they're the Blizzard of hardware. They move in on an existing market, usually one that's stalled (like cell phones or tablets) and put out an expensive product that works better than most.
no kids either (I'm on/. after all). I don't get a mortgage credit. It doesn't come close to my standard deduction. And there's more and more of me. Birth rates are dropping (after all, they don't pay me enough to start a family...)
I bought a house because I could, and when the economy crashed and the 1% started stealing homes from under folks apartment rent shot through the roof.
then your fiends and family are probably making less. Odds are you couldn't give two shits about this "devaluing" your salary. OTOH it INCREASES the value of your salary because now instead of being trapped in a shitty job because if you left you'd have to start all over you now have the option to jumping ship and a credible threat to your boss to demand raises with.
if you are very, very lucky. If _anything_ goes wrong your whole life collapses like a house of cards.
Oh, and Jobs won't migrate away. This is the first thing everyone who perpetuates the race to the bottom (tm) likes to quote. It doesn't happen because California is a _nice_ place to live and the rich like having services. But don't take my word for it, go look at Kansas' unemployment. It's twice the national average after all their "free market" reforms.
if you're going to go that route you also have to take aim at the underlining cause of drug abuse (poverty). Let's face it, when we talk about the war on drugs hurting people for whom it's a medical condition we mean poor people. If you're even upper middle class and you're busted for drugs you can get into a treatment program in no time. It's the poors that go to jail for using.
But the thing is, what do you do with the massive underclass we have? They're uneducated and likely to stay that way because their schools are underfunded. If you try to raise taxes to pay for better schools even a.5% sales tax raise gets voted into oblivion. Then there's jobs, or the lack thereof. Without education they only thing they're suited for is factory work, but that's all in China. Then there's fast food, but after 30 years of wage stagnation + inflation it doesn't pay enough to keep one adult alive let alone a family.
So what then? We don't want to pay 'em, we won't give 'em birth control until they die out ( a good 30% of our country is opposed on religious grounds ). We cordon them office and they wallow in their own misery. Every now and then a few spill over and the cops come down on them like a ton of bricks and we all dance around like the church woman from SNL acting like this doesn't happen every day...
It's been a massive success at keeping the lower classes in their place. Here in Arizona we've got multi-million dollar homes right next to slums. You can't do that without a good solid pretext to go in and bust heads whenever the poors spill over. Drugs are great for that. If you're poor chances are good you're taking some form of drugs to cope with the effects of poverty. If nothing else it's the closest to medical care you can get. Now, think about what happens when a few of those poors wander into the wealthy neighborhoods. Maybe they're there to use a park, or take a kid to one of the nicer schools. But odds are good one of 'em has a joint or two. And with our drug laws being what they are you're pretty much guilty by association. If you get a chance look up _why_ marijuana is illegal some time (hint: Migrant farm workers smoked it).
Then there's our whole private prison thing. As always, follow the money.
Did we read the same article? The point is there is going to be less and less work to do. Yes, there will still be high level thinkers like Hawkins and Einstein. Yes there will still be surgeons. The rest of us get replaced with robots, automation and expert systems. Maybe you're a genius brain surgeon ( if you are what the hell are you doing on/., but I degrees), but what about the other 6 billion who aren't gifted geniuses and don't have a silver spoon up their ass. What about them?
Bernie Sanders. Alan Greyson. Al Franken. We might not have a lot of 'em, but we've got a few. Hell, Bernie openly admits to being a socialist. In America that's like saying your a Nazi Pedophile Hipster who drinks lite beer.
There's lots of unemployed, especially in Mexico. How do the big rigs carrying cars make it up here. Could it be that that if you highjack a few of these you wind up dead, fast? Don't screw with the rich. You can do whatever you want to the poor and middle class, but if you steal from the wealthy you will die. If all else fails the American military will step in and carpet bomb you with drones.
stop repeating this nonsense about technology not disrupting peoples lives. Yes, over the course of several decades the economy replaced those jobs. In the meantime millions were without work. There's a reason why the Luddites existed. That word has meaning beyond an insult. There was nearly 60 years of joblessness following the industrial revolution before other tech caught up. Google it. Read some history. Jeez.
I agree the solution isn't to go back on technology though. It's socialism. Plain 'ole socialism. When we don't need these people to work we don't just let them starve while we all take turns seeing who can make the 1% the happiest. And btw, I said _socialism_, not communism. And not a fascist dictatorship that occasionally publishes a pamphlet with something written by Karl Marx either...
What I do is just vote for the most left leaning candidate I can get my hands on. It's better than nothing.
When you don't vote then that's a signal to the rich and powerful that they can get away with even _more_ than they did the last time around. What do you think happens when their lap dogs win in a landslide? Same thing as anyone who wins an overwhelming victory, it emboldens them.
Vote the most popularist person you can get. Here in the States I'll vote Hilary even though she's a a corporate douche because at least she won't gut the last round of medical reforms (which I have several friends/family dependent on).
Moreover we're adults. We shouldn't pout and cross our arms and say if I can't have everything I'll take nothing. Take what you can get. The Phrase "it can always get worse" really _does_ mean something...
I figured they were gonna give away the OS so they could get everyone on the Office 365 and Microsoft App Store gravy trains. Whatever they're making on Windows OS pales in comparison to taking a 30% cut of every desktop application out there. Maybe they figure they'll get both. Probably right if they do.
to revitalize arcades. There's a few barcades out there (Dave & Busters) but they're mostly ticket games to keep the dollars per minute of play high. There was a bowling alley in my neck of the woods that advertised a real arcade. I called to be sure and they told me they had 100+ arcade machines. 60 minute drive latter and the closest thing to an "Arcade" machine they had was a Sega truck driving game...
It's the wood really, and the TV. The cabinets are too expensive to make even as hardware gets cheaper. That and a declining middle class who can't afford to drop that much money into machines. Inflation means games need to be at least 75 cents a play and really want to be $1.33, but that's a heck of a lot of money for 5 minutes of gaming...
But I've yet to find one of those half and half keyboards that felt right. The Microsoft Natural curves slighly towards the center. Most of the split keyboards are a flat plane that you prop up at an angle. Literally just a regular keyboard cut in half that you can put at about a 30 degree angle. The trouble is my pinkies are shorter than my middle/index fingers. The Microsoft shape seems to talke that into account more.
because AOL wrote their own modem drivers. When the crappy modem in somebody's cheapo dell's driver busted AOL kept right on working, and I didn't have to go over to Aunt so-and-so's house to fix it.
I saw this coming in the mid 2000s. Companies realized it was more cost effective (read:cheaper) to have happy sounding customer service than a good product and knowledgeable staff. For people wondering why they don't just create an environment and products that don't make people angry in the first place it's because that costs money. Lots of it. So you dump the job of cleaning the mess left by management's lousy decisions onto some poor bastard in Bangladesh or some barely literate goof in Alabama. The sad thing is it works. People remember how the interaction felt more than it's content... For anyone who isn't an overly emotional idiot it's incredibly frustrating; and all the robots in the world don't help that.
not really. America's got tons of religious loonies and they don't get on to this sort of stuff because when they do the policy drop a hammer from space on them.
It's about money and control. Always is. The ruling class looks like other way because blokes like this one that got hacked up tend to be progressive. In addition to banging on about atheism they usually want food and medicine for everybody, and that cuts into the budge for private planes and houses the size of skyscrapers.
Whenever human beings do something truly awful it's always, always about money; and lots of it.
Oh, and before anyone thinks I'm saying America's better because we don't tolerate this sort of nonsense; it's not out of the kindness of our hearts, we just haven't felt the need to let religious extremists off their lease. We've got other ways of keeping the working man down...
not sure I see a problem with this. If the users were going to stay on the unpaid model and the ad revenue isn't enough to pay for it why bother hoping they convert? It only works for Candy Crush because a few "whales" buy a tonne of stuff, but with music those folks are buying CDs and vinyl for their collection. Might as well cut off the guys who want freebies...
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We was lucky if we had 4kb for the OS and the program code and the graphics and the sounds.
they're the Blizzard of hardware. They move in on an existing market, usually one that's stalled (like cell phones or tablets) and put out an expensive product that works better than most.
no kids either (I'm on /. after all). I don't get a mortgage credit. It doesn't come close to my standard deduction. And there's more and more of me. Birth rates are dropping (after all, they don't pay me enough to start a family...)
I bought a house because I could, and when the economy crashed and the 1% started stealing homes from under folks apartment rent shot through the roof.
then your fiends and family are probably making less. Odds are you couldn't give two shits about this "devaluing" your salary. OTOH it INCREASES the value of your salary because now instead of being trapped in a shitty job because if you left you'd have to start all over you now have the option to jumping ship and a credible threat to your boss to demand raises with.
it's the rate businesses close after 5 years. There's no wave, just more of the same with something new to blame it on.
if you are very, very lucky. If _anything_ goes wrong your whole life collapses like a house of cards.
Oh, and Jobs won't migrate away. This is the first thing everyone who perpetuates the race to the bottom (tm) likes to quote. It doesn't happen because California is a _nice_ place to live and the rich like having services. But don't take my word for it, go look at Kansas' unemployment. It's twice the national average after all their "free market" reforms.
if you're going to go that route you also have to take aim at the underlining cause of drug abuse (poverty). Let's face it, when we talk about the war on drugs hurting people for whom it's a medical condition we mean poor people. If you're even upper middle class and you're busted for drugs you can get into a treatment program in no time. It's the poors that go to jail for using.
.5% sales tax raise gets voted into oblivion. Then there's jobs, or the lack thereof. Without education they only thing they're suited for is factory work, but that's all in China. Then there's fast food, but after 30 years of wage stagnation + inflation it doesn't pay enough to keep one adult alive let alone a family.
But the thing is, what do you do with the massive underclass we have? They're uneducated and likely to stay that way because their schools are underfunded. If you try to raise taxes to pay for better schools even a
So what then? We don't want to pay 'em, we won't give 'em birth control until they die out ( a good 30% of our country is opposed on religious grounds ). We cordon them office and they wallow in their own misery. Every now and then a few spill over and the cops come down on them like a ton of bricks and we all dance around like the church woman from SNL acting like this doesn't happen every day...
It's been a massive success at keeping the lower classes in their place. Here in Arizona we've got multi-million dollar homes right next to slums. You can't do that without a good solid pretext to go in and bust heads whenever the poors spill over. Drugs are great for that. If you're poor chances are good you're taking some form of drugs to cope with the effects of poverty. If nothing else it's the closest to medical care you can get. Now, think about what happens when a few of those poors wander into the wealthy neighborhoods. Maybe they're there to use a park, or take a kid to one of the nicer schools. But odds are good one of 'em has a joint or two. And with our drug laws being what they are you're pretty much guilty by association. If you get a chance look up _why_ marijuana is illegal some time (hint: Migrant farm workers smoked it).
Then there's our whole private prison thing. As always, follow the money.
Abnegation.
in business. I think that was the Grandparent's point. You can do anything to anyone when it's "Just Business"...
Um... Yes it does. When we can have a society where we only need to work 8 hours a week and everyone's OK I say why the hell not?
Did we read the same article? The point is there is going to be less and less work to do. Yes, there will still be high level thinkers like Hawkins and Einstein. Yes there will still be surgeons. The rest of us get replaced with robots, automation and expert systems. Maybe you're a genius brain surgeon ( if you are what the hell are you doing on /., but I degrees), but what about the other 6 billion who aren't gifted geniuses and don't have a silver spoon up their ass. What about them?
Bernie Sanders. Alan Greyson. Al Franken. We might not have a lot of 'em, but we've got a few. Hell, Bernie openly admits to being a socialist. In America that's like saying your a Nazi Pedophile Hipster who drinks lite beer.
There's lots of unemployed, especially in Mexico. How do the big rigs carrying cars make it up here. Could it be that that if you highjack a few of these you wind up dead, fast? Don't screw with the rich. You can do whatever you want to the poor and middle class, but if you steal from the wealthy you will die. If all else fails the American military will step in and carpet bomb you with drones.
stop repeating this nonsense about technology not disrupting peoples lives. Yes, over the course of several decades the economy replaced those jobs. In the meantime millions were without work. There's a reason why the Luddites existed. That word has meaning beyond an insult. There was nearly 60 years of joblessness following the industrial revolution before other tech caught up. Google it. Read some history. Jeez.
I agree the solution isn't to go back on technology though. It's socialism. Plain 'ole socialism. When we don't need these people to work we don't just let them starve while we all take turns seeing who can make the 1% the happiest. And btw, I said _socialism_, not communism. And not a fascist dictatorship that occasionally publishes a pamphlet with something written by Karl Marx either...
What I do is just vote for the most left leaning candidate I can get my hands on. It's better than nothing.
When you don't vote then that's a signal to the rich and powerful that they can get away with even _more_ than they did the last time around. What do you think happens when their lap dogs win in a landslide? Same thing as anyone who wins an overwhelming victory, it emboldens them.
Vote the most popularist person you can get. Here in the States I'll vote Hilary even though she's a a corporate douche because at least she won't gut the last round of medical reforms (which I have several friends/family dependent on).
Moreover we're adults. We shouldn't pout and cross our arms and say if I can't have everything I'll take nothing. Take what you can get. The Phrase "it can always get worse" really _does_ mean something...
I figured they were gonna give away the OS so they could get everyone on the Office 365 and Microsoft App Store gravy trains. Whatever they're making on Windows OS pales in comparison to taking a 30% cut of every desktop application out there. Maybe they figure they'll get both. Probably right if they do.
to revitalize arcades. There's a few barcades out there (Dave & Busters) but they're mostly ticket games to keep the dollars per minute of play high. There was a bowling alley in my neck of the woods that advertised a real arcade. I called to be sure and they told me they had 100+ arcade machines. 60 minute drive latter and the closest thing to an "Arcade" machine they had was a Sega truck driving game...
It's the wood really, and the TV. The cabinets are too expensive to make even as hardware gets cheaper. That and a declining middle class who can't afford to drop that much money into machines. Inflation means games need to be at least 75 cents a play and really want to be $1.33, but that's a heck of a lot of money for 5 minutes of gaming...
it still drops frames. Not that it matters to an old codger like myself. I can't tell the diff between 1080p & 4k :P
But I've yet to find one of those half and half keyboards that felt right. The Microsoft Natural curves slighly towards the center. Most of the split keyboards are a flat plane that you prop up at an angle. Literally just a regular keyboard cut in half that you can put at about a 30 degree angle. The trouble is my pinkies are shorter than my middle/index fingers. The Microsoft shape seems to talke that into account more.
because AOL wrote their own modem drivers. When the crappy modem in somebody's cheapo dell's driver busted AOL kept right on working, and I didn't have to go over to Aunt so-and-so's house to fix it.
I saw this coming in the mid 2000s. Companies realized it was more cost effective (read:cheaper) to have happy sounding customer service than a good product and knowledgeable staff. For people wondering why they don't just create an environment and products that don't make people angry in the first place it's because that costs money. Lots of it. So you dump the job of cleaning the mess left by management's lousy decisions onto some poor bastard in Bangladesh or some barely literate goof in Alabama. The sad thing is it works. People remember how the interaction felt more than it's content... For anyone who isn't an overly emotional idiot it's incredibly frustrating; and all the robots in the world don't help that.
not really. America's got tons of religious loonies and they don't get on to this sort of stuff because when they do the policy drop a hammer from space on them.
It's about money and control. Always is. The ruling class looks like other way because blokes like this one that got hacked up tend to be progressive. In addition to banging on about atheism they usually want food and medicine for everybody, and that cuts into the budge for private planes and houses the size of skyscrapers.
Whenever human beings do something truly awful it's always, always about money; and lots of it.
Oh, and before anyone thinks I'm saying America's better because we don't tolerate this sort of nonsense; it's not out of the kindness of our hearts, we just haven't felt the need to let religious extremists off their lease. We've got other ways of keeping the working man down...
we got off lightly. It was 4 Adam Sandler Movies, National Treasure 3 and the latest film from Sstar Actor Shia Labeouf
not sure I see a problem with this. If the users were going to stay on the unpaid model and the ad revenue isn't enough to pay for it why bother hoping they convert? It only works for Candy Crush because a few "whales" buy a tonne of stuff, but with music those folks are buying CDs and vinyl for their collection. Might as well cut off the guys who want freebies...