No, cheaper is bad. Cheaper means the actual work preformed by raw resource workers, manufacturing workers, distributors, delivery personnell, sales associates etc. is itself valued as something cheap, which translates directly into exploitively low wages, inhuman/unsafe working conditions, and corrupt management.
We've been over that common luddite argument, and it is completely invalid.
They have two words for "cheap", billig and guenstig. Now "guenstig" connotes something having a good value, the price may be relatively low, but when one purchases some good or service which is seen as "guenstig" they don't have the feeling of getting a "steal", but rather a good deal.
We have the same connotation here, we just don't use it that often; it's just the word "value."
Any time you save a penny on productive work, the rest of society has to pick up the tab and pay the bill.
If this is really the way you feel, then throw out your computer and hire one instead. Literally, the word Computer used to be a profession that an actual person had. Throw out your touch tone phone too, because automated circuit switching used to be done by operators at switchboards. Just communicate via letter courier, otherwise you're taking away jobs from the post office. Make sure to hire somebody to write it for you, don't want to cheat them out of a wage.
In fact, do your kidneys work? Probably should drink anti-freeze so that they stop working so that high paid doctors and nurses aren't cheated out of their jobs operating a dialysis clinic.
Or you could actually realize that every time we make these kinds of advancements, sure we get frictional unemployment, but ultimately the economy grows. The economy couldn't possibly grow to the scale it is now without automating or at least simplifying the hell out of various tasks that somebody used to do manually. Silly luddites think automation will lead to a dystopia, but instead what always happens is we see unprecedented economic growth.
Cheaper isn't bad, cheaper is typically good in fact. Cheaper means more people can afford it, and often without sacrificing quality. During the 80's, 55" TVs were something only the super rich had. Now you buy them at wal-mart for $800, and they make the ones from the 80's look like complete crap, are much smaller and lighter, and make your electricity bill lower.
The poor become wealthier this way as a matter of fact. Remember that money isn't wealth. That said, nice things being cheaper makes it easier to acquire wealth.
That aside, I somehow doubt the revised ignition switches that correct the problem are more expensive (perhaps pennies worth of metal at best,) rather the original ones had a design oversight that the engineers didn't catch early on, otherwise they would have gone with the design they now have. I don't think it's morally reprehensible to make these kinds of mistakes; the engineers are humans, not machines. The problem would come from knowing that it leads to a disaster and then doing nothing about it. I don't think it occurred to the engineers that it would lead to a disaster (they don't anticipate anybody taking any action that could cause them to cut the engine while driving.)
Really your argument is as silly as saying "Phone manufacturers should stick with the multitude of 3" screens that came before our current 4" ones. Oh and get off my lawn."
I know you're trolling, but (hear me out on this one) this is actually true.
I don't know about anybody else, but I don't use POTS. I haven't used it in over 6 years. In fact, the house I most recently moved into was missing the POTS equipment at the demarc (the little plastic box is empty with a pair of obviously torn wires leading up to it.) I didn't care though because I don't ever plan on subscribing, and whatever copper thief made off with it can have it to feed his crack habit for another 5 minutes.
I fully imagine I'm not alone and that a lot of other people are in the same boat. That said, I think it is wholly unreasonable for the government to mandate that telecoms maintain an aging system that nobody save for a small subset of individuals even wants any more. Eventually that comes out of your bill somewhere if you happen to subscribe to another service that these companies offer, so effectively it is a tax on you for something you don't even care about and doesn't even affect you in any way. In fact one of the few people who might use it would be the crackhead who stole my POTS switch, but even he has cheaper options available through wireless, so not even he needs it.
Is it good for America to do away with obsolete systems that we don't use anymore? I'd say yes.
Having multiple redundant links is a good thing. Tell you what, we'll do it your way, but only after three competing companies have each laid their own cable provided that all three of them are running fiber optics from end to end.
Right now we're doing it your way, and the cable company gets to say "Oh gee look, I'm already here, guess nobody else can build now so I get to dictate terms to the market. Thank you mr politician, here's your bribe money."
You do realize though that modern city developments use conduit right? No more trenching, we just run cables inside of an existing pipe that can fit a lot more wires than what a single company would be interested in deploying anyways.
Well I'm not really much of a collector to be honest, but different people have different priorities depending on their interests. For example, I'm a big fan of Penn and Teller, and I know that those guys like to collect historically significant magician memorabilia (for example, Teller owns one of Harry Houdini's straight jackets.)
Dotcom says he has an avid interest in WWII, and already owns several WWII artifacts, such as items once belonging to Churchill and Stalin, so even by your argument he already had things higher on his priority list. However your argument doesn't really apply in this case; items like that don't just go for sale on the open market whenever, their current owner has to want to relinquish them first. That said, he happened to catch wind that it was being auctioned away, so he bid on it. If he didn't bid on it because he had a higher priority, he would have surely missed it -- possibly for good.
I'm pretty sure he knows why some people say he shouldn't own it, but he doesn't care, nor should he. It's WWII memorabilia to him, nothing more.
You telling him to not own a copy of Mein Kampf is every bit as absurd as Pat Robertson telling Richard Simmons the error of his ways. Richard Simmons might be a bit fruity and annoying, but he isn't about to start the gay version of the third Reich, and in fact is rather harmless.
The most important thing is that it is a very pivotal moment in history. Believe it or not, Nazi's actually inadvertently promoted existentialism by showing just how dangerous absolutes are. Besides, as much as I hate the Nazi's, I think some of the stuff they did was pretty neat, like that stealth jet they created. People today love the marvel of American military combat systems, not necessarily for what they do, but the technology behind them. The Nazi's were very good at that in their own way for their time. However that doesn't mean that we go around preaching Fascism.
I've read parts of Mein Kampf, and it's actually a pretty boring book. I was thinking it might offer insight on to how he managed to rally so many people against democracy and actively supporting a dictatorship, but it really doesn't. I think what did that is probably Hitler's charisma as a speaker, which got people into his book and into his ideology, but I don't think the book sold people on the ideology. It's probably more analogous to the way that Scientologists make the book Dianetics sell really well even though it's actually a very shitty book; they just buy more copies than they need and give them away because they like Scientology itself rather than Dianetics.
However that said, I wouldn't mind having that particular copy of Mein Kampf. Not even for the purposes of selling it, just for having it because of its historical significance.
Your strawman depends on no other factors being involved.
How exactly is that a strawman? I didn't attack an argument that they didn't make. Rather, what I did was invoke questions about the relevance of this data; in other words, if we pulled the cell phone out of the equation, would there be 25% fewer accidents? I'd say that's a negative. I can't prove a negative of course, however I can say that laws restricting cell phone use while driving haven't had any positive impact on reducing the number of accidents.
Not only that, but I specifically brought up the question of other factors coming into play. I swear you didn't even read my post -- look at my last sentence in the fourth paragraph -- you can read, right?
The figures aren't sensationalist when they're true.
Very very false. They are sensationalist, and true. Sensationalism isn't giving false information, rather sensationalism is over-hyping minor details or insignificant facts as if they tell a bigger narrative. Giving false information is just lying, and isn't sensationalism. I didn't accuse them of lying.
In fact you might want to go get a dictionary as you've clearly misunderstood two words that you've used (strawman and sensationalism.)
Here's a question: Would the black box tell you how many of these accidents would have happened even if there was no cell phone involved? If so, let's see it. (I honestly don't know.)
As it is, this one in four figure is useless, and all it does is add to the fire for people who just like to bitch about other people using cell phones (I know people who bitch about other people using cell phones while walking or even sitting, which poses no harm to anybody.)
Why is it useless? Well, today we happen to have a lot more cell phones around than we used to, namely because cell phone services are both A) more popular B) much cheaper than they used to be. More people have and use phones, so more people are going to be doing other things with them while they use them. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. You're equally well off in saying that talking on a cell phone is more likely to cause you to get outside for some fresh air if you happen to walk outside while talking on a cell phone.
Here's the $64 question: If a quarter of accidents happen to occur while somebody is using a cell phone, does that also mean that accidents are up 25% above when nobody had cell phones? Because I never heard that figure anywhere in here. Even if that is in there, there could be other factors coming into play, i.e. more cars being on the road now than there were then.
Until that is determined, sensationalist figures like these are more harmful than helpful. Why? Because stupid politicians make their careers off of adding new laws that get more people put into jail and/or fined without actually providing any benefit to anybody other than satisfying people who just can't stand the sight of seeing somebody else having a conversation that they aren't a part of.
I do like how Microsoft has gotten all lovey dovey with Apple now that Android has basically pulled the platform war out from underneath both companies.
I knew that Apple would turn into Microsoft if they had the chance back when slashdot used to praise Apple for being "open" with OS 10 (Yep, slashdot used to love apple until about 2006ish.)
Of course, Android isn't perfect either, but I like how it gives you options that the competition would never EVER consider allowing you to have.
One thing I keep hearing from the MS fans (yes, they very much exist) is how great it is to have Office for free with Windows RT (Yep, that dead bastardized OS still has fans.) They insist that it is the killer mobile app that makes those devices (windows phone, surface) worth having. Invariably you run into one problem with that statement though: Nobody is buying either of them. If this is really such a killer app, then why isn't it flying off of shelves? I think I know the answer to that: Nobody needs office suites anymore.
Consider these:
Word: How often do you write formal letters anymore to the point that you MUST have Word? Usually it's just an email, sms, or a tweet if you're the social network type. None of those need or even expect fancy formatting, which is what Word is all about. In fact, in those settings, such things are often shunned because they take away from brevity. But suppose you do on occasion need to write a formal letter; you probably aren't going to do fancy formatting on a mobile device. Instead you're going to draft your letter while the thoughts are in your head on an app like evernote, maybe email it to yourself, and then copy and paste it into Word on a desktop system where you'll do all of that fancy shit. You certainly won't write even a half decent resume on a mobile device.
PowerPoint: I don't think I need to explain the problems with creating presentations on mobile devices (kind of annoying to pull up your images and other whatnots and then scale and position them properly using just your fingers, even with the best of NUIs.) But let's set aside that entirely. Look at how much a lot of organizations now hate powerpoint. The DoD says it's making its servicemembers dumber and wants to get rid of it entirely. Certain educational institutes are preferring the old (well, kind of old) whiteboard again.
Excel: Excel is perhaps one of the most useful components of office. Problem is, MS Office suffers a bit from the reverse of the Pareto Principle: 80% of its users only use 20% of its features. This is especially true for Excel where you don't use a whole lot of its more advanced features. That said, MS Excel is overkill (and expensive, I believe $80 buys you a license for ONE PC, and it cannot ever be transferred to another PC once installed.) But even for the free RT/WP versions, the interface actually isn't that well designed compared to other spreadsheets for mobile devices. In my experience, quickoffice has perhaps the best touch NUI for this. Best of all, it costs nothing.
TL;DR, I don't think MS Office, or even LibreOffice or any other office suite, is really needed anymore. I only have it installed because some of my classes at school require me to, but I noticed that when I'm not doing these assignments, I have only used it to create my resume.
The thing is, they're in a bit of a sticky situation.
- If Mozilla lets him go, they'll get backlash from libertarians, conservatives, and tea party types. The civil libertarians aren't (typically) anti-gay, but they generally don't respond well to calls for boycotts over something somebody said as their affinity for freedom of expression takes precedence. - If Mozilla keeps him, they'll get backlash from the gay lobby (for lack of a better term.)
Neither is a particularly good thing to have, though (and here's where the irony is) staying their existing course would be safest *if* the gay lobby does an all out assault on this one. Recall chic-fil-a who actually saw record revenues from backlash during that incident. Similar things have also happened to other businesses who have snubbed their nose at the gay lobby; the only ones that don't continue are the ones that succumb to e.g. the death threats. This sort of plays into the theory of there being no such thing as bad publicity, which tends to be true in most cases.
Ironically, if the gay lobby just does a quiet boycott (i.e. they switch browsers without any fanfare) then they might actually succeed.
As for me, I really like the Firefox browser, I feel it is a lot more flexible, even if a tad buggy compared to chrome, and IE is a joke. One thing's for sure in any case: It's nice having a choice between two really good browsers. I feel the same way about Linux Mint, by the way, whose founder made a bunch of anti-semitic remarks (I myself believe Israel is in the right on that one.) I also loved the movie Ender's Game; really well done, and it didn't contain any gay related themes in it, either for or against.
This may be the case with some companies, but it's not that common. The smartphone for example has and is still in the process of replacing numerous jobs, and it has all of these needs, yet it doesn't ask anything of you. Quite the opposite in fact, the developers are always trying to figure out new things that it can do for you.
But it doesn't necessarily have to have all of these needs. A smartphone poses a big security risk, but a floor scrubber poses a very small one.
Another place to look at is 3d printing, which in spite of recent advancements is still very finicky and very much hobbyist quality, yet (most of at least) the companies that make 3d printers don't stick similar terms on you. And also again, a job replacing technology.
In fact, dare I say there isn't any technology out there that doesn't kill some kind of job. Everything from a safety razor (sorry daily visit to the barber) to a digital spreadsheet (sorry former function of the accounting profession.)
The end result is that these things no longer be something that are just for rich people, instead everybody has access to it. Far from creating more poor, it adds to the wealth of the poor by giving them nice things.
If the price difference was that close, I think the robot still wins:
- It won't ever ask for a raise, and likewise raising the minimum wage rate doesn't affect it. - It isn't subject to OSHA. - If it does its job poorly, it won't balk at being replaced, and nobody will care if you replace it. - It won't strike. - It doesn't ever call in sick. - It doesn't need vacation time. - It is always at work and on time.
I wouldn't fret over it though. There are always professions being replaced by technology; always have and always will be. A Computer for example used to be a job title. We still haven't automated the first and second oldest professions though.
I took three. I did 90 credits at Mesa Community College, who operates a very solid Cisco Network Academy affiliate, and 30 credits at Northern Arizona University for my bachelors in IT Management. Both are public colleges and accredited. It's cheap because you get the discount community college rates for 90 credits, and then only have to do the core credits for the university portion (skipping all of the fluff such as liberal arts, because they recognize that you already did the fluff at community college; so why repeat it?)
Zero student debt, in fact my costs were almost non-existent due to FAFSA and other grants issued by the schools themselves (which were based on FAFSA results but funded separately.)
Trade unionism is what workers do when the law is too friendly to employers.
Regardless, you can't work for a budding company and expect to have better working conditions than everybody else who works there (even its founders.) It's just very unrealistic, and if the law required that among these firms then they'd just find some place else to do it instead. That is what would result in the Detroit situation.
In Detroit it wasn't so much about automakers leaving as it was about new automakers wanting nothing to do with it, and then existing ones needing to expand, and after they expand they find that their Detroit facilities are performing poorly on their outputs due to featherbedding, so they eventually close up; the ones that don't close go belly up instead because they fail to compete. No matter which way it happens, the result is the same. You just can't have labor laws that make it impossible for a business to compete.
Forcing everybody to the same labor standards isn't a solution either, namely because not everybody wants the same labor standards. Cultural differences easily influence this, for example the French basically look at even Google employees as slave laborers even when most Google employees really enjoy working there. And pretty much all Americans look at the Japanese and Koreans the same way. In addition to that, forcing reduced labor causes bad economic problems (and is the key reason why France's economy sucks bad compared to its neighbors; see the "lump of labor fallacy" on sites like wikipedia for a full rundown of why.)
The thing I'm trying to see in this is, how does the supposed overworked startup tech worker differ from the founders and/or management in the same company? Starting a new business generally isn't easy, and generally involves you putting a lot of time and work into it with a good chance that you'll see zero return and a loss of your own investment.
Likewise, if you're working for such a person who is in such a situation, you're likely to inherit that situation for as long as you work there or until the firm becomes profitable. This really isn't the time or place for organized labor, which could very well nip a startup in the bud.
Given that Silicon Valley is mostly what it is due to its startups: If labor laws become too problematic, then Silicon Valley becomes Detroit (and people like Michael Moore will blame capitalism.)
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So instead of paying for something you don't use, you pay for something you do use?
No, cheaper is bad. Cheaper means the actual work preformed by raw resource workers, manufacturing workers, distributors, delivery personnell, sales associates etc. is itself valued as something cheap, which translates directly into exploitively low wages, inhuman/unsafe working conditions, and corrupt management.
We've been over that common luddite argument, and it is completely invalid.
They have two words for "cheap", billig and guenstig. Now "guenstig" connotes something having a good value, the price may be relatively low, but when one purchases some good or service which is seen as "guenstig" they don't have the feeling of getting a "steal", but rather a good deal.
We have the same connotation here, we just don't use it that often; it's just the word "value."
Any time you save a penny on productive work, the rest of society has to pick up the tab and pay the bill.
If this is really the way you feel, then throw out your computer and hire one instead. Literally, the word Computer used to be a profession that an actual person had. Throw out your touch tone phone too, because automated circuit switching used to be done by operators at switchboards. Just communicate via letter courier, otherwise you're taking away jobs from the post office. Make sure to hire somebody to write it for you, don't want to cheat them out of a wage.
In fact, do your kidneys work? Probably should drink anti-freeze so that they stop working so that high paid doctors and nurses aren't cheated out of their jobs operating a dialysis clinic.
Or you could actually realize that every time we make these kinds of advancements, sure we get frictional unemployment, but ultimately the economy grows. The economy couldn't possibly grow to the scale it is now without automating or at least simplifying the hell out of various tasks that somebody used to do manually. Silly luddites think automation will lead to a dystopia, but instead what always happens is we see unprecedented economic growth.
Cheaper isn't bad, cheaper is typically good in fact. Cheaper means more people can afford it, and often without sacrificing quality. During the 80's, 55" TVs were something only the super rich had. Now you buy them at wal-mart for $800, and they make the ones from the 80's look like complete crap, are much smaller and lighter, and make your electricity bill lower.
The poor become wealthier this way as a matter of fact. Remember that money isn't wealth. That said, nice things being cheaper makes it easier to acquire wealth.
That aside, I somehow doubt the revised ignition switches that correct the problem are more expensive (perhaps pennies worth of metal at best,) rather the original ones had a design oversight that the engineers didn't catch early on, otherwise they would have gone with the design they now have. I don't think it's morally reprehensible to make these kinds of mistakes; the engineers are humans, not machines. The problem would come from knowing that it leads to a disaster and then doing nothing about it. I don't think it occurred to the engineers that it would lead to a disaster (they don't anticipate anybody taking any action that could cause them to cut the engine while driving.)
Really your argument is as silly as saying "Phone manufacturers should stick with the multitude of 3" screens that came before our current 4" ones. Oh and get off my lawn."
I know you're trolling, but (hear me out on this one) this is actually true.
I don't know about anybody else, but I don't use POTS. I haven't used it in over 6 years. In fact, the house I most recently moved into was missing the POTS equipment at the demarc (the little plastic box is empty with a pair of obviously torn wires leading up to it.) I didn't care though because I don't ever plan on subscribing, and whatever copper thief made off with it can have it to feed his crack habit for another 5 minutes.
I fully imagine I'm not alone and that a lot of other people are in the same boat. That said, I think it is wholly unreasonable for the government to mandate that telecoms maintain an aging system that nobody save for a small subset of individuals even wants any more. Eventually that comes out of your bill somewhere if you happen to subscribe to another service that these companies offer, so effectively it is a tax on you for something you don't even care about and doesn't even affect you in any way. In fact one of the few people who might use it would be the crackhead who stole my POTS switch, but even he has cheaper options available through wireless, so not even he needs it.
Is it good for America to do away with obsolete systems that we don't use anymore? I'd say yes.
Having multiple redundant links is a good thing. Tell you what, we'll do it your way, but only after three competing companies have each laid their own cable provided that all three of them are running fiber optics from end to end.
Right now we're doing it your way, and the cable company gets to say "Oh gee look, I'm already here, guess nobody else can build now so I get to dictate terms to the market. Thank you mr politician, here's your bribe money."
You do realize though that modern city developments use conduit right? No more trenching, we just run cables inside of an existing pipe that can fit a lot more wires than what a single company would be interested in deploying anyways.
Weird or not I still choose death by snoo snoo.
Well everybody is weird in their own way. For example I'm one of those weird guys that thinks tall amazonian chicks are hot.
Well I'm not really much of a collector to be honest, but different people have different priorities depending on their interests. For example, I'm a big fan of Penn and Teller, and I know that those guys like to collect historically significant magician memorabilia (for example, Teller owns one of Harry Houdini's straight jackets.)
Dotcom says he has an avid interest in WWII, and already owns several WWII artifacts, such as items once belonging to Churchill and Stalin, so even by your argument he already had things higher on his priority list. However your argument doesn't really apply in this case; items like that don't just go for sale on the open market whenever, their current owner has to want to relinquish them first. That said, he happened to catch wind that it was being auctioned away, so he bid on it. If he didn't bid on it because he had a higher priority, he would have surely missed it -- possibly for good.
I'm pretty sure he knows why some people say he shouldn't own it, but he doesn't care, nor should he. It's WWII memorabilia to him, nothing more.
You telling him to not own a copy of Mein Kampf is every bit as absurd as Pat Robertson telling Richard Simmons the error of his ways. Richard Simmons might be a bit fruity and annoying, but he isn't about to start the gay version of the third Reich, and in fact is rather harmless.
The most important thing is that it is a very pivotal moment in history. Believe it or not, Nazi's actually inadvertently promoted existentialism by showing just how dangerous absolutes are. Besides, as much as I hate the Nazi's, I think some of the stuff they did was pretty neat, like that stealth jet they created. People today love the marvel of American military combat systems, not necessarily for what they do, but the technology behind them. The Nazi's were very good at that in their own way for their time. However that doesn't mean that we go around preaching Fascism.
I've read parts of Mein Kampf, and it's actually a pretty boring book. I was thinking it might offer insight on to how he managed to rally so many people against democracy and actively supporting a dictatorship, but it really doesn't. I think what did that is probably Hitler's charisma as a speaker, which got people into his book and into his ideology, but I don't think the book sold people on the ideology. It's probably more analogous to the way that Scientologists make the book Dianetics sell really well even though it's actually a very shitty book; they just buy more copies than they need and give them away because they like Scientology itself rather than Dianetics.
However that said, I wouldn't mind having that particular copy of Mein Kampf. Not even for the purposes of selling it, just for having it because of its historical significance.
Given the type of parties I've heard he throws, I figure he might call it the "Coke and Sex Party"
Your strawman depends on no other factors being involved.
How exactly is that a strawman? I didn't attack an argument that they didn't make. Rather, what I did was invoke questions about the relevance of this data; in other words, if we pulled the cell phone out of the equation, would there be 25% fewer accidents? I'd say that's a negative. I can't prove a negative of course, however I can say that laws restricting cell phone use while driving haven't had any positive impact on reducing the number of accidents.
Not only that, but I specifically brought up the question of other factors coming into play. I swear you didn't even read my post -- look at my last sentence in the fourth paragraph -- you can read, right?
The figures aren't sensationalist when they're true.
Very very false. They are sensationalist, and true. Sensationalism isn't giving false information, rather sensationalism is over-hyping minor details or insignificant facts as if they tell a bigger narrative. Giving false information is just lying, and isn't sensationalism. I didn't accuse them of lying.
In fact you might want to go get a dictionary as you've clearly misunderstood two words that you've used (strawman and sensationalism.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I really don't think a cell phone is any more dangerous than any of these. The only problem here is complainers.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
IMO roll out the self driving cars and be done with it.
Here's a question: Would the black box tell you how many of these accidents would have happened even if there was no cell phone involved? If so, let's see it. (I honestly don't know.)
As it is, this one in four figure is useless, and all it does is add to the fire for people who just like to bitch about other people using cell phones (I know people who bitch about other people using cell phones while walking or even sitting, which poses no harm to anybody.)
Why is it useless? Well, today we happen to have a lot more cell phones around than we used to, namely because cell phone services are both A) more popular B) much cheaper than they used to be. More people have and use phones, so more people are going to be doing other things with them while they use them. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. You're equally well off in saying that talking on a cell phone is more likely to cause you to get outside for some fresh air if you happen to walk outside while talking on a cell phone.
Here's the $64 question: If a quarter of accidents happen to occur while somebody is using a cell phone, does that also mean that accidents are up 25% above when nobody had cell phones? Because I never heard that figure anywhere in here. Even if that is in there, there could be other factors coming into play, i.e. more cars being on the road now than there were then.
Until that is determined, sensationalist figures like these are more harmful than helpful. Why? Because stupid politicians make their careers off of adding new laws that get more people put into jail and/or fined without actually providing any benefit to anybody other than satisfying people who just can't stand the sight of seeing somebody else having a conversation that they aren't a part of.
I do like how Microsoft has gotten all lovey dovey with Apple now that Android has basically pulled the platform war out from underneath both companies.
I knew that Apple would turn into Microsoft if they had the chance back when slashdot used to praise Apple for being "open" with OS 10 (Yep, slashdot used to love apple until about 2006ish.)
Of course, Android isn't perfect either, but I like how it gives you options that the competition would never EVER consider allowing you to have.
Is it really even needed for that though?
One thing I keep hearing from the MS fans (yes, they very much exist) is how great it is to have Office for free with Windows RT (Yep, that dead bastardized OS still has fans.) They insist that it is the killer mobile app that makes those devices (windows phone, surface) worth having. Invariably you run into one problem with that statement though: Nobody is buying either of them. If this is really such a killer app, then why isn't it flying off of shelves? I think I know the answer to that: Nobody needs office suites anymore.
Consider these:
Word: How often do you write formal letters anymore to the point that you MUST have Word? Usually it's just an email, sms, or a tweet if you're the social network type. None of those need or even expect fancy formatting, which is what Word is all about. In fact, in those settings, such things are often shunned because they take away from brevity. But suppose you do on occasion need to write a formal letter; you probably aren't going to do fancy formatting on a mobile device. Instead you're going to draft your letter while the thoughts are in your head on an app like evernote, maybe email it to yourself, and then copy and paste it into Word on a desktop system where you'll do all of that fancy shit. You certainly won't write even a half decent resume on a mobile device.
PowerPoint: I don't think I need to explain the problems with creating presentations on mobile devices (kind of annoying to pull up your images and other whatnots and then scale and position them properly using just your fingers, even with the best of NUIs.) But let's set aside that entirely. Look at how much a lot of organizations now hate powerpoint. The DoD says it's making its servicemembers dumber and wants to get rid of it entirely. Certain educational institutes are preferring the old (well, kind of old) whiteboard again.
Excel: Excel is perhaps one of the most useful components of office. Problem is, MS Office suffers a bit from the reverse of the Pareto Principle: 80% of its users only use 20% of its features. This is especially true for Excel where you don't use a whole lot of its more advanced features. That said, MS Excel is overkill (and expensive, I believe $80 buys you a license for ONE PC, and it cannot ever be transferred to another PC once installed.) But even for the free RT/WP versions, the interface actually isn't that well designed compared to other spreadsheets for mobile devices. In my experience, quickoffice has perhaps the best touch NUI for this. Best of all, it costs nothing.
TL;DR, I don't think MS Office, or even LibreOffice or any other office suite, is really needed anymore. I only have it installed because some of my classes at school require me to, but I noticed that when I'm not doing these assignments, I have only used it to create my resume.
The thing is, they're in a bit of a sticky situation.
- If Mozilla lets him go, they'll get backlash from libertarians, conservatives, and tea party types. The civil libertarians aren't (typically) anti-gay, but they generally don't respond well to calls for boycotts over something somebody said as their affinity for freedom of expression takes precedence.
- If Mozilla keeps him, they'll get backlash from the gay lobby (for lack of a better term.)
Neither is a particularly good thing to have, though (and here's where the irony is) staying their existing course would be safest *if* the gay lobby does an all out assault on this one. Recall chic-fil-a who actually saw record revenues from backlash during that incident. Similar things have also happened to other businesses who have snubbed their nose at the gay lobby; the only ones that don't continue are the ones that succumb to e.g. the death threats. This sort of plays into the theory of there being no such thing as bad publicity, which tends to be true in most cases.
Ironically, if the gay lobby just does a quiet boycott (i.e. they switch browsers without any fanfare) then they might actually succeed.
As for me, I really like the Firefox browser, I feel it is a lot more flexible, even if a tad buggy compared to chrome, and IE is a joke. One thing's for sure in any case: It's nice having a choice between two really good browsers. I feel the same way about Linux Mint, by the way, whose founder made a bunch of anti-semitic remarks (I myself believe Israel is in the right on that one.) I also loved the movie Ender's Game; really well done, and it didn't contain any gay related themes in it, either for or against.
This may be the case with some companies, but it's not that common. The smartphone for example has and is still in the process of replacing numerous jobs, and it has all of these needs, yet it doesn't ask anything of you. Quite the opposite in fact, the developers are always trying to figure out new things that it can do for you.
But it doesn't necessarily have to have all of these needs. A smartphone poses a big security risk, but a floor scrubber poses a very small one.
Another place to look at is 3d printing, which in spite of recent advancements is still very finicky and very much hobbyist quality, yet (most of at least) the companies that make 3d printers don't stick similar terms on you. And also again, a job replacing technology.
In fact, dare I say there isn't any technology out there that doesn't kill some kind of job. Everything from a safety razor (sorry daily visit to the barber) to a digital spreadsheet (sorry former function of the accounting profession.)
The end result is that these things no longer be something that are just for rich people, instead everybody has access to it. Far from creating more poor, it adds to the wealth of the poor by giving them nice things.
Corporations and profit are more important than the individual. You exist to serve them.
I'd say it's more analogous to the bacteria in your gut and intestines. They don't exist to serve you, but in serving themselves they benefit you.
That's what you call a symbiotic relationship, and to be honest I don't have a problem with it. Capitalism isn't failing any time soon.
If the price difference was that close, I think the robot still wins:
- It won't ever ask for a raise, and likewise raising the minimum wage rate doesn't affect it.
- It isn't subject to OSHA.
- If it does its job poorly, it won't balk at being replaced, and nobody will care if you replace it.
- It won't strike.
- It doesn't ever call in sick.
- It doesn't need vacation time.
- It is always at work and on time.
I wouldn't fret over it though. There are always professions being replaced by technology; always have and always will be. A Computer for example used to be a job title. We still haven't automated the first and second oldest professions though.
I took three. I did 90 credits at Mesa Community College, who operates a very solid Cisco Network Academy affiliate, and 30 credits at Northern Arizona University for my bachelors in IT Management. Both are public colleges and accredited. It's cheap because you get the discount community college rates for 90 credits, and then only have to do the core credits for the university portion (skipping all of the fluff such as liberal arts, because they recognize that you already did the fluff at community college; so why repeat it?)
Zero student debt, in fact my costs were almost non-existent due to FAFSA and other grants issued by the schools themselves (which were based on FAFSA results but funded separately.)
I wouldn't identify Adam Carolla as a conservative, more as a libertarian along the same vein as Penn Jillette.
Perhaps watching faked facial expressions on TV and whatnot has dulled our ability to distinguish them?
Trade unionism is what workers do when the law is too friendly to employers.
Regardless, you can't work for a budding company and expect to have better working conditions than everybody else who works there (even its founders.) It's just very unrealistic, and if the law required that among these firms then they'd just find some place else to do it instead. That is what would result in the Detroit situation.
In Detroit it wasn't so much about automakers leaving as it was about new automakers wanting nothing to do with it, and then existing ones needing to expand, and after they expand they find that their Detroit facilities are performing poorly on their outputs due to featherbedding, so they eventually close up; the ones that don't close go belly up instead because they fail to compete. No matter which way it happens, the result is the same. You just can't have labor laws that make it impossible for a business to compete.
Forcing everybody to the same labor standards isn't a solution either, namely because not everybody wants the same labor standards. Cultural differences easily influence this, for example the French basically look at even Google employees as slave laborers even when most Google employees really enjoy working there. And pretty much all Americans look at the Japanese and Koreans the same way. In addition to that, forcing reduced labor causes bad economic problems (and is the key reason why France's economy sucks bad compared to its neighbors; see the "lump of labor fallacy" on sites like wikipedia for a full rundown of why.)
The thing I'm trying to see in this is, how does the supposed overworked startup tech worker differ from the founders and/or management in the same company? Starting a new business generally isn't easy, and generally involves you putting a lot of time and work into it with a good chance that you'll see zero return and a loss of your own investment.
Likewise, if you're working for such a person who is in such a situation, you're likely to inherit that situation for as long as you work there or until the firm becomes profitable. This really isn't the time or place for organized labor, which could very well nip a startup in the bud.
Given that Silicon Valley is mostly what it is due to its startups: If labor laws become too problematic, then Silicon Valley becomes Detroit (and people like Michael Moore will blame capitalism.)