You really think if Aliens show up you'd be able to stop attention whores like Berlusconi and Sarkozy finding it in themselves to stop humping Obama's leg for a moment and running off to meet these aliens and declare their love for all species terrestrial and extra terrestrial? That's if they managed to beat Ahmadinejad there as he rushes to greet them with the insistence that they're muslim and clearly want all zionists to die.
No, this guy would likely be left in the dust as the worlds drama queens and attention whores rush to proclaim themselves as the voice of planet Earth.
Likely, this rush of the worlds arseholes towards them would probably make them jump back in their ship and fly straight back to the planet zog or whatever long before he got chance to meet them.
This is probably just one of those things public sector organisations like the various UN bodies tend to do to justify payrises. Fill in the public sector pay form as needed to calculate pay:
[] Manager of 10 or more people +$2,000 [] Financial responsibility +$1,000 [] Project planning responsibility +$1,000 [] Intergalactic relations responsibility +$50,000
The various state actors running our countries couldn't pass off an opportunity for something like this to someone no one's heard of even if the aliens in question were more of the Alien vs. Predator kind and their lives depended on it.
Or in other words, by this time next year, the media cartel with have lookup tables of every single consumer IP address owner in France, because for a population of 62 million, many of whom aren't online, or share an IP, that's all it'll take at the given rate.
Worse, because it'll be so costly for ISPs, they'll have more incentive to just assign a static IP per subscriber and create lookup tables themselves. Effectively this is the end of any amount of online privacy in France, if you connect to the net their, before long your IP and your name, phone number, home address, and e-mail address will be easily matched- what're the chances of such lookup tables staying secure and private indefinitely?
Something is going to go seriously wrong with this system one way or another, it's either going to kill off ISPs, or it's going to suffer torential backlash and be revoked, or in perhaps the worst case, it's going to make the online population of France the biggest target of tracking, identity theft, and scams in history.
PG Admin is the closest but it's still utter crap compared to MySQL's tools, unfortunately MySQL itself is quite shit, so basically you've got a choice of good dataabse, shit tools, or shit database, awesome tools.
That was a much saner and more reasonable post than your original one. If you accept it's a reaction to specific circumstances to the US then why the previous rhetoric about Europeans giving their freedoms away to government? This is precisely my point- we don't have these problems the US has, hence why many European nations have strict gun laws.
For what it's worth though, the US has higher disposable income per head of population on average than pretty much every European state (except the tax havens like Luxembourg and Monaco), so I'm not sure happiness is not particularly an economic thing either in all honesty, I suspect it's a number of factors, but my underlying point was that here in Europe, I accept we have things like hate speech laws, although even these are misinterpreted. The hate speech laws in Germany regarding Nazism for example don't imply you're not allowed to talk about nazism as many suggest, you're more than welcome to research and publish papers questioning whether certain nazi policies might in fact have been good for example, you're just not allowed to stand in the middle of Berlin praising what the nazi's did, praising Hitler, and shouting "Burn the jews" or whatever. As such, even those laws we do have that restrict liberty only do so when you intend to use them to cause harm or problems for other people and hence effectively infringe on their liberties. Sure governments overstep the mark sometimes, but don't they in the US? Look at warrantless wiretapping. Again when this happens though contrary to popular belief Europeans don't bend over and take it, they protest, they write to their parliamentary representative, they make sure it's kept in the public eye, and they do so until the government rescinds. A fine example in recent years is Jacqui Smith, she was a UK MP who was responsible for pushing many grossly undemocratic terror laws and restrictions on freedoms and liberties, it worked for her for a while, but eventually her career was destroyed, she was made a fairly public target for the media over a period of months, and eventually she lost her seat in the elections. Nearly all the laws she advocated failed to pass parliament, and the ones that did pass have been, or are being in the process of withdrawn or restricted to remove the problem elements. The point is that we didn't need guns, ultimately political activism serves us well, and has done for many many decades. I suspect if the day ever comes where we need arms to overthrow the government the military will be on our side anyway, because soldiers are citizens and have friends and family that would otherwise be set to lose too- this is basically what happened in Turkey with it's military coups of the last century, and to a similar extent, in Lebanon, but when political activism works just fine for us, I'm not sure how we'd really get to this situation.
I understand that in a situation where everyone else has a gun you would feel safer having one too, but isn't the ultimate solution to try and cut gun ownership so that you can walk the streets without ever for a minute thinking you might want to take a gun with you or ever even need to own one unless you specifically want to target shoot recreationally or whatever?
As I say I have no problem with gun ownership per-se, I have no problem with guns for sport (as I say, I quite enjoy shooting), I simply take issue with the idea that some Americans put forward that gun ownership is essential for freedom, security, liberty, and for good governance- when you attacked non-US countries as handing their freedoms away because they didn't have lax gun laws to allow citizens to keep their government in place, that's the impression I got from your original post, so I apologise if that's not how you really feel or the impression you intended to give.
"Maybe you just don't know that much about your own continent? Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Norway, Austria, Serbia, Greece, Belgium, and many more all have very significant gun ownership rates, some coming close to the US."
Also, gun ownership per capita is not the same as attitudes towards gun ownership, and the restrictions on gun ownership including registration of weapons, licensing of weapons, purchasing of weapons, types of weapons, and so on.
"For you to assert with no evidence and in fact contrary to existing scientific evidence that ownership rates of guns are causative in making an area unsafe is simply unfounded and irresponsible. Please do your research before burdening us with your opinions."
Actually, my assertion was that the idea that gun ownership makes you more safe doesn't seem to be true, but unfortunately in your seemingly patriotic rush to the defence of the good name of your nation that flew right over the top of your head.
"Who says we have more freedom?"
Tea party folk, NRA members and the like mostly.
I think you've probably taken my post the wrong way, and that's possibly fair enough- perhaps my wording wasn't ideal. My fundamental point is that the idea that Europeans are somehow negatively effected by lack of gun ownership freedoms in general (please read the post I originally responded to to understand the context of my post) simply isn't true. The idea that unless you have the absolute right to bear arms, you are living under a tyrannical government- an idea that all too many Americans seem to try and sell is blatantly false, because European countries are, for the most part, doing better. Arguments against gun control are often countered with arguments about how crime will rise, about how liberty will decrease, about how governments will become more tyrannical if it weren't for gun ownership- but my point is this clearly isn't necessarily true. Just as you say, gun ownership doesn't necessarily lead to increased violent crime, laws against gun ownership clearly don't lead to an increase in gun crime either.
For what it's worth, my comments regarding happiness were mostly there to illustrate the point that claims of Europeans being under the thumb of tyrannical governments because of generally much stricter laws on gun ownership are largely irrelevant, because importantly, the population is generally much more happy- that is, absolute freedoms including the freedom to arm yourself to the teeth may make you think you're more free in theory, but if it doesn't buy you any additional happiness does it really matter?
Most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google things for themselves. As you're apparently incapable of using Google though, enjoy:
As you can see, there are some stats where the US is equal to or above a handful of European nations, but in pretty much every case the US falls below the European average, and in some cases, is below that of all European nations.
"Lots of us think your utter submission to your governments, preference for the safety of lawbreakers over personal self-defense, and general sheeple tendencies aren't admirable either. You've traded freedom for (the perception of) security as is your right, but that only works in certain situations and assumes benign government."
Yet people in Europe don't feel oppressed, and have high levels of personal happiness (as well as other factors like health) whilst generally having better levels of literacy and numeracy. Most importantly, European "preference for the safety of lawbreakers over personal self-defense" seems to allow us to have vastly lower crime rates than in the US, particularly much lower gun crime rates, and certainly vastly fewer accidental injuries and deaths from firearms.
"The Middle Eastern populace clearly needs them for self-defense, and even the Coalition forces in Iraq allow one per household. If you cannot use force to protect yourself you have no _effective_ right to self-defense."
Yes, and we've seen how well it works. I'm sure the 1000s of Iraqis that die each month are more than happy with the self-defence their AK-47 offered them. Worked really well when it was the other guy who pulled the trigger first, or blew him up on his way to the market with an IED or car bomb.
"While those of you who are totally comfortable with your government controlling your lives and who live in areas without violent demographic/sectarian/criminal conflict may not care for firearms, they do go a long way to ensure sovereignty over ones own space."
Which is why the US also has higher levels of robbery than most European countries that have heavy restrictions on firearm ownership? Yeah, great sovereignty over your own space there.
"Americans killed their way to freedom in the Revolution, killed those who supported slavery until they surrendered at Appomattox, and if the government gets bad enough will vote with the bullet again. We tolerate quite a bit of corporate abuse, as do the rest of you"
Yes, we can see how well it turned out too. A two party state where each party is extremely heavily influenced by corporations to an incredible degree, and where elections can be turned if your relative happens to work at a popular news channel in a key state. Still, if it makes you feel better to tell yourself everyone else suffers the same corporate abuse US citizens do then you do that. Meanwhile we'll enjoy our statutory 5+ weeks holiday, our guaranteed redundancy pay, our strong protections on working conditions, our free healthcare and so on, all whilst maintaining a bigger economy alongside those afformentioned higher levels of personal happiness, healthcare, etc. than the US to boot!
"Both self and wife have used firearms in self-defense without firing them."
Really? That's pretty unfortunate. Here in Europe I've never been in such a situation where I'd have have had to do that, nor do I know anyone who has. Sounds like gun ownership helps ensure your country is a really nice place to live in.
I actually like shooting, it's a fun sport, but it's just that, a sport. You've got to be pretty insecure, or living in a pretty unfriendly country to think that a firearm is something you need to carry around with you everywhere you go, or necessarily to even keep one in your house. You can throw around terms like freedom, security, self-defence and so on as much as you want, but it doesn't change the cold hard fact that the US isn't really excelling in any important metric as a result of it's gun culture. If you have freedom why do corporations in the US have so much control both politically and personally? If you have guns as a deterrent to criminals, why is crime so high? If you feel safe, free, and secure as a result of gun ownership why do Americans report so much lower levels of personal happiness?
"Yeah, it's going to be hard to squeeze that kind of processing onto a console... Microsoft and their devs have their work cut out for them."
Which is why it's done by the Kinect hardware, leaving the console free to handle game logic and simply interact with the controller(s) (Kinect etc.) as need be like it always has.
US management of the internet has led to censorship of foreign sites globally through the court seizure of gambling domains, the court orders to take the Wikileaks domain offline and so forth.
As US management of the internet currently allows arbitrary judges to arbitrarily censor any part of the net from public view by seizing the domain names, whether based in the US or not then I don't see how a treaty to prevent exactly the sort of thing could make things worse, even if it is sponsored by Europe.
At least European censorship has to pass through democratic process and can be challenged in courts both at local and European level, rather than the arbitrary censorship US judges can impose on the internet at the behest of any random litigant requesting it currently. It's also worth noting that the US has pushed ACTA provisions, and it's comments regarding Wikileaks suggest it is moving strongly towards even greater powers and ability to censor parts of the internet at will.
I'm not sure which studio you're excluding from that list with your 4 out of 5, but let's be honest, id Software only gets on lists of "top studios" because of it's history. It's not done anything worthwhile since Quake 3, and even that was really the low point of the Quake series. It gets an honorary place, but it's hard to argue it's a top studio nowadays- certainly it doesn't seem to offer anything in it's titles over any other run of the mill FPS clone developer.
They're a far cry from their earlier selves when they produced the Wolfenstein, Doom, and the Quake series. During that period they led the game development world, ever since they've really just been an "also ran". Carmack is without a doubt a genius, but with the loss of the likes of Romero, Steed, McGee, Petersen, Kirsch, they just shed far too much talent, and as good a programmer as Carmack is, his programming ability alone couldn't make up for the loss of the game design, level design, character design skills of those folk.
Sure give them a legacy position as a top studio, but nowadays I think it's hard to argue they're anything special. This isn't to say their games are awful or anything they're not, they're just run of the mill and simply do not stand out from the crowd anymore like some developers do (i.e. Blizzard).
I think honestly the whole premise is flawed, the idea that terrorists are often engineers doesn't seem to necessarily be true whatsoever.
Look at attacks in the UK in recent times- the Glasgow bombers were all involved in the medical profession, or had medical qualifications. Of the 7th July 2005 bombers, one was a youth worker with a GNVQ in business, another was a youth worker, another seemed to have no real qualifications but worked in local government temporarily, another studied sports science and worked in a fish and chip shop.
Outside of the UK, we've got the shoe bomber who was another bum with no real prospects and who was involved in muggings and petty theft, the fellow you mention as you say, studied business.
Where are all these engineer terrorists exactly? Even if there's a few out there they don't seem disproportionately represented.
I had a look at the original article and the sample they used seems far from reliable. It mentions that of 404 records they could only ascertain the academic records of 178 of them, and that some areas are underrepresented including places like Iraq, and most of Asia, as well as North Africa.
Until they can actually demonstrate that terrorists really are oriented more towards engineering, there seems little point even trying to figure out why. They have not demonstrated this yet. There probably is a slant towards engineering because it offers the required skillset, but is it really significant? Is it significant enough to try and draw a conclusion that there's a link between the mindset of an engineer and a terrorist? absolutely not.
Heh, I find Slashdot tends to mangle a lot of things. I still have nightmares from the time I accidently changed the text type drop down without previewing!
I was referring to left handed/right handed settings- i.e. swapping the mouse buttons round in control panel. Obviously that's something you have to go out your way to do.
Are you sure Microsoft sued HTC? I was aware of the licensing deal but never heard anything about Microsoft suing them. A Google search turns up nothing about Microsoft suing HTC either, just the licensing deal.
It would be rather stupid of Microsoft to sue HTC too seeing as Microsoft has historically been so dependent on HTC hardware to shift Windows mobile. I don't really see that changing either, with Windows Phone 7 I suspect HTC will still produce the best Windows Mobile handsets.
The issue seems to be with handedness that because we instinctively use one hand for something we use that hand by default, it doesn't mean we couldn't get used to using our other hand too, just as it's less natural we simply don't bother to try.
My point really is that if you actually bother to try and actually get used to it, using your other hand does actually work just as well as using your main hand.
Well it's always going to be your choice, if you don't feel it's worth it fine, but then don't complain either- a solution to the problem is available. If you're complaining about it then obviously you're unhappy about it so the answer to "Why should I?" is simply so you don't have to worry about said problem.
"So if the IT guys at work are left handed, and unconsciously set up all the work stations with the mouse/mousepad on the left -- should all the righties just 'get used to it'?"
Not really because the IT guys have to go out their way to do just that, like it or not, right handed is the default. It's not unreasonable for people to expect the default, but it's much less reasonable to expect everyone to change things just for you.
If however as an alternative example, you'd used an imaginary scenario where by left hand was the default and righties should get used to it then yes, I'd agree with you completely. Unfortunately we do not live in that world though.
My point is, despite being left handed I don't find any disadvantage in switching to my right hand for any of these things, even though I can't for the life of me write with my right hand for example.
I have an old MS Sidewinder joystick which is very much a right handed stick, and have also had to use a purely right hand designed mouse at work, simply using my right hand instead was not difficult for these sorts of devices (again, as opposed to doing something like writing). It's not like when you're left handed you are missing your right hand- you're not disabled, it still works for many things and using a device as simple as a mouse and joystick is one of those things.
You have to get used to using your right hand for some things- what about driving a left hand drive car? you need your right hand to use the gear stick. Getting used to using a right handed mouse or joystick with your right hand even if naturally left handed really isn't any harder.
Perhaps I'm slightly more ambidextrous than some, but that seems unlikely because I know full well the discomfort of doing some things right handed and again, I simply can't write to save my life right handed for example, computing with any kind of device has never been one of those things though, just like driving a car hasn't. I think if people actually tried to get used to using their right hand rather than simply complain they can't, they'd soon find it's not really a problem.
I've always been left handed, but I never really understood complaints about southpaw on computers and console controllers, these sorts of devices seem trivial to master in either hand whatever handedness you are naturally.
I remember when I worked in tech support and was looking after an IT training suite one day, some candidate came in in a huff and sat down and said "Don't you have any left handed workstations?", I asked what she meant, and she said the mouse was on the wrong side of the keyboard, it seemed that picking the mouse up and moving it to the other side of the keyboard was too confusing a task for her.
I've always got the impression from experiences like this that those who complain about right/left hand stuff in computing are just people who like to complain whatever you do for them. Certainly as a leftie I've never once had a problem or felt disadvantaged when using any kind of computing device, ever, and I've never had to swap mouse buttons round, change game console controls around or anything like that either.
Slashdot Mirror
In that case, let's just hope that if they visit, they don't arrive at the wrong time of the month.
This guy's appointment is bollocks.
You really think if Aliens show up you'd be able to stop attention whores like Berlusconi and Sarkozy finding it in themselves to stop humping Obama's leg for a moment and running off to meet these aliens and declare their love for all species terrestrial and extra terrestrial? That's if they managed to beat Ahmadinejad there as he rushes to greet them with the insistence that they're muslim and clearly want all zionists to die.
No, this guy would likely be left in the dust as the worlds drama queens and attention whores rush to proclaim themselves as the voice of planet Earth.
Likely, this rush of the worlds arseholes towards them would probably make them jump back in their ship and fly straight back to the planet zog or whatever long before he got chance to meet them.
This is probably just one of those things public sector organisations like the various UN bodies tend to do to justify payrises. Fill in the public sector pay form as needed to calculate pay:
[] Manager of 10 or more people +$2,000
[] Financial responsibility +$1,000
[] Project planning responsibility +$1,000
[] Intergalactic relations responsibility +$50,000
The various state actors running our countries couldn't pass off an opportunity for something like this to someone no one's heard of even if the aliens in question were more of the Alien vs. Predator kind and their lives depended on it.
"I would know, cuz im a white hat lol"
I'm going to see how many times I can use this line in conversation at work today. It's just brilliant.
They'll just target IPs or hostnames assigned to French ISPs and ditch foreign IPs, that's really all they need to do to solve that problem.
Or in other words, by this time next year, the media cartel with have lookup tables of every single consumer IP address owner in France, because for a population of 62 million, many of whom aren't online, or share an IP, that's all it'll take at the given rate.
Worse, because it'll be so costly for ISPs, they'll have more incentive to just assign a static IP per subscriber and create lookup tables themselves. Effectively this is the end of any amount of online privacy in France, if you connect to the net their, before long your IP and your name, phone number, home address, and e-mail address will be easily matched- what're the chances of such lookup tables staying secure and private indefinitely?
Something is going to go seriously wrong with this system one way or another, it's either going to kill off ISPs, or it's going to suffer torential backlash and be revoked, or in perhaps the worst case, it's going to make the online population of France the biggest target of tracking, identity theft, and scams in history.
PG Admin is the closest but it's still utter crap compared to MySQL's tools, unfortunately MySQL itself is quite shit, so basically you've got a choice of good dataabse, shit tools, or shit database, awesome tools.
That was a much saner and more reasonable post than your original one. If you accept it's a reaction to specific circumstances to the US then why the previous rhetoric about Europeans giving their freedoms away to government? This is precisely my point- we don't have these problems the US has, hence why many European nations have strict gun laws.
For what it's worth though, the US has higher disposable income per head of population on average than pretty much every European state (except the tax havens like Luxembourg and Monaco), so I'm not sure happiness is not particularly an economic thing either in all honesty, I suspect it's a number of factors, but my underlying point was that here in Europe, I accept we have things like hate speech laws, although even these are misinterpreted. The hate speech laws in Germany regarding Nazism for example don't imply you're not allowed to talk about nazism as many suggest, you're more than welcome to research and publish papers questioning whether certain nazi policies might in fact have been good for example, you're just not allowed to stand in the middle of Berlin praising what the nazi's did, praising Hitler, and shouting "Burn the jews" or whatever. As such, even those laws we do have that restrict liberty only do so when you intend to use them to cause harm or problems for other people and hence effectively infringe on their liberties. Sure governments overstep the mark sometimes, but don't they in the US? Look at warrantless wiretapping. Again when this happens though contrary to popular belief Europeans don't bend over and take it, they protest, they write to their parliamentary representative, they make sure it's kept in the public eye, and they do so until the government rescinds. A fine example in recent years is Jacqui Smith, she was a UK MP who was responsible for pushing many grossly undemocratic terror laws and restrictions on freedoms and liberties, it worked for her for a while, but eventually her career was destroyed, she was made a fairly public target for the media over a period of months, and eventually she lost her seat in the elections. Nearly all the laws she advocated failed to pass parliament, and the ones that did pass have been, or are being in the process of withdrawn or restricted to remove the problem elements. The point is that we didn't need guns, ultimately political activism serves us well, and has done for many many decades. I suspect if the day ever comes where we need arms to overthrow the government the military will be on our side anyway, because soldiers are citizens and have friends and family that would otherwise be set to lose too- this is basically what happened in Turkey with it's military coups of the last century, and to a similar extent, in Lebanon, but when political activism works just fine for us, I'm not sure how we'd really get to this situation.
I understand that in a situation where everyone else has a gun you would feel safer having one too, but isn't the ultimate solution to try and cut gun ownership so that you can walk the streets without ever for a minute thinking you might want to take a gun with you or ever even need to own one unless you specifically want to target shoot recreationally or whatever?
As I say I have no problem with gun ownership per-se, I have no problem with guns for sport (as I say, I quite enjoy shooting), I simply take issue with the idea that some Americans put forward that gun ownership is essential for freedom, security, liberty, and for good governance- when you attacked non-US countries as handing their freedoms away because they didn't have lax gun laws to allow citizens to keep their government in place, that's the impression I got from your original post, so I apologise if that's not how you really feel or the impression you intended to give.
"Maybe you just don't know that much about your own continent? Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Norway, Austria, Serbia, Greece, Belgium, and many more all have very significant gun ownership rates, some coming close to the US."
For a very obscure definition of close perhaps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership
Also, gun ownership per capita is not the same as attitudes towards gun ownership, and the restrictions on gun ownership including registration of weapons, licensing of weapons, purchasing of weapons, types of weapons, and so on.
"For you to assert with no evidence and in fact contrary to existing scientific evidence that ownership rates of guns are causative in making an area unsafe is simply unfounded and irresponsible. Please do your research before burdening us with your opinions."
Actually, my assertion was that the idea that gun ownership makes you more safe doesn't seem to be true, but unfortunately in your seemingly patriotic rush to the defence of the good name of your nation that flew right over the top of your head.
"Who says we have more freedom?"
Tea party folk, NRA members and the like mostly.
I think you've probably taken my post the wrong way, and that's possibly fair enough- perhaps my wording wasn't ideal. My fundamental point is that the idea that Europeans are somehow negatively effected by lack of gun ownership freedoms in general (please read the post I originally responded to to understand the context of my post) simply isn't true. The idea that unless you have the absolute right to bear arms, you are living under a tyrannical government- an idea that all too many Americans seem to try and sell is blatantly false, because European countries are, for the most part, doing better. Arguments against gun control are often countered with arguments about how crime will rise, about how liberty will decrease, about how governments will become more tyrannical if it weren't for gun ownership- but my point is this clearly isn't necessarily true. Just as you say, gun ownership doesn't necessarily lead to increased violent crime, laws against gun ownership clearly don't lead to an increase in gun crime either.
For what it's worth, my comments regarding happiness were mostly there to illustrate the point that claims of Europeans being under the thumb of tyrannical governments because of generally much stricter laws on gun ownership are largely irrelevant, because importantly, the population is generally much more happy- that is, absolute freedoms including the freedom to arm yourself to the teeth may make you think you're more free in theory, but if it doesn't buy you any additional happiness does it really matter?
Most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google things for themselves. As you're apparently incapable of using Google though, enjoy:
Happiness:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index
Crime:
(rapes) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
(murders) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
(firearms murder and accidental) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
(burglaries) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita
Health:
(life expectancy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
(cancer deaths) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer
(obesity) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity
As you can see, there are some stats where the US is equal to or above a handful of European nations, but in pretty much every case the US falls below the European average, and in some cases, is below that of all European nations.
"Lots of us think your utter submission to your governments, preference for the safety of lawbreakers over personal self-defense, and general sheeple tendencies aren't admirable either. You've traded freedom for (the perception of) security as is your right, but that only works in certain situations and assumes benign government."
Yet people in Europe don't feel oppressed, and have high levels of personal happiness (as well as other factors like health) whilst generally having better levels of literacy and numeracy. Most importantly, European "preference for the safety of lawbreakers over personal self-defense" seems to allow us to have vastly lower crime rates than in the US, particularly much lower gun crime rates, and certainly vastly fewer accidental injuries and deaths from firearms.
"The Middle Eastern populace clearly needs them for self-defense, and even the Coalition forces in Iraq allow one per household. If you cannot use force to protect yourself you have no _effective_ right to self-defense."
Yes, and we've seen how well it works. I'm sure the 1000s of Iraqis that die each month are more than happy with the self-defence their AK-47 offered them. Worked really well when it was the other guy who pulled the trigger first, or blew him up on his way to the market with an IED or car bomb.
"While those of you who are totally comfortable with your government controlling your lives and who live in areas without violent demographic/sectarian/criminal conflict may not care for firearms, they do go a long way to ensure sovereignty over ones own space."
Which is why the US also has higher levels of robbery than most European countries that have heavy restrictions on firearm ownership? Yeah, great sovereignty over your own space there.
"Americans killed their way to freedom in the Revolution, killed those who supported slavery until they surrendered at Appomattox, and if the government gets bad enough will vote with the bullet again. We tolerate quite a bit of corporate abuse, as do the rest of you"
Yes, we can see how well it turned out too. A two party state where each party is extremely heavily influenced by corporations to an incredible degree, and where elections can be turned if your relative happens to work at a popular news channel in a key state. Still, if it makes you feel better to tell yourself everyone else suffers the same corporate abuse US citizens do then you do that. Meanwhile we'll enjoy our statutory 5+ weeks holiday, our guaranteed redundancy pay, our strong protections on working conditions, our free healthcare and so on, all whilst maintaining a bigger economy alongside those afformentioned higher levels of personal happiness, healthcare, etc. than the US to boot!
"Both self and wife have used firearms in self-defense without firing them."
Really? That's pretty unfortunate. Here in Europe I've never been in such a situation where I'd have have had to do that, nor do I know anyone who has. Sounds like gun ownership helps ensure your country is a really nice place to live in.
I actually like shooting, it's a fun sport, but it's just that, a sport. You've got to be pretty insecure, or living in a pretty unfriendly country to think that a firearm is something you need to carry around with you everywhere you go, or necessarily to even keep one in your house. You can throw around terms like freedom, security, self-defence and so on as much as you want, but it doesn't change the cold hard fact that the US isn't really excelling in any important metric as a result of it's gun culture. If you have freedom why do corporations in the US have so much control both politically and personally? If you have guns as a deterrent to criminals, why is crime so high? If you feel safe, free, and secure as a result of gun ownership why do Americans report so much lower levels of personal happiness?
"Yeah, it's going to be hard to squeeze that kind of processing onto a console... Microsoft and their devs have their work cut out for them."
Which is why it's done by the Kinect hardware, leaving the console free to handle game logic and simply interact with the controller(s) (Kinect etc.) as need be like it always has.
I'm sure being both black and white they're actually quite understanding.
US management of the internet has led to censorship of foreign sites globally through the court seizure of gambling domains, the court orders to take the Wikileaks domain offline and so forth.
As US management of the internet currently allows arbitrary judges to arbitrarily censor any part of the net from public view by seizing the domain names, whether based in the US or not then I don't see how a treaty to prevent exactly the sort of thing could make things worse, even if it is sponsored by Europe.
At least European censorship has to pass through democratic process and can be challenged in courts both at local and European level, rather than the arbitrary censorship US judges can impose on the internet at the behest of any random litigant requesting it currently. It's also worth noting that the US has pushed ACTA provisions, and it's comments regarding Wikileaks suggest it is moving strongly towards even greater powers and ability to censor parts of the internet at will.
I'm not sure which studio you're excluding from that list with your 4 out of 5, but let's be honest, id Software only gets on lists of "top studios" because of it's history. It's not done anything worthwhile since Quake 3, and even that was really the low point of the Quake series. It gets an honorary place, but it's hard to argue it's a top studio nowadays- certainly it doesn't seem to offer anything in it's titles over any other run of the mill FPS clone developer.
They're a far cry from their earlier selves when they produced the Wolfenstein, Doom, and the Quake series. During that period they led the game development world, ever since they've really just been an "also ran". Carmack is without a doubt a genius, but with the loss of the likes of Romero, Steed, McGee, Petersen, Kirsch, they just shed far too much talent, and as good a programmer as Carmack is, his programming ability alone couldn't make up for the loss of the game design, level design, character design skills of those folk.
Sure give them a legacy position as a top studio, but nowadays I think it's hard to argue they're anything special. This isn't to say their games are awful or anything they're not, they're just run of the mill and simply do not stand out from the crowd anymore like some developers do (i.e. Blizzard).
The summary doesn't contain the full set of specs, it definitely has wifi in the full specs.
I think honestly the whole premise is flawed, the idea that terrorists are often engineers doesn't seem to necessarily be true whatsoever.
Look at attacks in the UK in recent times- the Glasgow bombers were all involved in the medical profession, or had medical qualifications. Of the 7th July 2005 bombers, one was a youth worker with a GNVQ in business, another was a youth worker, another seemed to have no real qualifications but worked in local government temporarily, another studied sports science and worked in a fish and chip shop.
Outside of the UK, we've got the shoe bomber who was another bum with no real prospects and who was involved in muggings and petty theft, the fellow you mention as you say, studied business.
Where are all these engineer terrorists exactly? Even if there's a few out there they don't seem disproportionately represented.
I had a look at the original article and the sample they used seems far from reliable. It mentions that of 404 records they could only ascertain the academic records of 178 of them, and that some areas are underrepresented including places like Iraq, and most of Asia, as well as North Africa.
Until they can actually demonstrate that terrorists really are oriented more towards engineering, there seems little point even trying to figure out why. They have not demonstrated this yet. There probably is a slant towards engineering because it offers the required skillset, but is it really significant? Is it significant enough to try and draw a conclusion that there's a link between the mindset of an engineer and a terrorist? absolutely not.
Heh, I find Slashdot tends to mangle a lot of things. I still have nightmares from the time I accidently changed the text type drop down without previewing!
I was referring to left handed/right handed settings- i.e. swapping the mouse buttons round in control panel. Obviously that's something you have to go out your way to do.
Thank you for posting using bold text, I'd never have understood what you were trying to say otherwise.
Are you sure Microsoft sued HTC? I was aware of the licensing deal but never heard anything about Microsoft suing them. A Google search turns up nothing about Microsoft suing HTC either, just the licensing deal.
It would be rather stupid of Microsoft to sue HTC too seeing as Microsoft has historically been so dependent on HTC hardware to shift Windows mobile. I don't really see that changing either, with Windows Phone 7 I suspect HTC will still produce the best Windows Mobile handsets.
The problem seems to be that you're buying a phone on contract and are at the mercy of your provider.
If you buy an Android handset at retail without it being tied to a contract and phone provider then you'll receive much better update support.
The issue seems to be with handedness that because we instinctively use one hand for something we use that hand by default, it doesn't mean we couldn't get used to using our other hand too, just as it's less natural we simply don't bother to try.
My point really is that if you actually bother to try and actually get used to it, using your other hand does actually work just as well as using your main hand.
"c) Why exactly should I?"
Well it's always going to be your choice, if you don't feel it's worth it fine, but then don't complain either- a solution to the problem is available. If you're complaining about it then obviously you're unhappy about it so the answer to "Why should I?" is simply so you don't have to worry about said problem.
"So if the IT guys at work are left handed, and unconsciously set up all the work stations with the mouse/mousepad on the left -- should all the righties just 'get used to it'?"
Not really because the IT guys have to go out their way to do just that, like it or not, right handed is the default. It's not unreasonable for people to expect the default, but it's much less reasonable to expect everyone to change things just for you.
If however as an alternative example, you'd used an imaginary scenario where by left hand was the default and righties should get used to it then yes, I'd agree with you completely. Unfortunately we do not live in that world though.
I think you completely missed my point.
My point is, despite being left handed I don't find any disadvantage in switching to my right hand for any of these things, even though I can't for the life of me write with my right hand for example.
I have an old MS Sidewinder joystick which is very much a right handed stick, and have also had to use a purely right hand designed mouse at work, simply using my right hand instead was not difficult for these sorts of devices (again, as opposed to doing something like writing). It's not like when you're left handed you are missing your right hand- you're not disabled, it still works for many things and using a device as simple as a mouse and joystick is one of those things.
You have to get used to using your right hand for some things- what about driving a left hand drive car? you need your right hand to use the gear stick. Getting used to using a right handed mouse or joystick with your right hand even if naturally left handed really isn't any harder.
Perhaps I'm slightly more ambidextrous than some, but that seems unlikely because I know full well the discomfort of doing some things right handed and again, I simply can't write to save my life right handed for example, computing with any kind of device has never been one of those things though, just like driving a car hasn't. I think if people actually tried to get used to using their right hand rather than simply complain they can't, they'd soon find it's not really a problem.
I've always been left handed, but I never really understood complaints about southpaw on computers and console controllers, these sorts of devices seem trivial to master in either hand whatever handedness you are naturally.
I remember when I worked in tech support and was looking after an IT training suite one day, some candidate came in in a huff and sat down and said "Don't you have any left handed workstations?", I asked what she meant, and she said the mouse was on the wrong side of the keyboard, it seemed that picking the mouse up and moving it to the other side of the keyboard was too confusing a task for her.
I've always got the impression from experiences like this that those who complain about right/left hand stuff in computing are just people who like to complain whatever you do for them. Certainly as a leftie I've never once had a problem or felt disadvantaged when using any kind of computing device, ever, and I've never had to swap mouse buttons round, change game console controls around or anything like that either.