Most in-dash video systems (and after market ones) either blank the display when the car is in motion, or use a polarized display so that the driver can't see anything while the passenger can. Since such a device would have no way of knowing if it's connected to a GPS or to a DVD player, it's unlikely you'd have a way to override it.
Personally, I just use my smartphone. Tie it in to the car's bluetooth system, and let it use voice instructions for navigation. The car has a USB socket in the center console, and it works perfectly well with any bluetooth-enabled phone, while having steering-wheel controls for manipulating the audio playback or controllling the phone. Throw in a voice-recognition dialling system (which the car has), and the obsolescence problem becomes just wanting to make sure that the phones still support bluetooth.
Oh well, the fancy tires are probably too loud for me to hear the difference between HD and plain old FM anyway.
If your fancy tires are loud, you have a problem. Good tires tend not to be very loud on the road at all, because the noise they produce indicates energy lost, which means higher rolling resistance.
dunno about you, but I intend to wait until it shows up in the local library's DVD/BluRay collection, and then continue not going to that part of the library.
He was visible in the Galactic Senate scene, too. Presumably as the representative for Naboo.
Pretty sure that was ROTS. My mind has blocked out large parts of that movie as being one of the worst I've ever seen in my life (and I include Plan 9 from Outer Space on that list).
I doubt that Apple could make a $350 MacBook any more impressive than a $350 HP laptop. The reason that the MacBook sells well, despite not having Windows, which most people are familiar with, is that it is such a beautiful machine. People are willing to get rid of Windows when they are getting a really nice machine in exchange. However, at $350, there really isn't much room to make the machine appealing. No sleek aluminium case. No solid state drive, no multi-touch touchpad, no retina display, no crazy long battery life, no custom motherboard that allows the machine to be.75 inches including screen. Basically throw out everything that makes a Mac appealing. If you're just going to have some cheap junky computer, you might as well have and OS that's familiar and runs all your old programs.
They could easily make a $350 MacBook and still make a profit on it. The chassis is basically unchanged from previous iterations, and even if they come out with a new design there's no reason they can't use the same chassis on multiple system configurations. They already do that, actually, just that all of the configurations available are mid-high end. Given that the current version of OS/X runs perfectly well on a 2008 MacBook, there is absolutely no reason it wouldn't run on a current entry-level Intel processor. If I can run an i5 or an i7 on a MacBook, then there is absolutely no reason I can't run a Celeron on the same system without needing to change the motherboard or system design.
Aluminum cases aren't that expensive: my Dell Vostro V130 was $400, and it's got an anodized aluminum case. Battery life is not great on it, but it's respectable, able to eke out 4h or so with aggressive power management settings. Oh, and it's got a multi-touch touchpad... pretty much all Synaptics makes these days are multi-touch devices, and it's software that limits them on Windows devices: install Linux, and holy shit! your touchpad is actually multitouch! It would actually be cheaper for Apple to put the better battery in the "low end" system because of the cost associated with running multiple production lines (also the reason that touchpads are multi-touch), and you know as well as I do that "retina display" is marketing bullshit that doesn't actually mean anything.
The reason they don't make a $350 MacBook isn't because they can't, it's because they don't want to be associated with the low end of the market. It would hurt their image as a "high end" company, and they wouldn't be able to command such high prices on their high end equipment.
1. You can't extradite somebody to a foreign country for a crime that was committed domestically. If the crime was committed on Canadian soil, and is a crime under Canadian law, then it will be tried in a Canadian court. Canada also has a long-standing policy of not extraditing accused criminals to countries where they would face a penalty that is significantly more severe than what they would face domestically. (we don't extradite murder suspects to the US because of the death penalty, for example).
2. The "lobby" power is severely limited by conflict of interest laws in Canada. Specifically: - corporate donations are not allowed at all - personal donations are limited to just over $1000/year - campaigns have a spending limit that would give the US Presidential campaign managers giggle fits ($125,000 per electoral district, which has to actually be spent in that electoral district... can't ignore one riding and spent $250k in another, and smaller ridings have lower caps) - all election financing is a matter of public record whether the candidate wins or not, must be submitted within 30 days of the end of a campaign, and is available to anybody who asks. (publicly searchable on the Internet, or you can call Elections and ask them to send you a physical copy)
To put it perspective, the mayor of Toronto is currently going through a legal battle that will likely end his career, for violating the conflict of interest laws. What did he do? He asked a lobbyist to consider giving a donation to a charity that he works with, which buys football equipment for underprivileged kids. The lobbyist gave a donation (less than $3000 total), and the money went directly to the kids without touching the mayor's hands. The mayor was given an opportunity to return the money, and he declined. This, in Canada, is bad enough to end the career of a politician (who, admittedly, is a complete jackass, but that doesn't factor in to the decision), because it represents a conflict of interest.
The tools to break digital locks are still legal in Canada, after all. It's stupid that the restriction legally exists, but for that matter I'm pretty sure videotaping TV shows on cassette, which EVERYBODY did, was technically illegal until this latest copyright law passed. So keep that in mind.
It was never illegal. Canadian copyright law has said that making a personal copy of copyrighted material has been legal since before VCR's and cassette recorders existed to begin with. What's illegal in Canada, until quite recently, is "making available". Distribution. If you were to use a duplicator/editor to remove the commercials and then hand out copies of the recording at the local flea market, then you'd be up the creek for copyright infringement, but never if you were to simply record a broadcast for personal use.
The current law, C-11, changed that, but it's still nowhere near as onerous as US laws on the matter.
TFA says that the statutory limit for damages for non-commercial infringement is $5000, and that they're going to go after habitual downloaders. $5000 is less than the limit for small claims court, meaning that if you decide to challenge it, they will have to take it to small claims court where "expert witnesses" won't be allowed. Just their lawyer, your lawyer, and about 15 minutes a side to make your case because there's 30 other cases on the docket that day. (yes, I have been in a Canadian small claims court).
There's well over $5000 worth of DVD's in my collection. Physical media, most of which was bought at full retail price (and in some cases, well over retail price because it was a "special edition" box set). If those idiots decide to try to sue me because I downloaded a copy of True Lies (disc was scratched and I couldn't rip it when I was digitizing my physical copy), I'll be quite amused to see what the courts say about it. The reason there's nothing new in the collection isn't that I'm downloading movies, it's because the movies that they're making these days are crap.
Let us hope that they have better QC and design than was used on the X-Box 360. If I recall, the key reason for the RROD (Red Ring of Death) was fractures in the Ball-Grid array soldering due to board flexing, which will occur when memory, PCI cards, cables, etc. are installed or removed.
That's what the mounting posts are for. If you actually use all of them, and don't have a cheap board, then board flex is very unlikely to cause any kind of problem.
I have the hardware to run high end games (Radeon 6970 video card, 16GB of RAM, core i5 quad @ 4.8GHz), and I still say that most modern developers aren't at all focused on gameplay. The last AAA title I actually felt was worth the $60 they were asking for it was Civilization 5, which is a game with no story line at all, and infinite replayability. I have played other AAA titles since then, but I've never felt that they were actually worth the price that the vendor was asking for them. Of the several that I've picked up on Steam while they were on sale, the most memorable of the bunch was Saints Row the Third, which was actually enough fun that I sought out and acquired the first two in the series as well. I am seriously considering picking up Dishonored, too, but will probably wait a few months before I pick it up, because I already have a few on the go. It's probably the only game since Civ5 that I actually think will have enough replay value to be worth the price they are asking for it.
The problem isn't that I'm afraid to try new stuff, it's that game developers have an over-inflated idea of what their game is actually worth. Multiplayer is generally annoying (I get tired of being called a "fag" by a 13-year old virgin-for-life) unless you have RL friends who play and can set up a private game, and single player storylines are either pathetically short, or non-existant to begin with. Studios are simply not willing to take the kinds of risks on games that they used to, and it's left the industry as a whole very weak.
Enter indie games... I am actually spending more on games now than I was 5 years ago, and it's because I don't really feel gypped if I spend $10 on an indie title and only get 10 hours of gameplay out of it. Most of them are fun/entertaining, and provide good value for money. It's something that the mainstream developers have forgotten how to do.
More than that... what I've come to realise is that they've been normalizing the "feel" of games as well. Tribes Ascend, Bad Company 2, Call of Duty: Whatever, and even Planetside 2 all feel like the same game with slightly different sounds and models. When I gave Planetside 2's beta a shot I realised the most effective strategy in a firefight was to play exactly like I was in Bad Company 2.
That's because a lot of games use the same engine. How many Unreal-based shooters are out there these days? They all play pretty much the same, and if the developper doesn't bother putting the energy and money into coming up with a memorable storyline, then they're all going to end up being pretty much the same game with different models/textures.
There's a reason shooters suck in that respect... the market will bear them. Nintendo are the only ones ballsy enough to come out with 15 different RPG's, each with the same story line, and that's because most RPG players simply won't buy a game if it doesn't have a good story. That's also why most games being released aren't RPG's... they're too expensive to develop, and too much risk that people will decide that they're not different enough to be worth buying. Shooter? License an engine, pay some graphics designers to come up with character models, and borrow a story line from a recent movie. RPG? hire some writers, and give them 3 years to come up with a story, and only *then* hire the graphics designers, hope there's an engine that suits the story, and if not then write your own.
hunh. I thought my point was obvious, but let's try this again:
If Israel is serious about undermining Hamas, and stopping the violence, perhaps Israel should be the ones providing hospitals and schools, rather than participating in a blockade to prevent said hospitals and schools.
Hamas are the only ones providing schools and hospitals right now, because there's an Israeli blockade and the only way to get those supplies into the area are through the same smuggling tunnels that bring in weapons....
If you seriously think it's unprovoked, you really need to read a history book. The conflict in the middle east goes back before written history, and all sides have been responsible for atrocities committed against the other. In recent memory, Israel has started as many wars as not.
It's not going to end until somebody decides that enough's enough and puts down the fucking gun. And since you seem to think that rational thought doesn't exist among the Palestinians, doesn't the onus lie on Israel?
Thousands have been launched towards Israel. Dozens have been hurt.
This kind of says it all, really... I wish I could find the reference at the moment, but I read somewhere a couple of years ago that most of the rockets that are being fired into Israel don't even have a payload, and are just empty shells. Compare and contrast to how many have been injured or killed by Israeli reaction (not to mention the blockade of medical supplies and construction equipment/supplies into the west bank). There was an episode of The West Wing, in Season 1 which summed it up quite nicely... episode 3 - Proportional Response. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMVtP1CbOM
I really hope that the Iron Dome system works as advertised, and that it allows cooler heads to prevail. I also hope that the cease fire that was negotiated and announced today succeeds. If either of those fails to happen, it does not bode well.
Depends where you're coming from, and where you're trying to go. If you're in North America, you may find you already have all the necessary paperwork to move to a different part of North America where they're civilized like that.:) If you want to go to Europe, it may require more paperwork.
They're not preventing you from transferring funds, they're refusing to let it happen through their service.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from taking out a bank draft or a money order, or a certified cheque, or a regular cheque, or going to Western Union, or from mailing cash, or from using any of the many other methods available to move money from one point to another. They have every right to refuse to let the transaction pass through their electronic network.
There's plenty of reason to run it, if you don't play games. If you do play games, you're up the creek for much the reason you point out.
Most of my computing time gets done on a Linux laptop. On it, I am able to run instant messenger/irc, a web browser, a word processor, and a spreadsheet, just about everything that most non-gamers do with their systems. It can connect to my network hard drive without a problem, and it can play all of my media files if I want to (though I have dedicated hardware to play movies on the TV, and my stereo can connect to the DLNA server and play MP3/FLAC directly). And no, I did not pay for a Windows license on this laptop, it's a Dell that was bought with Linux pre-installed (which I replaced with my distro of choice, but if you happen to like Ubuntu then it wouldn't have been necessary).
The reason to run Linux on this hardware, aside from licensing cost, is that it allows me to keep my hardware alive for a very long time. The laptop in question is an ultraportable (13.3") and is a little over a year old (bought it in August of last year), but it's got enough memory that I don't need swap, and I have no reason to believe that I won't be able to keep running a modern system on this laptop until the hardware up and dies. Despite the "woefully underpowered" 1.2GHz dual core Celeron powering it, it is still as zippy as the day I bought it, and I don't regret the purchase price at all: it was $400 well spent. With a Windows system, especially a gaming Windows system, you will be stuck in an upgrade cycle. If you don't keep upgrading your hardware, you won't be able to play modern titles as they come out.
Ultimately, it boils down to the gaming question... are you playing games? If so, keep a Windows system around. If not, then there's nothing you can do on Windows that you can't on Linux, and you should consider it as an option.
Helicopters don't do pinpoint landings without power, they crash. It's true that the rotors will spin on their own and generate enough lift to make the landing safer, but there isn't really a lot of control over where the landing happens, because directional control depends on pitching the rotors and increasing/decreasing the speed on the tail rotor, both of which require power. The aircraft will pretty much be a writeoff in an unpowered landing, and there's a "dead zone" between 20 and 80 feet (depending on the helicopter) where the pilot is pretty much dead... the aircraft has enough altitude to get to a dangerous speed, and not enough to get the rotors spinning fast enough to slow the descent.
Oblig: I am not certified to fly rotary wing aircraft, but have looked into getting that license.
If the 747 is flying at 1000 feet, probably, and you can almost certainly sue them for something.
There's ceilings where it becomes a common resource. Public airspace. But depending on your jursidiction, you do "own" up to a certain altitude over your land. Of course, it depends on where you are, and the type of land contract you have. Most of us don't own what's under our land, for example.
Actually, I wasn't talking about inter-sect violence, I was talking about "collateral damage". Most of the people causing it are Christian, and many of them have gone on record talking about how much they hate the "towel-heads". If you want to look at inter-sect violence, I'll direct your attention to Ireland, where there's still some events of violence to this day, and where there are still walls dividing neighbourhoods in order to keep the violence down.
As to your odds on Iran, I would take those odds for a very simple reason: they may be a theocracy, but they're not stupid. Assuming they're pursuing nuclear weapons in the first place (remember how many nukes we found in Iraq?), they'd be doing it because Israel already has them and has been rattling their sabres in Iran's direction for years.
Any rational mind knows that nuclear weapons are a deterrent. They are not there to be used, they're there so you can use them if somebody else does first. Once you push the button, all bets are off. Sun Tzu said we study the art of war so that we may never need it... in more modern parlance, speak softly, and carry a big stick.
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Most in-dash video systems (and after market ones) either blank the display when the car is in motion, or use a polarized display so that the driver can't see anything while the passenger can. Since such a device would have no way of knowing if it's connected to a GPS or to a DVD player, it's unlikely you'd have a way to override it.
Personally, I just use my smartphone. Tie it in to the car's bluetooth system, and let it use voice instructions for navigation. The car has a USB socket in the center console, and it works perfectly well with any bluetooth-enabled phone, while having steering-wheel controls for manipulating the audio playback or controllling the phone. Throw in a voice-recognition dialling system (which the car has), and the obsolescence problem becomes just wanting to make sure that the phones still support bluetooth.
Oh well, the fancy tires are probably too loud for me to hear the difference between HD and plain old FM anyway.
If your fancy tires are loud, you have a problem. Good tires tend not to be very loud on the road at all, because the noise they produce indicates energy lost, which means higher rolling resistance.
To put it another way... Van Gogh never sold a painting, and Renoir died in abject poverty.
dunno about you, but I intend to wait until it shows up in the local library's DVD/BluRay collection, and then continue not going to that part of the library.
He was visible in the Galactic Senate scene, too. Presumably as the representative for Naboo.
Pretty sure that was ROTS. My mind has blocked out large parts of that movie as being one of the worst I've ever seen in my life (and I include Plan 9 from Outer Space on that list).
I doubt that Apple could make a $350 MacBook any more impressive than a $350 HP laptop. The reason that the MacBook sells well, despite not having Windows, which most people are familiar with, is that it is such a beautiful machine. People are willing to get rid of Windows when they are getting a really nice machine in exchange. However, at $350, there really isn't much room to make the machine appealing. No sleek aluminium case. No solid state drive, no multi-touch touchpad, no retina display, no crazy long battery life, no custom motherboard that allows the machine to be .75 inches including screen. Basically throw out everything that makes a Mac appealing. If you're just going to have some cheap junky computer, you might as well have and OS that's familiar and runs all your old programs.
They could easily make a $350 MacBook and still make a profit on it. The chassis is basically unchanged from previous iterations, and even if they come out with a new design there's no reason they can't use the same chassis on multiple system configurations. They already do that, actually, just that all of the configurations available are mid-high end. Given that the current version of OS/X runs perfectly well on a 2008 MacBook, there is absolutely no reason it wouldn't run on a current entry-level Intel processor. If I can run an i5 or an i7 on a MacBook, then there is absolutely no reason I can't run a Celeron on the same system without needing to change the motherboard or system design.
Aluminum cases aren't that expensive: my Dell Vostro V130 was $400, and it's got an anodized aluminum case. Battery life is not great on it, but it's respectable, able to eke out 4h or so with aggressive power management settings. Oh, and it's got a multi-touch touchpad... pretty much all Synaptics makes these days are multi-touch devices, and it's software that limits them on Windows devices: install Linux, and holy shit! your touchpad is actually multitouch! It would actually be cheaper for Apple to put the better battery in the "low end" system because of the cost associated with running multiple production lines (also the reason that touchpads are multi-touch), and you know as well as I do that "retina display" is marketing bullshit that doesn't actually mean anything.
The reason they don't make a $350 MacBook isn't because they can't, it's because they don't want to be associated with the low end of the market. It would hurt their image as a "high end" company, and they wouldn't be able to command such high prices on their high end equipment.
1. You can't extradite somebody to a foreign country for a crime that was committed domestically. If the crime was committed on Canadian soil, and is a crime under Canadian law, then it will be tried in a Canadian court. Canada also has a long-standing policy of not extraditing accused criminals to countries where they would face a penalty that is significantly more severe than what they would face domestically. (we don't extradite murder suspects to the US because of the death penalty, for example).
2. The "lobby" power is severely limited by conflict of interest laws in Canada. Specifically:
- corporate donations are not allowed at all
- personal donations are limited to just over $1000/year
- campaigns have a spending limit that would give the US Presidential campaign managers giggle fits ($125,000 per electoral district, which has to actually be spent in that electoral district... can't ignore one riding and spent $250k in another, and smaller ridings have lower caps)
- all election financing is a matter of public record whether the candidate wins or not, must be submitted within 30 days of the end of a campaign, and is available to anybody who asks. (publicly searchable on the Internet, or you can call Elections and ask them to send you a physical copy)
To put it perspective, the mayor of Toronto is currently going through a legal battle that will likely end his career, for violating the conflict of interest laws. What did he do? He asked a lobbyist to consider giving a donation to a charity that he works with, which buys football equipment for underprivileged kids. The lobbyist gave a donation (less than $3000 total), and the money went directly to the kids without touching the mayor's hands. The mayor was given an opportunity to return the money, and he declined. This, in Canada, is bad enough to end the career of a politician (who, admittedly, is a complete jackass, but that doesn't factor in to the decision), because it represents a conflict of interest.
The tools to break digital locks are still legal in Canada, after all. It's stupid that the restriction legally exists, but for that matter I'm pretty sure videotaping TV shows on cassette, which EVERYBODY did, was technically illegal until this latest copyright law passed. So keep that in mind.
It was never illegal. Canadian copyright law has said that making a personal copy of copyrighted material has been legal since before VCR's and cassette recorders existed to begin with. What's illegal in Canada, until quite recently, is "making available". Distribution. If you were to use a duplicator/editor to remove the commercials and then hand out copies of the recording at the local flea market, then you'd be up the creek for copyright infringement, but never if you were to simply record a broadcast for personal use.
The current law, C-11, changed that, but it's still nowhere near as onerous as US laws on the matter.
At current exchange rates, $5,033 USD, or $4814 AUD, and the rest, you can Google for yourself.
TFA says that the statutory limit for damages for non-commercial infringement is $5000, and that they're going to go after habitual downloaders. $5000 is less than the limit for small claims court, meaning that if you decide to challenge it, they will have to take it to small claims court where "expert witnesses" won't be allowed. Just their lawyer, your lawyer, and about 15 minutes a side to make your case because there's 30 other cases on the docket that day. (yes, I have been in a Canadian small claims court).
There's well over $5000 worth of DVD's in my collection. Physical media, most of which was bought at full retail price (and in some cases, well over retail price because it was a "special edition" box set). If those idiots decide to try to sue me because I downloaded a copy of True Lies (disc was scratched and I couldn't rip it when I was digitizing my physical copy), I'll be quite amused to see what the courts say about it. The reason there's nothing new in the collection isn't that I'm downloading movies, it's because the movies that they're making these days are crap.
illegal movies
I agree, there should be a law against the crap they're putting out. Sadly, however, it's not illegal yet.
Let us hope that they have better QC and design than was used on the X-Box 360. If I recall, the key reason for the RROD (Red Ring of Death) was fractures in the Ball-Grid array soldering due to board flexing, which will occur when memory, PCI cards, cables, etc. are installed or removed.
That's what the mounting posts are for. If you actually use all of them, and don't have a cheap board, then board flex is very unlikely to cause any kind of problem.
I have the hardware to run high end games (Radeon 6970 video card, 16GB of RAM, core i5 quad @ 4.8GHz), and I still say that most modern developers aren't at all focused on gameplay. The last AAA title I actually felt was worth the $60 they were asking for it was Civilization 5, which is a game with no story line at all, and infinite replayability. I have played other AAA titles since then, but I've never felt that they were actually worth the price that the vendor was asking for them. Of the several that I've picked up on Steam while they were on sale, the most memorable of the bunch was Saints Row the Third, which was actually enough fun that I sought out and acquired the first two in the series as well. I am seriously considering picking up Dishonored, too, but will probably wait a few months before I pick it up, because I already have a few on the go. It's probably the only game since Civ5 that I actually think will have enough replay value to be worth the price they are asking for it.
The problem isn't that I'm afraid to try new stuff, it's that game developers have an over-inflated idea of what their game is actually worth. Multiplayer is generally annoying (I get tired of being called a "fag" by a 13-year old virgin-for-life) unless you have RL friends who play and can set up a private game, and single player storylines are either pathetically short, or non-existant to begin with. Studios are simply not willing to take the kinds of risks on games that they used to, and it's left the industry as a whole very weak.
Enter indie games... I am actually spending more on games now than I was 5 years ago, and it's because I don't really feel gypped if I spend $10 on an indie title and only get 10 hours of gameplay out of it. Most of them are fun/entertaining, and provide good value for money. It's something that the mainstream developers have forgotten how to do.
More than that... what I've come to realise is that they've been normalizing the "feel" of games as well. Tribes Ascend, Bad Company 2, Call of Duty: Whatever, and even Planetside 2 all feel like the same game with slightly different sounds and models. When I gave Planetside 2's beta a shot I realised the most effective strategy in a firefight was to play exactly like I was in Bad Company 2.
That's because a lot of games use the same engine. How many Unreal-based shooters are out there these days? They all play pretty much the same, and if the developper doesn't bother putting the energy and money into coming up with a memorable storyline, then they're all going to end up being pretty much the same game with different models/textures.
There's a reason shooters suck in that respect... the market will bear them. Nintendo are the only ones ballsy enough to come out with 15 different RPG's, each with the same story line, and that's because most RPG players simply won't buy a game if it doesn't have a good story. That's also why most games being released aren't RPG's... they're too expensive to develop, and too much risk that people will decide that they're not different enough to be worth buying. Shooter? License an engine, pay some graphics designers to come up with character models, and borrow a story line from a recent movie. RPG? hire some writers, and give them 3 years to come up with a story, and only *then* hire the graphics designers, hope there's an engine that suits the story, and if not then write your own.
hunh. I thought my point was obvious, but let's try this again:
If Israel is serious about undermining Hamas, and stopping the violence, perhaps Israel should be the ones providing hospitals and schools, rather than participating in a blockade to prevent said hospitals and schools.
Hamas are the only ones providing schools and hospitals right now, because there's an Israeli blockade and the only way to get those supplies into the area are through the same smuggling tunnels that bring in weapons....
If you seriously think it's unprovoked, you really need to read a history book. The conflict in the middle east goes back before written history, and all sides have been responsible for atrocities committed against the other. In recent memory, Israel has started as many wars as not.
It's not going to end until somebody decides that enough's enough and puts down the fucking gun. And since you seem to think that rational thought doesn't exist among the Palestinians, doesn't the onus lie on Israel?
Thousands have been launched towards Israel. Dozens have been hurt.
This kind of says it all, really... I wish I could find the reference at the moment, but I read somewhere a couple of years ago that most of the rockets that are being fired into Israel don't even have a payload, and are just empty shells. Compare and contrast to how many have been injured or killed by Israeli reaction (not to mention the blockade of medical supplies and construction equipment/supplies into the west bank). There was an episode of The West Wing, in Season 1 which summed it up quite nicely... episode 3 - Proportional Response. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMVtP1CbOM
I really hope that the Iron Dome system works as advertised, and that it allows cooler heads to prevail. I also hope that the cease fire that was negotiated and announced today succeeds. If either of those fails to happen, it does not bode well.
Depends where you're coming from, and where you're trying to go. If you're in North America, you may find you already have all the necessary paperwork to move to a different part of North America where they're civilized like that. :) If you want to go to Europe, it may require more paperwork.
Move to the civilized part of the world, where they allow kids into bars, and trust that the bartender can tell a 10 year old from a 30 year old?
They're not preventing you from transferring funds, they're refusing to let it happen through their service.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from taking out a bank draft or a money order, or a certified cheque, or a regular cheque, or going to Western Union, or from mailing cash, or from using any of the many other methods available to move money from one point to another. They have every right to refuse to let the transaction pass through their electronic network.
There's plenty of reason to run it, if you don't play games. If you do play games, you're up the creek for much the reason you point out.
Most of my computing time gets done on a Linux laptop. On it, I am able to run instant messenger/irc, a web browser, a word processor, and a spreadsheet, just about everything that most non-gamers do with their systems. It can connect to my network hard drive without a problem, and it can play all of my media files if I want to (though I have dedicated hardware to play movies on the TV, and my stereo can connect to the DLNA server and play MP3/FLAC directly). And no, I did not pay for a Windows license on this laptop, it's a Dell that was bought with Linux pre-installed (which I replaced with my distro of choice, but if you happen to like Ubuntu then it wouldn't have been necessary).
The reason to run Linux on this hardware, aside from licensing cost, is that it allows me to keep my hardware alive for a very long time. The laptop in question is an ultraportable (13.3") and is a little over a year old (bought it in August of last year), but it's got enough memory that I don't need swap, and I have no reason to believe that I won't be able to keep running a modern system on this laptop until the hardware up and dies. Despite the "woefully underpowered" 1.2GHz dual core Celeron powering it, it is still as zippy as the day I bought it, and I don't regret the purchase price at all: it was $400 well spent. With a Windows system, especially a gaming Windows system, you will be stuck in an upgrade cycle. If you don't keep upgrading your hardware, you won't be able to play modern titles as they come out.
Ultimately, it boils down to the gaming question... are you playing games? If so, keep a Windows system around. If not, then there's nothing you can do on Windows that you can't on Linux, and you should consider it as an option.
Helicopters don't do pinpoint landings without power, they crash. It's true that the rotors will spin on their own and generate enough lift to make the landing safer, but there isn't really a lot of control over where the landing happens, because directional control depends on pitching the rotors and increasing/decreasing the speed on the tail rotor, both of which require power. The aircraft will pretty much be a writeoff in an unpowered landing, and there's a "dead zone" between 20 and 80 feet (depending on the helicopter) where the pilot is pretty much dead... the aircraft has enough altitude to get to a dangerous speed, and not enough to get the rotors spinning fast enough to slow the descent.
Oblig: I am not certified to fly rotary wing aircraft, but have looked into getting that license.
If the 747 is flying at 1000 feet, probably, and you can almost certainly sue them for something.
There's ceilings where it becomes a common resource. Public airspace. But depending on your jursidiction, you do "own" up to a certain altitude over your land. Of course, it depends on where you are, and the type of land contract you have. Most of us don't own what's under our land, for example.
Actually, I wasn't talking about inter-sect violence, I was talking about "collateral damage". Most of the people causing it are Christian, and many of them have gone on record talking about how much they hate the "towel-heads". If you want to look at inter-sect violence, I'll direct your attention to Ireland, where there's still some events of violence to this day, and where there are still walls dividing neighbourhoods in order to keep the violence down.
As to your odds on Iran, I would take those odds for a very simple reason: they may be a theocracy, but they're not stupid. Assuming they're pursuing nuclear weapons in the first place (remember how many nukes we found in Iraq?), they'd be doing it because Israel already has them and has been rattling their sabres in Iran's direction for years.
Any rational mind knows that nuclear weapons are a deterrent. They are not there to be used, they're there so you can use them if somebody else does first. Once you push the button, all bets are off. Sun Tzu said we study the art of war so that we may never need it... in more modern parlance, speak softly, and carry a big stick.