IIWW, left 65 million dead. Even if a war ten times larger erupts, it would put a very negligible dent on the current world population
A 10% drop in population is a decent-sized dent in my books, and certainly preferable to an 10% increase in population. The problem is that war is now expensive, whereas disease is cheap. From a population control point of view, crossing H1N1 with some other lethal disease is cheaper. Now that we can engineer diseases that attack specific sub-populations based on their genetics, don't be surprised if the next "final solution" is biological, and takes out half the population.
Of course, like anything else, this could backfire and wipe out the whole human race... but uncontrolled population expansion will also have the same effect. A better one would be to engineer a bug that inhibits either male sperm production, or female pregnancy. Drop the population below 2 billion over the next 50 years.
Second, that hypothetical increased fertility rate is spread over a longer period (ie, people having children later) which results in lower population growth.
It's still an absolute increase, and as such, it's a problem. We're well past sustainability, unless you want to define sustainable as in a reduced standard of living as Malthus takes his dues.
You don't need an article from the Economist or any other rag to know that. NO species has ever had continuous growth forever. It's just not physically possible.
Maemo doesn't have to make a profit, just the phones that it runs on. Also, they've already made it clear that there's no plan to come out with any upgrade path for their Symbian phones that involves anything other than switching to maemo - in other words, no more significan Symbian upgrades - it's in maintenance mode now. If you look around, you'll find the forums where people who bought their last Symbian-based big-buck products are bitching about being betrayed.
That Traf-o-data thing is an urban myth - it never made a penny, but like any good fish story, grew with time. Read some dead-tree books instead of the echo chamber that is the internet.
Installing Win95 from floppies is fun. Insert disk, hit enter, wait a few minutes, eject disk, repeat 27 more times... MS should've been punished for selling Win95 on floppies.
Or "copy all disks to hard drive, then install from hard drive" - a LOT quicker, a lot less grinding, and you have the files handy for when you install drivers - it no longer asks "please insert disk #7" or whatever...
Riight... they're more expensive than phones that can do more, because there's so little demand for them. $170 for a phone that only makes phone calls? Or the $50 + $35 activation fee - stock limited to what's on hand (in other words, we're discontinuing this piece of shit but we still want $85 for it, sucka)
The link you cite points out that the phone is being phased out because of poor sales. Even poor people want, and are prepared to pay for, more than a basic phone nowadays.
Riiight... they're going to devote effort to two different OS teams in today's competitive environment, especially when Symbian will be for the no-profit, no-margin, plain-jane ugly phone that nobody wants and that none of the carriers will stock.
By the end of the decade Symbian will be as dead as WinMobile is. Nokia knows that. So do the carriers. They're not going to trumpet it all over the place, because that would devalue current inventory, but if you've kept abreast of the situation, you'd know Symbian is a dead end.
Have you read Pravda lately? Ironically, they sometimes seem to be more insightful than the American media.
This is slashdot - people here read Depravada - russian pr0n.
The problem is easily fixed - let the weaker ones fold. Right now, there are obviously too many newspapers for the market. Also, their product is ecologically unsound, and by the time it reaches the reader, it's out of date.
If 90% were to close tomorrow, it would give the rest a chance to survive as a niche product, because newspapers are no longer mainstream.
I was at the supermarket Thursday, and the local paper was trying to get people to sign up by giving away a free mp3 player. Talk about a promotion stuck in the last century - who DOESN'T have a cell phone that plays mp3s? What next - free buggy whips?
WTF? How is a first post mentioning a "diversified ecosystem" redundant? Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does. It also tends to help keep pathogens numbers down, since even pathogens have predators/competitors in a diversified ecosystem.
32-bit and 64-bit operating system written entirely in assembler, fits on one floppy.
http://www.menuetos.net/
Pre-emptive multitasking with 1000hz scheduler, multithreading, ring-3 protection
Responsive GUI with resolutions up to 1280x1024, 16 million colours
Free-form, transparent and skinnable application windows, drag'n drop
IDE: Editor/Assembler for applications
USB 2.0 Hi-speed storage, webcam and printer support
TCP/IP stack with Loopback & Ethernet drivers
Email/ftp/http/chess clients and ftp/mp3/http servers
Hard real-time data fetch
Fits on a single floppy
They are NOT going to be using Symbian in the future for any phone that will compete with the iPhone.
Feature creep - eventually most phones will be smartphones, because it won't be economically viable to make a non-smartphone, same as motherboards without built-in networking, or laptops without a webcam, or 14" vga computer monitors, or telephone answering machines are all either non-existent or niche products.
Trying to get a "dumb phone" in 5 years will be like trying to get a cell phone that doesn't do anything except make phone calls today. They pretty much all do sms, web surfing, mp3, java games, etc.
Maemo brings the power of computers to mobile devices. Designed with the internet at its core, Linux-based Maemo software takes us into a new era of mobile computing.
Maemo is available on the Nokia N900 - a high-performance mobile computer with a powerful processor, large internal storage, and sharp touch-screen display.
Where'd you get that clunker - out of someone's garbage? That's the sort of machine you give someone you don't like, as a "favour."
No network card (at least from the specs you posted), no usb, 640x480, les than 1 gig hd, just a floppy drive - what are you going to do with that?
Best to find a copy of D0S 6x (or if you can find the Window95 floppy set, DOS7). Even Windows95 is too much for that. At least you'll be able to (sort of) play doom on it.
There have long been predictions that eventually the internet will be completely locked down and controlled by media interests, much like TV.
It's slowly coming true, one step at a time. It was never tolerable to governmental and economic powers that it would be free and open.
At which point everyone will start running/hosting wireless mesh lilypad networks, and stuff like email will be routed by this century's equivalent of fidonet. The Internet is made to route around damage, but when it becomes damaged enough, there'll be enough incentive for us to route around it.
Even those that do - say, McDonald's - can't exactly advertise a burger that they're offering nation-wide in the U.S. for a particular price in another country where that product is not available, or is available but for a different price.
Geolocation via IP - serve up different ads based on the viewers' geographical location. It's done all the time, along with time-of-day, so that you can target your ads to the viewers you want. Spamvertisers with their affiliate advertising do it all the time, why can't Hulu?
No, don't have it wrong. I worked in a pharmacy back in the early '90s, and one of the weightlifters who got his steroids elsewhere (we wouldn't sell steroids to him, but syringes are available to everyone who wants under a government program that's intended to reduce needle sharing among druggies) was using tamoxifen to mask the steroids, and it worked. He always tested clean.
I thought it was funny because he came in a day after an interview with him made the local paper, where he said he didn't use steroids. I bugged him about it - he said "What was I going to say, tell them the truth?"
Around here, policy is to have 2 police officers in every patrol car. It works out cheaper, because you can cut the number of cars circulating by half, you still have the same number of eyeballs and bodies out there, and one can actually concentrate on keeping an eye out for things, running plates, etc., while the other one drives. They also keep each other alert, and there's no likelyhood of a one-one-one or two-against-one-officer confrontation, so it's safer.
You now don't have cases where a second car is rushing to back up a solo officer, so it's safer for the public as well. It's a win-win.
However, the biggest problem I have with this new law, is not that it exists, I live in Ontario and cheer that it is in place, is that it does not apply to police officers. They are allowed to use hand held devices (such as cell phones) while they are driving. What is it that makes a copper less likely to be distracted by a hand held device than you or me?
The law contains exceptions for EVERYONE to use a cell phone to call 911. So whether it's you calling the police, or the police calling the police, it's the same rules.
FTFA:
Hands-free Bluetooth devices are O.K., and you'll be allowed to use any phone in the event of an emergency to call 911
I don't see any real problem here... the REAL problem I see is that you get bus drivers, etc., still yacking on their cell phones despite the laws in place.
While you're at it, why not sell raman noodle trees? With the economy the way it is there's bound to be people who would fall for that sort of scam on craigslist or feebay.
Or you can sell them baggies full of cheerios - just tell them they're donut seeds.
Slashdot Mirror
A 10% drop in population is a decent-sized dent in my books, and certainly preferable to an 10% increase in population. The problem is that war is now expensive, whereas disease is cheap. From a population control point of view, crossing H1N1 with some other lethal disease is cheaper. Now that we can engineer diseases that attack specific sub-populations based on their genetics, don't be surprised if the next "final solution" is biological, and takes out half the population.
Of course, like anything else, this could backfire and wipe out the whole human race ... but uncontrolled population expansion will also have the same effect. A better one would be to engineer a bug that inhibits either male sperm production, or female pregnancy. Drop the population below 2 billion over the next 50 years.
It's still an absolute increase, and as such, it's a problem. We're well past sustainability, unless you want to define sustainable as in a reduced standard of living as Malthus takes his dues.
You don't need an article from the Economist or any other rag to know that. NO species has ever had continuous growth forever. It's just not physically possible.
Maemo doesn't have to make a profit, just the phones that it runs on. Also, they've already made it clear that there's no plan to come out with any upgrade path for their Symbian phones that involves anything other than switching to maemo - in other words, no more significan Symbian upgrades - it's in maintenance mode now. If you look around, you'll find the forums where people who bought their last Symbian-based big-buck products are bitching about being betrayed.
That Traf-o-data thing is an urban myth - it never made a penny, but like any good fish story, grew with time. Read some dead-tree books instead of the echo chamber that is the internet.
Or "copy all disks to hard drive, then install from hard drive" - a LOT quicker, a lot less grinding, and you have the files handy for when you install drivers - it no longer asks "please insert disk #7" or whatever ...
Riight ... they're more expensive than phones that can do more, because there's so little demand for them. $170 for a phone that only makes phone calls? Or the $50 + $35 activation fee - stock limited to what's on hand (in other words, we're discontinuing this piece of shit but we still want $85 for it, sucka)
The link you cite points out that the phone is being phased out because of poor sales. Even poor people want, and are prepared to pay for, more than a basic phone nowadays.
Riiight ... they're going to devote effort to two different OS teams in today's competitive environment, especially when Symbian will be for the no-profit, no-margin, plain-jane ugly phone that nobody wants and that none of the carriers will stock.
By the end of the decade Symbian will be as dead as WinMobile is. Nokia knows that. So do the carriers. They're not going to trumpet it all over the place, because that would devalue current inventory, but if you've kept abreast of the situation, you'd know Symbian is a dead end.
This is slashdot - people here read Depravada - russian pr0n.
The problem is easily fixed - let the weaker ones fold. Right now, there are obviously too many newspapers for the market. Also, their product is ecologically unsound, and by the time it reaches the reader, it's out of date.
If 90% were to close tomorrow, it would give the rest a chance to survive as a niche product, because newspapers are no longer mainstream.
I was at the supermarket Thursday, and the local paper was trying to get people to sign up by giving away a free mp3 player. Talk about a promotion stuck in the last century - who DOESN'T have a cell phone that plays mp3s? What next - free buggy whips?
WTF? How is a first post mentioning a "diversified ecosystem" redundant? Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does. It also tends to help keep pathogens numbers down, since even pathogens have predators/competitors in a diversified ecosystem.
Pre-emptive multitasking with 1000hz scheduler, multithreading, ring-3 protection
Responsive GUI with resolutions up to 1280x1024, 16 million colours
Free-form, transparent and skinnable application windows, drag'n drop
IDE: Editor/Assembler for applications
USB 2.0 Hi-speed storage, webcam and printer support
TCP/IP stack with Loopback & Ethernet drivers
Email/ftp/http/chess clients and ftp/mp3/http servers
Hard real-time data fetch
Fits on a single floppy
Trying to get a "dumb phone" in 5 years will be like trying to get a cell phone that doesn't do anything except make phone calls today. They pretty much all do sms, web surfing, mp3, java games, etc.
Even Nokia is abandoning Symbian for maemo http://maemo.nokia.com/
Where'd you get that clunker - out of someone's garbage? That's the sort of machine you give someone you don't like, as a "favour."
No network card (at least from the specs you posted), no usb, 640x480, les than 1 gig hd, just a floppy drive - what are you going to do with that?
Best to find a copy of D0S 6x (or if you can find the Window95 floppy set, DOS7). Even Windows95 is too much for that. At least you'll be able to (sort of) play doom on it.
At which point everyone will start running/hosting wireless mesh lilypad networks, and stuff like email will be routed by this century's equivalent of fidonet. The Internet is made to route around damage, but when it becomes damaged enough, there'll be enough incentive for us to route around it.
Geolocation via IP - serve up different ads based on the viewers' geographical location. It's done all the time, along with time-of-day, so that you can target your ads to the viewers you want. Spamvertisers with their affiliate advertising do it all the time, why can't Hulu?
No, don't have it wrong. I worked in a pharmacy back in the early '90s, and one of the weightlifters who got his steroids elsewhere (we wouldn't sell steroids to him, but syringes are available to everyone who wants under a government program that's intended to reduce needle sharing among druggies) was using tamoxifen to mask the steroids, and it worked. He always tested clean.
I thought it was funny because he came in a day after an interview with him made the local paper, where he said he didn't use steroids. I bugged him about it - he said "What was I going to say, tell them the truth?"
this whole thing is SO not original ...
Around here, policy is to have 2 police officers in every patrol car. It works out cheaper, because you can cut the number of cars circulating by half, you still have the same number of eyeballs and bodies out there, and one can actually concentrate on keeping an eye out for things, running plates, etc., while the other one drives. They also keep each other alert, and there's no likelyhood of a one-one-one or two-against-one-officer confrontation, so it's safer.
You now don't have cases where a second car is rushing to back up a solo officer, so it's safer for the public as well. It's a win-win.
It's the hair. No matter how straight-edged you are, you're going to look half-baked :-)
Maybe they wanted it for muffins?
It doesn't change the fact that you can still buy your way into being "right" with the church.
Tamoxifen has been used since at least 1990 to mask the use of anabolic steroids by athletes.
The law contains exceptions for EVERYONE to use a cell phone to call 911. So whether it's you calling the police, or the police calling the police, it's the same rules.
FTFA:
I don't see any real problem here ... the REAL problem I see is that you get bus drivers, etc., still yacking on their cell phones despite the laws in place.
While you're at it, why not sell raman noodle trees? With the economy the way it is there's bound to be people who would fall for that sort of scam on craigslist or feebay.
Or you can sell them baggies full of cheerios - just tell them they're donut seeds.