"China's state-run media, which dubbed the plane Air Force One..."
HEY, just a minute there...

China practically invented the category of Gov't spyware in electronics. Be careful what you say in front of your Chinese made toaster.

That's what I was thinking. Many of the posts are trying to tell me that I'm stupid because I just want something to work for a change.

Interesting. I've got a friend with a Droid who uses the turn by turn for driving and it'll tell her to "turn around" "turn left" or do something else bizarre while sitting at a traffic light. She's ready to throw it out the window.

They have their own version of AOL now.

Haven't tried using multiple fingers on a MBP, Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad yet?

errata: I said DC is 10 square miles. That's incorrect. It's actually a square 10 miles on a side, a large chunk of which was eventually returned to Virginia long ago. DC is 68.3 square miles which makes it 0.00179% of the US land area.

Here... let me help you with the speculation:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8502957/smaller-risk-of-getting-shot-in-australia

There are no references in the article to substantiate their claim of being 15x more likely to get shot in the US than Australia, but seeing as they "made a sharp turn away from the gun culture in 1996", Australia must have been a mighty rough place at one time. It's still almost a rounding error away from the claimed US "getting shot" per capita rate today.

You know, nobody is happy with any of this. Who has the lowest crime rate anywhere? Switzerland.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/why-switzerland-has-the-lowest-crime-rate-in-the-world.html

Mexico has a high rate of deaths by gunfire, higher than the US, even though all guns are illegal in Mexico. Banning guns nationally isn't really working out for them.

It appears that armed citizens have a higher survival rate than disarmed citizens left as victims to those who follow no laws. Singapore has a low crime rate due to their system of immediate corporal punishment for offenses which Americans would receive a parole sentence. Anyone who opens fire during a crime and is caught is quickly tried and executed in Singapore. Same goes for narcotics offenders. That doesn't happen in the US, so here we are with gun toting criminals on the street in some places.

Bottom line is I agree with the dangers of getting shot in the US, but more than half of the death rate by gunfire is people shooting themselves in the head. The other consideration is regional if you're filtering by intentional homicide. The largest danger comes from a small sliver of regions and subcultures within the US. If you walk into a narcotics driven badland, you're more likely to be harmed.

Here's a "List of countries by intentional homicide rate": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homicide_rate

Murder Capital of the US is the DIstrict of Columbia. It's just 10 square miles of the US (out of 3.79 million) and practically all of the deaths are narcotics related. I've lived right outside of DC for 35 years and work in DC. Know it well. I've never heard gunfire. Must be because the crack houses are the old solid masonry row houses. So, 0.000264% of the US is the most dangerous. Next is Puerto Rico (3435 square miles or 0.00214% of the US) and below that is Louisiana. Most of the crime in Louisiana is centered on four cities. I won't speculate here why their crime rate is high because... hmmm... I can't even say that. Those three areas of the US, one of which isn't even on the mainland, make up for a huge chunk of the overall statistic leaving the rest of the US relatively safe - except for a few areas rife with narcotics traffic. The Northern Territory of Australia is worse than about half of the US. Even New Jersey is safer than the Northern Territory.

Ok, enough.

Gawd, talk about bending facts around!

Population of Australia as of 23 July 2012 at 01:47:58 PM (Canberra time): 22,678,733
Population of USA as of 23 July 2012 at 11:48:59 PM EST: 314,004,363

Seeing as there are 13.845 time as many capitas in the US as there are in Australia, it seems it's MORE likely to be shot (per capita) in Australia than the US.

Thanks for playing. Please try again.

Well, this is only Slashdot where everyone gets to pick which parts they wish to believe and berate the rest. That was a real newspaper article about the time I was in High School (1970-ish). I don't care if you don't believe it.

Denver is/was (some dispute with the State Courts) an "open carry" municipality, meaning you can have a gun strapped to your side as long as it's not concealed. All of that is in flux with the courts, so I don't know in what condition that rule is in currently (I don't live there). Colorado apparently leaves it up to the municipalities to post on specific establishments whether a firearm is legal (establishments which serve alcohol etc).

America isn't any more dangerous than most places. More people are killed by a lot of other things every year than guns. Nobody says we should ban cars on the road, even though there are about 30,000 deaths a year because of them. I saw a stat that said more people are killed by pigs every year than guns - but the bacon is worth the risk.

Apparently they don't worry much about the gun nuts. Surprising in Colorado that nobody returned fire.

I wish I could find a reference to this, but I read a newspaper article long ago about a guy in Italy who boarded a city bus and drew a gun on the driver trying to rob him. Eleven out of the seventeen people on the bus drew pistols and shot the guy. If anyone has guns, everyone should.

Let me Google that for you:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/02/feds-in-nj-26-arrests-made-in-325-million-counterfeit-goods-operation/
http://blog.chron.com/newswatch/2012/03/suspects-arrested-in-counterfeit-purse-operation/
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/14950996/2011/06/21/3-accused-of-selling-counterfeit-nikes-gucci?clienttype=printable
http://gucci.ezinemark.com/replica-gucci-handbags-low-quality-product-for-fashion-7d35cb4db7aa.html

Mostly about selling, but "...you could get yourself arrested, if you are spotted buying counterfeits."

This is only America, you know.

Correct.

That's really the crux of the issue. It's much easier for someone else to do all the engineering and hard work it takes to create an experience that nobody ever had - and copy it at a fraction of the cost. That goes for "Hassalblad" cameras and "Rolodex" watches. They've got no skin in the game except the expense of pulling molds off the original. In the US, they arrest people for having Louis Vuitton or Gucci knockoff hand bags. By that measure, Samsung qualifies. So does Hyundai but we can't see past the acquisition price. No doubt, they make really good ripoffs,but we bear (or submerge) the guilt of ripping off the originator when we buy it. Of course it's a good value, even if it lasts half as long.

I wanted new shoes over there and the local shoe shop in Itaewon handed me a Sears catalog. A real one. I pointed to the shoes I wanted and they had them custom made the NEXT DAY for 10% of the Sears price. Can't resist supporting that.

I have that Top Gear episode. Love that series. The real one.

One way to spin it: "OUR MISTAKE! Sorry, but the Samsung tablet is NOTHING like the iPad. Nothing at all. If you can find any similarities in the two products, they would merely be a coincidence. That's what we get for buying components from Samsung. Who knew they were already going to make a tablet and we're just using their parts? That's why the parts were so cheap - they were already making them. It was us who was late to the game. Besides, it's a COMPLETELY different shape than the iPad. Totally different. The Galaxy Tab is actually more similar to the other dozen counterfeit iPads... er... original tablet ideas independently developed a year or two later on the market today."

I spent over a year in Korea and they fucking copy EVERYTHING. Ever notice how the entire lineup of Hyundai copycat cars make you do a double take? There's one that looks like a BMW, a Mercedes, a Jaguar, a Bentley... you name it, they copy it. I almost bought a beautiful camera in Yongsan for an unbelievable price until I double checked the real spelling of Hasselblad. Korea is home to the finest counterfeit luxury goods in the world. No surprise here. Move along.