Re: #1 (The Post Office), #6 (Music)
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(YouTube Song Links) (Dead music? Or, just sleeping soundly?) |
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The Beatles |
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Elvis Presley |
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Bobby Vinton |
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Little Richard |
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Elvis Presley |
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Posted on 04/22/2018 6:13:57 AM PDT by sodpoodle
Ten Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime
1. The Post Office
Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check
Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with check by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper
The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book
You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone
Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.
6. Music
This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalogue items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. Television Revenues
To the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
8. The "Things" That You Own
Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
9. Joined Handwriting (Cursive Writing)
Already gone in some schools who no longer teach "joined handwriting" because nearly everything is done now on computers or keyboards of some type (pun not intended)
10. Privacy
If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway.. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits.. "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again and again.
All we will have left that which can't be changed.......are our "Memories".
Logic is dead. Excellence is punished. Mediocrity is rewarded. And dependency is to be revered.. This is present-day North America. When crooks rob banks they go to prison. When they rob the taxpayer they get re-elected
The thing is, everything you listed there requires a separate code module to be programmed into the car’s computer. As a human, you can see a situation that you have never seen before and extrapolate how you should respond based on similarities to other situations you have encountered. How is a car going to do that? It may have hundreds or thousands of algorithms programmed in, but it is impossible to predict every situation that can arise, meaning that it is impossible to write an algorithm for every situation. We have all seen bizarre behavior in computers—do you want those bizarre glitches manifesting when you are riding along in your self-driving car and you don’t have the skill to take over because you have only been taught rudimentary driving skills?
I know that those who are enamoured of technology love the idea of self-driving cars, but I honestly don’t see them happening.
Besides, the prospect of sitting in a car, doing nothing while waiting to arrive, is not at all appealing. I’d rather drive, and be busy at something.
Rush- Red Barchetta - Lyrics
My uncle has a country place, that no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the ‘Eyes’, and hop the Turbine freight
To far outside the Wire, where my white-haired uncle waits
Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine -
For fifty-odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream
I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta, from a better, vanished time
Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime...
Wind in my hair -
Shifting and drifting -
Mechanical music -
Adrenaline surge -
Well-weathered leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware
Suddenly, ahead of me, across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car, shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with shrieking tires, to run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley as another joins the chase
Run like the wind
Straining the limits of machine and man
Laughing out loud
With fear and hope, I’ve got a desperate plan
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside
Lol. I do appreciate your cordially non agressive tone.
At the core is knowledge, what is knowledge, how is it composed. There are Masters Degrees on this subject.
Highlight readers are superior to non highlight readers.
So I am not demeaning highlighters. Just ask a person to summarize a book they recently read, someone who does NOT mark on books.
The non marking reader retains less, AND most important is that for them to go back and review, they must reread the book again.
Readers are smarter than non readers.
Highlighters retain much more than readers.
Then Trade Secrets, a publishing editor may have some.
All books are the original outline, covered with fluff. Reading is recovering the original outline.
By understanding that principle, one can 4.0 GPA any college course.
Roger that, FRiend.
I went to Outer Mongolia in 2016. The Gobi looks a *lot* like the desert of Wyoming, Colorado, etc. The Mongolian nomads typically have a little solar panel, which provides just enough electricity to run an electric light, a TV, and charge the cell phones. No roads, no electricity, no utilities, but they have cell phones. It’s funny, in a way.
“I know that those who are enamoured of technology love the idea of self-driving cars, but I honestly don’t see them happening.”
They ARE happening.
No 'probably' about it .. most folks in the T wear the PAlabama nickname with pride and gratitude.
An uncommon amount of common sense still dwells in these parts too.
I hope to be an urn dweller before that ever changes.
Can’t we just light off a few emps and go back to the horse?
They are being tested on a limited basis, in a handful of areas. That is not the same as putting them out on the roads to replace actual cars, with the myriad of uses that people use them for.
They may be better as a means of controlling people than anything else.
“They are being tested on a limited basis, in a handful of areas. “
Even regular cars are getting close. Self-braking, adaptive cruise control, lane-following. It is coming.
Check out the latest on Tesla.
I love our landline. We have cells, too, but rely on the “home phone” — plugged in to the wall — not wifi, VOIP, or similar. We lose power here in TN more than we did in Alaska on the ‘70s. It’s nice to have stable communications in emergencies. Now, when I go to thrift shops I scan the aisles for “regular” phones.
BASIC TALK
Most of the time I don’t pick it up at all between 0900 and 2000 as I said.
“Most of the time I don’t pick it up at all between 0900 and 2000 as I said.”
What you said was that you don’t run from one end of the house to the other or interrupt things to pick up.
Same thing, different words. Don’t be picky.
“Same thing, different words. Don’t be picky.”
Depends. You could be sitting on the couch with your phone ...
So true.
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(YouTube Song Links) (Dead music? Or, just sleeping soundly?) |
|
The Beatles |
|
Elvis Presley |
|
Bobby Vinton |
|
Little Richard |
|
Elvis Presley |
|
|
We had the cell network go down when an earthquake knocked out the poser for the whole island. Landline still worked.
I refuse to walk around with a cell, do not expect to need it. Does sit in my car for emergenciy calls.
Of course, I do not "do" iPhag smartphones or need whatever all those cute little icons are for. Everyone else seems totally zombified by the damn things, so I stay out of the loop.
Your GPS issues are not the fault of the system, but of the programming by whoever made yours.
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