Although it's really easy to make fun of Garfield, there have been a few interesting cases of Jim Davis breaking from the main storyline.
For instance, this story arc from 1989 is moderately disturbing, especially when you consider that it's is Garfield comic....
And while we're on the subject of Garfield: removing Garfield's thought bubbles removed can be quite humorous (and occasionally depressing), while randomized sets of 3 frames from the comic are about as funny and as coherent as the real thing.
And finally, although it's not garfield, The Family Circus can be easily made funny with a different set of captions.
What it comes down to is which format studios and hardware companies are most comfortable supporting. For both, I'd have to say that HD-DVD comes out on top.
Studios have very strong reasons to be weary of Sony, considering that Sony has an appalling track record of refusing to play nicely with others, and also owns a movie studio themselves. Likewise, they've got their own reputations to worry about, should Sony pull another stunt, like the rootkit fiasco. Also, look at what happened to BetaMax.
Hardware vendors also have a bit to be concerned about. Although Blu-Ray has a small technical advantage over HD-DVD (the disc holds more), the players and discs are much more expensive to produce, and royalties are higher (and paid to Sony, who is in direct competition with other vendors). This translates to smaller profit margins, and a higher price at retail (both of which are bad, if your competitor can profitably sell what is essentially the same product for 2/3 the price). Once again, sony also doesn't tend to embrace standards (even their own!), and has a reputation of not playing nicely with others. Also, look at what happened to BetaMax.
Toshiba is a rather generic consumer electronics manufacturer, whereas Sony tends to be rather high-profile (and accordingly, high-risk).
Sony has a track record, and it's absolutely appalling. Even with all the marketing and buzz, studios and hardware vendors should know better than to trust them... this is where Toshiba put their money.
Unfortunately, it seems that Sony's been practicing a bit of payola, which is something that Toshiba hadn't considered, and something that Sony's *very* good at.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
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· Score: 3, Insightful
All of the anti-Vista and anti-2007 rhetoric frequently strikes me as just anti-MS drivel.
I'm not a huge fan of the Anti-MS drivel. For starters, I quite liked Office 2007. Considering that the suite needed a major overhaul, I think that MS did the absolute best job they could to pave the way to a better interface, while not completely alienating their current installed base. I was part of the Beta, and found it to be by far the best and most usable version of Office I've used. (That said, Apple's got the right idea with iWork, and with any luck, will have an Office-killer on their hands in the next version or two)
On the other hand, the Anti-Vista rhetoric is completely justified. I started using Vista extensively for the first time last week. [Continue or Cancel], and found the user experience to be just about the worst of any operating [Continue or Cancel] system that I've used. This includes Windows Me.
It's slow, it's [Continue or Cancel] obtrusive, and it seemed a tad unstable, compared to XP (which in turn wasn't [Continue or Cancel] as good as 2000). The "added security" put in place also seems [Continue or Cancel] a bit analogous to the TSA's liquid ban. I'm just not sure that [Continue or Cancel] any malware is going to break into my system by changing the [Continue or Cancel] screen resolution, and the fact that I'm constantly [Continue or Cancel] nagged by the OS to purchase an AntiVirus feels like an admission of failure from the get-go.
Although I wasn't happy with the direction MacOS has been going (which is what prompted my Vista experiment), using Vista evokes the sort of frustration that I haven't felt while using a computer since I uninstalled Windows ME. [Continue or Cancel?]
I'm still not sure how I feel about the CCTV system. The fact is that just about every convenience and grocery store in the planet has them. It's not like we're not already being watched as it is.
Putting cameras in public, high-risk, and high-crime areas does kind of make a lot of sense, and I'm not all that sure that the privacy concerns are well-founded, considering that there's no practical way to actually *monitor* such a large system.
Perhaps a good compromise would be to require some sort of court-issued warrant or subpoena before law enforcement is actually allowed to view the tapes.
The widespread mobile monitoring scenario is far-fetched and unplausable, considering the massive amount of manpower that would be necessary for such a program to be effective. It makes me recall a scene from The Simpsons' Movie. The camera shows a vast, endless room of identically-dressed NSA workers listening to headsets, all of whom are on the verge of falling asleep. After a few seconds, one of them triumphantly stands up and shouts "I FOUND ONE! The government actually found someone we're looking for!"
All in all, the CCTV is a pretty useful tool for solving crimes, and the privacy implications don't seem all that horrible, especially given how unreliable eyewitness accounts tend to be. And yes, I'm typically a privacy advocate, although I don't think that public CCTV is a battle worth fighting, considering the other manners in which our rights are being infringed upon.
The breakdown of military vs. educational spending is irrelevant to this discussion.
If the governments of developing nations wanted to increase educational spending by $100 per child, they could probably also achieve fantastic results, especially considering how many teachers one could train and hire with that money.
1:1 Laptop initiatives *have* been tried in the US, and have generally been found to have little educational value. That's why you don't see it done that often over here. Nothing can come close to the power of having a good teacher physically in the same room.
(And although I'm generally a pacifist, many of these countries do have a very legitimate need to have a good military for defensive purposes.)
You propose giving poor African, South American, and Asian kids big beautiful glass and polished stainless steel laptops and then send them walking home from school -- maybe a three to five mile walk?
They'd get fucking killed. They'd get mugged and every one of those things would be stolen.
Crime is a problem in developing nations, but what exactly makes you think that they're teeming with thugs from top to bottom?
On the other hand, if the OLPC does everything that its proponents claim it will, it'd be just as valuable to a thief as a shiny stainless steel laptop.
What the GP was hinting at is that there's a distinct difference between a "toy" and a "tool". Something tells me that the OLPC is the former, rather than the latter.
50 books can be used by 50 students at once. If you're really in a crunch, it's not totally unreasonable to ask 2 students to share 1 book, or put them all in a library on a "short-loan" basis.
Likewise, if you're doing a big print run, I feel that you should be able to produce a textbook for *FAR* less than $20 if you're willing to sacrifice color, print on recycled paper, etc. Reduce those costs even further if you want to do the printing on site, and provide some jobs in the process.
I've been a skeptic of the OLPC from the start, and from everything I've seen, the numbers just don't add up.
To be fair, the "bridge to nowhere" gets a bad rap. Two of Stevens' projects were dubbed as "bridges to nowhere," although one of them was arguably a pretty good idea.
The first, and the more famous never had a chance of being built, because even the locals thought it was a terrible and ridiculous idea. Stevens was stupid to propose it....
The second would have opened up large areas of undeveloped land in an area that is otherwise overcrowded, overpopulated, and expensive. Although the area is indeed mostly empty, the bridge would have almost certainly spurred massive development in the area. (Think of it like connecting New York to Long Island, which was very much a vast expanse of nothingness before the road link was constructed). The opponents of the project attached the label of "bridge to nowhere", which many confused with the first project, and it was swiftly voted down.
Stevens has had some awful ideas, although you can't give the rest of the senate all that much credit, as they've proven themselves unable to differentiate between the bad ideas and the good ones.
How is that hypocritical? Paul's message is not that we need less government everywhere (though that helps), but really that we need to go back to the way the country was before the Civil War, where the Federal Government had less power, and the States had more power.
For a parallel, look at modern Europe. France, Germany, Italy, etc. are all separate countries with vast differences between them, but they're all in a Union where they share the same currency, have free trade, and do some things together. This is more like what America started out as, and should return to. If California wants to create a massive welfare state, that's fine: they can tax their own citizens to pay for that silliness. Meanwhile, those of us in other states shouldn't be forced into paying for their problems.
There has been *one* War within the US in the past 232 years, which came as a result of irreconcilable differences arising between the states. Given the way that most state governments work these days, I'd be terrified of handing over even *more* power to them. Europe's had too many wars to count in that same period.
Likewise, the articles of confederation (enacted before the US constitution, which gave the states an extremely high degree of autonomy) proved to be a complete and total failure. Most US states are simply too small to effectively handle their own affairs, and the differences between the states aren't nearly as the right wing would have you believe. The "culture wars" are a relatively new phenomenon, and for the most part, are completely artificial.
Even the EU strongly encourages their member nations to look out for the welfare of the other nations within the union. EU citizens wishing to attend university in another EU state can typically do so, and pay virtually nothing. This isn't even possible in the US at present, where students are either forced to deal with the education system in their own state, or take out massive loans to attend an out-of-state, or private university.
Perhaps a better (but more radical) proposal would be to create a third tier of government at a regional level to better bridge the gap between state and federal governments.
Still, I don't think that the states are in *ANY* condition to begin managing their own affairs. Ron Paul's vision for America *WILL* result in another civil war at some point down the line.
I apologize if this comes across as a troll, but WTF do any of those things have to do with Ron Paul?
Libertarians have been tossing those ideas around forever. Ron Paul brings absolutely nothing new to the table, apart from a dose of religious insanity, and a rather hypocritical view on states' rights (a Ron Paul administration would almost certainly result in vastly larger and more powerful state governments)
Although I agree that the US Federal government needs to be cut back, we can't do so by outsourcing governmental functions to private corporations, or allocating powers previously held by the fed to the individual states. Likewise, there are a few limits to how far the cuts need to be made -- healthcare and education in the US are a joke, and there is absolutely no evidence that the private sector is willing to fill that void.
The map is rife with errors, and the study takes factors into account that haven't actually happened. For instance, the US received the lowest possible score for 'ID Cards and Biometrics'. Sure, there's some particularly nasty legislation in the works, but so far none of it has passed.
Svalbard is colored red. I can't possibly imagine that there are considerable privacy issues taking place on Svalbard, apart from the fact that most of the arctic island's 2,200 inhabitants probably know each other.
Scotland is ranked considerably higher than England & Wales. However, this is not reflected on the map.
As much as I applaud Privacy International's efforts, they're trying too hard to prove their point, and their credibility is suffering as a result.
Simple. NASA knows quite a bit about aviation safety. However, they're not responsible for it in any direct manner.
This makes me fairly inclined to believe what they have to say -- they're in the unique position of being experts on the subject, but also relatively unbiased. If NASA releases an overwhelmingly positive or negative report about the state of the FAA, it's not going to considerably effect NASA no matter what the outcome. (Although, an accurate report outlining specific failures of the FAA could bolster NASA's reputation and credibility)
Although NASA's had some serious management problems, I get the feeling that they know quite a bit about how aviation safety "should be" even if there might have been implementing it in the past. On a similar note, the two shuttles that were lost failed both times due to engineering failures, which isn't even relevant to the report at hand. If NASA lost a shuttle because it entered civilian airspace, and struck another aircraft, I'd question their credibility. However, as it is, they've done a pretty good job with regard to general aviation safety, and are an extremely qualified and unbiased body to do an external audit of the FAA.
A very vital element of designing cars is to make sure that the passenger compartment is not a part of the crumple zones.
You then have to consider the causes of crashes. Poorly made cars with bad brakes and cheap tires could very well end up being considerably more dangerous than a bike in a dense urban center (pedestrians getting hit, etc...). A bike is considerably more maneuverable, not to mention that bikers tend to be a bit more cautious, because they're fully aware that motorcycles are pretty darn dangerous.
Of course, you could circumvent this whole argument by building a proper public transportation system. It'll be a lot safer, last a lot longer, and pollute a whole lot less.
Yes, there's a problem. Generalizing it to all "Americans" isn't going to solve it.
If gas prices in the US were equal to what they are in Britain (~$9/gal) I'm sure you'd see just as many tiny hatchbacks on the road. (Of course, that doesn't solve the current obsession with status symbols, but I digress....)
A high gas tax is probably a bad idea, since it will most greatly affect the working classes. Heavily taxing large non-commercial vehicles, and strictly tightening efficiency standards, however, might not be such a bad idea.
Considering how poorly the not-even-as-low-cost Chinese cars perform in crash-tests, you've got to wonder how on earth something that cheap could possibly be safe at anything faster than walking speed.
1) The parent poster needs to chill out, and drop the racist undertones before I have to invoke Godwin's Law.
2) A truly "global" society probably will cause most of the major races will blend together. Because of the current population distribution, and the way in which skin pigmentation genes work, this will probably result in the end of your beloved aryan race. All in all, we'll sunburn less easily..... and that's about it. It'll take hundreds of years, and really.... who cares?
3) If the economic center of the world shifts to the southeast, I wouldn't be particularly surprised. The world's population is densest there, and Asia is rapidly industrializing. The tiny island of Great Britain is no longer the economic center of the world, although they seem to do pretty well for themselves these days nevertheless. The emergence of southeast-asian markets doesn't necessarily have to occur at the expense of western economies.
4) Europe's learned its lesson about religious governments many times over, especially France. I hate to make generalizations, but the people of France tend to be some of the most politically active and aware people on the planet. An Islamic (or Christian, Buddhist, etc.....) government is not going to emerge in France. The people simply won't allow it.
5) Sayyid Qutb isn't exactly well-respected in many Islamic circles (although many Americans would like to see all Muslims as carbon-copies of Qutb in order to justify their war). If you want a different perspective on Islam by a respected scholar, read up on Tariq Ramadan. If you want to try a conspiracy theory on for size, read up on his US Visa troubles.
6) What's wrong with Buddhists? Buddhism has easily got to be the single most inoffensive religion on the planet.
7) Israel/Palestine is an incredibly complicated issue, mainly because it's been carried over across several generations, and both sides are guilty of essentially the same crimes. However, whether you like it or not, Palestine was there first.
Thom Yorke: "Uh, David, but now they've got the Internet to get people's attention. They don't have to be well-off art students who's parents pay for them to live in Manhattan and hang out in clubs."
Although I agree with Thom Yorke's sentiment here, the buzz surrounding "In Rainbows" seriously needs to be kept in check.
In short, they did it to make money and generate hype.
Radiohead plateaued in popularity a few years ago, and are perfectly okay with the fact. Their music is appealing to a small subset of the population, and they've developed a large, but devoted fanbase over the past 10 years (largely with the assistance of major record labels).
Thom and his bandmates have hinted that they don't care for the sort of fame that involves hearing their own music on the radio, and that they'd rather "explore new territory" at the expense of inaccessibility. Whether Thom and co. should be labeled as arrogant or as visionaries for this is up to you. However, it's pretty clear that Radiohead aren't going to get any more popular, and that there are very few services that the labels can provide for them.
Get famous on a label, ditch that label, make a scene by doing so, and then watch the money roll in.
Yes, but it's going quickly downhill. While I was very impressed with the Apple stores when they first opened, it seems like they're having trouble attracting good employees to work at the genius bar.
Yes, still a step above Best Buy, but the gap is sadly closing (and it's not because Best Buy's improving). Maybe it's because of the crowds.....
All in all, I've been less and less impressed with Apple over the past year or so as they've grown in popularity, and have clearly gotten lazy as a result. The level of support just isn't the same as it used to be, and the Leopard launch could have gone a lot better, considering how long it was delayed. (Granted, it's a fender-bender in comparison to the Vista train wreck, but still...)
Although it's not *exactly* as Apple described, WaWa (world's most amazing convenience store/deli chain on the east coast) has had something similar for taking deli orders for a few years. You can't pay with it (although the capability has reportedly been there for some time), but it does take care of the rest of the ordering process.
WaWa's system isn't particularly novel, but then again, neither is Apple's (which also doesn't deal particularly well with theft).
Yes, but "good" LCDs have gotten extremely inexpensive these days. The display on the iMac is just about as good as you're going to get, and the glass surface is a huge plus -- I just got done deploying a couple hundred of the new aluminium iMacs in a school district, and I've got to say that All-in-one design is AMAZING for our purposes, with the indestructible glass screens as icing on the cake.
Likewise, I predict that extremely-high-resolution displays are just over the horizon. It's almost 2008 -- we should be able to make a display that can at least come *close* to the resolution of a laser printer. Take a look at the financial section of your newspaper, hold it up next to your computer screen, and you'll realize just how poor our current display technology is. In 4 years time, when it's time to replace your Dell or iMac, I imagine that you'll want a better monitor.
Either way, I'm sticking with Apple. The Dell doesn't have any compelling features over Apple, and the price frankly isn't that good either. Being able to run Mac OS *or* any version of Windows (simultaneously if you want) on the iMac is the dealbreaker, considering that just about every other aspect of the machine is the same.
Office hasn't had any serious competitors for well over 10 years, and is probably represents the best work Microsoft's done. Office 95 was the bad one. 97 and onwards were all pretty darn good, and set a pretty good baseline standard for office applications. Not dazzlingly fantastic, but not awful either.
Apple's iWork is starting to give Office a run for its money, however. 2003 is a big step forward (even if the new UI alienated a few users, given that they've literally never changed it), although Keynote still runs circles around PowerPoint, and Numbers' UI is a heck of a lot more convenient to use than Excel's.
OpenOffice isn't a competitor to MS Office any more than the GIMP is a competitor to Photoshop. Maybe someday, but I'm not holding my breath.
In the UK this would (IMO) result in breaches of H&S legislation.
To be totally fair, there are precious few things that don't violate UK Health&Safety regulations.
The UK has taken it to heart to try to enact ISO-9001-type bookkeeping practices on a national level. In other words, you end up with hundreds upon hundreds of pages of H&S practices and policies that employees are most likely never going to be aware of.
(This is from an American who recently just completed a gig in the UK. I really do appreciate that the UK government looks out for its people in a considerably more realistic and responsible way than the US does (I can even sort of see the rationale behind the cameras in London) -- however, I feel that the H&S guys went a bit too far, and are now severely impeding the UK's economic progress, and are also partly responsible for the fact that it's so bloody expensive to do any sort of business there)
And although using the Internet is quite frequently like taking a drink from the firehose, there really is surprisingly little free (and good) educational content out there geared at younger audiences that doesn't also require things like textbooks and encyclopedias.
"Free as in speech" textbooks would also certainly give the US-based textbook manufacturers a much-needed kick in the pants.
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Although it's really easy to make fun of Garfield, there have been a few interesting cases of Jim Davis breaking from the main storyline.
For instance, this story arc from 1989 is moderately disturbing, especially when you consider that it's is Garfield comic....
And while we're on the subject of Garfield: removing Garfield's thought bubbles removed can be quite humorous (and occasionally depressing), while randomized sets of 3 frames from the comic are about as funny and as coherent as the real thing.
And finally, although it's not garfield, The Family Circus can be easily made funny with a different set of captions.
Consumers play a very small role in this "battle"
What it comes down to is which format studios and hardware companies are most comfortable supporting. For both, I'd have to say that HD-DVD comes out on top.
Studios have very strong reasons to be weary of Sony, considering that Sony has an appalling track record of refusing to play nicely with others, and also owns a movie studio themselves. Likewise, they've got their own reputations to worry about, should Sony pull another stunt, like the rootkit fiasco. Also, look at what happened to BetaMax.
Hardware vendors also have a bit to be concerned about. Although Blu-Ray has a small technical advantage over HD-DVD (the disc holds more), the players and discs are much more expensive to produce, and royalties are higher (and paid to Sony, who is in direct competition with other vendors). This translates to smaller profit margins, and a higher price at retail (both of which are bad, if your competitor can profitably sell what is essentially the same product for 2/3 the price). Once again, sony also doesn't tend to embrace standards (even their own!), and has a reputation of not playing nicely with others. Also, look at what happened to BetaMax.
Toshiba is a rather generic consumer electronics manufacturer, whereas Sony tends to be rather high-profile (and accordingly, high-risk).
Sony has a track record, and it's absolutely appalling. Even with all the marketing and buzz, studios and hardware vendors should know better than to trust them... this is where Toshiba put their money.
Unfortunately, it seems that Sony's been practicing a bit of payola, which is something that Toshiba hadn't considered, and something that Sony's *very* good at.
I'm not a huge fan of the Anti-MS drivel. For starters, I quite liked Office 2007. Considering that the suite needed a major overhaul, I think that MS did the absolute best job they could to pave the way to a better interface, while not completely alienating their current installed base. I was part of the Beta, and found it to be by far the best and most usable version of Office I've used. (That said, Apple's got the right idea with iWork, and with any luck, will have an Office-killer on their hands in the next version or two)
On the other hand, the Anti-Vista rhetoric is completely justified. I started using Vista extensively for the first time last week. [Continue or Cancel], and found the user experience to be just about the worst of any operating [Continue or Cancel] system that I've used. This includes Windows Me.
It's slow, it's [Continue or Cancel] obtrusive, and it seemed a tad unstable, compared to XP (which in turn wasn't [Continue or Cancel] as good as 2000). The "added security" put in place also seems [Continue or Cancel] a bit analogous to the TSA's liquid ban. I'm just not sure that [Continue or Cancel] any malware is going to break into my system by changing the [Continue or Cancel] screen resolution, and the fact that I'm constantly [Continue or Cancel] nagged by the OS to purchase an AntiVirus feels like an admission of failure from the get-go.
Although I wasn't happy with the direction MacOS has been going (which is what prompted my Vista experiment), using Vista evokes the sort of frustration that I haven't felt while using a computer since I uninstalled Windows ME. [Continue or Cancel?]
I'm still not sure how I feel about the CCTV system. The fact is that just about every convenience and grocery store in the planet has them. It's not like we're not already being watched as it is.
Putting cameras in public, high-risk, and high-crime areas does kind of make a lot of sense, and I'm not all that sure that the privacy concerns are well-founded, considering that there's no practical way to actually *monitor* such a large system.
Perhaps a good compromise would be to require some sort of court-issued warrant or subpoena before law enforcement is actually allowed to view the tapes.
The widespread mobile monitoring scenario is far-fetched and unplausable, considering the massive amount of manpower that would be necessary for such a program to be effective. It makes me recall a scene from The Simpsons' Movie. The camera shows a vast, endless room of identically-dressed NSA workers listening to headsets, all of whom are on the verge of falling asleep. After a few seconds, one of them triumphantly stands up and shouts "I FOUND ONE! The government actually found someone we're looking for!"
All in all, the CCTV is a pretty useful tool for solving crimes, and the privacy implications don't seem all that horrible, especially given how unreliable eyewitness accounts tend to be. And yes, I'm typically a privacy advocate, although I don't think that public CCTV is a battle worth fighting, considering the other manners in which our rights are being infringed upon.
The breakdown of military vs. educational spending is irrelevant to this discussion.
If the governments of developing nations wanted to increase educational spending by $100 per child, they could probably also achieve fantastic results, especially considering how many teachers one could train and hire with that money.
1:1 Laptop initiatives *have* been tried in the US, and have generally been found to have little educational value. That's why you don't see it done that often over here. Nothing can come close to the power of having a good teacher physically in the same room.
(And although I'm generally a pacifist, many of these countries do have a very legitimate need to have a good military for defensive purposes.)
Is there actually any evidence to back up this claim?
50 books can be used by 50 students at once. If you're really in a crunch, it's not totally unreasonable to ask 2 students to share 1 book, or put them all in a library on a "short-loan" basis.
Likewise, if you're doing a big print run, I feel that you should be able to produce a textbook for *FAR* less than $20 if you're willing to sacrifice color, print on recycled paper, etc. Reduce those costs even further if you want to do the printing on site, and provide some jobs in the process.
I've been a skeptic of the OLPC from the start, and from everything I've seen, the numbers just don't add up.
To be fair, the "bridge to nowhere" gets a bad rap. Two of Stevens' projects were dubbed as "bridges to nowhere," although one of them was arguably a pretty good idea.
The first, and the more famous never had a chance of being built, because even the locals thought it was a terrible and ridiculous idea. Stevens was stupid to propose it....
The second would have opened up large areas of undeveloped land in an area that is otherwise overcrowded, overpopulated, and expensive. Although the area is indeed mostly empty, the bridge would have almost certainly spurred massive development in the area. (Think of it like connecting New York to Long Island, which was very much a vast expanse of nothingness before the road link was constructed). The opponents of the project attached the label of "bridge to nowhere", which many confused with the first project, and it was swiftly voted down.
Stevens has had some awful ideas, although you can't give the rest of the senate all that much credit, as they've proven themselves unable to differentiate between the bad ideas and the good ones.
Putting their scientific knowledge to good use, in an effort to justify their existence?
There has been *one* War within the US in the past 232 years, which came as a result of irreconcilable differences arising between the states. Given the way that most state governments work these days, I'd be terrified of handing over even *more* power to them. Europe's had too many wars to count in that same period.
Likewise, the articles of confederation (enacted before the US constitution, which gave the states an extremely high degree of autonomy) proved to be a complete and total failure. Most US states are simply too small to effectively handle their own affairs, and the differences between the states aren't nearly as the right wing would have you believe. The "culture wars" are a relatively new phenomenon, and for the most part, are completely artificial.
Even the EU strongly encourages their member nations to look out for the welfare of the other nations within the union. EU citizens wishing to attend university in another EU state can typically do so, and pay virtually nothing. This isn't even possible in the US at present, where students are either forced to deal with the education system in their own state, or take out massive loans to attend an out-of-state, or private university.
Perhaps a better (but more radical) proposal would be to create a third tier of government at a regional level to better bridge the gap between state and federal governments.
Still, I don't think that the states are in *ANY* condition to begin managing their own affairs. Ron Paul's vision for America *WILL* result in another civil war at some point down the line.
I apologize if this comes across as a troll, but WTF do any of those things have to do with Ron Paul?
Libertarians have been tossing those ideas around forever. Ron Paul brings absolutely nothing new to the table, apart from a dose of religious insanity, and a rather hypocritical view on states' rights (a Ron Paul administration would almost certainly result in vastly larger and more powerful state governments)
Although I agree that the US Federal government needs to be cut back, we can't do so by outsourcing governmental functions to private corporations, or allocating powers previously held by the fed to the individual states. Likewise, there are a few limits to how far the cuts need to be made -- healthcare and education in the US are a joke, and there is absolutely no evidence that the private sector is willing to fill that void.
The map is rife with errors, and the study takes factors into account that haven't actually happened. For instance, the US received the lowest possible score for 'ID Cards and Biometrics'. Sure, there's some particularly nasty legislation in the works, but so far none of it has passed.
Svalbard is colored red. I can't possibly imagine that there are considerable privacy issues taking place on Svalbard, apart from the fact that most of the arctic island's 2,200 inhabitants probably know each other.
Scotland is ranked considerably higher than England & Wales. However, this is not reflected on the map.
As much as I applaud Privacy International's efforts, they're trying too hard to prove their point, and their credibility is suffering as a result.
Simple. NASA knows quite a bit about aviation safety. However, they're not responsible for it in any direct manner.
This makes me fairly inclined to believe what they have to say -- they're in the unique position of being experts on the subject, but also relatively unbiased. If NASA releases an overwhelmingly positive or negative report about the state of the FAA, it's not going to considerably effect NASA no matter what the outcome. (Although, an accurate report outlining specific failures of the FAA could bolster NASA's reputation and credibility)
Although NASA's had some serious management problems, I get the feeling that they know quite a bit about how aviation safety "should be" even if there might have been implementing it in the past. On a similar note, the two shuttles that were lost failed both times due to engineering failures, which isn't even relevant to the report at hand. If NASA lost a shuttle because it entered civilian airspace, and struck another aircraft, I'd question their credibility. However, as it is, they've done a pretty good job with regard to general aviation safety, and are an extremely qualified and unbiased body to do an external audit of the FAA.
I'm not comparing it to a Benz. If we want to talk German cars, a Trabant performs better than those $25,000 Chinese cars.
Even the Smart Car does surprisingly well.
A very vital element of designing cars is to make sure that the passenger compartment is not a part of the crumple zones.
You then have to consider the causes of crashes. Poorly made cars with bad brakes and cheap tires could very well end up being considerably more dangerous than a bike in a dense urban center (pedestrians getting hit, etc...). A bike is considerably more maneuverable, not to mention that bikers tend to be a bit more cautious, because they're fully aware that motorcycles are pretty darn dangerous.
Of course, you could circumvent this whole argument by building a proper public transportation system. It'll be a lot safer, last a lot longer, and pollute a whole lot less.
Not all of us drive SUVs, you know.
Yes, there's a problem. Generalizing it to all "Americans" isn't going to solve it.
If gas prices in the US were equal to what they are in Britain (~$9/gal) I'm sure you'd see just as many tiny hatchbacks on the road. (Of course, that doesn't solve the current obsession with status symbols, but I digress....)
A high gas tax is probably a bad idea, since it will most greatly affect the working classes. Heavily taxing large non-commercial vehicles, and strictly tightening efficiency standards, however, might not be such a bad idea.
Considering how poorly the not-even-as-low-cost Chinese cars perform in crash-tests, you've got to wonder how on earth something that cheap could possibly be safe at anything faster than walking speed.
For now, I'll hold on to my Peel P50.
1) The parent poster needs to chill out, and drop the racist undertones before I have to invoke Godwin's Law.
2) A truly "global" society probably will cause most of the major races will blend together. Because of the current population distribution, and the way in which skin pigmentation genes work, this will probably result in the end of your beloved aryan race. All in all, we'll sunburn less easily..... and that's about it. It'll take hundreds of years, and really.... who cares?
3) If the economic center of the world shifts to the southeast, I wouldn't be particularly surprised. The world's population is densest there, and Asia is rapidly industrializing. The tiny island of Great Britain is no longer the economic center of the world, although they seem to do pretty well for themselves these days nevertheless. The emergence of southeast-asian markets doesn't necessarily have to occur at the expense of western economies.
4) Europe's learned its lesson about religious governments many times over, especially France. I hate to make generalizations, but the people of France tend to be some of the most politically active and aware people on the planet. An Islamic (or Christian, Buddhist, etc.....) government is not going to emerge in France. The people simply won't allow it.
5) Sayyid Qutb isn't exactly well-respected in many Islamic circles (although many Americans would like to see all Muslims as carbon-copies of Qutb in order to justify their war). If you want a different perspective on Islam by a respected scholar, read up on Tariq Ramadan. If you want to try a conspiracy theory on for size, read up on his US Visa troubles.
6) What's wrong with Buddhists? Buddhism has easily got to be the single most inoffensive religion on the planet.
7) Israel/Palestine is an incredibly complicated issue, mainly because it's been carried over across several generations, and both sides are guilty of essentially the same crimes. However, whether you like it or not, Palestine was there first.
Although I agree with Thom Yorke's sentiment here, the buzz surrounding "In Rainbows" seriously needs to be kept in check.
In short, they did it to make money and generate hype.
Radiohead plateaued in popularity a few years ago, and are perfectly okay with the fact. Their music is appealing to a small subset of the population, and they've developed a large, but devoted fanbase over the past 10 years (largely with the assistance of major record labels).
Thom and his bandmates have hinted that they don't care for the sort of fame that involves hearing their own music on the radio, and that they'd rather "explore new territory" at the expense of inaccessibility. Whether Thom and co. should be labeled as arrogant or as visionaries for this is up to you. However, it's pretty clear that Radiohead aren't going to get any more popular, and that there are very few services that the labels can provide for them.
Get famous on a label, ditch that label, make a scene by doing so, and then watch the money roll in.
Yes, but it's going quickly downhill. While I was very impressed with the Apple stores when they first opened, it seems like they're having trouble attracting good employees to work at the genius bar.
Yes, still a step above Best Buy, but the gap is sadly closing (and it's not because Best Buy's improving). Maybe it's because of the crowds.....
All in all, I've been less and less impressed with Apple over the past year or so as they've grown in popularity, and have clearly gotten lazy as a result. The level of support just isn't the same as it used to be, and the Leopard launch could have gone a lot better, considering how long it was delayed. (Granted, it's a fender-bender in comparison to the Vista train wreck, but still...)
Although it's not *exactly* as Apple described, WaWa (world's most amazing convenience store/deli chain on the east coast) has had something similar for taking deli orders for a few years. You can't pay with it (although the capability has reportedly been there for some time), but it does take care of the rest of the ordering process.
WaWa's system isn't particularly novel, but then again, neither is Apple's (which also doesn't deal particularly well with theft).
Yes, but "good" LCDs have gotten extremely inexpensive these days. The display on the iMac is just about as good as you're going to get, and the glass surface is a huge plus -- I just got done deploying a couple hundred of the new aluminium iMacs in a school district, and I've got to say that All-in-one design is AMAZING for our purposes, with the indestructible glass screens as icing on the cake.
Likewise, I predict that extremely-high-resolution displays are just over the horizon. It's almost 2008 -- we should be able to make a display that can at least come *close* to the resolution of a laser printer. Take a look at the financial section of your newspaper, hold it up next to your computer screen, and you'll realize just how poor our current display technology is. In 4 years time, when it's time to replace your Dell or iMac, I imagine that you'll want a better monitor.
Either way, I'm sticking with Apple. The Dell doesn't have any compelling features over Apple, and the price frankly isn't that good either. Being able to run Mac OS *or* any version of Windows (simultaneously if you want) on the iMac is the dealbreaker, considering that just about every other aspect of the machine is the same.
Are you kidding?
Office hasn't had any serious competitors for well over 10 years, and is probably represents the best work Microsoft's done. Office 95 was the bad one. 97 and onwards were all pretty darn good, and set a pretty good baseline standard for office applications. Not dazzlingly fantastic, but not awful either.
Apple's iWork is starting to give Office a run for its money, however. 2003 is a big step forward (even if the new UI alienated a few users, given that they've literally never changed it), although Keynote still runs circles around PowerPoint, and Numbers' UI is a heck of a lot more convenient to use than Excel's.
OpenOffice isn't a competitor to MS Office any more than the GIMP is a competitor to Photoshop. Maybe someday, but I'm not holding my breath.
To be totally fair, there are precious few things that don't violate UK Health&Safety regulations.
The UK has taken it to heart to try to enact ISO-9001-type bookkeeping practices on a national level. In other words, you end up with hundreds upon hundreds of pages of H&S practices and policies that employees are most likely never going to be aware of.
(This is from an American who recently just completed a gig in the UK. I really do appreciate that the UK government looks out for its people in a considerably more realistic and responsible way than the US does (I can even sort of see the rationale behind the cameras in London) -- however, I feel that the H&S guys went a bit too far, and are now severely impeding the UK's economic progress, and are also partly responsible for the fact that it's so bloody expensive to do any sort of business there)
That's what I'm hoping.
And although using the Internet is quite frequently like taking a drink from the firehose, there really is surprisingly little free (and good) educational content out there geared at younger audiences that doesn't also require things like textbooks and encyclopedias.
"Free as in speech" textbooks would also certainly give the US-based textbook manufacturers a much-needed kick in the pants.