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Comment Re:Animal cruelty and not being a vegan asshole (Score 1) 111

Don't confuse moral blackmail with owning the moral high ground. Eliminating suffering is a perfectly good argument to try and convince someone to go vegan. Just like we would reduce suffering by no longer choosing to have children for our selfish reasons of personal happiness, content at accepting all the possible suffering one's kid might go through. Both arguments seem to get the recipient especially irate.

Comment Re:Unfamiliar? (Score 1) 379

Plenty of examples out there of course but here's one involving /.'s old friend, the United Fruit Company. The UFC lobbied the US government to support the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

After the expropriations began in 1953 the UFC began lobbying the U.S. government in an attempt to draw them into their confrontation with Arbenz. The U.S. State Department responded by, amongst other things, successfully seeking approved cuts in economic aid and cuts in trade, with devastating effect to Guatemala, since "85% of Guatemala's exports are sold in the country and 85% of their imports come from the U.S." Internal U.S. State Department documents stated that the cutoff would have to be done "quietly" because this was "a violation of the Non-intervention agreement, to which we are party... If it became obvious that we were in violation of this agreement, other Latin American governments would rally to the support of Guatemala

Source

Comment Best Easter Egg (Score 1) 233

The best easter egg I've ever come across was in the flight simulator B17 The Mighty Eighth II (anyone remember that?)

If you were to play the CD as you were to play a music CD, you would find that the 8th track is a Morse Code signal. This signal, once translated, spells, "L-Y-M-E-R-E-G-I-S" There is a town on the south England coast named "Lyme Regis." Start a recon flight to the area of that town (you may want to find it on a map of England first) and fly low along the beach keeping a sharp look out. Keep looking and you will eventually find a flying saucer landed on the beach and two aliens sitting in lounge chairs!! You should also be able to faintly hear some strange 50's music coming from their radio! Too funny, and a brilliant idea for an egg!

source: http://www.eeggs.com/items/20664.html

Comment Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices" (Score 2, Informative) 240

Following your link I found they've posted pictures of their headquarters on their website http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/thames-house-image-gallery.html . You'd think any civilian taking pictures of the building would subsequently be subjected to a little chat with the law but there's no problem when they show it on their site in all it's glory from various angles...

Comment Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform yet (Score 2, Insightful) 315

It's pretty interesting the way developers are almost falling over themselves (if you believe the summary) to start developing for the iPhone. Build an attractive product and not only will the customers appear but also the Developers! Developers! Developers!. As a developer you'll need to buy an Apple computer for the privilege, and probably start learning Objective C, not an easy language to pick up when you're used to Java/C#. It's almost contrary to the idea usually associated with MS of making it easy for developers and the platform will succeed.
I'd imagine Apple is shifting quite a few new machines to iPhone developers who would otherwise still be developing on Windows/Java ME.

Government

Submission + - London police looking to install CCTV in pubs (theregister.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: The Met Police got a short sharp rap over the knuckles yesterday, as the Office of the Information Commissioner questioned what looks very much like a blanket policy to force CCTV onto public houses in certain parts of London.

The story begins with a letter to the Guardian last week, from Nick Gibson. He is currently renovating Islington pub The Drapers Arms, after its previous owners allowed it to go insolvent and then disappeared.

In his letter, he argues that if he had merely taken over an existing licence, the police could not have imposed any additional conditions. However, because this was now a new licence, the police were able to make specific requests, including one particular request in respect of installing CCTV.

Government

Submission + - Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone, targeted jou (rawstory.com)

JCWDenton writes: Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.
Software

Submission + - Microsoft launches Browser-based Word and Excel? (theregister.co.uk)

JCWDenton writes: In a bid to spin its web-based version of Office into contention with rival internet behemoth Google, Microsoft has said it will begin accepting applications for beta testing its web apps later this year.

There is one significant difference, however: unlike Google apps, Microsoft said users of its new service can only create or edit online documents if they have Office software already installed on their machines.

Microsoft said features of its Office Live Workspace would include allowing users to upload more than 1,000 documents to free personal websites.

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