Alas... perhaps his analysts, during the campaign, concluded that to utter things like "multi-year recovery" would lose him the election.
One thing that is definitely true about Obama is that he could have picked better advisers and lieutenants. In many cases his choices seem to have been dictated more by political loyalty rather than practical experience and capability.
Specifics, please? Name me an adviser/lieutenant who was picked because of political loyalty and name the person who, clearly, should have been picked, instead.
Huh? That's a mighty random conclusion. It's not "fair"? Based on what moral or ethical code is it not fair? How is it fair that someone wins the lottery?
Because all of the participants have willingly opted in and had an equal shot at winning
Fair. Give me a fucking break. It's not "fair" that the government controls my money and does not honor my wishes with where it should go.
Well, in a way, it is. Granted, the government doesn't let you have absolute say over what it does with all of our money. That would un-fair, because you'd have a disproportionately loud voice.
Now, if your point isn't that you want to dictate what the gov't does with our money and merely let you dictate what it does with the money it collects from you, then that's been tried before. It's the same as if we had no government at all and we each have total say over how much of our own money goes to, say, street paving, military defense, getting industry to stop pouring chemicals into our streams, fire protection, etc.
That didn't work out so well.
Nobody wanted to pay to pave the whole street, the people in the interior didn't want to pay for military defense when the invaders would hit the borderlands first, and the people without stoves didn't pay for fire protection, but their house burned down anyway when their neighbor's house caught fire.
So, government is what we put in place to make sure that we, ideally, all contribute to and all benefit from protections and opportunities which can't really work on an individual scale.
The fly in the ointment, however, is that we all only get one vote, and it doesn't count any more than the inbred, slackjaw out in the back woods. That's the curse of democracy...
You seem to be making up definitions of "fair" completely contrary to your own fundamental point. I could say the exact thing about "what's fair" and "what we'd like" as you said, just switching positions.
Those people don't just live here, they run businesses which create jobs. If they leave because they feel over-taxed, their businesses (and the jobs they create) will leave with them.
As Lester Thurow pointed out in his talks about factor-price equalization, if someone overseas will do the job cheaper, then that job has already left. The jobs that are still here are the ones where it either costs more to move them overseas (like final assembly of automobiles, say) or one where it's impossible to move the job (like harvesting agriculture, mining, garbage pickup, or cashier at Walmart).
Or, to put it a slightly different way, if you're a company that only sells widgets in the US, then moving your operations to another country is going to be a huge headache. On the other hand, if you're a multi-national company, then you've already got most of your ops outside the US, anyway.
It's a level of greed that I find astonishing and one that cost me the friendship.
You know, you're free to donate that estate money to charity, right?
Yup... but it would have miniscule effect. It'd be like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. It'd rather use it to convince other people who are just as well-off as I am... that they really don't need to be any richer.
Yeah, I'm willing to vote for 50% estate taxes (on money I didn't do anything to earn) if it means that people like Paris Hilton might have to do a single-day's work someday
I'm not sure if you know this, but Paris Hilton makes a shitload of her own money. But it's ironic you think it's terrible that her family have worked hard to become successful and would want to give her "free money", but you think it's swell that the government instead takes this money (for free) and gives it to someone else who gets it (for free).
Yeah, I know she makes tons of money for being rich and famous. That's not my point. My point is that she stands to get handed to her a sum of money larger than most of us will ever see... for the tough job of being born to the parents she was born to.
Now, regarding your "free money" comment, I don't believe that I ever asserted that the gov't should just start handing money to the poor. I think you just assumed that. What I'd prefer is that the gov't use more-progressive tax bracketing to make it easier to move up into the middle class and harder to move up out of it. I think it should be easier to make $1-million and harder to make $20-million. I never said anything about welfare.
If I have a modest sum of money when I die I'd much rather 100% of it go to my kids
Well, of course you would. We all would. We'd all love for our assets and stuff go to the hands of people we know, like, and love. I'm not focused on what I'd like. I'm focused on what's fair, and I don't see how your kids have earned your money any more than John Doe has. This is a really, really tough thing for most people to come to accept, because the conclusion is so antithetical to what we really want and that's for our loved-ones to prosper. But, try as I might, I can't come up with any solid argument for how loved ones have earned the money they inherit.
Not to deflect but have you thought that maybe you are asking the wrong question? Work isn't an after effect of tax changes, spending is.
Well, true, people will spend less if they take home less. But, the two counter-arguments I have to that are:
1) That's not how the Laffer curve is explained, and...
2) The gov't will spend whatever it makes on taxes. So, increasing taxes ensures that more of someone's income gets spent (ie, the taxpayer would have less available to stick into savings).
Stimulus spending has done shit to shore up the economy, it created temporary government jobs - nothing else.
Economies are fueled, in a large part, on optimism. If consumers think that their job is at risk, they're going to cut back their spending to save, not as many goods are sold, and then people really do start losing jobs. On the other hand, if people think that their job is iron-clad, then they don't mind spending their whole paycheck (or even borrowing against future ones) because they think there are more coming. The longer the recession lasts, and the worse it is, the deeper the lingering scar left on the psyche of the consumer, and the longer it will be before they loosen their purse-strings and return to their previous level of consumption. So, I'd agree with just about every economist I've read, who say that the stimulus saved us from a much worse situation. However, lacking a device to teleport us to an alternate stimulus-free universe, we'll never know (and, hence, never agree) on how much better or worse we'd have been without a stimulus.
Voting against your own self-interest is your choice. It's a silly one, IMO,
Well, I pronounce it "selfless". You see, I have an "enough" switch, and it has been triggered. I actually have enough money to be very comfortable. I own a house that's bigger than what I need. I really don't need any more money (although I'd love to have more, I can't make a straight-faced argument as to why *my* taxes should be lowered if you lower those of people poorer than myself). My former best-friend does not have an "enough" switch. He's easily worth $10-mil, yet he gripes about estate tax that he'll have to pay on the millions more that he will inherit someday. It's a level of greed that I find astonishing and one that cost me the friendship.
So, as far as voting against my self-interest. Yeah, I'm willing to vote for 50% estate taxes (on money I didn't do anything to earn) if it means that people like Paris Hilton might have to do a single-day's work someday... and if it means that we might, once again, have a thriving middle-class.
Personally, I've seen the "noble poor" in action and a huge number of them are just shit spitting out abused/neglected kid after abused neglected kid, wasting money on lottery tickets, alcohol, junk food, and designer clothes.
I don't see them in designer clothes. As to the other things, I'd like to mention what Marx said about religion being the "opiate of the masses". He didn't mean it like "narcotic", like atheists like to suggest these days. He meant that it's a salve... it was something that helped them tolerate what was being done to them... which Marx viewed as a bad thing, because it kept them from rising up and tangibly improving their situation. But, anyway, with that, I'll offer that lottery tickets, booze, and TV are the new opiates; lacking any clear path to improve their situation, these things help distract them from their condition. And regarding the junk food, it's partly because it's cheap. It costs a lot more to eat healthy food than to eat junk. You can get a McDonald's hamburger for about $1. Try doing that yourself by going to the supermarket.
And now we've got voter revolt happening over: 1) shock over the price tag of the stimulus (ie, Dems are spending too much trying to revive the economy) and 2) the slow recovery (ie, the Dems aren't doing enough to try to revive the economy). Well, which is it?
Both.
They’re spending too damn much money trying to revive the economy (surprise surprise... it’s not working) and aren’t doing anything that would actually revive the economy... in fact they’re doing the exact opposite.
So, you say that the Dems are doing the opposite of what they should be doing, but you don't offer a single detail about what they should be doing. This reminds me of John McCain's "I know how to fix the economy really easy (but I won't actually tell you how to do it unless you elect me)" comment during the campaign. Reminds me of several GOP'ers that I've seen on Hardball.
GOPer: The Dems' plan for (health-care, economy, immigration) is the wrong plan at the wrong time.
Chris Matthews: So, what would you guys do differently?
GOPer: We'd implement a better plan than the Dems have.
Chris Matthews: Okay, so what's your plan? What would you do differently?
GOPer: We'd give the American people the (health-care, economy, immigration policy) that they deserve.
Chris Matthews: Okay... but HOW would you do it? What the hell is your PLAN?!?!
GOPer: We'd implement a better plan than the Dems have.
Chris Matthews: All you're saying is that your plan is to implement your plan, but you have NO details on what changes you'd actually MAKE.
GOPer: We need to give the American people what they deserve...
Chris Matthews: Okay, so coming up after the break...
Reducing spending when we're still in the early stages of an economic recovery seems risky at best and suicidal at worst.
I agree. The time to pay off your credit cards is when you've got lots of extra income and things are looking rosy. Likewise, the time to pay down the debt is when the economy is humming right along (like what Clinton managed to do in the last few years of his admin). I was horrified when then-candidate Bush was promising to abandon the notion of debt pay-down and give all of that surplus back to the people.
You can even cut spending in areas that have less impact on the economy and replace them with targeted spending designed to encourage investment and job growth (still temporary of course.)
My current favorite is to throw the money at jobs building solar and wind farms. At least, that way, we reap some long-term cost savings down the road.
Here's the version I made a few years ago from White House OMB data
Nice. Too many colors, though. They all kinda get lost at the bottom. I'd keep it to a few biggies (interest, medicare, military, social-sec, and then maybe all of the others combined).
I also like that you took the time to point out that the GOP has been the one to increase the size of the gov't the most. What's frustrating to me is that the tea-partiers are all mobilized over stopping Obama's "big government" when the total number of government workers has gone down while he's been in office.
Now that you're motivated to crunch numbers on your own, go make a graph of federal spending and federal revenue over time. You'll find that, when taxes go up, spending goes down and, when taxes go down, spending goes up. Kinda blows the "tax-n-spend" label out of the water. At first, it doesn't make sense, because the GOP would have you believe that, if we cut federal revenue, then the gov't will have to decrease spending, but we know that that's simply not the case, because deficit-spending is always an option.
Instead, the way it seems to work is: either you've got an administration that cares about the deficit or doesn't. If they care, then they know that it's going to take a two-pronged attack... and also that lowering spending is the only way the public will tolerate a tax raise. On the other hand, if you don't give a rat's ass about the deficit, then you can make yourself popular by giving out tax cuts and spending tons of gov't money on contracts to your corporate backers.
According to what you hear from countless economists, we narrowly avoided another great depression, and the last one took a decade to recover from.
The worse problem is that we haven't avoided it. We've just postponed it.
No kidding. During the 2008 campaign, I heard some candidates promising to restore things ASAP and I was thinking "Restore things to what? Record-high consumer debt rates? Record-low savings rates? That's just setting us up to do this all again in a few years".
Mercifully, I'm seeing reports of consumer debt going steadily down and savings rates going up. So, it appears that a significant amount of the public has "found religion" again about personal finance, which is good... but it also means that recovery is going to be slow... and it probably won't return to previous levels until our collective memory forgets what a house-of-cards we're living in.
If we tried to tax 70%-90% today there are dozens of countries around the world that would quickly become more appealing to those in the highest tax brackets.
Let them leave. It'll lower the price of their mansions due to lower demand. It's not like these individuals really care if the U.S. collapses under its debt, anyway; these people can, and do, live just as happily in Paris, or Milan, or on one of their yachts. They're not like those of us who would be royally screwed if the gov't collapses. To them, it would be like one of their favorite vacation resorts closed down.
For good reason. In the 30 years since Reagan took office, the inflation-adjusted median income has gone down by 17%. Meanwhile, the income of the top thousandth of the population has more than doubled. It's not trickling down. It's staying up there at the top.
or at least the laffer curve.
That's because the Laffer curve fails to hold water even in theory. As everyone explains it, if taxes are too high, people will pass up opportunities to make more money because they don't get to keep enough of it. If you lower taxes, people will be so excited by the prospect of keeping more of their income, that they'll run outside and start looking for more work.
Problem is, nobody operates this way. I've asked people "So, last time when you were offered a raise, did you go check to see what tax bracket that would put you in before you decided whether to accept it?" or "When a customer calls you up with a job, do you ever say 'Nope. Not this year. Taxes are too high. Maybe I'll do it next year if the taxes are lower'?".
I don't know anybody who has ever done this once in their career. In fact, I don't know anybody who knows anybody else who has ever done this in their career. Work conditions being equal, people take the highest-paying job that they can get and then keep of it what they can.
You must NOT be able to prove your vote was counted correctly for a specific candidate.
Exactly! Although I figure that he has done this, he doesn't explain how. Now, you can tell, at the beginning of his talk that he's addressing a more "newbie" audience, so it doesn't surprise me that he doesn't go into this... but I'd still like to know.
Until then, I'll stick with punchscan/scantegrity, which is the only system I've seen which seems to be iron-clad. However, in order for it to work like it is designed, it requires that the voting public know what to do (like destructively verifying some sacrificial ballots before/during/after voting time) and that they know what anomalies are cause for raising the alarm.
What worries me about a lot of the graphs on that page is that they either use numbers which aren't even adjusted for inflation, or they adjust for inflation but don't compare them to GDP. He gets it right in a few places, but most of the graphs aren't useable. Looking at the un-adjusted debt principals, yes, the numbers will tend to climb.
What I'm much more concerned about is debt as it relates to GDP. After all, if you owe $10 in debt, that's a serious problem if you only make $1 per year, but it's inconsequential if you make $1,000 per year.
We were managing to pay it down... through Eisenhour, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter... and then Reagan started a precedent for Republican presidents to blow it sky-high.
I do agree with the webpage about trickle-down not working and that, for a steady economy, we need to get back to the higher taxes on the rich, like the 70%-90% on the highest tax brackets which were helping us pay down the WW-II debt consistently over 35 years until Reagan took office.
According to many polls, the number one concern this election was the economy. Somehow in the minds of many, the economy is the fault of the Democrats
What disheartens me is the number of people who seem to think that the largest economy in the world should handle like a sports car and not like a super-tanker. According to what you hear from countless economists, we narrowly avoided another great depression, and the last one took a decade to recover from. And now we've got voter revolt happening over: 1) shock over the price tag of the stimulus (ie, Dems are spending too much trying to revive the economy) and 2) the slow recovery (ie, the Dems aren't doing enough to try to revive the economy). Well, which is it?
During the 2008 campaign, I was actually a little worried that Obama wasn't making clear that it was going to take years to recover from this mess. It seems that every economist I was reading at the time was saying it. Granted, Obama wasn't saying that we'd recover quickly, but he also wasn't doing anything to disabuse the public of this notion that the recovery was going to be speedy. It struck me, at the time, that he could be setting himself up for this very kind of thing that we saw on Tuesday. Alas... perhaps his analysts, during the campaign, concluded that to utter things like "multi-year recovery" would lose him the election. It probably would have, but he should have, at least, started getting that message out very early on after his win.
As someone who stands to make out like a bandit from 0% tax on an inheritance (that I did nothing to earn) and on capital gains (that I make even while I'm sleeping or golfing), I'm getting pretty tired of voting against my personal financial self-interest for the benefit of other, less-fortunate folk who can't be persuaded to vote for their own interest.
When I discuss evolution-vs-creationism with some folks, the discussion sometimes steers toward the notion that the coming together of amino acids to form life is this *incredibly* improbable thing, and that it certainly needed the hand of a creator to ensure that it happened on a planet which could support it.
I then point out to them that *all* we know is that life has been created on this planet *at least* once. It may have happened a million times, for all we know. Out in that vast ocean, there are countless chances for it to happen every day and it very well *may* be happening. Who the hell knows? Any life that we may find out there in the oceans gets attributed to being descended from the *first* occurrence of life... but that might not really be the case.
So, this notion that life may have arisen twice? I don't find it shocking at all. Okay, I guess I'm a little piqued by the fact that researchers think that they hold *evidence* of it (since that's a little harder to do) but, like I said, I have a hunch this has happened millions of times since the "first time".
I read "Confessions of a Record Producer" where the dude gives you the step-by-step breakdown of where all of the money goes. One of the interesting ones is that the record companies now take out more for every CD pressed than they did for pressing LP's or cassettes, even though it's actually cheaper to make CD's.
He said that, every time he'd be at a cocktail party and someone would find out he's a record producer, they'd always ask "So, if I made an album that went gold, how much money would I get?". He proceeds to go through the cost accounting (which he describes earlier in the book) to arrive at some number like a 4-piece band making a gold record results in each member getting something like $23,000 or something. Don't quit your day job, fellas!
Also, back when Napster was really rolling, and the RIAA was freaking out, I recall reading an article by Janice Ian (a 70's 3-hit wonder) saying that she never got a statement from her record company that didn't say that she owed them money.
If you watch the RIAA's behavior carefully, you'll see that they're not really about attacking "piracy". They're trying to prevent any kind of delivery mechanism which takes them out of the loop... that connects the artist directly with the listener. "Disintermediation" is the big word for it. I recall several years back, there was a website (I forget it's name) where unsigned bands could post their songs as mp3's and they'd tag them with what known bands they thought they sounded like. So, you could go on there and search for "Dead Milkmen" and you could find all of these undiscovered bands who were influenced by them.
...
... and, of course, the RIAA figured out how to sue them into oblivion, even though they weren't really infringing on copyrighted material.
If it was an Apple style "magsafe" style connector I would get down on my knees and fellate each and every member of the standards committee.
Hear, hear. And, as a bonus, I'd cook them breakfast for a year if the brick actually was designed to have the cords easily wrap around it (like the Dell's did, although not so well lately, even better than the Apple ones). Granted, it isn't something that needs to be in the spec (like voltage, current rating, and connector dimensions), but it's still on my wishlist.
Oh, and one more thing: Some kind of light or indicator on the connector to indicate that the brick is plugged in (like the little dot on MagSafe connectors or the new "blue ring" on the Dells).
If it was an Apple style "magsafe" style connector I would get down on my knees and fellate each and every member of the standards committee.
Hear, hear. And, as a bonus, I'd cook them breakfast for a year if the brick actually was designed to have the cords easily wrap around it (like the Dell's did, although not so well lately, even better than the Apple ones). Granted, it isn't something that needs to be in the spec (like voltage, current rating, and connector dimensions), but it's still on my wishlist.
Close, but not exactly. I'm not saying that YouTube isn't valuable to them (Heck, I know some people who think that YouTube is the best reason to have an internet connection). What I said was: their time isn't valuable to them.
You think that watching youtube for enjoyment has no value, but other people feel differently. They CHOOSE to spend their free time watching youtube over other activities, so it HAS to have some value, or else no one would do it.
I don't think I said that their time has no value. I said that it isn't "valuable", which I meant as their time having low value.
The fact that they choose it over other things could mean either: 1) Watching YouTube is of high value, or 2) Everything else they could be doing at that time is of even lower value than watching YouTube. I tend to think that it's the latter most of the time.
What I think it all boils down to, is that you do not like it when people find value in things you don't.
Completely false.
I don't like Yani. Other people do. I don't care. Good for them. I'm glad that there exists a type of music that "does it" for them. Same goes for Hummers, butt-sex, cilantro, and wool.
Whatever floats your boat, go ahead and do it. My point was not that you shouldn't be allowed for that to be the most valuable thing you can find to do. My point was that, if that is the most valuable thing you can find to do, then your time isn't all that valuable.
And I'm not saying that that is a bad thing, either. What I'm saying is that it looks silly when someone complains about not being able to do more with their time when one of the things taking up their time is passive amusement (watching YouTube, or TV, or watching the grass grow).
Now, I think you're being a little disingenuous, here. I know some people who spend a lot of time just surfing YouTube, and all of them would be the first to admit that, among the myriad things they could otherwise be doing, working on a cure for cancer would not be among them. They'll freely admit that they're just "killing time" because they don't really "have anything else to do". So, to try to paint these people as very motivated, task-oriented, people who have a very valuable reason to need to watch YouTube videos while they tend to their other important stuff.... I think you're being a little facetious, there.
Look at the the lives of doctors, lawyers, pilots, skateboarders, hair-stylists, and gas-station attendants and you'll see a clear inverse relationship between how much they are able to bill for their time and the amount of time spent watching YouTube.
Now you're saying a person is better if they make more money. This says a lot.
Actually, I don't think I ever said anybody is "better" than anybody else. Please... read... my... posts... carefully. What we're discussing is how much someone's time is worth to them.
Now, what my example about doctors and lawyers does get at is that the amount people will pay for your talents provides us with a fair barometer of what the rest of society feels is the value of your time. Most of the time, individuals have roughly the same estimation of their time's value as the rest of society does.
There are exceptions. You sometimes come across people who feel that the things they're doing are very important and crucial, while the rest of the society does not. Examples of this would be... people like the guy who covers his house in bottlecaps. Usually, we define these people as a little deluded, if not outright crazy.
(with the exception of those rare instructive YouTube videos that show you how to do something useful).
You realize that your entire argument goes down the drain with that one exception?
Yes. I realize that my entire argument goes down the drain in situations when:
You need to watch a video that shows you how to do something that you don't know how to do (ie, you're not watching a cute snoring cat, or a guy getting hit in the balls by his kid, or a teen doing burnouts in his hopped-up car, or someone hitting a crazy trick shot at the basketball courts), AND
It's something complicated that you can't remember it once you see it done once, AND
You're not near a PC where you can watch-and-take-notes more easily, BUT...
You *are* someplace where you have 3G or WiFi service so that your phone can actually get the video
Then, yes. I realize the my entire argument falls to pieces in those cases.
I wonder what the obsession is with your kind about BASHING the existence of multitasking on phones.
Scour the internet. You will not find a single page, post, or comment from me wherein I bashed the Android for having multitasking. The only time I chime in on arguments like this is to defend the iPhone from those who criticize it for lacking multitasking. So, I'm not bashing the Android. I'm bashing the iPhone bashers. I consider that a big difference.
Breaking story: If you're visiting YouTube, you've already decided that your time isn't valuable.
Your argument is that because you don't consider something to be valuable to you, it can't possibly be valuable to another person.
Close, but not exactly. I'm not saying that YouTube isn't valuable to them (Heck, I know some people who think that YouTube is the best reason to have an internet connection). What I said was: their time isn't valuable to them. Look at the the lives of doctors, lawyers, pilots, skateboarders, hair-stylists, and gas-station attendants and you'll see a clear inverse relationship between how much they are able to bill for their time and the amount of time spent watching YouTube.
So, getting back to how that argument fit in with the larger point: If you're watching YouTube, you've already self-selected yourself to not be doing something productive or profitable during that time. You've elected to piss away a few minutes of your life in the pursuit of idle, passive amusement. That's fine. It's your time and you're allowed to do what you want with it (and I sometimes do the same thing, myself). But then to bellyache about not being able to launch some other app to "get something done"?!?! If you want to get something done, step ONE is to stop watching YouTube (with the exception of those rare instructive YouTube videos that show you how to do something useful).
I posted this as a comment on the multi-tasking article, but I'll restate it here with a little more verbosity.
Ever since I've had an iPhone, I've wondered what the obsession is with multitasking. I couldn't really think of any two *productive* things to do simultaneously on a phone. On a PC (by that I mean a desktop, laptop, netbook), I can appreciate the need to go do some other design work while you render a huge video, or burn a DVD, or OCR a huge document. On a phone, I can't, off-hand, think of much CPU-intensive stuff that can run for an extended time without needing to stop for user input. Because of that, productivity is lost because you're having to stop and switch apps all the time. The meaning of "EMACS" is true. Editors Make All Computers Slow. If the device is waiting for user input, then its speed (or multitasking ability) is moot.
Wanting to Pandora to keep streaming while you tweet is *not* a productivity enhancer; it's merely letting you be a little more streamlined about wasting your time (kinda like texting while you watch TV). Now, I know I'm sounding like an old "all work, no play" curmudgeon about this (and get off my lawn, too!). Don't get me wrong. I agree that being able to keep Pandora going while I do other stuff is a nicety, but I don't think that something like that is such a "must have" thing that it warrants all of the articles and posts we've seen demanding that Apple make significant changes to the OS and its API in order to make it possible. I'd never once make the argument that the iPhone OS has some glaring hole in its functionality because I can't listen to music while I'm sending a text.
Yet, Apple caved and gave it to us anyway. So now, the dude who wrote the article is mad because he can't go do something else while a YouTube video loads. Breaking story: If you're visiting YouTube, you've already decided that your time isn't valuable. I read another article where a guy was mad because he couldn't go switch to something else in the 5-6 seconds while a page loads in Safari (probably while he's driving, too).
My position on full background-execution multitasking remains unchanged from the first time I tried a Windows Mobile phone after being a Palm user for years. With a small device like a phone, it's just too easy for a user to rack up this huge array of crap running in the background without realizing it. And that, potentially, has a greater impact on your productivity since it will gobble up the power in your battery. With a PC, you've got a task bar or a dock to see what you've got running. In addition, there's a one-click way of shutting off the app. Whenever a Windows Mobile user would have me look at their phone to fix it, I'd find that they had a half-dozen things still running: control panel, mail, notepad, contacts... all of these things were things where they had finished their work with those apps, but they either didn't realize that they had to close the apps or they were too lazy to press "Menu->File->Quit". Instead, they just went back to the home screen and started the next app they wanted.
Personally, I think that Apple's compromise is a good one. If your app doesn't have a compelling reason to keep executing (like streaming audio, getting GPS updates for navigation, etc.), then the most your app really needs is just to have its state saved for quick re-launch.
There's no magic too it, they're just big foamy headphones with a microphone and cost way too much.
Actually, there is some magic. Aircraft headsets have two plugs. The plug for the headphones are, I think, a standard 1/4" three-conductor ("TRS") headphone plug. The mic on the other hand, is a different story. Some have a three-conductor plug, and others have a four-conductor (the extra conductor being for triggering the "transmit" mode on the radio). In addition, some of the mics require a DC bias voltage (like "phantom power" in music recording) to make the mic work. And the connector is a funky size... a little smaller than 1/4"... like 3/16" or something. Lastly, aircraft headsets are pretty expensive.
Something aircraft headsets do have going for them is that they are great at cutting down noise, since they're designed for an environment which is constantly noisy. However, keep in mind that the aircraft radios do the mic squelching at the radio. So, without a squelch feature, your aircraft-to-phone conversion might end up constantly transmitting the environment noise to the person on the other end of your call.
And what will you do when some of these localities start bringing back segregation, or other policies abhorrent to the nation as a whole?
I will move to a state that better fits my needs and beliefs. Or just go down the street and spend my money elsewhere.
Hey, sometimes, you don't even need to move. For example, when Nazi Germany was rounding up the jews. The Americans didn't need to move anywhere. They could just keep at their daily routine and periodically stop and think "Gosh, I sure have disdain for those mean Germans! I think I'll stop buying imported bratwurst.". On the other hand, some others could stand up and make the case that we must do something about it... something far less-passive than "voting with our feet/wallets"... that we must step in and interrupt inhumanity, even when it brings personal risk to ourselves.
Imagine it on a much smaller scale. Imagine that you're at a cocktail party and someone you know starts slapping his wife around. Do you just say to yourself "Wow.. sucks to be her. I think I'll protest his actions by not shopping at his store anymore" or do you step in and tell the guy that, if he's going to try to assault a fellow human, he's going to have to go through you first? Oh, wait... I guess we already know what you'd do.
For some folks, they just can't stand idly by while others are mistreated. They regard it as a prerequisite for calling ourselves "civilized".
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Alas... perhaps his analysts, during the campaign, concluded that to utter things like "multi-year recovery" would lose him the election.
One thing that is definitely true about Obama is that he could have picked better advisers and lieutenants. In many cases his choices seem to have been dictated more by political loyalty rather than practical experience and capability.
Specifics, please? Name me an adviser/lieutenant who was picked because of political loyalty and name the person who, clearly, should have been picked, instead.
Huh? That's a mighty random conclusion. It's not "fair"? Based on what moral or ethical code is it not fair? How is it fair that someone wins the lottery?
Because all of the participants have willingly opted in and had an equal shot at winning
Fair. Give me a fucking break. It's not "fair" that the government controls my money and does not honor my wishes with where it should go.
Well, in a way, it is. Granted, the government doesn't let you have absolute say over what it does with all of our money. That would un-fair, because you'd have a disproportionately loud voice.
Now, if your point isn't that you want to dictate what the gov't does with our money and merely let you dictate what it does with the money it collects from you, then that's been tried before. It's the same as if we had no government at all and we each have total say over how much of our own money goes to, say, street paving, military defense, getting industry to stop pouring chemicals into our streams, fire protection, etc.
That didn't work out so well.
Nobody wanted to pay to pave the whole street, the people in the interior didn't want to pay for military defense when the invaders would hit the borderlands first, and the people without stoves didn't pay for fire protection, but their house burned down anyway when their neighbor's house caught fire.
So, government is what we put in place to make sure that we, ideally, all contribute to and all benefit from protections and opportunities which can't really work on an individual scale.
The fly in the ointment, however, is that we all only get one vote, and it doesn't count any more than the inbred, slackjaw out in the back woods. That's the curse of democracy...
You seem to be making up definitions of "fair" completely contrary to your own fundamental point. I could say the exact thing about "what's fair" and "what we'd like" as you said, just switching positions.
Those people don't just live here, they run businesses which create jobs. If they leave because they feel over-taxed, their businesses (and the jobs they create) will leave with them.
As Lester Thurow pointed out in his talks about factor-price equalization, if someone overseas will do the job cheaper, then that job has already left. The jobs that are still here are the ones where it either costs more to move them overseas (like final assembly of automobiles, say) or one where it's impossible to move the job (like harvesting agriculture, mining, garbage pickup, or cashier at Walmart).
Or, to put it a slightly different way, if you're a company that only sells widgets in the US, then moving your operations to another country is going to be a huge headache. On the other hand, if you're a multi-national company, then you've already got most of your ops outside the US, anyway.
It's a level of greed that I find astonishing and one that cost me the friendship.
You know, you're free to donate that estate money to charity, right?
Yup... but it would have miniscule effect. It'd be like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. It'd rather use it to convince other people who are just as well-off as I am... that they really don't need to be any richer.
Yeah, I'm willing to vote for 50% estate taxes (on money I didn't do anything to earn) if it means that people like Paris Hilton might have to do a single-day's work someday
I'm not sure if you know this, but Paris Hilton makes a shitload of her own money. But it's ironic you think it's terrible that her family have worked hard to become successful and would want to give her "free money", but you think it's swell that the government instead takes this money (for free) and gives it to someone else who gets it (for free).
Yeah, I know she makes tons of money for being rich and famous. That's not my point. My point is that she stands to get handed to her a sum of money larger than most of us will ever see... for the tough job of being born to the parents she was born to.
Now, regarding your "free money" comment, I don't believe that I ever asserted that the gov't should just start handing money to the poor. I think you just assumed that. What I'd prefer is that the gov't use more-progressive tax bracketing to make it easier to move up into the middle class and harder to move up out of it. I think it should be easier to make $1-million and harder to make $20-million. I never said anything about welfare.
If I have a modest sum of money when I die I'd much rather 100% of it go to my kids
Well, of course you would. We all would. We'd all love for our assets and stuff go to the hands of people we know, like, and love. I'm not focused on what I'd like. I'm focused on what's fair, and I don't see how your kids have earned your money any more than John Doe has. This is a really, really tough thing for most people to come to accept, because the conclusion is so antithetical to what we really want and that's for our loved-ones to prosper. But, try as I might, I can't come up with any solid argument for how loved ones have earned the money they inherit.
Not to deflect but have you thought that maybe you are asking the wrong question? Work isn't an after effect of tax changes, spending is.
Well, true, people will spend less if they take home less. But, the two counter-arguments I have to that are:
1) That's not how the Laffer curve is explained, and...
2) The gov't will spend whatever it makes on taxes. So, increasing taxes ensures that more of someone's income gets spent (ie, the taxpayer would have less available to stick into savings).
Stimulus spending has done shit to shore up the economy, it created temporary government jobs - nothing else.
Economies are fueled, in a large part, on optimism. If consumers think that their job is at risk, they're going to cut back their spending to save, not as many goods are sold, and then people really do start losing jobs. On the other hand, if people think that their job is iron-clad, then they don't mind spending their whole paycheck (or even borrowing against future ones) because they think there are more coming. The longer the recession lasts, and the worse it is, the deeper the lingering scar left on the psyche of the consumer, and the longer it will be before they loosen their purse-strings and return to their previous level of consumption. So, I'd agree with just about every economist I've read, who say that the stimulus saved us from a much worse situation. However, lacking a device to teleport us to an alternate stimulus-free universe, we'll never know (and, hence, never agree) on how much better or worse we'd have been without a stimulus.
Voting against your own self-interest is your choice. It's a silly one, IMO,
Well, I pronounce it "selfless". You see, I have an "enough" switch, and it has been triggered. I actually have enough money to be very comfortable. I own a house that's bigger than what I need. I really don't need any more money (although I'd love to have more, I can't make a straight-faced argument as to why *my* taxes should be lowered if you lower those of people poorer than myself). My former best-friend does not have an "enough" switch. He's easily worth $10-mil, yet he gripes about estate tax that he'll have to pay on the millions more that he will inherit someday. It's a level of greed that I find astonishing and one that cost me the friendship.
So, as far as voting against my self-interest. Yeah, I'm willing to vote for 50% estate taxes (on money I didn't do anything to earn) if it means that people like Paris Hilton might have to do a single-day's work someday... and if it means that we might, once again, have a thriving middle-class.
Personally, I've seen the "noble poor" in action and a huge number of them are just shit spitting out abused/neglected kid after abused neglected kid, wasting money on lottery tickets, alcohol, junk food, and designer clothes.
I don't see them in designer clothes. As to the other things, I'd like to mention what Marx said about religion being the "opiate of the masses". He didn't mean it like "narcotic", like atheists like to suggest these days. He meant that it's a salve... it was something that helped them tolerate what was being done to them... which Marx viewed as a bad thing, because it kept them from rising up and tangibly improving their situation. But, anyway, with that, I'll offer that lottery tickets, booze, and TV are the new opiates; lacking any clear path to improve their situation, these things help distract them from their condition. And regarding the junk food, it's partly because it's cheap. It costs a lot more to eat healthy food than to eat junk. You can get a McDonald's hamburger for about $1. Try doing that yourself by going to the supermarket.
And now we've got voter revolt happening over: 1) shock over the price tag of the stimulus (ie, Dems are spending too much trying to revive the economy) and 2) the slow recovery (ie, the Dems aren't doing enough to try to revive the economy). Well, which is it?
Both.
They’re spending too damn much money trying to revive the economy (surprise surprise... it’s not working) and aren’t doing anything that would actually revive the economy... in fact they’re doing the exact opposite.
So, you say that the Dems are doing the opposite of what they should be doing, but you don't offer a single detail about what they should be doing. This reminds me of John McCain's "I know how to fix the economy really easy (but I won't actually tell you how to do it unless you elect me)" comment during the campaign. Reminds me of several GOP'ers that I've seen on Hardball.
GOPer: The Dems' plan for (health-care, economy, immigration) is the wrong plan at the wrong time.
Chris Matthews: So, what would you guys do differently?
GOPer: We'd implement a better plan than the Dems have.
Chris Matthews: Okay, so what's your plan? What would you do differently?
GOPer: We'd give the American people the (health-care, economy, immigration policy) that they deserve.
Chris Matthews: Okay... but HOW would you do it? What the hell is your PLAN?!?!
GOPer: We'd implement a better plan than the Dems have.
Chris Matthews: All you're saying is that your plan is to implement your plan, but you have NO details on what changes you'd actually MAKE.
GOPer: We need to give the American people what they deserve...
Chris Matthews: Okay, so coming up after the break...
Reducing spending when we're still in the early stages of an economic recovery seems risky at best and suicidal at worst.
I agree. The time to pay off your credit cards is when you've got lots of extra income and things are looking rosy. Likewise, the time to pay down the debt is when the economy is humming right along (like what Clinton managed to do in the last few years of his admin). I was horrified when then-candidate Bush was promising to abandon the notion of debt pay-down and give all of that surplus back to the people.
You can even cut spending in areas that have less impact on the economy and replace them with targeted spending designed to encourage investment and job growth (still temporary of course.)
My current favorite is to throw the money at jobs building solar and wind farms. At least, that way, we reap some long-term cost savings down the road.
Here's the version I made a few years ago from White House OMB data
Nice. Too many colors, though. They all kinda get lost at the bottom. I'd keep it to a few biggies (interest, medicare, military, social-sec, and then maybe all of the others combined).
I also like that you took the time to point out that the GOP has been the one to increase the size of the gov't the most. What's frustrating to me is that the tea-partiers are all mobilized over stopping Obama's "big government" when the total number of government workers has gone down while he's been in office.
Now that you're motivated to crunch numbers on your own, go make a graph of federal spending and federal revenue over time. You'll find that, when taxes go up, spending goes down and, when taxes go down, spending goes up. Kinda blows the "tax-n-spend" label out of the water. At first, it doesn't make sense, because the GOP would have you believe that, if we cut federal revenue, then the gov't will have to decrease spending, but we know that that's simply not the case, because deficit-spending is always an option.
Instead, the way it seems to work is: either you've got an administration that cares about the deficit or doesn't. If they care, then they know that it's going to take a two-pronged attack... and also that lowering spending is the only way the public will tolerate a tax raise. On the other hand, if you don't give a rat's ass about the deficit, then you can make yourself popular by giving out tax cuts and spending tons of gov't money on contracts to your corporate backers.
According to what you hear from countless economists, we narrowly avoided another great depression, and the last one took a decade to recover from.
The worse problem is that we haven't avoided it. We've just postponed it.
No kidding. During the 2008 campaign, I heard some candidates promising to restore things ASAP and I was thinking "Restore things to what? Record-high consumer debt rates? Record-low savings rates? That's just setting us up to do this all again in a few years".
Mercifully, I'm seeing reports of consumer debt going steadily down and savings rates going up. So, it appears that a significant amount of the public has "found religion" again about personal finance, which is good... but it also means that recovery is going to be slow... and it probably won't return to previous levels until our collective memory forgets what a house-of-cards we're living in.
If we tried to tax 70%-90% today there are dozens of countries around the world that would quickly become more appealing to those in the highest tax brackets.
Let them leave. It'll lower the price of their mansions due to lower demand. It's not like these individuals really care if the U.S. collapses under its debt, anyway; these people can, and do, live just as happily in Paris, or Milan, or on one of their yachts. They're not like those of us who would be royally screwed if the gov't collapses. To them, it would be like one of their favorite vacation resorts closed down.
Trickle down gets a bad rap,
For good reason. In the 30 years since Reagan took office, the inflation-adjusted median income has gone down by 17%. Meanwhile, the income of the top thousandth of the population has more than doubled. It's not trickling down. It's staying up there at the top.
or at least the laffer curve.
That's because the Laffer curve fails to hold water even in theory. As everyone explains it, if taxes are too high, people will pass up opportunities to make more money because they don't get to keep enough of it. If you lower taxes, people will be so excited by the prospect of keeping more of their income, that they'll run outside and start looking for more work.
Problem is, nobody operates this way. I've asked people "So, last time when you were offered a raise, did you go check to see what tax bracket that would put you in before you decided whether to accept it?" or "When a customer calls you up with a job, do you ever say 'Nope. Not this year. Taxes are too high. Maybe I'll do it next year if the taxes are lower'?".
I don't know anybody who has ever done this once in their career. In fact, I don't know anybody who knows anybody else who has ever done this in their career. Work conditions being equal, people take the highest-paying job that they can get and then keep of it what they can.
Tax. Rates. Have. Miniscule. Effect. Upon. How. Much. People. Will. Work.
You must NOT be able to prove your vote was counted correctly for a specific candidate.
Exactly! Although I figure that he has done this, he doesn't explain how. Now, you can tell, at the beginning of his talk that he's addressing a more "newbie" audience, so it doesn't surprise me that he doesn't go into this... but I'd still like to know.
Until then, I'll stick with punchscan/scantegrity, which is the only system I've seen which seems to be iron-clad. However, in order for it to work like it is designed, it requires that the voting public know what to do (like destructively verifying some sacrificial ballots before/during/after voting time) and that they know what anomalies are cause for raising the alarm.
A more data-based representation: http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
What worries me about a lot of the graphs on that page is that they either use numbers which aren't even adjusted for inflation, or they adjust for inflation but don't compare them to GDP. He gets it right in a few places, but most of the graphs aren't useable. Looking at the un-adjusted debt principals, yes, the numbers will tend to climb.
What I'm much more concerned about is debt as it relates to GDP. After all, if you owe $10 in debt, that's a serious problem if you only make $1 per year, but it's inconsequential if you make $1,000 per year.
So, look at debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP here: (http://zfacts.com/p/1195.html). You'll see that:
I do agree with the webpage about trickle-down not working and that, for a steady economy, we need to get back to the higher taxes on the rich, like the 70%-90% on the highest tax brackets which were helping us pay down the WW-II debt consistently over 35 years until Reagan took office.
According to many polls, the number one concern this election was the economy. Somehow in the minds of many, the economy is the fault of the Democrats
What disheartens me is the number of people who seem to think that the largest economy in the world should handle like a sports car and not like a super-tanker. According to what you hear from countless economists, we narrowly avoided another great depression, and the last one took a decade to recover from. And now we've got voter revolt happening over: 1) shock over the price tag of the stimulus (ie, Dems are spending too much trying to revive the economy) and 2) the slow recovery (ie, the Dems aren't doing enough to try to revive the economy). Well, which is it?
During the 2008 campaign, I was actually a little worried that Obama wasn't making clear that it was going to take years to recover from this mess. It seems that every economist I was reading at the time was saying it. Granted, Obama wasn't saying that we'd recover quickly, but he also wasn't doing anything to disabuse the public of this notion that the recovery was going to be speedy. It struck me, at the time, that he could be setting himself up for this very kind of thing that we saw on Tuesday. Alas... perhaps his analysts, during the campaign, concluded that to utter things like "multi-year recovery" would lose him the election. It probably would have, but he should have, at least, started getting that message out very early on after his win.
As someone who stands to make out like a bandit from 0% tax on an inheritance (that I did nothing to earn) and on capital gains (that I make even while I'm sleeping or golfing), I'm getting pretty tired of voting against my personal financial self-interest for the benefit of other, less-fortunate folk who can't be persuaded to vote for their own interest.
When I discuss evolution-vs-creationism with some folks, the discussion sometimes steers toward the notion that the coming together of amino acids to form life is this *incredibly* improbable thing, and that it certainly needed the hand of a creator to ensure that it happened on a planet which could support it.
I then point out to them that *all* we know is that life has been created on this planet *at least* once. It may have happened a million times, for all we know. Out in that vast ocean, there are countless chances for it to happen every day and it very well *may* be happening. Who the hell knows? Any life that we may find out there in the oceans gets attributed to being descended from the *first* occurrence of life... but that might not really be the case.
So, this notion that life may have arisen twice? I don't find it shocking at all. Okay, I guess I'm a little piqued by the fact that researchers think that they hold *evidence* of it (since that's a little harder to do) but, like I said, I have a hunch this has happened millions of times since the "first time".
I read "Confessions of a Record Producer" where the dude gives you the step-by-step breakdown of where all of the money goes. One of the interesting ones is that the record companies now take out more for every CD pressed than they did for pressing LP's or cassettes, even though it's actually cheaper to make CD's.
He said that, every time he'd be at a cocktail party and someone would find out he's a record producer, they'd always ask "So, if I made an album that went gold, how much money would I get?". He proceeds to go through the cost accounting (which he describes earlier in the book) to arrive at some number like a 4-piece band making a gold record results in each member getting something like $23,000 or something. Don't quit your day job, fellas!
Also, back when Napster was really rolling, and the RIAA was freaking out, I recall reading an article by Janice Ian (a 70's 3-hit wonder) saying that she never got a statement from her record company that didn't say that she owed them money.
If you watch the RIAA's behavior carefully, you'll see that they're not really about attacking "piracy". They're trying to prevent any kind of delivery mechanism which takes them out of the loop... that connects the artist directly with the listener. "Disintermediation" is the big word for it. I recall several years back, there was a website (I forget it's name) where unsigned bands could post their songs as mp3's and they'd tag them with what known bands they thought they sounded like. So, you could go on there and search for "Dead Milkmen" and you could find all of these undiscovered bands who were influenced by them.
...
... and, of course, the RIAA figured out how to sue them into oblivion, even though they weren't really infringing on copyrighted material.
If it was an Apple style "magsafe" style connector I would get down on my knees and fellate each and every member of the standards committee.
Hear, hear. And, as a bonus, I'd cook them breakfast for a year if the brick actually was designed to have the cords easily wrap around it (like the Dell's did, although not so well lately, even better than the Apple ones). Granted, it isn't something that needs to be in the spec (like voltage, current rating, and connector dimensions), but it's still on my wishlist.
Oh, and one more thing: Some kind of light or indicator on the connector to indicate that the brick is plugged in (like the little dot on MagSafe connectors or the new "blue ring" on the Dells).
If it was an Apple style "magsafe" style connector I would get down on my knees and fellate each and every member of the standards committee.
Hear, hear. And, as a bonus, I'd cook them breakfast for a year if the brick actually was designed to have the cords easily wrap around it (like the Dell's did, although not so well lately, even better than the Apple ones). Granted, it isn't something that needs to be in the spec (like voltage, current rating, and connector dimensions), but it's still on my wishlist.
Close, but not exactly. I'm not saying that YouTube isn't valuable to them (Heck, I know some people who think that YouTube is the best reason to have an internet connection). What I said was: their time isn't valuable to them.
You think that watching youtube for enjoyment has no value, but other people feel differently. They CHOOSE to spend their free time watching youtube over other activities, so it HAS to have some value, or else no one would do it.
What I think it all boils down to, is that you do not like it when people find value in things you don't.
Completely false.
I don't like Yani. Other people do. I don't care. Good for them. I'm glad that there exists a type of music that "does it" for them. Same goes for Hummers, butt-sex, cilantro, and wool.
Whatever floats your boat, go ahead and do it. My point was not that you shouldn't be allowed for that to be the most valuable thing you can find to do. My point was that, if that is the most valuable thing you can find to do, then your time isn't all that valuable.
And I'm not saying that that is a bad thing, either. What I'm saying is that it looks silly when someone complains about not being able to do more with their time when one of the things taking up their time is passive amusement (watching YouTube, or TV, or watching the grass grow).
Now, I think you're being a little disingenuous, here. I know some people who spend a lot of time just surfing YouTube, and all of them would be the first to admit that, among the myriad things they could otherwise be doing, working on a cure for cancer would not be among them. They'll freely admit that they're just "killing time" because they don't really "have anything else to do". So, to try to paint these people as very motivated, task-oriented, people who have a very valuable reason to need to watch YouTube videos while they tend to their other important stuff.... I think you're being a little facetious, there.
Look at the the lives of doctors, lawyers, pilots, skateboarders, hair-stylists, and gas-station attendants and you'll see a clear inverse relationship between how much they are able to bill for their time and the amount of time spent watching YouTube.
Now you're saying a person is better if they make more money. This says a lot.
Actually, I don't think I ever said anybody is "better" than anybody else. Please... read... my... posts... carefully. What we're discussing is how much someone's time is worth to them.
Now, what my example about doctors and lawyers does get at is that the amount people will pay for your talents provides us with a fair barometer of what the rest of society feels is the value of your time. Most of the time, individuals have roughly the same estimation of their time's value as the rest of society does.
There are exceptions. You sometimes come across people who feel that the things they're doing are very important and crucial, while the rest of the society does not. Examples of this would be... people like the guy who covers his house in bottlecaps. Usually, we define these people as a little deluded, if not outright crazy.
You realize that your entire argument goes down the drain with that one exception?
Yes. I realize that my entire argument goes down the drain in situations when:
Then, yes. I realize the my entire argument falls to pieces in those cases.
I wonder what the obsession is with your kind about BASHING the existence of multitasking on phones.
Scour the internet. You will not find a single page, post, or comment from me wherein I bashed the Android for having multitasking. The only time I chime in on arguments like this is to defend the iPhone from those who criticize it for lacking multitasking. So, I'm not bashing the Android. I'm bashing the iPhone bashers. I consider that a big difference.
Breaking story: If you're visiting YouTube, you've already decided that your time isn't valuable.
Your argument is that because you don't consider something to be valuable to you, it can't possibly be valuable to another person.
Close, but not exactly. I'm not saying that YouTube isn't valuable to them (Heck, I know some people who think that YouTube is the best reason to have an internet connection). What I said was: their time isn't valuable to them. Look at the the lives of doctors, lawyers, pilots, skateboarders, hair-stylists, and gas-station attendants and you'll see a clear inverse relationship between how much they are able to bill for their time and the amount of time spent watching YouTube.
So, getting back to how that argument fit in with the larger point: If you're watching YouTube, you've already self-selected yourself to not be doing something productive or profitable during that time. You've elected to piss away a few minutes of your life in the pursuit of idle, passive amusement. That's fine. It's your time and you're allowed to do what you want with it (and I sometimes do the same thing, myself). But then to bellyache about not being able to launch some other app to "get something done"?!?! If you want to get something done, step ONE is to stop watching YouTube (with the exception of those rare instructive YouTube videos that show you how to do something useful).
I posted this as a comment on the multi-tasking article, but I'll restate it here with a little more verbosity.
Ever since I've had an iPhone, I've wondered what the obsession is with multitasking. I couldn't really think of any two *productive* things to do simultaneously on a phone. On a PC (by that I mean a desktop, laptop, netbook), I can appreciate the need to go do some other design work while you render a huge video, or burn a DVD, or OCR a huge document. On a phone, I can't, off-hand, think of much CPU-intensive stuff that can run for an extended time without needing to stop for user input. Because of that, productivity is lost because you're having to stop and switch apps all the time. The meaning of "EMACS" is true. Editors Make All Computers Slow. If the device is waiting for user input, then its speed (or multitasking ability) is moot.
Wanting to Pandora to keep streaming while you tweet is *not* a productivity enhancer; it's merely letting you be a little more streamlined about wasting your time (kinda like texting while you watch TV). Now, I know I'm sounding like an old "all work, no play" curmudgeon about this (and get off my lawn, too!). Don't get me wrong. I agree that being able to keep Pandora going while I do other stuff is a nicety, but I don't think that something like that is such a "must have" thing that it warrants all of the articles and posts we've seen demanding that Apple make significant changes to the OS and its API in order to make it possible. I'd never once make the argument that the iPhone OS has some glaring hole in its functionality because I can't listen to music while I'm sending a text.
Yet, Apple caved and gave it to us anyway. So now, the dude who wrote the article is mad because he can't go do something else while a YouTube video loads. Breaking story: If you're visiting YouTube, you've already decided that your time isn't valuable. I read another article where a guy was mad because he couldn't go switch to something else in the 5-6 seconds while a page loads in Safari (probably while he's driving, too).
My position on full background-execution multitasking remains unchanged from the first time I tried a Windows Mobile phone after being a Palm user for years. With a small device like a phone, it's just too easy for a user to rack up this huge array of crap running in the background without realizing it. And that, potentially, has a greater impact on your productivity since it will gobble up the power in your battery. With a PC, you've got a task bar or a dock to see what you've got running. In addition, there's a one-click way of shutting off the app. Whenever a Windows Mobile user would have me look at their phone to fix it, I'd find that they had a half-dozen things still running: control panel, mail, notepad, contacts... all of these things were things where they had finished their work with those apps, but they either didn't realize that they had to close the apps or they were too lazy to press "Menu->File->Quit". Instead, they just went back to the home screen and started the next app they wanted.
Personally, I think that Apple's compromise is a good one. If your app doesn't have a compelling reason to keep executing (like streaming audio, getting GPS updates for navigation, etc.), then the most your app really needs is just to have its state saved for quick re-launch.
There's no magic too it, they're just big foamy headphones with a microphone and cost way too much.
Actually, there is some magic. Aircraft headsets have two plugs. The plug for the headphones are, I think, a standard 1/4" three-conductor ("TRS") headphone plug. The mic on the other hand, is a different story. Some have a three-conductor plug, and others have a four-conductor (the extra conductor being for triggering the "transmit" mode on the radio). In addition, some of the mics require a DC bias voltage (like "phantom power" in music recording) to make the mic work. And the connector is a funky size... a little smaller than 1/4"... like 3/16" or something. Lastly, aircraft headsets are pretty expensive.
Something aircraft headsets do have going for them is that they are great at cutting down noise, since they're designed for an environment which is constantly noisy. However, keep in mind that the aircraft radios do the mic squelching at the radio. So, without a squelch feature, your aircraft-to-phone conversion might end up constantly transmitting the environment noise to the person on the other end of your call.
And what will you do when some of these localities start bringing back segregation, or other policies abhorrent to the nation as a whole?
I will move to a state that better fits my needs and beliefs. Or just go down the street and spend my money elsewhere.
Hey, sometimes, you don't even need to move. For example, when Nazi Germany was rounding up the jews. The Americans didn't need to move anywhere. They could just keep at their daily routine and periodically stop and think "Gosh, I sure have disdain for those mean Germans! I think I'll stop buying imported bratwurst.". On the other hand, some others could stand up and make the case that we must do something about it... something far less-passive than "voting with our feet/wallets"... that we must step in and interrupt inhumanity, even when it brings personal risk to ourselves.
Imagine it on a much smaller scale. Imagine that you're at a cocktail party and someone you know starts slapping his wife around. Do you just say to yourself "Wow.. sucks to be her. I think I'll protest his actions by not shopping at his store anymore" or do you step in and tell the guy that, if he's going to try to assault a fellow human, he's going to have to go through you first? Oh, wait... I guess we already know what you'd do.
For some folks, they just can't stand idly by while others are mistreated. They regard it as a prerequisite for calling ourselves "civilized".