Actually, as the iPod is 0.78" thick, that would be 13%, but I see no need to increase the iPod's thickness by that much to accomidate a spring mechanism, a door, and electrical contacts. For a sheath you just need a wall the thickness of a credit card; around 1/32 of an inch. So, a 4% increase in size to significantly increase the lifespan of something that costs $300-$500 instead of making an expensive disposable device.
No no no, you misunderstand. Here's an example: The Federal Government appropriates money for a bitchen slip-and-slide in Florida. However, you don't live in Florida, why should you pay for a slip-and-slide, even if it truely is the biggest and best slip-and-slide ever produced, when you will recieve no benifit from it? So you, not living in Florida, sue Florida, saying "Hey, that's a local expenditure, you have no right to take my money to pay for it!" You win, now Florida has to reimburse the Federal Government the $5 billion in tax dollars it obtained to build this six-mile-long water ride (unless you get in early in the project, in which case Florida doesn't recieve a dime and doesn't have to pay anything back). So now the Federal Government has $5 billion with which to waste somewhere else, and you probably won't see a dime of that back, but fortunately it will eliviate Congresses "need" to raise your taxes next year. At least the deficit won't be as big next year. Meanwhile, in Florida, if a significant ammount of Federal dollars have been spent, people will have their taxes raised, possibly quite substantialy, to make up the difference. Florida voters are pissed off that they now have to pay for this massive boondoggle on their own, and the Senator who secured this pork project is going to have the $5 billion he cost the state of Florida thrown in his face come next election, and hopefully by that time the people of Florida will have learned how to vote correctly and kick him out of office. Short term, you are right, in many states the tax rate will probably increase, but as Senators realize that pork barrel projects no longer help them gain votes, long term tax rates will decrease. You see, I'm not sueing for my money back, I'm sueing to shift the burden of who pays.
I want a system whereby independant citizens can sue States to force them to pick up the entire tab for pork barrel projects their Representives and Senators secure for them. The factors to be directly considered would be the contents and primary purpose of the bill the appropriation was located in, the ammount and quality of debate over the appropriation, and does the appropriation benifit citizens not in the state enough to justify the cost. Leaving sole direct control of appropriations to elected officials is a big mistake.
Actually, now that I see the innards, the solution becomes somewhat obvious on how to make a battery esily removable while keeping it in the same place, as there it is bascially laying right next to the side of the case. You'd just need a spring-loaded mechanism to eject it, which doesn't seem that it would be hard at all to fit, a bent piece of metal/plastic would suffice. The biggest hurdle would be finding/building a battery that has direct contacts in the proper location to replace the plug, which I don't see as being that bad. The only reason I see for Apple NOT having a replacable battery is to make it accessable you would have to interupt the seems of the exterior case to provide a door, and thus negatively impact its look, as I doubt raising the cost by $20 (pessimistic assesment) would do a whole lot to the sales. I've seen tiny cameras with similar arrangements.
Simple, because the lousy design has nothing to do with the battery itself, but with HOW YOU REPLACE THE BATTERY. There's no little snap that you can press in and out pops the battery cover, instead the process is so complicated, according to the people who made the film at www.ipodsdirtysecret.com (who, I assume, is the source of the Washington Post article) you risk destroying the iPod if you do it yourself. It's important to note that Apple is NOT offering to send you the battery, instead they offer to let you bring the iPod in so that THEY can install the battery (a policy instituted AFTER the two guys made and distributed the movie). The iPod itself may be well engineered, but it still has a piss-poor DESIGN. This is what happens when you put form over function.
I think Columbus would be a bad example, but the steam engine would be better. We give credit to Thomas Savery's invention in 1698, not Heron of Alexandria's invention in 100 BC, simply because Savery's went somewhere.
Actually it's probably more due to competition from the DVD arena. When I spend money on entertainment, it's in the form of a couple DVDs that I can pick up for 17-23 USD, a much better bang-for-my-buck than even $13.50 for CDs. And no, I don't download mp3s. My DVD collection has fast outpaced my CD collection, and I wouldn't compare DVDs to VHS, as I rarely touched that God-awful format. For Christmas I used to have people asking for CDs, but as my friends and relatives started aquiring DVD players, they also started replacing their CD requests with DVD requests.
Oh, I definately agree about the MX700, best mouse I've ever had, and even better that I don't have to fight the force of gravity tugging on the cord when I move it. I just don't see the need for a wireless keyboard unless you're making a HTPC, it just adds something else you need to maintain. As a general "this is something any geek should have" gift, I strongly disagree. Besides, show me a wireless keyboard with electroluminescence that won't suck batteries dry.
Only if they start producing wireless keyboards with a docking station is this a good idea. Otherwise I'll stick to tethered without having to worry about battery life.
And you are correct. Legality is a political determination made solely to support the interests of those in power. It says nothing as to whether something is Right or Wrong, Just or Unjust, and you will notice that I made no arguement one way or the other on those topics. Seeing as how big a discussion something as mundane as legality caused, I'd shudder to think what a discussion based on Justice would yield.
Where do you get that? The closest you come is "Decides to remain seized of the matter", but gramatically that says the matter has control over the UN, not that the UN has sole control over the matter and no country can act without UN authorization. The phrase means "this topic will remain on the front burner," that's it. If that phrase meant what you say it means, that would mean the UN was the only organization with authority to deal with the September 11th Attacks.
Because widespread opposition in no way shape or form makes something illegal. It is irrelevant. I could cite the weather in Baghdad at the time, or I could cite the financial success of the Harry Potter series of books, but these things don't impact on the legality of a war, and neither does the prevailing opinion of the world's population, so I chose not to highlight them.
Everytime he fired at one of our aircraft patroling the no-fly zone he violated the agreement. Everytime he failed to provide adequete documentation that he had no WMDs (the burden of proof rested on him) he violated the agreement (and find me one country before the war besides Iraq that contended he provided adequete documentation to prove he had no WMDs, not even France made that claim). The charges that he was not trying to acquire WMDs has never been proven false, only a single CIA source about Saddam attempting to aquire Uranium from Nigeria, which was never used as justification for the war. Reports from Iraqi officials was that he was indeed attempting to acquire WMDs, only very ineptly. As for terror ties, not disproven, but currently tenuous (although the arguement was not that he had ties but what would happen if he created them. It's important to listen to people otherwise you might do something stupid, like start a war.)
BTW: I thought neo-cons was a term that was supposed to describe those who subscribed to the Bush doctrine, in which case I'd like to know when they got the time machine to go back and attack Clinton for bombing an asprin factory.
Ah, you are correct, my mistake for a poor choice of words. An unconditional surrender of a nation is not the same as a peace treaty. However, for purposes of this conversation, they have the same effect; declaring the end of a war, one does so by will of governments the other does so by will of the military. A cease fire agreement, on the other hand, does no such thing, often being initiated by field commanders for everything from removing wounded from a battle field (WWI) to negotiating surrenders (Afghanistan) up to pausing entire wars (Gulf War, Isreali-Palestinian conflict)
First, please care to demonstrate where I said there was no widespread oppisition to the war. I simply said the UN did not oppose it (the UN is more than Kofi Annon).
The "fear inspiring propaganda" was that A) Saddam had WMDs at some point. B) 12 UN resolutions that he disarm and prove to the international community that he has disarmed have been passed. C) He has failed to prove that he has disarmed.
Before the war there was not a single country besides Iraq that disputed this. This was because of Saddam's delaying tactics in dealing with inspections, throwing up conditions and declaring sites off limits. According to Iraqi officials that did maintain Iraq had no WMDs stockpiles were destroyed WITHOUT RECORDS BEING KEPT. The burden of proof that Iraq had no WMDs rested solely with Saddam under the UN resolutions, not with the Americans nor the British. He failed to meet that burden, that is a FACT, so no, the "fear inspiring propaganda" has not proven to be completely false. In addition, he was still attempting to obtain WMDs, but the system he set up to obtain them simply became "corrupt" and "embezelled" most of the money (I put them in quotation marks because the words are too strong for someone stealing from Saddam). Many of the projects Saddam invested in were complete frauds. It's unlikely Saddam even knew what he had, let alone the UN. The war was sold on uncertainty, which absolutely positively did exist. Argue against this, do not use rhetoric and mischaracterizations to fight against rehtoric and mischaracterizations. It simply makes you a hypocrit.
Wait, please, refresh my memory, was that a UN emblem on our soldier's uniforms or was that the American flag? Remember, Congress granted George H. W. Bush the authority to declare war, which he later did. Therefor, the US was at war with Iraq IN ADDITION to the UN.
Wrong. The UN did not oppose, it just did not support. Individual nations either supported or opposed the war completely independant of any UN resolution.
Well, if he's a Brit then he could be correct in his statements, as Blair did say Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes. But if he's an American listening to Bush, then you would be correct. It would be nice if the people on Slashdot were kind enough where simply pointing out a fact that happened to support Bush would not scare people into posting AC. Rehtoric, sure, but not facts.
Good, at least someone here recognizes the difference between "illegal" and "wrong." I'm almost convinced the AC thinks the two terms are interchangable. And I absolutely agree that during the time of the Cold War the US did lots of bad things and we are now learning that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend and it's important that we stick around to help pick up the pieces after we've wrecked a country. History is going to judge whether the "Bush doctrine" was a success or failure. At least it's different for the US. But I'll stand with you in recognizing that both the Democrats and Republicans are complete morons.
Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler's successor, sent General Alfred Jodl to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces detachment in Rheims to seek terms to end the war. On May 7, at 2:41 AM, General Jodl signed for the unconditional surrender of German forces on all fronts, which would take effect on May 8, 11:01 pm.
Except for the problem that there WAS a peace treaty signed with Germany (which is what we decalred war on, not the Third Reich). Damn those facts! This isn't some obscure legal backdoor, it was a legal document that, by its very nature, authorizes the continuation of war if its provisions are not lived up to. There is no expiration date on these things. You, sir, need the healthy dose of common sense, or at least a high school history course.
Slight (major) problem with the "illegal war" thing. At the end of Gulf War I, there was no peace treaty, only a cease fire (something of which we had a dozen or so of in Afghanistan alone during that war). It went along the lines of "disarm all WMDS and prove to our satisfaction the destruction of said WMDs and cease all hostilities and we won't finish the job." Since Saddam violated the cease fire on many counts and on many occasions, the only way the continuation of hostilities by the US could be considered an illegal war would be if the first Gulf War was itself illegal. Since that was done by the authority of the UN, that's highly unlikely, unless you doubt the authority of the UN, in which case there's no one to call any war illegal. But of course, this conflicts with your erotic anti-Bush world dreams, so I'm sure you won't let facts get in your way.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, as the iPod is 0.78" thick, that would be 13%, but I see no need to increase the iPod's thickness by that much to accomidate a spring mechanism, a door, and electrical contacts. For a sheath you just need a wall the thickness of a credit card; around 1/32 of an inch. So, a 4% increase in size to significantly increase the lifespan of something that costs $300-$500 instead of making an expensive disposable device.
No no no, you misunderstand. Here's an example: The Federal Government appropriates money for a bitchen slip-and-slide in Florida. However, you don't live in Florida, why should you pay for a slip-and-slide, even if it truely is the biggest and best slip-and-slide ever produced, when you will recieve no benifit from it? So you, not living in Florida, sue Florida, saying "Hey, that's a local expenditure, you have no right to take my money to pay for it!" You win, now Florida has to reimburse the Federal Government the $5 billion in tax dollars it obtained to build this six-mile-long water ride (unless you get in early in the project, in which case Florida doesn't recieve a dime and doesn't have to pay anything back). So now the Federal Government has $5 billion with which to waste somewhere else, and you probably won't see a dime of that back, but fortunately it will eliviate Congresses "need" to raise your taxes next year. At least the deficit won't be as big next year. Meanwhile, in Florida, if a significant ammount of Federal dollars have been spent, people will have their taxes raised, possibly quite substantialy, to make up the difference. Florida voters are pissed off that they now have to pay for this massive boondoggle on their own, and the Senator who secured this pork project is going to have the $5 billion he cost the state of Florida thrown in his face come next election, and hopefully by that time the people of Florida will have learned how to vote correctly and kick him out of office. Short term, you are right, in many states the tax rate will probably increase, but as Senators realize that pork barrel projects no longer help them gain votes, long term tax rates will decrease. You see, I'm not sueing for my money back, I'm sueing to shift the burden of who pays.
I want a system whereby independant citizens can sue States to force them to pick up the entire tab for pork barrel projects their Representives and Senators secure for them. The factors to be directly considered would be the contents and primary purpose of the bill the appropriation was located in, the ammount and quality of debate over the appropriation, and does the appropriation benifit citizens not in the state enough to justify the cost. Leaving sole direct control of appropriations to elected officials is a big mistake.
Actually, now that I see the innards, the solution becomes somewhat obvious on how to make a battery esily removable while keeping it in the same place, as there it is bascially laying right next to the side of the case. You'd just need a spring-loaded mechanism to eject it, which doesn't seem that it would be hard at all to fit, a bent piece of metal/plastic would suffice. The biggest hurdle would be finding/building a battery that has direct contacts in the proper location to replace the plug, which I don't see as being that bad. The only reason I see for Apple NOT having a replacable battery is to make it accessable you would have to interupt the seems of the exterior case to provide a door, and thus negatively impact its look, as I doubt raising the cost by $20 (pessimistic assesment) would do a whole lot to the sales. I've seen tiny cameras with similar arrangements.
I'm sorry, I fail to see how having a replaceable battery interfers with something being thin and having lots of storage.
Simple, because the lousy design has nothing to do with the battery itself, but with HOW YOU REPLACE THE BATTERY. There's no little snap that you can press in and out pops the battery cover, instead the process is so complicated, according to the people who made the film at www.ipodsdirtysecret.com (who, I assume, is the source of the Washington Post article) you risk destroying the iPod if you do it yourself. It's important to note that Apple is NOT offering to send you the battery, instead they offer to let you bring the iPod in so that THEY can install the battery (a policy instituted AFTER the two guys made and distributed the movie). The iPod itself may be well engineered, but it still has a piss-poor DESIGN. This is what happens when you put form over function.
I think Columbus would be a bad example, but the steam engine would be better. We give credit to Thomas Savery's invention in 1698, not Heron of Alexandria's invention in 100 BC, simply because Savery's went somewhere.
Actually it's probably more due to competition from the DVD arena. When I spend money on entertainment, it's in the form of a couple DVDs that I can pick up for 17-23 USD, a much better bang-for-my-buck than even $13.50 for CDs. And no, I don't download mp3s. My DVD collection has fast outpaced my CD collection, and I wouldn't compare DVDs to VHS, as I rarely touched that God-awful format. For Christmas I used to have people asking for CDs, but as my friends and relatives started aquiring DVD players, they also started replacing their CD requests with DVD requests.
Of course, this is all anecdotal
Oh, I definately agree about the MX700, best mouse I've ever had, and even better that I don't have to fight the force of gravity tugging on the cord when I move it. I just don't see the need for a wireless keyboard unless you're making a HTPC, it just adds something else you need to maintain. As a general "this is something any geek should have" gift, I strongly disagree. Besides, show me a wireless keyboard with electroluminescence that won't suck batteries dry.
Only if they start producing wireless keyboards with a docking station is this a good idea. Otherwise I'll stick to tethered without having to worry about battery life.
And you are correct. Legality is a political determination made solely to support the interests of those in power. It says nothing as to whether something is Right or Wrong, Just or Unjust, and you will notice that I made no arguement one way or the other on those topics. Seeing as how big a discussion something as mundane as legality caused, I'd shudder to think what a discussion based on Justice would yield.
Where do you get that? The closest you come is "Decides to remain seized of the matter", but gramatically that says the matter has control over the UN, not that the UN has sole control over the matter and no country can act without UN authorization. The phrase means "this topic will remain on the front burner," that's it. If that phrase meant what you say it means, that would mean the UN was the only organization with authority to deal with the September 11th Attacks.
Because widespread opposition in no way shape or form makes something illegal. It is irrelevant. I could cite the weather in Baghdad at the time, or I could cite the financial success of the Harry Potter series of books, but these things don't impact on the legality of a war, and neither does the prevailing opinion of the world's population, so I chose not to highlight them.
Everytime he fired at one of our aircraft patroling the no-fly zone he violated the agreement. Everytime he failed to provide adequete documentation that he had no WMDs (the burden of proof rested on him) he violated the agreement (and find me one country before the war besides Iraq that contended he provided adequete documentation to prove he had no WMDs, not even France made that claim). The charges that he was not trying to acquire WMDs has never been proven false, only a single CIA source about Saddam attempting to aquire Uranium from Nigeria, which was never used as justification for the war. Reports from Iraqi officials was that he was indeed attempting to acquire WMDs, only very ineptly. As for terror ties, not disproven, but currently tenuous (although the arguement was not that he had ties but what would happen if he created them. It's important to listen to people otherwise you might do something stupid, like start a war.)
BTW: I thought neo-cons was a term that was supposed to describe those who subscribed to the Bush doctrine, in which case I'd like to know when they got the time machine to go back and attack Clinton for bombing an asprin factory.
Ah, you are correct, my mistake for a poor choice of words. An unconditional surrender of a nation is not the same as a peace treaty. However, for purposes of this conversation, they have the same effect; declaring the end of a war, one does so by will of governments the other does so by will of the military. A cease fire agreement, on the other hand, does no such thing, often being initiated by field commanders for everything from removing wounded from a battle field (WWI) to negotiating surrenders (Afghanistan) up to pausing entire wars (Gulf War, Isreali-Palestinian conflict)
First, please care to demonstrate where I said there was no widespread oppisition to the war. I simply said the UN did not oppose it (the UN is more than Kofi Annon).
The "fear inspiring propaganda" was that A) Saddam had WMDs at some point. B) 12 UN resolutions that he disarm and prove to the international community that he has disarmed have been passed. C) He has failed to prove that he has disarmed.
Before the war there was not a single country besides Iraq that disputed this. This was because of Saddam's delaying tactics in dealing with inspections, throwing up conditions and declaring sites off limits. According to Iraqi officials that did maintain Iraq had no WMDs stockpiles were destroyed WITHOUT RECORDS BEING KEPT. The burden of proof that Iraq had no WMDs rested solely with Saddam under the UN resolutions, not with the Americans nor the British. He failed to meet that burden, that is a FACT, so no, the "fear inspiring propaganda" has not proven to be completely false. In addition, he was still attempting to obtain WMDs, but the system he set up to obtain them simply became "corrupt" and "embezelled" most of the money (I put them in quotation marks because the words are too strong for someone stealing from Saddam). Many of the projects Saddam invested in were complete frauds. It's unlikely Saddam even knew what he had, let alone the UN. The war was sold on uncertainty, which absolutely positively did exist. Argue against this, do not use rhetoric and mischaracterizations to fight against rehtoric and mischaracterizations. It simply makes you a hypocrit.
Wait, please, refresh my memory, was that a UN emblem on our soldier's uniforms or was that the American flag? Remember, Congress granted George H. W. Bush the authority to declare war, which he later did. Therefor, the US was at war with Iraq IN ADDITION to the UN.
Wrong. The UN did not oppose, it just did not support. Individual nations either supported or opposed the war completely independant of any UN resolution.
Well, if he's a Brit then he could be correct in his statements, as Blair did say Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes. But if he's an American listening to Bush, then you would be correct. It would be nice if the people on Slashdot were kind enough where simply pointing out a fact that happened to support Bush would not scare people into posting AC. Rehtoric, sure, but not facts.
Good, at least someone here recognizes the difference between "illegal" and "wrong." I'm almost convinced the AC thinks the two terms are interchangable. And I absolutely agree that during the time of the Cold War the US did lots of bad things and we are now learning that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend and it's important that we stick around to help pick up the pieces after we've wrecked a country. History is going to judge whether the "Bush doctrine" was a success or failure. At least it's different for the US. But I'll stand with you in recognizing that both the Democrats and Republicans are complete morons.
Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler's successor, sent General Alfred Jodl to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces detachment in Rheims to seek terms to end the war. On May 7, at 2:41 AM, General Jodl signed for the unconditional surrender of German forces on all fronts, which would take effect on May 8, 11:01 pm.
Does that answer your question?
Except for the problem that there WAS a peace treaty signed with Germany (which is what we decalred war on, not the Third Reich). Damn those facts! This isn't some obscure legal backdoor, it was a legal document that, by its very nature, authorizes the continuation of war if its provisions are not lived up to. There is no expiration date on these things. You, sir, need the healthy dose of common sense, or at least a high school history course.
Slight (major) problem with the "illegal war" thing. At the end of Gulf War I, there was no peace treaty, only a cease fire (something of which we had a dozen or so of in Afghanistan alone during that war). It went along the lines of "disarm all WMDS and prove to our satisfaction the destruction of said WMDs and cease all hostilities and we won't finish the job." Since Saddam violated the cease fire on many counts and on many occasions, the only way the continuation of hostilities by the US could be considered an illegal war would be if the first Gulf War was itself illegal. Since that was done by the authority of the UN, that's highly unlikely, unless you doubt the authority of the UN, in which case there's no one to call any war illegal. But of course, this conflicts with your erotic anti-Bush world dreams, so I'm sure you won't let facts get in your way.
I /.ed them. I /.ed them all! And not just the Win Server 2K3s, but the Apaches and the X Servers too! They're like SCO, and I DOSed them like SCO!
This website's over.
I thought all we needed to do that with was a computer virus?