It's not the actual zoned out act of texting that is the disturbance. Aside from people not putting their devices on silent (without Vibrate which is usually not very silent)...Device screens are VERY bright. And it seems most folks dont have their set to automatically adjust, or they simply can't dim enough not to visually distract other patrons.
All those lights popping on throughout a public performance, like a concert or a movie, can be very distracting, especially in a movie a live theater performance, concerts less so, depending on the lighting design of the show.
I do pine for my old Nokia. Battery lasts a week, great reception, clearer calls, AND.. I can successfully manage Call Waiting without dropping the other or both callers every single time (...thanks Droid2, Droid3, Droid4, iPhone5s, iPhone6)
And I loved the old call management functions.. used to be I could use codes or menu functions to forward calls when I am unavailable, such as when I am in the mountains and intermittently in coverage. I could forward the calls to the landline in the condo. Now, that functionality does not exist whatsoever in the mobile, at least not on Motorola's version of Android.
You make a fair point. One often overlooked issue with earnings and cost of living is what we actually take home. A few years back, I was enlightened on this topic after reading a Forbes article that questioned the common rubric used to estimate which cities are more expensive to live in than others. Most of those calculations focus on the cost of living without taking into account the ability to earn in that market. For example, I live in Atlanta. We have relatively low average household income, the lowest of the 15 peer MSA's. (Metropolitan Statistical Areas). Otherwise uninformed hires will take a job here since they view our cost of living as being a lot lower than many of the peer MSA's. I see lots of people who relocated here from some part or another of Michigan, stuck in a retail job, and worried about their prospects since it costs more to live here than where they came from.
So, the actual measure I like to use is the amount of money we get to keep and use after we earn our money from employment/business activities, and then pay off the costs of living. Atlanta ended up being one of the most expensive cities when this rubric was applied. Bay Area was actually one of the more attractive cities.
So, I can see where earning a US$25k/yr in a city in Mexico could really be quite comfortable. Thailand would be similar, for example. Healthcare is a lot less expensive in both countries, food is less expensive, housing, etc. The typical items are less expensive in the US are technology gadgets and automobiles/fuel.
This rubric does have a big GOTCHA. If you live in an area like the Bay Area/SF which has a very high cost of living, and you fail to stay in the viable bubble of earnings that make it livable, you have a huge gap to fall into. This is especially true in markets like Atlanta that have relatively few, if any, meaningful social services other than for the very least wealthy among us. If you are lower middle or below class in Atlanta, you live on a treadmill, have to suck up whatever your boss throws your way, and are a paycheck or two away from joining the tent campers under the I20 I75/85 overpass, just two blocks from our State Capitol complex, Atlanta City Hall, and Fulton County's Courthouse.
These "Officials" that write these laws dont know what they are talking about. You can NOT print a lower or upper receiver, the barrel, or the trigger mechanisms for 3d printed guns. You can only print a few things successfully, like the rails, the grip/stock, maybe a magazine (without any of the springs which it needs to operate). So.. why bother making the law? Just to make everyone that much more Skeered.
Agreed. Without the ability to make a choice, then a monopoly will exist. "Voting" by exercising an economic choice with a market incentivizes the competing schools available within the market to deliver better quality of service and to do so more efficiently.
Here is how it plays out in Atlanta GA. Full disclosure, I have no children, I went to an Atlanta Public School in the 80's, and I am actively involved in local politics in various forums (not online forums) of activity. 4/7 of my property taxes go towards the local public schools, specifically, Atlanta Public Schools. We spend the most in Georgia per student, and have the lowest scores and lowest succesa rate in terms of generating viable income earning economically, self-sustaining adults without need for government social welfare assistance. In my zipcode, 30318, the largest zip in Atlanta, 1 out of 10 men has been, or is currently, in jail.
I would propose a better solution. Allow MORE people to afford Private School Tuition or alternative education such as Home Schooling by allowing them to credit the tuitions paid to accredited programs or schools from their property taxes.
The current system essentially guarantees only those high levels of disposable income will be able to afford the School Taxes and the Private School Tuitions. Allowing citizens to take a credit off their Property Taxes for tuition paid to an Accredited program increase access to Private Schools and provide more competition in the market which will lead to enhanced service delivery by the public schools. It would also lead to more diveristy in the formats of the Private Schools, further promoting freedoms of choice in the market. This may even reduce overcrowding in Public School classrooms.
As for the status quo, I live in the United States, which ranks a shameful 17th in the world for pre-University education. I live in Georgia, a state which usually ranks between 46th and 49th in the United States. In live Atlanta (ITP/urban/downtown/center), where our three main school districts, Dekalb, Clayton, and Atlanta City have longstanding, ongoing, chronic, severe, and systemic problems.
APS, Atlanta Public Schools has 35 teachers and administrators under felony indictment for criminal conspiracy and fraud. There was a test score cheating racket busted where over 200 Atlanta Public Schools employees were involved in literally helping students fill in the bubbles correctly on the tests. If a student had a Learning Disability and then tested well with the teacher's help, then that student would not be able to access the LD services they would otherwise need.
Dekalb pays their School Board Commissioners $250,000/year in salary. Two of them were asked to resign under suspicion of taking kick backs from ongoing school renovations underway between 2005 and 2009. One administrator took a $1.25 million golden parachute of 5 years pays to resign. Another took a severance payment of four month's pay, $83,000. Teachers in DeKalb County consider themselves lucky if they earn more than $40,000/year in Salary. Recently, two more School Board Commissions were fired for the exact same reasons, taking kickbacks from the renovations that are now in their 7th year of the project, with no end in sight.
Clayton County lost their accreditations a few years back. They were only reinstated a couple of years later. All of those students graduating during that time frame may or may not hold valid diplomas. I am not 100% sure, but I seem to recall those students having to take a GED to gain a qualified diploma.
Here in Atlanta, we do take action politically simply because we are already paying for these schools out of our taxes, regardless of whether or not we are using the system. If you have no children, you are subsidizing these under-performing and corrupt school systems so families who can't afford private schools can get a free education at a substandard institution. This undermines the economic viablity of our region by producing lower quality employees for the job market. And large companies do dashboard
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It's not the actual zoned out act of texting that is the disturbance. Aside from people not putting their devices on silent (without Vibrate which is usually not very silent) ...Device screens are VERY bright. And it seems most folks dont have their set to automatically adjust, or they simply can't dim enough not to visually distract other patrons.
All those lights popping on throughout a public performance, like a concert or a movie, can be very distracting, especially in a movie a live theater performance, concerts less so, depending on the lighting design of the show.
I do pine for my old Nokia. Battery lasts a week, great reception, clearer calls, AND.. I can successfully manage Call Waiting without dropping the other or both callers every single time (...thanks Droid2, Droid3, Droid4, iPhone5s, iPhone6) And I loved the old call management functions.. used to be I could use codes or menu functions to forward calls when I am unavailable, such as when I am in the mountains and intermittently in coverage. I could forward the calls to the landline in the condo. Now, that functionality does not exist whatsoever in the mobile, at least not on Motorola's version of Android.
You make a fair point. One often overlooked issue with earnings and cost of living is what we actually take home. A few years back, I was enlightened on this topic after reading a Forbes article that questioned the common rubric used to estimate which cities are more expensive to live in than others. Most of those calculations focus on the cost of living without taking into account the ability to earn in that market. For example, I live in Atlanta. We have relatively low average household income, the lowest of the 15 peer MSA's. (Metropolitan Statistical Areas). Otherwise uninformed hires will take a job here since they view our cost of living as being a lot lower than many of the peer MSA's. I see lots of people who relocated here from some part or another of Michigan, stuck in a retail job, and worried about their prospects since it costs more to live here than where they came from. So, the actual measure I like to use is the amount of money we get to keep and use after we earn our money from employment/business activities, and then pay off the costs of living. Atlanta ended up being one of the most expensive cities when this rubric was applied. Bay Area was actually one of the more attractive cities. So, I can see where earning a US$25k/yr in a city in Mexico could really be quite comfortable. Thailand would be similar, for example. Healthcare is a lot less expensive in both countries, food is less expensive, housing, etc. The typical items are less expensive in the US are technology gadgets and automobiles/fuel. This rubric does have a big GOTCHA. If you live in an area like the Bay Area/SF which has a very high cost of living, and you fail to stay in the viable bubble of earnings that make it livable, you have a huge gap to fall into. This is especially true in markets like Atlanta that have relatively few, if any, meaningful social services other than for the very least wealthy among us. If you are lower middle or below class in Atlanta, you live on a treadmill, have to suck up whatever your boss throws your way, and are a paycheck or two away from joining the tent campers under the I20 I75/85 overpass, just two blocks from our State Capitol complex, Atlanta City Hall, and Fulton County's Courthouse.
These "Officials" that write these laws dont know what they are talking about. You can NOT print a lower or upper receiver, the barrel, or the trigger mechanisms for 3d printed guns. You can only print a few things successfully, like the rails, the grip/stock, maybe a magazine (without any of the springs which it needs to operate). So.. why bother making the law? Just to make everyone that much more Skeered.
Agreed. Without the ability to make a choice, then a monopoly will exist. "Voting" by exercising an economic choice with a market incentivizes the competing schools available within the market to deliver better quality of service and to do so more efficiently. Here is how it plays out in Atlanta GA. Full disclosure, I have no children, I went to an Atlanta Public School in the 80's, and I am actively involved in local politics in various forums (not online forums) of activity. 4/7 of my property taxes go towards the local public schools, specifically, Atlanta Public Schools. We spend the most in Georgia per student, and have the lowest scores and lowest succesa rate in terms of generating viable income earning economically, self-sustaining adults without need for government social welfare assistance. In my zipcode, 30318, the largest zip in Atlanta, 1 out of 10 men has been, or is currently, in jail. I would propose a better solution. Allow MORE people to afford Private School Tuition or alternative education such as Home Schooling by allowing them to credit the tuitions paid to accredited programs or schools from their property taxes. The current system essentially guarantees only those high levels of disposable income will be able to afford the School Taxes and the Private School Tuitions. Allowing citizens to take a credit off their Property Taxes for tuition paid to an Accredited program increase access to Private Schools and provide more competition in the market which will lead to enhanced service delivery by the public schools. It would also lead to more diveristy in the formats of the Private Schools, further promoting freedoms of choice in the market. This may even reduce overcrowding in Public School classrooms. As for the status quo, I live in the United States, which ranks a shameful 17th in the world for pre-University education. I live in Georgia, a state which usually ranks between 46th and 49th in the United States. In live Atlanta (ITP/urban/downtown/center), where our three main school districts, Dekalb, Clayton, and Atlanta City have longstanding, ongoing, chronic, severe, and systemic problems. APS, Atlanta Public Schools has 35 teachers and administrators under felony indictment for criminal conspiracy and fraud. There was a test score cheating racket busted where over 200 Atlanta Public Schools employees were involved in literally helping students fill in the bubbles correctly on the tests. If a student had a Learning Disability and then tested well with the teacher's help, then that student would not be able to access the LD services they would otherwise need. Dekalb pays their School Board Commissioners $250,000/year in salary. Two of them were asked to resign under suspicion of taking kick backs from ongoing school renovations underway between 2005 and 2009. One administrator took a $1.25 million golden parachute of 5 years pays to resign. Another took a severance payment of four month's pay, $83,000. Teachers in DeKalb County consider themselves lucky if they earn more than $40,000/year in Salary. Recently, two more School Board Commissions were fired for the exact same reasons, taking kickbacks from the renovations that are now in their 7th year of the project, with no end in sight. Clayton County lost their accreditations a few years back. They were only reinstated a couple of years later. All of those students graduating during that time frame may or may not hold valid diplomas. I am not 100% sure, but I seem to recall those students having to take a GED to gain a qualified diploma. Here in Atlanta, we do take action politically simply because we are already paying for these schools out of our taxes, regardless of whether or not we are using the system. If you have no children, you are subsidizing these under-performing and corrupt school systems so families who can't afford private schools can get a free education at a substandard institution. This undermines the economic viablity of our region by producing lower quality employees for the job market. And large companies do dashboard