I roast my own coffee which is high quality before I even roast it. The coffee I make is not bitter, I don't leave it on a hot plate to get bitter, so I like it black. So what this article is really about is people who drink lousy coffee black. I do understand how drinking shitty, bitter, acidic coffee can drive someone crazy. Some of us prefer great tasting coffee, and are more likely to drink good coffee black.
So just because I happen to be crazy, doesn't mean it is because of the great black coffee I drink.
This is absolutely true, their will be no "Year of the Linux Desktop" for the next ten years at least! I have been using Linux for over 25 years, it's not for most people, it doesn't have the manufacturer support, and quite frankly, manufacturers want it to go away so the few that support it don't have to anymore. My wife uses Linux at home and doesn't even know what it is, she reads email, browses the web and uses Libre Office for office type stuff. If I asked her what Linux is she wouldn't know or care. Without me to set it up for her, she wouldn't be using it.
Any article which mentions "Year of the Linux Desktop" is just click bait. There is no possibility at this time or in the next ten years.
My wife and I grew up using maps, and it's quite natural for us. I often use GPS especially for traveling, but my wife is resistant to using GPS, they steer you into lakes and lead you astray, etc. When I get online directions or use a GPS for long distance travel, I almost always check out the route to see if it makes sense. I often modify my route for a multitude of reasons such as; I know a different route is actually faster, construction I'm aware of, a different route is much more scenic and therefore worth the extra time, I know this route actually doesn't work, a new road not known by the map software and other misc. reasons.
I recently went to a Best Western Hotel in Wisconsin that had been there for over 15 years. When I keyed in the address when I got near by (I used maps to get to the area), the address didn't exist on my GPS and I couldn't find it searching around. The road actually had 3 names, and I knew 2 of them, but neither worked on my GPS. I'm not sure if the one I didn't know would have worked, but I ended up calling the place and getting directions. It was still tricky to find, yet right on a major 2 lane highway.
Following turn by turn directions on a GPS often aren't quick enough to get to the right side of the expressway for an exit in large downtown areas with many exits and moderate traffic.
I hate it when GPS and online instructions tell me to get on a certain road going straight down the expressway, over and over again, when it's the same road I'm on or it combines with another one and no turning is involved. This is why I often transcribe online directions into something one eighth as long as the original.
Ultimately, I never want to be without a GPS and at least a state map if I can help it.
So since seemingly all GMO foods are completely safe and have been thoroughly tested by Monsanto and other companies, we can label them in clear language that they are GMO products and a URL to the specific GMO modifications in plain language. Of course, this is about as likely as simple gun control measures in the US. If there is nothing to hide, let's not hide it!!! I actually don't mind certain GMO modifications, like making potatoes less toxic. But other things, like adding natural insect toxins and repellents to plants are an issue. It's not that the more benign ones are going to kill you directly, anymore than they are directly killing bees, usually parasites kill the bees because of their weakened immune systems (also weakened by pesticides). Many of these natural toxins are not fatal to humans, but they are mildly toxic to us if you are young and healthy, no problem. If lots of different products make these changes and you add them together, and if you are undergoing chemotherapy or some other weakening condition, you shouldn't be eating stuff with those types of modifications. In the US, how would you know, most of these aren't labeled. If Monsanto admits that some people shouldn't eat certain modified products then people might not buy them, so F*CK you weak people.
When there is nothing to hide, all researchers will be able to test these products and Monsanto and others, will welcome this extra testing. We might even engage in some long term testing of certain modifications on small groups of humans and/or animals instead of the entire population at once.
None of this will change until hundreds of thousands of people are definitively proven to have been hurt by this. It probably won't be something that happens quickly, but only from long term exposure. When it does happen, no matter how many warnings were received by these companies from their own people, no one will be prosecuted. After all, if your a greedy businessman, that is considered normal and it would be uncivilized to hold you accountable.
I haven't found anything suggested so far that has the features important to me in Evernote. I want to be able to clip partial and entire web pages as well as tag stuff too. I just tried Turtl and I can't clip an entire web page (including graphics too), I looked at Onenote and it doesn't run on Vista which is what my laptop runs. So far Evernote is untouchable. I'm on the free version of Evernote and would like to switch. Is there anything close to being as good as Evernote?
Steve Jobs understood this. The rich structure their compensation as much as possible to come in the form of capital gains and dividends. Why pay payroll taxes and regular income tax rates on your compensation if you're rich. Long term capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate and have no payroll taxes taken out. With backdated stock options you can control your compensation precisely.
I have used 2 AMD cards programming OpenCl on Linux, a HD4650 and a HD7770. My 4650 card was obsoleted by the AMD proprietary drivers in 18 months, my HD7770 is being obsoleted (for new Linux and OpenCL support) by AMD as I write this, after about 2 years. This means if I want to keep doing OpenCl development, I have to use the old driver and old kernels, old xservers, and current version of OpenCl, etc. I don't think think I will buy AMD again for this reason. Nvidia doesn't obsolete their cards anywhere near as quickly on Linux. If you buy a top of the line AMD card, you will probably get more than 2 years of support, but you lose even more money when it is obsoleted. I will buy Nvidia next time, but only one of their new Maxwell chipsets or newer, but admittedly, that won't be a perfect solution either. Both solutions have major flaws. If you can afford to buy new GPU cards every 2 or 3years, go with AMD, otherwise, get Nvidia.
My town's politicians were bought out by the cable monopoly in the Chicago suburbs and those towns whose politicians didn't sell out got the same fiber network built throughout just like everyone else. We have to pay higher prices here, because there's a guaranteed monopoly granted by corrupt politicians. There is no black and white choice of monopolies or socialism, we just need to pass better laws to prevent monopolies we have, because capitalism doesn't work without protection from monopolies. Monopolies are the Achilles heel of capitalism.
What you have said is true, but most importantly to cut costs, if you over-roast the coffee beans you can use cheap $2 a pound beans instead of $3 or $4 a pound beans(when you're buying 200 ton bulk loads of coffee beans). You just can't taste the difference when they over-roast it.
In many other parts of the world, gun ownership is legally required (after your mandatory militia service). Such places have very low violent crime rates. What's your point?
Can you name one of the countries that do that. Israel does NOT allow gun ownership unless you live in or frequently travel to "the settlements" (kibbutz's). The military hasn't allowed troops to bring their guns home for years, they are stored at the post.
Switzerland, no longer allows it's soldiers to bring home guns either. Crime rate is still low too;)
What we need in our modern society is a way of generating power when we are sitting on our ass - not when we are walking! Maybe if we put this in our underwear not our shoes?
You are basically right, although it is directly the amount of alcohol in the wine creating the legs, which reflects the percentage of sugar which has been converted to wine. Sometimes they add alcohol or more sugar to create a higher alcohol content in the wine, so a sweet wine could have a high alcohol content as a result, but traditionally a wine with more alcohol has less sugar content, because that is needed to create the alcohol unless the wine is fortified with alcohol.
If you identify with any of the tools you use: OS's, programming languages, platforms, then an attack on the tool you identify with, is an attack on yourself. You will vehemently defend an attack on your self identity. The only practical way to avoid fanboy-ism is to be a professional and not to identify with your tools, simply realize, that every useful thing is a tool and not 'who you are'. Then you can give a professional opinion on any of your tools, the pluses and minuses, without having to feel threatened emotionally.
Obviously, nobody here can "think out of the boxee", what pathetically pablum sucking dweebs. Since the size is about that of a coke can, you can't stack anything on it and if would fit next to anything you already have. Of course, the RF remote control means it doesn't have to be visible at all! Now get back in to your boxes and go back to sleep.
Keyboards are supposed to have more bacteria than a toilet seat. That means every time I start typing a program I have destroyed the solution to one of life's great problems. My keyboard solves problems I couldn't possibly program solutions too!!
I guess I should just retire and each day take a picture of my keyboard to save the current solution to a problem, then piss on it to erase the current solution and start the new program running. I guess if it is not to complex a problem, I can take a picture of my toilet seat to solve it.
Currently, the bacteria on my keyboard has the solution "42", but I don't know what the question is??? Oh piss on it.
After mocking DSL for years with their bogus Slowski turtle commercials, Comcast finally realized that slow broadband is cheap broadband. So as a result, Comcast has rolled out their new Slowski line of DNS servers, routers and traffic shapers. This has had the immediate impact of lowering the system load and no new bandwidth capacity improvements are now needed in the future. Anyone who has any problems with the improved service (lowers stress of people suffering from information overload) of the Slowski bandwidth changes, can talk to the brand new Slowski customer service representatives who can be reached by calling the Comcast 800 number and going through their new and improved Slowski phone menu system.
As someone who has owned a Tivo since about 6 months after they first came out. I was told from day one that they would collect data anonymously on me IF I did not opt-out. Now, I thought very seriously about this issue at the time. I normally opt-out of this kind of stuff but Tivo is one of the LEADING examples of hacker friendly companies selling consumer electronics products. I decided that I wanted to support their business plan since thanks to their hacker friendly policies I was able to upgrade my tiny 14 hr Tivo to an 80+ hour Tivo by myself. At any time before, now, or in the future Tivo could download code to detect and disable my hacked Tivo but they don't because they think differently than 99% of the other companies out there! I think they deserve some F***ING RESPECT & SUPPORT for being a company that is hacker friendly.
Remember this is not Sony root-kitting your PC, this is Tivo letting you hack the system they sold you. Not only that, I can only think of ONE other company (Garmin for my GPS) that continues to give me both bug fixes and actual enhancements to a product which is so old. I happen to have a lifetime subscription to Tivo, back from day one, when it only cost $150 and the only money they have made off of me since is from this anonymous data that I voluntarily allow them to collect! Tivo astonishingly, given the quality of their product and hacker tolerant policies, still isn't a highly profitable company. Maybe, the other 99% of the companies have it right economically - screw the hackers - but I think we should give credit to those who dare to challenge the established ways of treating customers. Suing your customers and root-kitting their computers is what we should be opposing not collecting anonymous data with full disclosure and an opt-out option.
I get lots of important personal emails bounced without informing me and just plain lost every week by Comcast. They used to be reliable, but they must have changed or maybe outsourced their email server administrators in the last 6 months. They are now hopelessly inept at getting me my email. I have to run my important email through Google now in order to get it. The bad part is most of the email I missed, I think I wasn't even aware of at the time. Mondays mornings are the worst, I used to miss all emails mailed before 11AM on Mondays.
I am surprised more people aren't aware of Global Dimming which after recent long term research has been fully supported. The basic problem is that both Global Warming and Global Cooling are going on at the same time. As we all know Global Warming is caused by greenhouse gases. Global Dimming is caused by particulate pollution (soot, etc). In a nutshell they have found that in heavily polluted (particulates not CO2) areas, especially China and India, that particulates in the air downwind of these areas cause clouds to reflect 10 to 30 percent more sunlight back out into space than unpolluted clouds. This huge difference in reflectivity easily shows up in both satellite images and ground solar radiation measurements. 10 to 30 percent is a HUGE difference in solar radiation heating the earth and would have enormous consequences except that most of the earth isn't polluted to that extent (particulate wise) and a lot of areas at any given time have no clouds over them at all so no loss of sunlight is happening then. The particulate pollution causes clouds to be more reflective by causing larger water vapor droplets to form because they are larger than the dust and pollen these droplets normally form around. For some reason, larger water vapor droplets causes greater reflection of sunlight back into space. The increase in particulate pollution from growing third world countries far exceeds the decreases of the same in the US and Europe. As a result this global dimming has reduced the global temperature by about 1.3 degrees Celsius over 20 years. Of course Global Warming has increased the temperature even more than this over the same period of time, BUT, if Global Dimming weren't cooling the earth, Global Warming would have caused 1.3 degrees even more warming than it has and there wouldn't BE a debate about Global Warming.
In the future as we clean up particulate pollution in these third world countries the cooling effect will disappear rapidly and global warming will seem to have accelerated dramatically. In actuality, we will just have lost one of our counterbalancing effects to Global Warming.
Scientists have tended to ignore Global Dimming in the past because it was obvious the Earth was warming up not cooling down, but now extensive studies in the Indian Ocean have made it clear that it is happening, but it is not as strong as Global Warming. This only makes it clear that Global Warming is worse than we thought because it has to overcome this temporary global cooling effect of heavy particulate emissions (until we clean them up).
I think that you have to get back in touch with your natural curiosity and with things that were fun for you when you were younger. What subjects interested you when you were younger and are there any you enjoyed in school and didn't pursue further at the time? I took a Fortran programmming course the last semester of college and enjoyed it more than anything I had done before. Being heavily in debt with student loans I couldn't pursue it at the time. Eight years later, after being laid off from my job, I went back to school and got a Masters Degree in Computer Science and have enjoyed it ever since.
What hobbies, sports and other activities did you find to be fun or thought would be fun and never did? I always thought it would be fun to ski when I was young but I didn't have the money or the easy access to a ski hill. When I was about 35 years old I decided to join a ski club and I learned to ski and have enjoyed it ever since and I still keep improving.
Joining a club or group of some kind is a good way to try new things. The same ski club I learned to ski with, also did other things depending on what anyone came up with including white water rafting, canoeing, scuba diving, backpacking, going out to plays, fancy dinners, bungie jumping, picnics, ski trips to Europe and all sorts of unusual things.
One key thing in the process of growing is you have to get out of your current comfort zone. This is where a group, friend, or girl friend can help you try something new. Check out any trips, one day seminars or other activities your local junior college or park district might be sponsoring, that you might enjoy doing.
Take a look at your life and identify places where you habitually spend too much time (like reading/.) so you don't have time to try something new.
Consider reading some books or magazine articles on the psychological aspects of personal growth. One good book is "The Art of Possibility" by Zander and Zander. But there are no lack of these types of books - buy a cup of coffee at a bookstore and browse through a few of these books and buy the most interesting one.
Finally, look at people who you don't like because they are so set in their ways and try to figure out how they got there, and let their behavior motivate you to not let yourself be like that!
The author of this article lacks any understanding of the difference between the negative effects of aging and maturing. Being flexible and adaptable are good things, which if kept while you are getting older are a sign of wisdom. Acting irresponsibly is totally unrelated to being flexible. People tend to become inflexible and set in their ways if they don't make an attempt to keep growing. However, personal growth takes effort and while necessary to achieve a minimal state of competence as you grow up, it becomes less important once you reach minimal competence. As a result many people would rather coast and become set in their ways than to put forth the effort and take the risks of growing further.
Once you have become familiar which one area of life, you take a risk branching off into a less familiar areas of life/learning and expose yourself to the possible ridicule of (small minded) others for making the beginners mistakes in this new area of growth or learning. The payback is well worth it, but you have to be willing to put forth the effort and accept the growing pains.
People tend to coast if they are not goal driven in some way to continue to improve. Sometimes, a wiser person gives us a nudge or sparks our curiosity so we continue to grow. Most people become more inclined to settle for less as they grow older, especially if you achieve a certain level of financial success intitially.
The problem is, once people become set in their ways, they want everyone else to act the way they do, so that they feel less insecure. I'm over 50 now, and my worst nightmare is becoming set in my ways, and fearful of change. In the meantime, I will continue to downhill ski down expert ski slopes, go backpacking in the mountains, learn new computer languages, tools and techniques and meet new people.
Slashdot Mirror
I roast my own coffee which is high quality before I even roast it. The coffee I make is not bitter, I don't leave it on a hot plate to get bitter, so I like it black. So what this article is really about is people who drink lousy coffee black. I do understand how drinking shitty, bitter, acidic coffee can drive someone crazy. Some of us prefer great tasting coffee, and are more likely to drink good coffee black.
So just because I happen to be crazy, doesn't mean it is because of the great black coffee I drink.
Almost 2 hours in and Amazon shopping app still isn't working. It does seem like the regular web pages are working.
ROFLOL, an hour and 15 minutes in and Amazon acts like any other Slashdotted site. The preeminent E-commerce site can't even hold a sale.
That's worse than stealing the money!
I can just imagine all the dust being blown around by this and how long it will take to dissipate.
This is absolutely true, their will be no "Year of the Linux Desktop" for the next ten years at least! I have been using Linux for over 25 years, it's not for most people, it doesn't have the manufacturer support, and quite frankly, manufacturers want it to go away so the few that support it don't have to anymore.
My wife uses Linux at home and doesn't even know what it is, she reads email, browses the web and uses Libre Office for office type stuff. If I asked her what Linux is she wouldn't know or care. Without me to set it up for her, she wouldn't be using it.
Any article which mentions "Year of the Linux Desktop" is just click bait. There is no possibility at this time or in the next ten years.
My wife and I grew up using maps, and it's quite natural for us. I often use GPS especially for traveling, but my wife is resistant to using GPS, they steer you into lakes and lead you astray, etc. When I get online directions or use a GPS for long distance travel, I almost always check out the route to see if it makes sense. I often modify my route for a multitude of reasons such as; I know a different route is actually faster, construction I'm aware of, a different route is much more scenic and therefore worth the extra time, I know this route actually doesn't work, a new road not known by the map software and other misc. reasons.
I recently went to a Best Western Hotel in Wisconsin that had been there for over 15 years. When I keyed in the address when I got near by (I used maps to get to the area), the address didn't exist on my GPS and I couldn't find it searching around. The road actually had 3 names, and I knew 2 of them, but neither worked on my GPS. I'm not sure if the one I didn't know would have worked, but I ended up calling the place and getting directions. It was still tricky to find, yet right on a major 2 lane highway.
Following turn by turn directions on a GPS often aren't quick enough to get to the right side of the expressway for an exit in large downtown areas with many exits and moderate traffic.
I hate it when GPS and online instructions tell me to get on a certain road going straight down the expressway, over and over again, when it's the same road I'm on or it combines with another one and no turning is involved. This is why I often transcribe online directions into something one eighth as long as the original.
Ultimately, I never want to be without a GPS and at least a state map if I can help it.
So since seemingly all GMO foods are completely safe and have been thoroughly tested by Monsanto and other companies, we can label them in clear language that they are GMO products and a URL to the specific GMO modifications in plain language.
Of course, this is about as likely as simple gun control measures in the US. If there is nothing to hide, let's not hide it!!!
I actually don't mind certain GMO modifications, like making potatoes less toxic. But other things, like adding natural insect toxins and repellents to plants are an issue. It's not that the more benign ones are going to kill you directly, anymore than they are directly killing bees, usually parasites kill the bees because of their weakened immune systems (also weakened by pesticides). Many of these natural toxins are not fatal to humans, but they are mildly toxic to us if you are young and healthy, no problem. If lots of different products make these changes and you add them together, and if you are undergoing chemotherapy or some other weakening condition, you shouldn't be eating stuff with those types of modifications. In the US, how would you know, most of these aren't labeled. If Monsanto admits that some people shouldn't eat certain modified products then people might not buy them, so F*CK you weak people.
When there is nothing to hide, all researchers will be able to test these products and Monsanto and others, will welcome this extra testing. We might even engage in some long term testing of certain modifications on small groups of humans and/or animals instead of the entire population at once.
None of this will change until hundreds of thousands of people are definitively proven to have been hurt by this. It probably won't be something that happens quickly, but only from long term exposure. When it does happen, no matter how many warnings were received by these companies from their own people, no one will be prosecuted. After all, if your a greedy businessman, that is considered normal and it would be uncivilized to hold you accountable.
Thanks for all the GMO fish.
I haven't found anything suggested so far that has the features important to me in Evernote.
I want to be able to clip partial and entire web pages as well as tag stuff too.
I just tried Turtl and I can't clip an entire web page (including graphics too), I looked at Onenote and it doesn't run on Vista which is what my laptop runs.
So far Evernote is untouchable. I'm on the free version of Evernote and would like to switch. Is there anything close to being as good as Evernote?
Steve Jobs understood this. The rich structure their compensation as much as possible to come in the form of capital gains and dividends. Why pay payroll taxes and regular income tax rates on your compensation if you're rich. Long term capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate and have no payroll taxes taken out. With backdated stock options you can control your compensation precisely.
I have used 2 AMD cards programming OpenCl on Linux, a HD4650 and a HD7770. My 4650 card was obsoleted by the AMD proprietary drivers in 18 months, my HD7770 is being obsoleted (for new Linux and OpenCL support) by AMD as I write this, after about 2 years. This means if I want to keep doing OpenCl development, I have to use the old driver and old kernels, old xservers, and current version of OpenCl, etc.
I don't think think I will buy AMD again for this reason. Nvidia doesn't obsolete their cards anywhere near as quickly on Linux. If you buy a top of the line AMD card, you will probably get more than 2 years of support, but you lose even more money when it is obsoleted.
I will buy Nvidia next time, but only one of their new Maxwell chipsets or newer, but admittedly, that won't be a perfect solution either. Both solutions have major flaws. If you can afford to buy new GPU cards every 2 or 3years, go with AMD, otherwise, get Nvidia.
My town's politicians were bought out by the cable monopoly in the Chicago suburbs and those towns whose politicians didn't sell out got the same fiber network built throughout just like everyone else. We have to pay higher prices here, because there's a guaranteed monopoly granted by corrupt politicians.
There is no black and white choice of monopolies or socialism, we just need to pass better laws to prevent monopolies we have, because capitalism doesn't work without protection from monopolies. Monopolies are the Achilles heel of capitalism.
What you have said is true, but most importantly to cut costs, if you over-roast the coffee beans you can use cheap $2 a pound beans instead of $3 or $4 a pound beans(when you're buying 200 ton bulk loads of coffee beans). You just can't taste the difference when they over-roast it.
In many other parts of the world, gun ownership is legally required (after your mandatory militia service). Such places have very low violent crime rates. What's your point?
Can you name one of the countries that do that. Israel does NOT allow gun ownership unless you live in or frequently travel to "the settlements" (kibbutz's). The military hasn't allowed troops to bring their guns home for years, they are stored at the post.
Switzerland, no longer allows it's soldiers to bring home guns either. Crime rate is still low too ;)
Remember, guns don't stop crimes, people do!
What we need in our modern society is a way of generating power when we are sitting on our ass - not when we are walking! Maybe if we put this in our underwear not our shoes?
You are basically right, although it is directly the amount of alcohol in the wine creating the legs, which reflects the percentage of sugar which has been converted to wine. Sometimes they add alcohol or more sugar to create a higher alcohol content in the wine, so a sweet wine could have a high alcohol content as a result, but traditionally a wine with more alcohol has less sugar content, because that is needed to create the alcohol unless the wine is fortified with alcohol.
If you identify with any of the tools you use: OS's, programming languages, platforms, then an attack on the tool you identify with, is an attack on yourself. You will vehemently defend an attack on your self identity. The only practical way to avoid fanboy-ism is to be a professional and not to identify with your tools, simply realize, that every useful thing is a tool and not 'who you are'. Then you can give a professional opinion on any of your tools, the pluses and minuses, without having to feel threatened emotionally.
Obviously, nobody here can "think out of the boxee", what pathetically pablum sucking dweebs. Since the size is about that of a coke can, you can't stack anything on it and if would fit next to anything you already have. Of course, the RF remote control means it doesn't have to be visible at all! Now get back in to your boxes and go back to sleep.
Keyboards are supposed to have more bacteria than a toilet seat. That means every time I start typing a program I have destroyed the solution to one of life's great problems. My keyboard solves problems I couldn't possibly program solutions too!!
I guess I should just retire and each day take a picture of my keyboard to save the current solution to a problem, then piss on it to erase the current solution and start the new program running. I guess if it is not to complex a problem, I can take a picture of my toilet seat to solve it.
Currently, the bacteria on my keyboard has the solution "42", but I don't know what the question is??? Oh piss on it.
After mocking DSL for years with their bogus Slowski turtle commercials, Comcast finally realized that slow broadband is cheap broadband. So as a result, Comcast has rolled out their new Slowski line of DNS servers, routers and traffic shapers. This has had the immediate impact of lowering the system load and no new bandwidth capacity improvements are now needed in the future.
Anyone who has any problems with the improved service (lowers stress of people suffering from information overload) of the Slowski bandwidth changes, can talk to the brand new Slowski customer service representatives who can be reached by calling the Comcast 800 number and going through their new and improved Slowski phone menu system.
As someone who has owned a Tivo since about 6 months after they first came out. I was told from day one that they would collect data anonymously on me IF I did not opt-out. Now, I thought very seriously about this issue at the time. I normally opt-out of this kind of stuff but Tivo is one of the LEADING examples of hacker friendly companies selling consumer electronics products. I decided that I wanted to support their business plan since thanks to their hacker friendly policies I was able to upgrade my tiny 14 hr Tivo to an 80+ hour Tivo by myself. At any time before, now, or in the future Tivo could download code to detect and disable my hacked Tivo but they don't because they think differently than 99% of the other companies out there! I think they deserve some F***ING RESPECT & SUPPORT for being a company that is hacker friendly.
Remember this is not Sony root-kitting your PC, this is Tivo letting you hack the system they sold you. Not only that, I can only think of ONE other company (Garmin for my GPS) that continues to give me both bug fixes and actual enhancements to a product which is so old. I happen to have a lifetime subscription to Tivo, back from day one, when it only cost $150 and the only money they have made off of me since is from this anonymous data that I voluntarily allow them to collect! Tivo astonishingly, given the quality of their product and hacker tolerant policies, still isn't a highly profitable company. Maybe, the other 99% of the companies have it right economically - screw the hackers - but I think we should give credit to those who dare to challenge the established ways of treating customers. Suing your customers and root-kitting their computers is what we should be opposing not collecting anonymous data with full disclosure and an opt-out option.
I get lots of important personal emails bounced without informing me and just plain lost every week by Comcast. They used to be reliable, but they must have changed or maybe outsourced their email server administrators in the last 6 months. They are now hopelessly inept at getting me my email. I have to run my important email through Google now in order to get it. The bad part is most of the email I missed, I think I wasn't even aware of at the time. Mondays mornings are the worst, I used to miss all emails mailed before 11AM on Mondays.
I am surprised more people aren't aware of Global Dimming which after recent long term research has been fully supported. The basic problem is that both Global Warming and Global Cooling are going on at the same time. As we all know Global Warming is caused by greenhouse gases. Global Dimming is caused by particulate pollution (soot, etc).
In a nutshell they have found that in heavily polluted (particulates not CO2) areas, especially China and India, that particulates in the air downwind of these areas cause clouds to reflect 10 to 30 percent more sunlight back out into space than unpolluted clouds. This huge difference in reflectivity easily shows up in both satellite images and ground solar radiation measurements. 10 to 30 percent is a HUGE difference in solar radiation heating the earth and would have enormous consequences except that most of the earth isn't polluted to that extent (particulate wise) and a lot of areas at any given time have no clouds over them at all so no loss of sunlight is happening then.
The particulate pollution causes clouds to be more reflective by causing larger water vapor droplets to form because they are larger than the dust and pollen these droplets normally form around. For some reason, larger water vapor droplets causes greater reflection of sunlight back into space.
The increase in particulate pollution from growing third world countries far exceeds the decreases of the same in the US and Europe. As a result this global dimming has reduced the global temperature by about 1.3 degrees Celsius over 20 years. Of course Global Warming has increased the temperature even more than this over the same period of time, BUT, if Global Dimming weren't cooling the earth, Global Warming would have caused 1.3 degrees even more warming than it has and there wouldn't BE a debate about Global Warming.
In the future as we clean up particulate pollution in these third world countries the cooling effect will disappear rapidly and global warming will seem to have accelerated dramatically. In actuality, we will just have lost one of our counterbalancing effects to Global Warming.
Scientists have tended to ignore Global Dimming in the past because it was obvious the Earth was warming up not cooling down, but now extensive studies in the Indian Ocean have made it clear that it is happening, but it is not as strong as Global Warming. This only makes it clear that Global Warming is worse than we thought because it has to overcome this temporary global cooling effect of heavy particulate emissions (until we clean them up).
I think that you have to get back in touch with your natural curiosity and with things that were fun for you when you were younger. What subjects interested you when you were younger and are there any you enjoyed in school and didn't pursue further at the time? I took a Fortran programmming course the last semester of college and enjoyed it more than anything I had done before. Being heavily in debt with student loans I couldn't pursue it at the time. Eight years later, after being laid off from my job, I went back to school and got a Masters Degree in Computer Science and have enjoyed it ever since.
What hobbies, sports and other activities did you find to be fun or thought would be fun and never did? I always thought it would be fun to ski when I was young but I didn't have the money or the easy access to a ski hill. When I was about 35 years old I decided to join a ski club and I learned to ski and have enjoyed it ever since and I still keep improving.
Joining a club or group of some kind is a good way to try new things. The same ski club I learned to ski with, also did other things depending on what anyone came up with including white water rafting, canoeing, scuba diving, backpacking, going out to plays, fancy dinners, bungie jumping, picnics, ski trips to Europe and all sorts of unusual things.
One key thing in the process of growing is you have to get out of your current comfort zone. This is where a group, friend, or girl friend can help you try something new. Check out any trips, one day seminars or other activities your local junior college or park district might be sponsoring, that you might enjoy doing.
Take a look at your life and identify places where you habitually spend too much time (like reading /.) so you don't have time to try something new.
Consider reading some books or magazine articles on the psychological aspects of personal growth. One good book is "The Art of Possibility" by Zander and Zander. But there are no lack of these types of books - buy a cup of coffee at a bookstore and browse through a few of these books and buy the most interesting one.
Finally, look at people who you don't like because they are so set in their ways and try to figure out how they got there, and let their behavior motivate you to not let yourself be like that!
The author of this article lacks any understanding of the difference between the negative effects of aging and maturing. Being flexible and adaptable are good things, which if kept while you are getting older are a sign of wisdom. Acting irresponsibly is totally unrelated to being flexible. People tend to become inflexible and set in their ways if they don't make an attempt to keep growing. However, personal growth takes effort and while necessary to achieve a minimal state of competence as you grow up, it becomes less important once you reach minimal competence. As a result many people would rather coast and become set in their ways than to put forth the effort and take the risks of growing further.
Once you have become familiar which one area of life, you take a risk branching off into a less familiar areas of life/learning and expose yourself to the possible ridicule of (small minded) others for making the beginners mistakes in this new area of growth or learning. The payback is well worth it, but you have to be willing to put forth the effort and accept the growing pains.
People tend to coast if they are not goal driven in some way to continue to improve. Sometimes, a wiser person gives us a nudge or sparks our curiosity so we continue to grow. Most people become more inclined to settle for less as they grow older, especially if you achieve a certain level of financial success intitially.
The problem is, once people become set in their ways, they want everyone else to act the way they do, so that they feel less insecure. I'm over 50 now, and my worst nightmare is becoming set in my ways, and fearful of change. In the meantime, I will continue to downhill ski down expert ski slopes, go backpacking in the mountains, learn new computer languages, tools and techniques and meet new people.