I did include games and 3D, but it's buried in the middle somewhere.
Computer hardware will always and forever grow -- I still remember wondering why the hell any graphics card would need 8MB of ram. That was before 3d of course, and before HD too.
The thing is that all of that computer hardware, going forward, is exclusively for computer industries -- computer graphics, computer-generated video, computer-generated audio, computer-generated 3d printing.
But any company that sells lumber, or white socks, or headphones, or water bottles, or travel arrangements, or or or, is already computerized as much as possible. There is nothing more to gain in the foreseeable future. What's a lumber yard going to computerize next that needs more hardware than is available today? Simulating which wood fibres termites would eat first?
Outside of direct-computer industries, there really aren't any routines left that require more hardware at this time. Computers are already pretty gosh-darn-good at what they do. And as you've alluded, we're a long way from them being able to do anything more.
And yes, I mean self-driving, self-flying, self-anything. Anyone currently going nuts to produce millions of lines of code to self-drive anything, good-on-ya for paving the way through the research stage. It won't work until it's way way way simpler. I swear to you that my human brain doesn't perform advanced calculus when I drive, just like it doesn't when I path-find around my office.
It's been nearly 35 years since I started using a computer for routine tasks. There simply aren't many new routines to computerize. For that reason, and I'm happy to say for that reason alone, computers will last longer and longer.
Routine one was numbers, think spreadsheets. I managed my elementary-school baseball pool in lotus 1-2-3. Yes, today's spreadsheets are "better", but they don't address any new routines. Once we had charts and graphs, that was it. Don't cry to me about pivot tables that no one uses.
Routine two was writing, think word processing. I put it second to numbers only because numbers needed computers, where writing didn't. But fast writing did. My essays were done in Wordstar for the longest time. By the time fancy fonts came around, we were done. Again, don't cry to me about tables and pictures, that's next.
Routine three was publishing & layout. I used PrintShop -- yeah, I'm calling ten-foot-long birthday banners layout. What of it?
E-mail (desperately trying to remember my first client, really can't, probably compuserve), web browser (duh, ncsa mosaic), music (winamp, still), graphics (jasc paintshop pro), audio (audacity), video (not me), programming (ultraedit since the dawn of our careers).
Add various messengers (ICQ) as the dawn of social media if you will, and newsfeeds (pointcast) as the now-dead origins of podcast directories.
The point is that with the singular exception of "MORE GRAPHICS", be it larger video, more 3d, raytracing, and bigger and bigger games, I think we're finding that there aren't any more parts of life to computerize.
Considering your life five years ago, compared with today, I doubt most people will find any significant routine that is computerizable today, that wasn't five years ago -- leading to the conclusion that a five-year old computer would be just fine.
There was a time when last year's technology was completely useless. Burn a music CD in an hour, but need three to get through failed attempts, or burn a CD in five minutes with ease. Last year's machine couldn't play a single new game, and would never be able to ever again. Can browse the internet, or can't. Could print in colour or black and white only.
We ain't there no more. Windows Vista needed near-brand-new hardware. Windows 10 could run on twenty-year old hardware. The vast majority of businesses today, that existed twenty years ago, don't need anything different than they had twenty years ago. It's hideous, but my local lumber yard uses machines and software from my Wordstar days. They sell wood just the same.
My local hydroponics store still uses carbon paper. I bet you can guess why.
a 70-year old thinks things are expensive. Big surprise. Also, a wholesaler thinks retail is expensive. Again, big surprise.
So I bought a fancy pair of fancy frameless frames and lenses. When it comes to eyeglasses, I probably bought the brand we all know to be considered the fanciest. I'm exceptionally happy with them. I've bought the same brand, for roughly the same dollar amount, three times in a row.
Basically, my entire adulthood, I've been buying the same shadowy brand. My prescription has changed those three times. I've kept going back.
At ~$650 CDN per pair, I'm paying roughly $1.50 per week of my life on glasses. On high-end glasses that make me comfortable. Right next to them were options for half the price.
Who's complaining that they bought, retail, $300 glasses that last for years? Who's complaining about spending $2 bucks a week on defective eyes?
Do these people buy coffee? At coffee shops for $5 a cup, in k-cups for $1 a cup? I'd wager they aren't grinding their own beans for pennies a cup. I'm the only one who does that -- and my friends howl at me for doing so.
Perhaps these people buy bottled water for $2 a bottle, instead of $0.20 per metric tonne from the their own tap.
Oh wait, maybe they buy water pitchers with carbon filters in them, for about ten times the cost of fitting the exact same type of filter to their cold water line.
I spent $650 CDN on my glasses. I bought them retail. Conveniently. From someone who answered my questions on three separate visits for a total of almost three hours. Someone who let me try on a few dozen pairs. They were shipped across the ocean. They were stocked and cleaned and supported and guaranteed -- even if I just changed my mind about the coatings. And I could have chosen the cheaper brand.
I'm not complaining. Remind me, on my death-bed, to complain that over the course of 90 years, I spent $9'000 for perfect vision. Also remind me what I did for a living, and that I liked to look at stuff.
There are plenty of things to complain about. Nearly all of them are that people choose to spend money, when they have perfectly free alternatives. This is not one of them. Either of them.
when last I checked, a "lack of information" is a great reason to avoid something dangerous. Actually, it might be the one and only and best reason to avoid anything dangerous -- from bicycles to bungee jumping. Get informed first. And if you thought you were informed, and suddenly you discover that you aren't informed because you can't explain something that happened, well then, avoid again until you become informed again.
In other words, let someone else run the tests. That's exactly what test-pilots are for.
In the case of a web-site, it's not like following a person through public. It's like following a customer of yours around your own store.
I don't think you'll find any jurisdiction in which it's illegal, or even frowned upon, to record how customers walk through your store, which shelves they look at, which clothes they try on, which products they pick up. And if you want to sell your customer-usage data to someone, it's yours because it's actually your customer data.
This all comes down to the purple pages. Phone books were illegal, in concept -- a book of everyone's phone number, name, and street address. But it was accepted anyway because you had to know the person's name. But there were the purple pages -- the very same phone book, indexed by street address. So you could look up a street address, and see who lived there. The purple pages were considered illegal -- for privacy reasons -- and were not widely published as a result.
Until they were.
So the only true answer to your question is actually the simplest one: slippery slope.
Ah, melting the ice on the sidewalks. Magic. Poof! It's gone.
Where'd it go?
Remind me, beside what are the sidewalks walked? Oh yeah.
The road.
Because flowing water, yeah, that's what we want at -39 degrees around here.
Sure you can heat the entire city. Sure you can make it all indoors. But if you expect to beat winter, and come out ahead financially, then you've never understood winter.
I'm surprised no one has gone the other way on this. Disposable sidewalks. Full of cracks to absorb the ice and maintain traction. But they only last one season, or less. And they are very easy and very inexpensive and very quick to replace or repair.
Maybe a poured "concrete", fibrous like wood-pulp. Let it crack. Pour some more every month.
Easily re-written: "City tools designed and built in 1980, still effective 40 years later, with near-zero funds wasted in multiple upgrades along the way."
Or perhaps: "Tax-payers uninteresting in making government employees' jobs easier, at great expense."
Hey, then there's: "BIC pens, glass windows, concrete, and electrical wiring from the '80s still running most government offices -- computers too."
And finally: "Government offices located in buildings that don't meet modern building codes. They haven't met building codes since they were built in the '80s."
So sorry you need to hit a few more key strokes to sell real estate. Boohoo. I'm not paying $36 million dollars to make your job a little easier. If you want to pay for it, go ahead. I think it's still fine as-is. Call me when the computer stops working.
Until then, I praise the well-designed, well-thought-out, and well-acquisitioned systems already in-place.
We've been down this road so many times. I don't understand why we're still on it.
The whole entire complete obvious purpose of movie reviews is to decide whether or not I want to see the movie before going to see the movie.
I don't need the reviews after the release. I need them before. In fact, that's exactly why movies have pre-releases -- to let some audiences (i.e. enthusiasts) tell the public in-advance.
So now I'm not able to see the movie on opening weekend, if I want to read the reviews first. Great. So I can wait a week, and see it later, right? Nope, because then the very same trolls will be in the very same position to screw things over in the very same way.
So we've done absolutely nothing here.
Like I said, we've run this road before. Welcome to reviews and recommendations since the dawn of time. If they aren't co-roberated, authenticated, and trusted, then they are meaningless.
Would it be so very difficult for sites like Rotten Tomatoes to do any fact-checking whatsoever to ensure that reviewers have actually seen the movie? Or at least paid for it? Truth is, it still wouldn't matter, because trolls could like the movie and still troll it, welcome to politics.
The problem is the same as it's always been. Stupid readers who don't consider the source.
Iâ(TM)m getting very tired of âoenewsâ and âoestudiesâ that say our common poisons that we use specifically to kill living things, are killing us. These shouldnâ(TM)t be surprising anyone.
Who thought that spraying poison in or around your house was a good idea?
If you want to kill things, thatâ(TM)s fine by me. But if you want to keep danger around you, itâ(TM)s a good bet that itâ(TM)s dangerous to you too.
Storing your gun in your childâ(TM)s bedroom, spraying poisons on your vegetable gardens, spraying ant poison all around your kitchen counters, tire spikes in your own driveway, booby traps in your own treasure room.
Why do we keep presenting this sort of AI non-sense as a new concept? We've had price-fixing, collusion, anti-competitive behaviour, insider trading, price gouging, and myriad other names for exactly the same thing.
We had water pollution in lakes, wells, and now oceans. We had air pollution and atmospheric pollution in ozone layers and smog. We had ground pollution in land-fills and dumps and litter. We had carbon pollution and carbon footprints. We had radiation pollution in nuclear disasters. We had light pollution. We had noise pollution.
And now, now we're inventing bio pollution.
Save the whales, save the dolphins, save the apes, save the birds. Screw up the mosquitoes?
So the mosquitoes won't be hungry. And the birds will eat the mosquitoes. And the birds won't be hungry. And the frogs won't be hungry. And the fish won't be hungry.
Then no one will lay any eggs.
Am I the only one who feels like maybe we shouldn't be destroying what little wildlife we have left? You know, at the genetic level?
We started here, a long time ago. I remember grocery-store drop-offs of reusable containers. Obviously glass bottles are the most obvious one.
We decided that disposable made a lot more sense. It wasn't just about hygiene.
Disposable packaging meant that there could be a lot less package of the "refills". You were always welcomed to use your own reusable containers. Buy ice cream "refills" in very little, very light, very disposable packaging.
If now the disposable packaging is already too much, that's a real problem. But the solution isn't to revert to heavy reusable containers being produced, transported, cleaned, shipped, damaged, and contaminated.
I don't want someone else's ice cream container. But I really don't want huge items of garbage in my bins either.
And do we really need to have this same discussion again? You're going to send a truck to my door, to collect my metal box, to transport it with fuel, to clean it with toxic chemicals and potable water. Toxic chemicals that were produced in a factory, potable water that's needed elsewhere, fuel from equally terrible places, all of which is better than a few grams of cardboard?
If you want to get rid of cardboard packaging without producing any waste, just wet it and throw it onto street. Heavy traffic will break it down in about ten minutes. Light traffic in a week. The forest in a few days.
The problem is as it always was. We produce waste that no one else eats. The fun of plastic. Paper was never the problem.
But we ditched plastic grocery-store bags with reusable nylon ones. Because somehow we forgot that paper bags were fine for almost everything. And we really forgot that the grocery store has a dumpster full of cardboard boxes to give away. And we completely ignored the ten little plastic bags of fruit and plastic-wrapped styrofoamed meats inside of the nylon bags.
No food, no water, no medicine, no doctors, no "quiet please, I'm diagnosing your dying child". So the solution is to replace the most reliable medical tool in the entire industry, a solid device that can be thrown around and has zero dependencies other than the patient, and someone to wield it, and we're going to replace it with a computer.
May I remind you:
No food, no water, no medicine, no doctors, no quiet, no electricity, no tech support.
It's very easy to mitigate this gaming effect. Such a site could easily normalize the scores based on the frequency of the influx. So let's say only counting the first hundred positive reviews of the month. A simple cap.
Of course, then you'd do the same with the negative reviews, limiting their effect as well.
And that, again, is where you've shot your own foot.
This is the reason that all of these completely fraudulent reputation sites are, at their very core, and from the ground up, completely fraudulent.
Would you want such a site to ignore a thousand negative reviews just because they came in all at once? But you want them to ignore the positive reviews?
It's easy to game any system that doesn't verify anything. And none of these reputation sites put any work into actually verifying that the review content is accurate. And that makes them completely meaningless.
Hire me. I have great references. They aren't related to me at all. I haven't paid them a dime. They aren't being paid to help me.
Reviews are valueless unless you know the reviewer. It's that simple.
It's really nice to know that there are countries with so much money and so few problems that they've begun to prioritize wormhole research over food, education, safety, and infrastructure. Must be nice to have all of the cheap problems solved. I wish my country had that kind of extra cash just lying around.
umm, I don't think you read anything. This study was about changing the point of view.
oh, and bull. Paint has depth. oh, and bull. 18" monitor showing a 36" painting. oh, and bull. Gallery lighting vs office lighting for enhancing depth.
Just like the study, you removed all context from your argument. You argued my point, not my point in context with the post. You can't jump a hurdle from a hundred feet away.
Ah, the "mona lisa". Well, a flat photograph of the mona lisa. Well, a digitized and compressed and substantially shrunken photograph of the mona lisa....and, in RGB....and back-lit
Ah, the "viewer". Well, from a seated position. In a poorly-lit room.
Ah, "follows". Well, with a calibrated reference-object in the way.
Sample size doesn't matter when you're measuring something completely different anyway.
I love that people think pictures are the things that they picture. They are not. That's not the mona lisa, and it's not the Hindenburg. It's a picture of the mona lisa, and it's a picture of the Hindenburg -- well, no more than half of it.
If you're saying that hiring someone for minimum wage to flip burgers, and then adding a non-compete with zero additional compensation at any time, I doubt that would hold up in most places.
You'll find that there are almost zero contracts that you can write without the physical transfer of value. In fact, most contracts aren't considered "signed" until they are both signed, and money has been transferred.
To that end, things of value are usually paid for in a contract. Non-competes, around here at least, have value, and must be offset with some form of compensation.
I'm sure there are myriad exceptions, of course. And obviously anyone can argue anything in a court, and any fight can be won by any party -- what a great judicial system, by the way. But all of that said, I've been advised to always be explicit in what is compensated with what, in order to further ensure a judge's inference.
"The more things change, the more they aren't any different."
In the beginning, there was tv. And lo, it was good, for any content creators could broadcast unto the lord.
Then tv begat tv channels, with news and entertainment independent. Then channels begat more channels which in-turn begat networks ABC, NBC, and CBS (three ways of spelling the exact same thing).
Alas, content creators would no longer broadcast anything. For 'twere the networks would control the airwaves.
And so it stood, for many ages, as networks created content for their channels, and content writers were at the mercy of the networks. Thus followed the big bang, ye old fragmentation: Scores of networks and hundreds of channels.
And then, out of divine intervention, the gods themselves begat the internet. And lo' it was good. For content creators could, once again, broadcast unto the lord.
So it stood, until such time as the content creators would threaten the networks. For you see, 'tis good to be a network. And so the internet of the gods' creation would begat netflix, prime video, and youtube (more inventive names they are certainly not) And lo' these channels would gather content from across the fragmentation of networks.
And then netflix did begat netflix originals, And prime video did purchase top gear, (asterisk, double-dagger)
But, as does echo through the ages: 'tis good to be a network.
And Disney shall fragment theirs, And Warner shall fragment theirs. And to each studio, so a fragment shall begat.
And thusly, surprise shall follow surprise, Not for novelty nor for ingenuity, But for the willful blindness of all.
My mortgage rate was 2.19% until last month, when it jumped to 3.33%. Thirty years ago, my parents were paying 22%. That's a factor of more than ten. Also, I rounded up to ten from eight.
Averages are meaningless when we're talking about individuals and multiple-causes. Math doesn't work outside of the lab. That's why we have statistics, scientific precision, threshold effects, and english.
Dude, cars are way way way cheaper. You can buy a used car today for under a thousand dollars, and it might last for three years. I've sold some of those. You can buy an almost new car for $10'000, and it'll be fantastic for five years easy. It won't have power anything.
I'd argue that, around here in my snowy climate, the typical first car for wealthy family children is roughly $20'000. It'll have power everything, moon roof, and be big enough for four adults with luggage for two adults and two children. It'll have airbags, child seats, everything you could need, and everything that the most expensive luxury car had forty years ago. And it'll need almost no maintenance -- under a thousand a year. It'll last up to ten years if you treat it well.
My point is that all new new cars are luxury cars. I'm sorry they don't fly.
My current car is a convertible sports car. It' cost me $41'744.34, Canadian, delivered, in 2009. It's nearly ten years old. I haven't spent more than $12'000 on repairs, and until last year, that number was $5'000. I've spent another $10'000 on consumables including brakes, tires, and rims. If it weren't the sports car, I'd have spent a third of that (I buy expensive rims and tires, and go through them fast). So, if I had bought the mazda 3, instead of the mazda mx-5, I'd have spent $25+$5+$4 = $34'000 to last year. That's under $4'000 per year. Plus $1'500 insurance, and $2'000 gas = $7'500 per year for a car.
I would argue that a mazda 3, honda civic, toyota carrola, all fit into that price point -- $7'500 per year for 8 years, which is pretty well the warranty period, by the way.
So, given that a wealthy family's child, at age 19, could easily have a job earning $50'000 per year, we're talking about 15% of their income on their car -- for the best car-practical. That very same exact car, three-years used, drops to $10'000 instead of $25'000. So 34 becomes $17'000, and still $7'500 per year in car, without the large down-payment. And that's ignoring leasing options.
All of this is Canadian dollars, by the way, and Japanese cars. A good idea, since GM is closing.
So, we're at 15% of a single person's income. 8% of a dual-income couple's income.
And there's still ride-sharing, buses, trains, and carpooling.
Let's move on.
College education is free. Welcome to the internet. Do you mean college certification? You might want to look into how quickly that's being ignored by employers. And it's certainly not required to start your own business around here. 25 years, and not a single client has every asked me for details about my education. And considering what else you could do in those four years instead, like starting in the mail-room, you might want to reconsider your education ideals. Also, if you mean a trades school -- you know, where you actually learn a career skill -- it'll be two years, and you'll have a job instantly. Also, if you're really smart, you'll get the job first, and let them send you for that trade training at no cost to you at all.
Bigger tvs, that's a joke right? $300 gets you a 50" these days. I just bought a 75" for $1'200. We're talking peanuts. Odds are anyone who can't afford $1'200 for a tvision doesn't have a room large enough for 75" anyway.
And no one wants to go out to restaurants anymore. Count the articles in your spare time.
Like I said. You live in a very different land my friend.
You might consider moving. What job skills do you have? Maybe I can hire you.
Am I "one appointed by another to act in his place"? No. Well, I've appointed myself to read, write, and enforce contracts between my business, it's suppliers, and it's clients.
Ask a legal litigator (like my beloved), and they'll tell you that most of my contracts would never hold up in a courtroom.
Ask any small business owner, and you'll learn that business agreements aren't required to hold up in a courtroom. They'll never see a courtroom because fighting in a courtroom is more expensive than anything the other side wants. Instead, such agreements are meant to formalize what the two parties have already agreed.
I've been in-business for 25 years. I've written close to 100 agreements, and signed well over 100. I've never seen a courtroom. Only two relationships have gone sour, for a total of ~$3'000 that I've refunded. That's factored under close to three million dollars of revenue. So that's 0.1%.
I, and you too, would call that incredibly successful.
Incidentally, one of my tricks is to write such agreements in as much past-tense as is possible to make true. The more of the responsibilities that you can enact ahead of signing the agreement, the most stable the agreement is.
Granted, and certainly caveats, I'm not in an industry where lives can be lost, gross sums of money can vanish, or clients engage in criminal behaviour. Obviously those kinds of liabilities might depend on a legal system to contain them. I'm also not a large company responsible for a large number of employees.
Slashdot Mirror
I did include games and 3D, but it's buried in the middle somewhere.
Computer hardware will always and forever grow -- I still remember wondering why the hell any graphics card would need 8MB of ram. That was before 3d of course, and before HD too.
The thing is that all of that computer hardware, going forward, is exclusively for computer industries -- computer graphics, computer-generated video, computer-generated audio, computer-generated 3d printing.
But any company that sells lumber, or white socks, or headphones, or water bottles, or travel arrangements, or or or, is already computerized as much as possible. There is nothing more to gain in the foreseeable future. What's a lumber yard going to computerize next that needs more hardware than is available today? Simulating which wood fibres termites would eat first?
Outside of direct-computer industries, there really aren't any routines left that require more hardware at this time. Computers are already pretty gosh-darn-good at what they do. And as you've alluded, we're a long way from them being able to do anything more.
And yes, I mean self-driving, self-flying, self-anything. Anyone currently going nuts to produce millions of lines of code to self-drive anything, good-on-ya for paving the way through the research stage. It won't work until it's way way way simpler. I swear to you that my human brain doesn't perform advanced calculus when I drive, just like it doesn't when I path-find around my office.
It's been nearly 35 years since I started using a computer for routine tasks. There simply aren't many new routines to computerize. For that reason, and I'm happy to say for that reason alone, computers will last longer and longer.
Routine one was numbers, think spreadsheets. I managed my elementary-school baseball pool in lotus 1-2-3. Yes, today's spreadsheets are "better", but they don't address any new routines. Once we had charts and graphs, that was it. Don't cry to me about pivot tables that no one uses.
Routine two was writing, think word processing. I put it second to numbers only because numbers needed computers, where writing didn't. But fast writing did. My essays were done in Wordstar for the longest time. By the time fancy fonts came around, we were done. Again, don't cry to me about tables and pictures, that's next.
Routine three was publishing & layout. I used PrintShop -- yeah, I'm calling ten-foot-long birthday banners layout. What of it?
E-mail (desperately trying to remember my first client, really can't, probably compuserve), web browser (duh, ncsa mosaic), music (winamp, still), graphics (jasc paintshop pro), audio (audacity), video (not me), programming (ultraedit since the dawn of our careers).
Add various messengers (ICQ) as the dawn of social media if you will, and newsfeeds (pointcast) as the now-dead origins of podcast directories.
The point is that with the singular exception of "MORE GRAPHICS", be it larger video, more 3d, raytracing, and bigger and bigger games, I think we're finding that there aren't any more parts of life to computerize.
Considering your life five years ago, compared with today, I doubt most people will find any significant routine that is computerizable today, that wasn't five years ago -- leading to the conclusion that a five-year old computer would be just fine.
There was a time when last year's technology was completely useless. Burn a music CD in an hour, but need three to get through failed attempts, or burn a CD in five minutes with ease. Last year's machine couldn't play a single new game, and would never be able to ever again. Can browse the internet, or can't. Could print in colour or black and white only.
We ain't there no more. Windows Vista needed near-brand-new hardware. Windows 10 could run on twenty-year old hardware. The vast majority of businesses today, that existed twenty years ago, don't need anything different than they had twenty years ago. It's hideous, but my local lumber yard uses machines and software from my Wordstar days. They sell wood just the same.
My local hydroponics store still uses carbon paper. I bet you can guess why.
Microsoft adopts Chrome software, maybe Google's adopting Surface hardware?
a 70-year old thinks things are expensive. Big surprise. Also, a wholesaler thinks retail is expensive. Again, big surprise.
So I bought a fancy pair of fancy frameless frames and lenses. When it comes to eyeglasses, I probably bought the brand we all know to be considered the fanciest. I'm exceptionally happy with them. I've bought the same brand, for roughly the same dollar amount, three times in a row.
Basically, my entire adulthood, I've been buying the same shadowy brand. My prescription has changed those three times. I've kept going back.
At ~$650 CDN per pair, I'm paying roughly $1.50 per week of my life on glasses. On high-end glasses that make me comfortable. Right next to them were options for half the price.
Who's complaining that they bought, retail, $300 glasses that last for years?
Who's complaining about spending $2 bucks a week on defective eyes?
Do these people buy coffee? At coffee shops for $5 a cup, in k-cups for $1 a cup? I'd wager they aren't grinding their own beans for pennies a cup. I'm the only one who does that -- and my friends howl at me for doing so.
Perhaps these people buy bottled water for $2 a bottle, instead of $0.20 per metric tonne from the their own tap.
Oh wait, maybe they buy water pitchers with carbon filters in them, for about ten times the cost of fitting the exact same type of filter to their cold water line.
I spent $650 CDN on my glasses. I bought them retail. Conveniently. From someone who answered my questions on three separate visits for a total of almost three hours. Someone who let me try on a few dozen pairs. They were shipped across the ocean. They were stocked and cleaned and supported and guaranteed -- even if I just changed my mind about the coatings. And I could have chosen the cheaper brand.
I'm not complaining. Remind me, on my death-bed, to complain that over the course of 90 years, I spent $9'000 for perfect vision. Also remind me what I did for a living, and that I liked to look at stuff.
There are plenty of things to complain about. Nearly all of them are that people choose to spend money, when they have perfectly free alternatives. This is not one of them. Either of them.
when last I checked, a "lack of information" is a great reason to avoid something dangerous. Actually, it might be the one and only and best reason to avoid anything dangerous -- from bicycles to bungee jumping. Get informed first. And if you thought you were informed, and suddenly you discover that you aren't informed because you can't explain something that happened, well then, avoid again until you become informed again.
In other words, let someone else run the tests. That's exactly what test-pilots are for.
In the case of a web-site, it's not like following a person through public. It's like following a customer of yours around your own store.
I don't think you'll find any jurisdiction in which it's illegal, or even frowned upon, to record how customers walk through your store, which shelves they look at, which clothes they try on, which products they pick up. And if you want to sell your customer-usage data to someone, it's yours because it's actually your customer data.
This all comes down to the purple pages. Phone books were illegal, in concept -- a book of everyone's phone number, name, and street address. But it was accepted anyway because you had to know the person's name. But there were the purple pages -- the very same phone book, indexed by street address. So you could look up a street address, and see who lived there. The purple pages were considered illegal -- for privacy reasons -- and were not widely published as a result.
Until they were.
So the only true answer to your question is actually the simplest one: slippery slope.
Yeah, it did this winter. I believe it was -25ish, and then a wind chill to -39. I was in it. It was down-right hostile.
Ah, melting the ice on the sidewalks. Magic. Poof! It's gone.
Where'd it go?
Remind me, beside what are the sidewalks walked? Oh yeah.
The road.
Because flowing water, yeah, that's what we want at -39 degrees around here.
Sure you can heat the entire city. Sure you can make it all indoors. But if you expect to beat winter, and come out ahead financially, then you've never understood winter.
I'm surprised no one has gone the other way on this. Disposable sidewalks. Full of cracks to absorb the ice and maintain traction. But they only last one season, or less. And they are very easy and very inexpensive and very quick to replace or repair.
Maybe a poured "concrete", fibrous like wood-pulp. Let it crack. Pour some more every month.
Easily re-written:
"City tools designed and built in 1980, still effective 40 years later, with near-zero funds wasted in multiple upgrades along the way."
Or perhaps:
"Tax-payers uninteresting in making government employees' jobs easier, at great expense."
Hey, then there's:
"BIC pens, glass windows, concrete, and electrical wiring from the '80s still running most government offices -- computers too."
And finally:
"Government offices located in buildings that don't meet modern building codes. They haven't met building codes since they were built in the '80s."
So sorry you need to hit a few more key strokes to sell real estate. Boohoo. I'm not paying $36 million dollars to make your job a little easier. If you want to pay for it, go ahead. I think it's still fine as-is. Call me when the computer stops working.
Until then, I praise the well-designed, well-thought-out, and well-acquisitioned systems already in-place.
We've been down this road so many times. I don't understand why we're still on it.
The whole entire complete obvious purpose of movie reviews is to decide whether or not I want to see the movie before going to see the movie.
I don't need the reviews after the release. I need them before.
In fact, that's exactly why movies have pre-releases -- to let some audiences (i.e. enthusiasts) tell the public in-advance.
So now I'm not able to see the movie on opening weekend, if I want to read the reviews first. Great. So I can wait a week, and see it later, right? Nope, because then the very same trolls will be in the very same position to screw things over in the very same way.
So we've done absolutely nothing here.
Like I said, we've run this road before. Welcome to reviews and recommendations since the dawn of time. If they aren't co-roberated, authenticated, and trusted, then they are meaningless.
Would it be so very difficult for sites like Rotten Tomatoes to do any fact-checking whatsoever to ensure that reviewers have actually seen the movie? Or at least paid for it? Truth is, it still wouldn't matter, because trolls could like the movie and still troll it, welcome to politics.
The problem is the same as it's always been. Stupid readers who don't consider the source.
Iâ(TM)m getting very tired of âoenewsâ and âoestudiesâ that say our common poisons that we use specifically to kill living things, are killing us. These shouldnâ(TM)t be surprising anyone.
Who thought that spraying poison in or around your house was a good idea?
If you want to kill things, thatâ(TM)s fine by me. But if you want to keep danger around you, itâ(TM)s a good bet that itâ(TM)s dangerous to you too.
Storing your gun in your childâ(TM)s bedroom, spraying poisons on your vegetable gardens, spraying ant poison all around your kitchen counters, tire spikes in your own driveway, booby traps in your own treasure room.
Enjoy.
Why do we keep presenting this sort of AI non-sense as a new concept? We've had price-fixing, collusion, anti-competitive behaviour, insider trading, price gouging, and myriad other names for exactly the same thing.
It's never been difficult to rip people off.
It's been illegal.
That's it.
It still is illegal.
Start arresting people.
You're mistaken. This consequence is very much intended. They want to reduce the mosquito population.
That's the problem. Forget what-happens-next. They already have it wrong.
What they really want is to stop mosquitoes from biting humans. That has absolutely nothing to do with killing mosquitoes.
Actually, I take that back. That too is too far. What they really want is to stop mosquitoes from spreading diseases to humans.
Again, absolutely nothing to do with the mosquito population.
It's not a "consequence" when it's the direct result of what you're doing. That's called cause and effect.
We had water pollution in lakes, wells, and now oceans.
We had air pollution and atmospheric pollution in ozone layers and smog.
We had ground pollution in land-fills and dumps and litter.
We had carbon pollution and carbon footprints.
We had radiation pollution in nuclear disasters.
We had light pollution.
We had noise pollution.
And now, now we're inventing bio pollution.
Save the whales, save the dolphins, save the apes, save the birds. Screw up the mosquitoes?
So the mosquitoes won't be hungry.
And the birds will eat the mosquitoes.
And the birds won't be hungry.
And the frogs won't be hungry.
And the fish won't be hungry.
Then no one will lay any eggs.
Am I the only one who feels like maybe we shouldn't be destroying what little wildlife we have left? You know, at the genetic level?
We started here, a long time ago. I remember grocery-store drop-offs of reusable containers. Obviously glass bottles are the most obvious one.
We decided that disposable made a lot more sense. It wasn't just about hygiene.
Disposable packaging meant that there could be a lot less package of the "refills". You were always welcomed to use your own reusable containers. Buy ice cream "refills" in very little, very light, very disposable packaging.
If now the disposable packaging is already too much, that's a real problem. But the solution isn't to revert to heavy reusable containers being produced, transported, cleaned, shipped, damaged, and contaminated.
I don't want someone else's ice cream container. But I really don't want huge items of garbage in my bins either.
And do we really need to have this same discussion again? You're going to send a truck to my door, to collect my metal box, to transport it with fuel, to clean it with toxic chemicals and potable water. Toxic chemicals that were produced in a factory, potable water that's needed elsewhere, fuel from equally terrible places, all of which is better than a few grams of cardboard?
If you want to get rid of cardboard packaging without producing any waste, just wet it and throw it onto street. Heavy traffic will break it down in about ten minutes. Light traffic in a week. The forest in a few days.
The problem is as it always was. We produce waste that no one else eats. The fun of plastic. Paper was never the problem.
But we ditched plastic grocery-store bags with reusable nylon ones. Because somehow we forgot that paper bags were fine for almost everything. And we really forgot that the grocery store has a dumpster full of cardboard boxes to give away. And we completely ignored the ten little plastic bags of fruit and plastic-wrapped styrofoamed meats inside of the nylon bags.
Love making jobs. Just say so.
No food, no water, no medicine, no doctors, no "quiet please, I'm diagnosing your dying child". So the solution is to replace the most reliable medical tool in the entire industry, a solid device that can be thrown around and has zero dependencies other than the patient, and someone to wield it, and we're going to replace it with a computer.
May I remind you:
No food, no water, no medicine, no doctors, no quiet, no electricity, no tech support.
It's very easy to mitigate this gaming effect. Such a site could easily normalize the scores based on the frequency of the influx. So let's say only counting the first hundred positive reviews of the month. A simple cap.
Of course, then you'd do the same with the negative reviews, limiting their effect as well.
And that, again, is where you've shot your own foot.
This is the reason that all of these completely fraudulent reputation sites are, at their very core, and from the ground up, completely fraudulent.
Would you want such a site to ignore a thousand negative reviews just because they came in all at once? But you want them to ignore the positive reviews?
It's easy to game any system that doesn't verify anything. And none of these reputation sites put any work into actually verifying that the review content is accurate. And that makes them completely meaningless.
Hire me. I have great references. They aren't related to me at all. I haven't paid them a dime. They aren't being paid to help me.
Reviews are valueless unless you know the reviewer. It's that simple.
So you're saying that you could have fed your population 75 years ago, if you hadn't split the atom? Maybe that would have been a good idea.
It's really nice to know that there are countries with so much money and so few problems that they've begun to prioritize wormhole research over food, education, safety, and infrastructure. Must be nice to have all of the cheap problems solved. I wish my country had that kind of extra cash just lying around.
umm, I don't think you read anything. This study was about changing the point of view.
oh, and bull. Paint has depth.
oh, and bull. 18" monitor showing a 36" painting.
oh, and bull. Gallery lighting vs office lighting for enhancing depth.
Just like the study, you removed all context from your argument.
You argued my point, not my point in context with the post.
You can't jump a hurdle from a hundred feet away.
Ah, the "mona lisa". ...and, in RGB. ...and back-lit
Well, a flat photograph of the mona lisa.
Well, a digitized and compressed and substantially shrunken photograph of the mona lisa.
Ah, the "viewer".
Well, from a seated position.
In a poorly-lit room.
Ah, "follows".
Well, with a calibrated reference-object in the way.
Sample size doesn't matter when you're measuring something completely different anyway.
I love that people think pictures are the things that they picture. They are not. That's not the mona lisa, and it's not the Hindenburg. It's a picture of the mona lisa, and it's a picture of the Hindenburg -- well, no more than half of it.
If you're saying that hiring someone for minimum wage to flip burgers, and then adding a non-compete with zero additional compensation at any time, I doubt that would hold up in most places.
You'll find that there are almost zero contracts that you can write without the physical transfer of value. In fact, most contracts aren't considered "signed" until they are both signed, and money has been transferred.
To that end, things of value are usually paid for in a contract. Non-competes, around here at least, have value, and must be offset with some form of compensation.
I'm sure there are myriad exceptions, of course. And obviously anyone can argue anything in a court, and any fight can be won by any party -- what a great judicial system, by the way. But all of that said, I've been advised to always be explicit in what is compensated with what, in order to further ensure a judge's inference.
Quid Pro Quo is, of course, a basal legal system.
"The more things change, the more they aren't any different."
In the beginning, there was tv. And lo, it was good, for any content creators could broadcast unto the lord.
Then tv begat tv channels, with news and entertainment independent.
Then channels begat more channels which in-turn begat networks ABC, NBC, and CBS (three ways of spelling the exact same thing).
Alas, content creators would no longer broadcast anything. For 'twere the networks would control the airwaves.
And so it stood, for many ages, as networks created content for their channels, and content writers were at the mercy of the networks.
Thus followed the big bang, ye old fragmentation:
Scores of networks and hundreds of channels.
And then, out of divine intervention, the gods themselves begat the internet.
And lo' it was good. For content creators could, once again, broadcast unto the lord.
So it stood, until such time as the content creators would threaten the networks.
For you see, 'tis good to be a network.
And so the internet of the gods' creation would begat netflix, prime video, and youtube (more inventive names they are certainly not)
And lo' these channels would gather content from across the fragmentation of networks.
And then netflix did begat netflix originals,
And prime video did purchase top gear, (asterisk, double-dagger)
But, as does echo through the ages:
'tis good to be a network.
And Disney shall fragment theirs,
And Warner shall fragment theirs.
And to each studio, so a fragment shall begat.
And thusly, surprise shall follow surprise,
Not for novelty nor for ingenuity,
But for the willful blindness of all.
Your realm is very different than mine, Sir.
My mortgage rate was 2.19% until last month, when it jumped to 3.33%. Thirty years ago, my parents were paying 22%. That's a factor of more than ten. Also, I rounded up to ten from eight.
Averages are meaningless when we're talking about individuals and multiple-causes. Math doesn't work outside of the lab. That's why we have statistics, scientific precision, threshold effects, and english.
Dude, cars are way way way cheaper. You can buy a used car today for under a thousand dollars, and it might last for three years. I've sold some of those. You can buy an almost new car for $10'000, and it'll be fantastic for five years easy. It won't have power anything.
I'd argue that, around here in my snowy climate, the typical first car for wealthy family children is roughly $20'000. It'll have power everything, moon roof, and be big enough for four adults with luggage for two adults and two children. It'll have airbags, child seats, everything you could need, and everything that the most expensive luxury car had forty years ago. And it'll need almost no maintenance -- under a thousand a year. It'll last up to ten years if you treat it well.
My point is that all new new cars are luxury cars. I'm sorry they don't fly.
My current car is a convertible sports car. It' cost me $41'744.34, Canadian, delivered, in 2009. It's nearly ten years old. I haven't spent more than $12'000 on repairs, and until last year, that number was $5'000. I've spent another $10'000 on consumables including brakes, tires, and rims. If it weren't the sports car, I'd have spent a third of that (I buy expensive rims and tires, and go through them fast). So, if I had bought the mazda 3, instead of the mazda mx-5, I'd have spent $25+$5+$4 = $34'000 to last year. That's under $4'000 per year. Plus $1'500 insurance, and $2'000 gas = $7'500 per year for a car.
I would argue that a mazda 3, honda civic, toyota carrola, all fit into that price point -- $7'500 per year for 8 years, which is pretty well the warranty period, by the way.
So, given that a wealthy family's child, at age 19, could easily have a job earning $50'000 per year, we're talking about 15% of their income on their car -- for the best car-practical. That very same exact car, three-years used, drops to $10'000 instead of $25'000. So 34 becomes $17'000, and still $7'500 per year in car, without the large down-payment. And that's ignoring leasing options.
All of this is Canadian dollars, by the way, and Japanese cars. A good idea, since GM is closing.
So, we're at 15% of a single person's income. 8% of a dual-income couple's income.
And there's still ride-sharing, buses, trains, and carpooling.
Let's move on.
College education is free. Welcome to the internet. Do you mean college certification? You might want to look into how quickly that's being ignored by employers. And it's certainly not required to start your own business around here. 25 years, and not a single client has every asked me for details about my education. And considering what else you could do in those four years instead, like starting in the mail-room, you might want to reconsider your education ideals. Also, if you mean a trades school -- you know, where you actually learn a career skill -- it'll be two years, and you'll have a job instantly. Also, if you're really smart, you'll get the job first, and let them send you for that trade training at no cost to you at all.
Bigger tvs, that's a joke right? $300 gets you a 50" these days. I just bought a 75" for $1'200. We're talking peanuts. Odds are anyone who can't afford $1'200 for a tvision doesn't have a room large enough for 75" anyway.
And no one wants to go out to restaurants anymore. Count the articles in your spare time.
Like I said. You live in a very different land my friend.
You might consider moving. What job skills do you have? Maybe I can hire you.
Am I "one appointed by another to act in his place"? No. Well, I've appointed myself to read, write, and enforce contracts between my business, it's suppliers, and it's clients.
Ask a legal litigator (like my beloved), and they'll tell you that most of my contracts would never hold up in a courtroom.
Ask any small business owner, and you'll learn that business agreements aren't required to hold up in a courtroom. They'll never see a courtroom because fighting in a courtroom is more expensive than anything the other side wants. Instead, such agreements are meant to formalize what the two parties have already agreed.
I've been in-business for 25 years. I've written close to 100 agreements, and signed well over 100. I've never seen a courtroom. Only two relationships have gone sour, for a total of ~$3'000 that I've refunded. That's factored under close to three million dollars of revenue. So that's 0.1%.
I, and you too, would call that incredibly successful.
Incidentally, one of my tricks is to write such agreements in as much past-tense as is possible to make true. The more of the responsibilities that you can enact ahead of signing the agreement, the most stable the agreement is.
Granted, and certainly caveats, I'm not in an industry where lives can be lost, gross sums of money can vanish, or clients engage in criminal behaviour. Obviously those kinds of liabilities might depend on a legal system to contain them. I'm also not a large company responsible for a large number of employees.