I didn't realise you have a left wing party of any substance in the USA, similar to socialist or labour parties in Europe. I thought your mapping was Democrat = centre-right and Republican= conservative right. For example, mainstream right wing parties in Europe are in favour of public education, and public health care like I think the Obama administration has just fought for.
Maybe we have a differing terminology, what would you describe as a left wing party, a centre party, and a right wing party? Do you have examples of all three in the USA? In the UK, Labour = left wing, Liberal Democrat = centre party, Conservative = right wing.
Some people might ask whether a private corporation should be entitled to make the decisions over how a country is run (e.g. what their citizens have access to) in preference to its elected government. Personally, I'd rather be ruled by an elected government rather than a private corporation. At least I can vote out the public representatives if I don't think they are making the right decisions. I have no power over what private companies choose to do.
Surely it's up to the Australians and their government to decide what they do and don't want sold in their country? And if enough citizens of the country disagree with their politicians' stances then they can vote them out in the next elections and put pressure on them in the meantime.
The only examples I know of where countries have been run by corporations rather than by their citizens with the intention of putting profit before the well being of their populations didn't work out too well (Belgian Congo, India under the East India Company).
yeah! we'll make you drive sub-compact sized space shuttles and swap your V8 rockets for 1.1litre ones! we'll make you leave your guns at home! You'll have to eat proper cheese for breakfast and noodles for lunch every day, and drink vodka instead of water! All the movies will be art-house in strange languages and you'll have to read the subtitles (but the upside is there will be naked good looking people in them, if less explosions and machine guns)! The controls will all be in Russian and Japanese and French, and the measurements will all be in metric! It'll be crazy, you'll love it!
Whenever somebody says "it's our destiny" , I shiver. I'm conscious that any minute now they'll be waving a gun around and saying "God made me do it!" or "the voices in my head said it was my duty!".
Control your own future, my friend. Don't believe in destiny or any other crazy ideas that your future is mapped out and you have no free will. You don't have to base your life on the belief in Ancient Greek goddesses (though I suppose other people believe in other gods so who am I to say what your belief system should be based upon...)
In the UK, we have the Public Lending Right (also in some other countries). This gives authors a micro payment for every time one of their books is loaned in a public library, something like 5p. a time.
I am not sure how the figures are worked out but the intention is that authors are compensated for public loans that might impact their sales. It's not tied to the number of copies of their books that are stocked by the libraries, but the number of times their books are borrowed. It's summed up and given to them as a payment each year.
I can't see why this couldn't be carried over into the digital realm, indeed it would surely be easier to implement and track than how its managed by recording paper issues at the moment.
Mind you it is a government funded scheme to support the arts so YMMV, some countries might not be able to afford this and some might see it as a dodgy communist plot etc., depends on whether your people feel this is what your nation's government should be doing. Wikipedia article notes some criticisms as well as arguments in its favour...
I think most families would prefer clean drinking water before kindle power charging.
If you gave them the hundred dollars or whatever a kindle is worth I think a kindle might be well down the list from my very limited experience of rural communities in India. Clean water systems, vaccination against the worst childhood diseases, guaranteeing their children one decent meal a day for the next year, those kind of things. Maybe shoes, school uniforms, pencil and paper for their kids next, etc....
"A 10 watt solar panel is about the size of a large sheet of paper and costs around $30" - what would you do given 30 days wages? (because that's what 30 dollars represents to some families in India). Probably not buy a charger for an electronic device...
To summarise the article: indie cafes bad, but on the First of Some Month Starbucks will give you free internet for as long as you want. Not "a major chain of coffee houses" but STARBUCKS.
How much was this person being paid to plug a company's offerings?
Contrary to the mainstream US media's beliefs, the Egyptian people may be capable of choosing a governmental system apart from fascist dictators or religious extremists....
There are many research fields where statistics don't provide the answers.
Don't start me, I just finished a PhD and spent a lot of time thinking about research methods;-)
But yeah, we all just hang around on slashdot for pleasure so taking most of the things here with a pinch of salt is probably wise. Nice when people link out to decent resources though...
Not sure if this is such a big issue in the USA, where I believe (please correct me here) most people learn to drive and continue to drive automatic cars, but here in Europe where the majority of cars are manual (stick shift I think you call it?) learning clutch control is a big issue. In the UK you can even take an automatic-only driving test which only allows you to drive automatic cars after you've passed, but very few people do so. I think the only people who take the automatic-only test are people with health problems (poor motor control in their left leg, or similar disability) or people coming to the UK and only intending to be here for a year or two who have come from countries where automatic cars are the norm. Passing the manual car test means you're allowed to drive an automatic with no further tests or training.
Classic new learner driver problem is dropping the clutch too quickly and stalling the car. Not sure how many driving games give you force feedback on the clutch? So I think you're probably right, games are ok for the skills they expose you to, but a lot of the mechanical skills are just not replicated realistically.
ha ha, all this time you Americans have been running around worrying about some bearded dudes in the Middle East, panicking about Muslims, al-Quaeda, Bin Laden and all that crowd... and all the time you've been looking at the WRONG BEARDS!
Fancy that, turns out those chilled out Amishes have pulled one on you, it's the dudes with the buggies and the barns you got to watch out for, and they've all got US passports to boot.
Just goes to show, doesn't it. It's the quiet ones who do carpentry you got to watch out for;-)
There are other media sources to check: good coverage at the moment by AlJazeera.
Some more Reuters quality photos here (warning: some show injuries, not nice). Barak Obama should probably not view photo 80, the protestor doesn't look too happy with the 'made in USA' tear gas canister....
Many early civilizations were pre-literate yet set up complex societies.
Or are you arguing about the word 'commoner' - do you mean that illiterate nobility can set up and run complex societies and you are making a class based argument, that non-nobles are somehow different?
But agents provocateurs are nothing new. They've been around since the beginning of the world too. Co-conspirators who encourage idealists to carry out an act and they all sign their vows of allegiance to the glorious people's revolution, and next find it being waved at them by the government's chief minister when they are hauled off to the dungeons the next day... nothing new here. Too many examples from history.
Agent provocateurs didn't start with the internet.
The USA is the country that has the highest percentage of its own population in jail: 715 per 100,000. New Zealand is in 55th place with 160 per 100,000. Find your country here.
Yes, I've visited Switzerland. People don't as a rule carry guns on them, and I don't believe it's a big political issue that they are not allowed to. I haven't seen members of the public carrying assault rifles in the streets in Switzerland.
Very few Swiss people carry guns in their cars to go and buy milk from the shops, and this doesn't seem to be a big issue. In the USA it appears some people don't feel safe in some places driving unless they have a gun with them. I think this is one aspect of where the USA and Switzerland vary.
Not every adult male in Switzerland is required to keep a fully automatic rifle at home. Only those who have carried out military training, have kept up military training and undergone psychological testing. These tests do not seem to be required for possession of a fully automatic rifle in the USA, for example Jared Loughner. I think this is also another way that Switzerland and the USA differ.
A totally criminal scam if I ever heard of one. File sharers were threatened with court, and told if they 'settled out of court', paid up 500 quid, then the case would be dropped against them. Meanwhile the media in the UK and USA are full of stories of people being sued for millions by music companies etc, and everybody knows it costs thousands of pounds to hire a lawyer. So what are you going to do if you don't know your rights and you're not particularly assertive? Probably get frightened and pay up 500 pounds which is a lot of money but most people can find it somehow. I can imagine a number of people thinking that's their cheapest and easiest way to end the nightmare.
A pure criminal exercise, no more than blackmail and extortion I'd say. The company has sat down and said "well I reckon if we pull this stunt 10% (or whatever) people will just get scared and pay up, let's send out a few thousand letters and watch the money roll in, and ignore anybody who fights back, just move on to the next poor victim". Easy money. Just a step up from a gang of muggers sitting outside a bar on a Saturday night waiting for easy targets to come past...
As for the legal firm getting death threats? well put up or shut up. Here in the UK that's taken very seriously. If they have received death threats, well turn over the evidence to the police and the police will duly investigate and arrest anybody who has being making these threats. And if the law firm is lying about this, well making false claims like these are also considered serious offenses. If there have been such threats, I would have thought a law firm before anybody else would know their rights and call in the police. I am not convinced...
I have great sympathy for you but my guess is the HR people are being told to make a long list from all the applications in too short a time, companies are failing to spend enough time checking through applications. Or believe they can get a good enough applicant using their current processes.
I should imagine for many places the HR departments are being told to reduce the pile of all applicants (say 100) to a long list of say 10, in not much time, an hour or two. So the first thing they'll do is give the pile of 100 to a methodical but junior member of staff and say "weed out all those who don't have the list of qualifications that we required in the application, and if you still have 50, then weed out those that don't have the list of desired qualifications". Then a more expensive more senior member of staff will take the 30 and look through them briefly to get it down to ten.
I think you're probably right, whether they do this manually or by computer they probably just do a match and chuck out everybody that doesn't match...
Slashdot Mirror
Petrol not so cheap these days...
Here in the UK, my local petrol (gasoline) station petrol costs 1.30 a litre, that's 8.03 US dollars / US gallon
(3.79 litres to a US gallon, 1.63 dollars to the GB pound).
I didn't realise you have a left wing party of any substance in the USA, similar to socialist or labour parties in Europe. I thought your mapping was Democrat = centre-right and Republican= conservative right. For example, mainstream right wing parties in Europe are in favour of public education, and public health care like I think the Obama administration has just fought for.
Maybe we have a differing terminology, what would you describe as a left wing party, a centre party, and a right wing party? Do you have examples of all three in the USA? In the UK, Labour = left wing, Liberal Democrat = centre party, Conservative = right wing.
'nuff said ;-)
The UK, apparently, has just declared AC posting to be a right.
The MOD covers all of the UK, not just England.
Some people might ask whether a private corporation should be entitled to make the decisions over how a country is run (e.g. what their citizens have access to) in preference to its elected government. Personally, I'd rather be ruled by an elected government rather than a private corporation. At least I can vote out the public representatives if I don't think they are making the right decisions. I have no power over what private companies choose to do.
Surely it's up to the Australians and their government to decide what they do and don't want sold in their country? And if enough citizens of the country disagree with their politicians' stances then they can vote them out in the next elections and put pressure on them in the meantime.
The only examples I know of where countries have been run by corporations rather than by their citizens with the intention of putting profit before the well being of their populations didn't work out too well (Belgian Congo, India under the East India Company).
yeah! we'll make you drive sub-compact sized space shuttles and swap your V8 rockets for 1.1litre ones! we'll make you leave your guns at home! You'll have to eat proper cheese for breakfast and noodles for lunch every day, and drink vodka instead of water! All the movies will be art-house in strange languages and you'll have to read the subtitles (but the upside is there will be naked good looking people in them, if less explosions and machine guns)! The controls will all be in Russian and Japanese and French, and the measurements will all be in metric! It'll be crazy, you'll love it!
Whenever somebody says "it's our destiny" , I shiver. I'm conscious that any minute now they'll be waving a gun around and saying "God made me do it!" or "the voices in my head said it was my duty!".
Control your own future, my friend. Don't believe in destiny or any other crazy ideas that your future is mapped out and you have no free will. You don't have to base your life on the belief in Ancient Greek goddesses (though I suppose other people believe in other gods so who am I to say what your belief system should be based upon...)
In the UK, we have the Public Lending Right (also in some other countries). This gives authors a micro payment for every time one of their books is loaned in a public library, something like 5p. a time.
I am not sure how the figures are worked out but the intention is that authors are compensated for public loans that might impact their sales. It's not tied to the number of copies of their books that are stocked by the libraries, but the number of times their books are borrowed. It's summed up and given to them as a payment each year.
I can't see why this couldn't be carried over into the digital realm, indeed it would surely be easier to implement and track than how its managed by recording paper issues at the moment.
Mind you it is a government funded scheme to support the arts so YMMV, some countries might not be able to afford this and some might see it as a dodgy communist plot etc., depends on whether your people feel this is what your nation's government should be doing. Wikipedia article notes some criticisms as well as arguments in its favour...
I think most families would prefer clean drinking water before kindle power charging.
If you gave them the hundred dollars or whatever a kindle is worth I think a kindle might be well down the list from my very limited experience of rural communities in India. Clean water systems, vaccination against the worst childhood diseases, guaranteeing their children one decent meal a day for the next year, those kind of things. Maybe shoes, school uniforms, pencil and paper for their kids next, etc....
"A 10 watt solar panel is about the size of a large sheet of paper and costs around $30" - what would you do given 30 days wages? (because that's what 30 dollars represents to some families in India). Probably not buy a charger for an electronic device...
To summarise the article: indie cafes bad, but on the First of Some Month Starbucks will give you free internet for as long as you want. Not "a major chain of coffee houses" but STARBUCKS.
How much was this person being paid to plug a company's offerings?
Contrary to the mainstream US media's beliefs, the Egyptian people may be capable of choosing a governmental system apart from fascist dictators or religious extremists....
"They all want Sharia law".
No they don't. Prove your statement.
There are many research fields where statistics don't provide the answers.
Don't start me, I just finished a PhD and spent a lot of time thinking about research methods ;-)
But yeah, we all just hang around on slashdot for pleasure so taking most of the things here with a pinch of salt is probably wise. Nice when people link out to decent resources though...
Not sure if this is such a big issue in the USA, where I believe (please correct me here) most people learn to drive and continue to drive automatic cars, but here in Europe where the majority of cars are manual (stick shift I think you call it?) learning clutch control is a big issue. In the UK you can even take an automatic-only driving test which only allows you to drive automatic cars after you've passed, but very few people do so. I think the only people who take the automatic-only test are people with health problems (poor motor control in their left leg, or similar disability) or people coming to the UK and only intending to be here for a year or two who have come from countries where automatic cars are the norm. Passing the manual car test means you're allowed to drive an automatic with no further tests or training.
Classic new learner driver problem is dropping the clutch too quickly and stalling the car. Not sure how many driving games give you force feedback on the clutch? So I think you're probably right, games are ok for the skills they expose you to, but a lot of the mechanical skills are just not replicated realistically.
ha ha, all this time you Americans have been running around worrying about some bearded dudes in the Middle East, panicking about Muslims, al-Quaeda, Bin Laden and all that crowd... and all the time you've been looking at the WRONG BEARDS!
Fancy that, turns out those chilled out Amishes have pulled one on you, it's the dudes with the buggies and the barns you got to watch out for, and they've all got US passports to boot.
Just goes to show, doesn't it. It's the quiet ones who do carpentry you got to watch out for ;-)
There are other media sources to check: good coverage at the moment by AlJazeera.
Some more Reuters quality photos here (warning: some show injuries, not nice). Barak Obama should probably not view photo 80, the protestor doesn't look too happy with the 'made in USA' tear gas canister....
Many early civilizations were pre-literate yet set up complex societies.
Or are you arguing about the word 'commoner' - do you mean that illiterate nobility can set up and run complex societies and you are making a class based argument, that non-nobles are somehow different?
But agents provocateurs are nothing new. They've been around since the beginning of the world too. Co-conspirators who encourage idealists to carry out an act and they all sign their vows of allegiance to the glorious people's revolution, and next find it being waved at them by the government's chief minister when they are hauled off to the dungeons the next day... nothing new here. Too many examples from history.
Agent provocateurs didn't start with the internet.
The USA is the country that has the highest percentage of its own population in jail: 715 per 100,000. New Zealand is in 55th place with 160 per 100,000. Find your country here.
RTFA:none. Unmanned probe.
Wasn't new coke some old people thing that happened before the web was invented?
wish I had some mod points! Good call :-)
Yes, I've visited Switzerland. People don't as a rule carry guns on them, and I don't believe it's a big political issue that they are not allowed to. I haven't seen members of the public carrying assault rifles in the streets in Switzerland.
Very few Swiss people carry guns in their cars to go and buy milk from the shops, and this doesn't seem to be a big issue. In the USA it appears some people don't feel safe in some places driving unless they have a gun with them. I think this is one aspect of where the USA and Switzerland vary.
Not every adult male in Switzerland is required to keep a fully automatic rifle at home. Only those who have carried out military training, have kept up military training and undergone psychological testing. These tests do not seem to be required for possession of a fully automatic rifle in the USA, for example Jared Loughner. I think this is also another way that Switzerland and the USA differ.
A totally criminal scam if I ever heard of one. File sharers were threatened with court, and told if they 'settled out of court', paid up 500 quid, then the case would be dropped against them. Meanwhile the media in the UK and USA are full of stories of people being sued for millions by music companies etc, and everybody knows it costs thousands of pounds to hire a lawyer. So what are you going to do if you don't know your rights and you're not particularly assertive? Probably get frightened and pay up 500 pounds which is a lot of money but most people can find it somehow. I can imagine a number of people thinking that's their cheapest and easiest way to end the nightmare.
A pure criminal exercise, no more than blackmail and extortion I'd say. The company has sat down and said "well I reckon if we pull this stunt 10% (or whatever) people will just get scared and pay up, let's send out a few thousand letters and watch the money roll in, and ignore anybody who fights back, just move on to the next poor victim". Easy money. Just a step up from a gang of muggers sitting outside a bar on a Saturday night waiting for easy targets to come past...
As for the legal firm getting death threats? well put up or shut up. Here in the UK that's taken very seriously. If they have received death threats, well turn over the evidence to the police and the police will duly investigate and arrest anybody who has being making these threats. And if the law firm is lying about this, well making false claims like these are also considered serious offenses. If there have been such threats, I would have thought a law firm before anybody else would know their rights and call in the police. I am not convinced...
I have great sympathy for you but my guess is the HR people are being told to make a long list from all the applications in too short a time, companies are failing to spend enough time checking through applications. Or believe they can get a good enough applicant using their current processes.
I should imagine for many places the HR departments are being told to reduce the pile of all applicants (say 100) to a long list of say 10, in not much time, an hour or two. So the first thing they'll do is give the pile of 100 to a methodical but junior member of staff and say "weed out all those who don't have the list of qualifications that we required in the application, and if you still have 50, then weed out those that don't have the list of desired qualifications". Then a more expensive more senior member of staff will take the 30 and look through them briefly to get it down to ten.
I think you're probably right, whether they do this manually or by computer they probably just do a match and chuck out everybody that doesn't match...