I was able to find a Xioami phone without all the trouble you are mentioning. When they just came out, of course it was hard to find even if they create an artificial outage, but the same is true of the new HTC One. Samsung is the only company that I have seen that has this massive availability for their products after they are announced.
In any case, pretty cool phone and even though I hated Android mods (unless it is Cyanogenmod), this is one to look for since it is very well done. Btw, even if you sign up for a 1 year contract, I feel like in China that is a better deal, since you pay say, 1000 yuan, they give you the phone and then you don't have to pay monthly fees for the whole year. Oh and they also gave me a sim card for my iPad for free the first 3 months, and after that it is 5 yuan per month. I honestly believe you cannot find such a deal in the States.
But the previous poster does have a point. Things are getting better in China regarding quality, but still the culture is simply not there when it comes to ensuring the basic safety of some things. And the punishments are a joke when companies get caught, since they will always get this random guy instead of just making the company pay tons of money in damages.
And you forgot to add, buying electricity because they were unable to produce it themselves.Ecoenergy needs to be part of the energy matrix, along with nuclear and even fossil fuels depending on the situation. When fossil fuels do run out then you can decide what to do, but right now you can reduce your consumption, not just stop using them altogether.
For good is a very subjective way to say that. I'm sure the fellow humans that are affected with such things would disagree with you, regardless if they hold US citizenship or not. I guess this is how the British justified the atrocities done by the "empire" while its educated citizens thought it was completely alright.
And for what it's worth, some of the UN research team members are starting to say there is a clear indication that it was the rebels, not the government who did it. In any case, there would be no civil war in Syria today if the rebel forces didn't get support fro the outside and were forced to negotiate a peace agreement. So jn a way, both Assad and the West are responsible for what is happening for their failure to sit down in a table and reach an agreement.
Which is exactly why it is a very good idea not to go to war in the first place. What happened to the "defense" part in the phrase Department of Defense.
Which is why the whole chemical weapons red line is a moot point. First there is no proof that the Syrian government did it, and to make matters worse, Syria is part of the 7 countries that never signed the chemical weapons ban, so this is like complaining Israel has nukes when they didn't sign the NPT.
The problem with your rationale is that you, like the crusaders of old, fail to understand that instead of bringing civilization, you will be pushing somebody to find ways to hurt you. So keep it on, and then don't wonder if you get even more terrorism in the West.
You have to be kidding. There is enough research to back claims that DU is unsafe even if the Army keeps playing it down because of the cost involved. The Navy used Tungsten shells to replace DU for a reason.
As Matt Damon said, there should be a referendum to ask people if they want to trade civil liberties for security. I really think that a vast majority will choose the former.
That they do not do petty corruption is one thing, but what is lobbying exactly if not a nice term for legalized corruption. The ability of individuals or corporations to pressure the government into changing laws by the sheer strength of the mighty dollar has nothing to do with democracy, justice or any other moral guidelines a government should have.
OpenOffice is a good alternative, but by no means best in class. Maybe it is the only serious solution on Linux and that is a different thing. Best in class in that area is still Microsoft Office by a long shot, hell and even Corel WordPerfect Office, since it has some really cool PDF editing tools in the word processor itself.
But other than that, I think Apache is doing great, even if I never was a Java fan. They have very interesting projects like Nutch/Solr, Traffic Server and by being the main bastion of heavy Java open source development. And if one thing their projects have is their focus in stability, which is something of a lost art in a lot of places nowadays.
So I guess by the same metric, Android isn't Linux either. It is called GNU/Linux, not GNU Linux, the difference being that it is the mix of both tools, not saying that Linux comes from GNU.
Maybe you were too young, but they pretty much created the concept of autocomplete for programming with Intellisense. As much as it is popular to hate Microsoft, they became well known for trying to make computers easier and have widespread availability. Sure they weren't as easy as Apple, but after reflecting of how long it took Linux to have tools like Nano become the default editor for a lot of config files, it made me realize that definitely geeks like us should play a limited role in what a good end-user software package can be. Ubuntu gets criticized a lot, and lots of that is because some people perceive that Linux stopped being that macho thing and finally became extremely usable for a whole lot of people.
The idiot still holds a journalism degree, whether employed by Time or not. It goes to show the quality of the journalists that Time have now. Even if you are feeling apologetic, that comment was irresponsible and unprofessional, but given that in a way, Assange is a new-age reporter, he pretty much advocated for the murder of somebody for exposing inconvenient truths about a government. I understand that what Manning did in the US is considered treason because of the classified nature of the material, but once it is out in the open, especially for non-US citizens, there is nothing that the US can do legally to other organizations, newspapers or websites. Which is why they resort to all these illegal tactics of intimidation, financial chokehold, or even that stuff they just did with the Brazilian reporter in Heathrow.
Sweden is the perfect example of live and let live. Something that certain US citizens still have to learn instead of being control freaks. Oppressive governments will be overrun by its own people, France being the prime example, even while it was surrounded by monarchies everywhere. It is my firm belief that Arab countries are not prepared for democracies. They are semi-feudal societies that still need a strong figure or family to take care of things so the rest of the country can be stable, and there is nothing wrong with that, because if enough people want to change it, the government either has to act accordingly or at some point they will be removed from power.
A lot of African presidents should be deposed if you follow the same logic. So who is going to play God in this sense? Governments are chosen by the people of that country, and if they manage to piss off enough people they will be removed from power. Thinking you have some kind of moral reason has been one of the most used excuses the US has to intervene in foreign countries, since the times when Cuba was still owned by the Spanish to this day. So please don't be a sheep and support the imperialistic policies of the system, while not as bad as what the British were doing to everybody else when they were an empire as well, it still makes you wonder why the British people themselves weren't disgusted by such policies.
You are full of crap. It's like those people who complain about anything just for the sake of complaining. Face it, Windows 7 was looking stale in a world of osx, Android and iOS. Sure it has a very productive interface, but so does OSX while looking way better. Those interfaces might not be perfect, but you can bet your ass that if there was any desktop environment even remotely similar to osx for linux (and I mean in terms of everything just works TM and really good graphics), Linux users would be flocking to it. And in a way Ubuntu is like a well done hybrid and Cinammon is what Windows Vista/7 should have been.
So really, just step down from that pedestal and just enjoy whatever platform, because each has its own strenghts and weaknesses
Gentoo has precompiled packages support for quite some time now, so it is pretty good for office use. And in any case, if you have power users you know they will love Gentoo even if they use other distros. Having a proper and complete development toolset out of the box is the major feature of Gentoo imho, aside from the fine-tuning that is.
You nailed it right in the head. I also do not know anyone that think Kinect was a other than a gimmick, and smae goes for PS Move while we are at it. I think the Wii was the truly innovative design and everybody wanted to do a quick copy afterwards, but even the Wii with its crappy non-HD graphics ended up being a gimmick after a couple of months.
Your solution is definitely the most sound technique of everything I have read so far on how to deal with this issue. So I guess you can establish a Darknet with your friends and family and some sort of encrypted e-mail using regular Thunderbird, and keep plain text e-mail for initial contact only. For business mail this would be tough though, and I guess you can set up a ticket support system to get in touch with your customers instead, but as dealing with providers and such, plain text e-mail will have to do.
Germany did something to mess up with the data of German citizens as well. I'm not exactly sure what happened but my German friend says he doesn't trust them at all since he does not believe what Merkel said about not knowing anything. Something like a govt agency was colaborating, since Germany is part of NATO after all. I think as many people said here, either roll your own server or use an e-mail of a country that is the antagonist of the country you live in.
I agree with you it is a complex issue, but the truth is that you could have a community server or roll your own, so at least when they want to see what's going on they would have to ask you.
Yandex is Google's Russia with all its faults. With Google you get to share your stuff with the US govt and with Yandex you do the same with the Russian government. If you read what the question is asking, Yandex is a very good solution. But if you want a better solution maybe that private e-mail project coming out from Iceland might do the trick, or Dotcom's idea. In any case, I'm all ears to hear about your solution. And no, I don't work for Yandex, as soon as I get my own server I'll dump them as well.
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I was able to find a Xioami phone without all the trouble you are mentioning. When they just came out, of course it was hard to find even if they create an artificial outage, but the same is true of the new HTC One. Samsung is the only company that I have seen that has this massive availability for their products after they are announced.
In any case, pretty cool phone and even though I hated Android mods (unless it is Cyanogenmod), this is one to look for since it is very well done. Btw, even if you sign up for a 1 year contract, I feel like in China that is a better deal, since you pay say, 1000 yuan, they give you the phone and then you don't have to pay monthly fees for the whole year. Oh and they also gave me a sim card for my iPad for free the first 3 months, and after that it is 5 yuan per month. I honestly believe you cannot find such a deal in the States.
But the previous poster does have a point. Things are getting better in China regarding quality, but still the culture is simply not there when it comes to ensuring the basic safety of some things. And the punishments are a joke when companies get caught, since they will always get this random guy instead of just making the company pay tons of money in damages.
And you forgot to add, buying electricity because they were unable to produce it themselves.Ecoenergy needs to be part of the energy matrix, along with nuclear and even fossil fuels depending on the situation. When fossil fuels do run out then you can decide what to do, but right now you can reduce your consumption, not just stop using them altogether.
For good is a very subjective way to say that. I'm sure the fellow humans that are affected with such things would disagree with you, regardless if they hold US citizenship or not. I guess this is how the British justified the atrocities done by the "empire" while its educated citizens thought it was completely alright.
And for what it's worth, some of the UN research team members are starting to say there is a clear indication that it was the rebels, not the government who did it. In any case, there would be no civil war in Syria today if the rebel forces didn't get support fro the outside and were forced to negotiate a peace agreement. So jn a way, both Assad and the West are responsible for what is happening for their failure to sit down in a table and reach an agreement.
Which is exactly why it is a very good idea not to go to war in the first place. What happened to the "defense" part in the phrase Department of Defense.
Which is why the whole chemical weapons red line is a moot point. First there is no proof that the Syrian government did it, and to make matters worse, Syria is part of the 7 countries that never signed the chemical weapons ban, so this is like complaining Israel has nukes when they didn't sign the NPT.
The problem with your rationale is that you, like the crusaders of old, fail to understand that instead of bringing civilization, you will be pushing somebody to find ways to hurt you. So keep it on, and then don't wonder if you get even more terrorism in the West.
It's kind of hard to rebuild in an area where a nuclear bomb was dropped you know.
You have to be kidding. There is enough research to back claims that DU is unsafe even if the Army keeps playing it down because of the cost involved. The Navy used Tungsten shells to replace DU for a reason.
As Matt Damon said, there should be a referendum to ask people if they want to trade civil liberties for security. I really think that a vast majority will choose the former.
That they do not do petty corruption is one thing, but what is lobbying exactly if not a nice term for legalized corruption. The ability of individuals or corporations to pressure the government into changing laws by the sheer strength of the mighty dollar has nothing to do with democracy, justice or any other moral guidelines a government should have.
OpenOffice is a good alternative, but by no means best in class. Maybe it is the only serious solution on Linux and that is a different thing. Best in class in that area is still Microsoft Office by a long shot, hell and even Corel WordPerfect Office, since it has some really cool PDF editing tools in the word processor itself.
But other than that, I think Apache is doing great, even if I never was a Java fan. They have very interesting projects like Nutch/Solr, Traffic Server and by being the main bastion of heavy Java open source development. And if one thing their projects have is their focus in stability, which is something of a lost art in a lot of places nowadays.
So I guess by the same metric, Android isn't Linux either. It is called GNU/Linux, not GNU Linux, the difference being that it is the mix of both tools, not saying that Linux comes from GNU.
Maybe you were too young, but they pretty much created the concept of autocomplete for programming with Intellisense. As much as it is popular to hate Microsoft, they became well known for trying to make computers easier and have widespread availability. Sure they weren't as easy as Apple, but after reflecting of how long it took Linux to have tools like Nano become the default editor for a lot of config files, it made me realize that definitely geeks like us should play a limited role in what a good end-user software package can be. Ubuntu gets criticized a lot, and lots of that is because some people perceive that Linux stopped being that macho thing and finally became extremely usable for a whole lot of people.
You know the parent post was actually joking right?
The idiot still holds a journalism degree, whether employed by Time or not. It goes to show the quality of the journalists that Time have now. Even if you are feeling apologetic, that comment was irresponsible and unprofessional, but given that in a way, Assange is a new-age reporter, he pretty much advocated for the murder of somebody for exposing inconvenient truths about a government. I understand that what Manning did in the US is considered treason because of the classified nature of the material, but once it is out in the open, especially for non-US citizens, there is nothing that the US can do legally to other organizations, newspapers or websites. Which is why they resort to all these illegal tactics of intimidation, financial chokehold, or even that stuff they just did with the Brazilian reporter in Heathrow.
Sweden is the perfect example of live and let live. Something that certain US citizens still have to learn instead of being control freaks. Oppressive governments will be overrun by its own people, France being the prime example, even while it was surrounded by monarchies everywhere. It is my firm belief that Arab countries are not prepared for democracies. They are semi-feudal societies that still need a strong figure or family to take care of things so the rest of the country can be stable, and there is nothing wrong with that, because if enough people want to change it, the government either has to act accordingly or at some point they will be removed from power.
A lot of African presidents should be deposed if you follow the same logic. So who is going to play God in this sense? Governments are chosen by the people of that country, and if they manage to piss off enough people they will be removed from power. Thinking you have some kind of moral reason has been one of the most used excuses the US has to intervene in foreign countries, since the times when Cuba was still owned by the Spanish to this day. So please don't be a sheep and support the imperialistic policies of the system, while not as bad as what the British were doing to everybody else when they were an empire as well, it still makes you wonder why the British people themselves weren't disgusted by such policies.
You are full of crap. It's like those people who complain about anything just for the sake of complaining. Face it, Windows 7 was looking stale in a world of osx, Android and iOS. Sure it has a very productive interface, but so does OSX while looking way better. Those interfaces might not be perfect, but you can bet your ass that if there was any desktop environment even remotely similar to osx for linux (and I mean in terms of everything just works TM and really good graphics), Linux users would be flocking to it. And in a way Ubuntu is like a well done hybrid and Cinammon is what Windows Vista/7 should have been.
So really, just step down from that pedestal and just enjoy whatever platform, because each has its own strenghts and weaknesses
Gentoo has precompiled packages support for quite some time now, so it is pretty good for office use. And in any case, if you have power users you know they will love Gentoo even if they use other distros. Having a proper and complete development toolset out of the box is the major feature of Gentoo imho, aside from the fine-tuning that is.
You nailed it right in the head. I also do not know anyone that think Kinect was a other than a gimmick, and smae goes for PS Move while we are at it. I think the Wii was the truly innovative design and everybody wanted to do a quick copy afterwards, but even the Wii with its crappy non-HD graphics ended up being a gimmick after a couple of months.
Your solution is definitely the most sound technique of everything I have read so far on how to deal with this issue. So I guess you can establish a Darknet with your friends and family and some sort of encrypted e-mail using regular Thunderbird, and keep plain text e-mail for initial contact only. For business mail this would be tough though, and I guess you can set up a ticket support system to get in touch with your customers instead, but as dealing with providers and such, plain text e-mail will have to do.
Plus even if it is encrypted they will always get who is sending the info and who is receiving it.
Germany did something to mess up with the data of German citizens as well. I'm not exactly sure what happened but my German friend says he doesn't trust them at all since he does not believe what Merkel said about not knowing anything. Something like a govt agency was colaborating, since Germany is part of NATO after all. I think as many people said here, either roll your own server or use an e-mail of a country that is the antagonist of the country you live in.
I agree with you it is a complex issue, but the truth is that you could have a community server or roll your own, so at least when they want to see what's going on they would have to ask you.
Yandex is Google's Russia with all its faults. With Google you get to share your stuff with the US govt and with Yandex you do the same with the Russian government. If you read what the question is asking, Yandex is a very good solution. But if you want a better solution maybe that private e-mail project coming out from Iceland might do the trick, or Dotcom's idea. In any case, I'm all ears to hear about your solution. And no, I don't work for Yandex, as soon as I get my own server I'll dump them as well.