Instead of complying with evils requirements, RIM could have well say "thanks but no thanks", thus doing a lot of advertising on how secure they were, and how strong their privacy concern was. This would have had a tremendous marketing effect. We would have all think about RIM as a very good company.
Now, we all know that RIM's network is full of spy watching us. The fact that appart from these spies, the network WAS to be considered very safe doesn't add up. We 100% know now, that somebody is listening.
They might have succeeded in keeping their market up and running in India and other Arabs countries, but now myself and many others well understand that we wont ever be able to trust a blackberry again. I really think this will hurt RIM in the long run. At least I wont forget, and will continue using OTR on open platforms like the n900.
While claiming that they can push more power is ridiculous (it's so easy considering that the standards and regulations are limiting to a ridiculous 250mW in Europe, 500 in USA), it's also totally useless. Of course, you can emit with more power, but then the person who will try to connect to your hotspot will have to emit also with more power, otherwise data are going on one direction only.
The paper also claims some questionable superlatives such as 'China is one of the countries suffering most from hacking.'
I believe that Chinese, more than in any other countries, are all using Windows, and have a very poor knowledge of computing in general. Nearly all (if not simply all) banking access are windows only, and so are so many other websites. As a consequence, I wouldn't be surprised if the rate of trojaned workstation was a way higher in China, and simply considering the amount of people in this country with internet access could render the above affirmation as correct.
The point is: nobody wants to run bloated software anymore, and Flash certainly is one of them. This is THE thing that makes everyone's computer slow, and also THE thing that has one security hole every day (or so). It is also extremely badly supported in open source platforms. Once we got HTML5 and video support for sites like youtube/dailymotion/vimeo, then really, there wont be any point in taking care of all the issues we are having when installing or upgrading Flash. The issue is not about the functionality of Flash that, by the way, are quite cool. It's all about the so poor quality of the product itself, that will make everyone so happy to jump into HTML5.
Why is it every time there's an phone article, you N900 guys come out and tout your unloved phones?
Maybe because we are tired of hearing about "news" that aren't news at all? Maybe because we are tired of the Job's marketing for the masses, that also reaches Slashdot? Or because we are open source and freedom lovers, and can't stand the fact that people are diving into the jail of the first computing platform all time, where you can't decide what software you can run? Choose the best answer...
Yes, we all know you can do everything in an unrestricted way on your amazing wonderphone.
That is correct. Including: installing Chromium, Opera and Mozilla, just because I feel like it, and without anyone to tell me that it is forbidden. Or compiling my own software if I want to (I did my own port of "joe" and "mtr" because I really missed them). Sorry, I quite don't want to buy a Mac to be able to port a tiny text editor...
It's time you guys faced up to the fact that the experience of using it is truly awful and nobody wants to buy this phone, regardless of what it can do. I'm not sure Nokia could give these away for free.
Any reason that is pushing you to say this that you would care mentioning? The only thing that I don't like is the slowness of Empathy, the rest of is pure wonder.
All this reeks of desperately trying to justify your purchase to an uncaring world.
Well, it's justified already by the numerous customer support tickets I have answer with it, all the email and podcasts (Floss weekly for example, using Gpodder) I have read, the music I listen using the FM transmitter and so on.
We're happy with our phones and obviously don't care about yours, so please stop telling us about it.
Sure we'll stop... as soon as the iPhone propaganda will stop too! Oh, and I forgot... We'll also stop when people will praise Apple and their god M. Jobs for being so nice to allow this or that apps to reach the store, when the only information that there is, is the lack of freedom. Seriously, I'm sick of all this, and people like you that don't understand how much installing the apps you want is important.
On the n900, the devices are called wlan0 and gprs0. IMHO, it's a way better naming than ethX, but at the end, who cares, as long as you can identify who's in use?
Now, about the revenue of the app store, how can you tell? I'm sure you are just making a wild guess here, and mine is that you are totally wrong. Let's say every iPhone user is buying 10 USD worth of apps, that is already reaching a quarter of a billion. Are you saying that this is insignificant? I don't think so.
Actually, as I wrote just above, it starts to be worth turning off after 15 seconds... Sure, it will "use" your engine and other components a bit more, but you will still use less petrol.
Well, in China, there's a countdown that is displayed in many crosses. That way, when I see that I will have to wait more than 15 seconds, I turn off my engine. 15 seconds is how much it takes to make it worth turning off the engine. Less than this, and you will consume more petrol starting the engine than leaving it running idle during 14 seconds (at least, this is what I read). Sure, this would be nicer if it was all automated, but it's cool enough to be able to do it to begin with.
Can you talk French, Chinese, and (a bit of) Spanish? If you can't, then you'll be more polite and excuse some of my mistakes. Anyway, even if you did understand these languages, you should stay polite and refrain from such (totally useless) comments that only deserve more than the disrespect you are throwing at me.
Do you think my mother is going to setup a gallery code [...]?
As if using or setting-up a gallery was sooooo hard. If you didn't know, there's 100s of hosts that are offering a point and click systems to install things like that. No need to upload anything: select the app, the folder, click next, and it's ready. Even a child could do it.
Truth is, your mother will use flickr because she doesn't know anything else (because you didn't tell her because you only know your geek way to setup a gallery PHP app). But let's forget about easiness.
Sure, setting-up her own domain and have it hosted is a bit more work than using $big_brother_public_server. But first, I never wrote it would be as easy, and mostly the job of a web hosting company to help people doing so. Or if you cared about your mother's privacy, you would have explain her why she shouldn't use flickr, and give a hand... Isn't it the role of people doing IT to explain what's beyond the scene, and do a bit of education for those who wont know?
Now, go ahead, and pretend that you want everything: free of charge, easy to use, and with privacy. If you are going this way, I give up adding arguments. OF COURSE, you have to invest (at least) a bit of time, and maybe few bucks a year for the hosting, if you want privacy. But also, having your own website is much much nicer result too than just a silly $public_server page that everyone else has.
I was not especially thinking about using PGP and all this kind of heavy equipment. It would be like using a carrier to cross a small river.
But what about uploading your photos to your own website, set a.htaccess /.htpasswd, and give the login / password to your friends? It doesn't seem insanely hard that your friend cut/past the login/pass you give them. And even if you send this over an unencrypted medium, it's still safer than posting the same content on Facebook. Also, if you search a little it, I'm sure you will find a PHP app that has the feature to password protect things, maybe even with openID support so people doesn't even have to login once you authorized them.
Now, my point was NOT about the general dumb public that doesn't even have a clue about the evilness of sites like we are talking about. But you, an IT guy reading/., are you really saying that you can't do without them? You don't know how to build a website, upload $php-web-galery, or setup a mailing list? COME ON, I'm not buying it, I believe you are simply being lazy here.
Until you guys are continuing to say that functionalities are more important than privacy, you will continue to get in the same kind of trouble. It has ALWAYS been the case that to keep things private, you need to put some efforts into it (and your PGP example is a good one). Now, know it, live with it, make your own choice, and stop whining about it when $big-brother is trying to make money with the content you VOLUNTEERED to upload because you've been too lazy to use another way.
AGAIN, you are talking about proprietary tools that you shouldn't be use. Why even mentioning wordpress, blogspot, flickr and picassa? What is it that you need in them? Isn't there enough open source solution to publish your content out there? Last time I had a look, there was multiple dozens of gallery, cms and blog software that you could use instead. Sharing photos? Well, can't you just send a link by email? Having a list of friends profiles? It's called "bookmarks" and it's one click away. Want to add them to your site, so everyone can see who's your friend? Well, add a link into your HTML page, and you are done.
Now, about other people using facebook. Well, first, it's their call to use it, you can't force them into having privacy concern. But the fact they do use Facebook doesn't mean you have to use it too. You can create an empty profile without information just to see their page. Then, you're going to say you need to be "friends" with them to see it. Doesn't mater, you've used a fake ID to login, so it wont hurt your privacy.
Being able to migrate your data from one big brother to another will NOT solve your issue. It will just make you wrongly believe that you are in the control, when in fact you wont really be able to check if the data you entered were deleted when you closed your account (if you even are able do so).
What's the issue you are complaining about here? Everyone knows that everything in facebook is public, we know it from the very beginning, and it's been years that we know how evil they are. Why don't you just post content on your personal website were you can control everything? I can't see ANY of the things you do with Facebook that you wouldn't be able to do with instant messengers and a web server.
Yes, save your ink, because you have just rephrase your first post (saying in short: numbers of believers, numbers of PhDs, numbers of whatever...).
You in fact have just added more silliness (to say the least):
- CNN says it: amen, they must be right! It's like for WMDs, 9/11 and all, we shall always trust CNN, shouldn't we? Unfortunately, this article is from the January 20, 2009, and since, a lot of things happened. I can't believe that such poll would have the same results again now, even if we were to believe the crap from CNN.
- You are now endorsing a non-scientific organization to give an opinion (when you write: "it endorses the Vatican not taking what vast numbers of others say is a large risk", the truth is, Vatican should have just shut up). That's not brilliant either.
- Or again, being off topic, talking about elections and justice when the topic of this/. story is about exactness of science...
Now, if you didn't know, and if you want to keep talking about majorities, from the 30ties up to the 60ties, a majority of scientists were claiming that the continent drifts theory was a pure stupidity. A VAST MAJORITY of them, maybe up to 97% as well. Currently, I don't see any scientist opposing this theory, did you? I guess at that time (before the 60ties), you would have say that the majority was of course right... So many battalions of PhDs, can't be wrong.
But even though your reasoning was right, I highly contest your numbers and the "vast majority" fact. Sure, you could say "a vast majority at the IPCC", the same that wrote the falsification that is the AR4 synthesis...
It's amazing to always read how "a vast majority of climatologists believe this". Of course, they are all paid to tell the world is warming up. Have you noticed that the only people that are standing up against them ARE NOT from this field, most of the time? (like for example, Vincent Courtillot). At the same time, we hear only climatologists should have the rights to tell what's science or not. Sorry, it doesn't work on me, you need a bit more to convince me. I want to look at numbers, and the scientific argumentation(c) (tm), because I got a bit more than half a brain, and that I believe I can read a graphic (and even the (falsified pascal) code to generate it). If you think science is about poll and elections, I don't know what else to say... Or maybe: let's go back to middle age, and let's ask the pope what he thinks about global warming!
First, I don't know where you have found this 97%. Maybe from the IPCC itself?
But public policy makers should go with the preponderance of evidence, just like a court; leaning to the views of a small minority is not sound policy-making. If 97% of 1000 nuclear scientists thought a nuclear plant would blow up, would you build it?
Second, what you say above endorses burning Galileo. What's that war with the number of scientist that you are trying to make? Why are you talking about "battalions of PhDs" this way? It doesn't make sense. I can point to PhDs that are skeptics.
3rd, your conclusion is your own. And like many, you are pretending everyone that doesn't think like you is stupid. That makes readers believe you aren't that smart, if that's your only argumentation...
There's precious little skepticism with regards to climate change these days, because the evidence is sufficient to convince those who were initially skeptical, but there's a hell of a lot of denial. If people who still refuse to accept the evidence don't want to be called "deniers," then you're welcome to come up with a different word -- but you can't have "skeptic," because that word already means something different.
Here, you are expressing your point of view, saying that all the evidences are enough, and that everyone that is skeptic should be called a denier. This is the same kind of argumentation that the people from IPCC had, which is that there's a consensus. Truth is: there's no consensus, and not enough real evidences.
You are basically saying that your opponent is denying all evidences that you believe in, when such evidences are contested. It's a too easy caricature to make to decide abitrarily who's the deniers instead skeptics.
We do have brains to think with, and we can make our own opinions by ourself, without needing somebody like you telling what is right or wrong, who is a stupid denier and who's a smart skeptic. For this, you do deserve a Godwin point, because there are 100s of ways to say that someone is a no brain that we should not believe, and you only choose the words related to the 2nd world war.
This price for 300 G is even more expensive than a bi-directional 100 Mbits line with 320 GB/month that you can get retail at less than 75 USD. That's even more expensive than what we can get in Australia. No doubt that they will make A LOT of money here.
To anyone using them: get in touch with the local data center if you need some downloads!!!
Re:Interpreters, by definitions, are a security is
on
Flash Is Not a Right
·
· Score: 1
What you are describing is a "Just In Time" interpreter, just like Java does. Unless I missed something. Nothing new, and it doesn't change my point.
As for the stock apps, did you notice how they had a full access to the phone? They do not live in jails. That doesn't change my point either, which is that Apple wants to keep 3rd party apps into jails, and that Adobe Flash wants to take that job over, which for good reasons (security of the device), is forbidden.
Amen. So because the vast majority don't care about freedom and patents, we should do their way? Doesn't make sense, sorry, I'm not buying into this. What you seem to miss is that, considering the amount of computers running Ubuntu, this could have influenced the full of Internet just a tiny bit. Now, this opportunity is over, thanks to the greediness of Ubuntu people.
Let me tell you then, so you don't have to see it: the screen is a way better than the iPhone, but the touch pad is not so good (not very precise, not multi-touch). The keyboard is not great (no special keys to use in your shell, too small, not enough space to reach the top-level keys), but it's a WAY better than a silly virtual keyboard.
As for the user interface, you can install a virtual machine with Debian or Ubuntu, and try by yourself with the dev kit: it's fully open source, and will run x86 code natively on a nested X window.
Interpreters, by definitions, are a security issue
on
Flash Is Not a Right
·
· Score: 1
There's something that everyone seems to miss in this issue. It's the fact that having an interpreter is a danger. Apple has always put some strong security policies, which I believe helped to keep iPhone safe, because applications are in a sandbox when they run. Have you even noticed that the only exploits that have been around are impacting ONLY iPhones that have been jail-broken? That's not pure luck here.
Now, Apple insist that it doesn't want an interpreter to be in. Why? Because that interpreter would allow untested and potentially dangerous apps to get in, which would lift one of the most important security layer of the operating system. It's not ONLY because Flash is a dog, with a disastrous security record. It's mainly because having an interpreter to decide what is right/wrong in the apps that are running is a security issue by definition.
I suppose that mostly everyone hate the fact that iPhones aren't multitasking. Like it or not, this is a very nice FEATURE that makes it possible for a developer to know that his app will be the only one running at a single point: you can consider you have all the CPU and power of the phone for yourself. Jail-break your phone, install the multi-tasking hack, and this is gone. Now an application that was written to take all the RAM of the phone is at risk, because another application that was doing the same assumption might be started already. Result? BOTH application might crash. Don't blame the developer, don't blame Apple, it's the fault of the user that is running them at once, when the system was not designed for it. And guess who will be blamed here? Yes, the OS maker, even if he is the least responsible here: the one that is at fault is the user.
Now, ENOUGH of this on slashdot. Let's move on to another topic. Apple doesn't like Flash, and it HAS VALID REASONS for it, end of the story.
Apple may have such right in USA. But in France, for example, you can't have such restriction. If you buy a device, you have the rights to do whatever you like with it: open it, modify it, reverse-engineer its code, load it with anything you like, etc.
While it might be more restrictive in USA, I can't believe that Apple has the legal rights to forbid you to install an app of your choice. The only thing it can do is refuse your app in their app store. That's a big difference! You can't blame a company for not distributing something if it doesn't want to.
And frankly, everyone, admit it: Flash is an horror-ware. Buggy as hell, slow except on Windows, full of security issues...
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of complying with evils requirements, RIM could have well say "thanks but no thanks", thus doing a lot of advertising on how secure they were, and how strong their privacy concern was. This would have had a tremendous marketing effect. We would have all think about RIM as a very good company.
Now, we all know that RIM's network is full of spy watching us. The fact that appart from these spies, the network WAS to be considered very safe doesn't add up. We 100% know now, that somebody is listening.
They might have succeeded in keeping their market up and running in India and other Arabs countries, but now myself and many others well understand that we wont ever be able to trust a blackberry again. I really think this will hurt RIM in the long run. At least I wont forget, and will continue using OTR on open platforms like the n900.
While claiming that they can push more power is ridiculous (it's so easy considering that the standards and regulations are limiting to a ridiculous 250mW in Europe, 500 in USA), it's also totally useless. Of course, you can emit with more power, but then the person who will try to connect to your hotspot will have to emit also with more power, otherwise data are going on one direction only.
The paper also claims some questionable superlatives such as 'China is one of the countries suffering most from hacking.'
I believe that Chinese, more than in any other countries, are all using Windows, and have a very poor knowledge of computing in general. Nearly all (if not simply all) banking access are windows only, and so are so many other websites. As a consequence, I wouldn't be surprised if the rate of trojaned workstation was a way higher in China, and simply considering the amount of people in this country with internet access could render the above affirmation as correct.
I mean, really yet AGAIN? That is it: rm /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so
The point is: nobody wants to run bloated software anymore, and Flash certainly is one of them. This is THE thing that makes everyone's computer slow, and also THE thing that has one security hole every day (or so). It is also extremely badly supported in open source platforms. Once we got HTML5 and video support for sites like youtube/dailymotion/vimeo, then really, there wont be any point in taking care of all the issues we are having when installing or upgrading Flash. The issue is not about the functionality of Flash that, by the way, are quite cool. It's all about the so poor quality of the product itself, that will make everyone so happy to jump into HTML5.
Why is it every time there's an phone article, you N900 guys come out and tout your unloved phones?
Maybe because we are tired of hearing about "news" that aren't news at all? Maybe because we are tired of the Job's marketing for the masses, that also reaches Slashdot? Or because we are open source and freedom lovers, and can't stand the fact that people are diving into the jail of the first computing platform all time, where you can't decide what software you can run? Choose the best answer...
Yes, we all know you can do everything in an unrestricted way on your amazing wonderphone.
That is correct. Including: installing Chromium, Opera and Mozilla, just because I feel like it, and without anyone to tell me that it is forbidden. Or compiling my own software if I want to (I did my own port of "joe" and "mtr" because I really missed them). Sorry, I quite don't want to buy a Mac to be able to port a tiny text editor...
It's time you guys faced up to the fact that the experience of using it is truly awful and nobody wants to buy this phone, regardless of what it can do. I'm not sure Nokia could give these away for free.
Any reason that is pushing you to say this that you would care mentioning? The only thing that I don't like is the slowness of Empathy, the rest of is pure wonder.
All this reeks of desperately trying to justify your purchase to an uncaring world.
Well, it's justified already by the numerous customer support tickets I have answer with it, all the email and podcasts (Floss weekly for example, using Gpodder) I have read, the music I listen using the FM transmitter and so on.
We're happy with our phones and obviously don't care about yours, so please stop telling us about it.
Sure we'll stop... as soon as the iPhone propaganda will stop too! Oh, and I forgot... We'll also stop when people will praise Apple and their god M. Jobs for being so nice to allow this or that apps to reach the store, when the only information that there is, is the lack of freedom. Seriously, I'm sick of all this, and people like you that don't understand how much installing the apps you want is important.
On the n900, the devices are called wlan0 and gprs0. IMHO, it's a way better naming than ethX, but at the end, who cares, as long as you can identify who's in use? Now, about the revenue of the app store, how can you tell? I'm sure you are just making a wild guess here, and mine is that you are totally wrong. Let's say every iPhone user is buying 10 USD worth of apps, that is already reaching a quarter of a billion. Are you saying that this is insignificant? I don't think so.
Actually, as I wrote just above, it starts to be worth turning off after 15 seconds ... Sure, it will "use" your engine and other components a bit more, but you will still use less petrol.
Well, in China, there's a countdown that is displayed in many crosses. That way, when I see that I will have to wait more than 15 seconds, I turn off my engine. 15 seconds is how much it takes to make it worth turning off the engine. Less than this, and you will consume more petrol starting the engine than leaving it running idle during 14 seconds (at least, this is what I read). Sure, this would be nicer if it was all automated, but it's cool enough to be able to do it to begin with.
Why even mentioning proper english?
Can you talk French, Chinese, and (a bit of) Spanish? If you can't, then you'll be more polite and excuse some of my mistakes. Anyway, even if you did understand these languages, you should stay polite and refrain from such (totally useless) comments that only deserve more than the disrespect you are throwing at me.
Do you think my mother is going to setup a gallery code [...]?
As if using or setting-up a gallery was sooooo hard. If you didn't know, there's 100s of hosts that are offering a point and click systems to install things like that. No need to upload anything: select the app, the folder, click next, and it's ready. Even a child could do it.
Truth is, your mother will use flickr because she doesn't know anything else (because you didn't tell her because you only know your geek way to setup a gallery PHP app). But let's forget about easiness.
Sure, setting-up her own domain and have it hosted is a bit more work than using $big_brother_public_server. But first, I never wrote it would be as easy, and mostly the job of a web hosting company to help people doing so. Or if you cared about your mother's privacy, you would have explain her why she shouldn't use flickr, and give a hand... Isn't it the role of people doing IT to explain what's beyond the scene, and do a bit of education for those who wont know?
Now, go ahead, and pretend that you want everything: free of charge, easy to use, and with privacy. If you are going this way, I give up adding arguments. OF COURSE, you have to invest (at least) a bit of time, and maybe few bucks a year for the hosting, if you want privacy. But also, having your own website is much much nicer result too than just a silly $public_server page that everyone else has.
I was not especially thinking about using PGP and all this kind of heavy equipment. It would be like using a carrier to cross a small river.
.htaccess / .htpasswd, and give the login / password to your friends? It doesn't seem insanely hard that your friend cut/past the login/pass you give them. And even if you send this over an unencrypted medium, it's still safer than posting the same content on Facebook. Also, if you search a little it, I'm sure you will find a PHP app that has the feature to password protect things, maybe even with openID support so people doesn't even have to login once you authorized them.
/., are you really saying that you can't do without them? You don't know how to build a website, upload $php-web-galery, or setup a mailing list? COME ON, I'm not buying it, I believe you are simply being lazy here.
But what about uploading your photos to your own website, set a
Now, my point was NOT about the general dumb public that doesn't even have a clue about the evilness of sites like we are talking about. But you, an IT guy reading
Until you guys are continuing to say that functionalities are more important than privacy, you will continue to get in the same kind of trouble. It has ALWAYS been the case that to keep things private, you need to put some efforts into it (and your PGP example is a good one). Now, know it, live with it, make your own choice, and stop whining about it when $big-brother is trying to make money with the content you VOLUNTEERED to upload because you've been too lazy to use another way.
I thought that the issue with Facebook was that everything was public... Are you suddenly feeling like you got to be off-topic?
AGAIN, you are talking about proprietary tools that you shouldn't be use. Why even mentioning wordpress, blogspot, flickr and picassa? What is it that you need in them? Isn't there enough open source solution to publish your content out there? Last time I had a look, there was multiple dozens of gallery, cms and blog software that you could use instead. Sharing photos? Well, can't you just send a link by email? Having a list of friends profiles? It's called "bookmarks" and it's one click away. Want to add them to your site, so everyone can see who's your friend? Well, add a link into your HTML page, and you are done.
Now, about other people using facebook. Well, first, it's their call to use it, you can't force them into having privacy concern. But the fact they do use Facebook doesn't mean you have to use it too. You can create an empty profile without information just to see their page. Then, you're going to say you need to be "friends" with them to see it. Doesn't mater, you've used a fake ID to login, so it wont hurt your privacy.
Being able to migrate your data from one big brother to another will NOT solve your issue. It will just make you wrongly believe that you are in the control, when in fact you wont really be able to check if the data you entered were deleted when you closed your account (if you even are able do so).
What's the issue you are complaining about here? Everyone knows that everything in facebook is public, we know it from the very beginning, and it's been years that we know how evil they are. Why don't you just post content on your personal website were you can control everything? I can't see ANY of the things you do with Facebook that you wouldn't be able to do with instant messengers and a web server.
Yes, save your ink, because you have just rephrase your first post (saying in short: numbers of believers, numbers of PhDs, numbers of whatever...).
/. story is about exactness of science...
You in fact have just added more silliness (to say the least):
- CNN says it: amen, they must be right! It's like for WMDs, 9/11 and all, we shall always trust CNN, shouldn't we? Unfortunately, this article is from the January 20, 2009, and since, a lot of things happened. I can't believe that such poll would have the same results again now, even if we were to believe the crap from CNN.
- You are now endorsing a non-scientific organization to give an opinion (when you write: "it endorses the Vatican not taking what vast numbers of others say is a large risk", the truth is, Vatican should have just shut up). That's not brilliant either.
- Or again, being off topic, talking about elections and justice when the topic of this
Now, if you didn't know, and if you want to keep talking about majorities, from the 30ties up to the 60ties, a majority of scientists were claiming that the continent drifts theory was a pure stupidity. A VAST MAJORITY of them, maybe up to 97% as well. Currently, I don't see any scientist opposing this theory, did you? I guess at that time (before the 60ties), you would have say that the majority was of course right... So many battalions of PhDs, can't be wrong.
But even though your reasoning was right, I highly contest your numbers and the "vast majority" fact. Sure, you could say "a vast majority at the IPCC", the same that wrote the falsification that is the AR4 synthesis...
It's amazing to always read how "a vast majority of climatologists believe this". Of course, they are all paid to tell the world is warming up. Have you noticed that the only people that are standing up against them ARE NOT from this field, most of the time? (like for example, Vincent Courtillot). At the same time, we hear only climatologists should have the rights to tell what's science or not. Sorry, it doesn't work on me, you need a bit more to convince me. I want to look at numbers, and the scientific argumentation(c) (tm), because I got a bit more than half a brain, and that I believe I can read a graphic (and even the (falsified pascal) code to generate it). If you think science is about poll and elections, I don't know what else to say... Or maybe: let's go back to middle age, and let's ask the pope what he thinks about global warming!
But public policy makers should go with the preponderance of evidence, just like a court; leaning to the views of a small minority is not sound policy-making. If 97% of 1000 nuclear scientists thought a nuclear plant would blow up, would you build it?
Second, what you say above endorses burning Galileo. What's that war with the number of scientist that you are trying to make? Why are you talking about "battalions of PhDs" this way? It doesn't make sense. I can point to PhDs that are skeptics.
3rd, your conclusion is your own. And like many, you are pretending everyone that doesn't think like you is stupid. That makes readers believe you aren't that smart, if that's your only argumentation...
There's precious little skepticism with regards to climate change these days, because the evidence is sufficient to convince those who were initially skeptical, but there's a hell of a lot of denial. If people who still refuse to accept the evidence don't want to be called "deniers," then you're welcome to come up with a different word -- but you can't have "skeptic," because that word already means something different.
Here, you are expressing your point of view, saying that all the evidences are enough, and that everyone that is skeptic should be called a denier. This is the same kind of argumentation that the people from IPCC had, which is that there's a consensus. Truth is: there's no consensus, and not enough real evidences.
You are basically saying that your opponent is denying all evidences that you believe in, when such evidences are contested. It's a too easy caricature to make to decide abitrarily who's the deniers instead skeptics.
We do have brains to think with, and we can make our own opinions by ourself, without needing somebody like you telling what is right or wrong, who is a stupid denier and who's a smart skeptic. For this, you do deserve a Godwin point, because there are 100s of ways to say that someone is a no brain that we should not believe, and you only choose the words related to the 2nd world war.
and minor errors in the IPCC
This is enough to say that those scientists aren't serious. How can you call these errors "minor"?
This price for 300 G is even more expensive than a bi-directional 100 Mbits line with 320 GB/month that you can get retail at less than 75 USD. That's even more expensive than what we can get in Australia. No doubt that they will make A LOT of money here.
To anyone using them: get in touch with the local data center if you need some downloads!!!
What you are describing is a "Just In Time" interpreter, just like Java does. Unless I missed something. Nothing new, and it doesn't change my point.
As for the stock apps, did you notice how they had a full access to the phone? They do not live in jails. That doesn't change my point either, which is that Apple wants to keep 3rd party apps into jails, and that Adobe Flash wants to take that job over, which for good reasons (security of the device), is forbidden.
Amen. So because the vast majority don't care about freedom and patents, we should do their way? Doesn't make sense, sorry, I'm not buying into this. What you seem to miss is that, considering the amount of computers running Ubuntu, this could have influenced the full of Internet just a tiny bit. Now, this opportunity is over, thanks to the greediness of Ubuntu people.
Let me tell you then, so you don't have to see it: the screen is a way better than the iPhone, but the touch pad is not so good (not very precise, not multi-touch). The keyboard is not great (no special keys to use in your shell, too small, not enough space to reach the top-level keys), but it's a WAY better than a silly virtual keyboard.
As for the user interface, you can install a virtual machine with Debian or Ubuntu, and try by yourself with the dev kit: it's fully open source, and will run x86 code natively on a nested X window.
There's something that everyone seems to miss in this issue. It's the fact that having an interpreter is a danger. Apple has always put some strong security policies, which I believe helped to keep iPhone safe, because applications are in a sandbox when they run. Have you even noticed that the only exploits that have been around are impacting ONLY iPhones that have been jail-broken? That's not pure luck here.
Now, Apple insist that it doesn't want an interpreter to be in. Why? Because that interpreter would allow untested and potentially dangerous apps to get in, which would lift one of the most important security layer of the operating system. It's not ONLY because Flash is a dog, with a disastrous security record. It's mainly because having an interpreter to decide what is right/wrong in the apps that are running is a security issue by definition.
I suppose that mostly everyone hate the fact that iPhones aren't multitasking. Like it or not, this is a very nice FEATURE that makes it possible for a developer to know that his app will be the only one running at a single point: you can consider you have all the CPU and power of the phone for yourself. Jail-break your phone, install the multi-tasking hack, and this is gone. Now an application that was written to take all the RAM of the phone is at risk, because another application that was doing the same assumption might be started already. Result? BOTH application might crash. Don't blame the developer, don't blame Apple, it's the fault of the user that is running them at once, when the system was not designed for it. And guess who will be blamed here? Yes, the OS maker, even if he is the least responsible here: the one that is at fault is the user.
Now, ENOUGH of this on slashdot. Let's move on to another topic. Apple doesn't like Flash, and it HAS VALID REASONS for it, end of the story.
and modifying iPhone OS to do so is forbidden.
Forbidden by who? Will you go to jail? But it's ok if you do, as you can always jail-break once more! :)
Apple may have such right in USA. But in France, for example, you can't have such restriction. If you buy a device, you have the rights to do whatever you like with it: open it, modify it, reverse-engineer its code, load it with anything you like, etc.
While it might be more restrictive in USA, I can't believe that Apple has the legal rights to forbid you to install an app of your choice. The only thing it can do is refuse your app in their app store. That's a big difference! You can't blame a company for not distributing something if it doesn't want to.
And frankly, everyone, admit it: Flash is an horror-ware. Buggy as hell, slow except on Windows, full of security issues...