How did the security level in the country get defined as "critical" after these two incidents ? I mean, yeah, something might have happened, and all sympathy to those who suffered in the 7/7 bombings, but here we have a bunch of Crap Terrorists (I am reminded of Viz's Crap Sharks) who are so rubbish they manage to crash their car into a wall and then stagger out on fire to try and punch a copper, only to get punched out by passers by. How does this make the security level of the country critical? We had 30 years of the IRA blowing up bombs and killing hundreds of people in this country, where would that be on the security scale if our two Crap Terrorists get "critical threat"? I don't remember us stopping the country when that happened, we just got back on the tube and off to work the next day. Would they have been rated "super-hyper-critical"?
Jaywalking? Sounds like something to do with small birds walking around pecking the ground! Where do the jays come into the equation?
We don't have that as a law over here in the UK. First time I found out about it was when I crossed the road in the USA (12 hours after I entered your country) and I heard a police siren, I got shouted at to stand on the side of the road and the police bike cop wrote me a ticket. I knew I'd done something wrong when she pulled out the ticket book, hadn't a clue what I'd done though. Had to ask her what I'd done that was wrong. Blimey, 12 hours in the USA and I was criminal for walking across a small side street to the youth hostel.... talk about a rough introduction to your country. One day in and I am standing on the side of a small road saying "well at least tell me what I've done wrong, I'm not from round here".
Ultimately configurable, you can get a billion pop songs from it. The world's top hits have been made using it. It's called AlphaBet (TM) and I'll sell you it for only 19.99, send to the address below...
Probably something on the lines of "crushing your enemies", "global war on terror" etc vs. "bringing freedom to the people" "winning hearts and minds etc". We're the good guys so we make up the terms...
Take the sunglasses off when you're out there guys, you look like robots too. They might like you a little bit more and believe you are human too if they could see your eyes...
What's so weird about buying vegetables loose rather than in packaging? Does this not happen in the USA?
In the UK packaged vegetables cost more, they are cheaper purchased loose in both supermarkets and small greengrocers. Not sure if you have small greengrocers, media reports suggest that your big supermarkets have closed down most small shops and you generally drive to out of town malls for all your food. Is that a media myth or true?
Over here in the UK, packaged vegetables cost more than loose, washed vegetables cost more than unwashed, and pre-processed vegetables cost the most (e.g. carrots already washed, topped and tailed and cut into sticks and then sealed in plastic bags). Buying the last is considered to be a bit of a yuppie middle classed thing to do. Standard joke is "what next? pre-chewed?" Washing and chopping up veggies is still the norm.
Price difference between pre-everything'd and loose and needing washing is maybe three times.
Microfiche has a short life span. When I was working at the Royal Greenwich Observatory they'd done some research and discounted that as a feasible option. Something like 25 years if you're lucky? The glass plates in the RGO were from the same period as these American ones, and in equally reasonable condition (in most cases.... the problem was there as well... we were transferring them to acid free paper sleeves).
Kind of depressing discussing which of our countries is most fecked up, but hey, you may note "I have already curtailed a previously-planned trip to London because I do not want to partake of their police state where anybody can be detained by police without reason" - but at least we still have Habeas Corpus. You guys claim the right to disappear anybody you want, fly them to a third country which isn't covered by your jurisdiction so you can torture them in ways that would be illegal on your home soil, then ship them off to your military base in Cuba and reserve the right to keep them there forever without access to independent representation. Don't you think that's a bit at odds with your government's claims to be bringing democracy to the world?
Quite a few people are quite scared about visiting your totalitarian state too...
I sympathise as well with people complaining about them being nearby - but not too much because I quite like them and also the people doing the complaining tend to be the people driving cars, expecting air conditioning and lots of electrical gadgets. I agree utilising off-shore space is also useful, there's a lot of ocean out there...
I think people just have to wake up and realise that if they want power they need power stations. Personally I'd prefer a wind farm 5 miles down the road rather than a nuclear power station, I know which one I'd be more relaxed about breaking down catastrophically...
Asimov's laws are really nice, but I don't see law enforcement agencies or authorities turning to a sci-fi novel for guidance. Let's face it, the UK authorities don't pay much attention to George Orwell's 1984....
I have always been of the mind that companies like Dell or IBM, or e-machines, or hell linux and microsoft, should ALL have mandatory certification programs if you intend to use their product. And if you dont have this certificate you CANNOT call in to complain about anything but the color of the sky.
Fine, just keep your idiot sales department off the public's back first of all. I think that's where a lot of the problem lies. People are being sold something by *your company* that they shouldn't be signing up to... I'll sign your certificate of competence just as soon as you can prove your sales department isn't bending the truth and show me their certificate of competence too.
The number of times I've helped out non technical friends because a sales person has told them "oh it's really easy, you just plug it in and follow the simple one side of instructions" - then my friends can't do it because *they've been lied to*. They end up with some techie on the support line who 9 times out of ten thinks they are superior and treats them like shite, one time out of ten they get lucky and get a nice guy like you who tries to help out and maybe even has the guts to tell them they've been mis-sold a product... and I end up having to try and help a friend who's been sold something not appropriate for their needs or their abilities because a sales rep has blinded them with a flashy presentation in order to get their commission.
The sales depts in companies have a lot to answer to as well.
My experiences indicate that if the Windows GUI fails, an inexperienced user is left helpless without a (usable) command line.
This is all pretty irrelevant. Inexperienced users wouldn't know what to do if they were presented with a command line. I am currently building a transient wireless network for a university summer school to enable mobility impaired students to take part at distance. The lead geology academic and I were chatting about how we had to make sure it was simple to use and documented well. Lead geology academic said to me "I could probably learn how to do 'ping' if you taught me but you'd have to get it all written up first of all". Which I felt was a very fair comment. Why the heck should they learn the command line - this stuff should just work. Very interesting that they (a career academic with three university degrees) considered doing anything in the command line as a job for technical specialists. That's where the world is these days. I think it's fair to assume "inexperienced users" won't know what a command line is when it appears. These days (i.e. at least the last ten years) you've got to make sure your GUI actually works.
A very fair comment. I guess I was just disappointed about how explicit the connection appears to be between money and power, particularly coming from the BBC. Something like "Obama draws biggest crowds to rallies" might have been a little more palatable as an indicator of success.
Well you keep telling us that America is land of the free, maybe your President really believes in it and decided Mr Libby had to be free?:-)
I don't really understand the details, as far as I can work out some really important guy broke a law that would put you or me behind bars for 20 years or so but instead they fined him, ooh, something like a month's wages, and he's on probation which I think means they'll be *really* angry if he does it again. Probably he's had to say sorry as well.
Not "Obama most popular" or "Obama reaches the heart of the issues that Americans care about" - but "Obama leads in campaign funding". As in, he's in the lead to be the Democrats representative because he's got the most money. Plain and simple. Damn, your system is at least blatently corrupt in line with countries like Nigeria. Ours (UK) is still based on hidden string-pulling... I guess you beat us for transparency...;-)
A good response if you're a US citizen (to demand the park keeper and the cops prove the law). If you're a foreign tourist, well, antagonising police and other figures of authority in a country you're visiting isn't a good idea. They know the law better than you, and they can make your life very very difficult (or at least mess up your holiday or work trip).
You do what they tell you to do, it's the simplest. It's impossible to learn all the laws of the country you are visiting, you just have to trust they are telling the truth and follow what they tell you to do. Particularly if you're in a country which reserves the right to disappear people they don't like beyond the reach of international law.
It's obvious - the anthromorphisised "Market" will decide!
Away from the pesky control of the evil commie big government forces, the freedom loving patriot being that is the Free Market will decide what is right. Don't panic, the Market will decide. You're just seeing it in action. If Exxon wasn't to stomp on small comedy companies, well then the shareholders would rise up and change the direction of the company. They haven't, so clearly The People Have Spoken!:-)
Small shops all over the world struggle against big retailers who can undercut their prices. Small retailers used to make a living by stocking obscure records that didn't bring in the profit/shift the volume that the big retailers wanted. Big retailers wouldn't let you bring back the CD the next day if you didn't like it. There probably aren't good music stores in the area because nobody can afford to dedicate their life to running a shop if there isn't a living wage in it.
I'm 40, when I was at college in my early 20s the only way to find out about the latest cool underground records coming out was to go and hang out in the local alternative record shop in our university town (Newcastle Upon Tyne). It was a social centre, you'd hang out with the same guys, you'd exchange knowledge about latest releases, the shop owner would put on new records and even though you were looking for the latest release by your favourite band, you'd end up hearing a few tracks from another band and buy that record anyway. Only the super-hardcore collectors who subscribed to very specialist record mags would have their own way of knowing what was coming out. The rest of us found out by checking out the store and hanging out there for a few hours.
Now people just browse the internet, they can access interesting random connections through stations like last.fm, and they can download new tracks there and then - no need to go to the store. Not a lot of 20 year olds have record decks. Not sure that many have CD players either, most have ipods or other mp3 players... there's no need to get the physical artefact to listen to the music. So no need to go to the record store. It's a specialist interest these days rather than something that every teenager is into. People seem happy with getting the music, there isn't such a widespread demand for the album cover/sleeve notes etc, that's more of a specialist thing.
Away from major centres of population, I don't think there is the demand anymore and alas not the profit to make it worthwhile for somebody to dedicate their life to it, I am not sure many people can pay the rent and eat from running a store like that.
Government involvement bad, commercial investment good, yadda yadda..yawn... - so why's it not happening?
Because there's no money in it! Nobody's stopping Bill Gates and Exxon and Haliburton from throwing a few billion at spaceflight, the Russians would happily take their dollars and launch up anything they want (oh the irony, the Russians are completely up for free market exploitation of space and the Americans won't allow it...).
So even though you want private investors to pour money in, they aren't doing it... they are waiting for the ev0l government funded projects to take the risk and make the discoveries and lose the lives first. Personally I don't think private companies give a toss about making discoveries and getting involved in innovation, they just want to make a profit.
People belong to their local chess/football/cricket/crafts/etc clubs for much longer than this. So what's new or special about this?
Being a group of people who share a common interest but are separated by distance and communicate via distance-media tools, umm well that's been going on for some time too.
Damn commies! everybody knows the true American Patriotic Car of the Future is an eight wheel, 6 ton, armour plated X-SUV (Extreme Sports Utility Vehicle) with night vision, aircon to chill a Canadian winter, bull bars to win any collision with anything short of a tank, 12 seats, and a beer cooler, doing two miles to the gallon (US not the dirty supersized British one). It's my Right as an American citizen!
I guess we just had different experiences. I have no idea of your work situation, what kind of school it was, what country it was in even. Unless you'd like to offer commentary on my workplace in the mid 90s in Scotland, I don't remember seeing you around there, so you'll have to take my word for it...
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How did the security level in the country get defined as "critical" after these two incidents ? I mean, yeah, something might have happened, and all sympathy to those who suffered in the 7/7 bombings, but here we have a bunch of Crap Terrorists (I am reminded of Viz's Crap Sharks) who are so rubbish they manage to crash their car into a wall and then stagger out on fire to try and punch a copper, only to get punched out by passers by. How does this make the security level of the country critical? We had 30 years of the IRA blowing up bombs and killing hundreds of people in this country, where would that be on the security scale if our two Crap Terrorists get "critical threat"? I don't remember us stopping the country when that happened, we just got back on the tube and off to work the next day. Would they have been rated "super-hyper-critical"?
Jaywalking? Sounds like something to do with small birds walking around pecking the ground! Where do the jays come into the equation?
We don't have that as a law over here in the UK. First time I found out about it was when I crossed the road in the USA (12 hours after I entered your country) and I heard a police siren, I got shouted at to stand on the side of the road and the police bike cop wrote me a ticket. I knew I'd done something wrong when she pulled out the ticket book, hadn't a clue what I'd done though. Had to ask her what I'd done that was wrong. Blimey, 12 hours in the USA and I was criminal for walking across a small side street to the youth hostel.... talk about a rough introduction to your country. One day in and I am standing on the side of a small road saying "well at least tell me what I've done wrong, I'm not from round here".
Ultimately configurable, you can get a billion pop songs from it. The world's top hits have been made using it. It's called AlphaBet (TM) and I'll sell you it for only 19.99, send to the address below...
Probably something on the lines of "crushing your enemies", "global war on terror" etc vs. "bringing freedom to the people" "winning hearts and minds etc". We're the good guys so we make up the terms...
Take the sunglasses off when you're out there guys, you look like robots too. They might like you a little bit more and believe you are human too if they could see your eyes...
"unbagged bunches, seriously!"
What's so weird about buying vegetables loose rather than in packaging? Does this not happen in the USA?
In the UK packaged vegetables cost more, they are cheaper purchased loose in both supermarkets and small greengrocers. Not sure if you have small greengrocers, media reports suggest that your big supermarkets have closed down most small shops and you generally drive to out of town malls for all your food. Is that a media myth or true?
Over here in the UK, packaged vegetables cost more than loose, washed vegetables cost more than unwashed, and pre-processed vegetables cost the most (e.g. carrots already washed, topped and tailed and cut into sticks and then sealed in plastic bags). Buying the last is considered to be a bit of a yuppie middle classed thing to do. Standard joke is "what next? pre-chewed?" Washing and chopping up veggies is still the norm.
Price difference between pre-everything'd and loose and needing washing is maybe three times.
Microfiche has a short life span. When I was working at the Royal Greenwich Observatory they'd done some research and discounted that as a feasible option. Something like 25 years if you're lucky? The glass plates in the RGO were from the same period as these American ones, and in equally reasonable condition (in most cases.... the problem was there as well... we were transferring them to acid free paper sleeves).
Kind of depressing discussing which of our countries is most fecked up, but hey, you may note "I have already curtailed a previously-planned trip to London because I do not want to partake of their police state where anybody can be detained by police without reason" - but at least we still have Habeas Corpus. You guys claim the right to disappear anybody you want, fly them to a third country which isn't covered by your jurisdiction so you can torture them in ways that would be illegal on your home soil, then ship them off to your military base in Cuba and reserve the right to keep them there forever without access to independent representation. Don't you think that's a bit at odds with your government's claims to be bringing democracy to the world?
Quite a few people are quite scared about visiting your totalitarian state too...
I sympathise as well with people complaining about them being nearby - but not too much because I quite like them and also the people doing the complaining tend to be the people driving cars, expecting air conditioning and lots of electrical gadgets. I agree utilising off-shore space is also useful, there's a lot of ocean out there...
I think people just have to wake up and realise that if they want power they need power stations. Personally I'd prefer a wind farm 5 miles down the road rather than a nuclear power station, I know which one I'd be more relaxed about breaking down catastrophically...
Asimov's laws are really nice, but I don't see law enforcement agencies or authorities turning to a sci-fi novel for guidance. Let's face it, the UK authorities don't pay much attention to George Orwell's 1984 ....
I have always been of the mind that companies like Dell or IBM, or e-machines, or hell linux and microsoft, should ALL have mandatory certification programs if you intend to use their product. And if you dont have this certificate you CANNOT call in to complain about anything but the color of the sky.
Fine, just keep your idiot sales department off the public's back first of all. I think that's where a lot of the problem lies. People are being sold something by *your company* that they shouldn't be signing up to... I'll sign your certificate of competence just as soon as you can prove your sales department isn't bending the truth and show me their certificate of competence too.
The number of times I've helped out non technical friends because a sales person has told them "oh it's really easy, you just plug it in and follow the simple one side of instructions" - then my friends can't do it because *they've been lied to*. They end up with some techie on the support line who 9 times out of ten thinks they are superior and treats them like shite, one time out of ten they get lucky and get a nice guy like you who tries to help out and maybe even has the guts to tell them they've been mis-sold a product... and I end up having to try and help a friend who's been sold something not appropriate for their needs or their abilities because a sales rep has blinded them with a flashy presentation in order to get their commission.
The sales depts in companies have a lot to answer to as well.
My experiences indicate that if the Windows GUI fails, an inexperienced user is left helpless without a (usable) command line.
This is all pretty irrelevant. Inexperienced users wouldn't know what to do if they were presented with a command line. I am currently building a transient wireless network for a university summer school to enable mobility impaired students to take part at distance. The lead geology academic and I were chatting about how we had to make sure it was simple to use and documented well. Lead geology academic said to me "I could probably learn how to do 'ping' if you taught me but you'd have to get it all written up first of all". Which I felt was a very fair comment. Why the heck should they learn the command line - this stuff should just work. Very interesting that they (a career academic with three university degrees) considered doing anything in the command line as a job for technical specialists. That's where the world is these days. I think it's fair to assume "inexperienced users" won't know what a command line is when it appears. These days (i.e. at least the last ten years) you've got to make sure your GUI actually works.
Nokia launched the 6136 last Feb (2006) in Europe:8 5,39252128,00.htm
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,10000000
This does the roaming wifi/GSM stuff as well.
Tested in Oulu, Finland in 2006:
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/49241.html
Anybody know how those tests have gone, what the take up is?
A very fair comment. I guess I was just disappointed about how explicit the connection appears to be between money and power, particularly coming from the BBC. Something like "Obama draws biggest crowds to rallies" might have been a little more palatable as an indicator of success.
regards.
Well you keep telling us that America is land of the free, maybe your President really believes in it and decided Mr Libby had to be free? :-)
I don't really understand the details, as far as I can work out some really important guy broke a law that would put you or me behind bars for 20 years or so but instead they fined him, ooh, something like a month's wages, and he's on probation which I think means they'll be *really* angry if he does it again. Probably he's had to say sorry as well.
Running for president introduces a new barrier, money
. stm
;-)
I'm sure it's been that way for a while but the recent headline on the BBC freaked me out: "Obama leads in campaign funding"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6259702
Not "Obama most popular" or "Obama reaches the heart of the issues that Americans care about" - but "Obama leads in campaign funding". As in, he's in the lead to be the Democrats representative because he's got the most money. Plain and simple. Damn, your system is at least blatently corrupt in line with countries like Nigeria. Ours (UK) is still based on hidden string-pulling... I guess you beat us for transparency...
ah heck yeah, that's the beauty of it, no missing bit in the plan!
:-)
umm, maybe its "getting there before everybody else in the country who's read the same newspaper and has the same idea"
Thousands washing up at 50 pounds a pop for returning them?
1. Train ticket to West Country
2. Beach scavenge
3. Profit!!
This will be more fun than when the Napoli beached off Branscombe! Easier to sneak plastic ducks off the beach than BMW motorbikes....
A good response if you're a US citizen (to demand the park keeper and the cops prove the law). If you're a foreign tourist, well, antagonising police and other figures of authority in a country you're visiting isn't a good idea. They know the law better than you, and they can make your life very very difficult (or at least mess up your holiday or work trip).
You do what they tell you to do, it's the simplest. It's impossible to learn all the laws of the country you are visiting, you just have to trust they are telling the truth and follow what they tell you to do. Particularly if you're in a country which reserves the right to disappear people they don't like beyond the reach of international law.
cheers! I thought maybe it was a chain of US record stores! :-)
It's obvious - the anthromorphisised "Market" will decide!
:-)
Away from the pesky control of the evil commie big government forces, the freedom loving patriot being that is the Free Market will decide what is right. Don't panic, the Market will decide. You're just seeing it in action. If Exxon wasn't to stomp on small comedy companies, well then the shareholders would rise up and change the direction of the company. They haven't, so clearly The People Have Spoken!
Small shops all over the world struggle against big retailers who can undercut their prices. Small retailers used to make a living by stocking obscure records that didn't bring in the profit/shift the volume that the big retailers wanted. Big retailers wouldn't let you bring back the CD the next day if you didn't like it. There probably aren't good music stores in the area because nobody can afford to dedicate their life to running a shop if there isn't a living wage in it.
/sleeve notes etc, that's more of a specialist thing.
I'm 40, when I was at college in my early 20s the only way to find out about the latest cool underground records coming out was to go and hang out in the local alternative record shop in our university town (Newcastle Upon Tyne). It was a social centre, you'd hang out with the same guys, you'd exchange knowledge about latest releases, the shop owner would put on new records and even though you were looking for the latest release by your favourite band, you'd end up hearing a few tracks from another band and buy that record anyway. Only the super-hardcore collectors who subscribed to very specialist record mags would have their own way of knowing what was coming out. The rest of us found out by checking out the store and hanging out there for a few hours.
Now people just browse the internet, they can access interesting random connections through stations like last.fm, and they can download new tracks there and then - no need to go to the store. Not a lot of 20 year olds have record decks. Not sure that many have CD players either, most have ipods or other mp3 players... there's no need to get the physical artefact to listen to the music. So no need to go to the record store. It's a specialist interest these days rather than something that every teenager is into. People seem happy with getting the music, there isn't such a widespread demand for the album cover
Away from major centres of population, I don't think there is the demand anymore and alas not the profit to make it worthwhile for somebody to dedicate their life to it, I am not sure many people can pay the rent and eat from running a store like that.
(Incidently, what does "B&M" mean?)
Government involvement bad, commercial investment good, yadda yadda ..yawn... - so why's it not happening?
Because there's no money in it! Nobody's stopping Bill Gates and Exxon and Haliburton from throwing a few billion at spaceflight, the Russians would happily take their dollars and launch up anything they want (oh the irony, the Russians are completely up for free market exploitation of space and the Americans won't allow it...).
So even though you want private investors to pour money in, they aren't doing it... they are waiting for the ev0l government funded projects to take the risk and make the discoveries and lose the lives first. Personally I don't think private companies give a toss about making discoveries and getting involved in innovation, they just want to make a profit.
People belong to their local chess/football/cricket/crafts/etc clubs for much longer than this. So what's new or special about this?
Being a group of people who share a common interest but are separated by distance and communicate via distance-media tools, umm well that's been going on for some time too.
Sorry, struggling to see the novelty in this..
Damn commies! everybody knows the true American Patriotic Car of the Future is an eight wheel, 6 ton, armour plated X-SUV (Extreme Sports Utility Vehicle) with night vision, aircon to chill a Canadian winter, bull bars to win any collision with anything short of a tank, 12 seats, and a beer cooler, doing two miles to the gallon (US not the dirty supersized British one). It's my Right as an American citizen!
I guess we just had different experiences. I have no idea of your work situation, what kind of school it was, what country it was in even. Unless you'd like to offer commentary on my workplace in the mid 90s in Scotland, I don't remember seeing you around there, so you'll have to take my word for it...