That'll be the invisible hand of the market pickpocketing the public purse again. Who loses? the people who live in these towns.
I wonder if this is going like the last time we had the Tories (right wing conservative party) in power? Lot of noise from politicians to privatise everything, juicy contracts issued, happy business leaders, 4 years down the line MPs (members of parliament) retire and get offered non-executive directorships in said companies (nominal one day a week jobs and a few million quid for doing so).
Reading the article (yes, unfashionable, I know) I see that the suggestion comes from a "Nonpartisan candidate". So I think this is an opinion by a random citizen standing for office (which I guess is open to the vast majority of people) rather than "an admission by government". The nearest we have to a government opinion in the article is the local Highway Patrol who think the idea is not sensible.
I am not sure what Nevada is like but where I live some proper nutty folk stand for election for all sorts of posts. I wouldn't give their opinions much credence so I don't think you have to assume that if a person stands for office their ideas are actually any good....
Minor correction for you - be careful not to mix up "England" and "Britain", they are different things. There are "English" courts and English law but there are no such things as "British courts" or "British law". In Scotland, which is part of Britain, Scottish courts and Scots law prevails, a different legal structure exists. So we're talking about the situation in England here, not Britain.
As far as I can work out, this is a follow on from a game previously released 14 years ago? is this correct? So who will care about its release apart from some very old-skool gamers? I guess it's just a kind of in-joke for old slashdot fans these days?
If you don't like the way it is, you have two other choices: campaign to change the laws regarding jury service, or changing your nationality. I don't think it's hard to leave your US nationality behind - though getting somebody else to accept you, YMMV.
While technology may add to the miriad ways in which people can be stupid, there have always been accidents and deaths in wild places because people have gone there unprepared. People die in the Scottish mountains every year. I've been told a big problem is people driving a long way to get there, and despite the weather closing, deciding they really must climb Ben Nevis or whatever because they've only got the three days there, even though their expertise and kit is only good enough for fair weather. This is when the Mountain Rescue gets a call out and find people have got injured / hypothermia / died. GPS or no GPS you shouldn't go up a mountain in training shoes and the kind of clothes you go to the shops in, but people still do....
In the USA, Christopher McCandless didn't need tech to make bad decisions either. Please be careful out there folks, you can die if you are unprepared.
I suppose the fundamental question here (in my opinion) is whether Americans believe that all muslims are terrorists. If yes, than I understand this perspective. If all muslims are terrorists, then every mosque is a home of terrorism, and related to the people who blew up the towers at 9/11.
If however you believe that not all muslims are terrorists (clearly the US military doesn't, it has serving soldiers who are muslims), then you have to consider that the mosque is not associated with the people who professed the same religion and killed on 9/11. You have to consider that the worshippers there may be peace loving and not want to be associated with the 9/11 killers, and so under the US Constitution and the oft mentioned cry of 'freedom' allow them to build their place of worship.
Personally I am prepared to believe there are many strands and interpretations of Islam, in the same way that most Americans who call themselves Christian don't associate with the Westboro Baptist Church and despite these people calling themselves Christian, may have very different views in their place of worship.
Oh lots of us love football, it's just we don't get American Football. We prefer the version where players use their feet to kick the ball.
Many of us think American Football might be rugby but with more padding because Americans are scared of getting hurt. Or perhaps they are more sensible and like their teeth and unbroken bones or other such faint excuses.
Personally I think one option would be to have a row of religious buildings from all the major world religions built next to each other. That way nobody could be accused of being given preferential treatment and the believers of each religion would have to talk to each other and find ways of getting on with each other (yes I know this would either be ineffectual or a tinderbox in reality).
Not sure of your expression "Islamic/ US relations" - I think these are orthogonal, they are not in the same dimension. Islam is a religion and the USA is a nation state, they are different types of entity. "Christian / Islamic relations" or "USA / Iranian relations" I would get. though the latter is slightly complicated as Iran I believe is a theocratic state.
It sounds like things work differently here in the UK compared to the USA. We don't tend to have 'police blotters' in the local news (which I guess means photos of arrested people) and the booking log at the local jails certainly aren't public access. Generally people arrested but not yet charged are not reported on publicly: I think its only serious crimes of national interest that might get covered in the press.
Depends on how your dad uses his GPS and what he needs to do with it, but Android smart phones aren't generally designed for rough conditions.
I've got a Garmin eTrex and an Android phone. The Garmin is way more ruggedised than the touch screen smart phone (Motorola Milestone). I don't think the Milestone would cope with pouring rain, snow, getting knocked about in rucsacs, dropped in puddles, sat on, etc, and still function in bad weather at night when I really need to know where I am: it might be life or death. "Smart phones" with a few exceptions are much too flimsy for outdoor use in severe conditions.
Posting pictures of people who have been arrested but not convicted would seem to be very dodgy territory, the police could be exposing themselves to all sorts of law suits. While the police generally try their hardest to do a good job, mistakes can be made. Putting up pictures of people who are later released without charge might still cause those people complications in their lives, whether it is over-zealous local vigilantes, or employers.
A friend of mine is a primary school teacher. He had to break up a fight between two ten year old boys a couple of years ago. As he was separating them, one of the parents arrived (end of school day) and then claimed my friend had assaulted her son. This all took a couple of months to sort out, nearly finished my friend's professional career. He was proved completely innocent, classic case of an insane parent believing their little Jimmy never did any wrong. My friend was incredibly stressed and depressed throughout, years of hard work possibly destroyed by one stupid parent, and ended up moving town to take up work in another school where he is very successful, has been promoted twice.
I can only imagine what might have happened to him if his pictures had been on Facebook for those two months with the caption "suspected child assault". He would have been under intense psychological pressure, and perhaps local parents might withdraw their children from his care, or pressurise his head teacher to sack him, or even taken illegal direct vigilante action. And then at the end after they'd ruined his life they'd find out he was innocent. Even if they gave him his backpay and reinstated him in his old job, he could have been in a very bad way psychologically if he'd been attacked as a result of this, maybe rumours would have spread that couldn't be stopped (his neighbours in his street saying "well he was proved innocent but I don't want my kids near his house" etc).
Posting pictures of arrested but not convicted folk in any circumstance, whether on Facebook, or a town billboard, or in the local paper - no - I think this is difficult territory.
Thanks for pointing out that Portugal is "a small country.... on the West Coast of Europe, known for its white sand beaches, oranges, fish, and wines".
For us non-USA folk, could you Americans give us geographical guidance when referring to US states, e.g. rather than just saying "New England", could you provide similar context, for example, say "New England is a small state on the East Coast of the USA, known for its historical districts, American Football team and..." (umm well I don't know anything else so this is why I could do with some help).
This kind of context would be really helpful for us non-Americans!;-)
I think Americans knowledge of European countries is about the same as Europeans knowledge of US states. Probably in both cases knowledge is biased to places which feature more in movies.
Well here in the UK my local garage is selling petrol/gasoline at 1.20 GBP / litre, there are 3.79 litres to 1 US gallon = 4.55 GBP / gallon, x 1.45 (pounds to dollars) so we're at $6.60/US gallon. You can probably find it for 1.17, a few pennies cheaper, but probably it's around the 1.20 mark give or take a tiny bit across the country. Rest of Europe probably similar.
So quite a difference from the 2.77 you pay in the USA and so hybrids perhaps more economically viable here.
"I totally agree that the internet is a better teacher for self motivated students"
I'd argue that the internet might be a good repository of information resources, but not a good teacher. Depends on your definition of what a teacher is, but a good teacher should be more than a stack of course material with some questions for you to answer at the end of your reading. A good teacher should respond according to how you are learning and be able to guide you based on your strengths and weaknesses, interpret your answers and push you forwards. Also a teacher should be able to facilitate your interactions with other students, who might be your best critics and advisors. I don't think AI is that good yet.
I agree with you that university (and other) qualifications are shorthand solutions to accreditation to simplify employment selection. I don't think the whole answer is to make interviews more difficult and complex though. Often companies don't have the money to spend too long on employee selection and a main challenge for them is to whittle down a selection of perhaps 100 applications to 2 or 3 they can spend time with. I can't see employers agreeing to interview every application for a job, they just can't afford the resources. So using qualifications to reduce the long list to a short list is currently a well tried filter. But I am sure you'd be a rich man if you could find an alternate way of enabling companies to pick good short lists from the total number of applications to their jobs.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that companies should behave ethically but it appears from experience that they rarely do this voluntarily.
Hence my noting that there is no governmental embargo in place over Saudia Arabia's privacy / tapping position or other human rights records. Governments could provide the lead, but the message they are sending out is "no problem, do as you will". RIM could argue that they are behaving within the law, and their government is not either providing direct advice, legal restrictions or leading by an example which suggests they should behave other than are doing.
Why should RIM care if they make sales? Businesses only worry about ethics when they might cause a reduction in profits. NGOs and individuals I expect to have ethics, but not corporations. Where does "backbone" come into running a business?
Canada and USA and a lot of other countries trade with Saudia Arabia, I haven't seen them declaring trade embargoes over Saudia Arabia's human rights issues either.
Personally I'd prefer it if companies (and countries) behaved ethically but from I've read over the last couple of decades this doesn't seem to be something they voluntarily indulge in.
I am surprised at the number of posts here which don't mention other people, seeing as slashdot gets excited about social engineering hacker contests, but to manage your risk and look after your property, don't forget to cultivate good relationships with your neighbours. Social side of things can help secure your property as much as technology.
Having friends looking out for you reduces risk immensely. I've got a neighbour who's phoned me at work to tell me I left a back window open: her boyfriend had noticed - and she'd seen me leave for work. Me and the same neighbour have a spare copy of each other's door key so I told her to come in and lock it up for me. Me and my neighbours tell each other when we're on holiday and take turns to pick up mail left on the door mat or in the letter box so places look occupied.
Getting decent locks is still a necessity but build good relations with your neighbours so you've got more eyes watching over your place at more times of the day, and when you're away for a few days, this is invaluable. There's nobody more interested in making sure your street is crime free than the people who live in the street.
... I am sure that you can't replace the entire US nuclear forensics programme with an 18 year old with an A level in Computer Science. I'm guessing there's a few folk with PhDs and the like in their organisation who are doing more than playing darts and watching day time tv. What do you think? Is it all a con? could it be replaced by a single teenaged student?
I am sure he's not short of a few quid. Maybe he got sponsorship as well (hey, the rich are rich because they are good with making money, right?) but he's hardly an inner city kid raising pennies to live a once in a life time dream. Fair play to the bloke for making a good ecological point, and definitely a good one for using his wealth well, but his dad is a multi-billionaire so I think the cost is irrelevant to him. He's not in it for the free holiday, he could buy any boat he wanted.
The Open University has over 200,000 distance learners world wide. It frequently gets high ratings in student satisfaction surveys - for three years running it was the highest rated UK university by this measure (beating off Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc). In the UK at least courses from the Open University are recognised as equivalent to those from other good universities, it's not a mickey mouse correspondence place like some "distance universities" but rigourously examined and with its own postgrad and PhD programmes. It's not the cheapest but you pay your money and you get what you pay for. This page seems to tell you about some of the courses aimed at US students.
Slashdot Mirror
That was probably a £170K Ferrari 458 - they seem to be bursting into flames quite regularly, general recall of the model is currently going on ;-)
That'll be the invisible hand of the market pickpocketing the public purse again. Who loses? the people who live in these towns.
I wonder if this is going like the last time we had the Tories (right wing conservative party) in power? Lot of noise from politicians to privatise everything, juicy contracts issued, happy business leaders, 4 years down the line MPs (members of parliament) retire and get offered non-executive directorships in said companies (nominal one day a week jobs and a few million quid for doing so).
Reading the article (yes, unfashionable, I know) I see that the suggestion comes from a "Nonpartisan candidate". So I think this is an opinion by a random citizen standing for office (which I guess is open to the vast majority of people) rather than "an admission by government". The nearest we have to a government opinion in the article is the local Highway Patrol who think the idea is not sensible.
I am not sure what Nevada is like but where I live some proper nutty folk stand for election for all sorts of posts. I wouldn't give their opinions much credence so I don't think you have to assume that if a person stands for office their ideas are actually any good....
Minor correction for you - be careful not to mix up "England" and "Britain", they are different things. There are "English" courts and English law but there are no such things as "British courts" or "British law". In Scotland, which is part of Britain, Scottish courts and Scots law prevails, a different legal structure exists. So we're talking about the situation in England here, not Britain.
cheers!
As far as I can work out, this is a follow on from a game previously released 14 years ago? is this correct? So who will care about its release apart from some very old-skool gamers? I guess it's just a kind of in-joke for old slashdot fans these days?
If you don't like the way it is, you have two other choices: campaign to change the laws regarding jury service, or changing your nationality. I don't think it's hard to leave your US nationality behind - though getting somebody else to accept you, YMMV.
While technology may add to the miriad ways in which people can be stupid, there have always been accidents and deaths in wild places because people have gone there unprepared. People die in the Scottish mountains every year. I've been told a big problem is people driving a long way to get there, and despite the weather closing, deciding they really must climb Ben Nevis or whatever because they've only got the three days there, even though their expertise and kit is only good enough for fair weather. This is when the Mountain Rescue gets a call out and find people have got injured / hypothermia / died. GPS or no GPS you shouldn't go up a mountain in training shoes and the kind of clothes you go to the shops in, but people still do....
In the USA, Christopher McCandless didn't need tech to make bad decisions either. Please be careful out there folks, you can die if you are unprepared.
I suppose the fundamental question here (in my opinion) is whether Americans believe that all muslims are terrorists. If yes, than I understand this perspective. If all muslims are terrorists, then every mosque is a home of terrorism, and related to the people who blew up the towers at 9/11.
If however you believe that not all muslims are terrorists (clearly the US military doesn't, it has serving soldiers who are muslims), then you have to consider that the mosque is not associated with the people who professed the same religion and killed on 9/11. You have to consider that the worshippers there may be peace loving and not want to be associated with the 9/11 killers, and so under the US Constitution and the oft mentioned cry of 'freedom' allow them to build their place of worship.
Personally I am prepared to believe there are many strands and interpretations of Islam, in the same way that most Americans who call themselves Christian don't associate with the Westboro Baptist Church and despite these people calling themselves Christian, may have very different views in their place of worship.
Oh lots of us love football, it's just we don't get American Football. We prefer the version where players use their feet to kick the ball.
Many of us think American Football might be rugby but with more padding because Americans are scared of getting hurt. Or perhaps they are more sensible and like their teeth and unbroken bones or other such faint excuses.
Other things the same distance from Ground Zero. Just to put the distance into context and unpack the debate about what should be allowed planning permission in this area.
Personally I think one option would be to have a row of religious buildings from all the major world religions built next to each other. That way nobody could be accused of being given preferential treatment and the believers of each religion would have to talk to each other and find ways of getting on with each other (yes I know this would either be ineffectual or a tinderbox in reality).
Not sure of your expression "Islamic/ US relations" - I think these are orthogonal, they are not in the same dimension. Islam is a religion and the USA is a nation state, they are different types of entity. "Christian / Islamic relations" or "USA / Iranian relations" I would get. though the latter is slightly complicated as Iran I believe is a theocratic state.
It sounds like things work differently here in the UK compared to the USA. We don't tend to have 'police blotters' in the local news (which I guess means photos of arrested people) and the booking log at the local jails certainly aren't public access. Generally people arrested but not yet charged are not reported on publicly: I think its only serious crimes of national interest that might get covered in the press.
Depends on how your dad uses his GPS and what he needs to do with it, but Android smart phones aren't generally designed for rough conditions.
I've got a Garmin eTrex and an Android phone. The Garmin is way more ruggedised than the touch screen smart phone (Motorola Milestone). I don't think the Milestone would cope with pouring rain, snow, getting knocked about in rucsacs, dropped in puddles, sat on, etc, and still function in bad weather at night when I really need to know where I am: it might be life or death. "Smart phones" with a few exceptions are much too flimsy for outdoor use in severe conditions.
Posting pictures of people who have been arrested but not convicted would seem to be very dodgy territory, the police could be exposing themselves to all sorts of law suits. While the police generally try their hardest to do a good job, mistakes can be made. Putting up pictures of people who are later released without charge might still cause those people complications in their lives, whether it is over-zealous local vigilantes, or employers.
A friend of mine is a primary school teacher. He had to break up a fight between two ten year old boys a couple of years ago. As he was separating them, one of the parents arrived (end of school day) and then claimed my friend had assaulted her son. This all took a couple of months to sort out, nearly finished my friend's professional career. He was proved completely innocent, classic case of an insane parent believing their little Jimmy never did any wrong. My friend was incredibly stressed and depressed throughout, years of hard work possibly destroyed by one stupid parent, and ended up moving town to take up work in another school where he is very successful, has been promoted twice.
I can only imagine what might have happened to him if his pictures had been on Facebook for those two months with the caption "suspected child assault". He would have been under intense psychological pressure, and perhaps local parents might withdraw their children from his care, or pressurise his head teacher to sack him, or even taken illegal direct vigilante action. And then at the end after they'd ruined his life they'd find out he was innocent. Even if they gave him his backpay and reinstated him in his old job, he could have been in a very bad way psychologically if he'd been attacked as a result of this, maybe rumours would have spread that couldn't be stopped (his neighbours in his street saying "well he was proved innocent but I don't want my kids near his house" etc).
Posting pictures of arrested but not convicted folk in any circumstance, whether on Facebook, or a town billboard, or in the local paper - no - I think this is difficult territory.
Indeed, exactly! of course I guess I could look up wikipedia I suppose ;-)
Thanks for pointing out that Portugal is "a small country .... on the West Coast of Europe, known for its white sand beaches, oranges, fish, and wines".
For us non-USA folk, could you Americans give us geographical guidance when referring to US states, e.g. rather than just saying "New England", could you provide similar context, for example, say "New England is a small state on the East Coast of the USA, known for its historical districts, American Football team and ..." (umm well I don't know anything else so this is why I could do with some help).
This kind of context would be really helpful for us non-Americans! ;-)
I think Americans knowledge of European countries is about the same as Europeans knowledge of US states. Probably in both cases knowledge is biased to places which feature more in movies.
Well here in the UK my local garage is selling petrol/gasoline at 1.20 GBP / litre, there are 3.79 litres to 1 US gallon = 4.55 GBP / gallon, x 1.45 (pounds to dollars) so we're at $6.60 /US gallon. You can probably find it for 1.17, a few pennies cheaper, but probably it's around the 1.20 mark give or take a tiny bit across the country. Rest of Europe probably similar.
So quite a difference from the 2.77 you pay in the USA and so hybrids perhaps more economically viable here.
"I totally agree that the internet is a better teacher for self motivated students"
I'd argue that the internet might be a good repository of information resources, but not a good teacher. Depends on your definition of what a teacher is, but a good teacher should be more than a stack of course material with some questions for you to answer at the end of your reading. A good teacher should respond according to how you are learning and be able to guide you based on your strengths and weaknesses, interpret your answers and push you forwards. Also a teacher should be able to facilitate your interactions with other students, who might be your best critics and advisors. I don't think AI is that good yet.
I agree with you that university (and other) qualifications are shorthand solutions to accreditation to simplify employment selection. I don't think the whole answer is to make interviews more difficult and complex though. Often companies don't have the money to spend too long on employee selection and a main challenge for them is to whittle down a selection of perhaps 100 applications to 2 or 3 they can spend time with. I can't see employers agreeing to interview every application for a job, they just can't afford the resources. So using qualifications to reduce the long list to a short list is currently a well tried filter. But I am sure you'd be a rich man if you could find an alternate way of enabling companies to pick good short lists from the total number of applications to their jobs.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that companies should behave ethically but it appears from experience that they rarely do this voluntarily.
Hence my noting that there is no governmental embargo in place over Saudia Arabia's privacy / tapping position or other human rights records. Governments could provide the lead, but the message they are sending out is "no problem, do as you will". RIM could argue that they are behaving within the law, and their government is not either providing direct advice, legal restrictions or leading by an example which suggests they should behave other than are doing.
Why should RIM care if they make sales? Businesses only worry about ethics when they might cause a reduction in profits. NGOs and individuals I expect to have ethics, but not corporations. Where does "backbone" come into running a business?
Canada and USA and a lot of other countries trade with Saudia Arabia, I haven't seen them declaring trade embargoes over Saudia Arabia's human rights issues either.
Personally I'd prefer it if companies (and countries) behaved ethically but from I've read over the last couple of decades this doesn't seem to be something they voluntarily indulge in.
You forgot 5. Get to know your neighbours.
I am surprised at the number of posts here which don't mention other people, seeing as slashdot gets excited about social engineering hacker contests, but to manage your risk and look after your property, don't forget to cultivate good relationships with your neighbours. Social side of things can help secure your property as much as technology.
Having friends looking out for you reduces risk immensely. I've got a neighbour who's phoned me at work to tell me I left a back window open: her boyfriend had noticed - and she'd seen me leave for work. Me and the same neighbour have a spare copy of each other's door key so I told her to come in and lock it up for me. Me and my neighbours tell each other when we're on holiday and take turns to pick up mail left on the door mat or in the letter box so places look occupied.
Getting decent locks is still a necessity but build good relations with your neighbours so you've got more eyes watching over your place at more times of the day, and when you're away for a few days, this is invaluable. There's nobody more interested in making sure your street is crime free than the people who live in the street.
"ANY recorded work from before 1972 (no matter how early it was recorded) won't go into the public domain until 2049 at the earliest."
- I think you mean any USA created work?
... I am sure that you can't replace the entire US nuclear forensics programme with an 18 year old with an A level in Computer Science. I'm guessing there's a few folk with PhDs and the like in their organisation who are doing more than playing darts and watching day time tv. What do you think? Is it all a con? could it be replaced by a single teenaged student?
I am sure he's not short of a few quid. Maybe he got sponsorship as well (hey, the rich are rich because they are good with making money, right?) but he's hardly an inner city kid raising pennies to live a once in a life time dream. Fair play to the bloke for making a good ecological point, and definitely a good one for using his wealth well, but his dad is a multi-billionaire so I think the cost is irrelevant to him. He's not in it for the free holiday, he could buy any boat he wanted.
The Open University has over 200,000 distance learners world wide. It frequently gets high ratings in student satisfaction surveys - for three years running it was the highest rated UK university by this measure (beating off Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc). In the UK at least courses from the Open University are recognised as equivalent to those from other good universities, it's not a mickey mouse correspondence place like some "distance universities" but rigourously examined and with its own postgrad and PhD programmes. It's not the cheapest but you pay your money and you get what you pay for. This page seems to tell you about some of the courses aimed at US students.
And for those of you from the few countries using the new-fangled* Celsius scale, that's a touch colder than -37C.
* (invented in 1742, current version from 1744)