What makes it significant is not anything in particular about the parts, but the fact they can save over 1 million pounds in the next few years with it. Imagine some airfield in an isolated location... a little plastic cap that would cost 4 cents to mass-produce on an assembly line probably costs ten-thousand times that by the time it goes onto a plane, because it is made in small quantities, procured through some byzantine contracting process, and then shipped around the globe through military logistics.
Under the conditions of the 20th century there was a trend towards higher workforce participation with tasks traditionally relegated to housewives being shifted to third parties or technology. Some of that may me be shifted back to home labor.
But stay-at-home parents have not returned to traditional home chores - sewing clothes and scrubbing them clean on river rocks, tending crops, grinding meal, gathering water and firewood, tending to or butchering animals, churning butter, beating rugs and so on. Instead they largely do work that would previously have been considered enriching recreation - shuttling kids to teams, clubs, and lessons. Or preparing meals that are essentially a luxury - higher quality, but largely more expensive than, a machine-prepared (frozen) or fast-food meal. This is not to mention time spent at the gym, shopping for junk, or burnishing a facebook page. And shuttling kids around appears to be on the verge of obsolescence as well due to automated driving. I say all this as the supporter of a stay-at-home spouse and 4 kids. (For people who do have meaningful, well-paying work the "future" of 2014 is pretty good!)
Well, some unemployed dude sitting around getting fat and depressed and playing PS3 all day might well match that definition, especially by 1960s standards.
But those cultural changes have come true to quite a degree. Granted, instead of complete mass joblessness, we have a significant decrease in the workforce participation rate (i.e. joblessness) but more significantly an explosion in service industry jobs, along with income subsidies of various types since the jobs are not economically necessary enough to provide a living wage. As for strict population controls, the most populous nation on earth introduced a strict population control 14 years after the prediction (China One Child Policy) and birth rates are widely tumbling. I will grant the main population control elsewhere around the world is through cultural controls rather than legal, but the net effect is certainly similar.
The false equivalence between parties when a person and a big company enter into a so-called mutually binding contract is one of the more ridiculous myths of our present-day culture. It's something an alien culture would look at and say, "really? You all agreed to play along with that pretense?" As if an individual could ever have the time to read, and the training to understand, dozens of pages of legalize for every basic function in society such as making a purchase or looking at a web page, countless times per day. It's a big, obvious lie that just facilitates companies' power to dictate every transaction on their own terms. Exchanges between individuals on one side and companies on the other should be regulated by selecting one of a few off-the-shelf Terms of Service, defined by a democratic process. Any such process could be nitpicked, but almost anything would be better than what we're doing now.
But but to be fair, you can also buy a new EV for less than the average price of a new car, which is a genuinely new situation. (Nissan Leaf base price is $28k, average new car price is $31K).
In theory. Remind me who was Time's Person of the Year in 2001? Osama Bin Laden, naturally?... no, it was Rudy Guliani. And here is a USA Today article from beforehand on their connundrum, on the difficulty of making the obvious pick. So, it's pretty clear Snowden isn't considered as radioactive as Bin Laden, anyways.
What if I get angry at a malfunctioning computer while knowing, on a rational level, that it is inanimate so my emotion is futile. Is that a dangerous mental schism? Should I simply believe that the computer is trying to hurt me? Or that god must be using the computer to pushing something bad that I did?
In Facebook Culture the number of World Firsts grow exponentially, but they also grow exponentially more bizarre and trivial, so the net effect resembles saturation instead of an explosion.
I think "Americanized" is a misnomer, and a more correct term would be "commercialized."
Granted, commercialization has its natural home here. But in the end, I think our whole-hearted embrace of greed just speeds up the process somewhat. All life is about sucking up resources, and most likely doomed to end in a race to the bottom.
Sounds to me like closing a loophole more than instituting a new tax. I realize that is a matter of interpretation, but the idea that google, apple, etc are "really" in Bermuda etc. is such a hoax in the first place.
Would you carry all your savings in the wallet in your back pocket? The digital equivalent of stuffing all your savings into a pillowcase or burying them in the backyard is extremely risky. Banks exist for very good reasons. Nothing about home computing was ever designed with the expectation of storing highly valuable information on it.
Recycling is already a much bigger business than most of us think.
According to the book Junkyard Planet, recycling currently employs more people in any other industry except agriculture! That amazed me. NPR Fresh Air had a good interview about the book, in which that claim is made (I haven't read the book).
I recently got a "retina" MacBook Pro for the first time and I am surprised at how much bigger it makes the screen feel. I have always gone with the 15" but, had I known, would more seriously have considered the 13". Smaller fonts are so much more legible.
3D isn't translating well into the living room, but it's doing fine in theaters, isn't it? I saw Gravity in 3d just a few months ago, and the 3d was very much worthwhile.
If you think the cost of glass at $0.25/sf has anything to do with the cost of the windows installed in an office building (or even a home) then you have never bought any.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes it significant is not anything in particular about the parts, but the fact they can save over 1 million pounds in the next few years with it. Imagine some airfield in an isolated location... a little plastic cap that would cost 4 cents to mass-produce on an assembly line probably costs ten-thousand times that by the time it goes onto a plane, because it is made in small quantities, procured through some byzantine contracting process, and then shipped around the globe through military logistics.
But stay-at-home parents have not returned to traditional home chores - sewing clothes and scrubbing them clean on river rocks, tending crops, grinding meal, gathering water and firewood, tending to or butchering animals, churning butter, beating rugs and so on. Instead they largely do work that would previously have been considered enriching recreation - shuttling kids to teams, clubs, and lessons. Or preparing meals that are essentially a luxury - higher quality, but largely more expensive than, a machine-prepared (frozen) or fast-food meal. This is not to mention time spent at the gym, shopping for junk, or burnishing a facebook page. And shuttling kids around appears to be on the verge of obsolescence as well due to automated driving. I say all this as the supporter of a stay-at-home spouse and 4 kids. (For people who do have meaningful, well-paying work the "future" of 2014 is pretty good!)
Well, some unemployed dude sitting around getting fat and depressed and playing PS3 all day might well match that definition, especially by 1960s standards.
But those cultural changes have come true to quite a degree. Granted, instead of complete mass joblessness, we have a significant decrease in the workforce participation rate (i.e. joblessness) but more significantly an explosion in service industry jobs, along with income subsidies of various types since the jobs are not economically necessary enough to provide a living wage. As for strict population controls, the most populous nation on earth introduced a strict population control 14 years after the prediction (China One Child Policy) and birth rates are widely tumbling. I will grant the main population control elsewhere around the world is through cultural controls rather than legal, but the net effect is certainly similar.
The false equivalence between parties when a person and a big company enter into a so-called mutually binding contract is one of the more ridiculous myths of our present-day culture. It's something an alien culture would look at and say, "really? You all agreed to play along with that pretense?" As if an individual could ever have the time to read, and the training to understand, dozens of pages of legalize for every basic function in society such as making a purchase or looking at a web page, countless times per day. It's a big, obvious lie that just facilitates companies' power to dictate every transaction on their own terms. Exchanges between individuals on one side and companies on the other should be regulated by selecting one of a few off-the-shelf Terms of Service, defined by a democratic process. Any such process could be nitpicked, but almost anything would be better than what we're doing now.
For me it would be getting prompted with people's names.
But but to be fair, you can also buy a new EV for less than the average price of a new car, which is a genuinely new situation. (Nissan Leaf base price is $28k, average new car price is $31K).
Then you should equally have no problem with PETA destroying the hunters' trucks and ATVs. Freedom and all.
In theory. Remind me who was Time's Person of the Year in 2001? Osama Bin Laden, naturally?... no, it was Rudy Guliani. And here is a USA Today article from beforehand on their connundrum, on the difficulty of making the obvious pick. So, it's pretty clear Snowden isn't considered as radioactive as Bin Laden, anyways.
What if I get angry at a malfunctioning computer while knowing, on a rational level, that it is inanimate so my emotion is futile. Is that a dangerous mental schism? Should I simply believe that the computer is trying to hurt me? Or that god must be using the computer to pushing something bad that I did?
In Facebook Culture the number of World Firsts grow exponentially, but they also grow exponentially more bizarre and trivial, so the net effect resembles saturation instead of an explosion.
Granted, commercialization has its natural home here. But in the end, I think our whole-hearted embrace of greed just speeds up the process somewhat. All life is about sucking up resources, and most likely doomed to end in a race to the bottom.
This is the big time. The F-series is America's best-selling vehicle for the last 28 consecutive years.
But there is one overriding difference between the two sides: generally (including here and now), one side has almost all the power.
Sounds to me like closing a loophole more than instituting a new tax. I realize that is a matter of interpretation, but the idea that google, apple, etc are "really" in Bermuda etc. is such a hoax in the first place.
Harmless is one thing; anonymous is the point in question.
Cite?
Would you carry all your savings in the wallet in your back pocket? The digital equivalent of stuffing all your savings into a pillowcase or burying them in the backyard is extremely risky. Banks exist for very good reasons. Nothing about home computing was ever designed with the expectation of storing highly valuable information on it.
Recycling is already a much bigger business than most of us think. According to the book Junkyard Planet, recycling currently employs more people in any other industry except agriculture! That amazed me. NPR Fresh Air had a good interview about the book, in which that claim is made (I haven't read the book).
More pixels = better, at least well beyond 1080p.
3D isn't translating well into the living room, but it's doing fine in theaters, isn't it? I saw Gravity in 3d just a few months ago, and the 3d was very much worthwhile.
If you think the cost of glass at $0.25/sf has anything to do with the cost of the windows installed in an office building (or even a home) then you have never bought any.
Second, windows need not be "darkened" to provide solar power. Most of the energy in sunlight is not in the visible spectrum.
And oddly enough crime rates have dropped drastically in the last 20 years. Turns out finger-pointing wasn't all that effective after all.
"The latest annual inflation rate for the United States is 1.2%, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on December 17, 2013."