I mean for this infection to work, the victim has to be not only stupid, but also not lazy. It has to have a low infection rate.
We have an abundance of uneducated people in the US, specifically those who don't know or understand the dangers of the internet. Also, a low infection rate is all it takes to get some return on investment.
To top it all off, Americans are first and foremost a scared people, especially of our own government and of forces outside our borders. Heaven forbid you piss off the government by not paying a parking ticket! You might lose your constitutional rights! Maybe they'll stop protecting you?!?!?! Maybe your a teenager who doesn't want your parents to find out?
Somehow these scams pay off and they only need a few suckers. And a new sucker is born every minute. Why do you think the "three cards, find the ace" scam still works in the alleyways and slums? It's one of the oldest scams in the book and those who are not educated don't know how it works and are easily manipulated.
Jack who? Who is this guy? Where did he come from? I have no idea who you are talking about. Seems like a guy who just wants some attention. Doesn't seem like he has anything important to say so I'm not going to click on the link.
It's not necessarily aimed at XP users. XP is just good enough for a whole lot of people and one reason people people don't want vista is because it was no better in any tangible way to vista (according to the masses). Xp users also realized how they can stay on xp so don't expect current xp users to upgrade.
Perhaps hey should be working I. Vistas back end because vista is a hog compared to xp. Making flashy I objects that DON'T work is not going to help MS much.
Release candidates under windows never made sense to me. Service packs and critical patches.
Screw the marketing. Does it work or not? Apple makes shiny gadgets that work. Ms makes less shiny gadgets that don't work. And how do you measure "effectiveness?". Maybe apple only has to test on proprietary hardware but from a QA standpoint that's a win. I argue that apple's qa is far more effective because re is no question apples products are more stable than MS products. That's my definition of effective.
I'm a software support rep and not even a developer and I know this is a blowhard troll.
1. It's client-server all over again. Web applications encourage a thin-client approach: the client handles UI rendering and user input, while the real processing happens on servers. What sense does that make when any modern laptop packs enough CPU and GPU power to put yesterday's Cray supercomputer to shame?
Concentrating computing power in the datacenter is fine if you're a Google or a Microsoft, but that approach puts a lot of pressure on smaller players. Scaling small server farms to meet demand can be a real challenge -- just ask Twitter.
Furthermore, security vulnerabilities abound in networked applications, and the complexity of the browser itself seemingly makes bugs inevitable. Why saddle your apps with that much baggage?
First, it's not client server all over again, not in the way you mean it. Client/server like windows terminal server or citrix makes it easier to manage company wide systems by giving an IT guy a central point to manage, and that saves time, which translates to dollars. Web apps do the same thing, but they are benefit from even easier setup management and deployment. Terminal server is a pain in the ass when it comes to deploying an app, because it has several ways to do so, none of them web based. You could deploy it by giving everyone a desktop to the terminal server, but then the dumbass users can't figure out which is their PC desktop and which is their server desktop. You could publish the app, which requires changing settings on the server and deploying the proper shortcut to the user's desktop, which takes more knowledge, which not everyone has.
Web apps are easier to deploy in that all you have to do is provide a web address. Everyone knows how to use a web browser and click on links. Citrix even recognized this and provides software to allow you to connect to the citrix box with a web interface!
Siting a laptop is stronger than an old cray is a clever misdirection. The real question is, what's more beneficial for your business, 30 laptops that cost $1000 apiece? Or 1 very large server that costs $10,000 plus 30 laptops costing $500 apiece? I just saved you $5000 on hardware! Plus when a laptop dies, there's less downtime, because I could just hand you another machine and you just go to the web address again. No application reinstalls. Most mega servers these days cost less than a distributed environment and can handle processing quite nicely.
As far as network vulnerabilities, that's just utterly nonsensical. How does that statement say that a webapp is less vulnerable than a distributed app? Data still has to travel over a network in a distributed app! Duh! Besides, most of the vulnerabilities these days dealt with IE specifically and those dealt with how it was integrated with Windows. Pick another web browser, viola, reduced vulnerabilities. Take it a step further and deploy the web app as an intranet app so it can't be accessed outside your local subnet. Network security is for the network professionals, let them take care of it. Provide encryption as needed in the app and access levels for the data but other than that, that's not a developer's domain.
2. Web UIs are a mess. The Web's stateless, mainly forms-based UI approach is reliable, but it's not necessarily the right model for every application. Why sacrifice the full range of real-time interactivity offered by traditional, OS-based apps? Technologies such as AJAX only simulate in the browser what systems programming could do already.
And while systems programmers are accustomed to building apps with consistent UI toolkits such as the Windows APIs, Apple's Cocoa, or Nokia's Qt, building a Web UI is too often an exercise in reinventing the wheel. Buttons, controls, and widgets vary from app to app. Sometimes the menus are along the top, other times they're off to the side. Sometimes they pop down when you roll over them, and s
In case anyone is wondering what the bruhaha is all about, every time someone talks about Microsoft and Bundling, someone else has to bring up Apple and bundling, or someone else and bundling, and asking why it's illegal.
These posts come from a variety of sources:
1) Free market zealots who think anti-trust laws are not a good idea (you crazy libertarians know who you are) 2) Anti-Apple/linux/insert-company-here zealots who have a beef to pick with said company. 3) People who can't wrap their heads around what a monopoly is and can't understand law no matter how many times you beat them with the book. 4) A few well placed astro turfers who probably get the discussion going in the first place. 5) Anti-bundling zealots who will slam any bundle that locks in customers.
Only the last one has a decent argument, and it's an ethical argument not a legal one. Legally, Microsoft is a monopoly. They've been declared so by the state. They have also abused their monopoly power by leveraging their dominance in one market (operating systems) to crush competition in another (web browsers).
You can't call Apple a monopoly in Macs because macs compete against PCs, so while I agree unbundling the operating system from the hardware could be a boon to customers in the market, you can't legally force it. You might be able to call Apple a monopoly in the music player business. However, I can download any music from any service that supports the MP3 format and push that into my iPhone/iPod. Music from iTunes music store is AAC which is an open standard and any developer could create a music player for that. Also music is no longer DRMed from the music store so that takes "fairplay" DRM out of the mix.
You might be able to work an argument that Apple needs to open the iPod protocols so that someone can code an alternative to iTunes, because iTunes is very convenient and integrates with the iPod. The iPod is paid hardware, leveraging free software (iTunes). If the iPod had 30% marketshare, I'd say get over it, but it has over 80%, and just maybe someone out there has some innovating to do to make something better than iTunes that can sync music with your iPod.
Of course you know and I know that I meant environmentally cleaner, but I'll play this cheapo game for a second.
With public works, you always have a few spoilers. If a hobo is doing that, someone has to clean it up. Supermarkets have the same problem, they just happen to be private. Give someone a job. Spend the money on a worthwhile service.
On the flip side, I've been in dozens of cars that were worse than the worst public transit I've ever been in. Trash everywhere, food crumbs, stains. Individual's lifestyles suck when it comes to cleanliness. If you are one of those anal people like me who likes clean things, then I applaud you. But thinking everyone has a clean and neat car interior is just deluding yourself. And I'm not talking a select few, I'm talking a sizable portion of not just america but the developed world! Every culture has it's fair share of neat freaks and snobs!
First off, highways screwed cities. If you can drive anywhere, you don't need the concentration of goods that a city offers, and more so, you allow people to get to work without having to live near it. Essentially this has turned American cities into corporate islands surrounded by ghettos because nobody wants to live in cities but everyone will take the high paying
This is not the case in Europe. That's because along with highways, Europe developed their public transportation systems as well. What screwed the populace was forcing everyone to use them, and not developing multiple modes of transport. Americans have this idea that everyone should use roads and that's somehow better than public transportation, which happens to be cleaner, cheaper, and safer.
Secondly, highways screwed local stores. No national brand could exist without highways to truck goods all over the place. Everyone that bitches about the likes of Walmart, McDonalds and every other chain and laments the death of the local foods in the local store need only look at the highway to see why this took place.
Same idea as above. With the decentralization of the population and more in suburbs, making it convenient to get what you need in one place became crucial when you had to drive everywhere. What's funny about this is, when I lived in Philadelphia when going to college, I could literally get and do anything I wanted. Out in the suburbs I can go to a walmart and I can't quite get everything I wanted, despite their claim. The items they wish to sell don't garner enough profit margin or are specialty items you can't find in bulk, like crafts or art. I'm stuck with what they want to sell me. The inner city truly has the most variety, followed secondly by remote antique craft-like areas way out in the boonies. The suburbs have the LEAST variety because it's all the same where ever you go.
Philadelphia keeps experiencing a population decrease because the traffic in town is terrible. Philadelphia was designed with narrow streets (it's the oldest major city in the US) and traffic is horrid in town. Our public transportation sucks. Getting around by bike is great, though slightly risky and you can't get to the furthest reaches of town or to the suburbs without a lot of time or a car or a train to that specific destination, which aren't that common. For the sake of the public, if they would try to revamp transportation in the city, perhaps more people would stay and variety would flourish in town.
Third, the highways really screwed blacks in America, because usually, in cities, all the overpasses and bridges and what not were all built in black neighborhoods, pretty much destroying the asset base of an already fragile population. New York City is a perfect example of this, and there are many black leaders that curse the name of Moses to this day - and no, not the biblical Moses.
You are correct on that, but that's not the highway's fault. That's the fault of racist politicians and racism itself. It's also the fault of the contractors trying to do things for the cheapest money possible. The millionaires uptown are going to hire expensive lawyers to uphold the NIMBY principle for themselves, even if it made sense to move them for the sake of the greater good. Big money is also to blame, which is a problem when people are forced out of their houses because it makes someone else a huge amount of money. There are plenty of public works projects that were performed for the good of the money grubbers involved, and not for the good of the people. That's a problem with the system of review not the highway.
Hoover dam screwed everyone that had local water, or needed the flow from the river downstream of the dam. You go to all this expense to get a good spot downstream and the government shuts you off. Or you go to all this expense to get your own water supply, and the government goes and doles it out to everyone else on the cheap, mak
The funny thing is that the "nice guys finish last" statement doesn't hold weight in your argument because Assertive, Confident and Ambitious are not mutually exclusive to being a nice guy.
So phrase a slightly more accurate generality, weak and shy nice guys finish last. Strong and Assertive nice guys have a much better shot at finishing first. We have one of those strong and assertive nice guys being inaugurated tomorrow.
The article suffers from this same false dichotomy.
Okay you threw politics in the beginning and made a good point. Then you severely detracted from your argument by throwing in the stimulus package and your opinion that it will suck and that it's not imaginative.
I'm not going to argue that point with you, because this is off topic, but in terms of making your point, in the future, try not to apply so much politics to a post that has nothing to do with it, and don't end a perfectly good post about creativity with a political opinion.
I see a lot of posts correctly stating Richard Blumenthal is a fucktard
I see a lot of posts correctly stating that everyone should just get off our backs and let us parent our children.
I see very few, if any posts, trying to admit that the internet is a "dangerous place" in the same way real life is, that the populous is, by and large, rather ill-equipped to deal with this, and don't give a suggestion on how to correct that situation.
Hacks like Blumenthal are in it for political gain and of course package a complex problem in a simple message with a half assed solution. The real message should be that the internet is international, and made up of real people, just like the real world. Most people you find are kind and decent people, but a select few are out to do no good. Parents need to be taught this, and then taught to pass it onto their kids. A few public announcements would be nice. Some letters home to parents from teachers might help. Workshops at local schools would be better, as well as some sessions in school for the kids. Hey, don't accept email from strangers is just as good a lesson as don't accept candy from strangers, if you ask me.
We have plenty of lessons for kids on crossing the street, not taking drugs, and recycling, we can't come up with some simple rules for surfing the internet we can give in school?
Or is my kid too old that we are already doing that?
That second article is for the British Telecoms not telecoms in general. While I might be tempted to believe this for American or Canadian Telecoms, the article makes no such claims. So, as usual, the summary is inflammatory and deceptive.
It's nice to know reporters on the other side of the pond make the same arrogant mistakes Americans do when they assume everyone has the same experiences as they do.
"More than half are willing to pay a little more for 'green'," said Mr Koening. "22 percent said they were willing to pay up to 15 percent more for it."
Green as a marketing gimmick is dangerous. The general idea is that green somehow is more expensive.
White wine vinegar is a nice natural cleaner, and it's cheap. So is ammonia in water. Why spend so much money on other alternatives?
Reducing package size is green and it costs less to produce. Why increase the price if cost is lowered?
If you can recycle all of a manufacturing plant's waste within the plant, you don't need to hire waste disposal, so why increase the price of goods made at the plant?
Business is constantly trying to get people to buy crap and justify it. Many of them are using the green label to justify their price tag, which is bullshit. In economics, the price of an item is not determined by the cost of the single item, but how much it is in demand, how much supply there is, and how much people perceive it's value. Companies go green because it either saves them money, or because a government tax break or tax penalty makes it more expensive not to go green.
Do not pay more for green products, demand the current products go green and don't increase their prices. On your own, look for natural alternatives which are just as good and easy to procure, but aren't made by big name brand labels.
I think you are missing where my emphasis is. I'm worried about the words "accident proof." There never is and never will be something that's accident proof, just like things aren't fool proof. It's hard to avoid an accident when you are sitting quietly in your 2020 volvo in an intersection and some drunk as comes up behind you and rear-ends you at 45 mph. Accident proof implies it cannot get into an accident, when you can never fully control the other idiots on the road.
But can you better protect the occupants? Certainly. It sounds like Broberg wants to make the occupants as safe as possible, by protecting them from serious injury, and the article's author uses the words "accident proof" of his own accord, which don't mean exactly the same thing as what broberg intented.
In TFA, Thomas Broberg was directly quoted saying this:
"Our aim for 2020 is that no one should be killed or injured in a Volvo car"
The article then proceeds like this:
So how can such a worthy goal be achieved? Broberg's reply would be that Volvo is working on the world's first accident-proof car.
100% injury free and accident proof are two different things. A car can't be accident proof, there are too many environmental factors outside of the car that you can't control, most importantly the other driver and their car. However, I can see within the realm of reality that you could build a safe shell around the passenger compartment in order to save the passengers and driver from injury. A bit tough and no doubt expensive, but possible.
It seems like the accident proof statement was the article putting words into Broberg's mouth. Am I too far off base?
...except companies want stupid people to sell stupid products to.
This proves once again, that antivirus manufacturers must make a special effort to increase user knowledge regarding computer security and malware effects.
Antivirus manufacturers must only make a profit, as markets demand of all companies. They must not do anything else. As such, to remain competitive and justify their existence, large software companies prey on this fear and fan it even further. Yes! Make sure you are protected! Don't want those evil viruses and hackers to get at your precious information, do you? Buy our $200 package which has to be relicensed every year! Nevermind the virus protection is mediocre, look at all the other useless gadgets we provide with it that make just as hard as a bad virus to work with your computer!
Morally, there should be a rather big push by multiple bodies to help educate the public about security, but there is no government body to help to do this, and no nonprofit large enough to make a dent in this. Businesses need customers, and security and antivirus companies have no interest in educating customers if it means reduced sales, which it would.
Quicken, like all similar financial software, is designed to allow you to see what your income is, what your outflows are, make estimates, and gauge in a moment whether you have the money or not to do something. That's an incredibly valuable tool, one that most anal./ers (should) respect. Quicken just happens to be the biggest name out there. Quicken is not about making good investments. Quicken is about being able to see your net worth in a moment and make spending and saving judgements based on what that worth is and what it will be.
Of course it won't help you find the next big stock to invest in, but you can use it to decide if you can afford 100 or 200 shares.
I leave the merits of Quicken vs gnucash and other offerings up to other commenters.
OWe have two sets of responses here so far. One camp says "why on earth would I want to do this?" The other camp says "it's already here, old news, move along, why do I need to know?" I love the/. naysayers and whiners, entertaining even while they completely fail to provide any insight on this.
To answer the first camp, #1 if VNC did it, obviously there is demand. The demand doesn't come from geeks using a remote program to administer their servers, the real demand comes from running windows apps on a citrix/VNC/terminal server with the full power of the server behind it, but with an interface fitting a mobile device. For example, my company has a "wireless warehouse" program which runs on a terminal server, but we have wireless scanner guns which connect to this terminal server via RDC and display the app. The power of a full version of windows in the palm of your hand. Okay it's still windows, but at least it's not windows mobile.
To answer the second camp, why this is significant is competition, and markets opening up for similar style applications. Granted, the iPhone has no bar code scanner yet, so my example won't fit here, but now you have VNC, Citrix, and RDC all making an appearance on the iPhone. That means competition, and it also means that the demand is already there. It also means opportunities are opening for business ideas, which is a direction Apple wanted to go... business applications. That could potentially be huge. Build it and they just might come.
You make all very good points, but just wanted to point out that your comments apply primarily to the US (don't have any idea how they would apply in Europe). In many places in Africa, just send your old car parts to them and I'm sure they'll trade a near definite chance of dying for a somewhat lower chance of dying.
Apple's DRM is, surprisingly, the most convenient of the DRM that exists out their these days, but still doesn't make it entirely right. I don't like DRM, I don't like the RIAA, I don't like that I don't have full control of my own copy, and I don't like how most artists get almost no cut of their CD sales unless they are mega stars who don't need a cut of their CD sales any more.
However, a boycott is wrong for the reasons listed here already, because it won't work. What will work is a steady approach to raise awareness. The RIAA is winning a very poorly run "war" because no one is raising awareness of the opposite side of the argument, that you do have the right to make personal copies of things you buy and that software DRM can damage your PC and that it does limit your rights, slowly the tide will turn back and then one day perhaps a boycott can be attempted.
Apart from the fact that you'd have to have an unknown boat in foreign waters, I'd think it would be pretty easy to "fake a mistake". Drop your anchor in a place you know where the cable is, drag for about a quarter mile, wait for your contact monitoring the connection to send you a nondescript signal that it's down, then pick up and make a bead for international waters.
So how does a nation without a sophisticated coast guard figure this out? Is any western country going to care (that is, the ones who aren't in on it, if it is espionage?
Slashdot Mirror
I mean for this infection to work, the victim has to be not only stupid, but also not lazy. It has to have a low infection rate.
We have an abundance of uneducated people in the US, specifically those who don't know or understand the dangers of the internet. Also, a low infection rate is all it takes to get some return on investment.
To top it all off, Americans are first and foremost a scared people, especially of our own government and of forces outside our borders. Heaven forbid you piss off the government by not paying a parking ticket! You might lose your constitutional rights! Maybe they'll stop protecting you?!?!?! Maybe your a teenager who doesn't want your parents to find out?
Somehow these scams pay off and they only need a few suckers. And a new sucker is born every minute. Why do you think the "three cards, find the ace" scam still works in the alleyways and slums? It's one of the oldest scams in the book and those who are not educated don't know how it works and are easily manipulated.
Jack who? Who is this guy? Where did he come from? I have no idea who you are talking about. Seems like a guy who just wants some attention. Doesn't seem like he has anything important to say so I'm not going to click on the link.
Maybe if we just ignore him, he'll go away.
Except the guys who do drink diet drinks won't wuss out and complain that commercials about manly diet drinks offend them.
Why are you complaining about a pepsi max commercial? ARE YOU A WUSS?????
It's not necessarily aimed at XP users. XP is just good enough for a whole lot of people and one reason people people don't want vista is because it was no better in any tangible way to vista (according to the masses). Xp users also realized how they can stay on xp so don't expect current xp users to upgrade.
Perhaps hey should be working I. Vistas back end because vista is a hog compared to xp. Making flashy I objects that DON'T work is not going to help MS much.
Release candidates under windows never made sense to me. Service packs and critical patches.
Screw the marketing. Does it work or not? Apple makes shiny gadgets that work. Ms makes less shiny gadgets that don't work. And how do you measure "effectiveness?". Maybe apple only has to test on proprietary hardware but from a QA standpoint that's a win. I argue that apple's qa is far more effective because re is no question apples products are more stable than MS products. That's my definition of effective.
I'm a software support rep and not even a developer and I know this is a blowhard troll.
1. It's client-server all over again.
Web applications encourage a thin-client approach: the client handles UI rendering and user input, while the real processing happens on servers. What sense does that make when any modern laptop packs enough CPU and GPU power to put yesterday's Cray supercomputer to shame?
Concentrating computing power in the datacenter is fine if you're a Google or a Microsoft, but that approach puts a lot of pressure on smaller players. Scaling small server farms to meet demand can be a real challenge -- just ask Twitter.
Furthermore, security vulnerabilities abound in networked applications, and the complexity of the browser itself seemingly makes bugs inevitable. Why saddle your apps with that much baggage?
First, it's not client server all over again, not in the way you mean it. Client/server like windows terminal server or citrix makes it easier to manage company wide systems by giving an IT guy a central point to manage, and that saves time, which translates to dollars. Web apps do the same thing, but they are benefit from even easier setup management and deployment. Terminal server is a pain in the ass when it comes to deploying an app, because it has several ways to do so, none of them web based. You could deploy it by giving everyone a desktop to the terminal server, but then the dumbass users can't figure out which is their PC desktop and which is their server desktop. You could publish the app, which requires changing settings on the server and deploying the proper shortcut to the user's desktop, which takes more knowledge, which not everyone has.
Web apps are easier to deploy in that all you have to do is provide a web address. Everyone knows how to use a web browser and click on links. Citrix even recognized this and provides software to allow you to connect to the citrix box with a web interface!
Siting a laptop is stronger than an old cray is a clever misdirection. The real question is, what's more beneficial for your business, 30 laptops that cost $1000 apiece? Or 1 very large server that costs $10,000 plus 30 laptops costing $500 apiece? I just saved you $5000 on hardware! Plus when a laptop dies, there's less downtime, because I could just hand you another machine and you just go to the web address again. No application reinstalls. Most mega servers these days cost less than a distributed environment and can handle processing quite nicely.
As far as network vulnerabilities, that's just utterly nonsensical. How does that statement say that a webapp is less vulnerable than a distributed app? Data still has to travel over a network in a distributed app! Duh! Besides, most of the vulnerabilities these days dealt with IE specifically and those dealt with how it was integrated with Windows. Pick another web browser, viola, reduced vulnerabilities. Take it a step further and deploy the web app as an intranet app so it can't be accessed outside your local subnet. Network security is for the network professionals, let them take care of it. Provide encryption as needed in the app and access levels for the data but other than that, that's not a developer's domain.
2. Web UIs are a mess.
The Web's stateless, mainly forms-based UI approach is reliable, but it's not necessarily the right model for every application. Why sacrifice the full range of real-time interactivity offered by traditional, OS-based apps? Technologies such as AJAX only simulate in the browser what systems programming could do already.
And while systems programmers are accustomed to building apps with consistent UI toolkits such as the Windows APIs, Apple's Cocoa, or Nokia's Qt, building a Web UI is too often an exercise in reinventing the wheel. Buttons, controls, and widgets vary from app to app. Sometimes the menus are along the top, other times they're off to the side. Sometimes they pop down when you roll over them, and s
In case anyone is wondering what the bruhaha is all about, every time someone talks about Microsoft and Bundling, someone else has to bring up Apple and bundling, or someone else and bundling, and asking why it's illegal.
These posts come from a variety of sources:
1) Free market zealots who think anti-trust laws are not a good idea (you crazy libertarians know who you are)
2) Anti-Apple/linux/insert-company-here zealots who have a beef to pick with said company.
3) People who can't wrap their heads around what a monopoly is and can't understand law no matter how many times you beat them with the book.
4) A few well placed astro turfers who probably get the discussion going in the first place.
5) Anti-bundling zealots who will slam any bundle that locks in customers.
Only the last one has a decent argument, and it's an ethical argument not a legal one. Legally, Microsoft is a monopoly. They've been declared so by the state. They have also abused their monopoly power by leveraging their dominance in one market (operating systems) to crush competition in another (web browsers).
You can't call Apple a monopoly in Macs because macs compete against PCs, so while I agree unbundling the operating system from the hardware could be a boon to customers in the market, you can't legally force it. You might be able to call Apple a monopoly in the music player business. However, I can download any music from any service that supports the MP3 format and push that into my iPhone/iPod. Music from iTunes music store is AAC which is an open standard and any developer could create a music player for that. Also music is no longer DRMed from the music store so that takes "fairplay" DRM out of the mix.
You might be able to work an argument that Apple needs to open the iPod protocols so that someone can code an alternative to iTunes, because iTunes is very convenient and integrates with the iPod. The iPod is paid hardware, leveraging free software (iTunes). If the iPod had 30% marketshare, I'd say get over it, but it has over 80%, and just maybe someone out there has some innovating to do to make something better than iTunes that can sync music with your iPod.
Of course you know and I know that I meant environmentally cleaner, but I'll play this cheapo game for a second.
With public works, you always have a few spoilers. If a hobo is doing that, someone has to clean it up. Supermarkets have the same problem, they just happen to be private. Give someone a job. Spend the money on a worthwhile service.
On the flip side, I've been in dozens of cars that were worse than the worst public transit I've ever been in. Trash everywhere, food crumbs, stains. Individual's lifestyles suck when it comes to cleanliness. If you are one of those anal people like me who likes clean things, then I applaud you. But thinking everyone has a clean and neat car interior is just deluding yourself. And I'm not talking a select few, I'm talking a sizable portion of not just america but the developed world! Every culture has it's fair share of neat freaks and snobs!
Let me rebut a few of the things you mentioned:
First off, highways screwed cities. If you can drive anywhere, you don't need the concentration of goods that a city offers, and more so, you allow people to get to work without having to live near it. Essentially this has turned American cities into corporate islands surrounded by ghettos because nobody wants to live in cities but everyone will take the high paying
This is not the case in Europe. That's because along with highways, Europe developed their public transportation systems as well. What screwed the populace was forcing everyone to use them, and not developing multiple modes of transport. Americans have this idea that everyone should use roads and that's somehow better than public transportation, which happens to be cleaner, cheaper, and safer.
Secondly, highways screwed local stores. No national brand could exist without highways to truck goods all over the place. Everyone that bitches about the likes of Walmart, McDonalds and every other chain and laments the death of the local foods in the local store need only look at the highway to see why this took place.
Same idea as above. With the decentralization of the population and more in suburbs, making it convenient to get what you need in one place became crucial when you had to drive everywhere. What's funny about this is, when I lived in Philadelphia when going to college, I could literally get and do anything I wanted. Out in the suburbs I can go to a walmart and I can't quite get everything I wanted, despite their claim. The items they wish to sell don't garner enough profit margin or are specialty items you can't find in bulk, like crafts or art. I'm stuck with what they want to sell me. The inner city truly has the most variety, followed secondly by remote antique craft-like areas way out in the boonies. The suburbs have the LEAST variety because it's all the same where ever you go.
Philadelphia keeps experiencing a population decrease because the traffic in town is terrible. Philadelphia was designed with narrow streets (it's the oldest major city in the US) and traffic is horrid in town. Our public transportation sucks. Getting around by bike is great, though slightly risky and you can't get to the furthest reaches of town or to the suburbs without a lot of time or a car or a train to that specific destination, which aren't that common. For the sake of the public, if they would try to revamp transportation in the city, perhaps more people would stay and variety would flourish in town.
Third, the highways really screwed blacks in America, because usually, in cities, all the overpasses and bridges and what not were all built in black neighborhoods, pretty much destroying the asset base of an already fragile population. New York City is a perfect example of this, and there are many black leaders that curse the name of Moses to this day - and no, not the biblical Moses.
You are correct on that, but that's not the highway's fault. That's the fault of racist politicians and racism itself. It's also the fault of the contractors trying to do things for the cheapest money possible. The millionaires uptown are going to hire expensive lawyers to uphold the NIMBY principle for themselves, even if it made sense to move them for the sake of the greater good. Big money is also to blame, which is a problem when people are forced out of their houses because it makes someone else a huge amount of money. There are plenty of public works projects that were performed for the good of the money grubbers involved, and not for the good of the people. That's a problem with the system of review not the highway.
Hoover dam screwed everyone that had local water, or needed the flow from the river downstream of the dam. You go to all this expense to get a good spot downstream and the government shuts you off. Or you go to all this expense to get your own water supply, and the government goes and doles it out to everyone else on the cheap, mak
The funny thing is that the "nice guys finish last" statement doesn't hold weight in your argument because Assertive, Confident and Ambitious are not mutually exclusive to being a nice guy.
So phrase a slightly more accurate generality, weak and shy nice guys finish last. Strong and Assertive nice guys have a much better shot at finishing first. We have one of those strong and assertive nice guys being inaugurated tomorrow.
The article suffers from this same false dichotomy.
Okay you threw politics in the beginning and made a good point. Then you severely detracted from your argument by throwing in the stimulus package and your opinion that it will suck and that it's not imaginative.
I'm not going to argue that point with you, because this is off topic, but in terms of making your point, in the future, try not to apply so much politics to a post that has nothing to do with it, and don't end a perfectly good post about creativity with a political opinion.
"Easy to learn, hard to master."
This falls under that umbrella. You're basically rewording this mantra in a more complex form.
I see a lot of posts correctly stating Richard Blumenthal is a fucktard
I see a lot of posts correctly stating that everyone should just get off our backs and let us parent our children.
I see very few, if any posts, trying to admit that the internet is a "dangerous place" in the same way real life is, that the populous is, by and large, rather ill-equipped to deal with this, and don't give a suggestion on how to correct that situation.
Hacks like Blumenthal are in it for political gain and of course package a complex problem in a simple message with a half assed solution. The real message should be that the internet is international, and made up of real people, just like the real world. Most people you find are kind and decent people, but a select few are out to do no good. Parents need to be taught this, and then taught to pass it onto their kids. A few public announcements would be nice. Some letters home to parents from teachers might help. Workshops at local schools would be better, as well as some sessions in school for the kids. Hey, don't accept email from strangers is just as good a lesson as don't accept candy from strangers, if you ask me.
We have plenty of lessons for kids on crossing the street, not taking drugs, and recycling, we can't come up with some simple rules for surfing the internet we can give in school?
Or is my kid too old that we are already doing that?
I never got my ass kicked at a playground, but have you ever experienced getting your ass kicked by a particularly nasty virus or identity thief?
Perhaps you haven't, but then again you were educated and wary... because you know the internet is just as dangerous a place.
That second article is for the British Telecoms not telecoms in general. While I might be tempted to believe this for American or Canadian Telecoms, the article makes no such claims. So, as usual, the summary is inflammatory and deceptive.
It's nice to know reporters on the other side of the pond make the same arrogant mistakes Americans do when they assume everyone has the same experiences as they do.
From TFA:
"More than half are willing to pay a little more for 'green'," said Mr Koening. "22 percent said they were willing to pay up to 15 percent more for it."
Green as a marketing gimmick is dangerous. The general idea is that green somehow is more expensive.
White wine vinegar is a nice natural cleaner, and it's cheap. So is ammonia in water. Why spend so much money on other alternatives?
Reducing package size is green and it costs less to produce. Why increase the price if cost is lowered?
If you can recycle all of a manufacturing plant's waste within the plant, you don't need to hire waste disposal, so why increase the price of goods made at the plant?
Business is constantly trying to get people to buy crap and justify it. Many of them are using the green label to justify their price tag, which is bullshit. In economics, the price of an item is not determined by the cost of the single item, but how much it is in demand, how much supply there is, and how much people perceive it's value. Companies go green because it either saves them money, or because a government tax break or tax penalty makes it more expensive not to go green.
Do not pay more for green products, demand the current products go green and don't increase their prices. On your own, look for natural alternatives which are just as good and easy to procure, but aren't made by big name brand labels.
I think you are missing where my emphasis is. I'm worried about the words "accident proof." There never is and never will be something that's accident proof, just like things aren't fool proof. It's hard to avoid an accident when you are sitting quietly in your 2020 volvo in an intersection and some drunk as comes up behind you and rear-ends you at 45 mph. Accident proof implies it cannot get into an accident, when you can never fully control the other idiots on the road.
But can you better protect the occupants? Certainly. It sounds like Broberg wants to make the occupants as safe as possible, by protecting them from serious injury, and the article's author uses the words "accident proof" of his own accord, which don't mean exactly the same thing as what broberg intented.
That was just my analysis anyway.
In TFA, Thomas Broberg was directly quoted saying this:
"Our aim for 2020 is that no one should be killed or injured in a Volvo car"
The article then proceeds like this:
So how can such a worthy goal be achieved? Broberg's reply would be that Volvo is working on the world's first accident-proof car.
100% injury free and accident proof are two different things. A car can't be accident proof, there are too many environmental factors outside of the car that you can't control, most importantly the other driver and their car. However, I can see within the realm of reality that you could build a safe shell around the passenger compartment in order to save the passengers and driver from injury. A bit tough and no doubt expensive, but possible.
It seems like the accident proof statement was the article putting words into Broberg's mouth. Am I too far off base?
Because iPhones have such a long battery life, and because the AT&T network is so reliable in a power outage.
...except companies want stupid people to sell stupid products to.
This proves once again, that antivirus manufacturers must make a special effort to increase user knowledge regarding computer security and malware effects.
Antivirus manufacturers must only make a profit, as markets demand of all companies. They must not do anything else. As such, to remain competitive and justify their existence, large software companies prey on this fear and fan it even further. Yes! Make sure you are protected! Don't want those evil viruses and hackers to get at your precious information, do you? Buy our $200 package which has to be relicensed every year! Nevermind the virus protection is mediocre, look at all the other useless gadgets we provide with it that make just as hard as a bad virus to work with your computer!
Morally, there should be a rather big push by multiple bodies to help educate the public about security, but there is no government body to help to do this, and no nonprofit large enough to make a dent in this. Businesses need customers, and security and antivirus companies have no interest in educating customers if it means reduced sales, which it would.
Quicken, like all similar financial software, is designed to allow you to see what your income is, what your outflows are, make estimates, and gauge in a moment whether you have the money or not to do something. That's an incredibly valuable tool, one that most anal ./ers (should) respect. Quicken just happens to be the biggest name out there. Quicken is not about making good investments. Quicken is about being able to see your net worth in a moment and make spending and saving judgements based on what that worth is and what it will be.
Of course it won't help you find the next big stock to invest in, but you can use it to decide if you can afford 100 or 200 shares.
I leave the merits of Quicken vs gnucash and other offerings up to other commenters.
OWe have two sets of responses here so far. One camp says "why on earth would I want to do this?" The other camp says "it's already here, old news, move along, why do I need to know?" I love the /. naysayers and whiners, entertaining even while they completely fail to provide any insight on this.
To answer the first camp, #1 if VNC did it, obviously there is demand. The demand doesn't come from geeks using a remote program to administer their servers, the real demand comes from running windows apps on a citrix/VNC/terminal server with the full power of the server behind it, but with an interface fitting a mobile device. For example, my company has a "wireless warehouse" program which runs on a terminal server, but we have wireless scanner guns which connect to this terminal server via RDC and display the app. The power of a full version of windows in the palm of your hand. Okay it's still windows, but at least it's not windows mobile.
To answer the second camp, why this is significant is competition, and markets opening up for similar style applications. Granted, the iPhone has no bar code scanner yet, so my example won't fit here, but now you have VNC, Citrix, and RDC all making an appearance on the iPhone. That means competition, and it also means that the demand is already there. It also means opportunities are opening for business ideas, which is a direction Apple wanted to go... business applications. That could potentially be huge. Build it and they just might come.
The US medical industry is all about litigation
There, fixed it for you.
You make all very good points, but just wanted to point out that your comments apply primarily to the US (don't have any idea how they would apply in Europe). In many places in Africa, just send your old car parts to them and I'm sure they'll trade a near definite chance of dying for a somewhat lower chance of dying.
Apple's DRM is, surprisingly, the most convenient of the DRM that exists out their these days, but still doesn't make it entirely right. I don't like DRM, I don't like the RIAA, I don't like that I don't have full control of my own copy, and I don't like how most artists get almost no cut of their CD sales unless they are mega stars who don't need a cut of their CD sales any more.
However, a boycott is wrong for the reasons listed here already, because it won't work. What will work is a steady approach to raise awareness. The RIAA is winning a very poorly run "war" because no one is raising awareness of the opposite side of the argument, that you do have the right to make personal copies of things you buy and that software DRM can damage your PC and that it does limit your rights, slowly the tide will turn back and then one day perhaps a boycott can be attempted.
Apart from the fact that you'd have to have an unknown boat in foreign waters, I'd think it would be pretty easy to "fake a mistake". Drop your anchor in a place you know where the cable is, drag for about a quarter mile, wait for your contact monitoring the connection to send you a nondescript signal that it's down, then pick up and make a bead for international waters.
So how does a nation without a sophisticated coast guard figure this out? Is any western country going to care (that is, the ones who aren't in on it, if it is espionage?
...warp 777.