Re: Rights
Lawyers pleading the 5th. That's a bit rich innit?
2726 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
Yes I do understate the case. I too live in a very small rural community and there is a fair proportion here who are simply not going to get a computer, let alone figure out where the any key is. I have a neighbour, a couple in their mid 80's, who just got a computer last year. It has taken them this long to figure how to put search terms into the Google box and what a list of results actually is for. Yesterday I got a call asking how to input a postal code. After fighting with the auto-complete, it turns out that the key piece of information here was that we needed to sort out the difference between a zero and and the letter O on the keyboard. There is indeed much to learn if one is starting from scratch. Indeed, many who don't have a computer now, are simply not going to put in the effort to get up to speed.
I get the joke, and it's exactly what some bureaucrats seem to think.
However, the tragedy here is that it's not about economics, it's about education. There's probably some other old fart like me reading this right now on some old piece of kit that somebody else would throw away. It would cost me nothing to get on line were I to start from scratch. People reading this forum know that running a browser doesn't need to involve a new computer, and anybody could theoretically get online regardless of income. But the sad fact is that even if the government were to give away free computers to the 15% in question, it would take some time before very many of them would be able to file something on line.
To use online public services people need to be able to trust the government with the information they provide online.
I'm sure that many will trust the government, but that doesn't mean that they actually can be trusted. If a bank gets hacked, people will go to a different bank. There is an incentive for banks to be secure. The government, on the other hand, is in a different position. They get hacked, and people will go to a different .... what? Exactly. There is no incentive for a government to do the best they can.
By inference pretty much every business in China must have connections to or are overseen by the Government and businesses that have goods made in China must have permissions from the Government.
In fact, I'm not entirely sure how this would be significantly different here, or in any other country. Every company needs permits and has economic connections to their government etc. Are we to assume that the US government hopes to do an overnight revival of home industry, or is the state planning to do without tech for a while?
I agree that it is not so black and white. However, I think the lesson here is that it is not about making more laws. It is about the fact that "due care and attention" is an overreaching factor which could make the present laws seem to be poorly correlated with the real situation.
Intensive and persistent virus attacks are being made every day on internet servers
This kind of statement makes me wonder what exactly is going on. Of course there are always attempts to compromise servers, surely they didn't just discovered this. Maybe he is referring to the kind of virus attack one gets after visiting free pr0n sites. Which side of the firewall are we talking about here?
This protesting about Google not continuing to provide something is just indicative of people denying that they had unrealistic expectations. This is a public company in a dominant position so it has little to no responsibility toward its clientèle. That's just how it is. Pretending that is not the case is perhaps what all those people are doing who have bought into Google's services and now complain when their dreams are broken. There'll be more of this, and I for one, am not playing that game.
I'm not sure myself, but does an account for an employee still belong to that person after they are no longer an employee? I would think that in this case the account would belong to the Tribune and that they would have been negligent in allowing Keys to still have valid credentials - that being tantamount to them willingly giving out the password themselves. Who knows. The story here could indeed be about The Tribune trying to blame somebody, anybody, on their own incompetence.
a policy that is designed to dilute the value of their brands
The thing is that the whole idea of diluting the value of a brand by using a close spelling in a domain name is a bunch of hooey anyway. Mostly people click on links, and besides, spelling isn't as hard as some marketeers would have you think. We have had similar spellings for as long as there have been written words. My friend Jon is not about sue my other friend John for diluting his identity, and in any case I have no trouble telling them apart. If I did, we'd have another problem on our hands - either with the Jo*s or with me.
"I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. 'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say," Shuttleworth wrote.
Yep, that's about the dumbest thing that a smart person could say. . . . oh wait ...
As for Linux not being user friendly "Huh" indeed. I'm writing this on a computer that started as Ubuntu 6.04 and eventually got upgraded to 8.04, which is what it has now. That means that it has been a user friendly and functional desktop machine for 7 years, and that the current Linux on it is now 5 years old. That's a pretty good track record. I'm sorry if you haven't been as lucky, though I do suspect that bad luck isn't actually your problem.
If you want to put down Linux, I'll join you, but I'm not going to say that it isn't user friendly, easy to install, and very functional - because it is. Still, I'm with AC at the top there, about FreeBSD being the best choice.
RW: It was neither deliberate nor a "technical" error. It was a management error, pure and simple. You would think that MS, with the threat of a large fine hanging over it should they commit a specific misdeed, would make very sure that that misdeed did not occur by accident.
MS is probably assuming that it will not be a large fine, probably only a few million, which they can well afford - especially considering that it will not actually "cost" them that much after tax deductions etc. It's likely worth it to them. If it turns out not, only then is it a management error.
That just covers way too wide a spectrum. In fact it easily covers everything from absurd hilarity, to tragic misunderstanding. An example of the latter would be proponents of marketing data. In any case, I can't help but think that so much of the natural world would be missed, that it would be a situation of one step forward and two steps back.
Instead they just impinge on the freedoms of responsible users.
And non-users as well. Here in Canada we have draconian alcohol laws and you can't easily buy clean ethyl alcohol for other purposes since it is assumed that you will drink it all on the way home. In any case, these kinds of laws always infringe on freedoms in general. They do, however, make an excellent excuse for collecting more taxes to fund programs such as this which will create a lot of jobs which otherwise wouldn't have a reason to exist.
I suspect that the novelty of arriving home to a cacophony of pets disturbed by the sudden music who have eaten the toast again and an enormous electricity bill because the windows were left open will quickly wear off,
Yes, but the ultimate goal is that you don't ever have to go home. You will be able to do everything you normally do, including watching TV with the security camera's over the net, that it will be possible for you to stay at work 24/7.
I work in the disabilities sector and find the reference to disabled people being hooked on drugs, prescription or otherwise, so be a crass over-generalisation. Care to elaborate?
If you work in the field, it must be an isolated branch. I'm sorry if you find my sensibilities "crass". What kind of elaboration you want?
These are people with which I have a tremendous amount of empathy. I've personally lived with a number of drug addicts, have had problems of my own, and spend considerable time with the group of which I speak. In Canada it is a very large group and mostly uncounted because they only show up to collect a cheque, or to get food. I have been closely connected with these people and have only the greatest respect and empathy. I'm not trying to "over-generalize" at all.
I am personally disabled, and know only too well the connection with alcohol and other drugs that can so easily ensue. I don't know what kind of work you do, but my work with drug addicts over the last three decades has certainly opened my eyes to what I'm talking about here. Perhaps you only deal with nice "clean" disabled people. The kind that can afford electric wheel chairs (I can't) and live in homes. Perhaps they even get treatments and have family. Safe crowd, eh? I suggest you spend a few years with the street people in the city of your choice, and then you will start to see a relationship between drugs and disabilities. I'm not claiming to have it figured out, but there is an interaction which often makes it difficult to see which came first. In my case, I've had polio, and I wake up every day with pain. To me it is clear how drugs can seem like a solution. After a while, it just gets all mixed up in the mind.
No, I didn't mean 'dependent on strong prescription medication', but that is probably also a problem. I am not generalizing or putting down any group. In Canadian cities we have large populations of people without homes. They are mostly "disabled" and mostly addicted. The two often go hand-in-hand. I have current local rural experience of this, and yes, it is a tragedy. I also have city and personal experience, and I can confirm that it is a National tragedy as well. Another tragedy is that the drug/disability situation is mostly ignored by the government.
People over 75 often don't feel they need it. Yes, I'm getting older so I talk with these people. I also notice that disabled people are often hooked on drugs or TV, or both. Again, there is no perceived need to join the world of communication. My prediction is that the first group will change as they get replaced with people who learnt at an earlier age, and the second group stay roughly the same. More poor and/or disabled people will "get it", but the group will grow in size.
I'm in both groups, but have kept up with computers since before the PC. I also refuse to get involved with things like drugs and TV (I don't know which is worse). The internet is perfect for someone like me.
One has to wonder about the applicability of averages to all things. If half the people like black, and the other half like white, does that mean that everyone likes grey? Since both milkshakes and hamburgers are very popular, I suppose a ground beef shake would be twice as popular. Sometimes it's the non-average that makes the treat. In fact, average isn't very sexy.