Take away all of the paper and all of the records instantly and I'd guess that 99.9999% of the population would be within spitting distance of each other, wealth-wise. Ironically, farmers would probably be the best off, if they have equipment for production and land.
At first. Then the desperate masses get organized by charismatic thugs who still know how to barter, manipulate people and climb to the top and force the farmers into servitude, and then you have a feudal system again, just without the divine right of kings (for the first few generations, anyway).
Worst case, the idiot masses think they know better than the farmers (or think the farmers are screwing them over), drive them off or kill them, break or destroy the equipment, and just plain make things worse for themselves and everyone else. Think Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
I certainly have the muscle memory to push from D to N. When I was still driving and learning on an automatic, my dad would routinely come off the long highway exit ramp (half a kilometer long), and knowing the upcoming intersection's light cycle, push into N if he knew he'd have to stop. I learned to do the same.
Technically I don't think this is legal; a car underway is supposed to have engine linked to wheels at all times in case sudden acceleration is needed.
Do any of your IT people in the US have sysadmin access to the Canadian data center? Are any Canadian operators directly answerable to your company's US management or executive staff?
If so, I'm not sure simply physically having DCs in Canada or the UK is sufficient protection against attacks by the US government.
This is why I like(d) our elections in Canada--no set dates, so instead of constantly campaigning representatives were doing their damn jobs. Once an election was called, it was done and over with in about 5 weeks.
That changed in the last few years, for the country and several provinces too. And we're already seeing the consequences of always-on campaigning, as the Conservative party in power are already airing sleazy attack ads--3 years before the next election.
What is the legal precedent for money being speech?
That decision also had the double whammy of not only declaring money as speech, but that political contributions couldn't be limited by law nor made public because making that could result in retribution against the contributors.
That was an immense twist of illogic.
The ONLY part of a democratic process that should be anonymous is the vote itself, because there everyone, from the poorest to the richest, hold the exact same power over their representatives. Contributions, especially large amounts by non-persons with lots of aggregate cash (businesses, churches, unions, etc) should not be allowed to be anonymous because it massively skews the democratic process in favour of those with more money.
Free speech is not the same as anonymous speech. Free speech specifically prevents *government* and its agents from acting against someone for speaking about something, but does not protect against consequences (including peaceful retaliation) by private citizens.
Take the recent example of Rush Limbaugh, whining about how his free speech rights were being trampled by leftist activists after his misogynist comments. Did government step in to punish him? No--some did call for action by the FCC, but I'm glad they didn't do anything (AFAIK). What the people did was flood Limbaugh's sponsors demanding they pull their ads or they'd be boycotted, and as private businesses (i.e. not government-owned) that's exactly what happened. Guess what Rush, you're a hypocrite for trying to invoke the sacred cow when other private citizens exercise *their* 1st amendment rights against you.
I'd point out that US lawmakers and courts have had no problem trampling all over the 1st Amendment and other parts of the constitution the last decade when it comes to private citizens (free speech zones, for example), but the obvious rebuttal is that two wrongs don't make a right.
While it's certainly true that warnings have been issued in the past, your examples are rather dated--your newest example is almost 40 years old.
And while the IRA continued their campaign until the late 90s, I'd say that the days of calling in a threat ahead of time has gone the same way as passively allowing hijackers to take over planes, or giving suspicious actions on planes a pass. There may be a few examples of warnings before an actual attack in the last decade, just as there's been a couple successful hijackings since 9/11 (and none on any flights to, from, or near US airspace), but they are far outnumbered by the number of bombings without prior warning, with claims of responsibility afterward.
And I still want an *actual* keyboard, not the smudgy hot mess in the hands of most iPhone (and Lumia 900) users.
Feh.
I can understand if you desire a physical keyboard because you want physical keys, but to dismiss touchscreens because they're smudgy is silly.
On a touchscreen you can easily wipe the smudge away. Chances are it's done frequently, even if there's an oleo-phobic coating, because smudge obviously interferes with screen clarity. Clean it easily with antiseptic wipes if you want.
With a physical keyboard? You have no idea what's on it, or when it was last cleaned. You'll only think it's "icky" if it's obviously oily. Out of sight, out of mind. And cleaning can't be as thorough--instead of clearing everything off a single flat surface, germs will likely remain on the sides of the keys.
Wrong. The first iPod had 1.8" drives. They were new enough at the time that the iPod cost the same as the HDD alone ($400; obviously Apple got volume discounts).
Even in the Slashdot summary at the time, snarky comment included, mentioned the iPod's dimensions as 2.4" wide. Tell me how you're supposed to fit a 2.5" HDD into that.
Someone helpfully compared it against the nearest competitors by physical size. The closest HDD-based players were 2.5", and were roughly 1.5x or 2x the weight. The others (some smaller than iPod) were flash-based drives maxing out at 128MB.
Making a product accessible to a bigger market *is* innovation. This sometimes includes reducing the number of features, but making those that make the cut very easy to use.
Innovation isn't limited to having the latest technology, or stuffing in all possible technologies. If the target audience (consumers, as opposed to techies) doesn't want to use half the features because accessing them is too bothersome, it has failed the usability test.
Car analogy: Top Gear has mocked some some cars for packing in tons of extra features, but accessed through terrible on-screen or physical interfaces that even they, professional drivers, couldn't figure out in a timely manner. A regular driver (if they were foolish enough to buy based on included features) will never actually bother using them.
How do you figure the peasant son never saw the coast? He was born in America, who spent time in Paris, and maybe Italy where he met his travelling friend, before making his way to Southampton. You didn't hop on an airplane on those days, US-Europe and continental Europe-UK was by ship.
The rest of your points stand, but a key part of your "main beef" doesn't.
You left out Titanic buffs in general, which I was years before the 1997 movie came out.
Sure, its attention to historical facts and details is secondary to the melodramatic love story, but they did an incredible technical job showing the ship going down. The ship is as much a character as the others, and watching it slowly die in the most realistic depiction to date was technically fascinating while emotionally gut-wrenching, in much the same way many Star Trek fans were devastated when the original Enterprise was destroyed in The Search for Spock.
Even this site, which claims to generate unlock codes for most brand phones, if you try generating a code for an iPhone it takes you to dedicated iPhone unlock page, the info button for the "Unlock type" section says 'Your iPhone's IMEI will be registered as "Unlocked" in Apple's database'. Their FAQ on the unlock says it's a "Remote unlock via cable and software". Nowhere does it mention entering an unlock code.
Perhaps it's changed since the 3G days, either way they never gave me (and presumably not cmdrbuzz) any code to enter into the keypad.
It seems you're right, a restore wasn't actually needed. The unlock guy at my old carrier just told me to do that.
OTOH, we were going to update to the latest iOS anyway, and the friend who bought the phone isn't a techy, so just as well we did it while I was still there.
All other brand phones are apparently easily unlockable, but officially unlocking an iPhone isn't done with a code.
It requires a full firmware restore, during which Apple servers are contacted, and confirms that the carrier has updated their records with Apple that your IMEI is now unlocked. If all went well, the Apple server sends the unlock commands to the phone, and when it's done iTunes shows a message confirming you're unlocked.
I went through this about 12 hours ago when unlocking my old iPhone 3GS. Other than taking a godawful long time, it was pretty seamless--all the previous settings, apps and music were restored automatically.
Screw the sports channels and their "expensive" content. Unlike scripted shows, their content (games, etc) will happen with or without them. Their actual operational expenses should be pretty low, no more than a regular news channel with a couple of broadcast studios, travel and accommodation for reporters and crew, broadcast equipment, etc. The bulk of their budget are the licensing fees that the sports leagues (NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, etc) are charging.
Example: ESPN pays $2 BILLION a year just for NFL media rights. That is twice as much as the entire annual budget for the CBC (Canada's public broadcaster on radio, TV and internet), which includes license fees to broadcast NHL games as well as producing original (lower-budget of course) Canadian programming.
Dedicated sports channels should not be subsidized by any other channel, period. The tens of millions of sports fans far outnumber the audience for specialty channels like Discovery, Space, History, those that produce original scripted dramas, etc. If anything, sports packages should be subsidizing *them*.
If tens of millions of dedicated sports fans can't sustain a sports channel on its own, then the leagues are charging too much. If the leagues aren't willing to charge reasonable license fees that their viewers are willing to pay for, they get dropped and stop getting coverage by the sports channels. Actually, sports fans would probably catch wind of this long before that happens, and demand the league and the sports channels come to a compromise.
A lot of those other discussion systems are crap. Poor threading, infinite up/down votes, pre-moderation (think Apple app store: you can spend lots of time writing a great comment, but it doesn't mean it'll get posted), etc. Worse, articles can be updated as the story changes, after comments have already been made, so the initial comments can be wildly off base.
The level of intelligence in commenters on those is typically far lower too. Trolls from both sides of the political spectrum can derail a perfectly good discussion.
The supreme court already ruled that corporations are people, and their millions in political bribery and corruption... Sorry, "anonymous political contributions" are free speech/expression that cannot be limited by law.
Pornography is far closer to freedom of speech and expression than that moronic court decision, and politicians have no moral ground to ban porn after they've whored themselves out to corporations.
If they're coming at you with a knife, and you don't have a knife but do have a gun, surely this is a reasonable self defence measure. You could try to turn around and outrun, but he can throw the knife into your back.
Heck, police use this line all the time--they gun down a suspect because he was brandishing or coming at them with a knife or even blunt instrument.
Citation please. Those are numbers pulled out of various nether regions. Yes, people can do much for themselves to decrease / delay morbidity (not mortality so much). And yes, we should encourage and teach people to watch their weight, not smoke, drink alcohol in vast moderation, do yoga, clean their rooms and brush their teeth twice daily (floss once) but health care still is going to cost quite a bit of money - maybe more as the number of frail elderly that need increasing care climbs dramatically.
Remember, one entertaining factoid in all of this - with all the 'bad things' we're doing (pollution / plastics / obesity / diabetes / whatever disease is popular this month) the average longevity of the population is slowly and steadily INCREASING. Now most of us think that's a good thing. Not many want to go back to the pre medical days of a 35 year average longevity, but it does have it's consequences....
The average life expectancy across the entire US is at an all-time high, yes, but in hundreds of mostly southern counties, it has fallen. In 702 of the 3100+ US counties (about 22%), women's life expectancy "fell significantly" between 2000 and 2007.
Are judges elected in the US, or just higher positions like attorney generals?
There's been some griping in Canada over recent "too soft on crime" rulings, and some idiots are saying judges should be elected. This is one of the most monumentally stupid things a democracy can do, as it's effectively mob justice. Judges are supposed to interpret the law, not waste time every X years justifying their decisions to a legally-ignorant electorate too easily swayed by emotions.
And honestly, if there is a defect from the manufacturer, they could give you a lifetime warranty and it wont make a difference, it will be found in the first 30 days 99% of the time, after that, it probably isn't a manufacturer defect. These aren't cars. There are no 'moving parts' outside of a few fans and a hard drive.
Several generations of white Macbooks released in 2006-2007 were prone to cracks in the casing, definitely a design/manufacturing defect. Apple would attempt repairs even outside the standard 1-year (in the US) warranty. It was even possible, after several repair attempts, that they replace it with the latest-generation Macbook.
I myself got a free Macbook battery replacement 4 years after purchase. Granted it was bulging (a rarer but also-known defect) and they probably exchanged it free for safety/liability reasons.
Acts like these are partly why my next laptop will still be from Apple.
Perhaps I hold a less than optimistic view of the American public, but I doubt readers of the Economist are "average Americans." The Economist is left leaning by U.S. standards and has much higher intellectual standards that most media consumed by the "average American."
That is a sad commentary on how far right America has slid in the last 20 years.
The Economist is regarded as fairly right leaning in Canada, having blasted the previous Liberal prime minister and endorsing the current Conservative one (Harper) for years.
It was big news here when the same publication slammed Harper for shutting down Parliament in 2010 rather than than let an opposition coalition take power.
Slashdot Mirror
Take away all of the paper and all of the records instantly and I'd guess that 99.9999% of the population would be within spitting distance of each other, wealth-wise. Ironically, farmers would probably be the best off, if they have equipment for production and land.
At first. Then the desperate masses get organized by charismatic thugs who still know how to barter, manipulate people and climb to the top and force the farmers into servitude, and then you have a feudal system again, just without the divine right of kings (for the first few generations, anyway).
Worst case, the idiot masses think they know better than the farmers (or think the farmers are screwing them over), drive them off or kill them, break or destroy the equipment, and just plain make things worse for themselves and everyone else. Think Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
I certainly have the muscle memory to push from D to N. When I was still driving and learning on an automatic, my dad would routinely come off the long highway exit ramp (half a kilometer long), and knowing the upcoming intersection's light cycle, push into N if he knew he'd have to stop. I learned to do the same.
Technically I don't think this is legal; a car underway is supposed to have engine linked to wheels at all times in case sudden acceleration is needed.
Unless its a manual transmission. No such thing as "park" position, and on my car at least I can switch it off in any gear at any time.
Do any of your IT people in the US have sysadmin access to the Canadian data center? Are any Canadian operators directly answerable to your company's US management or executive staff?
If so, I'm not sure simply physically having DCs in Canada or the UK is sufficient protection against attacks by the US government.
We've already seem the US wildly overstepping its bounds by "[shutting] down online-gambling site Bodog.com, and indicted its three top execs, despite their non-U.S. citizenships, residence outside the U.S. and the fact that the company is based in Vancouver, has no physical presence in the U.S. and its gambling business is legal in the country in which the company operates". Their justification was that it had a .com registration, and they claim all sites using .com and .org are subject to US jurisdiction.
This is why I like(d) our elections in Canada--no set dates, so instead of constantly campaigning representatives were doing their damn jobs. Once an election was called, it was done and over with in about 5 weeks.
That changed in the last few years, for the country and several provinces too. And we're already seeing the consequences of always-on campaigning, as the Conservative party in power are already airing sleazy attack ads--3 years before the next election.
What is the legal precedent for money being speech?
That decision also had the double whammy of not only declaring money as speech, but that political contributions couldn't be limited by law nor made public because making that could result in retribution against the contributors.
That was an immense twist of illogic.
The ONLY part of a democratic process that should be anonymous is the vote itself, because there everyone, from the poorest to the richest, hold the exact same power over their representatives. Contributions, especially large amounts by non-persons with lots of aggregate cash (businesses, churches, unions, etc) should not be allowed to be anonymous because it massively skews the democratic process in favour of those with more money.
Free speech is not the same as anonymous speech. Free speech specifically prevents *government* and its agents from acting against someone for speaking about something, but does not protect against consequences (including peaceful retaliation) by private citizens.
Take the recent example of Rush Limbaugh, whining about how his free speech rights were being trampled by leftist activists after his misogynist comments. Did government step in to punish him? No--some did call for action by the FCC, but I'm glad they didn't do anything (AFAIK). What the people did was flood Limbaugh's sponsors demanding they pull their ads or they'd be boycotted, and as private businesses (i.e. not government-owned) that's exactly what happened. Guess what Rush, you're a hypocrite for trying to invoke the sacred cow when other private citizens exercise *their* 1st amendment rights against you.
I'd point out that US lawmakers and courts have had no problem trampling all over the 1st Amendment and other parts of the constitution the last decade when it comes to private citizens (free speech zones, for example), but the obvious rebuttal is that two wrongs don't make a right.
While it's certainly true that warnings have been issued in the past, your examples are rather dated--your newest example is almost 40 years old.
And while the IRA continued their campaign until the late 90s, I'd say that the days of calling in a threat ahead of time has gone the same way as passively allowing hijackers to take over planes, or giving suspicious actions on planes a pass. There may be a few examples of warnings before an actual attack in the last decade, just as there's been a couple successful hijackings since 9/11 (and none on any flights to, from, or near US airspace), but they are far outnumbered by the number of bombings without prior warning, with claims of responsibility afterward.
And I still want an *actual* keyboard, not the smudgy hot mess in the hands of most iPhone (and Lumia 900) users.
Feh.
I can understand if you desire a physical keyboard because you want physical keys, but to dismiss touchscreens because they're smudgy is silly.
On a touchscreen you can easily wipe the smudge away. Chances are it's done frequently, even if there's an oleo-phobic coating, because smudge obviously interferes with screen clarity. Clean it easily with antiseptic wipes if you want.
With a physical keyboard? You have no idea what's on it, or when it was last cleaned. You'll only think it's "icky" if it's obviously oily. Out of sight, out of mind. And cleaning can't be as thorough--instead of clearing everything off a single flat surface, germs will likely remain on the sides of the keys.
Wrong. The first iPod had 1.8" drives. They were new enough at the time that the iPod cost the same as the HDD alone ($400; obviously Apple got volume discounts).
Even in the Slashdot summary at the time, snarky comment included, mentioned the iPod's dimensions as 2.4" wide. Tell me how you're supposed to fit a 2.5" HDD into that.
Someone helpfully compared it against the nearest competitors by physical size. The closest HDD-based players were 2.5", and were roughly 1.5x or 2x the weight. The others (some smaller than iPod) were flash-based drives maxing out at 128MB.
Making a product accessible to a bigger market *is* innovation. This sometimes includes reducing the number of features, but making those that make the cut very easy to use.
Innovation isn't limited to having the latest technology, or stuffing in all possible technologies. If the target audience (consumers, as opposed to techies) doesn't want to use half the features because accessing them is too bothersome, it has failed the usability test.
Car analogy: Top Gear has mocked some some cars for packing in tons of extra features, but accessed through terrible on-screen or physical interfaces that even they, professional drivers, couldn't figure out in a timely manner. A regular driver (if they were foolish enough to buy based on included features) will never actually bother using them.
I didn't contest that, I contested your recollection that he'd never been on a ship or even seen the coast before boarding Titanic.
How do you figure the peasant son never saw the coast? He was born in America, who spent time in Paris, and maybe Italy where he met his travelling friend, before making his way to Southampton. You didn't hop on an airplane on those days, US-Europe and continental Europe-UK was by ship.
The rest of your points stand, but a key part of your "main beef" doesn't.
You left out Titanic buffs in general, which I was years before the 1997 movie came out.
Sure, its attention to historical facts and details is secondary to the melodramatic love story, but they did an incredible technical job showing the ship going down. The ship is as much a character as the others, and watching it slowly die in the most realistic depiction to date was technically fascinating while emotionally gut-wrenching, in much the same way many Star Trek fans were devastated when the original Enterprise was destroyed in The Search for Spock.
It's not "really wrong".
Even this site, which claims to generate unlock codes for most brand phones, if you try generating a code for an iPhone it takes you to dedicated iPhone unlock page, the info button for the "Unlock type" section says 'Your iPhone's IMEI will be registered as "Unlocked" in Apple's database'. Their FAQ on the unlock says it's a "Remote unlock via cable and software". Nowhere does it mention entering an unlock code.
Perhaps it's changed since the 3G days, either way they never gave me (and presumably not cmdrbuzz) any code to enter into the keypad.
It seems you're right, a restore wasn't actually needed. The unlock guy at my old carrier just told me to do that.
OTOH, we were going to update to the latest iOS anyway, and the friend who bought the phone isn't a techy, so just as well we did it while I was still there.
All other brand phones are apparently easily unlockable, but officially unlocking an iPhone isn't done with a code.
It requires a full firmware restore, during which Apple servers are contacted, and confirms that the carrier has updated their records with Apple that your IMEI is now unlocked. If all went well, the Apple server sends the unlock commands to the phone, and when it's done iTunes shows a message confirming you're unlocked.
I went through this about 12 hours ago when unlocking my old iPhone 3GS. Other than taking a godawful long time, it was pretty seamless--all the previous settings, apps and music were restored automatically.
Screw the sports channels and their "expensive" content. Unlike scripted shows, their content (games, etc) will happen with or without them. Their actual operational expenses should be pretty low, no more than a regular news channel with a couple of broadcast studios, travel and accommodation for reporters and crew, broadcast equipment, etc. The bulk of their budget are the licensing fees that the sports leagues (NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, etc) are charging.
Example: ESPN pays $2 BILLION a year just for NFL media rights. That is twice as much as the entire annual budget for the CBC (Canada's public broadcaster on radio, TV and internet), which includes license fees to broadcast NHL games as well as producing original (lower-budget of course) Canadian programming.
Dedicated sports channels should not be subsidized by any other channel, period. The tens of millions of sports fans far outnumber the audience for specialty channels like Discovery, Space, History, those that produce original scripted dramas, etc. If anything, sports packages should be subsidizing *them*.
If tens of millions of dedicated sports fans can't sustain a sports channel on its own, then the leagues are charging too much. If the leagues aren't willing to charge reasonable license fees that their viewers are willing to pay for, they get dropped and stop getting coverage by the sports channels. Actually, sports fans would probably catch wind of this long before that happens, and demand the league and the sports channels come to a compromise.
A lot of those other discussion systems are crap. Poor threading, infinite up/down votes, pre-moderation (think Apple app store: you can spend lots of time writing a great comment, but it doesn't mean it'll get posted), etc. Worse, articles can be updated as the story changes, after comments have already been made, so the initial comments can be wildly off base.
The level of intelligence in commenters on those is typically far lower too. Trolls from both sides of the political spectrum can derail a perfectly good discussion.
The supreme court already ruled that corporations are people, and their millions in political bribery and corruption... Sorry, "anonymous political contributions" are free speech/expression that cannot be limited by law.
Pornography is far closer to freedom of speech and expression than that moronic court decision, and politicians have no moral ground to ban porn after they've whored themselves out to corporations.
If they're coming at you with a knife, and you don't have a knife but do have a gun, surely this is a reasonable self defence measure. You could try to turn around and outrun, but he can throw the knife into your back.
Heck, police use this line all the time--they gun down a suspect because he was brandishing or coming at them with a knife or even blunt instrument.
Citation please. Those are numbers pulled out of various nether regions. Yes, people can do much for themselves to decrease / delay morbidity (not mortality so much). And yes, we should encourage and teach people to watch their weight, not smoke, drink alcohol in vast moderation, do yoga, clean their rooms and brush their teeth twice daily (floss once) but health care still is going to cost quite a bit of money - maybe more as the number of frail elderly that need increasing care climbs dramatically.
Remember, one entertaining factoid in all of this - with all the 'bad things' we're doing (pollution / plastics / obesity / diabetes / whatever disease is popular this month) the average longevity of the population is slowly and steadily INCREASING. Now most of us think that's a good thing. Not many want to go back to the pre medical days of a 35 year average longevity, but it does have it's consequences....
The average life expectancy across the entire US is at an all-time high, yes, but in hundreds of mostly southern counties, it has fallen. In 702 of the 3100+ US counties (about 22%), women's life expectancy "fell significantly" between 2000 and 2007.
Also, "more than 80% of counties fell in standing against the average of the 10 nations with the best life expectancies in the world". Granted, the researchers attribute this to "obesity, tobacco use, and other preventable risk factors" instead of any issues providing health care.
Are judges elected in the US, or just higher positions like attorney generals?
There's been some griping in Canada over recent "too soft on crime" rulings, and some idiots are saying judges should be elected. This is one of the most monumentally stupid things a democracy can do, as it's effectively mob justice. Judges are supposed to interpret the law, not waste time every X years justifying their decisions to a legally-ignorant electorate too easily swayed by emotions.
And honestly, if there is a defect from the manufacturer, they could give you a lifetime warranty and it wont make a difference, it will be found in the first 30 days 99% of the time, after that, it probably isn't a manufacturer defect. These aren't cars. There are no 'moving parts' outside of a few fans and a hard drive.
Several generations of white Macbooks released in 2006-2007 were prone to cracks in the casing, definitely a design/manufacturing defect. Apple would attempt repairs even outside the standard 1-year (in the US) warranty. It was even possible, after several repair attempts, that they replace it with the latest-generation Macbook.
I myself got a free Macbook battery replacement 4 years after purchase. Granted it was bulging (a rarer but also-known defect) and they probably exchanged it free for safety/liability reasons.
Acts like these are partly why my next laptop will still be from Apple.
For a country that prides itself on so many advances, America is amazingly stuck in the past in some things.
Like dollar bills (I know there's $1 coins, they never seem to be used by actual people), and the Imperial measurement system.
Perhaps I hold a less than optimistic view of the American public, but I doubt readers of the Economist are "average Americans." The Economist is left leaning by U.S. standards and has much higher intellectual standards that most media consumed by the "average American."
That is a sad commentary on how far right America has slid in the last 20 years.
The Economist is regarded as fairly right leaning in Canada, having blasted the previous Liberal prime minister and endorsing the current Conservative one (Harper) for years.
It was big news here when the same publication slammed Harper for shutting down Parliament in 2010 rather than than let an opposition coalition take power.