You are aware that the largest PC maker in the world has the buttons on the other side as well?
I have a neighbour whose IQ is pretty low. Nice enough woman but limited in her intelligence. So she often had problems with her PC which she used for nothing more then IM and online free games. Naturally as an IT guy I was asked to help with Windows problems until I installed Ubuntu for her, added flash and gave myself ssh access to her machine. Never needed it in over a year now. It just works. So well in fact that she has asked for her sisters kids old laptop to be switched as well because kids are even worse for accidently installing crapware. No complaint from the child either, about 6 years old.
So a woman with an IQ well below average and a 6 year old can handle buttons on the left. But you can't. Or do you simply not want to because you hate any change period and just want to whine?
As for Ubuntu updates breaking something... right... it might but it hasn't happened to me on over a dozen machines in years. And I mess around a LOT with my setup because I am a nerd. But I do have a windows gaming machine which occasionally develops a phantom network card, can't sort out which audio output to use, looses connect to samba shares (while linux, a mac and even my android phone keep the connection open) etc etc. Ain't anecdotes wonderful pieces of evidence.
No, I think what that the problem is simple in Germany. Government workers are well known for being highly resistant to change. Add to this a healthy dose of missed dinners paid for by the sales rep and it is very hard to get anything changed. Note that the same resistance was once encountered by Microsoft.
You can't write on a Kindle, you can't code on a Kindle. It is okay as a book replacement but it does NOT allow the same freedom as a laptop.
I do not oppose the use of tech in teaching but let us remember that some of the brightest mind that ever lived did their work long before the PC or any of its parts where ever invented. You can do amazing things with some paper and ink.
Westerners also forget that places like India got one difference. You need to beat the kids to get out of school instead of in. They WANT to learn. They don't need gadgets or special programs to motivate them. Al they need is teachers. Less gadgets, more teachers. And really, if a paper mathbook is ten years out of date, so what? That only matters if you wish to overhaul the entire education system every 2 years so teachers spend more time on administration then teaching. 1+1=2, it has done so for a long time and will continue to do so and teachers have educated children with slates better then most kids get educated with PC's.
If you really wish to help as a westerner, fund open books, so school books costs only the printing costs (trivial) and not the copyright costs. In some places in the world you can have an education for the price of a Kindle. Send a child to school, not have him become a Amazon consumer.
There is indeed a problem and that is that some countries are experiencing a different evolution then others. But no American can ever understand that there are other parts of the world that are not the US. Just doesn't fit their head.
The problem is simple. In the west, we had this kind of thing as well and FAR FAR worse. No gaming after 8? Try being send down the coal mines or to scurry between open machines from the moment you can walk. Our industrial revolution was NOT a great moment in human history. We despise child labor in developing countries where children at the age of 8 or so are asked to work in open air and forget that our society is build on sending younger children without light into mines to work until they died. Or where children were killed to serve as specimens for medical research. As for sex trade... don't get me started.
But during this long period of industrial revolution, western society changed. We created the modern child, a creature that lived a totally different live then before, protected from the abuses of adults. A lot of countries who have not yet had their own industrial revolution nonetheless try to have this same protection. In fact many of them had them before the west. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the west has been a leading light. Some cases we brought darkness.
Yet, we owe our western civilization on the back of those children. It allowed the rise of enterprise and the death toll helped reduce the overpopulation that a high birth rate would have created combined with the advances in medicine.
See the Arab world, they don't kill of their children in wars (think about it, we call the Middle east a troubled region but how many wars have their really been this last decade, not as many as might think) or lethal crafts and have modern medicine, que the explosion of unemployment and the current revolts that are really just about jobs. Which is why the revolutions will fail. There are no jobs. The Arabs nations have failed. China has not, it knew it would explode if it allowed an uncontrolled birth rate to combine with advances in medicine. So it instigated a drastic policy. Only one child. Oh the consequences of it are pretty nasty but those who cry about the baby girls being killed forgot the sheer horror that would have occurred if China had bred out of control. 1 billion Chinese a lot? Try 3-4 billion, all trying to survive on the same tiny bit of land. Mass starvation or no choice but to use a surppless of people the only way you can, all out war.
So, back to Vietnam. It wants to become an Asian tiger and the way you do that is with strict control. Most Americans would be shocked to hear just how well this works but Japan, Korea and China have shows that it works. In Japan post-WW2 you couldn't do anything unless it fitted in the grand scheme of things. You had to proof for every new venture that it was the right thing at the right time. And the work ethic that made the Japanese once so famous was drilled into it from the top.
Vietnam needs this as well if it ever wishes to recover from American war crimes. They can't afford a lost generation. And America is exactly the example they do NOT wish to follow. When you see a country where FarmVille is a mega corp, you do NOT see an example, you see a warning. Let everyone be free and you are on a race to the bottom. They instead look for inspiration to other Asian economies where strict work ethic and iron discipline pulled these countries ahead an often in the lead in the world.
BUT Vietnam should also remember that the Japanese partied hard. Nothing like a old japanese guy to work hard all day at the office then get totally wasted each work night. The more pressure the greater release you got to allow.
If Vietnam has serious trouble with youths gaming instead of working, stopping them gaming should be the side effect of getting them to want to work. Work ethic is NOT being stopped from goofing off, it is WANTING to work, not being forced to or having no choice.
Work hard, play hard. THAT is the way to success. Not work hard. Or the American play hard.
The premise is NOT that Sauron was not evil but that history is written by the victor. IF Sauron had won, what would history have recorded of him?
Only in movies do the evil guys proclaim their evil. Hitler (oh come on, this is a thread about evil) never ever made a speech proclaiming that he was this evil creature who just wanted to see the world burn to create from its ashes a hellish world in which he himself would be the first in the gas chambers (diseased, crippled and non-arian)
So, if you take that history invariably is written with some propoganda motives by the victor, what if you turn it around? Read the losers propaganda. That Eisenhower was a puppet for the eternal jew (actual part of Hitlers speech on the decleration of war on the US) etc etc. Lies? Yes, we think so but would we also be thinking this if Hitler had won? How many germans actually believed this to the very core of their body so that it was reality to them?
Sauron is evil but we are told this by his enemies. Why are orcs corrupted? Because the other side said so? Well, bad luck for a lot of groups on earth then, we all have been called corrupted and evil by someone else at some time or another. Doesn't make it true does it?
Take Napoleon. Short mad man intent on forcing his will on the entire world... as told by the british. Except he wasn't short and we are told this by the British EMPIRE the largest empire ever in human history... In Napoleon's army religion did not matter, merit dictated who was promoted. Not so in the British army. Who Napoleon really is depends a lot on who you ask. And who the British are... well a LOT of people will have something to say about that.
Yes, this particular book does tend to gloss over a lot of things OR you can ask if what you read in the The Lord of the Rings, was the real story. Of course it was, it is fiction. But just imagine "how the west was won" written through a native American's eyes. The industrial revolution through a child of three forced to work in a mine with no light for 12 or more hours a day. Is James Watts a hero then? Custer a Mengele?
This is not really about trying to excuse the fictional character of Sauron and the actions that his creator dictated he has committed but trying through the Star Trek method of putting aliens in place of real life to get us to think about how history, the "truth" comes into being.
You look at this new book as if Sauron still is the guy from the Lotr, the entire premise is that the Lotr is a lie.
He asked what made Palpatine evil, you describe his ascent to Emperor. Not even his ascent to Sith lord.
It is here that the prequels fail. In the original movie it didn't really matter. We are given the most basic background for Darth Vader to give some dimension to his evil but he is evil end of story. The next two movies turn him from the master villain into a henchmen of a greater evil but this only deepens the role of Vader, we know nothing about Palpatine. The prequels should have answered the why of Vader and Palpatine and all we get is an angsty teenager going on a rampage for no good reason. Instead of us showing the Jedi order failing (more then being totally blind) or being corrupt or to strict or whatever we get little more then a angry kid who can't see either that is he is being manipulated. It ain't up to Fantasy standards. It might make sense in a drama, where mis understandings are the name of the game but not in a space-opera where we like our motives well and truly explained.
As for your idiotic statement about civilians aboard the death star. Are you insane? How many civilians are their aboard military vessels on active duty in a war zone? Zero? The only people that would have been there who didn't serve the empire were rebels prisoners. And that they only saved the royal princess in a huge prison, well that is the way these stories go. Guards die. If you want to read about their story, read Terry Pratchetts Guards! Except that he makes them into undying heroes as well. The story of the private who gets killed in the first scene just isn't that interesting.
But really, we are in dangerous Myth Busters waters here where we start to believe movie fantasy is reality and movie special effects need to be tested for realism.
If they want to sell something at a loss, that is their business. I pay the price charged in the shop, afterwards it belongs to me.
What next, are you such a slave that you think that you OWE the supermarket to buy candy because they sell bread at a loss leader so if you only buy bread, you are stealing?
Grow a spine.
Sony sells the PS3 as a normal product, no contract no special deal (PSN is not part of the sale). Really, if I sell a coke to you for 10 cents, you now owe me? No, only willing slaves think like that. Those who think they owe brand loyalty and all that crap or think EULA's are worth the paper they are written on.
Repeat after me: Not every business plan is viable or continues to be viable as times change.
The PC market does fine without subsidies, let console players pay the full price of their hardware so they stop saying how cheap their hardware is compared to a PC, while typing said message from a PC.
Lost in time. Lets say all those 500 million planets are earth like. That means they got a lifespan of a mere 10 billion years (earth is 4.5 billion old and got about 5 billion years left). On this planet (as far as we know) there has been one species influential enough to possibly be noticed in space or indeed notice space itself. For a grant total of just over a hundred years. In 10 billion. We have no way of knowing how long civilizations such as ours manage to survive. But even if you make it a thousand years, it still the shortest of blips on the time line of our planet.
Even if you account for that the fact that our planet wasn't always habitable during its life, it is still a VERY wide window in which to look. We could look at every single habitable planet and just never ever be looking at the right time to see life.
Every single planet could spawn life within its own lifespan and we still would never ever know about it. There are places in our own solar system that have possibly supported life and some still might, and we don't know for certain (yet) because we can't look for it yet.
I can not see a dinosaur, nor a dodo or an elephant bird or countless other forms of lifes which we know to have excisted, merely because time gets in the way. Space got far more time. We are not alone, just lost in a sea of time.
Gosh, amazing how soon change their mind. If someone dares to infringe upon your privacy you cry wolf but if a guy misuses children for the sake of views "However, when later asked if he regretted his decision he seemed a bit more cavalier: “I guess we’ll see how many views it gets on the Internet,” he said." then that is alright.
The kids nor their parents gave permission for this footage to be used as this. Don't they have rights? Hang him on this, confiscate all his past, current and future earning to pay for damages. That should frighten any musician I know far more then mere jail time.
Yes, the joke has been done before, but the other PAID and the people involved ALL knew what was going on. Big difference. If you disagree, then basically you think it is okay for a picture of you to be taken from the internet and placed besides an article you don't want to be linked to. Oh wait, that happened just a while ago and everyone was so outraged by it.
One problem in almost all Muslim nations (and a whole lot of non-muslim nations as well, but they don't seem to be on fire... yet) is that the wealth is extreme badly distributed. The rich are filthy rich, Mubarak and his immidiate family have tens of billions together. That is a shitload of money putting them among the richest people on the planet. These leeches suck their country dry.
But oddly enough not so dry as to deny all services. And this is the second problem. These countries are getting full. To put it not so nice, Muslims breed to fast. So did we in the west but we had some nice wars to get rid of our surplus when modern medicine meant that a woman having a dozen kids actually saw most of them reach adulthood.
In Egypt, Lybia, Tunesia, Morroco etc etc, there are a lot of young people having at least some sort of education (not all universities are equal) but absolutely no need for their services. Unemployment is a HUGE issues.
They ended up with a dangerous mix of young people (who could think enough for themselves not to believe the old lies, could through the internet see that there is a different world and who have nothing to loose and everything to gain) and an old elite who cannot change with the times.
Some have feared that this would breed dangerous fanatical terrorists... and it did not. Al Queda has failed, the youth has accomplished without violence more in the last couple of months then decades of terrorism.
Whether it will mean anything? I don't know. Nothing has really changed yet, dictators are pretty easily replaced but what comes in their place isn't always better. The problem is two fold after all. Distribute the wealth of Mubarak in Egypt will help but won't solve the chronic over-population. Where will all these unemployed find jobs when there just isn't enough work? Hitler solved this by going to war (read up on history) but lets hope they don't go that route. Farming doesn't take a lot of labor anymore, factories are all in China, it ain't that simple to get millions to work. The west with far less unemployed and better run economies is showing this.
China
None of this applies however to China. The situation might not be perfect there but the people there are feeling that things go forward. The middle class is growing, people are improving their lives and the young have plenty of opportunity. For people to risk all they got to feel they got nothing left to loose. The Chinese got plenty to loose.
No it doesn't. It only takes the cowards way out. "Oh I believe in free speech as some kind of right to say absolutely anything anywhere to anyone so I never have to take a stand for what I believe in because it might upset someone so I can sit safely at home feeling good at myself while filth roams the street".
Bravery is fighting for what you believe, not rolling over on your back for everyone with some hate speech.
What this coward says seem to make sense. But can be easily shown its cowardly nature by changing the names a bit.
Is there anything ironic about the self-appointed "guardians of freedom" trying to bully slavers out of existence? No, there absolutely IS NOT.
Only people that prefer for nothing ever to be done about anything because they are scared shitless of ever having to take a stand try to find silly excuses like this.
I know I still got access because they called me from a previous job if I could help them out and I just tried my login during the call to see what was going on and it was still there. I just thought "oh", fixed the issue and mailed that I still had access and left it at that.
I am a pro but not a sys admin. If I do not work for them, I do not have a need to access their servers and so I don't. Not very hard. Disgruntled? Even then I wouldn't because it would be against the law and could seriously hurt future employment.
The trick therefor for companies is to both have good account management AND hire professionals who care about not becoming a criminal.
Seriously kid, to anyone who read this, you just gave a massive reason NOT to hire you.
Do I as an employer constantly have to worry if it is that time of month for you?
Evil triumphs, when good men do nothing. Note what this says, evil is not just what you do, it can also be what you don't do.
A LOT of people have been finding excuses for MS for why not to do this, basically because it would mean a little bit extra work.
Yes indeed, picking up someone who has fallen is extra work so that is a reason not to do it. But it makes you a pretty mean spirited person.
MS COULD comply and simply do a tiny bit of extra work and thereby showing it is NO longer the bitter enemy of open source that is claims not to be.
So, we got the same MS apologists claiming that since MS stated open source and the GPL are no longer its enemies who should forgive all past crimes. But the first chance MS has to go the extra mile and SHOW its changed nature, it doesn't.
And it is NOT like it is really all that hard, they could simply put in their TOS that it is up to the developer that they include the source code. Same as nobody is going to go after the Piratebay if an ISO of Ubuntu violates the GPL. There are lots of ways to work with the GPL and MS and Apple have shown their true nature by refusing to do so. Yes, it costs them a bit more. Being good often does. It is that extra step you have to take to get out of a blind person's way that show the difference between a social human being and an asshole.
So, MS still up to its old tricks (and the best trick is the trick where you do nothing and still achieve your goal). I am not surprised.
You are summing up BAD PR. Yes, that is the most common form of PR but it is NOT good or effective PR.
The most simple example is with trains. Delays are pretty much inevitable on a complex network but trying to "hide" this does not work. The public can SEE the errors. If they find them out before you inform them they just get frustrated and feel cheated. So, if a train is running late. Announce it and announce it BEFORE everyone at the station can SEE it is running late. Train coming in at 10:30 getting a update at 10:35 that is late will is NOT good PR.
Admit you screwed up early and you are INFORMING people AND can THEN avoid the extra damage by people imagining the worsed.
But effective PR is costly and takes a lot of effort. You have to be constantly on your toes to make sure YOU are the one pointing out your own mistakes and not somebody else. BUT by YOU being the one pointing it out you at least seem somewhat in control and can limit the random speculation.
The dutch railways didn't use to say what caused delays, now they do. Nobody can fault the train service for a suicide jumper even if it causes hours delay. So people are NOT upset. Strange but true. INFORMED people are far less angry.
Sadly BAD PR has controlled society for so long we are now thinking it is NORMAL for PR to say "no comment". That is not what PR is supposed to be about. It is to INFORM the press of what is going on so the rest of the business can focuss on its own task. It is NOT to be a blackhole for communication.
You are still in Fox mode, trying to see the conspiracy behind events because your mind cannot grasp that shit just happens.
Anonymous has no organization, it cannot by its very nature. Some people who HAVE grouped together have used the name for themselves BUT by that they have seized to become Anonymous.
Is it really that hard to grasp? Just because you know the identity of ONE A. Nonymous author doesn't mean that every other book written under that name is linked to it in anyway. Anonymous, the concept to give a mystic to the random actions of people that sometimes seem to work together and groups calling themselves anonymous are NOT the same thing.
Except for the countless times that people have disclosed security problems to MS, found that MS didn't give a toss and finally after months release it to the public because if THEY know it, some one else might ALSO know it and be exploiting it.
But I guess a MS fanboy truly believes ignorance is bliss.
1. Antitrust issues? Which ones? Wouldn't this INCREASE competition? One of the biggest INTEL sellers becoming an AMD shop? By your logic Apples switch to Intel should have been against the law as well. No there is no issue on these grounds.
2. MADE Dell successful is correct. Made. They are not nearly as successful as they once were. EVERYONE has done the "chinese production" thing now and chinese factories are just better at it. Dell is no longer the cheap computer supplier out there slashing IT budgets.
3. Who the fuck cares? Really, this one is idiotic. If Dell buys AMD what the fuck do they care about Intel? They would have to be very silly to BUY Amd and continue to sell Intel! The whole idea for Dell to BUY AMD would be to USE AMD, you don't buy a chipmaker then sell someone elses chips.
Even if they want to continue to sell Intel to some, I think that Intel would be the one feeling the squeeze. Previous they could pressure Dell because you had to sell Intel to businesses. If Dell thinks buying AMD is worth it then they obviously think this can be changed. So Intel would have to compete on price not on the badge that goes on the case. They are not used to that.
I think there can be a very simple valid business reason for this all. AMD suffers from not having a huge outlet of its chips. And because of that it can't get a huge contract because it isn't visible enough. A catch 22. How to break out of it? AMD can't unless it becomes its own biggest customer and sells its own PC's.
But what if someone at Dell has thought the same thing. How can you buy AMD on the cheap and then make it big? By making it the sole supplier for one of the biggest PC retailers. Catch 22 solved!
It all depends on this question:
Do companies buy Dell because Intel or do they buy Intel because of Dell
Why is there an intel in your office Dell?
IF Dell believes that is because the company choose a Dell and that just happened to be the CPU in it, then they could easily switch to AMD, make cheaper PC's that perform well enough for the office. AMD would be churning out countless chips at a steady rate solving all its problems and both would go to bigger strengths because of it.
IF people buy a Dell and not an Intel for the office.
That is the question and frankly Dell has spend a LOT of time selling Intel to its customers. Not Dells.
"All of Nokia's competitors in the smartphone space come from North America"
Indeed, so that makes HTC, LG and Samsung you mention yourself North American companies?
I think their owners will be very suprised. So that is how Taiwan (HTC) is going for independence from China, they are going to be the 51st state, oh wait that is canada. So that is how WW3 is going to start. Good to know.
The rest of your post isn't much better.
The iPhone cost way more then 200-300 AND didn't come with CDMA at the start. Nokia also got plenty of cheap phones and that is in fact an area they do very well in being the top seller in poorer areas.
The N900 shipped with Maemo which is half the origin of Meego. So yes they shipped a phone and it sold very well indeed spending a lot of time being sold out.
The real problem Nokia faces is the "we need to drop everything for the next quarter". So they missed the boat on the current generation. So what? Does that mean you drop all your long term plans for an escape plan of dubious value? No, you though it out and focus on being the leader of the next generation. Mobile phones still have a long way to go and can be greatly improved.
One obvious example where Meego might be far superior then iPhone and Android? No market/App store. My god those things are hideous. Just trying to find a tool is bad enough, then most cost money as well. Now imagine something like Linux Mint installed on your mobile phone. EVERYTHING just works from the start with everything included. No need to hunt down media player for 3 bucks a piece that will play your content, VLC and Mplayer included and ready to go with years of experience.
Same with all the other tools. Freely available, long out of beta, tried and tested.
Nokia Meego, the phone for people who don't want to mess about with shady app sellers. Try the N900. Anyone who has KNOWS why it was such a good idea. It blows everything else out of the water.
Exactly how old do you think the iPad is? Or for that matter iOS and for that matter Linux is including Linux on mobile devices?
Simple proof? Which has the most mature and capable media player for FREE? Meego (VLC Mplayer), iOS or Android?
Thanks for playing: "The world existed before I was born", you loose.
By your logic, Apple is silly to go with iOS against market leader symbian with multi-year head start. Or android for that matter. Hell ANYONE whoever dared to enter a market. Bit silly of you don't you think?
News isn't just about the salt you put into what you serve but in WHAT you serve.
Euronews, riots in Egypt where on near 24/7. Riot in Iran, not at all... agenda? How much focus did YOUR news agency spend on the corruption angle of the Egyptian regime? Depending highly on how tied they are with governments/companies/individuals that thrived on said corruption.
ALL had to report the events but that is the obvious stuff. You can show different angles of a story you have no choice but to report but far more goes on that you can just hide under the guise of "we can only put so much on the front page".
WHY do you think the front page of newspapers has been shrinking? Either because the page itself was shrunk OR because photo's became bigger and bigger together with ad space? Less room for news == more room to drop news you don't want to handle.
So using Fox news as your aggregator is the perfect way for them to influence you. Not by the amount of salt in your diet of news but by controlling your entire news intake.
Well it depends on how you look at it. And what you consider a conspiracy theorist/nutter. The BBC has a clear agenda of promoting a multicultural society while being run by the oxford elite and including very little of the multicultural society and villifying anyone who dares question this.
Does that count? Probably not to someone who agrees with this point of view. Moron is such a subjective label after all. It always seems to apply to people you disagree with.
Media tends to be owned by someone and that someone doesn't always have to be a single person. But overtime any company or group tends to hire like-minded individuals turning it more and more into a singular voice because you don't hire someone who disagrees with you.
An example? In holland the Labour party PvDA (Partij van de Arbeid) is being called the (Partij van de Allochtonen/Immigrants) because of its soft stance. BUT this is a left leaning WORKER party, didn't they use to be dead against immigrants being used to take jobs away from local people and drive minimum wages down? Wasn't it in fact right wing parties that wanted immigrant labour from Turkey in europes to do jobs the companies didn't want to pay local workers for?
Ah yes! So how can a party AGAINST immigration become labelled as PRO-immigration?
Because over the years the leadership changed. From worker background/union to highly educated bleeding hearts. Some people think union and bleeding hearts are both left wing but that just goes to show the sillyness of trying to represent the whole political spectrum on a single axis. You wouldn't call Stalin a bleeding heart would you?
But at the same time, how comes the dutch VVD (Right wing by dutch standards, commies by US standards) is now leading a government with a so-called strong anti-immigration agenda and even spawned Geert Wilders whose whole agenda is anti-immigration? Did they forget who championed the whole immigration move from Turkey in the first place?
Yes, we got our nutters, but it depends on who you ask as to who is pointed out as the nutter. Geert Wilders and Job Cohen (leader of the PvDA) are BOTH considered insane by their opposition.
Really, we had the queens speech a while ago, a person with her own far reaching audience and a guaranteed tv spot and half the nation hailed her speech and half condemned it.
Glen Beck is a conspiracy theorists in your eyes, not in the eyes of his followers. Conspiracy is in the eye of the beholder. So it makes no sense to ask this question if you want an honest answer.
Slashdot is right wing and most techies are right wing. True geeks are often pretty liberal in their world views so we don't tend to all that right wing about issues like gay marriage but there aren't many true geeks left on slashdot. Willing to bet there are a lot who never compiled their own kernel let alone written one. But why should they when the easily available ones are well, that easily available?
Then you are just not a geek. You might as well ask a mountain climber why he doesn't just take a helicopter to the top of mount everest OR a helicopter pilot why he didn't just hire some sherpa's to pull him to the top.
"Because it is there" and all its variants are understood to any true enthusiast. But there aren't that many around.
What the majority here is is the proffesional IT'er who fits the stereotype of being good with math but not that good with social things. No, we are not talking about geeks here, they are to well adjusted for that. Just people that when you give them the choice between a 300 dollar tax cut and improving life for someone else, they take the 300. And then come up with a reason to defend it.
See the near bitter hatred that comes up when any store threathens the status quo, whether it be a move to a rail network or electric cars. A real geek would want his hands on a electric car if for no other reason then to see how it works. A right winger fears the change. Most people with lack of social skills fear change because they find society hard enough to understand as it is and don't want to have to learn it all over again.
See your own reaction. Glen Beck is making noise and you just want to ignore him because you are unwilling to deal with the social hassle of confronting him. Understandable but also very typical of the non-geek non-nerd IT related guy.
Slashdot Mirror
You are aware that the largest PC maker in the world has the buttons on the other side as well?
I have a neighbour whose IQ is pretty low. Nice enough woman but limited in her intelligence. So she often had problems with her PC which she used for nothing more then IM and online free games. Naturally as an IT guy I was asked to help with Windows problems until I installed Ubuntu for her, added flash and gave myself ssh access to her machine. Never needed it in over a year now. It just works. So well in fact that she has asked for her sisters kids old laptop to be switched as well because kids are even worse for accidently installing crapware. No complaint from the child either, about 6 years old.
So a woman with an IQ well below average and a 6 year old can handle buttons on the left. But you can't. Or do you simply not want to because you hate any change period and just want to whine?
As for Ubuntu updates breaking something... right... it might but it hasn't happened to me on over a dozen machines in years. And I mess around a LOT with my setup because I am a nerd. But I do have a windows gaming machine which occasionally develops a phantom network card, can't sort out which audio output to use, looses connect to samba shares (while linux, a mac and even my android phone keep the connection open) etc etc. Ain't anecdotes wonderful pieces of evidence.
No, I think what that the problem is simple in Germany. Government workers are well known for being highly resistant to change. Add to this a healthy dose of missed dinners paid for by the sales rep and it is very hard to get anything changed. Note that the same resistance was once encountered by Microsoft.
Kindles are for consumers, laptops for creators.
You can't write on a Kindle, you can't code on a Kindle. It is okay as a book replacement but it does NOT allow the same freedom as a laptop.
I do not oppose the use of tech in teaching but let us remember that some of the brightest mind that ever lived did their work long before the PC or any of its parts where ever invented. You can do amazing things with some paper and ink.
Westerners also forget that places like India got one difference. You need to beat the kids to get out of school instead of in. They WANT to learn. They don't need gadgets or special programs to motivate them. Al they need is teachers. Less gadgets, more teachers. And really, if a paper mathbook is ten years out of date, so what? That only matters if you wish to overhaul the entire education system every 2 years so teachers spend more time on administration then teaching. 1+1=2, it has done so for a long time and will continue to do so and teachers have educated children with slates better then most kids get educated with PC's.
If you really wish to help as a westerner, fund open books, so school books costs only the printing costs (trivial) and not the copyright costs. In some places in the world you can have an education for the price of a Kindle. Send a child to school, not have him become a Amazon consumer.
There is indeed a problem and that is that some countries are experiencing a different evolution then others. But no American can ever understand that there are other parts of the world that are not the US. Just doesn't fit their head.
The problem is simple. In the west, we had this kind of thing as well and FAR FAR worse. No gaming after 8? Try being send down the coal mines or to scurry between open machines from the moment you can walk. Our industrial revolution was NOT a great moment in human history. We despise child labor in developing countries where children at the age of 8 or so are asked to work in open air and forget that our society is build on sending younger children without light into mines to work until they died. Or where children were killed to serve as specimens for medical research. As for sex trade... don't get me started.
But during this long period of industrial revolution, western society changed. We created the modern child, a creature that lived a totally different live then before, protected from the abuses of adults. A lot of countries who have not yet had their own industrial revolution nonetheless try to have this same protection. In fact many of them had them before the west. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the west has been a leading light. Some cases we brought darkness.
Yet, we owe our western civilization on the back of those children. It allowed the rise of enterprise and the death toll helped reduce the overpopulation that a high birth rate would have created combined with the advances in medicine.
See the Arab world, they don't kill of their children in wars (think about it, we call the Middle east a troubled region but how many wars have their really been this last decade, not as many as might think) or lethal crafts and have modern medicine, que the explosion of unemployment and the current revolts that are really just about jobs. Which is why the revolutions will fail. There are no jobs. The Arabs nations have failed. China has not, it knew it would explode if it allowed an uncontrolled birth rate to combine with advances in medicine. So it instigated a drastic policy. Only one child. Oh the consequences of it are pretty nasty but those who cry about the baby girls being killed forgot the sheer horror that would have occurred if China had bred out of control. 1 billion Chinese a lot? Try 3-4 billion, all trying to survive on the same tiny bit of land. Mass starvation or no choice but to use a surppless of people the only way you can, all out war.
So, back to Vietnam. It wants to become an Asian tiger and the way you do that is with strict control. Most Americans would be shocked to hear just how well this works but Japan, Korea and China have shows that it works. In Japan post-WW2 you couldn't do anything unless it fitted in the grand scheme of things. You had to proof for every new venture that it was the right thing at the right time. And the work ethic that made the Japanese once so famous was drilled into it from the top.
Vietnam needs this as well if it ever wishes to recover from American war crimes. They can't afford a lost generation. And America is exactly the example they do NOT wish to follow. When you see a country where FarmVille is a mega corp, you do NOT see an example, you see a warning. Let everyone be free and you are on a race to the bottom. They instead look for inspiration to other Asian economies where strict work ethic and iron discipline pulled these countries ahead an often in the lead in the world.
BUT Vietnam should also remember that the Japanese partied hard. Nothing like a old japanese guy to work hard all day at the office then get totally wasted each work night. The more pressure the greater release you got to allow.
If Vietnam has serious trouble with youths gaming instead of working, stopping them gaming should be the side effect of getting them to want to work. Work ethic is NOT being stopped from goofing off, it is WANTING to work, not being forced to or having no choice.
Work hard, play hard. THAT is the way to success. Not work hard. Or the American play hard.
The premise is NOT that Sauron was not evil but that history is written by the victor. IF Sauron had won, what would history have recorded of him?
Only in movies do the evil guys proclaim their evil. Hitler (oh come on, this is a thread about evil) never ever made a speech proclaiming that he was this evil creature who just wanted to see the world burn to create from its ashes a hellish world in which he himself would be the first in the gas chambers (diseased, crippled and non-arian)
So, if you take that history invariably is written with some propoganda motives by the victor, what if you turn it around? Read the losers propaganda. That Eisenhower was a puppet for the eternal jew (actual part of Hitlers speech on the decleration of war on the US) etc etc. Lies? Yes, we think so but would we also be thinking this if Hitler had won? How many germans actually believed this to the very core of their body so that it was reality to them?
Sauron is evil but we are told this by his enemies. Why are orcs corrupted? Because the other side said so? Well, bad luck for a lot of groups on earth then, we all have been called corrupted and evil by someone else at some time or another. Doesn't make it true does it?
Take Napoleon. Short mad man intent on forcing his will on the entire world... as told by the british. Except he wasn't short and we are told this by the British EMPIRE the largest empire ever in human history... In Napoleon's army religion did not matter, merit dictated who was promoted. Not so in the British army. Who Napoleon really is depends a lot on who you ask. And who the British are... well a LOT of people will have something to say about that.
Yes, this particular book does tend to gloss over a lot of things OR you can ask if what you read in the The Lord of the Rings, was the real story. Of course it was, it is fiction. But just imagine "how the west was won" written through a native American's eyes. The industrial revolution through a child of three forced to work in a mine with no light for 12 or more hours a day. Is James Watts a hero then? Custer a Mengele?
This is not really about trying to excuse the fictional character of Sauron and the actions that his creator dictated he has committed but trying through the Star Trek method of putting aliens in place of real life to get us to think about how history, the "truth" comes into being.
You look at this new book as if Sauron still is the guy from the Lotr, the entire premise is that the Lotr is a lie.
He asked what made Palpatine evil, you describe his ascent to Emperor. Not even his ascent to Sith lord.
It is here that the prequels fail. In the original movie it didn't really matter. We are given the most basic background for Darth Vader to give some dimension to his evil but he is evil end of story. The next two movies turn him from the master villain into a henchmen of a greater evil but this only deepens the role of Vader, we know nothing about Palpatine. The prequels should have answered the why of Vader and Palpatine and all we get is an angsty teenager going on a rampage for no good reason. Instead of us showing the Jedi order failing (more then being totally blind) or being corrupt or to strict or whatever we get little more then a angry kid who can't see either that is he is being manipulated. It ain't up to Fantasy standards. It might make sense in a drama, where mis understandings are the name of the game but not in a space-opera where we like our motives well and truly explained.
As for your idiotic statement about civilians aboard the death star. Are you insane? How many civilians are their aboard military vessels on active duty in a war zone? Zero? The only people that would have been there who didn't serve the empire were rebels prisoners. And that they only saved the royal princess in a huge prison, well that is the way these stories go. Guards die. If you want to read about their story, read Terry Pratchetts Guards! Except that he makes them into undying heroes as well. The story of the private who gets killed in the first scene just isn't that interesting.
But really, we are in dangerous Myth Busters waters here where we start to believe movie fantasy is reality and movie special effects need to be tested for realism.
If they want to sell something at a loss, that is their business. I pay the price charged in the shop, afterwards it belongs to me.
What next, are you such a slave that you think that you OWE the supermarket to buy candy because they sell bread at a loss leader so if you only buy bread, you are stealing?
Grow a spine.
Sony sells the PS3 as a normal product, no contract no special deal (PSN is not part of the sale). Really, if I sell a coke to you for 10 cents, you now owe me? No, only willing slaves think like that. Those who think they owe brand loyalty and all that crap or think EULA's are worth the paper they are written on.
Repeat after me: Not every business plan is viable or continues to be viable as times change.
The PC market does fine without subsidies, let console players pay the full price of their hardware so they stop saying how cheap their hardware is compared to a PC, while typing said message from a PC.
Lost in time. Lets say all those 500 million planets are earth like. That means they got a lifespan of a mere 10 billion years (earth is 4.5 billion old and got about 5 billion years left). On this planet (as far as we know) there has been one species influential enough to possibly be noticed in space or indeed notice space itself. For a grant total of just over a hundred years. In 10 billion. We have no way of knowing how long civilizations such as ours manage to survive. But even if you make it a thousand years, it still the shortest of blips on the time line of our planet.
Even if you account for that the fact that our planet wasn't always habitable during its life, it is still a VERY wide window in which to look. We could look at every single habitable planet and just never ever be looking at the right time to see life.
Every single planet could spawn life within its own lifespan and we still would never ever know about it. There are places in our own solar system that have possibly supported life and some still might, and we don't know for certain (yet) because we can't look for it yet.
I can not see a dinosaur, nor a dodo or an elephant bird or countless other forms of lifes which we know to have excisted, merely because time gets in the way. Space got far more time. We are not alone, just lost in a sea of time.
Gosh, amazing how soon change their mind. If someone dares to infringe upon your privacy you cry wolf but if a guy misuses children for the sake of views "However, when later asked if he regretted his decision he seemed a bit more cavalier: “I guess we’ll see how many views it gets on the Internet,” he said." then that is alright.
The kids nor their parents gave permission for this footage to be used as this. Don't they have rights? Hang him on this, confiscate all his past, current and future earning to pay for damages. That should frighten any musician I know far more then mere jail time.
Yes, the joke has been done before, but the other PAID and the people involved ALL knew what was going on. Big difference. If you disagree, then basically you think it is okay for a picture of you to be taken from the internet and placed besides an article you don't want to be linked to. Oh wait, that happened just a while ago and everyone was so outraged by it.
Guess that hypocrisy rides again.
One problem in almost all Muslim nations (and a whole lot of non-muslim nations as well, but they don't seem to be on fire... yet) is that the wealth is extreme badly distributed. The rich are filthy rich, Mubarak and his immidiate family have tens of billions together. That is a shitload of money putting them among the richest people on the planet. These leeches suck their country dry.
But oddly enough not so dry as to deny all services. And this is the second problem. These countries are getting full. To put it not so nice, Muslims breed to fast. So did we in the west but we had some nice wars to get rid of our surplus when modern medicine meant that a woman having a dozen kids actually saw most of them reach adulthood.
In Egypt, Lybia, Tunesia, Morroco etc etc, there are a lot of young people having at least some sort of education (not all universities are equal) but absolutely no need for their services. Unemployment is a HUGE issues.
They ended up with a dangerous mix of young people (who could think enough for themselves not to believe the old lies, could through the internet see that there is a different world and who have nothing to loose and everything to gain) and an old elite who cannot change with the times.
Some have feared that this would breed dangerous fanatical terrorists... and it did not. Al Queda has failed, the youth has accomplished without violence more in the last couple of months then decades of terrorism.
Whether it will mean anything? I don't know. Nothing has really changed yet, dictators are pretty easily replaced but what comes in their place isn't always better. The problem is two fold after all. Distribute the wealth of Mubarak in Egypt will help but won't solve the chronic over-population. Where will all these unemployed find jobs when there just isn't enough work? Hitler solved this by going to war (read up on history) but lets hope they don't go that route. Farming doesn't take a lot of labor anymore, factories are all in China, it ain't that simple to get millions to work. The west with far less unemployed and better run economies is showing this.
China
None of this applies however to China. The situation might not be perfect there but the people there are feeling that things go forward. The middle class is growing, people are improving their lives and the young have plenty of opportunity. For people to risk all they got to feel they got nothing left to loose. The Chinese got plenty to loose.
No it doesn't. It only takes the cowards way out. "Oh I believe in free speech as some kind of right to say absolutely anything anywhere to anyone so I never have to take a stand for what I believe in because it might upset someone so I can sit safely at home feeling good at myself while filth roams the street".
Bravery is fighting for what you believe, not rolling over on your back for everyone with some hate speech.
We got enough bullets, there is room for one more at the well. No cigarettes though, you guys hate fags.
What this coward says seem to make sense. But can be easily shown its cowardly nature by changing the names a bit.
Is there anything ironic about the self-appointed "guardians of freedom" trying to bully slavers out of existence? No, there absolutely IS NOT.
Only people that prefer for nothing ever to be done about anything because they are scared shitless of ever having to take a stand try to find silly excuses like this.
What produced the Internet in the first place? The government or private industry?
I know I still got access because they called me from a previous job if I could help them out and I just tried my login during the call to see what was going on and it was still there. I just thought "oh", fixed the issue and mailed that I still had access and left it at that.
I am a pro but not a sys admin. If I do not work for them, I do not have a need to access their servers and so I don't. Not very hard. Disgruntled? Even then I wouldn't because it would be against the law and could seriously hurt future employment.
The trick therefor for companies is to both have good account management AND hire professionals who care about not becoming a criminal.
Seriously kid, to anyone who read this, you just gave a massive reason NOT to hire you.
Do I as an employer constantly have to worry if it is that time of month for you?
Evil triumphs, when good men do nothing. Note what this says, evil is not just what you do, it can also be what you don't do.
A LOT of people have been finding excuses for MS for why not to do this, basically because it would mean a little bit extra work.
Yes indeed, picking up someone who has fallen is extra work so that is a reason not to do it. But it makes you a pretty mean spirited person.
MS COULD comply and simply do a tiny bit of extra work and thereby showing it is NO longer the bitter enemy of open source that is claims not to be.
So, we got the same MS apologists claiming that since MS stated open source and the GPL are no longer its enemies who should forgive all past crimes. But the first chance MS has to go the extra mile and SHOW its changed nature, it doesn't.
And it is NOT like it is really all that hard, they could simply put in their TOS that it is up to the developer that they include the source code. Same as nobody is going to go after the Piratebay if an ISO of Ubuntu violates the GPL. There are lots of ways to work with the GPL and MS and Apple have shown their true nature by refusing to do so. Yes, it costs them a bit more. Being good often does. It is that extra step you have to take to get out of a blind person's way that show the difference between a social human being and an asshole.
So, MS still up to its old tricks (and the best trick is the trick where you do nothing and still achieve your goal). I am not surprised.
You are summing up BAD PR. Yes, that is the most common form of PR but it is NOT good or effective PR.
The most simple example is with trains. Delays are pretty much inevitable on a complex network but trying to "hide" this does not work. The public can SEE the errors. If they find them out before you inform them they just get frustrated and feel cheated. So, if a train is running late. Announce it and announce it BEFORE everyone at the station can SEE it is running late. Train coming in at 10:30 getting a update at 10:35 that is late will is NOT good PR.
Admit you screwed up early and you are INFORMING people AND can THEN avoid the extra damage by people imagining the worsed.
But effective PR is costly and takes a lot of effort. You have to be constantly on your toes to make sure YOU are the one pointing out your own mistakes and not somebody else. BUT by YOU being the one pointing it out you at least seem somewhat in control and can limit the random speculation.
The dutch railways didn't use to say what caused delays, now they do. Nobody can fault the train service for a suicide jumper even if it causes hours delay. So people are NOT upset. Strange but true. INFORMED people are far less angry.
Sadly BAD PR has controlled society for so long we are now thinking it is NORMAL for PR to say "no comment". That is not what PR is supposed to be about. It is to INFORM the press of what is going on so the rest of the business can focuss on its own task. It is NOT to be a blackhole for communication.
You are still in Fox mode, trying to see the conspiracy behind events because your mind cannot grasp that shit just happens.
Anonymous has no organization, it cannot by its very nature. Some people who HAVE grouped together have used the name for themselves BUT by that they have seized to become Anonymous.
Is it really that hard to grasp? Just because you know the identity of ONE A. Nonymous author doesn't mean that every other book written under that name is linked to it in anyway. Anonymous, the concept to give a mystic to the random actions of people that sometimes seem to work together and groups calling themselves anonymous are NOT the same thing.
Except for the countless times that people have disclosed security problems to MS, found that MS didn't give a toss and finally after months release it to the public because if THEY know it, some one else might ALSO know it and be exploiting it.
But I guess a MS fanboy truly believes ignorance is bliss.
1. Antitrust issues? Which ones? Wouldn't this INCREASE competition? One of the biggest INTEL sellers becoming an AMD shop? By your logic Apples switch to Intel should have been against the law as well. No there is no issue on these grounds.
2. MADE Dell successful is correct. Made. They are not nearly as successful as they once were. EVERYONE has done the "chinese production" thing now and chinese factories are just better at it. Dell is no longer the cheap computer supplier out there slashing IT budgets.
3. Who the fuck cares? Really, this one is idiotic. If Dell buys AMD what the fuck do they care about Intel? They would have to be very silly to BUY Amd and continue to sell Intel! The whole idea for Dell to BUY AMD would be to USE AMD, you don't buy a chipmaker then sell someone elses chips.
Even if they want to continue to sell Intel to some, I think that Intel would be the one feeling the squeeze. Previous they could pressure Dell because you had to sell Intel to businesses. If Dell thinks buying AMD is worth it then they obviously think this can be changed. So Intel would have to compete on price not on the badge that goes on the case. They are not used to that.
I think there can be a very simple valid business reason for this all. AMD suffers from not having a huge outlet of its chips. And because of that it can't get a huge contract because it isn't visible enough. A catch 22. How to break out of it? AMD can't unless it becomes its own biggest customer and sells its own PC's.
But what if someone at Dell has thought the same thing. How can you buy AMD on the cheap and then make it big? By making it the sole supplier for one of the biggest PC retailers. Catch 22 solved!
It all depends on this question:
Do companies buy Dell because Intel or do they buy Intel because of Dell
Why is there an intel in your office Dell?
IF Dell believes that is because the company choose a Dell and that just happened to be the CPU in it, then they could easily switch to AMD, make cheaper PC's that perform well enough for the office. AMD would be churning out countless chips at a steady rate solving all its problems and both would go to bigger strengths because of it.
IF people buy a Dell and not an Intel for the office.
That is the question and frankly Dell has spend a LOT of time selling Intel to its customers. Not Dells.
"All of Nokia's competitors in the smartphone space come from North America"
Indeed, so that makes HTC, LG and Samsung you mention yourself North American companies?
I think their owners will be very suprised. So that is how Taiwan (HTC) is going for independence from China, they are going to be the 51st state, oh wait that is canada. So that is how WW3 is going to start. Good to know.
The rest of your post isn't much better.
The iPhone cost way more then 200-300 AND didn't come with CDMA at the start. Nokia also got plenty of cheap phones and that is in fact an area they do very well in being the top seller in poorer areas.
The N900 shipped with Maemo which is half the origin of Meego. So yes they shipped a phone and it sold very well indeed spending a lot of time being sold out.
The real problem Nokia faces is the "we need to drop everything for the next quarter". So they missed the boat on the current generation. So what? Does that mean you drop all your long term plans for an escape plan of dubious value? No, you though it out and focus on being the leader of the next generation. Mobile phones still have a long way to go and can be greatly improved.
One obvious example where Meego might be far superior then iPhone and Android? No market/App store. My god those things are hideous. Just trying to find a tool is bad enough, then most cost money as well. Now imagine something like Linux Mint installed on your mobile phone. EVERYTHING just works from the start with everything included. No need to hunt down media player for 3 bucks a piece that will play your content, VLC and Mplayer included and ready to go with years of experience.
Same with all the other tools. Freely available, long out of beta, tried and tested.
Nokia Meego, the phone for people who don't want to mess about with shady app sellers. Try the N900. Anyone who has KNOWS why it was such a good idea. It blows everything else out of the water.
Exactly how old do you think the iPad is? Or for that matter iOS and for that matter Linux is including Linux on mobile devices?
Simple proof? Which has the most mature and capable media player for FREE? Meego (VLC Mplayer), iOS or Android?
Thanks for playing: "The world existed before I was born", you loose.
By your logic, Apple is silly to go with iOS against market leader symbian with multi-year head start. Or android for that matter. Hell ANYONE whoever dared to enter a market. Bit silly of you don't you think?
News isn't just about the salt you put into what you serve but in WHAT you serve.
Euronews, riots in Egypt where on near 24/7. Riot in Iran, not at all... agenda? How much focus did YOUR news agency spend on the corruption angle of the Egyptian regime? Depending highly on how tied they are with governments/companies/individuals that thrived on said corruption.
ALL had to report the events but that is the obvious stuff. You can show different angles of a story you have no choice but to report but far more goes on that you can just hide under the guise of "we can only put so much on the front page".
WHY do you think the front page of newspapers has been shrinking? Either because the page itself was shrunk OR because photo's became bigger and bigger together with ad space? Less room for news == more room to drop news you don't want to handle.
So using Fox news as your aggregator is the perfect way for them to influence you. Not by the amount of salt in your diet of news but by controlling your entire news intake.
Well done.
Well it depends on how you look at it. And what you consider a conspiracy theorist/nutter. The BBC has a clear agenda of promoting a multicultural society while being run by the oxford elite and including very little of the multicultural society and villifying anyone who dares question this.
Does that count? Probably not to someone who agrees with this point of view. Moron is such a subjective label after all. It always seems to apply to people you disagree with.
Media tends to be owned by someone and that someone doesn't always have to be a single person. But overtime any company or group tends to hire like-minded individuals turning it more and more into a singular voice because you don't hire someone who disagrees with you.
An example? In holland the Labour party PvDA (Partij van de Arbeid) is being called the (Partij van de Allochtonen/Immigrants) because of its soft stance. BUT this is a left leaning WORKER party, didn't they use to be dead against immigrants being used to take jobs away from local people and drive minimum wages down? Wasn't it in fact right wing parties that wanted immigrant labour from Turkey in europes to do jobs the companies didn't want to pay local workers for?
Ah yes! So how can a party AGAINST immigration become labelled as PRO-immigration?
Because over the years the leadership changed. From worker background/union to highly educated bleeding hearts. Some people think union and bleeding hearts are both left wing but that just goes to show the sillyness of trying to represent the whole political spectrum on a single axis. You wouldn't call Stalin a bleeding heart would you?
But at the same time, how comes the dutch VVD (Right wing by dutch standards, commies by US standards) is now leading a government with a so-called strong anti-immigration agenda and even spawned Geert Wilders whose whole agenda is anti-immigration? Did they forget who championed the whole immigration move from Turkey in the first place?
Yes, we got our nutters, but it depends on who you ask as to who is pointed out as the nutter. Geert Wilders and Job Cohen (leader of the PvDA) are BOTH considered insane by their opposition.
Really, we had the queens speech a while ago, a person with her own far reaching audience and a guaranteed tv spot and half the nation hailed her speech and half condemned it.
Glen Beck is a conspiracy theorists in your eyes, not in the eyes of his followers. Conspiracy is in the eye of the beholder. So it makes no sense to ask this question if you want an honest answer.
Slashdot is right wing and most techies are right wing. True geeks are often pretty liberal in their world views so we don't tend to all that right wing about issues like gay marriage but there aren't many true geeks left on slashdot. Willing to bet there are a lot who never compiled their own kernel let alone written one. But why should they when the easily available ones are well, that easily available?
Then you are just not a geek. You might as well ask a mountain climber why he doesn't just take a helicopter to the top of mount everest OR a helicopter pilot why he didn't just hire some sherpa's to pull him to the top.
"Because it is there" and all its variants are understood to any true enthusiast. But there aren't that many around.
What the majority here is is the proffesional IT'er who fits the stereotype of being good with math but not that good with social things. No, we are not talking about geeks here, they are to well adjusted for that. Just people that when you give them the choice between a 300 dollar tax cut and improving life for someone else, they take the 300. And then come up with a reason to defend it.
See the near bitter hatred that comes up when any store threathens the status quo, whether it be a move to a rail network or electric cars. A real geek would want his hands on a electric car if for no other reason then to see how it works. A right winger fears the change. Most people with lack of social skills fear change because they find society hard enough to understand as it is and don't want to have to learn it all over again.
See your own reaction. Glen Beck is making noise and you just want to ignore him because you are unwilling to deal with the social hassle of confronting him. Understandable but also very typical of the non-geek non-nerd IT related guy.