and that is just one of the reasons xkcd rocks. Not only does it have solid computer geek jokes but often there is a second layer for science/math/whatever kind of nerds.
Oh, and thanks for the clue about the second joke. Sometimes I wish there was a little guide that went along with the comics whenever there is something like that. Explaining a joke never makes it funny but since the second joke was already missed, it can make learning fun!
what an amazingly bad idea. I can have something which is precious to me, a love letter let's say, that I would not want to part with for anything but a huge some of cash because it is so personal. Paying takes on it would be far to expensive, so I would have to lower the price in which case someone could buy it from me at a far lower price then I find it worth.
I am personally surprised to find someone here on/. with such a different point of view. It is good to see that we are not as monolithic as we might seem.
However, if you agree that AI can become indistinguishable than it follows that you MUST grant them rights since there is no way to proved that any person you ever meet or have ever met is "real" - they could just be really advanced tech in a pretty package that cons you into thinking they are human. If there is no difference you can tell, what is the difference?
And for those few people who might read this and have not read the following short story:
Okay, we can pretend I am an idiot and you are one of the chosen who Knows The Truth. MY point remains: We morons out number you and you lost the battle. We morons buy a million items a day, only understand powers of 10 and just barely at that. Give up. You lost long ago and just have not woken to the fact. You can tell that you lost because you are still trying to have this conversation while the world keeps on doing what it has been doing for years ignoring you all the while.
Strangely enough, once everyone uses the same marketing tactics it balances out and there is no further advantage. Once upon a time hard drives were measured in powers of 2. So the first few people that started advertising in powers of 10 had a slight advantage - they got to lie, sorta. Now EVERYONE selling hard disks in power of 10, no advantage.
Really, I was trying to get you to understand that you cause is:
1) Stupid 2) pointless 3) LOST 4) Wrong 5) Arbitrary
But fortunately for yourself, you have all the answer and all of the wisdom that one could ever want. You have now, in oh so gentle of a fashion, imparted your wisdom on to me in a manner that will cause nothing but joy to spring forth into my mind when think about the big, complicated world of the numbers. Thank you sage!
the notion that only the manufactures caused confusion seems unlikely at best. I doubt very much that it was as universally known as you think is was. I certainly know that as a some what geeky kid 20 years ago I could not have told you the number of byte in a megabyte BUT even if I was the only one who didn't know at that time, I can bet cash money that even here, right now, the number of people who can tell me how many byte are in 7.23 MiB (2^20) in less that 3 seconds is almost zero. Yet, i can tell you that there are 7,230,000 bytes in 7.23 MB. It gets worse as the powers increase. Hell, even just going with a simple whole number, 5 MB, the number is not as easy to give.
But beyond all of that something much more important has happened in the last 20 years that changes everything:
morons are using computers.
Less pejoratively, the common man is now working with concepts that would have seemed like magic 25 years ago. I can carry around on me TRILLIONS of bytes of data. That is likely more storage than every personal computer had combined 25 years ago or at least a meaningful fraction. Going back just a bit further,40 years lets say, I can carry around on me as much data as there was on the PLANET in computer form. The order of scale was never conceived for the average person. Powers of 2 are NOT easy to work with in base 10.
Why do *I* care that my SDRAM is in powers of 2? Is there something lost if they instead sell me ram with 1.07 GB of memorey? They SHOULD be sold in power of 10 since THAT is the domain most humans speak. It just isn't a problem because we never SEE that number - people don't look at their ram often and say "Hey, i thought I had only 1 billion byte of memory but it turns out i instead have 1,073,741,824 billion bytes! WEEEEE!"
The language of the time was useful to the people who used such things THEN - not now. Times change, words change and so do the people who use them. The scale of things has changed so that, even if everything was once clear as you say, the old ways no longer are the right ways.
My biggest point is that last one: Things change and it is going to get worse as more people who know less work with and use things they barely grasp. Making things exact but less clear to the unwashed masses helps no one except those that hold on to tradition. Computing, an exact field, has meet the shapeless blob that is the public and Computing has lost.
The only readers out currently are way over priced. $300 is a bit too much for the feature set that the sony reader provides. This new tech is great but if the price is the same, or worse, the market is just going to take forever to develop and these things are just not gonna sell. I have craved epaper for over a decade now and I still can't quite justify spending $300. I have never seen anyone with one and i live in the valley.
I hope at some point drops into the reasonable range and I can enjoy the future i have been promised for a while.
why ever be sad about anything then? Sadness would have no place in life because you would just move onto the next. Whatever the loss you can always take a different approach other than being sad but sad is how all people feel from time to time about a loss. Someone might not be dieing but just moving to another country, for an amazing life which is wonderful for them but you will never see them again. That's sad even while it is great. Death is no different. True, some people have no perspective about death but then some people are crazy.
Sadness is a wonderful gift, it provides a richness to life , a depth that gives meaning. Enjoy your sadness as the blessing it is and then move on.
I say that is all slander and libel! I have never known him to do anything at all!
Re:what about the DRM "feature"?
on
ZOMG New Zunes
·
· Score: 1
perfect example because it is all about personal choice.
Some people are gonna take that offer while they might never ask the first guy. A lot of people are going to think that second guy is disgusting because he mentioned it, some just because he would like that at all and would feel the same way if they found out that the first guy would do that same if asked.
How you feel depends a lot on what you want - you want $50 dollars, maybe that is a good deal. Otherwise, you likely aren't happy with the offer. Me, i am not sure what I want. I might need the money but why on earth did that guy ask Me? Kinda creeps me out.
Re:what about the DRM "feature"?
on
ZOMG New Zunes
·
· Score: 1
NONONONO. I was just talking about how I FEEL, not what I think is right, and why other people may feel the way they do.
My main point was that MS, in their backhanded way, is being more honest. But in the same way that most people LIKE white lies from other people, most people want white lies from corporations. Companies don't run ads saying, "We just want your money." they run ads saying, "We care about our customers." People will like the second company more even if they get a better deal from the first. It might as well be the foundation of marketing.
The wireless sync feature sounds better and better the more I think about it. If i had to buy a new player I might go with the zune just for that - I am lazy and don't want to have to connect a cable if i don't have to. Hell, who knows, if enough geeks buy the zune someone will crack the 3 play limit and all will be right with the world.
Re:what about the DRM "feature"?
on
ZOMG New Zunes
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
So, i was reading a number of the comments that said basically the same thing - it might not be good, but it is better than nothing. Obviously some people feel it is NOT better than nothing, myself included and I wasn't sure why. So, I started thinking about it, trying to understand why I felt the way I did.
I think part of it is a feeling of MS being dishonest. It feels like they are trying to "cheat" the users, to cheat me. "Here is what you want, but not really, so why don't you buy our crippled product."
It ALSO feels like it carries a certain mental baggage. By accepting that someone else can only play it 3 times, I am buying into a system that thinks DRM is a good thing in a very obvious way. With the iTunes/iPod connection, DRM is still there but it is not nearly as blatant. Basically, Apple doesn't get the same grief because the are better at seduction then MS. Apple is the smooth talker that just says, "hey baby, marriage just is not for my thing. Maybe it will be someday." While MS says, "I could give you what you want but I am not going to. Deal."
It is a strange situation. We geeks often hate MS and love Apple. Both are not giving us what we clearly want, but one is more upfront and honest about it. You could also say blunt even. Which, if either, is better? Personal choice I think. Some of us prefer the pleasant lie, some prefer to take whatever we can get right now.
As you might guess, WHERE you live is more important than the amount you make, for the most part. Just as a point of reference:
If your parents are making $60k a year, where ever they live, it is they can likely afford to buy a house. Here,in the bay area, they likely could not afford a morgage on a condo. A house, a median priced home will be be around $700,000. Yes, a normal house like we see on TV means paying $4500 a month, or more, to own. Renting just a room in SF will almost certainly cost you $700 a month or $8500 a year. For a ROOM.
Cost of living is what it is all about, which yearly income is a part of but far from the only thing.
I surmise from the post that the premise is that common usage, using powers of 2, should take precedent over trying to force a new artificial standard in place. Interesting take but to me it seems to contain it's own rebuttal.
Common usage today IS a new standard. That is to say that now that megabyte and gigabyte are understood by the "common man" to mean powers of 10 and that there are far more of them then computer geeks hence it becomes the new standard. Common usage now is that 1 GB of memory is 1000 MB as far as most people understand. You might not (or you might!) like it but there are few people who will say that 1GB is 1024 MB.
Let us not forget that in the above example you gave they are VERY vague terms that can not have a simple number attached - they are more feeling than number. A SUV sized cat is an order or two magnitude off what most people mean by "huge cat" while that is not the case with 1000 vs. 1024.
AND powers of 10 are more natural for most people today.
AND data is the only case where i can think of the power notion being different. Having a one megahertz computer with one megabyte memory should be clear and consistent.
AND (!!) having 2 separate notion system (MB and MiB) avoid confusion. If a number is list as MiB I can know exactly how many bits are being talked about. With one standard the term gets overloaded and causes confusion even amongst people who know what they are doing.
And what are the advantages, today, of keeping with an outdated way of referring to powers of 2 instead of powers of 10 ONLY in the one area of storage?
First,glad to know that you have done your own extensive, scientific study. I guess it is a shame you just have not released it yet. We all await it eagerly, i can tell you.
Secondly, the real problem with the argument that everyone chooses everything they do is that there is some truth to it. There is more untruth, but that sliver is something people gasp and never let go. An example which you will like ignore follows:
25% of the population lack a gene. This lack means that it is harder for them to get enjoyment from smoking. It also makes it easier to quit when they try. By your logic that gene has nothing to do with it and it is merely a choice. However, without knowing ANYTHING else about a group of people except whither or not they lack the gene, i can predict more accurately how hard it will quit then someone who knows nothing. This is not a question of will power but of biology.
People are not created equal, people have different needs and tolerances. Something YOU can control someone else can not. Not because it is a flaw, but because they are not you. You maybe able to eat or not eat as is your whim yet maybe you can not control your anger. We are a messy, wiggly species with the most convoluted lump of matter in the universe between our ears. And you think you control it.
You are not in control of everything in you life, you do not choose to do everything you do. Your heart beats, your feet sweat, your hair grows. People being made aware of the things that shape their lives is nothing but good. People who are social around each tend to do the same sort of things,in a natural and HEALTHY way. This study underlines that.
Your hard line stance is wrong, does nothing to help and merely contains a note of derision and contempt. I hope you learn to accept the things that are beyond your control.
Look at the people who paid $150 for a 20" LCD screen with crap specs, when you can now buy a 60" for $50.00.
The answer is always about what you can afford. Nearly everything gets cheaper that touches a computer as time goes on. Hell, that is part of what moores is all about. The only thing that every makes sense is to ask if something is a good price for you. You think that waiting a gen for the price to drop 1/10th makes sense, while joe over there thinks that waiting 2 generations for the price to drop 1/100th of the cost. Both of you are right, as well as the person who has to have it right now.
Really, the $100 laptop just shows that in a few years time the vast percentage of the world that could only dream of a computer are going to get one. Some people will still spend $500 on a new video card every 6 months. It isn't that they are going to be drastically fewer of them, it is just that the market share they represent will be small.
20 years ago computers were almost exclusively the hobbie off the middle class or better, something someone could spend $2000 dollars on without a huge purpose other than it seemed cool or neat or whatever. The same is still true - $2000 dollars buys a nice box these days, alot nicer than a $100 laptop. Do most people who spend $2k on a box "need" a 2k box? No, but then who needs any computer?
it will be close to that even if it isn't exactly that. frankly, the notion that in a couple months i might spend just under 300 dollars and get a quad core cpu is....amazing. or to put it another way: in just a month you will get a %100 increase in number of cores for a %50 increase in price.
As crazy as it seems, there are people that do need to be reminded of exactly that fact. This is in no small part because companies want to seem like your friend, whither or not they are. A company would like you to think fondly of them and Apple has a very strong brand loyalty, so does Goooogle. This does not make them bad companies, but it does mean that people sometimes have to be reminded what the company is trying to do.
People who think of a company as a friend are more likely to make poor choices.
That makes no sense. While $2000 might, over 50 years, turn into $250,000 you don't get that much at the end. You only get $25k worth of purchasing power, at best. That becomes a much different story. Even if the math was right, and meant what you think it meant, what you just ended up arguing for is just putting some money away over the next 2 or 3 years and THEN doing whatever the hell you want for the rest of your life. 50 years later, magically everything is wonderful.
But, even if everything you said was true - that the money works out how you say and that very few people look back and are content - I would want to be one of those people. I would want to be one of those that enjoyed that 2 week trip after high school for the next 50 years. I might not be sure if I would be that person or not, but i know the safe ones, the turtles of the world, aren't. Some of them have more cash, some of them are happier then they every would be otherwise but none of them became that person, that person who inspires.
Sometimes, you aren't trying to keep something in, but keep something else out.
There are lots of reasons why blocking a signal would be better then mere encryption. Information can be garnered about a connection even if you do not know the content of the information. Besides, more options is almost always a good thing. For stupid people this will do nothing, for smart ones it will be the right solution in the right situation.
Slashdot Mirror
and that is just one of the reasons xkcd rocks. Not only does it have solid computer geek jokes but often there is a second layer for science/math/whatever kind of nerds.
Oh, and thanks for the clue about the second joke. Sometimes I wish there was a little guide that went along with the comics whenever there is something like that. Explaining a joke never makes it funny but since the second joke was already missed, it can make learning fun!
what an amazingly bad idea. I can have something which is precious to me, a love letter let's say, that I would not want to part with for anything but a huge some of cash because it is so personal. Paying takes on it would be far to expensive, so I would have to lower the price in which case someone could buy it from me at a far lower price then I find it worth.
Personally, I would rather vote for BOTH of the people you mention then vote for someone who believed in nothing.
I am personally surprised to find someone here on /. with such a different point of view. It is good to see that we are not as monolithic as we might seem.
/. posts.
However, if you agree that AI can become indistinguishable than it follows that you MUST grant them rights since there is no way to proved that any person you ever meet or have ever met is "real" - they could just be really advanced tech in a pretty package that cons you into thinking they are human. If there is no difference you can tell, what is the difference?
And for those few people who might read this and have not read the following short story:
They're made out of meat
is a classic and shorter than many
Sir, that is one of the best/worst puns I have seen in a while on /.
You are a very bad man.
Okay, we can pretend I am an idiot and you are one of the chosen who Knows The Truth. MY point remains: We morons out number you and you lost the battle. We morons buy a million items a day, only understand powers of 10 and just barely at that. Give up. You lost long ago and just have not woken to the fact. You can tell that you lost because you are still trying to have this conversation while the world keeps on doing what it has been doing for years ignoring you all the while.
Strangely enough, once everyone uses the same marketing tactics it balances out and there is no further advantage. Once upon a time hard drives were measured in powers of 2. So the first few people that started advertising in powers of 10 had a slight advantage - they got to lie, sorta. Now EVERYONE selling hard disks in power of 10, no advantage.
Really, I was trying to get you to understand that you cause is:
1) Stupid
2) pointless
3) LOST
4) Wrong
5) Arbitrary
But fortunately for yourself, you have all the answer and all of the wisdom that one could ever want. You have now, in oh so gentle of a fashion, imparted your wisdom on to me in a manner that will cause nothing but joy to spring forth into my mind when think about the big, complicated world of the numbers. Thank you sage!
the notion that only the manufactures caused confusion seems unlikely at best. I doubt very much that it was as universally known as you think is was. I certainly know that as a some what geeky kid 20 years ago I could not have told you the number of byte in a megabyte BUT even if I was the only one who didn't know at that time, I can bet cash money that even here, right now, the number of people who can tell me how many byte are in 7.23 MiB (2^20) in less that 3 seconds is almost zero. Yet, i can tell you that there are 7,230,000 bytes in 7.23 MB. It gets worse as the powers increase. Hell, even just going with a simple whole number, 5 MB, the number is not as easy to give. But beyond all of that something much more important has happened in the last 20 years that changes everything: morons are using computers. Less pejoratively, the common man is now working with concepts that would have seemed like magic 25 years ago. I can carry around on me TRILLIONS of bytes of data. That is likely more storage than every personal computer had combined 25 years ago or at least a meaningful fraction. Going back just a bit further,40 years lets say, I can carry around on me as much data as there was on the PLANET in computer form. The order of scale was never conceived for the average person. Powers of 2 are NOT easy to work with in base 10. Why do *I* care that my SDRAM is in powers of 2? Is there something lost if they instead sell me ram with 1.07 GB of memorey? They SHOULD be sold in power of 10 since THAT is the domain most humans speak. It just isn't a problem because we never SEE that number - people don't look at their ram often and say "Hey, i thought I had only 1 billion byte of memory but it turns out i instead have 1,073,741,824 billion bytes! WEEEEE!" The language of the time was useful to the people who used such things THEN - not now. Times change, words change and so do the people who use them. The scale of things has changed so that, even if everything was once clear as you say, the old ways no longer are the right ways. My biggest point is that last one: Things change and it is going to get worse as more people who know less work with and use things they barely grasp. Making things exact but less clear to the unwashed masses helps no one except those that hold on to tradition. Computing, an exact field, has meet the shapeless blob that is the public and Computing has lost.
The only readers out currently are way over priced. $300 is a bit too much for the feature set that the sony reader provides. This new tech is great but if the price is the same, or worse, the market is just going to take forever to develop and these things are just not gonna sell. I have craved epaper for over a decade now and I still can't quite justify spending $300. I have never seen anyone with one and i live in the valley.
I hope at some point drops into the reasonable range and I can enjoy the future i have been promised for a while.
why ever be sad about anything then? Sadness would have no place in life because you would just move onto the next. Whatever the loss you can always take a different approach other than being sad but sad is how all people feel from time to time about a loss. Someone might not be dieing but just moving to another country, for an amazing life which is wonderful for them but you will never see them again. That's sad even while it is great. Death is no different. True, some people have no perspective about death but then some people are crazy.
Sadness is a wonderful gift, it provides a richness to life , a depth that gives meaning. Enjoy your sadness as the blessing it is and then move on.
I say that is all slander and libel! I have never known him to do anything at all!
perfect example because it is all about personal choice.
Some people are gonna take that offer while they might never ask the first guy. A lot of people are going to think that second guy is disgusting because he mentioned it, some just because he would like that at all and would feel the same way if they found out that the first guy would do that same if asked.
How you feel depends a lot on what you want - you want $50 dollars, maybe that is a good deal. Otherwise, you likely aren't happy with the offer. Me, i am not sure what I want. I might need the money but why on earth did that guy ask Me? Kinda creeps me out.
NONONONO. I was just talking about how I FEEL, not what I think is right, and why other people may feel the way they do.
My main point was that MS, in their backhanded way, is being more honest. But in the same way that most people LIKE white lies from other people, most people want white lies from corporations. Companies don't run ads saying, "We just want your money." they run ads saying, "We care about our customers." People will like the second company more even if they get a better deal from the first. It might as well be the foundation of marketing.
The wireless sync feature sounds better and better the more I think about it. If i had to buy a new player I might go with the zune just for that - I am lazy and don't want to have to connect a cable if i don't have to. Hell, who knows, if enough geeks buy the zune someone will crack the 3 play limit and all will be right with the world.
So, i was reading a number of the comments that said basically the same thing - it might not be good, but it is better than nothing. Obviously some people feel it is NOT better than nothing, myself included and I wasn't sure why. So, I started thinking about it, trying to understand why I felt the way I did.
I think part of it is a feeling of MS being dishonest. It feels like they are trying to "cheat" the users, to cheat me. "Here is what you want, but not really, so why don't you buy our crippled product."
It ALSO feels like it carries a certain mental baggage. By accepting that someone else can only play it 3 times, I am buying into a system that thinks DRM is a good thing in a very obvious way. With the iTunes/iPod connection, DRM is still there but it is not nearly as blatant. Basically, Apple doesn't get the same grief because the are better at seduction then MS. Apple is the smooth talker that just says, "hey baby, marriage just is not for my thing. Maybe it will be someday." While MS says, "I could give you what you want but I am not going to. Deal."
It is a strange situation. We geeks often hate MS and love Apple. Both are not giving us what we clearly want, but one is more upfront and honest about it. You could also say blunt even. Which, if either, is better? Personal choice I think. Some of us prefer the pleasant lie, some prefer to take whatever we can get right now.
You feel ill? thnk how we feel.
As you might guess, WHERE you live is more important than the amount you make, for the most part. Just as a point of reference:
If your parents are making $60k a year, where ever they live, it is they can likely afford to buy a house. Here,in the bay area, they likely could not afford a morgage on a condo. A house, a median priced home will be be around $700,000. Yes, a normal house like we see on TV means paying $4500 a month, or more, to own. Renting just a room in SF will almost certainly cost you $700 a month or $8500 a year. For a ROOM.
Cost of living is what it is all about, which yearly income is a part of but far from the only thing.
is that this once /. joke is modded as insightful and not funny.
Honestly.
I surmise from the post that the premise is that common usage, using powers of 2, should take precedent over trying to force a new artificial standard in place. Interesting take but to me it seems to contain it's own rebuttal.
Common usage today IS a new standard. That is to say that now that megabyte and gigabyte are understood by the "common man" to mean powers of 10 and that there are far more of them then computer geeks hence it becomes the new standard. Common usage now is that 1 GB of memory is 1000 MB as far as most people understand. You might not (or you might!) like it but there are few people who will say that 1GB is 1024 MB.
Let us not forget that in the above example you gave they are VERY vague terms that can not have a simple number attached - they are more feeling than number. A SUV sized cat is an order or two magnitude off what most people mean by "huge cat" while that is not the case with 1000 vs. 1024.
AND powers of 10 are more natural for most people today.
AND data is the only case where i can think of the power notion being different. Having a one megahertz computer with one megabyte memory should be clear and consistent.
AND (!!) having 2 separate notion system (MB and MiB) avoid confusion. If a number is list as MiB I can know exactly how many bits are being talked about. With one standard the term gets overloaded and causes confusion even amongst people who know what they are doing.
And what are the advantages, today, of keeping with an outdated way of referring to powers of 2 instead of powers of 10 ONLY in the one area of storage?
Is that you George W ??
This sort of attitude always bothers me.
First,glad to know that you have done your own extensive, scientific study. I guess it is a shame you just have not released it yet. We all await it eagerly, i can tell you.
Secondly, the real problem with the argument that everyone chooses everything they do is that there is some truth to it. There is more untruth, but that sliver is something people gasp and never let go. An example which you will like ignore follows:
25% of the population lack a gene. This lack means that it is harder for them to get enjoyment from smoking. It also makes it easier to quit when they try. By your logic that gene has nothing to do with it and it is merely a choice. However, without knowing ANYTHING else about a group of people except whither or not they lack the gene, i can predict more accurately how hard it will quit then someone who knows nothing. This is not a question of will power but of biology.
People are not created equal, people have different needs and tolerances. Something YOU can control someone else can not. Not because it is a flaw, but because they are not you. You maybe able to eat or not eat as is your whim yet maybe you can not control your anger. We are a messy, wiggly species with the most convoluted lump of matter in the universe between our ears. And you think you control it.
You are not in control of everything in you life, you do not choose to do everything you do. Your heart beats, your feet sweat, your hair grows. People being made aware of the things that shape their lives is nothing but good. People who are social around each tend to do the same sort of things,in a natural and HEALTHY way. This study underlines that.
Your hard line stance is wrong, does nothing to help and merely contains a note of derision and contempt. I hope you learn to accept the things that are beyond your control.
Look at the people who paid $150 for a 20" LCD screen with crap specs, when you can now buy a 60" for $50.00.
The answer is always about what you can afford. Nearly everything gets cheaper that touches a computer as time goes on. Hell, that is part of what moores is all about. The only thing that every makes sense is to ask if something is a good price for you. You think that waiting a gen for the price to drop 1/10th makes sense, while joe over there thinks that waiting 2 generations for the price to drop 1/100th of the cost. Both of you are right, as well as the person who has to have it right now.
Really, the $100 laptop just shows that in a few years time the vast percentage of the world that could only dream of a computer are going to get one. Some people will still spend $500 on a new video card every 6 months. It isn't that they are going to be drastically fewer of them, it is just that the market share they represent will be small.
20 years ago computers were almost exclusively the hobbie off the middle class or better, something someone could spend $2000 dollars on without a huge purpose other than it seemed cool or neat or whatever. The same is still true - $2000 dollars buys a nice box these days, alot nicer than a $100 laptop. Do most people who spend $2k on a box "need" a 2k box? No, but then who needs any computer?
it will be close to that even if it isn't exactly that. frankly, the notion that in a couple months i might spend just under 300 dollars and get a quad core cpu is....amazing. or to put it another way: in just a month you will get a %100 increase in number of cores for a %50 increase in price.
wow.
As crazy as it seems, there are people that do need to be reminded of exactly that fact. This is in no small part because companies want to seem like your friend, whither or not they are. A company would like you to think fondly of them and Apple has a very strong brand loyalty, so does Goooogle. This does not make them bad companies, but it does mean that people sometimes have to be reminded what the company is trying to do.
People who think of a company as a friend are more likely to make poor choices.
damn it - the more i hear about the game, the more i think i have to do something to play it....
That makes no sense. While $2000 might, over 50 years, turn into $250,000 you don't get that much at the end. You only get $25k worth of purchasing power, at best. That becomes a much different story. Even if the math was right, and meant what you think it meant, what you just ended up arguing for is just putting some money away over the next 2 or 3 years and THEN doing whatever the hell you want for the rest of your life. 50 years later, magically everything is wonderful.
But, even if everything you said was true - that the money works out how you say and that very few people look back and are content - I would want to be one of those people. I would want to be one of those that enjoyed that 2 week trip after high school for the next 50 years. I might not be sure if I would be that person or not, but i know the safe ones, the turtles of the world, aren't. Some of them have more cash, some of them are happier then they every would be otherwise but none of them became that person, that person who inspires.
Better to have lived and loved as they say.....
If your phone has an internet connection, why would you want to talk to a person?
Sometimes, you aren't trying to keep something in, but keep something else out.
There are lots of reasons why blocking a signal would be better then mere encryption. Information can be garnered about a connection even if you do not know the content of the information. Besides, more options is almost always a good thing. For stupid people this will do nothing, for smart ones it will be the right solution in the right situation.