Parent said:

Grand-parent said:

I don't necessarily have confidence that the government could implement solutions to control spam, but at least different countries could cooperate to fight spam - maybe that's what GP mpe meant.

Instead, we have governments the world over (Europe, US,...) passing laws to limit file sharing, as if this was a more significant problem to society and the economy.

GP said:

I share this opinion more and more. It's sad. Governments, who should be protecting us the little guys (we have the votes...but don't always use them), seem more interested in protecting the interests of corporations (which have the economic power).

I mean look at French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He's famous for exchanging favors with his friends CEOs of mega-companies. What has he been doing with his infamous Hadopi three strikes law for instance? Aren't there BIGGER problems to solve for a government than copyright infringement?

Dammit.

>First was from 130 kilos down to 80 kilos. I did this through eating 1500 kcal per day exclusing green veggies AND doing >intensive cardio on the treadmill five times a week, hitting 500kcal on the calorie counter each time.

What do you mean "exclusing"? Did you mean "excluding" or did you mean "only"? If you never ate protein then that's why you lost so much of it...in your muscle, because of cellular turn-over. But surely I am misunderstanding?

That being said...Generally speaking lowering the calorie intake is a starting principle to lose fat, but studies have shown that even a balanced (lower-calorie) diet, will make you lose muscle as well. If you do endurance exercises, you will also lose muscles, sometimes even more. On the other hand, it seems working those muscles out with weights (or machines) prevents muscle loss...even if it means not gaining a much as with a normal calorie level.

I read that in Jogging International magazine. A long time ago. I wish I had the time to find actual references, it feels cheap to mention something like this without references - sorry for that.

Thanks Tim. It seems to me though this is tied to the bank, isn't it? Several people here have mentioned Citi in the US, but I don't think many other banks offer this. A few years ago PayPal had an attempt at such a service but for some reason they scraped it away.

BTW, can someone post a list of vendors of virtual temporary credit cards? A search on the Web didn't lead to much last time. This would obviously be something very useful for Internet purchase safety, if anything (tired of vendors who don't even encrypt account passwords). Why oh why isn't that service more pervasive?

Here in the UK our wonderful government outsources the implementation of its wonderful data retention policies to "contractors". A lot of private data about a huge number of people in the UK got lost in the wild, stolen or otherwise, in recent years. Subcontracting enables the government to shift the blame. How convenient. Somehow subcontracting enables some to get rid of their accountability.

Right before immigration checks, the USCIS banner says that they strive to welcome anyone with courtesy. Maybe they forgot to tell their employees about that.

No I don't think so. I am fairly sure I didn't have to do that last time I checked in for my round-trip to the US from the UK. The credit card should only be for identification. As long as they can see your passport, which is mandatory anyway, you shouldn't have to present your CC.

I agree with your point, but just to be the Devil's Advocate here: the consequences of addiction to chocolate are not exactly as bad as those you get from cocaine or heroin addiction. That being said, I dislike that harmless substances like cannabis are forbidden whereas alcohol isn't.

Most people don't care or don't know about this possibility, and effectively, very few will disable the initial instructions. Those instructions are not annoying the recipients but their callers. So, they should be removed by default by the phone company. They do not help anybody.

You must be new here. Er...I mean, in the US.

In the US you can challenge a traffic fine by going to court. So it's a Good Thing.

Very good point.

And I'll give the example of the McLibel case where the court ruled that the UK libel law breached the European Convention on Human Rights and fined the UK for damages.

Thing is, who is Apple's audience? At least from the perspective of buying a phone? Is their target demographics essentially composed of Slashdot geeks who keep abreast of the latest technology news?

Apple has done a remarkable, I mean, incredibly impressive job of winning Joe Public as a consumer of electronics. Their products are reliable, simple to use, and beautiful. Think of the ease-of-use of Mac OS, the beauty of the G4 laptop when it came out compared to every other laptop on the market at the time, the cool design of the iPod, the inherent coolness of the iPhone (object, graphical touch interface etc.).

I wonder if most of the people who bought an iPhone really care about the non-open, locked-down aspect of the iPhone. As a geek, evolutions in the offering of phones on the market such as Android sound completely natural to me, but IMHO most people don't need or want to hack their phones. I have a feeling that most people (who bought the iPhone) don't even know about Google Voice, and could care less about developing and selling applications for the iPhone.

Just my guess.

Or any adult who's played Starcraft.

Exactly. I'm really tired of this overloading of what the new buzzwords mean. Same story with component-oriented development in 1999/2000, same story with Web services (there were companies - e.g. Salesforce I think - who were doing text scraping of Web pages and they claimed that was "Web Services". I am not kidding), and same story now with cloud computing.

But it is very sad though when the ante is upped not by another set of marketing people for commercial interests, but by a disinterested party who is supposed to have geek knowledge.

Thanks for the information. Honestly, I would never have guessed Zittrain had any decent computer knowledge considering the confusion he demonstrated throughout his article.

>Zittrain knows his stuff. He was friends with Postel

Oh. Of course. He must be a very good computer scientist, then. :-)

Seriously though, is the term "the cloud" a substitute for "the Internet", now? Enough with this please.