Comment Inflation (Score 1) 95
FYI, the original XBox release price back in 2001 is the equivalent of $569.18 today.
So they're still doubling or trebling the price of something that's now commodity, even once you take into account inflation.
Comment This has been around a while (Score 4, Interesting) 132
The DOD/DOW have been working on this for a while. They discovered, early on, that the device had a propensity to cause permanent nerve damage.
It's very unlikely the US have fixed that, as they'd largely sidelined the work as a failure. However, at 36%, Trump needs something he can call a win, no matter what the long-term consequences.
Comment Re: Yes (Score 1) 202
Honestly, the employers were the first to start racing for the bottom there. For years they have relied on employees having an outdated sense of loyalty to the company that hasn't reciprocated in decades.
Much of the criticism of GenZ in the workplace is really just them giving to the employer what the employer offers them. Perhaps it's time for government to re-take its essential role in leveling the playing field so new players can enter the market and push the dinosaurs into their richly deserved tar pits.
Comment Re: Yes (Score 1) 202
Id doesn't NECESSARILY debase the social fabric. But if it does things like buying crooked inspectors to overlook sub-standard materials, buying off a zoning board to basically take over a residential area (*cough* datacenters *cough*), pays sub-standard wages under the table to people who 'need' to keep a low profile, and then when something goes wrong, scampers off leaving an impoverished shell behind to go bankrupt so the public has to pay for the clean-up, yes it debases the social fabric.
Comment Re: Yes (Score 1) 202
Only because legal enforcement of corporate charters seems to be dead.
There's lots of VERY profitable drug cartels as well, but I don't think we should celebrate them.
Comment Re:Yes (Score 1) 202
By separating the decision making from the execution, the corporation is the perfect psychopath. The structure not only allows all parties to rationalize their own guilt away, it also protects those who make unconscionable decisions from the legal consequences of their actions. That combination can only ever produce a monster. The LAST thing we need running them is someone educated to break the rules (law) when 'necessary'.
Even from the very beginnings of Capitalism, Smith admonished that corporate charters must be handed out exceedingly sparingly and they must be held strictly to their charters. Also note that all corporate charters are in legal theory supposed to be for the public good. Not just as a nice idea but as one of the mandates. A company acting against the public interest is supposed to be dissolved for violating it's charter. Clearly we have failed in that. Let's not double down on the failure by educating people in the image of the incorporated monster and putting them in charge.
There may be some use to something like the LLC, but there seems to be little economic use for corporate personhood. The only public value of a corporation (if/when it has any) is economic.
Comment Re:my experience among the apes (Score 1) 202
Rubbish. Most of them have a ratty couch with the least stained side of the cushions turned up (if they can decide which is least stained).
Comment Re:What difference does it make? (Score 1) 323
In fact, they need a warrant in spite of the courts bending over backwards to claim they don't. The Constitution doesn't have geographic limits, it applies to the U.S. government and it's agents wherever they may be.
Comment Re:Wait a second (Score 1) 151
Of course the wealthy don't want to talk about getting millions in tax breaks (to create jobs) and then creating so few jobs it would have been cheaper to just collect the taxes and pay those few people directly.
Comment Re: I hope UBI comes to pass... (Score 1) 151
I'll just leave this here.
Comment Re:I hope UBI comes to pass... (Score 1) 151
The Dead Kennedys wrote a song about you...
Comment Sigh (Score 1) 36
"removes support got SysVInit scripts"
Well... there's an OS I'm not upgrading to.
SystemD STILL needs to absolutely die.
Comment Sigh (Score 1) 91
Which means you could have done that all along - you just didn't give a shit. It was more important to you to turn my machines into walking adverts for your products, trying to push everything I own into your cloud, and jump on every fad imaginable, rather than make an OS that would actually allow me to use my machine.
Which is why I don't have any Microsoft OS at home any more.
Oh, and I never had less than 64GB in a Windows machine in the last 8 or so years. But it was still a shitshow.
This sudden "lets make the OS actually work for users" drive is decades too late.
Comment Re:They should migrate away from the internet (Score 3, Insightful) 105
Monitor, certainly. But why would they have remote control that can set a FREEZER to 50C?