What's an extra $10-20?
More than half the price of another raspberry pi.
People with brains buy a system to suit their needs. People with really good brains optimise that system to get maximum performance. Everybody else needlessly spends money on something more powerful than they need.
Well I bought 3 things from Aliexpress:
A 32gb SD card which craps out if you copy more than 2gb on it.
A set of 3w garden lights which draw just over 1.5w at full power and burn out if you even slightly raise the voltage.
A Bluetooth speaker with the beats logo which has approximately 10 min battery life.
So yes you can make anything for any price, but I'd rather buy something which works rather than something unrealistically cheap.
Made in China vs made in UK?
Actually Apple do claim that iCloud is very secure: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT...
Apple have long claimed to offer platforms free from malware and protected from hacking too. iOS even protects your kids from inappropriate content. Apple make big claims about security all the time.
If someone put their money in a reputable bank and it was stolen, would you blame them? The photos were in password protected accounts from a reputable company that claimed to be secure. There were no "your photos may be hacked" warnings. While it may seem obvious to people like us that the risk is there, most people don't think that way and can't really be blamed for not doing so. How is a password for iCloud any different from the password for your online banking or PIN number for the average person?
They evaluated the risks with the information they had, and Apple failed them. If Apple were a bank they would be entirely liable for any financial loss, no question.
What it comes down to is, if you don't want naked pictures of yourself to end up for all the world to see, don't take naked pictures of yourself.
Many of the photos appear to be taken by other people. In any case, people should be free to explore their sexuality with photos if they want, without the risk that they will be broadcast to the world. It's bad enough that paparazzi use telephoto lenses to take pictures of people in their own private areas.
Poor security is not a given, it's just the norm. Don't accept it. If more companies were facing lawsuits with truly punitive damages they might make more of an effort.
I imagine many of them want to be seen as serious actresses and realize that doing excessive, unwarranted nudity early in their careers would sabotage that. Maybe later when they are established they can feel more relaxed about it, but when young doing topless/nude screens is pretty much the mark of a talentless only-there-for-her-looks b-list star. There are exceptions of course, but they are just that - exceptions.
To be fair, the companies swear blind that their services are secure and as long as you are the only one with the password no-one else can see your private photos. People trust companies like Apple when the say that sort of thing, daft as that may seem.
While true that Apple is by no means the worst at security, they are one of the most image concious companies in the world and if there is a celebrity backlash due to these leaks it could really harm them. Doesn't help their iPhone 6 launch in the next week or two either.
Ugh... puns.
Passenger pigeons were not primarily a grain species, although they would eat grain when other preferred foods were in short supply. Part of the reasons the flocks increasingly turned to grain with time is due to the cutting and burning of many of their native forests to make room for farmland (and with an average lifespan in captivity of 15 years, probably half that in the wild, populations don't readjust right away). They were a migratory species, of course, but the habitat destruction was going on all over their range. If you get rid of the oaks and chestnuts in an area and the only other food option is grain, of course they're going to eat that. They also ate insects, mainly when breeding.
When you're talking about reintroducing a species from scratch, obviously the issues of what to do if a billion birds come into the area is totally inapplicable. The forests capable of supporting those numbers are gone. Birds that primarily consume seeds and grains are a much bigger threat to farmers than birds with a primary focus on nuts like the passenger pigeon.
it would take years for the ground plants to recover
Citation needed. Bird manure is one of the best natural fertilizers in existence. Have you seen what people charge for chicken manure? It's outrageous. Now, it's a concentrated enough fertilizer that you have to use it more like a chemical fertilizer than a soil suppliment - so it's possible that the pigeons would "nutrient burn" a location. But that's short term, in the long term that means leaving the area incredibly lush. And not to mention full of seeds in their droppings.
Trees and many smaller plants primarily cater to birds as their seed distributors.
Passenger pigeons mainly ate tree nuts, particularly acorns, for most of the year. So they had a big effect on controlling tree distribution - in particular red oak has taken over from white oak after their demise in their former habitats (white oak is a slightly more valuable timber tree, FYI). During the summer they would also eat berries. They would sometimes steal grain from farmers but it wasn't a main part of their diet. They additionally consumed insects such as caterpillars and snails, so they did some good for farmers as well.
FYI, honeybees aren't native to the US. And colony populations are totally artificial, as people can raise as many colonies as they want, queens are mass-raised (you can mail order them) and the only limiting factor on the number of honeybees is the number of hives raised by beekeepers. Colony losses are a financial hit to beekepers but they're no threat to the species or the usage of honey bees for pollination (only the economics of their usage). And the increase in the rate of colony loss is way overplayed.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
