1-year owner satisfaction surveys don't mean much to me. I want to know how reliable the car is going to be 5 years down the road. Ford doesn't have much of a record for long term reliability.
Owner satisfactions surveys mean nothing at all. A useless marketing metric that does not reflect real quality or construction, merely blind brand loyalty (in Australia Holden (GM) and Ford fanboys are worse then Apple fanboys, at least Apple fanboys are too sissy to start a fistfight). I have a 98 Honda Civic, it's done 250,000 KM (Australia is a big country) and kept very well maintained. That engine, chassis, drive train, axles and everything will do another 250,000 KM if kept well maintained, well except for Gearbox, probably.
Honda's are very well made, very reliable cars, the flipside of this is that if anything vital on the Honda does break, it will cost a fortune to fix. If the GGGP's Honda engine did die, without the free replacement it would be worth more to scrap the car.
The VVD supports private enterprise in the Netherlands and is often perceived as an economic liberal party"
Hmmm. That is why she didn't look like a long-haired smelly.
Liberal outside the US typically refers to social and economic freedom, as in traditional liberalism. Less restriction on the market in the case of Kroes, Yanks might call them Libertarian, but they aren't complete whack jobs like US libertarians.
A little 500 GB 2.5" USB hard drive is ten times faster, ten times more reliable, and cheaper.
You had me up to the point that it said 10 times.
A DVD drive will write at 20 MB/s, a 5400 RPM drive writes at 20-40 MB/s, in reality, if you're using USB you can expect about 20-30 MB/s.
Secondly, a DVD is a lot more damage resistant then a mechanical drive. Drop the mechanical drive and you pray it works again, drop the optical disk and you just pick it up. If we are talking about reliability, the best way to ensure you have data integrity is by having multiple copies. So that would be multiple DVD's or multiple 500 GB USB drives.
As for cheaper, a DVD is A$0.0.20 (100 pk off the shelf, can be bought cheaper in bulk) a 500 GB optical drive is A$80 for something cheap and cheerful. 500 GB is 114 DVD's give or take a fraction of 4.4 GB, that's $22.8 for 500 GB. The entire 500 GB needs to be overwritten 4 times before it's worth more.
Now that that's been said
The right tool for the right job. A portable HDD is about convenience, not data integrity. I use my portable HDD for things I want to move not backup or keep. Portable disks are not that safe and Murphy's Law is omnipresent.
I think it is fair to say, the GGP being a professional (or professional level) photographer that data integrity is more important. Having some experience in the matter as far as media goes.
Tape > Optical > Enterprise HDD (inc ent. SSD) > Consumer HDD (inc SSD) > Flash (cheap) > * > Cloud.
Optical is the best consumer grade backup and archive you can get. Easy to make multiple copies, easy to store, not senstive to excessive moisture/magnetics, not prone to damage. Not to mention the ease of sorting.
Point in short, if I'm moving 12 GB around my machines, plug in that USB drive. If I'm archiving off or backing up 12 GB, give me optical.
I love having an optical drive, I consider it mandatory for any serious computer not optimized for light-weight. Netbooks have their place, but for anything serious and regular use I want that optical drive. I use it all the time.
This,
In a cheap netbook, an optical drive is something I can live without. In a proper laptop costing $500 or more, I expect an optical drive unless I'm specifically looking for one without. The optical drive is not going anywhere any-time soon.
Yep, sure, I'm just going to fly 6000 KM's back home so I can watch a DVD.
Any other pearls of wisdom?
I use an optical drive for games mostly, yes there is steam but I dont feel like buying my back catalogue on steam and my old games (Deus Ex, System Shock, KOTOR) are the games that get the most use on my laptop when travelling. Plus I dont entirely trust Steam, so I like having the install media (with all related engine and art assets) under my control.
The optical drive is still there on most machines because most people still use it and dont want to hunt around for a portable drive let alone have the patience or skills to rip a DVD. Most wont even know what VLC is. Unlike the floppy drive, it's still in regular usage, buying programs on floppy disks was rare in 1997, buying programs on DVD is not rare in 2011. It will be a very long time before the average person stops needing an optical drive.
Please let me know how you are going to play back movies etc while in an airplane at 30,000 feet.
I suppose if you want to watch in a manner which drains your battery dead the fastest, you could go that way. Personally, I prefer carrying and watching my movies in a more portable form, such as data files stored on a HDD, my iPad, or flash media.
Yaz
Those USB devices will drain your battery fast as well.
This is why I keep a slower but larger 640 GB 5400 RPM drive in my laptop. Yep, slower loading for games but more storage for everything else. The spinning disk does not use as much power as a spinning disk in a USB caddy.
I do have an optical drive in my laptop (I use it for games) but it uses no power when not in operation. I could have got the non-optical drive version for $150 less, but decided I wanted to keep the optical drive.
When the iMac came out without a floppy disk dive in 1998, exactly the same sentiment was expressed. PC makers gasped, then heckled Apple.
Love the revisionist history.
The iMacs came out without floppy drives because Apple were trying to push Zip disks. I've still got an old MacPro (pre OS X, it ran System 9) sitting in a storage cupboard somewhere (it contains a program that only runs on System 9 that holds some ancient account data from a company we acquired) It has no floppy drive, but it has a Zip disk drive. We all know how far Zip disks went.
The floppy drive lived on for years in desktops. It was eliminated from common use by cheap DVD writers and the final nail was driven in by cheap USB flash drives. Mac's did absolutely nothing to get rid of Floppy drives. Even the latest gaming motherboards come with an FD port because a few people still use them.
So you don't see them. I am against copyright (as it exists now) but at least I am aware that it isn't a human right to see them.
Copyright grants the author the exclusive distribution right to their work in exchange for publication. If they are not publishing their work, then they should lose the exclusive distribution right.
And if they aren't the author, they shouldn't get to words in sideways about the matter.
I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price,
BZZZT, wrong, but thanks for playing.
Asus U36SD.
US$861
The Asus has a faster processor, switch-able graphics, USB 3, HDMI, VGA, SATA 3, Gigabit Ethernet and if you wanted to stick a 128 GB SSD into it, you're still $150 up on the Macbook. The Macbook also solders the RAM to the mainboard meaning it's non-upgradable and does not use a standard form factor or SATA interface meaning if you want to upgrade that you need to pay more then you would for standard hardware and yes, people do upgrade the RAM and HDD in their laptops, especially as SSD's get cheaper (well, get cheaper for most of us).
Not to mention that Asus supports the U3xSD series with their 2 year international warranty where as Apple only has a 1 year North America only warranty.
So can we do away with the myth that Mac's are cheap. I can get a Dell with an SSD for A$800. That's in Australia where everything costs more.
3) Tie unpopular issue to politician Murdoch does not like.
4) ????.
5) Profit.
6) Complain that the politician is now suing you for Libel.
Re:HTML5 has not "won"
on
Occupy Flash?
·
· Score: 1
What is this "death of flash" nonsense? Adobe isn't dropping flash
Just parroting the iFanboys.
Flash has been dead since iYear 0 (2007) if you ask them.
Of course I dont beleive it's going anywhere, there's too many legacy sites and as many people have pointed out, HTML5 is not a capable substitute for many uses of Flash.
Sure, today it only runs on desktops, but within 3 to 5 years, all mobile platforms that have enough screen space will also supply a complete "desktop experience."
Mobile traffic will never overtake desktop/laptop traffic.
Android will end up offering an alternative to flash, what or how I'm not sure but as I said, there's too much legacy in flash and it's not going anywhere. The idea of "there's an app for that" web site to compensate for the browsers deficiencies will go away as with any platform that depends on the idea. My Desire Z with Android 2.3.5.is almost as capable as my desktop browser.
A: The bomb will penetrate X feet of hardening.
B: We will build our new complex X+15 feet deep.
Millions of dollars and years of construction later
A: Oh yeah, that bomb will actually penetrate X+30 feet of hardening.
B: Oh shit.
The really fun part is, Boeing is building both the bomb and the bunker.
Hell, and it's Dell letting you change this - hardly a company you'd expect to let you do so.
Why does this surprise you?
Dell isn't into customer S&M like Apple, they realise that it's _your_ computer not your _Apple_ computer.
Re:HTML5 has not "won"
on
Occupy Flash?
·
· Score: 1
The problems with "HTML5 has won the web"
1. Its performance is crappy at best.
2. It exposes too much of the source for people who want to make a living off their code. It's bad enough with Flash and Java decompilers...
3. Unlike Flash, Python, Perl, Tcl.TK, C, C++, Java, etc., HTML5 needs a browser - and browsers are themselves a crappy - and inconsistent - host environment, so you also inherit any security and bug problems from the browser.
4. The standard for HTML5 is not yet even finished.
Ergo, the death of flash will just promote the rise of a new plugin to compensate for the inadequacies of HTML5. Just like SWF and Flash came about to compensate for the problems with HTML.
With any luck it will be an FOSS plugin but there's a phrase about "the devil we know" that keeps coming to mind
Agreed. But part of the problem is that Flash's existence is a higher cost than HTML5. Flash a is closed source,
As is the h.264 codec that Apple and MS are pushing for HTML 5.
So as a site builder who wants to put up some videos, I can use Flash which is cheaper and works across almost all browsers or I can use HTML 5 which is more expensive and means I need to support multiple encodings and pray that the user gets the right encoding for their browser when I they get to my site.
This is assuming MPEG-LA lets me use h.264 without license fees.
HTML5 is not a superset of Flash.
Flash is not a superset of HTML5.
Get over the pissing contests and use the right tool for the job.
Saying Flash is appropriate for a web site is like saying IPX/SPX are appropriate protocols for a LAN connecting to the Internet. Sure, it can be done, but it's a stupid way to do it and thankfully went away many years ago.
Very bad analogy,
Saying HTML5 is automatically better is like saying LTE is better the Optic Fibre. Sure LTE newer and has some fantastic marketing behind it, but it ignores that Fibre can really get the job done better, is cheaper to deploy, has fewer technical problems and is practically guaranteed to work. I wont be upgrading my server link from 15 yr old fibre to modern LTE simply because LTE has better marketing.
Right tool for the right job. Until HTML 5 becomes consistent across all browsers (this means MS and Apple need to adopt an open standard and codec, instead of pushing their own standards and codecs) it will rarely be the right tool.
Re:I propose we Occupy "Occupy"
on
Occupy Flash?
·
· Score: 1
HTML V5 IS A BIG PILE OF SUCK! that's what! It sucks MORE resources than flash, requires MORE CPU and RAM, I've found it pretty much won't run at all on anything less than a dual core, whereas flash will run fine without hardware acceleration on a 1.8GHz Celeron or Sempron as long as you stick to SD video and will even play HD1080p if you put a decent GPU to share the load, sucks up MORE bandwidth than flash...
Not only that, they cannot get video working consistently on the three most popular browsers (Firefox, IE and Chrome).
But people as still treating HTML5 like some kind of messiah coming to save us from the tyranny that is Flash. Yet HTML5 will only server to Balkanise (OK iFanboys, we can use "fragment" instead if you like) the internet into sites designed for specific browser. The reason flash came into popular usage was precisely because there were things that HTML could do, but couldn't do consistently across browsers. We will soon see a return of pages that say "This site is designed for Browser X. Get Browser X here http://browserx.com/download", this kind of nonsense was gotten rid of in the early 2000 although HTML5 will herald it's return as it is simply too expensive to make 5 sites for Firefox, Chrome, IE, iWhatever and Android.
Flash needs to die.. eventually, no doubt about it, but the HTML5 cult is attempting to kill it before there is a viable alternative. So we'll end up with the browser war moving from compatibility with the internet to forcing sites to be compatible with browsers. Apple and MS are already trying to do this by implementing their own HTML5 standards and codecs, in the end we'll end up with another form of Flash to cover up the inadequacies of HTML5.
Re:I propose we Occupy "Occupy"
on
Occupy Flash?
·
· Score: 1
I'm Occupying my livingroom this weekend! If my wife tries to make me move, well, I won't be intimidated with threats from authority figures!
This fact is often forgotten. But the estimates at the time were running at ~2 million soldiers and ~10 million civilians dead in case of conventional invasion of Japan. And of course, Russians would probably have been there in time to "help" with invasion and occupation and raping and pillaging and they would have turned the occupied areas into puppet communist regimes as in europe.
--Coder
And China would be a communist state today.
In 1945, the Russians were reluctant to fight Japan, even though the Japanese were in retreat across Asia. Russia would have done to the Allies in Asia what the Allies did to Russia in Europe, let the Allies fight the hard battles. Stalin didn't want to invade Manchuria, but did so only because they US and Britain forced his hand, he had no interest in occupying China, Japan or Asia militarily.
Another thing is, the Empire of Japan was seeking a means to surrender as early as late 1944. They sent emissaries to negotiate with the United States. Their mistake was to send their emissaries through the Soviet union, so of course no word of these attempts to sue for peace ever reached the US or Allies until after WWII ended. It's important to remember the Soviets were not necessarily our allies, but the enemies of our enemies.
I dont disagree with the US's decision in hind sight, they had no idea of the things we know today and someone had to be first to use a nuclear weapon (the Nazis were working on them as well, an SAS/Norwegian resistance operation against a heavy water plant in Norway was the biggest step towards halting the Nazi nuke program). I'm simply glad that no-one has used them again.
The problem here would be that you're assuming there's any kind of sanity over there. What happens when Iran suddenly has a few dirty bombs to toss around?
I'm still surprised that people haven't figured this out.
The ruling council of Iran (the Iranian president has no real power) is quite smart. They've kept themselves in power, unquestioned for 30 years. That whole "doing gods will" thing was just a mechanism to keep people in line. They aren't real religious fundies, they're fake religious fundies holding onto a large portion of real power and are smart enough not to do anything to jeopardise that.
They dont genuinely beleive they have any direction from God, they just use that to avoid having their leadership questioned by the people they rule (yep, historically religion gets used for this a lot). I'm more worried about a rouge US element getting nuclear weapons (as unlikely as it is). What if the Westboro Baptist Church go a hold of a nuke, say goodbye to Fristhco because they genuinely beleive God hates fags.
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1-year owner satisfaction surveys don't mean much to me. I want to know how reliable the car is going to be 5 years down the road. Ford doesn't have much of a record for long term reliability.
Owner satisfactions surveys mean nothing at all. A useless marketing metric that does not reflect real quality or construction, merely blind brand loyalty (in Australia Holden (GM) and Ford fanboys are worse then Apple fanboys, at least Apple fanboys are too sissy to start a fistfight). I have a 98 Honda Civic, it's done 250,000 KM (Australia is a big country) and kept very well maintained. That engine, chassis, drive train, axles and everything will do another 250,000 KM if kept well maintained, well except for Gearbox, probably.
Honda's are very well made, very reliable cars, the flipside of this is that if anything vital on the Honda does break, it will cost a fortune to fix. If the GGGP's Honda engine did die, without the free replacement it would be worth more to scrap the car.
The VVD supports private enterprise in the Netherlands and is often perceived as an economic liberal party"
Hmmm. That is why she didn't look like a long-haired smelly.
Liberal outside the US typically refers to social and economic freedom, as in traditional liberalism. Less restriction on the market in the case of Kroes, Yanks might call them Libertarian, but they aren't complete whack jobs like US libertarians.
BTW, how does one "look" smelly?
You had me up to the point that it said 10 times.
A DVD drive will write at 20 MB/s, a 5400 RPM drive writes at 20-40 MB/s, in reality, if you're using USB you can expect about 20-30 MB/s.
Secondly, a DVD is a lot more damage resistant then a mechanical drive. Drop the mechanical drive and you pray it works again, drop the optical disk and you just pick it up. If we are talking about reliability, the best way to ensure you have data integrity is by having multiple copies. So that would be multiple DVD's or multiple 500 GB USB drives.
As for cheaper, a DVD is A$0.0.20 (100 pk off the shelf, can be bought cheaper in bulk) a 500 GB optical drive is A$80 for something cheap and cheerful. 500 GB is 114 DVD's give or take a fraction of 4.4 GB, that's $22.8 for 500 GB. The entire 500 GB needs to be overwritten 4 times before it's worth more.
Now that that's been said
The right tool for the right job. A portable HDD is about convenience, not data integrity. I use my portable HDD for things I want to move not backup or keep. Portable disks are not that safe and Murphy's Law is omnipresent.
I think it is fair to say, the GGP being a professional (or professional level) photographer that data integrity is more important. Having some experience in the matter as far as media goes.
Tape > Optical > Enterprise HDD (inc ent. SSD) > Consumer HDD (inc SSD) > Flash (cheap) > * > Cloud.
Optical is the best consumer grade backup and archive you can get. Easy to make multiple copies, easy to store, not senstive to excessive moisture/magnetics, not prone to damage. Not to mention the ease of sorting.
Point in short, if I'm moving 12 GB around my machines, plug in that USB drive. If I'm archiving off or backing up 12 GB, give me optical.
This,
In a cheap netbook, an optical drive is something I can live without. In a proper laptop costing $500 or more, I expect an optical drive unless I'm specifically looking for one without. The optical drive is not going anywhere any-time soon.
Yep, sure, I'm just going to fly 6000 KM's back home so I can watch a DVD.
Any other pearls of wisdom?
I use an optical drive for games mostly, yes there is steam but I dont feel like buying my back catalogue on steam and my old games (Deus Ex, System Shock, KOTOR) are the games that get the most use on my laptop when travelling. Plus I dont entirely trust Steam, so I like having the install media (with all related engine and art assets) under my control.
The optical drive is still there on most machines because most people still use it and dont want to hunt around for a portable drive let alone have the patience or skills to rip a DVD. Most wont even know what VLC is. Unlike the floppy drive, it's still in regular usage, buying programs on floppy disks was rare in 1997, buying programs on DVD is not rare in 2011. It will be a very long time before the average person stops needing an optical drive.
Please let me know how you are going to play back movies etc while in an airplane at 30,000 feet.
I suppose if you want to watch in a manner which drains your battery dead the fastest, you could go that way. Personally, I prefer carrying and watching my movies in a more portable form, such as data files stored on a HDD, my iPad, or flash media.
Yaz
Those USB devices will drain your battery fast as well.
This is why I keep a slower but larger 640 GB 5400 RPM drive in my laptop. Yep, slower loading for games but more storage for everything else. The spinning disk does not use as much power as a spinning disk in a USB caddy.
I do have an optical drive in my laptop (I use it for games) but it uses no power when not in operation. I could have got the non-optical drive version for $150 less, but decided I wanted to keep the optical drive.
Love the revisionist history.
The iMacs came out without floppy drives because Apple were trying to push Zip disks. I've still got an old MacPro (pre OS X, it ran System 9) sitting in a storage cupboard somewhere (it contains a program that only runs on System 9 that holds some ancient account data from a company we acquired) It has no floppy drive, but it has a Zip disk drive. We all know how far Zip disks went.
The floppy drive lived on for years in desktops. It was eliminated from common use by cheap DVD writers and the final nail was driven in by cheap USB flash drives. Mac's did absolutely nothing to get rid of Floppy drives. Even the latest gaming motherboards come with an FD port because a few people still use them.
So you don't see them. I am against copyright (as it exists now) but at least I am aware that it isn't a human right to see them.
Copyright grants the author the exclusive distribution right to their work in exchange for publication. If they are not publishing their work, then they should lose the exclusive distribution right.
And if they aren't the author, they shouldn't get to words in sideways about the matter.
That sounds like something Hitler would say!
No it does not.
Hitler would have sounded more Germanic.
BZZZT, wrong, but thanks for playing. Asus U36SD.
US$861
Macbook Air 13"
US$1250
The Asus has a faster processor, switch-able graphics, USB 3, HDMI, VGA, SATA 3, Gigabit Ethernet and if you wanted to stick a 128 GB SSD into it, you're still $150 up on the Macbook. The Macbook also solders the RAM to the mainboard meaning it's non-upgradable and does not use a standard form factor or SATA interface meaning if you want to upgrade that you need to pay more then you would for standard hardware and yes, people do upgrade the RAM and HDD in their laptops, especially as SSD's get cheaper (well, get cheaper for most of us).
Not to mention that Asus supports the U3xSD series with their 2 year international warranty where as Apple only has a 1 year North America only warranty.
So can we do away with the myth that Mac's are cheap. I can get a Dell with an SSD for A$800. That's in Australia where everything costs more.
1) Pick unpopular issue.
2) Ignore all facts on the issue.
3) Tie unpopular issue to politician Murdoch does not like.
4) ????.
5) Profit.
6) Complain that the politician is now suing you for Libel.
Just parroting the iFanboys.
Flash has been dead since iYear 0 (2007) if you ask them.
Of course I dont beleive it's going anywhere, there's too many legacy sites and as many people have pointed out, HTML5 is not a capable substitute for many uses of Flash.
Mobile traffic will never overtake desktop/laptop traffic.
Android will end up offering an alternative to flash, what or how I'm not sure but as I said, there's too much legacy in flash and it's not going anywhere. The idea of "there's an app for that" web site to compensate for the browsers deficiencies will go away as with any platform that depends on the idea. My Desire Z with Android 2.3.5.is almost as capable as my desktop browser.
But "Obama care" would cost too much?
How many M.O. Penetrators would it cost.
Seriously?? Have you ever seen girls fight?
Have you seen Thai Girls fight.
Fists are considered a mere distraction.
A: The bomb will penetrate X feet of hardening.
B: We will build our new complex X+15 feet deep.
Millions of dollars and years of construction later
A: Oh yeah, that bomb will actually penetrate X+30 feet of hardening.
B: Oh shit.
The really fun part is, Boeing is building both the bomb and the bunker.
Hell, and it's Dell letting you change this - hardly a company you'd expect to let you do so.
Why does this surprise you?
Dell isn't into customer S&M like Apple, they realise that it's _your_ computer not your _Apple_ computer.
The problems with "HTML5 has won the web"
1. Its performance is crappy at best. ...
2. It exposes too much of the source for people who want to make a living off their code. It's bad enough with Flash and Java decompilers
3. Unlike Flash, Python, Perl, Tcl.TK, C, C++, Java, etc., HTML5 needs a browser - and browsers are themselves a crappy - and inconsistent - host environment, so you also inherit any security and bug problems from the browser.
4. The standard for HTML5 is not yet even finished.
Ergo, the death of flash will just promote the rise of a new plugin to compensate for the inadequacies of HTML5. Just like SWF and Flash came about to compensate for the problems with HTML.
With any luck it will be an FOSS plugin but there's a phrase about "the devil we know" that keeps coming to mind
Agreed. But part of the problem is that Flash's existence is a higher cost than HTML5. Flash a is closed source,
As is the h.264 codec that Apple and MS are pushing for HTML 5.
So as a site builder who wants to put up some videos, I can use Flash which is cheaper and works across almost all browsers or I can use HTML 5 which is more expensive and means I need to support multiple encodings and pray that the user gets the right encoding for their browser when I they get to my site.
This is assuming MPEG-LA lets me use h.264 without license fees.
HTML5 is not a superset of Flash.
Flash is not a superset of HTML5.
Get over the pissing contests and use the right tool for the job.
Saying Flash is appropriate for a web site is like saying IPX/SPX are appropriate protocols for a LAN connecting to the Internet. Sure, it can be done, but it's a stupid way to do it and thankfully went away many years ago.
Very bad analogy, Saying HTML5 is automatically better is like saying LTE is better the Optic Fibre. Sure LTE newer and has some fantastic marketing behind it, but it ignores that Fibre can really get the job done better, is cheaper to deploy, has fewer technical problems and is practically guaranteed to work. I wont be upgrading my server link from 15 yr old fibre to modern LTE simply because LTE has better marketing.
Right tool for the right job. Until HTML 5 becomes consistent across all browsers (this means MS and Apple need to adopt an open standard and codec, instead of pushing their own standards and codecs) it will rarely be the right tool.
Not only that, they cannot get video working consistently on the three most popular browsers (Firefox, IE and Chrome).
But people as still treating HTML5 like some kind of messiah coming to save us from the tyranny that is Flash. Yet HTML5 will only server to Balkanise (OK iFanboys, we can use "fragment" instead if you like) the internet into sites designed for specific browser. The reason flash came into popular usage was precisely because there were things that HTML could do, but couldn't do consistently across browsers. We will soon see a return of pages that say "This site is designed for Browser X. Get Browser X here http://browserx.com/download", this kind of nonsense was gotten rid of in the early 2000 although HTML5 will herald it's return as it is simply too expensive to make 5 sites for Firefox, Chrome, IE, iWhatever and Android.
Flash needs to die.. eventually, no doubt about it, but the HTML5 cult is attempting to kill it before there is a viable alternative. So we'll end up with the browser war moving from compatibility with the internet to forcing sites to be compatible with browsers. Apple and MS are already trying to do this by implementing their own HTML5 standards and codecs, in the end we'll end up with another form of Flash to cover up the inadequacies of HTML5.
I'm Occupying my livingroom this weekend! If my wife tries to make me move, well, I won't be intimidated with threats from authority figures!
Prepare for divorce, because she gets the 99%.
Most /. are developers not IT.
They beleive themselves to be special unique snowflakes who need to be coddled.
Which is why management is moving coding is going to Bucharest.
Which is good for me because developers are paid out of the IT budget.
This fact is often forgotten. But the estimates at the time were running at ~2 million soldiers and ~10 million civilians dead in case of conventional invasion of Japan. And of course, Russians would probably have been there in time to "help" with invasion and occupation and raping and pillaging and they would have turned the occupied areas into puppet communist regimes as in europe. --Coder
And China would be a communist state today.
In 1945, the Russians were reluctant to fight Japan, even though the Japanese were in retreat across Asia. Russia would have done to the Allies in Asia what the Allies did to Russia in Europe, let the Allies fight the hard battles. Stalin didn't want to invade Manchuria, but did so only because they US and Britain forced his hand, he had no interest in occupying China, Japan or Asia militarily.
Another thing is, the Empire of Japan was seeking a means to surrender as early as late 1944. They sent emissaries to negotiate with the United States. Their mistake was to send their emissaries through the Soviet union, so of course no word of these attempts to sue for peace ever reached the US or Allies until after WWII ended. It's important to remember the Soviets were not necessarily our allies, but the enemies of our enemies.
I dont disagree with the US's decision in hind sight, they had no idea of the things we know today and someone had to be first to use a nuclear weapon (the Nazis were working on them as well, an SAS/Norwegian resistance operation against a heavy water plant in Norway was the biggest step towards halting the Nazi nuke program). I'm simply glad that no-one has used them again.
The problem here would be that you're assuming there's any kind of sanity over there. What happens when Iran suddenly has a few dirty bombs to toss around?
I'm still surprised that people haven't figured this out.
The ruling council of Iran (the Iranian president has no real power) is quite smart. They've kept themselves in power, unquestioned for 30 years. That whole "doing gods will" thing was just a mechanism to keep people in line. They aren't real religious fundies, they're fake religious fundies holding onto a large portion of real power and are smart enough not to do anything to jeopardise that.
They dont genuinely beleive they have any direction from God, they just use that to avoid having their leadership questioned by the people they rule (yep, historically religion gets used for this a lot). I'm more worried about a rouge US element getting nuclear weapons (as unlikely as it is). What if the Westboro Baptist Church go a hold of a nuke, say goodbye to Fristhco because they genuinely beleive God hates fags.
Your Android phone was made in 1998?! Awesome. Do you have the Mr. Fusion mod for your Delorian or are you still stealing plutonium from the Libyans?
My telephone box has no need for such a modification.