How is iPad subsidized? There is no reason to lock, have contract or otherwise restrict user movement among different networks. If Apple honestly wanted to provide their users best experience they would just ship iPads unlocked and available for all 3G (AT&T, T-Mobile at least) networks out there.
Eventually one of these networks would offer cheaper data plan or some family plan with iPad just to gain market share on this. In relatively regulated (end user in mind regulation) wireless market (such as Nordic countries) the fees for wireless usage are much lower. Currently I have 24 month unlimited contract (to get the discount and USB modem) on HSPA data connection with up to 14Mbit/s for less than $20/month. In rural area where I live I get only 3Mbit/s but in cities the connection is much faster.
Since individuals always interpret bible and religion the whole issue becomes a moving target. Some individual claimed abortion is not acceptable, some individual claimed gay marriage is sin, some individual didn't like stem cell research, etc. Moral of this story is that whatever religious people tell me is subject to change as the moral code behind it evolves. These people are putting words into god's mouth because in a century or so the moral code of the church has already drifted away from the issues relevant at any point of time.
Why not just forget bible because it's impossible to interpret in modern world without inserting your own prejudice into the mix. It would be much more honest if religious people would be straight forward and say they don't like gay marriage because they think gay people are disgusting rather than hiding behind imaginary interpretation of a book. Once the bible is removed from the discussion there is no way to hide your own thoughts.
In case we start discussing why something was written then I would hope that the bible would be at least correct in a way the children physics books are. There is no need to explain science, just what happened in right order, that's all. What bible now provides is plain misinformation of the creation. Just reverse the order and write creation order as stars, sun, earth, ocean, plants, fish, land based animals, humans, and domesticated animals. There, I did better job than god in explaining the creation.
Yawn.. someone else who doesn't know what the word proves actually means or what science actually says.
Gen 1- No proof that some omnipotent being could not have done that. There is suggestion that it didn't happen that way but there is no prove disproving it.
I'm not sure where you are going with this, since what we can observe is the world we live in. In case we start accounting for actors that are not bound by the laws of nature there is no way of predicting anything. Fortunately world and universe seems to follow rules set in motion billions of years ago. As far as I know there are no evidence of acts of god (unnatural major events) found or happening as we speak.
I believe the goal has never been to annoy religious people or disprove the existence of god/gods. Problem comes when schools and society are suggested to follow teaching that have no basis on observations or theory provided by scientific method. How do we select which omnipotent being we believe did all this and how? I cannot understand why we shouldn't observe the past or universe with observed laws of nature but should rely on some thousands of years old scriptures that contradict the reality. Explaining it all with omnipotent being who is not bound by the laws of nature just doesn't work.
Why not focus all efforts in understanding and writing bible into a format that is clearly defined instead of parables? Since there must be an interpretation of each teaching that is the absolute truth. Once the clearly defined form of bible has been created scientific community could then validate or invalidate the messages. Some of the teaching are of course discussing morals and behavior in society, but even those can be validated with social sciences.
I believe you have very strange way of thinking of who started it, at least when talking about Christianity. Scientists (who were often integral part of the church) dared to challenge bible, so they started it. Science advances by definition will challenge current thinking, bible and religion. Religious organizations always offers answers to unknowns without hesitating to think if those answers are correct or not.
Here are some earlier bible interpretations that scientists dared to challenge:
1. Bible said earth is flat 2. Bible said earth is center of the universe (Copernicus) 3. Bible said god created all living beings (Darwin) 4. Bible said sun is center of the universe 5. Bible said earth is only 5000-10000 years old
As you can see, religion was there first giving answers. Scientists picked up the fight and challenged those truths. Christians went far enough to deliberately destroy scientific books because of the challenge scientist presented. Chinese communists have done that too for same reasons but different ideology.
Now present time scientists have made too many advances so the fundamental christians have came into crossroads where they either need to discard bible as literal truth or challenge science. Some will challenge science, but most of us discard bible as the literal truth. Many of us realize that religion is moral compass of the society and others denounce religion all together.
Religion has a major flaw and that is the thought that everything is well thought out and we finally know how everything is because our interpretation of bible is finally the correct one. As long as you follow the teaching you will get salvation. Christians are basically just waiting for the second coming and to be judged. There is no room for challenging the current situation because any deviation from the church teaching will reduce your chances of getting to heaven.
Same goes for Nokia. Nokia has been trying to get S60 UI usable from last century and hasn't succeeded yet. Just listen to the management talking about next version coming out next year the same way as Microsoft does because the current version just isn't good enough.
Microsoft should have bought Palm and create Mobile OS based on that. Nokia should have gone a route with Meego/Maemo that allows 3rd parties to provide whole user interface and applications, just have QT running and preinstall one UI with option to change it.
CIA Factbook: 383 million (2009); note - the US Internet total host count includes the following top level domain host addresses:.us,.com,.edu,.gov,.mil,.net, and.org
To be clear.com ending in domain name doesn't translate into US based server or computer. Additionally any other ending in domain name doesn't mean that the server or computer is not located in US. The article is very light on actual technical detail so I wouldn't be able to know how that 13% figure came from, but I wouldn't jump into conclusion that it has anything to do with domain names. Here are numbers on internet usage worldwide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users, which would indicate that US should have less than one third of world's zombie machines acting as hosts.
Naturally tracing the origins of spam is quite difficult, counting the zombie machines sending spam is quite accurate since that is what article is really counting. As you said in global economy a Nigerian prince may use Hungarian hacker who uses US based bot net to distribute a spam message about cheap Indian made Viagra.
Same fraction of congressmen/women/senators/presidents are found each year cheating on their spouses, having wide stances at restrooms, paying for escort services, etc. I don't see why there is such a big deal, unless there is some political motive behind this.
I'm sure they did but the real question is not "did McAfee test it against Windows XP?". It's "did they test it against Windows XP with every single version of svchost.exe that Microsoft have ever released?" - the original version and every updated version in every patch and service pack to date?
I don't see testing the previous versions that difficult. They should (and most likely do) have all the Windows versions in a giant hard drive that is scanned with each new version and any false alarm can be investigated. Problem is when each McAfee version (or even the latest) needs to be tested on any future version of any software.
With that syndrome she will get the regular exercise needed to lose weight. Also it's possible to be quite normal and still injure yourself badly. I have a friend (she is slim sporty woman) who slipped on a magazine at her home and fractured the cheekbone and injured a nerve so small part of her face is paralyzed now. WiiFit can cause similar injuries, in fact anything can cause that kind of injuries if there is extremely bad luck involved.
The two party system is defacto because of the rules of the election where winner takes it all. Different election mechanisms produce radically different outcomes. It's not the voters fault if they behave rationally.
Moon mission on the other hand is clear business decision where derailed project had to be killed and easiest way to justify the cancellation is to abandon that goal. Eventually when dust settles moon will be back on the agenda.
The fine print of the contract states that they can make reasonable adjustments to the terms and conditions as they see fit with minimal notice to the users. Changing the data cap from unlimited to 200 GB/month would be reasonable as 90+% of their users would regularly fall way below that limit.
In case that kind of change bothers you and you raise an issue I'm sure Verizon will be more than happy to let you go or sell you pricier connection.
It's easy to win if you can define the victory conditions. To be honest US does lead the space race, which implies that the race is not over yet. I see space race as continuous effort where US was leading by a huge margin but took a detour.
Maybe even better comparison would be that shuttle launch costs $450M, Soyuz costs $55M per astronaut. You want to send 2 people to ISS. In most missions all 7 astronauts didn't have any reason to be there in first place. Just hanging out in space and return after achieving nothing is a huge waste of money.
1 and 2. Why are you against rewarding good behavior, even if the recipient is non-military? That's very self-defeating behavior for individual or group. I fail to see anything reprehensible about rewards.
I'm not sure about my English, but isn't retribution always about a penalty. There is no reward in retribution, unless you are discussing theological theories. I do agree with grandparent post that opinions where retribution (meaning vengeance or punishment) is a default action are reprehensible. In most cases it won't lead to anything else than escalation of the situation, any counter actions need to be more than a retribution.
States act differently compared to human beings in the way decisions are made as there is no single individual making decisions. States are not bound by the laws of individuals, states are amoral, leaders are in general not accountable for states actions, and states yield power and resources far greater to any individual.
Due to the amorality of the states they are able of doing both good and bad same time, unlike your average individual who has moral code behind it's actions.
There is really no point in having that many warheads in first place, any conflict can be resolved with much fewer number of efficient warheads. I don't know why US or Russia wouldn't unilaterally reduce their warhead numbers, most likely it's a mind game to not appear weaker than the other.
I see this disarmament more as a cost reduction effort rather than a significant reduction of capability to perform nuclear strikes. If US or Russia came up with a stockpile of 10000 unaccounted warheads the threat wouldn't be any greater than with planned 1000+ warheads.
When talking about "ace in the hole" each country has nuclear submarines hidden in oceans that are capable of retaliation strikes. Number of warheads isn't the "ace". Even then everyone most likely know how many nuclear submaries there are, unknown location is the key. Any launch facility location on firm ground can be found out very easily and therefore won't serve as an "ace".
Since when did you think current Bluray was the final stage of development on optical disks? Most likely it's physically impossible to get old players to play new 100GB disks, they are just not built for that. On the other hand it makes sense that these new 100GB players will be able to play regular Bluray disks. Where is the problem? Your Bluray movies will keep on playing on all Bluray players, only when you want to have writable Bluray with 100GB capacity you need to buy a new player.
You do need to make assumptions for the sake of an argument. Assuming that Toyota ownership of these models skew a little older is valid assumption, in case you want to contest this 20% then please say so. Making the assumption into 30% (30% of Toyota owners are older than 65) won't change the calculation very much and the statistically significant skew towards older drivers is still valid.
It's easy to rip apart any data or assumption because you can always disagree on how it's collected, where it's coming from, etc. Using your own brain to estimate if the figures are sensible is very important. Also these 27 data points can be very well manufactured to show this kind of skew, who knows. Just having a reasonable assumption doesn't make the argument irrelevant and in this case grandparent post proved that 27 data points may very well be statistically significant number of data points.
Beating ABS is not possible for any human. Some surfaces it might be possible to get better result if you are an experienced driver but most surfaces that ABS is needed there is just no way a human could beat it. Just the fact that ABS manages braking force of each wheel separately and a human manages the general braking force is alone deciding factor in favor of ABS. Imagine surface where left wheels are on good traction surface and right wheels are on slippery surface. Managing this situation without ABS will result in a spin.
Maybe you haven't looked the labels on nuclear power plants, labels on your gas, labels on your software, etc. Consumer electronics and clothes come from those countries you mentioned, but Russia is not greatly involved in that.
Actually I am from the US and I have been paying attention to the news lately. I'm even a product of the US public school system and I paid attention in government class in high school so I know that the US is not a democracy, it is a representative republic. Pretty much because the founding fathers feared the hissy fit prone mob. They gave us a House of Representatives for the mob to vent and a Senate to provide adult supervision.;-)
The issue of vulnerable power grid is a legitimate threat, but the individual creating a study about it is not. You get it backwards when you say the individual is a threat and paper (or the vulnerability) might be harmless. A grad student won't have capability or interest in taking down US power grid, instances with capability to harm US power grid have also means to create similar study on their own. I'm sure even US military has created similar study and have planned on supplying electricity to critical locations without the electric grid.
There are many valid reasons why US electric grid was chosen to be target of the study. Creating similar risk analysis on Chinese electric grid could be a serious offense in China, or information about US electric grid was more available than any other major electric grid in the world. Most likely this student has interest in working at the electric grids and wants to help to build one that is more secure.
Making a list of people to be exterminated is not allowed without proper disclosure on who is on the list and why. It has nothing to do with war or ways war is supposed to be fought.
Maybe someone is added there by mistake or intentionally, once a person is on the list it's hard to get off of it unless you know it. US citizens have legitimate reasons to be and live in Afganistan, Iraq, or elsewhere in the world that could be considered warzone by US.
You belief that the government always does the right thing and no mistakes is adorable.
Slashdot Mirror
How is iPad subsidized? There is no reason to lock, have contract or otherwise restrict user movement among different networks. If Apple honestly wanted to provide their users best experience they would just ship iPads unlocked and available for all 3G (AT&T, T-Mobile at least) networks out there.
Eventually one of these networks would offer cheaper data plan or some family plan with iPad just to gain market share on this. In relatively regulated (end user in mind regulation) wireless market (such as Nordic countries) the fees for wireless usage are much lower. Currently I have 24 month unlimited contract (to get the discount and USB modem) on HSPA data connection with up to 14Mbit/s for less than $20/month. In rural area where I live I get only 3Mbit/s but in cities the connection is much faster.
Since individuals always interpret bible and religion the whole issue becomes a moving target. Some individual claimed abortion is not acceptable, some individual claimed gay marriage is sin, some individual didn't like stem cell research, etc. Moral of this story is that whatever religious people tell me is subject to change as the moral code behind it evolves. These people are putting words into god's mouth because in a century or so the moral code of the church has already drifted away from the issues relevant at any point of time.
Why not just forget bible because it's impossible to interpret in modern world without inserting your own prejudice into the mix. It would be much more honest if religious people would be straight forward and say they don't like gay marriage because they think gay people are disgusting rather than hiding behind imaginary interpretation of a book. Once the bible is removed from the discussion there is no way to hide your own thoughts.
In case we start discussing why something was written then I would hope that the bible would be at least correct in a way the children physics books are. There is no need to explain science, just what happened in right order, that's all. What bible now provides is plain misinformation of the creation. Just reverse the order and write creation order as stars, sun, earth, ocean, plants, fish, land based animals, humans, and domesticated animals. There, I did better job than god in explaining the creation.
Yawn.. someone else who doesn't know what the word proves actually means or what science actually says.
Gen 1- No proof that some omnipotent being could not have done that. There is suggestion that it didn't happen that way but there is no prove disproving it.
I'm not sure where you are going with this, since what we can observe is the world we live in. In case we start accounting for actors that are not bound by the laws of nature there is no way of predicting anything. Fortunately world and universe seems to follow rules set in motion billions of years ago. As far as I know there are no evidence of acts of god (unnatural major events) found or happening as we speak.
I believe the goal has never been to annoy religious people or disprove the existence of god/gods. Problem comes when schools and society are suggested to follow teaching that have no basis on observations or theory provided by scientific method. How do we select which omnipotent being we believe did all this and how? I cannot understand why we shouldn't observe the past or universe with observed laws of nature but should rely on some thousands of years old scriptures that contradict the reality. Explaining it all with omnipotent being who is not bound by the laws of nature just doesn't work.
Why not focus all efforts in understanding and writing bible into a format that is clearly defined instead of parables? Since there must be an interpretation of each teaching that is the absolute truth. Once the clearly defined form of bible has been created scientific community could then validate or invalidate the messages. Some of the teaching are of course discussing morals and behavior in society, but even those can be validated with social sciences.
I believe you have very strange way of thinking of who started it, at least when talking about Christianity. Scientists (who were often integral part of the church) dared to challenge bible, so they started it. Science advances by definition will challenge current thinking, bible and religion. Religious organizations always offers answers to unknowns without hesitating to think if those answers are correct or not.
Here are some earlier bible interpretations that scientists dared to challenge:
1. Bible said earth is flat
2. Bible said earth is center of the universe (Copernicus)
3. Bible said god created all living beings (Darwin)
4. Bible said sun is center of the universe
5. Bible said earth is only 5000-10000 years old
As you can see, religion was there first giving answers. Scientists picked up the fight and challenged those truths. Christians went far enough to deliberately destroy scientific books because of the challenge scientist presented. Chinese communists have done that too for same reasons but different ideology.
Now present time scientists have made too many advances so the fundamental christians have came into crossroads where they either need to discard bible as literal truth or challenge science. Some will challenge science, but most of us discard bible as the literal truth. Many of us realize that religion is moral compass of the society and others denounce religion all together.
Religion has a major flaw and that is the thought that everything is well thought out and we finally know how everything is because our interpretation of bible is finally the correct one. As long as you follow the teaching you will get salvation. Christians are basically just waiting for the second coming and to be judged. There is no room for challenging the current situation because any deviation from the church teaching will reduce your chances of getting to heaven.
Same goes for Nokia. Nokia has been trying to get S60 UI usable from last century and hasn't succeeded yet. Just listen to the management talking about next version coming out next year the same way as Microsoft does because the current version just isn't good enough.
Microsoft should have bought Palm and create Mobile OS based on that. Nokia should have gone a route with Meego/Maemo that allows 3rd parties to provide whole user interface and applications, just have QT running and preinstall one UI with option to change it.
CIA Factbook: 383 million (2009); note - the US Internet total host count includes the following top level domain host addresses: .us, .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, and .org
To be clear .com ending in domain name doesn't translate into US based server or computer. Additionally any other ending in domain name doesn't mean that the server or computer is not located in US. The article is very light on actual technical detail so I wouldn't be able to know how that 13% figure came from, but I wouldn't jump into conclusion that it has anything to do with domain names. Here are numbers on internet usage worldwide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users, which would indicate that US should have less than one third of world's zombie machines acting as hosts.
Naturally tracing the origins of spam is quite difficult, counting the zombie machines sending spam is quite accurate since that is what article is really counting. As you said in global economy a Nigerian prince may use Hungarian hacker who uses US based bot net to distribute a spam message about cheap Indian made Viagra.
Same fraction of congressmen/women/senators/presidents are found each year cheating on their spouses, having wide stances at restrooms, paying for escort services, etc. I don't see why there is such a big deal, unless there is some political motive behind this.
I'm sure they did but the real question is not "did McAfee test it against Windows XP?". It's "did they test it against Windows XP with every single version of svchost.exe that Microsoft have ever released?" - the original version and every updated version in every patch and service pack to date?
I don't see testing the previous versions that difficult. They should (and most likely do) have all the Windows versions in a giant hard drive that is scanned with each new version and any false alarm can be investigated. Problem is when each McAfee version (or even the latest) needs to be tested on any future version of any software.
With that syndrome she will get the regular exercise needed to lose weight. Also it's possible to be quite normal and still injure yourself badly. I have a friend (she is slim sporty woman) who slipped on a magazine at her home and fractured the cheekbone and injured a nerve so small part of her face is paralyzed now. WiiFit can cause similar injuries, in fact anything can cause that kind of injuries if there is extremely bad luck involved.
The two party system is defacto because of the rules of the election where winner takes it all. Different election mechanisms produce radically different outcomes. It's not the voters fault if they behave rationally.
Moon mission on the other hand is clear business decision where derailed project had to be killed and easiest way to justify the cancellation is to abandon that goal. Eventually when dust settles moon will be back on the agenda.
The fine print of the contract states that they can make reasonable adjustments to the terms and conditions as they see fit with minimal notice to the users. Changing the data cap from unlimited to 200 GB/month would be reasonable as 90+% of their users would regularly fall way below that limit.
In case that kind of change bothers you and you raise an issue I'm sure Verizon will be more than happy to let you go or sell you pricier connection.
It's easy to win if you can define the victory conditions. To be honest US does lead the space race, which implies that the race is not over yet. I see space race as continuous effort where US was leading by a huge margin but took a detour.
Maybe even better comparison would be that shuttle launch costs $450M, Soyuz costs $55M per astronaut. You want to send 2 people to ISS. In most missions all 7 astronauts didn't have any reason to be there in first place. Just hanging out in space and return after achieving nothing is a huge waste of money.
1 and 2. Why are you against rewarding good behavior, even if the recipient is non-military? That's very self-defeating behavior for individual or group. I fail to see anything reprehensible about rewards.
I'm not sure about my English, but isn't retribution always about a penalty. There is no reward in retribution, unless you are discussing theological theories. I do agree with grandparent post that opinions where retribution (meaning vengeance or punishment) is a default action are reprehensible. In most cases it won't lead to anything else than escalation of the situation, any counter actions need to be more than a retribution.
States act differently compared to human beings in the way decisions are made as there is no single individual making decisions. States are not bound by the laws of individuals, states are amoral, leaders are in general not accountable for states actions, and states yield power and resources far greater to any individual.
Due to the amorality of the states they are able of doing both good and bad same time, unlike your average individual who has moral code behind it's actions.
There is really no point in having that many warheads in first place, any conflict can be resolved with much fewer number of efficient warheads. I don't know why US or Russia wouldn't unilaterally reduce their warhead numbers, most likely it's a mind game to not appear weaker than the other.
I see this disarmament more as a cost reduction effort rather than a significant reduction of capability to perform nuclear strikes. If US or Russia came up with a stockpile of 10000 unaccounted warheads the threat wouldn't be any greater than with planned 1000+ warheads.
When talking about "ace in the hole" each country has nuclear submarines hidden in oceans that are capable of retaliation strikes. Number of warheads isn't the "ace". Even then everyone most likely know how many nuclear submaries there are, unknown location is the key. Any launch facility location on firm ground can be found out very easily and therefore won't serve as an "ace".
Since when did you think current Bluray was the final stage of development on optical disks? Most likely it's physically impossible to get old players to play new 100GB disks, they are just not built for that. On the other hand it makes sense that these new 100GB players will be able to play regular Bluray disks. Where is the problem? Your Bluray movies will keep on playing on all Bluray players, only when you want to have writable Bluray with 100GB capacity you need to buy a new player.
Funny, I have same feeling when I take a shit (hopefully that is correct way to say this) or walk around the block.
You do need to make assumptions for the sake of an argument. Assuming that Toyota ownership of these models skew a little older is valid assumption, in case you want to contest this 20% then please say so. Making the assumption into 30% (30% of Toyota owners are older than 65) won't change the calculation very much and the statistically significant skew towards older drivers is still valid.
It's easy to rip apart any data or assumption because you can always disagree on how it's collected, where it's coming from, etc. Using your own brain to estimate if the figures are sensible is very important. Also these 27 data points can be very well manufactured to show this kind of skew, who knows. Just having a reasonable assumption doesn't make the argument irrelevant and in this case grandparent post proved that 27 data points may very well be statistically significant number of data points.
Beating ABS is not possible for any human. Some surfaces it might be possible to get better result if you are an experienced driver but most surfaces that ABS is needed there is just no way a human could beat it. Just the fact that ABS manages braking force of each wheel separately and a human manages the general braking force is alone deciding factor in favor of ABS. Imagine surface where left wheels are on good traction surface and right wheels are on slippery surface. Managing this situation without ABS will result in a spin.
Maybe you haven't looked the labels on nuclear power plants, labels on your gas, labels on your software, etc. Consumer electronics and clothes come from those countries you mentioned, but Russia is not greatly involved in that.
Actually I am from the US and I have been paying attention to the news lately. I'm even a product of the US public school system and I paid attention in government class in high school so I know that the US is not a democracy, it is a representative republic. Pretty much because the founding fathers feared the hissy fit prone mob. They gave us a House of Representatives for the mob to vent and a Senate to provide adult supervision. ;-)
How is that working for you?
The issue of vulnerable power grid is a legitimate threat, but the individual creating a study about it is not. You get it backwards when you say the individual is a threat and paper (or the vulnerability) might be harmless. A grad student won't have capability or interest in taking down US power grid, instances with capability to harm US power grid have also means to create similar study on their own. I'm sure even US military has created similar study and have planned on supplying electricity to critical locations without the electric grid.
There are many valid reasons why US electric grid was chosen to be target of the study. Creating similar risk analysis on Chinese electric grid could be a serious offense in China, or information about US electric grid was more available than any other major electric grid in the world. Most likely this student has interest in working at the electric grids and wants to help to build one that is more secure.
Making a list of people to be exterminated is not allowed without proper disclosure on who is on the list and why. It has nothing to do with war or ways war is supposed to be fought.
Maybe someone is added there by mistake or intentionally, once a person is on the list it's hard to get off of it unless you know it. US citizens have legitimate reasons to be and live in Afganistan, Iraq, or elsewhere in the world that could be considered warzone by US.
You belief that the government always does the right thing and no mistakes is adorable.