Payam's Place

Not so long ago, I commented on how it was difficult to justify spending money on a new computer when my prehistoric 2008 MacBook Pro was managing to run Catalina after being equipped with a Samsung Evo solid state drive and using the DOSdude1 patch. Then came Costco’s crazy deal on the discontinued MacBook. The specs on this computer are not spectacular, but as the photo below attests, an upgraded 2008 MacBook Pro still cannot hold a candle to a 2017 computer. As the photo shows, the newer computer is twice as fast on wifi, and easily 20 times faster with all other tasks, especially editing and processing photos. The time savings alone, then, justified the $1100 expense.

The pictures itself says a lot. The new computer is much smaller, has a vastly superior screen–double the resolution and far less reflectivity–has a battery life nearly times longer (the old computer barely lasts 2 hours on a charge). This table summarizes the objective criteria differences. It’s hard to describe how much easier the higher resolution screen is to read despite its smaller size. The speakers even sound better. I was wrong, after all. It’s nice to have a new computer. Editing photos will no longer be a daylong chore. It won’t take more than 10 minutes.

The means by which online ticket sales obscure the price of their product must be outlawed. As the picture below demonstrates, the published prices for tickets bear no relationship to the true price that is exacted once various “fees” are exacted at time of purchase. In this particular instance, the outfit that handles the tickets for the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara, CA, exacts fees that add over 30% to the sales total. Once all fees are added up, the total is 40% higher than the published price the tickets: 2 tickets X $49.50/ticket = $99, but the total is $138, a 40% premium!

Ticket processing fees were tolerable when they hovered about $10 per ticket processed. Even if they represented a 50% premium for a $20 ticket, they were a reasonable cost to bear for the convenience of electronic ticket delivery. At nearly $20 a ticket, the processing fees no longer represent a small premium to be paid for convenience. These astronomical fees represent a means of inflating ticket prices. As such, they constitute a deceptive business practice and need to be regulated. Laws ought to demand that any fee in excess of $5 per ticket to be plainly advertised next to the ticket price so that the buyer can be aware of the true price of the ticket.

Source: Trump is not a lawyer – Ruth Bader Ginsburg – BBC News

The most important part of this interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not the fact that Donald Trump neither is a lawyer nor has any grasp of the law. His numerous failed business ventures and the Federal consent decree against his rental empire amply testify to his legal and fiduciary incompetence.

The revelation in the interview is the fact that Trump presidency is built entirely on the demonization and harassment of the poor. This scapegoating of the poor manifests itself most strongly in the steps his administration has taken in curbing abortions. The consequence is clearly put by RBG:

“And the truth is that with all these restrictive laws, the only people who are being restricted are poor women.” …”They normally can’t pay a plane fare or the bus fare, they can’t afford to take days off of work to go.”

Trump’s virtue derives entirely from comparing himself with wretched immigrants from Central America and poor women. The immigrants he is placing in de facto concentration camps, and poor women are being forced into unwanted pregnancies that they cannot terminate  because his administration is denying them access to family planning.

The Trump vision of America is, consequently, one in which we are better than the wretched. The fact that this comparison drives our standard of living closer to that of the wretched rather than toward the standards of the privileged in our society seems to have been lost on most. The Trump administration’s singular accomplishment is, therefore, further immiserating the miserable, a task that denigrates us all.

With many thanks to the Samsung solid state drive (SSD) that I installed in my 11-year-old MacBook Pro and the group of programmers led by DosDude1 who allowed me to install and run all the latest MacOS operating systems (currently High Sierra or 10.14.6) on this officially unsupported computer, I have managed to keep the purchase of a new MacBook Pro at bay for five years now. As much as a new computer would be nice to have, not having to spend nearly $3000 on the same model MacBook Pro in its new guise is awfully comforting.

The list of helpers has other occupants. The Apple TV 4K relieves my ancient laptop of the strain of playing back 4K content, a task this laptop’s ancient nVidia graphics card cannot handle anyway. The support of 80211.n in this old MacBook Pro (a cutting edge feature in 2008), also makes accessing the internet a cinch. As the graphic below shows, this geriatric piece of technology still squeezes one quarter of the 450 Mbits/s that my Spectrum connection delivers.

Upon the occasion of my purchase of an Apple HomePod–the purportedly audiophile quality compact speaker equipped with a computer that allows it to serve as a digital “assistant” and to play various music streams without the aid of any computer–Apple rewarded me with a three-month subscription to Apple Music so that I can enjoy this gift that Apple claims it has bestowed upon music lovers for the measly price of $9.99 monthly.

Is Apple Music a gift to music lovers? No, but Continue reading “Apple Music: More Like Apple Payola”

The simple pleasures in life are the best.