New Yorkers like to think that, but it's just not true. Go out and really watch people during the day sometime and you'll start to notice it. Watch the eyes. It's just human nature.
Actually, it's because Manhattan hurt your brain when you were there. It's actually intentional--it's the only way they can keep the theaters on Broadway packed for inane pablum like "Cats".
Presumably they eventually manage to recover at least somewhat, but I can tell you from personal experience that they remain permanently insufferable. Ask anyone who has lived in New York about pizza, or public transportation, or pretty much anything else for that matter and the conversation will eventually turn to how much better New York is than wherever it is they currently happen to be. One wonders why they don't just go back and stay there.
I have yet to meet an ex-New Yorker who isn't excessively proud of the fact that he once lived in "The City". They're worse than Texans.
Just head to Manhattan and look at the people around you. Everyone is constantly glancing around at everything. It's not just the tourists either--very nearly every single person is constantly shifting his gaze from point to point like a coked out monkey with ADD. It's one of the things that I hate about New York.
Price discrimination doesn't even come into it, because they're charging everyone the same price here. Stop throwing around terms when you have no idea what they mean.
The (great) grandparent was wrong, and you're wrong. Text messaging is not, and should not be, in perfect competition. There are huge barriers to entry into the market--namely, you have to have access to a global telecommunications network. It's not a commodity in the true sense of the word, where the number of providers is great and they are more or less indistinguishable from each other. It is, as I said before, an oligopoly market. And that's not an "evil" term--it's a natural result of the market.
text messages cost almost nothing, therefore, the price of text messages should be almost nothing.
It sounds like you got a C- in microeconomics and are pretty fuzzy on why. Simply assuming supply and demand will set prices is a naive way of examining a market. If the price of text messages were almost nothing, there would be no supply because people would refuse to supply them at such low prices--especially when people are clearly willing to pay a lot more for them. Why focus on a market that provides no revenue when you can concentrate on markets that are a lot more lucrative, regardless of marginal cost to entry? Clearly there are other factors at work than supply and demand. If you don't believe this, I invite you to set up your own text messaging service and compete with the carriers for market share. Given that the cost to enter the market is enormous, and under your interpretation of economics revenues would be extremely low, does that really make sense? If not, then you concede that the market is not in "perfect competition".
The key thing you're missing is that supply and demand do NOT determine prices. The prices are determined by two things, and only two things: What people are willing to pay, and what suppliers are willing to sell for. These two values are affected by numerous factors, supply and demand being only one of them. And furthermore, all of these factors are intertwined and affect each other. Level of competition, which is affected by barrier to entry, which affects overhead and marginal cost, which affects profit margins, which are affected by price elasticity of demand, which is affected by availability of substitute goods, and so on and so forth. But ultimately, it still comes down to those two things: What people will pay, and what people will sell for. That's it. In this case, people are clearly willing to pay the given rates for text messaging, as evidenced by the 3.3 trillion messages sent per year. When that changes--which may be for a multitude of reasons, one of which may or may not be fluctuating supply and demand--prices will change.
You clearly have no idea how supply and demand works. When demand exceeds supply it creates a shortfall, and prices go up due to the scarcity of the good in question. That is, you may be willing to pay $X for my widget, but someone else who wants it is willing to pay $X+1, so if I only have one I'll sell to him instead of you. Conversely, if I have three, I'll sell to him first, then you, then maybe to another guy who is only willing to pay $X-1. The average price drops, and as people realize that I have a bunch of widgets I want to unload, they know they can get them for less if they hold out, and consequently are willing to pay less money for them because they know that they will still be able to get one even when I've sold to everyone who is willing to pay more than they are.
Now that you've gotten a quick economics lesson, you should see why simply having an infinite supply of something doesn't make prices magically fall regardless of demand. Prices are set by what people are willing to pay for them (you may have heard the term "what the market will bear"). Supply and demand changes affect that price, but it's not the only factor. In this case, there are only a few companies providing the service, creating an oligopoly. They are going to set the price for text messaging based solely on what they think people will pay. If they set the prices too high, people will stop using the service or go to a competitor who offers a cheaper alternative. Yes, it's "price fixing" in the sense that each of the providers is setting his price at the level he thinks will provide him the most profit. If any of them were to lower their prices significantly, the effect would likely be to attract a large number of subscribers away from other carriers. Each of the carriers knows this, and so if one of them lowered the price all of them would have to in order to retain customers. The net result is that they simply all make less money. Since they're not forcing anyone to use their services, is making money really so wrong?
Prices are likely to drop eventually anyway, as the market grows and competition increases--not just from other cell providers, but third party solutions that replace the SMS system entirely. Witness the growth of iPhones, BlackBerries, and other smart phones that give people access to new ways of communicating every day. Within our lifetimes, SMS will be a distant memory. Especially given that this is a completely superfluous luxury service used mainly by people who can well afford it, it's hard for me to work up a whole lot of outrage about companies making a profit while they can reasonably do so.
It's perfectly reasonable. Since these fuels require more energy to produce than they actually provide, with the cost of fuel going down it is now going to become cheap enough to practically waste energy on this sort of "alternative-fuel" nonsense. If they would only pass a law requiring the use of these fuel sources, there would be no limit to the money and energy we could waste!
That's funny. I once tracked poop (on purpose) onto my English professor(')s carpet for giving me a 64 (the lowest possible D before an F) because he didn't agree with my position on a paper (which was on a moral issue). He gave me a D because he knew I had put hard work into the document(,) but couldn't agree with my position.
Frankly, I'd give you a D for that paragraph alone.
Because it means that we'll finally have an exact legal threshold in terms of number of recipients for an email to be considered spam, regardless of the contents or intent of the email. Zero tolerance policies are a really good idea, because they allow us to deal with violations--now matter how minor--in a uniform manner, and don't permit bureaucrats to allow things like reasonableness or circumstances to muddy the issue.
Why does it matter whether it happens daily, monthly or yearly? The fact that it happens is the point, so leave the pointless hyperbole out of it.
What? Your original statement was,
But say I want to watch a video.
Okay, we're saying you want to watch a video.
Oh, odd, it won't play. Something about a "codec". What the hell is a codec?
The implication there is that it happens whenever you try to watch a video. But now you claim you didn't mean what you literally said (if we're watching a video, it won't play). So okay, if it only happens occasionally, you call tech support and let a professional deal with it, much like you do when your car breaks down. The car analogy still stands. What is so hard to understand about this for you?
Perhaps by 'simpler' you mean 'easier to use'.
Well, yeah, I would pretty much be using the generally accepted definition of the word "simple" there.
I'm not exactly sure what you think the word should mean, but if you look at the context of my posts, it should be fairly obvious what I'm talking about. Read the part where I explicitly said they are getting more technically complex, but easier to operate, thus defining exactly what I meant by "simple", and not what you wanted me to mean.
Of course computers today can do more than those of yesterday. I stated that computers, like cars, have gotten simpler and so more people are able to use them than they were before. And when both cars and computers require maintenance, as they invariably do, there is nothing wrong with not doing it yourself. You responded by saying my analogy was bad, because computers are not getting simpler. I pointed out that just as cars have become simpler, computers have too, so the analogy was perfectly valid. Even if you believe "simple" means something other than what I defined it to mean, the analogy is still valid because cars and computers have gotten "simpler" in the exact same way (more technically complex, yet easier to use). Then you seemed to state that modern computers are somehow harder to use than the computers of 20 years ago, a claim that is laughable on its face.
Y'know, if you turn around and start running now, you might just be able to catch up with the point that flew over your head.
Y'know, I honestly don't think you have a point. You just want to quibble about a dictionary definition. Unfortunately, it turns out you're flat out wrong about that. Sorry.
You must be joking. Or do you seriously have problems on a daily basis watching videos, saving documents, copying photos, and so on? If you really do, then I feel sorry for you and you should take a computer class, because the rest of us don't regularly struggle with doing simple tasks like you've described. Sure, things go wrong, but software is getting better and better and handling problems automatically (Quicktime will attempt to download missing codecs for you, for example). And when things go really wrong, that's why we have tech support, because not everybody has to be a computer expert just to use the system.
By the way--in case you haven't realized--you can't do many of those things at all on a DOS computer, at least not without in depth knowledge of how the system works. Photos? Not in a text interface, maybe if you have a helper program and know how to use it. Videos? Forget it. In fact, most people who sat down at DOS computer would have no idea what to do with it, whereas the majority of people can figure out how to operate a Mac (or Windows, or really practically any modern computer) more or less on their own.
Do you have trouble driving a car because you can't figure out how to operate the stereo? I certainly hope not. For the tasks most people want to do, computers are vastly simpler today than they have ever been. Nobody is claiming they are perfectly intuitive, but even as they become more technically complex, they are becoming more user friendly (i.e. less complicated to operate).
Actually, my analogy is even more apt for you pointing that out. When cars were first manufactured, they were remarkably simple devices compared to today. A carburetor, for example, is quite unsophisticated compared to a fuel injection system. Modern cars have air conditioning, power steering, cruise control, emissions control systems, entertainment systems, and dozens of other functions that could fail. Yet, thanks to things like automatic transmissions, traction control systems, safety lights, and so on, cars have become simpler to operate, even as they have become more technically complicated.
So too with computers. Yes, there are more ways in which they could fail compared to the computers of yesteryear. But you can't seriously argue that a modern Macintosh, for example, is more difficult for the average person to use than a 286 running DOS, notwithstanding the fact that the newer computer is orders of magnitude more powerful, has advanced graphics, sound, networking functionality, etc.
From the user's perspective, computers are indeed getting simpler.
Uh, no. When cars were FIRST sold to the public, if you bought one you could afford to pay one of your servants to maintain it.
Besides, that's still a bad analogy, because it's not that most people couldn't change the oil or spark plugs on a car, it's just that it's too much of a pain in the ass for people to do it. I could teach anyone how to do it in theory. You just follow a few simple steps. But it's much easier to simply pay a guy 25 bucks every couple of months than have to crawl under the car, muck around with dirty oil, figure out where to dispose the old stuff, and so on. Given that, there's not really any real need for me to know how to do it, any more than I need to know how to perform surgery or cook escargot. Although in point of fact I do know how to change the oil on my car (having changed the oil on numerous motorcycles purely for the fun of it), I see no reason to call anyone who didn't have a clue how to do it an idiot.
Computers are getting simpler. They are getting to the point where it makes sense to learn how to use them and how to fix them when something minor goes wrong. This is the standard level for computer literacy. A better car analogy would be to observe that when cars were first sold to the public, they were complicated to operate, difficult to start, and not many people saw the use of them. Over time, however, they became simpler and simpler, to the point where it is reasonably expected that any given adult will be able to drive a car. This is what is increasingly happening with computers. Some from the older generations will learn to adapt to the new technology, and some will not. But within our lifetimes, computer competence will be expected of people, especially when computers have become simple and ubiquitous. To an extent, this is already the case. However, the general expectation is not that anybody could write software (i.e. design a car part) or be able to fix computers that have suffered a serious malfunction (i.e. replace the cooling system). It's not even be that most people are expected to be able to handle routine maintenance on their own, hence the need for automatic software updates--you don't need to understand the details, just that you need to do it every so often. Just like changing your car's oil.
I know that providing a basic standard of health care for everybody is something that we can afford as a nation, and something that we should do because it is simply the right thing to do.
And I say you're wrong. It's not something we can afford to do, and it's not something we should do. We already have the best health care system in the world. There is simply no better place to get well than in the United States. And nobody here goes without health care. Most people who want it can afford it. Given the choice, I'd rather pay for the ER visits of the tiny fraction of people who can't than have to fund a system that gives everyone coverage, whether they are capable of providing for themselves or not.
I pay taxes not because I don't want the IRS to come after me, I pay them because I know I'm getting a bargain for my money in terms of roadways, police, fire, etc... It's cheaper to have a government bureaucracy than to have a corporate profit machine funneling undeserved millions into the pockets of fallible executives who neither serve their customers or their shareholders with their greed.
You mean like the $700 billion bailout to line the pockets of fallible executives who neither served their customers or their shareholders with their greed? Or the hundreds of billions of dollars being pumped into the war machine? Or the untold sums of money being wasted at every level of government on unnecessary programs and pork barrel projects? That's where the majority of your tax money is going.
And as a personal note Guido.... I help my neighbors when they are in need, even when it might inconvenience me. I'm sorry that basic value was never instilled in you by the community and family you grew up in.
Do you see what you've done there? You assume that because I don't support letting the government take care of people, I don't support taking care of people at all--as if there's no other way to accomplish these goals and anyone who disagrees with you is motivated out of greed and selfishness. If you think these programs are so great, why don't you pay extra taxes to fund them so I don't have to? Or would you not be okay with funding them if I weren't also required to do so against my will? That's pretty greedy and selfish of you, to make me pay for a program you want and I don't, and you may use but I never will.
In fact, I believe that private citizens can and will support those around them given the opportunity to do so. Furthermore, they will be able to do so much more efficiently and for much less money than bringing the government in. You may not have faith in the free market's ability to solve social ills, but I do and so do many others. Although it may seem illogical to you, it is insane to us to believe the government can and will solve these problems, given its miserable track record in the past.
It would be terrifying to me if the government were to involve itself in providing health care for Americans. I have a cousin (in a foreign, first world country) who is expected to die shortly because the government simply will not approve further treatment for his illness. The treatment, while excellent if it works, doesn't have a terribly high success rate, and the government has decided it will not pay for it because it's a bad value for them in the long run. It would be covered by insurance were he in the US, but since he's not it is prohibitively expensive for him to come to this country and receive a treatment that could quite possibly save his life. He is essentially a victim of the sort of bureaucracy that you're championing. And before you ask why we as his family don't help pay for his treatment, it is because he won't allow us to, not because we wouldn't do it if asked.
Despite your greed if there comes a day when you've lost your job, or your business, I'll be happy that my tax dollars are providing you and your children with health care. I'l
Whether or not it actually saves any money--and I don't agree that it does--is irrelevant. I don't want you or anyone else to tell me what is best for me, or society as a whole. Why are you so certain that you know how to solve everyone's problems better than they do? That's pretty arrogant.
Do you know what you're buying with your taxes? Simply this: the right for one year not to have men with guns come into your house and throw you in prison. It's not any different from extortion. It doesn't matter what the taxes go to pay for. I would rather pay more for my own health care and be happy with what I'm getting than have my money taken from me by force and be unable to get health care that I'm satisfied with.
I've got a better question. I'd like to know how this memory stick came to be in the first place!
Putting aside the question of whether such a database of private information has any reason to exist, what possible excuse is there for putting the information to access that database on a portable USB device? It was not a question of if such a device would be lost, but when.
Good security policy demands redundancy for just this reason. A verification system should require--at the very least--a combination of something you know (your personal pin), and something you have (for example, a SecurID or in this case, a USB key with the passcodes on it). That way, if the physical token is lost, security isn't immediately compromised.
This kind of careless attitude towards security wouldn't fly in the corporate world. It's only because it's the government doing it that security is so lax. After all, nobody's job is on the line over this. It's next to impossible to fire a government employee in most countries, epic incompetence--or even outright misconduct--notwithstanding. So expect to see more of this, because there's no incentive to change.
I have to say, I'm really surprised this is happening in Turkey. Turkey is actually a fairly westernized country, and while it is predominantly Islamic, it is quite progressive on religious issues. Its constitution even guarantees freedom of religion (and Turkey has no official state religion), and since 1924 has maintained a secular government. I was led to understand that there is strong opposition in Turkey to the government interfering in matters of religion, but perhaps that is no longer the case for whatever reason...
Besides, the iPhone already is open, at least unofficially. I can in fact SSH from mine, and have been able to ever since I got it. I am a techie user, and I'm perfectly satisfied with my iPhone.
I'm sure Woz is sort of conflicted by the fact that, as much as he might want to, it would be impolitic for him to announce he had jailbroken his phone.
Believe it or not, they DO have an interest in preventing unsupported systems from running their software. They may feel that the degraded user experience will reflect badly on them to other people who see your setup, for example. And if they don't want it to run under Wine on Linux simply because they don't like the faces of the Wine developers, then that's their prerogative. To them, that's not a "legitimate system". You're welcome to try to defeat the mechanism by which they prevent you from doing that, but if it doesn't work, don't complain about it. You knew the risks going in. You have no more right to run the software then they have to prevent you from doing so, no matter how arbitrary their reasoning. Your main recourse is simply not to buy the game.
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New Yorkers like to think that, but it's just not true. Go out and really watch people during the day sometime and you'll start to notice it. Watch the eyes. It's just human nature.
Thanks for proving my point. There are things to like about New York. New Yorkers are not one of them. Ex-New Yorkers even less so.
The only thing I'm less interested in than how awesome New York is would be hearing people talk about how awesome New York is.
Actually, it's because Manhattan hurt your brain when you were there. It's actually intentional--it's the only way they can keep the theaters on Broadway packed for inane pablum like "Cats".
Presumably they eventually manage to recover at least somewhat, but I can tell you from personal experience that they remain permanently insufferable. Ask anyone who has lived in New York about pizza, or public transportation, or pretty much anything else for that matter and the conversation will eventually turn to how much better New York is than wherever it is they currently happen to be. One wonders why they don't just go back and stay there.
I have yet to meet an ex-New Yorker who isn't excessively proud of the fact that he once lived in "The City". They're worse than Texans.
Just head to Manhattan and look at the people around you. Everyone is constantly glancing around at everything. It's not just the tourists either--very nearly every single person is constantly shifting his gaze from point to point like a coked out monkey with ADD. It's one of the things that I hate about New York.
Price discrimination doesn't even come into it, because they're charging everyone the same price here. Stop throwing around terms when you have no idea what they mean.
The (great) grandparent was wrong, and you're wrong. Text messaging is not, and should not be, in perfect competition. There are huge barriers to entry into the market--namely, you have to have access to a global telecommunications network. It's not a commodity in the true sense of the word, where the number of providers is great and they are more or less indistinguishable from each other. It is, as I said before, an oligopoly market. And that's not an "evil" term--it's a natural result of the market.
text messages cost almost nothing, therefore, the price of text messages should be almost nothing.
It sounds like you got a C- in microeconomics and are pretty fuzzy on why. Simply assuming supply and demand will set prices is a naive way of examining a market. If the price of text messages were almost nothing, there would be no supply because people would refuse to supply them at such low prices--especially when people are clearly willing to pay a lot more for them. Why focus on a market that provides no revenue when you can concentrate on markets that are a lot more lucrative, regardless of marginal cost to entry? Clearly there are other factors at work than supply and demand. If you don't believe this, I invite you to set up your own text messaging service and compete with the carriers for market share. Given that the cost to enter the market is enormous, and under your interpretation of economics revenues would be extremely low, does that really make sense? If not, then you concede that the market is not in "perfect competition".
The key thing you're missing is that supply and demand do NOT determine prices. The prices are determined by two things, and only two things: What people are willing to pay, and what suppliers are willing to sell for. These two values are affected by numerous factors, supply and demand being only one of them. And furthermore, all of these factors are intertwined and affect each other. Level of competition, which is affected by barrier to entry, which affects overhead and marginal cost, which affects profit margins, which are affected by price elasticity of demand, which is affected by availability of substitute goods, and so on and so forth. But ultimately, it still comes down to those two things: What people will pay, and what people will sell for. That's it. In this case, people are clearly willing to pay the given rates for text messaging, as evidenced by the 3.3 trillion messages sent per year. When that changes--which may be for a multitude of reasons, one of which may or may not be fluctuating supply and demand--prices will change.
You clearly have no idea how supply and demand works. When demand exceeds supply it creates a shortfall, and prices go up due to the scarcity of the good in question. That is, you may be willing to pay $X for my widget, but someone else who wants it is willing to pay $X+1, so if I only have one I'll sell to him instead of you. Conversely, if I have three, I'll sell to him first, then you, then maybe to another guy who is only willing to pay $X-1. The average price drops, and as people realize that I have a bunch of widgets I want to unload, they know they can get them for less if they hold out, and consequently are willing to pay less money for them because they know that they will still be able to get one even when I've sold to everyone who is willing to pay more than they are.
Now that you've gotten a quick economics lesson, you should see why simply having an infinite supply of something doesn't make prices magically fall regardless of demand. Prices are set by what people are willing to pay for them (you may have heard the term "what the market will bear"). Supply and demand changes affect that price, but it's not the only factor. In this case, there are only a few companies providing the service, creating an oligopoly. They are going to set the price for text messaging based solely on what they think people will pay. If they set the prices too high, people will stop using the service or go to a competitor who offers a cheaper alternative. Yes, it's "price fixing" in the sense that each of the providers is setting his price at the level he thinks will provide him the most profit. If any of them were to lower their prices significantly, the effect would likely be to attract a large number of subscribers away from other carriers. Each of the carriers knows this, and so if one of them lowered the price all of them would have to in order to retain customers. The net result is that they simply all make less money. Since they're not forcing anyone to use their services, is making money really so wrong?
Prices are likely to drop eventually anyway, as the market grows and competition increases--not just from other cell providers, but third party solutions that replace the SMS system entirely. Witness the growth of iPhones, BlackBerries, and other smart phones that give people access to new ways of communicating every day. Within our lifetimes, SMS will be a distant memory. Especially given that this is a completely superfluous luxury service used mainly by people who can well afford it, it's hard for me to work up a whole lot of outrage about companies making a profit while they can reasonably do so.
It's perfectly reasonable. Since these fuels require more energy to produce than they actually provide, with the cost of fuel going down it is now going to become cheap enough to practically waste energy on this sort of "alternative-fuel" nonsense. If they would only pass a law requiring the use of these fuel sources, there would be no limit to the money and energy we could waste!
How lucky for you!
That grammar might have warranted a D, if he were in grade school.
A hypothetical contrary to fact takes the subjunctive. C-.
As it stands, you're right. But I forgot to change the clause to read
but he couldn't agree with my position.
Without the "he", the subject of the clause is technically ambiguous.
That's funny. I once tracked poop (on purpose) onto my English professor(')s carpet for giving me a 64 (the lowest possible D before an F) because he didn't agree with my position on a paper (which was on a moral issue). He gave me a D because he knew I had put hard work into the document(,) but couldn't agree with my position.
Frankly, I'd give you a D for that paragraph alone.
Because it means that we'll finally have an exact legal threshold in terms of number of recipients for an email to be considered spam, regardless of the contents or intent of the email. Zero tolerance policies are a really good idea, because they allow us to deal with violations--now matter how minor--in a uniform manner, and don't permit bureaucrats to allow things like reasonableness or circumstances to muddy the issue.
Why does it matter whether it happens daily, monthly or yearly? The fact that it happens is the point, so leave the pointless hyperbole out of it.
What? Your original statement was,
But say I want to watch a video.
Okay, we're saying you want to watch a video.
Oh, odd, it won't play. Something about a "codec". What the hell is a codec?
The implication there is that it happens whenever you try to watch a video. But now you claim you didn't mean what you literally said (if we're watching a video, it won't play). So okay, if it only happens occasionally, you call tech support and let a professional deal with it, much like you do when your car breaks down. The car analogy still stands. What is so hard to understand about this for you?
Perhaps by 'simpler' you mean 'easier to use'.
Well, yeah, I would pretty much be using the generally accepted definition of the word "simple" there.
1. easy to understand, deal with, use, etc.: a simple matter; simple tools.
I'm not exactly sure what you think the word should mean, but if you look at the context of my posts, it should be fairly obvious what I'm talking about. Read the part where I explicitly said they are getting more technically complex, but easier to operate, thus defining exactly what I meant by "simple", and not what you wanted me to mean.
Of course computers today can do more than those of yesterday. I stated that computers, like cars, have gotten simpler and so more people are able to use them than they were before. And when both cars and computers require maintenance, as they invariably do, there is nothing wrong with not doing it yourself. You responded by saying my analogy was bad, because computers are not getting simpler. I pointed out that just as cars have become simpler, computers have too, so the analogy was perfectly valid. Even if you believe "simple" means something other than what I defined it to mean, the analogy is still valid because cars and computers have gotten "simpler" in the exact same way (more technically complex, yet easier to use). Then you seemed to state that modern computers are somehow harder to use than the computers of 20 years ago, a claim that is laughable on its face.
Y'know, if you turn around and start running now, you might just be able to catch up with the point that flew over your head.
Y'know, I honestly don't think you have a point. You just want to quibble about a dictionary definition. Unfortunately, it turns out you're flat out wrong about that. Sorry.
You must be joking. Or do you seriously have problems on a daily basis watching videos, saving documents, copying photos, and so on? If you really do, then I feel sorry for you and you should take a computer class, because the rest of us don't regularly struggle with doing simple tasks like you've described. Sure, things go wrong, but software is getting better and better and handling problems automatically (Quicktime will attempt to download missing codecs for you, for example). And when things go really wrong, that's why we have tech support, because not everybody has to be a computer expert just to use the system.
By the way--in case you haven't realized--you can't do many of those things at all on a DOS computer, at least not without in depth knowledge of how the system works. Photos? Not in a text interface, maybe if you have a helper program and know how to use it. Videos? Forget it. In fact, most people who sat down at DOS computer would have no idea what to do with it, whereas the majority of people can figure out how to operate a Mac (or Windows, or really practically any modern computer) more or less on their own.
Do you have trouble driving a car because you can't figure out how to operate the stereo? I certainly hope not. For the tasks most people want to do, computers are vastly simpler today than they have ever been. Nobody is claiming they are perfectly intuitive, but even as they become more technically complex, they are becoming more user friendly (i.e. less complicated to operate).
Actually, my analogy is even more apt for you pointing that out. When cars were first manufactured, they were remarkably simple devices compared to today. A carburetor, for example, is quite unsophisticated compared to a fuel injection system. Modern cars have air conditioning, power steering, cruise control, emissions control systems, entertainment systems, and dozens of other functions that could fail. Yet, thanks to things like automatic transmissions, traction control systems, safety lights, and so on, cars have become simpler to operate, even as they have become more technically complicated.
So too with computers. Yes, there are more ways in which they could fail compared to the computers of yesteryear. But you can't seriously argue that a modern Macintosh, for example, is more difficult for the average person to use than a 286 running DOS, notwithstanding the fact that the newer computer is orders of magnitude more powerful, has advanced graphics, sound, networking functionality, etc.
From the user's perspective, computers are indeed getting simpler.
Uh, no. When cars were FIRST sold to the public, if you bought one you could afford to pay one of your servants to maintain it.
Besides, that's still a bad analogy, because it's not that most people couldn't change the oil or spark plugs on a car, it's just that it's too much of a pain in the ass for people to do it. I could teach anyone how to do it in theory. You just follow a few simple steps. But it's much easier to simply pay a guy 25 bucks every couple of months than have to crawl under the car, muck around with dirty oil, figure out where to dispose the old stuff, and so on. Given that, there's not really any real need for me to know how to do it, any more than I need to know how to perform surgery or cook escargot. Although in point of fact I do know how to change the oil on my car (having changed the oil on numerous motorcycles purely for the fun of it), I see no reason to call anyone who didn't have a clue how to do it an idiot.
Computers are getting simpler. They are getting to the point where it makes sense to learn how to use them and how to fix them when something minor goes wrong. This is the standard level for computer literacy. A better car analogy would be to observe that when cars were first sold to the public, they were complicated to operate, difficult to start, and not many people saw the use of them. Over time, however, they became simpler and simpler, to the point where it is reasonably expected that any given adult will be able to drive a car. This is what is increasingly happening with computers. Some from the older generations will learn to adapt to the new technology, and some will not. But within our lifetimes, computer competence will be expected of people, especially when computers have become simple and ubiquitous. To an extent, this is already the case. However, the general expectation is not that anybody could write software (i.e. design a car part) or be able to fix computers that have suffered a serious malfunction (i.e. replace the cooling system). It's not even be that most people are expected to be able to handle routine maintenance on their own, hence the need for automatic software updates--you don't need to understand the details, just that you need to do it every so often. Just like changing your car's oil.
I know that providing a basic standard of health care for everybody is something that we can afford as a nation, and something that we should do because it is simply the right thing to do.
And I say you're wrong. It's not something we can afford to do, and it's not something we should do. We already have the best health care system in the world. There is simply no better place to get well than in the United States. And nobody here goes without health care. Most people who want it can afford it. Given the choice, I'd rather pay for the ER visits of the tiny fraction of people who can't than have to fund a system that gives everyone coverage, whether they are capable of providing for themselves or not.
I pay taxes not because I don't want the IRS to come after me, I pay them because I know I'm getting a bargain for my money in terms of roadways, police, fire, etc... It's cheaper to have a government bureaucracy than to have a corporate profit machine funneling undeserved millions into the pockets of fallible executives who neither serve their customers or their shareholders with their greed.
You mean like the $700 billion bailout to line the pockets of fallible executives who neither served their customers or their shareholders with their greed? Or the hundreds of billions of dollars being pumped into the war machine? Or the untold sums of money being wasted at every level of government on unnecessary programs and pork barrel projects? That's where the majority of your tax money is going.
And as a personal note Guido.... I help my neighbors when they are in need, even when it might inconvenience me. I'm sorry that basic value was never instilled in you by the community and family you grew up in.
Do you see what you've done there? You assume that because I don't support letting the government take care of people, I don't support taking care of people at all--as if there's no other way to accomplish these goals and anyone who disagrees with you is motivated out of greed and selfishness. If you think these programs are so great, why don't you pay extra taxes to fund them so I don't have to? Or would you not be okay with funding them if I weren't also required to do so against my will? That's pretty greedy and selfish of you, to make me pay for a program you want and I don't, and you may use but I never will.
In fact, I believe that private citizens can and will support those around them given the opportunity to do so. Furthermore, they will be able to do so much more efficiently and for much less money than bringing the government in. You may not have faith in the free market's ability to solve social ills, but I do and so do many others. Although it may seem illogical to you, it is insane to us to believe the government can and will solve these problems, given its miserable track record in the past.
It would be terrifying to me if the government were to involve itself in providing health care for Americans. I have a cousin (in a foreign, first world country) who is expected to die shortly because the government simply will not approve further treatment for his illness. The treatment, while excellent if it works, doesn't have a terribly high success rate, and the government has decided it will not pay for it because it's a bad value for them in the long run. It would be covered by insurance were he in the US, but since he's not it is prohibitively expensive for him to come to this country and receive a treatment that could quite possibly save his life. He is essentially a victim of the sort of bureaucracy that you're championing. And before you ask why we as his family don't help pay for his treatment, it is because he won't allow us to, not because we wouldn't do it if asked.
Despite your greed if there comes a day when you've lost your job, or your business, I'll be happy that my tax dollars are providing you and your children with health care. I'l
Whether or not it actually saves any money--and I don't agree that it does--is irrelevant. I don't want you or anyone else to tell me what is best for me, or society as a whole. Why are you so certain that you know how to solve everyone's problems better than they do? That's pretty arrogant.
Do you know what you're buying with your taxes? Simply this: the right for one year not to have men with guns come into your house and throw you in prison. It's not any different from extortion. It doesn't matter what the taxes go to pay for. I would rather pay more for my own health care and be happy with what I'm getting than have my money taken from me by force and be unable to get health care that I'm satisfied with.
I've got a better question. I'd like to know how this memory stick came to be in the first place!
Putting aside the question of whether such a database of private information has any reason to exist, what possible excuse is there for putting the information to access that database on a portable USB device? It was not a question of if such a device would be lost, but when.
Good security policy demands redundancy for just this reason. A verification system should require--at the very least--a combination of something you know (your personal pin), and something you have (for example, a SecurID or in this case, a USB key with the passcodes on it). That way, if the physical token is lost, security isn't immediately compromised.
This kind of careless attitude towards security wouldn't fly in the corporate world. It's only because it's the government doing it that security is so lax. After all, nobody's job is on the line over this. It's next to impossible to fire a government employee in most countries, epic incompetence--or even outright misconduct--notwithstanding. So expect to see more of this, because there's no incentive to change.
I have to say, I'm really surprised this is happening in Turkey. Turkey is actually a fairly westernized country, and while it is predominantly Islamic, it is quite progressive on religious issues. Its constitution even guarantees freedom of religion (and Turkey has no official state religion), and since 1924 has maintained a secular government. I was led to understand that there is strong opposition in Turkey to the government interfering in matters of religion, but perhaps that is no longer the case for whatever reason...
Besides, the iPhone already is open, at least unofficially. I can in fact SSH from mine, and have been able to ever since I got it. I am a techie user, and I'm perfectly satisfied with my iPhone.
I'm sure Woz is sort of conflicted by the fact that, as much as he might want to, it would be impolitic for him to announce he had jailbroken his phone.
This guy got the same email as well.
So did a bunch of other people.
And they looked like this.
Believe it or not, they DO have an interest in preventing unsupported systems from running their software. They may feel that the degraded user experience will reflect badly on them to other people who see your setup, for example. And if they don't want it to run under Wine on Linux simply because they don't like the faces of the Wine developers, then that's their prerogative. To them, that's not a "legitimate system". You're welcome to try to defeat the mechanism by which they prevent you from doing that, but if it doesn't work, don't complain about it. You knew the risks going in. You have no more right to run the software then they have to prevent you from doing so, no matter how arbitrary their reasoning. Your main recourse is simply not to buy the game.