Even if that idea were a success, it only takes a few of those guards to be working with "the bad guys", and all hell's going to break loose. The "bad guys" aren't stupid - they don't spend all their money on tanks to drive at armoured columns in hopes of beating them - they spend them on IEDs, RPGs, and suicide belts, and get far more bang for their buck, literally.
The only way to stop this is to not be a target. Don't do stuff to others you wouldn't like done to you. Listen. Talk to folks so they don't have to blow up stuff you like to get your attention. For example: the Brits spoke to the IRA, even after the IRA were terrorists, and now the IRA isn't blowing up trucks full of explosives in London. It's not as if terrorists don't have stated goals - Al Qaida have said a million times what's pissing them off, and yet we don't do a damned thing about it. Americans would be pissed off if, say, China put a shitload of Chinese troops in America during a brief spat with Canada, and then didn't take them away afterwards, yet we expect Al Qaida to roll over and just take it when we do it to them. I'm not supporting any kind of violence towards anyone - that's doomed to fail. Talking is the way forward - it's what people are good at, and it fuckin' WORKS.
You'd have a point if most US folks regularly drove across the entire country, but as it's not a nation of travelling nomads, most folks tend to live in one place and return there frequently. Especially in CA, with most car owners living in big cities, and who fly out of state when travelling, as opposed to driving. That limits them to driving the same distances as in other countries. Also remember people in Britain can (and do) drive to the continent, which then gives them a far greater land-mass to drive around than Americans. Why do Australians drive the same cars as Americans? They don't. They do drive some same models as in the US (which are also driven everywhere else in the world, such as the UK, Europe, Russia, etc.), and they also have their own makes of cars, and drive many Japanese imports (as Japan is right there, and drives on the left as do Aussies, and especially as the Land Cruiser proved its use in the outback). 14-mile commutes aren't the stuff of fantasy in Europe, btw;)
Well, I guess you use your computer differently than I do. I set up my machines in minutes, spending more time editing config files for use on a machine than downloading and configuring each piece of software to work with others. The overhead is actually using the software, not simply getting it. This isn't really anything to do with "Add/remove software", as you don't use that to add software. It's all done via MSI packages, just by double-clicking them. Or simply downloading an archive and dropping it where you want. I'm sure this way has a lot of benefits for some people, but the vast, vast majority of Windows users out there won't give two hoots, so this will end up as another project at the bottom of the pile. And considering it won't work with most of the software windows users want, it looks more like a vanity project than anything else.
Package managers are great, until they stop working, then they're FAR worse than Windows's MSI-based craziness.:)
I've installed software on many distros as well as Windows, and I just don't see why anything needs to be improved. It works just fine. Sure, it's different, but it's not any worse. If improvements need to be made, I don't think this is the way to do it. Fracturing the install process just leads to complications for end users, which is one of the areas where Free Software is far, far behind what Windows currently has;) Seriously, the notion that something is better so should be adopted alongside the myriad other ways to do the same thing only serves to hurt the free software movement. One person's help is another person's hindrance. And we're dealing with Windows users here, too, so this seems mightily overkill.
Is it really that hard to find open source software for Windows? I've never had a problem. Windows already has a decent way of installing and uninstalling software, so adding another way to do it, seperate from Windows's own, seems rather pointless, not to be rude.
Then teachers should teach all kinds of crazy-ass theories everyone has without any shred of supporting evidence. That's the difference between scientific theories and biblical ones. Science has supporting evidence, biblical ones only have a book. It's fucking childish to think they're even similar.
There are mosquitoes in the London Underground which are a seperate species to ones above ground. Clearly the London Underground wasn't around when God pulled the universe out of his ass a few thousand years ago, so we have observed seperation of species. Not that you are able to change your mind on such things. That makes God angry.
By that logic, Windows is nearly free too, as long as the people using it don't need technical support. Brilliant work. As this discussion is about the real world, that's happening now, all around us, your argument doesn't hold much water.
Microsoft doesn't pay a subsidy. That's ridiculous. Windows is cheaper for Dell as the support infrastructure is already there, and has been there for years and years. A new OS on their line means they obviously have to spend more in getting more staff/callcentres/training/etc. to support it, hence the increased price. It wouldn't make much sense for them to charge non-Ubuntu users for this cost, as that would raise the prices of other lines for no apparent reason. Open source is anything but free all the time, but please don't let reality spoil your fun. Whatever gets you through the night, buddy.
Damn that's funny. Seriously. For one thing, the cops are NOT unaccountable and always right. You're willing to throw away technology because it might be mis-used down the road, instead of making sure any mis-use of such technology is punished. If society was to use that logic to determine what could and could not happen within it, there would be no police, no organisations, no anything - we'd just be living in shacks scared of anyone bigger than us. In essence, we'd be freakin' cavemen again. Brilliant knee-jerk Daily Mail attitude, mate.
I got the impression it was so high because it's so god-damned high. My mistake for looking at actual figures and not some romanticised idea of American society. My bad. I thought we were in reality here and not The Waltons.
Crime rates I can live with if I know I'm going to be able to continue about my life after the crime takes place. Carjackings at gun-point, or armed home invasions are another story, both of which are FAR higher in the US than in the UK or Aus.
If the murder rate in the US was comparable to other countries, you might have a point about being disarmed and feeling safer. As it is, clearly if derranged people don't have access to firearms, their spur-of-the-moment rampages are far less lethal. I can remember the last time someone went nuts at a school over here - it happened when I was at school in the early nineties. Since then, you can't own a firearm, and guess what? There haven't been any school shootings. The only rampages at school have been with swords or improvised weapons which were easily fought off with far, far fewer injuries. You have a gun and feel safer, when in fact it's contributing to the thing you should fear the most. You're making yourself the victim - you're more likely to be shot by someone who feels exactly the same way you do. Good luck with that.
Iraq? The US army isn't trying to fight the people, but a small section thereof. That's my whole fucking point. If the US army wanted to end any and all uprisings without trying to maintain the visage of being a benevolent world power trying to do a favour, it could destroy every single brown person in that country over night. It's only the international damnation and pressure from some people at home that's stopping it. If it was was to do that, it would be clearly demonstrating it's lying about its intentions, so it doesn't, as it's trying to rebuild democracy. A more accurate argument would be Saddam's army being defeated when it attacked its own people, which if you remember it wasn't defeated, and in fact was heavily victorious, with everyone it wanted dead being very much dead. Nukes aren't the only way - it might have been in WW2, but these days, it's far from it. Fallujah was a great example - practically an entire city destroyed, innocents and all, and you guessed it - international condemnation and massive, massive outrage at home.
So far you've not managed to make any sense what-so-ever, just trotting out the same bullshit arguments that are self-contradictory and just adding weight to my argument. If the US wasn't such a murder-happy place, you might have a point. As it is, you and your argument are fucked, no matter how much it pains you and your gun collection to realise so.
I'm talking about the XPS M1710. It mentions the specs of all the hardware components. As I said, nVidia 7950 512MB cards, 7200rpm SATA 160GB hard disk, WUXGA screen (better than the top-of-the-line Apple screen at 1920x1200, even the 17"-er mac). Of course they start at more, as you get more for your money. They're not even comparable when it comes to specs, as the Dell doesn't have to wait for Apple to support the hardware with drivers - the manufacturers do, and do as soon as the hardware is on the market, so Dells get newer hardware than Apples. Apple has to wait for their boys to get driver support ready before the parts can hit the Mac shelves. I'm not being a Dell whore here, or trying to piss on the Apple parade - I'm just a technologist looking for as much bang for my buck as possible. And that ain't coming from Apple at the moment. Oh, and the asterisk on the memory means it's 2x2048GB SODIMMS, as opposed to the 2GB option which is 2x1024GB SODIMMS (as it's DDR, it has matched pairs of chips, as opposed to just one chip). As I said before, I'm not looking for an argument, just to show the other side of the story.
Well, the "industry standard" doesn't really matter. If the screen manufacturers sold them to apple as true colour, then they're at fault as well. That doesn't clear apple of any blame of false advertising. No-one can say apple isn't aware of what they're selling, even if their suppliers aren't selling it accurately.
I got an XPS M1710 for my wife, and I know what you mean about the bundled software. I just re-installed windows, which took all of 30 minutes, and it was blazing fast. No reliability issues, great hardware. I guess when they ship as many units as they do, someone's bound to get a dodgy one. I've yet to hear about a manufacturer who doesn't have such issues, even the almight Apple!:)
Why yes, actually Dell laptops *are* better, if you want better hardware that is. They have faster hard disks (160GB SATA 7200rpm vs 5400rpm), more memory (4GBs vs. 3GBs), better graphics cards (512MB nVidia versus 256MB ATI), better screens (1920x1200 vs 1680x1050), more display outputs (DVI, VGA & s-video), more USB (6 ports vs. 3). Oh, and their support lasts longer, is cheaper, and covers nearly everything you can do to your notebook. But please don't let me keep you from your kool-aid;)
Hmm... dithered images are not true-colour, so they don't display millions of colours any more than a newspaper displays more than 4 (CMYK). It gives the illusion of more, but it's not actually giving more. This is far from a laughable claim. The whole 10^6/2^20 discrepancy is laughable, this is clearly a case of false advertising. And, fyi, courts of law are by definition the most pedantic out there, as they're dealing with really important things, and so have to get to the bottom of even the most ridiculous claim. The American Idol panel is the least pedantic example I can think of:)
First of all, not even the majority of people are criminals and don't care about others. Criminals who think it's fine to hurt others are in the vast, vast, VAST minority. That's more than enough for a democracy to deem what's safe for everyone. That's how it works. And as for Iraq, the US government isn't there to quell a mass uprising, but to fight off "terrorists", who happen to be either foreign fighters, or simply the Iraqi Army of old without their uniforms (ever wonder where they went when the allies moved in?). Iraq is an all-out war between two armies, regardless of how the US media spins it.
I don't allow criminals to attack me without repercussions. I know arming the people isn't a great idea, as you're also arming the criminals. The best solution is to have a police force, consisting of trained and well-equipped people, who have regular psychiatric evaluations and health-checks, who aren't allowed to carry their guns all the time (when they're drunk or emotionally hurt), which means people who are losing their grips on reality (like that Cho guy) don't have access to guns to shoot a shitload of people. But I guess you're willing to let people like him kill folks the way he did so you can feel safe that if it happened to you somehow the outcome would be different? You'd have a point if the murder rate in the US wasn't so ridiculously high, but as it is you just look really, really mis-informed. Yay you.
Your point is what I'm talking about - a knee-jerk reaction, completely ignoring the evidence of reality. Britain is not a communist regime, and the people who put up the CCTV on the tube (and indeed the vast, vast majority of CCTV in the UK) are NOT the police. They get handed the evidence should the civilian operators record/see something that needs their attention. And the cops were not charged with the killing after an independent civilian investigation. There was a breakdown in the surveillance of the guy (funnily if there was better CCTV at De Menezes' house, he might still be alive today), which lead to his mis-identification. Couple that with some unfortunate accidental behaviour (apparent "dry cleaning", or moves to try and shake off people following him), and the seeds were sown for his very unfortunate demise. Do you think those same police would have been treated any better if they had found a suicide bomber and just let him on his way, to blow up a train full of folks? Would you be leading the chorus of cheers for them not risking killing one guy to save dozens and dozens?
If we all ran around scared of things communists/fascists/the french did that was bad, we'd not have any technology of any kind. Did you know the Romans had boats? Better get rid of the Navy! Did you know Hannibal used Elephants? Better blow up the zoo! Hitler had cars! Blow up VW! It's the only way to be sure! Seriously, I appreciate your worry, but try looking at things logically and rationally. We can have the best of both worlds if we approach technology with logic, and if we put in the safeguards to ensure it's not mis-used.
My advice is, if you're going to sell drugs, do one massive deal then stop forever. It takes the cops more than one chance to get you, as they'll so very, very rarely stumble on your first deal. Not that I'm advocating anything illegal here. By drugs I mean cookies. or something.
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No! Because the 20 doctors in first class who are going to a convention can just... oh, wait.
Even if that idea were a success, it only takes a few of those guards to be working with "the bad guys", and all hell's going to break loose. The "bad guys" aren't stupid - they don't spend all their money on tanks to drive at armoured columns in hopes of beating them - they spend them on IEDs, RPGs, and suicide belts, and get far more bang for their buck, literally.
The only way to stop this is to not be a target. Don't do stuff to others you wouldn't like done to you. Listen. Talk to folks so they don't have to blow up stuff you like to get your attention. For example: the Brits spoke to the IRA, even after the IRA were terrorists, and now the IRA isn't blowing up trucks full of explosives in London. It's not as if terrorists don't have stated goals - Al Qaida have said a million times what's pissing them off, and yet we don't do a damned thing about it. Americans would be pissed off if, say, China put a shitload of Chinese troops in America during a brief spat with Canada, and then didn't take them away afterwards, yet we expect Al Qaida to roll over and just take it when we do it to them. I'm not supporting any kind of violence towards anyone - that's doomed to fail. Talking is the way forward - it's what people are good at, and it fuckin' WORKS.
You'd have a point if most US folks regularly drove across the entire country, but as it's not a nation of travelling nomads, most folks tend to live in one place and return there frequently. Especially in CA, with most car owners living in big cities, and who fly out of state when travelling, as opposed to driving. That limits them to driving the same distances as in other countries. Also remember people in Britain can (and do) drive to the continent, which then gives them a far greater land-mass to drive around than Americans. Why do Australians drive the same cars as Americans? They don't. They do drive some same models as in the US (which are also driven everywhere else in the world, such as the UK, Europe, Russia, etc.), and they also have their own makes of cars, and drive many Japanese imports (as Japan is right there, and drives on the left as do Aussies, and especially as the Land Cruiser proved its use in the outback). 14-mile commutes aren't the stuff of fantasy in Europe, btw ;)
Well, I guess you use your computer differently than I do. I set up my machines in minutes, spending more time editing config files for use on a machine than downloading and configuring each piece of software to work with others. The overhead is actually using the software, not simply getting it. This isn't really anything to do with "Add/remove software", as you don't use that to add software. It's all done via MSI packages, just by double-clicking them. Or simply downloading an archive and dropping it where you want. I'm sure this way has a lot of benefits for some people, but the vast, vast majority of Windows users out there won't give two hoots, so this will end up as another project at the bottom of the pile. And considering it won't work with most of the software windows users want, it looks more like a vanity project than anything else.
:)
Package managers are great, until they stop working, then they're FAR worse than Windows's MSI-based craziness.
I've installed software on many distros as well as Windows, and I just don't see why anything needs to be improved. It works just fine. Sure, it's different, but it's not any worse. If improvements need to be made, I don't think this is the way to do it. Fracturing the install process just leads to complications for end users, which is one of the areas where Free Software is far, far behind what Windows currently has ;) Seriously, the notion that something is better so should be adopted alongside the myriad other ways to do the same thing only serves to hurt the free software movement. One person's help is another person's hindrance. And we're dealing with Windows users here, too, so this seems mightily overkill.
Is it really that hard to find open source software for Windows? I've never had a problem. Windows already has a decent way of installing and uninstalling software, so adding another way to do it, seperate from Windows's own, seems rather pointless, not to be rude.
Then teachers should teach all kinds of crazy-ass theories everyone has without any shred of supporting evidence. That's the difference between scientific theories and biblical ones. Science has supporting evidence, biblical ones only have a book. It's fucking childish to think they're even similar.
There are mosquitoes in the London Underground which are a seperate species to ones above ground. Clearly the London Underground wasn't around when God pulled the universe out of his ass a few thousand years ago, so we have observed seperation of species. Not that you are able to change your mind on such things. That makes God angry.
Well, it's not really that big of a player compared to the two, if you're talking the market share using the different camps' products...
It's the Daily Mail. Do not believe a fucking WORD of it.
By that logic, Windows is nearly free too, as long as the people using it don't need technical support. Brilliant work. As this discussion is about the real world, that's happening now, all around us, your argument doesn't hold much water.
Score: 5, Usual bollocks
Microsoft doesn't pay a subsidy. That's ridiculous. Windows is cheaper for Dell as the support infrastructure is already there, and has been there for years and years. A new OS on their line means they obviously have to spend more in getting more staff/callcentres/training/etc. to support it, hence the increased price. It wouldn't make much sense for them to charge non-Ubuntu users for this cost, as that would raise the prices of other lines for no apparent reason. Open source is anything but free all the time, but please don't let reality spoil your fun. Whatever gets you through the night, buddy.
Damn that's funny. Seriously. For one thing, the cops are NOT unaccountable and always right. You're willing to throw away technology because it might be mis-used down the road, instead of making sure any mis-use of such technology is punished. If society was to use that logic to determine what could and could not happen within it, there would be no police, no organisations, no anything - we'd just be living in shacks scared of anyone bigger than us. In essence, we'd be freakin' cavemen again. Brilliant knee-jerk Daily Mail attitude, mate.
Unless the cameras are in your PRIVATE home, there is no invasion of privacy. Just fyi.
I got the impression it was so high because it's so god-damned high. My mistake for looking at actual figures and not some romanticised idea of American society. My bad. I thought we were in reality here and not The Waltons.
Crime rates I can live with if I know I'm going to be able to continue about my life after the crime takes place. Carjackings at gun-point, or armed home invasions are another story, both of which are FAR higher in the US than in the UK or Aus.
If the murder rate in the US was comparable to other countries, you might have a point about being disarmed and feeling safer. As it is, clearly if derranged people don't have access to firearms, their spur-of-the-moment rampages are far less lethal. I can remember the last time someone went nuts at a school over here - it happened when I was at school in the early nineties. Since then, you can't own a firearm, and guess what? There haven't been any school shootings. The only rampages at school have been with swords or improvised weapons which were easily fought off with far, far fewer injuries. You have a gun and feel safer, when in fact it's contributing to the thing you should fear the most. You're making yourself the victim - you're more likely to be shot by someone who feels exactly the same way you do. Good luck with that.
Iraq? The US army isn't trying to fight the people, but a small section thereof. That's my whole fucking point. If the US army wanted to end any and all uprisings without trying to maintain the visage of being a benevolent world power trying to do a favour, it could destroy every single brown person in that country over night. It's only the international damnation and pressure from some people at home that's stopping it. If it was was to do that, it would be clearly demonstrating it's lying about its intentions, so it doesn't, as it's trying to rebuild democracy. A more accurate argument would be Saddam's army being defeated when it attacked its own people, which if you remember it wasn't defeated, and in fact was heavily victorious, with everyone it wanted dead being very much dead. Nukes aren't the only way - it might have been in WW2, but these days, it's far from it. Fallujah was a great example - practically an entire city destroyed, innocents and all, and you guessed it - international condemnation and massive, massive outrage at home.
So far you've not managed to make any sense what-so-ever, just trotting out the same bullshit arguments that are self-contradictory and just adding weight to my argument. If the US wasn't such a murder-happy place, you might have a point. As it is, you and your argument are fucked, no matter how much it pains you and your gun collection to realise so.
I'm talking about the XPS M1710. It mentions the specs of all the hardware components. As I said, nVidia 7950 512MB cards, 7200rpm SATA 160GB hard disk, WUXGA screen (better than the top-of-the-line Apple screen at 1920x1200, even the 17"-er mac). Of course they start at more, as you get more for your money. They're not even comparable when it comes to specs, as the Dell doesn't have to wait for Apple to support the hardware with drivers - the manufacturers do, and do as soon as the hardware is on the market, so Dells get newer hardware than Apples. Apple has to wait for their boys to get driver support ready before the parts can hit the Mac shelves. I'm not being a Dell whore here, or trying to piss on the Apple parade - I'm just a technologist looking for as much bang for my buck as possible. And that ain't coming from Apple at the moment. Oh, and the asterisk on the memory means it's 2x2048GB SODIMMS, as opposed to the 2GB option which is 2x1024GB SODIMMS (as it's DDR, it has matched pairs of chips, as opposed to just one chip). As I said before, I'm not looking for an argument, just to show the other side of the story.
Well, the "industry standard" doesn't really matter. If the screen manufacturers sold them to apple as true colour, then they're at fault as well. That doesn't clear apple of any blame of false advertising. No-one can say apple isn't aware of what they're selling, even if their suppliers aren't selling it accurately.
I got an XPS M1710 for my wife, and I know what you mean about the bundled software. I just re-installed windows, which took all of 30 minutes, and it was blazing fast. No reliability issues, great hardware. I guess when they ship as many units as they do, someone's bound to get a dodgy one. I've yet to hear about a manufacturer who doesn't have such issues, even the almight Apple! :)
Why yes, actually Dell laptops *are* better, if you want better hardware that is. They have faster hard disks (160GB SATA 7200rpm vs 5400rpm), more memory (4GBs vs. 3GBs), better graphics cards (512MB nVidia versus 256MB ATI), better screens (1920x1200 vs 1680x1050), more display outputs (DVI, VGA & s-video), more USB (6 ports vs. 3). Oh, and their support lasts longer, is cheaper, and covers nearly everything you can do to your notebook. But please don't let me keep you from your kool-aid ;)
Hmm... dithered images are not true-colour, so they don't display millions of colours any more than a newspaper displays more than 4 (CMYK). It gives the illusion of more, but it's not actually giving more. This is far from a laughable claim. The whole 10^6/2^20 discrepancy is laughable, this is clearly a case of false advertising. And, fyi, courts of law are by definition the most pedantic out there, as they're dealing with really important things, and so have to get to the bottom of even the most ridiculous claim. The American Idol panel is the least pedantic example I can think of :)
First of all, not even the majority of people are criminals and don't care about others. Criminals who think it's fine to hurt others are in the vast, vast, VAST minority. That's more than enough for a democracy to deem what's safe for everyone. That's how it works. And as for Iraq, the US government isn't there to quell a mass uprising, but to fight off "terrorists", who happen to be either foreign fighters, or simply the Iraqi Army of old without their uniforms (ever wonder where they went when the allies moved in?). Iraq is an all-out war between two armies, regardless of how the US media spins it.
I don't allow criminals to attack me without repercussions. I know arming the people isn't a great idea, as you're also arming the criminals. The best solution is to have a police force, consisting of trained and well-equipped people, who have regular psychiatric evaluations and health-checks, who aren't allowed to carry their guns all the time (when they're drunk or emotionally hurt), which means people who are losing their grips on reality (like that Cho guy) don't have access to guns to shoot a shitload of people. But I guess you're willing to let people like him kill folks the way he did so you can feel safe that if it happened to you somehow the outcome would be different? You'd have a point if the murder rate in the US wasn't so ridiculously high, but as it is you just look really, really mis-informed. Yay you.
Your point is what I'm talking about - a knee-jerk reaction, completely ignoring the evidence of reality. Britain is not a communist regime, and the people who put up the CCTV on the tube (and indeed the vast, vast majority of CCTV in the UK) are NOT the police. They get handed the evidence should the civilian operators record/see something that needs their attention. And the cops were not charged with the killing after an independent civilian investigation. There was a breakdown in the surveillance of the guy (funnily if there was better CCTV at De Menezes' house, he might still be alive today), which lead to his mis-identification. Couple that with some unfortunate accidental behaviour (apparent "dry cleaning", or moves to try and shake off people following him), and the seeds were sown for his very unfortunate demise. Do you think those same police would have been treated any better if they had found a suicide bomber and just let him on his way, to blow up a train full of folks? Would you be leading the chorus of cheers for them not risking killing one guy to save dozens and dozens?
If we all ran around scared of things communists/fascists/the french did that was bad, we'd not have any technology of any kind. Did you know the Romans had boats? Better get rid of the Navy! Did you know Hannibal used Elephants? Better blow up the zoo! Hitler had cars! Blow up VW! It's the only way to be sure! Seriously, I appreciate your worry, but try looking at things logically and rationally. We can have the best of both worlds if we approach technology with logic, and if we put in the safeguards to ensure it's not mis-used.
Apple don't even have WUXGA screens yet, so clearly it's not working for Apple as you'd hope... :)
My advice is, if you're going to sell drugs, do one massive deal then stop forever. It takes the cops more than one chance to get you, as they'll so very, very rarely stumble on your first deal. Not that I'm advocating anything illegal here. By drugs I mean cookies. or something.
"We"? Really, "we"? Grow up :)