So, you don't see any problem with manufacturers deciding to replace perfectly good audio quality with lower quality?
I think the manufacturers should make what people want to buy. If I don't care about top tier audio quality why should I have to pay for more expensive equipment necessary to play it? The problem is that what YOU think is "perfectly good audio quality" is probably higher than what a lot of other people (myself included) are willing to tolerate. I'm not saying you are wrong for holding that opinion, just pointing out that other people clearly have different opinions.
We've been having this ridiculous debate since the early 80s when the CD was released. A small minority of people who are super picky about their sound quality (sometimes to the point of absurdity) complain loudly about sound quality and the rest of us genuinely think it's Good Enough and move on with our lives. I honestly don't really care if my smartphone has the sound quality I can get from my stereo. I don't even care if its worse than my last phone as long as it's Good Enough.
The fact that a 2019 flagship phone cannot deliver audio fidelity as good as a 2014 (or 2009) model is absurd.
Why is it absurd? I don't really agree that audio quality has meaningfully diminished but let's stipulate for the sake of argument that you are right and it has. If the people buying that phone don't care (and the evidence seems to be that they don't) then why should the manufacturer of that phone care? Why should they spend extra money putting in capabilities that isn't going to result in them selling more units?
Honestly this is why I think phone makers should make a phone with some base capabilities and then make an interface for a case where people can add capabilities they care about. I would like more battery and a better camera. You would like better sound quality and probably a 3.5mm jack. So make cases that give you top tier audio and give me a good camera and we are both happy instead of having this one size fits all phone that nobody is entirely pleased with.
Why do clever fun hacks have to be pointless? There are plenty of clever and fun things you can do that solve real problems. They don't have to be world changing but they don't have to be dumpster food either.
And they build skills that eventually can be used to solve "real" problems.
You can build skills to solve "real" problems by working on those real problems.
Right now their biggest advantage is inertia. Having the best product isn't instantly turning into wins across the board for AMD in the enterprise space.
That's because AMD doesn't have a cost advantage in manufacturing CPUs for PCs. AMD is reliant on other companies to actually make their chips. They have to pay these companies for the chips and importantly a profit margin. Intel has several advantages. 1) They don't have to pay the profit margin to a third party. All other things being equal this gives Intel a 10-20% cost advantage right out the gate. 2) Intel also has technology advantages and manufacturing scale advantages that increase this cost advantage in that segment.
Remember Intel is literally over 10X the size of AMD by revenue. It didn't get that much bigger by accident and certainly not merely through a clever ad campaign. AMD bought ATI to diversify away from competing with Intel on CPUs because it was a game they could never win in the long run. Intel just had unbeatable cost and scale advantages and AMD knows it. They occasionally would poke ahead on performance for a brief bit but they don't have the resources to sustain that advantages. Their current generation chips are good performers but I wouldn't hold my breath thinking they can maintain that advantage because they never have for the last 30 years.
AMD chips on the other hand wipe ARM and crush Intel in multiprocessing which is what it is all about in the enterprise space.
Enterprise computing is FAR more complicated than who has the best multi-core performance on the latest gen chips. What matters in the enterprise space is cost for performance. Sometimes individual chip performance matters most but when a company like Google is buying computers by the truck load, what they are looking for is the best price that meets their performance needs. That doesn't necessarily require the best performing chip. And in spite of recent problems, Intel remains hard to beat for price/performance for PC CPUs. But unless they get their shit together they won't be able to keep their market share because the enterprise market is ALL about cost at the end of the day and the market dynamics have changed in recent years.
I completely disagree with you, and your post proves the point.
Disagree all you want but that doesn't make me wrong. Personal anecdotes about your family are not persuasive. I've done the research on this. Intel for a long time had a huge cost advantage in their manufacturing. You don't have to take my word for it. The data is out there for you to look up - I didn't just pull this out of my ass. Harvard has done case studies about this for business schools.
10 years ago my parents wouldn't buy a computer at all unless it had Intel Inside on it, because they trusted Intel made the best chips.
So what? It wasn't like they had any alternatives in the PC space 10 years ago. AMD wasn't exactly hitting it out of the park and there was no option #3 in the PC space. Saying you wanted an Intel CPU in your PC was like saying you wanted a Microsoft operating system. There wasn't much else for most people to really chose from. Furthermore your parents almost certainly DID buy a computer without Intel Inside because I'm betting they owned a mobile phone which is just another type of computer. If Intel's CPU offerings had been worse than AMDs consistently or if AMD had a cost advantage then Intel would have lose market share and no amount of clever marketing would have convinced Apple or HP or the rest to stick with them.
The Intel Inside ad campaign made some marginal differences for Intel but it was not EVER the basis of their market dominance. Intel started that ad campaign in the early 1990s. I remember when it started. They were already the dominant player in CPUs long before the ad campaign started. Seriously, you don't have to take my word for it. Go back and pull their old financial statements and look at market analysis of the day. Intel dominated the PC CPU market because of their cost advantages in manufacturing. Without that Intel would have lost a long time ago.
Old quote. Just because you are different doesn't mean you are useful.
I'll grant that this is clever but it's hard to see any practical value in it. Obviously done for entertainment. This is what annoys me about a lot of so called Maker culture. They spend huge brainpower on things that are obviously useless. Nothing wrong with entertaining yourself building something just because you can but maybe take a tiny bit of effort to actually solve a real problem while you are at it? This is like the old calculator watches from my youth - got you geek cred to wear one but they were utterly useless to actually try and use.
If you think manufacturing is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance, then you haven't been paying attention.
Manufacturing absolutely has been the cornerstone of Intel's dominance for a long time. The main reason AMD could not compete with Intel on CPUs was because Intel had an absolute cost advantage because of their manufacturing. The only reason Intel didn't put AMD out of business a long time ago was because of anti-trust concerns. For a long time they could sell their x86 CPUs for less money than AMD's cost while still making a profit. Intel didn't get to be the biggest chip maker in the world by accident or clever ads.
MARKETING the "Intel" brand (slapped onto almost every PC for a while) and the "duh duh duh dun" sound is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance.
Sigh... You are hugely overestimating the power of marketing. This is utter nonsense. Intel's primary customers are definitively NOT end users. Apple, HP, Acer, Asus, Samsung, etc are the ones buying the majority of their CPUs and they aren't going to be impressed by their TV ads. What you are talking about is the branded ingredient strategy Intel rolled out years ago.
Once the masses realize(d) that you could get the same or similar chips from other places, cheaper, and without giving up much (if any) performance, Intel was in trouble.
The masses aren't the ones buying Intel's products and it's only been fairly recently that competitors could compete with Intel on cost when it comes to chip manufacturing. The problem Intel has right now is that other chip makers have caught up on cost and chip tech and their cash cow (the PC market) has been surpassed by the mobile market where they don't have very good product offerings. Intel is still hugely profitable but their growth prospects are constrained by their absence and problems in mobile. Has NOTHING to do with marketing and everything to do with product design and manufacturing prowess of competitors. Intel's biggest threat is not AMD in the PC space. Intel's biggest threats are ARM, Qualcom, and Taiwanese chip fabs. The mobile market is where the growth is and Intel doesn't dominate there.
Massive in terms of volume. 10 tonnes is, at least a usable
Unless you are planning to ship a lot of air, that isn't especially impressive. Frankly it looks like a solution looking for a problem.
It's what the company claims. Even if they're wrong it seems a more interesting thing to talk about than the sodding length, at least.
Yeah I'm not really sure why I should care about how long the aircraft is. I care what it can do. In this case the answer seems to be not much if we care about economics.
80 knots. Which is comparable to a perfectly straight traffic free highway. But most road transport is not on perfectly straight traffic free highways.
I have news for you. This thing isn't going to get cargo to its destination in a straight line either. Recall that you still need special facilities to load, unload, and in most cases land this aircraft. There are VERY few freight applications where this thing could take what it is hauling straight to its destination without involving intermodal transport. You'll have to land it at an airport in most cases which raises the question what the point of the thing is?
Let's be frank. It hauls less and is slower than a large fixed wing cargo jet. It's less flexible than a truck. It will be more expensive and carry FAR less than an ocean freighter. It will require special airfields and docking to be compatible with existing infrastructure. It can't land many places other than airports for practical reasons. It's fragile and can't operate in bad weather. It's not clear that it has any meaningful economic advantage for any practical use case. Maybe there is some corner case where it makes sense but so far nobody seems to know of one. Every 10-20 years someone takes a run at making lighter than air aircraft and it always is a failure because it can't compete with existing options on speed, reliability, and/or cost.
Smaller and thicker phones with a decently thick battery.
Ok, that is what YOU want. That has little reflection on what everyone else might want. I don't need a smaller phone (I like the size of the iPhone X) but I wouldn't object to the battery being thicker and it having a better camera. But that is what I want and you might feel differently. Some people want a tablet sized phone for some reason (bad eyesight, showing off, just like big screens, etc) and that's their right.
Personally I'm fine with the base phone being thin provided they make an actually decent battery case which nobody has so far. Every battery case I've seen to date has been a clumsy and ugly hack, including the ones the OEMs make (looking at you Apple). They could actually put real functions into the case besides padding and a battery but to date no phone maker seems interested in bothering.
Disagree. I want a common connector for every device possible, not just headphones. There is no way to accomplish that with a 3.5mm jack but it can be done with USB-C.
We want universal headphones that work not just with cell phones and computers, but professional audio equipment, older audio equipment...
USB-C does not prevent that. There is no reason USB-C headphones cannot be the universal interface you desire. Bear in mind that 3.5mm jacks aren't universal either and they are FAR more limited in capabilities. And you can adapt back to 3.5mm jacks if you are so inclined.
and we want it to be near or at 100% compatibility for future audio products.
You have NEVER had 100% compatibility nor even close to it. My home stereo doesn't have a single 3.5mm jack on the back of it. My phone doesn't have one. Only one of my cars has one. The 3.5mm port has always been common but it has never been universal and certainly won't ensure compatibility in the future. USB-C actually has a better chance of that at this point and it won't get there either.
Those of us who prefer the advantages of wired headphones over the advantages of Bluetooth ones see no advantages at all in USB-C.
Speak for yourself there bud. I'm not saying USB-C headphones are clearly better in every respect (they aren't) but there definitely ARE advantages to not needing multiple types of connectors. Personally I like having the I/O ports be universal and not have to worry about having the type of connector for a given device. Standardizing on USB-C definitely has advantages in that regard.
Non-competes are a problem, yes, but not the cause of wage stagnation.
As a general proposition this is correct. Most people aren't asked to sign non-competes.
Job mobility is higher than it's ever been, despite the rash of non-compete contracts.
Recent data seems to dispute your assertion. Non-competes are an issue in some places but they aren't a systemic problem because most people never sign one.
The main problem is that companies no longer value experience (except perhaps at hiring time but often not even then) and believe every employee with similar education is interchangeable.
They value it but experience does have limits to its value. Some companies perhaps don't adequately value experience like they should - usually to their long term detriment. On the other hand some workers think their experience is worth more than it really is. Remember that experience does not equal performance. I know lots of people with long experience who still somehow manage to be pretty bad at their job.
People that switch jobs the most are young people with the least experience. I don't think you'll find any hiring manager who thinks that people are interchangeable. That said they do have some constraints on how much pay differential they can offer for doing the same work. Experience doesn't matter once you are hired unless it translates into measurable job performance results.
t might be a legal battle if you are a CEO that ran off with trade secrets to start a new company, but a guy making 40k? Please, no one gives a fuck what you do, they only wrote it in the contract because people fall for it.
While it's true that usually companies don't much care, the terms are in there to give them the option to act if they decide they have a reason to care. And someone making 40K isn't going to be able to afford the lawyers to fight that fight so the threat alone tends to be enough to have the desired effect that most companies want. Plus, it's fairly unusual for someone making low wages who isn't doing anything involving trade secrets or sales relationships to be asked to sign a non-compete.
It requires very little in the way of runway length,
Evidently not true. The LEMV required at least 300 m (1,000 ft) of runway (violating the runway-independent requirement), and a tether point with a 100 m (300 ft) clear flat area around on which to park, which prevented them from operating at most large bases and all small bases.
has an absolutely massive cargo bay,
Not true. It can carry 10 tons which might sound like a lot but it isn't. A 747 can carry up to 130 tons in certain configurations.
has a low carbon footprint,
Citation needed.
is reasonably fast (nowhere near as fast as an airliner but faster than most other means of transport),
It has a cruising speed of 70 knots. That's at best comparable to highways speeds over land. Over water it's not clear why you would prefer this to a large fixed wing aircraft for transporting goods or people.
the ability to fly very slowly, and offers a flight endurance measured in weeks.
Pray tell what the civilian use of those capabilities might be? It doesn't dare fly anywhere near a storm just like any other lighter than air craft. It's also not entirely clear who the market for this could be. Originally it was developed for the military for recon and communications and they cancelled the program. I think they're hoping there are civilian uses for it but they are rather vague about the use cases. It's not clear what economic problem this would solve better than the currently available alternatives.
Contrary to certain media scare-mongering, helium is fairly abundant.
We're not going to run out in the next few years if that is what you are talking about. But our supply of readily accessible and economically available helium is limited unless we find new ways to extract more. It's nothing to lose sleep over at the present but it is worth worrying about in the long term. There have been some shortages in recent years but these are more due to supply chain disruptions than anything else.
Extracted natural gas contains as much as 7% helium.
That number is only true for a few fields - most have less than that and not all have enough to make it economically worthwhile to extract it. Natural gas reportedly needs to have more than 0.3% helium for it to become profitable to extract it.
Isn't Helium the second commonest element after Hydrogen?
In the universe? Yes. On Earth? No. We're talking about helium accessible to us. I don't think we're about to go mining the Sun for helium. We're not going to run out this minute or anything but we have a finite supply currently available to us. It doesn't help we waste a lot of it on party balloons and other frivolous uses.
In America the biggest problem facing us isn't immigration, guns, abortion, or tax rates.
Agreed. I would argue it is gerrymandering. Yeah our infrastructure is a problem but I'd argue it is a consequence of other structural problems - gerrymandering not the least among them.
We are living with an infrastructure of the early 20th century, which has been hacked and updated.
Don't know if you've traveled much but we're hardly unique in that regard. Much of western Europe has infrastructure that is similarly dated. Not saying they are better or worse but it's not a problem unique to the US.
The US could lead by example. Compared to other countries the US is unique in having a Large Population, with a low Population Density.
Russia has us beat on that score by a country mile so unique is not the right word. Unusual would be a better choice. Technically so does Brazil though because of the Amazon that is somewhat misleading.
While they do overlap, GP is right that they serve different purposes.
Of course copyright and patents do have different intents and apply to very different sorts of works. But it does not follow that some works could not be in principle covered by both.
And if machines are patentable, why shouldn't a process using those machines be patentable?
To answer that question you have to answer what the harm versus benefit to society is from allowing them or not. It's a reasonable question to ask. Speaking broadly I would argue that there are several reasons to not allow them: 1) The free rider problem does not cause sufficient economic harm to justify allowing them (this is the biggest reason) 2) Practical difficulty that these sorts of patents tend to too broad in scope due to difficulty in description. 3) No compelling value proposition to the public in allowing process patents 4) If the object being made with the process is patented then there is no need to patent the process
I would argue that item 1 alone is sufficient. There is just no compelling evidence that economic harm to society will result if we don't allow process or software patents.
Or, looked at another way, any software can be implemented in hardware elements (FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). Why should one implementation be patentable while another is not?
Because the hardware implementations are invariably more than just software in a crunchy shell. That said it's a reasonable question. My take on it is that the hardware could be patented if it involves sufficiently novel physics but the code should be adequately covered by copyright. Words on a page versus words on a monitor are still words. The exact medium the come on is (or should be) irrelevant for copyright purposes.
WONDERFUL! Two times zero is still zero (you're using open-source freeware, right?)
Accountant here. Just because the software doesn't have a license cost doesn't mean it is free (as in beer) to use. Still got to pay IT their salaries to install, support, train, and administer. I assure you they get justifiably cranky if you don't send them a paycheck regularly.
"All modern systems have security holes" and they shouldn't. It's that simple. If that doubles the cost of software then so be it.
"Double the cost"? HAHAHAHAHAHA... Oh wait, you were serious? Even if it were possible to get perfect security with no holes (it isn't and never will be) it would cost FAR more than double to get even close. The cost of security isn't some linear function. And if you increase the cost too much then the computer system becomes too costly to justify in the first place.
You can argue they didn't do enough to rise to a reasonable duty of care. It is completely ridiculous to argue that perfect security is even possible much less expected.
Maybe I would be ok with specific reputable ad companies using this data for specific advertising services, but not so ok if anyone can pay $300 and track my location.
Why should ad companies get special privileges? I'm not ok with them using this data without my consent and frankly I think the term "reputable ad company" is something of an oxymoron. I certainly do not trust ANY of them including Google and especially Facebook. At minimum there should be a firewall so that third parties have no means of learning specific details about the individual being tracked without explicit consent from that individual. It should absolutely be illegal to sell identifiable tracking data to third parties without explicit written (and revocable) consent.
I don't know why any insurance company would offer hacking insurance.
You can insure anything profitably provided you can charge adequately high premiums. To do that you need to have data about the likelihood of an incident and the financial burden that will result.
It is right up there with "terrorism insurance" or giving life insurance to military servicemen in terms of likelihood that you'll get hit with a payout demand.
Evidently you aren't an actuary. Have you actually looked at the risk tables for those activities? The insurance companies have. Yes military service is a dangerous job but you can be assured that fact is priced into the premiums they pay. Insurance companies aren't staffed by idiots and unlike you they actually do the math to figure out the risk/reward for writing a policy. Expected payouts are priced into the model.
If I left my front door open with a sign that said 'come take my stuff' I expect the insurance company would fight me too.
Nice strawman you have there.
That's not what happened and you know it. The question will (should?) come down to whether reasonable duty of care was exercised on the part of the plaintiff and whether the insurance contract was violated by failure of the plaintiff to take reasonably expected security measures and to implement them with reasonable competence. All modern systems have security holes so perfection is not a reasonable expectation.
Cool story bro. Why do you think that women are so weak that some evil patriarchy forces them to wear makeup?
Women aren't forced to wear makeup but the certainly are influence and coerced into it by a variety of means. Many of the influences actually have little to do with men directly. Women's magazines are a common example. Women influence other women as much or more than men do on the issue. There is nothing wrong with wearing SOME makeup just like there is nothing wrong with dressing nicely.
Women through the ages have enjoyed decorating themselves.
You think that is somehow independent of the influence of men or society? Sure many (not all) do enjoy it and there is nothing wrong with that but let's not pretend that social pressure doesn't play any role here. Men decorate themselves too, just in different ways. There have been times and places where men were expected to wear makeup thanks to social pressures. You think all those teenage boys wearing Axe body spray are doing that for any reason other than self decoration?
Makeup, which is not good or bad within itself, is another form of decorating.
Of course it is. Just like clothes or jewelry. It's in essence part of a costume which people wear in their daily lives. And there is nothing wrong with doing that - to a point. But just like most things it can be taken too far or done for the wrong reasons. Nothing wrong with taking some care to look good. Appearances do matter whether we like it or not. But there comes a point where it goes beyond reasonable care for one's appearance and into vanity and/or insecurity. If nobody has seen you in public without makeup and it's not your actual paying job (like a model) then that is a problem.
So the idea that makeup is something forced on women by the evil patriarchy is both silly and very demeaning to women, casting them as so weak that they can't even make up their minds.
Strawman. I don't think very many people think that at all. Few would argue that appearance doesn't matter or that makeup is bad as a general proposition. It's a more complicated issue than that. Mostly it isn't really a problem but like anything it sometimes becomes one. Women unquestionably are subjected to unreasonable expectations regarding their appearance and excessive use of makeup is often a symptom of this broader underlying problem. No/some makeup is fine. Lots of makeup and/or excessively routine use should raise some eyebrows.
I know many men, and the ones I have talked about women's makeup do not like it at all - they consider it dishonest, and some like myself, simply love freckles - covering them up is unforgivable.
If they think SOME makeup is dishonest then ask them if they are willing to go on their next date dressed in dirty wrinkled clothes and smelly because that is basically the same argument. Social conventions matter and makeup is one of them. It's just about intent and degree. Few reasonable men mind a sensible amount of makeup and enhancing one's appearance is far from dishonest. Like most things it isn't a problem until it is taken to excess or done for the wrong reasons.
For the record I agree on freckles. I find them adorable too.
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So, you don't see any problem with manufacturers deciding to replace perfectly good audio quality with lower quality?
I think the manufacturers should make what people want to buy. If I don't care about top tier audio quality why should I have to pay for more expensive equipment necessary to play it? The problem is that what YOU think is "perfectly good audio quality" is probably higher than what a lot of other people (myself included) are willing to tolerate. I'm not saying you are wrong for holding that opinion, just pointing out that other people clearly have different opinions.
We've been having this ridiculous debate since the early 80s when the CD was released. A small minority of people who are super picky about their sound quality (sometimes to the point of absurdity) complain loudly about sound quality and the rest of us genuinely think it's Good Enough and move on with our lives. I honestly don't really care if my smartphone has the sound quality I can get from my stereo. I don't even care if its worse than my last phone as long as it's Good Enough.
The fact that a 2019 flagship phone cannot deliver audio fidelity as good as a 2014 (or 2009) model is absurd.
Why is it absurd? I don't really agree that audio quality has meaningfully diminished but let's stipulate for the sake of argument that you are right and it has. If the people buying that phone don't care (and the evidence seems to be that they don't) then why should the manufacturer of that phone care? Why should they spend extra money putting in capabilities that isn't going to result in them selling more units?
Honestly this is why I think phone makers should make a phone with some base capabilities and then make an interface for a case where people can add capabilities they care about. I would like more battery and a better camera. You would like better sound quality and probably a 3.5mm jack. So make cases that give you top tier audio and give me a good camera and we are both happy instead of having this one size fits all phone that nobody is entirely pleased with.
Because clever but pointless hacks are fun?
Why do clever fun hacks have to be pointless? There are plenty of clever and fun things you can do that solve real problems. They don't have to be world changing but they don't have to be dumpster food either.
And they build skills that eventually can be used to solve "real" problems.
You can build skills to solve "real" problems by working on those real problems.
Right now their biggest advantage is inertia. Having the best product isn't instantly turning into wins across the board for AMD in the enterprise space.
That's because AMD doesn't have a cost advantage in manufacturing CPUs for PCs. AMD is reliant on other companies to actually make their chips. They have to pay these companies for the chips and importantly a profit margin. Intel has several advantages. 1) They don't have to pay the profit margin to a third party. All other things being equal this gives Intel a 10-20% cost advantage right out the gate. 2) Intel also has technology advantages and manufacturing scale advantages that increase this cost advantage in that segment.
Remember Intel is literally over 10X the size of AMD by revenue. It didn't get that much bigger by accident and certainly not merely through a clever ad campaign. AMD bought ATI to diversify away from competing with Intel on CPUs because it was a game they could never win in the long run. Intel just had unbeatable cost and scale advantages and AMD knows it. They occasionally would poke ahead on performance for a brief bit but they don't have the resources to sustain that advantages. Their current generation chips are good performers but I wouldn't hold my breath thinking they can maintain that advantage because they never have for the last 30 years.
AMD chips on the other hand wipe ARM and crush Intel in multiprocessing which is what it is all about in the enterprise space.
Enterprise computing is FAR more complicated than who has the best multi-core performance on the latest gen chips. What matters in the enterprise space is cost for performance. Sometimes individual chip performance matters most but when a company like Google is buying computers by the truck load, what they are looking for is the best price that meets their performance needs. That doesn't necessarily require the best performing chip. And in spite of recent problems, Intel remains hard to beat for price/performance for PC CPUs. But unless they get their shit together they won't be able to keep their market share because the enterprise market is ALL about cost at the end of the day and the market dynamics have changed in recent years.
I completely disagree with you, and your post proves the point.
Disagree all you want but that doesn't make me wrong. Personal anecdotes about your family are not persuasive. I've done the research on this. Intel for a long time had a huge cost advantage in their manufacturing. You don't have to take my word for it. The data is out there for you to look up - I didn't just pull this out of my ass. Harvard has done case studies about this for business schools.
10 years ago my parents wouldn't buy a computer at all unless it had Intel Inside on it, because they trusted Intel made the best chips.
So what? It wasn't like they had any alternatives in the PC space 10 years ago. AMD wasn't exactly hitting it out of the park and there was no option #3 in the PC space. Saying you wanted an Intel CPU in your PC was like saying you wanted a Microsoft operating system. There wasn't much else for most people to really chose from. Furthermore your parents almost certainly DID buy a computer without Intel Inside because I'm betting they owned a mobile phone which is just another type of computer. If Intel's CPU offerings had been worse than AMDs consistently or if AMD had a cost advantage then Intel would have lose market share and no amount of clever marketing would have convinced Apple or HP or the rest to stick with them.
The Intel Inside ad campaign made some marginal differences for Intel but it was not EVER the basis of their market dominance. Intel started that ad campaign in the early 1990s. I remember when it started. They were already the dominant player in CPUs long before the ad campaign started. Seriously, you don't have to take my word for it. Go back and pull their old financial statements and look at market analysis of the day. Intel dominated the PC CPU market because of their cost advantages in manufacturing. Without that Intel would have lost a long time ago.
Old quote. Just because you are different doesn't mean you are useful.
I'll grant that this is clever but it's hard to see any practical value in it. Obviously done for entertainment. This is what annoys me about a lot of so called Maker culture. They spend huge brainpower on things that are obviously useless. Nothing wrong with entertaining yourself building something just because you can but maybe take a tiny bit of effort to actually solve a real problem while you are at it? This is like the old calculator watches from my youth - got you geek cred to wear one but they were utterly useless to actually try and use.
If you think manufacturing is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance, then you haven't been paying attention.
Manufacturing absolutely has been the cornerstone of Intel's dominance for a long time. The main reason AMD could not compete with Intel on CPUs was because Intel had an absolute cost advantage because of their manufacturing. The only reason Intel didn't put AMD out of business a long time ago was because of anti-trust concerns. For a long time they could sell their x86 CPUs for less money than AMD's cost while still making a profit. Intel didn't get to be the biggest chip maker in the world by accident or clever ads.
MARKETING the "Intel" brand (slapped onto almost every PC for a while) and the "duh duh duh dun" sound is the cornerstone of Intel's dominance.
Sigh... You are hugely overestimating the power of marketing. This is utter nonsense. Intel's primary customers are definitively NOT end users. Apple, HP, Acer, Asus, Samsung, etc are the ones buying the majority of their CPUs and they aren't going to be impressed by their TV ads. What you are talking about is the branded ingredient strategy Intel rolled out years ago.
Once the masses realize(d) that you could get the same or similar chips from other places, cheaper, and without giving up much (if any) performance, Intel was in trouble.
The masses aren't the ones buying Intel's products and it's only been fairly recently that competitors could compete with Intel on cost when it comes to chip manufacturing. The problem Intel has right now is that other chip makers have caught up on cost and chip tech and their cash cow (the PC market) has been surpassed by the mobile market where they don't have very good product offerings. Intel is still hugely profitable but their growth prospects are constrained by their absence and problems in mobile. Has NOTHING to do with marketing and everything to do with product design and manufacturing prowess of competitors. Intel's biggest threat is not AMD in the PC space. Intel's biggest threats are ARM, Qualcom, and Taiwanese chip fabs. The mobile market is where the growth is and Intel doesn't dominate there.
Massive in terms of volume. 10 tonnes is, at least a usable
Unless you are planning to ship a lot of air, that isn't especially impressive. Frankly it looks like a solution looking for a problem.
It's what the company claims. Even if they're wrong it seems a more interesting thing to talk about than the sodding length, at least.
Yeah I'm not really sure why I should care about how long the aircraft is. I care what it can do. In this case the answer seems to be not much if we care about economics.
80 knots. Which is comparable to a perfectly straight traffic free highway. But most road transport is not on perfectly straight traffic free highways.
I have news for you. This thing isn't going to get cargo to its destination in a straight line either. Recall that you still need special facilities to load, unload, and in most cases land this aircraft. There are VERY few freight applications where this thing could take what it is hauling straight to its destination without involving intermodal transport. You'll have to land it at an airport in most cases which raises the question what the point of the thing is?
Let's be frank. It hauls less and is slower than a large fixed wing cargo jet. It's less flexible than a truck. It will be more expensive and carry FAR less than an ocean freighter. It will require special airfields and docking to be compatible with existing infrastructure. It can't land many places other than airports for practical reasons. It's fragile and can't operate in bad weather. It's not clear that it has any meaningful economic advantage for any practical use case. Maybe there is some corner case where it makes sense but so far nobody seems to know of one. Every 10-20 years someone takes a run at making lighter than air aircraft and it always is a failure because it can't compete with existing options on speed, reliability, and/or cost.
Smaller and thicker phones with a decently thick battery.
Ok, that is what YOU want. That has little reflection on what everyone else might want. I don't need a smaller phone (I like the size of the iPhone X) but I wouldn't object to the battery being thicker and it having a better camera. But that is what I want and you might feel differently. Some people want a tablet sized phone for some reason (bad eyesight, showing off, just like big screens, etc) and that's their right.
Personally I'm fine with the base phone being thin provided they make an actually decent battery case which nobody has so far. Every battery case I've seen to date has been a clumsy and ugly hack, including the ones the OEMs make (looking at you Apple). They could actually put real functions into the case besides padding and a battery but to date no phone maker seems interested in bothering.
Nobody wants USB-C headphones.
Disagree. I want a common connector for every device possible, not just headphones. There is no way to accomplish that with a 3.5mm jack but it can be done with USB-C.
We want universal headphones that work not just with cell phones and computers, but professional audio equipment, older audio equipment...
USB-C does not prevent that. There is no reason USB-C headphones cannot be the universal interface you desire. Bear in mind that 3.5mm jacks aren't universal either and they are FAR more limited in capabilities. And you can adapt back to 3.5mm jacks if you are so inclined.
and we want it to be near or at 100% compatibility for future audio products.
You have NEVER had 100% compatibility nor even close to it. My home stereo doesn't have a single 3.5mm jack on the back of it. My phone doesn't have one. Only one of my cars has one. The 3.5mm port has always been common but it has never been universal and certainly won't ensure compatibility in the future. USB-C actually has a better chance of that at this point and it won't get there either.
Those of us who prefer the advantages of wired headphones over the advantages of Bluetooth ones see no advantages at all in USB-C.
Speak for yourself there bud. I'm not saying USB-C headphones are clearly better in every respect (they aren't) but there definitely ARE advantages to not needing multiple types of connectors. Personally I like having the I/O ports be universal and not have to worry about having the type of connector for a given device. Standardizing on USB-C definitely has advantages in that regard.
Non-competes are a problem, yes, but not the cause of wage stagnation.
As a general proposition this is correct. Most people aren't asked to sign non-competes.
Job mobility is higher than it's ever been, despite the rash of non-compete contracts.
Recent data seems to dispute your assertion. Non-competes are an issue in some places but they aren't a systemic problem because most people never sign one.
The main problem is that companies no longer value experience (except perhaps at hiring time but often not even then) and believe every employee with similar education is interchangeable.
They value it but experience does have limits to its value. Some companies perhaps don't adequately value experience like they should - usually to their long term detriment. On the other hand some workers think their experience is worth more than it really is. Remember that experience does not equal performance. I know lots of people with long experience who still somehow manage to be pretty bad at their job.
People that switch jobs the most are young people with the least experience. I don't think you'll find any hiring manager who thinks that people are interchangeable. That said they do have some constraints on how much pay differential they can offer for doing the same work. Experience doesn't matter once you are hired unless it translates into measurable job performance results.
t might be a legal battle if you are a CEO that ran off with trade secrets to start a new company, but a guy making 40k? Please, no one gives a fuck what you do, they only wrote it in the contract because people fall for it.
While it's true that usually companies don't much care, the terms are in there to give them the option to act if they decide they have a reason to care. And someone making 40K isn't going to be able to afford the lawyers to fight that fight so the threat alone tends to be enough to have the desired effect that most companies want. Plus, it's fairly unusual for someone making low wages who isn't doing anything involving trade secrets or sales relationships to be asked to sign a non-compete.
I take it as a point of pride that I still use a 1/8" headphone jack.
If that gives you a sense of pride I think you might want to set the bar a little higher on your life goals.
It requires very little in the way of runway length,
Evidently not true. The LEMV required at least 300 m (1,000 ft) of runway (violating the runway-independent requirement), and a tether point with a 100 m (300 ft) clear flat area around on which to park, which prevented them from operating at most large bases and all small bases.
has an absolutely massive cargo bay,
Not true. It can carry 10 tons which might sound like a lot but it isn't. A 747 can carry up to 130 tons in certain configurations.
has a low carbon footprint,
Citation needed.
is reasonably fast (nowhere near as fast as an airliner but faster than most other means of transport),
It has a cruising speed of 70 knots. That's at best comparable to highways speeds over land. Over water it's not clear why you would prefer this to a large fixed wing aircraft for transporting goods or people.
the ability to fly very slowly, and offers a flight endurance measured in weeks.
Pray tell what the civilian use of those capabilities might be? It doesn't dare fly anywhere near a storm just like any other lighter than air craft. It's also not entirely clear who the market for this could be. Originally it was developed for the military for recon and communications and they cancelled the program. I think they're hoping there are civilian uses for it but they are rather vague about the use cases. It's not clear what economic problem this would solve better than the currently available alternatives.
Contrary to certain media scare-mongering, helium is fairly abundant.
We're not going to run out in the next few years if that is what you are talking about. But our supply of readily accessible and economically available helium is limited unless we find new ways to extract more. It's nothing to lose sleep over at the present but it is worth worrying about in the long term. There have been some shortages in recent years but these are more due to supply chain disruptions than anything else.
Extracted natural gas contains as much as 7% helium.
That number is only true for a few fields - most have less than that and not all have enough to make it economically worthwhile to extract it. Natural gas reportedly needs to have more than 0.3% helium for it to become profitable to extract it.
Isn't Helium the second commonest element after Hydrogen?
In the universe? Yes. On Earth? No. We're talking about helium accessible to us. I don't think we're about to go mining the Sun for helium. We're not going to run out this minute or anything but we have a finite supply currently available to us. It doesn't help we waste a lot of it on party balloons and other frivolous uses.
In America the biggest problem facing us isn't immigration, guns, abortion, or tax rates.
Agreed. I would argue it is gerrymandering. Yeah our infrastructure is a problem but I'd argue it is a consequence of other structural problems - gerrymandering not the least among them.
We are living with an infrastructure of the early 20th century, which has been hacked and updated.
Don't know if you've traveled much but we're hardly unique in that regard. Much of western Europe has infrastructure that is similarly dated. Not saying they are better or worse but it's not a problem unique to the US.
The US could lead by example. Compared to other countries the US is unique in having a Large Population, with a low Population Density.
Russia has us beat on that score by a country mile so unique is not the right word. Unusual would be a better choice. Technically so does Brazil though because of the Amazon that is somewhat misleading.
While they do overlap, GP is right that they serve different purposes.
Of course copyright and patents do have different intents and apply to very different sorts of works. But it does not follow that some works could not be in principle covered by both.
And if machines are patentable, why shouldn't a process using those machines be patentable?
To answer that question you have to answer what the harm versus benefit to society is from allowing them or not. It's a reasonable question to ask. Speaking broadly I would argue that there are several reasons to not allow them:
1) The free rider problem does not cause sufficient economic harm to justify allowing them (this is the biggest reason)
2) Practical difficulty that these sorts of patents tend to too broad in scope due to difficulty in description.
3) No compelling value proposition to the public in allowing process patents
4) If the object being made with the process is patented then there is no need to patent the process
I would argue that item 1 alone is sufficient. There is just no compelling evidence that economic harm to society will result if we don't allow process or software patents.
Or, looked at another way, any software can be implemented in hardware elements (FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). Why should one implementation be patentable while another is not?
Because the hardware implementations are invariably more than just software in a crunchy shell. That said it's a reasonable question. My take on it is that the hardware could be patented if it involves sufficiently novel physics but the code should be adequately covered by copyright. Words on a page versus words on a monitor are still words. The exact medium the come on is (or should be) irrelevant for copyright purposes.
WONDERFUL! Two times zero is still zero (you're using open-source freeware, right?)
Accountant here. Just because the software doesn't have a license cost doesn't mean it is free (as in beer) to use. Still got to pay IT their salaries to install, support, train, and administer. I assure you they get justifiably cranky if you don't send them a paycheck regularly.
"All modern systems have security holes" and they shouldn't. It's that simple. If that doubles the cost of software then so be it.
"Double the cost"? HAHAHAHAHAHA... Oh wait, you were serious? Even if it were possible to get perfect security with no holes (it isn't and never will be) it would cost FAR more than double to get even close. The cost of security isn't some linear function. And if you increase the cost too much then the computer system becomes too costly to justify in the first place.
You can argue they didn't do enough to rise to a reasonable duty of care. It is completely ridiculous to argue that perfect security is even possible much less expected.
Maybe I would be ok with specific reputable ad companies using this data for specific advertising services, but not so ok if anyone can pay $300 and track my location.
Why should ad companies get special privileges? I'm not ok with them using this data without my consent and frankly I think the term "reputable ad company" is something of an oxymoron. I certainly do not trust ANY of them including Google and especially Facebook. At minimum there should be a firewall so that third parties have no means of learning specific details about the individual being tracked without explicit consent from that individual. It should absolutely be illegal to sell identifiable tracking data to third parties without explicit written (and revocable) consent.
I don't know why any insurance company would offer hacking insurance.
You can insure anything profitably provided you can charge adequately high premiums. To do that you need to have data about the likelihood of an incident and the financial burden that will result.
It is right up there with "terrorism insurance" or giving life insurance to military servicemen in terms of likelihood that you'll get hit with a payout demand.
Evidently you aren't an actuary. Have you actually looked at the risk tables for those activities? The insurance companies have. Yes military service is a dangerous job but you can be assured that fact is priced into the premiums they pay. Insurance companies aren't staffed by idiots and unlike you they actually do the math to figure out the risk/reward for writing a policy. Expected payouts are priced into the model.
If I left my front door open with a sign that said 'come take my stuff' I expect the insurance company would fight me too.
Nice strawman you have there.
That's not what happened and you know it. The question will (should?) come down to whether reasonable duty of care was exercised on the part of the plaintiff and whether the insurance contract was violated by failure of the plaintiff to take reasonably expected security measures and to implement them with reasonable competence. All modern systems have security holes so perfection is not a reasonable expectation.
Cool story bro. Why do you think that women are so weak that some evil patriarchy forces them to wear makeup?
Women aren't forced to wear makeup but the certainly are influence and coerced into it by a variety of means. Many of the influences actually have little to do with men directly. Women's magazines are a common example. Women influence other women as much or more than men do on the issue. There is nothing wrong with wearing SOME makeup just like there is nothing wrong with dressing nicely.
Women through the ages have enjoyed decorating themselves.
You think that is somehow independent of the influence of men or society? Sure many (not all) do enjoy it and there is nothing wrong with that but let's not pretend that social pressure doesn't play any role here. Men decorate themselves too, just in different ways. There have been times and places where men were expected to wear makeup thanks to social pressures. You think all those teenage boys wearing Axe body spray are doing that for any reason other than self decoration?
Makeup, which is not good or bad within itself, is another form of decorating.
Of course it is. Just like clothes or jewelry. It's in essence part of a costume which people wear in their daily lives. And there is nothing wrong with doing that - to a point. But just like most things it can be taken too far or done for the wrong reasons. Nothing wrong with taking some care to look good. Appearances do matter whether we like it or not. But there comes a point where it goes beyond reasonable care for one's appearance and into vanity and/or insecurity. If nobody has seen you in public without makeup and it's not your actual paying job (like a model) then that is a problem.
So the idea that makeup is something forced on women by the evil patriarchy is both silly and very demeaning to women, casting them as so weak that they can't even make up their minds.
Strawman. I don't think very many people think that at all. Few would argue that appearance doesn't matter or that makeup is bad as a general proposition. It's a more complicated issue than that. Mostly it isn't really a problem but like anything it sometimes becomes one. Women unquestionably are subjected to unreasonable expectations regarding their appearance and excessive use of makeup is often a symptom of this broader underlying problem. No/some makeup is fine. Lots of makeup and/or excessively routine use should raise some eyebrows.
I know many men, and the ones I have talked about women's makeup do not like it at all - they consider it dishonest, and some like myself, simply love freckles - covering them up is unforgivable.
If they think SOME makeup is dishonest then ask them if they are willing to go on their next date dressed in dirty wrinkled clothes and smelly because that is basically the same argument. Social conventions matter and makeup is one of them. It's just about intent and degree. Few reasonable men mind a sensible amount of makeup and enhancing one's appearance is far from dishonest. Like most things it isn't a problem until it is taken to excess or done for the wrong reasons.
For the record I agree on freckles. I find them adorable too.