I was following along, and understanding your points, for most of your post. But then you just went off the deep-end. I wasn't agreeing with any of it, but you were understandable. I swear, it sounds like so many of you just always want to be the victim of some giant conspiracy designed solely to fuck you over.

Come off it, man. There tech industry didn't orchestrate any of this. People orchestrated this. This shit has been going on since DAY ONE of the Computer Era.

Yeah, tech companies only get paid if you buy their product. That's true for every single business out there. And since no company's reach is infinite, if they want to persist and grow, they have to convince those customers they can reach to give them money more than once. A one-off customer isn't really all that valuable.

I was there at the dawn of the Personal Computer Age. The rate at which we went from slow, relatively primitive machines, to the computational beasts that we have now has been astonishing. All of that advancement driven by a desire, by tech companies, to convince you to give them money over and over and over again.. But this hasn't been a 1-sided transaction. This has been driven by public demand the whole damn time.

My first machine was a 1 MHz Apple.. It sure seemed fast when I got it.. But as the software for it grew more capable, more useful, more mature.. that 1 MHz chip really started to bog down.

Whose fault was that? Apple for introducing a 1 MHz chip? The software assholes for having the gall to produce software that grew more complex and more powerful with each new release?

So Apple poured millions of dollars into developing a faster machine that would be able to run that software at a rate that would be satisfactory to their customers.. And again the same situation played out.. That whole cycle has repeated itself over and over and over and is still occurring today. Games get more realistic, more computations are required to generate that realism, and the public demands more and more and more..

Microsoft is no different. Generally speaking, they respond to public demand. I'm not talking about the UI.. I'm talking about the capabilities of the software and the need for it to be able to talk to an insane amount of hardware and also be expected to run whatever blob of user-land software you want to force on it.

The phones.. Same damn thing. A better camera, better battery life.. A better screen.. More rugged, more versatile.. More everything. C'mon.. You really think the public would be okay with still having a 2MP main camera? People throw money at Apple for two reasons. They really want that better camera or they've come to associate the latest phone with a status symbol.. The only reason people buy those insanely expensive designer brands (Versace or Louis Vuitton for example) is to flex.

Did Apple engineer that? I don't think so.. They got co-opted by the pretentious cunts decades ago. Well, if you've got customers who want to give you money just so they can be cool... What? You aren't gonna respond to that? No, you innovate and improve and give them a damn good reason to keep you as the status symbol.

I'm not a Rolex guy... But from what I understand, it's not all "hype". Yeah, they're a status symbol.. But apparently they're really good watches. For a mechanical watch, they have a precision of +2/-2 seconds per day. That's... impressive. You certainly can't claim Apple hasn't done quite a bit of innovation between the 1st iPhone and the most current iteration.

But I digress. No, the tech companies didn't dumb down their user-base on purpose to enslave them... Yeah, most people don't know how a computer works. So fucking what? Most people don't know how a car operates, how electricity is generated, how pharmaceuticals are developed, or how bread is made on an industrial level. So what?

Microsoft and Apple both figured out you can make a metric fuck-ton of money if you develop machines that don't require the user to have a phuckin' PhD to operate it.

Likewise, I'm fairly sure you're happy you can operate your automobile without having to have an engineering degree.... Humans specialize. The more we specialize, the more dependent we become on each other but the faster our technological progress occurs.

I'm a Linux guy.. I haven't used Apple since 1993. I stopped using Windows about 7 or 8 years ago.. Whenever Windows 7 was officially EOL'd. I'm not an advocate for Linux outside of someone inquiring of me, personally, on what I use and why. I say what and why. I'm not trying to sell it to anyone.. My PC is probably rubbing up against 10 years old. I have no real skin in this game.. But I've watched the industry from birth and I have been truly amazed at how often I am amazed.

I remember when cellular phones weighted north of 50 lbs and you mounted it in your trunk. My first one tipped the scales at well over 20 lbs. (A Nokia-Mobira model that was bolted to my vehicle's floorboard under the passenger seat). And now? I fits in my pocket, runs for about 2 days on a single charge, recharges in about an hour.... Has like 50 apps on it that I use constantly... And takes relatively decent photos and video... And it cost me $125. (I drop my phones from comms towers all the time. So I have a cheap phone that doesn't make me cry when I have to replace it for the bajillonth time..)

Honestly, how is anyone fucking you over?

Okay. Why the decree? I'm assuming it's not capricious. Microsoft gets paid if you upgrade your old PC or buy a new PC with it pre-installed.

Microsoft isn't a hardware company. They don't give a crap how much hardware moves. So, why the decree? There's got to be a technical reason for it.

Ah, turns out there is. They've listed a specific set of hardware features they require. TPM 2.0 - And a processor that supports SSE4.2 and PopCnt (among other specific requirements). So it's not just a decree. These are requirements that the development team has set. Windows expects to find those features on the machine or it's not going to operate properly. How is this unreasonable? I can guarantee the requirement for a CPU that supports SSE4.2 does so for performance reasons. TPM 2.0? Turns out it's "more secure" than previous versions. I'm assuming that there are active exploits, in the wild, for previous TPM versions. How you gonna get better security if you don't implement better security? None of this, not a single requirement, seems arbitrary.

So, it would appear to me that you want to force Microsoft to support, develop for, and operate on insecure hardware and at some measurable performance hit.

What am I wrong about in this? Change my mind. Persuade me.

That's absolutely incorrect. Dish-style transmitters use the dish to focus the energy too. Damn near every point-to-point microwave link is two dishes pointed at each other.

Oh give me a break. For starters, nobody's PC is going to stop working. Every Windows 10 PC out there will operate exactly the same on October 15th as they did the day before. Microsoft has, on average, supported each major version of Windows for a decade. Windows 95 was the shortest, if memory services. I think it only got 6 years. But the rest have averaged round-about a decade.

Microsoft is going to be releasing Windows 12 in the next few months. They'll have two OS's to maintain. Why should they be forced to pay developers to maintain a 3rd version? When would be a reasonable time to drop Windows 10 support? You know there are still idiots running Windows XP, right? i.e. Doesn't matter when they retire it, some yahoos will complain about it.

It's been over a half-decade since Microsoft told the public when the end-of-support date would be. How much time do people need? 5 years isn't enough??

Anyone throwing their PC in the trash to upgrade to Windows 11 (or 12) is the person generating the waste. Those PCs could be repurposed to run Linux quite easily. Just wipe 'em and toss 'em on Ebay. Nobody has to throw their machine in the garbage. That's a conscious decision on the part of the user / owner.

Excellent. So now when someone defaults on their credit card debt, they don't just get to discharge it and walk away.. They get their assets seized to satisfy the loan. Do you work for the banks or something???

Also, for many types of loans, assets are factored in. The more assets you have, the better your rate. Why? Less risk for the bank, silly. If I put up $30,000 in assets for a $40,000 loan (for example), the banks exposure is only $10,000. That's going to get me a better rate than if they're risking the entire $40,000. The bank may feel that my credit history is consistent with the risk for a $10K "overage". How are they going to know that I'm worth that reduced risk if they can't.... find that information somewhere?

Okay... So what about stuff that isn't real estate? Simple credit cards or small-business loans? How do I qualify for a credit card if I don't have any assets? Or do I have to risk what few assets I might have just to open a $1,000 line of revolving credit? What if I have a good job that shows I have sufficient income? Why can't the bank look at my payment history, income, and job history to help it decide if I'm more likely than not to pay back my loan on time?

Would that kind of be like... a credit score? I mean, you're implying that the bank lending me the money to buy my home will have access to my car payment history.... Or do I have to use the same bank? No shopping around for better rates? Are you planning on mandating rates? Would there be any other types of qualifying loans that would lead you to believe the person is a good risk? I ask because, in many major cities, especially those with copious public transportation (we'll use NYC as an example), the majority of people don't have a car. No car = no car loan payment history.

Finally, which countries out there do things significantly different that we do? The UK / France / Sweden / Portugal? They don't have credit scores and rates that are dependent on risk? The credit card companies in the EU don't look at credit scores? Really?

What countries, exactly, require assets the for the majority of bank loans? I'd like to hear some names, please.

Again... WHAT?

It would appear you can only criticize and not offer any alternatives. That's usually called "bitching".

I'm not saying you're wrong. But if you're going to say something is wrong, you need to have an alternative that is "correct". So what would you use? By what method would YOU, as the bank manager, use to determine if someone was a good investment or an unacceptable risk?

Really? Moderated as a troll? Slashdot has an over-abundance of fucktards.

Is Chicago's mayor not currently trying to raise property taxes? Did he not spend $500M on services for illegal aliens? If you fail to pay your higher property taxes, is your property not taken from you and sold at auction?

What about this is a troll?

Oh, are they? You think those people are fine with housing being so expensive, and them being so poor, that a glorified prison cell is their only affordable option?

You ate paint-chips as a child, didn't you?

That's bullshit and you know it. Very few loans are non-dischargable and the government isn't stepping in and covering every default. When you tell the CC company to fuck-off, that's a loss. Pure and simple. That loss directly affects the company's profits for the year.

Absolutely. But they aren't free.... The people living in those sardine cans have to pay for the space..

The absolute simplest way to obtain affordable housing is to have a slight over-supply. Nothing huge.. A few percentage points above demand.. And then you let the landlords / sellers compete for tenants / buyers.

The only part of it that might fail the "universal" test is the bit on legal/illegal orders and the related education/training.

The rest of it is going to be true for all militaries. The vast majority of the members of any country's military are going to be in support roles.

I don't think it's true that western-style countries with mandatory military service are dumping everyone into the "infantry". I don't buy that at all. I think it's far more likely that they are cross-trained. A good dose of firearms training, coupled with regular practice, and then a non-time-of-war specialty. Those guys have to be doing something useful when there's not a war / conflict going on that requires copious killing.

Right... because there are so many companies out there that will hire someone right out of school, with zero experience / training, to work as a technician. Hell of a lot easier to pull a paycheck, while being trained, and then later enter the civilian job-market with years of experience.

You may not have a choice about what you do, and some small fraction of people might get training in jobs that have absolutely no civilian-life counterpart, but everyone is learning discipline, attention to detail, how to be at work on time, and how to operate in a structured hierarchy. That's ubiquitous to ALL militaries and it's something that all businesses value.

When I got out, I didn't go into the aeronautical field. I went into telecom. The company that hired me wasn't shy about telling me that my military service was a huge positive on my record. The hiring manager was quite forthcoming that they preferred ex-military precisely because of the ancillary skills we had developed (the aforementioned discipline, detail-oriented work, etc). Then they dumped 3 months of time into formally training me how to do my job. I got paid, at full rate, to sit in a literal classroom and learn. They then paid me for another 6 months to ride along with an experienced tech who did my "on the job" training.

I highly doubt this scenario is significantly any different in most western-style, capitalist, nations.

I do not doubt that is true.. But have you seen some of the "apartments" that qualify as living space in Japan? 8.83 meters squared.. That's about double the size of the average prison cell in the US... https://www.surfacemag.com/art...

A super-majority (> 66%) of Americans own their home (I'm not claiming no mortgage - but these are folks who are not renters. They either own their home or on their way to paying off their home).

And yet, what's Chicago doing right now? Yeah.. Getting ready to squeeze those owners for even more tax money 'cause of all the cash they blew on illegals.. That's not debatable. That's pure facts.

Owning a home in liberal states just makes you another person who can be squeezed for additional tax revenue.. And should you not have the ability to pay those extra taxes.. The state will take your property away and sell it to someone else..

So all of this is bullshit, eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9AF6OtHtYs

Are you one of those cunts that believe the metrics that China releases?