Sure they have some states that are better, but they also have some crappy states (like Greece, Spain) that are a mere 1-2 Mbit/s.
Wow, wow wow. Just wow. FACT: Parent post is full of SH*T I am Greek and spent 6 years in NY (until 2009). I lived in Brooklyn and in Queens and worked in Manhattan in two locations - Chelsea and Upper West side. In all four locations mentioned, the fastest internet connection you could get was either cable at around $50-$60 for 5Mbps down 384kbps up (useless) or the more decent dsl at 3Mbps down/ 768kbps up for around $40. At the same time, my uncle in a tiny (50 inhabitants) village in a remote Greek island was getting more than 10Mbps DSL at the same price. My friends in Athens (home of almost half the Greek population) could enjoy even lower rates and even higher speeds (up to 24Mbps if you were very lucky, but most were at around 12-15). Also you get a 3G signal almost everywhere (including the subway and islands), and we are talking about real 3G here with downloads starting at 3-4Mbps if you are not at the edge of the signal range (even back in 2009 from when I can make a direct comparison). Compare that to my T-Mobile phone not working at all once I would leave the city, and my Verizon phone giving me (at least until 2009) the "awesomest" sub-Mbps speeds... Yes, Greece is among the crappiest European states when it comes to internet connections and broadband penetration (old people here just don't use PCs), and connection speeds and prices are so much better in most of the rest of Europe. So, imagine how crappy US is when it is even worse than Greece - it almost made me want to cry. Sure, if you are in a few select markets you could get something like OO or FIOS, but for the millions upon millions in NYC that was no consolation. Oh, I remember the last year I was in the US (2009), SpeakEasy DSL became available at our Upper West side location. $160/month (hey it is "business") for DSL2 (for those who don't follow it is the main service I described for Athens - up to 24Mbps, but usually around 12-15 depending your distance from the DSL center).
When I am at home I connect to WiFi as you say every few weeks. However when I travel abroad it is an indispensable tool giving me access to maps, travel info, reservations etc without having to rely - on sometimes very expensive - local access options. I consider my kindle 3G the best purchase I have ever made as it has already more than paid itself. Not to mention that I have been reading much more since I got a Kindle. Although 50MB is enough for the usage I need to get from the browser, congrats to the guys who were taking advantage of Amazon's amazing service and were tethering the device, hence probably ruining it for everyone.
Eh, this is a no-brainer. The Kindle (not Fire, the regular with the e-ink screen) has been the best think that has ever happened to my reading habits. Both me and my wife read a lot. While I don't mind reading the odd pdf on my (portrait-mode) LCD screen, I prefer the actual books since they are both portable and mainly much more relaxing to the eye. My wife cannot read on an LCD for more than an hour or so, so her only choice was books. That is until I bought her a Kindle Keyboard to try out. Well, let's just say that after a couple of weeks I got one for myself as well. While we have built a decent "paper" book library over the years (well over 1000 books), I now prefer to read the ebook versions - easier to carry, as relaxing to read, easier to hold, better night light, built in dictionary. Ok, I cheat a little - if I already own the book I download the kindle version without buying it again, but overall Amazon makes it amazingly easy to buy books instantly no matter where you are in the world. Overall, a tablet seems kind of useless to me for reading books. During the day, it is as tiring as a good monitor. Which for some people like me it is not that tiring, but it never compares to the relaxed reading that an e-ink screen offers you (and then there are people who get quickly tired with any LCD). During the night you would think that the LCD would have an advantage, but to me when the environment is dark that is exactly when the LCD becomes too tiring, probably because my iris is not closed enough due to the ambient darkness. A good light with the Kindle (e.g. the Kandle) is much more relaxing. Then we go to battery power - for a tablet it is measured in hours, for an e-ink reader it is measured in MONTHS (provided you don't leave your wireless on of course), if you can't imagine how important a difference that makes let me assure you it is a huge disadvantage of the tablet. One last thing is that a lot of people don't like the touch interface for their e-reader and that includes devices like Kindle Touch along with Tablets. The reason is that you don't want to accidentally switch a page while you are re-arranging your hold on the device and also it is tiring to do gestures when you do want to switch to the next page. Anyway, if it is not clear I am trying to say that a modern e-ink reader will actually improve your reading experience compared to traditional books making your read more in the end (at least in my and my wife's case), when a tablet is a device that among other things can let your read books, but makes a rather awkward substitute of the traditional book. I talked mostly about Kindle because I usually buy from Amazon anyway, plus I am a huge fan of free worldwide 3G access - but the rest of the points apply to any current e-ink based device. Obviously there are some limitations - pdfs don't work that well, you have to wait for the next generation if you expect color etc. But you asked about reading more. Also I am sure a lot of people will be adamant that e.g. an Apple tablet is as relaxing to read as admiring the landscape in the countryside (I mean - it's like a RETINA screen man, it's made for your eyes by Steve himself), but, yeah, you could try reading a few hours on a Tablet and on an e-ink and judge by yourself.
Yeah, but does it run Li... Oh, wait... Hmm, so, this is a car that runs Linux. I know that if it didn't come with Linux it would be a great thing to run Linux on it and all Slashdot would rejoice etc etc, but is it a good thing now that it comes with Linux already installed? Hopefully it is just for reporting and entertainment, not actually running the car? I mean, when you hit the brakes there is no chance the absd will die because authd exited early or such crap, right?
Hmm, Mountain Lion is $19.99 to upgrade from my Lion installation. And it represents about 1 year of additional development. Other companies would simply call it a "service pack" and give it away for free. Also, other companies give me the choice of being able to use their software on an older OS version if I don't want to pony up an "upgrade" fee every 1-2 years. But not Apple. I was sort of getting used to Leopard when they demanded an upgrade fee ($29 IIRC) for Snow Leopard if I still wanted to run the current Xcode versions. And I started to get used to Snow Leopard, it actually fixed some things (the definition of a Service Pack), but then they extorted another $29 to upgrade me to Lion. And that is when they actually broke a lot of things, it became so hard to use on my 3-monitor workstation, that I re-installed Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro and got a Mac Mini with Lion so that I can keep developing on my workstation and have the Mac Mini running the latest Xcode for debugging on the device. So OS X is not $20. It is closer to $20 per year and in some cases (see above) it can actually cost you more than $1000 so that you can afford not to "upgrade" your main workstation... I can't wait for Apple to "let" (force) me pay to run on my Mac Pro the same OS as my Ipad - woohoo!
So, Google is finally tired of waiting for Bing to catch up (or they just feel so sorry for their miserable attempts at getting a market share) so they will try to screw up their own searches instead to give competitors a chance? Google, how about you try to weed out the useless full of ads pages with fake/copy-pasted content that get top placements in the results instead of trying to be copyright police? With the search result quality decreasing dangerously the last few years, these kinds of algorithm tweaks are the wrong way.
At first I was aghast at how they could implicate Amazon for revealing the last 4 digits of your card, when they appear in every transaction receipt printed etc. However, after reading TFA it is obvious that Amazon has a serious security flaw as well that they need to address as well. It seems that you can call Amazon support knowing only the name, email and billing address of a person and you can add a bogus credit card number to their file. Then you call back and tell them you can't access your account and they will let you add a new email address to reset your password and you use the credit card number you had just added as verification of your identity! True, Amazon showing the last 4 digits of your CCs on your account is not a problem, but giving access to your account to a person armed only with knowledge of your name, address and email is a serious flaw. The summary and even the article don't make it that clear what the problem is with Amazon, you have to read through TFA.
It obviously violates the Slashdot code of conduct. It is not related to bitcoin or raspberry pi, it is not a dupe and has links to multiple articles that have a lot of text per page, requiring very few, if any, "next page" clicks. It might fool some that it has merit to be on slashdot by being a rather lame story that might appeal to people who like getting pissed at reading stories they don't consider "news for nerds", but I am sure you will agree that that alone is not enough.
And it is very "amusing" to recall that the main reason Elop said Nokia had to abandon the (much superior) Maemo/Meego platform is that they could only produce something like 1 phone model per year (they had two actually but he buried the N950). Yeah, we can't really have a winning strategy at Nokia now, can we?
As someone not from the US and not from Russia (from Greece if you are wondering), I should give some insight of what "the world" knows about that stuff - as a bonus my language does not use the latin or cyrillic scripts, so I can make some less biased searches. So, to answer the GP post, no, Chuck Yeager is certainly not known to non-US people, unless they are interested in the history of flight or spaceflight. I guess this makes most/.ers candidates for knowing Chuck Yeager - I did, but very few of my friends would know him. Now, Amelia Earhart has certainly been publicized more (at least outside the US) so she has made it in more general/history books, so it lowers the bar of knowing who she is - you just need to have read some books, so most of my friends know her. Heck, even reading books is not required - my nieces know her from her "Night at the Museum" appearance... Going on to the parent post, Chkalov is about the equivalent status of Chuck Yeager, but this time in Russia. Given the fact that Hollywood has exposed us to so much US culture and yet most people would have not heard of Chuck Yeager (no, The Right Stuff is sadly not well known in most of Europe), it is easy to explain why a handful of people would have heard of Chkalov. On the other hand, Yuri Gagarin is known by virtually every Greek (while you could find a few who would not know of Neil Armstrong or at least the fact that he was not a Jazz musician). But the Cosmonaut thing puts the bar too high I guess, he is not a single pilot. So there is at least one Russian pilot who is also not very well known, but more known than Chkalov (to Greeks at least): Alexey Meresyev. And rightfully so - the guy faught the Luftwaffe, got shot down, dragged himself to friendly territory losing his two legs in the process, then trained non-stop for many months with his prosthetic legs and flew again shooting down even more Germans! I don't think a pilot can top that. Anyway, to sum up, Amelia Earhart should probably be known to every geek around the world. Real geeks would also know more important but less advertised aviators, but if you haven't heard of her it is simply your fault and not a matter of culture. And here is the interesting piece, trying the names in the Greek script on google: Yuri Gagarin: 70200 Neil Armstrong: 30500 Amelia Earhart: 17800 Chuck Yeager: 909 Alexey Meresyev: 6 Valery Chkalov: 1
Off topic, but what is even more surprising (or outrageous depending on how you look at it) is that when the current Nokia CEO took over, he abandoned the (amazing as it turned out on the N9) MeeGo/Maemo for the Windows Phone giving as the reason the fact that their MeeGo dev pipeline was only good for 1 device per year (it was actually 2, but he he decided not to sell the N950).
I don't understand why everyone is so pissed at the Crazy Lady and very few comment on GoDaddy's insane policy! Who in their right mind would host a site on GoDaddy if someone can take down ALL YOUR SITES without warning just by sending GoDaddy a DMCA. Yes, in this case it was at least a valid DMCA, but a malicious person could send a fake one that does seem valid on first sight. The OP did not abuse the DMCA (he could have sent a simple email to the site owners first - but the big companies send DMCAs en masse, why should a person wronged refrain), but GoDaddy is abusing it. Would it be hard to implement a warning, or to remove just the image/page? Or in the end take down just one site? Imagine if you provide the sites for many clients and use GoDaddy to host them. If one of them gets a DMCA, all your clients will be screwed.
No, the universe is not out to get you, you simply can't fit a full keypad on a 15" or smaller laptop keyboard without compromising some other aspect of the keyboard, which would be more detrimental to business users. I don't know where you come from, but no, "business use" rarely comprises of data entry so it is not likely any major resources are being allocated for solving the "problem" you describe. I sort of feel you because I use the numpad a lot, but I don''t think that is the only thing missing of a laptop keyboard, so when I need to do serious work I have to have with me a full regular (and ergonomic in my case) keyboard since I don't think hardware should be slowing me down. Therefore, if you only need a numpad I suggest you get an external one which is less convenient than a fictional 15" laptop with an amazing fold-out full keyboard, but not much more inconvenient than the bulkier 17" laptops which have a numpad (probably not as good as an external) and could be an alternative for you.
Apple is loosing karma by the minute with a lot of experts, for the reasons we all know - but the legend that their hardware is overpriced is simply that: A legend. Within the spec-range they choose to deliver and cater to, they are, in fact, quite a good value. Denying that is just being silly.
Allow me to speak as one of the "silly" people. 3 years ago my company got me a 13" Macbook for $1300 and my wife got a 14" Compaq with similar hardware (both C2D 2.1GHz) for $600. The Macbook was heavier than the larger-screen Compaq, more than twice the price and overall it was a much worse experience than my previous laptops so I returned it in just a couple of months. A bit over a year ago, my company got me a MacPro for 4500Euro (I was now in Europe). It would be over 5500 Euro if I had not bought and installed the 12GB RAM myself. A few months before that I had assembled a 1000Euro PC for myself. It turns out the PC was not only faster but also had USB 3 and eSATA, neither of which were on the MacPro because even though they are definitely useful to connect disk arrays on a professional workstation like the MacPro, Apple just had to wait for something they approve. And, besides, you would always spend more money to get an expensive third party esata card, right? Also the PC was more silent, yeah, if you get the proper hardware (Antec in my case) you can build better than Apple and much cheaper. Then, let's go to the "superdrive". It was so loud (vibrations) and slow that I replaced it with a drive I had around. Why put such a miserable drive on a high end machine? Oh, and the first time I had to do a video-conference I found out that unlike $100 machines, the only microphone jack was at the back of the huge machine and mine actually did not even work! Another yay for the 4500 euro Apple marvel. So don't tell me Apple=expensive is a myth. If my company was not paying I would never spend all that money for a Mac. And the iphone is also way too expensive. It has gotten better of course. Remember that for the first iphone you had to pay an arm and a leg to Apple/AT&T when the hardware specs of the device were a generation behind the Dell PDAs of several years back (If you had an Axim X50/51v back in 2004/2005 you'll know what I am talking about) which were sold under $300 back in THEIR day. At least the 4S has good hardware. The only real exception I see is the iPad. For the first time, with the New iPad (what a brilliant name...) I see Apple going after hardware dominance at a very competitive price, and they made the iPad 2, which was already not really overpriced and with decent hardware, even cheaper. I don't know, perhaps this trend will pass on to Macs as well so in the future perhaps they have top-specs and a competitive price tag? Or is it just an attempt to get all the tablet market share right now?
On the one hand, a, hmm, say, 5 million award to Oracle would seem fair, given the fact that Oracle is such a "nice company" with such a "nice CEO". On the other hand, a huge award that gives Android trouble might finally make some people try out better and completely open alternatives like the MeeGo Harmattan OS that Nokia abandoned and pick that up... Yes, I am daydreaming again.
Pedantic much? They didn't have an argument that made sense or could stand in court. Which is usually what we usually mean when we say "didn't have an argument", sorry to confuse you. Anyway, why don't you simply RTFA? There is a lengthy and satisfying description of the proceedings. I guess the policy you are looking for is "it won’t boot so we won’t repair it" (which is exactly what the flaw that needs to be repaired causes) - a policy similar to the one Yossarian was up against
Because they admitted in court that it would not cost them anything to fix it, nVidia was paying the bill, but they still refused and they didn't even have an argument on why they were refusing. They just wanted to make it hard for their customer. RTFA, the description of how the trial went is comedy gold. I've had enough horror stories with with Apple products around me to not be surprised, it seems that for every iphone they replace no-questions-asked they void the warranty on a few iMacs just to balance it out. Since the average apple customer thinks Apple can do no wrong, these incidents usually don't generate any fuss. Good for the OP!
It was just the US, Canada and Australia that had not signed it originally. Australia later did, so it is just US/Canada the ones that have not ratified Kyoto.
I was just asking....personally, I'm not all the worried about emissions. The problems won't really show up till I'm long gone from this planet....so, as long as I have a good life NOW...I'm happy.
Hmm, it is not sarcasm? Interesting. Well, that is the exact reason the US is not willing to lower emissions, but they don't spell it out like that. I guess you are at least honest. Of course, you want to reap the benefits of civilization without caring about preserving it for future generations, so as far as human society is concerned you are but a foreign body, like, say, a tumor. Of course, you are in company of a large percentage of the population and I certainly cannot claim that it is for the benefit of the universe or some other grand scheme to preserve human civilization. Perhaps it is better if it just ends sooner rather than later;)
You will note that the US has over 5 times the emissions of China and over 10 times the emissions of India per capita. If you think about it it is quite crazy since most products that the US consumes, are manufactured outside the US! And yet the US is not keen on reducing emissions (or ratifying Kyoto). And then comes the Slashdoter from the US who has not RAFA in his life complaining how the other countries don't care about emissions!
Actually this sounds like the equivalent of KERS. I am sure the FTL Ferraris will harness the breaking energy to gain a speed advantage (esp. over cars of lesser teams like the FTL Minardis and FTL Super Aguris) at the long intergalactic straights.
One of the things that screws you over when you're only pretending to be a bank.
Ehh, you got it backwards, Paypal is pretending NOT to be a bank when they are one (they hold customers' funds and they issue lines of credit), to avoid regulation that would prevent them from profiting by screwing their users (most of whom can't help using them due to ebay being a monopoly).
What is peculiar is that if "poor" paypal got a complaint from a bank that there are many charge-backs that are costing them, they would not threaten to cut them off (they would lose more than paypal), but pass the carge-back cost to them and paypal could pass it to their customer. But paypal never does anything logical or good, they usually do whatever boneheaded move is the easiest for them and they think will not hurt their bottom-line, even if it screws some customers. After all, they have the online auction monopoly which guarantees them customers that have no alternative (the definition of anti-trust violation IMHO), so they never care about sounding bad.
Slashdot Mirror
I only let in celebrities - or at least internet celebrities.
Sure they have some states that are better, but they also have some crappy states (like Greece, Spain) that are a mere 1-2 Mbit/s.
Wow, wow wow.
Just wow.
FACT: Parent post is full of SH*T
I am Greek and spent 6 years in NY (until 2009). I lived in Brooklyn and in Queens and worked in Manhattan in two locations - Chelsea and Upper West side. In all four locations mentioned, the fastest internet connection you could get was either cable at around $50-$60 for 5Mbps down 384kbps up (useless) or the more decent dsl at 3Mbps down/ 768kbps up for around $40. At the same time, my uncle in a tiny (50 inhabitants) village in a remote Greek island was getting more than 10Mbps DSL at the same price. My friends in Athens (home of almost half the Greek population) could enjoy even lower rates and even higher speeds (up to 24Mbps if you were very lucky, but most were at around 12-15). Also you get a 3G signal almost everywhere (including the subway and islands), and we are talking about real 3G here with downloads starting at 3-4Mbps if you are not at the edge of the signal range (even back in 2009 from when I can make a direct comparison). Compare that to my T-Mobile phone not working at all once I would leave the city, and my Verizon phone giving me (at least until 2009) the "awesomest" sub-Mbps speeds...
Yes, Greece is among the crappiest European states when it comes to internet connections and broadband penetration (old people here just don't use PCs), and connection speeds and prices are so much better in most of the rest of Europe. So, imagine how crappy US is when it is even worse than Greece - it almost made me want to cry. Sure, if you are in a few select markets you could get something like OO or FIOS, but for the millions upon millions in NYC that was no consolation.
Oh, I remember the last year I was in the US (2009), SpeakEasy DSL became available at our Upper West side location. $160/month (hey it is "business") for DSL2 (for those who don't follow it is the main service I described for Athens - up to 24Mbps, but usually around 12-15 depending your distance from the DSL center).
When I am at home I connect to WiFi as you say every few weeks. However when I travel abroad it is an indispensable tool giving me access to maps, travel info, reservations etc without having to rely - on sometimes very expensive - local access options.
I consider my kindle 3G the best purchase I have ever made as it has already more than paid itself. Not to mention that I have been reading much more since I got a Kindle.
Although 50MB is enough for the usage I need to get from the browser, congrats to the guys who were taking advantage of Amazon's amazing service and were tethering the device, hence probably ruining it for everyone.
Eh, this is a no-brainer. The Kindle (not Fire, the regular with the e-ink screen) has been the best think that has ever happened to my reading habits.
Both me and my wife read a lot. While I don't mind reading the odd pdf on my (portrait-mode) LCD screen, I prefer the actual books since they are both portable and mainly much more relaxing to the eye. My wife cannot read on an LCD for more than an hour or so, so her only choice was books. That is until I bought her a Kindle Keyboard to try out. Well, let's just say that after a couple of weeks I got one for myself as well. While we have built a decent "paper" book library over the years (well over 1000 books), I now prefer to read the ebook versions - easier to carry, as relaxing to read, easier to hold, better night light, built in dictionary. Ok, I cheat a little - if I already own the book I download the kindle version without buying it again, but overall Amazon makes it amazingly easy to buy books instantly no matter where you are in the world.
Overall, a tablet seems kind of useless to me for reading books. During the day, it is as tiring as a good monitor. Which for some people like me it is not that tiring, but it never compares to the relaxed reading that an e-ink screen offers you (and then there are people who get quickly tired with any LCD). During the night you would think that the LCD would have an advantage, but to me when the environment is dark that is exactly when the LCD becomes too tiring, probably because my iris is not closed enough due to the ambient darkness. A good light with the Kindle (e.g. the Kandle) is much more relaxing. Then we go to battery power - for a tablet it is measured in hours, for an e-ink reader it is measured in MONTHS (provided you don't leave your wireless on of course), if you can't imagine how important a difference that makes let me assure you it is a huge disadvantage of the tablet. One last thing is that a lot of people don't like the touch interface for their e-reader and that includes devices like Kindle Touch along with Tablets. The reason is that you don't want to accidentally switch a page while you are re-arranging your hold on the device and also it is tiring to do gestures when you do want to switch to the next page.
Anyway, if it is not clear I am trying to say that a modern e-ink reader will actually improve your reading experience compared to traditional books making your read more in the end (at least in my and my wife's case), when a tablet is a device that among other things can let your read books, but makes a rather awkward substitute of the traditional book. I talked mostly about Kindle because I usually buy from Amazon anyway, plus I am a huge fan of free worldwide 3G access - but the rest of the points apply to any current e-ink based device.
Obviously there are some limitations - pdfs don't work that well, you have to wait for the next generation if you expect color etc. But you asked about reading more.
Also I am sure a lot of people will be adamant that e.g. an Apple tablet is as relaxing to read as admiring the landscape in the countryside (I mean - it's like a RETINA screen man, it's made for your eyes by Steve himself), but, yeah, you could try reading a few hours on a Tablet and on an e-ink and judge by yourself.
Yeah, but does it run Li... Oh, wait...
Hmm, so, this is a car that runs Linux. I know that if it didn't come with Linux it would be a great thing to run Linux on it and all Slashdot would rejoice etc etc, but is it a good thing now that it comes with Linux already installed? Hopefully it is just for reporting and entertainment, not actually running the car? I mean, when you hit the brakes there is no chance the absd will die because authd exited early or such crap, right?
Hmm, Mountain Lion is $19.99 to upgrade from my Lion installation. And it represents about 1 year of additional development. Other companies would simply call it a "service pack" and give it away for free. Also, other companies give me the choice of being able to use their software on an older OS version if I don't want to pony up an "upgrade" fee every 1-2 years.
But not Apple.
I was sort of getting used to Leopard when they demanded an upgrade fee ($29 IIRC) for Snow Leopard if I still wanted to run the current Xcode versions. And I started to get used to Snow Leopard, it actually fixed some things (the definition of a Service Pack), but then they extorted another $29 to upgrade me to Lion. And that is when they actually broke a lot of things, it became so hard to use on my 3-monitor workstation, that I re-installed Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro and got a Mac Mini with Lion so that I can keep developing on my workstation and have the Mac Mini running the latest Xcode for debugging on the device.
So OS X is not $20. It is closer to $20 per year and in some cases (see above) it can actually cost you more than $1000 so that you can afford not to "upgrade" your main workstation... I can't wait for Apple to "let" (force) me pay to run on my Mac Pro the same OS as my Ipad - woohoo!
So, Google is finally tired of waiting for Bing to catch up (or they just feel so sorry for their miserable attempts at getting a market share) so they will try to screw up their own searches instead to give competitors a chance?
Google, how about you try to weed out the useless full of ads pages with fake/copy-pasted content that get top placements in the results instead of trying to be copyright police? With the search result quality decreasing dangerously the last few years, these kinds of algorithm tweaks are the wrong way.
At first I was aghast at how they could implicate Amazon for revealing the last 4 digits of your card, when they appear in every transaction receipt printed etc.
However, after reading TFA it is obvious that Amazon has a serious security flaw as well that they need to address as well. It seems that you can call Amazon support knowing only the name, email and billing address of a person and you can add a bogus credit card number to their file. Then you call back and tell them you can't access your account and they will let you add a new email address to reset your password and you use the credit card number you had just added as verification of your identity!
True, Amazon showing the last 4 digits of your CCs on your account is not a problem, but giving access to your account to a person armed only with knowledge of your name, address and email is a serious flaw.
The summary and even the article don't make it that clear what the problem is with Amazon, you have to read through TFA.
It obviously violates the Slashdot code of conduct.
It is not related to bitcoin or raspberry pi, it is not a dupe and has links to multiple articles that have a lot of text per page, requiring very few, if any, "next page" clicks. It might fool some that it has merit to be on slashdot by being a rather lame story that might appeal to people who like getting pissed at reading stories they don't consider "news for nerds", but I am sure you will agree that that alone is not enough.
And it is very "amusing" to recall that the main reason Elop said Nokia had to abandon the (much superior) Maemo/Meego platform is that they could only produce something like 1 phone model per year (they had two actually but he buried the N950).
Yeah, we can't really have a winning strategy at Nokia now, can we?
Are you sure you won't be just going for their "In Russiam Sovieticus" or "But does it run Federal appeals" jokes?
If it wasn't for model boats they wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big boats... right?
As someone not from the US and not from Russia (from Greece if you are wondering), I should give some insight of what "the world" knows about that stuff - as a bonus my language does not use the latin or cyrillic scripts, so I can make some less biased searches. /.ers candidates for knowing Chuck Yeager - I did, but very few of my friends would know him. Now, Amelia Earhart has certainly been publicized more (at least outside the US) so she has made it in more general/history books, so it lowers the bar of knowing who she is - you just need to have read some books, so most of my friends know her. Heck, even reading books is not required - my nieces know her from her "Night at the Museum" appearance...
So, to answer the GP post, no, Chuck Yeager is certainly not known to non-US people, unless they are interested in the history of flight or spaceflight. I guess this makes most
Going on to the parent post, Chkalov is about the equivalent status of Chuck Yeager, but this time in Russia. Given the fact that Hollywood has exposed us to so much US culture and yet most people would have not heard of Chuck Yeager (no, The Right Stuff is sadly not well known in most of Europe), it is easy to explain why a handful of people would have heard of Chkalov. On the other hand, Yuri Gagarin is known by virtually every Greek (while you could find a few who would not know of Neil Armstrong or at least the fact that he was not a Jazz musician). But the Cosmonaut thing puts the bar too high I guess, he is not a single pilot. So there is at least one Russian pilot who is also not very well known, but more known than Chkalov (to Greeks at least): Alexey Meresyev. And rightfully so - the guy faught the Luftwaffe, got shot down, dragged himself to friendly territory losing his two legs in the process, then trained non-stop for many months with his prosthetic legs and flew again shooting down even more Germans! I don't think a pilot can top that.
Anyway, to sum up, Amelia Earhart should probably be known to every geek around the world. Real geeks would also know more important but less advertised aviators, but if you haven't heard of her it is simply your fault and not a matter of culture.
And here is the interesting piece, trying the names in the Greek script on google:
Yuri Gagarin: 70200
Neil Armstrong: 30500
Amelia Earhart: 17800
Chuck Yeager: 909
Alexey Meresyev: 6
Valery Chkalov: 1
Off topic, but what is even more surprising (or outrageous depending on how you look at it) is that when the current Nokia CEO took over, he abandoned the (amazing as it turned out on the N9) MeeGo/Maemo for the Windows Phone giving as the reason the fact that their MeeGo dev pipeline was only good for 1 device per year (it was actually 2, but he he decided not to sell the N950).
I don't understand why everyone is so pissed at the Crazy Lady and very few comment on GoDaddy's insane policy!
Who in their right mind would host a site on GoDaddy if someone can take down ALL YOUR SITES without warning just by sending GoDaddy a DMCA. Yes, in this case it was at least a valid DMCA, but a malicious person could send a fake one that does seem valid on first sight.
The OP did not abuse the DMCA (he could have sent a simple email to the site owners first - but the big companies send DMCAs en masse, why should a person wronged refrain), but GoDaddy is abusing it. Would it be hard to implement a warning, or to remove just the image/page? Or in the end take down just one site?
Imagine if you provide the sites for many clients and use GoDaddy to host them. If one of them gets a DMCA, all your clients will be screwed.
That's right!
If they were serious they would certainly start by having some whalers on the moon!
No, the universe is not out to get you, you simply can't fit a full keypad on a 15" or smaller laptop keyboard without compromising some other aspect of the keyboard, which would be more detrimental to business users.
I don't know where you come from, but no, "business use" rarely comprises of data entry so it is not likely any major resources are being allocated for solving the "problem" you describe.
I sort of feel you because I use the numpad a lot, but I don''t think that is the only thing missing of a laptop keyboard, so when I need to do serious work I have to have with me a full regular (and ergonomic in my case) keyboard since I don't think hardware should be slowing me down. Therefore, if you only need a numpad I suggest you get an external one which is less convenient than a fictional 15" laptop with an amazing fold-out full keyboard, but not much more inconvenient than the bulkier 17" laptops which have a numpad (probably not as good as an external) and could be an alternative for you.
Apple is loosing karma by the minute with a lot of experts, for the reasons we all know - but the legend that their hardware is overpriced is simply that: A legend. Within the spec-range they choose to deliver and cater to, they are, in fact, quite a good value. Denying that is just being silly.
Allow me to speak as one of the "silly" people.
3 years ago my company got me a 13" Macbook for $1300 and my wife got a 14" Compaq with similar hardware (both C2D 2.1GHz) for $600. The Macbook was heavier than the larger-screen Compaq, more than twice the price and overall it was a much worse experience than my previous laptops so I returned it in just a couple of months.
A bit over a year ago, my company got me a MacPro for 4500Euro (I was now in Europe). It would be over 5500 Euro if I had not bought and installed the 12GB RAM myself. A few months before that I had assembled a 1000Euro PC for myself. It turns out the PC was not only faster but also had USB 3 and eSATA, neither of which were on the MacPro because even though they are definitely useful to connect disk arrays on a professional workstation like the MacPro, Apple just had to wait for something they approve. And, besides, you would always spend more money to get an expensive third party esata card, right? Also the PC was more silent, yeah, if you get the proper hardware (Antec in my case) you can build better than Apple and much cheaper. Then, let's go to the "superdrive". It was so loud (vibrations) and slow that I replaced it with a drive I had around. Why put such a miserable drive on a high end machine? Oh, and the first time I had to do a video-conference I found out that unlike $100 machines, the only microphone jack was at the back of the huge machine and mine actually did not even work! Another yay for the 4500 euro Apple marvel.
So don't tell me Apple=expensive is a myth. If my company was not paying I would never spend all that money for a Mac. And the iphone is also way too expensive. It has gotten better of course. Remember that for the first iphone you had to pay an arm and a leg to Apple/AT&T when the hardware specs of the device were a generation behind the Dell PDAs of several years back (If you had an Axim X50/51v back in 2004/2005 you'll know what I am talking about) which were sold under $300 back in THEIR day. At least the 4S has good hardware.
The only real exception I see is the iPad. For the first time, with the New iPad (what a brilliant name...) I see Apple going after hardware dominance at a very competitive price, and they made the iPad 2, which was already not really overpriced and with decent hardware, even cheaper. I don't know, perhaps this trend will pass on to Macs as well so in the future perhaps they have top-specs and a competitive price tag? Or is it just an attempt to get all the tablet market share right now?
On the one hand, a, hmm, say, 5 million award to Oracle would seem fair, given the fact that Oracle is such a "nice company" with such a "nice CEO".
On the other hand, a huge award that gives Android trouble might finally make some people try out better and completely open alternatives like the MeeGo Harmattan OS that Nokia abandoned and pick that up...
Yes, I am daydreaming again.
Pedantic much?
They didn't have an argument that made sense or could stand in court. Which is usually what we usually mean when we say "didn't have an argument", sorry to confuse you.
Anyway, why don't you simply RTFA? There is a lengthy and satisfying description of the proceedings. I guess the policy you are looking for is "it won’t boot so we won’t repair it" (which is exactly what the flaw that needs to be repaired causes) - a policy similar to the one Yossarian was up against
Because they admitted in court that it would not cost them anything to fix it, nVidia was paying the bill, but they still refused and they didn't even have an argument on why they were refusing. They just wanted to make it hard for their customer. RTFA, the description of how the trial went is comedy gold.
I've had enough horror stories with with Apple products around me to not be surprised, it seems that for every iphone they replace no-questions-asked they void the warranty on a few iMacs just to balance it out. Since the average apple customer thinks Apple can do no wrong, these incidents usually don't generate any fuss.
Good for the OP!
It was just the US, Canada and Australia that had not signed it originally. Australia later did, so it is just US/Canada the ones that have not ratified Kyoto.
I was just asking....personally, I'm not all the worried about emissions. The problems won't really show up till I'm long gone from this planet....so, as long as I have a good life NOW...I'm happy.
Hmm, it is not sarcasm? Interesting. Well, that is the exact reason the US is not willing to lower emissions, but they don't spell it out like that. I guess you are at least honest. Of course, you want to reap the benefits of civilization without caring about preserving it for future generations, so as far as human society is concerned you are but a foreign body, like, say, a tumor. Of course, you are in company of a large percentage of the population and I certainly cannot claim that it is for the benefit of the universe or some other grand scheme to preserve human civilization. Perhaps it is better if it just ends sooner rather than later ;)
For just CO2 emissions for example look here: http://www.mnp.nl/images/Top20-CO2andGHG-countries-in2006-2005(GB)_tcm61-36276.xls
For total green house gas emissions an example source: http://pdf.wri.org/navigating_numbers_chapter4.pdf
You will note that the US has over 5 times the emissions of China and over 10 times the emissions of India per capita. If you think about it it is quite crazy since most products that the US consumes, are manufactured outside the US! And yet the US is not keen on reducing emissions (or ratifying Kyoto).
And then comes the Slashdoter from the US who has not RAFA in his life complaining how the other countries don't care about emissions!
Actually this sounds like the equivalent of KERS. I am sure the FTL Ferraris will harness the breaking energy to gain a speed advantage (esp. over cars of lesser teams like the FTL Minardis and FTL Super Aguris) at the long intergalactic straights.
One of the things that screws you over when you're only pretending to be a bank.
Ehh, you got it backwards, Paypal is pretending NOT to be a bank when they are one (they hold customers' funds and they issue lines of credit), to avoid regulation that would prevent them from profiting by screwing their users (most of whom can't help using them due to ebay being a monopoly).
What is peculiar is that if "poor" paypal got a complaint from a bank that there are many charge-backs that are costing them, they would not threaten to cut them off (they would lose more than paypal), but pass the carge-back cost to them and paypal could pass it to their customer. But paypal never does anything logical or good, they usually do whatever boneheaded move is the easiest for them and they think will not hurt their bottom-line, even if it screws some customers. After all, they have the online auction monopoly which guarantees them customers that have no alternative (the definition of anti-trust violation IMHO), so they never care about sounding bad.