I suggest you go read Freakonomics, where they tackle the myth of crack-dealers earning lots and lots of cash. Those who peddle the stuff on the street are actually low-income earners. Non-comission Amazon link here.
I don't knoe what planet you live on but here in Europe (As witnessed by sight in at least Norway and Denmark), the 360 is VERY much available. Not to speak of the Japanese market.
found a better job, or has some totally non-hateful reason for leaving
How can the HR dept. be sure of this? I'm pretty sure that if the company is big enough, the two weeks of extra pay is peanuts compared to the damage one disgruntled employee would do, if anything as a joke. Sure, he could do it before handing over the resignation but then he'd risk being without a job. Anyway, it is called cutting the risk magins as close as possible.
Nice that we can agree to disagree. My G17 has had 2000 rounds through it since I bought it privately a couple of months ago. My GF/SO is planning on (former Navy medic / NATO sailor) buying a Jericho 941 in the Baby Eagle (9x19, full steel reciever) TCN-coated edition. Since it is a good target gun. And pink. She has been a gunclub member for nearly 6 months and is thereby allowed to buy the gun and store it in my gun vault.
1. Sucks to be you. Why not go for the low-crime, low murder option? It's your to choose. 2. They were arrested, and in a population of four million (and a region of 1 million), they caused the entry crime stats to spike. Make no mistake, they were effectiv, trawling high class residantial ares during night, braking into as much as four - five houses and flats per night. They were in teams of two, approx. four teams operating in the city and two in the larger region. Forced entry is rare and practically non-existent. Further; see above. 3. During military, I learned that up close an effective hand weapon is not a gun (since they are son easy to avoid, ironicaly). The most effective is the extensible baton. (Usually) non lethal and renders an assilant to be a non threat quickly. I don't know why, but americans put far, far too much faith in ther small weaponry like hand guns. When assulted, most won't be able to use it effectively anyway. Specially in a country where every attacker must assume that their victim is armed and dangerous so they have to be even more dangerous. Guns are only effective after extensive tranging, beyond the rageng in lifelike situations. In half the time it took me to learn how to actually use the handgun under extreme pressure, we learned effective techniques to render an opponent defenseless with our bare hands. Stealing the gun from an opponent is actually quite easy when you learn it, and most people will let you so close to them that you can practically grab the gun. Be very glad that the assailant don't have MP training if the only defense you have is a gun. 4. I shoot a stock Glock 17 in competitions. No mods what so ever, besides a polished trigger. In combat, we use them for that not just bragging at the NRA meetings, it will remain snugly inside a hip holster. Only to be used if there is no other weapon available. As the saying goes: "a pistol is only useful for fighting your way back to the rifle you never should have put down anyway". My educated guess from medic training and the like is that a civilian without proper gun training will have a substantually larger chance of firmly killing the drywall of his house than the assailant. With a two - three week course, they might have a chanse to do something useful with the gun, and actually defending themselves. But luckily I live a place where I don't have to worry about gun crime at all (it's not non-esistend but very rare and confined to the hardcore criminals who never use it on civilians since it means a lot more time in the slammer if they are caught with it), the police respond quickly to emergencies and we actually can engage an assailant with something other than a gun. Yes, I am serious. Our former prime minister, othervise a dick, actually knocked a bank robber unconcious with a waste basket during a robbery. Our police spend more time on the treadmill than the donut shop, so they actually outpace the criminals and can run after them without fearing gun use.
Imagine that.
5. Pffft... If you are going to use straw man arguments, at least have the imagination to do something more relevant than that. How about gun accidents and pool accidents? Now go google. And stop using the car so much, you are only digging the hole for your nation even bigger.
First; it is extremely unlikely that a thief will try to enter an occupied house. This is so rare, that when it happened to a handful (6-8 houses) this summer it made national headline news. It was a gang of criminals from eastern Europe who were not very adept to see wether people were in the houses or not.
Second; none of these criminals had weapons on them and noone were harmed. They knew very little about this country, but they knew that if they would have guns on them and they were detected (or even worse for them, use their weapons) they would become the center of of a trigger happy armed police hunt that would last a long time. The police around here are normally unarmed, but they do know how to operate an MP5 and can get permission to arm within minutes. Seconds if they need or do it themselves if the situation is critical. That is why they did not arm themselves.
Third; this country has a very, very liberal self defense law. You are allowed to do whatever it takes to protect yourself or another person from harm. This be things like murder, rape or natural disasters. Yet, the issue of gun carry is moot here, and the few times a gun has been used in argued self defense it has been deemed murder. Why? Becaus,when armed with guns, the victim often use excessive force. You are allowed to stop a perp from commiting or finishing the attack, but the last self defense cases were merely pissed off property owners shooting the perp in the back, on the run. It is much easier to stop a rape with a heavy stone than a gun (in most rapes, arms are held by the attacker leaving only the legs as a self defense tool.) if you are a passer by that witness this. Around here, most attackers will think it is an air gun or a toy gun anyway and may try to attack you. Unless it is a shotgun, because they are prevailent. There is no court in this country that will convict you for knocking a rapis unconscious until the police arrive (median responce time is around 5 minutes for such calls, they get extreme priority).
Fourth; we have gun culture. Guns are used for hunting and sports. Not self defense. That is why I have (and is allowed to have) a gun, for recreational shooting. And by the way, by the looks of the target skills of those gun owners i chat with in the US, I find it very amusing that they rely on the gun as a self defense tool. I hope the attacker is within 5 meters...
Fifth; (this is in reply to another posting) re: knives vs. guns. Have you ever heard about a drive-by with knives? No? Then you obiously haven't understood the difference between the two.
It is not so much the ammount of guns as the easy availablity at home. I'm a gun owner in Europe (2 semi pistols) and overall, we have just as many guns at home as the US, due to the fact that the national guard store their weapons at home. I don't care for the American attitude towards guns, but that is their problem. What scares me is how they treat their weapons and their hostility towards safe gun practice. I store the guns in a gunvault, approved by the insurance company, bolted to the concrete wall, hidden in my flat and protected by an alarm. This is the demands the police have for gun ownership, and I like them. On the american discussion boards, they often debate how their guns were stolen and what to do. This is a non-issue here, since it is practically impossible for thieves to stel the guns, and since my apartment has an alarm they never even bother to try. Crime averted. From what I see on the discussion boards, a rather large segment of the American gun owners store their guns in extremely dumb places like drawers, closets and small lockable boxes around the house and vechicles. This is, of course, an invitation to thieves. Especially sinve gun boxes are very easy to identify by their size and apperance. Many of them also carry their gun around on their body, loaded. This is strictly forbidden where I live and for a good reason. Easy access to guns lead to more gun use. Simple as that. This goes for police, civilians and criminals. Here, the guns are hard to get by, even if they exist in a lot of homes, since it is a hunting nation. But it is a nation educated in gun use (there's a demand of clean police record, gun club membership, 3-day mandatory course and proven gun club participation for over six months plus recommendation from gun club predsidents to get a handgun here. Shotguns and hunting rifles are easier).
What America lacks is not more gun freedom, but more gun sense. Every yahoo can get a gun, fine, but the real trouble starts when you lose the gun to someone due to poor storage sense. I guess that if the US would try to improve on the huge loss of firearms to criminals every year, the NRA would freak out and go to Capitol Hill chaning the second amendment. I don't see anywhere that the second amendment calls for moronic storage of their firearms? I'm a bit scared when I read bout civilians storing 10+ firearmsin their home, just locking them in a closet. Here, that is punisable because you don't want to give the thieves an edge. Over there, it's "part of my freedom, dangnabbit!".
1 laptop carry case with Huge Evil News corporation logo (free) feilled with: 1 Apple PowerBook 15" 1,25 mHz 1 Network cable 1 Laptop lock (Fuck you, asshole university students who steal from other students) 2 Applications for Glock 17 9mm and.22 GSP ownership (What is it with laptop cases and handguns?) 1 Canon EOS 20D camera 1 USB camera cable 1 Uni paper, rated excellent
From (What i gather is his blog) Dave Winer: "Haven't gotten iChat to work with Google Talk yet (tried, but got confused)."
Holy hell! How can you get confused about something like that? OK, he's new to Macs but sheesh! My mother did it herself, from webbased instructions, and she's no computer geek just a computer user.
...is how many "unpaying" VoIP there are in the US. I, for one, use services that are free, like Skype, to communicate with friends. Skype does have a payment service, but along with my friends I never need it. We kinda fly under the radar.
I can't imagine that there are just a few of us that use systems like iChat, Skype etc. for voice communication.
Nemi has started to blow ass the latest 1/2 year or so. Just some very simple drawing with a crappy 6-word poem seems to dominate the panels lately. It is going the way of Pondus. For quality comics from Norway see: Kollektivet, M or swedish Rocky.
Accoring to the Systran widget for Dashboard (God bless you and your widgets, Dashboard!) it means "Retaining eye". I guess it's a an eye for a hook of some kind.
Some reviewers crap all over iTunes and say that "the MuVo allows for easy directory browsing so you have no need for a specific program". I agree with you, that is much, much less obvious to ordinary users than a single program acting as the sync, database, storage manager and music player. As iTunes or WinAmp with this plugin.
Some of these guys are really, really lame. They kinda remind me of an episode from Sweden: Some Star Wars fans were camping out for a month in advance to see episode 2 and were excited as hell to get the first tickets. When they went inside and the movie started the theatre wasonly slightly more than half-full.
Furthermore the costumes are lame, lame, lame. When you are a smelly 37-year old nerd, you do not look even remotely like Amidala og Anakin.
Besides, everyone that matters knows the only thing you really need to bring to a premiere is a towel.
It is coming. And it will be cheaper than the half-assed Windows Media Centre as well. Airport Video will stream 720p HDTV from your Mac where you bought the series, Decomp will happen on dedicated hardware in the Airport Video, you computer will be the storage and purchase hub. A remote will hook up to the Airport Video, so you can control it via the screen or without (for music).
I was athe the theatre yesterday, in Oslo. There are two theatres showing it, Colosseum (The largest THX theatre in the world apparently) and Vika (Original showing without subtitles). The Colosseum feature was sold out, but not until late friday. At Vika there was still 300 available tickets out of 400.
What you call informative, I call frustrating, confusing and uninformative. It does absolutely no good for more than 99% og the users and have contributed to making Windows a big joke.
Now, the crashing of the Mac is how it should be done. A screen saying, in 6 languages, that the system has experienced a non-recoverable error and must be rebooted. And here's how you reboot.
The other 1% that actually understand what would be on a windows bluescreen of death on the Mac, can go to NVRAM and check out the message. Even before the machine boots again.
I sure as hell belong to the 99%.
Commercial problems...
on
BBC Launches APIs
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Could a commercial broadcaster ever take a step like this?"
As one who work in a commercial news website; nope. We offer simple feeds to private non-commercial sites that wants to have out 10 latest news headlines. But other than that, it would be like handing out gold over to the competition. Besies, we want people to visit our site. Not get all the goodies on other sites.
Now, a state-run actor can do this, because their mraginal loss is approx. zero. We have a state rune broadcaster in Norway and they SUCK. I hate them with a passion, because thei charge the license fee and give us crap back. If there was an option to pay to the BBC and only get BBC programming to my TV, I'd do it in a heartbeat. NRK (the state broadcaster) has so much crap, I don't have the concistence to pay for it. So I don't have a TV.
BBC is cool. they plan to make most of their archives available for the public free. Here we have out of copyright works DRMed in Windows Media DRM and published for a fee by the film board. How retarded is that? Do you want to see a clip from your state broadcaster produced comedy show that YOU financed through license fees? Cough up 5 dollars pr 1/2 hour, scumbag, and take this Media Player DRMed file.
God, I hate them. No wonder they fail misreably in the internet sector, even while having the HUGE advantage f bein a state broadcaster.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, a radioactive pile has been built by a boy scout... :)
I suggest you go read Freakonomics, where they tackle the myth of crack-dealers earning lots and lots of cash. Those who peddle the stuff on the street are actually low-income earners. Non-comission Amazon link here.
I don't knoe what planet you live on but here in Europe (As witnessed by sight in at least Norway and Denmark), the 360 is VERY much available. Not to speak of the Japanese market.
Just use Applekey + lefft click... ;)
How can the HR dept. be sure of this? I'm pretty sure that if the company is big enough, the two weeks of extra pay is peanuts compared to the damage one disgruntled employee would do, if anything as a joke. Sure, he could do it before handing over the resignation but then he'd risk being without a job. Anyway, it is called cutting the risk magins as close as possible.
Nice that we can agree to disagree. My G17 has had 2000 rounds through it since I bought it privately a couple of months ago. My GF/SO is planning on (former Navy medic / NATO sailor) buying a Jericho 941 in the Baby Eagle (9x19, full steel reciever) TCN-coated edition. Since it is a good target gun. And pink. She has been a gunclub member for nearly 6 months and is thereby allowed to buy the gun and store it in my gun vault.
If you don't like it, don't read it.
1. Sucks to be you. Why not go for the low-crime, low murder option? It's your to choose.
2. They were arrested, and in a population of four million (and a region of 1 million), they caused the entry crime stats to spike. Make no mistake, they were effectiv, trawling high class residantial ares during night, braking into as much as four - five houses and flats per night. They were in teams of two, approx. four teams operating in the city and two in the larger region. Forced entry is rare and practically non-existent. Further; see above.
3. During military, I learned that up close an effective hand weapon is not a gun (since they are son easy to avoid, ironicaly). The most effective is the extensible baton. (Usually) non lethal and renders an assilant to be a non threat quickly. I don't know why, but americans put far, far too much faith in ther small weaponry like hand guns. When assulted, most won't be able to use it effectively anyway. Specially in a country where every attacker must assume that their victim is armed and dangerous so they have to be even more dangerous. Guns are only effective after extensive tranging, beyond the rageng in lifelike situations. In half the time it took me to learn how to actually use the handgun under extreme pressure, we learned effective techniques to render an opponent defenseless with our bare hands. Stealing the gun from an opponent is actually quite easy when you learn it, and most people will let you so close to them that you can practically grab the gun. Be very glad that the assailant don't have MP training if the only defense you have is a gun.
4. I shoot a stock Glock 17 in competitions. No mods what so ever, besides a polished trigger. In combat, we use them for that not just bragging at the NRA meetings, it will remain snugly inside a hip holster. Only to be used if there is no other weapon available. As the saying goes: "a pistol is only useful for fighting your way back to the rifle you never should have put down anyway". My educated guess from medic training and the like is that a civilian without proper gun training will have a substantually larger chance of firmly killing the drywall of his house than the assailant. With a two - three week course, they might have a chanse to do something useful with the gun, and actually defending themselves. But luckily I live a place where I don't have to worry about gun crime at all (it's not non-esistend but very rare and confined to the hardcore criminals who never use it on civilians since it means a lot more time in the slammer if they are caught with it), the police respond quickly to emergencies and we actually can engage an assailant with something other than a gun. Yes, I am serious. Our former prime minister, othervise a dick, actually knocked a bank robber unconcious with a waste basket during a robbery. Our police spend more time on the treadmill than the donut shop, so they actually outpace the criminals and can run after them without fearing gun use.
Imagine that.
5. Pffft... If you are going to use straw man arguments, at least have the imagination to do something more relevant than that. How about gun accidents and pool accidents? Now go google. And stop using the car so much, you are only digging the hole for your nation even bigger.
First; it is extremely unlikely that a thief will try to enter an occupied house. This is so rare, that when it happened to a handful (6-8 houses) this summer it made national headline news. It was a gang of criminals from eastern Europe who were not very adept to see wether people were in the houses or not.
Second; none of these criminals had weapons on them and noone were harmed. They knew very little about this country, but they knew that if they would have guns on them and they were detected (or even worse for them, use their weapons) they would become the center of of a trigger happy armed police hunt that would last a long time. The police around here are normally unarmed, but they do know how to operate an MP5 and can get permission to arm within minutes. Seconds if they need or do it themselves if the situation is critical. That is why they did not arm themselves.
Third; this country has a very, very liberal self defense law. You are allowed to do whatever it takes to protect yourself or another person from harm. This be things like murder, rape or natural disasters. Yet, the issue of gun carry is moot here, and the few times a gun has been used in argued self defense it has been deemed murder. Why? Becaus,when armed with guns, the victim often use excessive force. You are allowed to stop a perp from commiting or finishing the attack, but the last self defense cases were merely pissed off property owners shooting the perp in the back, on the run.
It is much easier to stop a rape with a heavy stone than a gun (in most rapes, arms are held by the attacker leaving only the legs as a self defense tool.) if you are a passer by that witness this. Around here, most attackers will think it is an air gun or a toy gun anyway and may try to attack you. Unless it is a shotgun, because they are prevailent. There is no court in this country that will convict you for knocking a rapis unconscious until the police arrive (median responce time is around 5 minutes for such calls, they get extreme priority).
Fourth; we have gun culture. Guns are used for hunting and sports. Not self defense. That is why I have (and is allowed to have) a gun, for recreational shooting. And by the way, by the looks of the target skills of those gun owners i chat with in the US, I find it very amusing that they rely on the gun as a self defense tool. I hope the attacker is within 5 meters...
Fifth; (this is in reply to another posting) re: knives vs. guns. Have you ever heard about a drive-by with knives? No? Then you obiously haven't understood the difference between the two.
What America lacks is not more gun freedom, but more gun sense. Every yahoo can get a gun, fine, but the real trouble starts when you lose the gun to someone due to poor storage sense. I guess that if the US would try to improve on the huge loss of firearms to criminals every year, the NRA would freak out and go to Capitol Hill chaning the second amendment. I don't see anywhere that the second amendment calls for moronic storage of their firearms? I'm a bit scared when I read bout civilians storing 10+ firearmsin their home, just locking them in a closet. Here, that is punisable because you don't want to give the thieves an edge. Over there, it's "part of my freedom, dangnabbit!".
And then... I'm fairly certain someone at Apple courted this guy. Hard.
So, in other words, he came around about when Steve Jobs was in fashion again? When MacOS were on the road to MacOS X?
Well, I was a Mac hater as well, and never understand why people liked the childish looking, always crashing OS.
Now I have a PowerBook and won|t look back for now. It is a computer that I can use as a tool, without feeling like a tool. For the computer, that is.
1 laptop carry case with Huge Evil News corporation logo (free) feilled with: .22 GSP ownership (What is it with laptop cases and handguns?)
1 Apple PowerBook 15" 1,25 mHz
1 Network cable
1 Laptop lock (Fuck you, asshole university students who steal from other students)
2 Applications for Glock 17 9mm and
1 Canon EOS 20D camera
1 USB camera cable
1 Uni paper, rated excellent
Holy hell! How can you get confused about something like that? OK, he's new to Macs but sheesh! My mother did it herself, from webbased instructions, and she's no computer geek just a computer user.
...is how many "unpaying" VoIP there are in the US. I, for one, use services that are free, like Skype, to communicate with friends. Skype does have a payment service, but along with my friends I never need it. We kinda fly under the radar.
I can't imagine that there are just a few of us that use systems like iChat, Skype etc. for voice communication.
Nemi has started to blow ass the latest 1/2 year or so. Just some very simple drawing with a crappy 6-word poem seems to dominate the panels lately. It is going the way of Pondus. For quality comics from Norway see: Kollektivet, M or swedish Rocky.
Didn't do squat on my Tiger PowerBook... :)
Accoring to the Systran widget for Dashboard (God bless you and your widgets, Dashboard!) it means "Retaining eye". I guess it's a an eye for a hook of some kind.
Some reviewers crap all over iTunes and say that "the MuVo allows for easy directory browsing so you have no need for a specific program". I agree with you, that is much, much less obvious to ordinary users than a single program acting as the sync, database, storage manager and music player. As iTunes or WinAmp with this plugin.
Some of these guys are really, really lame. They kinda remind me of an episode from Sweden: Some Star Wars fans were camping out for a month in advance to see episode 2 and were excited as hell to get the first tickets. When they went inside and the movie started the theatre wasonly slightly more than half-full.
Furthermore the costumes are lame, lame, lame. When you are a smelly 37-year old nerd, you do not look even remotely like Amidala og Anakin.
Besides, everyone that matters knows the only thing you really need to bring to a premiere is a towel.
It is coming. And it will be cheaper than the half-assed Windows Media Centre as well. Airport Video will stream 720p HDTV from your Mac where you bought the series, Decomp will happen on dedicated hardware in the Airport Video, you computer will be the storage and purchase hub. A remote will hook up to the Airport Video, so you can control it via the screen or without (for music).
The digital hub becomes a reality.
Not that I like it, but LOTR was sold out in advance for several days after the premiere.
I was athe the theatre yesterday, in Oslo. There are two theatres showing it, Colosseum (The largest THX theatre in the world apparently) and Vika (Original showing without subtitles). The Colosseum feature was sold out, but not until late friday. At Vika there was still 300 available tickets out of 400.
And this is on day TWO after the premiere, folks.
Not to be an asshole, but so does North Korea. I like Cuba, I think Castro hs done some good for them but he is is still a dictator.
What you call informative, I call frustrating, confusing and uninformative. It does absolutely no good for more than 99% og the users and have contributed to making Windows a big joke.
Now, the crashing of the Mac is how it should be done. A screen saying, in 6 languages, that the system has experienced a non-recoverable error and must be rebooted. And here's how you reboot.
The other 1% that actually understand what would be on a windows bluescreen of death on the Mac, can go to NVRAM and check out the message. Even before the machine boots again.
I sure as hell belong to the 99%.
Could a commercial broadcaster ever take a step like this?"
As one who work in a commercial news website; nope. We offer simple feeds to private non-commercial sites that wants to have out 10 latest news headlines. But other than that, it would be like handing out gold over to the competition. Besies, we want people to visit our site. Not get all the goodies on other sites.
Now, a state-run actor can do this, because their mraginal loss is approx. zero. We have a state rune broadcaster in Norway and they SUCK. I hate them with a passion, because thei charge the license fee and give us crap back. If there was an option to pay to the BBC and only get BBC programming to my TV, I'd do it in a heartbeat. NRK (the state broadcaster) has so much crap, I don't have the concistence to pay for it. So I don't have a TV.
BBC is cool. they plan to make most of their archives available for the public free. Here we have out of copyright works DRMed in Windows Media DRM and published for a fee by the film board. How retarded is that? Do you want to see a clip from your state broadcaster produced comedy show that YOU financed through license fees? Cough up 5 dollars pr 1/2 hour, scumbag, and take this Media Player DRMed file.
God, I hate them. No wonder they fail misreably in the internet sector, even while having the HUGE advantage f bein a state broadcaster.