To a computer, I'm sure. To the internet? Depending on their age, that's not as likely.
Personally, I had access to a computer from a very early age (3 or 4), was allowed to run things like Doom when I was about 10, and didn't have unsupervised access to the internet until I was 15 or so (although I had access at home around 10 or 11, with a parent hovering, filtered and supervised access at school around 14).
The fact is that my children will grow up in a different world and society than I did, and what worked for me might not work as well in a new social context (always-on broadband internet connections, social networking, free access to staggering amounts and varieties of information). People raising kids right now have to play some things by ear, since there aren't necessarily solidified social norms yet.
Probably. But my credit card has more information about me (and they sell it), my E-mail provider knows more about me (and they sell it), etc. I'm not under any illusions that Facebook doesn't do the same. I'm sure that you're right about the amount of information they've got (or pretty close). Especially circa 2005-2006, I was pretty liberal with the information I shared, before it became clear that the "free" service had a trade-off. The barn door's been open for a long time, and had been even around 2008, when I started caring about what I posted. The cows are long escaped.
I wouldn't consider myself quite the typical Facebook user, anyhow. They have a total of 38 pictures uploaded by me in my roughly 8 years of use of their service, and about 70 more than that of me, tagged by family members. I don't "like" things, don't join groups, don't use apps, etc. If they can pull some meaning out of data-mining my text replies to other people's posts, then more power to them.
I never said that I need it, just that it's the most convenient method of communication for a subset of my social group. On my profile, Facebook has access to my name, marital status, friends list, the text that I post on the service, the "likes" that I placed some 7 years ago and subsequently deleted, and the dozen sets of false biographical data that I used to enter as a game with another friend, to see who could come up with the most outlandish combinations. Every E-mail provider I've ever had has more correct information about me.
The information and rights you assign facebook just for the ability to "circulate information" a bit quicker is a pretty lousy trade, especially as facebook doesn't even possess anything that makes it uniquely qualified to do it.
With the exception of popularity, I agree. My luck hasn't been so great convincing people to switch to other platforms...so I go where the people are and make the best of it.
And they don't have phones? Wherein you text them, or even call them when you want to talk to them?
Some are more responsive on Facebook than to a phone call. Go figure.
As for your other points: To each their own. Apparently newer forms of communication aren't useful to you and your social circle; that's fine, I'm sure it's true for many. Among my friends and family, Facebook is sometimes the quickest way to circulate information that just isn't important enough for a phone call.
I'd let them go... if I'm that unimportant to the other person... why would I make staying in touch that important to me?
I'm not following. What about electronic contact makes you feel like you're unimportant to someone else? It's less formal, yes, but that's actually how I'd prefer my interpersonal contact to be.
As I said before, it's a very "to each their own"/YMMV situation.
Some of my friends don't check their e-mail more than once every few weeks and don't sign in to any instant messenger often, but most of them are on Facebook at least once per day. If something else had quite the communications potential for reaching a long list of friends quickly, I'd be more than interested. As it is, Facebook serves a purpose as a semi-public message board, announcement center, etc. Its usefulness depends on your own circle of friends.
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!
See? TV doesn't lie. We're on the way to the future!
Well, it *also* has a note in the Linux system requirements for that game that "MESA may not work reliably with ETS2". Maybe it didn't when you bought it, but in my experience, Valve has had a decent record in fixing issues as they come up (or at least informing users that they might have problems with certain configurations.
Well, checking the German and Spanish wikipedia articles on Continents, the German intro notes a 7-continent model (with North and South America as separate continents), and the Spanish wikipedia page has a nice section describing which continental divisions are commonly taught in different places. It notes that the Americas are commonly considered a single continent in Latin America, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Belgium. They're considered separate in Japan, countries of the former Soviet Union, most English-speaking countries, and China.
Note that "Windows laptop" is meant to set the context, and that the post you responded to implies a new-ish machine, by saying that it's good for content like "Hulu, Netlix, etc". In this case, "computer" should clearly be read as "x86 PC". Many content providers assume that anything running Android is a smartphone, or possibly a tablet, rather than a form-factor closer in design and input capability to the kinds of machines that usually carry an x86.
Your post makes you come off as a pedant (or a troll, and not a particularly creative one at that).
That's not the point of that study, though. If I had no cash in my accounts, severance at from my company would cover me for a few months as well, but that's neither here nor there. The point was that most families couldn't come up with $2k out of the blue in a short period of time (basically, while maintaining employment and without selling possessions).
I pay for Netflix, partially because it means that I get to be served "endless on demand video streaming" without seeing ads. There are other sites that, if given the chance, I'd pay to have ad-free. Seeing as that's not an option, I usually just avoid sites that get annoying enough to bother me. I'd have more sympathy for your viewpoint if it were possible to get the product that I want (an ad-free Youtube, for example) without becoming a product myself.
That's kind of what I thought, but I wasn't old enough at the time for the prices to mean much to me. When put together my estimate, I was aiming for the cheap end (basically, something that could run the first Warcraft game, in about 1994). So, 8MB of RAM, a 486 when Pentiums had been released already, etc.
Tablets for education usually have electronic copies of textbooks on them, along with other software that won't usually come with a device you'd pick up in a store.
I don't think I've ever seen a magnetic connector on an Xbox control. None of my original or 360 controls use magnets, at least. I am aware of certain Apple laptops with magnetically-attached power cables, though. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if there were separate patents for magnetic attachment of data cables versus magnetic attachment of power cables, though.
No, you aren't necessarily meant to infer what it means, since it has an understood definition. "Living paycheck to paycheck" describes the situation where someone's earnings go completely toward paying their monthly expenses, with little or no chance to build up a cushion of savings. If I make $100,000 per month and I spend all of that money maintaining my lifestyle (and I don't have a decent "rainy day fund" built up already), then I'm (technically) living paycheck to paycheck.
Granted, the term is a little broad, not really defining what "little to no savings" is, or for what period after being laid off someone should be able to survive. CNN's article uses "6 months or less in savings" as being the dividing line, so it's giving you a more solid definition, at least (while matching the OP's claim that "most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck").
Nearly half of Americans couldn't get $2000 together within 30 days without pawning possessions or taking a payday loan, including significant numbers of people that are above the poverty level. If I had under $2k in my account and I was fired, I'd end up missing mortgage, HOA, and utilities payments (not to mention food, credit card bills, and other expenses). I'd say that the poverty level has a "sufficient but not necessary" relationship to living paycheck to paycheck.
I bought mine as a toy, and that's what I use it as, for the most part. I've got other hardware that's better-suited to use as a media center. I've gotten my $35 of enjoyment out of playing around with it, though.
Around 1994, you'd spend close to $300 on 8MB of memory, a 486 CPU could be around $250 (being generous). I've blown your $500 budget, and you've still got the motherboard, sound and video hardware, floppy drive, hard disk, power supply, and IO peripherals before you have a functional computer. Sound and CD-ROM alone would cost around $500. If you're buying enough to build a whole computer from scratch with retail-priced parts, you're looking at an easy $1500+ for a machine that isn't particular top of the line. Swap meet prices would lower that somewhat, granted, but it's hard to imagine it would've been an over 70% discount.
And anyhow, the guy you replied to didn't say anything about computer prices. His parent post did, but you replied to the wrong post.
A SteamOS release implies a SteamBox release, by the very nature of the product, so a release for the former denotes compatibility with the latter. If the game's released as a "SteamOS exclusive", it's automatically a "SteamBox exlusive" as well. Troll harder.
I don't think it'll be common, but I think it'll be done. Hell, you just described a lot of my Saturday afternoons in college. Then again, I wasn't talking about loading SteamOS onto your own hardware. I was talking about buying a SteamBox: a pre-built, pre-configured computer, designed primarily to be used as a "just turn on and play" style of console.
So, what I "honestly believe" that people are going to do is: buy the fucking SteamBox console that's cheaper than their PC, plug it into the TV in their living room, and play the damn games they already paid for. In the meantime, I will "go fucking around setting up boot managers, installing a new OS and screwing around with drivers to play a game that would run just fine on the OS that [I] already use".
It's pretty common to have ARM devices that run that long, take up much less space, and provide much more power. It seems like we've made some progress to me, if those measures are the kind of progress you're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
I wrote an AES implementation in Perl once. It was horrifically sluggish, and I don't recommend it.
To a computer, I'm sure. To the internet? Depending on their age, that's not as likely.
Personally, I had access to a computer from a very early age (3 or 4), was allowed to run things like Doom when I was about 10, and didn't have unsupervised access to the internet until I was 15 or so (although I had access at home around 10 or 11, with a parent hovering, filtered and supervised access at school around 14).
The fact is that my children will grow up in a different world and society than I did, and what worked for me might not work as well in a new social context (always-on broadband internet connections, social networking, free access to staggering amounts and varieties of information). People raising kids right now have to play some things by ear, since there aren't necessarily solidified social norms yet.
Probably. But my credit card has more information about me (and they sell it), my E-mail provider knows more about me (and they sell it), etc. I'm not under any illusions that Facebook doesn't do the same. I'm sure that you're right about the amount of information they've got (or pretty close). Especially circa 2005-2006, I was pretty liberal with the information I shared, before it became clear that the "free" service had a trade-off. The barn door's been open for a long time, and had been even around 2008, when I started caring about what I posted. The cows are long escaped.
I wouldn't consider myself quite the typical Facebook user, anyhow. They have a total of 38 pictures uploaded by me in my roughly 8 years of use of their service, and about 70 more than that of me, tagged by family members. I don't "like" things, don't join groups, don't use apps, etc. If they can pull some meaning out of data-mining my text replies to other people's posts, then more power to them.
The information and rights you assign facebook just for the ability to "circulate information" a bit quicker is a pretty lousy trade, especially as facebook doesn't even possess anything that makes it uniquely qualified to do it.
With the exception of popularity, I agree. My luck hasn't been so great convincing people to switch to other platforms...so I go where the people are and make the best of it.
And they don't have phones? Wherein you text them, or even call them when you want to talk to them?
Some are more responsive on Facebook than to a phone call. Go figure.
As for your other points: To each their own. Apparently newer forms of communication aren't useful to you and your social circle; that's fine, I'm sure it's true for many. Among my friends and family, Facebook is sometimes the quickest way to circulate information that just isn't important enough for a phone call.
I'd let them go... if I'm that unimportant to the other person... why would I make staying in touch that important to me?
I'm not following. What about electronic contact makes you feel like you're unimportant to someone else? It's less formal, yes, but that's actually how I'd prefer my interpersonal contact to be.
As I said before, it's a very "to each their own"/YMMV situation.
Some of my friends don't check their e-mail more than once every few weeks and don't sign in to any instant messenger often, but most of them are on Facebook at least once per day. If something else had quite the communications potential for reaching a long list of friends quickly, I'd be more than interested. As it is, Facebook serves a purpose as a semi-public message board, announcement center, etc. Its usefulness depends on your own circle of friends.
I kind of think that was the point. I read the whole list in the Comic Book Guy's voice, from the Simpsons.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!
See? TV doesn't lie. We're on the way to the future!
Well, it *also* has a note in the Linux system requirements for that game that "MESA may not work reliably with ETS2". Maybe it didn't when you bought it, but in my experience, Valve has had a decent record in fixing issues as they come up (or at least informing users that they might have problems with certain configurations.
Well, checking the German and Spanish wikipedia articles on Continents, the German intro notes a 7-continent model (with North and South America as separate continents), and the Spanish wikipedia page has a nice section describing which continental divisions are commonly taught in different places. It notes that the Americas are commonly considered a single continent in Latin America, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Belgium. They're considered separate in Japan, countries of the former Soviet Union, most English-speaking countries, and China.
Note that "Windows laptop" is meant to set the context, and that the post you responded to implies a new-ish machine, by saying that it's good for content like "Hulu, Netlix, etc". In this case, "computer" should clearly be read as "x86 PC". Many content providers assume that anything running Android is a smartphone, or possibly a tablet, rather than a form-factor closer in design and input capability to the kinds of machines that usually carry an x86.
Your post makes you come off as a pedant (or a troll, and not a particularly creative one at that).
That's not the point of that study, though. If I had no cash in my accounts, severance at from my company would cover me for a few months as well, but that's neither here nor there. The point was that most families couldn't come up with $2k out of the blue in a short period of time (basically, while maintaining employment and without selling possessions).
I pay for Netflix, partially because it means that I get to be served "endless on demand video streaming" without seeing ads. There are other sites that, if given the chance, I'd pay to have ad-free. Seeing as that's not an option, I usually just avoid sites that get annoying enough to bother me. I'd have more sympathy for your viewpoint if it were possible to get the product that I want (an ad-free Youtube, for example) without becoming a product myself.
That's kind of what I thought, but I wasn't old enough at the time for the prices to mean much to me. When put together my estimate, I was aiming for the cheap end (basically, something that could run the first Warcraft game, in about 1994). So, 8MB of RAM, a 486 when Pentiums had been released already, etc.
Tablets for education usually have electronic copies of textbooks on them, along with other software that won't usually come with a device you'd pick up in a store.
I don't think I've ever seen a magnetic connector on an Xbox control. None of my original or 360 controls use magnets, at least. I am aware of certain Apple laptops with magnetically-attached power cables, though. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if there were separate patents for magnetic attachment of data cables versus magnetic attachment of power cables, though.
That's an unfair stereotype. Every time I North Carolina they always I'm kidding.
No, you aren't necessarily meant to infer what it means, since it has an understood definition. "Living paycheck to paycheck" describes the situation where someone's earnings go completely toward paying their monthly expenses, with little or no chance to build up a cushion of savings. If I make $100,000 per month and I spend all of that money maintaining my lifestyle (and I don't have a decent "rainy day fund" built up already), then I'm (technically) living paycheck to paycheck.
Granted, the term is a little broad, not really defining what "little to no savings" is, or for what period after being laid off someone should be able to survive. CNN's article uses "6 months or less in savings" as being the dividing line, so it's giving you a more solid definition, at least (while matching the OP's claim that "most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck").
Nearly half of Americans couldn't get $2000 together within 30 days without pawning possessions or taking a payday loan, including significant numbers of people that are above the poverty level. If I had under $2k in my account and I was fired, I'd end up missing mortgage, HOA, and utilities payments (not to mention food, credit card bills, and other expenses). I'd say that the poverty level has a "sufficient but not necessary" relationship to living paycheck to paycheck.
I bought mine as a toy, and that's what I use it as, for the most part. I've got other hardware that's better-suited to use as a media center. I've gotten my $35 of enjoyment out of playing around with it, though.
Around 1994, you'd spend close to $300 on 8MB of memory, a 486 CPU could be around $250 (being generous). I've blown your $500 budget, and you've still got the motherboard, sound and video hardware, floppy drive, hard disk, power supply, and IO peripherals before you have a functional computer. Sound and CD-ROM alone would cost around $500. If you're buying enough to build a whole computer from scratch with retail-priced parts, you're looking at an easy $1500+ for a machine that isn't particular top of the line. Swap meet prices would lower that somewhat, granted, but it's hard to imagine it would've been an over 70% discount.
And anyhow, the guy you replied to didn't say anything about computer prices. His parent post did, but you replied to the wrong post.
Not to mention the classic non-arcade version, as well. That's how I became familiar with it, anyhow.
A SteamOS release implies a SteamBox release, by the very nature of the product, so a release for the former denotes compatibility with the latter. If the game's released as a "SteamOS exclusive", it's automatically a "SteamBox exlusive" as well. Troll harder.
I don't think it'll be common, but I think it'll be done. Hell, you just described a lot of my Saturday afternoons in college. Then again, I wasn't talking about loading SteamOS onto your own hardware. I was talking about buying a SteamBox: a pre-built, pre-configured computer, designed primarily to be used as a "just turn on and play" style of console.
So, what I "honestly believe" that people are going to do is: buy the fucking SteamBox console that's cheaper than their PC, plug it into the TV in their living room, and play the damn games they already paid for. In the meantime, I will "go fucking around setting up boot managers, installing a new OS and screwing around with drivers to play a game that would run just fine on the OS that [I] already use".
It's pretty common to have ARM devices that run that long, take up much less space, and provide much more power. It seems like we've made some progress to me, if those measures are the kind of progress you're talking about.