I never said Facebook users had any "right" to dictate how the company runs their website. I suggested that if FB's owners are prudent, they'll voluntarily LISTEN to the users and their wishes.
Perhaps asking people to vote on changes isn't the best mechanism for that? (The low response rate sure indicates it.) But there's no legal requirement anyplace for FB to act on what's voted on by the users, in any case. They can still override any vote at any time, for any reason. They may as well call the whole thing a "survey" and ask for opinions, really.
But for what it's worth, you or I *could* become a customer of theirs in various ways. They do sell "credits" on Facebook prepaid cards at the store, for example. And I've experimented with paying them for some advertising before for my side business. (Turned out to be a total waste of money in my situation, but I tried it....)
I can't help but notice that as of late, MIT has a *load* of content coming out of the place revolving around the general concept of automation displacing humans. I think they're, perhaps, a little too fixated on it to look at the big picture clearly? (Don't get me wrong. I think MIT is doing a lot of excellent research work - and they're on the cutting edge month after month with interesting tech. developments. I just see how they'd get sucked into the "robots will displace us" idea in the midst of all of that.)
The bottom line is, humans are social creatures. There's WAY too much that gets lost when you get close to full automation of any business. The workplace isn't only about the work that's done. You're still selling your services or products to other human beings on the opposite end of the chain, and they want to interact with other people. At best, artificial intelligence is still just that; "faking it". Maybe, *maybe* we'll eventually reach a point where a robot can think, reason and interact with humans to the point where it's effectively the same as another person. But it's far too early to suggest that will be the case in any of our lifetimes.
What you do (and will continue) to see is automation replacing any workplace roles where humans act like "artificial robots", performing repetitive manual tasks that don't require any real thought. That still amounts to only a certain percentage of the work at hand in any given factory, and if it helps make production more profitable, it leads to more factories being built, who employ humans in all of the roles that aren't just assembly-related on the production floor. (And yes, it also creates a few more jobs for people who do repair, sales of and setup of those robots and machines.)
If users didn't contribute a bunch of status updates, photo collections and spend time commenting on what other users posted, the company would quickly fail.
In that sense, it's really pretty much nothing like fast food. McDonalds doesn't rely on people walking in its door contributing food and drinks so others will come in and exchange them for other food and drinks of their own (while profiting from the sale of advertising targeted at all the people walking in).
And while clearly, none of us are FORCED to use Facebook -- people tend to bitch and complain about the things they actually CARE about and USE, in the hopes it will result in product improvements. It would be a sure sign Facebook was dying out if you stopped hearing any complaints about it.
The truth is, the times are changing and social networking has become a central part of many people's daily lives. Earlier today, I was reading a financial blog where they commented that in 2012, only about 27% of all new cars sold were purchased by people under age 30. There's a growing trend for today's "20 somethings" not to buy a car or even get a driver's license, in the U.S., while conversely, that group is spending an ever increasing amount on computers and related technology.
I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for these changes, but the ability to work from home (or really, anywhere you can get a net connection) is one of them. Without a traditional workplace to go to each day, a lot of socialization is lost -- and social networking sites like Facebook help bridge that gap for people.
You can argue all day long about whether or not this is a "bad thing" -- but it's happening, regardless.
I don't know about that? I'd say that there's more of a bell curve in effect here. You can *generally* get further along, faster in the job market with the bachelors than the associates, but those going beyond that to earn masters' degrees often wind up unable to convert them to productive, higher-paying jobs.
There's such as thing as becoming "too educated" for the majority of people to take an interest in hiring you. Sure, it works out great if someone is really seeking the niche you're specialized in and has the money to afford the salary such a position commands. But all too often, it just means the individual spends a LOT of time unemployed or very under-employed.
As just a couple examples I've witnessed myself?
I used to do on-site computer service for a guy with a PhD who had a job proofing science textbooks for a major publishing house. They wound up laying him off and he spent the next year trying to get another job, with no luck. He finally wound up having to sell his house and move to another state just to find employment again - and he took a big loss on the whole thing.
One of my former in-laws had her Masters in Criminal Justice and guess what it got her? She had a job for a while as a prison guard and worked, briefly with someone else running a bail bonds business (which failed when the associate didn't live up to her end of some of the promises she made). I'd say overall, she was far better off never wasting time on that degree.....
I think you're correct, technically. To hear things from Microsoft's point of view, a full retail copy of Windows XP Pro or 7 was required to run as a VM on a Mac. An OEM license of Windows is only intended for use with the 1 new PC you purchased it with as a bundle.
On the other hand, I don't think the license specifically made any distinction that the new PC you purchased in a "bundle" with the OEM copy of Windows could NOT be a Mac? So you could probably buy a new Mac at a retailer like Micro Center and buy an OEM version of Windows 7 at the same time, for use with that Mac, and run it in a VM legally.
And simply because such a scenario can exist? It opens the door for a lot of "wiggle room" with the licensing. (How the heck is Microsoft going to know if that OEM copy of Windows 7 you possess and loaded on your Mac was actually purchased originally with said Mac, or if you really got it a few weeks earlier when you bought a new barebones PC that it turns out you put Linux on instead?)
Since I've recently passed the 40 year mark, maybe that puts me in that "old dog" category now? But I still work in I.T. supporting multiple platforms and systems, and I think I'm still pretty good at figuring out new UIs and upgrades to applications.
Nonetheless, I absolutely agree with Greenspun's blog on this. It's not so much a debate on whether the old START menu or the new tiles screen is more useful. It's a design issue/problem, where the radically new tiled UI feels like it's crudely bolted onto the traditional desktop UI. I feel like in Windows 8, I'm really running two different operating systems in tandem on a desktop machine, except the integration between them isn't even as tight as recent versions of a product like Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X gives you when running virtual Windows 7 sessions inside them!
For example, the tiled UI happily displays icons for apps like MS Office, which actually install and run from the Windows 7 style desktop side of things, yet it's possible to install web browsers which act completely independent of each other in the two UI's. To access them from both the tiles and the desktop side, you have to install them twice!
The way I see it, a goal of the dashboard electronics remaining relevant for the length of time the car is engineered to last (roughly a decade) really isn't some lofty ideal. The problem is the insistence on chasing the latest fads, vs. thinking about enhancements that stand up well on their own.
If you try to integrate heavily with 3rd. party devices like Apple iPhones, you wind up tied to Apple's upgrade path, instead of your own as an auto-maker.
On the other hand, if you look at such concepts as Cadillac's CUE, you're now talking about a customizable digital dash and heads-up display combo which offers features you can make use of for the life of the car (such as customizing the look of the gauges and readouts). With something as simple as a free downloadable software update an owner could load in via USB stick, this stuff could be refreshed or enhanced at will (and IMO, there's no huge risk of USB storage devices completely going away in 10 years). I'd also like to see more vehicles integrate their on-board diagnostics systems so it's not just a matter of storing trouble codes in memory someplace, never to be viewed until someone attaches an OBDII device to the port and fishes them out! There's a lot of good data streaming out of numerous sensors on today's vehicles, which could easily be collected and displayed in an end-user friendly format on a display in the dash. Again, since that's all part of an integrated system in the car anyway - it doesn't really matter of newer vehicles update the diagnostics standards. YOUR particular car is going to have what it has for that, throughout its lifespan, so making a nice UI to view it is going to be rather "timeless".
I was told, repeatedly, by attorneys during my divorce that prenuptials really don't hold much water in the Family Court system. You can put whatever you like in one, but the courts will still veto much of one if the judge handling the divorce case holds a different opinion of how assets should be distributed, etc.
I'll be honest. I tried marriage once and it was a pretty miserable failure Lost everything of value I owned and truly had to start over from square one, right in what should have been the "prime of my life". On the flip side, I got a great kid out of it -- but trying to justify the marriage as "all worthwhile" for that reason amounts to little more than an attempt to rationalize things. (Marriage, after all, is no true requirement for getting someone pregnant and having a kid.)
Since that time, I met a great woman (who went through a tough marriage before, like I did) and now we live as a blended family. I insisted from the start that we shouldn't concern ourselves with a goal of legal marriage though. Rather, we held our own commitment ceremony and invited only the people we felt were our true friends and family members who could understand the decision without casting judgements....
We both wear rings and consider ourselves married, but there's something relieving (to me at least... since I suppose I can't really speak for her) about knowing we didn't get suckered into paying the government for permission to marry by way of a license, It also prevents the Family Court system from stepping in and dictating who must share what with who, who gets to visit who on what terms, etc. -- should the worst happen and we break up on bad terms.
IMO, the idea of a couple making the commitment (in front of those you both care about) to live together as a "family unit" is a great thing. Families are the primary building blocks of our society. But LEGAL marriage is much more of a government construct... a way to determine taxation and exert authority over the populace. The biggest justification I can see, today, for legal marriage is the fear of a partner not having control over such things as making medical decisions for the other person, should they become incapacitated, or an employer's insurance plan refusing to cover a partner who isn't legally their "spouse". But those fighting for gay marriage rights are also indirectly fighting for reform in these areas, since the same complications and legal questions apply to them. I'm pretty confident these problems can be worked through and will be resolved as the years pass.
As I discovered first-hand, legal marriage can be a VERY foolish thing to undertake. No matter how much you love your partner, there's something incredibly stupid about setting yourself up so he/she can wipe you out financially on a whim, with no legal recourse. If your business partner did it, it would be declared theft or fraud and they'd be looking at years of imprisonment and hefty fines. When your marriage partner does it, the police and the courts look the other way, telling you "it was just as much hers as it was yours!", or "It was wrong, but we're not going to lift a finger to touch them because your divorce isn't even final yet and there's no telling what the judge will eventually rule about the property rights."
Too many people act like taking these risks just proves how much they love and trust their partner, and it's "supposed to be like that". But over 50% of these same people find out they were wrong about their promise to everyone that they'd stick with that person until death, too.
Anyone can file a lawsuit over just about anything..... So could advertisers decide to sue developers who made tools like Ad-Block? Of course!
I think the reason you haven't seen this happen so far (and why it may not happen in the future) is the relatively poor odds of winning such a case. First of all, you have to ask if users normally have the legal right to avoid viewing advertising that's presented to them. Clearly, there's vast evidence that they do, including the ability to change the channel on the TV when commercials come on.
One would have to successfully argue that somehow, contrary to all advertising ever created in the past, advertisers placing their ads on web sites enjoy a special legal protection where they can force viewers to view their ads.
All good suggestions.... but I'd add another here.
Add more of those automated postal centers they have in SOME post offices already. People should be able to go in, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and mail a box or buy a book of stamps. I work during the day, so by the time I'm out of work, the post offices around me are all closed. Without an automated postal center kiosk, I can't conduct any business with them (and boxes over 16 ounces or something like that are illegal to drop off in a blue mailbox or drop slot ever since the letter bomb scares, post 9-11).
The USPS *has* been gutted by corrupt politicians. No argument with that particular statement. That's the problem with government in general. Power corrupts and people need to CONSTANTLY be vigilant, trying to keep that power in check, if we expect to keep any kind of fair and functional government.
As for the "public is less efficient than private" comment? I wouldn't say it's a lie so much as "it depends". Government does certain things pretty efficiently. It's particularly useful when the country wants to undertake an extremely big project that has notable long-term benefits, but just doesn't show enough short term return on investment to interest private investors enough to fund the whole thing. (That's pretty much how we got the first man on the moon, for example. It's also how we put together the road and highway infrastructure we've got today. If that was done privately, I think at the very least, you'd see FAR more toll roads and roads with rules on who can use them and for what purpose.)
The thing is though, times change and what was "too big a project for the private sector" initially becomes doable over time. Space is being privatized successfully right now, making NASA increasingly irrelevant. The USPS is in the same situation. They have to adapt or become an anachronism.
As it stands today, I find the USPS very much a mixed bag. Generally, yes, the letters I send get delivered on time and efficiently. BUT, here's a prime counter-example. When I shut down my on-site computer service business recently, a buddy of mine wanted to take over with his company and service as many of my former customers as possible. So he paid to mail out letters to everyone in my address list informing them of the situation and enclosing his business card. Turns out nobody ever received that first batch -- and he even used 1st. class stamps on each one (not a bulk mailing rate). He sent out a second batch, which apparently finally started making it out to people, but took at least 2-3 weeks to arrive consistently. That is HORRIBLE service.
Honestly, this doesn't really change my opinion of them a bit. All these people placing them on a "do not buy" list... what do you hope to accomplish with that? Just by pure statistics alone, very close to HALF the entire voting U.S. population claims to side with Schnatter's support for Romney. That's far more than enough potential customers for him to remain very successful, EVEN if you could somehow convince ALL who disagree to never buy a Papa John's pizza again. So right away -- no hope of a successful boycott.
But more to my original point -- I'm not so sure he's wrong to fight the idea of providing healthcare benefits for all of his employees? Pizza delivery and baking isn't really something you do expecting excellent compensation, benefits and career advancement. The only reason we've collectively reached this situation where so many people clamor for paid healthcare is the spiraling cost. Everyone's afraid of what their "self pay" bill would look like.
Think of the spiraling cost of college tuition.... Seems pretty proportionate to the amount of student loans people became able to tap into to pay for it. If there were no loans, do you think colleges and universities would charge the same rates they charge now?
It's the same principle with healthcare today. If they can basically make health insurance a mandatory thing it's "unthinkable" to try to buy medical care without, they can charge insanely high rates and keep getting away with it.
I hate these types of comparisons, personally, because I think they miss the bigger picture completely.
Part of the U.S.'s whole problem right now is the desire to patch things back up, post financial crash, to quickly promise people "it's not SO bad" and "We can soon get on with business as usual again!" Meanwhile, the real problems haven't been corrected at all, and we're just setting ourselves up for another, even bigger, fall, down the road.
The "recovery" we're supposedly having right now is pretty much artificial. The Fed pumps a bunch of money back into the banks who screwed up and mismanaged things.... Entire industries that screwed up to the point of going under (like GM) get bailed out to make things look good again, ASAP.... and massive amounts of government (AKA. taxpayer) money gets funneled to such things as TSA agents, Homeland Security staff, and workers hired for road improvement work for a few years.
Before you know it, things are started to look a little bit better again. But it's kind of like a balloon with a bunch of small pinhole punctures in it. They just re-inflate it and say, "See... looks pretty good again now!" but they never patch all the holes.
The bottom line is the fact that government (unlike private business) never does anything that generates a profit. All they can do is tax you or print money, devaluing the money you already possess. And as they keep doing both to blow the leaky balloon back up again, we're all going to suffer for it eventually.
None of this is meant to be some sort of pitch that we needed a Republican like Ronney in office, mind you. I think for one thing, much of this damage has already been done and we're just going to start feeling the after-effects here in the next few years, regardless of who the President is. But further, I really don't think EITHER party will do what it takes to turn this problem around. The most likely scenario is a bunch of attempts to keep patching things and patching things until it all erodes away into a worthless currency.
I tend to side with the critics here, asking if maybe management (including possibly the person posting the original question) are really the ones to blame?
I've worked in I.T. for something like 25 years now, for companies big and small, though the only times I've held a title of "manager", I was really only tasked with managing outside consultants or developers. I've always preferred being relatively "hands on" with the problem solving and system/network administration tasks at-hand, vs. spending my day in meetings and typing up Excel spreadsheets trying to explain what the "team" was doing.
Bottom line? Sure, there are a LOT of people out there trying to get hired in I.T. as support people or sysadmins who REALLY don't know what they're doing. If more companies would let the people actually DOING those jobs interview these people, they'd be able to weed out far more of the bad seeds before they even started. What I see, time and time again, is some I.T. manager who thinks he's simply "too busy" to interview some potentially really good people who apply for positions, and then he gets in a panic when it comes down the wire and he absolutely can't go without employing another person any longer. He winds up asking H.R. to find him someone good, and of course they don't know squat about I.T. so they pick through the resume submissions based on "standard issue" criteria like the college degree they claim to have, or the number of certifications they list. If he does "second interviews" with these pre-selected people, he may just be trying to pick the best of a bad bunch at that point.
But another problem is with how the I.T. workers are managed. You can have some really top-notch people working for you, yet they're made out to be clueless, inefficient screw-ups because they're actually trying to use their brains to decide which tasks on their plates are REALLY most important to the company. Meanwhile, some upper management character is throwing fits about relatively inconsequential items his ego demands be put "front and center". If you're busy working a difficult problem affecting a whole division of the company and by doing so, you didn't get some new computer issued to somebody first thing in the morning... guess what usually happens? It's that idiot in I.T. who caused the employee not to have that shiny new PC on their desk on time. Nobody's even aware of the work the I.T. guy was actually in the middle of doing.
And here's the kicker.... You can say all you like about this simply being a "lack of communications" issue. "If management was simply kept informed about what I.T. was doing, everyone would be better off." But so many computer problems are of a "need to fix this yesterday!" level of importance, your good I.T. rank and file employees are going to concentrate on getting that done -- not on getting sidetracked with emailing status updates to key people. Management needs to realize that a certain level of TRUST is required here. You have to say, "I don't really know what Joe Q. has been doing the last few days, but that's ok. I trust Joe Q. because when I make an effort to find out if anyone feels Joe helped them with their issues, I get loads of positive feedback that he did." Micro-managing I.T. is almost never wise....
I, too, have no plans to vote for either Obama or Romney. I think a vote should only be cast for someone you're confident is a good choice for running the country. Neither one of these people have shown they deserve the title of President, IMO.
I really dislike that "vote for the lesser of two evils" concept. People have been doing that for a long time now, and that's largely how we got to the mess we're in today!
It seems to me that the current system has a razor sharp focus on ensuring everything quickly comes down to only 2 remaining viable candidates, at all costs. If a 3rd. party shows promise, the media or members of one of the two established parties pull out all the stops to discredit him or her. They want politics to run just like our sports teams... only 2 teams on the field fighting it out to see who wins. No matter how many teams play each other in a season, it has to come down to only two in the end, to declare someone the winner.
Until this changes, the American people really aren't able to vote for the type of government they want. They're only able to pick from two people pre-selected for them by the elite (meaning those with enough money and influence to boil the choices down to the final two they want to see you pick from). And sure, you CAN vote for a 3rd. party candidate (and I almost always do so). But we all know it's currently nothing more than a small display of contempt for the status quo system. I really doubt any sane person voting for, say, Gary Johnson, believes he really has a decent shot at winning.
Still, that's fine with me. You don't earn a prize for having voted for the guy who winds up winning.
I get that, completely.... and you're right. But still, the whole argument that someone acting improperly on company time deserves punishment really only extends as far as reprimanding them, giving them a pay cut or demotion, or firing them.
The police shouldn't really differentiate when it comes to who (if anyone) someone was employed by at the time they did something unlawful. (The courts *might* do so when a case goes to trial -- but that's a different issue, and would typically only come into play if there was evidence the company encouraged the unlawful behavior in some way.)
As far as the level of criminal punishment these guys would/should get for this stunt? I'm of the opinion it's not extremely serious, actually. Stupid and immature? Sure... But on the scale of illegal activities, I think it really does rank among the minor issues. If these guys proceeded to leverage the photos to attempt to extort money from the woman, or started making money with a pay web site featuring "stolen cellphone nude pics" or something? Now THAT would take it to the next level. As it is, what we've got here is a woman who was really too careless or trusting with what she kept on her phone, handing it over to a couple guys who took advantage of the situation for kicks.
I'm not quite sure how your post was modded so "Insightful".... but regardless?
The POINT is that we all *realize* the arbitrarily chosen DVD format is proprietary/closed, and we're complaining to point out the utter stupidity of such a move by the motion picture association and related companies!
Of course there's nothing "natural" about the existing DVD format, or some reason it has to be done the way they did it. They simply came up with ONE method of storing the bits digitally and then locked it down, demanding licensing by way of leveraging the laws of the land to their benefit.
So far, not ONE format for storing entertainment content has lasted without eventually being made obsolete. (Know many people listening to those cylinder records these days? How about those 8-track tapes?) So I don't care much that the current DVD format will be long gone by the year 2020. The issue is that here, today, we have millions of people who spent lots of money buying copies of movies they wanted to add to their personal collections, and still, they're in the ridiculous situation of actually breaking federal law every time they choose to view one of them using some DVD playback software made for a free, open-source operating system.
You can tell people to "go make a better, open format!" all you want, but they have no way to modify the content they've already purchased, or the content they borrow every time they borrow a DVD movie from their local library. So yes, all the public can do right now is keep crying about it. Here's hoping they cry long and loud enough to keep the movie industry from getting a good night's sleep.
I watched the last debate, out of what I guess was a partial sense of guilt and a partial sense of duty as an American citizen... but it sorely disappointed me.
Not that I expected better, but it just served as a reminder of what a circus the whole thing is today.
As I pointed out to some friends of mine after the debate, both candidates are primarily concerned with putting on a good show. They went over their allotted speaking time over and over again. I've seen high-school debate classes with students FAR more capable of getting their points across within their time slots! You have to ask yourself if Romney and Obama are really that unskilled at time management? I think you and I both know the answer to that one. They're only running out the clock and continuing to talk because it's a TACTIC. If a candidate really doesn't have a good, effective comment or rebuttal to make, he wanders off topic to run the clock down, and then pretends to start addressing the issue as time is running out. That way, he can appear to have simply not been given enough time to explain his position rather than do so in full and look foolish. Alternately, he can purposely exceed the time limit in an attempt to irritate his opponent and rattle him.
Beyond that? I expect more of the REAL issues will be directly addressed by those "alternative, smaller political parties" we finally get to hear debate in their own little CNN hosted program tomorrow.
If you want to really discuss where the U.S. stands in the eyes of the rest of the world, a good start would be expounding on the recent Wall Street Journal article explaining how U.S. citizens living abroad are suddenly finding foreign banks no longer want their business. The U.S. government (and IRS in particular) have become so demanding and ruthless in their quest to "know all" about each person's investments and spending habits, they've made it uneconomical for foreign banks to comply anymore. Even the Swiss bankers (once considered almost untouchable) are being given the ultimatum by the USA... turn over all those records of who has what in your bank, or else. Some people have even tried to turn in their passports and renounce their U.S. citizenship, only to find the IRS invalidates it, because they haven't paid past taxes (or even an "exit tax" they expect to be paid first).
It's an ugly state of affairs when your country believes it literally "owns" you, despite your express intentions to leave it behind. And the rest of the world realizes how draconian the U.S. government is getting, and doesn't want to get involved in that mess.... Here's betting NONE of this is even hinted at tonight in the "debates".
I don't have a problem with your decisions, but I don't know that I'd give that advice to everyone else?
IMO, the current stare of SSDs is such that you're still paying a big price premium for one over a traditional hard drive, and you're getting technology that clearly has certain limitations (primarily being a limited lifespan if it's forced to do many, many data rewrites).
You can Google search it to see what I'm talking about, but there are quite a few sysadmins out there who got excited by the prospects of moving their relational databases onto SSDs on their servers for a big speed boost, only to find they were consistently killing off the drives in a matter of as little as 2 to 6 months' time. They clearly couldn't hold up to that type of use/abuse.
On the other hand, 99% of the other tasks you might do with a computer aren't nearly as rewrite intensive. If, say, you're a computer gamer? You're going to like an SSD for the advantages it gives of faster load time for all those levels they have to read in. The casual user will mainly appreciate the quick boot time if he/she turns the computer off when it's not in use, so finds themselves booting up from scratch pretty regularly. Digital video editors and photographers and artists should appreciate the quicker time to load plug-ins and video content, not to mention large applications.
But to me, the temporary swap file is something you can still throw onto a physical hard drive, at least in a desktop PC. You can even recycle a smaller capacity drive this way that you'd otherwise not bother using anymore. It's pretty much win-win because it won't really slow down the overall system performance much at all if everything else is on the SSD. (Ideally, you have enough RAM so the swap file isn't being relied on real heavily anyway.)
I'm glad this question was asked, because I've experienced the same thing in many situations. (When I worked doing on-site PC service, I had a lot of service calls related to wi-fi issues, and often found routers in a degraded state. One was so bad, you could literally only see the SSID and make a connection if you had a laptop or mobile device within 2-3 feet of it!)
The explanation about bad capacitors sounds about right though, since that's been the bane of most other modern electronics over the last decade or so. If not capacitors, I imagine other inferior quality parts soldered onto the circuit board that fail with heat and time.
As cheap as some of the wireless routers have become though, I suppose they really are pretty disposable. I've got a Tenda branded Chinese wireless N router here that's actually working pretty well for me with a 50mbit cable modem connection from Comcast attached to it. I have a 3 story townhouse apt. and the signal is still pretty good on the 3rd. floor with this down in the corner of the basement. The router's cost? Absolutely free last year with a coupon Micro Center mailed out. But I can buy them there all day long for about $20 each.
I understand the reasoning behind class action suits perfectly well, and don't object to the theory in the least bit.
The problem I have with them is the fact that no matter how small a compensation is eventually awarded the "settlement class", the attorneys who brought the suit get a huge payout for themselves.
In normal court cases, there's a reasonable expectation of the wronged party receiving fair to excellent compensation when their case is won or settled. If the attorney felt he/she couldn't get you very much, you'd likely decide not to file suit in the first place. Many times, the attorney's pay is directly tied to the winnings as a percentage, motivating him/her to get as much as possible for you.
With class actions, it seems like any law office with some spare time can simply hear about some dissatisfaction out there with a product or service, ask people to email or call them if they've experienced it themselves, and put together a case. As long as they're awarded some big dollar figure as their own compensation in the eventual settlement, they can ask for VERY little for the rest of the settlement class.
I recall several of these class actions in the past where the eventual award was nothing more than a discount coupon off the purchase price of another product from the company. Why would I want to buy something else from the company that sold me a dud the last time?! That sounds to me like the lawyers just wanted to make sure the settlement went through so they'd get paid, so they asked for the smallest compensation possible for everyone else.
I've used enough SSD's with success to say you shouldn't necessarily be afraid of them. However, there are certain things you really need to do when using one to prolong its life.
Most importantly, don't save temporary swap files on one. Every desktop PC I've set up with an SSD boot drive, I custom configured to save its swap files on a second, standard hard drive. That does wonders for cutting down on unnecessary writes/rewrites to the SSD.
Second, avoid using them for relational databases. It seems like databases are the number one killer of SSDs, probably because many of them do thousands and thousands of writes/updates to the database file(s) in a short period of time.
SSDs are really FAR better for reading in data than writing it back out. They should allow essentially an infinite number of reads (until the whole controller in the thing finally fails due to bad capacitors or what-not). So they're great for holding the core of the OS that has to get read in/loaded up every single time the machine boots up. But anything you're going to be changing often is best stored on a traditional drive you can assign as your "data" disk.
Laptop/portable users may not have this luxury, obviously.... but my strategy in those cases is not to skimp and buy a cheaper SSD for them. Spend the extra money for one of the most reliable models, and do regular backups so a failure won't cost you much data loss. Most people upgrade laptops every 2-3 years anyway, so hopefully the SSD can make it that long.
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I never said Facebook users had any "right" to dictate how the company runs their website. I suggested that if FB's owners are prudent, they'll voluntarily LISTEN to the users and their wishes.
Perhaps asking people to vote on changes isn't the best mechanism for that? (The low response rate sure indicates it.) But there's no legal requirement anyplace for FB to act on what's voted on by the users, in any case. They can still override any vote at any time, for any reason. They may as well call the whole thing a "survey" and ask for opinions, really.
But for what it's worth, you or I *could* become a customer of theirs in various ways. They do sell "credits" on Facebook prepaid cards at the store, for example. And I've experimented with paying them for some advertising before for my side business. (Turned out to be a total waste of money in my situation, but I tried it ....)
I can't help but notice that as of late, MIT has a *load* of content coming out of the place revolving around the general concept of automation displacing humans. I think they're, perhaps, a little too fixated on it to look at the big picture clearly? (Don't get me wrong. I think MIT is doing a lot of excellent research work - and they're on the cutting edge month after month with interesting tech. developments. I just see how they'd get sucked into the "robots will displace us" idea in the midst of all of that.)
The bottom line is, humans are social creatures. There's WAY too much that gets lost when you get close to full automation of any business. The workplace isn't only about the work that's done. You're still selling your services or products to other human beings on the opposite end of the chain, and they want to interact with other people. At best, artificial intelligence is still just that; "faking it". Maybe, *maybe* we'll eventually reach a point where a robot can think, reason and interact with humans to the point where it's effectively the same as another person. But it's far too early to suggest that will be the case in any of our lifetimes.
What you do (and will continue) to see is automation replacing any workplace roles where humans act like "artificial robots", performing repetitive manual tasks that don't require any real thought. That still amounts to only a certain percentage of the work at hand in any given factory, and if it helps make production more profitable, it leads to more factories being built, who employ humans in all of the roles that aren't just assembly-related on the production floor. (And yes, it also creates a few more jobs for people who do repair, sales of and setup of those robots and machines.)
I don't know? I think the confusion stemmed from your first sentence:
The bigger a degree, the more interest it'll engender.
That, IMO, is simply untrue.
Facebook is DEFINITELY a two way street.
If users didn't contribute a bunch of status updates, photo collections and spend time commenting on what other users posted, the company would quickly fail.
In that sense, it's really pretty much nothing like fast food. McDonalds doesn't rely on people walking in its door contributing food and drinks so others will come in and exchange them for other food and drinks of their own (while profiting from the sale of advertising targeted at all the people walking in).
And while clearly, none of us are FORCED to use Facebook -- people tend to bitch and complain about the things they actually CARE about and USE, in the hopes it will result in product improvements. It would be a sure sign Facebook was dying out if you stopped hearing any complaints about it.
The truth is, the times are changing and social networking has become a central part of many people's daily lives. Earlier today, I was reading a financial blog where they commented that in 2012, only about 27% of all new cars sold were purchased by people under age 30. There's a growing trend for today's "20 somethings" not to buy a car or even get a driver's license, in the U.S., while conversely, that group is spending an ever increasing amount on computers and related technology.
I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for these changes, but the ability to work from home (or really, anywhere you can get a net connection) is one of them. Without a traditional workplace to go to each day, a lot of socialization is lost -- and social networking sites like Facebook help bridge that gap for people.
You can argue all day long about whether or not this is a "bad thing" -- but it's happening, regardless.
I don't know about that? I'd say that there's more of a bell curve in effect here. You can *generally* get further along, faster in the job market with the bachelors than the associates, but those going beyond that to earn masters' degrees often wind up unable to convert them to productive, higher-paying jobs.
There's such as thing as becoming "too educated" for the majority of people to take an interest in hiring you. Sure, it works out great if someone is really seeking the niche you're specialized in and has the money to afford the salary such a position commands. But all too often, it just means the individual spends a LOT of time unemployed or very under-employed.
As just a couple examples I've witnessed myself?
I used to do on-site computer service for a guy with a PhD who had a job proofing science textbooks for a major publishing house. They wound up laying him off and he spent the next year trying to get another job, with no luck. He finally wound up having to sell his house and move to another state just to find employment again - and he took a big loss on the whole thing.
One of my former in-laws had her Masters in Criminal Justice and guess what it got her? She had a job for a while as a prison guard and worked, briefly with someone else running a bail bonds business (which failed when the associate didn't live up to her end of some of the promises she made). I'd say overall, she was far better off never wasting time on that degree.....
I think you're correct, technically. To hear things from Microsoft's point of view, a full retail copy of Windows XP Pro or 7 was required to run as a VM on a Mac.
An OEM license of Windows is only intended for use with the 1 new PC you purchased it with as a bundle.
On the other hand, I don't think the license specifically made any distinction that the new PC you purchased in a "bundle" with the OEM copy of Windows could NOT be a Mac? So you could probably buy a new Mac at a retailer like Micro Center and buy an OEM version of Windows 7 at the same time, for use with that Mac, and run it in a VM legally.
And simply because such a scenario can exist? It opens the door for a lot of "wiggle room" with the licensing. (How the heck is Microsoft going to know if that OEM copy of Windows 7 you possess and loaded on your Mac was actually purchased originally with said Mac, or if you really got it a few weeks earlier when you bought a new barebones PC that it turns out you put Linux on instead?)
Sorry.... I recalled reading about this browser issue not too long ago, but can't locate the original article anymore.
I suspect it had to do with Chrome though, and was apparently a bug/issue they corrected in a more recent build.
The link below indicates problems with build 22, for example:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/Ul7_1HM6-PM
Since I've recently passed the 40 year mark, maybe that puts me in that "old dog" category now? But I still work in I.T. supporting multiple platforms and systems, and I think I'm still pretty good at figuring out new UIs and upgrades to applications.
Nonetheless, I absolutely agree with Greenspun's blog on this. It's not so much a debate on whether the old START menu or the new tiles screen is more useful. It's a design issue/problem, where the radically new tiled UI feels like it's crudely bolted onto the traditional desktop UI. I feel like in Windows 8, I'm really running two different operating systems in tandem on a desktop machine, except the integration between them isn't even as tight as recent versions of a product like Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X gives you when running virtual Windows 7 sessions inside them!
For example, the tiled UI happily displays icons for apps like MS Office, which actually install and run from the Windows 7 style desktop side of things, yet it's possible to install web browsers which act completely independent of each other in the two UI's. To access them from both the tiles and the desktop side, you have to install them twice!
The way I see it, a goal of the dashboard electronics remaining relevant for the length of time the car is engineered to last (roughly a decade) really isn't some lofty ideal. The problem is the insistence on chasing the latest fads, vs. thinking about enhancements that stand up well on their own.
If you try to integrate heavily with 3rd. party devices like Apple iPhones, you wind up tied to Apple's upgrade path, instead of your own as an auto-maker.
On the other hand, if you look at such concepts as Cadillac's CUE, you're now talking about a customizable digital dash and heads-up display combo which offers features you can make use of for the life of the car (such as customizing the look of the gauges and readouts). With something as simple as a free downloadable software update an owner could load in via USB stick, this stuff could be refreshed or enhanced at will (and IMO, there's no huge risk of USB storage devices completely going away in 10 years). I'd also like to see more vehicles integrate their on-board diagnostics systems so it's not just a matter of storing trouble codes in memory someplace, never to be viewed until someone attaches an OBDII device to the port and fishes them out! There's a lot of good data streaming out of numerous sensors on today's vehicles, which could easily be collected and displayed in an end-user friendly format on a display in the dash. Again, since that's all part of an integrated system in the car anyway - it doesn't really matter of newer vehicles update the diagnostics standards. YOUR particular car is going to have what it has for that, throughout its lifespan, so making a nice UI to view it is going to be rather "timeless".
Are you sure about this?
I was told, repeatedly, by attorneys during my divorce that prenuptials really don't hold much water in the Family Court system. You can put whatever you like in one, but the courts will still veto much of one if the judge handling the divorce case holds a different opinion of how assets should be distributed, etc.
I'll be honest. I tried marriage once and it was a pretty miserable failure Lost everything of value I owned and truly had to start over from square one, right in what should have been the "prime of my life". On the flip side, I got a great kid out of it -- but trying to justify the marriage as "all worthwhile" for that reason amounts to little more than an attempt to rationalize things. (Marriage, after all, is no true requirement for getting someone pregnant and having a kid.)
Since that time, I met a great woman (who went through a tough marriage before, like I did) and now we live as a blended family. I insisted from the start that we shouldn't concern ourselves with a goal of legal marriage though. Rather, we held our own commitment ceremony and invited only the people we felt were our true friends and family members who could understand the decision without casting judgements....
We both wear rings and consider ourselves married, but there's something relieving (to me at least ... since I suppose I can't really speak for her) about knowing we didn't get suckered into paying the government for permission to marry by way of a license, It also prevents the Family Court system from stepping in and dictating who must share what with who, who gets to visit who on what terms, etc. -- should the worst happen and we break up on bad terms.
IMO, the idea of a couple making the commitment (in front of those you both care about) to live together as a "family unit" is a great thing. Families are the primary building blocks of our society. But LEGAL marriage is much more of a government construct... a way to determine taxation and exert authority over the populace. The biggest justification I can see, today, for legal marriage is the fear of a partner not having control over such things as making medical decisions for the other person, should they become incapacitated, or an employer's insurance plan refusing to cover a partner who isn't legally their "spouse". But those fighting for gay marriage rights are also indirectly fighting for reform in these areas, since the same complications and legal questions apply to them. I'm pretty confident these problems can be worked through and will be resolved as the years pass.
As I discovered first-hand, legal marriage can be a VERY foolish thing to undertake. No matter how much you love your partner, there's something incredibly stupid about setting yourself up so he/she can wipe you out financially on a whim, with no legal recourse. If your business partner did it, it would be declared theft or fraud and they'd be looking at years of imprisonment and hefty fines. When your marriage partner does it, the police and the courts look the other way, telling you "it was just as much hers as it was yours!", or "It was wrong, but we're not going to lift a finger to touch them because your divorce isn't even final yet and there's no telling what the judge will eventually rule about the property rights."
Too many people act like taking these risks just proves how much they love and trust their partner, and it's "supposed to be like that". But over 50% of these same people find out they were wrong about their promise to everyone that they'd stick with that person until death, too.
Anyone can file a lawsuit over just about anything..... So could advertisers decide to sue developers who made tools like Ad-Block? Of course!
I think the reason you haven't seen this happen so far (and why it may not happen in the future) is the relatively poor odds of winning such a case. First of all, you have to ask if users normally have the legal right to avoid viewing advertising that's presented to them. Clearly, there's vast evidence that they do, including the ability to change the channel on the TV when commercials come on.
One would have to successfully argue that somehow, contrary to all advertising ever created in the past, advertisers placing their ads on web sites enjoy a special legal protection where they can force viewers to view their ads.
IMO, such a suggestion borders on insanity .....
All good suggestions.... but I'd add another here.
Add more of those automated postal centers they have in SOME post offices already. People should be able to go in, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and mail a box or buy a book of stamps. I work during the day, so by the time I'm out of work, the post offices around me are all closed. Without an automated postal center kiosk, I can't conduct any business with them (and boxes over 16 ounces or something like that are illegal to drop off in a blue mailbox or drop slot ever since the letter bomb scares, post 9-11).
I'm simply going to say this.
The USPS *has* been gutted by corrupt politicians. No argument with that particular statement. That's the problem with government in general. Power corrupts and people need to CONSTANTLY be vigilant, trying to keep that power in check, if we expect to keep any kind of fair and functional government.
As for the "public is less efficient than private" comment? I wouldn't say it's a lie so much as "it depends". Government does certain things pretty efficiently. It's particularly useful when the country wants to undertake an extremely big project that has notable long-term benefits, but just doesn't show enough short term return on investment to interest private investors enough to fund the whole thing. (That's pretty much how we got the first man on the moon, for example. It's also how we put together the road and highway infrastructure we've got today. If that was done privately, I think at the very least, you'd see FAR more toll roads and roads with rules on who can use them and for what purpose.)
The thing is though, times change and what was "too big a project for the private sector" initially becomes doable over time. Space is being privatized successfully right now, making NASA increasingly irrelevant. The USPS is in the same situation. They have to adapt or become an anachronism.
As it stands today, I find the USPS very much a mixed bag. Generally, yes, the letters I send get delivered on time and efficiently. BUT, here's a prime counter-example. When I shut down my on-site computer service business recently, a buddy of mine wanted to take over with his company and service as many of my former customers as possible. So he paid to mail out letters to everyone in my address list informing them of the situation and enclosing his business card. Turns out nobody ever received that first batch -- and he even used 1st. class stamps on each one (not a bulk mailing rate). He sent out a second batch, which apparently finally started making it out to people, but took at least 2-3 weeks to arrive consistently. That is HORRIBLE service.
Honestly, this doesn't really change my opinion of them a bit. All these people placing them on a "do not buy" list ... what do you hope to accomplish with that? Just by pure statistics alone, very close to HALF the entire voting U.S. population claims to side with Schnatter's support for Romney. That's far more than enough potential customers for him to remain very successful, EVEN if you could somehow convince ALL who disagree to never buy a Papa John's pizza again. So right away -- no hope of a successful boycott.
But more to my original point -- I'm not so sure he's wrong to fight the idea of providing healthcare benefits for all of his employees? Pizza delivery and baking isn't really something you do expecting excellent compensation, benefits and career advancement. The only reason we've collectively reached this situation where so many people clamor for paid healthcare is the spiraling cost. Everyone's afraid of what their "self pay" bill would look like.
Think of the spiraling cost of college tuition.... Seems pretty proportionate to the amount of student loans people became able to tap into to pay for it. If there were no loans, do you think colleges and universities would charge the same rates they charge now?
It's the same principle with healthcare today. If they can basically make health insurance a mandatory thing it's "unthinkable" to try to buy medical care without, they can charge insanely high rates and keep getting away with it.
I hate these types of comparisons, personally, because I think they miss the bigger picture completely.
Part of the U.S.'s whole problem right now is the desire to patch things back up, post financial crash, to quickly promise people "it's not SO bad" and "We can soon get on with business as usual again!" Meanwhile, the real problems haven't been corrected at all, and we're just setting ourselves up for another, even bigger, fall, down the road.
The "recovery" we're supposedly having right now is pretty much artificial. The Fed pumps a bunch of money back into the banks who screwed up and mismanaged things.... Entire industries that screwed up to the point of going under (like GM) get bailed out to make things look good again, ASAP .... and massive amounts of government (AKA. taxpayer) money gets funneled to such things as TSA agents, Homeland Security staff, and workers hired for road improvement work for a few years.
Before you know it, things are started to look a little bit better again. But it's kind of like a balloon with a bunch of small pinhole punctures in it. They just re-inflate it and say, "See... looks pretty good again now!" but they never patch all the holes.
The bottom line is the fact that government (unlike private business) never does anything that generates a profit. All they can do is tax you or print money, devaluing the money you already possess. And as they keep doing both to blow the leaky balloon back up again, we're all going to suffer for it eventually.
None of this is meant to be some sort of pitch that we needed a Republican like Ronney in office, mind you. I think for one thing, much of this damage has already been done and we're just going to start feeling the after-effects here in the next few years, regardless of who the President is. But further, I really don't think EITHER party will do what it takes to turn this problem around. The most likely scenario is a bunch of attempts to keep patching things and patching things until it all erodes away into a worthless currency.
I tend to side with the critics here, asking if maybe management (including possibly the person posting the original question) are really the ones to blame?
I've worked in I.T. for something like 25 years now, for companies big and small, though the only times I've held a title of "manager", I was really only tasked with managing outside consultants or developers. I've always preferred being relatively "hands on" with the problem solving and system/network administration tasks at-hand, vs. spending my day in meetings and typing up Excel spreadsheets trying to explain what the "team" was doing.
Bottom line? Sure, there are a LOT of people out there trying to get hired in I.T. as support people or sysadmins who REALLY don't know what they're doing. If more companies would let the people actually DOING those jobs interview these people, they'd be able to weed out far more of the bad seeds before they even started. What I see, time and time again, is some I.T. manager who thinks he's simply "too busy" to interview some potentially really good people who apply for positions, and then he gets in a panic when it comes down the wire and he absolutely can't go without employing another person any longer. He winds up asking H.R. to find him someone good, and of course they don't know squat about I.T. so they pick through the resume submissions based on "standard issue" criteria like the college degree they claim to have, or the number of certifications they list. If he does "second interviews" with these pre-selected people, he may just be trying to pick the best of a bad bunch at that point.
But another problem is with how the I.T. workers are managed. You can have some really top-notch people working for you, yet they're made out to be clueless, inefficient screw-ups because they're actually trying to use their brains to decide which tasks on their plates are REALLY most important to the company. Meanwhile, some upper management character is throwing fits about relatively inconsequential items his ego demands be put "front and center". If you're busy working a difficult problem affecting a whole division of the company and by doing so, you didn't get some new computer issued to somebody first thing in the morning ... guess what usually happens? It's that idiot in I.T. who caused the employee not to have that shiny new PC on their desk on time. Nobody's even aware of the work the I.T. guy was actually in the middle of doing.
And here's the kicker.... You can say all you like about this simply being a "lack of communications" issue. "If management was simply kept informed about what I.T. was doing, everyone would be better off." But so many computer problems are of a "need to fix this yesterday!" level of importance, your good I.T. rank and file employees are going to concentrate on getting that done -- not on getting sidetracked with emailing status updates to key people. Management needs to realize that a certain level of TRUST is required here. You have to say, "I don't really know what Joe Q. has been doing the last few days, but that's ok. I trust Joe Q. because when I make an effort to find out if anyone feels Joe helped them with their issues, I get loads of positive feedback that he did." Micro-managing I.T. is almost never wise....
I, too, have no plans to vote for either Obama or Romney. I think a vote should only be cast for someone you're confident is a good choice for running the country. Neither one of these people have shown they deserve the title of President, IMO.
I really dislike that "vote for the lesser of two evils" concept. People have been doing that for a long time now, and that's largely how we got to the mess we're in today!
It seems to me that the current system has a razor sharp focus on ensuring everything quickly comes down to only 2 remaining viable candidates, at all costs. If a 3rd. party shows promise, the media or members of one of the two established parties pull out all the stops to discredit him or her. They want politics to run just like our sports teams ... only 2 teams on the field fighting it out to see who wins. No matter how many teams play each other in a season, it has to come down to only two in the end, to declare someone the winner.
Until this changes, the American people really aren't able to vote for the type of government they want. They're only able to pick from two people pre-selected for them by the elite (meaning those with enough money and influence to boil the choices down to the final two they want to see you pick from). And sure, you CAN vote for a 3rd. party candidate (and I almost always do so). But we all know it's currently nothing more than a small display of contempt for the status quo system. I really doubt any sane person voting for, say, Gary Johnson, believes he really has a decent shot at winning.
Still, that's fine with me. You don't earn a prize for having voted for the guy who winds up winning.
I get that, completely .... and you're right. But still, the whole argument that someone acting improperly on company time deserves punishment really only extends as far as reprimanding them, giving them a pay cut or demotion, or firing them.
The police shouldn't really differentiate when it comes to who (if anyone) someone was employed by at the time they did something unlawful. (The courts *might* do so when a case goes to trial -- but that's a different issue, and would typically only come into play if there was evidence the company encouraged the unlawful behavior in some way.)
As far as the level of criminal punishment these guys would/should get for this stunt? I'm of the opinion it's not extremely serious, actually. Stupid and immature? Sure... But on the scale of illegal activities, I think it really does rank among the minor issues. If these guys proceeded to leverage the photos to attempt to extort money from the woman, or started making money with a pay web site featuring "stolen cellphone nude pics" or something? Now THAT would take it to the next level. As it is, what we've got here is a woman who was really too careless or trusting with what she kept on her phone, handing it over to a couple guys who took advantage of the situation for kicks.
I'm not quite sure how your post was modded so "Insightful" .... but regardless?
The POINT is that we all *realize* the arbitrarily chosen DVD format is proprietary/closed, and we're complaining to point out the utter stupidity of such a move by the motion picture association and related companies!
Of course there's nothing "natural" about the existing DVD format, or some reason it has to be done the way they did it. They simply came up with ONE method of storing the bits digitally and then locked it down, demanding licensing by way of leveraging the laws of the land to their benefit.
So far, not ONE format for storing entertainment content has lasted without eventually being made obsolete. (Know many people listening to those cylinder records these days? How about those 8-track tapes?) So I don't care much that the current DVD format will be long gone by the year 2020. The issue is that here, today, we have millions of people who spent lots of money buying copies of movies they wanted to add to their personal collections, and still, they're in the ridiculous situation of actually breaking federal law every time they choose to view one of them using some DVD playback software made for a free, open-source operating system.
You can tell people to "go make a better, open format!" all you want, but they have no way to modify the content they've already purchased, or the content they borrow every time they borrow a DVD movie from their local library. So yes, all the public can do right now is keep crying about it. Here's hoping they cry long and loud enough to keep the movie industry from getting a good night's sleep.
I watched the last debate, out of what I guess was a partial sense of guilt and a partial sense of duty as an American citizen ... but it sorely disappointed me.
Not that I expected better, but it just served as a reminder of what a circus the whole thing is today.
As I pointed out to some friends of mine after the debate, both candidates are primarily concerned with putting on a good show. They went over their allotted speaking time over and over again. I've seen high-school debate classes with students FAR more capable of getting their points across within their time slots! You have to ask yourself if Romney and Obama are really that unskilled at time management? I think you and I both know the answer to that one. They're only running out the clock and continuing to talk because it's a TACTIC. If a candidate really doesn't have a good, effective comment or rebuttal to make, he wanders off topic to run the clock down, and then pretends to start addressing the issue as time is running out. That way, he can appear to have simply not been given enough time to explain his position rather than do so in full and look foolish. Alternately, he can purposely exceed the time limit in an attempt to irritate his opponent and rattle him.
Beyond that? I expect more of the REAL issues will be directly addressed by those "alternative, smaller political parties" we finally get to hear debate in their own little CNN hosted program tomorrow.
If you want to really discuss where the U.S. stands in the eyes of the rest of the world, a good start would be expounding on the recent Wall Street Journal article explaining how U.S. citizens living abroad are suddenly finding foreign banks no longer want their business. The U.S. government (and IRS in particular) have become so demanding and ruthless in their quest to "know all" about each person's investments and spending habits, they've made it uneconomical for foreign banks to comply anymore. Even the Swiss bankers (once considered almost untouchable) are being given the ultimatum by the USA ... turn over all those records of who has what in your bank, or else. Some people have even tried to turn in their passports and renounce their U.S. citizenship, only to find the IRS invalidates it, because they haven't paid past taxes (or even an "exit tax" they expect to be paid first).
It's an ugly state of affairs when your country believes it literally "owns" you, despite your express intentions to leave it behind. And the rest of the world realizes how draconian the U.S. government is getting, and doesn't want to get involved in that mess.... Here's betting NONE of this is even hinted at tonight in the "debates".
I don't have a problem with your decisions, but I don't know that I'd give that advice to everyone else?
IMO, the current stare of SSDs is such that you're still paying a big price premium for one over a traditional hard drive, and you're getting technology that clearly has certain limitations (primarily being a limited lifespan if it's forced to do many, many data rewrites).
You can Google search it to see what I'm talking about, but there are quite a few sysadmins out there who got excited by the prospects of moving their relational databases onto SSDs on their servers for a big speed boost, only to find they were consistently killing off the drives in a matter of as little as 2 to 6 months' time. They clearly couldn't hold up to that type of use/abuse.
On the other hand, 99% of the other tasks you might do with a computer aren't nearly as rewrite intensive. If, say, you're a computer gamer? You're going to like an SSD for the advantages it gives of faster load time for all those levels they have to read in. The casual user will mainly appreciate the quick boot time if he/she turns the computer off when it's not in use, so finds themselves booting up from scratch pretty regularly. Digital video editors and photographers and artists should appreciate the quicker time to load plug-ins and video content, not to mention large applications.
But to me, the temporary swap file is something you can still throw onto a physical hard drive, at least in a desktop PC. You can even recycle a smaller capacity drive this way that you'd otherwise not bother using anymore. It's pretty much win-win because it won't really slow down the overall system performance much at all if everything else is on the SSD. (Ideally, you have enough RAM so the swap file isn't being relied on real heavily anyway.)
I'm glad this question was asked, because I've experienced the same thing in many situations. (When I worked doing on-site PC service, I had a lot of service calls related to wi-fi issues, and often found routers in a degraded state. One was so bad, you could literally only see the SSID and make a connection if you had a laptop or mobile device within 2-3 feet of it!)
The explanation about bad capacitors sounds about right though, since that's been the bane of most other modern electronics over the last decade or so. If not capacitors, I imagine other inferior quality parts soldered onto the circuit board that fail with heat and time.
As cheap as some of the wireless routers have become though, I suppose they really are pretty disposable. I've got a Tenda branded Chinese wireless N router here that's actually working pretty well for me with a 50mbit cable modem connection from Comcast attached to it. I have a 3 story townhouse apt. and the signal is still pretty good on the 3rd. floor with this down in the corner of the basement. The router's cost? Absolutely free last year with a coupon Micro Center mailed out. But I can buy them there all day long for about $20 each.
I understand the reasoning behind class action suits perfectly well, and don't object to the theory in the least bit.
The problem I have with them is the fact that no matter how small a compensation is eventually awarded the "settlement class", the attorneys who brought the suit get a huge payout for themselves.
In normal court cases, there's a reasonable expectation of the wronged party receiving fair to excellent compensation when their case is won or settled. If the attorney felt he/she couldn't get you very much, you'd likely decide not to file suit in the first place. Many times, the attorney's pay is directly tied to the winnings as a percentage, motivating him/her to get as much as possible for you.
With class actions, it seems like any law office with some spare time can simply hear about some dissatisfaction out there with a product or service, ask people to email or call them if they've experienced it themselves, and put together a case. As long as they're awarded some big dollar figure as their own compensation in the eventual settlement, they can ask for VERY little for the rest of the settlement class.
I recall several of these class actions in the past where the eventual award was nothing more than a discount coupon off the purchase price of another product from the company. Why would I want to buy something else from the company that sold me a dud the last time?! That sounds to me like the lawyers just wanted to make sure the settlement went through so they'd get paid, so they asked for the smallest compensation possible for everyone else.
I've used enough SSD's with success to say you shouldn't necessarily be afraid of them. However, there are certain things you really need to do when using one to prolong its life.
Most importantly, don't save temporary swap files on one. Every desktop PC I've set up with an SSD boot drive, I custom configured to save its swap files on a second, standard hard drive. That does wonders for cutting down on unnecessary writes/rewrites to the SSD.
Second, avoid using them for relational databases. It seems like databases are the number one killer of SSDs, probably because many of them do thousands and thousands of writes/updates to the database file(s) in a short period of time.
SSDs are really FAR better for reading in data than writing it back out. They should allow essentially an infinite number of reads (until the whole controller in the thing finally fails due to bad capacitors or what-not). So they're great for holding the core of the OS that has to get read in/loaded up every single time the machine boots up. But anything you're going to be changing often is best stored on a traditional drive you can assign as your "data" disk.
Laptop/portable users may not have this luxury, obviously .... but my strategy in those cases is not to skimp and buy a cheaper SSD for them. Spend the extra money for one of the most reliable models, and do regular backups so a failure won't cost you much data loss. Most people upgrade laptops every 2-3 years anyway, so hopefully the SSD can make it that long.