It costs only if a transaction involves change of currency but if it is done in Euro the Commission did some serious ass kicking and it is free of charge now, so if you live in Euro area your transfer may be cost free.
I would not laugh of the US banking system, their banks may be old fashion when it comes to ripping of their private customers but when it comes to creating virtual wealth and putting cost of it on others they are the best - after all their misconduct caused pain all over and losses bigger abroad than at home - can you tell the same about banks in any other country?
In Germany you can. It is enough to give the shop 'your' bank account and they will withdraw. The actual owner has of course a chance of making the transaction void. Whether that is easy to abuse on a mass scale I am not sure.
nevertheless in Germany privacy and law is not taken that seriously by the state especially if it associated with filling up the state's coffers so I guess that is desired development here.
What you say is only as much true as we and all our creations are part of universe.
Mathematics is a language with which we build models describing the universe as we see it. It is not the same as this universe and if we can successfully use certain models it does not mean that the universe works the same way. These models are just tools and they are not to be confused with the reality even if there is no other model to describe it.
There is no such thing as free and of course you are right to say that if it is free it will clog and be maintained badly. There is similar but not quite the same problem with any service where there is no relationship between actual usage and charge users must pay. It may work but will be slow, unreliable and expensive for tax payer (somebody will have to pay for it at the end). Better let private enterprise make things happen in a framework state or communities set. Something like for a basic fee (incorporated in the local taxes somehow) you get basic not very useful but existing service, to get anything useful like bandwith, static addresses, webspace, qos and what not, etc you need to pay extra. But I guess that is too much to ask. There will always be opposition for 'free' service for all ('you commies want to ruin our finances') and any reasonable pay scheme ('but fees violate the very idea internet was funded on'). In my view the problem is unsolvable.
I am not going to protect my data on all costs. In fact I cannot do it - my gov. has a lots of info on me which it shamelessly sells, gives away or does not bother to protect. I think the balance of power over information is so hopelessly skewed into one direction that we do not need to give away more - they are taking it anyway. Can you show benefits of scrapping privacy? I cannot unless it concerns the ruling elite or owners of insurance companies etc. I can see benefits for the society if the information about them is in public domain but this is not going to happen anyway. Private information is usually used against individuals. It may be of benefit if it is anonymized (which MIT has actually promised to do - see TFA) but it may be abused so easily. OC we may just happily go on revealing more and more without even considering the consequences. AT the end we all pay the price. Let us hope it will not be too great.
Whether insurance companies need hidden cameras in bathrooms all over is questionable - there are better and cheaper methods of finding out if you are obese. Other than that insurance companies in country I live in do not charge more for preexisting conditions. Preexisting conditions are simply not covered. So technically you are right practically not.
But that is OT. I think the argument is simply wrongly chosen. There is a need for privacy and honestly if somebody considers only his belly there that then it is silly. Do you leave all your CC pin codes, bank account details etc out in the open? The whole argument "they can get information anyway so we do not need protect it" is a fallacy - you cannot protect your car from theft but you can make it more difficult and thus making theft less likely. There is a lot of things people not from my tribe can do with information about me and my family that I would not appreciate. That is why I try to protect this information. They can find out of course but if they have to work hard to do it then I hope they turn to you for easier target.
to all that has been said about how efficient they work and how they do not have to deal with bureaucracy etc one must add motivation. They are motivated by direct profit and by the fact that if they screw up they are possibly in big trouble and I do not mean lack of bonus at the end of the year.
I was making a cynical and karma lethal comment about systems that are called social - german word 'sozial' is used in its basic law to describe characteristic of a system. Yet it is known that having children in Germany is one of the best methods (besides maybe being an immigrant) to reach poverty. Statistics seem to confirm that. This seems to coincide with so called conventional wisdom like the two items that are my favorites: 1. having a baby/breast feeding makes mother stupid 2. having more than n (where n is usually bigger than 2) children is asocial
Of course we do not have stoning today which means people change and that is good so.
And what is the point of cloning a human except that one can use his organs for transplants without risk of rejection? I see none. As there are other pressing issues I's say try something else: building a startrek style replicator to produce bottle of nice wine from a good but long gone year would be much better idea and useful one too.
Well what did you expect from a country that has word 'social' smeared all over their Grundgesetz (basic law i.e. ersatz of the constitution).
It is really off topic here but it is known fact that in modern day Germany having children is a factor contributing greatly to you chances of getting into financial and social trouble. It seems it was always like that. Good thing is - today they do not stone or kill you other way - you just get poor and nobody will employ you if you reveal too much of social burden (family) resting on your shoulder.
So what you say we should pump them with tranquilizers or what? I can agree that recognizing who is doing it may help but it can only do this much. I suppose there are many things that one can do - supervising the youth is one thing. The other is supporting youngsters in organizing themselves. That comes handy later too when it comes to fighting pricks in high offices. Of course that can deteriorate into gang fight but that is why you should educate people into thinking global about this and to teach them to respect others, ethics etc.
I guess not all can be prevented anyway but at least we can try this way.
I would actually welcome if somebody had invented intelligence. I do not care whether it is called artificial or else what but at least we would have something. What we have now instead - well look around for answer.
It is not an illusion but of course you are right about experience - it helps quite a lot. There is however level of chaos in the code that makes it completely useless as soon as any change (due to new requirements or a fault fix) is needed. hacking your way through is of course the fastest way then you might think. OC as the whole thing survived 30y then it is of high quality one might think so the hacking is limited too. The new stuff however is a different thing though.
I happen also to work with the system that has its origins 30y ago. There are terrible things hidden there but as they were simpler than anything that we create today they are also simpler to fix. They are also mature which means they work most of the time. I have impression however that the new stuff if screwed up properly is way more difficult to fix than the old. The reason may be that way back then the word 'agile' was not known among software developers. I ma not sure I love or hate the cowboys that do the coding today - worse they are more work I have so I should love them I suppose.
the arguments about nukes is not really correct. Nothing happened back in cold war era because we were lucky and there were only two systems that could go on destroying all there was and they were under tight control of semi civilized and organized forces. Now if you imagine every lunatic around having an access to a dirty bomb if not a real one then that is dangerous. Most likely it will happen eventually. Whether restrictions help in preventing this scenarios I doubt. The question is rather: do countries using such policies have enough stamina to compete with the rest and stay on top or not. If they do then they survive anyway if not then no amount of control will prevent demise. Practically there is an issue of control and how much of it is enough. Openness is good. But complete transparency (provided it is at all possible) may not be so good for anybody.
maybe they have y2000 problem sort of problem? Stored values in a byte and being good designers made a protection so there is no overflow. I keep seeing such designs (and other nonsense) all the time. That is good as it justifies expense of keeping an QA monkey like me.
in the city-states in ancient Greece the statistics were even worse and yet they had democracy too. What you are talking about is citizen rights particularly the right to vote not democracy in general.
There are views that for instance people that put an effort and finished university (this does not mean they are lees stupid of course) should have more votes than the others. Is this worse or better democracy? It is just different.
As for what is better and worse as a method of voting or casting the vote. Well electronic ways are maybe not perfect but I would like to see technology improving democracy. Direct democracy for instance is something that prevents politicians do things to us that we do not want. It works in small communities because of many reasons one of being them technological constraints of asking people all the time. If we find a sensible way to use it then there is one reason less not to go direct way. I for one would welcome some way to limit freedom of parasites sitting in government and parliament.
Bottom line - people should be allowed to control the way their democracy operates. To do it and to smooth the new solutions you need some trials - they tried and now they will have to make a decision either to fix it or to go back to old ways. I think it is only reasonable. What is not reasonable is any of (not complete list of course):
-not try and implement,
-implement against will of the people,
-try, see problems and implement anyway without fixes
- try, see problems and dump without analysis of the problem and public reaction
All these are bad. I guess trying and seeing where it went wrong is acceptable risk - after all if there are complaints there are also procedures to fix it. Finland is not Zimbabwe and fixing it is possible.
the sales team is no garantee that customer will not make your arse ache. I recall a situation in which some idiot in company I worked at the time signed a paper stating our product is 100% compliant with some complex open specification that the deisgn and verification team has not been using. Guess what - customer took the spec and tested every clause there giving us hundreds of errors and costing us a fortune in fines. What I wanted to say is that Finnish authorities can force the companies concerned to fix it.
There are countries where all citizens vote and the failure rate is null. I am sure you do not want to live there. There are also other countries where courts may decide what is best for citizens. One big democracy come to mind - almost 8 years ago.... Then there is Finnland where they seem to care what happens to votes. At least outside the justice department they do.
That is a bit of fast judgment I think. You do not know what the problem was. TFA says that there has been a report that either due to software fault or touchscreen insensitivity there could have been problems with pressing OK button and the voters could have thought they have pressed enter although they have not. It could be be that the procedure was 'open' i.e. did not give clear and distinct indication 'vote has been cast' which means this was a glitch maybe not really technical but procedural but still one that could cause the vote to go wrong way.
I suppose there are arguments against allowing stupid and uneducated people voting but I guess they would not vote anyway. There are ways how to improve democracy but if they start excluding people from it then usually the path to dictatorship is short.
I agree with your comments regarding the prerequisites etc. But there is much more besides the basics.
There are two ingredients that any school system has to provide: - basic skills and information - how to work, analyze and most importantly learn new things on your own.
If we are talking about good school & one that really intends to prepare you for professional life than not limiting itself to and reaching beyond what is currently perceived as vital technical skills would be a must. This of course would be too much to ask of any normal school. Probably it would be too much to ask of any normal student. After all independent thinking or even thinking in general is not an activity that is desired or wanted. Independently thinking citizens and customers would be a danger to status quo, they may destroy this nice system that we have created. Good that there are not so many of them around.
It may be or maybe not but I am not going to risk missing the chance and gulp my guinness as one should.
OTOH I see no point in spending millions in creating beer that have something taken from wine - if I want to have something to do with wine then I drink it. They should go and spend these millions on something useful instead.
Slashdot Mirror
It costs only if a transaction involves change of currency but if it is done in Euro the Commission did some serious ass kicking and it is free of charge now, so if you live in Euro area your transfer may be cost free.
I would not laugh of the US banking system, their banks may be old fashion when it comes to ripping of their private customers but when it comes to creating virtual wealth and putting cost of it on others they are the best - after all their misconduct caused pain all over and losses bigger abroad than at home - can you tell the same about banks in any other country?
In Germany you can. It is enough to give the shop 'your' bank account and they will withdraw. The actual owner has of course a chance of making the transaction void. Whether that is easy to abuse on a mass scale I am not sure.
nevertheless in Germany privacy and law is not taken that seriously by the state especially if it associated with filling up the state's coffers so I guess that is desired development here.
What you say is only as much true as we and all our creations are part of universe.
Mathematics is a language with which we build models describing the universe as we see it. It is not the same as this universe and if we can successfully use certain models it does not mean that the universe works the same way.
These models are just tools and they are not to be confused with the reality even if there is no other model to describe it.
There is no such thing as free and of course you are right to say that if it is free it will clog and be maintained badly. There is similar but not quite the same problem with any service where there is no relationship between actual usage and charge users must pay. It may work but will be slow, unreliable and expensive for tax payer (somebody will have to pay for it at the end). Better let private enterprise make things happen in a framework state or communities set. Something like for a basic fee (incorporated in the local taxes somehow) you get basic not very useful but existing service, to get anything useful like bandwith, static addresses, webspace, qos and what not, etc you need to pay extra. But I guess that is too much to ask. There will always be opposition for 'free' service for all ('you commies want to ruin our finances') and any reasonable pay scheme ('but fees violate the very idea internet was funded on').
In my view the problem is unsolvable.
I am not going to protect my data on all costs. In fact I cannot do it - my gov. has a lots of info on me which it shamelessly sells, gives away or does not bother to protect. I think the balance of power over information is so hopelessly skewed into one direction that we do not need to give away more - they are taking it anyway.
Can you show benefits of scrapping privacy? I cannot unless it concerns the ruling elite or owners of insurance companies etc. I can see benefits for the society if the information about them is in public domain but this is not going to happen anyway. Private information is usually used against individuals. It may be of benefit if it is anonymized (which MIT has actually promised to do - see TFA) but it may be abused so easily.
OC we may just happily go on revealing more and more without even considering the consequences. AT the end we all pay the price. Let us hope it will not be too great.
Whether insurance companies need hidden cameras in bathrooms all over is questionable - there are better and cheaper methods of finding out if you are obese. Other than that insurance companies in country I live in do not charge more for preexisting conditions. Preexisting conditions are simply not covered. So technically you are right practically not.
But that is OT. I think the argument is simply wrongly chosen. There is a need for privacy and honestly if somebody considers only his belly there that then it is silly.
Do you leave all your CC pin codes, bank account details etc out in the open? The whole argument "they can get information anyway so we do not need protect it" is a fallacy - you cannot protect your car from theft but you can make it more difficult and thus making theft less likely.
There is a lot of things people not from my tribe can do with information about me and my family that I would not appreciate. That is why I try to protect this information. They can find out of course but if they have to work hard to do it then I hope they turn to you for easier target.
to all that has been said about how efficient they work and how they do not have to deal with bureaucracy etc one must add motivation. They are motivated by direct profit and by the fact that if they screw up they are possibly in big trouble and I do not mean lack of bonus at the end of the year.
I was making a cynical and karma lethal comment about systems that are called social - german word 'sozial' is used in its basic law to describe characteristic of a system. Yet it is known that having children in Germany is one of the best methods (besides maybe being an immigrant) to reach poverty. Statistics seem to confirm that. This seems to coincide with so called conventional wisdom like the two items that are my favorites:
1. having a baby/breast feeding makes mother stupid
2. having more than n (where n is usually bigger than 2) children is asocial
Of course we do not have stoning today which means people change and that is good so.
Now explain your huh please.
And what is the point of cloning a human except that one can use his organs for transplants without risk of rejection? I see none. As there are other pressing issues I's say try something else: building a startrek style replicator to produce bottle of nice wine from a good but long gone year would be much better idea and useful one too.
Well what did you expect from a country that has word 'social' smeared all over their Grundgesetz (basic law i.e. ersatz of the constitution).
It is really off topic here but it is known fact that in modern day Germany having children is a factor contributing greatly to you chances of getting into financial and social trouble. It seems it was always like that. Good thing is - today they do not stone or kill you other way - you just get poor and nobody will employ you if you reveal too much of social burden (family) resting on your shoulder.
I am sure they are working in shifts on this case.
So what you say we should pump them with tranquilizers or what? I can agree that recognizing who is doing it may help but it can only do this much. I suppose there are many things that one can do - supervising the youth is one thing. The other is supporting youngsters in organizing themselves. That comes handy later too when it comes to fighting pricks in high offices. Of course that can deteriorate into gang fight but that is why you should educate people into thinking global about this and to teach them to respect others, ethics etc.
I guess not all can be prevented anyway but at least we can try this way.
I suppose there are few evil people working on this right now. They probably do not mean data centres only either.
I would actually welcome if somebody had invented intelligence. I do not care whether it is called artificial or else what but at least we would have something. What we have now instead - well look around for answer.
one of the planes taking part in the collision was already airborne at the crash point.
It is not an illusion but of course you are right about experience - it helps quite a lot. There is however level of chaos in the code that makes it completely useless as soon as any change (due to new requirements or a fault fix) is needed. hacking your way through is of course the fastest way then you might think. OC as the whole thing survived 30y then it is of high quality one might think so the hacking is limited too. The new stuff however is a different thing though.
I happen also to work with the system that has its origins 30y ago. There are terrible things hidden there but as they were simpler than anything that we create today they are also simpler to fix. They are also mature which means they work most of the time.
I have impression however that the new stuff if screwed up properly is way more difficult to fix than the old. The reason may be that way back then the word 'agile' was not known among software developers. I ma not sure I love or hate the cowboys that do the coding today - worse they are more work I have so I should love them I suppose.
the arguments about nukes is not really correct. Nothing happened back in cold war era because we were lucky and there were only two systems that could go on destroying all there was and they were under tight control of semi civilized and organized forces. Now if you imagine every lunatic around having an access to a dirty bomb if not a real one then that is dangerous. Most likely it will happen eventually.
Whether restrictions help in preventing this scenarios I doubt. The question is rather: do countries using such policies have enough stamina to compete with the rest and stay on top or not. If they do then they survive anyway if not then no amount of control will prevent demise. Practically there is an issue of control and how much of it is enough. Openness is good. But complete transparency (provided it is at all possible) may not be so good for anybody.
maybe they have y2000 problem sort of problem? Stored values in a byte and being good designers made a protection so there is no overflow. I keep seeing such designs (and other nonsense) all the time. That is good as it justifies expense of keeping an QA monkey like me.
in the city-states in ancient Greece the statistics were even worse and yet they had democracy too. What you are talking about is citizen rights particularly the right to vote not democracy in general.
There are views that for instance people that put an effort and finished university (this does not mean they are lees stupid of course) should have more votes than the others. Is this worse or better democracy? It is just different.
As for what is better and worse as a method of voting or casting the vote. Well electronic ways are maybe not perfect but I would like to see technology improving democracy. Direct democracy for instance is something that prevents politicians do things to us that we do not want. It works in small communities because of many reasons one of being them technological constraints of asking people all the time. If we find a sensible way to use it then there is one reason less not to go direct way. I for one would welcome some way to limit freedom of parasites sitting in government and parliament.
Bottom line - people should be allowed to control the way their democracy operates. To do it and to smooth the new solutions you need some trials - they tried and now they will have to make a decision either to fix it or to go back to old ways. I think it is only reasonable. What is not reasonable is any of (not complete list of course):
-not try and implement,
-implement against will of the people,
-try, see problems and implement anyway without fixes
- try, see problems and dump without analysis of the problem and public reaction
All these are bad. I guess trying and seeing where it went wrong is acceptable risk - after all if there are complaints there are also procedures to fix it. Finland is not Zimbabwe and fixing it is possible.
the sales team is no garantee that customer will not make your arse ache. I recall a situation in which some idiot in company I worked at the time signed a paper stating our product is 100% compliant with some complex open specification that the deisgn and verification team has not been using. Guess what - customer took the spec and tested every clause there giving us hundreds of errors and costing us a fortune in fines.
What I wanted to say is that Finnish authorities can force the companies concerned to fix it.
There are countries where all citizens vote and the failure rate is null. I am sure you do not want to live there.
There are also other countries where courts may decide what is best for citizens. One big democracy come to mind - almost 8 years ago....
Then there is Finnland where they seem to care what happens to votes. At least outside the justice department they do.
That is a bit of fast judgment I think. You do not know what the problem was. TFA says that there has been a report that either due to software fault or touchscreen insensitivity there could have been problems with pressing OK button and the voters could have thought they have pressed enter although they have not. It could be be that the procedure was 'open' i.e. did not give clear and distinct indication 'vote has been cast' which means this was a glitch maybe not really technical but procedural but still one that could cause the vote to go wrong way.
I suppose there are arguments against allowing stupid and uneducated people voting but I guess they would not vote anyway. There are ways how to improve democracy but if they start excluding people from it then usually the path to dictatorship is short.
I agree with your comments regarding the prerequisites etc. But there is much more besides the basics.
There are two ingredients that any school system has to provide:
- basic skills and information
- how to work, analyze and most importantly learn new things on your own.
If we are talking about good school & one that really intends to prepare you for professional life than not limiting itself to and reaching beyond what is currently perceived as vital technical skills would be a must.
This of course would be too much to ask of any normal school. Probably it would be too much to ask of any normal student. After all independent thinking or even thinking in general is not an activity that is desired or wanted. Independently thinking citizens and customers would be a danger to status quo, they may destroy this nice system that we have created. Good that there are not so many of them around.
It may be or maybe not but I am not going to risk missing the chance and gulp my guinness as one should.
OTOH I see no point in spending millions in creating beer that have something taken from wine - if I want to have something to do with wine then I drink it. They should go and spend these millions on something useful instead.
or directly use napalm instead