To paraphrase "It's the content, not the graphics, stupid!"
There have been lots of great looking, super shiny games that were absolutely terrible. And there are lots of games with less than stellar graphics that are absolute blasts to play. Not every game needs to look ultra realistic. For that matter, do you WANT some of Nintendo's IP to look ultra realistic?
I definitely understand that it's good to have the extra horsepower for some games, but at the same time way too often game companies chase the stunning visuals and don't work enough on the rest. Back in the old days when consoles had very limited power compared to what was in the arcades, game makers focused on making the games enjoyable first because they could only do so much with the graphics. That's probably one of the reasons Nintendo does so well with their IP in the handheld space even today.
>Think - if there was a culture of waste in manufacturing there would Apple be getting iThingies made in China.
????
That's exactly why THEY DO get their iThingies made there! Corruption doesn't just mean pork barrel waste, you know. Workers around dangerous chemicals? It's cheaper for the subcontractor to pay regulators off and have local officials look the other way than to properly protect them. When the workers get cancer or other illness, blame them instead of the process - it's like a 21st century Radium Girls redux! Lax waste handling measures, poor worker rights and protections, and payoffs galore. All combine to make it way cheaper to build iThings over there than over here.
> But wouldn't it be better if you could actually do something during that 15 min?
Why, does your body shut down and paralyze you during that time? No? Then go ahead and do something. Just make sure you're back when your car gets a full charge so you're not holding up the line like a twat. Sounds to me like you even get a notification on your phone to help you gauge this.
> There's always waste, but waste in US procurement waste is epic due to pork barrel spending -- which China as a non-democracy doesn't have.
I'm sorry, are you trying to say that China, a nation renowned for its bureaucratic corruption doesn't have any waste in its dev/supply chain? It's as bad over there as it is on this side of the ocean if not worse.
Signal triangulation? That would require constant surveillance by multiple dozens of antennas per mile of road as the signal would only be on for a fraction of a second.
As for "is it worth the risk", bear in mind we live in a world where dumbasses shoot at cars from the ditch and throw cinder blocks off overpasses at cars for shits and grins. Those people aren't thinking about risk, just mischief or worse.
Such a blinkered, narrow view. Did Capitalism protect those inventors from having their inventions stolen by those with more resources, or was it the socialist patent office that helped them out? For that matter, did capitalist forces keep their countries safe from invasion so they could work without concern for marauders coming over the hills to kill them and take their resources?
> Unless it transmits a cryptographically-signed VIN as part of the broadcast, and receivers log that VIN to some kind of persistent storage if they rely on its data.
And in this day and age, people can clone your car's wireless fob when you use it to open a door. Or clone your SIM card, RFID payment card, and others. Seeing as these boxes would probably be highly illegal to begin with, the users of such will have no problems with the morality of cloning an innocent bystander's vehicle VIN signature.
Radio devices can be invisible when concealed in a pocket or trunk. Can you look at a camera and point out the bloke with a cellphone jammer in his pocket in a crowd?
This is going to be abused. People will have so much fun with this, it'll be unreal. Imagine a little box you can buy/build that spoofs a vehicle system and tricks all the cars in a 100 meter radius into executing an emergency stop...
I disagree, I don't think they're copying the old format entirely, from what I've seen of it so far they're using the old formula as a template and trying new things with it. That said it's been hit or miss so far. The special forces thing was dreadful and scripted all to hell, but there's promising signs elsewhere, like the latest episode with the eco-cars. So far I am still in watch and see mode.
They do the same thing as those who were "monitored" and "regulated". Spy on SOs, exes etc. And of course, people were shocked, SHOCKED I tell you that the NSA staffers would ever do such a thing. Same as when cops were revealed to be doing the same thing...
> The fat American driver shitting on every car he drove so far is unnecessary
Actually I think it is necessary to avoid a suit by the BBC. Something about not being allowed to have a faceless silent racing driver doing the laps so they are maliciously complying with the agreement. Same with the celebrity kill-off bits. They're probably doing it to hew to the wording of the agreement worked out and also give the Beeb lawyers the finger. Which is also why James said "Oh Cack!" in the latest ep. If he said "Oh Cock!" the Beeb could sue.
> Because the return on investment is less than half as much.
But it's not really. You're not factoring in training costs, turnover, staff shortages during sickness, etc. Factor all of that in and the robot ROI looks better and better regardless of meatbag wage. The $15/hr minimum wage talk was brought up by the CEOs of fast food places as a red herring to try and shift blame for when the robots and automation changes come. Instead of them just looking like money grubbers, they can now blame the minimum wage workers for daring to want a living wage for the changes. And the public eats it up, figuratively speaking.
> I'm surprised that they even go there in the first place.
Idealism is probably why. They might hear and read some of the stories about the monster NSA and think it's not really that bad or they just need "more people like me!" and apply. In the same vein, I'm kind of surprised that anyone in the last 35 years since the draft was removed has joined the armed forces with the intention of making a difference instead of just looking for a job or a GI bill, but it happens. A very well known example would be Pat Tillman who left a multimillion dollar football career to go to Afghanistan - and then in the blackest of ironies gets killed by friendly fire.
Apples and oranges. Last time I looked you won't go to prison for bringing a candle onto a plane without using it, but a Note 7 is a one way ticket to the crowbar palace if it's found on you while trying to board a plane, even if it's powered off.
What if you live in an apartment or townhouse? Would you want your neighbors making that choice for you as well? And flipping that around if you live in an apartment or townhouse complex and your Note 7 did catch the place on fire, your neighbors would be well within their rights to sue you into a financial hole so deep you'd never get out of it. Why? Because the Note 7 is a proven fire risk that the manufacturer is doing everything it can to ensure that people return and you're ignoring that. I bet your insurance would decline coverage in that case as well.
Um, yes he does. Especially computers. Overpriced, feature-poor and unreliable were the hallmarks of some of the first gen microcomputers I used in the late 70s and early 80s. And some of the first "consumer"/small business systems cost more than cars did. I knew a guy who was selling IBM XTs with modems and weather forecast access software to farmers for over $10K a pop.
The "internet" as I knew it in the 80s wasn't the internet, it was BBSs and the horribly overpriced CompuServe. Then it was SLIP connections and using FTP, then Mosaic, then a thousand other incremental steps and now you have the ability to watch people get nutshotted in 4K on your monitor.
Similar with mobile phones. Horribly expensive and unreliable. Then came PSION and WinCE "smart" phones that sucked ass. Japan kinda got that going well in the early 2000s with their DoCoMo FOMA phones but didn't want the rest of the world to get in on the fun so they never made non-Japanese models. Palm came along with the Treo and that was the first mostly useful smart-phone and then came the iPhones and the Androids and now here we are today.
The problem is that there are many cases where companies use the employee improvement plan process to fire people who aren't actually bad at their jobs but the companies want them to leave for other reasons and don't want to lay them off with the associated unemployment costs.
They put the target on said plan in hopes they take the hint and just leave. If not, the employee will be judged to have not sufficiently improved, no matter how they actually perform, and at the end of the EIP deadline they are let go for cause.
I don't see a point at this stage of the game to people being allowed to post reviews without having a papertrail in Amazon that they bought it to AMZN.
That only realistically works for a few reviews. If a dedicated shitposter has 20 sockpuppet accounts they can still do a ton of damage to a product's rating and most customers aren't going to go to the trouble of checking more than a couple of those accounts and blocking them - if they even bother. Most people will see 35 reviews, and 20 of them are 1 star. NEXT PRODUCT, this one sucks!
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To paraphrase "It's the content, not the graphics, stupid!"
There have been lots of great looking, super shiny games that were absolutely terrible. And there are lots of games with less than stellar graphics that are absolute blasts to play. Not every game needs to look ultra realistic. For that matter, do you WANT some of Nintendo's IP to look ultra realistic?
http://www.mariomayhem.com/bowsers_blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/real-mario-face.jpg
How about no?
I definitely understand that it's good to have the extra horsepower for some games, but at the same time way too often game companies chase the stunning visuals and don't work enough on the rest. Back in the old days when consoles had very limited power compared to what was in the arcades, game makers focused on making the games enjoyable first because they could only do so much with the graphics. That's probably one of the reasons Nintendo does so well with their IP in the handheld space even today.
Hey man, free butt wipe is free butt wipe!
>Think - if there was a culture of waste in manufacturing there would Apple be getting iThingies made in China.
????
That's exactly why THEY DO get their iThingies made there! Corruption doesn't just mean pork barrel waste, you know. Workers around dangerous chemicals? It's cheaper for the subcontractor to pay regulators off and have local officials look the other way than to properly protect them. When the workers get cancer or other illness, blame them instead of the process - it's like a 21st century Radium Girls redux! Lax waste handling measures, poor worker rights and protections, and payoffs galore. All combine to make it way cheaper to build iThings over there than over here.
> But wouldn't it be better if you could actually do something during that 15 min?
Why, does your body shut down and paralyze you during that time? No? Then go ahead and do something. Just make sure you're back when your car gets a full charge so you're not holding up the line like a twat. Sounds to me like you even get a notification on your phone to help you gauge this.
This is a good point. When mass automation hits, having 900 million unemployed mouths to feed, clothe and house will be a massive drag on a country.
> There's always waste, but waste in US procurement waste is epic due to pork barrel spending -- which China as a non-democracy doesn't have.
I'm sorry, are you trying to say that China, a nation renowned for its bureaucratic corruption doesn't have any waste in its dev/supply chain? It's as bad over there as it is on this side of the ocean if not worse.
Signal triangulation? That would require constant surveillance by multiple dozens of antennas per mile of road as the signal would only be on for a fraction of a second.
As for "is it worth the risk", bear in mind we live in a world where dumbasses shoot at cars from the ditch and throw cinder blocks off overpasses at cars for shits and grins. Those people aren't thinking about risk, just mischief or worse.
Such a blinkered, narrow view. Did Capitalism protect those inventors from having their inventions stolen by those with more resources, or was it the socialist patent office that helped them out? For that matter, did capitalist forces keep their countries safe from invasion so they could work without concern for marauders coming over the hills to kill them and take their resources?
> Unless it transmits a cryptographically-signed VIN as part of the broadcast, and receivers log that VIN to some kind of persistent storage if they rely on its data.
And in this day and age, people can clone your car's wireless fob when you use it to open a door. Or clone your SIM card, RFID payment card, and others. Seeing as these boxes would probably be highly illegal to begin with, the users of such will have no problems with the morality of cloning an innocent bystander's vehicle VIN signature.
Radio devices can be invisible when concealed in a pocket or trunk. Can you look at a camera and point out the bloke with a cellphone jammer in his pocket in a crowd?
This is going to be abused. People will have so much fun with this, it'll be unreal. Imagine a little box you can buy/build that spoofs a vehicle system and tricks all the cars in a 100 meter radius into executing an emergency stop...
I disagree, I don't think they're copying the old format entirely, from what I've seen of it so far they're using the old formula as a template and trying new things with it. That said it's been hit or miss so far. The special forces thing was dreadful and scripted all to hell, but there's promising signs elsewhere, like the latest episode with the eco-cars. So far I am still in watch and see mode.
They do the same thing as those who were "monitored" and "regulated". Spy on SOs, exes etc. And of course, people were shocked, SHOCKED I tell you that the NSA staffers would ever do such a thing. Same as when cops were revealed to be doing the same thing...
> The fat American driver shitting on every car he drove so far is unnecessary
Actually I think it is necessary to avoid a suit by the BBC. Something about not being allowed to have a faceless silent racing driver doing the laps so they are maliciously complying with the agreement. Same with the celebrity kill-off bits. They're probably doing it to hew to the wording of the agreement worked out and also give the Beeb lawyers the finger. Which is also why James said "Oh Cack!" in the latest ep. If he said "Oh Cock!" the Beeb could sue.
> Because the return on investment is less than half as much.
But it's not really. You're not factoring in training costs, turnover, staff shortages during sickness, etc. Factor all of that in and the robot ROI looks better and better regardless of meatbag wage. The $15/hr minimum wage talk was brought up by the CEOs of fast food places as a red herring to try and shift blame for when the robots and automation changes come. Instead of them just looking like money grubbers, they can now blame the minimum wage workers for daring to want a living wage for the changes. And the public eats it up, figuratively speaking.
> I'm surprised that they even go there in the first place.
Idealism is probably why. They might hear and read some of the stories about the monster NSA and think it's not really that bad or they just need "more people like me!" and apply. In the same vein, I'm kind of surprised that anyone in the last 35 years since the draft was removed has joined the armed forces with the intention of making a difference instead of just looking for a job or a GI bill, but it happens. A very well known example would be Pat Tillman who left a multimillion dollar football career to go to Afghanistan - and then in the blackest of ironies gets killed by friendly fire.
Apples and oranges. Last time I looked you won't go to prison for bringing a candle onto a plane without using it, but a Note 7 is a one way ticket to the crowbar palace if it's found on you while trying to board a plane, even if it's powered off.
What if you live in an apartment or townhouse? Would you want your neighbors making that choice for you as well? And flipping that around if you live in an apartment or townhouse complex and your Note 7 did catch the place on fire, your neighbors would be well within their rights to sue you into a financial hole so deep you'd never get out of it. Why? Because the Note 7 is a proven fire risk that the manufacturer is doing everything it can to ensure that people return and you're ignoring that. I bet your insurance would decline coverage in that case as well.
Um, yes he does. Especially computers. Overpriced, feature-poor and unreliable were the hallmarks of some of the first gen microcomputers I used in the late 70s and early 80s. And some of the first "consumer"/small business systems cost more than cars did. I knew a guy who was selling IBM XTs with modems and weather forecast access software to farmers for over $10K a pop.
The "internet" as I knew it in the 80s wasn't the internet, it was BBSs and the horribly overpriced CompuServe. Then it was SLIP connections and using FTP, then Mosaic, then a thousand other incremental steps and now you have the ability to watch people get nutshotted in 4K on your monitor.
Similar with mobile phones. Horribly expensive and unreliable. Then came PSION and WinCE "smart" phones that sucked ass. Japan kinda got that going well in the early 2000s with their DoCoMo FOMA phones but didn't want the rest of the world to get in on the fun so they never made non-Japanese models. Palm came along with the Treo and that was the first mostly useful smart-phone and then came the iPhones and the Androids and now here we are today.
Sure, I didn't say ALL instances of EIP action were nefarious, just a not-insignificant percentage.
The problem is that there are many cases where companies use the employee improvement plan process to fire people who aren't actually bad at their jobs but the companies want them to leave for other reasons and don't want to lay them off with the associated unemployment costs.
They put the target on said plan in hopes they take the hint and just leave. If not, the employee will be judged to have not sufficiently improved, no matter how they actually perform, and at the end of the EIP deadline they are let go for cause.
One just requires more planning?
Evasion = Oh look, if I buy this from there I can get it without taxes because the seller is out of country and doesn't know what to charge, sweet!
Avoidance = If I structure my life/business a certain way and move mailing and or physical addresses I can avoid taxes on all these transactions.
I don't see a point at this stage of the game to people being allowed to post reviews without having a papertrail in Amazon that they bought it to AMZN.
That only realistically works for a few reviews. If a dedicated shitposter has 20 sockpuppet accounts they can still do a ton of damage to a product's rating and most customers aren't going to go to the trouble of checking more than a couple of those accounts and blocking them - if they even bother. Most people will see 35 reviews, and 20 of them are 1 star. NEXT PRODUCT, this one sucks!
Public transport in North America is chronically underfunded. So "do it cheaper" is definitely a contributing factor.