Actually, my adolescent work ethic was drilled into me @ college. Before that, it was a bit of a coast, as I think my earlier schooling was slightly ahead of the curve into becoming what schools today are - afraid of failing anyone. My first 3 elementary schools (we moved a bit) regularly failed and moved failing students into special ed classes if necessary. My last one didn't even have special ed classes, and current schools "mainstream" those problem students, to the detriment of all other students, IMNSHO.
As for the college remarks, there was a deep change in how students were taught as far as the graduates I interviewed which became apparent starting around 2000, IIRC. It's been a while. It went downhill rapidly, and has stayed pretty steady since about 2004 in (lack of) quality of interviewees. That doesn't mean we don't get an occasional diamond in the rough, but the average quality is bottom of the barrel, and their knowledge of even basic items is shockingly absent. This would be general knowledge of algorithms, data structures, and basic concepts of how computers work, among other things. Knowing how to write printfs or System.outs is of little interest to me as they are assumed.
So it's not a "gee we were great, look at how stupid they are" post, but rather a "WTF, where is this basic knowledge" post. I blame the colleges, students can only go so far beyond what they're given in general, and right now my perception is that colleges are not only failing to teach basic knowledge, but even worse, they are failing to teach analytical and logical thinking skills and investigative techniques.
1) way way back when the income tax was instituted, it was intended that the top tier of earners be the only ones that paid. only ones that paid. Not until the 1950s was the bracket lowered to include ordinary middle income earners.
2) until 1913 there was no income tax at all.
3) trickle down economics has worked like a champ - the flow of wealth has slowed to a trickle - take a look at the above link to see how the bottom 50%'s share of earnings compared to GDP dropped even in boom years while the top 1%'s earnings more than doubled. I think you've summed it up nicely - democracy cannot exist if the rich manipulate the system to increase their wealth at a direct cost to the masses.
And while we're talking GDP, realize that it is largely a meaningless number, since housing is included, and that's certainly not a good that can be exported. They are similar to roads. If you exclude housing, GDP is shrinking at a rather alarming rate.
The real bottom line is deficit spending. There should be none. We should be talking about reducing the debt, not having discussions about how we're going to borrow more money (effectively what the current debate on deficit spending is) The only way to stop it, based on obligations owed, is to raise taxes. Note, from above link, that corporation's tax revenues have declined rapidly over the years and they now pay a mere 1% compared to GDP. No wonder there'sa revenue shortfall.
There's an unmentioned elephant in the room - the entities that pay no federal revenue, and are the one group that the Constitution allows Congress to tax explicitly - the group that imports items into the country. Congress should start there in their efforts to raise revenue. Yes, it would increase the cost of goods, goods not made here that steal american jobs and that add nothing to the federal revenue, thus stealing from those remaining workers twice. Adding a 10-20% tax on goods entering the country would start to cover the federal revenue shortfall. A secondary benefit would be that it would stop the flow of jobs out of the country. Lastly, corporations that have been dodging taxes would start paying them again, directly, as a cost of doing business.
Oh no, so all those concalls (a couple a day at least) where I uttered that phrase wound up being manually inspected? There's a few FBI guys sleeping somewhere.
Actually - my mistake. The "Exceptional generation", aka the "greatest generation" was the generation that fought in WWII, the one that lived through Great Depression, and they certainly had no handouts. The Baby Boomers are their children, by and large, and they are exceptional only in the gift-wrapped economic boom they received, making the American Dream possible for unprecedented numbers of them, and the exceptionally large consumption economy they created.
Good thing I'm not a boomer or I'd be the target of your vitriol. And while I'm not fond of boomers, you're being unfair:
Said exceptional generation seems (at least as far as I can tell from the history books I haven't read) to have earned their wealth primarily through plundering our country and running it in the ground, and whose main occupation currently seems to consist of trying their damnedest to pull the ladder up behind them by removing every single social program they used to get to where they are today, all the while yelling at us that we're stupid and lazy.
They had little to no social programs helping them. Social Security was signed into law in 1935 and covered the elderly and disabled, not the healthy and capable. What they did get was an unprecedented chance to manufacture for the world, which had a huge positive inflow of wealth into the US, along with a huge economic growth that has never been equaled nor most likely will it ever repeat itself as automation starts handling more and more labor intensive functions. That said, the boomers have been supremely unsympathetic to those following and had the nerve to tell us to just get a job, any job, and work hard, blah blah blah and we too could live the dream. It didn't work that way. Hard work just got you minimum wage, and you know how far that'll take you.
You are wrong on all counts. Company is smaller than 100 people. We are high risk. We pay as well as they come, but I don't interview lower level people anymore. I think I passed 1 out of over 100. I too have been at startups, and at larger companies both. I've played stock option roulette several times. I've experienced the same nonsense over the past 10 years interviewing people at startups.Younger people on the whole come off as holier than thou know it alls that when queried, really don't understand even why they chose to do what they did. They tend to not understand the fundamental basics of their own chosen languages.
So, in short, those people do exist, but your company is selecting them out. They want to change the world, and they can't do that becoming a cog in a giant machine.
I too would like to change the world. Guess what - only 1 in a billion gets that lucky, and that's pretty optimistic. Most companies want workers that will do what's needed by them, not some one that thinks he doesn't stink hot-shot that goes off and makes a spaghetti mess of things. I've seen lots of companies with those supposed young people fail. Many fall out of the programming market as well, which is probably a good thing.
I disagree on the "dumber and less capable" part. They're capabilities are different. I think the schools do a better job of teaching the kids to be organized and to think abstractly.
I disagree with every point you make above. They are dumber. They are less capable (unless playing video games with top notch hardware beating out those unfortunate enough to have slightly less capable hardware counts in your statement) The schools do a horrible job of teaching kids anything at this point. I swear we learned more in half the grades than current spoon-fed "graduates". And colleges? Since when is it the job of a college to graduate students versed in some corporations level 1 training program: just about any comp sci school these days only teaches 1 or 2 language syntaxes. Algorithms? What are those? Data structures? You mean like when I lean the 'A' against a 'D' to create a wall? And I'm 99% sure that what you call "abstract thinking" is nothing more than glazed eye day-dreaming. We won't even talk about pattern recognition, critical thinking, or applying logical solutions.
I interview a few "senior" folks a week. These have already been screened through 2 layers, which weeds out a bunch before I see the cream of the crop. I pass maybe 1 out of 10, and most are in their 30s and 40s, with several up to their 60s. No age bias here, if they know their material, I'll thumbs up them - last 2 that got thumbs up were most likely 60+, I am not allowed to ask. I had some 20-something that somehow slipped through (someone else answering for him earlier?) and couldn't answer even basic technical questions about what he claimed to have accomplished on his own resume. He's not unusual. These aren't just out of school people. They have worked for generally more than 2 companies over a period of years.
And those costs could be rather large, since a 40 min delay, on top of other delays, can push pilots past their 10 hour window.That means new pilots and crew. There's all sorts of funny rules regarding airlines and crews. And that increases the delays, which means more missed connections, and so on and so forth. It's not just 40 minutes. Mind you this is in checked baggage that's already gone through a scanner. What they really needed to do was just scan the bag again.
Not only that, but there'd be a group of people with axes to grind against Sony that would buy the disk, and return it daily (or more often) for new ones because "they don't work" for the entirety of the contractual period
And this is why I don't game on these systems, any of them. I own a Wii, but no internet connection, so no Wii store (for the Wii anyways). Same for my internet "capable" TV. Sorry, the HTPC (which I control) is the only thing that needs an internet connection. BD Player? Only have it because it came with the TV on special and I needed a smaller DVD player than the old monstrosity for the rare time we actually use a disk. Nope - no internet connection for that either. (That's 4 internet enabled devices, only one of which has a network connection, and that's one that I fully control)
The Simon looks like a brick with a monochrome LCD panel - probably nice, but low res, and not touch screen - it was 1993 after all. The P800 was a flip phone, with extremely limited functionality in comparison with an iphone or any modern smartphone. The OS XDA Flame came out after the announcement/demo of the iPhone. Regarding MP3 players, yes, there were MP3 players prior to Apple's ipod. Many, in fact. Now ask yourself why Apple took over the market with a higher priced device with a niche platform (recall the initial ipods were firewire - only common on macs) Thanks for playing.
All that said, I fully agree with the statement on the patent system. It is broken. Does it need fixing? Or should it just abide by the original limitations? (Hint - you couldn't patent artistic designs, general ideas, physical or natural elements/laws, business processes, etc)
There's a small flaw in your point. Samsung is defending against a patent threat by Ericsson; Samsung has never been the patent aggressor against any competitor; it has always defended by counter-suing.
There's a small flaw in your point. Apple never copied anyone's phone design. They are defending themselves against a blatantly copied phone that's infringing upon their potential marketshare, like any responsible company should do.
Actually purchased a Denon receiver via a dealer that got rid of some inventory in a hurry. They had an advertised price for a lower level receiver, you called them, and they stated "we're out of that one, but here's one 2 models up, we'll ship it to you for the same price" What a deal! Authorized dealer with a receiver at more than 50% off MSRP. They lost their right to sell online after that episode.
Because using my OS like a Fisher Price steering wheel is about like driving a formula 1 race car by moving wood blocks. Some things just are not meant for 3 year olds, other things are not meant for adults, at least not normally functioning adults.
Note the basic misunderstanding embedded in that last sentence: Turned off != Hibernated.
First, depends upon the hibernate mode - mine's set to not write to disk. Yes, that means if power is interrupted I get the joy of a cold boot. It also means there are no unintended items on disk, although for me that was a secondary consideration - 24+GBs was taking up more space than my OS and page file, which is set to be comically small. As for accessing a running systems random memory without hosing something - if they have that much skill to make the proper connections on a running non-persisted system and extract the keys from a fully ASLR system, you probably have bigger problems than I hope to ever have.
Larry Page is a dictator. A tyrant... but that's what we've conditioned our society to look for in a 'good' CEO.
Was Steve Jobs any different? Most of these CEOs sound like complete assholes (especially when you listen to them talk to or about other humans).
I really wish more CEOs would be like Carnegie or Gates. True models of men that more people really should emulate.
You forgot the sarcastic smiley at the end. Bill Gates? The man that oversaw stealing or otherwise abusing monopoly power in an effort to force his sub-par crap on the world? I don't have any specific history on Carnegie's CEO exploits that are positive or negative, only noting that he rose to prominence during a time where such as he were termed "Robber Barons". I will note one positive - he actually did something good with some of his wealth - he created libraries. He also, unlike Gates, did not believe that philanthropy was merely the giving away of large amounts of wealth, but targeted his giving to help people help themselves. I would argue that Gates is primarily dropping bandaids, and has yet to make a single meaningful "gift", but I could be wrong.
That's one dystopian future view, others are equally bleak - 1984 / Brave New World covered the lowering of the living standard of the average person to something at the time we could never imagine, now we can. Star Trek was utopian - I'm hoping for this one, but they certainly glossed over a few details, just that everything was hunky dory everywhere except where the Enterprise went. There are many many others, most are not good.
I've come to the conclusion that most people need some motivation in life, usually meeting a base need, to keep them from playing Russian roulette using random victims as "the player" or similarly unsavory activities. The main problem, as I see it, is crowding. We are crowded, people generally have desires to live in certain areas, or with certain features, and there's not enough of that for all that want it - a tenth of our current population might bring the demand down to a bearable level, a fiftieth might be more reasonable.
You don't need to be a 20 year old, nor have perfect eyesight. You do, however, need a larger TV, and generally a decent one. You also need to know what to look for, and not watch cartoons or animated features, although even they can show some of the horrors of lower res, low FPS effects.
For me, although I do have decent eyesight, I can't deal with CRTs with lower than 75Hz scan rates, back when that mattered. For LCD/LED TVs, 240Hz was the first scan rate that didn't give me ghosting headaches. This didn't deal with the other major issue with LCD/LED TVs: banding effects. This occurs due to the LCD being a square and butting up to an adjacent crystal, and having discrete color across the crystal. So in cases of gradually changing color tones, such as shading etc, you wind up with blocky bands. This is not to be confused with the staircase artifacts from bad encoding/over compression. Additionally there's the problem with shades of black in dark scenes, my last ditch effort on my current HDTV set will be to purchase a full colorimeter to attempt to properly calibrate the screen programmatically, although I believe this will help, I'm not holding my breath that it will actually "fix" the core issues with LCD/LED tech. So I'll try plasma next, and see if I can live with its tradeoffs.
Has Blu Ray been a flop? I've never done any research, but I've certainly never seen anything to indicate that (at least in the US).
Yes I would characterize it as a flop. It certainly didn't make the inroads that Sony hoped. They are suffering massively for their rather huge bet on BD, at least in part.
Hold up now, if I have an income from... where-ever, I could most certainly spend it all on people providing services to me.
Therein lies the problem - where is the income coming from?
And the unlimited scientists/artists sounds good, but as youtube has shown us, only a very very very few are capable as artists. The number for scientists are probably lower.
You need a better antenna, probably a much better antenna, and locate it higher. If you cannot do that, suboptimal antenna placement alone can cause all sorts of issues. I have an almost 2m rig in the attic, at a height of over 10m, and I'm on a hill. I get signal strengths no lower than 90% from about 25 channels, even 3 from a city 75 km away at a 40 degree angle from my primaries. Oh, and there's an entire suite of skyscrapers in between me and my primaries, which are roughly 40 km away. I tried the amplified rabbit ears, and other indoor antennas, and had extremely poor reception on the handful of channels I could receive.
Having problems with this myself at the moment. It seems that entire blocks (as in Class B blocks) are being listed partly as an effort to remove the ability of "normal" people to run mail servers and force people to services such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and Google. Or, you can pony up the extra money and buy your static business IP(s) and for 10 times the cost for the same service, be "approved". You have to pay to play, it appears.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, my adolescent work ethic was drilled into me @ college. Before that, it was a bit of a coast, as I think my earlier schooling was slightly ahead of the curve into becoming what schools today are - afraid of failing anyone. My first 3 elementary schools (we moved a bit) regularly failed and moved failing students into special ed classes if necessary. My last one didn't even have special ed classes, and current schools "mainstream" those problem students, to the detriment of all other students, IMNSHO.
As for the college remarks, there was a deep change in how students were taught as far as the graduates I interviewed which became apparent starting around 2000, IIRC. It's been a while. It went downhill rapidly, and has stayed pretty steady since about 2004 in (lack of) quality of interviewees. That doesn't mean we don't get an occasional diamond in the rough, but the average quality is bottom of the barrel, and their knowledge of even basic items is shockingly absent. This would be general knowledge of algorithms, data structures, and basic concepts of how computers work, among other things. Knowing how to write printfs or System.outs is of little interest to me as they are assumed.
So it's not a "gee we were great, look at how stupid they are" post, but rather a "WTF, where is this basic knowledge" post. I blame the colleges, students can only go so far beyond what they're given in general, and right now my perception is that colleges are not only failing to teach basic knowledge, but even worse, they are failing to teach analytical and logical thinking skills and investigative techniques.
1) way way back when the income tax was instituted, it was intended that the top tier of earners be the only ones that paid. only ones that paid. Not until the 1950s was the bracket lowered to include ordinary middle income earners.
2) until 1913 there was no income tax at all.
3) trickle down economics has worked like a champ - the flow of wealth has slowed to a trickle - take a look at the above link to see how the bottom 50%'s share of earnings compared to GDP dropped even in boom years while the top 1%'s earnings more than doubled. I think you've summed it up nicely - democracy cannot exist if the rich manipulate the system to increase their wealth at a direct cost to the masses.
And while we're talking GDP, realize that it is largely a meaningless number, since housing is included, and that's certainly not a good that can be exported. They are similar to roads. If you exclude housing, GDP is shrinking at a rather alarming rate.
The real bottom line is deficit spending. There should be none. We should be talking about reducing the debt, not having discussions about how we're going to borrow more money (effectively what the current debate on deficit spending is) The only way to stop it, based on obligations owed, is to raise taxes. Note, from above link, that corporation's tax revenues have declined rapidly over the years and they now pay a mere 1% compared to GDP. No wonder there'sa revenue shortfall.
There's an unmentioned elephant in the room - the entities that pay no federal revenue, and are the one group that the Constitution allows Congress to tax explicitly - the group that imports items into the country. Congress should start there in their efforts to raise revenue. Yes, it would increase the cost of goods, goods not made here that steal american jobs and that add nothing to the federal revenue, thus stealing from those remaining workers twice. Adding a 10-20% tax on goods entering the country would start to cover the federal revenue shortfall. A secondary benefit would be that it would stop the flow of jobs out of the country. Lastly, corporations that have been dodging taxes would start paying them again, directly, as a cost of doing business.
Oh no, so all those concalls (a couple a day at least) where I uttered that phrase wound up being manually inspected? There's a few FBI guys sleeping somewhere.
masochist?
Actually - my mistake. The "Exceptional generation", aka the "greatest generation" was the generation that fought in WWII, the one that lived through Great Depression, and they certainly had no handouts. The Baby Boomers are their children, by and large, and they are exceptional only in the gift-wrapped economic boom they received, making the American Dream possible for unprecedented numbers of them, and the exceptionally large consumption economy they created.
Good thing I'm not a boomer or I'd be the target of your vitriol. And while I'm not fond of boomers, you're being unfair:
Said exceptional generation seems (at least as far as I can tell from the history books I haven't read) to have earned their wealth primarily through plundering our country and running it in the ground, and whose main occupation currently seems to consist of trying their damnedest to pull the ladder up behind them by removing every single social program they used to get to where they are today, all the while yelling at us that we're stupid and lazy.
They had little to no social programs helping them. Social Security was signed into law in 1935 and covered the elderly and disabled, not the healthy and capable. What they did get was an unprecedented chance to manufacture for the world, which had a huge positive inflow of wealth into the US, along with a huge economic growth that has never been equaled nor most likely will it ever repeat itself as automation starts handling more and more labor intensive functions. That said, the boomers have been supremely unsympathetic to those following and had the nerve to tell us to just get a job, any job, and work hard, blah blah blah and we too could live the dream. It didn't work that way. Hard work just got you minimum wage, and you know how far that'll take you.
You are wrong on all counts. Company is smaller than 100 people. We are high risk. We pay as well as they come, but I don't interview lower level people anymore. I think I passed 1 out of over 100. I too have been at startups, and at larger companies both. I've played stock option roulette several times. I've experienced the same nonsense over the past 10 years interviewing people at startups.Younger people on the whole come off as holier than thou know it alls that when queried, really don't understand even why they chose to do what they did. They tend to not understand the fundamental basics of their own chosen languages.
So, in short, those people do exist, but your company is selecting them out. They want to change the world, and they can't do that becoming a cog in a giant machine.
I too would like to change the world. Guess what - only 1 in a billion gets that lucky, and that's pretty optimistic. Most companies want workers that will do what's needed by them, not some one that thinks he doesn't stink hot-shot that goes off and makes a spaghetti mess of things. I've seen lots of companies with those supposed young people fail. Many fall out of the programming market as well, which is probably a good thing.
I disagree on the "dumber and less capable" part. They're capabilities are different. I think the schools do a better job of teaching the kids to be organized and to think abstractly.
I disagree with every point you make above. They are dumber. They are less capable (unless playing video games with top notch hardware beating out those unfortunate enough to have slightly less capable hardware counts in your statement) The schools do a horrible job of teaching kids anything at this point. I swear we learned more in half the grades than current spoon-fed "graduates". And colleges? Since when is it the job of a college to graduate students versed in some corporations level 1 training program: just about any comp sci school these days only teaches 1 or 2 language syntaxes. Algorithms? What are those? Data structures? You mean like when I lean the 'A' against a 'D' to create a wall? And I'm 99% sure that what you call "abstract thinking" is nothing more than glazed eye day-dreaming. We won't even talk about pattern recognition, critical thinking, or applying logical solutions.
I interview a few "senior" folks a week. These have already been screened through 2 layers, which weeds out a bunch before I see the cream of the crop. I pass maybe 1 out of 10, and most are in their 30s and 40s, with several up to their 60s. No age bias here, if they know their material, I'll thumbs up them - last 2 that got thumbs up were most likely 60+, I am not allowed to ask. I had some 20-something that somehow slipped through (someone else answering for him earlier?) and couldn't answer even basic technical questions about what he claimed to have accomplished on his own resume. He's not unusual. These aren't just out of school people. They have worked for generally more than 2 companies over a period of years.
And those costs could be rather large, since a 40 min delay, on top of other delays, can push pilots past their 10 hour window.That means new pilots and crew. There's all sorts of funny rules regarding airlines and crews. And that increases the delays, which means more missed connections, and so on and so forth. It's not just 40 minutes. Mind you this is in checked baggage that's already gone through a scanner. What they really needed to do was just scan the bag again.
Not only that, but there'd be a group of people with axes to grind against Sony that would buy the disk, and return it daily (or more often) for new ones because "they don't work" for the entirety of the contractual period
And this is why I don't game on these systems, any of them. I own a Wii, but no internet connection, so no Wii store (for the Wii anyways). Same for my internet "capable" TV. Sorry, the HTPC (which I control) is the only thing that needs an internet connection. BD Player? Only have it because it came with the TV on special and I needed a smaller DVD player than the old monstrosity for the rare time we actually use a disk. Nope - no internet connection for that either. (That's 4 internet enabled devices, only one of which has a network connection, and that's one that I fully control)
The Simon looks like a brick with a monochrome LCD panel - probably nice, but low res, and not touch screen - it was 1993 after all. The P800 was a flip phone, with extremely limited functionality in comparison with an iphone or any modern smartphone. The OS XDA Flame came out after the announcement/demo of the iPhone. Regarding MP3 players, yes, there were MP3 players prior to Apple's ipod. Many, in fact. Now ask yourself why Apple took over the market with a higher priced device with a niche platform (recall the initial ipods were firewire - only common on macs) Thanks for playing.
All that said, I fully agree with the statement on the patent system. It is broken. Does it need fixing? Or should it just abide by the original limitations? (Hint - you couldn't patent artistic designs, general ideas, physical or natural elements/laws, business processes, etc)
There's a small flaw in your point. Samsung is defending against a patent threat by Ericsson; Samsung has never been the patent aggressor against any competitor; it has always defended by counter-suing.
There's a small flaw in your point. Apple never copied anyone's phone design. They are defending themselves against a blatantly copied phone that's infringing upon their potential marketshare, like any responsible company should do.
Actually purchased a Denon receiver via a dealer that got rid of some inventory in a hurry. They had an advertised price for a lower level receiver, you called them, and they stated "we're out of that one, but here's one 2 models up, we'll ship it to you for the same price" What a deal! Authorized dealer with a receiver at more than 50% off MSRP. They lost their right to sell online after that episode.
Profiling.
Because using my OS like a Fisher Price steering wheel is about like driving a formula 1 race car by moving wood blocks. Some things just are not meant for 3 year olds, other things are not meant for adults, at least not normally functioning adults.
Note the basic misunderstanding embedded in that last sentence: Turned off != Hibernated.
First, depends upon the hibernate mode - mine's set to not write to disk. Yes, that means if power is interrupted I get the joy of a cold boot. It also means there are no unintended items on disk, although for me that was a secondary consideration - 24+GBs was taking up more space than my OS and page file, which is set to be comically small. As for accessing a running systems random memory without hosing something - if they have that much skill to make the proper connections on a running non-persisted system and extract the keys from a fully ASLR system, you probably have bigger problems than I hope to ever have.
Larry Page is a dictator. A tyrant... but that's what we've conditioned our society to look for in a 'good' CEO.
Was Steve Jobs any different? Most of these CEOs sound like complete assholes (especially when you listen to them talk to or about other humans).
I really wish more CEOs would be like Carnegie or Gates. True models of men that more people really should emulate.
You forgot the sarcastic smiley at the end. Bill Gates? The man that oversaw stealing or otherwise abusing monopoly power in an effort to force his sub-par crap on the world? I don't have any specific history on Carnegie's CEO exploits that are positive or negative, only noting that he rose to prominence during a time where such as he were termed "Robber Barons". I will note one positive - he actually did something good with some of his wealth - he created libraries. He also, unlike Gates, did not believe that philanthropy was merely the giving away of large amounts of wealth, but targeted his giving to help people help themselves. I would argue that Gates is primarily dropping bandaids, and has yet to make a single meaningful "gift", but I could be wrong.
That's one dystopian future view, others are equally bleak - 1984 / Brave New World covered the lowering of the living standard of the average person to something at the time we could never imagine, now we can. Star Trek was utopian - I'm hoping for this one, but they certainly glossed over a few details, just that everything was hunky dory everywhere except where the Enterprise went. There are many many others, most are not good.
I've come to the conclusion that most people need some motivation in life, usually meeting a base need, to keep them from playing Russian roulette using random victims as "the player" or similarly unsavory activities. The main problem, as I see it, is crowding. We are crowded, people generally have desires to live in certain areas, or with certain features, and there's not enough of that for all that want it - a tenth of our current population might bring the demand down to a bearable level, a fiftieth might be more reasonable.
You don't need to be a 20 year old, nor have perfect eyesight. You do, however, need a larger TV, and generally a decent one. You also need to know what to look for, and not watch cartoons or animated features, although even they can show some of the horrors of lower res, low FPS effects.
For me, although I do have decent eyesight, I can't deal with CRTs with lower than 75Hz scan rates, back when that mattered. For LCD/LED TVs, 240Hz was the first scan rate that didn't give me ghosting headaches. This didn't deal with the other major issue with LCD/LED TVs: banding effects. This occurs due to the LCD being a square and butting up to an adjacent crystal, and having discrete color across the crystal. So in cases of gradually changing color tones, such as shading etc, you wind up with blocky bands. This is not to be confused with the staircase artifacts from bad encoding/over compression. Additionally there's the problem with shades of black in dark scenes, my last ditch effort on my current HDTV set will be to purchase a full colorimeter to attempt to properly calibrate the screen programmatically, although I believe this will help, I'm not holding my breath that it will actually "fix" the core issues with LCD/LED tech. So I'll try plasma next, and see if I can live with its tradeoffs.
The whole reason Blu Ray has been a flop
Has Blu Ray been a flop? I've never done any research, but I've certainly never seen anything to indicate that (at least in the US).
Yes I would characterize it as a flop. It certainly didn't make the inroads that Sony hoped. They are suffering massively for their rather huge bet on BD, at least in part.
A service economy can only employ so many
Hold up now, if I have an income from... where-ever, I could most certainly spend it all on people providing services to me.
Therein lies the problem - where is the income coming from?
And the unlimited scientists/artists sounds good, but as youtube has shown us, only a very very very few are capable as artists. The number for scientists are probably lower.
Intelligent life on earth?!?! Where?
Apparently not where you are.
You need a better antenna, probably a much better antenna, and locate it higher. If you cannot do that, suboptimal antenna placement alone can cause all sorts of issues. I have an almost 2m rig in the attic, at a height of over 10m, and I'm on a hill. I get signal strengths no lower than 90% from about 25 channels, even 3 from a city 75 km away at a 40 degree angle from my primaries. Oh, and there's an entire suite of skyscrapers in between me and my primaries, which are roughly 40 km away. I tried the amplified rabbit ears, and other indoor antennas, and had extremely poor reception on the handful of channels I could receive.
Having problems with this myself at the moment. It seems that entire blocks (as in Class B blocks) are being listed partly as an effort to remove the ability of "normal" people to run mail servers and force people to services such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and Google. Or, you can pony up the extra money and buy your static business IP(s) and for 10 times the cost for the same service, be "approved". You have to pay to play, it appears.