The most obvious and probably most common usage is over-the-air broadcasts. Combined with the patent expiration of AC3 last year, this probably means sets with built-in tuners can be produced without any licensing fees... estimates were as high as $50 per set for these fees.
No, I don't think I am. I'll restate your point just to make it clear: If a road is funded with tolls (or even a gas tax), the drivers pay the costs directly. It's a flat tax or user fee. Paying from the general fund (in many states a progressive tax) will spread the burden to the entire population and subsidize the drivers. Poor drivers will pay a lot less in absolute dollars than rich drivers. Do I have it right?
Private ownership and toll roads means a poor worker passing that road twice daily on his commute to work pays the same as the rich guy passing that road just as often
No, private ownership has nothing to do with it. You are lumping tolls and private ownership together. You could also fund the private road company by counting cars and giving them a cut of the general fund. That's simply a policy decision: how do you want the incentives to work for the road company?
In other words, if the government has total regulatory authority over the road, it is an implementation detail whether the road itself is privately or publicly owned. Frankly, it's a waste of time to be selling off roads when government debt is super cheap. If bonds were expensive, then it might make more sense to raise revenue in a crunch from road sales.
Gasoline taxes and tolls barely pay for a third of state and local road spending; today,
That's a matter of policy, not something fundamental to gasoline taxes. Delaware flips that ratio to 2/3, for instance. If MD wanted to fund a private road with gasoline taxes, they could do so. If they want to do it with EZ-Pass and license plate readers like they do on the Intercounty Connector (MD-200), they can do that too. Hell, if they want to tax tacos and fund the road with taco revenue, they can do that. That's my point - it's a policy decision and the ownership of the road is more or less independent of that.
I don't gather your meaning, or maybe you are misinterpreting my argument. I don't really care whether it is toll booths or tax disbursements based on road usage. Gas tax collection is almost certainly more efficient, but probably less fair. On the other hand, if toll collection is automated and standardized (EZ-Pass), then you are reusing existing infrastructure and the efficiency is moot.
The point I was trying to make is that the governing structure/ownership of a road is an implementation detail - far smaller than all the other things. The government still has absolute control over the entity, and so both opponents and proponents of plans like these are mostly just yelling to be heard. The only advantage that squares well with me is that the government will get a one-time cash payment which they can then put towards things like their unfunded pensions. The biggest disadvantage is the loss of the asset, which of course can be undone in the future through legislation.
You are still paying, even without tolls. Sure, the private company could set up toll booths, but they could also count cars and then get a cut of the gas tax. Like I said, implementation detail.
Correct - I don't think that counted as a "landing", or even an attempting landing... the intent was always to have it descend into the ocean. It sounds like this mission was their first attempt to actually land using the three-engine burn.
over the trivial viewership generated by covering municipal government and school board meetings.
There is a trivial compromise, which would be a win-win for everyone:
Stream such events on demand,.
Comcast is right - it's a waste of resources to block out channels for these events with such low viewership. Vermont is right - expanding access to these meetings is in the public interest. It's not 1970 - let people stream the events. This will be more convenient for people, won't waste Comcast's bandwidth, and the only tradeoff is some extra hard drive space being used up.
You can go far enough left to approach fascism, too. Beware wing-nuts on both sides. Anyone probing you, shaming you, or vetting you for ideological purity is not someone you want to ally yourself with.
The difference between a government-run road and a corporate-run road (where the corporation is heavily regulated, gets its charter from the government, is granted a monopoly by the government, tolls are approved by regulatory commission, etc)... it's basically an implementation detail. Depending on the state, they'll probably even force the corporation to use prevailing wage to keep the unions happy. The NJ Turnpike would likely be indistinguishable as an authority vs. a corporation. I don't think there is any money to be saved here - roads are inherently monopolistic and not really subject to free market forces.
One thing that I don't see mentioned is that it would appear this was the first time they attempted to actually land using a multi-engine descent. All of the prior landings (not counting the one deliberately ditched at sea) used a single engine to stick the landing. They are eager to get multi-engine descent working because it will allow them to land boosters with less fuel.
Yeah, I read it. You, for reasons that I don't understand, omitted the important parts:
Yep — in the place where the headphone jack used to be, there's a piece of molded plastic. "No fancy electronics here, just some well-designed acoustics and molded plastic," iFixit writes.
and
Apple told The Verge that the plastic is a "barometric vent" — the new iPhone is water-resistant, which messed with the device's built-in barometer.
So the article is not self-consistent. It doesn't really matter what it is, it appears to be functional both from iFixit's description and Apple's.
Your source and Solandri's source differ on the purpose of the plastic, but it doesn't change my argument. Whatever it is, it serves a purpose and is not simply a filler piece of plastic as Solandri's comment implied.
How many people have you heard having to fix their phone jack before?
I've had two fail recently - one on an Amazon Fire tablet and one on a Samsung phone. Over my life, I've lost innumerable walkmen and headphones to that shitty connection design. I just soldered the connector back on my Sennheisers.
I have also tried both Google and Apple's bluetooth ear-buds and I am not impressed.
This is a completely legitimate complaint. I don't have golden ears and so I'm fine with even cheap bluetooth adaptors - but audiophiles seem to be universally negative about them. Now the circuitry needs to be duplicated in every device. On the plus side, if manufacturers could get their act together, there is a market catering to audiophiles for very expensive dongles that should in principle exceed anything that could be stuffed into a phone. My phone still has a headphone jack, and so I end up using both. Typically the bluetooth when doing something active (and so when audio quality is not that important) and wired when I'm sitting at my desk working.
I am not going to replace my earphone costing almost of as much as a new cell phone just because the vendor want to be trendy and copy from Apple, period!
I have bluetooth adaptors that standard headphones can plug into. And of course Apple sells their dongle. I don't spend $600 on phones, so this is all academic for me.
Samsung - has come up with a waterproof phone that also has a decent battery while retaining the headphones jack
Yes, they have. And we have no idea what cost or engineering tradeoffs they made to get there.
It's what good companies do for their customers so their customers keep buying their products.
Isn't that just a restatement of what I said in my last sentence? I think we agree.
it's not REALLY that hard to do compared
I have no way to judge that, since I work on fairly big machines where miniaturization is not much of an issue. I suspect you aren't qualified to make that statement, either.
The fact that they were able to waterproof the phone does not mean that they were able to do so without any cost or engineering tradeoffs.
You absolutely need to put a high-quality amp in the dongle or bluetooth module - but it saves you from needing to put it in the phone, saving cost and potentially space. In principle, only people with "golden ears" would need to buy the nice amp. Or they could buy one with a tube in it or some other such nonsense. In practice, it sounds like audiophiles shun both bluetooth and the wired adapters.
I'm not familiar enough to say, and I'm not willing to dig that deep right now. The presence of features does not tell the story of engineering compromises and tradeoffs that needed to be made, so it wouldn't be a worthwhile effort anyway. You'd really need to talk to the engineers at both Apple and Samsung to hear the different challenges that they encountered, and how they solved them.
The fact that they were able to produce a phone with a water resistant headphone jack says nothing about the cost or other engineering tradeoffs they had to make.
I can't answer that part - I spend $200 on a phone, max. And only under duress. I use both bluetooth and wired headphones, depending on the situation. What Apple and Samsung do with $600 phones hasn't trickled down to riff raff like me yet.
Explain why it is harder to waterproof, if anything it should be easier than any USB type plug.
Not my field, but you can take a SWAG and just look at the size of the connector. Just Google for waterproof headphone connector and waterproof USB-C connector and look a the huge difference in size of the surface mount stuff.
It hasn't changed since the late 1800's
I can't believe you are listing that as an advantage. Almost without exception, the failure mode of my headphones has been that plug and the failure mode of my portable audio equipment... well, it's been drops, actually... but I've also had jacks fail. Most recently on a Samsung phone and a Amazon Kindle tablet. I've never had a USB jack fail, though I've certainly lost cable connections - that's a design feature, actually. It certainly is easier to solder on a new audio jack, though. I've never bother to try to fix a USB plug.
And the speakers are driven by magical unicorns?
Audiophiles get all angsty over built-in phone speakers now? No, the built-in speakers can have a very shitty amp.
The length of the jack reduces the leverage on the internal components.
Whether it reduces leverage or not, the plug itself is very strong with a 1/8" audio connection. It's hard to make the jack stronger than the plug. With USB-C, the plug is supposed to be the wear part, the weakest link.
they filled the space with a piece of molded plastic
That's incredibly misleading. Sure, it's a piece of molded plastic. What you fail to mention is that it is a functional piece of molded plastic - part of the speaker.
The same engineering reasons that drove their competitors to do it - headphones need a deep hole with lots of mechanical support because of simple leverage. It's harder to waterproof and it takes up more space that could be dedicated to battery or another function. The jack is hard to design such that the point of failure is guaranteed to be the plug and not the socket. It requires a high-quality built-in amp. But yeah, if the market segment for people who want a jack is high enough, it's a good business move.
Slashdot Mirror
The most obvious and probably most common usage is over-the-air broadcasts. Combined with the patent expiration of AC3 last year, this probably means sets with built-in tuners can be produced without any licensing fees... estimates were as high as $50 per set for these fees.
You're still missing the point:
No, I don't think I am. I'll restate your point just to make it clear: If a road is funded with tolls (or even a gas tax), the drivers pay the costs directly. It's a flat tax or user fee. Paying from the general fund (in many states a progressive tax) will spread the burden to the entire population and subsidize the drivers. Poor drivers will pay a lot less in absolute dollars than rich drivers. Do I have it right?
Private ownership and toll roads means a poor worker passing that road twice daily on his commute to work pays the same as the rich guy passing that road just as often
No, private ownership has nothing to do with it. You are lumping tolls and private ownership together. You could also fund the private road company by counting cars and giving them a cut of the general fund. That's simply a policy decision: how do you want the incentives to work for the road company?
In other words, if the government has total regulatory authority over the road, it is an implementation detail whether the road itself is privately or publicly owned. Frankly, it's a waste of time to be selling off roads when government debt is super cheap. If bonds were expensive, then it might make more sense to raise revenue in a crunch from road sales.
Gasoline taxes and tolls barely pay for a third of state and local road spending; today,
That's a matter of policy, not something fundamental to gasoline taxes. Delaware flips that ratio to 2/3, for instance. If MD wanted to fund a private road with gasoline taxes, they could do so. If they want to do it with EZ-Pass and license plate readers like they do on the Intercounty Connector (MD-200), they can do that too. Hell, if they want to tax tacos and fund the road with taco revenue, they can do that. That's my point - it's a policy decision and the ownership of the road is more or less independent of that.
I don't gather your meaning, or maybe you are misinterpreting my argument. I don't really care whether it is toll booths or tax disbursements based on road usage. Gas tax collection is almost certainly more efficient, but probably less fair. On the other hand, if toll collection is automated and standardized (EZ-Pass), then you are reusing existing infrastructure and the efficiency is moot.
The point I was trying to make is that the governing structure/ownership of a road is an implementation detail - far smaller than all the other things. The government still has absolute control over the entity, and so both opponents and proponents of plans like these are mostly just yelling to be heard. The only advantage that squares well with me is that the government will get a one-time cash payment which they can then put towards things like their unfunded pensions. The biggest disadvantage is the loss of the asset, which of course can be undone in the future through legislation.
You are still paying, even without tolls. Sure, the private company could set up toll booths, but they could also count cars and then get a cut of the gas tax. Like I said, implementation detail.
By the way, I like that road.
Correct - I don't think that counted as a "landing", or even an attempting landing... the intent was always to have it descend into the ocean. It sounds like this mission was their first attempt to actually land using the three-engine burn.
over the trivial viewership generated by covering municipal government and school board meetings.
There is a trivial compromise, which would be a win-win for everyone:
Stream such events on demand,.
Comcast is right - it's a waste of resources to block out channels for these events with such low viewership. Vermont is right - expanding access to these meetings is in the public interest. It's not 1970 - let people stream the events. This will be more convenient for people, won't waste Comcast's bandwidth, and the only tradeoff is some extra hard drive space being used up.
You can go far enough left to approach fascism, too. Beware wing-nuts on both sides. Anyone probing you, shaming you, or vetting you for ideological purity is not someone you want to ally yourself with.
The difference between a government-run road and a corporate-run road (where the corporation is heavily regulated, gets its charter from the government, is granted a monopoly by the government, tolls are approved by regulatory commission, etc)... it's basically an implementation detail. Depending on the state, they'll probably even force the corporation to use prevailing wage to keep the unions happy. The NJ Turnpike would likely be indistinguishable as an authority vs. a corporation. I don't think there is any money to be saved here - roads are inherently monopolistic and not really subject to free market forces.
One thing that I don't see mentioned is that it would appear this was the first time they attempted to actually land using a multi-engine descent. All of the prior landings (not counting the one deliberately ditched at sea) used a single engine to stick the landing. They are eager to get multi-engine descent working because it will allow them to land boosters with less fuel.
Yeah, I read it. You, for reasons that I don't understand, omitted the important parts:
and
So the article is not self-consistent. It doesn't really matter what it is, it appears to be functional both from iFixit's description and Apple's.
Your source and Solandri's source differ on the purpose of the plastic, but it doesn't change my argument. Whatever it is, it serves a purpose and is not simply a filler piece of plastic as Solandri's comment implied.
Apple spends way too much on the look of their products! Style over substance!
Apple's new product is ugly as fuck!
How many people have you heard having to fix their phone jack before?
I've had two fail recently - one on an Amazon Fire tablet and one on a Samsung phone. Over my life, I've lost innumerable walkmen and headphones to that shitty connection design. I just soldered the connector back on my Sennheisers.
I have also tried both Google and Apple's bluetooth ear-buds and I am not impressed.
This is a completely legitimate complaint. I don't have golden ears and so I'm fine with even cheap bluetooth adaptors - but audiophiles seem to be universally negative about them. Now the circuitry needs to be duplicated in every device. On the plus side, if manufacturers could get their act together, there is a market catering to audiophiles for very expensive dongles that should in principle exceed anything that could be stuffed into a phone. My phone still has a headphone jack, and so I end up using both. Typically the bluetooth when doing something active (and so when audio quality is not that important) and wired when I'm sitting at my desk working.
I am not going to replace my earphone costing almost of as much as a new cell phone just because the vendor want to be trendy and copy from Apple, period!
I have bluetooth adaptors that standard headphones can plug into. And of course Apple sells their dongle. I don't spend $600 on phones, so this is all academic for me.
Samsung - has come up with a waterproof phone that also has a decent battery while retaining the headphones jack
Yes, they have. And we have no idea what cost or engineering tradeoffs they made to get there.
It's what good companies do for their customers so their customers keep buying their products.
Isn't that just a restatement of what I said in my last sentence? I think we agree.
it's not REALLY that hard to do compared
I have no way to judge that, since I work on fairly big machines where miniaturization is not much of an issue. I suspect you aren't qualified to make that statement, either.
The fact that they were able to waterproof the phone does not mean that they were able to do so without any cost or engineering tradeoffs.
You absolutely need to put a high-quality amp in the dongle or bluetooth module - but it saves you from needing to put it in the phone, saving cost and potentially space. In principle, only people with "golden ears" would need to buy the nice amp. Or they could buy one with a tube in it or some other such nonsense. In practice, it sounds like audiophiles shun both bluetooth and the wired adapters.
I'm not familiar enough to say, and I'm not willing to dig that deep right now. The presence of features does not tell the story of engineering compromises and tradeoffs that needed to be made, so it wouldn't be a worthwhile effort anyway. You'd really need to talk to the engineers at both Apple and Samsung to hear the different challenges that they encountered, and how they solved them.
My crappy Samsung Galaxy J has both a headphone jack and a removable battery. You need to go ghetto if you want the best features.
What is so proprietary about Bluetooth headphones?
Of course you can still do these things, but everything you mentioned requires a tradeoff.
The fact that they were able to produce a phone with a water resistant headphone jack says nothing about the cost or other engineering tradeoffs they had to make.
I can't answer that part - I spend $200 on a phone, max. And only under duress. I use both bluetooth and wired headphones, depending on the situation. What Apple and Samsung do with $600 phones hasn't trickled down to riff raff like me yet.
Explain why it is harder to waterproof, if anything it should be easier than any USB type plug.
Not my field, but you can take a SWAG and just look at the size of the connector. Just Google for waterproof headphone connector and waterproof USB-C connector and look a the huge difference in size of the surface mount stuff.
It hasn't changed since the late 1800's
I can't believe you are listing that as an advantage. Almost without exception, the failure mode of my headphones has been that plug and the failure mode of my portable audio equipment... well, it's been drops, actually... but I've also had jacks fail. Most recently on a Samsung phone and a Amazon Kindle tablet. I've never had a USB jack fail, though I've certainly lost cable connections - that's a design feature, actually. It certainly is easier to solder on a new audio jack, though. I've never bother to try to fix a USB plug.
And the speakers are driven by magical unicorns?
Audiophiles get all angsty over built-in phone speakers now? No, the built-in speakers can have a very shitty amp.
The length of the jack reduces the leverage on the internal components.
Whether it reduces leverage or not, the plug itself is very strong with a 1/8" audio connection. It's hard to make the jack stronger than the plug. With USB-C, the plug is supposed to be the wear part, the weakest link.
they filled the space with a piece of molded plastic
That's incredibly misleading. Sure, it's a piece of molded plastic. What you fail to mention is that it is a functional piece of molded plastic - part of the speaker.
The same engineering reasons that drove their competitors to do it - headphones need a deep hole with lots of mechanical support because of simple leverage. It's harder to waterproof and it takes up more space that could be dedicated to battery or another function. The jack is hard to design such that the point of failure is guaranteed to be the plug and not the socket. It requires a high-quality built-in amp. But yeah, if the market segment for people who want a jack is high enough, it's a good business move.