You do realise that this was a bug in Oracle Java don't you? That's a cross platform vulnerability, the Mal/JavaJar-B trojan for example also affected Windows, Linux and Unix systems.
Actually, before you ripped it out of context, the full quote was: "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it." So even at the time they admitted they were upset with themselves even though they could't help but take a shot at Microsoft for reasons that have to do with events that took place while you were probably still in diapers. Come to think of it I could fill a book with snide comments by Linux Fanbois about Windows security made on this forum, comments that ignore the fact that there is way more malware targeted at Windows than there malware targeted at Linux. If you take that into account Microsoft is doing a pretty good job on security, snide comments by Apple Marketing drones and Slashdot Linux fanbois not withstanding.
Being cross platform still means it affected Macs. So the GPs tirade against the idea that Macs are immune to malware is valid. The GP was not claiming that other systems were immune to it.
No Apple user I know and who has even basic knowledge of what malware is claims Macs are immune to malware. Even totally clueless 'drone' type users don't assume that. I know because a friend of mine has a small Apple shop and people regularly show up at his dealership and ask about infection risks on OS X and half the time they walk out with a free info booklet on malware and having bought a basic anti malware suite (he installs and configures it for free). This guy is just another nerdy zealot venting his irrational hatred of all things Apple. That "OS X is immune to malware and h4x0rs" mantra is so old it has whiskers on it and regurgitating it makes him just as lame as those sad plonkers who still spell Microsoft with a $ sign.
But...they were using Apples. Everyone knows that the Apple OSs can't be hacked. So it is perfectly OK to click on any link that strikes ones fancy. Isn't it?
You do realise that this was a bug in Oracle Java don't you? That's a cross platform vulnerability, the Mal/JavaJar-B trojan for example also affected Windows, Linux and Unix systems.
Well, in Germany many of the really virulent right wing reactionaries and bitter enders were culled during WWII and their world view was thoroughly discredeted.
Yeah well, we imported some of them into the USA, a crapload of them moved to Brazil... They didn't just disappear. Also, it is impossible for Germany to count the actual number of Nazis they have around because they have so successfully driven them underground by making the merest mention of their interest illegal. It does seem to keep them out of politics for the most part however, so that part is good anyway.
I didn't say they disappeared, just that a whole lot of them died and their ideas were discredeted. The nazi years caused a major change in German political culture. There is a whole string of European countries (and the USA) that have much bigger problems with right wing extremisim than Germany
To conservatives the most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom of speech.
Until somebody says something conservatives disapprove of, like that women should have freedom of choice, that gay people should be able to marry, that in a democracy communists have every rigth to participate in politics, that conservative demegogues have no right to forbid workers to engage in collective bargining or that uneducated religious fundamentalists have no business injecting their religious dogma into school books for science education.
You clearly wouldn't know "extreme left" if it bit you in the butt. What passes for "left" in the USA is the extreme right most everywhere else.
For instance, the Dutch VVD is the closest we get to you democrats, they are a RIGHT wing party. Left wing is the SP and they are socialists. Real socialists. In France there still are communist parties AND they have quite recently been part of governments (Miterand, I think was the last).
The Republicans are in EU terms, extreme right and with that I mean one step away from goose stepping.
A thing to remember is that for instance the French LOVE big government, to them it means the system is working. Which it more or less is. The Germans KNOW what to much freedom can lead to, they know that some censorship is a price to pay for being the most evil country on the face of the earth, starting WW3 would not be appreciated by the world and so they ban certain books and parties. And it works so well that when they copied from the BBC the idea of Germany's greatest German they were so not worried about their citizens they excluded Hitler from the nominees... who could ONLY be included in the first place because they allowed Austrians in the list of greatest Germans... some people never learn.
Well, in Germany many of the really virulent right wing reactionaries and bitter enders were culled during WWII and their world view was thoroughly discredeted. So if your hypothesis is correct that would explain to some extent the relative moderation in modern German politics indicating that it is not just down to censorship and banning parties but down to a change in population demographics and a fundamental cultural change. In Holland you guys have right wing plonkers who are way more scary than anything that currently has any significant following in Germany because your crazies have more electoral success. The German crazies hardly make it into parliament most of the time whereas in Holland a neo-fascist party (PVV) is the third largest one.
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!
Sure there is choice, I can for example abandon OS X for Windows OR Linux (Hint: That's two choices). There is a world outside Linux-land there is a world outside Wiindows-land and there is a world outside OS X land and you are allowed to travel between them.
So I'm curious, what other possible sanctions can they impose on Google? Clearly they'll begin with some sort of fine, but are there other actions that they may take, and if so, what?
I'm no expert in international politics but I'll take a jab at it.... The EU is a unified market area of over 500 million 1st world consumers. Google is not going to want pass up on an opportunity to make money in a place like that. If Google want's to make money in the EU it has to either have a presence somewhere in the EU or by some other means funnel cash from customers in the EU to wherever Google's favourite tax havens are at the moment. That gives the EU a way to make life hard for Google and also a motivation to make life rather easy for Google's competitors. For example, at the moment Google is, AFAIK, doing most of it's tax dodging in the EU via the Irish Republic. The EU has the Irish by the balls because of the 2008 financial crisis and all the EU commission has to do to make life unpleasant for Google is squeeze since it'll be hard for them to find another EU country willing to take Ireland's place knowing that the instant they invite Google in, the EU commission will be knocking on their door.
One man's waste of time and resources is another's inspiration and breakthrough.
It's funny how some people just classify everything as weird or useless if they see no sense or use in it. I have the habit of eating fries with strong mustard rather than ketchup. A friend of mine was appalled when he saw me do this and gave me a long lecture on how unappetising it was, after ranting on for a while he finally got tired of it and dug into his gouda-cheese, mayonnaise and jam sandwich.
I'll wash off the stink and you can swamp me with women but you'll have to shave my manly beard off my pale dead face. There is no way you'll get us beardy weirdys to participate you strange metrosexual war on body hair, it's donwright unmanly.
A patent is not a substitute for a viable business model. One cannot simply receive a patent and wait for the money to roll in, especially not as technology changes around you, quite often in order to work around your patent.
In this case, in 1991 Baylis invented a generator that was based on storing energy in a spring, then using a system of gears to release that energy steadily to power various devices such as a radio. But by 1995 wind-up radios were on their way out and by 2000 they had been entirely replaced by battery-based radios. His invention was a flash in the pan.
So Baylis had a nice idea, made some decent money off of it, but failed to turn that into a sustainable career. Now he wants the entire UK patent system modified in order to rescue him from his misfortune.
His original idea was a wind up radio for areas where batteries are hard to get ahold of. Another motivation was that batteries are not exactly affordable in many poor communities in developing countries and people in the these communities have to spend a significant amount of their disposable income to buy batteries, a fact that seems to be hard to understand for 1st worlders who buy batteries by the dozen and throw them away without a second thought. At least that's what Baylis claimed in an interview I watched back in the 90s.
Before somebody says, "well your answer is wrong", remember this. If you had infinite sums of money could the patent be defended? Yes. Thus the problem is not the patent system per say, but the courts that cause these problems. Simply put what needs to be fixed is the fact that lawyers with big sums of money do not have an advantage that lawyers with small sums of money.
Precisely... lawsuits in general are something the average citizen cannot afford if they drag on for any length of time. The legal system has become an instrument of extortion for rich people people with money to burn.
Project Looking Glass was started in the mid-late 90s (before OS-X dock was around)
The fact is any 'look' to anything has been ripped off/borrowed by/from every tech company in existence (including apple)
Design patent are worthless and and should be treated as such, Compete on your 'product' not how it looks. If someone can create a different product that looks the same to the point where you claim people are confused just by the outside looks than you either need to stop complaining and change the look or emphasize the parts that aren't (if you can't then you are not innovative.)
NeXT computers started development on their desktop environment in the late 1980s, the debut was in 1988. NeXT was OS Xs daddy and yes, it's desktop had a dock. Risc OS beat NeXT to it by about a year but their implementation wasn't as close to the OS X dock as the one by NeXT which Looking Glass then remade in 3D.
I think he means, losing market share. And they're bleeding market share like a stuck pig.
No, Android is gaining market share faster than iOS which is not surprising when every mobile vendor from high end device makers to the lowest shitphone peddlers are pushing Android devices onto the market and Android has pretty much exterminated every competitor except Apple. This was kind of inevitable when Apple refused to compromise, release budget iPhone versions and compete with the lower end Android device makers in a race to the bottom. Considering the fact that Apple makes decidedly high end devices it's remarkable how well they have kept up with the growing legion Android device makers. The ones bleeding market share like stuck pigs over the last couple of years are pretty much everybody except Apple with the biggest losers being Blackberry and Nokia. We are heading into a Mobile OS monoculture dominated by Google/Android to thundering applause from half the people on this forum.
Businesswise, it may well be. Office on iPad could make a lot of money, true. But a successful alternative to the iPad, controlled by MS with an MS app store? That's a lot more money. If Microsoft are to rival Apple they need ever advantage they can get, and Office exclusivity is a big advantage.
And according to a recent/. article, if I could snare an asteroid, bring it into earth orbit and mine the sucker I'd be able to pocket $195 billion, if, if, if. Here's a few bit more supposition: Microsoft is not going to make a dent in Apple's share of the mobilem market much less Google's Android OS empire just like that ** snaps fingers **. The bigger threat is Google so another option would be to accept this reality and make tons of money backing Apple against Google by releasing MS office for iOS but not Android. That would hurt Google/Android in the enterprise market since you'd instantly have a cloud enabled Office suite that is cross platform over Windows, Windows Phone, OS x and iOS with native and web apps but not on Android. Google is the bigger threat, business is war, war creates odd alliances.
While I agree with your sentiments, you judge all 300K+ Icelanders by the whims of one moralist minister.
He is playing for votes, there is an election coming. His left wing party, where he is part of an isolated radical faction, will probably be voted out in favour of the neocons that brought us the 2008 financial collapse and a populist right wing party that wants to build toll barriers and promotes xenophobia so that's where this crusade is likely to end. Conservative as these right wingers are they are no more keen than the rest of the Icelanders to become known as the only western democracy in the 'Enemies of the Internet' club along with countries like China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
The outer space treaty says that nations can't "claim ownership" of space bodies and they can't use them for weapons testing. But AFAIK that doesn't prohibit commercial exploitation of an asteroid. Whoever can catch it and start mining it has a pretty good
That'll go out the window as soon as the first superpower develops a serious capability to assert and enforce ownership of objects in space
Here in LA, I've never waited 45 minutes. I'd say a half-hour was the worst. But it's a car culture out here. The one time I was with my Mom and the car broke down in rural New Hampshire, you're right--it was easily an hour and probably more before the guy finally showed up. I just waited in the car and played Marathon on my laptop (hooray for warm-running laptops!) until the driver showed up, so I don't remember how long it took.
So fine. It might take two or three hours before you're back on your way. I'll give you that. I'd still be curious as to how long it would take to charge up your Tesla (at a standard 110v outlet) so you could finish a trip of, say, 100 miles and how would you get your car to said outlet. If I have to wait two hours for the tow truck to tow me to an outlet and 3 hours to get enough juice to finish my trip, that would be bad.
Again, though, I still want a Tesla Roadster.
The Tesla Sedan probably does not have to be plugged in daily if you are a commuter, but the cars most people can afford are of the charge once a day variety. That kind of electric car still makes sense for a lot of people and excuses like "Bbbut.... I'll have to charge my car once a day" that you hear from some people are just lame criticisms. The Tesla and full electrics do have their shortcomings and the slow charging is one of them. I suppose one could dump a small generator and a can of gas in the boot for emergencies but you'd better include a warm coat or something if you live in cold climates. Another point for the average citizen is that there is no infrastructure and not everybody lives in a house with a garage. How are you going to charge your car? What if you live in an apartment building on the 6th floor with no parking garage and no private parking space? I am also interested in the issue of heating since and its effect on range since I live in the arctic region and have the heater going full blast most of the winter. I have talked to people who have operated electric cars up here and their biggest gripe was always that the heater sucked and if you turned it up it affected range. Basically the Chevy Volt built in generator concept and pluggable hybrids make more sense to me than this Tesla Sedan. I'd only buy one if I was a commuter and wasn't ever planning to not take any long trips outside of regions where there are supercharge stations.
As I said, the difference is so great that using the German reunification as a model does not provide much useful information. There is one important difference that is often overlooked. East Germans had a fairly accurate understanding of West German lifestyle and expected to rapidly attain it after unification. It is unlikely that North Koreans have any idea what the South Korean lifestyle looks like and thus is less likely to harbor expectations of reaching it quickly upon reunification. Personally, I have no idea what a post reunification Korea would look like, except to believe that the improvements for North Koreans (except for those who are among the elites there currently) would be much greater than the losses for South Koreans.
That is also true but you can still learn something from the German experience even if it isn't a 1 to 1 mapping. Take for example the American decision to completely ignore their own experiences with the occupation of Germany in WWII. This experience wasn't directly applicable to Iraq but you sure as shit could have learned a few things from it anyway, starting with the fact that preventing any maltreatment of the occpuied population (Abu Graib etc.) and rebuilding the infrastructure and economy are complete musts. Similarly the US re-employed German soldiers and police after weeding out the worst nazis to maintain internal security and they did this right off the bat. Even before WWII ended the US and the British were doing what-if scenarios vis-a-vis the post war world and possible conflicts with the Soviet Union. All of these scenarios involved at least a dozen rebuilt and denazified German panzer and mechanized divisions. In iraq, however, the USA decided to disband the Iraqi army which was an act of galactic stupidity.
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...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
And the really funny part is that the USA ranks behind those "librul" pot smoking socialist hippies in the Netherlands.
You do realise that this was a bug in Oracle Java don't you? That's a cross platform vulnerability, the Mal/JavaJar-B trojan for example also affected Windows, Linux and Unix systems.
A few years ago, when Apple shipped iPods with Windows Virus they said "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses...". So now they now should be upset with themselves.
Actually, before you ripped it out of context, the full quote was: "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it." So even at the time they admitted they were upset with themselves even though they could't help but take a shot at Microsoft for reasons that have to do with events that took place while you were probably still in diapers. Come to think of it I could fill a book with snide comments by Linux Fanbois about Windows security made on this forum, comments that ignore the fact that there is way more malware targeted at Windows than there malware targeted at Linux. If you take that into account Microsoft is doing a pretty good job on security, snide comments by Apple Marketing drones and Slashdot Linux fanbois not withstanding.
Being cross platform still means it affected Macs. So the GPs tirade against the idea that Macs are immune to malware is valid. The GP was not claiming that other systems were immune to it.
No Apple user I know and who has even basic knowledge of what malware is claims Macs are immune to malware. Even totally clueless 'drone' type users don't assume that. I know because a friend of mine has a small Apple shop and people regularly show up at his dealership and ask about infection risks on OS X and half the time they walk out with a free info booklet on malware and having bought a basic anti malware suite (he installs and configures it for free). This guy is just another nerdy zealot venting his irrational hatred of all things Apple. That "OS X is immune to malware and h4x0rs" mantra is so old it has whiskers on it and regurgitating it makes him just as lame as those sad plonkers who still spell Microsoft with a $ sign.
But...they were using Apples. Everyone knows that the Apple OSs can't be hacked. So it is perfectly OK to click on any link that strikes ones fancy. Isn't it?
You do realise that this was a bug in Oracle Java don't you? That's a cross platform vulnerability, the Mal/JavaJar-B trojan for example also affected Windows, Linux and Unix systems.
Well, in Germany many of the really virulent right wing reactionaries and bitter enders were culled during WWII and their world view was thoroughly discredeted.
Yeah well, we imported some of them into the USA, a crapload of them moved to Brazil... They didn't just disappear. Also, it is impossible for Germany to count the actual number of Nazis they have around because they have so successfully driven them underground by making the merest mention of their interest illegal. It does seem to keep them out of politics for the most part however, so that part is good anyway.
I didn't say they disappeared, just that a whole lot of them died and their ideas were discredeted. The nazi years caused a major change in German political culture. There is a whole string of European countries (and the USA) that have much bigger problems with right wing extremisim than Germany
To conservatives the most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom of speech.
Until somebody says something conservatives disapprove of, like that women should have freedom of choice, that gay people should be able to marry, that in a democracy communists have every rigth to participate in politics, that conservative demegogues have no right to forbid workers to engage in collective bargining or that uneducated religious fundamentalists have no business injecting their religious dogma into school books for science education.
You clearly wouldn't know "extreme left" if it bit you in the butt. What passes for "left" in the USA is the extreme right most everywhere else.
For instance, the Dutch VVD is the closest we get to you democrats, they are a RIGHT wing party. Left wing is the SP and they are socialists. Real socialists. In France there still are communist parties AND they have quite recently been part of governments (Miterand, I think was the last).
The Republicans are in EU terms, extreme right and with that I mean one step away from goose stepping.
A thing to remember is that for instance the French LOVE big government, to them it means the system is working. Which it more or less is. The Germans KNOW what to much freedom can lead to, they know that some censorship is a price to pay for being the most evil country on the face of the earth, starting WW3 would not be appreciated by the world and so they ban certain books and parties. And it works so well that when they copied from the BBC the idea of Germany's greatest German they were so not worried about their citizens they excluded Hitler from the nominees... who could ONLY be included in the first place because they allowed Austrians in the list of greatest Germans... some people never learn.
Well, in Germany many of the really virulent right wing reactionaries and bitter enders were culled during WWII and their world view was thoroughly discredeted. So if your hypothesis is correct that would explain to some extent the relative moderation in modern German politics indicating that it is not just down to censorship and banning parties but down to a change in population demographics and a fundamental cultural change. In Holland you guys have right wing plonkers who are way more scary than anything that currently has any significant following in Germany because your crazies have more electoral success. The German crazies hardly make it into parliament most of the time whereas in Holland a neo-fascist party (PVV) is the third largest one.
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!
Sure there is choice, I can for example abandon OS X for Windows OR Linux (Hint: That's two choices). There is a world outside Linux-land there is a world outside Wiindows-land and there is a world outside OS X land and you are allowed to travel between them.
So I'm curious, what other possible sanctions can they impose on Google? Clearly they'll begin with some sort of fine, but are there other actions that they may take, and if so, what?
I'm no expert in international politics but I'll take a jab at it.... The EU is a unified market area of over 500 million 1st world consumers. Google is not going to want pass up on an opportunity to make money in a place like that. If Google want's to make money in the EU it has to either have a presence somewhere in the EU or by some other means funnel cash from customers in the EU to wherever Google's favourite tax havens are at the moment. That gives the EU a way to make life hard for Google and also a motivation to make life rather easy for Google's competitors. For example, at the moment Google is, AFAIK, doing most of it's tax dodging in the EU via the Irish Republic. The EU has the Irish by the balls because of the 2008 financial crisis and all the EU commission has to do to make life unpleasant for Google is squeeze since it'll be hard for them to find another EU country willing to take Ireland's place knowing that the instant they invite Google in, the EU commission will be knocking on their door.
One man's waste of time and resources is another's inspiration and breakthrough.
It's funny how some people just classify everything as weird or useless if they see no sense or use in it. I have the habit of eating fries with strong mustard rather than ketchup. A friend of mine was appalled when he saw me do this and gave me a long lecture on how unappetising it was, after ranting on for a while he finally got tired of it and dug into his gouda-cheese, mayonnaise and jam sandwich.
Better hygiene. Less beards. More women.
I'll wash off the stink and you can swamp me with women but you'll have to shave my manly beard off my pale dead face. There is no way you'll get us beardy weirdys to participate you strange metrosexual war on body hair, it's donwright unmanly.
A patent is not a substitute for a viable business model. One cannot simply receive a patent and wait for the money to roll in, especially not as technology changes around you, quite often in order to work around your patent.
In this case, in 1991 Baylis invented a generator that was based on storing energy in a spring, then using a system of gears to release that energy steadily to power various devices such as a radio. But by 1995 wind-up radios were on their way out and by 2000 they had been entirely replaced by battery-based radios. His invention was a flash in the pan.
So Baylis had a nice idea, made some decent money off of it, but failed to turn that into a sustainable career. Now he wants the entire UK patent system modified in order to rescue him from his misfortune.
His original idea was a wind up radio for areas where batteries are hard to get ahold of. Another motivation was that batteries are not exactly affordable in many poor communities in developing countries and people in the these communities have to spend a significant amount of their disposable income to buy batteries, a fact that seems to be hard to understand for 1st worlders who buy batteries by the dozen and throw them away without a second thought. At least that's what Baylis claimed in an interview I watched back in the 90s.
Before somebody says, "well your answer is wrong", remember this. If you had infinite sums of money could the patent be defended? Yes. Thus the problem is not the patent system per say, but the courts that cause these problems. Simply put what needs to be fixed is the fact that lawyers with big sums of money do not have an advantage that lawyers with small sums of money.
Precisely... lawsuits in general are something the average citizen cannot afford if they drag on for any length of time. The legal system has become an instrument of extortion for rich people people with money to burn.
This is normal - the rich don't pay tax.
But we get to bail them out when they screw up because they are 'too big to fail'.
Project Looking Glass was started in the mid-late 90s (before OS-X dock was around)
The fact is any 'look' to anything has been ripped off/borrowed by/from every tech company in existence (including apple)
Design patent are worthless and and should be treated as such, Compete on your 'product' not how it looks. If someone can create a different product that looks the same to the point where you claim people are confused just by the outside looks than you either need to stop complaining and change the look or emphasize the parts that aren't (if you can't then you are not innovative.)
NeXT computers started development on their desktop environment in the late 1980s, the debut was in 1988. NeXT was OS Xs daddy and yes, it's desktop had a dock. Risc OS beat NeXT to it by about a year but their implementation wasn't as close to the OS X dock as the one by NeXT which Looking Glass then remade in 3D.
I think he means, losing market share. And they're bleeding market share like a stuck pig.
No, Android is gaining market share faster than iOS which is not surprising when every mobile vendor from high end device makers to the lowest shitphone peddlers are pushing Android devices onto the market and Android has pretty much exterminated every competitor except Apple. This was kind of inevitable when Apple refused to compromise, release budget iPhone versions and compete with the lower end Android device makers in a race to the bottom. Considering the fact that Apple makes decidedly high end devices it's remarkable how well they have kept up with the growing legion Android device makers. The ones bleeding market share like stuck pigs over the last couple of years are pretty much everybody except Apple with the biggest losers being Blackberry and Nokia. We are heading into a Mobile OS monoculture dominated by Google/Android to thundering applause from half the people on this forum.
Businesswise, it may well be. Office on iPad could make a lot of money, true. But a successful alternative to the iPad, controlled by MS with an MS app store? That's a lot more money. If Microsoft are to rival Apple they need ever advantage they can get, and Office exclusivity is a big advantage.
And according to a recent /. article, if I could snare an asteroid, bring it into earth orbit and mine the sucker I'd be able to pocket $195 billion, if, if, if. Here's a few bit more supposition: Microsoft is not going to make a dent in Apple's share of the mobilem market much less Google's Android OS empire just like that ** snaps fingers **. The bigger threat is Google so another option would be to accept this reality and make tons of money backing Apple against Google by releasing MS office for iOS but not Android. That would hurt Google/Android in the enterprise market since you'd instantly have a cloud enabled Office suite that is cross platform over Windows, Windows Phone, OS x and iOS with native and web apps but not on Android. Google is the bigger threat, business is war, war creates odd alliances.
Why are so many people so willing to accept "rampant left bias" but refuse to see the rampant corporate bias?
There is a difference between corporate and conservative bias?
While I agree with your sentiments, you judge all 300K+ Icelanders by the whims of one moralist minister.
He is playing for votes, there is an election coming. His left wing party, where he is part of an isolated radical faction, will probably be voted out in favour of the neocons that brought us the 2008 financial collapse and a populist right wing party that wants to build toll barriers and promotes xenophobia so that's where this crusade is likely to end. Conservative as these right wingers are they are no more keen than the rest of the Icelanders to become known as the only western democracy in the 'Enemies of the Internet' club along with countries like China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
A place that has a Phallic museum should not be trying harder than Al-Quida to ban naked women.
The CIA found porn on Bin Laden's computers...
Monsanto takes .. And that's about all you have to say.
That's harsh, I'm sure they give generously to the politicians who enable their business practices.
And how is this different from the zillions of successful hacks against the dominant Windows world for laptops, or Android world for smartphones?
Becasue by using Apple devices you join the Sith....
The outer space treaty says that nations can't "claim ownership" of space bodies and they can't use them for weapons testing. But AFAIK that doesn't prohibit commercial exploitation of an asteroid. Whoever can catch it and start mining it has a pretty good
That'll go out the window as soon as the first superpower develops a serious capability to assert and enforce ownership of objects in space
Depends on where you live.
Here in LA, I've never waited 45 minutes. I'd say a half-hour was the worst. But it's a car culture out here. The one time I was with my Mom and the car broke down in rural New Hampshire, you're right--it was easily an hour and probably more before the guy finally showed up. I just waited in the car and played Marathon on my laptop (hooray for warm-running laptops!) until the driver showed up, so I don't remember how long it took.
So fine. It might take two or three hours before you're back on your way. I'll give you that. I'd still be curious as to how long it would take to charge up your Tesla (at a standard 110v outlet) so you could finish a trip of, say, 100 miles and how would you get your car to said outlet. If I have to wait two hours for the tow truck to tow me to an outlet and 3 hours to get enough juice to finish my trip, that would be bad.
Again, though, I still want a Tesla Roadster.
The Tesla Sedan probably does not have to be plugged in daily if you are a commuter, but the cars most people can afford are of the charge once a day variety. That kind of electric car still makes sense for a lot of people and excuses like "Bbbut .... I'll have to charge my car once a day" that you hear from some people are just lame criticisms. The Tesla and full electrics do have their shortcomings and the slow charging is one of them. I suppose one could dump a small generator and a can of gas in the boot for emergencies but you'd better include a warm coat or something if you live in cold climates. Another point for the average citizen is that there is no infrastructure and not everybody lives in a house with a garage. How are you going to charge your car? What if you live in an apartment building on the 6th floor with no parking garage and no private parking space? I am also interested in the issue of heating since and its effect on range since I live in the arctic region and have the heater going full blast most of the winter. I have talked to people who have operated electric cars up here and their biggest gripe was always that the heater sucked and if you turned it up it affected range. Basically the Chevy Volt built in generator concept and pluggable hybrids make more sense to me than this Tesla Sedan. I'd only buy one if I was a commuter and wasn't ever planning to not take any long trips outside of regions where there are supercharge stations.
As I said, the difference is so great that using the German reunification as a model does not provide much useful information. There is one important difference that is often overlooked. East Germans had a fairly accurate understanding of West German lifestyle and expected to rapidly attain it after unification. It is unlikely that North Koreans have any idea what the South Korean lifestyle looks like and thus is less likely to harbor expectations of reaching it quickly upon reunification. Personally, I have no idea what a post reunification Korea would look like, except to believe that the improvements for North Koreans (except for those who are among the elites there currently) would be much greater than the losses for South Koreans.
That is also true but you can still learn something from the German experience even if it isn't a 1 to 1 mapping. Take for example the American decision to completely ignore their own experiences with the occupation of Germany in WWII. This experience wasn't directly applicable to Iraq but you sure as shit could have learned a few things from it anyway, starting with the fact that preventing any maltreatment of the occpuied population (Abu Graib etc.) and rebuilding the infrastructure and economy are complete musts. Similarly the US re-employed German soldiers and police after weeding out the worst nazis to maintain internal security and they did this right off the bat. Even before WWII ended the US and the British were doing what-if scenarios vis-a-vis the post war world and possible conflicts with the Soviet Union. All of these scenarios involved at least a dozen rebuilt and denazified German panzer and mechanized divisions. In iraq, however, the USA decided to disband the Iraqi army which was an act of galactic stupidity.