When you kill a murderer, it's an execution. That's good.
The laws of UK, most of Europe and AFAIK even some US states would disagree with you there. Even in the US I do believe that there's a certain amount of due process to go through - you know, proving the case and so on.
If Motorola are trying to double dip and/or charge Apple more than the going rate (the ND in FRAND stands for "non-discriminatory") then they're in the wrong. If the 2.5% figure is correct, that's completely usurious for one component in a complex device. Motorola lost the right to license their IP on a "take it or leave it" basis when they agreed to let it be incorporated into an international standard.
When Apple is not involved, the groupthink is that standards should be entirely patent-free (quite right too - but not the way the world works).
In an earlier version of the script, the crew travel back in time to rescue the sperm whale, rather than the humpback whale, but due to an unfortunate communications error they end up trying to make a very small glass tank...
All fun and frolics, as long as you realize that the computational complexity of the "solution" has little to do with how difficult the game is for humans to play...
I'm assuming that by "solution" here we mean an algorithm that will either win (or prove winning impossible) for any case, in a finite number of steps; as opposed to a heuristic or stochastic technique that could win more-often-than-not, but never prove un-winnability.
Last time I looked, the human brain used some sort of complicated neural net-like wetware system that was most definitely not a Turing machine, and hence pretty crap at running algorithms. If, however, there's a neat non-algorithmic tactic that wins 90% of the time (especially if its based on something humans are really good at, like pattern recognition) then humans are going to do well, even if the "complete" solution is NP-hard or even uncomputable.
Maybe humans use algorithmic approaches to some puzzles, but I'd wager money that the human Rubic Cube champions supplemented their algorithms with intuitive leaps based on pattern recognition... Likewise, something like Tetris is going to call on pattern recognition, Pong on our wetwired/learned ability to predict motion (which predated Newton by a few thousand years...)
Then, of course, you have issues like reaction times, distractions and physical control layouts. For example - I'd surmise that 1st person shooters are easier with a keyboard and mouse, whereas tower defense games are easier on a touch screen. Dedicated arcade consoles can have custom-designed controls for the particular game, so the otherwise identical version for generic machines might be "harder".
The rules proposed seem quite reasonable, and if you can't be bothered to secure my data, then I don't want you in business in the first fucking place.
Its not the rules that will be unreasonable. They'll sound like peace, motherhood and apple pie which nobody could possibly object to.
The problem will be the inevitable requirement to maintain a metric shedload of paperwork to prove you've followed every last fucking detail of the rules, including the ones that are self-evidently inapplicable to your situation, or make no technical sense... If you work for an organization, make that the imperial shedload of paperwork to prove that you've adhered to your Data Protection Officer's ultra-cautious over-interpretation of the rules (and/or the ones who your IT manager hypes up to ensure that he gets a pay raise for added responsibilities). Be assured that the detailed rules will be so complex and open to interpretation that if you do get investigated the auditors will find something wrong.
Of course, that only affects the conscientious people that you would like to do business with (and then screw up because they were too busy filling forms to actually attend to their systems). The real cowboys know how to dodge and weave and will probably ignore the law, find loopholes or just plain lie on their paperwork.
Under the sign that says "Naive people sign here" (just follow the paving slabs with "good intentions" written on them) because unless the legislators show an unprecedented awareness of technical issues, unintended consequences and pragmatism this will end up loading a tonne of red tape, extra administration and legal liability on anybody (e.g.) running a website, while huge offenders (banks, telecos etc.) somehow manage to be let off with a slapped wrist (plus they benefit from the disproportionate effect of this on smaller businesses that might otherwise compete with them).
When considering new laws with such nice-sounding intentions, always remember: criminals don't obey the law - its part of their job description.
I can MAYBE see VGA disappearing, but DVI is going to be here for awhile longer.
Nope - in the same way that the 3.5" floppy outlived the Zip drive, I'd wager that VGA will outlive DVI. As others have pointed out: there is a shedload of presentation kit in offices and conference suites that uses VGA, and very little that supports DVI. Consequently, lots of current laptops offer HDMI and VGA connections - its DVI that has been dropped. Ditto monitors: HDMI + VGA is quite common. My TV has HDMI and VGA inputs, not DVI (of course, DVI to HDMI is a simple adapter job).
When I travel with my MacBook its the MiniDisplayPort-to-VGA adapter I take, not the DVI one.
I'm sure the T&Cs for most cloud services include a Force Majeure clause. Hopefully someone will have to dig through metamorphic rock to get at your backup.
TSA finds 4 guns per day at airports [nydailynews.com] (Wouldn't it be absurd to let those guns on the planes?)
Were these amazing non-metallic stealth guns only detectable by a full-body X-ray?
Were they "Man With The Golden Gun"-style devices assembled from what looked like a belt buckle, nail clippers and a shoe heel, with propellent made by mixing hemorrhoid cream with 7-up?
...or were they big lumps of blue steel that would have always been picked up by an old-school metal detector & baggage x-ray combo?
Thank you. I always find it fascinating that the people behind that incident managed to do it with what amounted to change found in the sofa, while our 'leaders' have taken out the equivalent of a third-mortgage and have little to show for it.
I'd take that as evidence that 9/11 wasn't planned by The Government! Since when did The Powers That Be understand "Keep It Simple, Stupid?"
What I find fascinating is the way that The Government can pull off these hugely complicated conspiracies perfectly, but can't find its arse with both hands when it comes to otherwise running the country.
Of course, that's exactly what they want you to think.
Cynically taking advantage of a real incident for political ends, now, that's another matter...
your comment is good, however the bit where I think you're wrong is that running office app on a tablet or ARM hardware is hardly a monopole lever. the real future is running office though th web browser, running apps is obsolete.
I'd fully agree that's the future. However, its not the present. Reliable, cheap mobile internet needs to improve somewhat before people can completely discard their native applications and use computers which turn into bricks away from the internet. I'm sure it will get there, but not yet.
I admit that I haven't tried Office 365, but I've used Google docs, and that's fantastic for when you really need collaboration, but its not yet a replacement for Office/LibreOffice for serious use.
...and even in the cloud, MS will have to be watched to make sure they stick to web standards for everything, and don't offer "enhanced functionality" on IE (ditto Google and Chrome, for that matter) especially with the W3C usually being a day late and a dollar short with their standards. Its possible that battle has been won, though.
There's also the issue that, whatever the theory, "Apps" have been a runaway success. Games, photo editors and suchlike I can understand, but don't ask me to explain the burgeoning market in dedicated info-centric "Apps" (I'd usually prefer a well-designed website). However, there they are...
Likewise, back in the 90s, "thin clients" and "network computers" were a vastly more sensible solution than having a full-blown PC with local OS on every desk (and a team of techies rushing around repairing Windows installations every time they broke) but, somehow, that didn't happen either.
there are hundreds of apps that can edit word documents (and outlook shows them to you in html)
There are hundreds of apps that can open/edit a subset of simple word documents provided you don't give a fig about layout, pagination, fonts/character sizes, symbols, graphics, tables, headers and footers getting totally screwed up. This isn't the fault of the application writers - its just that the formats aren't adequately standardised and documented. Heck, even different versions of MS Word are less than perfect when it comes to interoperability. I'd love to ditch Office, but it just doesn't work out. If the alternatives work for you, then good luck.
also, the business who would buy a tablet to run office is hardly the whole tablet market.
The corporate market for tablets its only just getting moving - propelled by Pointy-Haired Bosses bringing their iPads in to work. They probably have secretaries to repair their documents after they've edited them in Pages, or PDF everything for them (good strategy - stops people editing things!)
Also, note, I'm not talking about Office for Windows as-is: one reason for the success of post-iPad tablets is the realization that desktop software is next to unusable on a small touchscreen, which outweighs the interoperability issue. Office will need reworking for mobile devices - but then MS may have the interoperability advantage.
which I think should only ever be done in the case of monopolies, which doesn't really apply to Microsoft in the mobile marketspace
The monopoly that makes Microsoft dangerous is not hardware-related, not even Windows-related - it is MS Office and Exchange/Outlook. Even many OS X users are dependent on these and its one of the biggest practical obstacles to "Linux on the desktop". Anybody using mobile technology in an office environment is likely to be dependent on their ability to reliably create and open Office documents with full fidelity.
There seems to be fairly healthy competition (mutual assured patent destruction permitting) in the consumer tablet/smartphone market - but the corporate side of this business is only just getting started (with demand driven by consumer products) and if MS could offer "real" Office/Outlook on a half-credible mobile platform that would be seen by many corporates as an end-of-argument advantage.
What should have happened in previous anti-monopoly actions was the separation of MS's operating system and applications businesses. Anything else (fines, browser ballots, arguments over bundling) is pointless.
If Apple ever get to a monopoly position then maybe they'll need similar attention (e.g. hiving off iTunes.App Store from Apple) but at the moment they're driving innovation (NB: "innovation" includes getting other people's ideas to market).
If, at the age of 14, you don't think "Lord of the Rings" is the best book ever, there's probably something wrong with you.
If, by the age of 40, you still think "Lord of the Rings" is the best book ever, there's definitely something wrong with you.
Yes, and I suppose they're going to access that clean water through magic?
Yes, if they live in fairyland, that would be the most practical solution.
You said:
So by his logic, since "plumbing" is a technology, nobody should have the right to properly working indoor plumbing?
No, by his logic (and other posters here), the "right" that needs defining is access to clean water and sanitation, not the specific technology used to deliver it. It may be that a decent well and an earth closet is the best and safest solution in some environments.
You're missing the point - the problem with saying "the Internet is a right" is that the important right is access to uncensored communication and information not one specific technology for (possibly) securing that right, which may be obsolete in a few decades.
just as the right to free speech is irrelevant if you cannot access the means by which many if not most people in our globalized society communicate.
You mean talking? Singing? Writing? Text messaging? The brand new communication technology currently being developed at the University of Somewhereorother that will take the world by storm in 5 years' time (and which the UN will have to debate separately to decide whether its a "right"?)
Great - we've helped your government put in Internet as is your right, unfortunately we've also sold them filtering and monitoring technology to help in the Fight Against Terrorism(tm) so be careful what you say. Oh, also, watch out for all the perverts and scam artists who we can't kick off the internet because we've made it a human right... Damn, paradoxes suck. Overall, mate you'd be better off with your old postal service - sorry its gone bust now we've provided subsidised Internet...
So by his logic, since "plumbing" is a technology, nobody should have the right to properly working indoor plumbing?
No, they shouldn't - what they should have is the right to clean water and hygenic sanitation. Go ahead and watch the taps run dry because you've installed unsustainable hot & cold running water when you should have just dug a better communal well or standpipe which would have moderated water use. Actually, a system which uses expensively purified drinkable water to flush toilets is about as stupid as you can get.
As others have said - the right should be access to free, uncensored communication and information, not one specific way of providing it. Our wonderful leaders seem only too keen to get everybody on the internet - they're much less enthusistic when it comes to preventing it from being censored and filtered to hell to protect political and business interests.
And you needed a BBC Master to have as much RAM as the C64.
That's probably why those lucky C64 users got "The Blue Danube" docking computer music and cute furry trumbles when they eventually got Elite... Not fair.
Of course, the real problem is governments continually passing reams of unenforceable and abuse-able laws on corporate governance, freedom of information, copyright etc. in a naive attempt to fix whatever scandal they read about in the Sunday papers. For good IT managers these are a major headache and liability. For bad IT managers they provide a wildcard excuse for restrictions, power-grabs and empire building. The only people they don't affect are the actual crooks, who weren't planning on obeying the law anyway.
Maybe more people speak English than Spanish, I don't know, but it certainly isn't 4 times as much.
As a first or second language?
Authors aiming for an international audience would probably choose English. Spanish has a huge number of native speakers but you wouldn't necessarily choose it as an "international" language.
The Dutch Wikipedia for example has almost a million articles, while only about 30 million or so people actually speak the language.
...perhaps this relative enthusiasm for native Wikipedias in smaller countries with unique languages comes from a desire to pro-actively promote the language?
Dutch, Danish, Finnish, the Norwegian languages and other "minority" European languages could conceivably be steamrollered by English in the long term (English is already the de facto lingua franca* of the EU), whereas Spanish and Portuguese's future is assured by South America. Its similar to Welsh in the UK - the effort to preserve the language is disproportionate to the number of speakers.
"Young people have soured on the iPhone, find Android baffling and will see anything tagged Windows as uncool and boring, so we see a huge opportunity for Symbian and MeeGo... Sorry... you say we signed a WHAT with Microsoft? Seriously? Aw shit!"
You know, if the FTL neutrinos are real, then there is every possibility that the episodes are on their way to a rescue point in the future right now.
Look, you might think the copy protection on Blu Ray is a pain, but wait until you get a load of the confusingly-named Hyperspatial Digital Causality Protection that the unelected cartel of the Time Lords require on any temporally displaced media. I mean, one can downgrade your nice 1080p to standard def, but that's not as bad as the headache you get when the real HDCP cuts in and makes you never have been going to see the video you just watched.
How considerable is that premium? Cheap netbooks are dogs and have poor battery life.
Some of that is because the tablets have slower processors and less RAM. So the question is, when you install desktop Linux on your tablet, (a) is it fast enough and (b) does it get the same battery life as under Android?
Why couldn't OpenOffice have a tablet specific GUI?
No reason - but AFAIK it doesn't, yet. There's also the issue of whether a behemoth package like OO.o is the best choice for a low-power mobile device, or whether something leaner & meaner (like most of the office packages for Android and iOS) would make more sense.
The bookshelf/faux leather metaphor is simply that. It has no functionality.
However, the functionality has been changed as part of the same "update". The old version of iCal had a 3 pane design with a list of your calendars and a mini calendar for the month for quick navigation. These have gone (the calendar list is now a pop-up). Likewise, address book has gone from a 3-column layout with groups/names/details side-by-side to a dual mode "groups" and "names & details" system which, as the summary says, doesn't even make any sense within the book metaphor.
This isn't about "condescension" though - the designs have been copied over from the iPad. On a tablet, they use less screen real estate have bigger objects to click on with our fat fingers, work better in portrait mode and the metaphors (e.g. running your finger down the A-Z tabs, and the page turn effects tie in with the swipe gesture used to turn pages) make more sense.
OS X Lion was mainly about rolling tablet features back into the desktop operating system for the benefit of (mainly) the Macbook Airs. Others start making sense if you try using a trackpad instead of a mouse. By and large, the changes can be ignored if you have a larger Mac, once you realize that "full screen mode" = "tablet mode" and if you want to use multiple monitors it makes more sense just to maximize windows. The iCal and Address Book changes are among those that you can't ignore.
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When you kill a murderer, it's an execution. That's good.
The laws of UK, most of Europe and AFAIK even some US states would disagree with you there. Even in the US I do believe that there's a certain amount of due process to go through - you know, proving the case and so on.
If Motorola are trying to double dip and/or charge Apple more than the going rate (the ND in FRAND stands for "non-discriminatory") then they're in the wrong. If the 2.5% figure is correct, that's completely usurious for one component in a complex device. Motorola lost the right to license their IP on a "take it or leave it" basis when they agreed to let it be incorporated into an international standard.
When Apple is not involved, the groupthink is that standards should be entirely patent-free (quite right too - but not the way the world works).
In an earlier version of the script, the crew travel back in time to rescue the sperm whale, rather than the humpback whale, but due to an unfortunate communications error they end up trying to make a very small glass tank...
All fun and frolics, as long as you realize that the computational complexity of the "solution" has little to do with how difficult the game is for humans to play...
I'm assuming that by "solution" here we mean an algorithm that will either win (or prove winning impossible) for any case, in a finite number of steps; as opposed to a heuristic or stochastic technique that could win more-often-than-not, but never prove un-winnability.
Last time I looked, the human brain used some sort of complicated neural net-like wetware system that was most definitely not a Turing machine, and hence pretty crap at running algorithms. If, however, there's a neat non-algorithmic tactic that wins 90% of the time (especially if its based on something humans are really good at, like pattern recognition) then humans are going to do well, even if the "complete" solution is NP-hard or even uncomputable.
Maybe humans use algorithmic approaches to some puzzles, but I'd wager money that the human Rubic Cube champions supplemented their algorithms with intuitive leaps based on pattern recognition... Likewise, something like Tetris is going to call on pattern recognition, Pong on our wetwired/learned ability to predict motion (which predated Newton by a few thousand years...)
Then, of course, you have issues like reaction times, distractions and physical control layouts. For example - I'd surmise that 1st person shooters are easier with a keyboard and mouse, whereas tower defense games are easier on a touch screen. Dedicated arcade consoles can have custom-designed controls for the particular game, so the otherwise identical version for generic machines might be "harder".
The rules proposed seem quite reasonable, and if you can't be bothered to secure my data, then I don't want you in business in the first fucking place.
Its not the rules that will be unreasonable. They'll sound like peace, motherhood and apple pie which nobody could possibly object to.
The problem will be the inevitable requirement to maintain a metric shedload of paperwork to prove you've followed every last fucking detail of the rules, including the ones that are self-evidently inapplicable to your situation, or make no technical sense... If you work for an organization, make that the imperial shedload of paperwork to prove that you've adhered to your Data Protection Officer's ultra-cautious over-interpretation of the rules (and/or the ones who your IT manager hypes up to ensure that he gets a pay raise for added responsibilities). Be assured that the detailed rules will be so complex and open to interpretation that if you do get investigated the auditors will find something wrong.
Of course, that only affects the conscientious people that you would like to do business with (and then screw up because they were too busy filling forms to actually attend to their systems). The real cowboys know how to dodge and weave and will probably ignore the law, find loopholes or just plain lie on their paperwork.
Where do I sign up to vote "yes please"?
Under the sign that says "Naive people sign here" (just follow the paving slabs with "good intentions" written on them) because unless the legislators show an unprecedented awareness of technical issues, unintended consequences and pragmatism this will end up loading a tonne of red tape, extra administration and legal liability on anybody (e.g.) running a website, while huge offenders (banks, telecos etc.) somehow manage to be let off with a slapped wrist (plus they benefit from the disproportionate effect of this on smaller businesses that might otherwise compete with them).
When considering new laws with such nice-sounding intentions, always remember: criminals don't obey the law - its part of their job description.
I can MAYBE see VGA disappearing, but DVI is going to be here for awhile longer.
Nope - in the same way that the 3.5" floppy outlived the Zip drive, I'd wager that VGA will outlive DVI. As others have pointed out: there is a shedload of presentation kit in offices and conference suites that uses VGA, and very little that supports DVI. Consequently, lots of current laptops offer HDMI and VGA connections - its DVI that has been dropped. Ditto monitors: HDMI + VGA is quite common. My TV has HDMI and VGA inputs, not DVI (of course, DVI to HDMI is a simple adapter job).
When I travel with my MacBook its the MiniDisplayPort-to-VGA adapter I take, not the DVI one.
The cloud has burst.
I'm sure the T&Cs for most cloud services include a Force Majeure clause. Hopefully someone will have to dig through metamorphic rock to get at your backup.
TSA finds 4 guns per day at airports [nydailynews.com] (Wouldn't it be absurd to let those guns on the planes?)
Were these amazing non-metallic stealth guns only detectable by a full-body X-ray?
Were they "Man With The Golden Gun"-style devices assembled from what looked like a belt buckle, nail clippers and a shoe heel, with propellent made by mixing hemorrhoid cream with 7-up?
...or were they big lumps of blue steel that would have always been picked up by an old-school metal detector & baggage x-ray combo?
Thank you. I always find it fascinating that the people behind that incident managed to do it with what amounted to change found in the sofa, while our 'leaders' have taken out the equivalent of a third-mortgage and have little to show for it.
I'd take that as evidence that 9/11 wasn't planned by The Government! Since when did The Powers That Be understand "Keep It Simple, Stupid?"
What I find fascinating is the way that The Government can pull off these hugely complicated conspiracies perfectly, but can't find its arse with both hands when it comes to otherwise running the country.
Of course, that's exactly what they want you to think.
Cynically taking advantage of a real incident for political ends, now, that's another matter...
your comment is good, however the bit where I think you're wrong is that running office app on a tablet or ARM hardware is hardly a monopole lever. the real future is running office though th web browser, running apps is obsolete.
I'd fully agree that's the future. However, its not the present. Reliable, cheap mobile internet needs to improve somewhat before people can completely discard their native applications and use computers which turn into bricks away from the internet. I'm sure it will get there, but not yet.
I admit that I haven't tried Office 365, but I've used Google docs, and that's fantastic for when you really need collaboration, but its not yet a replacement for Office/LibreOffice for serious use.
...and even in the cloud, MS will have to be watched to make sure they stick to web standards for everything, and don't offer "enhanced functionality" on IE (ditto Google and Chrome, for that matter) especially with the W3C usually being a day late and a dollar short with their standards. Its possible that battle has been won, though.
There's also the issue that, whatever the theory, "Apps" have been a runaway success. Games, photo editors and suchlike I can understand, but don't ask me to explain the burgeoning market in dedicated info-centric "Apps" (I'd usually prefer a well-designed website). However, there they are...
Likewise, back in the 90s, "thin clients" and "network computers" were a vastly more sensible solution than having a full-blown PC with local OS on every desk (and a team of techies rushing around repairing Windows installations every time they broke) but, somehow, that didn't happen either.
there are hundreds of apps that can edit word documents (and outlook shows them to you in html)
There are hundreds of apps that can open/edit a subset of simple word documents provided you don't give a fig about layout, pagination, fonts/character sizes, symbols, graphics, tables, headers and footers getting totally screwed up. This isn't the fault of the application writers - its just that the formats aren't adequately standardised and documented. Heck, even different versions of MS Word are less than perfect when it comes to interoperability. I'd love to ditch Office, but it just doesn't work out. If the alternatives work for you, then good luck.
also, the business who would buy a tablet to run office is hardly the whole tablet market.
The corporate market for tablets its only just getting moving - propelled by Pointy-Haired Bosses bringing their iPads in to work. They probably have secretaries to repair their documents after they've edited them in Pages, or PDF everything for them (good strategy - stops people editing things!)
Also, note, I'm not talking about Office for Windows as-is: one reason for the success of post-iPad tablets is the realization that desktop software is next to unusable on a small touchscreen, which outweighs the interoperability issue. Office will need reworking for mobile devices - but then MS may have the interoperability advantage.
which I think should only ever be done in the case of monopolies, which doesn't really apply to Microsoft in the mobile marketspace
The monopoly that makes Microsoft dangerous is not hardware-related, not even Windows-related - it is MS Office and Exchange/Outlook. Even many OS X users are dependent on these and its one of the biggest practical obstacles to "Linux on the desktop". Anybody using mobile technology in an office environment is likely to be dependent on their ability to reliably create and open Office documents with full fidelity.
There seems to be fairly healthy competition (mutual assured patent destruction permitting) in the consumer tablet/smartphone market - but the corporate side of this business is only just getting started (with demand driven by consumer products) and if MS could offer "real" Office/Outlook on a half-credible mobile platform that would be seen by many corporates as an end-of-argument advantage.
What should have happened in previous anti-monopoly actions was the separation of MS's operating system and applications businesses. Anything else (fines, browser ballots, arguments over bundling) is pointless.
If Apple ever get to a monopoly position then maybe they'll need similar attention (e.g. hiving off iTunes.App Store from Apple) but at the moment they're driving innovation (NB: "innovation" includes getting other people's ideas to market).
I believe it was Terry Pratchett who said:
If, at the age of 14, you don't think "Lord of the Rings" is the best book ever, there's probably something wrong with you.
If, by the age of 40, you still think "Lord of the Rings" is the best book ever, there's definitely something wrong with you.
Yes, and I suppose they're going to access that clean water through magic?
Yes, if they live in fairyland, that would be the most practical solution.
You said:
So by his logic, since "plumbing" is a technology, nobody should have the right to properly working indoor plumbing?
No, by his logic (and other posters here), the "right" that needs defining is access to clean water and sanitation, not the specific technology used to deliver it. It may be that a decent well and an earth closet is the best and safest solution in some environments.
You're missing the point - the problem with saying "the Internet is a right" is that the important right is access to uncensored communication and information not one specific technology for (possibly) securing that right, which may be obsolete in a few decades.
just as the right to free speech is irrelevant if you cannot access the means by which many if not most people in our globalized society communicate.
You mean talking? Singing? Writing? Text messaging? The brand new communication technology currently being developed at the University of Somewhereorother that will take the world by storm in 5 years' time (and which the UN will have to debate separately to decide whether its a "right"?)
Great - we've helped your government put in Internet as is your right, unfortunately we've also sold them filtering and monitoring technology to help in the Fight Against Terrorism(tm) so be careful what you say. Oh, also, watch out for all the perverts and scam artists who we can't kick off the internet because we've made it a human right... Damn, paradoxes suck. Overall, mate you'd be better off with your old postal service - sorry its gone bust now we've provided subsidised Internet...
Just like that bit in "Life of Brian" ... "Loretta" might not be able to have babies (because he's a man) but he can have the right to have babies.
So by his logic, since "plumbing" is a technology, nobody should have the right to properly working indoor plumbing?
No, they shouldn't - what they should have is the right to clean water and hygenic sanitation. Go ahead and watch the taps run dry because you've installed unsustainable hot & cold running water when you should have just dug a better communal well or standpipe which would have moderated water use. Actually, a system which uses expensively purified drinkable water to flush toilets is about as stupid as you can get.
As others have said - the right should be access to free, uncensored communication and information, not one specific way of providing it. Our wonderful leaders seem only too keen to get everybody on the internet - they're much less enthusistic when it comes to preventing it from being censored and filtered to hell to protect political and business interests.
And you needed a BBC Master to have as much RAM as the C64.
That's probably why those lucky C64 users got "The Blue Danube" docking computer music and cute furry trumbles when they eventually got Elite... Not fair.
(Sneaks up to the C64 in Dixons)
10 PRINT "THE BBC MODEL B IS BETTER!"
20 GOTO 10:REM ** FOR STARTERS, BBC BASIC COULD DO THIS AS A REPEAT/UNTIL FALSE LOOP **
Oh, the biting wit of the 1980s teenager...
Of course, the real problem is governments continually passing reams of unenforceable and abuse-able laws on corporate governance, freedom of information, copyright etc. in a naive attempt to fix whatever scandal they read about in the Sunday papers. For good IT managers these are a major headache and liability. For bad IT managers they provide a wildcard excuse for restrictions, power-grabs and empire building. The only people they don't affect are the actual crooks, who weren't planning on obeying the law anyway.
Maybe more people speak English than Spanish, I don't know, but it certainly isn't 4 times as much.
As a first or second language?
Authors aiming for an international audience would probably choose English. Spanish has a huge number of native speakers but you wouldn't necessarily choose it as an "international" language.
The Dutch Wikipedia for example has almost a million articles, while only about 30 million or so people actually speak the language.
...perhaps this relative enthusiasm for native Wikipedias in smaller countries with unique languages comes from a desire to pro-actively promote the language?
Dutch, Danish, Finnish, the Norwegian languages and other "minority" European languages could conceivably be steamrollered by English in the long term (English is already the de facto lingua franca* of the EU), whereas Spanish and Portuguese's future is assured by South America. Its similar to Welsh in the UK - the effort to preserve the language is disproportionate to the number of speakers.
(* Yes, irony intended.)
What's he supposed to say?
Equally
"Young people have soured on the iPhone, find Android baffling and will see anything tagged Windows as uncool and boring, so we see a huge opportunity for Symbian and MeeGo... Sorry... you say we signed a WHAT with Microsoft? Seriously? Aw shit!"
...would likely have been a career-limiting move.
You know, if the FTL neutrinos are real, then there is every possibility that the episodes are on their way to a rescue point in the future right now.
Look, you might think the copy protection on Blu Ray is a pain, but wait until you get a load of the confusingly-named Hyperspatial Digital Causality Protection that the unelected cartel of the Time Lords require on any temporally displaced media. I mean, one can downgrade your nice 1080p to standard def, but that's not as bad as the headache you get when the real HDCP cuts in and makes you never have been going to see the video you just watched.
How considerable is that premium? Cheap netbooks are dogs and have poor battery life.
Some of that is because the tablets have slower processors and less RAM. So the question is, when you install desktop Linux on your tablet, (a) is it fast enough and (b) does it get the same battery life as under Android?
Why couldn't OpenOffice have a tablet specific GUI?
No reason - but AFAIK it doesn't, yet. There's also the issue of whether a behemoth package like OO.o is the best choice for a low-power mobile device, or whether something leaner & meaner (like most of the office packages for Android and iOS) would make more sense.
The bookshelf/faux leather metaphor is simply that. It has no functionality.
However, the functionality has been changed as part of the same "update". The old version of iCal had a 3 pane design with a list of your calendars and a mini calendar for the month for quick navigation. These have gone (the calendar list is now a pop-up). Likewise, address book has gone from a 3-column layout with groups/names/details side-by-side to a dual mode "groups" and "names & details" system which, as the summary says, doesn't even make any sense within the book metaphor.
This isn't about "condescension" though - the designs have been copied over from the iPad. On a tablet, they use less screen real estate have bigger objects to click on with our fat fingers, work better in portrait mode and the metaphors (e.g. running your finger down the A-Z tabs, and the page turn effects tie in with the swipe gesture used to turn pages) make more sense.
OS X Lion was mainly about rolling tablet features back into the desktop operating system for the benefit of (mainly) the Macbook Airs. Others start making sense if you try using a trackpad instead of a mouse. By and large, the changes can be ignored if you have a larger Mac, once you realize that "full screen mode" = "tablet mode" and if you want to use multiple monitors it makes more sense just to maximize windows. The iCal and Address Book changes are among those that you can't ignore.