Is Windows "Metro" really a platform? Metro seems more like a design language (not even a programming language), with its own custom libraries, that runs on top of a platform (Windows 8). But Metro is hardly the only way to write an app that will run on a Windows 8 platform, just as the Windows Metro based shell is hardly the only way to run Windows 8... There are still a lot of people running Windows 8 the old fashioned way - with a desktop, changing the way Microsoft has shipped things out of the box - and from the start menu running a QT (or some other) program.
Certainly QT can still generate cross platform applications that will run on Windows 8 and look like Metro. It doesn't use Metro's libraries. And judging from what nearly everyone I know who has tried the Windows 8 Metro shell, not using the Metro libraries isn't exactly a handicap.
The question about cross platform comes down to this: is there one environment that can build a program to run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOs. The answer is still YES. For this answer to be NO, it will take a lot more than inventing a new language and writing a goofy, near useless frontend. This would essentially require a redesign of the platform as it is today, providing all of the access to the platform through closed libraries for proprietary languages.
Apple may have the resources, leverage, limited market share, and Apple Logo worshiping minions to pull something like this off, but why? To gain an even greater infinitesimal share in desktop user and make it all the more relatively easier to write an Android app? And Microsoft's whole business is built on software compatibility (and yes, I know M$ has failed so many times here, but, really, the reason why many people still buy Microsoft OS is because they want to run some program that can only run on Microsoft OS). It is a bit over the top to think that new OS makers coming out with scripting type languages with tight coupling to the OS can actually use these languages to do away with C and cross platform development tools.
The real reason for all of these garbage scripting type languages is so that people who don't want to spend the time or effort to learn computer science can still put together a usable piece of software. They want to make it easier for graphic designers to program. The world wants pretty pictures.
It's pretty sad that the other 90% of universities have so little faith in their OWN graduates that they won't hire from within.
If I had just gotten a PhD, and it ended up being so worthless that even my own school wouldn't accept it, I would demand a refund.
Could it be that after going through all the BS to get a post graduate degree, the graduate ends up with little faith in their school?
I'm a lowly holder of a B.S. degree, somehow that has worked out well for me. I have friends that went on to get PhDs rom very good schools, some on this list, and except for one exception, all of them distanced themselves from academia as soon as they could. Something about finding out how the sausage was made.
I remember reading this argument like 10 years ago. I don't know if it is true, but it seems reasonable... all things being equal, it would take a lot more work to get a diesel fuel out of corn than crude oil.
But the true stupidity in using corn for fuel is using food as fuel. That just pushes food costs higher. Consider that there are a lot of other cleaner ways to make bio-diesel that don't compete with the food supply, it is hard to pin this study on the oil companies. Corn for bio-diesel is just more government kickback to the corn industry, and the ridiculous subsidy corn farmer get for bio-diesel.
Who cares about their take on psychotherapy or weather or not they believe in Xenu or if they are run by Tom Cruise. Heck, sometime I'll dress like a Pirate and discuss Flying Spaghetti.
The parts of Scientology that are concern me are the reports of abuse and indenturing of children and the mentally ill. Take that, along with the fact the Hubbard explicitly stated he made up Scientology as a tax dodge for profit, and you have what looks like a creepy mafia outfit.
This is not IRS directly. Only the Social Security Administration is doing this, through the Treasury, whose collection arm is the IRS.
It turns out this practice is illegal. I'm surprised it took so long for this to come out - my bet is that most of the people the SSA targeted were quite poor to begin with (hence they were getting SS benefits), and they couldn't really fight back.
This was put into the 2008 Farm Bill, but a relic from the 2005 Farm Bill, which was tabled for three years. The guy who wrote it in was congressman Todd Platts: http://books.google.com/books?...
Going after 6 Mill the first year, and 11 Mill subsequent years. At that rate, they'd sure piss off a lot of people before they paid off the Iraq war...
This is nonsense. The CIA has even debunked that Al Queda was allied with Iraq. There is a ton of evidence that suggests Saddam treated Al Queda like he did any other radical religious organization - as a threat. At this point, with what we now know, to say Saddam was allied and working with Al Queda is tinfoil hat territory.
But Al Queda sure did take off after we invaded, huh?
And Saddam Hussein was in a legal state of war with the United States, so the "Germany had declared war" comparison still holds.
I'm not sure what "legal state of war" means. Certainly we never entered a strict "legal state of war" with Iraq according to US laws, only congressional authorization of use of force to the President. Do you mean Iraq law? I have to apologize, I'm at a disadvantage, I wouldn't even pretend to understand Iraq law. If you are knowledgeable on per-invasion Iraqi law, than please explain. Otherwise, you don't have any clue what you are talking about, and are likely just repeating some nonsense you hear - my guess on Fox News.
Actually Saddam didn't keep terrorists out of Iraq, he provided them refuge, financing, and training. He just didn't have much to do with al Qaida. When al Qaida started conducting terrorist attacks in Iraq it resulted in massive loss of life for Iraqis which resulted in a large drop in support for al Qaida in the Arab and Muslim world. Their financing was significantly reduced, and many of their agents were captured or killed. Part of the reason that Afghanistan settled down for several years was the shift in effort from Afghanistan to Iraq by al Qaida. Eventually al Qaida was forced to flee Iraq and Afghanistan started heating up again. Al Qaida would have been stronger if it had not gone to Iraq.
The rate of worldwide Terrorist attacks have gone up since we've invaded Iraq. If the goal of the Iraq invasion was reducing worldwide terrorism, we did not achieve that goal. One may justify the Iraq invasion as a fight against terrorism, but if that is the case then invading Iraq was a failure. Rice was one of the key leaders in that failure.
I'm sure Rice's failures with the Iraq war will help Dropbox the way Bush's failures with the Rangers helped America.
The world is far better off with Saddam's regime being replaced by a democratic government.
Next?
What democratic government? Iraq was left as essentially anarchy. Perhaps replacing Saddam with anarchy is better - I don't know.
I do know that Saddam didn't bother me or anyone I know here in the US any more than the anarchy that is there now. I also know that my tax dollars and some people I know went to go blow things up and kill people in Iraq, and some other tax dollars and some other people I know went to try and rebuild schools and sewers only to see those things blown up and the Iraqis that helped them hunted and killed.
I don't know enough about Iraqi culture to judge Saddam or Iraq... But it does appear that we have wasted a lot of time and effort and lives on something that really wouldn't have mattered in the grand scheme of things.
Just as United States had "no grounds" to remove Hitler from power. Nazi Germany did not attack the United States in Pearl Harbor. Did United States illegally fight the war against Nazi Germany, too? Everyone knew that it was Imperial Japan which attacked Pearl Harbor.
Ridiculous comparison. Germany had invaded nearly all of continental Europe and North Africa, and the US barely lifted a finger. Know your history... prior to Pearl Harbor, a large portion of this country wanted little to do with Nazi Germany and what was going on in Europe, beyond what money they could make from trade. Few in the US were concerned about how Germany was treating its people, or the people it invaded. The economy was finally showing signs of pickup after the depression, and nobody wanted war. Germany was Europe's problem, not ours.
The US first declared war only on Japan after Perl Harbor. Then Germany then declared war on the US, according to its treaty with Japan. It was only then the US declared war on Germany. Then we kick everyone's butt, without asking permission or crying about BS WMDs. Then we rebuilt our former enemies with the Marshall Plan and hired what Nazi scientists we could get our hands on to run NASA.
I don't recall a wartime ally of Iraq attacking our naval base in Hawaii. I don't recall the US declaring war on that allay as a result of the attack. And I don't recall Iraq declaring the war on the US in response. Iraq couldn't even succeed in invading a neighbor less than 1/10th its size with no military.... They had no scientists useful for a space program. Aside from the ethical implications, nobody worried about invading Iraq. It was clear we would win that one. To compare the lead-up to the Iraq invasion with WWII is a fantasy - a fantasy that some fans of Lil' Bush's administration apparently hold to this day.
And the US did nothing to adequately rebuild Iraq - not that there was much we could do beyond inserting another iron-fisted dictator.
About the only thing that was really the same between WWII and the Iraq war was that we kicked ass. But kicking Iraq's ass kind of looses its luster without the threat of enslavement by Nazis.... Perhaps that is why some still hold onto this comparison of Iraq to Nazi Germany - its lipstick on a pig.
Download Linux. Use "man" or "the internet" to do something.
Using any computer effectively has more to do with what one wants to accomplish and how well one understands what they want to accomplish. Without a purpose, an OS is useless. Practically speaking, using an OS simply for the sake of an OS makes little sense.
If you want to pay $2400.00 to learn Linux and have no idea what you what you want to do with Linux once you learn it, just send me a check right now.
FPGAs are relatively expensive compared to graphics chips, actually most chips. Its still not clear what FPGAs can accomplish in a general computing platform that will be of value, considering the other lower cost options available.
The other half of the problem here is that, in comparison to GPU programming interfaces such as OpenCL and Cuda, there is relatively little effort in bringing FPGA development beyond ASIC-Lite. The tool chains and development processes (what FPGA vendors like to call "design flow") are miles apart between FPGA and software code. Right now, SystemC is the only thing close to software develpment for FPGAs (mainly because of C++ syntax) , but it really isn't that close. Also consider that there are really no common architectures - RTL synthesis can vary from part to part, and place & route is different for every flippen part number. This makes it nearly impossible for any third party, beyond pricey CAD vendors with cozy relationships to the FPGA Mfgs, to develop the libraries required to cleanly integrate FPGAs into software development.
The FPGA manufactures have done quite well on the low volume, high margin game. They have no incentive to drop the cost required for consumer volumes. GPUs are a completely different story....
ADA is a language that was once forced upon large development projects by the government. NO programmer or software designer ever decides to use ADA by choice. The use of ADA points to deficiency in the design process, mainly an over-reach of the requirements into implementation.
If one ever sees a program written in ADA, run. It will have problems.
You are equating natural selection with eugenics. There is nothing natural about eugenics. And no, eugenics is not the same as being rejected by the opposite sex because you are a moron.
More genocide has been committed in the name of religion than any other rationalization that exists.
These are my understanding the perceived failures of Windows 8 from people I talk with, you know, the average user? Forgive me if I don't communicate exclusively with Slashdot or power users....
As for throwing Android on top of windows 8... I'm not sure that there doohickey solves anything.
From everyone I've talked with, the biggest, most obvious failures of Windows 8 are: 1. Removal of the start menu 2. The misguided idea that a PC needs "apps".
So the idea is to go to a second operating system (VM, Dual Boot?) that doesn't have a start menu, with apps designed for mobile platform? This just seems like bad marketing
Assuming I'm using a Windows machine, If I want to run an Android app on a windows PC, I'll just install Android SDK.
"The attack would have been disguised as a request for a software update. If the user agreed, the virus would’ve infected the computer."
Technically, this wouldn't be a virus, but a trojan horse. Imagine that - people involved in computer security found a trojan horse. Our tax dollars at work. Big friendly brother and all that.
Maybe.
Assume that, after 40+ years of package deliver, FedEx and UPS have a good grasp on the accuracy of their projections over the holiday season. That is, the management of these companies can predict the risk of failing to meet these targets. Surely these large companies have bean counters (a.k.a. computers) that can asses what an acceptable risk vs. cost is.
The cost for at least some of the packages shipped and not making it on time is tangible - both companies have options for guaranteed delivery deadlines which will refund the shipping costs if the parcel doesn't make it. If the cost of these refunds exceeds the cost of additional capacity to offset risk, then the management will have failed. I'm sure the people the management answer to (i.e. sharholders) will hold the management accountable if this failure results in a significant loss.
As for the rest of the packages - no promises are made on delivery times, and the parcel companies cover their ass pretty clearly here when one fills out a shipping bill. If these packages don't make it by the magic day, it is the shippers fault.
Customer happiness really isn't part of this equation.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown on how many of these packages "still being processed" are shipped with guaranteed delivery. I'd expect the vast majority are not guaranteed, and so deprioritzed and left for after the rush of two-day and overnight packages. Just another tempest in a teapot.
.. so there is no looming "Incandescent Bulb Phase Out" only a phase out of incandescent bulbs that are woefully inefficient at creating visible light.
No, its the same wisdom as the oil company mergers, just not as obvious. Ultimately, this will result in T-Mobile declaring bankruptcy (or exiting from the US market), and the RF broadband then resold to AT&T and Verizon, furthering consolidation in the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but Metro is not the same as Windows Runtime API. If they were, then Windows would be fucked. Even the boneheads at Microsoft realize this.
Is Windows "Metro" really a platform? Metro seems more like a design language (not even a programming language), with its own custom libraries, that runs on top of a platform (Windows 8). But Metro is hardly the only way to write an app that will run on a Windows 8 platform, just as the Windows Metro based shell is hardly the only way to run Windows 8... There are still a lot of people running Windows 8 the old fashioned way - with a desktop, changing the way Microsoft has shipped things out of the box - and from the start menu running a QT (or some other) program.
Certainly QT can still generate cross platform applications that will run on Windows 8 and look like Metro. It doesn't use Metro's libraries. And judging from what nearly everyone I know who has tried the Windows 8 Metro shell, not using the Metro libraries isn't exactly a handicap.
The question about cross platform comes down to this: is there one environment that can build a program to run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOs. The answer is still YES. For this answer to be NO, it will take a lot more than inventing a new language and writing a goofy, near useless frontend. This would essentially require a redesign of the platform as it is today, providing all of the access to the platform through closed libraries for proprietary languages.
Apple may have the resources, leverage, limited market share, and Apple Logo worshiping minions to pull something like this off, but why? To gain an even greater infinitesimal share in desktop user and make it all the more relatively easier to write an Android app? And Microsoft's whole business is built on software compatibility (and yes, I know M$ has failed so many times here, but, really, the reason why many people still buy Microsoft OS is because they want to run some program that can only run on Microsoft OS). It is a bit over the top to think that new OS makers coming out with scripting type languages with tight coupling to the OS can actually use these languages to do away with C and cross platform development tools.
The real reason for all of these garbage scripting type languages is so that people who don't want to spend the time or effort to learn computer science can still put together a usable piece of software. They want to make it easier for graphic designers to program. The world wants pretty pictures.
"instead, the compiler infers the variable type, just as many scripting languages do."
Its safe to say that the baggage will be inferred as well.
It's pretty sad that the other 90% of universities have so little faith in their OWN graduates that they won't hire from within.
If I had just gotten a PhD, and it ended up being so worthless that even my own school wouldn't accept it, I would demand a refund.
Could it be that after going through all the BS to get a post graduate degree, the graduate ends up with little faith in their school?
I'm a lowly holder of a B.S. degree, somehow that has worked out well for me. I have friends that went on to get PhDs rom very good schools, some on this list, and except for one exception, all of them distanced themselves from academia as soon as they could. Something about finding out how the sausage was made.
No one can defeat the quad laser. The bullet is enormous, there is no escaping.
I remember reading this argument like 10 years ago. I don't know if it is true, but it seems reasonable... all things being equal, it would take a lot more work to get a diesel fuel out of corn than crude oil.
But the true stupidity in using corn for fuel is using food as fuel. That just pushes food costs higher. Consider that there are a lot of other cleaner ways to make bio-diesel that don't compete with the food supply, it is hard to pin this study on the oil companies. Corn for bio-diesel is just more government kickback to the corn industry, and the ridiculous subsidy corn farmer get for bio-diesel.
Who cares about their take on psychotherapy or weather or not they believe in Xenu or if they are run by Tom Cruise. Heck, sometime I'll dress like a Pirate and discuss Flying Spaghetti.
The parts of Scientology that are concern me are the reports of abuse and indenturing of children and the mentally ill. Take that, along with the fact the Hubbard explicitly stated he made up Scientology as a tax dodge for profit, and you have what looks like a creepy mafia outfit.
Your right, it is not gentrification.
San Francisco has rent control, so people living in the city for years are protected. It has public housing, and there are plenty of very poor people
The people getting kicked out of their homes are the ones being asked to go from $1,500/mo to $2,500/mo. Economic realities are a bitch.
The funny thing is, most people complaining about "gentrification" in San Francisco are people that don't live in the city.
This is not IRS directly. Only the Social Security Administration is doing this, through the Treasury, whose collection arm is the IRS.
It turns out this practice is illegal. I'm surprised it took so long for this to come out - my bet is that most of the people the SSA targeted were quite poor to begin with (hence they were getting SS benefits), and they couldn't really fight back.
This was put into the 2008 Farm Bill, but a relic from the 2005 Farm Bill, which was tabled for three years. The guy who wrote it in was congressman Todd Platts: http://books.google.com/books?...
Going after 6 Mill the first year, and 11 Mill subsequent years. At that rate, they'd sure piss off a lot of people before they paid off the Iraq war...
Just like the allies of Germany attacked us.
This is nonsense. The CIA has even debunked that Al Queda was allied with Iraq. There is a ton of evidence that suggests Saddam treated Al Queda like he did any other radical religious organization - as a threat. At this point, with what we now know, to say Saddam was allied and working with Al Queda is tinfoil hat territory.
But Al Queda sure did take off after we invaded, huh?
And Saddam Hussein was in a legal state of war with the United States, so the "Germany had declared war" comparison still holds.
I'm not sure what "legal state of war" means. Certainly we never entered a strict "legal state of war" with Iraq according to US laws, only congressional authorization of use of force to the President. Do you mean Iraq law? I have to apologize, I'm at a disadvantage, I wouldn't even pretend to understand Iraq law. If you are knowledgeable on per-invasion Iraqi law, than please explain. Otherwise, you don't have any clue what you are talking about, and are likely just repeating some nonsense you hear - my guess on Fox News.
Actually Saddam didn't keep terrorists out of Iraq, he provided them refuge, financing, and training. He just didn't have much to do with al Qaida. When al Qaida started conducting terrorist attacks in Iraq it resulted in massive loss of life for Iraqis which resulted in a large drop in support for al Qaida in the Arab and Muslim world. Their financing was significantly reduced, and many of their agents were captured or killed. Part of the reason that Afghanistan settled down for several years was the shift in effort from Afghanistan to Iraq by al Qaida. Eventually al Qaida was forced to flee Iraq and Afghanistan started heating up again. Al Qaida would have been stronger if it had not gone to Iraq.
The rate of worldwide Terrorist attacks have gone up since we've invaded Iraq. If the goal of the Iraq invasion was reducing worldwide terrorism, we did not achieve that goal. One may justify the Iraq invasion as a fight against terrorism, but if that is the case then invading Iraq was a failure. Rice was one of the key leaders in that failure.
I'm sure Rice's failures with the Iraq war will help Dropbox the way Bush's failures with the Rangers helped America.
The world is far better off with Saddam's regime being replaced by a democratic government.
Next?
What democratic government? Iraq was left as essentially anarchy. Perhaps replacing Saddam with anarchy is better - I don't know.
I do know that Saddam didn't bother me or anyone I know here in the US any more than the anarchy that is there now. I also know that my tax dollars and some people I know went to go blow things up and kill people in Iraq, and some other tax dollars and some other people I know went to try and rebuild schools and sewers only to see those things blown up and the Iraqis that helped them hunted and killed.
I don't know enough about Iraqi culture to judge Saddam or Iraq... But it does appear that we have wasted a lot of time and effort and lives on something that really wouldn't have mattered in the grand scheme of things.
Just as United States had "no grounds" to remove Hitler from power. Nazi Germany did not attack the United States in Pearl Harbor. Did United States illegally fight the war against Nazi Germany, too? Everyone knew that it was Imperial Japan which attacked Pearl Harbor.
Ridiculous comparison. Germany had invaded nearly all of continental Europe and North Africa, and the US barely lifted a finger. Know your history... prior to Pearl Harbor, a large portion of this country wanted little to do with Nazi Germany and what was going on in Europe, beyond what money they could make from trade. Few in the US were concerned about how Germany was treating its people, or the people it invaded. The economy was finally showing signs of pickup after the depression, and nobody wanted war. Germany was Europe's problem, not ours.
The US first declared war only on Japan after Perl Harbor. Then Germany then declared war on the US, according to its treaty with Japan. It was only then the US declared war on Germany. Then we kick everyone's butt, without asking permission or crying about BS WMDs. Then we rebuilt our former enemies with the Marshall Plan and hired what Nazi scientists we could get our hands on to run NASA.
I don't recall a wartime ally of Iraq attacking our naval base in Hawaii. I don't recall the US declaring war on that allay as a result of the attack. And I don't recall Iraq declaring the war on the US in response. Iraq couldn't even succeed in invading a neighbor less than 1/10th its size with no military.... They had no scientists useful for a space program. Aside from the ethical implications, nobody worried about invading Iraq. It was clear we would win that one. To compare the lead-up to the Iraq invasion with WWII is a fantasy - a fantasy that some fans of Lil' Bush's administration apparently hold to this day.
And the US did nothing to adequately rebuild Iraq - not that there was much we could do beyond inserting another iron-fisted dictator.
About the only thing that was really the same between WWII and the Iraq war was that we kicked ass. But kicking Iraq's ass kind of looses its luster without the threat of enslavement by Nazis.... Perhaps that is why some still hold onto this comparison of Iraq to Nazi Germany - its lipstick on a pig.
Download Linux. Use "man" or "the internet" to do something.
Using any computer effectively has more to do with what one wants to accomplish and how well one understands what they want to accomplish. Without a purpose, an OS is useless. Practically speaking, using an OS simply for the sake of an OS makes little sense.
If you want to pay $2400.00 to learn Linux and have no idea what you what you want to do with Linux once you learn it, just send me a check right now.
FPGAs are relatively expensive compared to graphics chips, actually most chips. Its still not clear what FPGAs can accomplish in a general computing platform that will be of value, considering the other lower cost options available.
The other half of the problem here is that, in comparison to GPU programming interfaces such as OpenCL and Cuda, there is relatively little effort in bringing FPGA development beyond ASIC-Lite. The tool chains and development processes (what FPGA vendors like to call "design flow") are miles apart between FPGA and software code. Right now, SystemC is the only thing close to software develpment for FPGAs (mainly because of C++ syntax) , but it really isn't that close. Also consider that there are really no common architectures - RTL synthesis can vary from part to part, and place & route is different for every flippen part number. This makes it nearly impossible for any third party, beyond pricey CAD vendors with cozy relationships to the FPGA Mfgs, to develop the libraries required to cleanly integrate FPGAs into software development.
The FPGA manufactures have done quite well on the low volume, high margin game. They have no incentive to drop the cost required for consumer volumes. GPUs are a completely different story....
ADA is a language that was once forced upon large development projects by the government. NO programmer or software designer ever decides to use ADA by choice. The use of ADA points to deficiency in the design process, mainly an over-reach of the requirements into implementation.
If one ever sees a program written in ADA, run. It will have problems.
You are equating natural selection with eugenics. There is nothing natural about eugenics. And no, eugenics is not the same as being rejected by the opposite sex because you are a moron.
More genocide has been committed in the name of religion than any other rationalization that exists.
These are my understanding the perceived failures of Windows 8 from people I talk with, you know, the average user? Forgive me if I don't communicate exclusively with Slashdot or power users....
As for throwing Android on top of windows 8... I'm not sure that there doohickey solves anything.
though, it produces nice fireworks : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5#Notable_launches
"The software, written in Ada....."
That says it all.
This makes no sense.
From everyone I've talked with, the biggest, most obvious failures of Windows 8 are:
1. Removal of the start menu
2. The misguided idea that a PC needs "apps".
So the idea is to go to a second operating system (VM, Dual Boot?) that doesn't have a start menu, with apps designed for mobile platform? This just seems like bad marketing
Assuming I'm using a Windows machine, If I want to run an Android app on a windows PC, I'll just install Android SDK.
You had me at "Why".
I can't figure out what problem this solves.
"The attack would have been disguised as a request for a software update. If the user agreed, the virus would’ve infected the computer." Technically, this wouldn't be a virus, but a trojan horse. Imagine that - people involved in computer security found a trojan horse. Our tax dollars at work. Big friendly brother and all that.
This is a management failure.
Maybe. Assume that, after 40+ years of package deliver, FedEx and UPS have a good grasp on the accuracy of their projections over the holiday season. That is, the management of these companies can predict the risk of failing to meet these targets. Surely these large companies have bean counters (a.k.a. computers) that can asses what an acceptable risk vs. cost is. The cost for at least some of the packages shipped and not making it on time is tangible - both companies have options for guaranteed delivery deadlines which will refund the shipping costs if the parcel doesn't make it. If the cost of these refunds exceeds the cost of additional capacity to offset risk, then the management will have failed. I'm sure the people the management answer to (i.e. sharholders) will hold the management accountable if this failure results in a significant loss. As for the rest of the packages - no promises are made on delivery times, and the parcel companies cover their ass pretty clearly here when one fills out a shipping bill. If these packages don't make it by the magic day, it is the shippers fault. Customer happiness really isn't part of this equation. It would be interesting to see a breakdown on how many of these packages "still being processed" are shipped with guaranteed delivery. I'd expect the vast majority are not guaranteed, and so deprioritzed and left for after the rush of two-day and overnight packages. Just another tempest in a teapot.
.. so there is no looming "Incandescent Bulb Phase Out" only a phase out of incandescent bulbs that are woefully inefficient at creating visible light.
No, its the same wisdom as the oil company mergers, just not as obvious. Ultimately, this will result in T-Mobile declaring bankruptcy (or exiting from the US market), and the RF broadband then resold to AT&T and Verizon, furthering consolidation in the industry.