Apparently you have never worked in a survey-based environment. On surveys, when rating someone 1 through 10, only 10 is acceptable to management. 1 through 9 is failure.
Aye. At the car dealership where I work, 9 is the same as zero on customer satisfaction surveys. Further, less than an 85% average score cuts your commission for all further sales until the average goes up. With an average of 10-12 new car sales per month (less than half of which fill out the surveys) one middling score can cut my income for several months.
(Sigh) The POINT was, classic Darwinian standards of fitness are already irrelevant as regard humans in civilized countries. Rather, fitness as regards utility to the individual, as in NOT having the genes for Huntington's, hemophilia, etc. But you knew that.
Read Robert Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon." from 1942. Or, at least read the Wikipedia article. Clever method of eugenic selection without direct gene manipulation. (Granted, I'm not sure the method would actually work). Or, "Methuselah's Children" - same period, same author - for a simpler, guaranteed method.
Simple fact is, modern medicine is allowing more, genetically less fit, individuals to survive and breed. Note the current research on Huntington's disease. We have to combat the deterioration somehow...
Companies are, in fact, not (usually) stupid. Someone calculated the revenue from selling the information against the loss in sales X the chance it will be discovered. The profit said "do it!" I've worked for companies where it cost more to keep existing customers happy than to advertise for new ones. Guess what we did?
These ride sharing services were set up to allow people to casually earn a little extra money. They do this by bypassing the cruft that's accumulated around traditional taxi services. So immediately, government, workers, and to some extent even the public wants to re-load all the baggage - destroying what ride-sharing was intended to be. It's not the 30's, in a company town - if they don't like the wages, there are other agencies and other industries.
Next, everyone strikes to have an above-average income.
No matter how many times you warn them, teach them, educate them - drivers will ALWAYS assume these system are more capable than they are. Especially given the instinct to blame anyone but themselves. I've always had a hard time visualizing an intermediate step between fully automatic and fully manual driving; and it appears that's coming true.
I have plenty of computers in the house, but "my" computer is a 2009 iMac running OSX 10.6.8. Notable feature is several multi-terabyte FireWire external hard drives. I have newer ones, but I don't like the later OS revs. My Windows machines are the same; I actually use Windows 7, despite having newer revs.
The likelihood I'll upgrade is inversely proportional to the urgency with which MS wants me to do so. If they're ramming it down my throat, it can't be for MY benefit, right? Besides, at work I use software which MUST run IE 10.
If you think Apple are any different then you're basing an opinion on wishful thinking and hope.
And your carrier cares for neither. Doesn't matter who your carrier is, if they don't want to supply an update to you, you won't see one. Apple, Samsung, HTC, whoever. It's all the same. Money talks.
That turns out not to be the case. With my Apple phone, Apple offers updates and I accept (or decline) them. The carrier has nothing to o with it.
Land of the free my ass. It's a nation of lunatics ruled by fear.
I grew up in the 50's. I had a happy and healthy childhood. But by today's standards, every relative of mine would have spent their entire lives in prison. I lived in Philadelphia, and by the time I could reliably walk I was running short errands of a block or two for my grandmother. "Go get a head of lettuce from the greengrocer, dear - have him put it on my account." By the time we moved to the suburbs (I was six) I was walking a mile or two to school. At eight I got a bike, and in summer roamed the entire town, out of adult supervision for most of the day. By ten or so I had a rail pass, and visited nearby towns (usually with a friend) to go to book stores or hobby shops. Note that I purchased, and flew, "dangerous" hobby items like model rockets.
Most damning, when I walked home from school - starting in third grade - I was home alone for a couple of hours before my mother got home from work. No one thought anything about it, or anything else mentioned above. I am so, so sorry for people currently experiencing childhood - they'll live their lives in coddled fear. No wonder they expect the government to protect them - they have no idea how to live their lives themselves.
Well, this made me laugh. The very first color inkjet I ever saw (circa 1987) used refillable reservoirs, and simple squeeze bottles of ink. The printer (Tektronix) was pricey - perhaps $1600 1987 dollars - but cost almost nothing to operate. I think an 8 oz. bottle was six or seven bucks.
BTW, that printer was a wide-carriage, 300 dpi model with a SCSI interface.
"Wah! I changed the wheels on my car and now the hubcaps I wanted to buy don't fit anymore! Somebody MAKE them make those hubcaps to fit a 13.5" Russian army surplus wheel!"
Anyone want to guarantee 100% perfect security for ANY wireless communication? Because if we have remotely piloted airliners (either because there's no pilot, or the pilot is suicidal) someone WILL hack into it.
It's a joke, you see. If we wait, eventually a star will come close enough that we can just hop on over to it. Thus interstellar travel with no extra technology needed, apart from that which would keep us alive if another star were that close.
Love it. You simply throw a rope around the passing star, and it yanks you right off the planet. For the less-than-alert reader, if you can accelerate to the speed of a passing body... you don't really need that body.
It almost doesn't matter as long as it's more than one medium, stored in more than one place. I keep copies of everything on HDDs (and sometimes tape) here at home, but also copy the most vital stuff onto 3.5" magneto-optical disks (Fuji DynaMO -- they never caught on but they've been super reliable) and keep that in a safe deposit box at the bank. $25/year is pretty good for getting my life's work back if my house burns down. If you do choose a removable medium, make sure you keep a spare drive too. It'd be a shame to have pristine media you can't read.
I've been using two HD copies and a DynaMO for years. Magneto-optical drives require both light and magnetism to write, and are predicted stable for 100+ years. However, I no longer have confidence that drives will be available when my primary and backup ones die. I'm shifting over to three HD's; at 59 years old, they'll last me long enough
...or have other specialized needs. Apple hardware has an unparalleled build quality; no one disputes that. The only question on that front is whether you find it worthwhile to pay for that quality. My Apple Laptop is dual-boot; Windows at work and OSX at home. Both work perfectly. My home system previously also had a Linux boot volume; that worked well too. However, for MY purposes, it did nothing that other Unix variant, OSX, did not - and it was trickier to install and maintain.
So the answer is, specific needs (like my absolute IE9 requirement at work) or just like to play with the OS.
I think one way to fish is to drop a grenade or TNT stick into a body of water. Then, at least some of the fish float to the surface.
Is it realistic to think we could explore life in the depths of the ocean by dropping depth charges and waiting to see what comes up?
In the same way we could learn about the culture of foreign countries by nuking them and examining the radiated spectrum. The search for knowlege only occasionally involves explosives.
Ultimately, I value my time enough that I will generally not purchase things I think will break and require fixing or taking to a repair shop. I'll spend extra on a dependable product. Apple computers have shown to not be dependable, despite being more expensive...
Yeah, factually untrue. Industry statistics show Apple products to be consistently the most dependable you can buy. If that's not good enough to meet your standards for reliability, what does?
See, all that would be hard, and could take a while. Also, "criminals" tend to be mobile and surreptitious. An ISP, on the other hand, is visible and stationary. If you can just shift the blame to someone you can actually reach, "doing something" becomes much easier.
Might as well stop fooling ourselves that we're a nation of laws. The actions of the US government are indistinguishable from those of an unlimited monarchy; they take what they want. Soon the burden of writing, re-writing, and re-interpreting little laws to justify it will be onerous, and they'll stop.
Then we won't have to (and indeed won't be allowed to) waste time talking about it.
1. no government entity (fees, fines, tolls, tariffs, settlements, and seizures) may use non-tax monies for any of its operating expenses 2. all non-tax revenue are distributed evenly amongst the citizens of the collecting jurisdiction on an annual basis
People who break the law or use limited government services still pay. People who don't break the law and don't use services are rewarded with an extra tax refund. And politicians can't be sneaky about the amount of money they spend since 100% of it will have to come directly from taxes.
Of course this will never happen because of entrenched power and the 1% benefiting from the current system fleecing the general public.
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Apparently you have never worked in a survey-based environment. On surveys, when rating someone 1 through 10, only 10 is acceptable to management. 1 through 9 is failure.
Aye. At the car dealership where I work, 9 is the same as zero on customer satisfaction surveys. Further, less than an 85% average score cuts your commission for all further sales until the average goes up. With an average of 10-12 new car sales per month (less than half of which fill out the surveys) one middling score can cut my income for several months.
The company has the system well rigged.
(Sigh) The POINT was, classic Darwinian standards of fitness are already irrelevant as regard humans in civilized countries. Rather, fitness as regards utility to the individual, as in NOT having the genes for Huntington's, hemophilia, etc. But you knew that.
Read Robert Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon." from 1942. Or, at least read the Wikipedia article. Clever method of eugenic selection without direct gene manipulation. (Granted, I'm not sure the method would actually work). Or, "Methuselah's Children" - same period, same author - for a simpler, guaranteed method.
Simple fact is, modern medicine is allowing more, genetically less fit, individuals to survive and breed. Note the current research on Huntington's disease. We have to combat the deterioration somehow...
Companies are, in fact, not (usually) stupid. Someone calculated the revenue from selling the information against the loss in sales X the chance it will be discovered. The profit said "do it!" I've worked for companies where it cost more to keep existing customers happy than to advertise for new ones. Guess what we did?
How many drive bays, how many ports, and how many card slots? I've owned every top end Mac Since the Macintosh II; this one I skipped.
These ride sharing services were set up to allow people to casually earn a little extra money. They do this by bypassing the cruft that's accumulated around traditional taxi services. So immediately, government, workers, and to some extent even the public wants to re-load all the baggage - destroying what ride-sharing was intended to be. It's not the 30's, in a company town - if they don't like the wages, there are other agencies and other industries.
Next, everyone strikes to have an above-average income.
No matter how many times you warn them, teach them, educate them - drivers will ALWAYS assume these system are more capable than they are. Especially given the instinct to blame anyone but themselves. I've always had a hard time visualizing an intermediate step between fully automatic and fully manual driving; and it appears that's coming true.
I have plenty of computers in the house, but "my" computer is a 2009 iMac running OSX 10.6.8. Notable feature is several multi-terabyte FireWire external hard drives. I have newer ones, but I don't like the later OS revs. My Windows machines are the same; I actually use Windows 7, despite having newer revs.
The likelihood I'll upgrade is inversely proportional to the urgency with which MS wants me to do so. If they're ramming it down my throat, it can't be for MY benefit, right? Besides, at work I use software which MUST run IE 10.
If you think Apple are any different then you're basing an opinion on wishful thinking and hope.
And your carrier cares for neither. Doesn't matter who your carrier is, if they don't want to supply an update to you, you won't see one. Apple, Samsung, HTC, whoever. It's all the same. Money talks.
That turns out not to be the case. With my Apple phone, Apple offers updates and I accept (or decline) them. The carrier has nothing to o with it.
Land of the free my ass. It's a nation of lunatics ruled by fear.
I grew up in the 50's. I had a happy and healthy childhood. But by today's standards, every relative of mine would have spent their entire lives in prison. I lived in Philadelphia, and by the time I could reliably walk I was running short errands of a block or two for my grandmother. "Go get a head of lettuce from the greengrocer, dear - have him put it on my account." By the time we moved to the suburbs (I was six) I was walking a mile or two to school. At eight I got a bike, and in summer roamed the entire town, out of adult supervision for most of the day. By ten or so I had a rail pass, and visited nearby towns (usually with a friend) to go to book stores or hobby shops. Note that I purchased, and flew, "dangerous" hobby items like model rockets.
Most damning, when I walked home from school - starting in third grade - I was home alone for a couple of hours before my mother got home from work. No one thought anything about it, or anything else mentioned above. I am so, so sorry for people currently experiencing childhood - they'll live their lives in coddled fear. No wonder they expect the government to protect them - they have no idea how to live their lives themselves.
Well, this made me laugh. The very first color inkjet I ever saw (circa 1987) used refillable reservoirs, and simple squeeze bottles of ink. The printer (Tektronix) was pricey - perhaps $1600 1987 dollars - but cost almost nothing to operate. I think an 8 oz. bottle was six or seven bucks.
BTW, that printer was a wide-carriage, 300 dpi model with a SCSI interface.
"Wah! I changed the wheels on my car and now the hubcaps I wanted to buy don't fit anymore! Somebody MAKE them make those hubcaps to fit a 13.5" Russian army surplus wheel!"
When I worked as an Apple repair tech, two out of every three machines off the line would fail and would require immediate refurbishing.
Yeah, no. I worked as an Apple service manager, and the initial failure rate is in the low single digits - the best in the industry. Try again, pal.
Anyone want to guarantee 100% perfect security for ANY wireless communication? Because if we have remotely piloted airliners (either because there's no pilot, or the pilot is suicidal) someone WILL hack into it.
It's a joke, you see. If we wait, eventually a star will come close enough that we can just hop on over to it. Thus interstellar travel with no extra technology needed, apart from that which would keep us alive if another star were that close.
Love it. You simply throw a rope around the passing star, and it yanks you right off the planet. For the less-than-alert reader, if you can accelerate to the speed of a passing body... you don't really need that body.
It almost doesn't matter as long as it's more than one medium, stored in more than one place. I keep copies of everything on HDDs (and sometimes tape) here at home, but also copy the most vital stuff onto 3.5" magneto-optical disks (Fuji DynaMO -- they never caught on but they've been super reliable) and keep that in a safe deposit box at the bank. $25/year is pretty good for getting my life's work back if my house burns down. If you do choose a removable medium, make sure you keep a spare drive too. It'd be a shame to have pristine media you can't read.
I've been using two HD copies and a DynaMO for years. Magneto-optical drives require both light and magnetism to write, and are predicted stable for 100+ years. However, I no longer have confidence that drives will be available when my primary and backup ones die. I'm shifting over to three HD's; at 59 years old, they'll last me long enough
Worst hardware support ever, even at the end of its five years life cycle. Never again.
Explain, please. Technical support of hardware issues, no drivers for what you want, problems with repairs... what?
...or have other specialized needs. Apple hardware has an unparalleled build quality; no one disputes that. The only question on that front is whether you find it worthwhile to pay for that quality. My Apple Laptop is dual-boot; Windows at work and OSX at home. Both work perfectly. My home system previously also had a Linux boot volume; that worked well too. However, for MY purposes, it did nothing that other Unix variant, OSX, did not - and it was trickier to install and maintain.
So the answer is, specific needs (like my absolute IE9 requirement at work) or just like to play with the OS.
The stopped just short of saying he was going to imbed an arc reactor in his chest. A superhero, he ain't.
I think one way to fish is to drop a grenade or TNT stick into a body of water. Then, at least some of the fish float to the surface.
Is it realistic to think we could explore life in the depths of the ocean by dropping depth charges and waiting to see what comes up?
In the same way we could learn about the culture of foreign countries by nuking them and examining the radiated spectrum. The search for knowlege only occasionally involves explosives.
Ultimately, I value my time enough that I will generally not purchase things I think will break and require fixing or taking to a repair shop. I'll spend extra on a dependable product. Apple computers have shown to not be dependable, despite being more expensive...
Yeah, factually untrue. Industry statistics show Apple products to be consistently the most dependable you can buy. If that's not good enough to meet your standards for reliability, what does?
See, all that would be hard, and could take a while. Also, "criminals" tend to be mobile and surreptitious. An ISP, on the other hand, is visible and stationary. If you can just shift the blame to someone you can actually reach, "doing something" becomes much easier.
Might as well stop fooling ourselves that we're a nation of laws. The actions of the US government are indistinguishable from those of an unlimited monarchy; they take what they want. Soon the burden of writing, re-writing, and re-interpreting little laws to justify it will be onerous, and they'll stop.
Then we won't have to (and indeed won't be allowed to) waste time talking about it.
it will require a constitutional amendment
1. no government entity (fees, fines, tolls, tariffs, settlements, and seizures) may use non-tax monies for any of its operating expenses
2. all non-tax revenue are distributed evenly amongst the citizens of the collecting jurisdiction on an annual basis
People who break the law or use limited government services still pay. People who don't break the law and don't use services are rewarded with an extra tax refund. And politicians can't be sneaky about the amount of money they spend since 100% of it will have to come directly from taxes.
Of course this will never happen because of entrenched power and the 1% benefiting from the current system fleecing the general public.
This. PLEASE! I've been saying it for years.