In vitro fertilization has similar ethical questions, which are rarely answered or questioned. Everyone who is against stem cell research should be also against in vitro fertilization and never watch Jon & Kate plus 8.
That will be found out sooner or later when charges start to appear to credit card bills. Even if the person behind the credit card is not known the account can be declared tainted. Google will be able to revert any actions from that account and keep the system more safe.
I wouldn't want soviet union back, but that doesn't mean all US does is nice and shiny. There are documented cases of US being the "bad guy" and if other nations do worse it's not an excuse. You compare US actions against the worst tyrants and worst wars, why not hold US to a higher standard? Don't get fooled into thinking that it's either US or Soviet Union, there are other alternatives and all nations should strive towards better future.
Couple points that you made are clearly wrong, for example US did support Saddam in his wars against Iran. US was providing means to build Saddam era Iraq.
In Yugoslavia all NATO countries participated along US side. That's what NATO is for, US is most prominent member in NATO. The peace process and peace keeping missions were handled together with US without US being dominant or even biggest partner.
In general peace keeping forces come from many nations and US is not clearly biggest player in that arena. European Union provides 4-5 times more resources to peace keeping that US does. Why is that?
Nations don't have any binding laws, if US doesn't like some international treaty it is possible to unilaterally withdraw from such treaty. It is up to the affected nations to act based on the withdrawal. Alternatively US government can produce laws that make previously illegal (according to US laws) acts legal.
Therefore when talking about nations there is no such thing as legal and illegal. All actions can be made legal and all opposing actions can be made illegal. Current wars are very clear example of such behavior. Invasions were "legally" justified first as retaliation, then as containment of WMD and later humanitarian effort to save peoples lives. Same time opponents were vilified as terrorists even when vast majority of them are defending their home land from invasion. We can only look at our own moral compass to decide whether a nations actions are justified, legal theater plays the history so that the winner/stronger is always the good guy.
To be fair in US there is no reason to buy unlocked phones. The rates are same for people who bring the phone and those who get it subsidized. Also 3G networks are no compatible across carriers and phones are custom made for all major carriers. Very rarely (if ever) there is 3G phone with 1700MHz and 1900Mhz supported on GSM side. CDMA does have some interoperability I believe but Sprint and Verizon are not really providing SIM cards, the phones are mostly assigned ID that cannot be removed from the phone and operators are not activating the phones across carriers.
I'm currently in Europe (Finland) and iPhones are only sold with operator lock in them. It's possible to get them unlocked once contract runs out, but before that jailbreaking is the only way to unlock them.
I already have an iPhone (AT&T iPhone I used in US for 2 years and the contract run out) and now I live in a country where AT&T doesn't have any service. Why should I go out and buy a new iPhone? It also didn't make sense when I was living in US to buy an iPhone for $700 and then use AT&T's full priced contract for 2 years.
Other poster pointed out that tethering is not enables for regular unlocked phones, that would be another reason for me to jailbreak but I never even had an option to run un-jailbroken unlocked iPhone so I don't know what else is missing.
I wouldn't be jailbreaking my iPhone if there was a way to remove SIM lock. Right now Apple & AT&T has forced me into a situation where AT&T won't provide unlock code (asks to go some unlock shop and pay for the unlock) and Apple doesn't really care. Only option is to jailbreak to get blacksn0w running.
If Steve/government (in many countries in Europe it is mandated that after contract period unlock key is given) would force AT&T to provide unlock codes for everyone out of contract then most of the jailbreaking business would go away.
Hmm... seems that Japan is not that advanced after all. Most of Finland has HSPA 3G network with 14.4mbps theoretical maximum for 14€/month uncapped for your phone with secondary data SIM and extra included USB data stick. Realistic rate is 6mbps/1mbps and 100+ms ping. I'm typing this using exactly that HSPA 3G connection, closest shop is 10 miles away and nearest city is 20 miles away. No wired or cable services available at all, only electricity line is coming to the edge of the property.
I doubt that Finland is less expensive per capita to build and/or operate a mobile network. The cost is not subsidized directly by tax payers. I would say Finnish telcos are less subsidized than the US telcos.
I suspect that it's cheaper because of strong competition among telcos. Regulation plays huge part in that. Phone subsidy is separated by law from the service contract. Meaning that subsidized phone must be priced separately and service must be provided without phone itself. This regulation gives the consumer ability to determine best deal for phone and best deal for service separately. Also changing plans to more suitable one is easy when contract can be changed to other provider without any strings attached. Phone will work across providers.
Universal phone service requirement change also cut costs on phone service side. Wireless service is counted as a phone service so long and expensive phone lines are cut down from all over Finland and replaced with cell towers that are located in accessible main roads. I believe that subsidy towards rural customers is one cost increasing factor in both US and Finland.
LTE or no LTE doesn't matter as long as the data plans in US are as horrible as they are now. LTE can be useful if the operator somehow enables tethering, secondary data line, or other ways to use the fast data connection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to pay close to $50/month to get LTE/3G data connection with restricted data usage via tethering, or $10-30/month if you want to use data just on your mobile phone, or both if you want LTE/3G usb data stick + data on your mobile.
This obscene pricing for data is holding back any real breakthrough in wireless data market in US. When comparing that to current prices in Finland the difference is huge. Currently operators are offering up to 14.4mbit/sec 3.5G (HSPA) data line for 14€/month. The plan includes data for your mobile phone + USB data stick for your computer with secondary SIM without data usage restrictions. Both data connections will work simultaneously and use the same phone number, secondary SIM doesn't receive text messages otherwise it's identical to primary SIM.
The result of such pricing scheme in Finland is that many families have several high speed internet connections at their disposal. Surprisingly telcos are quite profitable and have been able to offset the declining revenue in fixed line business with new wireless services.
Unfortunately that list contains only well rounded larger universities. There is no denying that US (and to some extent UK) have the biggest and most famous universities around. Those exceptions are not necessarily saying anything about system itself or greatness in more specialized faculties.
For example London Business School is ranked best among all MBA programs, but cannot be found from that list at all. In engineering MIT is clearly better than Harvard. CERN (not an university) is the place to go if you want to be on top of the nuclear physics.
If we want to evaluate the university system as a whole there should be focus on average graduate performance and average cost per graduate, but even these criteria are purely my own given as an example, someone else can have very different set of criteria to evaluate the university system. Unfortunately I don't have such statistics and I won't be able to make any conclusions if the university system in US is in fact the best in the world. The fact still is that some of the best universities in the world are in US, but that's hardly enough to say anything about the system and if the graduates are feeling the excellence of the system.
My personal experience is with a state funded university system where I reached my MSc with zero debt and was able to perform well in the work life, including 3 year excursion to US. I didn't feel disadvantaged when talking to people who had graduated from these ranked universities, but I often wished to be able to study at MIT or Stanford. The university that I graduated from wouldn't have a chance to be on that list because it was purely engineering university, but some of the faculties had world class research done and lots of students from abroad were coming in to study there.
You start your post by saying that nobody disputes the climate change (to the warmer), yet still it seems to be hard to believe that due to increasing global temperature glaciers would start melting. Why is that? This article describes clearly that glaciers are retreating and fresh water supply for hundreds of millions of people is at risk.
What comes to your questions about traffic conditions, we are not talking about a some ski resort here! These glaciers and mountains are far away from any even moderately populated areas.
From the article: "The result is a then-and-now series of photographs from Tibet, Nepal and near K2 in Pakistan - all of which show glaciers in retreat."
That means very insignificant variations in pollution, traffic, construction, etc. Dynamite is useful to clear the surface snow but not whole mountains of ice. Glaciers by definition are formed over years and diminish over years, seasonal variations on snow cover will be there but glaciers are not changing much between seasons. Focus on glaciers is quite obvious, they are the "canary in a coal mine" because they quite accurately reflect long term trends of the climate change. This image compilation is hardly FUD, it gives normal person a view to very remote glacier images. I don't think the article should reference the IPCC study at all and the focus should be purely on the comparing the images and drawing the conclusions from these images.
One thing that most people miss is also the ability to sell electricity back during peak hours, that would compensate the added draw in charging. When you have car standing in garage with 100% battery then during peak it could sell 20-30% of the capacity and charge again once rates go lower making driving on electricity even cheaper. Smart grid will enable this sort of behavior, but until people get energy storage/production at home smart grid is not a priority.
Certainly you will get FiOS or some other fiber to developed areas, but it's not worth running those cables again across US to rural households. Most of the cables already run out there should be replaced with either wired or wireless service, FCC needs to (de)regulate this process.
I haven't yet understood what benefit you get from receiving terabytes worth of channels you don't watch. I can understand that you may want to be able to stream two maximum of three simultaneous channels to your home, but wanting more seems extremely strange. You demand other people to explain the need for fast internet while backing your own arguments with ridiculous features. What need can there possibly be to have 20 simultaneous channels? And more importantly, is it justified use of public radio spectrum to allow such waste of bandwidth to very few households who can replace the service with basic satellite/cable TV?
Real requirement should be that you are able to watch any program you wish at any time with as high quality as possible. TV just cannot get there, and it's time to change.
Trust me a cellular service can be adequate for many things. Right now I'm watching World Cup over 3G HSPA (6-7mbit real life speed) connection in rural Finland where all phone cables have been taken away. Data connection is unlimited and costs 13 EUR/month. In my city apartment I have 100mbps fiber for 20 EUR/month. Most of government channels are provided on demand online with 750kbps bitrate (will increase later) at http://www.yle.fi/areena. Many private providers are providing online "tivo" as part of the cable service where you can record/play programs from any channel.
Sweden doesn't have oil, neither does Finland or Denmark. Norway does.
Ripping up old phone lines is not costly operation, telcos actually called up and offered 3G data network in rural areas so they could take away the old phone lines that were prone to be cut in snow storm, had to be cleared of brush regularly, pay land rent, etc. In US such incentive doesn't exist because FCC requires phone companies maintain phone lines as well as wireless service. All you need to do is to say that phone lines can be removed from areas where unlimited 3G wireless data connection and phone connection are offered for less than $30/month and telcos will do the rest. That's what happened in Finland.
Same goes with the television, requirement to support old TV technologies when free internet TV broadcast could address most (if not all) concerns is dumb. Maintaining TV stations and reserving bandwidth for handful of people is expensive. You have also asked repeatedly about the need to have 100mbps internet, but have you ever questioned the need to have a TV? I have lived all my adult life without TV.
It's not hard to believe and I'm all for Meego based device being my next mobile phone. As a developer for mobile devices Nokia/Ovi/Symbian has just failed me at every turn whereas Apple/iTunes/iDevice has worked well.
I think we are looking the issue from different perspectives, your goal is to make things work. My goal is to sell the application and do it so with relative ease. Qt provides that ease but only for very limited device catalog, most likely from N8 onwards. Adding additional tasks for the user before application works or adding fragmented underperforming device catalog is just not going to work.
Are you actually saying that I could make a Qt application and run it on any Symbian phone made in past 2-3 years? I don't think Qt is actually available with regularly pushed firmware upgrades, you most likely need to install some additional software to run it. That cannot be called "available" in this day and age.
I could be wrong, maybe firmware upgrades are delivered to Symbian devices with minimal user interaction and Qt is available after those upgrades.
Problem is that the article talks about "most used OS in the world". If we start limiting our selection to usable Symbian versions then we have to talk about "the least used OS in the world".
You cannot do it both ways, count all Symbian phones and versions out there and same time boast some irrelevantly small number of devices that supposedly makes development easy.
I would be surprised if US military didn't play war games where North Korea launches missiles at US or South Korean targets. The job of military is to prepare for these kinds of things not just pull the trigger.
Of course unknown enemy is harder to respond to, but even the current Iraq and Afghan wars were well prepared after the 9/11. There was no reason not to plan for different outcomes.
These questions should have been asked in the beginning of the war not after. What were US plans on handling prisoners of war (or enemy combatants)? What is the final objective of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? What are the war ending criteria? How to exit the war, what sort of rebuilding is necessary?
Of course I don't have an answer to those, but I would expect any nation that starts a war will have asked and answered to them with backup plans. Especially telling is the Soviet wars in Afghanistan, there was early warnings about not being able to finish off the war with clean victory.
I understood that the sahara project will use solar to heat up water that is then used to generate electricity. The beauty of the system is that electricity production can survive over night. In general I think the electricity generation needs to be more widespread with fluctuating pricing (such as Nordpool) and some intelligence in using the electricity needs to be built in to the consumer side in the long run. If I could program my washing machine to run on the cheap night electricity or wait for lower electricity price then load balancing would be more automatic.
Stock market needs to go back to the basics where you own a company rather than zero sum lottery tickets.
You do realize day trading has always existed, right? It has simply gone from people shouting on the floor of the NYSE to people making the exact same trades on their computers. There is no difference other than speed, and people who don't know what they are doing quickly loose money and go out of business, which has always been true.
I realize that trading needs to be done somehow, but I resent the fact that the odds are so clearly stacked against regular investors. Why a system that allows bots that trade in split seconds to perform better than forward looking investors needs to be defended? There are ways around these issues, one best ways to do this is to make the transactions cost money.
Current stock market is like playing a FPS against a team that all have all cheats enabled. Of course stupid people will lose money on bad investments, but this meta game that is going on within each day at stock market is not benefiting anyone or anything.
And this extra liquidity is a benefit? I could argue that even without these automated bots there is no shortage of liquidity in modern markets.
One of the greatest benefits of liquidity is supposed to be more stable price formation. Unfortunately I cannot believe in the current system where on a bad day swings can be over 50% down and back up, and on a good day stocks bounce around in 5-10% bracket. No company value can move that much during one day, it's all speculation and volatility of these systems.
Stock market needs to go back to the basics where you own a company rather than zero sum lottery tickets.
Slashdot Mirror
In vitro fertilization has similar ethical questions, which are rarely answered or questioned. Everyone who is against stem cell research should be also against in vitro fertilization and never watch Jon & Kate plus 8.
That will be found out sooner or later when charges start to appear to credit card bills. Even if the person behind the credit card is not known the account can be declared tainted. Google will be able to revert any actions from that account and keep the system more safe.
I wouldn't want soviet union back, but that doesn't mean all US does is nice and shiny. There are documented cases of US being the "bad guy" and if other nations do worse it's not an excuse. You compare US actions against the worst tyrants and worst wars, why not hold US to a higher standard? Don't get fooled into thinking that it's either US or Soviet Union, there are other alternatives and all nations should strive towards better future.
Couple points that you made are clearly wrong, for example US did support Saddam in his wars against Iran. US was providing means to build Saddam era Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war
In Yugoslavia all NATO countries participated along US side. That's what NATO is for, US is most prominent member in NATO. The peace process and peace keeping missions were handled together with US without US being dominant or even biggest partner.
In general peace keeping forces come from many nations and US is not clearly biggest player in that arena. European Union provides 4-5 times more resources to peace keeping that US does. Why is that?
Nations don't have any binding laws, if US doesn't like some international treaty it is possible to unilaterally withdraw from such treaty. It is up to the affected nations to act based on the withdrawal. Alternatively US government can produce laws that make previously illegal (according to US laws) acts legal.
Therefore when talking about nations there is no such thing as legal and illegal. All actions can be made legal and all opposing actions can be made illegal. Current wars are very clear example of such behavior. Invasions were "legally" justified first as retaliation, then as containment of WMD and later humanitarian effort to save peoples lives. Same time opponents were vilified as terrorists even when vast majority of them are defending their home land from invasion. We can only look at our own moral compass to decide whether a nations actions are justified, legal theater plays the history so that the winner/stronger is always the good guy.
To be fair in US there is no reason to buy unlocked phones. The rates are same for people who bring the phone and those who get it subsidized. Also 3G networks are no compatible across carriers and phones are custom made for all major carriers. Very rarely (if ever) there is 3G phone with 1700MHz and 1900Mhz supported on GSM side. CDMA does have some interoperability I believe but Sprint and Verizon are not really providing SIM cards, the phones are mostly assigned ID that cannot be removed from the phone and operators are not activating the phones across carriers.
I'm currently in Europe (Finland) and iPhones are only sold with operator lock in them. It's possible to get them unlocked once contract runs out, but before that jailbreaking is the only way to unlock them.
I already have an iPhone (AT&T iPhone I used in US for 2 years and the contract run out) and now I live in a country where AT&T doesn't have any service. Why should I go out and buy a new iPhone? It also didn't make sense when I was living in US to buy an iPhone for $700 and then use AT&T's full priced contract for 2 years.
Other poster pointed out that tethering is not enables for regular unlocked phones, that would be another reason for me to jailbreak but I never even had an option to run un-jailbroken unlocked iPhone so I don't know what else is missing.
I wouldn't be jailbreaking my iPhone if there was a way to remove SIM lock. Right now Apple & AT&T has forced me into a situation where AT&T won't provide unlock code (asks to go some unlock shop and pay for the unlock) and Apple doesn't really care. Only option is to jailbreak to get blacksn0w running.
If Steve/government (in many countries in Europe it is mandated that after contract period unlock key is given) would force AT&T to provide unlock codes for everyone out of contract then most of the jailbreaking business would go away.
Hmm... seems that Japan is not that advanced after all. Most of Finland has HSPA 3G network with 14.4mbps theoretical maximum for 14€/month uncapped for your phone with secondary data SIM and extra included USB data stick. Realistic rate is 6mbps/1mbps and 100+ms ping. I'm typing this using exactly that HSPA 3G connection, closest shop is 10 miles away and nearest city is 20 miles away. No wired or cable services available at all, only electricity line is coming to the edge of the property.
Here are speedtests for Helsinki (200 miles away in fact), London and San Diego... taken at 6pm, which is heavy usage time here.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/898400861.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/898402115.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/898409197.png
I doubt that Finland is less expensive per capita to build and/or operate a mobile network. The cost is not subsidized directly by tax payers. I would say Finnish telcos are less subsidized than the US telcos.
I suspect that it's cheaper because of strong competition among telcos. Regulation plays huge part in that. Phone subsidy is separated by law from the service contract. Meaning that subsidized phone must be priced separately and service must be provided without phone itself. This regulation gives the consumer ability to determine best deal for phone and best deal for service separately. Also changing plans to more suitable one is easy when contract can be changed to other provider without any strings attached. Phone will work across providers.
Universal phone service requirement change also cut costs on phone service side. Wireless service is counted as a phone service so long and expensive phone lines are cut down from all over Finland and replaced with cell towers that are located in accessible main roads. I believe that subsidy towards rural customers is one cost increasing factor in both US and Finland.
LTE or no LTE doesn't matter as long as the data plans in US are as horrible as they are now. LTE can be useful if the operator somehow enables tethering, secondary data line, or other ways to use the fast data connection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to pay close to $50/month to get LTE/3G data connection with restricted data usage via tethering, or $10-30/month if you want to use data just on your mobile phone, or both if you want LTE/3G usb data stick + data on your mobile.
This obscene pricing for data is holding back any real breakthrough in wireless data market in US. When comparing that to current prices in Finland the difference is huge. Currently operators are offering up to 14.4mbit/sec 3.5G (HSPA) data line for 14€/month. The plan includes data for your mobile phone + USB data stick for your computer with secondary SIM without data usage restrictions. Both data connections will work simultaneously and use the same phone number, secondary SIM doesn't receive text messages otherwise it's identical to primary SIM.
The result of such pricing scheme in Finland is that many families have several high speed internet connections at their disposal. Surprisingly telcos are quite profitable and have been able to offset the declining revenue in fixed line business with new wireless services.
Unfortunately that list contains only well rounded larger universities. There is no denying that US (and to some extent UK) have the biggest and most famous universities around. Those exceptions are not necessarily saying anything about system itself or greatness in more specialized faculties.
For example London Business School is ranked best among all MBA programs, but cannot be found from that list at all. In engineering MIT is clearly better than Harvard. CERN (not an university) is the place to go if you want to be on top of the nuclear physics.
If we want to evaluate the university system as a whole there should be focus on average graduate performance and average cost per graduate, but even these criteria are purely my own given as an example, someone else can have very different set of criteria to evaluate the university system. Unfortunately I don't have such statistics and I won't be able to make any conclusions if the university system in US is in fact the best in the world. The fact still is that some of the best universities in the world are in US, but that's hardly enough to say anything about the system and if the graduates are feeling the excellence of the system.
My personal experience is with a state funded university system where I reached my MSc with zero debt and was able to perform well in the work life, including 3 year excursion to US. I didn't feel disadvantaged when talking to people who had graduated from these ranked universities, but I often wished to be able to study at MIT or Stanford. The university that I graduated from wouldn't have a chance to be on that list because it was purely engineering university, but some of the faculties had world class research done and lots of students from abroad were coming in to study there.
You start your post by saying that nobody disputes the climate change (to the warmer), yet still it seems to be hard to believe that due to increasing global temperature glaciers would start melting. Why is that? This article describes clearly that glaciers are retreating and fresh water supply for hundreds of millions of people is at risk.
What comes to your questions about traffic conditions, we are not talking about a some ski resort here! These glaciers and mountains are far away from any even moderately populated areas.
From the article: "The result is a then-and-now series of photographs from Tibet, Nepal and near K2 in Pakistan - all of which show glaciers in retreat."
That means very insignificant variations in pollution, traffic, construction, etc. Dynamite is useful to clear the surface snow but not whole mountains of ice. Glaciers by definition are formed over years and diminish over years, seasonal variations on snow cover will be there but glaciers are not changing much between seasons. Focus on glaciers is quite obvious, they are the "canary in a coal mine" because they quite accurately reflect long term trends of the climate change. This image compilation is hardly FUD, it gives normal person a view to very remote glacier images. I don't think the article should reference the IPCC study at all and the focus should be purely on the comparing the images and drawing the conclusions from these images.
Here are comparison images with greater accuracy and explanation: http://sites.asiasociety.org/riversofice/comparative-photography
One thing that most people miss is also the ability to sell electricity back during peak hours, that would compensate the added draw in charging. When you have car standing in garage with 100% battery then during peak it could sell 20-30% of the capacity and charge again once rates go lower making driving on electricity even cheaper. Smart grid will enable this sort of behavior, but until people get energy storage/production at home smart grid is not a priority.
Certainly you will get FiOS or some other fiber to developed areas, but it's not worth running those cables again across US to rural households. Most of the cables already run out there should be replaced with either wired or wireless service, FCC needs to (de)regulate this process.
I haven't yet understood what benefit you get from receiving terabytes worth of channels you don't watch. I can understand that you may want to be able to stream two maximum of three simultaneous channels to your home, but wanting more seems extremely strange. You demand other people to explain the need for fast internet while backing your own arguments with ridiculous features. What need can there possibly be to have 20 simultaneous channels? And more importantly, is it justified use of public radio spectrum to allow such waste of bandwidth to very few households who can replace the service with basic satellite/cable TV?
Real requirement should be that you are able to watch any program you wish at any time with as high quality as possible. TV just cannot get there, and it's time to change.
Trust me a cellular service can be adequate for many things. Right now I'm watching World Cup over 3G HSPA (6-7mbit real life speed) connection in rural Finland where all phone cables have been taken away. Data connection is unlimited and costs 13 EUR/month. In my city apartment I have 100mbps fiber for 20 EUR/month. Most of government channels are provided on demand online with 750kbps bitrate (will increase later) at http://www.yle.fi/areena. Many private providers are providing online "tivo" as part of the cable service where you can record/play programs from any channel.
Sweden doesn't have oil, neither does Finland or Denmark. Norway does.
Ripping up old phone lines is not costly operation, telcos actually called up and offered 3G data network in rural areas so they could take away the old phone lines that were prone to be cut in snow storm, had to be cleared of brush regularly, pay land rent, etc. In US such incentive doesn't exist because FCC requires phone companies maintain phone lines as well as wireless service. All you need to do is to say that phone lines can be removed from areas where unlimited 3G wireless data connection and phone connection are offered for less than $30/month and telcos will do the rest. That's what happened in Finland.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/AT-T-FCC-Analog-Digital-VoIP,news-5456.html
Same goes with the television, requirement to support old TV technologies when free internet TV broadcast could address most (if not all) concerns is dumb. Maintaining TV stations and reserving bandwidth for handful of people is expensive. You have also asked repeatedly about the need to have 100mbps internet, but have you ever questioned the need to have a TV? I have lived all my adult life without TV.
It's not hard to believe and I'm all for Meego based device being my next mobile phone. As a developer for mobile devices Nokia/Ovi/Symbian has just failed me at every turn whereas Apple/iTunes/iDevice has worked well.
I think we are looking the issue from different perspectives, your goal is to make things work. My goal is to sell the application and do it so with relative ease. Qt provides that ease but only for very limited device catalog, most likely from N8 onwards. Adding additional tasks for the user before application works or adding fragmented underperforming device catalog is just not going to work.
Are you actually saying that I could make a Qt application and run it on any Symbian phone made in past 2-3 years? I don't think Qt is actually available with regularly pushed firmware upgrades, you most likely need to install some additional software to run it. That cannot be called "available" in this day and age.
I could be wrong, maybe firmware upgrades are delivered to Symbian devices with minimal user interaction and Qt is available after those upgrades.
Problem is that the article talks about "most used OS in the world". If we start limiting our selection to usable Symbian versions then we have to talk about "the least used OS in the world".
You cannot do it both ways, count all Symbian phones and versions out there and same time boast some irrelevantly small number of devices that supposedly makes development easy.
I would be surprised if US military didn't play war games where North Korea launches missiles at US or South Korean targets. The job of military is to prepare for these kinds of things not just pull the trigger.
Of course unknown enemy is harder to respond to, but even the current Iraq and Afghan wars were well prepared after the 9/11. There was no reason not to plan for different outcomes.
These questions should have been asked in the beginning of the war not after. What were US plans on handling prisoners of war (or enemy combatants)? What is the final objective of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? What are the war ending criteria? How to exit the war, what sort of rebuilding is necessary?
Of course I don't have an answer to those, but I would expect any nation that starts a war will have asked and answered to them with backup plans. Especially telling is the Soviet wars in Afghanistan, there was early warnings about not being able to finish off the war with clean victory.
I understood that the sahara project will use solar to heat up water that is then used to generate electricity. The beauty of the system is that electricity production can survive over night. In general I think the electricity generation needs to be more widespread with fluctuating pricing (such as Nordpool) and some intelligence in using the electricity needs to be built in to the consumer side in the long run. If I could program my washing machine to run on the cheap night electricity or wait for lower electricity price then load balancing would be more automatic.
There is oligopoly of bad service and screwing the customers with all major telcos. That's why they all can keep it going.
Stock market needs to go back to the basics where you own a company rather than zero sum lottery tickets.
You do realize day trading has always existed, right? It has simply gone from people shouting on the floor of the NYSE to people making the exact same trades on their computers. There is no difference other than speed, and people who don't know what they are doing quickly loose money and go out of business, which has always been true.
I realize that trading needs to be done somehow, but I resent the fact that the odds are so clearly stacked against regular investors. Why a system that allows bots that trade in split seconds to perform better than forward looking investors needs to be defended? There are ways around these issues, one best ways to do this is to make the transactions cost money.
Current stock market is like playing a FPS against a team that all have all cheats enabled. Of course stupid people will lose money on bad investments, but this meta game that is going on within each day at stock market is not benefiting anyone or anything.
And this extra liquidity is a benefit? I could argue that even without these automated bots there is no shortage of liquidity in modern markets.
One of the greatest benefits of liquidity is supposed to be more stable price formation. Unfortunately I cannot believe in the current system where on a bad day swings can be over 50% down and back up, and on a good day stocks bounce around in 5-10% bracket. No company value can move that much during one day, it's all speculation and volatility of these systems.
Stock market needs to go back to the basics where you own a company rather than zero sum lottery tickets.
At least this show came into conclusion. I hate it when some of these shows are cut in midseason.