Sorry to pop your pompous little bubble there, but the fact of the matter is that shit happens, and when it does, it's better to be prepared than unprepared.
Really? Then why is it that we pretty much never hear of these "prepared" people you speak of doing anything actually helpful? Where are all the pistol packing "good citizens" when they are needed when these mass shootings happen? Your argument relies on a fantasy rather than how real people actually go about their lives. When the US has lower levels of gun violence than countries with more restrictive gun laws then and only then can you lecture us about how firearms make you "prepared".
Attempting to disarm the public means discarding the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people.
First off, I have NO idea if you are a "good person" or not. What I do know is that if you brandish a gun I have to assume your intent is to murder me or others and behave accordingly. We aren't going to have a conversation about it. That means my responses are going to be either A) flee or B) fight and that response is going to come fast. If my response is B then there is a good chance one or both of us ends up dead even if we both intend to help. Second, the notion that "good people" (implied to be carrying firearms) outnumbering "bad people" somehow prevents these shootings from happening is belied by the fact that THEY KEEP HAPPENING. How many have to die to disprove your fantasy that citizen shooters are going to create a deterrence in the real world?
I sincerely hope that if your life is ever in danger, that there is someone equipped and prepared to defend you, but kindly stop pretending that abject helplessness is a virtue.
The odds of someone (including you) being properly equipped and prepared to engage in a fire fight on your behalf are a good approximation of zero. Even in the US most people do not carry firearms 24/7 particularly in public spaces. You included and don't pretend otherwise. Your argument is a strawman. People aren't helpless just because they aren't carrying a firearm, and even if they are that doesn't mean they are prepared to deal with a real live shooting event.
What? Clearly we like it this way, or we'd do something about it. Just like everyone else has.
"We"? We have some delusional idiots among us but let's not pretend all Americans are on board with the current idiotic situation.
Another possible option would be mandatory military service for all US citizens from their 19th birthday to their 24th birthday. And mandatory reserve status for anyone who wants to own a gun.
I have no problem with mandatory conscription as a condition of gun ownership. After all the 2nd amendment does say "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." so let's for once enforce that part of the amendment. Good idea. The best part is that it does not in any way infringe on the "right of the People to keep and bear arms". It actually makes that right useful for once. I don't think mandatory conscription for all is a good idea or necessary given the likely dangers to the US. Honestly we already spend too much money on our military as it is with a volunteer force and conscription does not in general improve the capabilities of the military.
Another alternative is that we can just keep doing what we're doing, letting any crazy jackass get all the guns and ammo they want. This is probably what will happen.
Law-abiding people, on the other hand, would follow the rules, leaving the only civilian guns on the premises in the hands of the criminals.
Yeah, funny how that's really only a problem in a country like the US where guns are far too readily available with barely any regulation. Strange how you almost never hear of such shootings in countries where it's hard to get a gun in the first place.
Honestly the fantasy that FAR too many Americans have that they would be able to effectively defend themselves in a gun fight that starts at a time and place they cannot predict is utterly delusional. It is not practical or smart to be carrying a gun at all times. Unless you actually served in the military in a combat specialty or possibly on a police force, you almost certainly have no idea what you are doing and are more of a danger than an asset. Worse when the police do respond, you become a problem because they have to figure out if you are the shooter which puts them, you, and others in additional danger. If you respond to a shooter with your own firearm, nobody around you knows whether you are the "good guy" or not. If I see you brandish a gun I have to assume you are trying to murder me and act accordingly even if in reality you have the best of intentions. Imagine for a moment that I have a gun too and I see someone I don't know pull out a firearm in a crowd. What do you think is likely to happen? Several options and most of them very bad for all involved.
Because, of course, guns don't just magically disintegrate when entering a "gun free zone."
Which is why letting (essentially) anyone and everyone carry without regulation is a incredibly dumb idea.
People who want to use bitcoin as MONEY have no problem, there's no need to invent a new coin for that.
Thing is close to no one is interested in actually using bitcoin (or any other crypto coin) as currency outside of certain people doing activities that are by and large illegal. Virtually all the interest in bitcoin is speculation in one form or another including a healthy dose of pump and dump and other fraud. Bitcoin isn't widely used as currency and is in no obvious danger of that changing any time soon.
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus, has something to say about the competing Magic Leap gear.
Founder of company bashes competitor. News at 11...
It is less of a functional developer kit and more of a flashy hype vehicle that almost nobody can actually use in a meaningful way, and many of their design decisions seem to be driven by that reality.
That is unfortunately a fair description of most VR technology that has ever been developed in the last 30 years. The hype has always exceeded the reality substantially even as far back as the early 1990s (see the movie Lawnmower Man back in 1992 for an example of the hype train in the form of a terrible movie). Understand that I used to make my living with VR tech and it has a soft spot in my heart. But the market potential of VR has been blown WAY out of proportion to the reality of it. AR is a huge market. VR not so much, particularly the bits requiring an immersive headset. Where VR is useful it's incredibly helpful but literally every application of it is the very definition of a niche market.
It does not deliver on almost any of the promises that allowed them to monopolize funding in the AR investment community.
AR != VR so I'm not really sure what he's on about. If investors are confusing the two then they are morons. But frankly most of the AR investment seems quite healthy because it's being done by companies like Google, Apple, and the like. You'll note that aside from Facebook, none of the other big tech companies are worried much about VR but they are spending a LOT of money on AR because there are vast, obvious, and hugely profitable applications for the tech. The closest VR comes to a mass market application is for games but even that is still a pretty small population segment and market compared to AR technology. AR tech includes all sorts of location aware smartphone tech, heads up displays, self driving and driver assisting car tech, warehousing, skilled trades, and so much more. VR is useful for some games and a few niche simulations like flight simulators and other training applications plus a bit of marketing. I'm not saying VR is useless, just that it's a smaller market opportunity than AR. Orders of magnitude smaller.
OK, so let me get this right. Windows-95 ran fine on real hardware with 4MB of memory, and 16MB on a high-end system.
Windows 95 NEVER "ran fine". It was wildly unstable and it ran on those hardware specs because that was the limit of what people had 20 years ago.
And now this guy is delighted to have the same stuff running in 'only 200MB'??
Umm, yeah. Emulating the entire OS and hardware in RAM in just 200MB is pretty impressive actually. It's not running the OS in 4MB - it's emulating the OS, the hardware, the entire hard drive, etc. Apples to oranges you have there.
I find it sad that an OS from 95 offered roughly the same functionality offered today but took much less space.
If all you do is some basic office tasks then you might be right. But as soon as you do something as simple as watch a 4K video then your argument blows up because those machines couldn't do it. A single video from my camera could easily fill up the entire hard drive and you could forget about editing it on any machine you could afford to own. Windows 95 was fine for its day but it took less space because it HAD to take less space. In those days a machine with 16MB of RAM was a lot of memory. Access to the internet was mostly via 56K dialup modems. The phone I have in my pocket would run rings around any PC you could buy when Windows 95 was the state of the art.
Our tech is degrading.
Really? That's funny because the PC I'm using to type this is FAR faster, drives three 4K monitors, has way more ram and disk space, has applications that do things we only dreamed of, has gigabit ethernet connected to a internet connection faster than my LAN in 1995. "Degrading"? Either you weren't around for those days or you have some serious rose tint on your glasses. The good old days weren't that good.
I honestly have no problems with someone being paid 40000x what I am being paid - whatever, I agreed to work for however much the company was paying.
You agreed to it because you didn't have a better option. If you don't see a problem with someone getting paid multiple orders of magnitude more than you when they are not creating a similar amount of added value to the company then you have no self respect.
So a CEO is making choices that affect all of the customers, and staff - obviously they still get paid very well.
Define "paid very well". When is it enough? How many multiple millions are does one need before one no longer is value added and start getting into amounts that actually hurt the company? I agree that pay should in principle be commensurate with the value added to the company but at some point too many companies start paying the people in charge amounts well beyond any possible value the could add to the company. Furthermore they negotiate these pay packages (including golden parachutes) before they ever work a day. Some CEOs probably are worth many millions a year but not very many of them.
The question is, what performance difference does a $1M CEO bring vs a $21.7M one?
The real question is how much of the company results can be attributed to the performance of the CEO. That is not an easy question to answer in most cases. I have no problem with pay for performance but in a lot of cases their pay is negotiated long before any performance.
But if you were more than 12 years old, you'd understand why people believe that their contribution to technological history deserves to be remembered.
WTF does that have to do with the stupid sign? If their contributions to technology were significant then they will stand on their own merits. We don't need a billboard to remind us of that fact long after the company has faded from relevance and memory. There are better ways to remind ourselves of our heritage than preserving irrelevant street signs.
One day, while it might not be mandatory, there will be so many advantages in being chipped vs many disadvantages in not being, that it will become essentially mandatory.
That presumes that people would be willing to go along with the action politically. I think that is unlikely to be the end result.
Can you hold on to your quaint sensibilities when being chipped means a fast track to the job you covet?
Probably. I'm certainly willing to take the challenge.
When not being chipped means having to sacrifice time and effort to do what the chipped achieve effortlessly?
My time and effort would be spent lobbying the government to make this an illegal practice. Possibly futile but I doubt I'd be alone.
You might think it would be cool to defy the "system" when you're young and single, but what will you do when you have a family to feed, hmmm?
If you aren't willing to fight for the civil rights of your children then you have no spine whatsoever. I'd fight this tooth and nail so my daughter wouldn't have to deal with it. I have a hard time envisioning a scenario whereby this would be acceptable to me. If I cannot win I'd be willing to move somewhere it isn't a concern.
Because Google is a rather moral and ethical company.
Hahahahaha.... They are a company that makes money by pimping vast amounts of personal data about you and everyone you know to advertisers. Spare me the notion that they are some sort of ethical paragon of an organization.
You obviously disagree but you might want to consider that Google employees have much better visibility into company actions than you do.
So did the people who worked at Enron so I'm not seeing much validity in your argument. Good people often work for bad organizations.
Actually, I think this question about censorship in China is one that reasonable people can disagree on. I appreciate and agree with the goals of the protesters, but I think they're making perfect the enemy of good. It's better to provide a censored search engine in China than to provide no search engine in China, from an ethical perspective.
Could not disagree more and I don't think your argument is a reasonable one at all. If censorship is bad you don't eliminate it by facilitating censorship.
It allows Google to become a force for reducing censorship in China.
So by censoring they are reducing censorship? That circular reasoning right there.
Oh, and also to make money, which is the primary goal of any business, of course.
Making money and having ethics are not incompatible behaviors. But it's undeniably easier to make money when you don't have to worry about ethics. Google seems to have placed theirs in escrow when it comes to China in order to make a buck.
Are you seriously arguing that we should keep unnecessary and obsolete jobs around? That is economic suicide. Sometimes jobs get replaced by automation. Get over it because it isn't going to change. Seriously, expecting a low margin price sensitive business like a grocery store to not take every opportunity to reduce costs is absurd and naive. It's not a jobs program, it's a for-profit business. Personally I doubt this service will amount to anything more than a publicity stunt but I have no problem with them giving it a try. Sometimes crazy ideas really work.
The sadness is the store is now only half of a grocery store, the rest being non-grocery items, booze, greeting cards, motor oil, pharmaceuticals, concessions (Murray's Most Expensive Cheese Kiosks), and so forth.
So you complain about the price of the products they sell but want them to pay higher wages to more people. You might want to think about making your argument self consistent. You can't have it both ways. Paying people higher wages requires you to spend more money and/or to allow them to cut costs.
I have no kitties and don't touch booze....
So grocery stores shouldn't sell that stuff because you don't partake? That's awfully self centered of you.
I live in flyover country now and people here are if anything more obsessed with propping up obsolete historical or otherwise noteable knickknacks.
Perhaps but they don't waste the time of a bunch of people posting stories about local news on a globally read website. While I'm sure slashdot has a fair number of bay area readers, I'm comfortable stating that almost everyone here has never heard of the sign or probably the company. I cannot imagine why the slashdot editors thought this would be of general interest to slashdot readers...
Not to seem snide but since I don't live there and have never even heard of the company, please explain to me why I (or anyone else) should care about some random bit of signage for a company just because it's been there a long time. I looked up some pictures and whatever significance this thing has to locals is utterly lost on me. It looks like a typical boring and wasteful company sign. Is this another example of people on the coasts thinking what happens in their city is somehow special and important even to people who don't live there? (NYC is notorious for this...)
Oh and he's a Democrat by the way, something to remember the next time they promise free healthcare.
I have never seen anyone (sane) promise "free healthcare" since there is no such thing. What they promise is healthcare for everyone. You know, like every other civilized country on the planet. We SHARE the cost and make it available to all without bankrupting the less wealthy among us in the process. Heaven forbid we share the costs and give a shit about our fellow citizens.
Eventually, when enough people are convinced, your hypothesis is essentially voted into being a theory.
Science is NOT about convincing people. Science is a process of establishing models that are have predictive power regardless of whether people believe them or not. Eventually people tend to come to a consensus behind models with proven and confirmed predictive power but this is a second order effect and not the actual point of the process. Science is what is true whether or not you believe in it. This is why when people use the argument about scientific consensus in regards to climate change they are making the wrong argument. It doesn't matter what the scientific consensus is - it only matters whether the models have predictive power. Consensus is just opinion and opinions can be wrong - even informed opinions. The argument they should make is that the climate models correctly predict XYZ and we have lots of various models all getting the same results.
When truth-establishing processes are dictatorial in nature, you get crazy religious wars.
True but group-think can be rather dictatorial in effect. Nobody forces people to believe in certain crazy ideas (like religion) but if you get enough of them collectively to believe it then it becomes an unquestioned dogma.
Anyone with a college degree is expected to not just pick any source, but strong sources that readers will likely to believe.
Ummm, sources that "readers will likely believe" routinely does not correlate positively with "strong sources". People will tend to believe whatever made of nonsense most strongly correlates with their pre-existing biases and beliefs.
the shortage of qualified medical professionals is one of the inputs into the cost of medical care --- which, in case some of you haven't noticed, has become ridiculously high.
My wife is a doctor so I have some direct insight into this. I won't deny that it likely plays some role but it's not at the top of the list or even in the top 5. Honestly I'm fine with paying doctors (and nurses) relatively high salaries if it correlates to high quality of care and there is some evidence to suggest it does. I'd rather they get the money than say investment bankers or other financial leaches in our society. The worst part of the cost is that they have to hire virtual armies of non-medical support staff to handle all the scheduling, billing, paperwork, and medical records, much of which should be automated or eliminated in many cases. In my wife's office there are one or two physicians and probably 10-15 support staff on any given day. Guess where the majority of the cost lies? (it's not the doctor's salary)
The high cost of major medical operations and treatments is a result of multiple factors, but a major one is the high demand and low supply.
What do you specifically mean when you say low supply? There is no widespread shortage of supply of medical procedures to date. There are some nursing staff shortages in some markets and fewer doctors being trained than probably are needed looking forward. In most cases if people have to wait a little while (which is what happens when capacity is strained) that's not the tragedy many make it out to be for many conditions. Let's be clear too. There is a difference between cost of providing the service and the prices charged to patients. It's important to keep the distinction clear when discussing this topic. For example hospital pricing bears NO relationship whatsoever to the actual cost of providing services. (seriously, it's almost criminal) But we as patients still have to pay it and we see that pricing as the "cost" of the service when in reality we are paying a rather steep markup in many cases.
The number one driver of high costs in the US is administrative costs. A large part of this is because we have this ludicrously complicated and hodge-podge payment system and shitty medical records systems and scattered insurance system. We (stupidly) don't have the government playing a big role in negotiating prices like every other civilized country. Other important factors are high drug costs, defensive medicine (extra tests/procedures to avoid liability), over use of expensive treatment modalities, wages/staffing, specialization/referrals, and believe it or not branding.
If the barrier to opening and successfully suing both professionals and hospitals over undesirable medical outcomes was much higher, then the costs of legal insurance, and the costs of many services could have been much lower;
My wife is a doctor and I think you overestimate the cost of insurance. Sure it's a problem, particularly in some specialties like OB/GYN and pediatrics. But the amount my wife's practice has to pay for insurance is not as outrageous as you probably think it is. I've seen the numbers and I honestly expected them to be a lot worse. The bigger problem here is that doctors literally have to order tests just to be sure in case of a lawsuit. Usually it's not a thing but on the rare cases where it does come to a lawsuit the first thing any lawyer worth his diploma is going to ask is "why didn't you order this extra test" or "why didn't you consult another specialist". And so the doctors do what they have to do. Ask yourself what you would do it you could be personally sued for malpractice if you didn't have that extra design review for your code?
To be fair, bear in mind that there is also a cost to shielding doctors excessively fr
You don't need a government program to fix everything, private donations and effort can actually work to fix problems like the rising cost of tuition.
So instead of a government program with some measure of accountability, you prefer hand outs from wealthy donors with no accountability? Nothing wrong with private donations but depending on fickle handouts from rich people who may have ulterior motives isn't a very sensible way to run a society.
We do, but doctors should be making enough money to pay their student loans.
They should but you hugely overestimate how much money certain specialties like family practice make - not to mention the number of hours they work. Specialists can do much better of course but it's still hard to start off with several hundred thousand in debt (medical school plus undergrad typically) at the beginning of your career. Plus residencies can take 3-8 years and they only get paid something like $40K per year while a resident.
What about the other students that are going into areas that don't pay as well, but are also essential?
A fair question. We used to do this by adequately funding state schools. But people of a certain political persuasion in the US don't like that for ideological/political reasons so the funding has languished and debt has been piled on young people when they are least able to deal with it so that others can get tax cuts they don't really need. Of course even some private schools really don't need to charge what they do. Harvard has a $36 billion endowment so every student who goes there could go there for free if Harvard chose to do that.
Why should they be subsidizing people going into such high paying professions?
A lot of graduate schools are highly subsidized. I got a scholarship to grad school. But pragmatically because we need more of them. Because the job is important. Because that school can do it. The question should be why are we not doing it for more professions rather than why this profession in particular. What you should be asking is which important profession can we help out next.
Well, in California, that is a Catch n Release crime
Citation needed. Armed robbery is not a catch and release crime nor is it considered non-violent.
Add in the "Bail is too hard on criminals" logic from a number of left wing loons
Nice strawman. Nobody is making the argument that bail is too hard on criminals. The argument is that bail unfairly penalizes people who are poor and cannot afford bail. One's financial means should have zero relevance on whether you remain in a jail cell.
Improvement looks at what everyone else is doing and tries something different, while "standing on the shoulders of the giant". No original thought.
So you are saying Issac Newton didn't have an original thought. Might want to go back and revisit that line of logic. NOBODY has ideas that don't build on the work of others. If you think you are the only person to have an idea then you are delusional. If your standard for "true innovation" is a thought or product nobody else had considered previously then there is no such thing as "true innovation". Your argument is complete nonsense.
The reasons any tech is in China is for cheap labor and loose environmental standards
There are a LOT of reasons why a lot of electronics and other tech are made in China. You mentioned two factors but they aren't the only ones nor the most important ones in a lot of cases.
I've worked in tech and with the Chinese. We had to QC all of their work.
I've been to China, worked in global sourcing, and source products from there daily in my day job most of which are just fine. China produces massive amounts of high quality good and services. Yes there is some junk too but your sweeping claims about the quality of work from China is demonstrably false. Sounds like your company hired the wrong people or didn't have the experience to manage them properly. Happens to a lot of companies. Doesn't mean that everything from China is shit.
Firefox had to change its name twice from Firebird and Phoenix.
How is this copying the product? They picked a name for it and needed to change it because they didn't know it was already taken. Has nothing to do with the product itself.
Yes they do and there is some good money in it too. But to be fair there is more than a little of it over here too.
do they ever really innovate? I mean in the last 800 years
Yes. Quite a lot actually. Sure there is a robust amounts of counterfeiting and knock off products but plenty of original work too. People used to think Japan produced nothing but crappy knockoffs too back in the 1950s and there were legitimate reasons to think that but over time it changes as the economy develops.
Need evidence of innovation? You're looking at it right now. The majority of electronics come from China and/or Taiwan. Much of this was developed by local talent without copying designs from elsewhere. Companies in every country engage in a certain amount of copying of works done elsewhere. The US and Europe are no exceptions.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry to pop your pompous little bubble there, but the fact of the matter is that shit happens, and when it does, it's better to be prepared than unprepared.
Really? Then why is it that we pretty much never hear of these "prepared" people you speak of doing anything actually helpful? Where are all the pistol packing "good citizens" when they are needed when these mass shootings happen? Your argument relies on a fantasy rather than how real people actually go about their lives. When the US has lower levels of gun violence than countries with more restrictive gun laws then and only then can you lecture us about how firearms make you "prepared".
Attempting to disarm the public means discarding the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people.
First off, I have NO idea if you are a "good person" or not. What I do know is that if you brandish a gun I have to assume your intent is to murder me or others and behave accordingly. We aren't going to have a conversation about it. That means my responses are going to be either A) flee or B) fight and that response is going to come fast. If my response is B then there is a good chance one or both of us ends up dead even if we both intend to help. Second, the notion that "good people" (implied to be carrying firearms) outnumbering "bad people" somehow prevents these shootings from happening is belied by the fact that THEY KEEP HAPPENING. How many have to die to disprove your fantasy that citizen shooters are going to create a deterrence in the real world?
I sincerely hope that if your life is ever in danger, that there is someone equipped and prepared to defend you, but kindly stop pretending that abject helplessness is a virtue.
The odds of someone (including you) being properly equipped and prepared to engage in a fire fight on your behalf are a good approximation of zero. Even in the US most people do not carry firearms 24/7 particularly in public spaces. You included and don't pretend otherwise. Your argument is a strawman. People aren't helpless just because they aren't carrying a firearm, and even if they are that doesn't mean they are prepared to deal with a real live shooting event.
What? Clearly we like it this way, or we'd do something about it. Just like everyone else has.
"We"? We have some delusional idiots among us but let's not pretend all Americans are on board with the current idiotic situation.
Another possible option would be mandatory military service for all US citizens from their 19th birthday to their 24th birthday. And mandatory reserve status for anyone who wants to own a gun.
I have no problem with mandatory conscription as a condition of gun ownership. After all the 2nd amendment does say "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." so let's for once enforce that part of the amendment. Good idea. The best part is that it does not in any way infringe on the "right of the People to keep and bear arms". It actually makes that right useful for once. I don't think mandatory conscription for all is a good idea or necessary given the likely dangers to the US. Honestly we already spend too much money on our military as it is with a volunteer force and conscription does not in general improve the capabilities of the military.
Another alternative is that we can just keep doing what we're doing, letting any crazy jackass get all the guns and ammo they want. This is probably what will happen.
Depressingly this is likely to remain the case.
Law-abiding people, on the other hand, would follow the rules, leaving the only civilian guns on the premises in the hands of the criminals.
Yeah, funny how that's really only a problem in a country like the US where guns are far too readily available with barely any regulation. Strange how you almost never hear of such shootings in countries where it's hard to get a gun in the first place.
Honestly the fantasy that FAR too many Americans have that they would be able to effectively defend themselves in a gun fight that starts at a time and place they cannot predict is utterly delusional. It is not practical or smart to be carrying a gun at all times. Unless you actually served in the military in a combat specialty or possibly on a police force, you almost certainly have no idea what you are doing and are more of a danger than an asset. Worse when the police do respond, you become a problem because they have to figure out if you are the shooter which puts them, you, and others in additional danger. If you respond to a shooter with your own firearm, nobody around you knows whether you are the "good guy" or not. If I see you brandish a gun I have to assume you are trying to murder me and act accordingly even if in reality you have the best of intentions. Imagine for a moment that I have a gun too and I see someone I don't know pull out a firearm in a crowd. What do you think is likely to happen? Several options and most of them very bad for all involved.
Because, of course, guns don't just magically disintegrate when entering a "gun free zone."
Which is why letting (essentially) anyone and everyone carry without regulation is a incredibly dumb idea.
People who want to use bitcoin as MONEY have no problem, there's no need to invent a new coin for that.
Thing is close to no one is interested in actually using bitcoin (or any other crypto coin) as currency outside of certain people doing activities that are by and large illegal. Virtually all the interest in bitcoin is speculation in one form or another including a healthy dose of pump and dump and other fraud. Bitcoin isn't widely used as currency and is in no obvious danger of that changing any time soon.
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus, has something to say about the competing Magic Leap gear.
Founder of company bashes competitor. News at 11...
It is less of a functional developer kit and more of a flashy hype vehicle that almost nobody can actually use in a meaningful way, and many of their design decisions seem to be driven by that reality.
That is unfortunately a fair description of most VR technology that has ever been developed in the last 30 years. The hype has always exceeded the reality substantially even as far back as the early 1990s (see the movie Lawnmower Man back in 1992 for an example of the hype train in the form of a terrible movie). Understand that I used to make my living with VR tech and it has a soft spot in my heart. But the market potential of VR has been blown WAY out of proportion to the reality of it. AR is a huge market. VR not so much, particularly the bits requiring an immersive headset. Where VR is useful it's incredibly helpful but literally every application of it is the very definition of a niche market.
It does not deliver on almost any of the promises that allowed them to monopolize funding in the AR investment community.
AR != VR so I'm not really sure what he's on about. If investors are confusing the two then they are morons. But frankly most of the AR investment seems quite healthy because it's being done by companies like Google, Apple, and the like. You'll note that aside from Facebook, none of the other big tech companies are worried much about VR but they are spending a LOT of money on AR because there are vast, obvious, and hugely profitable applications for the tech. The closest VR comes to a mass market application is for games but even that is still a pretty small population segment and market compared to AR technology. AR tech includes all sorts of location aware smartphone tech, heads up displays, self driving and driver assisting car tech, warehousing, skilled trades, and so much more. VR is useful for some games and a few niche simulations like flight simulators and other training applications plus a bit of marketing. I'm not saying VR is useless, just that it's a smaller market opportunity than AR. Orders of magnitude smaller.
OK, so let me get this right. Windows-95 ran fine on real hardware with 4MB of memory, and 16MB on a high-end system.
Windows 95 NEVER "ran fine". It was wildly unstable and it ran on those hardware specs because that was the limit of what people had 20 years ago.
And now this guy is delighted to have the same stuff running in 'only 200MB'??
Umm, yeah. Emulating the entire OS and hardware in RAM in just 200MB is pretty impressive actually. It's not running the OS in 4MB - it's emulating the OS, the hardware, the entire hard drive, etc. Apples to oranges you have there.
I find it sad that an OS from 95 offered roughly the same functionality offered today but took much less space.
If all you do is some basic office tasks then you might be right. But as soon as you do something as simple as watch a 4K video then your argument blows up because those machines couldn't do it. A single video from my camera could easily fill up the entire hard drive and you could forget about editing it on any machine you could afford to own. Windows 95 was fine for its day but it took less space because it HAD to take less space. In those days a machine with 16MB of RAM was a lot of memory. Access to the internet was mostly via 56K dialup modems. The phone I have in my pocket would run rings around any PC you could buy when Windows 95 was the state of the art.
Our tech is degrading.
Really? That's funny because the PC I'm using to type this is FAR faster, drives three 4K monitors, has way more ram and disk space, has applications that do things we only dreamed of, has gigabit ethernet connected to a internet connection faster than my LAN in 1995. "Degrading"? Either you weren't around for those days or you have some serious rose tint on your glasses. The good old days weren't that good.
I honestly have no problems with someone being paid 40000x what I am being paid - whatever, I agreed to work for however much the company was paying.
You agreed to it because you didn't have a better option. If you don't see a problem with someone getting paid multiple orders of magnitude more than you when they are not creating a similar amount of added value to the company then you have no self respect.
So a CEO is making choices that affect all of the customers, and staff - obviously they still get paid very well.
Define "paid very well". When is it enough? How many multiple millions are does one need before one no longer is value added and start getting into amounts that actually hurt the company? I agree that pay should in principle be commensurate with the value added to the company but at some point too many companies start paying the people in charge amounts well beyond any possible value the could add to the company. Furthermore they negotiate these pay packages (including golden parachutes) before they ever work a day. Some CEOs probably are worth many millions a year but not very many of them.
The question is, what performance difference does a $1M CEO bring vs a $21.7M one?
The real question is how much of the company results can be attributed to the performance of the CEO. That is not an easy question to answer in most cases. I have no problem with pay for performance but in a lot of cases their pay is negotiated long before any performance.
But if you were more than 12 years old, you'd understand why people believe that their contribution to technological history deserves to be remembered.
WTF does that have to do with the stupid sign? If their contributions to technology were significant then they will stand on their own merits. We don't need a billboard to remind us of that fact long after the company has faded from relevance and memory. There are better ways to remind ourselves of our heritage than preserving irrelevant street signs.
One day, while it might not be mandatory, there will be so many advantages in being chipped vs many disadvantages in not being, that it will become essentially mandatory.
That presumes that people would be willing to go along with the action politically. I think that is unlikely to be the end result.
Can you hold on to your quaint sensibilities when being chipped means a fast track to the job you covet?
Probably. I'm certainly willing to take the challenge.
When not being chipped means having to sacrifice time and effort to do what the chipped achieve effortlessly?
My time and effort would be spent lobbying the government to make this an illegal practice. Possibly futile but I doubt I'd be alone.
You might think it would be cool to defy the "system" when you're young and single, but what will you do when you have a family to feed, hmmm?
If you aren't willing to fight for the civil rights of your children then you have no spine whatsoever. I'd fight this tooth and nail so my daughter wouldn't have to deal with it. I have a hard time envisioning a scenario whereby this would be acceptable to me. If I cannot win I'd be willing to move somewhere it isn't a concern.
Because Google is a rather moral and ethical company.
Hahahahaha.... They are a company that makes money by pimping vast amounts of personal data about you and everyone you know to advertisers. Spare me the notion that they are some sort of ethical paragon of an organization.
You obviously disagree but you might want to consider that Google employees have much better visibility into company actions than you do.
So did the people who worked at Enron so I'm not seeing much validity in your argument. Good people often work for bad organizations.
Actually, I think this question about censorship in China is one that reasonable people can disagree on. I appreciate and agree with the goals of the protesters, but I think they're making perfect the enemy of good. It's better to provide a censored search engine in China than to provide no search engine in China, from an ethical perspective.
Could not disagree more and I don't think your argument is a reasonable one at all. If censorship is bad you don't eliminate it by facilitating censorship.
It allows Google to become a force for reducing censorship in China.
So by censoring they are reducing censorship? That circular reasoning right there.
Oh, and also to make money, which is the primary goal of any business, of course.
Making money and having ethics are not incompatible behaviors. But it's undeniably easier to make money when you don't have to worry about ethics. Google seems to have placed theirs in escrow when it comes to China in order to make a buck.
And I'm for involving humans, at living wage.
Are you seriously arguing that we should keep unnecessary and obsolete jobs around? That is economic suicide. Sometimes jobs get replaced by automation. Get over it because it isn't going to change. Seriously, expecting a low margin price sensitive business like a grocery store to not take every opportunity to reduce costs is absurd and naive. It's not a jobs program, it's a for-profit business. Personally I doubt this service will amount to anything more than a publicity stunt but I have no problem with them giving it a try. Sometimes crazy ideas really work.
The sadness is the store is now only half of a grocery store, the rest being non-grocery items, booze, greeting cards, motor oil, pharmaceuticals, concessions (Murray's Most Expensive Cheese Kiosks), and so forth.
So you complain about the price of the products they sell but want them to pay higher wages to more people. You might want to think about making your argument self consistent. You can't have it both ways. Paying people higher wages requires you to spend more money and/or to allow them to cut costs.
I have no kitties and don't touch booze....
So grocery stores shouldn't sell that stuff because you don't partake? That's awfully self centered of you.
I live in flyover country now and people here are if anything more obsessed with propping up obsolete historical or otherwise noteable knickknacks.
Perhaps but they don't waste the time of a bunch of people posting stories about local news on a globally read website. While I'm sure slashdot has a fair number of bay area readers, I'm comfortable stating that almost everyone here has never heard of the sign or probably the company. I cannot imagine why the slashdot editors thought this would be of general interest to slashdot readers...
Not to seem snide but since I don't live there and have never even heard of the company, please explain to me why I (or anyone else) should care about some random bit of signage for a company just because it's been there a long time. I looked up some pictures and whatever significance this thing has to locals is utterly lost on me. It looks like a typical boring and wasteful company sign. Is this another example of people on the coasts thinking what happens in their city is somehow special and important even to people who don't live there? (NYC is notorious for this...)
Oh and he's a Democrat by the way, something to remember the next time they promise free healthcare.
I have never seen anyone (sane) promise "free healthcare" since there is no such thing. What they promise is healthcare for everyone. You know, like every other civilized country on the planet. We SHARE the cost and make it available to all without bankrupting the less wealthy among us in the process. Heaven forbid we share the costs and give a shit about our fellow citizens.
Eventually, when enough people are convinced, your hypothesis is essentially voted into being a theory.
Science is NOT about convincing people. Science is a process of establishing models that are have predictive power regardless of whether people believe them or not. Eventually people tend to come to a consensus behind models with proven and confirmed predictive power but this is a second order effect and not the actual point of the process. Science is what is true whether or not you believe in it. This is why when people use the argument about scientific consensus in regards to climate change they are making the wrong argument. It doesn't matter what the scientific consensus is - it only matters whether the models have predictive power. Consensus is just opinion and opinions can be wrong - even informed opinions. The argument they should make is that the climate models correctly predict XYZ and we have lots of various models all getting the same results.
When truth-establishing processes are dictatorial in nature, you get crazy religious wars.
True but group-think can be rather dictatorial in effect. Nobody forces people to believe in certain crazy ideas (like religion) but if you get enough of them collectively to believe it then it becomes an unquestioned dogma.
Anyone with a college degree is expected to not just pick any source, but strong sources that readers will likely to believe.
Ummm, sources that "readers will likely believe" routinely does not correlate positively with "strong sources". People will tend to believe whatever made of nonsense most strongly correlates with their pre-existing biases and beliefs.
the shortage of qualified medical professionals is one of the inputs into the cost of medical care --- which, in case some of you haven't noticed,
has become ridiculously high.
My wife is a doctor so I have some direct insight into this. I won't deny that it likely plays some role but it's not at the top of the list or even in the top 5. Honestly I'm fine with paying doctors (and nurses) relatively high salaries if it correlates to high quality of care and there is some evidence to suggest it does. I'd rather they get the money than say investment bankers or other financial leaches in our society. The worst part of the cost is that they have to hire virtual armies of non-medical support staff to handle all the scheduling, billing, paperwork, and medical records, much of which should be automated or eliminated in many cases. In my wife's office there are one or two physicians and probably 10-15 support staff on any given day. Guess where the majority of the cost lies? (it's not the doctor's salary)
The high cost of major medical operations and treatments is a result of multiple factors, but a major one is the high demand and low supply.
What do you specifically mean when you say low supply? There is no widespread shortage of supply of medical procedures to date. There are some nursing staff shortages in some markets and fewer doctors being trained than probably are needed looking forward. In most cases if people have to wait a little while (which is what happens when capacity is strained) that's not the tragedy many make it out to be for many conditions. Let's be clear too. There is a difference between cost of providing the service and the prices charged to patients. It's important to keep the distinction clear when discussing this topic. For example hospital pricing bears NO relationship whatsoever to the actual cost of providing services. (seriously, it's almost criminal) But we as patients still have to pay it and we see that pricing as the "cost" of the service when in reality we are paying a rather steep markup in many cases.
The number one driver of high costs in the US is administrative costs. A large part of this is because we have this ludicrously complicated and hodge-podge payment system and shitty medical records systems and scattered insurance system. We (stupidly) don't have the government playing a big role in negotiating prices like every other civilized country. Other important factors are high drug costs, defensive medicine (extra tests/procedures to avoid liability), over use of expensive treatment modalities, wages/staffing, specialization/referrals, and believe it or not branding.
If the barrier to opening and successfully suing both professionals and hospitals over undesirable
medical outcomes was much higher, then the costs of legal insurance, and the costs of many services
could have been much lower;
My wife is a doctor and I think you overestimate the cost of insurance. Sure it's a problem, particularly in some specialties like OB/GYN and pediatrics. But the amount my wife's practice has to pay for insurance is not as outrageous as you probably think it is. I've seen the numbers and I honestly expected them to be a lot worse. The bigger problem here is that doctors literally have to order tests just to be sure in case of a lawsuit. Usually it's not a thing but on the rare cases where it does come to a lawsuit the first thing any lawyer worth his diploma is going to ask is "why didn't you order this extra test" or "why didn't you consult another specialist". And so the doctors do what they have to do. Ask yourself what you would do it you could be personally sued for malpractice if you didn't have that extra design review for your code?
To be fair, bear in mind that there is also a cost to shielding doctors excessively fr
You don't need a government program to fix everything, private donations and effort can actually work to fix problems like the rising cost of tuition.
So instead of a government program with some measure of accountability, you prefer hand outs from wealthy donors with no accountability? Nothing wrong with private donations but depending on fickle handouts from rich people who may have ulterior motives isn't a very sensible way to run a society.
We do, but doctors should be making enough money to pay their student loans.
They should but you hugely overestimate how much money certain specialties like family practice make - not to mention the number of hours they work. Specialists can do much better of course but it's still hard to start off with several hundred thousand in debt (medical school plus undergrad typically) at the beginning of your career. Plus residencies can take 3-8 years and they only get paid something like $40K per year while a resident.
What about the other students that are going into areas that don't pay as well, but are also essential?
A fair question. We used to do this by adequately funding state schools. But people of a certain political persuasion in the US don't like that for ideological/political reasons so the funding has languished and debt has been piled on young people when they are least able to deal with it so that others can get tax cuts they don't really need. Of course even some private schools really don't need to charge what they do. Harvard has a $36 billion endowment so every student who goes there could go there for free if Harvard chose to do that.
Why should they be subsidizing people going into such high paying professions?
A lot of graduate schools are highly subsidized. I got a scholarship to grad school. But pragmatically because we need more of them. Because the job is important. Because that school can do it. The question should be why are we not doing it for more professions rather than why this profession in particular. What you should be asking is which important profession can we help out next.
Well, in California, that is a Catch n Release crime
Citation needed. Armed robbery is not a catch and release crime nor is it considered non-violent.
Add in the "Bail is too hard on criminals" logic from a number of left wing loons
Nice strawman. Nobody is making the argument that bail is too hard on criminals. The argument is that bail unfairly penalizes people who are poor and cannot afford bail. One's financial means should have zero relevance on whether you remain in a jail cell.
True innovation is coming up with something that doesn't exist, isn't even an idea, and making it happen.
Ahh the no true Scotsman fallacy.
Improvement looks at what everyone else is doing and tries something different, while "standing on the shoulders of the giant". No original thought.
So you are saying Issac Newton didn't have an original thought. Might want to go back and revisit that line of logic. NOBODY has ideas that don't build on the work of others. If you think you are the only person to have an idea then you are delusional. If your standard for "true innovation" is a thought or product nobody else had considered previously then there is no such thing as "true innovation". Your argument is complete nonsense.
The reasons any tech is in China is for cheap labor and loose environmental standards
There are a LOT of reasons why a lot of electronics and other tech are made in China. You mentioned two factors but they aren't the only ones nor the most important ones in a lot of cases.
I've worked in tech and with the Chinese. We had to QC all of their work.
I've been to China, worked in global sourcing, and source products from there daily in my day job most of which are just fine. China produces massive amounts of high quality good and services. Yes there is some junk too but your sweeping claims about the quality of work from China is demonstrably false. Sounds like your company hired the wrong people or didn't have the experience to manage them properly. Happens to a lot of companies. Doesn't mean that everything from China is shit.
Firefox had to change its name twice from Firebird and Phoenix.
How is this copying the product? They picked a name for it and needed to change it because they didn't know it was already taken. Has nothing to do with the product itself.
they sure do copy a lot over there
Yes they do and there is some good money in it too. But to be fair there is more than a little of it over here too.
do they ever really innovate? I mean in the last 800 years
Yes. Quite a lot actually. Sure there is a robust amounts of counterfeiting and knock off products but plenty of original work too. People used to think Japan produced nothing but crappy knockoffs too back in the 1950s and there were legitimate reasons to think that but over time it changes as the economy develops.
Need evidence of innovation? You're looking at it right now. The majority of electronics come from China and/or Taiwan. Much of this was developed by local talent without copying designs from elsewhere. Companies in every country engage in a certain amount of copying of works done elsewhere. The US and Europe are no exceptions.