Basically they had the Tzolk'in which provided a 260 day year (13 months of 20 days) which was used to plan ceremonies and events. Because that doesn't match up with the length of the year they developed the Haab which lasts 365 days this provided 18 months consisting of 20 days, with 5 "nameless" days.
However neither of these calenders providing a way of keeping track of the year, so the mayans worked out the year by using the Tzolk'in and Haab calenders, since those dates reset every 52 years the Mayans called that a Calender Round.
The Long Count was created so dates which occurred outside of the 52 year cycle could be stated, the end of the world myth exists because 1 Bakturn consists of 144,000 days. On December 21st 2012 this bakturn cycle ends, that doesn't mean the world will end to the Mayans the end of such a cycle is a time of celebration.
In short the Mayan calender system is a giant overly complicated mess.
For compile time checking your better off using static code analysis, Coverity is very good at finding reverse/forward null/memory leak problems. Findbugs is good for finding some of these issues as well because it looks at the code from a byte code perspective.
Personally I use, coverity, findbugs & pmd and don't use things like assert because assert relies on the coder actually knowing what to do and doing it and these tools can be loaded into the IDE. They don't catch everything but they do find 99% of the obvious stuff.
One of the things which did stun me was running Tomcat 6.0.18 through Coverity it found 529 defects, about 180 were parameter checking ones. I've been tempted to join an open source project and spend my time resolving these kinds of bugs.
It's depressing, the guy involved with Windows Phone 7 becomes Nokia's CEO and the first thing he does is move Nokia completely onto WP7. Nokia's strategy of moving Symbian onto their feature phones and offering Meego for the Smartphone market made sense.
I could understand Elop when he was complaining about the slow release rate of Nokia's, I would even get on board of a multiple OS strategy (putting out the same phone with different operating systems).
This move annoys me, it's shutting down Ovi, killing off QT and telling any developers not to bother developing for your platform. All so the CEO can have his pet project rolled out.
What's worse is Nokia has always thought long term, his actions (mass firings) are the typical kind of stock market decided actions which are short term and will ultimately lead to a worse phone ecosystem.
WP7 was my fore-runner for my next phone, it isn't any longer. There's no point buying any Meego or Symbian phone because Elop won't have it supported. Guess I'll have to get an andriod phone.
The iPhone 4 doesn't just have a death grip issue, your right if you hold 99% of phones in a death grip they will lose signal. However Apple placed the wifi and phone antenna's on the outside. If you touch the gap between the antenna's with your little finger and bridge the antenna's the iPhone 4 will start losing signal strength. You don't actually need to be even holding the phone to repeat the problem.
Thanks for buying into Apples marketing, yes you are correct al phones will drop signal when you block most of it in a "Death Grip". You don't need to actually hold an iPhone 4 to cause this problem, because Apple placed the wifi and phone antenna's on the outside you can bridge them with your little finger. Bridging antennas causes them to detune and your signal quality to drop.
The reason for the hate? First I like many other slashdotters have been annoyed to death by iDevice owners telling me how wonder full and innovative their new iDevice is, but mostly because any microwave engineer can tell you putting the antenna's on the outside like that is a stupid thing to do and it was one of Apple's major "innovations" for this phone.
No dropping from 4 bars to 3 is a huge performance drop on an iPhone 4. Tests show the iPhones 5 bar coverage is actually quite a weak signal. I'm not certain if 3 bars is enough to do anything more than send text messages. See here for Apples admission of the problem, Slashdot also had a story with the actual numbers.
While there is no standard for displaying signal strength Apple massaged the figures by quite a bit. For an example a friend lives in a signal trouble area. In that area my Nokia reports 1 bar, you can make calls (quality is terrible) but text messages can sometimes pick up a delay. My friends iPhone 3GS reports 5 bars (still) although if he tries to make a call it's dropped quickly.
Your demonstrating one of the most annoy traits of an iDevice owner (any fanboy really) rather than accept there's a flaw in your device and it isn't perfect everything else is to blame. I love Symbian I think Nokia would be foolish to drop it but I long ago accepted that a lot of people seem to be gifted at breaking Symbian devices. My biggest concern with phones right now is Elop will drop Meego. I've waited over a year to have a play with one before I lock myself into a 2 year contract (current plan is for a WP7 phone)
While your correct, pretty much every Andriod, Symbian, Windows Mobile phone and even a lot of feature phones have had the ability to act as file stores for almost a decade. Heck my Nokia 5800 has a mode which makes a PC see it as a USB mass storage device (I'll admit a lot of phones require their software to be installed to access the file share abiity).
The posters point was the fact Apple have chosen to close their devices off for profit. Trying to move my little sisters files from her iPhone so her Galaxy S was a nightmare. My Nokia will sync with half a dozen email clients and will export my contacts as VCF,CSV,etc.. To claim Apple don't lock up your data when compared to others is silly. Don't get me wrong Samsungs early feature phones pc suite software was far worse but most manufacturers are embracing open standards.
Airplay is another great example, most of the Airplay gadgets I've seen would work fine using bluetooth (the stereo headset profile), but Apple felt the need to develop their own standard.
Foolish troll.
The European Data Protection directive places restrictions and responsibilities on how information gathered on EU citizens must be stored and handled.
In this particular instance if you are serving customers in the EU, then you are operating in the EU. If you are operating in the EU you have to abide by EU law.
In this case if your Twitter hosting EU data in a place where you could be forced to breach those law would be foolish.
The EU are looking to investigate because it would appear the US government would be using its powers in order to violate EU privacy for its own end.
As for never being able to work outside your own borders. Global companies tend to work on a policy of following the most restrictive laws of the countries they operate in regardless of local law. They then insulate their activities, so actions demanded by country A don't cause them to violate Country B's laws
I can't tell if your trolling or not, The lockerbie bomber blew up a plane over Scotland with US citizens. The UK tried him, when it came to his release Scotland with their devolution powers decided if he should be released or not.
Sure a bunch of US senators set up an inquiry and demanded people from various parts of the UK government attend. None of them did, That senator panel had nothing apart from publicized information to use in their inquiry.
Because Investment banking is dull, involves long hours with heavy responsibility and you need certain people skills which I flat out lack. I do software engineering it's something I enjoy, I earn good money and I'm told I excel at it. When you factor in the fact investment banking is in London financially I wouldn't be better off. Why would I want to be a banker?
My comment about bonuses was an example, currently small and medium sized businesses are finding it incredibly hard to get credit. Services many business have used for years have suddenly dried up and larger businesses are delaying payments for as long as possible. The UK government has been trying to force banks to lend more to small businesses. They have been refusing because they need to store up more capital as per government rules. The suspected bonus pot is something like 45% of their profits. Considering the current economic climate that money could be better invested in all sorts of ways.
You also have to ask if they are worth the salery they are being paid. I remember reading a university economic study which believed CEO pay was not competitive and realistic. It argued hedge fund/pension managers agreed to CEO pay deals in the knowledge that the CEO would agree to their own. They believed this had distorted the market by as much as 40%. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of it, although BBC news did cover it.
As for greed I have two issues with the market. Pay/bonuses are paid regardless of performance. While this is starting to change. Large rewards are still being given before their actions are shown to be fruitful. I don't know about you but my bonus is paid based on the companies performance over the last year, intangible future profits are ignored. Currently with top investment bankers up to half of their bonus is now being paid out as deals mature and provide profit.
My second issue is the coupling of investment banking with commercial and retail banking. Commercial and Retail banking are required to keep the economy functioning. Investment banking does provide a service but it is far riskier ultimately if a Investment bank fails only stoke holders are affected. Basically I want Investment banking to be separate from Commercial and Retail banking.
It's a lovely idea which doesn't work, read up on the velocity of money.
The basic premise is if you give 100 people £10 most will spend it leading to the majority of the money being re-invested into the economy. If you give a single person £1000 they may spend some of it but not nearly the same amount.
Most individuals can only spend so much on wants an desires which means eventually they start hoarding wealth. This takes money out of the economy and slows growth.
You keep hearing how bankers deserve their income but I can't help but think they aren't that bright. I have no doubt the UK banking industry will pay out ~£7B in bonuses. If the banks were really thinking they would reduce the bonuses and instead channel the money into risky small business loans (with the expectation of the loan failing). Sure the amount of bonus they receive would be smaller as a percentage but this policy over time would enlarge the pool they are extracting their money from.
In the case of the recent student riots the current UK government is a coalition of 2 parties the Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Before the last election Every Liberal Candidate made a point of publicly signing a pledge stating they would oppose any raise in tuition fess. This government just voted to raise tuition fees. How does one hold a MP accountable at the beginning of their term?
I wrote to my local MP asking him to hold his pledge and vote against tuition fees rise and implement a graduate tax. I told him I thought the arguments being made were the result of short term thinking and explained why. He wrote back telling me those arguments wern't short term and then voted for a tuition fees raise.
The legal system in the UK works differently to that of the USA. Here you have to show proximate cause and then show the law violates basic rights granted to you as a citizen. For example the Digital Economy Bill wasn't in acted until the end of last year. We will have wait until someone is prosecuted by the law, then that person will have to slowly move up the ladder until the Supreme Court of EU Court of Human rights strikes it down. Which will mean a legal means of revoking the law will take years. In the case of a tuition fees rise I doubt it would be possible.
I'd also like to point out that watching the Sky News and BBC News coverage the violent protesters numbered in the dozens while the peaceful ones were in the thousands.
A number of people at the protests have stated the crowd seemed "infiltrated" or "some people here don't look like they would ever have gone to uni". Making me think the protests we prey to football hooligan types. By that I mean people who claim to support a football team go to where the matches are played and never watch the match but instead find people who support the other team to fight.
Lastly the police continually "kettled" the protesters effectively bottling them up and away from everyone else. There have been a lot of complaints about police brutality during the event. There's even a video of police pulling a student protester out of his wheelchair and then dragging him into the kettle zone.
Britain as a rule is calmly accepting the necessary austerity measures and has done a lot to mitigate its effects. What has been getting people on to the streets is the fact alot of MP's stood on a platform for something and now in power are doing the complete opposite.
I'm running Windows 7 HP and Pro on two Intel Atoms a N230 and a N330. Current Arm processors are pretty close to those in performance. Both machines have 1GB of ram
Windows feels snappy and responsive, the idea of a windows 7 tablet running on Arm actually appeals to me because my tablet could be hooked into my home networks Homegroup. The idea of having something like a Samsung Galaxy tab which would just integrate with my other PC's might be usefull.
Resources are not infinite, money can't be infinite in supply because if it was it would be worthless.
Your kind of thinking causes bubbles to form around markets. The idea that something will continually increase in value. We just saw this happen in the housing market.
The fact that Apple pays no dividends means your only way to make money from their stock is the hope someone will buy it for more than you paid. That can't work forever because money is finite and at some point the confidence in the company will be knocked (reduced credit, increase in unemployment, inflation, etc..) leading to massive losses as the stock revalues.
You make the assumption that an increase in profits causes an increase in value. This is not how the stock market works. I remember reading about a Guinness press release where they announced profits of ~8%, from a market that had declined by ~15% and inflation was ~2%. Their share price had remained static over the last 6 months, after the announcement their share price tumbled by almost 20% because market analysts thought they weren't growing quickly enough. Annoyingly I can't find the BBC article which covered it.
For a closer valuation of what Apple is actually worth I'd look at companies with similar revenues/profits. Sure the heavy growth makes them more valuable (Microsofts share price would be a good one to compare Apple against), any valuation higher than that is speculation/gambling. It's not long term and will most likely result in a burst bubble.
I agree the Move is a rip off of the Wii controller, but it is a big improvement on it.
I picked up a move controller to play party games. After completing Resident Evil 5 (control schemes for that game suck horribly btw) a friend invited me to come over and play Goldeneye. I find the controls were sluggish, inaccurate and because of how they worked it made 4 player goldeneye very difficult (people sitting at angles had major problems).
I thought the Wii controllers were fine but the Move has really raised the bar. I want to hate the connect but the few goes I've had on it had been pretty awesome.
The IRA robbed banks and blew up streets and buses. They are responsible for several hundred deaths. Why think of them as freedom fighters? Is it somehow ok, because the people who died were English?
By your own logic people who lay IED's in Afganistan are freedom fighters and to commended.
Most school people I've met who've done the Computing A Level learnt visual basic from teachers hardly qualified in the subject. So your probably right.
My point was rather than lump everything under computer science and discover the persons only done MS Word 101. It at least gives an indication of what the students interested in.
Do what we do in the UK, we have "Information Technology" and "Computing". Information Technology covers typing, word*, powerpoint, excel, etc... While Computing delves more into computer science with things like programming, design, etc...
People can then get grades to show they have an aptitude in using a computer and universities can properly weight the qualification.
*generic concepts are taught but the tools are always the MS ones.
This is a very good point. In Java there are numerous safe guards you can add things like concurrent maps, synchronised statements, etc.. which when combined with good multi-threaded design make multi-threaded applications very easy to control and maintain.
Personally I also find it much easier to write modular code in Java. The Plug-in architecture coupled with the removal of header files prevents you from having stealth dependencies.
These things can be done in C and C++ but it is far harder to achieve and more importantly maintain.
I'd like to point out that I did something similar to this recently. I noticed I'd reached 14.3 stone so I went on the Speacial K diet and changed my evening meals so they involved pasta/chicken/etc.. I arranged things so I got all my vitamins and minerals but was significantly short in fat and calories.
During the first week I was starving every day, for the first two weeks I noticed becoming extremely tired when doing my gym workout. But my body has adjusted over the last four months. My stomachs shrunk and I would struggle to stay on my previous diet oh and I've reached 12.5 stone.
I agree the change was radical and not every diet will work for everyone but the body does adjust over time, its the the reason I gained so much in the first place.
My huge unsubstantiated opinion comes from listening to my friends who like me feel the same way. We've begun to refer to the show as Stargate: Eastenders. Admittedly those only the 20-30 people I know but as you said most people were as for less drama and more shooting. Sure that is just anecdotal evidence but reading this thread shows it is a common opinion.
People were not asking for no drama and any good action story will require a plot. It doesn't need a great plot but one needs to exist. Stargate SG1 and Atlantis both had multiple plots and story arcs, they were not great or even complex but they were compelling. SGU had none until a quarter the way through the second season.
I have watched some of the earth stories but after the first few I decided it was best to skip through them. That doesn't mean I missed all of the story I simply fast forwarded and checked nothing interesting was happening. The only ones I've seen that were meaningful were the Greer story and when Rush was in the chair. The rest have generally screamed filler.
I went to a school in the top 30 in the UK, most of my friends went to Cambridge and Oxford Universities because of their ability. Most of my life has been spent with people with IQ's above 140. I say this not to insult or intimidate but to clarify where I am coming from. While the social awkwardness of character's like Sheldon, House and Bones is funny, it is not a requirement of intelligence and in my experiences isn't even that common. The dysfunctional are often perceived to be intelligent even when they aren't, for example most people assume geeks are smart.
Even assuming anyone with an above average IQ would be heavy dysfunctional that would only explain Rush, Eli and the scientists. The colonel, Scott, Greer, Cloe, etc.. should be reasonably capable, however even the normal civilians and military personnel are deeply flawed to the point where it would have be hard to see how they achieved their positions in a normal environment let alone how they would qualify to be sent into space.
No people's complaint about there being too much drama is because good science fiction has a plot and you watch as the characters react to that plot. Character interaction is important but without anything to drive it you have little more than a Soap Opera. Until the end of season 1 the only 'plot' was having the characters attack each other. In season 2 Rush discovers something and it takes 5 episodes for the truth to come out. That story arc would have worked well in a single episode but dragging it out over 5 was boring.
I've tended to skip the earth stories because apart from seeming like something like from Lost they don't really add any depth to the characters.Most of the characters were unlike-able, you have a Colonel who is incapable of making any good strategic decisions, a second in command who won't take command even when he knows he must, a series of incompetent scientists, Eli who's naive to the point of idiocy, most of the soliders are cliche and Rush who I actually like.
Even when action occurs its filled with plot devices and the whole story seems more about god than science. They would often jump and skip big events only to drag out minor issues. For me the worst part was when Rush made it back to the ship, rather than show Rush dealing with being kicked off, or show how the ship starts failing without him, he comes back within the next episode.
The idea of the wrong people in the wrong place was a bad one, the Stargate program was supposed to involve the best and the brightest but most of the characters were so flawed I'd doubt any of them would have achieved their positions let alone be good enough to send off world.
Thats worse in many ways, news organisations with a clear bias are useful because you can often spot where the facts end and opinion starts. When the bias is less obvious it can be difficult to see the line.
Take the BBC news website, it aims to be unbiased and the website will often take contradictory views on issues in an effort to stay that way. It can lead you into a false sense of security. I'd suggest looking at the recent news around wikileaks. Julian Assange's story is played out as "Wikileaks on trial", constant inferences are made that wikileaks are doing something illegal and the actual history around the case is forgotten. Anonymous is a shady hacker group, bent on stealing credit card information.
Rather than argue about bias you should be encouraging people to read sources with different bias in order for them to get a better picture of the news.
Slashdot Mirror
I really hate this urban legend, read the wikipedia article on the Mayan Calender.
Basically they had the Tzolk'in which provided a 260 day year (13 months of 20 days) which was used to plan ceremonies and events. Because that doesn't match up with the length of the year they developed the Haab which lasts 365 days this provided 18 months consisting of 20 days, with 5 "nameless" days.
However neither of these calenders providing a way of keeping track of the year, so the mayans worked out the year by using the Tzolk'in and Haab calenders, since those dates reset every 52 years the Mayans called that a Calender Round.
The Long Count was created so dates which occurred outside of the 52 year cycle could be stated, the end of the world myth exists because 1 Bakturn consists of 144,000 days. On December 21st 2012 this bakturn cycle ends, that doesn't mean the world will end to the Mayans the end of such a cycle is a time of celebration.
In short the Mayan calender system is a giant overly complicated mess.
For compile time checking your better off using static code analysis, Coverity is very good at finding reverse/forward null/memory leak problems. Findbugs is good for finding some of these issues as well because it looks at the code from a byte code perspective.
Personally I use, coverity, findbugs & pmd and don't use things like assert because assert relies on the coder actually knowing what to do and doing it and these tools can be loaded into the IDE. They don't catch everything but they do find 99% of the obvious stuff.
One of the things which did stun me was running Tomcat 6.0.18 through Coverity it found 529 defects, about 180 were parameter checking ones. I've been tempted to join an open source project and spend my time resolving these kinds of bugs.
It's depressing, the guy involved with Windows Phone 7 becomes Nokia's CEO and the first thing he does is move Nokia completely onto WP7. Nokia's strategy of moving Symbian onto their feature phones and offering Meego for the Smartphone market made sense.
I could understand Elop when he was complaining about the slow release rate of Nokia's, I would even get on board of a multiple OS strategy (putting out the same phone with different operating systems).
This move annoys me, it's shutting down Ovi, killing off QT and telling any developers not to bother developing for your platform. All so the CEO can have his pet project rolled out.
What's worse is Nokia has always thought long term, his actions (mass firings) are the typical kind of stock market decided actions which are short term and will ultimately lead to a worse phone ecosystem.
WP7 was my fore-runner for my next phone, it isn't any longer. There's no point buying any Meego or Symbian phone because Elop won't have it supported. Guess I'll have to get an andriod phone.
RIP NOKIA.
The iPhone 4 doesn't just have a death grip issue, your right if you hold 99% of phones in a death grip they will lose signal. However Apple placed the wifi and phone antenna's on the outside. If you touch the gap between the antenna's with your little finger and bridge the antenna's the iPhone 4 will start losing signal strength. You don't actually need to be even holding the phone to repeat the problem.
Thanks for buying into Apples marketing, yes you are correct al phones will drop signal when you block most of it in a "Death Grip". You don't need to actually hold an iPhone 4 to cause this problem, because Apple placed the wifi and phone antenna's on the outside you can bridge them with your little finger. Bridging antennas causes them to detune and your signal quality to drop.
The reason for the hate? First I like many other slashdotters have been annoyed to death by iDevice owners telling me how wonder full and innovative their new iDevice is, but mostly because any microwave engineer can tell you putting the antenna's on the outside like that is a stupid thing to do and it was one of Apple's major "innovations" for this phone.
No dropping from 4 bars to 3 is a huge performance drop on an iPhone 4. Tests show the iPhones 5 bar coverage is actually quite a weak signal. I'm not certain if 3 bars is enough to do anything more than send text messages. See here for Apples admission of the problem, Slashdot also had a story with the actual numbers.
While there is no standard for displaying signal strength Apple massaged the figures by quite a bit. For an example a friend lives in a signal trouble area. In that area my Nokia reports 1 bar, you can make calls (quality is terrible) but text messages can sometimes pick up a delay. My friends iPhone 3GS reports 5 bars (still) although if he tries to make a call it's dropped quickly.
Your demonstrating one of the most annoy traits of an iDevice owner (any fanboy really) rather than accept there's a flaw in your device and it isn't perfect everything else is to blame. I love Symbian I think Nokia would be foolish to drop it but I long ago accepted that a lot of people seem to be gifted at breaking Symbian devices. My biggest concern with phones right now is Elop will drop Meego. I've waited over a year to have a play with one before I lock myself into a 2 year contract (current plan is for a WP7 phone)
While your correct, pretty much every Andriod, Symbian, Windows Mobile phone and even a lot of feature phones have had the ability to act as file stores for almost a decade. Heck my Nokia 5800 has a mode which makes a PC see it as a USB mass storage device (I'll admit a lot of phones require their software to be installed to access the file share abiity).
The posters point was the fact Apple have chosen to close their devices off for profit. Trying to move my little sisters files from her iPhone so her Galaxy S was a nightmare. My Nokia will sync with half a dozen email clients and will export my contacts as VCF,CSV,etc.. To claim Apple don't lock up your data when compared to others is silly. Don't get me wrong Samsungs early feature phones pc suite software was far worse but most manufacturers are embracing open standards.
Airplay is another great example, most of the Airplay gadgets I've seen would work fine using bluetooth (the stereo headset profile), but Apple felt the need to develop their own standard.
Foolish troll. The European Data Protection directive places restrictions and responsibilities on how information gathered on EU citizens must be stored and handled. In this particular instance if you are serving customers in the EU, then you are operating in the EU. If you are operating in the EU you have to abide by EU law.
In this case if your Twitter hosting EU data in a place where you could be forced to breach those law would be foolish.
The EU are looking to investigate because it would appear the US government would be using its powers in order to violate EU privacy for its own end.
As for never being able to work outside your own borders. Global companies tend to work on a policy of following the most restrictive laws of the countries they operate in regardless of local law. They then insulate their activities, so actions demanded by country A don't cause them to violate Country B's laws
I can't tell if your trolling or not, The lockerbie bomber blew up a plane over Scotland with US citizens. The UK tried him, when it came to his release Scotland with their devolution powers decided if he should be released or not.
Sure a bunch of US senators set up an inquiry and demanded people from various parts of the UK government attend. None of them did, That senator panel had nothing apart from publicized information to use in their inquiry.
Because Investment banking is dull, involves long hours with heavy responsibility and you need certain people skills which I flat out lack. I do software engineering it's something I enjoy, I earn good money and I'm told I excel at it. When you factor in the fact investment banking is in London financially I wouldn't be better off. Why would I want to be a banker?
My comment about bonuses was an example, currently small and medium sized businesses are finding it incredibly hard to get credit. Services many business have used for years have suddenly dried up and larger businesses are delaying payments for as long as possible. The UK government has been trying to force banks to lend more to small businesses. They have been refusing because they need to store up more capital as per government rules. The suspected bonus pot is something like 45% of their profits. Considering the current economic climate that money could be better invested in all sorts of ways.
You also have to ask if they are worth the salery they are being paid. I remember reading a university economic study which believed CEO pay was not competitive and realistic. It argued hedge fund/pension managers agreed to CEO pay deals in the knowledge that the CEO would agree to their own. They believed this had distorted the market by as much as 40%. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of it, although BBC news did cover it.
As for greed I have two issues with the market. Pay/bonuses are paid regardless of performance. While this is starting to change. Large rewards are still being given before their actions are shown to be fruitful. I don't know about you but my bonus is paid based on the companies performance over the last year, intangible future profits are ignored. Currently with top investment bankers up to half of their bonus is now being paid out as deals mature and provide profit.
My second issue is the coupling of investment banking with commercial and retail banking. Commercial and Retail banking are required to keep the economy functioning. Investment banking does provide a service but it is far riskier ultimately if a Investment bank fails only stoke holders are affected. Basically I want Investment banking to be separate from Commercial and Retail banking.
It's a lovely idea which doesn't work, read up on the velocity of money.
The basic premise is if you give 100 people £10 most will spend it leading to the majority of the money being re-invested into the economy. If you give a single person £1000 they may spend some of it but not nearly the same amount.
Most individuals can only spend so much on wants an desires which means eventually they start hoarding wealth. This takes money out of the economy and slows growth.
You keep hearing how bankers deserve their income but I can't help but think they aren't that bright. I have no doubt the UK banking industry will pay out ~£7B in bonuses. If the banks were really thinking they would reduce the bonuses and instead channel the money into risky small business loans (with the expectation of the loan failing). Sure the amount of bonus they receive would be smaller as a percentage but this policy over time would enlarge the pool they are extracting their money from.
In the case of the recent student riots the current UK government is a coalition of 2 parties the Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Before the last election Every Liberal Candidate made a point of publicly signing a pledge stating they would oppose any raise in tuition fess. This government just voted to raise tuition fees. How does one hold a MP accountable at the beginning of their term?
I wrote to my local MP asking him to hold his pledge and vote against tuition fees rise and implement a graduate tax. I told him I thought the arguments being made were the result of short term thinking and explained why. He wrote back telling me those arguments wern't short term and then voted for a tuition fees raise.
The legal system in the UK works differently to that of the USA. Here you have to show proximate cause and then show the law violates basic rights granted to you as a citizen. For example the Digital Economy Bill wasn't in acted until the end of last year. We will have wait until someone is prosecuted by the law, then that person will have to slowly move up the ladder until the Supreme Court of EU Court of Human rights strikes it down. Which will mean a legal means of revoking the law will take years. In the case of a tuition fees rise I doubt it would be possible.
I'd also like to point out that watching the Sky News and BBC News coverage the violent protesters numbered in the dozens while the peaceful ones were in the thousands.
A number of people at the protests have stated the crowd seemed "infiltrated" or "some people here don't look like they would ever have gone to uni". Making me think the protests we prey to football hooligan types. By that I mean people who claim to support a football team go to where the matches are played and never watch the match but instead find people who support the other team to fight.
Lastly the police continually "kettled" the protesters effectively bottling them up and away from everyone else. There have been a lot of complaints about police brutality during the event. There's even a video of police pulling a student protester out of his wheelchair and then dragging him into the kettle zone.
Britain as a rule is calmly accepting the necessary austerity measures and has done a lot to mitigate its effects. What has been getting people on to the streets is the fact alot of MP's stood on a platform for something and now in power are doing the complete opposite.
I'm running Windows 7 HP and Pro on two Intel Atoms a N230 and a N330. Current Arm processors are pretty close to those in performance. Both machines have 1GB of ram
Windows feels snappy and responsive, the idea of a windows 7 tablet running on Arm actually appeals to me because my tablet could be hooked into my home networks Homegroup. The idea of having something like a Samsung Galaxy tab which would just integrate with my other PC's might be usefull.
Resources are not infinite, money can't be infinite in supply because if it was it would be worthless.
Your kind of thinking causes bubbles to form around markets. The idea that something will continually increase in value. We just saw this happen in the housing market.
The fact that Apple pays no dividends means your only way to make money from their stock is the hope someone will buy it for more than you paid. That can't work forever because money is finite and at some point the confidence in the company will be knocked (reduced credit, increase in unemployment, inflation, etc..) leading to massive losses as the stock revalues.
You make the assumption that an increase in profits causes an increase in value. This is not how the stock market works. I remember reading about a Guinness press release where they announced profits of ~8%, from a market that had declined by ~15% and inflation was ~2%. Their share price had remained static over the last 6 months, after the announcement their share price tumbled by almost 20% because market analysts thought they weren't growing quickly enough. Annoyingly I can't find the BBC article which covered it.
For a closer valuation of what Apple is actually worth I'd look at companies with similar revenues/profits. Sure the heavy growth makes them more valuable (Microsofts share price would be a good one to compare Apple against), any valuation higher than that is speculation/gambling. It's not long term and will most likely result in a burst bubble.
Am I the only one looking forward to seeing the first proper Meego Phone? I've been putting off buying my next phone until I can have a play with one.
We have people thinking Microsoft will release desktop windows for ARM.
Lastly we've got colour e-ink finally making it's way on to the scene.
What's on their list? A White iPhone, Tablets and Chrome OS tablets.
I agree the Move is a rip off of the Wii controller, but it is a big improvement on it.
I picked up a move controller to play party games. After completing Resident Evil 5 (control schemes for that game suck horribly btw) a friend invited me to come over and play Goldeneye. I find the controls were sluggish, inaccurate and because of how they worked it made 4 player goldeneye very difficult (people sitting at angles had major problems).
I thought the Wii controllers were fine but the Move has really raised the bar. I want to hate the connect but the few goes I've had on it had been pretty awesome.
We have credit unions as well, you have building societies, credit unions and banks. Each has their own limitations and roles.
The IRA robbed banks and blew up streets and buses. They are responsible for several hundred deaths. Why think of them as freedom fighters? Is it somehow ok, because the people who died were English?
By your own logic people who lay IED's in Afganistan are freedom fighters and to commended.
Some examples of their work:
Omagh Bombing
Hammersmith Bridge
RPG Attack on MI6
BBC Car Bomb
I could go one but I'm getting bored.
Most school people I've met who've done the Computing A Level learnt visual basic from teachers hardly qualified in the subject. So your probably right.
My point was rather than lump everything under computer science and discover the persons only done MS Word 101. It at least gives an indication of what the students interested in.
Do what we do in the UK, we have "Information Technology" and "Computing". Information Technology covers typing, word*, powerpoint, excel, etc... While Computing delves more into computer science with things like programming, design, etc...
People can then get grades to show they have an aptitude in using a computer and universities can properly weight the qualification.
*generic concepts are taught but the tools are always the MS ones.
This is a very good point. In Java there are numerous safe guards you can add things like concurrent maps, synchronised statements, etc.. which when combined with good multi-threaded design make multi-threaded applications very easy to control and maintain.
Personally I also find it much easier to write modular code in Java. The Plug-in architecture coupled with the removal of header files prevents you from having stealth dependencies.
These things can be done in C and C++ but it is far harder to achieve and more importantly maintain.
I'd like to point out that I did something similar to this recently. I noticed I'd reached 14.3 stone so I went on the Speacial K diet and changed my evening meals so they involved pasta/chicken/etc.. I arranged things so I got all my vitamins and minerals but was significantly short in fat and calories.
During the first week I was starving every day, for the first two weeks I noticed becoming extremely tired when doing my gym workout. But my body has adjusted over the last four months. My stomachs shrunk and I would struggle to stay on my previous diet oh and I've reached 12.5 stone.
I agree the change was radical and not every diet will work for everyone but the body does adjust over time, its the the reason I gained so much in the first place.
My huge unsubstantiated opinion comes from listening to my friends who like me feel the same way. We've begun to refer to the show as Stargate: Eastenders. Admittedly those only the 20-30 people I know but as you said most people were as for less drama and more shooting. Sure that is just anecdotal evidence but reading this thread shows it is a common opinion.
People were not asking for no drama and any good action story will require a plot. It doesn't need a great plot but one needs to exist. Stargate SG1 and Atlantis both had multiple plots and story arcs, they were not great or even complex but they were compelling. SGU had none until a quarter the way through the second season.
I have watched some of the earth stories but after the first few I decided it was best to skip through them. That doesn't mean I missed all of the story I simply fast forwarded and checked nothing interesting was happening. The only ones I've seen that were meaningful were the Greer story and when Rush was in the chair. The rest have generally screamed filler.
I went to a school in the top 30 in the UK, most of my friends went to Cambridge and Oxford Universities because of their ability. Most of my life has been spent with people with IQ's above 140. I say this not to insult or intimidate but to clarify where I am coming from. While the social awkwardness of character's like Sheldon, House and Bones is funny, it is not a requirement of intelligence and in my experiences isn't even that common. The dysfunctional are often perceived to be intelligent even when they aren't, for example most people assume geeks are smart.
Even assuming anyone with an above average IQ would be heavy dysfunctional that would only explain Rush, Eli and the scientists. The colonel, Scott, Greer, Cloe, etc.. should be reasonably capable, however even the normal civilians and military personnel are deeply flawed to the point where it would have be hard to see how they achieved their positions in a normal environment let alone how they would qualify to be sent into space.
No people's complaint about there being too much drama is because good science fiction has a plot and you watch as the characters react to that plot. Character interaction is important but without anything to drive it you have little more than a Soap Opera. Until the end of season 1 the only 'plot' was having the characters attack each other. In season 2 Rush discovers something and it takes 5 episodes for the truth to come out. That story arc would have worked well in a single episode but dragging it out over 5 was boring.
I've tended to skip the earth stories because apart from seeming like something like from Lost they don't really add any depth to the characters.Most of the characters were unlike-able, you have a Colonel who is incapable of making any good strategic decisions, a second in command who won't take command even when he knows he must, a series of incompetent scientists, Eli who's naive to the point of idiocy, most of the soliders are cliche and Rush who I actually like.
Even when action occurs its filled with plot devices and the whole story seems more about god than science. They would often jump and skip big events only to drag out minor issues. For me the worst part was when Rush made it back to the ship, rather than show Rush dealing with being kicked off, or show how the ship starts failing without him, he comes back within the next episode.
The idea of the wrong people in the wrong place was a bad one, the Stargate program was supposed to involve the best and the brightest but most of the characters were so flawed I'd doubt any of them would have achieved their positions let alone be good enough to send off world.
Thats worse in many ways, news organisations with a clear bias are useful because you can often spot where the facts end and opinion starts. When the bias is less obvious it can be difficult to see the line.
Take the BBC news website, it aims to be unbiased and the website will often take contradictory views on issues in an effort to stay that way. It can lead you into a false sense of security. I'd suggest looking at the recent news around wikileaks. Julian Assange's story is played out as "Wikileaks on trial", constant inferences are made that wikileaks are doing something illegal and the actual history around the case is forgotten. Anonymous is a shady hacker group, bent on stealing credit card information.
Rather than argue about bias you should be encouraging people to read sources with different bias in order for them to get a better picture of the news.