Why does it matter as long as the data cap isn't hidden or abused (throttling implemented before the cap is reached)? I know my Comcast account has a 1TB limit, and that it will cost me extra for exceeding it. Moreover, they warn me when I'm approaching the limit. My phone service has a 6GB limit, after which you're throttled. They don't hide the fact. Unless the company is doing these things without telling the customer, why is it news?
I'm not denying the need to for speed bumps, I'm decrying the existence of drivers who can't control themselves from driving like idiots... but they exist, so we all suffer.
I imagine they may work great if it's not a road you frequently travel, but surely, over time you get used to them and learn to ignore them.
If there's even moderate traffic, though, someone will slow down, which then slows everybody else down. So all it takes is for one in ten or twenty to not know it's fake. Also, don't underestimate the ability for most drivers to completely ignore what they could potentially be learning on their drives to make life easier the next time.... they're mostly too busy checking facebook to realize they can learn and adapt their driving. Most people don't even think about what they're doing next.
I hate speed bumps and speed "humps" (the wide ones that sometimes have a pedestrian walkway across). It's me being punished because other idiots couldn't control themselves and slow down. I DO notice what you are talking about - it seems the people with the most expensive SUVs go the slowest. It bothers me more at railroad tracks because, in reality, unless they are really bad (as bad as speed bumps - most of the ones near me are actually pretty good), the trick is to go as fast as you can over them and let your car's suspension do what it was made for - it's less bumpy for you and much better for your car's suspension then bobbing up and down over every little bump.
I drove from east coast to west coast several times before people could buy GPS systems, let alone use smart phones. I can't believe people already think that would be anything special or news worthy. I know people that won't get in their cars without their smart phones because "what if something happened?" The ONLY time I ever needed to call someone because of a car problem I had to pull over and walk a quarter mile to a gas station.... OH THE HUMANITY!
No, I'm not a Luddite - I get the value of Waze and use it all the time, but to think it's something special to not use it is sad.
Well, that's actually understandable... sometimes sellers don't check all the boxes, sometimes they don't list features in the correct places. So the math if fine: 25 brakes, 19 without, and 98 "unknown."
Not that I disagree with the searching being terrible, just that I have learned to accept a few things as actually not being Amazon's fault. One thing to do is actually click on that "Didn't find what you want?" link at the bottom of the page and tell them why their search sucks.
Your problem is defining "success" as being "rich" instead of being able to support yourself and your family. The "American" dream was not be ostentatiously wealthy, it used to be to be able to support your family.
I agree, but you're living proof that it's not how wealthy you were growing up, it's how your guardians raised you. You saw your mother working very hard to support you, and she probably spent a lot of effort encouraging you to work hard and do well in school (often, in these cases, the guardian(s) will point to themselves and warn that you don't want to turn out like them - working very hard for very little - so you need to succeed in school). Often a single parent will also constantly warn of the mistake they made that caused them to be a single parent, because it's more often than not a stupid mistake and not an "act of god" that made it that way.
The biggest influence is parents/guardians - if that guardian is sitting back collecting welfare and not giving a crap about the children they are raising, well, guess what? That mentality gets passed down to the kids. You can grow up in a really crappy area, where schools suck, and your peers and the prevailing attitude is that school and hard work is for suckers, but if you have great people raising you then you can overcome that environment.
What I can say from your story is that your mom is a phenomenal person, and you should be very grateful to have had her as the one raising you.
I disagree, but there's something in between what you guys are arguing about. A lot of people who were born "on the wrong side of the tracks" end up doing really well both because they overcame the bad influences of their peers AND because they were raised by someone who valued hard work and education and encouraged the child to do well in school. It's almost entirely parenting.
When you get up into the middle and upper classes, the children can generally see hard work paying off, both in their guardians and elsewhere in their neighborhoods. People growing up in the ghetto don't get that. It could be a long discussion when you get to a lot of the finer points, but people are a product of both their nature and their nurture (how much influence the latter has depends on the former - some people are more easily influenced).
I don't know where I'd be if I wasn't raised in a middle class neighborhood, but if I was surrounded by bad influences and parents who didn't care, I'm certain I'd be a lot less well off. But you are a lot more likely to succeed if you are a hard worker (even more than if you are just "naturally" smart), but it is definitely luck to be born into an environment that actually encourages hard work and education.
Some people still luck into great jobs, and some exceptional people can't seem to catch a break. But here's the thing - graduating high school is the single biggest indicator of success in the future (in the U.S.), but if you live in an impoverished area and are not willing to move to where jobs are, you're relegating yourself to a pretty poor life, in general.
And let's be realistic in this discussion - we're not talking about Zuckerberg or Gates success, we're talking about being able to support yourself and your family with a decent lifestyle. That's the American dream was - only lately has it become being ostentatiously wealthy.
The big deal is avoiding a situation like: "Oh, you want to plug in that USB 4 Device? Well you'll need to run out and buy a new computer." Or "The next windows forced update requires a new computer. Your current one will stop working in 3 days. See you in the checkout line!"
So you're saying all currently existing computers should be USB 4 capable, despite the fact it doesn't even exist yet?
You have a point with Windows, but even then there has never been an instance of "your current one will stop working." Even Windows will just stop supporting your platform and not issue updates anymore. There's too much exaggeration, too much hyperbole... nobody is "forcing" anybody to do anything.
That's the thing - we're not talking about people who buy a complete system, or even who hack together a system because they simply prefer picking and choosing components (like me) over getting whatever vendors decided to put in. I build my own system so that I can do things like getting quiet fans and power supplies; I also know the graphics card installed on most systems (usually some built in crap) is not going to be good enough. I'm not a big gamer, but I do play, and I do use some graphics apps professionally.
Somebody who spends $3k to $4k building some super gaming rig should not be daunted by having to upgrade the MB as well as the CPU. If it's going to be compatible with at least one more generation, in particular, because after that you'd be upgrading pretty much everything anyway.
I don't see the big deal.... everybody whines and complains when compatibility is broken. People still think Windows 3 programs should still run under Windows 10, and that MS made it that way to force people to upgrade other software. It's not like they added any new features to the OS that forced them to finally let go of backwards compatibility. People here are right - those most affected here are a tiny fraction of the population, and most of them will just upgrade their MBs next time they want to upgrade.
Yes - I had Ubuntu and Mint installed on that laptop on the old HDD, but it's just so damn slow. So I got the cheapest configuration of SSD I could think of. XP didn't even need any extra drivers for it - it just worked, so I'm really disappointed.
My experience was similar many years ago, when it was like pulling teeth to get sound cards and WiFi adapters to work with Linux; at some point in the mid 2000s, it seemed to reverse - I had a much easier time installing Linux on laptops than I did trying to install Windows XP. After that, it seemed pretty even, having the occasional problem with both OSs.
Now it's turned back - in my very limited recent experiences. Both Windows 10 and Ubuntu seem really happy on my newest laptops, I haven't had any issues. But trying to make an old Toshiba Satellite Pro A105 useful again, I added an mSATA drive with an mSATA to SATA converter. The BIOS sees it, the original Windows XP installer that came with the system had no problem with it.... Linux Mint (trying to use something lighter weight than standard Ubuntu) simply will NOT see the drive at all. Fdisk doesn't see it, GPartEd doesn't see it... I was actually pretty shocked that an old Windows could somehow do something that a new Linux couldn't. I don't want Windows XP, though.... so I have no idea what to do with this old laptop, or if I should sink any more money into it.
Both pitch and width have gone down over the years - they somehow did it; they somehow shrank seats an average of almost 2 inches in width, as well as average pitch dropping by up to five inches in some cases. If we're talking about that 20% number, it's easily achievable.... on certain planes. Talk about planes with, for example, 6 or more middle seats and remove just one to get those inches back. You can't focus narrowly on turning a 3x3 into a 2x2 section of seats - that's way more space than they ever gave coach. I'm talking about removing one row in 10, and one seat from each row that often has six or more. Some smaller planes already do not suffer because they're already only four or five seats wide - not enough to add one, so they didn't suffer reduced space. Essentially only undo what they've done over the last 30 years.
It frustrates me, too - the airlines treat us like cattle because we accept being treated like cattle in order to pay less. At the same time, higher costs would mean a lot of people don't get to travel at all, so I don't know what the "happy" medium is. I can tell you it's NOT business or first class... if tickets cost 20% more for better service and more space, that's quite a bit different than doubling the cost (or more) for business and first classes. I've last minute upgraded to business class, but only when the price was a reasonable premium on top of coach. Doubling the cost is a non-starter.
Yup... I flew to visit my parents who live about 530 miles, door to door, from my house. The airport nearest to them is smaller, and it costs more to go there, so we end up going to major one about an hour drive from their house. My airport is about an hour drive from my house. Now they used to say arrive an hour ahead of time for domestic, but after the TSA they've added an hour (2 for domestic, 3 for international) to their suggested arrival times... if I roll parking and such into that, that's three hours just to get to the flight from my house, four for the drive to my parents (and wasting several hours for one of them to drive there, wait, and drive us back.... times 2 for the return flight), waiting for baggage, inevitable flight delays, and the time of the trip, and it's probably 6 hours door to door. Add in the price - and multiply times four because we have two kids, and flying is a ridiculous proposition.
At the same time, I would expect this new technology only be applied to longer flights anyway, at least at first, until it becomes more cost effective. It will take forever for this to hit consumers in a major way, anyway... it hasn't even been developed yet, and when airlines are flying planes built 20+ years ago, how long before they retire the ones they are buying now, or in the past few years, even if the technology is available at all? Still - wonderful for overseas flights, I wouldn't hold my breath for anything else.
No - it was just a verbal agreement to develop a website in exchange for personal training for my wife at a nearby gym they both worked at. He told me the name he wanted, dropped off testimonials (pictures and stories), and that was that. We agreed to a one hour session a week... so I was expending a lot more up front that we were supposed to get back over time (I was going to periodically update and add testimonials). If we were talking about a lot more resources, I'd have wanted a written contract and would have been very angry; instead I shrugged it off - I may have spent time and little money (I already had the hosting), but in the end neither of us got anything and I was able to add the little "and screw you" with the domain name at the end (which he did ask for). BTW, I wasn't asking for a lot - a few hours of development time I spent plus the cost of the name (which isn't a lot). From his reaction, he would have been upset at even paying the original cost of the name.
Hmm. It's not facebook's fault every site feels they need to include facebook links.
The point being that, at an admittedly vastly different level, what you're suggesting is akin to thought police. "We think you are thinking about doing , so we are going to break you up." You cannot punish people when they committed no crimes - you should not punish businesses that have committed no crimes. WHEN they commit a crime, then you can come up with a remedy. That those remedies are often little more than slaps on the wrist is a fault of the government, not the companies.
I'm guess I'm a douchebag. I contracted the full development of a website with someone for exchange of services. I registered their domain and put it on my hosting, developed the website and put it online - all without anything up front, all in exchange for what he was selling - personal training. He never showed for his appointments at the gym. I got tired of it and cut loose. He wanted the domain. I added up all my expenses, including a very LOW fee for the hours I worked, and he refused to pay it, so I kept it. That IS how you should deal with a deadbeat customer, IMO.
In Snope's case, it seems like a very different story, but ultimately I'm glad I was in control of the name in my case.
The primary point of anti-trust laws is not to break up companies, but seek remedies against companies when they violate the laws. If a company is deemed a monopoly, that could possibly be one of the remedies, but it's not the goal of anti-trust laws to break up companies because people "feel like" they are too big.
I don't like AT&T. I don't like Comcast, either. But lately Comcast has been pushing HBO, trying to get subscribers to pony up for the premium channel, citing shows like the new season of Game of Thrones. HBO is a Time Warner property. They have also spent quite a bit promoting that you can watch Netflix on their X1 platform. Apparently, despite how much I dislike Comcast, they are not forcing their own (NBC Universal) content on me.
Point being that large companies are actually capable of not violating anti-trust laws, and there's nothing inherently wrong with being enormous conglomerates until they actually start violating the law. I agree they simply need to be enforced, and like any effective deterrent, they need to be enforced swiftly and with commensurate punishments.
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Why does it matter as long as the data cap isn't hidden or abused (throttling implemented before the cap is reached)? I know my Comcast account has a 1TB limit, and that it will cost me extra for exceeding it. Moreover, they warn me when I'm approaching the limit. My phone service has a 6GB limit, after which you're throttled. They don't hide the fact. Unless the company is doing these things without telling the customer, why is it news?
I'm not denying the need to for speed bumps, I'm decrying the existence of drivers who can't control themselves from driving like idiots... but they exist, so we all suffer.
I imagine they may work great if it's not a road you frequently travel, but surely, over time you get used to them and learn to ignore them.
If there's even moderate traffic, though, someone will slow down, which then slows everybody else down. So all it takes is for one in ten or twenty to not know it's fake. Also, don't underestimate the ability for most drivers to completely ignore what they could potentially be learning on their drives to make life easier the next time.... they're mostly too busy checking facebook to realize they can learn and adapt their driving. Most people don't even think about what they're doing next.
I hate speed bumps and speed "humps" (the wide ones that sometimes have a pedestrian walkway across). It's me being punished because other idiots couldn't control themselves and slow down. I DO notice what you are talking about - it seems the people with the most expensive SUVs go the slowest. It bothers me more at railroad tracks because, in reality, unless they are really bad (as bad as speed bumps - most of the ones near me are actually pretty good), the trick is to go as fast as you can over them and let your car's suspension do what it was made for - it's less bumpy for you and much better for your car's suspension then bobbing up and down over every little bump.
Happiness is success. Having a gold plated Hummer H2 is not. Congratulations on your success.
I drove from east coast to west coast several times before people could buy GPS systems, let alone use smart phones. I can't believe people already think that would be anything special or news worthy. I know people that won't get in their cars without their smart phones because "what if something happened?" The ONLY time I ever needed to call someone because of a car problem I had to pull over and walk a quarter mile to a gas station.... OH THE HUMANITY!
No, I'm not a Luddite - I get the value of Waze and use it all the time, but to think it's something special to not use it is sad.
Well, that's actually understandable... sometimes sellers don't check all the boxes, sometimes they don't list features in the correct places. So the math if fine: 25 brakes, 19 without, and 98 "unknown."
Not that I disagree with the searching being terrible, just that I have learned to accept a few things as actually not being Amazon's fault. One thing to do is actually click on that "Didn't find what you want?" link at the bottom of the page and tell them why their search sucks.
I had a problem with Amazon HDMI cables, so I am pretty cautious about their stuff.
Your problem is defining "success" as being "rich" instead of being able to support yourself and your family. The "American" dream was not be ostentatiously wealthy, it used to be to be able to support your family.
I agree, but you're living proof that it's not how wealthy you were growing up, it's how your guardians raised you. You saw your mother working very hard to support you, and she probably spent a lot of effort encouraging you to work hard and do well in school (often, in these cases, the guardian(s) will point to themselves and warn that you don't want to turn out like them - working very hard for very little - so you need to succeed in school). Often a single parent will also constantly warn of the mistake they made that caused them to be a single parent, because it's more often than not a stupid mistake and not an "act of god" that made it that way.
The biggest influence is parents/guardians - if that guardian is sitting back collecting welfare and not giving a crap about the children they are raising, well, guess what? That mentality gets passed down to the kids. You can grow up in a really crappy area, where schools suck, and your peers and the prevailing attitude is that school and hard work is for suckers, but if you have great people raising you then you can overcome that environment.
What I can say from your story is that your mom is a phenomenal person, and you should be very grateful to have had her as the one raising you.
I disagree, but there's something in between what you guys are arguing about. A lot of people who were born "on the wrong side of the tracks" end up doing really well both because they overcame the bad influences of their peers AND because they were raised by someone who valued hard work and education and encouraged the child to do well in school. It's almost entirely parenting.
When you get up into the middle and upper classes, the children can generally see hard work paying off, both in their guardians and elsewhere in their neighborhoods. People growing up in the ghetto don't get that. It could be a long discussion when you get to a lot of the finer points, but people are a product of both their nature and their nurture (how much influence the latter has depends on the former - some people are more easily influenced).
I don't know where I'd be if I wasn't raised in a middle class neighborhood, but if I was surrounded by bad influences and parents who didn't care, I'm certain I'd be a lot less well off. But you are a lot more likely to succeed if you are a hard worker (even more than if you are just "naturally" smart), but it is definitely luck to be born into an environment that actually encourages hard work and education.
Some people still luck into great jobs, and some exceptional people can't seem to catch a break. But here's the thing - graduating high school is the single biggest indicator of success in the future (in the U.S.), but if you live in an impoverished area and are not willing to move to where jobs are, you're relegating yourself to a pretty poor life, in general.
And let's be realistic in this discussion - we're not talking about Zuckerberg or Gates success, we're talking about being able to support yourself and your family with a decent lifestyle. That's the American dream was - only lately has it become being ostentatiously wealthy.
The big deal is avoiding a situation like: "Oh, you want to plug in that USB 4 Device? Well you'll need to run out and buy a new computer." Or "The next windows forced update requires a new computer. Your current one will stop working in 3 days. See you in the checkout line!"
So you're saying all currently existing computers should be USB 4 capable, despite the fact it doesn't even exist yet?
You have a point with Windows, but even then there has never been an instance of "your current one will stop working." Even Windows will just stop supporting your platform and not issue updates anymore. There's too much exaggeration, too much hyperbole... nobody is "forcing" anybody to do anything.
Actually, when you call to cancel, most customer retention departments will renew those offers.
That was my thought. When the discounts and promotional rates expire, what do you expect?
That's the thing - we're not talking about people who buy a complete system, or even who hack together a system because they simply prefer picking and choosing components (like me) over getting whatever vendors decided to put in. I build my own system so that I can do things like getting quiet fans and power supplies; I also know the graphics card installed on most systems (usually some built in crap) is not going to be good enough. I'm not a big gamer, but I do play, and I do use some graphics apps professionally.
Somebody who spends $3k to $4k building some super gaming rig should not be daunted by having to upgrade the MB as well as the CPU. If it's going to be compatible with at least one more generation, in particular, because after that you'd be upgrading pretty much everything anyway.
I don't see the big deal.... everybody whines and complains when compatibility is broken. People still think Windows 3 programs should still run under Windows 10, and that MS made it that way to force people to upgrade other software. It's not like they added any new features to the OS that forced them to finally let go of backwards compatibility. People here are right - those most affected here are a tiny fraction of the population, and most of them will just upgrade their MBs next time they want to upgrade.
Yes - I had Ubuntu and Mint installed on that laptop on the old HDD, but it's just so damn slow. So I got the cheapest configuration of SSD I could think of. XP didn't even need any extra drivers for it - it just worked, so I'm really disappointed.
My experience was similar many years ago, when it was like pulling teeth to get sound cards and WiFi adapters to work with Linux; at some point in the mid 2000s, it seemed to reverse - I had a much easier time installing Linux on laptops than I did trying to install Windows XP. After that, it seemed pretty even, having the occasional problem with both OSs.
Now it's turned back - in my very limited recent experiences. Both Windows 10 and Ubuntu seem really happy on my newest laptops, I haven't had any issues. But trying to make an old Toshiba Satellite Pro A105 useful again, I added an mSATA drive with an mSATA to SATA converter. The BIOS sees it, the original Windows XP installer that came with the system had no problem with it.... Linux Mint (trying to use something lighter weight than standard Ubuntu) simply will NOT see the drive at all. Fdisk doesn't see it, GPartEd doesn't see it... I was actually pretty shocked that an old Windows could somehow do something that a new Linux couldn't. I don't want Windows XP, though.... so I have no idea what to do with this old laptop, or if I should sink any more money into it.
Both pitch and width have gone down over the years - they somehow did it; they somehow shrank seats an average of almost 2 inches in width, as well as average pitch dropping by up to five inches in some cases. If we're talking about that 20% number, it's easily achievable.... on certain planes. Talk about planes with, for example, 6 or more middle seats and remove just one to get those inches back. You can't focus narrowly on turning a 3x3 into a 2x2 section of seats - that's way more space than they ever gave coach. I'm talking about removing one row in 10, and one seat from each row that often has six or more. Some smaller planes already do not suffer because they're already only four or five seats wide - not enough to add one, so they didn't suffer reduced space. Essentially only undo what they've done over the last 30 years.
It frustrates me, too - the airlines treat us like cattle because we accept being treated like cattle in order to pay less. At the same time, higher costs would mean a lot of people don't get to travel at all, so I don't know what the "happy" medium is. I can tell you it's NOT business or first class... if tickets cost 20% more for better service and more space, that's quite a bit different than doubling the cost (or more) for business and first classes. I've last minute upgraded to business class, but only when the price was a reasonable premium on top of coach. Doubling the cost is a non-starter.
Yup... I flew to visit my parents who live about 530 miles, door to door, from my house. The airport nearest to them is smaller, and it costs more to go there, so we end up going to major one about an hour drive from their house. My airport is about an hour drive from my house. Now they used to say arrive an hour ahead of time for domestic, but after the TSA they've added an hour (2 for domestic, 3 for international) to their suggested arrival times... if I roll parking and such into that, that's three hours just to get to the flight from my house, four for the drive to my parents (and wasting several hours for one of them to drive there, wait, and drive us back.... times 2 for the return flight), waiting for baggage, inevitable flight delays, and the time of the trip, and it's probably 6 hours door to door. Add in the price - and multiply times four because we have two kids, and flying is a ridiculous proposition.
At the same time, I would expect this new technology only be applied to longer flights anyway, at least at first, until it becomes more cost effective. It will take forever for this to hit consumers in a major way, anyway... it hasn't even been developed yet, and when airlines are flying planes built 20+ years ago, how long before they retire the ones they are buying now, or in the past few years, even if the technology is available at all? Still - wonderful for overseas flights, I wouldn't hold my breath for anything else.
No - it was just a verbal agreement to develop a website in exchange for personal training for my wife at a nearby gym they both worked at. He told me the name he wanted, dropped off testimonials (pictures and stories), and that was that. We agreed to a one hour session a week... so I was expending a lot more up front that we were supposed to get back over time (I was going to periodically update and add testimonials). If we were talking about a lot more resources, I'd have wanted a written contract and would have been very angry; instead I shrugged it off - I may have spent time and little money (I already had the hosting), but in the end neither of us got anything and I was able to add the little "and screw you" with the domain name at the end (which he did ask for). BTW, I wasn't asking for a lot - a few hours of development time I spent plus the cost of the name (which isn't a lot). From his reaction, he would have been upset at even paying the original cost of the name.
Hmm. It's not facebook's fault every site feels they need to include facebook links.
The point being that, at an admittedly vastly different level, what you're suggesting is akin to thought police. "We think you are thinking about doing , so we are going to break you up." You cannot punish people when they committed no crimes - you should not punish businesses that have committed no crimes. WHEN they commit a crime, then you can come up with a remedy. That those remedies are often little more than slaps on the wrist is a fault of the government, not the companies.
I'm guess I'm a douchebag. I contracted the full development of a website with someone for exchange of services. I registered their domain and put it on my hosting, developed the website and put it online - all without anything up front, all in exchange for what he was selling - personal training. He never showed for his appointments at the gym. I got tired of it and cut loose. He wanted the domain. I added up all my expenses, including a very LOW fee for the hours I worked, and he refused to pay it, so I kept it. That IS how you should deal with a deadbeat customer, IMO.
In Snope's case, it seems like a very different story, but ultimately I'm glad I was in control of the name in my case.
The primary point of anti-trust laws is not to break up companies, but seek remedies against companies when they violate the laws. If a company is deemed a monopoly, that could possibly be one of the remedies, but it's not the goal of anti-trust laws to break up companies because people "feel like" they are too big.
I don't like AT&T. I don't like Comcast, either. But lately Comcast has been pushing HBO, trying to get subscribers to pony up for the premium channel, citing shows like the new season of Game of Thrones. HBO is a Time Warner property. They have also spent quite a bit promoting that you can watch Netflix on their X1 platform. Apparently, despite how much I dislike Comcast, they are not forcing their own (NBC Universal) content on me.
Point being that large companies are actually capable of not violating anti-trust laws, and there's nothing inherently wrong with being enormous conglomerates until they actually start violating the law. I agree they simply need to be enforced, and like any effective deterrent, they need to be enforced swiftly and with commensurate punishments.