>While I'm no fan of excessive lawsuits, I do believe in situations like this you should be able to sue credit reporting agencies for what is essentially defamation.
Alas, I was a junior IT professional on not much money, I am now currently a student, and lawyers cost money. I don't have a thousand pounds or whatever spare to get what out of Experian? an apology? The legal system laughs at the poor. There's no way I could justify the time and expense of raising a legal case (I've never been to court so I wouldn't know how to even start) so I just have to accept that if the facts have been corrected then that's the best I'll get. I feel really sorry for people who are in worse positions than myself and don't have the opportunity to take a day on a train to get to chase round council offices in another town and then multiple phone calls to the credit agencies.
>In the US you can get free credit reports (once a year IIRC), don't know about UK.
I'd happy to be corrected but my understanding is that the banks use one of two or three credit agencies, these are private companies, and you have to pay. You *are* able to get free 30 day trial of one of Experian's services (i.e.a free credit check) if you are prepared to give them your credit card and subscribe to a paying service that you can cancel for free within 30 days... however unless you cancel the service by phone they can deduct money from your account. My experience with them has been poor and I don't wish to risk going through some procedure of having to prove I tried to phone them and they didn't cancel the transaction... they've really got you by the balls....
cheers for your thoughts though. A warning to other folk in the UK....
mmm well I got to admit I don't find it "really..very easy" to read Chaucer and some of the concepts require a bit of reading to comprehend as far as I understand from what my teachers said - check out "gentillesse" as a concept in The Franklin's Tale - it really is culturally loaded and watching a few Hollywood films isn't going to explain it well:
1515: And in his herte hadde greet compassioun 1516: Of hire and of hire lamentacioun, 1517: And of arveragus, the worthy knyght, 1518: That bad hire holden al that she had hight, 1519: So looth hym was his wyf sholde breke hir trouthe 1520: And in his herte he caughte of this greet routhe, 1521: Considerynge the beste on every syde, 1522: That fro his lust yet were hym levere abyde 1523: Than doon so heigh a cherlyssh wrecchednesse 1524: Agayns franchise and all gentillesse; 1525: For which in fewe wordes seyde he thus -- 1526: madame, seyth to youre lord arveragus, 1527: That sith I se his grete gentillesse 1528: To yow, and eek I se wel youre distresse, 1529: That him were levere han shame (and that were routhe) 1530: Than ye to me sholde breke thus youre trouthe, 1531: I have wel levere evere to suffre wo 1532: Than I departe the love bitwix yow two.
But what happens when the credit agencies screw up?
I spent one summer fighting Experian because they screwed up my credit references. I got turned down for a mortgage and I wanted to know why - never been heavily in debt (student overdraft is all), credit card gets paid directly out of my current account every month, got no loans. Turns out it was because according to Experian I wasn't on the electoral voting register. I knew this was BS because I always sign up for the electoral roll. Ended up taking a train to London, back to the old council town hall in Hackney, and ask to see my records - yup, I was in there on the computer, the nice admin lady let me check it on the screen. I phone Experian then and there and say "you've got it wrong, I'm on the electoral roll for those years". Experian person: "No you're not, we've checked your records" Me: "ok I am handing you over to the Hackney council electoral official, could you confirm I am on the screen we're looking at?" (she confirms, passes phone back to me). Experian person: "ah, we must have made a mistake, I'll change it".
Thanks Experian. You screwed up my life. Moral of story: private credit agencies make mistakes, screw up your life, and don't give a toss. My advice to you all: if you're going to be entering into a situation where your credit record will be checked (e.g. loan, mortage, etc) do a check first and clear up any mistakes the credit agencies might have made. Obviously, you have to pay them, a private company, to look at your records....
"The fact that the car park is 4kms from the terminal building tells you all you need to know about Europe."
No, I don't understand, tell me. - In Europe cars are not as important as in other places? - In Europe land is more heavily built up than elsewhere so they have to put car parks where they can? - In Europe they don't help car drivers much? - In Europe they put their emphasis on better public transport too and from airports so you don't really need a car?... look forward to hearing from you...
A true shame is the way the Bletchley Park Museum is treated by the UK government and heritage authorities - they got turned down from national heritage funding and the whole place is operating on a shoe string. There are great volunteers (some of whom worked there in the war) who will take you on guided tours. It's really an amazing place to visit. Go there!
But they need financial help to keep the place running. Parts of the place really need financial investment - the Huts where the code breaking happened are barely standing. They've had to sell off some of the land around the house to developers (who are building a housing estate) to pay for the upkeep. Some of the volunteers were going round interviewing people who'd worked there during the war, they were so short of money that once they'd transcribed the interviews, they'd tape over the recordings and use the same tape again in the next interview to save money on buying new audio tapes.
If you think the work carried out at Bletchley Park during the war was valuable, or fascinating, contribute to keeping the place running as a museum. Visit the place! Buy some cool stuff from the shop! send them a donation! Please.
"I think the OP just meant other groups, IRA, McVeigh, etc., fit the traditional definition of terrorism, in that they use terror tactics to scare civilians/government by targeting govt/military targets. Civilians, however, are not the (intended) target of the violence
Sorry, but I'd say you are wrong. (Terror/radical/choose your expression) groups have targetted civilians before (and I'd question your implicit suggestion that the children who died in the Oklahoma City bombing were legitimate targets). This is nothing new. Here are some examples. I'm sure there are other examples and other groups, these are just ones that came to hand quickly because I remembered them from the news.
I think we agree on a lot of points - the internet and online resources have opened up discussion about what a university education means in the same way as other posters have noted that cheaply available books brought into question the purpose of the lecture. I think this is good.
I'd suggest though that the outcome of the current system is broader than just training people for an academic career, and that job training needs to turn out more than trained monkeys. My concern like many others is that a rote learning focussed system isn't good enough. I agree that employers may be looking for certificates but I'd suggest a good education should produce more than an individual with the ability to pass exams and I am concerned that the GP poster feels that if they can do that, they've got an education. It's not just academic topics either, in fact these might be the easiest to learn in a rote fashion; practical trade skills are perhaps more difficult to pass on through such a system. Sit me down in front of a bunch of books about car mechanics, or cookery techniques, and I could probably sit an exam and get a certificate to say I know everything about auto engines or French cooking. But I'd make a terrible mechanic or chef. I think good employers are looking for people who have picked up the tacit knowledge associated with their field of expertise. Or at least, I should imagine that employers want to find people that can be trained and have the skills to work alongside their other employees.
"No member of the IRA would be willing to blow themselves up on a public plane."
I don't know anybody in the IRA so I can't comment. I remember Bobby Sands and other IRA (and INLA) hunger strikers starving themselves to death for their cause. The expression "to die for the cause" is frequently used by radical groups as a sign of commitment (you choose if you wish to call them freedom fighters/ terrorists/ martyrs/ oppressed etc).
I wonder if the broad exposure the present suicide bombers are getting will 'up the ante' for other radical groups and mean that in future years more of these groups will start using suicide tactics as a result. Clearly members of many of these groups are prepared to die for their cause, and perhaps it is not a great psychological leap to agree to die by suicide if the belief in the cause is strong enough.
Can you name one western country that hasn't had a white person attack in recent history? USA- Timothy McVeigh. UK - IRA and other groups been blowing up bombs there for years. Germany: Baader Meinhoff gang. Italy - the Red Brigades. Spain - Basque separatism...
yawn..... what's this telling me? you can't judge somebody by their colour, place or birth, accent, religion....
"If a student gets the assignment listed in the syllabus in on time and passes the midterms, it means he has learned the material"
But is this a successful and complete education? On one level I understand what you're saying, and I understand the primary reason for going to university is to get a piece of paper which says you have the qualification. I take your point that 'learning the material' is probably the most important measure but heck, it's troublesome. Clearly for you "passing exams" is a significant part of your definition of "being educated". Sounds like your college needs to carefully examine its teaching methods, it could be in danger of turning out a bunch of trained monkeys. It may have an excellent system, and set really well designed tasks for you, so maybe all is fine, but declaring that its possible for a student to succeed in their university education without any contact with their fellow students or the teaching staff raises some fundamental issues. Mind you I think there is discussion going on about this at the moment, with more and more courses being put online. Maybe a university is just about accreditation? Though your comment about lecturers having horrible foreign accents suggests that a little bit of cultural exposure might also be useful for you.
"Only about 8% of British land is built on, and there are vast areas that could be used for landfills."
You scare me. Are you one of the filthy bastids who walks down the street dropping rubbish as you walk, goes on picnics and leaves crap everywhere, because it's not your back yard so you don't care? Mate, just because there is space to dump stuff, it doesn't mean it makes the place a whole lot nicer if you do. I'd prefer I could go for a walk in the countryside rather than walk between landfill sites in ten years time and not suffer because losers demand it's a human right to consume and throw huge amounts of crap.
A good place to start would be to educate people to use less packaging, to re-use what they've got, make sure stuff is packaged in biodegradable packing so what's thrown breaks down. Persuade people to purchase stuff that lasts longer, persuade the manufacturers not to build stuff that is designed to fall apart. Lots of issues I know but we're going to be neck deep in crap if don't start somewhere.
There's more of us, we consume more. Recycling isn't a scam per se, maybe the current implementation is flawed, I completely agree too much gets shipped off so some poor bastids get a dollar a day cooking circuit boards over open fires and chucking the rest in their drinking / washing water streams... how are we going to stop this stuipidity?
For goodness sake, this is pushing it a bit far, reporting on 5 year old papers. In other latest news from 2002 - New Orleans happy with flood defences, Lebanese economy doing well with current peaceful regional politics, British Airways relaxes security on air travel a year after 9/11.... sigh !:-)
"Common decency"... hmm, maybe exists in some 50s romantic B-movie comedies, but alas, welcome to the real world pal. That stuff never existed. Read your histories of work and industry through the ages. Watch a few Monty Python sketches if that's too boring (something about working in coal mines and getting up at 5am and being grateful for it: Victorian decency didn't have a problem with sending 5 year olds down mines and up chimneys after all). That's why unions got going in the first place, to actually give the little guys some real power rather than having individuals just sitting at home feeling shocked after layoff at the wake up call that they weren't actually working for a paternalistic social enterprise.
If you don't like the word 'union' then pick another, but you need some sort of collective ability to organise and respond when the big guys put the pressure on. They screw around with your workmates, you all stop work and threaten to take the company down if they don't start behaving better. Drastic, sure, but the USA is *proud* of its free market hire em and fire em attitude, you aren't going to get some middle manager to change their way by asking them to remember the unwritten rules of Lord's cricket ground and the British Raj. They are watching over their shoulder as well...
I totally agree with you that 'communist' has been appropriated by many dictators. As you note dictators tend to adopt whatever is fashionable and acceptable for the time, including 'democratic'. Probably a lot of nasty small places will use terminology acceptable to the US government in the next few years seeing as the USA is the dominant world power (while still carrying out terrible human rights abuses).
I think the politicians in Kerala are pretty solid about their communist beliefs, but you need to dig into this to get their exact positions on various issues, politics is like flavours of linux eh, lots of subtlety and the most passionate debates are about aspects of their positions that outsiders really don't care about...
Equally I think we agree being communist doesn't preclude one from being involved in democratic politics, there's a history of communist participation in parliamentary democracies. I was just having a little fun with the slashdot stereotype of right wing readers:-)
Damn commies! damn slashdot for taking this long to give us some really commies to complain about!
Actually I guess this is gonig to be fun watching people's head spin.. open source good, microsoft bad, but hang on, is communist open source good or bad? Actually Kerala is governed through a parliamentary system of representative democracy, they chose their current political leaders, no totalitarian dictators here. They just prefer communist representatives... Sounds like it's not all a bed of roses but it's in pretty good shape for an Indian state by the accounts I've come across (and a damn nice place to visit as a tourist according to several of my friends).
Nokia has also been doing a pilot in the town of Oulu in Finland, using Nokia 6136 phones. From the article "The pilot project is a joint cooperation between Nokia, the DNA/Finnet group and the City of Oulu".
I thought the Life of Brian jokes about the Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea was a joke aimed at the left wing factions of the day? So not so much useful as a starting point to consider the Middle East as a look at ourselves?
In the UK (where the Monty Python team was based) there was a dizzying number of left wing parties who seemed to spend more time in-fighting than working together against their common enemy (the right). For example, a quick look at recent left wing parties in the UK throws up the Workers' Revolutionary Party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the Communist Party of Great Britain...
A quick search on google suggests "Results 1 - 10 of about 9,000,000 for unlocking mobile phone". Every corner shop round here (in the UK) seems to be happy do it for you. Can't be that hard surely?
Great in theory but do you want to sit on the London - Australia flight next to a handful of really bored kids who are snivelling because they don't have their toys and the inflight sales toys are so expensive their parents could only afford to buy one each and they hate the food and why can't they have their own... plus the geek on the other side moaning about how he really needs to work on his laptop, and all you've got to keep you sane is the inflight magazine and ten back to back disney movies and paying 5 dollars for a bottle of water (because the airlines will charge what they fancy when there's no competition).
"I would much rather be safe than happy on a flight"
For sure but too much of a delay and it's just not worth travelling. London to Paris is 1 hr 15 minutes (approx), right now we're being told minimum 2 hours wait time to get on the plane for European short hop flights. It's one thing to queue for 3 hours for your London -Australia holiday flight but another if you want to get somewhere across Europe, have a meeting and fly back the the same day. Luckily I don't have to do this any more but a lot of people do.
I'm off to Copenhagen next week for a conference from London, 2 hour flight. A two hour wait in the airport I can just about cope with but when they start talking about 3,4,5 hour delays, heck, you got to wonder if it's worth it. Maybe we just have to rethink about how we do business in remote locations. I reckon the train and ferry companies are probably pretty happy right now, and the videoconference people as well!
ok I've always thought "War(Driving/Walking/Hula-hooping...)" a bit of a crap term for checking out wireless connections (yes I know the film heritage) but mmm.. WarRocketting.. I am probably having a humour-failure here but this strikes me as slightly *sick* right now don't ya think seeing as what's happening in the Middle East?
Can't we agree something a little more neutral/relaxed than "War" to describe checking out wireless signals?
Maybe I'm just old and don't think War=Fun.....
(sorry, grumbly old man rant over, please get off my lawn pesky kids...)
Indeed, mod parent up. So you get really excited and go to the National archives and type in the name of your city/town/village to see what was going on there a thousand years ago - it returns half a dozen searches - saying yes yes yes we've got information about these people/places, here's one line of introductory text, you click on any of them, and it says "3.50 pounds before you can see anything please". Deeply disappointing. See nothing unless you pay us 3.50 (that about 5 dollars I think). Heck, at least let us see the first one for free or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your kind thoughts.
.a free credit check) if you are prepared to give them your credit card and subscribe to a paying service that you can cancel for free within 30 days... however unless you cancel the service by phone they can deduct money from your account. My experience with them has been poor and I don't wish to risk going through some procedure of having to prove I tried to phone them and they didn't cancel the transaction... they've really got you by the balls....
>While I'm no fan of excessive lawsuits, I do believe in situations like this you should be able to sue credit reporting agencies for what is essentially defamation.
Alas, I was a junior IT professional on not much money, I am now currently a student, and lawyers cost money. I don't have a thousand pounds or whatever spare to get what out of Experian? an apology? The legal system laughs at the poor. There's no way I could justify the time and expense of raising a legal case (I've never been to court so I wouldn't know how to even start) so I just have to accept that if the facts have been corrected then that's the best I'll get. I feel really sorry for people who are in worse positions than myself and don't have the opportunity to take a day on a train to get to chase round council offices in another town and then multiple phone calls to the credit agencies.
>In the US you can get free credit reports (once a year IIRC), don't know about UK.
I'd happy to be corrected but my understanding is that the banks use one of two or three credit agencies, these are private companies, and you have to pay. You *are* able to get free 30 day trial of one of Experian's services (i.e
cheers for your thoughts though. A warning to other folk in the UK....
mmm well I got to admit I don't find it "really..very easy" to read Chaucer and some of the concepts require a bit of reading to comprehend as far as I understand from what my teachers said - check out "gentillesse" as a concept in The Franklin's Tale - it really is culturally loaded and watching a few Hollywood films isn't going to explain it well:
1515: And in his herte hadde greet compassioun
1516: Of hire and of hire lamentacioun,
1517: And of arveragus, the worthy knyght,
1518: That bad hire holden al that she had hight,
1519: So looth hym was his wyf sholde breke hir trouthe
1520: And in his herte he caughte of this greet routhe,
1521: Considerynge the beste on every syde,
1522: That fro his lust yet were hym levere abyde
1523: Than doon so heigh a cherlyssh wrecchednesse
1524: Agayns franchise and all gentillesse;
1525: For which in fewe wordes seyde he thus --
1526: madame, seyth to youre lord arveragus,
1527: That sith I se his grete gentillesse
1528: To yow, and eek I se wel youre distresse,
1529: That him were levere han shame (and that were routhe)
1530: Than ye to me sholde breke thus youre trouthe,
1531: I have wel levere evere to suffre wo
1532: Than I departe the love bitwix yow two.
But what happens when the credit agencies screw up?
I spent one summer fighting Experian because they screwed up my credit references. I got turned down for a mortgage and I wanted to know why - never been heavily in debt (student overdraft is all), credit card gets paid directly out of my current account every month, got no loans. Turns out it was because according to Experian I wasn't on the electoral voting register. I knew this was BS because I always sign up for the electoral roll. Ended up taking a train to London, back to the old council town hall in Hackney, and ask to see my records - yup, I was in there on the computer, the nice admin lady let me check it on the screen. I phone Experian then and there and say "you've got it wrong, I'm on the electoral roll for those years". Experian person: "No you're not, we've checked your records" Me: "ok I am handing you over to the Hackney council electoral official, could you confirm I am on the screen we're looking at?" (she confirms, passes phone back to me). Experian person: "ah, we must have made a mistake, I'll change it".
Thanks Experian. You screwed up my life.
Moral of story: private credit agencies make mistakes, screw up your life, and don't give a toss.
My advice to you all: if you're going to be entering into a situation where your credit record will be checked (e.g. loan, mortage, etc) do a check first and clear up any mistakes the credit agencies might have made. Obviously, you have to pay them, a private company, to look at your records....
No, I don't understand, tell me. ... look forward to hearing from you...
- In Europe cars are not as important as in other places?
- In Europe land is more heavily built up than elsewhere so they have to put car parks where they can?
- In Europe they don't help car drivers much?
- In Europe they put their emphasis on better public transport too and from airports so you don't really need a car?
A true shame is the way the Bletchley Park Museum is treated by the UK government and heritage authorities - they got turned down from national heritage funding and the whole place is operating on a shoe string. There are great volunteers (some of whom worked there in the war) who will take you on guided tours. It's really an amazing place to visit. Go there!
But they need financial help to keep the place running. Parts of the place really need financial investment - the Huts where the code breaking happened are barely standing. They've had to sell off some of the land around the house to developers (who are building a housing estate) to pay for the upkeep. Some of the volunteers were going round interviewing people who'd worked there during the war, they were so short of money that once they'd transcribed the interviews, they'd tape over the recordings and use the same tape again in the next interview to save money on buying new audio tapes.
If you think the work carried out at Bletchley Park during the war was valuable, or fascinating, contribute to keeping the place running as a museum. Visit the place! Buy some cool stuff from the shop! send them a donation! Please.
3 billion people (half the world's population) live on less than 2 dollars a day. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/poverty/images/IDEP_f lyer_A4.pdf There's going to be some well educated people in there.
Sorry, but I'd say you are wrong. (Terror/radical/choose your expression) groups have targetted civilians before (and I'd question your implicit suggestion that the children who died in the Oklahoma City bombing were legitimate targets). This is nothing new. Here are some examples. I'm sure there are other examples and other groups, these are just ones that came to hand quickly because I remembered them from the news.
The Arndale shopping centre, Manchester 1996
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=K-aKcU7c4pc&mode=relat
Bishopgate bomb, 1993
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishopsgate
Docklands, London, 1996
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/
Omagh Bombing, 1998
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omagh_bombing
Your thoughts?
I think we agree on a lot of points - the internet and online resources have opened up discussion about what a university education means in the same way as other posters have noted that cheaply available books brought into question the purpose of the lecture. I think this is good.
I'd suggest though that the outcome of the current system is broader than just training people for an academic career, and that job training needs to turn out more than trained monkeys. My concern like many others is that a rote learning focussed system isn't good enough. I agree that employers may be looking for certificates but I'd suggest a good education should produce more than an individual with the ability to pass exams and I am concerned that the GP poster feels that if they can do that, they've got an education. It's not just academic topics either, in fact these might be the easiest to learn in a rote fashion; practical trade skills are perhaps more difficult to pass on through such a system. Sit me down in front of a bunch of books about car mechanics, or cookery techniques, and I could probably sit an exam and get a certificate to say I know everything about auto engines or French cooking. But I'd make a terrible mechanic or chef. I think good employers are looking for people who have picked up the tacit knowledge associated with their field of expertise. Or at least, I should imagine that employers want to find people that can be trained and have the skills to work alongside their other employees.
I don't know anybody in the IRA so I can't comment. I remember Bobby Sands and other IRA (and INLA) hunger strikers starving themselves to death for their cause. The expression "to die for the cause" is frequently used by radical groups as a sign of commitment (you choose if you wish to call them freedom fighters/ terrorists/ martyrs/ oppressed etc).
I wonder if the broad exposure the present suicide bombers are getting will 'up the ante' for other radical groups and mean that in future years more of these groups will start using suicide tactics as a result. Clearly members of many of these groups are prepared to die for their cause, and perhaps it is not a great psychological leap to agree to die by suicide if the belief in the cause is strong enough.
Can you name one western country that hasn't had a white person attack in recent history? USA- Timothy McVeigh. UK - IRA and other groups been blowing up bombs there for years. Germany: Baader Meinhoff gang. Italy - the Red Brigades. Spain - Basque separatism...
yawn..... what's this telling me? you can't judge somebody by their colour, place or birth, accent, religion....
But is this a successful and complete education? On one level I understand what you're saying, and I understand the primary reason for going to university is to get a piece of paper which says you have the qualification. I take your point that 'learning the material' is probably the most important measure but heck, it's troublesome. Clearly for you "passing exams" is a significant part of your definition of "being educated". Sounds like your college needs to carefully examine its teaching methods, it could be in danger of turning out a bunch of trained monkeys. It may have an excellent system, and set really well designed tasks for you, so maybe all is fine, but declaring that its possible for a student to succeed in their university education without any contact with their fellow students or the teaching staff raises some fundamental issues. Mind you I think there is discussion going on about this at the moment, with more and more courses being put online. Maybe a university is just about accreditation? Though your comment about lecturers having horrible foreign accents suggests that a little bit of cultural exposure might also be useful for you.
You scare me. Are you one of the filthy bastids who walks down the street dropping rubbish as you walk, goes on picnics and leaves crap everywhere, because it's not your back yard so you don't care? Mate, just because there is space to dump stuff, it doesn't mean it makes the place a whole lot nicer if you do. I'd prefer I could go for a walk in the countryside rather than walk between landfill sites in ten years time and not suffer because losers demand it's a human right to consume and throw huge amounts of crap.
A good place to start would be to educate people to use less packaging, to re-use what they've got, make sure stuff is packaged in biodegradable packing so what's thrown breaks down. Persuade people to purchase stuff that lasts longer, persuade the manufacturers not to build stuff that is designed to fall apart. Lots of issues I know but we're going to be neck deep in crap if don't start somewhere.
There's more of us, we consume more. Recycling isn't a scam per se, maybe the current implementation is flawed, I completely agree too much gets shipped off so some poor bastids get a dollar a day cooking circuit boards over open fires and chucking the rest in their drinking / washing water streams... how are we going to stop this stuipidity?
For goodness sake, this is pushing it a bit far, reporting on 5 year old papers. In other latest news from 2002 - New Orleans happy with flood defences, Lebanese economy doing well with current peaceful regional politics, British Airways relaxes security on air travel a year after 9/11 .... sigh ! :-)
"Common decency" ... hmm, maybe exists in some 50s romantic B-movie comedies, but alas, welcome to the real world pal. That stuff never existed. Read your histories of work and industry through the ages. Watch a few Monty Python sketches if that's too boring (something about working in coal mines and getting up at 5am and being grateful for it: Victorian decency didn't have a problem with sending 5 year olds down mines and up chimneys after all). That's why unions got going in the first place, to actually give the little guys some real power rather than having individuals just sitting at home feeling shocked after layoff at the wake up call that they weren't actually working for a paternalistic social enterprise.
If you don't like the word 'union' then pick another, but you need some sort of collective ability to organise and respond when the big guys put the pressure on. They screw around with your workmates, you all stop work and threaten to take the company down if they don't start behaving better. Drastic, sure, but the USA is *proud* of its free market hire em and fire em attitude, you aren't going to get some middle manager to change their way by asking them to remember the unwritten rules of Lord's cricket ground and the British Raj. They are watching over their shoulder as well...
I totally agree with you that 'communist' has been appropriated by many dictators. As you note dictators tend to adopt whatever is fashionable and acceptable for the time, including 'democratic'. Probably a lot of nasty small places will use terminology acceptable to the US government in the next few years seeing as the USA is the dominant world power (while still carrying out terrible human rights abuses).
:-)
I think the politicians in Kerala are pretty solid about their communist beliefs, but you need to dig into this to get their exact positions on various issues, politics is like flavours of linux eh, lots of subtlety and the most passionate debates are about aspects of their positions that outsiders really don't care about...
Equally I think we agree being communist doesn't preclude one from being involved in democratic politics, there's a history of communist participation in parliamentary democracies. I was just having a little fun with the slashdot stereotype of right wing readers
Damn commies! damn slashdot for taking this long to give us some really commies to complain about!
Actually I guess this is gonig to be fun watching people's head spin.. open source good, microsoft bad, but hang on, is communist open source good or bad? Actually Kerala is governed through a parliamentary system of representative democracy, they chose their current political leaders, no totalitarian dictators here. They just prefer communist representatives... Sounds like it's not all a bed of roses but it's in pretty good shape for an Indian state by the accounts I've come across (and a damn nice place to visit as a tourist according to several of my friends).
Nokia has also been doing a pilot in the town of Oulu in Finland, using Nokia 6136 phones. From the article "The pilot project is a joint cooperation between Nokia, the DNA/Finnet group and the City of Oulu".
I thought the Life of Brian jokes about the Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea was a joke aimed at the left wing factions of the day? So not so much useful as a starting point to consider the Middle East as a look at ourselves?
In the UK (where the Monty Python team was based) there was a dizzying number of left wing parties who seemed to spend more time in-fighting than working together against their common enemy (the right). For example, a quick look at recent left wing parties in the UK throws up the Workers' Revolutionary Party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the Communist Party of Great Britain...
:-) hehehe.... 's ok, I'll trade you for some of those cool thinkgeek t-shirts!
A quick search on google suggests "Results 1 - 10 of about 9,000,000 for unlocking mobile phone". Every corner shop round here (in the UK) seems to be happy do it for you. Can't be that hard surely?
Great in theory but do you want to sit on the London - Australia flight next to a handful of really bored kids who are snivelling because they don't have their toys and the inflight sales toys are so expensive their parents could only afford to buy one each and they hate the food and why can't they have their own... plus the geek on the other side moaning about how he really needs to work on his laptop, and all you've got to keep you sane is the inflight magazine and ten back to back disney movies and paying 5 dollars for a bottle of water (because the airlines will charge what they fancy when there's no competition).
"I would much rather be safe than happy on a flight"
For sure but too much of a delay and it's just not worth travelling. London to Paris is 1 hr 15 minutes (approx), right now we're being told minimum 2 hours wait time to get on the plane for European short hop flights. It's one thing to queue for 3 hours for your London -Australia holiday flight but another if you want to get somewhere across Europe, have a meeting and fly back the the same day. Luckily I don't have to do this any more but a lot of people do.
I'm off to Copenhagen next week for a conference from London, 2 hour flight. A two hour wait in the airport I can just about cope with but when they start talking about 3,4,5 hour delays, heck, you got to wonder if it's worth it. Maybe we just have to rethink about how we do business in remote locations. I reckon the train and ferry companies are probably pretty happy right now, and the videoconference people as well!
Words are power, words shape reality. As you yourself recognise by posting AC. Too frightened to even commit your words to a slashdot account.
ok I've always thought "War(Driving/Walking/Hula-hooping...)" a bit of a crap term for checking out wireless connections (yes I know the film heritage) but mmm.. WarRocketting.. I am probably having a humour-failure here but this strikes me as slightly *sick* right now don't ya think seeing as what's happening in the Middle East?
Can't we agree something a little more neutral/relaxed than "War" to describe checking out wireless signals?
Maybe I'm just old and don't think War=Fun.....
(sorry, grumbly old man rant over, please get off my lawn pesky kids...)
Indeed, mod parent up. So you get really excited and go to the National archives and type in the name of your city/town/village to see what was going on there a thousand years ago - it returns half a dozen searches - saying yes yes yes we've got information about these people/places, here's one line of introductory text, you click on any of them, and it says "3.50 pounds before you can see anything please". Deeply disappointing. See nothing unless you pay us 3.50 (that about 5 dollars I think). Heck, at least let us see the first one for free or something.