Gmail took off because its interface was so much better than anyone else's webmail. I got my present webmail address when I kept losing my address when changing ISPs. Since I can use Thunderbird for a client for it, why in thw world would I want to change it? Especially since there's not only no compelling reason to, there's no reason to at all.
Oh, how the mighty slashdot has fallen, when a logged in slashdotter makes the insightful comment that Windows was never designed with security in mind. Although they did better with Vista and 7 than previous OSes it's still the most insecure OS I know of.
Yet he gets modded -1 troll for a factual comment. Do we have more shills than real users? Or are anti-MS comments being modded down by editors on orders of Dice because Microsoft is advertising here?
Why bother? Even when they know how to read, they don't. Something like 97% of Americans are aliterate, and as Twain said, an aliterate has no advantage over an illiterate.
We can't even feed ourselves reliably yet.
We can, there's no shortage of food. The trouble is, we don't.
I don't get it. Why should robots have any more theological ramifications than any other tool? And if you are created in God's image, wouldn't you also want to create beings in your own image? I mean, if he's any kind of artist at all...
Ghostbusters? Pshaw! How about the National Lampoon radio Hour, which was SNL without pictures? Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Dan Ankroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner... and, er, wasn't Ramis with them on SNL, too? I taped a couple of thise NLRO shows, have them digitized now. Some hilarious stuff!
Of course, most of you folks weren't even born then. Hey, would one of you kids mow my lawn?
Falwell is a terrible example. Preachers are supposed to lead by example, they're supposed to be above worldly things (and believe it or not, many people both clergy and non-clergy are).
A better example would be Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich. With Clinton, he was a lousy husband but the best President I've seen since I started voting in 1972 (voting age was 21 in 1968). Those who hated him still hated him, everybody else complained about the government paying forty million bucks to prosecute a blow job.
Gingrich was pretty much the epitome of evil while pretending to be a Christian (he actually worships money, like most Americans). Christians do NOT divorce their wives who are dying of cancer so they can legally bang some other chick. Yet he's still got a lot of clout (ran for Pres in 1012).
Clergy are held to a higher standard than their congregations are. What's worse, Falwell practiced what he so vehemently preached against.
Route 66 and other roads did cross state lines, but until Eisenhower the feds weren't in the highway business, the states took care of their own roads. Eisenhower saw the Autobahn and saw what a military use it would be and when elected President, pushed the Interstate Highway System through (It took two hours to get to my grandparents', about 45 minutes these days).
Do you really want government "competing", keeping ie Google fiber out while they offer up government service that works as well as Congress does, with DMV style customer service, and healthcare.gov quality?
Local government does a damned good job of running the city-owned electrical infrastructure and generation here. Lowest rates in the state, best uptime, best customer service. And it damned well better stay that way or the Mayor and city council get voted out of office.
So tell me, how can you alone possibly affect Comcast or Google? YOU CAN'T. OTOH, if your local government is running it, YOU HAVE A SAY.
Oh, as to the DMV, that's what you get when you vote people into office who think government is always the problem and never the solution. The DMV here in Illinois has been fast and courteous, although I can see where you might have shitty service somewhere like Texas, Florida, or Indiana since they're run by right-wing nuts who WANT government to fail and want people to hate their government (I used to live in Florida, their DMV is horrendous, like one would expect from a red state).
You're a fool. Your politicians have pulled the wool over your eyes.
And don't think for a second that the people involved in local government aren't interested in making decisions that personally profit themselves and their friends.
The graft isn't the problem, the lack of accountability is the problem. Take electricity -- the city owns and runs our power company. We have the lowest rates in the state, the lowest downtime, and the best customer service. Oh, and it profits from power sold to other power companies, keeping our taxes and rates down. So why is it so much better than the next town over?
Because the next town over is Amerin, a corporation. Its CEO is beholden to the stockholders, and no one else. It isn't like you can buy your electricity from a competitor. So the rates are as high as state government will allow, customer service is pretty much nonexistent, and downtimes are high and there's nothing the customer can do about it.
Here, more than one Mayor has been voted out of office because folks were pissed about electrical service. CWLP customers can fire their "CEO".
No, that's NOT how it's supposed to be happening. The government is constitutionally prohibited from spying on Americans' communications without a warrant. Once you have a warrant, eavesdrop all you want.
Too bad they no longer respect that document, if in fact they ever did.
And here I thought the explanation of how the T-2000 worked sounded like utter bullshit when I saw the movie, requiring suspension of disbelief. Except, of course, this stuff doesn't turn completely solid.
Your mother apparently neglected to teach you to not do things to people that they don't want you to do to them. Maybe she thought you were smart enough to figure it out yourself. If so, she was wrong.
You are discussing eugenics as an autocratic institution.
That's the only way eugenics works. You like eugenics? Move to North Korea where they make mothers drown newborns who aren't 100% Korean.
There's no particular reason it has to be that way. It's basically just animal husbandry as applied to yourself
Deciding your own offspring's traits isn't eugenics. Eugenics is, according to Websters, "The study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)".
Animal husbandry isn't eugenics, the term only applies to humans.
It can be. It can also be breeding traits in to a species. Look at how the Vikings managed to beautify the nordic gene pool with their routine kidnapping of foreign beauties.
So you're OK with rape and kidnapping? Do you have any idea how evil you sound?
discourage stupid people from breeding, or encourage smart people. Even if it's a government-organized program there's no reason it has to turn ugly - propaganda campaigns and/or an intelligence based breeding bonuses would go a long way.
So you're OK with discrimination, too? The mind boggles. Guess what -- you won't get the bonus. Lack of empathy is a negative trait which should be bred out of the species... that is, if you're ok with eugenics.
Your lack of intelligence would also disqualify you, since you seem to think stupidity is always inherited. It seldom is. Mental retardation is almost always the result of environmental factors, such as an umbiilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck during delivery, accidents when very young (blows to the head), and chemical exposure. Read up on it.
Take welfare as it existed 30 years ago in the US - I knew lots of families growing up who basically supported themselves by having babies, because that was the most profitable thing they were qualified to do.
What does that have to do with breeding traits into or out of people? You don't seem to understand the difference between genetics and environment. These people were chosen for their poverty, not their genetic makeup, and there's damned little correlation between the two.
You also don't seem to have heard of folks who were born in 1990 in welfare but are now in college.
When I use the term "glasshole" I'm not referring to any specific person, I'm referring to those who use google glass inappropriately. They're not for sale to the general public yet, so I would extend the term to someone who wants a pair.
Not that there won't be glass users who aren't glassholes; if you use them in place of a helmet cam biking, motorcycling, skiing, etc you're not a glasshole; it would be safer than a helmet cam, which can weaken your helmet.
If you take someone's picture or record them without permission, you ARE an asshole. Didn't your mother teach you any manners?
There is probably a reason that most people stay away from redneck bars.
Redneck bars and biker bars are safe, as long as you don't act like an asshole. Go into a yuppie bar and grab someone's ass and you'll be shown the door by a bouncer. Grab someone's ass in a redneck bar and you'll deservedly lose some teeth.
Sounds like the solution to your problem is a REALLY big guy with a camera and a holster.
No, the solution to my problem is complain to the bartender and if (s)he does nothing, leave. Actually, the solution to my "problem" is to stay the hell away from yuppie bars. I don't like the company or prices in those places anyway.
I'm not the one who's going to kick your ass, I'm a pacifist. But I will warn narcissistic morons who think they're better than everyone else that if they don't cool their assholishness someone else surely will.
Wearing Google Glass is the same as a t-shirt saying "I'm an asshole, please kick my ass."
Protip: as soon as it's defined as a person, and not an organism, what you are reading it likely to be wrong.
Animals are organisms. Humans are an animal species. We ARE organisms. Your dog has an artificial hip? He's a cyborg. You have an artificial hip? You're a cyborg.
Now explain to me why an electrical signal to our brain from your optical nerve is different then to your brain via any other nerve.
Nerve signals are chemical, not electrical. You can, however, affect chemistry with electricity, which is how it's different.
People will pay a reasonable price for content make it more easy than pirating.
Such as.99 cents on the Apple Store and elsewhere?
Well, your less than 1/10th of a penny would be a damned good price, but the ninety nine cents they're charging is WAY WAY WAY too high. It wasn't that long ago that you got a 45 RPM record with a song on each side for that price, and it had manufacturing, warehousing, breakage, and distributing costs. And you have a physical object you had full ownersip of (the piece of plastic and its sleeve). Paying twice that for a fucking download that you can sample from the radio for free and legally is ripping off the stupid. No way a fair price, and only a young fool would think it's a fair price.
And even though the price is brain-dead crazy high (a dime would be fair), the labels are raking in a lot more cash than when they were battling Napster.
The RIAA are morons. They should have freely given away MP3s as advertising for CDs, touted CD's superior fidelity, and had "added value" in the CDs. Of course, it wouldn't have hurt to de-sign all the shitty bands that can only come up with one good song in fifteen. When you consider $20 for a CD with one good song ($20 is $15 too much, indies charge $5) and forget or don't know about history it wouldn't sound so bad. But it is.
And per-song pricing is brain dead at any price. You have a two minute Bieber song for $.99 and Iron Butterfly's sixteen minute "In a Gadda Da Vida" or Little Feat's twenty minute "Dixie Chicken" for the same price? That's absurd.
The fact of the matter is people believe they are entitled to take whatever they want without having to pay the artist.
That would be the record labels, not the fans. Pirates spend more money on content than non-pirates, as all the studies have shown. Plus, as mentioned, people are paying a ridiculous $.99 per song willingly when a pirate download is as easy.
Bullshit. If you're supplied with your ISP's router, simply buy a second one and plug your PCs and ISP router into your own. It's yours, you can block traffic with it even if the one feeding it can't.
Where did all the nerds go?? Way too many normals here these days who are anti-science and technology and ignorant of both.
The last time I checked everybody at the local bar was carrying a cell phone camera, and I've yet to see somebody get punched in the face over it.
Well, the bars you go to must be too high class then. Try a redneck bar and see how your asshole glass turns out. When someone points a phone or a camera at me I can turn my back or say "take that picture and I'll break your goddamned phone." With Google Glass they're pointing a camera at everyone.
Once last year a fellow got drunk outside Felbers and passed out, while he was unconscious a woman I detest put makeup on him. Had his picture been taken and he found out about it, there would have certainly been some missing teeth. I'm pretty sure if you walked in wearing a pair of asshole glasses the bartender would make you leave.
Google glass does have legitimate uses, but wearing them into a bar or restaurant isn't one of them. Wear them hunting, skiing, hiking, sightseeing. Don't take my fucking picture without permission, and don't even make me THINK you're taking my picture without permission.
And thank $deity for that; could you imagine such a thing, in today's world of proprietary hardware and software, not to mention planned obsolescence?
That train already left the station. It's certain you know real cyborgs, it's just that we cyborgs don't stand out; we don't look like the terminator or robocop. A very large number of (mostly older) people have artificial hips, CrystaLens eye implants, artificial knees, cochlear implants, pacemakers, and other other mechanical parts implanted. Without those parts some of us would be disabled, often severely, or in the case of pacemakers, dead.
I was severely nearsighted all my life, then passed 40 and was farsighted as well as nearsighted. Then I got a cataract from steroid eye drops that had been prescribed and had surgery. I now have better than 20/20 vision at all distances; no more contact lenses, no more reading glasses.
And people wonder why I love technology so much...
As to planned obsolescence, my mother's eye implants are obsolete (although still used, the new ones that focus are more expensive) since she got them in 2000 and the CrystaLens wasn't approved until 2003. When its patent runs out, nobody will have monofocal lenses implanted.
I can back you up on that, I'm a cyborg, too. I have a CrystaLens implant. If yours is the old fixed focus lens it's debatable whether or not you're a cyborg, it depends on whether your monofocal implant is a device (I would agree it is, but there's no argument about something that focuses).
Dick Cheney used to be a cyborg but no longer is. Since his heart transplant there's no implanted device, so he's now a chimera. You would be surprised how many real cyborgs and chimeras there are today, especially since the first cyborg was a Brit in 1949 who got the first cataract surgery and the first chimera was in the 1960s (first transplant surgery).
Odd, in my 60 years of listening to car radios I never saw a single one of those old radios break. Not one. But almost every single digital car radio I've had has malfunctioned one way or another.
The best media player has no moving parts.
I can agree with that, but I've seen amplifiers (bigger power amps) with no moving parts (volume was controlled by the input device) go south. As to radios, I have yet to see a car radio with no moving parts. Right now, the volume knob in my car (thank God they got rid of volume buttons on the dash) usually turns the radio down when you're trying to turn it up. With a plain old potentiometer like they used to use, when it started getting bad you'd get static, a little switch oil always fixed the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Gmail took off because its interface was so much better than anyone else's webmail. I got my present webmail address when I kept losing my address when changing ISPs. Since I can use Thunderbird for a client for it, why in thw world would I want to change it? Especially since there's not only no compelling reason to, there's no reason to at all.
Oh, how the mighty slashdot has fallen, when a logged in slashdotter makes the insightful comment that Windows was never designed with security in mind. Although they did better with Vista and 7 than previous OSes it's still the most insecure OS I know of.
Yet he gets modded -1 troll for a factual comment. Do we have more shills than real users? Or are anti-MS comments being modded down by editors on orders of Dice because Microsoft is advertising here?
Either way, it saddens me.
How about teaching people to read?
Why bother? Even when they know how to read, they don't. Something like 97% of Americans are aliterate, and as Twain said, an aliterate has no advantage over an illiterate.
We can't even feed ourselves reliably yet.
We can, there's no shortage of food. The trouble is, we don't.
I don't get it. Why should robots have any more theological ramifications than any other tool? And if you are created in God's image, wouldn't you also want to create beings in your own image? I mean, if he's any kind of artist at all...
Ghostbusters? Pshaw! How about the National Lampoon radio Hour, which was SNL without pictures? Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Dan Ankroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner... and, er, wasn't Ramis with them on SNL, too? I taped a couple of thise NLRO shows, have them digitized now. Some hilarious stuff!
Of course, most of you folks weren't even born then. Hey, would one of you kids mow my lawn?
Falwell is a terrible example. Preachers are supposed to lead by example, they're supposed to be above worldly things (and believe it or not, many people both clergy and non-clergy are).
A better example would be Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich. With Clinton, he was a lousy husband but the best President I've seen since I started voting in 1972 (voting age was 21 in 1968). Those who hated him still hated him, everybody else complained about the government paying forty million bucks to prosecute a blow job.
Gingrich was pretty much the epitome of evil while pretending to be a Christian (he actually worships money, like most Americans). Christians do NOT divorce their wives who are dying of cancer so they can legally bang some other chick. Yet he's still got a lot of clout (ran for Pres in 1012).
Clergy are held to a higher standard than their congregations are. What's worse, Falwell practiced what he so vehemently preached against.
Route 66 and other roads did cross state lines, but until Eisenhower the feds weren't in the highway business, the states took care of their own roads. Eisenhower saw the Autobahn and saw what a military use it would be and when elected President, pushed the Interstate Highway System through (It took two hours to get to my grandparents', about 45 minutes these days).
Do you really want government "competing", keeping ie Google fiber out while they offer up government service that works as well as Congress does, with DMV style customer service, and healthcare.gov quality?
Local government does a damned good job of running the city-owned electrical infrastructure and generation here. Lowest rates in the state, best uptime, best customer service. And it damned well better stay that way or the Mayor and city council get voted out of office.
So tell me, how can you alone possibly affect Comcast or Google? YOU CAN'T. OTOH, if your local government is running it, YOU HAVE A SAY.
Oh, as to the DMV, that's what you get when you vote people into office who think government is always the problem and never the solution. The DMV here in Illinois has been fast and courteous, although I can see where you might have shitty service somewhere like Texas, Florida, or Indiana since they're run by right-wing nuts who WANT government to fail and want people to hate their government (I used to live in Florida, their DMV is horrendous, like one would expect from a red state).
You're a fool. Your politicians have pulled the wool over your eyes.
And don't think for a second that the people involved in local government aren't interested in making decisions that personally profit themselves and their friends.
The graft isn't the problem, the lack of accountability is the problem. Take electricity -- the city owns and runs our power company. We have the lowest rates in the state, the lowest downtime, and the best customer service. Oh, and it profits from power sold to other power companies, keeping our taxes and rates down. So why is it so much better than the next town over?
Because the next town over is Amerin, a corporation. Its CEO is beholden to the stockholders, and no one else. It isn't like you can buy your electricity from a competitor. So the rates are as high as state government will allow, customer service is pretty much nonexistent, and downtimes are high and there's nothing the customer can do about it.
Here, more than one Mayor has been voted out of office because folks were pissed about electrical service. CWLP customers can fire their "CEO".
I'd rather type on my old ZX81 than on my Android. Typing on glass sucks.
IOW, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" -- Salvor Hardin
No, that's NOT how it's supposed to be happening. The government is constitutionally prohibited from spying on Americans' communications without a warrant. Once you have a warrant, eavesdrop all you want.
Too bad they no longer respect that document, if in fact they ever did.
And here I thought the explanation of how the T-2000 worked sounded like utter bullshit when I saw the movie, requiring suspension of disbelief. Except, of course, this stuff doesn't turn completely solid.
Your mother apparently neglected to teach you to not do things to people that they don't want you to do to them. Maybe she thought you were smart enough to figure it out yourself. If so, she was wrong.
You are discussing eugenics as an autocratic institution.
That's the only way eugenics works. You like eugenics? Move to North Korea where they make mothers drown newborns who aren't 100% Korean.
There's no particular reason it has to be that way. It's basically just animal husbandry as applied to yourself
Deciding your own offspring's traits isn't eugenics. Eugenics is, according to Websters, "The study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)".
Animal husbandry isn't eugenics, the term only applies to humans.
It can be. It can also be breeding traits in to a species. Look at how the Vikings managed to beautify the nordic gene pool with their routine kidnapping of foreign beauties.
So you're OK with rape and kidnapping? Do you have any idea how evil you sound?
discourage stupid people from breeding, or encourage smart people. Even if it's a government-organized program there's no reason it has to turn ugly - propaganda campaigns and/or an intelligence based breeding bonuses would go a long way.
So you're OK with discrimination, too? The mind boggles. Guess what -- you won't get the bonus. Lack of empathy is a negative trait which should be bred out of the species... that is, if you're ok with eugenics.
Your lack of intelligence would also disqualify you, since you seem to think stupidity is always inherited. It seldom is. Mental retardation is almost always the result of environmental factors, such as an umbiilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck during delivery, accidents when very young (blows to the head), and chemical exposure. Read up on it.
Take welfare as it existed 30 years ago in the US - I knew lots of families growing up who basically supported themselves by having babies, because that was the most profitable thing they were qualified to do.
What does that have to do with breeding traits into or out of people? You don't seem to understand the difference between genetics and environment. These people were chosen for their poverty, not their genetic makeup, and there's damned little correlation between the two.
You also don't seem to have heard of folks who were born in 1990 in welfare but are now in college.
Both sad and disgusting. Please don't breed!
They weren't on tour, that's a very old shot from when the building (formerly a bar) was vacant.
The Google van blurs out people, so as not to be invasive. That said, some Germans sued over the google van.
If glass could blur out faces unless the face's owner accepted being filmed, there would be no problem. Google should work on that.
When I use the term "glasshole" I'm not referring to any specific person, I'm referring to those who use google glass inappropriately. They're not for sale to the general public yet, so I would extend the term to someone who wants a pair.
Not that there won't be glass users who aren't glassholes; if you use them in place of a helmet cam biking, motorcycling, skiing, etc you're not a glasshole; it would be safer than a helmet cam, which can weaken your helmet.
If you take someone's picture or record them without permission, you ARE an asshole. Didn't your mother teach you any manners?
There is probably a reason that most people stay away from redneck bars.
Redneck bars and biker bars are safe, as long as you don't act like an asshole. Go into a yuppie bar and grab someone's ass and you'll be shown the door by a bouncer. Grab someone's ass in a redneck bar and you'll deservedly lose some teeth.
Sounds like the solution to your problem is a REALLY big guy with a camera and a holster.
No, the solution to my problem is complain to the bartender and if (s)he does nothing, leave. Actually, the solution to my "problem" is to stay the hell away from yuppie bars. I don't like the company or prices in those places anyway.
I'm not the one who's going to kick your ass, I'm a pacifist. But I will warn narcissistic morons who think they're better than everyone else that if they don't cool their assholishness someone else surely will.
Wearing Google Glass is the same as a t-shirt saying "I'm an asshole, please kick my ass."
Protip: as soon as it's defined as a person, and not an organism, what you are reading it likely to be wrong.
Animals are organisms. Humans are an animal species. We ARE organisms. Your dog has an artificial hip? He's a cyborg. You have an artificial hip? You're a cyborg.
Now explain to me why an electrical signal to our brain from your optical nerve is different then to your brain via any other nerve.
Nerve signals are chemical, not electrical. You can, however, affect chemistry with electricity, which is how it's different.
Well, your less than 1/10th of a penny would be a damned good price, but the ninety nine cents they're charging is WAY WAY WAY too high. It wasn't that long ago that you got a 45 RPM record with a song on each side for that price, and it had manufacturing, warehousing, breakage, and distributing costs. And you have a physical object you had full ownersip of (the piece of plastic and its sleeve). Paying twice that for a fucking download that you can sample from the radio for free and legally is ripping off the stupid. No way a fair price, and only a young fool would think it's a fair price.
And even though the price is brain-dead crazy high (a dime would be fair), the labels are raking in a lot more cash than when they were battling Napster.
The RIAA are morons. They should have freely given away MP3s as advertising for CDs, touted CD's superior fidelity, and had "added value" in the CDs. Of course, it wouldn't have hurt to de-sign all the shitty bands that can only come up with one good song in fifteen. When you consider $20 for a CD with one good song ($20 is $15 too much, indies charge $5) and forget or don't know about history it wouldn't sound so bad. But it is.
And per-song pricing is brain dead at any price. You have a two minute Bieber song for $.99 and Iron Butterfly's sixteen minute "In a Gadda Da Vida" or Little Feat's twenty minute "Dixie Chicken" for the same price? That's absurd.
The fact of the matter is people believe they are entitled to take whatever they want without having to pay the artist.
That would be the record labels, not the fans. Pirates spend more money on content than non-pirates, as all the studies have shown. Plus, as mentioned, people are paying a ridiculous $.99 per song willingly when a pirate download is as easy.
Bullshit. If you're supplied with your ISP's router, simply buy a second one and plug your PCs and ISP router into your own. It's yours, you can block traffic with it even if the one feeding it can't.
Where did all the nerds go?? Way too many normals here these days who are anti-science and technology and ignorant of both.
The last time I checked everybody at the local bar was carrying a cell phone camera, and I've yet to see somebody get punched in the face over it.
Well, the bars you go to must be too high class then. Try a redneck bar and see how your asshole glass turns out. When someone points a phone or a camera at me I can turn my back or say "take that picture and I'll break your goddamned phone." With Google Glass they're pointing a camera at everyone.
Once last year a fellow got drunk outside Felbers and passed out, while he was unconscious a woman I detest put makeup on him. Had his picture been taken and he found out about it, there would have certainly been some missing teeth. I'm pretty sure if you walked in wearing a pair of asshole glasses the bartender would make you leave.
Google glass does have legitimate uses, but wearing them into a bar or restaurant isn't one of them. Wear them hunting, skiing, hiking, sightseeing. Don't take my fucking picture without permission, and don't even make me THINK you're taking my picture without permission.
And thank $deity for that; could you imagine such a thing, in today's world of proprietary hardware and software, not to mention planned obsolescence?
That train already left the station. It's certain you know real cyborgs, it's just that we cyborgs don't stand out; we don't look like the terminator or robocop. A very large number of (mostly older) people have artificial hips, CrystaLens eye implants, artificial knees, cochlear implants, pacemakers, and other other mechanical parts implanted. Without those parts some of us would be disabled, often severely, or in the case of pacemakers, dead.
I was severely nearsighted all my life, then passed 40 and was farsighted as well as nearsighted. Then I got a cataract from steroid eye drops that had been prescribed and had surgery. I now have better than 20/20 vision at all distances; no more contact lenses, no more reading glasses.
And people wonder why I love technology so much...
As to planned obsolescence, my mother's eye implants are obsolete (although still used, the new ones that focus are more expensive) since she got them in 2000 and the CrystaLens wasn't approved until 2003. When its patent runs out, nobody will have monofocal lenses implanted.
I just hope one of the struts doesn't break...
I can back you up on that, I'm a cyborg, too. I have a CrystaLens implant. If yours is the old fixed focus lens it's debatable whether or not you're a cyborg, it depends on whether your monofocal implant is a device (I would agree it is, but there's no argument about something that focuses).
Dick Cheney used to be a cyborg but no longer is. Since his heart transplant there's no implanted device, so he's now a chimera. You would be surprised how many real cyborgs and chimeras there are today, especially since the first cyborg was a Brit in 1949 who got the first cataract surgery and the first chimera was in the 1960s (first transplant surgery).
Yes, I remember those. They broke, too.
Odd, in my 60 years of listening to car radios I never saw a single one of those old radios break. Not one. But almost every single digital car radio I've had has malfunctioned one way or another.
The best media player has no moving parts.
I can agree with that, but I've seen amplifiers (bigger power amps) with no moving parts (volume was controlled by the input device) go south. As to radios, I have yet to see a car radio with no moving parts. Right now, the volume knob in my car (thank God they got rid of volume buttons on the dash) usually turns the radio down when you're trying to turn it up. With a plain old potentiometer like they used to use, when it started getting bad you'd get static, a little switch oil always fixed the problem.