So long as I don't have to pay for your tickets whenever I take a train/bus/plane, by all means feel free to follow me around all day taking whatever notes you like. I travel around a lot, but if you're willing to spend a few $$$ to write your magnum opus on how much I scratch my ass, you're more than welcome.
My problem with the police searching my house (or the store rent-a-cop searching my jacket) is the an inconvenience and embarrassment, not the breach of privacy. It's the fact everyone that sees me being searched by the rent-a-cop or the police will assume that, because I am being searched, I must have done something wrong. You following me around all day noting down everything I do makes you look stupid, not me, and thus if you want to do it, go right ahead, I won't stop you.
Warden (and similar anti-cheat programs) doesn't show you up in front of your peers, and it contributes to making the game more enjoyable for it's non-cheating users - if, for example, Valve Anti-Cheat really wants to know my Windows activation key in exchange for letting me play my favourite games without having them spoilt by having some 13-year-old kid gibbering "LOL I PWNZ J00" as he takes everyone out with his shiny new wallhacking aimbot, it can.
You already trusted Blizzard with your CC # and personal information - more than enough for identity theft if they really wanted to. If you value your registry higher than your money or identity, I would put it to you that you have some rather strange priorities.
Wow, you installed Vista in a VM and expect that to be representative of the average Vista user's experience? No offence, but presumably Vista was not coded for running inside virtual environments, and doing so is likely to introduce more bugs than if you were running it on real hardware. Vista has it's problems but running it in a way it wasn't designed to run and then calling foul when it doesn't work correctly doesn't cut any ice with me.
I'll go through your problems one by one:
1) This sounds like an issue to do with running inside a VM, as I've never once experienced this problem or heard of anyone else experiencing similar. You can blame Microsoft for not testing for how Vista behaves under a VM but because this problem doesn't occur on real hardware, I'm more inclined to believe this is a problem with Bootcamp rather than the OS.
2) Again, I cannot say I've ever heard of this occurring, so I'd be inclined to blame this on the VM too.
3) This is a genuine issue. I've had my Vista machine lock up twice in the six weeks I've had it and I've been very close to posting a rant about it myself. Quite how Microsoft have managed to spend the amount of money they have and still have an OS that freezes at random (the only apps that were open both times my machine crashed were MSN Messenger and Word 2007, and you'd expect MS products to play nice with other MS products, at the very least).
4) Smooth for me. It's a sample size of one, I know, but it's all I've got for this one. Perhaps you've allocated too small an amount of RAM to Vista to display it properly - do you have Aero turned on? - the fact that the thing needs 600Mb of memory just to run is rediculous, but is not a bug.
My pet hatred with Vista is the fact that installing a userland app can still render the machine unbootable. Installing the supposedly Vista version of ZoneAlarm Free causes the OS to bluescreen after install, and will thenafter bluescreen on reboot. Even Safe Mode managed to bluescreen itself, presumably because the app interfered with one of the 'safe' drivers. I had to launch System Restore from a recovery CD. I like Vista, I genuinely do (though I'm sure that will get me nailed to a tree around these parts), but there's no way with all it's new supposed security and stability, I should be able to render my machine unbootable and - without outside media - unrecoverable just by installing an application. It's rediculous.
Wow, you installed Vista in a VM and expect that to be representative of the average Vista user's experience? No offence, but presumably Vista was not coded for running inside virtual environments, and doing so is likely to introduce more bugs than if you were running it on real hardware. Vista has it's problems but running it in a way it wasn't designed to run and then calling foul when it doesn't work correctly doesn't cut any ice with me.
I'll go through your problems one by one:
1) This sounds like an issue to do with running inside a VM, as I've never once experienced this problem or heard of anyone else experiencing similar. You can blame Microsoft for not testing for how Vista behaves under a VM but because this problem doesn't occur on real hardware, I'm more inclined to believe this is a problem with Bootcamp rather than the OS.
2) Again, I cannot say I've ever heard of this occurring.
3) This is a genuine issue. I've had my Vista machine lock up twice in the six weeks I've had it and I've been very close to posting a rant about it myself. Quite how Microsoft have managed to spend the amount of money they have and still have an OS that freezes at random (the only apps that were open both times my machine crashed were MSN Messenger and Word 2007, and you'd expect MS products to play nice with other MS products, at the very least).
4) Smooth for me. Perhaps you've allocated too small an amount of RAM to Vista to display it properly - do you have Aero turned on? - the fact that the thing needs 600Mb of memory just to run is rediculous, but is not a bug.
My pet hatred with Vista is the fact that installing a userland app can still render the machine unbootable. Installing the supposedly Vista version of ZoneAlarm Free causes the OS to bluescreen after install, and will thenafter bluescreen on reboot. Even Safe Mode managed to bluescreen itself, presumably because the app interfered with one of the 'safe' drivers. I had to launch System Restore from a recovery CD. I like Vista, I genuinely do (though I'm sure that will get me nailed to a tree around these parts), but there's no way with all it's new supposed security and stability, I should be able to render my machine unbootable and - without outside media - unrecoverable just by installing an application.
'Holocaust' as a word refers to any large-scale extermination of a people, especially by fire. It was not invented to describe the treatment of Jews, Gypsies and others seen as undesirable by Nazi Germany.
For goodness' sake:
There are all sorts of nerds. Look at the list of sections on/. for a good idea of the main types of nerd found in the wild - there are IT nerds (and their sub-nerds, the Linux nerd, the Apple nerd, the Gamer nerd, etc), hardware nerds, science nerds, book nerds, and - shock! horror! - politics nerds. A (near) debate on the possible impeachment of the Vice President of the most powerful country on earth seems pretty important an issue for politics nerds everywhere.
Just because a story doesn't squeeze your particular nerd-gland, doesn't mean others don't want to read it.
Then it would only be a matter of time before some asshole cell provider started making their phones *only* use that special frequency, for all calls, and brand it as "Be Wired for Business... Anywhere!".
You have to be far more focussed to sit down, write out a letter, fold it, put it in an envelope and post it than you do to just bang out an email in a few minutes and fire it off. This leads to the obvious conclusion that most threatening emails received will be profane, angry missives from pissed-off but otherwise perfectly sane people, while most threatening letters will be written by people who are more mentally unbalanced, because they're the ones more likely to write such things with a level head, and not in a rush of blood.
Oh stop it. She was convicted of a serious crime by a jury of her peers, was sentenced in accordance with just laws, and she chose to commit another serious crime by escaping. Argue all you want about the legality or effectiveness of these databases, but you cannot possibly argue with a straight face that this woman is in the right.
I'm British, so it's not counter-terrorism that's taken the chemistry kits off our shelves, it's the health and safety obsession, but the result is the same. With my first chemistry set, I managed to mix the chemicals together in a test tube to produce something that was bright pink, hot to the touch and took a layer of enamel off the sink when I tried to pour it away, and *THAT*'s precisely what got me interested in science in the first place. Alright, my parents weren't too happy at the damage to the bathroom, but it sparked a curiosity in me that's still burning the better part of two decades later (thankfully, the sink isn't - a bit of cold water put it right out).
The chemistry sets of today are boring, and are just going to reinforce the view that too many kids these days have that science is boring - you'd be lucky if you even got some odd-coloured smoke out of the chemistry sets you see on the shelves nowadays.
The 'Do Not Call' list works - to a degree - because people who ignore it run the risk of legal action, due to all being inside the country they're calling. I can't see many companies going to the extent of running offshore telemarketing companies due to the high cost of international calls.
This problem obviously does not exist on the internet - the cost of serving up those banners to millions of people clearly doesn't eat into the profits of these companies, so there's no reason for them to stop, and if laws are passed forcing them to stop, they'll simply be replaced by foreign companies advertising either on behalf of the same companies serving up the ads now, or set up by the advertising companies to circumvent the laws.
Is trivia not information? Are trivia sections that detrimental to Wikipedia's credibility that they must be stamped out wherever they may be found? I really don't think they are, perhaps you could clarify the reasons why you do. (I'm not flaming, merely curious - I've never had a chance to ask a wikipedia admin that question).
As far as I see it, Wikipedia is less an encyclopaedia and more a burgeoning store of all world knowledge. Obviously there has to be a lower limit to the notability or notoriety of a subject before you want to waste the few kb's of storage space on it (a One Childish n00b entry, for example, would be pointless, but an article on the debate over whether trivia sections should or shouldn't be allowed would be worthy of a mention on Wikipedia's Wikipedia page - Ironically, probably in the trivia section), but as far as I see it, eliminating trivia sections is destroying large swathes of interesting facts because it doesn't fit an encyclopaedic style.
The problem that arises from that is you are removing knowledge that people might want to read. Wikipedia is not a valid academic reference and I doubt it ever will be due to the fluid nature of it's contents, so removing interesting trivia tidbits to make articles look more academic or 'encyclopaedia-like' strikes me as taking form over function.
They overcharge for their devices because it is "cool."
See also: Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, etc - turns out, all fashion is a scam!
Truth is, people with a fashionable product can charge what they like for it - you don't have to buy an iPod or buy your music from iTunes, same as you don't have to buy your shoes from a Gucci boutique - you just do if you want the most fashionable mp3 player/music download/footwear.
Apple can and will charge what the market will bear. That's not a scam, that's good business practice when you have the hottest product on the market. If you dont like it, go to Creative, iRiver, etc or get your music from Amazon or some other source. It's not like they're forcing you.
For me, Ubuntu is more stable than Vista. I know the Slashdot crowd will lynch me for this, but I like Vista, once you turn off the worst of the unneccessary shine its a very good, very secure operating system, but it's still not as stable as Ubuntu. Take, for example, my attempts to install ZoneAlarm on Vista:
First off, ZoneLabs state on their site that ZoneAlarm works on Vista. You are offered versions for 98/2000/XP and a version for Vista (or it might be 98/2000 and XP/Vista, I don't remember). I download it and start to install, and stalls at 19% for a good ten minutes. Fair enough, says I, perhaps their installer has a bug. But then, when it gets to 100% and displays the 'Setting up ZoneAlarm' dialog, both times I have tried to install it, the computer has bluescreened at this point and had to be hard restarted. The first time my network connection stopped working (presumably due to a misinstalled or misconfigured driver injected into the system by ZA - it was early and I wanted to just fix it and go to bed), and the second time the system bluescreened and hung again immediately after logging in (again presumably due to some sort of malformed driver early in the startup sequence).
Both times required me to do a system restore to roll back the changes.
Now you can argue that the problem lies with ZoneLabs and their bad coding. Perhaps the problem lies with my hardware (though I can't see how - this computer is fresh out of the box as of about four days ago and everything else is working fine), but whatever it is, Vista should not fail in this way, with bluescreens and crashes on startup. This doesn't happen on Ubuntu, and the worst that happens is I have to kill X and restart it, and that's happened maybe three times in the entire time I've been using Ubuntu - the only time I've had the machine fully lock up was from drastic hardware failure.
Now, my point is, I like Vista, in fact, because of my burgeoning gaming addiction, I'm starting to use it more than my Ubuntu machine, but a modern OS supposedly made with system stability and security in mind should not behave like this - it should fail gracefully or at the very least fail sanely enough for me to be able to resolve the problem without an hour's work. Certainly not within four days of sitting down and activating the damn thing.
There is a difference between information and personal information. Music is not personal information. If I copy a Metallica MP3, there is nothing I can do with that MP3 to harrass, intimidate or noticably affect the life of Lars Ulrich. Not so if I had his passport, drivers licence, etc.
Technically, this post is information. Feel free to reproduce it as many times as you wish, distribute it to your friends, I really don't care. I do care if you have my social security number - see?
Unfortunately, two languages most deserving of being thrown into the dustbin of history, languages whose primary purpose has been to separate one group of people from the rest of the world, will likely survive: Arabic and Hebrew.
So the fact that two disagreeing nations speak different languages now means that those languages were invented to drive a wedge between them? Were French and German invented to piss each other off? All languages 'seperate one group of people' (i.e. the people that speak it) from 'the rest of the world' (i.e. those that can't), by virtue of not being able to understand one another. Also, bringing the Arabic/Jewish problem into it is ludicrous - the people at the crux of the problem (the Israelis and Palestinians) both have a working knowledge of each other's languages, and the issues between them run a lot deeper than differing syntax.
Also, If the very existence of Hebrew scares you, well... mifached. It isn't going away.
Robert Mugabe is too busy driving white Zimbabweans out of his country and driving his people into poverty and starvation through ill-advised forced land re-allocations to do anything to do with helping the Commonwealth. In fact, he's busy trying to blame the UK for the problems he's caused in his own country.
How about, for once, the UN do something about the wrongs of the world, instead of sending nasty letters. Or perhaps the US should spread freedom and democracy to Burma by wading in? You guys need some good PR for your military, and it's a war you might actually win cleanly, with the population on your side.
That's probably the last thing anyone would want, as eventually you'd end up with a jury full of people who have probably never used the internet in their lives, and would even less have an idea of the ease involved in illegally downloading MP3s. These people would buy the spiel of the RIAA that MP3 piracy is closely linked to funding terrorism, paedophilia and the clubbing of baby seals and end up giving some poor bastard the death sentence for downloading a Celine Dion CD.
(Guys, no jokes about how a death sentence for Celine Dion listeners would be putting them out of their misery, please, it's cruel, irrelevant and unneccessary. We all know that just a few years of intensive psychotherapy could see them able to take their place in society, so cut it out, OK?)
I know this is a troll, but this is the sort of crap that you know will end up bandied about by right wing lunatics unless it's shot down wherever it's found by the more clueful members of the population. What's written here will virally be repeated by every armchair Hitler from here to eternity unless someone steps up to the plate and makes the author look like a fool - thankfully, it's not that difficult.
Gee... I wonder when AFRICA and its 'Just like us' niggers will ever get to the moon?
How about making a chip fab plant?
An aeroplane?
A car?
A bicycle?
Anything?
Oh, I forget... the only things blacks are good at is killing each other, and their local wildlife...
Perhaps you'd like to peruse this list before you make any wild claims about Africans not being able to invent anything - warship engines, carbon filaments, communication systems, gas masks, refrigeration systems, the list goes on. Before you claim they were helped by 'white civiization' by being in the United States, how many whites have patented revolutionary inventions in the middle of the Congo? Answers on a postcard, please.
The Congolese savages are right now finishing off the last 700 GORILLAS ON EARTH.
You couldn't be more uninformed if you tried. While there are, admittedly only around 700 mountain gorillas left, you miss out quite spectacularly on a couple of points:
* The Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) is far from the only species of gorilla - the Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei gorilla), Eastern Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) and Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla beringei dielhi) take the total gorilla population up to around 150,000 - still not great, and still needing our utmost attention, but nowhere near as endangered as you make them out to be.
* The biggest threat to the Gorilla population is not humans, it's the Ebola virus, which has decimated Western Lowland Gorilla populations and in fact continues to do so, according to most wildlife and conservation organizations.
* The population of mountain gorillas, according to the World Wildlife Fund, is actually increasing from it's dire state.
But just keep telling us, Jews, "We're all the same, and you MUST allow millions of third world blacks and Mestizo scum to live next door to you, and to get special preferences in everything - jobs, schooling, prison sentences, etc.etc. Free food for the invaders, while the remaining whites have to work our butts off to pay taxes to support these dysgenic parasites.
According to Immigration statistics, the number of African-born citizens in the United States is around 1.1m, and for South American-born citizens it's around 2.4m. Also, would you like to point out evidence of systematic special treatment for minorities in the justice system? Last I heard, even in the states that haven't slapped down affirmative action it hadn't gone so far as to spread to the courts. Also, name me one government organization set up to give minorities 'special treatment' in education - and no, the UNCF doesn't count, as it's not a government body. Keep trying.
Can any liberal asshole show me which part of this is untrue?
Which part? How about three. Jewish Liberal 1, Slashdot troll 0.
It's more the fact the justice system is broken and there are a lot of unfair ways of exploiting poorly-worded laws. It's not tilted deliberately in the direction of the bad or the good, but only bad guys will spend all day looking for the loopholes they can use to sue your ass off.
Yes, um... are we supposed to be pissed off because Windows now has 2 supercomputers up to... Linux/Unix having a combined 449? And a near-90% marketshare where Windows doesnt even have 0.5%?
Either you linked to the wrong chart, or you're the the worst troll ever.
And even if he is the dorkiest guy the GP's ever seen, who cares? He's a dork with a 350Z at 17, I don't think many girls are going to care about his Star Wars figurine collection.
Slashdot Mirror
So long as I don't have to pay for your tickets whenever I take a train/bus/plane, by all means feel free to follow me around all day taking whatever notes you like. I travel around a lot, but if you're willing to spend a few $$$ to write your magnum opus on how much I scratch my ass, you're more than welcome.
My problem with the police searching my house (or the store rent-a-cop searching my jacket) is the an inconvenience and embarrassment, not the breach of privacy. It's the fact everyone that sees me being searched by the rent-a-cop or the police will assume that, because I am being searched, I must have done something wrong. You following me around all day noting down everything I do makes you look stupid, not me, and thus if you want to do it, go right ahead, I won't stop you.
Warden (and similar anti-cheat programs) doesn't show you up in front of your peers, and it contributes to making the game more enjoyable for it's non-cheating users - if, for example, Valve Anti-Cheat really wants to know my Windows activation key in exchange for letting me play my favourite games without having them spoilt by having some 13-year-old kid gibbering "LOL I PWNZ J00" as he takes everyone out with his shiny new wallhacking aimbot, it can.
You already trusted Blizzard with your CC # and personal information - more than enough for identity theft if they really wanted to. If you value your registry higher than your money or identity, I would put it to you that you have some rather strange priorities.
Crap, let's try that again.
Wow, you installed Vista in a VM and expect that to be representative of the average Vista user's experience?
No offence, but presumably Vista was not coded for running inside virtual environments, and doing so is likely to introduce more bugs than if you were running it on real hardware. Vista has it's problems but running it in a way it wasn't designed to run and then calling foul when it doesn't work correctly doesn't cut any ice with me.
I'll go through your problems one by one:
1) This sounds like an issue to do with running inside a VM, as I've never once experienced this problem or heard of anyone else experiencing similar. You can blame Microsoft for not testing for how Vista behaves under a VM but because this problem doesn't occur on real hardware, I'm more inclined to believe this is a problem with Bootcamp rather than the OS.
2) Again, I cannot say I've ever heard of this occurring, so I'd be inclined to blame this on the VM too.
3) This is a genuine issue. I've had my Vista machine lock up twice in the six weeks I've had it and I've been very close to posting a rant about it myself. Quite how Microsoft have managed to spend the amount of money they have and still have an OS that freezes at random (the only apps that were open both times my machine crashed were MSN Messenger and Word 2007, and you'd expect MS products to play nice with other MS products, at the very least).
4) Smooth for me. It's a sample size of one, I know, but it's all I've got for this one. Perhaps you've allocated too small an amount of RAM to Vista to display it properly - do you have Aero turned on? - the fact that the thing needs 600Mb of memory just to run is rediculous, but is not a bug.
My pet hatred with Vista is the fact that installing a userland app can still render the machine unbootable. Installing the supposedly Vista version of ZoneAlarm Free causes the OS to bluescreen after install, and will thenafter bluescreen on reboot. Even Safe Mode managed to bluescreen itself, presumably because the app interfered with one of the 'safe' drivers. I had to launch System Restore from a recovery CD. I like Vista, I genuinely do (though I'm sure that will get me nailed to a tree around these parts), but there's no way with all it's new supposed security and stability, I should be able to render my machine unbootable and - without outside media - unrecoverable just by installing an application. It's rediculous.
Wow, you installed Vista in a VM and expect that to be representative of the average Vista user's experience? No offence, but presumably Vista was not coded for running inside virtual environments, and doing so is likely to introduce more bugs than if you were running it on real hardware. Vista has it's problems but running it in a way it wasn't designed to run and then calling foul when it doesn't work correctly doesn't cut any ice with me. I'll go through your problems one by one: 1) This sounds like an issue to do with running inside a VM, as I've never once experienced this problem or heard of anyone else experiencing similar. You can blame Microsoft for not testing for how Vista behaves under a VM but because this problem doesn't occur on real hardware, I'm more inclined to believe this is a problem with Bootcamp rather than the OS. 2) Again, I cannot say I've ever heard of this occurring. 3) This is a genuine issue. I've had my Vista machine lock up twice in the six weeks I've had it and I've been very close to posting a rant about it myself. Quite how Microsoft have managed to spend the amount of money they have and still have an OS that freezes at random (the only apps that were open both times my machine crashed were MSN Messenger and Word 2007, and you'd expect MS products to play nice with other MS products, at the very least). 4) Smooth for me. Perhaps you've allocated too small an amount of RAM to Vista to display it properly - do you have Aero turned on? - the fact that the thing needs 600Mb of memory just to run is rediculous, but is not a bug. My pet hatred with Vista is the fact that installing a userland app can still render the machine unbootable. Installing the supposedly Vista version of ZoneAlarm Free causes the OS to bluescreen after install, and will thenafter bluescreen on reboot. Even Safe Mode managed to bluescreen itself, presumably because the app interfered with one of the 'safe' drivers. I had to launch System Restore from a recovery CD. I like Vista, I genuinely do (though I'm sure that will get me nailed to a tree around these parts), but there's no way with all it's new supposed security and stability, I should be able to render my machine unbootable and - without outside media - unrecoverable just by installing an application.
'Holocaust' as a word refers to any large-scale extermination of a people, especially by fire. It was not invented to describe the treatment of Jews, Gypsies and others seen as undesirable by Nazi Germany.
For goodness' sake: There are all sorts of nerds. Look at the list of sections on /. for a good idea of the main types of nerd found in the wild - there are IT nerds (and their sub-nerds, the Linux nerd, the Apple nerd, the Gamer nerd, etc), hardware nerds, science nerds, book nerds, and - shock! horror! - politics nerds. A (near) debate on the possible impeachment of the Vice President of the most powerful country on earth seems pretty important an issue for politics nerds everywhere.
Just because a story doesn't squeeze your particular nerd-gland, doesn't mean others don't want to read it.
38? Haha, I love it, on the internet even the imaginary chicks are chunky.
Then it would only be a matter of time before some asshole cell provider started making their phones *only* use that special frequency, for all calls, and brand it as "Be Wired for Business... Anywhere!".
You have to be far more focussed to sit down, write out a letter, fold it, put it in an envelope and post it than you do to just bang out an email in a few minutes and fire it off. This leads to the obvious conclusion that most threatening emails received will be profane, angry missives from pissed-off but otherwise perfectly sane people, while most threatening letters will be written by people who are more mentally unbalanced, because they're the ones more likely to write such things with a level head, and not in a rush of blood.
Oh stop it. She was convicted of a serious crime by a jury of her peers, was sentenced in accordance with just laws, and she chose to commit another serious crime by escaping. Argue all you want about the legality or effectiveness of these databases, but you cannot possibly argue with a straight face that this woman is in the right.
I'm British, so it's not counter-terrorism that's taken the chemistry kits off our shelves, it's the health and safety obsession, but the result is the same. With my first chemistry set, I managed to mix the chemicals together in a test tube to produce something that was bright pink, hot to the touch and took a layer of enamel off the sink when I tried to pour it away, and *THAT*'s precisely what got me interested in science in the first place. Alright, my parents weren't too happy at the damage to the bathroom, but it sparked a curiosity in me that's still burning the better part of two decades later (thankfully, the sink isn't - a bit of cold water put it right out).
The chemistry sets of today are boring, and are just going to reinforce the view that too many kids these days have that science is boring - you'd be lucky if you even got some odd-coloured smoke out of the chemistry sets you see on the shelves nowadays.
The 'Do Not Call' list works - to a degree - because people who ignore it run the risk of legal action, due to all being inside the country they're calling. I can't see many companies going to the extent of running offshore telemarketing companies due to the high cost of international calls.
This problem obviously does not exist on the internet - the cost of serving up those banners to millions of people clearly doesn't eat into the profits of these companies, so there's no reason for them to stop, and if laws are passed forcing them to stop, they'll simply be replaced by foreign companies advertising either on behalf of the same companies serving up the ads now, or set up by the advertising companies to circumvent the laws.
This won't work.
Is trivia not information? Are trivia sections that detrimental to Wikipedia's credibility that they must be stamped out wherever they may be found? I really don't think they are, perhaps you could clarify the reasons why you do. (I'm not flaming, merely curious - I've never had a chance to ask a wikipedia admin that question).
As far as I see it, Wikipedia is less an encyclopaedia and more a burgeoning store of all world knowledge. Obviously there has to be a lower limit to the notability or notoriety of a subject before you want to waste the few kb's of storage space on it (a One Childish n00b entry, for example, would be pointless, but an article on the debate over whether trivia sections should or shouldn't be allowed would be worthy of a mention on Wikipedia's Wikipedia page - Ironically, probably in the trivia section), but as far as I see it, eliminating trivia sections is destroying large swathes of interesting facts because it doesn't fit an encyclopaedic style.
The problem that arises from that is you are removing knowledge that people might want to read. Wikipedia is not a valid academic reference and I doubt it ever will be due to the fluid nature of it's contents, so removing interesting trivia tidbits to make articles look more academic or 'encyclopaedia-like' strikes me as taking form over function.
They overcharge for their devices because it is "cool."
See also: Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, etc - turns out, all fashion is a scam!
Truth is, people with a fashionable product can charge what they like for it - you don't have to buy an iPod or buy your music from iTunes, same as you don't have to buy your shoes from a Gucci boutique - you just do if you want the most fashionable mp3 player/music download/footwear.
Apple can and will charge what the market will bear. That's not a scam, that's good business practice when you have the hottest product on the market. If you dont like it, go to Creative, iRiver, etc or get your music from Amazon or some other source. It's not like they're forcing you.
Fun, easy (if you've got the skills), well paid. Wouldn't you want to make money like that?
Doesn't sound like much of a waste to me.
For me, Ubuntu is more stable than Vista. I know the Slashdot crowd will lynch me for this, but I like Vista, once you turn off the worst of the unneccessary shine its a very good, very secure operating system, but it's still not as stable as Ubuntu. Take, for example, my attempts to install ZoneAlarm on Vista:
First off, ZoneLabs state on their site that ZoneAlarm works on Vista. You are offered versions for 98/2000/XP and a version for Vista (or it might be 98/2000 and XP/Vista, I don't remember). I download it and start to install, and stalls at 19% for a good ten minutes. Fair enough, says I, perhaps their installer has a bug. But then, when it gets to 100% and displays the 'Setting up ZoneAlarm' dialog, both times I have tried to install it, the computer has bluescreened at this point and had to be hard restarted. The first time my network connection stopped working (presumably due to a misinstalled or misconfigured driver injected into the system by ZA - it was early and I wanted to just fix it and go to bed), and the second time the system bluescreened and hung again immediately after logging in (again presumably due to some sort of malformed driver early in the startup sequence).
Both times required me to do a system restore to roll back the changes.
Now you can argue that the problem lies with ZoneLabs and their bad coding. Perhaps the problem lies with my hardware (though I can't see how - this computer is fresh out of the box as of about four days ago and everything else is working fine), but whatever it is, Vista should not fail in this way, with bluescreens and crashes on startup. This doesn't happen on Ubuntu, and the worst that happens is I have to kill X and restart it, and that's happened maybe three times in the entire time I've been using Ubuntu - the only time I've had the machine fully lock up was from drastic hardware failure.
Now, my point is, I like Vista, in fact, because of my burgeoning gaming addiction, I'm starting to use it more than my Ubuntu machine, but a modern OS supposedly made with system stability and security in mind should not behave like this - it should fail gracefully or at the very least fail sanely enough for me to be able to resolve the problem without an hour's work. Certainly not within four days of sitting down and activating the damn thing.
There is a difference between information and personal information. Music is not personal information. If I copy a Metallica MP3, there is nothing I can do with that MP3 to harrass, intimidate or noticably affect the life of Lars Ulrich. Not so if I had his passport, drivers licence, etc.
Technically, this post is information. Feel free to reproduce it as many times as you wish, distribute it to your friends, I really don't care. I do care if you have my social security number - see?
Unfortunately, two languages most deserving of being thrown into the dustbin of history, languages whose primary purpose has been to separate one group of people from the rest of the world, will likely survive: Arabic and Hebrew.
So the fact that two disagreeing nations speak different languages now means that those languages were invented to drive a wedge between them? Were French and German invented to piss each other off? All languages 'seperate one group of people' (i.e. the people that speak it) from 'the rest of the world' (i.e. those that can't), by virtue of not being able to understand one another. Also, bringing the Arabic/Jewish problem into it is ludicrous - the people at the crux of the problem (the Israelis and Palestinians) both have a working knowledge of each other's languages, and the issues between them run a lot deeper than differing syntax.
Also, If the very existence of Hebrew scares you, well... mifached. It isn't going away.
Robert Mugabe is too busy driving white Zimbabweans out of his country and driving his people into poverty and starvation through ill-advised forced land re-allocations to do anything to do with helping the Commonwealth. In fact, he's busy trying to blame the UK for the problems he's caused in his own country.
How about, for once, the UN do something about the wrongs of the world, instead of sending nasty letters. Or perhaps the US should spread freedom and democracy to Burma by wading in? You guys need some good PR for your military, and it's a war you might actually win cleanly, with the population on your side.
That's probably the last thing anyone would want, as eventually you'd end up with a jury full of people who have probably never used the internet in their lives, and would even less have an idea of the ease involved in illegally downloading MP3s. These people would buy the spiel of the RIAA that MP3 piracy is closely linked to funding terrorism, paedophilia and the clubbing of baby seals and end up giving some poor bastard the death sentence for downloading a Celine Dion CD.
(Guys, no jokes about how a death sentence for Celine Dion listeners would be putting them out of their misery, please, it's cruel, irrelevant and unneccessary. We all know that just a few years of intensive psychotherapy could see them able to take their place in society, so cut it out, OK?)
Gee... I wonder when AFRICA and its 'Just like us' niggers will ever get to the moon?
How about making a chip fab plant?
An aeroplane?
A car?
A bicycle?
Anything?
Oh, I forget... the only things blacks are good at is killing each other, and their local wildlife...
Perhaps you'd like to peruse this list before you make any wild claims about Africans not being able to invent anything - warship engines, carbon filaments, communication systems, gas masks, refrigeration systems, the list goes on. Before you claim they were helped by 'white civiization' by being in the United States, how many whites have patented revolutionary inventions in the middle of the Congo? Answers on a postcard, please.
The Congolese savages are right now finishing off the last 700 GORILLAS ON EARTH.
You couldn't be more uninformed if you tried. While there are, admittedly only around 700 mountain gorillas left, you miss out quite spectacularly on a couple of points:
But just keep telling us, Jews, "We're all the same, and you MUST allow millions of third world blacks and Mestizo scum to live next door to you, and to get special preferences in everything - jobs, schooling, prison sentences, etc.etc. Free food for the invaders, while the remaining whites have to work our butts off to pay taxes to support these dysgenic parasites.
According to Immigration statistics, the number of African-born citizens in the United States is around 1.1m, and for South American-born citizens it's around 2.4m. Also, would you like to point out evidence of systematic special treatment for minorities in the justice system? Last I heard, even in the states that haven't slapped down affirmative action it hadn't gone so far as to spread to the courts. Also, name me one government organization set up to give minorities 'special treatment' in education - and no, the UNCF doesn't count, as it's not a government body. Keep trying.
Can any liberal asshole show me which part of this is untrue?
Which part? How about three. Jewish Liberal 1, Slashdot troll 0.
It's more the fact the justice system is broken and there are a lot of unfair ways of exploiting poorly-worded laws. It's not tilted deliberately in the direction of the bad or the good, but only bad guys will spend all day looking for the loopholes they can use to sue your ass off.
Yes, um... are we supposed to be pissed off because Windows now has 2 supercomputers up to... Linux/Unix having a combined 449? And a near-90% marketshare where Windows doesnt even have 0.5%?
Either you linked to the wrong chart, or you're the the worst troll ever.
And even if he is the dorkiest guy the GP's ever seen, who cares? He's a dork with a 350Z at 17, I don't think many girls are going to care about his Star Wars figurine collection.
In that light, how could you blame Iran for wanting to have nukes?
Because Iran doesn't want nukes to make it a 'sovereign nation', it wants nukes to destroy Israel.
Dude, I think I prefer it without...