Internet Commenting is not growing away from anonymity at all. However, some high profile sites that value traffic over content have determined that boring places tend to attract more people since the vast majority of people simply is extremely boring. Anonymous non-boring commenting will always be around. It's just not compatible with the desires of the bulk of advertisers that pay for the boring parts Internet.
selling is more highly valued than building
It is?! Not in my world.
While part of that is definitely true, it probably is not the main explanation. In countries that have taken gender equality very far and managed to increase the freedom to choose a job tremendously, what happens is that men and women use that freedom to do typical jobs for their gender.
I think the documentary "The gender paradox" explains that incredibly well.
The typical maximum mouse age in my house is easily derived; it is at most equal to the age the youngest user had when the mouse was first used by that user.
Where is the U.S. heading?
Nowhere special. The US has been like this for ages. Apart from some details (TSA, leaks, technical possibilities) there has not been any real big change.
The fear has been around for just about always. And when there's nothing left to fear (like communism or alcohol) something new will be made up (like terrorism or drugs). Since the US spends more on its military than on social security, the military has become some kind of social security. It must be kept busy.
We will not have a robot driving the car (or a computer) for a very long time.
I think you're wrong. The reasons you state only apply to irrational human beings; anybody responsible for any kind of commercial transportation will decide otherwise and prefer the cheap computer over the expensive human driver anytime. In more or less closed areas that's been going on for years now; those huge mining trucks have been driving around autonomously for at least 5 years now and container-terminals have been using self-driving cars for much longer, albeit in much more controlled conditions.
Once such trucks start to appear on the road, it probably won't be much longer until self-driving taxis appear. These may very well be much cheaper than regular taxis and in some cases probably cheaper than regular public transportation. I find it highly unlikely such taxis will be avoided. In fact, they may very well become extremely popular with the somewhat drunk public that'd rather avoid taxi drivers:P
As such taxis become more common, it's highly likely they will slowly but steadily start to replace self-owned cars. They're simply more convenient and cheaper.
In fact, many cars on the road today already have a lot of the self-driving stuff on board. They DO take over when the human fails. It probably won't be long before such automated safety-systems become mandatory and by then any car can be considered self-driving but by default it'll probably be in a mode fooling the stubborn human into thinking he's driving.
No one has good statistics, for example, on crashes per mile ridden.
In the Netherlands the chance of getting seriously injured or dying in a traffic accident is 4.7 times larger on a bike than in a car (per kilometer). The Netherlands probably has the safest bicycle infrastructure in existence so if we can't do better the situation is clear: riding a bike is much more dangerous than using a car. Note that cycling includes mountain biking and other sports accidents while motor sport accidents are not counted in the car fatalities.
Another thing to consider is that many bicycle related fatalities are related to carelessness of the bicyclist while in cars this is less so. As a bicyclist you probably have more control over on your own fate than you do in your car, where technical problems and the simple fact that you may be a passenger are also a factor. When acting carefully, bicycling is probably much safer than the numbers indicate.
However, that only takes accidents into account. While there are a lot of them, we're still talking about a only few accidents per billion kilometers driven while most people don't get much farther than about 100000 kilometers in a lifetime. So obviously by far most bicyclists never get involved in a serious accident at all. Even though driving a bike is 4.7 times more dangerous than driving a car, the risk is still _extremely_ small.
On average, bicycle accidents are responsible for a shortening of the life expectancy in the Netherlands by about a WEEK while regularly riding a bicycle increases life expectancy by several MONTHS! So while the chance of dying in a bicycle accident is much larger than the chance of dying in a car accident, the certainty of dying when never riding a bike is much larger than when not doing so;-)
Also interesting to note is that additional exposure to polluted air while riding a bike lowers life expectancy by up to a few WEEKS. Obviously that's much more than the traffic accidents.
But that's the Netherlands. Bicycling may very well be MUCH more dangerous in countries that aren't equipped with a ridiculous amount of bicycle lanes. If the chance of a lethal bicycle accident is 10 times or so higher in the USA, the car is probably the better choice. Given the lack of data and given my experiences bicycling in other countries I really wouldn't advice riding a bicycle in actual traffic anywhere but in Netherlands...
Sources (in dutch):
- Article on the 4.7-number: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/D-2012-05.pdfâZ
- Health benefits of cycling: http://www.groen7.nl/gezondheidsvoordelen-fietsen-veel-groter-dan-risicos/
- Accidents/kilometer: http://www.swov.nl/rapport/Factsheets/NL/Factsheet_Risico.pdf
- More numbers: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4492/Nederland/article/detail/3323533/2012/09/28/Ergernis-en-ongelukken-op-drukkere-fietspaden.dhtml
After the stack of somewhat dead inkjetprinters reached the ceiling of my basement, I decided to get the printer my mom had been using for 5 years without a problem (apart from the plug falling out once:P). That was a Samsung. I've been using it for 2 years and it's awesome. Would highly recommend it.
Also got myself an A3 Konica-Minolta color laser printer but that may be a bit pricey for your needs. Would also highly recommend this.
Whatever you do, don't get an inkjet. Probably any laserprinter with proper driver support (linux support!) and a network connection is just fine.
I've been very interested in this subject for quite some time and have done some number crunching on employment rates in different sectors (as determined by our national statistics agency). Practically of them are in decline except for these five:
- Catering
- IT
- Security
- Medical and other care
- Sport and recreation
(and to a certain extent waste management/recycling)
Jobs in these sectors have been growing steadily for the past 40 years. I think we can expect that trend to continue; these are exactly the jobs that are not easily automated. The others will slowly be taken over by the machines. This in itself is not a problem, though. The problem lies not in automation, humans will find new things to do. There is a problem though, and that's that as humans are replaced by machines, the money earned by these machines will be "trapped" within businesses. Without employees, there's no salary to pay and there will be no mechanism to keep the money going around. Economy will slow down, possibly come to a standstill. And this may very well be exactly what we've been experiencing the past few years (albeit partly caused by outsourcing to China instead of automation - for now).
There are several "solutions". The obvious one would be huge taxes and welfare. However, as stuff becomes automated really quickly, nearly everything businesses currently do will become commodity rather quickly. On the one hand this means everybody can do them, on the other hand it means nobody will be able to excel in them nor will any new business be able to enter such markets. Due to this, probably not too many businesses will remain. And when that happens, we will end up in some kind of planned economy. If we smart and/or lucky, that is; the alternative would probably be some kind of dystopian oligarchy of the owners of the machines.
Marshall Brain wrote quite a nice story about exactly this situation, its problems and the possible solutions. For a story it's rather bad, but it provides so many insights into the intricacies of this problem that it's definitely worth a read.
I cannot find any data on the Pacific ocean near Australia, but in many places oceans are getting slightly cooler. This has nothing to do with melt water, though; there's much too little of that to have a measurable influence, especially at your latitude. Instead, it is most probably due to changing currents.
However, a very likely alternative cause for you guys feeling colder would be that you're getting older; as people get older, they feel colder quicker.
Due to slowness and creating other "less ideal" conditions, the W3C is quickly becoming an irrelevant marginalized nothing. They've their control over the HTML5 spec long ago; all browser manufacturers follow the HTML5 spec that's maintained by WHATWG (which, coincidentally, was formed by those browser manufacturers out of discontent with the way W3C managed it. Apparently they've learned nothing from that since this DRM stuff will marginalize them even further. Nowadays, W3C approving stuff has just about nothing to do with what browsers will support or what the Internet will look like in the future.
Fine. Here a's discussion about similar events in 2005.
http://hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/showthread.php?t=167378
I repeat: this is not new. It's just that the older news - including the article referenced in my link above - has disappeared from the interwebs.
This is not a "new threat"; this is extremely common. A quick google comes up with at least 5 similar incidents in 2011 and 2012.
http://www.ibtimes.com/jellyfish-invade-four-nuclear-reactors-japan-israel-scotland-photos-707777
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/27/11432974-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-in-california-knocked-offline-by-jellyfish-like-creature-called-salp?lite
That's just not true. You can get perfectly fine point-and-shoot cameras with all the advantages you ascribe to DSLR cameras. In fact, you can nowadays even get point-and-shoot cameras that will show you a clearer picture through the electronic viewfinder in the dark than you could ever get through a DSLR viewfinder with your own eyes.
Many of the compact cameras listed here will outdo many cheap DSLRs.
And for lens changing needs there's a multitude of system cameras with similar features and interchangable lenses.
Nevertheless, I prefer my DSLR over my point-and-shoots too, but that does not have that much to do with the mirror and the analog viewfinder. And you're damn right DSLRs are not only for professionals. However, compact cameras are not only for amateurs either.
Also, in good lighting conditions those "pinhead" sized sensors (they're a bit larger than that) in mobile phones are just fine and when combined with a good lens many of them deliver the equivalent of the megapixels they're marketed to deliver. In good lighting conditions, that is..:) And due to the extremely long depth of field these tiny things offer, they're absolutely superb when it comes to "macro" photography and other types of photography that require a rather long depth of field. Proper (expensive:)) phone cameras will at F2 get the equivalent depth of view of your DSLR at F8, enabling you to take great sharp pictures in situations where your DSLR will require a tripod or (expensive) image stabilization.
The same goes for compact cameras with medium sized sensors, by the way. There really are quite advantages to small sensors and it is exactly for those reasons that professional photographers will every now and then choose to use a compact camera for specific jobs.
I'm dutch, yes. And maybe that does indeed change things a little; my kids don't understand english. The foul language in GTA does not reach them. I think the language would be one of the bigger problems. The violence and sex, not so much.
"Money is the root of all money." -- the moving finger
