The mint could not possibly enforce that rule, so some people would argue bad behavior was inevitable.
Exactly. It's the Mint's fault, as I said: any idiot could have looked at those rules and realized that they weren't enforceable. Here's a simple rule that every government should follow: don't enact a rule/law that you can't enforce (or which would be completely not-cost-effective to enforce).
And finally, why was the Mint paying Visa/MC to get coins into circulation? That action alone was stupid and wrong. They don't have to pay to get people to circulate dollar bills or other coins. The whole scheme was just dumb.
Exactly. With so much automation now, this is absolutely what we should be doing. All these hollowed-out small towns have dirt-cheap real estate, so people who can't make it in the cities really would be better off just moving there. Surely some of them are going to end up doing something profitable with their time and UBI money, like setting up BnBs or tourism businesses, which will end up revitalizing some of these places (if they're places that tourists would want to go to), and relieving pressure in the cities from excess population.
And that's fine: if a place means a lot to you, you have the freedom to stay there if you can afford it. Just don't ask for a handout because it'd make you sad to leave and you somehow think you're entitled to live there. That's an incredibly selfish thing to do.
Are you fucking stupid? Cities (including suburbs) produce all the engineered products you use every day, including the computer you just typed your drivel into, and the car you surely drive if you're a rural dweller. And considering how all the rural people I know happily have smartphones and Facebook profiles, yes, they apparently want those too, and all those (from the phones to the cell towers to the software and services) are all products of cities.
Holy shit, the stupidity on this site really galls me sometimes.
That's not "real love", that's subservience. What you're describing is more primitive cultures where women were 2nd-class citizens and without a husband, basically couldn't survive, or at least would be social outcasts. That's the cost of what you advocate: a miserable existence for half the population. It works out OK for some lucky women who manage to find a decent husband, but for those who get stuck with an abusive one, an uncaring one, or just an incompatible one, it's hell. That's why the divorce rate is high now: women in western nations are no longer content to be subservient slaves, so if things aren't working out, they leave. The problem is, it's just too hard to find people who are really that compatible with you, for such a long time. Even people who start out compatible in their 20s end up changing so they're no longer compatible in their 40s. Back in the "old days", this wasn't a problem since people were lucky if they lived to 50 anyway. Now, 40 is barely considered middle-aged.
As I said in other replies here, if your agriculture or other industry is strong enough, then none of this is a concern. You don't need to grow fruit in NYC because it's economically viable to grow it somewhere else, and have the city people pay for this. The cost of any inefficiency in living in farm country is reflected in the price of the crops (since alternatively the efficiency of growing crops in the city is far outweighed by the land cost there, and maybe also the labor costs).
As for people like you, if you can afford to live far away, then fine, but if you can't do it without a subsidy, then you have no right to it. Generally, what people like you do is find some rural area where the local economy is already pretty healthy because the local industry is doing fine, and you end up living a little ways outside of the nearest town where you do most of your shopping. You don't go live in rural northern Canada, hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital and with no real local industry left. Places like that need to die out.
If you don't like it, don't move there. Just don't expect others to subsidize your lifestyle.
Not everyone is going to move into large cities. There's plenty of rural(-ish) areas that are quite economically viable on their own, supported by agriculture, tourism, fishing, wealthy retired people, etc. (and frequently a combination of these) They aren't going away any time soon. That's not what we're talking about here; we're talking about towns and extremely remote locations where the industry has dried up and the only people left are a few hangers-on, frequently mainly retired people (not wealthy or numerous enough to keep the local economy afloat), or some community who's lived there for generations and just refuses to leave because their ancestors lived there.
Your point is stupid. Cities *purchase* what they need from outside, including agricultural products. Agricultural communities that are successful don't need subsidies; they get along just fine from trade with the cities.
"Dying towns" are not productive agricultural communities. They're "dying" for a reason: their industry has left them. Maybe you don't realize it, but not every rural community actually produces agricultural products. 100-person towns in northern Canada certainly don't; it's too cold to grow anything there. And mountainous regions generally don't either; it's impractical to farm on mountains.
How do you think you're going to get your Salmon, Halibut, crab and other wonderful delicacies from the sea
We'll pay for them, you idiot. If those things are valuable, the costs of the difficulty in acquiring them (including having to pay people to live in rural areas where they're fished) will be reflected in the product's price. They don't need a government handout.
Have you not noticed how much Bering Sea fishermen get paid to catch crabs? It's very lucrative, and they usually don't even live nearby; they travel from many states away to work these seasonal jobs and live on the boat.
Do you want ALL of the tourists to go to Disneyland?
If a place is great enough for people to travel there for vacation, that'll support the local economy. If it's not that great, then it'll die.
Yes, I have the wife and kids- but also at work I have a nice large office that I can keep clean and clutter free- and that really helps me focus and concentrate.
That's entirely your own fault. My situation is the exact opposite: I have no wife or kids, and my house is quiet. At work, it's a chaotic, noisy mess. I have no control over my workplace at work since I'm not the boss (and even my boss and his boss have no control over this stuff either, sadly). I'd be far more productive at home.
Then there's the fact that you don't actually get to shoot the shit with anybody - who are you going to water cooler talk with? Yourself?
That's what internet forums like this are for. I work with a bunch of engineers and even here, I rarely get any quality conversation. People would rather talk about fishing boats than topics I have any interest in. On the internet, I can easily zero in on conversations I'm interested in, and it's far faster and more efficient, because talking is so damn slow and I read very quickly.
So many things around you to keep you distracted. Plus your wife and kids forgetting that you're supposed to be working
Not everyone has a wife and kids. Fewer and fewer people (esp. educated ones) are having kids at all these days.
I wish I had a work-from-home job. My house is generally quiet and peaceful. There's cats, but they usually sleep most of the day anyway. By contrast, work is chaotic and noisy, thanks to the open-plan offices that are all the rage these days. I can barely concentrate at all, and my work output is poor until late afternoon or evening when everyone finally goes home and I can finally get something done, until I'm too hungry and tired and want to leave. If I could, I'd probably set up a small office in my basement for the summertime since it's cool down there, and very quiet. Unfortunately, for my specialty (embedded), WfH jobs are ridiculously rare AFAICT. I guess I should have gone into web development because there seem to be tons of them in that sector.
Yes, children are a pain but they get used to it in the end.
Not necessarily. I have a single-female friend with a son who seems to be completely out of control every time I see him. I can't imagine trying to get any work done with him around; he simply will not listen when he's told to sit down and be quiet because the adults are talking. With so many kids like this having ADHD these days, I don't see how their parents could possible work from home effectively unless they're in school or an institution or something.
Why is "wife" associated with "nagging" more often than not? In my case, I find that I associate "wife" with the words "loving & caring." I guess I am lucky, no?
You're lucky. There's a good reason so many people associate "wife" with "nagging". It's probably also not a coincidence that the divorce rate is higher than ever and the marriage rate continues to drop.
If you personally associate "wife" with "loving & caring" because of ongoing personal experience, count your lucky stars.
Also, to be fair, it's not just women that are awful. Go talk to single women and ask them about their dating experiences; there's no shortage of stories about "man-children" (men with very poor emotional maturity), men still living in their parents' basement after age 30, misogynistic men, abusive men, etc. I estimate that roughly 75% of the population, in both sexes, has little to offer to a relationship and would make a very poor relationship partner. The only reason the marriage rate was so much higher in decades past (and the divorce rate lower) was because of social pressure, as it was necessary for continued growth and survival of the society. The cost was that countless people were trapped in loveless, unfulfilling, or even downright abusive or miserable marriages. These days, people are refusing to make that sacrifice more and more, and the cost is more singledom, more loneliness, and fewer children which is causing a demographic crisis. What's the answer to this? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing something to do with androids. Or perhaps the society illustrated by Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" where there's no marriage or natural childbirth, and children are both created and raised by the state.
It's not a scam; the people were simply playing the game by the rules that were set up for them. Blame the Mint for selling dollar coins below cost: whenever you sell something and accept a credit card, you're paying a ~3% fee to Visa/MC for the privilege of accepting that card and getting payment that way. So the US Mint was selling $1 coins for roughly $0.97 each. That's where the free frequent flyer miles were coming from. If they had sold the coins for $1.03 each, this wouldn't have happened.
Then it's up to the people of that town to take matters into their own hands and deal with it. The customers naturally outnumber the retailer, and this means the local government should favor the customers. If not, again it's the peoples' job to deal with it; they're the majority and they have the vote.
How are they a "benefit to society" if you're subsidizing them? If they're truly producing enough economic activity to make themselves viable (oil fields, for example), then they don't need subsidies: they're making enough money to make up for the inefficiencies caused by their remoteness.
As for giving up their land without a fight, why would you need to do that? Just stop giving them money for nothing. Either they'll starve to death or they'll move. If they really want to stay out there and try to survive on their own without enough money to have supplies delivered, that's their problem.
They're not going to influence anyone with their political beliefs; they simply don't have enough population to do this. A bunch of 500-person towns emptying out into the cities isn't going to affect their politics one iota.
And why should I care about them being miserable in the city? There's plenty of people living in the city who are also miserable. So what? We can't afford to give everyone a life of luxury so they don't have to be unhappy.
The real question is why aren't newer economic forces moving to these areas? A closed down factory, can be refurbished to a new factory, turned into offices, a warehouses, data center...
Probably a bunch of reasons:
- Workers don't want to move there. A whole slew of companies are not going to move into this place all at once, it'll only start with one. Workers don't want to move to a "company town" in this age; getting laid off means you're in real trouble because you can't get a job anywhere else in that area.
- Refurbishing an old factory probably costs more than building a new one.
- The infrastructure in the town is probably insufficient or decrepit. Not enough electric power available for the factory (or not reliable enough), no data service, etc.
- Warehouses only make sense in or near urban areas where the goods they're shipping will be used. Putting them in the middle of nowhere is nonsensical; it'll cost more to ship stuff both in and out. Warehouses are also frequently located near rail lines or shipping ports. None of those in little remote rural communities.
But even then those unviable communities have a purpose, like research, early warning in case of military attack and so on.
Are you fucking nuts? "Early warning"? You don't need a town of 500 yahoos to do that; haven't you heard of satellite surveillance? And who the fuck is going to attack northern Canada? Paranoid much?
Having lived in small towns and actual big cities(like Toronto). I'll take the small town any day of the week.
That's fine if the place is economically viable, and you can afford to live there. We have oil field jobs in North Dakota paying over $100k for manual labor, because the location is far from everything but the resource is valuable. But if you're going to live in the sticks like that, you really have no right to complain about shipping prices being high; living in a city comes with certain economy-of-scale benefits, and shipping cost is one of them. Living in the sticks has its economic advantages too: land value is far, far less, but you're going to make up for that with shipping costs, driving costs (you have to drive a lot to get anywhere), etc. Don't ask for city-dwellers to subsidize your quaint lifestyle: if you can earn it through the economic activity you generate at that remote location, great. Otherwise, too bad.
As small towns get smaller there are fewer employees to work in these shops thus increasing pressure on wages which increase costs.
It is a vicious cycle, that has no real solution.
Actually, it does: people need to abandon these small towns and move someplace more sustainable. The small-town lifestyle is not sustainable, and only works when it's being subsidized by the cities. Most of these dying towns don't have any real industry left anyway, so it's time for the people there to pack up and leave. 100+ years ago, this is exactly what happened, which is where there's a bunch of "ghost towns" in the western US (most of these are nothing more than some building foundations now, if that): when the local mine petered out, there wasn't any help from the state or federal government to keep the people living there from starving, so they packed up and moved out. This is what we should be doing now, except these days it'd be nice for the government to give poorer people a little temporary assistance to aid the transition to someplace with a stronger economy, but the end goal should be shutting these little towns down if they're no longer economically viable on their own.
Bad engineering is *always* the fault of bad management, no exceptions. It's management's job to manage the engineers, and identify and fire the bad ones, while facilitating the rest and ensuring their time is productive. Engineers have no power; only management does, so management gets 100% of the blame for the outcome.
If Windows is being used for safety-critical things, whoever made that decision should be jailed, and would certainly be exposed to a huge amount of liability. The Windows EULA clearly states that it is not suitable for safety-critical applications.
That said, some of those things aren't necessarily safety-critical; medical equipment in particular is frequently not. You're not going to die because your GP's blood-pressure and pulse machine blue-screened. (You could die if your infuser pump crapped out in the middle of the night though.) However, I've worked with that kind of equipment and it all runs on small RTOSes.
Tell me again why I need to install a dedicated Facebook app to send messages?
That's pretty simple: to lock you into Facebook's platform, and allow Facebook to log all your messages. That's not so easy if you use SMS. Why are you trying to keep secrets from Facebook? What do you have to hide?
This was a bad idea for users from day 1
Since when are the users' needs and desires important? This is good for Facebook, and that's all that matters.
and I will not be a part of it.
Then you're going to be relegated to obscurity and irrelevance, because all your family members will be using Facebook as they share videos and articles (probably from far-right-wing "news" sites; these are very popular on Facebook).
Bring on the good technology in its place.
If by "good technology" you mean something that's in the best interest of privacy-advocating users and not locked into any one company, then it'll never happen. What corporation would have an incentive to do such a thing? More importantly, name any such communications technology that exists now, and then look up how old it is and how popular it currently is.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the legions of apple fans would pay nearly any amount for one.
Exactly, which is why I think Apple is charging far too little here. They could easily charge $3k, or even $5k for their phone, and Apple lovers will happily pay that. Apple might need to offer financing, but that shouldn't be any trouble for Apple. They could get tons of people to sign up for $500/month phone payments (in addition to the cellular plan), and be more profitable than ever.
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The mint could not possibly enforce that rule, so some people would argue bad behavior was inevitable.
Exactly. It's the Mint's fault, as I said: any idiot could have looked at those rules and realized that they weren't enforceable. Here's a simple rule that every government should follow: don't enact a rule/law that you can't enforce (or which would be completely not-cost-effective to enforce).
And finally, why was the Mint paying Visa/MC to get coins into circulation? That action alone was stupid and wrong. They don't have to pay to get people to circulate dollar bills or other coins. The whole scheme was just dumb.
Exactly. With so much automation now, this is absolutely what we should be doing. All these hollowed-out small towns have dirt-cheap real estate, so people who can't make it in the cities really would be better off just moving there. Surely some of them are going to end up doing something profitable with their time and UBI money, like setting up BnBs or tourism businesses, which will end up revitalizing some of these places (if they're places that tourists would want to go to), and relieving pressure in the cities from excess population.
And that's fine: if a place means a lot to you, you have the freedom to stay there if you can afford it. Just don't ask for a handout because it'd make you sad to leave and you somehow think you're entitled to live there. That's an incredibly selfish thing to do.
Are you fucking stupid? Cities (including suburbs) produce all the engineered products you use every day, including the computer you just typed your drivel into, and the car you surely drive if you're a rural dweller. And considering how all the rural people I know happily have smartphones and Facebook profiles, yes, they apparently want those too, and all those (from the phones to the cell towers to the software and services) are all products of cities.
Holy shit, the stupidity on this site really galls me sometimes.
That's not "real love", that's subservience. What you're describing is more primitive cultures where women were 2nd-class citizens and without a husband, basically couldn't survive, or at least would be social outcasts. That's the cost of what you advocate: a miserable existence for half the population. It works out OK for some lucky women who manage to find a decent husband, but for those who get stuck with an abusive one, an uncaring one, or just an incompatible one, it's hell. That's why the divorce rate is high now: women in western nations are no longer content to be subservient slaves, so if things aren't working out, they leave. The problem is, it's just too hard to find people who are really that compatible with you, for such a long time. Even people who start out compatible in their 20s end up changing so they're no longer compatible in their 40s. Back in the "old days", this wasn't a problem since people were lucky if they lived to 50 anyway. Now, 40 is barely considered middle-aged.
As I said in other replies here, if your agriculture or other industry is strong enough, then none of this is a concern. You don't need to grow fruit in NYC because it's economically viable to grow it somewhere else, and have the city people pay for this. The cost of any inefficiency in living in farm country is reflected in the price of the crops (since alternatively the efficiency of growing crops in the city is far outweighed by the land cost there, and maybe also the labor costs).
As for people like you, if you can afford to live far away, then fine, but if you can't do it without a subsidy, then you have no right to it. Generally, what people like you do is find some rural area where the local economy is already pretty healthy because the local industry is doing fine, and you end up living a little ways outside of the nearest town where you do most of your shopping. You don't go live in rural northern Canada, hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital and with no real local industry left. Places like that need to die out.
If you don't like it, don't move there. Just don't expect others to subsidize your lifestyle.
Not everyone is going to move into large cities. There's plenty of rural(-ish) areas that are quite economically viable on their own, supported by agriculture, tourism, fishing, wealthy retired people, etc. (and frequently a combination of these) They aren't going away any time soon. That's not what we're talking about here; we're talking about towns and extremely remote locations where the industry has dried up and the only people left are a few hangers-on, frequently mainly retired people (not wealthy or numerous enough to keep the local economy afloat), or some community who's lived there for generations and just refuses to leave because their ancestors lived there.
Your point is stupid. Cities *purchase* what they need from outside, including agricultural products. Agricultural communities that are successful don't need subsidies; they get along just fine from trade with the cities.
"Dying towns" are not productive agricultural communities. They're "dying" for a reason: their industry has left them. Maybe you don't realize it, but not every rural community actually produces agricultural products. 100-person towns in northern Canada certainly don't; it's too cold to grow anything there. And mountainous regions generally don't either; it's impractical to farm on mountains.
How do you think you're going to get your Salmon, Halibut, crab and other wonderful delicacies from the sea
We'll pay for them, you idiot. If those things are valuable, the costs of the difficulty in acquiring them (including having to pay people to live in rural areas where they're fished) will be reflected in the product's price. They don't need a government handout.
Have you not noticed how much Bering Sea fishermen get paid to catch crabs? It's very lucrative, and they usually don't even live nearby; they travel from many states away to work these seasonal jobs and live on the boat.
Do you want ALL of the tourists to go to Disneyland?
If a place is great enough for people to travel there for vacation, that'll support the local economy. If it's not that great, then it'll die.
I'm less productive at home.
Yes, I have the wife and kids- but also at work I have a nice large office that I can keep clean and clutter free- and that really helps me focus and concentrate.
That's entirely your own fault. My situation is the exact opposite: I have no wife or kids, and my house is quiet. At work, it's a chaotic, noisy mess. I have no control over my workplace at work since I'm not the boss (and even my boss and his boss have no control over this stuff either, sadly). I'd be far more productive at home.
Then there's the fact that you don't actually get to shoot the shit with anybody - who are you going to water cooler talk with? Yourself?
That's what internet forums like this are for. I work with a bunch of engineers and even here, I rarely get any quality conversation. People would rather talk about fishing boats than topics I have any interest in. On the internet, I can easily zero in on conversations I'm interested in, and it's far faster and more efficient, because talking is so damn slow and I read very quickly.
So many things around you to keep you distracted. Plus your wife and kids forgetting that you're supposed to be working
Not everyone has a wife and kids. Fewer and fewer people (esp. educated ones) are having kids at all these days.
I wish I had a work-from-home job. My house is generally quiet and peaceful. There's cats, but they usually sleep most of the day anyway. By contrast, work is chaotic and noisy, thanks to the open-plan offices that are all the rage these days. I can barely concentrate at all, and my work output is poor until late afternoon or evening when everyone finally goes home and I can finally get something done, until I'm too hungry and tired and want to leave. If I could, I'd probably set up a small office in my basement for the summertime since it's cool down there, and very quiet. Unfortunately, for my specialty (embedded), WfH jobs are ridiculously rare AFAICT. I guess I should have gone into web development because there seem to be tons of them in that sector.
Because it's Brazil; didn't you read his post?
Air-conditioned homes aren't that common outside the US.
Yes, children are a pain but they get used to it in the end.
Not necessarily. I have a single-female friend with a son who seems to be completely out of control every time I see him. I can't imagine trying to get any work done with him around; he simply will not listen when he's told to sit down and be quiet because the adults are talking. With so many kids like this having ADHD these days, I don't see how their parents could possible work from home effectively unless they're in school or an institution or something.
Why is "wife" associated with "nagging" more often than not? In my case, I find that I associate "wife" with the words "loving & caring."
I guess I am lucky, no?
You're lucky. There's a good reason so many people associate "wife" with "nagging". It's probably also not a coincidence that the divorce rate is higher than ever and the marriage rate continues to drop.
If you personally associate "wife" with "loving & caring" because of ongoing personal experience, count your lucky stars.
Also, to be fair, it's not just women that are awful. Go talk to single women and ask them about their dating experiences; there's no shortage of stories about "man-children" (men with very poor emotional maturity), men still living in their parents' basement after age 30, misogynistic men, abusive men, etc. I estimate that roughly 75% of the population, in both sexes, has little to offer to a relationship and would make a very poor relationship partner. The only reason the marriage rate was so much higher in decades past (and the divorce rate lower) was because of social pressure, as it was necessary for continued growth and survival of the society. The cost was that countless people were trapped in loveless, unfulfilling, or even downright abusive or miserable marriages. These days, people are refusing to make that sacrifice more and more, and the cost is more singledom, more loneliness, and fewer children which is causing a demographic crisis. What's the answer to this? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing something to do with androids. Or perhaps the society illustrated by Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" where there's no marriage or natural childbirth, and children are both created and raised by the state.
It's not a scam; the people were simply playing the game by the rules that were set up for them. Blame the Mint for selling dollar coins below cost: whenever you sell something and accept a credit card, you're paying a ~3% fee to Visa/MC for the privilege of accepting that card and getting payment that way. So the US Mint was selling $1 coins for roughly $0.97 each. That's where the free frequent flyer miles were coming from. If they had sold the coins for $1.03 each, this wouldn't have happened.
Then it's up to the people of that town to take matters into their own hands and deal with it. The customers naturally outnumber the retailer, and this means the local government should favor the customers. If not, again it's the peoples' job to deal with it; they're the majority and they have the vote.
How are they a "benefit to society" if you're subsidizing them? If they're truly producing enough economic activity to make themselves viable (oil fields, for example), then they don't need subsidies: they're making enough money to make up for the inefficiencies caused by their remoteness.
As for giving up their land without a fight, why would you need to do that? Just stop giving them money for nothing. Either they'll starve to death or they'll move. If they really want to stay out there and try to survive on their own without enough money to have supplies delivered, that's their problem.
They're not going to influence anyone with their political beliefs; they simply don't have enough population to do this. A bunch of 500-person towns emptying out into the cities isn't going to affect their politics one iota.
And why should I care about them being miserable in the city? There's plenty of people living in the city who are also miserable. So what? We can't afford to give everyone a life of luxury so they don't have to be unhappy.
The real question is why aren't newer economic forces moving to these areas?
A closed down factory, can be refurbished to a new factory, turned into offices, a warehouses, data center...
Probably a bunch of reasons:
- Workers don't want to move there. A whole slew of companies are not going to move into this place all at once, it'll only start with one. Workers don't want to move to a "company town" in this age; getting laid off means you're in real trouble because you can't get a job anywhere else in that area.
- Refurbishing an old factory probably costs more than building a new one.
- The infrastructure in the town is probably insufficient or decrepit. Not enough electric power available for the factory (or not reliable enough), no data service, etc.
- Warehouses only make sense in or near urban areas where the goods they're shipping will be used. Putting them in the middle of nowhere is nonsensical; it'll cost more to ship stuff both in and out. Warehouses are also frequently located near rail lines or shipping ports. None of those in little remote rural communities.
But even then those unviable communities have a purpose, like research, early warning in case of military attack and so on.
Are you fucking nuts? "Early warning"? You don't need a town of 500 yahoos to do that; haven't you heard of satellite surveillance? And who the fuck is going to attack northern Canada? Paranoid much?
Having lived in small towns and actual big cities(like Toronto). I'll take the small town any day of the week.
That's fine if the place is economically viable, and you can afford to live there. We have oil field jobs in North Dakota paying over $100k for manual labor, because the location is far from everything but the resource is valuable. But if you're going to live in the sticks like that, you really have no right to complain about shipping prices being high; living in a city comes with certain economy-of-scale benefits, and shipping cost is one of them. Living in the sticks has its economic advantages too: land value is far, far less, but you're going to make up for that with shipping costs, driving costs (you have to drive a lot to get anywhere), etc. Don't ask for city-dwellers to subsidize your quaint lifestyle: if you can earn it through the economic activity you generate at that remote location, great. Otherwise, too bad.
As small towns get smaller there are fewer employees to work in these shops thus increasing pressure on wages which increase costs.
It is a vicious cycle, that has no real solution.
Actually, it does: people need to abandon these small towns and move someplace more sustainable. The small-town lifestyle is not sustainable, and only works when it's being subsidized by the cities. Most of these dying towns don't have any real industry left anyway, so it's time for the people there to pack up and leave. 100+ years ago, this is exactly what happened, which is where there's a bunch of "ghost towns" in the western US (most of these are nothing more than some building foundations now, if that): when the local mine petered out, there wasn't any help from the state or federal government to keep the people living there from starving, so they packed up and moved out. This is what we should be doing now, except these days it'd be nice for the government to give poorer people a little temporary assistance to aid the transition to someplace with a stronger economy, but the end goal should be shutting these little towns down if they're no longer economically viable on their own.
No, it doesn't. The lone engineer is doing two jobs: engineering and management. So management is still to blame.
Bad engineering is *always* the fault of bad management, no exceptions. It's management's job to manage the engineers, and identify and fire the bad ones, while facilitating the rest and ensuring their time is productive. Engineers have no power; only management does, so management gets 100% of the blame for the outcome.
If Windows is being used for safety-critical things, whoever made that decision should be jailed, and would certainly be exposed to a huge amount of liability. The Windows EULA clearly states that it is not suitable for safety-critical applications.
That said, some of those things aren't necessarily safety-critical; medical equipment in particular is frequently not. You're not going to die because your GP's blood-pressure and pulse machine blue-screened. (You could die if your infuser pump crapped out in the middle of the night though.) However, I've worked with that kind of equipment and it all runs on small RTOSes.
Tell me again why I need to install a dedicated Facebook app to send messages?
That's pretty simple: to lock you into Facebook's platform, and allow Facebook to log all your messages. That's not so easy if you use SMS. Why are you trying to keep secrets from Facebook? What do you have to hide?
This was a bad idea for users from day 1
Since when are the users' needs and desires important? This is good for Facebook, and that's all that matters.
and I will not be a part of it.
Then you're going to be relegated to obscurity and irrelevance, because all your family members will be using Facebook as they share videos and articles (probably from far-right-wing "news" sites; these are very popular on Facebook).
Bring on the good technology in its place.
If by "good technology" you mean something that's in the best interest of privacy-advocating users and not locked into any one company, then it'll never happen. What corporation would have an incentive to do such a thing? More importantly, name any such communications technology that exists now, and then look up how old it is and how popular it currently is.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the legions of apple fans would pay nearly any amount for one.
Exactly, which is why I think Apple is charging far too little here. They could easily charge $3k, or even $5k for their phone, and Apple lovers will happily pay that. Apple might need to offer financing, but that shouldn't be any trouble for Apple. They could get tons of people to sign up for $500/month phone payments (in addition to the cellular plan), and be more profitable than ever.