>"CNET ran a column titled "Fidget spinners exploding? Of course they are."
Here we go again. Nothing "exploded", it was just a lithium battery catching fire (although it can be violent sometimes). Gotta make it into an attention-grabbing headline, though, as if it were TNT or C4. Anything poorly made/designed (or the product is abused) with a lithium battery inside it can catch fire, unfortunately. And it is most likely to happen when being charged.
It does make one wonder if we should be charging all these devices on a large, non-flammable surfaces. Hmmm...
>"Speaking and writing with different grammar and word choices is an easy way to identify people as "other". It's not surprising it's used to exclude the interaction of people that are different from one another. It's the "human" way."
Correct. Humans constantly judge and discriminate with limited information and input. Generally, there is nothing evil or wrong about it either. It is what has helped us survive and thrive as a species. If someone with a blue hat hits you, you will be wary of people wearing blue hats. If you are trying to hire someone intelligent, you tend to discard those candidates who can't speak or write proper English- the connection being that those who are more educated will typically have a better grasp of good language. Of course, neither association is perfect, but often such associations are accurate. The real winner is to keep that judgement in mind and try to keep an open mind and accept additional information so as not to exclude those who otherwise would be neatly and quickly categorized into a certain box (stereotype).
I have no problems with any generally or even somewhat generally-used word being placed in the dictionary. It only serves to help people decode what is being said out there in the real-world.
My issue is that many people believe that just because a word is contained in the dictionary, that it somehow validates the word as "proper" English. Those same people tend to miss the coding for "slang", "improper", "colloquial", "informal", and "vulgar" in the definition. Of course the recent trend is now to down-play those categories and coding in fear they might, gasp, offend someone. Thus, the political-correctness movement often erodes the effectiveness of communication. Also, speaking and writing with poor grammar and word choices does put one at a disadvantage when seeking to be taken seriously or professionally.
My best English teacher would be rolling in her grave if she heard some of what many supposedly educated people say nowadays (of course, I suppose each generation could say that:) )
>Google[..] describing it as a "clean and uncluttered look."
"Clean?" Yeah, like that is somehow good. I hate Google's interfaces probably more than anything out there (I suppose Apple's is about the same).
Clean = No functionality, choices, settings, or real customizations. Freaking hidden everything. Unintuitive navigation. Things that fade in and out when you try to read them or use them. Controls and icons that make no sense. Tons of wasted space. Replace the "Clean" description with "frustrating" or "brain-dead" and there you have it.
Give me a "File" menu bar, persistent scroll bars, tons of preferences, and real dialog boxes any day!
>"But then we'd have to admit that there are more than two political parties. Can't let the voters discover that!"
Really, they never will with the electoral college in place and the lack of some form of instant runoff voting. But we really need that to change. I won't hold my breath...
>"The UK cannot afford to create its own programming language, make its own police OS, code its own apps, have 24/7 support for its own UK OS and have perfect vetting for all its police."
Right. So install and use CentOS for free (and the myriad of apps, including LibreOffice) and contract one of the many places for support. Have your GUI and a hardened, reliable, world-class, long-term, regularly-updated OS. Take the money you save on licensing and unnecessary hardware updates and malware payments, and use it to retrain your IT people. For key industry-specific apps, band together with other police departments, pool the money, and contract it to be coded to OSS that doesn't tie you to MS-Windows. Break free and move on and reap the benefits for decades to come. Instead of constant pain, take a big, very bitter pill once and solve the problem "forever".
Perhaps vitamin C added to cigarettes or Omga fatty acids in pot brownies or high protein potato chips or super fiber added to mega caffeine energy drinks? Hmmm.
Maybe you live in retirement areas of Florida? Where I live, I rarely see even a single handicapped space filled/used. Rows of them just sitting empty at just about every location.
The deal with the Uber thing is a bit over-the-top. They demand that they aren't going to wait longer AND yet they also want access to a tremendously more expensive vehicle that also costs a lot more to maintain and operate and uses more gas and delays the trip a lot for the driver.... but they want to pay the same fare? Seems a bit unrealistic.
What is with this near-obsessive "need" for all these TV, cable, ISP, phone, cell, and production companies to merge? We want choice, not "bundling." My wireless phone company has nothing to do with cable TV or my ISP. I really think the anti-trust authorities should step in and break up all these completed and prospective mergers. They are bad for consumers, bad for the economy, and bad for the country. It is not a free market when consumers are not free to make choices. I can see where it might be OK for T-Mobile and Sprint to join forces to compete with Verizon and AT&T, but that is as far as I would go.
>"when it comes to ensuring ubiquitous, reasonably priced fiber optic internet access for every resident"
Is that the standard for which to aim? Fiber to every resident? That is not only unrealistic but just silly and unnecessary. Fiber to the customer is very expensive, hard to install, hard to terminate, and hard to repair. How about fast, reliable, and reasonably priced as the goal? What about choice in providers? What about good customer service?
I have nothing against fiber- it can be very reliable, super fast, is impervious to interference, can push data a long way without repeating, and is future-proof. But the cost and complexity of fiber means it is usually at odds with providing wide coverage to everyone. Fiber to the neighborhood is usually a very reasonable compromise when the goal is to make it affordable AND accessible.
>"urged Silicon Valley to "apply that same creativity, innovation to figuring out a way that both the interests of privacy as well as security can be guaranteed." "
Um, impossible. Pick one. Either encryption is broken or it works as designed. There is no in-between. I hope we pick that it will continue to work.
Too bad it STILL won't tell anyone what is actually on a machine when a binary MS-Windows is installed. You still won't know what back doors, spyware, weakened encryption, "telemetry" sharing, and extra code was injected for the governments. And good luck on building something you will be able to actually install and use. This breech is unlikely to help anyone but black hatters, looking for vulnerabilities.
Meanwhile, grab distro Linux sources legally, see anything and everything you desire, and compile it and run it if you like.... it is actually DESIGNED to be compiled by people and groups who use it, if wanted.
>"..even if Telecom Cable wins, the max damages amount to pocket change for Comcast, and, if my understanding is correct, Telecom Cable still remains irreparably harmed, probably out of business. So Comcast wins no matter what happens."
I want to know also about the poor CUSTOMERS who had to suffer through it too; they were just as much the victims of this crime. How about a civil class-action suit from all who lost service and had to waste time trying to get reconnected and paying fees if they had to switch, etc? And if Telecom Cable goes out of business, then throw in how every many hundreds of thousands of OTHER customers who didn't get cut but now have to also spend time/energy/money seeking other service?
>"$120,000,000 for 100M calls? That's $1.20 per call.Unless the scammer made $120M in profits, this goes a little beyond punitive."
Sorry, but that sounds about right to me. He irritated people over 100 million times. That is a lot of bad. The problem is that they rarely fine anyone and rarely collect any of it, anyway.
If they do, they should use all that money to hunt down and destroy as many marketing, spam, political, and robocallers as possible. Or perhaps use the money to force the stupid carriers out there to NOT ALLOW SPOOFING LIKE THIS.
I have been getting calls too..... EIGHT of them. I thought it really odd I would get calls from a local number with the same first three digits as mine. Of course I never answered any of them. But that might explain what happened.
However, ALL robocallers should be fined, not just those who spoof. Better yet, ALL marketing callers AND pollsters AND political party callers. Stop invading my space, irritating me, and wasting my time.
>"Next of all, was it really "a thing"? I've been on cellular since 1996, and exclusively since 2002. I'd never heard of this thing until 2011"
And I have been on cellular since at least 1996 (USA)... and I have not only never experienced it, I have never even heard of such a thing until *TODAY*... top that! I can't believe they would allow such non-standard and annoying crap!
>"Yep, UBER wont expect it, but the Drivers will."
Exactly
>"Oh and you had better tip 30% because 20% is the new normal."
Outrageous! At least for wait service, 15% is a good tip, 20% is superb. There is zero reason that the percentages should ever increase.... inflation takes care of the actual amount relative to the food.
I can understand why many people will want to tip. But I thought the whole point was to use RATINGS to reward or hurt the drivers, not money. Riders would know what the exact amounts are in advance and yet still have the power to adjust the drivers future success through feedback in the app. Higher rated drivers will be more sought-out, have more success, and ultimately make more money.
Now tipping will become EXPECTED, like it is in all other industries where tipping exists. Yeah, Uber says:
âoeTipping is not included, nor is it expected or required,â the team added. âoeAnd thatâ(TM)s how we intend to keep it.â
But I am telling you, there will be an expectation of tipping for good service and leaving no tip will imply bad service. And no tip might lead the Driver to downrate a Rider.
>"All those old ladies who live with dozens of cats living among the stench of them"
Indoor cats (at least none I have ever encountered) don't have any negative smell or stench. Now, if you haven't trained the cat or don't clean the litterbox, yeah, cat urine smell is horrible. But I have had cats my entire life and have never had a problem with them urinating outside the box, and have zero smell in my house.
Dogs are the animals that smell, especially wet (OMG)... as do humans. Cats are remarkably clean, and self-cleaning. Unfortunately they tend to get cat hair everywhere.
Adjust your takeaway... At first I was surprised too, but then discovered it seems their servers had not been updated in something like 9 years! That has little to do with being Linux and a lot to do with zero maintenance.
90% of the world uses non-iPhone phones, 87% in the USA. I would hardly call an iPhone a supercomputer, and all smartphones have "the internet". And then you throw curse words at me? Brilliant.
Slashdot Mirror
>"CNET ran a column titled "Fidget spinners exploding? Of course they are."
Here we go again. Nothing "exploded", it was just a lithium battery catching fire (although it can be violent sometimes). Gotta make it into an attention-grabbing headline, though, as if it were TNT or C4. Anything poorly made/designed (or the product is abused) with a lithium battery inside it can catch fire, unfortunately. And it is most likely to happen when being charged.
It does make one wonder if we should be charging all these devices on a large, non-flammable surfaces. Hmmm...
>"Speaking and writing with different grammar and word choices is an easy way to identify people as "other". It's not surprising it's used to exclude the interaction of people that are different from one another. It's the "human" way."
Correct. Humans constantly judge and discriminate with limited information and input. Generally, there is nothing evil or wrong about it either. It is what has helped us survive and thrive as a species. If someone with a blue hat hits you, you will be wary of people wearing blue hats. If you are trying to hire someone intelligent, you tend to discard those candidates who can't speak or write proper English- the connection being that those who are more educated will typically have a better grasp of good language. Of course, neither association is perfect, but often such associations are accurate. The real winner is to keep that judgement in mind and try to keep an open mind and accept additional information so as not to exclude those who otherwise would be neatly and quickly categorized into a certain box (stereotype).
I have no problems with any generally or even somewhat generally-used word being placed in the dictionary. It only serves to help people decode what is being said out there in the real-world.
My issue is that many people believe that just because a word is contained in the dictionary, that it somehow validates the word as "proper" English. Those same people tend to miss the coding for "slang", "improper", "colloquial", "informal", and "vulgar" in the definition. Of course the recent trend is now to down-play those categories and coding in fear they might, gasp, offend someone. Thus, the political-correctness movement often erodes the effectiveness of communication. Also, speaking and writing with poor grammar and word choices does put one at a disadvantage when seeking to be taken seriously or professionally.
My best English teacher would be rolling in her grave if she heard some of what many supposedly educated people say nowadays (of course, I suppose each generation could say that :) )
>Google[..] describing it as a "clean and uncluttered look."
"Clean?" Yeah, like that is somehow good. I hate Google's interfaces probably more than anything out there (I suppose Apple's is about the same).
Clean = No functionality, choices, settings, or real customizations. Freaking hidden everything. Unintuitive navigation. Things that fade in and out when you try to read them or use them. Controls and icons that make no sense. Tons of wasted space. Replace the "Clean" description with "frustrating" or "brain-dead" and there you have it.
Give me a "File" menu bar, persistent scroll bars, tons of preferences, and real dialog boxes any day!
>"While it will still be based on Ubuntu and GNOME, "
Blech. So it is just Ubuntu with a few tweaks. Yawn. Nothing to see here, keep moving. Still, I wish System76 well- I like what they do!
>"But then we'd have to admit that there are more than two political parties. Can't let the voters discover that!"
Really, they never will with the electoral college in place and the lack of some form of instant runoff voting. But we really need that to change. I won't hold my breath...
>"The UK cannot afford to create its own programming language, make its own police OS, code its own apps, have 24/7 support for its own UK OS and have perfect vetting for all its police."
Right. So install and use CentOS for free (and the myriad of apps, including LibreOffice) and contract one of the many places for support. Have your GUI and a hardened, reliable, world-class, long-term, regularly-updated OS. Take the money you save on licensing and unnecessary hardware updates and malware payments, and use it to retrain your IT people. For key industry-specific apps, band together with other police departments, pool the money, and contract it to be coded to OSS that doesn't tie you to MS-Windows. Break free and move on and reap the benefits for decades to come. Instead of constant pain, take a big, very bitter pill once and solve the problem "forever".
Perhaps vitamin C added to cigarettes or Omga fatty acids in pot brownies or high protein potato chips or super fiber added to mega caffeine energy drinks? Hmmm.
Or you could just eat those without the carriers?
Maybe you live in retirement areas of Florida? Where I live, I rarely see even a single handicapped space filled/used. Rows of them just sitting empty at just about every location.
The deal with the Uber thing is a bit over-the-top. They demand that they aren't going to wait longer AND yet they also want access to a tremendously more expensive vehicle that also costs a lot more to maintain and operate and uses more gas and delays the trip a lot for the driver.... but they want to pay the same fare? Seems a bit unrealistic.
What is with this near-obsessive "need" for all these TV, cable, ISP, phone, cell, and production companies to merge? We want choice, not "bundling." My wireless phone company has nothing to do with cable TV or my ISP. I really think the anti-trust authorities should step in and break up all these completed and prospective mergers. They are bad for consumers, bad for the economy, and bad for the country. It is not a free market when consumers are not free to make choices. I can see where it might be OK for T-Mobile and Sprint to join forces to compete with Verizon and AT&T, but that is as far as I would go.
>"when it comes to ensuring ubiquitous, reasonably priced fiber optic internet access for every resident"
Is that the standard for which to aim? Fiber to every resident? That is not only unrealistic but just silly and unnecessary. Fiber to the customer is very expensive, hard to install, hard to terminate, and hard to repair. How about fast, reliable, and reasonably priced as the goal? What about choice in providers? What about good customer service?
I have nothing against fiber- it can be very reliable, super fast, is impervious to interference, can push data a long way without repeating, and is future-proof. But the cost and complexity of fiber means it is usually at odds with providing wide coverage to everyone. Fiber to the neighborhood is usually a very reasonable compromise when the goal is to make it affordable AND accessible.
>"urged Silicon Valley to "apply that same creativity, innovation to figuring out a way that both the interests of privacy as well as security can be guaranteed." "
Um, impossible. Pick one. Either encryption is broken or it works as designed. There is no in-between. I hope we pick that it will continue to work.
+1 insightful
I couldn't have worded it better if I tried.
Too bad it STILL won't tell anyone what is actually on a machine when a binary MS-Windows is installed. You still won't know what back doors, spyware, weakened encryption, "telemetry" sharing, and extra code was injected for the governments. And good luck on building something you will be able to actually install and use. This breech is unlikely to help anyone but black hatters, looking for vulnerabilities.
Meanwhile, grab distro Linux sources legally, see anything and everything you desire, and compile it and run it if you like.... it is actually DESIGNED to be compiled by people and groups who use it, if wanted.
And if one wants to pay in cash? Here is the middle finger?
>"..even if Telecom Cable wins, the max damages amount to pocket change for Comcast, and, if my understanding is correct, Telecom Cable still remains irreparably harmed, probably out of business. So Comcast wins no matter what happens."
I want to know also about the poor CUSTOMERS who had to suffer through it too; they were just as much the victims of this crime. How about a civil class-action suit from all who lost service and had to waste time trying to get reconnected and paying fees if they had to switch, etc? And if Telecom Cable goes out of business, then throw in how every many hundreds of thousands of OTHER customers who didn't get cut but now have to also spend time/energy/money seeking other service?
>"229 customers is a significant share of the market in a city of only 2300 people"
What kind of definition allows a city to be just 2300 people? That is barely a town! :)
>"$120,000,000 for 100M calls? That's $1.20 per call.Unless the scammer made $120M in profits, this goes a little beyond punitive."
Sorry, but that sounds about right to me. He irritated people over 100 million times. That is a lot of bad. The problem is that they rarely fine anyone and rarely collect any of it, anyway.
If they do, they should use all that money to hunt down and destroy as many marketing, spam, political, and robocallers as possible. Or perhaps use the money to force the stupid carriers out there to NOT ALLOW SPOOFING LIKE THIS.
I have been getting calls too..... EIGHT of them. I thought it really odd I would get calls from a local number with the same first three digits as mine. Of course I never answered any of them. But that might explain what happened.
However, ALL robocallers should be fined, not just those who spoof. Better yet, ALL marketing callers AND pollsters AND political party callers. Stop invading my space, irritating me, and wasting my time.
>"Next of all, was it really "a thing"? I've been on cellular since 1996, and exclusively since 2002. I'd never heard of this thing until 2011"
And I have been on cellular since at least 1996 (USA)... and I have not only never experienced it, I have never even heard of such a thing until *TODAY*... top that! I can't believe they would allow such non-standard and annoying crap!
Learn something new every day...
>"Yep, UBER wont expect it, but the Drivers will."
Exactly
>"Oh and you had better tip 30% because 20% is the new normal."
Outrageous! At least for wait service, 15% is a good tip, 20% is superb. There is zero reason that the percentages should ever increase.... inflation takes care of the actual amount relative to the food.
I can understand why many people will want to tip. But I thought the whole point was to use RATINGS to reward or hurt the drivers, not money. Riders would know what the exact amounts are in advance and yet still have the power to adjust the drivers future success through feedback in the app. Higher rated drivers will be more sought-out, have more success, and ultimately make more money.
Now tipping will become EXPECTED, like it is in all other industries where tipping exists. Yeah, Uber says:
âoeTipping is not included, nor is it expected or required,â the team added. âoeAnd thatâ(TM)s how we intend to keep it.â
But I am telling you, there will be an expectation of tipping for good service and leaving no tip will imply bad service. And no tip might lead the Driver to downrate a Rider.
>"All those old ladies who live with dozens of cats living among the stench of them"
Indoor cats (at least none I have ever encountered) don't have any negative smell or stench. Now, if you haven't trained the cat or don't clean the litterbox, yeah, cat urine smell is horrible. But I have had cats my entire life and have never had a problem with them urinating outside the box, and have zero smell in my house.
Dogs are the animals that smell, especially wet (OMG)... as do humans. Cats are remarkably clean, and self-cleaning. Unfortunately they tend to get cat hair everywhere.
Adjust your takeaway... At first I was surprised too, but then discovered it seems their servers had not been updated in something like 9 years! That has little to do with being Linux and a lot to do with zero maintenance.
90% of the world uses non-iPhone phones, 87% in the USA. I would hardly call an iPhone a supercomputer, and all smartphones have "the internet". And then you throw curse words at me? Brilliant.