I have lived in many places throughout the world. Right now, some of my family are in England, Poland, Italy, while my parents are in Singapore and my Sister is in Chicago.
Let me tell you, that from experience: the US is definitely NOT the best choice for safety, freedom and quality of life.
In terms of safety, it is in fact one of the LEAST safe countries. There is higher recorded crime and domestic violence than any other country.
In terms of freedom, I find that the constant bombardment of "freedom of rights" is really just choking the country. There are many places much more liberal and "free" (take Australia for example, or even an extreme: the Netherlands).
In terms of quality of life, there are many countries on par with the US (Australia, Japan, Singapore - unfortunately countries in the EU aren't officially rated quite as high with standard of living, although they are pretty close).
I have found, without any doubt, that Australia is definitely the best choice in the World in terms of safety, freedom and quality of life. And if you want to go as far as to examine the exact figures, you'll find the same thing.
Damian Conway was my lecturer for Object Oriented Programming last year here at Monash University in Melbourne (Australia).
HE WAS THE BEST LECTURER I HAVE EVER HAD.
His lectures are ALWAYS full, purely because he makes whatever he's teaching so interesting! There were always people up the front of the lecture hall participating in some sort of demonstration (like his "pick-up line" game, which taught encapsulation incredibly well).
I remember one lecture, someone walked in about 20 minutes late. He had green 3/4 length pants on, no shoes, one of those puffy jackets and red hair. As he was walking up the back to sit down, Damian stopped what he was saying, pointed to the guy, and said, "oh my god, it's a leprechaun!" (all in good fun, everyone - including the guy - couldn't stop laughing).
I download mp3s _almost_ constantly, and run into these kinds of sites _almost_ every day.
The majority seem to have an incredibly good range of music, but are extremely difficult to get into. Let me explain...
Firstly, the hosts have their site listed in an mp3 FTP search engines (such as audiogalaxy.com). Once their site is displayed (showing the username and password), I login via FTP. The first message displayed, is usually one saying that this is a 'looking only' account, and for 'leech access', one has to go to their website www.blah.whatever.etc.etc.
Once at the website, there are banners at the top of the page, and a message at the bottom. The message says to "click on the top banner, and the fourth word on the page is the login, then click on the second banner, and the second last word on the page is the password." Both of these banners (of course) are porn sites. The host obviously gets paid a few cents every time someone clicks on them.
Next, having finally got the 'leech' username and password, FTP to the server can be attempted. Now comes the fun part... after all that, upon login a message is displayed saying, "there are too many users currently logged into that account. Please try again later", and I'm instantly logged out.
This doesn't happen once or twice, it happens 90% of the time.
What I don't understand, is why the porn site keep paying them.
Don't get too worked up. I fully believe that Microsoft has an active hand in changing the press release about their own company. It's the same thing any company would do, it's called 'utilizing the media' - it's the same thing most world leaders have done at some point.
You obviously have some kind of affection (affection in this instance being used to denote lack of dislike) for Microsoft; so let me take a second to explain why 'everyone' calls "conspiracy theory" when Microsoft is involved...
Microsoft has created many OSes with many security flaws in them. When these flaws are pointed out, they simply ignore them, and continue to sell under-grade software. No other software crashes more, has as many bugs and faults, and is as hard to integrate with (this is not opinion, it's fact - when a company start changing standard protocols and programming constructs to suit themselves, they instantly make it difficult for other programmers to write cross-platform applications).
On another note, when competition rises against this, it's erradicated fairly well (I must hand it to M$ there, in terms of monopolization, they're good). It's mainly from the examples of this in particular, that people tend to cry "conspiracy theory".
Purely depends on the quality of the monitoring equipment - picking up individual monitors in one room can be done: let me refer to a demonstration done by Frank Jones (CEO of TheCodex)
"We had no problem viewing computer screens on adjacent floors in the building (we were sometimes hindered by noise) and were able to differentiate (to my surprise) between different computers in a large office. We aimed our device out the window across the street at an adjacent office building and were able to view CRT screens without too much difficulty."
The full article is here (scroll down to "WHAT WE WERE ABLE TO CAPTURE...")
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I have lived in many places throughout the world. Right now, some of my family are in England, Poland, Italy, while my parents are in Singapore and my Sister is in Chicago.
Let me tell you, that from experience: the US is definitely NOT the best choice for safety, freedom and quality of life.
In terms of safety, it is in fact one of the LEAST safe countries. There is higher recorded crime and domestic violence than any other country.
In terms of freedom, I find that the constant bombardment of "freedom of rights" is really just choking the country. There are many places much more liberal and "free" (take Australia for example, or even an extreme: the Netherlands).
In terms of quality of life, there are many countries on par with the US (Australia, Japan, Singapore - unfortunately countries in the EU aren't officially rated quite as high with standard of living, although they are pretty close).
I have found, without any doubt, that Australia is definitely the best choice in the World in terms of safety, freedom and quality of life. And if you want to go as far as to examine the exact figures, you'll find the same thing.
Damian Conway was my lecturer for Object Oriented Programming last year here at Monash University in Melbourne (Australia).
HE WAS THE BEST LECTURER I HAVE EVER HAD.
His lectures are ALWAYS full, purely because he makes whatever he's teaching so interesting! There were always people up the front of the lecture hall participating in some sort of demonstration (like his "pick-up line" game, which taught encapsulation incredibly well).
I remember one lecture, someone walked in about 20 minutes late. He had green 3/4 length pants on, no shoes, one of those puffy jackets and red hair. As he was walking up the back to sit down, Damian stopped what he was saying, pointed to the guy, and said, "oh my god, it's a leprechaun!" (all in good fun, everyone - including the guy - couldn't stop laughing).
I download mp3s _almost_ constantly, and run into these kinds of sites _almost_ every day.
...
... after all that, upon login a message is displayed saying, "there are too many users currently logged into that account. Please try again later", and I'm instantly logged out.
The majority seem to have an incredibly good range of music, but are extremely difficult to get into. Let me explain
Firstly, the hosts have their site listed in an mp3 FTP search engines (such as audiogalaxy.com). Once their site is displayed (showing the username and password), I login via FTP. The first message displayed, is usually one saying that this is a 'looking only' account, and for 'leech access', one has to go to their website www.blah.whatever.etc.etc.
Once at the website, there are banners at the top of the page, and a message at the bottom. The message says to "click on the top banner, and the fourth word on the page is the login, then click on the second banner, and the second last word on the page is the password." Both of these banners (of course) are porn sites. The host obviously gets paid a few cents every time someone clicks on them.
Next, having finally got the 'leech' username and password, FTP to the server can be attempted. Now comes the fun part
This doesn't happen once or twice, it happens 90% of the time.
What I don't understand, is why the porn site keep paying them.
Don't get too worked up. I fully believe that Microsoft has an active hand in changing the press release about their own company. It's the same thing any company would do, it's called 'utilizing the media' - it's the same thing most world leaders have done at some point.
You obviously have some kind of affection (affection in this instance being used to denote lack of dislike) for Microsoft; so let me take a second to explain why 'everyone' calls "conspiracy theory" when Microsoft is involved...
Microsoft has created many OSes with many security flaws in them. When these flaws are pointed out, they simply ignore them, and continue to sell under-grade software. No other software crashes more, has as many bugs and faults, and is as hard to integrate with (this is not opinion, it's fact - when a company start changing standard protocols and programming constructs to suit themselves, they instantly make it difficult for other programmers to write cross-platform applications).
On another note, when competition rises against this, it's erradicated fairly well (I must hand it to M$ there, in terms of monopolization, they're good). It's mainly from the examples of this in particular, that people tend to cry "conspiracy theory".
And frankly, I agree.
Purely depends on the quality of the monitoring equipment - picking up individual monitors in one room can be done: let me refer to a demonstration done by Frank Jones (CEO of TheCodex)
"We had no problem viewing computer screens on adjacent floors in the building (we were sometimes hindered by noise) and were able to differentiate (to my surprise) between different computers in a large office. We aimed our device out the window across the street at an adjacent office building and were able to view CRT screens without too much difficulty."
The full article is here (scroll down to "WHAT WE WERE ABLE TO CAPTURE...")