Strictly speaking, I don't need a PC to stay alive and capable of working. That means the PC is a luxury; I have one because at some point of my life, I had spare income. That, in turn, is an inefficiency - I could had undercut other workers by asking for less.
Sure, if your only goal is efficiency. But if it is, you're boring.
I barely need my smart phone, why the hell would I want to spend hundreds of dollars on a second, feature-pared screen that has a terrible battery life?
Well a lot of money was spent to no particular effect. That's kind of like change.
Meanwhile some of us actually want to develop multiplatform software.
The issue, in the long term, is does it really matter? Microsoft still had a big chunk of the enterprise workstation and groupware market, but in many other ways they're becoming irrelevant. Despite throwing boatloads of money at the search and tablet markets, they're not moving those products. To make up for that they're hiking the prices of the very enterprise offerings they need to survive. Volume licensing, Server, Exchange, SQL Server and the like have Alli been jacket up to fund their failures. The last batch of Server licenses I bought may very well be the last.
Let's be blunt. Microsoft is all but irrelevant in the mobile and tablet markets. About the only thing they have going for them is the scam patent tax they have on Android devices.
They don't need to be high voltage or high current, they just need to have electrolytic caps, like most analog circuitry does. Electrolytic caps don't need to run hot, they just need to be electrolytic and made in China, and they're virtually guaranteed to fail early. Go read about the Capacitor Plague.
People do get killed by these things.
I think we can sum up the whole letter with "We're going to keep imitating Google and Apple."
And you can by interchangable USB devices that work on multiple operating systems made by over twenty different companies.
When we can buy windows from twenty different companies and it just works, then the two will be equivalent.
That means that if you want to shoot down low-flying Amazon delivery drones, you should be able to do that.
Well, no. Not unless you can account for ballistics, and the drop zone for your projectiles. But perhaps you should be permitted to use a tethered net launcher.
Likewise, if you want to fly your own drone to take pictures of your own property, you should be able to do that too as long as you stay below 1000ft.
Or any public property. Whether the restrictions on line-of-sight are reasonable is a whole other discussion (my thought is "maybe") but public lands belong to all of us. As always, the thing must be operated in a manner which does not represent a realistic risk to others.
OOXML is a great example of a standad, and of how to move a standard through an international standards committee.
(This is irony, for those who may be impaired in its recognition)
I wasn't aware the FAA's mandate went down to 12' in residential areas.
Cool.
ahhhh so *thats* why Texans are so fucking fat.
No. No it is not. It's because they have amazing food down there. In California, 9/10ths of all restaurants are total fucking shit food with total fucking shit service. I can outcook them any and every day of the week, and I do, and I have no formal training whatsoever. In Texas, 9/10ths of all restaurants are at least basically competent. I think it's because Texans will tell you just what they think of you, and all the incompetents have fled for California, or committed suicide.
It's also because it's stupid hot, and you can't go outside.
Put the two together and you have a lot of driving from restaurant to restaurant with precious little fat-burning in between. That's what happened to me, anyway. Gained 100 lbs in a year and a half. The weight's off now, but ugh.
If you couldn't step outside without tripping over a chicken fried steak, you'd be fat, too.
1) Do you really want two-ton land missiles driven by desperate people who are driven to cut corners to stay competitive?
You mean like taxicab drivers? No. We should do away with them immediately.
More generally, as you noted, a competitive market is a swim-or-sink situation. That means profit margins will get razor-thin. That sounds awesome until you realize that wages are also a form of profits.
So your argument against permitting people to hire their services is that it will threaten others' wages? Congratulations, you just cast your vote for no progress ever. Please move back into a cave, and give up your PC.
So your argument for more taxis on the roads is that the current amount of taxis is already dangerous...
No, and only a someone who does not understand English at all could possibly come to that conclusion without being a prevaricating prickwad. They complained about the nature, not the number.
Cabbies drive like fuckheads because they have no competition, because of bullshit protectionist restraint of trade.
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson