The cable set top boxes that probably cost 50$ each wholesale are generating over 120$ of revenue per year. The cable companies will do everything legal and illegal to keep that cash cow going. Opening up the cable box segment for competition is a good idea. The cable companies are regulated monopolies, so opening up the set top box is doable, if the lobbying and sly tactics could be overcome.
But this is just one part of the raw deal customers are getting from the cable companies. Without real competition on the ground there will never be end to the abuse by cable monopolies. There are other agencies in the municipal areas that have easements and rights of way. Power companies have lines to every home. Phone, water and sewer lines too. All of them can string fiber or cable to their street corner control boxes or something similar. There are many promising solutions for the last furlong. Wireless in the loop etc.
What the government can do is to find a frequency band in the spectrum and allocate it for the wireless in the loop technologies. Bring real competition to the cable/phone markets, then set top box abuse will take care of it itself.
There are multiple agencies with easement rights and rights of way, and access to homes, offices and factories. Google designed a self driving car. It could design a semi-autonomous robot that trails fiber behind it and swim up the sewer lines and connect homes. Wondering why Google did not think about that.
The idea that industrial revolution and productivity gains will always create more jobs than destroyed is a very euro centric view. Globally if you take into account the jobs destroyed in the colonies along with the jobs destroyed in Europe, productivity improvements have never produced more jobs than lost. Had been true since the dawn of industrial revolution. When Europe ran out of fresh colonies, productivity gains destroyed jobs at home and it resulted in the world wars I and II.
Drastic cuts, old wealth disappearing, new order emerging etc held something at bay in Europe.
America had its own internal frontier. As long as the frontier was moving west and more land came under the till the population growth kept it going. World war II and the baby boom helped it going farther.
Finally we have run out of frontiers both in Europe and America. But that is merely the space frontier, the time frontier is endless. The next generation, always larger than the previous in sheer numbers will provide the demand needed to create more jobs than lost. But the pace is furious and is acceleration. Society does not have the time to adjust or grow to create more demand.
The world simply does not have the energy and material needed to provide first world comfort to the third world. But efficiency gains in material and energy use, as well as labor use, can create the demand needed to keep all the world employed gainfully.
Improving the living conditions of the third world is how we can create jobs in the first world. We need to promote trade that will genuinely improve the lives of the people of the third world, not trade policies driven by tax dodgers, job outsources, and environment scofflaws.
Go pro product. People laugh at it and snicker at it or grossed about it. But really the western toilets are very unsuitable to promote efficient elimination. Indian, Chinese and Japanese style toilets allow us to assume the posture evolution designed our anatomy to take for this purpose. This product gets you get at least half way towards that posture, quite cheaply too.
Wait, this gopro is not the gopro they are talking about right?
I see lots of posts explaining why unemployment claims is not a good metric to measure the state of affairs. The points made are quite logical and correct. I am not disputing that. But, all those things were also true every day since 1976 too. So comparing the delta between then now is not as invalid as most people make it out to be.
It is like the pressure altitude used by aircraft. Pressure altitude is a fictional table of pressure vs altitude created at the dawn of aviation. It does not tell you the true height above sea level. But the airport reports a pressure altitude based on that table, the aircraft altimeter uses the same table and when the delta is good enough to make safe landing. And two aircraft using the same table is enough to maintain safe vertical separation.
The delta is quite an accurate measure of the difference, even if the absolute values could have large errors. So we should not be so quick to dismiss this a stupid statistic. Don't have to accept it as the Gospel, but it is not Goebbels either.
The taxi cab numbers is the simplest anecdote from Ramanujan that could be told to general audience. Rest of his stuff are so far out, it is impossible to describe to even highly educated engineers. Really sad he died so young.
But Ramanujan was never taught the process of writing down formal proofs, he self thought everything from a handbook of mathematical identities. Rediscovering several things others had already discovered and proved. He was utterly at a loss to explain how he was able to do math. He simply said, "I look at the equation or a problem. Then Goddess Namagiri Devi writes the answer in my tongue and I recite it". (not an accurate quote, paraphrased by me)
I wish it was Lord Oppiliappan, the family deity of his dad, not Namagiri Devi the consort of the family deity of his mom. Because Lord Oppiliappan is my family deity too. Would have gotten me some bragging rights.
I was very much worried about the cyber criminals. Despaired what/who could stop them.
Finally, relieved. Corporate best practices! If that does not kill their efficiency and agility, nothing will. Hope the also implement agile rally scrum thingies complete with kanban board and daily dissing of waterfall development. Seven layers of managers telling the lone code monkey what to do, quarterly story point estimates, progress reports, burn down charts,... the works. So much time will be spent in measuring progress and in planning meeting, nothing will ever get done.
Great!
If criminals repeatedly use FedEX or UPS to ship/receive stolen merchandise the parcel delivery companies must delist them and stop delivering to their addresses. USPS also should stop delivering letters and packages. If pot growers use electric lights to grow weed, then the electric utility must cut off electricity to the whole building or the apartment complex. Why take half measures, no electricity to the entire zip code. That will teach them.
Error messages have to be focused on correcting the problem, not accusing the users of being "morons" and making a mistake, and not leaving them fearing punishment. And if a person runs into a feature that's difficult, frequently gives them error messages, or that takes them a long time to figure out, it's not their fault that the UI didn't help them. It's the UI that needs work.
The opening line of Anna Karenina is, "All happy families are alike. But each unhappy family is miserable in its own way".
All solvable problems are alike. But each unsolvable problem fails its own unique way. Demanding the UI to know every possible error that could be in the data and find the solution to tell the user what to do next is the classic demand from the management, sales and support engineers who do not really understand how the software works.
All we can do is to validate the data to make sure the next step can be completed. We can provide progress messages and explain to what level we have succeeded. When validation fails, we can explain clearly why the input data is failing validation, and explain the validation test, and why that particular data validation is needed. Then list common reasons why the input fails the validation test, some predicted by the developer, some gathered from the field and past experience. That is all we can do.
If it is possible to predict what should be done next for every failure, then why throw an error message and ask the user to fix it? Can't the software fix it, itself? There are bad error messages, "Data for this linked list is already found in another linked list" is a classic example of horrible error message to be shown to the user. If the user does not understand, "The input solid body solder_ball_VSSC_trace003_net007 in the input is not water tight. Cracks and holes are found in the solid body definition" is a good error message. If the user does not understand that message he/she should go back to school and demand their tuition back.
The company is still being run by the founder and the visionary leader. That is the source of this problem. Just wait till it goes public and institutional share holding crosses the threshold.
Then the MBAs will move in. They will pay themselves first, raid the cash reserves, cash out the good will. Define short term is tomorrow and long term as this quarter. Once they move in, they will make sure profits are made in their tenure and the wrongful death law suits come after their stock options have vested and cashed out.
It is very expensive to be poor. The minimum cash on hand threshold to avoid falling into the abyss is quite low when there is public transit. If you have money for bus fare, you could go to work and work for one day and start coming back up. Friends and family can scrape together enough to get you a bus fare.
When there is no public transit, the threshold is a few hundred dollars. One fender bender, one blown tire or busted alternator is all it takes for a poor person without public transit to fall off. Can't get to work, can't earn the money needed to fix the car. They would depend on the kindness and help from near and dear to get past that kind of emergency.
Most poor people would rather have a dependable transportation system to their work place and affordable child care than dole. Poverty rates can be halved just by providing/subsidizing transportation and child care.
Urban area unemployment rate is over 33% approaches even 50%. That means even in those blighted areas 50 to 66% of the people actually go to work. Somehow, despite all the hardships, despite seeing the drug dealers and pimps rolling in dough, people line up to work for minimum wage in a burger joint. Shows how much poverty could be alleviated if we make it possible for them to work.
Why do you call the GP post bullshit? It is true, Japan is much more densely populated. And what you say is also true. The cable monopolies are acting with bad faith.
Without competition it would be like that. We need to understand how Japan managed to foster competition that kept its internet access prices low.
For comparison: Verizon FiOS 50 up/ 50 down + landline phone + TV for 130$ including taxes. T-Mobile phone with unlimited voice and text, 2 GB data cap per line, four lines 120$.
I know slashdot has this policy of never deleting editing said by anyone. But I wonder if it should just delete posts like the parent. Set the threshold like 5 or 10 negative mod points for a post to be deleted entirely and apply it to the parent post by the AC.
Exposed to the elements? It would not last even a day. Covered with dust, react with air and in no time it will stop working as both solar cell and as rain cell.
Bundy is a racist bigot and a loser who depends on government handouts. The grazing fees charged by BLM is way below the market rates. If BLM auctions off the grazing rights and Bundy had to bid for it in open market it would have costed him and other ranchers 10 times more. Other ranchers know they are getting a sweet deal from the federal government and try to avoid drawing attention to it. Bundy's greed is shining a light on their sweet deal and they are worried they all may have to pay higher grazing fees. That is why there is so much opposition to the Bundy family in the west.
We should not allow the police and the military to acquire these armor protection. We know that the second amendment right to bear and keep arms is meant exclusively as a protection against tyrannical government. If the government forces can protect themselves from righteous citizens defending their liberty. The jack booted thugs will simply laugh at the citizen patriots peacefully occupying wild life refuges or graze cattle on land without paying grazing fees and impose their draconian will. It will unleash a tyranny that no founding father would have tolerated.
So we need a constitutional amendment to make sure the forces under the employment of the government are always vulnerable to the guns and ammunition of the law abiding citizens.
Area 51 was some Air Force cold war projects. Used some vaguely humanoid looking dummies for some radiation effects study and bombings. Some sketchy reports and leaks from confused lower level workers in the base gave rise to the rumors. Once the town and some of the businesses realized how lucrative it was, they stoked the flame.
Face it, any fool can ask questions. Asking questions is not difficult. Answering it is difficult, and it is impossible to wake up someone pretending to be asleep.
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But this is just one part of the raw deal customers are getting from the cable companies. Without real competition on the ground there will never be end to the abuse by cable monopolies. There are other agencies in the municipal areas that have easements and rights of way. Power companies have lines to every home. Phone, water and sewer lines too. All of them can string fiber or cable to their street corner control boxes or something similar. There are many promising solutions for the last furlong. Wireless in the loop etc.
What the government can do is to find a frequency band in the spectrum and allocate it for the wireless in the loop technologies. Bring real competition to the cable/phone markets, then set top box abuse will take care of it itself.
There are multiple agencies with easement rights and rights of way, and access to homes, offices and factories. Google designed a self driving car. It could design a semi-autonomous robot that trails fiber behind it and swim up the sewer lines and connect homes. Wondering why Google did not think about that.
Drastic cuts, old wealth disappearing, new order emerging etc held something at bay in Europe.
America had its own internal frontier. As long as the frontier was moving west and more land came under the till the population growth kept it going. World war II and the baby boom helped it going farther.
Finally we have run out of frontiers both in Europe and America. But that is merely the space frontier, the time frontier is endless. The next generation, always larger than the previous in sheer numbers will provide the demand needed to create more jobs than lost. But the pace is furious and is acceleration. Society does not have the time to adjust or grow to create more demand.
The world simply does not have the energy and material needed to provide first world comfort to the third world. But efficiency gains in material and energy use, as well as labor use, can create the demand needed to keep all the world employed gainfully.
Improving the living conditions of the third world is how we can create jobs in the first world. We need to promote trade that will genuinely improve the lives of the people of the third world, not trade policies driven by tax dodgers, job outsources, and environment scofflaws.
It was spent on good education. The pointy haired bosses learned something.
Wait, this gopro is not the gopro they are talking about right?
I think we would become a better nation if we learn not to pee on the hands ... No need for air dryers or paper.
It is like the pressure altitude used by aircraft. Pressure altitude is a fictional table of pressure vs altitude created at the dawn of aviation. It does not tell you the true height above sea level. But the airport reports a pressure altitude based on that table, the aircraft altimeter uses the same table and when the delta is good enough to make safe landing. And two aircraft using the same table is enough to maintain safe vertical separation.
The delta is quite an accurate measure of the difference, even if the absolute values could have large errors. So we should not be so quick to dismiss this a stupid statistic. Don't have to accept it as the Gospel, but it is not Goebbels either.
But Ramanujan was never taught the process of writing down formal proofs, he self thought everything from a handbook of mathematical identities. Rediscovering several things others had already discovered and proved. He was utterly at a loss to explain how he was able to do math. He simply said, "I look at the equation or a problem. Then Goddess Namagiri Devi writes the answer in my tongue and I recite it". (not an accurate quote, paraphrased by me)
I wish it was Lord Oppiliappan, the family deity of his dad, not Namagiri Devi the consort of the family deity of his mom. Because Lord Oppiliappan is my family deity too. Would have gotten me some bragging rights.
Hey, that was like LTE-U, isn't it?
Not any random products, "NEW" and "EXCITING" products.
Finally, relieved. Corporate best practices! If that does not kill their efficiency and agility, nothing will. Hope the also implement agile rally scrum thingies complete with kanban board and daily dissing of waterfall development. Seven layers of managers telling the lone code monkey what to do, quarterly story point estimates, progress reports, burn down charts, ... the works. So much time will be spent in measuring progress and in planning meeting, nothing will ever get done.
Great!
If criminals repeatedly use FedEX or UPS to ship/receive stolen merchandise the parcel delivery companies must delist them and stop delivering to their addresses. USPS also should stop delivering letters and packages. If pot growers use electric lights to grow weed, then the electric utility must cut off electricity to the whole building or the apartment complex. Why take half measures, no electricity to the entire zip code. That will teach them.
I have not heard the term resign for cause. I know "fired for cause" means no unemployment benefit.
Error messages have to be focused on correcting the problem, not accusing the users of being "morons" and making a mistake, and not leaving them fearing punishment. And if a person runs into a feature that's difficult, frequently gives them error messages, or that takes them a long time to figure out, it's not their fault that the UI didn't help them. It's the UI that needs work.
The opening line of Anna Karenina is, "All happy families are alike. But each unhappy family is miserable in its own way".
All solvable problems are alike. But each unsolvable problem fails its own unique way. Demanding the UI to know every possible error that could be in the data and find the solution to tell the user what to do next is the classic demand from the management, sales and support engineers who do not really understand how the software works.
All we can do is to validate the data to make sure the next step can be completed. We can provide progress messages and explain to what level we have succeeded. When validation fails, we can explain clearly why the input data is failing validation, and explain the validation test, and why that particular data validation is needed. Then list common reasons why the input fails the validation test, some predicted by the developer, some gathered from the field and past experience. That is all we can do.
If it is possible to predict what should be done next for every failure, then why throw an error message and ask the user to fix it? Can't the software fix it, itself? There are bad error messages, "Data for this linked list is already found in another linked list" is a classic example of horrible error message to be shown to the user. If the user does not understand, "The input solid body solder_ball_VSSC_trace003_net007 in the input is not water tight. Cracks and holes are found in the solid body definition" is a good error message. If the user does not understand that message he/she should go back to school and demand their tuition back.
Then the MBAs will move in. They will pay themselves first, raid the cash reserves, cash out the good will. Define short term is tomorrow and long term as this quarter. Once they move in, they will make sure profits are made in their tenure and the wrongful death law suits come after their stock options have vested and cashed out.
When there is no public transit, the threshold is a few hundred dollars. One fender bender, one blown tire or busted alternator is all it takes for a poor person without public transit to fall off. Can't get to work, can't earn the money needed to fix the car. They would depend on the kindness and help from near and dear to get past that kind of emergency.
Most poor people would rather have a dependable transportation system to their work place and affordable child care than dole. Poverty rates can be halved just by providing/subsidizing transportation and child care.
Urban area unemployment rate is over 33% approaches even 50%. That means even in those blighted areas 50 to 66% of the people actually go to work. Somehow, despite all the hardships, despite seeing the drug dealers and pimps rolling in dough, people line up to work for minimum wage in a burger joint. Shows how much poverty could be alleviated if we make it possible for them to work.
At least you were half right.
Without competition it would be like that. We need to understand how Japan managed to foster competition that kept its internet access prices low.
For comparison: Verizon FiOS 50 up/ 50 down + landline phone + TV for 130$ including taxes. T-Mobile phone with unlimited voice and text, 2 GB data cap per line, four lines 120$.
I know slashdot has this policy of never deleting editing said by anyone. But I wonder if it should just delete posts like the parent. Set the threshold like 5 or 10 negative mod points for a post to be deleted entirely and apply it to the parent post by the AC.
Exposed to the elements? It would not last even a day. Covered with dust, react with air and in no time it will stop working as both solar cell and as rain cell.
Bundy is a racist bigot and a loser who depends on government handouts. The grazing fees charged by BLM is way below the market rates. If BLM auctions off the grazing rights and Bundy had to bid for it in open market it would have costed him and other ranchers 10 times more. Other ranchers know they are getting a sweet deal from the federal government and try to avoid drawing attention to it. Bundy's greed is shining a light on their sweet deal and they are worried they all may have to pay higher grazing fees. That is why there is so much opposition to the Bundy family in the west.
So we need a constitutional amendment to make sure the forces under the employment of the government are always vulnerable to the guns and ammunition of the law abiding citizens.
Face it, any fool can ask questions. Asking questions is not difficult. Answering it is difficult, and it is impossible to wake up someone pretending to be asleep.
[Citation Provided]