I haven't noticed gay and transsexual groups asking society to adapt to them. I have noticed them wanting to be not discriminated against and wanting society in general to stop giving them a hard time.
And it should be noted, Autistic people want the same damn thing.
People who actually have Aspergers (rather than people who like to claim it because its cool) work very hard to hide the problems they have communicating and just trying to get along in ordinary society. People who think it just makes you a little smarter have no idea how hard people with Aspergers need to work on social skills that come naturally to most people. Would it really kill some people to not be arseholes when they stutter or in any other way muck up social interaction.
"A certain woman who had taken the vow of chastity fell, through youthful desire of pleasure and her womb swelled with child. Brigid, exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain. She faithfully returned the woman to health and to penance."
In my experience, users are very extreme in their assigned scores.
The problem with user scores is that most users are extremely unreliable or heavily biased. Fanboys, anti-fanboys, people who like everything and people who get off from writing negative reviews. So many peaks and valleys you cant be sure what is reliable. Above all this, you have no idea of the experience, biases or preferences of the reviewer.
With a professional review you can have some idea of the motivation of the reviewer (sometimes this is just money) and the history of the reviewer. This does not automatically make them trustworthy but it makes it easier to determine which ones are trustworthy. Commercial reviews have their own set of problems, such as no game scoring below 6/10 but this is easy to work around (IMHO, Eurogamer are one of the better commercial review sites). Details on what is wrong with the game is usually found in the content, which I will admit is pretty useless at those who dont read the review and only look a the scores, but that is their problem.
One of the few reviewers I trust with game recommendations is Yahtzee, the sarcastic bastard. Mainly because he's pretty unashamed of his biases and taking money to do reviews, ironically making him one of the more open and honest reviewers.
I mean, with the plethora of set-top boxes like AppleTV, Roku, FireTV, ChromeCast, why would anyone in their right mind buy an all-in-one, especially from a known UI offender like Samsung (TouchWiz?).
Because a lot of people have a fixation on not having a lot of devices.
Strange, but the mundane people would happily sacrifice quality, privacy and their dog if it means they can have everything in one magic box.
Apple. They are very up front with how they get their money from you and that's in the hardware prices. They charge a lot for hardware but so far they don't try to screw you after purchase by advertising or selling your data.
Read your Itunes T&C.
They can share your data with any "partner" they choose.
They're worse than Google with selling your data, at least Google is upfront about it, rather than burying it in 100 pages of legalese.
The fact is that in general, people want to own their stuff, not have their stuff own them. Apple taught manufacturers a very poor lesson; namely, the way to make huge profits is to create and cultivate a walled garden that the manufacturer controls and collects the tolls. But Apple wasn't successful because it has a walled garden, it is successful because plenty of people with lots of disposable income like the Apple advertising and marketing
Fixed that for you.
The pink elephant in the room is that Apples HCI is terrible, so terrible they needed to invent a bollocks field called "User Experience" to explain why their HCI was so bad. Apple are insanely good at marketing, look at how fanboys will argue over whether Apple is a software or hardware company, in reality their software is mostly derived from open source and their hardware is built by other people, so they're a marketing company.
The bad lesson Apple has taught to the corporate world is that you can abuse your customers like a drunken redneck husband beats his wife and they'll love you for it as long as you can spin it. Hell, they'll even blame themselves for anything Apple does wrong because "Apple loves them".
Gotta wonder... would Pepsi, Coke and other "name brands" really lose much business if they stopped advertising? Or would their net profit increase by not wasting $$ on ads?
Yep,
For brands like, Coke, McDonalds, et al. They would lose a lot of sales if they didn't constantly expose people to their advertising. You'd be surprised at the number of people who only drink Coke because they were exposed to a coke advert a few moments ago. For these companies they need to stay at the front of people's consciousness as they cant rely on people getting hungry or thirsty and defaulting to Micky D's or Coke because people would rarely do this of their own accord.
No, you are completely powerless. In fact you're more powerless than the GGP because you refuse to realise just how powerless you are.
And wrong.
It is the governments responsibility to enforce the law and prevent crime. That is basically what it happening, large corporations are getting away with near murder because people like you think that you can simply vote with your wallet completely unaware that most of the brands you're switching between are the same company.
It's more like the local government granting that the community can take the title for an abandoned house the owner no longer keeps in good order and fix it up on the condition they never sell or rent it.
What customers are actually ASKING for all this shit in cars today? Seriously?
Most of them.
Nowdays people expect connectivity from a base model Korean hatchback. Its more important to buyers than airbags and seatbelts. All you have to do is look at the ads for a Ford Fiesta to realise their marketed as fashion accessories for a chic lifestyle with their iwhotsits connectivity, bluetooth, satellite navigation. Having their phone play music through the speakers is more important than a car that actually works. It started with BMWs and Mercs in the early 00's, now its expected in a Kia.
People who shop for a car with decent performance or handling as priorities are in the extreme minority these days. Most people buy a BMW M3 or a WRX STI because of the reputation, not because they're exceptional cars.
I dont mind some computers in the car. Engine management systems, traction control, adjustable suspension and AWD systems are quite nice, especially when you can fettle with them yourself. However I expect that these systems will be disconnected from the "infotainment" unit. However a lot of manufacturers are integrating it into the infotainment system. In this case, I'd rather not have things like adjustable suspension because it means someone from outside my car could fiddle with it.
Eventually its going to backfire and manufacturers are going to have to backpedal connectivity as the cost of people making warranty claims and law suits for hacked cars increases.
It probably works like Siri or Cortana or any of a number of voice-process things, where they send the voice command data back to a more powerful computer to process what it actually meant.
And if that's how it works as I expect, that's why I don't use it for anything that I'm not already sending over the Internet. As in, I'll use it for entering addresses in Google Maps because I'm already sending the address to Google anyway, but I'm not inclined to dictate text messages because the voice processor people have no business with that information.
Android can do offline voice recognition.
Worked OK with the translate application.
I dont use voice recognition for much because its faster and easier to type it out (and you get less errors).
I'm not fond of Uber (not an user, and read some horror stories about raping, etc)
I have had the misfortune of using Uber. Haven't been raped or killed but the experience is definitely worse than using a licensed and insured taxi.
The last time I tried, a friend insisted we use Uber instead of taking a taxi that was parked right there with the vacant light on. So he booked one and we waited, and waited, and waited. After half an hour I just called a taxi and it was there in 5 minutes. Uber drivers can turn down fares they dont like, taxi drivers have to take them.
The time before that we actually got a car but it was horrible. 3 people to fit into an unwashed Pug 206 diesel. The inside smelled of old socks and mouldy cheese, the driver didn't look much better than the car. The driver was horrible, tailgating and lane weaving, no regard for the comfort of his passenger (I've never heard a taxi driver use the horn in Perth). About 1KM from my house he stopped and demanded we give him a 5 star rating because he'll get kicked out if he doesn't keep a high rating. Needless to say I got out and walked after sharing some choice words with him.
This was at 11 PM on a Saturday night and it was marginally cheaper than using a normal taxi (as in less than 5%), if you want a peak hour taxi and surge pricing comes into effect, a normal taxi is cheaper as surge pricing on taxis is illegal in my state.
Compared to Uber, all the taxi's in my city are modern and clean Camry Hybrids or Ford Falcons on gas (LPG). They're kept clean and neat by the taxi companies and the drivers have some semblance of how to drive.
Every experience I've had with Uber has been worse than using a normal taxi and in some cases, more expensive. The only thing Uber has going for it is an irrational hate of traditional taxis, this wont last as soon enough people will figure out Uber has more problems than a normal taxi. I'm certain all the people who have been banned from being taxi drivers because they assaulted a passenger or crashed are driving for Uber now.
The bigger issue Angela Merkel and the EU have is letting Greece exit the EU because of the message it sends to the others in the same boat, Portugal, Italy Ireland and Spain.
If the EU shows that it cant make Greece repay its debts the others are going to do whatever Greece did.
You could do a lot within the capitalist system just providing special tax benefits to the groups you want to support. But chances are you'd have to take them in taxes from somebody else. It wouldn't really work any better or different if you take away the money, somebody would be grabbing compensation from one group and giving it to another saying here, you deserve it more. And then ones who just got deprived would scream bloody murder. It's not hard to find faults with the market economy, but it's not hard to find faults with the plan economy either. In other words, explain a better system that'd actually work in the real world with selfish people who want to game the system.
Neither system is perfect is the reason western nations (and most successful economies) are mixed economies. Neither capitalist nor socialist in their entirety, rather using a mix of the two. How much gets mixed in and where it's applied is a matter of some debate.
A 100% capitalist state has never existed, unlike 100% socialist states that do exist and are abject failures. There's a reason for this. Pure capitalism fails for the same reason as pure communism. It relies on people believing the exact same thing. Communist nations enforce this by gunpoint, the closest a capitalist state came to this was fascism and that was stopped in short order. The problem, as you so eloquently pointed out is that selfish people who want to game the system exist and the closer to pure capitalism/socialism a system gets the easier it is for these people to game.
The reason we keep using mixed economic systems is not just because they're the best solution we've tried, but also because the more extreme you get the more despotic the government is required to be in order to enforce it. If a pure capitalist state existed, it would look a lot like North Korea, except the leader would have Donald Trumps hair cut.
Actually Germany is not socialism. nor are most other european counties, like one of the parents up claimed.
Arguable Scandinavia is navigating a middle way between socialism/non socialism.
However americans have a retarded idea what socialism actually is.
Universal healthcare? Socialism! (Rofl, it is a basic human right! China had that 4000 years ago, so had Egypt 6000 years ago)
Unemployment insurrance? Socialism!!! Rofl...
So what Greece is doing isn't socialism?
Here's my problem with "but OMFG socialism" and "socialism ruined everything" arguments, the people who make them wouldn't know proper socialism if it came up and threw them onto the spears of the soldiers. Socialism to them is a byword for "something I dont like".
Bull, followed by shit. Making a car that will function as well as a Model T is pretty easy, any dick with a little machining and welding experience can probably manage that.
Do you know how stupidly complex the Model T's controls were? Whatever Henry Ford was smoking when he released that I would like some of.
But I agree with your post. Anyone who thinks designing a car with off the shelf engine and suspension parts is delusional and has clearly never tried to modify a car. You cant simply buy bits off the shelf and expect them to fit together like lego. Hell, you can barely do that with wheels and they've got standardised connectors (stud patterns). Its nothing like building a computer where you buy a CPU, mainboard, HDD and case that just slot together. After you get the right parts and fit them, there is still a bit of fettling to get them right.
Very little of your car is plug and play. We cant even get manufacturers to use ISO connectors and DIN standards for stereos.
One of the most common attacks is actually the simplest. The thief waits in the car park with a jammer. Most cars use 433MHz in Europe, penalty 915 in the US. The victim walks away and presses the lock button on their key fob and doesn't notice that the car didn't actually respond. Once inside the thief can use the OBD-II port to steal the car.
I prefer keyless entry as you press a button on the car to lock it, and even if jammed it will always lock.
I dont walk away from my car until I hear the poorly synchronised clunks of the door locks.
Not that I'm worried about jammers and MITM attacks (they haven't quite made it to Australia just yet), rather I'm yet to find a key fob that works perfectly every single time. If you're pointing a little bit too far in the wrong direction or your body is in they way enough that it blocks the signal your car fails to lock.
Almost all cars have a visual signal (normally the indicators flashing) and most cars have an audible signal letting you know the car has been locked.
You do realize that MPAA promotes a fascist system, not a capitalist one, don't you?
You do realise that Fascism is a political system and Capitalism is an economic system. They aren't interchangeable and actually work quite well together.
I'm glad I live in semi-rural Australia, and know all the local cops if not by name, then at least on waving and nodding terms.
On the rare occasion I get pulled over, I say "gidday" and wait for him to say what's on his mind. If it's a random breath test, I follow instructions, and then I'm on my way. If I've been speeding, I 'fess up, and say "You got me, mate, I wasn't paying attention" - that once got me out of a '30km/h over the limit' ticket and fine with a warning. And our cops are armed with pistols and tasers.
Seriously, make an effort to be nice to your local policemen/women - the return on investment can be considerable.
This.
Cops in Australia are usually pretty good. You still get the odd bad apple but that's about it (even in the city, although classifying Perth as being completely urban is a bit disingenuous, we've still got the mining town mentality).
That being said I do understand the "dont talk to the cops" thing. But what most people fail to understand is that "dont talk to the cops" does not mean "be a complete arse to the cops". You'd be amazed at what you can say without saying anything at all. Be polite, be civil, make small talk, ask the officer how their day's been. Much like the parent poster, I've gotten out of minor infractions by simply being a nice person, cops will ignore a few K's over if you're not an arsehole. We call this "the personality test" and often it means you can drive away after being caught 10 KPH or so over.
So what would happen if someone calls 112 saying a shooting happened at your residence? A Police officer shows up and calmly knocks on the door? I am inclined to agree that the swatting response in the us is way overkill. But no or minimal response likely isn't the answer either.
Well first off, its Germany so not everyone is an armed nutcase. In fact most people will be very ordered and restrained.
Secondly, there will be more than one police officer. They typically work in pairs.
Thirdly, police officers in modern, functioning societies are trained to observe and measure up a situation before acting. So they'll take a look around and see that there's no need to call GSG 9.
Finally, even if there were a gunman, the officers would attempt to contain the situation and seek a non violent solution using force as a last resort only instead of going in half cocked, shooting everything that moves after which, they check to see if there is anything black that didn't get shot in the initial barrage.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't noticed gay and transsexual groups asking society to adapt to them. I have noticed them wanting to be not discriminated against and wanting society in general to stop giving them a hard time.
And it should be noted, Autistic people want the same damn thing.
People who actually have Aspergers (rather than people who like to claim it because its cool) work very hard to hide the problems they have communicating and just trying to get along in ordinary society. People who think it just makes you a little smarter have no idea how hard people with Aspergers need to work on social skills that come naturally to most people. Would it really kill some people to not be arseholes when they stutter or in any other way muck up social interaction.
Also keep in mind, I'm talking about adults here.
Ah come on, it's 6 one way and half a dozen the other..
Lies, damn lies and statistics...
When statistics get fiddled with, it's 5 of one and a bakers dozen of the other.
"A certain woman who had taken the vow of chastity fell, through youthful desire of pleasure and her womb swelled with child. Brigid, exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain. She faithfully returned the woman to health and to penance."
And abortion is illegal in Ireland.
In Soviet Russia, VPN watches you!
I would have gone with:
In Soviet Russia, VPN connect to you.
I'll see your former Soviet states and raise you a Columbia, Panama and Zaire.
I could do this all fuckin' day,
Gentlemen, gentlemen,
Both countries have small penises. Can we please move on.
The problem with user scores is that most users are extremely unreliable or heavily biased. Fanboys, anti-fanboys, people who like everything and people who get off from writing negative reviews. So many peaks and valleys you cant be sure what is reliable. Above all this, you have no idea of the experience, biases or preferences of the reviewer.
With a professional review you can have some idea of the motivation of the reviewer (sometimes this is just money) and the history of the reviewer. This does not automatically make them trustworthy but it makes it easier to determine which ones are trustworthy. Commercial reviews have their own set of problems, such as no game scoring below 6/10 but this is easy to work around (IMHO, Eurogamer are one of the better commercial review sites). Details on what is wrong with the game is usually found in the content, which I will admit is pretty useless at those who dont read the review and only look a the scores, but that is their problem.
One of the few reviewers I trust with game recommendations is Yahtzee, the sarcastic bastard. Mainly because he's pretty unashamed of his biases and taking money to do reviews, ironically making him one of the more open and honest reviewers.
I mean, with the plethora of set-top boxes like AppleTV, Roku, FireTV, ChromeCast, why would anyone in their right mind buy an all-in-one, especially from a known UI offender like Samsung (TouchWiz?).
Because a lot of people have a fixation on not having a lot of devices.
Strange, but the mundane people would happily sacrifice quality, privacy and their dog if it means they can have everything in one magic box.
Apple. They are very up front with how they get their money from you and that's in the hardware prices. They charge a lot for hardware but so far they don't try to screw you after purchase by advertising or selling your data.
Read your Itunes T&C.
They can share your data with any "partner" they choose.
They're worse than Google with selling your data, at least Google is upfront about it, rather than burying it in 100 pages of legalese.
The fact is that in general, people want to own their stuff, not have their stuff own them. Apple taught manufacturers a very poor lesson; namely, the way to make huge profits is to create and cultivate a walled garden that the manufacturer controls and collects the tolls. But Apple wasn't successful because it has a walled garden, it is successful because plenty of people with lots of disposable income like the Apple advertising and marketing
Fixed that for you.
The pink elephant in the room is that Apples HCI is terrible, so terrible they needed to invent a bollocks field called "User Experience" to explain why their HCI was so bad. Apple are insanely good at marketing, look at how fanboys will argue over whether Apple is a software or hardware company, in reality their software is mostly derived from open source and their hardware is built by other people, so they're a marketing company.
The bad lesson Apple has taught to the corporate world is that you can abuse your customers like a drunken redneck husband beats his wife and they'll love you for it as long as you can spin it. Hell, they'll even blame themselves for anything Apple does wrong because "Apple loves them".
Gotta wonder... would Pepsi, Coke and other "name brands" really lose much business if they stopped advertising? Or would their net profit increase by not wasting $$ on ads?
Yep,
For brands like, Coke, McDonalds, et al. They would lose a lot of sales if they didn't constantly expose people to their advertising. You'd be surprised at the number of people who only drink Coke because they were exposed to a coke advert a few moments ago. For these companies they need to stay at the front of people's consciousness as they cant rely on people getting hungry or thirsty and defaulting to Micky D's or Coke because people would rarely do this of their own accord.
No, you are completely powerless. In fact you're more powerless than the GGP because you refuse to realise just how powerless you are.
And wrong.
It is the governments responsibility to enforce the law and prevent crime. That is basically what it happening, large corporations are getting away with near murder because people like you think that you can simply vote with your wallet completely unaware that most of the brands you're switching between are the same company.
Yep,
It's more like the local government granting that the community can take the title for an abandoned house the owner no longer keeps in good order and fix it up on the condition they never sell or rent it.
What customers are actually ASKING for all this shit in cars today? Seriously?
Most of them.
Nowdays people expect connectivity from a base model Korean hatchback. Its more important to buyers than airbags and seatbelts. All you have to do is look at the ads for a Ford Fiesta to realise their marketed as fashion accessories for a chic lifestyle with their iwhotsits connectivity, bluetooth, satellite navigation. Having their phone play music through the speakers is more important than a car that actually works. It started with BMWs and Mercs in the early 00's, now its expected in a Kia.
People who shop for a car with decent performance or handling as priorities are in the extreme minority these days. Most people buy a BMW M3 or a WRX STI because of the reputation, not because they're exceptional cars.
I dont mind some computers in the car. Engine management systems, traction control, adjustable suspension and AWD systems are quite nice, especially when you can fettle with them yourself. However I expect that these systems will be disconnected from the "infotainment" unit. However a lot of manufacturers are integrating it into the infotainment system. In this case, I'd rather not have things like adjustable suspension because it means someone from outside my car could fiddle with it.
Eventually its going to backfire and manufacturers are going to have to backpedal connectivity as the cost of people making warranty claims and law suits for hacked cars increases.
It probably works like Siri or Cortana or any of a number of voice-process things, where they send the voice command data back to a more powerful computer to process what it actually meant.
And if that's how it works as I expect, that's why I don't use it for anything that I'm not already sending over the Internet. As in, I'll use it for entering addresses in Google Maps because I'm already sending the address to Google anyway, but I'm not inclined to dictate text messages because the voice processor people have no business with that information.
Android can do offline voice recognition.
Worked OK with the translate application.
I dont use voice recognition for much because its faster and easier to type it out (and you get less errors).
I'm not fond of Uber (not an user, and read some horror stories about raping, etc)
I have had the misfortune of using Uber. Haven't been raped or killed but the experience is definitely worse than using a licensed and insured taxi.
The last time I tried, a friend insisted we use Uber instead of taking a taxi that was parked right there with the vacant light on. So he booked one and we waited, and waited, and waited. After half an hour I just called a taxi and it was there in 5 minutes. Uber drivers can turn down fares they dont like, taxi drivers have to take them.
The time before that we actually got a car but it was horrible. 3 people to fit into an unwashed Pug 206 diesel. The inside smelled of old socks and mouldy cheese, the driver didn't look much better than the car. The driver was horrible, tailgating and lane weaving, no regard for the comfort of his passenger (I've never heard a taxi driver use the horn in Perth). About 1KM from my house he stopped and demanded we give him a 5 star rating because he'll get kicked out if he doesn't keep a high rating. Needless to say I got out and walked after sharing some choice words with him.
This was at 11 PM on a Saturday night and it was marginally cheaper than using a normal taxi (as in less than 5%), if you want a peak hour taxi and surge pricing comes into effect, a normal taxi is cheaper as surge pricing on taxis is illegal in my state.
Compared to Uber, all the taxi's in my city are modern and clean Camry Hybrids or Ford Falcons on gas (LPG). They're kept clean and neat by the taxi companies and the drivers have some semblance of how to drive. Every experience I've had with Uber has been worse than using a normal taxi and in some cases, more expensive. The only thing Uber has going for it is an irrational hate of traditional taxis, this wont last as soon enough people will figure out Uber has more problems than a normal taxi. I'm certain all the people who have been banned from being taxi drivers because they assaulted a passenger or crashed are driving for Uber now.
Money doesn't grow on trees or out of the ground.
Hmmm, US banknotes are made from a cotton fibre paper, cotton does come from trees.
Polymer banknotes used by Australia, Europe, the UK and others are made from plastic, which is made from petroleum that does come from the ground.
My advice, never test old cliches.
The bigger issue Angela Merkel and the EU have is letting Greece exit the EU because of the message it sends to the others in the same boat, Portugal, Italy Ireland and Spain.
If the EU shows that it cant make Greece repay its debts the others are going to do whatever Greece did.
Capitalism worked fine before globalization. Back when anti-trust laws were worth a damn and countries actually taxed the rich. Like after WWII.
No, no, no,
Taxing the rich is *gasp* SOCIALISM *gasp*. At least according to Fox News.
We have to tax the poorer more and cut public services.
Neither system is perfect is the reason western nations (and most successful economies) are mixed economies. Neither capitalist nor socialist in their entirety, rather using a mix of the two. How much gets mixed in and where it's applied is a matter of some debate.
A 100% capitalist state has never existed, unlike 100% socialist states that do exist and are abject failures. There's a reason for this. Pure capitalism fails for the same reason as pure communism. It relies on people believing the exact same thing. Communist nations enforce this by gunpoint, the closest a capitalist state came to this was fascism and that was stopped in short order. The problem, as you so eloquently pointed out is that selfish people who want to game the system exist and the closer to pure capitalism/socialism a system gets the easier it is for these people to game.
The reason we keep using mixed economic systems is not just because they're the best solution we've tried, but also because the more extreme you get the more despotic the government is required to be in order to enforce it. If a pure capitalist state existed, it would look a lot like North Korea, except the leader would have Donald Trumps hair cut.
Actually Germany is not socialism. nor are most other european counties, like one of the parents up claimed. ...
Arguable Scandinavia is navigating a middle way between socialism/non socialism.
However americans have a retarded idea what socialism actually is.
Universal healthcare? Socialism! (Rofl, it is a basic human right! China had that 4000 years ago, so had Egypt 6000 years ago)
Unemployment insurrance? Socialism!!! Rofl
So what Greece is doing isn't socialism?
Here's my problem with "but OMFG socialism" and "socialism ruined everything" arguments, the people who make them wouldn't know proper socialism if it came up and threw them onto the spears of the soldiers. Socialism to them is a byword for "something I dont like".
Do you know how stupidly complex the Model T's controls were? Whatever Henry Ford was smoking when he released that I would like some of.
But I agree with your post. Anyone who thinks designing a car with off the shelf engine and suspension parts is delusional and has clearly never tried to modify a car. You cant simply buy bits off the shelf and expect them to fit together like lego. Hell, you can barely do that with wheels and they've got standardised connectors (stud patterns). Its nothing like building a computer where you buy a CPU, mainboard, HDD and case that just slot together. After you get the right parts and fit them, there is still a bit of fettling to get them right.
Very little of your car is plug and play. We cant even get manufacturers to use ISO connectors and DIN standards for stereos.
One of the most common attacks is actually the simplest. The thief waits in the car park with a jammer. Most cars use 433MHz in Europe, penalty 915 in the US. The victim walks away and presses the lock button on their key fob and doesn't notice that the car didn't actually respond. Once inside the thief can use the OBD-II port to steal the car.
I prefer keyless entry as you press a button on the car to lock it, and even if jammed it will always lock.
I dont walk away from my car until I hear the poorly synchronised clunks of the door locks.
Not that I'm worried about jammers and MITM attacks (they haven't quite made it to Australia just yet), rather I'm yet to find a key fob that works perfectly every single time. If you're pointing a little bit too far in the wrong direction or your body is in they way enough that it blocks the signal your car fails to lock.
Almost all cars have a visual signal (normally the indicators flashing) and most cars have an audible signal letting you know the car has been locked.
You do realize that MPAA promotes a fascist system, not a capitalist one, don't you?
You do realise that Fascism is a political system and Capitalism is an economic system. They aren't interchangeable and actually work quite well together.
I'm glad I live in semi-rural Australia, and know all the local cops if not by name, then at least on waving and nodding terms.
On the rare occasion I get pulled over, I say "gidday" and wait for him to say what's on his mind. If it's a random breath test, I follow instructions, and then I'm on my way. If I've been speeding, I 'fess up, and say "You got me, mate, I wasn't paying attention" - that once got me out of a '30km/h over the limit' ticket and fine with a warning. And our cops are armed with pistols and tasers.
Seriously, make an effort to be nice to your local policemen/women - the return on investment can be considerable.
This.
Cops in Australia are usually pretty good. You still get the odd bad apple but that's about it (even in the city, although classifying Perth as being completely urban is a bit disingenuous, we've still got the mining town mentality).
That being said I do understand the "dont talk to the cops" thing. But what most people fail to understand is that "dont talk to the cops" does not mean "be a complete arse to the cops". You'd be amazed at what you can say without saying anything at all. Be polite, be civil, make small talk, ask the officer how their day's been. Much like the parent poster, I've gotten out of minor infractions by simply being a nice person, cops will ignore a few K's over if you're not an arsehole. We call this "the personality test" and often it means you can drive away after being caught 10 KPH or so over.
So what would happen if someone calls 112 saying a shooting happened at your residence? A Police officer shows up and calmly knocks on the door? I am inclined to agree that the swatting response in the us is way overkill. But no or minimal response likely isn't the answer either.
Well first off, its Germany so not everyone is an armed nutcase. In fact most people will be very ordered and restrained.
Secondly, there will be more than one police officer. They typically work in pairs.
Thirdly, police officers in modern, functioning societies are trained to observe and measure up a situation before acting. So they'll take a look around and see that there's no need to call GSG 9.
Finally, even if there were a gunman, the officers would attempt to contain the situation and seek a non violent solution using force as a last resort only instead of going in half cocked, shooting everything that moves after which, they check to see if there is anything black that didn't get shot in the initial barrage.
Yep, those crazy Germans.