Basically, what your saying is: "I wish there were a system where someone who is really smart could decide who the sensible people are, and just let them make decisions"
Bullshit. The system in the US is set up in a way that makes change next to impossible. Because if you don't vote either Democratic or Republican you "waste your vote" (can you imagine the disbelief in the rest of the world when actual US politicians say that and apparently are serious, see the entire "Ralph don't run" campaign? We wouldn't call that "democracy" here). And government members actually say that there isn't room for a third party in the US. Unbelievable.
And it remains that way precisely because neither of the two big parties would have anything to gain from real change.
And then you have the entire Electoral College thing. Democracy indeed.
Under the US system, the moderates are more powerful, as they are swing voters and will be pandered too.
In most of Europe the American Republican and Democratic parties would be considered right-wing parties that few people would vote for. Really, there's nothing "moderate" about the US government (unless you happen to be American, in which case you'd call all European governments "liberals").
Clearly, Apple has managed to insinuate itself in people's need to think themselves smarter than others in a way that other sold at a preimum products haven't.
Well, the only Apple product I have and according to you had to pay a higher price for is a 12" iBook. Which happens to be the cheapest 12" notebook I can get here. And it's not even good, just cheap
The point is, Apple sells many different products. Some good and overpriced, some okay and moderately priced and some crap and overpriced that they managed to create a hype for (iPod Shuffle). And there are many different kinds of customers, some morons who buy stuff to be cool and some who actually know what they're doing.
The other side of the coin is that the low prices at Wal Mart are subsidized by the rest of us.
For example, they don't provide proper health insurance to their employees which forces many of them to get government medical insurance assistance, otherwise known as Medicaid.
Very true.
Wal-Mart has been operating stores in Germany for a couple of years now. They still have to turn a profit there. This is partly because there are well-established discount supermarkets in Germany (you might even say they pioneered the concept -- think Aldi, which I think even has stores in the US). One other reason is that many of their tactics like firing employees for founding unions and having relationships with each other (believe it or not, they do this in the US) are just plain illegal in Germany and indeed most European countries. They did try though but they were successfully sued because of it.
I think this is a great example of how Wal-Mart makes money by exploiting people.
That's mentioned everytime, but it's not the problem.
Los Angeles County: Population: 10,179,716 Area: 10,517 sq km Population density: 967.9/sq km
LA County covers a huge area, something like one entire province in my country.
Now, let's see what it's like for a country that has great broadband, like Sweden:
Population: 9,047,752 Area: 449,964 sq km Population Density: 20/sq km
The truth is, these numbers don't mean that much. Poeple tend to live in cities, be it in Korea or in Sweden or in the US. Yet, for some reason, major US cities always seem to be lagging behind in broadband and cell phone coverage (compared to much of Europe and parts of Asia). Population density isn't to blame here.
Very few people make an issue of people flying off to Switzerland for a weekend of skiing, even though it's probably a more pointless thing to do.
That's true. But I once did the math on that. I fly about twice a year, usually only long distances (to a different continent, usually; for everything else there are trains). I still use less fuel than most people do for a year of driving around here and certainly a lot less than Americans.
I bought a whole bunch of energy efficient bulbs. Most of them died within a year because they don't like dirty electricity and being cycled rapidly -- shorter than the average lifetime I get out of normal bulbs
OK, but that's not a very typical situation. I use a couple 12 W energy-efficient bulbs (we call them "energy-saving" here) instead of 60 W incandescents to light a room, primarily because they last longer (I'm lazy). The first set I had lasted for about nine years. I changed them (BTW, don't throw them into the trash, there's mercury in there!) because they were almost black on the outside. Energy is really expensive around here and for a room that's lit a couple of hours a day I'm pretty sure I saved money.
>>We forget so often that the chinese government isn't stupid, and maybe not even evil.
>Yeah I'm sure the Dalai Lama would agree with that.
I don't know what he thinks of the current government but he likes to give interviews around here and often says something to the effect of, "Mao Zedong was actually a nice and intelligent person."
Re:The retail boxes are technically upgrades
on
OSx86 Cracked Again
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· Score: 1
Do you really mean to say that I can't buy a computer from Apple and sell it at some point (which even Apple explicitly permits) without any OS whatsoever? And that whoever buys it from me can't buy a retail copy of Mac OS X and install it on his newly acquired computer?
I do have an iBook. Because it was cheaper than everything else. I don't have any illusion about the quality of Apple's computers. There are notebooks out there that are way better than Powerbooks (wrt actual quality and support).
Take a look at the inside of a Powerbook or iBook. Carefully observe its details, count the million (superfluous) screws that hold everything in place, pay extra attention to the fact that it's all but impossible to remove the hard drive quickly. Try to imagine why an Apple engineer did it so.
Now, open just about any other notebook. Does that answer your question?
Well, we had a Formula 1 driver here (Niki Lauda, he even was world champion a couple of times) who had problems not getting off normal roads in normal cars (harmless accidents all, he just seemed to like driving cars into ditches).
One department at my university has "ads" as their subdomain. Always has been that way - it's an acronym. Apparently so many people are now using ad blockers that they constantly get complaints from students that their website doesn't work. Now every so often they beg their students to turn off ad blockers before complaining.
Ad-blocking should only be done on a per-site (or perhaps per-domain) basis.
On Mac OS X there's no keyboard navigation between input boxes or buttons. Some APPLE programs (e.g. iTunes and the ITMS) actively prevent you from using the keyboard to navigate pages by giving the focus to a text field and making it impossible to focus anything else.
That's just very poor usability and makes using the interface very slow, even more so with a trackpad.
The bit about the chlorine may be true. I'm from a country where we have great water straight from the mountains and I find the water in large parts of the US undrinkable. To me it tastes and smells like a swimming pool. In my experience it's especially bad in southern California and parts of New England. The first time I tasted tap water in Boston I really thought that it's not safe to drink.
I think he meant Flash uses too much CPU time. On all my computers (the fastest one being a 1.2 GHz G4) any site with multiple Flash ads and many of those oh-so-useful (and not searchable) animated menus takes 99% CPU time. It's just not right for a website (guess what, many people have dozens of websites open at a time) to use all available CPU power, especially on a laptop.
Flash is good for games and animations and maybe the occasional application that updates information in real time but it's absolutely the wrong choice for what it's used very often (navigation and entire websites).
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, what your saying is: "I wish there were a system where someone who is really smart could decide who the sensible people are, and just let them make decisions"
Bullshit. The system in the US is set up in a way that makes change next to impossible. Because if you don't vote either Democratic or Republican you "waste your vote" (can you imagine the disbelief in the rest of the world when actual US politicians say that and apparently are serious, see the entire "Ralph don't run" campaign? We wouldn't call that "democracy" here). And government members actually say that there isn't room for a third party in the US. Unbelievable.And it remains that way precisely because neither of the two big parties would have anything to gain from real change.
And then you have the entire Electoral College thing. Democracy indeed.
Under the US system, the moderates are more powerful, as they are swing voters and will be pandered too.
In most of Europe the American Republican and Democratic parties would be considered right-wing parties that few people would vote for. Really, there's nothing "moderate" about the US government (unless you happen to be American, in which case you'd call all European governments "liberals").Don't you know what "gay" really means? For me everything about today's Slashdot is gay. Nothing to do with homosexuals.
Clearly, Apple has managed to insinuate itself in people's need to think themselves smarter than others in a way that other sold at a preimum products haven't.
Well, the only Apple product I have and according to you had to pay a higher price for is a 12" iBook. Which happens to be the cheapest 12" notebook I can get here. And it's not even good, just cheapThe point is, Apple sells many different products. Some good and overpriced, some okay and moderately priced and some crap and overpriced that they managed to create a hype for (iPod Shuffle). And there are many different kinds of customers, some morons who buy stuff to be cool and some who actually know what they're doing.
So Americans are Brits? Really, the US and Britain have more in common than the Netherlands and South Africa.
The other side of the coin is that the low prices at Wal Mart are subsidized by the rest of us. For example, they don't provide proper health insurance to their employees which forces many of them to get government medical insurance assistance, otherwise known as Medicaid.
Very true.Wal-Mart has been operating stores in Germany for a couple of years now. They still have to turn a profit there. This is partly because there are well-established discount supermarkets in Germany (you might even say they pioneered the concept -- think Aldi, which I think even has stores in the US). One other reason is that many of their tactics like firing employees for founding unions and having relationships with each other (believe it or not, they do this in the US) are just plain illegal in Germany and indeed most European countries. They did try though but they were successfully sued because of it.
I think this is a great example of how Wal-Mart makes money by exploiting people.And I thought Bart was a boy and therefore not "blonde" as the article claims...
That's mentioned everytime, but it's not the problem.
Los Angeles County:
Population: 10,179,716
Area: 10,517 sq km
Population density: 967.9/sq km
LA County covers a huge area, something like one entire province in my country.
Now, let's see what it's like for a country that has great broadband, like Sweden:
Population: 9,047,752
Area: 449,964 sq km
Population Density: 20/sq km
The truth is, these numbers don't mean that much. Poeple tend to live in cities, be it in Korea or in Sweden or in the US. Yet, for some reason, major US cities always seem to be lagging behind in broadband and cell phone coverage (compared to much of Europe and parts of Asia). Population density isn't to blame here.
Not been on a bike much since they got popular
One hundred years ago?
Very few people make an issue of people flying off to Switzerland for a weekend of skiing, even though it's probably a more pointless thing to do.
That's true. But I once did the math on that. I fly about twice a year, usually only long distances (to a different continent, usually; for everything else there are trains). I still use less fuel than most people do for a year of driving around here and certainly a lot less than Americans.
I bought a whole bunch of energy efficient bulbs. Most of them died within a year because they don't like dirty electricity and being cycled rapidly -- shorter than the average lifetime I get out of normal bulbs
OK, but that's not a very typical situation. I use a couple 12 W energy-efficient bulbs (we call them "energy-saving" here) instead of 60 W incandescents to light a room, primarily because they last longer (I'm lazy). The first set I had lasted for about nine years. I changed them (BTW, don't throw them into the trash, there's mercury in there!) because they were almost black on the outside. Energy is really expensive around here and for a room that's lit a couple of hours a day I'm pretty sure I saved money.>>We forget so often that the chinese government isn't stupid, and maybe not even evil.
>Yeah I'm sure the Dalai Lama would agree with that.
I don't know what he thinks of the current government but he likes to give interviews around here and often says something to the effect of, "Mao Zedong was actually a nice and intelligent person."
Do you really mean to say that I can't buy a computer from Apple and sell it at some point (which even Apple explicitly permits) without any OS whatsoever? And that whoever buys it from me can't buy a retail copy of Mac OS X and install it on his newly acquired computer?
Somehow I find that hard to believe.
I do have an iBook. Because it was cheaper than everything else. I don't have any illusion about the quality of Apple's computers. There are notebooks out there that are way better than Powerbooks (wrt actual quality and support).
Take a look at the inside of a Powerbook or iBook. Carefully observe its details, count the million (superfluous) screws that hold everything in place, pay extra attention to the fact that it's all but impossible to remove the hard drive quickly. Try to imagine why an Apple engineer did it so.
Now, open just about any other notebook. Does that answer your question?
Well, we had a Formula 1 driver here (Niki Lauda, he even was world champion a couple of times) who had problems not getting off normal roads in normal cars (harmless accidents all, he just seemed to like driving cars into ditches).
That, and it's hard to move servers on a bicycle.
It isn't. Get a good trailer.One department at my university has "ads" as their subdomain. Always has been that way - it's an acronym. Apparently so many people are now using ad blockers that they constantly get complaints from students that their website doesn't work. Now every so often they beg their students to turn off ad blockers before complaining.
Ad-blocking should only be done on a per-site (or perhaps per-domain) basis.
Invite only... What's an orkut invite worth these days?
Eighty-nine US cents.He's Austrian. The .at URL could have been a hint. Or is this supposed to be a subtle commentary about Americans' knowledge of geography? ;-)
You're kidding, right?
On Mac OS X there's no keyboard navigation between input boxes or buttons. Some APPLE programs (e.g. iTunes and the ITMS) actively prevent you from using the keyboard to navigate pages by giving the focus to a text field and making it impossible to focus anything else.
That's just very poor usability and makes using the interface very slow, even more so with a trackpad.
20 miles; that's still an ideal distance to comfortably cycle. No need to drive if on day there isn't a bus anymore.
True. Bicycle lanes are always much more dangerous than riding on normal streets. Bicycle lanes are made for motorists, not for cyclists. Always.
Even better; the Boing Boing title is "Hollywood after the Anal. Hole again."
The bit about the chlorine may be true. I'm from a country where we have great water straight from the mountains and I find the water in large parts of the US undrinkable. To me it tastes and smells like a swimming pool. In my experience it's especially bad in southern California and parts of New England. The first time I tasted tap water in Boston I really thought that it's not safe to drink.
I think he meant Flash uses too much CPU time. On all my computers (the fastest one being a 1.2 GHz G4) any site with multiple Flash ads and many of those oh-so-useful (and not searchable) animated menus takes 99% CPU time. It's just not right for a website (guess what, many people have dozens of websites open at a time) to use all available CPU power, especially on a laptop.
Flash is good for games and animations and maybe the occasional application that updates information in real time but it's absolutely the wrong choice for what it's used very often (navigation and entire websites).