No, but if you aren't paying attention to the road (because you are texting), a helmet would come in handy if your bike hits a bump and you land on the pavement. It might make the difference between being dazed but getting up on your own or needing a trip to the hospital.
Users won't flock to Windows Phone because of the lack of apps. Better to spend your money on Android or iOS where the apps are.
Developers won't develop apps for Windows Phone because of the lack of users. Better to spend your time developing on Android or iOS where the users are.
I can't say that I envy Microsoft's position (as I use my Android phone).
My wife has a Nokia Lumia phone. (She received it for review purposes.) The camera on it is stellar. Best I've seen on any phone. The rest of the OS (Windows) stinks, of course. Few apps and what apps there are tend to be buggy. After her review period, she switched back to her Android phone and uses the Lumia as a point-and-shoot camera. If Nokia could release an Android phone with a Lumia-quality camera, they might just have something worthwhile.
True, but if a drunk driver collides with someone (not you), your main impact to worry about would be traffic. An inconvenience, sure, but not life threatening.
If a drunk flying car driver collides with someone (not you), you might have to worry about raining debris. Every car accident would create a ripple effect of additional damage as car parts rained down onto other flying cars, pedestrians, non-flying vehicles, houses, businesses, etc.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather deal with traffic than raining debris any day.
Having texts read to them? Just yesterday I saw a bicyclist on the road (in a bicycle lane, but still near traffic) texting with one hand while pedaling. Of course, she also wasn't wearing a helmet.
I'm hoping to get back into biking soon (it's really good exercise), but if I feel the need to text someone, I'll pull my bike to a safe spot, stop, text the person, and start up again. Otherwise, all focus will be on my surroundings, not my electronic gizmo.
I had my identity stolen once. (Name, address, SSN and DOB were used to open a credit card in my name. Thanks a lot, Capital One, for not validating Mother's Maiden Name!) I still post online, though. Why? Because the things I post online won't result in my identity being stolen again. I'm more at risk of my doctor's office's computers being hacked into causing my personal information to leak out than I am at risk of all of my online posts combined causing my identity to be stolen.
Forget civilian operated drones. Look at civilian operated cars. Take a glance at the kinds of drivers you see on the road every day and then ask yourself: "Do I really trust these people with a flying vehicle moving in three dimensions?"
Once we get self-driving cars, we might stand a chance of self-flying cars. Until then, though, flying cars would be a safety nightmare!
Obviously, your social media presence would impact the company's response. If you opened a Twitter account just for company complaints, you'd likely have only a few followers and companies might feel comfortable ignoring you. My Twitter account has over 3,000 followers so I get recognized most times. If someone like Jenny Lawson (aka TheBloggess) complains, her 378,000+ followers get her immediate attention. (Or else her rabid fans will slam the company in question unless they make good on it.)
But you're right about the multiplier effect. If I post to my 3,000+ followers that Company X did something horrible, some percentage of them might retweet the message to their followers, some might post about it on Facebook, people might chime in with their bad experiences, etc. It allows customers who previously might have been isolated in their grumblings to a tone deaf customer support line to amplify their message until the company listens. Of course, the Internet in general does this as well. Social media is just one more facet of the general Internet.
I use FedEx over UPS anytime I can. Unfortunately, sometimes things get sent by whoever the seller decides to use and that can mean needing to keep an eye out for a UPS truck.
Apple's iPhone popularized browsing the Internet with your phone. Previously, this was harder to do. However, the wireless carriers were never content providers the way the cable ISPs are. Verizon Wireless and AT&T might have offered ringtones or music, but those were side ventures. For the cable ISPs, video is their main business. This Internet stuff is a secondary venture. Not secondary enough that they will ditch it, but secondary enough that they would rather cripple it than allow it to threaten their primary business.
In addition, the wireless carriers always had competition. Verizon Wireless might have the best reception in my area, but I could still go with AT&T or Sprint and get decent service. However, if I want to leave Time Warner Cable, I have no other wired broadband options. This is the case for most Americans. The ISPs know this and react accordingly. (Prices go up while service quality goes down.)
Data mining and intercepting bad company experiences and "making good" on them. For example, we had something delivered via UPS. The driver left it on our front step, didn't ring the doorbell, and just left. It sat out there for hours before we realized it was there. The package could have easily been stolen during that time and neither UPS nor I would have known until it was much too late. We complained on Twitter and UPS contacted us in an attempt to find out what went wrong and how they could improve their policies.
I think this is the real usefulness for companies on social media. Spot bad experiences, help minimize bad PR by helping those customers, and minimize future bad PR by fixing those problems before more customers are affected.
And this is one of the problems. Comcast is a path, but it is also a company with a video service that Netflix competes with. The more people use Netflix, the less they use Comcast's video service. So if Comcast can slow Netflix down until they pay Comcast money for "fast lane access", then Comcast doubly-wins: 1) Netflix might need to raise prices to cover the additional costs making Comcast's video services cheaper by comparison (or, at least, not as expensive) and 2) Even if people still use Netflix instead of Comcast's video services, Comcast will still profit off of their usage (twice: once for the customers paying Comcast for the Internet connection and once for Netflix paying Comcast not to slow them down).
If ISPs were forced to remain separate from content services companies, this wouldn't happen.
No, actually what the NSA needs to do is launch a PR campaign to tell us just why we need to be monitored. I'm thinking super bowl commercials, ads on the front page of newspapers, billboards, and a sticker on each banana sold. *grabs calculator* Let's see.... this should cost.... Well, I'll be. Exactly the same amount as what the House is cutting. Plus a billion dollars.
I'll agree that cities shouldn't have to fight these legal battles, but once an ISP files one of these lawsuits, the city can either fight back or roll over and accept the ISPs' demands. What is needed is clear indications from the FCC that municipal broadband is completely legal - with the backbone to stand up to the inevitable ISP complaints.
One of the problems is that cities and towns that have tried this have found an unexpected expense: Legal bills from fighting against the lawsuits that the Big ISPs start to prevent these projects. This is even the case when the Big ISPs don't server those cities/towns. To hear the ISPs put it: Competition from the government is unfair and if they don't serve that area then it is still unfair competition since they might, some day, decide to maybe serve it.
Their family might. There are plenty of parents of severely autistic children who would love to know what was going on in their kids' heads that the kids couldn't communicate. Plus, being able to communicate is a big step to being able to function in society.
Ok, then how about Google being ordered to remove all links to websites that feature images of women not dressed in burkas because Google has a Saudi Arabian subsidiary (either theoretical for purposes of this example or actual if they happen to really have one)? Should Google comply with that order and remove all links, Google+ posts, YouTube videos, etc across all of Google.com/Google Plus/YouTube/etc that feature women who aren't in burkas?
I live in Canada so the diagnosis was free. It just took time to find a specialist.
Thanks. Sadly, it would likely cost me quite a bit to get a diagnosis. (Insurance probably wouldn't cover it.) So I'll have to remain an "undiagnosed Aspie" for awhile longer.
Aspergers has a strong genetic link. This has been a barrier to diagnosis as many parents have been reluctant to admit they are "different" too.
Even before my son's diagnosis, I knew that he was very much like me. (I often call him my mini-me... though he's not so mini anymore.) After the diagnosis, I was able to use some of the coping mechanisms that I figured out (without, at the time, even knowing what Asperger's/Autism was) to help my son. For example, when my son's brain was going a mile a minute and he couldn't stop talking. We'd tell him to be quiet, but he could only keep it in for so long before bursting with more information/descriptions of whatever he was focused on. I realized (from my own experience) that he felt compelled to finish his story no matter how long it was. So I told him to finish it in his head, not out his mouth. All of a sudden, he was quiet and my wife looked at me like I was a wizard.
As the parent of a child with Autism, I always hate when I'm ready to buy something because it supports an Autism Charity, only to find out that one of the charity's platforms is "exposing the truth behind vaccines causing Autism."
Not sure why you were modded as Troll. I agree with you with one caveat. The article mentions that this isn't a cure but can alleviate some symptoms. If it helps those on the far end of the Autism spectrum to function in society, then I can see it being useful. If someone wants to take it so they can not feel uneasy looking in people's eyes, though, they should just get some help developing a coping mechanism. (I look at people's noses or right behind their head. This way, it looks like I'm looking in their eyes without having to do so.)
If you don't mind me asking, how much did a diagnosis cost?
My son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism a couple of years ago. As we were doing research about it, I realized all these books were talking about me also. I've always known I was "different", just not exactly how. (I always thought of it like everyone else got the How To Socialize Manual and someone forgot to give me my copy.) I'm relatively comfortable with the "self-diagnosed but very likely Aspie" label mainly because money is tight and spending cash to get myself diagnosed when it won't help me (I already have my coping mechanisms in place) and won't help my son doesn't seem fiscally wise. If it didn't cost much, though, I might consider it just so I could definitely say Asperger's without having to preface it with "no official diagnosis."
There are days when I'm thankful that I'm an Aspie - like when my (neurotypical) wife is fretting over some body language that other people exhibited that I was completely blind to - and days when I'm not. In the case of the latter, when my Aspie fixations clash with my son's Aspie fixations, it can get quite stressful in our house. We feed off each other not doing what we're fixated on doing and everything quickly spirals out of control with my wife caught in the middle.
Of course, like you said, I wouldn't want to give up the good parts just to be rid of the bad parts.
I'm the parent of a child with Autism (albeit High Functioning Autism/Asperger's Syndrome) and know plenty of parents of children with more severe Autism. None of us would rather our children be dead (of vaccine preventable illness or anything else) than have Autism.
Anyone in their right mind hates Jenny McCarthy for convincing parents to skip vaccinations over [scary voice] Autism and toxins [/scary voice]. (Botox is perfectly fine, though.)
Since I have a child with Autism (Asperger's Syndrome so he's very high functioning), I double-hate her not only for her insinuation that a child is better off dead than Autistic, but for her claims of curing her son's Autism with a Gluten free diet (or whatever other nonsense she's advocating right now). Either her son didn't have Autism at all or he still has Autism but his symptoms were reduced so he could function better in neurotypical society. You don't "cure" Autism.
Yes, I realize what article I'm posting this under. Note that they said it reduces symptoms, not cures. Individuals with severe autism are so hampered that they can't communicate. Imagine not being able to communicate your fears, frustrations, desires, etc to anybody... ever. This drug might offer a path to reduce their symptoms to the point that they could communicate and possibly function in neurotypical society. It's not an Autism cure.
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No, but if you aren't paying attention to the road (because you are texting), a helmet would come in handy if your bike hits a bump and you land on the pavement. It might make the difference between being dazed but getting up on your own or needing a trip to the hospital.
It's a chicken and egg problem for Microsoft.
Users won't flock to Windows Phone because of the lack of apps. Better to spend your money on Android or iOS where the apps are.
Developers won't develop apps for Windows Phone because of the lack of users. Better to spend your time developing on Android or iOS where the users are.
I can't say that I envy Microsoft's position (as I use my Android phone).
My wife has a Nokia Lumia phone. (She received it for review purposes.) The camera on it is stellar. Best I've seen on any phone. The rest of the OS (Windows) stinks, of course. Few apps and what apps there are tend to be buggy. After her review period, she switched back to her Android phone and uses the Lumia as a point-and-shoot camera. If Nokia could release an Android phone with a Lumia-quality camera, they might just have something worthwhile.
True, but if a drunk driver collides with someone (not you), your main impact to worry about would be traffic. An inconvenience, sure, but not life threatening.
If a drunk flying car driver collides with someone (not you), you might have to worry about raining debris. Every car accident would create a ripple effect of additional damage as car parts rained down onto other flying cars, pedestrians, non-flying vehicles, houses, businesses, etc.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather deal with traffic than raining debris any day.
Having texts read to them? Just yesterday I saw a bicyclist on the road (in a bicycle lane, but still near traffic) texting with one hand while pedaling. Of course, she also wasn't wearing a helmet.
I'm hoping to get back into biking soon (it's really good exercise), but if I feel the need to text someone, I'll pull my bike to a safe spot, stop, text the person, and start up again. Otherwise, all focus will be on my surroundings, not my electronic gizmo.
I had my identity stolen once. (Name, address, SSN and DOB were used to open a credit card in my name. Thanks a lot, Capital One, for not validating Mother's Maiden Name!) I still post online, though. Why? Because the things I post online won't result in my identity being stolen again. I'm more at risk of my doctor's office's computers being hacked into causing my personal information to leak out than I am at risk of all of my online posts combined causing my identity to be stolen.
Forget civilian operated drones. Look at civilian operated cars. Take a glance at the kinds of drivers you see on the road every day and then ask yourself: "Do I really trust these people with a flying vehicle moving in three dimensions?"
Once we get self-driving cars, we might stand a chance of self-flying cars. Until then, though, flying cars would be a safety nightmare!
Obviously, your social media presence would impact the company's response. If you opened a Twitter account just for company complaints, you'd likely have only a few followers and companies might feel comfortable ignoring you. My Twitter account has over 3,000 followers so I get recognized most times. If someone like Jenny Lawson (aka TheBloggess) complains, her 378,000+ followers get her immediate attention. (Or else her rabid fans will slam the company in question unless they make good on it.)
But you're right about the multiplier effect. If I post to my 3,000+ followers that Company X did something horrible, some percentage of them might retweet the message to their followers, some might post about it on Facebook, people might chime in with their bad experiences, etc. It allows customers who previously might have been isolated in their grumblings to a tone deaf customer support line to amplify their message until the company listens. Of course, the Internet in general does this as well. Social media is just one more facet of the general Internet.
I use FedEx over UPS anytime I can. Unfortunately, sometimes things get sent by whoever the seller decides to use and that can mean needing to keep an eye out for a UPS truck.
Apple's iPhone popularized browsing the Internet with your phone. Previously, this was harder to do. However, the wireless carriers were never content providers the way the cable ISPs are. Verizon Wireless and AT&T might have offered ringtones or music, but those were side ventures. For the cable ISPs, video is their main business. This Internet stuff is a secondary venture. Not secondary enough that they will ditch it, but secondary enough that they would rather cripple it than allow it to threaten their primary business.
In addition, the wireless carriers always had competition. Verizon Wireless might have the best reception in my area, but I could still go with AT&T or Sprint and get decent service. However, if I want to leave Time Warner Cable, I have no other wired broadband options. This is the case for most Americans. The ISPs know this and react accordingly. (Prices go up while service quality goes down.)
Data mining and intercepting bad company experiences and "making good" on them. For example, we had something delivered via UPS. The driver left it on our front step, didn't ring the doorbell, and just left. It sat out there for hours before we realized it was there. The package could have easily been stolen during that time and neither UPS nor I would have known until it was much too late. We complained on Twitter and UPS contacted us in an attempt to find out what went wrong and how they could improve their policies.
I think this is the real usefulness for companies on social media. Spot bad experiences, help minimize bad PR by helping those customers, and minimize future bad PR by fixing those problems before more customers are affected.
And this is one of the problems. Comcast is a path, but it is also a company with a video service that Netflix competes with. The more people use Netflix, the less they use Comcast's video service. So if Comcast can slow Netflix down until they pay Comcast money for "fast lane access", then Comcast doubly-wins: 1) Netflix might need to raise prices to cover the additional costs making Comcast's video services cheaper by comparison (or, at least, not as expensive) and 2) Even if people still use Netflix instead of Comcast's video services, Comcast will still profit off of their usage (twice: once for the customers paying Comcast for the Internet connection and once for Netflix paying Comcast not to slow them down).
If ISPs were forced to remain separate from content services companies, this wouldn't happen.
Of course, the billboards with the logo would contain cameras to actually watch you.
You wouldn't want the NSA to lie, would you?!!!
No, actually what the NSA needs to do is launch a PR campaign to tell us just why we need to be monitored. I'm thinking super bowl commercials, ads on the front page of newspapers, billboards, and a sticker on each banana sold. *grabs calculator* Let's see.... this should cost.... Well, I'll be. Exactly the same amount as what the House is cutting. Plus a billion dollars.
I'll agree that cities shouldn't have to fight these legal battles, but once an ISP files one of these lawsuits, the city can either fight back or roll over and accept the ISPs' demands. What is needed is clear indications from the FCC that municipal broadband is completely legal - with the backbone to stand up to the inevitable ISP complaints.
One of the problems is that cities and towns that have tried this have found an unexpected expense: Legal bills from fighting against the lawsuits that the Big ISPs start to prevent these projects. This is even the case when the Big ISPs don't server those cities/towns. To hear the ISPs put it: Competition from the government is unfair and if they don't serve that area then it is still unfair competition since they might, some day, decide to maybe serve it.
Their family might. There are plenty of parents of severely autistic children who would love to know what was going on in their kids' heads that the kids couldn't communicate. Plus, being able to communicate is a big step to being able to function in society.
Ok, then how about Google being ordered to remove all links to websites that feature images of women not dressed in burkas because Google has a Saudi Arabian subsidiary (either theoretical for purposes of this example or actual if they happen to really have one)? Should Google comply with that order and remove all links, Google+ posts, YouTube videos, etc across all of Google.com/Google Plus/YouTube/etc that feature women who aren't in burkas?
Thanks. Sadly, it would likely cost me quite a bit to get a diagnosis. (Insurance probably wouldn't cover it.) So I'll have to remain an "undiagnosed Aspie" for awhile longer.
Even before my son's diagnosis, I knew that he was very much like me. (I often call him my mini-me... though he's not so mini anymore.) After the diagnosis, I was able to use some of the coping mechanisms that I figured out (without, at the time, even knowing what Asperger's/Autism was) to help my son. For example, when my son's brain was going a mile a minute and he couldn't stop talking. We'd tell him to be quiet, but he could only keep it in for so long before bursting with more information/descriptions of whatever he was focused on. I realized (from my own experience) that he felt compelled to finish his story no matter how long it was. So I told him to finish it in his head, not out his mouth. All of a sudden, he was quiet and my wife looked at me like I was a wizard.
As the parent of a child with Autism, I always hate when I'm ready to buy something because it supports an Autism Charity, only to find out that one of the charity's platforms is "exposing the truth behind vaccines causing Autism."
Not sure why you were modded as Troll. I agree with you with one caveat. The article mentions that this isn't a cure but can alleviate some symptoms. If it helps those on the far end of the Autism spectrum to function in society, then I can see it being useful. If someone wants to take it so they can not feel uneasy looking in people's eyes, though, they should just get some help developing a coping mechanism. (I look at people's noses or right behind their head. This way, it looks like I'm looking in their eyes without having to do so.)
If you don't mind me asking, how much did a diagnosis cost?
My son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism a couple of years ago. As we were doing research about it, I realized all these books were talking about me also. I've always known I was "different", just not exactly how. (I always thought of it like everyone else got the How To Socialize Manual and someone forgot to give me my copy.) I'm relatively comfortable with the "self-diagnosed but very likely Aspie" label mainly because money is tight and spending cash to get myself diagnosed when it won't help me (I already have my coping mechanisms in place) and won't help my son doesn't seem fiscally wise. If it didn't cost much, though, I might consider it just so I could definitely say Asperger's without having to preface it with "no official diagnosis."
There are days when I'm thankful that I'm an Aspie - like when my (neurotypical) wife is fretting over some body language that other people exhibited that I was completely blind to - and days when I'm not. In the case of the latter, when my Aspie fixations clash with my son's Aspie fixations, it can get quite stressful in our house. We feed off each other not doing what we're fixated on doing and everything quickly spirals out of control with my wife caught in the middle.
Of course, like you said, I wouldn't want to give up the good parts just to be rid of the bad parts.
I'm the parent of a child with Autism (albeit High Functioning Autism/Asperger's Syndrome) and know plenty of parents of children with more severe Autism. None of us would rather our children be dead (of vaccine preventable illness or anything else) than have Autism.
Anyone in their right mind hates Jenny McCarthy for convincing parents to skip vaccinations over [scary voice] Autism and toxins [/scary voice]. (Botox is perfectly fine, though.)
Since I have a child with Autism (Asperger's Syndrome so he's very high functioning), I double-hate her not only for her insinuation that a child is better off dead than Autistic, but for her claims of curing her son's Autism with a Gluten free diet (or whatever other nonsense she's advocating right now). Either her son didn't have Autism at all or he still has Autism but his symptoms were reduced so he could function better in neurotypical society. You don't "cure" Autism.
Yes, I realize what article I'm posting this under. Note that they said it reduces symptoms, not cures. Individuals with severe autism are so hampered that they can't communicate. Imagine not being able to communicate your fears, frustrations, desires, etc to anybody... ever. This drug might offer a path to reduce their symptoms to the point that they could communicate and possibly function in neurotypical society. It's not an Autism cure.