I apologize for the Hollywood scenario, but imagine your spouse and children being held by some child porn ring, being raped regularly. The group doesn't want a ransom, but you've got your hands on one of the perps... he won't talk. You don't start slapping him around at all? I call bullshit.
Easy... I'd call Liam Neeson.
Seriously, though, you are right, you never know. But I'd like to think of myself not, its part of my internal image. When it comes to our government torturing people things are a bit different, since there is a big enough space for us to keep a cool, rational mind.
never ? it might be annoying, impolite... but never aggressive.
You've never lived in a tough, poor, and violent urban center, then? Mere "following" can be aggressive, me and a lighter wallet can attest to this (as can a gun barrel mark on my chin, on one occasion), you get to know "normal" following, from "I'm going to take your cash and gut you" following after some time. Granted paranoia can play a big role in this as well, as I've had far more issues walking behind people with my brown/black friends, than with nicely groomed white friends.
In a civilized, humane world torture certainly should be avoided or at the very least be the *last thing* you use after exhausting other, much 'better' methods. However I doubt if such a perfect world can ever exist as long as we're dealing with humans produced by our current genetic makeup.
Sadly this is true. I just always want to ask advocates of torture if its okay if the "enemy" tortures their kids, and how is that different than us torturing someone else's kids. This is utopian logic, though, since it requires us to see things universally, without prejudice or the ditching false idea that people across other imaginary lines are less human than us.
In your original reply you said you doubted the truthfulness of the statement that 'torture works'.
A bit of a misunderstanding, sorry. "Torture works" sounds like a blanket statement saying "torture always works", or is "the most efficient way of getting results", this might not have been intended, but it is how I read it. Perhaps wrongly.
I've known a couple of people who were gathering intelligence in the military, and generally their opinion was torture doesn't work, and when it does, there are better methods for getting better intel faster.
Meh. Prime has always seemed a colossal waste of money to me.
It became worth it when most of our local bookstores died, and computer stores, and... It probably isn't the best for everyone, though. Part of its utility is that I share my Amazon account with my Girlfriend and mom.
But if you have a way to hide marketplace results I'd be very interested
Checking the show only Super Saver or Prime button works for items over a certain price, since those are generally fulfilled by Amazon, even if sold by a third party. If Amazon fulfills it, you get to deal with their service, and their returns, which is generally better than most marketplace sellers. Even when I get a good return with a marketplace seller, its generally; "if you give us more stars, we'll give you a refund", which is a bit odd, since they messed up in the first place.
are no more than $5 lower than anywhere else.
This is barely true anymore, now that they charge tax. Their prices, and Newegg's were pretty much identical. Though some of the items I was ordering were through third parties on Newegg, and not Amazon. This was a bit strange to me, since I've thrown plenty of cash at Newegg, and they used to be generally cheaper than everyone else, at least with components.
To my credit I shopped for hardware locally (mostly mom and pop shops, may they rest in piece) until all that existed was Fry's (a cesspool), and BestBuy. I bought books at local stores, until Border's died, leaving the gloried toy-store that is Barnes and Noble. I still try to buy all my used books at local stores, though that is getting harder, since one local chain has killed many of the smaller stores, and obviously Amazon helped.
That last bit is particularly sad, since there was a huge, ugly, grimy, used bookstore I went to for 20 years. The woman specialized in vintage science fiction, she had thousands of copies of 50's-60's science fiction all crammed, unorganized in boxes... It was beautiful, and a great way to kill an afternoon. Its gone now, along with the rest of them...
I try my hardest to buy local, but it is becoming increasingly impossible. There is only one store in my city of 3 and a quarter million people that sells motherboards and processors. They have dubious service, sleazy commission seekers, sometimes they outright lie, they have the worst return policy known to man, and have burnt me more times than I can remember (I took back a single motherboard 5 times, last time I relied on them). So what do I do? Put up with them? Buy from Amazon, which is bad. Buy from Newegg, which isn't the most stellar company either?
I've given up, to be honest. The local markets for specialty items is so depleted that it often takes days of searching to find something these days, when you could have it in 5 seconds of searching the internet, for half the cost.
I didn't say it was 0% effective, it just isn't very effective, nor is it the most effective way of reliable obtaining information. There are far more effective ways of obtaining information from uncooperative enemies.
I might, you might... but imagine it was something truly important, something you were willing to give your life for? There are plenty of stories of people withstanding torture. A lot of American POWs never gave in, because they believed in their cause, believed their cause was greater than them, or their families.
Love of God, or Country is a very powerful thing.
I know I would break really fast. Although I don't know what you would do in the position if you don't actually know something but they think you do.. that would suck
If we need to torture you, then we can't know what you know, so how do we ever verify that you don't know?
All this is fine and dandy, be we're still arguing about torture. I don't care if torture is 100% effective, I'd still oppose it. If torture would save my family, I'd still be against it. If torture saved us from 100 9/11s, I'd still oppose it.
Yup, the sad fact is that torture actually works and it can save lives when executed properly.
I doubt the truthfulness of this statement, on the basis of numerous studies, history, and a basic understanding of human psychology. But even if it was true, it is irrelevant, since it switches the argument against torture into and ethical and humanitarian one, which is also pretty solid. There also is the matter of hypocracy, since we can never actually condemn torture (of the so-called "good-guys"), as long as we advocate it.
The fact that there is a debate about the merits of torture is absolutely astounding to to me. Astounding and abhorrent.
* * * * * Awesome product, except 50% of its features are broken, it came 2 months late, and seller refused a return. I loved it!
My rule is to ignore the 5 star reviews (very few things are perfect), and ignore the one star reviews, unless there are a ton of them. 4-3 star reviews are more likely to be honest.
As for vendor reviews, they are completely worthless 90% of the time, unless they are wholly negative.
I'm not the largest fan of Amazon, but I haven't really run into this.
First, I have Prime, and generally avoid 3rd party sellers, not handled by Amazon themselves. Therefore, no shipping, or $4-5 for next day. Generally, if they are fulfilled by Amazon they come when they say, give or take a day (I mean that literally, things often come overnight, instead of in 2 days). Amazon also has a pretty good return policy, or at least I haven't had problems.
As for 3rd party sellers, they are a complete crapshoot, as they are everywhere else. You never know their shipping times, or how honest they are. I've had some pretty nasty experiences with them.
None of my complaints have to do with Amazon's service. I don't like how they killed local retail, or how they are the Walmart of online marketing (they set the bar low, so its hard to compete). I don't like their Kindle idea, any of it. I don't like their business practices... But they do have an awesome service, which I hate using but feel compelled to use since it is far better than anyone else out there.
I just built a new computer, and was sourcing everything. Newegg beat Amazon on most prices but once shipping was included ($5.99 for 2-4 weeks, or $0 for two days) Amazon won, so Amazon got my money, yet again. Granted Prime is money, it still pays itself off quickly (it did with one purchase, in my case).
So you have a 5-6 year old widget that is no longer supported, big whoop.
So, its okay for your DVD/Bluray player to stop playing movies after 5 years? For your TV to stop playing new shows? For your camera to stop being able to take pictures? For your PC to be obsolete?
I'm typing this from a 5 year old PC which runs pretty much everything almost as well as it did when I built it (it wasn't bleeding edge then, just high-mid-range), sans some games; so I should be happy if it just suddenly stopped working, for no reason other than someone decided to stop supporting it, just to force me to buy another one with slightly higher specs?
I always find it odd when people compare Apple to Android... Since you're comparing a brand name to a multi-platform OS, it isn't a very useful metric since it is Apples to oranges. Apple avoids fragmentation by being monolithic and holding a monopoly on their hardware and software. I'd rather have the fragmentation, than to only have one vender and only one set of hardware. Android is healthier for consumers in the long run, than iOS, since I can pick what flavor I want, and what hardware I want to pair it with. Android is closer to the PC market, where I can stick Linux, or Windows, or BSD or Chrome, or... on my Intel or AMD, or ARM box, with my Intel, NVIDIA or AMD graphics...
If you are a consumer and you have a 4 year old version of Android on your phone... if you cared, you would upgrade.
Unless you're using Verizon. They basically refuse to update, or at least they refused to update my Droid X past 2.3.
The biggest problem with the phone market is that someone else is in charge of updates. This killed my ASUS TF101, and killed my perfectly functional Droid X. The phone market should aspire towards the PC market, with open platforms and open updates. This, obviously, will never happen, since we're supposed to throw our phones in the landfill after two years, buying a new $500 bit of hardware.
Be an adult and reply with why you think I'm wrong.
As a white-male-hetero I fully agree with you on an intellectual level. They should have settled for the same privileges with a different name, it makes perfect logical sense... This was my initial stance, one I argued with my LGBT friends in college, and the stance I used to justify not signing their petitions or supporting their demonstrations.
I've come to realize, though, that this isn't a logical issue to them, this is an emotive "rights" issue. Why would they want to settle for the same, while accepting that they are (at least semantically) inferior? Civil unions might destroy the actual discrimination, but the context would still be discriminatory. We'd be telling them "fine, you can marry, but you're still really second class sorry."
Its like if we removed "separate but equal" from African American's, but classified them as different (lesser) still. The actual abuse has been eliminated, but all of the baggage behind it remains.
This is hard for people like me to understand, since I've never really been in that position. I've never been a topic, and no one has ever really wanted to classify me as anything other than the majority. I'm normal, by default. This is a very privileged position.
Another thing that turned me was the fact that I don't actually understand why they shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want. It doesn't hurt anyone to let them claim the title of "married". It doesn't hurt me. It doesn't hurt society. It doesn't hurt my relationship. If won't make America's abysmal marriage statistics much worse. There is no reason to really oppose it, then, at least according to my strong social libertarian (little-"L") principles. The main arguments I have seen have been from a religious foundation, which holds no water with me, nor should it in government. Some have been based bigoted exclusionist rhetoric; "they are different, therefore evil and corrupting". Or they have been based on naive political ideologies (big-"L" Libertarians, mostly), whose rationals often smell utopian, and verge on being completely aloof of human consequences, and some arguments from this quarter strike me as logically inconsistent.
The big thing is that there really is no reason whatsoever not to let them. It hurts no one. If is a net positive, in that there are more happy people, more inclusive definitions of "rights", and we're closer to all of us having an even playing field. And, a bit more snarkily, it pisses of bigots and homophobes, which is a personal plus.
What you want doesn't matter, the fact you look for a 25 year life expectancy in products that are designed for 5, in a changing field says you're not interesting in anything new, higher spec. Maybe you are poor, maybe you're just miserable. But that's irrelevant, you're a non-entity in the TV market, so stop your whining.
Or maybe he wants a quality product? I don't see the term "throw away" as a term of quality, to me it just says "cheap shit", even if the price is high it is still cheap shit. My old CRT monitor is 15 years old, I finally retired it, but it works fine, has minimal drift or decay, supports higher resolutions than top-of-the-line modern flat panels. It weighs a ton and a half, and will outlive us all, thats quality. I bought a first-gen ASUS Transformer tablet, which they stopped supporting and tagged as a "legacy" device within 2 years of it coming out. Which product would you rather buy?'
If someone sold you a car, full of widgets, and told you it would only last five years (while costing no less), would you find this as a badge of quality? Or would you see it for what it is, overpriced cheap shit?
Its a big shocker, I'd rather spend money on quality. My version of quality includes build quality, and the ability to stick around and not break or become obsolete. I personally am sick of the cell-phoneization of technology, we're supposed to just toss everything and buy a new full-priced unit in two years.
He should be an entity. Or rather people like him (myself included), because I want something that will actually last. I find it wasteful and ridiculous to cough up hundreds of dollars every 5 years when I really don't have to Even if I can afford it, why the hell would I want to?
Well it was really only ever truly free for people who were not of African descent.
Tell that to my ancestors of Irish decent.
Or many people of Japanese descent during WWII.
Or to all the non-Blacks to languished in debtors prisons.
Or the American Indians.
Or...
Yes, no nation is perfect, but that isn't an excuse to gloss over our flaws. Many do, I'm not pointing that finger at you. Americans love the tautology "We're number one. We're number one because we are America, and America is number one!" Oddly this includes my dad, who is generally against most of our Governments recent actions, I told him I was thinking of emigrating before starting a family, and he got very disappointed, telling me that America is the best country on earth, but couldn't actually say best at what. Not education. Not health. Not freedom/privacy. Not civil rights. Not freedom of the press. Not peace. Not mean happiness.
Sorry, I'm being a bit negative. I just looked a a full page of news headlines, and got stuck with the feeling that we really are the bad guys again. I haven't felt that way since Bush II. We're the Skeletor of the international stage (or more likely Boss Hog, from Duke's of Hazard).
How about they get a better education and a better job rather then demanding "living wages" from unskilled tasks?
Not that education means that much anymore, outside of a couple niches.
That said, I'm fine with it. That guy is happy, and I have no issue with that. Remember, two decades ago these people would have been middle class (union or no), now we expect them to be recent (illegal) immigrants making next to no money, just so profit margins can be higher. My dad, for example, raised a family, sent my mom to college, and raised a kid while living in a decent house (with a healthy mortgage) and taking nice vacations yearly, all while driving a truck. Today this is impossible, the current crop of drivers (or at least at the point where he retired) make next to nothing, work terrible hours (can't have a family), and are generally just passing through (they have to, no future), so don't give a shit about their jobs. They make, at best, a third of what my dad took home, with no pension and minimal benefits. Why shouldn't blue collar jobs make good money? Would you want to do them?
I should pay more for my car because the guy needs a "living wage" to sweep the floors?
I'm not sure its that simple, actually. It all equals out, that guy can afford a new car now, meaning they need extra volume/more demand, meaning more cars, meaning less price. Plus you have the non-material aspects, the guy is happy, his family has a better chance at a future, the world is a slightly better place (touchy-feely wise, and sociologically)... You needing to cover an extra.01% on a car doesn't factor in much, to be honest.
Further, I'd take a couple 70k janitors for the chance to keep management in its place, and keep them from abusing labor to save a buck.
Few people are willing to accept that part of the automotive industry issues was due to its unions and their inability to be flexible.
I've noticed the opposite, the people want to blame it ALL on unions, and not pass any responsibilities to the industry.
The fall of Detroit was partly the unions being idiotic, and forgetting that their industry needs to be healthy for the unions to be healthy. This is due, in part, to crooked elements in the unions, and also to general human nature being short-sighted and egocentric. The companies also failed to adapt to changing markets, though, which dug them a pit. Detroit was full of slow dinosaurs, that didn't see the change coming. The Unions just helped drag them down, but the actual sinking lies squarely in the industries hands.
Same with the current crop of bailouts they needed, the American auto industry is just stupid, since they pretty much repeated what happened in the '70s, to the same effect, but without unions to blame.
few things more annoying then standing in a line and watching the cashier perform minimum wage work, but earning a fat union premium which I am paying for in higher prices.
How dare they make a living wage doing hard work!? I'm sorry some of your purchase price went to funding sane working conditions, though. I'm not sure how you live with it... Short of shopping somewhere else, obviously. I honestly don't get annoyed when cashiers make more money, or are happier than the ones down the road.
My happiness with your service isn't proportional to the misery of your employees. Generally happy employees make happy customers. Go to a Costco, QT, or In-n-Out burger, and compare the experience to a shop that doesn't pay a decent wage and offer promotions and benefits.
My father was a union member and always told me that it was "protection money"--if you didn't pay union dues, the Union goons would kill you.
And my dad is living off a nice pension after putting in his years, which is better than pretty much anyone I know has to look forward too. A couple years back his 401k lost half its value, basically overnight, while his pension remained strong. Right now he's retired and comfortable, he doesn't have to worry about finding a job, or working until the day he dies. Thanks to unions. He also had seniority, a choice in shifts and hours, decent healthcare, and the ability to protect himself from his bosses (which came in handy many times). He also made a comfortable living wage doing blue collar work (driving a truck), which has pretty much died in America.
Unions ARE the workers, workers VOTE for their representatives, thus have responsibility for their good or bad deeds.
This isn't too say they are all good, obviously. Unions can lead to some nastiness, and some nasty people lurk in unions. My father got screwed out of a couple years because his boss (friends with the local union heads) didn't register his dues, pocketing them. His boss was his brother, which made things a bit worse. Unions can crush industries, since they forget that they need these industries to survive, as much as industry needs workers to survive.
That said, I'm a fan or workers protecting themselves against corporations. It is a good, and natural, power relation. You control my livelihood, and I control your ability to make a profit.
I'm not justifying MS, but the optics are probably going to be different. For a PC you want your focal planebeing rather close (1-3', perhaps), with a Xbox Whanot, you want it substantially further out. It would probably be a pain to include the hardware to allow it to switch focal plane, since that would require more advanced lenses with moving parts, and smarter firmware to drive it and differentiate between optimal planes, basically standard autofocus, which is a actually a pretty complex trick. Given this capability, it would drive up the price and be largely wasted since most people would just keep it on one device and never need it to be able to function in the other scenario.
Further, the PC version might be beefier, since PC drivers and applications are more complex, and have more possibilities than limited consoles.
Personally MS dropped the ball by not having a PC Kinect when Win 8 came out. There always is Leap Motion... oh wait... nevermind, that appears to be vaporware now... Well, there is a release date, but who knows at this point...
Taskman is nice, as is the fact that it mostly behaves with network and SD card transfers now, which 7 sometimes completely choked on. These issues was my main reason for switching from 7, to be honest. Transferring 5gb from my high speed SD 16gb SD card could sometimes take close to an hour on Win 7. And sometimes my networks, didn't. No permissions, bad user names, and when it worked, I'd be transferring data at dial-up speeds, unless I accessed my Win7 PC from my Linux/OS X/or old Vista Box, in which case it worked fine.
That's the phrase everyone has wanted to hear, including myself. Microsoft may have backpedaled, but that was the right thing to do.
Can I turn it off? I haven't missed it, past the first couple of hours running Win8. I barely used it since XP, since the Windows key is easier to hit than having to mouse around, and I generally access most programs by using the Win key and typing the first few letters of the program.
The only thing I'm excited about is smaller metro icons. If there was news about making the general features more coherent (and killing the damn "charms bar" idea, I'd be happy. I'd also be happy if I could run the very few metro apps I have in desktop mode, or at least let me dock them to the desktop in a smaller slice. Consolidating alt-tab, and the mostly annoying right top hot corner would be nice, as well. The "change PC settings" crap, has to die as well. And let me sleep with two mouse clicks again, please.
I don't care about the "start button", or classic menus I'm one of the few people who like Metro. I just wish that Win 8 didn't feel so tacked together and kludgy.
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I apologize for the Hollywood scenario, but imagine your spouse and children being held by some child porn ring, being raped regularly. The group doesn't want a ransom, but you've got your hands on one of the perps... he won't talk. You don't start slapping him around at all? I call bullshit.
Easy... I'd call Liam Neeson.
Seriously, though, you are right, you never know. But I'd like to think of myself not, its part of my internal image. When it comes to our government torturing people things are a bit different, since there is a big enough space for us to keep a cool, rational mind.
never ? it might be annoying, impolite... but never aggressive.
You've never lived in a tough, poor, and violent urban center, then? Mere "following" can be aggressive, me and a lighter wallet can attest to this (as can a gun barrel mark on my chin, on one occasion), you get to know "normal" following, from "I'm going to take your cash and gut you" following after some time. Granted paranoia can play a big role in this as well, as I've had far more issues walking behind people with my brown/black friends, than with nicely groomed white friends.
In a civilized, humane world torture certainly should be avoided or at the very least be the *last thing* you use after exhausting other, much 'better' methods. However I doubt if such a perfect world can ever exist as long as we're dealing with humans produced by our current genetic makeup.
Sadly this is true. I just always want to ask advocates of torture if its okay if the "enemy" tortures their kids, and how is that different than us torturing someone else's kids. This is utopian logic, though, since it requires us to see things universally, without prejudice or the ditching false idea that people across other imaginary lines are less human than us.
In your original reply you said you doubted the truthfulness of the statement that 'torture works'.
A bit of a misunderstanding, sorry. "Torture works" sounds like a blanket statement saying "torture always works", or is "the most efficient way of getting results", this might not have been intended, but it is how I read it. Perhaps wrongly.
I've known a couple of people who were gathering intelligence in the military, and generally their opinion was torture doesn't work, and when it does, there are better methods for getting better intel faster.
Meh. Prime has always seemed a colossal waste of money to me.
It became worth it when most of our local bookstores died, and computer stores, and... It probably isn't the best for everyone, though. Part of its utility is that I share my Amazon account with my Girlfriend and mom.
But if you have a way to hide marketplace results I'd be very interested
Checking the show only Super Saver or Prime button works for items over a certain price, since those are generally fulfilled by Amazon, even if sold by a third party. If Amazon fulfills it, you get to deal with their service, and their returns, which is generally better than most marketplace sellers. Even when I get a good return with a marketplace seller, its generally; "if you give us more stars, we'll give you a refund", which is a bit odd, since they messed up in the first place.
are no more than $5 lower than anywhere else.
This is barely true anymore, now that they charge tax. Their prices, and Newegg's were pretty much identical. Though some of the items I was ordering were through third parties on Newegg, and not Amazon. This was a bit strange to me, since I've thrown plenty of cash at Newegg, and they used to be generally cheaper than everyone else, at least with components.
You helped killed local retail, you.
As did we all.
To my credit I shopped for hardware locally (mostly mom and pop shops, may they rest in piece) until all that existed was Fry's (a cesspool), and BestBuy. I bought books at local stores, until Border's died, leaving the gloried toy-store that is Barnes and Noble. I still try to buy all my used books at local stores, though that is getting harder, since one local chain has killed many of the smaller stores, and obviously Amazon helped.
That last bit is particularly sad, since there was a huge, ugly, grimy, used bookstore I went to for 20 years. The woman specialized in vintage science fiction, she had thousands of copies of 50's-60's science fiction all crammed, unorganized in boxes... It was beautiful, and a great way to kill an afternoon. Its gone now, along with the rest of them...
I try my hardest to buy local, but it is becoming increasingly impossible. There is only one store in my city of 3 and a quarter million people that sells motherboards and processors. They have dubious service, sleazy commission seekers, sometimes they outright lie, they have the worst return policy known to man, and have burnt me more times than I can remember (I took back a single motherboard 5 times, last time I relied on them). So what do I do? Put up with them? Buy from Amazon, which is bad. Buy from Newegg, which isn't the most stellar company either?
I've given up, to be honest. The local markets for specialty items is so depleted that it often takes days of searching to find something these days, when you could have it in 5 seconds of searching the internet, for half the cost.
I didn't say it was 0% effective, it just isn't very effective, nor is it the most effective way of reliable obtaining information. There are far more effective ways of obtaining information from uncooperative enemies.
I know I would break really fast.
I might, you might... but imagine it was something truly important, something you were willing to give your life for? There are plenty of stories of people withstanding torture. A lot of American POWs never gave in, because they believed in their cause, believed their cause was greater than them, or their families.
Love of God, or Country is a very powerful thing.
I know I would break really fast. Although I don't know what you would do in the position if you don't actually know something but they think you do.. that would suck
If we need to torture you, then we can't know what you know, so how do we ever verify that you don't know?
All this is fine and dandy, be we're still arguing about torture. I don't care if torture is 100% effective, I'd still oppose it. If torture would save my family, I'd still be against it. If torture saved us from 100 9/11s, I'd still oppose it.
Yup, the sad fact is that torture actually works and it can save lives when executed properly.
I doubt the truthfulness of this statement, on the basis of numerous studies, history, and a basic understanding of human psychology. But even if it was true, it is irrelevant, since it switches the argument against torture into and ethical and humanitarian one, which is also pretty solid. There also is the matter of hypocracy, since we can never actually condemn torture (of the so-called "good-guys"), as long as we advocate it.
The fact that there is a debate about the merits of torture is absolutely astounding to to me. Astounding and abhorrent.
Or:
* * * * *
Awesome product, except 50% of its features are broken, it came 2 months late, and seller refused a return. I loved it!
My rule is to ignore the 5 star reviews (very few things are perfect), and ignore the one star reviews, unless there are a ton of them. 4-3 star reviews are more likely to be honest.
As for vendor reviews, they are completely worthless 90% of the time, unless they are wholly negative.
I'm not the largest fan of Amazon, but I haven't really run into this.
First, I have Prime, and generally avoid 3rd party sellers, not handled by Amazon themselves. Therefore, no shipping, or $4-5 for next day. Generally, if they are fulfilled by Amazon they come when they say, give or take a day (I mean that literally, things often come overnight, instead of in 2 days). Amazon also has a pretty good return policy, or at least I haven't had problems.
As for 3rd party sellers, they are a complete crapshoot, as they are everywhere else. You never know their shipping times, or how honest they are. I've had some pretty nasty experiences with them.
None of my complaints have to do with Amazon's service. I don't like how they killed local retail, or how they are the Walmart of online marketing (they set the bar low, so its hard to compete). I don't like their Kindle idea, any of it. I don't like their business practices... But they do have an awesome service, which I hate using but feel compelled to use since it is far better than anyone else out there.
I just built a new computer, and was sourcing everything. Newegg beat Amazon on most prices but once shipping was included ($5.99 for 2-4 weeks, or $0 for two days) Amazon won, so Amazon got my money, yet again. Granted Prime is money, it still pays itself off quickly (it did with one purchase, in my case).
at the very least Apple isn't monetizing my web surfing,
Apple was also on that NSA slide, along with Google and Microsoft. I wouldn't trust them either.
There are no good guys anymore. Accept it, and act accordingly.
So you have a 5-6 year old widget that is no longer supported, big whoop.
So, its okay for your DVD/Bluray player to stop playing movies after 5 years? For your TV to stop playing new shows? For your camera to stop being able to take pictures? For your PC to be obsolete?
I'm typing this from a 5 year old PC which runs pretty much everything almost as well as it did when I built it (it wasn't bleeding edge then, just high-mid-range), sans some games; so I should be happy if it just suddenly stopped working, for no reason other than someone decided to stop supporting it, just to force me to buy another one with slightly higher specs?
I always find it odd when people compare Apple to Android... Since you're comparing a brand name to a multi-platform OS, it isn't a very useful metric since it is Apples to oranges. Apple avoids fragmentation by being monolithic and holding a monopoly on their hardware and software. I'd rather have the fragmentation, than to only have one vender and only one set of hardware. Android is healthier for consumers in the long run, than iOS, since I can pick what flavor I want, and what hardware I want to pair it with. Android is closer to the PC market, where I can stick Linux, or Windows, or BSD or Chrome, or... on my Intel or AMD, or ARM box, with my Intel, NVIDIA or AMD graphics...
If you are a consumer and you have a 4 year old version of Android on your phone... if you cared, you would upgrade.
Unless you're using Verizon. They basically refuse to update, or at least they refused to update my Droid X past 2.3.
The biggest problem with the phone market is that someone else is in charge of updates. This killed my ASUS TF101, and killed my perfectly functional Droid X. The phone market should aspire towards the PC market, with open platforms and open updates. This, obviously, will never happen, since we're supposed to throw our phones in the landfill after two years, buying a new $500 bit of hardware.
Be an adult and reply with why you think I'm wrong.
As a white-male-hetero I fully agree with you on an intellectual level. They should have settled for the same privileges with a different name, it makes perfect logical sense... This was my initial stance, one I argued with my LGBT friends in college, and the stance I used to justify not signing their petitions or supporting their demonstrations.
I've come to realize, though, that this isn't a logical issue to them, this is an emotive "rights" issue. Why would they want to settle for the same, while accepting that they are (at least semantically) inferior? Civil unions might destroy the actual discrimination, but the context would still be discriminatory. We'd be telling them "fine, you can marry, but you're still really second class sorry."
Its like if we removed "separate but equal" from African American's, but classified them as different (lesser) still. The actual abuse has been eliminated, but all of the baggage behind it remains.
This is hard for people like me to understand, since I've never really been in that position. I've never been a topic, and no one has ever really wanted to classify me as anything other than the majority. I'm normal, by default. This is a very privileged position.
Another thing that turned me was the fact that I don't actually understand why they shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want. It doesn't hurt anyone to let them claim the title of "married". It doesn't hurt me. It doesn't hurt society. It doesn't hurt my relationship. If won't make America's abysmal marriage statistics much worse. There is no reason to really oppose it, then, at least according to my strong social libertarian (little-"L") principles. The main arguments I have seen have been from a religious foundation, which holds no water with me, nor should it in government. Some have been based bigoted exclusionist rhetoric; "they are different, therefore evil and corrupting". Or they have been based on naive political ideologies (big-"L" Libertarians, mostly), whose rationals often smell utopian, and verge on being completely aloof of human consequences, and some arguments from this quarter strike me as logically inconsistent.
The big thing is that there really is no reason whatsoever not to let them. It hurts no one. If is a net positive, in that there are more happy people, more inclusive definitions of "rights", and we're closer to all of us having an even playing field. And, a bit more snarkily, it pisses of bigots and homophobes, which is a personal plus.
Feeding a troll (I hope):
What contortions? "It doesn't hurt me or anyone else, therefore it is none of my business"; doesn't qualify as much of a contortion.
What you want doesn't matter, the fact you look for a 25 year life expectancy in products that are designed for 5, in a changing field says you're not interesting in anything new, higher spec. Maybe you are poor, maybe you're just miserable. But that's irrelevant, you're a non-entity in the TV market, so stop your whining.
Or maybe he wants a quality product? I don't see the term "throw away" as a term of quality, to me it just says "cheap shit", even if the price is high it is still cheap shit. My old CRT monitor is 15 years old, I finally retired it, but it works fine, has minimal drift or decay, supports higher resolutions than top-of-the-line modern flat panels. It weighs a ton and a half, and will outlive us all, thats quality. I bought a first-gen ASUS Transformer tablet, which they stopped supporting and tagged as a "legacy" device within 2 years of it coming out. Which product would you rather buy?'
If someone sold you a car, full of widgets, and told you it would only last five years (while costing no less), would you find this as a badge of quality? Or would you see it for what it is, overpriced cheap shit?
Its a big shocker, I'd rather spend money on quality. My version of quality includes build quality, and the ability to stick around and not break or become obsolete.
I personally am sick of the cell-phoneization of technology, we're supposed to just toss everything and buy a new full-priced unit in two years.
He should be an entity. Or rather people like him (myself included), because I want something that will actually last. I find it wasteful and ridiculous to cough up hundreds of dollars every 5 years when I really don't have to Even if I can afford it, why the hell would I want to?
Well it was really only ever truly free for people who were not of African descent.
Tell that to my ancestors of Irish decent.
Or many people of Japanese descent during WWII.
Or to all the non-Blacks to languished in debtors prisons.
Or the American Indians.
Or...
Yes, no nation is perfect, but that isn't an excuse to gloss over our flaws. Many do, I'm not pointing that finger at you. Americans love the tautology "We're number one. We're number one because we are America, and America is number one!" Oddly this includes my dad, who is generally against most of our Governments recent actions, I told him I was thinking of emigrating before starting a family, and he got very disappointed, telling me that America is the best country on earth, but couldn't actually say best at what. Not education. Not health. Not freedom/privacy. Not civil rights. Not freedom of the press. Not peace. Not mean happiness.
Sorry, I'm being a bit negative. I just looked a a full page of news headlines, and got stuck with the feeling that we really are the bad guys again. I haven't felt that way since Bush II. We're the Skeletor of the international stage (or more likely Boss Hog, from Duke's of Hazard).
How about they get a better education and a better job rather then demanding "living wages" from unskilled tasks?
Not that education means that much anymore, outside of a couple niches.
That said, I'm fine with it. That guy is happy, and I have no issue with that. Remember, two decades ago these people would have been middle class (union or no), now we expect them to be recent (illegal) immigrants making next to no money, just so profit margins can be higher. My dad, for example, raised a family, sent my mom to college, and raised a kid while living in a decent house (with a healthy mortgage) and taking nice vacations yearly, all while driving a truck. Today this is impossible, the current crop of drivers (or at least at the point where he retired) make next to nothing, work terrible hours (can't have a family), and are generally just passing through (they have to, no future), so don't give a shit about their jobs. They make, at best, a third of what my dad took home, with no pension and minimal benefits. Why shouldn't blue collar jobs make good money? Would you want to do them?
I should pay more for my car because the guy needs a "living wage" to sweep the floors?
I'm not sure its that simple, actually. It all equals out, that guy can afford a new car now, meaning they need extra volume/more demand, meaning more cars, meaning less price. Plus you have the non-material aspects, the guy is happy, his family has a better chance at a future, the world is a slightly better place (touchy-feely wise, and sociologically)... You needing to cover an extra .01% on a car doesn't factor in much, to be honest.
Further, I'd take a couple 70k janitors for the chance to keep management in its place, and keep them from abusing labor to save a buck.
Right-click the "start screen" hot-corner, click "command prompt" I'm not sure if is only in Professional, though.
Few people are willing to accept that part of the automotive industry issues was due to its unions and their inability to be flexible.
I've noticed the opposite, the people want to blame it ALL on unions, and not pass any responsibilities to the industry.
The fall of Detroit was partly the unions being idiotic, and forgetting that their industry needs to be healthy for the unions to be healthy. This is due, in part, to crooked elements in the unions, and also to general human nature being short-sighted and egocentric. The companies also failed to adapt to changing markets, though, which dug them a pit. Detroit was full of slow dinosaurs, that didn't see the change coming. The Unions just helped drag them down, but the actual sinking lies squarely in the industries hands.
Same with the current crop of bailouts they needed, the American auto industry is just stupid, since they pretty much repeated what happened in the '70s, to the same effect, but without unions to blame.
few things more annoying then standing in a line and watching the cashier perform minimum wage work, but earning a fat union premium which I am paying for in higher prices.
How dare they make a living wage doing hard work!? I'm sorry some of your purchase price went to funding sane working conditions, though. I'm not sure how you live with it... Short of shopping somewhere else, obviously. I honestly don't get annoyed when cashiers make more money, or are happier than the ones down the road.
My happiness with your service isn't proportional to the misery of your employees. Generally happy employees make happy customers. Go to a Costco, QT, or In-n-Out burger, and compare the experience to a shop that doesn't pay a decent wage and offer promotions and benefits.
My father was a union member and always told me that it was "protection money"--if you didn't pay union dues, the Union goons would kill you.
And my dad is living off a nice pension after putting in his years, which is better than pretty much anyone I know has to look forward too. A couple years back his 401k lost half its value, basically overnight, while his pension remained strong. Right now he's retired and comfortable, he doesn't have to worry about finding a job, or working until the day he dies. Thanks to unions. He also had seniority, a choice in shifts and hours, decent healthcare, and the ability to protect himself from his bosses (which came in handy many times). He also made a comfortable living wage doing blue collar work (driving a truck), which has pretty much died in America.
Unions ARE the workers, workers VOTE for their representatives, thus have responsibility for their good or bad deeds.
This isn't too say they are all good, obviously. Unions can lead to some nastiness, and some nasty people lurk in unions. My father got screwed out of a couple years because his boss (friends with the local union heads) didn't register his dues, pocketing them. His boss was his brother, which made things a bit worse. Unions can crush industries, since they forget that they need these industries to survive, as much as industry needs workers to survive.
That said, I'm a fan or workers protecting themselves against corporations. It is a good, and natural, power relation. You control my livelihood, and I control your ability to make a profit.
I'm not justifying MS, but the optics are probably going to be different. For a PC you want your focal planebeing rather close (1-3', perhaps), with a Xbox Whanot, you want it substantially further out. It would probably be a pain to include the hardware to allow it to switch focal plane, since that would require more advanced lenses with moving parts, and smarter firmware to drive it and differentiate between optimal planes, basically standard autofocus, which is a actually a pretty complex trick. Given this capability, it would drive up the price and be largely wasted since most people would just keep it on one device and never need it to be able to function in the other scenario.
Further, the PC version might be beefier, since PC drivers and applications are more complex, and have more possibilities than limited consoles.
Personally MS dropped the ball by not having a PC Kinect when Win 8 came out. There always is Leap Motion... oh wait... nevermind, that appears to be vaporware now... Well, there is a release date, but who knows at this point...
Or use Picasa, and its preview app instead?
Taskman is nice, as is the fact that it mostly behaves with network and SD card transfers now, which 7 sometimes completely choked on. These issues was my main reason for switching from 7, to be honest. Transferring 5gb from my high speed SD 16gb SD card could sometimes take close to an hour on Win 7. And sometimes my networks, didn't. No permissions, bad user names, and when it worked, I'd be transferring data at dial-up speeds, unless I accessed my Win7 PC from my Linux/OS X/or old Vista Box, in which case it worked fine.
That's the phrase everyone has wanted to hear, including myself. Microsoft may have backpedaled, but that was the right thing to do.
Can I turn it off? I haven't missed it, past the first couple of hours running Win8. I barely used it since XP, since the Windows key is easier to hit than having to mouse around, and I generally access most programs by using the Win key and typing the first few letters of the program.
The only thing I'm excited about is smaller metro icons. If there was news about making the general features more coherent (and killing the damn "charms bar" idea, I'd be happy. I'd also be happy if I could run the very few metro apps I have in desktop mode, or at least let me dock them to the desktop in a smaller slice. Consolidating alt-tab, and the mostly annoying right top hot corner would be nice, as well. The "change PC settings" crap, has to die as well. And let me sleep with two mouse clicks again, please.
I don't care about the "start button", or classic menus I'm one of the few people who like Metro. I just wish that Win 8 didn't feel so tacked together and kludgy.