Yes, but he said "the earthquake is going to happen in 6 to 24 hours".
And he was right, just not about the magnitude. According to another comment after the smaller quake he re-ran the numbers and predicted the larger one that hit a week later but was barred from telling anyone about it.
Yes, but the the wrong prediction created panic.
This caused the investigations by the authorities.
Later, as you say, he re-ran the numbers, using additional data FOLLOWING the event with the wrong magnitude.
He also told a news service that the earthquake "swarm" would end by the end of march. Another wrong prediction.
Fact is, predicting earthquakes with the level of precision he claims is still black magic. He left this home at l'Aquila with his family on the day of the big earthquake - so he got that one right, but he also lost credibility before.
And he may have led other people to believe that there is nothing in this line of research - which is in fact a very serious scientific research, started in 1971, after the Tashkent earthquake. But still has some way to go.
Giuliani was off by a week. He wasn't off by a month or a year. But a week. And he was right about the location (L'Aquila). That's more than a proverbial broken watch.
Yes, but he said "the earthquake is going to happen in 6 to 24 hours".
Roberto
To this day nobody knows how they can consume so much smoke, bread and wine and still be some of the thinnest people in the world!
Preferring small portions of expensive food over affordable supersized meals
And having an enjoyable sexual life instead of living in a sexually-obsessed puritan society that makes you feel guilt if you have fun. Intercourse is a great way of burning calories.
Well, since I actually CARRY my laptop on my back, in a backpack that also has my Canon 40D and a couple of lenses - and I *always* do that, for my own health I would NEVER byt that Dell:-)
And I want to do work with the computer, not just to go and visit friends and play games. So having a useful battery is actually a plus. Having 1.5 hours makes the machine completely useless. For me.
You can keep trying to peddle that nonsense, but I think most/.ers are capable of comparing $1600 and $2800 and coming to their own conclusions. It's not even a close call.
You are the one spreading nonsense.
You are comparing a monster weighting 11 pounds and 2 inches thick to a 7 pound, 1-inch thick portable computer. Smaller parts sometimes cost more.
Try again with a Dull machine that you can carry.
And, by the way, with loudspeakers that are useful. A few days ago a friend of mine showed her Dell machine (business line) and complained that "laptop loudspeakers are crap" - we could hear almost nothing form her computer. My MBP had loud and relatively undistorted sound, and she was shocked...
You are right - I just ran sunspider (on Windows) with the latest nightly of Firefox: Chrome is 1.66 times as fast. On the other hand, Safari 4 even faster still.
I don't mean to dump on V8, all I am saying is that it has some competition for the crown. It is great that we have the choice between so many capable browsers.
Even more important, this may help people to understand what is obvious to us: Microsoft does not care about writing good software. Almost everybody is writing better Javascript engines and browsers (and to some extent operating systems) than Microsoft. In fact, Office is OK, but Microsoft knows where they have to invest money - improving microsoft browsers could make activeX and similar stuff obsolete, loosening their grip. If Office were written as IE is coded, then you would see people dumping it.
But, hopefully, microsoft may be thus forced to make a better browser. A better javascript engine. Better standards support. Better you-name-it. The users would profit. In the worst case, we know where we can find a better browser.
The main effect of GCC for the last 20 years has been to suck all of the air out of the room for anyone else who wanted to develop compilers.
That is one of the most retarded statements I've ever read.
No. What the poster said is true. Also unfair, because GCC is a very useful tool, but it still had a bad influence as well. GCC is extremely useful and produces decent code as well, but it has effectively stifled a lot of C/C++ compiler research. And it seems to become slower with each release. I have a lot of code that was faster with 2.95 than with any 3.x release, and with 4.x it is even slower.
Now, LLVM is still a mixed bag, sometimes code is much faster, sometimes a bit slower, and does not compile everything I throw at it, but it is impressive technology. It has a more modern infrastructure, and finally allows things like compiling to bytecode and dynamic run-time optimisation with C. It may even allow for CPU-independent operating systems in the future, where you have LLVM bytecode in the binaries that will run like natively-compiled code once loaded.
I compiled some C programs _to_ LLVM bytecode and then ran them on my mac.
Their performance was comparable, oftentimes better, than that of the same programs compiled with a recent GCC. And I can still add inline assembler, which then is used only on the right architecture, if I provide C alternatives.
Think about this. This has the potential of *finally* freeing us from dependence on a CPU ISA. It may be an Apple-sponsored project, but we all should be grateful to them that they are actually pushing it.
Its pityful to see that the great Western nations have shackled their people. One of the reason that the US mobile phone market ( and the telecom market in general ) sucks is because of the anti-competitive nature of businesses.
Yes, it is anti-competitive, which is against the spirit of capitalism. This happens often in capitalistic countries: the economic model degenerates. It happens to every economic paradigm: in fact even socialism degenerated. But this is a digression.
This article just goes to show that Apple would rather ask people to pay $600 / $800 for a substandard ( YES SUBSTANDARD ) piece of equipment ( You got Multi-touch but you dont have copy-paste?? COME ON!! )
Well, fact is that you have copy-and-paste on cell phones with a keyboard - and a very clunky, nearly unuseable variant of that on most symbian phones - and currently very few good solutions on phones without a keyboard.
To add copy-and-paste to most windows mobile smartphones you need to install a software add-on. Provided you are allowed to install software on your handset, of course. Same as for the iPhone, currently - I did it, and it works. The next version (3.0) will have it by default.
Mind you, it is not easy to develop a new interface paradigm for a UI function. Even Apple (usually the masters of UI design) took some time with it. Well, now it is coming.
I've used one a lot that a friend has. Games are cool, video player is cool.
Well, you just had a look at the iPhone, probably by somebody that bought it just because it is cool. Okay, this is okay.
But: it has the best browser by far on a small mobile device (the Palm Pre is still vaporware, and since it uses the same html engine, it probably gets performance improvements only by using caching), and it has a lot of useful applications. I use my iPhone to browse the internet, to get timetables, to get weather info, as a currency converter and a maps application, to keep track of my appointments, as a gps device, a pocket calculator, as a portable database of my 4500 classical music CDs, as a portable english, spanish, german dictionary, as a multilingual medical dictionary (useful if you travel a lot), as a remote control for my mac-based multimedial setup at home, a mobile 3g modem (yes), as an iPod, I also have the european Michelin guide and the Wine Guide, and also have a few toys and 12 or so games.
I spent 569 eur on it, factory unlocked, and I use it with prepaid cards in Italy, Germany, Chile, Canada, France- the countries I travel most often to - otherwise I use an international prepaid SIM card. In Italy, Germany, and Chile I can use very inexpensive prepaid data packages.
Now, if I did not do all the things mentioned above, it would have been foolish to spend so much money for a beautiful, very expensive phone. At least for me, I am not rich. But I am using it as much more than just a phone. I do not use it as a camera because I usually have my DSLR with me. But I also took a couple of quick shots (like correspondence - shoot it and keep it - quite handy).
Now, for all the things I do, yes, it still is not a cheap gadget, but it is a very flexible and very useful tool with an apparent premium price that goes in making it thin (I do not like to look like I am carrying a baseball ball in my trousers) and with amazingly well thought ergonomics.
But he's paying over $2000 for the phone and two years of service.
Depends how much he uses the phone. To spend $1500 or more for two years of service is not uncommon in north america, and if you do use all the minutes in the plan, it can actually be a deal.
My phone is from Net 10. I paid $60. It's decent, does what a phone should and has IM/SMS and can send/recv photos.
I pay $15/MO. That is $360, after taxes, for 2 years of service and 150 minutes a month. 10c a minute for more minutes, 5c for messages.
As much as I like gadgets, I just can't imagine paying $90/MO for the iPhone. I'd much rather put that money towards my mortgage. Am I alone in this thinking?
Well, you are not alone. It is not the gadget for you. You would not be using the iPhone for what it was designed - but just as a mobile phone. Which, by the way, it does in a very, very good way. The address book is the best I have seen so far on a cell phone. With a group management application I bought separately, it is just fantastic. But using it only to call and text, that's an expensive toy. You can get a Razr for much less, and for that only it is just as great - just an example, I like think phones.
Roberto
In fact, the iPhone is the only handset I know where you can hot-swap the SIM cards - I never switch it off, I just pop one off and put the new one in. VERY handy. No resyncing. Just works. Very smooth - and Apple implemented it in an amazing way. That's why simlocked or netlocked iPhones are a technological crime!!!
Do you still have to jail-break the phone yourself to use on another GSM carrier?
No, there are solutions to use other carriers that do not involve jailbreaking (such as special cards that fit between the actual sim and the iphone electronics).
No, it does not work like that, at least not everywhere. There is one provider in Italy that does this, I know of no one in any other country.
You can either:
1. Buy a phone, then use the card you want; or
2. You get a subsidised, locked phone with your contract - the preferred way in Germany, where people end up paying much more for the iPhone than the americans, even.
In italy route 1 means that the iPhone is factory-unlocked, in Germany it will cost you more than in Italy and still netlocked to T-Mobile. I bought my iPhone in Italy and have used that several times in Italy, UK, north america and even Chile. With prepaid cards - sometimes even international sims (and will end up spending much less). In Germany and Italy I even have pay-as-you-go data plans that allow me to purchase 500Mb (italy) or 1Gb (germany) for about 10 euros.
As somebody else remarked, copyright infringement is not theft. Both are felonie, but of different nature.
Example. You go to a bookstore, take a book but do not pay for it: theft.
You take a book, make xerox copies of it and then share the copies. Copyright infringement.
Roberto
Because, as an iPhone developer, I am acutely aware that 99% of the people jailbreaking phones do so in order to steal software.
I beg to differ. I jailbroke my iPhone for the following reasons:
1) install tethering software (I am on a network that allows this for other phones, and has no specific clause about iPhone users not being allowed to use the sim for data)
2) install a voice recorder for calls and a blacklisting system
3) play with the unix system on the phone
All my software is paid (except free (as in beer) software of course). Even the apps that require jailbreaking were purchased.
I can just hear it now from the Apple Fans, "Apple has DRM! Do the other services? Nooooo! That's why I buy Apple for these extra value added services! That's why they charge more!"
Well, I am a "faithful" Apple user, and I find that DRM sucks.So I buy Apple HW but I do not buy from the iTMS. I grab from my own CDs. So there's your counterexample.
Roberto
Yeah. My macs are gay. But I talked to them, I explained I am hetero, and they never molested me - they never did anything to hurt my feelings. I am tolerant, but not interested in gay relationships. My computers understood that.
Not that I would ever be interested in having sex with a computer anyway...
Roberto
But, in fact, not even this is true - they DO have very nice traditional dishes. Sadly, 99% of the Germans have forgotten them:( It is not hopeless to find these recipes, and even some good restaurants that prepare them. Mind you, I said it is not hopeless, not that it is easy.
I'm an Italian-American and my relatives in Italy all refer to Berlusconi as "The Dwarf." I don't know if that's commonplace elsewhere in Italy.
Yes, he is often called "il nano" (the dwarf) or "il nano pelato" (the bald dwarf) or even "il psiconano" (the psychic dwarf). I find it very childish, even though I do not like "il silvio nazionale" (the national silvio - yes, YABN (yet another Berlusconi nickname)).
But, then, his opponent Prodi is often called "il mortadella" (the bologna-salami one).
I think Italy is a very nice country with all its arts and good food, but there are too many idiots and bigots.
And how is that different from any other country? Let take as an example the country where I live. Germany. Not much different. Idiots and bigots are an overwhelming majority in every country...
Roberto
The people from the North of italy are very different, and they dont' like the southeners at all. Some actually consider them Italian-speaking africans.
You got almost everything right, but this broad generalization does not give the rest justice.
I come from the north of Italy, even though I now emigrated to Germany. It is not that I do not like the southerners - I do not like the culture many of them have, and I do not identify myselfs with their values: A form of catholicism bordering with paganism, no sense of state, more respect for the mafia than the laws of the state, a sense of family so strong that you cannot "escape" it without being rejected by the whole local community, with obligations that go beyond the laws, ad so on...
An example: in Agrigento, 97% of the families do NOT pay the tax on tv sets, used by the state to fund the state TV, in my home town, Rovigo, however, 97% of the families DO pay this tax - and we are called "fessi", i.e. "dolts", or "nitwits", because of this and many similar examples.
But many notherners that did not fall to the rhetoric of the Lega Nord (The Northern League, our own "Parti Quebecois") can discern. People from Puglia are hard workers and have similar values to the north (they speak a VERY weird and interesting dialect, though, that can drive linguists crazy:-) and even in Sicily, the people of the town of Ragusa are proud to have a clean, efficient public administration and very little Mafia influence.
I do not consider them italian-speaking africans, even though sometimes I ask myself why the State did not agree with the Sicilian separatist movement that was active 1943-1948, then briefly again in the sities!
You know, sometimes it is easy to fall to rhetoric. Recently, in Germany, some calabrian people, connected with the Ndrangheta, have been brutally massacred.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Luca_feud
I just happen to live 20 km from the german town of Duisburg, and for a few weeks the Germans looked at us italians with suspicions, like we all traveled with our "lupara" (a kind of rifle originally conceived to kill wolves threatening sheep) and ready to kill. I was deeply ashamed of my people and almost (almost) muttered "maledetti terroni" between my teeth ("maledetto" means "damned" and "terrone" literally means "peasant", but refers now in a derogatory way to southerners - like they call us notherners "polentoni", i.e. "polenta eaters").
But there is a deep difference between disliking them as a whole or finding some aspects of their culture at odds with the own concepts and ideals of a civilised, organised state. It is the difference between racism and identification with a set of values with no pretense at all of superiority.
i think profit is the wrong word here. there's nothing wrong with a company using FOSS for commercial purposes, like running a LAMP server or installing Linux on the systems they sell. however, i don't think it's ethical for a company to sell free software they didn't write or own the rights to. they can sell support for the software, or sell hardware running the software, but they should provide the FOSS for free.
Well, apple does not "charge for the FOSS they do not write". They charge you for an OS that contains also FOSS. But there is a lot of development by Apple that Apple decided to keep closed (and it is their right to do so) and sell. What's wrong with this? The fact that the two types of product are on the same DVD does not make it a violation of GPL of BSD licenses.
Roberto
For what exactly? The full product name is "Windows Azure" compared to "Azureus" (which is a made up word). I'll admit I noticed the similarity myself but I'd hardly say either of these 2 programs could be mistaken for the other.
I am not sure. One piece of software can be used to download malware, the other one is. Oh, well.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but he said "the earthquake is going to happen in 6 to 24 hours".
And he was right, just not about the magnitude. According to another comment after the smaller quake he re-ran the numbers and predicted the larger one that hit a week later but was barred from telling anyone about it.
Yes, but the the wrong prediction created panic. This caused the investigations by the authorities.
Later, as you say, he re-ran the numbers, using additional data FOLLOWING the event with the wrong magnitude.
He also told a news service that the earthquake "swarm" would end by the end of march. Another wrong prediction.
Fact is, predicting earthquakes with the level of precision he claims is still black magic. He left this home at l'Aquila with his family on the day of the big earthquake - so he got that one right, but he also lost credibility before.
And he may have led other people to believe that there is nothing in this line of research - which is in fact a very serious scientific research, started in 1971, after the Tashkent earthquake. But still has some way to go.
Roberto
Giuliani was off by a week. He wasn't off by a month or a year. But a week. And he was right about the location (L'Aquila). That's more than a proverbial broken watch.
Yes, but he said "the earthquake is going to happen in 6 to 24 hours".
Roberto
Don't forget staying thin!
To this day nobody knows how they can consume so much smoke, bread and wine and still be some of the thinnest people in the world!
Preferring small portions of expensive food over affordable supersized meals
And having an enjoyable sexual life instead of living in a sexually-obsessed puritan society that makes you feel guilt if you have fun. Intercourse is a great way of burning calories.
Roberto
And I want to do work with the computer, not just to go and visit friends and play games. So having a useful battery is actually a plus. Having 1.5 hours makes the machine completely useless. For me.
Roberto
a) no, Macs are not significantly more expensive than PCs
$1600 Dell: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/913148
$2800 MacBook Pro: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB604LL/A?mco=MzA3MTE3NA
You can keep trying to peddle that nonsense, but I think most /.ers are capable of comparing $1600 and $2800 and coming to their own conclusions. It's not even a close call.
You are the one spreading nonsense.
You are comparing a monster weighting 11 pounds and 2 inches thick to a 7 pound, 1-inch thick portable computer. Smaller parts sometimes cost more.
Try again with a Dull machine that you can carry.
And, by the way, with loudspeakers that are useful. A few days ago a friend of mine showed her Dell machine (business line) and complained that "laptop loudspeakers are crap" - we could hear almost nothing form her computer. My MBP had loud and relatively undistorted sound, and she was shocked...
Roberto
You are right - I just ran sunspider (on Windows) with the latest nightly of Firefox: Chrome is 1.66 times as fast. On the other hand, Safari 4 even faster still.
I don't mean to dump on V8, all I am saying is that it has some competition for the crown. It is great that we have the choice between so many capable browsers.
Even more important, this may help people to understand what is obvious to us: Microsoft does not care about writing good software. Almost everybody is writing better Javascript engines and browsers (and to some extent operating systems) than Microsoft. In fact, Office is OK, but Microsoft knows where they have to invest money - improving microsoft browsers could make activeX and similar stuff obsolete, loosening their grip. If Office were written as IE is coded, then you would see people dumping it.
But, hopefully, microsoft may be thus forced to make a better browser. A better javascript engine. Better standards support. Better you-name-it. The users would profit. In the worst case, we know where we can find a better browser.
Roberto
The main effect of GCC for the last 20 years has been to suck all of the air out of the room for anyone else who wanted to develop compilers.
That is one of the most retarded statements I've ever read.
No. What the poster said is true. Also unfair, because GCC is a very useful tool, but it still had a bad influence as well. GCC is extremely useful and produces decent code as well, but it has effectively stifled a lot of C/C++ compiler research. And it seems to become slower with each release. I have a lot of code that was faster with 2.95 than with any 3.x release, and with 4.x it is even slower.
Now, LLVM is still a mixed bag, sometimes code is much faster, sometimes a bit slower, and does not compile everything I throw at it, but it is impressive technology. It has a more modern infrastructure, and finally allows things like compiling to bytecode and dynamic run-time optimisation with C. It may even allow for CPU-independent operating systems in the future, where you have LLVM bytecode in the binaries that will run like natively-compiled code once loaded.
I compiled some C programs _to_ LLVM bytecode and then ran them on my mac.
Their performance was comparable, oftentimes better, than that of the same programs compiled with a recent GCC. And I can still add inline assembler, which then is used only on the right architecture, if I provide C alternatives.
Think about this. This has the potential of *finally* freeing us from dependence on a CPU ISA. It may be an Apple-sponsored project, but we all should be grateful to them that they are actually pushing it.
Roberto
Its pityful to see that the great Western nations have shackled their people. One of the reason that the US mobile phone market ( and the telecom market in general ) sucks is because of the anti-competitive nature of businesses.
Yes, it is anti-competitive, which is against the spirit of capitalism. This happens often in capitalistic countries: the economic model degenerates. It happens to every economic paradigm: in fact even socialism degenerated. But this is a digression.
This article just goes to show that Apple would rather ask people to pay $600 / $800 for a substandard ( YES SUBSTANDARD ) piece of equipment ( You got Multi-touch but you dont have copy-paste?? COME ON!! )
Well, fact is that you have copy-and-paste on cell phones with a keyboard - and a very clunky, nearly unuseable variant of that on most symbian phones - and currently very few good solutions on phones without a keyboard.
To add copy-and-paste to most windows mobile smartphones you need to install a software add-on. Provided you are allowed to install software on your handset, of course. Same as for the iPhone, currently - I did it, and it works. The next version (3.0) will have it by default.
Mind you, it is not easy to develop a new interface paradigm for a UI function. Even Apple (usually the masters of UI design) took some time with it. Well, now it is coming.
Roberto
It's a phone.
It's a smartphone.
I understand the iPhone is a cool toy.
No, it is a smartphone.
I've used one a lot that a friend has. Games are cool, video player is cool.
Well, you just had a look at the iPhone, probably by somebody that bought it just because it is cool. Okay, this is okay.
But: it has the best browser by far on a small mobile device (the Palm Pre is still vaporware, and since it uses the same html engine, it probably gets performance improvements only by using caching), and it has a lot of useful applications. I use my iPhone to browse the internet, to get timetables, to get weather info, as a currency converter and a maps application, to keep track of my appointments, as a gps device, a pocket calculator, as a portable database of my 4500 classical music CDs, as a portable english, spanish, german dictionary, as a multilingual medical dictionary (useful if you travel a lot), as a remote control for my mac-based multimedial setup at home, a mobile 3g modem (yes), as an iPod, I also have the european Michelin guide and the Wine Guide, and also have a few toys and 12 or so games.
I spent 569 eur on it, factory unlocked, and I use it with prepaid cards in Italy, Germany, Chile, Canada, France- the countries I travel most often to - otherwise I use an international prepaid SIM card. In Italy, Germany, and Chile I can use very inexpensive prepaid data packages.
Now, if I did not do all the things mentioned above, it would have been foolish to spend so much money for a beautiful, very expensive phone. At least for me, I am not rich. But I am using it as much more than just a phone. I do not use it as a camera because I usually have my DSLR with me. But I also took a couple of quick shots (like correspondence - shoot it and keep it - quite handy).
Now, for all the things I do, yes, it still is not a cheap gadget, but it is a very flexible and very useful tool with an apparent premium price that goes in making it thin (I do not like to look like I am carrying a baseball ball in my trousers) and with amazingly well thought ergonomics.
But he's paying over $2000 for the phone and two years of service.
Depends how much he uses the phone. To spend $1500 or more for two years of service is not uncommon in north america, and if you do use all the minutes in the plan, it can actually be a deal.
My phone is from Net 10. I paid $60. It's decent, does what a phone should and has IM/SMS and can send/recv photos.
I pay $15/MO. That is $360, after taxes, for 2 years of service and 150 minutes a month. 10c a minute for more minutes, 5c for messages.
As much as I like gadgets, I just can't imagine paying $90/MO for the iPhone. I'd much rather put that money towards my mortgage. Am I alone in this thinking?
Well, you are not alone. It is not the gadget for you. You would not be using the iPhone for what it was designed - but just as a mobile phone. Which, by the way, it does in a very, very good way. The address book is the best I have seen so far on a cell phone. With a group management application I bought separately, it is just fantastic. But using it only to call and text, that's an expensive toy. You can get a Razr for much less, and for that only it is just as great - just an example, I like think phones. Roberto
In fact, the iPhone is the only handset I know where you can hot-swap the SIM cards - I never switch it off, I just pop one off and put the new one in. VERY handy. No resyncing. Just works. Very smooth - and Apple implemented it in an amazing way. That's why simlocked or netlocked iPhones are a technological crime!!!
Roberto
Do you still have to jail-break the phone yourself to use on another GSM carrier?
No, there are solutions to use other carriers that do not involve jailbreaking (such as special cards that fit between the actual sim and the iphone electronics).
But, yes, the phone will be locked to AT&T.
Roberto
No, it does not work like that, at least not everywhere. There is one provider in Italy that does this, I know of no one in any other country.
You can either:
1. Buy a phone, then use the card you want; or
2. You get a subsidised, locked phone with your contract - the preferred way in Germany, where people end up paying much more for the iPhone than the americans, even.
In italy route 1 means that the iPhone is factory-unlocked, in Germany it will cost you more than in Italy and still netlocked to T-Mobile. I bought my iPhone in Italy and have used that several times in Italy, UK, north america and even Chile. With prepaid cards - sometimes even international sims (and will end up spending much less). In Germany and Italy I even have pay-as-you-go data plans that allow me to purchase 500Mb (italy) or 1Gb (germany) for about 10 euros.
Roberto
As somebody else remarked, copyright infringement is not theft. Both are felonie, but of different nature. Example. You go to a bookstore, take a book but do not pay for it: theft. You take a book, make xerox copies of it and then share the copies. Copyright infringement. Roberto
Because, as an iPhone developer, I am acutely aware that 99% of the people jailbreaking phones do so in order to steal software.
I beg to differ. I jailbroke my iPhone for the following reasons:
1) install tethering software (I am on a network that allows this for other phones, and has no specific clause about iPhone users not being allowed to use the sim for data)
2) install a voice recorder for calls and a blacklisting system
3) play with the unix system on the phone
All my software is paid (except free (as in beer) software of course). Even the apps that require jailbreaking were purchased.
Roberto
Does OS X have a way to actually run a program or open a document from Finder using only one keystroke (or even a chord)?
It is an action -but not editing - so: Apple key, and then O for open. Apple-O. Roberto
I can just hear it now from the Apple Fans, "Apple has DRM! Do the other services? Nooooo! That's why I buy Apple for these extra value added services! That's why they charge more!"
Well, I am a "faithful" Apple user, and I find that DRM sucks.So I buy Apple HW but I do not buy from the iTMS. I grab from my own CDs. So there's your counterexample.
Roberto
Macs are gay.
Yeah. My macs are gay. But I talked to them, I explained I am hetero, and they never molested me - they never did anything to hurt my feelings. I am tolerant, but not interested in gay relationships. My computers understood that.
Not that I would ever be interested in having sex with a computer anyway...
Roberto
And how is that different from any other country?
German food sucks.
BWAHAHAH! Yes :) This is a nice comment!
:( It is not hopeless to find these recipes, and even some good restaurants that prepare them. Mind you, I said it is not hopeless, not that it is easy.
But, in fact, not even this is true - they DO have very nice traditional dishes. Sadly, 99% of the Germans have forgotten them
Roberto
I'm an Italian-American and my relatives in Italy all refer to Berlusconi as "The Dwarf." I don't know if that's commonplace elsewhere in Italy.
Yes, he is often called "il nano" (the dwarf) or "il nano pelato" (the bald dwarf) or even "il psiconano" (the psychic dwarf). I find it very childish, even though I do not like "il silvio nazionale" (the national silvio - yes, YABN (yet another Berlusconi nickname)).
But, then, his opponent Prodi is often called "il mortadella" (the bologna-salami one).
Roberto
I think Italy is a very nice country with all its arts and good food, but there are too many idiots and bigots.
And how is that different from any other country? Let take as an example the country where I live. Germany. Not much different. Idiots and bigots are an overwhelming majority in every country...
Roberto
The people from the North of italy are very different, and they dont' like the southeners at all. Some actually consider them Italian-speaking africans.
You got almost everything right, but this broad generalization does not give the rest justice. I come from the north of Italy, even though I now emigrated to Germany. It is not that I do not like the southerners - I do not like the culture many of them have, and I do not identify myselfs with their values: A form of catholicism bordering with paganism, no sense of state, more respect for the mafia than the laws of the state, a sense of family so strong that you cannot "escape" it without being rejected by the whole local community, with obligations that go beyond the laws, ad so on...
:-) and even in Sicily, the people of the town of Ragusa are proud to have a clean, efficient public administration and very little Mafia influence.
An example: in Agrigento, 97% of the families do NOT pay the tax on tv sets, used by the state to fund the state TV, in my home town, Rovigo, however, 97% of the families DO pay this tax - and we are called "fessi", i.e. "dolts", or "nitwits", because of this and many similar examples.
But many notherners that did not fall to the rhetoric of the Lega Nord (The Northern League, our own "Parti Quebecois") can discern. People from Puglia are hard workers and have similar values to the north (they speak a VERY weird and interesting dialect, though, that can drive linguists crazy
I do not consider them italian-speaking africans, even though sometimes I ask myself why the State did not agree with the Sicilian separatist movement that was active 1943-1948, then briefly again in the sities!
You know, sometimes it is easy to fall to rhetoric. Recently, in Germany, some calabrian people, connected with the Ndrangheta, have been brutally massacred. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Luca_feud
I just happen to live 20 km from the german town of Duisburg, and for a few weeks the Germans looked at us italians with suspicions, like we all traveled with our "lupara" (a kind of rifle originally conceived to kill wolves threatening sheep) and ready to kill. I was deeply ashamed of my people and almost (almost) muttered "maledetti terroni" between my teeth ("maledetto" means "damned" and "terrone" literally means "peasant", but refers now in a derogatory way to southerners - like they call us notherners "polentoni", i.e. "polenta eaters").
But there is a deep difference between disliking them as a whole or finding some aspects of their culture at odds with the own concepts and ideals of a civilised, organised state. It is the difference between racism and identification with a set of values with no pretense at all of superiority.
Roberto
You are obviously totally clueless. There are HUGE kernel changes in all these OS X revisions. Roberto
i think profit is the wrong word here. there's nothing wrong with a company using FOSS for commercial purposes, like running a LAMP server or installing Linux on the systems they sell. however, i don't think it's ethical for a company to sell free software they didn't write or own the rights to. they can sell support for the software, or sell hardware running the software, but they should provide the FOSS for free.
Well, apple does not "charge for the FOSS they do not write". They charge you for an OS that contains also FOSS. But there is a lot of development by Apple that Apple decided to keep closed (and it is their right to do so) and sell. What's wrong with this? The fact that the two types of product are on the same DVD does not make it a violation of GPL of BSD licenses. Roberto
For what exactly? The full product name is "Windows Azure" compared to "Azureus" (which is a made up word). I'll admit I noticed the similarity myself but I'd hardly say either of these 2 programs could be mistaken for the other.
I am not sure. One piece of software can be used to download malware, the other one is. Oh, well.
Nobody was more surprised than me, Roberto. And I can honestly say that I'm still surprised, and delighted, twenty years later (this Dec 4).
Well, that's normal! My wife still bears with me. But this is after only eight years, so I still have time ... keeping fingers crossed!
Roberto