I'm also barely interested in the argument, because I think we're having different arguments.
You say my analogies are bad, and then trot out examples that are *just as wrong*. I mean, what do you think toll roads, gas tax or city congestion charges etc are? Billing to cover road wear.
Finally, you also show your "true colors" in that in your mind, NO Analogy is good enough, so anyone who might regulate a system, or at least the Internet, ought to be pretty well versed in computer networking - which I might add is a specialization inside of IT.
Your argument that billing in a certain way is done commonly has nothing to do with my assertion of an opinion that billing in that way is wrong - specifically I think it's taking advantage specifically of peoples ignorance, and ripping them off. 95% billing is generally used for network interconnects and seems much more fair to me. That's also common, as is flat rate billing. It's common for people to be mugged in cities, doesn't make it right...
I probably haven't been clear enough, but I never intended to excuse ignorance - and I don't see that I've done so, but I know what I meant.
To step back - in the real world - the one we all live in, regulation is generally done by politicians or bureaucrats. Rarely do experts in some field regulate the field, and when they do, there's often conflicts of interest that arise - I'm imagining guilds or systems like the bar and the AMA that basically just regulate to keep out competition.
If you want to change the "real world", you need to communicate with people who aren't in your field in a way that doesn't require them to go take several classes or 5 years of domain experience. Hell, that's the point of this article - that dismissing people because they don't understand the signaling on the cable that forms the ethernet protocol that is then wrapped in an IP packet and routed etc and OSI model etc - that's like the high-school English teacher who complained about people misusing whom or may vs can. It's the complainer who gets dismissed, because frankly - no one cares.
Finally, how about you provide the mythical better analogy? I thought of the mail system, but it's not clear to me that it's better, just that it may get bogged down in details that don't matter depending on the point you're trying to address (in my case, why billing per byte seems to me to be a scam for the user). In no way does addressability per envelope, sorting, etc help illuminate anything about the point that internet throughput is largely determined by second in time capacity, and filling that capacity for a second or a month won't directly increase cost to the vendor for the equipment.
Maybe you thought I was arguing about net neutrality, or filtering attempts, or who knows what, but I was pretty much only trying to give a narrow example about flat rate vs per byte billing, and why caps don't address anything about the ISPs actual costs.
I got a PS4 for christmas, I've stacked it under my PS3. I figure PS is lesser of 3 gaming evils - supporting MS into another attempted monopoly, all the crap of Windows gaming as here, and Sony's stupidity. But their hardware shouldn't get more broken, and in my limited game play time, hasn't acros PS3 or PS4. Of course, I don't game online or pay for PSN so that didn't affect me.
Look, analogies are often not perfect. You're right that water in pipes doesn't route discreetly to given addresses. Roads and trucks isn't better in my opinion. Trucks can actively damage the road - data can't damage a router. The main point these analogies are usually used to make is that bill per byte doesn't make sense.
On roads, bill per mile certainly makes sense and is implemented in many places, because using the road quickly wears it out.
With pipes and hoses and ethernet - this really isn't the case, at least at a human scale of observation.
Also, with pipes - the system moves and directs the water - like ethernet, the frames are passive. Trucks direct themselves and the roads are passive - pretty much opposite of how data networks work.
Maybe it's been too long since my networking classes, and I haven't dived deeply enough into the networking at work - but sizing and implementing capacity rarely takes routing into consideration except insofar in bulk amounts a router or switch can route. This is pretty much directly analogous to pump specs and pipe sizes.
I too laughed at the "Internet is a bunch of tubes" when it was said in that particular politicians speech - but mainly due to other context.
That said, as an analogy - you could do far worse than plumbing in my opinion. For instance: there's a certain capital cost to putting in a certain throughput "pipe", and some maintenance in replacing failed "pipes", but in either case the cost doesn't go up or down based on the total volume of "stuff" sent through those pipes. The cost varies on how much "stuff" can go through at once, whether it's water or data.
The part where it breaks down is that water does have an incremental cost whereas data doesn't. But if you have a pump from a pond, it doesn't cost you appreciably more to run the water through a hose for 1 hour a day or 24 hours a day. It does cost appreciably more to get a 3" pipe filled from that pond than a 1/2" hose if you want the same pressure...
Hilariously, for power users, the command line / search is probably easier than the mouse. Heck, for servers, Microsoft is pretty much saying you use a powershell command prompt to do everything and GUIs are slowly not being written for new OSs.
Now, as I work 50% of my time on RHEL servers, once I set up SSH on my Domain Controllers, it lets me integrate much easier from Linux to process commands on Windows. Makes things like Puppet easier too.
However, I don't imagine I'm the average Windows user or server administrator. I always figured the only reason Windows got market share from Unix was the GUIs so less experienced people could "admin" them. But now Microsoft is throwing that away (albeit slowly).
Oh well, if I have to choose between the unusable mess of Metro and Powershell, Powershell via SSH wins for me every time.
I don't know - there's convenience. I can get many many things via Amazon in 2 days, often before I could go to a store (I have to drive 20 miles from my house to any appreciable store like Target). I can subscribe for things so they just show up. I don't have to search a store to find them. And I know the security and return policy.
Is cheapest best? Sometimes, but if it means I need to wait a week or a month vs 2 days, that's maybe too long. If it means that I might not be able to return something if it arrives broken without eating shipping costs (Newegg), that's not great...
Well, that and tools. So, I've done some joint repair on household stuff (changed out carpeting for laminate, replaced faucet, replaced shower stall) with my sister. The basics isn't hard, and youtube and the rest of the net will teach you a lot.
But for Laminate, you have to buy a table saw to cut to size, plus a laminate blade. For the shower, you need caulk gun, and drill. Etc. These add up, and they're not really items you want to buy for one use, and then store somewhere forever.
Same for cars, there's a lot of special tools often needed.
Now, if you're regularly going to help people with putting in laminate, or repairing cars, buying the tools might make sense. If you just need it fixed once, paying someone else might still be cheaper.
Makes me glad I have a Subaru. Every one I've owned (3) or my family has owned (5 more) has the battery on a shelf right side, near the front of the hood. It's not blocked by anything. Now, the windshield washer reservoir is hidden down under everything with a fill neck, so that's probably how they get the battery easily accessible.
Then again, I've replaced batteries, but never the washer fluid reservoir.
I think most of us don't. I *feel* like I don't have money, but that's because I can't just purchase a $1200 drone, or pay my sisters rent for her if she needs it; not because I can't spend $100 without worrying.
I guess when a $70 meal out is possible even though "I feel broke", I don't really know what not having money is like.
I suppose this is also what is "wrong" with "rich" people (define those words how you like) - you probably never feel comfortable because there is always some expense or some expensive thing you can imagine that you just can't afford.
But good luck activating it *on* a carrier other than the one who branded it (In the US anyway). Those phones are still subsidized (I have no idea why - I imagine it's an imaginary subsidy, but the flip phone I bought for $20 wouldn't re-activate eventually on a pre-paid carrier because I bought it at Wal-Mart and had let it lapse. The same phone for $50 on e-bay which was "unsubsidized" worked fine).
Anyway, in "developing countries" I guess there may not be wi-fi to use, hence wanting to use *phones* to get online with rather than tablets etc.
While an appeal to authority is a classical logical fallacy, I also think expertise is real and ought to be respected. Formal logic requires premises - givens that are assumed to be true. Generally it is impossible to argue from true first principals as you'll get mired well before you get to the meat of most discussions. (How do you prove you're not a brain in a jar?).
I am willing to start from a certain point, and the problem we have of course is that each persons point is different - one crux of the problem. So we're really arguing on what assumptions are allowed.
Of that, the appeal to authority causes me a problem. I don't claim that experts are always right, but there is a reason experts exist, and people get good paying work as experts in certain fields. I believe it is because you are far more likely to get a possible answer, if not the correct one from an expert vs starting from scratch yourself - within a reasonable timeframe. Sure, if you have 10,000 hrs and are willing to become an expert yourself, the existing expert is "worthless". But if you want a likely solution or answer in, say, 10 hours - you probably will get good value from the expert.
Also, I'm not sure appeal to authority always refers to expertise - I may be an authority to someone on cars, but if the person wants a recommendation on air travel, I'm just spouting opinion. The Authorities are often people who aren't experts - at least in what they're opining about. Then the "Appeal to Authority" is valid in my opinion.
But it's just a hand-wavy way to throw out an argument from an expert *in their field of expertise* to dismiss it with "Appeal from authority".
Then again, re-reading your comment, maybe you agree with me. But then I don't really get the point of your post - you seem to contradict yourself in that case.
I'm not a lawyer, but cities and towns can pass their own laws with the permission of the State, but only with permission isn't exactly true.
I'm not aware of any local government asking permission for passing a law of any higher government.
Tangent: what's the ordering, and does it vary with state? In NY we have county govt, town, city / village.). My understanding is that each level down can be more restrictive, but not less so, than a level above. That is, NY allows alcohol sales, but not cocaine sales. A local town can make selling alcohol illegal in their town (called a 'dry town'), banning selling in stores and banning bars. But they can't make it legal to sell cocaine.
Of course, what's less clear to me is if County govt overrules City govt, or if they are also orthogonal. Also, apparently, states can choose whether to enforce federal laws apparently - see recent marijuana news. I suppose that cities can choose whether to enforce state laws also? It's quite confusing, and I live here.
I imagine all this becomes moot as we get self driving cars. Heck, there are a bunch of cars, down to Subaru and Dodge price ranges with camera or radar based pre-collision braking and warnings that will mitigate this as well.
Technology will route around the problem. It's still stupid to create this problem though.
You know, there is a solution to even this (not liking cold calling people, even if it's a business and they expect random calls). I don't have any diagnosed mental issues, but I do dislike calling people in general. I think it started when I worked collections for a year and a half. That basically made me not want to call people to some extent. It's minor, but still.
Anyway, on to the solution: Virtual Assistants. There are services for all price ranges starting as low as $10 a month. You can submit a web query or e-mail (or call, but in that case, what is the assistant doing for you???) and they will call to get the info for you and e-mail you with it. Of course, it's still slower than a web site working, but there are a surprising number of things that still seem to need a phone call. It's great because they'll also play phone tag for you.
It's probably because the laptops don't break very often, are pretty standardized along the lines (i.e. the T510-T540, W510-W540 all use the same batteries, and the T and W series use the same power adapters within the letter series) have good warranty service and are very price competitive.
So all good things for cost savings and reliability for a fleet of laptops.
This is because Lenovo tends to be price competitive and less failure prone (at least in my experience with the business lines). Also, their tech support believes your troubleshooting rather than asking if you've tried turning it on and off.
That said, their on-site service is apparently woefully understaffed, and it is most definitely NOT NBD no mater what they claim. More like next business week. Then again, I only need that in the exceedingly rare case I need a desktop's motherboard replaced.
We just keep spares anyway because buying one extra of each model we use is a cheap insurance for this issue.
Yea, but how much actually needs to be troubleshot? Just re-create the system from scratch in a known configuration using config management and standardized OS deployments.
If it still fails, it's probably something you just do as a bug report that the developers can spin up using the same OS and config settings and then fix.
The interesting thing is if development can be automated. To some extent it might, or be made so end users can do it - look at "bad systems" like Labview or other simple drag and drop stuff. I imagine someone is going to keep working to make more and more stuff abstract or really simple libraries to hook together.
The problem I have is they hire such bad checkout people or have so few on staff at any time, or have such limited authority to do anything (i.e. someone has a travellers check or food stamp or insert non cash/credit form of payment here and the store for some reason requires them to accept it but doesn't train them or let the average cashier do it) that it is usually faster for me to do the self checkout in a lot of cases.
There are stores (Wegmans, Target) that seem to pay enough and have enough people on staff that I can check out faster with a cashier, but BJs, Walmart, Lowes, etc have lines where it takes 15+ minutes just waiting for your turn at the cashier.
Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't done the RFID you walk through a reader, insert card or have a payment fob like the store card, you approve on a screen or get the details on your smartphone app or by e-mail or something and you leave...
Did you see the puppetconf presentation? They're pretty much going away from Ruby and going to APIs. Yea, you can still use Ruby, but c++ native client is what's going to be shipping next year... The server is going Java.
I have found most dealers in my area are willing to order a car how you want it. You just have to wait, and may have to put down a down payment towards purchase of the car. Whether they actually order the correct car or not apparently varies.
Its in the dealer's best interest to do as much warranty/recall work as possible
Sure doesn't seem that way to me... At least with Subaru it's the local dealer always trying to weasel out of doing *anything* under warranty and central Subaru 1-800 getting them to do the *damn* work they are supposed to do under Warranty.
Why not just work like the aftermarket warranty companies where they pay local shops by credit card over the phone for warranty work? Has to be cheaper than setting up garages if your Tesla... Or however Geico etc do the mechanical breakdown coverage, but without the deductible. There are *plenty* of local shops that I trust to know what they're doing much more than the dealers, and they are often cheaper as well!
I've been trying to buy a new car. It may just be the southern tier of NY, but finding a Subaru dealer that a) knows even close as much about the car I want as what I know *from the Subaru web site* and the *Subaru Drive Magazine* is basically impossible. b) Is willing to quote me a price (why can't I call, e-mail or even walk in and just list the car + options and GET A PRICE? This is as bad as the phone companies.). Granted, many have prices on what they have in stock... c) Will actually order what I want.
I had one dealer order a car (that didn't have the Eyesight feature that I made clear was the *REASON* I wanted this car), and try and sell it to me. When I walked when it didn't have the Eyesight feature, they didn't understand why I didn't want the car. Hello? I came to you and listed specific features I wanted, you got a car without them (after I waited 2 months) and wonder why I didn't buy it?
I wish I could just order from Subaru like I do from Lenovo... Hell, I wish there was a pricewatch for cars and it was easier to get one delivered...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm also barely interested in the argument, because I think we're having different arguments.
You say my analogies are bad, and then trot out examples that are *just as wrong*. I mean, what do you think toll roads, gas tax or city congestion charges etc are? Billing to cover road wear.
Finally, you also show your "true colors" in that in your mind, NO Analogy is good enough, so anyone who might regulate a system, or at least the Internet, ought to be pretty well versed in computer networking - which I might add is a specialization inside of IT.
Your argument that billing in a certain way is done commonly has nothing to do with my assertion of an opinion that billing in that way is wrong - specifically I think it's taking advantage specifically of peoples ignorance, and ripping them off. 95% billing is generally used for network interconnects and seems much more fair to me. That's also common, as is flat rate billing. It's common for people to be mugged in cities, doesn't make it right...
I probably haven't been clear enough, but I never intended to excuse ignorance - and I don't see that I've done so, but I know what I meant.
To step back - in the real world - the one we all live in, regulation is generally done by politicians or bureaucrats. Rarely do experts in some field regulate the field, and when they do, there's often conflicts of interest that arise - I'm imagining guilds or systems like the bar and the AMA that basically just regulate to keep out competition.
If you want to change the "real world", you need to communicate with people who aren't in your field in a way that doesn't require them to go take several classes or 5 years of domain experience. Hell, that's the point of this article - that dismissing people because they don't understand the signaling on the cable that forms the ethernet protocol that is then wrapped in an IP packet and routed etc and OSI model etc - that's like the high-school English teacher who complained about people misusing whom or may vs can. It's the complainer who gets dismissed, because frankly - no one cares.
Finally, how about you provide the mythical better analogy? I thought of the mail system, but it's not clear to me that it's better, just that it may get bogged down in details that don't matter depending on the point you're trying to address (in my case, why billing per byte seems to me to be a scam for the user). In no way does addressability per envelope, sorting, etc help illuminate anything about the point that internet throughput is largely determined by second in time capacity, and filling that capacity for a second or a month won't directly increase cost to the vendor for the equipment.
Maybe you thought I was arguing about net neutrality, or filtering attempts, or who knows what, but I was pretty much only trying to give a narrow example about flat rate vs per byte billing, and why caps don't address anything about the ISPs actual costs.
I got a PS4 for christmas, I've stacked it under my PS3. I figure PS is lesser of 3 gaming evils - supporting MS into another attempted monopoly, all the crap of Windows gaming as here, and Sony's stupidity. But their hardware shouldn't get more broken, and in my limited game play time, hasn't acros PS3 or PS4. Of course, I don't game online or pay for PSN so that didn't affect me.
What is the "shit" about the PS4 though?
Look, analogies are often not perfect. You're right that water in pipes doesn't route discreetly to given addresses. Roads and trucks isn't better in my opinion. Trucks can actively damage the road - data can't damage a router. The main point these analogies are usually used to make is that bill per byte doesn't make sense.
On roads, bill per mile certainly makes sense and is implemented in many places, because using the road quickly wears it out.
With pipes and hoses and ethernet - this really isn't the case, at least at a human scale of observation.
Also, with pipes - the system moves and directs the water - like ethernet, the frames are passive. Trucks direct themselves and the roads are passive - pretty much opposite of how data networks work.
Maybe it's been too long since my networking classes, and I haven't dived deeply enough into the networking at work - but sizing and implementing capacity rarely takes routing into consideration except insofar in bulk amounts a router or switch can route. This is pretty much directly analogous to pump specs and pipe sizes.
I too laughed at the "Internet is a bunch of tubes" when it was said in that particular politicians speech - but mainly due to other context.
That said, as an analogy - you could do far worse than plumbing in my opinion. For instance: there's a certain capital cost to putting in a certain throughput "pipe", and some maintenance in replacing failed "pipes", but in either case the cost doesn't go up or down based on the total volume of "stuff" sent through those pipes. The cost varies on how much "stuff" can go through at once, whether it's water or data.
The part where it breaks down is that water does have an incremental cost whereas data doesn't. But if you have a pump from a pond, it doesn't cost you appreciably more to run the water through a hose for 1 hour a day or 24 hours a day. It does cost appreciably more to get a 3" pipe filled from that pond than a 1/2" hose if you want the same pressure...
Hilariously, for power users, the command line / search is probably easier than the mouse. Heck, for servers, Microsoft is pretty much saying you use a powershell command prompt to do everything and GUIs are slowly not being written for new OSs.
Now, as I work 50% of my time on RHEL servers, once I set up SSH on my Domain Controllers, it lets me integrate much easier from Linux to process commands on Windows. Makes things like Puppet easier too.
However, I don't imagine I'm the average Windows user or server administrator. I always figured the only reason Windows got market share from Unix was the GUIs so less experienced people could "admin" them. But now Microsoft is throwing that away (albeit slowly).
Oh well, if I have to choose between the unusable mess of Metro and Powershell, Powershell via SSH wins for me every time.
I don't know - there's convenience. I can get many many things via Amazon in 2 days, often before I could go to a store (I have to drive 20 miles from my house to any appreciable store like Target). I can subscribe for things so they just show up. I don't have to search a store to find them. And I know the security and return policy.
Is cheapest best? Sometimes, but if it means I need to wait a week or a month vs 2 days, that's maybe too long. If it means that I might not be able to return something if it arrives broken without eating shipping costs (Newegg), that's not great...
Well, that and tools. So, I've done some joint repair on household stuff (changed out carpeting for laminate, replaced faucet, replaced shower stall) with my sister. The basics isn't hard, and youtube and the rest of the net will teach you a lot.
But for Laminate, you have to buy a table saw to cut to size, plus a laminate blade. For the shower, you need caulk gun, and drill. Etc. These add up, and they're not really items you want to buy for one use, and then store somewhere forever.
Same for cars, there's a lot of special tools often needed.
Now, if you're regularly going to help people with putting in laminate, or repairing cars, buying the tools might make sense. If you just need it fixed once, paying someone else might still be cheaper.
Makes me glad I have a Subaru. Every one I've owned (3) or my family has owned (5 more) has the battery on a shelf right side, near the front of the hood. It's not blocked by anything. Now, the windshield washer reservoir is hidden down under everything with a fill neck, so that's probably how they get the battery easily accessible.
Then again, I've replaced batteries, but never the washer fluid reservoir.
I think most of us don't. I *feel* like I don't have money, but that's because I can't just purchase a $1200 drone, or pay my sisters rent for her if she needs it; not because I can't spend $100 without worrying.
I guess when a $70 meal out is possible even though "I feel broke", I don't really know what not having money is like.
I suppose this is also what is "wrong" with "rich" people (define those words how you like) - you probably never feel comfortable because there is always some expense or some expensive thing you can imagine that you just can't afford.
But good luck activating it *on* a carrier other than the one who branded it (In the US anyway). Those phones are still subsidized (I have no idea why - I imagine it's an imaginary subsidy, but the flip phone I bought for $20 wouldn't re-activate eventually on a pre-paid carrier because I bought it at Wal-Mart and had let it lapse. The same phone for $50 on e-bay which was "unsubsidized" worked fine).
Anyway, in "developing countries" I guess there may not be wi-fi to use, hence wanting to use *phones* to get online with rather than tablets etc.
While an appeal to authority is a classical logical fallacy, I also think expertise is real and ought to be respected. Formal logic requires premises - givens that are assumed to be true. Generally it is impossible to argue from true first principals as you'll get mired well before you get to the meat of most discussions. (How do you prove you're not a brain in a jar?).
I am willing to start from a certain point, and the problem we have of course is that each persons point is different - one crux of the problem. So we're really arguing on what assumptions are allowed.
Of that, the appeal to authority causes me a problem. I don't claim that experts are always right, but there is a reason experts exist, and people get good paying work as experts in certain fields. I believe it is because you are far more likely to get a possible answer, if not the correct one from an expert vs starting from scratch yourself - within a reasonable timeframe. Sure, if you have 10,000 hrs and are willing to become an expert yourself, the existing expert is "worthless". But if you want a likely solution or answer in, say, 10 hours - you probably will get good value from the expert.
Also, I'm not sure appeal to authority always refers to expertise - I may be an authority to someone on cars, but if the person wants a recommendation on air travel, I'm just spouting opinion. The Authorities are often people who aren't experts - at least in what they're opining about. Then the "Appeal to Authority" is valid in my opinion.
But it's just a hand-wavy way to throw out an argument from an expert *in their field of expertise* to dismiss it with "Appeal from authority".
Then again, re-reading your comment, maybe you agree with me. But then I don't really get the point of your post - you seem to contradict yourself in that case.
I'm not a lawyer, but cities and towns can pass their own laws with the permission of the State, but only with permission isn't exactly true.
I'm not aware of any local government asking permission for passing a law of any higher government.
Tangent: what's the ordering, and does it vary with state? In NY we have county govt, town, city / village.). My understanding is that each level down can be more restrictive, but not less so, than a level above. That is, NY allows alcohol sales, but not cocaine sales. A local town can make selling alcohol illegal in their town (called a 'dry town'), banning selling in stores and banning bars. But they can't make it legal to sell cocaine.
Of course, what's less clear to me is if County govt overrules City govt, or if they are also orthogonal. Also, apparently, states can choose whether to enforce federal laws apparently - see recent marijuana news. I suppose that cities can choose whether to enforce state laws also? It's quite confusing, and I live here.
I imagine all this becomes moot as we get self driving cars. Heck, there are a bunch of cars, down to Subaru and Dodge price ranges with camera or radar based pre-collision braking and warnings that will mitigate this as well.
Technology will route around the problem. It's still stupid to create this problem though.
Use a better bank? Maybe use Ally for instance . . . everything except initiating wire transfers is free as far as I can tell.
You know, there is a solution to even this (not liking cold calling people, even if it's a business and they expect random calls). I don't have any diagnosed mental issues, but I do dislike calling people in general. I think it started when I worked collections for a year and a half. That basically made me not want to call people to some extent. It's minor, but still.
Anyway, on to the solution: Virtual Assistants. There are services for all price ranges starting as low as $10 a month. You can submit a web query or e-mail (or call, but in that case, what is the assistant doing for you???) and they will call to get the info for you and e-mail you with it. Of course, it's still slower than a web site working, but there are a surprising number of things that still seem to need a phone call. It's great because they'll also play phone tag for you.
It's probably because the laptops don't break very often, are pretty standardized along the lines (i.e. the T510-T540, W510-W540 all use the same batteries, and the T and W series use the same power adapters within the letter series) have good warranty service and are very price competitive.
So all good things for cost savings and reliability for a fleet of laptops.
This is because Lenovo tends to be price competitive and less failure prone (at least in my experience with the business lines). Also, their tech support believes your troubleshooting rather than asking if you've tried turning it on and off.
That said, their on-site service is apparently woefully understaffed, and it is most definitely NOT NBD no mater what they claim. More like next business week. Then again, I only need that in the exceedingly rare case I need a desktop's motherboard replaced.
We just keep spares anyway because buying one extra of each model we use is a cheap insurance for this issue.
Yea, but how much actually needs to be troubleshot? Just re-create the system from scratch in a known configuration using config management and standardized OS deployments.
If it still fails, it's probably something you just do as a bug report that the developers can spin up using the same OS and config settings and then fix.
The interesting thing is if development can be automated. To some extent it might, or be made so end users can do it - look at "bad systems" like Labview or other simple drag and drop stuff. I imagine someone is going to keep working to make more and more stuff abstract or really simple libraries to hook together.
Tracker software, the maker of PDF-X-Change software seems to do this. It also seems to work pretty well.
The problem I have is they hire such bad checkout people or have so few on staff at any time, or have such limited authority to do anything (i.e. someone has a travellers check or food stamp or insert non cash/credit form of payment here and the store for some reason requires them to accept it but doesn't train them or let the average cashier do it) that it is usually faster for me to do the self checkout in a lot of cases.
There are stores (Wegmans, Target) that seem to pay enough and have enough people on staff that I can check out faster with a cashier, but BJs, Walmart, Lowes, etc have lines where it takes 15+ minutes just waiting for your turn at the cashier.
Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't done the RFID you walk through a reader, insert card or have a payment fob like the store card, you approve on a screen or get the details on your smartphone app or by e-mail or something and you leave...
Did you see the puppetconf presentation? They're pretty much going away from Ruby and going to APIs. Yea, you can still use Ruby, but c++ native client is what's going to be shipping next year... The server is going Java.
Worlds of Magic? How about Fallen Enchantress? That was the 2nd major update to Elemental that was the last Spiritual Successor to Masters of Magic...
I have found most dealers in my area are willing to order a car how you want it. You just have to wait, and may have to put down a down payment towards purchase of the car. Whether they actually order the correct car or not apparently varies.
Its in the dealer's best interest to do as much warranty/recall work as possible
Sure doesn't seem that way to me... At least with Subaru it's the local dealer always trying to weasel out of doing *anything* under warranty and central Subaru 1-800 getting them to do the *damn* work they are supposed to do under Warranty.
Why not just work like the aftermarket warranty companies where they pay local shops by credit card over the phone for warranty work? Has to be cheaper than setting up garages if your Tesla... Or however Geico etc do the mechanical breakdown coverage, but without the deductible. There are *plenty* of local shops that I trust to know what they're doing much more than the dealers, and they are often cheaper as well!
I've been trying to buy a new car. It may just be the southern tier of NY, but finding a Subaru dealer that
a) knows even close as much about the car I want as what I know *from the Subaru web site* and the *Subaru Drive Magazine* is basically impossible.
b) Is willing to quote me a price (why can't I call, e-mail or even walk in and just list the car + options and GET A PRICE? This is as bad as the phone companies.). Granted, many have prices on what they have in stock...
c) Will actually order what I want.
I had one dealer order a car (that didn't have the Eyesight feature that I made clear was the *REASON* I wanted this car), and try and sell it to me. When I walked when it didn't have the Eyesight feature, they didn't understand why I didn't want the car. Hello? I came to you and listed specific features I wanted, you got a car without them (after I waited 2 months) and wonder why I didn't buy it?
I wish I could just order from Subaru like I do from Lenovo... Hell, I wish there was a pricewatch for cars and it was easier to get one delivered...