Employment: They are investing in robots that disassemble old phones for recycling. That is a first step to robots that can assemble new phones. That can return factories to the US, increase jobs, increase tax revenues.
Robots that could assembly phones have been available for decades. You apparently are not aware of the level of automation that is already available. The reason Apple manufactures a lot of their stuff in China is because that is where the supply chain is located. It has nothing to do with a lack of sophisticated automation available in the US.
Healthcare: Apple has a healthcare engineering group that assists healthcare providers find technical solutions.
What the fuck does that mean? Could you come up with a more vague and content free sentence? You're talking about shit like Apple selling iPads to doctor's offices. Not exactly world changing stuff there and certainly not solving the important failures in our health care system.
A need does not create a right. People need health care, but it is NOT government's job to give everybody what they need.
Fuck you for thinking that people don't have a right to receive health care. Everybody should have a right to be treated when they are sick without being bankrupted in the process. If you think otherwise then you are an asshole. Plenty of people work very hard and still end up with medical bills FAR beyond their ability to pay them. A few weeks stay in a hospital can easily cost six figures. The only institution that can solve this problem is the government and to pretend otherwise is both idiotic and cruel.
Even taking ethics out of it, pure economic pragmatism should drive us to want to see everyone taken care of because if you don't insure everyone then you end up spending even more money when they inevitably end up in the ER and drive up costs for everyone.
Although the article here seems tailor made to bring out both the political flames as well as the Apple-bashing flames, I would like to say that I admire this attitude.
Talk is cheap. I judge a man by his actions. Tim Cook talks a good game about caring about the country but he does everything in his power to have his company avoid paying taxes to support it. Apple has billions in cash on their balance sheet which could be invested in ways that would create jobs. Instead they simply sit like Smaug on their pile of gold and do nothing that would create jobs or drive the economy forward. Apple has outsourced nearly all of their manufacturing to China, even stuff that might not actually have to be outsourced. Tim Cook I'm sure has many wonderful qualities but on the stuff he's talking about here he is nothing but a do-nothing hypocrite. Few companies are as well resourced to help change the world as Apple but sadly Apple and Cook are doing little with that opportunity.
I wish there were more people with the attitude that they want to do what they can to fix what problems they can, and that far too many people do instead say, "If you don't do what I want, I leave."
So do I. What's more I think rich powerful men like Tim Cook should be leading the charge instead of hoping others do it for them. Elon Musk is a FAR better example of someone trying to actually improve the world than Tim Cook is.
Apple has FAR greater ability to create jobs than the federal government does as a general proposition. Apple is sitting on a gigantic war chest of money. If Tim Cook really gave a shit about creating jobs he could spend some of that Scrooge McDuck pile of money on something. Saying he supports Trump on job creation is a bunch of bullshit unless he is actually directing his company to do everything it can to create jobs. He hasn't done this so he's lying about that.
The only reason for Apple to sit on a pile of cash that large is because they cannot figure out something productive to do with the money. So they should either return it to shareholders or find some way to put it to productive use.
Veterans Affairs has struggled in providing health care to veterans. We have an expertise in some of the things at the base level that they're struggling with. So we're going to work with them. I could give a crap about the politics of it. I want to help veterans. My dad's a veteran. My brother served. We have so many military folks in Apple. These folks deserve great health care. So we're going to keep helping.
The VA needs help to be sure but how about solving the bigger problem? EVERYONE needs health care, not just veterans. EVERYONE needs health insurance, not just veterans. IT in medicine sucks terribly for the most part. Apple has done nothing to tackle this problem. That would be a great place to invest some of those billions they have on their balance sheet. Buy some medical records companies and get busy. Do something rather than talking to Trump which is probably a waste of time.
Commercial airliners regularly fly 1km separation, and as little as 1500' altitude difference when going "head to head" in a controlled commercial flight lane.
Commercial airliners also are flying at speeds two orders of magnitude less than the speeds of satelltes (500mph vs 17500mph), with human pilots on board, the ability to quickly change course, and active air traffic control in most cases. Kind of comparing apples to oranges here.
That won't be possible. Because they will be killed by someone concealed carrying before it can become "mass".
The classic fantasy behind so many gun advocates. You're seriously going to argue that a bunch of untrained people carrying around concealed firearms is going to be a deterrence against a determined shooter? Gang violence is a thing even thought they know the targets are armed. They just wait for a moment to attack when their guard is down. Representative Scalise evidently even had a security detail and that didn't stop the attack. The simple fact is that concealed carry doesn't stop the violence. I understand the appeal of the idea but there is no evidence that it actually works and even if it did, the vast majority of people simply are not going to carry a firearm with them most of the time. Frankly I have no interest in living around a bunch of paranoid people who are constantly on the lookout for a shootout.
Anti-gun folks always, ALWAYS, forget that given the chance many second amendment advocates would carry guns for their (and their fellow citizens) protection around with them all the time.... And it DOES make a huge difference in being able to defend against an attack.
Bullshit. The attacker pretty much always gets to attack first and you had better hope they miss. Furthermore it is demonstrably ridiculous to carry a weapon on you at all times. These people were playing a game and had a security detail and it STILL didn't stop the attack.
So to co-opt the right's tired argument, why wasn't the congressman armed to protect himself? The political right are the ones who think everyone should have a firearm on them at all times even though most of the time it is a plainly absurd argument.
Sigh... it's a damn shame anyone has to be hurt by a gun. I hope all the victims of this horrible act of violence are ok.
Right, how is supporting the NRA even close to this? I've never heard the NRA advocate the shooting of it's political opponents, have you? I haven't.
Then you haven't been listening. The NRA is really a lobby for the gun industry and they are spewing plenty of rhetoric about how the government or "violent leftists" are coming to get them and the only way to protect yourself is to arm yourself. It's complete bullshit of course but scared people do buy lots of guns. They're clever enough to not directly say "shoot the liberals" but that's certainly what they are strongly implying.
Which every sane person understood as a commentary on the power of the NRA, not as an invitation to assassination.
Bullshit. It was and is easily interpreted as an incitement to violence (which Trump never bothered to deny) plenty of perfectly sane people. If he wanted to comment on the power of the NRA you don't do it in such a way that it can be interpreted otherwise.
Only if every auto accident is an argument to ban automobiles...
You're comparing an accident with a transportation device with an attempted homicide with a purpose built weapon. Automobiles have plenty of uses besides killing something. Firearms are purpose built weapons. Comparing the two is a false equivalency.
Aramco is prepping for an IPO so technically, they won't be privately held for much more than another year or two.
This is true though they are only selling something like 10% of the company so in practical terms it's still going to be privately held. But even once Aramco goes public Uber still won't be "the most valuable private company in the world". It won't even be the most valuable private company in the US for that matter.
It made me wonder - what can a company even do for absolution once the mob has decided they are to be punished?
Possibly nothing. It's fairly rare for a company culture that is rotten to suddenly change its ways in a short amount of time. Possible but it doesn't happen often. Uber can do a lot of really hard work to show that they have actually changed their ways and be transparent about how. It's not easy but it has been done in the past. This seems unlikely given Uber's typical disregard for the opinions of others but stranger things have happened.
If Uber has done the things they are accused of then I'm not sure they deserve absolution nor am I convinced they actually desire it. This is a company which routinely doesn't give a shit about observing niceties. To think they are going to suddenly become a sensitive organization seems unrealistic. Building trust takes a lot of time and hard work. Losing trust can be done in an instant and is incredibly easy. If the allegations are true then Uber probably deserves all the bad press and more.
Myself, I'll continue to use Uber primarily because I have it set up, and I feel like I am helping the drivers more than the company (I always tip Uber drivers now, did not at first).
You seriously think the drivers are benefiting more than the company? Seems rather conveniently optimistic of you. I think the first half of the sentence is really the reason and the behavior of the company just doesn't matter much to you.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will take a leave of absence from the world's most valuable privately held company
It is HIGHLY unlikely that any reasonable valuation of Uber exceeds that of Saudi Aramco which is the actual most valuable private company in the world.
Different bills introduce specific penalties for students who shout down the speech of others and prevent college administrators from disinviting speakers, to give two examples
So we are protecting free speech by eliminating free speech? Something about that doesn't sound quite right.
Glad to see others who want to limit governmental overreach.
Government overreach is when you could make things better by simply repealing the laws and doing nothing else. We have some of that but what we mostly have is laws that simply don't work. We have blatantly racist sentencing laws for drug related offenses. We have harsh imprisonment for borderline harmless drugs like weed. We spend ungodly fortunes fighting a misguided failure of a "war on drugs" (because no politician wants to look soft on drugs) and imprisoning the highest percentage of the population among industrialized nations. The government has to play a very serious role in these issues but US policy is just idiotic. Other countries have similar levels of government involvement but far saner strategies and laws and get better results.
Although I think that most people who are in favor of criminalizing drugs do so from the belief that that is the way to stop people from doing harm.
I don't think of it that way at all. I think the people are going to harm themselves anyway. I don't see a practical alternative to banning quite a few "hard" drugs like opiates. However, if the typical acute side effects are mild like they are for alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, etc then I think it is a huge waste of money, brains, and time to worry about making criminals out of those who use them. Basically we should have learned our lesson from Prohibition. Allow it, guide usage, tax it, and punish only those who cause harm to others through irresponsible actions. If someone wants to smoke a joint in the privacy of their home or at a bar and no one else is likely to be hurt, who gives a shit?
Are people too fat raise taxes on soda
Actually I think it's quite reasonable to do that. If people are going to give themselves diabetes then the cost of treating that epidemic (a shared cost whether you like it or not) should be paid for by taxing the proximate cause. It's no different than taxing gasoline to maintain the roads. If you smoke then part of the cost of your habit should go towards paying for the medical care that results from it. If you drink part of the cost should go towards treating alcohol related diseases and accidents. We've proven that people will do these things even when they know they aren't good for them so let's just make it so that we minimize the harm to society. It's really just a form of indirect insurance for all of us.
does a sick person shoot up a school then guns are the problem
Guns ARE a problem. While I'm in no way suggesting we do away with second amendment protections (I own several), to pretend that the US doesn't have a serious problem with firearms is to live in a fantasy world. There were over 30,000 deaths from firearms in the US last year according to the CDC. If you think that guns aren't a serious problem then you are delusional. It's not even a debate. The question is what to do about it and there is no sane solution that does not involve some amount of regulation. I have no interest in living in a place that is in a constant Mexican standoff. Fortunately in most of the US there is little actual need to own a firearm. There are a few times and places where your safety might be enhanced by carrying but these are vanishingly uncommon and thankfully so.
and to hell to people who think they have a right to defend themselves from predators (and the gov't);
Ahh yes the classic trope that you are actually going to defend hearth and home from "predators" and the government. By all means please tell me one example of someone successfully fending off the government with their rifle in the last 100 years. You really think your rifle will protect you from a military with assault helicopters and stealth bombers? Th
That depends on your goals. If you primary goal is to put a lot of poor people and minorities behind bars for using drugs that seldom result in meaningful harm to others then banning is a terrific solution. Not so much for people with a sense of decency and any amount of practicality though.
His rule is only one single task item allowed in the kitchen: the fire extinguisher.
Not even that. He used the fire extinguisher to make a desert.
I don't actually agree with Alton on this as a hard and fast rule even though I used it as an example. It's a good principle but there are sometimes good reasons to own and use a special purpose tool. Special tools are indicated when they save substantial labor and/or do a substantially better job than a more general purpose tool. For example I own a mandoline in addition to my knives. My knives are more general purpose tools and can do everything the mandoline can do and then some, but for some tasks the mandoline is SO much faster and accurate that it easily justifies me owning one even though I don't use it often.
Same deal with programming languages. Use the best general purpose language you can get away with and only bring in specialty languages if the net benefit to doing so is substantial either in time saved or quality of results. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good in search of marginal improvements that will probably cost more than the benefit received.
Is this a rhetorical question? I said sources of errors are multi-factorial. I made no effort to enumerate all the factors and there are indeed many beyond simply language design. Certainly intelligence plays a role. That's not however an acceptable excuse for making or choosing programming languages that needlessly complicate a task or add expense however.
We're only going to reduce errors if it's a programming language that makes errors harder to make.
Error reduction is multi-factorial. It's not merely language design though you are correct that that is a significant consideration. Factors like how well trained individuals are can play a major role. It is easier to teach best practices and how to avoid problems if all the teaching can be focused on the problems with a single tool. Asking people to generalize best practices across multiple languages makes training harder and errors more likely.
Of course this is all moot because we don't live in a world with just one programming language and probably never will. But there would be benefits to it if somehow we could make it happen.
It's reasonably obvious why we have multiple programming languages but your question has a serious answer. There would be HUGE advantages if it were practically possible to consolidate on one programming language. The economic benefits would be massive. Any time you can reduce the complexity of the tooling you use to make products it reduces cost, reduces errors, makes training easier, and has lots more knock on benefits. In many cases the benefits of minimizing tool complexity (less languages in this case) can be larger than the optimization benefits from using a specialized tool. To use a non-programming analogy, think about Alton Brown's "no uni-taskers" rule. Specialized tools or specialized languages have their time and place but one should avoid them if practically possible.
Now in the real world we're highly unlikely to ever see a single programming language dominate all forms of programming and for very good reasons. But that's a different question than why we would want such a state of affairs. Having multiple languages has advantages but having a single language makes life SO much easier in many important ways.
Shuttle was the omnitool that could do everything.
It could do a lot but it could not do anything cheaply. It was too complicated, too expensive, too unreliable, and unfocused. We got ahead of ourselves with the shuttle and turned a reasonable idea (reusable flight vehicle) into a jobs program which needlessly cost 14 astronauts their lives and held our space program back for three decades.
The actual transactional volume of cryptocurrencies. The value of the goods bought/sold with the cryptocurrencies. Etc. Derivative financial instruments and funds are essentially side bets on the underlying asset (such as bitcoin) and typically have at best a loose correlation to the actual value of the asset. Think of it like the difference between the amount of money the NFL makes (several billion/year) versus the amount of money bet on NFL games per year (FAR more). People are looking at the amount being bet on bitcoin and conflating that with the actual value of the bitcoin economy. Not the same thing.
As far as Wall Street analysts are concern, the quarterly results are the only thing that matters. If other cellphone manufacturers have something new and exciting each quarter, and Apple doesn't, Apple is falling behind. Eight quarters without something new and exciting is a long time for Wall Street.
Wall Street doesn't give a shit about new and shiny gear. Wall Street cares about profitable and growing. The only reason Wall Street pays attention to what new stuff Apple is making is over concern that it might affect profits and growth. That hasn't been much of a problem for the last 15 years or so.
Apple introduces a major new product platforms roughly once a decade. Apple ][ in 1977, Macintosh in 1984, Newton in 1993 (only major failure), iPod/iTunes 2001, iPhone, 2007, iPad 2010 (really just a bigger iPhone), Apple Watch 2015, etc with smaller products released in between. Worrying that Apple hasn't released anything huge in a few years is to have unrealistic assumptions. There simply aren't that many $20Billion new products out there and they certainly aren't going to release one every year. Apple will need to introduce something new at some point but they don't need to rush.
Siri is useful in the car when you want to do simple things: send a text message, play music (you can name), answer simple questions or set reminders/calendar dates.
Honestly it screws up even simple stuff most of the time. It cannot handle my wife's name which isn't anything exotic. I don't speak with a weird accent either - standard midwest bland. I find Siri to be frustratingly unreliable and routinely takes more time to use (and correct) than simply typing it in. I do use it here and there but not commonly and never in public. I don't like speaking to my phone out loud in public mostly for privacy reasons. It is terrible at dictation in my experience especially if there is any context involved.
Siri kind of reminds me of the handwriting recognition software on the Newton from back in the day. Neat but not really very useful and fails to work far too often.
There is one rational explanation that, if true, would totally justify this rapid increase in price across some of the major cryptocurrencies. And that is, maybe these currencies are actually worth these high prices, and maybe even worth many times more than that at which they are currently trading
Or more likely its a speculative bubble and like the stock price of Tesla it has far outpaced the current underlying fundamentals. They are basing this on valuations of derivative instruments relating to (mostly) bitcoin. Like a stock there is no cause and effect link between the market price and the actual value of the underlying asset. All it takes to get an absurd "valuation" is one party purchasing an interest in a fund or company dealing in bitcoin for a large amount of money. If I buy 10% of your company for $1 million dollars I am de-facto saying I think your company is worth $10 million. But the problem with that is that there is a winner's curse effect at work. Just because one person overpays doesn't mean everyone else agrees.
Slashdot Mirror
Employment: They are investing in robots that disassemble old phones for recycling. That is a first step to robots that can assemble new phones. That can return factories to the US, increase jobs, increase tax revenues.
Robots that could assembly phones have been available for decades. You apparently are not aware of the level of automation that is already available. The reason Apple manufactures a lot of their stuff in China is because that is where the supply chain is located. It has nothing to do with a lack of sophisticated automation available in the US.
Healthcare: Apple has a healthcare engineering group that assists healthcare providers find technical solutions.
What the fuck does that mean? Could you come up with a more vague and content free sentence? You're talking about shit like Apple selling iPads to doctor's offices. Not exactly world changing stuff there and certainly not solving the important failures in our health care system.
A need does not create a right. People need health care, but it is NOT government's job to give everybody what they need.
Fuck you for thinking that people don't have a right to receive health care. Everybody should have a right to be treated when they are sick without being bankrupted in the process. If you think otherwise then you are an asshole. Plenty of people work very hard and still end up with medical bills FAR beyond their ability to pay them. A few weeks stay in a hospital can easily cost six figures. The only institution that can solve this problem is the government and to pretend otherwise is both idiotic and cruel.
Even taking ethics out of it, pure economic pragmatism should drive us to want to see everyone taken care of because if you don't insure everyone then you end up spending even more money when they inevitably end up in the ER and drive up costs for everyone.
Although the article here seems tailor made to bring out both the political flames as well as the Apple-bashing flames, I would like to say that I admire this attitude.
Talk is cheap. I judge a man by his actions. Tim Cook talks a good game about caring about the country but he does everything in his power to have his company avoid paying taxes to support it. Apple has billions in cash on their balance sheet which could be invested in ways that would create jobs. Instead they simply sit like Smaug on their pile of gold and do nothing that would create jobs or drive the economy forward. Apple has outsourced nearly all of their manufacturing to China, even stuff that might not actually have to be outsourced. Tim Cook I'm sure has many wonderful qualities but on the stuff he's talking about here he is nothing but a do-nothing hypocrite. Few companies are as well resourced to help change the world as Apple but sadly Apple and Cook are doing little with that opportunity.
I wish there were more people with the attitude that they want to do what they can to fix what problems they can, and that far too many people do instead say, "If you don't do what I want, I leave."
So do I. What's more I think rich powerful men like Tim Cook should be leading the charge instead of hoping others do it for them. Elon Musk is a FAR better example of someone trying to actually improve the world than Tim Cook is.
Apple has FAR greater ability to create jobs than the federal government does as a general proposition. Apple is sitting on a gigantic war chest of money. If Tim Cook really gave a shit about creating jobs he could spend some of that Scrooge McDuck pile of money on something. Saying he supports Trump on job creation is a bunch of bullshit unless he is actually directing his company to do everything it can to create jobs. He hasn't done this so he's lying about that.
The only reason for Apple to sit on a pile of cash that large is because they cannot figure out something productive to do with the money. So they should either return it to shareholders or find some way to put it to productive use.
Veterans Affairs has struggled in providing health care to veterans. We have an expertise in some of the things at the base level that they're struggling with. So we're going to work with them. I could give a crap about the politics of it. I want to help veterans. My dad's a veteran. My brother served. We have so many military folks in Apple. These folks deserve great health care. So we're going to keep helping.
The VA needs help to be sure but how about solving the bigger problem? EVERYONE needs health care, not just veterans. EVERYONE needs health insurance, not just veterans. IT in medicine sucks terribly for the most part. Apple has done nothing to tackle this problem. That would be a great place to invest some of those billions they have on their balance sheet. Buy some medical records companies and get busy. Do something rather than talking to Trump which is probably a waste of time.
Commercial airliners regularly fly 1km separation, and as little as 1500' altitude difference when going "head to head" in a controlled commercial flight lane.
Commercial airliners also are flying at speeds two orders of magnitude less than the speeds of satelltes (500mph vs 17500mph), with human pilots on board, the ability to quickly change course, and active air traffic control in most cases. Kind of comparing apples to oranges here.
That won't be possible. Because they will be killed by someone concealed carrying before it can become "mass".
The classic fantasy behind so many gun advocates. You're seriously going to argue that a bunch of untrained people carrying around concealed firearms is going to be a deterrence against a determined shooter? Gang violence is a thing even thought they know the targets are armed. They just wait for a moment to attack when their guard is down. Representative Scalise evidently even had a security detail and that didn't stop the attack. The simple fact is that concealed carry doesn't stop the violence. I understand the appeal of the idea but there is no evidence that it actually works and even if it did, the vast majority of people simply are not going to carry a firearm with them most of the time. Frankly I have no interest in living around a bunch of paranoid people who are constantly on the lookout for a shootout.
Anti-gun folks always, ALWAYS, forget that given the chance many second amendment advocates would carry guns for their (and their fellow citizens) protection around with them all the time.... And it DOES make a huge difference in being able to defend against an attack.
Bullshit. The attacker pretty much always gets to attack first and you had better hope they miss. Furthermore it is demonstrably ridiculous to carry a weapon on you at all times. These people were playing a game and had a security detail and it STILL didn't stop the attack.
So to co-opt the right's tired argument, why wasn't the congressman armed to protect himself? The political right are the ones who think everyone should have a firearm on them at all times even though most of the time it is a plainly absurd argument.
Sigh... it's a damn shame anyone has to be hurt by a gun. I hope all the victims of this horrible act of violence are ok.
Right, how is supporting the NRA even close to this? I've never heard the NRA advocate the shooting of it's political opponents, have you? I haven't.
Then you haven't been listening. The NRA is really a lobby for the gun industry and they are spewing plenty of rhetoric about how the government or "violent leftists" are coming to get them and the only way to protect yourself is to arm yourself. It's complete bullshit of course but scared people do buy lots of guns. They're clever enough to not directly say "shoot the liberals" but that's certainly what they are strongly implying.
Which every sane person understood as a commentary on the power of the NRA, not as an invitation to assassination.
Bullshit. It was and is easily interpreted as an incitement to violence (which Trump never bothered to deny) plenty of perfectly sane people. If he wanted to comment on the power of the NRA you don't do it in such a way that it can be interpreted otherwise.
Only if every auto accident is an argument to ban automobiles...
You're comparing an accident with a transportation device with an attempted homicide with a purpose built weapon. Automobiles have plenty of uses besides killing something. Firearms are purpose built weapons. Comparing the two is a false equivalency.
Aramco is prepping for an IPO so technically, they won't be privately held for much more than another year or two.
This is true though they are only selling something like 10% of the company so in practical terms it's still going to be privately held. But even once Aramco goes public Uber still won't be "the most valuable private company in the world". It won't even be the most valuable private company in the US for that matter.
It made me wonder - what can a company even do for absolution once the mob has decided they are to be punished?
Possibly nothing. It's fairly rare for a company culture that is rotten to suddenly change its ways in a short amount of time. Possible but it doesn't happen often. Uber can do a lot of really hard work to show that they have actually changed their ways and be transparent about how. It's not easy but it has been done in the past. This seems unlikely given Uber's typical disregard for the opinions of others but stranger things have happened.
If Uber has done the things they are accused of then I'm not sure they deserve absolution nor am I convinced they actually desire it. This is a company which routinely doesn't give a shit about observing niceties. To think they are going to suddenly become a sensitive organization seems unrealistic. Building trust takes a lot of time and hard work. Losing trust can be done in an instant and is incredibly easy. If the allegations are true then Uber probably deserves all the bad press and more.
Myself, I'll continue to use Uber primarily because I have it set up, and I feel like I am helping the drivers more than the company (I always tip Uber drivers now, did not at first).
You seriously think the drivers are benefiting more than the company? Seems rather conveniently optimistic of you. I think the first half of the sentence is really the reason and the behavior of the company just doesn't matter much to you.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will take a leave of absence from the world's most valuable privately held company
It is HIGHLY unlikely that any reasonable valuation of Uber exceeds that of Saudi Aramco which is the actual most valuable private company in the world.
Given that Uber lost something like $2.8 Billion last year, proclaiming it the most valuable private company in the world is just plain idiotic.
Different bills introduce specific penalties for students who shout down the speech of others and prevent college administrators from disinviting speakers, to give two examples
So we are protecting free speech by eliminating free speech? Something about that doesn't sound quite right.
Glad to see others who want to limit governmental overreach.
Government overreach is when you could make things better by simply repealing the laws and doing nothing else. We have some of that but what we mostly have is laws that simply don't work. We have blatantly racist sentencing laws for drug related offenses. We have harsh imprisonment for borderline harmless drugs like weed. We spend ungodly fortunes fighting a misguided failure of a "war on drugs" (because no politician wants to look soft on drugs) and imprisoning the highest percentage of the population among industrialized nations. The government has to play a very serious role in these issues but US policy is just idiotic. Other countries have similar levels of government involvement but far saner strategies and laws and get better results.
Although I think that most people who are in favor of criminalizing drugs do so from the belief that that is the way to stop people from doing harm.
I don't think of it that way at all. I think the people are going to harm themselves anyway. I don't see a practical alternative to banning quite a few "hard" drugs like opiates. However, if the typical acute side effects are mild like they are for alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, etc then I think it is a huge waste of money, brains, and time to worry about making criminals out of those who use them. Basically we should have learned our lesson from Prohibition. Allow it, guide usage, tax it, and punish only those who cause harm to others through irresponsible actions. If someone wants to smoke a joint in the privacy of their home or at a bar and no one else is likely to be hurt, who gives a shit?
Are people too fat raise taxes on soda
Actually I think it's quite reasonable to do that. If people are going to give themselves diabetes then the cost of treating that epidemic (a shared cost whether you like it or not) should be paid for by taxing the proximate cause. It's no different than taxing gasoline to maintain the roads. If you smoke then part of the cost of your habit should go towards paying for the medical care that results from it. If you drink part of the cost should go towards treating alcohol related diseases and accidents. We've proven that people will do these things even when they know they aren't good for them so let's just make it so that we minimize the harm to society. It's really just a form of indirect insurance for all of us.
does a sick person shoot up a school then guns are the problem
Guns ARE a problem. While I'm in no way suggesting we do away with second amendment protections (I own several), to pretend that the US doesn't have a serious problem with firearms is to live in a fantasy world. There were over 30,000 deaths from firearms in the US last year according to the CDC. If you think that guns aren't a serious problem then you are delusional. It's not even a debate. The question is what to do about it and there is no sane solution that does not involve some amount of regulation. I have no interest in living in a place that is in a constant Mexican standoff. Fortunately in most of the US there is little actual need to own a firearm. There are a few times and places where your safety might be enhanced by carrying but these are vanishingly uncommon and thankfully so.
and to hell to people who think they have a right to defend themselves from predators (and the gov't);
Ahh yes the classic trope that you are actually going to defend hearth and home from "predators" and the government. By all means please tell me one example of someone successfully fending off the government with their rifle in the last 100 years. You really think your rifle will protect you from a military with assault helicopters and stealth bombers? Th
First of all banning is not a solution.
That depends on your goals. If you primary goal is to put a lot of poor people and minorities behind bars for using drugs that seldom result in meaningful harm to others then banning is a terrific solution. Not so much for people with a sense of decency and any amount of practicality though.
His rule is only one single task item allowed in the kitchen: the fire extinguisher.
Not even that. He used the fire extinguisher to make a desert.
I don't actually agree with Alton on this as a hard and fast rule even though I used it as an example. It's a good principle but there are sometimes good reasons to own and use a special purpose tool. Special tools are indicated when they save substantial labor and/or do a substantially better job than a more general purpose tool. For example I own a mandoline in addition to my knives. My knives are more general purpose tools and can do everything the mandoline can do and then some, but for some tasks the mandoline is SO much faster and accurate that it easily justifies me owning one even though I don't use it often.
Same deal with programming languages. Use the best general purpose language you can get away with and only bring in specialty languages if the net benefit to doing so is substantial either in time saved or quality of results. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good in search of marginal improvements that will probably cost more than the benefit received.
What about intelligence? Does that play any role?
Is this a rhetorical question? I said sources of errors are multi-factorial. I made no effort to enumerate all the factors and there are indeed many beyond simply language design. Certainly intelligence plays a role. That's not however an acceptable excuse for making or choosing programming languages that needlessly complicate a task or add expense however.
We're only going to reduce errors if it's a programming language that makes errors harder to make.
Error reduction is multi-factorial. It's not merely language design though you are correct that that is a significant consideration. Factors like how well trained individuals are can play a major role. It is easier to teach best practices and how to avoid problems if all the teaching can be focused on the problems with a single tool. Asking people to generalize best practices across multiple languages makes training harder and errors more likely.
Of course this is all moot because we don't live in a world with just one programming language and probably never will. But there would be benefits to it if somehow we could make it happen.
Why would we want just one programming language?
It's reasonably obvious why we have multiple programming languages but your question has a serious answer. There would be HUGE advantages if it were practically possible to consolidate on one programming language. The economic benefits would be massive. Any time you can reduce the complexity of the tooling you use to make products it reduces cost, reduces errors, makes training easier, and has lots more knock on benefits. In many cases the benefits of minimizing tool complexity (less languages in this case) can be larger than the optimization benefits from using a specialized tool. To use a non-programming analogy, think about Alton Brown's "no uni-taskers" rule. Specialized tools or specialized languages have their time and place but one should avoid them if practically possible.
Now in the real world we're highly unlikely to ever see a single programming language dominate all forms of programming and for very good reasons. But that's a different question than why we would want such a state of affairs. Having multiple languages has advantages but having a single language makes life SO much easier in many important ways.
Shuttle was the omnitool that could do everything.
It could do a lot but it could not do anything cheaply. It was too complicated, too expensive, too unreliable, and unfocused. We got ahead of ourselves with the shuttle and turned a reasonable idea (reusable flight vehicle) into a jobs program which needlessly cost 14 astronauts their lives and held our space program back for three decades.
And what "fundamentals" would those be, exactly?
The actual transactional volume of cryptocurrencies. The value of the goods bought/sold with the cryptocurrencies. Etc. Derivative financial instruments and funds are essentially side bets on the underlying asset (such as bitcoin) and typically have at best a loose correlation to the actual value of the asset. Think of it like the difference between the amount of money the NFL makes (several billion/year) versus the amount of money bet on NFL games per year (FAR more). People are looking at the amount being bet on bitcoin and conflating that with the actual value of the bitcoin economy. Not the same thing.
As far as Wall Street analysts are concern, the quarterly results are the only thing that matters. If other cellphone manufacturers have something new and exciting each quarter, and Apple doesn't, Apple is falling behind. Eight quarters without something new and exciting is a long time for Wall Street.
Wall Street doesn't give a shit about new and shiny gear. Wall Street cares about profitable and growing. The only reason Wall Street pays attention to what new stuff Apple is making is over concern that it might affect profits and growth. That hasn't been much of a problem for the last 15 years or so.
Apple introduces a major new product platforms roughly once a decade. Apple ][ in 1977, Macintosh in 1984, Newton in 1993 (only major failure), iPod/iTunes 2001, iPhone, 2007, iPad 2010 (really just a bigger iPhone), Apple Watch 2015, etc with smaller products released in between. Worrying that Apple hasn't released anything huge in a few years is to have unrealistic assumptions. There simply aren't that many $20Billion new products out there and they certainly aren't going to release one every year. Apple will need to introduce something new at some point but they don't need to rush.
Siri is useful in the car when you want to do simple things: send a text message, play music (you can name), answer simple questions or set reminders/calendar dates.
Honestly it screws up even simple stuff most of the time. It cannot handle my wife's name which isn't anything exotic. I don't speak with a weird accent either - standard midwest bland. I find Siri to be frustratingly unreliable and routinely takes more time to use (and correct) than simply typing it in. I do use it here and there but not commonly and never in public. I don't like speaking to my phone out loud in public mostly for privacy reasons. It is terrible at dictation in my experience especially if there is any context involved.
Siri kind of reminds me of the handwriting recognition software on the Newton from back in the day. Neat but not really very useful and fails to work far too often.
There is one rational explanation that, if true, would totally justify this rapid increase in price across some of the major cryptocurrencies. And that is, maybe these currencies are actually worth these high prices, and maybe even worth many times more than that at which they are currently trading
Or more likely its a speculative bubble and like the stock price of Tesla it has far outpaced the current underlying fundamentals. They are basing this on valuations of derivative instruments relating to (mostly) bitcoin. Like a stock there is no cause and effect link between the market price and the actual value of the underlying asset. All it takes to get an absurd "valuation" is one party purchasing an interest in a fund or company dealing in bitcoin for a large amount of money. If I buy 10% of your company for $1 million dollars I am de-facto saying I think your company is worth $10 million. But the problem with that is that there is a winner's curse effect at work. Just because one person overpays doesn't mean everyone else agrees.