After the reboot, having kirk and spock looking longingly at each other and Uhura emerging as a the true power in the ship
Weird and a waste of time on every level IMHO. In the original Uhura, Scotty and so on were all awesome at what they did which is enough for everyone who doesn't want to put their "mark" on the story by adding an unlikely twist.
To me it seems like stuff that would have been hounded out of fanfiction ended up in the recent movies.
Are you complaining that it's crappy or are you complaining that the reboot isn't exactly like the original down to the dialog, set designs 1960s special effects and the grainy texture of mid to late 20th century recording technology? I certainly have some issues with the reboot, such as a Cadet Kirk being promoted to captain of one of Star Fleet's capital ships but the reboot still isn't that bad. The original series had some gaping plot holes and various plot defects as well.
If I wasn't replying, I'd give you a +1 for (B). Compact or not, it's a huge pain in the ass to have a bunch of those patch cables, not just for USB A but for the USB power and the HDMI as well. With points to soldier to, it'd be easy to cut cables to fit.
I created my own USB cables by buying USB connectors on Adafruit, leaving off al the plastic crap and soldering them myself using thin copper wire. That cuts the amount of space you need for the connector down from something like 4-5 cm down to 1 cm. However, those USB connectors are a bitch to solder, especially mini and micro USB. I know you can order customised raspberries but for small projects that's not practical. if you have 20 pre production prototypes to assemble for user testing then it's impractical to solder so many cables. Soldering 90 degree pins into the USB connector house on the PCB and connecting them with female pin connectors like the ones on the page in the below link is much easier.
https://buildyourcnc.com/Item/...
A/D converter? Well, there's one or two in the audio circuitry, obviously, but for something more precise there are breakout boards that can connect to the GPIO bus very easily.
Or, you can connect an Arduino to the Pi and offload the work to an independent CPU that has multiple A/D and PWM channels built-in. Some Arduino models retail at under $5 in single quantities these days.
You can either install a hat to get A/D or you can design some simple circuit board that fits on the 40 pin connectors, that's not a big deal really just an annoyance unless your A/D hat has to be installed on top of a power management hat for charging the battery. That adds another 1.5 cm to your device height. Of all the things on my wish list the ones I want most are a charging circuit and a version with device enclosure friendly USB connectors and no 40 pin connector soldered on. When you are trying to design a really compact device, those 3-4 millimetres you can shave of the height with machine pin connectors can translate into being able to fit a 8000 mah battery instead of a 4000mah one.
I got one recently and they're frickin awesome.
I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers
If they've got the USB working properly now then it's awesome. If they don't then it's useless to me. Have they got the USB working properly now?
Depends on what you mean. I connect a 2W USB WiFi board to my PI using USB and I'm getting 150mps out of it and stream video for up to a kilometer. Other than that I mostly connect keyboards, mice, external USB drives, webcams and occasionally a USB sound card. Of course I'm not constantly plugging, un-plugging and then and re-plugin my connected devices at runtime but up until now I have had no problems.
I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers pointing out how you can get faster/cheaper things which blow the Pi away.
Sure you can, but it's under 30 quid, more than fast enough for what I want and has an excellent user community and documentation. I don't really care about shaving 50% off something already really cheap especially when it will inevitably cost me much more time in even the short term.
Oh also, the kernel provides access to GPIOs in/sys/class/gpio, including select() to wait for edge events. How cool is that? I never knew and that's going to save time screwing around with, well, GPIOs.
For the most part I agree. Unfortunately the main reason I use the PI is simply because of the widespread community support and the avaialbility of software for it. The PI is not without flaws. For one thing the PI has no A/D converter which is a major flaw from my point of view. It also has no internal charging circuit, the CHIP 9 Dollar computer has one and that's a big plus for the CHIP. Finally I'd like a version of the PI to be available off the shelf:
A) without those clunky old 40 pin strips soldered on. There are quite a few hat boards that you could mount 3-4 mm closer to the PI main board if you used machine pin header and connector strips.
B) With no USB-A connectors soldered on. That way I could solder some kind of pin into the holes the where the connectors of the USB-A socket go and use a ribbon cable to connect the PI to external USB devices. That would make the job of cramming the PI into the most compact possible device enclosure much easier than if you are using big and clunky USB-A patch cables.
They saw these options as "meddling with nature," even though we've been using technology to enhance our lives for thousands of years.
Call me a luddite but comparing the selective breeding we've been doing for thousands of years with livestock, for example, to the ability to insert cat and lizard DNA into a fertilised human egg cell and produce people that can see in the dark and regrow severed limbs is like comparing a stone hand-axe to a chain saw. When you are able to modify the human genome on that level you would be well advised to be agonisingly careful.
Have fun not owning a smartphone then. Every other phone on the market now seems to be an almost exact copy of the iPhone 6. Look at the Galaxy Note 7 and Galaxy S7 -- indistinguishable aside from the pointless wrapping screen that people crack all the time. No way Samsung isn't going to go to USB-C -- the reversible connector that Apple designed and donated to the USB group.
... so why shouldn't Samsung? Then there is the option of puting a USB-C connector on the iPhone 7 (the plug looks small enough) and Samsung does that as well everybody will follow them in which case people could use ubiquitous wired headphones on what ever device they have. Once that happens all people have to piss and moan about is having to unplug the headphones to charge the phone which does not concern me since I have been using Bluetooth headphones for years.
There are other polinators. And there are plants thriving in areas without large natural bee populations. The result would be bad, but lying about it just weakens your stance.
That is actually true but none of them are a really replacement for bees. In China this problem collapsing pollinator populations (read: bees for the most part) and gross overuse of pesticides has gotten so bad that farmers are pollinating their orchards by hand using a brush:
https://www.chinadialogue.net/...
In some regions school kids get time off school every year to go into the fields with a brush and pollinate the flowers of domesticated plants. The best way to solve this problem is to create patches of meadows and forest to act as habitat for pollinators as well as predators like bats and birds who could eliminate the need for a lot of pesticide spraying and save farmers huge amounts of money. Of course that would put some major dents into the bottom lines of large swaths of the chemical industry and we can't have that now can we? Why listen to a 'scientist' when your local Monsanto rep knows better?
DDT could save millions of lives. We tossed that to the side because of shaky science. Now we have Zika and that fix is killing bees.
So do we go back to ddt? Or just suffer the effects of Zika?
Bees are a key pollinator, just ask any farmer. Farmers actually hire beekeepers to come to their farms and set up their bee colonies to pollinate the crops. That is most bee keeper's main source of income, not honey production which is a side business. I know that there are people in the US who really like massive 'overwhelming firepower' type solutions but if it wasn't obvious before, it should be obvious now, that there are better ways of solving the Zika problem than to carpet bomb an entire state with pesticides, decimate the bee population and screwing up the lives of farmers who have enough problems already.
I don't follow European news, but I doubt that very much. The UK is ~14% of the total GDP of the EU (second largest in the EU): it dropping out without replacing the existing trade deals would be a massive economic blow to the EU. The EU may want to punish the UK for leaving, but I doubt they'd do it at the risk of collapsing the EU economy.
"The EU" doesn't want to punish the UK, a few eurocrats in Brussels and guys like Drunker might want to in order to scare others into staying, but a couple of leaders like Merkel and Hollande have already sat them down hard.
You can bet your bottom dollar that: the UK will be significantly worse off than the EU when brexit is finally realised for the simple reason that you cannot expect to leave the country club and retain all of your member rights. Furthermore the EU will not collapse as a result of this, there will be no 'hard Brexit' (unless the UK leadership has been beaten over the head with a stupid stick) and eventually, however much May denies it, the UK will end up with some equivalent of the 'Norwegian model'. That last bit basically means the UK will have a limited EU membership where it gets some immigration controls and pays for them with restrictions in other freedoms like for example no or limited passporting for UK banks and limited freedom for services. Another price the UK will pay is that where the US previously regarded the UK as their special friend in the EU that role will be taken over by some other country. My money is on Poland because the US needs a new contact inside the EU political decision making structure and Poland needs solid US support against a belligerent Russia. As for the UK Leave camp I think it is time for them to learn an American word:
backsliding
Noun
An occasion on which one backslides, shirks responsibility; reneges on one's obligations or commitments.
Half of Japan's investments into EU have gone into Britain, seeing as a gateway to the EU. Now they are scared shitless that they have bet on the wrong horse. EU tariffs on cars and other products produced in GB means all those factories were built on the wrong side of the channel.
Well to be fair to the Japanese, they invested in the UK based on it's reputation for political stability. How were they supposed to know that 30 years down the line the UK would be ruled by a league of demagogues with a compulsive foot-shooting complex and the foresight and planning ability of an amoeba?
As much as i like bats as any other person, they are the most popular remaining source of rabies in the developed world.
Bats also eat thousands and thousands of tons of insects that otherwise would wipe out our crops. They are extremely useful creatures. I think we can put up with the relatively insignificant annoyance of a few of them having rabies, especially in view of the fact that we have had a rabies vaccine since 1885.
This announcement makes perfect sense if you think of it as a move in the game of chess between Apple and the EU.
Despite his public proclamations and rhetoric, Tim Cook knows that the EU investigation into the tax deal between Ireland and Apple is absolutely not, "political crap" and he's had now enough time for his lawyers to tell him so. That event is an issue between the EU and Ireland and, in a sense, has nothing to do with Apple. The problem for Cook, then, is what to do? He can't put Apple in the middle of the dispute with the EU. He has no options.
Except one.
He can go to the US government to ask for help. "Hey Barak, that sweet deal we had with Ireland, the one that is letting us be profitable and employ lots of Americans? It's going south. Can you help?"
Obama isn't stupid either. He knows that now that the wheels are in motion, Apple is going to have to pay some taxes to someone - and Obama would rather the someone was the US Federal Government and not the Irish government. So what we're seeing now is Apple asking Washington for help. Washington have said, "Sure, we can help. But of course you're going to have to pay some tax somewhere..."
So Tim Cook has made this announcement about repatriation to show Barak that he's serious. Washington will now attempt to apply pressure to Brussels in order to get the EU to back down and allow Apple to continue to operate across the EU, all whilst paying less than 1% Corporation Tax. Meanwhile, Apple will repatriate some of their profits, which the US will tax, as part of the arrangements.
At least, that's their plan. However, bear in mind that the EU are just in the process of throwing out TTIP, which is going to make any attempt by the US to negotiate forcefully absolutely fraught with danger. The worst possible thing would be for the US to try and apply pressure right now: all they will do is make the entire EU mad at them. The only potential ally they would have had, the UK, is in the process of leaving the EU [with the planned start of Article 50 to commence in the New Year].
But the thing that all us little people need to remember here is that every pound, euro or dollar in tax that Apple "avoids", well that's a pound, euro or dollar that we have to find. When companies don't pull their weight, tax-wise, the private individuals are the ones who get stung. You only need to look at the international tax arrangements of the big multinationals to realise what a joke this process has become. What we need is a clear, internationally-agreed law that says that for tax purposes, a transaction occurs at the location that the buyer initiates the transaction. [ Turning that around, and saying that it is where the seller processes the transaction achieves nothing: Apple and others would just put their transaction processing system in a tax haven ].
The interesting thing is that these practices cost "local" tax payers HUGE amounts of extra taxes. So it's entirely possible that what we're seeing here could set a precedent that benefits 500 million people across the EU... Let's hope so...
You seem to be trying to make the case that all Apple thinks all it has to do is move all it's billions to the US, play the US off against the Europeans and their piles of cash will be safe from the EU. Even if that assessment is true I'm having trouble believing that the US leadership can possibly be that short sighted since it would sour their relationship with a whole string of their oldest and most important allies (although I have no trouble believing President Trump would be that stupid). Apple (along with a whole bunch of other corps) has the problem that they have used these questionable methods to get out of paying taxes in the EU and US for years but now the displeased citizenry both in the EU as well as the US has lit some major fires under the collective asses of their elected leaders they are finding they racked up a huge bill. If Apple tries to play off
Go and survey all the apes in the wild. Everything from murder to falling out of trees, to predators, to falling-out-of-trees-while-fleeing-predators.
Most animals DO NOT die of old-age. That's a very human-centric view.
Only since quite recently, as early as the 1950s the world average life expectancy was 48 (today it's 67). During the early middle ages people tended to die around 40-45 years of age. Palaeolithic hunter gatherers in Europe, both H. Sapiens and H. Neanderthalis did not usually live much past 30-35 or so. They usually died with badly worn teeth, abscesses, bones that show healed fractures, starvation marks and severe arthritis while child mortality was simply frightening.
Why is that a bad thing? Is Java better because Oracle owns it?
It probably isn't, come to that. C has many obvious advantages - it is easy to learn, it is low-level, so programs tend to be fast, the system calls of most OSes are directly accessible from C. The downside is that because it is so easy to learn, it also invites the inexperienced programmer to commit dangerous errors, that can sometimes be hard to pin down. Many of the better class of new languages try to address these problems, although I am not convinced that the solutions are always worth the cost. The best, new feature, in my view, is the introduction of exception handling in Java, C++, Python and other languages.
Exceptions or something like them would be nice to have in C (I'm sure that's not possible for some extremely good technical reason but a guy can dream). However, the thing about C that annoys me the most is the fact that I have two re-invent the wheel all the time, that, introduce libraries to the project or write my own utility libraries. The thing I think C is missing the most is a major extension of it's standard library. C++ for example is full of utility libraries with functions to do small mundane tasks like check strings. Things that can be finished off by one call to a utility function that is part of the standard library in C++ can only be solved in C by either writing several lines of code or including an external dependency that may or may not compile when you move to some other platform and even if it does the behaviour may not be the same. Headaches with different Lex/Yacc implementations spring to mind and even with the same Lex/Yacc implementation behaving differently on, say Linux and AIX or Solaris, the list of headaches connected to external dependencies is long. Also there is a lot of things that can be solved in a single assignment in C++ that can only be done in a much more clunky way in C.
+50... Exactly. Fucking Apple, they just can't help themselves. F1-F12 have been working pretty well so let's change it!
The function keys will still be there, just in touch screen form and since nobody uses the function keys for speed typing I don't see why you are raising such a stink over this.
...Yep, the same French government that is going to be taking a lead role in the Article 50 negotiations governing Brexit, already seems to be taking a hardline stance on the potential terms and, like all other members of the EU, has the ability to veto any deal that might be negotiated over Brexit. That all bodes well for a better Brexit deal with lower trade tariffs than the WTO default, doesn't it?
Anybody who thinks the UK will get some sort of sweetheart deal on access to the common market is delusional...the same goes for anybody who thinks that only getting access to the common market on WTO defaults won't have an impact on the UK economy because UK trade in goods and services with the EU is so minimal as to be unimportant. I'm pretty sure the negotiations about a post Brexit relationship with the EU nations will not be hallmarked by the EU doing Britain any favours. These negotiations will be long be hard and quite mercilessly focused on what's in the best interest of the EU and as the negotiations drag on the uncertainty over what future they will face will either deter companies from making investments in the UK or if they have UK based operations they will simply move those operations elsewhere in Europe where the political classes are less likely to shoot themselves in both feet.
Meanwhile, having annoyed the Chinese, Theresa May is now apparently trying to improve relations with Russia which, while it definitely needs to happen in its own right, doesn't exactly scan well in connection with alienating the Chinese the week prior.
Not to mention that fact that normalising relations with Russia as long as the Ukrainian wound continues to fester will piss off a whole string off their allies, most of whom the UK will be conducting sensitive trade and economic negotiations that will severely affect the economic future of the UK for the foreseeable future.
That means the kids that actually learn Arduino programming and make sumo bots are Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians!
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
His statement is also flawed, he said "Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians". It stands to reason that any Alien Technomancer Magician who came to visit earth, being essentially an alien nerd, would naturally become a member of the biggest gathering of nerds on the planet earth, i.e.Slashdot and if this Alien Technomancer Magician didn't pass the rigorous admission process all members Slashdot must undergo he would really be a fraud, not a real nerd and certainly not a 'Techno Mancer'. Since it is a well know fact that no Slashdot member, like all nerds throughout the universe, has any kind of a sex life that involves partner these Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians Lumpy speaks of cannot possibly exist. Now some of you might be tempted to ask: "But what if the species the Alien Technomancer Magician belongs to is asexual?". Asexual species don't really 'fuck' themselves to reproduce since that would involve a partner and an exchange of DNA but they do snog and exchange DNA so even if you define that as 'fucking', this hypothetical Fucking Alien Technomancer Magician would still need a partner which means he could never attain the title Technomancer Magician because in order to attain that title you must be a nerd and as was previously mentioned, it is a well known fact that nowhere in the universe do nerds have sex with partners. Thus it is quite clear that the titles 'fucker" and 'Technomancer Magician" are mutually exclusive.
I'm not sure locking the car will make any difference. My guess is they can hack into the electronic ignition they can hack into the electronic door locks as well.
I'm still looking forward to the day when I'll be able to pull this prank:
With self driving cars one would not have to hack the ignition or even need a rock. If you can hack the autopilot in these things you don't even have to drive the car to the chop shop or even come close enough to drop a rock in the driver's seat. You just have to hack the car's autopilot from a safe distance, disable the trackers and tell the thing where to go. I'm sure there will be a complete malware package for this compete with side-loaded Android app. Joining the classic car club and buying an old completely analog car is beginning to have a certain appeal.
The irony here is they can extradite someone who links to things but not an actual child rapist such as Roman Polanski who is evading US justice in Poland.
Time for a Roman Polandski child rapist meme. Bonus points if you can work a pun about "poles" in
He avoids US justice in Poland because he greased a few Poles.
If making a success of Brexit means selling the UK high tech sector off to Asia in bits and pieces we are all going to have to re-examine our definition of 'success'.
It's not up to the whole UK whether or not to sell ARM to Asia so there's no need to re-examine the definition of "success". But if you would prefer that corporations not sell themselves to foreign companies then I suggest that the UK reduce taxes on those corporations and focus their educational system on STEM-- both of which are strategies that the UK is now free to pursue thanks to its independence from the EU.
UK companies can 'sell themselves' to any foreign corporation they want. I just find it amusing how May and the Conservative party went from being willing to veto the sale of companies important to British communities and workers to telling us that the way to a succesful Brexit is to flog the UK high tech industry (i.e. Companies important to British communities and workers) off to the highest bidder.
Did they use the cheap pound to shop a british company?
Just days ago May made a stirring speech where she said No. 10 should be anle to step in if foreigners tried to buy companies important to British communities and workers. Now, apparently, No. 10 approved the sale to demonstrate conclusively that: "...the UK can make a success of leaving the EU". If making a success of Brexit means selling the UK high tech sector off to Asia in bits and pieces we are all going to have to re-examine our definition of 'success'.
...and if they are reluctant to take responsibility like Johnson and Farage have been they should be forced to
First of all, I'm not aware of any democratic system since ancient Greece or Rome that contemplates the power to compel a citizen to serve as an official against his or her will. That alone would be pretty remarkable. I'm not sure such a thing would be consistent with the UNCHR or the ECHR (to which the UK is still bound).
Second, if those were indeed the terms, the Referendum Act of Parliament probably should have mentioned them. Compelled service aside, now you're talking about surprise compelled service:-)
And yet it has already happened hasn't it? The Brexiteers have been forced to face the music. Cameron effectively stiffed the Brexit camp with article 50 when he resigned and put the burden of it all on the Brexiteers. Ever since the Brexiteers have been circling article 50 it like a pack of hungry wolves circling a side of beef but too afraid to approach it because it's roasting over a fire. What I still don't understand about the Brexit movement is what they thought would happen after a Brexit? The confusion was so complete and so obvious and their lack of any plan was so evident that it has now drained support for other exit movements clear across Europe. The only thing the Brexiteers could come up with was complaining that Cameron had not had a post Brexit plan, but weren't they supposed to be the people with the post Brexit plan? So what are they whining about? Well, they are slowly beginning to realise that If they activate article 50 there might be an avalanche of unintended consequences before Britain becomes the post Brexit land of wine and honey. Scotland might declare independence, god knows what will happen to the fragile peace in Ireland if the N-Irish Catholics want to do the same as the Scots and then reunite with the Irish Republic, there might be a recession which is never likely to increase your popularity, job losses due to broken trade agreements which does not help to lessen any recession, etc... If, However, if the Brexiteers don't activate article 50, which they are now stuck with having to do, they are done for and that's worse because it means the end of their careers. Boris Johnson tried to duck for cover and it cost him the position of PM and the current PM does not even trust him with the full portfolio of tasks a foreign minister is supposed to perform. Even the Brexiteers now revile him as a traitor. Meanwhile Nigel Farage just scurried off under a rock. Any other Brexiteer who watched that process unfold realised there is only one choice now because they sure as shit aren't going to commit career suicide. All they can do is step up, put their money where their mouth has been for decades, lead the charge on Brexit and hope it will be a success because the Remainers sure as shit aren't going to do this for them. Even if Brexit could be a success if you do everything the Brexit camp preached like unilaterally drop all tariffs and stick it out for 20 years people aren't going to care. Their patience will run out during the first year of any post-Brexit recession.
Slashdot Mirror
Weird and a waste of time on every level IMHO. In the original Uhura, Scotty and so on were all awesome at what they did which is enough for everyone who doesn't want to put their "mark" on the story by adding an unlikely twist. To me it seems like stuff that would have been hounded out of fanfiction ended up in the recent movies.
Are you complaining that it's crappy or are you complaining that the reboot isn't exactly like the original down to the dialog, set designs 1960s special effects and the grainy texture of mid to late 20th century recording technology? I certainly have some issues with the reboot, such as a Cadet Kirk being promoted to captain of one of Star Fleet's capital ships but the reboot still isn't that bad. The original series had some gaping plot holes and various plot defects as well.
If I wasn't replying, I'd give you a +1 for (B). Compact or not, it's a huge pain in the ass to have a bunch of those patch cables, not just for USB A but for the USB power and the HDMI as well. With points to soldier to, it'd be easy to cut cables to fit.
I created my own USB cables by buying USB connectors on Adafruit, leaving off al the plastic crap and soldering them myself using thin copper wire. That cuts the amount of space you need for the connector down from something like 4-5 cm down to 1 cm. However, those USB connectors are a bitch to solder, especially mini and micro USB. I know you can order customised raspberries but for small projects that's not practical. if you have 20 pre production prototypes to assemble for user testing then it's impractical to solder so many cables. Soldering 90 degree pins into the USB connector house on the PCB and connecting them with female pin connectors like the ones on the page in the below link is much easier. https://buildyourcnc.com/Item/...
A) and B) sound like the $5 Pi Zero.
A/D converter? Well, there's one or two in the audio circuitry, obviously, but for something more precise there are breakout boards that can connect to the GPIO bus very easily.
Or, you can connect an Arduino to the Pi and offload the work to an independent CPU that has multiple A/D and PWM channels built-in. Some Arduino models retail at under $5 in single quantities these days.
You can either install a hat to get A/D or you can design some simple circuit board that fits on the 40 pin connectors, that's not a big deal really just an annoyance unless your A/D hat has to be installed on top of a power management hat for charging the battery. That adds another 1.5 cm to your device height. Of all the things on my wish list the ones I want most are a charging circuit and a version with device enclosure friendly USB connectors and no 40 pin connector soldered on. When you are trying to design a really compact device, those 3-4 millimetres you can shave of the height with machine pin connectors can translate into being able to fit a 8000 mah battery instead of a 4000mah one.
I got one recently and they're frickin awesome. I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers
If they've got the USB working properly now then it's awesome. If they don't then it's useless to me. Have they got the USB working properly now?
Depends on what you mean. I connect a 2W USB WiFi board to my PI using USB and I'm getting 150mps out of it and stream video for up to a kilometer. Other than that I mostly connect keyboards, mice, external USB drives, webcams and occasionally a USB sound card. Of course I'm not constantly plugging, un-plugging and then and re-plugin my connected devices at runtime but up until now I have had no problems.
I got one recently and they're frickin awesome.
I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers pointing out how you can get faster/cheaper things which blow the Pi away.
Sure you can, but it's under 30 quid, more than fast enough for what I want and has an excellent user community and documentation. I don't really care about shaving 50% off something already really cheap especially when it will inevitably cost me much more time in even the short term.
Oh also, the kernel provides access to GPIOs in /sys/class/gpio, including select() to wait for edge events. How cool is that? I never knew and that's going to save time screwing around with, well, GPIOs.
For the most part I agree. Unfortunately the main reason I use the PI is simply because of the widespread community support and the avaialbility of software for it. The PI is not without flaws. For one thing the PI has no A/D converter which is a major flaw from my point of view. It also has no internal charging circuit, the CHIP 9 Dollar computer has one and that's a big plus for the CHIP. Finally I'd like a version of the PI to be available off the shelf:
They saw these options as "meddling with nature," even though we've been using technology to enhance our lives for thousands of years.
Call me a luddite but comparing the selective breeding we've been doing for thousands of years with livestock, for example, to the ability to insert cat and lizard DNA into a fertilised human egg cell and produce people that can see in the dark and regrow severed limbs is like comparing a stone hand-axe to a chain saw. When you are able to modify the human genome on that level you would be well advised to be agonisingly careful.
Have fun not owning a smartphone then. Every other phone on the market now seems to be an almost exact copy of the iPhone 6. Look at the Galaxy Note 7 and Galaxy S7 -- indistinguishable aside from the pointless wrapping screen that people crack all the time. No way Samsung isn't going to go to USB-C -- the reversible connector that Apple designed and donated to the USB group.
Well everybody else seems to be going with USB-C:
... so why shouldn't Samsung? Then there is the option of puting a USB-C connector on the iPhone 7 (the plug looks small enough) and Samsung does that as well everybody will follow them in which case people could use ubiquitous wired headphones on what ever device they have. Once that happens all people have to piss and moan about is having to unplug the headphones to charge the phone which does not concern me since I have been using Bluetooth headphones for years.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6...
Without bees there is no food.
There are other polinators. And there are plants thriving in areas without large natural bee populations. The result would be bad, but lying about it just weakens your stance.
That is actually true but none of them are a really replacement for bees. In China this problem collapsing pollinator populations (read: bees for the most part) and gross overuse of pesticides has gotten so bad that farmers are pollinating their orchards by hand using a brush: https://www.chinadialogue.net/... In some regions school kids get time off school every year to go into the fields with a brush and pollinate the flowers of domesticated plants. The best way to solve this problem is to create patches of meadows and forest to act as habitat for pollinators as well as predators like bats and birds who could eliminate the need for a lot of pesticide spraying and save farmers huge amounts of money. Of course that would put some major dents into the bottom lines of large swaths of the chemical industry and we can't have that now can we? Why listen to a 'scientist' when your local Monsanto rep knows better?
DDT could save millions of lives. We tossed that to the side because of shaky science. Now we have Zika and that fix is killing bees.
So do we go back to ddt? Or just suffer the effects of Zika?
Bees are a key pollinator, just ask any farmer. Farmers actually hire beekeepers to come to their farms and set up their bee colonies to pollinate the crops. That is most bee keeper's main source of income, not honey production which is a side business. I know that there are people in the US who really like massive 'overwhelming firepower' type solutions but if it wasn't obvious before, it should be obvious now, that there are better ways of solving the Zika problem than to carpet bomb an entire state with pesticides, decimate the bee population and screwing up the lives of farmers who have enough problems already.
I don't follow European news, but I doubt that very much. The UK is ~14% of the total GDP of the EU (second largest in the EU): it dropping out without replacing the existing trade deals would be a massive economic blow to the EU. The EU may want to punish the UK for leaving, but I doubt they'd do it at the risk of collapsing the EU economy.
"The EU" doesn't want to punish the UK, a few eurocrats in Brussels and guys like Drunker might want to in order to scare others into staying, but a couple of leaders like Merkel and Hollande have already sat them down hard.
You can bet your bottom dollar that: the UK will be significantly worse off than the EU when brexit is finally realised for the simple reason that you cannot expect to leave the country club and retain all of your member rights. Furthermore the EU will not collapse as a result of this, there will be no 'hard Brexit' (unless the UK leadership has been beaten over the head with a stupid stick) and eventually, however much May denies it, the UK will end up with some equivalent of the 'Norwegian model'. That last bit basically means the UK will have a limited EU membership where it gets some immigration controls and pays for them with restrictions in other freedoms like for example no or limited passporting for UK banks and limited freedom for services. Another price the UK will pay is that where the US previously regarded the UK as their special friend in the EU that role will be taken over by some other country. My money is on Poland because the US needs a new contact inside the EU political decision making structure and Poland needs solid US support against a belligerent Russia. As for the UK Leave camp I think it is time for them to learn an American word:
backsliding
Half of Japan's investments into EU have gone into Britain, seeing as a gateway to the EU. Now they are scared shitless that they have bet on the wrong horse. EU tariffs on cars and other products produced in GB means all those factories were built on the wrong side of the channel.
Well to be fair to the Japanese, they invested in the UK based on it's reputation for political stability. How were they supposed to know that 30 years down the line the UK would be ruled by a league of demagogues with a compulsive foot-shooting complex and the foresight and planning ability of an amoeba?
As much as i like bats as any other person, they are the most popular remaining source of rabies in the developed world.
Bats also eat thousands and thousands of tons of insects that otherwise would wipe out our crops. They are extremely useful creatures. I think we can put up with the relatively insignificant annoyance of a few of them having rabies, especially in view of the fact that we have had a rabies vaccine since 1885.
This announcement makes perfect sense if you think of it as a move in the game of chess between Apple and the EU.
Despite his public proclamations and rhetoric, Tim Cook knows that the EU investigation into the tax deal between Ireland and Apple is absolutely not, "political crap" and he's had now enough time for his lawyers to tell him so. That event is an issue between the EU and Ireland and, in a sense, has nothing to do with Apple. The problem for Cook, then, is what to do? He can't put Apple in the middle of the dispute with the EU. He has no options.
Except one.
He can go to the US government to ask for help. "Hey Barak, that sweet deal we had with Ireland, the one that is letting us be profitable and employ lots of Americans? It's going south. Can you help?"
Obama isn't stupid either. He knows that now that the wheels are in motion, Apple is going to have to pay some taxes to someone - and Obama would rather the someone was the US Federal Government and not the Irish government. So what we're seeing now is Apple asking Washington for help. Washington have said, "Sure, we can help. But of course you're going to have to pay some tax somewhere..."
So Tim Cook has made this announcement about repatriation to show Barak that he's serious. Washington will now attempt to apply pressure to Brussels in order to get the EU to back down and allow Apple to continue to operate across the EU, all whilst paying less than 1% Corporation Tax. Meanwhile, Apple will repatriate some of their profits, which the US will tax, as part of the arrangements.
At least, that's their plan. However, bear in mind that the EU are just in the process of throwing out TTIP, which is going to make any attempt by the US to negotiate forcefully absolutely fraught with danger. The worst possible thing would be for the US to try and apply pressure right now: all they will do is make the entire EU mad at them. The only potential ally they would have had, the UK, is in the process of leaving the EU [with the planned start of Article 50 to commence in the New Year].
But the thing that all us little people need to remember here is that every pound, euro or dollar in tax that Apple "avoids", well that's a pound, euro or dollar that we have to find. When companies don't pull their weight, tax-wise, the private individuals are the ones who get stung. You only need to look at the international tax arrangements of the big multinationals to realise what a joke this process has become. What we need is a clear, internationally-agreed law that says that for tax purposes, a transaction occurs at the location that the buyer initiates the transaction. [ Turning that around, and saying that it is where the seller processes the transaction achieves nothing: Apple and others would just put their transaction processing system in a tax haven ].
The interesting thing is that these practices cost "local" tax payers HUGE amounts of extra taxes. So it's entirely possible that what we're seeing here could set a precedent that benefits 500 million people across the EU... Let's hope so...
You seem to be trying to make the case that all Apple thinks all it has to do is move all it's billions to the US, play the US off against the Europeans and their piles of cash will be safe from the EU. Even if that assessment is true I'm having trouble believing that the US leadership can possibly be that short sighted since it would sour their relationship with a whole string of their oldest and most important allies (although I have no trouble believing President Trump would be that stupid). Apple (along with a whole bunch of other corps) has the problem that they have used these questionable methods to get out of paying taxes in the EU and US for years but now the displeased citizenry both in the EU as well as the US has lit some major fires under the collective asses of their elected leaders they are finding they racked up a huge bill. If Apple tries to play off
Half Of People Click Anything Sent To Them
Actually 49.5% of people click anything sent to them, another 49.5% double click anything sent to them. The remaining 1% are nerds who know better.
Everyone dies of something.
Go and survey all the apes in the wild. Everything from murder to falling out of trees, to predators, to falling-out-of-trees-while-fleeing-predators.
Most animals DO NOT die of old-age. That's a very human-centric view.
Only since quite recently, as early as the 1950s the world average life expectancy was 48 (today it's 67). During the early middle ages people tended to die around 40-45 years of age. Palaeolithic hunter gatherers in Europe, both H. Sapiens and H. Neanderthalis did not usually live much past 30-35 or so. They usually died with badly worn teeth, abscesses, bones that show healed fractures, starvation marks and severe arthritis while child mortality was simply frightening.
C doesn't have a corporate sponsor.
Why is that a bad thing? Is Java better because Oracle owns it?
It probably isn't, come to that. C has many obvious advantages - it is easy to learn, it is low-level, so programs tend to be fast, the system calls of most OSes are directly accessible from C. The downside is that because it is so easy to learn, it also invites the inexperienced programmer to commit dangerous errors, that can sometimes be hard to pin down. Many of the better class of new languages try to address these problems, although I am not convinced that the solutions are always worth the cost. The best, new feature, in my view, is the introduction of exception handling in Java, C++, Python and other languages.
Exceptions or something like them would be nice to have in C (I'm sure that's not possible for some extremely good technical reason but a guy can dream). However, the thing about C that annoys me the most is the fact that I have two re-invent the wheel all the time, that, introduce libraries to the project or write my own utility libraries. The thing I think C is missing the most is a major extension of it's standard library. C++ for example is full of utility libraries with functions to do small mundane tasks like check strings. Things that can be finished off by one call to a utility function that is part of the standard library in C++ can only be solved in C by either writing several lines of code or including an external dependency that may or may not compile when you move to some other platform and even if it does the behaviour may not be the same. Headaches with different Lex/Yacc implementations spring to mind and even with the same Lex/Yacc implementation behaving differently on, say Linux and AIX or Solaris, the list of headaches connected to external dependencies is long. Also there is a lot of things that can be solved in a single assignment in C++ that can only be done in a much more clunky way in C.
+50... Exactly. Fucking Apple, they just can't help themselves. F1-F12 have been working pretty well so let's change it!
The function keys will still be there, just in touch screen form and since nobody uses the function keys for speed typing I don't see why you are raising such a stink over this.
...Yep, the same French government that is going to be taking a lead role in the Article 50 negotiations governing Brexit, already seems to be taking a hardline stance on the potential terms and, like all other members of the EU, has the ability to veto any deal that might be negotiated over Brexit. That all bodes well for a better Brexit deal with lower trade tariffs than the WTO default, doesn't it?
Anybody who thinks the UK will get some sort of sweetheart deal on access to the common market is delusional ...the same goes for anybody who thinks that only getting access to the common market on WTO defaults won't have an impact on the UK economy because UK trade in goods and services with the EU is so minimal as to be unimportant. I'm pretty sure the negotiations about a post Brexit relationship with the EU nations will not be hallmarked by the EU doing Britain any favours. These negotiations will be long be hard and quite mercilessly focused on what's in the best interest of the EU and as the negotiations drag on the uncertainty over what future they will face will either deter companies from making investments in the UK or if they have UK based operations they will simply move those operations elsewhere in Europe where the political classes are less likely to shoot themselves in both feet.
Meanwhile, having annoyed the Chinese, Theresa May is now apparently trying to improve relations with Russia which, while it definitely needs to happen in its own right, doesn't exactly scan well in connection with alienating the Chinese the week prior.
Not to mention that fact that normalising relations with Russia as long as the Ukrainian wound continues to fester will piss off a whole string off their allies, most of whom the UK will be conducting sensitive trade and economic negotiations that will severely affect the economic future of the UK for the foreseeable future.
Grats, you just fucked poor people who can't afford better cars and gave rich people that make enough to not care a free pass.
Grats, you just discovered how capitalism works.
That means the kids that actually learn Arduino programming and make sumo bots are Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians!
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
His statement is also flawed, he said "Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians". It stands to reason that any Alien Technomancer Magician who came to visit earth, being essentially an alien nerd, would naturally become a member of the biggest gathering of nerds on the planet earth, i.e.Slashdot and if this Alien Technomancer Magician didn't pass the rigorous admission process all members Slashdot must undergo he would really be a fraud, not a real nerd and certainly not a 'Techno Mancer'. Since it is a well know fact that no Slashdot member, like all nerds throughout the universe, has any kind of a sex life that involves partner these Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians Lumpy speaks of cannot possibly exist. Now some of you might be tempted to ask: "But what if the species the Alien Technomancer Magician belongs to is asexual?". Asexual species don't really 'fuck' themselves to reproduce since that would involve a partner and an exchange of DNA but they do snog and exchange DNA so even if you define that as 'fucking', this hypothetical Fucking Alien Technomancer Magician would still need a partner which means he could never attain the title Technomancer Magician because in order to attain that title you must be a nerd and as was previously mentioned, it is a well known fact that nowhere in the universe do nerds have sex with partners. Thus it is quite clear that the titles 'fucker" and 'Technomancer Magician" are mutually exclusive.
I'm not sure locking the car will make any difference. My guess is they can hack into the electronic ignition they can hack into the electronic door locks as well.
I'm still looking forward to the day when I'll be able to pull this prank:
http://xkcd.com/1559/
With self driving cars one would not have to hack the ignition or even need a rock. If you can hack the autopilot in these things you don't even have to drive the car to the chop shop or even come close enough to drop a rock in the driver's seat. You just have to hack the car's autopilot from a safe distance, disable the trackers and tell the thing where to go. I'm sure there will be a complete malware package for this compete with side-loaded Android app. Joining the classic car club and buying an old completely analog car is beginning to have a certain appeal.
The irony here is they can extradite someone who links to things but not an actual child rapist such as Roman Polanski who is evading US justice in Poland.
Time for a Roman Polandski child rapist meme. Bonus points if you can work a pun about "poles" in
He avoids US justice in Poland because he greased a few Poles.
If making a success of Brexit means selling the UK high tech sector off to Asia in bits and pieces we are all going to have to re-examine our definition of 'success'.
It's not up to the whole UK whether or not to sell ARM to Asia so there's no need to re-examine the definition of "success". But if you would prefer that corporations not sell themselves to foreign companies then I suggest that the UK reduce taxes on those corporations and focus their educational system on STEM-- both of which are strategies that the UK is now free to pursue thanks to its independence from the EU.
UK companies can 'sell themselves' to any foreign corporation they want. I just find it amusing how May and the Conservative party went from being willing to veto the sale of companies important to British communities and workers to telling us that the way to a succesful Brexit is to flog the UK high tech industry (i.e. Companies important to British communities and workers) off to the highest bidder.
Did they use the cheap pound to shop a british company?
Just days ago May made a stirring speech where she said No. 10 should be anle to step in if foreigners tried to buy companies important to British communities and workers. Now, apparently, No. 10 approved the sale to demonstrate conclusively that: "...the UK can make a success of leaving the EU". If making a success of Brexit means selling the UK high tech sector off to Asia in bits and pieces we are all going to have to re-examine our definition of 'success'.
...and if they are reluctant to take responsibility like Johnson and Farage have been they should be forced to
First of all, I'm not aware of any democratic system since ancient Greece or Rome that contemplates the power to compel a citizen to serve as an official against his or her will. That alone would be pretty remarkable. I'm not sure such a thing would be consistent with the UNCHR or the ECHR (to which the UK is still bound).
Second, if those were indeed the terms, the Referendum Act of Parliament probably should have mentioned them. Compelled service aside, now you're talking about surprise compelled service :-)
And yet it has already happened hasn't it? The Brexiteers have been forced to face the music. Cameron effectively stiffed the Brexit camp with article 50 when he resigned and put the burden of it all on the Brexiteers. Ever since the Brexiteers have been circling article 50 it like a pack of hungry wolves circling a side of beef but too afraid to approach it because it's roasting over a fire. What I still don't understand about the Brexit movement is what they thought would happen after a Brexit? The confusion was so complete and so obvious and their lack of any plan was so evident that it has now drained support for other exit movements clear across Europe. The only thing the Brexiteers could come up with was complaining that Cameron had not had a post Brexit plan, but weren't they supposed to be the people with the post Brexit plan? So what are they whining about? Well, they are slowly beginning to realise that If they activate article 50 there might be an avalanche of unintended consequences before Britain becomes the post Brexit land of wine and honey. Scotland might declare independence, god knows what will happen to the fragile peace in Ireland if the N-Irish Catholics want to do the same as the Scots and then reunite with the Irish Republic, there might be a recession which is never likely to increase your popularity, job losses due to broken trade agreements which does not help to lessen any recession, etc... If, However, if the Brexiteers don't activate article 50, which they are now stuck with having to do, they are done for and that's worse because it means the end of their careers. Boris Johnson tried to duck for cover and it cost him the position of PM and the current PM does not even trust him with the full portfolio of tasks a foreign minister is supposed to perform. Even the Brexiteers now revile him as a traitor. Meanwhile Nigel Farage just scurried off under a rock. Any other Brexiteer who watched that process unfold realised there is only one choice now because they sure as shit aren't going to commit career suicide. All they can do is step up, put their money where their mouth has been for decades, lead the charge on Brexit and hope it will be a success because the Remainers sure as shit aren't going to do this for them. Even if Brexit could be a success if you do everything the Brexit camp preached like unilaterally drop all tariffs and stick it out for 20 years people aren't going to care. Their patience will run out during the first year of any post-Brexit recession.