This is what I was going to suggest. We had a regional burrito chain here called Boloco that used the clear plastic soda cups and lids and straws all made from corn fiber. You couldn't tell they weren't your standard plastic either. I found it kind of amazing.
Never saw any other places offer those since then, so maybe they're real costly or something? Beats me. Boloco did close their doors at both locations near me, so they had SOME kind of financial issues.
I'm not surprised Google pulled it from Maps either. IMO, it just crosses a line allowing a free map service to allow purchasing a commercial service on it. I mean, if they're going to let you hail an Uber without even installing Uber's app for it, why don't they support every other service that needs your location?
I have a buddy with a mobile mechanic business. Can he expect Google Maps to allow easy requests for mobile car repair to be built in? Why does Uber get special treatment?
I think it makes much more sense to show all the available public transit options as those are taxpayer funded and not private, for profit businesses.
All in all, I rooted for Uber's success when municipalities were trying to crush it. That doesn't mean I excuse some of the company's misbehavior. But ultimately, if I need a ride someplace and I can get it via a convenient app on my phone, complete with a system that lets me just charge it to a credit card, rate my driver afterwards, and sends me a detailed receipt of the trip? I'm going to take advantage of it when needed, and let sexual harassment issues back at the corporate HQ or disputes over pay rates between them and drivers sort themselves out.
That was my first though too. This may be an issue worth pointing out.... but if you're really worried about securing your data from prying eyes, why wouldn't you just encrypt ALL drives you use? Why is the system disk being left unencrypted?
I don't know the financials -- but I can easily see how it would improve efficiency, if you've got other other branches of the military all trying to maintain their own initiatives for things related to outer space and satellites.
You could gather up all of the existing technology and weapons from the different branches and say, "These now belong to this new military branch. You no longer have to fund them or worry about them."
I know some of my thoughts fly in the face of what's popular opinion right now, but....
1. "Clean burning" natural gas? Yeah, I'm kind of ok with continuing to burn that right now, at least as part of a whole energy generation picture. For one thing, if you need to heat a structure, it's *really* inefficient to do it using electric power. All of these supposedly more efficient electric heat pumps you see installed in many properties in the U.S. are only more efficient at climate control if the outside temperatures are somewhat moderate. When it dips down below freezing in the winter, these things have to start using electric heat strips as supplemental or "emergency" heat, which really draws some serious power. It's more efficient to use propane heat or natural gas heat... something that gives you an open flame, instead.
2. Options like solar and wind are great, but they're supplemental solutions, or localized solutions when power needs aren't that great. Because they can't be relied on to generate consistent power, you have to couple them with costly batteries to store power when you CAN generate a lot, to be used when you can't. That doubles the cost of the whole setup in most cases, and then you've got issues with batteries only having about a 10 year lifespan you can count on. They're not exactly environmentally-friendly to manufacture either.....
3. Agree that nuclear is the obvious answer for a lot of centralized power generation. But we're still shooting ourselves in the foot with all the anti-nuclear people who are so afraid of it, they're dragging progress down. We're only stuck with several generations old, less safe tech for reactors because they made the things so darn expensive to get up and running back when they were new -- and they're not helping with costs of disposal of waste to decommission one, now, either.
Technologies like PV solar are great, but they're really best used as supplements to other, primary power generation sources. Yes, there are cases where given the right conditions, a large solar power plant makes sense to build. But overall, this technology requires a whole lot of open space where the sun can shine down on many rows of expensive panels, unobstructed -- and obviously, it can't generate a thing after dark. Also going to have poor performance on cloudy/overcast days.
Hydroelectric power is a good option, but I believe we've already constructed hydro plants just about everywhere they're viable. So not much room for growth there.
I think the biggest, unfortunate problem with nuclear power is all of the opposition to it ran its cost WAY up to deploy it. All the F.U.D. from protesters for so many years didn't accomplish anything except causing a lot of expensive studies to get run that probably weren't really necessary, and big legal battles fought over plant locations, objections to any plans to handle or transport nuclear waste or fuel rods, etc.
Now, you're stuck with power companies who dumped SO much investment into putting the plants online, they're all trying to run them past their original expected lifespans and caught in a catch 22. More costly to keep repairing than it's really worth, yet not sensible to just shutter the whole thing and dismantle it, when there's no cost effective way to build a new plant and throw it online quickly.
It's clear there are more modern, safer ways to construct a nuclear plant -- and that's what we need to be doing. But the utility companies are kind of screwed from going over-budget with the existing reactors, plus using poor projections for power usage needs for various locations. (I know a number of nuclear plants rarely ran at more than 50% capacity or so because they falsely expected a doubling of power demands in the surrounding area that didn't materialize.)
Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed. Then, people would be screaming about law enforcement failing to take the call seriously enough and not leveraging the swat team taxpayer dollars funded.
The island may be uninhabited, but the fact it has a Norwegian research station on it should count for something? Wouldn't they possibly want some kind of Internet connectivity there?
There are a number of islands that got their own domain, despite not really doing much with them. I would think you could still run a server farm on a remote island like this, where the cold weather and ice helps eliminate your typical cooling challenges -- as long as you paid the initial expenses of getting it connected up to the rest of the Internet.
And as I mentioned in another post, the $5000 base model was on sale for $3,999 almost as soon as it came out, at all Micro Center stores. You had to go in to buy it in store to get the price. But my experience was that their stores were well stocked with them, and they did restock several times when they sold out at one.
They ran that sale again several times, as well as another sale where it was $799 discounted. I saw other stores like Best Buy do similar sales in response. So many of the iMac Pros people purchased were for far less than that $5,000 price tag.
Yeah..... I'm only a hobbyist with the music recording or production thing, at best. (Many years ago, I spent a lot more time and focus on those things. These days, I just try to keep up with them as a side interest.)
I've also chosen to use Macs as my primary systems at home for the last 10+ years now. I owned several Mac Pros too. I got a LOT of mileage out of both my 2006 and 2008 model. Picked up a used 2010 model after that. but wound up reselling it for a small profit when the opportunity arose. Plugged along with the 2013 "trash can" Mac Pro until just recently. I decided to buy the new iMac Pro as its replacement, only because Micro Center stores kept selling the base model for $1,000 off. And at that price, it really seemed like a pretty good value.
I agree that Apple has been basically stringing along the computer-using community for several years now. If they didn't release this iMac Pro AND someone quickly put the discount on it, though? I would have been done with the Mac moving forward.
There are a lot of arguments to be made why it's worth sticking with the Mac. All of my existing software investment would be one, as well as the investment in the rest of the ecosystem that just works well together. (I have a number of HomeKit devices here, for example -- and my wife and I have gotten used to keeping all of our schedules on iCloud shared calendars.) But everything has a price limit -- and that $5,000 starting point for a new "Pro" series desktop exceeded mine.
The notebook computers are really not where I want them to be either. I have one of the new 13" Macbook Pros, courtesy of my work. There are times I really like things about it, such as the overall size, weight and look of it. But other times, the dongle collection gets on my nerves, and I'll never agree with Apple's decision on the new keyboard design on them. The battery life is great and the screen is crisp. But I *really* want a better GPU in one of these. This new idea to sell external GPUs feels like a band-aid LONG after the bleeding has gone on.
The state of music software today is such that I don't think there's any need to stick with OS X though. The single biggest benefit to Mac is probably the lack of hassle configuring things to reduce latency. But Windows PC speeds have gotten so fast now, I'm doubtful that optimization is as necessary as it used to be.
This is the one big problem we have with raising taxes or creating new taxes. Government always puts itself in the position of being the "forced wealth redistributor".... taking some income from successful people who actually do something to earn it, and handing it back out elsewhere for some proposed idea to make things better for another group.
Now, granted -- the REALLY wealthy have reached a point where they really don't have to earn additional income anymore. Instead, they just let their money do the work for them by way of investments. That, too, involves some risk of losing it -- but obviously, it's still quite effective when done intelligently.
I've never really seen a problem that was fixed by just throwing money at it though. What usually happens is that money obtained with little or no effort is spent rather foolishly,and the original problem never gets solved.
Take the public school system as a prime example, No matter how much they claim they need more funding? I've never seen a tax increase voted in for them that notably improved the level of education students got from the school. They might get that new digital scoreboard over the football field they had their eye on, or administrative staff finds a way to get a raise from it. But the core problems with the educational system rage on..... (Funny how in "days of old", people got a perfectly acceptable basic education from those little log cabin school houses where they had nothing but a few books and a teacher lecturing to the class, with maybe a chalk board or something? Not a lot of cash outlay to make that work.)
I think the housing issues are the same way. Government can step in and try to fund "affordable housing" -- but at some point, you're just trying to subsidize a bunch of neighbors who are technically priced out of the area in all other respects. They're not likely to take good care of the properties the funding allows them to use, and they really don't usually make the effort to get the higher level skills needed to stay employed with the companies in the area who pay better wages. Meanwhile, they live under that stigma of being the ones in the subsidized housing area, which isn't so great either. It'd do them more of a service to cover their moving expenses to help them move out to parts of the country with cheaper costs of living -- if you were going to insist on paying them to assist them!
Thanks for completely missing my point... But it is interesting that we had that second celebrity death right after this article was posted.
If the deaths were utterly random with NO specific explanations for them that could be formulated, you'd have a pretty even distribution of rich, middle income and poor people who committed suicide. So quite obviously, there's no need for me to explain 39998 cases to you.
I will say, I *love* how Slashdot readers are so quick to click that "Troll" moderation button when they aren't comfortable with something that's been said. I really think my original comment was pretty infused with hope and reason, compared to a lot of this sensationalist "sky is falling" stuff people are spouting. But that seems to come with the territory in recent times.
Seriously, you have to take those claims of "designed for 90 days of operation" with some big grains of salt.... There's no way they'd spend all the money, time and energy on R&D to get something like this put on Mars, when they REALLY only expected it would be used for a few months.
That might be the length of time they NEEDED to complete the original planned research project, so in a worst-case scenario, NASA doesn't have to say they failed. But I'm quite certain this thing was engineered with the hopes it would run for years and years -- as it has done.
I suppose Kate Spade was one of those poor folks who just couldn't stand the division between the rich and the poor that grew so much since 1999, huh?
The "death of the middle class" is something you can thank our government for, with all of its attempts to manipulate the economy and devalue the dollar to protect its ability to keep spending into increasing amounts of debt. If you don't promote new business startups and growth, as well as ensure even mid-sized companies stay healthy and profitable? This is the result. Only the huge ones survive, partially by merging and buying out competition, and the "little guy" can't overcome all the red tape and regulation to make his business idea/dream a reality.
But there's plenty of hope available to grab onto, if you're willing to do it instead of whine and complain. This whole climate change thing, for example? It's a pretty awesome opportunity for people to make a LOT of money with solutions to it. Just a few stories down on Slashdot, there's one about researchers who have a pretty cheap way they found to extract C02 from the air. Identifying problems and working to solve them tends to be profitable and keep a person from staying poor.
Suicide has far more to do with people letting depression and apathy get to them, and a shortage of available, worthwhile help for people with these problems.
I'm 46 and so also from the generation that was conditioned to pick up a ringing phone. But the reason I still do it today is because of what "swb" says here. There are too many situations where a real time voice conversation gets something resolved efficiently, where the other methods just don't.
With IM and texting, the parties aren't a "captive audience". They can carry on the conversation at their leisure, while doing and thinking about other things. I can't get a quick resolution if it's not a simple yes or no type question.
Just last week, I needed to get some changes made to my Sirius/XM subscription. Tried the online chat but it was too slow and frustrating. It was resolved quickly by calling and and just explaining what I wanted to do. Same with updating my car insurance. The original quote I requested prompted me to ask about several other things on the policy, and everything was sorted out in a single phone call. I tried to text message my agent initially, but he only paid attention to the first item I asked about and didn't answer my other questions.
I hear younger people constantly saying they just don't talk on the phone anymore, and would often get rid of the phone number and voice portion of their cellphone if they could do it and save money on the bill. That saddens me, because they don't realize what they're giving up. The telephone was a great invention because it allowed vocal communication between distant parties. Everything else you can do on a cellphone today is just "pocket computer" stuff. And throughout the history of the computer, a telephone has still been a useful device to have along-side of one. Videoconferencing tools like Skype and Zoom do blur the lines. But still, a telephone call is a more simple, direct way to establish the communications link.
That's what I was thinking too! The old CFC-11 was the most efficient choice for an air conditioning system, thanks to its room temperature boiling point. It's really true that ever since it was banned and they forced us to use alternatives, air conditioning systems haven't performed nearly as well. For a large home A/C, it can be overcome by building a system that runs at higher pressures and uses a little more electricity -- so they do. And like most things produced in large numbers, they find ways to increase efficiency of other components to eventually offset some of the losses.
But for automotive applications, you can't just "draw more power" when you've got a little fuel-efficient 4 cylinder engine as the power-plant. So you wind up with an A/C that just can't get as cold and which disengages whenever you drive up a hill or accelerate quickly.
I barely ever watch TV, except for a little bit of whatever's on at night when I'm in bed but not yet asleep. (Often catch the late night news broadcast at that time, and/or some random entertaining thing like an episode of Family Guy or what-not.)
But I look at all the time the televisions are on at home here, and everywhere else I go, and I consistently see the same 2 things:
1. Especially with the elderly, they leave the TV on as sort of a "security blanket". They doze off while it's on or get bored with whatever's on and walk away from it a lot - but they get something out of it making a constant background noise, and that feeling that if something important happens, they'll quickly be informed about it. They tend to pay attention in little chunks, if, say, a game show comes on that they're finding enjoyable to watch, or something on a talk show grabs their attention.
2. Most other people I know leave the TV on while they're working on other things. An ex-g/f of mine has a photography business, for example. And she claims to be watching a whole list of TV series she's "following" at any given time. But it's almost always just on in the background while she's doing photo edits and posting things to web pages. My wife does this too... constantly "watching" crime shows like NCIS or Law & Order, but always while she's doing school work or trying to write letters or what-not. I really don't believe people are getting everything out of the programming when they consume it this way -- but maybe some people multitask a lot better than I do? I feel like if something is worth watching at all, it's worth giving it my undivided attention so I can give it the attention it deserves.
The owner's manual clearly states that the autopilot feature isn't supposed to be used unless you're #1 on a highway (not some smaller side road with vehicles parked along the side of it), and #2 the lines are clearly painted.
Pretty much all of the accidents people had with autopilot engaged where when they ignored these things AND didn't bother to pay attention to what was happening in front of them, or even have their hands on the wheel.
If you're too stupid to get that this technology is only a fancy cruise control with some ability to match speeds with vehicles in front of you and to stay in a lane that's well marked? Then I don't know what to tell you..... How do you manage to safely use cruise control on other cars and trucks? It's the same concept.
It really is interesting how many "little things" with iOS are probably actually more important to get fixed than these updates Apple considers a "big deal". I mean, the fact the HomePods didn't support stereo with a pair of them is, frankly, embarrassing - considering I've owned a couple different sets of bluetooth speakers that could do this years ago. So good for Apple it's finally been addressed. But I already skipped buying the HomePods. I own too many speaker and music solutions around here already.
One of the updates I imagine Apple said zero about that *should* finally be in the new iOS release is improved bluetooth communications for the Escort 360 Max series of radar detectors. They've had problems with iPhones, to date, where they don't stay paired and communicating properly after you make the initial connection (when starting your car) and then break it by shutting the engine off when you stop someplace, and then get back in and continue driving.
I've heard of Venmo but actually assumed it was one of those "next gen" web business ideas that would crash and burn. Didn't even realize it was still a "thing".
It truly is one of the most STUPID, INANE ideas I can fathom that you'd want to tie in your payments for services or things to some kind of social network. Here we are, fighting for privacy in the era of security breaches everywhere, where people are stealing your personal information -- and yet we have these services that enable sharing the same kind of stuff freely and openly!
I'm not going to hand out the smug, pointless "Told you so!" answer either.
The real problem is that people buy these new technologies with unrealistic expectations. Then they get angry when it can't live up to them.
I work in I.T. and I see examples, all the time, of technologies failing in totally unexpected ways. Even the best voice recognition systems I've ever used get my commands wrong at least 1 out of 4 times or so. That doesn't enthuse me about having an "always on" system trying to take commands properly when it's going to hear all sorts of random conversations all day long that don't involve it.
I can't mod you up anymore on this, but that's exactly how I feel about the whole thing.
Wealth is NOT a zero-sum game. It's absolutely possible for the rich to get richer without the poor getting proportionately poorer. Wealth is not a pie, where if one person cuts 3/4ths. of it for themselves, everyone else is stuck sharing the remaining 1/4th. of it. Businesses are "baking more pies" all the time when they come up with new things.
About the only thing that really increases, IMO, is jealousy by those who don't have all the extravagant things the richest people have achieved. And even that is just another human emotion that can be focused different ways. If that jealousy drives a person to learn more useful skills and to achieve greater things so they can have more, great! That's what Capitalism is supposed to be all about. If that same jealousy drives a person to commit crimes against others, because they feel entitled to steal the richer's person's wealth? Then that's an example of it motivating a person the wrong way.
In a far future where robots and A.I. have taken the liion's share of jobs, you have to ask how it's possible all of that automaton won't create a proportional number of new jobs selling, upgrading, repairing and programming all of it? The idea that the machines will just do all of that too is, IMO, pretty far-fetched. It's a BIG leap between the world where robotics and A.I. is designed well enough by humans so it can accomplish all of the physical labor we now do for pay, and a world where it's better than us at anticipating the next place we'd like to deploy it to do something new or different than it already does. You might even decide to draw legal or ethical lines against it, whenever that day comes -- since up till then, humans are still in the driver's seat, dictating exactly what a given piece of A.I. or robot will do for them.
Well aware of this..... Perhaps that's why I said, "cars that keep evolving towards self-driving capabilities"?
Still, the feature is called 'Auto Pilot" by Tesla themselves, so yes - you can reasonably say the car "is piloting itself", while still following the warnings and limitations of it. The fact some people are idiots and ignore all of that so they can text while driving it is irrelevant.
When the car lights up the steering wheel icon on the dash, it means it's collecting enough data about where the lane is on the road and where surrounding traffic is so you let it keep the car in the lane for you and adjust its speed appropriately.
Honestly, I'm a little surprised that Elon Musk has taken such a F.U.D. attitude towards A.I. when at the same time, it's exactly what he's trying to achieve with his cars that keep evolving towards self-driving capabilities.
The first time anyone tries letting a Tesla pilot itself, they feel some fear.... some uncertainty... and a little doubt. That's all part of exploring something that works a different way than what you're used to.
But technology needs to progress, without trying to hold it back out of fear of what negatives MIGHT come from it. So many negatives already come from not having improved technologies.
Humans are good at adapting to change, once we get over those initial fears and doubts. I think we'll figure out ways to cope with automation and A.I. and whatever else we can come up with. It may not be pretty while things are in transition. That's to be expected too. But you can't put genies back into bottles.... You may as well keep trying to move forward.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what I was going to suggest. We had a regional burrito chain here called Boloco that used the clear plastic soda cups and lids and straws all made from corn fiber. You couldn't tell they weren't your standard plastic either. I found it kind of amazing.
Never saw any other places offer those since then, so maybe they're real costly or something? Beats me. Boloco did close their doors at both locations near me, so they had SOME kind of financial issues.
I'm not surprised Google pulled it from Maps either. IMO, it just crosses a line allowing a free map service to allow purchasing a commercial service on it. I mean, if they're going to let you hail an Uber without even installing Uber's app for it, why don't they support every other service that needs your location?
I have a buddy with a mobile mechanic business. Can he expect Google Maps to allow easy requests for mobile car repair to be built in? Why does Uber get special treatment?
I think it makes much more sense to show all the available public transit options as those are taxpayer funded and not private, for profit businesses.
All in all, I rooted for Uber's success when municipalities were trying to crush it. That doesn't mean I excuse some of the company's misbehavior. But ultimately, if I need a ride someplace and I can get it via a convenient app on my phone, complete with a system that lets me just charge it to a credit card, rate my driver afterwards, and sends me a detailed receipt of the trip? I'm going to take advantage of it when needed, and let sexual harassment issues back at the corporate HQ or disputes over pay rates between them and drivers sort themselves out.
That was my first though too. This may be an issue worth pointing out .... but if you're really worried about securing your data from prying eyes, why wouldn't you just encrypt ALL drives you use? Why is the system disk being left unencrypted?
I don't know the financials -- but I can easily see how it would improve efficiency, if you've got other other branches of the military all trying to maintain their own initiatives for things related to outer space and satellites.
You could gather up all of the existing technology and weapons from the different branches and say, "These now belong to this new military branch. You no longer have to fund them or worry about them."
I know some of my thoughts fly in the face of what's popular opinion right now, but ....
1. "Clean burning" natural gas? Yeah, I'm kind of ok with continuing to burn that right now, at least as part of a whole energy generation picture. For one thing, if you need to heat a structure, it's *really* inefficient to do it using electric power. All of these supposedly more efficient electric heat pumps you see installed in many properties in the U.S. are only more efficient at climate control if the outside temperatures are somewhat moderate. When it dips down below freezing in the winter, these things have to start using electric heat strips as supplemental or "emergency" heat, which really draws some serious power. It's more efficient to use propane heat or natural gas heat ... something that gives you an open flame, instead.
2. Options like solar and wind are great, but they're supplemental solutions, or localized solutions when power needs aren't that great. Because they can't be relied on to generate consistent power, you have to couple them with costly batteries to store power when you CAN generate a lot, to be used when you can't. That doubles the cost of the whole setup in most cases, and then you've got issues with batteries only having about a 10 year lifespan you can count on. They're not exactly environmentally-friendly to manufacture either.....
3. Agree that nuclear is the obvious answer for a lot of centralized power generation. But we're still shooting ourselves in the foot with all the anti-nuclear people who are so afraid of it, they're dragging progress down. We're only stuck with several generations old, less safe tech for reactors because they made the things so darn expensive to get up and running back when they were new -- and they're not helping with costs of disposal of waste to decommission one, now, either.
Technologies like PV solar are great, but they're really best used as supplements to other, primary power generation sources. Yes, there are cases where given the right conditions, a large solar power plant makes sense to build. But overall, this technology requires a whole lot of open space where the sun can shine down on many rows of expensive panels, unobstructed -- and obviously, it can't generate a thing after dark. Also going to have poor performance on cloudy/overcast days.
Hydroelectric power is a good option, but I believe we've already constructed hydro plants just about everywhere they're viable. So not much room for growth there.
I think the biggest, unfortunate problem with nuclear power is all of the opposition to it ran its cost WAY up to deploy it. All the F.U.D. from protesters for so many years didn't accomplish anything except causing a lot of expensive studies to get run that probably weren't really necessary, and big legal battles fought over plant locations, objections to any plans to handle or transport nuclear waste or fuel rods, etc.
Now, you're stuck with power companies who dumped SO much investment into putting the plants online, they're all trying to run them past their original expected lifespans and caught in a catch 22. More costly to keep repairing than it's really worth, yet not sensible to just shutter the whole thing and dismantle it, when there's no cost effective way to build a new plant and throw it online quickly.
It's clear there are more modern, safer ways to construct a nuclear plant -- and that's what we need to be doing. But the utility companies are kind of screwed from going over-budget with the existing reactors, plus using poor projections for power usage needs for various locations. (I know a number of nuclear plants rarely ran at more than 50% capacity or so because they falsely expected a doubling of power demands in the surrounding area that didn't materialize.)
Don't worry, Mr. President.... We don't fund anything on that island anyway!
Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed. Then, people would be screaming about law enforcement failing to take the call seriously enough and not leveraging the swat team taxpayer dollars funded.
The island may be uninhabited, but the fact it has a Norwegian research station on it should count for something? Wouldn't they possibly want some kind of Internet connectivity there?
There are a number of islands that got their own domain, despite not really doing much with them. I would think you could still run a server farm on a remote island like this, where the cold weather and ice helps eliminate your typical cooling challenges -- as long as you paid the initial expenses of getting it connected up to the rest of the Internet.
And as I mentioned in another post, the $5000 base model was on sale for $3,999 almost as soon as it came out, at all Micro Center stores. You had to go in to buy it in store to get the price. But my experience was that their stores were well stocked with them, and they did restock several times when they sold out at one.
They ran that sale again several times, as well as another sale where it was $799 discounted. I saw other stores like Best Buy do similar sales in response. So many of the iMac Pros people purchased were for far less than that $5,000 price tag.
Yeah..... I'm only a hobbyist with the music recording or production thing, at best. (Many years ago, I spent a lot more time and focus on those things. These days, I just try to keep up with them as a side interest.)
I've also chosen to use Macs as my primary systems at home for the last 10+ years now. I owned several Mac Pros too. I got a LOT of mileage out of both my 2006 and 2008 model. Picked up a used 2010 model after that. but wound up reselling it for a small profit when the opportunity arose. Plugged along with the 2013 "trash can" Mac Pro until just recently. I decided to buy the new iMac Pro as its replacement, only because Micro Center stores kept selling the base model for $1,000 off. And at that price, it really seemed like a pretty good value.
I agree that Apple has been basically stringing along the computer-using community for several years now. If they didn't release this iMac Pro AND someone quickly put the discount on it, though? I would have been done with the Mac moving forward.
There are a lot of arguments to be made why it's worth sticking with the Mac. All of my existing software investment would be one, as well as the investment in the rest of the ecosystem that just works well together. (I have a number of HomeKit devices here, for example -- and my wife and I have gotten used to keeping all of our schedules on iCloud shared calendars.) But everything has a price limit -- and that $5,000 starting point for a new "Pro" series desktop exceeded mine.
The notebook computers are really not where I want them to be either. I have one of the new 13" Macbook Pros, courtesy of my work. There are times I really like things about it, such as the overall size, weight and look of it. But other times, the dongle collection gets on my nerves, and I'll never agree with Apple's decision on the new keyboard design on them. The battery life is great and the screen is crisp. But I *really* want a better GPU in one of these. This new idea to sell external GPUs feels like a band-aid LONG after the bleeding has gone on.
The state of music software today is such that I don't think there's any need to stick with OS X though. The single biggest benefit to Mac is probably the lack of hassle configuring things to reduce latency. But Windows PC speeds have gotten so fast now, I'm doubtful that optimization is as necessary as it used to be.
This is the one big problem we have with raising taxes or creating new taxes. Government always puts itself in the position of being the "forced wealth redistributor" .... taking some income from successful people who actually do something to earn it, and handing it back out elsewhere for some proposed idea to make things better for another group.
Now, granted -- the REALLY wealthy have reached a point where they really don't have to earn additional income anymore. Instead, they just let their money do the work for them by way of investments. That, too, involves some risk of losing it -- but obviously, it's still quite effective when done intelligently.
I've never really seen a problem that was fixed by just throwing money at it though. What usually happens is that money obtained with little or no effort is spent rather foolishly,and the original problem never gets solved.
Take the public school system as a prime example, No matter how much they claim they need more funding? I've never seen a tax increase voted in for them that notably improved the level of education students got from the school. They might get that new digital scoreboard over the football field they had their eye on, or administrative staff finds a way to get a raise from it. But the core problems with the educational system rage on..... (Funny how in "days of old", people got a perfectly acceptable basic education from those little log cabin school houses where they had nothing but a few books and a teacher lecturing to the class, with maybe a chalk board or something? Not a lot of cash outlay to make that work.)
I think the housing issues are the same way. Government can step in and try to fund "affordable housing" -- but at some point, you're just trying to subsidize a bunch of neighbors who are technically priced out of the area in all other respects. They're not likely to take good care of the properties the funding allows them to use, and they really don't usually make the effort to get the higher level skills needed to stay employed with the companies in the area who pay better wages. Meanwhile, they live under that stigma of being the ones in the subsidized housing area, which isn't so great either. It'd do them more of a service to cover their moving expenses to help them move out to parts of the country with cheaper costs of living -- if you were going to insist on paying them to assist them!
Thanks for completely missing my point ... But it is interesting that we had that second celebrity death right after this article was posted.
If the deaths were utterly random with NO specific explanations for them that could be formulated, you'd have a pretty even distribution of rich, middle income and poor people who committed suicide. So quite obviously, there's no need for me to explain 39998 cases to you.
I will say, I *love* how Slashdot readers are so quick to click that "Troll" moderation button when they aren't comfortable with something that's been said. I really think my original comment was pretty infused with hope and reason, compared to a lot of this sensationalist "sky is falling" stuff people are spouting. But that seems to come with the territory in recent times.
Seriously, you have to take those claims of "designed for 90 days of operation" with some big grains of salt.... There's no way they'd spend all the money, time and energy on R&D to get something like this put on Mars, when they REALLY only expected it would be used for a few months.
That might be the length of time they NEEDED to complete the original planned research project, so in a worst-case scenario, NASA doesn't have to say they failed. But I'm quite certain this thing was engineered with the hopes it would run for years and years -- as it has done.
I suppose Kate Spade was one of those poor folks who just couldn't stand the division between the rich and the poor that grew so much since 1999, huh?
The "death of the middle class" is something you can thank our government for, with all of its attempts to manipulate the economy and devalue the dollar to protect its ability to keep spending into increasing amounts of debt. If you don't promote new business startups and growth, as well as ensure even mid-sized companies stay healthy and profitable? This is the result. Only the huge ones survive, partially by merging and buying out competition, and the "little guy" can't overcome all the red tape and regulation to make his business idea/dream a reality.
But there's plenty of hope available to grab onto, if you're willing to do it instead of whine and complain. This whole climate change thing, for example? It's a pretty awesome opportunity for people to make a LOT of money with solutions to it. Just a few stories down on Slashdot, there's one about researchers who have a pretty cheap way they found to extract C02 from the air. Identifying problems and working to solve them tends to be profitable and keep a person from staying poor.
Suicide has far more to do with people letting depression and apathy get to them, and a shortage of available, worthwhile help for people with these problems.
I'm 46 and so also from the generation that was conditioned to pick up a ringing phone. But the reason I still do it today is because of what "swb" says here. There are too many situations where a real time voice conversation gets something resolved efficiently, where the other methods just don't.
With IM and texting, the parties aren't a "captive audience". They can carry on the conversation at their leisure, while doing and thinking about other things. I can't get a quick resolution if it's not a simple yes or no type question.
Just last week, I needed to get some changes made to my Sirius/XM subscription. Tried the online chat but it was too slow and frustrating. It was resolved quickly by calling and and just explaining what I wanted to do. Same with updating my car insurance. The original quote I requested prompted me to ask about several other things on the policy, and everything was sorted out in a single phone call. I tried to text message my agent initially, but he only paid attention to the first item I asked about and didn't answer my other questions.
I hear younger people constantly saying they just don't talk on the phone anymore, and would often get rid of the phone number and voice portion of their cellphone if they could do it and save money on the bill. That saddens me, because they don't realize what they're giving up. The telephone was a great invention because it allowed vocal communication between distant parties. Everything else you can do on a cellphone today is just "pocket computer" stuff. And throughout the history of the computer, a telephone has still been a useful device to have along-side of one. Videoconferencing tools like Skype and Zoom do blur the lines. But still, a telephone call is a more simple, direct way to establish the communications link.
That's what I was thinking too! The old CFC-11 was the most efficient choice for an air conditioning system, thanks to its room temperature boiling point. It's really true that ever since it was banned and they forced us to use alternatives, air conditioning systems haven't performed nearly as well. For a large home A/C, it can be overcome by building a system that runs at higher pressures and uses a little more electricity -- so they do. And like most things produced in large numbers, they find ways to increase efficiency of other components to eventually offset some of the losses.
But for automotive applications, you can't just "draw more power" when you've got a little fuel-efficient 4 cylinder engine as the power-plant. So you wind up with an A/C that just can't get as cold and which disengages whenever you drive up a hill or accelerate quickly.
I barely ever watch TV, except for a little bit of whatever's on at night when I'm in bed but not yet asleep. (Often catch the late night news broadcast at that time, and/or some random entertaining thing like an episode of Family Guy or what-not.)
But I look at all the time the televisions are on at home here, and everywhere else I go, and I consistently see the same 2 things:
1. Especially with the elderly, they leave the TV on as sort of a "security blanket". They doze off while it's on or get bored with whatever's on and walk away from it a lot - but they get something out of it making a constant background noise, and that feeling that if something important happens, they'll quickly be informed about it. They tend to pay attention in little chunks, if, say, a game show comes on that they're finding enjoyable to watch, or something on a talk show grabs their attention.
2. Most other people I know leave the TV on while they're working on other things. An ex-g/f of mine has a photography business, for example. And she claims to be watching a whole list of TV series she's "following" at any given time. But it's almost always just on in the background while she's doing photo edits and posting things to web pages. My wife does this too ... constantly "watching" crime shows like NCIS or Law & Order, but always while she's doing school work or trying to write letters or what-not. I really don't believe people are getting everything out of the programming when they consume it this way -- but maybe some people multitask a lot better than I do? I feel like if something is worth watching at all, it's worth giving it my undivided attention so I can give it the attention it deserves.
Funny.... I'm not too concerned.
The owner's manual clearly states that the autopilot feature isn't supposed to be used unless you're #1 on a highway (not some smaller side road with vehicles parked along the side of it), and #2 the lines are clearly painted.
Pretty much all of the accidents people had with autopilot engaged where when they ignored these things AND didn't bother to pay attention to what was happening in front of them, or even have their hands on the wheel.
If you're too stupid to get that this technology is only a fancy cruise control with some ability to match speeds with vehicles in front of you and to stay in a lane that's well marked? Then I don't know what to tell you..... How do you manage to safely use cruise control on other cars and trucks? It's the same concept.
It really is interesting how many "little things" with iOS are probably actually more important to get fixed than these updates Apple considers a "big deal".
I mean, the fact the HomePods didn't support stereo with a pair of them is, frankly, embarrassing - considering I've owned a couple different sets of bluetooth speakers that could do this years ago. So good for Apple it's finally been addressed. But I already skipped buying the HomePods. I own too many speaker and music solutions around here already.
One of the updates I imagine Apple said zero about that *should* finally be in the new iOS release is improved bluetooth communications for the Escort 360 Max series of radar detectors. They've had problems with iPhones, to date, where they don't stay paired and communicating properly after you make the initial connection (when starting your car) and then break it by shutting the engine off when you stop someplace, and then get back in and continue driving.
I've heard of Venmo but actually assumed it was one of those "next gen" web business ideas that would crash and burn. Didn't even realize it was still a "thing".
It truly is one of the most STUPID, INANE ideas I can fathom that you'd want to tie in your payments for services or things to some kind of social network. Here we are, fighting for privacy in the era of security breaches everywhere, where people are stealing your personal information -- and yet we have these services that enable sharing the same kind of stuff freely and openly!
I'm not going to hand out the smug, pointless "Told you so!" answer either.
The real problem is that people buy these new technologies with unrealistic expectations. Then they get angry when it can't live up to them.
I work in I.T. and I see examples, all the time, of technologies failing in totally unexpected ways. Even the best voice recognition systems I've ever used get my commands wrong at least 1 out of 4 times or so. That doesn't enthuse me about having an "always on" system trying to take commands properly when it's going to hear all sorts of random conversations all day long that don't involve it.
I can't mod you up anymore on this, but that's exactly how I feel about the whole thing.
Wealth is NOT a zero-sum game. It's absolutely possible for the rich to get richer without the poor getting proportionately poorer. Wealth is not a pie, where if one person cuts 3/4ths. of it for themselves, everyone else is stuck sharing the remaining 1/4th. of it. Businesses are "baking more pies" all the time when they come up with new things.
About the only thing that really increases, IMO, is jealousy by those who don't have all the extravagant things the richest people have achieved. And even that is just another human emotion that can be focused different ways. If that jealousy drives a person to learn more useful skills and to achieve greater things so they can have more, great! That's what Capitalism is supposed to be all about. If that same jealousy drives a person to commit crimes against others, because they feel entitled to steal the richer's person's wealth? Then that's an example of it motivating a person the wrong way.
In a far future where robots and A.I. have taken the liion's share of jobs, you have to ask how it's possible all of that automaton won't create a proportional number of new jobs selling, upgrading, repairing and programming all of it? The idea that the machines will just do all of that too is, IMO, pretty far-fetched. It's a BIG leap between the world where robotics and A.I. is designed well enough by humans so it can accomplish all of the physical labor we now do for pay, and a world where it's better than us at anticipating the next place we'd like to deploy it to do something new or different than it already does. You might even decide to draw legal or ethical lines against it, whenever that day comes -- since up till then, humans are still in the driver's seat, dictating exactly what a given piece of A.I. or robot will do for them.
Well aware of this..... Perhaps that's why I said, "cars that keep evolving towards self-driving capabilities"?
Still, the feature is called 'Auto Pilot" by Tesla themselves, so yes - you can reasonably say the car "is piloting itself", while still following the warnings and limitations of it. The fact some people are idiots and ignore all of that so they can text while driving it is irrelevant.
When the car lights up the steering wheel icon on the dash, it means it's collecting enough data about where the lane is on the road and where surrounding traffic is so you let it keep the car in the lane for you and adjust its speed appropriately.
Honestly, I'm a little surprised that Elon Musk has taken such a F.U.D. attitude towards A.I. when at the same time, it's exactly what he's trying to achieve with his cars that keep evolving towards self-driving capabilities.
The first time anyone tries letting a Tesla pilot itself, they feel some fear .... some uncertainty... and a little doubt. That's all part of exploring something that works a different way than what you're used to.
But technology needs to progress, without trying to hold it back out of fear of what negatives MIGHT come from it. So many negatives already come from not having improved technologies.
Humans are good at adapting to change, once we get over those initial fears and doubts. I think we'll figure out ways to cope with automation and A.I. and whatever else we can come up with. It may not be pretty while things are in transition. That's to be expected too. But you can't put genies back into bottles .... You may as well keep trying to move forward.