"But as a frequent traveler I've found the TSA frontmen to be quite polite and personable. "
Indeed.
Problem is, that is _all_ they are.
They have no other competence.
Maybe good to work at Denny's but to deter terrorists?
Much like the UK, a lot of them are ex-military, so I wouldn't be so quick to say they have no other competences.
As for stopping terrorists, that is a task for intelligence agencies, not customs and immigration. In that regard the TSA is horribly flawed. If a terrorist is not detected before getting to an airport, you're pretty much screwed. Customs and Immigration's responsibilities are about filtering out hazardous and illegal goods as well as ensuring that entrants have the correct visas/authorisations. However to reduce the TSA's responsibilities to this means that you'd have to cut their budget and axe more than a few senior staff (and pork must be protected).
Not to mention that a large number of people think that there are terrorists hiding under every rock, so they somnambulantly consent to anything for the illusion of safety. Fear is a good way to get re-elected.
The development of the Joint Strike Fighter, a fifth-generation stealth jet, has been beset by spiraling costs and schedule delays. The program's price tag is nearly $400 billion for 2,457 planes -- almost twice the initial estimate.
Personally I place the blame for the F35 on the planners rather than Lockheed Martin. The project wanted too many different roles and objectives from a single aircraft. Of course LM obliged and they had the age old dilemma of Capable, Cheap or Possible, pick any two.
That being said, there isn't a production fighter available today that would be suitable in an all out war. They're all too expensive, too complex and take too long to produce. How long would the UK's current stock of Eurofighters and F35's last? There's only about 200 aircraft in a combat role in the RAF to begin with. In WWII, Britain could build a Spitfire or Hurricane faster than the Germans could shoot one down. RAF pilots are often quoted as saying that they were (during the battle of Britain) were running low on pilots, but never on planes.
"I believe that even if the USA adopted the exact same laws that Japan has, gun violence in the USA wouldn't change very much."
Then you are a fool. As a canadian, I've been in physical encounters with people where they have drawn weapons. If I or they had a gun instead of a knife, things would have ended much worse for someone.
It is nearly impossible to get a legal handgun in canada. Most guns used in crimes are smuggled from the USA at extreme risk. And if you carry it around and someone sees that, you are going to jail.
Like it or not, if you want to change the culture of gun violence in the USA, you have to start by restricting gun sales. That means depriving people of owning guns that are not meant for hunting. All automatic weapons, all hand guns, and probably more types too (i am not an expert on guns, nor would i care to be). It means getting people to give up the "personal self defence" aspect of gun ownership. I doubt anyone has guns for that purpose in canada, simply because they are so restricted with how you can transport them and use them, any situation where you would need to have the gun "at the ready" for defence, simply wouldn't be possible.
So i would argue that you have no idea about canadian gun laws and how they are influencing society. The laws shape the culture. I'm not sure how you could possibly miss that fundamental point. When americans say that the government can't take away their guns, that statement is clearly part law and part culture. Change the laws and you would change the culture, for sure.
The US needs to change its thinking on guns. Once this happens, gun control becomes a natural part of the process, it is not the start or even the end of the process of reducing firearm violence.
In Europe, even in nations that have high firearm ownership fatalities are rare, even accidental fatalities. This is because people treat their weapons as a responsibility, not as a toy or penis extension. A gun is a dangerous object that must be handled with care and if handled with due care, is not a significant danger. If this attitude were to be adopted en masse by Americans, we'd see a massive drop in firearm related fatalities. There would also be gun control, but again this would be a natural result of the attitude change, not the cause of it.
However you'll have a hard time trying to get the Americans to change their minds, no matter how many lives are lost.
It's hilarious that the US still calls itself "the land of the free"
Mandatory paid time off may be a good idea, but it is not "freedom". It is a restriction on liberty for (arguably) a greater social good.
"Freedom" would leave it up to individuals whether they want vacation, or would prefer shorter daily hours or higher pay. Because that is the tradeoff. The paid vacation is not going to be "free".
And thats why we don't see it as freedom.
I've lost count of the amount of times I've heard from an American "Wow, you're allowed to take a whole two weeks off at once"... and then watch their look of utter amazement when I tell them I do that twice a year. In fact in my current role, I get 26 days (5+ weeks) in paid holidays, 8 bank holidays and 6 closure days (which are over Christmas/NY when my workplace closes), so 40 days in total and I'm getting paid more than an American in my position (I get the same amount in GBP as my counterparts get in USD).
When I get more benefits and pay, I cant see how I'm less free because my employer cant threaten to fire me if I ask for more than 5 days off... Also, if I get sick that does not come out of my allotment of holidays... Yep, I get sick leave too.
Put simply, I cant call the ability to have your employer shaft you out of holidays or other benefits, "freedom". A willing slave is still a slave.
Paid time off is legally mandated for all employed people in the UK.
Is this also true for the part-time IT consultant or contractor that gets paid an hourly rate?
Just looking to see exactly how far the UK takes the definition of "employed people"
Erm... the court ruled that the employers of Uber are _NOT_ contractors. They lost the appeal too, so now Uber has to provide them with the same basic rights as other employees. Zero hour contract employees are still entitled to holiday pay in the UK. Zero hour contracts are closer to salaried employees than contractors.
Contract is different to employment, but you are meant to be paid more in order to be compensated for things like paid holidays (20 days minimum), paid bank holidays (8 per year), paid sick leave, so on and so forth. Contractors are usually paid far more than salaried employees but have to pay tax and NI themselves.
Last week, flew out of LAX, same old shit. This past Friday, flew out of LAX again, and am told that all foodstuffs (things like granola bars) must come out and be placed in their own separate bins. I ask the agent when that change took place (because they weren't saying that shit last week). She says, "December" -- okay, whatever. I have three granola bars in my backpack. I take two out, throw them in the trash, leave one in the bag deliberately. Through the scanner it goes and out the other end it comes -- naturally without a peep from anyone. It's all such bullshit.
I will be flying out of LAX again in two weeks. I wonder what will happen to the new granola bar program.
OK, bio-security is a big thing, its actually one of the more useful things that the TSA and other customs agencies do. You'd be surprised at the amount of common pests that are not common in other countries and how easily they hide in foodstuffs. Most of it is harmless to humans but can wreak havoc on other ecosystems. Australia is a prime example of how much damage foreign pests can do (cane toads, rabbits, foxes, camels, horses).
As or arbitrary rules, these are often foisted on them by management many thousands of miles away with no explanation. Its a shit system, but it originates from the top, so no point in trying to take it out on the poor bloke at the bottom. He's already getting enough shit from his manager (who's getting it from their manager, who's getting it from their manager... lets cut to the chase, the shit originates from Parliament/Congress who are only doing what they think they have to to be re-elected).
Actually they were very respectful of the TSA goofballs. They depicted them as being able to talk in whole sentences.
First off, I get that you're joking.
But as a frequent traveler I've found the TSA frontmen to be quite polite and personable. Sure there are bound to be exceptions but I've never been mistreated or misdirected by the TSA agents I've had to deal with. The problem with the TSA comes from up high, their key metric is how safe passengers feel, not how safe they actually are so they run a 3 ring security theatre circus based on perceptions rather than proven security methods.
Also, I think a fair few TSA agents are ex-military.
Studies made in Ãf¾e olde typewriter era have shown that having a wider surface on top of the keys leads to more unintentional key presses.
Back then, keys were already pretty wide, you can easily make the keys too wide as well as too narrow.
However that isn't the issue with chicklet keyboards. If you look at a desktop keyboard you'll notice that the keys have a slight concave shape, this directs your fingers towards the centre of the keys, flat keys tend to increase typos because you can easily hit two or more keys at once. Unfortunately in order to have the same kind of keys on a laptop, you'd need to make it significantly thicker.
That being said, I'm pretty good with typing on a chicklet keyboard. However if you're going to be doing a lot of typing, just buy a £10 USB keyboard and have done with. The best laptop KB wont be as good as a cheap desktop keyboard and at £10 a pop, you can afford to keep a few around where you need them.
MacBook "Pro"'s keyboards with its ultra-flat "butterfly" scissor mechanism is especially bad.
I have an Asus K501, the keys is narrower than standard laptop KB's but its got a full numpad on it which is worth the trade off to me. Now that I've owned it for a few months I've gotten used to the keyboard, however if it were my primary machine I'd just get a USB keyboard and have done with but its a travel laptop as I have a gaming desktop. The K501 has the same specs as a Macbook Pro (bar the 1080p screen, but I wanted a smaller resolution screen as it's a 15" laptop used for gaming) but it costs £1800 less.
Actually it is a place in Norse Mythology. Its the world where the Norse gods lived, hence Stargate used it for the Asgardians (note they were mostly named after gods in Norse mythology). Midgard was the term for Earth if you were interested.
I've noticed the shift from India/Pakistan to the Philippines. I know right away, when they don't call me "Mr. Jonathan".
In the Philippines, at least in Tagalog speaking areas, they default to "sir". When I'm leaving my hotel they'll say "Good evening sir Michael" which because I'm Anglo, usually leads me to explaining that they don't have to call me "sir" because I haven't been knighted yet. Usually this is lost on them because they were educated by an American system.
Anyway, this is mostly because its the usage of the word "po" which means sir in tagalog, same as in Indian dialects they refer to everyone by an honorific, which is Mr by default (if you're a doctor, they would use their word for doctor) its just t"hat "sir" fits in better with western dialects.
Maybe they could implement a comprehensive, mandatory and free basic education system
They already have that. The literacy rate in the Philippines is 96.3%, which is about the same as the rest of Southeast Asia.
The amount of workers leaving the country to work elsewhere suggests there is lot to be changed and developed within the country.
Many of those expat workers are educated: Nurses in Hong Kong, engineers in Dubai, etc.
Some problems in the Philippines: High birthrate, corruption, dysfunctional legal system, lots of crime, high levels of inequality.
The problem you've got with education in the Philipines is that whilst basic education is good, it doesn't get much better than basic for most Filipinos. They can all just about read, write and do basic arithmetic but you need to be born into a rich, middle class or higher family to afford a decent education. For a girl born to a poor family in Leyte, she wont get to see much schooling beyond the lay preachers who teach them reading, writing and a whole bunch of god bollocks. This is because most villages don't have a school with a dedicated teacher. The senior male child may get sent to a school in a major town, but this will stop if money gets too tight.
However even for the "well to do" poor, the odds are stacked against them because Filipino education isn't given any recognition anywhere else. In Hong Kong they used to (maybe still do) joke about the maid having a degree in nuclear physics but it's OK because she's Filipina. Corruption, nepotism and poor standards have made a Filipino education essentially worthless. Even for professions that are in high demand like nursing, a Filipino nurse has to do, at the very least, a bridging course in a western university to be hired by an Australian or UK hospital. Only the small middle class and above get to send their children to reputable international schools in the Philippines and then onto western universities.
Corruption, nepotism, inequality are all rife in the Philippines. One of my favorite sayings about the PI (Philippine Islands) is that "they have an excellent legal system, but a terrible justice system". This is quite true, on paper their laws are almost as good as a western democracy, but the fact is the police and courts are so corrupt that it doesn't matter (almost any crime can be bought out of, in fact payment will be required regardless if they think you're rich).
That being said, if you've got enough money to live without working, its a great place to do so.
The shuttle bus drove right up to the side of a backing semi then stopped right behind the angled front wheel. You wouldn't have done that, because you could understand the truck drivers plan at a glance (and presumably aren't an asshole). Also because you would understand that the fastest way past was to let the truck finish backing up.
The trucker should have stopped and waited for the shuttle to back away. But the shuttle shouldn't have said 'my right of way' until it achieved gridlock. A human that did what the shuttle did is an asshole.
This is why autonomous cars are nowhere near ready for Prime Time.
Technically the autonomous car was in the right but a human driver would have spotted a reversing truck and waited. That is what we call common courtesy or road craft. You plan ahead, be aware of your surroundings and react accordingly. Lorries and articulated trucks have huge blind spots (and our nations depend on fleets of these vehicles to run day to day), sometimes they need to bend the rules to do the jobs.
OK some drivers cant plan ahead, say dopey Doris got herself in the same situation, at least she would have had the brains to engage the horn or back up if possible.
Finally this was in Las Vegas, home of some of the widest and emptiest roads I've ever driven on. I'd hate to see how much chaos a system like this would cause on some of London's busy lane ways with cars parked on both sides. Stopping for any length of time will cause tailbacks for potentially miles and what an autonomous car is programmed to do when it cant figure out what to do is stop dead until a human intervenes. One day they may be able to handle London like a human (eventually like the best London black cab drivers), but that day is a long way away.
Trouble is....I can see it coming....there will be movement to get human driving of cars made illegal and then ONLY AI vehicles will be able to run on the public roads.
This will be a GOOD THING. Once we get the humans off the road, we can make lanes narrower, traffic will flow more smoothly, cars can be made lighter, and traffic lights can be eliminated.
Ooooh and Unicorns. Because out of what you said and Unicorns, Unicorns are more realistic.
90% of the Highway Code is based on physics, not human response times. Physics wont change, you wont have autonomous cars going bumper to bumper at Eleventy Billion AU's an hour because physics doesn't change.
A sad day, as that I just bought a new FUN driving car yesterday.
Why should my tax dollars subsidize your hobby? If you want to drive, do it on a private track.
You've got that backwards boy, our fun cars are subsidising your crappy ones. If not for us who drive sports cars, your precious Prius/EV rebated wouldn't exist.
Because of the UK Govt giving BMW £5,000 to sell an i3, its the same cost as my M240i except if I wanted to drive to Devon to see Peter Daltry tonight, the M240i would make it instead of running out of power on the M4.
You need to give us our tax back, you benefits scrounger.
We've got five Windows 10 machines in our family, used by me, my wife and my two kids. I just let Windows Defender do its thing and I haven't seen a virus in years.
This has been the case for years. Mac OS is no more or less secure than Windows since XP SP2. The major cause of insecurity remains the user and almost all Windows malware is now user installed and its worse for the Mac because the Mac user believes it's automagically protected (and the cure for Malware on a Mac is to buy a new Mac*).
Also remember that almost all malware this day and age is intentionally non-destructive. They've taken a leaf from microbiology and if a virus kills its host, it cant propagate and send spam, DDOS or mine Bitcoin.
* OK, you could re-install OSX but having to do this for simple problems is why I stopped doing Mac support over a decade ago.
First up gaming laptops have a real problem, overheating to death.
Crap and uncared for gaming laptops have a history of overheating. Buy quality and as long as you clear the dust* out of it every 6 or so months It'll last years. The biggest problem is that if you buy one with a chunky GPU, it'll be outdated in no time. For gaming the desktop still rules as you have fewer overheating issues (poorly designed airflow + dust* still equals overheating) because you can buy a mid-range GPU and replace it when it gets a little long in the tooth.
Radio... now theres someting I haven't listened to in a long time:)
The big problem with shopping for clothes online is that you need to know your own measurements. This is fine when ordering T-shirts (come to think of it, I haven't bought a T-shirt from a B&M store in a while) where all you're worried about is M, L, XL, 2XL and SM (Small Marquee) but for business attire, I need to know at a minimum my arm/leg length as well as my collar/waist, even more if I want made to measure.
IIRC, you're also in the UK, I like buying from Charles Tyrwhitt but I can never remember my own measurements. They've just opened a new store near me though.
Even if you somehow overcame all that, the other major problem is noise. Because you have to move a lot of air to life that amount of weight, it's impossible to make it quiet and non-disruptive (strong winds blowing everything nearby over).
The only people who will be able to make use of this are the same ones who can use helicopters now. It's basically a cheaper helicopter alternative. Maybe they will offer semi-affordable hops between helipads.
I thought this was about NASA needing to find alternate sources of funding now the US Govt has an anti-science hard on.
If NASA can sucker some funds out of Uber, I cant see a problem here. Its not like Uber is the cleanest, most honest company in the known universes... or even the street they reside on.
The main reason I buy online is that brick and mortar rarely stock what I want.
I could go down to Curry's or M&S for something but chances are they aren't going to have it and if they do, its not in stock. So for things I dont need to measure, I'll buy online because they at least have it in stock. The big exception for me is clothing, but even that is changing.
So no mention of the patient's name, good. But why bother to mention the Syria connection? Does that have anything to do with the treatment or outcome/?
Because for semi-competent news networks its considered good reporting, especially where you aren't permitted to give any personally identifiable information like names. It ads context to the subject (meaning the person, not what the article is about).
I.E. "Today a British man..." or "A woman from Northumberland...". Seriously, it's like saying Andy Murray is Scottish tennis player, his country of origin is mentioned all the fecking time.
But you just wanted to have a bitch about Syria... because? Are you just that upset that you didn't get another war to lose?
that driving for a living is going away soon but you'd be amazed how many don't believe that. It's gonna be like when computers decimated junior accountants but without all the new jobs working on computers.
Honestly, I think that AI is going to put Accountants, Lawyers and many other white collar professions out of business long before drivers. Driving is a job that is pretty random, you cant put in an algorithm to predict a kid or dog running out on the road. Hell, we cant even get an algorithm to reliably predict if tomorrow will be rainy or if the A322 will be just slow or at a standstill.
What AI is good at, exceptionally good at is applying rules and rule sets to data. A lot of professions are based on doing just that, the problem is the rule sets are a little fuzzy and currently weak AI has a lot of trouble with fuzzy. As weak AI develops it will get better at interpreting the fuzzy parts. I continually find it astounding that everyone waffles on about autonomous cars that wont get here for decades, but no-one is talking about the robot lawyers and accountants that'll get here long before them. Hell, I'll bet on a robot doctor getting here first (and damn that's something the NHS needs, a first line that can deal with all the minor cases of sniffles and give the overstretched doctors more time for serious cases).
I've spent some of my spare time studying self driving car tech
Reading articles on MacFanboyNews.com is not research or study.
I'm actually involved with the one of the key technologies used by Google for its autonomous cars, namely LIDAR. Google uses a Helodyne HDL-64, which is a fantastic bit of kit but has a few serious drawbacks that are inherent to LIDAR. Namely moisture. Strangely enough, objects with a high refractive index like water tend to really screw with LIDAR (the L stands for Light). Whilst a Helodyne HDL-64 is fantastic at doing aerial terrain surveys, it can only do it on a perfectly cloudless day... which wont be for another 4 or 5 months here in Berkshire. That is not the biggest problem however.
The biggest problem comes in processing the raw data. LIDAR produces a lot of it, we have banks of blade servers dedicated to image processing to bring the processing time down from days to hours. The only way to reduce this further is to reduce fidelity, the problem with reducing fidelity is that you start to miss out things. Minor details at first, then significant ones. In order to be doing real time image processing in real time you need to be reducing your fidelity and detection parameters by a lot to do so with the kind of computing power you can put in a car.
I know a lot about the technology involved in automated detection, I'm not a world leading expert but I know more than enough to say you don't know anything about it. You're taking someone else's opinion you've read on a blog and championing it as fact.
Will autonomous cars get here, yes, will they be here in the next few years, definitely not. Will they get here in 5 years, no, 20 is a more realistic time frame.
In the E.U. Companies can and do require that their employees sign usage charters in order to access company networks. I know because I've deployed firewalls and network filtering equipment to quite a few of them and implemented the filtering policies.
Access charters are different to installing Keyloggers. That being said, some industries are allowed to install keyloggers due to (national) security concerns, see Airbus, Siemens, Vodafone and others that regularly deal with matters of sensitive data, military technologies, key financial data (including personal financial data).
Joe Blogs PLC is not permitted to spy on their employees at that level because they dont have a legitimate reason to. They can put whatever they want in their charter/Acceptable Use Policy but if they use it they'll be punished by the court.
Please try reading up on actual cases where employers have been caught spying or tracking their employees western Europe.
In France they passed a law that workers aren't allowed to answer emails at home outside of office hours. You think they'll allow this? LOL.
Just one minor point here. France didn't pass this law.
The law passed was that an employee was not obliged to answer an email outside of working hours. One could still do so voluntarily but an employer could not [legally] punish an employee for not doing so.
Contrary to the beliefs of most Americans, the majority of most worker protection laws in Europe are voluntary for the employee, they are designed to set limits on what an employer is permitted to demand to avoid them abusing workers. If you wanted to work additional unpaid hours, you are free to do so but the employer cannot fire or punish you for not doing so. Here in the UK, if your employer expects you to work out of hours or additional hours, it is an expectation that you will be compensated (in IT, most professionals are flexible though, if my employer wants me to do a few hours over the weekend I'm usually OK if asked in advance, if I wanted to take an afternoon off in exchange they're usually OK with it).
I doubt Eric Schmidt stands in a queue waiting for a table to become available and it's a bit of an insult to think he expects other people to do that.
If a place is so busy you have to queue, good chance there is a deserted place just down the road waiting to dole out a nice meal. Or if there isn't simply go home and cook your own food just like in the good old days. Save a pile of money too
Restaurant-queuing seems to be a cultural phenomenon associated mostly with America. It's not unusual to see a mile-long queue for a restaurant in America but in other parts of the world if there's a few waiting by the door people deem it to be busy and quickly move on to the next place.
Most of the world figured out that booking is easier than queuing many years ago. Queueing is something that only strokes an owners ego, which is why we only see for certain bars and clubs where insecurity is rife.
Lets take two cities, London, England vs Perth Australia. London is one of the worlds greatest cities, Perth is an overgrown mining town. I've lived in both and I'll let you guess which one makes me line up to get into a popular bar or club.
If you guessed London, you'd be wrong. In London I didn't have to queue to get into anywhere, not in the Southbank, not in Piccadilly, hardly anywhere. The only times queues are formed are when fire codes force them to (like Madam Tussauds, although I don't recommend going there if you're in London, plenty of better places to visit without a 2 hour line) because London is competitive and does not allow ego's to be stroked. If you want to make your London club "exclusive" then someone next door will eat your business. Compared to Perth where you can be rejected for entry for anything just to make sure the "right" kind of people get in, well I'm sure you can now see why no-one has heard of Perth, Western Australia or if they had, it was nothing good.
But I digress, if I want to go to a popular restaurant here in the UK, I ring ahead and make a booking for 6:30, 7, 8 or whenever for my expected party. We then turn up at the allotted time and the wonderful staff direct us to our reserved seating. Queuing is something one does at Macky D's, not at an eatery with any class.
Slashdot Mirror
"But as a frequent traveler I've found the TSA frontmen to be quite polite and personable. "
Indeed.
Problem is, that is _all_ they are.
They have no other competence.
Maybe good to work at Denny's but to deter terrorists?
Much like the UK, a lot of them are ex-military, so I wouldn't be so quick to say they have no other competences.
As for stopping terrorists, that is a task for intelligence agencies, not customs and immigration. In that regard the TSA is horribly flawed. If a terrorist is not detected before getting to an airport, you're pretty much screwed. Customs and Immigration's responsibilities are about filtering out hazardous and illegal goods as well as ensuring that entrants have the correct visas/authorisations. However to reduce the TSA's responsibilities to this means that you'd have to cut their budget and axe more than a few senior staff (and pork must be protected).
Not to mention that a large number of people think that there are terrorists hiding under every rock, so they somnambulantly consent to anything for the illusion of safety. Fear is a good way to get re-elected.
26 million is the camel's nose.
For reference look at the F-35.
The development of the Joint Strike Fighter, a fifth-generation stealth jet, has been beset by spiraling costs and schedule delays. The program's price tag is nearly $400 billion for 2,457 planes -- almost twice the initial estimate.
Personally I place the blame for the F35 on the planners rather than Lockheed Martin. The project wanted too many different roles and objectives from a single aircraft. Of course LM obliged and they had the age old dilemma of Capable, Cheap or Possible, pick any two.
That being said, there isn't a production fighter available today that would be suitable in an all out war. They're all too expensive, too complex and take too long to produce. How long would the UK's current stock of Eurofighters and F35's last? There's only about 200 aircraft in a combat role in the RAF to begin with. In WWII, Britain could build a Spitfire or Hurricane faster than the Germans could shoot one down. RAF pilots are often quoted as saying that they were (during the battle of Britain) were running low on pilots, but never on planes.
Then you are a fool. As a canadian, I've been in physical encounters with people where they have drawn weapons. If I or they had a gun instead of a knife, things would have ended much worse for someone.
It is nearly impossible to get a legal handgun in canada. Most guns used in crimes are smuggled from the USA at extreme risk. And if you carry it around and someone sees that, you are going to jail.
Like it or not, if you want to change the culture of gun violence in the USA, you have to start by restricting gun sales. That means depriving people of owning guns that are not meant for hunting. All automatic weapons, all hand guns, and probably more types too (i am not an expert on guns, nor would i care to be). It means getting people to give up the "personal self defence" aspect of gun ownership. I doubt anyone has guns for that purpose in canada, simply because they are so restricted with how you can transport them and use them, any situation where you would need to have the gun "at the ready" for defence, simply wouldn't be possible.
So i would argue that you have no idea about canadian gun laws and how they are influencing society. The laws shape the culture. I'm not sure how you could possibly miss that fundamental point. When americans say that the government can't take away their guns, that statement is clearly part law and part culture. Change the laws and you would change the culture, for sure.
The US needs to change its thinking on guns. Once this happens, gun control becomes a natural part of the process, it is not the start or even the end of the process of reducing firearm violence.
In Europe, even in nations that have high firearm ownership fatalities are rare, even accidental fatalities. This is because people treat their weapons as a responsibility, not as a toy or penis extension. A gun is a dangerous object that must be handled with care and if handled with due care, is not a significant danger. If this attitude were to be adopted en masse by Americans, we'd see a massive drop in firearm related fatalities. There would also be gun control, but again this would be a natural result of the attitude change, not the cause of it.
However you'll have a hard time trying to get the Americans to change their minds, no matter how many lives are lost.
It's hilarious that the US still calls itself "the land of the free"
Mandatory paid time off may be a good idea, but it is not "freedom". It is a restriction on liberty for (arguably) a greater social good.
"Freedom" would leave it up to individuals whether they want vacation, or would prefer shorter daily hours or higher pay. Because that is the tradeoff. The paid vacation is not going to be "free".
And thats why we don't see it as freedom.
I've lost count of the amount of times I've heard from an American "Wow, you're allowed to take a whole two weeks off at once"... and then watch their look of utter amazement when I tell them I do that twice a year. In fact in my current role, I get 26 days (5+ weeks) in paid holidays, 8 bank holidays and 6 closure days (which are over Christmas/NY when my workplace closes), so 40 days in total and I'm getting paid more than an American in my position (I get the same amount in GBP as my counterparts get in USD).
When I get more benefits and pay, I cant see how I'm less free because my employer cant threaten to fire me if I ask for more than 5 days off... Also, if I get sick that does not come out of my allotment of holidays... Yep, I get sick leave too.
Put simply, I cant call the ability to have your employer shaft you out of holidays or other benefits, "freedom". A willing slave is still a slave.
Paid time off is legally mandated for all employed people in the UK.
Is this also true for the part-time IT consultant or contractor that gets paid an hourly rate?
Just looking to see exactly how far the UK takes the definition of "employed people"
Erm... the court ruled that the employers of Uber are _NOT_ contractors. They lost the appeal too, so now Uber has to provide them with the same basic rights as other employees. Zero hour contract employees are still entitled to holiday pay in the UK. Zero hour contracts are closer to salaried employees than contractors.
Contract is different to employment, but you are meant to be paid more in order to be compensated for things like paid holidays (20 days minimum), paid bank holidays (8 per year), paid sick leave, so on and so forth. Contractors are usually paid far more than salaried employees but have to pay tax and NI themselves.
Yes indeed, how does this fit into Apple's evil plan achieve world domination and enslave humanity?
You're kidding, right? They can't even do a full environmental evaluation on a major product launch. Take over the world? That's preposterous.
Environmental chambers are not a big expense, it's established testing protocol to do that sort of evaluation. What else have they skipped testing?
Hey, we said they were planing to dominate the planet and enslave the species... We never said they were any good at it.
Last week, flew out of LAX, same old shit. This past Friday, flew out of LAX again, and am told that all foodstuffs (things like granola bars) must come out and be placed in their own separate bins. I ask the agent when that change took place (because they weren't saying that shit last week). She says, "December" -- okay, whatever. I have three granola bars in my backpack. I take two out, throw them in the trash, leave one in the bag deliberately. Through the scanner it goes and out the other end it comes -- naturally without a peep from anyone. It's all such bullshit.
I will be flying out of LAX again in two weeks. I wonder what will happen to the new granola bar program.
OK, bio-security is a big thing, its actually one of the more useful things that the TSA and other customs agencies do. You'd be surprised at the amount of common pests that are not common in other countries and how easily they hide in foodstuffs. Most of it is harmless to humans but can wreak havoc on other ecosystems. Australia is a prime example of how much damage foreign pests can do (cane toads, rabbits, foxes, camels, horses).
As or arbitrary rules, these are often foisted on them by management many thousands of miles away with no explanation. Its a shit system, but it originates from the top, so no point in trying to take it out on the poor bloke at the bottom. He's already getting enough shit from his manager (who's getting it from their manager, who's getting it from their manager... lets cut to the chase, the shit originates from Parliament/Congress who are only doing what they think they have to to be re-elected).
Actually they were very respectful of the TSA goofballs. They depicted them as being able to talk in whole sentences.
First off, I get that you're joking.
But as a frequent traveler I've found the TSA frontmen to be quite polite and personable. Sure there are bound to be exceptions but I've never been mistreated or misdirected by the TSA agents I've had to deal with. The problem with the TSA comes from up high, their key metric is how safe passengers feel, not how safe they actually are so they run a 3 ring security theatre circus based on perceptions rather than proven security methods.
Also, I think a fair few TSA agents are ex-military.
Back then, keys were already pretty wide, you can easily make the keys too wide as well as too narrow.
However that isn't the issue with chicklet keyboards. If you look at a desktop keyboard you'll notice that the keys have a slight concave shape, this directs your fingers towards the centre of the keys, flat keys tend to increase typos because you can easily hit two or more keys at once. Unfortunately in order to have the same kind of keys on a laptop, you'd need to make it significantly thicker.
That being said, I'm pretty good with typing on a chicklet keyboard. However if you're going to be doing a lot of typing, just buy a £10 USB keyboard and have done with. The best laptop KB wont be as good as a cheap desktop keyboard and at £10 a pop, you can afford to keep a few around where you need them.
I have an Asus K501, the keys is narrower than standard laptop KB's but its got a full numpad on it which is worth the trade off to me. Now that I've owned it for a few months I've gotten used to the keyboard, however if it were my primary machine I'd just get a USB keyboard and have done with but its a travel laptop as I have a gaming desktop. The K501 has the same specs as a Macbook Pro (bar the 1080p screen, but I wanted a smaller resolution screen as it's a 15" laptop used for gaming) but it costs £1800 less.
Asgard is not a place, it's a people.
Actually it is a place in Norse Mythology. Its the world where the Norse gods lived, hence Stargate used it for the Asgardians (note they were mostly named after gods in Norse mythology). Midgard was the term for Earth if you were interested.
I've noticed the shift from India/Pakistan to the Philippines. I know right away, when they don't call me "Mr. Jonathan".
In the Philippines, at least in Tagalog speaking areas, they default to "sir". When I'm leaving my hotel they'll say "Good evening sir Michael" which because I'm Anglo, usually leads me to explaining that they don't have to call me "sir" because I haven't been knighted yet. Usually this is lost on them because they were educated by an American system.
Anyway, this is mostly because its the usage of the word "po" which means sir in tagalog, same as in Indian dialects they refer to everyone by an honorific, which is Mr by default (if you're a doctor, they would use their word for doctor) its just t"hat "sir" fits in better with western dialects.
Maybe they could implement a comprehensive, mandatory and free basic education system
They already have that. The literacy rate in the Philippines is 96.3%, which is about the same as the rest of Southeast Asia.
The amount of workers leaving the country to work elsewhere suggests there is lot to be changed and developed within the country.
Many of those expat workers are educated: Nurses in Hong Kong, engineers in Dubai, etc.
Some problems in the Philippines: High birthrate, corruption, dysfunctional legal system, lots of crime, high levels of inequality.
The problem you've got with education in the Philipines is that whilst basic education is good, it doesn't get much better than basic for most Filipinos. They can all just about read, write and do basic arithmetic but you need to be born into a rich, middle class or higher family to afford a decent education. For a girl born to a poor family in Leyte, she wont get to see much schooling beyond the lay preachers who teach them reading, writing and a whole bunch of god bollocks. This is because most villages don't have a school with a dedicated teacher. The senior male child may get sent to a school in a major town, but this will stop if money gets too tight.
However even for the "well to do" poor, the odds are stacked against them because Filipino education isn't given any recognition anywhere else. In Hong Kong they used to (maybe still do) joke about the maid having a degree in nuclear physics but it's OK because she's Filipina. Corruption, nepotism and poor standards have made a Filipino education essentially worthless. Even for professions that are in high demand like nursing, a Filipino nurse has to do, at the very least, a bridging course in a western university to be hired by an Australian or UK hospital. Only the small middle class and above get to send their children to reputable international schools in the Philippines and then onto western universities.
Corruption, nepotism, inequality are all rife in the Philippines. One of my favorite sayings about the PI (Philippine Islands) is that "they have an excellent legal system, but a terrible justice system". This is quite true, on paper their laws are almost as good as a western democracy, but the fact is the police and courts are so corrupt that it doesn't matter (almost any crime can be bought out of, in fact payment will be required regardless if they think you're rich).
That being said, if you've got enough money to live without working, its a great place to do so.
Not what the pictures show.
The shuttle bus drove right up to the side of a backing semi then stopped right behind the angled front wheel. You wouldn't have done that, because you could understand the truck drivers plan at a glance (and presumably aren't an asshole). Also because you would understand that the fastest way past was to let the truck finish backing up.
The trucker should have stopped and waited for the shuttle to back away. But the shuttle shouldn't have said 'my right of way' until it achieved gridlock. A human that did what the shuttle did is an asshole.
This is why autonomous cars are nowhere near ready for Prime Time.
Technically the autonomous car was in the right but a human driver would have spotted a reversing truck and waited. That is what we call common courtesy or road craft. You plan ahead, be aware of your surroundings and react accordingly. Lorries and articulated trucks have huge blind spots (and our nations depend on fleets of these vehicles to run day to day), sometimes they need to bend the rules to do the jobs.
OK some drivers cant plan ahead, say dopey Doris got herself in the same situation, at least she would have had the brains to engage the horn or back up if possible.
Finally this was in Las Vegas, home of some of the widest and emptiest roads I've ever driven on. I'd hate to see how much chaos a system like this would cause on some of London's busy lane ways with cars parked on both sides. Stopping for any length of time will cause tailbacks for potentially miles and what an autonomous car is programmed to do when it cant figure out what to do is stop dead until a human intervenes. One day they may be able to handle London like a human (eventually like the best London black cab drivers), but that day is a long way away.
Trouble is....I can see it coming....there will be movement to get human driving of cars made illegal and then ONLY AI vehicles will be able to run on the public roads.
This will be a GOOD THING. Once we get the humans off the road, we can make lanes narrower, traffic will flow more smoothly, cars can be made lighter, and traffic lights can be eliminated.
Ooooh and Unicorns. Because out of what you said and Unicorns, Unicorns are more realistic.
90% of the Highway Code is based on physics, not human response times. Physics wont change, you wont have autonomous cars going bumper to bumper at Eleventy Billion AU's an hour because physics doesn't change.
A sad day, as that I just bought a new FUN driving car yesterday.
Why should my tax dollars subsidize your hobby? If you want to drive, do it on a private track.
You've got that backwards boy, our fun cars are subsidising your crappy ones. If not for us who drive sports cars, your precious Prius/EV rebated wouldn't exist.
Because of the UK Govt giving BMW £5,000 to sell an i3, its the same cost as my M240i except if I wanted to drive to Devon to see Peter Daltry tonight, the M240i would make it instead of running out of power on the M4.
You need to give us our tax back, you benefits scrounger.
Ever notice how they always get viruses
Spare me this tired meme from 20 years ago.
We've got five Windows 10 machines in our family, used by me, my wife and my two kids. I just let Windows Defender do its thing and I haven't seen a virus in years.
This has been the case for years. Mac OS is no more or less secure than Windows since XP SP2. The major cause of insecurity remains the user and almost all Windows malware is now user installed and its worse for the Mac because the Mac user believes it's automagically protected (and the cure for Malware on a Mac is to buy a new Mac*).
Also remember that almost all malware this day and age is intentionally non-destructive. They've taken a leaf from microbiology and if a virus kills its host, it cant propagate and send spam, DDOS or mine Bitcoin.
* OK, you could re-install OSX but having to do this for simple problems is why I stopped doing Mac support over a decade ago.
First up gaming laptops have a real problem, overheating to death.
Crap and uncared for gaming laptops have a history of overheating. Buy quality and as long as you clear the dust* out of it every 6 or so months It'll last years. The biggest problem is that if you buy one with a chunky GPU, it'll be outdated in no time. For gaming the desktop still rules as you have fewer overheating issues (poorly designed airflow + dust* still equals overheating) because you can buy a mid-range GPU and replace it when it gets a little long in the tooth.
* dust is mostly dead skin flakes.
Radio... now theres someting I haven't listened to in a long time :)
The big problem with shopping for clothes online is that you need to know your own measurements. This is fine when ordering T-shirts (come to think of it, I haven't bought a T-shirt from a B&M store in a while) where all you're worried about is M, L, XL, 2XL and SM (Small Marquee) but for business attire, I need to know at a minimum my arm/leg length as well as my collar/waist, even more if I want made to measure.
IIRC, you're also in the UK, I like buying from Charles Tyrwhitt but I can never remember my own measurements. They've just opened a new store near me though.
Even if you somehow overcame all that, the other major problem is noise. Because you have to move a lot of air to life that amount of weight, it's impossible to make it quiet and non-disruptive (strong winds blowing everything nearby over).
The only people who will be able to make use of this are the same ones who can use helicopters now. It's basically a cheaper helicopter alternative. Maybe they will offer semi-affordable hops between helipads.
I thought this was about NASA needing to find alternate sources of funding now the US Govt has an anti-science hard on.
If NASA can sucker some funds out of Uber, I cant see a problem here. Its not like Uber is the cleanest, most honest company in the known universes... or even the street they reside on.
The main reason I buy online is that brick and mortar rarely stock what I want.
I could go down to Curry's or M&S for something but chances are they aren't going to have it and if they do, its not in stock. So for things I dont need to measure, I'll buy online because they at least have it in stock. The big exception for me is clothing, but even that is changing.
So no mention of the patient's name, good. But why bother to mention the Syria connection? Does that have anything to do with the treatment or outcome/?
Because for semi-competent news networks its considered good reporting, especially where you aren't permitted to give any personally identifiable information like names. It ads context to the subject (meaning the person, not what the article is about).
I.E. "Today a British man..." or "A woman from Northumberland...". Seriously, it's like saying Andy Murray is Scottish tennis player, his country of origin is mentioned all the fecking time.
But you just wanted to have a bitch about Syria... because? Are you just that upset that you didn't get another war to lose?
that driving for a living is going away soon but you'd be amazed how many don't believe that. It's gonna be like when computers decimated junior accountants but without all the new jobs working on computers.
Honestly, I think that AI is going to put Accountants, Lawyers and many other white collar professions out of business long before drivers. Driving is a job that is pretty random, you cant put in an algorithm to predict a kid or dog running out on the road. Hell, we cant even get an algorithm to reliably predict if tomorrow will be rainy or if the A322 will be just slow or at a standstill.
What AI is good at, exceptionally good at is applying rules and rule sets to data. A lot of professions are based on doing just that, the problem is the rule sets are a little fuzzy and currently weak AI has a lot of trouble with fuzzy. As weak AI develops it will get better at interpreting the fuzzy parts. I continually find it astounding that everyone waffles on about autonomous cars that wont get here for decades, but no-one is talking about the robot lawyers and accountants that'll get here long before them. Hell, I'll bet on a robot doctor getting here first (and damn that's something the NHS needs, a first line that can deal with all the minor cases of sniffles and give the overstretched doctors more time for serious cases).
I've spent some of my spare time studying self driving car tech
Reading articles on MacFanboyNews.com is not research or study.
I'm actually involved with the one of the key technologies used by Google for its autonomous cars, namely LIDAR. Google uses a Helodyne HDL-64, which is a fantastic bit of kit but has a few serious drawbacks that are inherent to LIDAR. Namely moisture. Strangely enough, objects with a high refractive index like water tend to really screw with LIDAR (the L stands for Light). Whilst a Helodyne HDL-64 is fantastic at doing aerial terrain surveys, it can only do it on a perfectly cloudless day... which wont be for another 4 or 5 months here in Berkshire. That is not the biggest problem however.
The biggest problem comes in processing the raw data. LIDAR produces a lot of it, we have banks of blade servers dedicated to image processing to bring the processing time down from days to hours. The only way to reduce this further is to reduce fidelity, the problem with reducing fidelity is that you start to miss out things. Minor details at first, then significant ones. In order to be doing real time image processing in real time you need to be reducing your fidelity and detection parameters by a lot to do so with the kind of computing power you can put in a car.
I know a lot about the technology involved in automated detection, I'm not a world leading expert but I know more than enough to say you don't know anything about it. You're taking someone else's opinion you've read on a blog and championing it as fact.
Will autonomous cars get here, yes, will they be here in the next few years, definitely not. Will they get here in 5 years, no, 20 is a more realistic time frame.
In the E.U. Companies can and do require that their employees sign usage charters in order to access company networks. I know because I've deployed firewalls and network filtering equipment to quite a few of them and implemented the filtering policies.
Access charters are different to installing Keyloggers. That being said, some industries are allowed to install keyloggers due to (national) security concerns, see Airbus, Siemens, Vodafone and others that regularly deal with matters of sensitive data, military technologies, key financial data (including personal financial data).
Joe Blogs PLC is not permitted to spy on their employees at that level because they dont have a legitimate reason to. They can put whatever they want in their charter/Acceptable Use Policy but if they use it they'll be punished by the court.
Please try reading up on actual cases where employers have been caught spying or tracking their employees western Europe.
In France they passed a law that workers aren't allowed to answer emails at home outside of office hours. You think they'll allow this? LOL.
Just one minor point here. France didn't pass this law.
The law passed was that an employee was not obliged to answer an email outside of working hours. One could still do so voluntarily but an employer could not [legally] punish an employee for not doing so.
Contrary to the beliefs of most Americans, the majority of most worker protection laws in Europe are voluntary for the employee, they are designed to set limits on what an employer is permitted to demand to avoid them abusing workers. If you wanted to work additional unpaid hours, you are free to do so but the employer cannot fire or punish you for not doing so. Here in the UK, if your employer expects you to work out of hours or additional hours, it is an expectation that you will be compensated (in IT, most professionals are flexible though, if my employer wants me to do a few hours over the weekend I'm usually OK if asked in advance, if I wanted to take an afternoon off in exchange they're usually OK with it).
I doubt Eric Schmidt stands in a queue waiting for a table to become available and it's a bit of an insult to think he expects other people to do that. If a place is so busy you have to queue, good chance there is a deserted place just down the road waiting to dole out a nice meal. Or if there isn't simply go home and cook your own food just like in the good old days. Save a pile of money too
Restaurant-queuing seems to be a cultural phenomenon associated mostly with America. It's not unusual to see a mile-long queue for a restaurant in America but in other parts of the world if there's a few waiting by the door people deem it to be busy and quickly move on to the next place.
Most of the world figured out that booking is easier than queuing many years ago. Queueing is something that only strokes an owners ego, which is why we only see for certain bars and clubs where insecurity is rife.
Lets take two cities, London, England vs Perth Australia. London is one of the worlds greatest cities, Perth is an overgrown mining town. I've lived in both and I'll let you guess which one makes me line up to get into a popular bar or club.
If you guessed London, you'd be wrong. In London I didn't have to queue to get into anywhere, not in the Southbank, not in Piccadilly, hardly anywhere. The only times queues are formed are when fire codes force them to (like Madam Tussauds, although I don't recommend going there if you're in London, plenty of better places to visit without a 2 hour line) because London is competitive and does not allow ego's to be stroked. If you want to make your London club "exclusive" then someone next door will eat your business. Compared to Perth where you can be rejected for entry for anything just to make sure the "right" kind of people get in, well I'm sure you can now see why no-one has heard of Perth, Western Australia or if they had, it was nothing good.
But I digress, if I want to go to a popular restaurant here in the UK, I ring ahead and make a booking for 6:30, 7, 8 or whenever for my expected party. We then turn up at the allotted time and the wonderful staff direct us to our reserved seating. Queuing is something one does at Macky D's, not at an eatery with any class.