There's nothing wrong with EVs that a battery that lasts twice as long at half the cost wouldn't fix.
I prefer the opposite. There is nothing wrong with EVs that gasoline at twice the price wouldn't fix. Tax gasoline up to $8.00 a gallon and you'll see some serious interest in electric vehicles even with present limitations.
In 2009, the average length of a car trip was 10.1 miles; the average length of a commute to work was 12.6 miles.
Most usage of cars could be done easily with electric vehicles, with recharge overnight at home.
The problem isn't the averages, the problem is the variation. Most of the time you are correct that people could get their business done as the average distance traveled per day is around 35 miles. But long road trips are not unusual in the US. My daily round trip commute is around 40 miles but my daily miles driven is around 92 miles. (I drive around 35,000 miles per year) That means I take frequent longer trips, well beyond the range of any current electric vehicle. I'm not particularly unusual. I'd love an electric car but there is no way I could presently justify it as a primary vehicle - my daily driving needs vary too much. So I have to buy an entire second vehicle which is rather wasteful since I already have a gasoline powered vehicle. A plug-in-hybrid makes a lot of sense for my needs but the range limitation of an all-electric car is just a deal breaker. The problem isn't my average day - the problem is the variation in my average days
for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical.
That's not the same thing as saying most individuals have two or more vehicles - most do not. Many households do have second vehicles because there are multiple drivers. For the reasons above the problem is that you still have to justify the electric vehicle as a primary vehicle for at least one of the household members. That means one household member has to give up going beyond a certain range in a day. That's a harder sell than you seem to think even ignoring the presently higher cost of electric vehicles. Why? People choose vehicles for reasons other than their actual needs.
As an example the Ford F-150 has been the best selling vehicle in the US for decades but only a single digit percentage of people actually utilize its off road capabilities. They buy it for image (both self and projected) as much as for features. Actual horsepower needs are far more modest than what is available and the pickup bed will be empty most of the time. So long a fuel remains relatively cheap, the advantages of electric vehicles are insufficient to overcome the limitations of the charging infrastructure. People do not want to worry about needing to wait somewhere for 8 hours while they charge their car even if that would be a very rare event in reality.
Maybe in USA where diesel fuel is frowned upon, and engines are huge and cars are unnecessarily heavy & big, prius was a game changer.
The Prius is among the best selling cars in Japan and one of the top sellers world wide. It proved there is a sustainable market for hybrids which was not something that anyone could be sure of prior to the Prius. So yes, it is a game changer regardless of where you call home, even if that happens to be Europe.
Here in Europe, where it has to complete with all modern 1.6l diesels, the added price & complexity & weight don't make much sense- fuel consumption will be very close.
For long trips, particularly on the highway, a diesel will be competitive with a hybrid and better in some cases. However, for short trips where the hybrid can go battery only or for stop and go traffic at lower speeds a hybrid optimized for fuel economy (like a Prius or Volt) can easily be more economical on fuel than most diesel power cars. Diesels perform best at constant speeds which means they typically get great highway fuel economy but not-so-great around town fuel economy. Hybrids tend to be the reverse.
What I'd LOVE to see is a diesel-electric plug-in-hybrid where the only function the diesel has is to provide electrical power. Basically the same sort of technology used for locomotives on a smaller scale. I know Peugeot has developed a diesel hybrid but there is nothing like it available outside Europe that I'm aware of.
If a company cannot sell a product for a profit, there is no point in making the product. Current technology for electric vehicles has one huge showstopper bug in the recharge times. Until this problem is solved there is no mass market for all electric vehicles. There will be room for niche makers like Tesla (maybe) but nothing more. Plug-In-Hybrids are where there is a market and where the car makers can and should focus their efforts.
Toyota has been an innovator in how production operates, not in building game changing new vehicles.
I disagree. The Prius was a game changing vehicle. It is the first genuinely popular hybrid vehicle and it proved that there is a market for hybrid powertrains. While I will concede that Toyota's most important innovations have been in manufacturing processes, they have had some genuinely innovative products.
until an electric vehicle can be charged in the same time that a gasoline based car can be fueled, they will all be unacceptable to vast majority of drivers.
It doesn't have to be the same - it just has to be competitive. 15-20 minutes probably would be acceptable given the other advantages of an electric vehicle. Not as fast as filling a gas tank but close enough that people are willing to accept the differences. What is not acceptable and I think was your main point is that recharge times measured in hours are never going to be acceptable for mainstream use.
Toyota has pioneered the hybrid-electric market, selling each one at a net loss.
I guarantee you that Toyota is no longer selling the Prius at a loss. There is absolutely no business case that could be made to sell as many Prius's as they have while making a loss on each one. They probably were losing money at first but not anymore.
While I would genuinely love to buy an all electric vehicle, the technology just isn't quite there yet. For an electric vehicle to be feasible it needs three things - 1) Performance competitive with internal combustion engine powered vehicles, 2) Range of about 150 miles, and 3) Recharge times under about 15-20 minutes. Item's 1 and 2 have been substantially accomplished. Electric vehicles are better in some ways and worse in others regarding performance, range, reliability and longevity but they have reached the point where we could call them competitive. The problem is the recharge times. Recharge times are a showstopper problem. Until electric vehicles can be recharged MUCH quicker, they have no hope whatsoever of making a serious dent in the overall market. Sure there are some niche uses for them and vehicles like the ones made by Tesla will have some place in the market - but even a market share of 1% is almost certainly not achievable without some serious advances in charging technology.
Plug-in-hybrids are how electric vehicles have a future. They do not share the range and charging disadvantages of electric vehicles but they do provide an incentive for development of charging infrastructure. They also familiarize the market with using electric vehicles and provide a test bed to expand range and recharging times. If you like the idea of an electric vehicle (and I do) the best way to someday get them mainstream is to support development of plug-in-hybrids.
There's a growing trend of hiring intelligent Japanese, Chinese and Indian workers at a fraction of cost to U.S. ones
You think labor rates are cheap in Japan? GDP per-capita in Japan is about 4X that of China and about 10X that of India. Japan has plenty of talent but it isn't particularly cheap or abundant talent. Japan, like the US, relies heavily on automation. Labor intensive industries left Japan years ago just like they did in the US.
The U.S. ranks 23rd among developed nations in the percentage of students with undergraduate degrees in science or engineering who are employed in related fields
Now figure out what that means. It's not at all clear what significance is in having a lower percentage of engineers at a portion of the population. The US is also the third largest country in terms of population so even if they produce a lower percentage of engineers than some other countries they still will produce larger absolute numbers than most of them. You seem to be implying that graduating a lower percentage of engineers/scientists will result in negative consequences. While that might be true you have to back it up with more than just vague implications.
In total, 63 countries with a combined population of 4.5 billion people will be without one or more of these features they previously had in iOS
When 4.5 billion people actually have iPhones, I'll start worrying about this. As it stands it is a feature that will only be noticed as missing by a tiny percentage of the roughly 80 million people who actually have iPhones. While it is a genuinely nice feature that is (at least for a while) lost, it is hardly going to cause a "major backlash". Frankly relatively few people even realize that walking directions were possible. It's a nice feature if you happen to live where you can walk everywhere but for the vast majority of the US and many other parts of the world it is a useless feature. I suspect Apple is working on getting the feature back but presumably they had to start somewhere and driving directions are by far the most important turn-by-turn directions to have.
I'd happily pay a bit more per lb, to have a more healthy meat products come out...less contaminated by growth hormones and anti-biotics (contributing to the rise of anti-biotic resistant strains)....
You and I might be willing to pay more but many/most people are not. If everyone was willing to pay more and demanded better products, what we consider upscale grocery stores like Whole Foods would be the norm. As it stands, price is a huge factor and the only way to get low prices is with some industrial techniques that are often a bit scary. Look up how orange juice is made and you'll never drink anything buy fresh squeezed again.
how did we get to the stage where we need to electronically track the chemical makeup of their milk?
Agriculture is a highly technological business and always has been. Your mental image of farming appears to need some updating. There is a HUGE amount of sophistication that goes into farming. People like getting a consistent product and you don't get that without technology.
Shouldn't the milk be more like...err....pure milk?
You think all milk is the same? Go spend some time on a farm. What you are saying is a bit naive. The chemical composition of milk is quite variable. It's like saying "pure wine" assuming all wines are identical. Farmers are paid to deliver a fairly specific product which can easily spoil or be contaminated and that often requires careful monitoring.
Are we missing something? I'd love to buy an entrenched business for one year's worth of revenue...even if revenues were slowly declining.
Actually that's a fairly typical price for a buyout. Most buyouts are done as a percentage of revenue or EBITDA. Revenue multiples of around 1X annual earnings is a pretty typical price for a firm though it varies by industry, prospects and economic climate. Typical revenue multiples for any buyout is 0.8X-1.2X annual revenue or 3-5X EBITDA.
Remember that if you buy a company for its annual revenue, eventually you have to make that money back. If the profit of the company is say 10% of revenue it will take 10 years to recoup the investment.
I'm not totally sure what it means to sell them for 1 year's revenue
Buyouts and mergers are typically done as a multiple of some portion of the earnings or revenue of the company. It's a quick and dirty way to estimate the value of a company without doing a lot of math. Typical multiples for companies are between 0.8-1.2X annual revenue or 3-5X annual EBITDA (earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization). The multiple is usually adjusted up or down depending on the prospects of the company, the industry it is in as well as the economic climate. Software companies might command a higher multiple than a bricks & mortar retailer. Comparing buyout multiples to historic trends is a good way to identify bubbles as well as gauge the economic climate.
A multiple of 1X annual revenue is a fairly typical price to pay for a company. Doesn't necessarily mean it is a good price but it is about what I would expect someone to pay. In short, I wouldn't read too much into the price paid.
You never "migrated" your HDDs when you changed everything else in your PC, I take it?
Sure I have. But if I change everything else the HDD is usually not far behind. More commonly I just port the data to the new drive that comes with the new computer.
An item yet unmentioned at the time I post this, is SSD lifetime. The are finite, you know, and probably a lot more finite than a well-protected HDD.
The evidence that HDDs have a longer lifetime than SSDs remains rather inconclusive. Most of the data I've seen is either manufacturers data that should be taken with a huge grain of NaCl or anecdotal evidence with tiny data sets. Even if they do actually have a shorter life, I'd argue that the difference is relatively small basically meaningless. You really shouldn't trust either type of drive to be reliable. Data should be backed up and you should basically assume that your drive is going to fail at any moment because it might. SSDs don't actually have to last longer than HDDs, they just need to last the useful life of the computer. Anything longer is basically pointless.
Bingo - drop survivability and heat generation. These are two of the best reasons to use SSD in a laptop, and not HDD. Nothing to do with performance.
Solid state drives are pretty much better in every meaningful way except price per GB. Speed, shock resistance, noise, heat, latency, and power consumption are all better in solid state drives. If you need a lot of storage space (terabyte+) a spinning platter remains the way to go for now just due to cost but otherwise there really is no other advantage to them. Price is an important consideration sometimes but unless you are on an extremely tight budget or need huge amounts of space, I can't really see any reason to pick a spinning platter drive.
While HDDs cannot compare to SSDs in terms of IOPS generated when used in a storage array or server, it's debatable whether they offer performance increases in a laptop significant enough that justify paying three times as much compared with a high-end a hard drive or a hybrid drive.
It's only debatable if you are severely limited in budget or have SSDs have pretty much every advantage except price. Even if the price is 3x as high, the cost of the hard drive is only a smallish percentage of the whole cost of the device - maybe 20-30% total. While price is an important consideration, if my budget can accommodate an SSD I'll go with it every time. Sure, if/when I need a few terabytes of storage space then a spinning platter is the way to go (for now) but that's not true of most devices anymore. I have a server for mass storage needs but 128GB-256GB is usually more than enough for any day to day needs and a SSD in that range is affordable already and dropping fast. My phone and laptop and my primary desktop all have solid state drives. I have two spinning platters in my house - one in an older desktop that sees limited use and the other on my file server. The new laptops we're buying for work have are solid state as well. I don't see myself ever buying a laptop without a solid state drive ever again.
I would still be baffled by people who would buy a cell phone without reading reviews first.
Somebody has to be first or else there are no reviews to read. But the real reason people are willing to buy early in this case is that Apple has a reasonably strong track record of releasing good products and this is a mostly evolutionary upgrade to a well understood product. Could it have a showstopper problem? Possibly - but the odds are that it will be fine and most of the likely problems . It's a risk of course but a calculated one. If you prefer to wait there is no harm in doing so. There are lots of products (including Apple's) where I won't buy the first edition. I wait for later versions where the odds of a serious problem are reduced.
Plus if it really turns out to be a problem you always have the option of switching phones. Might be expensive but you don't have to keep using it if you really don't want to. Anyone who can afford an iPhone probably can afford to replace it if they absolutely had to.
You start the day, holding some stock. The market swings wildly up 10% down 20% and back up 15%.
Q. How much have you made/lost? A. Nothing.
The problem with your logic is that at some point you are going to want to buy or sell. If the price you get is artificially weird then that hurts investors. Even buy and hold investors at some point need to buy and eventually to sell. Furthermore if a stock is volatile then that can influence the behavior of the management of the company in ways that may not be optimal for the investor. CEOs can lose their jobs if the stock price dips too much so you better believe they pay close attention to the price of their shares and act based on that information.
Because the stocks are no longer about the actual worth of the company. Shorting doesn't change anything for the better, it's not more accurate, it's fucking gambling you fool.
It's just as much about the worth of the company as buying long is. Companies values go up and down so it makes sense to be able to trade based on the expectation that it will go either way. Buying long is just as much gambling as buying short. The only difference between buying long and buying short is the order in which you buy and sell. They are effectively identical transactions otherwise.
ALL stock trading is speculation. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a fool or a liar. And any trade in a stock is by definition not a trade in the profits of a company. The underlying asset (the company) is not actually tied to the value of the stock. There is a tendency for stocks to reflect the value of the company but there is nothing forcing them to anymore than the value of a baseball card is reflected in the batting average of the player it pictures.
They supported legislation which was purported to be good for business. In the end once they knew the details of the bill, they pulled their support.
Let's assume that what you say is true. That means they supported legislation that they did not understand which means they are stupid. Now lets assume they knew full well what was in the bill. That means they are, for lack of a better term, evil. So either they are stupid or they are evil or possibly both. Given the fact that GoDaddy is quite large enough to hire expensive lawyers and lobbyists capable of explaining the bill to them, I rather doubt that they did not know (or at least should have known) the contents of the bill prior to supporting or opposing it publicly. Given my experiences with GoDaddy I tend to favor that they are both stupid and evil but that's just my opinion. Lot's of things are purported to be "good for business". This doesn't make them all good ideas.
Where are you at? The well-known organic providers around here clearly select cultivars for taste and pick at the right time.
Heart of the midwest US in farm country. You are right that there is a very real difference between grocery stores in the quality of the foods they offer. But I think that has a lot less to do with the organic thing that it does the level of affluence of the customers at that store and the amount of local competition. People who shop at a Whole Foods or similar store tend to be rather well to do. We have some local chains that offer similar quality (taste and appearance) non-organic food to what you get at Whole Foods. The caveat is that these stores are invariably in relatively wealthy neighborhoods where usually there is competition. They buyers for these stores know they have to offer a better product. In my town we only have one conveniently located grocery store an the quality of the food they sell is relatively bad. They know they don't have to offer better and thus more expensive products because people have no where else to go unless they want to go way out of their way.
Organic milk definitely tastes different, and for some reason it lasts 3x longer than regular milk. I don't know if it's technically healthier or not, but it without a doubt tastes very different.
That's because of how it is usually pasteurized. Look at most organic milk and you'll notice that it typically uses ultra high temperature pasteurization. Products that undergo this process last much longer and it does affect taste. I've had non-organic milk that undergoes the same process and the end product tastes very similar.
Non-organic farming relies on fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides in humongous quantities.
Granted. The upside is that they get higher crop yields for the same expenditure of gasoline and labor. It's a tradeoff. Hard to say right now which is the better outcome. Hopefully we'll get some good science done that will better establish the nature of the tradeoff we are making.
It also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, reduces carbon emissions (both from the production and use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides), creates (at least anecdotally) safer food, and makes for a cleaner environment.
You use less fossil fuels for the fertilizers and pesticides but you'll use more in the planting, irrigation, harvesting, labor and processing per unit of food produced because of lower crop yields which require more land to be farmed or more careful tending of land. Organic yields are lower so you're going to have to put more energy resources into the process to get the same amount of food at the end of the day. Might be worth the tradeoff but there is no obvious advantage for organic foods just because they use less pesticides or fertilizer.
As far as safer goes you're going to have to back that up with more than anecdotes. There is no credible study that I am aware of (point me at one if you know of it) that clearly establishes that organic food is safer. I will happily concede that in theory organic food should be safer but that is a LONG way from actually proving that theory.
There is a very good reason to buy organic food : sustainability. It causes less pollution and uses less synthetic additives (which are often derived from fossil resources).
And your evidence for this is what? Nice theory but you seem to have so far merely asserted that your claim is true. Organic food actually requires more work to farm per unit of food. Even proponents will not dispute that crop yields are significantly lower. Just because you use less fertilizer or pesticides does not automatically mean that less resources or pollution were generated during its production. It still has to be planted, irrigated, harvested, transported and tended - all of which use vast amounts of energy and cause pollution. With non-organic methods you can produce more food using less space and with less of certain resources so at some level there appears to be a trade off. You might be actually right but it's not merely a simple or obvious assertion that organic is somehow more sustainable than non-organic. You need actual evidence to determine that.
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There's nothing wrong with EVs that a battery that lasts twice as long at half the cost wouldn't fix.
I prefer the opposite. There is nothing wrong with EVs that gasoline at twice the price wouldn't fix. Tax gasoline up to $8.00 a gallon and you'll see some serious interest in electric vehicles even with present limitations.
In 2009, the average length of a car trip was 10.1 miles; the average length of a commute to work was 12.6 miles.
Most usage of cars could be done easily with electric vehicles, with recharge overnight at home.
The problem isn't the averages, the problem is the variation. Most of the time you are correct that people could get their business done as the average distance traveled per day is around 35 miles. But long road trips are not unusual in the US. My daily round trip commute is around 40 miles but my daily miles driven is around 92 miles. (I drive around 35,000 miles per year) That means I take frequent longer trips, well beyond the range of any current electric vehicle. I'm not particularly unusual. I'd love an electric car but there is no way I could presently justify it as a primary vehicle - my daily driving needs vary too much. So I have to buy an entire second vehicle which is rather wasteful since I already have a gasoline powered vehicle. A plug-in-hybrid makes a lot of sense for my needs but the range limitation of an all-electric car is just a deal breaker. The problem isn't my average day - the problem is the variation in my average days
for a second vehicle (and most households in the US have two or more vehicles), electric is completely practical.
That's not the same thing as saying most individuals have two or more vehicles - most do not. Many households do have second vehicles because there are multiple drivers. For the reasons above the problem is that you still have to justify the electric vehicle as a primary vehicle for at least one of the household members. That means one household member has to give up going beyond a certain range in a day. That's a harder sell than you seem to think even ignoring the presently higher cost of electric vehicles. Why? People choose vehicles for reasons other than their actual needs.
As an example the Ford F-150 has been the best selling vehicle in the US for decades but only a single digit percentage of people actually utilize its off road capabilities. They buy it for image (both self and projected) as much as for features. Actual horsepower needs are far more modest than what is available and the pickup bed will be empty most of the time. So long a fuel remains relatively cheap, the advantages of electric vehicles are insufficient to overcome the limitations of the charging infrastructure. People do not want to worry about needing to wait somewhere for 8 hours while they charge their car even if that would be a very rare event in reality.
Maybe in USA where diesel fuel is frowned upon, and engines are huge and cars are unnecessarily heavy & big, prius was a game changer.
The Prius is among the best selling cars in Japan and one of the top sellers world wide. It proved there is a sustainable market for hybrids which was not something that anyone could be sure of prior to the Prius. So yes, it is a game changer regardless of where you call home, even if that happens to be Europe.
Here in Europe, where it has to complete with all modern 1.6l diesels, the added price & complexity & weight don't make much sense- fuel consumption will be very close.
For long trips, particularly on the highway, a diesel will be competitive with a hybrid and better in some cases. However, for short trips where the hybrid can go battery only or for stop and go traffic at lower speeds a hybrid optimized for fuel economy (like a Prius or Volt) can easily be more economical on fuel than most diesel power cars. Diesels perform best at constant speeds which means they typically get great highway fuel economy but not-so-great around town fuel economy. Hybrids tend to be the reverse.
What I'd LOVE to see is a diesel-electric plug-in-hybrid where the only function the diesel has is to provide electrical power. Basically the same sort of technology used for locomotives on a smaller scale. I know Peugeot has developed a diesel hybrid but there is nothing like it available outside Europe that I'm aware of.
We can't make it work with acceptable margins.
If a company cannot sell a product for a profit, there is no point in making the product. Current technology for electric vehicles has one huge showstopper bug in the recharge times. Until this problem is solved there is no mass market for all electric vehicles. There will be room for niche makers like Tesla (maybe) but nothing more. Plug-In-Hybrids are where there is a market and where the car makers can and should focus their efforts.
Toyota has been an innovator in how production operates, not in building game changing new vehicles.
I disagree. The Prius was a game changing vehicle. It is the first genuinely popular hybrid vehicle and it proved that there is a market for hybrid powertrains. While I will concede that Toyota's most important innovations have been in manufacturing processes, they have had some genuinely innovative products.
until an electric vehicle can be charged in the same time that a gasoline based car can be fueled, they will all be unacceptable to vast majority of drivers.
It doesn't have to be the same - it just has to be competitive. 15-20 minutes probably would be acceptable given the other advantages of an electric vehicle. Not as fast as filling a gas tank but close enough that people are willing to accept the differences. What is not acceptable and I think was your main point is that recharge times measured in hours are never going to be acceptable for mainstream use.
Toyota has pioneered the hybrid-electric market, selling each one at a net loss.
I guarantee you that Toyota is no longer selling the Prius at a loss. There is absolutely no business case that could be made to sell as many Prius's as they have while making a loss on each one. They probably were losing money at first but not anymore.
While I would genuinely love to buy an all electric vehicle, the technology just isn't quite there yet. For an electric vehicle to be feasible it needs three things - 1) Performance competitive with internal combustion engine powered vehicles, 2) Range of about 150 miles, and 3) Recharge times under about 15-20 minutes. Item's 1 and 2 have been substantially accomplished. Electric vehicles are better in some ways and worse in others regarding performance, range, reliability and longevity but they have reached the point where we could call them competitive. The problem is the recharge times. Recharge times are a showstopper problem. Until electric vehicles can be recharged MUCH quicker, they have no hope whatsoever of making a serious dent in the overall market. Sure there are some niche uses for them and vehicles like the ones made by Tesla will have some place in the market - but even a market share of 1% is almost certainly not achievable without some serious advances in charging technology.
Plug-in-hybrids are how electric vehicles have a future. They do not share the range and charging disadvantages of electric vehicles but they do provide an incentive for development of charging infrastructure. They also familiarize the market with using electric vehicles and provide a test bed to expand range and recharging times. If you like the idea of an electric vehicle (and I do) the best way to someday get them mainstream is to support development of plug-in-hybrids.
There's a growing trend of hiring intelligent Japanese, Chinese and Indian workers at a fraction of cost to U.S. ones
You think labor rates are cheap in Japan? GDP per-capita in Japan is about 4X that of China and about 10X that of India. Japan has plenty of talent but it isn't particularly cheap or abundant talent. Japan, like the US, relies heavily on automation. Labor intensive industries left Japan years ago just like they did in the US.
The U.S. ranks 23rd among developed nations in the percentage of students with undergraduate degrees in science or engineering who are employed in related fields
Now figure out what that means. It's not at all clear what significance is in having a lower percentage of engineers at a portion of the population. The US is also the third largest country in terms of population so even if they produce a lower percentage of engineers than some other countries they still will produce larger absolute numbers than most of them. You seem to be implying that graduating a lower percentage of engineers/scientists will result in negative consequences. While that might be true you have to back it up with more than just vague implications.
Nope, it's actually easier than that. Simply ban all items that can be used as weapons.
Are you including hands, feet and body odor?
In total, 63 countries with a combined population of 4.5 billion people will be without one or more of these features they previously had in iOS
When 4.5 billion people actually have iPhones, I'll start worrying about this. As it stands it is a feature that will only be noticed as missing by a tiny percentage of the roughly 80 million people who actually have iPhones. While it is a genuinely nice feature that is (at least for a while) lost, it is hardly going to cause a "major backlash". Frankly relatively few people even realize that walking directions were possible. It's a nice feature if you happen to live where you can walk everywhere but for the vast majority of the US and many other parts of the world it is a useless feature. I suspect Apple is working on getting the feature back but presumably they had to start somewhere and driving directions are by far the most important turn-by-turn directions to have.
I'd happily pay a bit more per lb, to have a more healthy meat products come out...less contaminated by growth hormones and anti-biotics (contributing to the rise of anti-biotic resistant strains)....
You and I might be willing to pay more but many/most people are not. If everyone was willing to pay more and demanded better products, what we consider upscale grocery stores like Whole Foods would be the norm. As it stands, price is a huge factor and the only way to get low prices is with some industrial techniques that are often a bit scary. Look up how orange juice is made and you'll never drink anything buy fresh squeezed again.
how did we get to the stage where we need to electronically track the chemical makeup of their milk?
Agriculture is a highly technological business and always has been. Your mental image of farming appears to need some updating. There is a HUGE amount of sophistication that goes into farming. People like getting a consistent product and you don't get that without technology.
Shouldn't the milk be more like...err....pure milk?
You think all milk is the same? Go spend some time on a farm. What you are saying is a bit naive. The chemical composition of milk is quite variable. It's like saying "pure wine" assuming all wines are identical. Farmers are paid to deliver a fairly specific product which can easily spoil or be contaminated and that often requires careful monitoring.
Are we missing something? I'd love to buy an entrenched business for one year's worth of revenue...even if revenues were slowly declining.
Actually that's a fairly typical price for a buyout. Most buyouts are done as a percentage of revenue or EBITDA. Revenue multiples of around 1X annual earnings is a pretty typical price for a firm though it varies by industry, prospects and economic climate. Typical revenue multiples for any buyout is 0.8X-1.2X annual revenue or 3-5X EBITDA.
Remember that if you buy a company for its annual revenue, eventually you have to make that money back. If the profit of the company is say 10% of revenue it will take 10 years to recoup the investment.
I'm not totally sure what it means to sell them for 1 year's revenue
Buyouts and mergers are typically done as a multiple of some portion of the earnings or revenue of the company. It's a quick and dirty way to estimate the value of a company without doing a lot of math. Typical multiples for companies are between 0.8-1.2X annual revenue or 3-5X annual EBITDA (earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization). The multiple is usually adjusted up or down depending on the prospects of the company, the industry it is in as well as the economic climate. Software companies might command a higher multiple than a bricks & mortar retailer. Comparing buyout multiples to historic trends is a good way to identify bubbles as well as gauge the economic climate.
A multiple of 1X annual revenue is a fairly typical price to pay for a company. Doesn't necessarily mean it is a good price but it is about what I would expect someone to pay. In short, I wouldn't read too much into the price paid.
You never "migrated" your HDDs when you changed everything else in your PC, I take it?
Sure I have. But if I change everything else the HDD is usually not far behind. More commonly I just port the data to the new drive that comes with the new computer.
An item yet unmentioned at the time I post this, is SSD lifetime. The are finite, you know, and probably a lot more finite than a well-protected HDD.
The evidence that HDDs have a longer lifetime than SSDs remains rather inconclusive. Most of the data I've seen is either manufacturers data that should be taken with a huge grain of NaCl or anecdotal evidence with tiny data sets. Even if they do actually have a shorter life, I'd argue that the difference is relatively small basically meaningless. You really shouldn't trust either type of drive to be reliable. Data should be backed up and you should basically assume that your drive is going to fail at any moment because it might. SSDs don't actually have to last longer than HDDs, they just need to last the useful life of the computer. Anything longer is basically pointless.
Bingo - drop survivability and heat generation. These are two of the best reasons to use SSD in a laptop, and not HDD. Nothing to do with performance.
Solid state drives are pretty much better in every meaningful way except price per GB. Speed, shock resistance, noise, heat, latency, and power consumption are all better in solid state drives. If you need a lot of storage space (terabyte+) a spinning platter remains the way to go for now just due to cost but otherwise there really is no other advantage to them. Price is an important consideration sometimes but unless you are on an extremely tight budget or need huge amounts of space, I can't really see any reason to pick a spinning platter drive.
While HDDs cannot compare to SSDs in terms of IOPS generated when used in a storage array or server, it's debatable whether they offer performance increases in a laptop significant enough that justify paying three times as much compared with a high-end a hard drive or a hybrid drive.
It's only debatable if you are severely limited in budget or have SSDs have pretty much every advantage except price. Even if the price is 3x as high, the cost of the hard drive is only a smallish percentage of the whole cost of the device - maybe 20-30% total. While price is an important consideration, if my budget can accommodate an SSD I'll go with it every time. Sure, if/when I need a few terabytes of storage space then a spinning platter is the way to go (for now) but that's not true of most devices anymore. I have a server for mass storage needs but 128GB-256GB is usually more than enough for any day to day needs and a SSD in that range is affordable already and dropping fast. My phone and laptop and my primary desktop all have solid state drives. I have two spinning platters in my house - one in an older desktop that sees limited use and the other on my file server. The new laptops we're buying for work have are solid state as well. I don't see myself ever buying a laptop without a solid state drive ever again.
I would still be baffled by people who would buy a cell phone without reading reviews first.
Somebody has to be first or else there are no reviews to read. But the real reason people are willing to buy early in this case is that Apple has a reasonably strong track record of releasing good products and this is a mostly evolutionary upgrade to a well understood product. Could it have a showstopper problem? Possibly - but the odds are that it will be fine and most of the likely problems . It's a risk of course but a calculated one. If you prefer to wait there is no harm in doing so. There are lots of products (including Apple's) where I won't buy the first edition. I wait for later versions where the odds of a serious problem are reduced.
Plus if it really turns out to be a problem you always have the option of switching phones. Might be expensive but you don't have to keep using it if you really don't want to. Anyone who can afford an iPhone probably can afford to replace it if they absolutely had to.
You start the day, holding some stock. The market swings wildly up 10% down 20% and back up 15%.
Q. How much have you made/lost?
A. Nothing.
The problem with your logic is that at some point you are going to want to buy or sell. If the price you get is artificially weird then that hurts investors. Even buy and hold investors at some point need to buy and eventually to sell. Furthermore if a stock is volatile then that can influence the behavior of the management of the company in ways that may not be optimal for the investor. CEOs can lose their jobs if the stock price dips too much so you better believe they pay close attention to the price of their shares and act based on that information.
Because the stocks are no longer about the actual worth of the company. Shorting doesn't change anything for the better, it's not more accurate, it's fucking gambling you fool.
It's just as much about the worth of the company as buying long is. Companies values go up and down so it makes sense to be able to trade based on the expectation that it will go either way. Buying long is just as much gambling as buying short. The only difference between buying long and buying short is the order in which you buy and sell. They are effectively identical transactions otherwise.
ALL stock trading is speculation. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a fool or a liar. And any trade in a stock is by definition not a trade in the profits of a company. The underlying asset (the company) is not actually tied to the value of the stock. There is a tendency for stocks to reflect the value of the company but there is nothing forcing them to anymore than the value of a baseball card is reflected in the batting average of the player it pictures.
They supported legislation which was purported to be good for business. In the end once they knew the details of the bill, they pulled their support.
Let's assume that what you say is true. That means they supported legislation that they did not understand which means they are stupid. Now lets assume they knew full well what was in the bill. That means they are, for lack of a better term, evil. So either they are stupid or they are evil or possibly both. Given the fact that GoDaddy is quite large enough to hire expensive lawyers and lobbyists capable of explaining the bill to them, I rather doubt that they did not know (or at least should have known) the contents of the bill prior to supporting or opposing it publicly. Given my experiences with GoDaddy I tend to favor that they are both stupid and evil but that's just my opinion. Lot's of things are purported to be "good for business". This doesn't make them all good ideas.
Where are you at? The well-known organic providers around here clearly select cultivars for taste and pick at the right time.
Heart of the midwest US in farm country. You are right that there is a very real difference between grocery stores in the quality of the foods they offer. But I think that has a lot less to do with the organic thing that it does the level of affluence of the customers at that store and the amount of local competition. People who shop at a Whole Foods or similar store tend to be rather well to do. We have some local chains that offer similar quality (taste and appearance) non-organic food to what you get at Whole Foods. The caveat is that these stores are invariably in relatively wealthy neighborhoods where usually there is competition. They buyers for these stores know they have to offer a better product. In my town we only have one conveniently located grocery store an the quality of the food they sell is relatively bad. They know they don't have to offer better and thus more expensive products because people have no where else to go unless they want to go way out of their way.
Organic milk definitely tastes different, and for some reason it lasts 3x longer than regular milk. I don't know if it's technically healthier or not, but it without a doubt tastes very different.
That's because of how it is usually pasteurized. Look at most organic milk and you'll notice that it typically uses ultra high temperature pasteurization. Products that undergo this process last much longer and it does affect taste. I've had non-organic milk that undergoes the same process and the end product tastes very similar.
Non-organic farming relies on fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides in humongous quantities.
Granted. The upside is that they get higher crop yields for the same expenditure of gasoline and labor. It's a tradeoff. Hard to say right now which is the better outcome. Hopefully we'll get some good science done that will better establish the nature of the tradeoff we are making.
It also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, reduces carbon emissions (both from the production and use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides), creates (at least anecdotally) safer food, and makes for a cleaner environment.
You use less fossil fuels for the fertilizers and pesticides but you'll use more in the planting, irrigation, harvesting, labor and processing per unit of food produced because of lower crop yields which require more land to be farmed or more careful tending of land. Organic yields are lower so you're going to have to put more energy resources into the process to get the same amount of food at the end of the day. Might be worth the tradeoff but there is no obvious advantage for organic foods just because they use less pesticides or fertilizer.
As far as safer goes you're going to have to back that up with more than anecdotes. There is no credible study that I am aware of (point me at one if you know of it) that clearly establishes that organic food is safer. I will happily concede that in theory organic food should be safer but that is a LONG way from actually proving that theory.
There is a very good reason to buy organic food : sustainability. It causes less pollution and uses less synthetic additives (which are often derived from fossil resources).
And your evidence for this is what? Nice theory but you seem to have so far merely asserted that your claim is true. Organic food actually requires more work to farm per unit of food. Even proponents will not dispute that crop yields are significantly lower. Just because you use less fertilizer or pesticides does not automatically mean that less resources or pollution were generated during its production. It still has to be planted, irrigated, harvested, transported and tended - all of which use vast amounts of energy and cause pollution. With non-organic methods you can produce more food using less space and with less of certain resources so at some level there appears to be a trade off. You might be actually right but it's not merely a simple or obvious assertion that organic is somehow more sustainable than non-organic. You need actual evidence to determine that.