So you mean that the American idea of democracy is to only listen to those who support you? No wonder that that pathetic clown is so alienated from reality.
So tell me, do you think anything of which you have said will still hold water in 50 years? That is the date that the Chinese have set for themselves to have a fully capable blue water navy. China, has nothing to lose, and they two things which the USA lacks: persistence and patience.
You know what the probelm is with aircraft carriers? They sink. Taiwan is around 200km from the Chinese mainland. Modern ships have point defense weapons which can protect them against missiles, but those are not effective against saturation attacks with massed missiles. The Chinese have a large, modern well equiped air force these days.
NOt only that, but China is now outfitting its first carrier and you can be sure that there will be more to come.
The reasons, however, why China does not want to enter into a conflict with USA, lie more likely with the fact that it would end the trading relationship between them immediately and would almost certainly be extremely damaging for both countries economies: no contracts for Chinese Wal-Mart suppliers and a huge crash in national bonds in the US since China owns so many of them.
1. There isn't, AFAIK, any absolute definition of a police state. North Korea certainly fits the bill, China does too, and so do Iran and Syria and Cuba and Vietnam. But the tendencies towards becoming a fully fledged police state are fuzzy, and one of those things is denying freedoms of expression or legal recourse are so-called "national emergencies" and "national interest" laws or, as is more appropriate in this case, the lack of accountability, which really is a huge problem evident in the USA since 2001. Clinton was impeached for lying about having sex. Bush has not been impeached for allowing the NSA to wiretap American nationals in a blatant affront of the law. Cheney has not been impeached nor investigated for bidding free contracts given to the company of which he was the CEO prior to becoming VP. The US Attorney General is getting away scott free after actions that are obviously and testifiably against the law. No one has been investigated for the suppression of dissenting opinions that led to decision to invade Iraq. No one has been charged with outing Valerie Plame (and don't argue that she wasn't covert or whatever, the law is the law, or at least it should be).
Do you get my point....
2.Your country is already financially extended beyond what it really can afford with your immense military and all the high tech weapons which aren't helping you win a guerilla war. Your army can hardly now find new recruits to go and kill and get killed in Iraq. You country is fantastically in debt, to the tune of over $1 trillion. You say Russia has big problems? Putin is the world's most popular politician in his home country. His approval rating is above 80%, and I don't think it's a manufactured rating either. He has brought Russia a tripling of GNP, reduced inflation down to just above 15% from some huge figure in the late 90s. He has brought stability and dethroned the corrupt and widely hated Oil oligarchs. He has started rebuilding Russia's neglected military, and Russia has NO (0) national debt, and he brutally persevered in Chechnya to the extent that the major impetus of the rebellion is mostly over. He actually won a guerilla war, in one of the two possible ways in which it can be won: brutal suppression or dialog and negotiations or a mixture of both. Russia's losses to terrrorism are incredibly high, but Russia is one tough country. They lost over 26 million people in WWII, but they didn't stop fighting. If Putin really decides that he doesn't want useless American interceptor missiles in the Czech republic and Poland (and I tend to agree with him that they are pointed at Russia and not Iran), he can turn the screws much tighter on Europe than the Americans can afford. The USA would NEVER risk a nuclear conflict with Russia over Poland or the Czech Republic and the majority of both nations' populations know this (a polls show), even if their politicians are too dizzied by American money. Europe needs Russia more than Russia needs Europe. As for the Taliban, you're making the same, dumb, if I may say so, mistake that supporters of the war in Iraq made in the early days of the insurgency: you don't notice that the violence is escalating and that the population is turning against the Allies because of so many civillian deaths. I repeat: you will most likely lose Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
3. China would not start any conflict in which it would have to fight Americans for the obvious reason that the damage to both countries economies would be enormous. China could easily keep American carrier groups away from Taiwan, as they posses a large amount of anti-ship missiles, very modern aircraft (SU-30MKK, the J-10 and the JH-7A) and carriers are limited in the number of aircraft they can carry. They would, however, incur huge losses, which, currently, would be unacceptable to them, but that might change in a different political climate, and if Taiwan does actually declare independence, I think China will attack, no matter what. The danger there lies rather in avoiding the use of nuclear weapons. Bo
The country of my birth was a police state. Shit like this, state abuse of power with absolutely no recourse for the victims, was the order of the day. Your country has become a police state since 2001. The corrupt bastards running your place, who you clowns voted in again after one abuseive term, have managed to dismember the rule of law in your country pretty effectively, partly by rigging your supreme court, and partly by then exceding the powers accorded to the President time and time again, with no real worry of being caught, because the only ones who could do anything about it are in the same camp as the ones abusing the system.
Whatever fuckhead bin laden's goal was, he has won. Your country might be safer from "terrarists" now, but it's also safer from opposition politicians, foreign students, dissenting opinions, real freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It is also safe from a stable, debt free economy. Your government has got itself suckered into two wars it will not and cannot win (did anyone really think the Taliban would just roll over and die? They're winning in Afghanistan too), but from which it cannot afford to withdraw. Your government has seriously endangered relations with a Russia that has had enough of being the USA's bitch, and which is now starting to seriously raise the stakes (do you really think you can wobble about fighting two bush wars and take on Russia too?)
And you know who is really laughing? The Chinese. They must be having hysterics. Every time Dick "Dick" Cheney opens his mouth for a round of anti-China drivel, everyone just has a good laugh. What can your country do about the Chinese military build up which is sure to challenge the USA later in this century? Nothing, absolutely nothing. China is so big and such a huge army and population that the USA could never, even if the Chinese did not have nuclear weapons, which they do, win a conflict. On top of that the USA economy is so tied into the Chinese economy that doing anything against China would seriously damage the American economy (Have to cut down on the SUVs a bit, and the clothers and just about all else too). The USA can't even play the Indians, China's natural foes, out against the Chinese because the Indians don't trust the USA either, and they find it easier to do business with Russia when it come to arms, because the Russians don't try to tell them how to run their country.
In closing, there are many, big bad problems in this world, and the longer Dick and Blow stay in power, the worse things will get for you. This is not an admonition to vote Democract or Libertarian or whatever other party you Americans have dreamt up, but it is a thought that perhaps voting for someone who wasn't so out to ruin his own country might be a good idea.
Switzerland (not part of the EU) has the same system, obligatory healthinsurance for all. You can pick and choose your medical insurance, and the insurers are restricted so that they don't overcharge, and those that can't afford it get it paid by the state. Works fairly well and is a good compromise for those who want total state provided healthcare and those who want to choose which one they want.
Given the news on slashdot yesterday that Universal was threatening to cancel its contract with Apple for iTunes, added to the fact that Universal is the ONLY big corrupt studio that support HD-DVD, plus a final dash of Microsoft who have lots of money invested in HD-DVD in the XBox 360 and in their piece of shit Zune, it looks like another blow has been struck against a true free market by the people who think bribery is a technicality.
I'm not an American. I will probably never vist the USA again because I actively fear being harassed by officials for my big mouth. Your actions, you fucking stinking heap of shit, have caused tens of thousands of innocent people to die and it seems very likely that many tens of thouands more will die before this is all over. You have made the world a phenomenally unsafe place, actually giving the freaks who started all this insanity in 2001, far more support than they ever would have had otherwise. You have sullied your country's reputation so badly that all the things that your country supposedly, in some way, stood for, such as freedom (no, not the potatoes, you dumb cunt) of opportunity, speech and lifestyle, have become null and void, destroyed by a big, dark, terrifying cabal of huge multinational corporations and utterly corrupt and amoral politicians. Your bunnies, Tony the poodle (selling his own country out bit by bit), and Johnny the bonobo (fucking Australia till it hurts), are going or are gone. All your corrupt buddies in world bodies, like Wolfie and Bolt-on, have been thrown out, becuase no one respects or trusts you, you sick prick. Even your own party is trying desperately to distance itself from you.
Did you know, you stupid semi-literate fuck, that China, of all the possible places, is regarded as being more friendly than the USA today by the majority of the world's population?
And today, difficult as it may seem, you actually managed to make me, once again, feel physically ill. You actually managed to lower my opinion of you.
I seriously doubt, you bastard, that history will much in the way of kind, good, and especially intelligent words for you.
The most likely answer is that Universal, whose bean counters are not dumb enough to drop fully 15% of their sales to spite Apple, is simply making noises to negotiate a better deal.
The other possibility is that Bill Gates, in utter desperation because the Zune is such a piece of crap, has offered to pay Universal for exclusive content for the Zune. I would seriously not put it past Bill G and Steve B to do something like this. It would be a really bad day for Apple if this did happen, because it would make the Zune more popular and the iPod less popular.
Of course, it could backfire heavily against both Microsoft and Universal if Zune sales don't grow significantly.
"After buying a new iPhone yesterday and bringing it home to sync and activate it, I found out that Windows 64-bit is not supported. Neither XP 64-bit nor Vista 64-bit works with the iPhone. I called the Apple support line and the rep said I needed to downgrade my computer from a 64-bit operating system. I also posted about my concerns on the Apple iPhone discussion forums, but my post was quickly removed."
Now you know what it's like to be a Mac or a Linux user.
Microsoft is a monopoly. This means that they can set a base price on any product and no one can legally go beneath it. This means that, from an American point of view, pharmceutical multis such as Pfizer can legally set minimum prices on medicines and no one can undercut them. It means that places like Amazon, newegg, etc, can get cut off by the manufacturers, because they can't sell stuff cheaper than the manufacturer whther or not they have lower costs to cover or not. Given how much of the economy runs over the internet, this is a desaster.
Oh well, MS and other huge multis, must have paid huge fees to get this one to pass, essentially turning the USA into a fascist corporacy. This may sound alarmist, but that is exactly the way things worked in fascist dicatorships.
This programme has most probably nothing to do with Microsoft selling hardware, but rather Microsoft trying to muscle in on the extreme low end market before it grows so big and full of low cost Linux machines that Microsoft has no chance. Microsoft will most likley use these lowish cost machines plus Vista starter edition (plus bucket loads of arm twisting, bribes and plain threats) to get authorities in developing country to stick with Vista Pirated Edition, since that is what will happen with the machines 5 minutes after they're powered on in any case. Microsoft is not going after Dell, Lenovo, or HP just yet.
However, Microsoft, you can bet your sweet fat arse, would love to build its own machines, so as to especially attempt to beat Apple at its own game of hardware/software integration. This is obvious. Vista copied so many features out of OSX (yay transparent windows and shadows, the calender, Windows Mail instead of Outlook Express, the gadgets in the sidebar, UAC and numerous things) in a transparent attempt to stop users drifting away from MS crapware to Apple. Microsoft entered the portable music player market ONLY because Apple was laughing so hard at Bill Gates every time he started up some new version of MSN music, claiming it would be an iPod killer. The zune may be a joke, but you can bet that MS will work on improving it to try and get it ready for the legendary 3rd revision, by which time MS products are expected to be better than the competition.
You can bet Micrsoft would build its own PCs in a heartbeat to counter Apple if it could. MS is scared silly by Apple. The iPhone is not going to help the fear in Redmond much either, because it is guaranteed to be a huge success compared to MSs Dumbphones. Expect MS to dump HTC and release its own phone in about two or three years.
The only thing stopping MS from making its own PCs is the fact that that is honestly, the only real MS success story. Windows, Office and the Server Windows is where MS makes its money. If MS were to frolic too hard with making its own PCs in the US and Europe, you can bet that Linux would be on the front page of HP and Dells sites tomorrow and that you would have to actually look at who would sell you Windows anymore. (Yes, I'm exagerating, but the OEMs will become OELinux pretty soon, since they would not be able to compete with MS.)
MS would stand to lose vast amounts of marketshare, and they'd still lose, beause no matter how well their machines sold, Apple, in a tight corner, would only have to start selling OSX to OEMs to really bust Redmonds balls.
(rereading this, I wonder just how desperate Ballmer and Bill the dweeb really are?)
Judging from Reiser's obviously unstable mental state (his obsession about violent video games with his little boy is disgusting), the good grounds for suspicion in the investigation (the blood, the missing seat), and his ex-friend's admitted murderous and perverse behaviour, I think his kids are better off with the Grandmother in Russia.
Every time I read about the transhumanist fantasy about uploading him or her self into a computer, I see someone without a sex life who does little or no sport and hasn't been for long walks in a forest or swum in a sea.
That's all very nice, but I said that the Russians and Chinese could improve the S-300 system as they already have through three or four successive versions, more than doubling its performance in that time, and it's very unlikely that a system like the S-300, which is known for its radar's ability to look over the horizon, would not be linked into a network of early warning devices.
Am I imaging it or is the submitter one of the cerebrally challenged individuals who come in their jeans every time their respective country or trading bloc does something BIG, or FAST (or utterly fucking stupid, for which they blame the other country or trading bloc)? Very much like the wonderfully bright ones who think that fanboi-ing for Boeing or Airbus is somehow going to improve their sex-lives and self worth?
This is about a very large international project, just like any large industrial project is these days, be it Boeing, Airbus or the LHC.
Nobody really cares about your little nationalistic wet dreams, be they in some exotic language or in broken English.
I'm not so sure that this craft will be invulnerable to surface to air missiles such as the S-300V (SA-12b) fielded by Russia, China and India. The SA-12b has a range of between 100 and 200 km and a speed of 2.4km/s (Mach 7.24) and is known to have a limited anti-ballistic missile capability. Any craft travelling at mach 6 is not going to be very manoeuvrable (less than a missile in any case) and if it were to come in range of the SAMs would very likey be shot down. It is also an interesting coincidence that the SR-71 was slowly retired as later variants of the S-300 became operational as it would have made intercepts possible even over international waters where the SR-71 usually operated (The limits of view at 80 000 feet altitude is about 640km so there good information could be gathered without endangering the crew and craft, and satellites could actually get closer to the target than the SR-71 could), but you can be sure that the SR-71 was never operated over any area where there were active and hostile S-300s.
That said, tracking a target at mach 6 is no easy task. If the plane deploys some stealth or good ecm it will be no easy target. But invulnerable I seriously doubt. In the same manner that Russia upgraded its S-27 Topol M ICBM to manoeuvre in order to make targeting by the US ABM interceptor missiles, I am pretty sure that both China and Russia would be able to develop a counter to the SR-72 relatively cheaply, probably by improving the S-300 system.
I think the real use of a system such as this would be against countries like Iran, which the US fears is going to threaten Israel.
Further down the page there's one of the usual articles lambasting China for its internet firewall. Now I see the Americans have learnt from the Chinese and want to do it as well.
I have a bad reputation here on slashdot as being typically virulently anti-american, which is true to a certain extent, rational and irrational as it is, and mainly being based on my antipathy towards some people's WASP like xenophobia and arrogance. That said, I have one honest question:
Why does the USA really hate Chavez so much? Honestly.
It's not as if he's about to launch nukular weapons of mass destruction towards middle-income-ville USA. The western press demonstrably distorts what he does (The BBC for example, supposedly a shining example of unpartisan reporting, consistently gives more time to his opposition than to anything else he does or says, mostly since some rich British landowners unused land was forcibly bought by the Vz government). His diatribes are often all but mocked by the same western press resulting in the atitudes you see here on Slashdot.
In fact, the only thing that I can see about Chavez is that he wakes some vague subconscious fear in westerners and especially americans, about "the red menace", but no one is ever able to clearly, using facts, to state exactly what is so "communist" about him or his policies, gioven that the same people think that social safety nets in Europe constitute "socialism" and are also a part of that same vague "red menace".
If this is so, isn't it more likely that Western fairy tales about communism, that western forefathers use to scare their children into behaving themselves at night, are being exploited here?
Here in Switzerland (where the prices are generally very high), Orange In Germany, with T-Mobile, the plans don't charge for incoming calls and are quite competitive.
You did know that different Europeam countries have different tarifs, didn't you? and you did know that no one here charegs you for incoming calls?
Slashdot Mirror
So you mean that the American idea of democracy is to only listen to those who support you? No wonder that that pathetic clown is so alienated from reality.
So tell me, do you think anything of which you have said will still hold water in 50 years? That is the date that the Chinese have set for themselves to have a fully capable blue water navy. China, has nothing to lose, and they two things which the USA lacks: persistence and patience.
You know what the probelm is with aircraft carriers? They sink. Taiwan is around 200km from the Chinese mainland. Modern ships have point defense weapons which can protect them against missiles, but those are not effective against saturation attacks with massed missiles. The Chinese have a large, modern well equiped air force these days.
NOt only that, but China is now outfitting its first carrier and you can be sure that there will be more to come.
The reasons, however, why China does not want to enter into a conflict with USA, lie more likely with the fact that it would end the trading relationship between them immediately and would almost certainly be extremely damaging for both countries economies: no contracts for Chinese Wal-Mart suppliers and a huge crash in national bonds in the US since China owns so many of them.
1. There isn't, AFAIK, any absolute definition of a police state. North Korea certainly fits the bill, China does too, and so do Iran and Syria and Cuba and Vietnam. But the tendencies towards becoming a fully fledged police state are fuzzy, and one of those things is denying freedoms of expression or legal recourse are so-called "national emergencies" and "national interest" laws or, as is more appropriate in this case, the lack of accountability, which really is a huge problem evident in the USA since 2001. Clinton was impeached for lying about having sex. Bush has not been impeached for allowing the NSA to wiretap American nationals in a blatant affront of the law. Cheney has not been impeached nor investigated for bidding free contracts given to the company of which he was the CEO prior to becoming VP. The US Attorney General is getting away scott free after actions that are obviously and testifiably against the law. No one has been investigated for the suppression of dissenting opinions that led to decision to invade Iraq. No one has been charged with outing Valerie Plame (and don't argue that she wasn't covert or whatever, the law is the law, or at least it should be).
Do you get my point....
2.Your country is already financially extended beyond what it really can afford with your immense military and all the high tech weapons which aren't helping you win a guerilla war. Your army can hardly now find new recruits to go and kill and get killed in Iraq. You country is fantastically in debt, to the tune of over $1 trillion. You say Russia has big problems? Putin is the world's most popular politician in his home country. His approval rating is above 80%, and I don't think it's a manufactured rating either. He has brought Russia a tripling of GNP, reduced inflation down to just above 15% from some huge figure in the late 90s. He has brought stability and dethroned the corrupt and widely hated Oil oligarchs. He has started rebuilding Russia's neglected military, and Russia has NO (0) national debt, and he brutally persevered in Chechnya to the extent that the major impetus of the rebellion is mostly over. He actually won a guerilla war, in one of the two possible ways in which it can be won: brutal suppression or dialog and negotiations or a mixture of both. Russia's losses to terrrorism are incredibly high, but Russia is one tough country. They lost over 26 million people in WWII, but they didn't stop fighting. If Putin really decides that he doesn't want useless American interceptor missiles in the Czech republic and Poland (and I tend to agree with him that they are pointed at Russia and not Iran), he can turn the screws much tighter on Europe than the Americans can afford. The USA would NEVER risk a nuclear conflict with Russia over Poland or the Czech Republic and the majority of both nations' populations know this (a polls show), even if their politicians are too dizzied by American money. Europe needs Russia more than Russia needs Europe. As for the Taliban, you're making the same, dumb, if I may say so, mistake that supporters of the war in Iraq made in the early days of the insurgency: you don't notice that the violence is escalating and that the population is turning against the Allies because of so many civillian deaths. I repeat: you will most likely lose Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
3. China would not start any conflict in which it would have to fight Americans for the obvious reason that the damage to both countries economies would be enormous. China could easily keep American carrier groups away from Taiwan, as they posses a large amount of anti-ship missiles, very modern aircraft (SU-30MKK, the J-10 and the JH-7A) and carriers are limited in the number of aircraft they can carry. They would, however, incur huge losses, which, currently, would be unacceptable to them, but that might change in a different political climate, and if Taiwan does actually declare independence, I think China will attack, no matter what. The danger there lies rather in avoiding the use of nuclear weapons. Bo
The country of my birth was a police state. Shit like this, state abuse of power with absolutely no recourse for the victims, was the order of the day. Your country has become a police state since 2001. The corrupt bastards running your place, who you clowns voted in again after one abuseive term, have managed to dismember the rule of law in your country pretty effectively, partly by rigging your supreme court, and partly by then exceding the powers accorded to the President time and time again, with no real worry of being caught, because the only ones who could do anything about it are in the same camp as the ones abusing the system.
Whatever fuckhead bin laden's goal was, he has won. Your country might be safer from "terrarists" now, but it's also safer from opposition politicians, foreign students, dissenting opinions, real freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It is also safe from a stable, debt free economy. Your government has got itself suckered into two wars it will not and cannot win (did anyone really think the Taliban would just roll over and die? They're winning in Afghanistan too), but from which it cannot afford to withdraw. Your government has seriously endangered relations with a Russia that has had enough of being the USA's bitch, and which is now starting to seriously raise the stakes (do you really think you can wobble about fighting two bush wars and take on Russia too?)
And you know who is really laughing? The Chinese. They must be having hysterics. Every time Dick "Dick" Cheney opens his mouth for a round of anti-China drivel, everyone just has a good laugh. What can your country do about the Chinese military build up which is sure to challenge the USA later in this century? Nothing, absolutely nothing. China is so big and such a huge army and population that the USA could never, even if the Chinese did not have nuclear weapons, which they do, win a conflict. On top of that the USA economy is so tied into the Chinese economy that doing anything against China would seriously damage the American economy (Have to cut down on the SUVs a bit, and the clothers and just about all else too). The USA can't even play the Indians, China's natural foes, out against the Chinese because the Indians don't trust the USA either, and they find it easier to do business with Russia when it come to arms, because the Russians don't try to tell them how to run their country.
In closing, there are many, big bad problems in this world, and the longer Dick and Blow stay in power, the worse things will get for you. This is not an admonition to vote Democract or Libertarian or whatever other party you Americans have dreamt up, but it is a thought that perhaps voting for someone who wasn't so out to ruin his own country might be a good idea.
Switzerland (not part of the EU) has the same system, obligatory healthinsurance for all. You can pick and choose your medical insurance, and the insurers are restricted so that they don't overcharge, and those that can't afford it get it paid by the state. Works fairly well and is a good compromise for those who want total state provided healthcare and those who want to choose which one they want.
So selling your country out is ok by you, then?
it, linux, microsoft, chairthrowing, developersdevelopersdevelopers (tagging beta)
Given the news on slashdot yesterday that Universal was threatening to cancel its contract with Apple for iTunes, added to the fact that Universal is the ONLY big corrupt studio that support HD-DVD, plus a final dash of Microsoft who have lots of money invested in HD-DVD in the XBox 360 and in their piece of shit Zune, it looks like another blow has been struck against a true free market by the people who think bribery is a technicality.
I'm not an American. I will probably never vist the USA again because I actively fear being harassed by officials for my big mouth. Your actions, you fucking stinking heap of shit, have caused tens of thousands of innocent people to die and it seems very likely that many tens of thouands more will die before this is all over. You have made the world a phenomenally unsafe place, actually giving the freaks who started all this insanity in 2001, far more support than they ever would have had otherwise. You have sullied your country's reputation so badly that all the things that your country supposedly, in some way, stood for, such as freedom (no, not the potatoes, you dumb cunt) of opportunity, speech and lifestyle, have become null and void, destroyed by a big, dark, terrifying cabal of huge multinational corporations and utterly corrupt and amoral politicians. Your bunnies, Tony the poodle (selling his own country out bit by bit), and Johnny the bonobo (fucking Australia till it hurts), are going or are gone. All your corrupt buddies in world bodies, like Wolfie and Bolt-on, have been thrown out, becuase no one respects or trusts you, you sick prick. Even your own party is trying desperately to distance itself from you.
Did you know, you stupid semi-literate fuck, that China, of all the possible places, is regarded as being more friendly than the USA today by the majority of the world's population?
And today, difficult as it may seem, you actually managed to make me, once again, feel physically ill. You actually managed to lower my opinion of you.
I seriously doubt, you bastard, that history will much in the way of kind, good, and especially intelligent words for you.
May you burn in hell.
The most likely answer is that Universal, whose bean counters are not dumb enough to drop fully 15% of their sales to spite Apple, is simply making noises to negotiate a better deal.
The other possibility is that Bill Gates, in utter desperation because the Zune is such a piece of crap, has offered to pay Universal for exclusive content for the Zune. I would seriously not put it past Bill G and Steve B to do something like this. It would be a really bad day for Apple if this did happen, because it would make the Zune more popular and the iPod less popular.
Of course, it could backfire heavily against both Microsoft and Universal if Zune sales don't grow significantly.
"After buying a new iPhone yesterday and bringing it home to sync and activate it, I found out that Windows 64-bit is not supported. Neither XP 64-bit nor Vista 64-bit works with the iPhone. I called the Apple support line and the rep said I needed to downgrade my computer from a 64-bit operating system. I also posted about my concerns on the Apple iPhone discussion forums, but my post was quickly removed."
Now you know what it's like to be a Mac or a Linux user.
Microsoft is a monopoly. This means that they can set a base price on any product and no one can legally go beneath it. This means that, from an American point of view, pharmceutical multis such as Pfizer can legally set minimum prices on medicines and no one can undercut them. It means that places like Amazon, newegg, etc, can get cut off by the manufacturers, because they can't sell stuff cheaper than the manufacturer whther or not they have lower costs to cover or not. Given how much of the economy runs over the internet, this is a desaster.
Oh well, MS and other huge multis, must have paid huge fees to get this one to pass, essentially turning the USA into a fascist corporacy. This may sound alarmist, but that is exactly the way things worked in fascist dicatorships.
This programme has most probably nothing to do with Microsoft selling hardware, but rather Microsoft trying to muscle in on the extreme low end market before it grows so big and full of low cost Linux machines that Microsoft has no chance. Microsoft will most likley use these lowish cost machines plus Vista starter edition (plus bucket loads of arm twisting, bribes and plain threats) to get authorities in developing country to stick with Vista Pirated Edition, since that is what will happen with the machines 5 minutes after they're powered on in any case. Microsoft is not going after Dell, Lenovo, or HP just yet.
However, Microsoft, you can bet your sweet fat arse, would love to build its own machines, so as to especially attempt to beat Apple at its own game of hardware/software integration. This is obvious. Vista copied so many features out of OSX (yay transparent windows and shadows, the calender, Windows Mail instead of Outlook Express, the gadgets in the sidebar, UAC and numerous things) in a transparent attempt to stop users drifting away from MS crapware to Apple. Microsoft entered the portable music player market ONLY because Apple was laughing so hard at Bill Gates every time he started up some new version of MSN music, claiming it would be an iPod killer. The zune may be a joke, but you can bet that MS will work on improving it to try and get it ready for the legendary 3rd revision, by which time MS products are expected to be better than the competition.
You can bet Micrsoft would build its own PCs in a heartbeat to counter Apple if it could. MS is scared silly by Apple. The iPhone is not going to help the fear in Redmond much either, because it is guaranteed to be a huge success compared to MSs Dumbphones. Expect MS to dump HTC and release its own phone in about two or three years.
The only thing stopping MS from making its own PCs is the fact that that is honestly, the only real MS success story. Windows, Office and the Server Windows is where MS makes its money. If MS were to frolic too hard with making its own PCs in the US and Europe, you can bet that Linux would be on the front page of HP and Dells sites tomorrow and that you would have to actually look at who would sell you Windows anymore. (Yes, I'm exagerating, but the OEMs will become OELinux pretty soon, since they would not be able to compete with MS.)
MS would stand to lose vast amounts of marketshare, and they'd still lose, beause no matter how well their machines sold, Apple, in a tight corner, would only have to start selling OSX to OEMs to really bust Redmonds balls.
(rereading this, I wonder just how desperate Ballmer and Bill the dweeb really are?)
And there I was thinking this about Zonk finally leaving to (mis)edit someone else's website?
Judging from Reiser's obviously unstable mental state (his obsession about violent video games with his little boy is disgusting), the good grounds for suspicion in the investigation (the blood, the missing seat), and his ex-friend's admitted murderous and perverse behaviour, I think his kids are better off with the Grandmother in Russia.
Every time I read about the transhumanist fantasy about uploading him or her self into a computer, I see someone without a sex life who does little or no sport and hasn't been for long walks in a forest or swum in a sea.
That's all very nice, but I said that the Russians and Chinese could improve the S-300 system as they already have through three or four successive versions, more than doubling its performance in that time, and it's very unlikely that a system like the S-300, which is known for its radar's ability to look over the horizon, would not be linked into a network of early warning devices.
Am I imaging it or is the submitter one of the cerebrally challenged individuals who come in their jeans every time their respective country or trading bloc does something BIG, or FAST (or utterly fucking stupid, for which they blame the other country or trading bloc)? Very much like the wonderfully bright ones who think that fanboi-ing for Boeing or Airbus is somehow going to improve their sex-lives and self worth?
This is about a very large international project, just like any large industrial project is these days, be it Boeing, Airbus or the LHC.
Nobody really cares about your little nationalistic wet dreams, be they in some exotic language or in broken English.
It was "BAe, the British defence company.
I'm not so sure that this craft will be invulnerable to surface to air missiles such as the S-300V (SA-12b) fielded by Russia, China and India. The SA-12b has a range of between 100 and 200 km and a speed of 2.4km/s (Mach 7.24) and is known to have a limited anti-ballistic missile capability. Any craft travelling at mach 6 is not going to be very manoeuvrable (less than a missile in any case) and if it were to come in range of the SAMs would very likey be shot down. It is also an interesting coincidence that the SR-71 was slowly retired as later variants of the S-300 became operational as it would have made intercepts possible even over international waters where the SR-71 usually operated (The limits of view at 80 000 feet altitude is about 640km so there good information could be gathered without endangering the crew and craft, and satellites could actually get closer to the target than the SR-71 could), but you can be sure that the SR-71 was never operated over any area where there were active and hostile S-300s.
That said, tracking a target at mach 6 is no easy task. If the plane deploys some stealth or good ecm it will be no easy target. But invulnerable I seriously doubt. In the same manner that Russia upgraded its S-27 Topol M ICBM to manoeuvre in order to make targeting by the US ABM interceptor missiles, I am pretty sure that both China and Russia would be able to develop a counter to the SR-72 relatively cheaply, probably by improving the S-300 system.
I think the real use of a system such as this would be against countries like Iran, which the US fears is going to threaten Israel.
Further down the page there's one of the usual articles lambasting China for its internet firewall. Now I see the Americans have learnt from the Chinese and want to do it as well.
I have a bad reputation here on slashdot as being typically virulently anti-american, which is true to a certain extent, rational and irrational as it is, and mainly being based on my antipathy towards some people's WASP like xenophobia and arrogance. That said, I have one honest question:
Why does the USA really hate Chavez so much? Honestly.
It's not as if he's about to launch nukular weapons of mass destruction towards middle-income-ville USA. The western press demonstrably distorts what he does (The BBC for example, supposedly a shining example of unpartisan reporting, consistently gives more time to his opposition than to anything else he does or says, mostly since some rich British landowners unused land was forcibly bought by the Vz government). His diatribes are often all but mocked by the same western press resulting in the atitudes you see here on Slashdot.
In fact, the only thing that I can see about Chavez is that he wakes some vague subconscious fear in westerners and especially americans, about "the red menace", but no one is ever able to clearly, using facts, to state exactly what is so "communist" about him or his policies, gioven that the same people think that social safety nets in Europe constitute "socialism" and are also a part of that same vague "red menace".
If this is so, isn't it more likely that Western fairy tales about communism, that western forefathers use to scare their children into behaving themselves at night, are being exploited here?
Here in Switzerland (where the prices are generally very high), Orange
In Germany, with T-Mobile, the plans don't charge for incoming calls and are quite competitive.
You did know that different Europeam countries have different tarifs, didn't you? and you did know that no one here charegs you for incoming calls?
Or was this just another yay USA pissing match?
(T-Mobile is a German company, btw)