The Gateses don't account for inflation in their prediction. Income may be higher in the future, but so will be living costs. The standard of poverty will simply be shifted. Furthermore, I think it's hard to reasonably expect a world in which almost no people are poor without considering the changes in consumption that will have to occur first. Present consumption levels won't be sustainable with more countries consuming at the level of the US, for example, unless new food/energy production innovations are able to mitigate it. (To that end, I admit to wishing the level of consumption of many western countries would be reduced.)
An anecdotal piece about income levels:
Currently, I'm in southeast Asia, and have seen first-hand income disparity. The city in which I'm living has seen a drastic increase in hotels over the past decade (someone reported 32 were approved in 2013, but they did not provide evidence), and many large roads have a hotel (or two) under development somewhere along them. These hotels are pristine and obnoxious. Beyond these main roads, within the bowels of the city blocks with narrower, labyrinthine, and occasionally unpaved streets, houses are barely adequate. With the chickens and other animals running between these houses, you feel like you're in a rural village. This is not specific to the entire city, but that you see it in a not-very-poor neighbourhood reminds you that poverty exists just behind the walls of rich hotels.
Food is incredibly cheap, $1 if you want something affordable; the most expensive meal I've had was $3, although I'm sure you can find more expensive food. Cooking isn't very efficient and cheap here, so most of your lunch and dinner comes from stalls or restaurants. Clothing is uneven; a branded T-shirt is $4, good shirt $30, and discounted shorts $10. Housing is cheap unless you want western amenities; I have a comfortable apartment in a quiet alley, with all the furnishings, a balcony, free drinking water, free laundry service, and free cleaning service for $230 a month. Tech doesn't appear to be very different; Laptops are 50% cheaper, as was an OTG cable, and when it was first released the S3 was $500.
The designation of all this as "cheap", however, depends on perspective. When comparing it with a country where good meals cost $20, especially ones that are relatively bland in comparison with the food here, one may view living comfortably here as an easy thing to do, but that's only if you earn a western-level amount. Instead, a good income here will barely cover my rent, which, seen from a local perspective, is actually quite obscene. And the longer I've lived here, the more I've found paying $3 for ribs harder to stomach. Earnings are commensurate with living costs, so when I think about whether I want to live here permanently and earn money here instead of in Europe, I have to consider that what would be a good income here would make it hard for me to return to the west with much pocket change. (For that reason, a friend works in the UAE and visits his wife here only every few months.)
If income levels increase here, so will restaurant bills, electricity, and the price of a laptop. The cost of everything will be higher, and everyone will be left with the same (in relative terms) amount of money to spend. The people who beg for 10 cents today will start begging for $1. Everywhere I've gone, it's been the same story: there's a balance between what you earn and what you pay; the only difference is the bracket surrounding those two numbers.
To me, the issue here isn't of income, but of prosperity. For many people, earning 10% of what they would in the west for often harder work is not a problem, because it's enough to support their families. What breaks my heart is that I can't drink tap water, am weary about my health, the rivers and air are heavily polluted, education depends on the interest levels of jaded teachers, and earning that 10% carries with it a significant cost to the environment. I desperately want the people here to be able to view the price of lunch for their family as flippantly as I did, but what I think they want more is to be able to assure that their children will be able to recover from sickness at a reasonable cost (for free in a perfect world), get a good education and hopefully make it to university (which is expensive but more prestigious here than in the west), have clean water and enough food, fewer power outages, and after that, enough money to afford the trinkets every modern human wants to show off to their friends. I believe they will take all that before higher income in 20 years to afford the same amount of what they get now.
I don't know whether any of this adds any value to the discussion or has too many fallacies (I think there is some appeal to emotion), but hopefully it was worth reading. Full disclosure: many of the people with whom I've worked here are in conservation and political science; I likely have an environmental bias, as well as bias relating to corruption and gender/class equality.
I've always wondered about the value vs. cost of official products compared with unofficial ones. I always assumed a part of what you were paying for is the brand name, which may be true without knowing just how much of the Apple version's higher price is justified by the extra components/pins, official chip, and protective cover (although I'd think it's a lot). Considering that the difference between the two appears to be higher susceptibility to electrical interference as well as risk of malfunction, and compatibility with non-Apple hardware, the cheaper adapter seems to have much higher value for money.
On a technical level, the ingenuity of the people tasked with squeezing comparable performance at 20% of the cost is remarkable - at least to this layman.
I switched to Xubuntu from Ubuntu, as well. Although it being catered to lower-end systems than Ubuntu is what drew me in, I've been most happy with its customisability, the highlight of which is panel (i.e. taskbar) control. Its depth goes so far for something I installed just because I wanted something light.
This is a fantastic coincidence. Over the past few weeks, and especially today, my fiancée has been telling me how she has lost her familiarity with Sanskrit after many years. I've already showed her this website. The joy!
I'd love to know just how much of a possibility there is of this happening. I've spent a lot of time customising and tine-tuning my own blog, so I've no interest in seeing it turn into one of millions of generic Google+ "blogs".
How do you account for the users that would choose the default browser anyway? For example, were Chrome the default on Ubuntu, I'd replace it with Firefox, but as Firefox is the default, I don't need to do any switching.
You took "living unhealthily" out of context. mattmanser said, "living unhealthily in your game". There's a difference; i.e. it regards one's dedication to a game, not their lifestyle.
Lenovo is known above all else for the durability of its hardware, so I'm surprised by this account. Perhaps you were simply unfortunate with the specific laptop you chose - no product line is 100% perfect, after all.
(I'm also aware that it's possible you're just trolling.)
The rounded tabs have been coming for a long time - at least since 2011[1] - and they're not only for Windows 8. They're meant to be the same across all supported platforms, and thus provide a "unified Firefox experience"[2]. The tabs are just one part of Australis, the banner under which the changes to the download manager and back button, for example, appear.
While the strength of a product may dictate its long-term success, a well-implemented marketing campaign is often the difference between a mediocre product with excellent sales and an excellent product with mediocre sales.
I'm not happy about it, but for many of the less computer-savvy users, I don't see why this should be a big problem. They may very well be interested in this feature, and it still beats paying an exorbitant amount (comparably) just to use Office or Photoshop, or whatever it is that compels people to get Apple computers.
Some us already support websites by shopping through their Amazon links. Why not support Ubuntu?
I have to admit, I love the snark of "A totally different plug". It captures exactly how I feel about every recent iteration of the iPhone: that minor improvements are met with inappropriately high levels of enthusiasm, simply because it's the "new" iProduct.
And, while it does seem like they're reaching by the end, a removable battery is absolutely worth mentioning to some consumers. I don't plan on purchasing either of these phones, for reasons unrelated to this ad, but it seems like the criticisms on here are awfully reactionary and over the top.
Out of curiosity, how exactly does one go about creating a "different" dock that also has a glass pane underneath? Different colour? Or angle of the pane? Different shape (which Samsung's version has)?
I'm wondering how much Samsung could do here without being accused of copying, other than removing the pane altogether.
EDIT: I do realise I'm nitpicking, but can someone also explain what the author means with this sentence: "Samsung’s designers have no taste, or ability to come up with an original idea that was inspired by others without just completely ripping it off."
I understand the point, but the wording is rather confusing. They're coming up with an original idea by ripping off another one? If their designers have no taste, why are they ripping off supposedly well-designed products (i.e. iPhone, etc.) instead of poorly-designed ones? They must have great taste in phones, if they keep copying the iPhones. Can an inspired idea truly be original?
I've been using DDG mainly on principle. As a search engine, I've found it to be less robust than Google. My searches tend to be highly specific, too, so my inability to learn all the keywords hasn't helped.
Nevertheless, I've only been using Google as a last resort, at a rate of perhaps twice a day. I think DuckDuckGo's cause is important.
An anecdotal piece about income levels:
Currently, I'm in southeast Asia, and have seen first-hand income disparity. The city in which I'm living has seen a drastic increase in hotels over the past decade (someone reported 32 were approved in 2013, but they did not provide evidence), and many large roads have a hotel (or two) under development somewhere along them. These hotels are pristine and obnoxious. Beyond these main roads, within the bowels of the city blocks with narrower, labyrinthine, and occasionally unpaved streets, houses are barely adequate. With the chickens and other animals running between these houses, you feel like you're in a rural village. This is not specific to the entire city, but that you see it in a not-very-poor neighbourhood reminds you that poverty exists just behind the walls of rich hotels.
Food is incredibly cheap, $1 if you want something affordable; the most expensive meal I've had was $3, although I'm sure you can find more expensive food. Cooking isn't very efficient and cheap here, so most of your lunch and dinner comes from stalls or restaurants. Clothing is uneven; a branded T-shirt is $4, good shirt $30, and discounted shorts $10. Housing is cheap unless you want western amenities; I have a comfortable apartment in a quiet alley, with all the furnishings, a balcony, free drinking water, free laundry service, and free cleaning service for $230 a month. Tech doesn't appear to be very different; Laptops are 50% cheaper, as was an OTG cable, and when it was first released the S3 was $500.
The designation of all this as "cheap", however, depends on perspective. When comparing it with a country where good meals cost $20, especially ones that are relatively bland in comparison with the food here, one may view living comfortably here as an easy thing to do, but that's only if you earn a western-level amount. Instead, a good income here will barely cover my rent, which, seen from a local perspective, is actually quite obscene. And the longer I've lived here, the more I've found paying $3 for ribs harder to stomach. Earnings are commensurate with living costs, so when I think about whether I want to live here permanently and earn money here instead of in Europe, I have to consider that what would be a good income here would make it hard for me to return to the west with much pocket change. (For that reason, a friend works in the UAE and visits his wife here only every few months.)
If income levels increase here, so will restaurant bills, electricity, and the price of a laptop. The cost of everything will be higher, and everyone will be left with the same (in relative terms) amount of money to spend. The people who beg for 10 cents today will start begging for $1. Everywhere I've gone, it's been the same story: there's a balance between what you earn and what you pay; the only difference is the bracket surrounding those two numbers.
To me, the issue here isn't of income, but of prosperity. For many people, earning 10% of what they would in the west for often harder work is not a problem, because it's enough to support their families. What breaks my heart is that I can't drink tap water, am weary about my health, the rivers and air are heavily polluted, education depends on the interest levels of jaded teachers, and earning that 10% carries with it a significant cost to the environment. I desperately want the people here to be able to view the price of lunch for their family as flippantly as I did, but what I think they want more is to be able to assure that their children will be able to recover from sickness at a reasonable cost (for free in a perfect world), get a good education and hopefully make it to university (which is expensive but more prestigious here than in the west), have clean water and enough food, fewer power outages, and after that, enough money to afford the trinkets every modern human wants to show off to their friends. I believe they will take all that before higher income in 20 years to afford the same amount of what they get now.
I don't know whether any of this adds any value to the discussion or has too many fallacies (I think there is some appeal to emotion), but hopefully it was worth reading. Full disclosure: many of the people with whom I've worked here are in conservation and political science; I likely have an environmental bias, as well as bias relating to corruption and gender/class equality.