> Where's the factory-reset button when you need it?

It's on the Chromecast.

> They need to be hardware buttons

It's a hardware button.

As a not-FiOS customer this would matter to me if Verizon was ever planning to expand their build-out past its current boundaries.

Aye. I use the product. What I'm saying is that on some sites, I've started getting messages... "You are using adblock. Please disable it to see the content".

I think our best target would be very smart machines which do not have consciousness. You can't "enslave" a vacuum cleaner.

Once they have conciousness then you are enslaving them.

I get the philosophical point- especially after reading a lot about brain injuries.

But pragmatically- we are conscious and creative. I think we'll get machines that are as capable as (more capable than) humans.

Actually, blacks did not fare well.

A couple quotes:
THE GREAT Depression of the 1930s was catastrophic for all workers. But as usual, Blacks suffered worse, pushed out of unskilled jobs previously scorned by whites before the depression. Blacks faced unemployment of 50 percent or more, compared with about 30 percent for whites. Black wages were at least 30 percent below those of white workers, who themselves were barely at subsistence level.

There was no relief from the liberal Roosevelt administration, whose National Recovery Act (NRA) of 1933 was soon referred to by Blacks as the Negro Removal Act. Although its stated goal was nondiscriminatory hiring and an equal minimum wage for whites and Blacks, NRA public works projects rarely employed Blacks and maintained racist wage differentials when they did.

---
  In 1950 a black person's income was around $3,828 but a white
person's income was $7,057. By 1956 a black person's income was around
$4,768 and a white's income was $9,060. As you can see from these
figures, because of segregation and the various laws around black and
white people, white people led a much higher standard of living
compared to black people.
---

Blacks have also consistently run about double the unemployment of whites as long as we've had data.

http://people.ucsc.edu/~rfairl...

And this was also true for the 1960's and 1970s. Double unemployment and much lower income.

Regarding 1930...

During most of the 1930's Blacks faced unemployment of 50 percent or more, compared with about 30 percent for whites. Black wages were at least 30 percent below those of white workers, who themselves were barely at subsistence level.

However, if you look at 1880 and 1910, during a period of general 3% unemployment- blacks had slightly lower unemployment.

----

I guess what I'm reacting to in your original post is the assumption that a lower or no minimum wage will automatically result in higher employment and that blacks benefited from lower minimum wages in the past. The data shows that from 1920 onwards, they had lower employment despite lower wages.

I don't want to bust your chops too much- I think the trend in robotics is going to replace humans generally with machines which can do the job 3 shifts a day for 1/6th the cost of a human per shift- never take vacations- never get sick (with a proper SLA). That's a good 15-30 years away before it becomes a dominant factor that can't be ignored tho.

It's a good question.

Prior to the current incarnation of the republican party, both parties screamed at each other but they worked together as a functioning government and negotiated with each other.

Having started voting in 1978, I've seen the change occur right in front of my eyes. I voted for reagan and bush sr. I voted for clinton (who worked very well with the republicans on actually getting things done).

Then suddenly the republicans started saying no to everything. They even asked for "X" and when offered "X", they STILL said "no".

If you recall, they openly declared that was their plan. They would vote no to everything and drive Obama from office by 2012.

To quote:
TIME just published âoeThe Party of No,â an article adapted from my new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. âoeIf he was for it,â former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, âoewe had to be against it.â

---

"If he was for it, we were against it" is something truly new to united states politics. I think it's bad for the country. I am currently no longer voting republican as a result of the policy. I think the policy is bad for the long term health of the republican party.

to my current Samsung S2 and Sprint.

Since I retired, I've examined various expenses with an eye on optimizing them. If they make sense, I can afford them but since I have the time why not check them out?

I'm currently paying $100 a month for "unlimited" data, 1500 daytime minutes and 1500 text msg with an aging S2.

My new plan is $53 a month for 1gb, unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited music data.

The S2 is an android phone while the Nokia is a windows phone.

After 20 days, it looks like I'm going to transfer my number to the Nokia and retire the android phone.

The actual service has been better on T-Mobile than on sprint which was a surprise. Sprint has so many dead areas off the high way that text to speech, pandora , etc. are painful to use. The GPS after only 2 years has become very flaky. GPS Status only works a quarter of the time- the rest the time I have to reboot the phone. Sometimes, it seems to have trouble with metal car roofs. I'm assuming the antennae is aging fast.

The "feel" of having a limited data plan is constraining but in actuality, I've only used about 200mb of data on the new phone and most of that was from doing some app installations at home when the wifi was turned off.

Voice quality on the Nokia is stunning with other Tmobile subscribers but slightly below sprint for other people. One of my friends said of a landline call, "it's not as good but it's not bad. I'll get used to it." Other Tmobile customers sound like they are in the same room.

I personally hate windows 8 on my laptop (which is not a touch screen) but I've gotten used to it really quickly on the phone.

I've replaced most of my apps with native apps-- some of them better and oddly not available on android devices. Oddly, some "official" apps have different features and behaviors on the two phones. Notably lacking was Scotttrade. There is a third party app which claims to interface with Scott trade but I'm leery of that for my money.

My biggest struggle to date was having to use the Office App to open pdfs which were then sent to the PDF app. This was seriously confusing-- the apps themselves had no way to open PDF's. But that's more of a windows issue than a phone issue.

The lack of a flash has been less of an issue than I thought and the picture quality is good.

---

Bottom line is- going to this phone is going to save me about $570 per year, I have improved gps, music. I technically have less data but it's more than I need and the reality of better coverage means I can use data driven features of the phone in a wider area. WIndows vs Android has turned out to be a surprisingly tiny learning curve.

I talk about retrocomputing with several people and most of those who are both over 30 and a long time computer users remember the Amiga.

LK

Wasn't this the opening scene for Jurassic Park?

In addition to being extremely hideous they're just as bad as Slashdot for posting non-tech stuff. The other day it was something about food delivery in India.

> They only have permission to search for certain specific categories of
> evidence, despite having the entire archive, so they wouldn't be able to find
> them guilty of some minor illegal activity unless it was part of the specific
> categories the judge authorised.

Or unless the details of the minor illegal activity (or major illegal activity but unrelated to the investigation, come to that) are acted upon within a seperate investigation.

This kind of mass data collection on everyone is a huge waste of resources. The more people you add to a database, the less relevant it becomes for anything. People who know trade craft, know how to cover their tracks and pollute big data. So this is basically a giant database of amateurs, stupid crooks and ordinary civilians.

Another problem with big data are the large numbers of errors. I've run big databases where users were motivated to provide good data and there were still gaps in the data, misspelled names, numbers transposed, and some entries locked out because they were trying to enter duplicate primary keys. Travel data is coming in fast, I can't imagine what the exception reports look like every day.

Australia has a minimum wage of around $20/hr and we are a very prosperous country.
Higher wages just take profits from the mega corps and give it to the working poor who , shock horror, spend it, and create more wealth!

Young black workers were affected by many factors. An "anti acting white culture", poverty left over from slavery, systemic racism in hiring, promotion, and housing.. and most significantly for the last two generations has been the "drug war".

In some states, almost ALL people incarcerated for drug crimes are black- yet the majority of people committing drug crimes are white. Blacks are more likely to be stopped-- then to be searched when stopped- then to be a arrested if something is found- then to be convicted when tried- and finally to be sentenced to much longer sentences when convicted.

Quote:
According to the Sentencing Project's website, the rate of incarceration for white Connecticut residents in 2005 was 211 per 100,000 people; for black residents it was 2,532 per 100,000. The Sentencing Project reports that the national incarceration rate for whites in 2005 was 412 per 100,000, and the rate for blacks was 2,290 per 100,000 people.

Also according to the Sentencing Project's web site, in seven states (Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota) the black to white incarceration ratio is greater than 10 to one.

1. about one in every 33 black men was a sentenced prisoner and the rate for white men was about one in every 205, for Hispanic men about one in every 79; and

2. black men represented the largest proportion of sentenced male inmates at yearend 2006 (38%); white men made up 34%; and Hispanic men, 21%.

More reading here...
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt...

http://www.americanprogress.or...

http://socialistworker.org/blo...

I have a friend who has a misdemeanor and she has a struggle even getting minimum wage jobs. With improved access to people's records even minor crimes become life sentences and create a strong push towards living poverty or turning to crime.

However, I don't think it's being used more as a "filter" at this point. There are 7 employees and 6 jobs. Any kind of criminal record at all is used to select which of the 6 will be hired.