As I said before, doing no evil is a far cry from doing good. I think on the whole google actively minimizes the evil it does. For instance it collects data, but it does not collate the data and then uses it to extort favors from people, as far as we know.
The Google projects are there for good, to test the limits of what can be done through a web or mobile based interfaces, but google is not a charity. It is not going to offer free products that do not support the core mission, to collect user data and sell it to advertisers. So google is going to do things that are not so good such as cut of services that is do not collect high quality data. It is going to deliver search results that support shady agents, because those shady agents are racking up the billable views. It is going to keep results non transparent because excessive transparency will allow advertisers to really know which campaign is working, and potentially cut earnings.
When Google first came online it was an easier life. Alta Vista was being overwhelmed with bad results. Everyone was blocking 2o7 because there was not useful reason for the end user to allow the cookies. So Goole came in and combined the two and go users used to letting cookies be set because services were being provided. But life is harder now. Facebook provides what may be a more relevant service, and is getting good at tracking users, and it getting into mobile. MS has a credible search engine and a lot of user data.
So Google is going to have to push the envelope of not-evil to keep profitable. Like any company reaching maturity, it is going to cut services, even if in the long run it going to hurt it. Cutting services to end users, who are not the customers, may seem better that cutting other expenses.
Given that MS has said it will release a new product every six months, and that MS seldom provides mainstream support for old product(read: new computers always are sold with current products), this is like the case. July 2014 will make current products two releases old. MS is likely only going to support current and previous release. Alternatively, it may be that by the end of the year all devices will be migrated to Windows RT.
In gambling the game is always rigged. The house is always going to win. In poker what you are gambling is your strategies and skill are better than the opponents.
Strategy, though is frowned upon in most cases. This, however, goes a bit beyond typical strategy. It does, to me, justify the assertion that poker is not gambling. I think it is crap, but if you can rig the game so you win, by whatever means, then it no longer gambling.
Here is what is most interesting. In 1984 a government bureaucracy was necessary to track everyone. In Fahrenheit 451 it took a whole walls of TVs to pacify the public. In Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep, the only real book, the corporations control the populous through mechanical animals, drug consoles, and shipments off world.
Inventor, Solid Works, etc are mechanical engineering tools. They are basically the same and not all that difficult to learn. I learned much on Inventor in a week.
OTOH, Blender and the like are more freeform design applications. I have not really worked on learning Blender, but what I have seen is good
What one uses depends on what one wants to do. If the point is to design parts that will fit together and function mechanically, then something like Inventor might be best. If the point is to design crafts or art, then perhaps blender is good.
Applications have costs and benefits. There is no general purpose application for this sort of thing.
How is registering a domain cybersquatting? Unless they clearly expect to sell the domain back there are many reasons to register such a domain. For instance, information on a pope is highly censored. it may be that these people are setting up sites to report news that does not make into the media. Or they may be there to praise and promote the Catholic faith. Or many other reasons. What is clear is we should not just vilify these people who are legally exercising their rights. It just reinforces the prejudice that Catholics do not believe in individual rights when those rights but against the desires of the Vatican.
Because, as in the case of Tesla, when independent reviewers test they do not follow instructions to the letter and the car does not perform as well. Of course most drivers don't follow the instructions to the letter, don't keep the tires inflated properly, drive inefficiently, have to drive in stop and go traffic, etc.
So the question becomes which is better. A standard set of tests in which values between models can be compared, or non standard tests in which more relevant values for the real world are attained.
I would say both. That said I agree with other posters who say their european cars meet of exceed the values posted in the US. My car easily gets the average efficiency now that I know how to drive it. I rented a Subaru a while back, went through a few tanks, and it exceeded my expectations. Obviously the EU testing is different and may overstate fuel consumption.
The point is if a private citizen or smaller company had done what data did, which is to collect this 'public' information, and in some form potentially put it to use, which we have no evidence google did not do, the feds might have worked harder at finding a punishment. There is a bit of unequal justice going on.
Here is a couple of further examples. HSBC almost certainly laundered terrorist money. They were fined 1.9 billion dollars. That is like 1% of market cap. OTOH, a few years ago the leaders of Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were put in jail for a long time and had to forfeit most of their money, the prosecutor saying money is the lifeblood of terrorist organization. By this logic HSBC is responsible of countless murders of US citizens, yet they get off pretty much scott free.
Allegiance to a dominant group is also beneficial. Eric Rudolph committed a terrorist act by bombing the olympics and other premeditated and unprovoked murders. He was a fugitive for five years. He was arrested, did not turn himself in. One might think he would be charged as a terrorist, but because he was a major element in the Christian Movement, he was merely give consecutive life sentence,which allows him to spew his hate of persons who do not agree with him. OTOH, on of the beltway snipers who were not so politically motivated and were not kept hidden and supported by the Christian terrorist movement, were put to death.
Powerful friends, and good lawyers, will tend to minimize the consequences of your actions.
We have discussed this in reference to movies. The overall jist was that many people would be distracted by a phone during a movie, therefore we all have to put our phones away because a few do not have the ability to focus.
I find phones to be slightly distracting during a movie, but I also find rowdy children and patrons who cannot stay seated for 180 minutes to be distracting as well. We deal with some of this, but not others. I argue that the real reason movies do not want texting is that it kills first weekend sales. If soclal media lights up that a movie sucks during the release on the east coast, by the time the movie hits the west coat everyone decices to go to see something else.
Focus and attention span is the key here. There is a assumption by the majority of young people that they must be constantly entertained, constantly engaged. This has always been the case, but the expectation has increased. While the kids of the 70's were transformed by Sesame Streets 3 minute edutainment bites, and the 80's by constant music input, todays kids have constant access to a wide range of media, never having to sit and think about what they are doing, watching, listening to. It is an ever changing random input of junk. There is no need for focus, analysis, understanding of the process.
Which is neither here nor there. Except to say the if phones are not acceptable at movies, then why at symphonies, which are not your pop concert where phones do seem to be acceptable, while still distracting but does not matter because at a pop concert few really seem to be paying attention anyone. The music is background. But many are paying attention at movies either.
In any case, a symphony, which is classical music, which is music from 200 years ago that has been distilled to take the vast majority which is crap and only includes what is critically acclaimed, uses an artistic language that is no accesible to the average person. Not because it is difficult but because it takes time. By allowing tweeting you are giving this person something to do during the concert. Could through this exposure the person learn the language of classical music, maybe. But it is an obtuse language and to learn it one must be focused. It is an exciting language.
To get a feeling for this, listen to New Horizon in music appreciation. It is really funny, but like al inside jokes it is only funny if you know the references.
Slashdot has microtransactions in terms of a subscription. The problem I had with microtransactions is that it is just too expensive. Like the games I used to play where one could buy stuff to support the developers. The rates started very reasonable, one could have fun for a few bucks a month, but then the prices simply got too high. The support the developers needed was beyond my ability to pay.
Slashdot was the same thing. i thought a subscription might last a while, but it ran out much faster than I thought. I think/. is a worthy site and should be supported, but given the rates that are charged for a subscription, it is clear that the advertisers are willing to pay more to get impressions that I am willing to pay for content.
Which is fine. This is how media has been forever. Advertisers are desperate to find ways to reach impressionable consumers. It works. I am not sure if there is any reason to change it. For instance I receive a number f magazine who subscriptions work out to much less than a dollar an issue. Clearly this is not enough to cover more than agency fees, handling, and postage. Therefore advertisers cover all productions costs and profits. These magazine makes money.
There are models already in the media in which end users provide tiny bits of funding, microtranactions so to speak, to support the media. In reality advertising, though much lower key, still supports up to 50% of the media outlets, and these outlets are often nonprofit, meaning corporate and public support is tax deductible. This is clearly not the model proposed here.
Hence the 12% error rate. This is a game or a means to allow advertisers to target users. It is really no different that assuming your status based on the neighborhood you live in. Or your intentions based on the bars you visit. I pretty much know if you gay, a frat boy, looking for rich husband, based on what I bar I see you in.
Years ago laptop manufacturers often called reviewers liars because the reviewers ran the laptops under real world conditions and achieved battery liars that were fractions of the stated battery life.Those manufacturers that overstated the most were the most vocal.
In cars energy consumption is traditionally widely overstated, as can be seen with the recent manufacturers that had to cut estimates. Some are accurace. The Subaru, in my experience, does can go 60 to 70 miles on a scant two gallons. One of my cars is rated 17/23 mpg, but in fact can be driven to get up to 30 mpg on the freeway, and typically get closer to 20 in the city. however that is assuming the the on board computers are correct, which various drivers have shown they are not through hand calculations.
So in the culture of auto manufacturing, and laptops, there is a culture of widely inaccurate estimates of energy consumption, which mostly does not matter. Most of the time we tend to be around a gas station or a wall outlet, and refueling either is pretty fast.
The problem is, and I got out of the NYT report was saying, is that when charging takes a relatively long tim, and when station are not everywhere, it is easy to get stuck. Not because the car is bad, but because no one is going to drive under ideal conditions, and the temptation to go when the estimates say you can will be great. More work needs to go into energy management.
One of the big criticisms of MS is that it did not start with how humans were going to interact with it's equipment. I know in the past several years it has, but that may be one issue with MS mobile technology. A mobile device is very intimate, much more than the personal computer, and therefore the interaction between user and device is much more critical. Than Android did start with the user is not surprising.
You know Amazon sells something like 1 out every 3 books. It is like Walmart, big enough that things change just for it. Remember when music was being censored so Walmart would sell it?
If I wrote a book that I was going to market so it would end up on some best seller list, and therefore in a brick and mortar store, the cost of ISBN would be insignificant. If I were publishing a book that might end up in a library, then the cost would be justified. If I were publishing a book every couple months, then the 10 pack would useful.
But really, $125 is at least $125 books. That money could be used for advertising on google that would drive people to Google where almost every person in the developed world can order my book.
i am not saying the ISBN is not useful, just that times are changing and some thing are not so valuable and do not demand so high a price. Firms that ignore this are not long for this world.
Having the customer enter some data into a web page and pushing that data to international data does not cost $125. There is nothing else these people do. Registering a domain name only costs $10.
Years ago I had surgery and was given three medications for home aftercare. My sister brought home a PDR from work and for grins I looked up my drugs. It turned out that one of drugs was wrong. We contacted the doctor, got the right ones, and all was well. Later I was prescribed another drug for my back, and one of the side effects was suicidal thoughts. Fortunately I tend to read up on any drugs i take, so when I wanted to kill myself I stopped taking the drug.
A friend of mine who was taking drugs for various ailments fainted and ended up in the hospital for a week because of drug interactions. Another friends mother also had some drug interactions and mild episodes, even though my friend, who realized that there might be a problem, tried to get the doctor to change the prescription. In the doctor' judgement there were not a lot of alternatives, and this was the best solution.
Which is to say there is already a lot of information out there. As far as I can tell most don't use this information. They simply take the medical solution for a problem, trust the doctor, which they should, and then sue if the medical solution is not perfect.
This centralized record keeping thing, to me, can be an effective way to cut costs and improve treatment. And medical records, like financial records, should be yours. But if the average person thinks they are just going to read them and know something, then this may be a case of unmanaged expectations.
The Pot office is an example of buggy whip operation that has not been allowed to innovate of charge a market price. For instance the forever first class stamp is a good form of innovation, but it does not go far enough. Why should it cost the same to mail a letter from Dallas to Chicago as from Dallas to the middle of nowhere frontier North Dakota. There is no opportunity of scale in North Dakota. Charging different rates will be inefficient, so just formally make the delivery time up to 5 days, instead of 2-3 for most. The understanding is that it will be at a post office in the area in 2 day, but may not be delivered until there is enough to justify the cost, just like UPS does. If you want it faster for rural areas, then pay for Priority Mail. No more subsidies for the rural folk by the city folk.
Then there is the issue of closing post offices. There should be some standard, such as no post office for less than 5,000 people. For instance, evidently the people of Derby Connecticticut (3,000 people) are upset that their post office is going to close even though there is another a half mile away. Evidently the US taxpayer is expected to cover maintenance costs for the building. I know how they feel. My historic post office might close, which serves way over 20,000 people, although there are satellite kiosks in other areas, but the reality is that it is sitting on a very valuable piece of property and does not need to be that big. I kind of hope it does not close, but will understand if it does.
Then there is saturday delivery, which the USPS is giving away while others do not have it. Again, if one want saturday deliver, which I have no use for, then pay for it. Priority mail, which the plan says will deliver on saturday, is six bucks. For the same service Fedex is 50 bucks. Ended Saturday delivery is something many firms are against because it is an entitlement. An entitlement that the taxpayer, according to congress, is not willing to pay for.
It would be news if Google or some other competitor did not, because that would be collusion, or cartel behavior. In the free market we have competition, and part of competition is ratting out your competitors when they don't follow code. On problem we have is that so many firms just go along with illegal behavior, joining in because everyone else is doing it, and that means honest firms often get left behind, leading to the kind of dishonesty that harms people and forces the taxpayer to bail out industries.
Last time I was in south america, it was hard to watch TV after 11 without seeing full frontal naked women in the shower advertising soap and couples having sex advertising, well I don't know what.
In any case the outside the US advertising allows a lot more skin, and the side effect is a lot more women are portrayed as anonymous objects of sex. it is arguably not a great thing for kids to grow up with. On the internet, no matter the opinion of p0rn, this is even a greater issue. Women and girls are all too often portrayed as vehicle for male satisfaction. This is not causing problems, for instance high school and college sports teams were gang raping women long before the Internet, but it is something we have not thought about a lot, and we do really need to think of implications and if it should be more controlled in some way.
I will say that these images are so available, I don't know if kids have less incentive to actually go out and pursue the real thing though relationships. Or if they being given such a high ideal, that they forgo the real thing since it is so unattainable.
I can slack off anywhere, but at home I can do housework, cook dinner, run an errand, sex, lots of stuff. The idea is not that you can't do some of these things at the office,but that your choices are more limited.
It really sounds like the employees, as some often do, simply took advantage of a good situation. I have, and have known people, who have had such opportunities. You keep yourself logged in. You stay next to a phone. If you leave, you make sure you can check problems from where you are. You check email frequently. It is a matter of discipline. it is hard. It is why some people make more than others. Those who don't need supervision do not incur the expense of supervision.
While I would like to see this case be the impetus to reform the way we deal with criminals, John Cornyn is not the one who is going to do it. This is just a political ploy to gain points with the right wingnuts. Cornyn sponsored a bill that would force anyone detained by the police to submit a DNA sample. Not arrested, no arraigned, not indicted, but simply stopped by a police officer for no apparent reason. He fully supports the patriot act and wiretapping without a warrant. He in no way is concerned that the police and prosecutors have too much power. He is simply one of those people who is leveraging people fear of the man in the office of the presidency. He is simply trying to win the next election.
I would add one more thing. While I really question what happened in this case, I also know that when you play with the big dogs you have to be able to deal with getting bit. Someone like Schwartz who father gave him ample opportuniteit and who was private school educated may have they did not have to live in the real world. Maybe they thought they had protection, and when they did not it frightened him. I saw this a lot when I was growing up, and even now. There were some white kids in Louisiana, for instance, who thought it might be fun to taunt the black boys. They were asked nicely to stop, but they did not. When retaliation did occur then thought it was very unfair. After all they were white and protected. I am not saying that the cases are similar, just that some people don't know that real world consequences exist. We live in a dangerous world where people, especially powerful people, will retaliate with excessive force. Fairness is not the point. Solving the problem is. Some of us have had experience with this from a young age
Compare this case to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. The retaliation against them are orders of magnitude greater than against Schwartz, yet they are dealing with it the best they can. Actions have Consequences. Thoreau was against the war, did not pay taxes, and went to jail. He honored his conscience and paid the price. Just as we all do.
Seriously, my only experience in this was moving my parent to a Mac. It solved everything. Since Mobileme went away it was not really useful. And believe it was painful. There was yelling and pouted, even drama at the Apple Store. I can say the underpaid staff handled it very well. Buy years later the machine still works, the training is done, and everything is done. The big screen and the large characters and big mouse help a lot.
What can be taken away is remote management is a must. Large characters is a must. We moved to google from whatever we had before, something like AOL, and that was the least painful of the transitions.
But seriously, if it is an MS Windows only deal, stick with XP. Make it work. Just move to Google. Search for how to customize XP for what you do. It is a legacy system so every use case has been explored.
There is a good video about why you should never talk to the police. Look it up on youtube.
Basically the police are, as the kids say, 'incentivized' to closed cases and get the collar. There is not enough incentive to insure the criminal is caught, especially for cases where the jury is not going to understand the case and convict on the basis that the police said the suspect did it.
Police are much better at this than any civilian. There is a reason why we have a right to legal representation, and why we should always get it. There is a reason why on TV procedurals the cops are always trying to keep the lawyers away. Remember, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
Just look at the so-called cannibal cop. No evidence that he it is anything other than fantasy, yet he is on trial for conspiracy. Or the kid who was conned into plotting to detonate a bomb by the FBI. He was an impressionable kid, with the same delusions of grandeur of any other kid. (And for those who say he was not a kid, then why can't an adult drink until 21?). He was manipulated by expert government personell into doing something illegal in the same way that many other kids are manipulated into doing illegal things by the religious fanatics. There was no cry for justice here, just some people trying to get a reputation for conviction.
It is not that the sign you place is illegal, it is that illegal signs are placed without fear of prosecution due to the use of contractors. The point is that contractors, in the real world, protect firms from actionable cause. This is why we still get calls even though we have a DNC list, we have bandit signs everywhere, and oil companies are free to have accidents that kill workers while those deaths are never reported as 'employee fatalities'.
About a third of the population is over 45. These are people who probably did not have computers in high school, probably did not have internet in college, probably did not have a personal cell phone until at least 30, or home internet for that matter. These are the people who have, on average, at least twice the personal wealth as people who are younger.
This is the target audience of the yellow pages. People who have funds to pay for services, and will likely look in book instead of craigs list or angies list. People who may go to a store rather than just get stuff shipped from Amazon. Certainly many of these people do use Amazon, and do not use the yellow pages, but even if on 1 in 5 used the yellow pages, that is over 5% of the population. That is a market. It is not the nearly 100% it used to be, but it still is a market
The problem is correcting itself, at least in civilized urban areas. The telephone books i get delivered, and I am not even sure I had one delivered this year, are about a quarter of the size of the old ones. We no longer have residential books delivered. Another generation and the books will be gone completely. It is just that some areas are more control freaks, and always want other people to change.
Slashdot Mirror
The Google projects are there for good, to test the limits of what can be done through a web or mobile based interfaces, but google is not a charity. It is not going to offer free products that do not support the core mission, to collect user data and sell it to advertisers. So google is going to do things that are not so good such as cut of services that is do not collect high quality data. It is going to deliver search results that support shady agents, because those shady agents are racking up the billable views. It is going to keep results non transparent because excessive transparency will allow advertisers to really know which campaign is working, and potentially cut earnings.
When Google first came online it was an easier life. Alta Vista was being overwhelmed with bad results. Everyone was blocking 2o7 because there was not useful reason for the end user to allow the cookies. So Goole came in and combined the two and go users used to letting cookies be set because services were being provided. But life is harder now. Facebook provides what may be a more relevant service, and is getting good at tracking users, and it getting into mobile. MS has a credible search engine and a lot of user data.
So Google is going to have to push the envelope of not-evil to keep profitable. Like any company reaching maturity, it is going to cut services, even if in the long run it going to hurt it. Cutting services to end users, who are not the customers, may seem better that cutting other expenses.
Given that MS has said it will release a new product every six months, and that MS seldom provides mainstream support for old product(read: new computers always are sold with current products), this is like the case. July 2014 will make current products two releases old. MS is likely only going to support current and previous release. Alternatively, it may be that by the end of the year all devices will be migrated to Windows RT.
Strategy, though is frowned upon in most cases. This, however, goes a bit beyond typical strategy. It does, to me, justify the assertion that poker is not gambling. I think it is crap, but if you can rig the game so you win, by whatever means, then it no longer gambling.
Here is what is most interesting. In 1984 a government bureaucracy was necessary to track everyone. In Fahrenheit 451 it took a whole walls of TVs to pacify the public. In Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep, the only real book, the corporations control the populous through mechanical animals, drug consoles, and shipments off world.
OTOH, Blender and the like are more freeform design applications. I have not really worked on learning Blender, but what I have seen is good
What one uses depends on what one wants to do. If the point is to design parts that will fit together and function mechanically, then something like Inventor might be best. If the point is to design crafts or art, then perhaps blender is good.
Applications have costs and benefits. There is no general purpose application for this sort of thing.
How is registering a domain cybersquatting? Unless they clearly expect to sell the domain back there are many reasons to register such a domain. For instance, information on a pope is highly censored. it may be that these people are setting up sites to report news that does not make into the media. Or they may be there to praise and promote the Catholic faith. Or many other reasons. What is clear is we should not just vilify these people who are legally exercising their rights. It just reinforces the prejudice that Catholics do not believe in individual rights when those rights but against the desires of the Vatican.
So the question becomes which is better. A standard set of tests in which values between models can be compared, or non standard tests in which more relevant values for the real world are attained.
I would say both. That said I agree with other posters who say their european cars meet of exceed the values posted in the US. My car easily gets the average efficiency now that I know how to drive it. I rented a Subaru a while back, went through a few tanks, and it exceeded my expectations. Obviously the EU testing is different and may overstate fuel consumption.
Here is a couple of further examples. HSBC almost certainly laundered terrorist money. They were fined 1.9 billion dollars. That is like 1% of market cap. OTOH, a few years ago the leaders of Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were put in jail for a long time and had to forfeit most of their money, the prosecutor saying money is the lifeblood of terrorist organization. By this logic HSBC is responsible of countless murders of US citizens, yet they get off pretty much scott free.
Allegiance to a dominant group is also beneficial. Eric Rudolph committed a terrorist act by bombing the olympics and other premeditated and unprovoked murders. He was a fugitive for five years. He was arrested, did not turn himself in. One might think he would be charged as a terrorist, but because he was a major element in the Christian Movement, he was merely give consecutive life sentence,which allows him to spew his hate of persons who do not agree with him. OTOH, on of the beltway snipers who were not so politically motivated and were not kept hidden and supported by the Christian terrorist movement, were put to death.
Powerful friends, and good lawyers, will tend to minimize the consequences of your actions.
I find phones to be slightly distracting during a movie, but I also find rowdy children and patrons who cannot stay seated for 180 minutes to be distracting as well. We deal with some of this, but not others. I argue that the real reason movies do not want texting is that it kills first weekend sales. If soclal media lights up that a movie sucks during the release on the east coast, by the time the movie hits the west coat everyone decices to go to see something else.
Focus and attention span is the key here. There is a assumption by the majority of young people that they must be constantly entertained, constantly engaged. This has always been the case, but the expectation has increased. While the kids of the 70's were transformed by Sesame Streets 3 minute edutainment bites, and the 80's by constant music input, todays kids have constant access to a wide range of media, never having to sit and think about what they are doing, watching, listening to. It is an ever changing random input of junk. There is no need for focus, analysis, understanding of the process.
Which is neither here nor there. Except to say the if phones are not acceptable at movies, then why at symphonies, which are not your pop concert where phones do seem to be acceptable, while still distracting but does not matter because at a pop concert few really seem to be paying attention anyone. The music is background. But many are paying attention at movies either.
In any case, a symphony, which is classical music, which is music from 200 years ago that has been distilled to take the vast majority which is crap and only includes what is critically acclaimed, uses an artistic language that is no accesible to the average person. Not because it is difficult but because it takes time. By allowing tweeting you are giving this person something to do during the concert. Could through this exposure the person learn the language of classical music, maybe. But it is an obtuse language and to learn it one must be focused. It is an exciting language.
To get a feeling for this, listen to New Horizon in music appreciation. It is really funny, but like al inside jokes it is only funny if you know the references.
Slashdot was the same thing. i thought a subscription might last a while, but it ran out much faster than I thought. I think /. is a worthy site and should be supported, but given the rates that are charged for a subscription, it is clear that the advertisers are willing to pay more to get impressions that I am willing to pay for content.
Which is fine. This is how media has been forever. Advertisers are desperate to find ways to reach impressionable consumers. It works. I am not sure if there is any reason to change it. For instance I receive a number f magazine who subscriptions work out to much less than a dollar an issue. Clearly this is not enough to cover more than agency fees, handling, and postage. Therefore advertisers cover all productions costs and profits. These magazine makes money.
There are models already in the media in which end users provide tiny bits of funding, microtranactions so to speak, to support the media. In reality advertising, though much lower key, still supports up to 50% of the media outlets, and these outlets are often nonprofit, meaning corporate and public support is tax deductible. This is clearly not the model proposed here.
Hence the 12% error rate. This is a game or a means to allow advertisers to target users. It is really no different that assuming your status based on the neighborhood you live in. Or your intentions based on the bars you visit. I pretty much know if you gay, a frat boy, looking for rich husband, based on what I bar I see you in.
In cars energy consumption is traditionally widely overstated, as can be seen with the recent manufacturers that had to cut estimates. Some are accurace. The Subaru, in my experience, does can go 60 to 70 miles on a scant two gallons. One of my cars is rated 17/23 mpg, but in fact can be driven to get up to 30 mpg on the freeway, and typically get closer to 20 in the city. however that is assuming the the on board computers are correct, which various drivers have shown they are not through hand calculations.
So in the culture of auto manufacturing, and laptops, there is a culture of widely inaccurate estimates of energy consumption, which mostly does not matter. Most of the time we tend to be around a gas station or a wall outlet, and refueling either is pretty fast.
The problem is, and I got out of the NYT report was saying, is that when charging takes a relatively long tim, and when station are not everywhere, it is easy to get stuck. Not because the car is bad, but because no one is going to drive under ideal conditions, and the temptation to go when the estimates say you can will be great. More work needs to go into energy management.
One of the big criticisms of MS is that it did not start with how humans were going to interact with it's equipment. I know in the past several years it has, but that may be one issue with MS mobile technology. A mobile device is very intimate, much more than the personal computer, and therefore the interaction between user and device is much more critical. Than Android did start with the user is not surprising.
If I wrote a book that I was going to market so it would end up on some best seller list, and therefore in a brick and mortar store, the cost of ISBN would be insignificant. If I were publishing a book that might end up in a library, then the cost would be justified. If I were publishing a book every couple months, then the 10 pack would useful.
But really, $125 is at least $125 books. That money could be used for advertising on google that would drive people to Google where almost every person in the developed world can order my book.
i am not saying the ISBN is not useful, just that times are changing and some thing are not so valuable and do not demand so high a price. Firms that ignore this are not long for this world.
Having the customer enter some data into a web page and pushing that data to international data does not cost $125. There is nothing else these people do. Registering a domain name only costs $10.
How dare he give the populous the right to monitor the police state.
A friend of mine who was taking drugs for various ailments fainted and ended up in the hospital for a week because of drug interactions. Another friends mother also had some drug interactions and mild episodes, even though my friend, who realized that there might be a problem, tried to get the doctor to change the prescription. In the doctor' judgement there were not a lot of alternatives, and this was the best solution.
Which is to say there is already a lot of information out there. As far as I can tell most don't use this information. They simply take the medical solution for a problem, trust the doctor, which they should, and then sue if the medical solution is not perfect.
This centralized record keeping thing, to me, can be an effective way to cut costs and improve treatment. And medical records, like financial records, should be yours. But if the average person thinks they are just going to read them and know something, then this may be a case of unmanaged expectations.
Then there is the issue of closing post offices. There should be some standard, such as no post office for less than 5,000 people. For instance, evidently the people of Derby Connecticticut (3,000 people) are upset that their post office is going to close even though there is another a half mile away. Evidently the US taxpayer is expected to cover maintenance costs for the building. I know how they feel. My historic post office might close, which serves way over 20,000 people, although there are satellite kiosks in other areas, but the reality is that it is sitting on a very valuable piece of property and does not need to be that big. I kind of hope it does not close, but will understand if it does.
Then there is saturday delivery, which the USPS is giving away while others do not have it. Again, if one want saturday deliver, which I have no use for, then pay for it. Priority mail, which the plan says will deliver on saturday, is six bucks. For the same service Fedex is 50 bucks. Ended Saturday delivery is something many firms are against because it is an entitlement. An entitlement that the taxpayer, according to congress, is not willing to pay for.
It would be news if Google or some other competitor did not, because that would be collusion, or cartel behavior. In the free market we have competition, and part of competition is ratting out your competitors when they don't follow code. On problem we have is that so many firms just go along with illegal behavior, joining in because everyone else is doing it, and that means honest firms often get left behind, leading to the kind of dishonesty that harms people and forces the taxpayer to bail out industries.
While Fisher seems to have confirmed it. Can't see Hamill has anything else to do. But how much are they going to pay Ford to do the work?
In any case the outside the US advertising allows a lot more skin, and the side effect is a lot more women are portrayed as anonymous objects of sex. it is arguably not a great thing for kids to grow up with. On the internet, no matter the opinion of p0rn, this is even a greater issue. Women and girls are all too often portrayed as vehicle for male satisfaction. This is not causing problems, for instance high school and college sports teams were gang raping women long before the Internet, but it is something we have not thought about a lot, and we do really need to think of implications and if it should be more controlled in some way.
I will say that these images are so available, I don't know if kids have less incentive to actually go out and pursue the real thing though relationships. Or if they being given such a high ideal, that they forgo the real thing since it is so unattainable.
It really sounds like the employees, as some often do, simply took advantage of a good situation. I have, and have known people, who have had such opportunities. You keep yourself logged in. You stay next to a phone. If you leave, you make sure you can check problems from where you are. You check email frequently. It is a matter of discipline. it is hard. It is why some people make more than others. Those who don't need supervision do not incur the expense of supervision.
I would add one more thing. While I really question what happened in this case, I also know that when you play with the big dogs you have to be able to deal with getting bit. Someone like Schwartz who father gave him ample opportuniteit and who was private school educated may have they did not have to live in the real world. Maybe they thought they had protection, and when they did not it frightened him. I saw this a lot when I was growing up, and even now. There were some white kids in Louisiana, for instance, who thought it might be fun to taunt the black boys. They were asked nicely to stop, but they did not. When retaliation did occur then thought it was very unfair. After all they were white and protected. I am not saying that the cases are similar, just that some people don't know that real world consequences exist. We live in a dangerous world where people, especially powerful people, will retaliate with excessive force. Fairness is not the point. Solving the problem is. Some of us have had experience with this from a young age
Compare this case to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. The retaliation against them are orders of magnitude greater than against Schwartz, yet they are dealing with it the best they can. Actions have Consequences. Thoreau was against the war, did not pay taxes, and went to jail. He honored his conscience and paid the price. Just as we all do.
What can be taken away is remote management is a must. Large characters is a must. We moved to google from whatever we had before, something like AOL, and that was the least painful of the transitions.
But seriously, if it is an MS Windows only deal, stick with XP. Make it work. Just move to Google. Search for how to customize XP for what you do. It is a legacy system so every use case has been explored.
Basically the police are, as the kids say, 'incentivized' to closed cases and get the collar. There is not enough incentive to insure the criminal is caught, especially for cases where the jury is not going to understand the case and convict on the basis that the police said the suspect did it.
Police are much better at this than any civilian. There is a reason why we have a right to legal representation, and why we should always get it. There is a reason why on TV procedurals the cops are always trying to keep the lawyers away. Remember, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
Just look at the so-called cannibal cop. No evidence that he it is anything other than fantasy, yet he is on trial for conspiracy. Or the kid who was conned into plotting to detonate a bomb by the FBI. He was an impressionable kid, with the same delusions of grandeur of any other kid. (And for those who say he was not a kid, then why can't an adult drink until 21?). He was manipulated by expert government personell into doing something illegal in the same way that many other kids are manipulated into doing illegal things by the religious fanatics. There was no cry for justice here, just some people trying to get a reputation for conviction.
About a third of the population is over 45. These are people who probably did not have computers in high school, probably did not have internet in college, probably did not have a personal cell phone until at least 30, or home internet for that matter. These are the people who have, on average, at least twice the personal wealth as people who are younger.
This is the target audience of the yellow pages. People who have funds to pay for services, and will likely look in book instead of craigs list or angies list. People who may go to a store rather than just get stuff shipped from Amazon. Certainly many of these people do use Amazon, and do not use the yellow pages, but even if on 1 in 5 used the yellow pages, that is over 5% of the population. That is a market. It is not the nearly 100% it used to be, but it still is a market
The problem is correcting itself, at least in civilized urban areas. The telephone books i get delivered, and I am not even sure I had one delivered this year, are about a quarter of the size of the old ones. We no longer have residential books delivered. Another generation and the books will be gone completely. It is just that some areas are more control freaks, and always want other people to change.