Pre WW2 there were movements in great britain to reduce agriculture, farming was not a proper business anymore, far better to have lesser countries do that and use the country side for relaxation.
It made sense, england back then could afford to import most of its food, and its own farming industry wasn't exactly top notch.
Then WW2 broke out, and BAM, no more imports. These days again, people are trying to reduce englands own farming industry with claims it is better to get it from abroad.
The problem is simple, what is true today, doesn't have to be true tomorrow. The entire history of the world is full of examples of nations who thought, oh war isn't going to happen, or we have time, or the rules have changed we no longer need X.
Recent examples, what was the most effective aircraft of the first Gulf War, that spiffy stealth bomber OR the dirt cheap unloved A10 tankkiller.
They hastily had to extend the life of that plane because all of sudden the US needed to destroy lots and lots of cheap tanks. Sure you can blow them up with missles that cost many time the cost of the enemy tank, but the A10 does it for peanuts. The istory of war, the US in particulair is filled with these kinds of examples, were leaders made a mistake of NOT preparing for everything and thought they could limit possible future wars to a single scenario.
We don't know what the future will bring. War isn't in the intrest of china, but war didn't exactly turn out to be in the intrest of germany either. Or japan. Or Italy. The serbs didn't do too well either, neither did Iraq, afghan was rewarded by being once again occupied.
The US military power is largely based on its carriers, they give it the power to project its might where it wants, when it wants it. To suddenly find out that a diesel-sub (not nuclear, a plain old diesel sub) can come undetected in torpedo range is very scary indeed. These things ain't expensive. Even terroriss could afford one. The reason they ain't expensive is that it was thought they were mostly obsolete.
The thing is, this sub was only detected when it surfaced (I am having some serious doubts about this), it could have emptied its tubes in the heart of the fleet, almost certainly resulting in the sinking of the carrier. IF this is true, it means that for instance Iraq could have bought one of these subs and used it to sink allied ships, they had the money.
The motto of any army should be to be prepared for what ever may happen, hopefully by showing that any attack is futile, you can prevent those attacks from happening in the first place. The reason most countries ain't at war is because they know that it would be too risky. All of sudden this story seems to say that risk to attack the US can be reduced. The americans ain't got all that many carriers, just how expensive would it be to equip a fleet capable of sinking all the carriers? You would instantly reduce the US military power.
Is china going to attack the US? Watch Tora! Tora! Tora! a realistic movie about Pearl Harbour. Most of WW2 in fact is one long chain of countries being invaded that didn't think it would happen. It did.
Remember, Pearl Harbour was NOT an attack against the US with a plan to invade and concour it, it was meant to knock the US out of the war long enough for Japan to make its claim in the east and then make peace when it had become too powerfull to be removed.
China might want to do the same thing, not destroy the US or occupy it, simply keep it from interfering in its affairs with for instance taiwan.
The US permantly got a fleet in that area to protect taiwan. Say the chinese launched an attack to reclaim it, the US carrier force would be a massive deterrent, but now they have shown they can take that carrier out. Then the US, with a reduced naval force would NOT be faced with fighting of an invasion force, but freeing an occupied nation.
No china once again upped the stakes in this dangerous game of who is the dominant power in the east. Alth
You know who you are, the ones that said Ballmer had a point last week when he called Android a press-release. Well, here is the SDK, as promised. On time.
So will all those slashdotter who doubted eat crow now? Or will the MS fanboys just pretend this never happened, or now move on to, "all google has is a press-release, and a sdk, and an alliance".
Come on, we need some amusement here. Spin this one!
There are javaless phones, that Motorola one with the primitive LCD display is one, but all "modern" gadget phones got it. If it can play mp3's and such, if basically it has the power to run downloadable games it has java because, well the games are java.
I can understand your confusion because it is just as confusing from my view. Basically most phones that are capable have it. How else would you play games and such on it?
To be fair, in holland and most of the EU, competition on the phones started with the mobile phones, before that the landlines were owned by semi-state industries on a national level. So perhaps the mobile phone companies that newly emerge with GSM just felt they had to compete on all fronts. In holland, the monopolist KPN was if I remember correctly also the one to most push their own content.
My own recent phone came with software to convert music to ringtones and offcourse java so I could run my own browser.
Basically, I never read a mobile phone companies press release saying it had java, only to find in store that it had been disabled. If Nokia, Sony-Ericsonn etc list the phone as java capable, then in holland at least, it is.
Perhaps it is also because most phones are sold through third party stores, they typically display a phone and then the different subscriptions you can get it with from the different networks. Wouldn't help sales of your network if your chart read "no java" when everyone else did have it.
Slashdots population is male, the number of females can be counted on the fingers of a clumsy lumberjack. As such it is hard for us to understand just how often females are the subject of sexual advances. I as a male can open a facebook page and never ever get an invititation for anything. A female only has to give the barest hint that she is female and BAM, she is hit upon.
Most recent example was in a MMORPG raid, I let it slip that our raid leader has a sexy voice, she does, as a motivation to get people to use voice chat. Oh boy. MISTAKE!
That was followed by a rather lengthy lecture by her and another friend on the realities of being a female in this world. I am old enough to know about cramps and lots of other stuff I think should be on a need to know basis (hint, I don't need to know) but they shocked me by just how constant and unrelenting it is. We all know about the teacher who offers better grade for eheh, homework. But as males we think that is something funny, but also rare. They both claimed that it was not, that on a night out it was not uncommon for them to be approached for sex for money. That if it becomes known in a game they are females they ALWAYS get hit upon. Sometimes perfectly nice, sometimes a bit too much and at times pure abuse but most important ALWAYS.
But there are slashdot females here, and they can no doubt better describe it, my point is that we as males cannot really judge just how much of a problem this is. Because what was also clear is that it is not the majority of men who harass, unless you yourselve are one of the people who prey on teens you just can't understand how constant the treath is.
Young girls are also vulnerable, not all, but some are in desperate need for anyone to give them attention and the predators out there are casting a wide enough net they will find some poor girl (or even boy) who is receptive. Again this is not something men can understand. If you as a teenage boy had a older female who wished to initiate you in the pleasures of love, you would have thanked god on your bair knees. You would have been a stud. When a few years ago that story broke about the highschooler and female teacher, who among us didn't think, "wish I had a teacher like that".
With social networking sites we have created spot where vulnerable people can expose themselves in an extremely direct manner to those who wish to take advantage of them, in total privacy.
Chat up a teen at my sportclub and you will get yourselve thoroughly beaten up. Do it online, and who is to know.
What I want to make clear is that it is NOT something we as males can accurately judge, if you really want to know, try finding a female in your circle of friends who has an account on such a site and ask to read the responses she gets. I read the logs she had of an old WoW session. I wouldn't say I was shocked but if you get pissed of at goldspammers, you ain't see nothing yet. She and I think other girls are there in game to play a game, not to get hit up on. It wasn't even the abuse or hatred that was shocking, but just how constant it was.
Women don't mind if you look at their tits, they take pride in them, they want to be sexy. What women object to is that men ONLY ever look at their tits. ALL men ALL the time.
Social networking sites remove even the most basic controls of civilized society, you can see this in the catch-a-predator series, perfectly normal men (hetero males are attracted to young females, it is nature, if you are not, you are gay) who know they shouldn't be doing this can't seem to resist. On the other hand we got young kids (not just girls are preyed upon) some of them vulnerable, all without any supervision of any sort. Problems are bound to occur.
Are they worse then what happened in earlier days? I remember a faint story from my childhood about a gym instructor who was let go. We got warnings about strange men hanging around the school, so it is nothing new. BUT I was also male. Those warnings didn't really apply to me, bu
If it had simple been a MBR type virus, that could have snuck on board during the process that formats the drives. This is how other infections have taken place, the machine that produced the finished image is infected and so the image gets infected.
If it had been a virus in one of the apps that come with some external drives, that could have gone a similar route.
But how the hell does one accidently come up with a virus/trojan/malware that accidently happens to be exactly what you need to infect a clean HD? If you read the description this piece of malware was designed to be used in this manner, it is not just a random infection.
I did spot one error in the story, that could be attributed to idiot journalists, about the claim the 500gb maxtor disks are typically used by goverments to store databases and such. Yeah, right. Store critical databases on a maxtor disk? Then the story goes on to contradict itself by claiming the disks were sold via stores, goverments do NOT hop to the closest store for their hardware. The disks in questions are cheapo consumer models, not destined for places like goverment at all.
It seems an odd case, but frankly I seen odder cases, perhaps it was just an attempt by someone to see if they could, or maybe it was test run. I don't really think it was a secret chinese job, unless they simply wanted to see if it was possible. The reason it uploaded to a chinese site is most likely simply that it is simple to host a site there.
Wasn't there a story about the RBN moving to china?
There was a point in history when the US of A did overflights of russia for 'recon' with the bombers, the same aircraft that would fly over russia in the outbreak of a war were send on 'recon' missions. Talk about bloody insane, what if a russian commander had taken it for an assault? How is he supposed to know what is in the bomb bay.
Countries pull these stunts to see how far they can go, compared to sending nuclear bombers on recon flights this one is harmless, but it does tell the chinese a lot about the west. We need their stuff, we cannot stop it, we cannot say, no more HD's not made in the west.
The US learned that the USSR at the time had no way to stop these aircraft (one of the reasons russia became so obsessed with interception tech was these flights, every US aircraft shotdown over vietnam with SAM's was the result of these probe missions, remember that incident where russia showdown a korean airliner? The US had a very long history of probing soviet airspace with civilian aircraft, that time some innocents learned just how far the US could go.). China has learned just what they can pull.
After all what is the US going to do, the western economy needs China, it would require a massive change of police to do anything about this. So China now knows that they can get away with it. Even if the chinese goverment did not do it, they still know this.
It seems a simple test to see just how deeply the western economy now depends on chinese products.
frankly I think it is far simpler, someone paid someone to put this on, and someone did. All these lead paint stories are nothing more then someone trying to increase his income. Ages ago I worked in a warehouse for glasses (sunglasses and regular frames), these things cost nothing but sell for a small fortune. Every now and then a small truck would arrive and load things, nothing abnormal except that the guy never bothered with a loading bill. The deal was simple, orders were frequently wrong, so with some carefull mis-management there was always surplus stock, this guy could sell those goods, all you had to do was make sure that whenhe arrived they were close enough by the door. In exachange, you would get a bonus, you didn't ask where it came from and they didn't tell you.
Apparently head office got a bit suspicious after a while and ordered a complete inventory count, the week before that we had a burglary. We didn't know what had been stolen, but luckily we had that inventory check coming up, so we would be able to tell the police then.
The "burglary" was almost idiotic, the way they entered they would have had to been acrobats to get anything out, they had forced open a door that had been blocked off by a shelving unit. They would have had to wriggle under the door, climb over the shelving, climb down and do that several times to get anything. All under the eyes of camera's. Can you say 'setup'?
But hey, it paid badly and the 'bonus' easily was half my salary, while to me the risk was at most undeclared income. Same I think here, someone offered some guy at the 'install crap software on the HD' department to install a little bit extra, and they took it.
I am ashamed you are a countryman of mine. Iraq back then was part of the Ottoman empire, so didn't even exist back then. Japan was on the "allied" site. Vietnam was a french colony, so on the same side as the US (when the americans finally got involved).
The 11th of november is remembered in the western nations that took part in WW1, this includes the US, canada, great britian, france and belgium at least. It is NOT a US day. It is also not a celebrations, it is a remembrance of those who died. Not a glorification of killing but a rememberance of the loss.
It is similar to our 4th of may, we remember those who died, ALL who died, in conflict. This includes those on the other side. No we do not lay reefs at site of nazi war criminals, but the graves of german soldiers are tended too and they too are remembered.
Frankly most soldiers from these past wars have learned to forgive but never forget, they can talk with their former enemies, why can't you get over it.
As for google displaying a bit of pride in the US, it is a US site. Let the afghans and iraqies and anyone else with a beef against the US go on their own internet and use their own search engines.
As a dutch person surely you must have noticed how everything turns orange around queens day? How should people from Suriname feel about that? Enslaved by dutch forces, to pay for the dutch empire, about this day?
Start looking a little closer at home before you start blaming other countries.
It isn't anonymous OR private that I see my doctor, the insurance company knows, the people in the waiting room know. So I am NOT anonymous, nor private about visiting the doctor.
The talk with the doctor isn't anonymous, he can see me, he knows who I am, he got my details on the chart in front of him. It is however assumed to be private, the doctor will NOT share the information with the next patient, even though that patients knows I saw that doctor.
In the same way the insurance company knows what drugs have been prescribed, no anonimty involved but they are still supposed to respect my privacy.
Slashdot knows my ip, I am not anonymous to them, yet they are supposed to keep it private.
Being anonymous is rare. Is voting anonymous? NO. They know who voted and who didn't in most systems. They need to know, to avoid people voting more then once, but your vote itself is anonymous, but NOT oddly enough private (after all, the whole point of voting is to let it be known).
Being anonymous is important for things that could really hurt you, like seeing a doctor about a sexual disease. There are special setups in most countries for this. But oddly enough privacy is given up then, you do not know why I see my regular GP, you can have a bloody guess why I go to a VD clinic.
Many things can't work with anonimity, but we require privacy nonetheless.
I really don't have an answer for how to deal with this in our changing world. As voters we on the one hand seem to want our goverments to "protect" us, but on the other hand we are loath for anything that affects us.
Dangerous driving is in holland one of the top irritations, but speed camera's are just as often seen as one of the great satan's. How does this reconcile? Could it be that voters speak with split tongue? What I really think people want is that the state goes after wrong doers, just as long as the wrong doers ain't them.
If you think democrats are socialists, you have some really screwed up vision of what it means to be a socialist. From a european view, the democrats are right wing, just a bit shy of being extreme right wing (neo-nazi). Republicans would come dangerously close to extreme right wing.
The most liberal democrat would still be considered a right-winger.
A true socialist believes in universal healthcare, a minimum wage that you can support a family on, maximum working week, state funded education for everyone, unions (not US style unions), equality, taxing the rich to support the poor.
Not exactly stuff the democrats seem to care about. No, not even hillary.
To be fair, the US is a totally different culture then western europe. You made your system work, we made our system work. One of the biggest culture clashes is that neither side seems capable of understanding that the other side LIKES their system.
If you tell the swedes that they are insane that they have their working population support a segment that could work but doesn't, they wouldn't understand what you are on about. They think their welfare system makes for a nice place to live in. If you told a working american that X% of his taxes went to a career student the ceiling would hit the roof.
The french LIKE their huge goverment system.
One of the most serious errors you can make in the world is to try and force your countries system on another (Oh yeah, Iraq is a very definite example of this.)
But even so, allowing democrats to be called socialists is going to far, just because they make up the US political left, does not make then socialist. By european standards they would definitly be on the right end of the spectrum and be dangerously close to the far right.
Far right is NOT extreme right, it is the difference between being loving your country, and hating foreigners.
IF the US has a problem (IF, it is kinda like saying, Oh Bill Gates is no longer number 1, he is in trouble, I would like to have his troubles) it is that its two party system has resulted in people having a choice between a moderate right winger who leans a bit to the left and a moderate right winger who leans a bit to the right. The end result is that whichever you pick, you get a compromise candidate who is always a rightwinger trying to appeal to both leftish right wingers and right wing right wingers.
That doesn't leave a lot of room for trying a new direction. The dems can't go to the center, for fear of alienating the right wing, and the republicans can't go to far too the right for fear of alienating the moderates on their side.
From a EU perspective it is often very hard to spot the difference between US presidential candidates.
But make no mistake, none of them is a socialist. Read up on what it means and you might see why the US can never go for it. It ain't in your countries culture. An american would recoil at the state providing for him from grib to grave. In the EU, we thing that is nice and exactly what we have goverment for.
(Please note I am being very generic here, so please don't tear my head off because you live in the US and are a communist or you live in the EU and want bushes baby).
We know that modern creators often include Easter Eggs in their products, everything from hidden bits of programming to images etched into the silicone hardware. Why do so many of slashdot readers find it impossible to accept that Leonardo might have done the same in his work?
We know he had the skill for it, we know he did it in other works, we know he loved tricks.
Yes, human beings have got a talent for seeing patterns where there aren't any, and slashdot readers got a talent for being a bunch of smartasses who think they know better.
Personally I would first want to see a picture of the painting, the overlayed musical score (how lenient do you have to be to see the scores, is it ALWAYS the center of the hand or is the note sometimes put at the fingernails and othertimes at the wrist?) and the music itself.
I am slightly suspicious because it seems all the be explained in a book. MONEY GRABBER! If it was science it would be a in a peer reviewed paper, not in a commercial book. Then their is the claim that this shows Leonardo was a religious person. Eh why? I don't see the connection between hiding a piece of music in a painting and the painters world vision.
Eclipse is nice, an IDE for java at first but suitable for other languages, and because it is java, it could in theory run on all os'es that have java.
Azureus is nice, a bittorrent client, and because it is java, it could in theory run on all os'es that have java.
Opera for mobile phones is Java.
These are just the ones I use most often.
The bad thing about java is that the old people among us remember it from the web days when everyone used it to bloat their pages when we were on modems that already choked on dns lookups. When your memory was measured in MB and java wanted GB that is when we got our first taste of java and my god did it taste foul.
Today that matters less, we got faster internet, we got more memory and more power, so while java still has a bloated feel to it, it doesn't matter anymore.
To be fair, java is only "bloated" because it replicates what your "local" programs already have in the OS. IF java apps didn't do that, and heavily relied on the OS they wouldn't be portable.
The most important reason to want java is that it would allow ANY java app to be run under it. No more need for signing, java would be signed, not the app running on it. Suddenly the iPhone would have a ton of third party stuff available.
There is a reason american phones often lack the java capability that exists on the same model in the rest of the world, java opens up the phone.
So java is good. Yes it is a bit bloated and a big of a hog, but that is the price for having apps that port easily.
Most of the things you mention are against the law in europe, so consumers can fully hold Apple accountable if they don't get what they expect, namely a phone that follows EU law.
Just because Apple can pull these stunts in the US does not mean it can do them in the EU.
Do you really think the EU would let Apple get away with it after it has gotten MS to finally submit? Remember, thanks to the lovely EU system, we CONSTANTLY have elections, so there is always someone somewhere who wants to pretend he really cares about the voters and will protect them against evil companies.
The EU works, because it is such a mess, the one thing I fear that it ever becomes a working system like the US has. God preserve us all.
ME as manager at NASA: What do you engineers say about the launch of this mission.
Engineers who know what they are doing because that is what they been trained for AND are required to stand behind if they want those letters after their name: We say X.
ME as manager at NASA: Okay, we do X.
Doesn't sound too hard, can I have my fat salary and golden parachute and parties now?
The two disasters were warned against by NASA owns personel, had the managers listened to their rocket-scientists then those 'accidents' would not have happened.
Do you want to know what I think about especially the first 'accident'? Do the math, cancel the mission and you get some bad press from an audience that doesn't care. If it goes wrong, you get massive public sympathy and can hopefully call it an accident with a straight face.
In the US release, you can commit a double homicide as long as everyone keeps their clothes on. In the EU release you can have any combination of sex but no blood. In the JP release... Well lets no go there shall we. Tentacles probably will be included.
Phones have been updatable for a long time, simply by selecting an option somewhere in the settings will it check and download the latest software for that phone.
You would really have to travel back in time to get phones that don't have this.
I got a pet little theory about MMORPG's and that is that most players play them, because there is nothing else. WoW was king not because of its excellence, but because of its one eye in the land of the mole people.
Currently my drug is LOTRO, and I can see once again just how bad the game is. Not bad in a conventional "crash and burn" type way, but bad as in, I can't believe I am playing this, kinda way.
But I need my MMORPG fix, and for now LOTRO provides it. But I am looking constantly for something new.
I get the same feeling from other players, we know the likes of Blizzard and Turbine and SOE are yanking our chain but we need that fix and we are forever hopefull that the next supplier of our drug will get a clue and provide a FUN game.
You know what I find hardest to understand? The insistence of companies to add a tedious grind for miniscule advancements. Oh but you got to keep the player intrested, else he will quit playing after one month and then were will we get our money?
One simple answer, THE SIMS
A fun game, that easily spins as much money most MMORPG's, yet it provides player with FUN so they keep coming back for more (Sims expansion packs are not quiet as regular as once a month, but they cost more AND the company doesn't need to provide servers and customer support).
There are countless more games that get endless replay simply by being FUN! I played Bioware RPG's several times for the HELL of it. So why do MMORPG companies feel they got to add endless grinds to keep players hooked? It doesn't really work on myself, I prefer the middle game and once that is done, I move on. Considering that most MMORPG slowly die I can't think it really appeals to that many people, just most keep playing until they find somethingbetter.
Is it just LOTRO that right now is a bit deserted after the EU launch of Tabula Rasa?
Would I recommend trying LOTRO at the moment? No not really, the game is rapidly dying in for the early levels. Everyone is either working on their end game OR leaving for greener pastures. Oh that still leaves a lot of people playing, but if you want to logon during the week, be prepared for some very lonely areas. Same thing happened to EQ SWG WoW and probably countless other MMORPG's I never bothered with.
Sometimes I think the most innovative element a new MMORPG could introduce was permanent death upon achieving the top level. Reach say 100 and you got time for a few epic quests that end your characters heroic journey, before fading away and forcing you to start a new character. Gone would be the mad rush to end game, the constant demand for insanely high level extra content, the need for increased levels AND you would have a constant stream of people in all levels of the game to make newcomers feel less lonely.
Ah well, spend to long in here, need my fix. damnit, load faster I am going into withdrawal here!
Responsible parenting is one thing, but kids will stick anything in their mouth, and nose.
A childerens enviroment should therefore not contain things that A are small enough to swallow or B are harmfull if done so. Toys therefore have to be made in such a way that even with rough handling parts do not come off and are non-toxic. Thats the law. It really ain't even that hard. The original toy in this case WAS non-toxic. The chinese replaced the original glue with another, why? The chinese for some reason seem unable to follow specifications. All the recalls I seen from China are because they changed a part of the design for no good reason.
I am all for responsible parenting, but when a company creates a safe product and a chinese company replaces a harmless glue with a KNOWN dangerous one, what is a parent to do. The product HAD been tested before. Should you put everything through your own lab before giving it to your child?
Frankly it is about time the chinese start to act upon this. Launch a police investigation and find out why this glue was replaced.
But yes parents should also inspect the toys themselves, before you give a toddler a teddybear, try and see if you can pull it apart. but parents can't be expected to do chemical tests.
Frankly I think we need to thighten the rules, NO product is released without it first passing rigid and mandatory safety checks that test EVERYTHING. Release a product that proves harmfull and you are charged with attempted manslaughter. Why did this company not TEST their products one they arrived from china?
TRANSLATION: so here is one my own. Their contains dates and promises with a history to back it up. Mine contains nothing.
we have many, many millions of customers
TRANSLATION: we got less then 10% of the market, we are so small Apple might overtake us with just one phone.
great software
TRANSLATION: Oh come one, am I trying to kid. It is the sucks and the only people that use Windows Mobile are those who absolutly have too. If it was so great we wouldn't be such a small player. Really, go to a european or japanese mobile phone dealer and try to find a MS phone. Thank god for our lock on the desktop or we would really be nothing. Curse you blackberry!
many hardware devices
TRANSLATION: we just can't shift them so we keep trying with lots of new devices hoping one day to get it right. Curse you steve jobs for doing it in one!
they're welcome in our world
TRANSLATION: and in our world the sky is pink with polka dots Wheee! I am not crazy, I am an airplane!
So no, nothing he says is actually a lie, it is just... man it is hard to remain serious about this. The symbian one was laughable enough, this is just, it is almost sad.
I have to keep telling myself it is his job to say that and that he probably knows that it is all a big lie, because if he really believes what he says he really needs to seek proffesional help.
Some people point out that he has no choice but to say this, he needs to reasue stockholders. That is true. Up to a point. But if you are a MS stockholder, does this reassure you? Because it just sends up a huge red flag to me that this guy has no clue how to deal with the fact that MS Windows Mobile just ain't doing that well and is now facing two new competitors (Apple and Google) who seem to have a very big clue, wrapper around a stick and are paddling his flabby ass.
No your kids don't turn to animals when they hit their teens. YOU screwed up long before.
Blame everyone else all you want, but that child was handed to you in a pristine state and you raised it. Problem kids ain't just teenagers, you get totally out of control kids of toddler age because the parents can't do it.
These exact same "parents" would also suck at raising a pet. What next, you are blaiming badly trained dogs on society as well rather then their owner? Puppies hang out at the fire-hydrant and pick up their habits there?
Things are different then when we grew up? oh yeah, because kids rebelling is something new. Ask your parents about it, or your grand-parents. They can do with a laugh.
If kids today got a feeling that everything is their god given right it is because YOU failed to raise them.
The proof? The fast majority of kids who do NOT grow into hell spawn. This is often forgotten, the countless kids who do NOT special attention, who just do what kids have done, grow up, become adults, have kids, live their lives.
I take your excuse ONLY if no parents are succeeding anymore in raising reasonably well-adjusted kids, but that ain't the case is it. Explain those "super" parents to me. Have they locked their kids away till 18? Why ain't there kids corrupted by these bad people out there.
Although I do admit that society ain't making it easier, with the increased importance of getting a nice diploma lots of kids are forced into schooling that don't suit them because their parents and society thinks that a physical job is beneath them.
I see that myself, kids forced into computing classes who should just be put in construction where they would be good and can get rid of their energy and see real direct results for their work. But no, being a bricklayer is beneath most parents ambition for their kids.
But that is another rant. But stop blaming society for your failure.
You claim you have a well adjusted to your teenage kids, and call them animals at the same time? Oh yeah, I think I may have spotted your problem.
First Symbian now Microsoft. It sure has the two competitors in a uproar.
You want to know the really funny thing, although I heard about the google phone, it is through this press release by MS and Symbian I learned that it is called Android and that it was officially announced. Thanks to these nice companies for helping me spot that I missed the original press-release by google itself (surely the world ain't so ironic that the original story never made slashdot?).
Okay, enough fun, on with a serious comment.
Taking bets, when a MS employee leaves to work on the google phone, what will Steve Ballmer throw, shouting "I will fucking bury Google, I failed to do so once, and I will fail to do so again."
A chair (it didn't work before, but hey, give the guy credit for persistence)
Although I have little problem with halo players calling each other "the gey", takes one to know one, I do have a slight suspicion that this family was not exactly a model household before the day of the air-card incident.
Dealing with kids is difficult, you finally somehow managed to become and adult, and now only have to deal with adults, who are in general mature in their relations with you. And bam, you are landed with a tiny critter whose entire goal is to drive you nuts.
It is alright for the first couple of years, they just cry a lot and stink, but then the little blighter discovers the concept of lying and will be very very bad at it. Yet what to do, beat the snot out of the brat for insulting your intelligence? Attempt to reason with someone who eats boogers? Ignore it like you ignore the lies of the guy you voted for?
What do you do when you child goes through the hurting other people phase? Usually kicking them? Hit them back so hard they know for their rest of their lives Pain results in Pain so never cause it to anyone bigger then you? Try to reason with a person kicking you in the shins or ignore it and watch Idol?
The sad fact is that too many parents simply don't want the responsibility, they either just don't want to spend the time (Congrats, you have a kid, say goodbye to your life) or want to be their kids best friend, not their parent.
The problem with this is that the problems won't start to show until years later, when all of a sudden parents find themselves with kids from hell. The proble doesn't get any better when these kids then go on to have kids themselves.
It really isn't anything new, disfunctional families have been around forever. Just that the media loves these kinds of stories so we get to hear about them constantly.
Simple, these things rarely work, and people rely on them as if they they are foolproof.
I see some people argue that you could use this to enforce a limited amount of play time with a kid, so that they cannot "cheat". But ask yourselve what this says about your relation with your child. You do not trust your child and broadcast this very clearly.
Ask yourselve if this does not already show that your parenting skills are lacking and you really need to take far more drastic actions then rely on some tool.
A well raised child will at times attempt to bend the rules (essential part of growing up) but at the same try not to actually break them because they simply do no want to hurt their parents. Offcourse because they are too young to know better, they will get this wrong. THAT IS GROWING UP. A kid watching a movie that is way too scary for it, learns the hard way. You can install all the counter measures you like, but isn't watching something too scary also a part of childhood? Same as with breaking something and cuts and bruises. Anybody here who did not risk their neck as a child doing silly stuff like making ever higher jumps with their bike?
Part of growing up is seeing what the laws of society are and this starts with the laws at home. We must at once learn to respect them if we are to function of society, but also learn when and how to break them unless we want to become mindless machines.
This is offcourse a nightmare as a parent, but any child will attempt to push curfew, it doesn't matter what the curfew is, if you tell your teenage daughter she doesn't have to come home from her friday night date before monday morning 9:00, she will be coming in monday 9:30. Bedtime is important, but so is allowing a child to just push it a little, now and then. It is a give and take and the secret is that there are no books you can follow for this. No simple one liners.
You ain't got a clue how to parent and your only hope of success is to stop the kid from finding out. It usually works.
The problems emerge when parents are unable to see themselves as the parents and want to be friends with their kids instead, or simply refuse to take responsibility. YOU raise your kid. Not the state, not the media and not some device. If you cannot do it without help, then hand over custody to those who can.
Lets face it, if you need the help of a machine to deal with a child, you are a miserable failure. What next, you can only toilet train a puppy with a cattle prod? I deal with "troubled" kids now and then as part of volunteer work. Problems enforcing the rules? Are you kidding me, these kids are drunk for rules. They WANT someone to tell them what they can and cannot do and be clear about it. Simple rule, no smoking in the computer room, full stop end of argument, this is obeyed, but the rule is enforced for everyone, at all times. This is clear, and gets respected. Do not be wishy washy and allow it after class, or allow adults to smoke. The kids even enforce it themselves on new arrivals.
Frankly the simple truth is that if you need a machine to check up on your kid it is already too late. You are fighting a symtome, not the disease. So even if you succeed and get the kid of the 360, the kid will just disobey in some other way. A friends 360? Gaming on the PC?
But sadly you got it wrong. The fault lies with the voter who has let media turn them into simple minded monkeys who can only vote based on the most idiotic notions.
The voter is supposed to use the media to inform himself about the world and that does NOT include hour long segments of the antics of the latest hollywood bimbo.
Because the media has become all about eyeballs, and the voter has made it clear he gives his eyeballs to the media that shows the most no-panty shots, we now have a media that has a day long following of some tart with a short cut to some news from some war that seems to be going on somewhere, sorry for this, some old fogey insists on putting this in but we will be right back with more famous peoples being prats right after this commericial.
Bread and Circusses, NOT given to us by the goverment, but by a handfull of superrich people who just happen to have very close ties to the powers that be, in fact ARE the powers that be.
Some people like to talk about conspiracies, but that is just another form of mindless entertainment. The real simple story is "follow the money".
A media outlet makes more money from trash then it does from real investigation. So why bother with the latter? It may be what the press is for but it don't sell ads. The voter is totally incapable of resisting, goes uninformed about what is going on and then is asked once every couple of years to vote for a person they know nothing about, backed by people they never heard off and that is how you elect your leaders?
Don't worry about conspiracy plots to keep the people dumb and take power away from them. The people don't need help doing that, just give them a choice between a real news channel and a light entertainment channel, add a dose of free market and before long you will have killed of the free press.
Why do you think the powers that be are so dead set against state television. Why do you think the BBC is under constant pressure to improve its ratings and supply programs people want to watch rather then be an "elitist" station airing intellectual stuff that gets no viewers? Because those programs are way to dangerous. Every hour a station airs another reality show, it ain't airing investigations of the goverment.
So don't cry over that 'these'[sic] people have done to you. Ask yourselve what you have to done to stop them. But don't worry, big brother is on next, and after that Idol, and it is all to late anyway, and your vote don't matter. Be a good little consumer.
Really, it may just be too late, unless something really big happens it just seems goverments of any type are doomed to slide down this path. It doesn't really matter if it is democracy or a dictatorship, left or right. Unless something big happens to shake a nation out of it, things just slide down. It is not just the US, look at britain, they too got a leader that should be in jail getting of free. A system that despite changing from right (Conservatives) to left (Labour) doesn't seem to have changed at all. Other countries show the same effect. Perhaps after decades of peace it just happens. Have the belgians finally gotten a goverment together after months of haggling? How many times can a dutch goverment fall? Have the Italians actually gotten around to arresting that corrupt guy who EVERYONE knows is corrupt to such an extent that you can just say it without fear of being charged with libel?
I sometimes think it is human nature, to change the world you need to be angry, and it is hard to stay angry 24/7 year in year out.
Boy, they must be worried about the Google phone, to release a press statement saying that you ain't worried means that you are pissing your pants and calling for your mommy.
All this story has done is shown that the Google phone apparently is a big enough worry of the current mobile OS platform to speak out about it, and here was me thinking it was nothing, just another Google Beta(TM) product. Thanks for setting me straight guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Pre WW2 there were movements in great britain to reduce agriculture, farming was not a proper business anymore, far better to have lesser countries do that and use the country side for relaxation.
It made sense, england back then could afford to import most of its food, and its own farming industry wasn't exactly top notch.
Then WW2 broke out, and BAM, no more imports. These days again, people are trying to reduce englands own farming industry with claims it is better to get it from abroad.
The problem is simple, what is true today, doesn't have to be true tomorrow. The entire history of the world is full of examples of nations who thought, oh war isn't going to happen, or we have time, or the rules have changed we no longer need X.
Recent examples, what was the most effective aircraft of the first Gulf War, that spiffy stealth bomber OR the dirt cheap unloved A10 tankkiller.
They hastily had to extend the life of that plane because all of sudden the US needed to destroy lots and lots of cheap tanks. Sure you can blow them up with missles that cost many time the cost of the enemy tank, but the A10 does it for peanuts. The istory of war, the US in particulair is filled with these kinds of examples, were leaders made a mistake of NOT preparing for everything and thought they could limit possible future wars to a single scenario.
We don't know what the future will bring. War isn't in the intrest of china, but war didn't exactly turn out to be in the intrest of germany either. Or japan. Or Italy. The serbs didn't do too well either, neither did Iraq, afghan was rewarded by being once again occupied.
The US military power is largely based on its carriers, they give it the power to project its might where it wants, when it wants it. To suddenly find out that a diesel-sub (not nuclear, a plain old diesel sub) can come undetected in torpedo range is very scary indeed. These things ain't expensive. Even terroriss could afford one. The reason they ain't expensive is that it was thought they were mostly obsolete.
The thing is, this sub was only detected when it surfaced (I am having some serious doubts about this), it could have emptied its tubes in the heart of the fleet, almost certainly resulting in the sinking of the carrier. IF this is true, it means that for instance Iraq could have bought one of these subs and used it to sink allied ships, they had the money.
The motto of any army should be to be prepared for what ever may happen, hopefully by showing that any attack is futile, you can prevent those attacks from happening in the first place. The reason most countries ain't at war is because they know that it would be too risky. All of sudden this story seems to say that risk to attack the US can be reduced. The americans ain't got all that many carriers, just how expensive would it be to equip a fleet capable of sinking all the carriers? You would instantly reduce the US military power.
Is china going to attack the US? Watch Tora! Tora! Tora! a realistic movie about Pearl Harbour. Most of WW2 in fact is one long chain of countries being invaded that didn't think it would happen. It did.
Remember, Pearl Harbour was NOT an attack against the US with a plan to invade and concour it, it was meant to knock the US out of the war long enough for Japan to make its claim in the east and then make peace when it had become too powerfull to be removed.
China might want to do the same thing, not destroy the US or occupy it, simply keep it from interfering in its affairs with for instance taiwan.
The US permantly got a fleet in that area to protect taiwan. Say the chinese launched an attack to reclaim it, the US carrier force would be a massive deterrent, but now they have shown they can take that carrier out. Then the US, with a reduced naval force would NOT be faced with fighting of an invasion force, but freeing an occupied nation.
No china once again upped the stakes in this dangerous game of who is the dominant power in the east. Alth
You know who you are, the ones that said Ballmer had a point last week when he called Android a press-release. Well, here is the SDK, as promised. On time.
So will all those slashdotter who doubted eat crow now? Or will the MS fanboys just pretend this never happened, or now move on to, "all google has is a press-release, and a sdk, and an alliance".
Come on, we need some amusement here. Spin this one!
There are javaless phones, that Motorola one with the primitive LCD display is one, but all "modern" gadget phones got it. If it can play mp3's and such, if basically it has the power to run downloadable games it has java because, well the games are java.
I can understand your confusion because it is just as confusing from my view. Basically most phones that are capable have it. How else would you play games and such on it?
To be fair, in holland and most of the EU, competition on the phones started with the mobile phones, before that the landlines were owned by semi-state industries on a national level. So perhaps the mobile phone companies that newly emerge with GSM just felt they had to compete on all fronts. In holland, the monopolist KPN was if I remember correctly also the one to most push their own content.
My own recent phone came with software to convert music to ringtones and offcourse java so I could run my own browser.
Basically, I never read a mobile phone companies press release saying it had java, only to find in store that it had been disabled. If Nokia, Sony-Ericsonn etc list the phone as java capable, then in holland at least, it is.
Perhaps it is also because most phones are sold through third party stores, they typically display a phone and then the different subscriptions you can get it with from the different networks. Wouldn't help sales of your network if your chart read "no java" when everyone else did have it.
Slashdots population is male, the number of females can be counted on the fingers of a clumsy lumberjack. As such it is hard for us to understand just how often females are the subject of sexual advances. I as a male can open a facebook page and never ever get an invititation for anything. A female only has to give the barest hint that she is female and BAM, she is hit upon.
Most recent example was in a MMORPG raid, I let it slip that our raid leader has a sexy voice, she does, as a motivation to get people to use voice chat. Oh boy. MISTAKE!
That was followed by a rather lengthy lecture by her and another friend on the realities of being a female in this world. I am old enough to know about cramps and lots of other stuff I think should be on a need to know basis (hint, I don't need to know) but they shocked me by just how constant and unrelenting it is. We all know about the teacher who offers better grade for eheh, homework. But as males we think that is something funny, but also rare. They both claimed that it was not, that on a night out it was not uncommon for them to be approached for sex for money. That if it becomes known in a game they are females they ALWAYS get hit upon. Sometimes perfectly nice, sometimes a bit too much and at times pure abuse but most important ALWAYS.
But there are slashdot females here, and they can no doubt better describe it, my point is that we as males cannot really judge just how much of a problem this is. Because what was also clear is that it is not the majority of men who harass, unless you yourselve are one of the people who prey on teens you just can't understand how constant the treath is.
Young girls are also vulnerable, not all, but some are in desperate need for anyone to give them attention and the predators out there are casting a wide enough net they will find some poor girl (or even boy) who is receptive. Again this is not something men can understand. If you as a teenage boy had a older female who wished to initiate you in the pleasures of love, you would have thanked god on your bair knees. You would have been a stud. When a few years ago that story broke about the highschooler and female teacher, who among us didn't think, "wish I had a teacher like that".
With social networking sites we have created spot where vulnerable people can expose themselves in an extremely direct manner to those who wish to take advantage of them, in total privacy.
Chat up a teen at my sportclub and you will get yourselve thoroughly beaten up. Do it online, and who is to know.
What I want to make clear is that it is NOT something we as males can accurately judge, if you really want to know, try finding a female in your circle of friends who has an account on such a site and ask to read the responses she gets. I read the logs she had of an old WoW session. I wouldn't say I was shocked but if you get pissed of at goldspammers, you ain't see nothing yet. She and I think other girls are there in game to play a game, not to get hit up on. It wasn't even the abuse or hatred that was shocking, but just how constant it was.
Women don't mind if you look at their tits, they take pride in them, they want to be sexy. What women object to is that men ONLY ever look at their tits. ALL men ALL the time.
Social networking sites remove even the most basic controls of civilized society, you can see this in the catch-a-predator series, perfectly normal men (hetero males are attracted to young females, it is nature, if you are not, you are gay) who know they shouldn't be doing this can't seem to resist. On the other hand we got young kids (not just girls are preyed upon) some of them vulnerable, all without any supervision of any sort. Problems are bound to occur.
Are they worse then what happened in earlier days? I remember a faint story from my childhood about a gym instructor who was let go. We got warnings about strange men hanging around the school, so it is nothing new. BUT I was also male. Those warnings didn't really apply to me, bu
If it had simple been a MBR type virus, that could have snuck on board during the process that formats the drives. This is how other infections have taken place, the machine that produced the finished image is infected and so the image gets infected.
If it had been a virus in one of the apps that come with some external drives, that could have gone a similar route.
But how the hell does one accidently come up with a virus/trojan/malware that accidently happens to be exactly what you need to infect a clean HD? If you read the description this piece of malware was designed to be used in this manner, it is not just a random infection.
I did spot one error in the story, that could be attributed to idiot journalists, about the claim the 500gb maxtor disks are typically used by goverments to store databases and such. Yeah, right. Store critical databases on a maxtor disk? Then the story goes on to contradict itself by claiming the disks were sold via stores, goverments do NOT hop to the closest store for their hardware. The disks in questions are cheapo consumer models, not destined for places like goverment at all.
It seems an odd case, but frankly I seen odder cases, perhaps it was just an attempt by someone to see if they could, or maybe it was test run. I don't really think it was a secret chinese job, unless they simply wanted to see if it was possible. The reason it uploaded to a chinese site is most likely simply that it is simple to host a site there.
Wasn't there a story about the RBN moving to china?
There was a point in history when the US of A did overflights of russia for 'recon' with the bombers, the same aircraft that would fly over russia in the outbreak of a war were send on 'recon' missions. Talk about bloody insane, what if a russian commander had taken it for an assault? How is he supposed to know what is in the bomb bay.
Countries pull these stunts to see how far they can go, compared to sending nuclear bombers on recon flights this one is harmless, but it does tell the chinese a lot about the west. We need their stuff, we cannot stop it, we cannot say, no more HD's not made in the west.
The US learned that the USSR at the time had no way to stop these aircraft (one of the reasons russia became so obsessed with interception tech was these flights, every US aircraft shotdown over vietnam with SAM's was the result of these probe missions, remember that incident where russia showdown a korean airliner? The US had a very long history of probing soviet airspace with civilian aircraft, that time some innocents learned just how far the US could go.). China has learned just what they can pull.
After all what is the US going to do, the western economy needs China, it would require a massive change of police to do anything about this. So China now knows that they can get away with it. Even if the chinese goverment did not do it, they still know this.
It seems a simple test to see just how deeply the western economy now depends on chinese products.
frankly I think it is far simpler, someone paid someone to put this on, and someone did. All these lead paint stories are nothing more then someone trying to increase his income. Ages ago I worked in a warehouse for glasses (sunglasses and regular frames), these things cost nothing but sell for a small fortune. Every now and then a small truck would arrive and load things, nothing abnormal except that the guy never bothered with a loading bill. The deal was simple, orders were frequently wrong, so with some carefull mis-management there was always surplus stock, this guy could sell those goods, all you had to do was make sure that whenhe arrived they were close enough by the door. In exachange, you would get a bonus, you didn't ask where it came from and they didn't tell you.
Apparently head office got a bit suspicious after a while and ordered a complete inventory count, the week before that we had a burglary. We didn't know what had been stolen, but luckily we had that inventory check coming up, so we would be able to tell the police then.
The "burglary" was almost idiotic, the way they entered they would have had to been acrobats to get anything out, they had forced open a door that had been blocked off by a shelving unit. They would have had to wriggle under the door, climb over the shelving, climb down and do that several times to get anything. All under the eyes of camera's. Can you say 'setup'?
But hey, it paid badly and the 'bonus' easily was half my salary, while to me the risk was at most undeclared income. Same I think here, someone offered some guy at the 'install crap software on the HD' department to install a little bit extra, and they took it.
I am ashamed you are a countryman of mine. Iraq back then was part of the Ottoman empire, so didn't even exist back then. Japan was on the "allied" site. Vietnam was a french colony, so on the same side as the US (when the americans finally got involved).
The 11th of november is remembered in the western nations that took part in WW1, this includes the US, canada, great britian, france and belgium at least. It is NOT a US day. It is also not a celebrations, it is a remembrance of those who died. Not a glorification of killing but a rememberance of the loss.
It is similar to our 4th of may, we remember those who died, ALL who died, in conflict. This includes those on the other side. No we do not lay reefs at site of nazi war criminals, but the graves of german soldiers are tended too and they too are remembered.
Frankly most soldiers from these past wars have learned to forgive but never forget, they can talk with their former enemies, why can't you get over it.
As for google displaying a bit of pride in the US, it is a US site. Let the afghans and iraqies and anyone else with a beef against the US go on their own internet and use their own search engines.
As a dutch person surely you must have noticed how everything turns orange around queens day? How should people from Suriname feel about that? Enslaved by dutch forces, to pay for the dutch empire, about this day?
Start looking a little closer at home before you start blaming other countries.
It isn't anonymous OR private that I see my doctor, the insurance company knows, the people in the waiting room know. So I am NOT anonymous, nor private about visiting the doctor.
The talk with the doctor isn't anonymous, he can see me, he knows who I am, he got my details on the chart in front of him. It is however assumed to be private, the doctor will NOT share the information with the next patient, even though that patients knows I saw that doctor.
In the same way the insurance company knows what drugs have been prescribed, no anonimty involved but they are still supposed to respect my privacy.
Slashdot knows my ip, I am not anonymous to them, yet they are supposed to keep it private.
Being anonymous is rare. Is voting anonymous? NO. They know who voted and who didn't in most systems. They need to know, to avoid people voting more then once, but your vote itself is anonymous, but NOT oddly enough private (after all, the whole point of voting is to let it be known).
Being anonymous is important for things that could really hurt you, like seeing a doctor about a sexual disease. There are special setups in most countries for this. But oddly enough privacy is given up then, you do not know why I see my regular GP, you can have a bloody guess why I go to a VD clinic.
Many things can't work with anonimity, but we require privacy nonetheless.
I really don't have an answer for how to deal with this in our changing world. As voters we on the one hand seem to want our goverments to "protect" us, but on the other hand we are loath for anything that affects us.
Dangerous driving is in holland one of the top irritations, but speed camera's are just as often seen as one of the great satan's. How does this reconcile? Could it be that voters speak with split tongue? What I really think people want is that the state goes after wrong doers, just as long as the wrong doers ain't them.
If you think democrats are socialists, you have some really screwed up vision of what it means to be a socialist. From a european view, the democrats are right wing, just a bit shy of being extreme right wing (neo-nazi). Republicans would come dangerously close to extreme right wing.
The most liberal democrat would still be considered a right-winger.
A true socialist believes in universal healthcare, a minimum wage that you can support a family on, maximum working week, state funded education for everyone, unions (not US style unions), equality, taxing the rich to support the poor.
Not exactly stuff the democrats seem to care about. No, not even hillary.
To be fair, the US is a totally different culture then western europe. You made your system work, we made our system work. One of the biggest culture clashes is that neither side seems capable of understanding that the other side LIKES their system.
If you tell the swedes that they are insane that they have their working population support a segment that could work but doesn't, they wouldn't understand what you are on about. They think their welfare system makes for a nice place to live in. If you told a working american that X% of his taxes went to a career student the ceiling would hit the roof.
The french LIKE their huge goverment system.
One of the most serious errors you can make in the world is to try and force your countries system on another (Oh yeah, Iraq is a very definite example of this.)
But even so, allowing democrats to be called socialists is going to far, just because they make up the US political left, does not make then socialist. By european standards they would definitly be on the right end of the spectrum and be dangerously close to the far right.
Far right is NOT extreme right, it is the difference between being loving your country, and hating foreigners.
IF the US has a problem (IF, it is kinda like saying, Oh Bill Gates is no longer number 1, he is in trouble, I would like to have his troubles) it is that its two party system has resulted in people having a choice between a moderate right winger who leans a bit to the left and a moderate right winger who leans a bit to the right. The end result is that whichever you pick, you get a compromise candidate who is always a rightwinger trying to appeal to both leftish right wingers and right wing right wingers.
That doesn't leave a lot of room for trying a new direction. The dems can't go to the center, for fear of alienating the right wing, and the republicans can't go to far too the right for fear of alienating the moderates on their side.
From a EU perspective it is often very hard to spot the difference between US presidential candidates.
But make no mistake, none of them is a socialist. Read up on what it means and you might see why the US can never go for it. It ain't in your countries culture. An american would recoil at the state providing for him from grib to grave. In the EU, we thing that is nice and exactly what we have goverment for.
(Please note I am being very generic here, so please don't tear my head off because you live in the US and are a communist or you live in the EU and want bushes baby).
We know that modern creators often include Easter Eggs in their products, everything from hidden bits of programming to images etched into the silicone hardware. Why do so many of slashdot readers find it impossible to accept that Leonardo might have done the same in his work?
We know he had the skill for it, we know he did it in other works, we know he loved tricks.
Yes, human beings have got a talent for seeing patterns where there aren't any, and slashdot readers got a talent for being a bunch of smartasses who think they know better.
Personally I would first want to see a picture of the painting, the overlayed musical score (how lenient do you have to be to see the scores, is it ALWAYS the center of the hand or is the note sometimes put at the fingernails and othertimes at the wrist?) and the music itself.
I am slightly suspicious because it seems all the be explained in a book. MONEY GRABBER! If it was science it would be a in a peer reviewed paper, not in a commercial book. Then their is the claim that this shows Leonardo was a religious person. Eh why? I don't see the connection between hiding a piece of music in a painting and the painters world vision.
Eclipse is nice, an IDE for java at first but suitable for other languages, and because it is java, it could in theory run on all os'es that have java.
Azureus is nice, a bittorrent client, and because it is java, it could in theory run on all os'es that have java.
Opera for mobile phones is Java.
These are just the ones I use most often.
The bad thing about java is that the old people among us remember it from the web days when everyone used it to bloat their pages when we were on modems that already choked on dns lookups. When your memory was measured in MB and java wanted GB that is when we got our first taste of java and my god did it taste foul.
Today that matters less, we got faster internet, we got more memory and more power, so while java still has a bloated feel to it, it doesn't matter anymore.
To be fair, java is only "bloated" because it replicates what your "local" programs already have in the OS. IF java apps didn't do that, and heavily relied on the OS they wouldn't be portable.
The most important reason to want java is that it would allow ANY java app to be run under it. No more need for signing, java would be signed, not the app running on it. Suddenly the iPhone would have a ton of third party stuff available.
There is a reason american phones often lack the java capability that exists on the same model in the rest of the world, java opens up the phone.
So java is good. Yes it is a bit bloated and a big of a hog, but that is the price for having apps that port easily.
Most of the things you mention are against the law in europe, so consumers can fully hold Apple accountable if they don't get what they expect, namely a phone that follows EU law.
Just because Apple can pull these stunts in the US does not mean it can do them in the EU.
Do you really think the EU would let Apple get away with it after it has gotten MS to finally submit? Remember, thanks to the lovely EU system, we CONSTANTLY have elections, so there is always someone somewhere who wants to pretend he really cares about the voters and will protect them against evil companies.
The EU works, because it is such a mess, the one thing I fear that it ever becomes a working system like the US has. God preserve us all.
And then you divorce the bloodsucking demon, discover girls all over again, on the internet.
Setup a date, and get a heart to heart with Chris Hansen from dateline.
Eh, or so I heard. Say, you ain't an undercover agent are you?
ME as manager at NASA: What do you engineers say about the launch of this mission.
Engineers who know what they are doing because that is what they been trained for AND are required to stand behind if they want those letters after their name: We say X.
ME as manager at NASA: Okay, we do X.
Doesn't sound too hard, can I have my fat salary and golden parachute and parties now?
The two disasters were warned against by NASA owns personel, had the managers listened to their rocket-scientists then those 'accidents' would not have happened.
Do you want to know what I think about especially the first 'accident'? Do the math, cancel the mission and you get some bad press from an audience that doesn't care. If it goes wrong, you get massive public sympathy and can hopefully call it an accident with a straight face.
In the US release, you can commit a double homicide as long as everyone keeps their clothes on. In the EU release you can have any combination of sex but no blood. In the JP release... Well lets no go there shall we. Tentacles probably will be included.
Phones have been updatable for a long time, simply by selecting an option somewhere in the settings will it check and download the latest software for that phone.
You would really have to travel back in time to get phones that don't have this.
I got a pet little theory about MMORPG's and that is that most players play them, because there is nothing else. WoW was king not because of its excellence, but because of its one eye in the land of the mole people.
Currently my drug is LOTRO, and I can see once again just how bad the game is. Not bad in a conventional "crash and burn" type way, but bad as in, I can't believe I am playing this, kinda way.
But I need my MMORPG fix, and for now LOTRO provides it. But I am looking constantly for something new.
I get the same feeling from other players, we know the likes of Blizzard and Turbine and SOE are yanking our chain but we need that fix and we are forever hopefull that the next supplier of our drug will get a clue and provide a FUN game.
You know what I find hardest to understand? The insistence of companies to add a tedious grind for miniscule advancements. Oh but you got to keep the player intrested, else he will quit playing after one month and then were will we get our money?
One simple answer, THE SIMS
A fun game, that easily spins as much money most MMORPG's, yet it provides player with FUN so they keep coming back for more (Sims expansion packs are not quiet as regular as once a month, but they cost more AND the company doesn't need to provide servers and customer support).
There are countless more games that get endless replay simply by being FUN! I played Bioware RPG's several times for the HELL of it. So why do MMORPG companies feel they got to add endless grinds to keep players hooked? It doesn't really work on myself, I prefer the middle game and once that is done, I move on. Considering that most MMORPG slowly die I can't think it really appeals to that many people, just most keep playing until they find somethingbetter.
Is it just LOTRO that right now is a bit deserted after the EU launch of Tabula Rasa?
Would I recommend trying LOTRO at the moment? No not really, the game is rapidly dying in for the early levels. Everyone is either working on their end game OR leaving for greener pastures. Oh that still leaves a lot of people playing, but if you want to logon during the week, be prepared for some very lonely areas. Same thing happened to EQ SWG WoW and probably countless other MMORPG's I never bothered with.
Sometimes I think the most innovative element a new MMORPG could introduce was permanent death upon achieving the top level. Reach say 100 and you got time for a few epic quests that end your characters heroic journey, before fading away and forcing you to start a new character. Gone would be the mad rush to end game, the constant demand for insanely high level extra content, the need for increased levels AND you would have a constant stream of people in all levels of the game to make newcomers feel less lonely.
Ah well, spend to long in here, need my fix. damnit, load faster I am going into withdrawal here!
Responsible parenting is one thing, but kids will stick anything in their mouth, and nose.
A childerens enviroment should therefore not contain things that A are small enough to swallow or B are harmfull if done so. Toys therefore have to be made in such a way that even with rough handling parts do not come off and are non-toxic. Thats the law. It really ain't even that hard. The original toy in this case WAS non-toxic. The chinese replaced the original glue with another, why? The chinese for some reason seem unable to follow specifications. All the recalls I seen from China are because they changed a part of the design for no good reason.
I am all for responsible parenting, but when a company creates a safe product and a chinese company replaces a harmless glue with a KNOWN dangerous one, what is a parent to do. The product HAD been tested before. Should you put everything through your own lab before giving it to your child?
Frankly it is about time the chinese start to act upon this. Launch a police investigation and find out why this glue was replaced.
But yes parents should also inspect the toys themselves, before you give a toddler a teddybear, try and see if you can pull it apart. but parents can't be expected to do chemical tests.
Frankly I think we need to thighten the rules, NO product is released without it first passing rigid and mandatory safety checks that test EVERYTHING. Release a product that proves harmfull and you are charged with attempted manslaughter. Why did this company not TEST their products one they arrived from china?
Right now they have a press release
TRANSLATION: so here is one my own. Their contains dates and promises with a history to back it up. Mine contains nothing.
we have many, many millions of customers
TRANSLATION: we got less then 10% of the market, we are so small Apple might overtake us with just one phone.
great software
TRANSLATION: Oh come one, am I trying to kid. It is the sucks and the only people that use Windows Mobile are those who absolutly have too. If it was so great we wouldn't be such a small player. Really, go to a european or japanese mobile phone dealer and try to find a MS phone. Thank god for our lock on the desktop or we would really be nothing. Curse you blackberry!
many hardware devices
TRANSLATION: we just can't shift them so we keep trying with lots of new devices hoping one day to get it right. Curse you steve jobs for doing it in one!
they're welcome in our world
TRANSLATION: and in our world the sky is pink with polka dots Wheee! I am not crazy, I am an airplane!
So no, nothing he says is actually a lie, it is just... man it is hard to remain serious about this. The symbian one was laughable enough, this is just, it is almost sad.
I have to keep telling myself it is his job to say that and that he probably knows that it is all a big lie, because if he really believes what he says he really needs to seek proffesional help.
Some people point out that he has no choice but to say this, he needs to reasue stockholders. That is true. Up to a point. But if you are a MS stockholder, does this reassure you? Because it just sends up a huge red flag to me that this guy has no clue how to deal with the fact that MS Windows Mobile just ain't doing that well and is now facing two new competitors (Apple and Google) who seem to have a very big clue, wrapper around a stick and are paddling his flabby ass.
No your kids don't turn to animals when they hit their teens. YOU screwed up long before.
Blame everyone else all you want, but that child was handed to you in a pristine state and you raised it. Problem kids ain't just teenagers, you get totally out of control kids of toddler age because the parents can't do it.
These exact same "parents" would also suck at raising a pet. What next, you are blaiming badly trained dogs on society as well rather then their owner? Puppies hang out at the fire-hydrant and pick up their habits there?
Things are different then when we grew up? oh yeah, because kids rebelling is something new. Ask your parents about it, or your grand-parents. They can do with a laugh.
If kids today got a feeling that everything is their god given right it is because YOU failed to raise them.
The proof? The fast majority of kids who do NOT grow into hell spawn. This is often forgotten, the countless kids who do NOT special attention, who just do what kids have done, grow up, become adults, have kids, live their lives.
I take your excuse ONLY if no parents are succeeding anymore in raising reasonably well-adjusted kids, but that ain't the case is it. Explain those "super" parents to me. Have they locked their kids away till 18? Why ain't there kids corrupted by these bad people out there.
Although I do admit that society ain't making it easier, with the increased importance of getting a nice diploma lots of kids are forced into schooling that don't suit them because their parents and society thinks that a physical job is beneath them.
I see that myself, kids forced into computing classes who should just be put in construction where they would be good and can get rid of their energy and see real direct results for their work. But no, being a bricklayer is beneath most parents ambition for their kids.
But that is another rant. But stop blaming society for your failure.
You claim you have a well adjusted to your teenage kids, and call them animals at the same time? Oh yeah, I think I may have spotted your problem.
First Symbian now Microsoft. It sure has the two competitors in a uproar.
You want to know the really funny thing, although I heard about the google phone, it is through this press release by MS and Symbian I learned that it is called Android and that it was officially announced. Thanks to these nice companies for helping me spot that I missed the original press-release by google itself (surely the world ain't so ironic that the original story never made slashdot?).
Okay, enough fun, on with a serious comment.
Taking bets, when a MS employee leaves to work on the google phone, what will Steve Ballmer throw, shouting "I will fucking bury Google, I failed to do so once, and I will fail to do so again."
Although I have little problem with halo players calling each other "the gey", takes one to know one, I do have a slight suspicion that this family was not exactly a model household before the day of the air-card incident.
Dealing with kids is difficult, you finally somehow managed to become and adult, and now only have to deal with adults, who are in general mature in their relations with you. And bam, you are landed with a tiny critter whose entire goal is to drive you nuts.
It is alright for the first couple of years, they just cry a lot and stink, but then the little blighter discovers the concept of lying and will be very very bad at it. Yet what to do, beat the snot out of the brat for insulting your intelligence? Attempt to reason with someone who eats boogers? Ignore it like you ignore the lies of the guy you voted for?
What do you do when you child goes through the hurting other people phase? Usually kicking them? Hit them back so hard they know for their rest of their lives Pain results in Pain so never cause it to anyone bigger then you? Try to reason with a person kicking you in the shins or ignore it and watch Idol?
The sad fact is that too many parents simply don't want the responsibility, they either just don't want to spend the time (Congrats, you have a kid, say goodbye to your life) or want to be their kids best friend, not their parent.
The problem with this is that the problems won't start to show until years later, when all of a sudden parents find themselves with kids from hell. The proble doesn't get any better when these kids then go on to have kids themselves.
It really isn't anything new, disfunctional families have been around forever. Just that the media loves these kinds of stories so we get to hear about them constantly.
Simple, these things rarely work, and people rely on them as if they they are foolproof.
I see some people argue that you could use this to enforce a limited amount of play time with a kid, so that they cannot "cheat". But ask yourselve what this says about your relation with your child. You do not trust your child and broadcast this very clearly.
Ask yourselve if this does not already show that your parenting skills are lacking and you really need to take far more drastic actions then rely on some tool.
A well raised child will at times attempt to bend the rules (essential part of growing up) but at the same try not to actually break them because they simply do no want to hurt their parents. Offcourse because they are too young to know better, they will get this wrong. THAT IS GROWING UP. A kid watching a movie that is way too scary for it, learns the hard way. You can install all the counter measures you like, but isn't watching something too scary also a part of childhood? Same as with breaking something and cuts and bruises. Anybody here who did not risk their neck as a child doing silly stuff like making ever higher jumps with their bike?
Part of growing up is seeing what the laws of society are and this starts with the laws at home. We must at once learn to respect them if we are to function of society, but also learn when and how to break them unless we want to become mindless machines.
This is offcourse a nightmare as a parent, but any child will attempt to push curfew, it doesn't matter what the curfew is, if you tell your teenage daughter she doesn't have to come home from her friday night date before monday morning 9:00, she will be coming in monday 9:30. Bedtime is important, but so is allowing a child to just push it a little, now and then. It is a give and take and the secret is that there are no books you can follow for this. No simple one liners.
You ain't got a clue how to parent and your only hope of success is to stop the kid from finding out. It usually works.
The problems emerge when parents are unable to see themselves as the parents and want to be friends with their kids instead, or simply refuse to take responsibility. YOU raise your kid. Not the state, not the media and not some device. If you cannot do it without help, then hand over custody to those who can.
Lets face it, if you need the help of a machine to deal with a child, you are a miserable failure. What next, you can only toilet train a puppy with a cattle prod? I deal with "troubled" kids now and then as part of volunteer work. Problems enforcing the rules? Are you kidding me, these kids are drunk for rules. They WANT someone to tell them what they can and cannot do and be clear about it. Simple rule, no smoking in the computer room, full stop end of argument, this is obeyed, but the rule is enforced for everyone, at all times. This is clear, and gets respected. Do not be wishy washy and allow it after class, or allow adults to smoke. The kids even enforce it themselves on new arrivals.
Frankly the simple truth is that if you need a machine to check up on your kid it is already too late. You are fighting a symtome, not the disease. So even if you succeed and get the kid of the 360, the kid will just disobey in some other way. A friends 360? Gaming on the PC?
But sadly you got it wrong. The fault lies with the voter who has let media turn them into simple minded monkeys who can only vote based on the most idiotic notions.
The voter is supposed to use the media to inform himself about the world and that does NOT include hour long segments of the antics of the latest hollywood bimbo.
Because the media has become all about eyeballs, and the voter has made it clear he gives his eyeballs to the media that shows the most no-panty shots, we now have a media that has a day long following of some tart with a short cut to some news from some war that seems to be going on somewhere, sorry for this, some old fogey insists on putting this in but we will be right back with more famous peoples being prats right after this commericial.
Bread and Circusses, NOT given to us by the goverment, but by a handfull of superrich people who just happen to have very close ties to the powers that be, in fact ARE the powers that be.
Some people like to talk about conspiracies, but that is just another form of mindless entertainment. The real simple story is "follow the money".
A media outlet makes more money from trash then it does from real investigation. So why bother with the latter? It may be what the press is for but it don't sell ads. The voter is totally incapable of resisting, goes uninformed about what is going on and then is asked once every couple of years to vote for a person they know nothing about, backed by people they never heard off and that is how you elect your leaders?
Don't worry about conspiracy plots to keep the people dumb and take power away from them. The people don't need help doing that, just give them a choice between a real news channel and a light entertainment channel, add a dose of free market and before long you will have killed of the free press.
Why do you think the powers that be are so dead set against state television. Why do you think the BBC is under constant pressure to improve its ratings and supply programs people want to watch rather then be an "elitist" station airing intellectual stuff that gets no viewers? Because those programs are way to dangerous. Every hour a station airs another reality show, it ain't airing investigations of the goverment.
So don't cry over that 'these'[sic] people have done to you. Ask yourselve what you have to done to stop them. But don't worry, big brother is on next, and after that Idol, and it is all to late anyway, and your vote don't matter. Be a good little consumer.
Really, it may just be too late, unless something really big happens it just seems goverments of any type are doomed to slide down this path. It doesn't really matter if it is democracy or a dictatorship, left or right. Unless something big happens to shake a nation out of it, things just slide down. It is not just the US, look at britain, they too got a leader that should be in jail getting of free. A system that despite changing from right (Conservatives) to left (Labour) doesn't seem to have changed at all. Other countries show the same effect. Perhaps after decades of peace it just happens. Have the belgians finally gotten a goverment together after months of haggling? How many times can a dutch goverment fall? Have the Italians actually gotten around to arresting that corrupt guy who EVERYONE knows is corrupt to such an extent that you can just say it without fear of being charged with libel?
I sometimes think it is human nature, to change the world you need to be angry, and it is hard to stay angry 24/7 year in year out.
Boy, they must be worried about the Google phone, to release a press statement saying that you ain't worried means that you are pissing your pants and calling for your mommy.
All this story has done is shown that the Google phone apparently is a big enough worry of the current mobile OS platform to speak out about it, and here was me thinking it was nothing, just another Google Beta(TM) product. Thanks for setting me straight guys.