Except instead of willful ignorance on drunk driving ("Get off our backs - everybody does it, and it's not that dangerous,"), it's the selfish "phone drunks".
Like drunk drivers, they're really easy to spot. They subconsciously drive a little slower while (in any lane). They fade in and out of their lanes - especially on freeway curves. They do it with extra good posture (perhaps they think that helps them navigate safely?) The worst ones are the ones holding their phones up in front of their faces and talking at them, trying to watch the road with peripheral vision - with no shame.
After a few more high profile deaths and political pressure, and a few of those "after school special" movies about cell phone driving killing children, we'll see an overly strict set of punitive laws that nail cellphone users while they drive (by the 2030s).
Maybe driverless technology will finally be the real solution for those who have to be able to "to FaceTime my friends while driving since it makes time go by faster." (Oh man... And least she was honest. And yeah, $100 says it was a she (under 25). Most dudes would never admit to that, and only someone that young would be that vain and foolish about life...)
In most cases having an exotic pet is ok - but only if you're willing to keep it contained and destroy it when it's time.
It's that last part that gets forgotten, however. They'd prefer to just "let 'em go", etc. They'll take their exotic turtle that's too big now and dump it in an irrigation ditch. No harm, no foul, right? That kind of stupidity usually works out (the animal doesn't survive out of its element), but not always. It played a role in burmese pythons getting into the Florida everglades. Two morons (Shakespeare fans) in New York City released an invasive bird species into the western hemisphere on an artistic whim. Dumb, dumb, dumb... I'm waiting for king cobras to show up in the Deep South, scurrying through the kudzu vines...
OOP isn't what bothers me about Drupal, it's that it still has the same old problem that installing a module can completely break your install to the point that you have to go in manually and not just remove the module, but also tell Drupal that you've done it before you can use it again.
I can't speak to D8, but those hard, WSOD PHP fails do happen in D7 on occasion because some contrib modules just aren't written well (no try/catch backstops in them, etc.), and they're not well tested anymore because of the ignored community.
On the D7 -> D8 migrations, more often than not the D7 site has JUST enough customization/hacking done outside the "Drupal way" of doing things to go from a 100% successful migration to a 98% correct in the DB but be a complete, "WTF, Where's my content?", mess that can require an in-depth understanding of D8 to debug.
Because of that, unless you're talking about a major website that can't be "just rebuilt" (or you don't have a Migrate API expert available to you), a majority of web site users should just do some kind of complete, manual rebuild.
And that timeframe is about when the market is going to make or break Backdrop CMS. If people aren't more thoroughly told about Backdrop by the Drupal community before late 2021 (when D7 goes out of support), the overwhelming majority of those remaining Drupal 6-7 sites are either going to go on unpatched and eventually die - or they will be ported to WordPress.
The transition to OOP (at the behest of Dries B. - who knew he was taking a huge risk but ultimately went with enterprise clients over the community leeches and public entities) stabbed Drupal through the heart 6-7 years ago and never pulled out the blade - letting it die slowly over a decade vs. dying right away.
The sad part for the slowly rotting community of mostly non-OOP Drupal experts/coders/architects is that Backdrop CMS - a fork of Drupal 7 from around 5-6 years ago - was the right path forward for them. The fork's creators have simplified Drupal back to where it was when it was gaining in popularity (Drupal 5-6 era) and was simpler to work with, all while continuing to add new features and keep its core strengths that made it a better CMS tool to use than Wordpress for all but the simplest of blog sites.
Backdrop CMS was supposed to take Drupal's old place in the small-to-medium website market, while the current OOP-based Drupal v8+ moved onto enterprise-level clients. That hasn't happened, however, because it gets zero marketing from the remaining stalwards in the Drupal community that have become too invested in the Drupal brand to see the writing on the wall:
(1) OOP-based Drupal (v8+) will never be accepted as a real option for small-to-medium websites when WordPress is cheaper and faster in most cases.
(2) Despite its change to OOP, Drupal 8+ talent is still too hard to find to warrant an enterprise-level investment - espeically when other more well-known framework options (with big money behind them) are out there. (3) Unless you work for Acquia or have some other enterprise-level client(s) with already deep Drupal roots, the Drupal job market is winding down fast - and when everyone's transitioned out of Drupal 5-7, it's over. Adapt or die.
Backdrop will hopefully not serve as another reminder that the winners in free markets are usually the products with the best marketing and lowest total cost of ownership (the "good enough" choice) - not the one with the best reliability, build quality, or number of features.
The leadership of Drupal - Wordpress's only real competition a decade ago - decided to grow up and cater to real programmers and the corporate/enterprise clients of Acquia (the Drupal creator's company). His decision to go all-in with OOP left average Drupal users - web "coders" that are not classically trained and didn't need or want the higher level of difficulty (and development costs) just to get the same results in their use case - hanging in the wind.
That has left upwards of a million legacy Drupal 6 and 7 sites that don't have the resources to go to a heavier OOP platform like Drupal 8 hanging in the wind. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of them will become Wordpress sites simply because it will be "good enough".
In the meantime, Wordpress continues to have more features bolted onto it by a growing community that has less technical expertise per capita than other CMSes. Being a Wordpress "expert" means you can 1) use SFTP and set up a webhosting account, 2) read some intelligently written documentation (unlike Drupal for most of its existence), and 3) hack together some PHP via Google search + stackexchange snippets (that you don't really understand enough to work - regardless of security or supportability). It also means you're a dime a dozen - and won't get paid very much unless you're really good at it (or you manage other WP devs).
In an email, a producer explained to her, 'It's not that the important points you made in your interview are ignored in the story, or that you didn't make them very effectively, they're just made by others'.
I'm not normally an activist type when it comes to women's rights, but that was pretty damn harsh.
You know, speaking of 60 Minutes, someone should contact them about a good story they should investigate. It has to do with a periodical news show that tried to do a segment about gender equality but ended up offending women everywhere. Does anyone know a good producer over there that can explain the whole process to the women so it can get done right?
This video was not moving. It was not powerful. If you think it was, you're part of the choir they were preaching to and not a part of the target audience it should've been aimed at: the people that don't care either way but need to be informed.
They used angry, language that just pisses people off that may not share their ivory tower views. When I heard "pale male" I was immediately put off and annoyed. I stopped listening to their message, and started looking for critiques. They need to make solid points without using inflammatory language like that.
The sound production quality was also way off. If you want to compete with a polished ad to satirize it, polish the sound at the same level of your target.
And you don't try to reach "the middle" by putting a gay man that is so gay that he's wearing heavy makeup, jingling with his earrings, with a fancy headcovering. His entire, "F U societal norms," outfit screamed, "I need my ass kicked."
Talk about tone deaf. They should've run this by average people and seen what they thought before trotting this out to the public.
This kind of project screams career-ending budget overruns, graft, missed deadlines, etc. And when it's finally "done", the system fails to work in just one way that everyone notices. Paychecks aren't direct deposited. Vacation hours screwed up. Tax figures are off by a decimal point. Cron jobs fail when some SQL job fails due to some unexpected character in someone's newly created name.
All of the above costs directors/managers in public positions their comfy jobs (which they earned through years of unenviable ass-kissing and other less-than-ideal methods of power gathering) when they fail to deliver.
So when the question of replacing the rickety fossil of a system, they say, "Does it still work? Yes? Ok - then keep using it."
The next thing you know, those directors that put it off have finally retired and are sitting on that pension they waited for, the mess is passed off to the next aspiring director, who asks, "Does is still work? Oh good - I thought you said it broke..." Rinse, wash, repeat... In the meantime, the cost of the replacement has gone up exponentially, making it even easier to kick down the road.
Something has to go REALLY wrong for a change to be forced on these public entities - and the sorry director that didn't get a chair when the music stopped playing starts their death march towards an "early retirement".
Occam's Razor applies here: We don't give a damn about Captain Marvel's origin story right now. We went through one of the biggest cliff hangers in movie history (Infinity War's ending), and we want the sequel ASAP. This movie feels like that the Captain Marvel is in the way and stalling.
Just one dev's opinion, but whether they're paid or not isn't the biggest issue. It's developer and community involvement - with devs ACTIVELY working on fixes, regardless of compensation (money, pride, prestige, etc.)
And that doesn't mean the original creator/author and one other person/spouse/friend. This means a minimum of 6-10 devs that are actively working on it. When one can't respond, another can pick up the slack.
End users turn their backs on projects that get the, "I'm too busy to do this," self-defense treatment from overworked developers/maintainers. That kills trust, which in turn kills the community of users and shrinks the possible pool of other devs who will bother to offer help.
(Worse yet, the "I'm too busy devs," sometimes ghost their own project outright - while retaining the keys to the project and keep others from taking over or even applying patches. For example, I've seen this in the Drupal community many times (abandoned add-ons/modules/themes with years of no new releases with fixes despite the list of offered (and community reviewed) patches that rot on the vine). Git forks and such can help alleviate some of this, but It is a real PITA having to recompile patches into increasingly fragile build processes and maintain them ourselves when a simple release of control over the project when it's been abandoned for a certain period of time - allowing for new releases - would fix the problem.)
Advice to OSS devs: 1) Be kind to contributors - even bug reporters. They just don't understand. 2) Don't waste time engaging jerks. Shun them. 3) Accept good help when offered, and KINDLY reject bad help. 4) Ask for compensation when necessary (for requests that don't really help the project or are one-off features). 5) Give up control ASAP when you're "done". Don't strangle your baby by holding on too long. 6) Commit to warning end users if the project is going to be shut down. Not doing this is devastating to popular project end users.
Advice to all end users:
1) Don't be a community leech! Donate in relation to how much you use a project.
2) Don't just have a problem -- try to have a solution. You'll get back what you put into it.
If you're an individual end user:
a) Be kind and professional in your requests and effusive (but short) in your thanks for anything done (even a WONTFIX).
b) Help out a little wherever you can (even simple, end-user friendly documentation for non-brainiacs; Almost all devs can use a heaping helping of help on.)
If you're an organization with a budget:
a) Donate any resources when possible to help it keep going. ($$$ is good, in-house dev hours is better, and both is best.)
b) Know when to get out - usually when the community leaders disappear and the FIRST sign of tickets not being responded to. Jumping too early hurts your org, but waiting too long is even worse.
You've minimized the inconvenience in your case, which is great. With a better system, however, you'd never have had to put in any effort to setting your system up - or be distracted again by future spoofed calls. THAT'S how it should be.
FTA: “In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” he said. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”
But we have an ass-ton of college graduates. That's what matters...
...that employers can take a glance at and as easily quantify as a stamp of approval on a topic as a college degree. Is there a better merit-based system out there? Or do we start going by IQ test results? Why not go to our genetic profiles (Gattaca-style)?
The problem isn't with the current system of looking at college degrees to judge someone's abilities. It's the devaluation of the college degree itself. People that aren't college capable are being pushed through the system for all the wrong reasons (universities are marketing to students harder than ever, student loans are being shoved down the throats of students that shouldn't ever be going to college, etc.).
Those students need to be given/shown another path to success, and the cheapest solution is to make high school diplomas matter again in real life - not just the college preparation, STEM world. High schools shouldn't just be a farm system for college recruiters; They should have more vocational skills introduced again - or at least make better connections with vocational schools to diversify what they have to offer. (My childrens' public high school - which is allegedly a "Grade A" school in a strong school district - has ZERO hands-on work classes like autos, shop, etc. The closest thing you can get is an Art class. You have to bus over to a vocational school for most of the day to get the hands-on work.
I get the joke, but in Arizona they take that seriously because of their experiment with photo radar statewide from 2007-2010. People immediately started to do this type of gaming - and it didn't last long. All O's are banned (you have to use zeroes). And they review each vanity plate request. I tried to get D0000D and they denied my request because it was too hard to read by officers. (They also don't allow offensive plates - and there have even been "negative" leaning plates denied (Arizona State fans bagging on their rivals with CATSH8R, etc.)
I also don't know of anyone in AZ that has the digital plates, either. I don't even know if people really know about them. Even if they did, why would they pay $499+ for a digital license plate in a state that just added a $30 "service fee" for each year of registration? (Yeah, we have lower income taxes in AZ, but the sales tax and extra fees get it from you eventually.)
...in infrastructure projects like this one, right?
Well, you got net neutrality overturned. So go invest in that infrastructure now... Oh wait, you don't want to pay for it now. What's your lame-ass excuse now?
It turns out that a majority of people prefer cruft -- if it's useful. That's how Chrome has taken over the web from Firefox - they put in the cruft people want but don't know they want.
Firefox can be stubborn and continue to service us luddites that fight for total privacy in all ways whatsoever, or they can survive.
Places like Chipotles, Potbelly's, etc. that have the modern minimalist look and feel may call it "design", but they've really done it to save money on both initial investment and repairs.
They also do it to save on cleaning cost/expenses and maintenance. Which is easier to keep clean - 1) padded, wooden seats around tables with tablecloths, and drapes over windows, or 2) steel countertops, hard window coverings and painted/sealed concrete floors?
When combined with an increasingly narcissistic generation growing into adulthood that disregards old social mores about speaking in hushed tones in restaurants, I can barely hear any table conversation when dining indoors anymore.
(And to you drunk assholes in the corner booth two tables down at *localSuburbanChainRestaurantOrSportsBar* on any given night - your rambling stories are NOT that boisterously funny. Keep them to yourselves.)
Only if the women's underwear section is included. That section was indispensable for those of us living in "no porn" homes as pre-Internet kids. (I preferred the more risque JCPenney's underwear section over Sears's more conservative selection, but you'd take what you could get.)
We're a small part of the equations, but this would be a good thing for Arizona residents who make their way to California for vacations on the coast. Our clocks would be synced up 365 days out of the year.
Slashdot Mirror
Except instead of willful ignorance on drunk driving ("Get off our backs - everybody does it, and it's not that dangerous,"), it's the selfish "phone drunks".
Like drunk drivers, they're really easy to spot. They subconsciously drive a little slower while (in any lane). They fade in and out of their lanes - especially on freeway curves. They do it with extra good posture (perhaps they think that helps them navigate safely?) The worst ones are the ones holding their phones up in front of their faces and talking at them, trying to watch the road with peripheral vision - with no shame.
After a few more high profile deaths and political pressure, and a few of those "after school special" movies about cell phone driving killing children, we'll see an overly strict set of punitive laws that nail cellphone users while they drive (by the 2030s).
Maybe driverless technology will finally be the real solution for those who have to be able to "to FaceTime my friends while driving since it makes time go by faster." (Oh man... And least she was honest. And yeah, $100 says it was a she (under 25). Most dudes would never admit to that, and only someone that young would be that vain and foolish about life...)
Diana Moon Clampers - the United States Handicapper General in 2081.
In most cases having an exotic pet is ok - but only if you're willing to keep it contained and destroy it when it's time.
It's that last part that gets forgotten, however. They'd prefer to just "let 'em go", etc. They'll take their exotic turtle that's too big now and dump it in an irrigation ditch. No harm, no foul, right? That kind of stupidity usually works out (the animal doesn't survive out of its element), but not always. It played a role in burmese pythons getting into the Florida everglades. Two morons (Shakespeare fans) in New York City released an invasive bird species into the western hemisphere on an artistic whim. Dumb, dumb, dumb... I'm waiting for king cobras to show up in the Deep South, scurrying through the kudzu vines...
OOP isn't what bothers me about Drupal, it's that it still has the same old problem that installing a module can completely break your install to the point that you have to go in manually and not just remove the module, but also tell Drupal that you've done it before you can use it again.
I can't speak to D8, but those hard, WSOD PHP fails do happen in D7 on occasion because some contrib modules just aren't written well (no try/catch backstops in them, etc.), and they're not well tested anymore because of the ignored community.
On the D7 -> D8 migrations, more often than not the D7 site has JUST enough customization/hacking done outside the "Drupal way" of doing things to go from a 100% successful migration to a 98% correct in the DB but be a complete, "WTF, Where's my content?", mess that can require an in-depth understanding of D8 to debug.
Because of that, unless you're talking about a major website that can't be "just rebuilt" (or you don't have a Migrate API expert available to you), a majority of web site users should just do some kind of complete, manual rebuild.
And that timeframe is about when the market is going to make or break Backdrop CMS. If people aren't more thoroughly told about Backdrop by the Drupal community before late 2021 (when D7 goes out of support), the overwhelming majority of those remaining Drupal 6-7 sites are either going to go on unpatched and eventually die - or they will be ported to WordPress.
The transition to OOP (at the behest of Dries B. - who knew he was taking a huge risk but ultimately went with enterprise clients over the community leeches and public entities) stabbed Drupal through the heart 6-7 years ago and never pulled out the blade - letting it die slowly over a decade vs. dying right away.
The sad part for the slowly rotting community of mostly non-OOP Drupal experts/coders/architects is that Backdrop CMS - a fork of Drupal 7 from around 5-6 years ago - was the right path forward for them. The fork's creators have simplified Drupal back to where it was when it was gaining in popularity (Drupal 5-6 era) and was simpler to work with, all while continuing to add new features and keep its core strengths that made it a better CMS tool to use than Wordpress for all but the simplest of blog sites.
Backdrop CMS was supposed to take Drupal's old place in the small-to-medium website market, while the current OOP-based Drupal v8+ moved onto enterprise-level clients. That hasn't happened, however, because it gets zero marketing from the remaining stalwards in the Drupal community that have become too invested in the Drupal brand to see the writing on the wall:
(1) OOP-based Drupal (v8+) will never be accepted as a real option for small-to-medium websites when WordPress is cheaper and faster in most cases.
(2) Despite its change to OOP, Drupal 8+ talent is still too hard to find to warrant an enterprise-level investment - espeically when other more well-known framework options (with big money behind them) are out there.
(3) Unless you work for Acquia or have some other enterprise-level client(s) with already deep Drupal roots, the Drupal job market is winding down fast - and when everyone's transitioned out of Drupal 5-7, it's over. Adapt or die.
Backdrop will hopefully not serve as another reminder that the winners in free markets are usually the products with the best marketing and lowest total cost of ownership (the "good enough" choice) - not the one with the best reliability, build quality, or number of features.
The leadership of Drupal - Wordpress's only real competition a decade ago - decided to grow up and cater to real programmers and the corporate/enterprise clients of Acquia (the Drupal creator's company). His decision to go all-in with OOP left average Drupal users - web "coders" that are not classically trained and didn't need or want the higher level of difficulty (and development costs) just to get the same results in their use case - hanging in the wind.
That has left upwards of a million legacy Drupal 6 and 7 sites that don't have the resources to go to a heavier OOP platform like Drupal 8 hanging in the wind. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of them will become Wordpress sites simply because it will be "good enough".
In the meantime, Wordpress continues to have more features bolted onto it by a growing community that has less technical expertise per capita than other CMSes. Being a Wordpress "expert" means you can 1) use SFTP and set up a webhosting account, 2) read some intelligently written documentation (unlike Drupal for most of its existence), and 3) hack together some PHP via Google search + stackexchange snippets (that you don't really understand enough to work - regardless of security or supportability). It also means you're a dime a dozen - and won't get paid very much unless you're really good at it (or you manage other WP devs).
True, true - It just seems harsh because of the ugly coincidence.
Maybe they were extra polite because they were cognizant to how it may appear to the women when the piece was aired?
In an email, a producer explained to her, 'It's not that the important points you made in your interview are ignored in the story, or that you didn't make them very effectively, they're just made by others'.
I'm not normally an activist type when it comes to women's rights, but that was pretty damn harsh.
You know, speaking of 60 Minutes, someone should contact them about a good story they should investigate. It has to do with a periodical news show that tried to do a segment about gender equality but ended up offending women everywhere. Does anyone know a good producer over there that can explain the whole process to the women so it can get done right?
This video was not moving. It was not powerful. If you think it was, you're part of the choir they were preaching to and not a part of the target audience it should've been aimed at: the people that don't care either way but need to be informed.
They used angry, language that just pisses people off that may not share their ivory tower views. When I heard "pale male" I was immediately put off and annoyed. I stopped listening to their message, and started looking for critiques. They need to make solid points without using inflammatory language like that.
The sound production quality was also way off. If you want to compete with a polished ad to satirize it, polish the sound at the same level of your target.
And you don't try to reach "the middle" by putting a gay man that is so gay that he's wearing heavy makeup, jingling with his earrings, with a fancy headcovering. His entire, "F U societal norms," outfit screamed, "I need my ass kicked."
Talk about tone deaf. They should've run this by average people and seen what they thought before trotting this out to the public.
This kind of project screams career-ending budget overruns, graft, missed deadlines, etc. And when it's finally "done", the system fails to work in just one way that everyone notices. Paychecks aren't direct deposited. Vacation hours screwed up. Tax figures are off by a decimal point. Cron jobs fail when some SQL job fails due to some unexpected character in someone's newly created name.
All of the above costs directors/managers in public positions their comfy jobs (which they earned through years of unenviable ass-kissing and other less-than-ideal methods of power gathering) when they fail to deliver.
So when the question of replacing the rickety fossil of a system, they say, "Does it still work? Yes? Ok - then keep using it."
The next thing you know, those directors that put it off have finally retired and are sitting on that pension they waited for, the mess is passed off to the next aspiring director, who asks, "Does is still work? Oh good - I thought you said it broke..." Rinse, wash, repeat... In the meantime, the cost of the replacement has gone up exponentially, making it even easier to kick down the road.
Something has to go REALLY wrong for a change to be forced on these public entities - and the sorry director that didn't get a chair when the music stopped playing starts their death march towards an "early retirement".
Occam's Razor applies here: We don't give a damn about Captain Marvel's origin story right now. We went through one of the biggest cliff hangers in movie history (Infinity War's ending), and we want the sequel ASAP. This movie feels like that the Captain Marvel is in the way and stalling.
1. Be kind to all contributors - even bug reporters that are wrong or uninformed. . They just don't understand.
Just one dev's opinion, but whether they're paid or not isn't the biggest issue. It's developer and community involvement - with devs ACTIVELY working on fixes, regardless of compensation (money, pride, prestige, etc.)
And that doesn't mean the original creator/author and one other person/spouse/friend. This means a minimum of 6-10 devs that are actively working on it. When one can't respond, another can pick up the slack.
End users turn their backs on projects that get the, "I'm too busy to do this," self-defense treatment from overworked developers/maintainers. That kills trust, which in turn kills the community of users and shrinks the possible pool of other devs who will bother to offer help.
(Worse yet, the "I'm too busy devs," sometimes ghost their own project outright - while retaining the keys to the project and keep others from taking over or even applying patches. For example, I've seen this in the Drupal community many times (abandoned add-ons/modules/themes with years of no new releases with fixes despite the list of offered (and community reviewed) patches that rot on the vine). Git forks and such can help alleviate some of this, but It is a real PITA having to recompile patches into increasingly fragile build processes and maintain them ourselves when a simple release of control over the project when it's been abandoned for a certain period of time - allowing for new releases - would fix the problem.)
Advice to OSS devs: 1) Be kind to contributors - even bug reporters. They just don't understand. 2) Don't waste time engaging jerks. Shun them. 3) Accept good help when offered, and KINDLY reject bad help. 4) Ask for compensation when necessary (for requests that don't really help the project or are one-off features). 5) Give up control ASAP when you're "done". Don't strangle your baby by holding on too long. 6) Commit to warning end users if the project is going to be shut down. Not doing this is devastating to popular project end users.
Advice to all end users:
1) Don't be a community leech! Donate in relation to how much you use a project.
2) Don't just have a problem -- try to have a solution. You'll get back what you put into it.
If you're an individual end user:
a) Be kind and professional in your requests and effusive (but short) in your thanks for anything done (even a WONTFIX).
b) Help out a little wherever you can (even simple, end-user friendly documentation for non-brainiacs; Almost all devs can use a heaping helping of help on.)
If you're an organization with a budget:
a) Donate any resources when possible to help it keep going. ($$$ is good, in-house dev hours is better, and both is best.)
b) Know when to get out - usually when the community leaders disappear and the FIRST sign of tickets not being responded to. Jumping too early hurts your org, but waiting too long is even worse.
Uh-oh. What will Slashdot do now?
Naively wait and hope - for Ajit Pai to push as hard for this as he did to bring down Net Neutrality.
You've minimized the inconvenience in your case, which is great. With a better system, however, you'd never have had to put in any effort to setting your system up - or be distracted again by future spoofed calls. THAT'S how it should be.
FTA: “In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” he said. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”
But we have an ass-ton of college graduates. That's what matters...
...that employers can take a glance at and as easily quantify as a stamp of approval on a topic as a college degree. Is there a better merit-based system out there? Or do we start going by IQ test results? Why not go to our genetic profiles (Gattaca-style)?
The problem isn't with the current system of looking at college degrees to judge someone's abilities. It's the devaluation of the college degree itself. People that aren't college capable are being pushed through the system for all the wrong reasons (universities are marketing to students harder than ever, student loans are being shoved down the throats of students that shouldn't ever be going to college, etc.).
Those students need to be given/shown another path to success, and the cheapest solution is to make high school diplomas matter again in real life - not just the college preparation, STEM world. High schools shouldn't just be a farm system for college recruiters; They should have more vocational skills introduced again - or at least make better connections with vocational schools to diversify what they have to offer. (My childrens' public high school - which is allegedly a "Grade A" school in a strong school district - has ZERO hands-on work classes like autos, shop, etc. The closest thing you can get is an Art class. You have to bus over to a vocational school for most of the day to get the hands-on work.
I get the joke, but in Arizona they take that seriously because of their experiment with photo radar statewide from 2007-2010. People immediately started to do this type of gaming - and it didn't last long. All O's are banned (you have to use zeroes). And they review each vanity plate request. I tried to get D0000D and they denied my request because it was too hard to read by officers. (They also don't allow offensive plates - and there have even been "negative" leaning plates denied (Arizona State fans bagging on their rivals with CATSH8R, etc.)
I also don't know of anyone in AZ that has the digital plates, either. I don't even know if people really know about them. Even if they did, why would they pay $499+ for a digital license plate in a state that just added a $30 "service fee" for each year of registration? (Yeah, we have lower income taxes in AZ, but the sales tax and extra fees get it from you eventually.)
...in infrastructure projects like this one, right?
Well, you got net neutrality overturned. So go invest in that infrastructure now... Oh wait, you don't want to pay for it now. What's your lame-ass excuse now?
You lying, greedy, ******* bastards.
If you want to make a powerful argument that the USA shouldn't be running the internet, then you do this kind of stunt.
It turns out that a majority of people prefer cruft -- if it's useful. That's how Chrome has taken over the web from Firefox - they put in the cruft people want but don't know they want.
Firefox can be stubborn and continue to service us luddites that fight for total privacy in all ways whatsoever, or they can survive.
They use a ridiculous amount of salt just to soften water - and dump salt directly into the water reservoir.
The tech should be restricted or banned since there are other solutions out there.
Places like Chipotles, Potbelly's, etc. that have the modern minimalist look and feel may call it "design", but they've really done it to save money on both initial investment and repairs.
They also do it to save on cleaning cost/expenses and maintenance. Which is easier to keep clean - 1) padded, wooden seats around tables with tablecloths, and drapes over windows, or 2) steel countertops, hard window coverings and painted/sealed concrete floors?
When combined with an increasingly narcissistic generation growing into adulthood that disregards old social mores about speaking in hushed tones in restaurants, I can barely hear any table conversation when dining indoors anymore.
(And to you drunk assholes in the corner booth two tables down at *localSuburbanChainRestaurantOrSportsBar* on any given night - your rambling stories are NOT that boisterously funny. Keep them to yourselves.)
Only if the women's underwear section is included. That section was indispensable for those of us living in "no porn" homes as pre-Internet kids. (I preferred the more risque JCPenney's underwear section over Sears's more conservative selection, but you'd take what you could get.)
We're a small part of the equations, but this would be a good thing for Arizona residents who make their way to California for vacations on the coast. Our clocks would be synced up 365 days out of the year.