> As much as 20 years ago

That was already the case in 1999. Where I was back then, things got UGLY in june 1999. If you were not working in june, you were screwed for the rest of the year. (It was all Y2K-related.)

In fact, I can't remember the time when it was not markedly easier to get *another* job whilst employed than when unemployed. For reference, I started on the job market in the early '80s.

(And no, various summer & part-time jobs or quick gigs I had whilst I was still in school don't count.)

Am willing to bet that if it were 80 million times any of his songs were broadcasted over standard radio, Weird Al would have made more money.

This is not the first time artists have complained that streaming only yields them a minute fraction of revenues of what they'd get over more traditional media.

(I'll be over-simplifying the following, but bear with me) Think about the disconnect: traditional radio is free, the only price you pay is time spent listening to adverts. Comparatively, you have to pay actual money to listen to services like Spotify. And yet, free to you is more lucrative for artists than when you have to pay.

Maybe I'm wrong, but some middleman is making more money off streaming than the artists themselves. Not saying there weren't any "funny business" in the music/radio industry before the age of streaming, but it seems it was healthier before.

Well, before a handful of corporations started buying all the radio stations in sight and went on to homogenise/police the content. No more distinct sound for each city, no more risk taking by DJs...

"Ancient" applies to VisiCalc, not Lotus 1-2-3, young whippersnapper.

mechanically, the lightning connector itself is simpler/better than the usb-c one. it's more robust and it's easier to clean -- i'm always amazed where crud can end up on anything electronic, and how much of it.

on all the cables i've used, though, the usb-c "grab", its shell, what you pinch between your fingers to manipulate the connector is superior to the lightning one because it's just a little bit bigger. too often, it's a b*tch to unplug a cable from my ipad because it's just a little bit too small. never had that problem with my pixel phones.

like i said, the lightning connector uses a mechanically simpler design and i wonder if it could have been used to transfer more power through it, at usb-c levels. i still think it could have overcome "the next usb", as in reversable, no-fuss connector.

usb has turned into a mess, with a plethora of various connectors and "levels" (i mean, "USB 3.2 Gen 2x2", really?), with the added possibility of frying your electronics if you use the wrong brand of usb-c cable. and don't get me started with driver support. it's no longer "just use it, don't have to think about it" like in the usb2 days.

eventually, the mess will be cleared up and you won't risk frying your expensive electronics (amongst other things), but until then, i'll be unhappy using anything usb-c.

Replying to myself as a post-scriptum: after 20+ years on Slashdot I now discover I can't edit a message I just posted? Hey, even if you preview things, sometimes you might only notice something *after* you click on "Submit".

This might be something I should understand at my age, and yet, I don't understand how you can justify the concept of a "turnover target".

What I find distasteful (and this is putting it mildly) is the fact that some people might end up with a black mark besides their name for no good reason, having been fired through no fault of their own just because some manager at Amazon needed to meet a "firing quota".

In the end, the cliché of the little guy being always the loser isn't so cliché after all and is a reality for too many people.

Some like to criticise NASA for delay with Orion, but shouldn't they look at Lockheed-Martin, instead?
*They* are building Orion, not NASA.
Isn't this a case of a contractor stretching things & abusing whatever process is in place to make more money?

It would be great if they could reverse hair loss...

...and hair growing in other places where it shouldn't. Yeah, the joys of getting older.

/* old fart alert */

if you're old enough, you'll remember that's how things were displayed back in the day. upper case white characters on a black background, or light blue on black (adm-3a, people?), or bright green on a dark green-ish background (lanparscopes, some hazeltine terms), etc. and that didn't bother us at all.

but now, like you, i can't read such colour schemes and do experience the "burned in my vision" feeling too. maybe it's to be expected when you are older?

i wouldn't say it's to give off a "1337 hax0r" vibe, but rather it's for the *retro look*, for the younger ones who never experienced it.

(well, that's my theory and i'm sticking with it)

to quote:
"It's mostly a problem of identification. The real power-brokers love to be behind the scenes. They aren't the ones who are out there, on TV, participating in campaigns, issuing press releases, etc. That's all a puppet show for public consumption, to put it simply.

The real aristocracy does everything by proxy, by funding, by corporations, and by front organizations. The single most effective thing they ever did was to replace real state-issued money with bank-issued monetized debt. That's how you grab a nation by the balls without ever using physical force."

dear lord, this reminds me so much of this brilliant mini-series called "a very british coup" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094576/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_British_Coup), where... this unseen, unelected establishment decides to take out the democratically elected prime minister of england because he was not acting like he was supposed to. when one of "them" met with Harry Perkins (the labour pm in this series), he basically said "they" preferred to stay behind the curtains, out of the limelight... that they were the real power going way back... hence the subsequent speech by perkins on the telly, ending with:

"You the people must decide wether you prefer to ruled by an elected government or by people you've never heard of, people you've never voted for, people who remain quiet, behind the scenes, generaton after generation, yeah even unto the middle ages."

like '1984', this story is still very relevant.
do yourself a favour, go and watch it.

oops. mea culpa. instead of:
          "some critics of the formats were saying initially that the fault lied with the format of the cd"
i should have typed:
          "some critics of the format were saying initially that the fault lied with the sampling rate of the cd"
and sorry for the other typos.

"When the CD first came out, it was MUCH higher quality than a record or tape"

i will have to take exception to that.
i'm old enough to have been an adult when the cd came out -- and i can tell you, the cd was *not* much higher quality than the current mainstay, the lp.

the cd was new and shiny (literally!), but at the time, it *didn't sound right*. for example, pianos sounded metallic and tinny. stereo imaging was muddled up. and so on. it took the recording companies until 1990 or thereabouts to come out with cds that didn't sound fundamentally wrong.

some critics of the formats were saying initially that the fault lied with the format of the cd (i.e., 16bits sampled at 44.1khz) and that "they" needed to up the resolution... in the late '90s, i read in the specialized press & heard from other audiophiles that it turned out that the main culprit of the bad sound was not insufficient resolution (16/44.1), but rather excessive jitter in the digitizing/recording chain... and, apparently, the fact that the "first few batches" of cds were sampled at less than 16 bits, due to design flaws in the early equipment used to digitize existing recordings!

once they got *properly sampled* audio to work with, the cd started to sound ok.

some people will dispute the rumoured causes of early digital audio's ills, and i will welcome any correction. i'm just an "innocent bystander" who goes with what he read & heard in the audio media.

but they cannot dispute the fact that early cds sounded like crap and that it took a few years before that changed.

and btw, who are we going to e-mail at apple, now that steve is gone?
i don't think that tim cook would personally answer / act upon e-mails like sjobs did...

just turned on the telly for some background noise as i do the nightly chores and whatnot, saw this newscast talks about apple, etc. (did they announce something else today? is it "one more thing" taken up to the next level?) then noticed the "steve jobs / 1955 - 2011" in the background.
O_O
ran upstairs to the box that is turned on... crap, it's true!

whoa, was tmz right after all?

too bad sjobs died so early, most of personal computing is in a critical phase right now, apple still needs his touch at this time... very well managed, yes, but that "vision" thing, i'm not so sure...

a starting point could be MacWold's novembre 1984 issue, pages 134-141.
check also Andy Hertzfeld's website (folklore.org) for more.