How about letting users unplug removable media without having to eject it first like no other OS has.
There is no OS in existence that allows that.
As a Mac user, I've noticed that Windows 8 and up seem to handle that particular situation just fine.
Linux and MacOS (AFAIK) use write caching which makes it a good idea to eject USB drives on these operating systems (caveat: it's been about a years since I last checked this, things may have changed). Windows on the other hand does not "handle USB drive yanking just fine", it just disables the write cache for external which reduces the chances of file system corruption but does not eliminate it 100%. Disabling the write cache also slows performance (according to the Windows device properties menu, policies tab). Generally it is always a good idea to eject your drive unless you have a journaled file system on it which should theoretically be able to recover from yanking related corruption. Having said that I'd still recommend disabling write caching on your system if you are a habitual yanker.
He's not irrational. There's something really wrong with OSX. With each new release, what I see everywhere is complaints of how buggy it is. Also, their hardware is crippled, due to a stupid obsession with slimness that makes them put laptop parts in desktop machines.
And his is based on your years of using OS X?... or is it based on anecdotal evidence gathered form Slashdot summaries and your general dislike of Apple? I've been using OS X since 10.2 and I can't say I've noticed it being any more buggy than the Fedora Linuxs + Gonme 3 setup I use at work these days. I know this runs contrary to the preconceptions of a good number of the people that frequent this site and are experts on OS X despite never having used it, but I have karma to burn so I'll voice my experience regardless.
... While I think that, since we're all carrying chip & pin cards, that they should be useable as login credentials, they should not, in any way, be mandatory...
Why don't we go all the way back, and make people wearing the Star of David for easy identification?
Europe criticizes China when the Communist Regime mandated that everyone who register for their weibo services must use their real name
The European parliament mourned for the loss of free speech in China, and poured money to support 'Chinese dissidents', even to the tune of awarding the noble prize to a certain Chinese writer (I read his books, in the Mandarin language, they were pure trash) just because he happens to be a 'Chinese dissident'
And no, I am not a supporter of the Communist Regime of China. I was an opponent of the CCP, and still am
The thing is, if Europe criticized China for the death of freedom they (Europeans) better don't repeat what the CCP has done
sigh!
Before any more people have an epileptic fit over this let's keep in mind that somewhere between the original article and the Slashdot summary the line:
"European Commission is exploring the theoretical possibilities of forcing online review platforms and EU citizens into using government IDs as online identities."
followed by:
"In its present form, the document has little chance of passing through the European Parliament, being clearly written by a person who didn't take all factors into account.
became:
"EU Exploring Idea of Using Government ID Cards As Mandatory Online Logins"
...and the part about it having near zero chance of being approved by the European parliament was not mentioned in the summary. By the time you wrote that post the whole discussion had been Godwinned by your reference to the holocaust and thereby Hitler and the Nazis. I know that Euro-scepticism is fashionable right now but going from a listing of theoretical options to the holocaust in three steps is pretty stupid, even for rhetoric slinging Euro-skeptics (although on Slashdot it is apparently more than good enough to get you modded 'Insightful'). Wake me up when this has progressed from an exploration of a theoretical option and has become something the European Commission is proposing to implement it looks likely to be approved by the European Parliament (which it has practically zero chance of doing and which you'd know if you had RTFA because that's what he OFA actually says).
Funny thing real estate prices have essentially risen indefinitely and will continue to do so with the odd correction. The only question is what rate of growth is sustainable? Look at any long term graph of property prices.
I was trying to make the point that in every real estate bubble (or bubbles in general) I have seen people expected the inflation of the bubble to go on indefinetly despite recent history being littered with stories of burst real estate bubbles. It's like the part of the brain that handles critical thought and common sense gets shut off as people start watching reality shows about real estate speculation while they watch the bubble value of their house go up and get second mortgages to pay for consumption. It's the 'short term corrections' that will kill you if you bought a property at inflated prices, end up in a house that is worth half of what you owe and then loose your job in the recession that follows the real estate bubble. This is the patern we saw after the mortgage crisis.
It seems that a significant portion of Sanders supporters are not willing to vote for Clinton no matter what.
That's very abusive wording. Independents won't vote for Hillary - the second most hated major party candidate, or Drumpf - the first most hated major party candidate.
That means that "Sanders supporters" are more likely independents or unenthusiastic party members. They aren't spiteful, but uninterested in a choice between two evils Who's the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. That makes you evil, even if you are trying to avoid a worse evil.
Thats moralistic hairsplitting. The choice here is not about deciding between 'evil' and 'more evil', there is nothing wrong with choosing the least awful option in order to limit the damage.
And yet.. Somehow.. He seems to care more about the manipulation of democracy than you do..
Interesting. Isn't it.
Trump is a childish idiot.
Clinton is a corrupt weasel.
Good luck America. Really. It's going to be rough.
And yet when I'm asked to choose between bad and worse, to decide who controls the worlds second largest nuclear arsenal on earth (by a small margin), I'd choose the corrupt weasel over the childish idiot every time but then I'm not an American so I can only watch and hope that the US public rejects the childish idiot. Having said that I am still puzzled over why the American people don't see to it that there is more (or better) choice. You'd think that as exasperated as a large portion of the American people seem to be with the Rep/Dem duopoly that they'd set up alternative political parties. It happens in other democracies all of the time. At the very least you guys could force a popular reform of the SNAFU that are the Rep/Dem primary election processes. There is something seriously wrong with your democratic process when primaries have become so manifestly corrupt and stupid that stand-up comedians don't even have to come up with jokes about them, they simply have to matter-of-factly tell the audience how the process works to reap roaring laughter.
Of course sales growth / adoption rates have to level off: you can't sell a billion phones every year to a population of ~7 billion indefinitely. Much like desktops before them, smartphones have reached the point where the hardware is "good enough" that replacing it at less than a 3-5 year interval is unnecessary.
Funnily enough that does not stop the unwashed masses that make up 'the market' from expecting such growth to go on indefinitely kind of like they also expect real estate prices to rise indefinitely despite ample evidence to the contrary in the form of innumerable burst real estate bubbles. It is almost comical to watch how surprised everybody is when a bubble burst or a rapidly growing market segment gets (inevitably) saturated.
I don't think you quite understand what the Bismark was meant to do...
By itself, it might not have been successful, but it would have been very painful had they not stopped her.
Germany came very close to cutting the convoys off from Britian, a few more U-Boats, the Bismark and Tirpitz, and she might have done it.
U-boats yes, Bismarck and Tirpitz... ummm... no! Roughly calculated the Germans cold literally have built 45 Type X submarines or 105 Type VIIC subs from the steel that went into the Bismarck and Tirpitz. Just to make clear what that means, the German navy mobilised every available sub including obsolete training subs to cover operation Weserübung, that submarine force counted 35 boats. They would have been better off taking the money that went into those dreadnoughts and pouring it into high-tech submarine design.
After the Bismarck sank HMS Hood, large parts of the British Navy were moved around (or kept in port) depending on where Bismarck was. This put big constraints on Navy operations. Early in WW2, air power did not extend into the middle of the Atlantic (due to lack of range) leaving surface ships free to wreak havoc on convoys which were not equipped to deal with a battleship.
Given the thin margin of supply Britain operated under, leaving Bismarck free to hunt British convoys would have been a major mistake.
I still do not see how one dreadnought and it's bodyguard would have caused more trouble than the U-boats. The Bismarck was tracked by reckon aircraft it's departure would have been quickly detected and even if the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen had gotten into a couple of convoys they were still sitting ducks once they were tracked down by a carrier group. Whenever this is discussed British and US historians don't mention fact that German Navy war-games in 1940-41 that investigated the feasibility of sending large surface ships into the Atlantic for commerce raiding concluded that it would be a stupid idea to do so and that submarines were a far more effective and less costly option. Somehow this all gets curtly ignored so the myth can be sustained that if it had not been sunk by the RN the super ship Bismarck would have attacked and the island of Britain and caused it to sink into the sea like they mythical Atlantis (<== that last bit was sarcasm).
If you had changed the tone of this post slightly, it would have come across as being interesting and informative.
As things stand, you sound like a arrogant loudmouth trying to promote some kind of non-neutral viewpoint.
And you forgot to use paragraphs. Better luck next time you post.
I just think that while the sinking of the Bismarck was interesting and important propaganda wise it was of limited importance in the grand scheme of things since the Bismarck and the Tirpitz were a liability to the Germans in every way. There are many British naval victories more deserving of being put on the list Britain's greatest naval victories of WWII than the sinking of one dreadnought. The way the Bismarck hunt gets plaid up today you might think they sank some sort of super ship that could have sunk half the Royal Navy if it was not disposed of. The Bismarck was certainly one of the most modern members of a mostly obsolete class of warship but it was not **that** much more powerful than the Royal Navy's own dreadnoughts.
That bit sounds you borrowed a line from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The Bismark would likely have been very dangerous if it had had escaped to be able to perform commerce raiding, as such the Bismark was a big threat.
A large surface navy has never made sense for Germany unless it was at peace with or allied with Britain. With Britain as an enemy the only naval forces that make sense for Germany are smaller surface vessels, long range naval aviation and a large numbers of submarines. The Bismarck was a big capital ship with a very limited life expectancy once it got into the open Atlantic. Yes, the Bismarck might have mauled a few convoys before it was sunk, no it wasn't really such a huge threat the survival or fall of Britain hung in the balance. The U-boats were a real threat, sinking the Bismarck was a propaganda coup for the British while building it in the first place was a waste of resources for Germany. The resources that went into the Tirpitz and the Bismarck would have been better spent expediting development programs like the 'Elektroboot' series of subs which were a very serious threat indeed and might have made a huge difference had Howaldt, B&V, DWK, Krupp, etc... started churning them out in series some a 18 months or so earlier than they did. Even converting the Tirpitz or the Bismarck into aircraft carriers, grouping some of the cruisers and destroyers that survived the Norway campaign into a carrier group and operating the thing out of Norway would have made more sense if you want to dominate the N-Atlantic than sending a dreadnought to sink convoys. Having said that I still think pouring all those resources into developing high tech subs and stand off missiles for naval aviation would have made better sense than building huge sitting-duck dreadnoughts.
...that led to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck -- one of Britain's greatest naval victories during the war...
Really? Sinking one dreadnought, that was one of the highlights of British WWII naval operations? I realise that there wasn't much traditional dreadnought on dreadnought action for the British surface fleet in the European theatre of operations during WWII since the Germans hardly bothered to build any dreadnoughts but the importance of the hunt for the Bismarck has quite frankly been blown up to quite ridiculous proportions. This epic conflict between the Bismarck and the Royal Navy is a bit like the epic football rivalry between Germany and Britain, it's very important to the British while the Germans hardly know it exists (They are obsessed with beating the Dutch). To the Germans the Bismarck was just another warship that was sunk during WWII albeit a pretty big and expensive one but it's not the national trauma that you'd think given what an epic status the Bismarck hunt has attained in the UK. The Norwegian campaign proved once and for all that he who rules the seas is he who can project the most air power over strategic distances, not he who owns lots of battleships because aircraft will slaughter dreadnoughts in the absence of carrier cover; so why build dreadnoughts? Germany, with a tiny surface navy, occupied Norway in a series of amphibious and airborne operations that left it painfully clear that even if the British fleet had the firepower to intervene they were not able to do so because the fleet lacked even the airpower to simply figure out what was going on let alone challenge the Luftwaffe for air superiority over the battlespace. Even if the Royal Navy had had a couple more carriers available during the Norway campaign the Germans still would have swept their aircraft from the skies because the Luftwaffe would still have outnumbered the Royal Naval Air Arm by 5:1, they could project way more airpower over strategic distances. If there was anybody left who believed that dreadnoughts were still part of the future of modern navies (Ronald Reagan was one of the last hold-outs I think) then that illusion was dispelled by Pearl Harbour, Midway and other carrier battles in the Pacific. The Bismarck was just one more nail in the coffin of the dreadnought and the death of the big battleships hit the British quite a lot harder than the Germans if only because they had invested ridiculous amounts of money in them. The Americans on the other hand quite matter of factly phased the dreadnought out in favour of carriers and, apart form Reagan bringing the USS Missouri out of mothballs for a while in a fit of romanticism and nostalgia, they never looked back. Of course the Americans could afford that in the aftermath of WWII while the British could not afford to modernise and transition to a carrier navy that could hold a candle to the old dreadnought navy in terms of size and relative firepower.
However, it is shortsighted because in my (limited) experience Apple Stores are stores with an incredible huge staffing. You never wait in a line at a cashier, or wait for a personal answering questions. [...] And that means with 16 business hours something like 100 + a bit of management etc.
While a grand total of three stores wouldn't matter even in much smaller countries, here we're talking about a country with almost 1.3 billion people. What do you think would be better for the Indian economy as a whole? having 2-300 cashier-like jobs or expanding the market share for local products?
If local products are competitive people will buy them, if local products are not competitive, forcing stores to sell 30% local products is not going to help one iota to boost and expand the market share of locally made goods. All it will do is motivate store owners to game the system somehow.
3) Spying on people from above or looking in their windows
These are all quite dangerous ways to use drones. Short of banning drones entirely, there's no way to stop this from occurring. Therefore, drones need to be banned.
I recommend a Mossberg 500 with, say... an M choke to give you the best compromise on pellet spread but you might want to experiment with that. According to Popular Mechanics you want number 8 bird shot shells with the largest pellet count you can find No. 10 or even 12 bird shot is even better if you can find it. If you live in an urban area blasting at drones with a shotgun might be a problem so your best urban-legal go-to option might be water based. Perhaps a powerful hose, or the most powerful super-soaker you can find but even that would probably not have the range of the shotgun. A more expensive option would be to build you own hunter-killer drone or a drone that snatches the offending one out of the sky and brings it to the ground so you can hold it to ransom. That last solution appeals to my inner nerd, my inner hill-billy likes the shotgun option best while shooting down drones with a super-soaker makes for a fun activity you can engage in with your kids. I also reserve a certain degree of admiration for this Russian reenactor who shot a drone out of the sky with a hand thrown spear.
This isn't about professionals. Apple missed that boat awhile back. Professionals need a decent keyboard. Ooops.
You mean the Apple specific keyboard layout? Been using that and PC keyboards for years, rarely have any problems switching.
Professionals need computing horsepower. Not quite oops but certainly nothing high end about the presumed stats.
On your local box? For what? Graphics programming? Game programming? Photoshop Work? Only the last one would make any sense to me, no serious developer develops games for the Mac because. For any other kind of development I have plenty of horsepower on the development machines I use but I'd still like better graphics performance on the Mac so I'll echo any criticism of Apple's graphics performance.
And don't talk to me about soldering RAM on the motherboard.
Never had a reason to be pissed off about that but I suppose if you want to do heavy duty graphics work or something you might miss that option although, if you are in such a busines why not just buy a machine with proper RAM right off the bat? It's not that much more expensive.
Professionals need ports. More than one or two. Dongles are for dorks.
Yes they do and no they are not?
Professionals need batteries.
6-7 hours is not enough? What are you doing rendering 3D on your laptop at maximum CPU during a train ride?/
Professionals need screens that do not double as a mirror.
Eh? Some people like glossy displays others like matt ones I suppose it might be a good idea to offer matt displays as an option but how many of Apple's competitors do that? Personally I don't give a rodent's rear.
Nor do they need 3D touch or the latest silly gizmo thingy that Apple dreamed up.
You mean Force Touch and haptic feedback? You can turn that off.
Professionals DON'T need super thin. Professionals are strong. They can cart around a few extra ounces. Triple shot 16 oz mochas go a long way. As long as they can get their work done, we're happy.
A number of professionals I know including a large number who do not even use Apple products would disagree with you on that one. If I want a weight lifting exercise I'll go to the gym. In the mean time I'll take my computers in the smallest format I can get.
Professionals actually need a decent graphics system. And for the love of God, bring back the 17 inch MacBook Pro.
I'll give you that one although I don't play many games, Apple's choice of graphics cards has sometimes sucked and I do miss good graphics cards and proper OpenGL performance for other purposes than gaming which I consider a waste of time for the most part.
Ah, yes. I oppose your particular flavor of freedom, so I must be a Communist!
** snipped long winded speech **
Communist? I didn't mean tomac use you of being a communist by calling you an apparatchik, any number of other similarly themed descriptors would fit you as well. You seem like the kind of dusty stiff necked bueraucrat who would rather follow the letter of the law even if it resulted in your country's military get steamrolled by it's enemies than bend the rules a bit and reap the benefits of discovering a gaping security flaw in your country's most secret and sensetive communications system.
These scenarios seem like the perfect opportunity for guerilla groups everywhere to recruit valuable players. If your group has the kind of insight to take advantage of these weakness it'll give you more of a fighting chance against large oppressive adversaries.
Thing is that you don't have to be a major poser like the USA, China or Russia to achieve a monster intelligence coup like cracking your opponents signals traffic. Small countries have achieved major military victories by letting a small group of very talentet people loose on the encrypted signals traffic of a much bigger and better equipped opponent. Cracking your opponents cencrypted comms is probably the biggest force multiplier there is. Conversely small players cannot afford incompetent politicay appointed pencil gnawers opening up their security.
computers and equipment that he used to listen in on the system were seized. Police also found a "counterfeit police badge" during the investigation.
There are the key details of the story.
Yes, I understand that he offered to help. Yes, I understand that he had the noblest intentions. Regardless, he still intentionally broke the law by accessing a system without authorization. That it was easy to do doesn't make it any less of a crime.
Spoken like a true apparatchik: Why, he should have known better than to try and contribute to the defence of his country by revealing security flaws in police/military communications systems and instead just kept his mouth shut and allowed these vulnerabilities to go unfixed thus ensuring that the fucking FSB and the Russian army could pwn his country's military in the event of a war. If the people in charge of the Slovenian police/military weren't the bunch of incompetent morons they apparently are, and it sounds like the problem lies with politicos in the defence ministry (DUH! incompetent political appointees screwing up, surprise, surprise...), they'd have hired this guy and others like him long ago and put them in charge of police/military signals security. Speaking for myself, my first reaction would have been consider recruiting this guy if only to ensure somebody else didn't snatch him up first. I'll also bet that this is what Slovenian military intelligence wanted to do (if they have a single spark of competence among them).
The only thing my wife needs is a browser (and the occasional casual document editing, which Google Apps can handle). I was strongly considering getting her a Chromebook (specifically the Acer 15) because the performance, battery life and display are quite good for the price, plus it's practically impenetrable to malware, but this news actually wavers me a bit. More stuff ChromeOS has to do means it's slower (keep in mind most Chromebooks have either a smartphone ARM CPU, or the lightweight Intel Celeron), and also it's more prone to malware.
That's also the problem with Chrome books. As long as all you need is that stuff you are OK but the moment you want to do some real work you run into the limitations of Chrome OS. I can see how adding all those Android apps would be a good move for people like my dad who hates tablets and prefers a keyboard but for anybody doing any real work a thin client laptop is completely inadequate even if it has millions of Android apps designed to be used on tablets and mobile devices with all the horrifying UI compromises and awful user experiences that brings with it.
There it is AGAIN. A leftist, making excuses for Islamists, and trying to deflect the blame and say the whole thing is the West's fault for being so kind and admitting these people. How many Syrian refugees have Islamic countries taken in? How about a word about them? What is *with* the left-wing alliance with Islamists? Why is there always one to jump right up and defend them? You know they execute homosexuals and legally allow spouse abuse?
All you had to do to avoid looking like a stupid right wing blowhard was to run a web search. Three moslem countries seem to lead the list:
Turkey 2,748,367
Lebanon 1,500,000
Jordan 1,265,000
Germany 484,000
Greece 496,119
Well, not exactly. There's several books by Arabs, Moslems, etc. who point out that there really is an Islamic ideology which aims to take over the world. Think of it like Communism.
Isn't that also the agenda of Christianity and every other fanatical missionary religion in human history?
Slashdot Mirror
How about letting users unplug removable media without having to eject it first like no other OS has.
There is no OS in existence that allows that.
As a Mac user, I've noticed that Windows 8 and up seem to handle that particular situation just fine.
Linux and MacOS (AFAIK) use write caching which makes it a good idea to eject USB drives on these operating systems (caveat: it's been about a years since I last checked this, things may have changed). Windows on the other hand does not "handle USB drive yanking just fine", it just disables the write cache for external which reduces the chances of file system corruption but does not eliminate it 100%. Disabling the write cache also slows performance (according to the Windows device properties menu, policies tab). Generally it is always a good idea to eject your drive unless you have a journaled file system on it which should theoretically be able to recover from yanking related corruption. Having said that I'd still recommend disabling write caching on your system if you are a habitual yanker.
He's not irrational. There's something really wrong with OSX. With each new release, what I see everywhere is complaints of how buggy it is. Also, their hardware is crippled, due to a stupid obsession with slimness that makes them put laptop parts in desktop machines.
And his is based on your years of using OS X? ... or is it based on anecdotal evidence gathered form Slashdot summaries and your general dislike of Apple? I've been using OS X since 10.2 and I can't say I've noticed it being any more buggy than the Fedora Linuxs + Gonme 3 setup I use at work these days. I know this runs contrary to the preconceptions of a good number of the people that frequent this site and are experts on OS X despite never having used it, but I have karma to burn so I'll voice my experience regardless.
Why don't we go all the way back, and make people wearing the Star of David for easy identification?
Europe criticizes China when the Communist Regime mandated that everyone who register for their weibo services must use their real name
The European parliament mourned for the loss of free speech in China, and poured money to support 'Chinese dissidents', even to the tune of awarding the noble prize to a certain Chinese writer (I read his books, in the Mandarin language, they were pure trash) just because he happens to be a 'Chinese dissident'
And no, I am not a supporter of the Communist Regime of China. I was an opponent of the CCP, and still am
The thing is, if Europe criticized China for the death of freedom they (Europeans) better don't repeat what the CCP has done
sigh!
Before any more people have an epileptic fit over this let's keep in mind that somewhere between the original article and the Slashdot summary the line:
...and the part about it having near zero chance of being approved by the European parliament was not mentioned in the summary. By the time you wrote that post the whole discussion had been Godwinned by your reference to the holocaust and thereby Hitler and the Nazis. I know that Euro-scepticism is fashionable right now but going from a listing of theoretical options to the holocaust in three steps is pretty stupid, even for rhetoric slinging Euro-skeptics (although on Slashdot it is apparently more than good enough to get you modded 'Insightful'). Wake me up when this has progressed from an exploration of a theoretical option and has become something the European Commission is proposing to implement it looks likely to be approved by the European Parliament (which it has practically zero chance of doing and which you'd know if you had RTFA because that's what he OFA actually says).
"European Commission is exploring the theoretical possibilities of forcing online review platforms and EU citizens into using government IDs as online identities."
followed by:
"In its present form, the document has little chance of passing through the European Parliament, being clearly written by a person who didn't take all factors into account.
became:
"EU Exploring Idea of Using Government ID Cards As Mandatory Online Logins"
Funny thing real estate prices have essentially risen indefinitely and will continue to do so with the odd correction. The only question is what rate of growth is sustainable? Look at any long term graph of property prices.
I was trying to make the point that in every real estate bubble (or bubbles in general) I have seen people expected the inflation of the bubble to go on indefinetly despite recent history being littered with stories of burst real estate bubbles. It's like the part of the brain that handles critical thought and common sense gets shut off as people start watching reality shows about real estate speculation while they watch the bubble value of their house go up and get second mortgages to pay for consumption. It's the 'short term corrections' that will kill you if you bought a property at inflated prices, end up in a house that is worth half of what you owe and then loose your job in the recession that follows the real estate bubble. This is the patern we saw after the mortgage crisis.
It seems that a significant portion of Sanders supporters are not willing to vote for Clinton no matter what.
That's very abusive wording. Independents won't vote for Hillary - the second most hated major party candidate, or Drumpf - the first most hated major party candidate. That means that "Sanders supporters" are more likely independents or unenthusiastic party members. They aren't spiteful, but uninterested in a choice between two evils Who's the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. That makes you evil, even if you are trying to avoid a worse evil.
Thats moralistic hairsplitting. The choice here is not about deciding between 'evil' and 'more evil', there is nothing wrong with choosing the least awful option in order to limit the damage.
And yet.. Somehow.. He seems to care more about the manipulation of democracy than you do.. Interesting. Isn't it. Trump is a childish idiot. Clinton is a corrupt weasel. Good luck America. Really. It's going to be rough.
And yet when I'm asked to choose between bad and worse, to decide who controls the worlds second largest nuclear arsenal on earth (by a small margin), I'd choose the corrupt weasel over the childish idiot every time but then I'm not an American so I can only watch and hope that the US public rejects the childish idiot. Having said that I am still puzzled over why the American people don't see to it that there is more (or better) choice. You'd think that as exasperated as a large portion of the American people seem to be with the Rep/Dem duopoly that they'd set up alternative political parties. It happens in other democracies all of the time. At the very least you guys could force a popular reform of the SNAFU that are the Rep/Dem primary election processes. There is something seriously wrong with your democratic process when primaries have become so manifestly corrupt and stupid that stand-up comedians don't even have to come up with jokes about them, they simply have to matter-of-factly tell the audience how the process works to reap roaring laughter.
Of course sales growth / adoption rates have to level off: you can't sell a billion phones every year to a population of ~7 billion indefinitely. Much like desktops before them, smartphones have reached the point where the hardware is "good enough" that replacing it at less than a 3-5 year interval is unnecessary.
Funnily enough that does not stop the unwashed masses that make up 'the market' from expecting such growth to go on indefinitely kind of like they also expect real estate prices to rise indefinitely despite ample evidence to the contrary in the form of innumerable burst real estate bubbles. It is almost comical to watch how surprised everybody is when a bubble burst or a rapidly growing market segment gets (inevitably) saturated.
Wasn't all this data supposed to be anonymised by Google's clever algorithms to the point where it could not be connected to any one person?
I don't think you quite understand what the Bismark was meant to do...
By itself, it might not have been successful, but it would have been very painful had they not stopped her.
Germany came very close to cutting the convoys off from Britian, a few more U-Boats, the Bismark and Tirpitz, and she might have done it.
U-boats yes, Bismarck and Tirpitz... ummm... no! Roughly calculated the Germans cold literally have built 45 Type X submarines or 105 Type VIIC subs from the steel that went into the Bismarck and Tirpitz. Just to make clear what that means, the German navy mobilised every available sub including obsolete training subs to cover operation Weserübung, that submarine force counted 35 boats. They would have been better off taking the money that went into those dreadnoughts and pouring it into high-tech submarine design.
After the Bismarck sank HMS Hood, large parts of the British Navy were moved around (or kept in port) depending on where Bismarck was. This put big constraints on Navy operations. Early in WW2, air power did not extend into the middle of the Atlantic (due to lack of range) leaving surface ships free to wreak havoc on convoys which were not equipped to deal with a battleship. Given the thin margin of supply Britain operated under, leaving Bismarck free to hunt British convoys would have been a major mistake.
I still do not see how one dreadnought and it's bodyguard would have caused more trouble than the U-boats. The Bismarck was tracked by reckon aircraft it's departure would have been quickly detected and even if the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen had gotten into a couple of convoys they were still sitting ducks once they were tracked down by a carrier group. Whenever this is discussed British and US historians don't mention fact that German Navy war-games in 1940-41 that investigated the feasibility of sending large surface ships into the Atlantic for commerce raiding concluded that it would be a stupid idea to do so and that submarines were a far more effective and less costly option. Somehow this all gets curtly ignored so the myth can be sustained that if it had not been sunk by the RN the super ship Bismarck would have attacked and the island of Britain and caused it to sink into the sea like they mythical Atlantis (<== that last bit was sarcasm).
If you had changed the tone of this post slightly, it would have come across as being interesting and informative.
As things stand, you sound like a arrogant loudmouth trying to promote some kind of non-neutral viewpoint.
And you forgot to use paragraphs. Better luck next time you post.
I just think that while the sinking of the Bismarck was interesting and important propaganda wise it was of limited importance in the grand scheme of things since the Bismarck and the Tirpitz were a liability to the Germans in every way. There are many British naval victories more deserving of being put on the list Britain's greatest naval victories of WWII than the sinking of one dreadnought. The way the Bismarck hunt gets plaid up today you might think they sank some sort of super ship that could have sunk half the Royal Navy if it was not disposed of. The Bismarck was certainly one of the most modern members of a mostly obsolete class of warship but it was not **that** much more powerful than the Royal Navy's own dreadnoughts.
Also, the sea is big, really big....
That bit sounds you borrowed a line from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The Bismark would likely have been very dangerous if it had had escaped to be able to perform commerce raiding, as such the Bismark was a big threat.
A large surface navy has never made sense for Germany unless it was at peace with or allied with Britain. With Britain as an enemy the only naval forces that make sense for Germany are smaller surface vessels, long range naval aviation and a large numbers of submarines. The Bismarck was a big capital ship with a very limited life expectancy once it got into the open Atlantic. Yes, the Bismarck might have mauled a few convoys before it was sunk, no it wasn't really such a huge threat the survival or fall of Britain hung in the balance. The U-boats were a real threat, sinking the Bismarck was a propaganda coup for the British while building it in the first place was a waste of resources for Germany. The resources that went into the Tirpitz and the Bismarck would have been better spent expediting development programs like the 'Elektroboot' series of subs which were a very serious threat indeed and might have made a huge difference had Howaldt, B&V, DWK, Krupp, etc... started churning them out in series some a 18 months or so earlier than they did. Even converting the Tirpitz or the Bismarck into aircraft carriers, grouping some of the cruisers and destroyers that survived the Norway campaign into a carrier group and operating the thing out of Norway would have made more sense if you want to dominate the N-Atlantic than sending a dreadnought to sink convoys. Having said that I still think pouring all those resources into developing high tech subs and stand off missiles for naval aviation would have made better sense than building huge sitting-duck dreadnoughts.
...that led to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck -- one of Britain's greatest naval victories during the war...
Really? Sinking one dreadnought, that was one of the highlights of British WWII naval operations? I realise that there wasn't much traditional dreadnought on dreadnought action for the British surface fleet in the European theatre of operations during WWII since the Germans hardly bothered to build any dreadnoughts but the importance of the hunt for the Bismarck has quite frankly been blown up to quite ridiculous proportions. This epic conflict between the Bismarck and the Royal Navy is a bit like the epic football rivalry between Germany and Britain, it's very important to the British while the Germans hardly know it exists (They are obsessed with beating the Dutch). To the Germans the Bismarck was just another warship that was sunk during WWII albeit a pretty big and expensive one but it's not the national trauma that you'd think given what an epic status the Bismarck hunt has attained in the UK. The Norwegian campaign proved once and for all that he who rules the seas is he who can project the most air power over strategic distances, not he who owns lots of battleships because aircraft will slaughter dreadnoughts in the absence of carrier cover; so why build dreadnoughts? Germany, with a tiny surface navy, occupied Norway in a series of amphibious and airborne operations that left it painfully clear that even if the British fleet had the firepower to intervene they were not able to do so because the fleet lacked even the airpower to simply figure out what was going on let alone challenge the Luftwaffe for air superiority over the battlespace. Even if the Royal Navy had had a couple more carriers available during the Norway campaign the Germans still would have swept their aircraft from the skies because the Luftwaffe would still have outnumbered the Royal Naval Air Arm by 5:1, they could project way more airpower over strategic distances. If there was anybody left who believed that dreadnoughts were still part of the future of modern navies (Ronald Reagan was one of the last hold-outs I think) then that illusion was dispelled by Pearl Harbour, Midway and other carrier battles in the Pacific. The Bismarck was just one more nail in the coffin of the dreadnought and the death of the big battleships hit the British quite a lot harder than the Germans if only because they had invested ridiculous amounts of money in them. The Americans on the other hand quite matter of factly phased the dreadnought out in favour of carriers and, apart form Reagan bringing the USS Missouri out of mothballs for a while in a fit of romanticism and nostalgia, they never looked back. Of course the Americans could afford that in the aftermath of WWII while the British could not afford to modernise and transition to a carrier navy that could hold a candle to the old dreadnought navy in terms of size and relative firepower.
However, it is shortsighted because in my (limited) experience Apple Stores are stores with an incredible huge staffing. You never wait in a line at a cashier, or wait for a personal answering questions. [...] And that means with 16 business hours something like 100 + a bit of management etc.
While a grand total of three stores wouldn't matter even in much smaller countries, here we're talking about a country with almost 1.3 billion people. What do you think would be better for the Indian economy as a whole? having 2-300 cashier-like jobs or expanding the market share for local products?
If local products are competitive people will buy them, if local products are not competitive, forcing stores to sell 30% local products is not going to help one iota to boost and expand the market share of locally made goods. All it will do is motivate store owners to game the system somehow.
How about fricken drones with friken lasers attached to their foreheads?
I prefer a chainsaw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I recommend therapy. I would think the drones you see spying on you are just in your imagination.
No, that's impossible. I wear a tinfoil hat.
3) Spying on people from above or looking in their windows
These are all quite dangerous ways to use drones. Short of banning drones entirely, there's no way to stop this from occurring. Therefore, drones need to be banned.
I recommend a Mossberg 500 with, say... an M choke to give you the best compromise on pellet spread but you might want to experiment with that. According to Popular Mechanics you want number 8 bird shot shells with the largest pellet count you can find No. 10 or even 12 bird shot is even better if you can find it. If you live in an urban area blasting at drones with a shotgun might be a problem so your best urban-legal go-to option might be water based. Perhaps a powerful hose, or the most powerful super-soaker you can find but even that would probably not have the range of the shotgun. A more expensive option would be to build you own hunter-killer drone or a drone that snatches the offending one out of the sky and brings it to the ground so you can hold it to ransom. That last solution appeals to my inner nerd, my inner hill-billy likes the shotgun option best while shooting down drones with a super-soaker makes for a fun activity you can engage in with your kids. I also reserve a certain degree of admiration for this Russian reenactor who shot a drone out of the sky with a hand thrown spear.
...maybe they will stop trying to make the Windows Desktop work like a Windows phone...
...I found a Windows user! We need an angry mob with torches, pitchforks, a barrel of tar and some feathers over here! PRONTO!!!
This isn't about professionals. Apple missed that boat awhile back. Professionals need a decent keyboard. Ooops.
You mean the Apple specific keyboard layout? Been using that and PC keyboards for years, rarely have any problems switching.
Professionals need computing horsepower. Not quite oops but certainly nothing high end about the presumed stats.
On your local box? For what? Graphics programming? Game programming? Photoshop Work? Only the last one would make any sense to me, no serious developer develops games for the Mac because. For any other kind of development I have plenty of horsepower on the development machines I use but I'd still like better graphics performance on the Mac so I'll echo any criticism of Apple's graphics performance.
And don't talk to me about soldering RAM on the motherboard.
Never had a reason to be pissed off about that but I suppose if you want to do heavy duty graphics work or something you might miss that option although, if you are in such a busines why not just buy a machine with proper RAM right off the bat? It's not that much more expensive.
Professionals need ports. More than one or two. Dongles are for dorks.
Yes they do and no they are not?
Professionals need batteries.
6-7 hours is not enough? What are you doing rendering 3D on your laptop at maximum CPU during a train ride? /
Professionals need screens that do not double as a mirror.
Eh? Some people like glossy displays others like matt ones I suppose it might be a good idea to offer matt displays as an option but how many of Apple's competitors do that? Personally I don't give a rodent's rear.
Nor do they need 3D touch or the latest silly gizmo thingy that Apple dreamed up.
You mean Force Touch and haptic feedback? You can turn that off.
Professionals DON'T need super thin. Professionals are strong. They can cart around a few extra ounces. Triple shot 16 oz mochas go a long way. As long as they can get their work done, we're happy.
A number of professionals I know including a large number who do not even use Apple products would disagree with you on that one. If I want a weight lifting exercise I'll go to the gym. In the mean time I'll take my computers in the smallest format I can get.
Professionals actually need a decent graphics system. And for the love of God, bring back the 17 inch MacBook Pro.
I'll give you that one although I don't play many games, Apple's choice of graphics cards has sometimes sucked and I do miss good graphics cards and proper OpenGL performance for other purposes than gaming which I consider a waste of time for the most part.
Gotta go. Nurse says its time for morning meds.
True, and nice rant/troll.
Spoken like a true apparatchik
Ah, yes. I oppose your particular flavor of freedom, so I must be a Communist!
** snipped long winded speech **
Communist? I didn't mean tomac use you of being a communist by calling you an apparatchik, any number of other similarly themed descriptors would fit you as well. You seem like the kind of dusty stiff necked bueraucrat who would rather follow the letter of the law even if it resulted in your country's military get steamrolled by it's enemies than bend the rules a bit and reap the benefits of discovering a gaping security flaw in your country's most secret and sensetive communications system.
These scenarios seem like the perfect opportunity for guerilla groups everywhere to recruit valuable players. If your group has the kind of insight to take advantage of these weakness it'll give you more of a fighting chance against large oppressive adversaries.
Thing is that you don't have to be a major poser like the USA, China or Russia to achieve a monster intelligence coup like cracking your opponents signals traffic. Small countries have achieved major military victories by letting a small group of very talentet people loose on the encrypted signals traffic of a much bigger and better equipped opponent. Cracking your opponents cencrypted comms is probably the biggest force multiplier there is. Conversely small players cannot afford incompetent politicay appointed pencil gnawers opening up their security.
computers and equipment that he used to listen in on the system were seized. Police also found a "counterfeit police badge" during the investigation.
There are the key details of the story.
Yes, I understand that he offered to help. Yes, I understand that he had the noblest intentions. Regardless, he still intentionally broke the law by accessing a system without authorization. That it was easy to do doesn't make it any less of a crime.
Spoken like a true apparatchik: Why, he should have known better than to try and contribute to the defence of his country by revealing security flaws in police/military communications systems and instead just kept his mouth shut and allowed these vulnerabilities to go unfixed thus ensuring that the fucking FSB and the Russian army could pwn his country's military in the event of a war. If the people in charge of the Slovenian police/military weren't the bunch of incompetent morons they apparently are, and it sounds like the problem lies with politicos in the defence ministry (DUH! incompetent political appointees screwing up, surprise, surprise...), they'd have hired this guy and others like him long ago and put them in charge of police/military signals security. Speaking for myself, my first reaction would have been consider recruiting this guy if only to ensure somebody else didn't snatch him up first. I'll also bet that this is what Slovenian military intelligence wanted to do (if they have a single spark of competence among them).
The only thing my wife needs is a browser (and the occasional casual document editing, which Google Apps can handle). I was strongly considering getting her a Chromebook (specifically the Acer 15) because the performance, battery life and display are quite good for the price, plus it's practically impenetrable to malware, but this news actually wavers me a bit. More stuff ChromeOS has to do means it's slower (keep in mind most Chromebooks have either a smartphone ARM CPU, or the lightweight Intel Celeron), and also it's more prone to malware.
That's also the problem with Chrome books. As long as all you need is that stuff you are OK but the moment you want to do some real work you run into the limitations of Chrome OS. I can see how adding all those Android apps would be a good move for people like my dad who hates tablets and prefers a keyboard but for anybody doing any real work a thin client laptop is completely inadequate even if it has millions of Android apps designed to be used on tablets and mobile devices with all the horrifying UI compromises and awful user experiences that brings with it.
There it is AGAIN. A leftist, making excuses for Islamists, and trying to deflect the blame and say the whole thing is the West's fault for being so kind and admitting these people. How many Syrian refugees have Islamic countries taken in? How about a word about them? What is *with* the left-wing alliance with Islamists? Why is there always one to jump right up and defend them? You know they execute homosexuals and legally allow spouse abuse?
All you had to do to avoid looking like a stupid right wing blowhard was to run a web search. Three moslem countries seem to lead the list:
Turkey 2,748,367
Lebanon 1,500,000
Jordan 1,265,000
Germany 484,000
Greece 496,119
Well, not exactly. There's several books by Arabs, Moslems, etc. who point out that there really is an Islamic ideology which aims to take over the world. Think of it like Communism.
Isn't that also the agenda of Christianity and every other fanatical missionary religion in human history?