I'd have to repeat myself and say "that is not the point of the Mac Book Air".
Come on, it's not that hard to see the unique selling point of this thing. We have told each other what it is not: - it's not incredibly versatile - it's not incredibly portable (waaay too flimsy, I fear it'll break in half pretty easy) - it's not incredibly powerful - it IS incredibly expensive - it IS incredibly unusual - it IS looking pretty luxurious.
Can you now guess what the market is for these things?
May I help you?
What about "Showing off", "display of wealth" or "display of being incredibly artilicious"?
If things cost a lot of money, look spectacular and do less than others, they are classic luxury items for people that really couldn't care less about spending one or two grand more or less on an item just because it looks stylish. Remember why diamonds are so expensive?:)
Both cars you mentioned have no innovation value, no geek sex appeal and do not fit in a standard envelope for mailing. Obviously, the Mac Book Air is better in all departments except raw power.
Seriously, try to compare it to the Smart car, if you want. Not just small and slow, but luxuriously so.
To repeat myself and others: "I think one of us is missing the point of the MacBook Air."
Or in other words, using a car metaphor, of course: "Nobody will ever buy a Porsche, because it's got only two seats and a minimal trunk space. For 50'000 EUR *less*, you'd get four seats, a pickup-sized cargo bay AND as much horsepowers, so the Porsche is clearly bad value.":)
To sum your post up: "Life is only worth more than human excrement if you rather selflessly helped poor and needy people."
Come out of your ivory tower and then do something that is "not bad for most people". That's ususally enough to do your part on making the world a better place. You could also invent a new technology out of pure evil greed for money and still be extremely contributing to society, though.
"Private vices, public benefits" is the keyword here. It doesn't matter if you get filthy rich while really actually improving life for everyone. Filthy rich, greedy, grumpy old bastards can be better to society than the most philantrophic people, because we don't just need people to help people, but also money, knowledge and technology.
I'd rather fear those people that claim to do good for all. They usually end up *forcing* all others to do the same.
Yes, certainly. There would be no accidents at all, if the limits were reduced to zero. However, traffic is a tradeoff between safety and speed. Either extreme, still stand or blasting at mach 1 would provide zero results, so the practical value lies in between.
How you define that tradeoff between safety and speed is the central question here, as you trade a rare but disastrous event (accident) versus a very frequent minor inconvenience (going slower than physically possible).
Now if you have an authority setting this trade-off to a speed value S_1, that most of the motorists do not obey, going at a faster speed S_2=S_1+X instead, you have a compelling reason to believe that S_2 is the trade-off point that more closely resembles the motorists own free will. And as driving in traffic always bears a risk, it would be the best to let those bearing that risk decide how much is "just enough".
This certainly doesn't apply to bad weather conditions, surprisingly tight corners and other risks that are not visible to non-local motororists, but straigth, clear, dry and clean sections of road only have a traffic-intrinsic risk that every motorist can assess and adapt to.
Exactly. Rummaging through the userlist on our company's website, I found hundreds of unused accounts, bogus accounts, accounts that somehow use the md5 of "password" and tons of other stuff. Yes, I know, we didn't use salted passwords, I don't know why but we're cleaning up already.
The new authentication is much simpler and incredibly secure from my perspective: use a personal password concatenated to a 6-digit number displayed on a separate keyfob-style authentication token. This number changes every 30 seconds in sync with the server. This way, everyone can select their own personal luser password and still be secure. I'd recommend this for all high-security needs, as it presents pretty good two-factor authentication with no client side requirements other than eyes and a keyboard and no software-based attack vectors. (Compared to smartcard readers, certificates etc.)
The only way to steal login should be social engineering or plain violence.
"There is a lot more computing in this world than what can be found in data centers and offices, young Padawan."
Really, there is. Computers that fly, sail, drive or are employed in low power, low heat, low noise, high vibration, high dust, high heat, low heat environments. Be creative: That starts with laptops in the space shuttle and surely doesn't end with onboard systems of surveillance planes. All Gigabyte-intensive operations where you do not have an unlimited power socket in the wall and/or have other considerations about weight and shock tolerances.
And all of these applications have powers with large checkbooks behind them, who will write off 5000USD as merely half a percent price increase for much better reliability and power consumption.
Override yes, full control no. Let the pilot have a three-way switch that can be set to "full on", "reduced power" (lights, maybe meals but no entertainment) and "all non-critical subsystems off" (20x 1W emergency LED lighting only). And the rest can then be set by the main flight attendant.
This way, the pilot has an quick and easy chance of turning everything off in an emergency and the layer separation between avionics and utilitiy systems is as good as it can be. No hacker and hijacker can then drain the plane's energy supply AND no hacker can interfere with the flight controls.
Simple, reliable one-way connections only. For data transfer we have things like forward error corrections already and the optical one-way interconnect should work extremely well. Use a standard gigabit optical fiber connection with only the sending fiber connected, as the IR-connection is too simply and error prone. Gigabit fiber has enough bandwidth, is electrically isolating and inherently secure. Why don't they use optical connections for the airplane version of the CAN bus anyway?
I will hold my breath, really. 120GB is all I need for my main volume, everything else is in network attached storage. That is grid-connected, RAIDed and down in the basement. For a NAS in the basement, I don't really care about individual media reliability, power consumption or noise as long as they are within reasonable eco{nom|log}ical limits. But my notebook, the terminal where I work and have unfinished documents, has to be quiet, light and highly reliable. Backups can get me only so far, as I'll lose some days or hours worth of productivity, a few Euros for a new HDD and maybe a failed presentation at a client. Spinning discs will be on the way out for me the instant a 120GB flash volume of reasonable quality hits below the 500 Euro limit.
Oh and HDDs stored spun-down can fail as well, they'll probably spin up, but hang on clicking at POST. Been there, done that, sorry.
And the storage size argument is not complete: critical data requires a RAIDed setup, thereby "losing" between a third and a half of the installed capacity. If flash based volumes can be as reliable without RAID, they have a 100% advantage versus spinning disks of equal capacity. The economical terabyte of reiable storage as of today requires three 500GB HDDs in a RAID5 setup, meaning 350 Euros for the HDDs, 300 for the enclosure and maybe 100 for the controller. All in all this amounts to 800 Euros and a power consumption I don't like for my SOHO environment. Today, a 64GB SSD volume is 800 Euros as well, so it is 16 times more expensive. Well see how this develops...:)
Some people reboot or power down their systems once in a while. To save power, to silence their bedroom or because of company policy. Every boot-up is several thousand random disk accesses and that's going to take a while in a mechanical disk with several milliseconds access time. With flash-based media of even low to mid transfer speeds, the boot process is a whole lot faster thanks to read access in the nanoseconds.
And most consumer PCs are running windows versions that do not support more than 3GB of RAM. And the next half-life and whatnot will use all those and more...
The capacity problem will be alleviated in 2-3 years, maybe sooner. 900GB archives will remain on spinning disks in the meantime, but their reliability is less-than-ideal. They can fail on you at any time, no matter how well they were treated, how low the operating shocks were and how low the environment temperatures were - they can collapse on the next boot-up, leaving you to employ expensive data rescue operations or simply write off the data and start from scratch.
Re-read the Google report on hard drive failures sometimes, it clearly proves that more than a third of all HDDs fail without prior SMART errors, meaning complete loss of data without a warning. With no backups, you're hosed. SMART keeps track of more than a dozen variables and is usefull in only two thirds of all cases. Thank you, but I'll flock to flash volumes. They need to track only a two variables concerning wear and failure, namely their total power-on hours and their remapped sector count. The first still is just a statistical indication, but the second provides a proportional measure of how much "juice" is left in it.
This is just begging for the usual real-world comparison: bike parts made from carbon-fiber materials. Many advantages, but the definite danger of a sudden and catastrophic breakdown without a prior warning. It may never happen, but if it happens, you'll go down like Brannigans Law: hard and fast.
Well, if you want a notebook that looks serious enough, try the business lines of Toshiba, HP or any Lenovo Thinkpad. No multicolors, no blinding blue power-on LED that lights up the whole room, but a sturdy construction and sturdy display hinges.
The Lenovo Thinkpads are my favorite, mainly because Toshiba has a totally awkward keyboard layout and the Thinkpads have spill-resistant keyboards and metal rollcages below the plastic. And they're just plain black and everyone loves that color. A black Macbook and a Levono Thinkpad look pretty similar, too, so the nerd-appeal can't be that low.
After all, I'm staying with Windows for the occasional game and LAN event, and the "curb appeal" of this sleek and silent notebook design is not to be taken lightly, I tell you. The graphics chip is not high-end, but there aren't any better GPUs to have without having the noise of a jet engine right before you.
It surely is an invasion of privacy, and human dignity, by the way. Being watched and videotaped is a passive invasion of privacy and unavoidable from a public standpoint. Being blasted with shocking audio messages from an unclear source and sharply increasing intensity is active invasion of privacy and much much worse.
Imagine someone screaming in your ear when you least expect it. Would you say "Hey, its in public, so go on, hurt my ears"?
I don't think so. I hate advertising as the next guy, but this is certainly a step too far. It frightens, disorients or startles unsuspecting people, it disrupts talking, endangers bikers and motorists and may cause much more mayhem than I can think.
This IS like yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater. If this is ruled as legally acceptable advertising, expect eye-safe lasers and strobos everywhere flashing directly into your eyes.
Oh yes, I remember:) - a friend of mine is that kind of user who installs everything as long as it's free, with all nagware checkboxes undisturbed. I once counted 8 toolbars and a total of 14 browser helper objects. Some of them well hidden until I enabled data execution prevetion on that machine and every single piece of spyware complained...
Google may do all kinds of malicious things, but disclosing your email adress to anyone is not on that list, ever. It would be trivial as you point out to prove that Google sells this kind of information, so it's almost guaranteed it's going to be publicized. And then the public would burn Google at the stake, as slow and painful as possible.
No, I don't think spammers are doing that. First, it's probably been guessed by dictionary attacks. Botnets should have the CPU time they need to exhaust the search space up to a dozen characters. (Remember: email is case insensitive and restricted to standard english alphanumeric characters plus a handful others. This is no NSA-safe keyspace.) And second, they probably obtained a list from somewhere. Some inbox on some PC that was rootkitted or an entry in a not-negative list that some other spammer sold them. (Remember: all adresses that do not bounce are valid mailboxes.)
And then there's the recent GTA installments, that reduced load times with every sequel arriving at zero with GTA San Andreas. Extremely large area to wander about, fly a 747 through it, whatever - no load times. It had minor hiccups when blasting through dense areas with a jet or flying at high altitudes with much of the world visible, but when you were in a regular car (which still is the norm in a Grand Theft *AUTO* sequel), you had no interruptions at all.
If GTA:SA could do it, why could Half-Life not? It really made the world feel real and cohesive that way, much better than for example Postal2 which had terrible load times and portals every couple o' feet.
Free roaming, interactive environment, side stories and exciting "normality" are what made the GTA series so special and it's sad that most other games didn't catch up with that. Loading is obviously unneeded, GTA didn't skimp on dialogues and cutscenes, BTW - just let the player walk or drive uninterrupted through a short but bland road while loading all the data. But don't interrupt the game mechanics, don't do too much cutscenes. Keep the "virtual reality" online at all times and don't blow the fourth wall. No video sequences, no loading bars, no save menu, no quicksave buttons. Some games can do it, so the excuse is unavailable for others...
If that is true what you say, we're screwed, big time. And we are to blame, as we let this happen.
I don't think we're that far down the road, I've personally met and talked to some sane and sober police officers. But it's getting downhill slowly, I must admit.
I hope something happens before that, because when Europe and the USA fail in respect to politics and dictatorships, the world will go dark. Literally. There's only us and then no one else when it comes to progress and civilization. That may sound extremely harsh, but it's gonna take India as the next best candidate some decades or half a century to catch up. If we fail now, our left over homo sapiens sapiens could as well climb up the trees again.
It will be like Rome falling again - it will take humanity some hundred years to recover, if ever. Remember anything important that happened from 200AD to 900AD? Or even remember anything at all? That's why.
I think we need to get up from our asses and do something. The problem is, I don't know what. No one does. Bombs, guns, terrorism is stupid and boneheaded, militia types are insane, religious types are insane and everyone else watches TV.
We'll see what happens. Greetings from Germany, Europe, where even using pepper spray against an assailant can yield prison time.
"'tis better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six" is the old adage concerning this. And I will not bury an intruders body, but lawfully call the police. Obeying the law goes both ways, with the police not breaking into my house at night and me reporting crimes which I witness.
Oh and I will be ready to testify exactly why it was neccessary to more than double-tap the attacker. I was sooooo scared and he still tried to shoot me (or moved like he was) so I just had to hit him right. That wouldn't work in California, but they'll be at the receiving end of the polical correct judges and politicians they elected, so i don't pity them.
Anyway, spending 10k (which I get back when I won the lawsuits) is much much less than being crippled or having to deal with the loss of a loved one. With a gun, you can try to survive, without you can only hope that Bubba has one of his nicer days.
People that have enough cash to buy 30 guns are not your typical gangster, as gangsters either have millions and their hitmen or they barely break even, no matter how much dope they sell. And not even mafia hitmen have 30 pieces of steel lying around, as they discard their weapons and don't hoard much stuff.
Anyway, after your first crime, possession of the remaining 29 guns becomes a crime as well.
I don't really understand what you are trying to say. Do you think, gun ownership and crime involvement is over- or underrated by saying "half the guns" (or even "half the gun owners") are related to committing crimes (and not meaning "protection from crimes" either)?
Google is much less dangerous to your privacy than, say, your employer, the local sheriff or local mobsters that somehow bribed they way to access your ISP. (Or simply hacked into something)
Comparing all network-monitoring, head-cutting dicatorial evil in the world, I think Google is the least concern for the time being.
It is a given that there are 100 million privately owned small arms in the US of A. (It is actually 192 million, including 65 million handguns, ref. Cook PJ, Ludwig J. Guns in America: Results of a comprehensive national survey on firearms ownership and use. Police Foundation. Washington DC. 1996.) You assumed that the majority of them used for crime. A majority is more than 50 percent. 50 percent of 100 or 192 million is 50 or 96 million.
The fact that you can step outside your home without being peppered with lead should make it clear that you're wrong on the majority = crime part.
And I won't try debating with you about the fact that criminals will always have guns, as they always had. And I will not say that short of orbital bombardment there is only one thing to keep YOU safe from millions of enemy guns: billions of guns in the hands of neighbors that are mentally sane, lawful and courageous. (It's actually sufficient to have them sane and friendly.)
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I'd have to repeat myself and say "that is not the point of the Mac Book Air".
:)
Come on, it's not that hard to see the unique selling point of this thing. We have told each other what it is not:
- it's not incredibly versatile
- it's not incredibly portable (waaay too flimsy, I fear it'll break in half pretty easy)
- it's not incredibly powerful
- it IS incredibly expensive
- it IS incredibly unusual
- it IS looking pretty luxurious.
Can you now guess what the market is for these things?
May I help you?
What about "Showing off", "display of wealth" or "display of being incredibly artilicious"?
If things cost a lot of money, look spectacular and do less than others, they are classic luxury items for people that really couldn't care less about spending one or two grand more or less on an item just because it looks stylish. Remember why diamonds are so expensive?
Both cars you mentioned have no innovation value, no geek sex appeal and do not fit in a standard envelope for mailing. Obviously, the Mac Book Air is better in all departments except raw power.
Seriously, try to compare it to the Smart car, if you want. Not just small and slow, but luxuriously so.
About a half of a Porsche's sex appeal is directly related to its price tag, a third is the sleek look and only the rest is actual performance.
The same applies for the MB Air. (and to a lesser extent to all other macbooks...)
To repeat myself and others: "I think one of us is missing the point of the MacBook Air."
:)
Or in other words, using a car metaphor, of course: "Nobody will ever buy a Porsche, because it's got only two seats and a minimal trunk space. For 50'000 EUR *less*, you'd get four seats, a pickup-sized cargo bay AND as much horsepowers, so the Porsche is clearly bad value."
I think one of us is missing the point of the MacBook Air :)
To sum your post up: "Life is only worth more than human excrement if you rather selflessly helped poor and needy people."
Come out of your ivory tower and then do something that is "not bad for most people". That's ususally enough to do your part on making the world a better place. You could also invent a new technology out of pure evil greed for money and still be extremely contributing to society, though.
"Private vices, public benefits" is the keyword here. It doesn't matter if you get filthy rich while really actually improving life for everyone. Filthy rich, greedy, grumpy old bastards can be better to society than the most philantrophic people, because we don't just need people to help people, but also money, knowledge and technology.
I'd rather fear those people that claim to do good for all. They usually end up *forcing* all others to do the same.
Yeah, just remember to no use napalm. It ruins the surf.
Yes, certainly. There would be no accidents at all, if the limits were reduced to zero. However, traffic is a tradeoff between safety and speed. Either extreme, still stand or blasting at mach 1 would provide zero results, so the practical value lies in between.
How you define that tradeoff between safety and speed is the central question here, as you trade a rare but disastrous event (accident) versus a very frequent minor inconvenience (going slower than physically possible).
Now if you have an authority setting this trade-off to a speed value S_1, that most of the motorists do not obey, going at a faster speed S_2=S_1+X instead, you have a compelling reason to believe that S_2 is the trade-off point that more closely resembles the motorists own free will. And as driving in traffic always bears a risk, it would be the best to let those bearing that risk decide how much is "just enough".
This certainly doesn't apply to bad weather conditions, surprisingly tight corners and other risks that are not visible to non-local motororists, but straigth, clear, dry and clean sections of road only have a traffic-intrinsic risk that every motorist can assess and adapt to.
Exactly. Rummaging through the userlist on our company's website, I found hundreds of unused accounts, bogus accounts, accounts that somehow use the md5 of "password" and tons of other stuff. Yes, I know, we didn't use salted passwords, I don't know why but we're cleaning up already.
The new authentication is much simpler and incredibly secure from my perspective: use a personal password concatenated to a 6-digit number displayed on a separate keyfob-style authentication token. This number changes every 30 seconds in sync with the server. This way, everyone can select their own personal luser password and still be secure. I'd recommend this for all high-security needs, as it presents pretty good two-factor authentication with no client side requirements other than eyes and a keyboard and no software-based attack vectors. (Compared to smartcard readers, certificates etc.)
The only way to steal login should be social engineering or plain violence.
"There is a lot more computing in this world than what can be found in data centers and offices, young Padawan."
Really, there is. Computers that fly, sail, drive or are employed in low power, low heat, low noise, high vibration, high dust, high heat, low heat environments. Be creative: That starts with laptops in the space shuttle and surely doesn't end with onboard systems of surveillance planes. All Gigabyte-intensive operations where you do not have an unlimited power socket in the wall and/or have other considerations about weight and shock tolerances.
And all of these applications have powers with large checkbooks behind them, who will write off 5000USD as merely half a percent price increase for much better reliability and power consumption.
Override yes, full control no. Let the pilot have a three-way switch that can be set to "full on", "reduced power" (lights, maybe meals but no entertainment) and "all non-critical subsystems off" (20x 1W emergency LED lighting only). And the rest can then be set by the main flight attendant.
This way, the pilot has an quick and easy chance of turning everything off in an emergency and the layer separation between avionics and utilitiy systems is as good as it can be. No hacker and hijacker can then drain the plane's energy supply AND no hacker can interfere with the flight controls.
Simple, reliable one-way connections only. For data transfer we have things like forward error corrections already and the optical one-way interconnect should work extremely well. Use a standard gigabit optical fiber connection with only the sending fiber connected, as the IR-connection is too simply and error prone. Gigabit fiber has enough bandwidth, is electrically isolating and inherently secure. Why don't they use optical connections for the airplane version of the CAN bus anyway?
That and because a certain popular desktop operating system doesn't support more than 3GB of RAM *and* requires regular reboots.
I will hold my breath, really. 120GB is all I need for my main volume, everything else is in network attached storage. That is grid-connected, RAIDed and down in the basement. For a NAS in the basement, I don't really care about individual media reliability, power consumption or noise as long as they are within reasonable eco{nom|log}ical limits. But my notebook, the terminal where I work and have unfinished documents, has to be quiet, light and highly reliable. Backups can get me only so far, as I'll lose some days or hours worth of productivity, a few Euros for a new HDD and maybe a failed presentation at a client. Spinning discs will be on the way out for me the instant a 120GB flash volume of reasonable quality hits below the 500 Euro limit.
:)
Oh and HDDs stored spun-down can fail as well, they'll probably spin up, but hang on clicking at POST. Been there, done that, sorry.
And the storage size argument is not complete: critical data requires a RAIDed setup, thereby "losing" between a third and a half of the installed capacity. If flash based volumes can be as reliable without RAID, they have a 100% advantage versus spinning disks of equal capacity. The economical terabyte of reiable storage as of today requires three 500GB HDDs in a RAID5 setup, meaning 350 Euros for the HDDs, 300 for the enclosure and maybe 100 for the controller. All in all this amounts to 800 Euros and a power consumption I don't like for my SOHO environment. Today, a 64GB SSD volume is 800 Euros as well, so it is 16 times more expensive. Well see how this develops...
Some people reboot or power down their systems once in a while. To save power, to silence their bedroom or because of company policy. Every boot-up is several thousand random disk accesses and that's going to take a while in a mechanical disk with several milliseconds access time. With flash-based media of even low to mid transfer speeds, the boot process is a whole lot faster thanks to read access in the nanoseconds.
And most consumer PCs are running windows versions that do not support more than 3GB of RAM. And the next half-life and whatnot will use all those and more...
The capacity problem will be alleviated in 2-3 years, maybe sooner. 900GB archives will remain on spinning disks in the meantime, but their reliability is less-than-ideal. They can fail on you at any time, no matter how well they were treated, how low the operating shocks were and how low the environment temperatures were - they can collapse on the next boot-up, leaving you to employ expensive data rescue operations or simply write off the data and start from scratch.
Re-read the Google report on hard drive failures sometimes, it clearly proves that more than a third of all HDDs fail without prior SMART errors, meaning complete loss of data without a warning. With no backups, you're hosed. SMART keeps track of more than a dozen variables and is usefull in only two thirds of all cases. Thank you, but I'll flock to flash volumes. They need to track only a two variables concerning wear and failure, namely their total power-on hours and their remapped sector count. The first still is just a statistical indication, but the second provides a proportional measure of how much "juice" is left in it.
This is just begging for the usual real-world comparison: bike parts made from carbon-fiber materials. Many advantages, but the definite danger of a sudden and catastrophic breakdown without a prior warning. It may never happen, but if it happens, you'll go down like Brannigans Law: hard and fast.
Well, if you want a notebook that looks serious enough, try the business lines of Toshiba, HP or any Lenovo Thinkpad. No multicolors, no blinding blue power-on LED that lights up the whole room, but a sturdy construction and sturdy display hinges.
The Lenovo Thinkpads are my favorite, mainly because Toshiba has a totally awkward keyboard layout and the Thinkpads have spill-resistant keyboards and metal rollcages below the plastic. And they're just plain black and everyone loves that color. A black Macbook and a Levono Thinkpad look pretty similar, too, so the nerd-appeal can't be that low.
After all, I'm staying with Windows for the occasional game and LAN event, and the "curb appeal" of this sleek and silent notebook design is not to be taken lightly, I tell you. The graphics chip is not high-end, but there aren't any better GPUs to have without having the noise of a jet engine right before you.
You can officially call me a Lenovo fanboi now.
It surely is an invasion of privacy, and human dignity, by the way. Being watched and videotaped is a passive invasion of privacy and unavoidable from a public standpoint. Being blasted with shocking audio messages from an unclear source and sharply increasing intensity is active invasion of privacy and much much worse.
Imagine someone screaming in your ear when you least expect it. Would you say "Hey, its in public, so go on, hurt my ears"?
I don't think so. I hate advertising as the next guy, but this is certainly a step too far. It frightens, disorients or startles unsuspecting people, it disrupts talking, endangers bikers and motorists and may cause much more mayhem than I can think.
This IS like yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater. If this is ruled as legally acceptable advertising, expect eye-safe lasers and strobos everywhere flashing directly into your eyes.
Oh yes, I remember :) - a friend of mine is that kind of user who installs everything as long as it's free, with all nagware checkboxes undisturbed. I once counted 8 toolbars and a total of 14 browser helper objects. Some of them well hidden until I enabled data execution prevetion on that machine and every single piece of spyware complained...
Google may do all kinds of malicious things, but disclosing your email adress to anyone is not on that list, ever. It would be trivial as you point out to prove that Google sells this kind of information, so it's almost guaranteed it's going to be publicized. And then the public would burn Google at the stake, as slow and painful as possible.
No, I don't think spammers are doing that. First, it's probably been guessed by dictionary attacks. Botnets should have the CPU time they need to exhaust the search space up to a dozen characters. (Remember: email is case insensitive and restricted to standard english alphanumeric characters plus a handful others. This is no NSA-safe keyspace.) And second, they probably obtained a list from somewhere. Some inbox on some PC that was rootkitted or an entry in a not-negative list that some other spammer sold them. (Remember: all adresses that do not bounce are valid mailboxes.)
And then there's the recent GTA installments, that reduced load times with every sequel arriving at zero with GTA San Andreas. Extremely large area to wander about, fly a 747 through it, whatever - no load times. It had minor hiccups when blasting through dense areas with a jet or flying at high altitudes with much of the world visible, but when you were in a regular car (which still is the norm in a Grand Theft *AUTO* sequel), you had no interruptions at all.
If GTA:SA could do it, why could Half-Life not? It really made the world feel real and cohesive that way, much better than for example Postal2 which had terrible load times and portals every couple o' feet.
Free roaming, interactive environment, side stories and exciting "normality" are what made the GTA series so special and it's sad that most other games didn't catch up with that. Loading is obviously unneeded, GTA didn't skimp on dialogues and cutscenes, BTW - just let the player walk or drive uninterrupted through a short but bland road while loading all the data. But don't interrupt the game mechanics, don't do too much cutscenes. Keep the "virtual reality" online at all times and don't blow the fourth wall. No video sequences, no loading bars, no save menu, no quicksave buttons. Some games can do it, so the excuse is unavailable for others...
If that is true what you say, we're screwed, big time. And we are to blame, as we let this happen.
I don't think we're that far down the road, I've personally met and talked to some sane and sober police officers. But it's getting downhill slowly, I must admit.
I hope something happens before that, because when Europe and the USA fail in respect to politics and dictatorships, the world will go dark. Literally. There's only us and then no one else when it comes to progress and civilization. That may sound extremely harsh, but it's gonna take India as the next best candidate some decades or half a century to catch up. If we fail now, our left over homo sapiens sapiens could as well climb up the trees again.
It will be like Rome falling again - it will take humanity some hundred years to recover, if ever. Remember anything important that happened from 200AD to 900AD? Or even remember anything at all? That's why.
I think we need to get up from our asses and do something. The problem is, I don't know what. No one does. Bombs, guns, terrorism is stupid and boneheaded, militia types are insane, religious types are insane and everyone else watches TV.
We'll see what happens. Greetings from Germany, Europe, where even using pepper spray against an assailant can yield prison time.
"'tis better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six" is the old adage concerning this. And I will not bury an intruders body, but lawfully call the police. Obeying the law goes both ways, with the police not breaking into my house at night and me reporting crimes which I witness.
Oh and I will be ready to testify exactly why it was neccessary to more than double-tap the attacker. I was sooooo scared and he still tried to shoot me (or moved like he was) so I just had to hit him right. That wouldn't work in California, but they'll be at the receiving end of the polical correct judges and politicians they elected, so i don't pity them.
Anyway, spending 10k (which I get back when I won the lawsuits) is much much less than being crippled or having to deal with the loss of a loved one. With a gun, you can try to survive, without you can only hope that Bubba has one of his nicer days.
People that have enough cash to buy 30 guns are not your typical gangster, as gangsters either have millions and their hitmen or they barely break even, no matter how much dope they sell. And not even mafia hitmen have 30 pieces of steel lying around, as they discard their weapons and don't hoard much stuff.
Anyway, after your first crime, possession of the remaining 29 guns becomes a crime as well.
I don't really understand what you are trying to say. Do you think, gun ownership and crime involvement is over- or underrated by saying "half the guns" (or even "half the gun owners") are related to committing crimes (and not meaning "protection from crimes" either)?
Google is much less dangerous to your privacy than, say, your employer, the local sheriff or local mobsters that somehow bribed they way to access your ISP. (Or simply hacked into something)
Comparing all network-monitoring, head-cutting dicatorial evil in the world, I think Google is the least concern for the time being.
It is a given that there are 100 million privately owned small arms in the US of A.
(It is actually 192 million, including 65 million handguns, ref. Cook PJ, Ludwig J. Guns in America: Results of a comprehensive national survey on firearms ownership and use. Police Foundation. Washington DC. 1996.)
You assumed that the majority of them used for crime.
A majority is more than 50 percent.
50 percent of 100 or 192 million is 50 or 96 million.
The fact that you can step outside your home without being peppered with lead should make it clear that you're wrong on the majority = crime part.
And I won't try debating with you about the fact that criminals will always have guns, as they always had. And I will not say that short of orbital bombardment there is only one thing to keep YOU safe from millions of enemy guns: billions of guns in the hands of neighbors that are mentally sane, lawful and courageous. (It's actually sufficient to have them sane and friendly.)