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Comment Re:Why did they ditch the TV? (Score 2) 244

The crux, as I see it, is that an add-on box is clunky compared to a TV. It's a thing that has to be installed. That's not vastly hard, but it's a power cord and a data cable, and it just kinda hangs off of your TV. That's not elegant. (Note: I don't have an Apple TV, but I don't get the impression that they have any better solution than my Roku does.)

They can certainly make the software better, but I can see why they would want to sell you an entire television to make the entire user experience just right. It's kinda too bad that it just doesn't add enough value to a TV to make it worth the trouble. Apple has always succeeded best when they could make their solutions elegant, in ways that seem obvious yet nobody had done them until Apple did.

I do like your idea for improving the iPod, though perhaps an audio indicator ("You have ten minutes of play time remaining") would be easier, since it's just a software update. I suspect that they won't be refreshing that line very often. I, for one, have switched to using my phone, finally putting my much-beloved fourth-generation Nano to bed. (It was the last one before it became an iOS device, which meant that it was perfectly optimized for playing music and nothing else. But my phone does a better job, especially since it has wi-fi built in, and I am going to be carrying it around anyway.)

Comment Re:Print some bucks (Score 1) 335

It's the corporate cash, rather than the consumers. A lot of it is sitting in the Fed itself. Bank reserves with the Fed have skyrocketed:
https://research.stlouisfed.or...

They've been sitting at about 3 trillion dollars. They could invest that in new products, but they don't seem to think that the consumers have the money to make that investment worthwhile. I think they're wrong. Consumers are starting to borrow again:

https://research.stlouisfed.or...

after a substantial blip during the crisis itself.

So I think (and I believe you agree with me) that this is really caused by the investor class failing to invest. That's an odd economic choice, since that kind of stagnation should mean that inflation gradually eats their nest egg. They've managed to keep inflation low. The Fed is offering free money, and instead they're putting their cash into the bank.

A lot of economists would say that it's time for even more forcible inflationary measures, since the current low rates only barely seem to be staving off deflation. The Fed hasn't been willing to go that far (they'd rather that the legislature do it if the investors won't), but they have repeatedly refused to raise interest rates. That's the action they take when they're afraid of inflation; it's the punch bowl they take away when the party gets going. And this party is stuck; it's not completely moribund but it's getting mediocre small talk (and many are shut out entirely.)

Comment Re:Print some bucks (Score 4, Interesting) 335

Effectively, they have been. The Federal Reserve has been keeping interest rates at levels that should be causing significant inflation. The goal is to prevent a deflationary spiral by pumping up the money supply: when you can borrow lower than inflation, people should borrow and pay it back with tomorrow's less-valuable dollars.

They've been doing that for nearly a decade now, and it has successfully prevented the deflation, but it's a little baffling that it hasn't touched off more inflation than it has. The consumer confidence is hovering around 100, which should be a decent level for a stable economy. Unemployment is still higher than we'd like but it's well off the bust years.

My hypothesis is that people have gotten too used to boom economies. If people aren't getting triple-digit returns they don't want to invest. What we've got is a very stable economy, exactly the kind that people should be able to take risks in, but without a real estate boom or dotcom boom or other scheme to get people to dump their whole life savings and then borrow on margin, they just don't bother.

Stability means that those who have been left behind continue to be left behind. That's the worst thing that can be said about the economy. There just isn't an engine of growth.

There are a lot of other factors, I'm sure. Europe went mostly for less aggressive measures, and their economies haven't come out as well, meaning fewer markets there. China's growth has ceased to be ridiculous. Oil prices should have sparked some kind of boom, and I've got a nasty cynical feeling that Wall Street is ideologically predisposed not to invest in the emerging energies as much as they should.

But a lot of it is the catch-22 you mentioned. Consumers and investors each seem to be waiting for the other to go first. We've been technically out of recession for more than five years, and it's gotten past the point where the recovery could be called mere accounting. It's real. But America just hasn't gotten its feet back under it in the way that it usually does.

Comment Re:"Citizens united" was a coup (Score 1) 142

Every vote in both the House and Senate are documented on their respective websites

Actually, not quite. There are a number of voice votes, where they don't even take an exact count. They're supposed to be used only when it's unanimous or nearly unanimous, though every once in a while somebody will play silly buggers and put things to a voice vote just to hide who said what. (Usually, when both parties want to avoid having the exact count known, since in theory anybody can request a division, which requires an exact count which will be published.)

Most votes are actually voice votes. They're generally on workaday issues without a lot of controversy, so it doesn't actually matter all that much. So it is true that all of the *important* votes should be documented on the web sites, but I thought the distinction was worth pointing out.

Comment Well played, PR team (Score 2) 67

Most of the time I gripe about press releases that massively overpromise, and don't contain enough real information to figure out what was actually done.

In this case they at least put the word "could" rather than "will" in the headline. And while the barrage of jargon that followed is incomprehensible to me, it's at least pretty clear that it's real work rather than science-by-press-release.

Now I'd appreciate it if somebody would come along and dumb it down to my level, which is still considerably higher than the fourth-grade education they usually target. So, in all seriousness: thanks to the PR team.

Comment Re:Seriously (Score 1) 93

Probably less than 1%. But that doesn't mean it's not News for Nerds. Apple has a history of introducing whole new ways of looking at hardware: the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. Each had predecessors, of course, but when Apple introduced one the product sector took off, not just for Apple but for its competitors. Apple has a knack for finding new ways for people to interact with devices that people find appealing. The technical respects may be weaker than other competing devices, but the aesthetics drive a lot of consumer demand.

So few Slashdotters will own one this year, but it's worth reading the news to see if we're all going to own one (or a competitor) in five years. Or perhaps more importantly: if all of our customers are going to be.

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