Why do you buy UL-certified electric devices? Because if you use them and one of them causes your house to burn down, your fire insurance will cover you. If you use a non-UL-certified electric device and it causes your house to burn down, your fire insurance won't pay.
Thus, I have an incentive to buy UL-certified devices. Uncle Sam does not need to get involved. This is, arguably, a good thing.
Many people are saying that IoT devices need something akin to UL labs. The problem is that UL labs get their power from insurance companies. You don't have to buy UL-certified devices, but there's a pretty big downside to not doing so. So what is the equivalent downside to not using ICANN-certified (for example) IoT devices? At the moment, there isn't one.
I'm reminded of an old joke about the IRS's new simplified 4 step tax forms:
How much money did you make?
What were your expenses?
How much money did you have left?
Send it in.
There's the format. It's simple. No loopholes. We might disagree with about how much you should be sending (eg, "Step 4: Send in 20% of that number") but the concept is that you should send x% of your profits. But now we start asking questions...
What are "expenses"? Suppose the business buys me, it's CEO, a brand new Lamborghini and then says, "Gosh, we barely made a profit after expenses. Guess I don't have to pay any business taxes." Well, yeah, 'cause you bought a Lamborghini and you certainly didn't need to do that. But I don't own the Lamborghini, the business does. So you can't come to me, personally, and say, "Hey, you owe us taxes on that Lamborghini!" because it isn't my property.
So there has to be some kind of definition of what an expense is. You can't just spend all the business's money on hookers and blow and then say, "Gosh, I made no money."
If they pay an accountant $80k, and he finds $81k of tax reduction, then it is worth it to the corporation to employ that accountant [...] I spend a lot of time reading up on tax laws. That is time that I could otherwise spend on productive activities. But it is worth it, because we pay near zero income taxes.
See, this is important: You devote time and effort to finding ways to save money on taxes because it helps your business's bottom line. Your complaint is that you spend lots of time doing it and you wish you didn't have to spend so much time finding ways around it.
So if the above, simpler, method--a simple "flat tax" if you will--were enacted, you would gladly pony up your 20%? Or would you still find ways--creative expenses and the like--to pay less cash in taxes?
I maintain that businesses would always be trying to pay less in taxes. Period. It's the nature of the beast--taxes are an expense and businesses want to cut expenses as much as possible.
Again, the current complaint is that it is "really hard" to cut your tax bill. It would be nice if the government made it easier for you to come up with ways to not pay your fair share.
Oh, that'll be great. So not only do I have some idiot sending a text while stopped at the light--not noticing it turned green 15 seconds ago--now I have some idiot in a Tesla trying to find an easter egg on their display.
Now I'll never get through that green light. Thanks, Elon.
It's a neat point. Though, I'd argue the opposite. 0-60 in 2.4 seconds without making a sound? The lack of sound makes it look like you're doing it effortlessly.
Something like UL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization) ) will be appropriate.
I've heard this a few times. I'm not convinced.
UL is "Underwriters' Laboratories." One of the things they do is look at electric devices and make sure that they won't catch fire in most conditions. This is a good thing and they have the backing of insurance companies. So if you plug in that extension cord that your brother made and it causes an electrical fire which burns down your house, when you go to your insurance company, they'll say, "Nope! We're not paying out because the extension cord wasn't UL certified. You're hosed. Have a nice day."
Which is a good reason to only buy UL-certified devices. No government involvement needed, right? I can choose not to use UL-certified devices and run the risk of making my fire insurance useless. Freedom!
Now how does this work with Internet-enabled lightbulbs? If my lightbulb gets hacked and put on a botnet which is then used to attack some company, am I responsible? Of course, I would turn around and sue the company that made the lightbulbs. Unfortunately, they just went bankrupt or they're in some foreign country where I can't really sue them. I guess I'm on the hook for a piece of the billion dollars that the company that got attacked is suing over.
That would certainly give me some incentive to by only "approved" lightbulbs.
The reason the UL-type system works is that I, as a consumer, have a definitely incentive to buy UL-certified device in that if I don't, and something goes wrong, I suffer. In the case of Internet Things like this, though, I don't suffer--someone else does. If someone hacks my lightbulbs to do a DDOS attack on you, I haven't really suffered that much. As the recipient, you suffered quite a bit.
For a UL-type system to work, I have to be responsible for attacks that emanate from the devices I own.
Years ago, at WWDC, there were various rumors about Apple dropping OS X and getting out of the Personal Computer market. A batch of us were talking about it with some Apple DTS guys and one of them made the great comment:
"Do you think Apple wants people developing iOS apps in Windows?"
Although sadly the Fukushima incident has shattered public faith in the best solution of the lot, Nuclear.
I rather like this statement.
I mean, if people get over the whole radiation possibly killing them and destroying their towns, cities, livelihood, etc., nuclear is a much better solution than solar or wind. Fucking whiny crybabies--"Oh, I've got cancer! Oh, the house I've lived in for the last 40 years is now a worthless hunk of radioactive real-estate! Oh, I lost my fishing business because all the fish are radioactive and nobody wants to eat radioactive fish!" I mean, c'mon! Take one for the team!
"We don't have those scummy apps like in Android. Apple makes sure that everything is on the up-and-up so you don't have to worry." "No they don't." "Well, you should know better than to trust these ridiculous offers! It's not Apple's fault!" "But didn't you just say...?" "Look! Apple's shipping a new adapter! Ooh...shiny..."
If some Indian IT consulting company offers services at bargain basement prices, they don't ask too many questions. To them, IT services are fungible.
It also gives them plausible deniability.
"Yes, health records are supposed to be protected. And we told our contractor just that. See? Here's the memo! So the fact that the health records for half-a-million people were released isn't our fault. We shouldn't have to pay a fine or anything because we told them they should be protected! I mean, what are we supposed to do, protect them ourselves? That'd be expensive! Dear God, won't somebody think of our profit margins?"
On a slightly different note, how many voice actors have recorded twenty minutes of dialog in the past? How many of their contracts give them control over how the movie studios use those recordings or mandate that the studios give them royalties for using "remixed" versions of their voices?
The argument is that the only reason you would take a photograph of yourself and your ballot, pay for processing the film, etc. is if you were being paid to do so. That might have been true back in the days of brownie cameras. But here in the 21st century, I can walk into a voting booth with a tiny video camera in my glasses that's linked to an app on the phone that will upload the video of me voting for whoever I was told to vote for. Poll workers would have no idea.
So the whole, "No taking pictures of you and your vote" thing is kind of ridiculous now-a-days. It's still illegal to accept money to vote but the whole idea that, here in the 21st century, the only reason I would take a picture of myself and my vote is I'm getting paid for it just isn't true.
Apple chose to stick with the low power ram. I think it is a bottleneck that will be resolved by intel next year.
What sort of annoys me is that Apple chose. Professionals understand these sorts of trade-offs and will decide for themselves whether or not it's worthwhile.
I also think it's notable that the new pro is thinner than the current air. if you're a photographer and you get a laptop for on the go photo processing, you'll appreciate a thin light computer with great battery life.
An iPad Pro is thinner and lighter than the MacBook Pro. Why don't I just use that?
A piece of paper is thinner and lighter than the iPad Pro. But I can't really access the web with a piece of paper. But, man, is it thin! And light!
While I'm being somewhat facetious, above, my point is that weight is important. If I'm in the market for a laptop and I find one with similar specs (and, yes, Professionals care about these things) but one is 3 lbs and the other is 4 lbs, hell yeah, I'll go for the lighter one.
But the specs aren't the same. I have less memory. I have 4 ports where nothing I own will connect to them and will have to go buy new cables/dongles and carry them around with me. So if it can't do what I want to do, it doesn't matter if it's a pound lighter.
All for the sake of a handful of laptop users compared to the total market [...]
The "total market"? Who are these people in the "total market"?
Guess what? The "total market" has a pretty large share of professional photographers who are willing to shell out $3000 for a laptop. Remember, this is the "Pro" market--people who make a living off their computers.
Every single port is USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 support,
Yes, I can get dongles. The issue, to me, isn't about whether I can do this. Of course I can do this.
The complaints I have are sort of two-fold.
First is the concept that it "just works." I spend $3000 for a computer. It arrives on my doorstep--woohoo! Now I try to attach my camera and...I can't because there's no port to plug it into? "Oh, you'll need an adapter!" So rather than enjoying my brand new computer, I'm off to the store to buy a bunch of adapters for my external display, my camera, etc. etc. Not to mention the fact that I just gave Apple $3000 and now they're going to come after me for $30 here and $50 there for adapters so that I can just get my laptop to work. It's not necessarily the money--arguably, if I can afford a $3000 computer, I can afford to pay an extra 1% for an adapter (or 4% for 4 adapters). But I buy a Mac because it "just works." I take it out of the box and I'm productive! Now, I take it out of the box and travel to store to spend more money.
Not what you'd call a great "Out of the Box" experience.
The other complaint is the difference between the "Pro" and the "Consumer." When Apple first shipped the iMac, they eschewed the old ADB ports. If you had ADB peripherals, TFB. Time to drag yourself into the 21st Century. When Apple shipped the PowerMac G3, there was one ADB port on the back. Because Professional users had peripherals that used the ADB port for things like colorimeters and such. Some of those peripherals were kind of pricey and they weren't going to throw them out and buy new ones.
"Pros" have different needs than "consumers" and Apple used to recognize this. "Pros" need to move large amounts of data quickly and work on them. Having a built-in SD drive is really convenient for professional photographers--the sort of "Pros" who will plop down $3000 for a laptop. So catering to them by having this built into the laptop is a plus for professionals. Yeah, it isn't a big deal if my Mom has to wait 5 minutes to transfer a really cute picture of her granddaughter. But for professionals, time is money.
Having more memory makes things faster. If my laptop can get things done twice as fast because it has 32GB of memory but only gives me 9 hours of battery life instead of 14, there's a good chance that a professional is willing to accept that trade-off. While my Mom may not ever upgrade her computer's memory or storage, a professional might do just that to protect their investment.
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You miss the point. I suppose I got a bit wordy.
Why do you buy UL-certified electric devices? Because if you use them and one of them causes your house to burn down, your fire insurance will cover you. If you use a non-UL-certified electric device and it causes your house to burn down, your fire insurance won't pay.
Thus, I have an incentive to buy UL-certified devices. Uncle Sam does not need to get involved. This is, arguably, a good thing.
Many people are saying that IoT devices need something akin to UL labs. The problem is that UL labs get their power from insurance companies. You don't have to buy UL-certified devices, but there's a pretty big downside to not doing so. So what is the equivalent downside to not using ICANN-certified (for example) IoT devices? At the moment, there isn't one.
Taxes should be simple and fair [...]
I'm reminded of an old joke about the IRS's new simplified 4 step tax forms:
There's the format. It's simple. No loopholes. We might disagree with about how much you should be sending (eg, "Step 4: Send in 20% of that number") but the concept is that you should send x% of your profits. But now we start asking questions...
What are "expenses"? Suppose the business buys me, it's CEO, a brand new Lamborghini and then says, "Gosh, we barely made a profit after expenses. Guess I don't have to pay any business taxes." Well, yeah, 'cause you bought a Lamborghini and you certainly didn't need to do that. But I don't own the Lamborghini, the business does. So you can't come to me, personally, and say, "Hey, you owe us taxes on that Lamborghini!" because it isn't my property.
So there has to be some kind of definition of what an expense is. You can't just spend all the business's money on hookers and blow and then say, "Gosh, I made no money."
If they pay an accountant $80k, and he finds $81k of tax reduction, then it is worth it to the corporation to employ that accountant [...] I spend a lot of time reading up on tax laws. That is time that I could otherwise spend on productive activities. But it is worth it, because we pay near zero income taxes.
See, this is important: You devote time and effort to finding ways to save money on taxes because it helps your business's bottom line. Your complaint is that you spend lots of time doing it and you wish you didn't have to spend so much time finding ways around it.
So if the above, simpler, method--a simple "flat tax" if you will--were enacted, you would gladly pony up your 20%? Or would you still find ways--creative expenses and the like--to pay less cash in taxes?
I maintain that businesses would always be trying to pay less in taxes. Period. It's the nature of the beast--taxes are an expense and businesses want to cut expenses as much as possible.
Again, the current complaint is that it is "really hard" to cut your tax bill. It would be nice if the government made it easier for you to come up with ways to not pay your fair share.
Oh, that'll be great. So not only do I have some idiot sending a text while stopped at the light--not noticing it turned green 15 seconds ago--now I have some idiot in a Tesla trying to find an easter egg on their display.
Now I'll never get through that green light. Thanks, Elon.
It's a neat point. Though, I'd argue the opposite. 0-60 in 2.4 seconds without making a sound? The lack of sound makes it look like you're doing it effortlessly.
Do you take your car to get fixed at the Sandwich shop?
Totally. They don't do a very good job on the car, granted, but The Cajun shrimp is excellent.
Something like UL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization) ) will be appropriate.
I've heard this a few times. I'm not convinced.
UL is "Underwriters' Laboratories." One of the things they do is look at electric devices and make sure that they won't catch fire in most conditions. This is a good thing and they have the backing of insurance companies. So if you plug in that extension cord that your brother made and it causes an electrical fire which burns down your house, when you go to your insurance company, they'll say, "Nope! We're not paying out because the extension cord wasn't UL certified. You're hosed. Have a nice day."
Which is a good reason to only buy UL-certified devices. No government involvement needed, right? I can choose not to use UL-certified devices and run the risk of making my fire insurance useless. Freedom!
Now how does this work with Internet-enabled lightbulbs? If my lightbulb gets hacked and put on a botnet which is then used to attack some company, am I responsible? Of course, I would turn around and sue the company that made the lightbulbs. Unfortunately, they just went bankrupt or they're in some foreign country where I can't really sue them. I guess I'm on the hook for a piece of the billion dollars that the company that got attacked is suing over.
That would certainly give me some incentive to by only "approved" lightbulbs.
The reason the UL-type system works is that I, as a consumer, have a definitely incentive to buy UL-certified device in that if I don't, and something goes wrong, I suffer. In the case of Internet Things like this, though, I don't suffer--someone else does. If someone hacks my lightbulbs to do a DDOS attack on you, I haven't really suffered that much. As the recipient, you suffered quite a bit.
For a UL-type system to work, I have to be responsible for attacks that emanate from the devices I own.
Years ago, at WWDC, there were various rumors about Apple dropping OS X and getting out of the Personal Computer market. A batch of us were talking about it with some Apple DTS guys and one of them made the great comment:
"Do you think Apple wants people developing iOS apps in Windows?"
Hey, at least they didn't call it "Bo-ing!"
Airplanes don't bounce.
Sort of. You have to buy the Special Edition iPad Pro and it will be included. Only $2000.
Although sadly the Fukushima incident has shattered public faith in the best solution of the lot, Nuclear.
I rather like this statement.
I mean, if people get over the whole radiation possibly killing them and destroying their towns, cities, livelihood, etc., nuclear is a much better solution than solar or wind. Fucking whiny crybabies--"Oh, I've got cancer! Oh, the house I've lived in for the last 40 years is now a worthless hunk of radioactive real-estate! Oh, I lost my fishing business because all the fish are radioactive and nobody wants to eat radioactive fish!" I mean, c'mon! Take one for the team!
Yeah, people are funny about things like that...
Uh...the fact that you no longer need to buy the Panasonic aftermarket stereo...
I often laugh about this.
"We don't have those scummy apps like in Android. Apple makes sure that everything is on the up-and-up so you don't have to worry."
"No they don't."
"Well, you should know better than to trust these ridiculous offers! It's not Apple's fault!"
"But didn't you just say...?"
"Look! Apple's shipping a new adapter! Ooh...shiny..."
If some Indian IT consulting company offers services at bargain basement prices, they don't ask too many questions. To them, IT services are fungible.
It also gives them plausible deniability.
"Yes, health records are supposed to be protected. And we told our contractor just that. See? Here's the memo! So the fact that the health records for half-a-million people were released isn't our fault. We shouldn't have to pay a fine or anything because we told them they should be protected! I mean, what are we supposed to do, protect them ourselves? That'd be expensive! Dear God, won't somebody think of our profit margins?"
"Hey, Scab. That's a nice credit rating you have. Be a shame if something were to happen to it..."
This could make a great "different cultures" comedy...
They tried. I think it lasted one season.
A negative profit is still a profit.
On a slightly different note, how many voice actors have recorded twenty minutes of dialog in the past? How many of their contracts give them control over how the movie studios use those recordings or mandate that the studios give them royalties for using "remixed" versions of their voices?
"In a world..."
(And, of course, the obligatory link. I can't hear that phrase without thinking of this. Although Pablo Francisco does a pretty good job.)
But should it be--the picture part, I mean.
The argument is that the only reason you would take a photograph of yourself and your ballot, pay for processing the film, etc. is if you were being paid to do so. That might have been true back in the days of brownie cameras. But here in the 21st century, I can walk into a voting booth with a tiny video camera in my glasses that's linked to an app on the phone that will upload the video of me voting for whoever I was told to vote for. Poll workers would have no idea.
So the whole, "No taking pictures of you and your vote" thing is kind of ridiculous now-a-days. It's still illegal to accept money to vote but the whole idea that, here in the 21st century, the only reason I would take a picture of myself and my vote is I'm getting paid for it just isn't true.
Apple chose to stick with the low power ram. I think it is a bottleneck that will be resolved by intel next year.
What sort of annoys me is that Apple chose. Professionals understand these sorts of trade-offs and will decide for themselves whether or not it's worthwhile.
I also think it's notable that the new pro is thinner than the current air. if you're a photographer and you get a laptop for on the go photo processing, you'll appreciate a thin light computer with great battery life.
An iPad Pro is thinner and lighter than the MacBook Pro. Why don't I just use that?
A piece of paper is thinner and lighter than the iPad Pro. But I can't really access the web with a piece of paper. But, man, is it thin! And light!
While I'm being somewhat facetious, above, my point is that weight is important. If I'm in the market for a laptop and I find one with similar specs (and, yes, Professionals care about these things) but one is 3 lbs and the other is 4 lbs, hell yeah, I'll go for the lighter one.
But the specs aren't the same. I have less memory. I have 4 ports where nothing I own will connect to them and will have to go buy new cables/dongles and carry them around with me. So if it can't do what I want to do, it doesn't matter if it's a pound lighter.
I was thinking cyclists, but that works, too.
Oh!
Too soon.
All for the sake of a handful of laptop users compared to the total market [...]
The "total market"? Who are these people in the "total market"?
Guess what? The "total market" has a pretty large share of professional photographers who are willing to shell out $3000 for a laptop. Remember, this is the "Pro" market--people who make a living off their computers.
Every single port is USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 support,
True. But if you actually want speed, you should only use the ports on the left-hand side.
Yes, I can get dongles. The issue, to me, isn't about whether I can do this. Of course I can do this.
The complaints I have are sort of two-fold.
First is the concept that it "just works." I spend $3000 for a computer. It arrives on my doorstep--woohoo! Now I try to attach my camera and...I can't because there's no port to plug it into? "Oh, you'll need an adapter!" So rather than enjoying my brand new computer, I'm off to the store to buy a bunch of adapters for my external display, my camera, etc. etc. Not to mention the fact that I just gave Apple $3000 and now they're going to come after me for $30 here and $50 there for adapters so that I can just get my laptop to work. It's not necessarily the money--arguably, if I can afford a $3000 computer, I can afford to pay an extra 1% for an adapter (or 4% for 4 adapters). But I buy a Mac because it "just works." I take it out of the box and I'm productive! Now, I take it out of the box and travel to store to spend more money.
Not what you'd call a great "Out of the Box" experience.
The other complaint is the difference between the "Pro" and the "Consumer." When Apple first shipped the iMac, they eschewed the old ADB ports. If you had ADB peripherals, TFB. Time to drag yourself into the 21st Century. When Apple shipped the PowerMac G3, there was one ADB port on the back. Because Professional users had peripherals that used the ADB port for things like colorimeters and such. Some of those peripherals were kind of pricey and they weren't going to throw them out and buy new ones.
"Pros" have different needs than "consumers" and Apple used to recognize this. "Pros" need to move large amounts of data quickly and work on them. Having a built-in SD drive is really convenient for professional photographers--the sort of "Pros" who will plop down $3000 for a laptop. So catering to them by having this built into the laptop is a plus for professionals. Yeah, it isn't a big deal if my Mom has to wait 5 minutes to transfer a really cute picture of her granddaughter. But for professionals, time is money.
Having more memory makes things faster. If my laptop can get things done twice as fast because it has 32GB of memory but only gives me 9 hours of battery life instead of 14, there's a good chance that a professional is willing to accept that trade-off. While my Mom may not ever upgrade her computer's memory or storage, a professional might do just that to protect their investment.
But, but, putting that motor in would make it thicker! And we can't have that...
I swear, Apple is being run by a bunch of anorexics.
It's unlikely that anyone's planning to alter the code on their (or anyone's) pacemaker [...]
At least not without testing it on Dick Cheney first...