It has to do with enjoying the sport. The noise servers no purpose other than that it's enjoyable to hear.
Again, WHY? I get that people like it, I just cannot comprehend why. I've been to plenty of auto races and have to bring earplugs when I do. The sound does NOT enhance the experience for me and engine noises are not beautiful, not matter what Jeremy Clarkston claims. For the same reason I fail to understand the appeal of Harley Davidson motorcycles that are pointlessly loud and obnoxious. If there is no actual useful primary purpose to the noise (like music), then it is nothing but pollution.
There is no purpose to racing, or any sporting event, at all. Attacking this single part of inane.
There are numerous purposes to racing and sporting events. Entertainment and money not the least among them. Sports (auto and otherwise) are hugely popular and are big business. They are substantial parts of our economy and of people's lives. The purpose is to be entertained and for some to make a living doing it.
Attacking pointless noise is "inane"? We're going to disagree on that. I'm well aware that many people like it but lots of people like all sorts of things that probably should go away. People like big hits in football but the side effect is concussions and permanent brain damage. People (inexplicably) like noisy cars but it's needlessly obnoxious and polluting.
What does the outcome of the race have to do with the enjoyment?
Ask any fan of their local NFL team what the outcome of the game has to do with the enjoyment of said game. The answer will be the same. If the outcome is a foregone conclusion and nobody cares who actually wins then what is the point of a contest?
You're not racing. What do you care who wins?
If no one cares who wins then nobody will bother coming to watch and there will be no race and certainly no business surrounding the race. Racing is a competitive sport and whether you comprehend it or not, people cheering for their favorite team/player(s) matters for the economics of the whole thing to work.
Same for sports. That's not your team. You just bought some of their marketing crap.
So you truly have no comprehension of what makes sports popular do you? It's PRECISELY the fact that people think of these teams as "their team". It's why they say "we" when referring to their team even if they do not actually work for the team. People WANT to be a part of a team, even if they are just fans. Professional sports ignore this at their peril.
I would like to see a "no holds barred" race, where you could enter anything from a teenager on a skateboard with a jet pack, to the Mammoth Car.
No you really wouldn't. Trust me. Then it becomes a contest based on the size of the wallet. F1 is boring for precisely this reason. There are a small handful of teams at the top with huge budgets that have a prayer of winning and the rest are basically competing to try to get on one of those teams. Furthermore you run into some very serious safety problems. The goal is to race and win and maybe do some good engineering along the way, not to design the most elaborate way to earn a Darwin Award.
Formula 1 is the high point of automotive racing technology.
Drive a Formula One car on anything other than an exquisitely paved road and let me know how that works out for you. Fancy a wager on how a F1 car would do against a Rally car on an unpaved road? Let's see a F1 car race a 24 hour race. How about a drag race? Peak of technology? Only for a subset of auto racing conditions.
Have you ever been to an auto race? I would not describe the typical crowd as "rich people".
Then you have clearly not been to a Formula One race. With NASCAR you are quite correct.
But that is just the spectators. If you want to actually race at anything more than your local junker car level, auto racing is hugely expensive. There is an old joke that the best way to make a small fortune in auto racing is to start with a large one.
Formula 1 jumped the shark when they disallowed ground effects.
Formula One has been boring for a loooong time, at least to me. It's basically an engineering arms race between 2-4 teams with little visibility into the actual engineering going on. Cost to field a team with a prayer of winning is between $1/5-1/2 Billion per year. If you aren't driving for one of the few blessed teams with outrageously large budgets, you have almost zero chance to win no matter how good the driver happens to be. Drivers at the back of the field are basically competing to move to one of the few teams with a hope of actually winning a race.
Formula One cars are absolutely amazing pieces of engineering but there is so much secrecy surrounding the engineering that it's hard to enjoy any of it if you are a geek. And the engineering is the actually interesting part of F1. The races are something close to a parade with the order mostly shuffled by mechanical breakdowns. Passes are so damned rare that people get super excited when one actually occurs for a reason other than car performance. The actual Formula One racing is unbelievably boring to watch. Don't get me wrong, I think it is more interesting than NASCAR's demolition derby but I'm damning with faint praise here.
Personally the most interesting driving to watch from my perspective is Rally car racing, specifically stage rallies. The engineering arms race issue is still alive and well but at least the driving is interesting to watch and the cars have some vague resemblance to something I might drive.
For me, the lack of any "raw" engine noise is actually the only minus.
Why? Seriously, why? What does that have to do with the outcome of the race? More noise != faster car. More noise != better engineering. More noise != better driving. Loud engines are a second order effect from trying to get horsepower from internal combustion engines but it isn't important to making a faster car. The noise serves no useful purpose at all and I simply do not comprehend the entertainment value in going deaf from needlessly loud engines.
The high-pitches wheezing just doesn't sound enjoyable at all; it's bland and unrecognizable at this point.
So basically you are telling me that you don't give a rip about the actual auto racing or the engineering involved. You just want a bunch of guys revving their engines loudly with no actual purpose which they could do in a parking lot. [sarcasm] Boy that sounds really exciting... [/sarcasm]
Yet these are two of the most "hated" brands for reasons that have nothing to do with the services they provide patrons.
Disagree. They are loved AND hated for exactly the same reasons and often by the same people. People love low prices but hate the side effects of relentless focus on low prices like low wages. People love consistency and knowing what to expect but hate the monotony of those very same things. People love good service but hate paying for it. People love having jobs but hate working.
In short, people are bi-polar in their attitudes towards big corporations. It's not as simple as saying people love big corporations or hate them. It's both at the same time.
On the other hand, might it be a good thing to make them go through the costly process so that they lose the competitive advantage over the companies that did it usefully at the beginning of development?
The documentation I'm referring to has nothing to do with any competitive advantage. If anything, not doing it is a competitive disadvantage in their particular marketplace. The potential liability costs, warranty/service costs, reputation costs, etc easily outweigh the cost of the paperwork and structure. This particular company was badly structured and was actually incurring all sorts of needless costs and problems by not having their house in order. If anything the FDA will make them more competitive in the long run.
So then the next thing you'd say is priests and lawyers should also not have confidentiality, because that would be inconvenient.
Lawyers and doctors have a relationship worthy of protection for very clear reasons. Same with spouses. But priests/clergy? Not really agreeing with that one. Why should a relationship between a priest and anyone else be a legally protected one relationship? What benefit to society is provided by protecting that relationship? I cannot think of a single benefit to society by protecting that relationship as something special when investigating a crime or inquiring about mental stability.
I don't think most people would disagree with you, but I think it'd be an enormous loss if every country ended up being just like every other country.
Never going to happen. Heck there are pretty substantial regional differences even within single countries. Go visit the Louisiana Bayou and then go to NYC and tell me America is homogenous.
But if you get to some other location and it's the same language, same restaurants, same shops, same recreational activities, what a waste.
"Waste"? Not at all. Shared cultural experiences have huge benefits, not the least of which are increased commerce and reduced conflict. It's hard to think of someone as the Other if they look, talk and act like you. Many people very much like familiarity even when in a foreign place. And it doesn't take a lot to feel displaced. Even something like moving from the US to Canada (or vice-versa) results in some pretty significant cultural adjustments even though the two countries are very similar in a lot of ways.
I'm not at all arguing that everyplace should be the same (quite the opposite in fact) but there is nothing wrong with having some, or even a lot of similarity.
In the end, I think a lot of places that want to be Americanized (or whatever you want to call it) will end up so, and then they'll soon come to regret it.
I could say the exact reverse and it has the same potential of being true. There is nothing wrong with adopting bits of a different culture if they appeal to you. The US has adopted cultural practices and language from around the globe. There is no reason why it should be bad for other cultures to take bits of American culture and language they like (or not if they don't). Different merely for the sake of being different is every bit as bad as everyone being the same.
As for the argument that the tougher cockpit doors and lockout mechanisms are to blame for this incident... that could be argued, but those changes have probably saved more lives over the last 14 years than were lost in this tragic incident
That's a pretty dubious assertion and you certainly have no evidence that it has saved any amount of lives. The main thing protecting the cockpit these days is the realization by most passengers that their safety is in their own hands. Anyone threatens to hijack a plane today and the passengers are very unlikely to sit quietly like they would have pre-9/11. The cockpit door lock is something that sounds sensible but which has unclear protective value and obviously introduces a new failure mode.
One of our customers for my company is a medical device company regulated by the FDA. The FDA a few years ago came down hard on them with fines and a consent decree whereby they couldn't sell products due to issues in their quality control systems. We are very familiar with this company and while they did have issues, the FDA has essentially forced a complete reorganization on them, some of which will be good but much of which is utterly pointless.
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of Control Plans, FMEAs and other documents for products we've been making for well over a decade to support this customer. These documents will serve no useful purpose and in all likelihood never get looked at again. I'm also validating test equipment which I assure you at the end of the day will prove nothing. It's necessary to help our customer stay in the good graces of the FDA but really is pretty much a waste of everyone's time since these sort of documents are supposed to be done when the product is being developed, not ten years later without any evidence of an actual problem.
If this passes, expect states in the US to try the same thing, especially if they have casinos that aren't doing well.
States in the US have had a hypocritical fight against gambling going on for years. Plenty of states have prohibited and restricted gambling in one form or another for most of my life. It's a fairly recent development that casinos have been permitted outside of Nevada, New Jersey and Indian Reservations because the state wanted the gambling revenue for the state lotteries. It's been an uphill battle to allow casinos and other forms of gambling in most states until fairly recently. And now the brink and mortar casinos and the states both want to fight online casinos because those are a threat to their business model.
Quebec is an island of francophone culture off a continent that is dominated by the U.S. Either you embrace protectionism or risk losing all that makes you unique.
That is a nonsense argument. If one needs to resort to protectionist measures to "preserve" your culture from a peaceful (to you) neighbor, then your people don't really support said measures even if they claim to. Actions speak louder than words. People claim to hate McDonalds and yet they sell millions of burgers every year to many of those same people. If the people of Quebec really want to speak French or engage in Francophile activities then they will do so. If they don't then they shouldn't be forced to. Cultural norms shift over time and there is nothing fundamentally bad about that.
I spend a fair bit of time in Canada. I was married in Alberta and regularly vacation in Ontario. Canada is a wonderful country. Most of Canada has little difficulty maintaining what makes them unique because what makes them truly unique isn't stuff the government needs to pass laws to protect.
Another important note is that the GAO is probably the most trustworthy and reliable portion of the U.S. Federal government from the public's point of view.
I agree that they are certainly up there with regard to trustworthiness. However they are hardly the only ones. I know it's super fashionable to claim that government is nothing but a bunch of crooks and that they can't do anything right but it's demonstrably not true. Government can be and often is a powerful force for good in society and while there is no denying that power often breeds/attracts corruption, for a government to be effective it cannot be universally incompetent and/or corrupt.
Other generally regarded as trustworthy and normally competent portions of the US government? Here are a few though hardly an exhaustive list. 1) Portions of the FAA 2) The US Geological Survey 3) The National Park Service 4) US Army Corps of Engineers (make mistakes sometimes but nobody thinks they are crooks) 5) National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration 6) US Fish and Wildlife Service 7) US Coast Guard (and select other portions of the US military) 8) The Secret Service (despite some recent embarrassing errors they're quite good at their job) 9) The US Mint
Not in the slightest. I've seen the hardware and setup for a few hotels and and a lot of restaurants with my own eyes. While I'm sure there are plenty of security issues with LTE, I know for a fact that plenty of public free wifi is about as clean as a $2 hooker.
Folks, you would think the designers of these 'secure' base stations would have wondered how to protect against cell site spoofing.
Please point me to a single instance of non-governmental cell site spoofing outside of black-hat hacking conferences. This simply is not a significant problem. Highly insecure wifi is a significant problem. Extremely slow and annoying public wifi is a significant problem. Anything that can be intercepted via LTE can be (more easily) intercepted via public free wifi. There is no truly secure solution but I'll take my chances with LTE over dubious hotel wifi any day of the week. It's kind of a least worst option.
There is a reason why I generally use LTE through my phone instead of "free" wifi when traveling. Not only is the LTE usually faster and less geographically constrained, but I don't have nearly as many security or connectivity problems 99% of the time. I've been behind the scenes at some restaurants and hotels and the "security" setup pretty much convinced me that free wifi is generally not worth the risk if you have a viable alternative. I assure you that many hotels and probably most restaurants do not have a crack IT staff maintaining their system. It's about as basic and insecure as you can possibly imagine. I've even had to point out to a franchised restaurant that they had the free wifi on the same subnet as their internal computers with zero protection of any kind.
In an article about 'developer fears of Apple' it probably isn't tactful to boast about the loot Apple rakes off the top.
Who'se boasting? I have no affiliation and no particular affinity with regard to Apple. The fact that a few developers are terrified of Apple is not evidence of a widespread problem and the fact that Apple is hugely profitable is pretty much the worst kept secret on the planet.
It isn't expensive anymore to use an eCommerce framework to sell direct to your customers.
Care to wager on that? (Disclosure: I'm a certified cost accountant.) Just because you can set up some software to do ecommerce does NOT mean that it is cheap to reach consumers. In virtually any software company you care to mention, only about 10-20% of cost is in engineering and development. The VAST majority comes of cost to a software company comes from Sales, General and Administration with Sales accounting for the lion's share. Doesn't matter what software company you mention from Microsoft on down to little tiny firms, the basic cost structure is roughly the same. Gross margins are usually somewhere between 60%-80% and net margins are somewhere between 10%-30% with sales and marketing making up most of the difference between the two margins. Microsoft for example spends about 2X as much on SG&A as they do on R&D. If you think selling software is cheap you have never tried to sell software on any sort of scale.
Selling software is not merely a matter of setting up an ecommerce platform. Even ignoring the technical issues, there has to be a reason for people to go there in the first place. That requires marketing (read $$$) even for a very good product, much less the shovelware that accounts for most mobile apps. You'll easily spend as much or more as Apple takes in most cases setting up a system that probably won't work as well and which almost definitely will be more annoying to customers.
Their walled garden represents easily one of the top 3 threats to computing freedom,
How do you figure? Not saying you are right or wrong but I'm not seeing a credible argument backing up this assertion.
and if you're a developer they're nothing but bad news - a nasty middleman who will dictate what your app can do and take your money for the privilege of doing it.
"Nasty middleman"? As if Apple provides no value here. Apple created the f-ing platform, both hardware and software as well as the distribution system. It is WILDLY successful and popular. If you don't like how they do it, go somewhere else. Android or Blackberry or Microsoft are all options. Whether you like it or not, Apple reviewing apps does keep malware and other shitty or problematic apps out of the ecosystem. Are there downsides to this? Absolutely. Is Apple sometimes unfair? No doubt about it. But let's not pretend that there is no benefit either. Apple has created something that a huge number of people value very highly and are willing to pay for. There is nothing wrong with being a middleman as long as you are providing value and Apple clearly does to a lot of people. Maybe you don't value what they are selling (and that's totally fine) but many others do.
For developers, the app store is a microcosm of the American dream, they'll tell you that you can make it on merit, but only a tiny minority will, the rest will just tread water and only enrich Apple in the process.
Let's be frank. 99.999% of the apps on the app store are crap (see Sturgeon's law) and do not deserve any of our money. Just because you put something out there doesn't mean it is automatically valuable to anyone else. If someone is delusional enough to think that developing a crappy piece of software entitles them to anything then I have no sympathy.
For users, it's the worst of '90s computing powered by the latest technology - a store full of shitty shovelware that you have to pay for or be annoyed by ads or restricted by a "trial version."
So every developer is supposed to live the dream and somehow be part of the 1% and they all develop undiscovered gems but you admit that most of the software is actually crap not worthy of purchase. So which is it? You're contradicting yourself. If the developers develop something worth buying, people tend to buy it. If they make shovelware then they deserve to lose money. Neither is Apple's fault or responsibility. Apple just makes both possibilities available. It's up to the developer to make something people will actually give a shit about.
If things get bad enough there's an actual 'revolt' against the platform, that would be something.
Agreed though there is no evidence I can see that such an event has happened or is likely in the near term.
Am I right in thinking the iPhone market-share is decreasing?
No. Apple's marketshare has been remarkably consistent for about 5 years. Apple also gets >50% of the smartphone industry profits which is arguably more important.
Um, which demographic plays Dance Dance Revolution again?
That would be young people, mostly still high school age or younger.
The guy said "techies like us are at increased risk because of our sedentary lifestyles" which is true for lots of techies. Increased risk != destiny. You may be the exception but people who largely sit at their desks and type all day are not as a general rule considered active.
No one cares about nuclear weapons since the cold war ended. Well, no one but old, irrelevant people.
Are you stupid or trolling? You must be a weapons-grade imbecile to not care about nuclear weapons. You seriously think that a device that can fit in the trunk of a car or on the nosecone of a missile, capable of can vaporizing a major metropolitan area in an instant, is not a big deal? That might be the dumbest thing I've ever read on slashdot in the last 15 years and that is saying something.
At some point I realized that nothing serious ever happened, and things kept getting better and I just stopped believing it.
So by your logic because nuclear war hasn't happened yet, it never will? That's... impressively illogical and dangerous.
This is probably why I'm skeptical that global warming will have a serious negative impact on my life.
If you are over the age of 40 and look at actuarial tables, global warming might or might not impact your life greatly. But if you give a crap about those who are younger than you then there is a very real probability it will impact younger folks in very tangible and serious ways. Within my lifetime glaciers have hugely receded, the Arctic ice cap has shrunken to historic lows, etc. If you think those events (regardless of whether caused by man or not) are not having an effect on global climate and weather right now then you either ignorant or have an agenda.
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It has to do with enjoying the sport. The noise servers no purpose other than that it's enjoyable to hear.
Again, WHY? I get that people like it, I just cannot comprehend why. I've been to plenty of auto races and have to bring earplugs when I do. The sound does NOT enhance the experience for me and engine noises are not beautiful, not matter what Jeremy Clarkston claims. For the same reason I fail to understand the appeal of Harley Davidson motorcycles that are pointlessly loud and obnoxious. If there is no actual useful primary purpose to the noise (like music), then it is nothing but pollution.
There is no purpose to racing, or any sporting event, at all. Attacking this single part of inane.
There are numerous purposes to racing and sporting events. Entertainment and money not the least among them. Sports (auto and otherwise) are hugely popular and are big business. They are substantial parts of our economy and of people's lives. The purpose is to be entertained and for some to make a living doing it.
Attacking pointless noise is "inane"? We're going to disagree on that. I'm well aware that many people like it but lots of people like all sorts of things that probably should go away. People like big hits in football but the side effect is concussions and permanent brain damage. People (inexplicably) like noisy cars but it's needlessly obnoxious and polluting.
What does the outcome of the race have to do with the enjoyment?
Ask any fan of their local NFL team what the outcome of the game has to do with the enjoyment of said game. The answer will be the same. If the outcome is a foregone conclusion and nobody cares who actually wins then what is the point of a contest?
You're not racing. What do you care who wins?
If no one cares who wins then nobody will bother coming to watch and there will be no race and certainly no business surrounding the race. Racing is a competitive sport and whether you comprehend it or not, people cheering for their favorite team/player(s) matters for the economics of the whole thing to work.
Same for sports. That's not your team. You just bought some of their marketing crap.
So you truly have no comprehension of what makes sports popular do you? It's PRECISELY the fact that people think of these teams as "their team". It's why they say "we" when referring to their team even if they do not actually work for the team. People WANT to be a part of a team, even if they are just fans. Professional sports ignore this at their peril.
I would like to see a "no holds barred" race, where you could enter anything from a teenager on a skateboard with a jet pack, to the Mammoth Car.
No you really wouldn't. Trust me. Then it becomes a contest based on the size of the wallet. F1 is boring for precisely this reason. There are a small handful of teams at the top with huge budgets that have a prayer of winning and the rest are basically competing to try to get on one of those teams. Furthermore you run into some very serious safety problems. The goal is to race and win and maybe do some good engineering along the way, not to design the most elaborate way to earn a Darwin Award.
Formula 1 is the high point of automotive racing technology.
Drive a Formula One car on anything other than an exquisitely paved road and let me know how that works out for you. Fancy a wager on how a F1 car would do against a Rally car on an unpaved road? Let's see a F1 car race a 24 hour race. How about a drag race? Peak of technology? Only for a subset of auto racing conditions.
Have you ever been to an auto race? I would not describe the typical crowd as "rich people".
Then you have clearly not been to a Formula One race. With NASCAR you are quite correct.
But that is just the spectators. If you want to actually race at anything more than your local junker car level, auto racing is hugely expensive. There is an old joke that the best way to make a small fortune in auto racing is to start with a large one.
Formula 1 jumped the shark when they disallowed ground effects.
Formula One has been boring for a loooong time, at least to me. It's basically an engineering arms race between 2-4 teams with little visibility into the actual engineering going on. Cost to field a team with a prayer of winning is between $1/5-1/2 Billion per year. If you aren't driving for one of the few blessed teams with outrageously large budgets, you have almost zero chance to win no matter how good the driver happens to be. Drivers at the back of the field are basically competing to move to one of the few teams with a hope of actually winning a race.
Formula One cars are absolutely amazing pieces of engineering but there is so much secrecy surrounding the engineering that it's hard to enjoy any of it if you are a geek. And the engineering is the actually interesting part of F1. The races are something close to a parade with the order mostly shuffled by mechanical breakdowns. Passes are so damned rare that people get super excited when one actually occurs for a reason other than car performance. The actual Formula One racing is unbelievably boring to watch. Don't get me wrong, I think it is more interesting than NASCAR's demolition derby but I'm damning with faint praise here.
Personally the most interesting driving to watch from my perspective is Rally car racing, specifically stage rallies. The engineering arms race issue is still alive and well but at least the driving is interesting to watch and the cars have some vague resemblance to something I might drive.
For me, the lack of any "raw" engine noise is actually the only minus.
Why? Seriously, why? What does that have to do with the outcome of the race? More noise != faster car. More noise != better engineering. More noise != better driving. Loud engines are a second order effect from trying to get horsepower from internal combustion engines but it isn't important to making a faster car. The noise serves no useful purpose at all and I simply do not comprehend the entertainment value in going deaf from needlessly loud engines.
The high-pitches wheezing just doesn't sound enjoyable at all; it's bland and unrecognizable at this point.
So basically you are telling me that you don't give a rip about the actual auto racing or the engineering involved. You just want a bunch of guys revving their engines loudly with no actual purpose which they could do in a parking lot. [sarcasm] Boy that sounds really exciting... [/sarcasm]
Yet these are two of the most "hated" brands for reasons that have nothing to do with the services they provide patrons.
Disagree. They are loved AND hated for exactly the same reasons and often by the same people. People love low prices but hate the side effects of relentless focus on low prices like low wages. People love consistency and knowing what to expect but hate the monotony of those very same things. People love good service but hate paying for it. People love having jobs but hate working.
In short, people are bi-polar in their attitudes towards big corporations. It's not as simple as saying people love big corporations or hate them. It's both at the same time.
On the other hand, might it be a good thing to make them go through the costly process so that they lose the competitive advantage over the companies that did it usefully at the beginning of development?
The documentation I'm referring to has nothing to do with any competitive advantage. If anything, not doing it is a competitive disadvantage in their particular marketplace. The potential liability costs, warranty/service costs, reputation costs, etc easily outweigh the cost of the paperwork and structure. This particular company was badly structured and was actually incurring all sorts of needless costs and problems by not having their house in order. If anything the FDA will make them more competitive in the long run.
One last chance for someone to be talked out of doing something we wish they wouldn't do?
Why does that need to be a legally protected relationship? Even doctors are required to report certain activities if they think harm is likely.
Separation of church and state?
Proper separation of church and state would argue against protecting the relationship with clergy, not for it.
So then the next thing you'd say is priests and lawyers should also not have confidentiality, because that would be inconvenient.
Lawyers and doctors have a relationship worthy of protection for very clear reasons. Same with spouses. But priests/clergy? Not really agreeing with that one. Why should a relationship between a priest and anyone else be a legally protected one relationship? What benefit to society is provided by protecting that relationship? I cannot think of a single benefit to society by protecting that relationship as something special when investigating a crime or inquiring about mental stability.
I don't think most people would disagree with you, but I think it'd be an enormous loss if every country ended up being just like every other country.
Never going to happen. Heck there are pretty substantial regional differences even within single countries. Go visit the Louisiana Bayou and then go to NYC and tell me America is homogenous.
But if you get to some other location and it's the same language, same restaurants, same shops, same recreational activities, what a waste.
"Waste"? Not at all. Shared cultural experiences have huge benefits, not the least of which are increased commerce and reduced conflict. It's hard to think of someone as the Other if they look, talk and act like you. Many people very much like familiarity even when in a foreign place. And it doesn't take a lot to feel displaced. Even something like moving from the US to Canada (or vice-versa) results in some pretty significant cultural adjustments even though the two countries are very similar in a lot of ways.
I'm not at all arguing that everyplace should be the same (quite the opposite in fact) but there is nothing wrong with having some, or even a lot of similarity.
In the end, I think a lot of places that want to be Americanized (or whatever you want to call it) will end up so, and then they'll soon come to regret it.
I could say the exact reverse and it has the same potential of being true. There is nothing wrong with adopting bits of a different culture if they appeal to you. The US has adopted cultural practices and language from around the globe. There is no reason why it should be bad for other cultures to take bits of American culture and language they like (or not if they don't). Different merely for the sake of being different is every bit as bad as everyone being the same.
As for the argument that the tougher cockpit doors and lockout mechanisms are to blame for this incident ... that could be argued, but those changes have probably saved more lives over the last 14 years than were lost in this tragic incident
That's a pretty dubious assertion and you certainly have no evidence that it has saved any amount of lives. The main thing protecting the cockpit these days is the realization by most passengers that their safety is in their own hands. Anyone threatens to hijack a plane today and the passengers are very unlikely to sit quietly like they would have pre-9/11. The cockpit door lock is something that sounds sensible but which has unclear protective value and obviously introduces a new failure mode.
One of our customers for my company is a medical device company regulated by the FDA. The FDA a few years ago came down hard on them with fines and a consent decree whereby they couldn't sell products due to issues in their quality control systems. We are very familiar with this company and while they did have issues, the FDA has essentially forced a complete reorganization on them, some of which will be good but much of which is utterly pointless.
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of Control Plans, FMEAs and other documents for products we've been making for well over a decade to support this customer. These documents will serve no useful purpose and in all likelihood never get looked at again. I'm also validating test equipment which I assure you at the end of the day will prove nothing. It's necessary to help our customer stay in the good graces of the FDA but really is pretty much a waste of everyone's time since these sort of documents are supposed to be done when the product is being developed, not ten years later without any evidence of an actual problem.
If this passes, expect states in the US to try the same thing, especially if they have casinos that aren't doing well.
States in the US have had a hypocritical fight against gambling going on for years. Plenty of states have prohibited and restricted gambling in one form or another for most of my life. It's a fairly recent development that casinos have been permitted outside of Nevada, New Jersey and Indian Reservations because the state wanted the gambling revenue for the state lotteries. It's been an uphill battle to allow casinos and other forms of gambling in most states until fairly recently. And now the brink and mortar casinos and the states both want to fight online casinos because those are a threat to their business model.
Quebec is an island of francophone culture off a continent that is dominated by the U.S. Either you embrace protectionism or risk losing all that makes you unique.
That is a nonsense argument. If one needs to resort to protectionist measures to "preserve" your culture from a peaceful (to you) neighbor, then your people don't really support said measures even if they claim to. Actions speak louder than words. People claim to hate McDonalds and yet they sell millions of burgers every year to many of those same people. If the people of Quebec really want to speak French or engage in Francophile activities then they will do so. If they don't then they shouldn't be forced to. Cultural norms shift over time and there is nothing fundamentally bad about that.
I spend a fair bit of time in Canada. I was married in Alberta and regularly vacation in Ontario. Canada is a wonderful country. Most of Canada has little difficulty maintaining what makes them unique because what makes them truly unique isn't stuff the government needs to pass laws to protect.
Another important note is that the GAO is probably the most trustworthy and reliable portion of the U.S. Federal government from the public's point of view.
I agree that they are certainly up there with regard to trustworthiness. However they are hardly the only ones. I know it's super fashionable to claim that government is nothing but a bunch of crooks and that they can't do anything right but it's demonstrably not true. Government can be and often is a powerful force for good in society and while there is no denying that power often breeds/attracts corruption, for a government to be effective it cannot be universally incompetent and/or corrupt.
Other generally regarded as trustworthy and normally competent portions of the US government? Here are a few though hardly an exhaustive list.
1) Portions of the FAA
2) The US Geological Survey
3) The National Park Service
4) US Army Corps of Engineers (make mistakes sometimes but nobody thinks they are crooks)
5) National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
6) US Fish and Wildlife Service
7) US Coast Guard (and select other portions of the US military)
8) The Secret Service (despite some recent embarrassing errors they're quite good at their job)
9) The US Mint
You have got to be shitting me?
Not in the slightest. I've seen the hardware and setup for a few hotels and and a lot of restaurants with my own eyes. While I'm sure there are plenty of security issues with LTE, I know for a fact that plenty of public free wifi is about as clean as a $2 hooker.
Folks, you would think the designers of these 'secure' base stations would have wondered how to protect against cell site spoofing.
Please point me to a single instance of non-governmental cell site spoofing outside of black-hat hacking conferences. This simply is not a significant problem. Highly insecure wifi is a significant problem. Extremely slow and annoying public wifi is a significant problem. Anything that can be intercepted via LTE can be (more easily) intercepted via public free wifi. There is no truly secure solution but I'll take my chances with LTE over dubious hotel wifi any day of the week. It's kind of a least worst option.
There is a reason why I generally use LTE through my phone instead of "free" wifi when traveling. Not only is the LTE usually faster and less geographically constrained, but I don't have nearly as many security or connectivity problems 99% of the time. I've been behind the scenes at some restaurants and hotels and the "security" setup pretty much convinced me that free wifi is generally not worth the risk if you have a viable alternative. I assure you that many hotels and probably most restaurants do not have a crack IT staff maintaining their system. It's about as basic and insecure as you can possibly imagine. I've even had to point out to a franchised restaurant that they had the free wifi on the same subnet as their internal computers with zero protection of any kind.
In an article about 'developer fears of Apple' it probably isn't tactful to boast about the loot Apple rakes off the top.
Who'se boasting? I have no affiliation and no particular affinity with regard to Apple. The fact that a few developers are terrified of Apple is not evidence of a widespread problem and the fact that Apple is hugely profitable is pretty much the worst kept secret on the planet.
It isn't expensive anymore to use an eCommerce framework to sell direct to your customers.
Care to wager on that? (Disclosure: I'm a certified cost accountant.) Just because you can set up some software to do ecommerce does NOT mean that it is cheap to reach consumers. In virtually any software company you care to mention, only about 10-20% of cost is in engineering and development. The VAST majority comes of cost to a software company comes from Sales, General and Administration with Sales accounting for the lion's share. Doesn't matter what software company you mention from Microsoft on down to little tiny firms, the basic cost structure is roughly the same. Gross margins are usually somewhere between 60%-80% and net margins are somewhere between 10%-30% with sales and marketing making up most of the difference between the two margins. Microsoft for example spends about 2X as much on SG&A as they do on R&D. If you think selling software is cheap you have never tried to sell software on any sort of scale.
Selling software is not merely a matter of setting up an ecommerce platform. Even ignoring the technical issues, there has to be a reason for people to go there in the first place. That requires marketing (read $$$) even for a very good product, much less the shovelware that accounts for most mobile apps. You'll easily spend as much or more as Apple takes in most cases setting up a system that probably won't work as well and which almost definitely will be more annoying to customers.
Their walled garden represents easily one of the top 3 threats to computing freedom,
How do you figure? Not saying you are right or wrong but I'm not seeing a credible argument backing up this assertion.
and if you're a developer they're nothing but bad news - a nasty middleman who will dictate what your app can do and take your money for the privilege of doing it.
"Nasty middleman"? As if Apple provides no value here. Apple created the f-ing platform, both hardware and software as well as the distribution system. It is WILDLY successful and popular. If you don't like how they do it, go somewhere else. Android or Blackberry or Microsoft are all options. Whether you like it or not, Apple reviewing apps does keep malware and other shitty or problematic apps out of the ecosystem. Are there downsides to this? Absolutely. Is Apple sometimes unfair? No doubt about it. But let's not pretend that there is no benefit either. Apple has created something that a huge number of people value very highly and are willing to pay for. There is nothing wrong with being a middleman as long as you are providing value and Apple clearly does to a lot of people. Maybe you don't value what they are selling (and that's totally fine) but many others do.
For developers, the app store is a microcosm of the American dream, they'll tell you that you can make it on merit, but only a tiny minority will, the rest will just tread water and only enrich Apple in the process.
Let's be frank. 99.999% of the apps on the app store are crap (see Sturgeon's law) and do not deserve any of our money. Just because you put something out there doesn't mean it is automatically valuable to anyone else. If someone is delusional enough to think that developing a crappy piece of software entitles them to anything then I have no sympathy.
For users, it's the worst of '90s computing powered by the latest technology - a store full of shitty shovelware that you have to pay for or be annoyed by ads or restricted by a "trial version."
So every developer is supposed to live the dream and somehow be part of the 1% and they all develop undiscovered gems but you admit that most of the software is actually crap not worthy of purchase. So which is it? You're contradicting yourself. If the developers develop something worth buying, people tend to buy it. If they make shovelware then they deserve to lose money. Neither is Apple's fault or responsibility. Apple just makes both possibilities available. It's up to the developer to make something people will actually give a shit about.
If things get bad enough there's an actual 'revolt' against the platform, that would be something.
Agreed though there is no evidence I can see that such an event has happened or is likely in the near term.
Am I right in thinking the iPhone market-share is decreasing?
No. Apple's marketshare has been remarkably consistent for about 5 years. Apple also gets >50% of the smartphone industry profits which is arguably more important.
Um, which demographic plays Dance Dance Revolution again?
That would be young people, mostly still high school age or younger.
The guy said "techies like us are at increased risk because of our sedentary lifestyles" which is true for lots of techies. Increased risk != destiny. You may be the exception but people who largely sit at their desks and type all day are not as a general rule considered active.
No one cares about nuclear weapons since the cold war ended. Well, no one but old, irrelevant people.
Are you stupid or trolling? You must be a weapons-grade imbecile to not care about nuclear weapons. You seriously think that a device that can fit in the trunk of a car or on the nosecone of a missile, capable of can vaporizing a major metropolitan area in an instant, is not a big deal? That might be the dumbest thing I've ever read on slashdot in the last 15 years and that is saying something.
At some point I realized that nothing serious ever happened, and things kept getting better and I just stopped believing it.
So by your logic because nuclear war hasn't happened yet, it never will? That's... impressively illogical and dangerous.
This is probably why I'm skeptical that global warming will have a serious negative impact on my life.
If you are over the age of 40 and look at actuarial tables, global warming might or might not impact your life greatly. But if you give a crap about those who are younger than you then there is a very real probability it will impact younger folks in very tangible and serious ways. Within my lifetime glaciers have hugely receded, the Arctic ice cap has shrunken to historic lows, etc. If you think those events (regardless of whether caused by man or not) are not having an effect on global climate and weather right now then you either ignorant or have an agenda.