lkrupp

DAalseth said:

CEO: So customers subscribe to our service for the content and because it’s a reasonable price.
Aide: Yes sir.
CEO: So how about we delete a bunch of the content and raise the price, that’ll increase our profits, right?
Aide: You are a genius sir.

Everything goes up, not down. You can’t buy a five pound bag of sugar at the grocery store these days, the bag is only four pounds now and the price still went up. Making snarky comments does nothing to correct that. Companies know they need a certain profit margin in order to keep the lights on and they will do what they have to to keep the lights on, end of story. As a customer you have absolutely no right to the price you find acceptable. Your only weapon is your power to not pay the price and go without the product. HBO is not a human right, not a life sustaining necessity, it’s entertainment, period. 

Sorry to go batshit crazy but HBO and the rest of them will or will not reap what they sow. All I know right now is that cord cutting is turning out not to be the price savior it was touted to be. I still have a cable subscription that includes HBO and Showtime and can stream using the HBO Max and Showtime apps at no additional charge.

9secondkox2 said:

Best to not launch the Mac Pro until it’s good and ready to destroy everything else. 

If it’s just a Mac Studio class performer in a different box, then wait until the m3 extreme, desktop specific D1, or whatever is ready. 

Don’t launch it after all this time an anticipation and have it become a meme. That’s just wrong. 

Nonsense. Real pros want to know what it does for them, how their software runs and can be optimized for it. ‘Destroying everything else’ is not on their list of priorities. That attitude is for spec monkeys and benchmark junkies. And rest assured that no matter what it is and when it is launched it will be deemed disappointing, underwhelming, insufficient, lacking, too little too late, and a failure. 

Yes, the same IDC that once predicted with certainty that Windows Mobile phones would overtake the iPhone in two years.

Unless, of course, EU bureaucrats decide to mandate something else. I would imagine using an Apple specification as a standard would burn their asses to no end.

blastdoor said:

macxpress said:

lkrupp said:

waveparticle said:

This is frivolous to the lowest level. TikTok is an entertaining tool. Government building is for working. Of course it is inappropriate to use TikTok. But making it a national security issue is a plot by China haters to silence democracy. 

Maybe the NSA, CIA, and the U.S. Military know something you don’t. But then you’re just a Chinese government operative spreading disinformation and propaganda. And who are you to be talking about democracy when your leader is a vicious despot.

But it's perfectly okay for the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc, etc to spy on every one of us everyday isn't it. 

False equivalencies / whatabout-ism is unbecoming -- I urge you to strive to be better than that. 

The FBI/CIA/NSA are far from perfect, to say the least. In many cases, it's bad apples / rogue agents who use the (necessary) secrecy of their work as a cover to do things that American citizens would never approve of. Sometimes, it's more than bad apples, sometimes there have been systemic problems. 

But the critical difference relative to the CCP/PLA is that in the US there is oversight by these agencies (and the military) by democratically elected civilians. That process can be slow and it doesn't always work, but it exists, and it does make a positive difference. 

So in the real world, where we have to make choices among competing feasible alternatives (not fantasy land alternatives), I'll always trust the FBI/CIA/NSA over the CCP+PLA or FSB (KGB).  

All this equivalency bullshit that the U.S. is no different than the totalitarian dictatorships of China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. These nut jobs wake up every morning hating their country, their government, even their own fellow citizens.