I figured they did this because they're secretly owned by Gillette. Their next laptop will have five screens and a lubricating strip.
Can't say I find this compelling. I had a workstation with four monitors back in 1990, courtesy of X11. Fun for a while but I've never been motivated to set up a multiple-monitor arrangement since, for programming or research or writing. I know many folks seem to think it's the greatest thing since sliced bits, but the appeal is lost on me.
Everyone without eyesight disabilities should be able to see the horrible compression artefacts in "streamed video",
No doubt many people do see the difference, and don't care. "Horrible" is in the eye of the beholder.
I used to watch a lot of broadcast television, VHF and UHF. Picture quality was pretty bad. Never bothered me.
We got a VHS VCR, and recorded shows at EP speed. Picture quality was even worse. We still watched them.
Then my parents moved to a house on the side of a mountain in Vermont; with a 15' antenna on the roof, they got three channels, filled with static. Not only did we continue to watch, we frequently recorded off the air onto those VHS tapes at EP speed. My family kept, and occasionally watched, some of those tapes for years.
These days I have a cheap LCD television, cable, and various streaming services. Cable carries a host of HD channels, which we never watch, because they're numbered higher than the SD ones and no one can be bothered to scroll down that far in the guide.
We have a DVD player but rarely use it. We've never bothered with Blu-Ray; don't see any reason to. (Still have a VCR, too, though I don't think it's been used in a couple of years.)
When my family watches something, we're watching for the narrative. As long as the picture is recognizable, that's probably going to be good enough. And I suspect we're not alone in that.
I think we have similar opinions on some of these issues, but this still does depend on what "leisure time" really means. While the American mentality is often to work to keep accumulating wealth ("he who dies with the most wins"), the European mentality is much more about leisure time as the payoff, not "stuff".
I'm not particularly interested in accumulating wealth - though I seem to have done so, more or less accidentally, in the process of doing things I enjoy. I do protect my leisure time, and use it for relaxation and entertainment.
What I certainly don't want is the government telling me when my leisure time is scheduled. Maybe I want to work all day Saturday, and then take Monday and Tuesday afternoons off. Maybe I'd like to start working at 5:30 and be done at 13:30.
I'm in favor of strong labor rights, broadly speaking - but they're supposed to empower workers, not confine them to some idiot bureaucrat's idea of the ideal work experience.
Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money. But for some quality of life it to be left the hell alone and not have your life run by a nanny state.
Indeed. My quality of life depends, in no small part, on my flexible hours. That includes being able to do whatever sort of work I want, including reading emails, whenever I want to.
I don't read work email all the time. I keep my MUA disconnected from the server, so I don't even see that I have new messages until I tell it go fetch. And I don't even have access to work email from my phone or personal laptop; I have to be using my work laptop to get to it at all.
But if I happen to be up at 5:00 or 23:00 and decide to write some code, I'll probably check email just for the hell of it. And I certainly wouldn't want a bunch of jackass legislators telling me I can't.
And then the process will repeat, as the same people that ruined Twitter flock to Instagram.
Yes. Instagram is the new Twitter. How long before it becomes the new old Twitter?
Of course, if the Credit Suisse estimate is anywhere close to correct, then Instagram has returned more than 3x revenue over the acquisition cost. No idea what part of that is net profit (and can't be bothered to try to figure it out). If Facebook continues to milk Instagram until it starts to crash, and then reduces costs aggressively, that $1B outlay might well turn out profitable (if it isn't already).
I admit I was dubious about Facebook's prospects, and Instagram's. But Facebook has shown they can sell enough advertising space to make money. Until they screw that up, I suppose we have to count them as successful.
I do wonder how much of the online advertising revenue is durable, and how much is a bubble. Online advertising is highly susceptible to fraud (because it can be metered, and thus sold, in ways that aren't available in non-interactive media like print and television). At some point ad buyers may look more closely at the existing online-advertising giants (Google and Facebook) and say, well, we're paying for a lot of theft here, and the viewership statistics are even less reliable than what we had with traditional media, and conversion rates aren't great either... maybe we should pull back and look for other channels.
Online advertising certainly isn't going to go away, but we could see a nasty correction.
Fact is Trump made a deal with Putin. Win me the election and will sanctions.
No, that's not a fact. It's pure conjecture.
Don't we now live in a post-fact world? WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker says that stories will *not* call Trump a liar as this is "too partisan" but will merely investigate his claims and post those stories separately for readers to make up their own minds. However, the WSJ has had no qualms in labeling Edward Snowden a liar in several stories.
Sure. Who's surprised that the WSJ editorial team has double standards? Hardly shocking - in fact it's how newspapers everywhere have always operated. It's pretty much how language has always operated, particularly if you accept some of the less naively instrumental theories of language like Toulmin's or Davidson's.
And I think Trump's a loathesome narcissist, bully, and con man.
But as far as I'm aware, there's no compelling, or even mildly persuasive, evidence that he "made a deal with Putin" to "win... the election". For that matter, I don't think Putin was capable of delivering the election, or that Trump needed his support. Trump won because he carried the states everyone expected him to carry; he won Florida[1]; and he won the "defector" states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan[2], and Wisconsin.
Why he won all those also seems pretty clear: populist demogoguery that appealed to antiestablishmentarianism, contrarianism, xenophobia, and general disconnection; a smaller but vocal cadre of middlebrow right-wingers who either believed his vague promises of business liberalization and social conservativism or anticipated that he'd delegate everything to right-winger lieutenants;[3] an even smaller bunch of Powers That Be who bet that he'd reward them;[4] some demographic factors; and gerrymandering, though that's an easy target that attracts more blame than it deserves (and blaming it doesn't do much good anyway).
Is Trump's win good for Putin? Very likely yes, though to be honest Putin would likely have been pretty pleased with a Clinton win as well, since continuing the current tensions would have served to keep his popularity up. Putin's a deft strongman and the Kremlin is adaptable. Really, sowing FUD about the election is probably all Russia wanted, since it distracts from more important issues and rallies nationalism at home. And they got that - in spades.
The OP's claim that Putin delivered the election to Trump just plays into Putin's hand. Focusing on things we do have evidence of would be much more productive.
[1]The Florida results seem to me pretty likely to be an accurate reflection of the actual popular vote, at least in terms of the overall winner. It wasn't another 2000.
[2]It's really not clear that he actually won Michigan, where the difference in the official count was well within the margin of error and the recount was halted early; but it makes no difference to the overall election. Trump still wins without Michigan's votes.
[3]That bet appears to be pretty safe, judging from Trump's cabinet nominations and the abundant evidence that he doesn't care to do the day job, whatever his day job supposedly is at the moment. If it's not something splashy that feeds his narcissism, he's not interested.
[4]Goldman Sachs executives, for example. Or the folks running Carrier, who just got a big reward from that tool Mike Pence for only eliminating many of the jobs at their Indiana facilities.
Yup. And then in his novel A Gift From Earth, a nation that depends on organ harvesting for its caste system is thrown into turmoil when organ substitutes are introduced. Like pretty much all of Niven's work it's a mix of hard-ish SF, social speculation, and pulpy potboiler, but he has a good point. And, of course, it's the same point made by the people in favor of decriminalizing certain drugs and otherwise opening artificially-scarce markets: institutions recognize that controlling a scarce commodity gives them power, and they'll try to gain and keep that control.
Cloned organs, or other sorts of artificial replacements (Niven's were genetically-engineered para-organs), could make a big difference. As someone noted above, replacement organs aren't a great treatment as it is, though of course most people feel it's better than dying.
Adams was the first author I ever wrote a personal letter to. I received a very nice response from his secretary, addressing my comments (not just a form letter) and a photo of Adams, which I kept in a frame for years. I must have been 10 or 11 at the time...
Some years later I wrote extensively on Adams' The Girl in the Swing, as part of a chapter in my lit dissertation (pairing it with two other contemporary novels about mother-daughter violence, Morrison's Beloved and Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills). I only read Shardik once and Plague Dogs two or three times, and never did make it all the way through Maia; but WD and TGiTS I nearly had memorized at one time.
And speaking of that... what's with this barbarism in the article: "They'll be alright". In all the editions I've seen, including the one in Google Books, it's "all right". Yes, language changes and English has no central authority - I'm a descriptivist myself - but let's respect the author's usage preferences, eh? "Alright" is a probably-inevitable (because parallel with "already"[1]) but ugly corruption of the original phrase, and there's certainly no reason to prefer it.
[1]"already" is a compression of Middle English "al redy", in which "al" is itself a simplified "all", so "alright" has an etymological precedent. And, as I already noted, it's probably inevitable. Doesn't mean we should let it contaminate a perfectly good "all right", though.
I may wake up hungry or thirsty sometimes, but never due to my bladder.
Interestingly (at least to me), I've found that since my mid-40s I do go to the bathroom more often during the night, but (based on volume expressed) I really didn't need to. I think I just wake part of the way up, then start thinking that maybe I need to go, and finally get up so I'll stop thinking about it.
I suspect it's mostly social conditioning, in other words. I've been told so many times that older people need to urinate more often, and when I'm half-awake my critical faculties are diminished, and so in that state I obsess (in a vaguely incoherent fashion) over things like that.
I usually don't check work email in any way if I'm not in the office - the major exception being when I'm oncall. But even when I'm oncall, no work email on my phone, that way madness lies. It can wait.
It can, at least for most people. But while I've happily gone a week or so at a time not reading my work email, even on vacation I often like to check it every day or two, just to see if anything interesting is happening.
But then most of my work boils down to interesting intellectual problems, so checking email is more like playing a game than suffering through a meeting. (Though come to think of it, most of my meetings are pretty productive too.)
Once in a while I'm woken by my alarm - actually my wife's alarm - but it's not a damn smartphone. It's one of those Philips daylight-simulating alarm clocks that comes on very dim about twenty minutes before the set time, and gradually brightens. Then the alarm sound (she has it set to birdsong, which is fine by me; I don't need some ghastly shrill electronic beeping waking me, thanks) starts at the set time, and again starts off quiet and gradually gets louder.
The alarm rarely wakes us in the summer months, since natural daylight and birdsong come on before the alarm time. Even better. But in the winter it's quite nice.
And while I occasionally read some email before breakfast, it's not until I've been downstairs to start the coffee, brought the newspaper in, and so forth. So at least I've had some time to get fully awake and moving. Reading email before even getting out of bed seems pretty dumb, even if it's not bad news.
When was the last time the US actually annexed land? It's been centuries.
1898 (Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, etc.) was barely more than one century ago. And then there's the Philippines: annexed 1902, sovereignty restored in 1946. And while the US never formally annexed Okinawa, we held complete control over the archipelago from 1945 until 1972.
And we've had plenty of nasty proxy wars, not to mention those we've been directly involved in.
Of course the sins of the US have little bearing on those of Russia (or the USSR before it, or Czarist Russia before that). But trying to claim the moral high ground only weakens your argument.
I've had half a dozen ThinkPads, IBM and Lenovo, over the years. My current one is from 2009. I've dropped all of them multiple times - just something that happens when you work in a lot of different environments, with cords strewn around and whatnot. I knocked the latest one over onto a hard floor again just a couple of days ago, which probably makes at least two dozen times it's taken such a tumble (while running).
The only problem I've had with this one is dust and cat hair collecting in the vents to the point where it overheats. One IBM ThinkPad needed its CPU fan replaced after a few years. Another had the drive fail catastrophically, but that's more Hitachi's fault (it was a Death^WTravelStar). One eventually developed an occasional RAM failure; never tracked that down to RAM or motherboard.
On the whole, though, they've been very tough and reliable.
Ok, everybody who was effected by this raise your hands! Anybody?
It's certainly possible that with traffic to some sites disrupted, some people turned to other... entertainments, and in the process effected someone. But I'm afraid you'll have to wait ~9 months for any of the latter group to raise their hands.
At last a suitable target for sky pirates. The steampunks must be wetting themselves with excitement. (And, of course, with condensation. All that steam has to go somewhere.)
Ugh. Having driven through many a tunnel as part of a daily commute, I doubt very much that underground roads would be pleasant or effective. (I see someone else has already mentioned the problem with accidents and other obstructions.)
Maybe we could restrict them to Segways and Rascal scooters. We were all told cities would be redesigned around the Segway - here's our opportunity!
Or instead of underground roads, let's have underground moving walkways. Everyone who's gone between Concourses B and C at O'Harrible knows that's a transportation dream come true. Of course, cash-strapped municipalities may have to skimp on the grating neon lighting and New Age "music".
Or maybe some sort of underground train system would work. Has that ever been tried?
Really, it's a shame we don't have more urban planners rethinking in-city transportation. Those "airpark" communities worked out so well, for example.
On a more serious note - yes, it's true that every idiot bashing about town in their own personal car is not a great transportation mode. Still beats cities full of horses, though. And while mass transit can work very well, in many places it doesn't, for one reason or another. I suspect this is not a problem with a bumper-sticker solution.
The only way to get a free and open and usable Android experience is to do so illegally
For some values of "usable", perhaps.
- use AOSP and inject Google's apps and services
I can live without Google's apps and services.
maybe grab some firmware or blobs for specific hardware so the damn thing charges properly or the WiFi actually works
Maybe - but this doesn't seem to be a problem with many phone models. And if you obtained the hardware legally in the first place, and saved its firmware and OS before you started messing with it, you'll probably have legal copies of the hardware-specific blobs you need.
hack some more shit to maybe get Android Pay working or get WiFi calling enabled
I've never wanted WiFi calling, and the day I use Android Pay you'll be able to ice skate in Tartarus.
and illegally download and share the updated APKs whenever there's a security patch (often)
Oh, please. Vast numbers of Android phones never get security updates now. This is hardly an obstacle to a "usable" Android experience, as millions of users can testify. Sensible user hygiene goes a lot further toward securing Android.
then cry because you have to reformat your phone to flash a new ROM with the latest Android security updates every month
As above. I have never had an Android phone receive an OTA security update. Never.
None of the things you mentioned would impede my current use of Android in the slightest. AOSP might not provide the Android "experience" you want, but many people don't need much more than a featurephone plus one or two apps they can find from someplace like F-Droid. No, it may not be easy for non-technical users, or even for techies who don't want the cognitive load and opportunity cost of acquiring Android-hacking expertise. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.
"Usable" is defined by the user.
Now, that doesn't mean that your broader point - that Google is doing what they can to control Android, while paying lip service to openness - is wrong. But as long as you exercise some care in your choice of phone model, it's not impossible to live without the non-open parts.
Real-time traffic is a nice feature, but by no means a necessity.
A nice feature for some users. I've never had any need for it.
Of course, I still use paper maps more often than I use satnav, because they're quick and reliable. I only use navigation apps when I don't have a map with me, or need a more-precise location of my destination.
I know it's hard for some to believe, but there was a time when we didn't have satnav with real-time traffic information, and somehow many of us survived. I used to commute around Boston - North Shore to Cambridge or Back Bay in the morning, then out to Framingham in the evening, then back to the North Shore at night; then later directly between the North Shore and Framingham morning and night. Yes, I often got stuck in traffic. It was annoying. It wasn't digging coal or subsistence agriculture.
A thousand times yes. I'm not interested in suffering permanent hearing damage because some idiot director, sound engineer, or theater owner decided MOAR LOAD! For my last couple of theater visits I brought earplugs, but that's hardly an ideal experience either.
For that matter, I'd like a special circle of Hell set aside for everyone who decides that SFX and incidental music should be much louder than dialog. I've quit watching some movies at home halfway through because there was no volume level where the dialog was audible but the crapnoise wasn't excessive.
I used to like the theater experience, but the last couple of times I've gone, the audio was much too loud, and the audience was infuriatingly disruptive, including a lot of phone use. No doubt there are theaters which are better-run - as a teen I used to go to one that still had ushers who would quietly remove the ill-behaved - but I don't live anywhere near one now. I haven't gone to the theater in years.
On the other hand, I don't think I've seen a movie in years, either, except for old favorites I have on DVD (or even VHS). For the small portion of my time that I want to devote to synchronous media, recent films haven't made the cut. I'm sure many are fine, but I feel no need to seek them out.
There's only 2 ways to steal a car, drive it or tow it. Locking brake systems immobilize vehicles rendering them immovable, thus virtually unstealable.
I've done a little towing, and immobilized wheels would hardly even have delayed us. Maybe a minute or two longer to get the vehicle secured and ready to roll. With the wheel-lift trucks we would have just used the dollies for the wheels on the ground, and with the ramp trucks we would have just hauled it up the ramp regardless. Your tires do not have anywhere close to sufficient static friction to stop the winch from hauling that vehicle up the ramp.
And I don't see how your mooted "locking brake system" interferes with any thief who convinces the car - through whatever means - to start normally.
I admit it'd really cut down on thefts that involve putting the transmission in neutral and pushing the car by hand, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I figured they did this because they're secretly owned by Gillette. Their next laptop will have five screens and a lubricating strip.
Can't say I find this compelling. I had a workstation with four monitors back in 1990, courtesy of X11. Fun for a while but I've never been motivated to set up a multiple-monitor arrangement since, for programming or research or writing. I know many folks seem to think it's the greatest thing since sliced bits, but the appeal is lost on me.
Everyone without eyesight disabilities should be able to see the horrible compression artefacts in "streamed video",
No doubt many people do see the difference, and don't care. "Horrible" is in the eye of the beholder.
I used to watch a lot of broadcast television, VHF and UHF. Picture quality was pretty bad. Never bothered me.
We got a VHS VCR, and recorded shows at EP speed. Picture quality was even worse. We still watched them.
Then my parents moved to a house on the side of a mountain in Vermont; with a 15' antenna on the roof, they got three channels, filled with static. Not only did we continue to watch, we frequently recorded off the air onto those VHS tapes at EP speed. My family kept, and occasionally watched, some of those tapes for years.
These days I have a cheap LCD television, cable, and various streaming services. Cable carries a host of HD channels, which we never watch, because they're numbered higher than the SD ones and no one can be bothered to scroll down that far in the guide.
We have a DVD player but rarely use it. We've never bothered with Blu-Ray; don't see any reason to. (Still have a VCR, too, though I don't think it's been used in a couple of years.)
When my family watches something, we're watching for the narrative. As long as the picture is recognizable, that's probably going to be good enough. And I suspect we're not alone in that.
Well learning any language makes you a better programmer.
Indeed. There's nothing like learning Unlambda to teach you how to use the s and k combinators.
I think we have similar opinions on some of these issues, but this still does depend on what "leisure time" really means. While the American mentality is often to work to keep accumulating wealth ("he who dies with the most wins"), the European mentality is much more about leisure time as the payoff, not "stuff".
I'm not particularly interested in accumulating wealth - though I seem to have done so, more or less accidentally, in the process of doing things I enjoy. I do protect my leisure time, and use it for relaxation and entertainment.
What I certainly don't want is the government telling me when my leisure time is scheduled. Maybe I want to work all day Saturday, and then take Monday and Tuesday afternoons off. Maybe I'd like to start working at 5:30 and be done at 13:30.
I'm in favor of strong labor rights, broadly speaking - but they're supposed to empower workers, not confine them to some idiot bureaucrat's idea of the ideal work experience.
Now, you might argue (as many in France do) that quality of life is more important than money. But for some quality of life it to be left the hell alone and not have your life run by a nanny state.
Indeed. My quality of life depends, in no small part, on my flexible hours. That includes being able to do whatever sort of work I want, including reading emails, whenever I want to.
I don't read work email all the time. I keep my MUA disconnected from the server, so I don't even see that I have new messages until I tell it go fetch. And I don't even have access to work email from my phone or personal laptop; I have to be using my work laptop to get to it at all.
But if I happen to be up at 5:00 or 23:00 and decide to write some code, I'll probably check email just for the hell of it. And I certainly wouldn't want a bunch of jackass legislators telling me I can't.
And then the process will repeat, as the same people that ruined Twitter flock to Instagram.
Yes. Instagram is the new Twitter. How long before it becomes the new old Twitter?
Of course, if the Credit Suisse estimate is anywhere close to correct, then Instagram has returned more than 3x revenue over the acquisition cost. No idea what part of that is net profit (and can't be bothered to try to figure it out). If Facebook continues to milk Instagram until it starts to crash, and then reduces costs aggressively, that $1B outlay might well turn out profitable (if it isn't already).
I admit I was dubious about Facebook's prospects, and Instagram's. But Facebook has shown they can sell enough advertising space to make money. Until they screw that up, I suppose we have to count them as successful.
I do wonder how much of the online advertising revenue is durable, and how much is a bubble. Online advertising is highly susceptible to fraud (because it can be metered, and thus sold, in ways that aren't available in non-interactive media like print and television). At some point ad buyers may look more closely at the existing online-advertising giants (Google and Facebook) and say, well, we're paying for a lot of theft here, and the viewership statistics are even less reliable than what we had with traditional media, and conversion rates aren't great either ... maybe we should pull back and look for other channels.
Online advertising certainly isn't going to go away, but we could see a nasty correction.
Fact is Trump made a deal with Putin. Win me the election and will sanctions.
No, that's not a fact. It's pure conjecture.
Don't we now live in a post-fact world? WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker says that stories will *not* call Trump a liar as this is "too partisan" but will merely investigate his claims and post those stories separately for readers to make up their own minds.
However, the WSJ has had no qualms in labeling Edward Snowden a liar in several stories.
Sure. Who's surprised that the WSJ editorial team has double standards? Hardly shocking - in fact it's how newspapers everywhere have always operated. It's pretty much how language has always operated, particularly if you accept some of the less naively instrumental theories of language like Toulmin's or Davidson's.
And I think Trump's a loathesome narcissist, bully, and con man.
But as far as I'm aware, there's no compelling, or even mildly persuasive, evidence that he "made a deal with Putin" to "win ... the election". For that matter, I don't think Putin was capable of delivering the election, or that Trump needed his support. Trump won because he carried the states everyone expected him to carry; he won Florida[1]; and he won the "defector" states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan[2], and Wisconsin.
Why he won all those also seems pretty clear: populist demogoguery that appealed to antiestablishmentarianism, contrarianism, xenophobia, and general disconnection; a smaller but vocal cadre of middlebrow right-wingers who either believed his vague promises of business liberalization and social conservativism or anticipated that he'd delegate everything to right-winger lieutenants;[3] an even smaller bunch of Powers That Be who bet that he'd reward them;[4] some demographic factors; and gerrymandering, though that's an easy target that attracts more blame than it deserves (and blaming it doesn't do much good anyway).
Is Trump's win good for Putin? Very likely yes, though to be honest Putin would likely have been pretty pleased with a Clinton win as well, since continuing the current tensions would have served to keep his popularity up. Putin's a deft strongman and the Kremlin is adaptable. Really, sowing FUD about the election is probably all Russia wanted, since it distracts from more important issues and rallies nationalism at home. And they got that - in spades.
The OP's claim that Putin delivered the election to Trump just plays into Putin's hand. Focusing on things we do have evidence of would be much more productive.
[1]The Florida results seem to me pretty likely to be an accurate reflection of the actual popular vote, at least in terms of the overall winner. It wasn't another 2000.
[2]It's really not clear that he actually won Michigan, where the difference in the official count was well within the margin of error and the recount was halted early; but it makes no difference to the overall election. Trump still wins without Michigan's votes.
[3]That bet appears to be pretty safe, judging from Trump's cabinet nominations and the abundant evidence that he doesn't care to do the day job, whatever his day job supposedly is at the moment. If it's not something splashy that feeds his narcissism, he's not interested.
[4]Goldman Sachs executives, for example. Or the folks running Carrier, who just got a big reward from that tool Mike Pence for only eliminating many of the jobs at their Indiana facilities.
If you need an organ, you are unhealthy.
Hey! I'm pretty healthy, but I use most of my organs every day. I'd just die without them.
Yup. And then in his novel A Gift From Earth, a nation that depends on organ harvesting for its caste system is thrown into turmoil when organ substitutes are introduced. Like pretty much all of Niven's work it's a mix of hard-ish SF, social speculation, and pulpy potboiler, but he has a good point. And, of course, it's the same point made by the people in favor of decriminalizing certain drugs and otherwise opening artificially-scarce markets: institutions recognize that controlling a scarce commodity gives them power, and they'll try to gain and keep that control.
Cloned organs, or other sorts of artificial replacements (Niven's were genetically-engineered para-organs), could make a big difference. As someone noted above, replacement organs aren't a great treatment as it is, though of course most people feel it's better than dying.
Adams was the first author I ever wrote a personal letter to. I received a very nice response from his secretary, addressing my comments (not just a form letter) and a photo of Adams, which I kept in a frame for years. I must have been 10 or 11 at the time...
Some years later I wrote extensively on Adams' The Girl in the Swing, as part of a chapter in my lit dissertation (pairing it with two other contemporary novels about mother-daughter violence, Morrison's Beloved and Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills). I only read Shardik once and Plague Dogs two or three times, and never did make it all the way through Maia; but WD and TGiTS I nearly had memorized at one time.
And speaking of that ... what's with this barbarism in the article: "They'll be alright". In all the editions I've seen, including the one in Google Books, it's "all right". Yes, language changes and English has no central authority - I'm a descriptivist myself - but let's respect the author's usage preferences, eh? "Alright" is a probably-inevitable (because parallel with "already"[1]) but ugly corruption of the original phrase, and there's certainly no reason to prefer it.
[1]"already" is a compression of Middle English "al redy", in which "al" is itself a simplified "all", so "alright" has an etymological precedent. And, as I already noted, it's probably inevitable. Doesn't mean we should let it contaminate a perfectly good "all right", though.
I may wake up hungry or thirsty sometimes, but never due to my bladder.
Interestingly (at least to me), I've found that since my mid-40s I do go to the bathroom more often during the night, but (based on volume expressed) I really didn't need to. I think I just wake part of the way up, then start thinking that maybe I need to go, and finally get up so I'll stop thinking about it.
I suspect it's mostly social conditioning, in other words. I've been told so many times that older people need to urinate more often, and when I'm half-awake my critical faculties are diminished, and so in that state I obsess (in a vaguely incoherent fashion) over things like that.
I usually don't check work email in any way if I'm not in the office - the major exception being when I'm oncall. But even when I'm oncall, no work email on my phone, that way madness lies. It can wait.
It can, at least for most people. But while I've happily gone a week or so at a time not reading my work email, even on vacation I often like to check it every day or two, just to see if anything interesting is happening.
But then most of my work boils down to interesting intellectual problems, so checking email is more like playing a game than suffering through a meeting. (Though come to think of it, most of my meetings are pretty productive too.)
Once in a while I'm woken by my alarm - actually my wife's alarm - but it's not a damn smartphone. It's one of those Philips daylight-simulating alarm clocks that comes on very dim about twenty minutes before the set time, and gradually brightens. Then the alarm sound (she has it set to birdsong, which is fine by me; I don't need some ghastly shrill electronic beeping waking me, thanks) starts at the set time, and again starts off quiet and gradually gets louder.
The alarm rarely wakes us in the summer months, since natural daylight and birdsong come on before the alarm time. Even better. But in the winter it's quite nice.
And while I occasionally read some email before breakfast, it's not until I've been downstairs to start the coffee, brought the newspaper in, and so forth. So at least I've had some time to get fully awake and moving. Reading email before even getting out of bed seems pretty dumb, even if it's not bad news.
When was the last time the US actually annexed land? It's been centuries.
1898 (Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, etc.) was barely more than one century ago. And then there's the Philippines: annexed 1902, sovereignty restored in 1946. And while the US never formally annexed Okinawa, we held complete control over the archipelago from 1945 until 1972.
And we've had plenty of nasty proxy wars, not to mention those we've been directly involved in.
Of course the sins of the US have little bearing on those of Russia (or the USSR before it, or Czarist Russia before that). But trying to claim the moral high ground only weakens your argument.
I've had half a dozen ThinkPads, IBM and Lenovo, over the years. My current one is from 2009. I've dropped all of them multiple times - just something that happens when you work in a lot of different environments, with cords strewn around and whatnot. I knocked the latest one over onto a hard floor again just a couple of days ago, which probably makes at least two dozen times it's taken such a tumble (while running).
The only problem I've had with this one is dust and cat hair collecting in the vents to the point where it overheats. One IBM ThinkPad needed its CPU fan replaced after a few years. Another had the drive fail catastrophically, but that's more Hitachi's fault (it was a Death^WTravelStar). One eventually developed an occasional RAM failure; never tracked that down to RAM or motherboard.
On the whole, though, they've been very tough and reliable.
Ok, everybody who was effected by this raise your hands! Anybody?
It's certainly possible that with traffic to some sites disrupted, some people turned to other ... entertainments, and in the process effected someone. But I'm afraid you'll have to wait ~9 months for any of the latter group to raise their hands.
At last a suitable target for sky pirates. The steampunks must be wetting themselves with excitement. (And, of course, with condensation. All that steam has to go somewhere.)
Ugh. Having driven through many a tunnel as part of a daily commute, I doubt very much that underground roads would be pleasant or effective. (I see someone else has already mentioned the problem with accidents and other obstructions.)
Maybe we could restrict them to Segways and Rascal scooters. We were all told cities would be redesigned around the Segway - here's our opportunity!
Or instead of underground roads, let's have underground moving walkways. Everyone who's gone between Concourses B and C at O'Harrible knows that's a transportation dream come true. Of course, cash-strapped municipalities may have to skimp on the grating neon lighting and New Age "music".
Or maybe some sort of underground train system would work. Has that ever been tried?
Really, it's a shame we don't have more urban planners rethinking in-city transportation. Those "airpark" communities worked out so well, for example.
On a more serious note - yes, it's true that every idiot bashing about town in their own personal car is not a great transportation mode. Still beats cities full of horses, though. And while mass transit can work very well, in many places it doesn't, for one reason or another. I suspect this is not a problem with a bumper-sticker solution.
The only way to get a free and open and usable Android experience is to do so illegally
For some values of "usable", perhaps.
- use AOSP and inject Google's apps and services
I can live without Google's apps and services.
maybe grab some firmware or blobs for specific hardware so the damn thing charges properly or the WiFi actually works
Maybe - but this doesn't seem to be a problem with many phone models. And if you obtained the hardware legally in the first place, and saved its firmware and OS before you started messing with it, you'll probably have legal copies of the hardware-specific blobs you need.
hack some more shit to maybe get Android Pay working or get WiFi calling enabled
I've never wanted WiFi calling, and the day I use Android Pay you'll be able to ice skate in Tartarus.
and illegally download and share the updated APKs whenever there's a security patch (often)
Oh, please. Vast numbers of Android phones never get security updates now. This is hardly an obstacle to a "usable" Android experience, as millions of users can testify. Sensible user hygiene goes a lot further toward securing Android.
then cry because you have to reformat your phone to flash a new ROM with the latest Android security updates every month
As above. I have never had an Android phone receive an OTA security update. Never.
None of the things you mentioned would impede my current use of Android in the slightest. AOSP might not provide the Android "experience" you want, but many people don't need much more than a featurephone plus one or two apps they can find from someplace like F-Droid. No, it may not be easy for non-technical users, or even for techies who don't want the cognitive load and opportunity cost of acquiring Android-hacking expertise. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.
"Usable" is defined by the user.
Now, that doesn't mean that your broader point - that Google is doing what they can to control Android, while paying lip service to openness - is wrong. But as long as you exercise some care in your choice of phone model, it's not impossible to live without the non-open parts.
Real-time traffic is a nice feature, but by no means a necessity.
A nice feature for some users. I've never had any need for it.
Of course, I still use paper maps more often than I use satnav, because they're quick and reliable. I only use navigation apps when I don't have a map with me, or need a more-precise location of my destination.
I know it's hard for some to believe, but there was a time when we didn't have satnav with real-time traffic information, and somehow many of us survived. I used to commute around Boston - North Shore to Cambridge or Back Bay in the morning, then out to Framingham in the evening, then back to the North Shore at night; then later directly between the North Shore and Framingham morning and night. Yes, I often got stuck in traffic. It was annoying. It wasn't digging coal or subsistence agriculture.
Scientist are naturally sceptic.
But thanks to Semmelweis and Lister, artificially aseptic.
No overly loud sound.
A thousand times yes. I'm not interested in suffering permanent hearing damage because some idiot director, sound engineer, or theater owner decided MOAR LOAD! For my last couple of theater visits I brought earplugs, but that's hardly an ideal experience either.
For that matter, I'd like a special circle of Hell set aside for everyone who decides that SFX and incidental music should be much louder than dialog. I've quit watching some movies at home halfway through because there was no volume level where the dialog was audible but the crapnoise wasn't excessive.
I used to like the theater experience, but the last couple of times I've gone, the audio was much too loud, and the audience was infuriatingly disruptive, including a lot of phone use. No doubt there are theaters which are better-run - as a teen I used to go to one that still had ushers who would quietly remove the ill-behaved - but I don't live anywhere near one now. I haven't gone to the theater in years.
On the other hand, I don't think I've seen a movie in years, either, except for old favorites I have on DVD (or even VHS). For the small portion of my time that I want to devote to synchronous media, recent films haven't made the cut. I'm sure many are fine, but I feel no need to seek them out.
There's only 2 ways to steal a car, drive it or tow it. Locking brake systems immobilize vehicles rendering them immovable, thus virtually unstealable.
I've done a little towing, and immobilized wheels would hardly even have delayed us. Maybe a minute or two longer to get the vehicle secured and ready to roll. With the wheel-lift trucks we would have just used the dollies for the wheels on the ground, and with the ramp trucks we would have just hauled it up the ramp regardless. Your tires do not have anywhere close to sufficient static friction to stop the winch from hauling that vehicle up the ramp.
And I don't see how your mooted "locking brake system" interferes with any thief who convinces the car - through whatever means - to start normally.
I admit it'd really cut down on thefts that involve putting the transmission in neutral and pushing the car by hand, though.
imagine being able to upload your design to a $25K commercial printer that works in metal or ceramic
Unfortunately the metal cartridge costs $100K and has to be replaced every month.
And then there's the intern who spends half an hour Googling to figure out what "PC LOAD CLAY" means...