This only works if there is cooperation from those spreading the disease. Maybe I have an overly devious mind but one of my first thoughts was when is some ISIS nut-job going to get themselves purposefully infected and start planting bodily fluids on every subway handrail, mall restroom door handle, drinking fountain leaver, escalator hand-rail, ketchup-dispenser, and whatever else they can think of, before they get too sick to move, and then finish it off by collapsing in the middle of some very public place, causing panic. Don't tell me there aren't at least a few sick bastards out there thinking along these lines. All it would take is one or two of these cases and the shear panic it would induce would shut this country down for a long time.
I find it interesting how much private information is exposed in that screenshot of the lab report. I would probably have cropped it differently or blurred it out before plastering it all over the interwebs...
Do they like Apple's products because of inherent, demonstrable superiority, like more functionality, better battery life, higher quality, or openness/ability to mod? Things that you can objectively examine such that any neutral, disinterested person can see for himself that it's superior to the competition?
My vehicle is demonstrably superior to your car. It's heavier, louder, has bigger tires, more storage space, doesn't have any of those "closed" computer things in it that make it so you can't work on it yourself and is way cheaper than yours. Why would you ever consider buying something as stupid as the one you chose? Any fool can compare the two objectively and see mine is clearly superior in every way...
No one is arguing against a teenager getting a part time job in suburban U.S.A. What is being argued is what is wrong with child labor as in "this is what you will do for the rest of your life because you won't be able to go to school because this will stunt your mental growth" kind of thing.
As someone who grew up in a "3rd-world country" I have news for you. Most people are finished with school by age 12. A 15-year-old is considered an adult and often is married and has at least one kid by then. We treat teen-agers like children in the US and Canada and they fulfill that expectation spectacularly - in fact, you aren't a "real" adult until 21 and then insurance companies rape you and you can't rent a car, etc., until you are 25. We put up with and even encourage infantile behavior by our teens and young-adults. And then we impose our beliefs on the rest of the world.
If Apple wants to make it's world-wide policy match our expectations, fine. They talk about these companies hiring workers "as young as 15". Well, that 15-year-old, who very possibly is married with a family and obviously wanted the job (I didn't hear that they were rounding up workers at gun-point) and obviously capable of doing the job (what job was that? Taking out the garbage? Putting the manual and CD in it's sleeve?) otherwise they wouldn't have been hired.
I would applaud Apple for standing up for what they believe in, but I fear that it's more to appease the ignorant, myopic American public and their America-centric world-view than any real conviction on the subject. And I feel bad for the young adults who were fortunate to land an excellent, high-paying job (for that part of the world) who will now be unemployed.
I do some "Angel" investing on occasion (I'm not at VC stage yet), meaning that I invest some of my money in promising startups. As much as it may seem that "the kids" have all the tech-saavy and good ideas, I look for startups that are lead by people with fairly extensive experience in both "tech" and business. That means that I'd be hard pressed to put my hard-earned money into a new company that's being run by a 25-year-old who is probably right out of college and has never run a business before. Now, I know that many of the great companies were started by kids with no business experience and I'm probably missing out on a good thing here. However, when I am presented with two competing proposals of otherwise equal potential where the difference is that one company is lead by a kid with no "real-world" experience and the other is lead by someone who's been in the field for 10-20 years, has run other businesses (even failed ones), I'll probably go for the experience - if all other factors are equal. In fact, I believe the youngest person I've ever funded was around 33 at the time.
So, how does this fit in with the gender issue? I've been in the IT field since 1984 and I can tell you that girls were almost entirely absent from my field. What this means in terms of total experience today is that those in the high-tech field with the most experience tend to be predominately men. It would also follow that those with enough experience in their field who are seriously ready to both run a business that requires funding at the VC-level (i.e. millions of dollars) and have enough of a portfolio and background to attract VC would tend to be predominately men. Think about the ages of people running *most* large, successful companies; they tend to be in their 50's or older. Look back at how many women were in the workforce, getting management and "technical" experience in the 70's and 80's. Keeping in mind that during that time women really didn't have the same opportunities as men in the workplace and they tended toward more "traditional" positions - thus further reducing their potential experience in roles that would lead to high-level executive positions.
Is this *fair* to women? Not really. They've always had to fight harder to be accepted into non-traditional roles in business. Is it *fair* to men for women to get moved into positions of authority simply because there aren't enough women in positions of authority? No. However, as someone who puts my money out there on the line, I'm looking for the best chance of a return that I can find. I don't care about the race, creed, color or gender of who's leading the company. I care about their chances of leading the company to success and my getting a return on my investment. Generally that will tend to lean toward those with experience, and in the technical fields that *tends* to be populated with males.
Now, I'm always on the lookout for the exceptions...
If you are talking about video, we know why it is slow.. because Apple will not let them use hardware acceleration. That level of GPU access is limited to the OS and QuickTime. Apple feels that only Quick Time should be used for video and they are enforcing it in the OS.
No. Quicktime uses the API's exposed by the core-graphics system. Adobe doesn't want to use them. They want to write their own and address hardware directly. Apple doesn't allow this - for many reasons.
Live streaming using H.264 seemed to work just dandy watching the State of the Union address on my iPhone while using the Whitehouse.gov iPhone app. Also seems to work great with MLB At-Bat on the iPhone as well. I watched many baseball games last season streaming live H.264 video to the iPhone.
But can you do it with a generic app which will connect to any server?
You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.
- can you please enlighten us, what part of that statement is true as you said? That a horse was designed? That a camel was designed? That a camel is 'worse' than a horse? Is camel worse than a horse for the environment it lives in?
So that old saying, is it truly true?
It's an Alan Sherman quote (despite what some people claim) from "Peter and the Commissar" (with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops). [dig] You are obviously too young and lacking in culture [/dig] (despite your low/. ID) to have heard it. So, to you, I give a quote you must certainly have heard: "Whoosh!"
Don't take the bait. You bought what was right for you and were willing to pay for it. What you are hearing from them is jealousy, sour grapes or some other mental disorder. Let them scrabble around together at the bottom, congratulating themselves on how little they spent for their cheap plastic boxes. It obviously works for them. They think everything should be free or cheap, that they're somehow owed it. Great! There's a market there and Dell, Gateway & MS, et al are there to fill it. That's what they want, that's what they deserve, that's what they're happy with. Why they feel so strongly about our preferences and why they feel the need to attack us so vehemently is a question they probably don't want an answer to. Be true to yourself. Don't be ashamed that you can distinguish, prefer and afford quality. They're just trying to drag you down to their level, thinking it will somehow validate them and make them better. They are wrong.
"You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee."
I don't get this? What's wrong with Camels? Seems they are well adapted to the desert environments they are native to? For a purpose-specific niche (a beast of burden suitable to survival and use in a desert region) they seem like the perfect design, no?
But the client was envisioning Secretariat and a Triple-Crown win.
I'm as much a fan of open-source as the next guy and I've contributed to some projects and asked for features, etc. However, I find that the whole "designed by committee" that *many* open source apps have reduces the overall quality. Those OSS apps that truly shine generally have either a strong leader or a single author. You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.
As far as openness goes, Apple doesn't announce vaporware like most other companies do. This means when they announce something, they are going to sell it. Usually their products have taken old ideas and looked at them from a different angle opting for being very good at a few things rather than poor and many things. Let's face it, Cmdr Tacos' famous assessment of the original iPod is a classic example of how "the masses" would design a similar product. If Apple would release an "alpha" product to "test the waters" like so many other companies do, the iPod (and iPhone, for that matter) would have died at birth or would be so hideously deformed that it would be unrecognizable.
Please post a link to where climate scientists (as opposed to scaremongering denialists) have said anything like "we may have started a runaway greenhouse effect"
Don't you EVER tell my what I have and haven't heard. And don't try to claim that the scaremongering is coming from denialists! The science on the root cause of "climate change" is not in and it's the scientists with a vested political and monetary interest in AGW who are doing the scaremongering.
The climate may be changing. Humans may be contributing to it to some degree. How much, I don't know and you don't either. Also, no one has convinced me that moving the temperate zone north a bit will be a bad thing for humanity. So Russia and Canadaand Alaska become the world's bread-basket. Is that a bad thing? Yes, it's change. Yes, there MAY be some coastal changes (slowly over hundreds of years). Yes, there might be an Island or two that currently sits a few feet above sea-level that will have to be evacuated. Sad, but things change. Not a global catastrophe by any means. Simply the fact that your side has switched from calling it Global Warming to "Climate Change" is very telling.
The climate has always changed. In fact it has historically changed much faster than it is now in swings that mage even the worst projections seem insignificant. And it has done it over and over and over again. We will adapt.
Seems to me the same arguments could be made for the "expert witnesses" (and if you take the Climate-Change-will-destroy-humanity crowd at their word, the cost-benefit analysis as well) in the AGW debate.
As a US citizen, I am prepared to make a sacrifice for my country and humanity...let it hit Alaska!
Ahem! Some of us like it up here in Alaska. Of course, if there's a decent chance that it would warm things up a bit, I think we can deal. We're a tough bunch, after all.
Heh. Learn something new every day. I guess I should actually log into facebook in a browser some times. I've been interacting with it through 3rd-party apps on the desktop and iPhone so far - they don't give me those options (that I've been able to see).
I swear, if I see another post about one of my "friends" finding a little lost duckling or sheep or whatever on my facebook feed I'm going to start making heavy use of the "unfriend" feature. If you want to play your game, fine, but PLEASE facebook, give me the ability to turn off notifications from stupid games like that! I might even try playing it if I wasn't so annoyed by all the crap it spews onto my facebook page and worried that I'd annoy my friends and family in turn - that and I don't trust ANY applications interacting with my facebook account.
No, I don't want that drink, poke, hug, heart, angel, bush or whatever. Thanks all the same, especially not when I have to click a button to give it access to my account. Yes, I'm paranoid.
Depends on whether you were the stronger or the weaker of the disputing parties, I suspect...
Actually, I disagree. I realize in this oh-so-civilized and politically-correct world I'm a bit of a neanderthal, but as the weaker one in may confrontations growing up, there was a certain finality and satisfaction in just facing your tormentor or opponent and having it out. Many times I was left with the split lip or black eye, but was able to walk away knowing that I'd at least defended my honor. As stupid as it sounds, things were never left to fester long enough to get to Columbine-proportions let alone anything that would be considered a severe beating.
I didn't fight often, but that was because I learned very quickly that my actions had consequences. I learned that it can sometimes hurt as much to punch someone as to get punched. I also learned that to avoid a physical confrontation, I needed to work on my diplomacy and many times my over-all prick-titude.
Kids these days barely get the chance to use harsh-language against each other before an adult steps in. They see people on TV and in the movies getting in horrific fights that would quickly render a real person unconscious or dead, getting right back up again, ready for more. They've never experienced the fear and pain of defeat, let alone the fear and pain of victory. Without an early outlet for small disagreements some people bottle it up until they explode. Often, they just commit suicide, but sometimes they take the small hurts way too far, grab a gun and kill someone. We can sit on the outside, wring our hands and say "Why would someone kill someone else over a little thing like that?" Well, it's not a little thing when you spend your whole life feeling powerless.
When I was a kid you'd never hear about someone shooting up their school. Why? For one thing, half the pickup trucks in the high school parking lot had a rifle in the back window. The kids actually hunted with them and had first-hand knowledge of the damage they did to flesh and what death and blood smells like. They'd never reach for a gun in a fight. They'd lose hand-to-hand first. Second, there was a spot, right off school grounds, that was the de facto fighting spot. You knew, when you were called out where to be and at what time.
If you chose not to show up, you lost and were dishonored. If you showed up, defeated your opponent, and then proceeded to beat him while he was down, you were considered a loser, which was a bigger dishonor that not showing up. If you lost, at least it was over and you were respected for standing up for yourself. The strange part about that was, after the first time a big bully beat a smaller kid there, it rarely happened again. The big bully didn't get near the accolades they'd envisioned after beating up on a weaker kid in full public view of their classmates. In fact, it was usually the weaker kid who came out better in the eyes of their peers. Of course, if you didn't show up you weren't lauded for your passivity, you were scorned for not being willing to stand up for yourself. No one had any respect for someone who wouldn't stand up for themselves (or their girlfriends more often than not).
I love when I hear naive people say "violence doesn't solve anything". Bullshit. Violence almost always solves the problem, one way or the other. It just may not be the best way to solve the problem. But when you've never known real violence, never dealt real violence, it all sort of becomes unreal. When you grow up your whole life being told that pacifism is so noble and everything can be resolved with talking and reason you lose touch with the grim, gritty reality that comes with getting that bloody nose. So when you find yourself in a situation when the other party won't just accept your reason and when you can't find any adults/officials to come to your rescue and make the other party see reason, your sense of frustration grows to the point where the violence you've never experienced takes on a seductive kind of
(and all you Apple fans get your negative moderation ready)
Apple has already responded: it is "releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own. There is no production fee charged by Apple," without confirming a date for the release.
You can put your AppleHate thingy back in your pants now. A reasonable assumption might be that Apple wants to get some solid examples out there as a benchmark to ensure quality (since they are charging a premium for the experience) so that we don't get the LP-version of the blink tag on grandma's homepage when we plunk down our hard earned dough. They also may be waiting for the HTML5 standards to be better clarified. Who knows, but the whiny "indie" band isn't willing to admit that what Apple probably told them was along the lines of "We aren't giving it out to just anyone yet. We'd also like to start with albums people have actually heard of. Right now, if you want your album to be an LP we will help you with it, but it will cost you around $10K if you really want it that bad."
It's amazing how when a company creates a brand and a marketplace that becomes popular everyone steps up and screams that they're "entitled" to it, for free, no less. And they want it NOW. But give it to them now and watch them bitch about how it's not polished enough or how they could have done it better. Apple can't win. It's funny that those who bitch the loudest seem to be the ones who don't even buy from iTunes and probably don't even use Apple products.
Seriously people. The shipping version is always "just a stopgap" with Microsoft. It's always the NEXT version that will be the Next Big Thing(TM). This is what keeps everyone hanging on. It allows CIOs and IT managers to address user complaints and keep competing products out while covering their asses. "Hey, Microsoft is the industry standard. Besides, just wait for the next version!". No one ever got fired for recommending Microsoft, after all.
Who knows though, with Linux finally getting some much-needed polish and OS X maturing, not to mention Android and-the-like coming into their own on mobile devices, maybe people are starting to wake up to the alternatives.
Although I think electric cars have an important place in the lineup, I have to say that my 1998 Mercedes already goes 500 miles between fill-ups. On top of that, when it get's to -60F it not only still goes (close to) 500 miles, but keeps me warm too. I admit I'm a fringe case here, but I'd be interested in knowing how many miles a battery-operated car would go at -60F when it's also running an electric heater powerful enough to fend off those temps. Now, give me a Mr. Fusion and I think we can do business.
BTW, who has a car that can only go 300 miles between fill-ups? I admit I'm a bit out of the loop as my newest vehicle is over 10 years old, but really? Even new cars today are getting that bad mileage?
I think the problem is worse than you think. First, we have a huge number of people who are convinced to trade their paid-for cars for debt on a new car - one of the worst financial decisions you can make in most circumstances. So now, in this uncertain economy, we have people gaining another liability, new debt in the form of a car payment, higher insurance rates (now they have to have full-coverage), and their (possibly) still-functional older car can't even be resold to someone who might really need an inexpensive upgrade. Expect to see a lot of almost-new cars be up for sale in the paper in about 6 months.
Oh, and this is all supposed to help the auto industry? Yeah, sure, they'll get a sales blip now, but what happens when everyone who was even remotely looking to buy a car in the near future buys one through this program? They aren't going to need another new one for years. What program does the government come up with next to help sell cars in the intervening years? After all, it's their car company now. Are they going to mandate that you can only keep your car for a year before having to buy a new one? I see a huge dry-spell coming for the auto industry in the next few years. The wise buyers are going to snap up the repo-ed cars from the suckers this round. Smart buyers don't buy new. I know I don't, and I drive *nice* (paid-for) cars.
Don't even get me started about how this is supposed to help save the environment. Do you know how far I'd have to drive my 12-year-old Mercedes to put enough crap into the environment in order to make up the amount of crap that has to go into the environment to make a new one? Even if I drove my old car *another* 200,000 miles, a 60mpg Prius will only burn about 3,000 gallons less over the same distance. That's about 250 gallons of gas a year. Look me in the eye and tell me mining, transporting, building, transporting, battery-ing and transporting a new car around the world saves more than 250 gallons of fuel worth of environmental impact from my already built car? And I am *not* driving 200,000 miles in a fscking Prius.
In typical government fashion they've put their foot in it again and will wind up forcing me to bail their ass out. Man, I can't remember a time when Going Gault sounded more appealing!
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This only works if there is cooperation from those spreading the disease. Maybe I have an overly devious mind but one of my first thoughts was when is some ISIS nut-job going to get themselves purposefully infected and start planting bodily fluids on every subway handrail, mall restroom door handle, drinking fountain leaver, escalator hand-rail, ketchup-dispenser, and whatever else they can think of, before they get too sick to move, and then finish it off by collapsing in the middle of some very public place, causing panic. Don't tell me there aren't at least a few sick bastards out there thinking along these lines. All it would take is one or two of these cases and the shear panic it would induce would shut this country down for a long time.
I find it interesting how much private information is exposed in that screenshot of the lab report. I would probably have cropped it differently or blurred it out before plastering it all over the interwebs...
Many of the better note-taking apps have a palm-rest/palm-detection mode for writing with a stylus.
Do they like Apple's products because of inherent, demonstrable superiority, like more functionality, better battery life, higher quality, or openness/ability to mod? Things that you can objectively examine such that any neutral, disinterested person can see for himself that it's superior to the competition?
My vehicle is demonstrably superior to your car. It's heavier, louder, has bigger tires, more storage space, doesn't have any of those "closed" computer things in it that make it so you can't work on it yourself and is way cheaper than yours. Why would you ever consider buying something as stupid as the one you chose? Any fool can compare the two objectively and see mine is clearly superior in every way...
No one is arguing against a teenager getting a part time job in suburban U.S.A. What is being argued is what is wrong with child labor as in "this is what you will do for the rest of your life because you won't be able to go to school because this will stunt your mental growth" kind of thing.
As someone who grew up in a "3rd-world country" I have news for you. Most people are finished with school by age 12. A 15-year-old is considered an adult and often is married and has at least one kid by then. We treat teen-agers like children in the US and Canada and they fulfill that expectation spectacularly - in fact, you aren't a "real" adult until 21 and then insurance companies rape you and you can't rent a car, etc., until you are 25. We put up with and even encourage infantile behavior by our teens and young-adults. And then we impose our beliefs on the rest of the world.
If Apple wants to make it's world-wide policy match our expectations, fine. They talk about these companies hiring workers "as young as 15". Well, that 15-year-old, who very possibly is married with a family and obviously wanted the job (I didn't hear that they were rounding up workers at gun-point) and obviously capable of doing the job (what job was that? Taking out the garbage? Putting the manual and CD in it's sleeve?) otherwise they wouldn't have been hired.
I would applaud Apple for standing up for what they believe in, but I fear that it's more to appease the ignorant, myopic American public and their America-centric world-view than any real conviction on the subject. And I feel bad for the young adults who were fortunate to land an excellent, high-paying job (for that part of the world) who will now be unemployed.
I do some "Angel" investing on occasion (I'm not at VC stage yet), meaning that I invest some of my money in promising startups. As much as it may seem that "the kids" have all the tech-saavy and good ideas, I look for startups that are lead by people with fairly extensive experience in both "tech" and business. That means that I'd be hard pressed to put my hard-earned money into a new company that's being run by a 25-year-old who is probably right out of college and has never run a business before. Now, I know that many of the great companies were started by kids with no business experience and I'm probably missing out on a good thing here. However, when I am presented with two competing proposals of otherwise equal potential where the difference is that one company is lead by a kid with no "real-world" experience and the other is lead by someone who's been in the field for 10-20 years, has run other businesses (even failed ones), I'll probably go for the experience - if all other factors are equal. In fact, I believe the youngest person I've ever funded was around 33 at the time.
So, how does this fit in with the gender issue? I've been in the IT field since 1984 and I can tell you that girls were almost entirely absent from my field. What this means in terms of total experience today is that those in the high-tech field with the most experience tend to be predominately men. It would also follow that those with enough experience in their field who are seriously ready to both run a business that requires funding at the VC-level (i.e. millions of dollars) and have enough of a portfolio and background to attract VC would tend to be predominately men. Think about the ages of people running *most* large, successful companies; they tend to be in their 50's or older. Look back at how many women were in the workforce, getting management and "technical" experience in the 70's and 80's. Keeping in mind that during that time women really didn't have the same opportunities as men in the workplace and they tended toward more "traditional" positions - thus further reducing their potential experience in roles that would lead to high-level executive positions.
Is this *fair* to women? Not really. They've always had to fight harder to be accepted into non-traditional roles in business. Is it *fair* to men for women to get moved into positions of authority simply because there aren't enough women in positions of authority? No. However, as someone who puts my money out there on the line, I'm looking for the best chance of a return that I can find. I don't care about the race, creed, color or gender of who's leading the company. I care about their chances of leading the company to success and my getting a return on my investment. Generally that will tend to lean toward those with experience, and in the technical fields that *tends* to be populated with males.
Now, I'm always on the lookout for the exceptions...
If you are talking about video, we know why it is slow.. because Apple will not let them use hardware acceleration. That level of GPU access is limited to the OS and QuickTime. Apple feels that only Quick Time should be used for video and they are enforcing it in the OS.
No. Quicktime uses the API's exposed by the core-graphics system. Adobe doesn't want to use them. They want to write their own and address hardware directly. Apple doesn't allow this - for many reasons.
Live streaming using H.264 seemed to work just dandy watching the State of the Union address on my iPhone while using the Whitehouse.gov iPhone app. Also seems to work great with MLB At-Bat on the iPhone as well. I watched many baseball games last season streaming live H.264 video to the iPhone.
But can you do it with a generic app which will connect to any server?
Try this site for some examples.
You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.
- can you please enlighten us, what part of that statement is true as you said? That a horse was designed? That a camel was designed? That a camel is 'worse' than a horse? Is camel worse than a horse for the environment it lives in?
So that old saying, is it truly true?
It's an Alan Sherman quote (despite what some people claim) from "Peter and the Commissar" (with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops). [dig] You are obviously too young and lacking in culture [/dig] (despite your low /. ID) to have heard it. So, to you, I give a quote you must certainly have heard: "Whoosh!"
Don't take the bait. You bought what was right for you and were willing to pay for it. What you are hearing from them is jealousy, sour grapes or some other mental disorder. Let them scrabble around together at the bottom, congratulating themselves on how little they spent for their cheap plastic boxes. It obviously works for them. They think everything should be free or cheap, that they're somehow owed it. Great! There's a market there and Dell, Gateway & MS, et al are there to fill it. That's what they want, that's what they deserve, that's what they're happy with. Why they feel so strongly about our preferences and why they feel the need to attack us so vehemently is a question they probably don't want an answer to. Be true to yourself. Don't be ashamed that you can distinguish, prefer and afford quality. They're just trying to drag you down to their level, thinking it will somehow validate them and make them better. They are wrong.
"You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee."
I don't get this? What's wrong with Camels? Seems they are well adapted to the desert environments they are native to? For a purpose-specific niche (a beast of burden suitable to survival and use in a desert region) they seem like the perfect design, no?
But the client was envisioning Secretariat and a Triple-Crown win.
I'm as much a fan of open-source as the next guy and I've contributed to some projects and asked for features, etc. However, I find that the whole "designed by committee" that *many* open source apps have reduces the overall quality. Those OSS apps that truly shine generally have either a strong leader or a single author. You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.
As far as openness goes, Apple doesn't announce vaporware like most other companies do. This means when they announce something, they are going to sell it. Usually their products have taken old ideas and looked at them from a different angle opting for being very good at a few things rather than poor and many things. Let's face it, Cmdr Tacos' famous assessment of the original iPod is a classic example of how "the masses" would design a similar product. If Apple would release an "alpha" product to "test the waters" like so many other companies do, the iPod (and iPhone, for that matter) would have died at birth or would be so hideously deformed that it would be unrecognizable.
No, you haven't heard that.
Please post a link to where climate scientists (as opposed to scaremongering denialists) have said anything like "we may have started a runaway greenhouse effect"
We'll wait.
Let's see, 5 seconds of googling returned pages of results with the first one being this: Failure to tackle global warming could spell the end for humanity, warns UN report.
Don't you EVER tell my what I have and haven't heard. And don't try to claim that the scaremongering is coming from denialists! The science on the root cause of "climate change" is not in and it's the scientists with a vested political and monetary interest in AGW who are doing the scaremongering.
The climate may be changing. Humans may be contributing to it to some degree. How much, I don't know and you don't either. Also, no one has convinced me that moving the temperate zone north a bit will be a bad thing for humanity. So Russia and Canadaand Alaska become the world's bread-basket. Is that a bad thing? Yes, it's change. Yes, there MAY be some coastal changes (slowly over hundreds of years). Yes, there might be an Island or two that currently sits a few feet above sea-level that will have to be evacuated. Sad, but things change. Not a global catastrophe by any means. Simply the fact that your side has switched from calling it Global Warming to "Climate Change" is very telling.
The climate has always changed. In fact it has historically changed much faster than it is now in swings that mage even the worst projections seem insignificant. And it has done it over and over and over again. We will adapt.
Seems to me the same arguments could be made for the "expert witnesses" (and if you take the Climate-Change-will-destroy-humanity crowd at their word, the cost-benefit analysis as well) in the AGW debate.
As a US citizen, I am prepared to make a sacrifice for my country and humanity...let it hit Alaska!
Ahem! Some of us like it up here in Alaska. Of course, if there's a decent chance that it would warm things up a bit, I think we can deal. We're a tough bunch, after all.
Heh. Learn something new every day. I guess I should actually log into facebook in a browser some times. I've been interacting with it through 3rd-party apps on the desktop and iPhone so far - they don't give me those options (that I've been able to see).
I swear, if I see another post about one of my "friends" finding a little lost duckling or sheep or whatever on my facebook feed I'm going to start making heavy use of the "unfriend" feature. If you want to play your game, fine, but PLEASE facebook, give me the ability to turn off notifications from stupid games like that! I might even try playing it if I wasn't so annoyed by all the crap it spews onto my facebook page and worried that I'd annoy my friends and family in turn - that and I don't trust ANY applications interacting with my facebook account.
No, I don't want that drink, poke, hug, heart, angel, bush or whatever. Thanks all the same, especially not when I have to click a button to give it access to my account. Yes, I'm paranoid.
Funny how the most retarded redneck with a windows box can find people hosting Kiddie Porn but the FBI et al can't do the same...
It's been reported as a hoax.
Because might make right was such a good system?
At least it's a system where you know where you stand and have a fightin' chance of changing it. ;-)
Depends on whether you were the stronger or the weaker of the disputing parties, I suspect...
Actually, I disagree. I realize in this oh-so-civilized and politically-correct world I'm a bit of a neanderthal, but as the weaker one in may confrontations growing up, there was a certain finality and satisfaction in just facing your tormentor or opponent and having it out. Many times I was left with the split lip or black eye, but was able to walk away knowing that I'd at least defended my honor. As stupid as it sounds, things were never left to fester long enough to get to Columbine-proportions let alone anything that would be considered a severe beating.
I didn't fight often, but that was because I learned very quickly that my actions had consequences. I learned that it can sometimes hurt as much to punch someone as to get punched. I also learned that to avoid a physical confrontation, I needed to work on my diplomacy and many times my over-all prick-titude.
Kids these days barely get the chance to use harsh-language against each other before an adult steps in. They see people on TV and in the movies getting in horrific fights that would quickly render a real person unconscious or dead, getting right back up again, ready for more. They've never experienced the fear and pain of defeat, let alone the fear and pain of victory. Without an early outlet for small disagreements some people bottle it up until they explode. Often, they just commit suicide, but sometimes they take the small hurts way too far, grab a gun and kill someone. We can sit on the outside, wring our hands and say "Why would someone kill someone else over a little thing like that?" Well, it's not a little thing when you spend your whole life feeling powerless.
When I was a kid you'd never hear about someone shooting up their school. Why? For one thing, half the pickup trucks in the high school parking lot had a rifle in the back window. The kids actually hunted with them and had first-hand knowledge of the damage they did to flesh and what death and blood smells like. They'd never reach for a gun in a fight. They'd lose hand-to-hand first. Second, there was a spot, right off school grounds, that was the de facto fighting spot. You knew, when you were called out where to be and at what time.
If you chose not to show up, you lost and were dishonored. If you showed up, defeated your opponent, and then proceeded to beat him while he was down, you were considered a loser, which was a bigger dishonor that not showing up. If you lost, at least it was over and you were respected for standing up for yourself. The strange part about that was, after the first time a big bully beat a smaller kid there, it rarely happened again. The big bully didn't get near the accolades they'd envisioned after beating up on a weaker kid in full public view of their classmates. In fact, it was usually the weaker kid who came out better in the eyes of their peers. Of course, if you didn't show up you weren't lauded for your passivity, you were scorned for not being willing to stand up for yourself. No one had any respect for someone who wouldn't stand up for themselves (or their girlfriends more often than not).
I love when I hear naive people say "violence doesn't solve anything". Bullshit. Violence almost always solves the problem, one way or the other. It just may not be the best way to solve the problem. But when you've never known real violence, never dealt real violence, it all sort of becomes unreal. When you grow up your whole life being told that pacifism is so noble and everything can be resolved with talking and reason you lose touch with the grim, gritty reality that comes with getting that bloody nose. So when you find yourself in a situation when the other party won't just accept your reason and when you can't find any adults/officials to come to your rescue and make the other party see reason, your sense of frustration grows to the point where the violence you've never experienced takes on a seductive kind of
(and all you Apple fans get your negative moderation ready)
Apple has already responded: it is "releasing the open specs for iTunes LP soon, allowing both major and indie labels to create their own. There is no production fee charged by Apple," without confirming a date for the release.
You can put your AppleHate thingy back in your pants now. A reasonable assumption might be that Apple wants to get some solid examples out there as a benchmark to ensure quality (since they are charging a premium for the experience) so that we don't get the LP-version of the blink tag on grandma's homepage when we plunk down our hard earned dough. They also may be waiting for the HTML5 standards to be better clarified. Who knows, but the whiny "indie" band isn't willing to admit that what Apple probably told them was along the lines of "We aren't giving it out to just anyone yet. We'd also like to start with albums people have actually heard of. Right now, if you want your album to be an LP we will help you with it, but it will cost you around $10K if you really want it that bad."
It's amazing how when a company creates a brand and a marketplace that becomes popular everyone steps up and screams that they're "entitled" to it, for free, no less. And they want it NOW. But give it to them now and watch them bitch about how it's not polished enough or how they could have done it better. Apple can't win. It's funny that those who bitch the loudest seem to be the ones who don't even buy from iTunes and probably don't even use Apple products.
Seriously people. The shipping version is always "just a stopgap" with Microsoft. It's always the NEXT version that will be the Next Big Thing(TM). This is what keeps everyone hanging on. It allows CIOs and IT managers to address user complaints and keep competing products out while covering their asses. "Hey, Microsoft is the industry standard. Besides, just wait for the next version!". No one ever got fired for recommending Microsoft, after all.
Who knows though, with Linux finally getting some much-needed polish and OS X maturing, not to mention Android and-the-like coming into their own on mobile devices, maybe people are starting to wake up to the alternatives.
Nah...
Although I think electric cars have an important place in the lineup, I have to say that my 1998 Mercedes already goes 500 miles between fill-ups. On top of that, when it get's to -60F it not only still goes (close to) 500 miles, but keeps me warm too. I admit I'm a fringe case here, but I'd be interested in knowing how many miles a battery-operated car would go at -60F when it's also running an electric heater powerful enough to fend off those temps. Now, give me a Mr. Fusion and I think we can do business. BTW, who has a car that can only go 300 miles between fill-ups? I admit I'm a bit out of the loop as my newest vehicle is over 10 years old, but really? Even new cars today are getting that bad mileage?
I think the problem is worse than you think. First, we have a huge number of people who are convinced to trade their paid-for cars for debt on a new car - one of the worst financial decisions you can make in most circumstances. So now, in this uncertain economy, we have people gaining another liability, new debt in the form of a car payment, higher insurance rates (now they have to have full-coverage), and their (possibly) still-functional older car can't even be resold to someone who might really need an inexpensive upgrade. Expect to see a lot of almost-new cars be up for sale in the paper in about 6 months.
Oh, and this is all supposed to help the auto industry? Yeah, sure, they'll get a sales blip now, but what happens when everyone who was even remotely looking to buy a car in the near future buys one through this program? They aren't going to need another new one for years. What program does the government come up with next to help sell cars in the intervening years? After all, it's their car company now. Are they going to mandate that you can only keep your car for a year before having to buy a new one? I see a huge dry-spell coming for the auto industry in the next few years. The wise buyers are going to snap up the repo-ed cars from the suckers this round. Smart buyers don't buy new. I know I don't, and I drive *nice* (paid-for) cars.
Don't even get me started about how this is supposed to help save the environment. Do you know how far I'd have to drive my 12-year-old Mercedes to put enough crap into the environment in order to make up the amount of crap that has to go into the environment to make a new one? Even if I drove my old car *another* 200,000 miles, a 60mpg Prius will only burn about 3,000 gallons less over the same distance. That's about 250 gallons of gas a year. Look me in the eye and tell me mining, transporting, building, transporting, battery-ing and transporting a new car around the world saves more than 250 gallons of fuel worth of environmental impact from my already built car? And I am *not* driving 200,000 miles in a fscking Prius.
In typical government fashion they've put their foot in it again and will wind up forcing me to bail their ass out. Man, I can't remember a time when Going Gault sounded more appealing!