I bet there's still a lot more encouragement to pull over the beaters, mainly due to the likelihood of drug possession, one of the passengers having warrants, etc. Not saying that all people that drive beaters are criminals, but I'm sure the police are more likely to suspect the person driving the 30 year old Buick with rust all over it then the person driving last year's Mercedes.
It'll never happen here because Lord knows all the millionaires would come screaming out of the woodwork about how it's punishing their success to make them feel the same sized pinch in their wallets as the hoi polloi, but at the same time, even if the state tried, the courts are so screwed up and skewed towards the wealthy that I'm sure they'd just be able to throw enough money at someone, be it a politician, lawyer, whatever, to make it go away so they wouldn't feel that pinch anyway.
My sister-in-law takes the bus to work every morning, and over the last 5 years they've gone from just having the ads plastered on the sides that we've been seeing for decades, to audio ads played over the loudspeakers inside the bus, and now LCD's inside the bus serving ads the entire time, flanked by print ads...
To make matters even worse, the volume of those ads has increasingly been getting raised higher and higher, probably due to the fact that more and more people are listening to their headphones to avoid them. She tells me that now, even with her volume turned all the way up (which I'll admit is not as loud as it used to be since all these devices do volume limitations to prevent ear injury), and even wearing big over-the-ear active noise-cancelling headphones, unless she's listening to something really upbeat and frantic like metal, the ads are still audible in the background. That's completely ridiculous to me...if the ads are so loud that you can hear them through the damn headphones with music, there's a serious problem that needs to be dealt with.
As for your augmented reality glasses, I would so throw some money at something like that. I have a sneaking suspicion that every single advertising agency would throw every penny they have at their disposal at making sure you get branded a terrorist or child pornographer for even attempting to subvert their influence that way...
It's not so far off, though. We've already got things like Word Lens, which can automatically recognize text and translate it to a different language using just your phone's camera in real time, so we very well could see a visual Adblock Plus built into Google Glasses that writes a big white box over anything that resembles an advertisement. Given the rate of advertising being shoved into every corner of our lives, we're probably going to be seeing lots and lots of white boxes as we look around in those Google Glasses...
There's really no reason to see ads anymore unless you really want to, although I really can't understand why you'd want to. Plus, the disabling of the tracking cookies via ScriptNo is worth it alone, as is the anti-social mode which automatically blocks all the Facebook 'like' buttons and the other social networking crap that exists on every page out there now...
you come across a company you have never heard of before, and go to their website, AND THEN SEE THE SAME FRICKIN BANNER ADD ON EVERY OTHER WEBSITE FOR WEEKS
Long live Adblock Plus + Noscript...
When I'm forced to use browsers without those two extensions, I almost can't believe how bad they're getting with shoving ads into every corner of every page on the internet. It's really distracting...
If you are doing ANYTHING that requires a lot of complex math, your phone will get it's butt handed to it's self by a old single core P4 processor.
That's the thing, though, most people aren't doing anything like that. Most people are just using the typical office software suites with some proprietary software thrown in the mix. The computers in many corporate environments are achingly old as it is...a modern mobile device can easily stand up to many of them in practical use.
Obviously this will never be a one-size-fits-all solution, but we're rapidly approaching the point (if not already at that point) where most applications, be it personal media consumption, general office work, whatever, can adequately be performed by a mobile device, and a dock with fully functional peripherals would do more to drive things that way...
The people that need the power of dedicated hardware will still have their beige monstrosities on their desk, but I doubt that's going to be more than 10% of users out there, and with 'The Cloud', we may actually be approaching that point where the computer as we know it is nothing more than a terminal to the real number cruncher's stored down in the basement out of the way.
The Internet is the worst example of all, it's entirely privately owned and operated. The fact that the federal government threw money at it is the result of its success, not the other way around.
Uh, the internet was invented in labs paid for with our tax dollars. If it were not for the government's need for a computer network for defense purposes, then ARPANET would not have existed, and a single unifying network wouldn't have coalesced and become the internet that we know today.
As with any utility (and yes, I absolutely do consider the internet a utility) having multiple infrastructures and multiple standards of communication across those networks, would have been horribly inefficient and our network capabilities would likely be decades behind where it is now if we'd just waited around for the private sector to see the value in the market worth capitalizing on. That means no Dot Com-era, none of the hundreds of billions of dollars a year in commerce going through that 'series of tubes', no-streaming media...
The internet is privately owned because for whatever reason, here in the states, we just love taking publicly-funded projects and handing them to private organizations once all the kinks have been worked out with little in the way of recompense. In many other countries, the results from publicly-funded research 'belong' to the state, i.e., the people, as it should be: if it's our tax dollars that paid for the labs, paid for the materials, paid for the scientists and researchers...then we, as a whole, should reap the rewards.
Many of the trappings of the modern world came out of government labs during and after WWII, and those labs were paid for by the people of this country, not the corporations that are now claiming ownership of their discoveries.
You'd bitch as much about ego if there was a spot in front of every Apple building labeled "Steve Jobs", "CEO", or "Executive" I suppose.
No, because that's pretty much ubiquitous. That's what makes Steve Job's ass-hattery so egregious, the fact that it was totally within his power to have that close parking spot without parking in handicapped spaces like every other chief executive that still actually drives him or herself to work, and he just refused to do so...almost as if he enjoyed parking in that handicapped spot, like "Look at me, I'm so fucking important I don't need to put a license plate on my car or even respect handicapped spaces." It's about respect for the handicapped; regardless if they're empty or not, you don't fucking park in them unless you're handicapped yourself.
I don't know if he felt that way for sure, but as he made no effort to cover up his arrogance in any other regard, I see no reason to doubt that carried over into this matter as well.
And these are the "job creators" we're supposed to bend over for and throw money at for the privilege of working for them (which obviously generates them more revenue then it costs otherwise the job wouldn't exist in the first place)? America! Fuck Yeah!!
Just another race to the bottom. Corporations are going to end up tax-exempt and we're all going to end up living in a Neo-Feudalistic society where instead of an aristocracy we've got C-levels and their retinues while national governments sputter out with less and less tax revenue coming in and become more and more irrelevant.
The saddest thing in all of this is, though, that there will be a sizable number of middle- and lower-class people out there cheering the shit, even as their own well-being is threatened directly by it. When you've got people in trailer parks arguing that taxes do nothing but punish success and cheering on the dismantling of the social programs they're actively using (such as Medicaid, welfare, public schools), you know that we're fucking doomed...
You tell me: Would you park in a handicapped spot if you were not handicapped? Even if there were "several spaces"?
Everyone knows it's wrong. There's no moral ambiguity here. Even Steve knew it was wrong, he just didn't give a shit. Parking in a handicapped spot when you're not handicapped is pretty high up there on the 'asshole-who-thinks-the-rules-don't-apply-to-him' meter. It rates even higher when you realize that he was Steve fucking Jobs and had myriad alternatives available to him that didn't involve being a dickhead and taking up a handicapped spot.
He couldn't just have a designated "Steve Jobs" spot in front of the buildings on campus? The guy that's apparently single-handedly created the modern age (according to another comment I received here) couldn't come up with a better solution? Come on. It's okay to like his company's products and still think him an asshole; they're not mutually exclusive states of being...but I really seem to get lots of irrationally defensive responses when talking about the fact that he was an asshole.
Yeah, that's really what makes the whole situation even more asinine, the fact that he could easily afford to have someone be on call 24/7 to drive him wherever he wanted to go...and like you said, even a 24/7 valet service to meet him anywhere and handle the parking aspect for him, if he insisted on driving himself around.
For all his brilliance, he couldn't come up with a way to handle this situation without being a dickhead and parking in a handicapped spot? I wonder what Steve's response would have been to someone that made that comment to him...probably something along the lines of "Fuck you, I'm Steve Jobs". I can't believe people actually defend this narcissistic bullshit. In anyone else few would argue it was above derision and mockery, but because it's Steven H. Chr^H^H^H JOBS...
Come on, it may be a dick move, but I bet he never came close to preventing a handicapped person from parking.
How the hell would you know? How could he know? Unless he was visually monitoring the spot, there could have been plenty of handicapped people that were forced to drive by and park farther away all because he was Steve fucking Jobs and the rules don't apply to him.
Would you make the same excuses if Joe Blow did it in front of your local 7-11? Why does Steve Jobs get a pass?
If, however, you're writing this from a personal computer, smartphone, tablet, or anything with a GUI, then you must be a huge hypocrite, since you owe it to Steve Jobs for bringing those tools to the masses.
Mod parent Funny!
Oh shit, you were actually serious?!?
It is truly amazing the mythology you people have built up around this guy. He did not single-handedly invent the modern age, fanboys...
“We could tell that Steve was in, because his blue Mercedes was parked in the handicap zone in front. As I was to learn, Steve always parked there."
The quote then goes on to talk about Steve doing it because disgruntled Apple employees (Disgruntled Apple employees?! How is this possible?!!??!?!!?) would key his car when he parked it in back. Obviously the reasonable solution, if your Steve Jobs, is not to put security cameras up or anything realistic...no, the solution is to just park in a handicapped spot because fuck all those crippled people, I'm Steve Jobs and the rules don't apply to me, and besides, the sanctity of my Mercedes is more important than their legal right to a parking spot near the front doors.
I'm jealous. My high school biology teacher was an ultra-Christian disbeliever of evolution, and because she taught deep in the bible belt in Georgia, she was allowed to impose her stupidity on us in almost every lesson. I'll never forget how she started the chapter on Evolution in our textbooks: "Now, the law requires that I cover this nonsense, but before we begin, let me tell you what really happened [puts down biology text, picks up her ever-present bible] 'In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth...'"
At least the quiz she gave afterwards was for extra credit, although I'm sure that was because legally she wasn't allowed to actually count that crap against our GPA, not because of any open-mindedness on her part.
Thank God for the internet, because I've learned more biology just reading Wikipedia than I did in her waste of a class...
The guy (Steve Jobs) parked in handicapped spots, and even went so far as to only keep his cars long enough to skirt under the registration requirement so he couldn't be ticketed for it.
I know there are a lot of Apple haters out there, but everything I've ever read about Steve Jobs as a person is totally negative and points to him being an asshole of epic proportions. This makes it hard for me to believe he was a philanthropist in secret.
“He’s gotten a lot of criticism for not giving away tons of money, but I think it’s a bum rap. There’s only so many hours in a week, and he created so many incredible products. He really contributed to culture and society.”
Only in today's twisted world can creating Chinese-made, throw-away consumer goods sold for premium prices be considered "giving back to the world". It fits well with this whole mythology we're building up around the wealthy these days, how it's just such a burden being rich and all that...
It is also pretty handy to know where the police are if you, you know, want to know what your tax money is being used for.
I used to work third shift, and took lunch every day around 2:30 AM. Every day, I would drive down to the gas station a block from work and get a muffin and some coffee, and every day, there would be a minimum of 5 cop cars and 8-10 officers hanging out drinking free coffee. According to the clerk, they pretty much hang out there all night, shooting the shit, drinking the coffee, doing fuck all.
I pass one cop every morning on my way to work now and the guy is asleep almost every time I see him. He's hidden back behind a store (where he must think nobody notices him) in his cruiser, head thrown back, mouth wide open almost every time. Part of me really wants to walk up and knock on his window just to see what his response to me catching him asleep is, but self-preservation obviously keeps me from making a big deal about it.
Still, part of me wants to turn in a complaint (if he's on the job, he damn sure shouldn't be sleeping), but after watching this video, I think turning in a complaint form would be a quicker way for me getting arrested and thrown in a cell than knocking on the officer's window while he's sleeping.
I'm black, and I've traveled extensively throughout America and many other nations. I have never run into problems with the police anywhere. But perhaps that's because I don't go out of my way to wear baggy pants with the waist at my ankles, I don't wear a straight-brimmed baseball hat with the price tag still on it, I don't drive around blaring hip hop or rap music, I don't choose to talk like I'm mentally disabled, and I don't partake in crime.
What on earth does my method of dress have to do with my level of intelligence? Why does the manner in which I speak imply something about my character? I'm educated, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start dressing like a hipster douche in a GQ ad, and certainly not to avoid being hassled by police that have no business harassing me in the first place. I've been in those situations, too, although when I was growing up, it was the grunge look (flannel shirts, chain wallets) that was a target by our local police. Just wearing a Tool shirt was enough to get me harassed. Hell, just carrying (not even riding, just carrying) a skateboard was enough to get someone harassed by the cops in my town.
I had a 4.0 GPA, perfect attendance, and volunteered, but that all goes out the window because I'm wearing a t-shirt for a band the cops don't like? Come on.
Many of the people who whine and moan about being targeted by the police merely need to clean up their acts.
No, I can think of a lot of different ways to design a phone, the problem is, Apple's design patents are so generic that the only way to avoid them is to design a less efficient product. If they own a "minimal design", then every manufacturer out there has to cram buttons on the front of their device? Come on, that's just stupid.
I could design a spherical cell phone, and nobody would buy it. Why? Because the most efficient shape for a communication device is a rectangle about 4-6 inches across. Look at every damned television remote, holy crap, all basically the same design. Why? Because they all have the same function, and they're all being used by hands about the same size.
Imagine if someone owned the concept of a rectangular remote control with buttons on the front, and now imagine how fucking retarded every competitor's remote would have to be to avoid that generic patent. How healthy could a market be with those limitations?
Yeah, because there is an infinite number of ways one could design a device that has exactly the same function, being used by people with about the same sized appendages in the same sorts of ways.
Head on down to your local hardware store, and look at the hand tools, and think about why every hammer looks pretty much the same, every screwdriver looks pretty much the same, every wrench looks pretty much the same...and now imagine how fucking retarded they would have to be designed if a single manufacturer owned such a broad and over-reaching patent. Imagine how many would sell if they had to be deliberately designed to be less effective just to get around a ridiculously generic design patent.
If the only way a competitor is supposed to get around Apple's stupid bullshit patents is to cram unnecessary hardware buttons onto their device, or make it work less efficiently, then there's a problem with the patent, and it likely never should have been granted in the first place.
Apple's design IS distinct. It's minimal design is exactly that : distinct.
The design itself is a natural evolution of the device as a whole, not Apple's particular spin on it. Allowing Apple to patent a rectangle with rounded corners is like allowing Craftsmen to patent a hammer with a handle and a claw. Now nobody else in the world can sell a hammer without radically changing the design and making it less efficient? Come on.
If the only way a competitor can avoid litigation for their patent is to actually make their own competing product harder to use, then that's a sign that the original patent should never been granted in the first place. Do people honestly expect Samsung to cram a bunch of hardware buttons on the front of their devices just because Apple removed them and now "owns" a minimal look? That's going to degrade their product's functionality, just the same as having to design a hammer with the claw coming out of the top of the head, or the handle coming out of the top with the intention of swinging it underhanded. Nobody would buy that piece of shit hammer, obviously.
Since most human beings are using these devices with the same appendages (their hands), the device is going to be roughly the same shape, and since most people's hands are about the same size, there's not going to be much variation on size before usefulness is impacted. They're all phones, and function dictates form. Imagine if Ford was able to patent such generic design concepts? How many cars would there be on the market if no one else was able to produce one with 4 wheels and doors on the sides? How stupid would every competitor's car be if they actually had to design around such a ridiculously broad and over-reaching patent? Who would drive the fucking things?
Now, I'm sure Apple would be happier than a pig in shit if their patents were upheld and they got to basically own the concept of a smartphone in totality, but that is totally against the spirit of patent law in the first place, and everyone knows it. The only people defending this nonsense are Team Apple cheerleaders, not because it's actually right or makes any sense, but because it's their team.
The consequences of deregulation have been very adverse. Our airlines, once world leaders, are now laggards in every category, including fleet age, service quality and international reputation. Fewer and fewer flights are on time. Airport congestion has become a staple of late-night comedy shows. An even higher percentage of bags are lost or misplaced. Last-minute seats are harder and harder to find. Passenger complaints have skyrocketed. Airline service, by any standard, has become unacceptable.
True, but some employers actually do require doctor's notes and the like, otherwise the absences are not "excused" and enough of those and you're out on your ass. I've seen it happen. Even if it doesn't result in a termination, we all know that things like that have a negative influence on an employee's upward mobility. It shouldn't, but it does.
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I bet there's still a lot more encouragement to pull over the beaters, mainly due to the likelihood of drug possession, one of the passengers having warrants, etc. Not saying that all people that drive beaters are criminals, but I'm sure the police are more likely to suspect the person driving the 30 year old Buick with rust all over it then the person driving last year's Mercedes.
Having fines which are the same for everyone just penalises the poor...
In Switzerland they now fine people proportionally to their wealth. A couple years ago they hit a guy with a ~$290,000 ticket for driving his Ferrari 85 mph through a village, and then 6 months after that, hit another guy for ~$1,000,000 for driving his Mercedes 170 km/h over the speed limit.
It'll never happen here because Lord knows all the millionaires would come screaming out of the woodwork about how it's punishing their success to make them feel the same sized pinch in their wallets as the hoi polloi, but at the same time, even if the state tried, the courts are so screwed up and skewed towards the wealthy that I'm sure they'd just be able to throw enough money at someone, be it a politician, lawyer, whatever, to make it go away so they wouldn't feel that pinch anyway.
My sister-in-law takes the bus to work every morning, and over the last 5 years they've gone from just having the ads plastered on the sides that we've been seeing for decades, to audio ads played over the loudspeakers inside the bus, and now LCD's inside the bus serving ads the entire time, flanked by print ads...
To make matters even worse, the volume of those ads has increasingly been getting raised higher and higher, probably due to the fact that more and more people are listening to their headphones to avoid them. She tells me that now, even with her volume turned all the way up (which I'll admit is not as loud as it used to be since all these devices do volume limitations to prevent ear injury), and even wearing big over-the-ear active noise-cancelling headphones, unless she's listening to something really upbeat and frantic like metal, the ads are still audible in the background. That's completely ridiculous to me...if the ads are so loud that you can hear them through the damn headphones with music, there's a serious problem that needs to be dealt with.
As for your augmented reality glasses, I would so throw some money at something like that. I have a sneaking suspicion that every single advertising agency would throw every penny they have at their disposal at making sure you get branded a terrorist or child pornographer for even attempting to subvert their influence that way...
It's not so far off, though. We've already got things like Word Lens, which can automatically recognize text and translate it to a different language using just your phone's camera in real time, so we very well could see a visual Adblock Plus built into Google Glasses that writes a big white box over anything that resembles an advertisement. Given the rate of advertising being shoved into every corner of our lives, we're probably going to be seeing lots and lots of white boxes as we look around in those Google Glasses...
Adblock Plus
ScriptNo (NoScript analogue)
There's really no reason to see ads anymore unless you really want to, although I really can't understand why you'd want to. Plus, the disabling of the tracking cookies via ScriptNo is worth it alone, as is the anti-social mode which automatically blocks all the Facebook 'like' buttons and the other social networking crap that exists on every page out there now...
you come across a company you have never heard of before, and go to their website, AND THEN SEE THE SAME FRICKIN BANNER ADD ON EVERY OTHER WEBSITE FOR WEEKS
Long live Adblock Plus + Noscript...
When I'm forced to use browsers without those two extensions, I almost can't believe how bad they're getting with shoving ads into every corner of every page on the internet. It's really distracting...
If you are doing ANYTHING that requires a lot of complex math, your phone will get it's butt handed to it's self by a old single core P4 processor.
That's the thing, though, most people aren't doing anything like that. Most people are just using the typical office software suites with some proprietary software thrown in the mix. The computers in many corporate environments are achingly old as it is...a modern mobile device can easily stand up to many of them in practical use.
Obviously this will never be a one-size-fits-all solution, but we're rapidly approaching the point (if not already at that point) where most applications, be it personal media consumption, general office work, whatever, can adequately be performed by a mobile device, and a dock with fully functional peripherals would do more to drive things that way...
The people that need the power of dedicated hardware will still have their beige monstrosities on their desk, but I doubt that's going to be more than 10% of users out there, and with 'The Cloud', we may actually be approaching that point where the computer as we know it is nothing more than a terminal to the real number cruncher's stored down in the basement out of the way.
The Internet is the worst example of all, it's entirely privately owned and operated. The fact that the federal government threw money at it is the result of its success, not the other way around.
Uh, the internet was invented in labs paid for with our tax dollars. If it were not for the government's need for a computer network for defense purposes, then ARPANET would not have existed, and a single unifying network wouldn't have coalesced and become the internet that we know today.
As with any utility (and yes, I absolutely do consider the internet a utility) having multiple infrastructures and multiple standards of communication across those networks, would have been horribly inefficient and our network capabilities would likely be decades behind where it is now if we'd just waited around for the private sector to see the value in the market worth capitalizing on. That means no Dot Com-era, none of the hundreds of billions of dollars a year in commerce going through that 'series of tubes', no-streaming media...
The internet is privately owned because for whatever reason, here in the states, we just love taking publicly-funded projects and handing them to private organizations once all the kinks have been worked out with little in the way of recompense. In many other countries, the results from publicly-funded research 'belong' to the state, i.e., the people, as it should be: if it's our tax dollars that paid for the labs, paid for the materials, paid for the scientists and researchers...then we, as a whole, should reap the rewards.
Many of the trappings of the modern world came out of government labs during and after WWII, and those labs were paid for by the people of this country, not the corporations that are now claiming ownership of their discoveries.
You'd bitch as much about ego if there was a spot in front of every Apple building labeled "Steve Jobs", "CEO", or "Executive" I suppose.
No, because that's pretty much ubiquitous. That's what makes Steve Job's ass-hattery so egregious, the fact that it was totally within his power to have that close parking spot without parking in handicapped spaces like every other chief executive that still actually drives him or herself to work, and he just refused to do so...almost as if he enjoyed parking in that handicapped spot, like "Look at me, I'm so fucking important I don't need to put a license plate on my car or even respect handicapped spaces." It's about respect for the handicapped; regardless if they're empty or not, you don't fucking park in them unless you're handicapped yourself.
I don't know if he felt that way for sure, but as he made no effort to cover up his arrogance in any other regard, I see no reason to doubt that carried over into this matter as well.
The entire process is rife with opportunity to rip off taxpayers. Here in Madison, WI, a locally based company, Spectrum Brands, hired a Florida firm to make overtures to the state government for tax breaks in consideration for "moving their business to Madison". Yes, a company that was already located here had a firm from another state negotiate for a 7-figure forgivable loan to move where they were already located.
Then, when the Madison public got wind of it, they moved to Middleton, anyway. With their loan, of course.
Gotta love corporate extortion and the transfer of public funds to private corporations. Oh yeah, plus the CEO of Spectrum Brands received a compensation package last year worth 13.7 million dollars. He couldn't take a little bit of a pay cut rather than bilking the government out of 4 million bucks? Heavens, no! That's just punishing success, right?!
And these are the "job creators" we're supposed to bend over for and throw money at for the privilege of working for them (which obviously generates them more revenue then it costs otherwise the job wouldn't exist in the first place)? America! Fuck Yeah!!
Just another race to the bottom. Corporations are going to end up tax-exempt and we're all going to end up living in a Neo-Feudalistic society where instead of an aristocracy we've got C-levels and their retinues while national governments sputter out with less and less tax revenue coming in and become more and more irrelevant.
The saddest thing in all of this is, though, that there will be a sizable number of middle- and lower-class people out there cheering the shit, even as their own well-being is threatened directly by it. When you've got people in trailer parks arguing that taxes do nothing but punish success and cheering on the dismantling of the social programs they're actively using (such as Medicaid, welfare, public schools), you know that we're fucking doomed...
You tell me: Would you park in a handicapped spot if you were not handicapped? Even if there were "several spaces"?
Everyone knows it's wrong. There's no moral ambiguity here. Even Steve knew it was wrong, he just didn't give a shit. Parking in a handicapped spot when you're not handicapped is pretty high up there on the 'asshole-who-thinks-the-rules-don't-apply-to-him' meter. It rates even higher when you realize that he was Steve fucking Jobs and had myriad alternatives available to him that didn't involve being a dickhead and taking up a handicapped spot.
He couldn't just have a designated "Steve Jobs" spot in front of the buildings on campus? The guy that's apparently single-handedly created the modern age (according to another comment I received here) couldn't come up with a better solution? Come on. It's okay to like his company's products and still think him an asshole; they're not mutually exclusive states of being...but I really seem to get lots of irrationally defensive responses when talking about the fact that he was an asshole.
Yeah, that's really what makes the whole situation even more asinine, the fact that he could easily afford to have someone be on call 24/7 to drive him wherever he wanted to go...and like you said, even a 24/7 valet service to meet him anywhere and handle the parking aspect for him, if he insisted on driving himself around.
For all his brilliance, he couldn't come up with a way to handle this situation without being a dickhead and parking in a handicapped spot? I wonder what Steve's response would have been to someone that made that comment to him...probably something along the lines of "Fuck you, I'm Steve Jobs". I can't believe people actually defend this narcissistic bullshit. In anyone else few would argue it was above derision and mockery, but because it's Steven H. Chr^H^H^H JOBS...
Come on, it may be a dick move, but I bet he never came close to preventing a handicapped person from parking.
How the hell would you know? How could he know? Unless he was visually monitoring the spot, there could have been plenty of handicapped people that were forced to drive by and park farther away all because he was Steve fucking Jobs and the rules don't apply to him.
Would you make the same excuses if Joe Blow did it in front of your local 7-11? Why does Steve Jobs get a pass?
If, however, you're writing this from a personal computer, smartphone, tablet, or anything with a GUI, then you must be a huge hypocrite, since you owe it to Steve Jobs for bringing those tools to the masses.
Mod parent Funny!
Oh shit, you were actually serious?!?
It is truly amazing the mythology you people have built up around this guy. He did not single-handedly invent the modern age, fanboys...
Forget Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs was the real electric Jesus!
Except he did it long before he got cancer. To quote David Bunnel, publisher of Macworld, about a visit he made to Apple headquarters in the early-80's:
“We could tell that Steve was in, because his blue Mercedes was parked in the handicap zone in front. As I was to learn, Steve always parked there."
The quote then goes on to talk about Steve doing it because disgruntled Apple employees (Disgruntled Apple employees?! How is this possible?!!??!?!!?) would key his car when he parked it in back. Obviously the reasonable solution, if your Steve Jobs, is not to put security cameras up or anything realistic...no, the solution is to just park in a handicapped spot because fuck all those crippled people, I'm Steve Jobs and the rules don't apply to me, and besides, the sanctity of my Mercedes is more important than their legal right to a parking spot near the front doors.
I'm jealous. My high school biology teacher was an ultra-Christian disbeliever of evolution, and because she taught deep in the bible belt in Georgia, she was allowed to impose her stupidity on us in almost every lesson. I'll never forget how she started the chapter on Evolution in our textbooks: "Now, the law requires that I cover this nonsense, but before we begin, let me tell you what really happened [puts down biology text, picks up her ever-present bible] 'In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth...'"
At least the quiz she gave afterwards was for extra credit, although I'm sure that was because legally she wasn't allowed to actually count that crap against our GPA, not because of any open-mindedness on her part.
Thank God for the internet, because I've learned more biology just reading Wikipedia than I did in her waste of a class...
The guy (Steve Jobs) parked in handicapped spots, and even went so far as to only keep his cars long enough to skirt under the registration requirement so he couldn't be ticketed for it.
I know there are a lot of Apple haters out there, but everything I've ever read about Steve Jobs as a person is totally negative and points to him being an asshole of epic proportions. This makes it hard for me to believe he was a philanthropist in secret.
This quote in particular cracks me up:
“He’s gotten a lot of criticism for not giving away tons of money, but I think it’s a bum rap. There’s only so many hours in a week, and he created so many incredible products. He really contributed to culture and society.”
Only in today's twisted world can creating Chinese-made, throw-away consumer goods sold for premium prices be considered "giving back to the world". It fits well with this whole mythology we're building up around the wealthy these days, how it's just such a burden being rich and all that...
It is also pretty handy to know where the police are if you, you know, want to know what your tax money is being used for.
I used to work third shift, and took lunch every day around 2:30 AM. Every day, I would drive down to the gas station a block from work and get a muffin and some coffee, and every day, there would be a minimum of 5 cop cars and 8-10 officers hanging out drinking free coffee. According to the clerk, they pretty much hang out there all night, shooting the shit, drinking the coffee, doing fuck all.
I pass one cop every morning on my way to work now and the guy is asleep almost every time I see him. He's hidden back behind a store (where he must think nobody notices him) in his cruiser, head thrown back, mouth wide open almost every time. Part of me really wants to walk up and knock on his window just to see what his response to me catching him asleep is, but self-preservation obviously keeps me from making a big deal about it.
Still, part of me wants to turn in a complaint (if he's on the job, he damn sure shouldn't be sleeping), but after watching this video, I think turning in a complaint form would be a quicker way for me getting arrested and thrown in a cell than knocking on the officer's window while he's sleeping.
I'm black, and I've traveled extensively throughout America and many other nations. I have never run into problems with the police anywhere. But perhaps that's because I don't go out of my way to wear baggy pants with the waist at my ankles, I don't wear a straight-brimmed baseball hat with the price tag still on it, I don't drive around blaring hip hop or rap music, I don't choose to talk like I'm mentally disabled, and I don't partake in crime.
What on earth does my method of dress have to do with my level of intelligence? Why does the manner in which I speak imply something about my character? I'm educated, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start dressing like a hipster douche in a GQ ad, and certainly not to avoid being hassled by police that have no business harassing me in the first place. I've been in those situations, too, although when I was growing up, it was the grunge look (flannel shirts, chain wallets) that was a target by our local police. Just wearing a Tool shirt was enough to get me harassed. Hell, just carrying (not even riding, just carrying) a skateboard was enough to get someone harassed by the cops in my town.
I had a 4.0 GPA, perfect attendance, and volunteered, but that all goes out the window because I'm wearing a t-shirt for a band the cops don't like? Come on.
Many of the people who whine and moan about being targeted by the police merely need to clean up their acts.
Thanks for the tip, mein fuhrer.
No, I can think of a lot of different ways to design a phone, the problem is, Apple's design patents are so generic that the only way to avoid them is to design a less efficient product. If they own a "minimal design", then every manufacturer out there has to cram buttons on the front of their device? Come on, that's just stupid.
I could design a spherical cell phone, and nobody would buy it. Why? Because the most efficient shape for a communication device is a rectangle about 4-6 inches across. Look at every damned television remote, holy crap, all basically the same design. Why? Because they all have the same function, and they're all being used by hands about the same size.
Imagine if someone owned the concept of a rectangular remote control with buttons on the front, and now imagine how fucking retarded every competitor's remote would have to be to avoid that generic patent. How healthy could a market be with those limitations?
Yeah, because there is an infinite number of ways one could design a device that has exactly the same function, being used by people with about the same sized appendages in the same sorts of ways.
Head on down to your local hardware store, and look at the hand tools, and think about why every hammer looks pretty much the same, every screwdriver looks pretty much the same, every wrench looks pretty much the same...and now imagine how fucking retarded they would have to be designed if a single manufacturer owned such a broad and over-reaching patent. Imagine how many would sell if they had to be deliberately designed to be less effective just to get around a ridiculously generic design patent.
If the only way a competitor is supposed to get around Apple's stupid bullshit patents is to cram unnecessary hardware buttons onto their device, or make it work less efficiently, then there's a problem with the patent, and it likely never should have been granted in the first place.
Apple's design IS distinct. It's minimal design is exactly that : distinct.
The design itself is a natural evolution of the device as a whole, not Apple's particular spin on it. Allowing Apple to patent a rectangle with rounded corners is like allowing Craftsmen to patent a hammer with a handle and a claw. Now nobody else in the world can sell a hammer without radically changing the design and making it less efficient? Come on.
If the only way a competitor can avoid litigation for their patent is to actually make their own competing product harder to use, then that's a sign that the original patent should never been granted in the first place. Do people honestly expect Samsung to cram a bunch of hardware buttons on the front of their devices just because Apple removed them and now "owns" a minimal look? That's going to degrade their product's functionality, just the same as having to design a hammer with the claw coming out of the top of the head, or the handle coming out of the top with the intention of swinging it underhanded. Nobody would buy that piece of shit hammer, obviously.
Since most human beings are using these devices with the same appendages (their hands), the device is going to be roughly the same shape, and since most people's hands are about the same size, there's not going to be much variation on size before usefulness is impacted. They're all phones, and function dictates form. Imagine if Ford was able to patent such generic design concepts? How many cars would there be on the market if no one else was able to produce one with 4 wheels and doors on the sides? How stupid would every competitor's car be if they actually had to design around such a ridiculously broad and over-reaching patent? Who would drive the fucking things?
Now, I'm sure Apple would be happier than a pig in shit if their patents were upheld and they got to basically own the concept of a smartphone in totality, but that is totally against the spirit of patent law in the first place, and everyone knows it. The only people defending this nonsense are Team Apple cheerleaders, not because it's actually right or makes any sense, but because it's their team.
Which caused it's own problems...
Former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall:
The consequences of deregulation have been very adverse. Our airlines, once world leaders, are now laggards in every category, including fleet age, service quality and international reputation. Fewer and fewer flights are on time. Airport congestion has become a staple of late-night comedy shows. An even higher percentage of bags are lost or misplaced. Last-minute seats are harder and harder to find. Passenger complaints have skyrocketed. Airline service, by any standard, has become unacceptable.
True, but some employers actually do require doctor's notes and the like, otherwise the absences are not "excused" and enough of those and you're out on your ass. I've seen it happen. Even if it doesn't result in a termination, we all know that things like that have a negative influence on an employee's upward mobility. It shouldn't, but it does.
Ever heard of "five whys"?
1. Why...
2. Why...
3.What...
What?!?!!?