Huh? I'm not from the UK. I watch plenty of content from all kinds of countries. I never said a disproportionate amount of the shows watched are American, I just said that's how someone might be aware of the US emergency number.
Also I'm not the GP poster... I didn't mention the UK number. I didn't mention any number (except 112, which is global).
A leading question? But the answer is "because we've seen American TV shows and movies". Same way you might know what the UK emergency number is from watching a UK show or movie.
The point is, it pisses the rest of the world off when Americans always ASSUME everyone else knows (or ~should~ know) about their equivalents to X, while at the same they seemingly haven't a clue about, or aren't expected to know, any other countries' equivalents to X.
'112' works from anywhere though (from a mobile phone), so that's probably the best one to use if a number MUST be used (instead of just saying 'emergency number')
North American then. In many places, 'American' doesn't specifically refer to the US (a topic done to death on Slashdot I know, but there is literally a word like 'United Statesian' in many languages to refer to those from the USA).
And even in English, 'American' in the context of phone networks is usually understood to mean 'North American' rather than specifically the US. After all, the US and Canada share the same country code (+1), so as far as 'talking about phones' is concerned, they may as well be the same country to most people from elsewhere.
Agreed. The UStream worked flawlessly (and that's from all the way over here in Australia) and the simulation stuff they had was great. Also amazed they had imagery within literally 2 or 3 minutes after touchdown... that was a genuine surprise. Overall a really professional and competently-run event.
Yes every time I see an article saying "the Mars Rover will be landing in a week!" I think to myself "well it will be impacting the surface of Mars in a week in one way or the other... who knows how fast it will be going at the time though!".
Seriously though the way they are landing this thing is mind-boggling. I honestly don't have my hopes too high that it will work.
Yeah I thought the Nine Network coverage here in Australia has been terrible and ad-ridden, but I've seen some clips of the NBC stuff and... just wow. Also the fact that it's not even live, as I understand it? They at least covered the opening ceremony live here, even if it was at 6am on a Saturday morning...
Huh? An iPhone is basically the same cost as a high-end Android (well, here in Australia at least... the Samsung Galaxy S3 is $899 outright, which is identical to the iPhone 4S 32GB outright from the Apple Store).
Samsung make great phones I agree but I don't think they have a particular price advantage over Apple.
Incidentally this is precisely the reason why in Australia, Apple got penalised by the courts for advertising their new iPads as '4G'. It wasn't ~merely~ because the iPad's didn't support the 4G frequency that the Australian mobile networks used, it was that they only supported frequencies that would NEVER have any hope of being used for 4G in Australia, because those frequencies are allocated to terrestrial TV in Australia. So there's no way Apple could argue "well maybe one day someone would start a 4G network on a supported frequency"... it was impossible from the outset for the iPad to ever be connected to a 4G network in Australia due to the frequencies being completely unavailable.
Which makes me wonder how this interference in the UK is being caused? Surely OFCOM has defined permissible bands for 4G and for TV, and ensured they don't overlap or interfere with each other?
I blame the media for this. They are the ones going "OMG this event must be caused by global warming". And people either believe them (wrongly), or assume that because it's such a ridiculous statement, then global warming is a farce and deny its happening at all (also wrong).
Higher average temperatures will lead to an increase in the frequency and perhaps the average severity of events. But you will never, ever, be able to point to any one event and say "that event is caused by global warming", or "that event would not have happened if the global average temperature was 2 degrees less". It's ridiculous. As you say, extreme weather has always occurred and always will. And no, this event was not 'caused' by global warming. But nonetheless, rising temperatures can still be said to lead to a general increase in the frequency of extreme stuff happening (after all, heat is energy).
Precisely. You can even see this for yourself quite easily. Pull up weather records for any place that has decently accurate and long term data (US or otherwise). Now compare the proportion of how many 'cold' records are broken vs 'hot' records over time. This can be daily record temps, monthly record temps, low minima, low maxima, high minima, high maxima, mean monthly temps etc. Doesn't really matter - the point is that you will see in the last couple of decades, 'heat' records are broken far more regularly than 'cold' records are. Yes, cold records still get broken sometimes... but for every one of them, there's several heat records set.
The city I'm living in (in Australia, so it's winter at the moment) just had its longest spell of cold nights in 36 years. We also had a relatively cool and wet summer six months ago. So you'll hear people going "see, it's not getting warmer!". But they seem to plain ignore the fact that we had an exceptionally warm (compared to normal) April-May, and came off the back of a string of truly record-breaking hot/dry summers from the 2005-2010. It is definitely getting warmer (overall) - people just can't see the overall picture amongst the daily/monthly/yearly variability.
Death Valley really is a brutal place. We have many very hot places in Australia (and indeed, Marble Bar in Western Australia holds the world record for ~prolonged~ heat: 160 consecutive days over 100 F), but for sheer intensity of heat we have nowhere that comes close to Death Valley.
There are some areas of Australia (the Pilbara, some of those inland areas in South Australia that are below sea level) that push a bit above 50 C on occasions, but 56.7 C? That's just insane.
Problem is, what you gain at the upper end, you lose at the lower. Australia does indeed get those high temperatures, but the US gets much colder temperatures than Australia does (well, most of it). You need a compound that won't melt in the local summer, but not contract to the point of cracking in the winter.
As someone that has spent large portions of their life in both countries, it is interesting to see the difference in road engineering. Comparing Canberra Australia (temp range roughly -8 C to +40 C) and NE Wisconsin (annual temperature range -30 C to +35 C):
- They seem to use a different blend of asphalt in Australia (doesn't start melting at 35 C, which I have seen in the US, but then again it doesn't have to cope with -30 C either!) It's harder and seems smoother/quieter to drive on than the US asphalt. (Also they use on-road reflectors a lot more than the US - driving at night or in the rain in Australia, it's much easier to see where the lane markings are compared to the US).
- OTOH, they use concrete/cement a LOT more in road surfacing in the US. I can count on three fingers the number of concrete roads I know of around SE Australia (and they are all on major intercity highways, namely, the Federal Highway, portions of the Hume Highway and the F3 to Newcastle). In the US though virtually all highways (US routes and Interstate routes, at least in the Midwest) are concrete, and city streets in the downtown areas usually are too. They don't do this in Australia because it costs so much more than asphalt, but concrete is a lot tougher than asphalt roads and needs less total maintenance over a long period of time (which I suppose is why they used it on a ~few~ busy Australian highways). You do get a continual 'thump, thump, thump' driving around in the US though which you don't get in Australia, due to the expansion joints in the concrete. Annoying but you can't do much about that - they are necessary to deal with the wider temperature swings.
Yeah flying in the US is a bit of a pain these days I have to admit (I visit the US regularly so do know what you mean).
I'm thankful at home (Australia) things are still pretty quick and easy, for domestic flights at least. 20 minutes is pushing it, but I usually turn up only 30-40 minutes before domestic flights here in Australia and have never missed one (if you're checking bags, 30 minutes before departure is the cutoff, but it's only 15 minutes before if you are only taking carry-on luggage).
The reasons I can do this are:
1. Security is still just a simple metal detector here. You don't need to take off shoes. There are no liquids restrictions.
2, I usually fly Qantas and have a frequent flier card and RFID bag tags. This means there's no standing in lines to check in - I just tap my card on one of the little readers they have at the front of the airport, a light turns green and it says "you are checked in". They don't even give you a boarding pass anymore - you just tap your card again at the gate. Checked bags are similarly easy - walk to one of the bag drop machines and it scans the RFID tag, knows who you are and what flight you're checked in for, and away it goes on the conveyor belt. Takes about 20 seconds.
So I still love flying domestically. It's quick, easy and convenient.
International flights are a bit more involved - can't use the automatic check-in for that, and because some international flights are obviously to the US, they enforce the US liquid/gel restrictions. You'll also sometimes get an extra pat down/security screening at the gate for US-bound flights. Still don't have to remove shoes though thankfully!
Ahh Botts' dots. Used to be ubiquitous here in Canberra, Australia too. But recently when roads have been due for repaving/repainting I notice they are just removing the dots and using plain old painted lines with a reflective 'raised pavement marker' between each dash. They must have decided it was cheaper.
Annoying thing though is, on roads that they didn't repave, when it rains, you can still see the old spots where the 'dots' used to be affixed to the road (they are shinier than the surrounding pavement). And since they realigned the lanes on many roads, sometimes it's hard to tell in the rain which lane markers are the 'current' ones and which are the old ones.
This is an independent ALRC review, not a Senate committee or something. The ALRC has a long history of liberalising laws where it's appropriate to do so and where other jurisdictions are making moves in that direction. I think your derision of the process is premature.
Either way though it will be a long time before we see any actual change. The ALRC reviews usually only take a year or so, but getting the government to actually enact any of their recommendations is another thing. For instance, the ALRC review of the Privacy Act was finished five years ago but the government itself is only now starting to work towards enacting some of the recommendations (after however many drafts and Senate reviews and blah blah).
Interesting because several fairly major email providers (e.g. Google Apps!) explicitly tell you what to put as your MX records to get it working, and they are A records, not IP addresses.
OK I'm not American (I'm Australian), but this whole post elicits a massive "WTF" from me.
If this is a Navy ship, belonging to the world's most powerful military and run and administered by a branch of the US Government, then surely:
a) if this kind of usage of the connection is permitted, the Navy (or other government entity) would have its own infrastructure you could use for this; or
b) if not, there'd already be a clear policy that stated who your preferred providers of such a service would be (having been vetted and cleared for such use by the relevant IT people within the Navy)
I mean, I can't imagine any government department, let alone the Navy, giving some random guy the task of finding and setting up a VPN via whatever means he happened to think was good.
Also, um, doesn't the ship have its own internet connection? I'm surprised that the filtering practices of the country where you're based are affecting you... surely you don't allow people on the ship to use random, untrusted connections provided by whatever place you happen to be in?
Anyway, as I said, I'm not American and wouldn't have a clue how the US military operates. But I can tell you this kind of thing would never fly in a government department here.
I don't get it either. I have an iPhone... it works and does what I want it to, and is simple to manage. It doesn't crash. It's nice and smooth and responsive when I scroll up and down. It gives me a decent 2 days of battery life. And has some fantastic apps. And listening to/controlling my music library via the included headphones works nicely on the bus. And a hundred other little reasons that made me buy it.
But I don't give a flying f**k that Apple made it. Nor do I think Android is inferior - it's just different. If I were a programmer and wanted to run my own code or felt a need to customise the interface (which I agree you can't really do much on a stock iPhone), then yeah, Android'd probably be better for me. But that's not what my needs are... I just want a phone that works with minimum fiddling (don't get me wrong - I like fiddling and hacking around with hardware, but I do that on my PC, not my phone, which I really see only as an appliance in the same way as I see my DVD player or microwave).
So I honestly don't see why people get so... passionate... about one 'side' or the other. People buy the device that works for them (and people's needs are completely different, so obviously what's 'better' for a person might not be 'better' for another).
Huh? If you buy your phone on a contract, from a carrier, then yes, it might be locked. But if you just buy the phone, by itself, they aren't locked in most markets (how could they be, when obviously they have no clue what carrier you're planning to use them on?).
Or to put it another way, there's no difference between me walking out the door right now and buying, say, a Samsung Galaxy S3 or an iPhone. In both cases, I walk into a store (Apple Store for the iPhone, other generic phone/electronics store for anything else), buy it, go home and pop my SIM card in it, done. No carriers involved. Or just purchase from a website and have it delivered (even nicer, though the Apple Online Store takes a while to ship since they actually send your stuff directly from manufacturer in Shenzhen)
Having said that, I'm just nitpicking over the anecdote you told. I agree with your core point that, for the segment of the market that does buy phones on a carrier contract, not having carrier-specific crud all over the phone is a key advantage of the iPhone over the others. (This was particularly egregious back in the feature-phone days... had some truly awful and buggy carrier-specific stuff on some of those!)
Having never used an Android phone, I am interested in this statement - do you actually need a Gmail account to setup an Android phone? Or do you just need a Google ID (which is understandable - but my understanding was a Google ID can be tied to any old email address and doesn't necessarily have to have a Gmail account attached)...
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Huh? I'm not from the UK. I watch plenty of content from all kinds of countries. I never said a disproportionate amount of the shows watched are American, I just said that's how someone might be aware of the US emergency number.
Also I'm not the GP poster ... I didn't mention the UK number. I didn't mention any number (except 112, which is global).
A leading question? But the answer is "because we've seen American TV shows and movies". Same way you might know what the UK emergency number is from watching a UK show or movie.
The point is, it pisses the rest of the world off when Americans always ASSUME everyone else knows (or ~should~ know) about their equivalents to X, while at the same they seemingly haven't a clue about, or aren't expected to know, any other countries' equivalents to X.
'112' works from anywhere though (from a mobile phone), so that's probably the best one to use if a number MUST be used (instead of just saying 'emergency number')
North American then. In many places, 'American' doesn't specifically refer to the US (a topic done to death on Slashdot I know, but there is literally a word like 'United Statesian' in many languages to refer to those from the USA).
And even in English, 'American' in the context of phone networks is usually understood to mean 'North American' rather than specifically the US. After all, the US and Canada share the same country code (+1), so as far as 'talking about phones' is concerned, they may as well be the same country to most people from elsewhere.
Which, for pottering around crowded inner city Indian streets, sounds perfectly adequate...
Uh, 50 km is an extremely poor rough conversion of 20 miles. It's only 1.6 km to the mile remember, whereas you've multiplied by 2.5.
20 miles is ~32 km. Making your journey roughly 32 cents in this car, not 50 cents.
Welcome to Slashdot. :)
Holy crap, it's that high?
I'm never driving again!! :o
Agreed. The UStream worked flawlessly (and that's from all the way over here in Australia) and the simulation stuff they had was great. Also amazed they had imagery within literally 2 or 3 minutes after touchdown ... that was a genuine surprise. Overall a really professional and competently-run event.
Yes every time I see an article saying "the Mars Rover will be landing in a week!" I think to myself "well it will be impacting the surface of Mars in a week in one way or the other ... who knows how fast it will be going at the time though!".
Seriously though the way they are landing this thing is mind-boggling. I honestly don't have my hopes too high that it will work.
Yeah I thought the Nine Network coverage here in Australia has been terrible and ad-ridden, but I've seen some clips of the NBC stuff and ... just wow. Also the fact that it's not even live, as I understand it? They at least covered the opening ceremony live here, even if it was at 6am on a Saturday morning...
Huh? An iPhone is basically the same cost as a high-end Android (well, here in Australia at least ... the Samsung Galaxy S3 is $899 outright, which is identical to the iPhone 4S 32GB outright from the Apple Store).
Samsung make great phones I agree but I don't think they have a particular price advantage over Apple.
Yeah weird.
Incidentally this is precisely the reason why in Australia, Apple got penalised by the courts for advertising their new iPads as '4G'. It wasn't ~merely~ because the iPad's didn't support the 4G frequency that the Australian mobile networks used, it was that they only supported frequencies that would NEVER have any hope of being used for 4G in Australia, because those frequencies are allocated to terrestrial TV in Australia. So there's no way Apple could argue "well maybe one day someone would start a 4G network on a supported frequency" ... it was impossible from the outset for the iPad to ever be connected to a 4G network in Australia due to the frequencies being completely unavailable.
Which makes me wonder how this interference in the UK is being caused? Surely OFCOM has defined permissible bands for 4G and for TV, and ensured they don't overlap or interfere with each other?
I blame the media for this. They are the ones going "OMG this event must be caused by global warming". And people either believe them (wrongly), or assume that because it's such a ridiculous statement, then global warming is a farce and deny its happening at all (also wrong).
Higher average temperatures will lead to an increase in the frequency and perhaps the average severity of events. But you will never, ever, be able to point to any one event and say "that event is caused by global warming", or "that event would not have happened if the global average temperature was 2 degrees less". It's ridiculous. As you say, extreme weather has always occurred and always will. And no, this event was not 'caused' by global warming. But nonetheless, rising temperatures can still be said to lead to a general increase in the frequency of extreme stuff happening (after all, heat is energy).
Precisely. You can even see this for yourself quite easily. Pull up weather records for any place that has decently accurate and long term data (US or otherwise). Now compare the proportion of how many 'cold' records are broken vs 'hot' records over time. This can be daily record temps, monthly record temps, low minima, low maxima, high minima, high maxima, mean monthly temps etc. Doesn't really matter - the point is that you will see in the last couple of decades, 'heat' records are broken far more regularly than 'cold' records are. Yes, cold records still get broken sometimes ... but for every one of them, there's several heat records set.
The city I'm living in (in Australia, so it's winter at the moment) just had its longest spell of cold nights in 36 years. We also had a relatively cool and wet summer six months ago. So you'll hear people going "see, it's not getting warmer!". But they seem to plain ignore the fact that we had an exceptionally warm (compared to normal) April-May, and came off the back of a string of truly record-breaking hot/dry summers from the 2005-2010. It is definitely getting warmer (overall) - people just can't see the overall picture amongst the daily/monthly/yearly variability.
Death Valley really is a brutal place. We have many very hot places in Australia (and indeed, Marble Bar in Western Australia holds the world record for ~prolonged~ heat: 160 consecutive days over 100 F), but for sheer intensity of heat we have nowhere that comes close to Death Valley.
There are some areas of Australia (the Pilbara, some of those inland areas in South Australia that are below sea level) that push a bit above 50 C on occasions, but 56.7 C? That's just insane.
Problem is, what you gain at the upper end, you lose at the lower. Australia does indeed get those high temperatures, but the US gets much colder temperatures than Australia does (well, most of it). You need a compound that won't melt in the local summer, but not contract to the point of cracking in the winter.
As someone that has spent large portions of their life in both countries, it is interesting to see the difference in road engineering. Comparing Canberra Australia (temp range roughly -8 C to +40 C) and NE Wisconsin (annual temperature range -30 C to +35 C):
- They seem to use a different blend of asphalt in Australia (doesn't start melting at 35 C, which I have seen in the US, but then again it doesn't have to cope with -30 C either!) It's harder and seems smoother/quieter to drive on than the US asphalt. (Also they use on-road reflectors a lot more than the US - driving at night or in the rain in Australia, it's much easier to see where the lane markings are compared to the US).
- OTOH, they use concrete/cement a LOT more in road surfacing in the US. I can count on three fingers the number of concrete roads I know of around SE Australia (and they are all on major intercity highways, namely, the Federal Highway, portions of the Hume Highway and the F3 to Newcastle). In the US though virtually all highways (US routes and Interstate routes, at least in the Midwest) are concrete, and city streets in the downtown areas usually are too. They don't do this in Australia because it costs so much more than asphalt, but concrete is a lot tougher than asphalt roads and needs less total maintenance over a long period of time (which I suppose is why they used it on a ~few~ busy Australian highways). You do get a continual 'thump, thump, thump' driving around in the US though which you don't get in Australia, due to the expansion joints in the concrete. Annoying but you can't do much about that - they are necessary to deal with the wider temperature swings.
Yeah flying in the US is a bit of a pain these days I have to admit (I visit the US regularly so do know what you mean).
I'm thankful at home (Australia) things are still pretty quick and easy, for domestic flights at least. 20 minutes is pushing it, but I usually turn up only 30-40 minutes before domestic flights here in Australia and have never missed one (if you're checking bags, 30 minutes before departure is the cutoff, but it's only 15 minutes before if you are only taking carry-on luggage).
The reasons I can do this are:
1. Security is still just a simple metal detector here. You don't need to take off shoes. There are no liquids restrictions.
2, I usually fly Qantas and have a frequent flier card and RFID bag tags. This means there's no standing in lines to check in - I just tap my card on one of the little readers they have at the front of the airport, a light turns green and it says "you are checked in". They don't even give you a boarding pass anymore - you just tap your card again at the gate. Checked bags are similarly easy - walk to one of the bag drop machines and it scans the RFID tag, knows who you are and what flight you're checked in for, and away it goes on the conveyor belt. Takes about 20 seconds.
So I still love flying domestically. It's quick, easy and convenient.
International flights are a bit more involved - can't use the automatic check-in for that, and because some international flights are obviously to the US, they enforce the US liquid/gel restrictions. You'll also sometimes get an extra pat down/security screening at the gate for US-bound flights. Still don't have to remove shoes though thankfully!
Ahh Botts' dots. Used to be ubiquitous here in Canberra, Australia too. But recently when roads have been due for repaving/repainting I notice they are just removing the dots and using plain old painted lines with a reflective 'raised pavement marker' between each dash. They must have decided it was cheaper.
Annoying thing though is, on roads that they didn't repave, when it rains, you can still see the old spots where the 'dots' used to be affixed to the road (they are shinier than the surrounding pavement). And since they realigned the lanes on many roads, sometimes it's hard to tell in the rain which lane markers are the 'current' ones and which are the old ones.
This is an independent ALRC review, not a Senate committee or something. The ALRC has a long history of liberalising laws where it's appropriate to do so and where other jurisdictions are making moves in that direction. I think your derision of the process is premature.
Either way though it will be a long time before we see any actual change. The ALRC reviews usually only take a year or so, but getting the government to actually enact any of their recommendations is another thing. For instance, the ALRC review of the Privacy Act was finished five years ago but the government itself is only now starting to work towards enacting some of the recommendations (after however many drafts and Senate reviews and blah blah).
Interesting because several fairly major email providers (e.g. Google Apps!) explicitly tell you what to put as your MX records to get it working, and they are A records, not IP addresses.
OK I'm not American (I'm Australian), but this whole post elicits a massive "WTF" from me.
If this is a Navy ship, belonging to the world's most powerful military and run and administered by a branch of the US Government, then surely:
a) if this kind of usage of the connection is permitted, the Navy (or other government entity) would have its own infrastructure you could use for this; or
b) if not, there'd already be a clear policy that stated who your preferred providers of such a service would be (having been vetted and cleared for such use by the relevant IT people within the Navy)
I mean, I can't imagine any government department, let alone the Navy, giving some random guy the task of finding and setting up a VPN via whatever means he happened to think was good.
Also, um, doesn't the ship have its own internet connection? I'm surprised that the filtering practices of the country where you're based are affecting you ... surely you don't allow people on the ship to use random, untrusted connections provided by whatever place you happen to be in?
Anyway, as I said, I'm not American and wouldn't have a clue how the US military operates. But I can tell you this kind of thing would never fly in a government department here.
Yeah. 100% right.
I don't get it either. I have an iPhone ... it works and does what I want it to, and is simple to manage. It doesn't crash. It's nice and smooth and responsive when I scroll up and down. It gives me a decent 2 days of battery life. And has some fantastic apps. And listening to/controlling my music library via the included headphones works nicely on the bus. And a hundred other little reasons that made me buy it.
But I don't give a flying f**k that Apple made it. Nor do I think Android is inferior - it's just different. If I were a programmer and wanted to run my own code or felt a need to customise the interface (which I agree you can't really do much on a stock iPhone), then yeah, Android'd probably be better for me. But that's not what my needs are ... I just want a phone that works with minimum fiddling (don't get me wrong - I like fiddling and hacking around with hardware, but I do that on my PC, not my phone, which I really see only as an appliance in the same way as I see my DVD player or microwave).
So I honestly don't see why people get so ... passionate ... about one 'side' or the other. People buy the device that works for them (and people's needs are completely different, so obviously what's 'better' for a person might not be 'better' for another).
Huh? If you buy your phone on a contract, from a carrier, then yes, it might be locked. But if you just buy the phone, by itself, they aren't locked in most markets (how could they be, when obviously they have no clue what carrier you're planning to use them on?).
Or to put it another way, there's no difference between me walking out the door right now and buying, say, a Samsung Galaxy S3 or an iPhone. In both cases, I walk into a store (Apple Store for the iPhone, other generic phone/electronics store for anything else), buy it, go home and pop my SIM card in it, done. No carriers involved. Or just purchase from a website and have it delivered (even nicer, though the Apple Online Store takes a while to ship since they actually send your stuff directly from manufacturer in Shenzhen)
Having said that, I'm just nitpicking over the anecdote you told. I agree with your core point that, for the segment of the market that does buy phones on a carrier contract, not having carrier-specific crud all over the phone is a key advantage of the iPhone over the others. (This was particularly egregious back in the feature-phone days ... had some truly awful and buggy carrier-specific stuff on some of those!)
It is here (having just finished autumn this month and moved into winter). Southern hemisphere, obviously :)
Having never used an Android phone, I am interested in this statement - do you actually need a Gmail account to setup an Android phone? Or do you just need a Google ID (which is understandable - but my understanding was a Google ID can be tied to any old email address and doesn't necessarily have to have a Gmail account attached)...