They never were a tech innovator, only a marketing one.
I note your examples are "first widely successful" and never "first to do X" or "best", because they never have been. You've always been able to buy a competing product that does more, and costs less.
They've been successful because they're great at convincing people to buy inferior products for more money, not because they make the best product.
This release is exactly on brand for them. Add a bunch of features the competition has had for years, talk up the innovation, nothing more.
Bollocks!! You sound like one of those angry disgruntled artists who got together with his angry disgruntled artist friends at a conference in a run down resort at a no longer frequented beach in California where you concocted a declaration stating that the only true art is art that does not sell. I was around when the iPod first came out, I remember the competition. The music players that I could buy over the counter within a 500 km radius of where I lived were nothing to phone home about. You could fit 2-5 CDs on them. The iPad could hold your entire music collection and the UI was by leaps and bound better and simpler than anything else widely available. In short, the iPod, won because it beat the pants off of everything else available at the time, hands down. There may have been devices that had similar capacity as the iPod but the UI sucked ass and they were not available in stores in my region so they might as well have been on the moon. Plus, I only found out about some of these things years later form Slashdot posts calming Apple ripped them off. The same applies to the iPhone. It beat the pants off the competition, including the Blackberry, Nokia and Ericsson, Motorola, HP, the lot of them. I also saw one of the Android prototypes, it was a Blackberry killer and it sucked compared to the iPhone. Then the iPhone hit the market and we heart nothing from Android for quite a long time while they played catch-up until they finally debuted a system whose UI was an iPhone knock off. It may have bee a knock of but at least it didn't suck any more which is the main reason why Android even remained a player. Claiming that Apple never innovated because somebody put some feature in some device 4 years earlier is crap. Combining components into devices that make peoples lives easier is every bit as much innovation as inventing those components.
You think you're moral and anyone who doesn't agree with you is immoral. I think it's you that needs a new compass printed and perhaps a sense of circumspection too.
No, I think that being elected into office rots your soul and the first thing to rot away is your moral compass. I don't care whether your name is Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi. I watched the both of them give interviews recently and I knew the two of them were rotten, but I had somewhat underestimated just how rotten they have become and while I was not surprised at just how completely the two of them have sold out their ideals I was somewhat surprised that the two of them seem to genuine believe that the people elected them to be this corrupt. I'm sure that at some point they really believed in them but nowadays they McConnell and Pelosi are just husks of their former selves who think they were elected to take bribes from corporations, banks and special interest groups. This story just made me muse about how things would be if we could update the moral software of our leaders so I posted my OP as a kind of a sarcastic joke which everybody seems to be taking waaaaaaaaaaaayyyy to seriously. I keep forgetting that if you don't suffix your sarcasm with the word 'Zinger!' many Americans *will* take you literally.
The point is, it has nothing to do with this story. Further, you're clearly reading stories, and doing your best to try to find a way, any way, to link it to politics.
You know that 50 years ago, people thought about the president of a country, the prime minister, monthly maybe? Stop watching 24 hour news channels, of any type. Stop reading political stories hourly. Maybe read them weekly, or monthly.
Stop being a slave to the 24x7 news cycle, and their need for you to read the same story over, and over, and over.
If you want to be an uninformed rube that is your choice. I, however, welcome any technology that allows us to retroactively upgrade our leaders to be less of a bunch of greedy selfish ass-holes than they currently are.
Try again. Not even in the neighborhood of acceptable thought.
What? Retrofitting sociopath politicians with a moral compass is unacceptable thought? Why? Being a a greedy and corrupt sociopath incapable of empathy (Bibi) is due to an malfunction in the circuitry of the human brain as is narcissism and dementia (Trump). If we can 3D print a heart, surely we can 3D print replacement neural circuitry and retroactively install a moral compass in these people using the 10 commandments as a basis for the design. I may be an atheist but the 10 commandments are pretty sensible rules to live by for the most part. As an atheist I don't really care about the idolatry part and banning coveting seems pretty harsh (a guy or girl l can dream) but not doing blasphemy, murder, adultery, theft and general dishonesty sounds like a plan
âoewhy do you have to turn everything into political mess.â
Because there are mentally ill people out there who obsess over things like this.
We obsess with this because it is important. Now tell me you have never met a banker/politician/CEO you would like to retrofit with a working moral compass?
why do you have to turn everything into political mess.
Me? Israeli, US and Russian voters took care of that by voting these bozos into power. It just seems to me that if we can 3D print moral compasses for politicians it might solve a lot of the world's problems.
So how long until they can 3D print a new moral compass for Bibi and a functioning brain for Trump?... I suppose it will take a little longer before they can 3D print a soul for Putin.
and yet, they can't make them fast enough. The fact that every single Tesla model vehicle is sold out in advance and they have a significant backlog means there's lot of of people will to buy $60K+ EV's. And judging by the all the Audi, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari etc. etc. cars being sold every day, I'd say there's a lot of people willing to pay $60K+ for a car, regardless of brand.
So a bunch of rich people are ripping these things off the assembly line as fast as they are making them the same goes for Rolls Royce and Bentley. All that means is that the richest 10% percent are doing fine financially, it does not mean that $35K+ EV (now that Musk is pushing their Model 3) are the way to grow into a significant player on the automobile market, Apple found that out with their smartphones. The one who dominates the market is the one who corners the $10-25.000 EV market because that is where 85% of the automobile sales are made and Tesla is just going to get their ass kicked in that market just like Apple gets it's ass kicked every time they try to invade the medium to low budget smartphone market.
Is that why there are thousands of them, sitting lots, getting recharged with diesel generators, because they cannot sell them fast enough? Oh, that's right - you said make them fast enough. Unfortunately, that's not what matters - sales is what matters, not necessarily production rate.
Wow!! You found one Tesla dealer who is recharging their cars with a diesel generator. Therefore all Tesla owners must be recharging their cars with Diesel Generators, what a bunch of hypocrites!!! You just won the fossil fuel vs electric cars debate single-handily with one link to an article in the automotive press equivalent of the Daily Mail. We are all in awe of your debating and reasoning skills.
Immediately contradicted by the subsequent line that says "concept car". I'm sure they'll release "something" eventually.
a fully-electric SUV in China which could compete with Tesla’s Model X
Place your bets that like every single other "electric SUV" apart from the Model X, it's simply a moderate-sized 5-seater with "SUV styling".
The German automaker said Sunday the ID. ROOMZZ
I too name vehicles after letters that I draw in Scrabble.
will be unveiled at the upcoming Shanghai Auto Show and will be available in 2021
Don't strain yourself with the rush there, VW.
Volkswagen says the zero-emission vehicle can go approximately 450 kilometers (280 miles) before the battery has to be recharged.
Ignoring the constant stream of "actual range being vastly less than the promised concept range" vehicles that we've been getting from European automakers, China measures ranges on the laughably lax NEDC cycle that gives grossly inflated range figures.
The concept car includes a fully-automatic driving mode
A technology which VW is a clear leader in;) (/snark)
The announcement comes one month after Volkswagen’s former CEO Martin Winterkorn was charged by U.S. regulators with defrauding investors during its massive diesel emissions scandal.
Speaking of that, they're already back to their old ways, trying to cheat the new WLTP standards. This time, the cheat is just the opposite - trying to make their emissions look bad, so that their reductions targets over the coming years will be less stringent. So they've been doing things like testing cars with depleted batteries and disabled engine start-stop systems to make the cars burn more and emit more.
Volkswagen has said it will boost electric vehicle production to 22 million over the next decade. It made fewer than 50,000 battery-only vehicles last year.
Please try harder than you've tried previously.
SUVs are an American niche market for the most part and as such they are uninteresting for the future of the EV. Whoever wins the electric car race and becomes the 'Android' of electric cars with a huge market share is the company or companies that can produce a slick small to medium sized electric family car with decent range, a decent set of features and that is cheap enough to be an affordable hit in China/India and other emerging economies, think Toyota Aygo/Yaris/Corolla. Also, I don't think consumers are going to care much about self driving in the near term at least it's an option most of them will be willing to dispense with. Tesla is a manufacturer of high end sports roadsters, luxury sedans and slightly less luxurious family cars who all have one thing in common, they are extremely overpriced. Tesla will become the Apple of the EV race because of that. The Andoroid(s) of this race, the ones who will dominate the car market in the future, are the ones who gun for the affordable car market that Toyota/KIA/Hyundai cater to, not the luxury segment that Tesla seems to have cornered. If I was going to bet money on who pulls off the Ford-T of the EV age I'd sure as hell not choose Tesla nor would I bet on VW/BMW/Benz/Toyota. It might be some smaller manufacturer from Europe, Korea or, and here is where I'd put most of my money,... China.
This is a giveaway, pushed for by some lobby. And it will not be for "poor, rural folks".
I just love watching the Republicans rage on about the looming dangers of "SOCIALISM!!!" and then turn around and do something as classically "SOCIALIST!!!" as subsidising broadband installations. Mind you half the money in that fund will probably end up in the pockets of telco executives as bonuses for using the other half of the money to get people in rural areas 3rd rate broadband for which they will then have to pay 1st rate broadband prices.
What the fuck do you mean "probably"? Obviously you're not very aware of history. We the Taxpayers have already paid these fuckers for this shit before. Go figure what actually happened to the money.
I said 'probably' because I'm just making an educated guess when I say half. Given how greedy these people are it's bound to be more but I thought I'd be conservative and go for the traditional minimum.
Mind you half the money in that fund will probably end up in the pockets of telco executives as bonuses
That's not socialism, though.
No, that's the other part that isn't socialist, the part where they pay themselves massive bonuses is pure mindless capitalist greed. If Republicans cannot do Christianity without changing it into a cut of mammon, did you really think they could do socialism without injecting a massive dose of selfish greed?
This is a giveaway, pushed for by some lobby. And it will not be for "poor, rural folks".
I just love watching the Republicans rage on about the looming dangers of "SOCIALISM!!!" and then turn around and do something as classically "SOCIALIST!!!" as subsidising broadband installations. Mind you half the money in that fund will probably end up in the pockets of telco executives as bonuses for using the other half of the money to get people in rural areas 3rd rate broadband for which they will then have to pay 1st rate broadband prices.
The White House on Friday will unveil a new 5G push to position the US ahead of global rivals in the race to deploy the next-generation wireless technology. President Donald Trump and Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai will announce new airwaves auctions and plans to spend $20.4 billion over 10 years on rural broadband.
And here I thought the Republican Party was the party of free trade, competition, small government and fiscal responsibility that cannot abide the sight of subsidies?!? Shouldn't we go easy on the irresponsible payments of subsidies and instead wait and watch the always rational, invisible hand of the free market fix the rural broadband problem?
Can you recommend a privacy respecting implementation for Android? I think you're right, and it's a bit past time to be switching.
Nail in the coffin and all that jazz. I'm moving *everything* off Google gradually. We tried the experiment, and got fucked. I'd rather pay for services and have some leverage with misbehaving corporations.
Karta GPS and Maps.me are the most popular ones on iOS and Android. I've only used Maps.me but it did OK enough for my purposes. I picked it mainly because the offline option is really good and the offline feature on Google Maps sucked ass by comparison back then. Be prepared to download a couple of gigabytes of maps for the offline functionality so better do that on a Wifi. Maps.me is ad-supported, and it is Russian if that scares you, Karta GPS was developed by a Portuguese company (I think), not sure how they support themselves. You are never going to find a free app like this that does not finance themselves through either ads, selling your data or charging companies for overlaying their store/restaurant/garage/hotel locations onto the OpenStreetMap's map data. That being said, at least they are not Google and will probably not rape your privacy anything as outrageously as Google and Morgan Stanley will. There is a list of mobile Apps on the OpenStreetMap Wiki:
"Sometimes I say the most under-monetized asset that I cover is Google Maps," Brian Nowak, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said while interviewing Google's business chief Philipp Schindler at a recent conference...
Morgan Stanley, Brrrr.... just hearing those two words makes my skin crawl. People should consider replacing Google Maps with Open Street Map. I've been using mobile apps that use this mapping service for a few years now. It's every bit as good as Google Maps and the offline function is vastly superior to what you get with Google Maps app. Using Open Street Map also has the added benefit of starving the beast (a.k.a. Google).
At least the government is capable of making good decisions from time to time.
Amazon and Microsoft are leaders in the cloud industry for a reason.
I'd pity anyone who got stuck with Oracle's service.
With a bit of luck Larry Ellison will spontaneously combust and burn to a neat pile of ashes, like a vampire exposed to sunlight, out of sheer annoyance over this development.
Let us consider some of the consequences of Yeltsin's electoral win:
-In the first years of the Chubais-Yeltsin privatization scheme, the life expectancy of a Russian male fell from 65 years to 57.5 years. Female life expectancy in Russia dropped from 74.5 years in 1989 to 72.8 years in 1999.
-Throughout Yeltsin's terms as President, flight of capital away from Russia totaled between $1 and $2 billion every month.
-Each year from 1989 to 2001 there was a fall of approximately 8% in Russia's productive assets.
-From 1990 to 1999 the percentage increase of people living on less than $1 a day was greater in Russia and the other former socialist countries than anywhere else in the world.
-The number of people living in poverty in the former Soviet Republics rose from 14 million in 1989 to 147 million in 1998. As a result of the 1998 financial collapse and the devaluation of the ruble, the life savings of tens of millons of Russian families disappeared overnight. Since then, the Great Recession and low oil pries have only made matters worse.
-In the period from 1992 to 1998 Russia's GDP fell by half-something that did not happen even under during the German invasion in the Second World War.
Under Yeltsin's tenure, the death rate in Russia reached wartime levels. Accidents, food poisoning, exposure, heart attacks, lack of access to basic healthcare, and an epidemic of suicidesâ"they all played a role. David Satter, a senior fellow at the anti-communist, Washington DC-based Hudson Institute, writing in the conservative Wall Street Journal, described the consequences of this victory of Democracy: "Western and Russian demographers now agree that between 1992 and 2000, the number of 'surplus deaths' in Russia-deaths that cannot be explained on the basis of previous trends-was between five and six million persons."
Now please explain to us how Vladimir Zhirinovsky would have led Russian into the land of milk and honey.
If they send enough bills, then the GOP will accuse the Democrats of wasting Congress's time by bullying the Senate and refusing to produce workable legislation, while propping up McConnell as a stalwart defender strong enough to resist the onslaught.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the Republican spin machine isn't working as well as it used to any more.
Right, I just don't think people give a damn about this kind of spin anymore. People don't care whose fault it is that Congress is deadlocked they just want Congress to stop yapping and get things done again and they will vote for anybody who looks like they can make that happen. As soon as they electorate perceives anybody standing in the way of things getting done again that person will earn their anger and Mitch McConnell has built a career on being Mr. NO!!!.
If they send enough bills, then the GOP will accuse the Democrats of wasting Congress's time by bullying the Senate and refusing to produce workable legislation, while propping up McConnell as a stalwart defender strong enough to resist the onslaught. Whether the bills are popular or not doesn't really matter... the bigger the number, the more it can be spun to look like political pressure.
That is easily countered, just make enough of a media hullabaloo about offering bipartisan cooperation to the Republicans you might even get a fair number of them on board with things like infrastructure reform since it will mean more jobs in their constituencies. America's infrastructure is more rotten than that of some 3rd world countries, there is hardly a congressional district anywhere in the US that would not benefit from an infrastructure improvement project. Same for all kinds of things like education and healthcare. Then send these bills to the senate where Mitch McConnell says NO because that always worked before. People will get the message soon enough about what the problem in the senate is and how to remove it.
Examples:
How do you raise the minimum wage to 15/hr while simultaneously allowing an endless flood of people in that will work for $5/hr ?
The federal minimum wage is already $7.25/hr so if you are right this is already a problem. The only thing that changes when raising the minimum wage to $15/hr is that a ton of people will actually get paid $15/hr since there is plenty of businesses that respect the law.
If sexual preference is biologically determined, just how is gender a social construct ?
I have no idea, I have been a heterosexual all my life and I have never doubted my gender or my sexual orientation for a second. The philosophy of gender ambiguity is a topic I'm quite content to leave to others and I am certainly not going to sit in my basement for hours on end reading Breitbart and getting angry about what the two gay boys next door might be doing in their bedroom. It's none of my f***ing business and I am quite happy with it not being any of my f***ing business.
Or the simple If it's OK for the U.S. to interfere in Russian elections, why wouldn't you expect them to return the favor ?
Well, US interference in the Russian election got the Russians Boris Yeltsin instead of Vladimir Zhirinovsky which is going from catastrophic to merely terrible. Russian interference in the US election got the Americans a completely senile, corrupt businessman, money launderer, tax cheat, bank fraudster, slum lord, pussy grabber and serial liar (basically Trump is American Yeltsin) instead of a controversial but generally competent female politician. I'm not quite sure who got the shorter end of the stick here but since Zhirinovsky would not have hesitated to start WWIII but Trump merely might start WWIII I think the we all probably benefitted more from American interference in Russa's elections than vice versa.
Slashdot Mirror
They never were a tech innovator, only a marketing one. I note your examples are "first widely successful" and never "first to do X" or "best", because they never have been. You've always been able to buy a competing product that does more, and costs less. They've been successful because they're great at convincing people to buy inferior products for more money, not because they make the best product. This release is exactly on brand for them. Add a bunch of features the competition has had for years, talk up the innovation, nothing more.
Bollocks!! You sound like one of those angry disgruntled artists who got together with his angry disgruntled artist friends at a conference in a run down resort at a no longer frequented beach in California where you concocted a declaration stating that the only true art is art that does not sell. I was around when the iPod first came out, I remember the competition. The music players that I could buy over the counter within a 500 km radius of where I lived were nothing to phone home about. You could fit 2-5 CDs on them. The iPad could hold your entire music collection and the UI was by leaps and bound better and simpler than anything else widely available. In short, the iPod, won because it beat the pants off of everything else available at the time, hands down. There may have been devices that had similar capacity as the iPod but the UI sucked ass and they were not available in stores in my region so they might as well have been on the moon. Plus, I only found out about some of these things years later form Slashdot posts calming Apple ripped them off. The same applies to the iPhone. It beat the pants off the competition, including the Blackberry, Nokia and Ericsson, Motorola, HP, the lot of them. I also saw one of the Android prototypes, it was a Blackberry killer and it sucked compared to the iPhone. Then the iPhone hit the market and we heart nothing from Android for quite a long time while they played catch-up until they finally debuted a system whose UI was an iPhone knock off. It may have bee a knock of but at least it didn't suck any more which is the main reason why Android even remained a player. Claiming that Apple never innovated because somebody put some feature in some device 4 years earlier is crap. Combining components into devices that make peoples lives easier is every bit as much innovation as inventing those components.
You think you're moral and anyone who doesn't agree with you is immoral. I think it's you that needs a new compass printed and perhaps a sense of circumspection too.
No, I think that being elected into office rots your soul and the first thing to rot away is your moral compass. I don't care whether your name is Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi. I watched the both of them give interviews recently and I knew the two of them were rotten, but I had somewhat underestimated just how rotten they have become and while I was not surprised at just how completely the two of them have sold out their ideals I was somewhat surprised that the two of them seem to genuine believe that the people elected them to be this corrupt. I'm sure that at some point they really believed in them but nowadays they McConnell and Pelosi are just husks of their former selves who think they were elected to take bribes from corporations, banks and special interest groups. This story just made me muse about how things would be if we could update the moral software of our leaders so I posted my OP as a kind of a sarcastic joke which everybody seems to be taking waaaaaaaaaaaayyyy to seriously. I keep forgetting that if you don't suffix your sarcasm with the word 'Zinger!' many Americans *will* take you literally.
The point is, it has nothing to do with this story. Further, you're clearly reading stories, and doing your best to try to find a way, any way, to link it to politics.
You know that 50 years ago, people thought about the president of a country, the prime minister, monthly maybe? Stop watching 24 hour news channels, of any type. Stop reading political stories hourly. Maybe read them weekly, or monthly.
Stop being a slave to the 24x7 news cycle, and their need for you to read the same story over, and over, and over.
If you want to be an uninformed rube that is your choice. I, however, welcome any technology that allows us to retroactively upgrade our leaders to be less of a bunch of greedy selfish ass-holes than they currently are.
Only the ones I disagree with.
And here I thought you conservatives valued the 1st amendment? ... apparently it only applies to people you agree with.
Try again. Not even in the neighborhood of acceptable thought.
What? Retrofitting sociopath politicians with a moral compass is unacceptable thought? Why? Being a a greedy and corrupt sociopath incapable of empathy (Bibi) is due to an malfunction in the circuitry of the human brain as is narcissism and dementia (Trump). If we can 3D print a heart, surely we can 3D print replacement neural circuitry and retroactively install a moral compass in these people using the 10 commandments as a basis for the design. I may be an atheist but the 10 commandments are pretty sensible rules to live by for the most part. As an atheist I don't really care about the idolatry part and banning coveting seems pretty harsh (a guy or girl l can dream) but not doing blasphemy, murder, adultery, theft and general dishonesty sounds like a plan
âoewhy do you have to turn everything into political mess.â
Because there are mentally ill people out there who obsess over things like this.
We obsess with this because it is important. Now tell me you have never met a banker/politician/CEO you would like to retrofit with a working moral compass?
why do you have to turn everything into political mess.
Me? Israeli, US and Russian voters took care of that by voting these bozos into power. It just seems to me that if we can 3D print moral compasses for politicians it might solve a lot of the world's problems.
So how long until they can 3D print a new moral compass for Bibi and a functioning brain for Trump? ... I suppose it will take a little longer before they can 3D print a soul for Putin.
The science is settled.
Science is never settled, there is always room for improvements due to new discoveries.
Very few people can afford $60,000+ EVs
and yet, they can't make them fast enough. The fact that every single Tesla model vehicle is sold out in advance and they have a significant backlog means there's lot of of people will to buy $60K+ EV's. And judging by the all the Audi, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari etc. etc. cars being sold every day, I'd say there's a lot of people willing to pay $60K+ for a car, regardless of brand.
So a bunch of rich people are ripping these things off the assembly line as fast as they are making them the same goes for Rolls Royce and Bentley. All that means is that the richest 10% percent are doing fine financially, it does not mean that $35K+ EV (now that Musk is pushing their Model 3) are the way to grow into a significant player on the automobile market, Apple found that out with their smartphones. The one who dominates the market is the one who corners the $10-25.000 EV market because that is where 85% of the automobile sales are made and Tesla is just going to get their ass kicked in that market just like Apple gets it's ass kicked every time they try to invade the medium to low budget smartphone market.
Is that why there are thousands of them, sitting lots, getting recharged with diesel generators, because they cannot sell them fast enough? Oh, that's right - you said make them fast enough. Unfortunately, that's not what matters - sales is what matters, not necessarily production rate.
Wow!! You found one Tesla dealer who is recharging their cars with a diesel generator. Therefore all Tesla owners must be recharging their cars with Diesel Generators, what a bunch of hypocrites!!! You just won the fossil fuel vs electric cars debate single-handily with one link to an article in the automotive press equivalent of the Daily Mail. We are all in awe of your debating and reasoning skills.
Immediately contradicted by the subsequent line that says "concept car". I'm sure they'll release "something" eventually.
Place your bets that like every single other "electric SUV" apart from the Model X, it's simply a moderate-sized 5-seater with "SUV styling".
I too name vehicles after letters that I draw in Scrabble.
Don't strain yourself with the rush there, VW.
Ignoring the constant stream of "actual range being vastly less than the promised concept range" vehicles that we've been getting from European automakers, China measures ranges on the laughably lax NEDC cycle that gives grossly inflated range figures.
A technology which VW is a clear leader in ;) (/snark)
Speaking of that, they're already back to their old ways, trying to cheat the new WLTP standards. This time, the cheat is just the opposite - trying to make their emissions look bad, so that their reductions targets over the coming years will be less stringent. So they've been doing things like testing cars with depleted batteries and disabled engine start-stop systems to make the cars burn more and emit more.
Please try harder than you've tried previously.
SUVs are an American niche market for the most part and as such they are uninteresting for the future of the EV. Whoever wins the electric car race and becomes the 'Android' of electric cars with a huge market share is the company or companies that can produce a slick small to medium sized electric family car with decent range, a decent set of features and that is cheap enough to be an affordable hit in China/India and other emerging economies, think Toyota Aygo/Yaris/Corolla. Also, I don't think consumers are going to care much about self driving in the near term at least it's an option most of them will be willing to dispense with. Tesla is a manufacturer of high end sports roadsters, luxury sedans and slightly less luxurious family cars who all have one thing in common, they are extremely overpriced. Tesla will become the Apple of the EV race because of that. The Andoroid(s) of this race, the ones who will dominate the car market in the future, are the ones who gun for the affordable car market that Toyota/KIA/Hyundai cater to, not the luxury segment that Tesla seems to have cornered. If I was going to bet money on who pulls off the Ford-T of the EV age I'd sure as hell not choose Tesla nor would I bet on VW/BMW/Benz/Toyota. It might be some smaller manufacturer from Europe, Korea or, and here is where I'd put most of my money, ... China.
This is a giveaway, pushed for by some lobby. And it will not be for "poor, rural folks".
I just love watching the Republicans rage on about the looming dangers of "SOCIALISM!!!" and then turn around and do something as classically "SOCIALIST!!!" as subsidising broadband installations. Mind you half the money in that fund will probably end up in the pockets of telco executives as bonuses for using the other half of the money to get people in rural areas 3rd rate broadband for which they will then have to pay 1st rate broadband prices.
What the fuck do you mean "probably"? Obviously you're not very aware of history. We the Taxpayers have already paid these fuckers for this shit before. Go figure what actually happened to the money.
I said 'probably' because I'm just making an educated guess when I say half. Given how greedy these people are it's bound to be more but I thought I'd be conservative and go for the traditional minimum.
Mind you half the money in that fund will probably end up in the pockets of telco executives as bonuses
That's not socialism, though.
No, that's the other part that isn't socialist, the part where they pay themselves massive bonuses is pure mindless capitalist greed. If Republicans cannot do Christianity without changing it into a cut of mammon, did you really think they could do socialism without injecting a massive dose of selfish greed?
This is a giveaway, pushed for by some lobby. And it will not be for "poor, rural folks".
I just love watching the Republicans rage on about the looming dangers of "SOCIALISM!!!" and then turn around and do something as classically "SOCIALIST!!!" as subsidising broadband installations. Mind you half the money in that fund will probably end up in the pockets of telco executives as bonuses for using the other half of the money to get people in rural areas 3rd rate broadband for which they will then have to pay 1st rate broadband prices.
The White House on Friday will unveil a new 5G push to position the US ahead of global rivals in the race to deploy the next-generation wireless technology. President Donald Trump and Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai will announce new airwaves auctions and plans to spend $20.4 billion over 10 years on rural broadband.
And here I thought the Republican Party was the party of free trade, competition, small government and fiscal responsibility that cannot abide the sight of subsidies?!? Shouldn't we go easy on the irresponsible payments of subsidies and instead wait and watch the always rational, invisible hand of the free market fix the rural broadband problem?
You cannot survive in today's technologically connected environment without google. Unless you are off the grid.
See recent reports of people who have tried.
I think you'll find one can.
My beef with OSM is that is incomplete / outdated af. Specially in small, countryside towns.
Well, It's a crowd-sourced project, not a for-profit monstrosity. If you encounter inaccuracies, contribute corrections.
Can you recommend a privacy respecting implementation for Android? I think you're right, and it's a bit past time to be switching.
Nail in the coffin and all that jazz. I'm moving *everything* off Google gradually. We tried the experiment, and got fucked. I'd rather pay for services and have some leverage with misbehaving corporations.
Karta GPS and Maps.me are the most popular ones on iOS and Android. I've only used Maps.me but it did OK enough for my purposes. I picked it mainly because the offline option is really good and the offline feature on Google Maps sucked ass by comparison back then. Be prepared to download a couple of gigabytes of maps for the offline functionality so better do that on a Wifi. Maps.me is ad-supported, and it is Russian if that scares you, Karta GPS was developed by a Portuguese company (I think), not sure how they support themselves. You are never going to find a free app like this that does not finance themselves through either ads, selling your data or charging companies for overlaying their store/restaurant/garage/hotel locations onto the OpenStreetMap's map data. That being said, at least they are not Google and will probably not rape your privacy anything as outrageously as Google and Morgan Stanley will. There is a list of mobile Apps on the OpenStreetMap Wiki:
iOS apps: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org...
Android apps: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org...
"Sometimes I say the most under-monetized asset that I cover is Google Maps," Brian Nowak, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said while interviewing Google's business chief Philipp Schindler at a recent conference...
Morgan Stanley, Brrrr.... just hearing those two words makes my skin crawl. People should consider replacing Google Maps with Open Street Map. I've been using mobile apps that use this mapping service for a few years now. It's every bit as good as Google Maps and the offline function is vastly superior to what you get with Google Maps app. Using Open Street Map also has the added benefit of starving the beast (a.k.a. Google).
At least the government is capable of making good decisions from time to time.
Amazon and Microsoft are leaders in the cloud industry for a reason.
I'd pity anyone who got stuck with Oracle's service.
With a bit of luck Larry Ellison will spontaneously combust and burn to a neat pile of ashes, like a vampire exposed to sunlight, out of sheer annoyance over this development.
US support of a very unpopular Yeltsin and his neo liberal "shock therapy" ideas that left Russia even worse off economically.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-meddling-in-1996-russian-elections-in-support-of-boris-yeltsin/5568288/amp
Let us consider some of the consequences of Yeltsin's electoral win:
-In the first years of the Chubais-Yeltsin privatization scheme, the life expectancy of a Russian male fell from 65 years to 57.5 years. Female life expectancy in Russia dropped from 74.5 years in 1989 to 72.8 years in 1999.
-Throughout Yeltsin's terms as President, flight of capital away from Russia totaled between $1 and $2 billion every month.
-Each year from 1989 to 2001 there was a fall of approximately 8% in Russia's productive assets.
-From 1990 to 1999 the percentage increase of people living on less than $1 a day was greater in Russia and the other former socialist countries than anywhere else in the world.
-The number of people living in poverty in the former Soviet Republics rose from 14 million in 1989 to 147 million in 1998. As a result of the 1998 financial collapse and the devaluation of the ruble, the life savings of tens of millons of Russian families disappeared overnight. Since then, the Great Recession and low oil pries have only made matters worse.
-In the period from 1992 to 1998 Russia's GDP fell by half-something that did not happen even under during the German invasion in the Second World War.
Under Yeltsin's tenure, the death rate in Russia reached wartime levels. Accidents, food poisoning, exposure, heart attacks, lack of access to basic healthcare, and an epidemic of suicidesâ"they all played a role. David Satter, a senior fellow at the anti-communist, Washington DC-based Hudson Institute, writing in the conservative Wall Street Journal, described the consequences of this victory of Democracy: "Western and Russian demographers now agree that between 1992 and 2000, the number of 'surplus deaths' in Russia-deaths that cannot be explained on the basis of previous trends-was between five and six million persons."
Now please explain to us how Vladimir Zhirinovsky would have led Russian into the land of milk and honey.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the Republican spin machine isn't working as well as it used to any more.
Right, I just don't think people give a damn about this kind of spin anymore. People don't care whose fault it is that Congress is deadlocked they just want Congress to stop yapping and get things done again and they will vote for anybody who looks like they can make that happen. As soon as they electorate perceives anybody standing in the way of things getting done again that person will earn their anger and Mitch McConnell has built a career on being Mr. NO!!!.
That can backfire easily enough.
If they send enough bills, then the GOP will accuse the Democrats of wasting Congress's time by bullying the Senate and refusing to produce workable legislation, while propping up McConnell as a stalwart defender strong enough to resist the onslaught. Whether the bills are popular or not doesn't really matter... the bigger the number, the more it can be spun to look like political pressure.
That is easily countered, just make enough of a media hullabaloo about offering bipartisan cooperation to the Republicans you might even get a fair number of them on board with things like infrastructure reform since it will mean more jobs in their constituencies. America's infrastructure is more rotten than that of some 3rd world countries, there is hardly a congressional district anywhere in the US that would not benefit from an infrastructure improvement project. Same for all kinds of things like education and healthcare. Then send these bills to the senate where Mitch McConnell says NO because that always worked before. People will get the message soon enough about what the problem in the senate is and how to remove it.
Examples: How do you raise the minimum wage to 15/hr while simultaneously allowing an endless flood of people in that will work for $5/hr ?
The federal minimum wage is already $7.25/hr so if you are right this is already a problem. The only thing that changes when raising the minimum wage to $15/hr is that a ton of people will actually get paid $15/hr since there is plenty of businesses that respect the law.
If sexual preference is biologically determined, just how is gender a social construct ?
I have no idea, I have been a heterosexual all my life and I have never doubted my gender or my sexual orientation for a second. The philosophy of gender ambiguity is a topic I'm quite content to leave to others and I am certainly not going to sit in my basement for hours on end reading Breitbart and getting angry about what the two gay boys next door might be doing in their bedroom. It's none of my f***ing business and I am quite happy with it not being any of my f***ing business.
Or the simple If it's OK for the U.S. to interfere in Russian elections, why wouldn't you expect them to return the favor ?
Well, US interference in the Russian election got the Russians Boris Yeltsin instead of Vladimir Zhirinovsky which is going from catastrophic to merely terrible. Russian interference in the US election got the Americans a completely senile, corrupt businessman, money launderer, tax cheat, bank fraudster, slum lord, pussy grabber and serial liar (basically Trump is American Yeltsin) instead of a controversial but generally competent female politician. I'm not quite sure who got the shorter end of the stick here but since Zhirinovsky would not have hesitated to start WWIII but Trump merely might start WWIII I think the we all probably benefitted more from American interference in Russa's elections than vice versa.