Realistically: the guy refusing the sale is Iranian-American. So his actions were probably not based on racist beliefs.The customer speaks Farsi, and he does too - so he was able to overhear what she was telling her uncle. From the second article: [the] employee [...] refused to sell an iPad to her and her uncle after overhearing them speaking Farsi. The iPad was to be a gift for her cousin who lives in Iran.
So she wanted to export it to Iran and Apple doesn't want to export to Iran. The employee knew what she wanted to do.
I think ISPs stop providing newsgroup access as people stopped caring about Usenet. Why maintain an additional server for a tiny minority of your users? The bulk of their customers want Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook has a huge user base, sure they could try and burden them with intrusive ads, and I agree that would probably doom them. However that's not their only option - they could try and add services which then make them money - like becoming a payment processor, enabling auctions (like ebay) etc. Their user base is a treasure, they have many options to build on that.
What's the point? The Lumia is a decent mid-range device, Nokia still has enough manufacturing capacity to make more of them - what they are lacking is customers.
MS buying Nokia would be nice for Nokia shareholders, but given that the company is already making Windows phones, there would be no gain for MS.
No it's not editorial spin. The NY Times appears to quote Nokia: "The company also warned investors that its loss was likely to be greater in the second quarter, which ends June 30, than it was in the first, and that the negative effects of its transition to a Windows-based smartphone business would continue into the third quarter."
assembling a phone is the equivalent of playing with Lego's. its simple tedious work. why would i want my kids to aspire to this kind of work?
They are not just closing plants according to this.
From the bloomberg article:
"The biggest share of cuts will come in research and development, where Nokia is killing whole projects to preserve others that are more important, Chief Financial Officer Timo Ihamuotila said on a call. Sales is the second-biggest area affected and general overhead is third, he said."
So they are now at the stage where they have to stop developing tomorrow's products in order to pay today's bills.
Just because they are filing for that patent doesn't mean they have any plans using it. I imagine MS - like many technology companies - have a program where employees are encouraged to submit patent ideas. The idea is to pad the patent war chest - you will need it to defend yourself even if you don't want to attack.
Basically there is no part in the typical company patent program which says: "let's see if we can use this". Either the patent is submitted by the design group which implements it (or could implement it) or they will never hear from it.
I design ASICs (surprise) and I never hear from patents any of the other design groups in my company file, and I never tell other design groups about the patents we file. Unless the idea is implemented in some module and then reused. We have quite aggressive patent goals, so there would be quite a number.
I suspect somebody at MS had an idea that he thought would pass through the patent process and wanted to get the award money, so that's why he filed it.
Oh and good news: thanks to this MS patent we may now never see this crap idea on Android phones.
Load a youtube video, right click, select "Settings", go to the leftmost tab, de-select "Enable Hardware Acceleration". Voila, colours are back to normal.
What did they do to Heisenberg? Looking over his bio it doesn't seem he suffered anything terrible after Germany's defeat, and had quite a decent career post-war.
Those were US-designed reactors. The Japanese should have simply kept up with the manufacturer's upgrades, just like the plants in the US did. Japanese research is somewhat irrelevant to that. Turning off nuclear power plants (which is just one of the suggested options) does not mean research into it becomes taboo. In any case there is still nuclear waste to be handled for generations, so there will be a nuclear industry of sorts in Japan, whether it produces energy or not.
I think it's including that, because a lot of users are frustrated by the way desktop UIs have been developing on Linux. (I'm not making claims regarding us being a majority - just that this reflects the feeling of a sizable number of users.) When KDE threw away the excellent code base they had with KDE 3 and early KDE 4 releases turned out to be horrible (much improved in later KDE 4s) many KDE users went to GNOME. Now with GNOME 3 there is similar frustration with esoteric UI concepts and the like. So with KDE getting better again it may be worth another look. As I said: that might not reflect the way the majority of users think, but it's relevant for a significant number.
Personally - I'll try it again on one of my machines, but for my main PC I'll stick with KDE 3.
It's just little stuff - like the KDE-menu not being disturbed when something is loading in the background, the notifications handling not being as distracting, keeping the desktops separated etc. It just does everything I need and is fast enough.
Space exploration with today's technology might well be like trying to build a 747 in medieval times. It's not going to go any faster no matter how much money you pour into hot air balloon building. The best thing you could have done at the time was to fund research in physics.
If you really want to explore space, you probably need to invest in the LHC and similar fundamental research.
Yes that would be the correct approach, but at some point it will be too late to use that because we already put too much in. I'm not all that confident that we can get our act together before that. Heck - I'm surprised this hasn't deteriorated in yet another "global warming skeptic" debate by now.
Teenager tend to be worse drivers, but in general I see no evidence that adults are more likely than teenagers to use the "adult definitions" you list.
Well, if the public wouldn't want the mayor to do that, they'd just go and vote for a different mayor, right? That's another freedom of choice. Regardless what you think of the policy - the guy probably put in some effort to gauge public opinion on that. He could have gotten that wrong, but that's actually something successful politicians are usually good at.
The issue is not: does the voting majority want the government to do that - it's likely they do and the politicians have been authorized by winning elections. The issue is if the majority has a right to limit the minority's freedom of choice. And how much.
Well, I presume you go to the cinema in order to have fun? Sure it would be cheaper not have something to drink while watching the movie, but it would also be less fun. These people would be suckers if they were unaware that the prices for the soda are way higher than buying them in the supermarket - but they are are not. They are making a conscious decision to spend that money regardless of the higher price.
Going to the cinema is a pricey way to watch a movie anyway - particularly if you already have cable. I still wouldn't call you a sucker for going anyway.
He still has the option to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if he fails in this appeal. To do that, I assume he has to exhaust the possibilities afforded to him by the UK courts.
It's besides the point. The folks pushing 'Anti-Piracy' and 'Copying is Stealing' don't need to come up with a viable business model for YouTube. Coming up with the business model is Google's job, and they would probably make that argument in a court case.
Anyway, you don't need a judge to remove user-uploaded content from a website you operate. You don't make a decision whether the user has infringed copyright and has to pay a fine, you decide you don't like it on your site and that's it. They don't use judges to remove porn now, do they?
There is plenty wrong with copyright - we can't enforce artificial scarcity simply because we don't want to come up with a new way to pay content creators. However the article invents problems which don't exist in reality.
The purpose being expressed was "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state". It doesn't really matter though - it's a right listed in the US constitution, so you have the right to keep and bear arms.
No, every country voting against this makes it easier to have public discussions about this topic in other countries. If they'd all operate in lockstep, if they'd all implement 3-strike laws and other nonsense, then it would appear normal to the population. The Netherlands are not the first country to reject ACTA, but they help all of us by doing so. Good for them and good for us. As far as internet freedom goes, we are all in this together.
Every country promoting that freedom helps internet users in other countries as well, every country trying to abolish that freedom does harm to all of us. It affects us all, because that's one more or one less country which can legally host servers where free speech is possible. It affects us all because it's one more example that internet freedom is possible, or one more example that restrictions are normal.
Uhm. It mentions an "evening and morning" for every other day - from day 1 to day 6. Using a word normally meaning "day" and adding "evening and morning" to it for six of the days you'd normally say you have made your point about which damn period of time you are referring to. So the writers of Genesis didn't specifically spell out that day seven also had a morning and an evening and from this you infer... that the other six times don't count?
You know, if god actually existed I think I might forgive him for the great flood considering what kind of effort it takes him to communicate with his alleged believers.
God: "Ok, so I created light and darkness on the first day"
Follower: "Oh so that took a thousand years, right?"
God: "No, just a day... you know from morning until evening. Got it?"
Follower: "Alright, so a day is a day, understood"
God: "On the second day I created sky and waters."
Follower: "Oh that took hundreds of thousands of years, right?"
God: "No! From morning till evening - just the same as the first one. Why would I say it took a day, otherwise?"
Follower: "Oh I see, I see..."
God: "On the third day I created dry land, herbs, trees and all that. It took a day - from morning until evening." *looks hard at follower*
Follower: *gulp*
...
God: "And on the seventh day I took a rest, so in your week you also take the seventh day off, ok?"
Follower: "Oh that's the day which took a million years, right?"
God, aside: "I'm going to drown the whole bunch of them, so help me myself I'll do it..."
Well usually what you mean with Occam's Razor is the simplest explanation which explains the observable phenomena. The problem with the god assumption is not that it's complicated, but that it explains nothing. You can't make any predictions with it, you can't build a taxonomy of animals better by using it etc. You can't use Occam's Razor on "god made it" because that statement is not even a scientific hypothesis - it's usefulness is indistinguishable from saying "I don't know".
Some form of creationism might work as a scientific hypothesis - *but* then you would have to pick one and analyze that. E.g. a creationist hypothesis would be - a creator put all animals on earth about x years ago. You can then show that animals existed before that point, and you could show that other animals only developed after that point which would disprove the hypothesis. You could make another creationist hypothesis that "change x was made by an external agent" - on this one you can use Occam's Razor if that change can just as well be explained by evolution. As the hypothesis in this case is evolution + a bit of creation, evolution by itself is necessarily the simpler explanation. The scientific way to get around that would be to find evidence that the change was not made by evolution - the hypothesis would become a valid theory if you found that.
So you are correct, you can't tell them: "you are wrong, the great snookie does not move the electrons and put them back before anyone notices", but you can tell them that their beliefs don't explain anything and have nothing to do with science.
It won't faze them, but you'd be right about that.
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Realistically: the guy refusing the sale is Iranian-American. So his actions were probably not based on racist beliefs.The customer speaks Farsi, and he does too - so he was able to overhear what she was telling her uncle. From the second article: [the] employee [...] refused to sell an iPad to her and her uncle after overhearing them speaking Farsi. The iPad was to be a gift for her cousin who lives in Iran.
So she wanted to export it to Iran and Apple doesn't want to export to Iran. The employee knew what she wanted to do.
What does 'owning' an Island actual mean? Is it part of the state of Hawaii and thus the USA? Can Larry declare independence [...]?
It's real estate, nothing else. He owns it in the same way you might own your house, surely that's a familiar use of the term?
I think ISPs stop providing newsgroup access as people stopped caring about Usenet. Why maintain an additional server for a tiny minority of your users? The bulk of their customers want Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook has a huge user base, sure they could try and burden them with intrusive ads, and I agree that would probably doom them. However that's not their only option - they could try and add services which then make them money - like becoming a payment processor, enabling auctions (like ebay) etc. Their user base is a treasure, they have many options to build on that.
G+ hangouts can be good for that sort of thing.
What's the point? The Lumia is a decent mid-range device, Nokia still has enough manufacturing capacity to make more of them - what they are lacking is customers.
MS buying Nokia would be nice for Nokia shareholders, but given that the company is already making Windows phones, there would be no gain for MS.
No it's not editorial spin. The NY Times appears to quote Nokia: "The company also warned investors that its loss was likely to be greater in the second quarter, which ends June 30, than it was in the first, and that the negative effects of its transition to a Windows-based smartphone business would continue into the third quarter."
assembling a phone is the equivalent of playing with Lego's. its simple tedious work. why would i want my kids to aspire to this kind of work?
They are not just closing plants according to this.
From the bloomberg article: "The biggest share of cuts will come in research and development, where Nokia is killing whole projects to preserve others that are more important, Chief Financial Officer Timo Ihamuotila said on a call. Sales is the second-biggest area affected and general overhead is third, he said."
So they are now at the stage where they have to stop developing tomorrow's products in order to pay today's bills.
Just because they are filing for that patent doesn't mean they have any plans using it. I imagine MS - like many technology companies - have a program where employees are encouraged to submit patent ideas. The idea is to pad the patent war chest - you will need it to defend yourself even if you don't want to attack.
Basically there is no part in the typical company patent program which says: "let's see if we can use this". Either the patent is submitted by the design group which implements it (or could implement it) or they will never hear from it.
I design ASICs (surprise) and I never hear from patents any of the other design groups in my company file, and I never tell other design groups about the patents we file. Unless the idea is implemented in some module and then reused. We have quite aggressive patent goals, so there would be quite a number.
I suspect somebody at MS had an idea that he thought would pass through the patent process and wanted to get the award money, so that's why he filed it.
Oh and good news: thanks to this MS patent we may now never see this crap idea on Android phones.
Load a youtube video, right click, select "Settings", go to the leftmost tab, de-select "Enable Hardware Acceleration". Voila, colours are back to normal.
What did they do to Heisenberg? Looking over his bio it doesn't seem he suffered anything terrible after Germany's defeat, and had quite a decent career post-war.
Those were US-designed reactors. The Japanese should have simply kept up with the manufacturer's upgrades, just like the plants in the US did. Japanese research is somewhat irrelevant to that. Turning off nuclear power plants (which is just one of the suggested options) does not mean research into it becomes taboo. In any case there is still nuclear waste to be handled for generations, so there will be a nuclear industry of sorts in Japan, whether it produces energy or not.
I think it's including that, because a lot of users are frustrated by the way desktop UIs have been developing on Linux. (I'm not making claims regarding us being a majority - just that this reflects the feeling of a sizable number of users.) When KDE threw away the excellent code base they had with KDE 3 and early KDE 4 releases turned out to be horrible (much improved in later KDE 4s) many KDE users went to GNOME. Now with GNOME 3 there is similar frustration with esoteric UI concepts and the like. So with KDE getting better again it may be worth another look. As I said: that might not reflect the way the majority of users think, but it's relevant for a significant number.
Personally - I'll try it again on one of my machines, but for my main PC I'll stick with KDE 3.
It's just little stuff - like the KDE-menu not being disturbed when something is loading in the background, the notifications handling not being as distracting, keeping the desktops separated etc. It just does everything I need and is fast enough.
Space exploration with today's technology might well be like trying to build a 747 in medieval times. It's not going to go any faster no matter how much money you pour into hot air balloon building. The best thing you could have done at the time was to fund research in physics.
If you really want to explore space, you probably need to invest in the LHC and similar fundamental research.
Yes that would be the correct approach, but at some point it will be too late to use that because we already put too much in. I'm not all that confident that we can get our act together before that. Heck - I'm surprised this hasn't deteriorated in yet another "global warming skeptic" debate by now.
Teenager tend to be worse drivers, but in general I see no evidence that adults are more likely than teenagers to use the "adult definitions" you list.
Well, if the public wouldn't want the mayor to do that, they'd just go and vote for a different mayor, right? That's another freedom of choice. Regardless what you think of the policy - the guy probably put in some effort to gauge public opinion on that. He could have gotten that wrong, but that's actually something successful politicians are usually good at.
The issue is not: does the voting majority want the government to do that - it's likely they do and the politicians have been authorized by winning elections. The issue is if the majority has a right to limit the minority's freedom of choice. And how much.
Well, I presume you go to the cinema in order to have fun? Sure it would be cheaper not have something to drink while watching the movie, but it would also be less fun. These people would be suckers if they were unaware that the prices for the soda are way higher than buying them in the supermarket - but they are are not. They are making a conscious decision to spend that money regardless of the higher price.
Going to the cinema is a pricey way to watch a movie anyway - particularly if you already have cable. I still wouldn't call you a sucker for going anyway.
He still has the option to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if he fails in this appeal. To do that, I assume he has to exhaust the possibilities afforded to him by the UK courts.
It's besides the point. The folks pushing 'Anti-Piracy' and 'Copying is Stealing' don't need to come up with a viable business model for YouTube. Coming up with the business model is Google's job, and they would probably make that argument in a court case.
Anyway, you don't need a judge to remove user-uploaded content from a website you operate. You don't make a decision whether the user has infringed copyright and has to pay a fine, you decide you don't like it on your site and that's it. They don't use judges to remove porn now, do they?
There is plenty wrong with copyright - we can't enforce artificial scarcity simply because we don't want to come up with a new way to pay content creators. However the article invents problems which don't exist in reality.
The purpose being expressed was "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state". It doesn't really matter though - it's a right listed in the US constitution, so you have the right to keep and bear arms.
No, every country voting against this makes it easier to have public discussions about this topic in other countries. If they'd all operate in lockstep, if they'd all implement 3-strike laws and other nonsense, then it would appear normal to the population. The Netherlands are not the first country to reject ACTA, but they help all of us by doing so. Good for them and good for us. As far as internet freedom goes, we are all in this together.
Every country promoting that freedom helps internet users in other countries as well, every country trying to abolish that freedom does harm to all of us. It affects us all, because that's one more or one less country which can legally host servers where free speech is possible. It affects us all because it's one more example that internet freedom is possible, or one more example that restrictions are normal.
Uhm. It mentions an "evening and morning" for every other day - from day 1 to day 6. Using a word normally meaning "day" and adding "evening and morning" to it for six of the days you'd normally say you have made your point about which damn period of time you are referring to. So the writers of Genesis didn't specifically spell out that day seven also had a morning and an evening and from this you infer ... that the other six times don't count?
You know, if god actually existed I think I might forgive him for the great flood considering what kind of effort it takes him to communicate with his alleged believers.
So adding another 30 years to that won't help.
Well, some of them might die of old age.
Well usually what you mean with Occam's Razor is the simplest explanation which explains the observable phenomena. The problem with the god assumption is not that it's complicated, but that it explains nothing. You can't make any predictions with it, you can't build a taxonomy of animals better by using it etc. You can't use Occam's Razor on "god made it" because that statement is not even a scientific hypothesis - it's usefulness is indistinguishable from saying "I don't know".
Some form of creationism might work as a scientific hypothesis - *but* then you would have to pick one and analyze that. E.g. a creationist hypothesis would be - a creator put all animals on earth about x years ago. You can then show that animals existed before that point, and you could show that other animals only developed after that point which would disprove the hypothesis. You could make another creationist hypothesis that "change x was made by an external agent" - on this one you can use Occam's Razor if that change can just as well be explained by evolution. As the hypothesis in this case is evolution + a bit of creation, evolution by itself is necessarily the simpler explanation. The scientific way to get around that would be to find evidence that the change was not made by evolution - the hypothesis would become a valid theory if you found that.
So you are correct, you can't tell them: "you are wrong, the great snookie does not move the electrons and put them back before anyone notices", but you can tell them that their beliefs don't explain anything and have nothing to do with science.
It won't faze them, but you'd be right about that.