They're creepy too. It's worse when you're bugging children's playtimes, but we shouldn't accept any of those things in our lives.
Often I find kids will eschew high tech toys in favour of a simple cardboard box. I gave my nephew a simple electronic drum kit for Christmas (it was to help with developing his co-ordination and to give him better musical tastes than his parents, so there was some thought into the gift) but he spent the entire day running around with the box it came in and having a ball. You wouldn't have been able to pry that box off him with a crow bar.
You dont need to get high tech toys for kids, they'll enjoy lego, blocks, matchbox cars and the like just as much as I did when I was a kid. Hell, one of the best things you had to play with was a large refrigerator box.
But 1000 miles is a bit beyond even my idea of acceptable range. If an electric could get 600-700 miles on a charge, I'd be happy.
Distance isn't a problem. Most people dont exceed the range of average EV's.
The problem is recharging. If you run low on petrol 50 KM from home you it takes 5 minutes to refill, if you run low on electricity 50 KM from home, you need to charge for several hours IF and that's a big if, you can find somewhere to recharge.
The reality is, if you run low on charge 50 KM from home, it's time to call a flatbed with a traditional internal combustion engine. So how many carbons does and Isuzu straight 6 diesel put out?
"The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so."
So we're to believe hertz put the cameras there for no reason other than to hurt their business by scaring away customers, because may be someday they may want them?
On the flipside, this means I no longer need to worry about the hire car company coming up with bollocks charges against me for damaging the car or got a fine because their camera didn't capture any of it. Also if I'm in an accident it will clearly show who is at fault (and I'm confident enough of a driver to say it wont be mine), so they cant claim their excess until "the issue is resolved".
It may be a bit paranoid, but when I hire a car I use my own dash cam in it for these reasons.
Proportional fines are not a means of revenue, where did you get that stupid idea from? Fines are punishments.
Because "Revenue Raising" is a popular conspiracy theory used by speeders in order to avoid admitting what they do is wrong.
Fines are punishments. As such, if the punishment doesn't reach even 1% of the money you earn in a day, you can effectively ignore them always, and in the process possibly endanger others. The proportionality of the system is to level the playing field, but that is clearly communism and can't be had in the united states of money.
Fines are punishments, but as you said they're only punishments up to a point. This is why most western nations have a demerit point system. If you accrue too many points you lose your license. A craw that sticks in the sides of the revenue conspiracy theorists in Australia is the fact we long weekends are "double demerit weekends", not "double fine weekends". So if you get caught doing 30 over in my state, its a $800 fine and 6 points. Do that on a double demerit weekend and its an $800 fine and a suspension (12 points). In Germany higher speeding fines come with automatic suspensions.
I dont speed, not simply because its stupid and costs money but because I also race my car, track, drift and on occasion, rally cross. After this you begin to realise that doing 15 over isn't just silly, it's boring compared to sliding a car round a track.
For speeding (unless it's a speed trap) it won't be. The people with the money will just challenge it in court and it will be dismissed. No fine and just whatever the lawyer charges.
In countries with sane enforcement policies its difficult to challenge a speeding fine if you were actually speeding. Australia and most European nations have a standard of evidence that makes it hard to deny that you were speeding.
Just try to listen to a 200 years old English recording, you wouldn't understand it. Languages evolve, and in a few 10's of years no American will understand the current British English.
10 years... They already have to subtitle most English accents on TV... And I mean a Londoner, not someone from Blackpool or Yorkshire.
Latin turned into Italian (and Spanish and French etc.), modern English grew out of Old English which is incomprehensible to everyone except linguists today, and yes, even modern English will be a dead language someday. Languages drift, film at 11.
English was derived from proto-Germanic languages from the Anglo-Saxons that colonised Britain, displacing Roman and Celtic languages. It was combined with Latin languages (notably French) later on.
So English is a language with both Latin and Germanic roots.
But that's MY choice. I shouldn't be REQUIRED to part with money to listen to music. We have the technology available that allows anyone to download any song they want for free.
This is the thing the music industry fails to understand. This day and age you're no longer REQUIRED to pay for music. The RIAA and studios need to move out of the mindset that people can be forced to pay and realise that people need to be enticed to pay.
The majority of people are happy to part with some coin to support the bands and artists they like. The problem is that they also feel no sympathy for the industry that takes 90-99% of the revenue and gives a pittance to the artists. You know the situation is bad when you have bands telling people to download their songs and come to their concerts.
And that's exactly what I do. It's not often that a good act comes to my city (Perth, Western Australia) but when a band I like comes here I make a point to go if I can. Same with comedians. I have bought 3 of the Foo Fighters albums but downloaded the other three. They played in Perth last week (I went, despite it being $150 for general admission) I would have been more than happy to give Dave Grohl and the band the A$9 I owed them for downloading their albums but I have the strangest feeling that if I did, they'd tell me they didn't need my A$9 and thank me for coming to their concert.
We have used something called Whole Baby Salve for each of our infants.
It has been amazing in treating scalded skin from diaper rash to mastitis and other burn like symptoms.
This works mainly because it serves as a lubricant between the kid and whatever is causing the rash. But that is besides the point.
We know that a lot of common items have some form of medicinal properties, well proven in the lab but they aren't classified as drugs because they aren't that powerful. For example, the Aloe Vera plant is proven to be helpful with rashes and burns, so it ends up being used in a lot of over the counter things from sun burn cream to moisturiser. Because its used so casually does not make it ineffective and just because it's not dispensed by a pharmacists does not make it homoeopathic. There's often quite a bit of science behind remedies that also happen to be old wives tales.
But the article isn't talking about treating nappy rash, it's talking about people eschewing proven medical treatments for serious medical conditions with homoeopathic remedies which are proven not to work. In this case, homoeopathy isn't just useless, it's also quite dangerous.
Because research has shown placebo's do have in fact, while small, a significant effect on health. As noted this is likely purely due to psychosomatic effect rather than any medical benefit but nonetheless it happens. It is a bit of a catch 22 though, since it is psychosomatic, for it to be effective, it has to actually seem like legit treatment even though it's nothing more than a trick. We humans are very strange in that regard.
Basically, a placebo is an effective treatment if there's nothing really wrong with you.
Its useful for treating hypochondria, doctor shoppers or alleviating symptoms whilst waiting for the body to heal itself (although a doctor will generally prescribe something functional if you need it).
Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.
True, though in some cases, reporting you feel better is the same as actually BEING better. Antidepressants, for instance.
Depression and anxiety are psychological conditions, so a psychological treatment is needed.
Proper anti-depressants are not pleasant drugs to be on. So if a placebo can be used as part of a psychological treatment that is good. However if you've got something like cancer then a medically prescribed placebo is useless, homoeopathy is worse than useless, it's dangerous.
I was just scanning the comments to see if this point had already been made. Thanks!
Perhaps the most obvious example of this was Babylon 5. In many ways that woke up television producers to the option of strong story arcs across seasons or even the entire show instead of the old rule that everything had to end back in the same state where it started. Sure, there are plenty of other examples, even before B5, but I think that is what really changed the market.
Now it's standard practice for lots of shows: 24, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, and many others.
B5 wasn't the first series to have a long overlapping story arc, but it was the one that refined it into what we know today. The Prisoner from the 60's is the earliest example I can think of off the top of my head.
There's a big difference between promoting gun safety at home, and putting it into law. The latter comes with regular, mandatory police inspections of gun owners' homes
Not really and that's wrong.
Codifying firearms storage into law does not require mandatory police inspections. We've got laws around gun storage in Australia and the cops cant search your home without a warrant. Even if you let them in for a chat and they notice an improperly stored gun, they cant do anything about it (besides saying "mate, you should probably keep that gun locked up").
Even then, if you are found via a legal search to have an improperly stored weapon, it's just a fine (A$500 from memory). It only becomes a significant punishment when combined with another crime where easy access to a weapon that was not locked up was a significant factor.
That being said, keeping guns and ammo secured mainly prevents accidental deaths. Guns are not common here in Oz, yet people still kill themselves. Easiest way to do it is to visit your local dealer and shoot a couple of hundred bucks up your arm. Beyond that you've got a variety of household items from razorblades and kitchen knives to plastic bags to various poisons available over the counter. Beyond that you have the classic example of the hose in the exhuast pipe (might be less effective on a BlueEfficency Merc these days though).
As someone who's worked with suicide prevention services and has made suicide prevention their personal cause, you need to focus on why people kill themselves, not how. As I've said above, its easy to find a way to do it, if you really want to. Secondly, we need to stop demonising people who try to commit suicide, it only makes things worse.
> Apple could be working on a more powerful tablet, something that could compete with Microsoft's Surface Pro line.
What, really? Apple is designing a table that is only ever seen on Hawaii Five-0?
The strange and sad thing is, Surface Pro's are becoming more common in corporate environments because they're basically just Windows machines sans KB. So they're actually replacing laptops instead of pretending to replace laptops like Android and Apple Tablets.
Ugh. I hate those legacy laptops with a hundred different connectors you have to manage every time you sit down to your desk
Yeah, its so much better having to rummage around in a bag for 2 minutes so I can plug in some headphones with a bog standard 3.5mm jack is soooooo much better... And woe betide you if you forget that adapter.
I do expect a minimum number of connectors in a laptop. At least 3 USB (keyboard, mouse and storage device), network (Ethernet), display out (HDMI is standard these days) and audio out (3.5 mm) are that minimum. So 7 connectors, none of which are legacy or even uncommon.
My idea of laptop hell is having to get an additional US$80 adapter just to plug in a device that plugs in fine to every other laptop in existence.
for hd video, wifi is NO SUBSTITUTE for wired enet.
This.
And it's not necessarily the speed (bit rate) but the inherent instability and susceptibility to interference that really makes it unstable. If my wireless connection drops momentarily whilst I'm browsing/. I'm not going to notice, if it drops whilst streaming a HD video, chances are I'll notice (even buffering the video wont help too much).
If you want to send video over a network you use wires. If you're really serious or going long distances, you go straight to fibre.
In the past year, two tablets in my household have died because the micro-USB ports which serve as their power connectors had ceased to work - presumably due to wear.
Yeah, I had to fix my tablet's micro-USB port twice. One of the pins had to be resoldered to the board. These micro USB connectors are way too delicate for daily use.
I dont know what you two are doing, but you're doing it wrong.
I've got a Nokia 3600C I bought back in 2007 which still works perfectly not the least of which, is it's microUSB port. I've never had a USB port break in any of my devices and pretty much every phone I've had since 2004 has had a USB port of some description. I've also got a Chinese brand tablet I bought for A$80 2 years ago, it's USB port has never needed re-soldering.
USB is designed so the plug breaks before the port, this is deliberate as replacing a USB cable is cheaper than a USB port. If you're being violent enough with it to break a USB port you're being violent enough to break any form of port (or you're just making your story up, which I suspect is closer to the truth).
Does USB Type C Herald the End of Apple's Proprietary Connectors?
I'm gonna go out on a very short limb and go with "no" as my answer. Apple always finds a way to do something a little different and I doubt that is likely to change anytime soon.
Yep.
Apple doesn't give a crap if it loses 90% of its market share as long as it gets to keep doing it's own thing. The only reason Apple gave up on PowerPC was because they had a spat with IBM (who were more interested in using the architecture for games consoles and servers). But Apple has a habit of doing this "taking my ball and going home" thing when they cant get their own way.
What USB C means is that few others will take up thunderbolt as it's expensive, thunderbolt devices are less common and has no clear advantage over USB. Basically, thunderbolt is the new firewire and all we can expect to see from it are more Mac users rummaging through their Louis Vutton shoulder bags for their adapter.
Apple just deprecates things slightly ahead of people realzing they soon won't need that.
Which is why they kept the Zip drive for years after PC's abandoned it, Same with Firewire and the PowerPC chips.
Sorry if this bursts your bubble about Apple being some kind of prophet, but there's plenty of examples of Apple getting it wrong (and I predict Thunderbolt will be another, like firewire it's an expensive solution looking for a problem just like Firewire was).
Slashdot Mirror
They're creepy too. It's worse when you're bugging children's playtimes, but we shouldn't accept any of those things in our lives.
Often I find kids will eschew high tech toys in favour of a simple cardboard box. I gave my nephew a simple electronic drum kit for Christmas (it was to help with developing his co-ordination and to give him better musical tastes than his parents, so there was some thought into the gift) but he spent the entire day running around with the box it came in and having a ball. You wouldn't have been able to pry that box off him with a crow bar.
You dont need to get high tech toys for kids, they'll enjoy lego, blocks, matchbox cars and the like just as much as I did when I was a kid. Hell, one of the best things you had to play with was a large refrigerator box.
Gender stereotypes work both ways.
Other news exclusively for misogynists and misandrists at 11.
But 1000 miles is a bit beyond even my idea of acceptable range. If an electric could get 600-700 miles on a charge, I'd be happy.
Distance isn't a problem. Most people dont exceed the range of average EV's.
The problem is recharging. If you run low on petrol 50 KM from home you it takes 5 minutes to refill, if you run low on electricity 50 KM from home, you need to charge for several hours IF and that's a big if, you can find somewhere to recharge.
The reality is, if you run low on charge 50 KM from home, it's time to call a flatbed with a traditional internal combustion engine. So how many carbons does and Isuzu straight 6 diesel put out?
What do you do about the microphone?
Iron Maiden, Metalica, Rise Against. Take your pick.
Telling you that the volume should be set to very loud is redundant. Metal should always be played at full volume.
But I don't like bananas :(
Well. Tough luck. To be a privacy conscious person, one has to eat bananas.
Plus its a good source of sodium... But it's also a source of radiation so a privacy minded person knows that helps the government track you.
Fight the power, eat nectarines.
"The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so."
So we're to believe hertz put the cameras there for no reason other than to hurt their business by scaring away customers, because may be someday they may want them?
On the flipside, this means I no longer need to worry about the hire car company coming up with bollocks charges against me for damaging the car or got a fine because their camera didn't capture any of it. Also if I'm in an accident it will clearly show who is at fault (and I'm confident enough of a driver to say it wont be mine), so they cant claim their excess until "the issue is resolved".
It may be a bit paranoid, but when I hire a car I use my own dash cam in it for these reasons.
Proportional fines are not a means of revenue, where did you get that stupid idea from? Fines are punishments.
Because "Revenue Raising" is a popular conspiracy theory used by speeders in order to avoid admitting what they do is wrong.
Fines are punishments. As such, if the punishment doesn't reach even 1% of the money you earn in a day, you can effectively ignore them always, and in the process possibly endanger others. The proportionality of the system is to level the playing field, but that is clearly communism and can't be had in the united states of money.
Fines are punishments, but as you said they're only punishments up to a point. This is why most western nations have a demerit point system. If you accrue too many points you lose your license. A craw that sticks in the sides of the revenue conspiracy theorists in Australia is the fact we long weekends are "double demerit weekends", not "double fine weekends". So if you get caught doing 30 over in my state, its a $800 fine and 6 points. Do that on a double demerit weekend and its an $800 fine and a suspension (12 points). In Germany higher speeding fines come with automatic suspensions.
I dont speed, not simply because its stupid and costs money but because I also race my car, track, drift and on occasion, rally cross. After this you begin to realise that doing 15 over isn't just silly, it's boring compared to sliding a car round a track.
For speeding (unless it's a speed trap) it won't be. The people with the money will just challenge it in court and it will be dismissed. No fine and just whatever the lawyer charges.
In countries with sane enforcement policies its difficult to challenge a speeding fine if you were actually speeding. Australia and most European nations have a standard of evidence that makes it hard to deny that you were speeding.
Just try to listen to a 200 years old English recording, you wouldn't understand it. Languages evolve, and in a few 10's of years no American will understand the current British English.
10 years... They already have to subtitle most English accents on TV... And I mean a Londoner, not someone from Blackpool or Yorkshire.
Latin turned into Italian (and Spanish and French etc.), modern English grew out of Old English which is incomprehensible to everyone except linguists today, and yes, even modern English will be a dead language someday. Languages drift, film at 11.
English was derived from proto-Germanic languages from the Anglo-Saxons that colonised Britain, displacing Roman and Celtic languages. It was combined with Latin languages (notably French) later on.
So English is a language with both Latin and Germanic roots.
Rike wot th queen does.
I can't see that these companies can be so valuable.
Its because they aren't.
The numbers quoted are what some analyst thinks that someone might theoretically pay.
The reality is once the "ride sharing" scam falls into a heap, these companies will be picked up for pennies on the dollar.
But that's MY choice. I shouldn't be REQUIRED to part with money to listen to music. We have the technology available that allows anyone to download any song they want for free.
This is the thing the music industry fails to understand. This day and age you're no longer REQUIRED to pay for music. The RIAA and studios need to move out of the mindset that people can be forced to pay and realise that people need to be enticed to pay.
The majority of people are happy to part with some coin to support the bands and artists they like. The problem is that they also feel no sympathy for the industry that takes 90-99% of the revenue and gives a pittance to the artists. You know the situation is bad when you have bands telling people to download their songs and come to their concerts.
And that's exactly what I do. It's not often that a good act comes to my city (Perth, Western Australia) but when a band I like comes here I make a point to go if I can. Same with comedians. I have bought 3 of the Foo Fighters albums but downloaded the other three. They played in Perth last week (I went, despite it being $150 for general admission) I would have been more than happy to give Dave Grohl and the band the A$9 I owed them for downloading their albums but I have the strangest feeling that if I did, they'd tell me they didn't need my A$9 and thank me for coming to their concert.
We have used something called Whole Baby Salve for each of our infants.
It has been amazing in treating scalded skin from diaper rash to mastitis and other burn like symptoms.
This works mainly because it serves as a lubricant between the kid and whatever is causing the rash. But that is besides the point.
We know that a lot of common items have some form of medicinal properties, well proven in the lab but they aren't classified as drugs because they aren't that powerful. For example, the Aloe Vera plant is proven to be helpful with rashes and burns, so it ends up being used in a lot of over the counter things from sun burn cream to moisturiser. Because its used so casually does not make it ineffective and just because it's not dispensed by a pharmacists does not make it homoeopathic. There's often quite a bit of science behind remedies that also happen to be old wives tales.
But the article isn't talking about treating nappy rash, it's talking about people eschewing proven medical treatments for serious medical conditions with homoeopathic remedies which are proven not to work. In this case, homoeopathy isn't just useless, it's also quite dangerous.
Because research has shown placebo's do have in fact, while small, a significant effect on health. As noted this is likely purely due to psychosomatic effect rather than any medical benefit but nonetheless it happens. It is a bit of a catch 22 though, since it is psychosomatic, for it to be effective, it has to actually seem like legit treatment even though it's nothing more than a trick. We humans are very strange in that regard.
Basically, a placebo is an effective treatment if there's nothing really wrong with you.
Its useful for treating hypochondria, doctor shoppers or alleviating symptoms whilst waiting for the body to heal itself (although a doctor will generally prescribe something functional if you need it).
Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.
True, though in some cases, reporting you feel better is the same as actually BEING better. Antidepressants, for instance.
Depression and anxiety are psychological conditions, so a psychological treatment is needed.
Proper anti-depressants are not pleasant drugs to be on. So if a placebo can be used as part of a psychological treatment that is good. However if you've got something like cancer then a medically prescribed placebo is useless, homoeopathy is worse than useless, it's dangerous.
I was just scanning the comments to see if this point had already been made. Thanks!
Perhaps the most obvious example of this was Babylon 5. In many ways that woke up television producers to the option of strong story arcs across seasons or even the entire show instead of the old rule that everything had to end back in the same state where it started. Sure, there are plenty of other examples, even before B5, but I think that is what really changed the market.
Now it's standard practice for lots of shows: 24, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, and many others.
B5 wasn't the first series to have a long overlapping story arc, but it was the one that refined it into what we know today. The Prisoner from the 60's is the earliest example I can think of off the top of my head.
You do realize that when you make a statement like that, it takes only a single counterexample to prove you wrong?
Irony abound.
http://www.whas11.com/story/news/2015/03/10/campbellsville-police-child-shot-in-leg-by-parent-repairing-gun/24698611/
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Texas-Boy-6-Hospitalized-After-Shot-By-Little-Brother-294704731.html
http://abc13.com/news/4-year-old-dead-in-accidental-shooting-in-north-harris-county/539586/
http://www.chron.com/houston/article/Child-wounded-in-gunfire-in-NW-Harris-County-6105827.php
For every news story that shows someone shooting in self defence, there are half a dozen stories about someone being shot by accident. Statistics have shown you're far more likely to shoot yourself of someone you care about with unsecured firearms around the house.
Not really and that's wrong.
Codifying firearms storage into law does not require mandatory police inspections. We've got laws around gun storage in Australia and the cops cant search your home without a warrant. Even if you let them in for a chat and they notice an improperly stored gun, they cant do anything about it (besides saying "mate, you should probably keep that gun locked up").
Even then, if you are found via a legal search to have an improperly stored weapon, it's just a fine (A$500 from memory). It only becomes a significant punishment when combined with another crime where easy access to a weapon that was not locked up was a significant factor.
That being said, keeping guns and ammo secured mainly prevents accidental deaths. Guns are not common here in Oz, yet people still kill themselves. Easiest way to do it is to visit your local dealer and shoot a couple of hundred bucks up your arm. Beyond that you've got a variety of household items from razorblades and kitchen knives to plastic bags to various poisons available over the counter. Beyond that you have the classic example of the hose in the exhuast pipe (might be less effective on a BlueEfficency Merc these days though).
As someone who's worked with suicide prevention services and has made suicide prevention their personal cause, you need to focus on why people kill themselves, not how. As I've said above, its easy to find a way to do it, if you really want to. Secondly, we need to stop demonising people who try to commit suicide, it only makes things worse.
> Apple could be working on a more powerful tablet, something that could compete with Microsoft's Surface Pro line.
What, really? Apple is designing a table that is only ever seen on Hawaii Five-0?
The strange and sad thing is, Surface Pro's are becoming more common in corporate environments because they're basically just Windows machines sans KB. So they're actually replacing laptops instead of pretending to replace laptops like Android and Apple Tablets.
Yeah, its so much better having to rummage around in a bag for 2 minutes so I can plug in some headphones with a bog standard 3.5mm jack is soooooo much better... And woe betide you if you forget that adapter.
I do expect a minimum number of connectors in a laptop. At least 3 USB (keyboard, mouse and storage device), network (Ethernet), display out (HDMI is standard these days) and audio out (3.5 mm) are that minimum. So 7 connectors, none of which are legacy or even uncommon.
My idea of laptop hell is having to get an additional US$80 adapter just to plug in a device that plugs in fine to every other laptop in existence.
for hd video, wifi is NO SUBSTITUTE for wired enet.
This.
/. I'm not going to notice, if it drops whilst streaming a HD video, chances are I'll notice (even buffering the video wont help too much).
And it's not necessarily the speed (bit rate) but the inherent instability and susceptibility to interference that really makes it unstable. If my wireless connection drops momentarily whilst I'm browsing
If you want to send video over a network you use wires. If you're really serious or going long distances, you go straight to fibre.
In the past year, two tablets in my household have died because the micro-USB ports which serve as their power connectors had ceased to work - presumably due to wear.
Yeah, I had to fix my tablet's micro-USB port twice. One of the pins had to be resoldered to the board. These micro USB connectors are way too delicate for daily use.
I dont know what you two are doing, but you're doing it wrong.
I've got a Nokia 3600C I bought back in 2007 which still works perfectly not the least of which, is it's microUSB port. I've never had a USB port break in any of my devices and pretty much every phone I've had since 2004 has had a USB port of some description. I've also got a Chinese brand tablet I bought for A$80 2 years ago, it's USB port has never needed re-soldering.
USB is designed so the plug breaks before the port, this is deliberate as replacing a USB cable is cheaper than a USB port. If you're being violent enough with it to break a USB port you're being violent enough to break any form of port (or you're just making your story up, which I suspect is closer to the truth).
Does USB Type C Herald the End of Apple's Proprietary Connectors?
I'm gonna go out on a very short limb and go with "no" as my answer. Apple always finds a way to do something a little different and I doubt that is likely to change anytime soon.
Yep.
Apple doesn't give a crap if it loses 90% of its market share as long as it gets to keep doing it's own thing. The only reason Apple gave up on PowerPC was because they had a spat with IBM (who were more interested in using the architecture for games consoles and servers). But Apple has a habit of doing this "taking my ball and going home" thing when they cant get their own way.
What USB C means is that few others will take up thunderbolt as it's expensive, thunderbolt devices are less common and has no clear advantage over USB. Basically, thunderbolt is the new firewire and all we can expect to see from it are more Mac users rummaging through their Louis Vutton shoulder bags for their adapter.
Which is why they kept the Zip drive for years after PC's abandoned it, Same with Firewire and the PowerPC chips.
Sorry if this bursts your bubble about Apple being some kind of prophet, but there's plenty of examples of Apple getting it wrong (and I predict Thunderbolt will be another, like firewire it's an expensive solution looking for a problem just like Firewire was).