There are no warships that can survive a missile striking the hull. Also, your argument does not refute the parent argument. To summarise your post: "they can fire missiles from speedboats" "But if they do that, the US would sink every ship bigger than a speedboat". Yes... Also, subs are not that useful against hundreds of speedboats. Regular ships have enough trouble with them as it is (eg Somali pirates, drug dealers etc.) Speed boats are fast and can be used to cover a large area, the Somalis have extended the normal operating range to thousands of kilometers by converting some into what are effectively mobile fuel dumps.
it certainly doesn't provide the polished overall experiences that Microsoft or Apple do.
Nice switch. The Linux variant being discussed by the OP was Android, which is by all accounts pretty polished (the latest version in particular has been widely praised), but your then go on to define your argument against Android based on desktop Linux distributions. Desktop Linux and Android are not the same, so this line of reasoning is completely invalid. I could go on and point out that many people don't care about visual bling, and how it's taken years for Windows and OS X to incorporate support for simple concepts like software repositories that Linux distributions have had for over a decade (do the Windows and Mac app store repositories even do dependency tracking across packages yet?) Linux isn't even a desktop. If you're going to say that something isn't polished, at least tell people what you are talking about - Gnome, KDE, Xfce?
It does make sense to collaborate with your largest trading partners to produce a common base of legislation for trade and issues that directly affect trade (eg employment rights, movement of labour etc.). Think of it from a systems engineering perspective - a single trading market needs protocols in place to function. EU Directives specify the basic protocols. Each nation is free to implement those protocols as they wish in national law. A single market that crosses national boundaries can not function without a corresponding legal system to regulate it. For an analogy, imagine every city in your nation implemented different laws regarding trade, freedom of movement, residency, contract law, currency etc. Trade between those cities would become more difficult, and more expensive, and there would be considerable barriers to individuals relocating for work, which would make acquisition of talented employees more difficult.
This app will cost way more than $500. A team of professional app developers, working on a government contract, will cost hundreds of thousands, the final cost with maintenance and bug fixing may well be over $1 million. Remember that even a very simple app costs $100k+ http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/11/23/210241/osha-app-costs-govt-200k
Agreed. And I'd go further and say that it should be available to everyone. From TFA: "The software will allow the Prime Minister to see the latest NHS waiting-list figures, crime statistics, unemployment numbers and a wide variety of other data at a glance." The big question is, why isn't all of this information being made available to the general public? It is not secret, it is not personal, it is just a summary view of various national statistics. Once again the tax payer funds software development but will never see the actual software, and citizens are denied access to what should be public data.
Actually the US median salary is lower than $38k: "The overall median personal income for all individuals over the age of 18 was $24,062[4] ($32,140 for those age 25 or above) in the year 2005.[5] The overall median income for all 155 million persons over the age of 15 who worked with earnings in 2005 was $28,567." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
Every manufacturer abandons old phones. There is no phone that will get manufacturer supported updates forever (I will be very surprised if MS is still supporting updates for all of the existing WP phones in even 5 years). Once you accept that fact, the question becomes: how long do you personally require updates for? If you actually do require updates beyond the manufacturer's support period, then you will need to rely on community software, and so far only the Android community is doing that. If you don't require updates beyond the manufacturer's support period, then you can rely on that.
And a salary in California is on the low end of a salary in Monaco. But it doesn't mean that much - the absolute value of a salary is not usually directly comparable between nations. You need to use a metric like PPP instead.
The actual stated value is £25k. Median UK salary is about £24k. The position is advertised as "graduate" and academic research scale (funded by University of Cambridge). Given those constraints, £25k is decent - the low end of the pay scale is around £17k. (Bizarrely, there are people who think academic researchers are all about the money)...
The summary actually overstated the technical aspects, the actual job advert states that maintaining the speech system is only part of the position.
Managing national and international travel for Prof. Hawking and his care team. Expect to spend around 3 months per year abroad!
Development and maintenance of Professor Hawking's communication and speech systems
Procurement and maintenance of his wheelchairs and accessible van
Preparation of lecture graphics and public speaking
Dealing with the media and press
Answering inquiries from the public and maintaining the website
The average person upgrades their phone every 14 months, so your comparison to a Walmart buyer who only expects 3 years service isn't that far from the truth. Most people don't make buying decisions based on software updates. It may be annoying to us geeks, but that doesn't make it less true. Look at the iPhone 3g, software updates were killed while some users were still on 2 year contracts, but it didn't seem to affect future sales figures.
How is the Walmart etc. pile 'em high sell 'em cheap" business model short-term and unsustainable? It would appear that the model can be sustained as long as we have natural resources and cheap mass manufacturing. The mass market will only gravitate to a premium product if cost is no consideration. Otherwise we'd all be driving BMWs...
I am personally highly skeptical that an average temperature change in the region of a tenth of a degree or whatever it has been over the past decade could be responsible for this.
You assume the local change is the same as the global mean change. In fact, due to the way a mean value is calculated, change in the global mean temperature can be caused by localised small or large increases and decreases. Also, check out the global mean deviation from ice age to temperate Earth and associated climatic events... you may be surprised by how change of the mean temperature by only a few degrees has historically caused a collapse in global fish stocks.
Microsoft Office. Apparently Gates insisted that the Office association had to be there for Windows Phone. I've seen print adverts that still empathize Windows plus Office.. problem is that very few people care about running Office on their phones.. MS pimps something they care about but phone buyers don't.
That site exists to track Apple patent applications "in search of future features and secrets," as the site puts it [patentlyapple.com]. It's not celebrating patents
Did you even look at the site? Their slogan, which you can't miss because it's in the page header, is "Celebrating Apple's Spirit of Invention. They Imagine. They Explore. They Inspire and Invent." It's hard to interpret that as not celebrating Apple's patents, in the context of a site which exists to list Apple's patents...
How was it pure xenophobia with Japan? Their stuff used to be crap, ask Doc Brown.
Japan wasn't under the control of an autocratic government like China is, nor is their history full of autocrats and strict living.
Are we talking about the same Japan? The one that has a centuries history of strict living culture? The one of which was said "THE Government of Japan is paternal, more autocratic in the power of her Emperor and ruling class than any of prominence now existing."
Four things that wouldn't have been possible with closed source: 1 Port it to Windows. Yeah, you can run Android apps on Windows now.. 2 Amazon took the source and created the Fire and their own app store. 3 Cyanogenmod and other independent distributions. 4 MIPS and x86 ports.
Funny, you should say that, I have a friend who has been working in Korea with one of the managers of the Galaxy S project. He said that the S was actually a beta but Samsung went to market with it. His exact words were "Wait for the S2. That is the real Galaxy!"
You assume that Android branding is important. If Google adds onerous restrictions then these manufacturers can sell essentially the same phone unbranded, form their own brand, or partner with say Amazon.
It's a phone. The majority of buyers have no interest in upgrading the operating system. The average person replaces their phone every 12-18 months. That's when they get their software upgrades. Remember: There are still millions of people happily using XP, and with no intention of upgrading. It just isn't important to a lot of people.
Maybe so, but Samsung didn't release the Galaxy S in most countries until near the end of 2010, so I'd argue that the total figures are a more valid metric in this case (they still represent the bulk of 12 months sales before the s2 was released). Similarly, you would not compare iPhone 4s figures for 2011 against a phone that has been selling since January.
Apple fans once said the same thing about Android phones: "Who the hell is going to buy one when they could get an iPhone instead? The iPhone isn't even more expensive when you consider your time etc." Now that Android turned out to be popular we don't see these arguments so much anymore.
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There are no warships that can survive a missile striking the hull. Also, your argument does not refute the parent argument. To summarise your post: "they can fire missiles from speedboats" "But if they do that, the US would sink every ship bigger than a speedboat". Yes... Also, subs are not that useful against hundreds of speedboats. Regular ships have enough trouble with them as it is (eg Somali pirates, drug dealers etc.) Speed boats are fast and can be used to cover a large area, the Somalis have extended the normal operating range to thousands of kilometers by converting some into what are effectively mobile fuel dumps.
Let them have the original iPhone.
412 MHz... Too slow to ever be useful.
it certainly doesn't provide the polished overall experiences that Microsoft or Apple do.
Nice switch. The Linux variant being discussed by the OP was Android, which is by all accounts pretty polished (the latest version in particular has been widely praised), but your then go on to define your argument against Android based on desktop Linux distributions. Desktop Linux and Android are not the same, so this line of reasoning is completely invalid. I could go on and point out that many people don't care about visual bling, and how it's taken years for Windows and OS X to incorporate support for simple concepts like software repositories that Linux distributions have had for over a decade (do the Windows and Mac app store repositories even do dependency tracking across packages yet?) Linux isn't even a desktop. If you're going to say that something isn't polished, at least tell people what you are talking about - Gnome, KDE, Xfce?
It does make sense to collaborate with your largest trading partners to produce a common base of legislation for trade and issues that directly affect trade (eg employment rights, movement of labour etc.). Think of it from a systems engineering perspective - a single trading market needs protocols in place to function. EU Directives specify the basic protocols. Each nation is free to implement those protocols as they wish in national law. A single market that crosses national boundaries can not function without a corresponding legal system to regulate it. For an analogy, imagine every city in your nation implemented different laws regarding trade, freedom of movement, residency, contract law, currency etc. Trade between those cities would become more difficult, and more expensive, and there would be considerable barriers to individuals relocating for work, which would make acquisition of talented employees more difficult.
This app will cost way more than $500. A team of professional app developers, working on a government contract, will cost hundreds of thousands, the final cost with maintenance and bug fixing may well be over $1 million. Remember that even a very simple app costs $100k+ http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/11/23/210241/osha-app-costs-govt-200k
Agreed. And I'd go further and say that it should be available to everyone. From TFA: "The software will allow the Prime Minister to see the latest NHS waiting-list figures, crime statistics, unemployment numbers and a wide variety of other data at a glance." The big question is, why isn't all of this information being made available to the general public? It is not secret, it is not personal, it is just a summary view of various national statistics. Once again the tax payer funds software development but will never see the actual software, and citizens are denied access to what should be public data.
Actually the US median salary is lower than $38k: "The overall median personal income for all individuals over the age of 18 was $24,062[4] ($32,140 for those age 25 or above) in the year 2005.[5] The overall median income for all 155 million persons over the age of 15 who worked with earnings in 2005 was $28,567." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
Every manufacturer abandons old phones. There is no phone that will get manufacturer supported updates forever (I will be very surprised if MS is still supporting updates for all of the existing WP phones in even 5 years). Once you accept that fact, the question becomes: how long do you personally require updates for? If you actually do require updates beyond the manufacturer's support period, then you will need to rely on community software, and so far only the Android community is doing that. If you don't require updates beyond the manufacturer's support period, then you can rely on that.
And a salary in California is on the low end of a salary in Monaco. But it doesn't mean that much - the absolute value of a salary is not usually directly comparable between nations. You need to use a metric like PPP instead.
The summary actually overstated the technical aspects, the actual job advert states that maintaining the speech system is only part of the position.
Managing national and international travel for Prof. Hawking and his care team. Expect to spend around 3 months per year abroad! Development and maintenance of Professor Hawking's communication and speech systems Procurement and maintenance of his wheelchairs and accessible van Preparation of lecture graphics and public speaking Dealing with the media and press Answering inquiries from the public and maintaining the website
The average person upgrades their phone every 14 months, so your comparison to a Walmart buyer who only expects 3 years service isn't that far from the truth. Most people don't make buying decisions based on software updates. It may be annoying to us geeks, but that doesn't make it less true. Look at the iPhone 3g, software updates were killed while some users were still on 2 year contracts, but it didn't seem to affect future sales figures.
How is the Walmart etc. pile 'em high sell 'em cheap" business model short-term and unsustainable? It would appear that the model can be sustained as long as we have natural resources and cheap mass manufacturing. The mass market will only gravitate to a premium product if cost is no consideration. Otherwise we'd all be driving BMWs...
Seamless experiences always win out over time.
Actually I think you'll find that "cheap and good enough" wins over time. See, for example, fast food, supermarkets, shoes, clothing, housing etc.
I am personally highly skeptical that an average temperature change in the region of a tenth of a degree or whatever it has been over the past decade could be responsible for this.
You assume the local change is the same as the global mean change. In fact, due to the way a mean value is calculated, change in the global mean temperature can be caused by localised small or large increases and decreases. Also, check out the global mean deviation from ice age to temperate Earth and associated climatic events... you may be surprised by how change of the mean temperature by only a few degrees has historically caused a collapse in global fish stocks.
Microsoft Office. Apparently Gates insisted that the Office association had to be there for Windows Phone. I've seen print adverts that still empathize Windows plus Office.. problem is that very few people care about running Office on their phones.. MS pimps something they care about but phone buyers don't.
That site exists to track Apple patent applications "in search of future features and secrets," as the site puts it [patentlyapple.com]. It's not celebrating patents
Did you even look at the site? Their slogan, which you can't miss because it's in the page header, is "Celebrating Apple's Spirit of Invention. They Imagine. They Explore. They Inspire and Invent." It's hard to interpret that as not celebrating Apple's patents, in the context of a site which exists to list Apple's patents...
Japan wasn't under the control of an autocratic government like China is, nor is their history full of autocrats and strict living.
Are we talking about the same Japan? The one that has a centuries history of strict living culture? The one of which was said "THE Government of Japan is paternal, more autocratic in the power of her Emperor and ruling class than any of prominence now existing."
Learning from the Nazis isn't enough... http://xkcd.com/984/
Four things that wouldn't have been possible with closed source: 1 Port it to Windows. Yeah, you can run Android apps on Windows now.. 2 Amazon took the source and created the Fire and their own app store. 3 Cyanogenmod and other independent distributions. 4 MIPS and x86 ports.
Funny, you should say that, I have a friend who has been working in Korea with one of the managers of the Galaxy S project. He said that the S was actually a beta but Samsung went to market with it. His exact words were "Wait for the S2. That is the real Galaxy!"
You assume that Android branding is important. If Google adds onerous restrictions then these manufacturers can sell essentially the same phone unbranded, form their own brand, or partner with say Amazon.
It's a phone. The majority of buyers have no interest in upgrading the operating system. The average person replaces their phone every 12-18 months. That's when they get their software upgrades. Remember: There are still millions of people happily using XP, and with no intention of upgrading. It just isn't important to a lot of people.
Maybe so, but Samsung didn't release the Galaxy S in most countries until near the end of 2010, so I'd argue that the total figures are a more valid metric in this case (they still represent the bulk of 12 months sales before the s2 was released). Similarly, you would not compare iPhone 4s figures for 2011 against a phone that has been selling since January.
Also described : the death of the PC. Oh, wait...
Apple fans once said the same thing about Android phones: "Who the hell is going to buy one when they could get an iPhone instead? The iPhone isn't even more expensive when you consider your time etc." Now that Android turned out to be popular we don't see these arguments so much anymore.