Dude... I'm not sure if I count in your definition as anti-Trump. I am against any person who believes they belong in that office... especially the ones who try really hard to get there.
Let's take the commitment made by China as with most of the other "commitments" Trump has forced out of China so far.
"We promise to consider doing this...."
"We promise to consider doing that...."
"Now that we've completely collapsed the entire American soy bean market value, we promise to buy some at pennies on the dollar but we don't really need them that badly since we bought out South America's supply and they agreed to plant more."
Let's also consider that my company and its customers are cancelling or placing on "indefinite hold" billions of dollars in American purchases as we look for non-American suppliers because we don't trust the volatility of the American dollar or the American tariff system. So, if we commit to "buying American", we can't be sure that our 5+ year commitments are safe since they can easily inflate by 10-25% at any time due to increased American import costs as well as lack of stability of the dollar. We are also holding off on stateside investments since the dollar could rebound 10% with no hope of recovery at any time. So... put simply... it will probably be 2-3 years before we buy American again and by then we'll have established suppliers outside. If American companies are willing to operate in Euros instead and therefore assuming the fiscal risks themselves, we may reconsider, but this would likely hurt them and then we are worried about the health of the companies we're committing to.
Since Trump came in, the DHS and Treasury has made it particularly difficult to invoice American companies. If we can't sell to the US, we can't buy from the US. This means that we need to be able to rent people and equipment to the US. As a company attempting to invoice a US company, it is required to fill out tax forms that provide information to prove that you're not laundering money. This is because the US doesn't trust their own companies or foreign companies to operate fairly. If you refuse to or are simply unable to fill out these forms, the American company is required to withhold 30% of your payment and pay it to the US government instead. This may sound like no big deal, but to properly fill out these forms requires that you're invoicing at least $25,000 to justify the cost of employing an international tax lawyer to handle the process. So, the solution is to open a shell corporation in the US, then buy bonds in Apple and then take a loan from Apple in Europe... which in turn is money laundering. But it's legal money laundering.
I'd be remiss if I didn't explain that we always had to file these forms in the past as well. It's simply that with the added trade restrictions since Trump took over, it's much worse. The form used to be something you could fill out yourself. Now it requires actual accountants and tax attorneys.
Now, let me approach the specific topic at hand.
IP Theft.
The Chinese have now declared that there are lots of possible punishments for IP theft. This is a big issue.
1) The commitment doesn't define what IP theft means. It doesn't state whether US patents are recognized in the consideration. 2) It doesn't declare how IP theft is identified. Is it something that is reported? Is it something they have to discover themselves? 3) It doesn't specify where the burden of proof lies. Is this a guilty until proven innocent or vise versa environment? 4) It doesn't specify whether IP theft claims can be filed remotely. 5) It doesn't specify whether simply making something similar is actually IP theft
I can go on. It basically says "We will treat IP theft badly" but what's more important is that China recognizes less than 1% of all claims made regarding IP theft as actually being IP theft. It's not like you can just say "China stole my thing". There's been a rough total of 2 big cases ever filed regarding IP the
Let's suppose for a moment that Apple includes an air filter in the laptops. Understand that we're not talking about a grill, a grill doesn't do much to stop dust. It would have to be an air filter.
To produce an air filter to block particulates from entering the laptop, the filter would itself gather the particulates. This would require making the filter itself able to be cleaned. For this it would require some form of removable grill. A removable grill will require either screw holes or some sort of novel slide and release mechanism to be machined or molded from similar materials as the laptop body.
The addition of said air filter will be of limited value if the filter can't allow air passage as well as block particulates. This means that there would have to be somewhat considerable surface area, low density, greater size, and/or a high power fan to assist with airflow as well as a corresponding power source to compensate for the additional draw.
To make an effective air filter will add additional cost, weight, etc...
The alternative is to facilitate effective use of compressed air through a directed nozzle.
If there's an airflow path for cooling within the laptop that allows air to pass through in the first place, this is the path dust is following to clog the system. Therefore a high power burst of air in the reverse direction will be suitable to remove or somewhat release the particles and eject what would likely be a suitable amount from the chassis or bury in places of less importance.
I believe if Apple loses this case, they should simply ship users a free can of compressed air with the correct nozzle for maximum effectiveness and future models should make it clear that compressed air is a suggested accessory on the side of the box.
I think the air filter would be a generally unwelcome addition to the system.
I also think that Apple needs to identify a means of suing this law firm for targeted frivolous law suits that don't actually represent the interests of the consumers but instead target companies who they believe they can exploit for large settlements.
If Apple asks me, I will participate in a class action suit against this law firm for intentionally misrepresenting me and driving up the costs of products I depend on through frivolous litigation "on my behalf".
If you're old enough to have the money to shell out $1200 for and iPhone and you're discussing doing it "every year", you're probably facing more issues with delayed maturity than you realize.
I have an iPhone 6S Plus. It was the last good phone Apple made. I bought a top end iPhone X and after using it for a month, I decided to give it to my wife because it was a piece of shit. I now have an iPhone 6S Plus.
Is it slower? I suppose. Can't tell when you use it like an adult.
Is the battery in need of replacement... I'm not sure, with Wifi disabled, the phone lasts 24 hours or more of normal use. With Wifi enabled, it lasts about 12-15. It also is not sleeping properly on Wifi which seems associated.
I guess if I was to play the latest games or be obsessed with AI powered photo tools, it could be a problem. But I don't... haven't since I grew up.
I think the average Apple device should last an adult at least 5 years now.
thank you for making this comment. This is what I was looking for!
The car successfully was driving all by itself with a sleeping driver. I don't know the details, but it's possible it might have brought the "driver" home if the destination was known.
I'm also wondering what the grounds for pulling the driver over was. If the car is capable of self-driving then the person at the wheel wasn't actually the driver, they were the operator. When they fell asleep they also forfeited that role to the vehicle and degraded to being a passenger. So far as I can tell, they pulled a car over on the grounds that there was a passenger sleeping at the wheel.
Wouldn't the real issue be that the police should have some means of telling a self driving vehicle to pull over?
What's their plan when delivery trucks start driving soon with no driver present? They obviously can't pull those trucks over for lacking a driver.
Did you just talk about living in a place where someone would shoot themselves while driving...
And you do this in a way that suggested that it wasn't really that shocking... kinda just "And in this morning's news, a driver shot himself while driving down the highway killing a family after swerving across the center lane. And today's lottery numbers are..."
You really really really need to move. There is something really really really wrong with you. This is something that you should never be able to say in passing without horror and terror. Something like that should be a life changing... damn near religion changing experience.
You're in the wrong place if this is passing news.
Team Red and Team Blue... you get to decide which team to support as they fight using nothing but the weapons you give them to an eventual death of western civilization.
Dude... what kind of world is this when we televise and get our rocks off on a 80+ year old cripple smacking some ass by reading 150 pages from the odyssey to fuck their rival team or keep their team from getting fucked in return? And then the next day we publish headlines all across the world about how this geriatric suit wearing loser kicked some major ass to the other party.
Washington is about representing the interests of the American people. It's about trying to present the needs of the people from each state within a forum where mature responsible adults can work together to provide the best balance between want and need for the people with the least amount of compromise from each side. For this system to operate, it requires multiple view points and representatives who are genuinely passionate about the actual needs of their constituents.
What we have is team red and team blue and sport fan supporters on both sides fighting over whose team is better. And what's even dumber is that instead of the representatives listening to the needs of the people, they listen to what the people claim to want and then go kick some ass.
It is absolutely 100% the Democratic and Republican party's fault that Donald Trump is president. They didn't present as options to the people genuine candidate that could best represent them. They chose the candidates they believed had the greatest change to dominate the other party and forced the people to choose between them.
This is true for every election in modern times. We don't choose between good and bad or right and wrong. In fact, we should be choosing more good and more right. Instead we're choosing between Red and Blue. Believe it or not, many people are choosing More Red or More Blue.
Tell me... what percentage of the people who voted for Trump could actually be represented by him? How many of his voters does Trump understand the needs of well enough to represent them in Washington and throughout the world? I'd imagine that it's just about the same pitiful amount that could be represented by Hillary.
Why are we voting for people who can't fairly represent us? Why are we choosing red or blue when there's clearly a spot when you can write in the name of someone you believe could represent you?
The politicians in Washington passed.... stop pretending like Democrats or Republicans are any different than each other. Every one of them sold their souls to get you to sell your soul.
Quit blaming anyone but yourself and the people around you. You and everyone around you that voted democrat or republican are precisely the reason this happened.
Hold on... hold on... so you're telling me that a man willing to sell his soul to a room full of devils in order to pass a useless bill that in its present form should have been burned instead of signed is less guilty of stupidity than the other idiots?
And... dude... whoever agreed to vote for one party or the other and turn the country into something that looks like it's run by Hulk Holgan and friends instead of representatives of the people are to blame.
Do you know what caused the downfall of the Romans and allowed the Caesars to take control? Simple, it was turning the senate into a sporting event.
Americans are so hell-bent on screaming Republican this or Democrat that they don't listen to the sound of the bullshit as it rises above their ears shortly before drowning. This is not the republicans or democrats fault. This is the fault of the spectators who support their childish bickering and enable them.
Social medicine is a simple concept. If you don't want to pay for someone to sit on the couch playing XBox while you're working because he says he has a boo boo, then send his ass to the doctor. He'll say "I can't afford a doctor" so you pay for it. Then he goes to the doctor, the doctor says "He has a boo boo and I can make it better but it will cost" and you say "Fine.. fix the thing... he ass is going to work" and then you chip in with all your tax payer friends and make him better. Then he says "But I don't have a job" so you educated him. And when he has no options left, you find him a government job.
Guess what... that's more expensive sometimes than letting him play XBox, but at least you're not working and grinding your teeth and busting your ass while he's sitting at home drinking schlitz and swearing at 12 year olds while playing CoD.
Social medicine can't work at a state level because you have places like Mississippi and Alabama and Oklahoma who even if you gave them billions of dollars would hire some expert super duper programming firm that would take the money and run and they still wouldn't have a health care system. And if you want the U in USA to mean anything, you'll have to pay for them too. So, federal is the only possibly way it will work.
There's a problem however with federal healthcare... if you implement it, then 10% of the entire countries top paying jobs will disappear almost instantly. Insurance companies will simply collapse. They work now based on different rules they've negotiated state by state until they've found a way to squeeze as much money as possible out of the customers and pay the least amount of money possible to the doctors in each state. In addition, they have partitioned their companies to limit risk in a way that will allow them to file bankruptcy and reestablish under a new name almost over night in each state. By nationalizing it, it would make it too expensive for many of them to operate... and they'd lay off all their people. That's up to 10% of the national white color workforce if you also consider the companies that support those companies.
ACA was guaranteed to fail no matter who implemented it. There is simply no solution to that problem other than....
Wait for it....
Wait for it...
Long term thinking.
That's right, you'd have to start with something like Medicare and Medicaid and create long term solutions that would extend it to everyone over time. It would allow wealthier people to keep their insurance and exploit private clinics and it would allow everyone else to get healthcare when they need it. This is what countries like Norway and Sweden have.
But what Obama did was say "let's just push anything at all through and that's better than nothing" and when went through was just garbage.
So... if you're going to vote democrat or republican and then complain about the other one... you sir are in fact the problem. You're not afraid to speak up and you're not afraid to voice your opinion. Go out and tell people that you all fucked up by letting these democrat and republican assholes play pro-wrestling with your health and your future. It's time to write in your votes.
Yeh... that is the clear answer. But I've been a have and been a have not as well.
When you're a have, it's easy to manage money. Things kinda line up and even if you screw up here and there, there's always a few hundred bucks in the couch cushions somewhere.
When you're a have not, there are all kinds of problems.
A friend of mine who had a childhood that still gives me nightmares to think about would tell me about how she was beaten as a child because her father was frustrated that he couldn't make ends meet. With the exception of her (who worked as a glamour model for a long while) the family was obese. This was because they couldn't afford to gas to drive to the grocery store more than once a month, so the freezer at home was full of food that would last. That means preservatives.
When you're a have not, you run on empty. When you're buried in a hole so deep that even though you can see the top, you know you can never reach it, you eventually come to grips with knowing that you'll never get out... and if know you can never get out, what's the point of trying?
Trust me, as a "have" I'm thoroughly convinced there's no such thing as a hole I can't get out of. But I've spent enough of my life around "have not"s to know that they lack the tools, the knowledge, and worst of all the hope to do so.
So, if you're ok scraping by... consider this.
You consider a big payday when you make it to the end of the week and you actually get to keep your whole welfare check because you haven't already borrowed against it at 30%/week interest rates at the corner shop.
WIC is something you trade for cash. This is done either with a friend or family member you go shopping with and you buy their groceries and they pay your electric bill so you don't freeze. And if none of your friends or relatives are able to help you... then you end up finding some asshole you don't like who is willing to trade you $0.50 cash for $1 WIC
T-Mobile is king because they have some crazy ass way of making it so that you can buy an iPhone X 128GB even though the government doesn't trust you with your own paycheck and is withdrawing money from it.
Paper checks are a blessing and a curse because if you can get someone to take a $5 post dated check and get the money deposited before the check comes due... you're golden. If you can't, then your $300 pay check just became $150 because you got hit by 5 penalties for being poor.
No... if every single week you have a deficit that is compounded by additional fees incurred from poor money management the week before...
You and I clearly know that life doesn't have to be like this. If I were in the position today, here's my plan :
- pawn whatever's left and get a few clean and decent outfits
- Use that iPhone X I somehow lucked out on and watch about 1,000 hours of Khan Academy
- Take my GED
- Visit a local school and beg a teacher to assist me with speech therapy to make my speech patterns "wealthier" and less "ghetto". Ghetto schools actually have programs for this in big cities.
- Start visiting a church in a wealthier neighborhood and volunteer enough to be noticed as a hard and honest worker until someone takes pitty on the fella down on his luck and offers him something. Rabbis and Priests have a "discretionary fund" which is often used to help the poor or even to make a mortgage payment for a member of the church or temple that is desperate. You'd be surprised how much those people are really willing to help. (I'm atheist, but I respect people who help other people)
- Read the news paper every day and learn how those entitled people think in order to better communicate with them.
This seems like a lot of work and it is. But it's a plan that has a 90% or better chance of working and certainly wouldn't leave you worse of than when you started.
For someone in that position, no... you don't have the tools, the knowledge... or worse... the hope. And trust me... that guy has WIC... or he did on Monday and now it's Wednesday and after paying off the guy who helped keep the water on last week, there's nothing left.
Hmmm... this is strange... in the past, I considered it an important thing for the president to spend time "playing on camera"
Trump... it may simply be that I don't like him, but let's talk about why it was important for former presidents to do so.
Consider for a moment you were president. Meaning the public representative of the shareholders of the America... the people. This is the position. When you are president, your job is to act on behalf of your constituents and to negotiate on their behalf both foreign and domestic. You are also granted the office of war. In this case, it was a power formerly reserved for monarchs, but prior to Trump, we haven't had anyone claiming the role of monarch in America. Hell... he even wants to build big guarded walls around his kingdom.
Before 9/11, the president often did a fantastic job of using golf or jogging or whatever to let people know that things were going so well he had time to relax and play. This is true for Camp David and such as well.
Since GWB and 9/11, the US government has evolved to use fear tactics as a means of allowing for socialistic job creation by massive increases to military, TSA, DHS, police force, etc... spending. As such, the US has been transforming slowly into a borderline communist government with a policy "If you can't find a job, we'll make one for you" but to support this, the people need to be in constant fear of enemies from within and without. It is working though and the economy is booming by diluting the currency base and simply agreeing with other nations that they all need to make more money to employ people who would be on welfare otherwise.
Consider than in the last 4 years, Norway (where I live) has eliminated almost all post offices, moved into grocery stores and the grocery stores have replaced most of their clerks with self-checkout. Altogether, let's suggest for every 10km sq. computers have replaced at least 150 postal and grocery jobs... then consider that Norway also just ordered self-driving postal delivery robots. These people need jobs... so the government will either pay welfare or make new jobs for them. In America that means war and fear.
Even today, it was important for the leader...the representative of the people. The CEO hired by the shareholders of the country to be seen taking it easy. It means that he believes he is on top of things. It means that he's not locked in a room getting ready to start a war somewhere. You have a reason to sleep well tonight because you are safe and they have it all under control.
In Trump's case, I believe he thinks that being seen working on his lovely orange glow while on a golf course is conveying to the people that he's showing those bastards in Washington and France and China that they aren't even important enough to delay his game for. He'll show them.
No... the golf course or Clinton's jogging track... etc... these are very very important aspects of the presidency. I sure as hell would be worried if there was a president that made it look like they were so busy they couldn't trust anyone else in the white house for even a day or the world would explode.
I was watching interviews with farmers who were impacted by the tariffs. It was like:
"We planted Soy this year... no one bought it and the silos can't take it... so we dumped it in a yard next to the silos and got paid"
"Next year, we'll flood the corn or grain market because the tariffs are killing demand for soy today and we'd rather plant stuff with demand"
"Trump has been giving us money so we don't have to worry about losing the farm"
"We'll suffer like this today so that our kids will have it better tomorrow"
All that seems to have happened is that China agreed to wait to come to an agreement. They of course agreed to import stuff they planned to import anyway but can negotiate price on now because it's sitting and collecting dust. Maybe they'll pay full price, but it's supply and demand and China has managed to meet most of the demand by buying from Brazil for example. So, while the US has a tremendous supply, the Chinese aren't desperate, so the buyer will set the price.
As for stagnant wages. I don't understand. I've had increasing wages consistently for the past 25 years. I make five-six times as much now as I did in 1999. My wife makes at least double.
Ohhhh... you mean for the minimum wage bracket. As in the people working for employers who do things like take a $9 an hour minimum wage and offer $9.15 to buy employee loyalty because he's saying "Look how much I appreciate you... I would never pay you minimum wage!" or the other poor bastards working for minimum wage which is an employer's means of saying "You have so little value to me, I would pay you less if the government would let me.".
Are you under the impression that the president of the United States has any connection to what it means to worry about the price of milk or a toothbrush? I was homeless when I was in my early 20s, living in a car that was so filthy I should have died from sepsis or similar. And I have no idea what the price of eggs, milk or a toothbrush is. I consider it hardship when I have less than $10,000 a month to waste on shit I don't need. And no I never bother with savings because the money basically just keeps coming in bigger and bigger amounts as I get older. And now I'm in a place where I can climb ladders and there's room for me to double, triple or quadruple my income again in the next 10-20 years while getting board seats.
No... middle and upper class (not income... class... there's a real difference. Middle income is a fancy term politicians made up to make poor people feel like they're actually middle class) won't even notice the slightest bit if they have to pay $1.25 for a toothbrush instead of $1.00 because they probably paid that anyway.
Also make no mistake that China can easily drop prices as well. If China wants to win this one, they can make things even cheaper. Look at the prices they're paying for the sames things in China. Surf the shopping sites using Google Translate. The prices are considerably less. If you look closely, you'll find that most of the price you're paying for pretty much everything is shipping... which they wouldn't pay tax on anyway. So... why not just charge a little less for the toothbrush and a little more for the shipping? In fact, instead of charging $1 for the toothbrush and $0 for shipping. Why not charge $0.05 for the toothbrush and $1.00 for the shipping. This would actually hurt Americans as it would drive the prices up and pay almost nothing in taxes.
Also, the dollar is REALLY REALLY REALLY strong right now. I've recommended to customers in 3 countries now to place all USD purchases on hold until it becomes predictable. There's too much risk negotiating purchases in dollars right now. If American companies want that business (total of about $3.1 billion), they'll have to commit and negotiate in EUR because anything purchased in dollars is simply too volatile right now. I know that at least a few of those customers have taken my advise. None of they really need those purchases, at least n
I'm in favor of no term limits but also in favor of votes of no confidence.
If a politician has a legitimate a good idea, they have a very limited time to achieve it. So, let's take Obama for example. He wanted to implement socialized medicine. American's call it "Single payer" where in Europe we just call it "health care".
So like everything else Obama ever did... he did it completely half-assed and other than the name of the bill, it was not what he planned.
See, here's the thing. He came into office with strong popularity and had more support walking in than probably anyone since Reagan. He had some struggles and he couldn't just bully people into what he wanted. But he also knew that if he was to deliver on the "Affordable Care Act" he would have less than 2 years to get something onto paper and get it through at least one side of congress.
So, what he did is that he took a bill written by republicans that could have been the starting point. He added his own changes, but nothing revolutionary. The only flaw in his bill was that it was federal and the republicans wanted state level. The bill itself was shit because it certainly didn't offer European style medical coverage, but there was clearly hope that if this bill got in, it could eventually evolve into something useful.
Then he send the bill to politicians on both sides of the isles and each on chopped something they didn't like and earmarked something utterly unrelated onto it. I haven't read the whole thing, but at some point I think Oklahoma tried to earmark eliminating science from school in favor of creationism. Even the democrats and his supporters were earmarking the shit out of the bill hoping to slip things like road work projects and such in.
When the ACA finally reached his desk to either be vetod or approved, about the only thing left in the plan that was from the original document was the title and this was because he knew that if we wanted to actually get a chance to start implementing it, he couldn't fight each change, he just accepted everything like an idiot. The end result was he had less than a year and a half to start implementing possibly the worst health bill ever and attempt to prove that it would work.
Then the government hired a contractor to write the software. And as with any good American Funded government project... they outsourced the entire thing to India... everything got rushed and botched to hell and it was WAY over budget and WAY late because well... software takes time to write and the lawyers running thing apparently are just stupid.
My point which I'm making is that if Obama didn't have term limits to worry about and instead of wasting an entire year of his time in office trying to get more time in office, he could have used well timed votes of no confidence to extend his time in office long enough to fight for a real ACA and to implement it. But because of term limits, the US now has the ACA which must be the worst thing ever.
And then you have the follow up which is Trump who believes the ACA has to go and he has a limited time to work and he isn't proposing an alternative and he's stomping his feet to make good on the promise because if he doesn't pull it off, everyone will tear him apart during reelection for failing at this. Then how will he get one of the biggest construction projects in history to be named for him?
A president's job is to represent the people and act as commander in chief. He's not there to make laws. He's not there to pass laws. He's not there to do most things. He has the option to veto bills, but that's really only meant for extraneous circumstances.
The American people are warlike. I dare you to suggest otherwise.
Each day each child stands and recites: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Let me clarify. From the time a child first enters school, each day, they will repledge their allegiance. They're declaring they are an ally to a member of a conflict. They are declaring in front of a room of people that they are ready and willing to play their role in a conflict or battle if necessary.
They are declaring the allegiance to a symbol which is a flag. A flag is a tool that has little or no purpose out of either battle or political battle. A flag is something you place everywhere the way a dog marks trees. If a dog decides to mark a tree that's been marked by another dog, that dog is declaring they are willing to fight for it. This is precisely what we're doing with flags. A flag is a symbol of anger and aggression. It's a symbol of dominance and daring.
Children... every day for 12 years or more are declaring their willingness, readiness and intent to dominate all others to support the flag, the republic for which it stand... they will do it with absolute belief that God wishes this to be so... and WTF?
With liberty and justice for all?
Liberty by the definition provided in Merriam Webster's dictionary has changed many times over the years to make this statement true. Or should I say that as the American government has slowly degraded the liberties permitted, the definition has changed to reflect what little liberty as a person has left by law. Now, it seems that liberty means that you should be allowed to watch the 4th of July Fireworks while hundreds or thousands of highly armed police officers enforce the barriers and limit where you are allowed to sit or stand, limit whether you can go to the bathroom, etc... but the good news is that this is in the name of guaranteeing you liberty and freedom.
And justice. Tell me... what is justice? Justice requires that people are treated fairly and well enough that no individuals will feel a need to intentionally impede on other people's liberty. A just system would require no justice system because in a just system, the people would in theory be content. I know this is silly, but it sets a premise of a utopia I'm leading up from.
A justice system is a system which is there to "dispense justice" in a systematic way that should be as just as possible to as many people as possible.
If someone were to steal milk from a convenience store... and while they're there "In for a dime, in for a dollar" grabs a bottle of Jack Daniels and a carton of Newports. He even carries a gun, not because he would ever shoot at a person, but because shooting a few bullets into the floor would likely get him out of there with less friction. He stole the milk because he was poor and his baby was hungry. He stole the Jack and the Newports because he's so shaken up from doing this that he'll chug the bottle and chainsmoke until the shaking stops.
This is an extreme example. But what is justice here?
Should we send this man to prison for 5 years ensuring that during that time, he'll be unable to provide for his child. Then when he gets out, his child, raised mostly without a father... not only that, but without a father that loved him so much that he was willing to throw his life away to get the child milk... the child will have grown up without someone to help raise him. The child's mother will have had to work twice or three times as hard leaving the child to be raised by someone who is already unable to share
And we'll be paying for Clinton's balanced budget for decades to come. We'll pay for Reagan's mass deflation of currency forever. We'll pay for Obama's limp dicked social healthcare which started as "Healthcare for all" to a piece of paper that said "Affordable Healthcare Act" and really meant "There's nothing left in here from the original policy and we've let every politician in America earmark the shit of it. Oklahoma can no declare black people as aliens and teach creationism as science. But at least I passed my bill".
Rule #1 : If you think you're the right person to represent hundreds of millions of people with hundreds of millions of different and generally conflicting needs. You probably should be shot before entering office.
Rule #2 : If you need to associate with a political party who will sell you a chance at the presidency in return for what few drops of your soul you have left... you should not run for president.
Rule #3 : If you are either a conservative or a liberal... you can not represent people fairly. You should not be allowed to run for present.
Rule #4 : If you actually become president and when midterms come around you're supporting only one political party or worse... you're supporting a political party instead of the merits of the individual candidates... you should be burned on a cross.
Please don't pretend like one president is better than the next. The system specifically permits only bankers and lawyers and oilmen into the office. They are people who like to play the game or to represent themselves and their families. After two Bushes and a Trump, American is clearly becoming something of an oligarchy.
Worse, we see things like Hillary running for office because well if GWB can be president after daddy, then shouldn't she be able to be president after Bill? And the most fucked up thing is, she might have been the most technically qualified presidential candidate we've had since the founding fathers died since she might be the only candidate that actually had real experience running the country because she and Bill were a team. Now, considering that like all other presidents, Bill sucked at the job.. even with her help, I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
Dukey was a mess. He would have been a lame duck. Nah... he'd have been a limp dick. He was almost as stupid as Al Gore.
We sit here judging US presidents as though we really think there's such a thing as a possibility of having a good one. When you have one part of a country who get's their education from the Westboro Baptist Church, another part of the country idolizing and learning from Kim Kardashian, another part rallying for Donald Trump and wearing hats specifically designed to target rednecks, another part like Jamaica Queens NY where there are multiple police officers on every corner all day and night trying to either maintain the peace, simply keep people alive, or beating teenaged kids for carrying a joint... and then close to a hundred million retired people who mostly have burned through their savings that were stored based on 10 years of life after retirement but now everyone is living 20-30 more...
You know what... I can make a list that sounds like Billy Joel's we didn't start the fire that lists everything from modern day hippies to wall street one per-centers and I would never get close to covering even the smallest portion of America.
Let's make it simple... GHWB wasn't any worse than the rest of them. When he went to war and he incarcerated people for being poor.... he wasn't being any worse than the rest of them. He was an unqualified person being controlled by an unqualified party voted for by unqualified voters and criticized publicly by unqualified journalists who were trying to make a buck by turning The New York Times into just another tabloid like the rest of them with bold and shocking headlines.
Guess what... bold shocking headlines aren't bold or shocking when you've shocked everyone so much that no one gives a shit anymore. If the Post
Nonsense... he has that southern drawl that makes him difficult to understand.
If you understand redneck fluently (6 years in Florida helped me learn), he clearly said "Read my lips. No new taxis"
And he stood by that 10000%, no matter where I traveled during that era within the US, there wasn't a single new taxi in service. They were falling apart left and right and I believe he double downed on his promise because I'm pretty sure he made it so that absolutely no service would be performed on those taxis either.
I've always though that was unfair of people to falsely interpret his speech impediment to mean taxes instead of taxis.
Golf carts on the other hand, they're not really taxis, so those did receive lots of updates.
Some of us believe in world peace. It is almost as practical as a wall separating a massive border between two countries.
There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a problem, but border control is as effective as pixie dust. The solution is to set realistic standards that convince the people trying to get in to meet those standards. If the requirements seem unachievable or overly complicated, people will lose hope in ever achieving them and therefore choosing to circumvent them instead.
If you set the requirements to a reasonable level and set the standards high enough to require the immigrants to actively contribute to making America better, the problem will likely solve itself.
If you lack faith in people (most pro-border control generally do), you should believe completely that there is no forceful solution to the problem. You have to manipulate the people into participating in a system that is designed to offer a legitimate compromise that is as fair as possible to all those involved.
Of course for such a system to work, it would require people to let it work. Two party politics ensures this will never be the case. If you really want to find a real solution to the problem, consider voting against both parties in the future. Let the government know that you are tired of their bickering and you are done with your country being run by fools who have turned politics into team sports instead of representation of the people.
Amazon isn't buying a premade chip. They bought an ARM licensee who made an Amazon branded chip. This is an Amazon ARM processor.
Microsoft I've heard is doing the same.
Google I'm sure could do the same. They of course own several companies who have experience licensing ARM cores.
If each of these companies establish their own chip development teams and simply license cores, that's the end of pretty much the entire server chip market... period.
I work for a massive corporation who among other things owns a cloud provider. I have two racks for my mad science in their data centers. I still haven't seen a current generation Xeon chip. I haven't seen new servers purchased. Even as an enterprise, I haven't seen these newer systems. The reason is simple... there are only three cloud companies out there. And if all three make their own chips, I know we're not picking up the slack at Intel.
When working in Lambdas, an effective DBA on the team can be focused on optimizing queries which will shorten the time you're running lambdas for. If nothing else, they can help identify queries which should be made async and recommend how. So... while I'm entirely on board with canning the IT department, please keep the DBAs, they are really really useful... especially in a lambda world.
I'm choking here... you're spending up to $96,000 a year on K8S in the cloud? I don't know what you do and to be fair, if there's a solid reason why hosting in the cloud makes more sense than just running it back home... ignore me. But running K8S on premise (or Swarm which I like better) is cheap. I've spent a few thousand bucks on the infrastructure and it's all disposable. Raspberry Pi + Linux + GlusterFS (shared volumes) + Docker + K8S +.NET Core.... it's pretty good. The only problem I have at this time is that while I have Crate.IO in test for SQL... who the hell uses SQL anymore. I'm focused more on NoSQL and would love a functional Couchbase solution, but I'm running that on a few x86 servers which were left over after we realized that VMware was the blackhole of IT spending.
As for backup, we're backing up GlusterFS volumes to S3, we're backing up Couchbase natively.
I'm pretty sure that you could self host on LattePanda Alpha for substantially less than you're paying for Amazon.
The shortcoming in my design of course if you're an online service. Then the money you'd save by self hosting would be entirely consumed by bandwidth and networking costs.
As for cutting AWS costs... you know that if you move to Lambda, you probably would cut back by as much as 98%? Docker was an insane improvement over VMs... saved companies millions. But if you trim to Lambdas, you can get the same savings again.
My fear before switching to Docker, ARM and.NET Core was that if I switched to a non-Intel architecture, I might not be able to go back. Meaning, let's say I did something stupid like writing my code to work in the public cloud. Then, I coded and optimized against Amazon's ARM architecture... then Amazon decided to change the terms of service or jack up their prices, etc... then I would be stuck paying and doing whatever they demanded.
Of course, now with Docker and.NET Core, I simply code towards Docker and ignore the underlying platform.
2018 soon 2019... people learn to program from places like CodeAcademy. They take 12 week classes and are professional programmers. Etc...
Most of the code out there in the world is being produced by people writing node or python scripts. A lot of it is just deploying packages on Linux and running a server. In many cases, it's just a blog deployed by clicking a few links. If you're coding for the cloud, then you would never deploy your own database... well unless you're a moron, you'd use nothing but cloud storage (or in Amazon terms) Elastic everything.
Probably close to 50% of all code going into the cloud today is pretty much entirely CPU agnostic and if you can do it on x86, you could do it on ARM or anything else and be entirely clueless about it. Linux is Linux, Python is Python.
So... yeh.. within reason... for most projects (done by programmers, not IT guys.. they always fuck things up) there's really no difference between the platforms.
I'll toss you a bone though. Coders are not programmers. Coders are generally slapping stuff together non-stop without any real idea how anything works. Programmers should never have a problem switching CPUs. I've been coding on many architectures for decades and to be honest, other than ARM being among the worst with regards to performance.. ALWAYS... I haven't seen a difference between them. So one is, big endian, the other is small. One is 32-bit the other is 64. One works without word alignment, the other demands it. But a CPU is a CPU.
I will admit that I've had suspicions for a long time that ARM is simply not compatible with a user workflow. It's an amazing design when you really limit the task swapping. But as soon as multithreading is involved, it chokes. This is why it works so well on phones and Nintendo and such. It's great when you have one single foreground application. But it's a crappy system when you're running multiple equal class citizens like server processes and such.
Yes, there is an ARM license. But they focus on volume. I think it's something like $1 a core or something like that. It might be $1 per die. But unless you're doing 100 cores, it's pretty cheap.
I use ARM almost exclusively for my servers. The exception is my Couchbase servers and I'm considering replacing them since they don't really do Docker well either. If Couchbase manages to do ARM + Docker... as in it's possible to deploy an entire redundant Couchbase Enterprise cluster using (preferably) Swarm or possibly Kubernetes, then I'm back with them.
I use small, cheap Raspberry Pi servers running Linux, Docker and.NET Core. All my code is map/reduce so scalabiiity is not an issue. I can run tens of thousands of nodes without a problem. At an average cost (including board, case, power supply, SD card, NB-IOT, LCD, wires and fan) of about $95 a unit, this is just silly inexpensive. Because I use Swarm with Docker Community Edition, Linux and.NET Core, management is super simple, ridiculously cheap and just plain smarter than using much of anything else.
That said, since ARM is still a second class citizen in the sense that there's still no native ARM development computers out there worth using, I get easily frustrated by having to constantly work on stupidly underpowered Raspberry Pi devices.
As for ARM servers... they never made sense for any application I've ever heard of. The industry is so full of shit these days. I means serious... most of the tasks running on the 50+ Xeon Core systems are terribly wasteful. Consider that I'm running basically a massive scale (I mean massive) data collection and mining system for system management. I'm streaming syslog, snmp, netflow, etc... from over 100,000 devices into a semi-centralized database and mining the data constantly. My average footprint per system is about 32 megs of RAM (I'm running in debug at this time), 75 megs of flash (I haven't optimized the docker images yet) and about 4% CPU usage... on a Raspberry Pi 3B+.
I use gigabit Ethernet... I'm not sure why... but 100Mb isn't really available anymore. I never waste money on things like redundant networking since I have absolutely no possibility of a single point of failure due to the nature of the map/reduce architecture. I don't waste time fixing broken systems, I simply throw them away (donate them to schools) and when capacity drops below a certain level, I add 10 or 20 more units.
I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would build anything else... unless you're just a cloud vendor and focused on density. But for daily operations at a company, all you need is a 9 Raspberry Pis, 3 routers with built in switches (Banana Pi R2 if you're brave, Cisco 4220 otherwise), and that should be enough to provide a fully redundant massive server cluster. It won't run Windows server... but that stuff is in the cloud these days. Local infrastructure is for business systems... because why the hell would you put that in the cloud when it costs a few hundred bucks to host it yourself?
So again... massive ARM processors... I guess if you're Amazon, it makes sense. But for what typically amounts to little more than a transaction processing system (business systems) they are just completely overkill.
I'm a father of two full-fledged teenagers who in the past have been known to buy each other loot boxes for their birthdays.
In Overwatch, my daughter's favorite, she loves to get the latest and greatest skins. But I've seen her with tears in her eyes because she had incredibly high hopes that the loot boxes her brother bought her would give her the skin she really wanted. This of course made my son feel like shit because he really wanted to make his sister happy and he had spent almost all his monthly disposable income on loot boxes for his sister and he failed to be her hero. He, who is freakishly talented with regards to killing in games but hates Overwatch then binge gamed with her to try and earn her more loot boxes before the special offer expired. They still came up short.
My friend's son who receives close to $400 a month in allowance (he plays his divorced mother and father against each other) spends most of it on loot boxes, then he sells whatever he gets. So far as I know, the most profitable month he's had in 3 years of doing this is to break even. And because of the nature of gambling, he and the other moron children who do the same thing sit around comparing who is going to get rich first from this. And then they complain about how their parents didn't by them the latest Jordan's yet.
Loot boxes legitimize gambling for teenagers. This means that they grow up thinking that the lottery is a good idea. They think that Vegas is a great place to go. Instead of cake sales at schools, they sell raffle tickets for the same cakes. I recently was asked to buy a raffle ticket for $2 for a chance to win a cake. I said "I'll give you $30 for the cake"... they actually turned me down because they would rather gamble that they could sell more than 15 tickets for the same cake their mother baked.
I refused to let my kids play Movie Star Planet when they were younger because in order to advance in the game, they had to use tokens to win more tokens at a casino. Of course, they had a few tokens as part of the membership to the game, but they would beg for us to buy them more tokens so they could gamble more. When I asked why... that was the end of that game. Same went for several others.
No... casinos and gambling are not welcome. And legitimizing gambling for children of any age is simply not welcome. My son is playing basketball now, I told him that I'll pull him from it as soon as he participates in gambling of any sort and that includes raffles. I said that if they don't want to throw a bake sale, then sell services like carrying bags at the grocery store to peoples cars. Or offer to pack peoples groceries for a tip. There's simply no reason to gamble or to promote that other people should gamble.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn!!! That's the best one I've heard yet. I've wanted to say that so many times. I think I'd use the Indigo format of phrasing the statement though.
Yep... in fact, I run Linux (without the Linux Kernel) on Windows every day. I love it. It's like having Linux but on top of something usable.
Dude... I'm not sure if I count in your definition as anti-Trump. I am against any person who believes they belong in that office... especially the ones who try really hard to get there.
Let's take the commitment made by China as with most of the other "commitments" Trump has forced out of China so far.
"We promise to consider doing this...."
"We promise to consider doing that...."
"Now that we've completely collapsed the entire American soy bean market value, we promise to buy some at pennies on the dollar but we don't really need them that badly since we bought out South America's supply and they agreed to plant more."
Let's also consider that my company and its customers are cancelling or placing on "indefinite hold" billions of dollars in American purchases as we look for non-American suppliers because we don't trust the volatility of the American dollar or the American tariff system. So, if we commit to "buying American", we can't be sure that our 5+ year commitments are safe since they can easily inflate by 10-25% at any time due to increased American import costs as well as lack of stability of the dollar. We are also holding off on stateside investments since the dollar could rebound 10% with no hope of recovery at any time. So... put simply... it will probably be 2-3 years before we buy American again and by then we'll have established suppliers outside. If American companies are willing to operate in Euros instead and therefore assuming the fiscal risks themselves, we may reconsider, but this would likely hurt them and then we are worried about the health of the companies we're committing to.
Since Trump came in, the DHS and Treasury has made it particularly difficult to invoice American companies. If we can't sell to the US, we can't buy from the US. This means that we need to be able to rent people and equipment to the US. As a company attempting to invoice a US company, it is required to fill out tax forms that provide information to prove that you're not laundering money. This is because the US doesn't trust their own companies or foreign companies to operate fairly. If you refuse to or are simply unable to fill out these forms, the American company is required to withhold 30% of your payment and pay it to the US government instead. This may sound like no big deal, but to properly fill out these forms requires that you're invoicing at least $25,000 to justify the cost of employing an international tax lawyer to handle the process. So, the solution is to open a shell corporation in the US, then buy bonds in Apple and then take a loan from Apple in Europe... which in turn is money laundering. But it's legal money laundering.
I'd be remiss if I didn't explain that we always had to file these forms in the past as well. It's simply that with the added trade restrictions since Trump took over, it's much worse. The form used to be something you could fill out yourself. Now it requires actual accountants and tax attorneys.
Now, let me approach the specific topic at hand.
IP Theft.
The Chinese have now declared that there are lots of possible punishments for IP theft. This is a big issue.
1) The commitment doesn't define what IP theft means. It doesn't state whether US patents are recognized in the consideration.
2) It doesn't declare how IP theft is identified. Is it something that is reported? Is it something they have to discover themselves?
3) It doesn't specify where the burden of proof lies. Is this a guilty until proven innocent or vise versa environment?
4) It doesn't specify whether IP theft claims can be filed remotely.
5) It doesn't specify whether simply making something similar is actually IP theft
I can go on. It basically says "We will treat IP theft badly" but what's more important is that China recognizes less than 1% of all claims made regarding IP theft as actually being IP theft. It's not like you can just say "China stole my thing". There's been a rough total of 2 big cases ever filed regarding IP the
Let's suppose for a moment that Apple includes an air filter in the laptops. Understand that we're not talking about a grill, a grill doesn't do much to stop dust. It would have to be an air filter.
To produce an air filter to block particulates from entering the laptop, the filter would itself gather the particulates. This would require making the filter itself able to be cleaned. For this it would require some form of removable grill. A removable grill will require either screw holes or some sort of novel slide and release mechanism to be machined or molded from similar materials as the laptop body.
The addition of said air filter will be of limited value if the filter can't allow air passage as well as block particulates. This means that there would have to be somewhat considerable surface area, low density, greater size, and/or a high power fan to assist with airflow as well as a corresponding power source to compensate for the additional draw.
To make an effective air filter will add additional cost, weight, etc...
The alternative is to facilitate effective use of compressed air through a directed nozzle.
If there's an airflow path for cooling within the laptop that allows air to pass through in the first place, this is the path dust is following to clog the system. Therefore a high power burst of air in the reverse direction will be suitable to remove or somewhat release the particles and eject what would likely be a suitable amount from the chassis or bury in places of less importance.
I believe if Apple loses this case, they should simply ship users a free can of compressed air with the correct nozzle for maximum effectiveness and future models should make it clear that compressed air is a suggested accessory on the side of the box.
I think the air filter would be a generally unwelcome addition to the system.
I also think that Apple needs to identify a means of suing this law firm for targeted frivolous law suits that don't actually represent the interests of the consumers but instead target companies who they believe they can exploit for large settlements.
If Apple asks me, I will participate in a class action suit against this law firm for intentionally misrepresenting me and driving up the costs of products I depend on through frivolous litigation "on my behalf".
There's a problem here.
If you're old enough to have the money to shell out $1200 for and iPhone and you're discussing doing it "every year", you're probably facing more issues with delayed maturity than you realize.
I have an iPhone 6S Plus. It was the last good phone Apple made. I bought a top end iPhone X and after using it for a month, I decided to give it to my wife because it was a piece of shit. I now have an iPhone 6S Plus.
Is it slower? I suppose. Can't tell when you use it like an adult.
Is the battery in need of replacement... I'm not sure, with Wifi disabled, the phone lasts 24 hours or more of normal use. With Wifi enabled, it lasts about 12-15. It also is not sleeping properly on Wifi which seems associated.
I guess if I was to play the latest games or be obsessed with AI powered photo tools, it could be a problem. But I don't... haven't since I grew up.
I think the average Apple device should last an adult at least 5 years now.
thank you for making this comment. This is what I was looking for!
The car successfully was driving all by itself with a sleeping driver. I don't know the details, but it's possible it might have brought the "driver" home if the destination was known.
I'm also wondering what the grounds for pulling the driver over was. If the car is capable of self-driving then the person at the wheel wasn't actually the driver, they were the operator. When they fell asleep they also forfeited that role to the vehicle and degraded to being a passenger. So far as I can tell, they pulled a car over on the grounds that there was a passenger sleeping at the wheel.
Wouldn't the real issue be that the police should have some means of telling a self driving vehicle to pull over?
What's their plan when delivery trucks start driving soon with no driver present? They obviously can't pull those trucks over for lacking a driver.
Ok...
I'm trying now...
I don't know where to start...
Did you just talk about living in a place where someone would shoot themselves while driving...
And you do this in a way that suggested that it wasn't really that shocking... kinda just "And in this morning's news, a driver shot himself while driving down the highway killing a family after swerving across the center lane. And today's lottery numbers are..."
You really really really need to move. There is something really really really wrong with you. This is something that you should never be able to say in passing without horror and terror. Something like that should be a life changing... damn near religion changing experience.
You're in the wrong place if this is passing news.
Team Red and Team Blue... you get to decide which team to support as they fight using nothing but the weapons you give them to an eventual death of western civilization.
Dude... what kind of world is this when we televise and get our rocks off on a 80+ year old cripple smacking some ass by reading 150 pages from the odyssey to fuck their rival team or keep their team from getting fucked in return? And then the next day we publish headlines all across the world about how this geriatric suit wearing loser kicked some major ass to the other party.
Washington is about representing the interests of the American people. It's about trying to present the needs of the people from each state within a forum where mature responsible adults can work together to provide the best balance between want and need for the people with the least amount of compromise from each side. For this system to operate, it requires multiple view points and representatives who are genuinely passionate about the actual needs of their constituents.
What we have is team red and team blue and sport fan supporters on both sides fighting over whose team is better. And what's even dumber is that instead of the representatives listening to the needs of the people, they listen to what the people claim to want and then go kick some ass.
It is absolutely 100% the Democratic and Republican party's fault that Donald Trump is president. They didn't present as options to the people genuine candidate that could best represent them. They chose the candidates they believed had the greatest change to dominate the other party and forced the people to choose between them.
This is true for every election in modern times. We don't choose between good and bad or right and wrong. In fact, we should be choosing more good and more right. Instead we're choosing between Red and Blue. Believe it or not, many people are choosing More Red or More Blue.
Tell me... what percentage of the people who voted for Trump could actually be represented by him? How many of his voters does Trump understand the needs of well enough to represent them in Washington and throughout the world? I'd imagine that it's just about the same pitiful amount that could be represented by Hillary.
Why are we voting for people who can't fairly represent us? Why are we choosing red or blue when there's clearly a spot when you can write in the name of someone you believe could represent you?
The politicians in Washington passed.... stop pretending like Democrats or Republicans are any different than each other. Every one of them sold their souls to get you to sell your soul.
Quit blaming anyone but yourself and the people around you. You and everyone around you that voted democrat or republican are precisely the reason this happened.
Hold on... hold on... so you're telling me that a man willing to sell his soul to a room full of devils in order to pass a useless bill that in its present form should have been burned instead of signed is less guilty of stupidity than the other idiots?
And... dude... whoever agreed to vote for one party or the other and turn the country into something that looks like it's run by Hulk Holgan and friends instead of representatives of the people are to blame.
Do you know what caused the downfall of the Romans and allowed the Caesars to take control? Simple, it was turning the senate into a sporting event.
Americans are so hell-bent on screaming Republican this or Democrat that they don't listen to the sound of the bullshit as it rises above their ears shortly before drowning. This is not the republicans or democrats fault. This is the fault of the spectators who support their childish bickering and enable them.
Social medicine is a simple concept. If you don't want to pay for someone to sit on the couch playing XBox while you're working because he says he has a boo boo, then send his ass to the doctor. He'll say "I can't afford a doctor" so you pay for it. Then he goes to the doctor, the doctor says "He has a boo boo and I can make it better but it will cost" and you say "Fine.. fix the thing... he ass is going to work" and then you chip in with all your tax payer friends and make him better. Then he says "But I don't have a job" so you educated him. And when he has no options left, you find him a government job.
Guess what... that's more expensive sometimes than letting him play XBox, but at least you're not working and grinding your teeth and busting your ass while he's sitting at home drinking schlitz and swearing at 12 year olds while playing CoD.
Social medicine can't work at a state level because you have places like Mississippi and Alabama and Oklahoma who even if you gave them billions of dollars would hire some expert super duper programming firm that would take the money and run and they still wouldn't have a health care system. And if you want the U in USA to mean anything, you'll have to pay for them too. So, federal is the only possibly way it will work.
There's a problem however with federal healthcare... if you implement it, then 10% of the entire countries top paying jobs will disappear almost instantly. Insurance companies will simply collapse. They work now based on different rules they've negotiated state by state until they've found a way to squeeze as much money as possible out of the customers and pay the least amount of money possible to the doctors in each state. In addition, they have partitioned their companies to limit risk in a way that will allow them to file bankruptcy and reestablish under a new name almost over night in each state. By nationalizing it, it would make it too expensive for many of them to operate... and they'd lay off all their people. That's up to 10% of the national white color workforce if you also consider the companies that support those companies.
ACA was guaranteed to fail no matter who implemented it. There is simply no solution to that problem other than....
Wait for it....
Wait for it...
Long term thinking.
That's right, you'd have to start with something like Medicare and Medicaid and create long term solutions that would extend it to everyone over time. It would allow wealthier people to keep their insurance and exploit private clinics and it would allow everyone else to get healthcare when they need it. This is what countries like Norway and Sweden have.
But what Obama did was say "let's just push anything at all through and that's better than nothing" and when went through was just garbage.
So... if you're going to vote democrat or republican and then complain about the other one... you sir are in fact the problem. You're not afraid to speak up and you're not afraid to voice your opinion. Go out and tell people that you all fucked up by letting these democrat and republican assholes play pro-wrestling with your health and your future. It's time to write in your votes.
Yeh... that is the clear answer. But I've been a have and been a have not as well.
When you're a have, it's easy to manage money. Things kinda line up and even if you screw up here and there, there's always a few hundred bucks in the couch cushions somewhere.
When you're a have not, there are all kinds of problems.
A friend of mine who had a childhood that still gives me nightmares to think about would tell me about how she was beaten as a child because her father was frustrated that he couldn't make ends meet. With the exception of her (who worked as a glamour model for a long while) the family was obese. This was because they couldn't afford to gas to drive to the grocery store more than once a month, so the freezer at home was full of food that would last. That means preservatives.
When you're a have not, you run on empty. When you're buried in a hole so deep that even though you can see the top, you know you can never reach it, you eventually come to grips with knowing that you'll never get out... and if know you can never get out, what's the point of trying?
Trust me, as a "have" I'm thoroughly convinced there's no such thing as a hole I can't get out of. But I've spent enough of my life around "have not"s to know that they lack the tools, the knowledge, and worst of all the hope to do so.
So, if you're ok scraping by... consider this.
You consider a big payday when you make it to the end of the week and you actually get to keep your whole welfare check because you haven't already borrowed against it at 30%/week interest rates at the corner shop.
WIC is something you trade for cash. This is done either with a friend or family member you go shopping with and you buy their groceries and they pay your electric bill so you don't freeze. And if none of your friends or relatives are able to help you... then you end up finding some asshole you don't like who is willing to trade you $0.50 cash for $1 WIC
T-Mobile is king because they have some crazy ass way of making it so that you can buy an iPhone X 128GB even though the government doesn't trust you with your own paycheck and is withdrawing money from it.
Paper checks are a blessing and a curse because if you can get someone to take a $5 post dated check and get the money deposited before the check comes due... you're golden. If you can't, then your $300 pay check just became $150 because you got hit by 5 penalties for being poor.
No... if every single week you have a deficit that is compounded by additional fees incurred from poor money management the week before...
You and I clearly know that life doesn't have to be like this. If I were in the position today, here's my plan :
- pawn whatever's left and get a few clean and decent outfits
- Use that iPhone X I somehow lucked out on and watch about 1,000 hours of Khan Academy
- Take my GED
- Visit a local school and beg a teacher to assist me with speech therapy to make my speech patterns "wealthier" and less "ghetto". Ghetto schools actually have programs for this in big cities.
- Start visiting a church in a wealthier neighborhood and volunteer enough to be noticed as a hard and honest worker until someone takes pitty on the fella down on his luck and offers him something. Rabbis and Priests have a "discretionary fund" which is often used to help the poor or even to make a mortgage payment for a member of the church or temple that is desperate. You'd be surprised how much those people are really willing to help. (I'm atheist, but I respect people who help other people)
- Read the news paper every day and learn how those entitled people think in order to better communicate with them.
This seems like a lot of work and it is. But it's a plan that has a 90% or better chance of working and certainly wouldn't leave you worse of than when you started.
For someone in that position, no... you don't have the tools, the knowledge... or worse... the hope. And trust me... that guy has WIC... or he did on Monday and now it's Wednesday and after paying off the guy who helped keep the water on last week, there's nothing left.
Hmmm... this is strange... in the past, I considered it an important thing for the president to spend time "playing on camera"
Trump... it may simply be that I don't like him, but let's talk about why it was important for former presidents to do so.
Consider for a moment you were president. Meaning the public representative of the shareholders of the America... the people. This is the position. When you are president, your job is to act on behalf of your constituents and to negotiate on their behalf both foreign and domestic. You are also granted the office of war. In this case, it was a power formerly reserved for monarchs, but prior to Trump, we haven't had anyone claiming the role of monarch in America. Hell... he even wants to build big guarded walls around his kingdom.
Before 9/11, the president often did a fantastic job of using golf or jogging or whatever to let people know that things were going so well he had time to relax and play. This is true for Camp David and such as well.
Since GWB and 9/11, the US government has evolved to use fear tactics as a means of allowing for socialistic job creation by massive increases to military, TSA, DHS, police force, etc... spending. As such, the US has been transforming slowly into a borderline communist government with a policy "If you can't find a job, we'll make one for you" but to support this, the people need to be in constant fear of enemies from within and without. It is working though and the economy is booming by diluting the currency base and simply agreeing with other nations that they all need to make more money to employ people who would be on welfare otherwise.
Consider than in the last 4 years, Norway (where I live) has eliminated almost all post offices, moved into grocery stores and the grocery stores have replaced most of their clerks with self-checkout. Altogether, let's suggest for every 10km sq. computers have replaced at least 150 postal and grocery jobs... then consider that Norway also just ordered self-driving postal delivery robots. These people need jobs... so the government will either pay welfare or make new jobs for them. In America that means war and fear.
Even today, it was important for the leader...the representative of the people. The CEO hired by the shareholders of the country to be seen taking it easy. It means that he believes he is on top of things. It means that he's not locked in a room getting ready to start a war somewhere. You have a reason to sleep well tonight because you are safe and they have it all under control.
In Trump's case, I believe he thinks that being seen working on his lovely orange glow while on a golf course is conveying to the people that he's showing those bastards in Washington and France and China that they aren't even important enough to delay his game for. He'll show them.
No... the golf course or Clinton's jogging track... etc... these are very very important aspects of the presidency. I sure as hell would be worried if there was a president that made it look like they were so busy they couldn't trust anyone else in the white house for even a day or the world would explode.
I was watching interviews with farmers who were impacted by the tariffs. It was like :
"We planted Soy this year... no one bought it and the silos can't take it... so we dumped it in a yard next to the silos and got paid"
"Next year, we'll flood the corn or grain market because the tariffs are killing demand for soy today and we'd rather plant stuff with demand"
"Trump has been giving us money so we don't have to worry about losing the farm"
"We'll suffer like this today so that our kids will have it better tomorrow"
All that seems to have happened is that China agreed to wait to come to an agreement. They of course agreed to import stuff they planned to import anyway but can negotiate price on now because it's sitting and collecting dust. Maybe they'll pay full price, but it's supply and demand and China has managed to meet most of the demand by buying from Brazil for example. So, while the US has a tremendous supply, the Chinese aren't desperate, so the buyer will set the price.
As for stagnant wages. I don't understand. I've had increasing wages consistently for the past 25 years. I make five-six times as much now as I did in 1999. My wife makes at least double.
Ohhhh... you mean for the minimum wage bracket. As in the people working for employers who do things like take a $9 an hour minimum wage and offer $9.15 to buy employee loyalty because he's saying "Look how much I appreciate you... I would never pay you minimum wage!" or the other poor bastards working for minimum wage which is an employer's means of saying "You have so little value to me, I would pay you less if the government would let me.".
Are you under the impression that the president of the United States has any connection to what it means to worry about the price of milk or a toothbrush? I was homeless when I was in my early 20s, living in a car that was so filthy I should have died from sepsis or similar. And I have no idea what the price of eggs, milk or a toothbrush is. I consider it hardship when I have less than $10,000 a month to waste on shit I don't need. And no I never bother with savings because the money basically just keeps coming in bigger and bigger amounts as I get older. And now I'm in a place where I can climb ladders and there's room for me to double, triple or quadruple my income again in the next 10-20 years while getting board seats.
No... middle and upper class (not income... class... there's a real difference. Middle income is a fancy term politicians made up to make poor people feel like they're actually middle class) won't even notice the slightest bit if they have to pay $1.25 for a toothbrush instead of $1.00 because they probably paid that anyway.
Also make no mistake that China can easily drop prices as well. If China wants to win this one, they can make things even cheaper. Look at the prices they're paying for the sames things in China. Surf the shopping sites using Google Translate. The prices are considerably less. If you look closely, you'll find that most of the price you're paying for pretty much everything is shipping... which they wouldn't pay tax on anyway. So... why not just charge a little less for the toothbrush and a little more for the shipping? In fact, instead of charging $1 for the toothbrush and $0 for shipping. Why not charge $0.05 for the toothbrush and $1.00 for the shipping. This would actually hurt Americans as it would drive the prices up and pay almost nothing in taxes.
Also, the dollar is REALLY REALLY REALLY strong right now. I've recommended to customers in 3 countries now to place all USD purchases on hold until it becomes predictable. There's too much risk negotiating purchases in dollars right now. If American companies want that business (total of about $3.1 billion), they'll have to commit and negotiate in EUR because anything purchased in dollars is simply too volatile right now. I know that at least a few of those customers have taken my advise. None of they really need those purchases, at least n
Want a good argument against term limits?
I'm in favor of no term limits but also in favor of votes of no confidence.
If a politician has a legitimate a good idea, they have a very limited time to achieve it. So, let's take Obama for example. He wanted to implement socialized medicine. American's call it "Single payer" where in Europe we just call it "health care".
So like everything else Obama ever did... he did it completely half-assed and other than the name of the bill, it was not what he planned.
See, here's the thing. He came into office with strong popularity and had more support walking in than probably anyone since Reagan. He had some struggles and he couldn't just bully people into what he wanted. But he also knew that if he was to deliver on the "Affordable Care Act" he would have less than 2 years to get something onto paper and get it through at least one side of congress.
So, what he did is that he took a bill written by republicans that could have been the starting point. He added his own changes, but nothing revolutionary. The only flaw in his bill was that it was federal and the republicans wanted state level. The bill itself was shit because it certainly didn't offer European style medical coverage, but there was clearly hope that if this bill got in, it could eventually evolve into something useful.
Then he send the bill to politicians on both sides of the isles and each on chopped something they didn't like and earmarked something utterly unrelated onto it. I haven't read the whole thing, but at some point I think Oklahoma tried to earmark eliminating science from school in favor of creationism. Even the democrats and his supporters were earmarking the shit out of the bill hoping to slip things like road work projects and such in.
When the ACA finally reached his desk to either be vetod or approved, about the only thing left in the plan that was from the original document was the title and this was because he knew that if we wanted to actually get a chance to start implementing it, he couldn't fight each change, he just accepted everything like an idiot. The end result was he had less than a year and a half to start implementing possibly the worst health bill ever and attempt to prove that it would work.
Then the government hired a contractor to write the software. And as with any good American Funded government project... they outsourced the entire thing to India... everything got rushed and botched to hell and it was WAY over budget and WAY late because well... software takes time to write and the lawyers running thing apparently are just stupid.
My point which I'm making is that if Obama didn't have term limits to worry about and instead of wasting an entire year of his time in office trying to get more time in office, he could have used well timed votes of no confidence to extend his time in office long enough to fight for a real ACA and to implement it. But because of term limits, the US now has the ACA which must be the worst thing ever.
And then you have the follow up which is Trump who believes the ACA has to go and he has a limited time to work and he isn't proposing an alternative and he's stomping his feet to make good on the promise because if he doesn't pull it off, everyone will tear him apart during reelection for failing at this. Then how will he get one of the biggest construction projects in history to be named for him?
Hmmm... I'm not sure I agree with you.
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... not only that, but without a father that loved him so much that he was willing to throw his life away to get the child milk... the child will have grown up without someone to help raise him. The child's mother will have had to work twice or three times as hard leaving the child to be raised by someone who is already unable to share
A president's job is to represent the people and act as commander in chief. He's not there to make laws. He's not there to pass laws. He's not there to do most things. He has the option to veto bills, but that's really only meant for extraneous circumstances.
The American people are warlike. I dare you to suggest otherwise.
Each day each child stands and recites
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Let me clarify. From the time a child first enters school, each day, they will repledge their allegiance. They're declaring they are an ally to a member of a conflict. They are declaring in front of a room of people that they are ready and willing to play their role in a conflict or battle if necessary.
They are declaring the allegiance to a symbol which is a flag. A flag is a tool that has little or no purpose out of either battle or political battle. A flag is something you place everywhere the way a dog marks trees. If a dog decides to mark a tree that's been marked by another dog, that dog is declaring they are willing to fight for it. This is precisely what we're doing with flags. A flag is a symbol of anger and aggression. It's a symbol of dominance and daring.
Children... every day for 12 years or more are declaring their willingness, readiness and intent to dominate all others to support the flag, the republic for which it stand... they will do it with absolute belief that God wishes this to be so... and WTF?
With liberty and justice for all?
Liberty by the definition provided in Merriam Webster's dictionary has changed many times over the years to make this statement true. Or should I say that as the American government has slowly degraded the liberties permitted, the definition has changed to reflect what little liberty as a person has left by law. Now, it seems that liberty means that you should be allowed to watch the 4th of July Fireworks while hundreds or thousands of highly armed police officers enforce the barriers and limit where you are allowed to sit or stand, limit whether you can go to the bathroom, etc... but the good news is that this is in the name of guaranteeing you liberty and freedom.
And justice. Tell me... what is justice? Justice requires that people are treated fairly and well enough that no individuals will feel a need to intentionally impede on other people's liberty. A just system would require no justice system because in a just system, the people would in theory be content. I know this is silly, but it sets a premise of a utopia I'm leading up from.
A justice system is a system which is there to "dispense justice" in a systematic way that should be as just as possible to as many people as possible.
If someone were to steal milk from a convenience store... and while they're there "In for a dime, in for a dollar" grabs a bottle of Jack Daniels and a carton of Newports. He even carries a gun, not because he would ever shoot at a person, but because shooting a few bullets into the floor would likely get him out of there with less friction. He stole the milk because he was poor and his baby was hungry. He stole the Jack and the Newports because he's so shaken up from doing this that he'll chug the bottle and chainsmoke until the shaking stops.
This is an extreme example. But what is justice here?
Should we send this man to prison for 5 years ensuring that during that time, he'll be unable to provide for his child. Then when he gets out, his child, raised mostly without a father
And we'll be paying for Clinton's balanced budget for decades to come. We'll pay for Reagan's mass deflation of currency forever. We'll pay for Obama's limp dicked social healthcare which started as "Healthcare for all" to a piece of paper that said "Affordable Healthcare Act" and really meant "There's nothing left in here from the original policy and we've let every politician in America earmark the shit of it. Oklahoma can no declare black people as aliens and teach creationism as science. But at least I passed my bill".
Rule #1 : If you think you're the right person to represent hundreds of millions of people with hundreds of millions of different and generally conflicting needs. You probably should be shot before entering office.
Rule #2 : If you need to associate with a political party who will sell you a chance at the presidency in return for what few drops of your soul you have left... you should not run for president.
Rule #3 : If you are either a conservative or a liberal... you can not represent people fairly. You should not be allowed to run for present.
Rule #4 : If you actually become president and when midterms come around you're supporting only one political party or worse... you're supporting a political party instead of the merits of the individual candidates... you should be burned on a cross.
Please don't pretend like one president is better than the next. The system specifically permits only bankers and lawyers and oilmen into the office. They are people who like to play the game or to represent themselves and their families. After two Bushes and a Trump, American is clearly becoming something of an oligarchy.
Worse, we see things like Hillary running for office because well if GWB can be president after daddy, then shouldn't she be able to be president after Bill? And the most fucked up thing is, she might have been the most technically qualified presidential candidate we've had since the founding fathers died since she might be the only candidate that actually had real experience running the country because she and Bill were a team. Now, considering that like all other presidents, Bill sucked at the job.. even with her help, I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
Dukey was a mess. He would have been a lame duck. Nah... he'd have been a limp dick. He was almost as stupid as Al Gore.
We sit here judging US presidents as though we really think there's such a thing as a possibility of having a good one. When you have one part of a country who get's their education from the Westboro Baptist Church, another part of the country idolizing and learning from Kim Kardashian, another part rallying for Donald Trump and wearing hats specifically designed to target rednecks, another part like Jamaica Queens NY where there are multiple police officers on every corner all day and night trying to either maintain the peace, simply keep people alive, or beating teenaged kids for carrying a joint... and then close to a hundred million retired people who mostly have burned through their savings that were stored based on 10 years of life after retirement but now everyone is living 20-30 more...
You know what... I can make a list that sounds like Billy Joel's we didn't start the fire that lists everything from modern day hippies to wall street one per-centers and I would never get close to covering even the smallest portion of America.
Let's make it simple... GHWB wasn't any worse than the rest of them. When he went to war and he incarcerated people for being poor.... he wasn't being any worse than the rest of them. He was an unqualified person being controlled by an unqualified party voted for by unqualified voters and criticized publicly by unqualified journalists who were trying to make a buck by turning The New York Times into just another tabloid like the rest of them with bold and shocking headlines.
Guess what... bold shocking headlines aren't bold or shocking when you've shocked everyone so much that no one gives a shit anymore. If the Post
Nonsense... he has that southern drawl that makes him difficult to understand.
If you understand redneck fluently (6 years in Florida helped me learn), he clearly said "Read my lips. No new taxis"
And he stood by that 10000%, no matter where I traveled during that era within the US, there wasn't a single new taxi in service. They were falling apart left and right and I believe he double downed on his promise because I'm pretty sure he made it so that absolutely no service would be performed on those taxis either.
I've always though that was unfair of people to falsely interpret his speech impediment to mean taxes instead of taxis.
Golf carts on the other hand, they're not really taxis, so those did receive lots of updates.
Some of us believe in world peace. It is almost as practical as a wall separating a massive border between two countries.
There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a problem, but border control is as effective as pixie dust. The solution is to set realistic standards that convince the people trying to get in to meet those standards. If the requirements seem unachievable or overly complicated, people will lose hope in ever achieving them and therefore choosing to circumvent them instead.
If you set the requirements to a reasonable level and set the standards high enough to require the immigrants to actively contribute to making America better, the problem will likely solve itself.
If you lack faith in people (most pro-border control generally do), you should believe completely that there is no forceful solution to the problem. You have to manipulate the people into participating in a system that is designed to offer a legitimate compromise that is as fair as possible to all those involved.
Of course for such a system to work, it would require people to let it work. Two party politics ensures this will never be the case. If you really want to find a real solution to the problem, consider voting against both parties in the future. Let the government know that you are tired of their bickering and you are done with your country being run by fools who have turned politics into team sports instead of representation of the people.
I agree mostly but will make an amendment.
This will be devastating to all chip vendors.
Amazon isn't buying a premade chip. They bought an ARM licensee who made an Amazon branded chip. This is an Amazon ARM processor.
Microsoft I've heard is doing the same.
Google I'm sure could do the same. They of course own several companies who have experience licensing ARM cores.
If each of these companies establish their own chip development teams and simply license cores, that's the end of pretty much the entire server chip market... period.
I work for a massive corporation who among other things owns a cloud provider. I have two racks for my mad science in their data centers. I still haven't seen a current generation Xeon chip. I haven't seen new servers purchased. Even as an enterprise, I haven't seen these newer systems. The reason is simple... there are only three cloud companies out there. And if all three make their own chips, I know we're not picking up the slack at Intel.
I'm almost 100% with you.
A DBA is actually part of the development staff.
When working in Lambdas, an effective DBA on the team can be focused on optimizing queries which will shorten the time you're running lambdas for. If nothing else, they can help identify queries which should be made async and recommend how. So... while I'm entirely on board with canning the IT department, please keep the DBAs, they are really really useful... especially in a lambda world.
I'm choking here... you're spending up to $96,000 a year on K8S in the cloud? I don't know what you do and to be fair, if there's a solid reason why hosting in the cloud makes more sense than just running it back home... ignore me. But running K8S on premise (or Swarm which I like better) is cheap. I've spent a few thousand bucks on the infrastructure and it's all disposable. Raspberry Pi + Linux + GlusterFS (shared volumes) + Docker + K8S +.NET Core .... it's pretty good. The only problem I have at this time is that while I have Crate.IO in test for SQL... who the hell uses SQL anymore. I'm focused more on NoSQL and would love a functional Couchbase solution, but I'm running that on a few x86 servers which were left over after we realized that VMware was the blackhole of IT spending.
As for backup, we're backing up GlusterFS volumes to S3, we're backing up Couchbase natively.
I'm pretty sure that you could self host on LattePanda Alpha for substantially less than you're paying for Amazon.
The shortcoming in my design of course if you're an online service. Then the money you'd save by self hosting would be entirely consumed by bandwidth and networking costs.
As for cutting AWS costs... you know that if you move to Lambda, you probably would cut back by as much as 98%? Docker was an insane improvement over VMs... saved companies millions. But if you trim to Lambdas, you can get the same savings again.
My fear before switching to Docker, ARM and .NET Core was that if I switched to a non-Intel architecture, I might not be able to go back. Meaning, let's say I did something stupid like writing my code to work in the public cloud. Then, I coded and optimized against Amazon's ARM architecture... then Amazon decided to change the terms of service or jack up their prices, etc... then I would be stuck paying and doing whatever they demanded.
.NET Core, I simply code towards Docker and ignore the underlying platform.
Of course, now with Docker and
I'll bite..
2018 soon 2019... people learn to program from places like CodeAcademy. They take 12 week classes and are professional programmers. Etc...
Most of the code out there in the world is being produced by people writing node or python scripts. A lot of it is just deploying packages on Linux and running a server. In many cases, it's just a blog deployed by clicking a few links. If you're coding for the cloud, then you would never deploy your own database... well unless you're a moron, you'd use nothing but cloud storage (or in Amazon terms) Elastic everything.
Probably close to 50% of all code going into the cloud today is pretty much entirely CPU agnostic and if you can do it on x86, you could do it on ARM or anything else and be entirely clueless about it. Linux is Linux, Python is Python.
So... yeh.. within reason... for most projects (done by programmers, not IT guys.. they always fuck things up) there's really no difference between the platforms.
I'll toss you a bone though. Coders are not programmers. Coders are generally slapping stuff together non-stop without any real idea how anything works. Programmers should never have a problem switching CPUs. I've been coding on many architectures for decades and to be honest, other than ARM being among the worst with regards to performance.. ALWAYS... I haven't seen a difference between them. So one is, big endian, the other is small. One is 32-bit the other is 64. One works without word alignment, the other demands it. But a CPU is a CPU.
I will admit that I've had suspicions for a long time that ARM is simply not compatible with a user workflow. It's an amazing design when you really limit the task swapping. But as soon as multithreading is involved, it chokes. This is why it works so well on phones and Nintendo and such. It's great when you have one single foreground application. But it's a crappy system when you're running multiple equal class citizens like server processes and such.
Yes, there is an ARM license. But they focus on volume. I think it's something like $1 a core or something like that. It might be $1 per die. But unless you're doing 100 cores, it's pretty cheap.
I use ARM almost exclusively for my servers. The exception is my Couchbase servers and I'm considering replacing them since they don't really do Docker well either. If Couchbase manages to do ARM + Docker... as in it's possible to deploy an entire redundant Couchbase Enterprise cluster using (preferably) Swarm or possibly Kubernetes, then I'm back with them.
.NET Core. All my code is map/reduce so scalabiiity is not an issue. I can run tens of thousands of nodes without a problem. At an average cost (including board, case, power supply, SD card, NB-IOT, LCD, wires and fan) of about $95 a unit, this is just silly inexpensive. Because I use Swarm with Docker Community Edition, Linux and .NET Core, management is super simple, ridiculously cheap and just plain smarter than using much of anything else.
... I'm not sure why... but 100Mb isn't really available anymore. I never waste money on things like redundant networking since I have absolutely no possibility of a single point of failure due to the nature of the map/reduce architecture. I don't waste time fixing broken systems, I simply throw them away (donate them to schools) and when capacity drops below a certain level, I add 10 or 20 more units.
I use small, cheap Raspberry Pi servers running Linux, Docker and
That said, since ARM is still a second class citizen in the sense that there's still no native ARM development computers out there worth using, I get easily frustrated by having to constantly work on stupidly underpowered Raspberry Pi devices.
As for ARM servers... they never made sense for any application I've ever heard of. The industry is so full of shit these days. I means serious... most of the tasks running on the 50+ Xeon Core systems are terribly wasteful. Consider that I'm running basically a massive scale (I mean massive) data collection and mining system for system management. I'm streaming syslog, snmp, netflow, etc... from over 100,000 devices into a semi-centralized database and mining the data constantly. My average footprint per system is about 32 megs of RAM (I'm running in debug at this time), 75 megs of flash (I haven't optimized the docker images yet) and about 4% CPU usage... on a Raspberry Pi 3B+.
I use gigabit Ethernet
I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would build anything else... unless you're just a cloud vendor and focused on density. But for daily operations at a company, all you need is a 9 Raspberry Pis, 3 routers with built in switches (Banana Pi R2 if you're brave, Cisco 4220 otherwise), and that should be enough to provide a fully redundant massive server cluster. It won't run Windows server... but that stuff is in the cloud these days. Local infrastructure is for business systems... because why the hell would you put that in the cloud when it costs a few hundred bucks to host it yourself?
So again... massive ARM processors... I guess if you're Amazon, it makes sense. But for what typically amounts to little more than a transaction processing system (business systems) they are just completely overkill.
I disagree.
I'm a father of two full-fledged teenagers who in the past have been known to buy each other loot boxes for their birthdays.
In Overwatch, my daughter's favorite, she loves to get the latest and greatest skins. But I've seen her with tears in her eyes because she had incredibly high hopes that the loot boxes her brother bought her would give her the skin she really wanted. This of course made my son feel like shit because he really wanted to make his sister happy and he had spent almost all his monthly disposable income on loot boxes for his sister and he failed to be her hero. He, who is freakishly talented with regards to killing in games but hates Overwatch then binge gamed with her to try and earn her more loot boxes before the special offer expired. They still came up short.
My friend's son who receives close to $400 a month in allowance (he plays his divorced mother and father against each other) spends most of it on loot boxes, then he sells whatever he gets. So far as I know, the most profitable month he's had in 3 years of doing this is to break even. And because of the nature of gambling, he and the other moron children who do the same thing sit around comparing who is going to get rich first from this. And then they complain about how their parents didn't by them the latest Jordan's yet.
Loot boxes legitimize gambling for teenagers. This means that they grow up thinking that the lottery is a good idea. They think that Vegas is a great place to go. Instead of cake sales at schools, they sell raffle tickets for the same cakes. I recently was asked to buy a raffle ticket for $2 for a chance to win a cake. I said "I'll give you $30 for the cake"... they actually turned me down because they would rather gamble that they could sell more than 15 tickets for the same cake their mother baked.
I refused to let my kids play Movie Star Planet when they were younger because in order to advance in the game, they had to use tokens to win more tokens at a casino. Of course, they had a few tokens as part of the membership to the game, but they would beg for us to buy them more tokens so they could gamble more. When I asked why... that was the end of that game. Same went for several others.
No... casinos and gambling are not welcome. And legitimizing gambling for children of any age is simply not welcome. My son is playing basketball now, I told him that I'll pull him from it as soon as he participates in gambling of any sort and that includes raffles. I said that if they don't want to throw a bake sale, then sell services like carrying bags at the grocery store to peoples cars. Or offer to pack peoples groceries for a tip. There's simply no reason to gamble or to promote that other people should gamble.