I bet you that Apple would gladly take care of that for all but the largest and smallest of vendors. =)

And if you had the same LAND MASS TO COVER, with the (understandable in many many many areas of the country) lack of public transportation as we generally do in the good ole' USA, you'd have a bunch of absolutely broke Europeans paying the $9/ a gallon because , in fact, there WAS NO OTHER WAY to get to work.

Why do many Europeans never take the area to cover into consideration when it comes to the gas price / travel another way debate? I WELCOME you to come to any rural part of the US and support yourself/rent/mortgage/general life by any means possible, as long as you do not use or own a private vehicle. You will NOT be able to make ends meet in many places in the country. Period. Now factor $9 a gallon gasoline into the equation vs our ~ $4 a gallon average, and you'd find yourself.... Paying another $5 a gallon, to put in the car that you literally HAD to obtain, in order to survive in the modern world, in such 'rural' areas.

The sad point is, having a car in many rural parts of the USA is necessary to live.

With the right person doing it, $20k can 'buy you' a lot of life experiences that you'll never forget. Or it can buy you a 'super high def' television set.

I always thought I was a technology fan, but as I find myself becoming older, I keep thinking: "This is insane.".

Who would honestly consider spending $20k on a television?

There is a large difference that I am seeing:

A website is a GET request.
An App allows for PUSH'ed content.

GETTING the information at your whim, if you even remember that you HAVE the website 'bookmarked'/'shortcutted' is a COMPLETELY different mental stimulus than having the updated drone attack (who are we kidding,(?) I am using attack because it absolutely fits the bill) pop-up on screen when you're looking at weather.com or on the phone with your Mom.

99% of the impact is LOST if it were to be all handled via GET; The PUSH is what makes it politically notable.

If the 'app' is rated as objectionable and 'crude'', what does that make the actions themselves? Are we all so content as a society to hide our heads under our pillows, all the while chanting 'freedom in the USA!'?

I think the guy had a valid point -- If the app exists or doesn't exist, it doesn't change the data points that are being created (Monthly/Weekly/Daily?) nor the map itself.

Correlation is not causation - Apple should know this.

Shit, left the quote on:

Two points:

Just curious your thoughts on all the state lotteries, both 'instant win scratch tickets' and those drawn via numbers. There is NO cap on how many tickets people buy, and we've all seen people in the gas stations dropping $60 on tickets and $10 of gas for their truck. If you talk to the workers, some of them are regulars on intervals as frequent as every morning, some just once a week, and some, well, just once. To me, having someone invest in (this company, whatever it is) in order to hopefully create a profit for themselves is a) more rewarding for society as a whole (perhaps not the state budgets...) b) More rewarding to the person doing the 'investing' (the prior scratch ticket winner), as it requires thought and far more interest than pure monetarily expectations.

Secondly, Why should one exclude 'the poor' (you're pretty-much referring to myself, but I am NOT calling myself poor... ) from taking action into a company or companies that they feel have great/good/marketable ideas? My of my friends are in the same financial 'boat' as I am, give / take, and they often have smart ideas that could be worth investing in....

Cheers,

Shit, I hit the wrong mod button; Apologies! So , I am commenting on your post, of which I tried to mod 'insightful', and instead, erasing my mod of 'redundant' in the process.

Cheers!

Honestly, and this is just a general assumption (although, I'm sure there is plenty of truth in it):

They are exceptions because the field pays so LITTLE and seems to be quite hard. (Not the teaching, mind you, but the 'beat down' one gets from Government, Parents, School boards, etc).

Imagine $76 million dollars to fund MORE / 'Better' teachers? Willing to bet it does more to help the overall economy & education (current AND future, in the same price tag) than buying some silly software that's going to show us that we don't truly care anymore.

Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place? Computer software to track an individuals 'performance' (Ie; a 'quantitative thing') is yet another step in the ass-backwardness of the modern educational system.

Why do we always forget that while test scores are important, they are FAR from the deterministic quality on which to judge an individuals intelligence or desire to learn?

We have not created successful AI; The human mind stuck inside a quality educator, no matter the level, cannot be boiled down to algorithms and pure statical data-sets.

But oh how we try. *sigh*.

You know, I agree with this to a massive extent. I would however like to see it on a 'large local' scale, ie. 'City' wide, Town wide, Burrough-wide.

I imagine something like this, but running over a town-wide MESH network, being an absolutely positive force in that of a moderate sized community. Actually bringing people together, that live in a 10 (or whatever) mile radius. A scaled back internet, a scaled back 'social network', where the social aspect is a given, because the people involved are the people you see when you grocery shop; When you get gas; When you walk your dog.

Scale it back; Decentralize it. Make it work for US, the general person.

A man can dream, right?

(Sorry, double post, my first post was completely mis-quoted.

Innovate? I think we're already past that with Facebook, no?

If you're looking for innovation, personally, I'd look elsewhere -- Way past the social-network situation that we see graying at a rapid rate.

Not that I believe that servers and organizations based in the EU are 'safe' from our (US) recent tactics of policing the world, however, IF this were to be the case:

There goes another (small?) portion of jobs, to the overseas, never to be hiring or promoting here again!

Obviously, this is EXACTLY what we are looking for, so it makes perfect sense to keep pushing things this hard! *

(*no)

Thank you for correcting some of my ignorance! I've read about a few Euro-based in the news, but came up rather lacking at home. I actually have already ordered the physical print copy from amazon the other day; It should be here Monday. (I figure it's worth actually purchasing).

Also, you're absolutely right about the time-frame of things -- Now is the time.