I trust you're aware of the irony inherent in the fact that to make this comment, you used a device that is one of the direct spinoffs of the space program, which at the time was largely a US - Soviet dick-measuring program.
As a species, we made a decision 'way back when to solve problems with technology. If we're going to get out of the mess we're currently making, technology and science will be how we do it.
And that means we need more of these dick measuring contests, not fewer of them.
The problem with a universal basic income is that the sharks start circling immediately. Landlords see it as an opportunity to jack up the rent. Stores (especially in poor neighbourhoods) raise the price of semi-necessities like disposable diapers. "Hope taxes" like lotteries market their wares more aggressively.
Soon, everybody's doing better except the people a basic income was intended to help, who get picked cleaner than a squirrel carcass at a crow convention.
Just about everybody in the Free World is either keeping their mouth shut about how much they're willing to give up to be safe, or else beating their chest and proclaiming what manly men they are because "anything to fight terrorism".
We need to start calling out both varieties of coward, ridiculing them, shaming them and generally treating them like the threats to democracy they are.
We need to stand up and say we're willing to accept casualties to stay free. That means the government needs to be told to fuck off out of our private lives, and if that means terrorists manage to kill some of us, it's a price we'll pay. We need to let people like this know we will unelect them and their party so fast their cynical, crypto-fascist heads will spin.
In short, we need to grow up and stop pretending we can have both freedom and perfect security. We have to choose. And as far as I'm concerned, if you choose security, you should move to China and quit wrecking things for decent people.
I wonder how many people have died because you made bad decisions. If you're a doctor, then you know the research about fatigue and human error is irrefutable, and it indicates that over time, tired people make more mistakes.
The study assumes that employers want to treat their employees as human beings. In the United States, employees are inconvenient, failure-prone devices that insist on receiving a few dollars in pay for the work they do. This puts an unfair limit on the employer's ability to make money.
So if an employee has a heart attack or a stroke, or suffers from depression...that's their problem. If one of them occasionally loses their shit and goes on a killing spree...it's not going to be the CEO who gets shot.
So the hours an employee works need to be whatever the employer says. If an employer wants 60 hour weeks with another 10 hours of tacked-on, uncompensated "setup time", the employees should just shut up and thank god they have jobs.
And no health care. That could raise corporate taxes, and it's better for America if the employees die off when they can't work anymore.
Haven't you figured it out yet? As a market, America is dying. Too much wealth at the top and too many people spiralling down into poverty. How many cell phones can you sell to the 1%? How many cars? CEO's stand up to Trump because he has little to offer and even less to threaten with.
Smart corporations are positioning themselves to get first crack at new, developing markets in the Third World. China's emerging middle class will be enormous, and it will have money to spend on technology. Same with India. If getting access means kissing some totalitarian buttock every now and again...well, it's a small price to pay.
What's truly pathetic, though, is that so many US workers believe their jobs will come back if only the government cuts corporate taxes a bit more. And so many Americans still think their country is a desirable place to do business.
Well, Elon has introduced electric cars to the general market after the big automakers had decided they didn't want to, and he's brought private enterprise into space.
Roll those into the cost of your Spark or Versa, along with the staggering cost of keeping the US military in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the picture is very different.
As I mentioned elsewhere, gas is only cheap when you externalize a lot of the costs. Aside from subsidies and tax breaks, there's the cost of sending the US military in to maintain stability wherever America has oil interests. How much has the US spent over the years in Afghanistan and the Middle East? When that's tacked onto the bill, which it absolutely should be, then the competitive situation changes a lot.
And the "untelligentsia" isn't people who disagree with me. It's that crowd of commenters who are reflexively against anything except "more of the same, but bigger" in any of the topics discussed here. I'm quite happy to have a rational discussion with anybody. What I won't do anymore is take people seriously who are a short step away from the Anti-vaxxers and conspiracy nuts.
At the moment, you're right. But the cost of gasoline is going to keep rising. And if we're going to talk about the real cost of gasoline, which includes spending billions in the Middle East rather than just walking away and grabbing a box of popcorn, the picture changes considerably.
I don't believe it's unfair to include the externalized costs of gasoline in the equation, as long as we can document them in straight-up dollars spent. When we do that, I don't think gas really is that cheap.
The untelligentsia will be all over this like a cheap suit. They'll be squealing about nobody being able to plug their cars in overnight (blissfully unaware that over just a couple of weeks a small Ontario town where I grew up put in dozens of outlets for block heaters back in the 1960's). They'll whine about the lack of power outlets on highways (blissfully unaware that even the lowly Bolt is good for 200 miles per charge). They'll scream about resale value (blissfully unaware this will change as low-range first generation EV's leave the market and battery durability stats over long periods become a matter of record). They'll rage about subsidies (blissfully unaware that gasoline cars and oil companies have benefitted from government subsidies on a scale that dwarfs anything EV manufacturers could even dream about).
None of it will matter, in the end. EV's are coming and all the pissing and moaning from the "we hate everything new" crew won't make a bit of difference.
It's happening already. The place I work shares a fleet of cars with other agencies. Some cars are gas and diesel, others are hybrid and electric. The latter two varieties are consistently the cheapest to operate. As far as maintenance...the electrics have been virtually maintenance free. Brake pads, coolant (ours have thermal management systems) and tire care have been the whole story. Fleet management is putting away $500 per year per EV for eventual battery replacement.
I suspect the fleet will be at least 80% electric within five years. A few diesels will be kept around for special occasions and the gasoline and hybrid vehicles will be gone. There are two competing plans for dealing with the EV's as they age. One says replace the batteries (probably at about 10 years) and drive them 'til they die. The other is to replace the battery packs after eight years and sell them. Used EV's with brand new battery packs will probably have a great resale potential. If not...Plan A.
So now I'm going to relax and enjoy reading the flood of comments from that sub-set of Slashdotters who will confidently predict the failure of electric vehicles...like they predicted the failure of 64-bit operating systems, solar power, Space X and just about everything else new and innovative that doesn't involve slaughtering an endangered species.
"Mozilla succeeded in breaking the lock Microsoft's Internet Explorer had on the web a decade ago, and now it's fighting the same battle again against Google's Chrome."
Mozilla succeeded against Internet Explorer by offering a completely different browsing experience...tabs and a lot of really interesting ways to customize the browser.
So what is Firefox now? It's dull, soulless Chrome with some dull, soulless tweaks. If I want to go down that road, I'll opt for better security/privacy and start spending more time browsing with Epic, or perhaps Brave.
My pleasure. I thought you provided a civil, well-reasoned response to him, and his answer was to use Jefferson in a comparison so flawed and simplified it qualifies as dishonest...then do a victory lap.
I was happy to participate in a very small way to the spanking he got below, when he tried something similar. And I am happy you got to see it.
Fortunately, I have an ancient Android tablet quietly rotting in a drawer. Maybe it's time I recharged it and figured out how to put CyanogenMod's successor on it.
The reason it's in a drawer is I absolutely hated the way every app available wanted every scintilla of data on the tablet, plus whatever else it could trick or steal out of any device that e-touched the tablet in any way at all.
I'm so very sorry you believe I'm condescending to you. Condescension, at least in dictionaries civilized people use, usually implies disdain. I feel only pity for conservatives, mixed with sorrow and perhaps even a little horror. But not disdain. Could it be that your own prejudices are getting in the way of understanding how important it is to reach down to them?
Also, the tone of your comments indicates you have issues with rage, perhaps driven by feelings of inadequacy. This is not a healthy way to live. I feel I should take the time to educate you, and clear up some of your misapprehensions. Addressing all of them, sadly, is beyond the time I have available, but perhaps you will be less angry if I explain some things to you.
First, there's your mistake about condescension. I believe I covered that. Then there's your suggestion I should volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Would you care to guess who was on-site in Winnipeg when President Carter was overcome by dehydration this past summer?
And then there's the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It's not a disease, my angry friend. It's a cognitive bias. Evidence seems to indicate most of its victims are conservatives. In fact, many would argue it's part and parcel of conservatism. This is because study after study has indicated that when compared to liberals, conservatives are less intelligent, more driven by fear and rage (reptilian, hind-brain emotions...see what I did there?), and less able to change their views in the face of objective facts. All of these provide fertile ground for the growth of a healthy Dunning-Kruger bias.
I can provide some links to this research if you like. Would you like some links?
In any case, thank you for the opportunity to educate you. I feel that I have accomplished something here. I hope the rest of your day is as uplifting and amusing as mine has been so far.
Slashdot Mirror
Richer idiots than you, apparently
Snicker
It's hard not to notice how angry conservatives get when people who don't agree with them exercise their First Amendment rights.
Greatest Star Trek line ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_5cmdQX5Sk
And no, it's not "Off Topic".
I trust you're aware of the irony inherent in the fact that to make this comment, you used a device that is one of the direct spinoffs of the space program, which at the time was largely a US - Soviet dick-measuring program.
As a species, we made a decision 'way back when to solve problems with technology. If we're going to get out of the mess we're currently making, technology and science will be how we do it.
And that means we need more of these dick measuring contests, not fewer of them.
The problem with a universal basic income is that the sharks start circling immediately. Landlords see it as an opportunity to jack up the rent. Stores (especially in poor neighbourhoods) raise the price of semi-necessities like disposable diapers. "Hope taxes" like lotteries market their wares more aggressively.
Soon, everybody's doing better except the people a basic income was intended to help, who get picked cleaner than a squirrel carcass at a crow convention.
Just about everybody in the Free World is either keeping their mouth shut about how much they're willing to give up to be safe, or else beating their chest and proclaiming what manly men they are because "anything to fight terrorism".
We need to start calling out both varieties of coward, ridiculing them, shaming them and generally treating them like the threats to democracy they are.
We need to stand up and say we're willing to accept casualties to stay free. That means the government needs to be told to fuck off out of our private lives, and if that means terrorists manage to kill some of us, it's a price we'll pay. We need to let people like this know we will unelect them and their party so fast their cynical, crypto-fascist heads will spin.
In short, we need to grow up and stop pretending we can have both freedom and perfect security. We have to choose. And as far as I'm concerned, if you choose security, you should move to China and quit wrecking things for decent people.
I wonder how many people have died because you made bad decisions. If you're a doctor, then you know the research about fatigue and human error is irrefutable, and it indicates that over time, tired people make more mistakes.
The study assumes that employers want to treat their employees as human beings. In the United States, employees are inconvenient, failure-prone devices that insist on receiving a few dollars in pay for the work they do. This puts an unfair limit on the employer's ability to make money.
So if an employee has a heart attack or a stroke, or suffers from depression...that's their problem. If one of them occasionally loses their shit and goes on a killing spree...it's not going to be the CEO who gets shot.
So the hours an employee works need to be whatever the employer says. If an employer wants 60 hour weeks with another 10 hours of tacked-on, uncompensated "setup time", the employees should just shut up and thank god they have jobs.
And no health care. That could raise corporate taxes, and it's better for America if the employees die off when they can't work anymore.
Haven't you figured it out yet? As a market, America is dying. Too much wealth at the top and too many people spiralling down into poverty. How many cell phones can you sell to the 1%? How many cars? CEO's stand up to Trump because he has little to offer and even less to threaten with.
Smart corporations are positioning themselves to get first crack at new, developing markets in the Third World. China's emerging middle class will be enormous, and it will have money to spend on technology. Same with India. If getting access means kissing some totalitarian buttock every now and again...well, it's a small price to pay.
What's truly pathetic, though, is that so many US workers believe their jobs will come back if only the government cuts corporate taxes a bit more. And so many Americans still think their country is a desirable place to do business.
He does have that aroma clinging to him, doesn't he!
Well, Elon has introduced electric cars to the general market after the big automakers had decided they didn't want to, and he's brought private enterprise into space.
So what are your accomplishments again?
Annual US gas prices https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/h...
Annual Canadian Gas Prices https://tradingeconomics.com/c...
Fossil fuel subsidies, which you are ignoring: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Impact_of_fossil_fuel_subsidies"
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867
Roll those into the cost of your Spark or Versa, along with the staggering cost of keeping the US military in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the picture is very different.
As I mentioned elsewhere, gas is only cheap when you externalize a lot of the costs. Aside from subsidies and tax breaks, there's the cost of sending the US military in to maintain stability wherever America has oil interests. How much has the US spent over the years in Afghanistan and the Middle East? When that's tacked onto the bill, which it absolutely should be, then the competitive situation changes a lot.
And the "untelligentsia" isn't people who disagree with me. It's that crowd of commenters who are reflexively against anything except "more of the same, but bigger" in any of the topics discussed here. I'm quite happy to have a rational discussion with anybody. What I won't do anymore is take people seriously who are a short step away from the Anti-vaxxers and conspiracy nuts.
At the moment, you're right. But the cost of gasoline is going to keep rising. And if we're going to talk about the real cost of gasoline, which includes spending billions in the Middle East rather than just walking away and grabbing a box of popcorn, the picture changes considerably.
I don't believe it's unfair to include the externalized costs of gasoline in the equation, as long as we can document them in straight-up dollars spent. When we do that, I don't think gas really is that cheap.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein daring to speak unironically about "perpetrating fraud" is probably the funniest thing I've read here today.
The untelligentsia will be all over this like a cheap suit. They'll be squealing about nobody being able to plug their cars in overnight (blissfully unaware that over just a couple of weeks a small Ontario town where I grew up put in dozens of outlets for block heaters back in the 1960's). They'll whine about the lack of power outlets on highways (blissfully unaware that even the lowly Bolt is good for 200 miles per charge). They'll scream about resale value (blissfully unaware this will change as low-range first generation EV's leave the market and battery durability stats over long periods become a matter of record). They'll rage about subsidies (blissfully unaware that gasoline cars and oil companies have benefitted from government subsidies on a scale that dwarfs anything EV manufacturers could even dream about).
None of it will matter, in the end. EV's are coming and all the pissing and moaning from the "we hate everything new" crew won't make a bit of difference.
It's happening already. The place I work shares a fleet of cars with other agencies. Some cars are gas and diesel, others are hybrid and electric. The latter two varieties are consistently the cheapest to operate. As far as maintenance...the electrics have been virtually maintenance free. Brake pads, coolant (ours have thermal management systems) and tire care have been the whole story. Fleet management is putting away $500 per year per EV for eventual battery replacement.
I suspect the fleet will be at least 80% electric within five years. A few diesels will be kept around for special occasions and the gasoline and hybrid vehicles will be gone. There are two competing plans for dealing with the EV's as they age. One says replace the batteries (probably at about 10 years) and drive them 'til they die. The other is to replace the battery packs after eight years and sell them. Used EV's with brand new battery packs will probably have a great resale potential. If not...Plan A.
So now I'm going to relax and enjoy reading the flood of comments from that sub-set of Slashdotters who will confidently predict the failure of electric vehicles...like they predicted the failure of 64-bit operating systems, solar power, Space X and just about everything else new and innovative that doesn't involve slaughtering an endangered species.
"Mozilla succeeded in breaking the lock Microsoft's Internet Explorer had on the web a decade ago, and now it's fighting the same battle again against Google's Chrome."
Mozilla succeeded against Internet Explorer by offering a completely different browsing experience...tabs and a lot of really interesting ways to customize the browser.
So what is Firefox now? It's dull, soulless Chrome with some dull, soulless tweaks. If I want to go down that road, I'll opt for better security/privacy and start spending more time browsing with Epic, or perhaps Brave.
You raise an excellent point!
"Fox News is doing a 360 degree VR video of the President's tremendous asshole."
How do they keep their tongue out of the picture?
My pleasure. I thought you provided a civil, well-reasoned response to him, and his answer was to use Jefferson in a comparison so flawed and simplified it qualifies as dishonest...then do a victory lap.
I was happy to participate in a very small way to the spanking he got below, when he tried something similar. And I am happy you got to see it.
Game. Set. Match.
If I'd known I could call in air support, I'd have shortened up my responses to that jackass.
I was going to respond. Somebody beat me to it, and I'm laughing too hard to come up with anything better.
"What he said.
Enjoy your day. Relax. Make sure you take any required medications. Thank you for your time.
...the less I like it.
Fortunately, I have an ancient Android tablet quietly rotting in a drawer. Maybe it's time I recharged it and figured out how to put CyanogenMod's successor on it.
The reason it's in a drawer is I absolutely hated the way every app available wanted every scintilla of data on the tablet, plus whatever else it could trick or steal out of any device that e-touched the tablet in any way at all.
I'm so very sorry you believe I'm condescending to you. Condescension, at least in dictionaries civilized people use, usually implies disdain. I feel only pity for conservatives, mixed with sorrow and perhaps even a little horror. But not disdain. Could it be that your own prejudices are getting in the way of understanding how important it is to reach down to them?
Also, the tone of your comments indicates you have issues with rage, perhaps driven by feelings of inadequacy. This is not a healthy way to live. I feel I should take the time to educate you, and clear up some of your misapprehensions. Addressing all of them, sadly, is beyond the time I have available, but perhaps you will be less angry if I explain some things to you.
First, there's your mistake about condescension. I believe I covered that. Then there's your suggestion I should volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Would you care to guess who was on-site in Winnipeg when President Carter was overcome by dehydration this past summer?
And then there's the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It's not a disease, my angry friend. It's a cognitive bias. Evidence seems to indicate most of its victims are conservatives. In fact, many would argue it's part and parcel of conservatism. This is because study after study has indicated that when compared to liberals, conservatives are less intelligent, more driven by fear and rage (reptilian, hind-brain emotions...see what I did there?), and less able to change their views in the face of objective facts. All of these provide fertile ground for the growth of a healthy Dunning-Kruger bias.
I can provide some links to this research if you like. Would you like some links?
In any case, thank you for the opportunity to educate you. I feel that I have accomplished something here. I hope the rest of your day is as uplifting and amusing as mine has been so far.
I bet you say that to all your boyfriends. (snicker)