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Howto make an index by Hanna's+Goblin+Toys · 2002-12-20 06:34 · Score: 1 · on 85 Big Ideas that Changed the World

Howto make an index by Hanna's+Goblin+Toys · 2002-12-20 06:34 · Score: 1 · on 85 Big Ideas that Changed the World

he tried pretty hard by Anonymous Coward · 2002-12-18 07:02 · Score: 1, Informative · on When Sysadmins Go Bad

But was ultimately limited by his physical location and environment reach. Had he done this two years ago, he would have done more damage, but now that PaineWebber has been a part of UBS Warburg for, two years most of our transaction and settlement occurs in our Stamford facility But he did take out an entire data center in New Jersey, three external websites, and connectivity to all 500 of our national retail (private investor) branches, FOR A WEEK!!

Re:Yes! by MacAndrew · 2002-12-12 09:07 · Score: 2 · on FCC Considers Expanding Unlicensed Spectrum

(For the interested, a detailed chart of freq. allocations.)

Yes, by "double" I referred to the "loan," if you prefer of add'l spectrum to broadcasters. There will be at least a decade before the spectrum returns, assuming the broadcasters don't figure out the political means to squat on it by then. They have to return it in 2006 or 85% market penetration, which clearly won't happen until later, esp. in non-early adopter areas.

There has been some debate over whether stations can exploit additional space within their bandwidth, used for neither digital nor analog signals, for commercial purposes. I'm not sure how that came out.

Your analogy to early TV is inept. The introduction of TV forced no one to buy anything unless they wanted to participate. Same with color, which was cleverly compatible with B&W TV's. Opt-outs did not subsidize early adopters, and improvements did not needlessly obsolete existing equipment. Now, with DTV we face losing our equipment -- unless we buy $$ converters -- and of higher cable fees as they transition to digital, etc. Already digital tuners are supposedly to be required for all new TV's whether you need one or not (most of us have cable). Moreover, HDTV also portends a new round of DRM that may ultimately peel off some fair use rights.

I don't mind the advance to DTV at all, indeed it is probably a good thing. Many people do seem to want it, but -- and this is key -- I'm not at all interested in subsidizing them or the manufacturers in their entertainment or profits, respectively. I would like converting to me my choice, quaint notion though that may be, and will hold off as long as possible until the people who just absolutely positively have to have DTV rigth away have paid for the bleeding edge of technology and the prices drop.

Thankfully we don't just do things that people "want" is offensive. I don't know how you distinguish between "we" and "people," but people were excited as hell about TV's debut. DTV is more ho-hum despite years of promotion and hype. More perceptive souls have questioned whether DTV is a rip-off for the ordinary consumer here or here or here or various other places not preoccupied with how neat DTV is --- or what a favor they're doing for the little "people."

A related forbes article by shashibg · 2002-12-12 08:16 · Score: 1 · on FCC Considers Expanding Unlicensed Spectrum

The article is titled Dead Air in Forbes, Nov 25. The online version is available in http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1125/138.html I point this specially to people who say that government should be milking the private sector for spectrum licenses

contract manufacturers by Anonymous Coward · 2002-12-12 02:57 · Score: 0 · on Has the Quality of Consumer Electronics Declined?

A significant portion of CE products are outsourced to be produced by the contract manufacturers.

This group of companies were producing profits + 20% growth rates + huge revenues during the boom years.

Now they are struggling.

Perhaps their financial difficulties have had an impact on their quality control?

Re:your competitor's OS by Jace+of+Fuse! · 2002-12-11 13:19 · Score: 2 · on OS/2 Going, Going... Gone

Sony certainly isn't afraid of Palm

Why should they? They forked down a good chunk of change to own some portion of Palm's OS developement side.

Re:Dark Fiber gaffe or proper planning? by Evro · 2002-12-10 08:17 · Score: 1 · on Dark Fiber: A Case In Point

Network traffic has been doubling every two years or so, this means that 90-95% dark fiber would last you about 6-8 years.

The statistic that caused this boom in the laying of fiber was 1000% network growth per year, or doubling every 3 months. This has proven to be a wildly exaggerated figure, and IMHO, one pushed by those who stood to to profit from skyrocketing telecom stock prices (e.g. Jack Grubman) despite knowing it to be false.

Wildly optimistic data drove telecoms to build fiber glut - Wall Street Journal, Sept. 26 2002

Re:They don't *WANT* to make money?!?! by DjMd · 2002-12-02 10:37 · Score: 5, Informative · on AMD's 64-bit Plot

I love that everyone read that story and thought it ment that they were leaving the desktop market, when it really said that they were going to diversify outside of the desktop market, as in do more in addition to their desktop market...

(a quote from first paragraph of the Forbes article "[a] strategy of developing processors for a wider range of products outside computers ...")

Why copyright doesn't work! by Anonymous Coward · 2002-11-27 02:28 · Score: -1, Offtopic · on Location-based Security for Wireless Apps

From meempool
(I can heartily recommend Leisure Town, it's twisted.
I find the comment in the Forbes article about comic books not making a profit, and that the publishers treat them as R&D for ancillerary rights to be quite intriuging...)

Whatever happened to comic books? In the 1940s millions of Americans read comics not only for Superhero stories, but Romance, Cowboys, War, History, Literary Adaptations and more. Readers were lured away whenever another medium provided their "fix" cheaper, easier or better, beginning with television in the '50s. By the early '80s the only genre still dominated by comics was Superheroes, and 1989's hugely profitable Batman signaled the beginning of the superheroic exodus from comics to film. Since then comicbook sales have plummeted, from $850 million in 1993 to $275 million in 2000 and still falling fast. Leading publishers Marvel and DC Comics both now treat comics solely as Research and Development: they lose millions printing the comics, but earn far more selling licenses for movies, cartoons and toys. Comics' core audience, traditionally pre-teens, is now 18-30 and getting older every year. Is this the death of comics? Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, plays Gandalf to an unofficial fellowship out to save comics by migrating to the Internet! Join the revolution with Justine Shaw's Nowhere Girl, Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep, Tristan Farnon's Leisure Town, Derek Kirk's Small Stories, Jenn Manley Lee's Dicebox, Cat Garza's Magic Inkwell and more!

I donno what score this deserves by slughead · 2002-11-23 20:29 · Score: 4, Interesting · on AMD Announces A Shift In Focus From PC Processors

Again, verbatim from my site:

Attention Slashdoters:
Don't get all your news from Slashdot

I should really start out by saying that I have never owned and Intel chip, my PC is an AthlonXP. I'm about to attempt to put an end to any dispute, and I'm going to use Forbes as my main source (because I think the man might know a thing or two about money, because he's got a lot more than me).

After the PC market's recent downturn, AMD was facing tough times. However, unlike Intel, AMD has little diversity in chip manufacturing. Recently, Intel announced their 3ghz processor with hyperthreading (a way of fooling software into running more efficiently). So AMD cut 15% of their employees shortly after.

Not that anyone needs to be reminded, but when a company cuts jobs, it doesn't just mean that they will have less employees, it also means that they will pay taxes. In addition to their current financial problems, just 5 days ago, AMD converted $300m of debt into stock, which will hurt their economic standing in the future, and by extension, the present (the news left AMD's stock in shambles at $5.90).

Converting debt into stock on such a large scale has consequences. Like, for instance, S & P could cut your credit rating. Of course, when the S & P does that, you have to convert more debt into stock.

Just a bad time for PC CPU mfg.ers? Well Intel's doing great, so how about that?

So whether the article said it directly or not (I read it 5 times and I think it pretty well did), AMD will not be competing in the PC market for a while. Their 64bit chip might help bridge the gap between 32bit and 64, but it has to come out first, and then it has to beat Intel's benchmarks on 32bit applications (which I could presume it will not). It will beat it in UT2003 though, hopefully that'll be enough!