Just something to consider... I know what you're saying, but "good" of course has different meaning for different applications. I've never heard Bose headphones, but I have heard other Bose audio, and while it sounds very nice, for what is popular today in what people want to hear, in my experience, Bose can almost never actually be considered having fidelity, that is, faithful to the actual audio that is being amplified... because I have discovered they are always incredibly bass heavy. In a studio, this might be fine for cans for a drummer... if an expensive option. For purely enjoying music, they are pleasant I have little doubt, Bose does some pretty incredible things. But you're hearing more than the artists intended, FWIW. I'm no Bose expert, haven't listened to any of their headphones, but I would expect if you tried to mix music with them, all your music would end up sounding weak in the low end... because you're mixing with a heavy bass handycap. If the music you listen to is traditionally bass heavy anyway, I wouldn't expect Bose to be considered good for that application, unless you just really love low end and don't mind that you're hearing more of the headphones and less of the music.
Again, I am no expect, but I would consider the best headphones those that faithfully reproduce music flatly, in all its gory sonic imperfection, and not try to boost any frequencies because the sound of it happens to be popular right now.
I like Bose radios for their compactness... big sound, small box... but I have no delusion as to whether the audio coming out of it is actually really what I am listening to... if that makes any sense (how much is the artist, how much is Bose?). Most people would hate the way studio monitors sound, but if Bose made such a thing in a compact box that didn't boost frequencies and faithfully reproduced the signal no matter what it was, I'd be all over it.
...just my uninformed $.02... YMMV
One think I noticed about earplugs, and probably headphones too, (I have both), is that there is a legal limit to the number of decibels that they are allowed to produce. The vendors tell you to not damage your ears with too much loudness.
As for radios, I have not found any home radio as good as a modern car radio for reception. Our car radio picks up stations with good stereo clarity which my home system fails to detect. Is it the antenna? Is there an extra RF stage between antenna and tuner, or is the IF strip (digital or analog), better in car radio devices than in home systems.
For those of you who remember the EICO kit with a tube FM Stereo, I truly miss good reception that these systems provided. And for sound, my stereo system with Klipsh folded horns and with Electrohome speakers still give me that thump thump when listening to drums. And the horn tweaters were great on them too.
Ah for the good old tube equipement with pairs of 6L6s running class A push-pull amplification.
Suppose you are forced to wait the 5 seconds for the advert to complete before the display returns to normal, with the idea that if you watch or wait out the advert, you get a small credit for your bill.
If you are genitically modifying crops they MUST be kept isoated from nature and ensure that they cannot contaminate conventional or organic farms with patented gene. Sealed greenhouse whatever. IF you can accomplish that then carry on and label your product as such.
Tell that to Monsanto. Let the farmers field be your lab, and as the wind blows your pollen and seed to the neighbors field, sue the victim with exorbitant claims that as a conclusion, that farmer is obliged to purchase his next years seed from M.
Seems like a reasonable thing to want in a laptop. If I wanted a machine that did everything at any cost.. I'd get a desktop.
Is Apple playing to your esthetic wishes, along with your desire to own and drive a Lamborghini? I am not an airline traveler, so weight is secondary for me and my Samsung Laptop. Since I can't afford a Lamborghini, owning an APPLE device is the next best thing. My laptop is not heavy, but because the case is in plastic, it is slightly heavier than an aluminum cased system. I code, watch movies, browse the net, respond to Slashdot comments, and enjoy the fact that it does all that I ask of a conventional laptop. Why, if it is stolen, I wont cry. It was less than a quarter of the price of the APPLE unit. And I touchtype and I believe that I cannot type faster on my device or the Apple.
I was very upset with Unity and Gnome, and essentially remained with UBUNTU 10.4 for the longest time. With Fedora 17, and with downloading and installing the tweaks package, gnome has a menu option located on the top left of the panel. One click and I have a list of topics displayed vertically. Slide down to the topic of interest, click on it, and immediately below it is a list of all the programs in that category. Very easy to use. What Gnome and Unity fail to provide for multiple configurable viewable shortcuts (icons) to either rapidly (one click) switch to another desktop, or switch to a designated folder (other than home), or to open browser to a dedicated webpage. I code in C++ or C and am teaching myself some other languages, and the browser is set to point to the list of classes or functions that I need. Gnome 3.4 does not support 2 instances of the file manager. This means I click to open the file manager, I search and click to open the next level, and I click to maximize or resize and I click until at end of day I have carpal tunnel pains in my arms or forefinger.
I did use XFCE, but with the Gnome tweaks, I found Gnome back in favor until you SDotters find and report something better.
The higher the resolution, the faster the processors required for the graphics card and in the monitor. Ergo, the higher the power consumption for each.
The next point is with respect to Quality Control of the monitor. The likelihood of a defective pixel or color LED is infinitesimal, but still occurs as a random distribution of the screen material (I believe defects follow the Poisson distribution). Therefore, in making very dense high resolution screens, will require many screens to be tested before a good one (low defects) is found.
If you make 10 screens but only 1 is suitable, costs are high, waste is high, and selling price is high. But with lower density screens, the leds are larger, and defect rates much much lower. Ergo, 1080p or 2000p, screens using very slightly larger leds have much lower defect rates.
Your welfare system that looks after diabetics, liver transplants and Koomanin medication know that cutting out the sugar will reduce dependencies on insulan, and so many other medications.
Sometimes I think that sewing a persons lips together would be a better solution, except they would put a straw up their other opening and drink the pop in from there.
Addiction, we should write a song about Big Gulp addiction.
We in Canada are not in a dictatorship, Neither are the British. We have the same or worse restricted gun laws, and yes, our deaths per gun accident are very very significantly lower than that of the USA.
We license long arms (rifles), but not handguns, unless you work in security, have passed a need to have and a written test, (transport jewelery worth $$$ allows guns to be used for transport, but not in the store.)
And once a decade of less often we occasionally get the mentally deranged person who shoots up a crowd.
And yes, in a democracy you do not need guns. Canada is not at war with the USA or the USA at war with Canada, or Mexico or Cuba (with guns).
Wait, the MPAA is claiming the Megaupload EULA/TOS as a reason why people shouldn't get their data back? That's kinda a dick move.
Also, if I was the NZ government, I would be asking FedEx some pretty hard questions. Like: "Considering that you helped a foreign power conspire to break NZ law, why should we allow you to continue to work in our country?"
Why would FEDEX know the contents of what was being sent out of the country, other than it is a hard drive, and it contains data. Would they know that doing so is illegal? Your comment would be true if FEDEX was complicit.
Untrue. The requirement is that secure boot can not be disabled. If you have a signed bootloader (like one from Red Hat, Fedora, or any other distro that pays the $99 to use this service) you can boot any OS you want.
Does this include any brand of VM that I want to boot under Linux? A VM wants an emulated UEFI bios. Is it too going to need the certificate?
For users performing local customization, they will have the ability to self-register their own trusted keys on their own systems at no cost.
The $99 license is for if you want to distribute yours to other machines. The point is that it's a price that hits a line between "too expensive and will put vendors out of business" and "So cheap any asshat can get one". What it boils down to is the CA correctly authenticating the buyer, if malware vendors get a key signed by them it's the CA's fault.
Now someone who buys a key and recklessly leaves it lying around an insecure place, on the other hand, is a different matter....
I'm retired, I live on $20k per year, of which rent is $12k, taxes and medical expenses $3k, so for me, I guess I must be an asshat.
Even though the immigrants are highly skilled, working in the USA will give them additional skills -- cultural and technological.
And since the skills are valuable in two ways -- for the individual and for the country. They should be encouraged to remain.
However, many are keen to return home for reasons that are not obvious to Americans. -- Family (uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters, cousins etc).
A better job back home for having returned with greater experience.
A way to start a business with a lower overhead cost. Probably the cost of starting up in the USA is very very high, and only a few get venture capital.
Why do they call the study of malware and viruses a security problem. Is it not an insecurity problem?
We should take a course in insecurity analytics.
The local university is giving a degree program in cyberxxx where xxx is IR fraud, networking IT hacking and phishing etc and criminal fraud based on cyber actions.
My son lived in Riga Latvia, and since the war and the Exodos of the Russians from latvia, metal was so expensive, that citizens stole copper from wiring, elevators, etc. The local communication companies found it cheaper to install fibre to all residences. Yes, his apartment had 8 megabit access. He could download a movie in three to four minutes. I downloaded a 3.5gbyte Linux distribution at the limiting speed of the host. (about 5-6 minutes). If I recall, the state owned the communications company.
So, back to the school needs. Yes, it is possible, the constraint is that it is a question of monetizing bandwidth. It may mean that all residents go from dsl to fibre, except in very far off regions of the state.
If the desire is there, it can be done, and the bank will not be broken.
All of my children have high IQs. My oldest son went to gifted school, jumped two grades, and was held back for good reason. Social imbalances. When his friends got to 16, he was 14, and he too wanted to also get his driver's permit. When his friends got to 18, and could go to the bars, he was 16, and had to lie about his age, or stay home. I gave him driving tests and the like until he was of age for the permit.
In university, he was bored, but did math, music, and finance. Before age 20, he graduated, moved to Florida, got an MBA, learned Spanish to add to his English and French. He could imitate the accents of Cubans, Mexicans. He picked up Portuguese, Chinese and Russian. After 10 years in the USA, he left for Latvia, taught Spanish, learned Russian and applied for a job in Moscow.
My other son, gifted in Finance, is very analytical, and is also worth bragging about. His skills in Poker and Blackjack which he did part time for a few years earned him a lot of money. (In Canada, gambling wins are not taxable, unless you are a professional gambler (have no other job). I dont want to bore you, but he is one of the fingers on my hand, not one finger is better than the other.
My daughter is number 2 of the three. She got bored with University, took her Mrs. Has 3 kids, and now deals very professionally with autistic children. She is called on for many consultations and her success rate is way above average.
Do they take after me? Are they above average? No and Yes. Their mother was very smart and married me. Gifted or not, Hi IQ or not, I love them all. But you cannot BS any of us. The important thing that we measure, is their kindness, generosity, and caring about others. That is more important than IQ or high scores.
Your right, I wrote bullshit. So if we look at crime and shootings that take place in a crime, the highest rate of crime with a gun fired is a figment of my imagination, since nothing can be proven. Why let my figment work some more, I tell myself "imagine that if you removed the drug warloads crimes of killing the competition, would the actual crime rate in Mexico be probably lower than that of the USA?"
The USA has a wonderful group of smart loving and caring families, who have no guns at home or hidden in the car. These families and many more like them are what the USA is about. The problem of poor image is because a few guns too many spoil and lower the world image of a great nation.
On consideration, I think it is a great idea. In the USA, given the RIAA, , Disney, and large media companies etc. who real objective is to monetize the internet (as if it was a TV station carrying advertisements), would destroy the internet as we know it today. With the UN there, the internet can be extended to poorer countries, where network based educational courses, news, information showing how others live, and with the net, increased tolerance for others would promote worldly well-being. We may pay for some slight usage, but we can hope for less censorship. Perhaps we need a second internet, that is an alternative to the existing one.
Statistics show that if the victim has a firearm, there's a greater chance of either he/she or the people near the victim being wounded.
Prove it. Cite a relevant study. Don't make baseless claims about statistics if you don't have hard evidence. One could make the claim that you don't need a gun to commit a violent crime or a homicide. A knife or a big piece of wood/metal or even just fists is more than sufficient.
The USA is the only country where anyone can purchase a short gun, automatic weapon as a right. The rest of the world recognizes that you may own a long gun (rifle) for hunting, or target shooting, but a pistol -- only if you can justify it -- if you are a police officer, you are a security guard, etc. The availability of guns is the reason George Zimmerman is on trial for murder. Had he not had access to a gun, the young 16 year old lad and many other innocent people in the USA would be alive today.
Personally, the better option would be to just not bother with Windows 8, and demand a refund (or if the OEM allows it, demand a non-Windows 8 preload). If Microsoft refuses to refund your money, take them to small claims court for that refund.
I wonder though - can an enterprising lawyer raise up a class-action lawsuit over the EULA clause itself?
There is a new computer bios called eufi. The bios is microprocessor controlled. and requires certification from the operating system before the system can be installed. Eufi can block everything since the bios needs the correct security key to allow loading of the kernel. Microsoft has been the instigator of this EUFI interface. Linux vendors will have to pay MS for the privilege of allowing their OPSYS to be installed. (I read it was a $99 tax).
So, perhaps the EUFI chip can be pluggable, where you can remove it and revert to a EUFI bios that uses a common security key.
Oh yes, whats also coming is EUFI HDMI output. Your monitor will sign into your system, as will your printer. DRM is being applied all the way. The only legal ?? way to make a copy of a movie you purchase or an e-book will be via webcam or a remote camera, doing the recording.
Cloud storage is wonderful, particularly for companies who are established in tornado alley, or in "hurricane prone" states. You are lucky because you can get flooded, or the roof can cave in, and you can still be (on paper) in business.
And in states where the temperature climbs above boiling on roof tops, the similar argument holds. Your hard disks located in the cloud wont melt, even if you do.
Very few (and let's face it, wacky) sects out there actually refuse to accept Darwin's theories of evolution these days, so I'm not really seeing the story here.
Let me make that clearer still: Most Christian sects have no problems with Darwin or evolution, and the largest/original sect has never formally condemned it, even back when it was new and untested. That link also is an example of it being embraced by Christianity.
Certainly, again, there are nuts who take the Bible waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too literally. But really... how many of them actually read Slashdot again? I mean, it's cool that Leakey is thinking that things will be easier to understand for the kids and all, but it's not like there's nothing really new you will ever dig up in the lineage of Homo Sapiens Sapiens that going to convince anyone not otherwise convinced by now.
So, err, what was the point of this again? Outside of allowing posters to post various bigotries in a socially acceptable manner, I'm not seeing why the story should be given anything more than just a 'oh, okay - cool.' attitude. Mod me down all you like, because I know it'll come, but seriously - Evolution is a non-issue these days.
Some ultra orthodox jews believe that when God invented the universe, he also invented it with all it's history. But if God is benevolent, why do we have contagious diseases, and cancers?
Slashdot Mirror
Not as good as $200 Bose
Just something to consider... I know what you're saying, but "good" of course has different meaning for different applications. I've never heard Bose headphones, but I have heard other Bose audio, and while it sounds very nice, for what is popular today in what people want to hear, in my experience, Bose can almost never actually be considered having fidelity, that is, faithful to the actual audio that is being amplified... because I have discovered they are always incredibly bass heavy. In a studio, this might be fine for cans for a drummer... if an expensive option. For purely enjoying music, they are pleasant I have little doubt, Bose does some pretty incredible things. But you're hearing more than the artists intended, FWIW. I'm no Bose expert, haven't listened to any of their headphones, but I would expect if you tried to mix music with them, all your music would end up sounding weak in the low end... because you're mixing with a heavy bass handycap. If the music you listen to is traditionally bass heavy anyway, I wouldn't expect Bose to be considered good for that application, unless you just really love low end and don't mind that you're hearing more of the headphones and less of the music.
Again, I am no expect, but I would consider the best headphones those that faithfully reproduce music flatly, in all its gory sonic imperfection, and not try to boost any frequencies because the sound of it happens to be popular right now.
I like Bose radios for their compactness... big sound, small box... but I have no delusion as to whether the audio coming out of it is actually really what I am listening to... if that makes any sense (how much is the artist, how much is Bose?). Most people would hate the way studio monitors sound, but if Bose made such a thing in a compact box that didn't boost frequencies and faithfully reproduced the signal no matter what it was, I'd be all over it.
...just my uninformed $.02... YMMV
One think I noticed about earplugs, and probably headphones too, (I have both), is that there is a legal limit to the number of decibels that they are allowed to produce. The vendors tell you to not damage your ears with too much loudness.
As for radios, I have not found any home radio as good as a modern car radio for reception. Our car radio picks up stations with good stereo clarity which my home system fails to detect. Is it the antenna? Is there an extra RF stage between antenna and tuner, or is the IF strip (digital or analog), better in car radio devices than in home systems.
For those of you who remember the EICO kit with a tube FM Stereo, I truly miss good reception that these systems provided. And for sound, my stereo system with Klipsh folded horns and with Electrohome speakers still give me that thump thump when listening to drums. And the horn tweaters were great on them too.
Ah for the good old tube equipement with pairs of 6L6s running class A push-pull amplification.
Suppose you are forced to wait the 5 seconds for the advert to complete before the display returns to normal, with the idea that if you watch or wait out the advert, you get a small credit for your bill.
If you are genitically modifying crops they MUST be kept isoated from nature and ensure that they cannot contaminate conventional or organic farms with patented gene. Sealed greenhouse whatever. IF you can accomplish that then carry on and label your product as such.
Tell that to Monsanto. Let the farmers field be your lab, and as the wind blows your pollen and seed to the neighbors field, sue the victim with exorbitant claims that as a conclusion, that farmer is obliged to purchase his next years seed from M.
Thinner => Lighter / Smaller => More portable
Seems like a reasonable thing to want in a laptop. If I wanted a machine that did everything at any cost.. I'd get a desktop.
Is Apple playing to your esthetic wishes, along with your desire to own and drive a Lamborghini? I am not an airline traveler, so weight is secondary for me and my Samsung Laptop. Since I can't afford a Lamborghini, owning an APPLE device is the next best thing.
My laptop is not heavy, but because the case is in plastic, it is slightly heavier than an aluminum cased system.
I code, watch movies, browse the net, respond to Slashdot comments, and enjoy the fact that it does all that I ask of a conventional laptop. Why, if it is stolen, I wont cry. It was less than a quarter of the price of the APPLE unit. And I touchtype and I believe that I cannot type faster on my device or the Apple.
I was very upset with Unity and Gnome, and essentially remained with UBUNTU 10.4 for the longest time. With Fedora 17, and with downloading and installing the tweaks package, gnome has a menu option located on the top left of the panel.
One click and I have a list of topics displayed vertically. Slide down to the topic of interest, click on it, and immediately below it is a list of all the programs in that category. Very easy to use.
What Gnome and Unity fail to provide for multiple configurable viewable shortcuts (icons) to either rapidly (one click) switch to another desktop, or switch to a designated folder (other than home), or to open browser to a dedicated webpage. I code in C++ or C and am teaching myself some other languages, and the browser is set to point to the list of classes or functions that I need.
Gnome 3.4 does not support 2 instances of the file manager. This means I click to open the file manager, I search and click to open the next level, and I click to maximize or resize and I click until at end of day I have carpal tunnel pains in my arms or forefinger.
I did use XFCE, but with the Gnome tweaks, I found Gnome back in favor until you SDotters find and report something better.
The theft does not help Argentinian Tourism. Imagine what all software developers who have heard or read the news are thinking....
The higher the resolution, the faster the processors required for the graphics card and in the monitor. Ergo, the higher the power consumption for each.
The next point is with respect to Quality Control of the monitor. The likelihood of a defective pixel or color LED is infinitesimal, but still occurs as a random distribution of the screen material (I believe defects follow the Poisson distribution). Therefore, in making very dense high resolution screens, will require many screens to be tested before a good one (low defects) is found.
If you make 10 screens but only 1 is suitable, costs are high, waste is high, and selling price is high. But with lower density screens, the leds are larger, and defect rates much much lower. Ergo, 1080p or 2000p, screens using very slightly larger leds have much lower defect rates.
Your welfare system that looks after diabetics, liver transplants and Koomanin medication know that cutting out the sugar will reduce dependencies on insulan, and so many other medications.
Sometimes I think that sewing a persons lips together would be a better solution, except they would put a straw up their other opening and drink the pop in from there.
Addiction, we should write a song about Big Gulp addiction.
We in Canada are not in a dictatorship, Neither are the British. We have the same or worse restricted gun laws, and yes, our deaths per gun accident are very very significantly lower than that of the USA.
We license long arms (rifles), but not handguns, unless you work in security, have passed a need to have and a written test, (transport jewelery worth $$$ allows guns to be used for transport, but not in the store.)
And once a decade of less often we occasionally get the mentally deranged person who shoots up a crowd.
And yes, in a democracy you do not need guns. Canada is not at war with the USA or the USA at war with Canada, or Mexico or Cuba (with guns).
Guns kill, nervous people with guns kill.
And the recording industry is still hungry for money.
No, they still want to force the Canadian government to implement USA laws.
the NDAA which Congress passed by ~65% and Obama vetoed..... ooops, I mean signed.
Yeah, but he didn't WANT to sign it, see. Or, at least, that's what he says when he's running for reelection.
So now the USA can kidnap foreign nationals, bring them to Guantanamo, and forget that they have the person, until someone squeeks out.
Wait, the MPAA is claiming the Megaupload EULA/TOS as a reason why people shouldn't get their data back? That's kinda a dick move.
Also, if I was the NZ government, I would be asking FedEx some pretty hard questions. Like: "Considering that you helped a foreign power conspire to break NZ law, why should we allow you to continue to work in our country?"
Why would FEDEX know the contents of what was being sent out of the country, other than it is a hard drive, and it contains data.
Would they know that doing so is illegal? Your comment would be true if FEDEX was complicit.
Untrue. The requirement is that secure boot can not be disabled. If you have a signed bootloader (like one from Red Hat, Fedora, or any other distro that pays the $99 to use this service) you can boot any OS you want.
Does this include any brand of VM that I want to boot under Linux? A VM wants an emulated UEFI bios. Is it too going to need the certificate?
Not quite, summary:
The $99 license is for if you want to distribute yours to other machines. The point is that it's a price that hits a line between "too expensive and will put vendors out of business" and "So cheap any asshat can get one". What it boils down to is the CA correctly authenticating the buyer, if malware vendors get a key signed by them it's the CA's fault.
Now someone who buys a key and recklessly leaves it lying around an insecure place, on the other hand, is a different matter....
I'm retired, I live on $20k per year, of which rent is $12k, taxes and medical expenses $3k, so for me, I guess I must be an asshat.
Even though the immigrants are highly skilled, working in the USA will give them additional skills -- cultural and technological.
And since the skills are valuable in two ways -- for the individual and for the country. They should be encouraged to remain.
However, many are keen to return home for reasons that are not obvious to Americans. -- Family (uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters, cousins etc).
A better job back home for having returned with greater experience.
A way to start a business with a lower overhead cost. Probably the cost of starting up in the USA is very very high, and only a few get venture capital.
Why do they call the study of malware and viruses a security problem. Is it not an insecurity problem?
We should take a course in insecurity analytics.
The local university is giving a degree program in cyberxxx where xxx is IR fraud, networking IT hacking and phishing etc and criminal fraud based on cyber actions.
Price is what the market will bear.
My son lived in Riga Latvia, and since the war and the Exodos of the Russians from latvia, metal was so expensive, that citizens stole copper from wiring, elevators, etc. The local communication companies found it cheaper to install fibre to all residences. Yes, his apartment had 8 megabit access. He could download a movie in three to four minutes. I downloaded a 3.5gbyte Linux distribution at the limiting speed of the host. (about 5-6 minutes). If I recall, the state owned the communications company.
So, back to the school needs. Yes, it is possible, the constraint is that it is a question of monetizing bandwidth. It may mean that all residents go from dsl to fibre, except in very far off regions of the state.
If the desire is there, it can be done, and the bank will not be broken.
All of my children have high IQs. My oldest son went to gifted school, jumped two grades, and was held back for good reason. Social imbalances. When his friends got to 16, he was 14, and he too wanted to also get his driver's permit. When his friends got to 18, and could go to the bars, he was 16, and had to lie about his age, or stay home. I gave him driving tests and the like until he was of age for the permit.
In university, he was bored, but did math, music, and finance. Before age 20, he graduated, moved to Florida, got an MBA, learned Spanish to add to his English and French. He could imitate the accents of Cubans, Mexicans. He picked up Portuguese, Chinese and Russian. After 10 years in the USA, he left for Latvia, taught Spanish, learned Russian and applied for a job in Moscow.
My other son, gifted in Finance, is very analytical, and is also worth bragging about. His skills in Poker and Blackjack which he did part time for a few years earned him a lot of money. (In Canada, gambling wins are not taxable, unless you are a professional gambler (have no other job).
I dont want to bore you, but he is one of the fingers on my hand, not one finger is better than the other.
My daughter is number 2 of the three. She got bored with University, took her Mrs. Has 3 kids, and now deals very professionally with autistic children. She is called on for many consultations and her success rate is way above average.
Do they take after me? Are they above average? No and Yes. Their mother was very smart and married me.
Gifted or not, Hi IQ or not, I love them all. But you cannot BS any of us. The important thing that we measure, is their kindness, generosity, and caring about others. That is more important than IQ or high scores.
Your right, I wrote bullshit. So if we look at crime and shootings that take place in a crime, the highest rate of crime with a gun fired is a figment of my imagination, since nothing can be proven. Why let my figment work some more, I tell myself "imagine that if you removed the drug warloads crimes of killing the competition, would the actual crime rate in Mexico be probably lower than that of the USA?"
The USA has a wonderful group of smart loving and caring families, who have no guns at home or hidden in the car. These families and many more like them are what the USA is about. The problem of poor image is because a few guns too many spoil and lower the world image of a great nation.
The only problem with cyber warfare is that what goes around comes around.
On consideration, I think it is a great idea. In the USA, given the RIAA, , Disney, and large media companies etc. who real objective is to monetize the internet (as if it was a TV station carrying advertisements), would destroy the internet as we know it today. With the UN there, the internet can be extended to poorer countries, where network based educational courses, news, information showing how others live, and with the net, increased tolerance for others would promote worldly well-being. We may pay for some slight usage, but we can hope for less censorship. Perhaps we need a second internet, that is an alternative to the existing one.
Statistics show that if the victim has a firearm, there's a greater chance of either he/she or the people near the victim being wounded.
Prove it. Cite a relevant study.
Don't make baseless claims about statistics if you don't have hard evidence.
One could make the claim that you don't need a gun to commit a violent crime or a homicide. A knife or a big piece of wood/metal or even just fists is more than sufficient.
The USA is the only country where anyone can purchase a short gun, automatic weapon as a right. The rest of the world recognizes that you may own a long gun (rifle) for hunting, or target shooting, but a pistol -- only if you can justify it -- if you are a police officer, you are a security guard, etc. The availability of guns is the reason George Zimmerman is on trial for murder. Had he not had access to a gun, the young 16 year old lad and many other innocent people in the USA would be alive today.
It may well depend on what state you live in.
Personally, the better option would be to just not bother with Windows 8, and demand a refund (or if the OEM allows it, demand a non-Windows 8 preload). If Microsoft refuses to refund your money, take them to small claims court for that refund.
I wonder though - can an enterprising lawyer raise up a class-action lawsuit over the EULA clause itself?
There is a new computer bios called eufi. The bios is microprocessor controlled. and requires certification from the operating system before the system can be installed. Eufi can block everything since the bios needs the correct security key to allow loading of the kernel. Microsoft has been the instigator of this EUFI interface. Linux vendors will have to pay MS for the privilege of allowing their OPSYS to be installed. (I read it was a $99 tax).
So, perhaps the EUFI chip can be pluggable, where you can remove it and revert to a EUFI bios that uses a common security key.
Oh yes, whats also coming is EUFI HDMI output. Your monitor will sign into your system, as will your printer. DRM is being applied all the way. The only legal ?? way to make a copy of a movie you purchase or an e-book will be via webcam or a remote camera, doing the recording.
Cloud storage is wonderful, particularly for companies who are established in tornado alley, or in "hurricane prone" states. You are lucky because you can get flooded, or the roof can cave in, and you can still be (on paper) in business.
And in states where the temperature climbs above boiling on roof tops, the similar argument holds. Your hard disks located in the cloud wont melt, even if you do.
Very few (and let's face it, wacky) sects out there actually refuse to accept Darwin's theories of evolution these days, so I'm not really seeing the story here.
Let me make that clearer still: Most Christian sects have no problems with Darwin or evolution, and the largest/original sect has never formally condemned it, even back when it was new and untested. That link also is an example of it being embraced by Christianity.
Certainly, again, there are nuts who take the Bible waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too literally. But really... how many of them actually read Slashdot again? I mean, it's cool that Leakey is thinking that things will be easier to understand for the kids and all, but it's not like there's nothing really new you will ever dig up in the lineage of Homo Sapiens Sapiens that going to convince anyone not otherwise convinced by now.
So, err, what was the point of this again? Outside of allowing posters to post various bigotries in a socially acceptable manner, I'm not seeing why the story should be given anything more than just a 'oh, okay - cool.' attitude. Mod me down all you like, because I know it'll come, but seriously - Evolution is a non-issue these days.
Some ultra orthodox jews believe that when God invented the universe, he also invented it with all it's history. But if God is benevolent, why do we have contagious diseases, and cancers?