And this post is why we need a "narrow minded" modding option.
Now I do agree that submarine patents are a very bad thing, but I cannot agree that killing RFID would be good.
Sure, RFID has some potential for abuse, but on the whole it's not that evil. RFID has been around for many years - it's only recently that the application of price tagging goods in shops and that kind of thing has been practical.
For example if you work in an office building you may have a card that you have to wave at a panel to unlock doors. That's RFID. Smart tickets are now used in some of the world's subway systems (London and Seoul to name two of the busiest) and these tickets too are basically (enhanced) RFID technology. Few people find their work security passes worrisome and most find that their new subway tickets are much more rhobust than the paper they replaced. Indeed the Seoul tickets are often part of a credit card, or burried within a mobile phone, so you don't even need to carry anything extra. No complaints going on there.
Simplistic forms of RFID have been used in shops for many years to try to prevent theft - tags on unpaid-for goods are detected by barriers as you exit the store and set off alarms.
Yes, it is technically possible to track the comings and goings of people with this technology. However on the London Underground the old paper magnetic stripe tickets (which had to be scanned at every entrance and exit) were also trackable. People are already tracked (when necessary) by their credit card transactions. Yes, this does have law-enforcement possibilities, but as far as I'm aware there have been no reports of abuses in this area relating to RFID. Having appropriate checks and balances in laws ensures this. Of course with the PATRIOT act many of those checks and balances have been removed. The problem isn't the technology though, it's the laws.
Now as I'm sure you know Wall-mart wants to use RFID. Personally I love the idea of never having to queue again at the check-out.
VNC doesn't care what platform is being used - it'll work with X-Windows, or Mac OS X, or Windows, or PalmOS, or RISC OS, or Symbian.
Both X and VNC however also rely on having a fixed central computer system or systems on which to run applications, and simply use the remote system as an IO device. It sounds very much as if this new idea does not require fixed systems, only fixed storage.
Re:Undocumented API calls
on
Hacking Quartz
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· Score: 4, Informative
Apple does indeed have a number of undocumented API calls in Mac OS X. Now whilst it would be nice for all of the API calls to be documented they simply aren't right now.
Quartz actually can do a whole load of other things using undocumented APIs besides this virtual desktop stuff. It's also possible to rotate windows, shrink them, and zoom them up - I have an application that does this. However those that have investigated the APIs that allow these wild things to happen have found that they're not exactly complete.
Apple has of course been challenged about these APIs, and they remain consistent: you shouldn't use these APIs. They are undocumented because they are likely to change in the future. When the API is complete they will be documented, but not before then.
It's quite possible that all of these APIs (handling virtual desktops, rotation, and scaling) will be documented for 10.4 (Tiger).
One example of this is the shadow effect that Mac OS X supports on windows and other graphics. It's been there since 10.0, but it wasn't publically documented (although some people discovered its API). Apple only used this API for shadowing windows and menus. An official API for shadows was introduced in 10.3 which is more fully featured and easier to use than the old unofficial API. Indeed there's two official APIs now for shadows - one for low level Quartz calls, and a high-level API for AppKit.
Of course what Apple really should do is make sure that these new experimental APIs simply aren't present in the shipping OS. Apple themselves don't use them, so why leave them around?
Yes, the K means Kingdom, although right now it's a Queendom.:-)
However this notion of "some crazy old persion decides" simply is wrong. "Modern" democratic monarchies aren't like that.
Seriously dude, the Queen in the UK has basically nothing to do with running the country. This has been the case for longer than the USA has been in existence. She's also got nothing to do with running the other countries she's Queen of, which includes Australia, Canada, and India. If you understood anything about the British monarchy you'd get this.
Now there are plenty of examples of crazy old people running countries that aren't monarchies, and this is IMHO much more worrying. The UK did indeed have a King that was quite mad in the not too distant past (well, 200 years ago). However he had essentially no influence over the running of the country.
In contrast in much more recent years (less than 20 years back) at least one major power had a president who it is understood suffered from Alzheimers disease. And today there is a president who can't understand the logical falacy in the statement "you're either for us or against us". Then again almost the whole country that voted for that dullard (or failed to vote against him) doesn't seem to understand that falacy either.
Now, I can understand looking at this and saying - "online isn't the be-all end-all of technologies for consoles", but honestly, an online golf game - most likely the least online-needing sports subgenre there is - used as proof that online isn't a capability people want?
Now I agree with you that golf isn't necessarily the best example of a game that needs to be on-line. Of course it doesn't.
However in bars here in North America the Golden Tee arcade machines always seem to be busy. Those things are online - people play against each other all over the continent.
So what does it mean when an on-line arcade game is very popular, but an equivalent console game isn't so popular. I don't think any conclusions can really be drawn here. It can be inferred though that on-line capabilities isn't currently a major concern for console games.
Whatever happens with the development of on-line games though, whatever improvements are made, there are always going to be limitations. Latency is a big issue for on-line gameplay, and unfortunately without faster-than-light communications it's going to remain an issue.
As for your assertion about Nintendo crippling the Gamecube by not including on-line capabilities out of the box, I've got to call bullshit on that one. Sony didn't include on-line capabilities in the PS2 either, and it did just fine. Microsoft of course did include on-line capabilities in the XBox, yet the sales of the Gamecube and XBox are almost identical. The evidence there seems to indicate that an on-line capability isn't that important to gamers right now.
HOWEVER, this is roughly a 200dpi display -- current operating systems simply aren't designed for screens with pixel density this high. GUI widgets and text are often ridiculously small.
Shouldn't be a massive problem to overcome on Mac OS X. The imaging layer Quartz is, after all, Display PDF. It shouldn't be too difficult for Apple to persuade Quartz to render at a different resolutions.
AFAIK You didn't need Mac hardware to use the old Cinema displays - you just needed an ADC to DVI converter.
After all, not all Macs come with ADC - one of the features of these new screens is that they work with the latest Powerbooks, which have DVI connectors.
No, it's a bit more than locate. It's a combination of full content and meta-data searching, so slightly more sophisticated.
Re:Sports writer says: ... most powerful movie ...
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Man, saying "55.5% if you include the brit", and thus branding British people as being pseudo-American is pretty poor...
You might as well say that it was a jury of British origin, since most people in America have a british ancestor somewhere in their family.
However your point about the fact that whilst it was a French film festival but only one jury member was actually French is a good one. Anyone feeble-minded enough to equate "French" with "Evil" should keep munching their "freedom fries" and tear down the Statue of Liberty (a gift from the French) immediately.
You think that 94.4% of the US population have a job?
Are you nuts?
About half the US population are either too young to work or are of retirement age.
I don't believe this 94.4%. To come up with any statistic for the employed population relies on better information about the population than is available. Employment statistics are rare - what's more common is unemployment statistics. These rarely reflect those that are unable to work, and often many people fall through the cracks and are not counted.
It is just as vital to reach the proles as it is the intellectuals...
Well said - a point which unfortunately gets ignored far too often these days.
When you have a largely uneducated population (I don't say that to be offensive) it's even more important to reach the proles.
Apathy allows for massive change in the direction that a minority wants and desires, albeit using small steps. For change to occur in a direction that the masses want and desire the masses need to rise up. Revolutions cannot happen without significant support from the general population.
I couldn't agree more about replacing "features" with "quality".
Of course a major problem is just how do you define "quality". We all know what it is, but coming up with a formal definition of it is notoriously difficult and has even driven people to insanity.
For a very interesting take on quality you should read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence by Robert Pirsig, and also his follow up book Lila. An excellent book well worth reading. (As an interesting asside Pirsig used to write tech manuals for IBM back in the early 70s.) He makes a very good case for concentrating on quality rather than "features", although this philosophy is not specifically applied to computer software.
To my way of thinking if you produce software of truly high quality then the features will follow, if they are necessary. Adding new features to genuinely high quality software shouldn't be a big problem. If you have trouble adding new features then I would argue that the quality of your design isn't high enough.
Of course Classic is less than transparent, and I didn't say it was perfect. It's frustrating having to wait for it to boot up when you start a Classic app. It's windows aren't Aqua-styled and don't work properly with Expose. That doesn't mean it doesn't work well though.
People posting stuff like "I can't upgrade to OS X until the following apps are native.." was, from what I can tell, mostly people being overly cautious. Yes, some apps had problems with very early versions of Classic, but this got addressed pretty quickly - unfortunately the FUD remained. Apple had a big hand in this caution too by pushing so hard for companies to update their apps, which brought about a fear of incompatibility with Mac OS X. The reality was that a very small number of apps didn't work, and few suffered from any kind of reduced performance.
:-) I was right - I did get modded as a troll too.
Anyway, this amused me: Because the US does not use their military might to colonize and subjugate other countries.
The US has a long track record of using their military, political, and economic might not to colonize but subjugate other countries. Take for example South Korea.
A few years back South Korea were looking to upgrade their air force, so they put out tenders to potential suppliers. They ended up with out-dated F-15s. This is widely considered by many Koreans to have been a very bad thing, especially when much better planes were on offer from elsewhere for similar amounts of money. However the Korean government was basically cajouled by the US government into going for the F-15 with threats of decreased investment in Korea and "reconsidered" their original decision to opt for a superior plane.
Now when I was told about this I thought "nah, the F-15's a good plane, they've even flown back home with wings blown off", so I investigated further. Sure enough the version of the F-15 that the Korean Air Force bought is quite a bit inferior to the current models, and it was originally their second choice.
Your points though about European imperialism are well taken.
I would say though that asserting that France duped the US into Vietnam doesn't ring true to me. The US jumped into Vietnam, same as it did in Korea, because of the paranoia about the spread of communism.
The Palestine fiasco can of course be directly linked to WWII and imperialism, however it was imperialistic actions of Britain and the USA that lead to the creation of Israel. It's currently the imperialistic attitude of the Israeli government and the virtually unconditional backing of them by the US government that is the root of the current problems. Given their history you would have thought that Israel would treat people better, however they have created a ghetto in their own country, which is eerily similar to what happened to them in Germany.
You are right that many of the problems in the Middle East come from European Imperialism, but they also come from US interference. Remember that Saddam was an ally of the US only a couple of decades ago.
Ah, the luxury of not having to worry too much about the public.
If Scaled Composites were a publically listed company (or a government agency) you can be sure their lips would have been closed about any kind of failure.
Fortunately the primary investors in Scaled Composites aren't up-tight investor types. If they were then they would have insisted nothing be released aboout any kind of failure since it could have a negative impact on share price.
What? Classic unusable? You must be a Windows or Linux user.
Yes, every vendor was under pressure to produce native versions of their apps ASAP, but that's because you get a better application running native than under Classic because it can take better advantage or the new OS. The big reason why Apple pushed people to upgrade their apps was the new Aqua UI, which the Classic environment doesn't give you.
Now the very early versions of Classic were still very good, but there were some minor problems with it as a few people reported. Personallly though I never had any problems at all, and every single application I have tried to run under Classic has worked flawlessly.
The only class of software that I know of that is not guaranteed work under Classic are OS extensions. Even some of those actually work.
Man, I can't believe that some ignoramus really did mod you as a troll for this. And I'll bet that if anyone bothers to mod this comment that's what I'll get too.
You're spot on with your comment. Why is it OK for the US to develop advanced weapons like this when it's not OK for other countries to do so? It's OK for the US to equip themselves with rail-guns, and design suitcase nukes, but it's not OK for other countries to do the same things.
Don't be so naiive as to think it's just "terrorist" countries that are dissuaded from advanced weaponary development. The US has a longstanding history with even it's closest neighbours of discouraging development. Even Britain and Canada, it's two closest allies, have been encouraged by the US to drop certain weaponary development projects. The US are just more vocal against the developments of countries it doesn't get on with so well.
For real chemistry between characters the original Trek can't be beaten IMHO. The Kirk, Spock, McCoy triangle was fantastic and has never been equalled in any other Trek series.
The problem with TNG was simply too many characters. It took a bloody long time for any real crew chemistry to establish itself. IMO it wasn't until the 4th year really until things really became established.
As for Enterprise, I haven't watched all that much of it. I would say though there's some good elements of chemistry there - the relationships that T'Pol with the Archer and Trip has are generally fairly interesting. In many ways I prefer it to the first 3 seasons of TNG, but later on the whole TNG was much better.
My favourite series though is probably DSN - specifically the last few seasons with the Dominion War. My favourite character most definitely is Garak - the most complex Star Trek character there's ever been and one that definitely doesn't fall into the typical black and white mold that all the Star Trek series have suffered from.
What this means is that historically the UK libel laws were such that the government had a degree of protection against libel action and that libel laws were a tool for the government against opposition. Fortunately libel laws in the UK are now sufficiently broad to allow them to be applied in a non-government context, and also can be used against the government.
Of course IANAL though, so I still have a bit of a hard time differentiating between a defendant proving that something is true and a plaintiff proving that something is a lie. These approaches would seem to be virtually equivalent to me, and indeed I would have thought that both went on in a typical libel case on both sides of the pond.
Indeed it sounds as if you're saying that in libel cases in the USA one has to prove that the publisher lied, whereas in the UK the publisher has to prove they told the truth. Again these seem virtually equivalent to me. If anything the UK position (if I have understood correctly) should help ensure that publications are more likely to be true.
So what if the US legal system has changed sincec the US split from Britain?
Since when has libel ever meant anything apart from "false publication"?
This Zenger case is a distraction. The truth has always been a defence against libel. It has always been used as the defence against libel, and always will be, whether the case is tried in the USA or the UK.
The principle of using truth as a defence against libel accusations is inherent in any law that uses the term "libel" in their definition.
The US legal system was essentially a copy of the British legal system, including the principles of slander and libel, so that's where the round of applause you call for should really be directed...
Secondly, what makes you think things are so different in Brazil? After all the US legal system is essentially irrelevant in this case.
From society's point of view, it's a bad idea to reward people for wasteful, unproductive behavior. By this, I mean behavior that doesn't meet (directly or indirectly) a country's basic needs like feeding people, helping people stay alive, keeping out invaders, etc.
Dude, I was going to write a whole load here about unproductive behaviour that seems to be accepted in modern society which is damaging to society. The habit in America for suing every man and his dog when something goes wrong is a good example of this, and plenty of people are employed and rewarded for this. I would say that this is most definitely against the interests of society.
I can't really say how to fix this though.
Unfortunately also many things go on in the name of making our countries safer places these days which actually do the opposite, but the majority of people are too stupid to see that's actually the case. Anything problem that isn't clearly black or white, yes or no, and can't be solved in 15 seconds tends to either get ignored or folks tend to accept a yes/no answer from people in power. The world is of course far more subtle complex than this.
The solution to this one is better education for all, which means not people knowing more facts, but people better able to think for themselves. Unfortuantely that's against the interests of government and big corporations so that's unlikely to happen any time soon.
From my point of view, you can piss right off. How dare you suggest that society take some of my money and give it to some lazy bastard!:-)
Yes, but we're essentially talking about utopian ideals here, and the changes necessary to bring them about are not going to happen without some kind of big revolution. In other words chill dude, the status quo will be around for quite some time.
Besides that, how do you know that it's going to be lazy bastards receiving money? This mythical money could be going to fund research that could save your life.
Also I would argue that this doesn't even need a great deal of money anyway. If you ensure that everybody is fed, has a home, medical treatment, and clothing then the job's essentially done. Not that expensive at all really. The USA could easily afford to make sure all of its people had those basic needs - it would take a tiny fraction of the current military budget.
Slashdot Mirror
And this post is why we need a "narrow minded" modding option.
Now I do agree that submarine patents are a very bad thing, but I cannot agree that killing RFID would be good.
Sure, RFID has some potential for abuse, but on the whole it's not that evil. RFID has been around for many years - it's only recently that the application of price tagging goods in shops and that kind of thing has been practical.
For example if you work in an office building you may have a card that you have to wave at a panel to unlock doors. That's RFID. Smart tickets are now used in some of the world's subway systems (London and Seoul to name two of the busiest) and these tickets too are basically (enhanced) RFID technology. Few people find their work security passes worrisome and most find that their new subway tickets are much more rhobust than the paper they replaced. Indeed the Seoul tickets are often part of a credit card, or burried within a mobile phone, so you don't even need to carry anything extra. No complaints going on there.
Simplistic forms of RFID have been used in shops for many years to try to prevent theft - tags on unpaid-for goods are detected by barriers as you exit the store and set off alarms.
Yes, it is technically possible to track the comings and goings of people with this technology. However on the London Underground the old paper magnetic stripe tickets (which had to be scanned at every entrance and exit) were also trackable. People are already tracked (when necessary) by their credit card transactions. Yes, this does have law-enforcement possibilities, but as far as I'm aware there have been no reports of abuses in this area relating to RFID. Having appropriate checks and balances in laws ensures this. Of course with the PATRIOT act many of those checks and balances have been removed. The problem isn't the technology though, it's the laws.
Now as I'm sure you know Wall-mart wants to use RFID. Personally I love the idea of never having to queue again at the check-out.
Why don't people use remote X?
Very few people run X-Windows applications.
VNC doesn't care what platform is being used - it'll work with X-Windows, or Mac OS X, or Windows, or PalmOS, or RISC OS, or Symbian.
Both X and VNC however also rely on having a fixed central computer system or systems on which to run applications, and simply use the remote system as an IO device. It sounds very much as if this new idea does not require fixed systems, only fixed storage.
Apple does indeed have a number of undocumented API calls in Mac OS X. Now whilst it would be nice for all of the API calls to be documented they simply aren't right now.
Quartz actually can do a whole load of other things using undocumented APIs besides this virtual desktop stuff. It's also possible to rotate windows, shrink them, and zoom them up - I have an application that does this. However those that have investigated the APIs that allow these wild things to happen have found that they're not exactly complete.
Apple has of course been challenged about these APIs, and they remain consistent: you shouldn't use these APIs. They are undocumented because they are likely to change in the future. When the API is complete they will be documented, but not before then.
It's quite possible that all of these APIs (handling virtual desktops, rotation, and scaling) will be documented for 10.4 (Tiger).
One example of this is the shadow effect that Mac OS X supports on windows and other graphics. It's been there since 10.0, but it wasn't publically documented (although some people discovered its API). Apple only used this API for shadowing windows and menus. An official API for shadows was introduced in 10.3 which is more fully featured and easier to use than the old unofficial API. Indeed there's two official APIs now for shadows - one for low level Quartz calls, and a high-level API for AppKit.
Of course what Apple really should do is make sure that these new experimental APIs simply aren't present in the shipping OS. Apple themselves don't use them, so why leave them around?
Yes, the K means Kingdom, although right now it's a Queendom. :-)
However this notion of "some crazy old persion decides" simply is wrong. "Modern" democratic monarchies aren't like that.
Seriously dude, the Queen in the UK has basically nothing to do with running the country. This has been the case for longer than the USA has been in existence. She's also got nothing to do with running the other countries she's Queen of, which includes Australia, Canada, and India. If you understood anything about the British monarchy you'd get this.
Now there are plenty of examples of crazy old people running countries that aren't monarchies, and this is IMHO much more worrying. The UK did indeed have a King that was quite mad in the not too distant past (well, 200 years ago). However he had essentially no influence over the running of the country.
In contrast in much more recent years (less than 20 years back) at least one major power had a president who it is understood suffered from Alzheimers disease. And today there is a president who can't understand the logical falacy in the statement "you're either for us or against us". Then again almost the whole country that voted for that dullard (or failed to vote against him) doesn't seem to understand that falacy either.
Now, I can understand looking at this and saying - "online isn't the be-all end-all of technologies for consoles", but honestly, an online golf game - most likely the least online-needing sports subgenre there is - used as proof that online isn't a capability people want?
Now I agree with you that golf isn't necessarily the best example of a game that needs to be on-line. Of course it doesn't.
However in bars here in North America the Golden Tee arcade machines always seem to be busy. Those things are online - people play against each other all over the continent.
So what does it mean when an on-line arcade game is very popular, but an equivalent console game isn't so popular. I don't think any conclusions can really be drawn here. It can be inferred though that on-line capabilities isn't currently a major concern for console games.
Whatever happens with the development of on-line games though, whatever improvements are made, there are always going to be limitations. Latency is a big issue for on-line gameplay, and unfortunately without faster-than-light communications it's going to remain an issue.
As for your assertion about Nintendo crippling the Gamecube by not including on-line capabilities out of the box, I've got to call bullshit on that one. Sony didn't include on-line capabilities in the PS2 either, and it did just fine. Microsoft of course did include on-line capabilities in the XBox, yet the sales of the Gamecube and XBox are almost identical. The evidence there seems to indicate that an on-line capability isn't that important to gamers right now.
The future is another question though.
HOWEVER, this is roughly a 200dpi display -- current operating systems simply aren't designed for screens with pixel density this high. GUI widgets and text are often ridiculously small.
Shouldn't be a massive problem to overcome on Mac OS X. The imaging layer Quartz is, after all, Display PDF. It shouldn't be too difficult for Apple to persuade Quartz to render at a different resolutions.
AFAIK You didn't need Mac hardware to use the old Cinema displays - you just needed an ADC to DVI converter.
After all, not all Macs come with ADC - one of the features of these new screens is that they work with the latest Powerbooks, which have DVI connectors.
No, it's a bit more than locate. It's a combination of full content and meta-data searching, so slightly more sophisticated.
Man, saying "55.5% if you include the brit", and thus branding British people as being pseudo-American is pretty poor...
You might as well say that it was a jury of British origin, since most people in America have a british ancestor somewhere in their family.
However your point about the fact that whilst it was a French film festival but only one jury member was actually French is a good one. Anyone feeble-minded enough to equate "French" with "Evil" should keep munching their "freedom fries" and tear down the Statue of Liberty (a gift from the French) immediately.
What????
You think that 94.4% of the US population have a job?
Are you nuts?
About half the US population are either too young to work or are of retirement age.
I don't believe this 94.4%. To come up with any statistic for the employed population relies on better information about the population than is available. Employment statistics are rare - what's more common is unemployment statistics. These rarely reflect those that are unable to work, and often many people fall through the cracks and are not counted.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
It is just as vital to reach the proles as it is the intellectuals...
Well said - a point which unfortunately gets ignored far too often these days.
When you have a largely uneducated population (I don't say that to be offensive) it's even more important to reach the proles.
Apathy allows for massive change in the direction that a minority wants and desires, albeit using small steps. For change to occur in a direction that the masses want and desire the masses need to rise up. Revolutions cannot happen without significant support from the general population.
here is _all_ the corruption ( on the oil side of the equation... ...)
Are you really sure about that?
I haven't seen the film yet, but I doubt that Moore managed to find everything. I'm sure there's more that's hidden away.
Man this is one of the funniest things I've read on Slashdot for a while.
If you weren't being sarcastic then you have my sympathy.
I couldn't agree more about replacing "features" with "quality".
Of course a major problem is just how do you define "quality". We all know what it is, but coming up with a formal definition of it is notoriously difficult and has even driven people to insanity.
For a very interesting take on quality you should read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence by Robert Pirsig, and also his follow up book Lila. An excellent book well worth reading. (As an interesting asside Pirsig used to write tech manuals for IBM back in the early 70s.) He makes a very good case for concentrating on quality rather than "features", although this philosophy is not specifically applied to computer software.
To my way of thinking if you produce software of truly high quality then the features will follow, if they are necessary. Adding new features to genuinely high quality software shouldn't be a big problem. If you have trouble adding new features then I would argue that the quality of your design isn't high enough.
You expect basic journalism techniques from the editors?
:-)
Here on Slashdot?
Somebody mod this guy as funny please!
Of course Classic is less than transparent, and I didn't say it was perfect. It's frustrating having to wait for it to boot up when you start a Classic app. It's windows aren't Aqua-styled and don't work properly with Expose. That doesn't mean it doesn't work well though.
.." was, from what I can tell, mostly people being overly cautious. Yes, some apps had problems with very early versions of Classic, but this got addressed pretty quickly - unfortunately the FUD remained. Apple had a big hand in this caution too by pushing so hard for companies to update their apps, which brought about a fear of incompatibility with Mac OS X. The reality was that a very small number of apps didn't work, and few suffered from any kind of reduced performance.
People posting stuff like "I can't upgrade to OS X until the following apps are native
:-) I was right - I did get modded as a troll too.
Anyway, this amused me:
Because the US does not use their military might to colonize and subjugate other countries.
The US has a long track record of using their military, political, and economic might not to colonize but subjugate other countries. Take for example South Korea.
A few years back South Korea were looking to upgrade their air force, so they put out tenders to potential suppliers. They ended up with out-dated F-15s. This is widely considered by many Koreans to have been a very bad thing, especially when much better planes were on offer from elsewhere for similar amounts of money. However the Korean government was basically cajouled by the US government into going for the F-15 with threats of decreased investment in Korea and "reconsidered" their original decision to opt for a superior plane.
Now when I was told about this I thought "nah, the F-15's a good plane, they've even flown back home with wings blown off", so I investigated further. Sure enough the version of the F-15 that the Korean Air Force bought is quite a bit inferior to the current models, and it was originally their second choice.
Your points though about European imperialism are well taken.
I would say though that asserting that France duped the US into Vietnam doesn't ring true to me. The US jumped into Vietnam, same as it did in Korea, because of the paranoia about the spread of communism.
The Palestine fiasco can of course be directly linked to WWII and imperialism, however it was imperialistic actions of Britain and the USA that lead to the creation of Israel. It's currently the imperialistic attitude of the Israeli government and the virtually unconditional backing of them by the US government that is the root of the current problems. Given their history you would have thought that Israel would treat people better, however they have created a ghetto in their own country, which is eerily similar to what happened to them in Germany.
You are right that many of the problems in the Middle East come from European Imperialism, but they also come from US interference. Remember that Saddam was an ally of the US only a couple of decades ago.
Ah, the luxury of not having to worry too much about the public.
If Scaled Composites were a publically listed company (or a government agency) you can be sure their lips would have been closed about any kind of failure.
Fortunately the primary investors in Scaled Composites aren't up-tight investor types. If they were then they would have insisted nothing be released aboout any kind of failure since it could have a negative impact on share price.
What? Classic unusable? You must be a Windows or Linux user.
Yes, every vendor was under pressure to produce native versions of their apps ASAP, but that's because you get a better application running native than under Classic because it can take better advantage or the new OS. The big reason why Apple pushed people to upgrade their apps was the new Aqua UI, which the Classic environment doesn't give you.
Now the very early versions of Classic were still very good, but there were some minor problems with it as a few people reported. Personallly though I never had any problems at all, and every single application I have tried to run under Classic has worked flawlessly.
The only class of software that I know of that is not guaranteed work under Classic are OS extensions. Even some of those actually work.
Man, I can't believe that some ignoramus really did mod you as a troll for this. And I'll bet that if anyone bothers to mod this comment that's what I'll get too.
You're spot on with your comment. Why is it OK for the US to develop advanced weapons like this when it's not OK for other countries to do so? It's OK for the US to equip themselves with rail-guns, and design suitcase nukes, but it's not OK for other countries to do the same things.
Don't be so naiive as to think it's just "terrorist" countries that are dissuaded from advanced weaponary development. The US has a longstanding history with even it's closest neighbours of discouraging development. Even Britain and Canada, it's two closest allies, have been encouraged by the US to drop certain weaponary development projects. The US are just more vocal against the developments of countries it doesn't get on with so well.
Ah, a TNG fan... You must be in your early 20s.
For real chemistry between characters the original Trek can't be beaten IMHO. The Kirk, Spock, McCoy triangle was fantastic and has never been equalled in any other Trek series.
The problem with TNG was simply too many characters. It took a bloody long time for any real crew chemistry to establish itself. IMO it wasn't until the 4th year really until things really became established.
As for Enterprise, I haven't watched all that much of it. I would say though there's some good elements of chemistry there - the relationships that T'Pol with the Archer and Trip has are generally fairly interesting. In many ways I prefer it to the first 3 seasons of TNG, but later on the whole TNG was much better.
My favourite series though is probably DSN - specifically the last few seasons with the Dominion War. My favourite character most definitely is Garak - the most complex Star Trek character there's ever been and one that definitely doesn't fall into the typical black and white mold that all the Star Trek series have suffered from.
OK - I see now, I think.
What this means is that historically the UK libel laws were such that the government had a degree of protection against libel action and that libel laws were a tool for the government against opposition. Fortunately libel laws in the UK are now sufficiently broad to allow them to be applied in a non-government context, and also can be used against the government.
Of course IANAL though, so I still have a bit of a hard time differentiating between a defendant proving that something is true and a plaintiff proving that something is a lie. These approaches would seem to be virtually equivalent to me, and indeed I would have thought that both went on in a typical libel case on both sides of the pond.
Indeed it sounds as if you're saying that in libel cases in the USA one has to prove that the publisher lied, whereas in the UK the publisher has to prove they told the truth. Again these seem virtually equivalent to me. If anything the UK position (if I have understood correctly) should help ensure that publications are more likely to be true.
So what if the US legal system has changed sincec the US split from Britain?
Since when has libel ever meant anything apart from "false publication"?
This Zenger case is a distraction. The truth has always been a defence against libel. It has always been used as the defence against libel, and always will be, whether the case is tried in the USA or the UK.
The principle of using truth as a defence against libel accusations is inherent in any law that uses the term "libel" in their definition.
Blah blah, US is Fantastic! Rah rah.
Two points...
The US legal system was essentially a copy of the British legal system, including the principles of slander and libel, so that's where the round of applause you call for should really be directed...
Secondly, what makes you think things are so different in Brazil? After all the US legal system is essentially irrelevant in this case.
From society's point of view, it's a bad idea to reward people for wasteful, unproductive behavior. By this, I mean behavior that doesn't meet (directly or indirectly) a country's basic needs like feeding people, helping people stay alive, keeping out invaders, etc.
:-)
Dude, I was going to write a whole load here about unproductive behaviour that seems to be accepted in modern society which is damaging to society. The habit in America for suing every man and his dog when something goes wrong is a good example of this, and plenty of people are employed and rewarded for this. I would say that this is most definitely against the interests of society.
I can't really say how to fix this though.
Unfortunately also many things go on in the name of making our countries safer places these days which actually do the opposite, but the majority of people are too stupid to see that's actually the case. Anything problem that isn't clearly black or white, yes or no, and can't be solved in 15 seconds tends to either get ignored or folks tend to accept a yes/no answer from people in power. The world is of course far more subtle complex than this.
The solution to this one is better education for all, which means not people knowing more facts, but people better able to think for themselves. Unfortuantely that's against the interests of government and big corporations so that's unlikely to happen any time soon.
From my point of view, you can piss right off. How dare you suggest that society take some of my money and give it to some lazy bastard!
Yes, but we're essentially talking about utopian ideals here, and the changes necessary to bring them about are not going to happen without some kind of big revolution. In other words chill dude, the status quo will be around for quite some time.
Besides that, how do you know that it's going to be lazy bastards receiving money? This mythical money could be going to fund research that could save your life.
Also I would argue that this doesn't even need a great deal of money anyway. If you ensure that everybody is fed, has a home, medical treatment, and clothing then the job's essentially done. Not that expensive at all really. The USA could easily afford to make sure all of its people had those basic needs - it would take a tiny fraction of the current military budget.