There's nothing sane about demanding companies begin evenly distributing wealth with you, just because they invested a portion of their profits in automation. Heck, in this case, none of that even happened yet. These workers are just realizing that the jobs they do could potentially be automated so they're trying to work a deal to ensure their employers don't take advantage of new technology as it becomes available to them.
Ironically, they're striking over this in the casinos of Vegas, of all places! Let's think about that for a minute. You're talking about an industry that's been centered around automation of much of its profit center since practically day 1. Slot machines are standard fare, and they've brought in things like video poker and video blackjack too. On top of that? These guys only let people play games that are rigged in the house's favor. If they even suspect you're using a skill like card counting ability to get an edge while playing, they ban you from the casino. But you expect them to invest in automation so they can equitably share the money made by it with you? Let me get my popcorn.....
I didn't care for practically *everything* being on the touchscreen on a bare dashboard either. Even if the touchscreen was the most usable, more ergonomic design ever created for a car, I didn't like that look in the Model 3 a bit.
That said? The touchscreen is pretty darn nice in my Tesla S. IMO, that was an example of doing it properly. You still have all your normal features available on the 3 stalks and steering wheel controls, but the touchscreen gives an alternate method to control much of it along with many of the things you wouldn't find on most vehicles. To be fair, they could possibly have added a COUPLE of extra hard buttons or switches. (Unless I'm mistaken, the fog lights are still a feature you have to configure from the touchscreen to have them come on with the headlights, or not come on with them. I prefer the little ring on the stalk that controls the normal headlights to toggle them on/off at will. And I don't think the panoramic sunroof can be controlled except from the touchscreen.) But it works well overall, and it's nice having things like the owners' manual accessible on the screen. (Look how often one is missing on a used car because somebody took it out of the glovebox and never put it back!)
I just bought a used Model S (P85D) and I'm no expert on it, by any means. But from driving it so far, I got the impression that the regenerative braking wasn't factored in as part of the total stopping distance they measure/report?
You can disable that feature at will, since some drivers find it difficult to get used to or just don't care for it. And yes, they turn it off for nearly full batteries too. (The default settings on the Model S only allow the battery to charge up about 90% of the way. So there should usually be a margin there.... They recommend that since fully charging the battery isn't good for it, long-term.)
I had to do a panic stop on the freeway in it, thanks to everyone suddenly slamming on their brakes in front of me, and it certainly seemed to me like the resistance provided by the regen braking wasn't much of a contributor to the force needed to stop the car quickly.
I'm FAR more inclined to believe testing done by car enthusiast magazines like Car & Driver or Road & Track than anything out of Consumer Reports.
This is the same group that consistently gives a "do not recommend" type rating to the Jeep Wrangler, despite it being Chrysler/Fiat's flagship best seller and money maker that keeps the whole business afloat as they try to restructure.
C.R. is too focused on their subjective list of key points THEY feel are the only ones car buyers need to be concerned with. This leads to them giving top ratings to some of the most bland, boring boxes on wheels to ever hit the roads while not comprehending at all what makes a vehicle desirable to a big segment of the population.
(The Wrangler will ALWAYS fare poorly in C.R. testing because they don't like things like the poor fuel economy and harsh ride, or the "sparse interior". Clearly, they don't understand the interest people have in owning a vehicle that's capable of driving off-road in places few other motor vehicles can go? Just last week, all the rain we got flooded out the only roads back to our house. Many cars were stranded along-side the highway. My wife was coming back from a meeting and in her Wrangler Unlimited, was able to drive right through, once she determined the water wasn't much more than 14" - 18" deep. Wranglers are designed to be able to do water crossings with up to 30" of water. They also fail to understand the interest in the configurability of a Wrangler. You can use it like a convertible with the soft top down, or put a hard top on it and have it act more like a traditional SUV. You can take just the front panels off the hard top and have the equivalent of t-tops or a sunroof. You can take the whole top off completely if you prefer. Even the doors can come off and the front windshield could even be folded down if you desired. What other vehicles offer all of that?)
I have to admit I'm slightly bothered by the trend, overall, in shifting away from building physical things to selling virtual stuff.
Right now, lots of companies are finding it's easier to make good profits by selling subscriptions to stream content to people than it is to actually BUILD something tangible, and then deal with shipping it out to be sold, handle repairs of the broken units that come back, etc. etc. (Look at IBM and their selloff of their entire notebook computer division to Lenovo, in favor of becoming a service provider. Even companies like HP basically split the company down the middle so they could detach sales of hardware from all the service-related stuff they wanted to sell.)
The problem is -- a lot of these businesses have been engineering and building consumer electronics goods for a LONG time. So now, that talent gets jettisoned and we have to hope it goes someplace else useful. A lot of stuff seems to just fall to, "Ah well... someone in China will build and sell it!", resulting in sub-par quality electronics junk. At best, it's only successful because it's a complete ripoff of the engineering originally done by one of these big companies in the past.
Sony did a lot of "lock in" with needlessly requiring Sony-branded accessories for its products, so I'm not so sorry to see THAT part vanish. (Sony memory sticks, for example? Ick.) But all in all, I think we're going to lose some quality products with this.
1. The news media is interested in covering anything that's sensational and grabs viewer eyeballs. We've had house fires for about as long as we had houses, yet they'll still put those on the evening news any time they have some dramatic footage to show people. By the same token, if you're a high profile company that lots of people follow (like Apple or Tesla), you're also going to find yourself in the media spotlight any time an excuse can be made to do it. People stay tuned in any time you mention those names.
2. The unfortunate thing about Tesla's autopilot functionality is that at least in the beginning, it was talked up as a car that could "drive itself". That wasn't close to reality, but it sure helped generate a lot of "buzz" for the product. (The autopilot hardware used in most of the used Tesla Model S's on the road today isn't even capable of keeping the car in a lane when the road starts curving. It really only works in a straight line.) In hindsight, I think it would have gone far better for Tesla if they only sold the whole thing as an advanced cruise control and parallel parking assistant. Then, additional features could have been added down the road without the general public so eager to hear about every time the "self driving car" fails (as they try to ease their consciences about fears of the computers/robots taking over things like driving).
Almost all of these accidents happening with autopilot on are due to drivers who aren't paying attention to what's happening in front of them anymore. They put too much trust in a fairly limited system that still really needs a human driver to intervene occasionally, when something happens outside the parameters the system can work with. If this keeps up though, government will once again try to "save us from ourselves" and start cracking down on the ability to do ANY of this stuff and get closer to self-driving cars in the future.
Tim Cook probably has self-serving reasons to give this advice... but still? I'd say the libertarian-minded stance would be the same; don't implement tariffs.
The best alternative isn't a "quick fix" like most politicians are seeking. The long-term, best solution, involves encouraging U.S. based startups and small businesses to develop, and to perhaps a lesser extent, to provide some aid for mid-sized businesses too.
If you impose fees on imported goods but your country doesn't offer enough comparable alternatives of its own that people want to buy instead, you wind up either A) punishing U.S. citizens by cutting off goods they want to buy, or B) causing the country doing the importing to mark up the prices of what they're selling to compensate for the higher taxes on bringing it in, while again ultimately making the American people cover that cost.
I'm not engaging in "starry eyed worship" here. I've often been pretty outspoken about how the whole PV solar market hawks inflated numbers and stats to get people to buy into it. Solar panel tech is pretty cool and actually works, but it doesn't give the cost savings they promise in many cases. It's a long-term investment gamble at best, where you might come out ahead if your inverters don't die, past the warranty period and the panels themselves don't fail or shatter from hail damage, and if electricity costs really do rise over time as estimated. And Solar City is one of Musk's partnerships.
But Tesla cars are just fine as a solution, once you realize that a decent percentage of car buyers want something in the luxury segment... not just cheap, boring transportation from A to B.
Plenty of incredibly good business ideas are ones that need patience and time to bring to fruition. There's a need to do due diligence and make sure the company isn't just a false front, or a bunch of clueless idiots wasting every dollar they're loaned. But a company like Tesla has already proven it can deliver a working product that people find desirable. In fact, they did it several times over -- ever since the first Tesla Roadster came out.
Wall Street is destroying a lot of great ideas because they hyper-focus on short term results. If you're a big, established firm, that's probably fine. They generally sell in saturated markets where their profits are relatively stable. But for anything else, you used to have a lot of investors who bought and HELD stocks because they truly liked what the company was doing. They weren't living "quarter to quarter" to look for the first sign they needed to do a sell-off.
All the computerization of Wall Street is probably what led to a lot of this. Computer automation and ability to execute micro-trades super rapidly over high speed networks turns it into a pure game of numeric trends, vs. wishing to put your money into a business you believed in.
Well, I'm talking about the whole "ball of wax" really. I understand that as we get more electric cars out there, there will be more charging stations built by many different manufacturers. But Tesla has the ones that supply enough wattage to get one of their cars recharged in a reasonable amount of time so you can grab a bite to eat and continue on a road trip, with it charged back up sufficiently. The GPS systems in their vehicles know about all of these stations they installed too, so it can factor them into your planned route.
From what I've read, several of the other standards for charging stations only work with a Tesla if you buy the right adapter/cable, and then you very well may be limited to only 50% or so of the charging capacity the car can accept.
So yeah --- his car sales do partially depend on that whole supercharger network being built out sufficiently. But the free charging is a factor too.
Unfortunately, as soon as you take your company public, this is the B.S. you get caught up in. Today's Wall Street investor doesn't give a crap if you're a super genius with world-changing ideas you're trying to gear up to sell to the world. They only care about profit and loss statements and projections for the next quarter's revenue. They're going to buy and sell your stock right along with hundreds or thousands of others, going by whatever trends they think they can spot to maximize their income on them. They really don't invest in you because they believe in your business and business model anymore.
I don't work in the financial world, so maybe some others who are will challenge my assertions here? But I do have a friend whose dad owned a big investment firm for something like 40 years. He decided to retire about 8 years ago, saying he always told himself he'd quit, the day he stopped feeling like any of the investing made sense to him anymore. And that day came.....
So on one hand, I have to kind of laugh and admire Musk here, doing what he did. It's a nice "poke in the eye" to the Financial "gods" who rule American business these days. But on the other, it really is true that he's so heavily financially leveraged with Tesla that he'd have nothing but unrealized ideas if all the big lenders and investors backed out on him.
And IMO, one thing he has working against him is that he needs to build out a massively expensive network of superchargers (and maintain them all, including the promise of free charging for many customers) - BUT he doesn't get any of the government protections that we've extended others who tried to undertake similarly massive infrastructure roll-outs (such as the cellular companies). I'm not saying he SHOULD have any of that, either! But he's trying to compete against the established gas station infrastructure that benefits almost all the other auto-makers. So he's going to NEED to stay on the good side of people with lots of money to lend him.
Sprint has fallen so far in recent years, they're really just a bottom of the barrel carrier that has a disproportionately large number of customers with poor credit, plus people they suckered in with a deep discount on a new handset, only to be locked in to the poor coverage for the next 48 months.
T-Mobile will likely just dismantle the whole thing, keeping the customer database and the frequency spectrum rights. (Existing Sprint customers may get some kind of special deal to move to a T-Mobile compatible handset or hotspot if they stick with them through the transition.)
The bottom line is -- Sprint hasn't really been much of a real competitor lately.
I'd still like to know what ever happened to U.S. Cellular though? I had them years ago and thought they were a pretty respectable regional carrier. As far as I know, they owned their own towers and all that... just not nationwide. But it seems like they suddenly changed direction and shrunk their footprint, having about the same status today as any of these second tier carriers who use the major carriers' infrastructure? It seems to me they had a real shot at replacing a carrier like Sprint, for a long time.
The problem sci-fi had, traditionally, is a lack of a budget. When the story you want to tell involves high-tech, futuristic things that are often supposed to be happening on other worlds -- it's difficult to make that really believable when you're limited by tight financial constraints and a lack of tools at your disposal to pull it off successfully.
Look how many of the 50's and 60's sci-fi movies have been relegated to "b-movie" status, ripe for poking fun at via a TV series like MST3K. They're kind of painful to watch if you're trying to take them seriously. It often seems like the most commonly found building material for a spacecraft was aluminum foil.
Even Star Trek struggled with those issues.... requiring putting together props from junk found in dumpsters.
I think movies like Star Wars showed people what could be done if more effort and money was put toward making a quality result. But even today, it seems like funding gets in the way of many great works. (Remember the complaints by Sci-Fi network about the high cost of doing the Battlestar Galactica remake?) Other times, I see independent sci-fi movies that are great, yet the whole time, you have an awareness that part of what you like so much is how much they're able to do with so little. ("The Cube" was a great example of this.... and I'd say "Moon" was, to an extent, another.) Because really, a great story is still a great story no matter what. But you can still tell when the same few backgrounds are re-used as much as possible to cut costs....
Pretending the problems are because sci-fi is too "stale" with a bunch of pale, white guys doing most of it? Give me a break! That's the Hollywood B.S. answer for the fact they don't have enough imagination or quality screen-writers to pull of more good science fiction.
And as others pointed out, Cameron's Avatar seemed to be an attempt to throw tons of money at a concept that really wasn't all that original or "deep" - which led to a visually amazing movie that still didn't have half the impact of so many better sci-fi stories.
Realistically, I don't see how it could ever be another way? If you committed crimes society deems serious enough that you needed to be locked away for years, separated from the masses? You can't *really* just expect to come back after that and have everyone pretend it never happened.
It's one thing for government to officially declare "time served" as the end of your punishment. But it's another to expect the public not to judge you for your past transgressions.
Especially when it comes to applying for credit, you're talking about a process shrouded in layers of secrecy as to exactly what earns you the credit score you're given, and exactly what a given score will or won't let you do. Regardless of any prison time, the REST of us aren't always too sure what's going on with the credit thing either. You've got 3 big credit reporting agencies out there who all keep their own records about you and all seem to come up with different scores. Some places try to average 2 or 3 of those together while others just go with a favorite agency's score as the one they use. When trying to get a home loan, they don't even use ANY of those scores, but instead, use one that you're never able to see yourself at all.
I have to question if a lot of this is just being overblown by Mac haters and the press, looking for something sensational to exploit? (I've done some blogging before and it's WELL known that if you can find practically any news to discuss that has "Apple" in it, you'll get a great click rate on it.)
We deployed a bunch of these new Macbook Pro 13" laptops in my workplace and so far, not a single complaint about keyboard problems. I have one myself that I use, and my only issue, to date, is just that I'm not a fan of having that little key-travel.
One of my co-workers had a key on his stop working but he said he knew it was his fault. He was eating a piece of toast while using it and crumbs got under the key. He was able to use a vacuum to suck it back out and it started working again.
Obviously, you have very little room inside those scissor action pieces under the keycaps on these keyboards, so very small things can get in there and jam it up. (On a more typical keyboard design, you'd just mash down the crumb and pulverize it when you hit the key a few times, so it wouldn't jam things up anymore. You'd eventually get a gross-looking keyboard full of gunk if you didn't clean it out eventually -- but it'd keep typing.)
Not sure this is really something deserving of a recall though? It's more of an awareness that on a machine this light and thin and with this design, you HAVE to make more of an effort to keep it clean.
What I've seen a lot of in the Northeastern U.S. is that people get that skilled trades have shortages, and people aren't looking down on them as "lesser" jobs. But the younger generation is more likely than ever to have been raised on staying indoors most of the time, in climate controlled settings, doing things like playing video games when not in school itself.
When you propose to them the idea of working in a field like construction, where you might be outdoors all day doing physical labor and dealing with bugs/insects, plus hot, cold or rainy conditions? They say, "Thanks, but no thanks." And plumbing? No matter how much it pays, there will always be a relative shortage of plumbers because it's literally a dirty job. You're going to get called to do a lot of the work that homeowners were too grossed out to attempt to do themselves, like crawling into a mucky, dark crawlspace under a house to fix a broken pipe in close quarters. Even replacing toilets is pretty disgusting, given the conditions a lot of bathrooms are kept in. There are some real health risks involved with all the sewage they come in contact with too.
I've noticed that you're more likely to find available electricians, by contrast. Probably because they get to do a lot more work indoors and electrical wiring is a lot less gross/dirty than sewer lines or rotting wood with a hornet's nest by it.
Some of these skilled labor jobs are honestly just ones I look at myself and say, "That guy earns EVERY PENNY of whatever he charges." The guy who did my roofing repairs recently was one of them. My roof has a steep slope that makes it dangerous to crawl around on it. I know some of the larger firms won't even touch it unless I pay thousands extra for them to put full scaffolding up first. But this guy just took his ladder and skillfully used it to move from level to level, crawling around like a spider monkey, and got everything caulked up, shingles replaced that were missing, etc. This was in the cold, and while it started to rain AND get dark. He just took out a flashlight and kept going.
Seems pretty questionable to me. "Because Copyright" doesn't provide blanket ability for a company to control what it produces?
At best, this is a case of nitpicking over the "letter of the law" vs. intent and spirit of the law.
Because let's face it.... This level of control over distribution is USUALLY reserved for the scenarios that existed at the time the copyright laws were written, where the work itself wasn't protected from use in some manner like requiring a product key. (If I purchase a copy of Star Wars on VHS tape, I can't go making duplicates and reselling them or I'm violating copyright. I'm literally competing with the movie studio directly for sales of the movie. and my copy is just as easy to pop in a player and view as the original store bought one is.)
Windows is designed so it requires product activation over the Internet. Microsoft's server has to verify the unique key you typed in as part of the setup process, to determine you're ok to actually continue using it. IMO, that makes everything hinge on the product key -- not the installation media.
The fact that Microsoft has web sites anyone can visit where Windows 10's installation media can be downloaded as an ISO image, AND even a free tool to help you build a bootable USB stick version of it helps illustrate this. The install media isn't relevant to determining who properly licensed the software and who didn't.
You make some valid points about jury nullification but I can't agree with the claim that Lundgren violated the spirit or intent of the law... only the letter of the law.
At the end of the day, Microsoft always tries to "have its cake and eat it too" when it comes to Windows licensing. I've worked in I.T. for almost 30 years now, and it's been an underlying theme with Microsoft's products as far as back as I can remember working for a company using them. The "volume licensing" program used to be so complicated, practically nobody could figure out if they were really in compliance or not.
EG. It was standard practice to use imaging software like Ghost to blast workstation images onto your corporate PCs before deployment. Yet that image might have been licensed using a single Windows key code that didn't match the OEM keys that came printed on stickers affixed to the individual machines. Microsoft used to claim that put companies in legal violation and they were required to buy volume licenses for each PC they wanted to image that way. Of course, the logical assumption from the company's POV was that the computer was sold with a Windows license bundled with it, and they were still only running that same "flavor" of Windows after imaging. Since the license key stickers were still on each PC, it proved they legally owned a copy of Windows that shipped with that PC. There was no avenue to do anything ELSE with the copy of Windows they paid for with the PC, either. So this amounted to Microsoft trying to double-dip on sales, via a technicality.
I see this guy's case as pretty similar. Basically, Microsoft tried to prevent him from mass producing copies of their operating system that aren't even possible to install on a computer without an accompanying license key, which he WASN'T including with any of them. And in fact (according to an article about this on Gizmodo's web site), he was eventually only charged with 2 counts out of 21 original ones; the counts related to him using the Microsoft name and logo on his disc labels without permission. That's not even what they originally went after him for. More like, they stacked up as many counts as they could possibly find on him, and only those 2 "side issue" ones stood the legal test.
I remember as far back as the early 1990's, MANY mom and pop computer shops and online service places would run ads in the Yellow Pages and on mailings that had the Windows flag logo in the corner someplace, simply to indicate they serviced and sold those types of products. You might often find the Linux penguin logo right next to one to show they knew Linux too. Microsoft practically never prosecuted for THAT violation (because you know the majority of them didn't contact Microsoft for permission to use it first).
(Ultimately, I'm sure Microsoft couldn't see any value in going after the illegal re-printing of their logo like that, when it was clear that the people doing it were only helping them sell more products -- not less.)
Nah... reality is, there's a lot of convergence these days. The same panels they're putting in those 1920x1080 LCD monitors get used in some of the 1080p TV sets. That's why they want that 1080 vertical resolution -- so there are no black bars on the default resolution they're designed to display as a TV.
When it comes to computer users -- you don't have to go back THAT far in time to remember when a "high res display" was only doing 1024x768 or maybe 1280x1024.
So in reality, a cheap but good looking display that can do 1920x1080 is still an upgrade from those older standards.
Every week, there's some study going on to tell you if a food we all consume regularly is "good" or "bad" for you. In many of these cases, you can go back in time a bit and find a study on the same food that concludes the opposite. (Coffee is good for you! No, wait... coffee is bad for you because of increased risks of X and Y. No, it's good for you because those risks are small while this new benefit we think it has is a big deal!)
I remember, growing up, how my mom (a registered nurse) would be SO concerned we were eating healthy. So we avoided fats like real butter and bacon, and always chose options with vegetable oils instead of lard.
Now? The general advice says that was ALL wrong. Margarine is unhealthy and a lot of those partially hydrogenated oils were far worse for you than old-fashioned lard. Some doctors are even recommending diets higher in fats (like bacon), even to heart patients who recently had bypass surgery.
So as likely as not, I'll have more problems with clogged arteries when I'm older from my mom's good intentions than if I just ignored it all. Great....
The simple advice to eat any one thing in moderation and to eat a varied diet is probably all that's needed for "good health".
There are exceptions, but you're basically correct. Employers know if you were willing to accept $X as your pay to work for them in the beginning? They feel like you should stick around and be satisfied with relatively small, incremental bumps in pay from there on out. (All of your managers have their annual budgets calculated with that assumption too.) It's easier for them to justify a big pay increase for a brand new hire when the time comes and they want someone who possesses whatever special skills they're seeking. They can roll that in as part of the cost of whatever new systems, software, or initiative they're trying to deploy.
When they try to explain why an existing employee should get that kind of salary to do something new or additional? That's a much tougher sell. (No matter what lip service companies pay to the value of hiring from within -- there's still a deep seated hope that hiring a talented outsider will be a better ROI. After all, the new hire might have previously worked for a place that spent big bucks sending them to training classes that they never wanted to pay for themselves? Or maybe they have a lot of sales contacts that could lead to the company growing their business into brand new areas?)
I'd say that the vast majority of the time, companies ONLY prefer to promote people from within because they think they're getting that savings of not having to pay the person as much as a new, outside hire. So it really becomes a situation where you just accept that if you're comfortable and like other aspects of the job (location and hours, maybe?). But you'll change jobs to leverage new skills, if your main goal is maximizing your pay.
Seriously, when has a boycott of ANY nationwide or multinational chain really accomplished anything? In a best case scenario, you get so much media attention that the company decides it's a good P.R. move to do some token thing to show how "good" they are. When the furor subsides, they go back to business as usual.
With WalMart for example? So many people claim to hate them, but they provide employment for the relatively unemployable. If there's one thing I *really* dislike about them? It's the way they're able to work our welfare system, so they pay people JUST low enough wages so they qualify for govt. assistance while working full time for them. That's something that government itself really needs to address though. If they leave the loophole there, companies will come along and take advantage of it. IMO, those assistance programs should be there as TEMPORARY help for people who are in-between jobs. It shouldn't be supplemental income that allows someone to accept a job at a wage they'd normally consider unacceptable.
With these reports about Amazon's warehouses, I think you've got a similar situation. Most people with the ability and knowledge to do better would just quit a job in those conditions, and do something that pays at least as well to work in a better environment. If you're risking passing out and peeing in bottles to avoid bathroom breaks, you're basically trying to stay employed as a simulated robot. Amazon and others trying to run things this way are sending a clear message; we would really rather just use robots. And IMO, that's inevitably where this will all lead.
The unions want you to think they can fix this, by FORCING employers to give you better pay and better conditions doing these same tasks. But that only works when the employer still needs HUMAN labor. It used to be, that was a given. But today, it's not.
There are a lot of problems with YouTube and censoring of content. Personally, I still take issue with the way they block videos simply based on a supposed copyright infringement any time they detect a copyrighted piece of music playing in the background.
(One guy I know just recently complained how they uploaded some video clip of his family at a ball game, and the video got pulled because some rock music came over the PA system in the ballpark during the video.)
The only reasonable way to deal with this, IMO, is for YouTube and other streaming services of their type to strike up blanket deals with the recording industry rights-holders. Pay some annual fee to ensure that any user can post content containing any of their copyrighted music in it legally. In fact, in the early days, I thought that's exactly what was proposed and done in some cases? I don't know what ever happened with that? Perhaps the recording industry got too greedy and refused to work a deal at anything resembling a reasonable rate? Or maybe YouTube decided it could save money by not bothering, and just promising to pull everything they could find with their fancy digital analysis software?
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There's nothing sane about demanding companies begin evenly distributing wealth with you, just because they invested a portion of their profits in automation. Heck, in this case, none of that even happened yet. These workers are just realizing that the jobs they do could potentially be automated so they're trying to work a deal to ensure their employers don't take advantage of new technology as it becomes available to them.
Ironically, they're striking over this in the casinos of Vegas, of all places! Let's think about that for a minute. You're talking about an industry that's been centered around automation of much of its profit center since practically day 1. Slot machines are standard fare, and they've brought in things like video poker and video blackjack too. On top of that? These guys only let people play games that are rigged in the house's favor. If they even suspect you're using a skill like card counting ability to get an edge while playing, they ban you from the casino. But you expect them to invest in automation so they can equitably share the money made by it with you? Let me get my popcorn .....
I didn't care for practically *everything* being on the touchscreen on a bare dashboard either. Even if the touchscreen was the most usable, more ergonomic design ever created for a car, I didn't like that look in the Model 3 a bit.
That said? The touchscreen is pretty darn nice in my Tesla S. IMO, that was an example of doing it properly. You still have all your normal features available on the 3 stalks and steering wheel controls, but the touchscreen gives an alternate method to control much of it along with many of the things you wouldn't find on most vehicles. To be fair, they could possibly have added a COUPLE of extra hard buttons or switches. (Unless I'm mistaken, the fog lights are still a feature you have to configure from the touchscreen to have them come on with the headlights, or not come on with them. I prefer the little ring on the stalk that controls the normal headlights to toggle them on/off at will. And I don't think the panoramic sunroof can be controlled except from the touchscreen.) But it works well overall, and it's nice having things like the owners' manual accessible on the screen. (Look how often one is missing on a used car because somebody took it out of the glovebox and never put it back!)
I just bought a used Model S (P85D) and I'm no expert on it, by any means. But from driving it so far, I got the impression that the regenerative braking wasn't factored in as part of the total stopping distance they measure/report?
You can disable that feature at will, since some drivers find it difficult to get used to or just don't care for it. And yes, they turn it off for nearly full batteries too. (The default settings on the Model S only allow the battery to charge up about 90% of the way. So there should usually be a margin there.... They recommend that since fully charging the battery isn't good for it, long-term.)
I had to do a panic stop on the freeway in it, thanks to everyone suddenly slamming on their brakes in front of me, and it certainly seemed to me like the resistance provided by the regen braking wasn't much of a contributor to the force needed to stop the car quickly.
I'm FAR more inclined to believe testing done by car enthusiast magazines like Car & Driver or Road & Track than anything out of Consumer Reports.
This is the same group that consistently gives a "do not recommend" type rating to the Jeep Wrangler, despite it being Chrysler/Fiat's flagship best seller and money maker that keeps the whole business afloat as they try to restructure.
C.R. is too focused on their subjective list of key points THEY feel are the only ones car buyers need to be concerned with. This leads to them giving top ratings to some of the most bland, boring boxes on wheels to ever hit the roads while not comprehending at all what makes a vehicle desirable to a big segment of the population.
(The Wrangler will ALWAYS fare poorly in C.R. testing because they don't like things like the poor fuel economy and harsh ride, or the "sparse interior". Clearly, they don't understand the interest people have in owning a vehicle that's capable of driving off-road in places few other motor vehicles can go? Just last week, all the rain we got flooded out the only roads back to our house. Many cars were stranded along-side the highway. My wife was coming back from a meeting and in her Wrangler Unlimited, was able to drive right through, once she determined the water wasn't much more than 14" - 18" deep. Wranglers are designed to be able to do water crossings with up to 30" of water. They also fail to understand the interest in the configurability of a Wrangler. You can use it like a convertible with the soft top down, or put a hard top on it and have it act more like a traditional SUV. You can take just the front panels off the hard top and have the equivalent of t-tops or a sunroof. You can take the whole top off completely if you prefer. Even the doors can come off and the front windshield could even be folded down if you desired. What other vehicles offer all of that?)
I have to admit I'm slightly bothered by the trend, overall, in shifting away from building physical things to selling virtual stuff.
Right now, lots of companies are finding it's easier to make good profits by selling subscriptions to stream content to people than it is to actually BUILD something tangible, and then deal with shipping it out to be sold, handle repairs of the broken units that come back, etc. etc. (Look at IBM and their selloff of their entire notebook computer division to Lenovo, in favor of becoming a service provider. Even companies like HP basically split the company down the middle so they could detach sales of hardware from all the service-related stuff they wanted to sell.)
The problem is -- a lot of these businesses have been engineering and building consumer electronics goods for a LONG time. So now, that talent gets jettisoned and we have to hope it goes someplace else useful. A lot of stuff seems to just fall to, "Ah well ... someone in China will build and sell it!", resulting in sub-par quality electronics junk. At best, it's only successful because it's a complete ripoff of the engineering originally done by one of these big companies in the past.
Sony did a lot of "lock in" with needlessly requiring Sony-branded accessories for its products, so I'm not so sorry to see THAT part vanish. (Sony memory sticks, for example? Ick.) But all in all, I think we're going to lose some quality products with this.
I have a couple of thoughts on all of this.
1. The news media is interested in covering anything that's sensational and grabs viewer eyeballs. We've had house fires for about as long as we had houses, yet they'll still put those on the evening news any time they have some dramatic footage to show people. By the same token, if you're a high profile company that lots of people follow (like Apple or Tesla), you're also going to find yourself in the media spotlight any time an excuse can be made to do it. People stay tuned in any time you mention those names.
2. The unfortunate thing about Tesla's autopilot functionality is that at least in the beginning, it was talked up as a car that could "drive itself". That wasn't close to reality, but it sure helped generate a lot of "buzz" for the product. (The autopilot hardware used in most of the used Tesla Model S's on the road today isn't even capable of keeping the car in a lane when the road starts curving. It really only works in a straight line.) In hindsight, I think it would have gone far better for Tesla if they only sold the whole thing as an advanced cruise control and parallel parking assistant. Then, additional features could have been added down the road without the general public so eager to hear about every time the "self driving car" fails (as they try to ease their consciences about fears of the computers/robots taking over things like driving).
Almost all of these accidents happening with autopilot on are due to drivers who aren't paying attention to what's happening in front of them anymore. They put too much trust in a fairly limited system that still really needs a human driver to intervene occasionally, when something happens outside the parameters the system can work with. If this keeps up though, government will once again try to "save us from ourselves" and start cracking down on the ability to do ANY of this stuff and get closer to self-driving cars in the future.
Tim Cook probably has self-serving reasons to give this advice ... but still? I'd say the libertarian-minded stance would be the same; don't implement tariffs.
The best alternative isn't a "quick fix" like most politicians are seeking. The long-term, best solution, involves encouraging U.S. based startups and small businesses to develop, and to perhaps a lesser extent, to provide some aid for mid-sized businesses too.
If you impose fees on imported goods but your country doesn't offer enough comparable alternatives of its own that people want to buy instead, you wind up either A) punishing U.S. citizens by cutting off goods they want to buy, or B) causing the country doing the importing to mark up the prices of what they're selling to compensate for the higher taxes on bringing it in, while again ultimately making the American people cover that cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm not engaging in "starry eyed worship" here. I've often been pretty outspoken about how the whole PV solar market hawks inflated numbers and stats to get people to buy into it. Solar panel tech is pretty cool and actually works, but it doesn't give the cost savings they promise in many cases. It's a long-term investment gamble at best, where you might come out ahead if your inverters don't die, past the warranty period and the panels themselves don't fail or shatter from hail damage, and if electricity costs really do rise over time as estimated. And Solar City is one of Musk's partnerships.
But Tesla cars are just fine as a solution, once you realize that a decent percentage of car buyers want something in the luxury segment ... not just cheap, boring transportation from A to B.
Plenty of incredibly good business ideas are ones that need patience and time to bring to fruition. There's a need to do due diligence and make sure the company isn't just a false front, or a bunch of clueless idiots wasting every dollar they're loaned. But a company like Tesla has already proven it can deliver a working product that people find desirable. In fact, they did it several times over -- ever since the first Tesla Roadster came out.
Wall Street is destroying a lot of great ideas because they hyper-focus on short term results. If you're a big, established firm, that's probably fine. They generally sell in saturated markets where their profits are relatively stable. But for anything else, you used to have a lot of investors who bought and HELD stocks because they truly liked what the company was doing. They weren't living "quarter to quarter" to look for the first sign they needed to do a sell-off.
All the computerization of Wall Street is probably what led to a lot of this. Computer automation and ability to execute micro-trades super rapidly over high speed networks turns it into a pure game of numeric trends, vs. wishing to put your money into a business you believed in.
Well, I'm talking about the whole "ball of wax" really. I understand that as we get more electric cars out there, there will be more charging stations built by many different manufacturers. But Tesla has the ones that supply enough wattage to get one of their cars recharged in a reasonable amount of time so you can grab a bite to eat and continue on a road trip, with it charged back up sufficiently. The GPS systems in their vehicles know about all of these stations they installed too, so it can factor them into your planned route.
From what I've read, several of the other standards for charging stations only work with a Tesla if you buy the right adapter/cable, and then you very well may be limited to only 50% or so of the charging capacity the car can accept.
So yeah --- his car sales do partially depend on that whole supercharger network being built out sufficiently. But the free charging is a factor too.
Unfortunately, as soon as you take your company public, this is the B.S. you get caught up in. Today's Wall Street investor doesn't give a crap if you're a super genius with world-changing ideas you're trying to gear up to sell to the world. They only care about profit and loss statements and projections for the next quarter's revenue. They're going to buy and sell your stock right along with hundreds or thousands of others, going by whatever trends they think they can spot to maximize their income on them. They really don't invest in you because they believe in your business and business model anymore.
I don't work in the financial world, so maybe some others who are will challenge my assertions here? But I do have a friend whose dad owned a big investment firm for something like 40 years. He decided to retire about 8 years ago, saying he always told himself he'd quit, the day he stopped feeling like any of the investing made sense to him anymore. And that day came.....
So on one hand, I have to kind of laugh and admire Musk here, doing what he did. It's a nice "poke in the eye" to the Financial "gods" who rule American business these days. But on the other, it really is true that he's so heavily financially leveraged with Tesla that he'd have nothing but unrealized ideas if all the big lenders and investors backed out on him.
And IMO, one thing he has working against him is that he needs to build out a massively expensive network of superchargers (and maintain them all, including the promise of free charging for many customers) - BUT he doesn't get any of the government protections that we've extended others who tried to undertake similarly massive infrastructure roll-outs (such as the cellular companies). I'm not saying he SHOULD have any of that, either! But he's trying to compete against the established gas station infrastructure that benefits almost all the other auto-makers. So he's going to NEED to stay on the good side of people with lots of money to lend him.
Sprint has fallen so far in recent years, they're really just a bottom of the barrel carrier that has a disproportionately large number of customers with poor credit, plus people they suckered in with a deep discount on a new handset, only to be locked in to the poor coverage for the next 48 months.
T-Mobile will likely just dismantle the whole thing, keeping the customer database and the frequency spectrum rights. (Existing Sprint customers may get some kind of special deal to move to a T-Mobile compatible handset or hotspot if they stick with them through the transition.)
The bottom line is -- Sprint hasn't really been much of a real competitor lately.
I'd still like to know what ever happened to U.S. Cellular though? I had them years ago and thought they were a pretty respectable regional carrier. As far as I know, they owned their own towers and all that ... just not nationwide. But it seems like they suddenly changed direction and shrunk their footprint, having about the same status today as any of these second tier carriers who use the major carriers' infrastructure? It seems to me they had a real shot at replacing a carrier like Sprint, for a long time.
The problem sci-fi had, traditionally, is a lack of a budget. When the story you want to tell involves high-tech, futuristic things that are often supposed to be happening on other worlds -- it's difficult to make that really believable when you're limited by tight financial constraints and a lack of tools at your disposal to pull it off successfully.
Look how many of the 50's and 60's sci-fi movies have been relegated to "b-movie" status, ripe for poking fun at via a TV series like MST3K. They're kind of painful to watch if you're trying to take them seriously. It often seems like the most commonly found building material for a spacecraft was aluminum foil.
Even Star Trek struggled with those issues .... requiring putting together props from junk found in dumpsters.
I think movies like Star Wars showed people what could be done if more effort and money was put toward making a quality result. But even today, it seems like funding gets in the way of many great works. (Remember the complaints by Sci-Fi network about the high cost of doing the Battlestar Galactica remake?) Other times, I see independent sci-fi movies that are great, yet the whole time, you have an awareness that part of what you like so much is how much they're able to do with so little. ("The Cube" was a great example of this.... and I'd say "Moon" was, to an extent, another.) Because really, a great story is still a great story no matter what. But you can still tell when the same few backgrounds are re-used as much as possible to cut costs....
Pretending the problems are because sci-fi is too "stale" with a bunch of pale, white guys doing most of it? Give me a break! That's the Hollywood B.S. answer for the fact they don't have enough imagination or quality screen-writers to pull of more good science fiction.
And as others pointed out, Cameron's Avatar seemed to be an attempt to throw tons of money at a concept that really wasn't all that original or "deep" - which led to a visually amazing movie that still didn't have half the impact of so many better sci-fi stories.
Realistically, I don't see how it could ever be another way? If you committed crimes society deems serious enough that you needed to be locked away for years, separated from the masses? You can't *really* just expect to come back after that and have everyone pretend it never happened.
It's one thing for government to officially declare "time served" as the end of your punishment. But it's another to expect the public not to judge you for your past transgressions.
Especially when it comes to applying for credit, you're talking about a process shrouded in layers of secrecy as to exactly what earns you the credit score you're given, and exactly what a given score will or won't let you do. Regardless of any prison time, the REST of us aren't always too sure what's going on with the credit thing either. You've got 3 big credit reporting agencies out there who all keep their own records about you and all seem to come up with different scores. Some places try to average 2 or 3 of those together while others just go with a favorite agency's score as the one they use. When trying to get a home loan, they don't even use ANY of those scores, but instead, use one that you're never able to see yourself at all.
I have to question if a lot of this is just being overblown by Mac haters and the press, looking for something sensational to exploit? (I've done some blogging before and it's WELL known that if you can find practically any news to discuss that has "Apple" in it, you'll get a great click rate on it.)
We deployed a bunch of these new Macbook Pro 13" laptops in my workplace and so far, not a single complaint about keyboard problems. I have one myself that I use, and my only issue, to date, is just that I'm not a fan of having that little key-travel.
One of my co-workers had a key on his stop working but he said he knew it was his fault. He was eating a piece of toast while using it and crumbs got under the key. He was able to use a vacuum to suck it back out and it started working again.
Obviously, you have very little room inside those scissor action pieces under the keycaps on these keyboards, so very small things can get in there and jam it up. (On a more typical keyboard design, you'd just mash down the crumb and pulverize it when you hit the key a few times, so it wouldn't jam things up anymore. You'd eventually get a gross-looking keyboard full of gunk if you didn't clean it out eventually -- but it'd keep typing.)
Not sure this is really something deserving of a recall though? It's more of an awareness that on a machine this light and thin and with this design, you HAVE to make more of an effort to keep it clean.
What I've seen a lot of in the Northeastern U.S. is that people get that skilled trades have shortages, and people aren't looking down on them as "lesser" jobs. But the younger generation is more likely than ever to have been raised on staying indoors most of the time, in climate controlled settings, doing things like playing video games when not in school itself.
When you propose to them the idea of working in a field like construction, where you might be outdoors all day doing physical labor and dealing with bugs/insects, plus hot, cold or rainy conditions? They say, "Thanks, but no thanks." And plumbing? No matter how much it pays, there will always be a relative shortage of plumbers because it's literally a dirty job. You're going to get called to do a lot of the work that homeowners were too grossed out to attempt to do themselves, like crawling into a mucky, dark crawlspace under a house to fix a broken pipe in close quarters. Even replacing toilets is pretty disgusting, given the conditions a lot of bathrooms are kept in. There are some real health risks involved with all the sewage they come in contact with too.
I've noticed that you're more likely to find available electricians, by contrast. Probably because they get to do a lot more work indoors and electrical wiring is a lot less gross/dirty than sewer lines or rotting wood with a hornet's nest by it.
Some of these skilled labor jobs are honestly just ones I look at myself and say, "That guy earns EVERY PENNY of whatever he charges." The guy who did my roofing repairs recently was one of them. My roof has a steep slope that makes it dangerous to crawl around on it. I know some of the larger firms won't even touch it unless I pay thousands extra for them to put full scaffolding up first. But this guy just took his ladder and skillfully used it to move from level to level, crawling around like a spider monkey, and got everything caulked up, shingles replaced that were missing, etc. This was in the cold, and while it started to rain AND get dark. He just took out a flashlight and kept going.
Seems pretty questionable to me. "Because Copyright" doesn't provide blanket ability for a company to control what it produces?
At best, this is a case of nitpicking over the "letter of the law" vs. intent and spirit of the law.
Because let's face it .... This level of control over distribution is USUALLY reserved for the scenarios that existed at the time the copyright laws were written, where the work itself wasn't protected from use in some manner like requiring a product key. (If I purchase a copy of Star Wars on VHS tape, I can't go making duplicates and reselling them or I'm violating copyright. I'm literally competing with the movie studio directly for sales of the movie. and my copy is just as easy to pop in a player and view as the original store bought one is.)
Windows is designed so it requires product activation over the Internet. Microsoft's server has to verify the unique key you typed in as part of the setup process, to determine you're ok to actually continue using it. IMO, that makes everything hinge on the product key -- not the installation media.
The fact that Microsoft has web sites anyone can visit where Windows 10's installation media can be downloaded as an ISO image, AND even a free tool to help you build a bootable USB stick version of it helps illustrate this. The install media isn't relevant to determining who properly licensed the software and who didn't.
You make some valid points about jury nullification but I can't agree with the claim that Lundgren violated the spirit or intent of the law ... only the letter of the law.
At the end of the day, Microsoft always tries to "have its cake and eat it too" when it comes to Windows licensing. I've worked in I.T. for almost 30 years now, and it's been an underlying theme with Microsoft's products as far as back as I can remember working for a company using them. The "volume licensing" program used to be so complicated, practically nobody could figure out if they were really in compliance or not.
EG. It was standard practice to use imaging software like Ghost to blast workstation images onto your corporate PCs before deployment. Yet that image might have been licensed using a single Windows key code that didn't match the OEM keys that came printed on stickers affixed to the individual machines. Microsoft used to claim that put companies in legal violation and they were required to buy volume licenses for each PC they wanted to image that way. Of course, the logical assumption from the company's POV was that the computer was sold with a Windows license bundled with it, and they were still only running that same "flavor" of Windows after imaging. Since the license key stickers were still on each PC, it proved they legally owned a copy of Windows that shipped with that PC. There was no avenue to do anything ELSE with the copy of Windows they paid for with the PC, either. So this amounted to Microsoft trying to double-dip on sales, via a technicality.
I see this guy's case as pretty similar. Basically, Microsoft tried to prevent him from mass producing copies of their operating system that aren't even possible to install on a computer without an accompanying license key, which he WASN'T including with any of them. And in fact (according to an article about this on Gizmodo's web site), he was eventually only charged with 2 counts out of 21 original ones; the counts related to him using the Microsoft name and logo on his disc labels without permission. That's not even what they originally went after him for. More like, they stacked up as many counts as they could possibly find on him, and only those 2 "side issue" ones stood the legal test.
I remember as far back as the early 1990's, MANY mom and pop computer shops and online service places would run ads in the Yellow Pages and on mailings that had the Windows flag logo in the corner someplace, simply to indicate they serviced and sold those types of products. You might often find the Linux penguin logo right next to one to show they knew Linux too. Microsoft practically never prosecuted for THAT violation (because you know the majority of them didn't contact Microsoft for permission to use it first).
(Ultimately, I'm sure Microsoft couldn't see any value in going after the illegal re-printing of their logo like that, when it was clear that the people doing it were only helping them sell more products -- not less.)
Nah... reality is, there's a lot of convergence these days. The same panels they're putting in those 1920x1080 LCD monitors get used in some of the 1080p TV sets. That's why they want that 1080 vertical resolution -- so there are no black bars on the default resolution they're designed to display as a TV.
When it comes to computer users -- you don't have to go back THAT far in time to remember when a "high res display" was only doing 1024x768 or maybe 1280x1024.
So in reality, a cheap but good looking display that can do 1920x1080 is still an upgrade from those older standards.
Yep. Jersey Mike's should tip ME for accepting those terrible excuses for sandwiches, really.
But come on... no tip at all in a sit-down place? You demand slave labor from your servers then, I take it?
Every week, there's some study going on to tell you if a food we all consume regularly is "good" or "bad" for you. In many of these cases, you can go back in time a bit and find a study on the same food that concludes the opposite. (Coffee is good for you! No, wait... coffee is bad for you because of increased risks of X and Y. No, it's good for you because those risks are small while this new benefit we think it has is a big deal!)
I remember, growing up, how my mom (a registered nurse) would be SO concerned we were eating healthy. So we avoided fats like real butter and bacon, and always chose options with vegetable oils instead of lard.
Now? The general advice says that was ALL wrong. Margarine is unhealthy and a lot of those partially hydrogenated oils were far worse for you than old-fashioned lard. Some doctors are even recommending diets higher in fats (like bacon), even to heart patients who recently had bypass surgery.
So as likely as not, I'll have more problems with clogged arteries when I'm older from my mom's good intentions than if I just ignored it all. Great....
The simple advice to eat any one thing in moderation and to eat a varied diet is probably all that's needed for "good health".
Yep... I would mod you up if I could.
There are exceptions, but you're basically correct. Employers know if you were willing to accept $X as your pay to work for them in the beginning? They feel like you should stick around and be satisfied with relatively small, incremental bumps in pay from there on out. (All of your managers have their annual budgets calculated with that assumption too.) It's easier for them to justify a big pay increase for a brand new hire when the time comes and they want someone who possesses whatever special skills they're seeking. They can roll that in as part of the cost of whatever new systems, software, or initiative they're trying to deploy.
When they try to explain why an existing employee should get that kind of salary to do something new or additional? That's a much tougher sell. (No matter what lip service companies pay to the value of hiring from within -- there's still a deep seated hope that hiring a talented outsider will be a better ROI. After all, the new hire might have previously worked for a place that spent big bucks sending them to training classes that they never wanted to pay for themselves? Or maybe they have a lot of sales contacts that could lead to the company growing their business into brand new areas?)
I'd say that the vast majority of the time, companies ONLY prefer to promote people from within because they think they're getting that savings of not having to pay the person as much as a new, outside hire. So it really becomes a situation where you just accept that if you're comfortable and like other aspects of the job (location and hours, maybe?). But you'll change jobs to leverage new skills, if your main goal is maximizing your pay.
Seriously, when has a boycott of ANY nationwide or multinational chain really accomplished anything? In a best case scenario, you get so much media attention that the company decides it's a good P.R. move to do some token thing to show how "good" they are. When the furor subsides, they go back to business as usual.
With WalMart for example? So many people claim to hate them, but they provide employment for the relatively unemployable. If there's one thing I *really* dislike about them? It's the way they're able to work our welfare system, so they pay people JUST low enough wages so they qualify for govt. assistance while working full time for them. That's something that government itself really needs to address though. If they leave the loophole there, companies will come along and take advantage of it. IMO, those assistance programs should be there as TEMPORARY help for people who are in-between jobs. It shouldn't be supplemental income that allows someone to accept a job at a wage they'd normally consider unacceptable.
With these reports about Amazon's warehouses, I think you've got a similar situation. Most people with the ability and knowledge to do better would just quit a job in those conditions, and do something that pays at least as well to work in a better environment. If you're risking passing out and peeing in bottles to avoid bathroom breaks, you're basically trying to stay employed as a simulated robot. Amazon and others trying to run things this way are sending a clear message; we would really rather just use robots. And IMO, that's inevitably where this will all lead.
The unions want you to think they can fix this, by FORCING employers to give you better pay and better conditions doing these same tasks. But that only works when the employer still needs HUMAN labor. It used to be, that was a given. But today, it's not.
There are a lot of problems with YouTube and censoring of content. Personally, I still take issue with the way they block videos simply based on a supposed copyright infringement any time they detect a copyrighted piece of music playing in the background.
(One guy I know just recently complained how they uploaded some video clip of his family at a ball game, and the video got pulled because some rock music came over the PA system in the ballpark during the video.)
The only reasonable way to deal with this, IMO, is for YouTube and other streaming services of their type to strike up blanket deals with the recording industry rights-holders. Pay some annual fee to ensure that any user can post content containing any of their copyrighted music in it legally. In fact, in the early days, I thought that's exactly what was proposed and done in some cases? I don't know what ever happened with that? Perhaps the recording industry got too greedy and refused to work a deal at anything resembling a reasonable rate? Or maybe YouTube decided it could save money by not bothering, and just promising to pull everything they could find with their fancy digital analysis software?