Yes. This sort of thing has been increasingly condoned, ignored, not called out, all in the name of politics and power. The big difference now is that it's being done by Republicans to other Republicans, with no quarter given. This is what happens when you continue to tear apart the political norms and decorum that undergird the system. Trump is totally unafraid to deploy it against people who never expected to be attacked for it, and isn't even bothering to have surrogates do it.
Birth rates in advanced countries are already well below the rate of replacement. In some countries, it's so low they're going to see significant population declines. The only place birth rates are still up are in the most underdeveloped parts of the world, and even in moderately developed countries it's tapered off quite a bit. China panicked about their birth rate, instituted draconian measures, and now has a significantly negative birth rate, to the point that they're going to have a huge demographic swell of the elderly, followed by a massive drop as the old generations die off.
This will basically just be a drop in the bucket, no pun intended. It's going to be way too expensive to really have any impact in any place but the more developed world, and those are the places that have birth rates below replacement level.
You won't likely need birth control, at least beyond making it freely available on a voluntary basis. If anything, we have the opposite problem right now, which is falling birth rates. It's not so bad in the USA, because we've been importing lots of new people, which masks the fact that our birth rates fell below replacement level a while back. In other advanced countries, it's far worse. South Korea's birth rate is now 1.3 children per female, which means that their population is shrinking. And for reference, 2 would be effective equilibrium, though it's more like 2.1 when you factor in accidental/etc deaths at younger age. And if 1.3 doesn't sound bad, consider that 1.0 would mean roughly 50% population drop each generation.
Even in countries like Mexico it's fallen significantly (6.7 in 1970, 2.2 in 2012). India is still growing, but only slowly (now 2.5 in 2012). China famously instituted draconian birth restrictions to try and stop its population growth, and succeeded, only to overshoot, and will now face serious problems from it, as they're down to 1.66.
Now, it's certainly interesting to speculate what would change if people were able to remove many of the burdens of having children. Past studies on a basic income have shown that many women, if given the choice, would opt to stay home and raise children. Day care is expensive, and children are expensive beyond that in so many ways. If there wasn't any financial drawback to having kids, how many people would have more of them? I don't know, but it's an interesting thought. Still, I think history tends to show that once reliable birth control is available, and infant/child mortality rates are brought in check, most people tend to prefer 2-3 children, in order to devote more quality time to those children.
The first is some sort of shared wealth and prosperity, where the productivity of robots is shared such that nobody has to work for survival level needs. Luxury goods would still have value, and people would still be employed to create things, whether it be ideas, music, arts, entertainment, etc, probably on an entirely free market basis (think like the way successful Youtube or Twitch streamers work now).
The second is some form of dystopia, where the productivity of robots is owned only by some, not everyone. Those people get rich and prosper, and everyone else who isn't so lucky scrapes to get by and not starve.
That may seem a bit ridiculous, but consider that our present attitudes and values are still rooted in our history, dating back to times where we expected everyone to work, because it was necessary for survival. In a subsistence farming village, everyone needed to work, and freeloaders were dangerous parasites. But in a world where robots do all the work, to the point that there's enough food/shelter/etc for everyone, that paradigm no longer applies, and we need new ones, because the value of low skilled human labor will be so low that it's not enough to survive on.
Caveat Emptor is fine with things that a consumer should be reasonably expected to notice or be aware of, and/or that aren't inherently life threatening. If I buy used furniture on Ebay or Craigslist, I should know that I'm taking a risk. On the other hand, things like tainted food? Yes, I want the government regulating that. What about things like lead paint on Childrens' toys? I sure wouldn't be able to tell the difference at a glance, so yes, absolutely.
Things like computer security? I don't expect that the government is necessarily going to be the one testing everything, but I'm perfectly happy with the government instituting penalties for companies that sell a supposedly "secure" product that turns out to be complete bullsh*t full of more holes than swiss cheese, because penalties are pretty much the only thing that's going to really get companies to take things seriously, at least in the SOHO market.
Yes. The problem with this (and many other polls) is in how you phrase the question, and the degree to which you explain the issue (or not).
For instance, if I asked people, "Should Apple comply with a legally issued search warrant?" most people will answer yes. If I instead ask them, "Should Apple give the U.S. Government unfettered access to everyone's iPhone?" people will likely answer more negatively (I wish I could say all would, but I don't have that much faith in humanity anymore).
Beyond that though, I think part of the problem is that the average person doesn't understand why "unlocking a terrorist's phone, with a warrant" is a problem. Apple has no problem (morally speaking, technical challenges are another matter) with unlocking a single iPhone. What Apple objects to is giving the government a key to disable security on ANY iPhone, because past evidence shows that they'll start using it anywhere they want to, not just on this one particular case.
There's other factors to consider. For one, income isn't exactly equal in terms of what it means. You might think a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, but a single dollar to a poor person has a lot more marginal value than it does to a billionaire.
There's a certain amount of income that's basically your core survival amount. For the sake of argument, let's say $15k (which may vary greatly). Taking money away here is going to seriously threaten your ability to just get by.
Then comes the next level, where you start to add in basic amenities, and minor luxuries like entertainment, saving money, the occasional vacation. Taking money from this amount doesn't threaten you, but it might lower the niceties that you can afford (maybe you only go out once a week to places like Chipotle rather than going out 2-3 times a week to a steakhouse). It's not the end of the world, but you notice.
Eventually, we get to the point where you're making so much money that the difference in amenities that more money will buy is approaching a ridiculous level, like a question of 187 diamonds encrusted on the steering wheel of your Yacht rather than 188. We're talking incomes into the millions of dollars here. At this point, you're not even going to notice an extra dollar, because it represents a tiny fraction of your income. And even if we start talking percentages of your income, the amount that you're foregoing may be staggeringly huge, but it has minimal real impact on your lifestyle. If I make $10 million a year, and I pay 10% more in taxes, that's a million more I pay - but I won't notice it the same way that someone making $50k notices losing an extra $5k. Moreover, at this level, I have lots of money I can afford to invest into making even more money.
So that's partly why progressive taxation can make sense, because of the marginal value of that income. But really, the core problem in many cases is that last sentence above, because the majority of wealth isn't in wage income. Really rich people make their money off investments, and capital gains is taxed far less than wage income, and it's definitely not indexed progressively (or at all).
Queue the various senators and congressmembers trying to tell us that actual competition is somehow anti-competitive and will stifle innovation in 3... 2... 1...
You're exactly right that those things have nothing to do with games. People have been failing out of school for a long, long time, for reasons that had nothing to do with video games. In fact, of my high school friends circle, the people who failed out were the ones who weren't hardcore video gamers. They instead "partied themselves out" the old fashioned way, with women and alcohol.
I can't imagine that there will simply be zero demand for fast, or faster, chips, regardless of the power efficiency. Some applications just demand it. If Intel won't do it, then someone else will, whether that's AMD or some new competitor in China or wherever.
On the other hand, there's certainly a market for more efficiency, especially in mobile devices, so I can certainly see lines of chips designed for that heading in the way described.
I live in a nice suburban neighborhood, and I sure don't recall having seen any panthers, black or otherwise, outside my polling stations (in a generally pro-Republican district) the last few federal elections or so.
Now, I did see a few Jaguars, but I don't remember the color offhand. Maybe maroon-ish? Dark grey?:)
Clearly we weren't conducting full mass surveillance prior to 9/11, so we need to do so. Otherwise the terrorists win.
We also didn't have anyone locked up in Guantanamo, so we need to double, no, TRIPLE Guantanamo. Anyone who says otherwise obviously is a terrorist sympathizer.
And we're not doing this for our sake - it's for the children. Won't someone think of the children?
The senators speaking here are pretty consistently against corporate abuse, and have been pro-consumer, nevermind reasonably tech-astute (especially the Oregon senators). They're not the ones you should be slamming for taking bribes and doing nothing - these people actually walk the walk.
The problem is that they're a minority in the senate, both in terms of being pro-consumer/anti-abuse, and in being part of the minority party. Contrast them to the Republicans that are busy decrying Net Neutrality, Title II, etc. And in fairness, not all republicans in congress are, and there's more than few corporate shills on the democratic side, but if we're talking about the loudest voices in each group, it's clear where the preferences tend to lie.
And that's something that's important to remember - not that one party is good or bad, or to claim that one is pure and the isn't, but that it's absolutely NOT fair to just tar every single legislator with the same brush, and claim they're all the same. Some of them are CLEARLY better than others, and by refusing to recognize that, we're punishing the good along with the bad. We need to reward the good behavior, and punish the bad ones.
You're certainly welcome to be cynical, but let's take a look at the list of names here:
Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
Several of these people have been talking about internet and technology issues for some time, and rather astutely (the Oregon senators), or have taken a very pro-consumer stance against abuse by corporations (Warren, Sanders). None of them are none for being shills or fair-weather friends on this sort of thing, and they've proven more than willing to put action and effort behind their words.
Now if you really want to be cynical, bemoan the fact that they don't have enough power at present to accomplish anything versus the majority of (mostly Republican, though not all) legislators who are all too happy to suck up to Comcast/etc and proclaim idiotic things like "Net Neutrality hurts competition" or ranting about how Title II will stifle innovation when we're already getting left in the dust on connection speed by most of the developed world.
Contrast it with music. Is there really a problem with music piracy anymore? Not that I'm aware of at least. There's lots of options, between various digital stores (iTunes, Amazon) and various streaming services that cover a very wide catalog. About the only thing I can't get easily is something like foreign bands that are unknown in the USA, and even that's getting better. Maybe if I was looking for very specific live performances or something, I dunno - but certainly not something the average person is going to run into in a typical month or even year.
Contrast that to movies and TV shows, of which some are available, but it's still highly segregated, they regularly yank stuff out of the catalog to create artificial scarcity, etc. They still haven't gotten with the idea fully. It may be better than it was five years ago, but that's not saying much.
"You can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere."
They're never going to stop piracy. It's like trying to play whack-a-mole. Movie companies would do a much better job if they stopped trying to squash any sort of piracy, and focused more on providing what people want, in the form they want, when they want it, at a convenient price. Some people will always pirate, sure, but 99% of people aren't going to ever bother if they can get what they're looking for conveniently and without paying through the nose for it.
Depending on the expected severance package (which can vary with the laws in each state, and the contract you're on - I'm not sure about California or Yahoo in this case) it can be worth sticking around, but you're right on the vast majority of cases. I've worked at places that were on the downward slide (back when I was still a minor peon who couldn't influence any of that), and it was utterly miserable. Problems proliferate, and morale goes into the toilet, which makes going to work each day and dealing with your miserable coworkers a nightmarish experience. The ones who can get out easily almost certainly do, and the company isn't backfilling those positions (and if they are, nobody worth a damn wants to take them), and the extra load gets dumped on whoever's left - if people are even bothering not to halfass it in the first place.
So barring some damn nice severance, that is codified in law, and expecting that the company won't go under totally (in which case you might get left with nothing, law/contract or not), it's definitely best to have your escape plan ready to go.
You could also institute a time limit for edits, something like 2 minutes, or even 5 minutes, to give you a brief window after posting if you realize you screwed something up and hit submit anyway.
One suggestion would be to allow a limited window of time where you can edit your comment. It doesn't need to be anything long, even 5 minutes or so would suffice, mostly to allow for typo correction that slips past.
Alternately, have those posts be pending for 2 minutes/5 minutes/whatever so no one else can see them, but you can still edit them until that point is up? Even with the preview function, I know there's tons of typos/etc that slip through, especially when posting from an autocorrecting mobile device.
No way, they'll absolutely deliver you these speeds. That way you can eat up your allotted 5GB in even less time, and start racking up data overage charges in less than one tenth of a second.
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Yes. This sort of thing has been increasingly condoned, ignored, not called out, all in the name of politics and power. The big difference now is that it's being done by Republicans to other Republicans, with no quarter given. This is what happens when you continue to tear apart the political norms and decorum that undergird the system. Trump is totally unafraid to deploy it against people who never expected to be attacked for it, and isn't even bothering to have surrogates do it.
Birth rates in advanced countries are already well below the rate of replacement. In some countries, it's so low they're going to see significant population declines. The only place birth rates are still up are in the most underdeveloped parts of the world, and even in moderately developed countries it's tapered off quite a bit. China panicked about their birth rate, instituted draconian measures, and now has a significantly negative birth rate, to the point that they're going to have a huge demographic swell of the elderly, followed by a massive drop as the old generations die off.
This will basically just be a drop in the bucket, no pun intended. It's going to be way too expensive to really have any impact in any place but the more developed world, and those are the places that have birth rates below replacement level.
You won't likely need birth control, at least beyond making it freely available on a voluntary basis. If anything, we have the opposite problem right now, which is falling birth rates. It's not so bad in the USA, because we've been importing lots of new people, which masks the fact that our birth rates fell below replacement level a while back. In other advanced countries, it's far worse. South Korea's birth rate is now 1.3 children per female, which means that their population is shrinking. And for reference, 2 would be effective equilibrium, though it's more like 2.1 when you factor in accidental/etc deaths at younger age. And if 1.3 doesn't sound bad, consider that 1.0 would mean roughly 50% population drop each generation.
Even in countries like Mexico it's fallen significantly (6.7 in 1970, 2.2 in 2012). India is still growing, but only slowly (now 2.5 in 2012). China famously instituted draconian birth restrictions to try and stop its population growth, and succeeded, only to overshoot, and will now face serious problems from it, as they're down to 1.66.
Now, it's certainly interesting to speculate what would change if people were able to remove many of the burdens of having children. Past studies on a basic income have shown that many women, if given the choice, would opt to stay home and raise children. Day care is expensive, and children are expensive beyond that in so many ways. If there wasn't any financial drawback to having kids, how many people would have more of them? I don't know, but it's an interesting thought. Still, I think history tends to show that once reliable birth control is available, and infant/child mortality rates are brought in check, most people tend to prefer 2-3 children, in order to devote more quality time to those children.
Two general options (and variations thereupon):
The first is some sort of shared wealth and prosperity, where the productivity of robots is shared such that nobody has to work for survival level needs. Luxury goods would still have value, and people would still be employed to create things, whether it be ideas, music, arts, entertainment, etc, probably on an entirely free market basis (think like the way successful Youtube or Twitch streamers work now).
The second is some form of dystopia, where the productivity of robots is owned only by some, not everyone. Those people get rich and prosper, and everyone else who isn't so lucky scrapes to get by and not starve.
That may seem a bit ridiculous, but consider that our present attitudes and values are still rooted in our history, dating back to times where we expected everyone to work, because it was necessary for survival. In a subsistence farming village, everyone needed to work, and freeloaders were dangerous parasites. But in a world where robots do all the work, to the point that there's enough food/shelter/etc for everyone, that paradigm no longer applies, and we need new ones, because the value of low skilled human labor will be so low that it's not enough to survive on.
Caveat Emptor is fine with things that a consumer should be reasonably expected to notice or be aware of, and/or that aren't inherently life threatening. If I buy used furniture on Ebay or Craigslist, I should know that I'm taking a risk. On the other hand, things like tainted food? Yes, I want the government regulating that. What about things like lead paint on Childrens' toys? I sure wouldn't be able to tell the difference at a glance, so yes, absolutely.
Things like computer security? I don't expect that the government is necessarily going to be the one testing everything, but I'm perfectly happy with the government instituting penalties for companies that sell a supposedly "secure" product that turns out to be complete bullsh*t full of more holes than swiss cheese, because penalties are pretty much the only thing that's going to really get companies to take things seriously, at least in the SOHO market.
Yes. The problem with this (and many other polls) is in how you phrase the question, and the degree to which you explain the issue (or not).
For instance, if I asked people, "Should Apple comply with a legally issued search warrant?" most people will answer yes. If I instead ask them, "Should Apple give the U.S. Government unfettered access to everyone's iPhone?" people will likely answer more negatively (I wish I could say all would, but I don't have that much faith in humanity anymore).
Beyond that though, I think part of the problem is that the average person doesn't understand why "unlocking a terrorist's phone, with a warrant" is a problem. Apple has no problem (morally speaking, technical challenges are another matter) with unlocking a single iPhone. What Apple objects to is giving the government a key to disable security on ANY iPhone, because past evidence shows that they'll start using it anywhere they want to, not just on this one particular case.
There's other factors to consider. For one, income isn't exactly equal in terms of what it means. You might think a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, but a single dollar to a poor person has a lot more marginal value than it does to a billionaire.
There's a certain amount of income that's basically your core survival amount. For the sake of argument, let's say $15k (which may vary greatly). Taking money away here is going to seriously threaten your ability to just get by.
Then comes the next level, where you start to add in basic amenities, and minor luxuries like entertainment, saving money, the occasional vacation. Taking money from this amount doesn't threaten you, but it might lower the niceties that you can afford (maybe you only go out once a week to places like Chipotle rather than going out 2-3 times a week to a steakhouse). It's not the end of the world, but you notice.
Eventually, we get to the point where you're making so much money that the difference in amenities that more money will buy is approaching a ridiculous level, like a question of 187 diamonds encrusted on the steering wheel of your Yacht rather than 188. We're talking incomes into the millions of dollars here. At this point, you're not even going to notice an extra dollar, because it represents a tiny fraction of your income. And even if we start talking percentages of your income, the amount that you're foregoing may be staggeringly huge, but it has minimal real impact on your lifestyle. If I make $10 million a year, and I pay 10% more in taxes, that's a million more I pay - but I won't notice it the same way that someone making $50k notices losing an extra $5k. Moreover, at this level, I have lots of money I can afford to invest into making even more money.
So that's partly why progressive taxation can make sense, because of the marginal value of that income. But really, the core problem in many cases is that last sentence above, because the majority of wealth isn't in wage income. Really rich people make their money off investments, and capital gains is taxed far less than wage income, and it's definitely not indexed progressively (or at all).
Queue the various senators and congressmembers trying to tell us that actual competition is somehow anti-competitive and will stifle innovation in 3... 2... 1...
Cox isn't great - but compared to Comcast/Time Warner/etc, they're absolutely stellar.
That's not saying much, but it's also saying quite a lot.
Cox sounds so much better than my ISP. And that's why I'm going to switch to them today!
...oh, wait.
Because past Presidents have never proposed budgets before.
Here's a hint, they do it pretty much every year. Congress doesn't have to listen to it, of course, though they sometimes do.
Your family should totally sue the makers of Oregon Trail for making you think that you could safely ford that river.
You're exactly right that those things have nothing to do with games. People have been failing out of school for a long, long time, for reasons that had nothing to do with video games. In fact, of my high school friends circle, the people who failed out were the ones who weren't hardcore video gamers. They instead "partied themselves out" the old fashioned way, with women and alcohol.
He's referring to the well-known fact that Valve is less capable of counting to 3 than Arthur, King of the Britons, is.
I can't imagine that there will simply be zero demand for fast, or faster, chips, regardless of the power efficiency. Some applications just demand it. If Intel won't do it, then someone else will, whether that's AMD or some new competitor in China or wherever.
On the other hand, there's certainly a market for more efficiency, especially in mobile devices, so I can certainly see lines of chips designed for that heading in the way described.
I live in a nice suburban neighborhood, and I sure don't recall having seen any panthers, black or otherwise, outside my polling stations (in a generally pro-Republican district) the last few federal elections or so.
:)
Now, I did see a few Jaguars, but I don't remember the color offhand. Maybe maroon-ish? Dark grey?
Clearly we weren't conducting full mass surveillance prior to 9/11, so we need to do so. Otherwise the terrorists win.
/sarcasm
We also didn't have anyone locked up in Guantanamo, so we need to double, no, TRIPLE Guantanamo. Anyone who says otherwise obviously is a terrorist sympathizer.
And we're not doing this for our sake - it's for the children. Won't someone think of the children?
The senators speaking here are pretty consistently against corporate abuse, and have been pro-consumer, nevermind reasonably tech-astute (especially the Oregon senators). They're not the ones you should be slamming for taking bribes and doing nothing - these people actually walk the walk.
The problem is that they're a minority in the senate, both in terms of being pro-consumer/anti-abuse, and in being part of the minority party. Contrast them to the Republicans that are busy decrying Net Neutrality, Title II, etc. And in fairness, not all republicans in congress are, and there's more than few corporate shills on the democratic side, but if we're talking about the loudest voices in each group, it's clear where the preferences tend to lie.
And that's something that's important to remember - not that one party is good or bad, or to claim that one is pure and the isn't, but that it's absolutely NOT fair to just tar every single legislator with the same brush, and claim they're all the same. Some of them are CLEARLY better than others, and by refusing to recognize that, we're punishing the good along with the bad. We need to reward the good behavior, and punish the bad ones.
You're certainly welcome to be cynical, but let's take a look at the list of names here:
Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
Several of these people have been talking about internet and technology issues for some time, and rather astutely (the Oregon senators), or have taken a very pro-consumer stance against abuse by corporations (Warren, Sanders). None of them are none for being shills or fair-weather friends on this sort of thing, and they've proven more than willing to put action and effort behind their words.
Now if you really want to be cynical, bemoan the fact that they don't have enough power at present to accomplish anything versus the majority of (mostly Republican, though not all) legislators who are all too happy to suck up to Comcast/etc and proclaim idiotic things like "Net Neutrality hurts competition" or ranting about how Title II will stifle innovation when we're already getting left in the dust on connection speed by most of the developed world.
Contrast it with music. Is there really a problem with music piracy anymore? Not that I'm aware of at least. There's lots of options, between various digital stores (iTunes, Amazon) and various streaming services that cover a very wide catalog. About the only thing I can't get easily is something like foreign bands that are unknown in the USA, and even that's getting better. Maybe if I was looking for very specific live performances or something, I dunno - but certainly not something the average person is going to run into in a typical month or even year.
Contrast that to movies and TV shows, of which some are available, but it's still highly segregated, they regularly yank stuff out of the catalog to create artificial scarcity, etc. They still haven't gotten with the idea fully. It may be better than it was five years ago, but that's not saying much.
"You can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere." They're never going to stop piracy. It's like trying to play whack-a-mole. Movie companies would do a much better job if they stopped trying to squash any sort of piracy, and focused more on providing what people want, in the form they want, when they want it, at a convenient price. Some people will always pirate, sure, but 99% of people aren't going to ever bother if they can get what they're looking for conveniently and without paying through the nose for it.
Depending on the expected severance package (which can vary with the laws in each state, and the contract you're on - I'm not sure about California or Yahoo in this case) it can be worth sticking around, but you're right on the vast majority of cases. I've worked at places that were on the downward slide (back when I was still a minor peon who couldn't influence any of that), and it was utterly miserable. Problems proliferate, and morale goes into the toilet, which makes going to work each day and dealing with your miserable coworkers a nightmarish experience. The ones who can get out easily almost certainly do, and the company isn't backfilling those positions (and if they are, nobody worth a damn wants to take them), and the extra load gets dumped on whoever's left - if people are even bothering not to halfass it in the first place.
So barring some damn nice severance, that is codified in law, and expecting that the company won't go under totally (in which case you might get left with nothing, law/contract or not), it's definitely best to have your escape plan ready to go.
You could also institute a time limit for edits, something like 2 minutes, or even 5 minutes, to give you a brief window after posting if you realize you screwed something up and hit submit anyway.
One suggestion would be to allow a limited window of time where you can edit your comment. It doesn't need to be anything long, even 5 minutes or so would suffice, mostly to allow for typo correction that slips past.
Alternately, have those posts be pending for 2 minutes/5 minutes/whatever so no one else can see them, but you can still edit them until that point is up? Even with the preview function, I know there's tons of typos/etc that slip through, especially when posting from an autocorrecting mobile device.
No way, they'll absolutely deliver you these speeds. That way you can eat up your allotted 5GB in even less time, and start racking up data overage charges in less than one tenth of a second.