when it will impact groups that have lobbies as powerful as theirs. If the farm lobby is successful, there may be collateral damage to the entertainment industry. Changes in the law may not be limited to right to repair or such changes may be broadly interpreted by courts to allow things the entertainment industry fears; such as circumvention technology that gives users access to DRM protected materials. Since what is at issue is software it's not hard to imagine a scenario where changes to the DCMA have unknown, potentially far reaching implications and that is what the industry fears. Now if only some gun manufacturer introduced software that required you to use a factory technician to clean your gun...
The problem is not imposing a schedule, although that often happens; it's that the developer is not good at giving an accurate estimate and will tend to underestimate the time required.
This isn't any thing new. People are bad at estimating how long a task will take, wether it is developing or building a skyscraper. There is a lot of literature on why people are bad at estimating the time it will take to perform a sequence of tasks. Development is simply the next in a long line of activities that people try to estimate, and do badly.
same here. For the price and extras they are the best deal for me. Coverage is fine and I travel overseas so the free data and texting are a big plus. I can Skype on the slow speed data just fine so calling works and my clients Skype routinely so they are used to reaching people that way, and 90% of my needs are covered by texting for non-business needs. Even with clients a quick text is generally the prefered method anyway. Their customer service is great, any issues I have had with billing were resolved quickly. The last time I had a problem they even credited a full months service, above what I was owed, for my troubles even though I only asked them to credit what I was owed. The free line lets me use unlimited data on my iPad; before that the 200mb free per month let me use email without any overage. Coverage is good as I live in a major metropolitan area. I'm paying 1/2 of what I paid with ATT so I left them after quite a few years and don't regret it. YMMV but my mileage is fine.The best hint that happened for consumers, IMHO, is ATT didn't buy them so T-Mobile has been able to shake up the industry to everyone's benefit. ATT, in contrast, sent me bills for 0 dollars every month for a year before they realized I was no longer with ATT; even though they had already ported my number to another carrier. When I calle dream they said since I was on a corporate account they could not close the account unless the person in charge of phones closed the account. I worked for a major international company who had no one "in charge of phones" and all it took to get their rate was for me to call ATT and say I worked at X and they put me on the account. I eventually had a friend still there call, say they were in charge of phones and to take me off the account. ATT's coverage was great but their customer service wasn't; at one point I kept getting transferred from corporate accounts to personal ones, while I tried to get them to fix the problem, because neither could figure out who was responsible for it since it was my personal number with a corporate rate. As I have had the number for years, even pre ATT when I was on VZW so I could not afford to lose the number and have clients all of a sudden not reach me or get a black mark on my credit score for not paying 0 dollars. When I asked what would happen if I simply didn't pay if I had a bill they said "No problem we just would bill the corporate account and not cut off service." At one point I even called the President's office to get it fixed (I had a friend who worked with the CEO so he gave me the number to call) and even they couldn't figure it out. My friend there said if I didn't pay they would just write off the loss eventually; but I didn't want to go that route as it wouldn't be right. They magically stopped billing me finally and all is well but I would not want to be held hostage by the Death Star so I will not go back to them. I also had VZW for a few years and was happy with their service. VZW, while they were a lot better than ATT and even sent me new phones for free before my contract was up, their CDMA technology limited my ability to use a phone overseas and I didn't want to have to get a new number on a prepaid card every time I traveled and give clients a new number every time I traveled. I realize they now have world phones but since TMobile meets my needs there is no compelling reason to go back to VZW.
you're just not deep enough in the guts of the app to know what they are. UI re-writes are seldom if ever for the hell of it. There's a few good ones:
Yes, there are, and there are also a lot of bad ones:
1. I think a new interface will give my program a fresh look even though the one I have works great and users like it.
2. I think a feature is better implemented in a different way so I'll change how it works.
3. I don't know how to implement this in our current UI so I will redo it to allow me to add this feature.
4. I think this is cool and current so let's get rid of the old UI without thinking about how users actually use the UI.
UI changes need to be carefully thought out. People don't like change and if the rewrite requires learning a new way of doing things or removes features / ways of doing things users will have problems. The developer of one program I use regularly decided to completely redo the interface which resulted in many complaints and the rating to drop from 5 stars to 1 star. He completely broke the old way of doing things and changed features so the program became essentially useless for many users. Fortunately, he quickly returned to the 'classic' interface and all is good again. If it ain't broke don't fix it is a good rule for UI design.
You go to the corner store every Saturday to buy gum. The cashier knows you (and your purchase history) and tells you about a new gum that came out. He just violated your ban.
While I agree such a ban would be unworkable, in the case you described I would think there was an implied consent to collect the information you provided based on the purchase.
They are putting personal data like names, photographs on social media. That isn't anything different from having year photographs on school noticeboards and yearbooks.. If they were taking live streamed photographs and recording audio that would be a wiretapping crime.
Except parents explicitly opt in to allow the photographs to be taken and sign a release for their use. If parents do not sign the release photos are not take. I know of parents with special ed kids who do not allow them to be photographed and the school complies with those wishes. At a minimum, the school is misrepresenting themselves as the student to establish the accounts, which probably violate TOS if not any laws. If enough parents complain to the school board and the head of the local school district this type of crap would stop. I can see this winding up in a lawsuit; especially in a district with affluent parents who know how to work the system.
Waring blenders (the silver one you see in bars) work better and last longer - and are about 1/3 the price.
I have had both.
While Waring makes some good products and start at around 200 vs 400 for a vitaMix, I find they are really 2 different products. If yo want to blend drinks a good Waring will do the job for less. However, I use my VitaMix for many other things, including grinding coffee beans, making soup, chopping vegetables, etc.; all things a blender will not do. It's best to match the device to its use.
How about the CEO eliminates the word "cold-pressed" juice from any public discussion, since it's pretty much meaningless and one of the menu-enhancing words to make people think something is more elaborate or valuable than it is? When have you had juice that is not "cold-pressed"? It's all fucking "cold-pressed". So stop saying that.
It's like "Locally-sourced Niman Ranch charcoal-seared pork chop". A load of enhancement words that just try to make you think something more than it is. It's a fucking pork chop. It's fucking juice.
That's the beauty of marketing - every word has no meaning except in the person hearing them.
The VitaMix is pretty amazing and while not cheap is built like a tank and very versatile. Need coffee beans ground? Soup made? ice cream? Smoothy? Rice flour from rice instead of buying expensive rice flour? It does all that and more. I concur with your assessment as to its value as well as to the noise it makes. It doesn't cut so much as beat to liquid since the blades are dull and rely on speed to do the work rather than sharpness. A plus is you can clean it if needed by hand without cutting yourself.
AirBNB is pretty good for the customers, no real argument there.. It just forces the neighbors who signed up to live in a residential area to live like they were next to a hotel.
This is where neighbors need to work together if someone causes a nuisance by becoming an AirBNB landlord that simply uses the property as a rental. We have a number of lawyers and cops in my neighborhood so it wouldn't be hard to determine what laws are being broken and start complaining so the owner and or renters get fined for violations. For example, if someone is having a loud party have the police show up and if they continue arrest or ticket them. Illegally parked car? Drunk in public? Same thing. Make sure the taxman knows it's generating income and estimate how much. If a homeowner decides to be a problem their are plenty of ways neighbors can address it; I've seen it happen and either stop being an asshat or move. I have no issue with the occasional rental but there are valid reasons zoning laws prevent short term repeated rentals.
I would expect that many people who ask for a second opinion have a reason to ask for a second opinion: in fact, the article even mentions the situation where the first doctor recommended they do so. What would be more telling would be if they did a large study and gave EVERYONE second opinions, and then told us how many differed.
This smells like another case of "lies, damned lies, and statistics", which is designed to make the Mayo Clinic look good.
Correct. A sample size of 286 is pretty small and without knowing details on the data it's hard to draw from conclusions, unless you want to put out a press release. As for the/. header, 88% didn't give a different diagnosis 21% did, with some 67% getting a refined or redefined diagnosis. I would guess that the second opinion MD, knowing what the first said, would focus in on those aspects of the diagnosis to confirm or refine it; medicine is an inexact science, I'd be more worried about 90% agreement than the numbers from this study. More to the point, what was the actual conditions of the patients and what was the accuracy of diagnosis once the condition was positively identified.
Mayo later points out that this study supports getting second opinions even though they cost money. Duh, an outfit that makes money off of MD visits supports more visits? I'm shocked, shocked. Next thing you know there'll be gambling at Rick's...
What was interesting is the conclusion "There were no significant differences between provider types;" i.e. PA's and NPs did just as well as MDs; so using them as the primary entry point in healthcare may be one good way to lower costs while maintaining the quality of care.
As for AI, it certainly is good to use it to aid in diagnosis, as it can learn about specific conditions and continue to build a database to draw from, far beyond an MD's ability to see a broad range of patients to help refine his or her diagnostic capability. AI is good at drawing conclusions from large datasets but not good at recognizing other symptoms that only manifest themselves in person, such as odors, odd way of walking or speaking, that can clue an MD into looking further.
Your (completely uncalled for) optimism about NK's 70 or so subs is noted.
Only six are missile submarines, and those are diesel boats; which have to surface or snort to recharge their batteries and thus are a lot easier to track than a nuke. In addition, if one or more was detected leaving NK waters they'd probably have a tail right way to see where it was headed. Any sign of a launch could result in them getting a torpedo amidships before they realized what was happening. OK, they'd hear the high pitched screw noises for a short period before water started entering their submarine.
Brown water... I would only point out that in WWII, the Japanese managed to build subs that could reach the US coast. Assuming some NK hardware is not at least as capable is absurd.
The Japanese built subs for long distance deployment, as did the Germans and US. A costal submarine may simply not have the fuel stores for a long voyage even if it could operate in blue water. It would appear their 6 missile boats may have the capability since it would make no sense to build one that has limited range.
Media companies are making bigger profits than ever, with no signs of it slowing down. Why are they so concerned about the tiny amount of piracy taking place?
1) Most piracy is done by teenagers and people who are broke and cannot afford to watch content legitimately anyway.
2) Piracy is a pain in the ass. Paying a few dollars for content is far easier, so that's what most people will do.
If they want to reduce piracy further, the best way is to make watching content as easy and simple as possible. For example, FOX recently yanked a bunch of their shows from Netflix because they're starting their own streaming service. Most people don't want to pay for multiple streaming services! Their greed is probably going to result in more piracy, as people go "Damnit Firefly is no longer on Netflix. I'm just going to torrent the rest of the episodes." So now instead of making some money, they make none.
And despite all this, like I mentioned earlier, the industry is more profitable than ever. They're basically yelling "THE SKY IS FALLING!!" on a clear, calm day with blue skies and sunshine.
Part of the problem is the media company's see each pirated copy as a lost sale; even if that is not true. Online piracy is relatively simple to go after compared to bootlegs; especially if you can offload responsibility to block them to others. You don't have to send out agents to buy bootlegs, find the supplier, get local law enforcement to cooperate, etc. Even if bootlegs represent a larger real revenue loss, going after an easier target is appealing. I guess teh argument would be even if we only get 10% of the piracy numbers in sales that's 10% more than we get now; and we don't have to do much heavy lifting to block a site so why not go for it?
The setting to turn it off is in the router/modem box. Not a big deal.
And tehn setting up a fake hotspot that allows you to spy on all the traffic coming through. Seriously, Comcast is training users their WiFi is safe; setting people up for scammers who decide to impersonate Comcast and steal whatever information they want while they route traffic.
Which is perfectly acceptable. Why would you think I'd have any issue with that?
In fact, it would force vendors to supply a more accurate TCO.
Except all would subsidize the failures of a few and pay a premium to do so because of the regulation. Why not just offer a separate warranty add on so a better indication f TOC can be made? Personally, I think the best solution is right to repair; as someone who works on his own vehicles and finds it getting harder and harder. I'd rather buy a legit copy of the manufacturer's software than run a bootleg or someone else not as full featured alternative.
"If the consumer can not repair the purchased item, then the vendor must provide free parts and labour for the advertised lifetime of the item, provided within a reasonable response time for the industry and item in question".
In other words, a mandatory all-encompassing warranty with an SLA.
You want to lock in your customer base? How about the customer base locks in the manufacturer?
Sure, I'll just look at my anticipated repair costs per unit, and jack up the price 150% and give "free" parts and labor for the advertised lifetime, which just happens to be the warranty period. TINSTAAFL
This could definitely be a game changer. First, farmers are a VERY vocal group and the proverbial epitome of freedom of the land, founder spirit and everything that the average American feels good about. Everyone has a farmer somewhere in his ancestry and everyone can at least somehow understand how that's important. These people make the stuff you eat, after all!
Except the average American farmer is a large conglomeration who doesn't fix their own stuff, it's either leased with service or handled by a dealer. Th family farmer, while part of the popular culture, is disappearing; but given the challenges with making a living I can understand why they are against restrictive do not repair EULAs.
While it might work during cruise and landing, will the extra fuel need for takeoff and possibly to support flight at cruise altitude, and thus extra fuel burn and the need to carry such fuel, outweigh the benefits in reduced fuel consumption.
Depends on how you design it. As a back of a napkin exercise I can think of some ideas worth exploring, one of which is track launch. ie the plane launches from a powered rail which gives it the energy required to take off, so it only needs to carry energy to cruise (landing requires require no energy as with the case of the space shuttle). I'd even experiment with keeping the plane connected to the ground via electrical cable somehow for the first 200-300m since that is when most power is required.
No idea of practicality of this, but if we're reinventing transport we'll have to think outside the box a little.
Aircraft carriers already do this, although in a much shorter distance than a commercial aircraft does. A/C would need to be designed to accommodate that since it would change how the A/C is stressed on takeoff when you pull on a wheel. That alone means you'd have to plan now to get airports and A/C capable of doing it in the foreseeable future. There would also have to be close coordination between a launch controller and the A/C, especially if yo get a weak shot or have to abort. Interesting idea, however.
There will be electric ships long before there are electric planes. On a ship weight is hardly an issue at all.
I seem to recall some short haul ferries are electric. Electric ships make sense since propulsion already is electric and once battery technology gets to the point of reasonably fast charging you could charge on shore power while offloading and be ready to go once you've completed cargo operations.
...it takes a lot of discipline to be willing to take less than one could justify. The structure of Costco does this, their upper management does not take all they could, they do not pass all they can on to shareholders. They instead pay their workers well enough that it's possible to make working for Costco in a store a career and to retire from a life in that career.
It's very tempting to instead take more and more and more. It's hard to resist that. Hopefully if they really want to be like Costco they have the fortitude to really mean it.
Costco has a very interesting business model built on loyal employees, and makes it money from memberships, not sales. It's liberal return policy also builds loyalty; I returned an Xbox with the red ring of death, got my money back and promptly bought a new one rather than sending mine to MS for repair and Costco handled the return. That is a key difference, along with the the revenue from memberships, that is hard to replicate. Low price quality goods sold at low margins may attract buyers but can you sustain such a model over time?
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when it will impact groups that have lobbies as powerful as theirs. If the farm lobby is successful, there may be collateral damage to the entertainment industry. Changes in the law may not be limited to right to repair or such changes may be broadly interpreted by courts to allow things the entertainment industry fears; such as circumvention technology that gives users access to DRM protected materials. Since what is at issue is software it's not hard to imagine a scenario where changes to the DCMA have unknown, potentially far reaching implications and that is what the industry fears. Now if only some gun manufacturer introduced software that required you to use a factory technician to clean your gun...
I still want an 1130 with Hollerith cards and line printer...
The problem is not imposing a schedule, although that often happens; it's that the developer is not good at giving an accurate estimate and will tend to underestimate the time required.
This isn't any thing new. People are bad at estimating how long a task will take, wether it is developing or building a skyscraper. There is a lot of literature on why people are bad at estimating the time it will take to perform a sequence of tasks. Development is simply the next in a long line of activities that people try to estimate, and do badly.
same here. For the price and extras they are the best deal for me. Coverage is fine and I travel overseas so the free data and texting are a big plus. I can Skype on the slow speed data just fine so calling works and my clients Skype routinely so they are used to reaching people that way, and 90% of my needs are covered by texting for non-business needs. Even with clients a quick text is generally the prefered method anyway. Their customer service is great, any issues I have had with billing were resolved quickly. The last time I had a problem they even credited a full months service, above what I was owed, for my troubles even though I only asked them to credit what I was owed. The free line lets me use unlimited data on my iPad; before that the 200mb free per month let me use email without any overage. Coverage is good as I live in a major metropolitan area. I'm paying 1/2 of what I paid with ATT so I left them after quite a few years and don't regret it. YMMV but my mileage is fine.The best hint that happened for consumers, IMHO, is ATT didn't buy them so T-Mobile has been able to shake up the industry to everyone's benefit. ATT, in contrast, sent me bills for 0 dollars every month for a year before they realized I was no longer with ATT; even though they had already ported my number to another carrier. When I calle dream they said since I was on a corporate account they could not close the account unless the person in charge of phones closed the account. I worked for a major international company who had no one "in charge of phones" and all it took to get their rate was for me to call ATT and say I worked at X and they put me on the account. I eventually had a friend still there call, say they were in charge of phones and to take me off the account. ATT's coverage was great but their customer service wasn't; at one point I kept getting transferred from corporate accounts to personal ones, while I tried to get them to fix the problem, because neither could figure out who was responsible for it since it was my personal number with a corporate rate. As I have had the number for years, even pre ATT when I was on VZW so I could not afford to lose the number and have clients all of a sudden not reach me or get a black mark on my credit score for not paying 0 dollars. When I asked what would happen if I simply didn't pay if I had a bill they said "No problem we just would bill the corporate account and not cut off service." At one point I even called the President's office to get it fixed (I had a friend who worked with the CEO so he gave me the number to call) and even they couldn't figure it out. My friend there said if I didn't pay they would just write off the loss eventually; but I didn't want to go that route as it wouldn't be right. They magically stopped billing me finally and all is well but I would not want to be held hostage by the Death Star so I will not go back to them. I also had VZW for a few years and was happy with their service. VZW, while they were a lot better than ATT and even sent me new phones for free before my contract was up, their CDMA technology limited my ability to use a phone overseas and I didn't want to have to get a new number on a prepaid card every time I traveled and give clients a new number every time I traveled. I realize they now have world phones but since TMobile meets my needs there is no compelling reason to go back to VZW.
you're just not deep enough in the guts of the app to know what they are. UI re-writes are seldom if ever for the hell of it. There's a few good ones:
Yes, there are, and there are also a lot of bad ones:
1. I think a new interface will give my program a fresh look even though the one I have works great and users like it.
2. I think a feature is better implemented in a different way so I'll change how it works.
3. I don't know how to implement this in our current UI so I will redo it to allow me to add this feature.
4. I think this is cool and current so let's get rid of the old UI without thinking about how users actually use the UI.
UI changes need to be carefully thought out. People don't like change and if the rewrite requires learning a new way of doing things or removes features / ways of doing things users will have problems. The developer of one program I use regularly decided to completely redo the interface which resulted in many complaints and the rating to drop from 5 stars to 1 star. He completely broke the old way of doing things and changed features so the program became essentially useless for many users. Fortunately, he quickly returned to the 'classic' interface and all is good again. If it ain't broke don't fix it is a good rule for UI design.
You go to the corner store every Saturday to buy gum. The cashier knows you (and your purchase history) and tells you about a new gum that came out. He just violated your ban.
While I agree such a ban would be unworkable, in the case you described I would think there was an implied consent to collect the information you provided based on the purchase.
They are putting personal data like names, photographs on social media. That isn't anything different from having year photographs on school noticeboards and yearbooks.. If they were taking live streamed photographs and recording audio that would be a wiretapping crime.
Except parents explicitly opt in to allow the photographs to be taken and sign a release for their use. If parents do not sign the release photos are not take. I know of parents with special ed kids who do not allow them to be photographed and the school complies with those wishes. At a minimum, the school is misrepresenting themselves as the student to establish the accounts, which probably violate TOS if not any laws. If enough parents complain to the school board and the head of the local school district this type of crap would stop. I can see this winding up in a lawsuit; especially in a district with affluent parents who know how to work the system.
Waring blenders (the silver one you see in bars) work better and last longer - and are about 1/3 the price.
I have had both.
While Waring makes some good products and start at around 200 vs 400 for a vitaMix, I find they are really 2 different products. If yo want to blend drinks a good Waring will do the job for less. However, I use my VitaMix for many other things, including grinding coffee beans, making soup, chopping vegetables, etc.; all things a blender will not do. It's best to match the device to its use.
How about the CEO eliminates the word "cold-pressed" juice from any public discussion, since it's pretty much meaningless and one of the menu-enhancing words to make people think something is more elaborate or valuable than it is? When have you had juice that is not "cold-pressed"? It's all fucking "cold-pressed". So stop saying that. It's like "Locally-sourced Niman Ranch charcoal-seared pork chop". A load of enhancement words that just try to make you think something more than it is. It's a fucking pork chop. It's fucking juice.
That's the beauty of marketing - every word has no meaning except in the person hearing them.
The VitaMix is pretty amazing and while not cheap is built like a tank and very versatile. Need coffee beans ground? Soup made? ice cream? Smoothy? Rice flour from rice instead of buying expensive rice flour? It does all that and more. I concur with your assessment as to its value as well as to the noise it makes. It doesn't cut so much as beat to liquid since the blades are dull and rely on speed to do the work rather than sharpness. A plus is you can clean it if needed by hand without cutting yourself.
AirBNB is pretty good for the customers, no real argument there.. It just forces the neighbors who signed up to live in a residential area to live like they were next to a hotel.
This is where neighbors need to work together if someone causes a nuisance by becoming an AirBNB landlord that simply uses the property as a rental. We have a number of lawyers and cops in my neighborhood so it wouldn't be hard to determine what laws are being broken and start complaining so the owner and or renters get fined for violations. For example, if someone is having a loud party have the police show up and if they continue arrest or ticket them. Illegally parked car? Drunk in public? Same thing. Make sure the taxman knows it's generating income and estimate how much. If a homeowner decides to be a problem their are plenty of ways neighbors can address it; I've seen it happen and either stop being an asshat or move. I have no issue with the occasional rental but there are valid reasons zoning laws prevent short term repeated rentals.
He's been a Democrat before he was a Republican?
He promised to pay back loans and contractors and then didn't?
He was for virtually everything until he was against it?
I mean, he's been sooo consistant and open throughout his life that this New Trump must be some sort of aberration.
The one thing that has never wavered is Trump does what is best for Trump and screw the rest of you.
They are paid by visitors who vote elsewhere
I would expect that many people who ask for a second opinion have a reason to ask for a second opinion: in fact, the article even mentions the situation where the first doctor recommended they do so. What would be more telling would be if they did a large study and gave EVERYONE second opinions, and then told us how many differed. This smells like another case of "lies, damned lies, and statistics", which is designed to make the Mayo Clinic look good.
Correct. A sample size of 286 is pretty small and without knowing details on the data it's hard to draw from conclusions, unless you want to put out a press release. As for the /. header, 88% didn't give a different diagnosis 21% did, with some 67% getting a refined or redefined diagnosis. I would guess that the second opinion MD, knowing what the first said, would focus in on those aspects of the diagnosis to confirm or refine it; medicine is an inexact science, I'd be more worried about 90% agreement than the numbers from this study. More to the point, what was the actual conditions of the patients and what was the accuracy of diagnosis once the condition was positively identified.
Mayo later points out that this study supports getting second opinions even though they cost money. Duh, an outfit that makes money off of MD visits supports more visits? I'm shocked, shocked. Next thing you know there'll be gambling at Rick's...
What was interesting is the conclusion "There were no significant differences between provider types;" i.e. PA's and NPs did just as well as MDs; so using them as the primary entry point in healthcare may be one good way to lower costs while maintaining the quality of care.
As for AI, it certainly is good to use it to aid in diagnosis, as it can learn about specific conditions and continue to build a database to draw from, far beyond an MD's ability to see a broad range of patients to help refine his or her diagnostic capability. AI is good at drawing conclusions from large datasets but not good at recognizing other symptoms that only manifest themselves in person, such as odors, odd way of walking or speaking, that can clue an MD into looking further.
Your (completely uncalled for) optimism about NK's 70 or so subs is noted.
Only six are missile submarines, and those are diesel boats; which have to surface or snort to recharge their batteries and thus are a lot easier to track than a nuke. In addition, if one or more was detected leaving NK waters they'd probably have a tail right way to see where it was headed. Any sign of a launch could result in them getting a torpedo amidships before they realized what was happening. OK, they'd hear the high pitched screw noises for a short period before water started entering their submarine.
Brown water... I would only point out that in WWII, the Japanese managed to build subs that could reach the US coast. Assuming some NK hardware is not at least as capable is absurd.
The Japanese built subs for long distance deployment, as did the Germans and US. A costal submarine may simply not have the fuel stores for a long voyage even if it could operate in blue water. It would appear their 6 missile boats may have the capability since it would make no sense to build one that has limited range.
You used little plastic tubes to program it by placing them over pins. You then cranked it and it would yield binary answers.
Media companies are making bigger profits than ever, with no signs of it slowing down. Why are they so concerned about the tiny amount of piracy taking place?
1) Most piracy is done by teenagers and people who are broke and cannot afford to watch content legitimately anyway. 2) Piracy is a pain in the ass. Paying a few dollars for content is far easier, so that's what most people will do.
If they want to reduce piracy further, the best way is to make watching content as easy and simple as possible. For example, FOX recently yanked a bunch of their shows from Netflix because they're starting their own streaming service. Most people don't want to pay for multiple streaming services! Their greed is probably going to result in more piracy, as people go "Damnit Firefly is no longer on Netflix. I'm just going to torrent the rest of the episodes." So now instead of making some money, they make none.
And despite all this, like I mentioned earlier, the industry is more profitable than ever. They're basically yelling "THE SKY IS FALLING!!" on a clear, calm day with blue skies and sunshine.
Part of the problem is the media company's see each pirated copy as a lost sale; even if that is not true. Online piracy is relatively simple to go after compared to bootlegs; especially if you can offload responsibility to block them to others. You don't have to send out agents to buy bootlegs, find the supplier, get local law enforcement to cooperate, etc. Even if bootlegs represent a larger real revenue loss, going after an easier target is appealing. I guess teh argument would be even if we only get 10% of the piracy numbers in sales that's 10% more than we get now; and we don't have to do much heavy lifting to block a site so why not go for it?
The setting to turn it off is in the router/modem box. Not a big deal.
And tehn setting up a fake hotspot that allows you to spy on all the traffic coming through. Seriously, Comcast is training users their WiFi is safe; setting people up for scammers who decide to impersonate Comcast and steal whatever information they want while they route traffic.
Which is perfectly acceptable. Why would you think I'd have any issue with that?
In fact, it would force vendors to supply a more accurate TCO.
Except all would subsidize the failures of a few and pay a premium to do so because of the regulation. Why not just offer a separate warranty add on so a better indication f TOC can be made? Personally, I think the best solution is right to repair; as someone who works on his own vehicles and finds it getting harder and harder. I'd rather buy a legit copy of the manufacturer's software than run a bootleg or someone else not as full featured alternative.
"If the consumer can not repair the purchased item, then the vendor must provide free parts and labour for the advertised lifetime of the item, provided within a reasonable response time for the industry and item in question".
In other words, a mandatory all-encompassing warranty with an SLA.
You want to lock in your customer base? How about the customer base locks in the manufacturer?
Sure, I'll just look at my anticipated repair costs per unit, and jack up the price 150% and give "free" parts and labor for the advertised lifetime, which just happens to be the warranty period. TINSTAAFL
This could definitely be a game changer. First, farmers are a VERY vocal group and the proverbial epitome of freedom of the land, founder spirit and everything that the average American feels good about. Everyone has a farmer somewhere in his ancestry and everyone can at least somehow understand how that's important. These people make the stuff you eat, after all!
Except the average American farmer is a large conglomeration who doesn't fix their own stuff, it's either leased with service or handled by a dealer. Th family farmer, while part of the popular culture, is disappearing; but given the challenges with making a living I can understand why they are against restrictive do not repair EULAs.
While it might work during cruise and landing, will the extra fuel need for takeoff and possibly to support flight at cruise altitude, and thus extra fuel burn and the need to carry such fuel, outweigh the benefits in reduced fuel consumption.
Depends on how you design it. As a back of a napkin exercise I can think of some ideas worth exploring, one of which is track launch. ie the plane launches from a powered rail which gives it the energy required to take off, so it only needs to carry energy to cruise (landing requires require no energy as with the case of the space shuttle). I'd even experiment with keeping the plane connected to the ground via electrical cable somehow for the first 200-300m since that is when most power is required. No idea of practicality of this, but if we're reinventing transport we'll have to think outside the box a little.
Aircraft carriers already do this, although in a much shorter distance than a commercial aircraft does. A/C would need to be designed to accommodate that since it would change how the A/C is stressed on takeoff when you pull on a wheel. That alone means you'd have to plan now to get airports and A/C capable of doing it in the foreseeable future. There would also have to be close coordination between a launch controller and the A/C, especially if yo get a weak shot or have to abort. Interesting idea, however.
There will be electric ships long before there are electric planes. On a ship weight is hardly an issue at all.
I seem to recall some short haul ferries are electric. Electric ships make sense since propulsion already is electric and once battery technology gets to the point of reasonably fast charging you could charge on shore power while offloading and be ready to go once you've completed cargo operations.
...it takes a lot of discipline to be willing to take less than one could justify. The structure of Costco does this, their upper management does not take all they could, they do not pass all they can on to shareholders. They instead pay their workers well enough that it's possible to make working for Costco in a store a career and to retire from a life in that career.
It's very tempting to instead take more and more and more. It's hard to resist that. Hopefully if they really want to be like Costco they have the fortitude to really mean it.
Costco has a very interesting business model built on loyal employees, and makes it money from memberships, not sales. It's liberal return policy also builds loyalty; I returned an Xbox with the red ring of death, got my money back and promptly bought a new one rather than sending mine to MS for repair and Costco handled the return. That is a key difference, along with the the revenue from memberships, that is hard to replicate. Low price quality goods sold at low margins may attract buyers but can you sustain such a model over time?