Supply and demand. Market is efficiently allocating scarce resources. Price increase will increase supply providing consumers with more of the scarce resource. It's a thing of beauty really.
That's the argument that war profiteers make. When there has been an act of terrorism or war that is NOT the time to increase prices to maximize profit. The market wasn't efficiently allocating scarce resources. What happen here was a market failure which is economic self interest resulting in outcomes that are actually negative to society. Uber was maximizing profit and there are times when that is unacceptable behavior.
It's an algorithm. The more in demand the product is, the higher the price.
Correction. It's an INSUFFICIENTLY SOPHISTICATED algorithm. Fixed that for you. Sounds like they need some parameters in their algorithm in order to not go profiteering from terrorism.
Repeat after me: Uber is NOT run by the government... that's both what makes it good... AND what leads to scenarios like this. You can't have the good (low fares, clean cars, drivers that give a shit) without allowing them to work with the free market (supply / demand).
That's a false dilemma. It's not an either/or situation with no middle ground. That is why we regulate most businesses to at least some degree. There is no such thing as a completely free market in any civilized country. Uber is no exception to that. You can have good quality service without allowing all the excesses of a completely unregulated market. Free markets are great until market failures occur. When pure self interest leads to situations where allocation of goods and services is no longer efficient or beneficial to society. If Uber is profiteering from terrorism then that is something that almost demands regulation since it clearly is not in the best interest of society at large.
I've watched investors and buyers do due diligence of technology, and its not particularly impressive.
So have I. Some are very good at it, others not so much. But it seems clear that essentially zero due diligence was performed in this case. If someone came to me with a piece of technology looking for investment, there isn't a way in hell I would fork over the money without full disclosure of how it worked. Most of the VCs I know personally are pretty thorough. Obviously this company knew how to find either patsies or accomplices.
I could easily see how with a few good presentations they could be tricked, especially since technologically-minded people aren't good at looking for scams.
This is true. Engineers and scientists can be among the easiest people to trick under the right circumstances because their minds (generally speaking) do not go naturally to looking for intentional falsehoods. You would think finance people would have clarity of mind to look for the scams but sometimes greed overwhelms clear thought even among the well intentioned. When a lot of people do it that what we call it a bubble. The financial crisis of 2008 was an object lesson in this. So was the dotcom bubble.
Silicon Valley went along for the ride. The person responsible for the whole thing is Ms. Holmes, who is nothing but a scammer.
You will rarely find a scam this size where just one person is responsible. What about the engineers who HAD to know that the whole thing was bullshit (or were incompetent if they didn't)? How about the investors who couldn't be bothered to do any due diligence before writing a large check? How about the customers for the product who didn't demand adequate demonstrations of effectiveness before deploying the technology? What about the company management who had to know about the problem but lacked a moral compass?
No, there is plenty of blame to go around. Ms Holmes might be the lead singer in this particular band but she's hardly the only one playing.
But nope, the VCs were more than willing to hand over money to an unknown person offering an unknown procedure without having to show how said product works.
While it certainly is possible for a VC to make a mistake when evaluating a company this is kind of the most shocking thing to me. I have close friends who are VCs and when making an investment the first thing they do is to do a LOT of due diligence. If they aren't domain experts in the technology themselves they call in someone they trust who is a domain expert to review the technology. They certainly don't make investments in companies who refuse to disclose to them how their product actually works. That doesn't mean everything will work out but I've never seen a VC personally who would hand over a large check no questions asked.
So we're left with two options. Either the VCs in this instance were reckless fools who invested in something when they should have known better OR they were complicit in the fraud and didn't care. I've seen enough VCs investing in idiotic ideas to believe that it could have been greed/recklessness but it's hard to tell the difference without more information.
I suppose it depends on whether you consider Theranos a successful scam that could only happen in Silicon Valley, or a massive failure which could only happen at that magnitude in Silicon Valley.
I think it is entirely possible it is both a failure and a scam. Wouldn't surprise me at all if it started as an honest effort that eventually failed and turned into a scam. Some of the nuances are unique to Silicon Valley but from a big picture perspective it's a story that has happened before and will happen again. Charismatic CEO builds company and raises lots of money based on product that either couldn't or didn't work and eventually resorted to fraud. Nothing new in that story and it could have happened almost anywhere.
The real failure is the investors who failed to do their due diligence before putting their money down. This is EXACTLY why we insist on patents and public disclosure of how medicines and therapies work before making them public. It's why we have government oversight in the form of the FDA. People want to believe in miracle cures and amazing technology and we have some remarkable achievements in medicine. But quackery is a real thing and there are people who are very willing to literally let credulous or innocent people die to make money.
Wind and solar are only less expensive because of subsidies - which is cheating.
Fossil fuels are hugely subsidized globally to the tune of around $500 Billion annually and that doesn't even count the countries that sell oil to citizens below cost. This is substantially more than renewable energy subsidies. Furthermore all nuclear power is subsidized as well since it requires government backing to get any kind of insurance. Furthermore your argument implies that subsidizing green energy sources is somehow a bad thing. I would argue that it is an economic imperative based on the apparent climatic effects of the dominant source of energy - fossil fuels.
They are actually the most expensive forms of energy out there, not only in terms of kw output, but the overall footprint required.
Boy you are all about the unsupported assertions aren't you? Here are some actual facts about cost of energy by source. You'll note that on-shore wind is actually among the cheaper sources of energy and photovoltaic is competitive with the more expensive forms of fossil fuel production.
But I'm a firm believer in math - aka reality - and to replace our grid capacity with solar and wind would require paving over most of the southwest, and limit any growth to current levels.
Evidently you went to the Donald Trump University majoring in Made Up Statistics and minoring in Bogus "Facts". For a person who professes to "believe in math" there is a distinct lack of it in you posts. It would take something like 11-12 million acres or about 2000sqft per person. That's about 0.6% of the land mass of the US. A lot of space sure but nothing remotely close to "paving most of the southwest". Furthermore much of that acreage could come simply by utilizing already existing rooftops. Furthermore wind power is a thing and doesn't require nearly the area that solar does. In fact it can even be off shore and in areas where solar is highly impractical. Of course it's a moot discussion since there is no way we are going to go 100% solar/wind.
A tiny nuclear fission reactor like on our aircraft carriers could power a small city cleanly and safely for decades, for relatively low cost.
Fission reactors are sort of clean. Until they aren't. And when they aren't they REALLY aren't clean. In many cases nuclear fission is the least worst alternative available to us today but let's not pretend it doesnt cause any sort of pollution. Nuclear waste and fallout (when things really go wrong) are serious problems with no particularly good solutions. Nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers are maintained by the military under military discipline without any profit motive and at enormous expense. There is a reason we only put reactors on a handful of ships - they are hugely expensive and challenging to maintain safely. Just because something works in a military setting doesn't mean it will work in the civilian world. While arguably the technology would be transferable, the economic case for it is FAR weaker.
Fusion could be an answer but we haven't figured that one out yet and it doesn't look to be in the cards for a few more decades. Right now it's just science fiction for all practical purposes.
'It's more environmentally friendly, and it's very humane on the rodents as well.'"
"Very humane"? Seriously? I don't have a problem with them taking measures to kill pests but suffocation isn't exactly what I would call humane. Necessary maybe but let's not pretend that they're doing something nice or pleasant to the rats.
Future wars will be fought with pilotless (and maybe even autonomous) vehicles.
Some will, some won't. You won't see large scale remote operated vehicles between major powers because they have one huge weakness - namely they can be jammed. They're useful against third world countries with limited military resources. I wouldn't have nearly so much faith in them against a major power like Russia or China. Autonomous fighting vehicles are not only not ready for combat yet, it's not clear that they are a good idea at all for a host of both practical and ethical reasons. Even if they manage to deal with those concerns adequately (and I doubt they will) we're still quite a long ways from having practical autonomous weapons platforms. (If the phrase "autonomous weapons platform" doesn't scare you there is something wrong with you)
Cyber warfare will also be much more devastating than whatever damage this overpriced toy can produce.
Not any time soon. Maybe someday but that day is a ways off. Right now bombs and missiles have a lot more power to shut down the infrastucture of a country than any hacker. Go to Syria and tell me how much damage has been done there with just conventional weapons versus hacking. The difference isn't even close and it's likely to remain that way for quite some time to come. Cyber warfare can cause some serious problems but it's a rather awkward way to kill them in any meaningful numbers.
We should dock the pay of every congress critter who voted for it until it's paid back in full.
Preach it, Brother! I memorized one fucking mnemonic back in grade school and I really don't want to have to come up with another one!
Unclear if you are being sarcastic but is abject laziness really the best argument someone can come up against changing planetary taxonomy?
I don't really get the furor over how we classify Pluto. It doesn't really matter if it is a bucket we label planets or a bucket we label something else. The point is to label similar objects into sensible categories. If you think the categories are poor ones then come up with a better one. But it is clear that Pluto is definitely something different than the other eight traditional planets so it makes sense to call it something different. Similarly the inner planets are clearly something different than the gas giants. If you want to say Pluto is a different type of planet than Earth which is a different type of planet from Jupiter, I can get on board with that. Frankly there probably are at least 3-4 major categories of "planets" and then a host of other minor categories. Much like in biology we should probably classify them based on how they form/evolve.
Of course the next headline will probably be that it's not a planet, it's a space station...
We already found the space station. It's called Mimas and it orbits Saturn.
I get motion sick if I try to read anything (book, map, phone, computer) in a moving car or train. I'll get zero productivity gain from a self driving car. Not sure what percentage of the population has the same issue, but I doubt it's insignificant.
Probably most people under the right circumstances. Some are more prone to it than others. It also depends on the stability of the vehicle, the route being taken, etc. If I try to read intensely in the back seat of a car without looking out on a twisty turny road with a bad suspension I'll certainly get nauseous.
More importantly, what's with the continued obsession with maximizing productivity?
That's how you get economic growth. It's one of the dominant reasons wages in the US are higher than wages in Brazil or Russia or other places. People are obsessed with it because it matters a lot. Productivity growth is a very big deal in determining standards of living.
How about pitch it as a way for people to have more time to relax and recharge?
Some will undoubtedly use it that way. Driving does require some mental exertion so not having to drive can have benefits in being more rested at your destination even if you do little work along the way.
It's much more likely the daughter is a hypersensitive, unsympathetic, thoughtless, self-absorbed twit.
Disagree. I think we have some parents who lack empathy, are emotionally abusive and lack common courtesy. If someone posted naked pictures of me at any age publicly I'd be entirely within my rights to be pissed off at that asshole. Whether they see it as a problem or not is irrelevant. Now I'm sure there is more at play here than this one little incident but based on the facts at hand I have to say the parents are WAY out of line here.
Disclaimer: I have a teenage daughter.
And do you go out of your way to embarrass her or cause her emotional distress? If she made a harmess request of you would you tell her to get bent? Do you care so little for her feelings?
Rules tend to be different when it's non sexualized photos of an infant. That's likely the case here.
What is "sexual" is very much dependent on the viewer. Some people have fetishes I could not begin to imagine being arousing but nevertheless they are real. Just because the parents are too dense to grasp that fact doesn't make it less true. Do you really want somebody with tendencies towards child molestation pleasuring themselves over your child's pictures? There are people who do that you know. It's not hard to make an argument that any picture of a naked child could be considered child porn. And it is entirely reasonable to not want such pictures of oneself posted for all the world to see for that reason alone.
There is no reason for the parents to not honor their child's reasonable request. The fact that the child had to get unreasonable about how she made her request speaks to how unreasonable the parents are being.
The obvious answer is to ignore it. Non-mentally-ill adults do not experience "emotional distress" over the fact that people may see some of their baby pictures.
Why should she ignore it? That will not solve her problem. They are pictures of her, not pictures of you and they affect her. There can be real consequences to having even seemingly innocent information made public. Maybe you don't care but she's entitled to a different opinion. I don't like having pictures of me posted without my consent either. It's one of the reasons I don't participate in facebook. The parents are being very disrespectful and possibly harmful. It costs them nothing to take the pictures down and respect her harmless request for privacy. Mentally ill people are those who lack empathy for others and the parents are the ones showing a distinct lack of it here.
I can get on board with the notion that suing might be overkill here but there is no objective reason for the parents to persist their behavior. I very much doubt they would like naked pictures of themselves posted publicly. The fact that she is a child in the pictures makes them arguably child porn if she really wants to play hardball over it. Just because someone is your parent doesn't make any and all behavior towards their child acceptable.
I'd take them down, then thar would be the last she ever heard of me. "You are no longer in our life, person - is that taking you seriously enough?"
If your response to everyone that gets mad at you for something you did is to shut them out of your life forever you're going to live a pretty lonely life. Doubly so if those people are your children. Shutting a child out of your life is an absolutely brutal thing to do. I have direct experience in my family of what this is like. Parents who do this for any reason other than self protection are assholes.
You are correct about not knowing the dynamics of the situation. but if a child of mine ever sued me for anything, it would be the last contact they'd ever have with me.
Based on your response that might be good thing. You sound unbalanced and I'm guessing you don't have children. You seriously believe that no matter how badly you behave the child should never be able to drag you in to court? Some parents are terrible, abusive, mean, or manipulative. Some parents steal from their children or beat them or abuse them both physically and psychologically. There is a reason emancipated minors are a thing. If an adult (she is 18) child actually gets to the point where you behavior has made them think that the only means to get you to behave nicely is to sue you then the problem is most likely YOU. What exactly do the parents lose by taking the pictures down? Nothing. They are keeping them up just out of spite and/or disrespect for self indulgent reasons. I'm having trouble seeing any scenario where the parents are the good guys here.
If I posted a picture of someone and they asked me to take it down I see no reason to be a jerk about it and ignore the request. Granted going to court about it is pretty extreme but it's entirely conceivable that it is justified (or possibly not). Frankly I wouldn't want all my childhood pictures being posted publicly either so I get where the daughter is coming from. I don't have a facebook account for this very reason among others. Some people value their privacy and don't want everyone in the world to see every detail of their lives. Reasonable people will honor this point of view so long as it causes no harm and none could possibly come from taking down the pictures..
There are a few corner cases where smartwatches are advantageous but these have been insufficiently explored to date. Smartwatches have two primary uses. 1) a highly portable data-logging sensor suite and 2) a compact display for compact messages. These are useful things but for most use cases a smartphone can serve the same purpose AND have a lot more capabilities besides. The corner cases where a smartwatch makes a big different don't apply to most people most of the time and so it should surprise no one that they haven't been taking over the world sales-wise.
Haptic feedback is another partial differentiator, it can tap you on the wrist to get your attention.
As you say smartphones can do this too. The fact that there are some corner cases doesn't generally make a good case to buy a smartwatch unless those corner cases are super important. I would argue that your example is not a particularly big problem.
Wait, what? If it's inconvenient, I get that. But ill-advised? If it's ill-advised to carry a cellphone, it's just as ill-advised to wear a smartwatch
You can swim with a lot of smartwatches. Not so much of a good idea with smartphones - even IPXX rated ones. There also are places where smartphones are prohibited for security reasons or where they might prove socially problematic but where smartwatches would be acceptable.
If it's a theft issue, it's on display on your wrist and it's actually more of an issue.
A smartwatch is generally a LOT less conspicuous than most people's smartphones. Less valuable too.
"Smartwatches still have yet to make a significant impression on consumers as a must-have device," said Ramon Llamas, an analyst at IDC.
They mostly are a solution looking for a problem. Smartwatches are useful in some very particular circumstances, mostly where it is inconvenient or ill-advised to carry a smartphone. Those circumstances are not widely applicable in most people's every day lives and therefore there is limited market need for smartwatches. Relatively few people of my generation and those younger wear a watch routinely. People want to wear fewer devices, not more so at best it tends to replace a watch for those who were already prone to carrying one. For the rest of us it actually ADDS a device to carry when the trend it actually to carry less. My smartphone replaced my point-and-shoot camera, my PDA, my calendar, my MP3 player, my laptop in some circumstances and oh yeah it makes calls. Plus it can do everything a smartwatch can do except be small.
Yeah, one of the nice things about the MacBook Pro series, and PowerBook G4 before them, is that you didn't need a docking station to get around bad design.
I don't agree with your assertion that removing ports axiomatically equals bad design. It can but doesn't have to.
Starting with FireWire, and continuing with Mini-DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, you had one or two cables to plug in coming off of a display that had FireWire / USB hubs built in that also acted as a "docking station".
You appear to contradict yourself. You argue that having lots of ports on the laptop is good design and then admit that you plug it into a de-facto docking station anyway. So by your own admission all those excess ports are unnecessary.
Do you really want to carry more cords when you travel? I don't. That's when I make heavy use of wireless stuff when possible. And when you are at a desk do you really care if there are lots of cables as long as you don't have to handle more than 1-2 of them? I don't. That's when I use a docking station and route all the cables neatly under the desk. Apple seems to grasp this.
I've been using a portable Mac since 1998, and this kind of decision making might force me to Lenovo.
Lenovo? Good luck with that. Given their recent actions I wouldn't touch Lenovo with a barge pole. Here's the thing. Your needs/wants may or may not align with what Apple's customer base needs/wants. I have a few pieces of Apple gear but much of my equipment is for stuff that Apple's offerings don't fit well with so I bought something else. Buy what you need and if that happens to be something that Apple makes, great! I am under no illusions that Apple is under any obligation to design products specifically for my needs. It's a pleasant surprise when they do but I don't expect it.
Sometimes it does. There are very good reasons why we have standardized interfaces for all sorts of things. The only time to have a specialty single purpose interface is if there are no viable alternative options. Fortunately for hipsters who want to be different just to make a point there are plenty of other options for headphone jacks out there besides the offerings from Apple. If Apple's offerings don't fit your needs, do what I did and buy something else for whatever application you are working on. Trust me, nobody will mind.
Paradigm shift, from consumer is always right, to consumer will accept whatever we fucking give them.
Anyone who thinks the customer is always right has never had to deal with an actual customer. Customers are wrong all the frickin' time. Catering excessively to customers who are wrong is a great way to go bankrupt. Henry Ford put it best when he said "If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have said 'a faster horse'".
Most of the Bluetooth headphones that I have used only like to be paired to one device at a time.
Not universally true and that will change pretty quickly I think. The bluetooth headphones I use can connect up to ten devices. I would expect that to go downmarket pretty fast. Apple's actions have effectively created a market and the void should fill up in short order I expect.
Getting rid of the headphone jack on all Apple's products will be suicide for them.
You keep telling yourself that. This is not Apple's first rodeo with removing interfaces that others were reluctant to part with. While no one knows for certain, all indications so far seem to be that all the furor over the headphone jack really won't affect Apple's sales to any significant degree. There are real threats to Apple's business but this is highly unlikely to be among them. Apple has never tried to be all things to all people and if you really need that jack there are options available to you. Personally I cut the cord for laptop and smartphone audio headphones some time ago and I haven't missed them yet.
Personally I don't really care. I'm actually happy to see the number of cables on my devices reduced by one since I don't really use the 3.5mm jack. You may feel differently of course and that's fine but I'm looking forward to the day when we don't have to deal with separate cable types for monitors, peripherals, power, network, etc. I want to have to carry just one well designed type of cable. I make my living making and selling specialty wire harnesses and I think most of them are just wasteful.
Geez, I actually use my MBP as my desktop for about 98% of the time, and it is hooked to my desktop speakers for listening to.... I'm supposed to fscking do THAT wireless too now?!?!
Only if you want to. You could go USB or thunderbolt pretty easily. I connect my laptops to a USB 3.0 docking station which has a 3.5mm jack built in when I'm using them at my desk. So that's a perfectly viable option when using a laptop as an ersatz desktop PC. Heck you're probably going to hook up a USB hub or peripherals anyway so why not just include the 3.5mm jack there? I could see it being annoying to not have it when you are traveling with a laptop but the arguments against removing it at the desk are pretty weak.
That said on a real desktop PC (Mac) I don't really see a good argument for removing the 3.5mm jack at this time. Neither space, power or cost are constraints and there is no advantage to the user in removing it unless you get something in return. None of those things apply to desktop PCs. I can at least see the argument on a smartphone whether or not I agree with it but those arguments don't apply to desktop machines.
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Supply and demand. Market is efficiently allocating scarce resources. Price increase will increase supply providing consumers with more of the scarce resource. It's a thing of beauty really.
That's the argument that war profiteers make. When there has been an act of terrorism or war that is NOT the time to increase prices to maximize profit. The market wasn't efficiently allocating scarce resources. What happen here was a market failure which is economic self interest resulting in outcomes that are actually negative to society. Uber was maximizing profit and there are times when that is unacceptable behavior.
It's an algorithm. The more in demand the product is, the higher the price.
Correction. It's an INSUFFICIENTLY SOPHISTICATED algorithm. Fixed that for you. Sounds like they need some parameters in their algorithm in order to not go profiteering from terrorism.
Repeat after me: Uber is NOT run by the government... that's both what makes it good... AND what leads to scenarios like this. You can't have the good (low fares, clean cars, drivers that give a shit) without allowing them to work with the free market (supply / demand).
That's a false dilemma. It's not an either/or situation with no middle ground. That is why we regulate most businesses to at least some degree. There is no such thing as a completely free market in any civilized country. Uber is no exception to that. You can have good quality service without allowing all the excesses of a completely unregulated market. Free markets are great until market failures occur. When pure self interest leads to situations where allocation of goods and services is no longer efficient or beneficial to society. If Uber is profiteering from terrorism then that is something that almost demands regulation since it clearly is not in the best interest of society at large.
I've watched investors and buyers do due diligence of technology, and its not particularly impressive.
So have I. Some are very good at it, others not so much. But it seems clear that essentially zero due diligence was performed in this case. If someone came to me with a piece of technology looking for investment, there isn't a way in hell I would fork over the money without full disclosure of how it worked. Most of the VCs I know personally are pretty thorough. Obviously this company knew how to find either patsies or accomplices.
I could easily see how with a few good presentations they could be tricked, especially since technologically-minded people aren't good at looking for scams.
This is true. Engineers and scientists can be among the easiest people to trick under the right circumstances because their minds (generally speaking) do not go naturally to looking for intentional falsehoods. You would think finance people would have clarity of mind to look for the scams but sometimes greed overwhelms clear thought even among the well intentioned. When a lot of people do it that what we call it a bubble. The financial crisis of 2008 was an object lesson in this. So was the dotcom bubble.
Silicon Valley went along for the ride. The person responsible for the whole thing is Ms. Holmes, who is nothing but a scammer.
You will rarely find a scam this size where just one person is responsible. What about the engineers who HAD to know that the whole thing was bullshit (or were incompetent if they didn't)? How about the investors who couldn't be bothered to do any due diligence before writing a large check? How about the customers for the product who didn't demand adequate demonstrations of effectiveness before deploying the technology? What about the company management who had to know about the problem but lacked a moral compass?
No, there is plenty of blame to go around. Ms Holmes might be the lead singer in this particular band but she's hardly the only one playing.
But nope, the VCs were more than willing to hand over money to an unknown person offering an unknown procedure without having to show how said product works.
While it certainly is possible for a VC to make a mistake when evaluating a company this is kind of the most shocking thing to me. I have close friends who are VCs and when making an investment the first thing they do is to do a LOT of due diligence. If they aren't domain experts in the technology themselves they call in someone they trust who is a domain expert to review the technology. They certainly don't make investments in companies who refuse to disclose to them how their product actually works. That doesn't mean everything will work out but I've never seen a VC personally who would hand over a large check no questions asked.
So we're left with two options. Either the VCs in this instance were reckless fools who invested in something when they should have known better OR they were complicit in the fraud and didn't care. I've seen enough VCs investing in idiotic ideas to believe that it could have been greed/recklessness but it's hard to tell the difference without more information.
I suppose it depends on whether you consider Theranos a successful scam that could only happen in Silicon Valley, or a massive failure which could only happen at that magnitude in Silicon Valley.
I think it is entirely possible it is both a failure and a scam. Wouldn't surprise me at all if it started as an honest effort that eventually failed and turned into a scam. Some of the nuances are unique to Silicon Valley but from a big picture perspective it's a story that has happened before and will happen again. Charismatic CEO builds company and raises lots of money based on product that either couldn't or didn't work and eventually resorted to fraud. Nothing new in that story and it could have happened almost anywhere.
The real failure is the investors who failed to do their due diligence before putting their money down. This is EXACTLY why we insist on patents and public disclosure of how medicines and therapies work before making them public. It's why we have government oversight in the form of the FDA. People want to believe in miracle cures and amazing technology and we have some remarkable achievements in medicine. But quackery is a real thing and there are people who are very willing to literally let credulous or innocent people die to make money.
Wind and solar are only less expensive because of subsidies - which is cheating.
Fossil fuels are hugely subsidized globally to the tune of around $500 Billion annually and that doesn't even count the countries that sell oil to citizens below cost. This is substantially more than renewable energy subsidies. Furthermore all nuclear power is subsidized as well since it requires government backing to get any kind of insurance. Furthermore your argument implies that subsidizing green energy sources is somehow a bad thing. I would argue that it is an economic imperative based on the apparent climatic effects of the dominant source of energy - fossil fuels.
They are actually the most expensive forms of energy out there, not only in terms of kw output, but the overall footprint required.
Boy you are all about the unsupported assertions aren't you? Here are some actual facts about cost of energy by source. You'll note that on-shore wind is actually among the cheaper sources of energy and photovoltaic is competitive with the more expensive forms of fossil fuel production.
But I'm a firm believer in math - aka reality - and to replace our grid capacity with solar and wind would require paving over most of the southwest, and limit any growth to current levels.
Evidently you went to the Donald Trump University majoring in Made Up Statistics and minoring in Bogus "Facts". For a person who professes to "believe in math" there is a distinct lack of it in you posts. It would take something like 11-12 million acres or about 2000sqft per person. That's about 0.6% of the land mass of the US. A lot of space sure but nothing remotely close to "paving most of the southwest". Furthermore much of that acreage could come simply by utilizing already existing rooftops. Furthermore wind power is a thing and doesn't require nearly the area that solar does. In fact it can even be off shore and in areas where solar is highly impractical. Of course it's a moot discussion since there is no way we are going to go 100% solar/wind.
A tiny nuclear fission reactor like on our aircraft carriers could power a small city cleanly and safely for decades, for relatively low cost.
Fission reactors are sort of clean. Until they aren't. And when they aren't they REALLY aren't clean. In many cases nuclear fission is the least worst alternative available to us today but let's not pretend it doesnt cause any sort of pollution. Nuclear waste and fallout (when things really go wrong) are serious problems with no particularly good solutions. Nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers are maintained by the military under military discipline without any profit motive and at enormous expense. There is a reason we only put reactors on a handful of ships - they are hugely expensive and challenging to maintain safely. Just because something works in a military setting doesn't mean it will work in the civilian world. While arguably the technology would be transferable, the economic case for it is FAR weaker.
Fusion could be an answer but we haven't figured that one out yet and it doesn't look to be in the cards for a few more decades. Right now it's just science fiction for all practical purposes.
'It's more environmentally friendly, and it's very humane on the rodents as well.'"
"Very humane"? Seriously? I don't have a problem with them taking measures to kill pests but suffocation isn't exactly what I would call humane. Necessary maybe but let's not pretend that they're doing something nice or pleasant to the rats.
Future wars will be fought with pilotless (and maybe even autonomous) vehicles.
Some will, some won't. You won't see large scale remote operated vehicles between major powers because they have one huge weakness - namely they can be jammed. They're useful against third world countries with limited military resources. I wouldn't have nearly so much faith in them against a major power like Russia or China. Autonomous fighting vehicles are not only not ready for combat yet, it's not clear that they are a good idea at all for a host of both practical and ethical reasons. Even if they manage to deal with those concerns adequately (and I doubt they will) we're still quite a long ways from having practical autonomous weapons platforms. (If the phrase "autonomous weapons platform" doesn't scare you there is something wrong with you)
Cyber warfare will also be much more devastating than whatever damage this overpriced toy can produce.
Not any time soon. Maybe someday but that day is a ways off. Right now bombs and missiles have a lot more power to shut down the infrastucture of a country than any hacker. Go to Syria and tell me how much damage has been done there with just conventional weapons versus hacking. The difference isn't even close and it's likely to remain that way for quite some time to come. Cyber warfare can cause some serious problems but it's a rather awkward way to kill them in any meaningful numbers.
We should dock the pay of every congress critter who voted for it until it's paid back in full.
Good luck with that.
Preach it, Brother! I memorized one fucking mnemonic back in grade school and I really don't want to have to come up with another one!
Unclear if you are being sarcastic but is abject laziness really the best argument someone can come up against changing planetary taxonomy?
I don't really get the furor over how we classify Pluto. It doesn't really matter if it is a bucket we label planets or a bucket we label something else. The point is to label similar objects into sensible categories. If you think the categories are poor ones then come up with a better one. But it is clear that Pluto is definitely something different than the other eight traditional planets so it makes sense to call it something different. Similarly the inner planets are clearly something different than the gas giants. If you want to say Pluto is a different type of planet than Earth which is a different type of planet from Jupiter, I can get on board with that. Frankly there probably are at least 3-4 major categories of "planets" and then a host of other minor categories. Much like in biology we should probably classify them based on how they form/evolve.
Of course the next headline will probably be that it's not a planet, it's a space station...
We already found the space station. It's called Mimas and it orbits Saturn.
I get motion sick if I try to read anything (book, map, phone, computer) in a moving car or train. I'll get zero productivity gain from a self driving car. Not sure what percentage of the population has the same issue, but I doubt it's insignificant.
Probably most people under the right circumstances. Some are more prone to it than others. It also depends on the stability of the vehicle, the route being taken, etc. If I try to read intensely in the back seat of a car without looking out on a twisty turny road with a bad suspension I'll certainly get nauseous.
More importantly, what's with the continued obsession with maximizing productivity?
That's how you get economic growth. It's one of the dominant reasons wages in the US are higher than wages in Brazil or Russia or other places. People are obsessed with it because it matters a lot. Productivity growth is a very big deal in determining standards of living.
How about pitch it as a way for people to have more time to relax and recharge?
Some will undoubtedly use it that way. Driving does require some mental exertion so not having to drive can have benefits in being more rested at your destination even if you do little work along the way.
It's much more likely the daughter is a hypersensitive, unsympathetic, thoughtless, self-absorbed twit.
Disagree. I think we have some parents who lack empathy, are emotionally abusive and lack common courtesy. If someone posted naked pictures of me at any age publicly I'd be entirely within my rights to be pissed off at that asshole. Whether they see it as a problem or not is irrelevant. Now I'm sure there is more at play here than this one little incident but based on the facts at hand I have to say the parents are WAY out of line here.
Disclaimer: I have a teenage daughter.
And do you go out of your way to embarrass her or cause her emotional distress? If she made a harmess request of you would you tell her to get bent? Do you care so little for her feelings?
Rules tend to be different when it's non sexualized photos of an infant. That's likely the case here.
What is "sexual" is very much dependent on the viewer. Some people have fetishes I could not begin to imagine being arousing but nevertheless they are real. Just because the parents are too dense to grasp that fact doesn't make it less true. Do you really want somebody with tendencies towards child molestation pleasuring themselves over your child's pictures? There are people who do that you know. It's not hard to make an argument that any picture of a naked child could be considered child porn. And it is entirely reasonable to not want such pictures of oneself posted for all the world to see for that reason alone.
There is no reason for the parents to not honor their child's reasonable request. The fact that the child had to get unreasonable about how she made her request speaks to how unreasonable the parents are being.
The obvious answer is to ignore it. Non-mentally-ill adults do not experience "emotional distress" over the fact that people may see some of their baby pictures.
Why should she ignore it? That will not solve her problem. They are pictures of her, not pictures of you and they affect her. There can be real consequences to having even seemingly innocent information made public. Maybe you don't care but she's entitled to a different opinion. I don't like having pictures of me posted without my consent either. It's one of the reasons I don't participate in facebook. The parents are being very disrespectful and possibly harmful. It costs them nothing to take the pictures down and respect her harmless request for privacy. Mentally ill people are those who lack empathy for others and the parents are the ones showing a distinct lack of it here.
I can get on board with the notion that suing might be overkill here but there is no objective reason for the parents to persist their behavior. I very much doubt they would like naked pictures of themselves posted publicly. The fact that she is a child in the pictures makes them arguably child porn if she really wants to play hardball over it. Just because someone is your parent doesn't make any and all behavior towards their child acceptable.
I'd take them down, then thar would be the last she ever heard of me. "You are no longer in our life, person - is that taking you seriously enough?"
If your response to everyone that gets mad at you for something you did is to shut them out of your life forever you're going to live a pretty lonely life. Doubly so if those people are your children. Shutting a child out of your life is an absolutely brutal thing to do. I have direct experience in my family of what this is like. Parents who do this for any reason other than self protection are assholes.
You are correct about not knowing the dynamics of the situation. but if a child of mine ever sued me for anything, it would be the last contact they'd ever have with me.
Based on your response that might be good thing. You sound unbalanced and I'm guessing you don't have children. You seriously believe that no matter how badly you behave the child should never be able to drag you in to court? Some parents are terrible, abusive, mean, or manipulative. Some parents steal from their children or beat them or abuse them both physically and psychologically. There is a reason emancipated minors are a thing. If an adult (she is 18) child actually gets to the point where you behavior has made them think that the only means to get you to behave nicely is to sue you then the problem is most likely YOU. What exactly do the parents lose by taking the pictures down? Nothing. They are keeping them up just out of spite and/or disrespect for self indulgent reasons. I'm having trouble seeing any scenario where the parents are the good guys here.
If I posted a picture of someone and they asked me to take it down I see no reason to be a jerk about it and ignore the request. Granted going to court about it is pretty extreme but it's entirely conceivable that it is justified (or possibly not). Frankly I wouldn't want all my childhood pictures being posted publicly either so I get where the daughter is coming from. I don't have a facebook account for this very reason among others. Some people value their privacy and don't want everyone in the world to see every detail of their lives. Reasonable people will honor this point of view so long as it causes no harm and none could possibly come from taking down the pictures..
Smartwatches also have heart rate sensors.
There are a few corner cases where smartwatches are advantageous but these have been insufficiently explored to date. Smartwatches have two primary uses. 1) a highly portable data-logging sensor suite and 2) a compact display for compact messages. These are useful things but for most use cases a smartphone can serve the same purpose AND have a lot more capabilities besides. The corner cases where a smartwatch makes a big different don't apply to most people most of the time and so it should surprise no one that they haven't been taking over the world sales-wise.
Haptic feedback is another partial differentiator, it can tap you on the wrist to get your attention.
As you say smartphones can do this too. The fact that there are some corner cases doesn't generally make a good case to buy a smartwatch unless those corner cases are super important. I would argue that your example is not a particularly big problem.
Wait, what? If it's inconvenient, I get that. But ill-advised? If it's ill-advised to carry a cellphone, it's just as ill-advised to wear a smartwatch
You can swim with a lot of smartwatches. Not so much of a good idea with smartphones - even IPXX rated ones. There also are places where smartphones are prohibited for security reasons or where they might prove socially problematic but where smartwatches would be acceptable.
If it's a theft issue, it's on display on your wrist and it's actually more of an issue.
A smartwatch is generally a LOT less conspicuous than most people's smartphones. Less valuable too.
"Smartwatches still have yet to make a significant impression on consumers as a must-have device," said Ramon Llamas, an analyst at IDC.
They mostly are a solution looking for a problem. Smartwatches are useful in some very particular circumstances, mostly where it is inconvenient or ill-advised to carry a smartphone. Those circumstances are not widely applicable in most people's every day lives and therefore there is limited market need for smartwatches. Relatively few people of my generation and those younger wear a watch routinely. People want to wear fewer devices, not more so at best it tends to replace a watch for those who were already prone to carrying one. For the rest of us it actually ADDS a device to carry when the trend it actually to carry less. My smartphone replaced my point-and-shoot camera, my PDA, my calendar, my MP3 player, my laptop in some circumstances and oh yeah it makes calls. Plus it can do everything a smartwatch can do except be small.
Yeah, one of the nice things about the MacBook Pro series, and PowerBook G4 before them, is that you didn't need a docking station to get around bad design.
I don't agree with your assertion that removing ports axiomatically equals bad design. It can but doesn't have to.
Starting with FireWire, and continuing with Mini-DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, you had one or two cables to plug in coming off of a display that had FireWire / USB hubs built in that also acted as a "docking station".
You appear to contradict yourself. You argue that having lots of ports on the laptop is good design and then admit that you plug it into a de-facto docking station anyway. So by your own admission all those excess ports are unnecessary.
Do you really want to carry more cords when you travel? I don't. That's when I make heavy use of wireless stuff when possible. And when you are at a desk do you really care if there are lots of cables as long as you don't have to handle more than 1-2 of them? I don't. That's when I use a docking station and route all the cables neatly under the desk. Apple seems to grasp this.
I've been using a portable Mac since 1998, and this kind of decision making might force me to Lenovo.
Lenovo? Good luck with that. Given their recent actions I wouldn't touch Lenovo with a barge pole. Here's the thing. Your needs/wants may or may not align with what Apple's customer base needs/wants. I have a few pieces of Apple gear but much of my equipment is for stuff that Apple's offerings don't fit well with so I bought something else. Buy what you need and if that happens to be something that Apple makes, great! I am under no illusions that Apple is under any obligation to design products specifically for my needs. It's a pleasant surprise when they do but I don't expect it.
That's right Zippy, one size fits all
Sometimes it does. There are very good reasons why we have standardized interfaces for all sorts of things. The only time to have a specialty single purpose interface is if there are no viable alternative options. Fortunately for hipsters who want to be different just to make a point there are plenty of other options for headphone jacks out there besides the offerings from Apple. If Apple's offerings don't fit your needs, do what I did and buy something else for whatever application you are working on. Trust me, nobody will mind.
Paradigm shift, from consumer is always right, to consumer will accept whatever we fucking give them.
Anyone who thinks the customer is always right has never had to deal with an actual customer. Customers are wrong all the frickin' time. Catering excessively to customers who are wrong is a great way to go bankrupt. Henry Ford put it best when he said "If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have said 'a faster horse'".
Most of the Bluetooth headphones that I have used only like to be paired to one device at a time.
Not universally true and that will change pretty quickly I think. The bluetooth headphones I use can connect up to ten devices. I would expect that to go downmarket pretty fast. Apple's actions have effectively created a market and the void should fill up in short order I expect.
Getting rid of the headphone jack on all Apple's products will be suicide for them.
You keep telling yourself that. This is not Apple's first rodeo with removing interfaces that others were reluctant to part with. While no one knows for certain, all indications so far seem to be that all the furor over the headphone jack really won't affect Apple's sales to any significant degree. There are real threats to Apple's business but this is highly unlikely to be among them. Apple has never tried to be all things to all people and if you really need that jack there are options available to you. Personally I cut the cord for laptop and smartphone audio headphones some time ago and I haven't missed them yet.
Personally I don't really care. I'm actually happy to see the number of cables on my devices reduced by one since I don't really use the 3.5mm jack. You may feel differently of course and that's fine but I'm looking forward to the day when we don't have to deal with separate cable types for monitors, peripherals, power, network, etc. I want to have to carry just one well designed type of cable. I make my living making and selling specialty wire harnesses and I think most of them are just wasteful.
Geez, I actually use my MBP as my desktop for about 98% of the time, and it is hooked to my desktop speakers for listening to.... I'm supposed to fscking do THAT wireless too now?!?!
Only if you want to. You could go USB or thunderbolt pretty easily. I connect my laptops to a USB 3.0 docking station which has a 3.5mm jack built in when I'm using them at my desk. So that's a perfectly viable option when using a laptop as an ersatz desktop PC. Heck you're probably going to hook up a USB hub or peripherals anyway so why not just include the 3.5mm jack there? I could see it being annoying to not have it when you are traveling with a laptop but the arguments against removing it at the desk are pretty weak.
That said on a real desktop PC (Mac) I don't really see a good argument for removing the 3.5mm jack at this time. Neither space, power or cost are constraints and there is no advantage to the user in removing it unless you get something in return. None of those things apply to desktop PCs. I can at least see the argument on a smartphone whether or not I agree with it but those arguments don't apply to desktop machines.