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Comment Are we buying Apple's explanation? (Score 1) 177

We've had these complaints since long before iOS 10. My iPhone 4s took a terrible speed and stability hit overnight when I upgraded from iOS 8 -> iOS 9. But Apple's defined the conversation as being about slowing down iPhone 6 and newer with iOS 10. Is this just artful dodging?

Comment Re:"Didn't actually exist" = "No dedicated name" (Score 2) 173

The US doesn't recognize Palestine.

The CIA World Factbook does recognize The West Bank as a distinct entity, just not under the name Palestine.

Groups that believe that the West Bank and Gaza are a part of Israel, such as the Jewish Virtual Library, place the percentage of Muslims in Israel at 20.7% of the total Israeli population.

Comment Blame the captains (Score 1) 438

The initial problem with both Voyager and Enterprise was the captains (or the actors hired to play them).

Archer - as portrayed by Scott Bakula - was too wishywashy, especially in the first seasons. He has a backbone one minute, then he doesn’t. He’s decisive, then he isn’t. The inconsistency in how he commanded the crew, in how he made decisions, was annoying, and made his character weak. He always seemed to be the wrong person at the wrong time.

Janeway - well, according to Kate Mulgrew’s portrayal - if a woman wants to command a starship, she has to speak like a man. Every time she would switch from a conversational voice to that attempt at a deep-throated captain’s voice, I winced. So unnatural, so unconvincing.

Each had good episodes.

Enterprise even had a few good ones in season one (the first P’Jem story, which helped paint the Vulcans as meddling puppet masters comes to mind.). One thing Enterprise gave us was a better understanding of the Andorrians (and Empress Sato).

Voyager was an anomaly of Star Trek in that some of it’s most promising episodes and ideas were in the first season (then abandoned or muted for whatever reason). The “One ship, two crews” theme should have been a goldmine of stories, but was quickly smothered. Neelix’s “they have such a beautiful ship. Why do they keep risking it?” [paraphrase] was spot on, and marked the point where the series abandoned originality and really became regular Trek. Voyager should have continually deteriorated so that even lessor threats would have real consequences, but it didn’t (how many shuttles did it have?). I don’t know what to make of Seven of Nine - a late addition designed to drive ratings. Her story arc took too much time in the show and in the end belittled the Borg (and by association, Picard and Sisko).

They were all flawed, even TOS, and the new one will be too. But hopefully it will be Trek at its heart and not JJ-Trek.

United Kingdom

Dogs Can Be Pessimistic 99

Not that it will change anything, but researchers at Bristol University say that your dog might be a gloom-monger. In addition to the downer dogs, the study also found a few that seemed happy no matter how uncaring the world around them was. "We know that people's emotional states affect their judgments and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs," said professor Mike Mendl, an author of the study and head of animal welfare and behavior at Bristol University.
Idle

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
It's funny.  Laugh.

What If They Turned Off the Internet? 511

theodp writes "It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."

Comment Microsoft in Namibia (Score 1) 248

I'm currently teaching English in a rural secondary school in Namibia, and helping with the computer lab as I can. We're one of the lucky schools - we have internet access through a radio link and often have as many at 15 working computers (power supplies and monitors seem to have short lifespans out here).

All of our computers use Linux (either Open Lab or Edubuntu) as part of the SchoolNet distribution. The problem? Our computer curriculum is specifically designed with Microsoft products in mind (Office and Publisher) and the teachers here don't have enough of a background to transfer the learning objectives to Open Office in the classroom.

So MS (or whoever set the curriculum to MS products) has managed to create a situation where the teachers are actively campaigning against the free alternative. It's insidious and hard to fight.

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