It seems like years ago, I got disgusted with the high retail prices for the 4 or 8 packs of alkaline batteries on store shelves, so I made a concerted effort to stop buying them that way.
There's regularly a GroupOn special (like one I just saw yesterday for a 72-pack of Sony alkaline AA batteries) where you get them quite inexpensively in bulk.
I got something similar from Costco for free a year ago as one of a number of coupons they included with our membership purchase.
In other cases, it just makes sense to buy rechargeable batteries instead.
And lastly? For those pesky 9 volt batteries that we need for our smoke alarms, I started buying the yellow IKEA batteries. They're inexpensive compared to Duracell or Energizer but seem to get the job done.
Look, we have a lot of software developers in here. Do any of you really believe your job is in jeopardy or potentially unprofitable, simply because whatever you code will become obsolete and unused within a decade or so? Hopefully not, because you realize it's about continually updating what you write and coming up with brand new things to code. You don't learn to code so you can write one thing, and then expect to sit back and profit from it for the rest of your life - deciding you never need to code again.
That seems a lot like this article.... complaining because if you successfully make a drug to cure a disease, it will eventually stop being useful because you made the disease go extinct. So what? You've got PLENTY of other diseases you can work on curing, and plenty of opportunities to help alleviate symptoms with other drugs in the meantime, while you try to find more cures. If you are good at doing these things,you'll continue to be very profitable.
FWIW, I *do* think Apple has a tougher time justifying these changes to its users for a couple of reasons.
1. A lot of people paid a premium to buy a Mac in the first place because of the promise that they have a longer useful life than their Windows PC counterparts. Traditionally, that held true because with them "playing by their own rules", development was based around making software work with what Apple made available. (You couldn't arbitrarily decide, for example, that you didn't like how slow a whole series of graphics cards had become and set your hardware requirements higher. If Apple didn't BUILD a new Mac with a better graphics card, you were stuck coding for the ones already out there.) This did have the advantage that it often led to a better quality of programs, since developers had more time to focus on fixing bugs and optimizing the code for the available hardware.
2. In recent years, I think there's been a pretty strong market for trying to breathe more life into the last few generations of Macs. As Apple has switched to a practically non user-serviceable, non-upgradable design across the board, there's some backlash from the community. After all, from 2006-2012, Apple sold the VERY expandable Mac Pro workstations, which can now be bought for as little as $100 or so each. In other cases, like the MacBook Pro laptops? It's been a long time since Apple offered one with a 17" screen -- but some people still really want that feature. So they hang onto to the last of the models that had one.
Granted, all of those Mac Pro workstations were 64-bit capable, as were the 17" MacBook Pro laptops and any older iMac going back as far as the Core 2 Duo CPU in them. But there's at least the FEAR that Apple is accelerating its intentions of obsoleting everything that's not a current model. (The 2006 and 2007 Mac Pro workstations were arbitrarily cut off from OS X support for versions newer than Lion, even though with some hackery - they can run the much more recent El Capitan version just fine.)
The truth of the matter is, DisplayLink driver support for OS X has always been rather shoddy.
I purchased a $100 or so docking station a while back, from "j5create" (who makes a lot of products that specifically claim Mac compatibility). They rely on rebranded/customized DisplayLink drivers to make their video ports on their docks work. When I installed the latest Mac drivers from them for it, I found out that screen rotation wasn't supported -- so I couldn't use my second display that was rotated to "portrait" mode.
I think they *finally* addressed that issue, but I already sold that MacBook and stopped using that dock with it, so I'm not 100% sure?
They had plenty of other issues though, even with the last couple major OS X versions:
Protected video content will never be viewable via a DisplayLink connected monitor either, BTW.
It's really just a partial solution/hack to add a monitor over a port that wasn't originally intended to be used that way. So while it's irritating it's non-functional in the latest OS X release? It was never that great to begin with.....
I have to disagree with you there. I work for a company that does communications marketing and they're primarily on Macs. They most assuredly are not "just pretending" to be designers or artists.
I also took a tour of some of the major recording studios in Nashville last year and guess what? They still used Macs almost exclusively, even when doing so required special effort (such as finding custom rack mount kits to mount the "trash can" 2013 Mac Pro in their acoustically isolated rack enclosures).
The Apple userbase may be declining in areas it traditionally dominated, like the education sector and 3D animation work. But the creative fields, in general, are still big customers for Apple products.
I don't think it's necessarily bad if Apple parts ways with Intel and makes its own CPUs.... but as others said, the whole switch to Intel enabled a lot of possibilities with running Windows in a dual boot mode, or ensuring virtualization software worked 100%. I think that's a big negative if Apple discards it as unnecessary with the new chips.
It seems like every company I ever work for, or anyone I talk to needing to do mass mailings for an organization or charity resorts to using MailChimp.
It's not really something I've looked closely at, since I work in I.T. taking care of systems, support and network infrastructure. (If you want to do a mass mailing, we make sure your computer and the Internet are working properly so you can pursue that. But we're not going to hand-hold you through signing up for a 3rd. party service or what-not.)
But I find it odd that there doesn't seem to be much competition at all for this? (I know "Constant Contact" comes up often as an alternative, but I believe that one costs more or has other reason it's often skipped over after an initial review of it?)
Isn't bulk emailing something that's relatively easy to bolt a UI on the front for and sell as a service? Why is MailChimp such a powerhouse for this?
A lot of people are suggesting virtual machines -- but at least theoretically, you might not be allowed to install VM software on your business laptop. Perhaps you're only supposed to be using the apps approved for it by I.T., or ??
The cheap solution would be carrying around a USB drive that's set up with an OS (like Linux) designed to run entirely off of it.
Pay for a non-US hosted cloud service and be subject to the whims of their socialist or communist governments, who can arbitrarily decide your content violates THEIR standards. Really.. what's the difference? Bottom line is just as others posted; don't keep your only copy of anything you need in the cloud.
Even if nobody is censoring the content, you never know when a service will go out of business and take your data with it.
Strange? Well, maybe -- unless you start thinking about the way people's desires change along with increased wealth.
Say you earn that median $50,000/yr. income, but you get a big raise to $100,000/yr. It seems like a BIG deal at first, but you can use up the entire difference just by moving into a new home. So say you find a new job and again double your income? Not only does your higher tax bracket take a bigger chunk out of your take-home pay than you used to give up, but you'll again, pretty easily use up the extra income with such things as deciding to drive around nicer cars, and likely spending more time with groups of people who earn more money too -- and have expectations you'll spend more on outings with them, donations to associations they're involved in, etc.
If you're at the point where you've got a BILLION dollars at your disposal? You're probably going to be interested in tackling appropriately sized projects.... Starting new foundations to research something, perhaps?
I guess what I'm saying is... whether people give their government enough money so it has billions to spend on things, or individuals manage to amass that kind of wealth themselves? The results probably aren't all that different. Either way, they're definitely going to live a much fancier lifestyle than most of us... but they're also going to realize that they've got so much income, they can't even realistically just spend it on themselves. People are aware they have that kind of money, and they have a lot of expectations for them to try to live up to. SOME people have no conscience... but MOST people actually do. They tend to care about SOMETHING. Maybe for them, it's trying to cure an illness that caused the death of a loved one? Or maybe they're fascinated with some aspect of science and technology that they can really advance with the money?
I think you're neglecting some key things in your arguments.
Primarily, rail lines in America really can't move that many passengers per day because as a rule, they're operating on the tracks owned by railroads who are primarily focused on moving FREIGHT. The commuter rail traffic is viewed as a nuisance, and the railroads often take actions to hamper it whenever they can get away with it. (That's why the MARC in the DC metro area is so often running 45 minutes or more late. CSX owns the rails it runs on, and they like to schedule freight trains to conflict with it and create congestion. That's because from their viewpoint, it's better off if they can discourage people from taking the passenger rail system and stop voting on legislation that lets the states borrow their rails more than they do already.)
I don't deny that freeways are ridiculously costly to maintain.... but at the end of the day, they're just concrete or asphalt strips with some painted lines on them and signage. When you invest in a whole transit system like a streetcar or light rail system, you're multiplying the complexity exponentially. You need to hire engineers to operate the vehicles, instead of letting the users drive themselves. You have to employ a skilled maintenance staff that commands higher salaries than the guy who knows how to fill a hole using a shovel. It's not that I expect a highway to be PROFITABLE (like someone else suggested here). I just expect it to be a relatively good use of my tax dollars as a way to keep infrastructure in place that allows me to get around, and allows deliveries to arrive. The packages coming via the post office or UPS or FedEx or DHL aren't getting transported via mass transit. They're still relying on the highways and roads.
As far as complaining about mass transit despite it generally being faster than driving? I think you misunderstood? I'm not talking about having to actually sit on a train that's not moving. That's rarely happened to me, for more than a brief period of time. I'm talking about things like getting stuck standing around outside, at a train platform, waiting for 2+ hours because of a train having a mechanical issue and the updates promising it'll arrive with a 20 minute delay, then another 30 minutes, etc. etc. When that happens in the middle of winter, trust me... it's not pleasant.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned, even though LOTS of other intelligent comments were made on why this is a bad idea?
A lot of people who are regular listeners to music via YouTube don't even care about the video content. They're strictly using it to stream the songs they want to hear. This would often be your pre-teens and teens who don't have money to pay for a music subscription but want to hear their favorite new music releases. If YouTube wanted them to consume less bandwidth, they could offer an option to simply listen to the tracks with the video disabled -- and I think many of the users would be just fine with that.
I live in a city that was created back in the early 1900's by the railroad. They put their infrastructure here and then built a "planned community" around it. Today, CSX still uses the tracks here as a rail yard and we have a station stop that's used for the commuter rail system. But generally, the buildings the railroad originally built have all been re-purposed for other things and we have a self-sustaining town here.
I think it's wishful thinking if they believe success in such an endeavor proves people "love tech companies enough to live in them", though. More likely, it's about the convenience of living right by where you work, in a housing market that's gotten so expensive, that's not otherwise feasible for a lot of people.
Parent poster says, "So the answer is more bus lanes - and more buses - and more public transit in general - not less. That's because experience shows that if you've got a city with millions of people living in it, the proper way to organize it is 1) build it at high density and 2) move people around primarily using high-capacity public transit, not cars."
Problem is, I've seen the massive financial losses incurred by some of these mass transit projects. Not talking about just the huge initial expenses, but the continual bleeding of money trying to maintain them -- plus the inevitable demands to expand them and upgrade them over time.
So is it really "proper" to insist cities invest in mass transit solutions instead of upgrading the roads and highways?
It probably is from strictly the standpoint of what's efficient for commuters. But living in the DC metro area and seeing our challenges with the existing system? Man, I just don't know? I've tried to use our mass transit options for my daily commute. Assuming I'm trying to get to and from work during normal rush hour times, it potentially cuts my transit time in half to take the train and transfer to the metro, vs. driving in during traffic jams and trying to find parking in a multi-story garage. BUT -- it's a double-edged sword because I occasionally get stuck for hours if a train breaks down and messes up the schedule OR a miss a train because my schedule doesn't allow me to make the one I intended to make. On top of that, it's gotten expensive enough so I don't think it saves me any money vs. just driving in. For me? The optimal solution is driving in but doing so during non-peak congestion hours. I'm best off working from home in the early morning and driving in late in the morning, and staying a couple hours later in the office until traffic dies down before heading home.
I've never really seen a bus system that ran efficiently either? By that, I mean most buses are nowhere near filled to capacity and they seem to take routes that aren't useful to a lot of potential riders. People, in turn, demand additional routes to service their needs. When that happens, it tends to only help a small minority of people who were the loudest about needing the public transportation -- so costs of operation keep going up.
You're on the right track, generally speaking. But the biggest danger with all of this information culled from social media sites is the potential to mis-use it by taking it out of context.
Anything I was willing to post on Facebook under my name is a statement I'm willing to stand up and take the credit for posting. Therefore, if someone published it in the local newspaper? I'd be fine with that too. (Why you'd find it worthy of an article in the paper, I'm not quite sure? But for the sake of argument... let's say I became famous and people suddenly care about details of my life, like where I go out to eat and what I think about things. Ok.... publish away and attribute what I typed to me. I can handle that.)
What scares me is the ability to selectively seek out certain tidbits of information on people that can be spun in some way to use it against them.
A whole lot of things that aren't particularly meaningful, in context of hundreds or thousands of random posts, can suddenly SEEM relevant if they're quoted out of context.
EG. Say I'm upset with poor customer service at a chain store, so I rant about it online one day? Maybe I just wanted to vent, or hoped someone in a position to improve things at that location might see it and have it serve as a "wake up call"? But let's say a year goes by, and all of a sudden I'm trying to get a job with a firm that has that chain store as one of their clients? Someone on a mission to show why they shouldn't hire me could hunt down that one rant and position it as proof that I'm going to badmouth their client.
We'll get the video game industry trying its best to prove that no kid, ever was even slightly influenced to commit a crime from a game all about committing violent crimes. The opposition will claim it's such a pressing issue, we need to ignore such inconveniences as freedom of the press or speech and squash the legality of creating any game with violence or shooting in it.
99% of sane, normal citizens will carry on as usual -- buying the next GTA sequel by the millions of copies, etc.
With ALL of this stuff, the fact remains that people who aren't deeply troubled in life don't feel a need to go on killing sprees. I can play violent shooter games all day long (and when I was a bit younger, I did that some weekends at LAN gaming parties), and all it made any of us do is enjoy the camaraderie and share some fresh baked cookies and cola.
As was cautioned by the founders of America, freedom and safety butt heads if you try to legislate both at once. So yeah, we could take away all of the guns, or even just the most powerful ones, and it might be a band-aid -- dropping the murder rate a bit. But all of those people with mental instability or serious depression or anger issues haven't gone away. They're as dysfunctional as ever. You just made it harder for them to kill using that one option. They don't need a gun to rape a stranger or to harass somebody anonymously until life is unbearable for their target, or to hack into financial systems and steal others' identities, or any number of things they might do to "get back at society".
I'd rather have a little less of the safety obtained by limiting my freedoms, and try harder to address the ROOT CAUSES behind these problems.
If you want a pretty decent example of this, look at the encryption methods used in such things as DirecTV or Dish Network receivers. For many years,the "smartcards" containing your authorized programming were hacked in a cat and mouse game. You had to buy this programmer devices or that piece of PC software to keep up with it, but it was absolutely possible to unlock those things so you had all the programming without paying (or with just paying for a bare minimum subscription to keep something flagged as an active account).
Then, both of them discontinued their existing card technology and rolled out mandatory upgrades, and the hole was effectively sealed. Nobody I'm aware is really hacking these things anymore, in any big commercial way?
As I understand it, many of the previous hacks were really the result of leaks.... Someone was paid off to reveal a way to access the card and modify it.
That's always going to be the "weak spot"... having such a hole that you're aware of and leave in there for internal use. If you give keys to a "trusted third party" like the FBI -- same problem only amplified because now the info exists both with the manufacturer AND the agency holding the keys. Twice as likely it will get leaked out by somebody, somewhere.
The question asked in the FB survey was pretty straightforward, and it simply asked if you'd be ok with a particular type of Federal crime going on over the service. The only sane answer is "no".
This wasn't asking to what extent FB would be expected to spy on private messages, actively seeking out certain types of discussions or content.
I think it's true where I work. I've been there for 6 years now and when I started, telework was something we were technically equipped to support. We had some proprietary Cisco VPN software we loaded on all of the Windows laptops for it, etc. But it was still viewed as something only a "select few" people were approved to do. (Typically, it would be someone like a graphics artist or producer who they knew would probably just quit and go freelance if they weren't given the option to work from home most of the time.)
Currently, we upgraded all of our gear to Cisco Meraki and we have about 20 of their Z1 and Z3 remote access points we can deploy to people. Everyone else can VPN in from several different geographic locations using the built-in VPN software on a Mac or a Windows machine, and we've doubled our bandwidth at most locations to make it work better. Our head person in Finance just started working remotely, since she elected to move out of state. Our I.T. team works remotely at least as often as any of us are in one of the offices. And a whole slew of other employees work from home randomly/occasionally, whenever they see it as appropriate.
Ironically? I really believe the real-estate is one of the things holding us back from encouraging *more* telework. Again, I could see that evolving with time. But in our industry, there's a certain amount of "clout" in having a nice physical office presence with a relatively prestigious address. They shell out a lot of money on leases to have space in places like downtown Chicago, Washington D.C., New Orleans, etc. And as people stop coming in, I think management has a bit of frustration that so much of that square footage they're paying on is under-utilized.
I've noticed a bit of a trend towards offering a lot of free lunches or special events/perks in various office locations, in an attempt to get more people to come in instead of working at home. To be fair... it does also help encourage a bit of brainstorming that might not happen if you didn't get the group under one roof like that.
To be fair.... I hate the dongle mess Apple has created too. But I have a 2017 Macbook Pro 13" I'm using, and you can buy some pretty slick 3rd. party USB-C to multi-purpose adapters to cut down on what's needed, and the price.
I'm currently using one that has an HDMI port, 2 USB 3.0 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, and a pass-through USB-C port on it. The dongle cost me about $79 at Best Buy. (That means I'm sure cheaper ones are available online if you look around.) Honestly, with that -- what else do you ever need?
Ignoring some of the snarky comments.... The Macbook Air likely still sells well in corporate America, where there was already a big investment in the machine.
When you look at Windows PCs? All of the big manufacturers like Dell, HP and Lenovo offer a line of laptops that don't change in design much for a number of years. They typically offer a docking station that's made to attach to any of the machines in that series, too. The price point on these always tends to be higher and they wind up with less features or poorer specs than their counterparts that see a lot of regular changes. But businesses pay the premium so they can stick with a standard for a while.
If you're a business that used Macs, the Macbook Air has stayed about the same since 2009-2010 other than regular bumps in CPU speed and a change so they all come with 8GB of RAM instead of only 4GB. All of the mag-safe AC adapters you bought for them and all of those USB to Ethernet dongles you bought (because they don't have built-in wired Ethernet and were sparse on ports), plus any docks you might have bought all work with an Air you replace in 2018 just as well as they worked with that 2009 or 2010 model.
The lack of a higher resolution display really doesn't matter to a lot of business users, because they're going to use a larger external monitor while at their desk with the computer all day. On the go, they're primarily in apps like Outlook where you don't need 4K resolution.
Just because Bill Gates repeats what's been said for years, it's more relevant?
Trying to finger crypto-currency as "more evil than cash" because it's "easier to use" seems to be cherry-picking scenarios.
How many times is cash used for illicit transactions because it's so straightforward? You can't do a thing with a crypto-currency unless you're tech savvy enough to set up some kind of wallet to receive the funds, and then you have to deal with a buyer who is equally savvy to pay you with them. And right now, you have long waits for most transactions to complete if you're using a well established e-currency like bitcoin. So that's another obstacle in some situations.
I mean, technically, he's not wrong. I'm sure people have died because of drugs that were bought and sold using cryptocoins. I just don't think the tech itself is ever anything but neutral. Again, the problem lies in the motivations of the sellers and buyers - not the payment method.
These Powerwalls just don't add up as truly economic solutions if you're a regular customer buying at Tesla's asking price.
Same problem Tesla has with those solar roof shingles. The estimated cost to cover the average size roof on a home makes them totally non-competitive with regular panels.
I really hope I'll see this change in my lifetime, and even better if it's fairly quickly. But battery technology really hasn't evolved at that fast of a pace. Much of the gains we've seen in how long you can go before needing to recharge a laptop or a phone have more to do with CPUs and other components increasing their efficiency.
Plus, the whole battery making process is REALLY environmentally dirty. The more batteries we use, the more negative environmental impact that production creates -- and right now, companies like Tesla are really trying NOT to address that issue. (It's nice to promise all the "feel good" things about batteries being able to be recycled over and over whenever they wear out, but many, many NEW batteries need to be manufactured to meet the needs for battery powered automobiles and power capture for PV solar. We're FAR from a point where all the batteries we'd ever need already exist can can just be re-used on demand!)
I've been through a lot of difficult times in my life, and spent many years in a depressed "funk". But still, I think I realized there were legitimate reasons behind all of it. I dealt with bullies and just being a general outcast in school, from grade-school until changing schools half way through high-school. I was always introverted so tended to dwell on the "why?" questions, if someone looked at me funny or made a comment that bothered me. Even years after the fact, I might remember some random statement a buddy said to me that really bothered me, and I'd keep interpreting everything else they said or did in that light or mindset, trying to find the relevance of it.
Eventually, I think the combination of everyone around me just "growing up" as I was, plus finally finding new people to call friends changed my situation. More importantly, it changed ME. (I had long time friends who commented how they watched me evolve over the years, finally coming out of the "shell" they perceived me to be in when I was younger.)
I'm still uncomfortable trying to talk to new people in big groups and often hit those awkward moments, mid conversation, with some random co-worker or manager I run into in a hallway and have to engage in conversation with. But I never took any pill to try to fix any of it, and I don't think I ever should have.
These days, I see kids with similar struggles I had getting prescribed multiple medications and making regular visits to the psychiatrist and psychologist. I'm not at all convinced it helps anyone except those doctors and the pharmaceutical companies.
You know? I've always been such an advocate for technology and science that I would have immediately been on-board 100% with everything you said there. But as I've gotten older, I've experienced things that make me question some of that. For example, I've never been a "morning person", always preferring to sleep in until my body wants to get up (usually by 11AM or thereabouts), and like to stay up until 1AM or so. But I recently visited with some friends of mine who have a small house on a bunch of land out in the country, and live a pretty "simple" lifestyle compared to what I've designed for myself. Sure, they have "Internet" -- but their only connection consists of a Sprint LTE hotspot. For them, most of their Internet usage is Facebook on their cellphones or small games or apps downloaded onto them. They own exactly 1 Windows laptop, that sits on a small desk in the living room and gets used randomly by whoever needs it for something. (Typically - they seem to use it to download photos off their digital cameras.)
They spend most of their free time doing outdoorsy things. They have a swimming pool, 4-wheelers they can drive around on all the land out there, etc. They build bonfires when it's cool and invite neighbors and friends over for meals, to drink and just to have conversations. The guy's wife likes to do a lot of arts and crafts using "found" materials from a local junk yard they visit and scour through regularly.
It's the type of lifestyle I always said was "NOT for me!"... but I found within hours of spending time with them, my stress levels just dropped off. They went to bed earlier than I would have normally called it a night, but I had no problem getting right to sleep since we had done a lot of more physical activity with all the outdoors stuff that day. They woke up bright and early and I found it just felt "right" to be up with the sun like that.
I guess what I found more enlightening was how quickly I adapted to that "farmer's schedule" they kept, even though it had NOTHING to do with farming!
Don't get me wrong.... When I got back home from that trip, I was content to fall right back into my usual patterns and was happy to have all my technology back. But it made me ask myself if a lot of our struggles are just the result of our choices -- and not so much a case of "worshiping that false god, nature"? The more things you own, the more the things begin to own you. That's a quote I read someplace and I see a lot of truth to it. How much additional stress and hassle is in my life because I have "to do" lists filled with errands to runs or items to buy to maintain my stuff? And how often are we eating poorly because time has become such a precious commodity for us, with our artificially busy schedules we've created? I'm not really ready to throw it all away and become the next Luddite, living in a secluded log cabin. But I'm realizing we're paying the price, in many ways, for trying to enhance our lives with all the tech we surround ourselves with. It gives but it takes away too. Maybe it's more of a "wash" than we think, compared to not living this way?
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It seems like years ago, I got disgusted with the high retail prices for the 4 or 8 packs of alkaline batteries on store shelves, so I made a concerted effort to stop buying them that way.
There's regularly a GroupOn special (like one I just saw yesterday for a 72-pack of Sony alkaline AA batteries) where you get them quite inexpensively in bulk.
I got something similar from Costco for free a year ago as one of a number of coupons they included with our membership purchase.
In other cases, it just makes sense to buy rechargeable batteries instead.
And lastly? For those pesky 9 volt batteries that we need for our smoke alarms, I started buying the yellow IKEA batteries. They're inexpensive compared to Duracell or Energizer but seem to get the job done.
Look, we have a lot of software developers in here. Do any of you really believe your job is in jeopardy or potentially unprofitable, simply because whatever you code will become obsolete and unused within a decade or so? Hopefully not, because you realize it's about continually updating what you write and coming up with brand new things to code. You don't learn to code so you can write one thing, and then expect to sit back and profit from it for the rest of your life - deciding you never need to code again.
That seems a lot like this article.... complaining because if you successfully make a drug to cure a disease, it will eventually stop being useful because you made the disease go extinct. So what? You've got PLENTY of other diseases you can work on curing, and plenty of opportunities to help alleviate symptoms with other drugs in the meantime, while you try to find more cures. If you are good at doing these things,you'll continue to be very profitable.
FWIW, I *do* think Apple has a tougher time justifying these changes to its users for a couple of reasons.
1. A lot of people paid a premium to buy a Mac in the first place because of the promise that they have a longer useful life than their Windows PC counterparts. Traditionally, that held true because with them "playing by their own rules", development was based around making software work with what Apple made available. (You couldn't arbitrarily decide, for example, that you didn't like how slow a whole series of graphics cards had become and set your hardware requirements higher. If Apple didn't BUILD a new Mac with a better graphics card, you were stuck coding for the ones already out there.) This did have the advantage that it often led to a better quality of programs, since developers had more time to focus on fixing bugs and optimizing the code for the available hardware.
2. In recent years, I think there's been a pretty strong market for trying to breathe more life into the last few generations of Macs. As Apple has switched to a practically non user-serviceable, non-upgradable design across the board, there's some backlash from the community. After all, from 2006-2012, Apple sold the VERY expandable Mac Pro workstations, which can now be bought for as little as $100 or so each. In other cases, like the MacBook Pro laptops? It's been a long time since Apple offered one with a 17" screen -- but some people still really want that feature. So they hang onto to the last of the models that had one.
Granted, all of those Mac Pro workstations were 64-bit capable, as were the 17" MacBook Pro laptops and any older iMac going back as far as the Core 2 Duo CPU in them. But there's at least the FEAR that Apple is accelerating its intentions of obsoleting everything that's not a current model. (The 2006 and 2007 Mac Pro workstations were arbitrarily cut off from OS X support for versions newer than Lion, even though with some hackery - they can run the much more recent El Capitan version just fine.)
The truth of the matter is, DisplayLink driver support for OS X has always been rather shoddy.
I purchased a $100 or so docking station a while back, from "j5create" (who makes a lot of products that specifically claim Mac compatibility). They rely on rebranded/customized DisplayLink drivers to make their video ports on their docks work. When I installed the latest Mac drivers from them for it, I found out that screen rotation wasn't supported -- so I couldn't use my second display that was rotated to "portrait" mode.
I think they *finally* addressed that issue, but I already sold that MacBook and stopped using that dock with it, so I'm not 100% sure?
They had plenty of other issues though, even with the last couple major OS X versions:
https://support.displaylink.co...
Protected video content will never be viewable via a DisplayLink connected monitor either, BTW.
It's really just a partial solution/hack to add a monitor over a port that wasn't originally intended to be used that way. So while it's irritating it's non-functional in the latest OS X release? It was never that great to begin with.....
I have to disagree with you there. I work for a company that does communications marketing and they're primarily on Macs. They most assuredly are not "just pretending" to be designers or artists.
I also took a tour of some of the major recording studios in Nashville last year and guess what? They still used Macs almost exclusively, even when doing so required special effort (such as finding custom rack mount kits to mount the "trash can" 2013 Mac Pro in their acoustically isolated rack enclosures).
The Apple userbase may be declining in areas it traditionally dominated, like the education sector and 3D animation work. But the creative fields, in general, are still big customers for Apple products.
I don't think it's necessarily bad if Apple parts ways with Intel and makes its own CPUs .... but as others said, the whole switch to Intel enabled a lot of possibilities with running Windows in a dual boot mode, or ensuring virtualization software worked 100%. I think that's a big negative if Apple discards it as unnecessary with the new chips.
It seems like every company I ever work for, or anyone I talk to needing to do mass mailings for an organization or charity resorts to using MailChimp.
It's not really something I've looked closely at, since I work in I.T. taking care of systems, support and network infrastructure. (If you want to do a mass mailing, we make sure your computer and the Internet are working properly so you can pursue that. But we're not going to hand-hold you through signing up for a 3rd. party service or what-not.)
But I find it odd that there doesn't seem to be much competition at all for this? (I know "Constant Contact" comes up often as an alternative, but I believe that one costs more or has other reason it's often skipped over after an initial review of it?)
Isn't bulk emailing something that's relatively easy to bolt a UI on the front for and sell as a service? Why is MailChimp such a powerhouse for this?
A lot of people are suggesting virtual machines -- but at least theoretically, you might not be allowed to install VM software on your business laptop. Perhaps you're only supposed to be using the apps approved for it by I.T., or ??
The cheap solution would be carrying around a USB drive that's set up with an OS (like Linux) designed to run entirely off of it.
Pay for a non-US hosted cloud service and be subject to the whims of their socialist or communist governments, who can arbitrarily decide your content violates THEIR standards. Really .. what's the difference? Bottom line is just as others posted; don't keep your only copy of anything you need in the cloud.
Even if nobody is censoring the content, you never know when a service will go out of business and take your data with it.
Strange? Well, maybe -- unless you start thinking about the way people's desires change along with increased wealth.
Say you earn that median $50,000/yr. income, but you get a big raise to $100,000/yr. It seems like a BIG deal at first, but you can use up the entire difference just by moving into a new home. So say you find a new job and again double your income? Not only does your higher tax bracket take a bigger chunk out of your take-home pay than you used to give up, but you'll again, pretty easily use up the extra income with such things as deciding to drive around nicer cars, and likely spending more time with groups of people who earn more money too -- and have expectations you'll spend more on outings with them, donations to associations they're involved in, etc.
If you're at the point where you've got a BILLION dollars at your disposal? You're probably going to be interested in tackling appropriately sized projects.... Starting new foundations to research something, perhaps?
I guess what I'm saying is ... whether people give their government enough money so it has billions to spend on things, or individuals manage to amass that kind of wealth themselves? The results probably aren't all that different. Either way, they're definitely going to live a much fancier lifestyle than most of us ... but they're also going to realize that they've got so much income, they can't even realistically just spend it on themselves. People are aware they have that kind of money, and they have a lot of expectations for them to try to live up to. SOME people have no conscience ... but MOST people actually do. They tend to care about SOMETHING. Maybe for them, it's trying to cure an illness that caused the death of a loved one? Or maybe they're fascinated with some aspect of science and technology that they can really advance with the money?
I think you're neglecting some key things in your arguments.
Primarily, rail lines in America really can't move that many passengers per day because as a rule, they're operating on the tracks owned by railroads who are primarily focused on moving FREIGHT. The commuter rail traffic is viewed as a nuisance, and the railroads often take actions to hamper it whenever they can get away with it. (That's why the MARC in the DC metro area is so often running 45 minutes or more late. CSX owns the rails it runs on, and they like to schedule freight trains to conflict with it and create congestion. That's because from their viewpoint, it's better off if they can discourage people from taking the passenger rail system and stop voting on legislation that lets the states borrow their rails more than they do already.)
I don't deny that freeways are ridiculously costly to maintain .... but at the end of the day, they're just concrete or asphalt strips with some painted lines on them and signage. When you invest in a whole transit system like a streetcar or light rail system, you're multiplying the complexity exponentially. You need to hire engineers to operate the vehicles, instead of letting the users drive themselves. You have to employ a skilled maintenance staff that commands higher salaries than the guy who knows how to fill a hole using a shovel. It's not that I expect a highway to be PROFITABLE (like someone else suggested here). I just expect it to be a relatively good use of my tax dollars as a way to keep infrastructure in place that allows me to get around, and allows deliveries to arrive. The packages coming via the post office or UPS or FedEx or DHL aren't getting transported via mass transit. They're still relying on the highways and roads.
As far as complaining about mass transit despite it generally being faster than driving? I think you misunderstood? I'm not talking about having to actually sit on a train that's not moving. That's rarely happened to me, for more than a brief period of time. I'm talking about things like getting stuck standing around outside, at a train platform, waiting for 2+ hours because of a train having a mechanical issue and the updates promising it'll arrive with a 20 minute delay, then another 30 minutes, etc. etc. When that happens in the middle of winter, trust me ... it's not pleasant.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned, even though LOTS of other intelligent comments were made on why this is a bad idea?
A lot of people who are regular listeners to music via YouTube don't even care about the video content. They're strictly using it to stream the songs they want to hear. This would often be your pre-teens and teens who don't have money to pay for a music subscription but want to hear their favorite new music releases. If YouTube wanted them to consume less bandwidth, they could offer an option to simply listen to the tracks with the video disabled -- and I think many of the users would be just fine with that.
I live in a city that was created back in the early 1900's by the railroad. They put their infrastructure here and then built a "planned community" around it. Today, CSX still uses the tracks here as a rail yard and we have a station stop that's used for the commuter rail system. But generally, the buildings the railroad originally built have all been re-purposed for other things and we have a self-sustaining town here.
I think it's wishful thinking if they believe success in such an endeavor proves people "love tech companies enough to live in them", though. More likely, it's about the convenience of living right by where you work, in a housing market that's gotten so expensive, that's not otherwise feasible for a lot of people.
Parent poster says, "So the answer is more bus lanes - and more buses - and more public transit in general - not less. That's because experience shows that if you've got a city with millions of people living in it, the proper way to organize it is 1) build it at high density and 2) move people around primarily using high-capacity public transit, not cars."
Problem is, I've seen the massive financial losses incurred by some of these mass transit projects. Not talking about just the huge initial expenses, but the continual bleeding of money trying to maintain them -- plus the inevitable demands to expand them and upgrade them over time.
So is it really "proper" to insist cities invest in mass transit solutions instead of upgrading the roads and highways?
It probably is from strictly the standpoint of what's efficient for commuters. But living in the DC metro area and seeing our challenges with the existing system? Man, I just don't know? I've tried to use our mass transit options for my daily commute. Assuming I'm trying to get to and from work during normal rush hour times, it potentially cuts my transit time in half to take the train and transfer to the metro, vs. driving in during traffic jams and trying to find parking in a multi-story garage. BUT -- it's a double-edged sword because I occasionally get stuck for hours if a train breaks down and messes up the schedule OR a miss a train because my schedule doesn't allow me to make the one I intended to make. On top of that, it's gotten expensive enough so I don't think it saves me any money vs. just driving in. For me? The optimal solution is driving in but doing so during non-peak congestion hours. I'm best off working from home in the early morning and driving in late in the morning, and staying a couple hours later in the office until traffic dies down before heading home.
I've never really seen a bus system that ran efficiently either? By that, I mean most buses are nowhere near filled to capacity and they seem to take routes that aren't useful to a lot of potential riders. People, in turn, demand additional routes to service their needs. When that happens, it tends to only help a small minority of people who were the loudest about needing the public transportation -- so costs of operation keep going up.
You're on the right track, generally speaking. But the biggest danger with all of this information culled from social media sites is the potential to mis-use it by taking it out of context.
Anything I was willing to post on Facebook under my name is a statement I'm willing to stand up and take the credit for posting. Therefore, if someone published it in the local newspaper? I'd be fine with that too. (Why you'd find it worthy of an article in the paper, I'm not quite sure? But for the sake of argument ... let's say I became famous and people suddenly care about details of my life, like where I go out to eat and what I think about things. Ok .... publish away and attribute what I typed to me. I can handle that.)
What scares me is the ability to selectively seek out certain tidbits of information on people that can be spun in some way to use it against them.
A whole lot of things that aren't particularly meaningful, in context of hundreds or thousands of random posts, can suddenly SEEM relevant if they're quoted out of context.
EG. Say I'm upset with poor customer service at a chain store, so I rant about it online one day? Maybe I just wanted to vent, or hoped someone in a position to improve things at that location might see it and have it serve as a "wake up call"? But let's say a year goes by, and all of a sudden I'm trying to get a job with a firm that has that chain store as one of their clients? Someone on a mission to show why they shouldn't hire me could hunt down that one rant and position it as proof that I'm going to badmouth their client.
There are millions of Jeep Wranglers on the road today and none of them get more than 25MPG. Typically, it's probably less.
Also, I have a 370Z that averages right at 25-26MPG.
My Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 I used to drive got around 27, but required premium gas too.
So yeah -- 25MPG average seems legit to me. Lots of cars get more, but plenty get less.
We'll get the video game industry trying its best to prove that no kid, ever was even slightly influenced to commit a crime from a game all about committing violent crimes. The opposition will claim it's such a pressing issue, we need to ignore such inconveniences as freedom of the press or speech and squash the legality of creating any game with violence or shooting in it.
99% of sane, normal citizens will carry on as usual -- buying the next GTA sequel by the millions of copies, etc.
With ALL of this stuff, the fact remains that people who aren't deeply troubled in life don't feel a need to go on killing sprees. I can play violent shooter games all day long (and when I was a bit younger, I did that some weekends at LAN gaming parties), and all it made any of us do is enjoy the camaraderie and share some fresh baked cookies and cola.
As was cautioned by the founders of America, freedom and safety butt heads if you try to legislate both at once. So yeah, we could take away all of the guns, or even just the most powerful ones, and it might be a band-aid -- dropping the murder rate a bit. But all of those people with mental instability or serious depression or anger issues haven't gone away. They're as dysfunctional as ever. You just made it harder for them to kill using that one option. They don't need a gun to rape a stranger or to harass somebody anonymously until life is unbearable for their target, or to hack into financial systems and steal others' identities, or any number of things they might do to "get back at society".
I'd rather have a little less of the safety obtained by limiting my freedoms, and try harder to address the ROOT CAUSES behind these problems.
If you want a pretty decent example of this, look at the encryption methods used in such things as DirecTV or Dish Network receivers. For many years,the "smartcards" containing your authorized programming were hacked in a cat and mouse game. You had to buy this programmer devices or that piece of PC software to keep up with it, but it was absolutely possible to unlock those things so you had all the programming without paying (or with just paying for a bare minimum subscription to keep something flagged as an active account).
Then, both of them discontinued their existing card technology and rolled out mandatory upgrades, and the hole was effectively sealed. Nobody I'm aware is really hacking these things anymore, in any big commercial way?
As I understand it, many of the previous hacks were really the result of leaks.... Someone was paid off to reveal a way to access the card and modify it.
That's always going to be the "weak spot" ... having such a hole that you're aware of and leave in there for internal use. If you give keys to a "trusted third party" like the FBI -- same problem only amplified because now the info exists both with the manufacturer AND the agency holding the keys. Twice as likely it will get leaked out by somebody, somewhere.
The question asked in the FB survey was pretty straightforward, and it simply asked if you'd be ok with a particular type of Federal crime going on over the service. The only sane answer is "no".
This wasn't asking to what extent FB would be expected to spy on private messages, actively seeking out certain types of discussions or content.
I think it's true where I work. I've been there for 6 years now and when I started, telework was something we were technically equipped to support. We had some proprietary Cisco VPN software we loaded on all of the Windows laptops for it, etc. But it was still viewed as something only a "select few" people were approved to do. (Typically, it would be someone like a graphics artist or producer who they knew would probably just quit and go freelance if they weren't given the option to work from home most of the time.)
Currently, we upgraded all of our gear to Cisco Meraki and we have about 20 of their Z1 and Z3 remote access points we can deploy to people. Everyone else can VPN in from several different geographic locations using the built-in VPN software on a Mac or a Windows machine, and we've doubled our bandwidth at most locations to make it work better. Our head person in Finance just started working remotely, since she elected to move out of state. Our I.T. team works remotely at least as often as any of us are in one of the offices. And a whole slew of other employees work from home randomly/occasionally, whenever they see it as appropriate.
Ironically? I really believe the real-estate is one of the things holding us back from encouraging *more* telework. Again, I could see that evolving with time. But in our industry, there's a certain amount of "clout" in having a nice physical office presence with a relatively prestigious address. They shell out a lot of money on leases to have space in places like downtown Chicago, Washington D.C., New Orleans, etc. And as people stop coming in, I think management has a bit of frustration that so much of that square footage they're paying on is under-utilized.
I've noticed a bit of a trend towards offering a lot of free lunches or special events/perks in various office locations, in an attempt to get more people to come in instead of working at home. To be fair ... it does also help encourage a bit of brainstorming that might not happen if you didn't get the group under one roof like that.
To be fair .... I hate the dongle mess Apple has created too. But I have a 2017 Macbook Pro 13" I'm using, and you can buy some pretty slick 3rd. party USB-C to multi-purpose adapters to cut down on what's needed, and the price.
I'm currently using one that has an HDMI port, 2 USB 3.0 ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, and a pass-through USB-C port on it. The dongle cost me about $79 at Best Buy. (That means I'm sure cheaper ones are available online if you look around.) Honestly, with that -- what else do you ever need?
Ignoring some of the snarky comments .... The Macbook Air likely still sells well in corporate America, where there was already a big investment in the machine.
When you look at Windows PCs? All of the big manufacturers like Dell, HP and Lenovo offer a line of laptops that don't change in design much for a number of years. They typically offer a docking station that's made to attach to any of the machines in that series, too. The price point on these always tends to be higher and they wind up with less features or poorer specs than their counterparts that see a lot of regular changes. But businesses pay the premium so they can stick with a standard for a while.
If you're a business that used Macs, the Macbook Air has stayed about the same since 2009-2010 other than regular bumps in CPU speed and a change so they all come with 8GB of RAM instead of only 4GB. All of the mag-safe AC adapters you bought for them and all of those USB to Ethernet dongles you bought (because they don't have built-in wired Ethernet and were sparse on ports), plus any docks you might have bought all work with an Air you replace in 2018 just as well as they worked with that 2009 or 2010 model.
The lack of a higher resolution display really doesn't matter to a lot of business users, because they're going to use a larger external monitor while at their desk with the computer all day. On the go, they're primarily in apps like Outlook where you don't need 4K resolution.
Just because Bill Gates repeats what's been said for years, it's more relevant?
Trying to finger crypto-currency as "more evil than cash" because it's "easier to use" seems to be cherry-picking scenarios.
How many times is cash used for illicit transactions because it's so straightforward? You can't do a thing with a crypto-currency unless you're tech savvy enough to set up some kind of wallet to receive the funds, and then you have to deal with a buyer who is equally savvy to pay you with them. And right now, you have long waits for most transactions to complete if you're using a well established e-currency like bitcoin. So that's another obstacle in some situations.
I mean, technically, he's not wrong. I'm sure people have died because of drugs that were bought and sold using cryptocoins. I just don't think the tech itself is ever anything but neutral. Again, the problem lies in the motivations of the sellers and buyers - not the payment method.
These Powerwalls just don't add up as truly economic solutions if you're a regular customer buying at Tesla's asking price.
Same problem Tesla has with those solar roof shingles. The estimated cost to cover the average size roof on a home makes them totally non-competitive with regular panels.
I really hope I'll see this change in my lifetime, and even better if it's fairly quickly. But battery technology really hasn't evolved at that fast of a pace. Much of the gains we've seen in how long you can go before needing to recharge a laptop or a phone have more to do with CPUs and other components increasing their efficiency.
Plus, the whole battery making process is REALLY environmentally dirty. The more batteries we use, the more negative environmental impact that production creates -- and right now, companies like Tesla are really trying NOT to address that issue. (It's nice to promise all the "feel good" things about batteries being able to be recycled over and over whenever they wear out, but many, many NEW batteries need to be manufactured to meet the needs for battery powered automobiles and power capture for PV solar. We're FAR from a point where all the batteries we'd ever need already exist can can just be re-used on demand!)
Couldn't agree more!
I've been through a lot of difficult times in my life, and spent many years in a depressed "funk". But still, I think I realized there were legitimate reasons behind all of it. I dealt with bullies and just being a general outcast in school, from grade-school until changing schools half way through high-school. I was always introverted so tended to dwell on the "why?" questions, if someone looked at me funny or made a comment that bothered me. Even years after the fact, I might remember some random statement a buddy said to me that really bothered me, and I'd keep interpreting everything else they said or did in that light or mindset, trying to find the relevance of it.
Eventually, I think the combination of everyone around me just "growing up" as I was, plus finally finding new people to call friends changed my situation. More importantly, it changed ME. (I had long time friends who commented how they watched me evolve over the years, finally coming out of the "shell" they perceived me to be in when I was younger.)
I'm still uncomfortable trying to talk to new people in big groups and often hit those awkward moments, mid conversation, with some random co-worker or manager I run into in a hallway and have to engage in conversation with. But I never took any pill to try to fix any of it, and I don't think I ever should have.
These days, I see kids with similar struggles I had getting prescribed multiple medications and making regular visits to the psychiatrist and psychologist. I'm not at all convinced it helps anyone except those doctors and the pharmaceutical companies.
You know? I've always been such an advocate for technology and science that I would have immediately been on-board 100% with everything you said there. But as I've gotten older, I've experienced things that make me question some of that. For example, I've never been a "morning person", always preferring to sleep in until my body wants to get up (usually by 11AM or thereabouts), and like to stay up until 1AM or so. But I recently visited with some friends of mine who have a small house on a bunch of land out in the country, and live a pretty "simple" lifestyle compared to what I've designed for myself. Sure, they have "Internet" -- but their only connection consists of a Sprint LTE hotspot. For them, most of their Internet usage is Facebook on their cellphones or small games or apps downloaded onto them. They own exactly 1 Windows laptop, that sits on a small desk in the living room and gets used randomly by whoever needs it for something. (Typically - they seem to use it to download photos off their digital cameras.)
They spend most of their free time doing outdoorsy things. They have a swimming pool, 4-wheelers they can drive around on all the land out there, etc. They build bonfires when it's cool and invite neighbors and friends over for meals, to drink and just to have conversations. The guy's wife likes to do a lot of arts and crafts using "found" materials from a local junk yard they visit and scour through regularly.
It's the type of lifestyle I always said was "NOT for me!" ... but I found within hours of spending time with them, my stress levels just dropped off. They went to bed earlier than I would have normally called it a night, but I had no problem getting right to sleep since we had done a lot of more physical activity with all the outdoors stuff that day. They woke up bright and early and I found it just felt "right" to be up with the sun like that.
I guess what I found more enlightening was how quickly I adapted to that "farmer's schedule" they kept, even though it had NOTHING to do with farming!
Don't get me wrong.... When I got back home from that trip, I was content to fall right back into my usual patterns and was happy to have all my technology back. But it made me ask myself if a lot of our struggles are just the result of our choices -- and not so much a case of "worshiping that false god, nature"? The more things you own, the more the things begin to own you. That's a quote I read someplace and I see a lot of truth to it. How much additional stress and hassle is in my life because I have "to do" lists filled with errands to runs or items to buy to maintain my stuff? And how often are we eating poorly because time has become such a precious commodity for us, with our artificially busy schedules we've created? I'm not really ready to throw it all away and become the next Luddite, living in a secluded log cabin. But I'm realizing we're paying the price, in many ways, for trying to enhance our lives with all the tech we surround ourselves with. It gives but it takes away too. Maybe it's more of a "wash" than we think, compared to not living this way?