I think you're being a bit pessimistic, and I definitely have to disagree that this is a new trend. I'm currently reading Vanity Fair - a book written in the 1840s that's mainly about the social and domestic life of the wealthy and wannabe wealthy of England after the Napoleanic wars. I was surprised to discover how many of the accoutrements of wealth were actually rented by the British nobility. They would borrow hunting horses from a livery stable, rent a (furnished) townhouse from a middle class landlord, rent books from paid lending libraries, and even rent their clothes. As I understand, this occurred because most of the wealth either came from quarterly rent checks out of the family estate (their tenant farmers were renters too) or from interest on perpetual bonds bought from the Royal Exchequer; so regular rental payments were much easier to budget for than large capital outlays. Renting many of their possessions was necessary for all but the ultra mega wealthy in Britain before the 20th century.
For a more technological example, remember how IBM thought of mini/microcomputers in the early days - forty years ago, they envisioned users renting computer time for use on a dumb terminal, and scoffed at the idea of home users owning their own computing resources.
So I don't think that this de-emphasis of personal ownership is a new or permanent trend. Hopefully, the benefits of renting/streaming/etc. will outweigh the downsides.
The thing is, Valve makes the vast majority of its money from Steam. Everything else they do, like the Steambox, their first party titles, etc., are designed in some way to further the usage of Steam as a platform by gamers and publishers. The Steambox isn't a product that they expect to make much money from - it's a hedge against Microsoft iOSing Windows first, and an advertisement for Steam second. So I don't think that a more typical gaming company would have rushed this thing either.
I'll second this opinion. Valve's current darling is Dota 2, which I play frequently. I think Valve has done a fantastic job of releasing a free to play game that is simultaneously profitable and utterly free of the annoyances that plague most free to play games. However, it's very clear that Dota 2 is intended to be a "reference design" rather than a cash cow franchise - its a demonstration to other publishers that they can use Steam to make profitable but non-exploitative freemium games. Heck, Valve didn't even develop Dota; they just persuaded Icefrog to give them the rights to it, and incorporated it into the Source engine.
I think of Valve's first party titles these days in the same way that I think of Google's Nexus program. We're seeing Google wind down the Nexus program because it has largely accomplished its goal of convincing OEMs to make their phones more Googley (for better or worse); Valve is likewise de-emphasizing their first party titles.
While the results of this particular study may be questionable, it's annoying to see how many comments dismiss the study out of hand just because it was performed by osteopathic physicians. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in the US, "Doctor of Osteopathic" has a specific meaning - they are legitimate physicians whose training differs from that of allopathic physicians in philosophy rather than in medical knowledge or practice.
The only medical distinction between a "traditional" MD and a DO is that a DO undergoes an 8 week course in osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT), which is a specific therapy for lower back pain, and which NIH studies have shown to be "mildly to moderately effective." Other than that, medical training between the two branches is indistinguishable.
There's a common quip about quack medicine: "What do you call alternative medicine when it gets scientifically verified? Medicine." I find it comforting that at least one group of (former) quacks in the US actually took that sentiment to heart. Now if only chiropractors and homeopaths would do the same...
I'll second that statement. Microwaving is especially nice for me because I can make the bacon crispy without having to char it, which was always my pet peeve about bacon.
Presumably those were two non-overlapping groups of whiners?
I don't have a problem with capped internet. I know, it's heresy to many people here, but I really don't. The marginal cost for bandwidth isn't zero and no amount of wishing by Slashdotters will make it so. It makes sense that there's a mechanism in place to limit the impact of heavy users on lighter, if they're both paying the same costs.
Of course, having said that, I fully expect Comcast to go about implementing a theoretically sensible idea in the most discriminatory, expensive, heavy-handed, and frustrating way possible. What the hell is wrong with those guys?
How nice of you to make that decision for everyone else. Believe it or not, it is actually possible that sometimes the more expensive, more secure option doesn't offer enough benefits to outweigh the increased costs in certain use cases.
I'm sure that my cheapo router at home doesn't meet your lofty standards of safety. I understand the potential security risks that this router poses reasonably well. I could have spent $50 extra to buy a "better" router, then spent an evening or so figuring out how to hack it so I could put your approved firmware on it. But I don't, because it's a freaking home router, and I've made a reasoned decision that the security benefits don't outweigh the extra time, money, and hassle. Maybe I'm wrong about that (though I seriously doubt it), but why shouldn't I get to make that decision?
But, at least to me, the main benefit of carrying a credit card is that it lets me avoid cash and cash equivalents, not to mention the need for juggling multiple accounts. I don't have to treat my credit card like cash. Why anyone would deliberately want to deal with something "like cash" when they can avoid it is beyond me.
I, on the other hand, am horrified at the idea of trusting either Paypal or Google with any personal or financial information. My credit union isn't perfect, but I'll take them any day of the week over your suggestions.
On an unrelated note, I find it slightly amusing that you disparage restaurants for getting their payment processing equipment from Ebay while lauding the use of Paypal...
As a lover of well done steaks, thank you for saving me the trouble of replying. Most places that I've ordered well done steaks at will do exactly what you say, and it seems to work out ok. I've only had one restaurant give me trouble about it, so I will never eat there again. I swear, steak snobs like Xicor (or Anthony Bourdain) are worse than wine snobs sometimes.
Well, not that it's much of a defense, but absolutely no one that I know of took the SAT essay section seriously. I have not heard of any university that actually considered that section of the SAT when making admission decisions. So our education establishment wasn't completely stupid, I guess.
Do you actually have hard evidence for this, or is this prejudice? I'd really hate to think about going through the hiring process for an employer who looked down on me because I did too well in school.
Not just that, but Gmail educational accounts usually end in @Name_Of_Institution. So, even if you could make the dubious argument that the sender is responsible for knowing Gmail's terms if they want to send email to a Gmail recipient, there's no way to know that the recipient uses Gmail.
I would speculate that the low speeds, at least, occur because Americans simply don't care. Yes, yes, I know that plenty of American Slashdotters care. But competition tends to make companies better at producing what customers demand. If there isn't sufficient demand for a product, such as gigabit internet, then no amount of competition will cause companies to start producing that product.
Now, that's not an absolute statement, and low demand isn't the same thing as no demand. If Google wants to provide Kansas City with gigabit internet on its own initiative at a low, possibly subsidized, price as a publicity stunt, I'm sure plenty of people will sign up. And better marketing and public awareness might raise demand for better internet speeds. But my guess is that most Americans are satisfied with the internet speeds, or at least not upset enough to do anything about it (remember, Slashdot isn't America). My own city actually has heated competition between three different ISP's. It's led to lower prices, which customers obviously want, but not faster speeds, which customers don't seem to care about.
No. No I don't. I mean, maybe someone was saying that, but in practice a goodly number of the early cellphones were bought precisely for emergencies, especially by anxious well-off parents, or teachers supervising school trips, or the like.
Well, too often people in accidents would "handle it" by bleeding out on the side of the road and dying. It very nearly happened to a family friend, but, fortunately, he was able to be life-flighted to a hospital because the bystanders who found him had cell phones to call for help with. I mean, I'm pretty sure it would have been better if he had just died instead of making a full recovery, right?
Also, maybe it's just my part of the country, but I haven't seen those call boxes on the highway in years, and even when they were around, they were several miles apart.
No, we don't have competition, and unless you are an extremely rare exception, you don't either. Having a competitive retail electrical distribution infrastructure is difficult, bordering on impossible. That's why they're regulated as utilities.
It's always seemed weird to me that there's so little limitation on who can call themselves an engineer. Doctors have medical school and board exams, lawyers have the bar exam, heck, even cosmetologists have to be board certified.
In my own profession - p&c actuary - I have to pass a series of 11 exams plus continuing education courses just to become fully credentialed. And when I (someday, please God) get done with that, I will be personally liable for every actuarial statement that I ever produce. I could potentially be personally sued for even the tiniest error in any actuarial statement, although that kind of thing is very rate. And I have to go through all of this just to make sure that I don't incorrectly estimate a client's auto insurance costs.
Actually, the "price" for lawyers really is going down. Hardly a day goes by without the Wall Street Journal bemoaning the crappy job prospects for legal talent.
Unfortunately, the price for lawyers is going down unevenly - it's difficult to find a job, so underemployment is high, but the per hour fees once a lawyer has a job are as high as ever. This means that the lawyers for General Mills need to "work" harder than ever to justify not getting layed off into a very rough job market; while at the same time, legal expenses for the average guy who has to fight against GM's aforesaid overzealous lawyers are paying just as many legal fees as ever.
You know, instead of being "sure," you could actually spend 30 seconds checking Google before spreading your prejudices as fact. I can't speak for other products, but that wasn't true for my Fitbit. There's no need to give them a real name - when you register your device, they just ask for a name to call you by (which can be anything), and a valid email. They might be able to figure out my real name when I set it up to sync with my phone (which wasn't required either), but I guess I'm just not paranoid enough to mind.
Say what you will about the unreasonable price, but the TI graphing calculators last forever. I got a TI-83+ in 1999 when I was in middle school, and I'm still using it frequently at work 15 years later. It hardly ever even needs the batteries changed.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're being a bit pessimistic, and I definitely have to disagree that this is a new trend. I'm currently reading Vanity Fair - a book written in the 1840s that's mainly about the social and domestic life of the wealthy and wannabe wealthy of England after the Napoleanic wars. I was surprised to discover how many of the accoutrements of wealth were actually rented by the British nobility. They would borrow hunting horses from a livery stable, rent a (furnished) townhouse from a middle class landlord, rent books from paid lending libraries, and even rent their clothes. As I understand, this occurred because most of the wealth either came from quarterly rent checks out of the family estate (their tenant farmers were renters too) or from interest on perpetual bonds bought from the Royal Exchequer; so regular rental payments were much easier to budget for than large capital outlays. Renting many of their possessions was necessary for all but the ultra mega wealthy in Britain before the 20th century.
For a more technological example, remember how IBM thought of mini/microcomputers in the early days - forty years ago, they envisioned users renting computer time for use on a dumb terminal, and scoffed at the idea of home users owning their own computing resources.
So I don't think that this de-emphasis of personal ownership is a new or permanent trend. Hopefully, the benefits of renting/streaming/etc. will outweigh the downsides.
The thing is, Valve makes the vast majority of its money from Steam. Everything else they do, like the Steambox, their first party titles, etc., are designed in some way to further the usage of Steam as a platform by gamers and publishers. The Steambox isn't a product that they expect to make much money from - it's a hedge against Microsoft iOSing Windows first, and an advertisement for Steam second. So I don't think that a more typical gaming company would have rushed this thing either.
I'll second this opinion. Valve's current darling is Dota 2, which I play frequently. I think Valve has done a fantastic job of releasing a free to play game that is simultaneously profitable and utterly free of the annoyances that plague most free to play games. However, it's very clear that Dota 2 is intended to be a "reference design" rather than a cash cow franchise - its a demonstration to other publishers that they can use Steam to make profitable but non-exploitative freemium games. Heck, Valve didn't even develop Dota; they just persuaded Icefrog to give them the rights to it, and incorporated it into the Source engine.
I think of Valve's first party titles these days in the same way that I think of Google's Nexus program. We're seeing Google wind down the Nexus program because it has largely accomplished its goal of convincing OEMs to make their phones more Googley (for better or worse); Valve is likewise de-emphasizing their first party titles.
While the results of this particular study may be questionable, it's annoying to see how many comments dismiss the study out of hand just because it was performed by osteopathic physicians. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in the US, "Doctor of Osteopathic" has a specific meaning - they are legitimate physicians whose training differs from that of allopathic physicians in philosophy rather than in medical knowledge or practice.
The only medical distinction between a "traditional" MD and a DO is that a DO undergoes an 8 week course in osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT), which is a specific therapy for lower back pain, and which NIH studies have shown to be "mildly to moderately effective." Other than that, medical training between the two branches is indistinguishable.
There's a common quip about quack medicine: "What do you call alternative medicine when it gets scientifically verified? Medicine." I find it comforting that at least one group of (former) quacks in the US actually took that sentiment to heart. Now if only chiropractors and homeopaths would do the same...
I'm from the U.S. (from the Deep South even), and I can't remember ever hearing the phrase Central America used differently from the way you describe.
I'll second that statement. Microwaving is especially nice for me because I can make the bacon crispy without having to char it, which was always my pet peeve about bacon.
Presumably those were two non-overlapping groups of whiners?
I don't have a problem with capped internet. I know, it's heresy to many people here, but I really don't. The marginal cost for bandwidth isn't zero and no amount of wishing by Slashdotters will make it so. It makes sense that there's a mechanism in place to limit the impact of heavy users on lighter, if they're both paying the same costs.
Of course, having said that, I fully expect Comcast to go about implementing a theoretically sensible idea in the most discriminatory, expensive, heavy-handed, and frustrating way possible. What the hell is wrong with those guys?
How nice of you to make that decision for everyone else. Believe it or not, it is actually possible that sometimes the more expensive, more secure option doesn't offer enough benefits to outweigh the increased costs in certain use cases.
I'm sure that my cheapo router at home doesn't meet your lofty standards of safety. I understand the potential security risks that this router poses reasonably well. I could have spent $50 extra to buy a "better" router, then spent an evening or so figuring out how to hack it so I could put your approved firmware on it. But I don't, because it's a freaking home router, and I've made a reasoned decision that the security benefits don't outweigh the extra time, money, and hassle. Maybe I'm wrong about that (though I seriously doubt it), but why shouldn't I get to make that decision?
But, at least to me, the main benefit of carrying a credit card is that it lets me avoid cash and cash equivalents, not to mention the need for juggling multiple accounts. I don't have to treat my credit card like cash. Why anyone would deliberately want to deal with something "like cash" when they can avoid it is beyond me.
I, on the other hand, am horrified at the idea of trusting either Paypal or Google with any personal or financial information. My credit union isn't perfect, but I'll take them any day of the week over your suggestions.
On an unrelated note, I find it slightly amusing that you disparage restaurants for getting their payment processing equipment from Ebay while lauding the use of Paypal...
Not if they want to comply with regulations, they don't. As should hopefully be obvious.
As a lover of well done steaks, thank you for saving me the trouble of replying. Most places that I've ordered well done steaks at will do exactly what you say, and it seems to work out ok. I've only had one restaurant give me trouble about it, so I will never eat there again. I swear, steak snobs like Xicor (or Anthony Bourdain) are worse than wine snobs sometimes.
Well, not that it's much of a defense, but absolutely no one that I know of took the SAT essay section seriously. I have not heard of any university that actually considered that section of the SAT when making admission decisions. So our education establishment wasn't completely stupid, I guess.
Do you actually have hard evidence for this, or is this prejudice? I'd really hate to think about going through the hiring process for an employer who looked down on me because I did too well in school.
It hasn't worked for football very well, has it?
Not just that, but Gmail educational accounts usually end in @Name_Of_Institution. So, even if you could make the dubious argument that the sender is responsible for knowing Gmail's terms if they want to send email to a Gmail recipient, there's no way to know that the recipient uses Gmail.
I would speculate that the low speeds, at least, occur because Americans simply don't care. Yes, yes, I know that plenty of American Slashdotters care. But competition tends to make companies better at producing what customers demand. If there isn't sufficient demand for a product, such as gigabit internet, then no amount of competition will cause companies to start producing that product.
Now, that's not an absolute statement, and low demand isn't the same thing as no demand. If Google wants to provide Kansas City with gigabit internet on its own initiative at a low, possibly subsidized, price as a publicity stunt, I'm sure plenty of people will sign up. And better marketing and public awareness might raise demand for better internet speeds. But my guess is that most Americans are satisfied with the internet speeds, or at least not upset enough to do anything about it (remember, Slashdot isn't America). My own city actually has heated competition between three different ISP's. It's led to lower prices, which customers obviously want, but not faster speeds, which customers don't seem to care about.
That's my pet theory, at least.
No. No I don't. I mean, maybe someone was saying that, but in practice a goodly number of the early cellphones were bought precisely for emergencies, especially by anxious well-off parents, or teachers supervising school trips, or the like.
Well, too often people in accidents would "handle it" by bleeding out on the side of the road and dying. It very nearly happened to a family friend, but, fortunately, he was able to be life-flighted to a hospital because the bystanders who found him had cell phones to call for help with. I mean, I'm pretty sure it would have been better if he had just died instead of making a full recovery, right?
Also, maybe it's just my part of the country, but I haven't seen those call boxes on the highway in years, and even when they were around, they were several miles apart.
No, we don't have competition, and unless you are an extremely rare exception, you don't either. Having a competitive retail electrical distribution infrastructure is difficult, bordering on impossible. That's why they're regulated as utilities.
Um, not living in Michigan?
It's always seemed weird to me that there's so little limitation on who can call themselves an engineer. Doctors have medical school and board exams, lawyers have the bar exam, heck, even cosmetologists have to be board certified.
In my own profession - p&c actuary - I have to pass a series of 11 exams plus continuing education courses just to become fully credentialed. And when I (someday, please God) get done with that, I will be personally liable for every actuarial statement that I ever produce. I could potentially be personally sued for even the tiniest error in any actuarial statement, although that kind of thing is very rate. And I have to go through all of this just to make sure that I don't incorrectly estimate a client's auto insurance costs.
Actually, the "price" for lawyers really is going down. Hardly a day goes by without the Wall Street Journal bemoaning the crappy job prospects for legal talent.
Unfortunately, the price for lawyers is going down unevenly - it's difficult to find a job, so underemployment is high, but the per hour fees once a lawyer has a job are as high as ever. This means that the lawyers for General Mills need to "work" harder than ever to justify not getting layed off into a very rough job market; while at the same time, legal expenses for the average guy who has to fight against GM's aforesaid overzealous lawyers are paying just as many legal fees as ever.
You know, instead of being "sure," you could actually spend 30 seconds checking Google before spreading your prejudices as fact. I can't speak for other products, but that wasn't true for my Fitbit. There's no need to give them a real name - when you register your device, they just ask for a name to call you by (which can be anything), and a valid email. They might be able to figure out my real name when I set it up to sync with my phone (which wasn't required either), but I guess I'm just not paranoid enough to mind.
Say what you will about the unreasonable price, but the TI graphing calculators last forever. I got a TI-83+ in 1999 when I was in middle school, and I'm still using it frequently at work 15 years later. It hardly ever even needs the batteries changed.