Except that you usually cannot return an opened video game (or opened CD or DVD), because of the suspicion of piracy: http://help.walmart.com/app/an...

Also, your explanation is like a designer saying: "What, you wanted the picture with a 1920x1080 resolution? Yea, I made it 320x240 and then stretched it using Microsoft Paint and saved it at a higher resolution. It's 1920x1080, what's your problem?"

Thank you for realizing the corruption problem. I'm pretty sure governmental workers don't have a need for a "work iPad", and it's pretty awkward doing the maintenance/change management when you have a fleet of PCs and then this department gets a bunch of Macs.

Also I thought that on Slashdot we blame Apple for making expensive crap anyway, at which point not buying them would be wise buying policies for a government... ;)

So apparently, and I'm leeching from another post above (kudos and thanks DeathElk), they're not!

http://community.skype.com/t5/...

The app itself forces you to upgrade, because ... I was going to write yay-money-grab, but Skype is "free", so... I'm not sure, more ads, more NSA loopholes, or something, but as expected nothing changed technology-wise and everything still works if you block the call to force the update.

So, my gf had to update her Mac OS (granted, 5-6 years old Mac) just so that we could chat on Skype. It's not about having updates forever. She didn't want a single update. Hell, I don't want a single update either. If my shit works, it works, leave it be. I'm not even sure what Skype updates add except ads and a module that increases memory consumption. (I'm half-kidding; I truly don't know what those updates give me, but I don't _really_ think it's just to make me use more RAM.)

tldr: I don't want a fucking update. I paid for my shit and I want it to work like when I paid for it, not a succession of updates that do I-have-no-clue-what.

Granted, Skype is free, but the point remains... why does it need to forcefully update? Let me use my old version, did your protocol suddenly change?... And if my computer/OS is 5 years-old but works fine for me, why should I upgrade? Right now there's just no choice; your app _mandates_ an upgrade and then stops working, and you're like "well fuck I guess I need to change OS". Remember when you weren't _forced_ to update your software? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

So, you're Lawful Evil then?...

The government also tends to _pass laws_, I don't know if you noticed. The "law" is supposed to be rooted in morals and ethics, and it is entirely possible to act in a lawful and yet unethical manner. In this case the government has been lying to us for years, but revealing that the government is behaving unethically yielded a witch hunt for the lone unlawful rebel instead of a scandal about how the government has been acting all along.

This is like a king yelling "Traitor! To death!" when evidence is published that the king behaved wrongly for years.

Yay internet vocabulary fight! :)

Debatable (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/debatable):
1. open to question; in dispute; doubtful: Whether or not he is qualified for the job is debatable.
2. capable of being debated.

Synonyms
1. questionable, dubious, arguable, disputable.

Perhaps "questionable" or "dubious" would have been a better choice, but it's "debatable" because I'm unsure whether or not they charge that $500. Their policy says they do; their response to this scandal is they don't. We can debate whether they're being truthful or not. You're right though, it serves no purpose. :) And if it can be proven, using something else than the response of the management, that they never charged this penalty, then there's nothing to debate anymore. :)

Except, if you actually read all the TripAdvisor reviews (I had a lot of time to waste yesterday), you do notice a few things:

1. The owners seem incredibly snarky.
2. There's multiple cases of people getting charged even though they tried cancelling half a year in advance
3. They seem to suffer from low staff and debatable accounting practices
4. There's a of positive reviews from people with 1 review, and he accuses negative reviewers of being liars when they have a few reviews on their account

Whether or not they actually charge $500 for bad online reviews is debatable, but they sure seem like dicks and charge for everything else, and have bad business practices.

Totally agree, it wasn't always "China", and there are many, many different tribes currently included in "Chinese". In fact, the current dominant ethic Han were not always the emperors, but I digress.

Here, let me google that for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

There's an amazing animated map on the right. The entire east/south of China has been "China" ever since, roughly, 300 BC (yep, that's 2300 years ago). The west (which, must I remind you, is nowhere as populated as the east, and certainly was even less populated before "modern China") was entirely conquered, or at least considered China, for the first time in roughly 1200 (800 years ago). Some fragments had been conquered and then lost previous to that, but whatever. In 1892, China occupied also all of current Mongolia, too, apparently.

Basically China as we know it is maybe new, but there has been mingling of population and wars over _thousands of years_. You could argue it belonged to.. different warring factions, or city-states, back in the days, but that's like saying the Italians had a bunch of city-states. As a whole though? The concept of "China" has been in the region considered China now for a long, long, long time. You can argue about Tibet, though it was conquered by Mongols in the 13th century, along with China and a lot of the Middle-East, and by the Qing in the early 18th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tibet#Manchurian_Qing_Dynasty). I mean... I don't know man, what do you want me to say? Those ethnic tribes considered "Chinese" have been sharing this territory for a couple hundred/thousands of years, and they've had a lot of wars, for sure, but that's no different than most old civilizations...

The point is, the current China has now joined the Western world's game of Diplomacy, and people are just unhappy at a new player. There is no historical reason to believe they would use their ICBMs more than the US or anyone else, and I can't blame them for wanting to play the game because they got screwed not playing it for the past hundred years.

Yes because historically China has always been an imperial force seeking domination, and not the country that got shat on repeatedly in the 19th/20th century.

Hint: Almost all of China's wars were internal (or at least in the territory of current China). The Opium war and the invasion by Japan led the country to decide they need to play the game others are playing, which is what they've been doing since then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_wars_and_battles

It totally is about military power now, but I find it hard to not understand them, due to the history.

Correct: http://www.vox.com/2014/7/31/5...

Why not both? - taco girl.

Seriously we're talking of an organization that is involved in covert military intelligence or worse and spies on the entire world, including US citizens, that is funded by the US government but lies to its elected officials and also spies on them. Really? Shut it down or massively cut down on its powers, and jail every leader involved. If you can't do that, then does the US government control the CIA, or does the CIA control the US government?...

What kind of "applications" are you building using data from your ERP system? The whole goal of having the system is to have this single, integrated software that does everything. Sure you can interface with it, but "best practices" would mandate you only do it when it's strictly necessary. Having a bunch of Excel spreadsheets running around kind of defeats the purpose of having your ERP in the first place.. I know the costs are always great, but if your ERP system can do what you want to achieve, then use it. You never know if the APIs are as great as you think they are, and I shudder to think of having to maintain 20 different applications using an ERP system whose data model might change ever so slightly over the years...

Also, plan your staffing. If you have the money to pay for Oracle, you have the money to hire one or two people in-house to manage and code on it. They can guide your consultants and keep them honest, without that expertise you can easily be wasting money. The best people are the ones that worked as developers at Oracle, don't count on people that studied to just get a certification.

So I was having a conversation at work the other day, and the topic of protests and the French came up. Everyone had a good laugh, because "haha those French, lost WW2 and go on protesting every weekend, yay freedom fries 'murica".

I'm appalled that when your elected representatives make decisions a large portion of the population decries, there is no sign of disagreement. I'm not suggesting murdering people, but the step before revolution, in a democratic country, should be to let your opinion known and denounce the situation. Which is what the French love to do, since they sparked this entire democracy thing with their revolution (yea, the Greeks, yadda yadda). Send mails to and call your congressmen, but more importantly, organize yourself. Protest it, denounce it, make it known, make it impossible to ignore. That's how you change things.

And if it doesn't? Then you need to admit you stopped living in a democracy, and do whatever is necessary to restore it, if you want democracy back.

+1. The way Dwarves are being treated is racism, pure and simple. :(

Just going to put this up here.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
http://www.newrepublic.com/art...

Not taking sides, just thought these are informative.