Pornography was illegal back in those days in the US. Stag films existed, but they were primarily produced by criminal organizations and was an underground thing. Then during the late '60s and '70s adult movie theaters started to appear in the seedier parts of the cities. The big moment when it went into the mainstream public was when the Linda Lovelace movie Deep Throat that was financed by the Mafia started being played in those adult theatres. Mob enforcers would extract a percentage of the ticket proceeds from the owners of the theatres or an accident just might happen.
I'm going to disagree with you here. McArthur made sure that Japan's constitution prohibit the export of pornography. Why do that if they didn't have a different mindset towards sex than the US? That's why all Japanese porn movies have been pixelated over the naughty bits that you can find in the US.
The stock market crash of 1929 wasn't the start of the great depression. It took a few years for the pain to really start and J. P. Morgan benefitted greatly by buying stock at the lowest price and then the stock market went up again. I'd guess that the same will happen this time around.
Good luck with that! I catered to SMBs and all of my good clients got acquired by much larger companies. The little guys are going to get crushed one way or another.
I think that you aren't thinking about the NPCs in the commie states that will eat this shit up as a wonderful thing. California and NY (for now) have pretty large populations and this will spread throughout the northeast as they push harder for dumbass things like natural gas suddenly being a health hazard.
I actually purchased an electric lawnmower to give it a try and I have to schedule when I mow around the temperature of the day so that it doesn't overheat the batteries. I always hear my Dad in my head telling me that I'm a dumbass for even thinking that it was a good idea to buy one, but I have a small yard and thought that it would work better than gas. I was wrong.
This is just their next big thing and the power companies are wanting to install smart meters to reduce costs on reading the meter, when the reality is that they will be better able to regulate how much power you can use and much easier to switch it off remotely. Even if I turned off the main breaker my electric bill will be at least 50 bucks in fees without any usage. They only read meters bimonthly now and will estimate your bill for three times what it was a year ago just because. This all electric bullshit is going to benefit a few people wanting to make a profit and then in 10 to 15 years, they'll say that gas is much better and start pushing for that as they buy the stock on the low end.
Yeah, my daughter mentioned to me that the wind was really bad today and the damn wind farm wasn't even turning as she drove by. Probably because they are broke down. Renewable energy, my ass!
Companies won't produce as much inventory though due to less demand, thus the higher cost per item. Buying from out of state won't matter much, because now you have a captive audience so to speak. Prices will go up on everything gas powered and they will claim that the fuel price increase is due to an overall less demand. Energy stocks are rigged by the stockholders.
I'm getting old and this crap has been going on forever! The things that I actually care about such as maintaining our forests by replanting what is cut down for harvest aren't important though. You won't sit under that tree, but maybe your grandchildren will. Provided that they don't clearcut everything and build cheap housing for everyone.
Less demand for gas powered yard tools and gasoline means a higher price for both. Count on seeing the switch back to them in 10 to 15 years after record profits have been made.
Do you know George Jetson? He goes to work and just pushes buttons all day! I really don't get young people today thinking that we are in some golden age of tech. You need three things to live. Food, water and shelter. The commies are outlawing even wood stoves in the Democrat states. During the ice storm of '93, I just cooked on the wood stove and fetched water from the fresh water spring that you could publicly access. People don't know what it's actually like when all the creature comforts are no longer available to them.
As soon as the outdoor temperature drops below 35 degrees Fahrenheit, the heat pump efficiency deteriorates. The system will strain to keep the home warm inside when the temperature outside falls below zero degrees Fahrenheit
This just means that your electric bill will go sky high whereas natural gas has a much higher BTU.
Electric heat pumps don't work below a certain temperature because the air outside is just too damn cold. You aren't living in the world of tomorrow.
Oh you haven't seen the advertisements that menthol cigarettes were targeting fags and they need to be banned yet?!! Electric companies are announcing the installation of smart meters in rural areas of NY so that they can easily regulate and turn off service more easily. Meanwhile everyone has been getting asthma now from gas stoves. This is all so fake and gay that I don't understand why more people aren't up in arms, but a third of our population is retarded and the other two thirds are half Democrat NPCs.
Edit: I'm going to blame the removal of lead from gasoline for causing all this stupidity!
Teaching someone how to play an instrument, learn a language (look at an object, tells you the name), cook, fix a car, etc. That'd be awesome. Not stupid VR chat rooms.
You can do all of those things now without a dumbass VR headset. You don't get tactile feedback of working on anything, so I really don't see the point in any of it.
If you can wait a month then Alibaba is the cheapest place to buy from, but you can't return anything without it costing a fortune due to the lopsided shipping costs. That's why Amazon is the better option due to someone else buying a butt load of product to reduce the shipping costs per item.
Someone else has outed themselves as being raised by the greatest generation. 😂 What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Those jobs used to be the freelance guy's work. An SMB would buy software with a source code license and the free lancer would customize it for their business. This model worked really well, but I really do believe that software development is going to die out over time as free software gets better. There will be money to be made to support and customize, but your work will be worth a lot less trying to compete with countries that you can live off of on pennies a day. Meanwhile, we're getting raped by inflation and something needs to be done about it all.
If the customer isn't willing to pay it, then obviously they don't need it. $100 an hour is nothing for tech. Back in the 90s $125 an hour was common for hardware repair. Good software takes a long time to write and is very hard to do. Today we have nothing but shit software where the only thing that ever gets changed is the UI and companies think that a subscription model is worth those small changes.
Don't forget tariffs on foreign services provided over the Internet. Cost should be more than outsourcing your back-office departments to a third world shithole country would ever save a company.
I'm not sure what you actually quoted, but I do agree with you that Microsoft is a shitty company. Remember that DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run? Now we have an open source product known as gpg. Everyone keeps trying to reinvent the wheel instead of just improving what already exists. By improving, I mean actually improving the speed and security of existing software. I think that everyone got lost when assembly fell out of style because it was too hard and took longer to develop with. I'm surprised that any of this crap software works today with all the additional libraries and compilers and such. Writing good software takes a long time and effort to get right, but we're not making bank on that.
That and tech is on a downtrend now. I can't tell the difference between 1920 x 1080 and 4k! What are they going to add to the equation?! Don't get me started on actual software available today. No one has any good ideas and that's probably to be expected, but grocery stores are raping everyone with their bullshit pricing. An Amish store was selling eggs for $2.97 a dozen. We're getting fleeced in the name of covid.
PGP couldn't be universally adopted back in the 90s and what did it have? Signing of emails to verify your identity and full encryption of whatever you sent. Now we have DocuSign (tm) and whatever vendor specific encryption that exists today.
Well I learned a very long time ago that if you have a natural ability at something that you can be successful doing it. Some things like art and music are a mixture of natural ability and luck. Some people make it, but very few actually succeed at it. Those that do make it are usually connected or have real talent in the craft. I just couldn't believe the amount of arguing that took place for ten years, but once the starving artist working night shift at a hotel gets rebuffed by a girl for his choices in life and suddenly he actually wants to earn money. I've known music writers, producers and the talent in the country music industry, so I have seen some things. I still wish that my Dad was around to tell me what actually happened at the party he attended with Porter Wagner. All I know is that Porter said to him don't tell anyone what happens tonight. I do know that coke was involved though. LOL
Son: I want to get a degree in graphical design.
Me: So let me get this straight, you have no natural art talent and you want to be an artist and try to make a living doing that?
Son: Yes, I want to work in the gaming industry.
Me: ???
Over ten years later...
Son: Dad, how do I get started in IT?
Decades ago when I was young I looked at it out of curiosity. Not something that would titillate me, but I had to find out why there was always pixels. Japanese can be very weird.