The bottom line is - we all want more fast, inexpensive broadband options. So when you live in a city that doesn't really have them, you jump at the first opportunity that comes along. Sometimes, that's going to be your local government proposing a roll-out of a city-wide system.
If it seems like a law is trying to block that from happening, your first reaction is to protest that law!
But like someone else on here pointed out? Municipal Internet doesn't always have the best long-term track record. It's likely funded with grants, donations and whatever else could be scraped together to do the initial build-out, and then it's all about keeping as many captive customers as possible to justify those initial costs.
If better, faster broadband alternatives pop up, your local government may not be too receptive to allowing them in, as they know that would effectively ruin their own project.
There are certainly some success stories out there, as well, though.
I guess I lean towards disliking legislation that tells your local govt. it CAN'T do such a thing. If the local residents vote for it and a plan is approved by the local city hall, I think that should be respected. But it would be wise of local voters to be aware of the potential pitfalls and to voice their opinion that a city-wide broadband project is a "non starter" if it doesn't provide really good speeds.
So what? IMO - you never have anything to lose by documenting valid reasons you left a company. I suspect that in quite a few cases, upper management doesn't really do anything about it when they receive letters or exit interview information like this. But eventually, it piles up and *someone* notices. (I used to work at a place like that, where one of the managers had a continuous history of insulting and angering the interns and assistants they hired to work with him. Many years of that went on, with everyone else who worked there long enough gossiping about it and how it would "never change". But then the economy took a nosedive and they had to make cutbacks. Guess who one of the first guys was they let go?)
If you don't already use it, I'd also recommend creating an account over on GlassDoor.com and make sure you post about the issue there. At least that way, you might be helping someone else who is researching the company and considering taking the opening you left behind, or one similar.
I think when Steve Jobs was still alive, he enforced a philosophy at Apple that the Mac was the "cornerstone" of the company, no matter what else it developed. It was all about that "halo effect", where the Mac was the control center for everything else, and everything had a symbiotic relationship with everything else Apple sold. (EG. You could be a Windows user and buy an iPod as your music player, and use it just fine. BUT, you'd eventually say, "Hey... Apple's iTunes software that manages this thing really runs better on the Mac than it does in Windows. Maybe I'll just go with a Mac in the future and use it with this?" Or you might be a Windows or even Linux user who bought an Apple Airport Extreme as your wi-fi router because it got high reviews. You *could* manage it with the Windows version of the management software, but you'd find it's easier to just set one up from an iPhone, where support is built right in.)
Back then, it was commonplace for Jobs to remind people that low overall percentages of Mac sales compared to Windows didn't concern him. It was about selling gourmet food vs. McDonalds. If you have a premium product, you concentrate on catering to those who appreciate that... not worrying about maximizing sales numbers.
Today, it's very different. Apple under Tim Cook seems to believe iOS devices are the "future" as the traditional computer dies out, and MANY of the complaints Mac users have are direct results of this change in course. There are problems right now with PDFKit in OS X, where Apple suddenly rewrote the thing from the ground up in OS X Sierra without so much as informing developers. The reason? They wanted one with feature parity with the iOS version. This made Apple's own Preview software unsafe to use to edit PDF documents, because it causes embedded OCR layers to be stripped from them when you save them. Other applications like Mariner Paperless, which use Preview to display scanned documents in their database, crash as soon as you try to view a file in your collection. It's basically a trainwreck right now. I hear Apple is scrambling to fix a lot of this in the latest OS X beta, but this fiasco already caused many realtors to switch back to Windows because they rely so heavily on PDF as part of their daily workflow,
If rumors I've heard can be believed, Apple doesn't even have much of a Mac OS X development team left anymore. The updates to it are supposedly being done by a team that's expected to spend part of their time doing iOS related work.
I've been a big Mac proponent since the 2001 time-frame, but I'm finally reaching the point where my next computer won't be a Mac, unless there's a major change of course in the near future. As others have said, Apple has nothing for sale that I'd really want to buy. The new Macbook Pro 15" looks desirable at first glance. The touch-bar is a nice addition and it looks attractive in space gray color and all that. But in reality, it's the most expensive laptop Apple has ever sold (in a high spec configuration at least), while demanding more compromises to use it than have ever been expected of "Pro" users before. The lack of all ports except USB-C would be more acceptable if the USB-C standard was more prevalent. But putting it there today is doing it just to prove you're "cutting edge", while hampering real-world usage. And at that price? Why isn't a set of the dongle adapters included with it?? The Mag-Safe charging was a mistake to eliminate too. That's been a signature feature that made Mac laptops a step ahead of everyone else. Couldn't they at least do a USB-C variant of Mag-Safe?
The impression I'm getting in recent years is that we're transitioning towards a computing world where individual consumers primarily want portables, or alternately, "all in one" or super small form-factor desktops which just use mobile motherboards and CPUs anyway.
The high-end "power users" who tell you they still need a desktop machine for the work they do are best served by a "workstation" class system, vs. a regular desktop PC. The primary differentiation between a "desktop" and a "workstation"? Seems to be the inclusion of a Xeon class processor, originally intended to go into servers. Secondarily, workstations tend to offer the highly costly video cards optimized for use with CAD/CAM and other graphics design packages.
Again, at least *some* of this strikes me as cases of, "Sure...the technology may let you do it, but you're still creating a trail to get caught!"
I mean, ok --- the relatively weak security might let me log in to a web portal and cancel a guy's flight. But if that's a flexible ticket (the most expensive kind) that lets me reschedule it under another name? Don't you think he might *notice* that happened? And when they investigate, it wouldn't be too tough to figure out who DID use that rescheduled flight.
I'd be more worried about the possibility of mischievous hackers screwing up people's booked flights for amusement and general rabble-rousing. But even something as simple as putting your own frequent flier ID in under someone else's flights to earn their miles means you can be tracked down and caught/punished for theft of them.
Yep! I don't even work in Accounting or Finance, but because I do computer support for that department and have to get slightly involved in the bill coding side of the process -- I agree completely.
I'm pretty sure that even if you *could* get a computer to do everything for Accounting automatically, people would constantly become frustrated with parts of the resulting process -- from reports requested by management not having the formatting or items desired on them, to inflexibility getting an item charged to a certain group's cost center when it's an exception to the usual process.
Automation really works best when you have a repetitive, consistent process people have to go through without any creativity or thought involved. In every profession, there's still PLENTY of that required of people each day. Those are the tasks you want to automate to improve efficiency. Attempts to get a computerized system to substitute for human THOUGHT or CREATIVITY is where it quickly falls apart.
Yes.... many reasons why home ownership makes good sense in the long run. Maybe you're still too young to get it though?
Look... it's not about playing some kind of investment game with the home you live in, expecting you can flip it for a big profit (which mysteriously, you believe will only increase based on how much you spend upgrading everything in the house).
It's about the fact that with your home comes a chunk of land that it sits on, for starters. This means you have your own little square of space on this planet you have control over. If you decide you'd like to start growing some of your own food, you can just go out in your back yard and do it. If you want to buy a big dog, you can do it without worrying about getting your landlord's permission first, AND you can let him poop outside all you want, and clean it up again on your own time. You're not stuck running around with a bag and pooper scooper, right behind your dog, to appease the other people who live in your apartment unit. Heck, maybe you decide you'd like to build yourself a workshop or a shed to store some things in? It's your yard, so you can do it!
It's also about having control over your house itself. If you discover you'd like things much better with a wall removed between your kitchen and your living room? You can undertake that project. You don't have to worry about somebody you're renting from telling you no. You can repaint any time you like. You can redo anything you want in your kitchen or your bathroom to suit you. And if you spend the money doing it, at least you don't get stuck giving all of it away to somebody else at no charge, for them to get some of the benefit from it, when it turns out your rent has gone up and you need to find a different place to stay.
Obviously, you get the tax advantages too, such as tax credits on the mortgage interest you pay.
I don't know why you're trying to paint home ownership as some kind of political scheme? As someone else posted, it's been a popular theme for over 60 years in America. The only problems we had were when presidents decided to sell it as something EVERYONE should do, no matter their financial situation. Again, you need to have a solid, steady job that makes it viable FIRST.
0xdeadbeef, you're really just complaining about bad luck that could happen to anyone, regardless of buying Apple products.
I've been using Apple since around 2001, and owned 6 of their computers at once, at one point in time. I currently work for a company that has deployed about 60 of them to mobile workers and I do support for them (along with another 60 or so using Windows machines).
The 2007 MBP you're speaking of with the battery that swelled? There were a TON of defective Li-On batteries out there, used by all manufacturers. It's not like Apple has anything directly to do with the battery manufacturing process (certainly not back in that time-frame). So that's really nothing you can pin on Apple, as opposed to pinning on owning a laptop that used a battery. The 3D graphics card that died? That, too, was an industry-wide issue for a while, especially with one series of nVidia GPUs out there. A design flaw in the BGA (ball grid array) design of the processor, essentially. Didn't hold up under the stresses of heating and cooling cycles over time.
Your 2012 MBP with trackpad issues? I don't know what to tell you there, really? That sucks and sounds like especially bad luck if it went bad only a month after being replaced. But I'm not sure I've ever run into a similar trackpad issue with ANY of the Mac laptops in service where I work that were purchased in 2011-2013, nor with the one I owned personally. I follow sites like MacRumors pretty closely too, and don't recall trackpad problems coming up as a collective issue on their forums either.
You can complain about "AppleCare" and its cost all you like, but all you'd REALLY be saying is that you feel Macs should give you a full 3 year warranty for the price you pay for them, rather than only 1 year. The fact is, if you DO buy AppleCare, you get coverage for 3 years instead of 1 for stuff like the trackpad failures you had. It's just an "extended warranty" that may or may not turn out to be a good decision to purchase. I don't believe I got more than a 1 year warranty with the Dell XPS 13 laptop I purchased last year either though -- so not sure how this is such a major issue? It's been my experience that if you DO spend extra for the AppleCare, it adds to the resale value of the computer if you decide to resell it while it has warranty left on it. So you can recoup some of that cost in those cases.
Now, I'm using a 2015 MBP "Retina" to write this message on Slashdot, right now. And yes, it will go to sleep if you close the lid if it doesn't have AC power attached. I've honestly never minded that a bit. In fact, it's served to "warn" me when I thought I was running on AC power at my desk but realized the power strip wasn't on or what-not when it went to sleep upon shutting the lid. If your cat keeps unplugging the cord while you're trying to work? I fail to see how that's a situation Apple should be expected to take care of for you? My friend's dog used to chew on his video cable to his external monitor off of his Dell laptop. Is the fact Dell didn't address that by armoring the video cords against dog bites a "Fuck you to dog owners!" on Dell's part?
I already made another post on here where I think I made it clear I'm with Consumer Reports on not recommending this latest MBP from Apple. I'm no fanboy. I've just worked with a whole lot of computers from many manufacturers over the last 2+ decades, and work in Linux, Windows and OS X all in the same day, on a regular basis. And from all of that, I can assure people that Apple made a computer that was just as good as anything else on the market, if not superior in some respects to competitors. What they're releasing in the last couple years is more suspect, IMO -- and shows their lack of focus on Macs, vs. iOS devices, watches, etc. Tim Cook clearly lacks the imagination Steve Jobs had to push the company to build new products. Apple is in decline right now, IMO... at least at building desirable computers that are good performers AND stylish. But a 2012 or 2015 MBP wouldn't qualify in my book as an example of this problem.
I forget now where I read it (might have been over on Engadget)? But supposedly, some employees at Apple spoke about this new Macbook Pro off the record, saying it was supposed to receive a multi-tiered, custom battery in it, similar to what Apple did with the new Macbook in 2015. Except at the last minute, they ran into some issues and were told they'd have to scrap that and just make a standard battery fit inside it instead.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if these odd power problems are a direct result. (Had no time to really re-optimize the system for a battery that wasn't going to supply as much power as what they intended all along.)
I'd have say I side with Consumer Reports on not recommending this notebook right now. I think the touch-bar is very cool and the computer looks great in the new "Space Gray" color option. Not a fan of losing all the ports besides USB-C, *but* if everything else was fine, I'd accept that as a downside I could live with. The problem is, this one seems to have fundamental flaws of the type that you won't see fully corrected until the next revision is released.
If you've been following things closely on the Mac-specific forums, you'd see there are some serious questions about this computer's video performance too. There's a guy on YouTube who put the high-end configuration through its paces running a number of modern 3D video games and the performance was, frankly, god-awful! In one title, he was only getting 3 or 4FPS! As he admitted himself, people aren't buying the new 15" Macbook Pro as a gaming machine. But they ARE paying a premium price to get the latest AMD Polaris series GPU in it, and that's supposed to be 2 generations newer than the best available mobile GPU AMD had to offer for any older laptops. The graphics performance in games is so abysmally bad though, it's clear something else is going on here. IMO, Apple probably underclocks the GPU to help conserve power and to control heat generation -- and may have done so far too aggressively, given the last minute battery change that had to be done.
I'm all for the idea of relocating to get a better job. (I think that's increasingly necessary just to reward states with a pro-business/commerce mindset and punish the ones without it.)
But markets where real-estate gets so "hot", you can't ever imagine owning your own home without becoming a millionaire first? That's a huge negative, in my opinion. The "American dream" is all about home ownership and a good paying career type job should be one that makes that dream possible for you (even if you're still in a situation where you only want to rent, at the moment).
I moved to the DC area for a new job myself, and it has this same problem. So I compromised by moving to a small, more rural community in Western Maryland. Now I have a 50+ mile commute each direction for work, BUT we have a commuter rail system I can make use of, AND I have the option to work from home several days a week. So it's completely doable, and I get the benefit of enjoying peaceful, quiet rural living AND a regular does of the "big city" at the same time. Results may vary for others who opt to come here for a job... but it's all stuff to consider.
I think what many people aren't aware of (because Apple sure doesn't go to any effort to market it) is that the new Bluetooth EarPods use a proprietary "W2" chip which adds a number of proprietary extensions to the Bluetooth standards.
The iPhone 7 has the W2 chip functionality embedded in it for any devices able to support it, and defaults back to standard Bluetooth support for everything else.
The additional W2 functionality is supposed to address some of the glitches and hassles inherent in regular Bluetooth headsets and provide a better experience.
If you're a customer who prefers using wireless Bluetooth headsets with a cellphone to begin with (and MANY people I know do), the EarPods and iPhone 7 combo promises one of the better usability experiences you can get out that combo today. Yes, it may be at the expense of giving you a traditional headphone jack. But how much that matters to you really does depend on your use case.
Seriously, I find Microsoft's whole Surface product line to be promising, yet not quite "there" yet.
The Surface Studio, for example? Very cool concept and one of those designs that inspires a lot of techno-lust when you see it. But on a closer analysis, I just can't see the value? For the huge price tag, you still wind up with a machine with the previous generation GPU technology in it; doubly insulting when you pair it with a huge display of that high a resolution, where you really could use more GPU power to move all those pixels around.
The Surface Book? I haven't spent much time in front of one of those, so I feel less qualified to talk about it, except again - you pay a really big price premium for it over most Windows notebooks, and I don't quite see where the value is? The previous version supposedly had some issues with the hinge design that people didn't like. I think most of that was addressed in the latest revision. The whole thing just doesn't excite me in any way, shape or form though. It's just "another laptop option on the market".
And the Surface Pro 4, I'm very familiar with as I use one every day. This one absolutely stinks, IMO, in its base price configuration with the Core m CPU. If you want to see the point in buying one at all, you have to spend more money for a better configured variation. The "sweet spot" of price vs. performance is probably the Core i5 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. You can buy that one for around the $1,500 price point with a type-cover keyboard (which should realistically just come with the things... you DO want one for it). As soon as you decide you'd rather have 16GB of RAM and/or a 512GB SSD though? The price starts shooting way upward. IMO, these machines have kind of a cheap plastic feel to them and I've seen a fairly high incidence of repairs needed on them too. But at the same time? The pencil works great with them, and when attached to your full size keyboard, mouse and display via the dock, you'll forget you're not using a pretty good performing desktop PC.
I think everything "Surface" from MS is starting to finally pose a challenge for Apple in the PC hardware department. And it's coming at just the time when Apple seems to be slacking off on any real focus on updating Macs (in favor of more profitable iOS devices, watches, etc.). But as it stands right now, I still prefer using my Macs. Might just be a preference for OS X over Windows 10 at this point, but that's enough to keep me using my Macs as primary machines for the time being. Still, my NEXT new computer may well NOT be a Mac unless Apple turns things around soon.
I see it in a similar vein.... For as long as we've had the ability to use technology to save duplicate copies of print, audio, video or computer software content, we've had this raging "piracy" debate. But nothing's really changed.
If you're in an industry that makes its money from charging to redistribute copies of content, it's in your best financial interest to leverage any possible angle to prevent anyone ELSE from doing the same thing you charge money to do. Meanwhile, the consumer simply wants copies of particular pieces of the content for personal use and enjoyment -- so he/she is looking for any angle to obtain as much as possible at the lowest possible cost.
I'd like to know who these mythical people are who LIKE paying for movies, music and applications? In reality, nobody I know enjoys spending their hard-earned money for these things. It's simply a compromise made depending on the circumstances. (EG. A new movie comes out and you really want to be among the first to see it. Your only reasonable option is to pay the movie theater's price for a ticket to view it there. Otherwise, you're probably only going to get a very sub-standard quality bootleg copy of the movie (at best) to watch at home - which isn't going to do the movie any justice. Same might apply if you want to own a particular music album that's difficult to find. You might not have any avenues to download a free copy so you resort to paying the asking price to buy it.)
There are, of course, other considerations that have to do with the "value adds" of paying for a legal copy of a piece of content. You might appreciate having a digital license on a service like Steam for a video game, because it adds convenience. (Instead of having to protect a physical piece of media from damage or loss, it exists in the "cloud", tied to your account, indefinitely. Any time you want to reinstall the game on a new computer, even years later? It's right there for you in Steam when you log in.)
But IMO -- all of this "push and pull" is just a natural condition that comes with the territory. If I was a content distributor, I'd concentrate on making sure I had the most convenient and easy to use service for purchasing the content, and added as much value as I could to the whole process. I wouldn't waste time on the legal end of things, trying to chase down and eliminate "pirates" -- because in most cases, the "pirate" one day can be your customer the next. There will always be far more content to consume than anyone has time to digest... and there will always be only some small subset of what you're offering for sale that any one person will be willing to purchase from you.
The fear-mongering that we're going to successfully wipe ourselves out by not immediately embracing solar or wind energy, or electric cars, or whatever the faux solution-du-jour is..... That's as much B.S. as this sensationalist garbage that our oceans will begin boiling if the polar ice melts.
If we succeed in destroying ourselves as a species on Earth, it will probably be with a nuclear war. But even that is a situation that essentially peaked in the 1980's, and nations have taken steps to back-pedal from it since then.
The previous poster, "hipp5", may not be a Twitter user, but it sounds to me like he understands it better than most regular Twitter users do!
From the first day the service was announced, a lot of us "long timers" in computers and I.T. were left scratching our heads, wondering what the point was in the entire thing? I mean, Twitter was essentially nothing more than yet *another* IM client of sorts, except with arbitrarily short limits on the length of messages. I grant that there's a certain amount of value, in at least the artistic sense, in forcing people to communicate in very brief statements. It forces people to think before they write, and distill things down to the most succinct possible way to get a message across. But building a commercial platform on that and expecting huge profits would somehow follow? Not so much....
As you can predict, people struggled to find more validity for Twitter as time went on. I saw everything from realtors shooting out updates about the latest properties to go on the market for sale to a laundromat that had Twitter enabled washing machines and dryers, so you could get an immediate notification when a machine was finished or available. But none of this really constituted a "killer app" for Twitter. Rather, it felt like "trying too hard" to prove it had value.
Now it's expanded to try to be more of a Facebook clone, where you can share links, video, audio.... whatever you like. But again, nothing that makes Twitter stand out as a unique tool, accomplishing something I can't already do elsewhere.
It's funny how this UBI discussion causes so much heated debate and varied opinions by people all over the political spectrum. I think that's because there are so many different ways to imagine how the process of handing out some free money might work.
As a libertarian, I'm not necessarily opposed to a UBI, far enough into the future. (Yes, that's despite someone above who felt the need to slam libertarians because we're completely against such a thing.) From my point of view though, a UBI becomes really viable only in a "post Capitalist" society. I don't see why there's any reason Capitalism will last indefinitely? IMO, it's simply the most equitable and effective way to run things at this time. Capitalism becomes outdated in a society where resource scarcity is no longer a real issue. I don't know if and when we'll ever develop technologies like the replicator of Star Trek, but that's certainly a "game changer" of the highest order. Perhaps more realistically though? I can see us getting to the point where we could grow and harvest all of the food we'd ever need or want, and prepare/serve all of it with pure automation. At the same time, there's a possibility of creating plentiful energy for all takers with a very low cost of operation/maintenance. If you've got those two areas covered, you're taking care of a BIG chunk of the bills people are pretty much required to pay today, just to survive. With energy at extremely low cost, that means cheap forms of transportation follow -- and it's a fair assumption that by the time we'd have this, we'd ALSO have automated pretty much all of the driving on roads, ships and rail systems too.)
When people speak of wanting to see a UBI *today* though? I think it's either A) really a thinly veiled push towards more Socialism, or B) an experiment in a simplified or alternate way to handle an existing welfare system. In America, as it stands today -- you could almost pay straight cash instead of food stamps and you'd be right there, trying a form of UBI. (Many people on food stamps find ways and means to resell them, to convert them into cash, anyway. May not be legal and "above board", but it happens all the time. Some of the bodegas in NYC got investigated for aiding in this, a few years ago. They'd just take the food stamps, ring up fake receipts for food supposedly bought with them, and then pay cash back to the customer, minus their percentage fee for doing the "conversion".)
Now personally? I think a strong case can be made that the rise of the welfare system in the 1960's and beyond did a lot of harm in America, creating generations of people who grew dependent on the system. There's a book that was just recently published by an African American man who even makes the argument that blacks in America would be much further along towards true equality today if it wasn't for the Federal government interfering in the natural course of things. (He explains, for example, that despite racism in America, blacks were still slowly bettering themselves and were often quite integrated in smaller towns in the U.S. Then came all the integration programs that pushed people together against their will and encouraged taking advantage of social welfare programs to overcome financial struggles - which to an extent were exacerbated by said integration.) So in the "grand scheme" of thing? Yeah... I'd like to see a lot more restrictions on welfare programs at the Federal level. (And at the same time, I'd suggest less government "red tape" making it legally risky or difficult for grocers or restaurants to give away any "day old" food or drinks. Enough food goes wasted that it could solve most of our hunger program just by efficiently redirecting it to those in need, rather than throwing it out!)
But a limited UBI setup that doesn't cost taxpayers any more than the existing system does, accomplished by simplifying the food stamp program and cutting down on administrative costs? I'd have to view that as at least a small improvement over what we're doing now.
Hardly worth my time replying to you, except it's pretty disturbing how the OP here was modded +5 Interesting for that stereotypical Bernie Sanderesque drivel.
Paying for your own education is an investment in your future. Paying for other people's educations is an unknown.... How do you know how if those people will make any effort to learn anything useful, vs. just costing you a big chunk of tax money to act as a state-sponsored babysitter? And yes, despite that - our country decided it's willing to fork over the money to at least TRY to get the majority of people up to certain minimum levels of knowledge. But that's not good enough for a bunch of people today. Now, you hear these excuses about jobs being "too difficult to find", so they need a "free" college education as the new minimum.
News flash... The more people we churn out with 4 year degrees, the less a 4 year degree will be worth to an employer. Giving people taxpayer-funded higher education isn't going to do anything to improve the job situation if the businesses aren't here in the first place to hire all of them! That's where things sit today. Our biggest employers are WalMart and fast food giants.
The problem too many people have is a desire for a wealthy *lifestyle". That's a very different thing from wanting "nice things", IMO.
on a $100K salary, I could finally pay all of my bills comfortably, without worrying that I had to stick way too much on a credit card one month, stressing about how I'm going to get that paid back down in the coming months. I'd be able to make bigger than the minimum payment on a couple of my existing loans, to get them paid off more quickly and free up a little extra money to do more fun things with, too. And I wouldn't have the problems I have now where in really cold winter months, my electric bill is sky high and really cuts into what I can afford to buy as holiday gifts for people.
That's the kind of wealth I want... not millions of dollars that force me to start dressing in expensive, fancy clothes for social events I'm expected to attend because of the new crowd I'm around, and the pressure to have an impressive sized and styled home, so those people don't think less of me when I invite them over.
Free education is never really free, first of all. All you're doing is advocating that the bulk of the costs of teaching students be covered by those who are already gainfully employed. Society has already pretty much agreed to accept that burden for a basic "core" education (grade school and high school). The enrollment fees some of the public high schools are charging are literally peanuts compared to what taxpayers are on the hook for to keep them running. I honestly don't know where those fees came from, except possibly from certain districts deciding it was a way to get around a failed tax increase vote? When I was in high school, there were never any fees like that -- but today, I have friends in the Chicago area having to pay $300 or so per kid, annually, for a public school. If a kid misses out on a high school education over those enrollment fees? I find it hard to believe that's the fault of anyone but the parents for not trying a little harder to get something worked out. I mean, otherwise? Why are we even still messing around with a public school system, if it's not really for those who can't afford the fee to get in?
The "decreasing number of jobs" should be able to be largely offset by encouraging more small business growth and new business ventures. Every day, people have ideas for things they might be able to do or sell as a business. But government taxes and regulations generally create a steep wall to climb, right from the get-go. (For example, "Obamacare" has caused quite a few businesses to close their doors or stop trying to grow because they can't afford the additional healthcare expenses they're now required to pay if they exceed 50 employees.) And even if we ignore all of that? Try opening your own sole proprietorship and then deciding to hire on your first additional employee! You're suddenly met with payroll challenges, and accounting that just got so much more complicated, you probably need to hire a bookkeeper or CPA as well, to handle all of that while you try to keep your business running. The current system discourages people from employing other people.
Those vending machines that dispense a mildew-laden cup of poor quality coffee have been around for a LONG time. I remember encountering one of those lousy machines when waiting around to be selected for jury duty, back in the late 1980's.
The fact is, people building and deploying these machines know that the public's expectations from them are minimal. The goal is to offer something you can afford with your left-over pocket change, so they get that impulse buy.
I think any building calling itself a restaurant is going to be held to a much higher standard. So robotic automation used in one of them really does still have to work with a food product of the same quality the restaurant used with human labor, or people will stop patronizing them.
If you paid attention to speeches given by Ray Kroc about McDonalds, you'd learn that HIS business model is rather unique anyway. He's really in the real estate business, with McDonalds restaurants as the "excuse" to acquire valuable land in developing areas. They generally make more money reselling McDonalds restaurants that have been open a while than they ever make selling food while they're open.
Sure, SOME people might do that. But most people I know (who range Libertarian to Conservative) are neither that concerned about the veracity of the claims that Russians were responsible for the leaked Hillary campaign emails OR concerned that the NSA is bleeding some talent right now.
As far as I'm concerned, the NSA serves a useful purpose, but it's one of those organizations that's been entrusted with a whole lot of power. Our government has a history of doing that at times, and inevitably, it comes back to haunt the general public when boundaries are overstepped and too many leaders aren't willing to reign them in again. I think we have this with today's FBI to an extent, and I put the Federal Reserve in the same category. The ATF has proven to abuse its power too (although they've been a bit more quiet in recent years).
I find it interesting that much of the anger over Wikileaks and the Hillary email isn't even attempting to debunk what was leaked as fake, edited or wrong. It's all focused on outrage that it leaked. So in other words, the truth got out and people reacted to the facts that were revealed. Funny, but I'm pretty ok with that.
As details come out (much of it thanks to Snowden) about just what the NSA has been doing, it's easy to see why people might be upset. There are entire categories of communication content that were being monitored wholesale. That implies that they've got way too many people on the payroll, as that was never the NSA's purpose. By comparison, that would be like your local police department engaging in surveillance of every single resident in your community, in a "proactive effort to stop crime".
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The bottom line is - we all want more fast, inexpensive broadband options. So when you live in a city that doesn't really have them, you jump at the first opportunity that comes along. Sometimes, that's going to be your local government proposing a roll-out of a city-wide system.
If it seems like a law is trying to block that from happening, your first reaction is to protest that law!
But like someone else on here pointed out? Municipal Internet doesn't always have the best long-term track record. It's likely funded with grants, donations and whatever else could be scraped together to do the initial build-out, and then it's all about keeping as many captive customers as possible to justify those initial costs.
If better, faster broadband alternatives pop up, your local government may not be too receptive to allowing them in, as they know that would effectively ruin their own project.
There are certainly some success stories out there, as well, though.
I guess I lean towards disliking legislation that tells your local govt. it CAN'T do such a thing. If the local residents vote for it and a plan is approved by the local city hall, I think that should be respected. But it would be wise of local voters to be aware of the potential pitfalls and to voice their opinion that a city-wide broadband project is a "non starter" if it doesn't provide really good speeds.
They said -- After years of being made to watch the "most twisted" videos on the internet, employees said they suffered severe psychological distress.
Ok, but who will compensate me for watching Tosh.O all those times in came on late night TV?!
So what? IMO - you never have anything to lose by documenting valid reasons you left a company. I suspect that in quite a few cases, upper management doesn't really do anything about it when they receive letters or exit interview information like this. But eventually, it piles up and *someone* notices. (I used to work at a place like that, where one of the managers had a continuous history of insulting and angering the interns and assistants they hired to work with him. Many years of that went on, with everyone else who worked there long enough gossiping about it and how it would "never change". But then the economy took a nosedive and they had to make cutbacks. Guess who one of the first guys was they let go?)
If you don't already use it, I'd also recommend creating an account over on GlassDoor.com and make sure you post about the issue there. At least that way, you might be helping someone else who is researching the company and considering taking the opening you left behind, or one similar.
I think when Steve Jobs was still alive, he enforced a philosophy at Apple that the Mac was the "cornerstone" of the company, no matter what else it developed. It was all about that "halo effect", where the Mac was the control center for everything else, and everything had a symbiotic relationship with everything else Apple sold. (EG. You could be a Windows user and buy an iPod as your music player, and use it just fine. BUT, you'd eventually say, "Hey... Apple's iTunes software that manages this thing really runs better on the Mac than it does in Windows. Maybe I'll just go with a Mac in the future and use it with this?" Or you might be a Windows or even Linux user who bought an Apple Airport Extreme as your wi-fi router because it got high reviews. You *could* manage it with the Windows version of the management software, but you'd find it's easier to just set one up from an iPhone, where support is built right in.)
Back then, it was commonplace for Jobs to remind people that low overall percentages of Mac sales compared to Windows didn't concern him. It was about selling gourmet food vs. McDonalds. If you have a premium product, you concentrate on catering to those who appreciate that ... not worrying about maximizing sales numbers.
Today, it's very different. Apple under Tim Cook seems to believe iOS devices are the "future" as the traditional computer dies out, and MANY of the complaints Mac users have are direct results of this change in course. There are problems right now with PDFKit in OS X, where Apple suddenly rewrote the thing from the ground up in OS X Sierra without so much as informing developers. The reason? They wanted one with feature parity with the iOS version. This made Apple's own Preview software unsafe to use to edit PDF documents, because it causes embedded OCR layers to be stripped from them when you save them. Other applications like Mariner Paperless, which use Preview to display scanned documents in their database, crash as soon as you try to view a file in your collection. It's basically a trainwreck right now. I hear Apple is scrambling to fix a lot of this in the latest OS X beta, but this fiasco already caused many realtors to switch back to Windows because they rely so heavily on PDF as part of their daily workflow,
If rumors I've heard can be believed, Apple doesn't even have much of a Mac OS X development team left anymore. The updates to it are supposedly being done by a team that's expected to spend part of their time doing iOS related work.
I've been a big Mac proponent since the 2001 time-frame, but I'm finally reaching the point where my next computer won't be a Mac, unless there's a major change of course in the near future. As others have said, Apple has nothing for sale that I'd really want to buy. The new Macbook Pro 15" looks desirable at first glance. The touch-bar is a nice addition and it looks attractive in space gray color and all that. But in reality, it's the most expensive laptop Apple has ever sold (in a high spec configuration at least), while demanding more compromises to use it than have ever been expected of "Pro" users before. The lack of all ports except USB-C would be more acceptable if the USB-C standard was more prevalent. But putting it there today is doing it just to prove you're "cutting edge", while hampering real-world usage. And at that price? Why isn't a set of the dongle adapters included with it?? The Mag-Safe charging was a mistake to eliminate too. That's been a signature feature that made Mac laptops a step ahead of everyone else. Couldn't they at least do a USB-C variant of Mag-Safe?
You can afford to fly first class so you have room to use it, right?
The impression I'm getting in recent years is that we're transitioning towards a computing world where individual consumers primarily want portables, or alternately, "all in one" or super small form-factor desktops which just use mobile motherboards and CPUs anyway.
The high-end "power users" who tell you they still need a desktop machine for the work they do are best served by a "workstation" class system, vs. a regular desktop PC. The primary differentiation between a "desktop" and a "workstation"? Seems to be the inclusion of a Xeon class processor, originally intended to go into servers. Secondarily, workstations tend to offer the highly costly video cards optimized for use with CAD/CAM and other graphics design packages.
Again, at least *some* of this strikes me as cases of, "Sure...the technology may let you do it, but you're still creating a trail to get caught!"
I mean, ok --- the relatively weak security might let me log in to a web portal and cancel a guy's flight. But if that's a flexible ticket (the most expensive kind) that lets me reschedule it under another name? Don't you think he might *notice* that happened? And when they investigate, it wouldn't be too tough to figure out who DID use that rescheduled flight.
I'd be more worried about the possibility of mischievous hackers screwing up people's booked flights for amusement and general rabble-rousing. But even something as simple as putting your own frequent flier ID in under someone else's flights to earn their miles means you can be tracked down and caught/punished for theft of them.
Yep! I don't even work in Accounting or Finance, but because I do computer support for that department and have to get slightly involved in the bill coding side of the process -- I agree completely.
I'm pretty sure that even if you *could* get a computer to do everything for Accounting automatically, people would constantly become frustrated with parts of the resulting process -- from reports requested by management not having the formatting or items desired on them, to inflexibility getting an item charged to a certain group's cost center when it's an exception to the usual process.
Automation really works best when you have a repetitive, consistent process people have to go through without any creativity or thought involved. In every profession, there's still PLENTY of that required of people each day. Those are the tasks you want to automate to improve efficiency. Attempts to get a computerized system to substitute for human THOUGHT or CREATIVITY is where it quickly falls apart.
Yes.... many reasons why home ownership makes good sense in the long run.
Maybe you're still too young to get it though?
Look ... it's not about playing some kind of investment game with the home you live in, expecting you can flip it for a big profit (which mysteriously, you believe will only increase based on how much you spend upgrading everything in the house).
It's about the fact that with your home comes a chunk of land that it sits on, for starters. This means you have your own little square of space on this planet you have control over. If you decide you'd like to start growing some of your own food, you can just go out in your back yard and do it. If you want to buy a big dog, you can do it without worrying about getting your landlord's permission first, AND you can let him poop outside all you want, and clean it up again on your own time. You're not stuck running around with a bag and pooper scooper, right behind your dog, to appease the other people who live in your apartment unit. Heck, maybe you decide you'd like to build yourself a workshop or a shed to store some things in? It's your yard, so you can do it!
It's also about having control over your house itself. If you discover you'd like things much better with a wall removed between your kitchen and your living room? You can undertake that project. You don't have to worry about somebody you're renting from telling you no. You can repaint any time you like. You can redo anything you want in your kitchen or your bathroom to suit you. And if you spend the money doing it, at least you don't get stuck giving all of it away to somebody else at no charge, for them to get some of the benefit from it, when it turns out your rent has gone up and you need to find a different place to stay.
Obviously, you get the tax advantages too, such as tax credits on the mortgage interest you pay.
I don't know why you're trying to paint home ownership as some kind of political scheme? As someone else posted, it's been a popular theme for over 60 years in America. The only problems we had were when presidents decided to sell it as something EVERYONE should do, no matter their financial situation. Again, you need to have a solid, steady job that makes it viable FIRST.
0xdeadbeef, you're really just complaining about bad luck that could happen to anyone, regardless of buying Apple products.
I've been using Apple since around 2001, and owned 6 of their computers at once, at one point in time. I currently work for a company that has deployed about 60 of them to mobile workers and I do support for them (along with another 60 or so using Windows machines).
The 2007 MBP you're speaking of with the battery that swelled? There were a TON of defective Li-On batteries out there, used by all manufacturers. It's not like Apple has anything directly to do with the battery manufacturing process (certainly not back in that time-frame). So that's really nothing you can pin on Apple, as opposed to pinning on owning a laptop that used a battery. The 3D graphics card that died? That, too, was an industry-wide issue for a while, especially with one series of nVidia GPUs out there. A design flaw in the BGA (ball grid array) design of the processor, essentially. Didn't hold up under the stresses of heating and cooling cycles over time.
Your 2012 MBP with trackpad issues? I don't know what to tell you there, really? That sucks and sounds like especially bad luck if it went bad only a month after being replaced. But I'm not sure I've ever run into a similar trackpad issue with ANY of the Mac laptops in service where I work that were purchased in 2011-2013, nor with the one I owned personally. I follow sites like MacRumors pretty closely too, and don't recall trackpad problems coming up as a collective issue on their forums either.
You can complain about "AppleCare" and its cost all you like, but all you'd REALLY be saying is that you feel Macs should give you a full 3 year warranty for the price you pay for them, rather than only 1 year. The fact is, if you DO buy AppleCare, you get coverage for 3 years instead of 1 for stuff like the trackpad failures you had. It's just an "extended warranty" that may or may not turn out to be a good decision to purchase. I don't believe I got more than a 1 year warranty with the Dell XPS 13 laptop I purchased last year either though -- so not sure how this is such a major issue? It's been my experience that if you DO spend extra for the AppleCare, it adds to the resale value of the computer if you decide to resell it while it has warranty left on it. So you can recoup some of that cost in those cases.
Now, I'm using a 2015 MBP "Retina" to write this message on Slashdot, right now. And yes, it will go to sleep if you close the lid if it doesn't have AC power attached. I've honestly never minded that a bit. In fact, it's served to "warn" me when I thought I was running on AC power at my desk but realized the power strip wasn't on or what-not when it went to sleep upon shutting the lid. If your cat keeps unplugging the cord while you're trying to work? I fail to see how that's a situation Apple should be expected to take care of for you? My friend's dog used to chew on his video cable to his external monitor off of his Dell laptop. Is the fact Dell didn't address that by armoring the video cords against dog bites a "Fuck you to dog owners!" on Dell's part?
I already made another post on here where I think I made it clear I'm with Consumer Reports on not recommending this latest MBP from Apple. I'm no fanboy. I've just worked with a whole lot of computers from many manufacturers over the last 2+ decades, and work in Linux, Windows and OS X all in the same day, on a regular basis. And from all of that, I can assure people that Apple made a computer that was just as good as anything else on the market, if not superior in some respects to competitors. What they're releasing in the last couple years is more suspect, IMO -- and shows their lack of focus on Macs, vs. iOS devices, watches, etc. Tim Cook clearly lacks the imagination Steve Jobs had to push the company to build new products. Apple is in decline right now, IMO ... at least at building desirable computers that are good performers AND stylish. But a 2012 or 2015 MBP wouldn't qualify in my book as an example of this problem.
I forget now where I read it (might have been over on Engadget)? But supposedly, some employees at Apple spoke about this new Macbook Pro off the record, saying it was supposed to receive a multi-tiered, custom battery in it, similar to what Apple did with the new Macbook in 2015. Except at the last minute, they ran into some issues and were told they'd have to scrap that and just make a standard battery fit inside it instead.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if these odd power problems are a direct result. (Had no time to really re-optimize the system for a battery that wasn't going to supply as much power as what they intended all along.)
I'd have say I side with Consumer Reports on not recommending this notebook right now. I think the touch-bar is very cool and the computer looks great in the new "Space Gray" color option. Not a fan of losing all the ports besides USB-C, *but* if everything else was fine, I'd accept that as a downside I could live with. The problem is, this one seems to have fundamental flaws of the type that you won't see fully corrected until the next revision is released.
If you've been following things closely on the Mac-specific forums, you'd see there are some serious questions about this computer's video performance too. There's a guy on YouTube who put the high-end configuration through its paces running a number of modern 3D video games and the performance was, frankly, god-awful! In one title, he was only getting 3 or 4FPS! As he admitted himself, people aren't buying the new 15" Macbook Pro as a gaming machine. But they ARE paying a premium price to get the latest AMD Polaris series GPU in it, and that's supposed to be 2 generations newer than the best available mobile GPU AMD had to offer for any older laptops. The graphics performance in games is so abysmally bad though, it's clear something else is going on here. IMO, Apple probably underclocks the GPU to help conserve power and to control heat generation -- and may have done so far too aggressively, given the last minute battery change that had to be done.
I'm all for the idea of relocating to get a better job. (I think that's increasingly necessary just to reward states with a pro-business/commerce mindset and punish the ones without it.)
But markets where real-estate gets so "hot", you can't ever imagine owning your own home without becoming a millionaire first? That's a huge negative, in my opinion. The "American dream" is all about home ownership and a good paying career type job should be one that makes that dream possible for you (even if you're still in a situation where you only want to rent, at the moment).
I moved to the DC area for a new job myself, and it has this same problem. So I compromised by moving to a small, more rural community in Western Maryland. Now I have a 50+ mile commute each direction for work, BUT we have a commuter rail system I can make use of, AND I have the option to work from home several days a week. So it's completely doable, and I get the benefit of enjoying peaceful, quiet rural living AND a regular does of the "big city" at the same time. Results may vary for others who opt to come here for a job ... but it's all stuff to consider.
I think what many people aren't aware of (because Apple sure doesn't go to any effort to market it) is that the new Bluetooth EarPods use a proprietary "W2" chip which adds a number of proprietary extensions to the Bluetooth standards.
The iPhone 7 has the W2 chip functionality embedded in it for any devices able to support it, and defaults back to standard Bluetooth support for everything else.
The additional W2 functionality is supposed to address some of the glitches and hassles inherent in regular Bluetooth headsets and provide a better experience.
If you're a customer who prefers using wireless Bluetooth headsets with a cellphone to begin with (and MANY people I know do), the EarPods and iPhone 7 combo promises one of the better usability experiences you can get out that combo today. Yes, it may be at the expense of giving you a traditional headphone jack. But how much that matters to you really does depend on your use case.
Seriously, I find Microsoft's whole Surface product line to be promising, yet not quite "there" yet.
The Surface Studio, for example? Very cool concept and one of those designs that inspires a lot of techno-lust when you see it. But on a closer analysis, I just can't see the value? For the huge price tag, you still wind up with a machine with the previous generation GPU technology in it; doubly insulting when you pair it with a huge display of that high a resolution, where you really could use more GPU power to move all those pixels around.
The Surface Book? I haven't spent much time in front of one of those, so I feel less qualified to talk about it, except again - you pay a really big price premium for it over most Windows notebooks, and I don't quite see where the value is? The previous version supposedly had some issues with the hinge design that people didn't like. I think most of that was addressed in the latest revision. The whole thing just doesn't excite me in any way, shape or form though. It's just "another laptop option on the market".
And the Surface Pro 4, I'm very familiar with as I use one every day. This one absolutely stinks, IMO, in its base price configuration with the Core m CPU. If you want to see the point in buying one at all, you have to spend more money for a better configured variation. The "sweet spot" of price vs. performance is probably the Core i5 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. You can buy that one for around the $1,500 price point with a type-cover keyboard (which should realistically just come with the things ... you DO want one for it). As soon as you decide you'd rather have 16GB of RAM and/or a 512GB SSD though? The price starts shooting way upward. IMO, these machines have kind of a cheap plastic feel to them and I've seen a fairly high incidence of repairs needed on them too. But at the same time? The pencil works great with them, and when attached to your full size keyboard, mouse and display via the dock, you'll forget you're not using a pretty good performing desktop PC.
I think everything "Surface" from MS is starting to finally pose a challenge for Apple in the PC hardware department. And it's coming at just the time when Apple seems to be slacking off on any real focus on updating Macs (in favor of more profitable iOS devices, watches, etc.). But as it stands right now, I still prefer using my Macs. Might just be a preference for OS X over Windows 10 at this point, but that's enough to keep me using my Macs as primary machines for the time being. Still, my NEXT new computer may well NOT be a Mac unless Apple turns things around soon.
I see it in a similar vein.... For as long as we've had the ability to use technology to save duplicate copies of print, audio, video or computer software content, we've had this raging "piracy" debate. But nothing's really changed.
If you're in an industry that makes its money from charging to redistribute copies of content, it's in your best financial interest to leverage any possible angle to prevent anyone ELSE from doing the same thing you charge money to do. Meanwhile, the consumer simply wants copies of particular pieces of the content for personal use and enjoyment -- so he/she is looking for any angle to obtain as much as possible at the lowest possible cost.
I'd like to know who these mythical people are who LIKE paying for movies, music and applications? In reality, nobody I know enjoys spending their hard-earned money for these things. It's simply a compromise made depending on the circumstances. (EG. A new movie comes out and you really want to be among the first to see it. Your only reasonable option is to pay the movie theater's price for a ticket to view it there. Otherwise, you're probably only going to get a very sub-standard quality bootleg copy of the movie (at best) to watch at home - which isn't going to do the movie any justice. Same might apply if you want to own a particular music album that's difficult to find. You might not have any avenues to download a free copy so you resort to paying the asking price to buy it.)
There are, of course, other considerations that have to do with the "value adds" of paying for a legal copy of a piece of content. You might appreciate having a digital license on a service like Steam for a video game, because it adds convenience. (Instead of having to protect a physical piece of media from damage or loss, it exists in the "cloud", tied to your account, indefinitely. Any time you want to reinstall the game on a new computer, even years later? It's right there for you in Steam when you log in.)
But IMO -- all of this "push and pull" is just a natural condition that comes with the territory. If I was a content distributor, I'd concentrate on making sure I had the most convenient and easy to use service for purchasing the content, and added as much value as I could to the whole process. I wouldn't waste time on the legal end of things, trying to chase down and eliminate "pirates" -- because in most cases, the "pirate" one day can be your customer the next. There will always be far more content to consume than anyone has time to digest ... and there will always be only some small subset of what you're offering for sale that any one person will be willing to purchase from you.
The fear-mongering that we're going to successfully wipe ourselves out by not immediately embracing solar or wind energy, or electric cars, or whatever the faux solution-du-jour is ..... That's as much B.S. as this sensationalist garbage that our oceans will begin boiling if the polar ice melts.
If we succeed in destroying ourselves as a species on Earth, it will probably be with a nuclear war. But even that is a situation that essentially peaked in the 1980's, and nations have taken steps to back-pedal from it since then.
The previous poster, "hipp5", may not be a Twitter user, but it sounds to me like he understands it better than most regular Twitter users do!
From the first day the service was announced, a lot of us "long timers" in computers and I.T. were left scratching our heads, wondering what the point was in the entire thing? I mean, Twitter was essentially nothing more than yet *another* IM client of sorts, except with arbitrarily short limits on the length of messages. I grant that there's a certain amount of value, in at least the artistic sense, in forcing people to communicate in very brief statements. It forces people to think before they write, and distill things down to the most succinct possible way to get a message across. But building a commercial platform on that and expecting huge profits would somehow follow? Not so much ....
As you can predict, people struggled to find more validity for Twitter as time went on. I saw everything from realtors shooting out updates about the latest properties to go on the market for sale to a laundromat that had Twitter enabled washing machines and dryers, so you could get an immediate notification when a machine was finished or available. But none of this really constituted a "killer app" for Twitter. Rather, it felt like "trying too hard" to prove it had value.
Now it's expanded to try to be more of a Facebook clone, where you can share links, video, audio .... whatever you like. But again, nothing that makes Twitter stand out as a unique tool, accomplishing something I can't already do elsewhere.
It's funny how this UBI discussion causes so much heated debate and varied opinions by people all over the political spectrum.
I think that's because there are so many different ways to imagine how the process of handing out some free money might work.
As a libertarian, I'm not necessarily opposed to a UBI, far enough into the future. (Yes, that's despite someone above who felt the need to slam libertarians because we're completely against such a thing.) From my point of view though, a UBI becomes really viable only in a "post Capitalist" society. I don't see why there's any reason Capitalism will last indefinitely? IMO, it's simply the most equitable and effective way to run things at this time. Capitalism becomes outdated in a society where resource scarcity is no longer a real issue. I don't know if and when we'll ever develop technologies like the replicator of Star Trek, but that's certainly a "game changer" of the highest order. Perhaps more realistically though? I can see us getting to the point where we could grow and harvest all of the food we'd ever need or want, and prepare/serve all of it with pure automation. At the same time, there's a possibility of creating plentiful energy for all takers with a very low cost of operation/maintenance. If you've got those two areas covered, you're taking care of a BIG chunk of the bills people are pretty much required to pay today, just to survive. With energy at extremely low cost, that means cheap forms of transportation follow -- and it's a fair assumption that by the time we'd have this, we'd ALSO have automated pretty much all of the driving on roads, ships and rail systems too.)
When people speak of wanting to see a UBI *today* though? I think it's either A) really a thinly veiled push towards more Socialism, or B) an experiment in a simplified or alternate way to handle an existing welfare system. In America, as it stands today -- you could almost pay straight cash instead of food stamps and you'd be right there, trying a form of UBI. (Many people on food stamps find ways and means to resell them, to convert them into cash, anyway. May not be legal and "above board", but it happens all the time. Some of the bodegas in NYC got investigated for aiding in this, a few years ago. They'd just take the food stamps, ring up fake receipts for food supposedly bought with them, and then pay cash back to the customer, minus their percentage fee for doing the "conversion".)
Now personally? I think a strong case can be made that the rise of the welfare system in the 1960's and beyond did a lot of harm in America, creating generations of people who grew dependent on the system. There's a book that was just recently published by an African American man who even makes the argument that blacks in America would be much further along towards true equality today if it wasn't for the Federal government interfering in the natural course of things. (He explains, for example, that despite racism in America, blacks were still slowly bettering themselves and were often quite integrated in smaller towns in the U.S. Then came all the integration programs that pushed people together against their will and encouraged taking advantage of social welfare programs to overcome financial struggles - which to an extent were exacerbated by said integration.) So in the "grand scheme" of thing? Yeah... I'd like to see a lot more restrictions on welfare programs at the Federal level. (And at the same time, I'd suggest less government "red tape" making it legally risky or difficult for grocers or restaurants to give away any "day old" food or drinks. Enough food goes wasted that it could solve most of our hunger program just by efficiently redirecting it to those in need, rather than throwing it out!)
But a limited UBI setup that doesn't cost taxpayers any more than the existing system does, accomplished by simplifying the food stamp program and cutting down on administrative costs? I'd have to view that as at least a small improvement over what we're doing now.
Yep... and then the White House press secretary slipped up and blamed China instead of Russia too....
http://conservativetribune.com...
But I like Judge Napolitano's commentary:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion...
Is the ProTip the type with or without a baculum?
Hardly worth my time replying to you, except it's pretty disturbing how the OP here was modded +5 Interesting for that stereotypical Bernie Sanderesque drivel.
Paying for your own education is an investment in your future. Paying for other people's educations is an unknown.... How do you know how if those people will make any effort to learn anything useful, vs. just costing you a big chunk of tax money to act as a state-sponsored babysitter? And yes, despite that - our country decided it's willing to fork over the money to at least TRY to get the majority of people up to certain minimum levels of knowledge. But that's not good enough for a bunch of people today. Now, you hear these excuses about jobs being "too difficult to find", so they need a "free" college education as the new minimum.
News flash... The more people we churn out with 4 year degrees, the less a 4 year degree will be worth to an employer. Giving people taxpayer-funded higher education isn't going to do anything to improve the job situation if the businesses aren't here in the first place to hire all of them! That's where things sit today. Our biggest employers are WalMart and fast food giants.
The problem too many people have is a desire for a wealthy *lifestyle". That's a very different thing from wanting "nice things", IMO.
on a $100K salary, I could finally pay all of my bills comfortably, without worrying that I had to stick way too much on a credit card one month, stressing about how I'm going to get that paid back down in the coming months. I'd be able to make bigger than the minimum payment on a couple of my existing loans, to get them paid off more quickly and free up a little extra money to do more fun things with, too. And I wouldn't have the problems I have now where in really cold winter months, my electric bill is sky high and really cuts into what I can afford to buy as holiday gifts for people.
That's the kind of wealth I want ... not millions of dollars that force me to start dressing in expensive, fancy clothes for social events I'm expected to attend because of the new crowd I'm around, and the pressure to have an impressive sized and styled home, so those people don't think less of me when I invite them over.
Free education is never really free, first of all. All you're doing is advocating that the bulk of the costs of teaching students be covered by those who are already gainfully employed. Society has already pretty much agreed to accept that burden for a basic "core" education (grade school and high school). The enrollment fees some of the public high schools are charging are literally peanuts compared to what taxpayers are on the hook for to keep them running. I honestly don't know where those fees came from, except possibly from certain districts deciding it was a way to get around a failed tax increase vote? When I was in high school, there were never any fees like that -- but today, I have friends in the Chicago area having to pay $300 or so per kid, annually, for a public school. If a kid misses out on a high school education over those enrollment fees? I find it hard to believe that's the fault of anyone but the parents for not trying a little harder to get something worked out. I mean, otherwise? Why are we even still messing around with a public school system, if it's not really for those who can't afford the fee to get in?
The "decreasing number of jobs" should be able to be largely offset by encouraging more small business growth and new business ventures. Every day, people have ideas for things they might be able to do or sell as a business. But government taxes and regulations generally create a steep wall to climb, right from the get-go. (For example, "Obamacare" has caused quite a few businesses to close their doors or stop trying to grow because they can't afford the additional healthcare expenses they're now required to pay if they exceed 50 employees.) And even if we ignore all of that? Try opening your own sole proprietorship and then deciding to hire on your first additional employee! You're suddenly met with payroll challenges, and accounting that just got so much more complicated, you probably need to hire a bookkeeper or CPA as well, to handle all of that while you try to keep your business running. The current system discourages people from employing other people.
Those vending machines that dispense a mildew-laden cup of poor quality coffee have been around for a LONG time. I remember encountering one of those lousy machines when waiting around to be selected for jury duty, back in the late 1980's.
The fact is, people building and deploying these machines know that the public's expectations from them are minimal. The goal is to offer something you can afford with your left-over pocket change, so they get that impulse buy.
I think any building calling itself a restaurant is going to be held to a much higher standard. So robotic automation used in one of them really does still have to work with a food product of the same quality the restaurant used with human labor, or people will stop patronizing them.
If you paid attention to speeches given by Ray Kroc about McDonalds, you'd learn that HIS business model is rather unique anyway. He's really in the real estate business, with McDonalds restaurants as the "excuse" to acquire valuable land in developing areas. They generally make more money reselling McDonalds restaurants that have been open a while than they ever make selling food while they're open.
Sure, SOME people might do that. But most people I know (who range Libertarian to Conservative) are neither that concerned about the veracity of the claims that Russians were responsible for the leaked Hillary campaign emails OR concerned that the NSA is bleeding some talent right now.
As far as I'm concerned, the NSA serves a useful purpose, but it's one of those organizations that's been entrusted with a whole lot of power. Our government has a history of doing that at times, and inevitably, it comes back to haunt the general public when boundaries are overstepped and too many leaders aren't willing to reign them in again. I think we have this with today's FBI to an extent, and I put the Federal Reserve in the same category. The ATF has proven to abuse its power too (although they've been a bit more quiet in recent years).
I find it interesting that much of the anger over Wikileaks and the Hillary email isn't even attempting to debunk what was leaked as fake, edited or wrong. It's all focused on outrage that it leaked. So in other words, the truth got out and people reacted to the facts that were revealed. Funny, but I'm pretty ok with that.
As details come out (much of it thanks to Snowden) about just what the NSA has been doing, it's easy to see why people might be upset. There are entire categories of communication content that were being monitored wholesale. That implies that they've got way too many people on the payroll, as that was never the NSA's purpose. By comparison, that would be like your local police department engaging in surveillance of every single resident in your community, in a "proactive effort to stop crime".