Argh, you're going to force me to undo modding for this one, but I've got to reply...
To the best of my knowledge, the CIA absolutely did not overthrow the Shah in Iran. The Shah was a staunch ally of the US, and his overthrow (and subsequent formation of the Islamic Republic) was a complete disaster (see the front page of any newspaper). Received wisdom is that the CIA were taken completely by surprise by the popular uprising against the Shah, and that that represents one of their more embarrassing 10th century failures.
The Shah was a brutal dictator liked by the US, not a brutal dictator disliked. It's understandably difficult to tell them apart sometimes, being identical.
My guess is the former is the main reason. Why go to the court for something you don't need to go to the court for? Indeed, if you genuinely believed that there was no need to get court approval for something, it'd be positively irresponsible to keep going to court about it- a big waste of expensive court time.
But then, there's no saying how many of the investigations are too flimsy to have stood up in court. That's exactly why we force law enforcement to get warrants for things- to weed out flimsy cases. Without that check in place, god knows how many shoddy cases were nodded through.
What good is high-quality speakers when the signal received is so low "resolution"?
Just as TV makers all leapt on the chance to call their products "HD", and users leapt on the chance to buy something indescribably "better" ("it has 1080p!" "what's a P?" "I don't know, but I've got 1080 of them!"), I'm sure phones will go the same way.
Abysmal timing to announce "we have more money than we actually know what to do with" so hot on the heels of the negative stories about workers rights in the factories making Apple (and other) components. Perhaps they wouldn't have the "problem" of having such a colossal cash mountain if all workers in the supply chain were paid a fair wage?
And depressing that the best suggestion for dealing with the cash mountain is to distribute it to investors (to keep already highly valued share prices inflated), rather than any one of a hundred other uses- from increased pay, smaller profit margins on sale prices, increased R&D to come up with some truly innovative technology, or even just good old fashioned philanthropy.
Just going to take a guess and say "First Past The Post" is how. Same as in the UK- the Tories are the "winning" party with 36% of the vote, on a 65% turnout. Admittedly they're a minority government in coalition with the Lib Dems, but only just- and the figures are comparable with the 2005 Labour victory, which was a majority.
Most of the most popular games are linear stories, only with interactive challenges between the plot elements. Aside from the odd "now with 4 different endings" gimmick, the vast majority of games have only two endings- the actual plot ending, and "game over". Unless you lose, you usually end up in the same place, with the same characters, and the same events having happened to them, in more or less the same order.
Android's got all sorts of very dodgy sounding apps in their market, promising naked girls and whatnot. I've got no interest in downloading porn apps for my phone, so it'd be a definite development if they were in their own searchable section which I can ignore. I don't want to come across all "think of the children", but it is embarrassing when these apps show up in a list when little kids, or your grandparents, or your boss, are looking.
It makes me incredibly sad that TFS includes it as an example alongside 2001. 2001 was a genuinely innovative, ground-breaking film. Avatar was a 3D CGI remake of Pocahontas. There are so many genuinely worthy scifi films out there, and Avatar is not one of them.
I get it. Google can't tell me about services if my local bus company won't give them the data. That's not a controversial statement.
What's important, though, is that I don't care. If it's because my local bus company is being an anti-competitive ass, or because they're technologically backwards, or if it's laziness, or if it's because of excruciatingly dull data licensing reasons- it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is whether this (free) commercial service is useful enough for me to use.
Currently, for whatever reason, Google's service doesn't contain data for my local services. Even if I did some unpaid leg work for them and lobbied my local company to sign up to their service, I'd still be unsure if Google have data for all those companies I don't know about- companies local to places I'm visiting. That's a major turn off for me to entrust this service with organising my travel plans.
And when push comes to shove, they're a commercial company competing for my eyeballs with other existing services- such as the excellent tax-funded one the GP linked to. What motivation have I got to do unpaid work for a private company like Google (offering to help my local companies set up this Google service, as you suggest), when I could just use something that already exists?
Excellent tip, particularly on that first one. Very many thanks indeed.
(Which underlines Google Transit's lack of suitability- it performs considerably worse than transportdirect.info on a few test routes I've just tried. If they can't out-perform what's already available, they're not ready for me to use them)
Bizarrely, was a problem when I posted this message this morning (I checked), but is actually fixed now, this very evening. Apparently dozens of bug reports and an article in the local paper does nothing, while a small and little-read comment on Slashdot gets instant attention!
I reported an error a few months back. I got a lovely response back saying "thanks, we'll let you know when we've fixed it", and never heard anything since. I'm assuming it's waiting for a release or some such, but it seems like the fix has been a long time coming for what it is.
Quite amusing error, really. The town of Swindon (a long suffering butt of many jokes) no longer appears on the map. I mean it's there, but not labelled at most zoom levels. All the piddling neighbouring villages are labelled, but the town itself is not. Cue the barrage of new jokes, e.g., "Google does everyone a favour and gotten rid of Swindon", or "Tourists to Swindon are no longer able to find a route there on the map; all three of them are very disappointed".
As an aside, it always depresses me to see American's complain about petrol prices. I don't remember the last time petrol here was less than £5 a gallon; I think these days it's more like £6 (about $10)...
Firstly, it simply doesn't have all the public transport companies' data. Looking at my home town, it lacks the local (government owned, almost monopoly) bus company, and instead suggests you just walk everywhere (hours and hours of walking for some routes I've just tried). I know this is daft because I know my local transport routes; it'd be downright an issue when travelling somewhere unknown, where you don't know what you're missing.
Secondly, compared with the main railway site (nationalrail.co.uk), Google Transit only gives you a tiny subset of possible journeys. It also doesn't give you the fares. This is important, as one route I've just checked has three trains an hour, 2 of which cost £9 a ticket, the third costs £22 a ticket. Any sane traveller would obviously want to aim for the cheaper two trains an hour where possible, but Google Transit doesn't give any indication that the three routes are even slightly different.
I like the concept, but it's still lightyears away from being a useful product from where I'm sitting.
I agree with you, but I doubt you can blame yours and my situation for AMDs woes. I feel that a) desktop Linux users who b) are easily confused by technical specs are probably the minority, in the grand scheme of their customer base.
The UK government has shown time and time again that this is going to be a bad thing. For one, they've had so many data breaches in the last few years (lost DVLA disks, tax details, NHS disks, god knows what else) that a single monolithic data source is just asking for trouble. Secondly, we've had plenty of cases in recent years of jumped up local officials and magistrates using "anti-terror" laws (which were no-doubt passed in good faith) to track people who put their bins out on the wrong week, or don't keep their allotments tidy, or any number of other petty nonsense.
And finally, I'd like to point out to any smug-feeling non-Brits reading this that it's bad for you too. If your communications pass through UK -based servers, odds are you're going to be logged and tracked too. And you don't even have the satisfaction of having voted for this rubbish!
An interesting argument against the abolishment of 1p and 2p coins in the UK was that it would harm charities. Most shops in the UK will have a charity collection pot next to the till. If you're given copper change (1p or 2p coins), many people will just drop it straight into the charity pot to save having it rattling around their wallets. If all change given out was "real money" (denominations large enough people care about it), people would be unlikely to idly drop it in the charity pot.
I'd be surprised if they don't do this already. I imagine if you walk into your local hardware shop and buy the ingredients for a bomb (fertilizer, some electrical components, sack of ball-bearings, etc.), I suspect a little computer in Secret Service HQ will start to beep, and an unmarked van will take to parking on your street corner for the next few weeks.
Seeing the ads is only half the story. It's the data they're collecting on you that's really valuable. I mean, obviously you need to "see" an ad eventually for it to be worth their while. But maybe a company will use your Facebook data to send you junk email, or even junk snail mail to your house. Or perhaps a company like Amazon will buy it and use it to populate their "recommended for you" section.
ABP is nice because it stops websites being populate with gaudy ads. But it does diddly nothing to protect your privacy. The only way to do that is to not use Facebook.
Agreed. Xubuntu is my go-to distro these days. It's simple. light-weight, and keeps out of my way. Plus it reminds me of Gnome 2, which was my first proper experience of a Linux desktop.
I have used Unity. Indeed, am using it now on my netbook. It's not awful for a small screen, but there are far too many "WTF" decisions in it for me to reccommend it.
Lets face it- all major technology companies have turned into patent trolls in the last decade or two. Apple has categorically attempted to sue every one of its major rivals out of the markets. Microsoft's still tries to extort money out of companies selling products they don't even compete with. Samsung, Motorola, Google- they're all at it too.
Frankly, a crumbling company like Kodak would have been foolish for not copying the business tactics of their more successful rivals. It might have worked too, if only Kodak were even slightly relevant anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Er, 20th century...
Argh, you're going to force me to undo modding for this one, but I've got to reply...
To the best of my knowledge, the CIA absolutely did not overthrow the Shah in Iran. The Shah was a staunch ally of the US, and his overthrow (and subsequent formation of the Islamic Republic) was a complete disaster (see the front page of any newspaper). Received wisdom is that the CIA were taken completely by surprise by the popular uprising against the Shah, and that that represents one of their more embarrassing 10th century failures.
The Shah was a brutal dictator liked by the US, not a brutal dictator disliked. It's understandably difficult to tell them apart sometimes, being identical.
My guess is the former is the main reason. Why go to the court for something you don't need to go to the court for? Indeed, if you genuinely believed that there was no need to get court approval for something, it'd be positively irresponsible to keep going to court about it- a big waste of expensive court time.
But then, there's no saying how many of the investigations are too flimsy to have stood up in court. That's exactly why we force law enforcement to get warrants for things- to weed out flimsy cases. Without that check in place, god knows how many shoddy cases were nodded through.
What good is high-quality speakers when the signal received is so low "resolution"?
Just as TV makers all leapt on the chance to call their products "HD", and users leapt on the chance to buy something indescribably "better" ("it has 1080p!" "what's a P?" "I don't know, but I've got 1080 of them!"), I'm sure phones will go the same way.
Abysmal timing to announce "we have more money than we actually know what to do with" so hot on the heels of the negative stories about workers rights in the factories making Apple (and other) components. Perhaps they wouldn't have the "problem" of having such a colossal cash mountain if all workers in the supply chain were paid a fair wage?
And depressing that the best suggestion for dealing with the cash mountain is to distribute it to investors (to keep already highly valued share prices inflated), rather than any one of a hundred other uses- from increased pay, smaller profit margins on sale prices, increased R&D to come up with some truly innovative technology, or even just good old fashioned philanthropy.
Just going to take a guess and say "First Past The Post" is how. Same as in the UK- the Tories are the "winning" party with 36% of the vote, on a 65% turnout. Admittedly they're a minority government in coalition with the Lib Dems, but only just- and the figures are comparable with the 2005 Labour victory, which was a majority.
Most of the most popular games are linear stories, only with interactive challenges between the plot elements. Aside from the odd "now with 4 different endings" gimmick, the vast majority of games have only two endings- the actual plot ending, and "game over". Unless you lose, you usually end up in the same place, with the same characters, and the same events having happened to them, in more or less the same order.
Android's got all sorts of very dodgy sounding apps in their market, promising naked girls and whatnot. I've got no interest in downloading porn apps for my phone, so it'd be a definite development if they were in their own searchable section which I can ignore. I don't want to come across all "think of the children", but it is embarrassing when these apps show up in a list when little kids, or your grandparents, or your boss, are looking.
It makes me incredibly sad that TFS includes it as an example alongside 2001. 2001 was a genuinely innovative, ground-breaking film. Avatar was a 3D CGI remake of Pocahontas. There are so many genuinely worthy scifi films out there, and Avatar is not one of them.
You mean you don't know how to use the three seashells?
I get it. Google can't tell me about services if my local bus company won't give them the data. That's not a controversial statement.
What's important, though, is that I don't care. If it's because my local bus company is being an anti-competitive ass, or because they're technologically backwards, or if it's laziness, or if it's because of excruciatingly dull data licensing reasons- it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is whether this (free) commercial service is useful enough for me to use.
Currently, for whatever reason, Google's service doesn't contain data for my local services. Even if I did some unpaid leg work for them and lobbied my local company to sign up to their service, I'd still be unsure if Google have data for all those companies I don't know about- companies local to places I'm visiting. That's a major turn off for me to entrust this service with organising my travel plans.
And when push comes to shove, they're a commercial company competing for my eyeballs with other existing services- such as the excellent tax-funded one the GP linked to. What motivation have I got to do unpaid work for a private company like Google (offering to help my local companies set up this Google service, as you suggest), when I could just use something that already exists?
Excellent tip, particularly on that first one. Very many thanks indeed.
(Which underlines Google Transit's lack of suitability- it performs considerably worse than transportdirect.info on a few test routes I've just tried. If they can't out-perform what's already available, they're not ready for me to use them)
Bizarrely, was a problem when I posted this message this morning (I checked), but is actually fixed now, this very evening. Apparently dozens of bug reports and an article in the local paper does nothing, while a small and little-read comment on Slashdot gets instant attention!
I reported an error a few months back. I got a lovely response back saying "thanks, we'll let you know when we've fixed it", and never heard anything since. I'm assuming it's waiting for a release or some such, but it seems like the fix has been a long time coming for what it is.
Quite amusing error, really. The town of Swindon (a long suffering butt of many jokes) no longer appears on the map. I mean it's there, but not labelled at most zoom levels. All the piddling neighbouring villages are labelled, but the town itself is not. Cue the barrage of new jokes, e.g., "Google does everyone a favour and gotten rid of Swindon", or "Tourists to Swindon are no longer able to find a route there on the map; all three of them are very disappointed".
As an aside, it always depresses me to see American's complain about petrol prices. I don't remember the last time petrol here was less than £5 a gallon; I think these days it's more like £6 (about $10)...
I have two basic problems with it.
Firstly, it simply doesn't have all the public transport companies' data. Looking at my home town, it lacks the local (government owned, almost monopoly) bus company, and instead suggests you just walk everywhere (hours and hours of walking for some routes I've just tried). I know this is daft because I know my local transport routes; it'd be downright an issue when travelling somewhere unknown, where you don't know what you're missing.
Secondly, compared with the main railway site (nationalrail.co.uk), Google Transit only gives you a tiny subset of possible journeys. It also doesn't give you the fares. This is important, as one route I've just checked has three trains an hour, 2 of which cost £9 a ticket, the third costs £22 a ticket. Any sane traveller would obviously want to aim for the cheaper two trains an hour where possible, but Google Transit doesn't give any indication that the three routes are even slightly different.
I like the concept, but it's still lightyears away from being a useful product from where I'm sitting.
Would mod you up if I had points; it was what I clicked through to post.
It discusses the topic in such atomic detail (ho ho), it makes this discussion a bit of a pain to read on here; so much is already debunked.
I agree with you, but I doubt you can blame yours and my situation for AMDs woes. I feel that a) desktop Linux users who b) are easily confused by technical specs are probably the minority, in the grand scheme of their customer base.
Nvidia weren't necessarily for sale. ATI would have been an affordable purchase precisely because they were number two in their market of two.
You might as well say "why didn't they just buy IBM".
The UK government has shown time and time again that this is going to be a bad thing. For one, they've had so many data breaches in the last few years (lost DVLA disks, tax details, NHS disks, god knows what else) that a single monolithic data source is just asking for trouble. Secondly, we've had plenty of cases in recent years of jumped up local officials and magistrates using "anti-terror" laws (which were no-doubt passed in good faith) to track people who put their bins out on the wrong week, or don't keep their allotments tidy, or any number of other petty nonsense.
And finally, I'd like to point out to any smug-feeling non-Brits reading this that it's bad for you too. If your communications pass through UK -based servers, odds are you're going to be logged and tracked too. And you don't even have the satisfaction of having voted for this rubbish!
An interesting argument against the abolishment of 1p and 2p coins in the UK was that it would harm charities. Most shops in the UK will have a charity collection pot next to the till. If you're given copper change (1p or 2p coins), many people will just drop it straight into the charity pot to save having it rattling around their wallets. If all change given out was "real money" (denominations large enough people care about it), people would be unlikely to idly drop it in the charity pot.
I'd be surprised if they don't do this already. I imagine if you walk into your local hardware shop and buy the ingredients for a bomb (fertilizer, some electrical components, sack of ball-bearings, etc.), I suspect a little computer in Secret Service HQ will start to beep, and an unmarked van will take to parking on your street corner for the next few weeks.
Seeing the ads is only half the story. It's the data they're collecting on you that's really valuable. I mean, obviously you need to "see" an ad eventually for it to be worth their while. But maybe a company will use your Facebook data to send you junk email, or even junk snail mail to your house. Or perhaps a company like Amazon will buy it and use it to populate their "recommended for you" section.
ABP is nice because it stops websites being populate with gaudy ads. But it does diddly nothing to protect your privacy. The only way to do that is to not use Facebook.
Agreed. Xubuntu is my go-to distro these days. It's simple. light-weight, and keeps out of my way. Plus it reminds me of Gnome 2, which was my first proper experience of a Linux desktop.
I have used Unity. Indeed, am using it now on my netbook. It's not awful for a small screen, but there are far too many "WTF" decisions in it for me to reccommend it.
Whereas Apple never sues anyone?
Lets face it- all major technology companies have turned into patent trolls in the last decade or two. Apple has categorically attempted to sue every one of its major rivals out of the markets. Microsoft's still tries to extort money out of companies selling products they don't even compete with. Samsung, Motorola, Google- they're all at it too.
Frankly, a crumbling company like Kodak would have been foolish for not copying the business tactics of their more successful rivals. It might have worked too, if only Kodak were even slightly relevant anymore.