Good luck taking a train between Europe and North America.
Flying does indeed suck, but trains are ridiculously slow. It takes days to cross the US by Amtrak, and the cost is astronomical. They work OK for regional travel, or maybe if you like sightseeing and have plenty of time and money for a sleeper car, but that's it.
First, as for your "catch a movie or two", that sounds great, except that you need a laptop (or at least a tablet) to do that, unless you want to be stuck with whatever shit the airline is showing. Don't forget, the airline's shit will cost you $$$; with your laptop, you can watch whatever you brought with you for free.
Secondly, the only way you can be reached in-flight now is through WiFi. Maybe I'm a little out of touch, but last time I flew that cost extra, and it wasn't that cheap either. So if you don't want to be in contact, don't: don't pay for the optional WiFi service, and just use your laptop for a movie, or working on a personal project, or whatever. If someone complains, ask if they're willing to give you cash to pay for the WiFi, and if not, to shut the hell up. Personally, in all my years of working, I've never had any employer or business contact give me grief for not using something unless it was actually provided by the company, not paid for by me personally. No reasonable employer ever expects an employee to personally pay for stuff that's just for business use.
You don't need a ship to get out of North America; you can just take a plane. Notice that this rule about laptops only refers to incoming flights. Be sure to take a flight with a non-US airline. I hear that Emirates, Lufthansa, JAL, and Korean Air are the best.
For your car, you can ship it to Europe with a bunch of different companies for under $1k. It'll probably take a couple weeks though.
Now if you're about to ask about getting back with your laptop and without a lot of hassle, or complain that 2 weeks to get your car is too long, my question to you is: why would you want to come back once you've escaped?
You're entirely missing the point. You said way above that you don't need sugar, so I quipped that you can't survive without it in your bloodstream, and then you went on a rant about diets and nutrition, which is entirely beside the point. Your body synthesizes glucose (a sugar) from your food, and that's how your cells are fueled; this is Biology 101. That's the whole point of my silly quip. You can eat nothing but protein (which is basically what my cats do, they sure as hell don't eat any sugary foods), and if you're a mammal your body will convert that to sugar so your cells can use it. It's that simple. It was meant to be nothing more than a joke, not a debate about nutrition and dieting.
Yeah, but while MS can probably get away with fleecing customers with short-lived crap like that, I would have thought high-end luxury car buyers would be more discerning and more likely to spread the word about short-lived cars to their rich buddies while at the golf course or country club. Again, while I haven't sat in a 6-figure car for a while, I thought they were generally decked out in (genuine) leather.
Is this Alcantara stuff like the microfiber sectional couch I have? If so, it's OK I guess, but honestly I can't imagine wanting that stuff in my car. It seems like it'd be too hot in the summer, but worse, on the steering wheel it just makes no sense at all. You don't want something furry on your steering wheel, not even genuine suede leather; you want smooth leather that's a little soft and supple.
You need to take a biology class. No, you can't survive without sugar, unless you're some kind of alien or something. Your body converts everything (carbs, protein, etc.) into glucose in your bloodstream to feed your cells, and your cells convert it all to ATP. Your body's energy source is literally glucose, a sugar. You can't survive without it.
Since it appears that whatever shitty school you went to didn't teach you any biology (I learned this stuff in public high school bio in the US, not exactly world-class education), here's a Wikipedia article for you:
Yeah, I do agree even if it didn't quite seem that way. I use their stuff too a lot: Android, GMail, Maps, Calendar particularly. I try to use DDG for search but frequently go back to Google depending on what it is. It's convenient, but I'm just pointing out how many of them wouldn't be *that* hard to do without, and that for me at least, Maps is probably the one I'd miss the most (assuming I have time to pull all my email out of GMail; I really should do that sometime just to have a backup anyway).
Humans can survive without sex. It's not even necessary for reproduction (and never has been; you could always inseminate artificially, with a turkey baster if nothing else). And with the way most American women look these days, I can understand why many American men wouldn't want to bother....
Linux works just fine, and much better than Windows in fact for most cases, the problem is software and document compatibility. Document compatibility with LibreOffice is good, but not 100%. And so many important 3rd-party applications run on Windows (which may or may not work in WINE). That's why most users stick with Windows, along with sheer laziness or apathy.
If MS suddenly disappeared tomorrow, and for some odd reason everyone was somehow given 1 year to migrate everything they had to non-MS software before it all magically stopped working, people could easily switch to Linux for their desktop OSes (and servers too of course), and to LibreOffice and Google Docs (and others) for their office software. There'd be some pain in the transition of course, but companies would spring up to aid in the transition for a price, and all the 3rd-party Windows-only software would very quickly be ported to Linux and/or Mac. There'd probably also be a lot of work put into improving document compatibility with MS-OOXML by some companies seeking to profit by selling converters.
The main thing that'd really suck about a future with Linux on the desktop is that so many distros push Gnome3 instead of one of the better desktops like KDE.
Newer laptops have better CPUs with lower power consumption. You should upgrade to something that's 3-5 years old. It'll still be dirt-cheap on Ebay, but a significant upgrade from what you have now.
You don't need GMail; there's lots of other email services out there (but many require payment), or you can set up your own on a server. You really don't need "cloud document services"; just use LibreOffice if you don't want to use MS Office. But the calendaring system I'll admit is very useful because of its integration with Android IMO, since it results in reminders notifying me on my phone when I'm out. That can be replaced too, I'm sure, probably with some other 3rd-party app and web calendar service (which would probably require payment), but unless such a thing already exists (I don't know, never checked), it seems like this would be the hardest to replace if you use it a lot.
Going without Google search is easy these days though. DDG works quite well for me, and even Bing (as much as I hate MS) works OK most of the time.
The Google product I'd probably miss the most, once I safely transferred all my email out of GMail, is Google Maps. (And don't say "switch to Waze" because that's owned by Google too.) IMO, this is probably their most useful thing of all these days. Being able to search for businesses in the area, then with one or two taps being able to get turn-by-turn navigation there, including routing around traffic, is very useful and not easily replaced by any other service I know of. Sure, I can use the nav system in my car, or some other 3rd-party app, for GPS navigation if I know the street address of my destination, but getting that address is half the challenge, and Google Maps makes it really easy.
See, this really shows how bad these poll questions are, because people interpret them differently, and small differences in interpretation result in huge differences in responses.
You talk about these companies "disappearing", but that's not exactly what they're asking, is it? It's vague. Is the company disappearing altogether, or are you just required to not use their products any more? If the company magically disappears, do all their products disappear too from the face of the planet, or is there just a smoking crater where their offices were, with all their assets gone, but everything that's sold still out there? (i.e. can you still continue to use Windows if MS disappears tomorrow, but you won't get any more updates? Are other entities who have the Windows source code allowed to make their own version of Windows now?) What about open-source stuff? Does all that stuff that was contributed suddenly disappear?
You mention ARM. If the company itself disappears, that's not a big blow because the chips are all made by other companies and the designs are already out there; the only problem would be future designs, but surely someone else would just start making derivatives of existing ARM designs (unless that's not allowed somehow even though the company no longer exists). But if it also means all chips based on ARM IP suddenly disappear, then that's something altogether different because suddenly most modern technology will stop working.
Microsoft is the next easiest to eliminate from my life. The only Microsoft products/services I really use are Office and Windows. Windows I don't need at all, I only use it because others do or demand software specific to it (Office being the key example).
Yeah, but what if the scenario is that *you* have to give up all Microsoft software, but no one else does? So that means that if your employers uses Windows, Office, Outlook, etc., you're no longer allowed to do your job, and you can't work any place else that uses these things. This is a very different scenario than *everyone* suddenly not being able to use MS software.
Personally, I'd love for the latter scenario to happen, but the former is pretty untenable for me because most jobs use Windows/Office/Outlook if they don't involve software development on Windows.
There's several ways to interpret the poll question. Does "giving up" one of the tech giants means that you personally simply refuse to use their products, but everyone else still does? Or does it mean that the tech giant magically disappears from the face of the planet, and everyone relying on them is left in a lurch?
So, for instance, I'd be happy to give up MS products forever. However I can't easily do it any time soon because my job, and almost any other job I might apply to and be qualified for, uses MS products in some capacity, usually for Office, Outlook, etc. So refusing to use MS products at all will make it very hard for me to make a living, even though my "real work" involves programming on non-MS platforms. However if MS the company magically stopped existing tomorrow and everyone had to either live with existing MS software with zero support (let's assume all the source code for MS-ware disappeared in the process, or somehow MS decided to commit suicide and refused to sell any more licenses or allow anyone to use their source code for anything), or start looking for alternatives, that'd be a great day for me, even if there's some short-term pain at work.
And yes, "need" can be interpreted in many ways. You don't "need" internet service at home at all, you can just do work stuff at work and use a coffee shop for surfing, as many people do. You don't "need" internet outside of work either, you can just not use it at all for personal stuff, as some people do (particularly old people). You don't "need" it at work either; even if your work depends on it, you can get another job that doesn't need it, like stocking shelves or digging ditches or flipping burgers. You don't "need" to work at any of those jobs either; you can just become homeless and live on the street, as many people do. You don't "need" to live on the street or at all, you can just die, as many people do voluntarily.
Anyway, back to the original topic: this could really be re-done as several different questions: 1) Which tech giant would cause you the most pain if they and their products magically disappeared all of a sudden? 2) Which tech giant would cause you the most pain if you alone were forbidden from using their products, while everything remained the same for others? Which tech giant would you miss the most (because of personal preference/opinion) if they 3) magically disappeared or 4) you weren't allowed to use them? And also, which tech giant would you be most willing to give up if 5) you could will them to magically disappear or 6) you alone had to give up their products?
For me, #1-4 would be Google, #5 would be Microsoft, and #6 would be Apple. I'm not completely ecstatic about them, but Google stuff I actually use a lot (esp. Android--phone), so losing them would affect my life the most. I'd love to see Microsoft magically disappear, but I can't afford to refuse to use their products ever as they're used by too many employers. But Apple I could refuse to use right now, because I don't use any of their stuff anyway. Facebook is a close #2 to Apple, but I occasionally use it with family members, and Amazon I do buy from sometimes, though not as much these days because the counterfeiting problem has gotten so bad and their prices aren't that great any more, their shipping times aren't great, and I refuse to sign up for Prime.
Another factor is: in the above scenarios, how do various open-source products they've released factor into it? If I refuse to use Apple stuff, does that mean I can't print any more since CUPS is owned by Apple? I would think that open-source stuff that's "in the wild" and not directly generating profits shouldn't be affected, but again this just shows the question is complicated. If this stuff were included, I'd have to change my #5 answer to Facebook since I don't use Hack, HHVM, etc. But wait, what if they've contributed to some other project that I do use? Can I not use that project, even if their contribution is small? Does their contribution magically disappear?
Are you alleging that Gnome3 is part of a nefarious conspiracy theory?
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me too much. Why anyone likes that turd is completely beyond me, so an elaborate conspiracy theory would actually explain why it's so seemingly popular among Linux users and why so many distros push it so hard.
You want something strong that you can wipe clean like glass, metal, steel, titanium, aluminum.
No, you really don't want titanium unless it has a durable coating on it, unless you like scratches. Titanium has a high strength-to-weight ratio, but its surface hardness is quite poor and it's easily scratched. If it were cheap and easily replaced, it'd probably be a better choice than plastic, but it isn't cheap.
Not the OP, but no, I don't have one of those either. It may have cost nearly that much new, but my Galaxy S5 was less than $150 used, and still works great. And unlike the new S8 that another article here today says is the most delicate phone ever, the S5 is pretty rugged, and even more so in my Otterbox case.
Phones aren't improving at all these days in useful ways (and no, going from 1080p up to 4k isn't really useful in a phone), so buying a brand new phone is really pointless when you can get something 1-2 years old that still works great, and likely will continue to.
Why on earth would a luxury car use a synthetic microfiber for a steering wheel instead of good ol' leather? Leather is a little expensive, but these are luxury cars so that shouldn't be a problem, and leather is long-lasting and easy to clean and condition, and feels a lot better than plastic. You can even find leather steering wheels on mid-grade and lower cars these days.
but there are a whole class of positions that will simply disappear. Call me introverted, but I will be happy to not have to wait in line to talk to anyone in order to "check in" to a hotel or rent/return a car.
It's already getting like this in more and more places. For instance, one of my favorite chain restaurants is Panera Bread. What's great about these places is (at the corporate-owned ones, the franchises are behind) you don't have to talk to anyone to place an order. Instead, you go in, swipe your frequent-customer card on the kiosk (looks like a tablet computer), and place your order there with the touchscreen. Even better, the UI is far, far, far superior to talking to some dumb teenager: the kiosk will show you all kinds of options you didn't know were available, let you change the type of bread or the toppings, add things, change quantities, etc. You could get the dumb teenager to do this too, but only if you already know what to ask for. The kid isn't going to rattle off 20 different types of bread for you, and he has no way of showing you photos of these different breads.
After you've placed your order with the kiosk, you take your buzzer and go find a table. Then someone brings your order to you. That one brief contact is the only contact with staff you have to have at the restaurant. (And if you go to the bathroom and leave your buzzer on the table, you may just find your food already there when you return, so no human contact at all.)
Why rental car places haven't gone this way yet, I have no idea. They could have one human standing by for 4 kiosks, instead of making a bunch of people who just got off a jet stand in line for so long.
Which NASA's management still doesn't understand, those perennial idiots with their failure to go metric
Huh? What are you talking about? I'm not sure what they did back in the Apollo days, but they've been all-metric for some time now at least. If you're talking about that failed Mars lander mission, that was the fault of some stupid defense contractor they got some data from. NASA's failure was in not verifying the units of the data, but the contractor was also at fault for not providing any kind of units. Basically, both of them were stupid for providing, and accepting, a bunch of numbers with the units just assumed on each side. But it wasn't because they "failed to go metric" (however their defense-contractor partners they frequently work with did).
Finally, NASA has had a lot of successes: the Mercury and Apollo programs of course, but even in recent years there's been a bunch of successful probes and landers: the Mars landers, the Juno probe, the New Horizons probe, etc. If you're criticizing them for not getting bigger missions done and not having a way of sending humans into space any more, you can blame Congress and the White House for that. No one can get big missions done when the requirements are constantly changing and you're being jerked around with your budget and being told "work on this program now! No wait, cancel that, work on this other program now!"; anyone who's worked in engineering should know that.
And it's not even wise, because companies will become more reluctant to work with you in the future, and people will also dislike you for what you do, meaning some of them will buy from another company.
In the case of Apple, this just isn't true. Apple customers love Apple, no matter what they do, and will defend Apple's actions to the death if necessary. They won't buy from another company no matter what. They're also willing to make their Apple purchases their top priority, and would even take out a second mortgage on their house if necessary to continue their Apple spending habit, so there's a lot of room for Apple to keep jacking up prices to keep profits high, even if a few malcontents leave them.
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Good luck taking a train between Europe and North America.
Flying does indeed suck, but trains are ridiculously slow. It takes days to cross the US by Amtrak, and the cost is astronomical. They work OK for regional travel, or maybe if you like sightseeing and have plenty of time and money for a sleeper car, but that's it.
This is just plain dumb.
First, as for your "catch a movie or two", that sounds great, except that you need a laptop (or at least a tablet) to do that, unless you want to be stuck with whatever shit the airline is showing. Don't forget, the airline's shit will cost you $$$; with your laptop, you can watch whatever you brought with you for free.
Secondly, the only way you can be reached in-flight now is through WiFi. Maybe I'm a little out of touch, but last time I flew that cost extra, and it wasn't that cheap either. So if you don't want to be in contact, don't: don't pay for the optional WiFi service, and just use your laptop for a movie, or working on a personal project, or whatever. If someone complains, ask if they're willing to give you cash to pay for the WiFi, and if not, to shut the hell up. Personally, in all my years of working, I've never had any employer or business contact give me grief for not using something unless it was actually provided by the company, not paid for by me personally. No reasonable employer ever expects an employee to personally pay for stuff that's just for business use.
You don't need a ship to get out of North America; you can just take a plane. Notice that this rule about laptops only refers to incoming flights. Be sure to take a flight with a non-US airline. I hear that Emirates, Lufthansa, JAL, and Korean Air are the best.
For your car, you can ship it to Europe with a bunch of different companies for under $1k. It'll probably take a couple weeks though.
Now if you're about to ask about getting back with your laptop and without a lot of hassle, or complain that 2 weeks to get your car is too long, my question to you is: why would you want to come back once you've escaped?
Yeah, this definitely isn't the first time I've seen a joke fly over someone's head on here :-)
You're entirely missing the point. You said way above that you don't need sugar, so I quipped that you can't survive without it in your bloodstream, and then you went on a rant about diets and nutrition, which is entirely beside the point. Your body synthesizes glucose (a sugar) from your food, and that's how your cells are fueled; this is Biology 101. That's the whole point of my silly quip. You can eat nothing but protein (which is basically what my cats do, they sure as hell don't eat any sugary foods), and if you're a mammal your body will convert that to sugar so your cells can use it. It's that simple. It was meant to be nothing more than a joke, not a debate about nutrition and dieting.
Wow, you're really dense aren't you? I don't care what you eat, if it's an energy source it'll be converted to glucose.
Yeah, but while MS can probably get away with fleecing customers with short-lived crap like that, I would have thought high-end luxury car buyers would be more discerning and more likely to spread the word about short-lived cars to their rich buddies while at the golf course or country club. Again, while I haven't sat in a 6-figure car for a while, I thought they were generally decked out in (genuine) leather.
Is this Alcantara stuff like the microfiber sectional couch I have? If so, it's OK I guess, but honestly I can't imagine wanting that stuff in my car. It seems like it'd be too hot in the summer, but worse, on the steering wheel it just makes no sense at all. You don't want something furry on your steering wheel, not even genuine suede leather; you want smooth leather that's a little soft and supple.
You need to take a biology class. No, you can't survive without sugar, unless you're some kind of alien or something. Your body converts everything (carbs, protein, etc.) into glucose in your bloodstream to feed your cells, and your cells convert it all to ATP. Your body's energy source is literally glucose, a sugar. You can't survive without it.
Since it appears that whatever shitty school you went to didn't teach you any biology (I learned this stuff in public high school bio in the US, not exactly world-class education), here's a Wikipedia article for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yeah, I do agree even if it didn't quite seem that way. I use their stuff too a lot: Android, GMail, Maps, Calendar particularly. I try to use DDG for search but frequently go back to Google depending on what it is. It's convenient, but I'm just pointing out how many of them wouldn't be *that* hard to do without, and that for me at least, Maps is probably the one I'd miss the most (assuming I have time to pull all my email out of GMail; I really should do that sometime just to have a backup anyway).
Humans can survive without sex. It's not even necessary for reproduction (and never has been; you could always inseminate artificially, with a turkey baster if nothing else). And with the way most American women look these days, I can understand why many American men wouldn't want to bother....
Oh bullshit; you're an idiot.
Linux works just fine, and much better than Windows in fact for most cases, the problem is software and document compatibility. Document compatibility with LibreOffice is good, but not 100%. And so many important 3rd-party applications run on Windows (which may or may not work in WINE). That's why most users stick with Windows, along with sheer laziness or apathy.
If MS suddenly disappeared tomorrow, and for some odd reason everyone was somehow given 1 year to migrate everything they had to non-MS software before it all magically stopped working, people could easily switch to Linux for their desktop OSes (and servers too of course), and to LibreOffice and Google Docs (and others) for their office software. There'd be some pain in the transition of course, but companies would spring up to aid in the transition for a price, and all the 3rd-party Windows-only software would very quickly be ported to Linux and/or Mac. There'd probably also be a lot of work put into improving document compatibility with MS-OOXML by some companies seeking to profit by selling converters.
The main thing that'd really suck about a future with Linux on the desktop is that so many distros push Gnome3 instead of one of the better desktops like KDE.
Newer laptops have better CPUs with lower power consumption. You should upgrade to something that's 3-5 years old. It'll still be dirt-cheap on Ebay, but a significant upgrade from what you have now.
You don't need GMail; there's lots of other email services out there (but many require payment), or you can set up your own on a server. You really don't need "cloud document services"; just use LibreOffice if you don't want to use MS Office. But the calendaring system I'll admit is very useful because of its integration with Android IMO, since it results in reminders notifying me on my phone when I'm out. That can be replaced too, I'm sure, probably with some other 3rd-party app and web calendar service (which would probably require payment), but unless such a thing already exists (I don't know, never checked), it seems like this would be the hardest to replace if you use it a lot.
Going without Google search is easy these days though. DDG works quite well for me, and even Bing (as much as I hate MS) works OK most of the time.
The Google product I'd probably miss the most, once I safely transferred all my email out of GMail, is Google Maps. (And don't say "switch to Waze" because that's owned by Google too.) IMO, this is probably their most useful thing of all these days. Being able to search for businesses in the area, then with one or two taps being able to get turn-by-turn navigation there, including routing around traffic, is very useful and not easily replaced by any other service I know of. Sure, I can use the nav system in my car, or some other 3rd-party app, for GPS navigation if I know the street address of my destination, but getting that address is half the challenge, and Google Maps makes it really easy.
Great, I'd like to see how you get along without any sugar in your bloodstream.
See, this really shows how bad these poll questions are, because people interpret them differently, and small differences in interpretation result in huge differences in responses.
You talk about these companies "disappearing", but that's not exactly what they're asking, is it? It's vague. Is the company disappearing altogether, or are you just required to not use their products any more? If the company magically disappears, do all their products disappear too from the face of the planet, or is there just a smoking crater where their offices were, with all their assets gone, but everything that's sold still out there? (i.e. can you still continue to use Windows if MS disappears tomorrow, but you won't get any more updates? Are other entities who have the Windows source code allowed to make their own version of Windows now?) What about open-source stuff? Does all that stuff that was contributed suddenly disappear?
You mention ARM. If the company itself disappears, that's not a big blow because the chips are all made by other companies and the designs are already out there; the only problem would be future designs, but surely someone else would just start making derivatives of existing ARM designs (unless that's not allowed somehow even though the company no longer exists). But if it also means all chips based on ARM IP suddenly disappear, then that's something altogether different because suddenly most modern technology will stop working.
Microsoft is the next easiest to eliminate from my life. The only Microsoft products/services I really use are Office and Windows. Windows I don't need at all, I only use it because others do or demand software specific to it (Office being the key example).
Yeah, but what if the scenario is that *you* have to give up all Microsoft software, but no one else does? So that means that if your employers uses Windows, Office, Outlook, etc., you're no longer allowed to do your job, and you can't work any place else that uses these things. This is a very different scenario than *everyone* suddenly not being able to use MS software.
Personally, I'd love for the latter scenario to happen, but the former is pretty untenable for me because most jobs use Windows/Office/Outlook if they don't involve software development on Windows.
There's several ways to interpret the poll question. Does "giving up" one of the tech giants means that you personally simply refuse to use their products, but everyone else still does? Or does it mean that the tech giant magically disappears from the face of the planet, and everyone relying on them is left in a lurch?
So, for instance, I'd be happy to give up MS products forever. However I can't easily do it any time soon because my job, and almost any other job I might apply to and be qualified for, uses MS products in some capacity, usually for Office, Outlook, etc. So refusing to use MS products at all will make it very hard for me to make a living, even though my "real work" involves programming on non-MS platforms. However if MS the company magically stopped existing tomorrow and everyone had to either live with existing MS software with zero support (let's assume all the source code for MS-ware disappeared in the process, or somehow MS decided to commit suicide and refused to sell any more licenses or allow anyone to use their source code for anything), or start looking for alternatives, that'd be a great day for me, even if there's some short-term pain at work.
And yes, "need" can be interpreted in many ways. You don't "need" internet service at home at all, you can just do work stuff at work and use a coffee shop for surfing, as many people do. You don't "need" internet outside of work either, you can just not use it at all for personal stuff, as some people do (particularly old people). You don't "need" it at work either; even if your work depends on it, you can get another job that doesn't need it, like stocking shelves or digging ditches or flipping burgers. You don't "need" to work at any of those jobs either; you can just become homeless and live on the street, as many people do. You don't "need" to live on the street or at all, you can just die, as many people do voluntarily.
Anyway, back to the original topic: this could really be re-done as several different questions: 1) Which tech giant would cause you the most pain if they and their products magically disappeared all of a sudden? 2) Which tech giant would cause you the most pain if you alone were forbidden from using their products, while everything remained the same for others? Which tech giant would you miss the most (because of personal preference/opinion) if they 3) magically disappeared or 4) you weren't allowed to use them? And also, which tech giant would you be most willing to give up if 5) you could will them to magically disappear or 6) you alone had to give up their products?
For me, #1-4 would be Google, #5 would be Microsoft, and #6 would be Apple. I'm not completely ecstatic about them, but Google stuff I actually use a lot (esp. Android--phone), so losing them would affect my life the most. I'd love to see Microsoft magically disappear, but I can't afford to refuse to use their products ever as they're used by too many employers. But Apple I could refuse to use right now, because I don't use any of their stuff anyway. Facebook is a close #2 to Apple, but I occasionally use it with family members, and Amazon I do buy from sometimes, though not as much these days because the counterfeiting problem has gotten so bad and their prices aren't that great any more, their shipping times aren't great, and I refuse to sign up for Prime.
Another factor is: in the above scenarios, how do various open-source products they've released factor into it? If I refuse to use Apple stuff, does that mean I can't print any more since CUPS is owned by Apple? I would think that open-source stuff that's "in the wild" and not directly generating profits shouldn't be affected, but again this just shows the question is complicated. If this stuff were included, I'd have to change my #5 answer to Facebook since I don't use Hack, HHVM, etc. But wait, what if they've contributed to some other project that I do use? Can I not use that project, even if their contribution is small? Does their contribution magically disappear?
Why even bother interviewing at a place if you already know that the hiring manager is consistently rejecting qualified candidates?
Are you alleging that Gnome3 is part of a nefarious conspiracy theory?
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me too much. Why anyone likes that turd is completely beyond me, so an elaborate conspiracy theory would actually explain why it's so seemingly popular among Linux users and why so many distros push it so hard.
You want something strong that you can wipe clean like glass, metal, steel, titanium, aluminum.
No, you really don't want titanium unless it has a durable coating on it, unless you like scratches. Titanium has a high strength-to-weight ratio, but its surface hardness is quite poor and it's easily scratched. If it were cheap and easily replaced, it'd probably be a better choice than plastic, but it isn't cheap.
Not the OP, but no, I don't have one of those either. It may have cost nearly that much new, but my Galaxy S5 was less than $150 used, and still works great. And unlike the new S8 that another article here today says is the most delicate phone ever, the S5 is pretty rugged, and even more so in my Otterbox case.
Phones aren't improving at all these days in useful ways (and no, going from 1080p up to 4k isn't really useful in a phone), so buying a brand new phone is really pointless when you can get something 1-2 years old that still works great, and likely will continue to.
Why on earth would a luxury car use a synthetic microfiber for a steering wheel instead of good ol' leather? Leather is a little expensive, but these are luxury cars so that shouldn't be a problem, and leather is long-lasting and easy to clean and condition, and feels a lot better than plastic. You can even find leather steering wheels on mid-grade and lower cars these days.
but there are a whole class of positions that will simply disappear. Call me introverted, but I will be happy to not have to wait in line to talk to anyone in order to "check in" to a hotel or rent/return a car.
It's already getting like this in more and more places. For instance, one of my favorite chain restaurants is Panera Bread. What's great about these places is (at the corporate-owned ones, the franchises are behind) you don't have to talk to anyone to place an order. Instead, you go in, swipe your frequent-customer card on the kiosk (looks like a tablet computer), and place your order there with the touchscreen. Even better, the UI is far, far, far superior to talking to some dumb teenager: the kiosk will show you all kinds of options you didn't know were available, let you change the type of bread or the toppings, add things, change quantities, etc. You could get the dumb teenager to do this too, but only if you already know what to ask for. The kid isn't going to rattle off 20 different types of bread for you, and he has no way of showing you photos of these different breads.
After you've placed your order with the kiosk, you take your buzzer and go find a table. Then someone brings your order to you. That one brief contact is the only contact with staff you have to have at the restaurant. (And if you go to the bathroom and leave your buzzer on the table, you may just find your food already there when you return, so no human contact at all.)
Why rental car places haven't gone this way yet, I have no idea. They could have one human standing by for 4 kiosks, instead of making a bunch of people who just got off a jet stand in line for so long.
Which NASA's management still doesn't understand, those perennial idiots with their failure to go metric
Huh? What are you talking about? I'm not sure what they did back in the Apollo days, but they've been all-metric for some time now at least. If you're talking about that failed Mars lander mission, that was the fault of some stupid defense contractor they got some data from. NASA's failure was in not verifying the units of the data, but the contractor was also at fault for not providing any kind of units. Basically, both of them were stupid for providing, and accepting, a bunch of numbers with the units just assumed on each side. But it wasn't because they "failed to go metric" (however their defense-contractor partners they frequently work with did).
Finally, NASA has had a lot of successes: the Mercury and Apollo programs of course, but even in recent years there's been a bunch of successful probes and landers: the Mars landers, the Juno probe, the New Horizons probe, etc. If you're criticizing them for not getting bigger missions done and not having a way of sending humans into space any more, you can blame Congress and the White House for that. No one can get big missions done when the requirements are constantly changing and you're being jerked around with your budget and being told "work on this program now! No wait, cancel that, work on this other program now!"; anyone who's worked in engineering should know that.
And it's not even wise, because companies will become more reluctant to work with you in the future, and people will also dislike you for what you do, meaning some of them will buy from another company.
In the case of Apple, this just isn't true. Apple customers love Apple, no matter what they do, and will defend Apple's actions to the death if necessary. They won't buy from another company no matter what. They're also willing to make their Apple purchases their top priority, and would even take out a second mortgage on their house if necessary to continue their Apple spending habit, so there's a lot of room for Apple to keep jacking up prices to keep profits high, even if a few malcontents leave them.