Meant to end with the tidbit that the new metro line being build in Amsterdam also doesn't connect to the airport. Getting a direct bus service is also rather hard.

I have used that line as a visitor and a person without a car and it ain't as bad as that. The light rail/tram indeed does NOT connect to the airport but it DOES connect directly to the free bus service that is at the airport.

The tram has rather ample storage for bikes and the busses allow bikes to be stored on racks in front, so it is a better public transport system then exists in places like Amsterdam where you can't do this. BUT the area is HUGE and is made for cars. Roads are insanely wide and everything is spread out, so one line is hardly going to service the entire area you need to go as a resident. And getting fat Americans (they really are as fat as seen on TV) out of their gigantic cars is impossible.

It would have made more sense if they made it a tram, riding in say on the edges of the road for easy pedestrian access leaving the cars the remaining 200 meters or so in the middle of the road (they really are fucking wide) saving a LOT in construction costs. Instead they made it into a seperate track and that indeed means it doesn't really hit to many areas. Once you figured it out, it is also very very very very cheap (buy a multi-day ticket).

It was far better then I expected as a Dutch/Amsterdam person from the deep south but I can see how Americans hate it. You might actually have to walk! Going to the shops just a 10 minute walk away, my American host wanted to take the car... in beautiful dry sunny weather. WHY!!! (32 degrees celcius, in Holland when we get that maybe once a decade, the humidity is 80%) GO OUTSIDE AND ENJOY THE FUCKING NICE WEATHER AND LOOSE SOME TONS!

Oh and the metro in Amsterdam, not even the new line is. Despite the train service to the airport being rather error prone. Those in power don't use public transport so it rarely makes sense.

George Lucas did NOT make the original Star Wars alone, not The Empire Strikes Back. But "A New Hope" especially was made by a team including his wife. That you don't know about this says a LOT about human beings but it isn't hard to research.

Basically, when Lucas made a New Hope, nobody thought he was to big to contradict and he listened to advice/opinions then put it together. By the time the new episodes came around, he didn't listen and nobody dared to tell him he was wrong anyway. It is the perfect example of a benevolent dictator turning into an evil one because he has been surrounded by yes-men.

Join the dark-side Jedi, we got the original laser disc where Han Solo shoots first, Sith style! Watch the raping of your childhood, let the hatred flow through you and set you free!

TNG always sucked, always will, so it was okay to suck because it sucked. We are talking about the destruction of the original series not that yuppie whank-fest of a TNG that was the prelude for making Star Trek lighter and lighter and lighter. You would think that you couldn't get more lightweight then Voyager but they found a way.

Pfff, at least the ass-raping of my youth will be done. I thought not being Catholic I had escaped being raped up the ass in my youth... but not to worry, my youth has now been thoroughly raped. Both Star * series have now been raped completely and thoroughly. George Lucas and his PCness, Star Trek The Office and all the following series, Episode 1-3, followed by the rape of the memory of Star Trek TOS and now even the sequels to Star Wars...

All I can say, well played universe! There is now nothing left to rape. The only thing to finish it off is to make me choke on my own bile as I write this [CARRIER LOST]

So... customers care more about price then minor feature differences but are willing to pay a premium for Apple products that have minor feature differences...

That makes sense.

Oh and smartphones are hardly a budget market at the moment, if you want a budget phone, you get one for 50 dollars or less without a contract. 500-600 dollars for a smartphone is high-end. And they sell like hotcakes.

I am seriously starting to dislike Android. When it runs, it is fine BUT if you want to upgrade (coming from a DOS, Unix, Linux and Windows background) FORGET about it. It is gigantic fucking mess where you are totally at the mercy of the manufacturer as to whether your model gets an upgrade. Cyanogenmod isn't an answer either, it is FAR from a generic Android that just "works". If Android was Linux you would have distro's that ONLY ran on ONE model of Dell and then had 1 year after release small niggling bugs like the monitor not yet working...

Now I grew up with Unix, Dos, Windows and Linux. I am no stranger to having to hunt for drivers and have to deal with weird configurations and installing stuff in just the right order. But with ALL the above, you at least have the OPTION to do so.

With Android? No drivers, no configs, no nothing. Either you spend ages learning how to cook a release to tweak it or you just don't. The debug options to are shockingly bad even compared to Windows. It would be a LOT better if there was just a default install you could do and install drivers that Google required each company to make available for install if they want to use Android.

But they didn't and you suddenly realize just how fucking open the Windows platform is by comparison, just how complete Linux is.

I am either going to stick with Nexus devices in the future or hope an alternative emerges because I am NOT going to be stuck with a device that is not going to be updated by Samsung ever again.

You don't have to differentiate with screen/case etc. JUST FUCKING UPDATE YOUR FUCKING DEVICE! That will make you fucking unique in Android land. The first company that manages to release a device that can ALWAYS run the latest Android version will leave ALL the other companies in the dust.

I played Lord of the Rings Online the most and was a casual raid leader (meaning I organized and ran raids for casual players where often the loot would go to someone who had a birthday or fought well or been really unlucky rather then loot tables, I also didn't care about levels or experience). They were somewhat popular and I was asked to lead other groups... and then found out that in the NON-PUG groups, getting people to talk was a LOT easier. In the PUG raids everyone had sound on but for some reason few had a microphone. Suddenly in the closed raids, most had. And high voices.

Turns out I had been gaming with a lot of women. And I mean a LOT. Some were raids were majority female but when I asked them to join a pug something became clear... they were willing to play BUT could I not reveal they were female.

I have had several discussions online and in the real world were I was told about the kind of abuse female players receive. And this is NOT the rage kind when someone just says "bitch" or the sexual innuendo. Women talk like that too. It were attacks that yes as the AC says, you would expect in Klan meeting. One type of attack is that women have no right to play the game... I mean seriously. WTF?

AND it is not just trolling, there are a lot of REAL misogynists online. They can't vent their putrid bile in real life because they would get beaten up but online they let go.

So... the women hide online and only reveal their gender if they feel safe. AND THAT IS NOT OKAY! If you think it is, then I hate your fucking guts and hope you die before spreading your diseased genes. Because THIS attitude is what fuels extremists by tolerating them. It is basically nothing else then "if you don't want to be raped, don't reveal your gender". It is YOUR kind that created the burkha.

People should be free to be who they are. Yes, there can be gentle ribbing like Q.I. makes fun of homosexuals and hetero's alike BUT that is NOT what gay and female gamers are talking about. Gay and female gamers don't want special regonizition, they simply want to be able to be who they are without getting attacked simply for speaking with a high voice.

And only a closet bigot would start an argument over whether they got the right to be who they are.

Never take security advice from a guy who can't read. The static content web servers use 1024 bit keys, the encryption servers 2048. So you can spend a small fortune decrypting the content on static content web servers. Wheee!

What is the issue here? Or are you not aware that New Zealand, the home of Mega is very early in the timezones? The day practically starts in NZ.

Under EU law at least AT&T would be in trouble for violating privacy laws, they didn't protect private customer data and that is a violation.

So what was the reason this guy who went to a reporter (not just published the list or sold it) prosecuted? And why is there no link of said reporter defending his source?

This case could not have happened in say my own country. There have been cases were it was TRIED but the judges slapped it down hard. So... what part is missing from the story (we are reading just one side of it) or is the US really that different? I can't imagine the US has no privacy laws at all that AT&T would not have violated by making data so easely available. Can't someone bring a case against AT&T? Making this guy evidence in a far great case, possibly worth some outrageous sum in a settlement and worthy as a bargaining chip to get this case dropped?

What is missing from this story? Because on its own it seems to make no sense. Why should AT&T risk bad publicity when a simple "don't do that again" would have buried the story years ago.

You won't get a politician to admit it but everybody knows the US is a major supporter of terrorism and also easily one of the great human rights violators and has been for a long time. Anything from the mass slaughter of natives to agent orange to supporting murderous dictorial regimes to the support of the taliban in Afghanistan when the Russians were there.

As for backing Pakistan, only a complete fool would do that, or a country totally paranoid over communism making it fight the largest democracy in the world by supporting one of the most primitive backward nations on earth. (Hint for fox viewers, India is a democracy, Pakistan isn't).

The US has a long continuing history of being not just a moral vacuum but actually on the side of evil, supporting the nazi regime (to the point that when volunteer American aircrew were bombing ball bearing plants at great personal cost, a shipment of ball bearings went from the US through Sweden that totally off-set the destroyed production), sheltering Nazi war criminals even those guilty of killing US soldiers who had been captured (employed at NASA).

Only the most foolish uncultured people are going to be shocked by the claim that the US is funding terrorism, it is a simple fact that has been proven countless times beyond a shadow of a doubt.

HOWEVER: If I give you a gun to commit a murder, I am guilty. But you DO have free choice, you don't HAVE to do the murder, not even if I give you a million dollars. Yes, the person who hires the assassin is just as guilty AS the assassin but that doesn't absolve the assassin of blame.

The US has found many a willing regime/group in its fight against democracy in the world (remember, India is leaning close to communism then capatalism but freely elected IN a working democracy), it makes it an evil nation, or at least a nation of "wir haben es nicht gewust" (because we made sure not to look) lead by few very evil advisors like Kissinger a man who history would do well to remember in the same line as an Eichman. But it does not stop Pakistan from being an nation of evil itself. It is a nation that has been at war with India since its creation and has been linked countless time to terrorism. India isn't similarly linked in retaliation. The only reason it exists is because the US keeps supporting it else it would long since have collapsed into a non-state like Afghanistan. Just tribal lords fighting each other.

There are a lot of people who hate the US and there are a lot of reasons to hate the US but to many people use that as an excuse to excuse everything anyone else does. There is room for more blame in this world.

He wasn't sentenced (or even found guilty yet) and the claim wasn't for 50 years. But hey, facts happen to other people right?

The moment you start spouting nonsense like this, the rest of your opinion is automatically suspect as well. After all, if you don't know the facts, how can you form an accurate opinion?

Cases like this get very emotional but if you ever want to change anything, you need to argue with facts, not with made up stuff. Liars like mangu just make it easier for people on the other side to dismiss the opposition as being ill-informed morons whose rants have no value.

And with the 11th bride walks up to the altar, you got to wonder just how stupid she really is. Many a MS apologists is really just suffering from battered wife syndrome "nobody understands him, he will chance, he told me!".

Sad. Although I find it a useful measurement to see if a person is worth taking notice off.

For instance "Sponge Bath" and "DavidClarkeHR" can be filed under the heading, to stupid to live. It ain't a nice thing to do but god does it save time and I rather be filed under nasty then stupid.