They replaced it with a new TI-35 Plus which I still use. Kudos to TI for excellent customer support.
You do know that they can do this because they cost TI virtually nothing to make. A few dollars at most. The profit margin on these things has to be enormous because all the tooling was fully depreciated years ago and it's not like they are dropping a lot of money on new designs. I'll agree it's good customer service but it wasn't like they really incurred a big expense in the process. I'm just astonished you actually bothered to contact them instead of just buying a new one.
The scientific calculator with its multi-line LCD screen will be around for a long time yet.
I'm sure it will but frankly they ceased being of much utility to me the moment I graduated from college despite working as an engineer for the last 20+ years. Any calculations I need to do are almost always easier and faster to do with the vastly more powerful PC sitting on my desk. I still have several old TI and HP calculators but I'm sure the batteries in them died years ago and I honestly cannot remember the last time I pulled one out to use. I have an old slide rule too that doesn't get any love either. I'm well aware there are field service jobs where they are quite useful but if you have a PC in front of you they really don't save me any time except in rare corner cases. I can (and do) replicate the functionality with an app on my PC or smartphone should the need ever arise.
I'm both an engineer and an accountant and do some of both in my day job. You would be astonished how many accountants still rely on paper tape calculators even when they have a perfectly functional and far more useful spreadsheet sitting right in front of them. First thing I did at my current job was to throw all the paper tape calculators the company had in the dumpster because those things are a terrible idea that people only use because they don't know any better.
It is almost impossible to find new slide rules now
It's almost impossible to find new buggy whips now too. Life and technology moves on.
I still have one, which I keep as an heirloom.
I inherited my grandfather's slide rule which is a pretty awesome one. Even has a leather holster. I have no practical use for it but it's still really cool (to me) anyway.
Keeping the front page of the internet clean has become a thankless and abusive task, and yet Reddit's administration has repeatedly neglected to respond to moderators who report offenses.
Umm, then don't do it. If it really is that odious a task and you aren't being paid then feel free to do something else. If you continue to do it then it must not be all that bad. The nice thing about being a volunteer is that you can quite any time without any personal consequences. I assure you that the world will go on if Reddit moderators start quitting.
Baffles will increase mass, weight and make loading and unloading of cargo much slower.
And that is somehow worse than the loss of the ship and possibly the crew?
As for the second point, what will all the specialised ships do whilst not being employed for a single task?
Sit idle. Yes this will make the cargo cost more to carry. That's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes. Ships for liquefied natural gas don't get converted to haul coal when not carrying cargo. If safety demands a specialized ship then so be it.
The best and simplest solution is to find out why cargoes are liquefying, its not something that happens that often.
And then what? They evidently already know why they are liquefying. The question is what to actually do about it which will almost certainly involved some amount of change to ship design and cargo procedures.
Thanks though it could be quite a lot longer. Apple makes good products but they are not even close to perfect.
Those things are already available to other manufactures...and add bulk, something Apple/Media have made their faithful believe is bad, like specifications, and openness, and repairablity...even cost!?
To be fair, if those things really are important then some other company should be able to eat Apple's lunch by providing them.
you even defend revenue
Not sure what you mean here. I've explained WHY Apple does some of the things they do. I don't particularly like some of Apple's tactics but I understand why they do what they do. That should not be confused with defending what they do.
Hell their lack of a headphone jack for poor quality speakers; They have made travelling on public transport a nightmare.
I understand why some people want headphone jacks but the problem is blown way out of proportion. A "nightmare"? Really? Isn't that just a touch hyperbolic? If Apple doesn't make the product you want then buy a phone that does have the features you want. There are plenty of very good Android phones out there. The iPhone happens to suit my particular needs pretty well but if your needs are different then get what fits you. You be you.
You are right. I do think desperate is too strong a word, but compelling iterations are not comping out of Apple.
Not compelling to you maybe but Apple is still selling ludicrous numbers of these things so the evidence is clear that they are compelling to a lot of people. The real question is whether Apple can keep improving the products fast enough to maintain or grow revenue further. There is evidence that the smartphone market at least in the US has matured and reached something close to saturation. That means further growth in that market becomes a zero sum game. It's going to be challenging in the long term for Apple to remain a step ahead in perpetuity. And given their current size, growth is going to be REALLY hard. To just grow 5% they have to generate the entire amount of business eBay does from scratch. And it has to have some rather ludicrous margins. There just aren't that many possible products that can move the needle for a company the size of Apple.
thought that Apple is a phone company not a Brand.
Apple has a strong brand but that is not what they are. Apple fundamentally is a software company and people forget or misunderstand this routinely. Their hardware is just the pretty box they bundle with it to sell it to you. Nobody buys a brand if the underlying products suck - or at least they don't buy the products for very long. People often think that Apple is a hardware company but the mistake in this logic is that you cannot be something you do not make and they do not (mostly) make their own hardware - they outsourced that. The thing they do keep in house is software and product design. Since they don't actually sell product design that means their business is really software. Think about it. You could easily put Windows on a Mac or Android on an iPhone since the underlying hardware is near identical. The reason people buy Apple products and pay a premium for them is based in what is different about them and the main difference is the software.
How can you say that in the same breath you mention 1080i, which is a line count? If it's number of pixels, why does no one say the resolution of HD is 2,073,600?
They do say the resolution in terms of pixels. What do you think 4K means? What do you think the term megapixel means? You are confusing marketing terms with technical ones. The term 1080i and 1080p were marketing terms developed by people (probably engineers) many years ago who were clueless about how to market products. If it were done today it would be called 2K or perhaps 2Kp and 2Ki since the line count isn't really important to consumers. (and 720p would be 1K) As it is we get all sorts of stupid terms that read sort of like Super Ultra Mega Quad Duper Wide HD which don't mean anything to anybody. The companies that make this stuff are decent at engineering but utterly hopeless at marketing it to non-geeks. Seriously, how many people actually know the difference between QXGA and TXGA off the top of their head? (and if you do know the answer you need to get out of your mom's basement more often)
It's a problem that goes back to the early days of bitmapped graphics, when they started calling the pixel dimensions of the screen "resolution," whereas prior it had meant the density of detail, e.g. "300-dpi resolution."
I suggest you study the difference between pixel resolution and spatial resolution further to understand why it isn't relevant to this conversation.
In terms of processing, it is processing half the pixels. so it is half the resolution.
You should educate yourself on the definition of resolution. The fact that they display it in a clever way that reduces processing requirements (with some drawbacks) does not change the fact that the resolution of the image (the amount of data you can RESOLVE) is still 1920x1080. The crude definition of resolution in this context is pixel count and number of pixels in a 1080i image is 2,073,600 which is identical to the number of pixels in a 1080p image. Spatial resolution is the same for 1080p and 1080i so that is not relevant here.
Even to see the difference between 1080p and 4k, you need a 100+ inches TV and move your couch forward a lot.
That is a false and commonly repeated myth. Seeing the full detail of 4K requires a large screen and close proximity but to see a DIFFERENCE you merely need to be able to perceive ANY improvement over 1080p which is actually quite trivial and does not require being particularly close or a particularly large screen. I have a 60 inch 4K TV at home and I can tell there is a difference between 4K content and 1080p content from my couch which is 15 feet away. I have to get up close to really see all the details but I can tell it is better from a long way away without even trying. Also I'm typing this on a 24 inch 4K monitor from about 3 feet away which replaced a 24 inch 1080p monitor and it is very easy to see the difference.
So what's the incentive to buy one of these things if the content world is pretty much still on 1080i/p, let alone 4k?
Probably none but your incentives are not the same as everyone else's. I watch a fair bit of 4K content (streaming and disc) and all my computer monitors are 4K monitors (I'm looking at three of them as I type this). I could probably make use of an 8K monitor for computing tasks to start and I'm sure some content will be broadcast in 8K eventually. Probably just for bragging rights at the moment for most people but if they don't make it then nobody will ever make the content for it either. Since people can still watch 4K and 1080p (which should be called 2K) content, they don't lose anything and the future proof their purchase.
Empathy is a huge part. That is why they wear a mask. To protect others.
They wear masks for a lot of reasons and protecting others from illness is not foremost among them for many Japanese. In many cases it is to protect themselves from illness or from allergens.
The US culture has a lot of lack of empathy.
That's simply not true as a broad brush statement. Americans are by and large very empathetic people. Hell we greet each other with salutations like "how are you" which people from many other countries find rather intrusive. You seem to be confusing our taste for independence and autonomy with our empathy for others. Sometimes those things are at odds which explains some of our bi-polar policy behavior. And like any big country we have segments of the population (and certain leaders) that have more empathy than others. But any claim that Americans as a general proposition are not an empathetic people is simply not consistent with the facts.
On the empathy scale, they are on complete different sides.
Simply not true. The difference is in how it is expressed, not how much of it there is.
We've long since hit peak phone, whereby the tech in the existing models satisfies everything we want and more, and we don't lust after any new features.
Oh that's not even remotely true. Here's just a few of the things I'd like to see in an iPhone just off the top of my head. (and I use an iPhone) 1) Proper file management 2) Improved integration/cooperation with other devices (especially cameras or PC but even among apple devices could be better) 3) A bigger battery version 4) Modular OEM cases for features not universally needed like bigger batteries, headphone jacks, SD cards, proper GPS, holding styluses, better camera, etc 5) Stylus support with apps that are actually useful 6) USB-C instead of Lightning 7) Better and more useful Augmented Reality features 8) Speech recognition that actually is useful (Siri by and large sucks)
And with a little time I'm sure I could come up with a much much longer list. The iPhone is a very good and useful device but there is a LOT Apple could still do to make it better. Same with every other phone manufacturer. There is still a huge amount of room for improvement in smartphones and tablets.
Now Apple is getting desperate, and the desperation is showing.
That sounds like wishful thinking of an Apple hater. While I'll be the first to say that Apple isn't getting everything right, there is no evidence of desperation or a major decline in iPhone revenue in the near future.
*waits for share price to crash down hard back to reality*
Apple's stock price is in reality shockingly reasonable given the profitability of the company. The P/E is 19.52 as I type this which is actually quite modest compared to many of their tech peers. Unless their profitability falls off a cliff, your thesis that their stock is overpriced is not consistent with the actual facts.
It's an enormous leap in the amount of payload needed, and the net expenditure of energy, an increase of at least 100 in payload requirements and of roughly 1000 in propellant requirements.
There is nothing about the payload requirements for a manned mission to Mars that our current technology cannot manage. It's not going to be done on a single huge spacecraft so I'm not really clear what you are worried about. Supplies and fuel will be sent via separate missions (probably multiple) most likely and the craft to ferry the humans very likely would be built via multiple launches similar to the ISS. The limitations on such a mission are really just budgetary and life support. The former is a matter of political will and the later is the one major technical hurdle we have yet to overcome though it too probably is just a question of budget. If the mission design requires generating propellant on Mars then that is an additional technical hurdle to address.
The cost and difficulty of launching such a mission from Earth's surface are so large that I do not see how a manned Mars mission is feasible without a permanent station in Earth orbit, one at which large scale construction is possible, to build the spacecraft already in orbit.
I guess you don't work at NASA then because the people actually working on the problem don't seem to regard that as a problem. If you are talking about colonizing Mars you might have a point but to just get boots on the ground is a FAR simpler task and certainly doesn't require building an orbiting factory. Most of the heavy launch capabilities should be available via SpaceX BFR and Falcon Heavy (and similar) long before any manned mission would get off the ground. Even with a crash program we're not sending people to Mars sooner than the mid 2030s unless we make it a one way suicide mission and more realistically it would be 2040s or 2050s probably.
Maintaining assured clear distance IS being predictable as well as assures that you cannot hit the car ahead of you no matter what dumb ass thing they do. Driving right up on someone's bumper on the other hand makes it impossible for you to react quickly enough to avoid an unexpected problem. Physics is unfortunately quite unforgiving in this matter.
If you drive 25mph in a 55mph zone because you insist on keeping a large space in front of your vehicle while everyone in a large line behind you leapfrogs in front, you will be dead or cited for impeding traffic.
I'm sure you would but that's not what actually happens outside of your strawman argument. To maintain assured clear distance you simply have to drive just slightly slower than the car ahead of you for a short period of time. 54mph for a few seconds when the guy ahead of you is going 55 is adequate to accomplish the task. Once you get an adequate gap then you resume traveling at a speed that matches the car ahead of you. Anyone who has actually driven a car knows this intuitively.
Not always and in many ways they are slow and limited.
Much cheaper and quicker.
That's only true currently because we haven't yet developed the life support systems to sustain a human on Mars. A human geologist on Mars could accomplish multiple orders of magnitude more useful work per unit time than any robot we are in danger of developing any time soon. The argument that we shouldn't go anywhere we could send a robot is a flawed argument. The bottom of the ocean is incredibly hostile but there still are good reasons to send people there, not the least of which is simply because we want to go. There are many good reasons to send a robot and there are also many good reasons to send a person. This is not an either/or proposition unless we needlessly make it one.
Also provides incentive for better AI to do autonomous exploration.
Human missions of that sort of duration will require robotic support so this simply isn't true. Plus much of the best technology we've gotten out of the space program has come from the manned programs. If we want it to be more than an academic exercise sooner or later we need to go in person if we possibly can.
Except that we pretty much know exactly what we'll find on Mars.
No, we know SOME things we will find on Mars. There are undoubtedly countless things we are completely unaware of and will be amazed. It's an entire planet that we've barely explored. Heck we haven't discovered everything there is to find here on Earth yet and we've had thousands of years to look. Your argument is akin to flying to another country and snapping a few photos in while on a short vacation and then declaring that you've seen everything there is to see.
A place far more inhospitable than the worst place on Earth.
I assure you that there are places on Earth that will kill you (or anything else) dead just as fast as anyplace on Mars. We're better adapted to most of Earth but not all of it.
Safe distance is a nice academic idea which ignores the reality of driving on busy roads.
Physics doesn't care about your social problems. If you cannot stop without hitting the car ahead of you then you were following too close. There is no debate to be had here. If you don't maintain an adequate gap then you are purposely taking a risk.
Leave enough of a gap between yourself and the car in front and someone will cut in and fill it.
Then you adjust your speed to allow the car to get ahead of you to a safe distance. If the cars behind you have a problem with you driving safely then they can change lanes and pass or simply slow down themselves and suck it up. It's not rocket surgery to figure this one out. And it is not relevant on single lane roads which account for the vast majority of roads anywhere. Believe it or not, not all driving occurs on multi-lane highways.
And in fact while not as safe, close driving is far more efficient in terms of utilising road space in city enviroments.
You don't get both. Safety and efficiency are not always complementary concepts. The choice to drive more dangerously is one you can make but then you don't get to bitch about the consequences when things go badly. If you want driverless cars to be safe then they are going to maintain assured clear distance just like you should. Your failure to maintain an adequate gap is not the fault of the car ahead of you.
I would work on the bus and be just as productive from the bus as I was at my desk.
That must be nice or you must have had a fairly narrow work flow. For me working on a bus would be absolutely horrible for my productivity since I deal with a lot of paperwork and generally have three monitors in front of me for computer work. Plus it's a little hard to manage staff from a laptop on a bus.
So it would be an hour to work, 6 hours in the office, and an hour back.
That would get you fired rather quickly at most companies in the US since commuting time is not considered relevant. There are exceptions but not a lot of them.
Besides, I though that Texas was going to secede from the Union again.
We could only hope...;-)
Old favorite joke of mine. A delegate from Texas was holding court at a political convention and bragging about how big everything in Texas was. Eventually the delegate from Alaska tired of listening to this and told him he should shut up or Alaska would cut itself in half and Texas would only be the third biggest state.
Right but if you stop suddenly in front of someone you're an ASSHOLE.
Not if you stop for a good reason. Are you seriously going to argue that you've never once slowed or stopped your car because you were confused about the situation and wanted to be safe? (If you say yes you are a liar) If you are following too close to someone such that them stopping in front of you is a problem then YOU are the asshat, not them. If you are driving appropriately then a sudden stop isn't a serious problem. If they are confused then maybe consider trying to help or at least be understanding instead of going all third degree jackass.
It is entirely within Google's power to do better, they just don't want to.
??? You seriously think Google isn't trying to improve their vehicles? You think they are just driving and spending all that money for grins and giggles?
No there is an Air Force which has a space focused command - not the same thing and certainly not an integrated service. The Navy also has a similar command. Plus various other defense oriented federal agencies have their own capabilities. There is no Space Force branch of the military at this time - just a bunch of capabilities spread across a variety of federal agencies.
With the possibility of a new branch of the military comes the possibility of new facilities for it. Houston might be a good place for that.
If you want to play that game, then pick anything impossible or claimed to be impossible. Then claim it won't always be so.
Spare us your misplaced snark. Sending a spacecraft to Mars has already been done. Sending a human into space for long periods has already been done. Sending a human to the moon and back has already been done. It's not a significant stretch of the imagination to envision us sending a human to Mars and possibly beyond. Cripes if we weren't overly concerned about them surviving the trip we could do it today. The only thing really holding us back is that we're still developing the life support systems - we already know how to do the rest of it to a reasonable approximation. I'm not talking about some Star Trek level of science fiction here or intergalactic travel. I'm talking about plausible levels of technology advancement within the next several decades and the rationale for doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
They replaced it with a new TI-35 Plus which I still use. Kudos to TI for excellent customer support.
You do know that they can do this because they cost TI virtually nothing to make. A few dollars at most. The profit margin on these things has to be enormous because all the tooling was fully depreciated years ago and it's not like they are dropping a lot of money on new designs. I'll agree it's good customer service but it wasn't like they really incurred a big expense in the process. I'm just astonished you actually bothered to contact them instead of just buying a new one.
The scientific calculator with its multi-line LCD screen will be around for a long time yet.
I'm sure it will but frankly they ceased being of much utility to me the moment I graduated from college despite working as an engineer for the last 20+ years. Any calculations I need to do are almost always easier and faster to do with the vastly more powerful PC sitting on my desk. I still have several old TI and HP calculators but I'm sure the batteries in them died years ago and I honestly cannot remember the last time I pulled one out to use. I have an old slide rule too that doesn't get any love either. I'm well aware there are field service jobs where they are quite useful but if you have a PC in front of you they really don't save me any time except in rare corner cases. I can (and do) replicate the functionality with an app on my PC or smartphone should the need ever arise.
I'm both an engineer and an accountant and do some of both in my day job. You would be astonished how many accountants still rely on paper tape calculators even when they have a perfectly functional and far more useful spreadsheet sitting right in front of them. First thing I did at my current job was to throw all the paper tape calculators the company had in the dumpster because those things are a terrible idea that people only use because they don't know any better.
It is almost impossible to find new slide rules now
It's almost impossible to find new buggy whips now too. Life and technology moves on.
I still have one, which I keep as an heirloom.
I inherited my grandfather's slide rule which is a pretty awesome one. Even has a leather holster. I have no practical use for it but it's still really cool (to me) anyway.
Keeping the front page of the internet clean has become a thankless and abusive task, and yet Reddit's administration has repeatedly neglected to respond to moderators who report offenses.
Umm, then don't do it. If it really is that odious a task and you aren't being paid then feel free to do something else. If you continue to do it then it must not be all that bad. The nice thing about being a volunteer is that you can quite any time without any personal consequences. I assure you that the world will go on if Reddit moderators start quitting.
Baffles will increase mass, weight and make loading and unloading of cargo much slower.
And that is somehow worse than the loss of the ship and possibly the crew?
As for the second point, what will all the specialised ships do whilst not being employed for a single task?
Sit idle. Yes this will make the cargo cost more to carry. That's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes. Ships for liquefied natural gas don't get converted to haul coal when not carrying cargo. If safety demands a specialized ship then so be it.
The best and simplest solution is to find out why cargoes are liquefying, its not something that happens that often.
And then what? They evidently already know why they are liquefying. The question is what to actually do about it which will almost certainly involved some amount of change to ship design and cargo procedures.
I like your list.
Thanks though it could be quite a lot longer. Apple makes good products but they are not even close to perfect.
Those things are already available to other manufactures...and add bulk, something Apple/Media have made their faithful believe is bad, like specifications, and openness, and repairablity...even cost!?
To be fair, if those things really are important then some other company should be able to eat Apple's lunch by providing them.
you even defend revenue
Not sure what you mean here. I've explained WHY Apple does some of the things they do. I don't particularly like some of Apple's tactics but I understand why they do what they do. That should not be confused with defending what they do.
Hell their lack of a headphone jack for poor quality speakers; They have made travelling on public transport a nightmare.
I understand why some people want headphone jacks but the problem is blown way out of proportion. A "nightmare"? Really? Isn't that just a touch hyperbolic? If Apple doesn't make the product you want then buy a phone that does have the features you want. There are plenty of very good Android phones out there. The iPhone happens to suit my particular needs pretty well but if your needs are different then get what fits you. You be you.
You are right. I do think desperate is too strong a word, but compelling iterations are not comping out of Apple.
Not compelling to you maybe but Apple is still selling ludicrous numbers of these things so the evidence is clear that they are compelling to a lot of people. The real question is whether Apple can keep improving the products fast enough to maintain or grow revenue further. There is evidence that the smartphone market at least in the US has matured and reached something close to saturation. That means further growth in that market becomes a zero sum game. It's going to be challenging in the long term for Apple to remain a step ahead in perpetuity. And given their current size, growth is going to be REALLY hard. To just grow 5% they have to generate the entire amount of business eBay does from scratch. And it has to have some rather ludicrous margins. There just aren't that many possible products that can move the needle for a company the size of Apple.
thought that Apple is a phone company not a Brand.
Apple has a strong brand but that is not what they are. Apple fundamentally is a software company and people forget or misunderstand this routinely. Their hardware is just the pretty box they bundle with it to sell it to you. Nobody buys a brand if the underlying products suck - or at least they don't buy the products for very long. People often think that Apple is a hardware company but the mistake in this logic is that you cannot be something you do not make and they do not (mostly) make their own hardware - they outsourced that. The thing they do keep in house is software and product design. Since they don't actually sell product design that means their business is really software. Think about it. You could easily put Windows on a Mac or Android on an iPhone since the underlying hardware is near identical. The reason people buy Apple products and pay a premium for them is based in what is different about them and the main difference is the software.
How can you say that in the same breath you mention 1080i, which is a line count? If it's number of pixels, why does no one say the resolution of HD is 2,073,600?
They do say the resolution in terms of pixels. What do you think 4K means? What do you think the term megapixel means? You are confusing marketing terms with technical ones. The term 1080i and 1080p were marketing terms developed by people (probably engineers) many years ago who were clueless about how to market products. If it were done today it would be called 2K or perhaps 2Kp and 2Ki since the line count isn't really important to consumers. (and 720p would be 1K) As it is we get all sorts of stupid terms that read sort of like Super Ultra Mega Quad Duper Wide HD which don't mean anything to anybody. The companies that make this stuff are decent at engineering but utterly hopeless at marketing it to non-geeks. Seriously, how many people actually know the difference between QXGA and TXGA off the top of their head? (and if you do know the answer you need to get out of your mom's basement more often)
It's a problem that goes back to the early days of bitmapped graphics, when they started calling the pixel dimensions of the screen "resolution," whereas prior it had meant the density of detail, e.g. "300-dpi resolution."
I suggest you study the difference between pixel resolution and spatial resolution further to understand why it isn't relevant to this conversation.
In terms of processing, it is processing half the pixels. so it is half the resolution.
You should educate yourself on the definition of resolution. The fact that they display it in a clever way that reduces processing requirements (with some drawbacks) does not change the fact that the resolution of the image (the amount of data you can RESOLVE) is still 1920x1080. The crude definition of resolution in this context is pixel count and number of pixels in a 1080i image is 2,073,600 which is identical to the number of pixels in a 1080p image. Spatial resolution is the same for 1080p and 1080i so that is not relevant here.
Even to see the difference between 1080p and 4k, you need a 100+ inches TV and move your couch forward a lot.
That is a false and commonly repeated myth. Seeing the full detail of 4K requires a large screen and close proximity but to see a DIFFERENCE you merely need to be able to perceive ANY improvement over 1080p which is actually quite trivial and does not require being particularly close or a particularly large screen. I have a 60 inch 4K TV at home and I can tell there is a difference between 4K content and 1080p content from my couch which is 15 feet away. I have to get up close to really see all the details but I can tell it is better from a long way away without even trying. Also I'm typing this on a 24 inch 4K monitor from about 3 feet away which replaced a 24 inch 1080p monitor and it is very easy to see the difference.
1080i is half the resolution.
No, 1080i is interlaced but the resolution is the same as 1080p. Both are 1920X1080 resolution.
So what's the incentive to buy one of these things if the content world is pretty much still on 1080i/p, let alone 4k?
Probably none but your incentives are not the same as everyone else's. I watch a fair bit of 4K content (streaming and disc) and all my computer monitors are 4K monitors (I'm looking at three of them as I type this). I could probably make use of an 8K monitor for computing tasks to start and I'm sure some content will be broadcast in 8K eventually. Probably just for bragging rights at the moment for most people but if they don't make it then nobody will ever make the content for it either. Since people can still watch 4K and 1080p (which should be called 2K) content, they don't lose anything and the future proof their purchase.
Empathy is a huge part. That is why they wear a mask. To protect others.
They wear masks for a lot of reasons and protecting others from illness is not foremost among them for many Japanese. In many cases it is to protect themselves from illness or from allergens.
The US culture has a lot of lack of empathy.
That's simply not true as a broad brush statement. Americans are by and large very empathetic people. Hell we greet each other with salutations like "how are you" which people from many other countries find rather intrusive. You seem to be confusing our taste for independence and autonomy with our empathy for others. Sometimes those things are at odds which explains some of our bi-polar policy behavior. And like any big country we have segments of the population (and certain leaders) that have more empathy than others. But any claim that Americans as a general proposition are not an empathetic people is simply not consistent with the facts.
On the empathy scale, they are on complete different sides.
Simply not true. The difference is in how it is expressed, not how much of it there is.
We've long since hit peak phone, whereby the tech in the existing models satisfies everything we want and more, and we don't lust after any new features.
Oh that's not even remotely true. Here's just a few of the things I'd like to see in an iPhone just off the top of my head. (and I use an iPhone)
1) Proper file management
2) Improved integration/cooperation with other devices (especially cameras or PC but even among apple devices could be better)
3) A bigger battery version
4) Modular OEM cases for features not universally needed like bigger batteries, headphone jacks, SD cards, proper GPS, holding styluses, better camera, etc
5) Stylus support with apps that are actually useful
6) USB-C instead of Lightning
7) Better and more useful Augmented Reality features
8) Speech recognition that actually is useful (Siri by and large sucks)
And with a little time I'm sure I could come up with a much much longer list. The iPhone is a very good and useful device but there is a LOT Apple could still do to make it better. Same with every other phone manufacturer. There is still a huge amount of room for improvement in smartphones and tablets.
Now Apple is getting desperate, and the desperation is showing.
That sounds like wishful thinking of an Apple hater. While I'll be the first to say that Apple isn't getting everything right, there is no evidence of desperation or a major decline in iPhone revenue in the near future.
*waits for share price to crash down hard back to reality*
Apple's stock price is in reality shockingly reasonable given the profitability of the company. The P/E is 19.52 as I type this which is actually quite modest compared to many of their tech peers. Unless their profitability falls off a cliff, your thesis that their stock is overpriced is not consistent with the actual facts.
It's an enormous leap in the amount of payload needed, and the net expenditure of energy, an increase of at least 100 in payload requirements and of roughly 1000 in propellant requirements.
There is nothing about the payload requirements for a manned mission to Mars that our current technology cannot manage. It's not going to be done on a single huge spacecraft so I'm not really clear what you are worried about. Supplies and fuel will be sent via separate missions (probably multiple) most likely and the craft to ferry the humans very likely would be built via multiple launches similar to the ISS. The limitations on such a mission are really just budgetary and life support. The former is a matter of political will and the later is the one major technical hurdle we have yet to overcome though it too probably is just a question of budget. If the mission design requires generating propellant on Mars then that is an additional technical hurdle to address.
The cost and difficulty of launching such a mission from Earth's surface are so large that I do not see how a manned Mars mission is feasible without a permanent station in Earth orbit, one at which large scale construction is possible, to build the spacecraft already in orbit.
I guess you don't work at NASA then because the people actually working on the problem don't seem to regard that as a problem. If you are talking about colonizing Mars you might have a point but to just get boots on the ground is a FAR simpler task and certainly doesn't require building an orbiting factory. Most of the heavy launch capabilities should be available via SpaceX BFR and Falcon Heavy (and similar) long before any manned mission would get off the ground. Even with a crash program we're not sending people to Mars sooner than the mid 2030s unless we make it a one way suicide mission and more realistically it would be 2040s or 2050s probably.
Driving predictably is safer.
Maintaining assured clear distance IS being predictable as well as assures that you cannot hit the car ahead of you no matter what dumb ass thing they do. Driving right up on someone's bumper on the other hand makes it impossible for you to react quickly enough to avoid an unexpected problem. Physics is unfortunately quite unforgiving in this matter.
If you drive 25mph in a 55mph zone because you insist on keeping a large space in front of your vehicle while everyone in a large line behind you leapfrogs in front, you will be dead or cited for impeding traffic.
I'm sure you would but that's not what actually happens outside of your strawman argument. To maintain assured clear distance you simply have to drive just slightly slower than the car ahead of you for a short period of time. 54mph for a few seconds when the guy ahead of you is going 55 is adequate to accomplish the task. Once you get an adequate gap then you resume traveling at a speed that matches the car ahead of you. Anyone who has actually driven a car knows this intuitively.
Unmanned rovers are good enough for that.
Not always and in many ways they are slow and limited.
Much cheaper and quicker.
That's only true currently because we haven't yet developed the life support systems to sustain a human on Mars. A human geologist on Mars could accomplish multiple orders of magnitude more useful work per unit time than any robot we are in danger of developing any time soon. The argument that we shouldn't go anywhere we could send a robot is a flawed argument. The bottom of the ocean is incredibly hostile but there still are good reasons to send people there, not the least of which is simply because we want to go. There are many good reasons to send a robot and there are also many good reasons to send a person. This is not an either/or proposition unless we needlessly make it one.
Also provides incentive for better AI to do autonomous exploration.
Human missions of that sort of duration will require robotic support so this simply isn't true. Plus much of the best technology we've gotten out of the space program has come from the manned programs. If we want it to be more than an academic exercise sooner or later we need to go in person if we possibly can.
Except that we pretty much know exactly what we'll find on Mars.
No, we know SOME things we will find on Mars. There are undoubtedly countless things we are completely unaware of and will be amazed. It's an entire planet that we've barely explored. Heck we haven't discovered everything there is to find here on Earth yet and we've had thousands of years to look. Your argument is akin to flying to another country and snapping a few photos in while on a short vacation and then declaring that you've seen everything there is to see.
A place far more inhospitable than the worst place on Earth.
I assure you that there are places on Earth that will kill you (or anything else) dead just as fast as anyplace on Mars. We're better adapted to most of Earth but not all of it.
Safe distance is a nice academic idea which ignores the reality of driving on busy roads.
Physics doesn't care about your social problems. If you cannot stop without hitting the car ahead of you then you were following too close. There is no debate to be had here. If you don't maintain an adequate gap then you are purposely taking a risk.
Leave enough of a gap between yourself and the car in front and someone will cut in and fill it.
Then you adjust your speed to allow the car to get ahead of you to a safe distance. If the cars behind you have a problem with you driving safely then they can change lanes and pass or simply slow down themselves and suck it up. It's not rocket surgery to figure this one out. And it is not relevant on single lane roads which account for the vast majority of roads anywhere. Believe it or not, not all driving occurs on multi-lane highways.
And in fact while not as safe, close driving is far more efficient in terms of utilising road space in city enviroments.
You don't get both. Safety and efficiency are not always complementary concepts. The choice to drive more dangerously is one you can make but then you don't get to bitch about the consequences when things go badly. If you want driverless cars to be safe then they are going to maintain assured clear distance just like you should. Your failure to maintain an adequate gap is not the fault of the car ahead of you.
I would imagine that you may have intended to write milk?
Actually no. I thought it would be funnier as written and I don't have autocorrect. Good eye catching the joke though.
I would work on the bus and be just as productive from the bus as I was at my desk.
That must be nice or you must have had a fairly narrow work flow. For me working on a bus would be absolutely horrible for my productivity since I deal with a lot of paperwork and generally have three monitors in front of me for computer work. Plus it's a little hard to manage staff from a laptop on a bus.
So it would be an hour to work, 6 hours in the office, and an hour back.
That would get you fired rather quickly at most companies in the US since commuting time is not considered relevant. There are exceptions but not a lot of them.
Here's my hypothesis: Wage increases and job security.
An old axiom about why buy the cow when you get the milf for free comes to mind...
Guess which one gets the raise. Guess who gets laid off when business is slow.
My guess would be neither and both respectively.
Besides, I though that Texas was going to secede from the Union again.
We could only hope... ;-)
Old favorite joke of mine. A delegate from Texas was holding court at a political convention and bragging about how big everything in Texas was. Eventually the delegate from Alaska tired of listening to this and told him he should shut up or Alaska would cut itself in half and Texas would only be the third biggest state.
Right but if you stop suddenly in front of someone you're an ASSHOLE.
Not if you stop for a good reason. Are you seriously going to argue that you've never once slowed or stopped your car because you were confused about the situation and wanted to be safe? (If you say yes you are a liar) If you are following too close to someone such that them stopping in front of you is a problem then YOU are the asshat, not them. If you are driving appropriately then a sudden stop isn't a serious problem. If they are confused then maybe consider trying to help or at least be understanding instead of going all third degree jackass.
It is entirely within Google's power to do better, they just don't want to.
??? You seriously think Google isn't trying to improve their vehicles? You think they are just driving and spending all that money for grins and giggles?
There's a US space force already.
No there is an Air Force which has a space focused command - not the same thing and certainly not an integrated service. The Navy also has a similar command. Plus various other defense oriented federal agencies have their own capabilities. There is no Space Force branch of the military at this time - just a bunch of capabilities spread across a variety of federal agencies.
With the possibility of a new branch of the military comes the possibility of new facilities for it. Houston might be a good place for that.
Certainly possible
If you want to play that game, then pick anything impossible or claimed to be impossible. Then claim it won't always be so.
Spare us your misplaced snark. Sending a spacecraft to Mars has already been done. Sending a human into space for long periods has already been done. Sending a human to the moon and back has already been done. It's not a significant stretch of the imagination to envision us sending a human to Mars and possibly beyond. Cripes if we weren't overly concerned about them surviving the trip we could do it today. The only thing really holding us back is that we're still developing the life support systems - we already know how to do the rest of it to a reasonable approximation. I'm not talking about some Star Trek level of science fiction here or intergalactic travel. I'm talking about plausible levels of technology advancement within the next several decades and the rationale for doing so.