Well, they are using data from TomTom as far as I understand.

I have the TomTom app on my iPhone and it's a lot better than the iOS 6 maps though. It's expensive and takes a lot of storage space, but it's great, especially if you might find yourself without network/internet in a foreign country or just a remote location. I have literally crossed 3 continents with it. The quality of the app, POI and map data is very very good. I must have spent about $100 to get North America, Europe and Oceania, but its well worth it. It knows all speed cameras and speed limits, it must have saved me a multitude of my investment in speeding fines alone.

Given that Apple apparently uses the same data, I'm surprised at how much worse their results are.

I find that the TomTom apps for the iPhone have both very good POI and map data. I've literally crossed 3 continents with them and they're really really good. They're not free though and take a lot of storage space.

Apple has done much worse with the same data than TomTom itself. I was rather surprised and disappointed.

I have the TomTom apps on my iPhone for several continents. They take a lot of space, but work very very well. I've travelled in Europe, North America and Australia/New Zealand, it has been very accurate, has a very good points-of-interest database, voice navigation, lane assist, traffic assist and up to date and correct maps.

I am very surprised that the quality of the iOS map application is so much less. It's very not-Apple (maybe post Steve Jobs?) to release like this, and also I would not like to be TomTom at this moment, if must rub off on them a little as well.

The TomTom applications aren't cheap, and take many GB of space (about 5 GB per continent), but they allow you full offline navigation. Personally I haven't regretted spending the money one second, and several times it has saved me a lot of time and trouble, especially in rural areas of places like Nevada, Australia, Sweden if you need to find a fuel station, restaurant, place to sleep or get to one you one you booked earlier. But it also works in NYC or Paris.

I'm just surprised.

I was under the impression that education at the university level was not job training but about concepts and understanding.

I would expect a new student at a university to already know these things.

You are very correct. the Middle East is a very different place than it was 30-40 years ago.

Most of this change seems to be fueled by oil money from Saudi-Arabia. Nearly all Qurans printed are using their version of interpretation of the texts. At least that's what I've heard.

The unresolved conflict between Israel and Palestina isn't helping either. Every time it errupts it reopens old wounds.

The USA has had a lot of advantages by being a largely immigrant country.

It's not just education, but also things like healthcare, age and health of the workforce, etc.

If you stop the immigration, you all of a sudden need to start caring for your own population much more. I think that in 50 years, America will look much more like Europe than today.

And that's assuming you live in the USA.

I can't watch movies onine legally anywhere. Not Netflix, Hulu, Amazon.com, iTunes, etc.

I got onto the BluRay bandwagon just over a year ago. It lasted for about 4 months.

The 6th or so disk I bought was for Avatar. I couldn't get it to play. When googling I found out that it probably required a software update to my Pioneer player. Due to some weird incompatibility with my TV, the software update menu doesn't work. I fiddled with it for an entire evening, over 3 hours.

In the end I downloaded the movie and watched it that way, despite having a legal copy.

I decided then and there never to buy a BluRay movie again, despite having paid good money for a decent player.

Of which Apple made the first one.

And the PC market exists mostly because of the deal Bill Gates made over MS-DOS. The PC hardware was nothing new, I have an ICL machine from 1979 with the same components as the first PC, it runs CP/M-86.

I don't agree with you. The success of the PC industry has been because of this high flexibility.

The problem I have with the Linux kernel, is that as a programmer, the abstraction isn't of a high enough level, so a lot of stuff needs to be done by the desktop environment. Maybe there should be a layer between the kernel and the desktop environment, or the level of abstraction should be much higher within the kernel itself.

My knowledge is somewhat dated, as I left Linux land about 5 years ago, but my problem was that often the abstraction stopped at the level of character/block device, while I wanted to talk to "scanner"/"modem"/"TVtuner"/"camera".

Without good abstraction at that level, there is no way for a device manufacturer to write a proper driver, and then I'm not even touching the binary/source debate.

There is no way to expand the interfaces, as the capabilities of a type of devices expand, if the kernel doesn't even have an abstraction at that level.

The numbers I've seen are 5-7% for rape and 3.5% for consensual intercourse. The explanation being that often rapists target the most fertile women in the 15-25% age bracket.

That sounds quite reasonable to me actually. Most crime goes unreported, and rape being a rather shameful one, I wouldn't be surprised it often went unreported.

I don't know the statistics, but the numbers you quote don't seem that odd to me. It's not statistical evidence, but there have been many cases in the news where a sex offended got caught on a few reported cases, only to have many more victims show up once the initial story hits the news. See for example the recent paedophilia scandals in the church.

If anything, the statistical evidence points to a higher chance of getting pregnant from rape (5-7%) than from consensual intercourse (3.5%). Most explanations I've seen suggest this is because rapists often select the most fertile women in the 15-25 age bracket.

I think religion plays an important role in cultural evolution. It's why the religions that preach "go forth and multiply" in general are the successful ones.

Religion has shown itself as a very good mechanism for cultures to survive (and keep those in power secure). The power of religion should not be underestimated, it's survival of the fittest at the cultural level, and religions have proven themselves very good at that.

It's still higher than the average chance to get pregnant (3.5%) from voluntary intercourse. The best explanation I've seen for the number for rape being higher than that is that rapists often target the most fertile women in the 15-25 age bracket.