rustynails

As a kid, I used to suffer from motion sickness in cars.. If I didn't look out of the window, my mind told me one thing, my body another, and I'd be sick. I suspect this is the same. I really like IOS7, but the zoom in/out makes me feel mildly uncomfortable. It might be that I'm experiencing a mild case.

Like when my sound volume stuffed up on my iPhone. There were no settings to recover it... Or when iTunes refused to copy music to my phone, but 3rd party tools would. As soon as iTunes was restarted, it deleted the good "newly added" tracks and corrupt them. My experience with Apple: it works most of the time, but when it doesn't, you're screwed because there's no setting to fix it. Good news: Apple added "reset settings", which would have solved my audio settings quickly.. Without this feature, it took me months to solve the problem. Btw, I LOVE the IOS7 control center !!

I had a feeling that a critique on Apple would turn into a Google bash. Can you please stay on topic. As an IOS user who is posting from his iPhone, I'm tired of Apple fans deflecting genuine criticisms at APPLE. You didn't raise or refute one thing in the article.

You sir/mam are a fanboy of the worst kind.

For the record, I feel IOS 7 lost its way. Jobsy would have shot it to pieces and buried it before it saw the light of day.

Cost + absense of regulation.

Storm was a terribly written character. Giving her strong power and little personality was a token "female" hero with little thought. It was just plain "crap story telling".

As someone else said, there are only a few xmen characters with depth - wolverine being one.

Great list. Add Judi Dench, Renee Zellweger, Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, the list is quite big...

As I mentioned in another post, you see what you want to see ("victim mentality").

No offense, the men were thinking it. If the project had a hard deadline in a few years, any respective employer would think through this option. Failure to do so (under certain circumstances) could cost you dearly. This is despite "what the law allows you to say".

Where do I begin? Great and terrible article. Riddled with victim mentality (bad), but desire to improve story telling of movies with a very narrow focus (somewhat good).

Here's an example of victim mentality, but not from the author's perspective. - why are the villains in movies often English or German. Discrimination! - why don't we have Australian heroes in movies? Australian actors are forced to change their accents and nationalities... It's disgusting... It's xenophobic!

Now take those examples with a grain of salt. I don't have a victim mentality that insists on x% of movie heroes being Australian ... It's superficial and mandates others on what they must think.

I remember a gay author who was told to add more straight characters - the one story of his that I heard kept on referring to a straight dog.. When I asked my gay friend about the importance of a "straight" dog, he explained the back story of the mandate... The dark side to political correctness.

Here's where I partially agree with the author. Black Widow and the other "Rambo in slacks" were pathetic characters by Joss Whedon - some of the worst I've ever seen. Arrogant, rude, completely self-absorbed and able to take down 20 "baddies" at the same time with their bare hands. Remember Stallone as Rambo? Well, Joss Whedon thinks that adding slacks makes Rambo a better character... Yeah, right. But rather than see "sexism" and "insistence of 50% female leads", I see "crap writing", "area for improvement" and "lost opportunity". Let the writers decide what gender a character is... But highlight opportunities for thinking out of the box (go Aussie heroes ;)

Having said all of that, I'm a huge fan of Legend of Korra. Korra is a believable heroine who retains her femininity and humility: brilliant writing. Lin Bei Fong: a tough as nails woman that shows compassion and vulnerability. Many writers and directors could learn a think or two from Di Martino and Koneitzko (the Korra writers).

One of my other heroes is JK Rowling. In her Potterverse, she chose to have a balance of 50% male/female characters that were fairly well balanced. It worked very well and did not detract from the story. If anything, it added credibility. It was important (at least to me) that the characters made sense, more than what their gender was.

In summary, the referenced article is a thinly veilled feminist (sexist) piece that dictates too much and is too narrowly focused (aka feminism). I agree that female characters are usually poorly written and I love when I see female characters written well.

Then again, I'd also love to see corporate bankers held accountable, NSA snooping to be reigned in and sexism (from feminists or otherwise) being denounced ... I have my doubts that any of these wishes will come true.

USB ports not working. It's a common fault. I had to install win8 from scratch. I lost a lot of things.. A lot of software wouldn't install under win8, but it had worked when i first upgraded.

Love the win+X - but detest the tiles. There's no logic or structure or hierarchy to them. Almost impossible to manage. It's obvious the GUI was NOT designed for a desktop - it's terrible.

Thank goodness for Start8 and similar products. If I could uninstall tiles to save memory, I would.

Just for a moment, substitute Microsoft with Apple. You could just as easily be describing either vendor. I believe most vendors offer a similar experience in these regards. If you know someone that doesn't follow this pattern, let me know. I had an Apple fault for months. Apple replaced my hardware but it didn't solve the issue. The problem started after a software update. After months of anguish and hardware change disruption, Apple fixed the software bug.. Despite most people suspecting it was software. Apple's support was crap. Microsoft's support for my disabled USB ports under Windows 8 was no better - reinstall the OS.

You will never get to the truth by shouting down those that oppose your views. As long as someone is willing to engage in an open and robust discussion ... The minute "opinion, belief or faith" enter the equation, an intelligent conversation is dead. Otherwise, you should get to the truth.

I would hope you have more respect than 100% belief in just about anything. Look up the Socratic method for some good example of flaws in anything being 100% wrong, or 100% right.

Now can someone fix the embarrassing network bug in Linux. You know, where if you access a link to a network, or access an open networked path after 255 seconds or so ... You receive a network error. It still begs belief that such a fundamental aspect of Linux is broken ... When I show Linux to newbies and this fault occurs (ie. 100% of the time), I simply say "Linux isn't perfect ..." But inside, I cringe...

It occurs under all distros I've tried and it's been there for years. Even on different computers with different hardware...

RTFA. He says the Jews (religious) do well, but Muslims (religious) don't- so what is his point?

The author speculates that it might be linked to socio-economic status more than religion.

For the record I am an atheist, but I disrespect poor arguments from anyone, theist, agnostic or atheist.

Watch this video at around 22 minutes, http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/kill-the-messenger/

Dear Mr Obama - please explain why we are REPEATING the same thing. Shame on you if you fool us once, shame on us if you fool us again...

I was shocked when I watched this video. It's all happening again...

Many other countries follow suit. Almost certainly, Australia and the UK will see this as a precedent.

The way I'd look at it is that focus and confidence is a pre-requisite, not a guarantee. Arnie was right.

If you do localise content, make sure it's what your users want.

When it comes to Rotten Tomatoes, I'm glad it asks my location because I prefer US film reviewers to my local film reviewers. If I let Rotten Tomatoes know my time zone, I can't access US reviewers (that I'm aware of).

Various sites? Can you confirm? I don't read reddit because it really is lowest common denominator (it's the tabloid of the forums). But I haven't seen the comments you're referring to anywhere that I'd consider reputable.

The Italians have been caught selling rancid and impure olive oil in Australia about once per year (ie. just about every time it's checked). It applied to cheaper and expensive oils, so cost wasn't a judge.

I don't buy Italian olive oils any more because of the wide-spread deception. To be fair to the Italians, they were as dishonest as the Greeks and the Spanish. The list of brands was very long and the levels of rancidity/impurity were worrying.

The only name I remember that was found to be honest was Cobham. I think they're an Australian family business (but could be wrong). I have no affiliation with Cobham in any way, except I buy their extra virgin olive oil.

Interestingly, I know rancid oils are very poisonous, but have never found a reference to the ill effects of rancid oils.

Slightly off topic, but lobbying includes companies lobbying against NSA privacy contentions, so lobbying by the $ is not a good measure of wanting a "self licking icecream".

A while back, the Australian dollar was about US 60c. I would suggest this was the basis for which software was pegged against. When the exchange rate changed, the priced stayed fixed because it maintained status quo for the locals. Over time, it became the norm for others to follow suit. It's actually quite simple: if you think it's too expensive or loaded pricing, don't buy it.

I think you're missing something. I don't see anyone enforcing anything. What if people like differentiation? Your comments imply that it's bad. I come from a family with adopted siblings. My siblings are very similar to their biological parents, who were unknown to them (and all of us) until they were 20+. Let me put it another way... They don't just share similar genes in their "appearance". From where I sit, nurture plays very little in shaping a person in a benevolent environment. I have decades of case study around me to support that view. I also believe that part of human socialization is about mimicry. Why do most people wear jeans? Why do we bother with pleasant looking hair-styles? Why don't men wear dresses? These don't define who I am, and I believe have little influence on the way I think (to the best of my knowledge). If girls want to wear pink, it's not a bad thing, nor should it be seen as so.

Does anyone have an analysis of the drawings? How accurate are they? What about the detail of the human anatomy, is it comprehensive? Is there any meaning in the series of diagrams? These questions won't decode the text, but they may give an indication of the quality of the text. Based on a WAG, I'd say the book's text is not particularly informative, it is merely the "challenge" that generates the interest.

Why mod the parent down? There is no proof that it won't, is there? If Microsoft come out with a clear statement (no doublespeak), then I'll believe them. Until then, burden of proof required from Microsoft. As of today, I trust none of the big players, and your venacular of "scare mongering" won't change the burden of proof either.

What about the Mongols? Romans? I'm not seeing the distinction. Can you please explain?

Thou doth jest. Most western countries are lap-dogs to the US, and almost certainly exchange spying data with the US so that they don't breach their own privacy laws. This will have little impact with US allies.

My son just asked why the English are so bad "spying on Europeans". I reassured him by saying that most western governments are almost cetainly corrupt (inc dear old Australia). And he who controls the databases controls the politicians, police, lawyers, judges ... You get the idea. And even better, just because you've got nothing to hide, it's easy for these databases to be changed by someone in the know. These systems are extremely dangerous, and should not be underestimated.

Malware is also delivered by ads, a very important reason to block ads.

Thank you for specifying Fahrenheit. Given there are different temperature scales used throughout the world, I always appreciate people who take the effort to clarify. Thanks ... Oh, awesome pic!!