I was thinking "what did the Romans ever do for us?" You're right on the spot there, even though I'm sort of a "left-wing" (non)whiner. Another question to ask is: what does it matter what you did for them, if the Tibetans don't want you?
That was my thinking, too. A score of 7.6 isn't too shabby at all, many high-dollar commercial packages have fared worse in the past (when I used to read those mags). Especially when you take into consideration the criticisms, given the right environment or setup the effective score could be much higher.
Re:calling clueful car manufacturers
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 1
> Analogue freq dial thingies
That's so 80's. Newer transmitters use digital tuning that is very frequency stable. RadioShack and other places sell transmitters like the irock or AudiaX quite cheaply, and these work much better than the old analogue freq dial thingies.
> then why do they try to mimic the same functions as the laptop?
Because you can. My main problem with these devices is the price. There's just no way I will carry a $700 item in my pant pockets, period. And I suspect there are plenty more people that think the same way--I just can't see these things flying off the shelves. Too many hazards: knocking it against a table edge while walking, losing it while running, putting it in the wash with the pants, etc. While its features are certainly very nice and desireable, I sigh and pay $100 for an SJ20 that does most of the things I need from it, has a hirez screen, rechargeable battery, and comes as close to being disposable as $100 will ever be.
Actually, I believe you can add the data plan to any voice plan, of course adding the two fees together. Of course you should expect higher costs, these guys aren't going to give anything away that they think they can make money on. For me personally the data-only plan actually isn't bad, since I only use very few voice minutes on average, and the per-minute costs would still add up to less than even the cheapest voice plan. I've been considering getting a BT phone and a BT card for my Clie, but I can't decide on a decent cheap phone.
> you have to get your hardware from a third party
Well, they do offer that weird Nokia 3650 with the camera and circular keypad, but it's huge, expensive and ugly. I rather liked the T68i, but online feedback on it is terrible. You could get it for free from Amazon for quite a while, though. Now I'm somewhat considering the R520, which isn't the prettiest or smallest, but it's quite cheap (around $75 on ebay incl. shipping) and has BT, speaker phone and is tri-band. Plus they're not SIM-locked. If you have a backpack that you could leave it in most of the time, its BT features might be all you need.
>> BP's figures clearly disprove that. > What do they say? I can send you a number of links that say "over half" > or "50%" or similar numbers EU consumed
According to this table, Europe gets around 27% of its total imports from the ME, which is far less than "over 50%". The point being that here in the US the interests of Europe in Iraqi oil under Saddam have been greatly exagerated as a whole. Even if France stood to gain some, Germany certainly didn't at all. If anything, certain members of the "coalition of the willing" have much higher interests in the new Iraqi oil order, such as Poland, whose president last week freely acknowledged that Poland was participating in the campaign in the hope of gaining a piece of the oil pie. Anyway, enough of that topic.
> around 30% of German electricity comes from nuclear sources > US is under 20% nuclear
Well, we're talking 19 reactors versus 104, so percentages can be deceptive. Nuclear waste is an extremely serious problem that unfortunately isn't as scaleable as most other things. Even with just 19 reactors Germany is barely able to deal with its waste, with massive public protests against it each time a transport takes place. The US certainly doesn't have an easier time of it. One of the more recent National Geographic editions had the cover article on the nuclear waste problem. Fission is really not a long-term solution and should definitely be only treated as a stop-gap measure. If fusion ever takes off, that might work, otherwise orbital solar production plus renewable terrestrial sources will probably remain the main long-term future options.
> You sound as I slapped you for suggesting that European oil usage would increase
No, I was amused at your suggestion that Europe's stampeding use of oil is the real problem, not the US's. Both raw numbers and per-capita usage clearly show the US to be the great internal combustion engine of this planet.
> though those reserves (north sea--norway primarily) are slated to run dry within 40 years
Hardly. If you examine the figures I linked to, roughly half of EU oil comes from Russia, plus considerable amounts from Africa.
> The figures I've seen are ~60% (or more) of total EU oil consumption comes from the middleeast.
BP's figures clearly disprove that.
> thanks to EU-aversion to nuclear oil usage is slated to multiply over the upcoming decades
That's fresh, considering the US is still by far leading the world in oil consumption, with no end in sight. There are damn good reasons Europe is against nuclear power, what with not having a Yucca Mountain of their own and all. Of course, if the US were willing to dispose of European nuclear waste for a nominal fee, we might reconsider.
Of course I expected this argument, but it is quite separate from the issue of incest, the same as owning a gun is separate from killing with it. Just because an action has the potential of resulting in harm does not imply that the action must be disallowed. IOW, if your sister and you fancy each other, go ahead, make each other's day (and gross out everyone else in the process). But if that leads to a child, you will open another legal can of worms, and we will see you again in this court room.
> a corpse can neither consent nor object..it's not a person... > no one gets harmed... this by your logic.
Quite correct, and some don't actually consider it a crime in that respect. OTOH, the living relatives of the corpse have all sorts of claims to the body and all sorts of legal avenues to get you.
> The fact that the law MUST worry about consent means that the > law must worry about sexual acts.
You're changing my argument. Naturally the law must address sexual acts to that extent, but once it is established that participants in an act are consenting adults, it is no further concerned with the act, until of course other laws are broken (such as bodily harm etc.) The whole original point of contention had been that the law has the right to dictate who can get a blowjob by whom, or what kinds of sexual acts should be illegal.
Well, why the hell not? It's a social taboo that most, including myself, would find pretty gross to break, but what's it to you if somone else fancies his adult sister?
> Necrophiliacs? The other "person" isn't exactly a person.
What the HELL are you talking about? How is a corpse a consenting adult?
> So you see, it IS the business of law.
No, I don't see, because you don't make any sense at all.
> The moorish invasion of spain was justifiable to this day by many islamic people on usenet
Well, LOL, usenet. For all you know you're conversing with Osama. You don't need freaking usenet to meet modern Muslims, just get out of the house. I've been in school with and had various other friends and acquaintances from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, etc, and guess what, none of them were burning any kinds of flags or anything. These are actually the silent majority that simply go about living their daily lives, without any particular regilious agenda or anything. Do some of them have different views and values, particularly regarding formal interactions between men and women? Yes, some more so than others, with economic background being more deciding than anything else in that respect.
OTOH, it is ironic that Iraq was actually one of the Muslim countries with the strongest limitation of religious powers. It was in fact one of the main countries in the area where a Christian was safe (to the degree that anyone was safe in Iraq, of course). But you make it sound like all Muslim countries are religiously and socially radical, and that is very far from the truth. Most of the countries on the Mediterranean rim are quite moderate, particularly Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Turkey is entirely secular, despite certainly having strong religious undercurrents. Don't confuse Iranian Sharia law with the reality of those other countries.
> if you are suspicious of the American right wing, then how can > you not be even trebly suspicious at the islamic right wing
Because the former is right here and now, and in charge of this country and my future, while the latter is not.
> You don't see the need for a GPS for urban areas, but you see > the need for a PDA and software? What's the difference?
That a mapping GPS is a PDA+software+GPS, i.e. more hardware (and a lot more money). What's the point of having a moving arrow on the map constantly tell you that you're driving along Market Street, when you could just lift your eyes and obtain that same information from street signs? Mind you, when GPS is close to a zero-cost item both financially and in terms of power consumption, I certainly won't mind having it in my PDA. But while I have to pay $800 for that moving map, no thanks.
> Personally I'm glad we're having a falling out with SA. > I don't think we should have dealings with any bad regime like that.
Well, we do agree on one thing.
> look to Europe. almost all european oil comes from the middleeast
Your Magic Hat of Figures and Numbers must be defective. According to BP, actual oil trade movements are a bit different. Sure, a significant part of European oil comes from the ME (about 40% more than in the US), but hardly "almost all"--even more comes from Russia and Africa combined. In fact, by far the biggest takers of Arab oil are Asian countries, but nobody's mad at them for that.
> but the majority of the American people don't--and that's why Bush was elected
He, he. No, it was because of term limits. Bill could have otherwise comfortably won a third term against Bush, and every GOPpy knows it, and that makes them mad as hell.
> What they are trying to do today is the same thing they were > trying to do 300,500, 700, and 1000, even 1250 years ago.
Yes, at about the same time Western Christianity considered the Inquisition a valuable conversion methodology. Come on, you obviously haven't met many modern, mainstream Muslims. While--even in the eyes of many of their own scholars--the main shortcoming of Islam is that it never had its own Reformation , it has still come a long way since the invasion of Spain by the Moors. Don't believe all the drivel served up by Murdoch's war-mongering posse.
> his ILLEGAL military buildups (illegal by treaty of surrender)
Aha! So you acknowledge the existence of an international legal framework regarding military operations during the period of the League of Nations? Well, that framework today exists within the UN, and they did indeed fail to recognize a war on Iraq as justified (hence, legal). Besides, the US constitution also spells out quite clearly how to go to war, and it doesn't mention anywhere pulling the wool over the eyes of Congress.
> had they launched a preemptive strike, would THAT have been legal?
Given that all those atrocities were still in the future at your hypothetical point in time, and given the little likelihood of Germany actually pulling off a pan-European invasion and victory, yes, it would have been quite presumtious to level Germany at that time. Today you have the benefit of hindsight to make you think it would have been such an obvious thing for the Allies to do. What you are proposing is somewhat akin to Minority Report--preemptive action on the mere potential of future crimes. As has been said, Democracy fights its battles with one hand behind the back. As purveyours of our particular set of values, we don't have the same luxuries of summary assumptions and action as dictatorhips and totalitarian regimes. Not every petty little dictator that wants to take over the world has any realistic chance or opportunity to do so. Striking him down at the very thought of it makes us no better than him, just stronger.
> The legality of a war is decided by the winning side.
You might want to pull out your trusty copy of the constitution and check on that. The conditions and procedures for the US going to war are spelled out quite clearly, and nowhere does it bless the president to do so, as long as he wins.
I was talking about the period after OUR regime change, when the next administration hopefully decides that the US is not more equal than the rest of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
> Yeah, and Hitler built the Autobahn.
I was thinking "what did the Romans ever do for us?" You're right on the spot there, even though I'm sort of a "left-wing" (non)whiner. Another question to ask is: what does it matter what you did for them, if the Tibetans don't want you?
Wow, didn't even think of looking at the Egg for that sort of thing. That $48 for a fast charger plus eight 2100 mAh batteries is a pretty good deal.
> a means of the government trolling for terrorists?
Well, it's quite along the lines of W's challenge to Iraqi guerillas to "bring it on."
> The review is pretty positive, really
That was my thinking, too. A score of 7.6 isn't too shabby at all, many high-dollar commercial packages have fared worse in the past (when I used to read those mags). Especially when you take into consideration the criticisms, given the right environment or setup the effective score could be much higher.
> Analogue freq dial thingies
That's so 80's. Newer transmitters use digital tuning that is very frequency stable. RadioShack and other places sell transmitters like the irock or AudiaX quite cheaply, and these work much better than the old analogue freq dial thingies.
> then why do they try to mimic the same functions as the laptop?
Because you can. My main problem with these devices is the price. There's just no way I will carry a $700 item in my pant pockets, period. And I suspect there are plenty more people that think the same way--I just can't see these things flying off the shelves. Too many hazards: knocking it against a table edge while walking, losing it while running, putting it in the wash with the pants, etc. While its features are certainly very nice and desireable, I sigh and pay $100 for an SJ20 that does most of the things I need from it, has a hirez screen, rechargeable battery, and comes as close to being disposable as $100 will ever be.
Perhaps this is just meant to be a laptop for very, very small people such as himself.
> But you can't get both together.
Actually, I believe you can add the data plan to any voice plan, of course adding the two fees together. Of course you should expect higher costs, these guys aren't going to give anything away that they think they can make money on. For me personally the data-only plan actually isn't bad, since I only use very few voice minutes on average, and the per-minute costs would still add up to less than even the cheapest voice plan. I've been considering getting a BT phone and a BT card for my Clie, but I can't decide on a decent cheap phone.
> you have to get your hardware from a third party
Well, they do offer that weird Nokia 3650 with the camera and circular keypad, but it's huge, expensive and ugly. I rather liked the T68i, but online feedback on it is terrible. You could get it for free from Amazon for quite a while, though. Now I'm somewhat considering the R520, which isn't the prettiest or smallest, but it's quite cheap (around $75 on ebay incl. shipping) and has BT, speaker phone and is tri-band. Plus they're not SIM-locked. If you have a backpack that you could leave it in most of the time, its BT features might be all you need.
>> BP's figures clearly disprove that.
> What do they say? I can send you a number of links that say "over half"
> or "50%" or similar numbers EU consumed
According to this table, Europe gets around 27% of its total imports from the ME, which is far less than "over 50%". The point being that here in the US the interests of Europe in Iraqi oil under Saddam have been greatly exagerated as a whole. Even if France stood to gain some, Germany certainly didn't at all. If anything, certain members of the "coalition of the willing" have much higher interests in the new Iraqi oil order, such as Poland, whose president last week freely acknowledged that Poland was participating in the campaign in the hope of gaining a piece of the oil pie. Anyway, enough of that topic.
> around 30% of German electricity comes from nuclear sources
> US is under 20% nuclear
Well, we're talking 19 reactors versus 104, so percentages can be deceptive. Nuclear waste is an extremely serious problem that unfortunately isn't as scaleable as most other things. Even with just 19 reactors Germany is barely able to deal with its waste, with massive public protests against it each time a transport takes place. The US certainly doesn't have an easier time of it. One of the more recent National Geographic editions had the cover article on the nuclear waste problem. Fission is really not a long-term solution and should definitely be only treated as a stop-gap measure. If fusion ever takes off, that might work, otherwise orbital solar production plus renewable terrestrial sources will probably remain the main long-term future options.
> You sound as I slapped you for suggesting that European oil usage would increase
No, I was amused at your suggestion that Europe's stampeding use of oil is the real problem, not the US's. Both raw numbers and per-capita usage clearly show the US to be the great internal combustion engine of this planet.
> At 4k bytes per second average rate it will take 4.26 minutes to transfer a megabyte
GPRS is a packet switched technology, so per minute charges are meaningless. That alone should have given you the hint that it's talking about voice.
> though those reserves (north sea--norway primarily) are slated to run dry within 40 years
Hardly. If you examine the figures I linked to, roughly half of EU oil comes from Russia, plus considerable amounts from Africa.
> The figures I've seen are ~60% (or more) of total EU oil consumption comes from the middleeast.
BP's figures clearly disprove that.
> thanks to EU-aversion to nuclear oil usage is slated to multiply over the upcoming decades
That's fresh, considering the US is still by far leading the world in oil consumption, with no end in sight. There are damn good reasons Europe is against nuclear power, what with not having a Yucca Mountain of their own and all. Of course, if the US were willing to dispose of European nuclear waste for a nominal fee, we might reconsider.
> what about adultery? Make it legal?
Since when is it illegal?
> you fail to address the issue of children
Of course I expected this argument, but it is quite separate from the issue of incest, the same as owning a gun is separate from killing with it. Just because an action has the potential of resulting in harm does not imply that the action must be disallowed. IOW, if your sister and you fancy each other, go ahead, make each other's day (and gross out everyone else in the process). But if that leads to a child, you will open another legal can of worms, and we will see you again in this court room.
> a corpse can neither consent nor object..it's not a person...
> no one gets harmed... this by your logic.
Quite correct, and some don't actually consider it a crime in that respect. OTOH, the living relatives of the corpse have all sorts of claims to the body and all sorts of legal avenues to get you.
> The fact that the law MUST worry about consent means that the
> law must worry about sexual acts.
You're changing my argument. Naturally the law must address sexual acts to that extent, but once it is established that participants in an act are consenting adults, it is no further concerned with the act, until of course other laws are broken (such as bodily harm etc.) The whole original point of contention had been that the law has the right to dictate who can get a blowjob by whom, or what kinds of sexual acts should be illegal.
> So incest is ok between consenting adults?
Well, why the hell not? It's a social taboo that most, including myself, would find pretty gross to break, but what's it to you if somone else fancies his adult sister?
> Necrophiliacs? The other "person" isn't exactly a person.
What the HELL are you talking about? How is a corpse a consenting adult?
> So you see, it IS the business of law.
No, I don't see, because you don't make any sense at all.
Around $100. But $300 isn't bad, except it's probably not a high resolution display. Don't care about color, but it must be high rez.
> The moorish invasion of spain was justifiable to this day by many islamic people on usenet
Well, LOL, usenet. For all you know you're conversing with Osama. You don't need freaking usenet to meet modern Muslims, just get out of the house. I've been in school with and had various other friends and acquaintances from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, etc, and guess what, none of them were burning any kinds of flags or anything. These are actually the silent majority that simply go about living their daily lives, without any particular regilious agenda or anything. Do some of them have different views and values, particularly regarding formal interactions between men and women? Yes, some more so than others, with economic background being more deciding than anything else in that respect.
OTOH, it is ironic that Iraq was actually one of the Muslim countries with the strongest limitation of religious powers. It was in fact one of the main countries in the area where a Christian was safe (to the degree that anyone was safe in Iraq, of course). But you make it sound like all Muslim countries are religiously and socially radical, and that is very far from the truth. Most of the countries on the Mediterranean rim are quite moderate, particularly Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Turkey is entirely secular, despite certainly having strong religious undercurrents. Don't confuse Iranian Sharia law with the reality of those other countries.
> if you are suspicious of the American right wing, then how can
> you not be even trebly suspicious at the islamic right wing
Because the former is right here and now, and in charge of this country and my future, while the latter is not.
> You don't see the need for a GPS for urban areas, but you see
> the need for a PDA and software? What's the difference?
That a mapping GPS is a PDA+software+GPS, i.e. more hardware (and a lot more money). What's the point of having a moving arrow on the map constantly tell you that you're driving along Market Street, when you could just lift your eyes and obtain that same information from street signs? Mind you, when GPS is close to a zero-cost item both financially and in terms of power consumption, I certainly won't mind having it in my PDA. But while I have to pay $800 for that moving map, no thanks.
> Personally I'm glad we're having a falling out with SA.
> I don't think we should have dealings with any bad regime like that.
Well, we do agree on one thing.
> look to Europe. almost all european oil comes from the middleeast
Your Magic Hat of Figures and Numbers must be defective. According to BP, actual oil trade movements are a bit different. Sure, a significant part of European oil comes from the ME (about 40% more than in the US), but hardly "almost all"--even more comes from Russia and Africa combined. In fact, by far the biggest takers of Arab oil are Asian countries, but nobody's mad at them for that.
> but the majority of the American people don't--and that's why Bush was elected
He, he. No, it was because of term limits. Bill could have otherwise comfortably won a third term against Bush, and every GOPpy knows it, and that makes them mad as hell.
> IT is so fucking hilarious to watch democrats continuously call this administration "stupid"
I'm no Democrat. Just someone who whinces every time mikes get shoved into the Supreme Leader's face.
> Kind of a sobering thought, eh?
Why do you think those that have seen the Matrix can't sleep at night?
> So incest is ok. NAMBLA? necrophiliacs? pedophiles
Don't be a child, we're obviously talking about consenting adults. And by "nobody's" I meant regardless of their position in society.
> What they are trying to do today is the same thing they were
> trying to do 300,500, 700, and 1000, even 1250 years ago.
Yes, at about the same time Western Christianity considered the Inquisition a valuable conversion methodology. Come on, you obviously haven't met many modern, mainstream Muslims. While--even in the eyes of many of their own scholars--the main shortcoming of Islam is that it never had its own Reformation
, it has still come a long way since the invasion of Spain by the Moors. Don't believe all the drivel served up by Murdoch's war-mongering posse.
rant rant rant Kuwait rant rant rant Hitler rant rant rant WW2 rant rant rant.
> his ILLEGAL military buildups (illegal by treaty of surrender)
Aha! So you acknowledge the existence of an international legal framework regarding military operations during the period of the League of Nations? Well, that framework today exists within the UN, and they did indeed fail to recognize a war on Iraq as justified (hence, legal). Besides, the US constitution also spells out quite clearly how to go to war, and it doesn't mention anywhere pulling the wool over the eyes of Congress.
> had they launched a preemptive strike, would THAT have been legal?
Given that all those atrocities were still in the future at your hypothetical point in time, and given the little likelihood of Germany actually pulling off a pan-European invasion and victory, yes, it would have been quite presumtious to level Germany at that time. Today you have the benefit of hindsight to make you think it would have been such an obvious thing for the Allies to do. What you are proposing is somewhat akin to Minority Report--preemptive action on the mere potential of future crimes. As has been said, Democracy fights its battles with one hand behind the back. As purveyours of our particular set of values, we don't have the same luxuries of summary assumptions and action as dictatorhips and totalitarian regimes. Not every petty little dictator that wants to take over the world has any realistic chance or opportunity to do so. Striking him down at the very thought of it makes us no better than him, just stronger.
> The legality of a war is decided by the winning side.
You might want to pull out your trusty copy of the constitution and check on that. The conditions and procedures for the US going to war are spelled out quite clearly, and nowhere does it bless the president to do so, as long as he wins.
I was talking about the period after OUR regime change, when the next administration hopefully decides that the US is not more equal than the rest of the world.