Like someone else already commented here... I don't get why any of this SHOULD be a problem for politicians or employers to address? Hopefully, as an adult, each one of us is capable of making our own decisions about how we live our daily lives.
Even the biggest work-a-holic has to sleep sometime, and he or she can opt to go to bed a little earlier if the core problem lies with expectations they're up bright and early to report to the job. A person can only do so much in a day (or night). There's diminishing returns on trying to cut back on sleep to squeeze more functional hours out of the day.
I went through an especially difficult stage myself, because I had a pre-teen daughter who just would NOT wake up on her own in the morning to catch her bus to school. We fought to get her into a different school than our home district, which had the side effect that she had to be up and out the door by 5:45AM or so to catch the bus that went out there. Meanwhile, I worked for a company with offices spread out over multiple time zones, and was expected to work later in the evening because west coast people needed assistance at 4 or 5PM their time, while I was on the east coast. Trying to accommodate both of those needs was really limiting my sleep.
But even then? I just had to make a habit of getting ready for bed each night ASAP, instead of doing any of the other things I would have liked to do. I learned to put everything else off until the weekends. It sucked, but I got through it and then summer provided a break. Now, she's much better about waking up on her own when her alarm goes off so I don't have to deal with it.
Why does it have to be so polarized? (EG. Nestle = victim, OR Nestle = evil sociopaths)
I really don't find Nestle as either one. I think they're just taking advantage of the opportunities presented to maximize profits, as they've promised their stockholders all along. If Nestle was really SO evil, they'd be putting highly addictive substances into their water bottles causing you to crave Nestle branded water - or something like that?
Yes, corporations tend to have enough money to buy influence in the political system. That's why I've always felt we need to both pay attention to what's going on and vote in an informed manner, AND reduce government's size and scope. The more power and influence central government has in the first place, the more ability it has to selectively grant businesses specials favors or privileges - despite the will of the people being against it.
I'd love to see political lobbyists outlawed, period. There's no reason someone should get paid just to try to win a politician's favor on an issue when that's the job of the voting public to decide. My elected representatives are supposed to be up there, doing the lobbying for the issues those of us in their district believe should be handled a certain way. Individuals trying to influence them with gifts, dinners, and what-not? They're clearly only there to subvert the process.
"Stupid consumers" aren't even the problem, IMO. Clearly, plenty of consumers feel that the convenience of a sealed, labeled bottle of fresh water is worth the price being charged. And maybe it is? For example, if I try to take my own drinks in to a sporting event like a national league baseball game, they won't allow it past security unless it's in a sealed container. My reusable bottles I filled myself won't cut it. But the crazy concession prices in the stadium mean the bottled water, bought ahead of time, was a far cheaper way to drink water during the game.
I've heard a lot about how "evil" Nestle is for these practices. But as usual, we're simply dealing with shrewd businesses taking advantage of situations where they can make huge profits because the law of the land doesn't prevent any of it.
IMO, laws can be changed at any time -- so blame the governments for this.
I see a lot of Apple fans rushing to defend the company, pointing out all the times the media decried an Apple product as a poor idea or too expensive or ?? And then, people got their hands on them, decided they really liked them, and sales went through the roof anyway.
Point taken and agreed with, EXCEPT -- the post Steve Jobs Apple is notably less interesting. I think the fact is, Apple was Steve's baby. When he gave those Keynotes and gushed about some "insanely great" new idea, he really believed it was. A lot of that stuff was only allowed to be put in production because he personally approved of it (after rejecting dozens of other ideas), or dreamt it up himself in at least a basic, general way.
Tim Cook is clearly NOT the same type of guy. He doesn't dream up cool new tech ideas at night and pressure his staff to make them happen, while micro-managing that whole process. He wants to leave that to their other employees. But I don't think their other employees are quite that self-sufficient. I think the culture at Apple has been, for far too long, about taking orders from "The Steve" and finding ways to make his wishes into reality.
They got by for a while with Jobs ideas that were in the pipeline, but that's clearly run out now. And what I see now are a lot of smaller refreshes to its products, passed off as the latest upgrades. The Apple Watch is a good example. The LTE support should have been in the LAST revision - given the expectations of a watch that could do more while untethered from a phone.
AppleTV feels the same way to me. All of the updates are good, but they feel like they're about 1 revision behind where they should be. When I forked out the money to go from my last AppleTV to the version that can finally run its own apps? I'm left wondering why THAT one didn't also have 4K support in it (even if it would have cost a bit more)?
I completely disagree with that statement, given the current economic system we have in place.
UBI is a fantasy unless we first reach a post-capitalist economy where the labor required for all of our basic needs is fully automated. Then you can start talking about taking the revenue generated by the robots and automation and issuing it back out to citizens.
As it stands right now? You can't implement a UBI without it amounting to yet another "rob from the rich to give to the poor" scheme. Because where is the money going to come from that's paid back out? Governments don't generate income. They tax people to get money to redistribute.
Well, I'd argue that getting involved at a local level and trying to support the candidates you feel are worthy of support is JUST as important as advocating people try to run, themselves.
The problem I see time and time again, at the "bottom rungs" of the political ladder is that many of the best candidates for the positions, philosophy-wise, are also people with a lot of demands on their time. You're talking about people trying to work a full-time career job and raise a family. And now you're asking them to try running for a local political office that probably pays little to nothing, and expect they're available for regularly scheduled meetings likely taking place just about as soon as they can get home from the day job.
So what you tend to get are a lot of single people with no kids, who have the spare time to give politics a try, and a lot of older people who retired already and their kids are all grown and long since out of their house. That leads to, A) candidates who really don't understand some of the issues facing families, like public school system problems, and B) candidates who are older and set in their ways, who may be out of touch with some things. I've seen a number of politicians around this area touting their roots as family-people with several kids and experience running a business. But honestly, when you analyze their situations -- you see that they're almost universally wealthy and can hire nannies to do the tasks they're too busy to handle while they're out campaigning. So again, not sure they're really that in-touch with some people's struggles....
The thing I haven't really seen talked about here is that traditional bodegas will *never* be replaced by this type of business model. (Perhaps that's why some are offended they borrowed the name.) Bodegas as they exist in places like New York City, cater to lower income urban citizens who don't necessarily have the money to purchase what they need right away. Bodega owners often extend credit to these people, relying on knowing them personally and their past history. Their customers are likely NOT to have forms of credit like a credit debit cards that can be swiped or read at a vending kiosk.
But even putting that aside? These automatic vending systems tend to suffer from mechanical breakdowns or loss of network connectivity (needed to verify the cards being processed). That's likely one reason they haven't become more popular a long time ago. This idea really isn't anything new at all. Pretty much any company who ever built a vending machine probably thought about it. It just doesn't make a whole lot of financial sense when you have to deal with people who may need to do returns or exchanges on whatever they buy, and who need basic necessities ASAP, so can't just "come back later" if the system can't vend them the loaf of bread or gallon of milk they're after for that night's dinner.
As I recall, large scale vending like this was actually experimented with in some big cities. I recall being told about such a system on a street corner somewhere in Memphis, for example? I think it was done as a drive-up thing? Anyway, it was removed after a year or two. Apparently not so profitable or well liked.
Sounds like a lot of other Slashdot readers already get this, but the votes that matter most are for the people geographically closest to where you live.
The people we voted in as our city council members and mayor have already made more decisions that impact my life than anything Trump has done.
The President in America is only slightly less of a figurehead than than Queen of England, and that's been by design since the nation was founded. If you visit the Old Courthouse in Annapolis, MD - you can see the original letter General George Washington wrote when he declined the offer to become the first King of the USA, right after the Revolutionary War. He felt that control of the nation shouldn't be in the hands of just one individual like that, and just wanted to go back to farming his land. He wound up our first President, instead, by a unanimous vote.
When you really look back at the claimed "big accomplishments" of past Presidents, much of it had more to do with advisors and other staff members putting the ideas forward and convincing the President to get behind them. Ronald Reagan's "trickle down economics" was a great example. He didn't come up with that idea himself. He wasn't even a Finance guy... just a former Hollywood actor. In other cases, we don't really know if a President really had a plan themselves or not -- but we do know that many changes they make just get watered down or reversed within a decade's time. (President Clinton was famous for his "welfare to work" policy, where he mandated time limits on how long welfare could be collected. In the years that followed, the states slowly dismantled that with exceptions to rules and changes - so today, none of that has any effect on how the system works.) Obama's presidency made a lot of claims about improving our economic and employment conditions - yet historically, we know the economy is cyclical. If you have a boom, you have a bust that follows it, and vise-versa. Become a president when the economy is poor and just hang in there, and you'll eventually be able to take credit for the inevitable turn-around.
I don't want to discount Presidential voting as irrelevant... but choosing wisely in the Primaries is where you really get more control over who wins. By the time you're at the general election, you've literally got over a dozen contenders who didn't make it -- quite often for the wrong reasons. (Candidates with well known names often get automatic advantages over people nobody has heard of. And candidates pouring more money into trying to win the election can make some of the others look bad for just long enough to bump them out of the running. Reality might be that those "also rans" were actually more qualified candidates all along.)
... People who falsely believe Ayn Rand's Objectivism defines the entire thing, or those who falsely believe conspiracy theorists define them?
Most intelligent people I know who claim to be libertarian are interested in looking at all different philosophies related to a core idea that people have natural rights and freedoms, and these shouldn't be taken away by a central government.
In fact, while the majority of libertarians probably fall into a rough category of being socially liberal but fiscally conservative? It's possible to be a libertarian who believes in liberal fiscal policies. (I was initially at a loss to explain how that could even work, until I asked someone in that camp to explain it to me. Apparently, the gist of it is an idea that you could create a society full of unions, but these unions would completely dictate pay, because you'd have one for each type of job in demand. The idea that the employer would offer a salary would be gone. Rather, they'd decide what labor they needed to have done, and approach the proper unions to obtain the labor required.)
The point is, libertarian politics is (or should be) a very big "tent". There's room for the Randians, along with plenty of others with differing ideas about the details of how some things should work. The core principles remain the same, and they're the ones the "big 2" political parties in America today both choose to largely ignore.
I can't really speak so much for how difficult it is to find good programming talent, these days. I've spent most of my career in the hardware side of things, doing workstation support, server and networking support and build-outs, etc. Pretty much everything EXCEPT software coding.
But I do know that when it comes to hiring a computer support person capable of serving as "jack of all trades" for small or mid-sized companies, there are some very capable people out there who remain underemployed, often struggling along with their own small computer-related business.
One of my old acquaintances has been self-employed for the last 15 years or more, running various computer stores, comic book shops or coffee shops. He's kind of an outdoorsy type so he's always lived in the midwest -- currently outside Branson, MO. Truth is, he's got 99% of the skills any small business would ever need if they decided to hire a single I.T. guy to take care of things in-house. And if they offered him even $60,000/yr. or so, I'm pretty sure that would far exceed his current income and be a really tempting offer.
Unfortunately, there's really no business in that area who would hire a guy like him. So he scrapes by, helping grandma get that old Windows '98 PC upgraded to something more modern, or fixing old Joe's inkjet printer that clogged up its print-head again.
In general? I think there's a whole generation of computer geeks out there who grew up with the 8-bit machines in the 80's and pretty much lived and breathed computers for many years. I consider myself part of that group.... ran a BBS as a hobby for over a decade, before latching on to the first chances to get on the Internet using "high speed" via overpriced DSL connections. Worked in mom and pop computer stores, sometimes not even for any pay, just for the fun of learning to build computers from parts and benchmarking the latest tech to see how well it ran. Played with pretty much every software package that came along, even if I had to get a pirated registration key or what-not to make it run. A whole lot of us eventually wound up hitting a "brick wall" of sorts, as computers in business became more formalized and colleges and universities caught up with the times. Back when I was in college, you couldn't even really pursue such a thing as an MIS degree. It was either "Computer Science" (mostly math and theory), "programming" or "data entry". So folks like me just said, "Screw it.... not interested in any of those." and went down other paths.
Most people with this history are going to be excellent hires for any technical/computer-related job they're interested in doing. But these days? Most will be overlooked from the get-go, if they even make the effort to apply, because they can't get past the H.R. gatekeeper who is looking for specific credentials, college degrees, or "X years of experience" with the latest buzzwords. I mean, even if a hiring manager sees past that stuff and recognizes their intelligence and talents? They're all in their 40's.... almost too OLD to consider, vs. the new talent coming out of the colleges with shiny new degrees.
When I look back at my old friends from the 80's who I still keep tabs on? I see a distinct pattern where the financially successful ones got promoted to some type of management position in a mid-sized or larger company they got hired on with a long time ago. Then, the management experience gave them a "springboard" to job hop for higher pay and better benefits, as they climbed the ladder. Everyone else floundered when businesses they worked for did layoffs, cutbacks or just went under, and they kept fighting with long periods of unemployment followed by short term I.T. gigs. Most of them went into other fields just to make ends meet.
So my point? There's some great, untapped talent out there in the 40-something age group. But you may find some of them driving trucks or working sound and lights for concerts or ?? because corporate I.T. neglected to realize their value for too long.
Back in my younger days, I played guitar in a band for a while, and hung out with a group that liked to experiment a bit with psychedelics.
My recollection of LSD was it felt like "shorting out your brain". Your sense of touch would become all mis-translated, so for example? The sensations you normally block out as irrelevant (like the feeling of the back of your leg pressing against the seat of the chair you're sitting in) all became "significant". You might have the "wires are crossed in my head" experience where you think you can see sounds you're hearing. Visual perceptions became distorted. You might see someone's face "morph" before your eyes into something out of a horror movie, or a room you're in might suddenly seem like it had really high ceilings, or the walls might feel like they're starting to close in on you. The often talked about "bad trip" was really nothing more than a typical LCD trip where your fears and paranoia became the topics of all of these illusions. (And since LSD takes many hours to wear off, it's easily possible to go from having a great experience to having a bad one, prompted by some random experience that reminds you of something unpleasant.)
I can understand how some people equate it with a "spiritual experience", but looking back on those trips -- I'd say that's just your mind playing tricks on you while tripping. It's easy to get grandiose ideas, like you "discovered something about God and creation" -- only to realize it was nonsense and incomplete thoughts later.
I really do think there may be something to the idea that musicians can create music that's more appealing to people doing drugs when they do the drugs themselves while composing it. (In particular, I remember listening to old Moody Blues albums while tripping and finding them way more enjoyable than I did any other time.) But that's not because the drugs unlocked some part of their brain or made them "more creative" than they were before. Its just that music is an expression of how a person feels, if it's done "from the heart" (and not just manufactured to try to sell it for a specific purpose). If you're really angry, you can write better heavy metal or angst-ridden rock. If you're tripping, you can write better psychedelic music.
I really have two issues with the legislation and am happy Trump is opting to repeal it.
First and foremost is exactly what you stated: Obama's creating this the way he did overstepped his boundaries and it needs to be rescinded, in favor of Congress coming up with an acceptable alternative.
Second, just how many of these "DREAM" folks made any real effort towards becoming legal citizens after being granted this loophole to stay here? (I really don't know the answer to that question -- but unless someone can show evidence otherwise, I'm betting not a whole lot of them did much. They just assumed/hoped they were "good" since Obama gave them that legislative relief.) They should have realized this was likely only a temporary measure and didn't preclude them trying to become U.S. citizens if they wanted to stay here permanently.
Exactly.... Not only is my eyesight not that terrific, but I purposely went for a "last years' model" new HDTV when we were due to replace it. Got a lot more features for the money by picking out something 1080p instead of 4K, and most of the content we use with it isn't 4K anyway.
We do a lot of streaming of content saved on my Plex media server, for example -- and pretty much all of that is compressed to 720p or 1080p resolution, tops. The larger, higher resolution files are less likely to work over wireless without stuttering, and clog up my bandwidth if someone wants to watch them remotely, served via my connection. The cable company isn't sending us any 4K content either... at least not without paying some additional fee to see a limited selection of things in it.
I have a 4K monitor for my Mac and that's more clearly useful to me -- but even so? I still find myself dragging a lot of windows over to my big 1080p resolution display, just so all the fonts are displayed larger.)
The state is big enough so some parts have other options, but Comcast is really the only state-wide broadband provider. We *should* have Verizon FiOS as competition out here, except Verizon has long considered that entire service a loss leader designed to meet obligations that let them collect big subsidies they could largely pocket with big pay raises for execs. (Any time you see FiOS service available out here in a smaller community, follow the money. There's always some high ranking Verizon exec who happens to live there.)
Last I heard, they were trying to sell FiOS off to be operated by some other telco. That seems like it could be a good thing, if true.... but so far, no evidence the whole thing isn't retaining the Verizon branding and their same restrictions on which neighborhoods are actually served by it.
Yeah... but as long as I can remember, people were writing off most of the alt-coins as "me too" currencies, often only created by someone for purposes of pump and dump schemes or at least an ability to get in at the bottom (after pre-mining some undetermined amount of it for themselves), to ensure it makes the developer a few bucks.
I think that's where Dogecoin and others like it fall, really.
Litecoin, by contrast, had long been viewed as the only other crypto-coin with a chance of some real adoption, other than bitcoin. You actually had retailers you could pay in LTC for things. And if nothing else, it had the advantage of more familiarity because more people gave GPU mining it an honest try once bitcoin's cost to mine went through the roof. (They had really handy distros to image onto USB sticks to make instant LTC mining rigs and so on.)
Agreed.... but even if the college migrated to Hyper-V, they'd have to eat that initial licensing cost for VMWare and all the Horizon desktop licenses they bought.
Yes, but weeding out arrogant assholes and "corporate culture" really shouldn't be the same thing.
I know that's the "nice, politically correct" term they can use while doing it. But I've seen a lot of places where deciding if you're a good fit for the corporate culture is more about trying to find people who dress and think like the rest of the group.
For example? A LONG time ago, I applied for an I.T. job at a large international brewery's main location. A friend of a friend worked in management there and promised he'd try to make sure the right people took note of my resume and gave me consideration once I did the required interview. Well, to make a long story short -- I thought I did ok on the technical parts of the interview, but a big deal was made of walking me around the place to shake hands with and "meet" various people. I was never the most extroverted guy and was probably less comfortable chatting up strangers then than I am today. And on top of that, I was getting over a case of the flu, so wasn't feeling so great. The whole thing felt pretty miserable, but I tried to be as personable as I could. I quickly got the sense these people were writing me off though, as quickly as I was introduced to them. There was a strong vibe there of "work hard, play hard" types who liked to show off their success by wearing expensive clothing and watches or jewelry, and who had a common theme of being really into major league sports and nightclubs on weekends.
I never did get that job, even though my buddy on the inside said he kept trying to push for my hiring. It was never about me not being able to do the work they were hiring for. It was about being judged as not entertaining enough to hang out with socially.
I can definitely agree with this statement! I had a really tough time of things, when I was younger, because I really believed the advice you're giving. I had moved out of my parents' place and into an apartment I shared with a friend. I was trying to get a full time I.T. job because that's what I was good at and wanted to do with my life, but everywhere I turned, I was criticized for being a "mooch" -- because I couldn't always pay exactly half of the bills, right on time, while I was doing odd jobs and trying to find the type of employment I wanted.
I wound up getting kicked out of that place and had to temporarily move back in with mom and dad, but I did finally get a job with a computer store, about 3 weeks later, doing what I wanted to do. Best decision I made in the long run, vs. doing landscaping or pizza delivery or what-not, like other people said I should do.
And to this day, 25 or so years later? It's still held true. If you can't get a job doing what you're good at and want to do? Find a way to work for yourself doing something along those same lines until you get that next job. Don't settle for a crappy retail or restaurant job or whatever else comes along. It just occupies all of your time, making it too hard to find something better -- and nobody really respects you for settling for less. (Sure, you can try to explain to an interviewer why you just took it because you needed the income, etc. etc. But in the back of their head, they're still thinking, "Yeah buddy. If you were REALLY good at what you do, you wouldn't have even been in that situation in the first place."
You have a real problem where places invested (unwisely, IMO) in ever increasingly complex technologies that they're discovering it's hard to find qualified people to maintain for them, at the salaries they've budgeted.
For example, my wife does I.T. for a local community college. The previous I.T. director was largely regarded as an idiot, but before they let him go, he drove off 4 or 5 really bright, motivated I.T. staffers with his unreasonable demands and requests. Now, they've had to hire his successor AND replacements for those staffers that quit. One of the former director's big ideas before he was ousted was setting up VMWare and Horizon to serve virtual desktops to a number of staffers and students, vs. letting them use stand-alone PCs.
With the limitations they've got on the top pay they can offer a systems admin or support person right now? They're extremely lucky if they get any applicant who even knows what Horizon is, much less has experience working with it.
Meanwhile, the existing staff is struggling with network issues and crashes that are the direct result of improperly spec'd or configured virtual servers - and it's somewhat doubtful there's any more money available to upgrade the servers to get sufficient system resources for their needs.
They may just have to eliminate all of the complexity and go back to regular PC workstations, in order to "dumb down" the environment to the level where the salaries they pay I.T. staff are in-line with the technology again. But that would amount to a huge one-time loss if they just throw away the money already spent on the initiative.... It's a big mess. But I think this is the kind of mess a LOT of businesses have right now.
Blade Runner was a movie that relied a lot on the "ambience". The gritty feel of the city and how relate-able some of it is to what you might encounter every day helps set the tone.
A lot of current sci-fi I've watched seems to do a pretty good job of trying to guess what the "little things" will be like in future daily life, though. TV series like Humans or Extant, for example? Lots of predictions about the style and functionality of self-driving vehicles, home automation with hand gesture controls, etc.
In other shows like the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, the old technology on board was very purposeful - to prevent Cylons from infecting and hijacking it.
I've been primarily a Mac user since around 2000-2001, when OS X was a new thing and I was bored with the same old DOS and Windows routine.
The #1 thing that took me MONTHS to warm up to and embrace on the Mac was the handling of the application menu bars. If you're used to other GUIs, it really is kind of painful getting used to the idea that the "Finder" (essentially the desktop you're working with to do everything else) has its own menu bar that only has focus when you click on some unused portion of your screen to bring it forward. And as you launch applications and go between them, that same top menu bar changes to perform as the menu set for whatever app has focus.
And to be honest? Although I've gotten completely used to it now, I *still* don't know that I care much for the way the "Finder" is handled like that. I feel like everything else related to OS X is controlled from the Preferences panel, so why not the stuff on that Finder menu too? If I want to show or hide my connected network drive shares, wouldn't that be a good option to put someplace under Networking in System Preferences instead? I feel like it's a concept carried over from pre OS X days and isn't necessarily the best way to do things today. But it is what it is.
I think the other thing that seems to take people a long time to get used to on the Mac is the liberal use of compressed.dmg image files. In the Windows world, it would be almost like people regularly having you download applications in the form of ISO images and expecting you to mount them temporarily to the desktop as virtual CDs or DVDs so you could copy over or install software from them, and then unmount them again when you're done. Weird, right? I mean, you usually only download an ISO because you're going to make a bootable disc or USB thumb drive from it or something. But in the OS X world, they "think different". You commonly have to uncompress a.zip or other archive file just to wind up with a.dmg that you have to mount so you can get to its contents. And cleaning that up requires remembering to unmount the mounted image first (by dragging to the trash) so you can delete the.dmg file successfully. This took me more than a month to really wrap my head around and consider normal/usual.
But really, I think more in OS X is similar to using Windows (or even a popular Linux GUI) than different. It's nice not having the Windows registry to hassle with - but "prefs" files nested in the hidden Library folder, under various sub-folders, is somewhat equivalent. (If you just delete your apps by trashing them from your Applications folder, they often still have leftover bits and pieces in that Library folder -- even if leaving them behind typically does no real harm.)
I find that OS X does a generally superior job of handling peripheral setup. I can often get Bluetooth to pair and work with things that Windows struggles to use properly. Wi-fi seems a bit easier to manage on the Mac, including the dedicated application for detecting and managing any Airport devices on your network (although Apple is disappointingly getting out of the wi-fi router market). More printers just plug in via USB and work on my Macs than in Windows, too.
And obviously, OS X is much less of a hassle when it comes to malware and virus threats. (Sure, it can be infected. People who say Macs don't get viruses are clearly wrong. But the point is, they just don't have the severe issues Windows machines have. Maybe it's due to a better underlying architecture, or maybe it's just because far less effort is put toward infecting Macs? Who knows, and to an extent, who cares? I've used them for 15+ years now and it's held true that they just have fewer issues.)
If you really used the Mac for a YEAR or more and still dislike it? Cool... it's not for you. But I'm just saying, it's not an OS change I felt fully comfortable with until I kept plugging along with it for at least several months -- maybe even 6 months?
It turns out I was already planning a road trip to St. Louis, MO anyway, to visit with family and friends. So when I mentioned arriving the day before the eclipse, a couple of my old friends mentioned they owned property out in Steelville, MO (about an hour's drive from St. Louis itself), and we were welcome to stay the night there on Sunday to watch the eclipse on Monday, as it was in the path of totality.
I brought my Celestron Nexstar telescope, a solar filter for it, and the camera adapter for my Canon 70d, and was able to get a pretty cool photo of the eclipse right at the moment of totality - along with a number of other photos of the progression of the eclipse.
We also had a couple of great home-cooked meals and spent some time riding 4 wheelers around their property. so an enjoyable day all the way around.
I could see this working better for a nightclub, where part of the draw is knowing you paid to get into a place that's full of lots of attractive people.
But a restaurant? The new ones that opened out by me and had lines just made me decide to hold off a few days before visiting them. (After all, most new restaurants really don't have their food preparation or service down yet, so you tend to get a less than ideal experience.)
As someone else on here pointed out too; won't people realize something's not quite right if the place isn't totally full on the inside? If I saw a long line and empty tables inside, that would tell me the restaurant is short-handed and service will be really poor. That would make me leave.
If you want to generate a buzz and a big line for the sake of photo ops and media coverage, it's a far better investment to give away free food to people. Krispy Kreme doughnut shops do that all the time when opening new locations. First day, you get a free one with each visit.
Really? You have a big issue with Apple Maps only being accessible via Apple devices? I never even gave that a thought until you mentioned it, just now. Considering all the options like Waze, Google Maps, MapQuest, or even MapsFly, it's not like APPLE Maps would offer something original that you'd really want to get in mapping, but can't get, right?
I assume Apple wanted to invest in its own mapping solution for "internal" use with its own devices because it's a good financial investment for them in the long run. It's that simple. Apple is interested in developing something having to do with self-driving vehicles in coming years, and that's going to require map data. Why pay millions or billions to a competitor for it?
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Like someone else already commented here ... I don't get why any of this SHOULD be a problem for politicians or employers to address? Hopefully, as an adult, each one of us is capable of making our own decisions about how we live our daily lives.
Even the biggest work-a-holic has to sleep sometime, and he or she can opt to go to bed a little earlier if the core problem lies with expectations they're up bright and early to report to the job. A person can only do so much in a day (or night). There's diminishing returns on trying to cut back on sleep to squeeze more functional hours out of the day.
I went through an especially difficult stage myself, because I had a pre-teen daughter who just would NOT wake up on her own in the morning to catch her bus to school. We fought to get her into a different school than our home district, which had the side effect that she had to be up and out the door by 5:45AM or so to catch the bus that went out there. Meanwhile, I worked for a company with offices spread out over multiple time zones, and was expected to work later in the evening because west coast people needed assistance at 4 or 5PM their time, while I was on the east coast. Trying to accommodate both of those needs was really limiting my sleep.
But even then? I just had to make a habit of getting ready for bed each night ASAP, instead of doing any of the other things I would have liked to do. I learned to put everything else off until the weekends. It sucked, but I got through it and then summer provided a break. Now, she's much better about waking up on her own when her alarm goes off so I don't have to deal with it.
Why does it have to be so polarized? (EG. Nestle = victim, OR Nestle = evil sociopaths)
I really don't find Nestle as either one. I think they're just taking advantage of the opportunities presented to maximize profits, as they've promised their stockholders all along. If Nestle was really SO evil, they'd be putting highly addictive substances into their water bottles causing you to crave Nestle branded water - or something like that?
Yes, corporations tend to have enough money to buy influence in the political system. That's why I've always felt we need to both pay attention to what's going on and vote in an informed manner, AND reduce government's size and scope. The more power and influence central government has in the first place, the more ability it has to selectively grant businesses specials favors or privileges - despite the will of the people being against it.
I'd love to see political lobbyists outlawed, period. There's no reason someone should get paid just to try to win a politician's favor on an issue when that's the job of the voting public to decide. My elected representatives are supposed to be up there, doing the lobbying for the issues those of us in their district believe should be handled a certain way. Individuals trying to influence them with gifts, dinners, and what-not? They're clearly only there to subvert the process.
"Stupid consumers" aren't even the problem, IMO. Clearly, plenty of consumers feel that the convenience of a sealed, labeled bottle of fresh water is worth the price being charged. And maybe it is? For example, if I try to take my own drinks in to a sporting event like a national league baseball game, they won't allow it past security unless it's in a sealed container. My reusable bottles I filled myself won't cut it. But the crazy concession prices in the stadium mean the bottled water, bought ahead of time, was a far cheaper way to drink water during the game.
I've heard a lot about how "evil" Nestle is for these practices. But as usual, we're simply dealing with shrewd businesses taking advantage of situations where they can make huge profits because the law of the land doesn't prevent any of it.
IMO, laws can be changed at any time -- so blame the governments for this.
I see a lot of Apple fans rushing to defend the company, pointing out all the times the media decried an Apple product as a poor idea or too expensive or ?? And then, people got their hands on them, decided they really liked them, and sales went through the roof anyway.
Point taken and agreed with, EXCEPT -- the post Steve Jobs Apple is notably less interesting. I think the fact is, Apple was Steve's baby. When he gave those Keynotes and gushed about some "insanely great" new idea, he really believed it was. A lot of that stuff was only allowed to be put in production because he personally approved of it (after rejecting dozens of other ideas), or dreamt it up himself in at least a basic, general way.
Tim Cook is clearly NOT the same type of guy. He doesn't dream up cool new tech ideas at night and pressure his staff to make them happen, while micro-managing that whole process. He wants to leave that to their other employees. But I don't think their other employees are quite that self-sufficient. I think the culture at Apple has been, for far too long, about taking orders from "The Steve" and finding ways to make his wishes into reality.
They got by for a while with Jobs ideas that were in the pipeline, but that's clearly run out now. And what I see now are a lot of smaller refreshes to its products, passed off as the latest upgrades. The Apple Watch is a good example. The LTE support should have been in the LAST revision - given the expectations of a watch that could do more while untethered from a phone.
AppleTV feels the same way to me. All of the updates are good, but they feel like they're about 1 revision behind where they should be. When I forked out the money to go from my last AppleTV to the version that can finally run its own apps? I'm left wondering why THAT one didn't also have 4K support in it (even if it would have cost a bit more)?
I completely disagree with that statement, given the current economic system we have in place.
UBI is a fantasy unless we first reach a post-capitalist economy where the labor required for all of our basic needs is fully automated. Then you can start talking about taking the revenue generated by the robots and automation and issuing it back out to citizens.
As it stands right now? You can't implement a UBI without it amounting to yet another "rob from the rich to give to the poor" scheme. Because where is the money going to come from that's paid back out? Governments don't generate income. They tax people to get money to redistribute.
Well, I'd argue that getting involved at a local level and trying to support the candidates you feel are worthy of support is JUST as important as advocating people try to run, themselves.
The problem I see time and time again, at the "bottom rungs" of the political ladder is that many of the best candidates for the positions, philosophy-wise, are also people with a lot of demands on their time. You're talking about people trying to work a full-time career job and raise a family. And now you're asking them to try running for a local political office that probably pays little to nothing, and expect they're available for regularly scheduled meetings likely taking place just about as soon as they can get home from the day job.
So what you tend to get are a lot of single people with no kids, who have the spare time to give politics a try, and a lot of older people who retired already and their kids are all grown and long since out of their house. That leads to, A) candidates who really don't understand some of the issues facing families, like public school system problems, and B) candidates who are older and set in their ways, who may be out of touch with some things. I've seen a number of politicians around this area touting their roots as family-people with several kids and experience running a business. But honestly, when you analyze their situations -- you see that they're almost universally wealthy and can hire nannies to do the tasks they're too busy to handle while they're out campaigning. So again, not sure they're really that in-touch with some people's struggles ....
The thing I haven't really seen talked about here is that traditional bodegas will *never* be replaced by this type of business model. (Perhaps that's why some are offended they borrowed the name.) Bodegas as they exist in places like New York City, cater to lower income urban citizens who don't necessarily have the money to purchase what they need right away. Bodega owners often extend credit to these people, relying on knowing them personally and their past history. Their customers are likely NOT to have forms of credit like a credit debit cards that can be swiped or read at a vending kiosk.
But even putting that aside? These automatic vending systems tend to suffer from mechanical breakdowns or loss of network connectivity (needed to verify the cards being processed). That's likely one reason they haven't become more popular a long time ago. This idea really isn't anything new at all. Pretty much any company who ever built a vending machine probably thought about it. It just doesn't make a whole lot of financial sense when you have to deal with people who may need to do returns or exchanges on whatever they buy, and who need basic necessities ASAP, so can't just "come back later" if the system can't vend them the loaf of bread or gallon of milk they're after for that night's dinner.
As I recall, large scale vending like this was actually experimented with in some big cities. I recall being told about such a system on a street corner somewhere in Memphis, for example? I think it was done as a drive-up thing? Anyway, it was removed after a year or two. Apparently not so profitable or well liked.
Sounds like a lot of other Slashdot readers already get this, but the votes that matter most are for the people geographically closest to where you live.
The people we voted in as our city council members and mayor have already made more decisions that impact my life than anything Trump has done.
The President in America is only slightly less of a figurehead than than Queen of England, and that's been by design since the nation was founded. If you visit the Old Courthouse in Annapolis, MD - you can see the original letter General George Washington wrote when he declined the offer to become the first King of the USA, right after the Revolutionary War. He felt that control of the nation shouldn't be in the hands of just one individual like that, and just wanted to go back to farming his land. He wound up our first President, instead, by a unanimous vote.
When you really look back at the claimed "big accomplishments" of past Presidents, much of it had more to do with advisors and other staff members putting the ideas forward and convincing the President to get behind them. Ronald Reagan's "trickle down economics" was a great example. He didn't come up with that idea himself. He wasn't even a Finance guy ... just a former Hollywood actor. In other cases, we don't really know if a President really had a plan themselves or not -- but we do know that many changes they make just get watered down or reversed within a decade's time. (President Clinton was famous for his "welfare to work" policy, where he mandated time limits on how long welfare could be collected. In the years that followed, the states slowly dismantled that with exceptions to rules and changes - so today, none of that has any effect on how the system works.) Obama's presidency made a lot of claims about improving our economic and employment conditions - yet historically, we know the economy is cyclical. If you have a boom, you have a bust that follows it, and vise-versa. Become a president when the economy is poor and just hang in there, and you'll eventually be able to take credit for the inevitable turn-around.
I don't want to discount Presidential voting as irrelevant ... but choosing wisely in the Primaries is where you really get more control over who wins. By the time you're at the general election, you've literally got over a dozen contenders who didn't make it -- quite often for the wrong reasons. (Candidates with well known names often get automatic advantages over people nobody has heard of. And candidates pouring more money into trying to win the election can make some of the others look bad for just long enough to bump them out of the running. Reality might be that those "also rans" were actually more qualified candidates all along.)
... People who falsely believe Ayn Rand's Objectivism defines the entire thing, or those who falsely believe conspiracy theorists define them?
Most intelligent people I know who claim to be libertarian are interested in looking at all different philosophies related to a core idea that people have natural rights and freedoms, and these shouldn't be taken away by a central government.
In fact, while the majority of libertarians probably fall into a rough category of being socially liberal but fiscally conservative? It's possible to be a libertarian who believes in liberal fiscal policies. (I was initially at a loss to explain how that could even work, until I asked someone in that camp to explain it to me. Apparently, the gist of it is an idea that you could create a society full of unions, but these unions would completely dictate pay, because you'd have one for each type of job in demand. The idea that the employer would offer a salary would be gone. Rather, they'd decide what labor they needed to have done, and approach the proper unions to obtain the labor required.)
The point is, libertarian politics is (or should be) a very big "tent". There's room for the Randians, along with plenty of others with differing ideas about the details of how some things should work. The core principles remain the same, and they're the ones the "big 2" political parties in America today both choose to largely ignore.
I can't really speak so much for how difficult it is to find good programming talent, these days. I've spent most of my career in the hardware side of things, doing workstation support, server and networking support and build-outs, etc. Pretty much everything EXCEPT software coding.
But I do know that when it comes to hiring a computer support person capable of serving as "jack of all trades" for small or mid-sized companies, there are some very capable people out there who remain underemployed, often struggling along with their own small computer-related business.
One of my old acquaintances has been self-employed for the last 15 years or more, running various computer stores, comic book shops or coffee shops. He's kind of an outdoorsy type so he's always lived in the midwest -- currently outside Branson, MO. Truth is, he's got 99% of the skills any small business would ever need if they decided to hire a single I.T. guy to take care of things in-house. And if they offered him even $60,000/yr. or so, I'm pretty sure that would far exceed his current income and be a really tempting offer.
Unfortunately, there's really no business in that area who would hire a guy like him. So he scrapes by, helping grandma get that old Windows '98 PC upgraded to something more modern, or fixing old Joe's inkjet printer that clogged up its print-head again.
In general? I think there's a whole generation of computer geeks out there who grew up with the 8-bit machines in the 80's and pretty much lived and breathed computers for many years. I consider myself part of that group .... ran a BBS as a hobby for over a decade, before latching on to the first chances to get on the Internet using "high speed" via overpriced DSL connections. Worked in mom and pop computer stores, sometimes not even for any pay, just for the fun of learning to build computers from parts and benchmarking the latest tech to see how well it ran. Played with pretty much every software package that came along, even if I had to get a pirated registration key or what-not to make it run. A whole lot of us eventually wound up hitting a "brick wall" of sorts, as computers in business became more formalized and colleges and universities caught up with the times. Back when I was in college, you couldn't even really pursue such a thing as an MIS degree. It was either "Computer Science" (mostly math and theory), "programming" or "data entry". So folks like me just said, "Screw it .... not interested in any of those." and went down other paths.
Most people with this history are going to be excellent hires for any technical/computer-related job they're interested in doing. But these days? Most will be overlooked from the get-go, if they even make the effort to apply, because they can't get past the H.R. gatekeeper who is looking for specific credentials, college degrees, or "X years of experience" with the latest buzzwords. I mean, even if a hiring manager sees past that stuff and recognizes their intelligence and talents? They're all in their 40's.... almost too OLD to consider, vs. the new talent coming out of the colleges with shiny new degrees.
When I look back at my old friends from the 80's who I still keep tabs on? I see a distinct pattern where the financially successful ones got promoted to some type of management position in a mid-sized or larger company they got hired on with a long time ago. Then, the management experience gave them a "springboard" to job hop for higher pay and better benefits, as they climbed the ladder. Everyone else floundered when businesses they worked for did layoffs, cutbacks or just went under, and they kept fighting with long periods of unemployment followed by short term I.T. gigs. Most of them went into other fields just to make ends meet.
So my point? There's some great, untapped talent out there in the 40-something age group. But you may find some of them driving trucks or working sound and lights for concerts or ?? because corporate I.T. neglected to realize their value for too long.
Back in my younger days, I played guitar in a band for a while, and hung out with a group that liked to experiment a bit with psychedelics.
My recollection of LSD was it felt like "shorting out your brain". Your sense of touch would become all mis-translated, so for example? The sensations you normally block out as irrelevant (like the feeling of the back of your leg pressing against the seat of the chair you're sitting in) all became "significant". You might have the "wires are crossed in my head" experience where you think you can see sounds you're hearing. Visual perceptions became distorted. You might see someone's face "morph" before your eyes into something out of a horror movie, or a room you're in might suddenly seem like it had really high ceilings, or the walls might feel like they're starting to close in on you. The often talked about "bad trip" was really nothing more than a typical LCD trip where your fears and paranoia became the topics of all of these illusions. (And since LSD takes many hours to wear off, it's easily possible to go from having a great experience to having a bad one, prompted by some random experience that reminds you of something unpleasant.)
I can understand how some people equate it with a "spiritual experience", but looking back on those trips -- I'd say that's just your mind playing tricks on you while tripping. It's easy to get grandiose ideas, like you "discovered something about God and creation" -- only to realize it was nonsense and incomplete thoughts later.
I really do think there may be something to the idea that musicians can create music that's more appealing to people doing drugs when they do the drugs themselves while composing it. (In particular, I remember listening to old Moody Blues albums while tripping and finding them way more enjoyable than I did any other time.) But that's not because the drugs unlocked some part of their brain or made them "more creative" than they were before. Its just that music is an expression of how a person feels, if it's done "from the heart" (and not just manufactured to try to sell it for a specific purpose). If you're really angry, you can write better heavy metal or angst-ridden rock. If you're tripping, you can write better psychedelic music.
I really have two issues with the legislation and am happy Trump is opting to repeal it.
First and foremost is exactly what you stated: Obama's creating this the way he did overstepped his boundaries and it needs to be rescinded, in favor of Congress coming up with an acceptable alternative.
Second, just how many of these "DREAM" folks made any real effort towards becoming legal citizens after being granted this loophole to stay here? (I really don't know the answer to that question -- but unless someone can show evidence otherwise, I'm betting not a whole lot of them did much. They just assumed/hoped they were "good" since Obama gave them that legislative relief.) They should have realized this was likely only a temporary measure and didn't preclude them trying to become U.S. citizens if they wanted to stay here permanently.
Exactly.... Not only is my eyesight not that terrific, but I purposely went for a "last years' model" new HDTV when we were due to replace it. Got a lot more features for the money by picking out something 1080p instead of 4K, and most of the content we use with it isn't 4K anyway.
We do a lot of streaming of content saved on my Plex media server, for example -- and pretty much all of that is compressed to 720p or 1080p resolution, tops. The larger, higher resolution files are less likely to work over wireless without stuttering, and clog up my bandwidth if someone wants to watch them remotely, served via my connection. The cable company isn't sending us any 4K content either ... at least not without paying some additional fee to see a limited selection of things in it.
I have a 4K monitor for my Mac and that's more clearly useful to me -- but even so? I still find myself dragging a lot of windows over to my big 1080p resolution display, just so all the fonts are displayed larger.)
The state is big enough so some parts have other options, but Comcast is really the only state-wide broadband provider. We *should* have Verizon FiOS as competition out here, except Verizon has long considered that entire service a loss leader designed to meet obligations that let them collect big subsidies they could largely pocket with big pay raises for execs. (Any time you see FiOS service available out here in a smaller community, follow the money. There's always some high ranking Verizon exec who happens to live there.)
Last I heard, they were trying to sell FiOS off to be operated by some other telco. That seems like it could be a good thing, if true.... but so far, no evidence the whole thing isn't retaining the Verizon branding and their same restrictions on which neighborhoods are actually served by it.
Yeah ... but as long as I can remember, people were writing off most of the alt-coins as "me too" currencies, often only created by someone for purposes of pump and dump schemes or at least an ability to get in at the bottom (after pre-mining some undetermined amount of it for themselves), to ensure it makes the developer a few bucks.
I think that's where Dogecoin and others like it fall, really.
Litecoin, by contrast, had long been viewed as the only other crypto-coin with a chance of some real adoption, other than bitcoin. You actually had retailers you could pay in LTC for things. And if nothing else, it had the advantage of more familiarity because more people gave GPU mining it an honest try once bitcoin's cost to mine went through the roof. (They had really handy distros to image onto USB sticks to make instant LTC mining rigs and so on.)
Agreed.... but even if the college migrated to Hyper-V, they'd have to eat that initial licensing cost for VMWare and all the Horizon desktop licenses they bought.
Yes, but weeding out arrogant assholes and "corporate culture" really shouldn't be the same thing.
I know that's the "nice, politically correct" term they can use while doing it. But I've seen a lot of places where deciding if you're a good fit for the corporate culture is more about trying to find people who dress and think like the rest of the group.
For example? A LONG time ago, I applied for an I.T. job at a large international brewery's main location. A friend of a friend worked in management there and promised he'd try to make sure the right people took note of my resume and gave me consideration once I did the required interview. Well, to make a long story short -- I thought I did ok on the technical parts of the interview, but a big deal was made of walking me around the place to shake hands with and "meet" various people. I was never the most extroverted guy and was probably less comfortable chatting up strangers then than I am today. And on top of that, I was getting over a case of the flu, so wasn't feeling so great. The whole thing felt pretty miserable, but I tried to be as personable as I could. I quickly got the sense these people were writing me off though, as quickly as I was introduced to them. There was a strong vibe there of "work hard, play hard" types who liked to show off their success by wearing expensive clothing and watches or jewelry, and who had a common theme of being really into major league sports and nightclubs on weekends.
I never did get that job, even though my buddy on the inside said he kept trying to push for my hiring. It was never about me not being able to do the work they were hiring for. It was about being judged as not entertaining enough to hang out with socially.
I can definitely agree with this statement! I had a really tough time of things, when I was younger, because I really believed the advice you're giving. I had moved out of my parents' place and into an apartment I shared with a friend. I was trying to get a full time I.T. job because that's what I was good at and wanted to do with my life, but everywhere I turned, I was criticized for being a "mooch" -- because I couldn't always pay exactly half of the bills, right on time, while I was doing odd jobs and trying to find the type of employment I wanted.
I wound up getting kicked out of that place and had to temporarily move back in with mom and dad, but I did finally get a job with a computer store, about 3 weeks later, doing what I wanted to do. Best decision I made in the long run, vs. doing landscaping or pizza delivery or what-not, like other people said I should do.
And to this day, 25 or so years later? It's still held true. If you can't get a job doing what you're good at and want to do? Find a way to work for yourself doing something along those same lines until you get that next job. Don't settle for a crappy retail or restaurant job or whatever else comes along. It just occupies all of your time, making it too hard to find something better -- and nobody really respects you for settling for less. (Sure, you can try to explain to an interviewer why you just took it because you needed the income, etc. etc. But in the back of their head, they're still thinking, "Yeah buddy. If you were REALLY good at what you do, you wouldn't have even been in that situation in the first place."
You have a real problem where places invested (unwisely, IMO) in ever increasingly complex technologies that they're discovering it's hard to find qualified people to maintain for them, at the salaries they've budgeted.
For example, my wife does I.T. for a local community college. The previous I.T. director was largely regarded as an idiot, but before they let him go, he drove off 4 or 5 really bright, motivated I.T. staffers with his unreasonable demands and requests. Now, they've had to hire his successor AND replacements for those staffers that quit. One of the former director's big ideas before he was ousted was setting up VMWare and Horizon to serve virtual desktops to a number of staffers and students, vs. letting them use stand-alone PCs.
With the limitations they've got on the top pay they can offer a systems admin or support person right now? They're extremely lucky if they get any applicant who even knows what Horizon is, much less has experience working with it.
Meanwhile, the existing staff is struggling with network issues and crashes that are the direct result of improperly spec'd or configured virtual servers - and it's somewhat doubtful there's any more money available to upgrade the servers to get sufficient system resources for their needs.
They may just have to eliminate all of the complexity and go back to regular PC workstations, in order to "dumb down" the environment to the level where the salaries they pay I.T. staff are in-line with the technology again. But that would amount to a huge one-time loss if they just throw away the money already spent on the initiative.... It's a big mess. But I think this is the kind of mess a LOT of businesses have right now.
Blade Runner was a movie that relied a lot on the "ambience". The gritty feel of the city and how relate-able some of it is to what you might encounter every day helps set the tone.
A lot of current sci-fi I've watched seems to do a pretty good job of trying to guess what the "little things" will be like in future daily life, though. TV series like Humans or Extant, for example? Lots of predictions about the style and functionality of self-driving vehicles, home automation with hand gesture controls, etc.
In other shows like the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, the old technology on board was very purposeful - to prevent Cylons from infecting and hijacking it.
I've been primarily a Mac user since around 2000-2001, when OS X was a new thing and I was bored with the same old DOS and Windows routine.
The #1 thing that took me MONTHS to warm up to and embrace on the Mac was the handling of the application menu bars. If you're used to other GUIs, it really is kind of painful getting used to the idea that the "Finder" (essentially the desktop you're working with to do everything else) has its own menu bar that only has focus when you click on some unused portion of your screen to bring it forward. And as you launch applications and go between them, that same top menu bar changes to perform as the menu set for whatever app has focus.
And to be honest? Although I've gotten completely used to it now, I *still* don't know that I care much for the way the "Finder" is handled like that. I feel like everything else related to OS X is controlled from the Preferences panel, so why not the stuff on that Finder menu too? If I want to show or hide my connected network drive shares, wouldn't that be a good option to put someplace under Networking in System Preferences instead? I feel like it's a concept carried over from pre OS X days and isn't necessarily the best way to do things today. But it is what it is.
I think the other thing that seems to take people a long time to get used to on the Mac is the liberal use of compressed .dmg image files. In the Windows world, it would be almost like people regularly having you download applications in the form of ISO images and expecting you to mount them temporarily to the desktop as virtual CDs or DVDs so you could copy over or install software from them, and then unmount them again when you're done. Weird, right? I mean, you usually only download an ISO because you're going to make a bootable disc or USB thumb drive from it or something. But in the OS X world, they "think different". You commonly have to uncompress a .zip or other archive file just to wind up with a .dmg that you have to mount so you can get to its contents. And cleaning that up requires remembering to unmount the mounted image first (by dragging to the trash) so you can delete the .dmg file successfully. This took me more than a month to really wrap my head around and consider normal/usual.
But really, I think more in OS X is similar to using Windows (or even a popular Linux GUI) than different. It's nice not having the Windows registry to hassle with - but "prefs" files nested in the hidden Library folder, under various sub-folders, is somewhat equivalent. (If you just delete your apps by trashing them from your Applications folder, they often still have leftover bits and pieces in that Library folder -- even if leaving them behind typically does no real harm.)
I find that OS X does a generally superior job of handling peripheral setup. I can often get Bluetooth to pair and work with things that Windows struggles to use properly. Wi-fi seems a bit easier to manage on the Mac, including the dedicated application for detecting and managing any Airport devices on your network (although Apple is disappointingly getting out of the wi-fi router market). More printers just plug in via USB and work on my Macs than in Windows, too.
And obviously, OS X is much less of a hassle when it comes to malware and virus threats. (Sure, it can be infected. People who say Macs don't get viruses are clearly wrong. But the point is, they just don't have the severe issues Windows machines have. Maybe it's due to a better underlying architecture, or maybe it's just because far less effort is put toward infecting Macs? Who knows, and to an extent, who cares? I've used them for 15+ years now and it's held true that they just have fewer issues.)
If you really used the Mac for a YEAR or more and still dislike it? Cool ... it's not for you. But I'm just saying, it's not an OS change I felt fully comfortable with until I kept plugging along with it for at least several months -- maybe even 6 months?
It turns out I was already planning a road trip to St. Louis, MO anyway, to visit with family and friends. So when I mentioned arriving the day before the eclipse, a couple of my old friends mentioned they owned property out in Steelville, MO (about an hour's drive from St. Louis itself), and we were welcome to stay the night there on Sunday to watch the eclipse on Monday, as it was in the path of totality.
I brought my Celestron Nexstar telescope, a solar filter for it, and the camera adapter for my Canon 70d, and was able to get a pretty cool photo of the eclipse right at the moment of totality - along with a number of other photos of the progression of the eclipse.
We also had a couple of great home-cooked meals and spent some time riding 4 wheelers around their property. so an enjoyable day all the way around.
I could see this working better for a nightclub, where part of the draw is knowing you paid to get into a place that's full of lots of attractive people.
But a restaurant? The new ones that opened out by me and had lines just made me decide to hold off a few days before visiting them. (After all, most new restaurants really don't have their food preparation or service down yet, so you tend to get a less than ideal experience.)
As someone else on here pointed out too; won't people realize something's not quite right if the place isn't totally full on the inside? If I saw a long line and empty tables inside, that would tell me the restaurant is short-handed and service will be really poor. That would make me leave.
If you want to generate a buzz and a big line for the sake of photo ops and media coverage, it's a far better investment to give away free food to people. Krispy Kreme doughnut shops do that all the time when opening new locations. First day, you get a free one with each visit.
Really? You have a big issue with Apple Maps only being accessible via Apple devices? I never even gave that a thought until you mentioned it, just now. Considering all the options like Waze, Google Maps, MapQuest, or even MapsFly, it's not like APPLE Maps would offer something original that you'd really want to get in mapping, but can't get, right?
I assume Apple wanted to invest in its own mapping solution for "internal" use with its own devices because it's a good financial investment for them in the long run. It's that simple. Apple is interested in developing something having to do with self-driving vehicles in coming years, and that's going to require map data. Why pay millions or billions to a competitor for it?