- the phone does have a keyboard, it's just an onscreen soft keyboard rather than a physical one, and
- I don't use the physical keyboard to pick the contact I want to call anyway. I flick my finger down the screen and stop the scrolling contact list when the person I want comes on-screen. I only have 120 or so contacts, so it takes under 4 seconds to scroll, so while a keyboard would be slightly quicker it lacks the simple joy of flicking my finger to get a fast scroll speed.
Hmm. I get 2kW through the mains and you want me to charge my phone with a mere 2.5W?
Why wait a few hours when the technology and the power supply permit charge times in minutes? My current monster doesn't even have that large a battery and still takes longer than I'd like to charge on the 1A 'dumb' power supply. (Incidentally, it also charges from USB in the same socket).
Maybe you should try considering buying gadgets that give you all the technical capabilities you need on a single device instead of buying several, spare batteries for them, and making your friends wait while they all charge. The environment will be grateful.
I said you should seek a better theory. That doesn't preclude a theory that there is some mythical omnipotent being out there.
Of course, such a theory suffers from other key challenges, such as "where did that being come from?", for which established religious dogma lacks sensible answers.
I'm not demanding that there is an explanation that isn't a god of some form. It's just that nobody's been able to provide one.
I'm not looking for evidence that there is no god. I'm still waiting to see evidence that there is one. Archaic superstitious rituals and the brainwashing of vulnerable people into believing there might be one do not constitute evidence.
The UK Government is insidiously trying to hide much of their nefarious activity.
E.g. their big push for ID cards has ground to a halt. The public have realised how bad an idea the database state is and started to react against it. So instead of an ID card bill the Government has introduced data sharing powers in the Coroner's bill (I forget the full title) that's due for discussion in parliament shortly. They've also restricted the time available to discuss this bill. They'll also issue a three-line whip to get it through against any opposition.
That's pretty insidious. That's mis-use of the legislative process. That'll also be picked up and slapped straight back by the Lords, but this government has also shown its willingness to use the Parliament Act to force through bad laws, so the Lords may only delay and not prevent this law.
It'll end in blood and tears, if history is any guide.
I would expect the police to only seize a server if it could reasonably be expected to contain the relevant data, and if the server operators had refused to co-operate. I would expect a warrant to be used. I would expect the police to act with sensitivity and restraint.
None of these things happened.
I would also expect the police to provide me with a level of protection commensurate with the risk to me.
I'm sure that is happening, but does not excuse the rest.
Shit, getting a warrant should be the immediate initial action. The police should never assume people will just hand over servers.
The ISP has potentially broken the DPA. My personal data may be on that server, and may now be in police hands, illegally.
That's bad. That's very bad. That's bad enough to incite me to violence - fortunately I have more restraint than others (e.g. the police).
You may trust the police. I don't. I can't. They have too much power and abuse it too often to trust them on even the most trivial of matters.
I think it was bankrupting ourselves standing up to Nazi Germany that made the UK fall.
Not an MBA in sight.
MBAs are not a bad thing. What is a bad thing is failing to realise that a twat with an MBA is still a twat. A good manager with an MBA is a good manager with broader horizons, and that's a good thing.
So when travelling back in time, the car moves forward to where the Earth would be as far into the future as the car went in the past - while the earth in the past hasn't reached where it was in the present yet.
If I have a VISA to enter the US, they will still request my fingerprints. When I refuse they will either prevent me from entering, or arrest me, take my finger prints, charge me with a random crime then expel me anyway.
Technically this may mean I can enter, but to all intents and purposes they wont let me in the country.
From personal experience Windows (heavy use by game players) I find the opposite to be true. Windows requires a total reinstall at about the four month mark. It just sloooows down so much, defrag cleaning out the registry and so on, has no effect. So by the time I get to the last one, the first one requires a reinstall. There was even a company selling a utility to keep your heavy apps on different Windows partitions so as the machine won't slow down over time. The utility provided a hot key to switch between apps..
As someone that owns computers for 2-4 years and has been running Windows since 3.11 days I always laugh at people with this problem.
Yes, it can happen. No, it never happens to me, or to other people I know that are competent with computers.
No, it never happens on my work PCs.
I refer you to the 'properly configured' comment you responded to. Your random installation of any old crap (games, etc) is not proper configuration, and does not reflect business (or academic) use of Windows.
Ignoring all of that, even were you correct and all Windows installations needed to be reinstalled every four months.. a properly configured Windows setup can be reinstalled in minutes, unattended, overnight. Every night if you want.
Your personal experience is interesting and not uncommon. It's also not representative of well managed systems.
Which you've clearly not had experience of, as you lack knowledge of the 'excellent' management tools that are available.
Personally I hate Microsoft's tactics to leverage their monopoly position, I prefer OO.o and think Vista sucks donkeys. Windows XP however is a very stable very usable and legitimately competitive operating system, and I'm happy to have bought it. I dual-boot Linux on this system but until the software I want to run works in Linux I'll continue to predominantly boot into the OS that lets my apps work.
Which comes back to the point about educational software...
You may not have noticed, but there are a lot of people in the UK pretty fucking unhappy with the things going on here too.
I choose whether or not to fly to the US. I choose not.
I choose whether or not to let the fascist fuckwits in the Labour party force me out of my own country. I choose not.
That doesn't mean I agree with the cameras, the ID cards, the metal detectors. It means I'm going to stay and tell them to stop it and behave, and I'm going to vote them out of power in the election.
If a similar proportion had voted your favoured party into power, would you still complain?
Fuck yes. 35% of the vote, when a third of the voters didn't even vote, is not sufficient mandate to hold a 'win every vote you pull a three line whip on' majority in parliament.
I'd far rather have an even split where laws didn't get made because the Government couldn't bribe them through.
As for the House of Lords, until and unless they can replace it with something that will act more effectively in keeping the Commons in check, keep what we've got. I don't like the idea of hereditary peers but for whatever reason it does work.
When people vote they should vote for the person to represent them in parliament. A factor they should consider is how that person will represent them when voting for the prime minister in the Government.
If they voted for a Labour candidate then they did so knowing Blair was going to step down and knowing Brown was a shoe-in for the role afterwards. If they didn't vote for a Labour candidate then they didn't even vote for Blair, let alone Brown.
So Brown has every bit as much right to lead the country as Blair did. Fuck all. But it's not necessary to call an election; both were elected to represent their consituents, and both were chosen by a majority of MPs in the house to lead the Government. Democracy in action, don't you love it.
I travelled through most of Europe in the 80s. Didn't have to surrender my passport, answer intrusive questions or apply for a visa. Never got fingerprinted. I visited East Germany in the 80s. Didn't have to surrender my passport, answer intrusive questions or apply for a visa. Never got fingerprinted. I travelled to the US in the late 90s/early 2000s. Didn't have to surrender my passport, answer intrusive questions or apply for a visa. Never got fingerprinted.
I did have to apply for a visa to visit Hungary pre-'89. I didn't have to answer intrusive questions. Never got fingerprinted.
So about these travel restrictions.. I could and did travel all over the place when I was younger, no restrictions. These days I can't travel to the US or to Japan. They wont let me in the country, even if I have a visa, even if I answer all the intrusive questions they want to ask.
That's restrictive. That's today. So much for the 80s..
Especially with the UK's current willingness to give away anybody the US asks to extradite, no evidence required.
It's not that I don't trust the US Government, it's just that they've killed too many innocent people, tortured too many people (innocence being irrelevant here) and locked up far too many people without a fair trial.
Imagine being charged for living expenses when you can't go out and get a job. If you refuse to pay, do you ever get let out? If you get let out are you immediately bankrupt, on account of having accumulated debt, no income and a criminal record reducing your chances of finding a job?
That's really going to help people avoid returning to crime.
I was refusing to enter the US purely because of the fingerprints thing. To be fair, applying for a visa isn't something that I have an issue with, although some of the questions are probably unnecessarily intrusive.
Did I care about going to the US in the first place? Well, I have friends I greatly regret being unable to visit, there's the best Tex-Mex restaurant on the planet I can no longer go to, and I've lost jobs because I'm not a criminal and the US can't have my fingerprints.
Maybe that means I don't care. Maybe it just means I care far more about something else.
Slashdot Mirror
The twin ironies being that
- the phone does have a keyboard, it's just an onscreen soft keyboard rather than a physical one, and
- I don't use the physical keyboard to pick the contact I want to call anyway. I flick my finger down the screen and stop the scrolling contact list when the person I want comes on-screen. I only have 120 or so contacts, so it takes under 4 seconds to scroll, so while a keyboard would be slightly quicker it lacks the simple joy of flicking my finger to get a fast scroll speed.
- The screen is *exactly* the same model. It's nice, but only 2.5". Every time I hold an iPhone, what really strikes me is that huge 3.5" screen.
The screen is smaller, but the resolution is the same.
Personally I think that's an improvement. Smaller pixels, greater information density, no loss of text on-screen.
I can see how that would be an issue for people that aren't as short-sighted as me though.
No. It wont fit in my pocket, unlike the phone with built-in keyboard.
Hmm. I get 2kW through the mains and you want me to charge my phone with a mere 2.5W?
Why wait a few hours when the technology and the power supply permit charge times in minutes? My current monster doesn't even have that large a battery and still takes longer than I'd like to charge on the 1A 'dumb' power supply. (Incidentally, it also charges from USB in the same socket).
Maybe you should try considering buying gadgets that give you all the technical capabilities you need on a single device instead of buying several, spare batteries for them, and making your friends wait while they all charge. The environment will be grateful.
I said you should seek a better theory. That doesn't preclude a theory that there is some mythical omnipotent being out there.
Of course, such a theory suffers from other key challenges, such as "where did that being come from?", for which established religious dogma lacks sensible answers.
I'm not demanding that there is an explanation that isn't a god of some form. It's just that nobody's been able to provide one.
I'm not looking for evidence that there is no god. I'm still waiting to see evidence that there is one. Archaic superstitious rituals and the brainwashing of vulnerable people into believing there might be one do not constitute evidence.
There's no evidence that a god exists.
Why believe in something for which there is no evidence?
If a theory fails to explain certain phenomena, that means the theory is incomplete or wrong.
It doesn't mean you should make up some farcical fantasy to replace it. It means you should seek a better theory.
Curious. Why didn't the mother tell me about her? Come to that, who was I shagging nearly 7 years ago? How much do I owe in maintenance?
Sorry, relapse into a nightmare there..
The UK Government is insidiously trying to hide much of their nefarious activity.
E.g. their big push for ID cards has ground to a halt. The public have realised how bad an idea the database state is and started to react against it. So instead of an ID card bill the Government has introduced data sharing powers in the Coroner's bill (I forget the full title) that's due for discussion in parliament shortly. They've also restricted the time available to discuss this bill. They'll also issue a three-line whip to get it through against any opposition.
That's pretty insidious. That's mis-use of the legislative process. That'll also be picked up and slapped straight back by the Lords, but this government has also shown its willingness to use the Parliament Act to force through bad laws, so the Lords may only delay and not prevent this law.
It'll end in blood and tears, if history is any guide.
I would expect the police to only seize a server if it could reasonably be expected to contain the relevant data, and if the server operators had refused to co-operate.
I would expect a warrant to be used.
I would expect the police to act with sensitivity and restraint.
None of these things happened.
I would also expect the police to provide me with a level of protection commensurate with the risk to me.
I'm sure that is happening, but does not excuse the rest.
Shit, getting a warrant should be the immediate initial action. The police should never assume people will just hand over servers.
The ISP has potentially broken the DPA. My personal data may be on that server, and may now be in police hands, illegally.
That's bad. That's very bad. That's bad enough to incite me to violence - fortunately I have more restraint than others (e.g. the police).
You may trust the police. I don't. I can't. They have too much power and abuse it too often to trust them on even the most trivial of matters.
Although blowing up children isn't one of them.
If I were a terrorist, I'd target the children. It's the quick route to terror.
The purpose of terrorism is to terrorise - Lenin.
What are you trying to achieve. What are you willing to do to achieve it? If you're not willing to kill children, you aren't that fussed about it.
Children can fire guns too. They grow up to be adults. They perpetuate the ideas you may be seeking to extinguish.
Hello, you can't nuke a nation without hurting the children, and many people are willing to nuke a nation.
I'll stop there, people might think I'm insane.
And the ISP should have refused to give them the server without a warrant.
That's a local ISP that'll never be getting business from my company..
They did not have the info to release.
They did not have the post. They did not have the poster's ID (or IP address, which is entirely different again).
They could not release the info.
The police/government now have a server that will not help them. That doesn't really serve anyone.
I think it was bankrupting ourselves standing up to Nazi Germany that made the UK fall.
Not an MBA in sight.
MBAs are not a bad thing. What is a bad thing is failing to realise that a twat with an MBA is still a twat. A good manager with an MBA is a good manager with broader horizons, and that's a good thing.
So when travelling back in time, the car moves forward to where the Earth would be as far into the future as the car went in the past - while the earth in the past hasn't reached where it was in the present yet.
To go back in time inertia is insufficient.
No, he was entirely correct.
No, this study was about the effects of coffee.
I'm British.
If I have a VISA to enter the US, they will still request my fingerprints. When I refuse they will either prevent me from entering, or arrest me, take my finger prints, charge me with a random crime then expel me anyway.
Technically this may mean I can enter, but to all intents and purposes they wont let me in the country.
From personal experience Windows (heavy use by game players) I find the opposite to be true. Windows requires a total reinstall at about the four month mark. It just sloooows down so much, defrag cleaning out the registry and so on, has no effect. So by the time I get to the last one, the first one requires a reinstall. There was even a company selling a utility to keep your heavy apps on different Windows partitions so as the machine won't slow down over time. The utility provided a hot key to switch between apps ..
As someone that owns computers for 2-4 years and has been running Windows since 3.11 days I always laugh at people with this problem.
Yes, it can happen. No, it never happens to me, or to other people I know that are competent with computers.
No, it never happens on my work PCs.
I refer you to the 'properly configured' comment you responded to. Your random installation of any old crap (games, etc) is not proper configuration, and does not reflect business (or academic) use of Windows.
Ignoring all of that, even were you correct and all Windows installations needed to be reinstalled every four months.. a properly configured Windows setup can be reinstalled in minutes, unattended, overnight. Every night if you want.
Your personal experience is interesting and not uncommon. It's also not representative of well managed systems.
Which you've clearly not had experience of, as you lack knowledge of the 'excellent' management tools that are available.
Personally I hate Microsoft's tactics to leverage their monopoly position, I prefer OO.o and think Vista sucks donkeys. Windows XP however is a very stable very usable and legitimately competitive operating system, and I'm happy to have bought it. I dual-boot Linux on this system but until the software I want to run works in Linux I'll continue to predominantly boot into the OS that lets my apps work.
Which comes back to the point about educational software...
You may not have noticed, but there are a lot of people in the UK pretty fucking unhappy with the things going on here too.
I choose whether or not to fly to the US. I choose not.
I choose whether or not to let the fascist fuckwits in the Labour party force me out of my own country. I choose not.
That doesn't mean I agree with the cameras, the ID cards, the metal detectors. It means I'm going to stay and tell them to stop it and behave, and I'm going to vote them out of power in the election.
If a similar proportion had voted your favoured party into power, would you still complain?
Fuck yes. 35% of the vote, when a third of the voters didn't even vote, is not sufficient mandate to hold a 'win every vote you pull a three line whip on' majority in parliament.
I'd far rather have an even split where laws didn't get made because the Government couldn't bribe them through.
As for the House of Lords, until and unless they can replace it with something that will act more effectively in keeping the Commons in check, keep what we've got. I don't like the idea of hereditary peers but for whatever reason it does work.
When people vote they should vote for the person to represent them in parliament. A factor they should consider is how that person will represent them when voting for the prime minister in the Government.
If they voted for a Labour candidate then they did so knowing Blair was going to step down and knowing Brown was a shoe-in for the role afterwards. If they didn't vote for a Labour candidate then they didn't even vote for Blair, let alone Brown.
So Brown has every bit as much right to lead the country as Blair did. Fuck all. But it's not necessary to call an election; both were elected to represent their consituents, and both were chosen by a majority of MPs in the house to lead the Government. Democracy in action, don't you love it.
I travelled through most of Europe in the 80s. Didn't have to surrender my passport, answer intrusive questions or apply for a visa. Never got fingerprinted.
I visited East Germany in the 80s. Didn't have to surrender my passport, answer intrusive questions or apply for a visa. Never got fingerprinted.
I travelled to the US in the late 90s/early 2000s. Didn't have to surrender my passport, answer intrusive questions or apply for a visa. Never got fingerprinted.
I did have to apply for a visa to visit Hungary pre-'89. I didn't have to answer intrusive questions. Never got fingerprinted.
So about these travel restrictions.. I could and did travel all over the place when I was younger, no restrictions. These days I can't travel to the US or to Japan. They wont let me in the country, even if I have a visa, even if I answer all the intrusive questions they want to ask.
That's restrictive. That's today. So much for the 80s..
Especially with the UK's current willingness to give away anybody the US asks to extradite, no evidence required.
It's not that I don't trust the US Government, it's just that they've killed too many innocent people, tortured too many people (innocence being irrelevant here) and locked up far too many people without a fair trial.
No, they can't have my biometric data.
Imagine being charged for living expenses when you can't go out and get a job. If you refuse to pay, do you ever get let out? If you get let out are you immediately bankrupt, on account of having accumulated debt, no income and a criminal record reducing your chances of finding a job?
That's really going to help people avoid returning to crime.
I was refusing to enter the US purely because of the fingerprints thing. To be fair, applying for a visa isn't something that I have an issue with, although some of the questions are probably unnecessarily intrusive.
Did I care about going to the US in the first place? Well, I have friends I greatly regret being unable to visit, there's the best Tex-Mex restaurant on the planet I can no longer go to, and I've lost jobs because I'm not a criminal and the US can't have my fingerprints.
Maybe that means I don't care. Maybe it just means I care far more about something else.