Switching around the pages, updating the examples in ways that doesn't change the content meaningfully, and changing the practice problems around is simply an artificial price support. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Hence why some colleges are just building the cost of the eTextbooks into the tuition from the outset...you don't even get a choice anymore. Someone's palms are getting greased for that arrangement, I'm sure; like any other arm of the MAFIAA, they're not going to let an antiquated business model get in their way of increasing profits.
At least, that's how things are here in the U.S., based on the comments of extended family members currently in college. Textbooks were always a fucking racket, we all know that, but it's getting more and more ridiculous year after year. eTextbooks are great for the publisher...no more used market to compete with, no more kids scraping by using a library copy of their text, and since they're starting to add it in to tuition, they have a guaranteed sale with every admission.
Hell, I can't even get the correct change back when a cash register is broken. And they run to Google when faced with horrible problems like "cook at 250 C" on a stove with F temperatures, because doing 1.8 x + 32 is beyond them.
While I'll admit, the inability for people to do the quick mental arithmetic required to give correct change quickly is astonishing to me, honestly, your second gripe seems a little ridiculous. Is that scenario truly something that happens often enough in a person's life that it should be committed to memory?
I mean, I'm all for knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but I'm not going to start shitting on people because they don't remember something that they were taught who knows how many years ago if they basically never use it in their daily lives. Most people only use basic algebra and geometry from day to day. Knowledge of higher mathematics (and unnecessary conversions) to them is about as useful as a shepherd having an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire. If I've been on a boat 3 times in my entire life, do I need to remember the difference between a nautical mile and a terrestrial one? Or how to convert knots to mph/kph?
Would we have committed as much to memory ourselves in our scholastic careers if there had been an omnipresent internet with which to go looking for the answer at a moment's notice? I doubt it. It's just personal bias on our part, and I admit, I sometimes do it, too, when something that I always considered "common knowledge" is proven not to be so common in younger people I interact with, but such is the nature of common knowledge, it's constantly evolving. I remember a late 19th-century "basic" math test someone emailed me, it was loaded with agricultural conversions and surveying calculations...shit that virtually no one uses on a regular basis anymore. If we could travel back in time, they'd probably think we were a bunch of fucking morons, too, when we couldn't just spit out the answer to something they would consider trivial.
You should have seen the emails shooting back and forth when CompUSA was liquidating, just before they took the exchange servers off-line. Boy was that some colorful commentary.
Here's how you do it: keep schools exactly as they are now, but allow parents to register at any school they want, regardless of political boundaries. Doesn't have to even be in the same school district, or state, but other than Rhode Island, I doubt many parents are going to send their children that far away.
How do the parents get their kids to those far-away schools? If they're poor, more than likely, they don't have reliable enough transportation to truck their kids to the "good side" of town. So what happens to those kids? They stay in the shitty schools in their shitty neighborhoods, right?
This idea that the poor have the time or means to send their kids all over the world in search of a better education is just as facetious as the idea that most women have a choice whether to be a stay-at-home mom or not. Imagine your life on a Walmart or McDonald's salary (the best you can hope for in a shitty neighborhood) and then ask yourself how effective a voucher program would be for you in terms of improving your kid's education.
If parents don't like the poor district schools and do like the rich district schools, they send their kids to the rich districts. What prevents that?
The fact that the rich school districts and the poor school districts are often miles and miles apart?
I know, they'll just throw the kids on the bus in South Central so they can be shipped up to Bel Air every single day for school. Hell, maybe all those stay-at-home mom's can drive them?
Guess we'd better set up a bus voucher program, too.
Particularly with food it would be a hard sell to get the general population to ask for less inspections.
Not only that, but some things need a more proactive approach than the somewhat reactionary attitudes I've seen held up as reasons why we don't need certain government regulatory bodies. Food safety, for instance...I've literally been told "Well, nobody would purchase food from at a restaurant if people get sick" as a reason why we don't need food inspectors. What about the people that got sick in the first place? Are they just the societal sacrificial lambs or what? Are we going to pretend that there aren't unscrupulous business owners that would try and skirt that line if it may save them a buck? Should the victims just put their faith in a judgement at some point, years down the road? You just can't say 'Caveat Emptor' when it's a matter of public safety like that, so at some level we're going to need regulations, and more importantly, regulators to make sure that they're being upheld.
From what I understand, in order for a market to be considered "free", it requires perfect competition and perfect information. Do consumers in the U.S. always get all of the relevant information with which to make an informed decision? I'm not naive enough to remotely believe that. As for perfect competition, well, there have been plenty of lawsuits recently concerning collusion (eBook prices being the most recent). So is the market truly 'free' at all? Has there ever been a truly free market? And if not, how the hell could we possibly know that it would solve any problems more efficiently than the regulatory bodies we have now?
Honestly, with no rancor implied, could you please tell me how Libertarianism, as you understand it, deals with people unable to afford medical care in the case of an emergency? If there's no law or regulation saying that those people have to be helped, and there's no one willing to be charitable and help them (a poor person in a poor neighborhood, for instance), what becomes of them?
Of course there's quality of care issues, even the most stellar, miracle-working physician is going to have a malpractice suit at some point in their career and medicine is a constantly evolving discipline as it is, but what alternative would be better that requiring all those with a medical emergency to be seen regardless of ability to pay? For instance, how would allowing hospitals to turn people away accomplish any positive change in society? Being poor fucking sucks, take it from someone that grew up poor, but there are very, very few poor people I have ever met in my life that literally chose that lifestyle and sought it out. Pretty much every fucking person in the ghetto wants to get the hell out of the ghetto. They'll sell drugs if they have to make money, they'll prostitute themselves to make money, but I've never met anyone that's said "you know, I don't want more money, I'm happy just being poor." I'm not saying that you're saying that, mind you, I'm just saying that it seems like there's this idea that there are millions of people in this country that just chose to be poor, and that's ludicrous...
If charity was enough to solve the problems of poverty in this country, why hasn't it solved them yet? Here's another question: why is charitable giving claimable on your taxes? Why are churches tax exempt? Does the government need to subsidize charitable giving? If it does, how could we possibly pretend that charity is a real solution to this problem if it's got to be government subsidized to get it to the levels we have today?
"WP7" is a different beast all together, is very good, and should not in any way be associated with "WinMo". It's NOT the same thing.
No shit. It's a WINdows operating system. On a MObile phone. Rather than saying Windows Phone 7 (where the fuck is the 7 coming from? "It's NOT the same thing" so why are they continuing the numbering scheme? If they don't want the association there, why foster it in that way?) we just say WinMo, just as we have for the last decade or so that Windows Mobile Phones have existed.
To clarify, again, you're assuming I'm trying to lump them together and I'm not. I don't give a flying fuck what "they" call it, it's a fucking phone running some flavor of Windows on it. Maybe you discuss them all individually and qualify every descriptor as to phone OS with specifics (It's not just Android, oh ho ho, it's Ice Cream Sandwich Android, big difference!. It's not iOS, it's iOS 5, big difference!) but as a layman, we never do.
Again, the ferocity with which you're trying to force the distinction belies either some vested interest on your part or some weird need you feel to defend the brand. What the hell do you care what we refer to it as?
Nobody is forcing you to participate. If you don't like the way that a civilized society works and would rather go back to tribal times, you're free to leave. Head over to Somalia, the libertarians paradise.
Damn right. We keep hearing about what an imposition all these things like taxes and such are, especially from people making 6-figures or more a year...if it's so fucking bad, why does anyone become successful? I mean, if we're all "punishing success" with taxes, where are the legions of C-level executives abandoning those high paying jobs for McDonald's and Walmart? Where are all the property owners selling their homes to go live in apartments so they don't have to deal with the "burden" of property taxes? I hear ethereal threats from anonymous "job creators" all the time about how "it's not worth it" to own a business and have employees and all that other shit, but guess how many businesses I've seen close because "it's not worth it"? Zero. Where the hell are they? I mean, for all the bitching, why aren't there business owners calling grand press conferences to layoff all their employees because "it's just not worth it"? Where are the guys willing to go on record and put up or shut up as regards how everyone is "punishing them" for "being successful"? With all the hatred of Obama these days, you'd think there'd be people willing to do that just to get their dig in at the President, especially those wealthy enough to actually be able to afford to torpedo their livelihood that way just to make a point.
I mean, there's all the name-calling and insulting, but where is the actual follow-through? Where are the legions of wealthy people closing down their shops and running off to Libertarian fantasy lands like Somalia and Zimbabwe? I mean, it's not like they can't afford it, right? All I ever see are wealthy people closing their shops so they can open them in China or India and make more fucking money. If we're "punishing their success", why in the blue fuck would they be trying to increase their bottom-line? Wouldn't that increase the "punishment"? And why live in the first-world at all if it's so fucking bad? You don't need that "nanny state", right?
These fucking people all think that they were raised in the woods by wolves or something and that they didn't benefit from all this shit just the same as anyone else growing up. That, or they're being deliberately obtuse as to the necessity of taxes and social programs in a first-world society. There are some elements of Libertarianism that are actually attractive to me (ending the War on Drugs, for one...prohibition as a means to control vice in any form, honestly), but unfortunately, the bullshit that often comes along with it, like dumping safety nets is totally repugnant to me, especially as regards access to fucking health care. Find me the Libertarian that doesn't think health care is a privilege, and not a right, and I do believe I may have a fucking aneurysm.
I think bitching about it this extensively advertises an irrational need to defend the brand on your part. What the shit do you care? It's a mobile phone. Running windows. Hence, a "Windows Mobile phone". WinMo, for short. I'm pretty sure everyone knows that it's not Windows Mobile 6.5 we're talking about when discussing it these days, years after that OS has been rendered obsolete.
Thanks for your personal anecdote, though. I'll take it with as much weight as you've obviously taken my own.
You read too much into people using the term "WinMo". It's not necessarily meant to imply disparagement, it's simply a portmanteau. It's a WINdows MObile phone, hence WinMo. When talking about Android phones, I don't say "Honeycomb Android" or "Ice Cream Sandwich Android", I say "Android" and most everyone understands completely well that I mean the OS as a whole, not a particular flavor of it.
We're not in a sales environment, so I guess I really don't see why the distinction is that important. Besides, I'm betting pretty much everyone here knew exactly what the GP meant when he said WinMo and understood that he probably wasn't referring to prior versions that ran on obsolete handsets. If someone actually did experience some confusion there, please feel free to retort...
If you make a lot of domestic calls it is useful, too, since obviously it doesn't use up your minutes.
Speaking as a non-Skype user here, but I have a few family members that use Skype as their primary means of communication. I honestly have very few actual voice conversations on my phone these days at all...pretty much everything is SMS, IM, or Email.
If there was an actual mechanical switch on the PS3 (as the PS2 had) that completely powered the unit down, absolutely. But I've got my entire home theater running through a power cleaner/conditioner UPS which obviously isn't going on to be placed on a switched outlet and wouldn't like constant power cycles probably anyway.
With the amount of money these consoles cost, there's really no good excuse as to why they can't be made to be more energy efficient, especially when they're not actively being used. The removal of that mechanical switch from the PS3 was pretty dumb. The Xbox 360 should have had one as well. When my PC is powered down for more than a day or two (i.e., when I'm on vacation) I hit the main switch on the PSU as well (and unplug my expensive electronics completely). Every little bit helps, especially with summer coming and the increased demand of our air conditioner.
I see no problem with a "waste" tax. There's already a gas guzzler tax, so why not an "electricity guzzler tax" on electronic devices as well? As the vast majority of our electricity generation (at least in the U.S.) is fossil-fuel based, in essence, devices that waste electricity are really just as bad in the long run as cars that get ridiculously low gas mileage. Probably more so, because most households only have one car per driver, but dozens of electronic devices sitting there chugging power all day when they're not even being used.
I know how much some people hate regulation these days, but this would be a tax that only effects those that chose to consume those inefficient devices. I would have just as much sympathy for someone complaining about that as a smoker bitching about cigarette taxes. Stop fucking smoking, and viola! No more cigarette taxes! Don't buy an electronic device that eats electricity like The Nothing from The Never-Ending Story and you'll never have to pay that energy waster tax.
I think taxes are an excellent way to encourage people to modify their behavior when they otherwise wouldn't. I know many people that quit smoking solely because the cost of a pack of their cigarettes went from $2.50 to $7.00 over the course of a few years. Not a single one has ever said to me "Man, I wish cigarettes were cheaper so I could start smoking again". Adding taxes would make all these otherwise external costs regarding pollution be felt by the end user, which is necessary in this day and age. In a perfect world, people would make these decisions even if it's not their own backyard that's turning into a polluted hell-hole, but as we all know, homo sapien is a selfish creature that easily buries it's head in the sand when the effects of their behavior doesn't directly negatively impact their own lives. Pollution is a perfect example of this.
What truly shocked me about the PS3 was to find that attached controllers do not appear to charge unless the console is powered on.
I was surprised, too, especially after I woke up the next morning after I brought it home and found it had turned itself on to download updates and then never turned itself off. We actually make it a point now to glance at the PS3 every morning before leaving to make sure it's not just sitting there in standby mode of it's volition.
They have the console set up to wake up on it's own and download patches and such, but having the controllers charge via USB while powered off was too difficult or not an important feature to them? Especially given that you can't swap batteries at all? Plus, since my console is over 20 feet away from the couch, there's no way I can just plug it in and continue using it, so I was forced to buy extra controllers to swap in.
Luckily for us, the vast majority of our PS3's usage is in the form of watching Bluray discs and Netflix, so 99% of the time we're using the PS3 remote (which uses regular batteries). Still, Sony should have thought that through, imho.
When I installed Chrome it did not pop up a window and offer me a choice of which search engine to use. How many people bother to click their way into the settings menu and pick a search engine other than Google whey they set up Chrome?
Conversely, how many people install Chrome and reasonably expect some other search engine to be the default? I mean, If you're downloading the Google Chrome web browser, it would seem kinda obvious to me that the default search engine would be Google.
The real question is; how many people would bother to change it even if it was a big pop-up window when you first ran the browser? I literally do not know anybody that does not solely use Google as their search engine. Of course that's not to say that those people don't exist, obviously, but I'd really doubt it's a sizable percentage based on my own personal observations. I mean, not sure if this is still true, but Bing was using Google's search results. Why fuck around with a middle-man?
I'm no Googlebot, and I understand the privacy concerns that stem from the fact that they've got their fingers in literally every damn pie out there, but I think that there are some silly scenarios that come out of these complaints. Like the arguments against Google just returning the answer to a query at the top of a search rather than serving up a bunch of websites related to it if it can do so. Most people, when they search a question, are looking for a fucking answer, not 1,000 websites talking about the answer. If I type in "How tall is Tom Cruise?", I'm not wondering how tall IMDB specifically thinks he is, or Wikipedia, I just want to know how freaking tall he is...but there are people arguing that is an abuse of their position and should deliberately obfuscate the information to drive hits to competitor sites? Come on. Not saying this particular AC is saying that (before someone starts screaming Straw Man) just saying I've heard that argument before and it's always seemed weird to me.
For the record, I never really agreed with the Microsoft anti-trust shit, either. I know it was fashionable to hate on them back then in "You Will Be Assimilated" era, but that was one thing that I felt Microsoft was totally within it's rights to do. If they prevented you from installing a rival browser, fine, or if they deliberately made a rival browser perform worse than their own, fine...but simply including it's own by default was fine with me. Apple includes Safari with OSX, you can't remove it...does Apple need an anti-trust suit?
The truth is, our country has its own "business" that is seperate of who is in office. The puppet in office maintains the gov's business and rarely changes course.
I absolutely agree. The military-industrial complex has owned this country since the dawn of the 20th century. Any President that gets out of line with their whims likely has a real 'Dallas, 1963 moment' in their not-to-far future.
Conspiracy theory bullshit? Maybe. But I doubt for a second that these war merchants would sit back for a second and allow any President to cut off the steady stream of blank checks we've been sending their way for at least the last 70 years.
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
So? Let them blame piracy. Let them cram so much fucking DRM into a game that the only way you can play it is to submit to retinal scans every 15 minutes. They'll just create more pirates, because the pirated copies don't have any of that shit. They're a superior product in almost every way.
I stopped giving a shit about their whining long ago. "Oh, those dirty pirates, ripping off our games..." Meanwhile the industry is bringing in more money than it ever has in history and breaking profit records year after year? Give me a fucking break...
To be fair, I know a fair number of people who have been boycotting the industry since the day they discovered Kazaa...
Right or wrong, when game companies do shit like this, that is where they're driving their customer base. Why boycott when you can just rip the fucking game off and play it for free? Are people supposed to feel bad about doing that when the industry itself is treating them like they're doing it anyway? I mean, you keep calling your 12 year old daughter a whore, by the time she's 16, odds are, she's going to be a whore.
The game industry treats it's customer base like an abusive parent treats their children, and they're shocked when the kids finally have had enough and disappear? Please. Not even these masters of the universe can be that fucking naive.
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Switching around the pages, updating the examples in ways that doesn't change the content meaningfully, and changing the practice problems around is simply an artificial price support. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Hence why some colleges are just building the cost of the eTextbooks into the tuition from the outset...you don't even get a choice anymore. Someone's palms are getting greased for that arrangement, I'm sure; like any other arm of the MAFIAA, they're not going to let an antiquated business model get in their way of increasing profits.
At least, that's how things are here in the U.S., based on the comments of extended family members currently in college. Textbooks were always a fucking racket, we all know that, but it's getting more and more ridiculous year after year. eTextbooks are great for the publisher...no more used market to compete with, no more kids scraping by using a library copy of their text, and since they're starting to add it in to tuition, they have a guaranteed sale with every admission.
Hell, I can't even get the correct change back when a cash register is broken. And they run to Google when faced with horrible problems like "cook at 250 C" on a stove with F temperatures, because doing 1.8 x + 32 is beyond them.
While I'll admit, the inability for people to do the quick mental arithmetic required to give correct change quickly is astonishing to me, honestly, your second gripe seems a little ridiculous. Is that scenario truly something that happens often enough in a person's life that it should be committed to memory?
I mean, I'm all for knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but I'm not going to start shitting on people because they don't remember something that they were taught who knows how many years ago if they basically never use it in their daily lives. Most people only use basic algebra and geometry from day to day. Knowledge of higher mathematics (and unnecessary conversions) to them is about as useful as a shepherd having an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire. If I've been on a boat 3 times in my entire life, do I need to remember the difference between a nautical mile and a terrestrial one? Or how to convert knots to mph/kph?
Would we have committed as much to memory ourselves in our scholastic careers if there had been an omnipresent internet with which to go looking for the answer at a moment's notice? I doubt it. It's just personal bias on our part, and I admit, I sometimes do it, too, when something that I always considered "common knowledge" is proven not to be so common in younger people I interact with, but such is the nature of common knowledge, it's constantly evolving. I remember a late 19th-century "basic" math test someone emailed me, it was loaded with agricultural conversions and surveying calculations...shit that virtually no one uses on a regular basis anymore. If we could travel back in time, they'd probably think we were a bunch of fucking morons, too, when we couldn't just spit out the answer to something they would consider trivial.
Gandhi's feelings on the matter regardless, WWII was probably the last war that the American public, as a whole, felt was worth fighting.
You should have seen the emails shooting back and forth when CompUSA was liquidating, just before they took the exchange servers off-line. Boy was that some colorful commentary.
The fact that it was a war actually worth fighting probably helped, too.
ok
Okay sounds good man.
Here's how you do it: keep schools exactly as they are now, but allow parents to register at any school they want, regardless of political boundaries. Doesn't have to even be in the same school district, or state, but other than Rhode Island, I doubt many parents are going to send their children that far away.
How do the parents get their kids to those far-away schools? If they're poor, more than likely, they don't have reliable enough transportation to truck their kids to the "good side" of town. So what happens to those kids? They stay in the shitty schools in their shitty neighborhoods, right?
This idea that the poor have the time or means to send their kids all over the world in search of a better education is just as facetious as the idea that most women have a choice whether to be a stay-at-home mom or not. Imagine your life on a Walmart or McDonald's salary (the best you can hope for in a shitty neighborhood) and then ask yourself how effective a voucher program would be for you in terms of improving your kid's education.
If parents don't like the poor district schools and do like the rich district schools, they send their kids to the rich districts. What prevents that?
The fact that the rich school districts and the poor school districts are often miles and miles apart?
I know, they'll just throw the kids on the bus in South Central so they can be shipped up to Bel Air every single day for school. Hell, maybe all those stay-at-home mom's can drive them?
Guess we'd better set up a bus voucher program, too.
Particularly with food it would be a hard sell to get the general population to ask for less inspections.
Not only that, but some things need a more proactive approach than the somewhat reactionary attitudes I've seen held up as reasons why we don't need certain government regulatory bodies. Food safety, for instance...I've literally been told "Well, nobody would purchase food from at a restaurant if people get sick" as a reason why we don't need food inspectors. What about the people that got sick in the first place? Are they just the societal sacrificial lambs or what? Are we going to pretend that there aren't unscrupulous business owners that would try and skirt that line if it may save them a buck? Should the victims just put their faith in a judgement at some point, years down the road? You just can't say 'Caveat Emptor' when it's a matter of public safety like that, so at some level we're going to need regulations, and more importantly, regulators to make sure that they're being upheld.
From what I understand, in order for a market to be considered "free", it requires perfect competition and perfect information. Do consumers in the U.S. always get all of the relevant information with which to make an informed decision? I'm not naive enough to remotely believe that. As for perfect competition, well, there have been plenty of lawsuits recently concerning collusion (eBook prices being the most recent). So is the market truly 'free' at all? Has there ever been a truly free market? And if not, how the hell could we possibly know that it would solve any problems more efficiently than the regulatory bodies we have now?
One will quickly notice a conspicuous absence of rights for corporations
But corporations are people, remember?!
Honestly, with no rancor implied, could you please tell me how Libertarianism, as you understand it, deals with people unable to afford medical care in the case of an emergency? If there's no law or regulation saying that those people have to be helped, and there's no one willing to be charitable and help them (a poor person in a poor neighborhood, for instance), what becomes of them?
Of course there's quality of care issues, even the most stellar, miracle-working physician is going to have a malpractice suit at some point in their career and medicine is a constantly evolving discipline as it is, but what alternative would be better that requiring all those with a medical emergency to be seen regardless of ability to pay? For instance, how would allowing hospitals to turn people away accomplish any positive change in society? Being poor fucking sucks, take it from someone that grew up poor, but there are very, very few poor people I have ever met in my life that literally chose that lifestyle and sought it out. Pretty much every fucking person in the ghetto wants to get the hell out of the ghetto. They'll sell drugs if they have to make money, they'll prostitute themselves to make money, but I've never met anyone that's said "you know, I don't want more money, I'm happy just being poor." I'm not saying that you're saying that, mind you, I'm just saying that it seems like there's this idea that there are millions of people in this country that just chose to be poor, and that's ludicrous...
If charity was enough to solve the problems of poverty in this country, why hasn't it solved them yet? Here's another question: why is charitable giving claimable on your taxes? Why are churches tax exempt? Does the government need to subsidize charitable giving? If it does, how could we possibly pretend that charity is a real solution to this problem if it's got to be government subsidized to get it to the levels we have today?
"WP7" is a different beast all together, is very good, and should not in any way be associated with "WinMo". It's NOT the same thing.
No shit. It's a WINdows operating system. On a MObile phone. Rather than saying Windows Phone 7 (where the fuck is the 7 coming from? "It's NOT the same thing" so why are they continuing the numbering scheme? If they don't want the association there, why foster it in that way?) we just say WinMo, just as we have for the last decade or so that Windows Mobile Phones have existed.
To clarify, again, you're assuming I'm trying to lump them together and I'm not. I don't give a flying fuck what "they" call it, it's a fucking phone running some flavor of Windows on it. Maybe you discuss them all individually and qualify every descriptor as to phone OS with specifics (It's not just Android, oh ho ho, it's Ice Cream Sandwich Android, big difference!. It's not iOS, it's iOS 5, big difference!) but as a layman, we never do.
Again, the ferocity with which you're trying to force the distinction belies either some vested interest on your part or some weird need you feel to defend the brand. What the hell do you care what we refer to it as?
Nobody is forcing you to participate. If you don't like the way that a civilized society works and would rather go back to tribal times, you're free to leave. Head over to Somalia, the libertarians paradise.
Damn right. We keep hearing about what an imposition all these things like taxes and such are, especially from people making 6-figures or more a year...if it's so fucking bad, why does anyone become successful? I mean, if we're all "punishing success" with taxes, where are the legions of C-level executives abandoning those high paying jobs for McDonald's and Walmart? Where are all the property owners selling their homes to go live in apartments so they don't have to deal with the "burden" of property taxes? I hear ethereal threats from anonymous "job creators" all the time about how "it's not worth it" to own a business and have employees and all that other shit, but guess how many businesses I've seen close because "it's not worth it"? Zero. Where the hell are they? I mean, for all the bitching, why aren't there business owners calling grand press conferences to layoff all their employees because "it's just not worth it"? Where are the guys willing to go on record and put up or shut up as regards how everyone is "punishing them" for "being successful"? With all the hatred of Obama these days, you'd think there'd be people willing to do that just to get their dig in at the President, especially those wealthy enough to actually be able to afford to torpedo their livelihood that way just to make a point.
I mean, there's all the name-calling and insulting, but where is the actual follow-through? Where are the legions of wealthy people closing down their shops and running off to Libertarian fantasy lands like Somalia and Zimbabwe? I mean, it's not like they can't afford it, right? All I ever see are wealthy people closing their shops so they can open them in China or India and make more fucking money. If we're "punishing their success", why in the blue fuck would they be trying to increase their bottom-line? Wouldn't that increase the "punishment"? And why live in the first-world at all if it's so fucking bad? You don't need that "nanny state", right?
These fucking people all think that they were raised in the woods by wolves or something and that they didn't benefit from all this shit just the same as anyone else growing up. That, or they're being deliberately obtuse as to the necessity of taxes and social programs in a first-world society. There are some elements of Libertarianism that are actually attractive to me (ending the War on Drugs, for one...prohibition as a means to control vice in any form, honestly), but unfortunately, the bullshit that often comes along with it, like dumping safety nets is totally repugnant to me, especially as regards access to fucking health care. Find me the Libertarian that doesn't think health care is a privilege, and not a right, and I do believe I may have a fucking aneurysm.
I think bitching about it this extensively advertises an irrational need to defend the brand on your part. What the shit do you care? It's a mobile phone. Running windows. Hence, a "Windows Mobile phone". WinMo, for short. I'm pretty sure everyone knows that it's not Windows Mobile 6.5 we're talking about when discussing it these days, years after that OS has been rendered obsolete.
Thanks for your personal anecdote, though. I'll take it with as much weight as you've obviously taken my own.
You read too much into people using the term "WinMo". It's not necessarily meant to imply disparagement, it's simply a portmanteau. It's a WINdows MObile phone, hence WinMo. When talking about Android phones, I don't say "Honeycomb Android" or "Ice Cream Sandwich Android", I say "Android" and most everyone understands completely well that I mean the OS as a whole, not a particular flavor of it.
We're not in a sales environment, so I guess I really don't see why the distinction is that important. Besides, I'm betting pretty much everyone here knew exactly what the GP meant when he said WinMo and understood that he probably wasn't referring to prior versions that ran on obsolete handsets. If someone actually did experience some confusion there, please feel free to retort...
If you make a lot of domestic calls it is useful, too, since obviously it doesn't use up your minutes.
Speaking as a non-Skype user here, but I have a few family members that use Skype as their primary means of communication. I honestly have very few actual voice conversations on my phone these days at all...pretty much everything is SMS, IM, or Email.
The fact this guy called Windows Phone 7 "WinMo" kind of suggests he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Why? Everyone I know calls them WinMo phones, too. Microsoft may call it something else, but they're Windows Mobile phones, therefore, WinMo.
If there was an actual mechanical switch on the PS3 (as the PS2 had) that completely powered the unit down, absolutely. But I've got my entire home theater running through a power cleaner/conditioner UPS which obviously isn't going on to be placed on a switched outlet and wouldn't like constant power cycles probably anyway.
With the amount of money these consoles cost, there's really no good excuse as to why they can't be made to be more energy efficient, especially when they're not actively being used. The removal of that mechanical switch from the PS3 was pretty dumb. The Xbox 360 should have had one as well. When my PC is powered down for more than a day or two (i.e., when I'm on vacation) I hit the main switch on the PSU as well (and unplug my expensive electronics completely). Every little bit helps, especially with summer coming and the increased demand of our air conditioner.
I see no problem with a "waste" tax. There's already a gas guzzler tax, so why not an "electricity guzzler tax" on electronic devices as well? As the vast majority of our electricity generation (at least in the U.S.) is fossil-fuel based, in essence, devices that waste electricity are really just as bad in the long run as cars that get ridiculously low gas mileage. Probably more so, because most households only have one car per driver, but dozens of electronic devices sitting there chugging power all day when they're not even being used.
I know how much some people hate regulation these days, but this would be a tax that only effects those that chose to consume those inefficient devices. I would have just as much sympathy for someone complaining about that as a smoker bitching about cigarette taxes. Stop fucking smoking, and viola! No more cigarette taxes! Don't buy an electronic device that eats electricity like The Nothing from The Never-Ending Story and you'll never have to pay that energy waster tax.
I think taxes are an excellent way to encourage people to modify their behavior when they otherwise wouldn't. I know many people that quit smoking solely because the cost of a pack of their cigarettes went from $2.50 to $7.00 over the course of a few years. Not a single one has ever said to me "Man, I wish cigarettes were cheaper so I could start smoking again". Adding taxes would make all these otherwise external costs regarding pollution be felt by the end user, which is necessary in this day and age. In a perfect world, people would make these decisions even if it's not their own backyard that's turning into a polluted hell-hole, but as we all know, homo sapien is a selfish creature that easily buries it's head in the sand when the effects of their behavior doesn't directly negatively impact their own lives. Pollution is a perfect example of this.
What truly shocked me about the PS3 was to find that attached controllers do not appear to charge unless the console is powered on.
I was surprised, too, especially after I woke up the next morning after I brought it home and found it had turned itself on to download updates and then never turned itself off. We actually make it a point now to glance at the PS3 every morning before leaving to make sure it's not just sitting there in standby mode of it's volition.
They have the console set up to wake up on it's own and download patches and such, but having the controllers charge via USB while powered off was too difficult or not an important feature to them? Especially given that you can't swap batteries at all? Plus, since my console is over 20 feet away from the couch, there's no way I can just plug it in and continue using it, so I was forced to buy extra controllers to swap in.
Luckily for us, the vast majority of our PS3's usage is in the form of watching Bluray discs and Netflix, so 99% of the time we're using the PS3 remote (which uses regular batteries). Still, Sony should have thought that through, imho.
When I installed Chrome it did not pop up a window and offer me a choice of which search engine to use. How many people bother to click their way into the settings menu and pick a search engine other than Google whey they set up Chrome?
Conversely, how many people install Chrome and reasonably expect some other search engine to be the default? I mean, If you're downloading the Google Chrome web browser, it would seem kinda obvious to me that the default search engine would be Google.
The real question is; how many people would bother to change it even if it was a big pop-up window when you first ran the browser? I literally do not know anybody that does not solely use Google as their search engine. Of course that's not to say that those people don't exist, obviously, but I'd really doubt it's a sizable percentage based on my own personal observations. I mean, not sure if this is still true, but Bing was using Google's search results. Why fuck around with a middle-man?
I'm no Googlebot, and I understand the privacy concerns that stem from the fact that they've got their fingers in literally every damn pie out there, but I think that there are some silly scenarios that come out of these complaints. Like the arguments against Google just returning the answer to a query at the top of a search rather than serving up a bunch of websites related to it if it can do so. Most people, when they search a question, are looking for a fucking answer, not 1,000 websites talking about the answer. If I type in "How tall is Tom Cruise?", I'm not wondering how tall IMDB specifically thinks he is, or Wikipedia, I just want to know how freaking tall he is...but there are people arguing that is an abuse of their position and should deliberately obfuscate the information to drive hits to competitor sites? Come on. Not saying this particular AC is saying that (before someone starts screaming Straw Man) just saying I've heard that argument before and it's always seemed weird to me.
For the record, I never really agreed with the Microsoft anti-trust shit, either. I know it was fashionable to hate on them back then in "You Will Be Assimilated" era, but that was one thing that I felt Microsoft was totally within it's rights to do. If they prevented you from installing a rival browser, fine, or if they deliberately made a rival browser perform worse than their own, fine...but simply including it's own by default was fine with me. Apple includes Safari with OSX, you can't remove it...does Apple need an anti-trust suit?
The truth is, our country has its own "business" that is seperate of who is in office. The puppet in office maintains the gov's business and rarely changes course.
I absolutely agree. The military-industrial complex has owned this country since the dawn of the 20th century. Any President that gets out of line with their whims likely has a real 'Dallas, 1963 moment' in their not-to-far future.
Conspiracy theory bullshit? Maybe. But I doubt for a second that these war merchants would sit back for a second and allow any President to cut off the steady stream of blank checks we've been sending their way for at least the last 70 years.
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
- Major General Smedley D. Butler, War Is A Racket
So? Let them blame piracy. Let them cram so much fucking DRM into a game that the only way you can play it is to submit to retinal scans every 15 minutes. They'll just create more pirates, because the pirated copies don't have any of that shit. They're a superior product in almost every way.
I stopped giving a shit about their whining long ago. "Oh, those dirty pirates, ripping off our games..." Meanwhile the industry is bringing in more money than it ever has in history and breaking profit records year after year? Give me a fucking break...
To be fair, I know a fair number of people who have been boycotting the industry since the day they discovered Kazaa...
Right or wrong, when game companies do shit like this, that is where they're driving their customer base. Why boycott when you can just rip the fucking game off and play it for free? Are people supposed to feel bad about doing that when the industry itself is treating them like they're doing it anyway? I mean, you keep calling your 12 year old daughter a whore, by the time she's 16, odds are, she's going to be a whore.
The game industry treats it's customer base like an abusive parent treats their children, and they're shocked when the kids finally have had enough and disappear? Please. Not even these masters of the universe can be that fucking naive.