"Do you want the bad news first or the good news? The good news is that about 80% of Americans think science knowledge is 'very important' to our future. The bad news is most of those people think it's up to someone else to get knowledgeable. Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water (47% if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number) and over 40% think dinosaurs and humans cavorted together like in some sort of 'Land Of The Lost' episode. What to do? Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense. Yes, it will enrage the teachers' union, but it might inspire better people to go into science teaching. It's either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun."
WTF! How does the percentage of the Earth's surface covered with water rank as an important scientific fact? And dinosaurs? Give me a break. Last I checked, most people don't use dinosaurs or sail around on the ocean very often, so these little tidbits of geography and history are not retained.
Ask them questions about things that they use everyday: Why do we have seasons? What is electricity? How is energy generated form combustion?
I will admit that people should be on top of the definition of a year. But it's hard to be scientific when a half of the country is trying to ram Intelligent Design and God down your throat and the other half can't string coherent thoughts together because they are busy texting their friends about Britney Spears' panties.
You honestly believe that in the next two years China can catch up on the last 40 years of NASA R&D? They would have to land a man on the moon, develop and launch a space telescope better than the JWST, they would have had to land and operate rovers on Mars 3 years ago, since we've already operated rovers on Mars for 5 years, construct a global satellite communications network, and a global satellite positioning system. They aren't even close to being near where the US is, nobody is. We've been miles and miles ahead for decades.
I do believe that the Chinese can catch up with us very quickly. They have already achieved manned spaceflight. They aren't stupid people, they are incredibly motivated (by their power-seeking government), and they have gotten a lot of help from the Russians. Plus, they are really really good at reverse engineering other countries successful designs.
Also, they don't really need to catch up to 40 years of manned spaceflight. We started trying for space in when? 1959? And our last lunar mission was in 1973. So that's 14 years of technology development that occurred over 35 years ago... Since then we have been driving a bus in low earth orbit and sending remote control vehicles to other planets.
I also take issue with your cost analysis argument. NASA's budget may be much larger than the Chinese budget. But I worked for NASA; they waste a TON of money. There is incredibly high overhead, thousands of unmotivated government employees who have been beaten down by the bureaucratic machine and are just waiting for retirement, and miles of red tape to do anything because of safety, equal opportunity, buying from small and disadvantaged businesses... etc.
You think the Chinese are going to waste their time with that shit? I don't. They'll fire or shoot the employees that aren't performing, buy/requisition whatever they need from their massive cheap labor force, pick the best candidates regardless of race (they'll all be Chinese:) and steal whatever technology they need form their spies in the US. Any astronauts that die from a mission failure will be declared heros and replaced immediately without any stop-work procedures. I have no doubt they can accomplish what NASA can at 1/10th the price.
Keep patting yourself on the back about how great US technology is though. In my opinion, we were great, but we have been resting on our laurels for at least 30 years now. Our government doesn't have the drive to support multiyear projects for science and technology and we barely have enough homegrown scientists to support our defense and space programs. All we have is a small percentage of motivated individuals trying to make progress and being bogged down by unmotivated colleagues and extremely short duration projects that require immediate results or they are canceled.
We're already being surpassed in some fields. Do you really think it is that ludicrous that other counties could technologically surpass us while our government is busy funding bailout packages to rescue banks and poorly planned mortgages instead of investing that money in science and technology?
Wouldn't it be extremely expensive to send large quantities of water into orbit (also, our water supply is limited we can't be throwing it into space!)?
That's a good point. Plus how will the water stay liquid? And what if it doesn't come out as a spray. I bet it would suck to get hit with a big frozen ice block in orbit.
The US should fix this problem the way they fix everything else: Hire a bunch of illegal immigrants or people from a 3rd world country to go up there and pick all the junk out of orbit!
Why, I would have said "tell the same to the Sioux, the Apache, the Comanche, the Pawnee, the Alaska natives," and so on.
It has always puzzled me how some Americans can double-think on such a grand scale when talking about Tibet: almost the entire area of the US was taken by outright theft, swindle or larceny.
At the same time, while China is the evil empire persecuting Tibetans, Israel is "just defending itself". Would be interesting to see how the US public opinion would react if China bombed Tibet the way Israel bombed Gaza, and whether it would be considered that Tibetans actually killed more Chinese of other ethnic groups last year (see Lhasa riots) than Palestinians killed Israelis.
Your China-Israel analogy is flawed. Israel is bombing Gaza because of continued Palestinian rocket attacks. And let's not forget that Israel's neighbors have wanted to want to blow the shit out of Israel and kill every last Jew since the country was created. The social protests in Tibet are a little lower key than that.
And I am so sick of this whole "land ownership" thing. Humans evolved from a single place in Africa 2 million years ago and spread out from there. At what point in time did land ownership start?
The American Indians were killing each other for resources long before the white men showed up. Are you saying it is OK for Indians to kill each other but not OK for white people to? What are you racist?
Well, if you compare China to US then it seems to be quite a peaceful nation (if you talk about international issues).
Yeah, they are too busy killing their own citizens to bother killing people in other countries.
Instead, they just sell weapons to shady dictators in exchange for raw materials to fuel their economic growth. Then they let the dictators fight the wars while they sit back and profit.
Not that I am saying that the US or Russia are any better... You don't get to be a superpower by being "peaceful."
Why is this cute and interesting when done by a group of European amateurs and a global threat when done in North Korea?
Because the Danish group isn't simultaneously developing and conducting nuclear weapons tests and threatening to "accidentally" shoot down passenger aircraft.
Also, the European nations already have the ability to reach space. It's cool because it is being done by an amateur group.
Think of it as the difference between watching your son plinking at targets with a BB gun versus watching your neighbor blow holes in thick metal plates at 2 km with his.50 cal semiauto rifle, while simultaneously punching his wife in the face and giving you the finger.
> Our government used to stop these things, but they got bought out by the corporations about 20 years ago.
Let's call a duck a duck. It was thanks to Ronald Reagan, the greatest almighty president, that corporations got more and more power. For those who were too young to know, or forgot, banks also had a limit to how much interest they could charge on a credit card, but Reagan decided it wasn't fair and made them free to charge whatever they wanted. Good Morning 29% APR.
Thanks George W. Reagan!
I'm not going to disagree with you about who started chipping away at the public good in favor of corporate greed. Sadly though, I think that both major parties are guilty. Priority goes to getting yourself re-elected, which involves bringing the most pork into your district and making the corporate lobbyists happy so that they don't overthrow you on the next election.
When advertising and lobbyists started having more effect on elections than the actual facts on the ground, the general public lost out.
That isn't going to happen for a while. Currently we have an economy in which no one is willing to take risks or to spend money, banks aren't lending money, people aren't spending money, investors aren't investing, few people are going to start a new business. Secondly, the existing electronic retailers that are doing Ok in this economy (Best Buy, Walmart, etc) can easily expand to consume these free customers. Thirdly, the internet has largely replaced all non-established brick and mortar stores, making starting a new one even more un-appealing.
What I am taking from your post is that a new, more competitive store has already been created (Walmart, Best Buy, the internet) and driven Circuit City out of business.
In my opinion, places like Circuit City and Best Buy have limited relevance anyway nowdays due to a binning of consumers at the extreme ends of the spectrum due to the info available on the internet. Walmart- and Target-like entities are able to meet the needs of a consumer who just wants a TV but isn't terribly savvy. More technical competent shoppers surf to find exactly what product they want and then go to places like Fry's the internet (Newegg, etc.) to get that exact item.
I think that we will see places like Fry's create more locations to fill the void.
For a lot of people the only substantial consumer electronics retailers are best buy and circuit city. After circuit city is officially gone, best buy will have numerous markets without even token competition for consumer electronics (unless you count walmart).
Hence even losing a lousy retailer is still a loss for the consumer. One could potentially expect to see best buy starting to carry even less variety of product, as they won't have much to worry about competing against.
I guess I view it differently than you. The loss of a lousy retailer provides an opening for a better store to compete in the electronics market. It's capitalism at work... out with the old and weak and in with the new.
CC went out of business because they were not able to maintain their relevancy. Now there are free customers and space in town for someone to try out some new business concepts in the electronics market.
Personally, these days it's hard for me not to just order what I want online. And I don't do that because it is cheaper, I do it because it is easier than driving down to the store, parking, wading through all the other shoppers and trying to find the item I want. The retailers never carry the computer monitor or accessory that I want in the store anyway. (No, I don't want integrated speakers on my monitor, thank you.)
When in human history has encountering a more advanced civilisation ever been good for a less advanced civilisation?
Japan didn't do too badly; once they realised how backward they were they acted quickly to catch up, taking less than ninety years from the Black Ships to Pearl Harbour.
Alright, now take it down to Starbucks to work on stuff while you have a coffee.
So much for boasting about '2 grand', huh? I agree with your point, but there are uses for expensive, portable computers, even uses that justify spending that kind of money.
Lol. No offense, but people who do real work don't do it at Starbucks. Have you ever tried to write a computer program or derive any complex theory in that environment? You can't string a series of connected thoughts.
Starbucks is for emailing/websurfing while pretending to work while actually people-watching and showing off. Now if you said "take it to the airport," that would make more sense.
Burdick's cellular connection which he thought was connected (though a datacard) to AT&T's network. Unfortunately for Burdick he was actually connected to the ship's onboard network, which accounts for the international roaming, and his datacard was unable to display the repeated warnings that AT&T kept sending him over SMS.
Maybe if you are savvy enough to setup a slingbox, you should be savvy enough to make sure you are logged into the proper network before downloading a shitload of data.
I have a different take on this article. 99% of apps are absolute shit and it takes people less than 1 day to realize this.
I think that some of the apps for sale tend to be a bit better since the authors want to make money, but there is still a lot of crap out there. I rarely buy any apps for this reason. Sure, I know it is usually only a dollar or two... but I hate wasting ANY of my money on crap.
I would probably buy more apps if I had the option to return them or demo the full version for a day or two.
I only had to be spanked about three times as a child. The skillful parents make it more psychological... I was crying before a hand even contacted my ass. And it didn't even hit that hard. You can be damn sure I remembered the humiliation next time my mom looked at me and told me to stop acting up.
However, in this girl's situation, the most effective solution would have been to take her phone, smash it, and then have her parents come pick it and her up. Now obviously that doesn't fly nowdays, but it worked great when I was in school 20 years ago. You can guarantee no one would take a cell phone to class after that.
The public always acts horrified that some big company is using products made by these workers make their products. But people also like having cheap keyboards and will preferentially purchase them, causing companies to create these conditions.
If those keyboards were made in a happy and environmentally friendly manner in the US, they would probably cost $100.
You want to blame someone? Blame the Chinese government. They are the ones allowing this to occur on their soil and profiting from it. They are willing to poison their citizens (and us) to make a buck.
Who is to say Dell and IBM even have the ability to control the factory conditions? Time and time again the Chinese have demonstrated they'll try to slip cheaper, poisoned products through the system (poisoned dog food, baby formula, baby toys) to profit. The only way this will ever change is if the Chinese government starts caring more about the health of their citizens than they do about the kickbacks they are getting.
Reliability and redundancy are not just mission critical considerations, but life critical situations. This MUST be your primary consideration at all times. My tax dollars paid for parts of the ISS and I would want it to get the greatest amount of use before it is decommissioned. However, I don't want to risk the lives of astronauts just to keep using a piece of equipment.
You're using Western logic there though. Russia and China have traditionally worried less about keeping their people alive and more about getting the job done... and it's been working for them.
From that perspective, Russia's proposal is a sound idea.
The US space program accepts risk too, it just downplays it from the public/government... let's not forget the foam issue that toasted Columbia. Prior to the accident, this was a known issue that they chose to ignore due to cost concerns. I'd be curious to hear how that fits in with your reliability and redundancy logic. In general, our entire shuttle fleet has been flying past its lifetime, but we are too cheap to bother designing a new one.
It all comes down to what cost you value a human life at. Russia's number is lower than ours, but they are both finite.
I think that Sirius/XM just priced themselves out of their own market.
Satellite radio is $13/month. While not as good for dedicated radio listening, a cell phone data plan is $30/month and provides a hell of a lot more functionality in general.
I maintain that all of their problems would be solved if they charged $5/month and put gags on their stupid DJs.
For God's sake open a newspaper, it's all over the front page. That bit about the "economic meltdown?" Or the "climate crisis," the "energy crisis," and on and on and on? It's because people decided it would be easier to just cut a deal. Our practicality, our comprimises, our working with people and organizations we don't like, has completely fucked us.
Jeeze man. You need to relax.
The economy can't be hurting you that bad if you don't pay taxes, buy gas, or purchase things from companies you don't respect.
Wait a minute, who do you buy your computer and internet service from?
Half the people in a group of 36 male and 65 female college students were instructed...
An extensive survey of the two groups showed that the exclusion of violence didn't diminish players' enjoyment of the game
Yeah, OK. But only because they had so many women in the mix. Put some 12 year old boys in there and the map will be covered in blood.
I don't buy it. I bike, walk and use public transit.
.I bet you think you're clever though, with your pithy "Who do you buy your gasoline from" crap.
Like living with ideals is an impossible and ridiculous thing that nobody really does and no one is really expected to do. Personally, I disassociate myself permanently from people and organizations I don't like. Won't work for em, won't buy from em, won't be involved, won't help make them strong. Hell, I didn't like what my government has been doing last number of years, so I stopped paying my taxes. Almost went to jail for that, but my hands are clean. I did not help them.
...therefore I'm really just passing the hardship along to others. That makes me accountable to those others, and I may one day be called on to pay the piper, and if they come for me, it will be right and good and my own damned fault.
It's called taking responsibility, maybe you ought to look into it.
What are you 12 years old? It sounds like you think you're the clever one. The world isn't black and white, it's shades of grey and sometimes you have to compromise and work with people and organizations you don't like to make progress.
Just because you don't agree with elected government officials doesn't give you the right to stop paying taxes and push the cost onto other citizens under some retarded form of social protest. By living in the country, you are accepting the whole package, including agreeing paying taxes, regardless of who is elected.
If you don't like it, legally fight for change or GTFO. You can't bury your head in the sand and just ignore things you don't like.
If you want the service of yonder years, you can still get it. In fact, you can still get it at approximately the same prices *you used to pay*.
I for one welcome the democratization of long-distance travel.
No.
My employer has *always* purchased economy class tickets for work travel. The difference is that it used to be bearable 10 years ago, now it sucks. Seats have gotten smaller, amenities have disappeared, flight attendants are bitchy, and you get *nothing* when your flight is canceled. This all used to be different.
Please tell me how I can get the service of yonder years for the same prices today. Let's pick a specific example... Economy flights from LAX to PVD from 5/29 to 5/31 cost a minimum of $240. Business or first class flights are a minimum of $874. I am looking at a receipt from 10 years ago where that flight cost $330 (after all the fees). Who do I give $90 to get my 4 inches of lost legroom, my multiple snacks and meals, and the ability to carry on a bag as big as a coffin with no questions asked?
The Republican party needs a reboot. We need a healthy Republican party to be the best country we can be. I welcome a strong Republican party. This one ain't it.
I'm about done with both parties. I think what we really need is a 3rd party. This two party system is getting ridiculous. Look what we had to choose between this election. Personally, I was unhappy with both candidates.
In my opinion, both parties have degraded into caricatures of their former selves. There's no independent thought and no compromise. If you want to be supported by the party bosses, you need to tow the party line.
I'm sick of having to choose between only two sets of beliefs. What if I am pro-abortion and pro-gun? What if I am pro-stem cell research and anti-taxes?
Let's get some more options for the voters. If congress consisted of 4 or 5 parties, maybe we could avoid situations where one of them gets majority control of congress and tries to ram their bills down everyone's throats. Maybe we could have real compromise from the start, rather than last minute, poorly thought out, hacked up bills.
Maybe we could limit the congress terms to 4 years too. Then we'd see some real change.
Slashdot Mirror
"Do you want the bad news first or the good news? The good news is that about 80% of Americans think science knowledge is 'very important' to our future. The bad news is most of those people think it's up to someone else to get knowledgeable. Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water (47% if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number) and over 40% think dinosaurs and humans cavorted together like in some sort of 'Land Of The Lost' episode. What to do? Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense. Yes, it will enrage the teachers' union, but it might inspire better people to go into science teaching. It's either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun."
WTF! How does the percentage of the Earth's surface covered with water rank as an important scientific fact? And dinosaurs? Give me a break. Last I checked, most people don't use dinosaurs or sail around on the ocean very often, so these little tidbits of geography and history are not retained.
Ask them questions about things that they use everyday: Why do we have seasons? What is electricity? How is energy generated form combustion?
I will admit that people should be on top of the definition of a year. But it's hard to be scientific when a half of the country is trying to ram Intelligent Design and God down your throat and the other half can't string coherent thoughts together because they are busy texting their friends about Britney Spears' panties.
You honestly believe that in the next two years China can catch up on the last 40 years of NASA R&D? They would have to land a man on the moon, develop and launch a space telescope better than the JWST, they would have had to land and operate rovers on Mars 3 years ago, since we've already operated rovers on Mars for 5 years, construct a global satellite communications network, and a global satellite positioning system. They aren't even close to being near where the US is, nobody is. We've been miles and miles ahead for decades.
I do believe that the Chinese can catch up with us very quickly. They have already achieved manned spaceflight. They aren't stupid people, they are incredibly motivated (by their power-seeking government), and they have gotten a lot of help from the Russians. Plus, they are really really good at reverse engineering other countries successful designs.
Also, they don't really need to catch up to 40 years of manned spaceflight. We started trying for space in when? 1959? And our last lunar mission was in 1973. So that's 14 years of technology development that occurred over 35 years ago... Since then we have been driving a bus in low earth orbit and sending remote control vehicles to other planets.
I also take issue with your cost analysis argument. NASA's budget may be much larger than the Chinese budget. But I worked for NASA; they waste a TON of money. There is incredibly high overhead, thousands of unmotivated government employees who have been beaten down by the bureaucratic machine and are just waiting for retirement, and miles of red tape to do anything because of safety, equal opportunity, buying from small and disadvantaged businesses... etc.
You think the Chinese are going to waste their time with that shit? I don't. They'll fire or shoot the employees that aren't performing, buy/requisition whatever they need from their massive cheap labor force, pick the best candidates regardless of race (they'll all be Chinese :) and steal whatever technology they need form their spies in the US. Any astronauts that die from a mission failure will be declared heros and replaced immediately without any stop-work procedures. I have no doubt they can accomplish what NASA can at 1/10th the price.
Keep patting yourself on the back about how great US technology is though. In my opinion, we were great, but we have been resting on our laurels for at least 30 years now. Our government doesn't have the drive to support multiyear projects for science and technology and we barely have enough homegrown scientists to support our defense and space programs. All we have is a small percentage of motivated individuals trying to make progress and being bogged down by unmotivated colleagues and extremely short duration projects that require immediate results or they are canceled.
We're already being surpassed in some fields. Do you really think it is that ludicrous that other counties could technologically surpass us while our government is busy funding bailout packages to rescue banks and poorly planned mortgages instead of investing that money in science and technology?
Wouldn't it be extremely expensive to send large quantities of water into orbit (also, our water supply is limited we can't be throwing it into space!)?
That's a good point. Plus how will the water stay liquid? And what if it doesn't come out as a spray. I bet it would suck to get hit with a big frozen ice block in orbit.
The US should fix this problem the way they fix everything else: Hire a bunch of illegal immigrants or people from a 3rd world country to go up there and pick all the junk out of orbit!
Why, I would have said "tell the same to the Sioux, the Apache, the Comanche, the Pawnee, the Alaska natives," and so on.
It has always puzzled me how some Americans can double-think on such a grand scale when talking about Tibet: almost the entire area of the US was taken by outright theft, swindle or larceny.
At the same time, while China is the evil empire persecuting Tibetans, Israel is "just defending itself". Would be interesting to see how the US public opinion would react if China bombed Tibet the way Israel bombed Gaza, and whether it would be considered that Tibetans actually killed more Chinese of other ethnic groups last year (see Lhasa riots) than Palestinians killed Israelis.
Your China-Israel analogy is flawed. Israel is bombing Gaza because of continued Palestinian rocket attacks. And let's not forget that Israel's neighbors have wanted to want to blow the shit out of Israel and kill every last Jew since the country was created. The social protests in Tibet are a little lower key than that.
And I am so sick of this whole "land ownership" thing. Humans evolved from a single place in Africa 2 million years ago and spread out from there. At what point in time did land ownership start?
The American Indians were killing each other for resources long before the white men showed up. Are you saying it is OK for Indians to kill each other but not OK for white people to? What are you racist?
Well, if you compare China to US then it seems to be quite a peaceful nation (if you talk about international issues).
Yeah, they are too busy killing their own citizens to bother killing people in other countries.
Instead, they just sell weapons to shady dictators in exchange for raw materials to fuel their economic growth. Then they let the dictators fight the wars while they sit back and profit.
Not that I am saying that the US or Russia are any better... You don't get to be a superpower by being "peaceful."
Counter Strike class? Is that what you guys called your IT classes in school? We called it Quake class.
Heh. You whippersnappers.
It used to be all about Doom running in DOS.
Why is this cute and interesting when done by a group of European amateurs and a global threat when done in North Korea?
Because the Danish group isn't simultaneously developing and conducting nuclear weapons tests and threatening to "accidentally" shoot down passenger aircraft.
Also, the European nations already have the ability to reach space. It's cool because it is being done by an amateur group.
Think of it as the difference between watching your son plinking at targets with a BB gun versus watching your neighbor blow holes in thick metal plates at 2 km with his .50 cal semiauto rifle, while simultaneously punching his wife in the face and giving you the finger.
Does that help?
> Our government used to stop these things, but they got bought out by the corporations about 20 years ago.
Let's call a duck a duck. It was thanks to Ronald Reagan, the greatest almighty president, that corporations got more and more power. For those who were too young to know, or forgot, banks also had a limit to how much interest they could charge on a credit card, but Reagan decided it wasn't fair and made them free to charge whatever they wanted. Good Morning 29% APR. Thanks George W. Reagan!
I'm not going to disagree with you about who started chipping away at the public good in favor of corporate greed. Sadly though, I think that both major parties are guilty. Priority goes to getting yourself re-elected, which involves bringing the most pork into your district and making the corporate lobbyists happy so that they don't overthrow you on the next election.
When advertising and lobbyists started having more effect on elections than the actual facts on the ground, the general public lost out.
Now it's just like herding sheep.
That isn't going to happen for a while. Currently we have an economy in which no one is willing to take risks or to spend money, banks aren't lending money, people aren't spending money, investors aren't investing, few people are going to start a new business. Secondly, the existing electronic retailers that are doing Ok in this economy (Best Buy, Walmart, etc) can easily expand to consume these free customers. Thirdly, the internet has largely replaced all non-established brick and mortar stores, making starting a new one even more un-appealing.
What I am taking from your post is that a new, more competitive store has already been created (Walmart, Best Buy, the internet) and driven Circuit City out of business.
In my opinion, places like Circuit City and Best Buy have limited relevance anyway nowdays due to a binning of consumers at the extreme ends of the spectrum due to the info available on the internet. Walmart- and Target-like entities are able to meet the needs of a consumer who just wants a TV but isn't terribly savvy. More technical competent shoppers surf to find exactly what product they want and then go to places like Fry's the internet (Newegg, etc.) to get that exact item.
I think that we will see places like Fry's create more locations to fill the void.
No.
Our government used to stop these things, but they got bought out by the corporations about 20 years ago.
Why is their death sad?
For a lot of people the only substantial consumer electronics retailers are best buy and circuit city. After circuit city is officially gone, best buy will have numerous markets without even token competition for consumer electronics (unless you count walmart). Hence even losing a lousy retailer is still a loss for the consumer. One could potentially expect to see best buy starting to carry even less variety of product, as they won't have much to worry about competing against.
I guess I view it differently than you. The loss of a lousy retailer provides an opening for a better store to compete in the electronics market. It's capitalism at work... out with the old and weak and in with the new.
CC went out of business because they were not able to maintain their relevancy. Now there are free customers and space in town for someone to try out some new business concepts in the electronics market.
Personally, these days it's hard for me not to just order what I want online. And I don't do that because it is cheaper, I do it because it is easier than driving down to the store, parking, wading through all the other shoppers and trying to find the item I want. The retailers never carry the computer monitor or accessory that I want in the store anyway. (No, I don't want integrated speakers on my monitor, thank you.)
When in human history has encountering a more advanced civilisation ever been good for a less advanced civilisation?
Japan didn't do too badly; once they realised how backward they were they acted quickly to catch up, taking less than ninety years from the Black Ships to Pearl Harbour.
And then they got nuked.
Alright, now take it down to Starbucks to work on stuff while you have a coffee.
So much for boasting about '2 grand', huh? I agree with your point, but there are uses for expensive, portable computers, even uses that justify spending that kind of money.
Lol. No offense, but people who do real work don't do it at Starbucks. Have you ever tried to write a computer program or derive any complex theory in that environment? You can't string a series of connected thoughts.
Starbucks is for emailing/websurfing while pretending to work while actually people-watching and showing off. Now if you said "take it to the airport," that would make more sense.
Burdick's cellular connection which he thought was connected (though a datacard) to AT&T's network. Unfortunately for Burdick he was actually connected to the ship's onboard network, which accounts for the international roaming, and his datacard was unable to display the repeated warnings that AT&T kept sending him over SMS.
Maybe if you are savvy enough to setup a slingbox, you should be savvy enough to make sure you are logged into the proper network before downloading a shitload of data.
Just a thought...
I have a different take on this article. 99% of apps are absolute shit and it takes people less than 1 day to realize this.
I think that some of the apps for sale tend to be a bit better since the authors want to make money, but there is still a lot of crap out there. I rarely buy any apps for this reason. Sure, I know it is usually only a dollar or two... but I hate wasting ANY of my money on crap.
I would probably buy more apps if I had the option to return them or demo the full version for a day or two.
I only had to be spanked about three times as a child. The skillful parents make it more psychological... I was crying before a hand even contacted my ass. And it didn't even hit that hard. You can be damn sure I remembered the humiliation next time my mom looked at me and told me to stop acting up.
However, in this girl's situation, the most effective solution would have been to take her phone, smash it, and then have her parents come pick it and her up. Now obviously that doesn't fly nowdays, but it worked great when I was in school 20 years ago. You can guarantee no one would take a cell phone to class after that.
I don't get it.
The public always acts horrified that some big company is using products made by these workers make their products. But people also like having cheap keyboards and will preferentially purchase them, causing companies to create these conditions.
If those keyboards were made in a happy and environmentally friendly manner in the US, they would probably cost $100.
You want to blame someone? Blame the Chinese government. They are the ones allowing this to occur on their soil and profiting from it. They are willing to poison their citizens (and us) to make a buck.
Who is to say Dell and IBM even have the ability to control the factory conditions? Time and time again the Chinese have demonstrated they'll try to slip cheaper, poisoned products through the system (poisoned dog food, baby formula, baby toys) to profit. The only way this will ever change is if the Chinese government starts caring more about the health of their citizens than they do about the kickbacks they are getting.
Reliability and redundancy are not just mission critical considerations, but life critical situations. This MUST be your primary consideration at all times. My tax dollars paid for parts of the ISS and I would want it to get the greatest amount of use before it is decommissioned. However, I don't want to risk the lives of astronauts just to keep using a piece of equipment.
You're using Western logic there though. Russia and China have traditionally worried less about keeping their people alive and more about getting the job done... and it's been working for them.
From that perspective, Russia's proposal is a sound idea.
The US space program accepts risk too, it just downplays it from the public/government... let's not forget the foam issue that toasted Columbia. Prior to the accident, this was a known issue that they chose to ignore due to cost concerns. I'd be curious to hear how that fits in with your reliability and redundancy logic. In general, our entire shuttle fleet has been flying past its lifetime, but we are too cheap to bother designing a new one.
It all comes down to what cost you value a human life at. Russia's number is lower than ours, but they are both finite.
I think that Sirius/XM just priced themselves out of their own market. Satellite radio is $13/month. While not as good for dedicated radio listening, a cell phone data plan is $30/month and provides a hell of a lot more functionality in general. I maintain that all of their problems would be solved if they charged $5/month and put gags on their stupid DJs.
I rarely drive. Why should I subsidize the people who drive 100 miles a day to commute into the city from their faux-rural home?
Because they subsidize your public transit and the roads you drive on. Duh.
For God's sake open a newspaper, it's all over the front page. That bit about the "economic meltdown?" Or the "climate crisis," the "energy crisis," and on and on and on? It's because people decided it would be easier to just cut a deal. Our practicality, our comprimises, our working with people and organizations we don't like, has completely fucked us.
Jeeze man. You need to relax.
The economy can't be hurting you that bad if you don't pay taxes, buy gas, or purchase things from companies you don't respect.
Wait a minute, who do you buy your computer and internet service from?
Half the people in a group of 36 male and 65 female college students were instructed... An extensive survey of the two groups showed that the exclusion of violence didn't diminish players' enjoyment of the game
Yeah, OK. But only because they had so many women in the mix. Put some 12 year old boys in there and the map will be covered in blood.
Who do you buy your gasoline from?
I don't buy it. I bike, walk and use public transit.
.I bet you think you're clever though, with your pithy "Who do you buy your gasoline from" crap.
Like living with ideals is an impossible and ridiculous thing that nobody really does and no one is really expected to do. Personally, I disassociate myself permanently from people and organizations I don't like. Won't work for em, won't buy from em, won't be involved, won't help make them strong. Hell, I didn't like what my government has been doing last number of years, so I stopped paying my taxes. Almost went to jail for that, but my hands are clean. I did not help them.
It's called taking responsibility, maybe you ought to look into it.
What are you 12 years old? It sounds like you think you're the clever one. The world isn't black and white, it's shades of grey and sometimes you have to compromise and work with people and organizations you don't like to make progress.
Just because you don't agree with elected government officials doesn't give you the right to stop paying taxes and push the cost onto other citizens under some retarded form of social protest. By living in the country, you are accepting the whole package, including agreeing paying taxes, regardless of who is elected.
If you don't like it, legally fight for change or GTFO. You can't bury your head in the sand and just ignore things you don't like.
If you want the service of yonder years, you can still get it. In fact, you can still get it at approximately the same prices *you used to pay*.
I for one welcome the democratization of long-distance travel.
No.
My employer has *always* purchased economy class tickets for work travel. The difference is that it used to be bearable 10 years ago, now it sucks. Seats have gotten smaller, amenities have disappeared, flight attendants are bitchy, and you get *nothing* when your flight is canceled. This all used to be different.
Please tell me how I can get the service of yonder years for the same prices today. Let's pick a specific example... Economy flights from LAX to PVD from 5/29 to 5/31 cost a minimum of $240. Business or first class flights are a minimum of $874. I am looking at a receipt from 10 years ago where that flight cost $330 (after all the fees). Who do I give $90 to get my 4 inches of lost legroom, my multiple snacks and meals, and the ability to carry on a bag as big as a coffin with no questions asked?
The Republican party needs a reboot. We need a healthy Republican party to be the best country we can be. I welcome a strong Republican party. This one ain't it.
I'm about done with both parties. I think what we really need is a 3rd party. This two party system is getting ridiculous. Look what we had to choose between this election. Personally, I was unhappy with both candidates.
In my opinion, both parties have degraded into caricatures of their former selves. There's no independent thought and no compromise. If you want to be supported by the party bosses, you need to tow the party line.
I'm sick of having to choose between only two sets of beliefs. What if I am pro-abortion and pro-gun? What if I am pro-stem cell research and anti-taxes?
Let's get some more options for the voters. If congress consisted of 4 or 5 parties, maybe we could avoid situations where one of them gets majority control of congress and tries to ram their bills down everyone's throats. Maybe we could have real compromise from the start, rather than last minute, poorly thought out, hacked up bills.
Maybe we could limit the congress terms to 4 years too. Then we'd see some real change.