I am afraid you folks down south of the border (I am Canadian) have been reduced to having an illusion of democracy and your Constitutional Rights. I know the average American supports the Constitution and believes implicitly in the American system of government etc. Its a great system overall, but I think its been abused for the past 50 years or so - at least by the Republicans when in power. You don't have a right to privacy, you don't have the right of free speech, you don't have the right to avoid unlawful search and seizure - all those things have been stripped away systematically by succeeding US presidencies. These things have been done in the name of "National Security", but really they are in large part a way for the party in power to stay in power, and for the Republicans to keep control over US society and its laws. I hope something is done to rectify this, perhaps Obama can manage it, but I highly doubt much will change. Good luck getting your country back!
Sadly, under Prime Minister Harper, my country is heading the same way. We have a prime minister who is willing to prorogue Parliament whenever there is the possibility that he might be challenged over his cavalier actions. He has done so twice so far and I see no signs he is likely to stop until he is unelected. Sadly the opposition parties can't find their asses with both hands at the moment, so the whole country suffers.
This is more like going into a public library and writing down a list of all the books they have by title, ISBN, placement on the shelves, publisher etc, and then relating that information to show connections between the books. Its all publicly available information and anyone can walk in and look at it, write it down etc.
The difference here is that Facebook is providing its services free to the public so that THEY can go grab all this information and turn it into a dataset they can sell to corporations that want access to our private information. Its just that Facebook's developers have been too stupid to prevent someone from being able to do so, and remiss in not updating their robots.txt (not that a robots.txt file has much effective force).
What is to prevent them from merely listing the reason as "inadequate performance" or some other description? When you have a job, your employer has you by the short and curlies and can more or less dictate whatever the fuck they want - in one way or another - if you want to keep the job. Its not fair or right in any sense, but it is Capitalism in action. Only in cases of outright discrimination, or where the employer has been remarkably stupid, do you end up with any legal recourse if they violated the law. Any smart employer can fire you for any reason they want while saying its for some other reason I am sure.
The solution is not to work for an employer who is that fucked up if at all possible.
Another factor is the quality of reporting. The average user is less seemingly less inclined towards quality and will take anything they read at face value. They are also less discerning. I don't think the bulk of readers want honest to god reporting with research to back it up - they just want to see the funny kitty spin on cuteoverload.com, or youtube.
Take a look at CNN's website - they are changing it to show whats most popular, and hide much of the serious news reporting deeper in the site. Articles on CNN often seem to have been rattled off rather quickly, often with typos etc. The focus seems more on getting viewer attention now than on relating anything newsworthy, although admittedly they do at least cover major issues somewhat.
The Guardian is definitely my paper of choice, even though I am in Canada and not the UK. Their website is terrific generally, but I am not sure they can keep up the quality. All that journalistic integrity has got to cost them a lot of money - and the audience who is willing to pay for that is dwindling with each generation.
The problem with most "news" on the web is that a lot of it not backed by solid painstaking research, its rattled off as quickly as possible and a lot more of it is editorialized rather than objective reporting. The same thing is happening with TV news, so much of it is now involving the anchors commenting on the stories and presented in a slanted manner. I can't believe that something like FOX is even on the air, let alone has a viewership.
Plus we are seeing more "from the blogs" type stuff everywhere and I am sorry but the average blog offers opinions, not researched articles. Most barely qualifies as anything remotely resembling journalism. Most of it is editorials intended to reflect a viewpoint. Its not journalism as we knew it - but I think thats going to be a thing of the past in a decade. We won't get news - we will get media-shaped targetted editorials intended to affect our political views, voting habits, and consumer purchasing - we will just think its the news.
Well said, as a fellow Canadian I agree with your comments. Its sad to see Harper abuse the rights of the PMO so greatly - and continue to get away with it. I am ashamed of my fellow Canadians every time I think about the fact that he and the "Conservatives" got elected to government. I can only hope that sanity returns to our political state at some point soon. Sadly none of the other parties are offering us anyone who seems to have enough personality to get the public's support. Personally I wouldn't buy a used car from Harper:P
And Timmy's coffee is actually rather good at times, although I suspect its the cream they use not the coffee:)
Because in the US the Insurance and Drug companies have been running an extremely popular scam, err system for many years and I don't think anyone expects them to change. Essentially I think things work well everywhere else because people expect them to work more or less, and get outraged when they fail. Things get fixed as a result. In the US everyone seems to think this system is nothing more than a way to fleece every citizen for no benefit, so I expect their participation will tend to be focused on how to get their piece of the pie, rather than how to make it work. People are talking about how they can get insurance only when they get ill, then stop paying when they are better etc in the threads above. In otherwords, fuck everyone else, gimme my shit for free - you can pay for it.
The other thing that gets me is how people are talking about paying $400 per month for insurance and treating that as a good deal. I pay about $90/mo up here in Canada, and that's likely a bit high. Someone on welfare pays nothing, and it scales up based on your income. If I was told I had to pay $400 for health insurance, you can be sure that I would be looking into emmigrating to a sane country immediately.
If its costing that much for health care per month, then your health care system and insurance system are riddled with criminals and that's where you need to start your reforms.
However, I think that most Americans seem to be arguing that their system is the best *because of the quality* and most people who have been exposed to a universal health-care system like we have up here in Canada, are arguing *because its affordable*.
I have no doubt that the quality of treatment available in the US is absolutely top notch. No doubt whatsoever. I am also equally convinced that from the point of view of how paying for that treatment affects the average individual, the universal socialized systems are generally superior. Not always superior for everyone, but in general superior. I don't think that there can be much argument there to be honest.
Cases in point: * My wife's friends down in Phoenix, who could only afford health insurance for *him*, his wife had to make do without. They lived their lives hoping that she didn't get seriously ill. As it stood, it was costing them hundreds of dollars a month for their insurance (this was a decade or two ago mind you, things might be better now, I don't really know).
* A good friend who was diagnosed as having a brain tumour up here in Canada. Within a week he was in the hospital, had the tumour removed by a top notch surgeon, and was out of the hospital a week or two after that. The surgery was completely successful I am pleased to say. Total cost: nothing whatsoever beyond whatever he pays for his health-care insurance (likely around $60 a month, but the amount is based on your income so it might be less than that). * My mother, who was treated for lung cancer over a year long period. She received multiple chemotherapy treatments, was hospitalized a few times etc. She did die sadly, but the total cost to her estate was $50 for the trip to the hospital for pallative care. No other costs were incurred. * I have never had to pay a single dollar more than my regular health-care cost based on my income. I am 50 years old. Everything is covered, except sadly dental work. Ten years of that was admittedly covered by the military when I was a member, but the rest has been covered by the regular health-care system. * I don't know *ANYONE* who has had to pay a huge bill for treatment or surgery (actually I don't know anyone who has had to pay extra period), don't know anyone who has not been covered for any treatment they needed, don't know anyone who has gone broke as a result of a major medical problem, don't know anyone who has been stuck on a waiting list who suffered as a result, etc.
While I have no doubt that someone in the US who has good insurance is effectively covered and gets the treatment they need etc, there is apparently a huge percentage of the US population who have no insurance coverage - I believe an article I read on CNN stated something like 35m to 55m but I can't recall. That is absolutely insane to be honest. I personally have to consider anyone who argues that the current US system works and is superior to a more socialized system is honestly so selfish and ignorant that they could be considered truly evil.
I can understand that many of you have such a strong desire to ensure you never do anything for a fellow citizen that you would rather they die than help them out financially by say, paying some taxes that spread the burden out, but I can't understand it *at all*.
What was Lenin or Stalin's quote: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we hang them"? or something to that effect.
Looks like its happening in an economic sense. I fully expect that China will eclipse the US as the most influential superpower in the world, sometime in the next decade or two. They seem to have the initiative, the resources and the willingness.
Thanks for the interesting explanation. Unfortunately for China, in the West we see the People's Republic of China as invaders who are viciously oppressing the people of Tibet against their will. I imagine none of us give Mongolia a second's thought mind you. The differing attitudes between whats accepted as the truth in the PRC, and what we see as the truth in the west is going to continue to cause friction in cases like this. The same thing is true with regards to Taiwan. I think that the US and the PRC will come to a conflict over Taiwan at some point in the future in fact. The PRC is certainly preparing for it.
90 Years worth of energy for the nation with the largest population in the world seems like sufficient cause for China to claim that Tibet is part of China and always has been etc, despite the fact that it has been independant for much of its history (although its also been occupied by one power or another for much of the rest of that history of course).
If Tibet had its independence this would be a terrific resource for the country to take advantage of in modernizing itself. As it stands I am sure it will be used for Chinese benefit and not Tibetan.
there will always be organizations who are too large to easily upgrade anything, even something as simple as a browser version, without it cost a ton of money. If you are well prepared and organized I am sure its not that bad, just time consuming, but for many companies, IT sucks hind tit and doesn't get the money, personnel or resources it needs to do something like a system wide upgrade - they exist on the bare minimum required to operate.
And there will always be users who buy a computer and treat it like a toaster - it does what they want until it doesn't. Then they are fucked because they don't even know that you can upgrade, let alone how. Never underestimate how little the average computer user actually knows about their computer. The/. crowd find that hard to believe, but for the average person configuring their PC *is* like rocket science (yeah I know some of you out there are rocket scientists, pick a different metaphor), and they have no idea how or where to start.
Yeah, one of the more disappointing aspects of them canning the series was the fact that some story lines didn't get completely evolved, and Book was a great character.
I really don't know why shows like this do get canceled, when there is such utter derivative crap on TV - actually come to think of it almost everything I see on TV these days is utter derivative low-budget crap...
When they added all those other channels, the amount of money available for TV show production remained a constant I guess, so now instead of a few channels producing shows worth watching, we have hundreds of channels each producing piles of steaming shit for the masses on almost no budget.
That game was very seriously amazing. I too spent many hours attempting to keep the world from crumbling and avoid the advance of the Communist Peril. One of the first highly addictive PC games I can recall. I think Wolfenstein and later Doom were the next ones that got me and my wife thoroughly addicted (although she wasn't into BOP).
What I liked about it the most was that it was extremely challenging, and detailed.
Oh the PC World is definitely more flexible without a doubt. I was addressing the folks who keep arguing that they can buy a Macbook Pro for $1700 or they can get a Asus laptop for $450 and insisting the two are somehow comparable and that therefore the Mac is overpriced and anyone who buys one must be an idiot etc. There are a lot of people who can't see past the "but it doesn't run Windows" aspect of the discussion. Yes, with a PC you can get tons of different options and complete control over the configuration of your system etc. Then you can load MS Windows on it if you want (and if you want to play PC games), or more sensibly IMHO some variety of *nix (if you want an arguably better OS, again IMHO). But if what you want is a Mac, at least now that won't prevent you from playing as many game titles as it has in the past and it might start a trend, that was my real point. Kudos to Valve.
Now if you do want a really high end system you can buy a Mac for that as well but the price can get really prohibitive and I am sure only those who are making money off their system even consider it for a second. You can get a Mac Pro with Quad-core starting at $2499, or 8-core starting at $3299 according to the Apple site. The prices climb from there. I am sure the end result will be pretty stunning though.
Just playing with their online systemconfiguration app (and buying most of the top end features mind you) I think the high end system you might get would be something like this:
* Two 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon * 32GB (8x4GB) * Mac Pro RAID Card * 4 x 2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s * 4x NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB * One 18x SuperDrive * 2 x Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel) * Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) and User's Guide * AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi Card with 802.11n * AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro - Auto-enroll For a grand total of $16,646.00 before taxes. Of course, the first thing you do is go buy a decent mouse from Logitech IMHO:P
Now I realize thats not doing the "Macs are too expensive" side of the argument much of a favour, but what would that cost as a PC, recognizing its also got to be in a very high end case and top quality components everywhere?
The biggest objections to Apple's computers over the last few years have been a) The cost and b) no games available.
The cost issue has become pretty meaningless to anyone who is willing to compare oranges to oranges: the cost of a Mac laptop or desktop with X features is pretty comparable to a Windows laptop or desktop with the same feature set, its just that usually the PC side has lower features by default and you can buy the components to raise the level of functionality, whereas Apple doesn't operate in the low end of the computer spectrum and even their base systems have great features and very high quality.
With this change by Valve it will hopefully signify changes in the attitude of the rest of the games industry and Mac support will grow to the point that its treated as well as Microsoft's products with regards to gaming. I am perfectly content with my iMac 20" desktop for the gaming I am doing, and I would love to play more games under OS/X rather than dualbooting to XP.
Lastly, if the Mac gains in acceptance, perhaps Linux will follow down the road. Having implemented all of this stuff for OS/X it can't be as far a stretch to include Linux as it was to make the original jump from Windows to OS/X (being a kind of unix after all)?
From the article: "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Portal 2 lead developer Josh Weier. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
The article also mentions that Portal2 will be a day 1 release for the Mac alongside the PC.
Yeah they mention a possible implementation of this in producing laptop batteries. I for one am not all that happy with contemplating using a laptop whose battery reaches 3000 Kelvin:P
Londoners should feel right at home here in Victoria, BC then. Apparently we get 142 days of rain a year, with 608mm of rain. However we have an average of 2183 hours of sunshine each year, and we average only 2-5 days with at least 5cm of snow on the ground.
Mind you, our weather is far better than Vancouver's, they manage 170 days of rain apparently.:P
My wife and I read about a book every few days, sometimes every other day. We buy pocketbook versions of books we know we will reread and hardcovers of books we know we will want to reference and which will be hard to find otherwise. I think we have around 1500 books in our apartment.
We go the library every few days. We take out fiction, non-fiction, and a lot of DVDs. The local library system allows us to search for books and place holds online, they ship the books to whatever branch we want etc.
I see DRM and E-Books as a bid by the Publishing industry to try to produce books they can sell, that appeal to their customers because of convenience, and which will eventually kill off the library system entirely due to their DRM. A lot of publishers seem to view libraries as the next thing to criminal because they hurt book sales.
Yes, its essentially a universal writing system for all Chinese speakers from what I understand. There is the caveat that there was an old system for writing that was traditional, and there is now a newer simplified system that requires less symobols etc. From what I understand not everyone knows the old system, so some things that are older may be somewhat unreadable to modern readers. "Chinese" actually comprises 5 language groups I believe (Mandarin, Cantonese, Han, Wu and something else), and well over 1 million dialects, but a newspaper printed anywhere in mainland China can be read anywhere in mainland China regardless of what languages the reader speaks. Its an incredible feature generally speaking, and I presume has contributed to the overall cohesiveness of the Chinese people throughout history. It does suffer from the fact that to use it you need to memorize thousands of written symbols, rather than just our 26 for the English alphabet. I believe I recall reading that by the time a student is in grade 7, they have memorized around 10,000 Chinese characters. I know its possible to type in Chinese but I have no idea how its possible to be honest. Grammar should not be a real obstacle as all Chinese languages have a very simplified grammar from what I understand
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it?:)
And the poor customers are stuck with the choice of either paying 200% higher costs, or having to spend time and energy travelling to the nearest village that doesn't charge outrageous prices (assuming they aren't all controlled by an armed Flour Cartel, or the industry is a monopoly). In the end the customer suffers. It may be Capitalism at its best but its also totally amoral in my opinion. I'll take government price regulation in industries that are providing essential materials (i.e. necessary food items) any day.
Look at the cable TV industry here in Victoria BC. There was a system where we had competition between Rogers and Shaw Cable. Rogers and Shaw reached an agreement and divided up western Canadian cities so that they each controlled certain cities and there was no competition. The price stabilized at about $20/mo for basic cable services. The Government stepped in and added the ability for other companies to participate in the market, but the barrier to entry costs are quite considerable, so few can afford to compete. However, Telus (a phone company) started offering cable TV services via their infrastructure. The cost was about the same initially, but now that Digital TV is the only option, the price has almost doubled (about $35) for the same service. Telus didn't lower there prices to compete, they merely matched the going rate, then everyone raised their rates with the switch to digital. The only person to lose out is the customer, again. Competition didn't actually work at all there. I am on Telus at the moment (and the service is lousy by the way, and in order to get any channels worth watching it costs about $65/mo, but that can easily ramp up. If you bundle your internet and phone with your TV signal, their top end package is $185/mo). I just don't buy the Randian "the free market is always right and always works" concept at all. There are too many examples where it doesn't seem to work for me at all.
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I am afraid you folks down south of the border (I am Canadian) have been reduced to having an illusion of democracy and your Constitutional Rights. I know the average American supports the Constitution and believes implicitly in the American system of government etc. Its a great system overall, but I think its been abused for the past 50 years or so - at least by the Republicans when in power. You don't have a right to privacy, you don't have the right of free speech, you don't have the right to avoid unlawful search and seizure - all those things have been stripped away systematically by succeeding US presidencies. These things have been done in the name of "National Security", but really they are in large part a way for the party in power to stay in power, and for the Republicans to keep control over US society and its laws. I hope something is done to rectify this, perhaps Obama can manage it, but I highly doubt much will change.
Good luck getting your country back!
Sadly, under Prime Minister Harper, my country is heading the same way. We have a prime minister who is willing to prorogue Parliament whenever there is the possibility that he might be challenged over his cavalier actions. He has done so twice so far and I see no signs he is likely to stop until he is unelected. Sadly the opposition parties can't find their asses with both hands at the moment, so the whole country suffers.
This is more like going into a public library and writing down a list of all the books they have by title, ISBN, placement on the shelves, publisher etc, and then relating that information to show connections between the books. Its all publicly available information and anyone can walk in and look at it, write it down etc.
The difference here is that Facebook is providing its services free to the public so that THEY can go grab all this information and turn it into a dataset they can sell to corporations that want access to our private information. Its just that Facebook's developers have been too stupid to prevent someone from being able to do so, and remiss in not updating their robots.txt (not that a robots.txt file has much effective force).
What is to prevent them from merely listing the reason as "inadequate performance" or some other description?
When you have a job, your employer has you by the short and curlies and can more or less dictate whatever the fuck they want - in one way or another - if you want to keep the job. Its not fair or right in any sense, but it is Capitalism in action. Only in cases of outright discrimination, or where the employer has been remarkably stupid, do you end up with any legal recourse if they violated the law. Any smart employer can fire you for any reason they want while saying its for some other reason I am sure.
The solution is not to work for an employer who is that fucked up if at all possible.
Another factor is the quality of reporting. The average user is less seemingly less inclined towards quality and will take anything they read at face value. They are also less discerning. I don't think the bulk of readers want honest to god reporting with research to back it up - they just want to see the funny kitty spin on cuteoverload.com, or youtube.
Take a look at CNN's website - they are changing it to show whats most popular, and hide much of the serious news reporting deeper in the site. Articles on CNN often seem to have been rattled off rather quickly, often with typos etc. The focus seems more on getting viewer attention now than on relating anything newsworthy, although admittedly they do at least cover major issues somewhat.
The Guardian is definitely my paper of choice, even though I am in Canada and not the UK. Their website is terrific generally, but I am not sure they can keep up the quality. All that journalistic integrity has got to cost them a lot of money - and the audience who is willing to pay for that is dwindling with each generation.
The problem with most "news" on the web is that a lot of it not backed by solid painstaking research, its rattled off as quickly as possible and a lot more of it is editorialized rather than objective reporting. The same thing is happening with TV news, so much of it is now involving the anchors commenting on the stories and presented in a slanted manner. I can't believe that something like FOX is even on the air, let alone has a viewership.
Plus we are seeing more "from the blogs" type stuff everywhere and I am sorry but the average blog offers opinions, not researched articles. Most barely qualifies as anything remotely resembling journalism. Most of it is editorials intended to reflect a viewpoint. Its not journalism as we knew it - but I think thats going to be a thing of the past in a decade. We won't get news - we will get media-shaped targetted editorials intended to affect our political views, voting habits, and consumer purchasing - we will just think its the news.
Try this page: SVG WOW
Well said, as a fellow Canadian I agree with your comments. Its sad to see Harper abuse the rights of the PMO so greatly - and continue to get away with it. I am ashamed of my fellow Canadians every time I think about the fact that he and the "Conservatives" got elected to government. I can only hope that sanity returns to our political state at some point soon. Sadly none of the other parties are offering us anyone who seems to have enough personality to get the public's support. :P
Personally I wouldn't buy a used car from Harper
And Timmy's coffee is actually rather good at times, although I suspect its the cream they use not the coffee :)
Because in the US the Insurance and Drug companies have been running an extremely popular scam, err system for many years and I don't think anyone expects them to change.
Essentially I think things work well everywhere else because people expect them to work more or less, and get outraged when they fail. Things get fixed as a result.
In the US everyone seems to think this system is nothing more than a way to fleece every citizen for no benefit, so I expect their participation will tend to be focused on how to get their piece of the pie, rather than how to make it work. People are talking about how they can get insurance only when they get ill, then stop paying when they are better etc in the threads above. In otherwords, fuck everyone else, gimme my shit for free - you can pay for it.
The other thing that gets me is how people are talking about paying $400 per month for insurance and treating that as a good deal. I pay about $90/mo up here in Canada, and that's likely a bit high. Someone on welfare pays nothing, and it scales up based on your income. If I was told I had to pay $400 for health insurance, you can be sure that I would be looking into emmigrating to a sane country immediately.
If its costing that much for health care per month, then your health care system and insurance system are riddled with criminals and that's where you need to start your reforms.
in my opinion at least.
However, I think that most Americans seem to be arguing that their system is the best *because of the quality* and most people who have been exposed to a universal health-care system like we have up here in Canada, are arguing *because its affordable*.
I have no doubt that the quality of treatment available in the US is absolutely top notch. No doubt whatsoever. I am also equally convinced that from the point of view of how paying for that treatment affects the average individual, the universal socialized systems are generally superior. Not always superior for everyone, but in general superior. I don't think that there can be much argument there to be honest.
Cases in point:
* My wife's friends down in Phoenix, who could only afford health insurance for *him*, his wife had to make do without. They lived their lives hoping that she didn't get seriously ill. As it stood, it was costing them hundreds of dollars a month for their insurance (this was a decade or two ago mind you, things might be better now, I don't really know).
* A good friend who was diagnosed as having a brain tumour up here in Canada. Within a week he was in the hospital, had the tumour removed by a top notch surgeon, and was out of the hospital a week or two after that. The surgery was completely successful I am pleased to say. Total cost: nothing whatsoever beyond whatever he pays for his health-care insurance (likely around $60 a month, but the amount is based on your income so it might be less than that).
* My mother, who was treated for lung cancer over a year long period. She received multiple chemotherapy treatments, was hospitalized a few times etc. She did die sadly, but the total cost to her estate was $50 for the trip to the hospital for pallative care. No other costs were incurred.
* I have never had to pay a single dollar more than my regular health-care cost based on my income. I am 50 years old. Everything is covered, except sadly dental work. Ten years of that was admittedly covered by the military when I was a member, but the rest has been covered by the regular health-care system.
* I don't know *ANYONE* who has had to pay a huge bill for treatment or surgery (actually I don't know anyone who has had to pay extra period), don't know anyone who has not been covered for any treatment they needed, don't know anyone who has gone broke as a result of a major medical problem, don't know anyone who has been stuck on a waiting list who suffered as a result, etc.
While I have no doubt that someone in the US who has good insurance is effectively covered and gets the treatment they need etc, there is apparently a huge percentage of the US population who have no insurance coverage - I believe an article I read on CNN stated something like 35m to 55m but I can't recall. That is absolutely insane to be honest. I personally have to consider anyone who argues that the current US system works and is superior to a more socialized system is honestly so selfish and ignorant that they could be considered truly evil.
I can understand that many of you have such a strong desire to ensure you never do anything for a fellow citizen that you would rather they die than help them out financially by say, paying some taxes that spread the burden out, but I can't understand it *at all*.
What was Lenin or Stalin's quote: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we hang them"? or something to that effect.
Looks like its happening in an economic sense. I fully expect that China will eclipse the US as the most influential superpower in the world, sometime in the next decade or two. They seem to have the initiative, the resources and the willingness.
Thanks for the interesting explanation. Unfortunately for China, in the West we see the People's Republic of China as invaders who are viciously oppressing the people of Tibet against their will. I imagine none of us give Mongolia a second's thought mind you.
The differing attitudes between whats accepted as the truth in the PRC, and what we see as the truth in the west is going to continue to cause friction in cases like this.
The same thing is true with regards to Taiwan. I think that the US and the PRC will come to a conflict over Taiwan at some point in the future in fact. The PRC is certainly preparing for it.
That's not a gigantic ancient impact crater. That's a gigantic ancient impact crater.
90 Years worth of energy for the nation with the largest population in the world seems like sufficient cause for China to claim that Tibet is part of China and always has been etc, despite the fact that it has been independant for much of its history (although its also been occupied by one power or another for much of the rest of that history of course).
If Tibet had its independence this would be a terrific resource for the country to take advantage of in modernizing itself. As it stands I am sure it will be used for Chinese benefit and not Tibetan.
there will always be organizations who are too large to easily upgrade anything, even something as simple as a browser version, without it cost a ton of money. If you are well prepared and organized I am sure its not that bad, just time consuming, but for many companies, IT sucks hind tit and doesn't get the money, personnel or resources it needs to do something like a system wide upgrade - they exist on the bare minimum required to operate.
And there will always be users who buy a computer and treat it like a toaster - it does what they want until it doesn't. Then they are fucked because they don't even know that you can upgrade, let alone how. Never underestimate how little the average computer user actually knows about their computer. The /. crowd find that hard to believe, but for the average person configuring their PC *is* like rocket science (yeah I know some of you out there are rocket scientists, pick a different metaphor), and they have no idea how or where to start.
Yeah, one of the more disappointing aspects of them canning the series was the fact that some story lines didn't get completely evolved, and Book was a great character.
I really don't know why shows like this do get canceled, when there is such utter derivative crap on TV - actually come to think of it almost everything I see on TV these days is utter derivative low-budget crap...
When they added all those other channels, the amount of money available for TV show production remained a constant I guess, so now instead of a few channels producing shows worth watching, we have hundreds of channels each producing piles of steaming shit for the masses on almost no budget.
That game was very seriously amazing. I too spent many hours attempting to keep the world from crumbling and avoid the advance of the Communist Peril. One of the first highly addictive PC games I can recall. I think Wolfenstein and later Doom were the next ones that got me and my wife thoroughly addicted (although she wasn't into BOP).
What I liked about it the most was that it was extremely challenging, and detailed.
Well if you bought an iMac you could likely attach your existing monitor to the iMac and use both, providing you use a min-DVI adapter etc.
Oh the PC World is definitely more flexible without a doubt. I was addressing the folks who keep arguing that they can buy a Macbook Pro for $1700 or they can get a Asus laptop for $450 and insisting the two are somehow comparable and that therefore the Mac is overpriced and anyone who buys one must be an idiot etc. There are a lot of people who can't see past the "but it doesn't run Windows" aspect of the discussion.
Yes, with a PC you can get tons of different options and complete control over the configuration of your system etc. Then you can load MS Windows on it if you want (and if you want to play PC games), or more sensibly IMHO some variety of *nix (if you want an arguably better OS, again IMHO).
But if what you want is a Mac, at least now that won't prevent you from playing as many game titles as it has in the past and it might start a trend, that was my real point. Kudos to Valve.
Now if you do want a really high end system you can buy a Mac for that as well but the price can get really prohibitive and I am sure only those who are making money off their system even consider it for a second. You can get a Mac Pro with Quad-core starting at $2499, or 8-core starting at $3299 according to the Apple site. The prices climb from there. I am sure the end result will be pretty stunning though.
Just playing with their online systemconfiguration app (and buying most of the top end features mind you) I think the high end system you might get would be something like this:
* Two 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon :P
* 32GB (8x4GB)
* Mac Pro RAID Card
* 4 x 2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* 4x NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB
* One 18x SuperDrive
* 2 x Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)
* Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) and User's Guide
* AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi Card with 802.11n
* AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro - Auto-enroll
For a grand total of $16,646.00 before taxes. Of course, the first thing you do is go buy a decent mouse from Logitech IMHO
Now I realize thats not doing the "Macs are too expensive" side of the argument much of a favour, but what would that cost as a PC, recognizing its also got to be in a very high end case and top quality components everywhere?
The biggest objections to Apple's computers over the last few years have been a) The cost and b) no games available.
The cost issue has become pretty meaningless to anyone who is willing to compare oranges to oranges: the cost of a Mac laptop or desktop with X features is pretty comparable to a Windows laptop or desktop with the same feature set, its just that usually the PC side has lower features by default and you can buy the components to raise the level of functionality, whereas Apple doesn't operate in the low end of the computer spectrum and even their base systems have great features and very high quality.
With this change by Valve it will hopefully signify changes in the attitude of the rest of the games industry and Mac support will grow to the point that its treated as well as Microsoft's products with regards to gaming. I am perfectly content with my iMac 20" desktop for the gaming I am doing, and I would love to play more games under OS/X rather than dualbooting to XP.
Lastly, if the Mac gains in acceptance, perhaps Linux will follow down the road. Having implemented all of this stuff for OS/X it can't be as far a stretch to include Linux as it was to make the original jump from Windows to OS/X (being a kind of unix after all)?
From the article:
"Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Portal 2 lead developer Josh Weier. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
The article also mentions that Portal2 will be a day 1 release for the Mac alongside the PC.
Yeah they mention a possible implementation of this in producing laptop batteries. I for one am not all that happy with contemplating using a laptop whose battery reaches 3000 Kelvin :P
Londoners should feel right at home here in Victoria, BC then. Apparently we get 142 days of rain a year, with 608mm of rain. However we have an average of 2183 hours of sunshine each year, and we average only 2-5 days with at least 5cm of snow on the ground.
Mind you, our weather is far better than Vancouver's, they manage 170 days of rain apparently. :P
My wife and I read about a book every few days, sometimes every other day. We buy pocketbook versions of books we know we will reread and hardcovers of books we know we will want to reference and which will be hard to find otherwise. I think we have around 1500 books in our apartment.
We go the library every few days. We take out fiction, non-fiction, and a lot of DVDs. The local library system allows us to search for books and place holds online, they ship the books to whatever branch we want etc.
I see DRM and E-Books as a bid by the Publishing industry to try to produce books they can sell, that appeal to their customers because of convenience, and which will eventually kill off the library system entirely due to their DRM. A lot of publishers seem to view libraries as the next thing to criminal because they hurt book sales.
Yes, its essentially a universal writing system for all Chinese speakers from what I understand. There is the caveat that there was an old system for writing that was traditional, and there is now a newer simplified system that requires less symobols etc. From what I understand not everyone knows the old system, so some things that are older may be somewhat unreadable to modern readers.
"Chinese" actually comprises 5 language groups I believe (Mandarin, Cantonese, Han, Wu and something else), and well over 1 million dialects, but a newspaper printed anywhere in mainland China can be read anywhere in mainland China regardless of what languages the reader speaks. Its an incredible feature generally speaking, and I presume has contributed to the overall cohesiveness of the Chinese people throughout history. It does suffer from the fact that to use it you need to memorize thousands of written symbols, rather than just our 26 for the English alphabet. I believe I recall reading that by the time a student is in grade 7, they have memorized around 10,000 Chinese characters.
I know its possible to type in Chinese but I have no idea how its possible to be honest.
Grammar should not be a real obstacle as all Chinese languages have a very simplified grammar from what I understand
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
And the poor customers are stuck with the choice of either paying 200% higher costs, or having to spend time and energy travelling to the nearest village that doesn't charge outrageous prices (assuming they aren't all controlled by an armed Flour Cartel, or the industry is a monopoly). In the end the customer suffers.
It may be Capitalism at its best but its also totally amoral in my opinion. I'll take government price regulation in industries that are providing essential materials (i.e. necessary food items) any day.
Look at the cable TV industry here in Victoria BC. There was a system where we had competition between Rogers and Shaw Cable. Rogers and Shaw reached an agreement and divided up western Canadian cities so that they each controlled certain cities and there was no competition. The price stabilized at about $20/mo for basic cable services. The Government stepped in and added the ability for other companies to participate in the market, but the barrier to entry costs are quite considerable, so few can afford to compete. However, Telus (a phone company) started offering cable TV services via their infrastructure. The cost was about the same initially, but now that Digital TV is the only option, the price has almost doubled (about $35) for the same service. Telus didn't lower there prices to compete, they merely matched the going rate, then everyone raised their rates with the switch to digital. The only person to lose out is the customer, again. Competition didn't actually work at all there. I am on Telus at the moment (and the service is lousy by the way, and in order to get any channels worth watching it costs about $65/mo, but that can easily ramp up. If you bundle your internet and phone with your TV signal, their top end package is $185/mo). I just don't buy the Randian "the free market is always right and always works" concept at all. There are too many examples where it doesn't seem to work for me at all.