Imagine every newly discovered animal, insect and tree named after a wealthy individual or corp... that's truly disgusting. I would rather the govt reward the scientist for his discovery or at least fund his research somehow.
Then by all means, get the government or a group of your friends and bid on it. I think it's an ingenious idea. I'm very curious who will win and whether they will pick a reasonable name. A better system than highest bidder might be highest bidder with veto right so that the scientist can pick the 2nd or 3rd highest bidder if they had a more reasonable name.
I'm curious how a bunch of students were able to get past the two restrictions - I can imagine a uni having some portable towers lying around for research purposes, but how would they have found out his IMEI number?
From the article (hiding in the header), I don't think that they did. It sounds like the police gave the students the last known cell phone towers and they canvased the area on foot around those towers.
Yes it can be annoying to have to deal with their constant tech troubles, but you probably owe them (I have 3 young kids, and they definitely owe me big time). Let's face it, while people are still very active in their late 60's, you should enjoy it while it lasts because most people will really start to slow down in their early to mid 70's. As people age they become much more susceptible to scams (as you've noticed), so the only person you can really trust is you (or your siblings). I think that in 5 or 10 years you might have wished you could have spent more time with them.
Even if this is true, what about the aunt, or the lady across the street, or the friend from high school you barely know or the person in the nursing home who doesn't have any family? Saying he's the right one to do it doesn't really answer the question of where the best place to send someone who has a computer problem. I think what most people who don't have a friend do is go into a computer shop and pay several hundred dollars to get it fixed or they ask a neighbor, random people on facebook, etc...
Sarcasm aside, guns are not meant to 'immobilize a person'. They're meant to kill. The goal of a LEO using a gun is to eliminate a threat, by killing it. That's not only to protect the LEO, but also others. As far as that goes, guns are pretty good. Not great, but not bad.
Most cops would prefer to have a suspect come quietly. They don't want the danger or the paperwork that comes with shooting a gun. If they had an effective way to magically put the suspect safely cuffed into the back of their car then they would prefer to use that to using their gun.
I think you just proved China's point. They don't want to just follow in America's footsteps. That being said, yes, America has done a few things in space but America is laughable too. We've barely scratched the surface of mars but compared to the other planets and moons, mars is well covered. China has plenty of places where they can be first. How about a Venus rover, or a Europa rover or any of the other interesting planets and moons out there that we've barely explored.
I think the combine and other heavy machinery would be a contender. Heavy machinery has reduced the number of farm and construction workers by more than 90% allowing those other people to take up new jobs. The computer, the service industry, cities, etc... wouldn't exist as they are today if 90% of our workforce still worked on the farm. The article says that refrigeration and other household technologies made household work drop from 58 to 18 hours (a 69% reduction). Farm machinery has the beat by a long shot with something close to a 90% reduction in labor.
Other runner ups for other reasons would include birth control, antibiotics, plastic, the internal combustion engine, and factory automation.
Smoking = carcinogens Pickling = excessive salt Canning = Preservatives Refrigeration = lower temperature I choose refrigeration.
I'm not sure you understand what the work disruptive means. One of the reasons refrigeration was disruptive is because everyone chose it over all of the previous methods. That's exactly what disruptive means.
The statement "Complete and utter FUD. Has there EVER been a case where a non-family member kidnaps a specific kid based on stuff they found online?" is not true and it sounds like you aren't contesting that, instead trying to change the topic/use semantics.
In what way is a pedophile *not* a child predator?
Yes, a child predator is a pedophile and no, I'm not trying to change the topic/sematics. You are the one trying to change the topic from a parent posting photos of their kid to a kid talking to strangers online. As other people have posted, there is a HUGE difference between a young kid having a conversation with a stranger online using the kid's personal facebook account and a parent posting pictures of a kid.online on an adult account. The first is dangerous but has no connection to the later.
If you really cared I could dig up specifics, but here in the US there was an abduction and either actual or attempted murder of a juvenile by someone not known to the family and only to the child via online activity. The perpetrator was a criminal who had done this before.
What you're describing sounds like a child predator. This not the same thing at all. A child predator finds a tween/teen in a chat room or where the tween/teen has their own personal facebook account and starts a conversation. This is not the same thing as an adult posting pictures of their kid on their adult facebook page.
To make it short. They warn about giving the really bad guys an easy way to get a photo and enough data to locate the kids. Some people even post their kids schedule.
Complete and utter FUD. Has there EVER been a case where a non-family member kidnaps a specific kid based on stuff they found online? If you want to kidnap a kid, you already know where they hang out. First off, kidnapping by a complete stranger is extremely extremely rare and secondly the person who is going to do this is going to go where the kids are and grab the first kid they find, they aren't going to try to get a specific kid. Now posting when your kid is home alone is probably not the smartest thing to do so I would venture to say that posting your own work schedule or whereabouts would be more dangerous than posting a picture of your kid or your kid's schedule. Lastly, so they have your kid's picture, who cares? They can get millions of pictures on google by googling "kid". That's not the kind of pictures they are wanting and in no way does it make your kid any more at risk. The only thing it could possibly do is allow a kidnapper to put a name to a face so they can call the kid by name but that can be done by listening to the kids play for 5 minutes and abducting kids is disgustingly easy. Show up with a cute dog and you can have your pick of any kid on the playground. It just doesn't happen.
I don't think most people really grasp how mindboggingly big a Dyson sphere is. I sure as hell don't.
According to wikipedia, the interior of a dyson sphere would have 550 million times the surface area of earth. Before getting to that point, it would make a lot more sense to just pull a bunch of planets (like mars) into the same orbit, or better yet, implement some sort of population control before you need that much damn space. If we can never figure out how to break the light barrier, something like this is probably inevitable as most people aren't going to want to board a multigenerational ship but sending a robotic ship on a multigeneration journey to bring back materials would be something that could possibly be done.
The amount of material required to build such a thing exceeds what's available in a solar system. That's beside any issue regarding building this structure which wouldn't collapse on itself.
Any civilization capable of building anything close to size of a dyson sphere would not be limited to what's available in a single solar system.
Even if you drove 50,000 miles a year it would mean your car is still spending 90% of it's time sitting in a parking spot. Autonomous vehicles would eventually lower the cost of taxi services, and make them more cost effective as a mode of daily transportation, to the point where it will be cheaper to use an autonomous taxi everyday than it will be to own a car. When you own a car you are paying for a thing that's not being used most of the time. The only reason taking a taxi or uber everywhere is more expensive than owning a car is because the driver needs to be paid for their time.
Although I mostly agree with you, the difference is probably not as great as you make it sound. If you have a car and drove it 100% of the time then it would probably only last 10% as long. If you buy a new car and drive it 20,000 miles per year then after 10 years it has 200,000 miles on it and is probably getting close to end of life. If you buy another new car and manage to drive 200,000 miles in a single year, it's probably going to show similiar levels of wear and tear and also be pretty close to end of life.
Sure, if I own the car it should do only what I want it to when I want it to, but why should I own a car at all? I use a car only a few times a month, driving maybe 5000 miles/year total. Why should I spend $30,000 on a depreciating asset and devote 200 sq ft of space towards housing it.
There is already an existing solution for that. Car clubs. You become a member, the company parks cars across your city in dedicated parking spaces. When you want a car you go along with your RFID tag and drive off. You only pay for when you're using the car. Just like a hire car, except they're more easily accessible.
Car clubs are still a novelty because: 1) you have to first get to the car. 2) unless your destination is also an approved drop off location, you're still paying for the car the entire time you are at your destination. 3) you have to return the car to a proper dropoff point (or someone else must physically drive it back to it's correct spot) 4) you have to get back home after you return the car
An automated car club would completely eliminate all of this as it could come directly to where you are, take you exactly where you want to go and then even if it has to return back to where it is "parked", you're not running up a bill while your rental is sitting idle. You get charged for a whooping 30 minutes or so time on each leg with no charges for the car waiting for you to get done with your errand.
I want to call a car and have it come when I want it, take me where I want to go, then go away until I need it again.
Use your favorite search engine, or even your yellow pages, and look up "taxi". If you want to be trendy, look up "Uber" or "Lyft".
Taxis/Uber/Lyft are not at all priced competitively with owning a car outright or having a car share. The best you could do today without automated cars would be if you lived in an apartment complex with 100 families and you all went together and bought 35 cars (or however many you needed for peak demand) but even this wouldn't be as good as an automated car as if I leave at 7am and don't get back till 6pm, that car is at my work and is completely unusable to my neighbor who wants to do a quick errand at 11am. With an automated car, it could easily be used by multiple people throughout the day instead of sitting and taking up space the entire time someone is at work (Not to mention that you would no longer need to have huge parking lots at work as the cars would just drop you off and go elsewhere until you needed it again)
You think they're going to only charge you $200 a month and get less profit on their driverless cars than they do on a driver occupied car.
You are a fool if you think the auto industry isn't going to figure out a way to get MORE money out of you, not less....
He specifically mentioned a co-op. There are already plenty of car sharing, boat sharing, and airplane sharing clubs where the cost of membership is less than the cost of owning a single vehicle outright. They already exist, the big difference is with an automated car, you can call it and have it waiting in your driveway instead of having to go pick it up or have another human driver deliver it to you.
I'd be more interested to see a comparison of a 4 years CS grad with another 4 years of work experience up against someone with 8 years of work experience.
Just guessing, I would say that the person with 4 years experience would do better than the person fresh out of college. The person with 8 years experience would probably be about on par with the person with a degree plus 4 years. The problem comes after that. After 10 years experience, most companies don't really care about more, it's almost a detriment. On the other hand, there are plenty of jobs that require a 4 year degree and 6-10 years experience and having 20 years experience isn't going to help you land those jobs. I could probably make a good argument that the best thing to do financially is to work first and do college part-time so that you eventually get the degree at about the 10 year mark but that's basically like having 2 jobs.
What I think Star Trek provides us with is a future where amassing material wealth is seen as slightly immature, as it no longer provides people with the one thing they want to buy most: influence and respect. Those are reserved for those seeking knowledge and adventure.
I would agree with this completely. Many "rich" people buy things like $5k+ purses for the status not because they honestly believe that $5k purse is more functional than a cheaper one. Same with jewelry and a host of other things that do nothing for a rich person's quality of life. Not only do "rich" people tend to buy more expensive versions of the same thing, they also tend to have a greater quantity of them. If a rich person only bought what functionally improved their life then the amount of money they could spend in a year on themself would be greatly reduced. Unfortunately, in many rich circles, the requirement to "fit in" requires you to spend excessively on expensive clothing, jewelry, and accessories which is a somewhat artificial and fake version of the influence/respect/status that you're referring to. I think the world would be a lot better off if we could transition to where accomplishments not stuff is what gives you status and respect.
The only way that I see that you could entirely eliminate the concept of "money" (aka currency) would be for everything that everyone wants to be available to everyone. This is the only way to eliminate the motivation to barter, and I just don't see how you possibly achieve that.
The only way to do that is to expand into space where raw materials and land are no longer scarce and/or reduce the allowable type of goods. (i.e. Noone is allowed to own their own jet). The only other way is for people to voluntarily exit the rat race. I have everything I want with excess money to spare but that's because I don't want much. I'm content with what I have. Sure, I would like my own jet and to be able to take 3 month vacations, but I've decided that I'm comfortable living at a certain amenities level which happens to be considerable less than what I make. Another example would be Bill Gates, he is at the "post scarcity level" and can buy anything he wants and spend approximately 6 million a day and never run out but I would be surprised if he spends even 6 million a year on "stuff". So you don't have to get to complete and total infinite resouces, there are plenty of people in the world that have enough "stuff" and have no desire to have more.
make bigger pigs, make bigger plants... and feed the world.
oh, i see. there's more money selling a novelty pet, and all the chinese-made accessories for them, to the 1 percent, than it is to sell cheap food to the rest of us.
What advantage is there to a bigger pig? Pigs are already pretty big, making them bigger won't necessarily make them cheaper. Chicken are a lot smaller than pigs and usually cost less per pound than pig.
It's kind of ridiculous that many users have broadband speeds on their phones which surpass the speeds of their home internet connection, yet they can only use a few GB before being essentially cut-off.
That's because the technology is different. Wireless technology is a shared medium. They can transmit at high speed just like wired connections but it has to be shared by everyone in the area. It makes sense with a shared medium to implement fair use policies. The other way to do it is give everyone an equal slice at 128k (or slower) but I think everyone prefers having high-speed to an unlimited trickle. T-mobile probably has the best compromise where they switch you to the low-speed after you use up your allotment. Modern phones all automatically switch to wifi when available, only download updates over wifi, and do all they can to keep the limited shared medium open for people who really need it. If you're using more than 10G/month on mobile, then you're probably doing something wrong, without looking, my guess is there is probably a gps enable app that can tell you where you're using all your data but most people probably already know that. Very few people are constantly mobile in areas where there is no wifi and if you are then expect to pay more for that privilege.
Most cell contracts say they can change the price anytime.
Some might but I haven't seen this but it doesn't really matter as most contracts are only good for 2 years and no judge is going to hold a company to a contract that expired 8 years ago. And yes, most contracts in any industry say they can adjust the price on renewal of the contract.
This is pretty common in every industry. The loyal customers are grandfathered in for a while and then eventually when they renew, they have to renew at the then current rate. As contracts are typically only 2 years and the unlimited has been phased out probably a decade ago, I'm surprised that it's taken them this long to up the price. I'm actually surprised they haven't gotten completely rid of unlimited. Do you really expect to sign a 2 year contract and never have your price increased, ever? Just inflation alone means that if you have an unlimited plan that you are paying considerably less than when you originally signed up for it. I sure wish my landline cost the same now as when I first got it. Same with cable, water, electric, etc... They all have yearly increase and my guess is that even with a $20 jump, many of the unlimited users are paying a lot less than someone who signs up today.
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Imagine every newly discovered animal, insect and tree named after a wealthy individual or corp... that's truly disgusting. I would rather the govt reward the scientist for his discovery or at least fund his research somehow.
Then by all means, get the government or a group of your friends and bid on it. I think it's an ingenious idea. I'm very curious who will win and whether they will pick a reasonable name. A better system than highest bidder might be highest bidder with veto right so that the scientist can pick the 2nd or 3rd highest bidder if they had a more reasonable name.
I'm curious how a bunch of students were able to get past the two restrictions - I can imagine a uni having some portable towers lying around for research purposes, but how would they have found out his IMEI number?
From the article (hiding in the header), I don't think that they did. It sounds like the police gave the students the last known cell phone towers and they canvased the area on foot around those towers.
Yes it can be annoying to have to deal with their constant tech troubles, but you probably owe them (I have 3 young kids, and they definitely owe me big time). Let's face it, while people are still very active in their late 60's, you should enjoy it while it lasts because most people will really start to slow down in their early to mid 70's. As people age they become much more susceptible to scams (as you've noticed), so the only person you can really trust is you (or your siblings). I think that in 5 or 10 years you might have wished you could have spent more time with them.
Even if this is true, what about the aunt, or the lady across the street, or the friend from high school you barely know or the person in the nursing home who doesn't have any family? Saying he's the right one to do it doesn't really answer the question of where the best place to send someone who has a computer problem.
I think what most people who don't have a friend do is go into a computer shop and pay several hundred dollars to get it fixed or they ask a neighbor, random people on facebook, etc...
Sarcasm aside, guns are not meant to 'immobilize a person'. They're meant to kill. The goal of a LEO using a gun is to eliminate a threat, by killing it. That's not only to protect the LEO, but also others. As far as that goes, guns are pretty good. Not great, but not bad.
Most cops would prefer to have a suspect come quietly. They don't want the danger or the paperwork that comes with shooting a gun. If they had an effective way to magically put the suspect safely cuffed into the back of their car then they would prefer to use that to using their gun.
I think you just proved China's point. They don't want to just follow in America's footsteps. That being said, yes, America has done a few things in space but America is laughable too. We've barely scratched the surface of mars but compared to the other planets and moons, mars is well covered. China has plenty of places where they can be first. How about a Venus rover, or a Europa rover or any of the other interesting planets and moons out there that we've barely explored.
This will be a perfect testbed to train my clickbaitblock plugin to go along with my adblock plugin.
I think the combine and other heavy machinery would be a contender. Heavy machinery has reduced the number of farm and construction workers by more than 90% allowing those other people to take up new jobs. The computer, the service industry, cities, etc... wouldn't exist as they are today if 90% of our workforce still worked on the farm. The article says that refrigeration and other household technologies made household work drop from 58 to 18 hours (a 69% reduction). Farm machinery has the beat by a long shot with something close to a 90% reduction in labor.
Other runner ups for other reasons would include birth control, antibiotics, plastic, the internal combustion engine, and factory automation.
Smoking = carcinogens .
Pickling = excessive salt
Canning = Preservatives
Refrigeration = lower temperature
I choose refrigeration
I'm not sure you understand what the work disruptive means. One of the reasons refrigeration was disruptive is because everyone chose it over all of the previous methods. That's exactly what disruptive means.
The statement "Complete and utter FUD. Has there EVER been a case where a non-family member kidnaps a specific kid based on stuff they found online?" is not true and it sounds like you aren't contesting that, instead trying to change the topic/use semantics.
In what way is a pedophile *not* a child predator?
Yes, a child predator is a pedophile and no, I'm not trying to change the topic/sematics. You are the one trying to change the topic from a parent posting photos of their kid to a kid talking to strangers online. As other people have posted, there is a HUGE difference between a young kid having a conversation with a stranger online using the kid's personal facebook account and a parent posting pictures of a kid.online on an adult account. The first is dangerous but has no connection to the later.
If you really cared I could dig up specifics, but here in the US there was an abduction and either actual or attempted murder of a juvenile by someone not known to the family and only to the child via online activity. The perpetrator was a criminal who had done this before.
What you're describing sounds like a child predator. This not the same thing at all. A child predator finds a tween/teen in a chat room or where the tween/teen has their own personal facebook account and starts a conversation. This is not the same thing as an adult posting pictures of their kid on their adult facebook page.
To make it short. They warn about giving the really bad guys an easy way to get a photo and enough data to locate the kids. Some people even post their kids schedule.
Complete and utter FUD. Has there EVER been a case where a non-family member kidnaps a specific kid based on stuff they found online? If you want to kidnap a kid, you already know where they hang out. First off, kidnapping by a complete stranger is extremely extremely rare and secondly the person who is going to do this is going to go where the kids are and grab the first kid they find, they aren't going to try to get a specific kid. Now posting when your kid is home alone is probably not the smartest thing to do so I would venture to say that posting your own work schedule or whereabouts would be more dangerous than posting a picture of your kid or your kid's schedule. Lastly, so they have your kid's picture, who cares? They can get millions of pictures on google by googling "kid". That's not the kind of pictures they are wanting and in no way does it make your kid any more at risk. The only thing it could possibly do is allow a kidnapper to put a name to a face so they can call the kid by name but that can be done by listening to the kids play for 5 minutes and abducting kids is disgustingly easy. Show up with a cute dog and you can have your pick of any kid on the playground. It just doesn't happen.
I don't think most people really grasp how mindboggingly big a Dyson sphere is. I sure as hell don't.
According to wikipedia, the interior of a dyson sphere would have 550 million times the surface area of earth. Before getting to that point, it would make a lot more sense to just pull a bunch of planets (like mars) into the same orbit, or better yet, implement some sort of population control before you need that much damn space. If we can never figure out how to break the light barrier, something like this is probably inevitable as most people aren't going to want to board a multigenerational ship but sending a robotic ship on a multigeneration journey to bring back materials would be something that could possibly be done.
The amount of material required to build such a thing exceeds what's available in a solar system. That's beside any issue regarding building this structure which wouldn't collapse on itself.
Any civilization capable of building anything close to size of a dyson sphere would not be limited to what's available in a single solar system.
Even if you drove 50,000 miles a year it would mean your car is still spending 90% of it's time sitting in a parking spot. Autonomous vehicles would eventually lower the cost of taxi services, and make them more cost effective as a mode of daily transportation, to the point where it will be cheaper to use an autonomous taxi everyday than it will be to own a car. When you own a car you are paying for a thing that's not being used most of the time. The only reason taking a taxi or uber everywhere is more expensive than owning a car is because the driver needs to be paid for their time.
Although I mostly agree with you, the difference is probably not as great as you make it sound. If you have a car and drove it 100% of the time then it would probably only last 10% as long. If you buy a new car and drive it 20,000 miles per year then after 10 years it has 200,000 miles on it and is probably getting close to end of life. If you buy another new car and manage to drive 200,000 miles in a single year, it's probably going to show similiar levels of wear and tear and also be pretty close to end of life.
Sure, if I own the car it should do only what I want it to when I want it to, but why should I own a car at all? I use a car only a few times a month, driving maybe 5000 miles/year total. Why should I spend $30,000 on a depreciating asset and devote 200 sq ft of space towards housing it.
There is already an existing solution for that. Car clubs. You become a member, the company parks cars across your city in dedicated parking spaces. When you want a car you go along with your RFID tag and drive off. You only pay for when you're using the car. Just like a hire car, except they're more easily accessible.
Car clubs are still a novelty because:
1) you have to first get to the car.
2) unless your destination is also an approved drop off location, you're still paying for the car the entire time you are at your destination.
3) you have to return the car to a proper dropoff point (or someone else must physically drive it back to it's correct spot)
4) you have to get back home after you return the car
An automated car club would completely eliminate all of this as it could come directly to where you are, take you exactly where you want to go and then even if it has to return back to where it is "parked", you're not running up a bill while your rental is sitting idle. You get charged for a whooping 30 minutes or so time on each leg with no charges for the car waiting for you to get done with your errand.
I want to call a car and have it come when I want it, take me where I want to go, then go away until I need it again.
Use your favorite search engine, or even your yellow pages, and look up "taxi". If you want to be trendy, look up "Uber" or "Lyft".
Taxis/Uber/Lyft are not at all priced competitively with owning a car outright or having a car share. The best you could do today without automated cars would be if you lived in an apartment complex with 100 families and you all went together and bought 35 cars (or however many you needed for peak demand) but even this wouldn't be as good as an automated car as if I leave at 7am and don't get back till 6pm, that car is at my work and is completely unusable to my neighbor who wants to do a quick errand at 11am. With an automated car, it could easily be used by multiple people throughout the day instead of sitting and taking up space the entire time someone is at work (Not to mention that you would no longer need to have huge parking lots at work as the cars would just drop you off and go elsewhere until you needed it again)
You think they're going to only charge you $200 a month and get less profit on their driverless cars than they do on a driver occupied car.
You are a fool if you think the auto industry isn't going to figure out a way to get MORE money out of you, not less....
He specifically mentioned a co-op. There are already plenty of car sharing, boat sharing, and airplane sharing clubs where the cost of membership is less than the cost of owning a single vehicle outright. They already exist, the big difference is with an automated car, you can call it and have it waiting in your driveway instead of having to go pick it up or have another human driver deliver it to you.
I'd be more interested to see a comparison of a 4 years CS grad with another 4 years of work experience up against someone with 8 years of work experience.
Just guessing, I would say that the person with 4 years experience would do better than the person fresh out of college.
The person with 8 years experience would probably be about on par with the person with a degree plus 4 years.
The problem comes after that. After 10 years experience, most companies don't really care about more, it's almost a detriment.
On the other hand, there are plenty of jobs that require a 4 year degree and 6-10 years experience and having 20 years experience
isn't going to help you land those jobs. I could probably make a good argument that the best thing to do financially is to work first
and do college part-time so that you eventually get the degree at about the 10 year mark but that's basically like having 2 jobs.
What I think Star Trek provides us with is a future where amassing material wealth is seen as slightly immature, as it no longer provides people with the one thing they want to buy most: influence and respect. Those are reserved for those seeking knowledge and adventure.
I would agree with this completely. Many "rich" people buy things like $5k+ purses for the status not because they honestly believe that $5k purse is more functional than a cheaper one. Same with jewelry and a host of other things that do nothing for a rich person's quality of life. Not only do "rich" people tend to buy more expensive versions of the same thing, they also tend to have a greater quantity of them. If a rich person only bought what functionally improved their life then the amount of money they could spend in a year on themself would be greatly reduced. Unfortunately, in many rich circles, the requirement to "fit in" requires you to spend excessively on expensive clothing, jewelry, and accessories which is a somewhat artificial and fake version of the influence/respect/status that you're referring to. I think the world would be a lot better off if we could transition to where accomplishments not stuff is what gives you status and respect.
The only way that I see that you could entirely eliminate the concept of "money" (aka currency) would be for everything that everyone wants to be available to everyone. This is the only way to eliminate the motivation to barter, and I just don't see how you possibly achieve that.
The only way to do that is to expand into space where raw materials and land are no longer scarce and/or reduce the allowable type of goods. (i.e. Noone is allowed to own their own jet). The only other way is for people to voluntarily exit the rat race. I have everything I want with excess money to spare but that's because I don't want much. I'm content with what I have. Sure, I would like my own jet and to be able to take 3 month vacations, but I've decided that I'm comfortable living at a certain amenities level which happens to be considerable less than what I make. Another example would be Bill Gates, he is at the "post scarcity level" and can buy anything he wants and spend approximately 6 million a day and never run out but I would be surprised if he spends even 6 million a year on "stuff". So you don't have to get to complete and total infinite resouces, there are plenty of people in the world that have enough "stuff" and have no desire to have more.
make bigger pigs, make bigger plants... and feed the world.
oh, i see. there's more money selling a novelty pet, and all the chinese-made accessories for them, to the 1 percent, than it is to sell cheap food to the rest of us.
What advantage is there to a bigger pig? Pigs are already pretty big, making them bigger won't necessarily make them cheaper. Chicken are a lot smaller than pigs and usually cost less per pound than pig.
It's kind of ridiculous that many users have broadband speeds on their phones which surpass the speeds of their home internet connection, yet they can only use a few GB before being essentially cut-off.
That's because the technology is different. Wireless technology is a shared medium. They can transmit at high speed just like wired connections but it has to be shared by everyone in the area. It makes sense with a shared medium to implement fair use policies. The other way to do it is give everyone an equal slice at 128k (or slower) but I think everyone prefers having high-speed to an unlimited trickle. T-mobile probably has the best compromise where they switch you to the low-speed after you use up your allotment. Modern phones all automatically switch to wifi when available, only download updates over wifi, and do all they can to keep the limited shared medium open for people who really need it. If you're using more than 10G/month on mobile, then you're probably doing something wrong, without looking, my guess is there is probably a gps enable app that can tell you where you're using all your data but most people probably already know that. Very few people are constantly mobile in areas where there is no wifi and if you are then expect to pay more for that privilege.
Most cell contracts say they can change the price anytime.
Some might but I haven't seen this but it doesn't really matter as most contracts are only good for 2 years and no judge is going to hold a company to a contract that expired 8 years ago. And yes, most contracts in any industry say they can adjust the price on renewal of the contract.
wouldn't this constitute a breach of contract?
You mean the 2 year contract that has long since expired?
This is pretty common in every industry. The loyal customers are grandfathered in for a while and then eventually when they renew, they have to renew at the then current rate. As contracts are typically only 2 years and the unlimited has been phased out probably a decade ago, I'm surprised that it's taken them this long to up the price. I'm actually surprised they haven't gotten completely rid of unlimited. Do you really expect to sign a 2 year contract and never have your price increased, ever? Just inflation alone means that if you have an unlimited plan that you are paying considerably less than when you originally signed up for it.
I sure wish my landline cost the same now as when I first got it. Same with cable, water, electric, etc... They all have yearly increase and my guess is that even with a $20 jump, many of the unlimited users are paying a lot less than someone who signs up today.