Chickenpox is rarely fatal, although it is generally more severe in adult males than in adult females or children. Non-immune pregnant women and those with a suppressed immune system are at highest risk of serious complications. Chickenpox is believed to be the cause of one third of stroke cases in children.[13] The most common late complication of chickenpox is shingles (herpes zoster), caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus decades after the initial episode of chickenpox.
Or to summarise, it's bad for some people. Particularly pregnant people, and people with immunodeficiency disorders (such as AIDS).
So again- Valve (maker of Half Life, Portal, Team Fortress, etc.) are releasing their own Linux distro and associated hardware. Sounds like they would have both the means and the incentive.
A quick reminder that most (if not all) of the inmates claim that they are innocent, and we know for a fact that the authorities don't have enough evidence to convict most of them to the normal civil standard (or they would have just convened a court and done so). So, for one, let's remember the doctrine of "innocent until proven guilty". And for two, you've got to think to what will happen if you ship these guys to New York, put them on trial, and they're acquitted and free to live their lives like normal people in America. Will they be safe and protected on the street? Will people be happy living next door to a former Gitmo inmate? What about the severe egg-on-face for the authorities if the guy they've had in solitary confinement for a decade is given the "completely innocent" stamp by a court- will heads roll?
It should be pointed out that as the Steam Box is just a regular Linux distro on regular PC hardware, you will not be limited to using just this controller. You'll be able to use anything available on the market for PCs, including- wireless keyboard & mouse, wireless handheld keyboard & trackpad, Sony Dual Shock controllers, Dual Shock rip off imitation controllers, Xbox controllers, Xbox ripoff imitation controllers, joysticks...
This controller is just because Valve know that 99% of their Steam catalogue is designed for keyboard & mouse, they know that 99% of that 99% will never be modified for use with a console gamepad, and they know that most console gamers would balk at the suggestion they should sit on their couch with a tea tray on their lap for a keyboard & mouse. This is their selling point to that crowd. If you're happy with the tea tray keyboard & mouse set up, Valve certainly won't be objecting. And if you want to buy a £10 PS-style gamepad from Amazon to play with, they'll be happy with that too.
While you're right (and still right- the PS4 won't have any games until someone releases games for it), surely Valve's biggest selling point with Steam is that they already have 100's of much loved titles covering every genre ready to go. I don't know how many Steam titles there are for Linux already, but it's a non-trivial number and includes AAA titles from the last few years (not least their own titles).
Bearing in mind that they'll be a new kid on the block in the console market, it certainly helps if they have a much bigger and better games catalogue than any of their next-gen rivals.
I use a laptop as my main work computer. Let me describe to you my desk at the office: 1) A big monitor. Because the 15" screen on my laptop is too fidly for proper work, and two monitors is always nice. 2) A keyboard. Because it means I can type in a comfy position while putting my laptop screen in a comfy place on my desk. 3) A laptop stand. Because it's nice to have my laptop screen at eye level. 4) A mouse. Because of the laptop stand, and because I never really have gotten over my dislike of trackpads.
I'm definitely going to have those things on my desk for as long as I'm using a laptop. No reason why I should compromise with a small screen, a trackpad and a neck ache. So that in mind- it'd be nice if I could dock my phone into that lot when I want to; it'd mean I'd have a personal full-featured computer with me all day (in addition to the corporate laptop), rather than an over-powered pocket warmer which can play Angry Birds.
I have lots of computers. Big ones, small ones, pocket ones, whatever. One of them is my smartphone. It has quite a powerful processor in it. So here's what I want, which some companies don't seem willing to let me have: 1) The option to run any software I like on it. 2) Access to "non pretty" functions, like a command line, SSH client, FTP functionality. 3) The ability to connect peripherals, like a hardware keyboard or big screen, so that I can use the more involved features (both the ones from point 2), and things like the browser, email client and office suite) more easily when I'm settled in to a comfy seat.
Apple & Microsoft both maintain separate UIs for essentially the same codebase (their mobile and desktop OS flavours). Why shouldn't they make it so I can switch UI on the fly, depending on which one makes more sense on each occasion? Sounds like a great idea to me.
Personally, I like the idea behind the Ubuntu phone. If they can pull it off to a good quality (and that's a big if), I'd buy it. If Apple/Android/Microsoft want to do the same thing, I'd be a happy chappy.
And no, I still wouldn't give up my gaming desktop, my business laptop, or my home server. I have room in my life for many computers.
Puny compared to Microsoft- compared to Apple? Depends on your definition of puny.
I just checked a market share website (pick your favourite- there are dozens, and they all give different answers), ant it put OSX on 7.3% of the market at Linux on 1.5%. Let's assume that Ubuntu has 2/3rds of the Linux share for easy numbers, to give us 1%. That means that the Ubuntu has (very roughly) 1/7th of the market share of Apple. Which is coincidentally about the same difference between Apple and Windows.
So to put it another way, Ubuntu is roughly as big compared to Mac as Mac is to Windows. So it is no more implausible for Apple to pay attention to what Ubuntu is up to than it is that Microsoft would pay attention to what Mac is up to.
And that's ignoring the fact that a good idea is a good idea, and the tech world has a long history to big companies watching and copying (or acquiring) the good ideas of small start ups and fringe competitors. The best ideas in the industry almost always come from the minnows rather than the whales.
I'm going to play the devil's advocate here - Ubuntu is the release of Linux that is not necessarily meant for the most tech savvy users, and it may not be as closed monitored as other, more security focused Linux distributions. It may be easier to get something passed everyone since people aren't watching it as closely. That's not saying it can't be caught, but that it might take longer to find.
Riposte- as it is probably the most widely used distro, and as it is used by a large number of high profile organisations, it could be MORE closely monitored than a more niche distro which appeals to the tech-savvy (say, Gentoo). That is, I expect that the French Gendarme (militarised police) did their homework before they rolled out Ubuntu in terms of security. Same of course goes for the other big hitters (Red Hat etc.) when compared with the other smaller players (Arch, Mint, etc.).
I believe the "morphs seamlessly from phone to desktop to TV and back again" functionality is supposed to come in with Unity 8, which is being launched for the 14.04 LTS release. So he is rolling it out.
You can already flash the software to a Nexus phone yourself, and allegedly Canonical have been working their socks off to try to persuade OEMs to hop on board. I can understand their reluctance to just buy 10,000 cheap Chinese generic handsets and releasing them themselves, as they don't want to tarnish the Ubuntu OS brand with a sub-standard reference model. They'll only get rich if they can persuade lots of people to buy Ubuntu phones (from any vendor) and get a decent market share; selling a few thousand flaky phones to enthusiasts isn't going to do them much good.
Others see inflation as a form of "theft" or "tax" taking spending power away from those who decide to keep hold of their money rather than investing it.
My understanding of mainstream economic theory (which is poor; but this is the internet, so I won't let that stop me) is that both inflation and deflation are considered bad. However, unlike inflation, deflation is considered "infectious".
If you have some money and it is experiencing deflation, it will be worth more tomorrow than it is today. So why spend it today? That widescreen TV you wanted- why not wait until tomorrow, then you can buy one and have more money left over! Except the same is true of the day after too, and the day after that- tomorrow never comes. Instead of having money as a means of exchange, it becomes and investment to buy up and horde.
Inflation is bad too, but it doesn't do that. So, if you want to maintain your currency at a stable point, with as little inflation and deflation as possible, the way to do it is to aim for a small amount of inflation (say, 1%). The inflation won't spiral of its own accord, and it gives you a small buffer from the deadly contagious deflation.
That's the theory anyway. In relation to Bitcoin, this could turn out pretty text book. If Bitcoin is deflating, then people will use it as an investment ("buy now, sell at a profit later") rather than a currency. All the Bitcoins end up in huge hordes (which makes them even more likely to be lost en masse, I suppose, as in the original topic of this thread) , which means all the liquidity leaves the market and nobody uses it as a currency any more. The goal of having a decentralised, anonymous currency is lost, and instead you just have an electronic pyramid scheme.
So it's a deflationary pressure, then? That is, if I have 10 Bitcoins today and do absolutely nothing with them, will they be worth more tomorrow (because they now represent a larger proportion of the overall population)?
Deflation is, in economics, generally considered A Very Bad Thing. I believe that's why Bitcoin was designed to have an inflationary pressure built right in (the mining process should continually increase the pool, making every Bitcoin worth slightly less over time).
I don't think they'd require SteamOS for anything. But it's not a secret that they'll be launching their own living-room console "soon". Having big game title exclusives to plug it with is standard tradecraft.
And I don't mean "exclusive to the Steam console at the expense of Steam on a PC", I mean "exclusive to Steam at the expense of PS4, WiiU and XBone". The Steam console is pretty much exclusively a vehicle with which to get more people to buy games via the Steam store. Odds are Valve will even need to sell them at subsidised prices if they want to compete with the other consoles. So Valve won't care if you buy their game for your PC or your console, as long as you buy it from them and not their competitors.
The Wayland folks were the X11 folks. X11 doesn't have any folks anymore.
With a cynic's hat on, Wayland is the new pet project of the guys who used to do X11, and they'll move heaven and earth (including smearing X11) to get people to adopt their shiny new product. It is against their interests for anyone to claim that X11 doesn't need wholesale replacing, or that the replacement should look different to how Wayland looks.
(With the cynic's hat removed- I honestly don't have an opinion. I'm not close enough to Wayland or Mir, nor a powerful-enough X11 power user to really care one way or the other).
Canonical claim that Wayland isn't well suited to their view of device interoperability (a view which is fairly unique to them- none of the other distros/DEs are going in the same directions). No idea if that's true (say what you like about Canonical, they've never been prone to telling outright porkies, especially when the code is open for all to see), but if it is- why shouldn't they roll their own? That's what OSS is all about, after all. No reason they should compromise on functionality just so they can support someone else's pet project, if they've got the resources to do otherwise.
And if you or I don't like it, there's always Mint/Debian/Fedora/whatever. Again, that's the beauty of Linux.
I'm not sure watching "Spamalot" on stage is going to make the world a better place any more so than watching Hollyoaks on TV. They're both a load of old tripe; one load of old tripe being performed live while the other is recorded doesn't make it more worthy. Oh, did you mean "watch meaningful and intellectual theatre", rather than just ANYTHING on stage? In that case, can I qualify that you should only watch meaningful and intellectual television as a valid comparison?
I'm not sure the world would be a better place if all anyone did was stay at home cooking and fucking, either. Mindlessly gratifying yourself with a hormone fix and baking fairy cakes isn't exactly going to expand your mind. You'd be far better off watching a quality documentary on BBC 4, or enjoying classical music via the (televised) Proms, or a drama by one of our most talented contemporary writers.
I say that as man who reads a lot, cooks every day for pleasure, enjoys a good fuck, and watches plays at his local Arts Centre. I just also enjoy the quality bits of TV, too.
Spoken like someone who is hilariously pro Israel, and is upset by news which isn't tub-thumpingly supportive of your views your side.
The BBC is excruciatingly, almost absurdly careful about producing unbiased coverage. Every regulator and watchdog in the country agrees. But for some reason whenever they report on anything controversial, there are always choruses of "why don't they agree with me, they're so biased!" from one side or another. See just about any reporting about government policy from the last two decades for further reference...
My personal favourite is whenever the government (this one or last) announces that they've got some fantastic economic news and should be worshipped like democratically elected gods, and the BBC inevitably publishes material knocking the claims full of holes. Cue choruses of "the BBC is so left wing / right wing / out to get us and needs to be reformed!" from government spokespeople...
You realise that Dave made it's fame (and it's fortune) showing BBC repeats, and is 50% owned by BBC Worldwide, right? For all intents and purposes, it IS part of the BBC family.
And as for the Discovery Channel- it's original launch back in the 1980's was part funded by the BBC, and Animal Planet was a joint venture between Discovery Channel and the BBC. It might be pushing it to say that Discovery wouldn't exist if it weren't for the BBC- but the BBC was involved in the birth of that one too.
You want a half-finished, buggy and untested Linux distro with bad driver support? Why?
Give them a chance to finish developing it first. Software development takes time. If I understand it correctly, this Steam OS is just going to be a Linux distro configured to run the Steam for Linux programme on startup, possibly with a few other bits of software and config in support. If you want it so badly that you're willing to put up with a half-finished
Something that curiously never comes up in the world of USB cables outside of Apple devices- you know, those cables that are in use for every other device in the known world these days. USB cables and chargers made in the cheapest Chinese workshops still seem to manage to work without electrocuting anything.
This means that either: 1) The Lightning extension to the USB standard is somehow inherently dangerous. 2) People who manufacture Apple peripherals are less competent than all of the other peripheral manufacturers in the world. 3) Apple devices are so poorly designed that they can take a minor defect in a cable and make it a risk of serious injury, where other companies' devices would not. 4) Apple are just trying to cash in by forcing you to pay £30 for £5 worth of cable.
My provider (Virgin) had the same phone on subsidised contract (of varying lengths), and for sale outright. They also did Sim Free contracts, with exactly the same minute/text/data allowances.
Using a spreadsheet, I compared 12/18/24 months Sim Free payments + cost of phone with 12/18/24 (etc.) months contract payments to see which was cheaper. Not only was the Sim Free + purchase option cheaper, it was by a wide margin- £100 and more from the 24 monther, a little less for the shorter contracts. The difference was wide enough that I could have just bought the phone on my credit card (9.9% APR) and paid it off over a year and it still would have worked out cheaper than the contract options; for the price of the phone, it would have been £80 or so in interest, without any interest free deals. Apologies I don't have the numbers any more- long since deleted. But trust me.
Obviously it always pays to do the maths every time you do these purchases- that Galaxy S4 price you quoted isn't as bad as all that, and you never know when you might get lucky and find a loss leader.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically targeted for their geographic position. The US needed to test it in these places as they had specifically left both cities unbombed through out their entire campaign. The places for the bombs to detonate planned specifically to maximize the information they could gather about the bombs effect.
Dropping nukes on a whim isn't generally considered well thought out plans.
An interesting historical note is that Nagasaki wasn't the intended target for the second bomb. They originally intended to drop the bomb on Kokura, but were thwarted when they got there by poor weather. Nagasaki was their secondary "target of opportunity". Because, you know, it would have been a shame to fly all the way out there without dropping a bomb on someone.
The WW2 atom bombs have as much in common with a cold war H bomb as a medieval musket has with a with a modern belt-fed machine gun. The principal is vaguely the same, but the actual mechanism is almost wholly different.
In short, orbiters such as the Mars Express detected methane. Methane only has an atmospheric life of a few years, which means if the orbiter detected it then something must be releasing it right now. The amount detected was more than could have been expected from non-living sources, which makes it an indication of life.
If we now can't detect it, that means either all our previous detections were wrong, or the methane has disappeared. Or, of course, that the rover isn't detecting it even though it is still there somewhere. All of which raises more questions than answers. Hence "mystery".
Slashdot Mirror
Quoth Wikipedia:
Chickenpox is rarely fatal, although it is generally more severe in adult males than in adult females or children. Non-immune pregnant women and those with a suppressed immune system are at highest risk of serious complications. Chickenpox is believed to be the cause of one third of stroke cases in children.[13] The most common late complication of chickenpox is shingles (herpes zoster), caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus decades after the initial episode of chickenpox.
Or to summarise, it's bad for some people. Particularly pregnant people, and people with immunodeficiency disorders (such as AIDS).
So again- Valve (maker of Half Life, Portal, Team Fortress, etc.) are releasing their own Linux distro and associated hardware. Sounds like they would have both the means and the incentive.
A quick reminder that most (if not all) of the inmates claim that they are innocent, and we know for a fact that the authorities don't have enough evidence to convict most of them to the normal civil standard (or they would have just convened a court and done so). So, for one, let's remember the doctrine of "innocent until proven guilty". And for two, you've got to think to what will happen if you ship these guys to New York, put them on trial, and they're acquitted and free to live their lives like normal people in America. Will they be safe and protected on the street? Will people be happy living next door to a former Gitmo inmate? What about the severe egg-on-face for the authorities if the guy they've had in solitary confinement for a decade is given the "completely innocent" stamp by a court- will heads roll?
It should be pointed out that as the Steam Box is just a regular Linux distro on regular PC hardware, you will not be limited to using just this controller. You'll be able to use anything available on the market for PCs, including- wireless keyboard & mouse, wireless handheld keyboard & trackpad, Sony Dual Shock controllers, Dual Shock rip off imitation controllers, Xbox controllers, Xbox ripoff imitation controllers, joysticks...
This controller is just because Valve know that 99% of their Steam catalogue is designed for keyboard & mouse, they know that 99% of that 99% will never be modified for use with a console gamepad, and they know that most console gamers would balk at the suggestion they should sit on their couch with a tea tray on their lap for a keyboard & mouse. This is their selling point to that crowd. If you're happy with the tea tray keyboard & mouse set up, Valve certainly won't be objecting. And if you want to buy a £10 PS-style gamepad from Amazon to play with, they'll be happy with that too.
While you're right (and still right- the PS4 won't have any games until someone releases games for it), surely Valve's biggest selling point with Steam is that they already have 100's of much loved titles covering every genre ready to go. I don't know how many Steam titles there are for Linux already, but it's a non-trivial number and includes AAA titles from the last few years (not least their own titles).
Bearing in mind that they'll be a new kid on the block in the console market, it certainly helps if they have a much bigger and better games catalogue than any of their next-gen rivals.
I use a laptop as my main work computer. Let me describe to you my desk at the office:
1) A big monitor. Because the 15" screen on my laptop is too fidly for proper work, and two monitors is always nice.
2) A keyboard. Because it means I can type in a comfy position while putting my laptop screen in a comfy place on my desk.
3) A laptop stand. Because it's nice to have my laptop screen at eye level.
4) A mouse. Because of the laptop stand, and because I never really have gotten over my dislike of trackpads.
I'm definitely going to have those things on my desk for as long as I'm using a laptop. No reason why I should compromise with a small screen, a trackpad and a neck ache. So that in mind- it'd be nice if I could dock my phone into that lot when I want to; it'd mean I'd have a personal full-featured computer with me all day (in addition to the corporate laptop), rather than an over-powered pocket warmer which can play Angry Birds.
NOBODY WANTS THIS!
I want this. What sort of geek are you?
I have lots of computers. Big ones, small ones, pocket ones, whatever. One of them is my smartphone. It has quite a powerful processor in it. So here's what I want, which some companies don't seem willing to let me have:
1) The option to run any software I like on it.
2) Access to "non pretty" functions, like a command line, SSH client, FTP functionality.
3) The ability to connect peripherals, like a hardware keyboard or big screen, so that I can use the more involved features (both the ones from point 2), and things like the browser, email client and office suite) more easily when I'm settled in to a comfy seat.
Apple & Microsoft both maintain separate UIs for essentially the same codebase (their mobile and desktop OS flavours). Why shouldn't they make it so I can switch UI on the fly, depending on which one makes more sense on each occasion? Sounds like a great idea to me.
Personally, I like the idea behind the Ubuntu phone. If they can pull it off to a good quality (and that's a big if), I'd buy it. If Apple/Android/Microsoft want to do the same thing, I'd be a happy chappy.
And no, I still wouldn't give up my gaming desktop, my business laptop, or my home server. I have room in my life for many computers.
Puny compared to Microsoft- compared to Apple? Depends on your definition of puny.
I just checked a market share website (pick your favourite- there are dozens, and they all give different answers), ant it put OSX on 7.3% of the market at Linux on 1.5%. Let's assume that Ubuntu has 2/3rds of the Linux share for easy numbers, to give us 1%. That means that the Ubuntu has (very roughly) 1/7th of the market share of Apple. Which is coincidentally about the same difference between Apple and Windows.
So to put it another way, Ubuntu is roughly as big compared to Mac as Mac is to Windows. So it is no more implausible for Apple to pay attention to what Ubuntu is up to than it is that Microsoft would pay attention to what Mac is up to.
And that's ignoring the fact that a good idea is a good idea, and the tech world has a long history to big companies watching and copying (or acquiring) the good ideas of small start ups and fringe competitors. The best ideas in the industry almost always come from the minnows rather than the whales.
I'm going to play the devil's advocate here - Ubuntu is the release of Linux that is not necessarily meant for the most tech savvy users, and it may not be as closed monitored as other, more security focused Linux distributions. It may be easier to get something passed everyone since people aren't watching it as closely. That's not saying it can't be caught, but that it might take longer to find.
Riposte- as it is probably the most widely used distro, and as it is used by a large number of high profile organisations, it could be MORE closely monitored than a more niche distro which appeals to the tech-savvy (say, Gentoo). That is, I expect that the French Gendarme (militarised police) did their homework before they rolled out Ubuntu in terms of security. Same of course goes for the other big hitters (Red Hat etc.) when compared with the other smaller players (Arch, Mint, etc.).
I believe the "morphs seamlessly from phone to desktop to TV and back again" functionality is supposed to come in with Unity 8, which is being launched for the 14.04 LTS release. So he is rolling it out.
You can already flash the software to a Nexus phone yourself, and allegedly Canonical have been working their socks off to try to persuade OEMs to hop on board. I can understand their reluctance to just buy 10,000 cheap Chinese generic handsets and releasing them themselves, as they don't want to tarnish the Ubuntu OS brand with a sub-standard reference model. They'll only get rich if they can persuade lots of people to buy Ubuntu phones (from any vendor) and get a decent market share; selling a few thousand flaky phones to enthusiasts isn't going to do them much good.
It is by mainstream economists.
Others see inflation as a form of "theft" or "tax" taking spending power away from those who decide to keep hold of their money rather than investing it.
My understanding of mainstream economic theory (which is poor; but this is the internet, so I won't let that stop me) is that both inflation and deflation are considered bad. However, unlike inflation, deflation is considered "infectious".
If you have some money and it is experiencing deflation, it will be worth more tomorrow than it is today. So why spend it today? That widescreen TV you wanted- why not wait until tomorrow, then you can buy one and have more money left over! Except the same is true of the day after too, and the day after that- tomorrow never comes. Instead of having money as a means of exchange, it becomes and investment to buy up and horde.
Inflation is bad too, but it doesn't do that. So, if you want to maintain your currency at a stable point, with as little inflation and deflation as possible, the way to do it is to aim for a small amount of inflation (say, 1%). The inflation won't spiral of its own accord, and it gives you a small buffer from the deadly contagious deflation.
That's the theory anyway. In relation to Bitcoin, this could turn out pretty text book. If Bitcoin is deflating, then people will use it as an investment ("buy now, sell at a profit later") rather than a currency. All the Bitcoins end up in huge hordes (which makes them even more likely to be lost en masse, I suppose, as in the original topic of this thread) , which means all the liquidity leaves the market and nobody uses it as a currency any more. The goal of having a decentralised, anonymous currency is lost, and instead you just have an electronic pyramid scheme.
So it's a deflationary pressure, then? That is, if I have 10 Bitcoins today and do absolutely nothing with them, will they be worth more tomorrow (because they now represent a larger proportion of the overall population)?
Deflation is, in economics, generally considered A Very Bad Thing. I believe that's why Bitcoin was designed to have an inflationary pressure built right in (the mining process should continually increase the pool, making every Bitcoin worth slightly less over time).
I don't think they'd require SteamOS for anything. But it's not a secret that they'll be launching their own living-room console "soon". Having big game title exclusives to plug it with is standard tradecraft.
And I don't mean "exclusive to the Steam console at the expense of Steam on a PC", I mean "exclusive to Steam at the expense of PS4, WiiU and XBone". The Steam console is pretty much exclusively a vehicle with which to get more people to buy games via the Steam store. Odds are Valve will even need to sell them at subsidised prices if they want to compete with the other consoles. So Valve won't care if you buy their game for your PC or your console, as long as you buy it from them and not their competitors.
The Wayland folks were the X11 folks. X11 doesn't have any folks anymore.
With a cynic's hat on, Wayland is the new pet project of the guys who used to do X11, and they'll move heaven and earth (including smearing X11) to get people to adopt their shiny new product. It is against their interests for anyone to claim that X11 doesn't need wholesale replacing, or that the replacement should look different to how Wayland looks.
(With the cynic's hat removed- I honestly don't have an opinion. I'm not close enough to Wayland or Mir, nor a powerful-enough X11 power user to really care one way or the other).
Canonical claim that Wayland isn't well suited to their view of device interoperability (a view which is fairly unique to them- none of the other distros/DEs are going in the same directions). No idea if that's true (say what you like about Canonical, they've never been prone to telling outright porkies, especially when the code is open for all to see), but if it is- why shouldn't they roll their own? That's what OSS is all about, after all. No reason they should compromise on functionality just so they can support someone else's pet project, if they've got the resources to do otherwise.
And if you or I don't like it, there's always Mint/Debian/Fedora/whatever. Again, that's the beauty of Linux.
I'm not sure watching "Spamalot" on stage is going to make the world a better place any more so than watching Hollyoaks on TV. They're both a load of old tripe; one load of old tripe being performed live while the other is recorded doesn't make it more worthy. Oh, did you mean "watch meaningful and intellectual theatre", rather than just ANYTHING on stage? In that case, can I qualify that you should only watch meaningful and intellectual television as a valid comparison?
I'm not sure the world would be a better place if all anyone did was stay at home cooking and fucking, either. Mindlessly gratifying yourself with a hormone fix and baking fairy cakes isn't exactly going to expand your mind. You'd be far better off watching a quality documentary on BBC 4, or enjoying classical music via the (televised) Proms, or a drama by one of our most talented contemporary writers.
I say that as man who reads a lot, cooks every day for pleasure, enjoys a good fuck, and watches plays at his local Arts Centre. I just also enjoy the quality bits of TV, too.
Spoken like someone who is hilariously pro Israel, and is upset by news which isn't tub-thumpingly supportive of your views your side.
The BBC is excruciatingly, almost absurdly careful about producing unbiased coverage. Every regulator and watchdog in the country agrees. But for some reason whenever they report on anything controversial, there are always choruses of "why don't they agree with me, they're so biased!" from one side or another. See just about any reporting about government policy from the last two decades for further reference...
My personal favourite is whenever the government (this one or last) announces that they've got some fantastic economic news and should be worshipped like democratically elected gods, and the BBC inevitably publishes material knocking the claims full of holes. Cue choruses of "the BBC is so left wing / right wing / out to get us and needs to be reformed!" from government spokespeople...
You realise that Dave made it's fame (and it's fortune) showing BBC repeats, and is 50% owned by BBC Worldwide, right? For all intents and purposes, it IS part of the BBC family.
And as for the Discovery Channel- it's original launch back in the 1980's was part funded by the BBC, and Animal Planet was a joint venture between Discovery Channel and the BBC. It might be pushing it to say that Discovery wouldn't exist if it weren't for the BBC- but the BBC was involved in the birth of that one too.
You want a half-finished, buggy and untested Linux distro with bad driver support? Why?
Give them a chance to finish developing it first. Software development takes time. If I understand it correctly, this Steam OS is just going to be a Linux distro configured to run the Steam for Linux programme on startup, possibly with a few other bits of software and config in support. If you want it so badly that you're willing to put up with a half-finished
Just general anti-militarism, actually. I'm sure any military the world over would have acted the same. It doesn't make it any more pleasant.
Something that curiously never comes up in the world of USB cables outside of Apple devices- you know, those cables that are in use for every other device in the known world these days. USB cables and chargers made in the cheapest Chinese workshops still seem to manage to work without electrocuting anything.
This means that either:
1) The Lightning extension to the USB standard is somehow inherently dangerous.
2) People who manufacture Apple peripherals are less competent than all of the other peripheral manufacturers in the world.
3) Apple devices are so poorly designed that they can take a minor defect in a cable and make it a risk of serious injury, where other companies' devices would not.
4) Apple are just trying to cash in by forcing you to pay £30 for £5 worth of cable.
I know which of the four options I favour.
No need to wonder- there's a place you can actually try it out, today!
http://www.amazon.com/
I am UK, and yes.
My provider (Virgin) had the same phone on subsidised contract (of varying lengths), and for sale outright. They also did Sim Free contracts, with exactly the same minute/text/data allowances.
Using a spreadsheet, I compared 12/18/24 months Sim Free payments + cost of phone with 12/18/24 (etc.) months contract payments to see which was cheaper. Not only was the Sim Free + purchase option cheaper, it was by a wide margin- £100 and more from the 24 monther, a little less for the shorter contracts. The difference was wide enough that I could have just bought the phone on my credit card (9.9% APR) and paid it off over a year and it still would have worked out cheaper than the contract options; for the price of the phone, it would have been £80 or so in interest, without any interest free deals. Apologies I don't have the numbers any more- long since deleted. But trust me.
Obviously it always pays to do the maths every time you do these purchases- that Galaxy S4 price you quoted isn't as bad as all that, and you never know when you might get lucky and find a loss leader.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically targeted for their geographic position. The US needed to test it in these places as they had specifically left both cities unbombed through out their entire campaign. The places for the bombs to detonate planned specifically to maximize the information they could gather about the bombs effect.
Dropping nukes on a whim isn't generally considered well thought out plans.
An interesting historical note is that Nagasaki wasn't the intended target for the second bomb. They originally intended to drop the bomb on Kokura, but were thwarted when they got there by poor weather. Nagasaki was their secondary "target of opportunity". Because, you know, it would have been a shame to fly all the way out there without dropping a bomb on someone.
The WW2 atom bombs have as much in common with a cold war H bomb as a medieval musket has with a with a modern belt-fed machine gun. The principal is vaguely the same, but the actual mechanism is almost wholly different.
There has been plenty of indication that there was methane on Mars, which was an exciting prospect. Quoth the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Atmosphere
In short, orbiters such as the Mars Express detected methane. Methane only has an atmospheric life of a few years, which means if the orbiter detected it then something must be releasing it right now. The amount detected was more than could have been expected from non-living sources, which makes it an indication of life.
If we now can't detect it, that means either all our previous detections were wrong, or the methane has disappeared. Or, of course, that the rover isn't detecting it even though it is still there somewhere. All of which raises more questions than answers. Hence "mystery".