They still don't have an excel competitor, so no iWork will not directly compete with Office 2004.
The pattern is there: First Keynote to face off against PowerPoint; next, Pages to face off against Word. Excel is the next obvious step.
(I bet it'll be called "Column", symbolizing the shafting they want to give bgates@microsoft.com.;-) )
And I dunno but it seems iWork is designed more for the graphics media people.
Nah -- I've had a number of programming and business clients who specifically requested I design their presentations in Keynote, precisely because they too liked the slick look and feel of it. And I have to say, I enjoy designing presentations in Keynote as opposed to pulling my own head off rather than use PowerPoint. The interface is just so much easier to deal with, and a lot more stable for me, too.
You don't have to be a designer to appreciate good design, after all.
Hopefully, it'll work with the PS/2 keyboards and mice that I've got lying around, if not then I suppose that I'll be shelling out for USB ones but that's no great loss.
Or just pick up a used Mac one on eBay for a song.
You can use Winders USB keyboards, but it's a little less confusing if you get a Mac one.
Except that AAPL is actually zooming downwards at the moment. Something like -4% in less than an hour after the keynote ended.
My hunch is that it's because Apple just fired a big-ass shot across Microsoft's bow with iWork. We can likely say bye-bye to Office v.X for Mac, and with it quite possibly the Mac platform. (At least in my experience, the existence of Office for Mac was one of the few things that kept the platform alive for a very large number of users, both corporate and private.)
That's the only explanation I can think of at the moment. SJ just delivered an under-$500 Mac and an under-$200 iPod, so you'd think people would be going ape-shit.
The Mindawn Player runs on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, and is really only needed for previewing songs (you can also buy via the website). Thus all three major platforms are fully supported.
The other point is that yes, the number of tracks available is small. But Mindawn is actively looking for new and independent artists -- think of the site as a kind of CaféPress for music geeks, though of course some big-name artists (such as James LaBrie from DreamTheater) are coming soon.
Presumably, Mindawn receives the artists' permissions to sell their music.
Of course. That is one of the ideas behind Mindawn -- providing an easy way for artists to sell their music online. You might think of it as CaféPress for musicians.
It costs you as an artist just $50 per year to have your account, with as many albums and tracks as you want. You don't even have to print CDs -- just put some of those new songs you're working on up for sale online. You don't even have to even work around the concept of an "album" if you don't want to. Just create your account and load your content -- you can be 'live' within 30 minutes of opening your account.
[...] We have two royalty models:
75% for electronic content exclusive to Mindawn. However, you can change at any time to the second model:
55% for non-exclusive electronic content
That means you get either 55% or 75% of the total price -- far better for artists than most record labels or iTMS.
And the/. article is rather misleading. The client is for Linux AND Windows AND Mac OS X. Also, the client is only for previewing songs -- you can buy via the website, ergo technically it's platform-independent. Mindawn isn't "targeting Linux" -- it supports Linux alongside other OSes.
(FWIW I know about the service because I did the graphics and eye candy for the site and software.)
That isn't such a good deal, people from other countries constantly come to the US for healthcare.
That is a common claim that is misleading. Plenty of people come to Europe for high-quality care, too. (Right here in my city in Germany is a well-known medical college that gets patients from around the world, all the time, for special operations and treatment.) You just don't hear about that in the American press, apparently.
I'm an American living abroad, and am well acquainted with both European and American health care firsthand. As someone who is chronically ill, I don't stand a chance of getting insured in America in any reasonable way; in Germany I'm fully covered, no questions asked, and fairly cheaply in comparison, with a better quality of coverage than I had with the HMO I was with in America (at the time I was still insured on a policy I "inherited" from my parents' coverage).
Not to mention, many of the european countries are going to have to cut back on socialist programs like universal health care in 20-25 years because there will be way more people retired than working.
Another myth, by the way: most European countries I know of don't have socialized medicine, but do have real universal coverage (as in, everyone's insured and can get a level of care at least as good as any given HMO in America, if not far better).
Germany, where I live, is an excellent example of a universal system that generally works quite well. The Netherlands and Switzerland have broadly similar systems. None have state ownership of the system, none have provider monopolies. France has a single-payer system with private supplemental insurance (while allowing competition between providers); the others have competition and free choice between insurers and providers.
Ireland and the UK do have honest-to-God socialized medicine (single-payer and single-provider) -- and have lousy care, that is true. Meanwhile, Sweden has socialized medicine and has pretty decent care overall.
Universal health care actually saves money, apparently -- the European countries I named above (aside from the UK, Ireland and Sweden) all have universal coverage, yet spend far less as a proportion of GDP than the US does on health care. IOW they're spending less and getting a better effect. And by a number of measures, Germans are living longer and healthier than Americans in spite of living unhealthier lifestyles (far higher smoking rates, far higher alcohol consumption, fairly similar obesity rates).
Excuse my being personal, though, but does your wife like to be called Kraut and reminded of Blitzkrieg (or however he spelt it)?
Well, to give you a hint: she calls me Hunnybun. I call her Bunny-Hun.
Get the picture?;-)
Sure, some Germans (mostly northern Germans) have had their sense of humor surgically removed. But most that I know have a pretty black sense of humor, too.
I'd say it's inappropriate to have people (paying subscribers, even) have their entire subnet get knocked off Slashdot, just because of three downmods in 24 hours. (Then have an impertinent "meh, wait out the ban period" as the response.)
HANK Well, I've been a Slash developer all my life. I love Slashdotters. That's why I like to kill 'em. I wouldn't kill an Slashdotter I didn't like. Goodday Roy.
Pull back to reveal he is walking with his brother in fairly rough server farm. They pull a small trailer with 'high explosives' written in large letters on the side. The trailer has modbombs in it. Hank takes a bazooka from the trailer.
VOICEOVER Hank and Roy Spim are tough, fearless Slash developers who have chosen to live in a violent, unrelenting world of nature's creatures, where only the fittest survive. Today they are off to hunt Slashdotters.
Big close-up Roy Spim. He is obviously searching for something.
ROY (voice over) The Slashdotter's a clever little bastard. You can mod him for days and days until you really get to know him like a friend. He knows you're there, and you know he's there. It's a game of wits. You hate him, then you respect him, then you kill him.
KeyCaps is gone? I have it here in my Jaguar 10.2.8 install. Are you saying that when I upgrade to Panther, I should put KeyCaps to one side beforehand? (A la Disk Copy, Internet pref pane, and Clock?)
In a word: yup.
You can get back the same functionality by activating the Keyboard menu -- which takes up real estate in the menu bar and has no other purpose for most people. This is yet another UI decision since OS X came out where a lot of people had to ask WTF Apple was thinking...
You could make them yourself with transparent Avery labels and any old inkjet or laser printer. Don't know if the toner would rub off, but you could try spraying the printed surface of the labels with spray fix (any office supply or art supply would have that) or cheap aerosol hair spray (that acts as a fixative as well) and letting it dry a while before putting them on your keys.
Mainly the feel of using it. The "extended" in the name refers to the fact that it's a full 105-key keyboard (Apple used to also make a smaller keyboard lacking the page up/down, extra command/option and F keys, IIRC usually sold with the SE and LC computers), so in that regard it's nothing special compared to a standard PC keyboard.
But the actual use of it was great, because of the tactile feedback (the keys sort of clicked just at the moment the input actually was sent -- sounds trivial, but on more modern computers it's a little lacking) and the audible "click" the keys made was also nice to have as an audible feedback (if you're transcribing texts and can't look at the screen, that's helpful).
So it's a lot of little stuff. Not something for everyone -- I sure as hell wouldn't go so far as to shell out $90 for it, and am satisfied with my current Apple USB keyboard with the G5 -- but some people really need that.
I do like the additional labels on the keys, though -- something that's sorely lacking on Apple's newer keyboards (especially the non-US ones).
My question is, does it come in non-American layouts? From what I saw on the site and article, there was no mention of other layouts at all. (The physical layout is usually the same, just the keys are rearranged and in some cases labelled differently for special characters.)
#./buggy-program SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) recieved. The program has been terminated. File a bug report? (Y/n) _
That's the thing: such words as "terminated" mislead and disconcert the user -- it makes it sound like the program itself was destroyed, not the copy in RAM. Other such grammatical flaws abound in Windows as well -- "illegal instruction" is a particularly bad one -- that confuse and irritate the user.
As for mapping an error message in plain English to specific problems or errors, it just takes a little thinking -- and effort to avoid using misleading terms. In your examples:
SIGSEGV could be "Sorry, this program quit unexpectedly because of a memory error."
ENOMEM could be "Sorry, this program quit unexpectedly because it used too much memory on your computer."
ENOSYS could be "Sorry, this program quit unexpectedly because it tried to access a part of the system that does not exist."
The idea of having a bug buddy installed also would be an excellent idea -- it makes the user feel more comfortable with the error having occurred (in my experience users tend to blame themselves for everything -- "what did I do to make it crash?" -- whereas the bug message would let them know it wasn't their fault). Such little things make using computers a lot less painful and irritating.
I suppose it would help if developers imagined all users to be crotchety Andy Rooney types.;-)
FWIW Mac OS X 10.3.x gets pretty close to the ideal solution for a GUI (unless you insist on the Holy Grail of error-free coding -- fat chance:-P ). In OS X, you get a fairly neutral-sounding error message, and are presented with a dialog box asking if you want to "notify Apple" of the error so that it can be fixed. Doing something like that in a CLI ought to be fairly easy...
Right, because programmers get confused every time they get a seg fault... That *is* mostly the audience that sees that message.
Not really -- programmers should be the only ones to see that message, but hey, sometimes end users get stuck with shoddy software that segfaults too, ya know.;-)
Who is this General Protection Fault, and what's he doing reading my hard drive?
That said, it would be rather helpful if command-line tools would actually communicate more in plain English. Most of the commands and responses were meant to save keystrokes and be brief, and were written by geeks for geeks (so to speak).
Why write "Segmentation fault: core dumped", rather than, say, "Sorry, this program has unexpectedly quit because of a programming error"? In other words, worry less about technical accuracy in error messages and concentrate more on making the computer and OS more understandable to non-technical people.
I'm not saying bash or the other shells should be re-written that way, but it would be nice if a more newbie-friendly CLI was around.
What do modern German military uniforms look like, anyway?
See for yourself. (Sorry, uses Flash.) Click on the images along the right to see the various uniforms currently in use.
You can also see the military ranks here. 'Heer' is the Army, 'Luftwaffe' is the Air Force, 'Marine' is the Navy, 'Sanitaetsdienst' is the medical service.
PS: For comparison, the firebombing of Tokyo is said to have killed about 80000 to 100000 people. The firebombing of Dresden, between 25000 and 150000. With such attrocities it demonstrates that the actions of the victors in WWII were in the end no better than that of their foes, as regards the deliberate targetting of civilian populations. I guess you can always point a finger at the Germany and say 'they started it'...:(
"No better"? As someone living in Germany (and married to a German), I can hardly tell you how wrong you are. Where to begin?
America and Britain did not seek to exterminate an entire people (and nearly succeed) as the Nazis did, or summarily rape and pillage and entire city, as the Japanese did,
America and Britain did not do human wave attacks, unlike the Soviets.
America and Britain did not, as a matter of policy, summarily execute prisoners of war, as did the Soviets, Japan and the Nazis.
America and Britain did not impose dictatorships wholesale on the countries they occupied, unlike the Soviets, Nazis and Japan. Indeed, most countries the US and UK occupied got liberal democracies and independence.
Indeed, America even rebuilt its defeated enemies, gave them liberal democracies, gave them huge amounts of money and aid, defended them from the Soviets through the Cold War...need I go on?
To make the statement that America was "no better" than the Nazis, Imperial Japan or Stalinist Russia is just completely out of touch with basic facts. Yes, America and Britain did commit many crimes, like the internment of Japanese-Americans and dropping the atom bomb on civilians and firebombing German cities and so on. But on balance I'd still much rather have a world where America and the UK won, as opposed to one where the Soviets or (shudder) Nazis won, thankyouverymuch.
And given that I live in a city which was flattened by Bomber Harris, and which has Hiroshima as a partner city, I can tell you that the "defeated" Germans were in the end just as much 'winners' in the end as us Americans -- and they know it, and won't forget it easily. That's why Germany still commemorates the Berlin Airlift, Kennedy's "Berliner" speech (no, he did not say he was a jelly donut), the Marshall Plan and so on.
America little better than the Nazis? Today's Germans -- at least all the Germans I know -- would say America's a hell of a lot better.
Not interested in Imperialism? Really? Tell that to the French neo-colonies in West Africa. I wish I still had the link, I saw a great picture after France unilaterally sent troops in Cote d'Ivoire of Ivoirians holding up signs saying "Bush! Save us from the French!"
Like others have pointed out, such pictures can be misleading. How do you know the people asking for Bush's "protection" weren't supporters of one or the other faction in the civil war?
You think European economic and diplomatic power far exceeds the US? Well, the economic point is so laughable as to not even deserve refutation.
Actually, the EU's total GDP as of 1999 was about the same as that of the US; once EU enlargement takes place this year, with the accession of Poland, Hungary et. al., the EU's GDP will actually be larger than that of the US (though per capita GDP will be rather lower). Many member states export proportionally far more than the US as well -- such as Germany, for example.
Furthermore, the Euro has succeeded in becoming the largest reserve currency after the US dollar, and continues to grow in usage (one reason for the dollar's decline in value recently -- many countries are partially switching reserves to Euros to spread out their risks).
Oh, and half of the G8 are in the EU -- France, the UK, Germany and Italy.
The EU's economic influence is thus hardly "laughable" at all...
As for European diplomacy succeeding with or without American participation, one can quite easily turn your statement on its head and point out that American diplomacy doesn't work in a vacuum -- American initiatives tend to work far, far better when the Europeans are on board. Think of it as the "good cop, bad cop" routine. Worked brilliantly in Iran recently, as the Iranians agreed top open up to the IAEA (after intense consultations with EU members as well as having American troops on its borders).
A final point about 'European' diplomacy: don't forget that the EU is really just a collection of nation-states, and can only act as a unit in nearly all cases when a consensus amongst those states has been reached.
In that light, to blame "Europe" for diplomatic weakness is misguided: the EU is weak, but its individual members still have quite a lot of influence abroad -- far, far more than other countries of similar size. France, Spain and the UK all punch far above their weight, and Germany is also taking an ever higher profile in recent years.
No offense intended, but such blinkered remarks are why many non-Americans get so exasperated with us -- factually wrong (or iffy) boasts, filled with misinformed chest-pounding about our supposed achievements and so on. We as Americans do have much to be proud of, but that doesn't mean we need to overdo it -- nor does it mean we need to rub everyone else's faces in it (especially not when we claim too much credit). Not a good way to make friends and keep them.
Check out IIC's website. The IIC is a quasi-governmental group attracting businesses to eastern Germany, and they also had a hand in all of this.
This is great news for eastern Germany, in particular the Dresden area, which has really been on hard times since reunification. Hopefully this will also help fight the nascent neo-Nazism that was budding in Saxony for a while...that seems to have quieted down in recent years.
Damn, that is pretty small to weigh 1 pound. What is it made out of? Depleted Uranium?
I know you're kidding, but seriously, the 1-pound coins really are heavy -- not quite a pound, maybe, but heavy for a coin.
I often wondered what the hell they are made of -- I'll never forget the first time someone handed me one. Pretty weird sensation when you expect it to weigh practically nothing -- and in fact it weighs quite a bit (for a coin anyway).
Doing a quick Google...ah, a 2003 pound coin (yes, they change the design every year) weighs 9.5 g and is 22.5 mm in diameter, while an American quarter weighs 5.67 g and is 24.25 mm in diameter.
The pound coin is nickel-brass alloy (copper 70%, zinc 24.5%, nickel 5.5%); the quarter is cupro-nickel clad (8.33% nickel, 91.67% copper).
Much like a TV. That's what Intel/MS wants to do, make the PC into a "proper" consumer device.
FWIW Macs have more or less done this ever since OS X came out. I just nudge the power button on my Apple TFT, and the Mac instantly goes into sleep mode; nudge it again and it wakes up in about a second.
You're right. I didn't catch that point. I thought your mention of the President not getting into office for months implied that the ballot counting could take that long.
In hindsight, yes, my post could have been read that way. Sorry.
Slashdot Mirror
The pattern is there: First Keynote to face off against PowerPoint; next, Pages to face off against Word. Excel is the next obvious step.
(I bet it'll be called "Column", symbolizing the shafting they want to give bgates@microsoft.com. ;-) )
And I dunno but it seems iWork is designed more for the graphics media people.
Nah -- I've had a number of programming and business clients who specifically requested I design their presentations in Keynote, precisely because they too liked the slick look and feel of it. And I have to say, I enjoy designing presentations in Keynote as opposed to pulling my own head off rather than use PowerPoint. The interface is just so much easier to deal with, and a lot more stable for me, too.
You don't have to be a designer to appreciate good design, after all.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Or just pick up a used Mac one on eBay for a song.
You can use Winders USB keyboards, but it's a little less confusing if you get a Mac one.
Cheers,
Ethelred
My hunch is that it's because Apple just fired a big-ass shot across Microsoft's bow with iWork. We can likely say bye-bye to Office v.X for Mac, and with it quite possibly the Mac platform. (At least in my experience, the existence of Office for Mac was one of the few things that kept the platform alive for a very large number of users, both corporate and private.)
That's the only explanation I can think of at the moment. SJ just delivered an under-$500 Mac and an under-$200 iPod, so you'd think people would be going ape-shit.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Cheers,
Ethelred
The other point is that yes, the number of tracks available is small. But Mindawn is actively looking for new and independent artists -- think of the site as a kind of CaféPress for music geeks, though of course some big-name artists (such as James LaBrie from DreamTheater) are coming soon.
Cheers,
Ethelred
2. Download the Mindawn Player for the platform of your choice.
3. Enjoy!
Cheers,
Ethelred
Of course. That is one of the ideas behind Mindawn -- providing an easy way for artists to sell their music online. You might think of it as CaféPress for musicians.
From Mindawn Artists' FAQ:
It costs you as an artist just $50 per year to have your account, with as many albums and tracks as you want. You don't even have to print CDs -- just put some of those new songs you're working on up for sale online. You don't even have to even work around the concept of an "album" if you don't want to. Just create your account and load your content -- you can be 'live' within 30 minutes of opening your account.
[...] We have two royalty models:
75% for electronic content exclusive to Mindawn. However, you can change at any time to the second model:
55% for non-exclusive electronic content
That means you get either 55% or 75% of the total price -- far better for artists than most record labels or iTMS.
And the /. article is rather misleading. The client is for Linux AND Windows AND Mac OS X. Also, the client is only for previewing songs -- you can buy via the website, ergo technically it's platform-independent. Mindawn isn't "targeting Linux" -- it supports Linux alongside other OSes.
(FWIW I know about the service because I did the graphics and eye candy for the site and software.)
Cheers,
Ethelred
That is a common claim that is misleading. Plenty of people come to Europe for high-quality care, too. (Right here in my city in Germany is a well-known medical college that gets patients from around the world, all the time, for special operations and treatment.) You just don't hear about that in the American press, apparently.
I'm an American living abroad, and am well acquainted with both European and American health care firsthand. As someone who is chronically ill, I don't stand a chance of getting insured in America in any reasonable way; in Germany I'm fully covered, no questions asked, and fairly cheaply in comparison, with a better quality of coverage than I had with the HMO I was with in America (at the time I was still insured on a policy I "inherited" from my parents' coverage).
Not to mention, many of the european countries are going to have to cut back on socialist programs like universal health care in 20-25 years because there will be way more people retired than working.
Another myth, by the way: most European countries I know of don't have socialized medicine, but do have real universal coverage (as in, everyone's insured and can get a level of care at least as good as any given HMO in America, if not far better).
Germany, where I live, is an excellent example of a universal system that generally works quite well. The Netherlands and Switzerland have broadly similar systems. None have state ownership of the system, none have provider monopolies. France has a single-payer system with private supplemental insurance (while allowing competition between providers); the others have competition and free choice between insurers and providers.
Ireland and the UK do have honest-to-God socialized medicine (single-payer and single-provider) -- and have lousy care, that is true. Meanwhile, Sweden has socialized medicine and has pretty decent care overall.
Universal health care actually saves money, apparently -- the European countries I named above (aside from the UK, Ireland and Sweden) all have universal coverage, yet spend far less as a proportion of GDP than the US does on health care. IOW they're spending less and getting a better effect. And by a number of measures, Germans are living longer and healthier than Americans in spite of living unhealthier lifestyles (far higher smoking rates, far higher alcohol consumption, fairly similar obesity rates).
Cheers,
Ethelred
Well, to give you a hint: she calls me Hunnybun. I call her Bunny-Hun.
Get the picture? ;-)
Sure, some Germans (mostly northern Germans) have had their sense of humor surgically removed. But most that I know have a pretty black sense of humor, too.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Cheers,
Ethelred
Link for your convenience.
I'd say it's inappropriate to have people (paying subscribers, even) have their entire subnet get knocked off Slashdot, just because of three downmods in 24 hours. (Then have an impertinent "meh, wait out the ban period" as the response.)
Hmm...kinda like shooting mosquitos with bazookas.
...
Just a little humor to save the day!
Cheers,
Ethelred (a fellow subscriber)
L'Inspire
and corner that lucrative Yuppie snob OS market not already covered by Macs.
* - Hah! I invented a word!
Cheers,
Ethelred
In a word: yup.
You can get back the same functionality by activating the Keyboard menu -- which takes up real estate in the menu bar and has no other purpose for most people. This is yet another UI decision since OS X came out where a lot of people had to ask WTF Apple was thinking...
Cheers,
Ethelred
You could make them yourself with transparent Avery labels and any old inkjet or laser printer. Don't know if the toner would rub off, but you could try spraying the printed surface of the labels with spray fix (any office supply or art supply would have that) or cheap aerosol hair spray (that acts as a fixative as well) and letting it dry a while before putting them on your keys.
Cheers,
Ethelred
But the actual use of it was great, because of the tactile feedback (the keys sort of clicked just at the moment the input actually was sent -- sounds trivial, but on more modern computers it's a little lacking) and the audible "click" the keys made was also nice to have as an audible feedback (if you're transcribing texts and can't look at the screen, that's helpful).
So it's a lot of little stuff. Not something for everyone -- I sure as hell wouldn't go so far as to shell out $90 for it, and am satisfied with my current Apple USB keyboard with the G5 -- but some people really need that.
I do like the additional labels on the keys, though -- something that's sorely lacking on Apple's newer keyboards (especially the non-US ones).
My question is, does it come in non-American layouts? From what I saw on the site and article, there was no mention of other layouts at all. (The physical layout is usually the same, just the keys are rearranged and in some cases labelled differently for special characters.)
Cheers,
Ethelred
That's the thing: such words as "terminated" mislead and disconcert the user -- it makes it sound like the program itself was destroyed, not the copy in RAM. Other such grammatical flaws abound in Windows as well -- "illegal instruction" is a particularly bad one -- that confuse and irritate the user.
As for mapping an error message in plain English to specific problems or errors, it just takes a little thinking -- and effort to avoid using misleading terms. In your examples:
SIGSEGV could be "Sorry, this program quit unexpectedly because of a memory error."
ENOMEM could be "Sorry, this program quit unexpectedly because it used too much memory on your computer."
ENOSYS could be "Sorry, this program quit unexpectedly because it tried to access a part of the system that does not exist."
The idea of having a bug buddy installed also would be an excellent idea -- it makes the user feel more comfortable with the error having occurred (in my experience users tend to blame themselves for everything -- "what did I do to make it crash?" -- whereas the bug message would let them know it wasn't their fault). Such little things make using computers a lot less painful and irritating.
I suppose it would help if developers imagined all users to be crotchety Andy Rooney types. ;-)
FWIW Mac OS X 10.3.x gets pretty close to the ideal solution for a GUI (unless you insist on the Holy Grail of error-free coding -- fat chance :-P ). In OS X, you get a fairly neutral-sounding error message, and are presented with a dialog box asking if you want to "notify Apple" of the error so that it can be fixed. Doing something like that in a CLI ought to be fairly easy...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Not really -- programmers should be the only ones to see that message, but hey, sometimes end users get stuck with shoddy software that segfaults too, ya know. ;-)
Cheers,
Ethelred
That said, it would be rather helpful if command-line tools would actually communicate more in plain English. Most of the commands and responses were meant to save keystrokes and be brief, and were written by geeks for geeks (so to speak).
Why write "Segmentation fault: core dumped", rather than, say, "Sorry, this program has unexpectedly quit because of a programming error"? In other words, worry less about technical accuracy in error messages and concentrate more on making the computer and OS more understandable to non-technical people.
I'm not saying bash or the other shells should be re-written that way, but it would be nice if a more newbie-friendly CLI was around.
Cheers,
Ethelred
See for yourself. (Sorry, uses Flash.) Click on the images along the right to see the various uniforms currently in use.
You can also see the military ranks here. 'Heer' is the Army, 'Luftwaffe' is the Air Force, 'Marine' is the Navy, 'Sanitaetsdienst' is the medical service.
Cheers,
Ethelred
"No better"? As someone living in Germany (and married to a German), I can hardly tell you how wrong you are. Where to begin?
America and Britain did not seek to exterminate an entire people (and nearly succeed) as the Nazis did, or summarily rape and pillage and entire city, as the Japanese did,
America and Britain did not do human wave attacks, unlike the Soviets.
America and Britain did not, as a matter of policy, summarily execute prisoners of war, as did the Soviets, Japan and the Nazis.
America and Britain did not impose dictatorships wholesale on the countries they occupied, unlike the Soviets, Nazis and Japan. Indeed, most countries the US and UK occupied got liberal democracies and independence.
Indeed, America even rebuilt its defeated enemies, gave them liberal democracies, gave them huge amounts of money and aid, defended them from the Soviets through the Cold War...need I go on?
To make the statement that America was "no better" than the Nazis, Imperial Japan or Stalinist Russia is just completely out of touch with basic facts. Yes, America and Britain did commit many crimes, like the internment of Japanese-Americans and dropping the atom bomb on civilians and firebombing German cities and so on. But on balance I'd still much rather have a world where America and the UK won, as opposed to one where the Soviets or (shudder) Nazis won, thankyouverymuch.
And given that I live in a city which was flattened by Bomber Harris, and which has Hiroshima as a partner city, I can tell you that the "defeated" Germans were in the end just as much 'winners' in the end as us Americans -- and they know it, and won't forget it easily. That's why Germany still commemorates the Berlin Airlift, Kennedy's "Berliner" speech (no, he did not say he was a jelly donut), the Marshall Plan and so on.
America little better than the Nazis? Today's Germans -- at least all the Germans I know -- would say America's a hell of a lot better.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Not interested in Imperialism? Really? Tell that to the French neo-colonies in West Africa. I wish I still had the link, I saw a great picture after France unilaterally sent troops in Cote d'Ivoire of Ivoirians holding up signs saying "Bush! Save us from the French!"
Like others have pointed out, such pictures can be misleading. How do you know the people asking for Bush's "protection" weren't supporters of one or the other faction in the civil war?
You think European economic and diplomatic power far exceeds the US? Well, the economic point is so laughable as to not even deserve refutation.
Actually, the EU's total GDP as of 1999 was about the same as that of the US; once EU enlargement takes place this year, with the accession of Poland, Hungary et. al., the EU's GDP will actually be larger than that of the US (though per capita GDP will be rather lower). Many member states export proportionally far more than the US as well -- such as Germany, for example.
Furthermore, the Euro has succeeded in becoming the largest reserve currency after the US dollar, and continues to grow in usage (one reason for the dollar's decline in value recently -- many countries are partially switching reserves to Euros to spread out their risks).
Oh, and half of the G8 are in the EU -- France, the UK, Germany and Italy.
The EU's economic influence is thus hardly "laughable" at all...
As for European diplomacy succeeding with or without American participation, one can quite easily turn your statement on its head and point out that American diplomacy doesn't work in a vacuum -- American initiatives tend to work far, far better when the Europeans are on board. Think of it as the "good cop, bad cop" routine. Worked brilliantly in Iran recently, as the Iranians agreed top open up to the IAEA (after intense consultations with EU members as well as having American troops on its borders).
A final point about 'European' diplomacy: don't forget that the EU is really just a collection of nation-states, and can only act as a unit in nearly all cases when a consensus amongst those states has been reached.
In that light, to blame "Europe" for diplomatic weakness is misguided: the EU is weak, but its individual members still have quite a lot of influence abroad -- far, far more than other countries of similar size. France, Spain and the UK all punch far above their weight, and Germany is also taking an ever higher profile in recent years.
No offense intended, but such blinkered remarks are why many non-Americans get so exasperated with us -- factually wrong (or iffy) boasts, filled with misinformed chest-pounding about our supposed achievements and so on. We as Americans do have much to be proud of, but that doesn't mean we need to overdo it -- nor does it mean we need to rub everyone else's faces in it (especially not when we claim too much credit). Not a good way to make friends and keep them.
Cheers,
Ethelred
This is great news for eastern Germany, in particular the Dresden area, which has really been on hard times since reunification. Hopefully this will also help fight the nascent neo-Nazism that was budding in Saxony for a while...that seems to have quieted down in recent years.
Cheers,
Ethelred
I know you're kidding, but seriously, the 1-pound coins really are heavy -- not quite a pound, maybe, but heavy for a coin.
I often wondered what the hell they are made of -- I'll never forget the first time someone handed me one. Pretty weird sensation when you expect it to weigh practically nothing -- and in fact it weighs quite a bit (for a coin anyway).
Doing a quick Google...ah, a 2003 pound coin (yes, they change the design every year) weighs 9.5 g and is 22.5 mm in diameter, while an American quarter weighs 5.67 g and is 24.25 mm in diameter.
The pound coin is nickel-brass alloy (copper 70%, zinc 24.5%, nickel 5.5%); the quarter is cupro-nickel clad (8.33% nickel, 91.67% copper).
Cheers,
Ethelred
FWIW Macs have more or less done this ever since OS X came out. I just nudge the power button on my Apple TFT, and the Mac instantly goes into sleep mode; nudge it again and it wakes up in about a second.
Cheers,
Ethelred
In hindsight, yes, my post could have been read that way. Sorry.
Cheers,
Ethelred