Ummm, I think Danial Andrews (current premier of Victoria who has just green-lit a MAJOR rail tunnel right under the Melbourne CBD) would disagree with what you said about parties that only build roads, roads and more roads.
But I do agree that in general governments in this country (at all levels) don't care about public transport anywhere near as much as they should (or anywhere near as much as they do in big cities elsewhere in the world)
If you think its only happening in the USA, I suggest you visit Australia. Many parts of Australia are being artificially held back from the kind of higher density inner city living that is badly needed (mostly by NIMBYs who don't want to see apartment towers in "their" suburbs and by backwards thinking planning bodies and councils)
They do when their boss says "we need you to be in xyz by tomorrow to visit a customer, you have 3 hours to go home, pack some bags and get to the airport in time for your flight in zero-legroom-class on bargain-airlines-r-us, if you dont like it you can go find another job"
What the government should do is: 1.Eliminate laws like the Wright Amendment (that restricts what airlines can do when flying out of Dallas Love Field, Fort Worth Meacham and Addison in order to protect Dallas/Fort Worth International) and any other similar restrictions (such as restrictions on the size or gate count of airports and restrictions on which airlines can fly to/from a given airport and where they can fly from/to). Let unrestricted competition rule and let the most efficient airports (and the ones that can offer the lowest cost in airport fees to the airlines) survive 2.Eliminate the laws that prohibit foreign ownership of domestic airlines and allow any airline to fly on any domestic route as well as the laws limiting which airlines can fly on which international routes. Let unrestricted competition rule and if some carries cant handle the increased competition from new players, they don't deserve to be in business 3.Reduce red tape and regulations so that US-based carriers aren't disadvantaged by #2 above (i.e. every carrier regardless of where they are based or who owns them would be on a level playing field) 4.Eliminate all subsidies to the airline industry. If there are specific air routes that aren't viable without subsidies but where there is a genuine need for air service on the route, offer any airline willing to fly that route a subsidy for flying it (so that all the little towns don't loose their air service because its unviable to fly there without a subsidy). Allow a level playing field where all airlines have to compete on their own merits without subsidies (any airline that can't survive without government subsidies doesn't deserve to say in business and if no airline can survive without the subsidies then there is something wrong with the system as a whole that needs to be fixed so the costs for everyone come down and they become viable)
Re:Say Good By to the Rainforests ....
on
FDA Bans Trans Fat
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There are a bunch of reasons why a switch back to animal fats isn't going to happen. First is lobbying by the likes of Monsanto (who produce all the GM crops that go into the oils like Canola and Soybean that will still get used as part of the oil mix even with the trans-fat ban) Second is the years of anti-animal-fat FUD that has to be overcome to convince people that animal fat is somehow OK. And third is pressure from vegetarian groups who pushed some of these chains to ditch animal fats in the first place.
Except that even if you use only music where you have explicit permission from the copyright holder (Creative Commons or otherwise) the rights enforcement goons will still come after you and sue you (and since they are much bigger and more powerful they will probably win or at least make it too expensive to fight rather than settling)
Congress cuts funding for a program that (at least on the SpaceX side) is well advanced in producing a man-rated booster and capsule to replace the Russian rides to the ISS and yet they INCREASE funding for a program that has yet to even produce a full-size prototype, doesn't have a proper mission yet, just some thought bubbles AND is costing far more than it would cost if you just said "this is what we want the rocket to do, who can build it for us"
I think there are 2 things going on here. First is that there is an election comming up and the votes of a bunch of ATK workers in Utah who have been promised jobs in the SLS program to replace the jobs they had in the shuttle program are somehow important enough to matter (which is a reflection on just how broken the US political system is). Hence the increase in funding for SLS to get it to the "actually building stuff" phase much faster. (and to assure the workers in question that their jobs are safe)
And second is that SpaceX has the lead in producing a crew rated capsule right now (their crew capsule and rocket are a modified version of the capsule and rocket they are launching to the ISS already whereas Boeing has to develop a capsule from scratch) so the cut in funding and the delay is a chance to give Boeing time to catch up (since Boeing is too politically and economically important to allow SpaceX to win this race on its own)
I have a Core 2 Duo E6400 as the CPU in my main box. Its old and I want a Core i7 but I dont NEED one for the things I do. I did recently upgrade with a new Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB SSD and a new NVIDIA GeForce GTX750 which (combined with a complete reinstall of Windows) has made my system feel almost like new again, much faster than it was.
I have heard it said that upgrading from any kind of spinning disk to an SSD is the number one way to get more performance out of a computer and I 100% agree on that. Even though its not a top-of-the-line SSD or a top-of-the-line motherboard, its still much faster on things like app startup and windows bootup than it used to be.
What will probably get me to upgrade is when a game I want to play (like the new Fallout game they just announced) requires more CPU than my system can deliver.
Assuming the cameras are sufficient resolution to capture the small defects before they become larger defects (or cause a failure) and assuming there is still a way to a human to get up there and look at something if the photos aren't clear enough and there are still questions, I see no problem with this.
With the costs of low-end Android handsets (even those aimed at the developing world) being so cheap these days, why does it still make sense for manufacturers to make a phone in between a "dumb phone" (that has no internet access, no installable apps, no Java and just does calls, text and maybe music playback and some built-in crappy games) and a full-on smartphone?
As someone who lives in Brisbane, Australia (where it can be 35-40 degrees Celsius and 70-80% humidity in the same day) I can tell you that no, these "passive" standards will never work, you NEED air-conditioning (or at least a fan of some sort)
Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are the best Sci-Fi RPGs I have ever played (and I am still playing through the various pieces of DLC for Fallout New Vegas having recently finished Old World Blues and started on Lonesome Road)
There aren't too many things that will make me not buy this. If Fallout 4 on PC doesn't have the awesome mod support Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas have I wont be buying it. If they add any extra crap DRM on top of the Steam DRM I wont be buying it. If they make the system requirements too great that my fairly beefy system can't play it I wont be buying it. And if they do anything to intentionally make it harder to reverse engineer the games data formats and stuff I wont be buying it.
Oh and they should put some effort into making the engine more stable and less prone to crashing (Fallout 3 and New Vegas aren't exactly the most stable games I have ever played)
Not too sure I like the idea of randomly generated dungeons or quests either, I much prefer the hand-built dungeons/quests of Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas to the randomly generated areas of games like Diablo 2.
More and more cable companies are either requiring you to buy some sort of "basic cable" TV service or they are pricing things such that "internet + basic cable" is cheaper than just internet service.
They are doing this so that they can artificially inflate the numbers of cable subscribers they have.
If they never published Lollipop binaries for the Canadian G2, they are under no obligation to publish sources. If someone asked for the Jellybean (or whatever the current version is) sources for the Canadian G2 or asked for the Lollipop sources for a different G2 variant that did get Lollipop, I am sure LG would be happy to comply.
They have released binaries (and presumably kernel source) for previous versions of Android on the Canadian G2. What they haven't done is released any binaries for Lollipop on the Canadian G2 and are therefore not required to release any source for it (which may not even exist if they have decided not to port Lollipop to the Canadian G2)
People mix msvcrt and GCC all the time if they are working on Windows. The Windows port of GCC (MingW) uses msvcrt.dll for a large chunk of its C Runtime.
We do need an air force but I don't buy into the argument that Australia is going to be invaded or attacked anytime soon and therefore we need a top-of-the-line air force with the most expensive fighters money can buy. There are plenty of fighter options (both from the yanks and from Europe) that give Australia what it actually needs but don't cost anywhere near as much as the F-35 is costing us.
The whole "China is a threat" thing is overblown. Why would China attack Australia or the US?
Even worse is that they not only suckered the Australian government into buying that flying piece of crap but got them to place a second order for more of them:( There are far better things our government could be spending money on than shiny new toys for our military.
The first thing the new owners need to do is to start talking to the right people so they can overcome all the licensing BS that stops ThinkGeek from shipping all their cool stuff (Marvel, Star Wars, Dr Who etc) overseas.
Me, I wish the code for the Space Shuttle was available. The shuttles are now decommissioned and sitting in museums and no country wanting to build any kind of shuttle or space plane is going to be replicating a 40 year old American design when there are far better ways to do it nowadays so there shouldn't be any risk to national security in releasing the code (not to mention that the code alone isn't enough to rebuild the computer system, let alone the whole shuttle).
If only Australia would do what the UK has done and target tax dodging corporations.
That said, I do wonder if the UK is going to target some of the biggest tax dodgers (Mr Murdoch's media empire is VERY high on the list of global tax cheats yet no government seems to have the guts to go after them)
People who say "this is crap because I can buy a Nexus or Galaxy or android-device-of-the-month for far less money" don't have a clue about what the Neo900 is or why its nothing like the Nexus or Galaxy or other Android devices.
Things the Neo900 has that NONE of the current high-end Android devices (the things most people are going to be comparing the Neo900 to) have: Physical hardware keyboard (there are still people like me who love physical keyboards and wont buy a phone without one)
Hardware enforced separation between the modem and the main CPU (this means that the rumors that the NSA can listen to you via your cellphone microphone are definatly NOT going to happen on a Neo900)
No closed blobs for the cellular radio on the main CPU side (pretty much all "open" android ROMs still require a closed-source radio library specific to the radio in your particular Android device. The Neo900 will have a 100% open source library to talk to the cellular radio module)
No closed blobs on the main CPU side for WiFi, bluetooth, NFC, audio, touch screen, camera, GPS or sensors (unlike even the Google Nexus phones which require closed blobs for many pieces of hardware)
Full schematics and hardware documentation available (show me a high-end phone where you can get THAT)
The Neo900 isn't meant to be a competitor to the Samsung Galaxy or Apple iPhone or Google Nexus. Its meant to be a phone for people who care about their privacy and want a device where they control all the software running on the main CPU and can be sure none of the other CPUs in the device have access to the main CPU/RAM/storage or to hardware like the microphone. And a phone for hardware geeks who want a hackable device and one THEY control and not some carrier or OEM (there are phones where the bootloader started out unlocked and was then locked by an OTA update)
Its got LTE, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and bluetooth 4.0 low energy for fast speeds and the ability to talk to other devices.
The 3 modem options available mean its compatible with many carriers all over the world.
As far as I know there is no closed source code required on the main CPU to use the WiFi chip, the only thing you absolutely HAVE to have for WiFi to work is a firmware blob downloaded to the chip itself.
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Ummm, I think Danial Andrews (current premier of Victoria who has just green-lit a MAJOR rail tunnel right under the Melbourne CBD) would disagree with what you said about parties that only build roads, roads and more roads.
But I do agree that in general governments in this country (at all levels) don't care about public transport anywhere near as much as they should (or anywhere near as much as they do in big cities elsewhere in the world)
If you think its only happening in the USA, I suggest you visit Australia. Many parts of Australia are being artificially held back from the kind of higher density inner city living that is badly needed (mostly by NIMBYs who don't want to see apartment towers in "their" suburbs and by backwards thinking planning bodies and councils)
They do when their boss says "we need you to be in xyz by tomorrow to visit a customer, you have 3 hours to go home, pack some bags and get to the airport in time for your flight in zero-legroom-class on bargain-airlines-r-us, if you dont like it you can go find another job"
What the government should do is:
1.Eliminate laws like the Wright Amendment (that restricts what airlines can do when flying out of Dallas Love Field, Fort Worth Meacham and Addison in order to protect Dallas/Fort Worth International) and any other similar restrictions (such as restrictions on the size or gate count of airports and restrictions on which airlines can fly to/from a given airport and where they can fly from/to). Let unrestricted competition rule and let the most efficient airports (and the ones that can offer the lowest cost in airport fees to the airlines) survive
2.Eliminate the laws that prohibit foreign ownership of domestic airlines and allow any airline to fly on any domestic route as well as the laws limiting which airlines can fly on which international routes. Let unrestricted competition rule and if some carries cant handle the increased competition from new players, they don't deserve to be in business
3.Reduce red tape and regulations so that US-based carriers aren't disadvantaged by #2 above (i.e. every carrier regardless of where they are based or who owns them would be on a level playing field)
4.Eliminate all subsidies to the airline industry. If there are specific air routes that aren't viable without subsidies but where there is a genuine need for air service on the route, offer any airline willing to fly that route a subsidy for flying it (so that all the little towns don't loose their air service because its unviable to fly there without a subsidy). Allow a level playing field where all airlines have to compete on their own merits without subsidies (any airline that can't survive without government subsidies doesn't deserve to say in business and if no airline can survive without the subsidies then there is something wrong with the system as a whole that needs to be fixed so the costs for everyone come down and they become viable)
There are a bunch of reasons why a switch back to animal fats isn't going to happen.
First is lobbying by the likes of Monsanto (who produce all the GM crops that go into the oils like Canola and Soybean that will still get used as part of the oil mix even with the trans-fat ban)
Second is the years of anti-animal-fat FUD that has to be overcome to convince people that animal fat is somehow OK.
And third is pressure from vegetarian groups who pushed some of these chains to ditch animal fats in the first place.
Except that even if you use only music where you have explicit permission from the copyright holder (Creative Commons or otherwise) the rights enforcement goons will still come after you and sue you (and since they are much bigger and more powerful they will probably win or at least make it too expensive to fight rather than settling)
Congress cuts funding for a program that (at least on the SpaceX side) is well advanced in producing a man-rated booster and capsule to replace the Russian rides to the ISS and yet they INCREASE funding for a program that has yet to even produce a full-size prototype, doesn't have a proper mission yet, just some thought bubbles AND is costing far more than it would cost if you just said "this is what we want the rocket to do, who can build it for us"
I think there are 2 things going on here.
First is that there is an election comming up and the votes of a bunch of ATK workers in Utah who have been promised jobs in the SLS program to replace the jobs they had in the shuttle program are somehow important enough to matter (which is a reflection on just how broken the US political system is). Hence the increase in funding for SLS to get it to the "actually building stuff" phase much faster. (and to assure the workers in question that their jobs are safe)
And second is that SpaceX has the lead in producing a crew rated capsule right now (their crew capsule and rocket are a modified version of the capsule and rocket they are launching to the ISS already whereas Boeing has to develop a capsule from scratch) so the cut in funding and the delay is a chance to give Boeing time to catch up (since Boeing is too politically and economically important to allow SpaceX to win this race on its own)
I have a Core 2 Duo E6400 as the CPU in my main box. Its old and I want a Core i7 but I dont NEED one for the things I do. I did recently upgrade with a new Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB SSD and a new NVIDIA GeForce GTX750 which (combined with a complete reinstall of Windows) has made my system feel almost like new again, much faster than it was.
I have heard it said that upgrading from any kind of spinning disk to an SSD is the number one way to get more performance out of a computer and I 100% agree on that. Even though its not a top-of-the-line SSD or a top-of-the-line motherboard, its still much faster on things like app startup and windows bootup than it used to be.
What will probably get me to upgrade is when a game I want to play (like the new Fallout game they just announced) requires more CPU than my system can deliver.
Assuming the cameras are sufficient resolution to capture the small defects before they become larger defects (or cause a failure) and assuming there is still a way to a human to get up there and look at something if the photos aren't clear enough and there are still questions, I see no problem with this.
With the costs of low-end Android handsets (even those aimed at the developing world) being so cheap these days, why does it still make sense for manufacturers to make a phone in between a "dumb phone" (that has no internet access, no installable apps, no Java and just does calls, text and maybe music playback and some built-in crappy games) and a full-on smartphone?
As someone who lives in Brisbane, Australia (where it can be 35-40 degrees Celsius and 70-80% humidity in the same day) I can tell you that no, these "passive" standards will never work, you NEED air-conditioning (or at least a fan of some sort)
Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are the best Sci-Fi RPGs I have ever played (and I am still playing through the various pieces of DLC for Fallout New Vegas having recently finished Old World Blues and started on Lonesome Road)
There aren't too many things that will make me not buy this. If Fallout 4 on PC doesn't have the awesome mod support Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas have I wont be buying it. If they add any extra crap DRM on top of the Steam DRM I wont be buying it. If they make the system requirements too great that my fairly beefy system can't play it I wont be buying it. And if they do anything to intentionally make it harder to reverse engineer the games data formats and stuff I wont be buying it.
Oh and they should put some effort into making the engine more stable and less prone to crashing (Fallout 3 and New Vegas aren't exactly the most stable games I have ever played)
Not too sure I like the idea of randomly generated dungeons or quests either, I much prefer the hand-built dungeons/quests of Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas to the randomly generated areas of games like Diablo 2.
More and more cable companies are either requiring you to buy some sort of "basic cable" TV service or they are pricing things such that "internet + basic cable" is cheaper than just internet service.
They are doing this so that they can artificially inflate the numbers of cable subscribers they have.
If they never published Lollipop binaries for the Canadian G2, they are under no obligation to publish sources.
If someone asked for the Jellybean (or whatever the current version is) sources for the Canadian G2 or asked for the Lollipop sources for a different G2 variant that did get Lollipop, I am sure LG would be happy to comply.
They have released binaries (and presumably kernel source) for previous versions of Android on the Canadian G2. What they haven't done is released any binaries for Lollipop on the Canadian G2 and are therefore not required to release any source for it (which may not even exist if they have decided not to port Lollipop to the Canadian G2)
And if you happen to live in Australia or any of 100+ other countries, you wont even get Cortana.
People mix msvcrt and GCC all the time if they are working on Windows. The Windows port of GCC (MingW) uses msvcrt.dll for a large chunk of its C Runtime.
The SCOTUS is free to ignore the DOJ on this and take the case anyway.
We do need an air force but I don't buy into the argument that Australia is going to be invaded or attacked anytime soon and therefore we need a top-of-the-line air force with the most expensive fighters money can buy. There are plenty of fighter options (both from the yanks and from Europe) that give Australia what it actually needs but don't cost anywhere near as much as the F-35 is costing us.
The whole "China is a threat" thing is overblown. Why would China attack Australia or the US?
Even worse is that they not only suckered the Australian government into buying that flying piece of crap but got them to place a second order for more of them :(
There are far better things our government could be spending money on than shiny new toys for our military.
The first thing the new owners need to do is to start talking to the right people so they can overcome all the licensing BS that stops ThinkGeek from shipping all their cool stuff (Marvel, Star Wars, Dr Who etc) overseas.
Me, I wish the code for the Space Shuttle was available. The shuttles are now decommissioned and sitting in museums and no country wanting to build any kind of shuttle or space plane is going to be replicating a 40 year old American design when there are far better ways to do it nowadays so there shouldn't be any risk to national security in releasing the code (not to mention that the code alone isn't enough to rebuild the computer system, let alone the whole shuttle).
If only Australia would do what the UK has done and target tax dodging corporations.
That said, I do wonder if the UK is going to target some of the biggest tax dodgers (Mr Murdoch's media empire is VERY high on the list of global tax cheats yet no government seems to have the guts to go after them)
People who say "this is crap because I can buy a Nexus or Galaxy or android-device-of-the-month for far less money" don't have a clue about what the Neo900 is or why its nothing like the Nexus or Galaxy or other Android devices.
Things the Neo900 has that NONE of the current high-end Android devices (the things most people are going to be comparing the Neo900 to) have:
Physical hardware keyboard (there are still people like me who love physical keyboards and wont buy a phone without one)
Hardware enforced separation between the modem and the main CPU (this means that the rumors that the NSA can listen to you via your cellphone microphone are definatly NOT going to happen on a Neo900)
No closed blobs for the cellular radio on the main CPU side (pretty much all "open" android ROMs still require a closed-source radio library specific to the radio in your particular Android device. The Neo900 will have a 100% open source library to talk to the cellular radio module)
No closed blobs on the main CPU side for WiFi, bluetooth, NFC, audio, touch screen, camera, GPS or sensors (unlike even the Google Nexus phones which require closed blobs for many pieces of hardware)
Full schematics and hardware documentation available (show me a high-end phone where you can get THAT)
The Neo900 isn't meant to be a competitor to the Samsung Galaxy or Apple iPhone or Google Nexus. Its meant to be a phone for people who care about their privacy and want a device where they control all the software running on the main CPU and can be sure none of the other CPUs in the device have access to the main CPU/RAM/storage or to hardware like the microphone. And a phone for hardware geeks who want a hackable device and one THEY control and not some carrier or OEM (there are phones where the bootloader started out unlocked and was then locked by an OTA update)
Its got LTE, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and bluetooth 4.0 low energy for fast speeds and the ability to talk to other devices.
The 3 modem options available mean its compatible with many carriers all over the world.
As far as I know there is no closed source code required on the main CPU to use the WiFi chip, the only thing you absolutely HAVE to have for WiFi to work is a firmware blob downloaded to the chip itself.