I'll bet the moderation field is at least 8-bits, so there should be 256 moderation items. Plenty of room for "spelling error", "grammar error", "I see your point but I disagree", "yes", "no", "too drunk to moderate", and many other.
More specific moderations would be useful, but I think that what would really help is if when moderating you had to type in a justification and then if there were any easy way to see the moderations/justifications on any posting.
... Conversely when they name informants/defectors within the enemy forces they would generally be viewed as bad.
Sometimes secrecy is necessary and other times it is not, it seems both sides want to for an absolute on this though.
The US government accused them of naming informants after refusing to help redact the documents. Wikileaks made a best effort to redact the documents and beyond pronouncements from the US government I have heard no evidence that they failed at it. So I'd say Wikileaks is being more balanced than the US government in this matter.
It essentially boils down to whether you believe in the War on Terror or not.
In other words, it essentially boils down to whether you're an indoctrinated drone or not. All that the government has proved lately is that terrorism works. The people lose many of their freedoms in exchange for a false sense of security, and they just accept it.
Maybe it's because I agree, but this sure seems more like a strong opinion than a troll. Can someone explain why this is modded troll?
Well to use a cliche, some of my best friends are Christians. But...
As of 2008, 76% of the US population self-identifies as Christian, with about 4% as "other" religions. About 15% self-identifies with None/No religion. The final 5% responded "don't know/refuse" so we'll ignore them.
So what's the make up of the US Congress? Well, it's 86.6% Christian, 12.4% "other" and 0.9% unknown. Pete Sark may be an agnostic, or some such, but had to back peddle and say he is a Unitarian. In short, Christians and Jews are overrepresented in elected government while (openly) non-believers can not get elected.
Many of these representatives belong to powerful Christian organizations which influence not only US law, but also the laws of other nations (see Senator James Inhofe and the draconian anti-gay legislation of Uganda, or the abortion gag rule that every Republican president uses to limit funding of NGOs, etc.). And then there is the ongoing folly about sex education, evolution, and the age of the universe that is a constant (and seemingly losing) battle in US school systems. Plus the uses of leviticus to argue against gay marriage (but not to enforce other "laws", oddly). The adding of "In God We Trust" to coins in the 1860s, making that the national motto in 1956, and changing the pledge to include "one country under God" in 1956. Now used by some as evidence that we were founded as a Christian nation. All in a country with a supposed separation of church and state. And yet many Christians feel persecuted...
As an agnostic, I get really tired of hearing about people "doing God's work" or how "God is their moral compass" and other implications that people with different (or significantly reduced) magical thinking can not be moral or trust worthy. I also get really tired of huge social battles and the restricting of personal freedoms based on taking the Bible "partially literally." I say partially, because if we took it literally we would not be much different from several Middle Eastern countries. Depending on whether one wants to focus on the vengeance or the forgiveness bits (but there is a lot of vengeance...) So while it may not be the most mature response, some people feel inclined to verbally poke back at the apparent insanity of our society.
I never thought I'd see the day when there'd be a major desktop OS that's even more closed than Windows. But, here it is.
Here it is? Where? Did they add DRM to OS X? Did they take away Xcode? Did they remove the ability to download tarballs, zip files, and disk images? Did they take away the Finder and the Terminal application? Did they remove Java? Did they remove bash, Perl and Python? Did they prevent Flash from running in the browser? Did they disable sudo? Did they make it so you can't install Fink, Mac Ports, and Homebrew? Did they disable Applescript? Did they remove the Automator? Did they take away anything?
Did they remove one, single, solitary capability or piece of functionality?
Maybe Spaces, it's unclear to me if Spaces is part of the mix in Mission Control or if it went away. I hope they didn't remove it as I like multiple desktops...
I have the nagging suspicion that Apple is indeed going to turn anything but the MacPro into a larger version of an iPhone, or the equivalent of an XBox.
Xbox is locked down, Windows is not. Could it be that iOS is locked down, but not OS X?
Goodbye Mac, hello Linux.
I have a sneaking suspiscion you don't have a Mac to get rid of...
Apple is doing something extremely correct and keeping their GUI intuative and (I do not know how, but) compatible with older OSs they released
What are you talking about? Pretty much the only thing the OS X GUI has in common with earlier versions of MacOS is the location of the menu bar. Even the Finder operates on totally different principles.
You're right in the jump from OS9 to OS X. I never liked the original MacOS, so I don't know the good bits I missed. But 10 years ago puts him back to about OS X 10.0, and Apple has been evolving the GUI in a pretty "backwards compatible" way there for the basics. the Apple menu still gets you to System Preferences, Log in, Log out, etc... The Application->About, Preferences and Quit are still there. The (x) (-) (+) controls are in the same place, the dock is functionally similar. It's all minor - no more stripes, more brushed metal. iTunes is a bit of a wild card. All while adding Spotlight, Spaces, Expose, standardizing Services, etc... But in the same time frame MS went from Windows 98/2000 clunk, to XP's "My First Computer Playschool" to Windows 7 "Alpha channel is way cooler than being able to read the URL in the browser." But more importantly, while Windows always had the Control Panel, what was in it and what wasn't and how you get there seems to keep moving around.
Apple will wind down OS X over the decade - the PC era is over.
For users, this was heralded by the advent of the iPad, which will usher in 10,000 copies. For data centers, this came with large-scale, production virtualization.
Your beloved PC? Now a "content creator's" workstation. Everything from word processing to simple photo-editing goes on line - or into an "app".
Maybe for most people, but don't forget that part of the content to be created is the apps that run on all these devices. Maybe there will be some cloud-based programming suite, but I wouldn't count the desktop out for me, a programmer. Especially for iDevice apps which are essentially running OS X with a different GUI. Plus, we are becoming an ever more content consuming society, so there will be a lot of content creators. Long live the desktop/laptop/local-CPU-and-sotrage-so-I-can-work-on-an-island!
... Also, even after several years, it still bothers me that closing a window on a Mac doesn't terminate the application. I can understand the philosophical rationale (for what it's worth) behind this, but it seems unnecessary and wasteful.
It's funny, but I actually like the differentiation between closing a window and an application. But I do a lot via the keyboard, not the mouse, so when I want to close a window I use Command-W and know that the application will still be in memory to use Command-O or Command-N rather than having to relaunch the app. If I want to quit then I use Command-Q. I was actually a bit annoyed when they changed "single window/document/view" type applications to exit when their window was closed (though I get the rational.)
I also launch everything from Spotlight rather than spelunking around the Finder. One of the funniest things to me is how people (not saying you) assume that Mac OS X is not for power users and is mouse centric. But if you enable "All Controls" in System Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts, have Spotlight enabled and know the difference between Command-Tab and Command-`, you can do most driving from the keyboard. Add the Automater's Save As Service, the consistent Service interface, applescript and the ability to assign global, application and context sensitive keyboard shortcuts and for me Mac OS X is a power user's dream. All right out of the box. For instance, using the Application's Shortcuts I've bound Command-. to bring up the System Preferences and by creating a "Finder Application.app" in the automator I can use Spotlight to jump right to the finder rather than tabbing through 20 apps or mousing around in expose. Plus Shift-Command-G in virtually any file dialog and Finder and you can type in a path rather than click up and down folder hierarchies.
While I'm in fanboy mode, I'll mention what I love most is the consistency. All (non-MS) application's text edit areas support the basic emacs-like ^a, ^d ^e, and ^k functionality. I'm an old emacs/bash guy, so I'm happy, even if it makes no sense to young-uns. Also, once you know about property lists, you can figure out where prefs are for 99% of applications. And if you can find to the right docs, you can tweak away. It almost sucks that there is no uninstaller, but it rarely matters and if you care - once again the consistency tells you exactly where to look for any left over files. I think that the "application bundle" is a great way to deal with managing all the files related to a program.
Apologies for the fanboyism. I also came from years of Linux experience, which I loved. But for some reason Mac OS X just "clicked" for me.
If you don't have it, I highly recommend TinkerTool which is free "as in beer" to explore some level of system/UI tweaking. Also, Lingon
is a pretty decent open source tool for navigating all the system and user startup services provided by launchd. It's no longer under development, but it's an Apache licensed program and pretty useful so maybe someone will pick it up. I install Lingon via MacPorts (though the git based HomeBrew" is intriguing...)
So you're saying the whole purpose of this exercise is to annoy the DoD? I thought the whole purpose was to watch the watchers. And you're describing Punked for Government.
The purpose is to bring attention to the fact that the government (or any organization whose leaks are published) is acting in bad faith. The fact that the information was already out there is irrelevant if people aren't aware that the information is out there.
In the case of this principle, it has been widely stated and incorporated into rulings in the British justice system. As such it forms a part of British law, regardless of whether or not we have a document that "grants" this "right" to people.
Still seems like a good idea to write these things down. ISO 9001 and all that...
I am a late teenaged person, I eat only fast and junk food, don't exercise, and drink at least 3 cans of regular soda a day. I am underweight, and have several friends with similar operating scenarios. Please explain.
As many have said, you are young and your metabolism and pancreas can deal with it for the moment. Not everyone's genetics are as robust, even when they are young. What you are doing seems to be working, but chances are that you are putting your pancreas under constant stress to deliver insulin fast enough. It is likely that you are setting yourself up for insulin resistance, mid-life obesity and type 2 diabetes, though you may be lucky and be just fine.
Sorry if I sound preachy. As a teen, I ate the same diet as you and got away with it. I considered myself virtually indestructible. I couldn't really even put on weight until I was in my early 30s. By 35 I was having serious blood sugar issues. I'm 45 now and though I'm not diabetic, the writing is on the wall. If I want to avoid becoming insulin dependent, I have to really watch what I eat - and even then there are no guarantees. By US standards I'm still thin, but I can seriously affect my BMI (and belly) by consuming fairly small amounts of liquid calories. breads and other simple carbohydrates.
You'd be doing your future-self a major favor by skipping the daily sugar-water and eating less processed, more "real" food.
By being younger, having better functioning pancreases, higher than average metabolisms, exercising to the point of obsession and/or having eating habits that are counter to the society in which they live (assuming they live in the US.) It's not a simple matter of watching the scale - do you really think you are eating exactly the right amount of food? If you are, you are spending a lot of time and energy to do so. More likely, your body's self-regulating mechanisms are still functioning better than average. Maybe because you've avoided the crappy food that eventually wears out the pancreas, your age or lucky genetics.
Humans are hard wired to be somewhat gluttonous, especially when sugar, fat and salt are involved because these nutrients and calories in general were scarce for the majority of human history. Modern processed food is the perfect storm. On top of that, humans are social animals and eating together is a social activity. Good luck getting your average pre-teen or teenager to not join their friends for a burger, fries and liter of sugar water. If you look into behavioral economics, it turns out it's really hard to turn down the "better deal". For example, it takes a lot of will power to pay $2.55 for a "short" (8 oz.) latte at, when a "tall" latte (12 oz.) is $2.65. And the short isn't even listed on menu.
The entire agribusiness model is predicated on cheap carbs consumed in massive quantities. Restaurants have to compete with portion size because people want a "good deal." The food that average people eat is processed to the point of barely requiring chewing. This rant could go on and on, but what I'm trying to say is that it is hard for people to get good information, it's not just how much but what you eat, it's a hassle to get good food, and there are biological, economic and social pressures to eat too much of the wrong stuff.
We either address the lack of information, the marketing lies and insane incentives that are feeding the feeding frenzy, or we spend a fortune on the medical and other costs of becoming a nation of type-2 diabetics.
You know there's a reason why we have two symbols, right?...
William Oughtred chose the cross symbol a couple of hundred years before vector analysis was developed.
If he had chosen the dot operator, then Gibbs (or whoever chose the cross symbol in vector analysis) would have invented/borrowed some other symbol. Who knows, maybe they would have chosen the cross and then I could blame them.
This is where I blame computers for making math a little more difficult.
5 x 2 = x x 1 is a real PITA to go through when you type it out, even if you wrote it as 5 x 2 = X x 1, it looks like crap.
...
I like to blame William Oughtred for choosing the cross as inspiration for the multiplication sign (a×b), instead of the interpunct (ab) like the apparently wiser heathens choose. For Christ's sake, the plus already looks like a cross...
Damn, can't get the ⋅ to render in the preview, hopefully it will in the submission, so that should be (a⋅b) not (ab).
I find it confusing more than anything. CEO of HP stealing a free dinner or two is peanuts. It'd be like if you or me stole a grape from a grocery store.
Well, you don't get rich(er) by spending your own money.
Well, part of the news here is the comparison to Apple's heavily-controlled store model. Would this have happened on the iPhone? Would the app have even been approved?
Those are examples of a developer "hacking" into people's itunes accounts to buy his crappy apps, not the app itself stealing data from the phone and sending it to a server. Still sucks, but it's a different issue. I think the itunes username and passwords were harvested via good old-fashioned viruses, trojans and phishing. Maybe some brute force attacks.
Can't you create a (password + optional SSL protected) website for posting those updates? Hosting is cheap these days and it does not look like you would use a lot of hard drive space and/or bandwidth.
(I am not the author of the GPP.) I can, but I don't expect all my friends to do so, especially all my non-geek friends. For myself and virtually everyone that I stay in touch with: (free + convenient + slightly evil) trumps (cheap + hassle + ideologically sound). Probably doesn't bode well for the future of personal privacy, but there you go...
Slashdot Mirror
I'll bet the moderation field is at least 8-bits, so there should be 256 moderation items. Plenty of room for "spelling error", "grammar error", "I see your point but I disagree", "yes", "no", "too drunk to moderate", and many other.
More specific moderations would be useful, but I think that what would really help is if when moderating you had to type in a justification and then if there were any easy way to see the moderations/justifications on any posting.
... Conversely when they name informants/defectors within the enemy forces they would generally be viewed as bad.
Sometimes secrecy is necessary and other times it is not, it seems both sides want to for an absolute on this though.
The US government accused them of naming informants after refusing to help redact the documents. Wikileaks made a best effort to redact the documents and beyond pronouncements from the US government I have heard no evidence that they failed at it. So I'd say Wikileaks is being more balanced than the US government in this matter.
It essentially boils down to whether you believe in the War on Terror or not.
In other words, it essentially boils down to whether you're an indoctrinated drone or not. All that the government has proved lately is that terrorism works. The people lose many of their freedoms in exchange for a false sense of security, and they just accept it.
Maybe it's because I agree, but this sure seems more like a strong opinion than a troll. Can someone explain why this is modded troll?
Well to use a cliche, some of my best friends are Christians. But...
As of 2008, 76% of the US population self-identifies as Christian, with about 4% as "other" religions. About 15% self-identifies with None/No religion. The final 5% responded "don't know/refuse" so we'll ignore them.
So what's the make up of the US Congress? Well, it's 86.6% Christian, 12.4% "other" and 0.9% unknown. Pete Sark may be an agnostic, or some such, but had to back peddle and say he is a Unitarian. In short, Christians and Jews are overrepresented in elected government while (openly) non-believers can not get elected.
Many of these representatives belong to powerful Christian organizations which influence not only US law, but also the laws of other nations (see Senator James Inhofe and the draconian anti-gay legislation of Uganda, or the abortion gag rule that every Republican president uses to limit funding of NGOs, etc.). And then there is the ongoing folly about sex education, evolution, and the age of the universe that is a constant (and seemingly losing) battle in US school systems. Plus the uses of leviticus to argue against gay marriage (but not to enforce other "laws", oddly). The adding of "In God We Trust" to coins in the 1860s, making that the national motto in 1956, and changing the pledge to include "one country under God" in 1956. Now used by some as evidence that we were founded as a Christian nation. All in a country with a supposed separation of church and state. And yet many Christians feel persecuted...
As an agnostic, I get really tired of hearing about people "doing God's work" or how "God is their moral compass" and other implications that people with different (or significantly reduced) magical thinking can not be moral or trust worthy. I also get really tired of huge social battles and the restricting of personal freedoms based on taking the Bible "partially literally." I say partially, because if we took it literally we would not be much different from several Middle Eastern countries. Depending on whether one wants to focus on the vengeance or the forgiveness bits (but there is a lot of vengeance...) So while it may not be the most mature response, some people feel inclined to verbally poke back at the apparent insanity of our society.
And ooh look at this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10150118 .. wonderful system the Europeans have there
I never thought I'd see the day when there'd be a major desktop OS that's even more closed than Windows. But, here it is.
Here it is? Where? Did they add DRM to OS X? Did they take away Xcode? Did they remove the ability to download tarballs, zip files, and disk images? Did they take away the Finder and the Terminal application? Did they remove Java? Did they remove bash, Perl and Python? Did they prevent Flash from running in the browser? Did they disable sudo? Did they make it so you can't install Fink, Mac Ports, and Homebrew? Did they disable Applescript? Did they remove the Automator? Did they take away anything? Did they remove one, single, solitary capability or piece of functionality?
Maybe Spaces, it's unclear to me if Spaces is part of the mix in Mission Control or if it went away. I hope they didn't remove it as I like multiple desktops...
I have the nagging suspicion that Apple is indeed going to turn anything but the MacPro into a larger version of an iPhone, or the equivalent of an XBox.
Xbox is locked down, Windows is not. Could it be that iOS is locked down, but not OS X?
Goodbye Mac, hello Linux.
I have a sneaking suspiscion you don't have a Mac to get rid of...
BNU?
What are you talking about? Pretty much the only thing the OS X GUI has in common with earlier versions of MacOS is the location of the menu bar. Even the Finder operates on totally different principles.
You're right in the jump from OS9 to OS X. I never liked the original MacOS, so I don't know the good bits I missed. But 10 years ago puts him back to about OS X 10.0, and Apple has been evolving the GUI in a pretty "backwards compatible" way there for the basics. the Apple menu still gets you to System Preferences, Log in, Log out, etc... The Application->About, Preferences and Quit are still there. The (x) (-) (+) controls are in the same place, the dock is functionally similar. It's all minor - no more stripes, more brushed metal. iTunes is a bit of a wild card. All while adding Spotlight, Spaces, Expose, standardizing Services, etc... But in the same time frame MS went from Windows 98/2000 clunk, to XP's "My First Computer Playschool" to Windows 7 "Alpha channel is way cooler than being able to read the URL in the browser." But more importantly, while Windows always had the Control Panel, what was in it and what wasn't and how you get there seems to keep moving around.
The Desktop OS is dead.
Apple will wind down OS X over the decade - the PC era is over.
For users, this was heralded by the advent of the iPad, which will usher in 10,000 copies. For data centers, this came with large-scale, production virtualization.
Your beloved PC? Now a "content creator's" workstation. Everything from word processing to simple photo-editing goes on line - or into an "app".
Maybe for most people, but don't forget that part of the content to be created is the apps that run on all these devices. Maybe there will be some cloud-based programming suite, but I wouldn't count the desktop out for me, a programmer. Especially for iDevice apps which are essentially running OS X with a different GUI. Plus, we are becoming an ever more content consuming society, so there will be a lot of content creators. Long live the desktop/laptop/local-CPU-and-sotrage-so-I-can-work-on-an-island!
It's funny, but I actually like the differentiation between closing a window and an application. But I do a lot via the keyboard, not the mouse, so when I want to close a window I use Command-W and know that the application will still be in memory to use Command-O or Command-N rather than having to relaunch the app. If I want to quit then I use Command-Q. I was actually a bit annoyed when they changed "single window/document/view" type applications to exit when their window was closed (though I get the rational.)
I also launch everything from Spotlight rather than spelunking around the Finder. One of the funniest things to me is how people (not saying you) assume that Mac OS X is not for power users and is mouse centric. But if you enable "All Controls" in System Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts, have Spotlight enabled and know the difference between Command-Tab and Command-`, you can do most driving from the keyboard. Add the Automater's Save As Service, the consistent Service interface, applescript and the ability to assign global, application and context sensitive keyboard shortcuts and for me Mac OS X is a power user's dream. All right out of the box. For instance, using the Application's Shortcuts I've bound Command-. to bring up the System Preferences and by creating a "Finder Application.app" in the automator I can use Spotlight to jump right to the finder rather than tabbing through 20 apps or mousing around in expose. Plus Shift-Command-G in virtually any file dialog and Finder and you can type in a path rather than click up and down folder hierarchies.
While I'm in fanboy mode, I'll mention what I love most is the consistency. All (non-MS) application's text edit areas support the basic emacs-like ^a, ^d ^e, and ^k functionality. I'm an old emacs/bash guy, so I'm happy, even if it makes no sense to young-uns. Also, once you know about property lists, you can figure out where prefs are for 99% of applications. And if you can find to the right docs, you can tweak away. It almost sucks that there is no uninstaller, but it rarely matters and if you care - once again the consistency tells you exactly where to look for any left over files. I think that the "application bundle" is a great way to deal with managing all the files related to a program.
Apologies for the fanboyism. I also came from years of Linux experience, which I loved. But for some reason Mac OS X just "clicked" for me.
If you don't have it, I highly recommend TinkerTool which is free "as in beer" to explore some level of system/UI tweaking. Also, Lingon
is a pretty decent open source tool for navigating all the system and user startup services provided by launchd. It's no longer under development, but it's an Apache licensed program and pretty useful so maybe someone will pick it up. I install Lingon via MacPorts (though the git based HomeBrew" is intriguing...)
OK, I'll go away now...
OK then, where did you obtain this mystical viewpoint into reality that tells you far more than is being reported?
Magic Eight Ball, duh.
So you're saying the whole purpose of this exercise is to annoy the DoD? I thought the whole purpose was to watch the watchers. And you're describing Punked for Government.
The purpose is to bring attention to the fact that the government (or any organization whose leaks are published) is acting in bad faith. The fact that the information was already out there is irrelevant if people aren't aware that the information is out there.
How do you get rid of $100,000,000,000 without anybody noticing?
I don't know, but I'm willing to try.
In the case of this principle, it has been widely stated and incorporated into rulings in the British justice system. As such it forms a part of British law, regardless of whether or not we have a document that "grants" this "right" to people.
Still seems like a good idea to write these things down. ISO 9001 and all that...
But no Nobel Prize
Yup. Total loser.
So what do we do about Brian May (Scientist/Rock Star)?
Envy him...
I am a late teenaged person, I eat only fast and junk food, don't exercise, and drink at least 3 cans of regular soda a day. I am underweight, and have several friends with similar operating scenarios. Please explain.
As many have said, you are young and your metabolism and pancreas can deal with it for the moment. Not everyone's genetics are as robust, even when they are young. What you are doing seems to be working, but chances are that you are putting your pancreas under constant stress to deliver insulin fast enough. It is likely that you are setting yourself up for insulin resistance, mid-life obesity and type 2 diabetes, though you may be lucky and be just fine.
Sorry if I sound preachy. As a teen, I ate the same diet as you and got away with it. I considered myself virtually indestructible. I couldn't really even put on weight until I was in my early 30s. By 35 I was having serious blood sugar issues. I'm 45 now and though I'm not diabetic, the writing is on the wall. If I want to avoid becoming insulin dependent, I have to really watch what I eat - and even then there are no guarantees. By US standards I'm still thin, but I can seriously affect my BMI (and belly) by consuming fairly small amounts of liquid calories. breads and other simple carbohydrates.
You'd be doing your future-self a major favor by skipping the daily sugar-water and eating less processed, more "real" food.
By being younger, having better functioning pancreases, higher than average metabolisms, exercising to the point of obsession and/or having eating habits that are counter to the society in which they live (assuming they live in the US.) It's not a simple matter of watching the scale - do you really think you are eating exactly the right amount of food? If you are, you are spending a lot of time and energy to do so. More likely, your body's self-regulating mechanisms are still functioning better than average. Maybe because you've avoided the crappy food that eventually wears out the pancreas, your age or lucky genetics.
Humans are hard wired to be somewhat gluttonous, especially when sugar, fat and salt are involved because these nutrients and calories in general were scarce for the majority of human history. Modern processed food is the perfect storm. On top of that, humans are social animals and eating together is a social activity. Good luck getting your average pre-teen or teenager to not join their friends for a burger, fries and liter of sugar water. If you look into behavioral economics, it turns out it's really hard to turn down the "better deal". For example, it takes a lot of will power to pay $2.55 for a "short" (8 oz.) latte at, when a "tall" latte (12 oz.) is $2.65. And the short isn't even listed on menu.
The entire agribusiness model is predicated on cheap carbs consumed in massive quantities. Restaurants have to compete with portion size because people want a "good deal." The food that average people eat is processed to the point of barely requiring chewing. This rant could go on and on, but what I'm trying to say is that it is hard for people to get good information, it's not just how much but what you eat, it's a hassle to get good food, and there are biological, economic and social pressures to eat too much of the wrong stuff.
We either address the lack of information, the marketing lies and insane incentives that are feeding the feeding frenzy, or we spend a fortune on the medical and other costs of becoming a nation of type-2 diabetics.
You know there's a reason why we have two symbols, right? ...
This is where I blame computers for making math a little more difficult.
5 x 2 = x x 1 is a real PITA to go through when you type it out, even if you wrote it as 5 x 2 = X x 1, it looks like crap.
...
I like to blame William Oughtred for choosing the cross as inspiration for the multiplication sign (a×b), instead of the interpunct (ab) like the apparently wiser heathens choose. For Christ's sake, the plus already looks like a cross...
Damn, can't get the ⋅ to render in the preview, hopefully it will in the submission, so that should be (a⋅b) not (ab).
Brawndo's Got Electrolytes!
I find it confusing more than anything. CEO of HP stealing a free dinner or two is peanuts. It'd be like if you or me stole a grape from a grocery store.
Well, you don't get rich(er) by spending your own money.
Don't like ground based readings? You could look at the satellite data.
Well, part of the news here is the comparison to Apple's heavily-controlled store model. Would this have happened on the iPhone? Would the app have even been approved?
Yes. Yes it would have.
Those are examples of a developer "hacking" into people's itunes accounts to buy his crappy apps, not the app itself stealing data from the phone and sending it to a server. Still sucks, but it's a different issue. I think the itunes username and passwords were harvested via good old-fashioned viruses, trojans and phishing. Maybe some brute force attacks.
Can't you create a (password + optional SSL protected) website for posting those updates? Hosting is cheap these days and it does not look like you would use a lot of hard drive space and/or bandwidth.
(I am not the author of the GPP.) I can, but I don't expect all my friends to do so, especially all my non-geek friends. For myself and virtually everyone that I stay in touch with: (free + convenient + slightly evil) trumps (cheap + hassle + ideologically sound). Probably doesn't bode well for the future of personal privacy, but there you go...