No - actually my parents bought it new when they built their first house in 1987 - no clue what they paid for it. They gave it to me when I moved out in 1999. It broke shortly thereafter and I paid $50 to have it fixed. It broke again a number of years back (2008-ish IIRC, though I'm not positive) and I paid $75 to have it fixed again.
Meanwhile my parents are on their THIRD new washing machine since they gave me their old one. The newer model ones don't seem to last nearly as long and are harder to repair. No clue what they paid for the replacements but you generally can't find a new washer for under $300.
Really? I find them invaluable. My machine is a 30-ish year old Kenmoore. Its had to be repaired twice in that span. $50 once - $75 the other time. Heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new unit that is likely of lesser quality and would break within 3-4 years.
Kinda off-topic but I think I society needs to get back to higher quality items that are worth repairing rather than the concept of literally everything being disposable.
Look at how easy it is to jailbreak an iPhone. Do you really think that the criminals wouldn't either a) acquire guns without these features or b) simply disable them?
Gun control always assumes a perfect world - that the criminals will simply comply with whatever legislation is passed. In the real world, it doesn't work that way.
Which explains why guns are pretty useless for self-defense, as it takes way long than a second to get your gun out, load it, disable any safety, and aim it remotely accurately.
Not really. Maybe a LITTLE longer, but not much more for the average person (I shoot competitively but I'm at best average and my time from draw to fire is between 1.5 and 1.75 seconds).
Some particularly good shooters can get a LOT faster. Bob Vogel recently had a Youtube video during which he managed to get in a draw, removal of manual safety, fire, RELOAD, and then a second shot off in 0.97 seconds.
Kinda. Regardless of the default however, ANY extraneous functionality introduced into a gun is a potential point of failure. Heck some recent new guns have even touted parts count as a selling feature (with a lower count, ie, simplicity, being better).
Reliability is everything when it comes to a firearm. I can honestly say that just the fact that it requires a battery means its out for me. Even if by some chance it could operate completely mechanically its still introducing a needless point of failure.
Now, don't get me wrong - there are some people which might be willing to accept such restrictions. There are some people who might even think that its worth the tradeoff. I'm fine with such guns being made available if they think there's enough of those people to support a market for them. I just don't want any government entity saying that I HAVE to use such a gun.
Web-based tax software seems to be almost as popular as local client based stuff these days (if it hasn't already become more popular). Even for those that DO use a local client the machine is still probably on the internet. This isn't the dilemma you're making it out to be.
Actually I think people overestimate how often "Office" is used in office settings. A lot of whats used tends to be specialty and/or niche apps specific to a certain task. We have around 550 computer users in our organization. Maybe 15% of them use Word and/or Excel. The rest have a specific application (or set of apps) that pertains to their job function. Since we've already switched to Gmail for email we're considering just having the majority of the users utilize Google Docs for the occasional time they need to use an office app, and reserving the full copies of Office only for people who heavily use it.
My point wasn't that there wouldn't be homosexual pairings between elves. Just that you wouldn't have a homosexual option for every single romanceable character in the game.
If they're going to make romance options in the game there should be some straight characters, some bisexual, and some homosexual. Making them all bisexual and then calling it a day is just lazy and boring.
the universal agreement is that Nichelle Nichols was, and remains, a stunning woman woman whom any of us would be proud to have kissed at any point in her career.
Strange. It always struck me odd that Kirk was kissing Uhura there - not because she was black, but because she was downright ugly. Thankfully they rectified that with the new Uhura - Zoe Saldana is smokin. I guess everyone has their tastes though.
Mass Effect and Dragon Age both had same-sex relationship options, and both were available on Xbox and Playstation, so those platforms certainly don't restrict that from appearing on there. Not sure about Nintento and iOS, but I doubt they'd ban the concept on the entire platform.
Besides - the whole thing has gotten a bit silly lately anyways. Dragon Age 2 not only allowed same-sex relationships, but made it so that EVERY character capable of starting a romance could enter into a relationship with your character regardless of your gender. That effectively removes heterosexuality from the game and renders everyone bisexual, which is in no way realistic.
90% obesity in Ireland is nonsense unless you're using some imaginary definition of obesity.
"Overweight or obese", and males only.
It doesn't really take that much to fall into the "overweight" category on the BMI scale. As a matter of fact the start of the "overweight" scale is actually what I'd consider to be optimal weight. At my height 5'10" you're officially overweight starting at 175 lbs - I personally wouldn't want to be much under that.
Yes, and I'm saying what I'd be willing to pay for it. Much more than that and I will simply continue to get what I want through other channels. Valve (via Steam) has already proven that it tends to be better to sell digital goods to lots of people are cheap prices than fewer people at high prices. I'll pay $5/month for HBO GO . . . or they can get nothing.
When I moved a year ago I haven't signed back up for satellite or cable at the new house. Honestly, its just not worth the bill. I pay $8 per month for Netflix and paid $50 one time for a decent HDTV antenna. That gives me plenty of stuff to browse around on and basic broadcast TV. If HBO made HBO GO available as a separate service I'd probably get it just for Game of Thrones, but I'm still doing OK without it (honestly, I'm torrenting it, but I'd be willing to pay $5/month for HBO GO if they'd do it).
I think it really depends. A lot of people who always used a laptop seem to be better served by keeping the laptop. I personally have always hated a laptop for general usage though. Compared to a desktop they've always been limited in specs and had smaller screens and bad keyboards.
HOWEVER, for those times when I'm out traveling I need something portable, and the tablets work great for that. I'm not out working, and any email I send is basically "Hey I'm out till Monday - I'll check with you when I'm back in the office.". Other than that all I want to do is check Facebook/Twitter, look at restaurant reviews, etc.
Basically, the tablet is a great portable computer to do the things I HAVE to do on a computer when I'm away and don't really want/need to spend a lot of time on a "real" computer. Just enough system to meet my needs without getting in the way.
That's the computer market as a whole. From the early 80's up until about 2005 computers were always slow. Slow to the point where people got frustrated, and the never ending progression of speed made upgrading every 2 years (or even faster) the norm.
Then sometime around 2005-ish things seem to get to a point where people weren't waiting on the computer anymore. An upgrade meant little because outside of gaming the computer likely wouldn't "feel" any faster.
Heck I used to build a new computer annually, but I just rebuilt my computer about 2 weeks ago that I had been running since 2009. Not because it was too slow, but because half the USB ports had died on the motherboard.
At this point its gotten to be about like a car. I don't buy a new computer because I want something "better" anymore. I buy when the old one is broken or has more problems than are worth fixing. Tablets are the same way. Honestly I think phones would be too except that due to the way they're carried they suffer a lot more wear and tear and simply break more frequently.
Indeed. Gun legislation often is scoffed at because almost every time an exemption is put in for law enforcement. 10 round magazines for everyone . . . except cops.
Its hard to keep a straight face when these people are saying that "anything more than 10 rounds is good for nothing but mowing down crowds of people" while they insist that the police need to keep their hi-cap mags.
Bottom line is that most gun regs put a needless and artificial burden. I wouldn't accept an artificial and arbitrary limit on my computer of 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a single core 1Ghz processor to keep me from hacking, nor will I accept artificial magazine capacity limits, or "smart gun" technology on my guns to keep me from misusing it.
But, they might find people suddenly saying "to hell with that", and go read a book.
Or more realistically, they'll just pirate it.
These guys really don't understand that they are dealing with a situation where people can, for the most part, obtain their product for free with little chance of getting caught. They keep wanting to charge more and more - the "pay per" model, whether that per be inches, pixels, views, viewers, or anything else. They need to realize that they need to be thinking about how to get the product cheaper, not more expensive.
You fight piracy by pricing things low enough and making them convenient enough that piracy is too much of a hassle. For songs that's already the case. I'm not going to bother pirating a song when I can just go buy it for $1. With movies/TV, what has gotten a lot of people to go "legit" is Netflix and Hulu - basically a flat rate "all you can eat" pricing model.
It's a buyers market right now - they don't have the leverage to pull this stuff.
I paid $16,000 for my Hyundai Tiburon brand new back in 2006. I'm currently around 145,000 miles on it and it's still chugging along. Aside from maintenance items (tires, brakes, spark plugs, belts, oil, etc) the only thing that has ever broken has been the blower motor on the ac/heat. That was a $65 fix.
Looking at their website there are still several models in the $15-20k range brand new.
For games - maybe not, but perhaps non-interactive content like many people already watch will be adapted to this.
Its not a holodeck - there's no tactile feedback, but I can a future where one could watch the superbowl as if they're standing on the field with the players. Or similar things for movies. Basically like being a "ghost" - you're there, and you observe, but you can't interact.
Your comment kinda reminds me of something my brother said back in the mid-late 90's. I had a DVD drive on my computer and I said "Eventually these are going to replace video cassettes.". He exclaimed that that would never happen because most people don't watch movies on a computer. While he was right on the latter part (for a time), that was irrelevant, because he wasn't seeing the full scope of what the technology could be used with.
Its not as if they cloning lab gets charged by the pound. If they've got better preserved mammoth DNA then clone that - the final size of the animal is sort of irrelevant.
No, Google designed a system that would be a compromise between security and usability since some people would obviously go bat shit if they had to enter their password every time.
If only there were some precedent for making that time adjustable - or even eliminated. Perhaps if I'm quick enough I could patent the ability for a user to adjust the settings of a device to his or her own preferences . . .
Indeed. I don't think they understand that "parenting" isn't so well defined.
My kids I do a lot of activities with. Next weekend we're going to the zoo. A few weeks ago we went to the aquarium. I read to them and tell them stories quite frequently.
However, often times they WANT to go do something by themselves. Whether that is playing in the back yard or on the iPad (or more recently the laptop - the 5 year old has gotten pretty proficient with both. She can't even read but she understands how to open the browser and type in "pbskids.org"). You simply can't be there like a hawk for every second without delving into helicopter parenting, which is just a bad idea. At a minimum I should be able to set the tablet so that it asks me for the password EVERY SINGLE TIME you make a purchase.
Its not something that I have to worry about as I generally hate microtransaction games to the point that I don't let them buy anything in them (so I never enter the password the 1st time), but I certainly can see why someone would want this.
Pretty much the same in government. My friends in the private sector get paid 30-40% more, but the benefits are worth it. I have extremely good healthcare paid 100% by my employer, 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, a pension plan that pays for life after 28 years (I can retire when I'm 51) and an extreme level of job security (in developed countries governments don't "go out of business" like private firms).
I actually had a friend straight up offer me a private sector job a few years ago at a 25% pay increase over my current one and I turned it down. The extra pay isn't worth the stress.
Um, no. Depending on what site you're looking at it might go up or down, but nobody is ranking IE at over 50% anymore. W3 is actually reporting IE at around 20% these days:
Slashdot Mirror
No - actually my parents bought it new when they built their first house in 1987 - no clue what they paid for it. They gave it to me when I moved out in 1999. It broke shortly thereafter and I paid $50 to have it fixed. It broke again a number of years back (2008-ish IIRC, though I'm not positive) and I paid $75 to have it fixed again.
Meanwhile my parents are on their THIRD new washing machine since they gave me their old one. The newer model ones don't seem to last nearly as long and are harder to repair. No clue what they paid for the replacements but you generally can't find a new washer for under $300.
washing machine repairmen
Really? I find them invaluable. My machine is a 30-ish year old Kenmoore. Its had to be repaired twice in that span. $50 once - $75 the other time. Heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new unit that is likely of lesser quality and would break within 3-4 years.
Kinda off-topic but I think I society needs to get back to higher quality items that are worth repairing rather than the concept of literally everything being disposable.
Look at how easy it is to jailbreak an iPhone. Do you really think that the criminals wouldn't either a) acquire guns without these features or b) simply disable them?
Gun control always assumes a perfect world - that the criminals will simply comply with whatever legislation is passed. In the real world, it doesn't work that way.
Which explains why guns are pretty useless for self-defense, as it takes way long than a second to get your gun out, load it, disable any safety, and aim it remotely accurately.
Not really. Maybe a LITTLE longer, but not much more for the average person (I shoot competitively but I'm at best average and my time from draw to fire is between 1.5 and 1.75 seconds).
Some particularly good shooters can get a LOT faster. Bob Vogel recently had a Youtube video during which he managed to get in a draw, removal of manual safety, fire, RELOAD, and then a second shot off in 0.97 seconds.
https://www.facebook.com/photo...
Kinda. Regardless of the default however, ANY extraneous functionality introduced into a gun is a potential point of failure. Heck some recent new guns have even touted parts count as a selling feature (with a lower count, ie, simplicity, being better).
Reliability is everything when it comes to a firearm. I can honestly say that just the fact that it requires a battery means its out for me. Even if by some chance it could operate completely mechanically its still introducing a needless point of failure.
Now, don't get me wrong - there are some people which might be willing to accept such restrictions. There are some people who might even think that its worth the tradeoff. I'm fine with such guns being made available if they think there's enough of those people to support a market for them. I just don't want any government entity saying that I HAVE to use such a gun.
Web-based tax software seems to be almost as popular as local client based stuff these days (if it hasn't already become more popular). Even for those that DO use a local client the machine is still probably on the internet. This isn't the dilemma you're making it out to be.
Actually I think people overestimate how often "Office" is used in office settings. A lot of whats used tends to be specialty and/or niche apps specific to a certain task. We have around 550 computer users in our organization. Maybe 15% of them use Word and/or Excel. The rest have a specific application (or set of apps) that pertains to their job function. Since we've already switched to Gmail for email we're considering just having the majority of the users utilize Google Docs for the occasional time they need to use an office app, and reserving the full copies of Office only for people who heavily use it.
My point wasn't that there wouldn't be homosexual pairings between elves. Just that you wouldn't have a homosexual option for every single romanceable character in the game.
If they're going to make romance options in the game there should be some straight characters, some bisexual, and some homosexual. Making them all bisexual and then calling it a day is just lazy and boring.
the universal agreement is that Nichelle Nichols was, and remains, a stunning woman woman whom any of us would be proud to have kissed at any point in her career.
Strange. It always struck me odd that Kirk was kissing Uhura there - not because she was black, but because she was downright ugly. Thankfully they rectified that with the new Uhura - Zoe Saldana is smokin. I guess everyone has their tastes though.
Mass Effect and Dragon Age both had same-sex relationship options, and both were available on Xbox and Playstation, so those platforms certainly don't restrict that from appearing on there. Not sure about Nintento and iOS, but I doubt they'd ban the concept on the entire platform.
Besides - the whole thing has gotten a bit silly lately anyways. Dragon Age 2 not only allowed same-sex relationships, but made it so that EVERY character capable of starting a romance could enter into a relationship with your character regardless of your gender. That effectively removes heterosexuality from the game and renders everyone bisexual, which is in no way realistic.
90% obesity in Ireland is nonsense unless you're using some imaginary definition of obesity.
"Overweight or obese", and males only.
It doesn't really take that much to fall into the "overweight" category on the BMI scale. As a matter of fact the start of the "overweight" scale is actually what I'd consider to be optimal weight. At my height 5'10" you're officially overweight starting at 175 lbs - I personally wouldn't want to be much under that.
Yes, and I'm saying what I'd be willing to pay for it. Much more than that and I will simply continue to get what I want through other channels. Valve (via Steam) has already proven that it tends to be better to sell digital goods to lots of people are cheap prices than fewer people at high prices. I'll pay $5/month for HBO GO . . . or they can get nothing.
When I moved a year ago I haven't signed back up for satellite or cable at the new house. Honestly, its just not worth the bill. I pay $8 per month for Netflix and paid $50 one time for a decent HDTV antenna. That gives me plenty of stuff to browse around on and basic broadcast TV. If HBO made HBO GO available as a separate service I'd probably get it just for Game of Thrones, but I'm still doing OK without it (honestly, I'm torrenting it, but I'd be willing to pay $5/month for HBO GO if they'd do it).
I think it really depends. A lot of people who always used a laptop seem to be better served by keeping the laptop. I personally have always hated a laptop for general usage though. Compared to a desktop they've always been limited in specs and had smaller screens and bad keyboards.
HOWEVER, for those times when I'm out traveling I need something portable, and the tablets work great for that. I'm not out working, and any email I send is basically "Hey I'm out till Monday - I'll check with you when I'm back in the office.". Other than that all I want to do is check Facebook/Twitter, look at restaurant reviews, etc.
Basically, the tablet is a great portable computer to do the things I HAVE to do on a computer when I'm away and don't really want/need to spend a lot of time on a "real" computer. Just enough system to meet my needs without getting in the way.
That's the computer market as a whole. From the early 80's up until about 2005 computers were always slow. Slow to the point where people got frustrated, and the never ending progression of speed made upgrading every 2 years (or even faster) the norm.
Then sometime around 2005-ish things seem to get to a point where people weren't waiting on the computer anymore. An upgrade meant little because outside of gaming the computer likely wouldn't "feel" any faster.
Heck I used to build a new computer annually, but I just rebuilt my computer about 2 weeks ago that I had been running since 2009. Not because it was too slow, but because half the USB ports had died on the motherboard.
At this point its gotten to be about like a car. I don't buy a new computer because I want something "better" anymore. I buy when the old one is broken or has more problems than are worth fixing. Tablets are the same way. Honestly I think phones would be too except that due to the way they're carried they suffer a lot more wear and tear and simply break more frequently.
Indeed. Gun legislation often is scoffed at because almost every time an exemption is put in for law enforcement. 10 round magazines for everyone . . . except cops.
Its hard to keep a straight face when these people are saying that "anything more than 10 rounds is good for nothing but mowing down crowds of people" while they insist that the police need to keep their hi-cap mags.
Bottom line is that most gun regs put a needless and artificial burden. I wouldn't accept an artificial and arbitrary limit on my computer of 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a single core 1Ghz processor to keep me from hacking, nor will I accept artificial magazine capacity limits, or "smart gun" technology on my guns to keep me from misusing it.
But, they might find people suddenly saying "to hell with that", and go read a book.
Or more realistically, they'll just pirate it.
These guys really don't understand that they are dealing with a situation where people can, for the most part, obtain their product for free with little chance of getting caught. They keep wanting to charge more and more - the "pay per" model, whether that per be inches, pixels, views, viewers, or anything else. They need to realize that they need to be thinking about how to get the product cheaper, not more expensive.
You fight piracy by pricing things low enough and making them convenient enough that piracy is too much of a hassle. For songs that's already the case. I'm not going to bother pirating a song when I can just go buy it for $1. With movies/TV, what has gotten a lot of people to go "legit" is Netflix and Hulu - basically a flat rate "all you can eat" pricing model.
It's a buyers market right now - they don't have the leverage to pull this stuff.
I paid $16,000 for my Hyundai Tiburon brand new back in 2006. I'm currently around 145,000 miles on it and it's still chugging along. Aside from maintenance items (tires, brakes, spark plugs, belts, oil, etc) the only thing that has ever broken has been the blower motor on the ac/heat. That was a $65 fix.
Looking at their website there are still several models in the $15-20k range brand new.
For games - maybe not, but perhaps non-interactive content like many people already watch will be adapted to this.
Its not a holodeck - there's no tactile feedback, but I can a future where one could watch the superbowl as if they're standing on the field with the players. Or similar things for movies. Basically like being a "ghost" - you're there, and you observe, but you can't interact.
Your comment kinda reminds me of something my brother said back in the mid-late 90's. I had a DVD drive on my computer and I said "Eventually these are going to replace video cassettes.". He exclaimed that that would never happen because most people don't watch movies on a computer. While he was right on the latter part (for a time), that was irrelevant, because he wasn't seeing the full scope of what the technology could be used with.
Its not as if they cloning lab gets charged by the pound. If they've got better preserved mammoth DNA then clone that - the final size of the animal is sort of irrelevant.
No, Google designed a system that would be a compromise between security and usability since some people would obviously go bat shit if they had to enter their password every time.
If only there were some precedent for making that time adjustable - or even eliminated. Perhaps if I'm quick enough I could patent the ability for a user to adjust the settings of a device to his or her own preferences . . .
Indeed. I don't think they understand that "parenting" isn't so well defined.
My kids I do a lot of activities with. Next weekend we're going to the zoo. A few weeks ago we went to the aquarium. I read to them and tell them stories quite frequently.
However, often times they WANT to go do something by themselves. Whether that is playing in the back yard or on the iPad (or more recently the laptop - the 5 year old has gotten pretty proficient with both. She can't even read but she understands how to open the browser and type in "pbskids.org"). You simply can't be there like a hawk for every second without delving into helicopter parenting, which is just a bad idea. At a minimum I should be able to set the tablet so that it asks me for the password EVERY SINGLE TIME you make a purchase.
Its not something that I have to worry about as I generally hate microtransaction games to the point that I don't let them buy anything in them (so I never enter the password the 1st time), but I certainly can see why someone would want this.
Pretty much the same in government. My friends in the private sector get paid 30-40% more, but the benefits are worth it. I have extremely good healthcare paid 100% by my employer, 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, a pension plan that pays for life after 28 years (I can retire when I'm 51) and an extreme level of job security (in developed countries governments don't "go out of business" like private firms).
I actually had a friend straight up offer me a private sector job a few years ago at a 25% pay increase over my current one and I turned it down. The extra pay isn't worth the stress.
Newsflash: IE still has >50% market share.
Um, no. Depending on what site you're looking at it might go up or down, but nobody is ranking IE at over 50% anymore. W3 is actually reporting IE at around 20% these days:
http://www.w3counter.com/globa...
No - the current one tries to be "different". Mac OS is far more traditionally oriented than Gnome 3.
They didn't just shoot themselves in the foot with that release - they did so with almost the entire userbase screaming "Don't do it!!!!!".
Oh well. XFCE makes for a perfectly fine replacement.