If everyone realises that wide spread abuse is going on, then why the hell do they allow the practice to continue?
It is very hard to create programs and policies to achieve a difficult goal and at the same time prevent unintended consequences and abuse. Abuse of immigration policies is probably inevitable, but so is the downfall of any nation which closes itself off to the world and/or tries to create one-sided trade policies. So one thing everyone should agree on is immigration requires a delicate and difficult balancing act of many concerns.
Create a points system for bringing new people in with the right skills and education, and make sure they are paid a similar wage, so that local wages do not reduce rapidly.
That isn't even the type of visa this article is talking about. B1 visas are meant for business professionals to enter the country for business meetings, conducting research, conducting negotiations, etc. It is not meant for gainfull employment. But my guess is it is very hard to write rules and enforce rules which prevent abuse. In this case "consultants" are traveling to the US for a few months and then leaving. You cannot replace full time positions with these guest workers, but you can replace temporary workers (both skilled and unskilled).
There probably is a way to reduce abuse, and lobbyists are probably trying to prevent helpful reforms, but even without these problems I doubt it would be easy to stop the abuse of these visas all together.
Isn't the public immunized? What danger does a non vaccinated family pose?
People who hold opinions like this are exactly why more education is necessary. Immunization is not 100% effective, and some people have legitimate medical reasons to not get vaccinated. Nut jobs who don't vaccinate their children are a public health issue even when almost everyone else is vaccinated.
On the contrary I would say the last 20 years has seen the most innovation of any other 20 year period, and the next 20 years will beat out the last 20. And this will continue probably forever, or until a global extinction event takes us out.
New ideas may not be as transformative, although that is a product of technology solving all the low hanging fruit over the past 200 years. But new ideas are researched, sent to market, and iterated on at a faster rate today than any other time. The agricultural revolution is obviously the most transformative period of innovation, but it is a stretch to think fostering new ideas was more prevalent in 10,000 BC than it is today.
By any objective metrics you could use to measure innovation, such as R&D spending as a proportion of GDP (both private and public), the rate of change of business processes, the percentage of population in STEM fields, etc, I doubt there is any period in history that contends with today. Maybe the 1960's comes close because of the cold war but I still doubt it matches the current decade.
None of which would be possible without the discovery of electricity and the invention of electricity generation and transmission. If you disregard any innovations built upon previous ones, then I guess 10000 BC wins by your criteria.
If you've ever had to hand wash, or live without refrigeration/freezing for a few weeks, you would have noticed how mind-bendingly central these two items are for maintaining a modern life.
These technologies primarily just enable two earner households, not maintaining modern life. Washing machines, refrigerators, microwaves, and vacuums have collectively made adequate housekeeping a part time job for the average household. They also enable parents to spend far more time parenting than a couple generations ago. Even working parents spend more time interacting with their kids today than stay at home parents did 50 years ago because of these technologies.
If you replace washing machines and refrigerators with electricity and indoor plumbing then I would agree with you.
' Self driving cars still require a human to take over whenever it doesn't know what to do...'
And if you believe that humans can do this after several hours or days of nothing happening, you're wrong.
You are certainly correct that self driving cars cannot assume a driver is being attentive. But they could identify a problem is up ahead and give up control if it can warn the driver perhaps at least 30 seconds before he needs to take control. One example could be construction ahead.
Current studies do not show the food you eat to be a contributing factor, although there are some studies showing sugary drinks have an impact even after adjusting for BMI. Even though the American Diabetes Association is clear that increased sugar consumption is in food is not a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, it does single out sugary drinks as a risk factor.
Sugary drinks as a general rule are the worst thing you can put in your body. Not only does a can of cola have more sugar than a bag of skittles, there does appear to be something different about how the body processes nutrients in drinks as opposed to food. Although the research into why hasn't been very conclusive (at least that I can find).
Shaming type 2 diabetics surely makes sense. It is almost certainly their own fault they are that way.
Type 2 diabetes has very little to do with personal choices either. Being overweight does slightly increase your chances of getting Type 2 diabetes, but it is far from the only risk factor. My dad has had Type 2 diabetes since he was 40 and is a very active slim person (farmer by profession).
Shaming anyone because of Type 2 diabetes makes no sense.
It's because of too much sugar and carbs. Get rid of the junk food!
You are only partly right.
No, he is 100% wrong. Sugar and carbs do not contribute to Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. Being overweight does have a slight impact on getting Type 2 diabetes, but the foods or genetics that made you overweight are irrelevant. If you exercise enough to eat all the pasta and candy you want and stay fit, you have no increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.
That can be one of the causes of type 2 diabetes , however genetics plays a far bigger role. Type1 is NOT because of sugar and carbs.
Why the distinction when Type 2 diabetes is also not caused by sugar and carbs?
Being overweight does have a very slight correlation with having Type 2 diabetes, but the reason why you are overweight does not matter. You could either eat too much candy, not be active enough, have a thyroid problem, or just be "big boned".
But just eating a lot of candy and pasta is not a contributing factor to getting Type 2 diabetes as long as you don't let it make you fat. And even if you are fat you have a very similar risk of Type 2 diabetes as everyone else. For instance about 80% of people with Type 2 diabetes are overweight, as opposed to 74% of the general population. Not a huge difference in demographics.
I'm male, 5'11 (184cm) and 169lb (12st 1lb / 77kg) and very happy with my weight. I enjoy exercise so much that I need to eat around 3,000 calories per day, but I can't begin to imagine eating 590 calories for lunch except as an occasional blow-out.
You eat 3,000 calories per day but cannot imagine eating 20% of your daily calorie consumption in a single meal? You have a very poor imagination.
The idea of "no taxation without representation" has never been very popular in this country.
Well that would be a good start. If you don't pay taxes, then perhaps you shouldn't have representation. Wellfare? No voting for you. Don't make enough to actually pay taxes? No voting for you either.
Although, I think being able to have some minimum education AND the ability to see things from other's points of view should be a basic requirement for voting.
Everyone other than perhaps the homeless are taxed in this country. While you are likely thinking of income taxes, that is not the sole source of taxes. In fact only a third of local, state, and federal revenue is based on income in the US. Everyone pays taxes on goods the purchase, where they live (either directly through property taxes or indirectly through rent), and on various fees. And even those who don't pay federal income taxes still likely pay towards medicare and social security.
Neither grammar rules nor mathematics have any racial or gender bias to them.
The mere fact that wealthier students receive a better education makes requiring a certain level of education to vote problematic. Requiring a certain level of education to vote is very close to requiring your parents to have a certain level of income to vote. The decision to make is if the benefit of a more educated voting block outweighs removing a large percentage of the population from the democratic process. The idea of "no taxation without representation" has never been very popular in this country.
I'm more concerned with them having *my* "faceprint". I never signed up for their shitty service, but I know my face has ended up on there a few times.
As long as you never go into the public you will never have to worry that public information about you exists. Just as long as your parents didn't do something foolish like getting a birth certificate and social security card, another horrible invasion of privacy.
They are taking almost $1 per San Franscisco resident per day, as you suggested, and using that money on homeless programs created by the representatives San Franscisco residents appointed to handle this problem.
I'm only suggesting $1 per day per person is not nearly enough. It either takes far more money and/or very well run programs to make a difference. Just giving homeless money is already known to not be very effective, as most of them need guidance to even know what to do with the money. There is a reason most lottery winners lose all their money in a few years.
If you give $50k to a homeless person it is unlikely it will be spent towards the mental health services and job training he needs to not be in the same situation next year. That person probably already had access to free services before he became homeless in the first place but either mental health problems or simply a lack of education made him not take advantage of them. A run of bad luck can make almost anyone homeless for a short period. But long term homelessness (over a few months) takes real professions to combat, not handouts.
Similar to our education issues, just throwing more money at the problem is highly unlikely to make a significant difference. The problem is not as simple as saying we aren't donating enough. We need to find ways of changing services or even changing our societal values in general. These are not simple problems and there are no simple answers. Even progressive governments spending significant money, like San Francisco, are having real difficulties finding solutions.
For example, we can all see that homelessness is a problem in SF, but we mostly ignore it. There are only 7,000 homeless people in SF, amongst a population of a million. If each of us gave a dollar a day, the problem would be easily solved. But when was the last time you gave a dollar to a homeless person? Not very often, if you're average.
San Francisco spent $241 million on homeless services in 2015, or about $0.82 per day per person. As far as I can tell there is still a big homeless problem, and officials admit they are not able to track the results.
Are you saying that $241 million per year is not enough but $294 million would miraculously solve the problem?
Oddly enough, the existence of quantum mechanics seems to make free will more likely, rather than less. In a fully Newtonian universe, you could argue that by knowing the position and vector of every atom you might predict the future, which sounds a lot like fate, where all future action is based on the past. However, the apparent fuzziness of our reality seems to leave the door open to much more complex probabilistic, entangled, and parallel behaviors.
But quantum mechanics simply opens the possibility of randomness. That doesn't equate to free will, where you made a decision based on your desires, beliefs, willpower, etc. It would just mean some of your decisions are impacted by purely random inputs.
For me, it's about quality vs price. If all you care about price, you get what you pay for. My MacBook has lasted 10 years and is still going although it is now quite outdated. I don't think any PC laptop every lasted more than 3 years for me. So even at 3X the price, it paid for itself.
I'm a bit different of a customer since I refresh my equipment far more frequently. My MacBook Pro didn't even last three years since it didn't have an SSD, and those only became common about a year after I bought mine. Although admittedly SSDs are one of the few upgrades over the past decade which significantly affects the user experience. I don't really care if my electronic devices last more than three years, and even over two years is merely a luxury.
In my case I use my laptop for work, and in that case price is hardly a factor at all. I'm not going to waste money on a fancy video card or anything, but even with a two year refresh cycle a $2500 laptop is well under 1% of my salary. Any equipment I use for about half my working hours will be purchased based on features and capabilities, not a few hundred dollars of price difference.
As a disclaimer I have an Android phone, have owned two iPads (one is still used by my wife), but own a Surface Pro 4 now. My last laptop was a Macbook Pro with Windows installed, but now I have a Lenovo. I am certainly not an Apple fanboy but still feel they offer great products.
Apple's hardware is underpowered.
This is rarely true. Because there is only one manufacturer of Apple devices and they only refresh them about once a year, there are usually more powerful Android / Windows devices on the market for most of the year. But you rarely have to wait more than 6-9 months for Apple to catch up. Apple also tends to wait for the bugs in newer drivers to be solved, which as an owner of a Surface Pro 4 I can tell you is not how Microsoft handled their device launch. It took about 5 months before my Surface Pro 4 drivers started functioning properly all of the time.
The OS software is so oversimplified that it's hard to use.
This is probably only because you are a power user. I also sometimes find OSX difficult to use, but not for 95% of my usage. Only when I am trying to customize my experience do I run into problems, and I assume the primary reason is I am used to other OSes.
There aren't many useful applications unless you're doing audio or video editing
I would agree that Apple doesn't really have a killer app on the desktop, but in the iOS world they are clearly #1 in applications. You may not find those applications useful, but the majority of consumers disagree with you.
Apple hasn't innovated in ten years.
That is nonsense. It still takes innovation to incrementally improve products. You don't have to reinvent an industry to be innovative. I may agree that Apple hasn't innovated much in the last 2-3 years, but certainly not 10.
The Apple Watch was a mistake that tried to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Agreed.
Apple products are incredibly expensive but wouldn't even be worth the cost of a typical Android or Windows product.
The apple tax is mostly a myth, and at best comes to $50 on many devices. For instance the iPhone 6+ cost $50 more than my Note 4 when I purchased it two years ago. Apple also tends to only build devices with top of the line hardware, so they are more expensive that the vast majority of other devices. But when compared to Android / Windows devices with similar specs the prices are very similar.
Can anyone explain to me why anyone would use Apple products?
Overall I don't use Apple products because I don't think there is enough variation of products, and I generally feel a more open marketplace creates better products in the long run. For at least 5-6 years I have felt Android phones were superior primarily because I had more options to choose from. If I had to choose between Samsung and Apple I probably would have chosen Apple until 4 years ago, but I never had to make that choice since I also had Motorola / HTC / etc to choose from. Same thing with other Apple devices. For a short time I felt the Macbook Pro 17" laptop was the best on the market, so that is what I bought, but I don't think that has been true for a while.
But regardless of my complaints about options from Apple, they still make great devices. Its just not for me.
Would I be crazy to steer my kids towards CS theses days?
I would use the term guide instead of steer, since the steering analogy implies they are forced down your path. But no, guiding your kids towards CS is not crazy.
Every sector of the economy will be affected by increased automation and increased global competition. Even jobs that need to be done locally, such as plumbing, would be affected by a large flux of displaced workers looking for more local work. So any worries about outsourcing or automation and how they will affect the job market 20-30 years for your children specifically is pointless.
Guiding them towards a well rounded education, whether formal or self-directed, is the most important thing you can do. Computer science will still almost certainly be a great specialization 20-30 years from now because it deals with the underpinnings of the newest phase in the world economy. Deep understanding of database technologies, artificial intelligence, programming languages, etc will be very useful knowledge until the day all humans are unemployable.
The second most important thing to teach is the value of networking. People who rely on job boards instead of their personal network for career opportunities a decade after college will do even worse in 20 years than they do today. If you teach your children that their technical competency will be the only factor in their professional success then you really are crazy, and doing them a grave disservice.
It's a $3,500 a month two bedroom overlooking Elliott Bay, and I have my own bedroom. Plus, parking is $380 per month per space. Could you afford that by yourself?
$3500 per month is not that much for successful IT personnel. Paying 50% of take home on rent is not uncommon in city areas, which only comes to a salary of about $125k per year. Even in the Midwest that isn't very high for someone with about 10 years of experience. Certainly anyone skilled enough to identify the *best* Microsoft developers makes much more than that.
I'm making $35k a year after nine years with a Microsoft vendor. It's hard to afford your own place while making that.
Jesus, $35k per year after nine years? Please say that is some kind of tier 1 customer service, or serving food or something.
The GP must live in the Midwest or something.
While the GP was being a jerk about it, he was certainly insunuating that the AC must be someone who still had trouble paying a few thousand for his dwelling after decades in the IT industry. It is probably accurate that someone with over 20 years experience who has trouble paying $3500 per month in rent does not have the expertise to identify the *best* developers at Microsoft.
Warren Buffet would disagree. But then, what does he know about investing?
What part of what he said disagrees with Warren's viewpoints in the article you linked to? Warren tries to estimate the company's intrinsic value, which is not bound to the net profit or revenue of the company today. While I certainly agree he is more risk adverse than your average VC, which is probably a good thing, but he certainly is not bound to simplistic measures of a company's worth.
I don't think Warren would invest in a company with virtually no book value but a much higher market value, but that doesn't mean he ignores that intrinsic value exists.
Another meaningless figure- of what use this this "Human Capital" other than as a prop for your weak argument ? Also, you are comparing the present value of capital held by billionaires against the lifetime cumulative value of "Human Capital"- this is a major logic fail. If you compared their cumulative value to that of everyone else, the figures would continue to be very lopsided.
I did not compare the cumulative value of human capital. I compared a person who could produce $10k for 30 years in disposable income with an investment instrument which could produce $10k yearly for 30 years.
To put it another way, if slavery was legal and you could buy someone (and guarantee he would never escape with no enslavement related costs), what would his value be? It wouldn't just be his current net worth. Even for a working class person the figure would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It is still worthwhile to compare the financial wealth of different classes in an attempt to combat inequality. But to state that financial wealth is the only wealth of a nation is disingenuous.
Slashdot Mirror
If everyone realises that wide spread abuse is going on, then why the hell do they allow the practice to continue?
It is very hard to create programs and policies to achieve a difficult goal and at the same time prevent unintended consequences and abuse. Abuse of immigration policies is probably inevitable, but so is the downfall of any nation which closes itself off to the world and/or tries to create one-sided trade policies. So one thing everyone should agree on is immigration requires a delicate and difficult balancing act of many concerns.
Create a points system for bringing new people in with the right skills and education, and make sure they are paid a similar wage, so that local wages do not reduce rapidly.
That isn't even the type of visa this article is talking about. B1 visas are meant for business professionals to enter the country for business meetings, conducting research, conducting negotiations, etc. It is not meant for gainfull employment. But my guess is it is very hard to write rules and enforce rules which prevent abuse. In this case "consultants" are traveling to the US for a few months and then leaving. You cannot replace full time positions with these guest workers, but you can replace temporary workers (both skilled and unskilled).
There probably is a way to reduce abuse, and lobbyists are probably trying to prevent helpful reforms, but even without these problems I doubt it would be easy to stop the abuse of these visas all together.
Isn't the public immunized? What danger does a non vaccinated family pose?
People who hold opinions like this are exactly why more education is necessary. Immunization is not 100% effective, and some people have legitimate medical reasons to not get vaccinated. Nut jobs who don't vaccinate their children are a public health issue even when almost everyone else is vaccinated.
On the contrary I would say the last 20 years has seen the most innovation of any other 20 year period, and the next 20 years will beat out the last 20. And this will continue probably forever, or until a global extinction event takes us out.
New ideas may not be as transformative, although that is a product of technology solving all the low hanging fruit over the past 200 years. But new ideas are researched, sent to market, and iterated on at a faster rate today than any other time. The agricultural revolution is obviously the most transformative period of innovation, but it is a stretch to think fostering new ideas was more prevalent in 10,000 BC than it is today.
By any objective metrics you could use to measure innovation, such as R&D spending as a proportion of GDP (both private and public), the rate of change of business processes, the percentage of population in STEM fields, etc, I doubt there is any period in history that contends with today. Maybe the 1960's comes close because of the cold war but I still doubt it matches the current decade.
None of which would be possible without the discovery of electricity and the invention of electricity generation and transmission. If you disregard any innovations built upon previous ones, then I guess 10000 BC wins by your criteria.
If you've ever had to hand wash, or live without refrigeration/freezing for a few weeks, you would have noticed how mind-bendingly central these two items are for maintaining a modern life.
These technologies primarily just enable two earner households, not maintaining modern life. Washing machines, refrigerators, microwaves, and vacuums have collectively made adequate housekeeping a part time job for the average household. They also enable parents to spend far more time parenting than a couple generations ago. Even working parents spend more time interacting with their kids today than stay at home parents did 50 years ago because of these technologies.
If you replace washing machines and refrigerators with electricity and indoor plumbing then I would agree with you.
' Self driving cars still require a human to take over whenever it doesn't know what to do...'
And if you believe that humans can do this after several hours or days of nothing happening, you're wrong.
You are certainly correct that self driving cars cannot assume a driver is being attentive. But they could identify a problem is up ahead and give up control if it can warn the driver perhaps at least 30 seconds before he needs to take control. One example could be construction ahead.
Current studies do not show the food you eat to be a contributing factor, although there are some studies showing sugary drinks have an impact even after adjusting for BMI. Even though the American Diabetes Association is clear that increased sugar consumption is in food is not a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, it does single out sugary drinks as a risk factor.
Diabetes Myths
Sugary drinks as a general rule are the worst thing you can put in your body. Not only does a can of cola have more sugar than a bag of skittles, there does appear to be something different about how the body processes nutrients in drinks as opposed to food. Although the research into why hasn't been very conclusive (at least that I can find).
Shaming type 2 diabetics surely makes sense. It is almost certainly their own fault they are that way.
Type 2 diabetes has very little to do with personal choices either. Being overweight does slightly increase your chances of getting Type 2 diabetes, but it is far from the only risk factor. My dad has had Type 2 diabetes since he was 40 and is a very active slim person (farmer by profession).
Shaming anyone because of Type 2 diabetes makes no sense.
It's because of too much sugar and carbs. Get rid of the junk food!
You are only partly right.
No, he is 100% wrong. Sugar and carbs do not contribute to Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. Being overweight does have a slight impact on getting Type 2 diabetes, but the foods or genetics that made you overweight are irrelevant. If you exercise enough to eat all the pasta and candy you want and stay fit, you have no increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.
That can be one of the causes of type 2 diabetes , however genetics plays a far bigger role.
Type1 is NOT because of sugar and carbs.
Why the distinction when Type 2 diabetes is also not caused by sugar and carbs?
Being overweight does have a very slight correlation with having Type 2 diabetes, but the reason why you are overweight does not matter. You could either eat too much candy, not be active enough, have a thyroid problem, or just be "big boned".
But just eating a lot of candy and pasta is not a contributing factor to getting Type 2 diabetes as long as you don't let it make you fat. And even if you are fat you have a very similar risk of Type 2 diabetes as everyone else. For instance about 80% of people with Type 2 diabetes are overweight, as opposed to 74% of the general population. Not a huge difference in demographics.
I'm male, 5'11 (184cm) and 169lb (12st 1lb / 77kg) and very happy with my weight. I enjoy exercise so much that I need to eat around 3,000 calories per day, but I can't begin to imagine eating 590 calories for lunch except as an occasional blow-out.
You eat 3,000 calories per day but cannot imagine eating 20% of your daily calorie consumption in a single meal? You have a very poor imagination.
The idea of "no taxation without representation" has never been very popular in this country.
Well that would be a good start. If you don't pay taxes, then perhaps you shouldn't have representation. Wellfare? No voting for you. Don't make enough to actually pay taxes? No voting for you either.
Although, I think being able to have some minimum education AND the ability to see things from other's points of view should be a basic requirement for voting.
Everyone other than perhaps the homeless are taxed in this country. While you are likely thinking of income taxes, that is not the sole source of taxes. In fact only a third of local, state, and federal revenue is based on income in the US. Everyone pays taxes on goods the purchase, where they live (either directly through property taxes or indirectly through rent), and on various fees. And even those who don't pay federal income taxes still likely pay towards medicare and social security.
Neither grammar rules nor mathematics have any racial or gender bias to them.
The mere fact that wealthier students receive a better education makes requiring a certain level of education to vote problematic. Requiring a certain level of education to vote is very close to requiring your parents to have a certain level of income to vote. The decision to make is if the benefit of a more educated voting block outweighs removing a large percentage of the population from the democratic process. The idea of "no taxation without representation" has never been very popular in this country.
I'm more concerned with them having *my* "faceprint". I never signed up for their shitty service, but I know my face has ended up on there a few times.
As long as you never go into the public you will never have to worry that public information about you exists. Just as long as your parents didn't do something foolish like getting a birth certificate and social security card, another horrible invasion of privacy.
many Facebook users probably don't know that they agree to having data about their face stored when they sign up
The thought that users would think Facebook could automatically identify their face without storing any information about their face is mind boggling.
The typo in the headline is on me, not the slashdot editors.
I did mention it in the comments on the submission, but I guess they missed it.
If you think proofreading even just the headline of a story isn't the duty of an editor, what do you think is a responsibility of an editor?
I have no idea what SF is doing with that money.
They are taking almost $1 per San Franscisco resident per day, as you suggested, and using that money on homeless programs created by the representatives San Franscisco residents appointed to handle this problem.
I'm only suggesting $1 per day per person is not nearly enough. It either takes far more money and/or very well run programs to make a difference. Just giving homeless money is already known to not be very effective, as most of them need guidance to even know what to do with the money. There is a reason most lottery winners lose all their money in a few years.
If you give $50k to a homeless person it is unlikely it will be spent towards the mental health services and job training he needs to not be in the same situation next year. That person probably already had access to free services before he became homeless in the first place but either mental health problems or simply a lack of education made him not take advantage of them. A run of bad luck can make almost anyone homeless for a short period. But long term homelessness (over a few months) takes real professions to combat, not handouts.
Similar to our education issues, just throwing more money at the problem is highly unlikely to make a significant difference. The problem is not as simple as saying we aren't donating enough. We need to find ways of changing services or even changing our societal values in general. These are not simple problems and there are no simple answers. Even progressive governments spending significant money, like San Francisco, are having real difficulties finding solutions.
For example, we can all see that homelessness is a problem in SF, but we mostly ignore it. There are only 7,000 homeless people in SF, amongst a population of a million. If each of us gave a dollar a day, the problem would be easily solved. But when was the last time you gave a dollar to a homeless person? Not very often, if you're average.
San Francisco spent $241 million on homeless services in 2015, or about $0.82 per day per person. As far as I can tell there is still a big homeless problem, and officials admit they are not able to track the results.
Are you saying that $241 million per year is not enough but $294 million would miraculously solve the problem?
Oddly enough, the existence of quantum mechanics seems to make free will more likely, rather than less. In a fully Newtonian universe, you could argue that by knowing the position and vector of every atom you might predict the future, which sounds a lot like fate, where all future action is based on the past. However, the apparent fuzziness of our reality seems to leave the door open to much more complex probabilistic, entangled, and parallel behaviors.
But quantum mechanics simply opens the possibility of randomness. That doesn't equate to free will, where you made a decision based on your desires, beliefs, willpower, etc. It would just mean some of your decisions are impacted by purely random inputs.
For me, it's about quality vs price. If all you care about price, you get what you pay for. My MacBook has lasted 10 years and is still going although it is now quite outdated. I don't think any PC laptop every lasted more than 3 years for me. So even at 3X the price, it paid for itself.
I'm a bit different of a customer since I refresh my equipment far more frequently. My MacBook Pro didn't even last three years since it didn't have an SSD, and those only became common about a year after I bought mine. Although admittedly SSDs are one of the few upgrades over the past decade which significantly affects the user experience. I don't really care if my electronic devices last more than three years, and even over two years is merely a luxury.
In my case I use my laptop for work, and in that case price is hardly a factor at all. I'm not going to waste money on a fancy video card or anything, but even with a two year refresh cycle a $2500 laptop is well under 1% of my salary. Any equipment I use for about half my working hours will be purchased based on features and capabilities, not a few hundred dollars of price difference.
As a disclaimer I have an Android phone, have owned two iPads (one is still used by my wife), but own a Surface Pro 4 now. My last laptop was a Macbook Pro with Windows installed, but now I have a Lenovo. I am certainly not an Apple fanboy but still feel they offer great products.
Apple's hardware is underpowered.
This is rarely true. Because there is only one manufacturer of Apple devices and they only refresh them about once a year, there are usually more powerful Android / Windows devices on the market for most of the year. But you rarely have to wait more than 6-9 months for Apple to catch up. Apple also tends to wait for the bugs in newer drivers to be solved, which as an owner of a Surface Pro 4 I can tell you is not how Microsoft handled their device launch. It took about 5 months before my Surface Pro 4 drivers started functioning properly all of the time.
The OS software is so oversimplified that it's hard to use.
This is probably only because you are a power user. I also sometimes find OSX difficult to use, but not for 95% of my usage. Only when I am trying to customize my experience do I run into problems, and I assume the primary reason is I am used to other OSes.
There aren't many useful applications unless you're doing audio or video editing
I would agree that Apple doesn't really have a killer app on the desktop, but in the iOS world they are clearly #1 in applications. You may not find those applications useful, but the majority of consumers disagree with you.
Apple hasn't innovated in ten years.
That is nonsense. It still takes innovation to incrementally improve products. You don't have to reinvent an industry to be innovative. I may agree that Apple hasn't innovated much in the last 2-3 years, but certainly not 10.
The Apple Watch was a mistake that tried to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Agreed.
Apple products are incredibly expensive but wouldn't even be worth the cost of a typical Android or Windows product.
The apple tax is mostly a myth, and at best comes to $50 on many devices. For instance the iPhone 6+ cost $50 more than my Note 4 when I purchased it two years ago. Apple also tends to only build devices with top of the line hardware, so they are more expensive that the vast majority of other devices. But when compared to Android / Windows devices with similar specs the prices are very similar.
Can anyone explain to me why anyone would use Apple products?
Overall I don't use Apple products because I don't think there is enough variation of products, and I generally feel a more open marketplace creates better products in the long run. For at least 5-6 years I have felt Android phones were superior primarily because I had more options to choose from. If I had to choose between Samsung and Apple I probably would have chosen Apple until 4 years ago, but I never had to make that choice since I also had Motorola / HTC / etc to choose from. Same thing with other Apple devices. For a short time I felt the Macbook Pro 17" laptop was the best on the market, so that is what I bought, but I don't think that has been true for a while.
But regardless of my complaints about options from Apple, they still make great devices. Its just not for me.
Would I be crazy to steer my kids towards CS theses days?
I would use the term guide instead of steer, since the steering analogy implies they are forced down your path. But no, guiding your kids towards CS is not crazy.
Every sector of the economy will be affected by increased automation and increased global competition. Even jobs that need to be done locally, such as plumbing, would be affected by a large flux of displaced workers looking for more local work. So any worries about outsourcing or automation and how they will affect the job market 20-30 years for your children specifically is pointless.
Guiding them towards a well rounded education, whether formal or self-directed, is the most important thing you can do. Computer science will still almost certainly be a great specialization 20-30 years from now because it deals with the underpinnings of the newest phase in the world economy. Deep understanding of database technologies, artificial intelligence, programming languages, etc will be very useful knowledge until the day all humans are unemployable.
The second most important thing to teach is the value of networking. People who rely on job boards instead of their personal network for career opportunities a decade after college will do even worse in 20 years than they do today. If you teach your children that their technical competency will be the only factor in their professional success then you really are crazy, and doing them a grave disservice.
It's a $3,500 a month two bedroom overlooking Elliott Bay, and I have my own bedroom. Plus, parking is $380 per month per space. Could you afford that by yourself?
$3500 per month is not that much for successful IT personnel. Paying 50% of take home on rent is not uncommon in city areas, which only comes to a salary of about $125k per year. Even in the Midwest that isn't very high for someone with about 10 years of experience. Certainly anyone skilled enough to identify the *best* Microsoft developers makes much more than that.
I'm making $35k a year after nine years with a Microsoft vendor. It's hard to afford your own place while making that.
Jesus, $35k per year after nine years? Please say that is some kind of tier 1 customer service, or serving food or something.
The GP must live in the Midwest or something.
While the GP was being a jerk about it, he was certainly insunuating that the AC must be someone who still had trouble paying a few thousand for his dwelling after decades in the IT industry. It is probably accurate that someone with over 20 years experience who has trouble paying $3500 per month in rent does not have the expertise to identify the *best* developers at Microsoft.
Warren Buffet would disagree. But then, what does he know about investing?
What part of what he said disagrees with Warren's viewpoints in the article you linked to? Warren tries to estimate the company's intrinsic value, which is not bound to the net profit or revenue of the company today. While I certainly agree he is more risk adverse than your average VC, which is probably a good thing, but he certainly is not bound to simplistic measures of a company's worth.
I don't think Warren would invest in a company with virtually no book value but a much higher market value, but that doesn't mean he ignores that intrinsic value exists.
Another meaningless figure- of what use this this "Human Capital" other than as a prop for your weak argument ? Also, you are comparing the present value of capital held by billionaires against the lifetime cumulative value of "Human Capital"- this is a major logic fail. If you compared their cumulative value to that of everyone else, the figures would continue to be very lopsided.
I did not compare the cumulative value of human capital. I compared a person who could produce $10k for 30 years in disposable income with an investment instrument which could produce $10k yearly for 30 years.
To put it another way, if slavery was legal and you could buy someone (and guarantee he would never escape with no enslavement related costs), what would his value be? It wouldn't just be his current net worth. Even for a working class person the figure would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It is still worthwhile to compare the financial wealth of different classes in an attempt to combat inequality. But to state that financial wealth is the only wealth of a nation is disingenuous.