Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America
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Help Find Steve Fossett
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· Score: 5, Insightful
For helping a fellow human being? A warm fuzzy feeling inside. And, if you believe in it, karma/brownie points with your deity of choice.
For helping a millionaire in his hour of need? Who knows, maybe 15 minutes of fame, a few opportunities that you would otherwise not had and maybe a modest reward.
Looks like Opera has a fanbase denial problems the same as Firefox does.
I've been using Opera before Firefox existed, and I said what I said based on what I personally witness seeing people used to IE7/Firefox work in Opera.
I'm suggesting what would help Opera take over: dev tools, simpler more Firefox-like interface and better branding/marketing.
And you say "nah it's perfect as it is, you ignorant foo!"... right, it's perfect with sub 1% market share. Enjoy.
Actually, that's far from the situation. You said "Opera falls down when it comes to X and Y", and I countered with "No, Opera is actually superior to Firefox when it comes to X and Y". The X and Y in this case being shortcuts and tab behaviour.
I didn't say anything about your developer tools, the interface (which is totally customisable in Opera, by the way) or anything else. I merely sought to address (and, in my opinion, correct) the statements that you made regarding the relative merits of the browsers' shortcut and tab behaviour features.
If you can demonstrate how, in any way, Opera's shortcuts and tab behaviour are inferior to Firefox's then I'll gladly contract my statement.
But don't start talking about something, then get pissed at me for questioning you on that and then come back to me with "See! You're in denial!" (and a silly attempt to put words in my mouth, to boot) just because you can't or won't back up your position with anything more than an insult.
The ball is in Opera's court. They have the technology, have the ability: they need to make it work more like Firefox UI-wise.. Yea:( Well, with IE7 copying Firefox' shortcuts and tab behaviour, this is what people are used to, and I'm afraid Opera feels a bit awkward compared. It's ridiculous given Opera originated those features, but that's life. Firefox implemented them better in the UI department.
See, this is exactly an example of the FUD and ignorance that I'm talking about. There's no way that shortcuts and tab behaviour are better implemented in Firefox than in Opera. Opera blows Firefox out of the water in both regards.
If security is what concerns you then, unless I'm very much mistaken, Firefox has had more vulnerabilities than Opera.
The whole "rigorously security audited" argument is a fallacy, unless you truly believe that Opera is somehow doing something that it shouldn't be doing. And that fallacy is blown out of the water when you realise that there isn't a single demonstrable example of Opera doing something as unethical as "phoning home" with your browsing habits, etc.
Look around. The minute that something like that happens, whether it's Microsoft, Real, Sony or whoever, it's exposed almost immediately. Why, then, do people maintain this "ooh, they could be doing something naughty" line about Opera, when the company has gone out of its way to be a positive member of the software community? It's FUD, pure and simple.
Look elsewhere on this story. You have people claiming that it's not "free as in beer". That's ignorance. You have people claiming it's not as fast as Firefox. That's ignorance again. You have people claiming that it might be useful if only it would perform well on machines that are only equipped with 256MB. That's... well, do you want to guess what that is? Go on, guess. You have people bleating "big deal, speed doesn't matter". Yet these are the same people who bleat about how Firefox is better than MSIE because it's faster and less bloated.
It's all FUD and ignorance, FUD and ignorace. What happened to fair judgement and common sense?
Opera is a great product from a great company. Pure and simple.
Opera is faster than Firefox across the board. Always has been, and probably always will be. Put that into context whatever way you want. So what's the point of your emphasis again?
At the same time, Opera is also smaller, lighter, more stable, more innovative, better integrated, and comes from a company that behaves ethically towards the rest of the software community (eg, it does not engage in patent warfare to pummel the competition).
Yet because it's not open source (it's been "free as in beer" for quite some time now, but even that's news to some people here) it's practically awarded pariah status by many Firefox zealots who typically use nothing more than ignorance and FUD to put it down.
Seriously, the amount of anti-Opera, pro-Firefox propaganda (for want of a better word) here on Slashdot is ridiculous. Opera is, and always has been, a top-notch product.
In the eyes of this humble observer, it's a far better browser than any other, but regardless of our personal preferences, isn't it time that people gave it due respect? Or is good software engineering only to be appreciated if it comes from the open source community?
No, I understand the problem: Walmart intentionally cut corners and pay their workers as little as possible, so little, in fact, that on a Walmart wage with a family to support means that you can't be an adequate provider.
Walmart makes billions in profits. You don't think that it should be spending some of its money, like its competitors do, on providing decent wages and benefits for its workforce? If so, why not? Why should Walmart be allowed to get away with such sub-standard compensation for its workers with the taxpayers footing the bill and providing it with an unfair competitive advantage over the rest of the market?
It's not about crippling the economy. If you're so worried about economics then please explain to me what's so wrong with asking Walmart to play to the a level playing field and to the same rules as any other big business?
Again, Walmart's profits run into 10 or 11 figures. Some of that profit it purely from cutting corners in a fashion that's not only immoral and unethical but that also costs the everybody (not just the people who work and shop there) money. In other words, some of those billions come straight from the taxpayer.
Still, Q4 2007 is less than 4 weeks away. This could well be the European iPhone launch confirmation but it could just as as easily be something else.
Knowing Apple, though, it'll probably be both. After all, if they have flown in European journalists then why fly them in twice in a matter of months when you could get everything done in one go?
I predict the new iPods, plus confirmation of the European iPhone launch dates, service providers and sample price plans.
Surely your welfare system should be there as a safety net to those that aren't able to get jobs and support themselves instead of a supplement to help corporations (especially ones that make billions of dollars in profits) avoid having to pay their employees a decent, basic wage that would allow them to stand on their own two feet?
If you're a tax payer, which do you want? Do you want the guy stacking the shelves to earn enough to be able to put a roof over his kids' heads, food on their plates and medicine when they need it? Or do you want him to earn so little that, even with his job, he has to go to the government and dip into your pooled taxes to help pay for that roof and then has to constantly pray for good health so that he doesn't have to make a stark choice between food on plates and medicine?
Walmart shirks its responsibilities - both to its employees and, in turn, to the general public - and the only people that benefit from the situation are its shareholders. Profits before people: that's the Walmart story.
Read the post that I referred to (heck, read the Wikipedia and other online articles about the Swiss flag), and you'll find out that current appearance of the flag (the symmetry of the cross, etc) is a fairly modern invention.
If you had read that post, you'll see that I'm not attempting to ignore that "the same combinations will pop up from time to time", rather that I've shown that there was a fair degree of usage of St George's Cross and its derivations across continental Europe, spanning an area that includes Switzerland, even before the earliest possible date of a white on red one being used there, which is more than just a happy coincidence.
Lenevo is choosing to go with an older, well-established OS that's tried and tested for the "mission critical" stuff rather than a newer, less tested one. So what?
Is anybody surprised at that? Would you do things differently?
When you have to look after everything from press accreditation to publishing results, from scheduling to putting up the correct names of competitors, and doing it all in a multitude of languages and to the tightest of schedules, what would Windows Vista bring to the party that Windows XP wouldn't?
To use a car analogy, Windows XP has been around the block, been put through its paces, had its engine tuned and is humming nicely, whilst Windows Vista has barely had more than its tyres kicked in the dealer's forecourt. If you were taking a 5,000 mile road trip across a continent, which would you go with?
Why anybody would be surprised at this decision, or even see it as a failing of Windows Vista, is beyond me. If you're going to go with a Microsoft OS, then common sense makes Windows XP the obvious choice.
The English use of St George's Cross dates back to the Crusades, in the 11th century, having been adopted from Genoa, which was using it before that.
The oldest of the three possible origins for the Swiss flag has it dating back to the 12th century, when the cross was asymmetrical, like most other crosses portrayed on flags. It was only in the 17th century that the cross first started to appear in a symmetrical style. And it was only a little over 100 years ago that the cross's modern appearance was fixed.
If you want to talk about role models, prior art or derivations, it's likely that the Swiss flag is based upon St George's Cross in some way. After all, the red on white St George's Cross was so prevalent in Europe (used, for example, by regions and city states in Germany, Italy, Spain) that it straddled a large part of the continent way before the first possible appearance of the white on red cross, including the area that later became the Old Swiss Confederacy and then later modern, federal Switzerland.
It's all but certain that the similarity between the two is more than just a happy coincidence. There's more to the story than most people realise.
Switzerland's flag is a white cross on a red background.
If you want to talk about a flag that contains a red cross on a white background then look at the Cross of St. George, which is the national flag of England (and thus part of the Union Flag), as well as its derivatives, including the national flags of Northern Ireland and Malta.
"In case you were wondering, Apophis is the Greek form of the name for the Egyptian Demon Apep."
Thanks. Because if there's one thing that you can be sure about the average Slashdot reader it's that none of us has ever seen an episode of Stargate SG-1, and thus the name Apophis, and associating that name with evil personified, would be totally new to us all.
The number of people who die in the UK as a result of police action or activity is a well documented fact and is usually in the order of about 2-3 people a year.
Granted, that's 2-3 people too much but that hardly sounds like it's a case of gross and wide-spread abuse of the definition of "reasonable force".
The person to whom I initially replied to on that point painted a picture of such a thing being nearer the norm that barely registers as an event rather than a freak occurence that caused wide-scale public outrage.
Your other examples are in the US: can you find any similar evidence to suggest that the police in the UK are just as guilty of fatally mis-applying "reasonable force" as their American brethren?
You may well live in London yet you still thought that British policemen and -women were still armed with wooden truncheons, and you also gave the impression that firearms and tasers were a standard part of their equipment, as well.
As I said, you seem to have a distorted view of what weaponry the average police officer carries. And with a less than accurate knowledge of what they usually carry (Uzis? RPGs? Cut flowers?) you don't really have a proper frame of reference when comparing a potential new addition to their arsenal to their existing options.
And, as others have pointed out, aimed at the wrong person the "torch" that you refer to could well be fatal. I doubt few police officers are personally sufficiently-trained and well-equipped to deal with an epileptic fit, especially a life-threatening one. In that regard, your special torch is potentially the most deadly item that you've mentioned.
Nothing like taking a single isolated incident - which occured just weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 and injured 700, and days after another four tried but failed to repeat the attack, and in which the officers concerned were told that they were tracking a known terrorist suspected (and later confirmed) as being part of the threat - and blowing it out of proportion.
Jean Charles de Menezes died because many things wen't wrong that shouldn't have been allowed to go wrong. And while I'm not excusing either the commanding officers that misinformed their subordinates in the field, or the officers that delivered the killing shots themselves, it's unreasonable to suggest that this single isolated incident is a typical police response.
Nor, not that it needs to be said, has anybody attempted to defend what happened with a "reasonable force" defence.
If you're going to use an example then at least use one that's typical rather than one that's unique, or at least put the example in context and provide the reader with some facts rather than sensationalism for sensationalism's sake.
Did de Menezes die as a result of a police overreaction? Yes. Was it in any way a normal reaction to a normal incident? No.
The UK police have regular firearms as well as Tazers and wooden clubs - I don't see a `special torch` having trouble passing the `reasonable` test, do you?
Very few British police officers are armed. I'd guess that less than 5 percent have received firearms training and, of those that are trained, most will not carry any weaponry on their person.
Currently, only around 7 percent of officers in London are authorised to use firearms, so nationwide I'd expect the number to be much lower. After all, London has a disproportionately high number of anti-terrorist, diplomatic protection and other such specialist officers.
Tasers are in the exactly the same category: only trained firearms officers are permitted to use them and they're not regularly carried. Additionally, I can't think of a single time that I've read about a taser actually being used to detain anybody.
Lastly, police batons aren't wooden these days. Those were phased out some time ago. Telescopic batons are standard issue these days, and while I don't have any proof that I can readily provide, I do believe that these are slightly less dangerous to those on the receiving end than the batons that they replaced.
Clearly your image of the average British cop is distorted. For more information on what they do and don't carry, and how it's regulated, read the relevant Wikipedia entry.
"Won't someone PLEASE think of the poor epileptics! BULLSHIT!!! We're under no obligation to coddle people caught in the act of breaking the law."
Brilliant! Because we all know that everybody who's arrested is guilty, don't we? After all, it's only guilty people that get arrested, right? Innocent people never get stopped and detained, do they?
Idiot.
Why do you think courts exist? Law enforcement officers, in the heat of the action, aren't judge and jury. They don't determine if someone has broken the law or not. A court does that.
The margin on hardware is much smaller than it is on software, MS can give maybe a 70% discount whereas they might be able to get 10% on hardware.
Dell might be able to get 10 percent on hardware?
If you think that the difference between the price that Dell pays for the average piece of hardware and the price that a one-man operation would pay for the same hardware is 10 percent then you're nuts.
Dell undoubtably buys directly from manufacturers. When it buys Intel CPUs, it buys them directly from Intel. When it buys Belkin accessories, it buys them directly from Belkin. When Dell buys, there's no middleman.
When a one-man operation buys Intel CPUs or Belkin accessories then it buys them from a distributor. There might be one, two or maybe even three such middlemen between it and Intel or Belkin. Each middleman takes a cut, which drives the price that the one-man operation pays for the products higher and higher. How much is that cut? Well, 10 percent per distributor would be a fair figure.
(If you want to get a fairer idea of distribution costs, take the cost per 1,000 units that is typically quoted regarding CPUs and compare that to the typical single unit street price. Allow a small (maybe 5-10 percent) profit for the vendor and you'll see that the distribution chain takes a fair chunk along the way.)
And all that's before you talk about how much of each product is bought by Dell. There's a big difference between maybe buying 5 CPUs a week through the channel and buying almost 200,000 a week directly from the manufacturer.
In 2006, Dell accounted for 16.1 percent of the 59 million PCs shipped worldwide. Last year, Dell shipped 950 million PCs.
Are you really telling me that you think that, with that sort of buying power, you don't think that Dell gets deals that give it a more than 10 percent hardware cost price advantage?
That massive discount Microsoft gives them over smaller OEMs is Dell's biggest competitive advantage. Now they'll have to compete more directly with local whitebox builders.
They don't have much choice though. The local box builders have already switched to Ubuntu as their OS of choice. Dell has to match them or be swamped.
And there was me thinking that Dell's biggest competitive advantages were its huge purchasing power on all components, not just operating systems, and its brand-name recognition.
I guess I was wrong. Who knew that Dell was paying the same price for CPUs, RAM, hard drives, etc that outfits run out of the owners' garages were paying?
My PVR is less than a year old. It, as well as the HD model that's now part of the same range, both use IDE drives. In fact, I believe that most PVR models do the same.
The recommended replacement drives (or upgrade drives for those looking for more capacity) are from Seagate: the .
If/when Seagate pulls out of this market, the price of new PVRs probably won't be affected at all, but it may well drive the price of repairing/upgrading existing models up a bit.
Bottom line to PVR users: upgrade that drive while you can.
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For helping a fellow human being? A warm fuzzy feeling inside. And, if you believe in it, karma/brownie points with your deity of choice.
For helping a millionaire in his hour of need? Who knows, maybe 15 minutes of fame, a few opportunities that you would otherwise not had and maybe a modest reward.
For most, doing the former is enough.
Actually, that's far from the situation. You said "Opera falls down when it comes to X and Y", and I countered with "No, Opera is actually superior to Firefox when it comes to X and Y". The X and Y in this case being shortcuts and tab behaviour.
I didn't say anything about your developer tools, the interface (which is totally customisable in Opera, by the way) or anything else. I merely sought to address (and, in my opinion, correct) the statements that you made regarding the relative merits of the browsers' shortcut and tab behaviour features.
If you can demonstrate how, in any way, Opera's shortcuts and tab behaviour are inferior to Firefox's then I'll gladly contract my statement.
But don't start talking about something, then get pissed at me for questioning you on that and then come back to me with "See! You're in denial!" (and a silly attempt to put words in my mouth, to boot) just because you can't or won't back up your position with anything more than an insult.
If security is what concerns you then, unless I'm very much mistaken, Firefox has had more vulnerabilities than Opera.
The whole "rigorously security audited" argument is a fallacy, unless you truly believe that Opera is somehow doing something that it shouldn't be doing. And that fallacy is blown out of the water when you realise that there isn't a single demonstrable example of Opera doing something as unethical as "phoning home" with your browsing habits, etc.
Look around. The minute that something like that happens, whether it's Microsoft, Real, Sony or whoever, it's exposed almost immediately. Why, then, do people maintain this "ooh, they could be doing something naughty" line about Opera, when the company has gone out of its way to be a positive member of the software community? It's FUD, pure and simple.
Look elsewhere on this story. You have people claiming that it's not "free as in beer". That's ignorance. You have people claiming it's not as fast as Firefox. That's ignorance again. You have people claiming that it might
be useful if only it would perform well on machines that are only equipped with 256MB. That's... well, do you want to guess what that is? Go on, guess. You have people bleating "big deal, speed doesn't matter". Yet these are the same people who bleat about how Firefox is better than MSIE because it's faster and less bloated.
It's all FUD and ignorance, FUD and ignorace. What happened to fair judgement and common sense?
Opera is a great product from a great company. Pure and simple.
Opera is faster than Firefox across the board. Always has been, and probably always will be. Put that into context whatever way you want. So what's the point of your emphasis again?
At the same time, Opera is also smaller, lighter, more stable, more innovative, better integrated, and comes from a company that behaves ethically towards the rest of the software community (eg, it does not engage in patent warfare to pummel the competition).
Yet because it's not open source (it's been "free as in beer" for quite some time now, but even that's news to some people here) it's practically awarded pariah status by many Firefox zealots who typically use nothing more than ignorance and FUD to put it down.
Seriously, the amount of anti-Opera, pro-Firefox propaganda (for want of a better word) here on Slashdot is ridiculous. Opera is, and always has been, a top-notch product.
In the eyes of this humble observer, it's a far better browser than any other, but regardless of our personal preferences, isn't it time that people gave it due respect? Or is good software engineering only to be appreciated if it comes from the open source community?
No, I understand the problem: Walmart intentionally cut corners and pay their workers as little as possible, so little, in fact, that on a Walmart wage with a family to support means that you can't be an adequate provider.
Walmart makes billions in profits. You don't think that it should be spending some of its money, like its competitors do, on providing decent wages and benefits for its workforce? If so, why not? Why should Walmart be allowed to get away with such sub-standard compensation for its workers with the taxpayers footing the bill and providing it with an unfair competitive advantage over the rest of the market?
It's not about crippling the economy. If you're so worried about economics then please explain to me what's so wrong with asking Walmart to play to the a level playing field and to the same rules as any other big business?
Again, Walmart's profits run into 10 or 11 figures. Some of that profit it purely from cutting corners in a fashion that's not only immoral and unethical but that also costs the everybody (not just the people who work and shop there) money. In other words, some of those billions come straight from the taxpayer.
Whichever way you look at it, it's wrong.
Still, Q4 2007 is less than 4 weeks away. This could well be the European iPhone launch confirmation but it could just as as easily be something else.
Knowing Apple, though, it'll probably be both. After all, if they have flown in European journalists then why fly them in twice in a matter of months when you could get everything done in one go?
I predict the new iPods, plus confirmation of the European iPhone launch dates, service providers and sample price plans.
Surely your welfare system should be there as a safety net to those that aren't able to get jobs and support themselves instead of a supplement to help corporations (especially ones that make billions of dollars in profits) avoid having to pay their employees a decent, basic wage that would allow them to stand on their own two feet?
If you're a tax payer, which do you want? Do you want the guy stacking the shelves to earn enough to be able to put a roof over his kids' heads, food on their plates and medicine when they need it? Or do you want him to earn so little that, even with his job, he has to go to the government and dip into your pooled taxes to help pay for that roof and then has to constantly pray for good health so that he doesn't have to make a stark choice between food on plates and medicine?
Walmart shirks its responsibilities - both to its employees and, in turn, to the general public - and the only people that benefit from the situation are its shareholders. Profits before people: that's the Walmart story.
Read the post that I referred to (heck, read the Wikipedia and other online articles about the Swiss flag), and you'll find out that current appearance of the flag (the symmetry of the cross, etc) is a fairly modern invention.
If you had read that post, you'll see that I'm not attempting to ignore that "the same combinations will pop up from time to time", rather that I've shown that there was a fair degree of usage of St George's Cross and its derivations across continental Europe, spanning an area that includes Switzerland, even before the earliest possible date of a white on red one being used there, which is more than just a happy coincidence.
Lenevo is choosing to go with an older, well-established OS that's tried and tested for the "mission critical" stuff rather than a newer, less tested one. So what?
Is anybody surprised at that? Would you do things differently?
When you have to look after everything from press accreditation to publishing results, from scheduling to putting up the correct names of competitors, and doing it all in a multitude of languages and to the tightest of schedules, what would Windows Vista bring to the party that Windows XP wouldn't?
To use a car analogy, Windows XP has been around the block, been put through its paces, had its engine tuned and is humming nicely, whilst Windows Vista has barely had more than its tyres kicked in the dealer's forecourt. If you were taking a 5,000 mile road trip across a continent, which would you go with?
Why anybody would be surprised at this decision, or even see it as a failing of Windows Vista, is beyond me. If you're going to go with a Microsoft OS, then common sense makes Windows XP the obvious choice.
Yes, I do. And you do know that it's highly probable that the Swiss flag is derived from St George's Cross, don't you?
Read the fuller reply I gave to a previous poster if you really want to know more.
Yes, I do. Read the reply I gave to the poster above you if you're really interested in talking about derivations.
The English use of St George's Cross dates back to the Crusades, in the 11th century, having been adopted from Genoa, which was using it before that.
The oldest of the three possible origins for the Swiss flag has it dating back to the 12th century, when the cross was asymmetrical, like most other crosses portrayed on flags. It was only in the 17th century that the cross first started to appear in a symmetrical style. And it was only a little over 100 years ago that the cross's modern appearance was fixed.
If you want to talk about role models, prior art or derivations, it's likely that the Swiss flag is based upon St George's Cross in some way. After all, the red on white St George's Cross was so prevalent in Europe (used, for example, by regions and city states in Germany, Italy, Spain) that it straddled a large part of the continent way before the first possible appearance of the white on red cross, including the area that later became the Old Swiss Confederacy and then later modern, federal Switzerland.
It's all but certain that the similarity between the two is more than just a happy coincidence. There's more to the story than most people realise.
Switzerland's flag is a white cross on a red background.
If you want to talk about a flag that contains a red cross on a white background then look at the Cross of St. George, which is the national flag of England (and thus part of the Union Flag), as well as its derivatives, including the national flags of Northern Ireland and Malta.
"In case you were wondering, Apophis is the Greek form of the name for the Egyptian Demon Apep."
Thanks. Because if there's one thing that you can be sure about the average Slashdot reader it's that none of us has ever seen an episode of Stargate SG-1, and thus the name Apophis, and associating that name with evil personified, would be totally new to us all.
The opposite of "attract" is "repel": "repeal" has a totally different meaning.
Could an editor correct that rather relevant spelling error in the story summary, please?
The number of people who die in the UK as a result of police action or activity is a well documented fact and is usually in the order of about 2-3 people a year.
Granted, that's 2-3 people too much but that hardly sounds like it's a case of gross and wide-spread abuse of the definition of "reasonable force".
The person to whom I initially replied to on that point painted a picture of such a thing being nearer the norm that barely registers as an event rather than a freak occurence that caused wide-scale public outrage.
Your other examples are in the US: can you find any similar evidence to suggest that the police in the UK are just as guilty of fatally mis-applying "reasonable force" as their American brethren?
You may well live in London yet you still thought that British policemen and -women were still armed with wooden truncheons, and you also gave the impression that firearms and tasers were a standard part of their equipment, as well.
As I said, you seem to have a distorted view of what weaponry the average police officer carries. And with a less than accurate knowledge of what they usually carry (Uzis? RPGs? Cut flowers?) you don't really have a proper frame of reference when comparing a potential new addition to their arsenal to their existing options.
And, as others have pointed out, aimed at the wrong person the "torch" that you refer to could well be fatal. I doubt few police officers are personally sufficiently-trained and well-equipped to deal with an epileptic fit, especially a life-threatening one. In that regard, your special torch is potentially the most deadly item that you've mentioned.
Nothing like taking a single isolated incident - which occured just weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 and injured 700, and days after another four tried but failed to repeat the attack, and in which the officers concerned were told that they were tracking a known terrorist suspected (and later confirmed) as being part of the threat - and blowing it out of proportion.
Jean Charles de Menezes died because many things wen't wrong that shouldn't have been allowed to go wrong. And while I'm not excusing either the commanding officers that misinformed their subordinates in the field, or the officers that delivered the killing shots themselves, it's unreasonable to suggest that this single isolated incident is a typical police response.
Nor, not that it needs to be said, has anybody attempted to defend what happened with a "reasonable force" defence.
If you're going to use an example then at least use one that's typical rather than one that's unique, or at least put the example in context and provide the reader with some facts rather than sensationalism for sensationalism's sake.
Did de Menezes die as a result of a police overreaction? Yes. Was it in any way a normal reaction to a normal incident? No.
For those that would prefer some facts: Wikipedia article on Jean Charles de Menezes.
The UK police have regular firearms as well as Tazers and wooden clubs - I don't see a `special torch` having trouble passing the `reasonable` test, do you?
Very few British police officers are armed. I'd guess that less than 5 percent have received firearms training and, of those that are trained, most will not carry any weaponry on their person.
Currently, only around 7 percent of officers in London are authorised to use firearms, so nationwide I'd expect the number to be much lower. After all, London has a disproportionately high number of anti-terrorist, diplomatic protection and other such specialist officers.
Tasers are in the exactly the same category: only trained firearms officers are permitted to use them and they're not regularly carried. Additionally, I can't think of a single time that I've read about a taser actually being used to detain anybody.
Lastly, police batons aren't wooden these days. Those were phased out some time ago. Telescopic batons are standard issue these days, and while I don't have any proof that I can readily provide, I do believe that these are slightly less dangerous to those on the receiving end than the batons that they replaced.
Clearly your image of the average British cop is distorted. For more information on what they do and don't carry, and how it's regulated, read the relevant Wikipedia entry.
"Won't someone PLEASE think of the poor epileptics! BULLSHIT!!! We're under no obligation to coddle people caught in the act of breaking the law."
Brilliant! Because we all know that everybody who's arrested is guilty, don't we? After all, it's only guilty people that get arrested, right? Innocent people never get stopped and detained, do they?
Idiot.
Why do you think courts exist? Law enforcement officers, in the heat of the action, aren't judge and jury. They don't determine if someone has broken the law or not. A court does that.
Sorry, you're right. This is what happens when you do maths in your head after pulling an all-nighter.
The number should be 9.5 million. All the other numbers are correct though.
The margin on hardware is much smaller than it is on software, MS can give maybe a 70% discount whereas they might be able to get 10% on hardware.
Dell might be able to get 10 percent on hardware?
If you think that the difference between the price that Dell pays for the average piece of hardware and the price that a one-man operation would pay for the same hardware is 10 percent then you're nuts.
Dell undoubtably buys directly from manufacturers. When it buys Intel CPUs, it buys them directly from Intel. When it buys Belkin accessories, it buys them directly from Belkin. When Dell buys, there's no middleman.
When a one-man operation buys Intel CPUs or Belkin accessories then it buys them from a distributor. There might be one, two or maybe even three such middlemen between it and Intel or Belkin. Each middleman takes a cut, which drives the price that the one-man operation pays for the products higher and higher. How much is that cut? Well, 10 percent per distributor would be a fair figure.
(If you want to get a fairer idea of distribution costs, take the cost per 1,000 units that is typically quoted regarding CPUs and compare that to the typical single unit street price. Allow a small (maybe 5-10 percent) profit for the vendor and you'll see that the distribution chain takes a fair chunk along the way.)
And all that's before you talk about how much of each product is bought by Dell. There's a big difference between maybe buying 5 CPUs a week through the channel and buying almost 200,000 a week directly from the manufacturer.
In 2006, Dell accounted for 16.1 percent of the 59 million PCs shipped worldwide. Last year, Dell shipped 950 million PCs.
Are you really telling me that you think that, with that sort of buying power, you don't think that Dell gets deals that give it a more than 10 percent hardware cost price advantage?
Dell's got to be hating this.
That massive discount Microsoft gives them over smaller OEMs is Dell's biggest competitive advantage. Now they'll have to compete more directly with local whitebox builders.
They don't have much choice though. The local box builders have already switched to Ubuntu as their OS of choice. Dell has to match them or be swamped.
And there was me thinking that Dell's biggest competitive advantages were its huge purchasing power on all components, not just operating systems, and its brand-name recognition.
I guess I was wrong. Who knew that Dell was paying the same price for CPUs, RAM, hard drives, etc that outfits run out of the owners' garages were paying?
My PVR is less than a year old. It, as well as the HD model that's now part of the same range, both use IDE drives. In fact, I believe that most PVR models do the same.
The recommended replacement drives (or upgrade drives for those looking for more capacity) are from Seagate: the .
If/when Seagate pulls out of this market, the price of new PVRs probably won't be affected at all, but it may well drive the price of repairing/upgrading existing models up a bit.
Bottom line to PVR users: upgrade that drive while you can.