Most female players I've known have been housewives, and were able to put so much time in compared to their spouses because their spouses were out working.
I used to be at home during the day because I worked at a newspaper where our hours were 8am to 8pm Mon, Tues, Fri, 8am to 6pm Weds and 8am to 12pm on Thurs so always had Thursday afternoons and Friday off as that's when the paper went to print. On those Thursday afternoons and Fridays I recall many times speaking to female guild mates who were in their mid to late twenties and early thirties playing because they'd done the house work and had nothing else to do. They'd play for hours in the day and continue to play with their partner when their partner got home.
Yep, that was what I was thinking too and this is exactly what the movie industry should be doing rather than suing file sharers- coming up with innovative new technologies that give people a reason to go to the cinema.
The only problem is right now, 3D films are far more expensive, which is a shame and is the only thing that puts me off. I don't mind paying a little more for 3D to help the costs of the equipment, but I aint paying double the price of a normal film!
I like it in cinema, when I've watched 3D movies at the cinema it's been the biggest improvement to film since colour, a far better improvement than digital, high def, surround sound and such.
But here's the problem, is TV based 3D as good as cinema 3D? afaik it's a completely different technology and up until now, TV 3D has been frankly, complete and utter crap.
If it's just the tired old crappy TV 3D, then, well, it's a complete waste of time as you say. If however it's as good as the 3D they're pushing in cinemas now, then frankly I'd even prefer 3D over HD if I had to choose between the two because it's a much bigger, much better change.
Or more importantly, it's not necessary because Netscape failed because it was crap, not because of Microsoft's situation, and Firefox is killing Microsoft's marketshare even though IE has the same supposed advantage over it that it had over netscape.
Opera are pushing this because their browser is in the non-factor segment of the market when the real solution is to just do as Firefox did- build a better browser, and spend some time convincing people to adopt it.
I actually feel sorry for Microsoft because this is a waste of their time and a waste of our time, Firefox has proven that all along it's just about building better software and marketing it and the sooner other browser vendors realise this the better because otherwise, even with this screen, they will still remain non-factors.
What next, a ballot screen for alternatives to calculator? notepad?
No, using the last election that the AC mentioned as an example, he said the opposition got 33% and 22% of popular vote. Effectively all these people (55% of voters) made a vote that had no effect whatsoever, because they didn't get as high a number as Labour who got 35% and hence took all the power.
This happens because 35% of the vote was enough to win something like 60% of MPs (I can't remember the exact numbers), and as such 35% of the vote gave them a majority in parliament to allow them to unilaterally push laws without opposition support- effectively, they can do what they want despite only 35% of the population supporting them. Under PR however, 35% of the vote would be 35% of parliament, meaning that they would need the support of at least one opposition party to get over 50% of parliamentary vote to be able to pass laws. So 35% of vote is currently allowing Labour to have a majority, which means they can always do what they want even if the opposition whom the majority of the population voted for disagree. Under PR however Labour would only be able to muster 35% of the parliamentary vote, meaning those who voted for the opposition would be able to have their votes mean something, their opposition votes would allow them to block Labour.
ID cards are a good example here, 35% of people voted Labour, and hence most likely agree with Labour's ID card manifesto. 55% of people voted for the opposition, likely disagreeing with the ID card scheme. Labour could push ID cards through anyway under FPTP, but under PR, the 55% who voted for the opposition- again, the majority of the population would have been able to have the scheme blocked.
So the difference is then, that FPTP does not represent the will of the population, PR does. It's not about the indvidiual vote in itself not making a direct difference, it's about the combined votes against the government, despite being more numerous than the votes for the government not making a difference. 55% of voters voted against the government, yet the government still has power to act unilaterally as if they have 100% of power; something is clearly wrong with that picture.
Russia is a nation heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, in fact, their entire economy depends on it else it would just flat out collapse again as it did at the fall of communism.
So the issue is this, even if Russia has made the allegations, even if they do provide data, there's no real way to tell that they haven't manipulated the data themselves to suit their own agenda of keeping the burning of fossil fuels the main form of energy worldwide.
We've seen the same tactics from Saudi Arabia, they have tried extremely hard to discredit climate research because again, without oil sales, their country would be in ruins.
So if the source of the reporter's claims itself is flawed then the whole article is flawed and a good and truly unbiased journalist wouldn't put such an article forward for publication. The fact the reporter himself is clearly quite biased and incompetent doesn't do much to help the situation, it just means he's found a biased source that suits his agenda. So yes, his source, might be right, that this institution did discard a lot of the data, but is that because they found a trend that demonstrate the data itself was bad, which would be no suprise coming from a country with such vested interests in pushing bad data. A good reporter would look for other sources in nations that don't have vested interests in showing up climate change as a sham, but oddly these don't really seem to exist. Even China accepts the problem and with their economy based on needing to pollute by way of their massive manufacturing base, they have much more to lose.
Pointing out the reporter is a joke, just opens the door for realising that even if he has reported what his source said or gave him correctly, doesn't mean his source is even correct and unbiased. It just means he's found someone willing to make such allegations for him to report on even if they're false. If however it had been a reporter with a good track record of being unbiased then we could have more faith that he'd used a valid, unbiased source.
I'm sure I could find plenty of sources willing to testify god exists so that I could write an article hence proving he does, but it wouldn't mean I was right, or that they were right, it would just mean I'd found people willing to push the same agenda as I.
So yes, the objectivity and fairness of the reporter matters, because it's a reflection of the whether or not they're likely to care about the validity of their source or mindlessly just publish without verifying.
Nice assumption, I've actually been quite pro Israel, because I believe they're the best of a bad bunch in the region. I supported their attacks on Hezbollah, I supported their pounding of Gaza because frankly, I think if you provoke a tiger you should get what you ask for for. If the Palestinians really want progress the best way to do it would be to smuggle in equipment for building wells, fuel for electricity and so on, but instead spend most their effort smuggling in more rockets to fire at Israel, they themselves are partly to blame for the situation there- if they can spend a year or two proving they want peace then they're going to have a leg to stand on.
However, the continued building of illegal settlements absolutely sickens me, it alone is evidence enough that Israel is more interested in grabbing land than finding peace, as such I struggle to have any sympathy for Israel either nowadays in general, that doesn't however mean I think that somehow that if Israel is wrong, Hamas is right, it is possible that perhaps, they're both just wrong.
So kindly take your ignorant view and your stupid assumptions elsewhere. I'm British, I'm atheist, I'm neither Israeli or Jewish. Unlike you, I'm just capable of seeing errors in the way of both parties, that doesn't somehow make me an Israeli settler.
Actually, it's good because I hope it means they all just drop remote software activation:p
It's been one of the biggest ball aches in software in the last 10 years or so, their servers go down? no internet access? tough shit, you can't use the product.
"Congratuations! If you actually do shoot a bomb, you'll probably kill yourself and do a significant amount of damage to your surroundings."
It was a laptop not a car bomb, shooting it from a range wouldn't blow anyone up. Having it detonated point blank next to a few people though would kill a few at once. Even the 7/7 bombers backpack bombs in the UK which would be much bigger than a laptop bomb could be only killed the people right next to the bombers, people even a few metres away survived with only the likes of hearing loss and shock.
"If you shoot a chemical or biological or radiation agent, you've just dispersed it."
These sorts of devices are easily detected by scanners. They don't have the technology to hide this sort of device and hence would've been detected either by xray as a suspicious hollow looking object if a dispersible threat or radiation detection kit if radioactive long before they shot it. A checkpoint this secure likely even has chemical sensors too.
Um, Egypt and many of it's citizens have fairly good relations with Israel because they realise Hamas, an offshoot of the Islamic Brotherhood is Egypt's biggest terrorist threat. This is why Egypt is happy to help Israel keep up the Palestinian blockade on their border, and why most of Egypt's citizens aren't too fussed about that either.
"Fuck Star of David" picture isn't something that's covered by either of these and yes it would strike me as a concern as a person responsible for security in a country that is under constant threat of attack from people with such an attitude towards them. But then, you can't take these things in isolation, because that doesn't give a full picture.
It's like finding someone with a binary explosive, and having the components confiscated and them saying that's not fair, would you consider either of the components a threat in isolation? Sure they are harmless by themselves, but that doesn't mean they're not suspicious and dangerous when being carried together, breaking down to the individual parts doesn't tell the full story.
I think you overestimate the intelligence of the people who become suicide bombers. These are people who don't worry about such things as getting caught because they believe Allah will get them to their target regardless.
Handles are usually a little smarter, but that's assuming the bomber has handlers- not all do, some really are just dumb kids, full of hatred who think they'll be able to pull it off and be remembered for it whilst they're up in heaven with their virgins.
If they were smart, they'd be the handlers, or the ones building car bombs or IEDs and leaving the scene, not the ones blowing themselves up because they believe it's their destiny no matter what.
"I disagree with the emotive language implying that Palestinians are the only ones killing innocent civilians. Particularly given differences in death counts or the lack of running water for so many people"
The problem with this type of argument is it completely ignores intention.
You see, the issue is this, Israel, with it's military might, could kill far more than the death counts it does if it wanted to. Hamas, because they are constrained and only have highly inaccurate rockets can't. Israel does at least, contrary to popular belief try and hit militants not civilians, but the problem they face is two fold, firstly a militant with his AK-47 taken away is easily classed as a civilian, because they do not wear uniforms, and secondly, militants hide amongst the civilian population. I wont pretend there aren't some dickheads in the Israeli army who do attack civilians, and I wont pretend the Israeli military try and cover it up when it does happen. What is pretty clear though is that the Israeli military doesn't have a policy of intentionally killing as many civilians as possible, else they'd just napalm the shit out of downtown Gaza and get far higher casualty numbers in contrast.
Now on the other side of it, you have Hamas, Hamas do want to inflict civilian casualties on Israel, in fact, that's their goal, but fortunately they don't have the means to do so very successfully.
So the raw numbers are often used unfairly to demonise Israel, because you see, Israel's kill count is much lower than it could be if Israel wanted it higher, but it's also much lower than the civilian kill count Hamas would like to inflict on Israel. It becomes even more of an issue when you realise that Hamas using civilian cover is the whole reason many Palestinian civilians die in the first place- effectively Hamas put them in the line of fire by launching rockets from civilian errors- in this respect Israel has to decide whether they just take the fire and receive casualties themselves, or try and stop the fire and risk Palestinian civilian casualties, but also take out the militants too. Hamas then also must bear some responsibility for the Palestinian civilian casualties themselves.
Again, just to make it clear, I far from believe the Israelis are saints, but I do realise it's not a simple problem for them, and it does seem clear they don't for the majority part intentionally kill civilians. They do a lot wrong, but they're playing a far less dirty game than Hamas, and by falling for their game of using civilians as cover as you are, you're just encouraging them to do it because the propaganda they get from it due to people like yourself looking only at the figures, not the facts, or the fact they can't be shot at but can shoot and kill Israelis freely if they aren't stopped makes the situation win-win. Do the Palestinian civilians a favour and recognise the problem of Palestinian civilian deaths for what it is- a problem that both Hamas AND Israel are responsible for rather than falling for the Hamas propaganda and hence giving them ever more reason to continue to put Palestinian civilian lives in danger by keeping it a win-win situation for Hamas.
We had a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in the UK back in 2007 and the worst that happened is one guy got a broken pelvis because he lived in a really old house where the chimney stack fell through, but that was one injury across the whole country. Other than that, about the worst that happens is the odd chimney stack (that was probably dangerous anyway) topples or a few tiles fall off people's roofs.
We have earthquakes of around 3.4 a few times a year in the UK and no one even notices. We had a 3.7 back in the first half of this year and it wasn't even newsworthy.
Far from shitting themselves over this, I'd be amazed if the majority of people even noticed the quake rather than simply put it down to a plane flying overhead, a truck driving past their house, if they even noticed anything at all.
Even houses not designed at all for earthquakes would almost certainly suffer no damage from such a quake because even heavy wind will likely put more stress on such a structure than this would.
"You can't compare a console to a PC, but you can compare their ability to play games. A console is, by definition, nothing more than a gimped PC used for dedicated gaming, they are this, and nothing more."
This really makes no sense, you recognise they're dedicated to gaming, but then suggest they're somehow gimped. They're better than the PC at what they do because they are dedicated, but because they're dedicated they can't do everything the PC does. That does not make them gimped, it makes them superior at their task.
"Right now I'm running a $500 Dell with an old video card ( ATI 4650; $50 at Fry's), and can run just about any game at max settings, and get a decent frame-rate. I don't see any performance degradation, obviously, since it performs better."
This is simply an outright lie. Even a current $500 Dell will not offer the same graphical quality and frame rate as the 3 - 4 year or so old PS3 or 360 period. You need to spend close to $3000 for a PC to even get near a high end console at release, and around $1500 now, even then you'll see disadvantages in performance simply because of the nature of generic buses. This is inarguable basic fact. The architecture alone of the PC prevents equivalent performance and if you try and pretend otherwise it simply demonstrates you know zero about hardware architectures.
"The only question involved is taste. Which do you prefer. The PC holds a slight edge (especially if we tack on a few extra bucks, and you have the technical skills to actually use it)"
No, this is still simply false. The only edge the PC holds is in being able to do things other than gaming, if it's a gaming vs. gaming comparison the PC cannot hold a slight edge purely because it is designed to be able to do more than just gaming. I'll produce a simple example for you, imagine Jon and Joe have $50 to spend on buttons and each button is $1 each, Jon buys 50 red buttons, Joe buys 20 green buttons. No matter how hard Joe tries, he cannot also have 50 red buttons because he's already bought 20 green buttons. It's the same with the PC, it has hardware that must support tasks other than gaming so for a similar cost, cannot possibly be as good as the console which is dedicated to just gaming and can ignore the requirements for the other task. The issue is that it even goes beyond this, beyond simple performance to other areas- the PC is open because you need to be able to do what you want with it, the console however does not need to be open because people just need to play games on it, this means the console is inherently less prone to cheating than the PC.
"For instance, while I do think that my PC has higher gaming capabilities, I really want to drop money on a 360 (if only they weren't plagued by hardware issues) because of their exclusives."
See, people like yourself keep using this argument, but the 360 has been over the hardware issues for over 2 years now. Again, it really suggests you don't actually know much about current consoles at all if you weren't aware of this.
I've said it here before, if people prefer the PC that's perfectly fair, but when they try and pretend it doesn't have any disadvantages over consoles like you are they are simply outright lying. Each has benefits, but hardware dedicated to a certain task is always going to be better at that task than hardware designed for generic tasks. It's really not that complicated a concept to grasp.
Labour, and pushing laws through that no one wants including their own supporters.
That sounds familiar.
Ah yes, I remember now, it's like our Labour party here in Britain trying to push through ID cards despite the opposition being against it and half their own voterbase being against it leaving them around 10% - 20% support for the scheme with 80% - 90% being opposed (yet ~35% still being stupid enough to vote them in each election which is all they need for 100% control under first past the post).
If it's any consolation the sensible amongst us have been fighting Labour's totalitarian ideals here in Britain for 10 years now, but finally, after all this time it looks like it might be beginning to pay off. They're finally just now looking at abandoning the ID cards scheme by the sound of it and the party is in ruins with defeat almost outright guaranteed next election in May or so.
Keep up the pressure, and never fall for their "family friendly" values argument, as family friendly ultimately just seems to mean "dictator with an excuse". Hopefully we can do away with the international scourge which are Labour parties for good.
Fair point, but god knows what kind of shitty hardware they're running on if they can't even manage single database queries for a simple 1 to 1 relationship?
Is a database even the right solution here in the first place though? 301 redirects should be handled by the webserver without need for a database no? Assuming these URLs are designed to be held indefinitely then it really should just be a case of writing once, and reading in future. I suppose with the amount of URLs they handle though it's not as simple as just writing to config files because large configs would themselves create problems.
It's just a guess, but I'd wager the real problem is they do more than just redirect you, like logging your IP, storing cookies, browser data etc. and so forth for targetted advertising. I'd bet it's probably this extra work that creates the real strain.
Of course, if this is the case I imagine Google will do exactly the same because advertising is what Google do, the difference is I'd imagine Google have the resources to do it properly still.
When I had the misfortunate of using one the other day it chucked up a page telling me the service was busy and to try again later.
Quite how popping up a page stating the service was busy is any easier than just issuing a redirect to the required site I don't really know, but it did, and it was stupid as there was no way to ascertain the underlying URL it was meant to redirect to from the stupid shortened URL I clicked.
At least with Google it's a pretty safe bet they'll be able to handle the traffic, and their URLs will likely remain indefinitely unlike others who may (and some have) go bust and lose all the links they stored.
It's interesting to see the different perspective here on Slashdot to that I'm used to in the UK.
Here in the UK, if a product breaks in an unreasonable timeframe, you don't have to worry about having a warranty to cover you, if the product was not fit to last it's reasonable lifetime (say, 5 years for something like a DVD player) then you have a right to replacement or repair. The caveat is that after the first 6 months it's upto you to prove you didn't break it, but for electrical goods this is a fairly trivial case of getting an electrician from a repair shop to just write you a quick note stating that's the case. Most retailers wont bother you with this though if it occurs within say, the first 3 years or so and I've never heard a case of them challenging a replacement/repair request within the first year or so for electronic gadgets and such. In the first 6 months they can only challenge the replacement if you're clearly at fault for the damage (i.e. if the gadget has coke all over it for example), otherwise it's upto you to choose whether you want a replacement/repair, or simply a refund for that period.
So in the UK, I wouldn't buy an extended warranty for peace of mind, because I have peace of mind that if I look after my product properly then I'm not going to be shelling out for a repair anyway.
To me this system makes sense, to put the onus on the manufacturer to produce quality products, else you're just encouraging companies to sell shit products so that they can sell you the extended warranty to go with it. They might as well produce quality products for the UK market because they'll only end up shouldering the costs anyway. You're also leaving the door open for dodgy extended warranties that companies try and get out of fulfilling despite you having paid for them due to hidden clauses and such, but when it's law they have little choice but to adhere.
The only reason I'd pay for one in the UK is if I suspected there might be a risk of accidental damage on my behalf, the only thing I can think of in that respect might be my phone if I accidently dropped it, but even that I don't pay for insurance on and take the risk, one day it may come back to bite me, but the amount I'll have saved in not paying it will more than cover the cost of buying a new handset anyway.
How many of Saudi Arabia's oil fields are being run by US oil companies?
It's not just about imports, it's about making sure the US' oil giants have enough oil fields to remain the global juggernaughts of companies bringing money into the US that they are.
Moral of the story: Don't go fucking around in other people's affairs.
Tell me, how do you think the people of the US would've reacted if a bunch of Russians were wandering around Capitol Hill spreading communist propaganda and encouraging people to act to overthrow the government to allow a communist regime to take it's place?
Do you seriously believe America would act much different if your government was constantly the target of well funded foreign propaganda campaigns against it with people actually in your country openly and actively pushing for overthrow of the government?
Do you really believe they wouldn't imprison these people even if all they had done was this?
This is after all, the same America guilty of extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, and torture.
Erm, can you clarify which the other nation was and did said nation have an embargo from the biggest economy in the world on it for the same period? Did it also get attacked by said superpower? Was it victim of multiple plots at coup d'etats from said superpower?
Besides, Sweden and many other European nations are socialist, Cuba is communist. At least understand the difference between political ideologies and realise that correlation is not causation before trying to discuss such things.
Your assumption that a country is somehow better under democracy does not hold either. Iraq was more stable and had a stronger economy as a dictatorship even post first gulf war than it does now.
Different things work in different places for different people, the attitude of the American way or the high way is the reason the likes of Vietnam and Iraq ended up such bloodbaths for America and the reason Afghanistan looks like it may well end up the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Housewives.
Most female players I've known have been housewives, and were able to put so much time in compared to their spouses because their spouses were out working.
I used to be at home during the day because I worked at a newspaper where our hours were 8am to 8pm Mon, Tues, Fri, 8am to 6pm Weds and 8am to 12pm on Thurs so always had Thursday afternoons and Friday off as that's when the paper went to print. On those Thursday afternoons and Fridays I recall many times speaking to female guild mates who were in their mid to late twenties and early thirties playing because they'd done the house work and had nothing else to do. They'd play for hours in the day and continue to play with their partner when their partner got home.
Yep, that was what I was thinking too and this is exactly what the movie industry should be doing rather than suing file sharers- coming up with innovative new technologies that give people a reason to go to the cinema.
The only problem is right now, 3D films are far more expensive, which is a shame and is the only thing that puts me off. I don't mind paying a little more for 3D to help the costs of the equipment, but I aint paying double the price of a normal film!
I like it in cinema, when I've watched 3D movies at the cinema it's been the biggest improvement to film since colour, a far better improvement than digital, high def, surround sound and such.
But here's the problem, is TV based 3D as good as cinema 3D? afaik it's a completely different technology and up until now, TV 3D has been frankly, complete and utter crap.
If it's just the tired old crappy TV 3D, then, well, it's a complete waste of time as you say. If however it's as good as the 3D they're pushing in cinemas now, then frankly I'd even prefer 3D over HD if I had to choose between the two because it's a much bigger, much better change.
Or more importantly, it's not necessary because Netscape failed because it was crap, not because of Microsoft's situation, and Firefox is killing Microsoft's marketshare even though IE has the same supposed advantage over it that it had over netscape.
Opera are pushing this because their browser is in the non-factor segment of the market when the real solution is to just do as Firefox did- build a better browser, and spend some time convincing people to adopt it.
I actually feel sorry for Microsoft because this is a waste of their time and a waste of our time, Firefox has proven that all along it's just about building better software and marketing it and the sooner other browser vendors realise this the better because otherwise, even with this screen, they will still remain non-factors.
What next, a ballot screen for alternatives to calculator? notepad?
"For example, they both demonize the Greens as a bunch of environmental crazies who all want to take heaps of drugs and have orgies in the forest."
I thought you said they demonize them? They'd get my vote on the orgies in the forest alone!
No, using the last election that the AC mentioned as an example, he said the opposition got 33% and 22% of popular vote. Effectively all these people (55% of voters) made a vote that had no effect whatsoever, because they didn't get as high a number as Labour who got 35% and hence took all the power.
This happens because 35% of the vote was enough to win something like 60% of MPs (I can't remember the exact numbers), and as such 35% of the vote gave them a majority in parliament to allow them to unilaterally push laws without opposition support- effectively, they can do what they want despite only 35% of the population supporting them. Under PR however, 35% of the vote would be 35% of parliament, meaning that they would need the support of at least one opposition party to get over 50% of parliamentary vote to be able to pass laws. So 35% of vote is currently allowing Labour to have a majority, which means they can always do what they want even if the opposition whom the majority of the population voted for disagree. Under PR however Labour would only be able to muster 35% of the parliamentary vote, meaning those who voted for the opposition would be able to have their votes mean something, their opposition votes would allow them to block Labour.
ID cards are a good example here, 35% of people voted Labour, and hence most likely agree with Labour's ID card manifesto. 55% of people voted for the opposition, likely disagreeing with the ID card scheme. Labour could push ID cards through anyway under FPTP, but under PR, the 55% who voted for the opposition- again, the majority of the population would have been able to have the scheme blocked.
So the difference is then, that FPTP does not represent the will of the population, PR does. It's not about the indvidiual vote in itself not making a direct difference, it's about the combined votes against the government, despite being more numerous than the votes for the government not making a difference. 55% of voters voted against the government, yet the government still has power to act unilaterally as if they have 100% of power; something is clearly wrong with that picture.
Russia is a nation heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, in fact, their entire economy depends on it else it would just flat out collapse again as it did at the fall of communism.
So the issue is this, even if Russia has made the allegations, even if they do provide data, there's no real way to tell that they haven't manipulated the data themselves to suit their own agenda of keeping the burning of fossil fuels the main form of energy worldwide.
We've seen the same tactics from Saudi Arabia, they have tried extremely hard to discredit climate research because again, without oil sales, their country would be in ruins.
So if the source of the reporter's claims itself is flawed then the whole article is flawed and a good and truly unbiased journalist wouldn't put such an article forward for publication. The fact the reporter himself is clearly quite biased and incompetent doesn't do much to help the situation, it just means he's found a biased source that suits his agenda. So yes, his source, might be right, that this institution did discard a lot of the data, but is that because they found a trend that demonstrate the data itself was bad, which would be no suprise coming from a country with such vested interests in pushing bad data. A good reporter would look for other sources in nations that don't have vested interests in showing up climate change as a sham, but oddly these don't really seem to exist. Even China accepts the problem and with their economy based on needing to pollute by way of their massive manufacturing base, they have much more to lose.
Pointing out the reporter is a joke, just opens the door for realising that even if he has reported what his source said or gave him correctly, doesn't mean his source is even correct and unbiased. It just means he's found someone willing to make such allegations for him to report on even if they're false. If however it had been a reporter with a good track record of being unbiased then we could have more faith that he'd used a valid, unbiased source.
I'm sure I could find plenty of sources willing to testify god exists so that I could write an article hence proving he does, but it wouldn't mean I was right, or that they were right, it would just mean I'd found people willing to push the same agenda as I.
So yes, the objectivity and fairness of the reporter matters, because it's a reflection of the whether or not they're likely to care about the validity of their source or mindlessly just publish without verifying.
Nice assumption, I've actually been quite pro Israel, because I believe they're the best of a bad bunch in the region. I supported their attacks on Hezbollah, I supported their pounding of Gaza because frankly, I think if you provoke a tiger you should get what you ask for for. If the Palestinians really want progress the best way to do it would be to smuggle in equipment for building wells, fuel for electricity and so on, but instead spend most their effort smuggling in more rockets to fire at Israel, they themselves are partly to blame for the situation there- if they can spend a year or two proving they want peace then they're going to have a leg to stand on.
However, the continued building of illegal settlements absolutely sickens me, it alone is evidence enough that Israel is more interested in grabbing land than finding peace, as such I struggle to have any sympathy for Israel either nowadays in general, that doesn't however mean I think that somehow that if Israel is wrong, Hamas is right, it is possible that perhaps, they're both just wrong.
So kindly take your ignorant view and your stupid assumptions elsewhere. I'm British, I'm atheist, I'm neither Israeli or Jewish. Unlike you, I'm just capable of seeing errors in the way of both parties, that doesn't somehow make me an Israeli settler.
Actually, it's good because I hope it means they all just drop remote software activation :p
It's been one of the biggest ball aches in software in the last 10 years or so, their servers go down? no internet access? tough shit, you can't use the product.
"Congratuations! If you actually do shoot a bomb, you'll probably kill yourself and do a significant amount of damage to your surroundings."
It was a laptop not a car bomb, shooting it from a range wouldn't blow anyone up. Having it detonated point blank next to a few people though would kill a few at once. Even the 7/7 bombers backpack bombs in the UK which would be much bigger than a laptop bomb could be only killed the people right next to the bombers, people even a few metres away survived with only the likes of hearing loss and shock.
"If you shoot a chemical or biological or radiation agent, you've just dispersed it."
These sorts of devices are easily detected by scanners. They don't have the technology to hide this sort of device and hence would've been detected either by xray as a suspicious hollow looking object if a dispersible threat or radiation detection kit if radioactive long before they shot it. A checkpoint this secure likely even has chemical sensors too.
Um, Egypt and many of it's citizens have fairly good relations with Israel because they realise Hamas, an offshoot of the Islamic Brotherhood is Egypt's biggest terrorist threat. This is why Egypt is happy to help Israel keep up the Palestinian blockade on their border, and why most of Egypt's citizens aren't too fussed about that either.
"Fuck Star of David" picture isn't something that's covered by either of these and yes it would strike me as a concern as a person responsible for security in a country that is under constant threat of attack from people with such an attitude towards them. But then, you can't take these things in isolation, because that doesn't give a full picture.
It's like finding someone with a binary explosive, and having the components confiscated and them saying that's not fair, would you consider either of the components a threat in isolation? Sure they are harmless by themselves, but that doesn't mean they're not suspicious and dangerous when being carried together, breaking down to the individual parts doesn't tell the full story.
I think you overestimate the intelligence of the people who become suicide bombers. These are people who don't worry about such things as getting caught because they believe Allah will get them to their target regardless.
Handles are usually a little smarter, but that's assuming the bomber has handlers- not all do, some really are just dumb kids, full of hatred who think they'll be able to pull it off and be remembered for it whilst they're up in heaven with their virgins.
If they were smart, they'd be the handlers, or the ones building car bombs or IEDs and leaving the scene, not the ones blowing themselves up because they believe it's their destiny no matter what.
"I disagree with the emotive language implying that Palestinians are the only ones killing innocent civilians. Particularly given differences in death counts or the lack of running water for so many people"
The problem with this type of argument is it completely ignores intention.
You see, the issue is this, Israel, with it's military might, could kill far more than the death counts it does if it wanted to. Hamas, because they are constrained and only have highly inaccurate rockets can't. Israel does at least, contrary to popular belief try and hit militants not civilians, but the problem they face is two fold, firstly a militant with his AK-47 taken away is easily classed as a civilian, because they do not wear uniforms, and secondly, militants hide amongst the civilian population. I wont pretend there aren't some dickheads in the Israeli army who do attack civilians, and I wont pretend the Israeli military try and cover it up when it does happen. What is pretty clear though is that the Israeli military doesn't have a policy of intentionally killing as many civilians as possible, else they'd just napalm the shit out of downtown Gaza and get far higher casualty numbers in contrast.
Now on the other side of it, you have Hamas, Hamas do want to inflict civilian casualties on Israel, in fact, that's their goal, but fortunately they don't have the means to do so very successfully.
So the raw numbers are often used unfairly to demonise Israel, because you see, Israel's kill count is much lower than it could be if Israel wanted it higher, but it's also much lower than the civilian kill count Hamas would like to inflict on Israel. It becomes even more of an issue when you realise that Hamas using civilian cover is the whole reason many Palestinian civilians die in the first place- effectively Hamas put them in the line of fire by launching rockets from civilian errors- in this respect Israel has to decide whether they just take the fire and receive casualties themselves, or try and stop the fire and risk Palestinian civilian casualties, but also take out the militants too. Hamas then also must bear some responsibility for the Palestinian civilian casualties themselves.
Again, just to make it clear, I far from believe the Israelis are saints, but I do realise it's not a simple problem for them, and it does seem clear they don't for the majority part intentionally kill civilians. They do a lot wrong, but they're playing a far less dirty game than Hamas, and by falling for their game of using civilians as cover as you are, you're just encouraging them to do it because the propaganda they get from it due to people like yourself looking only at the figures, not the facts, or the fact they can't be shot at but can shoot and kill Israelis freely if they aren't stopped makes the situation win-win. Do the Palestinian civilians a favour and recognise the problem of Palestinian civilian deaths for what it is- a problem that both Hamas AND Israel are responsible for rather than falling for the Hamas propaganda and hence giving them ever more reason to continue to put Palestinian civilian lives in danger by keeping it a win-win situation for Hamas.
It really is inconsequential.
We had a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in the UK back in 2007 and the worst that happened is one guy got a broken pelvis because he lived in a really old house where the chimney stack fell through, but that was one injury across the whole country. Other than that, about the worst that happens is the odd chimney stack (that was probably dangerous anyway) topples or a few tiles fall off people's roofs.
We have earthquakes of around 3.4 a few times a year in the UK and no one even notices. We had a 3.7 back in the first half of this year and it wasn't even newsworthy.
Far from shitting themselves over this, I'd be amazed if the majority of people even noticed the quake rather than simply put it down to a plane flying overhead, a truck driving past their house, if they even noticed anything at all.
Even houses not designed at all for earthquakes would almost certainly suffer no damage from such a quake because even heavy wind will likely put more stress on such a structure than this would.
Unless someone or some people decided to keep a copy outside of the official places that investigators would look for it in case it came in useful.
"You can't compare a console to a PC, but you can compare their ability to play games. A console is, by definition, nothing more than a gimped PC used for dedicated gaming, they are this, and nothing more."
This really makes no sense, you recognise they're dedicated to gaming, but then suggest they're somehow gimped. They're better than the PC at what they do because they are dedicated, but because they're dedicated they can't do everything the PC does. That does not make them gimped, it makes them superior at their task.
"Right now I'm running a $500 Dell with an old video card ( ATI 4650; $50 at Fry's), and can run just about any game at max settings, and get a decent frame-rate. I don't see any performance degradation, obviously, since it performs better."
This is simply an outright lie. Even a current $500 Dell will not offer the same graphical quality and frame rate as the 3 - 4 year or so old PS3 or 360 period. You need to spend close to $3000 for a PC to even get near a high end console at release, and around $1500 now, even then you'll see disadvantages in performance simply because of the nature of generic buses. This is inarguable basic fact. The architecture alone of the PC prevents equivalent performance and if you try and pretend otherwise it simply demonstrates you know zero about hardware architectures.
"The only question involved is taste. Which do you prefer. The PC holds a slight edge (especially if we tack on a few extra bucks, and you have the technical skills to actually use it)"
No, this is still simply false. The only edge the PC holds is in being able to do things other than gaming, if it's a gaming vs. gaming comparison the PC cannot hold a slight edge purely because it is designed to be able to do more than just gaming. I'll produce a simple example for you, imagine Jon and Joe have $50 to spend on buttons and each button is $1 each, Jon buys 50 red buttons, Joe buys 20 green buttons. No matter how hard Joe tries, he cannot also have 50 red buttons because he's already bought 20 green buttons. It's the same with the PC, it has hardware that must support tasks other than gaming so for a similar cost, cannot possibly be as good as the console which is dedicated to just gaming and can ignore the requirements for the other task. The issue is that it even goes beyond this, beyond simple performance to other areas- the PC is open because you need to be able to do what you want with it, the console however does not need to be open because people just need to play games on it, this means the console is inherently less prone to cheating than the PC.
"For instance, while I do think that my PC has higher gaming capabilities, I really want to drop money on a 360 (if only they weren't plagued by hardware issues) because of their exclusives."
See, people like yourself keep using this argument, but the 360 has been over the hardware issues for over 2 years now. Again, it really suggests you don't actually know much about current consoles at all if you weren't aware of this.
I've said it here before, if people prefer the PC that's perfectly fair, but when they try and pretend it doesn't have any disadvantages over consoles like you are they are simply outright lying. Each has benefits, but hardware dedicated to a certain task is always going to be better at that task than hardware designed for generic tasks. It's really not that complicated a concept to grasp.
Labour, and pushing laws through that no one wants including their own supporters.
That sounds familiar.
Ah yes, I remember now, it's like our Labour party here in Britain trying to push through ID cards despite the opposition being against it and half their own voterbase being against it leaving them around 10% - 20% support for the scheme with 80% - 90% being opposed (yet ~35% still being stupid enough to vote them in each election which is all they need for 100% control under first past the post).
If it's any consolation the sensible amongst us have been fighting Labour's totalitarian ideals here in Britain for 10 years now, but finally, after all this time it looks like it might be beginning to pay off. They're finally just now looking at abandoning the ID cards scheme by the sound of it and the party is in ruins with defeat almost outright guaranteed next election in May or so.
Keep up the pressure, and never fall for their "family friendly" values argument, as family friendly ultimately just seems to mean "dictator with an excuse". Hopefully we can do away with the international scourge which are Labour parties for good.
Hardly any of the chicks in Neighbours are hot nowadays for starters!
Even Steph now has a few rough edges, and Susan is getting too old to be milf material.
How could you let your finest export slide like this?
Fair point, but god knows what kind of shitty hardware they're running on if they can't even manage single database queries for a simple 1 to 1 relationship?
Is a database even the right solution here in the first place though? 301 redirects should be handled by the webserver without need for a database no? Assuming these URLs are designed to be held indefinitely then it really should just be a case of writing once, and reading in future. I suppose with the amount of URLs they handle though it's not as simple as just writing to config files because large configs would themselves create problems.
It's just a guess, but I'd wager the real problem is they do more than just redirect you, like logging your IP, storing cookies, browser data etc. and so forth for targetted advertising. I'd bet it's probably this extra work that creates the real strain.
Of course, if this is the case I imagine Google will do exactly the same because advertising is what Google do, the difference is I'd imagine Google have the resources to do it properly still.
When I had the misfortunate of using one the other day it chucked up a page telling me the service was busy and to try again later.
Quite how popping up a page stating the service was busy is any easier than just issuing a redirect to the required site I don't really know, but it did, and it was stupid as there was no way to ascertain the underlying URL it was meant to redirect to from the stupid shortened URL I clicked.
At least with Google it's a pretty safe bet they'll be able to handle the traffic, and their URLs will likely remain indefinitely unlike others who may (and some have) go bust and lose all the links they stored.
It's interesting to see the different perspective here on Slashdot to that I'm used to in the UK.
Here in the UK, if a product breaks in an unreasonable timeframe, you don't have to worry about having a warranty to cover you, if the product was not fit to last it's reasonable lifetime (say, 5 years for something like a DVD player) then you have a right to replacement or repair. The caveat is that after the first 6 months it's upto you to prove you didn't break it, but for electrical goods this is a fairly trivial case of getting an electrician from a repair shop to just write you a quick note stating that's the case. Most retailers wont bother you with this though if it occurs within say, the first 3 years or so and I've never heard a case of them challenging a replacement/repair request within the first year or so for electronic gadgets and such. In the first 6 months they can only challenge the replacement if you're clearly at fault for the damage (i.e. if the gadget has coke all over it for example), otherwise it's upto you to choose whether you want a replacement/repair, or simply a refund for that period.
So in the UK, I wouldn't buy an extended warranty for peace of mind, because I have peace of mind that if I look after my product properly then I'm not going to be shelling out for a repair anyway.
To me this system makes sense, to put the onus on the manufacturer to produce quality products, else you're just encouraging companies to sell shit products so that they can sell you the extended warranty to go with it. They might as well produce quality products for the UK market because they'll only end up shouldering the costs anyway. You're also leaving the door open for dodgy extended warranties that companies try and get out of fulfilling despite you having paid for them due to hidden clauses and such, but when it's law they have little choice but to adhere.
The only reason I'd pay for one in the UK is if I suspected there might be a risk of accidental damage on my behalf, the only thing I can think of in that respect might be my phone if I accidently dropped it, but even that I don't pay for insurance on and take the risk, one day it may come back to bite me, but the amount I'll have saved in not paying it will more than cover the cost of buying a new handset anyway.
How many of Saudi Arabia's oil fields are being run by US oil companies?
It's not just about imports, it's about making sure the US' oil giants have enough oil fields to remain the global juggernaughts of companies bringing money into the US that they are.
Moral of the story: Don't go fucking around in other people's affairs.
Tell me, how do you think the people of the US would've reacted if a bunch of Russians were wandering around Capitol Hill spreading communist propaganda and encouraging people to act to overthrow the government to allow a communist regime to take it's place?
Do you seriously believe America would act much different if your government was constantly the target of well funded foreign propaganda campaigns against it with people actually in your country openly and actively pushing for overthrow of the government?
Do you really believe they wouldn't imprison these people even if all they had done was this?
This is after all, the same America guilty of extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, and torture.
Erm, can you clarify which the other nation was and did said nation have an embargo from the biggest economy in the world on it for the same period? Did it also get attacked by said superpower? Was it victim of multiple plots at coup d'etats from said superpower?
Besides, Sweden and many other European nations are socialist, Cuba is communist. At least understand the difference between political ideologies and realise that correlation is not causation before trying to discuss such things.
Your assumption that a country is somehow better under democracy does not hold either. Iraq was more stable and had a stronger economy as a dictatorship even post first gulf war than it does now.
Different things work in different places for different people, the attitude of the American way or the high way is the reason the likes of Vietnam and Iraq ended up such bloodbaths for America and the reason Afghanistan looks like it may well end up the same.
Absolutely, I mean it's so hard here in Britain with our free healthcare and my $350 a day wage.
Wait, what?