Actually - is it not. For an example here in Finland where ownership of firearms is very high - about 1.6 million guns (with another 200 000 unlicensed ones) to 5 million people. And yet we are still quite high in homicide rate. (We are above Japan, Sweden and Turkey for example....).
So does HP, what's your point? And they are not giving it away either - you can sell a ton of (high-margin) consulting and support services with those, unlike your average consumer pc.
Yes it does - a horrible kind of in OS4. And back then it didn't because 68000/68020 used in the popular models (500/1200) had no MMU so it could not have been implemented anyway. MMU came with 68030 turbo cards which enabled virtual memory but memory protection never really was built in the os - what I understand doing it at this point would massively break backwards-compatibility so not gonna happen for old 3.9 -based OS. But I think that if someone would make an "Amiga" tablet it would not really be anything but the logo and inside something else.
Europe had a whole different home computer market - here in Finland for an example everybody, and I do mean literally nearly every schoolkid-everybody had a C64 or Amiga 500 at some point. C64 was named as "The computer of the republic" because of its popularity. Brits had their own home computers (mainly because they were made-in-gb) and naming them not-viable platforms would be silly.
It's years were limited but when it was on it's peak it was a viable platform. You are right that consoles and PC games (and piracy to some extent, and the utter management failures at nearly every home computer companyt) killed "home computers" in the early-mid 90's - in some places sooner than in others but saying that the platform was not viable is just not true.
Yes, the kings - DOS and Windows have been succesfull at adapting and backwards-compatibility has been amazing to the point that it has sometimes hurt the platform. But in software industry 5 years is an eternity when talking about entertainment and phones - you do what sells now and then move on, and viable platform is what users have and Amiga had that spotlight (in some parts of the world) for about 5 years. Can you really predict what is hot for iOS in 2016?
Just because you loved yours doesn't mean that the platform as a whole was viable.
Amiga (and on other countries Atari ST) were *the* gaming machines for number of years. The other platforms you mention evolved and had more general-purpose business software, Amiga and Atari did not (they had their niches in business use, Amiga in the video production world and Atari in music). They were truly the last "home computers" - PC got big only after their prices fell - and got gamer atention really only after that. Amiga was a viable platform, sold like hotcakes, had all the games (superior stereo sound at a time PC's had beepers and first SoundBlaster was expensive and inferior, superior graphics when PC's had commonly CGA and EGA was add-in), but was killed mainly because Commodore the company totally screwed up their finances. And it did not evolve while the PC did.
RIM's problem is basically same as Nokia's was - their platforms eco-system is practically dead.
It is now because everyone is jumping ship from Symbian because Nokia efectively EOLd it. But before it was quite alive - yes the first Software market was cumbersome, and Ovi store just started working right when the Elop and axe came. But even before app store was a glimmer in Steve's eyes people were quite succesfull developing and distributing Symbian apps were it's market share was high (read: Europe). It was just so shiny and polished but nobody had that at the time. I don't know if you look at things from stateside of the lake - Nokia really had no marketshare there ever (around 15% at best times when global share was nearing 60% at the peak - which was not due to having no software but their inability to bend over to carriers wishes and trying to sell phones like they do in the rest of the world) and so I guess the Symbian software is not visible.
What happened to economies of scale? Would we be better if we decentralised schooling to a level of 1 school house, 2 teachers, and 40 pupils? This allows local schools on a block-by-block basis in some areas.
This is a 2-way street. On the other hand you have the seemingly "free" building and no extra fees for janitors etc. in 2 teacher school - but when the bad things happen they happen fast and brutally, mold in one school and pupils getting sick - game over. Two years of not having enough pupils to fill the class and bring in money - game over.
But on the other hand - scaling up doesn't always work as well and one model is not the optimal in all cases. iPads can work for some pre-school if used properly, sure, but in the general...I highly doubt it is the optimal solution (it is a $500 device, even if the book and grayons which would have cost more in dead-tree edition costs half as much (they don't generally) it is still quite an expensive feat...) - but hey, if it works, I'm all for it. But as much as I am a member of the Internet-generation who grew up with the net (well, I'm 32 so it was not exactly pre-school net for me) I am more concerned about the quality of the textbooks and resources to offer diverse enough education from the start - not that iPads can help on it - maybe they will - but from the start the important bit is basics and diversity, later on information retrieval, comprehension and usage of tools available.
Or, they could, you know, invest in their networks and bring them into the 21st century. It's entirely possible to operate a profitable ISP at lower prices without any kind of throttling or data caps, and without any kind of proxies, BRAS systems, and whatever other manner of junk they put between your loop and the Internet. They just don't want to stop overselling and underdelivering, to paraphrase contemporary internetworking parlance.
Yes - but this is hard when at the same time investors demand profit and success in stock market and consumers tend to take the cheapest option - that is why regulators are needed in essential services (which data traffic nowadays is). It is just doesn't work - unfortunately. For businesses the game is different - money buys you guarantees and even more money buys you guarantees that have financial incentives for provider to really, really meet those guarantees, always. But it is not cheap, and in the consumer-space it is all about the price and availability. As long as consumers don't put money where their mouth is we will have this situation - and they won't or can't. Quality has really lost it's value - and markets adjust to that, and if you ask me quality should be enforced by regulation on data services like it is enforced on providing electricity and other utilities.
I'm glad that I live in a country that has ISPs that don't throttle, performance is almost always what is advetised and implementing data caps would cause major backlash. But the harsh reality of the business is that you can get a "geek-connection" sold with premium in some areas to very limited people, others just buy the cheapest and occasionally bitch because their torrent/wow/netflix stutters but they really don't want (or are able to realistically) change providers either.
On a yearly basis, American cell phone users are spending about $635.85 on cell phone service. [...]By contrast people in the Netherlands and Finland pay the lowest amount for cell phone service, only $131.44 per year.
I don't know (because anything but the summary is behind paywall) if this takes into account that in USA you are really paying for the handset for credit when in Finland and Netherlands it is far more common to pay separately for the handset (easily $500-$600 cost for a new highend-smartphone) and then select the carrier, this evens out the difference because basic plans are here dirt cheap (I have unlimited data for two SIM cards (phone and a USB adapter for laptop) for 9€/mo and phone calls - initiating them, not recieving - are 0.059€ / min - cheaper if you want a package but my usage is mostly data so I don't bother taking one) - but I guess they are at least partially right prices in the USA for mobile service are terrible even when counting in the subsidy compared to Finland - but at least you have cheap clothes and food...
It doesn't necessarily might became unstable - the main function of trimming is to get the force smaller at the controls on desired speed / attitude. Otherwhise especially on old planes with hardwired (by wires or pushbars) controls in different speeds you would have to work hard to keep the plane level; pilots do use it also to give up-down bias (so that at "neutral" position the plane tends to climb or dive) but the main purpose is to lessen the control forces that you don't have to "fight" the plane in order to stay level at selected speed. And I imagine that on this kind of plane (old warbird with steroids) accidentally losing trim at race speeds can be quite of a surprise.
Maybe - maybe not. 2nd class medical is not that hard to get and keep even at an older age - If you don't have conditions that may lead to incapacitation, are not on "banned" medication and your hearing and eysight is within limits you are good to go. I would imagine when aging most lose their medical for age-related eyesgiht-issuses, a small stroke at the brain which affects vision or when the have to go on permanent medication.
The important point is that medical 2 is not a proof a competency to enter an air race in a fighter. That is up to the pilot and maybe the organization handling the event.
And age inevidably affects us - it slows reaction times, increases risks of incapacitation and makes us generally physically lesser performers - I'm not saying that in this case it was a factor, in fact by what I have seen so far I think probably not, but relying on the fact that he has medical 2 doesn't yet prove that he is qualified to race, it tells he has passed the FAA requirements for medical 2 which are not designed towards air races but for commercial aviation (not qualified for airline transport which has futher additional requirements including annual ecg testing.
Yes. Flying can be done safely by elderly people and they can enjoy it greatly, but it is 2 different things to do it for recreation or to race with spectators watching.
Remember - this is not a glider or some simple Cessna/Piper small commuter plane - this is a very high performance fighter which is probably even more difficult to fly in this (race) context than a modern fly-by-wire fighter. And still fighter pilots retire today at guite younger age than at 74 for a reason.
This is terrible tragedy, and no doubt the guy was a professional and did everything he could to prevent casulties - even maybe at the cost of his own life. But he should not have been in the cockpit in a race.
Did you miss the point where they got quick investment of money from CA?
No state moves investment faster the CA. I don't care where you have your startup, if you sell in a state that has a tax, then you need to collect that tax.
The greater problem is having the same currency and free flow of things in states with very different taxation and economic policies. Euro-zone is in crisis now because of this (and because of a certain housing bubble and even criminal activity in the form of forgery in the case of Greece). United States is a bit tighter federation and can throw down the big federal hammer more easily but it is still a problem when companies start to seriously shop for the cheapeast and politicians, investors and banks bend over to this - sure, it brings nice short-term benefits but in the long term if you have the same currency unified policies are better - ref. Ireland.
Watch "Please remove your shoes" - it outlines quite straight everything that is wrong with the TSA and it doesn't just feature some "leftist commie nutjub who was denied to fly" but the creators and workers of TSA.
Main points are:
1) The organization has taken all the ill effects of government organization - that is that people are not actually doing their jobs but their main goal is getting power and advancing their careers. I'm not sure if privatization will help in this at least at the top level...
2) The current system leaks like a sieve. Even the manufacturers of the machines admit that by not using the pre-defined procedures detection rate is poor.
3) Out-of-mind procedures - at one point air marshalls were required to wear suits so that they "keep up the image" of the agency. They actually had officers on airports reporting violators of this policy and air marshalls who would not like to point out that "it's me, kill me first!" by wearing a suit did tricks to avoid them. And one gem - at one point due the lack of budget air marshalls were denied to participate on long flights which required overnight stay in a hotel at some point. This was quickly reversed when it was leaked to public but just shows how the agency has no clue how to run it's operation.
This site has really helped me being a better nerd. What you have done is really appreciated. I hope Geeknet has good replacement for you, the war doesn't need one soldier, but good Cmdr helps a lot.
reading a webpage on the screen is fine, reading a whole book is not.
That's what ereaders are for.
My Kindle did not even survive a trip in the overhead bin on an aircraft, I highly doubt it would survive bathtub. An accidental dip will ruin few pages in your book, but for ereader...your luck plays a big role. And yes, I have a new Kindle now, still enjoy it, and it is damn addictive way to buy books and so far the recommendations Amazon web store gives beats the crap out of browsing at the bookstore (did I mention pricing, a few year old titles that are gems can be had at $2-$5 range, try that at physical bookstore). But it is not for bathtub, and at least my old one was too fragile even for a backpack.
And Amazon UK won't ship Kindle to me. They just say go to US site (which calculates taxes right there when ordering and charges that on your credit card and authorizes to courier firm to do the tax/toll handling).
Tons of it. As a single consumer you don't see it but as enterprise customer you very much do. They are nowadays as much if more an integrator and datacenter builder as a printer / camera manufacturer. They are taking the road of IBM, which is not necessarily a bad move. The PC, mobile phone and tablet business is a cutthroat-competition now and the only one who really shines is Apple. In business sense it is a good move to choose your battles to those which you can win and bring good profits. From general point of view losing webOS (if this really means it) and HP desktop/laptop hardware is a loss - competition keeps others innovating.
Just like if you were to hire a hitman, you don't actually fire a bullet, so the sentence should be different?
I think so, yes.
And quite a few countries think so too in their law. This is both good and bad thing, the good side is that you are separating the actual deed and planning, this eliminates the cases which seem absurd to the non-US readers where in a robbery gone bad one crackhead starts shooting and then a teenager who was involved and just wanted the $200 for weed gets also sentenced of murder. Yes, punishment is needed and getting away technically for not actually pulling the trigger is wrong. It is easy to counter this by saying "just don't be part of that kind of actions". But when you think a little bit broader than just hardline "lock them up"-mindset you start to see problems.
The bad side is that you can get away on a technicalty and police can't necerraily act on just planning a crime so efectively. But "setting examples" is not a way to do this, it has never worked and just creates more inmates and angry people.
Google Music is not available outside US/Canada. Amazon is not offering music to non-US/Canada customers. Virtual barriers are all around nowadays in the intellectual property business, and patents are just one tool. And the US and it's laws are not the only reason for that, but I admit that it is non-significant issue - both to import and export.
US has had Pandora and many others which compete with Spotify for a long time, Spotify became mainstream in Europe because it was the first that really offered good quality subscription (and first, free, that was the main kicker!) music service. This is just about one company trying to cash on the new kid in town.
Meanwhile in China they are laughing and selling knockoff-products of Ford and Apple.
Marrying != reproducing. Yes, in highly educated areas the less educated (especially men) tend to end up single more often than the educated ones. But this is not significant in the big picture, the US is not The Netherlands, it has plenty of room for the less educated.
You are right in a way though, this is changing because overall the world is getting more educated and in areas with high wealth also reproduction has started to favor the more succesfull ones (but statistically, these areas still have lower babycount than before), but still the pattern is clear; in areas where education is poor and the life expentancy is low people tend to make more babies - and when you think of it, the reason for it is quite simple...
Are you really legally required to check your mailbox in Germany?
We have the equivelant in Finland (verkkoposti, free btw, and really nice for re-incurring bills because of how you can archieve things, but because we pay out of our nose compared to other similar countries to the Finnish post office (Itella) that is not really not something you can celebrate on) but checking it, no more necessary than your physical mail, but of course you are legally responsible for your contracts, including paying for services you have ordered and "dog had my mail for luch" does not qualify for excuse... Signed mail is there for a reason, it quarantees that recipient has quite reasonably recieved your mail - but people usually tend not to require signing for their business because it has extra cost and effort to everybody.
AFAIK Exchange is only available on enterprise Gmail servers, not on public Gmail.
Works fine here, although the current official documentation seems to suggest that Exchange is not available if you are not on an enterprise agreement with G, but on my iPad my personal plain Gmail account is listed as Exchange account (server m.google.com, use SSL) and it syncs fine.
Google do sometimes show a lack of care for their product though. Yes they provide us with a collection of very useful tools and some fun toys too which is great when it all works, but they should try make a little more effort to provide speedy methods of resolution when mistakes are made.
They are not alone. Even paid-for businesses do this - and they do this to minimize the ammount of customer support work. Two anecdotes: I was a week ago in US, destined to fly to Finland on airway ticket issued by Delta and operated by Air France and Finnair (Delta and AF are on the same alliance, Finnair does France-Finland flights on codeshare with Skyteam) - the first flight was re-schedulet 1 day before departure and I promplty received text mesasge and an an email about that. But guess what happened after trying to find AF customer support service (go ahead, try lo look up a phone number...) to clear up follow-up flights and to get accomodation because of delays. I ended up after calling their sales to Delta customer service which could re-book the flights (and this was done with no questions asked, the good thing) but had no idea on the complete picture about hotels and meals, she said she is just outsourced worked whos job is to sell flights.
On the same trip, my Kindle's screen died (it probably had too much load on it when on a backpack as handluggage on on airplane). I had none complaints what so ever to Amazon (it is over warranty, they propably would deem it not-replaceable and I understand that sometimes things break even tough this time no physical damage was visible, and I thouhgt I would tell them about it just that they would know) - but trying to tell them about this, the only way for me is to call (expensive international phone number) them. Customer-support form quite bluntly told that I will have to call them, no questions are responded on email. Did that once (Google voice to minimize costs) - will not bother to do that again because of feedback, the experience was, well..what would you expect when dealing with call-center worker with checklist and the response is basicly that these are the questions I have to ask and shut up, I will escalate the problem.
Amazon and Air France both have excellent customer support and feedback channels about their affiliate credit cards and frequent flier programs, but not their actual prodcuts...
There are better reasons why TSA couldn't stop the underwear or shoe bombers.
They flew in from foreign airports. Abdulmutallab was flying in from Amsterdam. Reid was flying in from Paris.
USA (TSA) do mandate how security is done on foreign airports on flights to US. European airports do have additional security checkpoints at the gate on flights to US. My country (Finland) experimented on backscatter scans as did other European countries also but they ditched them because of privacy issues and lack of evidence about their efectiveness and health issues, but on departing flight to US they are mandatory. I don't recall if the badge on the gate-officials said TSA or something else but TSA is efectively telling what and how to do about security on foreign airports on flights coming to US.
And I actually think US has every right to do that. But at the same time I do think that the current system is tuu intrusive and not efective.
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Actually - is it not. For an example here in Finland where ownership of firearms is very high - about 1.6 million guns (with another 200 000 unlicensed ones) to 5 million people. And yet we are still quite high in homicide rate. (We are above Japan, Sweden and Turkey for example....).
IBM make very large, very fast, mainframes.
So does HP, what's your point? And they are not giving it away either - you can sell a ton of (high-margin) consulting and support services with those, unlike your average consumer pc.
Yes it does - a horrible kind of in OS4. And back then it didn't because 68000/68020 used in the popular models (500/1200) had no MMU so it could not have been implemented anyway. MMU came with 68030 turbo cards which enabled virtual memory but memory protection never really was built in the os - what I understand doing it at this point would massively break backwards-compatibility so not gonna happen for old 3.9 -based OS. But I think that if someone would make an "Amiga" tablet it would not really be anything but the logo and inside something else.
I guess you grew up in the USA?
Europe had a whole different home computer market - here in Finland for an example everybody, and I do mean literally nearly every schoolkid-everybody had a C64 or Amiga 500 at some point. C64 was named as "The computer of the republic" because of its popularity. Brits had their own home computers (mainly because they were made-in-gb) and naming them not-viable platforms would be silly.
It's years were limited but when it was on it's peak it was a viable platform. You are right that consoles and PC games (and piracy to some extent, and the utter management failures at nearly every home computer companyt) killed "home computers" in the early-mid 90's - in some places sooner than in others but saying that the platform was not viable is just not true.
Yes, the kings - DOS and Windows have been succesfull at adapting and backwards-compatibility has been amazing to the point that it has sometimes hurt the platform. But in software industry 5 years is an eternity when talking about entertainment and phones - you do what sells now and then move on, and viable platform is what users have and Amiga had that spotlight (in some parts of the world) for about 5 years. Can you really predict what is hot for iOS in 2016?
Just because you loved yours doesn't mean that the platform as a whole was viable.
Amiga (and on other countries Atari ST) were *the* gaming machines for number of years. The other platforms you mention evolved and had more general-purpose business software, Amiga and Atari did not (they had their niches in business use, Amiga in the video production world and Atari in music). They were truly the last "home computers" - PC got big only after their prices fell - and got gamer atention really only after that. Amiga was a viable platform, sold like hotcakes, had all the games (superior stereo sound at a time PC's had beepers and first SoundBlaster was expensive and inferior, superior graphics when PC's had commonly CGA and EGA was add-in), but was killed mainly because Commodore the company totally screwed up their finances. And it did not evolve while the PC did.
RIM's problem is basically same as Nokia's was - their platforms eco-system is practically dead.
It is now because everyone is jumping ship from Symbian because Nokia efectively EOLd it. But before it was quite alive - yes the first Software market was cumbersome, and Ovi store just started working right when the Elop and axe came. But even before app store was a glimmer in Steve's eyes people were quite succesfull developing and distributing Symbian apps were it's market share was high (read: Europe). It was just so shiny and polished but nobody had that at the time. I don't know if you look at things from stateside of the lake - Nokia really had no marketshare there ever (around 15% at best times when global share was nearing 60% at the peak - which was not due to having no software but their inability to bend over to carriers wishes and trying to sell phones like they do in the rest of the world) and so I guess the Symbian software is not visible.
What happened to economies of scale? Would we be better if we decentralised schooling to a level of 1 school house, 2 teachers, and 40 pupils? This allows local schools on a block-by-block basis in some areas.
This is a 2-way street. On the other hand you have the seemingly "free" building and no extra fees for janitors etc. in 2 teacher school - but when the bad things happen they happen fast and brutally, mold in one school and pupils getting sick - game over. Two years of not having enough pupils to fill the class and bring in money - game over.
But on the other hand - scaling up doesn't always work as well and one model is not the optimal in all cases. iPads can work for some pre-school if used properly, sure, but in the general...I highly doubt it is the optimal solution (it is a $500 device, even if the book and grayons which would have cost more in dead-tree edition costs half as much (they don't generally) it is still quite an expensive feat...) - but hey, if it works, I'm all for it. But as much as I am a member of the Internet-generation who grew up with the net (well, I'm 32 so it was not exactly pre-school net for me) I am more concerned about the quality of the textbooks and resources to offer diverse enough education from the start - not that iPads can help on it - maybe they will - but from the start the important bit is basics and diversity, later on information retrieval, comprehension and usage of tools available.
Or, they could, you know, invest in their networks and bring them into the 21st century. It's entirely possible to operate a profitable ISP at lower prices without any kind of throttling or data caps, and without any kind of proxies, BRAS systems, and whatever other manner of junk they put between your loop and the Internet. They just don't want to stop overselling and underdelivering, to paraphrase contemporary internetworking parlance.
Yes - but this is hard when at the same time investors demand profit and success in stock market and consumers tend to take the cheapest option - that is why regulators are needed in essential services (which data traffic nowadays is). It is just doesn't work - unfortunately. For businesses the game is different - money buys you guarantees and even more money buys you guarantees that have financial incentives for provider to really, really meet those guarantees, always. But it is not cheap, and in the consumer-space it is all about the price and availability. As long as consumers don't put money where their mouth is we will have this situation - and they won't or can't. Quality has really lost it's value - and markets adjust to that, and if you ask me quality should be enforced by regulation on data services like it is enforced on providing electricity and other utilities.
I'm glad that I live in a country that has ISPs that don't throttle, performance is almost always what is advetised and implementing data caps would cause major backlash. But the harsh reality of the business is that you can get a "geek-connection" sold with premium in some areas to very limited people, others just buy the cheapest and occasionally bitch because their torrent/wow/netflix stutters but they really don't want (or are able to realistically) change providers either.
On a yearly basis, American cell phone users are spending about $635.85 on cell phone service. [...]By contrast people in the Netherlands and Finland pay the lowest amount for cell phone service, only $131.44 per year.
I don't know (because anything but the summary is behind paywall) if this takes into account that in USA you are really paying for the handset for credit when in Finland and Netherlands it is far more common to pay separately for the handset (easily $500-$600 cost for a new highend-smartphone) and then select the carrier, this evens out the difference because basic plans are here dirt cheap (I have unlimited data for two SIM cards (phone and a USB adapter for laptop) for 9€/mo and phone calls - initiating them, not recieving - are 0.059€ / min - cheaper if you want a package but my usage is mostly data so I don't bother taking one) - but I guess they are at least partially right prices in the USA for mobile service are terrible even when counting in the subsidy compared to Finland - but at least you have cheap clothes and food...
It doesn't necessarily might became unstable - the main function of trimming is to get the force smaller at the controls on desired speed / attitude. Otherwhise especially on old planes with hardwired (by wires or pushbars) controls in different speeds you would have to work hard to keep the plane level; pilots do use it also to give up-down bias (so that at "neutral" position the plane tends to climb or dive) but the main purpose is to lessen the control forces that you don't have to "fight" the plane in order to stay level at selected speed. And I imagine that on this kind of plane (old warbird with steroids) accidentally losing trim at race speeds can be quite of a surprise.
Maybe - maybe not. 2nd class medical is not that hard to get and keep even at an older age - If you don't have conditions that may lead to incapacitation, are not on "banned" medication and your hearing and eysight is within limits you are good to go. I would imagine when aging most lose their medical for age-related eyesgiht-issuses, a small stroke at the brain which affects vision or when the have to go on permanent medication.
The important point is that medical 2 is not a proof a competency to enter an air race in a fighter. That is up to the pilot and maybe the organization handling the event.
And age inevidably affects us - it slows reaction times, increases risks of incapacitation and makes us generally physically lesser performers - I'm not saying that in this case it was a factor, in fact by what I have seen so far I think probably not, but relying on the fact that he has medical 2 doesn't yet prove that he is qualified to race, it tells he has passed the FAA requirements for medical 2 which are not designed towards air races but for commercial aviation (not qualified for airline transport which has futher additional requirements including annual ecg testing.
Yes. Flying can be done safely by elderly people and they can enjoy it greatly, but it is 2 different things to do it for recreation or to race with spectators watching.
Remember - this is not a glider or some simple Cessna/Piper small commuter plane - this is a very high performance fighter which is probably even more difficult to fly in this (race) context than a modern fly-by-wire fighter. And still fighter pilots retire today at guite younger age than at 74 for a reason.
This is terrible tragedy, and no doubt the guy was a professional and did everything he could to prevent casulties - even maybe at the cost of his own life. But he should not have been in the cockpit in a race.
Did you miss the point where they got quick investment of money from CA?
No state moves investment faster the CA.
I don't care where you have your startup, if you sell in a state that has a tax, then you need to collect that tax.
The greater problem is having the same currency and free flow of things in states with very different taxation and economic policies. Euro-zone is in crisis now because of this (and because of a certain housing bubble and even criminal activity in the form of forgery in the case of Greece). United States is a bit tighter federation and can throw down the big federal hammer more easily but it is still a problem when companies start to seriously shop for the cheapeast and politicians, investors and banks bend over to this - sure, it brings nice short-term benefits but in the long term if you have the same currency unified policies are better - ref. Ireland.
Watch "Please remove your shoes" - it outlines quite straight everything that is wrong with the TSA and it doesn't just feature some "leftist commie nutjub who was denied to fly" but the creators and workers of TSA.
Main points are:
1) The organization has taken all the ill effects of government organization - that is that people are not actually doing their jobs but their main goal is getting power and advancing their careers. I'm not sure if privatization will help in this at least at the top level...
2) The current system leaks like a sieve. Even the manufacturers of the machines admit that by not using the pre-defined procedures detection rate is poor.
3) Out-of-mind procedures - at one point air marshalls were required to wear suits so that they "keep up the image" of the agency. They actually had officers on airports reporting violators of this policy and air marshalls who would not like to point out that "it's me, kill me first!" by wearing a suit did tricks to avoid them. And one gem - at one point due the lack of budget air marshalls were denied to participate on long flights which required overnight stay in a hotel at some point. This was quickly reversed when it was leaked to public but just shows how the agency has no clue how to run it's operation.
Thanks for your work.
This site has really helped me being a better nerd. What you have done is really appreciated. I hope Geeknet has good replacement for you, the war doesn't need one soldier, but good Cmdr helps a lot.
reading a webpage on the screen is fine, reading a whole book is not.
That's what ereaders are for.
My Kindle did not even survive a trip in the overhead bin on an aircraft, I highly doubt it would survive bathtub. An accidental dip will ruin few pages in your book, but for ereader...your luck plays a big role. And yes, I have a new Kindle now, still enjoy it, and it is damn addictive way to buy books and so far the recommendations Amazon web store gives beats the crap out of browsing at the bookstore (did I mention pricing, a few year old titles that are gems can be had at $2-$5 range, try that at physical bookstore). But it is not for bathtub, and at least my old one was too fragile even for a backpack.
And Amazon UK won't ship Kindle to me. They just say go to US site (which calculates taxes right there when ordering and charges that on your credit card and authorizes to courier firm to do the tax/toll handling).
This from Finland.
Tons of it. As a single consumer you don't see it but as enterprise customer you very much do. They are nowadays as much if more an integrator and datacenter builder as a printer / camera manufacturer. They are taking the road of IBM, which is not necessarily a bad move. The PC, mobile phone and tablet business is a cutthroat-competition now and the only one who really shines is Apple. In business sense it is a good move to choose your battles to those which you can win and bring good profits. From general point of view losing webOS (if this really means it) and HP desktop/laptop hardware is a loss - competition keeps others innovating.
Just like if you were to hire a hitman, you don't actually fire a bullet, so the sentence should be different?
I think so, yes.
And quite a few countries think so too in their law. This is both good and bad thing, the good side is that you are separating the actual deed and planning, this eliminates the cases which seem absurd to the non-US readers where in a robbery gone bad one crackhead starts shooting and then a teenager who was involved and just wanted the $200 for weed gets also sentenced of murder. Yes, punishment is needed and getting away technically for not actually pulling the trigger is wrong. It is easy to counter this by saying "just don't be part of that kind of actions". But when you think a little bit broader than just hardline "lock them up"-mindset you start to see problems.
The bad side is that you can get away on a technicalty and police can't necerraily act on just planning a crime so efectively. But "setting examples" is not a way to do this, it has never worked and just creates more inmates and angry people.
Google Music is not available outside US/Canada. Amazon is not offering music to non-US/Canada customers. Virtual barriers are all around nowadays in the intellectual property business, and patents are just one tool. And the US and it's laws are not the only reason for that, but I admit that it is non-significant issue - both to import and export.
US has had Pandora and many others which compete with Spotify for a long time, Spotify became mainstream in Europe because it was the first that really offered good quality subscription (and first, free, that was the main kicker!) music service. This is just about one company trying to cash on the new kid in town.
Meanwhile in China they are laughing and selling knockoff-products of Ford and Apple.
Marrying != reproducing. Yes, in highly educated areas the less educated (especially men) tend to end up single more often than the educated ones. But this is not significant in the big picture, the US is not The Netherlands, it has plenty of room for the less educated.
You are right in a way though, this is changing because overall the world is getting more educated and in areas with high wealth also reproduction has started to favor the more succesfull ones (but statistically, these areas still have lower babycount than before), but still the pattern is clear; in areas where education is poor and the life expentancy is low people tend to make more babies - and when you think of it, the reason for it is quite simple...
Are you really legally required to check your mailbox in Germany?
We have the equivelant in Finland (verkkoposti, free btw, and really nice for re-incurring bills because of how you can archieve things, but because we pay out of our nose compared to other similar countries to the Finnish post office (Itella) that is not really not something you can celebrate on) but checking it, no more necessary than your physical mail, but of course you are legally responsible for your contracts, including paying for services you have ordered and "dog had my mail for luch" does not qualify for excuse... Signed mail is there for a reason, it quarantees that recipient has quite reasonably recieved your mail - but people usually tend not to require signing for their business because it has extra cost and effort to everybody.
AFAIK Exchange is only available on enterprise Gmail servers, not on public Gmail.
Works fine here, although the current official documentation seems to suggest that Exchange is not available if you are not on an enterprise agreement with G, but on my iPad my personal plain Gmail account is listed as Exchange account (server m.google.com, use SSL) and it syncs fine.
Google do sometimes show a lack of care for their product though. Yes they provide us with a collection of very useful tools and some fun toys too which is great when it all works, but they should try make a little more effort to provide speedy methods of resolution when mistakes are made.
They are not alone. Even paid-for businesses do this - and they do this to minimize the ammount of customer support work. Two anecdotes: I was a week ago in US, destined to fly to Finland on airway ticket issued by Delta and operated by Air France and Finnair (Delta and AF are on the same alliance, Finnair does France-Finland flights on codeshare with Skyteam) - the first flight was re-schedulet 1 day before departure and I promplty received text mesasge and an an email about that. But guess what happened after trying to find AF customer support service (go ahead, try lo look up a phone number...) to clear up follow-up flights and to get accomodation because of delays. I ended up after calling their sales to Delta customer service which could re-book the flights (and this was done with no questions asked, the good thing) but had no idea on the complete picture about hotels and meals, she said she is just outsourced worked whos job is to sell flights.
On the same trip, my Kindle's screen died (it probably had too much load on it when on a backpack as handluggage on on airplane). I had none complaints what so ever to Amazon (it is over warranty, they propably would deem it not-replaceable and I understand that sometimes things break even tough this time no physical damage was visible, and I thouhgt I would tell them about it just that they would know) - but trying to tell them about this, the only way for me is to call (expensive international phone number) them. Customer-support form quite bluntly told that I will have to call them, no questions are responded on email. Did that once (Google voice to minimize costs) - will not bother to do that again because of feedback, the experience was, well..what would you expect when dealing with call-center worker with checklist and the response is basicly that these are the questions I have to ask and shut up, I will escalate the problem.
Amazon and Air France both have excellent customer support and feedback channels about their affiliate credit cards and frequent flier programs, but not their actual prodcuts...
There are better reasons why TSA couldn't stop the underwear or shoe bombers.
They flew in from foreign airports. Abdulmutallab was flying in from Amsterdam. Reid was flying in from Paris.
USA (TSA) do mandate how security is done on foreign airports on flights to US. European airports do have additional security checkpoints at the gate on flights to US. My country (Finland) experimented on backscatter scans as did other European countries also but they ditched them because of privacy issues and lack of evidence about their efectiveness and health issues, but on departing flight to US they are mandatory. I don't recall if the badge on the gate-officials said TSA or something else but TSA is efectively telling what and how to do about security on foreign airports on flights coming to US.
And I actually think US has every right to do that. But at the same time I do think that the current system is tuu intrusive and not efective.