Agreed, no fees for drivers licenses and plates and marriage licenses. No tolls or other charges. All this crap is just a way to avoid using the tax system to pay for government services.
But who's fault is this.
Joe Q Moron wants to pay less tax, so Senator J Greed obliges him. However JQ Moron also wants services from the government that he takes for granted. Reduced taxes mean that only _some_ of the services JQ Moron takes for granted can be funded from taxation, so they impose levies, fees and charges to ensure that Senator Greed can give JQ Moron a tax cut yet not get JQ Moron upset because the services he takes for granted are no longer there.
The really sad part is, Joe Q Moron is the majority.
You go to the store, you buy a "game". You go home and open the green plastic box, and take out your little slips of paper. You slowly and laboriously enter a long alphanumeric code. Your console blinks some LEDs and talks to MS. Your console puts a light show on your TV and tells you about the ABSOLUTELY BADASS game you just "bought". An hour or two later, it's done downloading and you can play.
Dave Xbox, play the game. Xbox 1440 I'm sorry Dave, I cannot authorise this game. Dave Why cant you play the game Xbox, Xbox 1440 Because Microsoft said you're a pirate Dave. Dave I'm not a pirate Xbox, you've never been modded. Xbox 1440 I know that Dave. Dave So why cant you play the game Xbox 1440 Because Microsoft said you're a pirate Dave. Dave Open the CD bay doors Xbox 1440 I'm sorry Dave, I cant do that.
Think about it, the RROD is already half way to looking like HAL.
Acer makes an open game console. It's called the Aspire X1, it's about the size of an original Xbox 360 and can use its gamepads, and it runs all PC software. And unlike the major consoles, it has multiple app stores: Steam, Impulse, Desura, and GOG. There's even an adapter called the Retrode that lets it play classic games made for the Super NES and Sega Genesis.
Let's make PCs the fourth console.
Hell no.
PC gamers dont want the same kind of restrictions and dumbed down games that appear on consoles. Several manufacturers tried to consolise PC's before, they've all failed because of this reason.
Conspiracy: A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. The action of plotting or conspiring.
I cant read the cable at work but...
Conspiracy certainly fits. It was a plan to do something harmful and unlawful in many was too. Their entire plan was to force compliance to their rules by attempting to financially punish companies. The fact that this did not work doesn't change their intent.
More often then not, the AU govt is the US govt's bitch.
Sad but true.
Meanwhile, iinet, the ISP that was sued is going gang busters. They just adsorbed another significant Australian ISP, Internode and it's 100K customers.
And guess who found those flaws in tse statistical methods in the first place (as credited by Wegman and others since)? Why, it was none other than Anthony Watts.
When no-one else can find the same flaws, the flaws themselves tend to be fallacious.
Anthony Watts is no scientist, he was a TV weatherman. The best evidence he found out of the IPCC report is a few typo's.
So far, 84 claims have been filed against different Android manufacturers (HTC, Samsung, etc.) for patent infringements, out of which only 10 were proved to have been infringed and only one ruling has gone in Apple's favor."
WTH? What happened in the 9 cases where the patent was proven to be infringed but the ruling didn't go in Apple's favour?
They made minor changes to the software as per court orders.
What you have to remember is that Apple are so afraid of Android that they are suing over anything and everything no matter how petty.
And yeah, this has happened in previous years, Safari scheduled to be attacked first so the media and anti-Apple people online scream about how Safari is the least secure browser because it was broken "first"
I dont suppose that you've considered that Safari gets broken first and fastest because there are a lot of undiscovered exploits, due largely to the fact that no-one targets safari as a browser due to low usage. Pwn2Own requires an entirely new exploit (otherwise I'm sure IE would be down in a number of nanoseconds)
BTW, Safari was not simply broken first, it was broken fastest, this is important as you pointed out the demonstrations took place at different times.
IE, Chrome and Firefox all have larger user bases, it stands to reason that they will have fewer undiscovered exploits then Safari because they are targeted more often.
Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,
Oh wait, their serious.
Durability:
I still have textbooks from 1997,
My boss has a textbook from 1956 (borrowed from a university library, hate to imagine what 56 years of late fees look like).
My texbook gets rained on, 95% chance I can use it again.
I have a pile of broken Ipads out the back, they aren't even 3 years old yet.
Accessibility.
Ipads have about 6-7 hours of usable battery life (yes fanboys, this is what they get under real world conditions, especially after the battery has gone through a few charge (read: abuse) cycles).
Books dont run out of batteries and become unusable.
Not Enviromentally Friendly:
Right, we all know paper can be recycled right. Then made into new paper.
Sustainable forestry, try looking it up.
Ipads make more pollution when being made, then they continue to produce pollution whilst being used (they use electricity, producing electricity creates pollution).
The green angle has to be the most laughable out of all of these. Especially with Apples reputation.
Then report for a full frontal lobotomy, you'll come out of the operation with a higher IQ then you'd get from reading anything written by Anthony Watts.
Google ads aren't generally splashed over the entire top of the intial screen loaded page. While I don't want to sound like a google shill here, I really don't get how they make their money - aren't google ads generally little text areas with "Advertisement" written above them? I am not one to click on ads, but I know that I have clicked on a few by mistake - but never Google ones that I knew of - they really seem to make their ads be known as ads.
Google ad's are not invasive. Often I dont feel so dirty when I click on them. Also, Google ads tend to be highly relevant to what I'm looking for. I.E. I put "car loan" into Google, it brings up a list of local finance providers.
Compare this to invasive pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-overs and pop-reacharounds, All I want is for the damn thing to get out of my way so I can get to the content. This is so annoying I refuse to use any browser that does not have a decent adblock available for it. Google ads by contrast sit quietly to the side until I'm ready to look at them.
Adwords is the big exception to the rule, but sites are using them less and less (at least the sites I visit).
Well, maybe Facebook should swallow a heaping teaspoon of its own advice. After all, they were being evil about user privacy. Even Mark Zuckerberg deluded himself into believing that users don't care about privacy.
Deluded?
Most users dont care about privacy. They'll happily trade privacy for recognition. Why the hell do you think so many people try out for reality TV.
To those people, the definition of a game is pretty straight forward:
"If I don't like it, then it is not a game at all"
"If I do like it, and so do others, it is a pop game"
"If I do like it, and others don't even know it exists, then it is a true game"
How to get access to 99% of the functionality a jailbreak provides on IOS on Android.
1) Turn it on.
Root on Android is a lot harder because it provides a whole different level of functionality. Basically the only reason someone Root's their Android device now is to install a custom ROM. Most of the reasons people Jailbreak their iDevice is available as standard on Android (tethering independent of the carrier, being able to install applications from third party sources) and as yet, there are no custom IOS ROM's, so comparing Root to Jailbreaking is like comparing sex to masturbation. In theory they have the same effect, in reality they are worlds apart.
What interests me is the promotion of these jailbreaks as a good thing. It's an exploit, after all. That allows the attacker to completely root your device, often just by visiting a website.
The Reality Distortion Field.
this is rampant in Android too.
As yet, there has been no remote exploit for Android, nor any single exploit to gain root that is consistent across different phones on the same version of the OS. So rampant is the wrong word.
The only current devices with no known exploits are Windows Phone 7 based, which is very telling.
Google ChevronWP7.
Exploits have been out for a year. MS simply paid the ChevronWP7 team to sit on it.
I normally do not use those strong tones in my slashdot replies but what I do, and what videos I watch are no ones business! Why is this even for sale?
This is not for the US. Nor any other western nation so calm down.
In the west banks can already buy this kind of detailed personal information without having to ask phone companies for it.
Countries mentioned in the fine summary are places like India, Brazil and the Philipines, in these places people dont have ready access to legitimate sources of credit. As a result, they cannot get a credit history easily. But they have a phone history, I'm not sure about India or Brazil, but Filipino's live on the phone, just going over avg spend should give some insight into their ability to manage finances.
Personally I think that easy credit in these places is an incredibly bad idea. Scratch that, I think easy credit is an incredibly bad idea. Being able to handle credit correctly is a rare skill in western nations where there is a high level of education, in developing nations where there is a much lower level of education it can be disastrous to the lives of ordinary working people.
As a result, you've continually paid more for every product you buy in everyday life.
Do you honestly think banks give away those "miles" for free?
Banks make money off of credit cards out of merchant fees, this is a fee, usually a percentage of the purchase paid by the merchant to the credit card operator. The merchant must build this fee into their operating costs. The more people using credit, the more the merchant must raise their prices to compensate.
Now as for the interest argument, it's bollocks. You dont get an extra few hundred every month, all you get is the first month as your credit card gets paid off every month. Say you earn $2000 per month. Your expenses equal $1500 per month so you save $500 per month. Lets say you earn 5% on your savings. By paying cash for 12 months, you have $5,525 and no money owing. If you paid by credit card and put away $2,000 in the first month, you will have $7,100 at the end of 12 months, but you'll owe $1500 on your credit card. So $7,100 less $1,500 is $5,600. So all that risk for $75.
I bought an air-conditioner last summer, the ticket price was A$650, I paid A$500 because I bought it with savings and not credit. Lets not even talk about what I saved on my car by paying for it out of savings and not getting a loan, that's off the ticket price _before_ interest was calculated.
First, they quit selling 16:10 panels because it's cheaper to make 16:9 panels.
Except they haven't. 16:10 panels are the high end of monitors. I'm typing this on a Dell U2412M, 1920x1200 24" monitor I bought two months ago.
If you want a 16:10 panel, they're easy to get, just not as cheap as a 16:9.
1: A nascent product can be sued out of existance. I remember an issue about a helmet company refusing to put out a new safety feature for fear of a bankruptcy producing class-action lawsuit because they didn't do it earlier.
2: IP laws are so tangled that a company has a minefield of patents that are overly broad or vague. It only takes one violation to have a company shut down and liquidated.
This.
In Asia a company hires 10 engineers and 2 lawyers to make a new product. In the US a company hires 2 engineers and 10 lawyers to make the same product. The net result is that the engineers have to work 5 times as hard to reach the same deadline and the lawyers are a drain on the development budget.
The cost difference between an Asian engineer and an American engineer is minuscule and not the problem. The problem is the cost difference between 2 lawyers and 10.
Trying to create laws to protect things invented yesterday wont help when your competitors are inventing things for tomorrow.
Probably those experiments over at Black Mesa. By the way, the portrayal of New Mexico in Half-Life always amused me, with the cartoonish Looney Tunes cliffs and plateaus. With the exception of the northern area of the state, it's mostly just weeds as far as the eye can see, littered with the occasional beer can. We have good Mexican food, though.
Well, if you were building a secret lab to run probably illegal experiments into inter-dimensional travel with the potential to bring vicious invaders to earth, which part of New Mexico would you pick.
Where did you get those figures? They seem fishy. There was recently an article somewhere that said the PS3 passed the 60 million units sold worldwide, and before that there was another article that said they were only a couple of million units behind the Xbox 360.
Slashdot Mirror
But who's fault is this.
Joe Q Moron wants to pay less tax, so Senator J Greed obliges him. However JQ Moron also wants services from the government that he takes for granted. Reduced taxes mean that only _some_ of the services JQ Moron takes for granted can be funded from taxation, so they impose levies, fees and charges to ensure that Senator Greed can give JQ Moron a tax cut yet not get JQ Moron upset because the services he takes for granted are no longer there.
The really sad part is, Joe Q Moron is the majority.
You go to the store, you buy a "game". You go home and open the green plastic box, and take out your little slips of paper. You slowly and laboriously enter a long alphanumeric code. Your console blinks some LEDs and talks to MS. Your console puts a light show on your TV and tells you about the ABSOLUTELY BADASS game you just "bought". An hour or two later, it's done downloading and you can play.
Dave Xbox, play the game.
Xbox 1440 I'm sorry Dave, I cannot authorise this game.
Dave Why cant you play the game Xbox,
Xbox 1440 Because Microsoft said you're a pirate Dave.
Dave I'm not a pirate Xbox, you've never been modded.
Xbox 1440 I know that Dave.
Dave So why cant you play the game
Xbox 1440 Because Microsoft said you're a pirate Dave.
Dave Open the CD bay doors
Xbox 1440 I'm sorry Dave, I cant do that.
Think about it, the RROD is already half way to looking like HAL.
Acer makes an open game console. It's called the Aspire X1, it's about the size of an original Xbox 360 and can use its gamepads, and it runs all PC software. And unlike the major consoles, it has multiple app stores: Steam, Impulse, Desura, and GOG. There's even an adapter called the Retrode that lets it play classic games made for the Super NES and Sega Genesis.
Let's make PCs the fourth console.
Hell no.
PC gamers dont want the same kind of restrictions and dumbed down games that appear on consoles. Several manufacturers tried to consolise PC's before, they've all failed because of this reason.
It's true for used cars, why wouldn't it be true for games?
Because cars cost lots more than games.
The principal is the same, only the scale differs.
If we weren't allowed to sell cars second hand, would there be a significant rise in new car sales or just less cars on the road?
In actual fact, I think we'd just see a rise in illegally sold cars.
Not only do we have oil, we have coal, natural gas and uranium.
And what do you all do? Drive on the wrong side of the road and export Vegemite.
What sort of contribution to civilization is that?
Actually, we drive on the correct side of the road and Vegemite is now owned by Kraft, an American company (try some, its good for you).
We also use the metric system and make decent beer like any civilised nation.
Conspiracy: A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. The action of plotting or conspiring.
I cant read the cable at work but...
Conspiracy certainly fits. It was a plan to do something harmful and unlawful in many was too. Their entire plan was to force compliance to their rules by attempting to financially punish companies. The fact that this did not work doesn't change their intent.
Interfering on a foreign country's soil smells of an act of war. Imagine if the roles were reversed? Or they had oil? Look out!!!!
Sweet Jebus,
Not only do we have oil, we have coal, natural gas and uranium.
More often then not, the AU govt is the US govt's bitch.
Sad but true.
Meanwhile, iinet, the ISP that was sued is going gang busters. They just adsorbed another significant Australian ISP, Internode and it's 100K customers.
Question is - how much money did they won from that one ruling in favor ?
Any compensation awarded to Apple in these cases is purely icing, and a molecule in the bucket compared to Apple's capital. This is about
stopping competition because Apple cant compete.
And as we all know, Apple will go to any lengths to do so.
When no-one else can find the same flaws, the flaws themselves tend to be fallacious.
Anthony Watts is no scientist, he was a TV weatherman. The best evidence he found out of the IPCC report is a few typo's.
So far, 84 claims have been filed against different Android manufacturers (HTC, Samsung, etc.) for patent infringements, out of which only 10 were proved to have been infringed and only one ruling has gone in Apple's favor."
WTH? What happened in the 9 cases where the patent was proven to be infringed but the ruling didn't go in Apple's favour?
They made minor changes to the software as per court orders.
What you have to remember is that Apple are so afraid of Android that they are suing over anything and everything no matter how petty.
I dont suppose that you've considered that Safari gets broken first and fastest because there are a lot of undiscovered exploits, due largely to the fact that no-one targets safari as a browser due to low usage. Pwn2Own requires an entirely new exploit (otherwise I'm sure IE would be down in a number of nanoseconds)
BTW, Safari was not simply broken first, it was broken fastest, this is important as you pointed out the demonstrations took place at different times.
IE, Chrome and Firefox all have larger user bases, it stands to reason that they will have fewer undiscovered exploits then Safari because they are targeted more often.
Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,
Oh wait, their serious.
Durability:
I still have textbooks from 1997,
My boss has a textbook from 1956 (borrowed from a university library, hate to imagine what 56 years of late fees look like).
My texbook gets rained on, 95% chance I can use it again.
I have a pile of broken Ipads out the back, they aren't even 3 years old yet.
Accessibility.
Ipads have about 6-7 hours of usable battery life (yes fanboys, this is what they get under real world conditions, especially after the battery has gone through a few charge (read: abuse) cycles).
Books dont run out of batteries and become unusable.
Not Enviromentally Friendly:
Right, we all know paper can be recycled right. Then made into new paper.
Sustainable forestry, try looking it up.
Ipads make more pollution when being made, then they continue to produce pollution whilst being used (they use electricity, producing electricity creates pollution).
The green angle has to be the most laughable out of all of these. Especially with Apples reputation.
Then report for a full frontal lobotomy, you'll come out of the operation with a higher IQ then you'd get from reading anything written by Anthony Watts.
Presumably not punishing google ads(ducks)
Google ads aren't generally splashed over the entire top of the intial screen loaded page. While I don't want to sound like a google shill here, I really don't get how they make their money - aren't google ads generally little text areas with "Advertisement" written above them? I am not one to click on ads, but I know that I have clicked on a few by mistake - but never Google ones that I knew of - they really seem to make their ads be known as ads.
Google ad's are not invasive. Often I dont feel so dirty when I click on them. Also, Google ads tend to be highly relevant to what I'm looking for. I.E. I put "car loan" into Google, it brings up a list of local finance providers.
Compare this to invasive pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-overs and pop-reacharounds, All I want is for the damn thing to get out of my way so I can get to the content. This is so annoying I refuse to use any browser that does not have a decent adblock available for it. Google ads by contrast sit quietly to the side until I'm ready to look at them.
Adwords is the big exception to the rule, but sites are using them less and less (at least the sites I visit).
Well, maybe Facebook should swallow a heaping teaspoon of its own advice. After all, they were being evil about user privacy. Even Mark Zuckerberg deluded himself into believing that users don't care about privacy.
Deluded?
Most users dont care about privacy. They'll happily trade privacy for recognition. Why the hell do you think so many people try out for reality TV.
To those people, the definition of a game is pretty straight forward:
"If I don't like it, then it is not a game at all"
"If I do like it, and so do others, it is a pop game"
"If I do like it, and others don't even know it exists, then it is a true game"
Hipsters can be gamers too.
How to jailbreak or 4S/iPad 2:
1) Download Absinthe
2) Click jailbreak
How to get access to 99% of the functionality a jailbreak provides on IOS on Android.
1) Turn it on.
Root on Android is a lot harder because it provides a whole different level of functionality. Basically the only reason someone Root's their Android device now is to install a custom ROM. Most of the reasons people Jailbreak their iDevice is available as standard on Android (tethering independent of the carrier, being able to install applications from third party sources) and as yet, there are no custom IOS ROM's, so comparing Root to Jailbreaking is like comparing sex to masturbation. In theory they have the same effect, in reality they are worlds apart.
What interests me is the promotion of these jailbreaks as a good thing. It's an exploit, after all. That allows the attacker to completely root your device, often just by visiting a website.
The Reality Distortion Field.
this is rampant in Android too.
As yet, there has been no remote exploit for Android, nor any single exploit to gain root that is consistent across different phones on the same version of the OS. So rampant is the wrong word.
The only current devices with no known exploits are Windows Phone 7 based, which is very telling.
Google ChevronWP7.
Exploits have been out for a year. MS simply paid the ChevronWP7 team to sit on it.
This is not for the US. Nor any other western nation so calm down.
In the west banks can already buy this kind of detailed personal information without having to ask phone companies for it.
Countries mentioned in the fine summary are places like India, Brazil and the Philipines, in these places people dont have ready access to legitimate sources of credit. As a result, they cannot get a credit history easily. But they have a phone history, I'm not sure about India or Brazil, but Filipino's live on the phone, just going over avg spend should give some insight into their ability to manage finances.
Personally I think that easy credit in these places is an incredibly bad idea. Scratch that, I think easy credit is an incredibly bad idea. Being able to handle credit correctly is a rare skill in western nations where there is a high level of education, in developing nations where there is a much lower level of education it can be disastrous to the lives of ordinary working people.
As a result
As a result, you've continually paid more for every product you buy in everyday life.
Do you honestly think banks give away those "miles" for free?
Banks make money off of credit cards out of merchant fees, this is a fee, usually a percentage of the purchase paid by the merchant to the credit card operator. The merchant must build this fee into their operating costs. The more people using credit, the more the merchant must raise their prices to compensate.
Now as for the interest argument, it's bollocks. You dont get an extra few hundred every month, all you get is the first month as your credit card gets paid off every month. Say you earn $2000 per month. Your expenses equal $1500 per month so you save $500 per month. Lets say you earn 5% on your savings. By paying cash for 12 months, you have $5,525 and no money owing. If you paid by credit card and put away $2,000 in the first month, you will have $7,100 at the end of 12 months, but you'll owe $1500 on your credit card. So $7,100 less $1,500 is $5,600. So all that risk for $75.
I bought an air-conditioner last summer, the ticket price was A$650, I paid A$500 because I bought it with savings and not credit. Lets not even talk about what I saved on my car by paying for it out of savings and not getting a loan, that's off the ticket price _before_ interest was calculated.
First, they quit selling 16:10 panels because it's cheaper to make 16:9 panels.
Except they haven't. 16:10 panels are the high end of monitors. I'm typing this on a Dell U2412M, 1920x1200 24" monitor I bought two months ago. If you want a 16:10 panel, they're easy to get, just not as cheap as a 16:9.
This.
In Asia a company hires 10 engineers and 2 lawyers to make a new product. In the US a company hires 2 engineers and 10 lawyers to make the same product. The net result is that the engineers have to work 5 times as hard to reach the same deadline and the lawyers are a drain on the development budget.
The cost difference between an Asian engineer and an American engineer is minuscule and not the problem. The problem is the cost difference between 2 lawyers and 10.
Trying to create laws to protect things invented yesterday wont help when your competitors are inventing things for tomorrow.
Probably those experiments over at Black Mesa. By the way, the portrayal of New Mexico in Half-Life always amused me, with the cartoonish Looney Tunes cliffs and plateaus. With the exception of the northern area of the state, it's mostly just weeds as far as the eye can see, littered with the occasional beer can. We have good Mexican food, though.
Well, if you were building a secret lab to run probably illegal experiments into inter-dimensional travel with the potential to bring vicious invaders to earth, which part of New Mexico would you pick.
Where did you get those figures? They seem fishy. There was recently an article somewhere that said the PS3 passed the 60 million units sold worldwide, and before that there was another article that said they were only a couple of million units behind the Xbox 360.
Wikipedia.
Yep, I know, bad day for that.