong, the only seeds that have been planted about segregation come from SJWs who as usual misinterpret things and then cry out some extreme suggestion that's come from nowhere other than their own fucked up minds.
Yeah because it's not like the Slashdot crowd have anything in common with someone who has a problem with overarching US governmental efforts to apply universal jurisdiction outside of their authority, who thinks that linking shouldn't be copyright infringement, and that believes someone needs to stand up and stick it to the RIAA/MPAA.
Ah, I wont hold my breath as I think there have been gaps before though, I notice Jeff Cogswell got another post this week too, and really, Jeff Cogswell is just another manifestation of Bennet, albeit slightly more on topic, though still fundamentally useless and wrong about everything.
Have they actually said Bennet is gone, or is it just that they haven't posted anything for him in a while? I must've missed this victory against Bennet and I need to know the gossip!
I'm interested to know how this affects international - ThinkGeek has some cool stuff you can only buy from it and can't get in the UK.
I've ordered stuff from ThinkGeek before but on two occasions they sent the wrong thing that weighed far less and cost far less, told me the right thing was out of stock even though they were still selling it because they didn't want to pay international shipping for their mistake again, took over a month to process the refund after I had to chase it 5 times, and when they did still didn't refund the extra I was charged because of the fact they overcharged me on shipping weight due to wrong item, and and I got overcharged on taxes because they made an incorrect customs declaration.
As such internationally they always came across as almost a bunch of fraudsters, effectively trying to hold onto money for something they hadn't sent, and lying to try and avoid rectifying their mistakes. The second time it happened I just cut through their bullshit and did a credit card refund straight from my card issuer.
I've ordered from GameStop before to buy US versions of games (usually MMOs) preferring to play with US friends than European versions that were often months behind in terms of updates too and have never had a problem with them. If GameStop sort ThinkGeek out I might buy from them - even better, GameStop now even have a.co.uk site so maybe we'll get ThinkGeek stuff direct from the UK and avoid import duty altogether.
Yeah but you're really just making up numbers to suit your argument, making your whole argument meaningless. This idea that it's cheaper to pay $1000 a year rather than the additional amount for a new car, is only true if you insist on buying a whole new car.
Most people go from paying $1000 a year for a knackered old car (though I'd argue the costs are typically higher than that on a really old car on it's way out) with maybe 200,000 - 300,000 miles on the clock to something with only 30,000 - 50,000 on the clock and pay less than $1000 a year.
Essentially you're using the new car price premium, which everyone knows loses half it's value the second you drive it off the lot to argue the point, but there's nothing in this world that says if you have to buy a new car then you have to go for the most expensive option, most people just go for a second owner car that's far more reliable, far more economic, and has a lower headline cost each year to boot.
You're also ignoring things like fuel economy, the cost of fuel alone can be twice as much on an old car, so whilst you think you're saving because you're paying no more in headline repairs than you would on the costs of a new car, you're blowing a fortune more on fuel.
Much of what you say doesn't even apply to many countries anyway, you can't just drive a car into the ground in the UK, so you have no choice about fixing certain things if you want it to be road legal, it has to be safe and roadworthy and that's probably why we have some of the safest roads in the world. We don't just let people think "Oh I can't be bothered to fix that to save money" only for them to have a wheel fall off on the motorway sending them crashing into a neighbouring vehicle killing the people in it. You'll also get taxed based on emissions, so a newer car may have no vehicle excise tax because it doesn't pollute much and is fuel efficient, but an old banger is going to set you back upwards of £200 each year alone.
So are you saying that corrupt Mafia-esque organisations should be free to commit crime on American soil with American money providing they don't actually live in America or leave the country afterwards then or what?
You should be proud that America is the only country that's found the balls to say enough is enough and put an end to Sepp's mafia rather than trying to make it all party politicial and pretending Obama has somehow been bad again. This is a good thing all around, there is nothing bad about what is being done to FIFA. It has been run as a criminal organisation for nearly 20 years, and criminal organisations should be dealt with no matter how popular they are in countless backwater countries.
I've never seen a job that doesn't have salary advertised alongside it (okay, well I've seen some say "competitive salary" but that's just code for "uncompetitive salary") though so you should know what they're offering anyway. Typically I ask for a bit above what they're offering to try it on, but often it is a genuine hard cap.
Of course it could depend where you are, if you're in the US the approach to this sort of thing may well be different to here in the UK.
I've tried going for jobs that offer less in the hope I can convince them to offer me more after recruiters have convinced them but it never works, their advertised hard cap is their hard cap and no amount of persuasion will convince them (one company made me do some up to 3 hour technical test, and I scored 99.6% on it, the highest they've ever seen by far and they still offered me their cap which was £5k lower than the minimum I made it clear I was willing to accept).
But ultimately if a job isn't advertising a headline salary that I'd be happy with then I just don't go for it any more, I don't see the point, it wastes my time and theirs, that's why I tell recruiters exactly what I'd move for as a minimum, what I'd like and so forth and the recruiters typically respect that - it's in their interest to get you your high end figure because then they get more too. If I expected more I'd have gone for a higher headline figure job in the first place.
As I say though it may well be down to societal differences between the US and UK.
Because sometimes the cost or inconvenience of running the old one just isn't worth the hassle?
There reaches a point where a car is still running, but costing so much in maintenance, or becomes so unreliable that it's not worth the hassle.
It's not like cars typically break down on a binary one day it's all fine, the next day is dead altogether. It's usually preceded by months of hassle, wasted time, and lateness for work because it wouldn't start within a decent time that particular morning even if it worked fine the next day, and then you find you need to spend £X,000 to make sure it's not going to die altogether within the next few months because part Y is on it's way out so you go to the dealership and trade it in as a working car before it's completely fucked and hence the dealership realises how fucked it actually is and so before they can really screw you on trade in value.
Sounds like a great way to waste time. I always tell recruiters what I want, because if they can't get me what I want then why waste each other's time?
What's the point being sent for interview to positions that aren't going to offer what you want because the recruiter has no idea what you're looking for?
You don't have to tell them what you currently make, but not telling them what you want seems phenomenally stupid and unhelpful to both sides. A great way to waste your time and theirs.
If you're worried that by telling them what you want you'll get offered slightly below that, then it's trivial to put forward a slightly higher figure as for what you want and get offered slightly below that giving you what you expect, or a bit more than you expected.
Recruiters need to know what your looking for, else you'll end up going for a few jobs that pay too low, understandably turn them down, and the recruiter will get fed up of dealing with you because they can't be bothered to guess what figure you're really after. Recruiters go for the easy money - if you tell them what you're looking for, they'll put you forward for it, if you dick around making them play guessing games they wont even bother with you as there's quicker money to be made with people who are open about what they want and who then typically get put forward for that and get it.
Given that they're the biggest/2nd biggest toy company in the world and have one of the longest running most persistently successful video game franchises going I think they most definitely do get it.
They seem to be doing better than most companies in growing their product, and maintaining high levels of user satisfaction of their video games.
I think you're confusing the term representative democracy, for a democracy that's proportionally representative.
Representative democracy is where you have a specific assigned representative you can go to, this is what we have here too in the UK, we have a local MP who we vote in to represent us in parliament.
But not every system of democracy has that local representative, some you just vote for the government and if you want to speak to them you contact them directly, rather than your elected local political representative. No one represents your area in this sort of system, they just represent the country as a whole.
This is not to be conflated with a proportionally representative system, for example, in the UK 1/3rd of local representatives were elected with less than 30% of the local vote, and more than half less than 50%. As such in the UK we have a representative system because your area has a representative in parliament, the problem is that it is not proportionally representative such that although we have a representative in theory, he doesn't actually represent us in practice because he often has only the support of a minority of local constituents.
"As far as cold in Europe, cherry picking a few UK averages doesn't actually impart much information about what's happening."
You chose Britain. If your cherry picking backfired, don't blame me. Just learn to realise that if you're going to cherry pick based on some factually incorrect newspaper article then you're going to look a massive fool when it backfires.
You talk of facts, science, and actual data. I've provided that all along - you're still just spouting bollocks without managing to back it up in the slightest with anything other than the exact opposite of facts and data - you're backing it up with others opinions who agree with yours. That is not fact, that is not science, and that is not data.
Stop being a zealot and get over the fact your argument is broken and there's a severe lack of data to back the points you've made, and, if anything, an awful lot (as I've pointed out) showing the opposite.
You spoke of cold winters in places like Britain that had bad CCD, I pointed out with actual data we have had incredibly mild winters in those years, I showed the temperature records, and you still try and deflect and call me the zealot. I can only assume you either work for Bayer, or are actually retarded.
Science and data aren't things you get to declare, you have to actual do and show them, you've failed hard. Get over it.
Have you considered learning to comprehend posts that you read?
Of course Java is used heavily for server-side programming. I know this, because I have leader server side Java software projects.
None of which changes the fact that that's still not even close to a majority of developers, and not even close to a majority of the world's computer using population.
I can only assume therefore that you're either incapable of reading posts on the internet and comprehending them. Or you're just plain batshit insane and like to say things that make no sense in the context of the discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone I once worked with put it best regarding living in London, there are two groups of people, there are those who have lived there for a short time, i.e. only a year or two who think it's the best thing ever because they've not yet exhausted all the attractions, and then there are the people who lived there all their lives, and know that once the attractions are done, and you've eaten at all the cool places to eat, it's an incredibly shit city to live in. I suppose you're right, you can add the ultra-rich as a third category who will love it because they have the money to paper over it's problems (i.e. they can get their kids out of there and send them to private school, they have chauffeurs so don't have to deal with overcrowded transport, and they can have a country home to get some actual fresh air on weekends).
It's anyone's guess why Cameron chose London as the UK's tech hub, when London inherently writes off a good portion of the UK's population as willing candidates either because they can't afford to live there, or simply don't want to live in a shit hole. Cambridge was always the obvious choice, but there are other lesser considered yet far better choices too that have rapidly growing tech scenes that have developed naturally without need for government intervention to try and force it as London's "silicon roundabout" has (e.g. Bristol, Sheffield, Edinburgh).
Other capital cities like Ottawa and Wellington might not have as much upfront to do as London, but at least they're places you'd actually want to live if you had a choice and are the sorts of places you'd actually want to bring up children.
I don't know about the US, but it's similarly a sham in the UK.
I have two phone lines, the second always got spam calls, it was obviously a line some idiot had plastered everywhere and then given up only for BT to re-assign it to me, luckily I only have that line for my secondary internet connection so there's no phone on it anymore anyway.
But when I initially did have a phone, I asked BT how they intended to resolve the issue given that it was receiving junk calls through no fault of my own. The short answer is, they refused to unless I pay them money - fat chance given that it wasn't a problem I caused. The long answer is that there are actually two types of withheld number - there's a number withheld within the UK, which BT can see, but doesn't get passed to me, the owner of the line, there's a withheld number of foreign origin - they can tell where the call comes from, but not the original number. Both these types of blocked numbers can be differentiated at the customer's end point. I asked therefore, if they could simply block all calls from India, because I frankly have no interest in talking to anyone from there, and was told I could only block all international calls, or none at all, and as much as I'd like to prevent my mother in law from Canada ever calling, that wasn't an option because the other half would have something to say about that. Oh, and I'd have to pay them for the privilege, again, bearing in mind this was a problem of their making, not mine.
I similarly asked whether any of the withheld number calls I listed as unsolicited were from the UK and was told that they were, I asked what the numbers were but was told for data protection reasons they couldn't give me them, this was troubling for two reasons. Firstly, companies aren't protected by the data protection act and these were commercial calls, and secondly companies have a legal obligation to make their contact number available now.
But there was a common theme throughout the discussions - they couldn't do anything, unless I pay them more, whether a few pounds a month to block at their end, or about £130 for their fancy new BT phone that can magically block these things.
So it seemed perfectly clear that at least here in the UK, BT has everything it needs to help solve the problem, it could tell you details of companies calling you using hidden numbers if it wanted, and it could detect and block calls from certain countries if it wanted. Similarly, it could use market-led approaches to the problem, it could charge penalty costs to route calls from problem countries. India would soon get it's criminal call centre industry in line, if it's legitimate call centre industry was put at commercial risk.
But as it stands, it's just too easy for them to make money from making sure the problem remains a problem, they're making a fortune charging people for simple features that should be part of the already astoundingly high £17 a month line rental, and there's too much profit in charging for phones with built in filtering functionality such as whitelists.
So yes, solutions are already either widely available, or technically or even commercially trivial to implement. What's missing is the will for telcos to solve the problem when they're allowed to share the profit for it. This is unfortunately I suspect something that will not change without legislation.
Western involvement in Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO. All Western support for Ukraine has been done by sovereign nations in an individual capacity.
Being a member of NATO does not remove Britain or America's sovereignty in the exact same way that Russia invading Ukraine does not remove Ukraine's sovereignty in being able to ask for the assistance of sovereign Western nations.
Unlike Russia, Western countries in Ukraine have been explicitly invited there as sovereign nations, by a sovereign nation.
The only NATO response to the crisis has been to bolster NATO forces in NATO member states and to comment on the security implications of the situation and how they might eventually impact NATO.
You seem desperate to criticise the West here, but the only problem state here is Russia in that it has invaded and even annexed part of a foreign sovereign state. This isn't Afghanistan or Iraq where NATO and the West really did fuck up in overstepping their mark. The West is wholly in the right on this one.
The reason they didn't have it originally is simply because Sony and Microsoft both rushed their consoles to market not wanting the other to benefit from first mover status.
Both consoles have been regularly adding new functionality and features the old consoles had but the new ones didn't, the X1 at least now goes over and above the featureset of the 360, but given the positive feedback they've had from adding new features, and not stopping when they simply reached par, I'm not overly surprised they've decided to throw this in given that they're second place behind Sony right now.
I don't think any conspiracy theory of trying to make people buy new consoles is really needed when they didn't even have things like 3D Bluray support despite supporting Bluray playback, and lacked many other social features that were important parts of the 360's ecosystem.
The fact is, they just couldn't get their full wishlist done for release, that much was pretty clear by the state of features on release. Now it seems they can, and they've reached far enough down the wishlist to hit backwards compatibility, that's all that's really happened here.
Once someone has been exposed as a spy, they can't really be used as such again, because you simply have no idea who the country they were spying on and have been exposed to have told that that person is a spy.
It'd just be far too risky to put them back out in the field, the best you can do is bring them back home and give them a desk job there, at which point there's no problem in outing them because it gives credibility to the argument.
Even if you say, well, he's been spying on Russia, they hate ISIS, we hate ISIS, so we'll use this person as an anti-ISIS spy you're taking too much of a risk with that agents life because you still have absolutely no idea if anyone in Russia that knows about this spy has still leaked information about them to someone who isn't so unfriendly towards ISIS. What if the Russians let the Syrians know about this spy they've outed, and some Syrian who then knows gets captured by ISIS and tortured for information?
When a spy is done in the field because they've been unmasked, they're done for good in the field and with good reason.
Greenwald is right, the fact they're saying that some people have effectively had their spying careers shut down - because that's what being found out by even one nation implies, without giving any evidence that that's actually happened, means that such claims are as good as worthless. If any such agents have indeed been unmasked then they're now sat back safely in the US/UK with a desk job requiring no identity protection.
"Swift on the other hand has a lot of desirable features, that are not available elsewhere."
I'm intrigued, can you post some examples?
But the problem is it's not the corporations lying here, it's the people who wrote the article. As I pointed out, there was never any suggestion that most of those games would be out yet.
What lie have they told here exactly?
One by one, the games they're complaining about:
Dance Central Spotlight - Released
Ori and the Blind Forest - Released
Phantom Dust - Delayed because subcontracted developers failed to meet contract
Crackdown - Always a 2016 release, still on track
Scalebound - No release date ever given
Forza Horizon 2 - Released
Sunset Overdrive - Released
Project Spark - Released
Halo 5: Guardians - To be released on time in September
Fable Legends - No release date ever given
Entwined - Released
Bloodborne - Released
LittleBigPlanet 3 - Released
Abzu - No release date ever given
Let It Die - Delayed
Uncharted 4: A Thiefâ(TM)s End - Delayed
The Order: 1886 - Released
No Manâ(TM)s Sky - No release date ever given
There are actually only 3 broken promises in there, out of 18 titles. I don't think that's terribly bad and is far better than the industry norm.
I'd rather the journalists just stop lying for page hits above all else quite frankly. I think that's a far far bigger problem in the industry than absolutely anything else.
Yes, the same is true of Nintendo also. In fact, you can stretch it all the way to companies like Valve on the PC too.
The fact is that 1st party console titles, and titles from top developers like Valve are of consistently higher quality than those from other publishers.
The fact they take their time and even cancel stuff that is sub-par should not be seen as a bad thing. This is probably one of the weakest attempts at console bashing to date on Slashdot, games like TF2 on the PC underwent countless cancellations, revisions, and restarts before they finally saw the light of day as decent and successful titles.
Worse, the article is even complaining that some titles that haven't come out yet aren't out yet, even though it was never once suggested they'd be out yet. Take Crackdown for example in the Microsoft article- Crackdown was never ever meant to be anything other than a 2016 release, so why is it a problem that it's not out yet?
This article seems to be complaining that some sections of the industry are actually taking their time and doing things properly, when those sections of the industry - MGS, Sony 1st party titles, Nintendo 1st party titles, Valve's own titles, Blizzards own titles and so forth where development takes a long time but the titles are consistently good are exactly what the industry needs more of, not less of.
These articles are exactly why we get broken games - because some 'tards think it's more important to have a completely forgettable broken game that fails to deliver now, instead of a great game that we'll remember fondly for years after it's released in two or three more years time.
No, you've entirely missed the point.
I'm not saying it's not a concern, I'm not saying it's not a problem. I'm saying going after the people who have neither the time nor the budget, nor the technical skills to operate this sort of thing is pointless, when you should instead be focussing on the government organisations that can do this - i.e. the people who will actually be running it.
The problem is that our general police forces are for the most part actually quite good and reasonable in the UK. My point is that importing the "fuck the police" attitude from the US to here is unhelpful when they're not the problem.
I firmly believe that if there's a problem then the solution is to find the facts, and attack it from an informed viewpoint. I think all the clutter of people crying out their pet conspiracy theories gets in the way of people who actually know the details from arguing their point that something is bad, because those doing bad can just deflect it as being just another one of the nuts.
When you start throwing out things that are wholly unsubstantiated, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on. If you focus on the facts, you stand much more of a chance. Rather than asking a police chief who has no fucking idea about these things, people should be pursuing their MPs to get a firm answer as to who is behind it, and if it turns out that it is actually the Met you then find out how they're paying for this massive nationwide database. When it becomes clear that it must be through some secret shadow fund, because their transparent budget does not contain any such provision, then the next step is to pressure your MPs into finding out why the fuck police forces have shadow funding. I suspect you'll never get that far though, because I don't think police forces do have shadow funding - that's a security services thing, and hence likely the people that really should be being pursued over this.
So yes I agree it's a problem, I agree with you entirely on that. I just don't think you can get to the bottom of it by harassing random public servants with completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
Do you have any evidence for any of that whatsoever, or is it all just conspiracy theory?
The met's entire budget is £4.1bn, and the price tag on GCHQ's equivalent system was £6bn. Where are the police getting the money for this exactly?
The only evidence of police overuse of phone records is that some providers are giving the police free reign of call logs:
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
That's a far cry though from having their own database that also tracks and compares location data and even links it all up to car number plates, and does so nationally. If they had their own database then they wouldn't even need to partner with 3rd parties to do the job for them in the case of stolen phones like in this scheme:
http://www.nmpcu.police.uk/imm...
You mention innocent people on the DNA database, you realise that's almost a dead horse now right? Yes, the police still retain temporarily the DNA records for some innocent people, but I assure you, there aren't "millions" of people in England (Scotland doesn't allow retention of any innocents DNA) that have been arrested for crimes like rape but not found guilty. There are thousands at best, and their records go after 3 years. Everyone else on there isn't innocent, they've been found guilty. Whilst I don't defend having innocents on there, it's hardly the problem it was under Brown and Blair's increasingly authoritarian police state. You're right that more needs to be done, but crying "millions of innocent people" just makes you sound like a paranoid crackpot because it's patently false nowadays.
I'd be more worried about other things now, like the fact they're building a database of mugshots of innocent people by paying them off £10 at a time for their new electronic lineup system without informing them that those mugshots may be used for other purposes, like development of facial recognition cameras.
There seems little point criticising police over things that are made up when you can criticise the security services and police for things that we know for a fact are not made up and are real actual problems.
Because the fact is, our standard police forces can't deal with the things they're meant to be dealing with as is, hence why certain things have become defacto legalised because they don't have time to deal with them.
The idea that they've then got time to dick around doing something like mass spying on top makes little sense.
Any such spying would typically be carried out by the security services, or by one of the new pseudo security forces that are effectively national police agencies like SOCA or whatever name they're going by nowadays.
So frankly I believe Hogan-Howe, I don't think it's his guys doing this, I think he's probably exactly right when he says it's nothing to do with him and his force. I think they genuinely have neither the resources or the will to do this.
That doesn't mean it's not another branch of the government of course, and it most likely is. When he refuses to comment it's probably because he knows it's nothing to do with him and doesn't want anything to do with the political debate of who is doing it or the rights and wrongs of it.
Frankly, whoever approached the met to ask who is operating them approached the wrong person. It's like asking the chief of a hospital why some members of parliament support homeopathy. How the fuck are they meant to know why they support what they do and vote for what they do? it effects them but they have no real control over it, nor can they say why the MPs think or do what they do. It's a question best put to the MPs themselves, not some unrelated chief of a hospital.
Except that's not what happened here. Okay, yes, that's the SJW story being peddled to you, but it's not even remotely what he said.
What he said was a joke about his inability to avoid falling in love, and others having fallen in love with him, coupled with subsequent crying when he criticises the work of those people. It was a commentary on the fact that when those people cry, he, no one else, he, is unable to continue criticising legitimately.
It was a joke about love in the workplace, and his inability to continue to objectively critique someone in the face of either them loving him, or him loving them and them crying if he does. This is a common type of British humour known as self-deprecation. If you don't get it that's fine, but don't pretend this guy is pretending it's a global widespread problem that needs some extreme solution.
He hasn't called for segregation or any such nonsense, it's the SJW's that have shown their true hypocritical colours by assuming that that's the actual solution to the problem in the joke he made. The solution could just as well be that he grow a pair, but for some reason only the SJW's seem to have jumped to some extreme conclusion about segregation, which says an awful fuck load more about them than it does about this guy.
Given that this guy is married to a female in a related scientific field to him, he could very well be talking about a very personal experience of meeting his wife in the lab. He clearly said "my trouble with girls" - it's clearly a reference to his own shortcomings rather than some extreme suggestion of a general problem needing segregation.
So give the guy a break, he's done nothing wrong, the only seeds that have been planted about segregation come from SJWs who as usual misinterpret things and then cry out some extreme suggestion that's come from nowhere other than their own fucked up minds.
Yeah because it's not like the Slashdot crowd have anything in common with someone who has a problem with overarching US governmental efforts to apply universal jurisdiction outside of their authority, who thinks that linking shouldn't be copyright infringement, and that believes someone needs to stand up and stick it to the RIAA/MPAA.
Wait, are you sure you're on the right site?
Ah, I wont hold my breath as I think there have been gaps before though, I notice Jeff Cogswell got another post this week too, and really, Jeff Cogswell is just another manifestation of Bennet, albeit slightly more on topic, though still fundamentally useless and wrong about everything.
Have they actually said Bennet is gone, or is it just that they haven't posted anything for him in a while? I must've missed this victory against Bennet and I need to know the gossip!
I'm interested to know how this affects international - ThinkGeek has some cool stuff you can only buy from it and can't get in the UK.
I've ordered stuff from ThinkGeek before but on two occasions they sent the wrong thing that weighed far less and cost far less, told me the right thing was out of stock even though they were still selling it because they didn't want to pay international shipping for their mistake again, took over a month to process the refund after I had to chase it 5 times, and when they did still didn't refund the extra I was charged because of the fact they overcharged me on shipping weight due to wrong item, and and I got overcharged on taxes because they made an incorrect customs declaration.
As such internationally they always came across as almost a bunch of fraudsters, effectively trying to hold onto money for something they hadn't sent, and lying to try and avoid rectifying their mistakes. The second time it happened I just cut through their bullshit and did a credit card refund straight from my card issuer.
I've ordered from GameStop before to buy US versions of games (usually MMOs) preferring to play with US friends than European versions that were often months behind in terms of updates too and have never had a problem with them. If GameStop sort ThinkGeek out I might buy from them - even better, GameStop now even have a .co.uk site so maybe we'll get ThinkGeek stuff direct from the UK and avoid import duty altogether.
Yeah but you're really just making up numbers to suit your argument, making your whole argument meaningless. This idea that it's cheaper to pay $1000 a year rather than the additional amount for a new car, is only true if you insist on buying a whole new car.
Most people go from paying $1000 a year for a knackered old car (though I'd argue the costs are typically higher than that on a really old car on it's way out) with maybe 200,000 - 300,000 miles on the clock to something with only 30,000 - 50,000 on the clock and pay less than $1000 a year.
Essentially you're using the new car price premium, which everyone knows loses half it's value the second you drive it off the lot to argue the point, but there's nothing in this world that says if you have to buy a new car then you have to go for the most expensive option, most people just go for a second owner car that's far more reliable, far more economic, and has a lower headline cost each year to boot.
You're also ignoring things like fuel economy, the cost of fuel alone can be twice as much on an old car, so whilst you think you're saving because you're paying no more in headline repairs than you would on the costs of a new car, you're blowing a fortune more on fuel.
Much of what you say doesn't even apply to many countries anyway, you can't just drive a car into the ground in the UK, so you have no choice about fixing certain things if you want it to be road legal, it has to be safe and roadworthy and that's probably why we have some of the safest roads in the world. We don't just let people think "Oh I can't be bothered to fix that to save money" only for them to have a wheel fall off on the motorway sending them crashing into a neighbouring vehicle killing the people in it. You'll also get taxed based on emissions, so a newer car may have no vehicle excise tax because it doesn't pollute much and is fuel efficient, but an old banger is going to set you back upwards of £200 each year alone.
So are you saying that corrupt Mafia-esque organisations should be free to commit crime on American soil with American money providing they don't actually live in America or leave the country afterwards then or what?
You should be proud that America is the only country that's found the balls to say enough is enough and put an end to Sepp's mafia rather than trying to make it all party politicial and pretending Obama has somehow been bad again. This is a good thing all around, there is nothing bad about what is being done to FIFA. It has been run as a criminal organisation for nearly 20 years, and criminal organisations should be dealt with no matter how popular they are in countless backwater countries.
I've never seen a job that doesn't have salary advertised alongside it (okay, well I've seen some say "competitive salary" but that's just code for "uncompetitive salary") though so you should know what they're offering anyway. Typically I ask for a bit above what they're offering to try it on, but often it is a genuine hard cap.
Of course it could depend where you are, if you're in the US the approach to this sort of thing may well be different to here in the UK.
I've tried going for jobs that offer less in the hope I can convince them to offer me more after recruiters have convinced them but it never works, their advertised hard cap is their hard cap and no amount of persuasion will convince them (one company made me do some up to 3 hour technical test, and I scored 99.6% on it, the highest they've ever seen by far and they still offered me their cap which was £5k lower than the minimum I made it clear I was willing to accept).
But ultimately if a job isn't advertising a headline salary that I'd be happy with then I just don't go for it any more, I don't see the point, it wastes my time and theirs, that's why I tell recruiters exactly what I'd move for as a minimum, what I'd like and so forth and the recruiters typically respect that - it's in their interest to get you your high end figure because then they get more too. If I expected more I'd have gone for a higher headline figure job in the first place.
As I say though it may well be down to societal differences between the US and UK.
Because sometimes the cost or inconvenience of running the old one just isn't worth the hassle?
There reaches a point where a car is still running, but costing so much in maintenance, or becomes so unreliable that it's not worth the hassle.
It's not like cars typically break down on a binary one day it's all fine, the next day is dead altogether. It's usually preceded by months of hassle, wasted time, and lateness for work because it wouldn't start within a decent time that particular morning even if it worked fine the next day, and then you find you need to spend £X,000 to make sure it's not going to die altogether within the next few months because part Y is on it's way out so you go to the dealership and trade it in as a working car before it's completely fucked and hence the dealership realises how fucked it actually is and so before they can really screw you on trade in value.
Sounds like a great way to waste time. I always tell recruiters what I want, because if they can't get me what I want then why waste each other's time?
What's the point being sent for interview to positions that aren't going to offer what you want because the recruiter has no idea what you're looking for?
You don't have to tell them what you currently make, but not telling them what you want seems phenomenally stupid and unhelpful to both sides. A great way to waste your time and theirs.
If you're worried that by telling them what you want you'll get offered slightly below that, then it's trivial to put forward a slightly higher figure as for what you want and get offered slightly below that giving you what you expect, or a bit more than you expected.
Recruiters need to know what your looking for, else you'll end up going for a few jobs that pay too low, understandably turn them down, and the recruiter will get fed up of dealing with you because they can't be bothered to guess what figure you're really after. Recruiters go for the easy money - if you tell them what you're looking for, they'll put you forward for it, if you dick around making them play guessing games they wont even bother with you as there's quicker money to be made with people who are open about what they want and who then typically get put forward for that and get it.
Given that they're the biggest/2nd biggest toy company in the world and have one of the longest running most persistently successful video game franchises going I think they most definitely do get it.
They seem to be doing better than most companies in growing their product, and maintaining high levels of user satisfaction of their video games.
I think you're confusing the term representative democracy, for a democracy that's proportionally representative.
Representative democracy is where you have a specific assigned representative you can go to, this is what we have here too in the UK, we have a local MP who we vote in to represent us in parliament.
But not every system of democracy has that local representative, some you just vote for the government and if you want to speak to them you contact them directly, rather than your elected local political representative. No one represents your area in this sort of system, they just represent the country as a whole.
This is not to be conflated with a proportionally representative system, for example, in the UK 1/3rd of local representatives were elected with less than 30% of the local vote, and more than half less than 50%. As such in the UK we have a representative system because your area has a representative in parliament, the problem is that it is not proportionally representative such that although we have a representative in theory, he doesn't actually represent us in practice because he often has only the support of a minority of local constituents.
"As far as cold in Europe, cherry picking a few UK averages doesn't actually impart much information about what's happening."
You chose Britain. If your cherry picking backfired, don't blame me. Just learn to realise that if you're going to cherry pick based on some factually incorrect newspaper article then you're going to look a massive fool when it backfires.
You talk of facts, science, and actual data. I've provided that all along - you're still just spouting bollocks without managing to back it up in the slightest with anything other than the exact opposite of facts and data - you're backing it up with others opinions who agree with yours. That is not fact, that is not science, and that is not data.
Stop being a zealot and get over the fact your argument is broken and there's a severe lack of data to back the points you've made, and, if anything, an awful lot (as I've pointed out) showing the opposite.
You spoke of cold winters in places like Britain that had bad CCD, I pointed out with actual data we have had incredibly mild winters in those years, I showed the temperature records, and you still try and deflect and call me the zealot. I can only assume you either work for Bayer, or are actually retarded.
Science and data aren't things you get to declare, you have to actual do and show them, you've failed hard. Get over it.
Have you considered learning to comprehend posts that you read?
Of course Java is used heavily for server-side programming. I know this, because I have leader server side Java software projects.
None of which changes the fact that that's still not even close to a majority of developers, and not even close to a majority of the world's computer using population.
I can only assume therefore that you're either incapable of reading posts on the internet and comprehending them. Or you're just plain batshit insane and like to say things that make no sense in the context of the discussion.
Which is it?