Nice to see Consumer Reports calling Apple on their crap this time.
From the fine article
Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that "mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.
Anyone with a basic understanding of troubleshooting tech should be able to tell that the signal drop is not caused by software as it only happens when the aerial is touched. Anyone with a basic understanding of electrical engineering could tell you that this is because you are changing the length of the circuit (your hand becomes a conductor). This will cause the aerial to have a harder time picking up the correct frequencies. Apple ignored some basic EE design rules here and didn't test the design properly.
Then why did Nintendo do it for the Wii. Sometimes it's not about the money that makes you money. It's about meeting the clients expectations.
Because Nintendo did a very Japanese thing and threw the business self on the sword to save face. Keeping customers satisfied was of paramount concern, you'll notice Toyota did the same thing with the Prius acceleration issues.
The problem with Apple doing this is that it would be an admission of guilt. An admission that an Apple product has a flaw would destroy the image that Apple has worked to create and doing this would destroy the reason that many people buy Apple products. Most people who buy Apple products do it for the image (a few fanboys will post to the contrary, I'd remind them that/.ers are not typical customers) so if you damage the image, you damage customer satisfaction.
Apple's already fixed this issue. They've declared that 2 bars are "full" bars, your display will be changed to reflect the new truth in the next software update.
In case you didn't know all electronic products have a higher price in Europe to the US, so such grey market imports will always look expensive.
In case you didnt know, people who order from the UK outside the EU do not pay VAT (effectively removing 20% of the retail cost) making it cheaper to order from the UK when you live in a nation which doesn't tax parallel imports. I paid A$580 for my Moto Milestone to get delivered, that's about US$520 at the current exch rate.
Secondly, the Samsung Galaxy S is an import from Korea, where Samsung makes the phones and the Evo 4G is not sold anywhere outside the US (HTC expressly designed it for Sprint) so please get your facts straight before posting fanboyish nonsense.
The unsubsidised (i.e. comes without a contract) cost of an iPhone, direct from Apple US, is $599.
Citation needed. I cant find one on the US site without an AT&T contract.
Where did you go to school, North Korea? I know people from Iran and schooling isn't that bad. I think you're exaggerating here.
This is rural Australia 10 years ago (oh dear FSM, has it been that long) and I did travel 90 KM, both ways, in the blistering Australian heat.
06:00 get up, shower, breakfast.
06:35 Walk to the bus stop.
06:45 Get on the bus. Most people would actually talk to each other on the bus as long as it was kept to a reasonable volume, in 2000 the bus got a VCR player and TV. Ideal time to finish the homework from last night.
07:50 Arrive at school.
08:00 lines form for first period.
08:10 classes begin, periods 1 and 2 (~1 hour periods).
10:15 Recess. Play sports or just sit around talking.
10:45 Period 3.
11:55 Lunch. There's be football, basketball and other sports outside, reading or internet access in the library. Everyone brownbaged (bought their own lunch) as hot options were always expensive in Australia.
12:30 Period 4.
13:30 Form/study period. Always occurred in the same class as period 4, mostly people chatted or caught up with class work.
13:50 Period 5.
14:50 End, back on the bus. There was music but I'd typically listen to my walkman (later upgraded to a discman), because I couldn't and still cant stomach Rap or late 90's pop.
16:10 Start walking home.
16:20 Get home.
For most Australian kids who didn't live in the middle of fucking nowhere (pick a spot on the north west Australian coast and go 500 KMs inland) you could cut at least 30 minutes of travel time each way. A lot of kids live less then 15 minutes walk from their schools. This is what happens when you invest in a good education system.
Because he loves his kids and wants them to have a future.
He recognises that home-schooling will only serve to pass on his own biases and weaknesses, meanwhile completely stifling the child's ability to grow as an individual as well as killing their ability to learn new social skills in a mixed environment. This will ultimately isolate the child from their peers where they will not question the ideas that their parents have indoctrinated into them.
The type of personality that advocates "home schooling" tends to be less concerned with a child's growth and education and more concerned that a child does not learn anything that would contradict their parents beliefs. As the GP said, this is highly dependent on the teacher they get.
If a parent truly wants to help then they would provide an environment outside of school where creativity is encouraged. Just giving the kid a mecano or lego set is a great start or try teaching them something about mechanics or electronics. Better yet, run a bit of a clinic for all the child's friends, the absolute best thing you can do to turn your kid into a bitter husk is isolate them from contact with people their own age.
Being cleared by a political panel is irrelevant as they didn't address any of the actual science. If you only listen to the political crap your thinking will be polluted by the political crap. As they say Garbage In Garbage Out.
The brilliant thing about conspiracy theories is that they don't actually need to be rational, verifiable or even possible. So long as you throw enough emotionally weighted language and loaded terms like "political" or "Garbage" you don't need to prove anything.
Oddly enough, your theory falls victim to the same "sin" you accuse the scientists of, perhaps you should spend some "quality time" behind bars for having "perpetrated some obvious frauds".
P.S. you didn't say political enough times, people saw through that.
P.P.S you should have bolded "Garbage In Garbage Out" as that would have helped to detract from the lack of actual fact in your post.
You do realize that Apple contributes to many open source projects right? In fact you can get the backbone of OS X BSD system as Darwin. Chrome wouldn't exist without WebKit. LLVM, CalDAV, CUPS, etc.
Apple didnt develop WebKit (KHTML), LLVM or CalDAV. They didn't develop or open source CUPS either, they purchased the source code in 2007. Please get your facts straight.
Secondly, Apple has more software patents then Microsoft. Apple does not open source what it can avoid open sourcing. They embody the reason the GPL v3 exists, Apple takes from OSS and gives little back, just enough to avoid legal action.
For Mac computers there isn't a walled garden.
OK then, I'll just run it up on my AMD Phenom gaming rig shall I. Make no mistake, Mac's are limited, maybe not as much as iDevices but it's still limited and locked down. Saying this is "better" is like Jane saying her new boyfriend is better because he only beats her half as much, you're ignoring the fact that it's locked down in the first place.
The difference between them and MS is that MS reached out with their monopoly to harm competitors and partners
No, both Apple and MS do this. The critical difference is that Microsoft has been successful. Apple will happily sue it's competitors (Apple Computers vs Microsoft, Apple Inc vs HTC and so forth) but it always ends up losing. MS on the other hand buys out competitors, strong arms suppliers and makes back room deals, so MS has been quite successful.
That seems to be somewhat more "filtering I can live with" even as a pretty outspoken libertarian:)
Except we don't know if the list is secret or not.
Those behind the filter do not want people to know what is being blocked as "it lets people know where child porn is". It's almost as if they have some delusional idea that if people know about child porn they'll instantly become paedophiles. This has the effect of hiding false positives.
Rant aside, all this will end up being is a button on my iinet control panel saying "do you want to take part in voluntary filtering (_)YES (_)NO" and if it becomes a pain the "NO" box will get ticked by default.
For a long time now I've said that this will be kicked around parliament with no real action being taken. Every time KRudd bought it in the last year up he faced a rebellion from the back bench from those MP's who relied on a narrow margin to keep their seats. Gillard has not gone one way or the other remaining ambiguous on the subject (she's a lawyer after all). I don't think Labor needs the fundie vote and Abott is more likely to get the fundies on side with Gillard being "non-religious" but Labor is not willing to alienate any voters at this point in time.
This bill will get kicked around some more and dismissed or watered down so much that it's never truly implemented. With any luck, Conroy will lose his seat in the senate (dearest Victorians, this is your problem, we westies have our hands full supporting the nations economy right now) and a Labor/Green coalition will remain in power. I have no doubt the ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) will pressure Tony Abott to implement some kind of filter if he wins and I don't think Abott has the stones to deny the ACLs request.
Smart people don't insult people with weapons, especially not in countries where human life has never been a priority.
The OP said "US Tourist", but that's a given as anyone else knows the US did not actually win the cold war it just fizzled out (realistically it had been approaching this point for years with Moscow and Washington increasing diplomatic relations (glasnost) and leaders figuring out trade would get more then espionage ever did).
One of the apps was for the Job Centre which tend to concentrate on lower paid jobs to help people on the dole find employment. So the target audience for the app are those least likely to be able to afford an iPhone to use it! If, instead of being distracted by a shiny new toy, even a minimal level of thought had been put into the planning stage this would have been obvious.
Actually, the biggest market in Australia for Iphones is the low earners, minimum wage and sub A$30K crowd. They get the oldest, cheapest model on a A$49 plan and think it's a bargain. This is the kind of person who uses a phone to replace a desktop or laptop, not that they used a desktop or laptop for anything more complex then Arsebook.
Iphones have become synoymous with "cant afford anything better but want to look like I have money", RIM and Nokia E series means "Work gave me this phone so I have a high paying job", Android means "I'm geeky enough to know better" or "I listened to someone who knows better" whilst WinMo and Nokia N series says "I don't really know what I'm doing and let the salesdroid talk me into this, oooh look it's a bycycle".
It's kind of weird that Germany and Europe are now the safeguards of our privacy.
What's weird about that?
Europe abolished slavery long before the US (even existed in some cases).
Europe gained workers rights before the US.
Europe gave women voting rights before the US.
Europe got rid of segregation long before the US.
It does not surprise me in the slightest that Europe is ahead of the US in protecting privacy. There is more to Europe's history then a war the US was only in half of.
Heh. I'm guessing the dips that modded this up didn't read to the end.
No, they did and realised I was right.
Team Fortress 2 was released in October 2007. Nearly 3 years later Valve are still adding new features and updating the engine. Better yet, Team Fortress 2 was sold in the Orange Box, along with Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2 and Portal so it was really 1/4 of the price of a full game as well as being free to play online. Valve even tried to get free content onto the Xbox but MS did not have and refused to allow a price of $0 for DLC. Stardock continued to add new content to Galactic Civilisations for almost 2 years despite there being 2 expansion packs (priced cheaper then traditional expansion packs as well).
Could you point out what is wrong in this scenario.
Oh, that's right, nothing. It just doesn't fit in with your bias.
Am I missing something here? There is nothing difficult about connecting a PC to a TV.
Nope, you haven't missed anything. The first thing I did with my 40" Samsung TV is plugged the HDMI into my PC using a DVI converter. Played Crysis for about 20 minutes until the lustre wore off and I realised that it wasn't really any better then my 22" LCD and a bit more uncomfortable. Presently a small form factor PC is attached to that TV serving as a media centre
Like most things that Console players claim about PC, the difficulty level is greatly exaggerated. It's no more difficult then plugging a console, in fact with modern bluetooth controllers it's a lot more difficult then plugging in my USB mouse and Keyboard.
Yes, that is a good one which is why I added it. Most of my DOS games either play natively in Windows XP or run happily on DOSBOX in Linux. You could pull out $OBSCURER_DOS_TITLE but you know thats not the norm.
So have you actually tried running a DOS game on a modern PC or just assumed that it didnt run.
1. Insert disc, run installer. Wait for files to copy.
2. Run game, discover it comes with an auto-updater, and that there was a 500MB patch released three days before the game was released. Download and install that.
3. After either the Consoles DRM decides you're a pirate you get banned from Xbox Live or PSN
There, fixed that for you. There is yet to be a PC DRM system that hasn't been cracked to the point where the layman cant do it.
Console:
1. try to make out text that isnt aliased/sampled properly.
2. play for 5 minutes.
3. Level transition time, loading.
4. play.
5. load.
6. play.
7. load.
8. change disk.
9. load.
10. RROD.
11. vendor retroactively takes features.
12. game vendor nickels and dimes you for DLC.
13. after 13 DLC's at $5 each you finally have a full game.
PC
1. Set resolution to monitors native (most games do this automatically now).
2. Play.
3. Keep playing.
4. Holy crap, there's more then 4 hours of content in the game and no loading screen.
5. Enjoy quicksaving.
6. Get free content from the distributor (thanks valve and stardock).
7. Play the game 15 years later on your modern gaming PC.
More like waiting rooms. You either put a distraction in there or people make their own, especially when one can be waiting 2-5 hours to see someone about licensing, paperwork or various registrations and fines.
Sure, these people might have no protection against toxins...but the alternative choice might be starvation or prostitution or even more horrible jobs like stone crushing. (yes, that is a job)
So, a girl who can earn a months wage in a factory in just three nights on her back is far worse then the Bhopal disaster?
This is not insightful at all. It is a terrible justification for keeping people in terrible conditions and it's wrong, people want to believe it because it makes them feel better.
You're rant against "do gooders" ignores all the people who work to establish sustainable farming and industry with safety that meets most western standards. That means workers aren't standing around in toxins, have helmets and gloves as well as several other simple safety measures like training (e.g. spot the hazard). It helps you to belittle people actually trying to make lives better as that means you aren't being as selfish as you really are. It may come as a surprise to you but most people involved in "doing good" in poorer nations actually want to help develop sustainable communities, these are people like non-religious private aid agencies and the UN amongst others. I used to work for a company that formed a non-profit charity organisation after the tsunami in Asia, for the most part all this organisation does is zero interest loans and business advice (supporting the people who take the loans).
Note that when 3rd worlders start making more than 10K USD per person in Per-Capita
You really have no clue about the third or developing world. The problem isn't when the average wage out of 100 people is 10K, I can show you that in Thailand and 80 of the 100 people will be subsistence farmers. The problem the developing world has is that the distribution wealth is so terribly lopsided, a few people make billions whilst most of the population makes little.
Do you honestly think that factories in China, Vietnam and Thailand operate without the consent of the local politicians or business leaders? No, of course not they're involved and getting their cut.
I'm sorry to interrupt your free market drivel, but ignoring the problem will not make it go away, it took 20 years just for the Indian people to get to declare Union Carbide exec's guilty, they were fined US$2000 and let go, not a single exec ended up in jail, not a single western exec was even charged.
3. There are no "czars" in this government. Some people are more senior, and have more authority; other people are less senior and have less authority. Are you in favor of everyone having the same authority? Or do you object to the word "czar"? Heaven knows it's an objectionable word, but it's one that the media uses to describe otherwise boring titles.
Yes, yes I object to the word "Czar", it's a bastardisation of the root word, Ceasar.
Realistically we should have more accurate names, right now in Australia there is certain politician who's title is "Minister of Communications, Broadband and the Digital Economy" when he really needs to be called the "Fürer of the Internet".
Slashdot Mirror
From the fine article
Anyone with a basic understanding of troubleshooting tech should be able to tell that the signal drop is not caused by software as it only happens when the aerial is touched. Anyone with a basic understanding of electrical engineering could tell you that this is because you are changing the length of the circuit (your hand becomes a conductor). This will cause the aerial to have a harder time picking up the correct frequencies. Apple ignored some basic EE design rules here and didn't test the design properly.
Because Nintendo did a very Japanese thing and threw the business self on the sword to save face. Keeping customers satisfied was of paramount concern, you'll notice Toyota did the same thing with the Prius acceleration issues.
/.ers are not typical customers) so if you damage the image, you damage customer satisfaction.
The problem with Apple doing this is that it would be an admission of guilt. An admission that an Apple product has a flaw would destroy the image that Apple has worked to create and doing this would destroy the reason that many people buy Apple products. Most people who buy Apple products do it for the image (a few fanboys will post to the contrary, I'd remind them that
Apple's already fixed this issue. They've declared that 2 bars are "full" bars, your display will be changed to reflect the new truth in the next software update.
In case you didnt know, people who order from the UK outside the EU do not pay VAT (effectively removing 20% of the retail cost) making it cheaper to order from the UK when you live in a nation which doesn't tax parallel imports. I paid A$580 for my Moto Milestone to get delivered, that's about US$520 at the current exch rate.
Secondly, the Samsung Galaxy S is an import from Korea, where Samsung makes the phones and the Evo 4G is not sold anywhere outside the US (HTC expressly designed it for Sprint) so please get your facts straight before posting fanboyish nonsense.
Citation needed. I cant find one on the US site without an AT&T contract.
Where did you go to school, North Korea? I know people from Iran and schooling isn't that bad. I think you're exaggerating here.
This is rural Australia 10 years ago (oh dear FSM, has it been that long) and I did travel 90 KM, both ways, in the blistering Australian heat.
06:00 get up, shower, breakfast.
06:35 Walk to the bus stop.
06:45 Get on the bus. Most people would actually talk to each other on the bus as long as it was kept to a reasonable volume, in 2000 the bus got a VCR player and TV. Ideal time to finish the homework from last night.
07:50 Arrive at school.
08:00 lines form for first period.
08:10 classes begin, periods 1 and 2 (~1 hour periods).
10:15 Recess. Play sports or just sit around talking.
10:45 Period 3.
11:55 Lunch. There's be football, basketball and other sports outside, reading or internet access in the library. Everyone brownbaged (bought their own lunch) as hot options were always expensive in Australia.
12:30 Period 4.
13:30 Form/study period. Always occurred in the same class as period 4, mostly people chatted or caught up with class work.
13:50 Period 5.
14:50 End, back on the bus. There was music but I'd typically listen to my walkman (later upgraded to a discman), because I couldn't and still cant stomach Rap or late 90's pop.
16:10 Start walking home.
16:20 Get home.
For most Australian kids who didn't live in the middle of fucking nowhere (pick a spot on the north west Australian coast and go 500 KMs inland) you could cut at least 30 minutes of travel time each way. A lot of kids live less then 15 minutes walk from their schools. This is what happens when you invest in a good education system.
Because he loves his kids and wants them to have a future.
He recognises that home-schooling will only serve to pass on his own biases and weaknesses, meanwhile completely stifling the child's ability to grow as an individual as well as killing their ability to learn new social skills in a mixed environment. This will ultimately isolate the child from their peers where they will not question the ideas that their parents have indoctrinated into them.
The type of personality that advocates "home schooling" tends to be less concerned with a child's growth and education and more concerned that a child does not learn anything that would contradict their parents beliefs. As the GP said, this is highly dependent on the teacher they get.
If a parent truly wants to help then they would provide an environment outside of school where creativity is encouraged. Just giving the kid a mecano or lego set is a great start or try teaching them something about mechanics or electronics. Better yet, run a bit of a clinic for all the child's friends, the absolute best thing you can do to turn your kid into a bitter husk is isolate them from contact with people their own age.
Copyright laws work for the good of the people
The brilliant thing about conspiracy theories is that they don't actually need to be rational, verifiable or even possible. So long as you throw enough emotionally weighted language and loaded terms like "political" or "Garbage" you don't need to prove anything.
Oddly enough, your theory falls victim to the same "sin" you accuse the scientists of, perhaps you should spend some "quality time" behind bars for having "perpetrated some obvious frauds".
P.S. you didn't say political enough times, people saw through that.
P.P.S you should have bolded "Garbage In Garbage Out" as that would have helped to detract from the lack of actual fact in your post.
You're quite right, that is nowhere near what you paid for your Iphone.
If you bought it on a contract you paid about 3 times that amount. If you terminate early you have to pay a fee for the handset or hand it back.
If you want to buy it outright you can start around US$850.
HTC Evo 4G = US$570
Samsung Galaxy S = US$620
Apple Iphone 3Gs 16GB = US$840
You were saying?
It appears the top end android phones are a full US$200 or 25% cheaper then the lowest end Iphones.
Apple didnt develop WebKit (KHTML), LLVM or CalDAV. They didn't develop or open source CUPS either, they purchased the source code in 2007. Please get your facts straight.
Secondly, Apple has more software patents then Microsoft. Apple does not open source what it can avoid open sourcing. They embody the reason the GPL v3 exists, Apple takes from OSS and gives little back, just enough to avoid legal action.
OK then, I'll just run it up on my AMD Phenom gaming rig shall I. Make no mistake, Mac's are limited, maybe not as much as iDevices but it's still limited and locked down. Saying this is "better" is like Jane saying her new boyfriend is better because he only beats her half as much, you're ignoring the fact that it's locked down in the first place.
No, both Apple and MS do this. The critical difference is that Microsoft has been successful. Apple will happily sue it's competitors (Apple Computers vs Microsoft, Apple Inc vs HTC and so forth) but it always ends up losing. MS on the other hand buys out competitors, strong arms suppliers and makes back room deals, so MS has been quite successful.
Except we don't know if the list is secret or not.
Those behind the filter do not want people to know what is being blocked as "it lets people know where child porn is". It's almost as if they have some delusional idea that if people know about child porn they'll instantly become paedophiles. This has the effect of hiding false positives.
Rant aside, all this will end up being is a button on my iinet control panel saying "do you want to take part in voluntary filtering (_)YES (_)NO" and if it becomes a pain the "NO" box will get ticked by default.
For a long time now I've said that this will be kicked around parliament with no real action being taken. Every time KRudd bought it in the last year up he faced a rebellion from the back bench from those MP's who relied on a narrow margin to keep their seats. Gillard has not gone one way or the other remaining ambiguous on the subject (she's a lawyer after all). I don't think Labor needs the fundie vote and Abott is more likely to get the fundies on side with Gillard being "non-religious" but Labor is not willing to alienate any voters at this point in time.
This bill will get kicked around some more and dismissed or watered down so much that it's never truly implemented. With any luck, Conroy will lose his seat in the senate (dearest Victorians, this is your problem, we westies have our hands full supporting the nations economy right now) and a Labor/Green coalition will remain in power. I have no doubt the ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) will pressure Tony Abott to implement some kind of filter if he wins and I don't think Abott has the stones to deny the ACLs request.
The OP said "US Tourist", but that's a given as anyone else knows the US did not actually win the cold war it just fizzled out (realistically it had been approaching this point for years with Moscow and Washington increasing diplomatic relations (glasnost) and leaders figuring out trade would get more then espionage ever did).
The problem is the iZealots wont let things like this go. Even though the service and software existed before the Iphone.
But Kudos to the submitter for having the stones to own up to and try to fix his mistake, that's a quality we rarely see these days.
Actually, the biggest market in Australia for Iphones is the low earners, minimum wage and sub A$30K crowd. They get the oldest, cheapest model on a A$49 plan and think it's a bargain. This is the kind of person who uses a phone to replace a desktop or laptop, not that they used a desktop or laptop for anything more complex then Arsebook.
Iphones have become synoymous with "cant afford anything better but want to look like I have money", RIM and Nokia E series means "Work gave me this phone so I have a high paying job", Android means "I'm geeky enough to know better" or "I listened to someone who knows better" whilst WinMo and Nokia N series says "I don't really know what I'm doing and let the salesdroid talk me into this, oooh look it's a bycycle".
What's weird about that?
Europe abolished slavery long before the US (even existed in some cases).
Europe gained workers rights before the US.
Europe gave women voting rights before the US.
Europe got rid of segregation long before the US.
It does not surprise me in the slightest that Europe is ahead of the US in protecting privacy. There is more to Europe's history then a war the US was only in half of.
No, they did and realised I was right.
Team Fortress 2 was released in October 2007. Nearly 3 years later Valve are still adding new features and updating the engine. Better yet, Team Fortress 2 was sold in the Orange Box, along with Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2 and Portal so it was really 1/4 of the price of a full game as well as being free to play online. Valve even tried to get free content onto the Xbox but MS did not have and refused to allow a price of $0 for DLC. Stardock continued to add new content to Galactic Civilisations for almost 2 years despite there being 2 expansion packs (priced cheaper then traditional expansion packs as well).
Could you point out what is wrong in this scenario.
Oh, that's right, nothing. It just doesn't fit in with your bias.
Nope, you haven't missed anything. The first thing I did with my 40" Samsung TV is plugged the HDMI into my PC using a DVI converter. Played Crysis for about 20 minutes until the lustre wore off and I realised that it wasn't really any better then my 22" LCD and a bit more uncomfortable. Presently a small form factor PC is attached to that TV serving as a media centre
Like most things that Console players claim about PC, the difficulty level is greatly exaggerated. It's no more difficult then plugging a console, in fact with modern bluetooth controllers it's a lot more difficult then plugging in my USB mouse and Keyboard.
Yes, that is a good one which is why I added it. Most of my DOS games either play natively in Windows XP or run happily on DOSBOX in Linux. You could pull out $OBSCURER_DOS_TITLE but you know thats not the norm.
So have you actually tried running a DOS game on a modern PC or just assumed that it didnt run.
There, fixed that for you. There is yet to be a PC DRM system that hasn't been cracked to the point where the layman cant do it.
Console:
1. try to make out text that isnt aliased/sampled properly.
2. play for 5 minutes.
3. Level transition time, loading.
4. play.
5. load.
6. play.
7. load.
8. change disk.
9. load.
10. RROD.
11. vendor retroactively takes features.
12. game vendor nickels and dimes you for DLC.
13. after 13 DLC's at $5 each you finally have a full game.
PC
1. Set resolution to monitors native (most games do this automatically now).
2. Play.
3. Keep playing.
4. Holy crap, there's more then 4 hours of content in the game and no loading screen.
5. Enjoy quicksaving.
6. Get free content from the distributor (thanks valve and stardock).
7. Play the game 15 years later on your modern gaming PC.
More like waiting rooms. You either put a distraction in there or people make their own, especially when one can be waiting 2-5 hours to see someone about licensing, paperwork or various registrations and fines.
So, a girl who can earn a months wage in a factory in just three nights on her back is far worse then the Bhopal disaster?
This is not insightful at all. It is a terrible justification for keeping people in terrible conditions and it's wrong, people want to believe it because it makes them feel better.
You're rant against "do gooders" ignores all the people who work to establish sustainable farming and industry with safety that meets most western standards. That means workers aren't standing around in toxins, have helmets and gloves as well as several other simple safety measures like training (e.g. spot the hazard). It helps you to belittle people actually trying to make lives better as that means you aren't being as selfish as you really are. It may come as a surprise to you but most people involved in "doing good" in poorer nations actually want to help develop sustainable communities, these are people like non-religious private aid agencies and the UN amongst others. I used to work for a company that formed a non-profit charity organisation after the tsunami in Asia, for the most part all this organisation does is zero interest loans and business advice (supporting the people who take the loans).
You really have no clue about the third or developing world. The problem isn't when the average wage out of 100 people is 10K, I can show you that in Thailand and 80 of the 100 people will be subsistence farmers. The problem the developing world has is that the distribution wealth is so terribly lopsided, a few people make billions whilst most of the population makes little.
Do you honestly think that factories in China, Vietnam and Thailand operate without the consent of the local politicians or business leaders? No, of course not they're involved and getting their cut.
I'm sorry to interrupt your free market drivel, but ignoring the problem will not make it go away, it took 20 years just for the Indian people to get to declare Union Carbide exec's guilty, they were fined US$2000 and let go, not a single exec ended up in jail, not a single western exec was even charged.
Just wait until they find out about the prostitution.
Yes, yes I object to the word "Czar", it's a bastardisation of the root word, Ceasar.
Realistically we should have more accurate names, right now in Australia there is certain politician who's title is "Minister of Communications, Broadband and the Digital Economy" when he really needs to be called the "Fürer of the Internet".