Often that's second hand (or refurb) but if its better value I'll buy new. I've never found new to be better value for phones or cars though:).
Well, I tend to agree with you largely..but some exceptions.
With performance cars...it depends on the car, some you find are great garage queens...but you have to be on guard for those that were ragged out by previous owners. Takes some research and buyer beware, etc.
With phones I have to ask you on that one....
I've never bought a used phone, ever. I don't buy phones very often...I went from a flip phone to an iPhone 3GS....to an iPhone 6s Plus.
Are you not potentially running into battery lifetime concerns with a used phone?
Some people like sport cars that can go real fast even though most roads cannot handle them.
Like it or not, status symbols have value in our culture. Even if you see someone with one and you think they are a pretentious snob, it means the status symbol is working.
It isn't always about status, nice things....
Example, myself...I have never owned a car with more than 2 seats (technically, I had a 1986 Porsche 911 Turbo, that had something resembling rear seats, but no person could fit there, so doesn't count).....I worked and saved during High School....and in my senior year, my parents helped me out with some $ for early graduation, and I bought my first car...a 1978 Datsun 280Z.
I worked most all weekends, missed most football games, etc...but I worked and saved for what I truly wanted.
I've always had sports cars, I like to drive them, I like to drive fast, and yes, when road conditions are right, I do tend to light things up from time to time and enjoy the car.
I have never bought any of my cars for what other folks thought about them....actually for most of my life, I was pretty oblivious to what others thought about them.
It wasn't till about 15years or so ago, I was driving with a friend of mine in one of the early C5 corvettes, the new body style at the time. We'd gone down to the lake front and were running errand about town. He commented to me later "Man, you just don't have a clue do you?". I asked him what he was talking about, and he went on to say how much HE was noticing girls parked and driving near us, looking at us in the car, etc.
I hadn't noticed a bit....but after that, I have started to try to notice if it is attracting female attention, turns out, a nice car can be "bait" for picking up ladies.
But I think that shows that not everyone that buys nice things, or even somewhat exotic things, does it JUST to use as a status symbol and rub it in other peoples' faces.
Some people just know what they want...if they're wealthy, then its easy, but for others, we just work and save and get things we really want in life.
And, there's nothing at all wrong with treating yourself to some nice things in life, after all..that's one of the main reasons we actually work jobs.
And is some cases...you get what you pay for.
Take cooking gear....years back, I started buying pieces at a time, or specials on starter kits, of things like All-Clad SS pots and pans. I also have been investing in Wusthof-Trident knives...the good ones.
Now...sure, I have pans that cost near $100 each...knives that do....but, I buy them once, and they will pretty much last beyond my lifetime. I use them a lot and rather than shell out a few bucks n cheap shit that wears out after 1-2 years, or doesn't even function that well new.....I just invest in quality and stuff that will last me long past the initial investment.
So....those are factors to consider when you see someone with something nice.
Well, to be fair....there are actually a LOT of people out there, that don't consider $1200 as being a lot of money...to them, that is pocket change.
No, I'm not one of them, but I know a lot of them....and it isn't uncommon.
And even with me, while I don't consider $1200 to be cheap, I also don't think it breaks the bank either....I tend to be the type that doesn't buy a lot of trivial shit here and there constantly.
I tend to save my money and 2-3 times a year, I drop a wad of money on something I really want. Earlier this year, I dropped about $2370 on a new lens for my camera. It was a Canon 11-24 f/4 zoom lens....this monster usually lists for about $3K, I found one on the canon refurb site for the sale price and jumped on it.
Now..do I buy things like this willy-nilly all the time. No.
But, I had been researching, and plotting and planning AND...yes...SAVING to buy this and when this came up for sale I immediately pulled the trigger.
I'm now quite happy with the new lens in my stable.
So, yes...there are a lot of people out there with a LOT of disposable income. There are a lot of people out there with some disposable income, but with that...if you are choosy, you can save and have some really nice things. It really isn't that difficult at all.
The key point is knowing how to save...and NOT go into CC debt hell.
Yeah, that was my first thought, when did $250K a year define you as rich?
Sure in many parts of the US, that is a lot of money and you can live comfortably...but not excessive.
But in other parts, that is NOT a high salary....especially in the larger metropolitan areas on the east and west coast.
I don't think you should have to supplement people to live in a city...either you can afford to live there, or you can't...the US is plenty large enough, with cities and places that don't cost an arm and a leg, and yes...there are jobs there.
At this point Linux servers are mostly for small blogs and criminal organizations.
Hmm..I dunno what rock you live under, but most any server room I've worked in for the past few decades, is about 99% Linux...with only the token windows server in the mix here and there.
The recorded music industry only changed the medium and now we can buy a la cart songs instead of a CD with one good song and 9 to 10 fillers.
While this has always been a problem with some artists....it seemed back in the day, when I bought albums, I'd not buy one unless it had 5+ good songs on it.
Perhaps today it is more telling of the dearth of talent out there?
Also, sadly, the song at a time lends itself to the death of the "concept" album, like Dark Side of the Moon, Tommy, Sgt. Peppers, Pet Sounds, The Wall....etc.
It is kind of sad really....often I'd buy an album, that I knew had some songs I liked, but since it was all packaged, I played the entire album and got to where I discovered and really came to enjoy the deeper cuts.
With streaming...you find yourself only getting 1-2 songs and listening to them over and over, but possibly missing out on the gems that are in the deeper cuts.
We already don't the US imports next to nothing from the middle east. Including Canada and Mexico in the mix the three of us are more than self sufficient for a variety/majority of oil products.
The US would actually benefit substantially from the middle east oil production destruction. The US would be the only industrialized nation with a reliable energy supply. China, India, Japan and the EU would be completely screwed. The US would be just fine.
Well, I really meant more in general...pretty much the only reason the Middle East gets any attention from the rest of the civilized world is their oil.
If there were no need for that...then the rest of the world could easily say "Fuck'em"...and let them alone to blow them selves up to bits and we needn't care or need to waste resources over there any longer.
There is more at stake in the region than just oil revenue, like competing regional influence (with military benefits), mass migrations, exportable terrorism and, of course, the Israel-Arab conflict in which the U.S. has always been knee deep. Turning the region into a resourceless dump of poverty is unlikely to improve things for anyone.
Yeah, but if we don't have to depend on that area for anything as important as oil....we don't really have to care if they blow each other to bits over there....
And it seems most terrorists there are blowing things up here because we are involved with things in the ME...if we were to leave it all alone, I'm guessing many would not have much a reason to need to use terrorism against the big satan.
As far as mass migrations....nip it in the bud. If they arrive on your shores, let it be known they'll be immediately rounded up and shipped back "home"....if people know they can't get away with illegal migration, they won't try as hard to get into your country.
Are you willing to have everyone in the vicinity of the prison to have their cell phone service blocked as well?
Well, I don't think that's a problem really....most any prison I know of, is WAAAAY out side the any cities, isolated on rural lands, where the nearest neighbor is miles away.
They could jam away and not bother anyone really.
It isn't like prisons are built close by to cities, etc. for many reasons.
The fun thing about digital is that it doesn't degrade when you copy it -- as long as the source stream is good quality, the rip will be equally good.
ONLY if you are copying it in a lossless format.
If you are taking a mp3 (which has already lost fidelity by its nature)...and rip that to another mp3 copy...you lose more...do it again...you lose more quality.
SO...it depends if the whole copy workflow is lossless vs lossy.
Back in the day it was recording off FM onto cassette tape!!
I did this VERY briefly early on...but also, early on, I noticed the sound sucked, and well...hard to always get the intro/outro of the song without the fscking DJ talking over it, or starting a new song over top of the last one....
But at a young age...I and most of my friends were sold on good quality audio.
We all worked, mowing lawns, baby sitting...later we got jobs washing dishes and bussing tables in HS.
But starting about 12 years old...I went into a high end audio shop, and heard a McIntosh tube amp hooked to Klipschorn speakers and my jaw hit the floor.
Starting from then...I earned and bought piece by piece as good of audio equipment as I could save and afford at the time...and have been trading up over all these years, till I now essentially have that first system I heard as a kid.
Of course, too many loud concerts have made my hearing not quite as sharp as back then, but still...I love good audio.
For the gym or car, sure..high quality mp3 is just fine, but for home...I want CD quality...usually I rip my stuff to FLAC and listen on the good stereo to that....
So does war. And the call for NATO to increase defense spending to 2%. To counter that, Russia and China will increase their defense spending. So next you'll be crying for a large increase in US defense spending. And Russia and China will also have to increase theirs to counter it.
Well, to be fair....Defense IS one of the few enumerated responsibilities of the Federal Govt. by the Constitution.
If you go out in public in those communities, you see a whole bunch of people who can't spell any words properly if they contain more than about 4 letters. Their math skills are just as rudimentary. Many lack even basic people skills, needed to negotiate things like confrontations with dissatisfied customers in a workplace. They're simply not mentally equipped to be employable in modern society.
You see pretty much the same thing in any inner city ghetto....usually just with more violence added on top.
I'm guessing they're getting FAR less than even dismal mp3 quality music ripping off of streaming services, that aren't putting out very high quality music at all....
I would guess this wouldn't sound very good even on a portable player or in a car, much less even a modestly decent home sound system....
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
This is the same argument that it's always been. Qualcomm has patents that are necessary to use cellular networks, and in return for making them standards, they've agreed to license them (either in their chips or their competitors)....
Here's the part I don't understand.
If Apple is using competitor chips, that have been licensed by the competitor to Qualcomm....hasn't that competing chip maker already paid the rent/licensing fee to Qualcomm at the chip manufacture level...?
If so, why does the secondary user of the chip (Apple) also have to pay licensing fees?
If you do move far from mommy and daddy, it gets harder to have those kids from a lack of support. I know, my parents (and my in laws) live on the other side of the country. Having young children and no family support network is pretty hard.
It isn't hard and has been done for ages....
What about the wagon trains of years past...those folks left their relatives and likely NEVER saw them again.
My parents moved after I was born....and I grew up first half of my life not really knowing or seeing any relatives.
While its nice to have some grandparents to unload the kids on from time to time...it isn't a necessity.
That there really isn't that great an influx of useable and creative (key word creative) talent on these programs, but that it merely gets used to bring in cheap, lower quality labor to help drive down the prevailing wage.
I look at the state where I live (Connecticut), and I see a place where all of the manufacturing and office jobs continue to disappear and keep getting replaced with low wage service jobs.
You know, in the USA, you are free to move to where the jobs are......?
You're right. So you guys need to stay home and take care of the house while we women earn the big bucks.
Err...why change and reverse the roles that worked SO well for so many 100's of years?
Even for relatively recent history...this worked out BETTER when the men worked, and the women stayed home to care for the kids, hell...there's biological proclivity for this.
If it isn't working mixed, why not go back to what was proven to work in the past vs doing full blown reversal into unknown territory?
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Well, I tend to agree with you largely..but some exceptions.
With performance cars...it depends on the car, some you find are great garage queens...but you have to be on guard for those that were ragged out by previous owners. Takes some research and buyer beware, etc.
With phones I have to ask you on that one....
I've never bought a used phone, ever. I don't buy phones very often...I went from a flip phone to an iPhone 3GS....to an iPhone 6s Plus.
Are you not potentially running into battery lifetime concerns with a used phone?
It isn't always about status, nice things....
Example, myself...I have never owned a car with more than 2 seats (technically, I had a 1986 Porsche 911 Turbo, that had something resembling rear seats, but no person could fit there, so doesn't count).....I worked and saved during High School....and in my senior year, my parents helped me out with some $ for early graduation, and I bought my first car...a 1978 Datsun 280Z.
I worked most all weekends, missed most football games, etc...but I worked and saved for what I truly wanted.
I've always had sports cars, I like to drive them, I like to drive fast, and yes, when road conditions are right, I do tend to light things up from time to time and enjoy the car.
I have never bought any of my cars for what other folks thought about them....actually for most of my life, I was pretty oblivious to what others thought about them.
It wasn't till about 15years or so ago, I was driving with a friend of mine in one of the early C5 corvettes, the new body style at the time. We'd gone down to the lake front and were running errand about town. He commented to me later "Man, you just don't have a clue do you?". I asked him what he was talking about, and he went on to say how much HE was noticing girls parked and driving near us, looking at us in the car, etc.
I hadn't noticed a bit....but after that, I have started to try to notice if it is attracting female attention, turns out, a nice car can be "bait" for picking up ladies.
But I think that shows that not everyone that buys nice things, or even somewhat exotic things, does it JUST to use as a status symbol and rub it in other peoples' faces.
Some people just know what they want...if they're wealthy, then its easy, but for others, we just work and save and get things we really want in life.
And, there's nothing at all wrong with treating yourself to some nice things in life, after all..that's one of the main reasons we actually work jobs.
And is some cases...you get what you pay for.
Take cooking gear....years back, I started buying pieces at a time, or specials on starter kits, of things like All-Clad SS pots and pans. I also have been investing in Wusthof-Trident knives...the good ones.
Now...sure, I have pans that cost near $100 each...knives that do....but, I buy them once, and they will pretty much last beyond my lifetime. I use them a lot and rather than shell out a few bucks n cheap shit that wears out after 1-2 years, or doesn't even function that well new.....I just invest in quality and stuff that will last me long past the initial investment.
So....those are factors to consider when you see someone with something nice.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.....
No, I'm not one of them, but I know a lot of them....and it isn't uncommon.
And even with me, while I don't consider $1200 to be cheap, I also don't think it breaks the bank either....I tend to be the type that doesn't buy a lot of trivial shit here and there constantly.
I tend to save my money and 2-3 times a year, I drop a wad of money on something I really want. Earlier this year, I dropped about $2370 on a new lens for my camera. It was a Canon 11-24 f/4 zoom lens....this monster usually lists for about $3K, I found one on the canon refurb site for the sale price and jumped on it.
Now..do I buy things like this willy-nilly all the time. No.
But, I had been researching, and plotting and planning AND...yes...SAVING to buy this and when this came up for sale I immediately pulled the trigger.
I'm now quite happy with the new lens in my stable.
So, yes...there are a lot of people out there with a LOT of disposable income. There are a lot of people out there with some disposable income, but with that...if you are choosy, you can save and have some really nice things. It really isn't that difficult at all.
The key point is knowing how to save...and NOT go into CC debt hell.
Yeah, that was my first thought, when did $250K a year define you as rich?
Sure in many parts of the US, that is a lot of money and you can live comfortably...but not excessive.
But in other parts, that is NOT a high salary....especially in the larger metropolitan areas on the east and west coast.
I don't think you should have to supplement people to live in a city...either you can afford to live there, or you can't...the US is plenty large enough, with cities and places that don't cost an arm and a leg, and yes...there are jobs there.
Hmm..I dunno what rock you live under, but most any server room I've worked in for the past few decades, is about 99% Linux...with only the token windows server in the mix here and there.
That was mostly Federal systems....
While this has always been a problem with some artists....it seemed back in the day, when I bought albums, I'd not buy one unless it had 5+ good songs on it.
Perhaps today it is more telling of the dearth of talent out there?
Also, sadly, the song at a time lends itself to the death of the "concept" album, like Dark Side of the Moon, Tommy, Sgt. Peppers, Pet Sounds, The Wall....etc.
It is kind of sad really....often I'd buy an album, that I knew had some songs I liked, but since it was all packaged, I played the entire album and got to where I discovered and really came to enjoy the deeper cuts.
With streaming...you find yourself only getting 1-2 songs and listening to them over and over, but possibly missing out on the gems that are in the deeper cuts.
Well, I really meant more in general...pretty much the only reason the Middle East gets any attention from the rest of the civilized world is their oil.
If there were no need for that...then the rest of the world could easily say "Fuck'em"...and let them alone to blow them selves up to bits and we needn't care or need to waste resources over there any longer.
Yeah, but if we don't have to depend on that area for anything as important as oil....we don't really have to care if they blow each other to bits over there....
And it seems most terrorists there are blowing things up here because we are involved with things in the ME...if we were to leave it all alone, I'm guessing many would not have much a reason to need to use terrorism against the big satan.
As far as mass migrations....nip it in the bud. If they arrive on your shores, let it be known they'll be immediately rounded up and shipped back "home"....if people know they can't get away with illegal migration, they won't try as hard to get into your country.
Well, I don't think that's a problem really....most any prison I know of, is WAAAAY out side the any cities, isolated on rural lands, where the nearest neighbor is miles away.
They could jam away and not bother anyone really.
It isn't like prisons are built close by to cities, etc. for many reasons.
BUT...if they can figure how to Air Condition my house from my lawn, I'd be in on that....
I live in New Orleans...my AC system basically clicks on in late April, and it doesn't go off again till early November.
Cool me off.....heat is no problem.
I'm trying to find out the difference betweent he F and the M....?
What are the defining differences?
ONLY if you are copying it in a lossless format.
If you are taking a mp3 (which has already lost fidelity by its nature)...and rip that to another mp3 copy...you lose more...do it again...you lose more quality.
SO...it depends if the whole copy workflow is lossless vs lossy.
I did this VERY briefly early on...but also, early on, I noticed the sound sucked, and well...hard to always get the intro/outro of the song without the fscking DJ talking over it, or starting a new song over top of the last one....
But at a young age...I and most of my friends were sold on good quality audio.
We all worked, mowing lawns, baby sitting...later we got jobs washing dishes and bussing tables in HS.
But starting about 12 years old...I went into a high end audio shop, and heard a McIntosh tube amp hooked to Klipschorn speakers and my jaw hit the floor.
Starting from then...I earned and bought piece by piece as good of audio equipment as I could save and afford at the time...and have been trading up over all these years, till I now essentially have that first system I heard as a kid.
Of course, too many loud concerts have made my hearing not quite as sharp as back then, but still...I love good audio.
For the gym or car, sure..high quality mp3 is just fine, but for home...I want CD quality...usually I rip my stuff to FLAC and listen on the good stereo to that....
Well, to be fair....Defense IS one of the few enumerated responsibilities of the Federal Govt. by the Constitution.
Regardless of your political leanings...
You gotta admit, that Fox News always seems to have the best stable of "News Chicks"....wow, great looking and usually quite smart.
You see pretty much the same thing in any inner city ghetto....usually just with more violence added on top.
I would guess this wouldn't sound very good even on a portable player or in a car, much less even a modestly decent home sound system....
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
Here's the part I don't understand.
If Apple is using competitor chips, that have been licensed by the competitor to Qualcomm....hasn't that competing chip maker already paid the rent/licensing fee to Qualcomm at the chip manufacture level...?
If so, why does the secondary user of the chip (Apple) also have to pay licensing fees?
It isn't hard and has been done for ages....
What about the wagon trains of years past...those folks left their relatives and likely NEVER saw them again.
My parents moved after I was born....and I grew up first half of my life not really knowing or seeing any relatives.
While its nice to have some grandparents to unload the kids on from time to time...it isn't a necessity.
That's silly...there are plenty of jobs in the US, they just may not be located in Connecticut like the OP was talking about....
There are jobs in the US, you just may have to move to another state to get the job and wages, and cost of living you desire.
It is pretty simple really....you just can't be scared to move a few 100 miles or more away from mommy and daddy.
That there really isn't that great an influx of useable and creative (key word creative) talent on these programs, but that it merely gets used to bring in cheap, lower quality labor to help drive down the prevailing wage.
You guys have fun with that.
You know, in the USA, you are free to move to where the jobs are......?
I hope it holds till I"m gone....
I really don't wanna live in a socialistic society, and what they're pushing is fundamentally a different USA than has been till now.
Err...why change and reverse the roles that worked SO well for so many 100's of years?
Even for relatively recent history...this worked out BETTER when the men worked, and the women stayed home to care for the kids, hell...there's biological proclivity for this.
If it isn't working mixed, why not go back to what was proven to work in the past vs doing full blown reversal into unknown territory?
Err...can you point me to the method to instantly turn off/on that hormone switch, and turn off my male sexually programmed brain?
Yes, whenever I see a woman, I instantly instinctually size her up with the question, "would I want to fuck her"?
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that does this...it is evolution as another person put it.