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Comment Re:Please pick Elop.... (Score 1) 292

by bfandreas (#45375845) Attached to: Stephen Elop Would Pull a Nokia On Microsoft
Yes, he could have gone Android. I still remember the discussion about that a couple of years ago. The rationale then was that that would turn Nokia from THE dominant market player into just another mobe manufacturer. That was when the sales figures of Android devices was going up and was predicted to rise even more at the cost of Nokia's share.

The difference between Google developing Android and Nokia developing Maemo was that Google was really comitted to it whereas the infighting at Nokia around Maemo/Meego was legendary. Also Google was prepared to quickly go public with a crap first Android version while Nokia kept polishing, reworking and restructuring their new systems just to find a market that wouldn't sustain another mobe OS.

I had an E61 in 2007 and I thought it was the bee's knees and fanboyishly shrugged off anybody who said it was dated since I could run ScummVM on it. In 2008/2009 I was seriously eying a N800 and was counting the moments until its release. One year later I had an Android phone with the same capabilities. Elop showed up at Nokia in 2010.

In 2008 Maemo was designed with a single-touch gesture UI while world+dog was raving about "pinch to zoom". Hadn't they dragged their feet and rushed it out they could have competed with Android.

The only thing I grant you lot was that jumping onto the Windows mobe train(well dog cart at most) was doomed. But Nokia was dying/dead long before Elop put his dick into it.

Comment Re:Please pick Elop.... (Score 3, Interesting) 292

by bfandreas (#45371385) Attached to: Stephen Elop Would Pull a Nokia On Microsoft

That moron completely destroyed Nokia, he will do the same to Microsoft.

He didn't destroy Nokia. It was doomed before he showed up. They had slept through the smartphone revolution for quite some time before and spent most of the time infighting or directionlessly redoing the Meego/Maemo UI over and over again.
He failed to turn the company around after the market had already been neatly divided between iThings and Androids.

From a business point of view Microsoft had used the XBox to get a foothold "in the living room" and has sunk quite a lot of money into that and the competition is fierce. It might very well be that they should do just that.

Whatever. I don't care either way.

Comment Re:Outright bans are not smart (Score 1) 376

by bfandreas (#45366247) Attached to: WRT trans fats, the FDA should ...
I don't like outright bans with licensed exceptions. that's idiotic. The other extreme is hoping that "market forces" or unicorns or other things magically manage to regulate this.

What is needed is an informed and sympathetic consumer and regulation of excesses. Especially the first bit is not easy to achieve but it is the right thing to do. Same thing should be done with sugary stuff.

How about we tell everybody that their favourite brand of coke contains some salt so they feel the need to drink more of that vile stuff? An informed consumer is the thing we need to achieve so only that fat lazy stupid bastards die of avoidable side effects of systematic malnutrition. Perhaps a hefty tax on processed foods dedicated to deal with the health cost of malnutrition is in order, too. It's somewhat weird that cooking yourself is more expensive than eating processed stuff. Especially if you are hunting for bargains.

Comment Re:Vegans need it (Score 2) 520

by bfandreas (#45366107) Attached to: US FDA Moves To Ban Trans Fat
While I too am not a fan of government bans I have to say that relying on consumer choice for them to get something as basic nutrition right is beyond naive. While vegans truly must come from another star system the mainstream is not any better.

To my European taste the US food is not edible. Everything is far, far too sweet. Setting aside the madness that is HFCS most of the processed foods are frankly disgusting. Why there needs to be so much sweetener in bread, ketchup, peanutbutter, stuff that doesn't need to be sweet is beyond me. And the sweets are so sweet you feel like your mouth is being pickled with sugar.

This, too, is a problem in Europe. But in the US you can detect it with a minimum of functional taste buds.

I think the story you can take away from TFA is that you shouldn't buy processed food. Anywhere. Problem is, it tends to be dirt cheap.

Comment Re:The verdict on Edward Snowden (Score 2) 510

A person is a person. Illegal is only a state of law and as such arbitrary. If a law gets in the way of doing the right thing like sheltering somebody who's country has been just bombed to bits then you can safely ignore it.
I don't get why so many people are prepared to accept laws at face value.

Comment Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score 2) 510

Sociopaths are, for the most part, charming. The ones who do not get thrown in prison or institutionalized have adapted to demonstrate the proper behavior at the right time, simply to get what they want.

No, those are psychopaths. Sociopaths are in fact those who can't even simulate being sane in public.

Comment Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score 2) 510

But , honestly, couldn't the whole thing be solved with instituting a hunting season w/ no limits? They still have hunting weapons over there don't they? A list of registered offenders and a box of 12 ga. shells. All that's left is to call for an appt. with the taxidermist. Personally I'd love a hunting season. I already print off the I.D. pages from the local registry and tack them to lampposts near the offenders home, in case the neighbors didn't know about the registry. What FUN! If they get torn down, I just put them back up again , wheeeeeeeeeeeee! Sneakernet LIVES! Webpages on poles.

That is actually a bit creepy.

Comment Re:UK (Score 2) 510

Unfortunately, we even have to import the bananas.

...and the monarchs.
Let's not forget the Windsors rebranded themselves from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha when being German was considered somewhat unpopular during WW1. So they named themselves after a German brand of Danish cookies.

It's a rightful mess, innit?

Comment Re:The naivety on here is staggering (Score 1) 510

So you think leaking confidential documents *doesn't* damage security in some way? Have you just landed from Planet Naive?

In this case, pretty much no.

In this case, pretty much yes.
It is a severe threat to the job security and budget of those parasites who lost a sense of proportion of what is acceptable and those who were supposed to oversee them.

National security is still exposed to the usual threat by those who are supposed to run the country for the benefit of all. Which justifies a permanent orange threat level. If the current bunch were vikings, Alfred the Great would rise from the grave and drive them back into the sea. Although that might not be possible due to the current international treaties concerning pollution of the North Sea.

Comment Re:I read this on Techdirt: (Score 1) 510

(Copied from a Techdirt comment): I wonder if the CIA distributes pedo material the same way they get Swiss bankers to drink-drive?

Imagine you are a UK minister. Like most men you look at porn because you're biologically programmed to like pictures of woman doing stuff. Like most ministers you pretend porn is vial and evil, because that's how you get elected.

CIA wants to turn you into an apparatchik, so they do their 'redirect' attack, the one they use to MITM Google in one of the leaks. CIA redirects them to a kiddy porn server in Orlando, now the logs of both GCHQ and NSA show them visiting a kiddy diddling site.

CIA man visits minister and explains the shock and outrage at finding this, but assures minister that he's a good man and therefore the CIA won't tell.

Minister can't go to MI5 because Parker could be a CIA apparatchik (he is doing an attack on the free press FFS). Indeed he can't get help at all, because all it takes is ONE apparatchik among the people in the know and he is gone.

It may sound fanciful, but the mechanisms are already in place. Also read a few leaks. The plan to attack Greenwald & Wikileaks.

http://www.thetechherald.com/articles/Data-intelligence-firms-proposed-a-systematic-attack -against-WikiLeaks/12751/

The leverage they got over a Swiss Banker:

http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-describes-cia-tricks-2013-6

The weird way ministers are behaving.

This practice goes way back. That's how they got Thatcher to do Reagans biddings...

Comment Re:consistent much? (Score 1) 510

You are aware it it the British police saying this? You know, where the strictest of gun laws in the USA is orders of magnitude more permisive than what is allowed in England?

The rozzers currently have so much egg on their face a brain-fart like that won't misdirect the current attention they gained for being corrupt, lying and brutal bastards.

Take money from the yellow press, be caught lying about an incident that forced a senior politician to resign and demonstably be disonest why they shot a guy who posed no threat and you will have some yolk dripping down your collar. Sprinkle this with a misplaced esprit d'corps and obfuscation and feet-dragging and suddenly you will think of their uniform as nothing more than gang colours.

Comment Re:The verdict on Edward Snowden (Score 5, Insightful) 510

These wankers in Britsh govt (and civil service) know very well how much are their sleezy sicko tricks are exposed .. so take the usual mud slinging tactic .. Edward Snowden, you are true hero.

The kind of sleaze like running ads on vans for "illegals" to turn themselves in? If UKIP says something like this is going too far then you know they absolutely crossed all lines including the date-line. Calling them wankers is an insult to all masturbators everywhere.

Comment Re:Damn poop detector is going off again (Score 4, Insightful) 510

Cameron and May have no place on a high horse.
The UK Tories have a long track record of comically wrong policies. Especially May is utterly despicable. Anybody remember the Snooper's Charta? Guess what? GCHQ didn't need it at all. And the Snooper's Charta was killed off(read: tabled) for being too far-fetching. Add to this the abysmal PR campaign where they painted an invitation for illegal immigrants to call a phone number for deportation on the side of lorries. And the text message campaign doing the same. And now they say that unearthing their lack of oversight aids pedos, terrorists and crims.
Where before this their policies seemed to be merely incompetent they now look like acts of malice.

The UK shows the least grace of all parties involved in the Snowden revelations. Pity the country that NEEDS The Grauniad.

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