Ok this isn't a troll, I just don't understand economics. Can somebody explain to me where "anti-competitive" fits into the "free market" model?
Surely "free market" means as little regulation as possible so if somebody can leverage advantage and beat competitors and keep on beating them by what ever means they use then this is just part of "the invisible hand of the market" and all that stuff? If Microsoft or another get really big and beat others down then this is just free market economics, linux will win if it is proved better but if it's not it loses? Doesn't 'stopping anti-competitive practices' mean state / international regulation of commerce to some degree, the acceptance of the need for controls with more power than the decisions of the market?
Disclaimer: I am actually a left of centre voting linux loving European (which probably makes me a near terrorist pinko commie in the USA, but round here just means I buy organic food sometimes and do a bit of voluntary work in my community;-) )
ok I am just having a laugh cos I know you were teasing too on the old north/south divide, we're all southern softies and you're hard as nails with ferrets down your trousers... but most of London doesn't vote Conservative. More like a split between Labour/Lib/Tory.
I lived in Hackney for ten years and that's hardly a rich place, there's not a lot of love for Thatcher and now Cameron there. Reckon there's probably more Cameron voters in the posh end of Sheffield than in Hackney or Brixton...
But yeah we probably got the Tories coming, very depressing. It's feeling more and more like the 30s every day, the BNP will probably get a lot of votes in the white working class heartlands as well, I think that's something we've got to worry about, when socialist voters turn national socialist....
calm down silly. It's not that bad yet. Maybe in the future but not yet.
After all the conditions at Glastonbury (music festival) each year are seen as an integral part of the fun rather than a health hazard and even the authorities realise they just have to deal with the incidences of trench foot and food poisioning rather than closing it down. You haven't been to a rock festival til you've been to a truly muddy Glastonbury and grooved to your favourite band while in a foot of toffee consistency proper waterlogged farmland:-)
As noted in your linked wikipedia reference, people check in their sgian dubh when travelling on planes even though its legal to wear one when dressed up in the full rig back home. Quite funny when you see wedding parties travelling out to USA or elsewhere checking in a dozen or more knives into a bag on the ticket counter, ready to be stashed on the flight deck for the duration.
Mind you when you rent the whole wedding outfit the sgian dubh they put in is some little plastic and tin thing that you'd have a hard time opening letters with:-)
I think it is maybe perceived more so by the USA as the majority of their citizens have not experienced a modern war on their own mainland territory. For many people in other countries the experience of war is more direct and people are less likely to be so gung-ho about it. Mainland USA was untouched in the major conflicts of the twentieth century. While terrible events were unfolding the lights were on in Main Street, small town America and you could walk down that street eating ice cream as if nothing was happening. I honestly believe this has given Americans a profoundly different idea of what a war is from the majority of the rest of the world.
Don't talk lightly of wars, they are certainly not games.
You make some good points but I am a bit frightened about your hypothesis that paying people a good salary to do a job they love is risky, and if you only pay people a poor salary then you'll gte higher quality staff as only the highly passionate will apply to do it.
My personal opinion as a university researcher who works alongside teachers in a local secondary school is whatever they get paid, it isn't enough!:-)
And seriously, pay high, then lots of people will compete for jobs, then the school gets to choose a high quality teacher. I'm afraid I don't buy the line that if you want really high quality staff, pay really low wages.
Children are the future of society, the people we'll depend on when we're old and need to rely on others. Surely we want to spend as much as possible on their education, it's what they do for most of their waking life for ten years...
Teacher training, and working with the school's IT technicians as well, are a central part of the project. It's important that eventually the teachers and IT technicians will be able to set up and run the machines and the software themselves so there is a sense of local ownership rather than us being an outside intervention with limited time span. In the early trials we have been on hand to support the teachers in the classrooms; we expect a gradual transition period and have planned for this.
Generally the teachers we are working with are very comfortable with the laptops and the software, they use computers in a lot of their lessons already (they all have laptops and interactive whiteboards in their classrooms and regularly take their students to IT suites to work on projects). We've built our software tool using open source software and the user front end is web based, so very familiar as an interface to the students and teachers.
"As soon as something stops being available for sale (or maybe after some reasonable time, like a couple months), then it should enter the public domain."
A good idea for popular works (e.g. cool movies or video games) but as other posts have noted, these are not necessarily the information resources we might find valuable in the future. More likely to be highly specialised data from an Earth Sciences laboratory (future research into global warming), tax returns for a large population (economics advisors trying to predict the future based on past activities) and obscure census information (trying to find out where famous people lived and worked: famous in the future but possibly insignificant right now).
I understand you might willing to store 1000 cool movies and underground music tracks at home, but would you volunteer to store a couple of terabytes of tax returns from Belgium or census returns from Kazahkstan for the benefit of humanity?
Main issue is a formal storage procedure and resources to do so on national and international levels.
I am working with Asus EEE PCs in a Milton Keynes school -I am at the Open University and we are part of the Personal Inquiry project. Happy to chat offline if you'd like to hear about our experiences.
Main issues: variable levels of student computer literacy, support and management of laptops, making sure the devices transparently connect to the school network, other school computers on shared drives and home networks, ethical issues (schools and homes having different policies on what students can access), students using laptops as tool to play with instead of working (i.e. using the games/distraction software and functionalities).
With all due respect, some of the material might appear tedious to you because it's culturally specific.
I can imagine a lot of jokes about 1970s Britain (with a lot of poking at the Home Counties middle classed attitudes of the time) might completely miss you in the same way that I (as a British person) can watch US comedies with my American friends and they are falling about laughing at cultural references that all Americans take for granted and I completely miss, and just sit and think - "what's funny? this is just boring".
I suppose the same is true of all comedy, and even two people who grew up next door will find different things funny. But definitely some culturally specific stuff in there: check out Monty Python's "International Philosophy" sketch. Did you get the reference to 1966 England world cup footballer Nobby Stiles? Me and my friends fall about with hoots of laughter when the German captain in the sketch is introduced as Nobby Hegel - how many layers of humour are in there? Hegel being associated with a short toothless midfielder, a German philosopher being given an English nickname (England beat Germany in the 66' final), bit of an intellectual gag there about Nobby Stiles being a hard man on the pitch compared with Hegel's 'might makes right' philosophical leanings.
I'm not arguing that all Monty Python stuff is genius, some leaves me bored, but just suggesting that 40 years on in the UK I miss some of the gags and wonder if you might be as well. 1970s American comedies? I haven't a clue at half of the cultural references even when spelt out obviously.
I'm with you there buddy. But I don't think voting Tory would make much difference. Maggie wasn't exactly cool in her relationship with the USA. And she didn't have a problem with human rights abuses, she determinedly supported General Pinochet even after the rest of the world turned their back on a man who thought state torture and throwing people out of aircraft was perfectly acceptable behaviour.
David "heir to Blair" Cameron will probably be more of the same. Rather depressing really. Or maybe it's just realpolitik, keeping in with the superpower that thinks we're cute.
"there's also this light bulb that has burned for over a century"
So what percentage of 100 year old lightbulbs still work then? How many lightbulbs from 100 years ago are still functioning? I am guessing a very, very small percentage chance of success. i.e. be optimistic, but realistic...
"Why would they even consider not extraditing him?"
Because the UK doesn't trust the US legal system? The USA is a country that locks up people indefinitely in a third country when it's not sure that its own citizens would accept this kind of regime on their own soil, sometimes taking prisoners to other countries with poor human rights records for interrogation using methods that many of its partners refer to as "torture" (why don't these prisoners get interrogated in the USA? I am sure there is a good reason but it makes people suspicious).
Hoping that things will change under the new management but I think there's a lot of caution in the UK over whether Gary McKinnon would receive justice rather than a kangaroo court if he was tried in the USA.
Thanks, appreciated. You'd better keep those medals out, you'll be awarding a few more to posters on slashdot who don't realise things cost once they get out into the real world:-)
Gross is indeed relative. Somewhere in the world somebody is going to be freaked out what you consider lovely and normal and natural.
A girl I knew quite put me off eggs for a while after describing them as "chickens' periods" and somebody else said they found cheese a bit hard to eat when you consider it as congealed, old, mouldy animal milk. As for what goes into sausages and burgers and meat paste?
As for meat, a friend of mine worked in a factory and told me about the machines they used and how they really get every last bit of animal product off a carcass and out of the skulls...
Don't get me wrong - I agree with you - I love small class sizes. I'm just telling you that in many educational environments the bean counters (accountants) have the upper hand over the educationalists.
Disclaimer at this point: I am a postgrad researcher in education and technology in a large UK university, and have worked as a librarian in the UK state (US: read public) school system.
Going back to your original point, you asked "what's the use of classes this size" (excuse my summary) - I'm afraid I'd still stick by my opinion that it is driven by economic reason, and not pedagogic theory. I think if you asked educational theorists to design a teaching system and told them they could have an infinite budget, they would choose a very low student to teacher ratio. I don't think many would choose one to one as there are social and educational benefits in getting groups of students working together. But I don't think many educationalists would choose high student to teacher ratios in an ideal world.
I understand the spirit of your original post and agree - what's the use of large class sizes- not a lot. Many educational researchers would agree that they are not conducive to learning and quite a few would argue that the lecture format itself is a medieval model that is outmoded and should be thrown away (thanks Prof. Elton!). However to read your post directly, the use of large class sizes is they are cheap to run. I imagine if you pressed your university hard enough you'd find that that, rather than any pedagogic reasoning, is why they choose that format to teach. Maybe not all, but enough students survive that format and continue to pass to keep it as a teaching method.
"What's the use of having a class so huge that the professor can't even know all his students, doesn't grade papers(his TAs do that), the student can't necessarily see the screen well or hear the professor"
It's more cost efficient. It saves money. Why don't all students have their own personal tutor, or only get taught in classes of ten or less? Because teachers cost money, rooms cost money, equipment cost money. If you can get 150 students through with one professor, rather than one professor per 30, well you've just saved 4 salaries.
"I find it ironic that your unelected upper house is the voice of sanity in the UK. Perhaps you made a mistake when you stripped them of all their power?"
No mistake there at all buddy. People came to their right senses and realised that being ruled by unelected bodies was not a good idea (we're still working on the monarchy). Having a hereditary, unelected body of folk making the laws might seem a really cute idea from 3000 miles away but it's a bit archaic in this day and age. Somebody gets to make laws and judge you because one of their ancestors 500 years ago did something the king liked (or possibly lent him some money or similar)? No thanks. Or was that a plea from you to have the USA taken under the wing of the British Monarchy and its Parliament again?;-)
Not so much hate as intrigued - is this the first country in the world that you are not allowed to enter unless you have internet access?
I'd expect the anti-technology crowd (Daily Mail readers, etc) to be more up in arms about this than the technophile slashdot crowd.
Anyhow, I'd expect a weegie to get access to the internet somehow, they are all in a big city. It's the teuchters up in the hills who'd be more having the problem getting broadband access.
A degree of hypocrisy alas though which has been observed many times - funnily enough recently in a Heriot-Watt University study of romantic comedy films. There is an expectation of women being better turned out than men.
Men generally will say "I can't be bothered, I don't want to be judged on how I look" yet place importance on a woman's appearance when considering a partner.
Definitely agreed that perfectly turned out people of either gender are a bit scary to me (how do these people manage it?!) but I can understand the other point of view which says "if you can't be bothered to tidy up/ look nice for a formal / special occasion then does this indicate general slackness/lack of respect".
A cultural issue as much as anything else. It was interesting for me to travel round India as a backpacker and see how western tourists were dressed. A lot of the young alternative sorts thought they were making a real statement about chilling out, going barefoot, growing out dreads, wearing simple clothes til they fell apart. Some Indian folk I spoke to just couldn't understand it, they were asking "what's going on in these people's minds? they are so rich yet they dress like beggars. Have they no respect to turn up to important places dressed like this, or to expect people to take them seriously?" Depends on your viewpoint I think...
Why does the United States care about a third world, impoverished nation?
Because the current administration's strategy of "let's bomb them back into the Stone Age and then they won't be a threat to us any more" seems to have failed and might be causing more problems than it solves. Bombing corrupt dictatorships who have fallen out of favour into lawless non-states or marginally functional new states and destroying all their national infrastructures and employment for some reason doesn't seem to have reduced the number of disaffected angry young men and women who are desperate to vent their anger and are happy enough to listen to local radicals who think the USA is to blame.
Perhaps getting the president out to some of these places and getting him to talk and listen to these people might persuade a few not to dedicate their lives to killing as many Americans as possible, and maybe work with the USA instead. The last US plan doesn't seem to have won them over.
Really, I don't think most people will care. If a nice leaflet/broadcast/website from the government explains "it's to catch terrorists" and "it's to catch really super big evil criminals" - most people will say "well I am not one of those so I don't care". A few people will mutter over their pints of beer and a couple of articles will appear in the papers, uber-geeks will use some encryption or other work around, the real criminals will read the geek websites and learn how to cover their tracks, and 99% of the population will just go on as before. They don't mind giving their credit card details out to online stores they've never heard of before, they'll not worry the government keeps a copy of their emails.
Little public outrage was voiced here in the UK when Echelon became known about. A few left wing and liberal newspapers wrote big articles on it blowing the whole thing open to the middle class public and it didn't get much more feedback than a few people switching their vote to a different mainstream party, a couple of letters from Angry of Tunbridge Wells to the Times, and a few dozen hackers waving banners outside a government building or two. The man on the Clapham omnibus just won't care.
wow, don't fancy that. Maybe if I was splitting wood every day I'd be fit enough to swing one but right now it would just damage me - if I get more serious about cutting wood I might think about a small chainsaw. 8lb maul is just about the right weight for me!
Unscrewed the hard drive out of an old computer and put it on a block of wood. Got out my 8lb splitting maul (looks like an axe but fatter wedge shaped head, designed for splitting logs) and gave it a few hearty hits. Seemed to help it spill all the bits and bobs around my back yard quite nicely. Having a really big hammer is the trick. None of your wee bijou designer claw hammers;-) Probably faster than the usual problem you have with one stubborn screw not coming out. Needed a bit of a sweep up afterwards mind you. I think all the bits of the platters went into the dustbin though perhaps a few small fragments might turn up in the veggie patch when I dig it over in the spring.
Oh no, but CDs are so *cold* in their reproduction of the sound! They just can't match the warmth of a good piano roll!
Very sad, it's a lovely technology that intrigued me since I was a kid, but I guess it's a free market economy - if there's no money in it there's no reason to continue to spend money on doing it. Would be lovely if it was possible to continue production on a small scale in a 'living industrial museum' and turn out a few for tourists and fans though if a funder could be found to keep the machinery running.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok this isn't a troll, I just don't understand economics. Can somebody explain to me where "anti-competitive" fits into the "free market" model?
Surely "free market" means as little regulation as possible so if somebody can leverage advantage and beat competitors and keep on beating them by what ever means they use then this is just part of "the invisible hand of the market" and all that stuff? If Microsoft or another get really big and beat others down then this is just free market economics, linux will win if it is proved better but if it's not it loses? Doesn't 'stopping anti-competitive practices' mean state / international regulation of commerce to some degree, the acceptance of the need for controls with more power than the decisions of the market?
Disclaimer: I am actually a left of centre voting linux loving European (which probably makes me a near terrorist pinko commie in the USA, but round here just means I buy organic food sometimes and do a bit of voluntary work in my community ;-) )
ok I am just having a laugh cos I know you were teasing too on the old north/south divide, we're all southern softies and you're hard as nails with ferrets down your trousers... but most of London doesn't vote Conservative. More like a split between Labour/Lib/Tory.
I lived in Hackney for ten years and that's hardly a rich place, there's not a lot of love for Thatcher and now Cameron there. Reckon there's probably more Cameron voters in the posh end of Sheffield than in Hackney or Brixton...
But yeah we probably got the Tories coming, very depressing. It's feeling more and more like the 30s every day, the BNP will probably get a lot of votes in the white working class heartlands as well, I think that's something we've got to worry about, when socialist voters turn national socialist....
calm down silly. It's not that bad yet. Maybe in the future but not yet.
After all the conditions at Glastonbury (music festival) each year are seen as an integral part of the fun rather than a health hazard and even the authorities realise they just have to deal with the incidences of trench foot and food poisioning rather than closing it down. You haven't been to a rock festival til you've been to a truly muddy Glastonbury and grooved to your favourite band while in a foot of toffee consistency proper waterlogged farmland :-)
As noted in your linked wikipedia reference, people check in their sgian dubh when travelling on planes even though its legal to wear one when dressed up in the full rig back home. Quite funny when you see wedding parties travelling out to USA or elsewhere checking in a dozen or more knives into a bag on the ticket counter, ready to be stashed on the flight deck for the duration.
Mind you when you rent the whole wedding outfit the sgian dubh they put in is some little plastic and tin thing that you'd have a hard time opening letters with :-)
Really, grow up. War isn't a game.
I think it is maybe perceived more so by the USA as the majority of their citizens have not experienced a modern war on their own mainland territory. For many people in other countries the experience of war is more direct and people are less likely to be so gung-ho about it. Mainland USA was untouched in the major conflicts of the twentieth century. While terrible events were unfolding the lights were on in Main Street, small town America and you could walk down that street eating ice cream as if nothing was happening. I honestly believe this has given Americans a profoundly different idea of what a war is from the majority of the rest of the world.
Don't talk lightly of wars, they are certainly not games.
You make some good points but I am a bit frightened about your hypothesis that paying people a good salary to do a job they love is risky, and if you only pay people a poor salary then you'll gte higher quality staff as only the highly passionate will apply to do it.
My personal opinion as a university researcher who works alongside teachers in a local secondary school is whatever they get paid, it isn't enough! :-)
And seriously, pay high, then lots of people will compete for jobs, then the school gets to choose a high quality teacher. I'm afraid I don't buy the line that if you want really high quality staff, pay really low wages.
Children are the future of society, the people we'll depend on when we're old and need to rely on others. Surely we want to spend as much as possible on their education, it's what they do for most of their waking life for ten years...
Teacher training, and working with the school's IT technicians as well, are a central part of the project. It's important that eventually the teachers and IT technicians will be able to set up and run the machines and the software themselves so there is a sense of local ownership rather than us being an outside intervention with limited time span. In the early trials we have been on hand to support the teachers in the classrooms; we expect a gradual transition period and have planned for this.
Generally the teachers we are working with are very comfortable with the laptops and the software, they use computers in a lot of their lessons already (they all have laptops and interactive whiteboards in their classrooms and regularly take their students to IT suites to work on projects). We've built our software tool using open source software and the user front end is web based, so very familiar as an interface to the students and teachers.
"As soon as something stops being available for sale (or maybe after some reasonable time, like a couple months), then it should enter the public domain."
A good idea for popular works (e.g. cool movies or video games) but as other posts have noted, these are not necessarily the information resources we might find valuable in the future. More likely to be highly specialised data from an Earth Sciences laboratory (future research into global warming), tax returns for a large population (economics advisors trying to predict the future based on past activities) and obscure census information (trying to find out where famous people lived and worked: famous in the future but possibly insignificant right now).
I understand you might willing to store 1000 cool movies and underground music tracks at home, but would you volunteer to store a couple of terabytes of tax returns from Belgium or census returns from Kazahkstan for the benefit of humanity?
Main issue is a formal storage procedure and resources to do so on national and international levels.
I am working with Asus EEE PCs in a Milton Keynes school -I am at the Open University and we are part of the Personal Inquiry project. Happy to chat offline if you'd like to hear about our experiences.
Main issues: variable levels of student computer literacy, support and management of laptops, making sure the devices transparently connect to the school network, other school computers on shared drives and home networks, ethical issues (schools and homes having different policies on what students can access), students using laptops as tool to play with instead of working (i.e. using the games/distraction software and functionalities).
With all due respect, some of the material might appear tedious to you because it's culturally specific.
I can imagine a lot of jokes about 1970s Britain (with a lot of poking at the Home Counties middle classed attitudes of the time) might completely miss you in the same way that I (as a British person) can watch US comedies with my American friends and they are falling about laughing at cultural references that all Americans take for granted and I completely miss, and just sit and think - "what's funny? this is just boring".
I suppose the same is true of all comedy, and even two people who grew up next door will find different things funny. But definitely some culturally specific stuff in there: check out Monty Python's "International Philosophy" sketch. Did you get the reference to 1966 England world cup footballer Nobby Stiles? Me and my friends fall about with hoots of laughter when the German captain in the sketch is introduced as Nobby Hegel - how many layers of humour are in there? Hegel being associated with a short toothless midfielder, a German philosopher being given an English nickname (England beat Germany in the 66' final), bit of an intellectual gag there about Nobby Stiles being a hard man on the pitch compared with Hegel's 'might makes right' philosophical leanings.
I'm not arguing that all Monty Python stuff is genius, some leaves me bored, but just suggesting that 40 years on in the UK I miss some of the gags and wonder if you might be as well. 1970s American comedies? I haven't a clue at half of the cultural references even when spelt out obviously.
I'm with you there buddy. But I don't think voting Tory would make much difference. Maggie wasn't exactly cool in her relationship with the USA. And she didn't have a problem with human rights abuses, she determinedly supported General Pinochet even after the rest of the world turned their back on a man who thought state torture and throwing people out of aircraft was perfectly acceptable behaviour.
David "heir to Blair" Cameron will probably be more of the same. Rather depressing really. Or maybe it's just realpolitik, keeping in with the superpower that thinks we're cute.
"there's also this light bulb that has burned for over a century"
So what percentage of 100 year old lightbulbs still work then? How many lightbulbs from 100 years ago are still functioning? I am guessing a very, very small percentage chance of success. i.e. be optimistic, but realistic...
"Why would they even consider not extraditing him?"
Because the UK doesn't trust the US legal system?
The USA is a country that locks up people indefinitely in a third country when it's not sure that its own citizens would accept this kind of regime on their own soil, sometimes taking prisoners to other countries with poor human rights records for interrogation using methods that many of its partners refer to as "torture" (why don't these prisoners get interrogated in the USA? I am sure there is a good reason but it makes people suspicious).
Hoping that things will change under the new management but I think there's a lot of caution in the UK over whether Gary McKinnon would receive justice rather than a kangaroo court if he was tried in the USA.
Thanks, appreciated. You'd better keep those medals out, you'll be awarding a few more to posters on slashdot who don't realise things cost once they get out into the real world :-)
Gross is indeed relative. Somewhere in the world somebody is going to be freaked out what you consider lovely and normal and natural.
A girl I knew quite put me off eggs for a while after describing them as "chickens' periods" and somebody else said they found cheese a bit hard to eat when you consider it as congealed, old, mouldy animal milk. As for what goes into sausages and burgers and meat paste?
As for meat, a friend of mine worked in a factory and told me about the machines they used and how they really get every last bit of animal product off a carcass and out of the skulls...
Don't get me wrong - I agree with you - I love small class sizes. I'm just telling you that in many educational environments the bean counters (accountants) have the upper hand over the educationalists.
Disclaimer at this point: I am a postgrad researcher in education and technology in a large UK university, and have worked as a librarian in the UK state (US: read public) school system.
Going back to your original point, you asked "what's the use of classes this size" (excuse my summary) - I'm afraid I'd still stick by my opinion that it is driven by economic reason, and not pedagogic theory. I think if you asked educational theorists to design a teaching system and told them they could have an infinite budget, they would choose a very low student to teacher ratio. I don't think many would choose one to one as there are social and educational benefits in getting groups of students working together. But I don't think many educationalists would choose high student to teacher ratios in an ideal world.
I understand the spirit of your original post and agree - what's the use of large class sizes- not a lot. Many educational researchers would agree that they are not conducive to learning and quite a few would argue that the lecture format itself is a medieval model that is outmoded and should be thrown away (thanks Prof. Elton!). However to read your post directly, the use of large class sizes is they are cheap to run. I imagine if you pressed your university hard enough you'd find that that, rather than any pedagogic reasoning, is why they choose that format to teach. Maybe not all, but enough students survive that format and continue to pass to keep it as a teaching method.
"What's the use of having a class so huge that the professor can't even know all his students, doesn't grade papers(his TAs do that), the student can't necessarily see the screen well or hear the professor"
It's more cost efficient. It saves money. Why don't all students have their own personal tutor, or only get taught in classes of ten or less? Because teachers cost money, rooms cost money, equipment cost money. If you can get 150 students through with one professor, rather than one professor per 30, well you've just saved 4 salaries.
"I find it ironic that your unelected upper house is the voice of sanity in the UK. Perhaps you made a mistake when you stripped them of all their power?"
No mistake there at all buddy. People came to their right senses and realised that being ruled by unelected bodies was not a good idea (we're still working on the monarchy). Having a hereditary, unelected body of folk making the laws might seem a really cute idea from 3000 miles away but it's a bit archaic in this day and age. Somebody gets to make laws and judge you because one of their ancestors 500 years ago did something the king liked (or possibly lent him some money or similar)? No thanks. Or was that a plea from you to have the USA taken under the wing of the British Monarchy and its Parliament again? ;-)
Not so much hate as intrigued - is this the first country in the world that you are not allowed to enter unless you have internet access?
I'd expect the anti-technology crowd (Daily Mail readers, etc) to be more up in arms about this than the technophile slashdot crowd.
Anyhow, I'd expect a weegie to get access to the internet somehow, they are all in a big city. It's the teuchters up in the hills who'd be more having the problem getting broadband access.
A degree of hypocrisy alas though which has been observed many times - funnily enough recently in a Heriot-Watt University study of romantic comedy films. There is an expectation of women being better turned out than men.
Men generally will say "I can't be bothered, I don't want to be judged on how I look" yet place importance on a woman's appearance when considering a partner.
Definitely agreed that perfectly turned out people of either gender are a bit scary to me (how do these people manage it?!) but I can understand the other point of view which says "if you can't be bothered to tidy up/ look nice for a formal / special occasion then does this indicate general slackness /lack of respect".
A cultural issue as much as anything else. It was interesting for me to travel round India as a backpacker and see how western tourists were dressed. A lot of the young alternative sorts thought they were making a real statement about chilling out, going barefoot, growing out dreads, wearing simple clothes til they fell apart. Some Indian folk I spoke to just couldn't understand it, they were asking "what's going on in these people's minds? they are so rich yet they dress like beggars. Have they no respect to turn up to important places dressed like this, or to expect people to take them seriously?" Depends on your viewpoint I think...
Why does the United States care about a third world, impoverished nation?
Because the current administration's strategy of "let's bomb them back into the Stone Age and then they won't be a threat to us any more" seems to have failed and might be causing more problems than it solves. Bombing corrupt dictatorships who have fallen out of favour into lawless non-states or marginally functional new states and destroying all their national infrastructures and employment for some reason doesn't seem to have reduced the number of disaffected angry young men and women who are desperate to vent their anger and are happy enough to listen to local radicals who think the USA is to blame.
Perhaps getting the president out to some of these places and getting him to talk and listen to these people might persuade a few not to dedicate their lives to killing as many Americans as possible, and maybe work with the USA instead. The last US plan doesn't seem to have won them over.
Really, I don't think most people will care. If a nice leaflet/broadcast/website from the government explains "it's to catch terrorists" and "it's to catch really super big evil criminals" - most people will say "well I am not one of those so I don't care". A few people will mutter over their pints of beer and a couple of articles will appear in the papers, uber-geeks will use some encryption or other work around, the real criminals will read the geek websites and learn how to cover their tracks, and 99% of the population will just go on as before. They don't mind giving their credit card details out to online stores they've never heard of before, they'll not worry the government keeps a copy of their emails.
Little public outrage was voiced here in the UK when Echelon became known about. A few left wing and liberal newspapers wrote big articles on it blowing the whole thing open to the middle class public and it didn't get much more feedback than a few people switching their vote to a different mainstream party, a couple of letters from Angry of Tunbridge Wells to the Times, and a few dozen hackers waving banners outside a government building or two. The man on the Clapham omnibus just won't care.
wow, don't fancy that. Maybe if I was splitting wood every day I'd be fit enough to swing one but right now it would just damage me - if I get more serious about cutting wood I might think about a small chainsaw. 8lb maul is just about the right weight for me!
Unscrewed the hard drive out of an old computer and put it on a block of wood. Got out my 8lb splitting maul (looks like an axe but fatter wedge shaped head, designed for splitting logs) and gave it a few hearty hits. Seemed to help it spill all the bits and bobs around my back yard quite nicely. Having a really big hammer is the trick. None of your wee bijou designer claw hammers ;-) Probably faster than the usual problem you have with one stubborn screw not coming out. Needed a bit of a sweep up afterwards mind you. I think all the bits of the platters went into the dustbin though perhaps a few small fragments might turn up in the veggie patch when I dig it over in the spring.
Oh no, but CDs are so *cold* in their reproduction of the sound! They just can't match the warmth of a good piano roll!
Very sad, it's a lovely technology that intrigued me since I was a kid, but I guess it's a free market economy - if there's no money in it there's no reason to continue to spend money on doing it. Would be lovely if it was possible to continue production on a small scale in a 'living industrial museum' and turn out a few for tourists and fans though if a funder could be found to keep the machinery running.