I tell my daughter that I write video games (I am a developer, but not a game developer)
I can just imagine the kid at school in the standard one-upmanship argument: "Well my dad wrote Quake 3, so he will be able to take you out with a rail gun!"
When I first typed the above sentence, the language probably wasn't suited to an 8 year old, but maybe I am just out of touch:)
Obviously it is multi-factored, but I am sure that some of the reason I bought a powerbook is because it looks a bit different from the crowd - but I suppose for the really trendites, there are two many Macs around already:)
Here are the Australian homicide statistics as well as sorted by weapon type. As you can see from 1993 to 2002 the number of homicides is pretty steady, so given that our population is rising that is actually a relative reduction.
Firearm control has been more strict since the late 90s, so percentage using firearms has dropped down and "other weapon" has increased, but 300-350 homicides a year ain't too bad I think.
That is just propaganda. I was about to write my own response to this quote (based in living in Australia), when google found me one here:
Lott does not mention that none of Miron's correlations between gun-control laws and homicide were statistically significant. (In his book it's worse--Lott falsely claims that half of the correlations are significant.) Nor does he mention that Miron's measure of gun laws was badly flawed. Their measure was a simple three point scale with 0 being no laws, 1 being some controls, and 2 a complete ban. On this scale the US and the UK have the same gun laws, and France and Germany have less restrictive laws than the US.
And Lott unaccountably fails to mention all of the studies that have examined the relationship between gun ownership and homicide with international data. The most sophisticated of these, with a vastly better measure of gun ownership and more statistical controls than Miron is by Anthony Hoskin in Justice Quarterly 18:3 pp. 569-592 (2001). Hoskin found:
"Two-stage least squares regression, which controls for homicide's effect on firearm availability in addition to a number of other confounding factors, reveals a statistically significant positive effect of firearm availability on national homicide rates. The magnitude of the association is considerable. The observed relationship is found to be insensitive to sample composition. Results also indicate that homicide rates do not influence levels of firearm availability."
That's more guns, more crime. Don't expect Lott to admit that this study exists any time soon.
but it is tragically misguided to think that somehow european societal norms would apply better in the US
Actually you shouldn't assume that I am from Europe simply because I am not from the USA. As a matter of fact, I am not from Asia or Africa or even North/South America either. "Where else is there?" the crowd calls - I am from Australia.
According to this data, back in 1999 (newest data I could find in a hurry) our national gun deaths (excluding suicides) was 84 (50 homicide,28 accidents,4 legal invention). How small a city in the USA do you need to look at to compare to our national gun death total? For everyones info the national population is about 20 million.
Now perhaps our road death toll might be a world competitive, but remember that we are the land of Mad Max.
Always carry chambered! If you're trying to beat the bad guy to the draw, the extra half a second it takes to rack the slide WILL cost you your life.
Glad I do not live in the USA. Seriously you guys should take a step back and see how things work anyway else in the world (not counting war zones and third world countries)
InfoCom got control of the domain because they sell computers and services to the middle east, but they are in trouble because they sold computers to particular countries in the middle east.
On an aside, I have to stop myself typing iRaq - you can tell than I use Macs:)
Remember that the mother was a german sprinter - I am sure that there is no chance that it was the mothers performance that they were trying to enhance:)
I have to agree with the parent post that English simply has fucked up spelling. It would be nice to gradually go through and deprecate the words that are the worst offenders. Granted English will never be phonetic, but it would be nice to improve the current mess a bit.
Don't forget that the real masochists tried Win 98 SE as well (OK so no-one would _pay_ for that upgrade). Seriously though, some people would have done the following and spent a bit more:
Windows 95 -> Windows NT4 -> Windows 2000 Prof -> Windows XP Prof
The OSX full price is comparable to the Windows upgrade price $129 vs. $99
I have to say that I felt annoyed that there was no discount for upgrades from Apple. So lets make the upgrade price $US129 and the full price $US199 - everyone will be happy then right?
The general impression is that the US military has the biggest bucket of money in the world.
My old man was in the Australian Army (30 yrs ago though), and he certainly implied that the equipment that the equipment issued to the US guys in his day beat the crap out of the stuff the Aussies got.
From examples in the parent post, the money is not always flowing down to the guys at the front anymore.
I haven't used this software yet either, but I made sure that the phone that I just got off ebay is on the compatibility list, because I sure as heck intend to!
Maybe we will finally get a "media center" that is compatible with OS X - and the bizarre thing is that it will come from Microsoft.
The only problem is that the OS X end user license only allows installation on "Apple-labeled computers" - so what do you think the chances are that the XBox Next will have an apple on them somewhere?
Having lost interest in superhero power fantasies for a number of years, I had zero interest in seeing The Incredibles.
I am not much interested in fish, but loved Finding Nemo! I think that you will find that like all Pixar films, the best bits of the Incredibles will be the relevance to the normal Joe.
I think that if they did want to develop an office suite, then I don't think that they would choose OpenOffice (just like they didn't build Safari on Mozilla).
As other posters have mentioned, they are a number of FOSS competitors to MS Office - my personal favourite Word replacement is AbiWord (the native OS X is not yet in "stable" - but it does look very encouraging)
Australia also has a lot of sand (we have a number of large inland deserts) - I just wanted you to know that I don't have too many problems with the sand in my computer.
Thankfully the kangaroos hopping down the street are too big to get lodged in the grill.
Slashdot Mirror
I can just imagine the kid at school in the standard one-upmanship argument: "Well my dad wrote Quake 3, so he will be able to take you out with a rail gun!"
When I first typed the above sentence, the language probably wasn't suited to an 8 year old, but maybe I am just out of touch:)
Obviously it is multi-factored, but I am sure that some of the reason I bought a powerbook is because it looks a bit different from the crowd - but I suppose for the really trendites, there are two many Macs around already :)
Firearm control has been more strict since the late 90s, so percentage using firearms has dropped down and "other weapon" has increased, but 300-350 homicides a year ain't too bad I think.
Actually you shouldn't assume that I am from Europe simply because I am not from the USA. As a matter of fact, I am not from Asia or Africa or even North/South America either. "Where else is there?" the crowd calls - I am from Australia.
According to this data, back in 1999 (newest data I could find in a hurry) our national gun deaths (excluding suicides) was 84 (50 homicide,28 accidents,4 legal invention). How small a city in the USA do you need to look at to compare to our national gun death total? For everyones info the national population is about 20 million.
Now perhaps our road death toll might be a world competitive, but remember that we are the land of Mad Max.
I laughed so loud reading this post that the same thing happened to me :)
Always carry chambered! If you're trying to beat the bad guy to the draw, the extra half a second it takes to rack the slide WILL cost you your life.
Glad I do not live in the USA. Seriously you guys should take a step back and see how things work anyway else in the world (not counting war zones and third world countries)
InfoCom got control of the domain because they sell computers and services to the middle east, but they are in trouble because they sold computers to particular countries in the middle east. On an aside, I have to stop myself typing iRaq - you can tell than I use Macs :)
Remember that the mother was a german sprinter - I am sure that there is no chance that it was the mothers performance that they were trying to enhance :)
That photo looks like someone has crossed a cow and a Rhino!
I have to agree with the parent post that English simply has fucked up spelling. It would be nice to gradually go through and deprecate the words that are the worst offenders. Granted English will never be phonetic, but it would be nice to improve the current mess a bit.
Don't forget that the real masochists tried Win 98 SE as well (OK so no-one would _pay_ for that upgrade). Seriously though, some people would have done the following and spent a bit more:
Windows 95 -> Windows NT4 -> Windows 2000 Prof -> Windows XP Prof
I have to say that I felt annoyed that there was no discount for upgrades from Apple. So lets make the upgrade price $US129 and the full price $US199 - everyone will be happy then right?
[deathly silence]
The general impression is that the US military has the biggest bucket of money in the world.
My old man was in the Australian Army (30 yrs ago though), and he certainly implied that the equipment that the equipment issued to the US guys in his day beat the crap out of the stuff the Aussies got.
From examples in the parent post, the money is not always flowing down to the guys at the front anymore.
I haven't used this software yet either, but I made sure that the phone that I just got off ebay is on the compatibility list, because I sure as heck intend to!
I have heard on a mailing list that I am subscribed to (infinite loop) that the current iMac cannot be ordered anymore.
Powermac G5 updates down - iMac G5 and Powerbook G5 to go!
Maybe we will finally get a "media center" that is compatible with OS X - and the bizarre thing is that it will come from Microsoft.
The only problem is that the OS X end user license only allows installation on "Apple-labeled computers" - so what do you think the chances are that the XBox Next will have an apple on them somewhere?
Having lost interest in superhero power fantasies for a number of years, I had zero interest in seeing The Incredibles.
I am not much interested in fish, but loved Finding Nemo! I think that you will find that like all Pixar films, the best bits of the Incredibles will be the relevance to the normal Joe.
And MECCA (Openstep 4.0 Release Candidate 1) with the TabbedView Shelf that still hasn't resurfaced in OS X (hopefully one day)
For those like me that didn't understand the tabbed shelf reference in the parent, Google sends us the goods.
I think that if they did want to develop an office suite, then I don't think that they would choose OpenOffice (just like they didn't build Safari on Mozilla).
As other posters have mentioned, they are a number of FOSS competitors to MS Office - my personal favourite Word replacement is AbiWord (the native OS X is not yet in "stable" - but it does look very encouraging)
Before googling around, I had assumed that this already was working?
There are still no posts Surely the slashdot crowd isn't speechless :)
Australia also has a lot of sand (we have a number of large inland deserts) - I just wanted you to know that I don't have too many problems with the sand in my computer.
Thankfully the kangaroos hopping down the street are too big to get lodged in the grill.
Man I hope Virginia Tech buys some more Xserve G5s - they are slipping down the ranks :)