Ya.. There are are a bunch of whiny bitches here.
Thanks. I am so delighted it got fixed. It only took about 1.5 years and a half dozen "expert" doctors to find one who knew what he was doing. I had sympathy for people who couldn't get around before. Now I have a *lot* more.
Here's the key point to all of this: If you only have one option for a phone company that's because it's unprofitable to serve the area you live in.
You're full of shit. I live in a wealthy suburb of San Francisco and have almost no Internet service options (which is what we're talking about in this article - Internet service). Any provider not hamstrung by regulations favoring incumbents would make an absolute killing here. Comcast has the monopoly (I don't care what you call it) on high speed Internet access in my area and has refused to do anything with it except raise prices through the roof while making my Netflix stream play like ass.
While I sympathize with my rural neighbors, I can't think of a single legitimate reason why their choice to live in difficult-to-serve areas means that I have to have shitty, expensive Internet in the heart of the world's high-tech capital.
Hallam said it best: there has never been a time when humanity has successfully and peacefully coexisted with nature.
That would be a nice quote, but it contains an implicit assumption which is seriously wrong: That there is any distinction between humanity and nature.
It's not surprising that we tend to see ourselves as distinct from the rest of nature, because we are dramatically different from all other forms of life around us, and not just because we're self-centered, or even because we're objectively hugely more successful than any other species. We're dramatically different because we're the only species we know of that is capable of creating explanatory knowledge, of conjecturing and criticizing ideas, individually and in collaboration, to understand how and why things work. Many species on Earth are capable of learning, but as far as we can tell it's all "behavioral" learning; understanding merely that specific behaviors cause specific results. Sometimes the results of that level of understanding can be quite sophisticated, as in the animals who can create and use tools in complex sequences to accomplish goals, but it's still on a completely different level from the ability that humans have to deduce deep explanations of the structure and nature of the universe, and how to manipulate it.
Regardless of the temptation to view ourselves as separate from nature, though, we're not. That doesn't mean we won't benefit from applying our understanding of the rest of nature to maintain the elements of it that are beneficial to us. Obviously, we're better off if we don't make the world a worse for ourselves -- the flip side of that is that we are better off if we make the world a better place for us, so stasis is not the goal. That's really good because stasis (aka "sustainability") is impossible.
Really? This would be devastating? We can't live without electricity, electronics, water pumps?
Can you farm without electricity? Gasoline? Do you have all the pre-electricity farm equipment that would allow you to grow food without a tractor, power tools, etc? Does your well pump even work without electricity? I'll bet it doesn't. I'll bet you can't really live off the grid unless you're Amish or Mennonite. You simply don't have the pre-industrial technology to get along in such a world.
Many in cities and suburbs, after 3 or 4 weeks, would wind up going out into the country to forage if they could find gasoline to pump (and gas pumps work with electricity!), because the supermarkets would be empty and all the food in the refrigerators/freezers would have spoiled after only a few days.
To your "off the grid" house. Probably.
inb4 "I have an arsenal of arms to keep them away"
Your best defense and survival depends on your neighbors. Because one lone person with a stash of food and arms can be out-sieged by the outside world.
I would suggest watching "The Trigger Effect," Episode 1 of James Burke's "Connections" series. Anyone (sensible) who watches that and looks around at the technology that supports all of us will come away with the conclusion that if it seriously went away for a month, we'd be fucked. The shit would so seriously hit the fan that your incredulousness indicates you are either completely out of touch with society at large, deliberately myopic, or some teenager that hasn't lived life enough to have any kind of broad view. Good luck with that.
--
BMO
practical long distance EVs at a reasonable price and/or can recharge in less than half an hour
The price may or may not be reasonable, depending on your budget, though it definitely is for a non-trivial number of people, but the Tesla Model S fulfills the other requirements today.
My Nissan LEAF doesn't, though it's still a very practical car that easily manages all but a small fraction of my driving.
Only if you're lucky. Well, I think SW does that. No other airlines I fly do. I don't really care about kids. My ears have never really tolerated flying much, so I have to use the pressure relieving earplugs. Wearing noise cancelling headphones over them, I can barely tell the engines are running, much less screaming children.
No, you really want them to board first.
For the last year, up until last month, I was barely able to walk. I still had to fly for work. I boarded flights with the kids and anyone else that needed help.
The parent doesn't just stow their stuff and sit down. They stow the kids bags, get the kids to sit down, shut up, buckles on, no you can't go to the bathroom, blah, blah, blah.
For me, it took me about 4x as long just to get down the airway. A guy barely walking down the ramp with passengers walking normal speed definitely held up the flow, no matter how much room I tried to leave. I still got held up by the parents with kids, and I didn't care. I'd just sit on the nearest armrest until they were done.
You don't want me, or the parents with kids slowing you down. People are assholes enough boarding planes.
If you wait for them to board last, now you'll have parents trying to stow bags in the last few spots (if there are any), trying to get the kids in their seats at the same time, and having the kid(s) climbing over other passengers.
For me, barely able to walk, if I had to take the window seat, that would mean everyone in the other seat(s) would have to move. Walking on a cane, I wasn't able to just squeeze by anyone, especially if there were no good seats available. It was still hard just to get *to* the window seat.
And before any of you complain, since surgery I can walk fine. The cane is retired at least for another 30 years.
Absolutely. Have a bad day, make one wrong judgment call, and see your livelihood vanish. Good luck getting another job.
Fired? Maybe not, unless this was a pattern of bad behavior. Suspended for a week or two? Yes, absolutely.
Where do you work, I wonder, that you believe people who have flaws, like we all do, should be treated like used tissues?
Just my opinion, but this goes beyond a minor "flaw" or a slight error in judgment. The guy had already shown his willingness to publicize his dissatisfaction by tweeting about a minor inconvenience, and this employee provided him with a much worse story to tell. Any person with common sense should have seen this as the potential for some seriously bad publicity.
There were many ways to handle this and defray the damage from the initial tweet, from a sincere apology and perhaps offer for free future tickets or upgrade (if the employee wanted to use kindness) or a response tweet thanking the customer for his feedback and also thanking all the other customers for following the rules (if the employee wanted to be passive aggressive but still make a point).
Escalating a minor disagreement with a customer into a public fight is just not a good idea, and employees who can't avoid that do deserve punishment. Customers can be jerks sometimes. Employees have a corporate image to uphold, though, and they need to aspire to a higher standard -- they're getting paid to be there. The customer was not.
Somebody did something on the interwebs (or intertubes or whatever those new-fangled contraptions are called). This is a tech site, so we've gotta cover it!
(Actually, if you're serious -- it's here because seating processes on airplanes make everyone bitchy for some reason, and everyone thinks it's inefficient and thinks they could plan it better. So, somebody complaining about some aspect of that is bound to get all the anal retentive wackos here worked up and spouting their favorite ideas about what's wrong with planes and boarding and kids on planes and snakes on planes and whatever. That and... FREE SPEECH, LIBERTARIAN MUMBO-JUMBO, AYN RAND IS A GODDESS!!!! etc. P.S. I'm NOT saying Southwest was in the right here -- just why this story will get everyone worked up.)
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
