Alex_V

hexclock said:

cia said:

toddzrx said:

Extrapolating is about the only thing the global warming cabal has been doing the past thirty years; and getting it wrong every time. 

lol conservative trigger warning!

One has only to look back at numerous predictions from “experts” going back to the 70’s that to see that the doomsday scenarios never quite pan out. Just look at all of Al Gores predictions, for example. 

Simply put, this is what happened: Three and a half billion years ago life formed on earth on this planet. The carbon life forms evolved over millions of years, living and dying over the millennia, and buried underground, fossilised in deep storage. This removed carbon from the atmosphere, creating the oxygen-rich conditions for the preponderance of biodiversity and the glorious natural world that we exploit and wantonly destroy today. Since the industrial revolution, humans have been extracting those fossil fuels and burning them — returning the carbon to the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. And scientists (including those employed by the fossil fuels industry) have been warning that nothing good would come from that. Since the 1970s, tens of thousands of scientists have contributed to our understanding of the problem. Hundreds of satellites have been launched to study the earth’s atmospheric system, hundreds of thousands of scientific studies and doctoral theses have looked at every aspect of the problem — the chemistry of our atmosphere, the role of the oceans, the sun, the magnetosphere, the world’s biodiversity, the oceans, the role of algae, forests etc. etc. etc., They have come up with climate ‘models’ — essentially, the synthesis of all the data, accumulated by scientists over half a century or more of studying the problem, which have been entered into ever more powerful computers. (And if you have any doubts you are welcome to devote ten years of your life to become an expert in a relevant field [4 years bachelor, 2 years master, 4 years PhD] then get the funding to set up a laboratory to replicate their studies, and if you dispute them, you may publish your findings in reputed journals that are peer reviewed by the best minds in the field, and then wait for the response of your peers in the field.) Because remember this: there is no greater thrill for a scientist than to find error in the work of their peers.

So, according to yank-servatives, it is the scientists who are a ‘cabal,’ and not the chicken-sh*t corporate execs who lie and spread disinformation via ‘think-tanks’ and ‘propagandist media outlets,’ so that their profits may continue unabated, and they may enrich themselves even more. Because change is tough and, after all, an oil guy knows one thing — how to extract and refine petroleum, and nothing else.

My theory is that Microsoft still exists thanks only to Excel. The company rests upon that single foundation stone. Businesses around the world must have Excel because of the formulas and macros or whatever, that run their company spreadsheets. Over the last two or three decades, they have accumulated and rely on hundreds of old spreadsheets, refining and improving them. And because of compatibility issues, they cannot afford to change to something else. They must be able to open a spreadsheet from 20 years ago and it must work perfectly. No time to change formulas or debug etc. So for essential business spreadsheets, it has to be Excel. But Word, PowerPoint? Outlook?? Who cares? These are software appliances — like refrigerators, TVs etc, — a highly competitive market with low margins. For office, there’s Google for those who don’t mind being spied upon. Apple has free alternatives, there is open source, and a myriad of free and paid alternatives.

Because a business must use Excel, they therefore buy the entire Office package, as Microsoft offers bulk-purchase discounts. Thus an entire organisation resorts to using the bloody programs as they have already paid for them. If someone wants to use an alternative, the IT guy will say: “Heck no, we’ve already got you a word processor (or whatever).” The same goes for cloud storage, and even the operating system — Windows is the only thing that will run all of Excel perfectly. So it has to be a Windows PC. Microsoft’s entire business rests upon that single foundation stone, once that foundation stone is undermined, good luck…   

sbdude said:

And the hits keep rolling in for Jony. I wonder how many hours it would have taken a first-year graphic communications major to put this together in Illustrator. 

“Bah humbug!”

9secondkox2 said:

Absent a new and outstanding competitor, the ultra likely won’t change industrial design for a few cycles. 

Agreed. Apple will squeeze this particular orange (a.k.a. production line) for a while yet, before they consider changing anything that requires chassis re-design and re-tooling. But, I don’t think anything a competitor can do (foreseeably) will change Apple’s overall production plans. 

Two billion active devices. Up by two-hundred million from the year before. That is the population of Nigeria or Brazil added every year. It is safe to assume that well over one billion users access their Apple devices each day. That is Coca-Cola-like market penetration. Coca-Cola claims that “More than 1.9 billion servings of our drinks are enjoyed in more than 200 countries each day.” It is time to put to bed the idea that Apple is a high-priced luxury that only the wealthy (or only Americans) can afford.