The guy built that company up from a two-bit hole in the wall operation into one of the largest computer empires known to man.
All by himself? Yeah, not quite. Larry may own a lot of stock but he didn't build Oracle up all by his lonesome. A LOT of other people were involved with that and their contributions matter. Many of them arguably more than Larry himself. You are making the same stupid argument I hear people make on sports radio about how some star player "won" the title, as if none of his teammates mattered a bit.
He could fairly ask for a billion bucks a year as a salary and he would deserve it all!
Really? He brings in more value to the company than $1B/year? I think you are going to have to provide some evidence for that.
Nobody makes much profit off Android - most players make no profit at all.
I'm pretty sure Samsung would disagree with you strongly. You are correct that most Android device makers don't make much of a profit but Samsung definitely does well with Android devices. Google doesn't really need to make money off Android directly. Android is a play by Google to protect their actual core business which is advertising. By controlling the platform they can't be crowded out in mobile ads by Apple or Microsoft.
You'll notice how the majority of seatbelts in the majority of classes do not act like a car seatbelt. In emergencies, people tend to forget that, and rely on their muscle memory of "push button, seatbelt opens", rather than "lift flap, seatbelt opens"
Great. To take your argument you think a quick briefing is somehow going to override that muscle memory that you think people are so enthralled to? Curiously contradictory argument you have there.
Point me to the any evidence that the pre-flight briefing on how to operate the seat belt clasp has saved a single life. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Ah, the standard Slashdot "you are right". Abuse and a complete change of argument.
Abuse? I think you need to thicken your skin up a bit. Furthermore look up the word satire. I think you'll find it helpful here.
You implied that car belts make one an expert at aviation belts. I pointed out they work in unrelated manners.
I didn't imply it. I stated it outright. And I also pointed out that the fact that the number of people for whom the different release mechanism presents a problem is a pretty good approximation of zero. Go ahead and prove me wrong. Find a shred of evidence that the in flight briefing has demonstrably saved a single life and I'll retract my satire. But without evidence you are just hypothesizing about theoretical and unlikely failure modes.
It's not the airlines, it is the FAA. Preflight briefings are mandatory
That is not the same thing as proving that a briefing on how to use a seat belt a useful activity with demonstrable safety benefits. They also used to be required to ask if I had packed my own bags on the apparent (absurd) assumption that any terrorist would break down and fess up. I defy you to find a shred of evidence that pre-flight seat belt briefings have demonstrably saved a single life in the real world. You know, someone saying "whew, if it wasn't for that pre-flight briefing on the seat belt I'd have burned to a crisp". It's the sort of thing that sounds good to an FAA bureaucrat but in reality there is not a bit of evidence that it actually serves a useful purpose.
Most cars are "press to release" Most planes are "pull to release" Someone with 40 years experience in cars might be confused by the airplane seatbelt clasp.
Seriously, have you EVER seen anyone have a problem figuring out the seat belt on a plane who is over the age of 5? If you say yes I'm going to call you a liar. I've been flying for decades and NO ONE has any problems figuring this out.
If you are a supposedly competent adult and can't figure out the seat belt on a plane, we don't need you.
Actually I think it's more to do with the fact that old PCN & GSM phones gave off quite a bit of interference
Which caused precisely zero plane crashes.
Most phones these days hardly use those spectrums and anyway you've still got keep the phone in flight mode.
Not for any evidence based reason. There are social reasons to not allow cell phones (annoys your fellow passengers when you talk loudly) but thousands of phones are turned on every single day in airplanes for the entire duration of the flight (both intentionally and not) and there has not been a single accident ever as a result. If it were actually a safety risk then the ONLY effective solution would be to ban cell phones entirely from the plane. Based on the fact they haven't done this it is not a risk factor and the FAA knows it.
So, what is the use of being better Driver while it is too much costly so that it can not be used by many people even if the Government allows self-driving cars in future?
The cost of ANYTHING is high at first. The main reason for this is fixed costs which are very high on a per unit basis if you haven't produced a lot of units. You need to scale up production to bring the costs down since that allows you to spread the fixed costs over more units. Since we are still in the R&D phase with this technology there is no point in mass producing anything in order to lower the costs. Furthermore as the technology develops we discover cheaper ways to accomplish what was previously expensive.
The mainstream media had (IMHO thankfully) a bit of a hate-on for Bush, so every little thing his administration did wrong was broadcast loud and clear.
Exactly what do you think the media reported on that was out of proportion to the actions taken by Bush and his administration? Under his watch we saw two unjustified wars started, illegal and immoral kidnappings and torturing and even worse arguing that these crimes were somehow justified, squandering of the first budget surplus in decades, an utterly incompetent response to a major natural disaster, and (though arguably not the administration's direct fault) the worst economic crisis in 80 years. If anything the media was WAY too nice to Bush and the rest of them.
They don't seem to have the same diligence towards the current administration
In case you didn't notice the media gave the Bush administration basically a free pass for a good long while after 9/11. Hell, they were positive enough that the guy got re-elected. Furthermore you an alternative explanation for the media's behavior is that there simply is less bad behavior to report on. While the Obama administration is FAR from innocent (they've done some pretty evil things too) they don't have anywhere near the track record of abuse and incompetence of their predecessors. That might be damning with faint praise but it's a better explanation that media ennui.
If the Bush administration handled, say, the whole Benghazi incident exactly the same way our current administration had, would there or would there not be calls for impeachment from the likes of CNBC
Probably not - at least not any more than we hear it from FOX news these days about the Obama administration. The Bush administration did things that were FAR worse than Benghazi and suffered little for the trouble.
Google is your friend, it can show you every last killed and injured biker.
No it cannot possibly show you every last injured cyclist. Killed I could believe but definitely not injured because most cycling injuries never get reported including those that involve cars. I've been in numerous cycling accidents myself of which *maybe* one may have been documented somewhere because it required sutures. I've been in and around competitive cycling my entire life (father races) and I assure you that very few bicycle accidents are ever reported to the police much less the NHTSA.
This is not true. A cheap color laser has very expensive toner needs whereas an expensive inkjet printer can be cheaper than many color lasers.
I defy you to find a case where on a per page basis the ink is even close to as cheap as from a laser. B&W or color, doesn't matter. The toner cartridges for the color laser printer I have next to me cost about $75-85 each and they print about 3500 pages. That is about $0.02 per page versus the average around $0.08 per page with inkjets (look it up). You can buy a printer equivalent to the one I have from the same manufacturer for just over $225 right now.
If you want a color laser you have to buy a very expensive model to achieve cheap toner costs.
Demonstrably not true if you are comparing to any inkjet. You can get a very good color laser printer these days for $250 or less. I have a Brother HL-4150CDN right next to me that you can get for $250 new and the cost per page is very economical and the toner is (relatively) reasonable.
What is the use case? Color or B&W? How many pages per month? Printing text, pictures or graphics?
When I replaced our inkjet at work with a color laser printer the payback was basically about 2500 pages (the first set of toner cartridges) to erase the price premium of the laser. I did the math just out of curiosity. Plus it allowed me to use the printer in circumstances where it didn't make economic sense before (ink cost too much). Add in the fact that the laser was FAR faster, has a larger paper tray, could print duplex and was network capable and it was pretty much a no brainer.
We replaced every inkjet in my office with a laser. For basic B&W printing we use some basic Brother laser printers that cost about $75 when on sale and print 3000 pages per toner cartridge.
Inkjets have some very narrow use cases where they make sense. Printing high quality photos is the most common. A good inkjet will print images better than a consumer grade laser printer.
Laser printers are still much more expensive to buy than inkjets.
Not really true anymore. You can get a very good basic laser printer for about US$60-90. I just bought a pair of Brother laser printers for about $75 each and they work great. Even a good color laser can be had for about US200-300.
Sure after 10,000 pages they're cheaper but most inkjets never make it that far
Kind of shooting your argument in the foot there. First set of ink cartridges you have dry out on you prematurely (which WILL happen if you don't print regularly) will erase any cost difference. And if you do print a lot then a laser very quickly becomes the economic choice. There are a few people for whom inkjets sort of make sense but not many. Inkjets are good if you are using them to regularly print high quality pictures. They also are good as large plotters. Otherwise I can't really think of a use case that makes much sense. If you only print very occasionally an inkjet is a REALLY stupid purchase and super wasteful as well. Most inkjets I've used are built really really poorly so you'll end up throwing them out even if you ignore the outrageous cost of ink.
Lasers are also bulkier.
Again, not actually true in many many cases. Most lasers are comparably sized to inkjets with similar performance and features. Doesn't matter whether you are talking about just printers or multi-function units. Inkjets might be a bit smaller but the difference is usually pretty minor.
One of them broke off while replacing the toner cartridge for the very first time rendering the printer unusable. I haven't looked at Brother's printers since. The price was right but the quality of the hardware wasn't up to snuff.
Our company has about 6 Brother laser printers of various sorts. They're workhorses. They are reasonably priced and I've gotten excellent mileage out of them with good reliability. I have a Brother HL-4150CDN sitting next to me that I print about 1000-2000 pages a month with and has worked for nearly 3 years without any problems. My only real complaint with them is that they declare the toner cartridge to be out of ink before it actually is out of ink and will not print until it is replaced.
I wouldn't touch an inkjet with a barge pole except for a few very specific circumstances.
The deficit doesn't get any better when Windows is run on Apple hardware.
Perhaps because the Apple hardware that can run Windows is barely any different than the hardware from Dell or HP. The case for these PCs might be a different shape but the processors, RAM, chipset, etc are close to identical for all practical purposes. 99% of the functional difference between a Dell and an Apple is in the software. One would expect the experience of running Windows on an Apple computer to be pretty darn similar to running on a similarly spec'd Dell.
Yes, just in case for both sides. Doesn't mean the plans are expected to be used but you can be certain that the US military has at some point developed plans for attacking and defending against every country in the world. Just in case.
which is not a valid argument for any NSA actions against a friendly country.
There is no such thing as a friendly foreign country as far as intelligence services are concerned. While I (and probably you) do not and should not approve of the NSA's actions, we also should not be even a tiny bit surprised by them and you can be quite sure France is not surprised despite what their government might claim. Allies can become enemies and even countries on good terms can harbor dangerous individuals - sometimes unknowingly. The US and Canada have the longest undefended border in the world but I guarantee you that they do spy on each other and that each has developed invasion/defense plans against the other just in case. Intelligence services like the CIA and NSA look for information wherever it can be found. If that happens to be a "friendly" nation or even their own citizens then so be it. This is why it is SO important to have meaningful oversight by civilian authorities. Something which we are sorely lacking at the present time.
Countries that complain about NSA spying are really just putting on a show for their voting public. They have their own intelligence services and you can be 100% certain they are spying on the US and you can also be 100% sure that they knew or at least suspected the NSA spying already. Frankly the ONLY thing that would surprise me is if they were not trying to replicate to some degree what the US is doing.
Illegal == undocumented in the context of this discussion.
100% wrong. Illegal is illegal and undocumented is undocumented. They both mean very specific things and the context of the discussion is irrelevant. If a person is illegal AND undocumented then the only correct statement is to say they are both. Someone can be legal and undocumented or illegal and documented.
I assume that's double speak for illegally working
Undocumented means exactly what it you think the word means. It means there is no documentation available to prove the person's citizenship status. If I were to lose certain important documents, I would be undocumented and I'm a US citizen. Often immigrants who are here illegally are also undocumented but undocumented does not mean illegal and illegal does not mean undocumented.
Intel did the right thing and deployed their SSD upgrade software [intel.com] as a bootable CD.
I think that was the best way to do it last decade but it's a bit like an updated version of when every flash update required a 1.44MB floppy. CD drives are being phased out. Lots of machines don't come with CDs anymore including the one I'm using to type this. While I have a USB CD drive if I need it, I break it out *maybe* twice a year. Usually if I need drivers or software I get them online. If I need to take software with me I put it on a flash drive or an online storage service. I'm having a hard time remembering the last time I actually burned a CD.
Flash drives are a better option most of the time since they are smaller, reusable, repurpose-able, and take up less wasted space in my closet.
I presume you are referring to plans such as Universal Life or similar? Sure, it can be a tax advantaged account. Plus it can have lots of other estate advantages.
Often after they get a terminal diagnosis.
If you take out a sizeable life insurance plan you will almost certainly be required to get a physical. The underwriters will adjust the cost of the plan accordingly.
Insurance is, by definition, payment to mitigate risk. If one has the ability to back up that risk, as the 1% do, it is on average better to not get insurance.
You are generally correct but it is a bit more nuanced than that. The question you have to ask is whether the underwriting premiums (the amount you pay) is likely to exceed the benefits paid out to you. As you say, a gamble. If you can afford the loss in many cases it is better to just take the risk as your expected return is higher. This typically comes down to how much is being charged for the insurance premiums. Some very smart underwriters are evaluating the risks and if the underwriting is being done at a profit that by definition means that the insurance costs more than the payout on average. Feeling lucky?
Healthcare insurance is unusual in that if you get ill, you can be financially wiped out very quickly unless you are extremely wealthy. It also is unusual in that EVERYBODY is going to need healthcare at some point which is not true of many other forms of insurance. Health insurance isn't really primarily to pay for your annual checkup but rather to keep you from going bankrupt should you need surgery or other serious medical care. A few days in a hospital can easily add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills - well beyond the means of most people. However as you get lower on the income scale it takes less and less (not linear either) to bankrupt you they need more things covered.
On the other hand if you examine the estates of the very rich (the so called 1%) you'll actually find they tend to have a LOT of insurance. Some of it is for estate planning, some is for asset protection, some is simply a calculated investment. Insurance is a form of investment. Insurance is simply a bet that you are going to have worse luck than the insurance company thinks you will. The advantage you have in that equation is that you have more information about yourself and your situation than the insurance company does. Smart people take advantage of this fact.
Slashdot Mirror
The guy built that company up from a two-bit hole in the wall operation into one of the largest computer empires known to man.
All by himself? Yeah, not quite. Larry may own a lot of stock but he didn't build Oracle up all by his lonesome. A LOT of other people were involved with that and their contributions matter. Many of them arguably more than Larry himself. You are making the same stupid argument I hear people make on sports radio about how some star player "won" the title, as if none of his teammates mattered a bit.
He could fairly ask for a billion bucks a year as a salary and he would deserve it all!
Really? He brings in more value to the company than $1B/year? I think you are going to have to provide some evidence for that.
Nobody makes much profit off Android - most players make no profit at all.
I'm pretty sure Samsung would disagree with you strongly. You are correct that most Android device makers don't make much of a profit but Samsung definitely does well with Android devices. Google doesn't really need to make money off Android directly. Android is a play by Google to protect their actual core business which is advertising. By controlling the platform they can't be crowded out in mobile ads by Apple or Microsoft.
You'll notice how the majority of seatbelts in the majority of classes do not act like a car seatbelt. In emergencies, people tend to forget that, and rely on their muscle memory of "push button, seatbelt opens", rather than "lift flap, seatbelt opens"
Great. To take your argument you think a quick briefing is somehow going to override that muscle memory that you think people are so enthralled to? Curiously contradictory argument you have there.
Point me to the any evidence that the pre-flight briefing on how to operate the seat belt clasp has saved a single life. Go ahead, I'll wait.
[/crickets]
Thats what I thought...
Ah, the standard Slashdot "you are right". Abuse and a complete change of argument.
Abuse? I think you need to thicken your skin up a bit. Furthermore look up the word satire. I think you'll find it helpful here.
You implied that car belts make one an expert at aviation belts. I pointed out they work in unrelated manners.
I didn't imply it. I stated it outright. And I also pointed out that the fact that the number of people for whom the different release mechanism presents a problem is a pretty good approximation of zero. Go ahead and prove me wrong. Find a shred of evidence that the in flight briefing has demonstrably saved a single life and I'll retract my satire. But without evidence you are just hypothesizing about theoretical and unlikely failure modes.
It's not the airlines, it is the FAA. Preflight briefings are mandatory
That is not the same thing as proving that a briefing on how to use a seat belt a useful activity with demonstrable safety benefits. They also used to be required to ask if I had packed my own bags on the apparent (absurd) assumption that any terrorist would break down and fess up. I defy you to find a shred of evidence that pre-flight seat belt briefings have demonstrably saved a single life in the real world. You know, someone saying "whew, if it wasn't for that pre-flight briefing on the seat belt I'd have burned to a crisp". It's the sort of thing that sounds good to an FAA bureaucrat but in reality there is not a bit of evidence that it actually serves a useful purpose.
Most cars are "press to release" Most planes are "pull to release" Someone with 40 years experience in cars might be confused by the airplane seatbelt clasp.
Seriously, have you EVER seen anyone have a problem figuring out the seat belt on a plane who is over the age of 5? If you say yes I'm going to call you a liar. I've been flying for decades and NO ONE has any problems figuring this out.
If you are a supposedly competent adult and can't figure out the seat belt on a plane, we don't need you.
If you'll please pay attention to our safety demonstration and procedures speech...
You mean the one where they explain how to use a seatbelt for everyone who hasn't been in a car in the last 40 years?
Actually I think it's more to do with the fact that old PCN & GSM phones gave off quite a bit of interference
Which caused precisely zero plane crashes.
Most phones these days hardly use those spectrums and anyway you've still got keep the phone in flight mode.
Not for any evidence based reason. There are social reasons to not allow cell phones (annoys your fellow passengers when you talk loudly) but thousands of phones are turned on every single day in airplanes for the entire duration of the flight (both intentionally and not) and there has not been a single accident ever as a result. If it were actually a safety risk then the ONLY effective solution would be to ban cell phones entirely from the plane. Based on the fact they haven't done this it is not a risk factor and the FAA knows it.
So, what is the use of being better Driver while it is too much costly so that it can not be used by many people even if the Government allows self-driving cars in future?
The cost of ANYTHING is high at first. The main reason for this is fixed costs which are very high on a per unit basis if you haven't produced a lot of units. You need to scale up production to bring the costs down since that allows you to spread the fixed costs over more units. Since we are still in the R&D phase with this technology there is no point in mass producing anything in order to lower the costs. Furthermore as the technology develops we discover cheaper ways to accomplish what was previously expensive.
The mainstream media had (IMHO thankfully) a bit of a hate-on for Bush, so every little thing his administration did wrong was broadcast loud and clear.
Exactly what do you think the media reported on that was out of proportion to the actions taken by Bush and his administration? Under his watch we saw two unjustified wars started, illegal and immoral kidnappings and torturing and even worse arguing that these crimes were somehow justified, squandering of the first budget surplus in decades, an utterly incompetent response to a major natural disaster, and (though arguably not the administration's direct fault) the worst economic crisis in 80 years. If anything the media was WAY too nice to Bush and the rest of them.
They don't seem to have the same diligence towards the current administration
In case you didn't notice the media gave the Bush administration basically a free pass for a good long while after 9/11. Hell, they were positive enough that the guy got re-elected. Furthermore you an alternative explanation for the media's behavior is that there simply is less bad behavior to report on. While the Obama administration is FAR from innocent (they've done some pretty evil things too) they don't have anywhere near the track record of abuse and incompetence of their predecessors. That might be damning with faint praise but it's a better explanation that media ennui.
If the Bush administration handled, say, the whole Benghazi incident exactly the same way our current administration had, would there or would there not be calls for impeachment from the likes of CNBC
Probably not - at least not any more than we hear it from FOX news these days about the Obama administration. The Bush administration did things that were FAR worse than Benghazi and suffered little for the trouble.
Google is your friend, it can show you every last killed and injured biker.
No it cannot possibly show you every last injured cyclist. Killed I could believe but definitely not injured because most cycling injuries never get reported including those that involve cars. I've been in numerous cycling accidents myself of which *maybe* one may have been documented somewhere because it required sutures. I've been in and around competitive cycling my entire life (father races) and I assure you that very few bicycle accidents are ever reported to the police much less the NHTSA.
This is not true. A cheap color laser has very expensive toner needs whereas an expensive inkjet printer can be cheaper than many color lasers.
I defy you to find a case where on a per page basis the ink is even close to as cheap as from a laser. B&W or color, doesn't matter. The toner cartridges for the color laser printer I have next to me cost about $75-85 each and they print about 3500 pages. That is about $0.02 per page versus the average around $0.08 per page with inkjets (look it up). You can buy a printer equivalent to the one I have from the same manufacturer for just over $225 right now.
If you want a color laser you have to buy a very expensive model to achieve cheap toner costs.
Demonstrably not true if you are comparing to any inkjet. You can get a very good color laser printer these days for $250 or less. I have a Brother HL-4150CDN right next to me that you can get for $250 new and the cost per page is very economical and the toner is (relatively) reasonable.
Show me the calculation, I'm not convinced.
What is the use case? Color or B&W? How many pages per month? Printing text, pictures or graphics?
When I replaced our inkjet at work with a color laser printer the payback was basically about 2500 pages (the first set of toner cartridges) to erase the price premium of the laser. I did the math just out of curiosity. Plus it allowed me to use the printer in circumstances where it didn't make economic sense before (ink cost too much). Add in the fact that the laser was FAR faster, has a larger paper tray, could print duplex and was network capable and it was pretty much a no brainer.
We replaced every inkjet in my office with a laser. For basic B&W printing we use some basic Brother laser printers that cost about $75 when on sale and print 3000 pages per toner cartridge.
Inkjets have some very narrow use cases where they make sense. Printing high quality photos is the most common. A good inkjet will print images better than a consumer grade laser printer.
Laser printers are still much more expensive to buy than inkjets.
Not really true anymore. You can get a very good basic laser printer for about US$60-90. I just bought a pair of Brother laser printers for about $75 each and they work great. Even a good color laser can be had for about US200-300.
Sure after 10,000 pages they're cheaper but most inkjets never make it that far
Kind of shooting your argument in the foot there. First set of ink cartridges you have dry out on you prematurely (which WILL happen if you don't print regularly) will erase any cost difference. And if you do print a lot then a laser very quickly becomes the economic choice. There are a few people for whom inkjets sort of make sense but not many. Inkjets are good if you are using them to regularly print high quality pictures. They also are good as large plotters. Otherwise I can't really think of a use case that makes much sense. If you only print very occasionally an inkjet is a REALLY stupid purchase and super wasteful as well. Most inkjets I've used are built really really poorly so you'll end up throwing them out even if you ignore the outrageous cost of ink.
Lasers are also bulkier.
Again, not actually true in many many cases. Most lasers are comparably sized to inkjets with similar performance and features. Doesn't matter whether you are talking about just printers or multi-function units. Inkjets might be a bit smaller but the difference is usually pretty minor.
One of them broke off while replacing the toner cartridge for the very first time rendering the printer unusable. I haven't looked at Brother's printers since. The price was right but the quality of the hardware wasn't up to snuff.
Our company has about 6 Brother laser printers of various sorts. They're workhorses. They are reasonably priced and I've gotten excellent mileage out of them with good reliability. I have a Brother HL-4150CDN sitting next to me that I print about 1000-2000 pages a month with and has worked for nearly 3 years without any problems. My only real complaint with them is that they declare the toner cartridge to be out of ink before it actually is out of ink and will not print until it is replaced.
I wouldn't touch an inkjet with a barge pole except for a few very specific circumstances.
The deficit doesn't get any better when Windows is run on Apple hardware.
Perhaps because the Apple hardware that can run Windows is barely any different than the hardware from Dell or HP. The case for these PCs might be a different shape but the processors, RAM, chipset, etc are close to identical for all practical purposes. 99% of the functional difference between a Dell and an Apple is in the software. One would expect the experience of running Windows on an Apple computer to be pretty darn similar to running on a similarly spec'd Dell.
Oh yeah, "just in case"
Yes, just in case for both sides. Doesn't mean the plans are expected to be used but you can be certain that the US military has at some point developed plans for attacking and defending against every country in the world. Just in case.
which is not a valid argument for any NSA actions against a friendly country.
There is no such thing as a friendly foreign country as far as intelligence services are concerned. While I (and probably you) do not and should not approve of the NSA's actions, we also should not be even a tiny bit surprised by them and you can be quite sure France is not surprised despite what their government might claim. Allies can become enemies and even countries on good terms can harbor dangerous individuals - sometimes unknowingly. The US and Canada have the longest undefended border in the world but I guarantee you that they do spy on each other and that each has developed invasion/defense plans against the other just in case. Intelligence services like the CIA and NSA look for information wherever it can be found. If that happens to be a "friendly" nation or even their own citizens then so be it. This is why it is SO important to have meaningful oversight by civilian authorities. Something which we are sorely lacking at the present time.
Countries that complain about NSA spying are really just putting on a show for their voting public. They have their own intelligence services and you can be 100% certain they are spying on the US and you can also be 100% sure that they knew or at least suspected the NSA spying already. Frankly the ONLY thing that would surprise me is if they were not trying to replicate to some degree what the US is doing.
Illegal == undocumented in the context of this discussion.
100% wrong. Illegal is illegal and undocumented is undocumented. They both mean very specific things and the context of the discussion is irrelevant. If a person is illegal AND undocumented then the only correct statement is to say they are both. Someone can be legal and undocumented or illegal and documented.
I assume that's double speak for illegally working
Undocumented means exactly what it you think the word means. It means there is no documentation available to prove the person's citizenship status. If I were to lose certain important documents, I would be undocumented and I'm a US citizen. Often immigrants who are here illegally are also undocumented but undocumented does not mean illegal and illegal does not mean undocumented.
But flash memory is not suitable for long-term data storage.
Neither are most CDs.
Intel did the right thing and deployed their SSD upgrade software [intel.com] as a bootable CD.
I think that was the best way to do it last decade but it's a bit like an updated version of when every flash update required a 1.44MB floppy. CD drives are being phased out. Lots of machines don't come with CDs anymore including the one I'm using to type this. While I have a USB CD drive if I need it, I break it out *maybe* twice a year. Usually if I need drivers or software I get them online. If I need to take software with me I put it on a flash drive or an online storage service. I'm having a hard time remembering the last time I actually burned a CD.
Flash drives are a better option most of the time since they are smaller, reusable, repurpose-able, and take up less wasted space in my closet.
The very rich buy life insurance as a tax dodge.
I presume you are referring to plans such as Universal Life or similar? Sure, it can be a tax advantaged account. Plus it can have lots of other estate advantages.
Often after they get a terminal diagnosis.
If you take out a sizeable life insurance plan you will almost certainly be required to get a physical. The underwriters will adjust the cost of the plan accordingly.
Insurance is, by definition, payment to mitigate risk. If one has the ability to back up that risk, as the 1% do, it is on average better to not get insurance.
You are generally correct but it is a bit more nuanced than that. The question you have to ask is whether the underwriting premiums (the amount you pay) is likely to exceed the benefits paid out to you. As you say, a gamble. If you can afford the loss in many cases it is better to just take the risk as your expected return is higher. This typically comes down to how much is being charged for the insurance premiums. Some very smart underwriters are evaluating the risks and if the underwriting is being done at a profit that by definition means that the insurance costs more than the payout on average. Feeling lucky?
Healthcare insurance is unusual in that if you get ill, you can be financially wiped out very quickly unless you are extremely wealthy. It also is unusual in that EVERYBODY is going to need healthcare at some point which is not true of many other forms of insurance. Health insurance isn't really primarily to pay for your annual checkup but rather to keep you from going bankrupt should you need surgery or other serious medical care. A few days in a hospital can easily add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills - well beyond the means of most people. However as you get lower on the income scale it takes less and less (not linear either) to bankrupt you they need more things covered.
On the other hand if you examine the estates of the very rich (the so called 1%) you'll actually find they tend to have a LOT of insurance. Some of it is for estate planning, some is for asset protection, some is simply a calculated investment. Insurance is a form of investment. Insurance is simply a bet that you are going to have worse luck than the insurance company thinks you will. The advantage you have in that equation is that you have more information about yourself and your situation than the insurance company does. Smart people take advantage of this fact.
Mondelez says the software will only use and collect aggregate data, and will not record any video or photos.
...at first. Later on we make no promises.
Seriously, if this can be abused it will be.