Wow. We're only 1 week into 2019 and cable providers are already gunning for the "Stupidest Business Move of the Year" award. The most common-sense response to when you're losing paying customers in droves would be to either reduce prices or to increase value to current customers and have more enticing offers for first-time customers. But nope, they're going to shoot themselves in the foot instead and *raise* prices. Keep this up guys, and your shareholders will be the next ones looking for the exit door.
While CD degradation is a problem, manufacturing quality and care for discs are the biggest contributing factors to disc rot. I have many pre-1996 CDs (I still have my first CD from 1987) and they all play fine on my circa 1994 CD player. I take good care of my CDs (hold them by the edge, don't transport them in my car) and have had few, if any, problems. Maybe you bought into the marketing hype that CDs were indestructable and you treated your first CD poorly?
I think the reasons for the success of superhero movies are that (A) The movies have a pre-established fanbase, just like the LOTR and Harry Potter movies had their fanbases well before the movies came out (B) Special effects technology has finally reached the point where the superpowers and battles can be done right without appearing cheesy or lame. (C) the "shared universe" concept of crossovers between characters has been around for ages in comics but it had never really been done before in cinema until Marvel took a HUGE gamble with the idea (and it paid off handsomely). (D) Treating the characters and stories with respect. It's all too easy to go camp with superheroes, like the 60's Batman TV show did and it took decades for the genre to shake that off. But Marvel steered way clear of camp and treated the characters (and by extension, the fans) with respect and delivering quality stories.
"Superhero" movies are more than just "tights and fights" and can accommodate a variety of story types. Winter Soldier was a thriller, Guardians of the Galaxy was sci-fi, Dr. Strange was fantasy. Ant-Man was mostly a comedy.
Finally, what's so bad about 12 year old boys' taste in entertainment? I'm over 40 and can appreciate a well told action movie as much as any kid.
Pure fearmongering. I think we can both agree that "greatness" is a nebulous term. But to claim that to return to "greatness" America must revisit its dark side is just fearmongering vagueness. Can you be more specific about what sins would be reinstated as part of making America great again? Reviving Jim Crow laws isn't going to bring the middle-class back to its 1960s level of prosperity. Making same-sex marriage illegal again isn't going to get the US closer to energy independence. Bringing back slavery isn't going to fix our road and bridge infrastructure (On second thought, maybe it could. It would certainly keep labor costs way down, saving taxpayers a lot of money!). A return to semi-imperialism abroad isn't going to enable American footprints on Mars. Ooops! I think I just fed a troll.
Jack Ma isn't the first person to point this out and certainly won't be the last. For example, Thomas Friedman has been saying this for years. Friedman questioned the wisdom of pouring money into countries that will NEVER amount to anything. Afghanistan will always be a backwards, tribal s**thole country riven by warlords and violence. Iraq has a tiny sliver of potential to be more than just another oil barrel nation, but it's too rife with corruption and sectarian grudges to ever realize that potential. Friedman pointed out that the amount of money pissed away on our adventures in the middle-east and central Asia could buy every American a 4-year college degree and still have money left over for infrastructure development and other societal ills. What really saddens me is that we're 17 years into this "Forever War," and every year the memory of living in a nation at peace fades just a little bit more.
Many companies are striving to relieve their employees of burnout and stress through "early retirement offers" and "layoffs" thus taking the "work" out of "work/life balance". It's great for the companies, but not so much for the former employees and the remaining employees who have to take up the slack.
Wages have been stagnant for a loooong time, so this is old news. Until the early 1970's, wages and productivity grew in lock-step with each other, but then they started to diverge. Productivity kept rising ever upward but wage growth slowed and has been largely flat. For the last ten years, I've been an advocate of having multiple streams of income as way to (A) Not be 100% financially dependent on one's job and (B) Overcome wage stagnation. My job's annual wage increase was usually 3%, which meant I was keeping up with inflation, but not really getting ahead. But since I got into dividend investing 10 years ago, my dividend income has risen at about 10% annually. It doesn't take a genius to see that being an investor is better in the long-term than being an employee.
What's the point of having a primary election if the party leadership has already decided who is going to get the nomination? Sanders and all the other Democrat presidential primary candidates should have just stayed home and sat out the primary election process, since the designated nominee was a foregone conclusion. Being an unaffiliated voter, I'm just an outside observer of the Democrats and I find the undemocratic conduct of the party's leadership to be appalling.
Good point. No surprise to me, but ideally, the DNC should be impartial towards the primary candidates. But contrary to their public position, they weren't. The fix was in, and "by hook or by crook" they were going to have Hillary win the party nomination, The DNC hack served to shine a bright light into the dark corners of the DNC's machinations, showing voters that the Democrats play the game just as dirty as the opposition.
The Russians' did the American people a favor by hacking the DNC. It exposed what most Bernie Sanders supporters suspected, but could not prove: that the DNC had already decided that their handpicked gal Hillary was going to win the primary, no matter how much support other primary candidates had. There was nothing "democratic" about the process. The DNC wanted Hillary to win the primary and they got what they wanted. But come November, Hillary lost out to Trump. Ooops.
Microsoft has been working with DoD for years, from providing Windows and Office licenses, to servers, to IT infrastructure support, and NOW some employees are getting picky about who Microsoft works with? Since this open letter was supported by an "unspecified number of Microsoft employees stated their disapproval" it would be nice to know just how many. I suspect it's a very small (less than 0.1% of their workforce) number of employees behind the open letter. Microsoft should uncover who they are and remind them, in no uncertain terms, that they are employees and have no say in company strategy and policy. If they persist, then Microsoft would be well within its rights to fire their asses.
You say nationalism and populism like they're bad things. Carried to the extreme, like you're implying, they can be. But in moderation, both can good for raising the national morale and having a leadership that is more responsive to the desires of the people.
So Zuck doesn't say what you want him to say. And what exactly do you want him to say? Do you want Zuck to suddenly fall to his knees and cry profusely, confess his wrong doing, and to repent? Maybe even slit a wrist or two to demonstrate contrition? Jeezus H. Christ, what the f**k do you want him to say??? He's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, not some four year old who faces a spanking if he doesn't admit wrongdoing, so expect him to behave accordingly. Grow the f**k up Swisher.
Same (in)activity, different venue. Is anybody really surprised by this? People are very well trained to be consumers, not producers. For most people, producing something (let alone something of value) is WORK not leisure.
*Exactly* Pirating just gives the Adobe juggernaut more power, as they can claim that piracy hurts their business and using their products further cements their hold on the graphics software industry. Many graphic designers, turned off by the idea of software subscriptions, have abandoned Adobe and switched to Affinity instead. Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer have proved to be quite worthy replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator. Plus the one-time price of $49.99 each is quite reasonable. Affinity needs an InDesign killer and Affinity Publisher is currently in development with a beta expected some time this summer with a release expected before the end of the year.
Gen X isn't perfect, but no generation has a monopoly on coming up with bad ideas (although Millennials and Gen Y seem to making a good effort). As for your idea of taking the 'mass' out of mass shooting, you have a very good point. Kids can largely be educated online for subjects such as math, science, reading/writing, history, social studies, etc. The only subjects that require a physical class are science lab, PE, and some of the arts (theater, music).
*Exactly* And a mask is only useful for getting in, but once somebody is inside (mask or no mask), facial recognition and security cameras become as much a deterrent as "Gun Free Zone" signs posted around the school. Completely and utterly useless. Once the shooting starts, so what if the facial recognition system identifies Davy Dumbass as the shooter and he's using a Mossberg shotgun and 9 mm Glock? He's just going to keep on shooting and taking lives until he's either dead or arrested.
As for guns, you're absolutely right. Swords, machetes, and kitchen knives more than enough to kill and injure people, especially if somebody really knows how to use a blade. No, it's a societal problem that's at play here. I don't think anybody has any answer to it and can really do anything except make feeble efforts at changing school security practices.
An excerpt from Cory Doctorow's Little Brother story:
I moved down the corridor lightly and sprightly, keeping my
gait even and measured for the gait recognition cameras. These
had been installed only a year before, and I loved them for their
sheer idiocy. Beforehand, we'd had face recognition cameras
covering nearly every public space in school, but a court ruled
that was unconstitutional. So Benson and a lot of other paranoid
school administrators had spent our textbook dollars on these idiot
cameras that were supposed to be able to tell one person's walk
from another. Yeah, right.
I hope somebody challenges the legality of facial recognition (and gait recognition too if it comes to that). As for making a school more secure against an active shooter, it's as useless as security cams and other security theater efforts. The only thing these things are good for are catching vandals, enforcing attendance, and wasting taxpayer money.
Good point. I often forget that GNOME and GNOME Shell are different things and I mistakenly conflate the two. GNOME is fine (more or less), but GNOME Shell 3.x is an unpleasant experience for many who prefer a more traditional desktop. You're right about Firefox/Mozilla. They're doing fine.
Here's some other deserving open-source projects where $2M would have a wider benefit to the Linux community than GNOME:
(in no particular order)
1. Linux Mint/Cinnamon
2. MATE
3. GIMP
4. Inkscape
5. Firefox
6. Scribus
7. XFCE
You're welcome.
Eventually that culture and the people within it will effectively die off and all that will be left is the culture of ignoring education, career success, valuing off-time and enjoying the activity of making six kids.
He may be a nihilistic Malthusian, but Thanos had a valid point. If one could eliminate 50% of sentient life from a world, the long term benefits would outweigh the immediate negatives. This is already based on historical precedence. After the Black Plague wiped out over 1/3 of Europe's population, the continent experienced a rebirth that became the Renaissance, the church lost much of its power, the continent's economic power strength improved, and the age of the Enlightenment came about which brought new artistic, scientific, and political thinking. One has to wonder what the long term impact would be from reducing the Earth's current human population from 7.6 billion to 3.8 billion (approximately 1970's world population).
Just because I explained the reality of the situation doesn't mean I find it acceptable. Until the system is reformed (and I hope it happens), this is the cold reality of what the so-called "justice" system has now become. What do you want me to do about it? Scream, cry, and have a temper tantrum? Move to a more enlightened country?
Hey, if you think plea-bargaining is an outrage, then you'll loooove civil asset forfeiture. Here's a link to get you started. Enjoy!:-)
The US judicial system has more similarities with witch trials than actual justice. On that, we can both agree. It's all about the money. Saving it (plea bargaining) and making it (civil asset forfeiture).
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Wow. We're only 1 week into 2019 and cable providers are already gunning for the "Stupidest Business Move of the Year" award. The most common-sense response to when you're losing paying customers in droves would be to either reduce prices or to increase value to current customers and have more enticing offers for first-time customers. But nope, they're going to shoot themselves in the foot instead and *raise* prices. Keep this up guys, and your shareholders will be the next ones looking for the exit door.
While CD degradation is a problem, manufacturing quality and care for discs are the biggest contributing factors to disc rot. I have many pre-1996 CDs (I still have my first CD from 1987) and they all play fine on my circa 1994 CD player. I take good care of my CDs (hold them by the edge, don't transport them in my car) and have had few, if any, problems. Maybe you bought into the marketing hype that CDs were indestructable and you treated your first CD poorly?
What are your sites' URLs?
If he were still among us, Stan Lee would respectfully disagree.
I think the reasons for the success of superhero movies are that (A) The movies have a pre-established fanbase, just like the LOTR and Harry Potter movies had their fanbases well before the movies came out (B) Special effects technology has finally reached the point where the superpowers and battles can be done right without appearing cheesy or lame. (C) the "shared universe" concept of crossovers between characters has been around for ages in comics but it had never really been done before in cinema until Marvel took a HUGE gamble with the idea (and it paid off handsomely). (D) Treating the characters and stories with respect. It's all too easy to go camp with superheroes, like the 60's Batman TV show did and it took decades for the genre to shake that off. But Marvel steered way clear of camp and treated the characters (and by extension, the fans) with respect and delivering quality stories.
"Superhero" movies are more than just "tights and fights" and can accommodate a variety of story types. Winter Soldier was a thriller, Guardians of the Galaxy was sci-fi, Dr. Strange was fantasy. Ant-Man was mostly a comedy.
Finally, what's so bad about 12 year old boys' taste in entertainment? I'm over 40 and can appreciate a well told action movie as much as any kid.
Pure fearmongering. I think we can both agree that "greatness" is a nebulous term. But to claim that to return to "greatness" America must revisit its dark side is just fearmongering vagueness. Can you be more specific about what sins would be reinstated as part of making America great again? Reviving Jim Crow laws isn't going to bring the middle-class back to its 1960s level of prosperity. Making same-sex marriage illegal again isn't going to get the US closer to energy independence. Bringing back slavery isn't going to fix our road and bridge infrastructure (On second thought, maybe it could. It would certainly keep labor costs way down, saving taxpayers a lot of money!). A return to semi-imperialism abroad isn't going to enable American footprints on Mars. Ooops! I think I just fed a troll.
Jack Ma isn't the first person to point this out and certainly won't be the last. For example, Thomas Friedman has been saying this for years. Friedman questioned the wisdom of pouring money into countries that will NEVER amount to anything. Afghanistan will always be a backwards, tribal s**thole country riven by warlords and violence. Iraq has a tiny sliver of potential to be more than just another oil barrel nation, but it's too rife with corruption and sectarian grudges to ever realize that potential. Friedman pointed out that the amount of money pissed away on our adventures in the middle-east and central Asia could buy every American a 4-year college degree and still have money left over for infrastructure development and other societal ills. What really saddens me is that we're 17 years into this "Forever War," and every year the memory of living in a nation at peace fades just a little bit more.
Many companies are striving to relieve their employees of burnout and stress through "early retirement offers" and "layoffs" thus taking the "work" out of "work/life balance". It's great for the companies, but not so much for the former employees and the remaining employees who have to take up the slack.
Wages have been stagnant for a loooong time, so this is old news. Until the early 1970's, wages and productivity grew in lock-step with each other, but then they started to diverge. Productivity kept rising ever upward but wage growth slowed and has been largely flat. For the last ten years, I've been an advocate of having multiple streams of income as way to (A) Not be 100% financially dependent on one's job and (B) Overcome wage stagnation. My job's annual wage increase was usually 3%, which meant I was keeping up with inflation, but not really getting ahead. But since I got into dividend investing 10 years ago, my dividend income has risen at about 10% annually. It doesn't take a genius to see that being an investor is better in the long-term than being an employee.
What's the point of having a primary election if the party leadership has already decided who is going to get the nomination? Sanders and all the other Democrat presidential primary candidates should have just stayed home and sat out the primary election process, since the designated nominee was a foregone conclusion. Being an unaffiliated voter, I'm just an outside observer of the Democrats and I find the undemocratic conduct of the party's leadership to be appalling.
Good point. No surprise to me, but ideally, the DNC should be impartial towards the primary candidates. But contrary to their public position, they weren't. The fix was in, and "by hook or by crook" they were going to have Hillary win the party nomination, The DNC hack served to shine a bright light into the dark corners of the DNC's machinations, showing voters that the Democrats play the game just as dirty as the opposition.
The Russians' did the American people a favor by hacking the DNC. It exposed what most Bernie Sanders supporters suspected, but could not prove: that the DNC had already decided that their handpicked gal Hillary was going to win the primary, no matter how much support other primary candidates had. There was nothing "democratic" about the process. The DNC wanted Hillary to win the primary and they got what they wanted. But come November, Hillary lost out to Trump. Ooops.
Microsoft has been working with DoD for years, from providing Windows and Office licenses, to servers, to IT infrastructure support, and NOW some employees are getting picky about who Microsoft works with? Since this open letter was supported by an "unspecified number of Microsoft employees stated their disapproval" it would be nice to know just how many. I suspect it's a very small (less than 0.1% of their workforce) number of employees behind the open letter. Microsoft should uncover who they are and remind them, in no uncertain terms, that they are employees and have no say in company strategy and policy. If they persist, then Microsoft would be well within its rights to fire their asses.
You say nationalism and populism like they're bad things. Carried to the extreme, like you're implying, they can be. But in moderation, both can good for raising the national morale and having a leadership that is more responsive to the desires of the people.
So Zuck doesn't say what you want him to say. And what exactly do you want him to say? Do you want Zuck to suddenly fall to his knees and cry profusely, confess his wrong doing, and to repent? Maybe even slit a wrist or two to demonstrate contrition? Jeezus H. Christ, what the f**k do you want him to say??? He's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, not some four year old who faces a spanking if he doesn't admit wrongdoing, so expect him to behave accordingly. Grow the f**k up Swisher.
Same (in)activity, different venue. Is anybody really surprised by this? People are very well trained to be consumers, not producers. For most people, producing something (let alone something of value) is WORK not leisure.
*Exactly* Pirating just gives the Adobe juggernaut more power, as they can claim that piracy hurts their business and using their products further cements their hold on the graphics software industry. Many graphic designers, turned off by the idea of software subscriptions, have abandoned Adobe and switched to Affinity instead. Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer have proved to be quite worthy replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator. Plus the one-time price of $49.99 each is quite reasonable. Affinity needs an InDesign killer and Affinity Publisher is currently in development with a beta expected some time this summer with a release expected before the end of the year.
Gen X isn't perfect, but no generation has a monopoly on coming up with bad ideas (although Millennials and Gen Y seem to making a good effort). As for your idea of taking the 'mass' out of mass shooting, you have a very good point. Kids can largely be educated online for subjects such as math, science, reading/writing, history, social studies, etc. The only subjects that require a physical class are science lab, PE, and some of the arts (theater, music).
*Exactly* And a mask is only useful for getting in, but once somebody is inside (mask or no mask), facial recognition and security cameras become as much a deterrent as "Gun Free Zone" signs posted around the school. Completely and utterly useless. Once the shooting starts, so what if the facial recognition system identifies Davy Dumbass as the shooter and he's using a Mossberg shotgun and 9 mm Glock? He's just going to keep on shooting and taking lives until he's either dead or arrested.
As for guns, you're absolutely right. Swords, machetes, and kitchen knives more than enough to kill and injure people, especially if somebody really knows how to use a blade. No, it's a societal problem that's at play here. I don't think anybody has any answer to it and can really do anything except make feeble efforts at changing school security practices.
An excerpt from Cory Doctorow's Little Brother story:
I moved down the corridor lightly and sprightly, keeping my gait even and measured for the gait recognition cameras. These had been installed only a year before, and I loved them for their sheer idiocy. Beforehand, we'd had face recognition cameras covering nearly every public space in school, but a court ruled that was unconstitutional. So Benson and a lot of other paranoid school administrators had spent our textbook dollars on these idiot cameras that were supposed to be able to tell one person's walk from another. Yeah, right.
I hope somebody challenges the legality of facial recognition (and gait recognition too if it comes to that). As for making a school more secure against an active shooter, it's as useless as security cams and other security theater efforts. The only thing these things are good for are catching vandals, enforcing attendance, and wasting taxpayer money.
Good point. I often forget that GNOME and GNOME Shell are different things and I mistakenly conflate the two. GNOME is fine (more or less), but GNOME Shell 3.x is an unpleasant experience for many who prefer a more traditional desktop. You're right about Firefox/Mozilla. They're doing fine.
Here's some other deserving open-source projects where $2M would have a wider benefit to the Linux community than GNOME:
(in no particular order)
1. Linux Mint/Cinnamon
2. MATE
3. GIMP
4. Inkscape
5. Firefox
6. Scribus
7. XFCE
You're welcome.
Eventually that culture and the people within it will effectively die off and all that will be left is the culture of ignoring education, career success, valuing off-time and enjoying the activity of making six kids.
So Idiocracy is inevitable?
He may be a nihilistic Malthusian, but Thanos had a valid point. If one could eliminate 50% of sentient life from a world, the long term benefits would outweigh the immediate negatives. This is already based on historical precedence. After the Black Plague wiped out over 1/3 of Europe's population, the continent experienced a rebirth that became the Renaissance, the church lost much of its power, the continent's economic power strength improved, and the age of the Enlightenment came about which brought new artistic, scientific, and political thinking. One has to wonder what the long term impact would be from reducing the Earth's current human population from 7.6 billion to 3.8 billion (approximately 1970's world population).
Just because I explained the reality of the situation doesn't mean I find it acceptable. Until the system is reformed (and I hope it happens), this is the cold reality of what the so-called "justice" system has now become. What do you want me to do about it? Scream, cry, and have a temper tantrum? Move to a more enlightened country?
Hey, if you think plea-bargaining is an outrage, then you'll loooove civil asset forfeiture. Here's a link to get you started. Enjoy! :-)
The US judicial system has more similarities with witch trials than actual justice.
On that, we can both agree. It's all about the money. Saving it (plea bargaining) and making it (civil asset forfeiture).