No, we won't. Stop being delusional. First off, Biden is not part of the Sanders camp, he's a lot closer to the Hillary camp, though admittedly he isn't remotely as scandal-plagued or charismatically-challenged as her. Secondly, Biden and Sanders are both quite old now; it's really doubtful either one of them is up for a 2020 run. They'd both probably be the oldest contenders in history for those offices.
Regardless of all that, I simply cannot believe that the DNC would back Sanders again (or a Sanders clone). They're simply too corrupt; they proved it in this election. They even re-elected Pelosi to her position.
I think what's going to happen is one of 2 things: 1) Hillary will be backed, yet again, and will lose, *again*, to Trump, even amidst a terrible recession caused by Trump's policies. I think the DNC just isn't ready to throw in the towel on pushing their queen to the Presidency. 2) Some other (younger, slightly less scandal-plagued, but obviously sold-out corporatist) Hillary clone will be nominated again, again with dirty tricks by the DNC just like this year, and they'll lose, again.
And cut it out with your comments about "real democratic candidates". See the No True Scotsman fallacy. Candidates like Hillary and DWS are *real* Democrats. They epitomize the Democratic party, and this was proven this year by the DNC's backing of them.
Face it: the Democratic party has a *long* history of running establishment-backed losers. Every once in a while there's a big upset or exception, but most of the time they pick the most uncharismatic people they can find, and frequently the most corrupt. They ran Mondale and Dukakis, both horribly uncharismatic. Then they picked Bill Clinton; corrupt (though it wasn't so obvious back then) but he made up for it in charisma and the Republicans' vote was split by Perot so he won with a minority. He got lucky and presided over an economic boom fueled by the internet so he got re-elected (Dole had no charisma too). Then they ran Gore, who had the charisma of a wooden pole, and he lost (partially thanks to the vote being split by the much more progressive Nader) to Bush, who had some charisma though he was dumber than a chimp and looked like one too. Then they tried running Kerry against Bush, and Kerry too had no charisma and was totally unlikeable. Then they tried coronating their corrupt and utterly unlikeable queen Hillary, but Obama (who had lots of charisma) threw a wrench into their machinations there and beat her in the primaries in a big surprise. So now that Obama can't run for a 3rd term (which is too bad, I'll take him over Hillary any day), they did it again, and succeeded this time with lots of dirty tricks against another charismatic upstart named Sanders, and just as Michael Moore predicted, she lost to Trump, the second most unpopular candidate in history.
If the Democratic Party can't learn their lesson after at least 32 years, I have no idea why you think they'll suddenly change their ways now.
Running against Hillary probably wouldn't have gotten her anywhere anyway; Bernie tried it and look where it got him. The DNC had everything rigged in Hillary's favor, so Warren wouldn't have had a chance there. Maybe that's why she didn't want to run. But if offered a VP spot, that might have gotten her interest because then she wouldn't have had to run against Hillary, and would have at least been able to supposedly have an effect on Hillary's positions. Maybe she wasn't ready, but it's not like she's some youngster either, she's in her 50s or 60s now I think.
She didn't even have to pick Bernie; there's other not-so-establishment people should could have picked out of the Democratic party. Elizabeth Warren for one, would have been an interesting choice as then they'd have had two women on the ticket, with the VP pick at least being fairly popular among the progressives and Bernie voters. I honestly think even doing this would have won her the election, as it probably would have brought more young voters to the polls, hoping that Hillary would croak early on leaving Warren in charge.
Sorry, no. She royally pissed off all the Bernie voters with that move (plus hiring DWS). This election was basically about establishment vs. non-establishment. People who wanted a big change were screaming for either Trump or Bernie, because they were both non-establishment. Hillary did absolutely nothing to get the Bernie voters back on her side after winning the primaries (or is it "winning" the primaries?), except getting Bernie to stump for her which just wasn't enough after she picked the most pro-establishment democrat she could find to be her running mate. So lots of Bernie voters either sat out the election, or voted 3rd party, or possibly even for Trump.
Of course, Trump seems to be picking a bunch of establishment people to surround himself with (including his VP), but that's another issue. I never said the anti-establishment Trump voters were smart.
The fancy theater you speak of sounds great, but remember a lot of people don't live near one of those. And it still has other problems, including both the ones you mention and also the ones typical to any cinema: you can't pause or rewind or bring your own food.
If you have a whole group of people, that seems like a perfect time to ditch the theaters altogether and find a DVD/BluRay/streaming video you all want to watch instead, and have movie night at someone's home. It's a much nicer experience if you have a nice group of people you get along with, since you're just around them and not any strangers who'll just ruin the experience. Plus you can have a potluck, make dinner for everyone (easier when you have multiple people willing to pitch in in the kitchen), etc.
The stupid seats aren't even good for going to the movies with a date. They're squished together, so you're uncomfortably close to some stranger that happens to sit next to you (assuming the theater is moderately full), but there's an uncomfortable armrest in the way which can't be lifted out of the way, so you can't snuggle with your girlfriend either.
Much better to just watch the movie at home on your sectional sofa. Then you can sit as near or far from your companion(s) as you want. You can probably even lie down together on the recliner (it helps if you're both thin here...).
Your response is stupid. No, this stuff has never happened before, that I can readily recall. All your examples are cases where an older technology was replaced by a clearly superior technology. This simply isn't the case here. The 3.5mm headphone jack is the superior technology. Bluetooth is inferior; its only advantage is eliminating a wire, but the downside is poor audio quality as well as radio interference problems. USBc headphones are not a proper replacement because they prevent charging, and also they simply aren't enough of a technical improvement to justify the cost. In fact, the connectors are likely inferior; 3.5mm connectors are simple, easy to plug in since they're round, and extremely rugged compared to today's ultra-delicate connectors. There's simply no good reason to abandon it at this point. Manufacturers are only dumping it because they're cheap and lazy, and one of them wants to sell all their customers brand-new headphones.
There *is* something inherently wrong with a workaround when the problem was never necessary in the first place. No one asked these companies to abandon the 3.5mm jack. The solution is simple: don't buy their shitty products.
Well I looked into the G5 and it doesn't appear to be waterproof, so that's out.
No matter, my Galaxy S5 still works fine for now. Hopefully in a year or two, one of these companies will pull its head out of its ass and make an updated phone as good as this one.
There was nothing whiny about his "excuses". It's his money and time, and his prerogative how to spend them. If the movie companies want his business, they'll make their product available in a format he prefers (and which many people these days prefer, considering how popular streaming video is these days, as evidenced by Netflix's instant play offerings, Hulu, Amazon video, etc.). If they can't be bothered to do that, then he was every right to call them morons and spend his time and money elsewhere.
It's really no different than a company which offers me information and the ability to order their products on a website, versus a company which has no website and insists that I use a fax machine to communicate with them. Guess which one won't be getting my business. But I will make fun of them whenever I have the chance.
Timing and location makes all the difference. I've had terrible experiences, and nice ones. The nice ones were like when I saw "The Martian" last year: we went when the movie had already been out a while (it was probably just about done with its run at that theater, not sure), and we went I believe on a weekday night, so there was almost no one at all in the whole place. I think there were two other patrons watching The Martian with us in that theater. When you can catch a movie like that, it's a pretty nice experience. Of course, if you have a nice giant-screen TV and your own home theater room, I'm not sure what the theater offers that beats this.
I've also gone to a few movies at a dinner theater in the city I used to live in, and that was pretty nice. No noisy teenagers or inappropriately young children in theaters like that (they serve alcohol, so they're probably not allowed in, plus it's not the environment they'd like).
But any rather recent movie, in a non-dinner theater, at a time when there's likely to be a lot of people (esp. young people), is probably going to be a miserable experience. It's really a lot easier to just avoid it altogether instead of trying to game the system to figure out when the optimum time to view the movie is.
Also, having trouble with uncivil patrons once a year is too much: I probably don't even watch 12 movies a year, so that's a high probability of a bad experience. And all it takes is one bad experience to make me think thrice about bothering with a theater. I had a bad experience back in 2007 watching JJ's "Star Trek" and my movie-viewing (in-theater) went way down after that.
But again, timing and location make all the difference, plus how recent the movie is. Some localities have very, very different patrons than other localities, the mix of people changes drastically depending on the time (matinee vs. evening, weekday vs. weekend), and the mix of people changes based on the movie itself and how old it is (e.g. first week of a Star Wars movie vs. 5th week of some chick flick or boring adult drama).
Finally, there's some things that are universal. For instance, everyone needs to use the restroom at some point, and movies never have intermissions (in American movies at least). So people who urinate a little more often are going to be unhappy no matter what with a theater, whereas watching at home doesn't come with this problem because of something called a "pause button".
I would rather go to a theatre and watch it on the big screen. Watching a movie, in my opinion, isn't just about watching the movie. It's the experience, something I feel I wouldn't be able to replicate on my smartphone or TV at home.
So you actually like having people kick the back of your seat, listen to them talk/text on the phone or talk to their companion, listen to kids talk and scream during an adult movie, and only have access to shitty drinks and snacks at absurd prices?
You sound like a complete asshole. WhyTF should anyone hang onto ancient and obsolete technologies just to accommodate the media companies? I for one have plenty of other things to do with my time than worry about hanging onto things like BluRay players or fax machines just because some stupid company refuses to give them up. TechyImmigrant isn't missing out on anything anyway; Hollywood's latest stuff is all garbage, and I'm sure he's perfectly happy spending his time watching stuff that's available in streaming format.
Everyone seems insistent on copying all of the features of the iPhone, even the absolutely braindead ones like removing the headphone jack..... and then release a new iPhone that has the features people actually want.
The problem with your theory, as much as I really do like it, is that there's no shortage of drooling morons who will rationalize Apple's "braindead" design decisions like removing the headphone jack, even right here on Slashdot. Just watch, some stupid AC will respond here telling me how all I have to do is "buy an adapter" or "get some Bluetooth headphones" and that I don't really need a headphone jack (an AC did just this a few hours ago in response to another comment of mine about the headphone jack).
The fundamental problem is that most people are followers, so if Apple and some of its competitors do something user-hostile but profit-boosting, they'll defend it to their last breath, because they get a positive emotional response by being a follower of something larger than themselves (like a giant corporation), not because there's any logic to the position.
I keep hearing this every time someone says they don't want to upgrade past some Samsung model in the past (like my current S5).
I'm going to have to check out the LG phones sometime. Maybe it really is the new promised land. There's gotta be some company out there smart enough to go after the market of people who like sensible, utilitarian features like removable batteries and SDcard slots.
The S7 has no such problem. It's the Note7 that has that problem. Different product. It's like bitching about the "you're holding it wrong" "feature" on iPads, when that was a problem on iPhones and not iPads.
Or are they crazy enough to think they can get people to repeatedly pay $1,500 over the (short) life of the phone (say, $900 up front, then two $300 glass+display repairs.
Yes, they're that crazy. They're looking at iPhone users, who do exactly this, and they think they can get their customers to do the same thing. But they're probably wrong. Only Apple is so reliably able to get customers this willing to put up with their antics.
Looks like we'll be evolving into the Eloi and Morlocks before long....
Here in the DC area, I'm seeing a bunch of (usually affluent, professional) women who seem to be giving up on finding a man and just having themselves a kid in their mid-30s to mid-40s somewhere. I matched with one woman on Tinder who was about 43 I think, and we quickly had a phone call to chat, and within just a few minutes, this woman I had never even met in person and only started talking to from a dating site was telling me how she had already been through one round of IVF!!! I ended up going on a casual date with her, but she didn't want to see me again; this was back just before the primaries, and we talked about politics a little bit, and I think she didn't like something I said about a political issue, even though we both liked Bernie.
She's not the only one like that I dated who wanted kids quickly. Another woman I dated didn't like that I lived a little bit too far away (I don't live right in DC like so many of these women), and that my divorce was too recent. As far as I can tell, these women are all ridiculously picky, and unwilling to compromise on anything, which is why they're now 40+ and still single. I feel sorry for their kids; they're going to grow up with no father at all (IVF donation or maybe some guy they picked up at a bar, or in the case of another woman I chatted with on Tinder, some guy she met in Africa...), and a mother who's never there because she's always at work.
It's not emissions "you can see" that we base our standards on, it's how they affect smog. NOx emissions are invisible too (when they come out of the tailpipe), but the problem is that they react with stuff in the air to create really nasty smog. CO2 isn't just invisible, it's completely harmless as far as smog goes, as well as human health (as long as there's sufficient oxygen in the air). To us, CO2 is inert, just like nitrogen (N2). The only problem with it is that it causes global warming, but that's a global problem, not a local problem like smog. So worrying about CO2 while ignoring NOx in your emissions standards means you're sacrificing the air quality in your localities in order to try to reduce global warming.
In contrast, container vessels contribute 17%, and a whopping 26% comes from fireplaces
After looking at a map, I really don't think container vessels contribute anything to Paris's smog problem. Maybe London's.
Part of the problem is Europe pushing diesel because of its better fuel efficiency, and forgetting its big NOx pollution problems that are inherent in diesel engines. They've pushed everyone to buy diesel all this time, so it's pretty hard to suddenly change course and get everyone to throw away their 2-year-old VWs and buy brand-new gas cars, esp. when the tax incentives favor diesels.
And stop using the damn fireplace, or get an efficient closed fireplace or stove.
Where are they getting wood for those things? Here in the US, wood for burning in fireplaces isn't that cheap, unless you live in a rural area in which case pollution isn't a big problem anyway. Anyway, if the government wants people to use more efficient closed fireplaces, they should offer tax incentives for them, because those things are extremely expensive.
No, what caused the Note7 disaster was a lack of testing and a bad design of the battery compartment: there wasn't enough space for the battery to expand, so when it did, boom! This could happen with any cellphone, not just a cutting-edge one. Honestly, I'm surprised they made such a seemingly-elementary mistake; these companies have been making small devices with lithium-ion batteries for many years now, so you'd think this would be pretty basic.
Anyway, they're already saying (in TFS) that they're going to do a more thorough job of testing now to avoid stupid mistakes like that. More thorough testing should also catch other problems that can happen with boundary-pushing designs.
No, what they really need to do is go back to providing basic features that Apple and others have been removing lately: removable batteries and SDcard slots, and now headphone jacks. I'm listening to music at work now on my cellphone using, you guessed it, my 3.5mm headphone jack. WhyTF would I buy a "cutting edge" cellphone that won't let me use my noise-cancelling headphones at work? Utter stupidity. And no, I'm not going to use some fucking dongle, nor am I going to trash my nice noise-cancelling headphones and buy some shitty Bluetooth headphones.
The problem here is that it's very hard to build a technological product without depending on a single source supplier somewhere. Just look at any smartphone: they all have at least semi-custom CPUs; you can't just drop in a different one, even if they are all ARM-based. Usually all the other complex chips are the same. You can design a new product (or maybe a new version that mostly looks and works the same from the user's perspective) with an alternate part, in many cases, but that's a more serious undertaking.
Unfortunately for Pebble, it sounds like their product design was based on a type of display (e-ink) that just isn't all that widely used, especially now that e-books seem to have abandoned them. You can't make a smart-watch with a backlit LCD that runs for over a week without recharging; this is simply against the laws of physics, so e-ink was the obvious choice to make a product like this. I don't see how they really could have done anything different in regards to their screen supply choice.
The problem is that your statement about there being no company acquisition is plainly contradicted by the actual article title!!! Look here: "Pebble Gets Acquired By Fitbit - Ends Production and Ceases Support Of Its Existing Lineup of Smartwatches" (emphasis mine)
Then, in the first line of the fucking summary, it again says that Pebble is being acquired: "In a notice to Kickstarter backers, pebble has stated that -- following the acquisition by Fitbit (official now) --..."
It's only at the very end of TFS that our stupid editors finally point out that the article's title is a blatant LIE!
If you want to bitch at someone, bitch at the stupid editors on this site who can't even post an article title and summary that don't contradict themselves.
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No, we won't. Stop being delusional. First off, Biden is not part of the Sanders camp, he's a lot closer to the Hillary camp, though admittedly he isn't remotely as scandal-plagued or charismatically-challenged as her. Secondly, Biden and Sanders are both quite old now; it's really doubtful either one of them is up for a 2020 run. They'd both probably be the oldest contenders in history for those offices.
Regardless of all that, I simply cannot believe that the DNC would back Sanders again (or a Sanders clone). They're simply too corrupt; they proved it in this election. They even re-elected Pelosi to her position.
I think what's going to happen is one of 2 things: 1) Hillary will be backed, yet again, and will lose, *again*, to Trump, even amidst a terrible recession caused by Trump's policies. I think the DNC just isn't ready to throw in the towel on pushing their queen to the Presidency. 2) Some other (younger, slightly less scandal-plagued, but obviously sold-out corporatist) Hillary clone will be nominated again, again with dirty tricks by the DNC just like this year, and they'll lose, again.
And cut it out with your comments about "real democratic candidates". See the No True Scotsman fallacy. Candidates like Hillary and DWS are *real* Democrats. They epitomize the Democratic party, and this was proven this year by the DNC's backing of them.
Face it: the Democratic party has a *long* history of running establishment-backed losers. Every once in a while there's a big upset or exception, but most of the time they pick the most uncharismatic people they can find, and frequently the most corrupt. They ran Mondale and Dukakis, both horribly uncharismatic. Then they picked Bill Clinton; corrupt (though it wasn't so obvious back then) but he made up for it in charisma and the Republicans' vote was split by Perot so he won with a minority. He got lucky and presided over an economic boom fueled by the internet so he got re-elected (Dole had no charisma too). Then they ran Gore, who had the charisma of a wooden pole, and he lost (partially thanks to the vote being split by the much more progressive Nader) to Bush, who had some charisma though he was dumber than a chimp and looked like one too. Then they tried running Kerry against Bush, and Kerry too had no charisma and was totally unlikeable. Then they tried coronating their corrupt and utterly unlikeable queen Hillary, but Obama (who had lots of charisma) threw a wrench into their machinations there and beat her in the primaries in a big surprise. So now that Obama can't run for a 3rd term (which is too bad, I'll take him over Hillary any day), they did it again, and succeeded this time with lots of dirty tricks against another charismatic upstart named Sanders, and just as Michael Moore predicted, she lost to Trump, the second most unpopular candidate in history.
If the Democratic Party can't learn their lesson after at least 32 years, I have no idea why you think they'll suddenly change their ways now.
Running against Hillary probably wouldn't have gotten her anywhere anyway; Bernie tried it and look where it got him. The DNC had everything rigged in Hillary's favor, so Warren wouldn't have had a chance there. Maybe that's why she didn't want to run. But if offered a VP spot, that might have gotten her interest because then she wouldn't have had to run against Hillary, and would have at least been able to supposedly have an effect on Hillary's positions. Maybe she wasn't ready, but it's not like she's some youngster either, she's in her 50s or 60s now I think.
She didn't even have to pick Bernie; there's other not-so-establishment people should could have picked out of the Democratic party. Elizabeth Warren for one, would have been an interesting choice as then they'd have had two women on the ticket, with the VP pick at least being fairly popular among the progressives and Bernie voters. I honestly think even doing this would have won her the election, as it probably would have brought more young voters to the polls, hoping that Hillary would croak early on leaving Warren in charge.
Sorry, no. She royally pissed off all the Bernie voters with that move (plus hiring DWS). This election was basically about establishment vs. non-establishment. People who wanted a big change were screaming for either Trump or Bernie, because they were both non-establishment. Hillary did absolutely nothing to get the Bernie voters back on her side after winning the primaries (or is it "winning" the primaries?), except getting Bernie to stump for her which just wasn't enough after she picked the most pro-establishment democrat she could find to be her running mate. So lots of Bernie voters either sat out the election, or voted 3rd party, or possibly even for Trump.
Of course, Trump seems to be picking a bunch of establishment people to surround himself with (including his VP), but that's another issue. I never said the anti-establishment Trump voters were smart.
Yeah, that didn't help either, nor did the fact that the movie generally sucked in many other ways.
The fancy theater you speak of sounds great, but remember a lot of people don't live near one of those. And it still has other problems, including both the ones you mention and also the ones typical to any cinema: you can't pause or rewind or bring your own food.
If you have a whole group of people, that seems like a perfect time to ditch the theaters altogether and find a DVD/BluRay/streaming video you all want to watch instead, and have movie night at someone's home. It's a much nicer experience if you have a nice group of people you get along with, since you're just around them and not any strangers who'll just ruin the experience. Plus you can have a potluck, make dinner for everyone (easier when you have multiple people willing to pitch in in the kitchen), etc.
No uncomfortable squished together seats
The stupid seats aren't even good for going to the movies with a date. They're squished together, so you're uncomfortably close to some stranger that happens to sit next to you (assuming the theater is moderately full), but there's an uncomfortable armrest in the way which can't be lifted out of the way, so you can't snuggle with your girlfriend either.
Much better to just watch the movie at home on your sectional sofa. Then you can sit as near or far from your companion(s) as you want. You can probably even lie down together on the recliner (it helps if you're both thin here...).
Your response is stupid. No, this stuff has never happened before, that I can readily recall. All your examples are cases where an older technology was replaced by a clearly superior technology. This simply isn't the case here. The 3.5mm headphone jack is the superior technology. Bluetooth is inferior; its only advantage is eliminating a wire, but the downside is poor audio quality as well as radio interference problems. USBc headphones are not a proper replacement because they prevent charging, and also they simply aren't enough of a technical improvement to justify the cost. In fact, the connectors are likely inferior; 3.5mm connectors are simple, easy to plug in since they're round, and extremely rugged compared to today's ultra-delicate connectors. There's simply no good reason to abandon it at this point. Manufacturers are only dumping it because they're cheap and lazy, and one of them wants to sell all their customers brand-new headphones.
There *is* something inherently wrong with a workaround when the problem was never necessary in the first place. No one asked these companies to abandon the 3.5mm jack. The solution is simple: don't buy their shitty products.
Well I looked into the G5 and it doesn't appear to be waterproof, so that's out.
No matter, my Galaxy S5 still works fine for now. Hopefully in a year or two, one of these companies will pull its head out of its ass and make an updated phone as good as this one.
There was nothing whiny about his "excuses". It's his money and time, and his prerogative how to spend them. If the movie companies want his business, they'll make their product available in a format he prefers (and which many people these days prefer, considering how popular streaming video is these days, as evidenced by Netflix's instant play offerings, Hulu, Amazon video, etc.). If they can't be bothered to do that, then he was every right to call them morons and spend his time and money elsewhere.
It's really no different than a company which offers me information and the ability to order their products on a website, versus a company which has no website and insists that I use a fax machine to communicate with them. Guess which one won't be getting my business. But I will make fun of them whenever I have the chance.
Doing this, however, would basically put movie theaters out of business.
I fail to see the problem here.
Timing and location makes all the difference. I've had terrible experiences, and nice ones. The nice ones were like when I saw "The Martian" last year: we went when the movie had already been out a while (it was probably just about done with its run at that theater, not sure), and we went I believe on a weekday night, so there was almost no one at all in the whole place. I think there were two other patrons watching The Martian with us in that theater. When you can catch a movie like that, it's a pretty nice experience. Of course, if you have a nice giant-screen TV and your own home theater room, I'm not sure what the theater offers that beats this.
I've also gone to a few movies at a dinner theater in the city I used to live in, and that was pretty nice. No noisy teenagers or inappropriately young children in theaters like that (they serve alcohol, so they're probably not allowed in, plus it's not the environment they'd like).
But any rather recent movie, in a non-dinner theater, at a time when there's likely to be a lot of people (esp. young people), is probably going to be a miserable experience. It's really a lot easier to just avoid it altogether instead of trying to game the system to figure out when the optimum time to view the movie is.
Also, having trouble with uncivil patrons once a year is too much: I probably don't even watch 12 movies a year, so that's a high probability of a bad experience. And all it takes is one bad experience to make me think thrice about bothering with a theater. I had a bad experience back in 2007 watching JJ's "Star Trek" and my movie-viewing (in-theater) went way down after that.
But again, timing and location make all the difference, plus how recent the movie is. Some localities have very, very different patrons than other localities, the mix of people changes drastically depending on the time (matinee vs. evening, weekday vs. weekend), and the mix of people changes based on the movie itself and how old it is (e.g. first week of a Star Wars movie vs. 5th week of some chick flick or boring adult drama).
Finally, there's some things that are universal. For instance, everyone needs to use the restroom at some point, and movies never have intermissions (in American movies at least). So people who urinate a little more often are going to be unhappy no matter what with a theater, whereas watching at home doesn't come with this problem because of something called a "pause button".
I would rather go to a theatre and watch it on the big screen. Watching a movie, in my opinion, isn't just about watching the movie. It's the experience, something I feel I wouldn't be able to replicate on my smartphone or TV at home.
So you actually like having people kick the back of your seat, listen to them talk/text on the phone or talk to their companion, listen to kids talk and scream during an adult movie, and only have access to shitty drinks and snacks at absurd prices?
That's an "experience" I can do without.
Does anybody watch movies anymore? They ran out of stories 20 years ago.
Why would anyone stop watching movies? There's tons of great movies from 20+ years ago that you can still watch!
You sound like a complete asshole. WhyTF should anyone hang onto ancient and obsolete technologies just to accommodate the media companies? I for one have plenty of other things to do with my time than worry about hanging onto things like BluRay players or fax machines just because some stupid company refuses to give them up. TechyImmigrant isn't missing out on anything anyway; Hollywood's latest stuff is all garbage, and I'm sure he's perfectly happy spending his time watching stuff that's available in streaming format.
Everyone seems insistent on copying all of the features of the iPhone, even the absolutely braindead ones like removing the headphone jack..... and then release a new iPhone that has the features people actually want.
The problem with your theory, as much as I really do like it, is that there's no shortage of drooling morons who will rationalize Apple's "braindead" design decisions like removing the headphone jack, even right here on Slashdot. Just watch, some stupid AC will respond here telling me how all I have to do is "buy an adapter" or "get some Bluetooth headphones" and that I don't really need a headphone jack (an AC did just this a few hours ago in response to another comment of mine about the headphone jack).
The fundamental problem is that most people are followers, so if Apple and some of its competitors do something user-hostile but profit-boosting, they'll defend it to their last breath, because they get a positive emotional response by being a follower of something larger than themselves (like a giant corporation), not because there's any logic to the position.
I keep hearing this every time someone says they don't want to upgrade past some Samsung model in the past (like my current S5).
I'm going to have to check out the LG phones sometime. Maybe it really is the new promised land. There's gotta be some company out there smart enough to go after the market of people who like sensible, utilitarian features like removable batteries and SDcard slots.
The S7 has no such problem. It's the Note7 that has that problem. Different product. It's like bitching about the "you're holding it wrong" "feature" on iPads, when that was a problem on iPhones and not iPads.
Or are they crazy enough to think they can get people to repeatedly pay $1,500 over the (short) life of the phone (say, $900 up front, then two $300 glass+display repairs.
Yes, they're that crazy. They're looking at iPhone users, who do exactly this, and they think they can get their customers to do the same thing. But they're probably wrong. Only Apple is so reliably able to get customers this willing to put up with their antics.
Looks like we'll be evolving into the Eloi and Morlocks before long....
Here in the DC area, I'm seeing a bunch of (usually affluent, professional) women who seem to be giving up on finding a man and just having themselves a kid in their mid-30s to mid-40s somewhere. I matched with one woman on Tinder who was about 43 I think, and we quickly had a phone call to chat, and within just a few minutes, this woman I had never even met in person and only started talking to from a dating site was telling me how she had already been through one round of IVF!!! I ended up going on a casual date with her, but she didn't want to see me again; this was back just before the primaries, and we talked about politics a little bit, and I think she didn't like something I said about a political issue, even though we both liked Bernie.
She's not the only one like that I dated who wanted kids quickly. Another woman I dated didn't like that I lived a little bit too far away (I don't live right in DC like so many of these women), and that my divorce was too recent. As far as I can tell, these women are all ridiculously picky, and unwilling to compromise on anything, which is why they're now 40+ and still single. I feel sorry for their kids; they're going to grow up with no father at all (IVF donation or maybe some guy they picked up at a bar, or in the case of another woman I chatted with on Tinder, some guy she met in Africa...), and a mother who's never there because she's always at work.
It's not emissions "you can see" that we base our standards on, it's how they affect smog. NOx emissions are invisible too (when they come out of the tailpipe), but the problem is that they react with stuff in the air to create really nasty smog. CO2 isn't just invisible, it's completely harmless as far as smog goes, as well as human health (as long as there's sufficient oxygen in the air). To us, CO2 is inert, just like nitrogen (N2). The only problem with it is that it causes global warming, but that's a global problem, not a local problem like smog. So worrying about CO2 while ignoring NOx in your emissions standards means you're sacrificing the air quality in your localities in order to try to reduce global warming.
In contrast, container vessels contribute 17%, and a whopping 26% comes from fireplaces
After looking at a map, I really don't think container vessels contribute anything to Paris's smog problem. Maybe London's.
Part of the problem is Europe pushing diesel because of its better fuel efficiency, and forgetting its big NOx pollution problems that are inherent in diesel engines. They've pushed everyone to buy diesel all this time, so it's pretty hard to suddenly change course and get everyone to throw away their 2-year-old VWs and buy brand-new gas cars, esp. when the tax incentives favor diesels.
And stop using the damn fireplace, or get an efficient closed fireplace or stove.
Where are they getting wood for those things? Here in the US, wood for burning in fireplaces isn't that cheap, unless you live in a rural area in which case pollution isn't a big problem anyway. Anyway, if the government wants people to use more efficient closed fireplaces, they should offer tax incentives for them, because those things are extremely expensive.
No, what caused the Note7 disaster was a lack of testing and a bad design of the battery compartment: there wasn't enough space for the battery to expand, so when it did, boom! This could happen with any cellphone, not just a cutting-edge one. Honestly, I'm surprised they made such a seemingly-elementary mistake; these companies have been making small devices with lithium-ion batteries for many years now, so you'd think this would be pretty basic.
Anyway, they're already saying (in TFS) that they're going to do a more thorough job of testing now to avoid stupid mistakes like that. More thorough testing should also catch other problems that can happen with boundary-pushing designs.
No, what they really need to do is go back to providing basic features that Apple and others have been removing lately: removable batteries and SDcard slots, and now headphone jacks. I'm listening to music at work now on my cellphone using, you guessed it, my 3.5mm headphone jack. WhyTF would I buy a "cutting edge" cellphone that won't let me use my noise-cancelling headphones at work? Utter stupidity. And no, I'm not going to use some fucking dongle, nor am I going to trash my nice noise-cancelling headphones and buy some shitty Bluetooth headphones.
The problem here is that it's very hard to build a technological product without depending on a single source supplier somewhere. Just look at any smartphone: they all have at least semi-custom CPUs; you can't just drop in a different one, even if they are all ARM-based. Usually all the other complex chips are the same. You can design a new product (or maybe a new version that mostly looks and works the same from the user's perspective) with an alternate part, in many cases, but that's a more serious undertaking.
Unfortunately for Pebble, it sounds like their product design was based on a type of display (e-ink) that just isn't all that widely used, especially now that e-books seem to have abandoned them. You can't make a smart-watch with a backlit LCD that runs for over a week without recharging; this is simply against the laws of physics, so e-ink was the obvious choice to make a product like this. I don't see how they really could have done anything different in regards to their screen supply choice.
The problem is that your statement about there being no company acquisition is plainly contradicted by the actual article title!!! Look here:
"Pebble Gets Acquired By Fitbit - Ends Production and Ceases Support Of Its Existing Lineup of Smartwatches" (emphasis mine)
Then, in the first line of the fucking summary, it again says that Pebble is being acquired: "In a notice to Kickstarter backers, pebble has stated that -- following the acquisition by Fitbit (official now) -- ..."
It's only at the very end of TFS that our stupid editors finally point out that the article's title is a blatant LIE!
If you want to bitch at someone, bitch at the stupid editors on this site who can't even post an article title and summary that don't contradict themselves.