Also dental, and I imagine vision, too. Nobody can tell you what something is actually going to cost you out-of-pocket, because the insurance company will say "we'll pay this much", but when the doctor/dentist goes to submit the claim, they say "oh well we're only really going to pay this much, LOL" and the patient gets stuck with the bill. WHY IS THIS ALLOWED!? If it were anything else I'm pretty sure it would be considered fraud.
The Rich don't give a fuck whether something can be 'repaired' by 3rd parties or not, because they just pay whoever and not worry about the cost or the hassle.
The Poor care because they can't afford to pay for things being repaired by only the dealership or only the manufacturer. They need to be able to get repairable things repaired wherever they can -- or repair them themselves if and when possible.
The Rich unfortunately are also the ones who own or control these manufacturers who are fighting for protectionism of their repair monopolies.
The Rich may very likely get their way, especially under the current 'administration', which doesn't seem to give a fuck about common, private citizens (lip service not withstanding) and cares more about making The Rich richer -- on the backs of The Poor, of course.
Here's what I think will happen:
If manufacturers get their way, then nothing changes, and expensive things stay expensive and inconvenient to get repaired -- if they are allowed to be repaired at all.
If consumers get their way, then manufacturers may just go back to the old way of doing things: built-in obsolescence in the form of less durability. Maybe even low quality on purpose, or a built-in 'expiration date' that bricks things when they get old enough. Don't sit there and tell me it hasn't all happened before, either, because it has.
Here's why:
Companies that make high-quality, durable products, that stand the test of time seem to invariably end up going out of business due to no repeat business. They sell to everyone they can sell to, everyone is thrilled with their products, which never seem to wear out, therefore they never need to replace them.
Meanwhile other shittier companies make half-assed products that may be flashy and popular, but that don't last forever. Eventually they have to be replaced.
Then there's 'built-in obsolescence' in the form of 'standards' that keep changing (on purpose) to make what you have now obsolete.
I suppose a middle ground might be manufacturers being forced to allow anyone to repair anything, but jacking up the price of 'proprietary' parts to compensate for their 'lost revenues' (Waaaah!), or 'licensing' of proprietary repair information, or who knows. Really, it's all capitalism gone bad.
I agree. 720p broadcast looks fantastic so far as I'm concerned. 1080p from a disc looks great too. I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference between 1080, 4k and 8k anymore. More useful when you want a gigantic desktop with lots of stuff open on it or for gaming.
Since apparently no one can convince most people to not buy these gods-be-damned things in the first place, at least try to convince them to unplug the power from it when they're not actively using it. Make up some plausible reason that will trigger them emotionally, like "so pedophiles won't be listening in on your kids" or something like that.
Manufacturers could just go back to the tried-and-true business model: planned obsolescence. I.e. they could go back to shitty quality so things naturally only last a few years (just past the end of the warranty, ideally) so you're forced to buy a new one. As is they're relying on the 'poor shaming' sales strategy, where you're made to feel bad because you aren't being an early adopter.
Do I really have to explain this to anyone? It's not real AI. Apparently 99% of everyone thinks that this crap they keep trotting out is the equivalent of a human being. Little could be farther from the truth. A hamster is smarter than this so-called 'AI' they keep trotting out; for the MILLIONTH time, it's not going to destroy everybody's jobs. Never have, never will, believe it.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!1!!
Don't believe the hype. We do not even have real AI, all we have is half-assed 'pseudo-intelligence'. It's not anywhere near as good as the marketing hype says it is. Stop panicking.
If the "stability of society" means asshole corporations like Miscreant-o-soft running roughshod over people who did nothing wrong, then we must all be dead and this is Hell. Time to get the guillotine out of storage and drive it up to Redmond.
This is a prime example of the 'Golden Rule': Those who have the gold make the rules. Microsoft, being the asshole corporation they are, has probably an entire building full of high-priced lawyers, and they will pile on anybody they feel like and bury them. This Eric Lundgren probably doesn't even have a fraction of the liquid assets that Microsoft has and was just plain destroyed via attrition. The reason why, by the way: it went against their long-term objective to force everyone to use Windows 10, and become part of the Microsoft bot-net. Microsoft needs to be taken down and chopped up again. Hell, for that matter, big corporations in general, especially here in the U.S., need to be taken down and chopped up. There used to be such a concept as 'capitalism in the public interest', but I don't see that happening today. I think it's about time it started happening.
Yeah sure because their so-called 'culture', if that's what this is, is just so fucking great for our species as a whole -- especially when their country makes up a double-digit percentage of all the humans on the planet.
Maybe if, somehow, we found enough evidence of a previous non-hominid terrestrial civilization, and what caused their downfall, then maybe, just maybe, we'd get pulled up short long enough to stop and think about some of the things we're doing right now, and how they may affect us, as a species, a hundred or few years from now.
..or, maybe, everyone would just say "LOL, what a bunch of losers, they blew themselves up! Glad we're smarter than that!" and just go on without missing a beat, like the arrogant animals we are.
So you don't give a fuck if you're paying EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to hear something? And if they decide they don't want to offer it anymore and you wanted to hear it again, that's just too fucking bad for you, tough shit, listen to what THEY want you to listen to? Are you really this dumb?
Yeah be sure to enjoy your 'digital only' copies of things that can be yanked back from you with no notice, I'll continue to enjoy my nice old fashioned physical media that you'd have to break into my house to take from me, along with my paper books and other 'physical' things I own. I think 'streaming' is just another scam and you're all falling for it.
Let me make a prediction: In the coming years the Democrats will come to control both the Senate and the House, and there will be a Democrat in the Whitehouse again. It's inevitable. Not only has it happened before, but between Trump and the GOP fucking everything up, not even dyed-in-the-wool, fingers-in-their-ears going LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU! with blinders on Trump supporters will be able to stop it. Then for a while the needle on the socio-political meter will swing back to the center for a while. Then it'll start slamming up against the left again, and the whole process will happen as above, but with the Parties reversed. Rinse, repeat ad infinitum, until we either experience an extinction-level event as a species, or we manage to finally fucking grow up as a species and stop acting like idiots.
So somehow you're okay with living in a world where you never own anything, you only ever 'rent' things? Someone else owns it all, and they're the only ones who have any actual wealth? You PAY, PAY, PAY forever and ever? Think about what you're saying.
You know they will. They'll still scream and cry and throw temper tantrums about 'piracy' and how much it's cutting into their revenues and how it's 'hurting the artists the most' (which is a lie). Because the recording industry is a prime example of capitalism gone bad.
Yes, exactly, and that's why I think all so-called 'social media' should also go away and be banned. The experiment is a failure, it's not benefical overall to people in general, it's time it all goes away and we go back to actually TALKING to each other instead.
Okay. Pass laws that they're not allowed to track or collect ANY data of ANY kind, a persons data and content is their property and theirs alone, violations are criminally prosecutable. They have to charge a subscription fee, too, so no social media site has an excuse to be covertly selling data that isn't theirs. Data breaches are also criminally prosecutable as criminal negligence. Everyone has to use their real, legal name, provide verifiable government ID to prove they are who they say they are, and background checks become mandated by the federal government; this is to keep out foreign nationals so no more 'fake news' bullshit can happen. I'm sure I can come up with more.
That's what this is. Even worse: it's being done to prop up his core voter support, not for the benefit of the Nation as a whole. More damage to the Country, courtesy of the Trump Administration. It'll take DECADES to fix everything this son of a bitch is doing to us once he's removed from office.
Show us your peer-reviewed double-blind blind-funded University studies that conclusively show that ANY form of smoking whatsoever is completely harmless.
What's so wrong wiht the people running this website at least reading things before posting them on the front page? A little professionalism, please? A pseudo-news-aggregator site like this could at least do that much for it's credibility, otherwise how is it any better than junk people post on social media?
People familiar with the situation say the theaters would be used to give greater exposer to the feature and documentary titles Netflix is hoping to push into the awards race.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee whiz looks like I ticked off a paid Microsoft astroturfer/shill and he had mod points.
Also dental, and I imagine vision, too. Nobody can tell you what something is actually going to cost you out-of-pocket, because the insurance company will say "we'll pay this much", but when the doctor/dentist goes to submit the claim, they say "oh well we're only really going to pay this much, LOL" and the patient gets stuck with the bill. WHY IS THIS ALLOWED!? If it were anything else I'm pretty sure it would be considered fraud.
The Rich don't give a fuck whether something can be 'repaired' by 3rd parties or not, because they just pay whoever and not worry about the cost or the hassle.
The Poor care because they can't afford to pay for things being repaired by only the dealership or only the manufacturer. They need to be able to get repairable things repaired wherever they can -- or repair them themselves if and when possible.
The Rich unfortunately are also the ones who own or control these manufacturers who are fighting for protectionism of their repair monopolies.
The Rich may very likely get their way, especially under the current 'administration', which doesn't seem to give a fuck about common, private citizens (lip service not withstanding) and cares more about making The Rich richer -- on the backs of The Poor, of course.
Here's what I think will happen:
If manufacturers get their way, then nothing changes, and expensive things stay expensive and inconvenient to get repaired -- if they are allowed to be repaired at all.
If consumers get their way, then manufacturers may just go back to the old way of doing things: built-in obsolescence in the form of less durability. Maybe even low quality on purpose, or a built-in 'expiration date' that bricks things when they get old enough. Don't sit there and tell me it hasn't all happened before, either, because it has.
Here's why:
Companies that make high-quality, durable products, that stand the test of time seem to invariably end up going out of business due to no repeat business. They sell to everyone they can sell to, everyone is thrilled with their products, which never seem to wear out, therefore they never need to replace them.
Meanwhile other shittier companies make half-assed products that may be flashy and popular, but that don't last forever. Eventually they have to be replaced.
Then there's 'built-in obsolescence' in the form of 'standards' that keep changing (on purpose) to make what you have now obsolete.
I suppose a middle ground might be manufacturers being forced to allow anyone to repair anything, but jacking up the price of 'proprietary' parts to compensate for their 'lost revenues' (Waaaah!), or 'licensing' of proprietary repair information, or who knows. Really, it's all capitalism gone bad.
I agree. 720p broadcast looks fantastic so far as I'm concerned. 1080p from a disc looks great too. I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference between 1080, 4k and 8k anymore. More useful when you want a gigantic desktop with lots of stuff open on it or for gaming.
Since apparently no one can convince most people to not buy these gods-be-damned things in the first place, at least try to convince them to unplug the power from it when they're not actively using it. Make up some plausible reason that will trigger them emotionally, like "so pedophiles won't be listening in on your kids" or something like that.
Manufacturers could just go back to the tried-and-true business model: planned obsolescence. I.e. they could go back to shitty quality so things naturally only last a few years (just past the end of the warranty, ideally) so you're forced to buy a new one. As is they're relying on the 'poor shaming' sales strategy, where you're made to feel bad because you aren't being an early adopter.
Do I really have to explain this to anyone? It's not real AI. Apparently 99% of everyone thinks that this crap they keep trotting out is the equivalent of a human being. Little could be farther from the truth. A hamster is smarter than this so-called 'AI' they keep trotting out; for the MILLIONTH time, it's not going to destroy everybody's jobs. Never have, never will, believe it.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!1!!
Don't believe the hype. We do not even have real AI, all we have is half-assed 'pseudo-intelligence'. It's not anywhere near as good as the marketing hype says it is. Stop panicking.
If the "stability of society" means asshole corporations like Miscreant-o-soft running roughshod over people who did nothing wrong, then we must all be dead and this is Hell. Time to get the guillotine out of storage and drive it up to Redmond.
This is a prime example of the 'Golden Rule': Those who have the gold make the rules. Microsoft, being the asshole corporation they are, has probably an entire building full of high-priced lawyers, and they will pile on anybody they feel like and bury them. This Eric Lundgren probably doesn't even have a fraction of the liquid assets that Microsoft has and was just plain destroyed via attrition. The reason why, by the way: it went against their long-term objective to force everyone to use Windows 10, and become part of the Microsoft bot-net. Microsoft needs to be taken down and chopped up again. Hell, for that matter, big corporations in general, especially here in the U.S., need to be taken down and chopped up. There used to be such a concept as 'capitalism in the public interest', but I don't see that happening today. I think it's about time it started happening.
Yeah sure because their so-called 'culture', if that's what this is, is just so fucking great for our species as a whole -- especially when their country makes up a double-digit percentage of all the humans on the planet.
*Yawn*
Maybe if, somehow, we found enough evidence of a previous non-hominid terrestrial civilization, and what caused their downfall, then maybe, just maybe, we'd get pulled up short long enough to stop and think about some of the things we're doing right now, and how they may affect us, as a species, a hundred or few years from now.
..or, maybe, everyone would just say "LOL, what a bunch of losers, they blew themselves up! Glad we're smarter than that!" and just go on without missing a beat, like the arrogant animals we are.
So you don't give a fuck if you're paying EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to hear something? And if they decide they don't want to offer it anymore and you wanted to hear it again, that's just too fucking bad for you, tough shit, listen to what THEY want you to listen to? Are you really this dumb?
Go look up "feudalism". You're the 'serf'.
Yeah be sure to enjoy your 'digital only' copies of things that can be yanked back from you with no notice, I'll continue to enjoy my nice old fashioned physical media that you'd have to break into my house to take from me, along with my paper books and other 'physical' things I own. I think 'streaming' is just another scam and you're all falling for it.
Let me make a prediction: In the coming years the Democrats will come to control both the Senate and the House, and there will be a Democrat in the Whitehouse again. It's inevitable. Not only has it happened before, but between Trump and the GOP fucking everything up, not even dyed-in-the-wool, fingers-in-their-ears going LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU! with blinders on Trump supporters will be able to stop it. Then for a while the needle on the socio-political meter will swing back to the center for a while. Then it'll start slamming up against the left again, and the whole process will happen as above, but with the Parties reversed. Rinse, repeat ad infinitum, until we either experience an extinction-level event as a species, or we manage to finally fucking grow up as a species and stop acting like idiots.
So somehow you're okay with living in a world where you never own anything, you only ever 'rent' things? Someone else owns it all, and they're the only ones who have any actual wealth? You PAY, PAY, PAY forever and ever? Think about what you're saying.
You know they will. They'll still scream and cry and throw temper tantrums about 'piracy' and how much it's cutting into their revenues and how it's 'hurting the artists the most' (which is a lie). Because the recording industry is a prime example of capitalism gone bad.
Yes, exactly, and that's why I think all so-called 'social media' should also go away and be banned. The experiment is a failure, it's not benefical overall to people in general, it's time it all goes away and we go back to actually TALKING to each other instead.
Okay. Pass laws that they're not allowed to track or collect ANY data of ANY kind, a persons data and content is their property and theirs alone, violations are criminally prosecutable. They have to charge a subscription fee, too, so no social media site has an excuse to be covertly selling data that isn't theirs. Data breaches are also criminally prosecutable as criminal negligence. Everyone has to use their real, legal name, provide verifiable government ID to prove they are who they say they are, and background checks become mandated by the federal government; this is to keep out foreign nationals so no more 'fake news' bullshit can happen. I'm sure I can come up with more.
That's what this is. Even worse: it's being done to prop up his core voter support, not for the benefit of the Nation as a whole. More damage to the Country, courtesy of the Trump Administration. It'll take DECADES to fix everything this son of a bitch is doing to us once he's removed from office.
That's the only way this shit will stop. Haven't you all had quite enough of this shit?
Pro-tip: YOU CAN'T
Enjoy your CANCER, loser.
If you're trying to be funny, it's kinda weak.
What's so wrong wiht the people running this website at least reading things before posting them on the front page? A little professionalism, please? A pseudo-news-aggregator site like this could at least do that much for it's credibility, otherwise how is it any better than junk people post on social media?
People familiar with the situation say the theaters would be used to give greater exposer to the feature and documentary titles Netflix is hoping to push into the awards race.
As I said: "exposure"