The "fasten seatbelt" lights are on for good reason: if the airpline suddenly loses altitude, you won't crack your skull on the roof.
You should avoid spending any time at all without your seatbelts in an airplane because, in some rare occurrences, these drops will happen without any warning at all.
I've tried really hard to like OpenStreetMaps, even contributed several street names and fixed some bad street geometry issues in my neighborhood... but overall it's next to useless here in Brazil. And I live in one of the largest cities here (metro area with 6 million people).
So, yeah, maybe it's useful in the US and Europe, but not everywhere...
Is it just me or this year's April's Fool is sucking hard here on Slashdot?
Come on, don't fail me this time Slashdot!
1) Here in Brazil, mostly everyone trusts the e-voting systems.
It's much much better than the paper ballots which used to end up in rampant fraud in smaller cities, since corruption is widespread. With the e-voting system, the only possible fraud is if the federal government wants to rig the elections (and does a *very* good job at it) neither the government or the opposing parties consider this an issue so, unless they're all colluding with each other (which would make the elections pointless anyway), I think it's reasonably safe. I actually worked for a year and a half in the IT dept. of the Elections Branch in my state and, with that knowledge, I trust the e-voting system.
2) No one here really cares about providing personal data to third-parties. It's common to have to provide your RG (ID card number) and CPF number (something similar to SSN) at a store, when you're making a regular purchase such as shoes or a t-shirt. When designing any sort of IT system to store clients, etc, the CPF number is usually the natural primary key.
Most people here think it's reasonable to collect fingerprints and no one cares when, for instance, the US consulate collects our fingerprints when we're getting our US Visa. Almost all our government documents (we have several: ID Card, CPF, "Voter's Card", Driver's License, Passport) have tons of personal data and fingerprints. This is a non-issue here.
3) People here care about privacy only inside their homes. For instance, everyone (including me) thinks it's a good idea to install more CCTV cameras in some areas to stop crime. In some places, crime is a much more pressing issue than expectation of privacy in a public place. "Big Brother" reality shows are the top 1 programs on public TV, so I would say the next generation might even not care about privacy in their own homes.
The rest of the world is very different from the US - just keep this in mind.
I'm Brazilian and a few weeks ago I was contacted by my bank regarding some very odd charges which seemed fraudulent - these transactions were made on New York parking garages (something like, NYC DOT Parking). The cancelled the credit card, cancelled the charges and sent me a new one.
I visited New York in July 2011 so I was thinking that maybe they stole my credit card details back then and kept the info until they finally decided to use it for fraudulent purchases. It seemed like a long shot, but it was the best explanation I could think of. When I read the story it ringed a bell: I was probably affected by this issue.
Not sure if it was due to online purchases I did in the last few or if it was related to my visit to NYC last year (and this credit card processor could have stored my CC info somewhere for all these months - who knows).
So, yeah, this is actually a global issue - not sure if it's because of tourism or the internet. Personally I think it's nice that they made these news public since this explains a lot for me.
If you wany an apples to apples comparison, you should, at the very least, compare mobile web traffic from iOS to mobile web traffic from high-end 4G Android device - which is what the CEO was talking. And no one seems to ever announce this sort of data.
Stop with the fanboism. Seriously.
For instance, it's nearly useless here in Brazil.
I've contributed several street names and actual physical correction for my neighborhood but I just wouldn't have time to fix everything so I just gave up.
I imagine there's several countries where it's also like that.
Since I don't particularly like Apple and despise their walled garden policies, I see this as a good thing: they'll definitely lose some users because of this, since their apps will become much less useful.
This is ridiculous. Someone in the computer monitor business should get his ass kicked.
My 24" monitor has a resolution of 1920x1200 and even that was difficult to find - most were only 1920x1080 (a.k.a Full HD).
How come a puny tablet has more pixels than a 24" monitor and no one is doing anything about it?!
Well, I'm not sure about the other countries you mentioned... but Brazil would actually be something like $10/hour + a lot of benefits according to the local labor law:
- 8 hours/day max (or paid overtime at 2x the regular rate, up to 10 hours/day)
- 30-day vacations each year
- unlimited sick leave
- reasonable job security (there's a fine when you fire employees)
- can't fire people for going on strike
All workers are unionized in Brazil (by law). Factory workers union agreements usually also state that:
- company pays for employee transportation
- company pays for employee lunch
- health insurance
They only considered moving here to Brazil because Brazil has a ridiculously high import tax. If they produced iPads here, they would avoid that aqnd, even though the local labor cost is much higher than China's, the final product would still be cheaper to consumers. And Brazil is consuming a lot right now.
The moon is made of green cheese. -- John Heywood
