A clerk has zero incentive to get you through the line as quickly as possible.

While I agree with your first line, I disagree with this.

It's been a while since I worked retail, and I never worked registers as a regular thing, but even these days I can see boards hanging on the walls of stores (sometimes back in an employee-only area, sometimes right out in front of the lines) that show rankings of either Customers Per Minute (CPM) or Items Per Minute (IPM). While I have no personal knowledge about these, I would bet they're used for, at worst, some bad management "incentive" like "you get a bag of chips if you're highest at the end of the month!" or, at best, part of promotion and raises.

I love self-checkout lines myself; as long as you only have a few items and they aren't packed with families trying to check out a cart full of groceries, you can zip right though. I get to avoid human interaction most of the time (idle chit-chat severely annoys me), bag groceries my (anal) way, and get out quickly. There's also a space-saving feature: six machines and one clerk can replace three lines that might not all be open at the same time, anyway. But, for all of that, I doubt you will ever completely get rid of cashiers. Maybe once all items have their own RFID tags and a cart can simply be scanned without having to remove stuff, but that is still quite some time off.

Not to mention that creativity often coincides with critical thinking, and critical thinkers are more likely to realize that something a company doing is illegal and have the moral fiber to blow the whistle.

So not only are creative types unnecessary to giant companies, they are an active threat and so should be avoided unless they are a known quantity (i.e. plays golf with the CEO every Saturday.)

And so we can bring this subthread back around to the main article: Octopus (octopii?) will also engage in cannibalism. http://www.livescience.com/479...

When octopuses go hunting for prey, they sometimes end up "dining" on members of their own species, and the cephalopods seem to have a taste for their victims' arm tips.

Divers have captured video of this octopus-on-octopus action in the wild for the first time on video.

In a new study, researchers described three cases of cannibalism in the common octopus — Octopus vulgaris — recorded with a camcorder by scuba divers in Ría de Vigo, Spain, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast. In two of the cases, the predators had started to eat the tips of the arms of their prey by the time the divers found them. [...] And, in one of the cases, the predator had access to more "traditional" prey in the form of mussels, but it still chose to feed on another, smaller octopus.

Maintaining the status quo is often far simpler than changing anything. Not necessarily easier, mind you, but simpler--even if it's a complex process, it's a process that's known and understood. Therefore, you don't have to think much, which is why conservatism (in the political sense of the word, not associating it with any particular party) will more often than not fight to keep things as they are and get those kind of people. Fighting to maintain is easier than learning to adapt or understand.

There's also a hint of self-conceit in there, I think. It goes like this: If something is done now, then it must be Right, so if I do it I am Right. But if you change the way things are done, then I will be Wrong to at least some extent. I cannot stand being Wrong; therefore, I must fight your way even if your way is right and my way is wrong, because the only thing worse than me being Wrong is you being Right.

Anyway, change certainly should not be done for the sake of change, but neither should change be ignored for the sake of tradition.

A lot of companies, namely beverage companies, already do this in the US. Things are listed in both metric and imperial, it's just a matter of which is listed first (normally dependent on which number is nicely rounded.) All the companies would have to do to fully convert is remove one of the labels.

The odd sizes for those first measured in imperial might cause some confusion at first, but you can be sure the companies will waste no time coming out with new bottles that have nice, round numbers, contain less than the original bottle, and cost the same.

With no way to get there and no means to communicate, the fact of the existence of extra-terrestrial life simply won't have much impact on anyone's day-to-day life.

For now. I'm not saying we'll have the ability to travel or communicate in the near future, but if we are able to detect extra-terrestrial life it will probably be first done either because they either made their planet go nuclear and we see the explosion, or because they've been broadcasting various signals that we can pick out.

Since it will likely be the latter (the former would most likely register as "weird, a planet just blew up" with no guarantee it held life), it will affect pretty much every astrophysicist on the planet. Every single telescope we can bring to bare will be pointed at that single planet, trying to capture as much information as possible. Assuming it makes it here without heavy distortion (dunno how likely that is), if their broadcasting systems resemble anything we've done as a species we might be able to decode it. At this point it gets turned over to linguistics specialists who will see if they can interpret the language. And if we get video! Biologists, anthropologists, artists, whole slews of academic departments will invest years analyzing it (not to mention the hits for Youtube uploads.)

If we are able to get rough translations we may even be able to learn things from this species (as opposed to about this species). When we receive the signals it means their tech is at least on parity with ours back so many years, but could also be far more advanced. Even if the information we receive is from their first broadcasts, and those started about the same time as ours, they could still have breakthroughs in other fields that we don't have or that we did in different ways. This will be extra helpful if we get their version of PBS, History, or Discovery (before their society started filling it with reality shows.)

While most of these discoveries will be minimal (and, granted, we've had to accomplish a lot to get to the point we can understand them), if there's any giant leap in science (agriculture, travel, power generation and transmission, weaponry) it will affect every human on the planet. So, yes, if life can be confirmed the furor will die down after a few weeks, but if we can do something with that information a few years later a morning news show will start "Hey, remember those aliens we discovered a few years back? Scientists have been able to figure out how they inverted gravity!"

And, of course, this will add motivation to space travel and communication, with the far goal of visiting or at least communicating with ET.

I also wonder if there's an overlap with those who don't trust climate scientists or scientists in general vs. those who trust a single, discredited scientist as well as a celebrity about vaccines causing autism (whether or not there was enough trust to avoid getting the vaccines.)

A great, recent example of this is some panel on Fox where one of their blowhards--er, commentators--Eric Bolling spent a good 5-10 minutes ostracizing Pres. Obama for his "latte salute" (despite their beloved Pres. Bush II doing the "dog salute") and saying that they need to respect the troops. Then--in the very same broadcast!--when another commentator reports about the United Arab Emirate's first female fighter pilot dropping bombs on ISIS/Daesh alongside American pilots, he immediately makes the crack "So should we call this 'Boobs on the Ground'?"

Jon Stewart does an excellent review of all this. You can tell he's getting tired of Fox News because, rather than use the usual banter to highlight their hypocrisy, he straight up says "Fuck you and your false patriotism."

I'm not saying it's Microsoft's fault, but if they're going to do "jump" a version in large part due to sloppy third parties I think they could do it in a different way. Of course, the way I suggested means they'd run into this same problem when they reach Windows 7.0...

Personally I think they're hampered enough in the public with the Win8 debacle that they should just say "screw it" and do a proper Win9. All of this assumes that is the reason they're jumping to 10, though.

If your friends do the same to every other subway lines at the same time

you could potentially get the bonus effect of a pandemic frenzy. Not only would all of the "seizures" shut down subway traffic (assuming your situation is plausible, which it sounds), but it would have a lingering effect as news stations trip over each other to get the first word about a dozen "mysterious" seizures happening in the same system at the same time and saying they're hypothetical biochemical weapons or some disease. As each one feeds upon the speculation from the other 24-hour news channels, the local population could be whipped into a small frenzy and leave the subways much emptier the day afterward. Other cities with subways might have minor hiccups as well as people become worried about something similar happening there, or any poor soul who has a real seizure on the subway causes panic as people shove over each other to get the hell away from him.

While the truth would come out in time, there would still be permanent damage as the news reported it was a terrorist plot, compounding the fear that existed already by that point. Even if no one was killed, there would then be added concern of orchestrated terrorist activities within the US.

I'm reminded of checking for browser version in Javascript when you need to hack around a limitation or non-standard here or there (especially back in the IE6 days). Anyone worth their salt said "You don't ask the browser what it is, you ask what it can do" because the easy ways to check were also easy to spoof. So it was better to see if it threw an error when you did X, or if you could access property.Y, etc., then use those results to figure out which browser you were running in. I don't think it's done as often these days, partly because of engines catching up and partly because of frameworks doing it for you.

Anyway, I don't know how trivial it would be to spoof the system information, but relying on the system to report its proper version doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Speaking of version, code like the last link is looking at the marketing name when looking at the actual version (i.e. Windows 6.1) would be better. Maybe Microsoft should just go with the internal version number: it will cause as much marketing confusion as Windows 10, avoid the "Windows 9" checks, and make the internal/marketing names more consistent.

It's usury, plain and simple. These snakes are just waiting for you to slip-up on a payment. Fees for being late are fair. But their goal is to simply repo the very moment you're late with a payment. Because, then, they can repo the car - sell it again (and again, until it can't be sold). Auction it. Then still leave you with a credit-report item for the difference.

This reminds me of something I was told when I was going through in-processing at Ft. Bliss, Texas. I can't remember if it was part of an actual presentation about the surrounding El Paso community or something one of the presenters said off the cuff, but we were warned not to buy a car from one of the lots along a busy road not far from the main base gate. There were dozens and dozens of small used car dealers that would prey on younger soldiers, especially those who just got out of BCT and find themselves with a moderately-sized (for them) steady paycheck.

But these guys didn't do the repo part; as I understand it, once they entered into the contract if the soldier failed to pay the dealership could contact the post and have the soldier's pay garnished. As long as the soldier was at post (I don't know if it would have continued if they got orders to another location) the dealer would get paid. I'm sure they did the rest (jacking up the price, no money down, high financing) to ride this gravy train.

that 60% would be spent on goods and services

And debt. A quick google search tells me that average American household debt is ~$55K. Even if that $1 Trillion was distributed evenly to every man, woman, and child (which it's not, even amongst adults, as you said), that's only $13,000 per household (4.5 people). A sudden surge of that amount would likely result in a lot of debt being paid off, likely focused on medical and credit card, and still doesn't take care of all of it. So, since I highly doubt the CC/Medical collections companies would be hiring or giving out bonuses to regular workers in spades, any potential economical boon from Joe Average would be only a fraction of that 60%.

Claim: The Chevrolet Nova sold poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because its name translates as "doesn't go" in Spanish. Excerpts:

Although "no va" can be literally translated as "no go," it would be a curious locution for a speaker of Spanish to use in reference to a car. Just as an English speaker would describe a broken-down car by saying that it "doesn't run" rather than it "doesn't go," so a Spanish speaker would refer to a malfunctioning automobile by saying "no marcha" or "no funciona" or "no camina" rather than "no va."
--
The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova's name didn't significantly affect its sales: it sold well in both its primary Spanish-language markets, Mexico and Venezuela. (Its Venezuelan sales figures actually surpassed GM's expectations.)

While my Japanese is only kawaii-desu-ne, I would be surprised if "Win(dows) 9" would really be that much of a problem. If they just called it "9", perhaps that might cause the allusion...

Also consider the Nintendo Wii. Yeah, there were people making fun of the name left and right (even I, a long-time fan of Nintendo, thought the name was stupid), but after it sold like hotcakes the jokes retreated and are only used by other gamer camps now. (But Wii U is still a stupid name.)

Speaking as a millenial, let me be frank when I address the clearly shocked and disappointed Baby Boomer parents that find my lack of enthusiasm infuriating.

Now tell them the one about how many of us don't care about actually owning our own home.