No, we hear that cancer treatment will be improved so that what's lethal today will be treatable in 20 years. This prediction has so far been more or less true, we can treat cancers at more and more advanced stages successfully. Problem with cancer is its propensity to keep on coming back, so you can never truly "cure" it, merely remove the life-threatening tumour and monitor for new growths.
Same thing with prosthetics. They are improving fast. 20 years ago Pistorius' success story would not have been possible. We also are slowly starting to get actual neural interfaces for people who have neurological damage rather then just physiological one.
Unfortunately I'm not in US, so it would need to be an actual shop with an ability to mail stuff. I'd even pay import tax if monitor itself was reasonably priced.
For me, on my current 2x TN setup, if I change angle by about 10 degrees below optimal, I start to have trouble telling links I've already clicked and ones I haven't clicked already in my profile on slashdot. It's that bad. And colour banding in games is horrible. IPS would probably help somewhat, but it's simply too costly at the moment for a big dual screen setup.
That's one funny thing. If I could get an affordable CRT monitor that is about 24" diagonally and can do 4:3 or 16:10 or even 16:9 at at least 1024 vertical pixels or better, I'd buy three and never look back at any of the LCD monitors ever again.
Sure, CRT will use more power and may eventually get issues with convergence, but I will finally be able to get a monitor that can display colours properly. It's been years since I've seen a computer monitor with proper colours, even IPS is shit in comparison to CRT, and OLED is just not ready for being made in monitor sizes needed (and has dimming problems with time).
I don't suppose the basement is actually a shop that sells those monitors somewhere? Please?:(
Arguably, it's the human eyes that are the limit, and we're hitting it. As quite a few people pointed out, if you don't specifically look for differences, most people will not see the difference beyond current resolutions used. It's a sweet spot between what people find acceptable in terms of quality and acceptable in terms of price.
Too many holes to poke at to fit into a slashdot post. Let's just agree to disagree, and thanks for hitting a real sore spot with Nokia. One of the big qualms that we (as a nation proud of a company that grew from a small country) had with nokia going from pro-linux to pro-microsoft overnight was that nokia "surrendered".
"Norway stood for what it believe in and fell to the Nazi's, but it's saboteurs were incredibly beneficial to the war effort. I do not see any loss of their culture as a result. They can be rightly proud of what they did and stood for."
Key question that you gloss over: Who's war effort? Theirs was lost. If Allied forces didn't win and liberate them in the end, they would have been like Baltics were during USSR - a small client region inside a large empire struggling to keep its national identity. Norway's approach was a complete failure if you look at it from their own perspective. It was a success if you look at them from standpoint of US/UK citizen because their sacrifices served US/UK cause at the cost of Norway's independence during war and countless Norwegian lives.
Which shows you the depth of your "imperial" mentality: to you, people of small countries are either your nice little boy scouts who are willing to die for your cause, or they're cowards trying to justify why they chose to stand truly independent instead of siding with you or with your enemy fully, in spite of getting a much harder fight on their hands when doing so. Or they are the enemy to be purged for siding with your enemy.
Which is exactly what I was talking about when talking about "imperialist mentality". You do not understand that "Taliban continues to resist" because Taliban represents vast majority of people of Afghanistan. It's an anathema to a person with imperial mind set - that a country they are "liberating" doesn't want to be "liberated".
You're completely unrealistic when you assume that small countries have such options available. Heck, every single country in this world that survived values lives of its countrymen higher then those of other countries. I present exhibit A: Iraq and exhibit B: Afghanistan as shiny examples. No one cares when hundreds of "darkies" die to shooting and hundreds of thousands die to destroyed infrastructure.
But god forbid one NATO soldier gets threatened to be dragged to a local court for mass murder of local women and children. That cannot be allowed because american lives are naturally far more valuable to US then those of locals. Then we get to talk about the poor sod, his traumas and his wife, and no one cares that many families of "those other guys" just got brutally murdered. It makes a great example of just how different of a value is assigned to a human life depending on what citizenship that person has.
That's the reality. The tribes that did not follow this policy are not around to tell their tale because they have been wiped out by us, those that do follow such policies. By extension, if selling weapons to nazis buys you freedom from annexation, and you do not do it as a leader, you deserve to be tried for treason. And you will be found guilty, because your job as a leader is to ensure that your citizens get the best possible outcome. Not that some distant Russian/Allied soldier doesn't get shot with bullets made by you, because that soldier won't think twice about butchering a dosen of your countrymen if it saved his friend either.
That's how life is. To argue that this is somehow "wrong" is to argue against the very concept of humanity. I suspect your point of view has been indoctrinated into you by your local culture and you come from one of the large empires currently in existence (USA, France, UK, Russia to name a few). Such indoctrination is purposeful to make you believe that you are in fact superior, and that when someone tries to not recognise your superiority and pragmatically survive, as a small entity rather then a competing large empire (which is the requirement for "truly independent" as defined by you - small nations do not have such options) they are viewed by you as cowardly and need to be dealt with accordingly if possible.
Such indoctrination allows for much better soldiers who have far better tolerance to dehumanising their victims when ordered to purge people of the said small country. Again, Iraq and Afghanistan make prime examples of this particular aspect of human nature that comes from being a member of a large imperial society.
If you read this thread on you will notice that I have a lot to say about both "defending Finland without the help of NATO" which would have just de-facto annexed us as their client state as a payment for such help, as well as Soviet nukes in Finland (notice the location of Leningrad of the maps, and look up how fallout from nuclear weapons works as I mention in the continuation of the thread).
You may argue that from NATO's point of view, nuking of Finnish infrastructure to prevent Soviets from using it against NATO is acceptable and I can understand why such an argument would sound reasonable to a resident of a NATO country. But to people who want nothing to do with allying with either NATO or USSR and have a proven history of beating full on Red Army assault twice against all odds, it would in fact be a very clear-cut "stab in the back".
And please, do remember that Finland is not, and never was a part of NATO or Warsaw Pact. It was and remains and fully independent state that takes great pride on the fact that it survived both times when Germany and USSR divided entire Eastern Europe, including Finland, between each other as well as cold war while sitting both between NATO and USSR and on a very dangerous spot for USSR with our proximity to Leningrad. To use, there is no difference between NATO attacking us and USSR attacking us as an independent state rather then becoming annexed or a client state. In both cases it would be a case of a hostile empire trying to attack and destroy an independent state to protect its interests.
I will readily admit that actual chemistry for this particular burn agent may be unique enough for me to not fully understand at where my basic university chemistry lessons and online resources end and I have to extrapolate from memory. Full disclosure: I am a trained sergeant in reserve of FDF and my field is command of small medical team of three people assigned to armoured or infantry division. As a result, I received quite a few lectures on topic of various burns caused by incendiary weaponry and triage and treatment of victims in the field and in the hospital.
WP was, as far as I recall, always considered a banned substance for anti-personnel use in lectures that I recall and might have been mentioned in the ABC lectures talking about chemical weaponry. But these lectures have been over ten years ago, so my memory may not be correct.
Most of the burns we would have to treat in war scenario and be trained for are typically for molten pieces of metal hitting the crew/personnel inside/immediately outside of armoured vehicle after it is hit by anti tank munitions or set on fire. There was also significant amount of lessons on napalm. WP being metallic would likely obey same rules as molten metal flying off the hit armoured vehicle (extrapolation backed by images on wikipedia and google when searching for pictures of WP-inflicted trauma in conflict), meaning it will cause shrapnel wounds and localized burns around the area. I would extrapolate that since it will keep on burning inside the wound until it runs out of oxygen or burns out, that the burns would cover wider area then those caused by molten metal used in armoured vehicles, but would retain the same general structure: localized, extremely painful, exceptionally susceptible to infection and potential harmful chemical agents. And if victim survives the burn itself, the biggest problem is going to be infection or poisoning through the weakened immune response in the burned tissue as well as necrosis. WP appears to be especially nasty in regard that it is absorbed through the tissue which is severely burnt but not yet necrotic, something that most metals do not do.
And as far as I remember, while chemical weapons are not always the type designed to actually kill the victim. Quite a few of them are meant to cause other kinds of damage, such as debilitating sickness, based on the fact that it's much more effective to painfully disable rather then kill the victim, forcing allocating resources to evacuation and treatment in addition to much greater demoralisation factor of survivors. In this regard, WP seems to be very suitable both due to horrific wounds it causes as well as debilitating and likely slow and eventually lethal chemical poisoning it will cause for survivors.
So it's very hard to agree on how to classify it. On one hand, it's a great (and thankfully mostly outlawed) anti-personnel incendiary. On the other hand, it can be viably classified as a chemical weapon due to after effects on the victims.
It's worth noting that pragmatism is deeply ingrained in our culture. Back in dark ages when crusaders came to "civilize" us, modus operandi was to bury the idols, obey them while knights were here, and when knights left dig the idols out of the ground and keep going about business as usual.
As a result, Finland managed to maintain a very large collection of oral mysticism-related tradition which was later assembled into Kalevala, something that was stomped out in regions that chose to fight (and eventually lost the fight).
It's also worth noting that Finns won the recognition of their abilities to fight off a far more powerful attacker in Winter War of 1939, which showed everyone that even someone with as much tolerance for deaths of his own soldiers as Stalin actually found Finland to be unconquerable without suffering intolerable losses. It's highly unlikely that Germany would choose to actually conquer Finland after WW2, just like USSR chose not to try to annex it due to costs involved being simply too high even for Stalin in second attempt in 1944. Red Army did its biggest assault of the entire war on us, and they still failed to break the line badly enough to force surrender. It just wasn't worth the cost, especially considering that Finns were very much willing to cooperate on many levels with any neighbour.
This attitude on cultural level is something that people native to large empires are actively taught on their own cultural level to frown upon as "cowardly", because such pragmatism makes it difficult for empires to gain as much (ab)use out of the small country. Colonising more pliable, or more combative cultures is much easier, as you can conquer former via diplomatic and trade methods and wage wars to conquer the latter. But pragmatic "work with everyone but stay true to independence and arm yourself for war just in case" approach makes it very difficult to justify either approach and forces aforementioned empires to actually work with target country and negotiate on at least some of the terms of cooperation rather then fully dictate them.
The other country in Europe that chose the same approach is Swizerland. Notably the two of us are the only countries left in Europe with armies based on universal conscription of all young men and a large reserve.
Well, considering that we have no official numbers anywhere, only guesses from analysts, it could go one way or another. We do know that nokia traditionally does very well in certain markets like Russia, China, India, Africa and so on. Nokia's brand is also very strong in Europe (but diminishing fast due to complete OS policy failure alongside market share).
So yes, if L800 does well in US, that would be because of MS rather then Nokia. Elsewhere? It's most likely riding on what's left of Nokia's brand (EU) or just plain riding the brand that is still considered great (Russia, China, Africa...)
I used to live ~1km from campus where MeeGo team was located. People who worked on it, and who I personally knew were given fairly generous severance packages so they would stay and finish N9 after the news of nokia killing MeeGo were announced to the workers.
Key members of the team, ones that got offers from competitors the moment Nokia announced that MeeGo is being killed left pretty much immediately after announcement. They still have the skeleton crew managing mandatory software updates, but essentially entire team that designed software part of N9 is now employed elsewhere. IIRC some were re-trained to develop for WP but most left since Nokia basically killed all of its linux OS level know how and with android coming up as well as Intel wanting some of the MeeGo people, they had other good job offers.
I could be wrong on exact numbers, my contact in the company left after they released N9 as per her severance package and is now employed elsewhere.
It does reasonably well in "certain markets" because it bears nokia's logo. In those markets, you could sell a turn with nokia logo and it would do reasonably well.
It can't respond because the team responsible for N9 is long fired. There is simply no one left to continue development, all these people left for other companies.
Problem isn't on that end. Never was. Nokia has some of the best engineering minds in the industry, or had before Elop decided to start throwing these best engineering minds off the "oil rig".
For example he kicked out entire MeeGo team essentially before they got to release N9 (it was finished up with a skeleton crew). Which was, and still remains worlds ahead of any iteration of windows phone.
First of all, I am a finn. If you know any finns that would "in polite terms disagree with me", they are a minority and below you'll find out why.
You see, as with any small neutral country stuck between two grandiose empires that could stomp us out and not barely notice it throughout our independence (which is what they thought of us, namely Germany, USSR and later on NATO), we had our shills for all sides. During cold war we had our Soviet shills, and our NATO shills. I'm guessing you've been talking to descendants of the latter. Notably their numbers are in low 30 percentile and have been going down steadily across the country for almost a decade now as people with severe phobia of anything Russia-related due to WW2 part of our history die out of old age and we get more and more Russian tourists bringing good money into the economy.
On topic of disinformation, that either wasn't it, or if it was, it sure fooled everyone (including some medium level NATO attaches who were spying for us). In here, when you build a building that houses more then a few people, you have to, BY LAW to build a bomb shelter in it with mandated level of low ABC proofing since early cold war. Every big city has one to several bomb shelters typically dug into solid rock rated to survive a 20 kiloton tactical nuke explosion directly above itself. Note the payload, it was exactly what we were expecting NATO to drop on us in potential conflict and the goal was the classic Finnish pragmatism - to allow as many of our people as possible to survive to fight another day even at significant additional costs to economy. During peace time, they're used as hokey rinks, swimming pools and so on. I go to one such swimming pool weekly - the entrance is less then 500m from my home. They are also required by law to have a plan on how to prepare it to function as a bomb shelter within 4 weeks.
Do note that we had near zero nuclear treat from Soviets due to geography - any nukes in southern Finland where biggest cities are and where biggest shelters are built mean a likely fallout in 5.000.000 people city of Leningrad.
All in all, your argument is that of a classic NATO shill. "You had two wars with Soviets, therefore anyone opposing them is a force for good!". Except that opposing force was about as "evil" from our point of view, and the only meaningful difference for us independents caught between was the direction in which guns are pointed. Which was usually at us, from both sides, because both followed the "if you're not with us, you're potentially against us" doctrine. In the end, we survived independent because we played both sides against one another, just like we played Germany against USSR in 1944 to stay independent in spite of suffering the heaviest Red Army assault in the entire war. Notably USSR gave us very good trading terms during Cold War, we were classified in the "Warsaw pact countries and Finland" category. Something that even NATO liked to use to trade with USSR and vice versa, because it meant being able to indirectly trade for things you couldn't trade directly due to political fallout through a politically stable country with a culture that valued privacy of such deals.
So in short, most Finns that actually live around here would tell you, in actually polite and laconic terms, to stuff it. We're the only country in Molotov-Ribbentrop that succeeded to stay independent, we succeeded to stay independent during Cold War in spite of pressure from USSR and NATO to join one of them, and we'll stay independent now if current polls about desirability of NATO membership are anything to go by. That is because history taught us one thing: empires only care about themselves and allying yourself with one of them would likely cost you independence as most unbalanced deals with the devil do.
P.S. It may surprise you to find out that we also have quite a few statues of Lenin around here. They're usually tactfully hidden, but we do remember who it was that gave us independence for first time in our history. So if you think that our history together with our neighbours started in WW2, you're sorely mistaken.
Not at all welcome. The "open secret" of NATO's plans for USSR attack on Finland was to use tactical nukes to cripple the country's infrastructure. Basically to backstab the country that tries to defend itself at the critical moment.
That's why most finns are rather sceptical on NATO trying to show itself as the "good guys" during Cold War.
Slashdot Mirror
No, we hear that cancer treatment will be improved so that what's lethal today will be treatable in 20 years. This prediction has so far been more or less true, we can treat cancers at more and more advanced stages successfully. Problem with cancer is its propensity to keep on coming back, so you can never truly "cure" it, merely remove the life-threatening tumour and monitor for new growths.
Same thing with prosthetics. They are improving fast. 20 years ago Pistorius' success story would not have been possible. We also are slowly starting to get actual neural interfaces for people who have neurological damage rather then just physiological one.
Firefox 3.6.x (latest 3.6 version) runs it fine.
Note that code itself suggests that game will not start until you press one of the four control buttons.
It works even on firefox 3.6.x
Unfortunately I'm not in US, so it would need to be an actual shop with an ability to mail stuff. I'd even pay import tax if monitor itself was reasonably priced.
For me, on my current 2x TN setup, if I change angle by about 10 degrees below optimal, I start to have trouble telling links I've already clicked and ones I haven't clicked already in my profile on slashdot. It's that bad. And colour banding in games is horrible. IPS would probably help somewhat, but it's simply too costly at the moment for a big dual screen setup.
I do not need glasses and I find it acceptable on my 15" monitor.
That's one funny thing. If I could get an affordable CRT monitor that is about 24" diagonally and can do 4:3 or 16:10 or even 16:9 at at least 1024 vertical pixels or better, I'd buy three and never look back at any of the LCD monitors ever again.
Sure, CRT will use more power and may eventually get issues with convergence, but I will finally be able to get a monitor that can display colours properly. It's been years since I've seen a computer monitor with proper colours, even IPS is shit in comparison to CRT, and OLED is just not ready for being made in monitor sizes needed (and has dimming problems with time).
I don't suppose the basement is actually a shop that sells those monitors somewhere? Please? :(
Arguably, it's the human eyes that are the limit, and we're hitting it. As quite a few people pointed out, if you don't specifically look for differences, most people will not see the difference beyond current resolutions used. It's a sweet spot between what people find acceptable in terms of quality and acceptable in terms of price.
Too many holes to poke at to fit into a slashdot post. Let's just agree to disagree, and thanks for hitting a real sore spot with Nokia. One of the big qualms that we (as a nation proud of a company that grew from a small country) had with nokia going from pro-linux to pro-microsoft overnight was that nokia "surrendered".
Which admittedly is ironic.
If she's a boss, she'll tell you to get them, and then check out your ass.
Welcome to gender equality.
I'm pretty sure that freezing ASSES counts as "willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health". /reading comprehension
"Norway stood for what it believe in and fell to the Nazi's, but it's saboteurs were incredibly beneficial to the war effort. I do not see any loss of their culture as a result. They can be rightly proud of what they did and stood for."
Key question that you gloss over: Who's war effort? Theirs was lost. If Allied forces didn't win and liberate them in the end, they would have been like Baltics were during USSR - a small client region inside a large empire struggling to keep its national identity. Norway's approach was a complete failure if you look at it from their own perspective. It was a success if you look at them from standpoint of US/UK citizen because their sacrifices served US/UK cause at the cost of Norway's independence during war and countless Norwegian lives.
Which shows you the depth of your "imperial" mentality: to you, people of small countries are either your nice little boy scouts who are willing to die for your cause, or they're cowards trying to justify why they chose to stand truly independent instead of siding with you or with your enemy fully, in spite of getting a much harder fight on their hands when doing so. Or they are the enemy to be purged for siding with your enemy.
Which is exactly what I was talking about when talking about "imperialist mentality". You do not understand that "Taliban continues to resist" because Taliban represents vast majority of people of Afghanistan. It's an anathema to a person with imperial mind set - that a country they are "liberating" doesn't want to be "liberated".
You're completely unrealistic when you assume that small countries have such options available. Heck, every single country in this world that survived values lives of its countrymen higher then those of other countries. I present exhibit A: Iraq and exhibit B: Afghanistan as shiny examples. No one cares when hundreds of "darkies" die to shooting and hundreds of thousands die to destroyed infrastructure.
But god forbid one NATO soldier gets threatened to be dragged to a local court for mass murder of local women and children. That cannot be allowed because american lives are naturally far more valuable to US then those of locals. Then we get to talk about the poor sod, his traumas and his wife, and no one cares that many families of "those other guys" just got brutally murdered. It makes a great example of just how different of a value is assigned to a human life depending on what citizenship that person has.
That's the reality. The tribes that did not follow this policy are not around to tell their tale because they have been wiped out by us, those that do follow such policies. By extension, if selling weapons to nazis buys you freedom from annexation, and you do not do it as a leader, you deserve to be tried for treason. And you will be found guilty, because your job as a leader is to ensure that your citizens get the best possible outcome. Not that some distant Russian/Allied soldier doesn't get shot with bullets made by you, because that soldier won't think twice about butchering a dosen of your countrymen if it saved his friend either.
That's how life is. To argue that this is somehow "wrong" is to argue against the very concept of humanity. I suspect your point of view has been indoctrinated into you by your local culture and you come from one of the large empires currently in existence (USA, France, UK, Russia to name a few). Such indoctrination is purposeful to make you believe that you are in fact superior, and that when someone tries to not recognise your superiority and pragmatically survive, as a small entity rather then a competing large empire (which is the requirement for "truly independent" as defined by you - small nations do not have such options) they are viewed by you as cowardly and need to be dealt with accordingly if possible.
Such indoctrination allows for much better soldiers who have far better tolerance to dehumanising their victims when ordered to purge people of the said small country. Again, Iraq and Afghanistan make prime examples of this particular aspect of human nature that comes from being a member of a large imperial society.
If you read this thread on you will notice that I have a lot to say about both "defending Finland without the help of NATO" which would have just de-facto annexed us as their client state as a payment for such help, as well as Soviet nukes in Finland (notice the location of Leningrad of the maps, and look up how fallout from nuclear weapons works as I mention in the continuation of the thread).
You may argue that from NATO's point of view, nuking of Finnish infrastructure to prevent Soviets from using it against NATO is acceptable and I can understand why such an argument would sound reasonable to a resident of a NATO country. But to people who want nothing to do with allying with either NATO or USSR and have a proven history of beating full on Red Army assault twice against all odds, it would in fact be a very clear-cut "stab in the back".
And please, do remember that Finland is not, and never was a part of NATO or Warsaw Pact. It was and remains and fully independent state that takes great pride on the fact that it survived both times when Germany and USSR divided entire Eastern Europe, including Finland, between each other as well as cold war while sitting both between NATO and USSR and on a very dangerous spot for USSR with our proximity to Leningrad. To use, there is no difference between NATO attacking us and USSR attacking us as an independent state rather then becoming annexed or a client state. In both cases it would be a case of a hostile empire trying to attack and destroy an independent state to protect its interests.
There is a small skeleton crew doing the mandatory updates for the phone. The actual development team that made the phone is long gone.
I will readily admit that actual chemistry for this particular burn agent may be unique enough for me to not fully understand at where my basic university chemistry lessons and online resources end and I have to extrapolate from memory. Full disclosure: I am a trained sergeant in reserve of FDF and my field is command of small medical team of three people assigned to armoured or infantry division. As a result, I received quite a few lectures on topic of various burns caused by incendiary weaponry and triage and treatment of victims in the field and in the hospital.
WP was, as far as I recall, always considered a banned substance for anti-personnel use in lectures that I recall and might have been mentioned in the ABC lectures talking about chemical weaponry. But these lectures have been over ten years ago, so my memory may not be correct.
Most of the burns we would have to treat in war scenario and be trained for are typically for molten pieces of metal hitting the crew/personnel inside/immediately outside of armoured vehicle after it is hit by anti tank munitions or set on fire. There was also significant amount of lessons on napalm. WP being metallic would likely obey same rules as molten metal flying off the hit armoured vehicle (extrapolation backed by images on wikipedia and google when searching for pictures of WP-inflicted trauma in conflict), meaning it will cause shrapnel wounds and localized burns around the area. I would extrapolate that since it will keep on burning inside the wound until it runs out of oxygen or burns out, that the burns would cover wider area then those caused by molten metal used in armoured vehicles, but would retain the same general structure: localized, extremely painful, exceptionally susceptible to infection and potential harmful chemical agents. And if victim survives the burn itself, the biggest problem is going to be infection or poisoning through the weakened immune response in the burned tissue as well as necrosis. WP appears to be especially nasty in regard that it is absorbed through the tissue which is severely burnt but not yet necrotic, something that most metals do not do.
And as far as I remember, while chemical weapons are not always the type designed to actually kill the victim. Quite a few of them are meant to cause other kinds of damage, such as debilitating sickness, based on the fact that it's much more effective to painfully disable rather then kill the victim, forcing allocating resources to evacuation and treatment in addition to much greater demoralisation factor of survivors. In this regard, WP seems to be very suitable both due to horrific wounds it causes as well as debilitating and likely slow and eventually lethal chemical poisoning it will cause for survivors.
So it's very hard to agree on how to classify it. On one hand, it's a great (and thankfully mostly outlawed) anti-personnel incendiary. On the other hand, it can be viably classified as a chemical weapon due to after effects on the victims.
It's worth noting that pragmatism is deeply ingrained in our culture. Back in dark ages when crusaders came to "civilize" us, modus operandi was to bury the idols, obey them while knights were here, and when knights left dig the idols out of the ground and keep going about business as usual.
As a result, Finland managed to maintain a very large collection of oral mysticism-related tradition which was later assembled into Kalevala, something that was stomped out in regions that chose to fight (and eventually lost the fight).
It's also worth noting that Finns won the recognition of their abilities to fight off a far more powerful attacker in Winter War of 1939, which showed everyone that even someone with as much tolerance for deaths of his own soldiers as Stalin actually found Finland to be unconquerable without suffering intolerable losses. It's highly unlikely that Germany would choose to actually conquer Finland after WW2, just like USSR chose not to try to annex it due to costs involved being simply too high even for Stalin in second attempt in 1944. Red Army did its biggest assault of the entire war on us, and they still failed to break the line badly enough to force surrender. It just wasn't worth the cost, especially considering that Finns were very much willing to cooperate on many levels with any neighbour.
This attitude on cultural level is something that people native to large empires are actively taught on their own cultural level to frown upon as "cowardly", because such pragmatism makes it difficult for empires to gain as much (ab)use out of the small country. Colonising more pliable, or more combative cultures is much easier, as you can conquer former via diplomatic and trade methods and wage wars to conquer the latter. But pragmatic "work with everyone but stay true to independence and arm yourself for war just in case" approach makes it very difficult to justify either approach and forces aforementioned empires to actually work with target country and negotiate on at least some of the terms of cooperation rather then fully dictate them.
The other country in Europe that chose the same approach is Swizerland. Notably the two of us are the only countries left in Europe with armies based on universal conscription of all young men and a large reserve.
From inside it may look that way. From outside, it looked like a very solid empire for entire Cold War.
Well, considering that we have no official numbers anywhere, only guesses from analysts, it could go one way or another. We do know that nokia traditionally does very well in certain markets like Russia, China, India, Africa and so on. Nokia's brand is also very strong in Europe (but diminishing fast due to complete OS policy failure alongside market share).
So yes, if L800 does well in US, that would be because of MS rather then Nokia. Elsewhere? It's most likely riding on what's left of Nokia's brand (EU) or just plain riding the brand that is still considered great (Russia, China, Africa...)
I used to live ~1km from campus where MeeGo team was located. People who worked on it, and who I personally knew were given fairly generous severance packages so they would stay and finish N9 after the news of nokia killing MeeGo were announced to the workers.
Key members of the team, ones that got offers from competitors the moment Nokia announced that MeeGo is being killed left pretty much immediately after announcement. They still have the skeleton crew managing mandatory software updates, but essentially entire team that designed software part of N9 is now employed elsewhere. IIRC some were re-trained to develop for WP but most left since Nokia basically killed all of its linux OS level know how and with android coming up as well as Intel wanting some of the MeeGo people, they had other good job offers.
I could be wrong on exact numbers, my contact in the company left after they released N9 as per her severance package and is now employed elsewhere.
It does reasonably well in "certain markets" because it bears nokia's logo. In those markets, you could sell a turn with nokia logo and it would do reasonably well.
Outside of that, it's tanking and hard.
It can't respond because the team responsible for N9 is long fired. There is simply no one left to continue development, all these people left for other companies.
Problem isn't on that end. Never was. Nokia has some of the best engineering minds in the industry, or had before Elop decided to start throwing these best engineering minds off the "oil rig".
For example he kicked out entire MeeGo team essentially before they got to release N9 (it was finished up with a skeleton crew). Which was, and still remains worlds ahead of any iteration of windows phone.
First of all, I am a finn. If you know any finns that would "in polite terms disagree with me", they are a minority and below you'll find out why.
You see, as with any small neutral country stuck between two grandiose empires that could stomp us out and not barely notice it throughout our independence (which is what they thought of us, namely Germany, USSR and later on NATO), we had our shills for all sides. During cold war we had our Soviet shills, and our NATO shills. I'm guessing you've been talking to descendants of the latter. Notably their numbers are in low 30 percentile and have been going down steadily across the country for almost a decade now as people with severe phobia of anything Russia-related due to WW2 part of our history die out of old age and we get more and more Russian tourists bringing good money into the economy.
On topic of disinformation, that either wasn't it, or if it was, it sure fooled everyone (including some medium level NATO attaches who were spying for us). In here, when you build a building that houses more then a few people, you have to, BY LAW to build a bomb shelter in it with mandated level of low ABC proofing since early cold war. Every big city has one to several bomb shelters typically dug into solid rock rated to survive a 20 kiloton tactical nuke explosion directly above itself. Note the payload, it was exactly what we were expecting NATO to drop on us in potential conflict and the goal was the classic Finnish pragmatism - to allow as many of our people as possible to survive to fight another day even at significant additional costs to economy. During peace time, they're used as hokey rinks, swimming pools and so on. I go to one such swimming pool weekly - the entrance is less then 500m from my home. They are also required by law to have a plan on how to prepare it to function as a bomb shelter within 4 weeks.
Do note that we had near zero nuclear treat from Soviets due to geography - any nukes in southern Finland where biggest cities are and where biggest shelters are built mean a likely fallout in 5.000.000 people city of Leningrad.
All in all, your argument is that of a classic NATO shill. "You had two wars with Soviets, therefore anyone opposing them is a force for good!". Except that opposing force was about as "evil" from our point of view, and the only meaningful difference for us independents caught between was the direction in which guns are pointed. Which was usually at us, from both sides, because both followed the "if you're not with us, you're potentially against us" doctrine. In the end, we survived independent because we played both sides against one another, just like we played Germany against USSR in 1944 to stay independent in spite of suffering the heaviest Red Army assault in the entire war.
Notably USSR gave us very good trading terms during Cold War, we were classified in the "Warsaw pact countries and Finland" category. Something that even NATO liked to use to trade with USSR and vice versa, because it meant being able to indirectly trade for things you couldn't trade directly due to political fallout through a politically stable country with a culture that valued privacy of such deals.
So in short, most Finns that actually live around here would tell you, in actually polite and laconic terms, to stuff it. We're the only country in Molotov-Ribbentrop that succeeded to stay independent, we succeeded to stay independent during Cold War in spite of pressure from USSR and NATO to join one of them, and we'll stay independent now if current polls about desirability of NATO membership are anything to go by. That is because history taught us one thing: empires only care about themselves and allying yourself with one of them would likely cost you independence as most unbalanced deals with the devil do.
P.S. It may surprise you to find out that we also have quite a few statues of Lenin around here. They're usually tactfully hidden, but we do remember who it was that gave us independence for first time in our history. So if you think that our history together with our neighbours started in WW2, you're sorely mistaken.
Not at all welcome. The "open secret" of NATO's plans for USSR attack on Finland was to use tactical nukes to cripple the country's infrastructure. Basically to backstab the country that tries to defend itself at the critical moment.
That's why most finns are rather sceptical on NATO trying to show itself as the "good guys" during Cold War.
If you stopped letting them kiss it, it wouldn't be that red.
Think of where those lips have been.