When I add a machine to the network, I power it on. I add it to the appropriate group in Workgroup manager. All our applications are mounted via NFS as/Network/Applications with support files in/Network/Library.
The ONLY thing we do after booting up the machine is renaming it (so it isn't Local Administrator's Computer), run software update, and walk away. As soon as the updates are done, the machine is good to go.
I don't have to install ANY software. All my office's software is in the Applications mount point. All the configurations that get pushed to the workstation are in Workgroup manager. There is NO setup time, and it only took me about 2 hours with the server to get those settings...
I said "for my office..." If you didn't pick up on it, I use my machines to make money, not as a hobby.
Contrast a Windows machine: install it, join the domain, reboot... Run software update, normally 2-3 times to get all the updates... reboot. Install Firefox, install Thunderbird, install MS Office, install Quickbooks, reboot. Add appropriate users to appropriate permissions (if needed), now the machine is good to go.
And with the Mac, I don't need to worry about the latest Worm getting ran by accident and shutting my business down.
Does that Mac have problems? Yes, there is/was a bug that caused either SMB or AFS to suck up 100% utilization, which caused the machines to run dog slow. We had a bad machine that seemed to nuke our network and the OS X Server handled it badly. But that was our ONLY IT need in the past few months.
I'm VERY happy with my Macs.
I am NOT deluding myself, because whenever we go on a hiring spree, we're buying 5 computers.
For home use, the Mac is MUCH less tinkering, but I'm not running the stuff that you are. I MOSTLY use the iLife apps, and some music composition software for my wife. I'm sure to run lots "hacker" software (and I'm using it in quotes for a reason), it's a lot of work, but I don't have that much stuff running.
Are their downsides to the Mac... sure, a few, but tinkering time isn't one of them for MY USAGE.
Back in the day of Rhapsody, there was: Yellow Box (OpenSTEP APIs) with multi-arch binaries for x86 and PPC... Blue Box - now Classic, ran Mac OS in a window, basically a Virtual Mac environment Java - ran natively in Yellow Box land Red Box (or Blue Box x86, it's been a while) that ran Windows in a Window...
That was part of the Rhapsody/x86 part... The idea was Mac users upgrade to Rhapsody/PPC with their old software in emulation... Windows users upgrade to Rhapsody/x86 with their old apps in the Windows in emulation... (note, its more virtualization than emulation, because the hardware would be direct calls)... then when all apps are Rhapsody/Yellow Box, everyone upgrades to the chip of choice, then assumed to be PPC, but it didn't matter who won.
Well, that got abandoned, or so we thought. Apple apparently kept their x86 codebase REASONABLY up to date... and I would assume that they are using their old Windows stuff.
I'm excited... right now I keep a Windows machine on my desk to run Quickbooks and a few random small applications... I can't wait to have the ability to run those apps at full speed (say 95% of full speed) on my new Powerbook...
I'm not in a platform war, I just want a laptop that runs BSD, MS Office, and is reasonably reliable. This is a wonderful time...
Interestingly, hopefully for most apps I'll just run Darwine instead of needing to run Windows, but I can run it for apps that need it.
Good times, good times. And hell, I need to buy Windows licenses from time to time anyway to run in Virtual PC if I need a Windows app on the road, so its a wash...
Well, if I was doing IT for a larger company (my small company has 15 people, adding 5 every 6 months or so, so we buy that many new Macs), and I could buy a Dell and pop in an Apple DVD, that would be my Mac stations... Basically, for anyone that wanted OS X, it would be easier and cheaper normally to buy the lowest end Dell and stick OS X in there... Sure the equivalent Dell to an Apple is about that same price as the Apple (+/- 10%), but Apple has limited selection... Sure the equivalent Dell to the Mini (including XP Pro) is about $550, but I can buy a $300 Dell... and possibly do dual-monitor for $300-$600, compared to $2000 with Apple...
Basically, Apple doesn't want people buying design workstations (dual monitor, decent RAM, etc.) buying a $1200 Dell instead of a $2000 "PowerMac," and spending $200 to get the Mac OS X, they want to sell the $2000 hardware and make their $400 in margins...
Sure, there WILL be a way to buy an off the shelf machine, or alternatively, assemble off-the-shelf parts to match what the Mac has, flash firmware or whatever to match Apple's trickiness, and run OS X... guess what, college kids will do it... but there is no way for my company I would do that...
Because if I roll out a patch (say, 10.5.3) and it breaks my machines, I'm SOL until a new "hack" comes out... or a security patch does it, etc., etc... Sure, for a hobbyist they'll do it... and I doubt Apple cares that a few Alpha geeks run hacked Macs... they get some mindshare and possibly sell some software (maybe not the OS, but maybe Pages or Quicktime Pro, or anything), and maybe when that kid makes purchase decisions he'll buy Macs...
What they DO NOT want is my small company buying 5 Dells + 5 Dell monitors + OS X DVDs, instead of 5 Mac Minis + 5 Apple monitors (the combo looks SO slick) and then buying OS X upgrades annually...
It's not about normal unsupported... it's about some OS upgrade breaking the system and leaving me fucked with an insecure machine until the upgrade happens. ALL they need to do is have the stock kernel check something in the hardware and it will accomplish 80% of their objectives. Anything ELSE they do it just gravy... my guess is something in the kernel, and something in the closed source layers... basically force you to apply a new hack every security patch/OS upgrade, and that will keep all but hobbyists from going that route... and that is ALL Apple needs.
What was the cost different to get a comparable Apple laptop. What do you value your free time at... for me its a lot, because I don't have much... Given the choice between an extra $200 for the machine (and generally, Dell charges the same as Apple for the same machine, but Apple only has limited options, so you buy more machine... i.e. to upgrade the screen, you get a processor upgrade, that kinda thing), and a few hours of tinkering, I reach for my Amex...
It all depends if you'd rather have two-four hours for yourself or a little cash in your pocket...
My point on the Apple vs. Dell... any time I took an Apple machine, then went to Dell and priced an "equivalent" purchase, the price was +/- $50... however, if you start with the Dell, and then price out the equivalent Apple, it is usually a bit more... but you get stuff you may not need, but that is because Apple has limited models...
The Mac Mini is a GREAT office desktop (we have 8, probably going to get 4-5 more)... and its dirt cheap... Once you price out the equivalent Dell and add in XP Pro (home is worthless for a business workstation), and a few other minor upgrades, the mini tends to be $25-$50 less, which is a great deal.
You are suggesting that it would be better to have fewer drugs, but have them cheaper. I would suggest you think about the patent system, we DO get the best of both worlds now.
By the time the regulatory hoops are jumped through and a drug is approved, there is usually less than 10 years left on the patent.
This means that right now, ALL DRUGS ON THE MARKET BEFORE 1995 have dirt-cheap generic versions of them.
The market system we have does limit the NEWEST drugs to those that can afford them or afford good insurance... this is true.
But the rapid development of new drugs continues.
By 2015, all these "overpriced miracle drugs" will be available cheaply...
I'm okay with the newest treatments being scarce, if that maximizes drug development, because within a few years, those same drugs are available cheaply.
The drug would be affordable for Taiwan to treat the DISEASE, but that isn't what they are looking for.
So far this "epidemic" has claimed 60 lives. While it is tragic for those families, it isn't a return of the plague.
The disease is not currently jumping from bird -> human except in cases of HEAVY contact, and there is no human -> human jumping.
In previous "bird flu" epidemics, illegal versions of the drugs were used to treat birds by poor farmers rightfully fearing losing their livelihood. As a result, the remaining disease was resistant to the treatment, and previous treatments were no longer valid. There is an article in this month's Fortune on the issue...
Basically, if you keep the price high, people (or their governments) will pay for it to save lives, but not over use it to the point of treating birds...
It's not simple, and that's without debating the merits of our current private sector drug industry...
Ditto on the Comcast vs. DirecTV... My biggest problem is that in Florida, the summer rains interupt my signal... so that might be a reason to switch to cable. I also find MPEG4 artifacts more annoying than the MPEG2 ones... (people are free to disagree, I also find MPEG artifacts more annoying than static, but its probably from years of filtering out static).
However, DirecTV's deal with the NFL requires them to make Sunday Ticket available without programming. Not sure if you could keep your Tivo service, so I'd have to switch to the older HD Box, but I think that I would keep Sunday ticket, even if I switched to Comcast...
I had a UHF antenna in Boston, and grabbed all 6 networks with HD feeds, plus my nationals, all piped through my HD and later HD-Tivo box. In Florida, I needed to get a VHF/UHF antenna. Right now, the antenna only feeds through one line, I just need the 15 minutes to hop in the attic and switch the 4x8 multiswitch for the 5x8 multiswitch, and I could do HD on ANY drop...
Nothing with with OTA HD, it generally is at a higher bitrate than cable or satellite will give you (my local CBS looks much better than the NY Feed)... Plus Sunday Ticket + Superfan gives you LOTS of HD football. Now if only the Shortcuts ran in HD... maybe next year they'll get it.
The DirecTV boxes all include a built in OTA tuner, so no harm, no foul, and once you are putting in a satellite dish, the antenna is no big deal.
Basically, Apple's threat to GPL its "crown Jewels" would immediately get Linux to the Apple level... meaning that Red Hat would support Apple OS and eventually a Mac/Linux merged environment. That WOULD threaten Microsoft, because at a minimum it could grab the 3%-6% share that Apple holds and the other 1%-3% that Linux holds, which all of a sudden is a viable platform to develop software for because Apple alone is...
HOWEVER, as you said, he couldn't do that, because it would be "not in the best interests of the shareholders" who would prefer a liquidation deal...
That said, what if Steve Jobs made that Apple policy AND signed a deal as such with a third party. In that case, Steve's threat is real, because the code is in escrow and contracted to be released under the GPL...
Now, as long as making that threat credible is in the interests of Apple shareholders (which it arguably is... it makes it more likely that the Mac remains a viable desktop), then he can make the threat.
Now Microsoft has no interest in removing Office for Mac OS X...
It's all about making the threat credible by cutting off his other options, because as you noted, it isn't a credible threat. Apple no doubt has lots of RESTRICTIVE contracts like that JUST for this reason, it cuts off the other options, which means that competitors have to factor on them doing it, instead of discounting it.
Go find one of the adoption graphs on the web (I won't do it for you).
Excel "overtook" 1-2-3 and Word overtook Wordperfect in 1993 or 1994... which was BEFORE Windows 95 when Windows became the "hot thing."
But more than that, the EXISTENCE of these products cramped the markets for the DOS dominating players, which decimated profit margins, which altered the market realities for these companies.
Make less money, and you have less to invest in the next round for two reasons, #1 you have less cash on hand to fund R&D, and #2, you now need to decrease your expectations for future revenues, which on a discounted factor makes the investment less viable.
If you had 70% margins as a result of 90% share, which becomes a 30% margin with a 60% share, then your expected returns from the next rev. of the product become different, which makes it harder to justify investing more money in the product.
WordPerfect was truly DEFEATED when it was sold off several times, because Word made it uneconomically viable except to companies with a synergistic strategy, and they failed. WordPerfect became a brand, and not a great one... and it happened in the marketplace, not the computer magazine reviews.
Microsoft didn't win by being the best, they "won" by being the cheapest that works.
Word wasn't "better" than WordPerfect (if you are running a transcription service or something similar, people have the FASTEST results with WP 5.1 than ANY modern system), and Excel wasn't "better" than Lotus 1-2-3. However, they were less than half the price and you could get the bundle for less than either program individually.
Sure, business travelers will have no interest in virtual open office... at least for the forseeable future, but home users MIGHT. My wife uses web mail (Gmail), because she can check it at the office AND at home. If she works on a personal document, she emails it to herself. A virtual (GOffice) would work for her.
Sure, those of us that work on laptops on flights would have no interest, but that doesn't matter.
If Google grabs the bottom 50% of the market, than Microsoft is in trouble... they can't sell companies on paying $100/machine to OEM office if the competition eats their lunch because home users use Goffice and business users get site licenses.
Remember why software often is winner-take-all. The costs are 99% R&D, and 1% Variable, therefore, the contribution margin on each sale is close to 99% of price. If Microsoft loses 10% of Office, that could reduce their "profits" by 20%, 30%, or more... If they need 30% of the market to cover their R&D costs, and they hold 70%, than a 10% loss in marketshare loses 25% of their profits...
Google just needs to eat them from the bottom, and Microsoft is in trouble.
Microsoft's business REQUIRES being "good enough" for 70%-90% of the markets that they play in. The smaller market remaining forces their competition higher and higher up the chain.
Apple's OS R&D isn't going to be THAT MUCH smaller than Microsoft's, which forces Apple's prices to be higher (compare Apple's margins on hardware to Microsoft's OEM deals... for fairness, backout the gross margin that other manufacturers make, probably 10%, and you see Apple's OS "premium" which is 8x-10x Microsoft's OEM price)...
MS SQL Server forced Oracle and DB2 out of the low end of the market, which keeps them in the premium spot despite better tech, because MS SQL is "good enough" and therefore a price drop doesn't grab marketshare for the better players.
This is why Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and other Open Source solutions scare Microsoft... Microsoft can't sell a lot of web servers (compared to their marketshare in desktops or Office Suites), because LAMP is "good enough," which has REALLY hurt them... in that they thought they could leverage the Win95 monopoly into a server monopoly, which they never obtained.
Historically, Microsoft has been extremely pro-Consumer... they just sometimes put themselves first.
I mean, Microsoft created the hardware commoditization... had they not licensed a compatible MS-DOS to Compaq (and instead went back to IBM to re-negotiate), the commoditization of PCs wouldn't have happened. They historically were willing to support any hardware platform, not support the monopolization... they haven't tried to lock in a single video card.
Even where they attempted to monopolize markets (DirectX 3D vs. OpenGL), it was arguably pro-consumer... while OpenGL was the better API, MS's API was able to be supported by more hardware manufacturers, while OpenGL was more complicated and required more power...
Microsoft has recently moved in an anti-consumer direction, but ONLY for their own stuff.
Look, I love iTunes and iTMS, but that said, the Microsoft WMA "standard" does support competition in both the player (hardware) market and competition in the music "retailer" market...
While they aren't generally friendly to standards, and compete like dogs against any perceived threat, their default is generally to bring prices down for customers... just not THEIR prices.
Their aggressive tactics DEFINITELY involved non-innovating and swooping in when the leader falters, bundling with their OS monopoly, and generally engaging in tactics that would be cutthroat for a small company, and at times criminal for a monopolist.
That said, they aren't an anti-consumer company, beyond the fact that their actions destroy the competition.
In fact, they have generally been the MOST resistant to limiting user actions, contrasted on the OS side with IBM's OS/2 and Apple's Mac OS (Classic OR X)... you could replace the default shell, and until Win95, some companies did, and other easy to tweak aspects of the OS.
I think that the MS bashing needs to focus on where they are abusive... They also piss off enthusiasts for the same reason Wal-Mart pisses off upper-middle class consumers... If you appreciate quality things, then you HATE the low priced player that puts the company that makes higher quality stuff out of business.
As a enthusiast, I hate that MS's push to lower prices for computers (without lowering their prices) has pushed out good technology and replaced it with crap... however, as a purchaser of computer hardware, I do appreciate how much prices have dropped, and I realize that it was a combination of Microsoft and Intel pushing EVERY OTHER component to commodity status... just like I appreciate the myriad of Linux players doing the same thing to the OS component, and OpenOffice/StarOffice pushing productivity software to commodity status.
When Java came out, Microsoft controlled about 85% of the Market, Apple about 8%, and the OTHERS (OS/2, Engineering UNIX stations, etc. of which Solaris was a part) was the rest...
Sun only put Java out for Solaris/Microsoft, so write-once, run-anywhere was write once, run on Windows/Solaris.
The Mac Java was always MUCH laters and much buggier...
If Sun shipped Java for the Mac, then as a cross-platform environment, it would have had a purpose. Back then, cross-platform meant Windows/Mac, or DOS/Windows/Mac...
Sun ignored OS/2, the Mac, DOS, or ANY platform with usage... which made the write-once, run-anywhere POINTLESS...
The only cross-platform advantage was theoretically Windows on non-Intel chips... which not only was a non-existance market, but Sun didn't always ship Java for it...
When I first started playing with Java Applets as an undergrad in 1997, my 75 MHz Pentium tricked out with 256 MB of RAM was TOO slow running Java.
In 2003, we decided that XUL was too poorly documented so we developed an XML language for designing GUIs, that kept all the logic on the server and described widgets to the client machine. The client ran in Java. The language was a bit verbose, and our 400 MHz Pentium II machines really struggled, but when we upgraded to 800 MHz w/ 512 MB RAM clients, it ran decently for all but the largest data supplies to listboxes...
Now we can run AJAX on our 1.5 - 4 GHz machines with 512 MB - 2 GB of RAM and we're supposed to be impressed at how much more efficient it is?
The idea of the Applet was to move SOME processing to the client to take advantage of our FAST 200 MHz clients instead of the true dumb-terminal/mainframe model... that is even more the case here.
I'm not convinced that AJAX is more powerful, just the machines are faster.
I'm NOT a proponent of ID, although I personally belief in the Jewish Creation story, I also understand how the lack of specifics in biblical Hebrew make the "modern" translations (especially the common Hebrew Bible -> Greek translation of Hebrew Bible -> Latin New Testament -> English translation) AWFUL. I think that one can learn an awful lot about mankind and our role in the world from Genesis, and see no conflict with Genesis's story and its moral lessons and evolution as a scientific explanation.
I do, however, take MAJOR issue with the politicization of science. I responded to a post suggesting that the next steps was witches and evil spirits whose tag-line was "pissing of the religious right." I take SERIOUS issue with the anti-religious left that has deified "science," and not particularly useful science at that.
I don't, however, have an issue with including ID in a school curriculum, albeit on a limited scale. I think that any high school lecture on evolution SHOULD explain the limitations and explain how others believe that there is an intelligent design involved. Traditional Jewish thought maintains that Hashem uses natural process for miracles... things like low tides splitting seas, things like that.
The reason for the leeches/maggots post was just to point out the danger of the worship of science. For about a century those were treated as mankind's barbaric past... yet after 100 years of insulting our historical healing, we test it scientifically and find out that it is valid for certain treatments.
I find what is lacking in these issues is any willingness to question why or question scientists. Why we've decided that people that spent 7 years in one particular institution to be granted a Ph.D are somehow immune from agendas or ideologies. Science is a tool, people use tools to accomplish goals.
The reason I laugh... think about the impact of evolution and look at some events... notice that the proponents of "science only" don't learn the lessons of natural selection.
Assumption: leeches and maggots were not valid forms of healing. Historical Experiment: some societies used them, some didn't Result: the societies that used them (the West) seemed to take over the planet Popular Conclusion: that was are barbarous past, it's remarkable that we survived Scientific/Evolution Conclusion: perhaps that was a factor that caused the Christian world to dominate the planet, prolonging lives and increasing child bearing
Assumption: high child births will destroy society Historical Experiment: Rome collapsed within a few generations of rampant pedophilia that required the passage of marriage laws to increase population Recent Historical Experiment: Western birthrates have been plummeting for generations as we've "advanced," and Europe can't survive without Arab immigration, India with a higher birthrate is growing rapidly, China's enlightened "one child policy" is creating tremors in its society as marriage isn't an option for large chunks of a generation, Israel ceded Gaza to its enemies and parts of Samaria because of demographic problems, and America's social security network is showing serious stresses) Popular Conclusion: high birthrates are a function of stupid barbarians, enlightened societies will create gender equality and dismiss child bearing to an option Scientific/Evolution Conclusion: societies that aren't fruitful and multiplying enter a period of decline and collapse, political/economic growth requires political growth
That is my issue, those that worship at the alter of science have created a idol to worship, the scientific community. They worship it as the bastion of truth the way previous generations of idolators worshipped the sun or the moon. Neither community UNDERSTOOD what they were looking at. Science is an INCREDIBLY powerful tool that can explain historical phenomenon and help us make better decisions. It Science-anity is an attempt to replace G-d with science, and worships the scientific expe
Yeah, I mean, we need to only consider science... and ignoring other thoughts, that's not at all a religion... Next thing you know in addition to blaming ills on evil spirits, we'll start treating them with leaches and possibly need to regulate maggots for health treatment.
The fact is, not everyone who disagrees with you is a nut job, and "pissing off the religious right" may make you proud, but science is a series of tests and experiments... Science is the scientific method, and anything that doesn't fall within the scientific method isn't science.
That includes Global Climate Change/Global Cooling/Global Warming/whatever the scare tactic of the decade is... Unless you have two earths somewhere to conduct the tests to determine if humans actually cause a difference. The level of "fact" the global climate change is argued for (with INCORRECT facts, like hurricanes being caused by it... GCC argues for 2 degrees/century, which is NOT the reason for a 2-4 degree increase in the last few years, but that's not what you hear...)
That includes evolution, because you can't test any of it.
GCC and Evolution are ATTEMPTS to explain what appears to be going on, they aren't SCIENCE! The biggest champions of these movements have turned it into a religion... it's an anti-Christian religion, but religion none-the-less.
Evolution is the scientific community's best attempt to explain species, and has some big gaps that they are working on. Some people believe that evolution fails to explain certain complexity and indicates an intelligent design. Who cares... apparently you, because ALL science will now stop, because students are exposed to people that disagree...
Independent thought and people acting different than you REALLY bothers non-conformists, huh?
In comparison, Gateway is ranked #495 with over $3b in revenue.
While Microsoft is larger, #41, with over $36b in revenue, it isn't this massive comparison. Microsoft isn't the largest or most powerful company in America, and they aren't even the most powerful or largest in the Computer Industry (IBM, HP, and Dell are all larger companies).
People treat Apple like it's this little company in a garage, but it's a large company, one of the 300 largest in America, with a market cap in excess of $43 BILLION dollars.
Microsoft is in fact a monopolist with those higher levels of profits, but Apple is NOT small, stop treating them as such.
In comparison, Red Hat's capitalization is under $3b, and is treated like a large bully on Slashdot, while Apple at nearly 15 times the value and a larger company is treated like it's still Steve Jobs and Woz in a garage.
I love my Powerbook, I have 15 Macs in my small business, but Apple isn't a small company and should be held to task for its failures.
BTW: at $36b in revenue compared to $8b in revenue, Microsoft isn't even ONE order of magnitude larger than Apple, and both have influences in society in different ways, hardly orders of magnitude different.
Jherek Carnelian writers, "The difference is that if you want to burn ballots in the field, you have to physically go get the ballots, physically transport them, and physically destroy them. All of which carries some amount of risk of being caught by widely-understood, traditional methods of security."
Most cases of election fraud aren't "rogue anarchists," its the local political machine. Generally, it is done by the police, the Sheriff's office, or someone else in the local political establishment.
Online liberalism only focuses on the national political scene, but politics is a rough sport, and generally takes place on the ground... busing people to polling stations, driving around neighborhoods to "get out the vote," and the Sheriff's office losing/finding ballots...
It's a fantasy about how democracy works from an online-only world that ignores the reality that all politics are local, and there is only one election in the US that is semi-national (the President/Vice President, because while the mechanics involve electing electors, people vote for a national candidate). All the OTHER raises from school board/city council, through state legislatures, through the Congress, are all LOCAL or at most state-wide elections.
Okay, companies and and should do GOOD, they just can't do altruism at the shareholders (owner's) expense, that's being a bad fiduciary. That said, there is a wide range of good you can do and justify it...
That said, this actually should accomplish a LOT for IBM.
The target is near-retirees, people that are leaving anyway.
1. If you lay them off, you risk a age-discrimination class-action suit (SCOTUS just allowed disparate affects in age discrimination, though the bar is set high).
2. If they join the public workforce, then they probably snap up the yummy government provided benefits, which gets them off IBM's benefits, at least until they retire from their new profession... Who knows, the ludicrous school retiree benefits may kick in in a short-enough time, that this may get some of the people off their benefits long term.
3. It NEVER hurts to have someone with a MAJORLY positive image of IBM teaching youngsters, the future's consumers and employees. IBM is an old established company, planning for 3 decades isn't unreasonable.
4. Brain Drain - if the person is going to retire soon anyway, you are losing their skill set. If you keep them on "leave of absence" for two years, you can pick their brain (even if not contracted to help, who wouldn't help their company that they were on leave for when called with a question). Also, if they moved into teaching with IBM's help, they are probably very happy with IBM, and may remain accessible for years helping people with arcane problems.
This looks like a HUGE win. IBM is able to do something good for the world, and there are enough plausible business benefits to justify it as a proper fiduciary activity.
AMD has often had trouble shipping chips in the needed quantity. In addition, Apple would probably be AMD's biggest account if they were 100% AMD, none of the handful of larger manufacturers are 100% AMD. Apple's chip needs would account for approximately 15% of AMD's current production. I don't believe that AMD can ramp up production 15% without problems, otherwise they would and lower prices slightly and grab more market... They don't have excess capacity.
A chip manufacturing plan is HIGHLY automated. Those lines DO NOT shut down when running.
AMD doesn't have excess capacity.
There is a REASON that AMD doesn't advertise. They are a manufacturing company, NOT a technology company. They use R&D to develop products, but they don't care about marketing. AMD can sell every chip that they product. Their market share limitation is a function of production limits.
The reason AMD does these marketing games? They are trying (and HAVE succeeded) in moving up their selling price by increasing their perceived value. They do market, but to manufacturers and large technology opinion shakers, NOT end users.
Intel is a full technology company that uses R&D, manufacturing, and branding to sell their products at a premium. Intel has excess capacity. However, as the "monopolist" in a monopoly w/ fringe market, they cede the fringe to collect monopoly rents... That means that Intel gets 100% of the market that isn't taken by the fringe players.
In the US, Apple is the #4 manufacturer of PCs, they were #8 in global sales, but I believe that they have moved up to #6 or so...
What is my point? They are one of the LARGEST manufacturers of PCs... period. The fact that there are BIGGER companies doesn't make them a small player. Their aren't many bigger sellers of machines on the planet (there are about 5 of them)... Meaning while they aren't the biggest account, there are only 4 accounts that matter more...
Remember, Apple is the #2 seller of operating systems and the #6 seller of PCs, that's not a small account. They ARE a Fortune 500 company (top 300 I believe), meaning that there aren't 300 companies in the US that are bigger than them.
Right. Basically, there are economic inefficiencies in certain markets, which is called a dead weight loss.
If a monopolist grabs my share of the "surplus" that isn't really an overall loss, thought I'm pissed off.:) Basically, if a service is worth $50 to me, and the "market" price is $20, there is a $30 consumer surplus. If the monopolist can charge $40, then I keep $10 in surplus, and the monopolist transfers $20 in consumer surplus to producer surplus. That "sucks" for the consumer, but doesn't hurt the overall economy as the surplus is still captured anyway. The problem for the economy is the people that value the service at $35, that in a free market would buy and get $15 in surplus, but don't by from the monopolist, and that surplus is just gone.
Now, we can debate the role of the government in preventing the transfer of surplus, but at least there you aren't losing productivity.
These free-rider problems, adverse selection problems... if it costs $250 in a group, but $500 for an individual, that is because the individual is more likely to be an adverse case, that also means that the non-adverse person willing to pay between the $250 and $499 goes without insurance, which SHOULD be available at $250 but isn't because of signaling. The person for whom it is worth $500 or more is "screwed" because the insurer took his surplus, but the overall transaction is neutral... he still was better off for the trade (surplus > 0 by at least some very small epsilon, it's worth $500.0000001 to him, for example).
Beyond the political problems, any solution should be aimed to minimize ALL dead weight loss in the market, because that is money that just goes away.
NOTE TO OTHER ECONOMICS GEEKS: I am intentionally ignoring producer surplus, because it makes it too confusing to explain in a Slashdot post.
Basically, we can debate programs, but any INCREASE in dead-weight-loss needs to be realized, as this is national wealth that evaporates... the TRUE "cost" of the program... the cost of the program to the nation is the DWL, not the sticker price of the program.
BTW: I philosophically agree with you with some minimum line. I also like the consumption tax w/ rebate approach, where people can a pre-bate (basically a check from the government) to cover the poverty line level cost of the taxes, so their net tax position is effectively 0. I am comfortable with saying that our society is wealthy enough that we can suffer some losses to provide some guaranteed minimum level of lifestyle to our citizens, that includes the ability to get food, medicine, and some amount of discretion for lifestyle. I realize that this makes me a bad conservative, but I think that it is "the right thing to do" and would probably be relatively neutral compared to the absurdity of messy systems we have now.
If everyone (based on SSN) got some automatic deposit of cash, food allowance, and medical allowance, and all our taxes were hidden in some VAT, I'd think it was great. You are in the "national health plan" unless you opt-out, and your insurer files with the government to get your "allowance" deposited with them, and theoretically private enterprises can offer "0 cost" insurance that absorbs your "allowance" and offers something better/different. Likewise, for the poor, they can get physical "food stamps," while the rest of us have our banking system pull reimbursements from via the Fed/ACH to cover approved expenditures via credit card/debit card at grocery stores. Likewise, your pre-bate money... essentially your first level tax-free income, gets DD for those that use a banking system, and the rest of the people get a "Federal Bank Note" mailed to them that can be endorsed and used "same-as-cash."
I think that the tech is here that we could GREATLY simplify things and have it be non-cumbersome for all. Those that use the financial system can ignore the intricacies, and the burdens on those that don't can be minimized. On the plus side, "taking cash" instead of a check and under-reporting income becomes irrelevant, because the VAT is already collected along the way... meaning people in the black/grey markets become tax payers, instead of just hiding.
An FSA lets you put money into a company account to use during the year pre-tax, and get reimbursements. The incentive to the company is that they keep leftover money.
The idea is that things like co-pays, etc., should be tax-neutral. In other words, if I pay an extra $1000/year to avoid $1000 in co-pays, without FSAs, I pay takes on the co-pays, so I come out behind. That encourages over-insurance to lower copays. Itemized medical deductions would be easier, but instead you can only deduct the amount over 5% or 7.5% or something ridiculous of your AGI.
The cynic in me says that the government knows that a straightforward "above the line" deduction for health care would be theoretically the same as their complicated system, but "cost the government money" because right now, they keep the errors in estimating. i.e. if I estimate $500 in FSA expenses, and spend $1000, I only get the deduction on $500. The fact that the money is lost provides an incentive to low-ball.
The idealist in me thinks that the government knows how few people itemize and therefore keep receipts, and see this as an easy solution.
The HSA is YOUR money. You can withdraw it at any time (and pay taxes + 10% penality), withdraw it at retirement / 59 1/2, (and pay taxes), or use it for ANY qualified medical expenses.
It's a federal tax incentive to encourage people to adopt high deductible plans, which aims to include market forces into routine medical decisions...
If a doctor charges $150 for a procedure (under negotiated rates) and my co-pay is $20, I make a decision on the procedure based upon the $20 co-pay. If it is worth $20 to me, I get the procedure. With a high deductible, I decide if it is worth $150. My insurance still covers any MAJOR costs, but leaves it to me to manage the low-end.
Basically, it creates insurance. If my deductible is $2000/year, I can put $2000 away in above-the-line deductions (pre tax even without itemizing), so even in years that I use my deductible, it is all pre-tax money being spent. In all other plans, at least SOME of the money is either post-tax (co-pays, or co-pays in excess of FSAs, or the company's keeping of your excess FSA money is taxable income).
If an individual is buying insurance, then he falls into two categories, "risk adverse" or "expecting a positive return." In other words, as most people don't use anywhere NEAR the $3000 (young single individual) to $15,000 (older family) in medical costs that insurance costs, people that are sicker are more likely to purchase insurance.
By having insurance available for the entire group (with some minimum enrollment percentage), people are not more likely to choose the insurance because they EXPECT high medical costs.
That's the economic theory.
The problem is, our health insurance market is COMPLETELY messed up.
For example, I have insurance on my car, it covers unexpected events (accidents), not expected events (routine oil changes). However, our health insurance covers expected events (normal doctor's visits), which makes the market REALLY screwy.
But it gets worse, if I am paying to insure my life, then if I die, my insurance company pays out. If I pay to insure my health, it makes ZERO sense that if I get some serious disease, I can be dropped from the insurance and screwed. I don't understand why pre-existing conditions are paid for by your insurance, it SHOULD be paid for by your previous insurance.
I mean, if I develop some permanent blood disease, and I paid Blue Cross to insure me, then shouldn't they take their lumps and pay for that situation permanently? If I later contract with Aetna to take on my health risk, why are they pricing in my preexisting condition, or forced to take it with a group program, or able to exclude me.
Ideally, insurance should go forward, not backward.
The problem is routine maintenance. It is cheaper, in general, to have an annual check-up and catch things early then wait for problems. However, routine health maintenance isn't really an insurable event (I mean, if it costs $100/yr for an annual physical, and everyone has one, it is really silly to make that part of insurance, it just means that the costs go up by $100). The problem is, if you don't do it through insurance, people won't get them, because it is cheaper to pay the co-pay then to get the physical to avoid getting sick.
I believe in a market based solution, but current health care isn't one. Small co-pays for somewhat elective procedures (most therapy, some minor operations) is insane. Sure it makes peoples lives better, but then it is an individual choice.
I really like the new Consumer-Driven Healthcare Programs (I think that acronym is CDHP). The idea is a HIGH deductible, and possibly high co-pay, but a lower premium. It makes health insurance into insurance, which makes MUCH more sense. The HSA option that was added to the Medicare fiasco bill is a nice incentive. Since employer contributions to health care AND the employee side with a Section 125 plan is tax deductible, you can pay for your deductible with pre-tax money, in an HSA. It makes the CDHP option tax-neutral with traditional insurance.
The idea is to get people to pay for routine options, so they make decisions with the cost in mind, while still being insured if something major happens. It is an attempt to bring market forces to bare.
This still doesn't deal with the absurdity that you come down with a permanent condition, and your employer has an economic incentive to fire you to bring down the group rates. That requires a fundamental realignment of the insurance market.
The facts that I'm aware of include authorization paperwork for other states to send national guard troops in. And Washington sat on the paperwork for days.
Now WHY two sovereign states require permission from a Federal Executive Branch agency to help each other is beyond me, unless it is to prevent the formation of a new Army of Northern Virginia... which keeping military forces from moving around makes it harder to create an open rebellion.
I actually don't understand why we have FEMA... it seems like the heavy lifting in real emergencies is via the National Guard, and multi-state agreements generally handle it. It seems like FEMA is an attempt to share information and disaster planning (like the expanded and increasingly useless and dangerous Department of Education, which doesn't do much for education but creates red tape and sucks down resources).
It seems like a more cost effective solution would be to have a disaster planning division in the Army, instead of a civilian organization since the real work is done via military personnel, and private donations seem to dominate over government contributions...
But that's just me.
I aam in NO way excusing inept behavior by FEMA, I'm just saying that it wasn't the problem.
It was catastrophically prepared for and messed up long BEFORE FEMA got a chance to make things worse, that's all I'm saying.
Slashdot Mirror
When I add a machine to the network, I power it on. I add it to the appropriate group in Workgroup manager. All our applications are mounted via NFS as /Network/Applications with support files in /Network/Library.
The ONLY thing we do after booting up the machine is renaming it (so it isn't Local Administrator's Computer), run software update, and walk away. As soon as the updates are done, the machine is good to go.
I don't have to install ANY software. All my office's software is in the Applications mount point. All the configurations that get pushed to the workstation are in Workgroup manager. There is NO setup time, and it only took me about 2 hours with the server to get those settings...
I said "for my office..." If you didn't pick up on it, I use my machines to make money, not as a hobby.
Contrast a Windows machine: install it, join the domain, reboot... Run software update, normally 2-3 times to get all the updates... reboot. Install Firefox, install Thunderbird, install MS Office, install Quickbooks, reboot. Add appropriate users to appropriate permissions (if needed), now the machine is good to go.
And with the Mac, I don't need to worry about the latest Worm getting ran by accident and shutting my business down.
Does that Mac have problems? Yes, there is/was a bug that caused either SMB or AFS to suck up 100% utilization, which caused the machines to run dog slow. We had a bad machine that seemed to nuke our network and the OS X Server handled it badly. But that was our ONLY IT need in the past few months.
I'm VERY happy with my Macs.
I am NOT deluding myself, because whenever we go on a hiring spree, we're buying 5 computers.
For home use, the Mac is MUCH less tinkering, but I'm not running the stuff that you are. I MOSTLY use the iLife apps, and some music composition software for my wife. I'm sure to run lots "hacker" software (and I'm using it in quotes for a reason), it's a lot of work, but I don't have that much stuff running.
Are their downsides to the Mac... sure, a few, but tinkering time isn't one of them for MY USAGE.
Alex
Back in the day of Rhapsody, there was:
Yellow Box (OpenSTEP APIs) with multi-arch binaries for x86 and PPC...
Blue Box - now Classic, ran Mac OS in a window, basically a Virtual Mac environment
Java - ran natively in Yellow Box land
Red Box (or Blue Box x86, it's been a while) that ran Windows in a Window...
That was part of the Rhapsody/x86 part... The idea was Mac users upgrade to Rhapsody/PPC with their old software in emulation... Windows users upgrade to Rhapsody/x86 with their old apps in the Windows in emulation... (note, its more virtualization than emulation, because the hardware would be direct calls)... then when all apps are Rhapsody/Yellow Box, everyone upgrades to the chip of choice, then assumed to be PPC, but it didn't matter who won.
Well, that got abandoned, or so we thought. Apple apparently kept their x86 codebase REASONABLY up to date... and I would assume that they are using their old Windows stuff.
I'm excited... right now I keep a Windows machine on my desk to run Quickbooks and a few random small applications... I can't wait to have the ability to run those apps at full speed (say 95% of full speed) on my new Powerbook...
I'm not in a platform war, I just want a laptop that runs BSD, MS Office, and is reasonably reliable. This is a wonderful time...
Interestingly, hopefully for most apps I'll just run Darwine instead of needing to run Windows, but I can run it for apps that need it.
Good times, good times. And hell, I need to buy Windows licenses from time to time anyway to run in Virtual PC if I need a Windows app on the road, so its a wash...
Alex
Well, if I was doing IT for a larger company (my small company has 15 people, adding 5 every 6 months or so, so we buy that many new Macs), and I could buy a Dell and pop in an Apple DVD, that would be my Mac stations... Basically, for anyone that wanted OS X, it would be easier and cheaper normally to buy the lowest end Dell and stick OS X in there... Sure the equivalent Dell to an Apple is about that same price as the Apple (+/- 10%), but Apple has limited selection... Sure the equivalent Dell to the Mini (including XP Pro) is about $550, but I can buy a $300 Dell... and possibly do dual-monitor for $300-$600, compared to $2000 with Apple...
Basically, Apple doesn't want people buying design workstations (dual monitor, decent RAM, etc.) buying a $1200 Dell instead of a $2000 "PowerMac," and spending $200 to get the Mac OS X, they want to sell the $2000 hardware and make their $400 in margins...
Sure, there WILL be a way to buy an off the shelf machine, or alternatively, assemble off-the-shelf parts to match what the Mac has, flash firmware or whatever to match Apple's trickiness, and run OS X... guess what, college kids will do it... but there is no way for my company I would do that...
Because if I roll out a patch (say, 10.5.3) and it breaks my machines, I'm SOL until a new "hack" comes out... or a security patch does it, etc., etc... Sure, for a hobbyist they'll do it... and I doubt Apple cares that a few Alpha geeks run hacked Macs... they get some mindshare and possibly sell some software (maybe not the OS, but maybe Pages or Quicktime Pro, or anything), and maybe when that kid makes purchase decisions he'll buy Macs...
What they DO NOT want is my small company buying 5 Dells + 5 Dell monitors + OS X DVDs, instead of 5 Mac Minis + 5 Apple monitors (the combo looks SO slick) and then buying OS X upgrades annually...
It's not about normal unsupported... it's about some OS upgrade breaking the system and leaving me fucked with an insecure machine until the upgrade happens. ALL they need to do is have the stock kernel check something in the hardware and it will accomplish 80% of their objectives. Anything ELSE they do it just gravy... my guess is something in the kernel, and something in the closed source layers... basically force you to apply a new hack every security patch/OS upgrade, and that will keep all but hobbyists from going that route... and that is ALL Apple needs.
Alex
What was the cost different to get a comparable Apple laptop. What do you value your free time at... for me its a lot, because I don't have much... Given the choice between an extra $200 for the machine (and generally, Dell charges the same as Apple for the same machine, but Apple only has limited options, so you buy more machine... i.e. to upgrade the screen, you get a processor upgrade, that kinda thing), and a few hours of tinkering, I reach for my Amex...
It all depends if you'd rather have two-four hours for yourself or a little cash in your pocket...
My point on the Apple vs. Dell... any time I took an Apple machine, then went to Dell and priced an "equivalent" purchase, the price was +/- $50... however, if you start with the Dell, and then price out the equivalent Apple, it is usually a bit more... but you get stuff you may not need, but that is because Apple has limited models...
The Mac Mini is a GREAT office desktop (we have 8, probably going to get 4-5 more)... and its dirt cheap... Once you price out the equivalent Dell and add in XP Pro (home is worthless for a business workstation), and a few other minor upgrades, the mini tends to be $25-$50 less, which is a great deal.
You are suggesting that it would be better to have fewer drugs, but have them cheaper. I would suggest you think about the patent system, we DO get the best of both worlds now.
By the time the regulatory hoops are jumped through and a drug is approved, there is usually less than 10 years left on the patent.
This means that right now, ALL DRUGS ON THE MARKET BEFORE 1995 have dirt-cheap generic versions of them.
The market system we have does limit the NEWEST drugs to those that can afford them or afford good insurance... this is true.
But the rapid development of new drugs continues.
By 2015, all these "overpriced miracle drugs" will be available cheaply...
I'm okay with the newest treatments being scarce, if that maximizes drug development, because within a few years, those same drugs are available cheaply.
You need to take a longer term view.
Alex
The drug would be affordable for Taiwan to treat the DISEASE, but that isn't what they are looking for.
So far this "epidemic" has claimed 60 lives. While it is tragic for those families, it isn't a return of the plague.
The disease is not currently jumping from bird -> human except in cases of HEAVY contact, and there is no human -> human jumping.
In previous "bird flu" epidemics, illegal versions of the drugs were used to treat birds by poor farmers rightfully fearing losing their livelihood. As a result, the remaining disease was resistant to the treatment, and previous treatments were no longer valid. There is an article in this month's Fortune on the issue...
Basically, if you keep the price high, people (or their governments) will pay for it to save lives, but not over use it to the point of treating birds...
It's not simple, and that's without debating the merits of our current private sector drug industry...
Alex
Ditto on the Comcast vs. DirecTV... My biggest problem is that in Florida, the summer rains interupt my signal... so that might be a reason to switch to cable. I also find MPEG4 artifacts more annoying than the MPEG2 ones... (people are free to disagree, I also find MPEG artifacts more annoying than static, but its probably from years of filtering out static).
However, DirecTV's deal with the NFL requires them to make Sunday Ticket available without programming. Not sure if you could keep your Tivo service, so I'd have to switch to the older HD Box, but I think that I would keep Sunday ticket, even if I switched to Comcast...
Alex
I had a UHF antenna in Boston, and grabbed all 6 networks with HD feeds, plus my nationals, all piped through my HD and later HD-Tivo box. In Florida, I needed to get a VHF/UHF antenna. Right now, the antenna only feeds through one line, I just need the 15 minutes to hop in the attic and switch the 4x8 multiswitch for the 5x8 multiswitch, and I could do HD on ANY drop...
Nothing with with OTA HD, it generally is at a higher bitrate than cable or satellite will give you (my local CBS looks much better than the NY Feed)... Plus Sunday Ticket + Superfan gives you LOTS of HD football. Now if only the Shortcuts ran in HD... maybe next year they'll get it.
The DirecTV boxes all include a built in OTA tuner, so no harm, no foul, and once you are putting in a satellite dish, the antenna is no big deal.
Alex
Basically, Apple's threat to GPL its "crown Jewels" would immediately get Linux to the Apple level... meaning that Red Hat would support Apple OS and eventually a Mac/Linux merged environment. That WOULD threaten Microsoft, because at a minimum it could grab the 3%-6% share that Apple holds and the other 1%-3% that Linux holds, which all of a sudden is a viable platform to develop software for because Apple alone is...
HOWEVER, as you said, he couldn't do that, because it would be "not in the best interests of the shareholders" who would prefer a liquidation deal...
That said, what if Steve Jobs made that Apple policy AND signed a deal as such with a third party. In that case, Steve's threat is real, because the code is in escrow and contracted to be released under the GPL...
Now, as long as making that threat credible is in the interests of Apple shareholders (which it arguably is... it makes it more likely that the Mac remains a viable desktop), then he can make the threat.
Now Microsoft has no interest in removing Office for Mac OS X...
It's all about making the threat credible by cutting off his other options, because as you noted, it isn't a credible threat. Apple no doubt has lots of RESTRICTIVE contracts like that JUST for this reason, it cuts off the other options, which means that competitors have to factor on them doing it, instead of discounting it.
Alex
Go find one of the adoption graphs on the web (I won't do it for you).
Excel "overtook" 1-2-3 and Word overtook Wordperfect in 1993 or 1994... which was BEFORE Windows 95 when Windows became the "hot thing."
But more than that, the EXISTENCE of these products cramped the markets for the DOS dominating players, which decimated profit margins, which altered the market realities for these companies.
Make less money, and you have less to invest in the next round for two reasons, #1 you have less cash on hand to fund R&D, and #2, you now need to decrease your expectations for future revenues, which on a discounted factor makes the investment less viable.
If you had 70% margins as a result of 90% share, which becomes a 30% margin with a 60% share, then your expected returns from the next rev. of the product become different, which makes it harder to justify investing more money in the product.
WordPerfect was truly DEFEATED when it was sold off several times, because Word made it uneconomically viable except to companies with a synergistic strategy, and they failed. WordPerfect became a brand, and not a great one... and it happened in the marketplace, not the computer magazine reviews.
Microsoft didn't win by being the best, they "won" by being the cheapest that works.
Word wasn't "better" than WordPerfect (if you are running a transcription service or something similar, people have the FASTEST results with WP 5.1 than ANY modern system), and Excel wasn't "better" than Lotus 1-2-3. However, they were less than half the price and you could get the bundle for less than either program individually.
Sure, business travelers will have no interest in virtual open office... at least for the forseeable future, but home users MIGHT. My wife uses web mail (Gmail), because she can check it at the office AND at home. If she works on a personal document, she emails it to herself. A virtual (GOffice) would work for her.
Sure, those of us that work on laptops on flights would have no interest, but that doesn't matter.
If Google grabs the bottom 50% of the market, than Microsoft is in trouble... they can't sell companies on paying $100/machine to OEM office if the competition eats their lunch because home users use Goffice and business users get site licenses.
Remember why software often is winner-take-all. The costs are 99% R&D, and 1% Variable, therefore, the contribution margin on each sale is close to 99% of price. If Microsoft loses 10% of Office, that could reduce their "profits" by 20%, 30%, or more... If they need 30% of the market to cover their R&D costs, and they hold 70%, than a 10% loss in marketshare loses 25% of their profits...
Google just needs to eat them from the bottom, and Microsoft is in trouble.
Microsoft's business REQUIRES being "good enough" for 70%-90% of the markets that they play in. The smaller market remaining forces their competition higher and higher up the chain.
Apple's OS R&D isn't going to be THAT MUCH smaller than Microsoft's, which forces Apple's prices to be higher (compare Apple's margins on hardware to Microsoft's OEM deals... for fairness, backout the gross margin that other manufacturers make, probably 10%, and you see Apple's OS "premium" which is 8x-10x Microsoft's OEM price)...
MS SQL Server forced Oracle and DB2 out of the low end of the market, which keeps them in the premium spot despite better tech, because MS SQL is "good enough" and therefore a price drop doesn't grab marketshare for the better players.
This is why Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and other Open Source solutions scare Microsoft... Microsoft can't sell a lot of web servers (compared to their marketshare in desktops or Office Suites), because LAMP is "good enough," which has REALLY hurt them... in that they thought they could leverage the Win95 monopoly into a server monopoly, which they never obtained.
Alex
Historically, Microsoft has been extremely pro-Consumer... they just sometimes put themselves first.
I mean, Microsoft created the hardware commoditization... had they not licensed a compatible MS-DOS to Compaq (and instead went back to IBM to re-negotiate), the commoditization of PCs wouldn't have happened. They historically were willing to support any hardware platform, not support the monopolization... they haven't tried to lock in a single video card.
Even where they attempted to monopolize markets (DirectX 3D vs. OpenGL), it was arguably pro-consumer... while OpenGL was the better API, MS's API was able to be supported by more hardware manufacturers, while OpenGL was more complicated and required more power...
Microsoft has recently moved in an anti-consumer direction, but ONLY for their own stuff.
Look, I love iTunes and iTMS, but that said, the Microsoft WMA "standard" does support competition in both the player (hardware) market and competition in the music "retailer" market...
While they aren't generally friendly to standards, and compete like dogs against any perceived threat, their default is generally to bring prices down for customers... just not THEIR prices.
Their aggressive tactics DEFINITELY involved non-innovating and swooping in when the leader falters, bundling with their OS monopoly, and generally engaging in tactics that would be cutthroat for a small company, and at times criminal for a monopolist.
That said, they aren't an anti-consumer company, beyond the fact that their actions destroy the competition.
In fact, they have generally been the MOST resistant to limiting user actions, contrasted on the OS side with IBM's OS/2 and Apple's Mac OS (Classic OR X)... you could replace the default shell, and until Win95, some companies did, and other easy to tweak aspects of the OS.
I think that the MS bashing needs to focus on where they are abusive... They also piss off enthusiasts for the same reason Wal-Mart pisses off upper-middle class consumers... If you appreciate quality things, then you HATE the low priced player that puts the company that makes higher quality stuff out of business.
As a enthusiast, I hate that MS's push to lower prices for computers (without lowering their prices) has pushed out good technology and replaced it with crap... however, as a purchaser of computer hardware, I do appreciate how much prices have dropped, and I realize that it was a combination of Microsoft and Intel pushing EVERY OTHER component to commodity status... just like I appreciate the myriad of Linux players doing the same thing to the OS component, and OpenOffice/StarOffice pushing productivity software to commodity status.
Alex
When Java came out, Microsoft controlled about 85% of the Market, Apple about 8%, and the OTHERS (OS/2, Engineering UNIX stations, etc. of which Solaris was a part) was the rest...
Sun only put Java out for Solaris/Microsoft, so write-once, run-anywhere was write once, run on Windows/Solaris.
The Mac Java was always MUCH laters and much buggier...
If Sun shipped Java for the Mac, then as a cross-platform environment, it would have had a purpose. Back then, cross-platform meant Windows/Mac, or DOS/Windows/Mac...
Sun ignored OS/2, the Mac, DOS, or ANY platform with usage... which made the write-once, run-anywhere POINTLESS...
The only cross-platform advantage was theoretically Windows on non-Intel chips... which not only was a non-existance market, but Sun didn't always ship Java for it...
Sun killed Java through stupidity.
Alex
When I first started playing with Java Applets as an undergrad in 1997, my 75 MHz Pentium tricked out with 256 MB of RAM was TOO slow running Java.
In 2003, we decided that XUL was too poorly documented so we developed an XML language for designing GUIs, that kept all the logic on the server and described widgets to the client machine. The client ran in Java. The language was a bit verbose, and our 400 MHz Pentium II machines really struggled, but when we upgraded to 800 MHz w/ 512 MB RAM clients, it ran decently for all but the largest data supplies to listboxes...
Now we can run AJAX on our 1.5 - 4 GHz machines with 512 MB - 2 GB of RAM and we're supposed to be impressed at how much more efficient it is?
The idea of the Applet was to move SOME processing to the client to take advantage of our FAST 200 MHz clients instead of the true dumb-terminal/mainframe model... that is even more the case here.
I'm not convinced that AJAX is more powerful, just the machines are faster.
Alex
I'm NOT a proponent of ID, although I personally belief in the Jewish Creation story, I also understand how the lack of specifics in biblical Hebrew make the "modern" translations (especially the common Hebrew Bible -> Greek translation of Hebrew Bible -> Latin New Testament -> English translation) AWFUL. I think that one can learn an awful lot about mankind and our role in the world from Genesis, and see no conflict with Genesis's story and its moral lessons and evolution as a scientific explanation.
I do, however, take MAJOR issue with the politicization of science. I responded to a post suggesting that the next steps was witches and evil spirits whose tag-line was "pissing of the religious right." I take SERIOUS issue with the anti-religious left that has deified "science," and not particularly useful science at that.
I don't, however, have an issue with including ID in a school curriculum, albeit on a limited scale. I think that any high school lecture on evolution SHOULD explain the limitations and explain how others believe that there is an intelligent design involved. Traditional Jewish thought maintains that Hashem uses natural process for miracles... things like low tides splitting seas, things like that.
The reason for the leeches/maggots post was just to point out the danger of the worship of science. For about a century those were treated as mankind's barbaric past... yet after 100 years of insulting our historical healing, we test it scientifically and find out that it is valid for certain treatments.
I find what is lacking in these issues is any willingness to question why or question scientists. Why we've decided that people that spent 7 years in one particular institution to be granted a Ph.D are somehow immune from agendas or ideologies. Science is a tool, people use tools to accomplish goals.
The reason I laugh... think about the impact of evolution and look at some events... notice that the proponents of "science only" don't learn the lessons of natural selection.
Assumption: leeches and maggots were not valid forms of healing.
Historical Experiment: some societies used them, some didn't
Result: the societies that used them (the West) seemed to take over the planet
Popular Conclusion: that was are barbarous past, it's remarkable that we survived
Scientific/Evolution Conclusion: perhaps that was a factor that caused the Christian world to dominate the planet, prolonging lives and increasing child bearing
Assumption: high child births will destroy society
Historical Experiment: Rome collapsed within a few generations of rampant pedophilia that required the passage of marriage laws to increase population
Recent Historical Experiment: Western birthrates have been plummeting for generations as we've "advanced," and Europe can't survive without Arab immigration, India with a higher birthrate is growing rapidly, China's enlightened "one child policy" is creating tremors in its society as marriage isn't an option for large chunks of a generation, Israel ceded Gaza to its enemies and parts of Samaria because of demographic problems, and America's social security network is showing serious stresses)
Popular Conclusion: high birthrates are a function of stupid barbarians, enlightened societies will create gender equality and dismiss child bearing to an option
Scientific/Evolution Conclusion: societies that aren't fruitful and multiplying enter a period of decline and collapse, political/economic growth requires political growth
That is my issue, those that worship at the alter of science have created a idol to worship, the scientific community. They worship it as the bastion of truth the way previous generations of idolators worshipped the sun or the moon. Neither community UNDERSTOOD what they were looking at. Science is an INCREDIBLY powerful tool that can explain historical phenomenon and help us make better decisions. It Science-anity is an attempt to replace G-d with science, and worships the scientific expe
Yeah, I mean, we need to only consider science... and ignoring other thoughts, that's not at all a religion... Next thing you know in addition to blaming ills on evil spirits, we'll start treating them with leaches and possibly need to regulate maggots for health treatment.
The fact is, not everyone who disagrees with you is a nut job, and "pissing off the religious right" may make you proud, but science is a series of tests and experiments... Science is the scientific method, and anything that doesn't fall within the scientific method isn't science.
That includes Global Climate Change/Global Cooling/Global Warming/whatever the scare tactic of the decade is... Unless you have two earths somewhere to conduct the tests to determine if humans actually cause a difference. The level of "fact" the global climate change is argued for (with INCORRECT facts, like hurricanes being caused by it... GCC argues for 2 degrees/century, which is NOT the reason for a 2-4 degree increase in the last few years, but that's not what you hear...)
That includes evolution, because you can't test any of it.
GCC and Evolution are ATTEMPTS to explain what appears to be going on, they aren't SCIENCE! The biggest champions of these movements have turned it into a religion... it's an anti-Christian religion, but religion none-the-less.
Evolution is the scientific community's best attempt to explain species, and has some big gaps that they are working on. Some people believe that evolution fails to explain certain complexity and indicates an intelligent design. Who cares... apparently you, because ALL science will now stop, because students are exposed to people that disagree...
Independent thought and people acting different than you REALLY bothers non-conformists, huh?
Alex
Apple is a Fortune 500 Company.
In fact, they are the 263rd largest company in America by Revenues. In 2004, they made over $8 billion in revenues last year.
In comparison, Gateway is ranked #495 with over $3b in revenue.
While Microsoft is larger, #41, with over $36b in revenue, it isn't this massive comparison. Microsoft isn't the largest or most powerful company in America, and they aren't even the most powerful or largest in the Computer Industry (IBM, HP, and Dell are all larger companies).
People treat Apple like it's this little company in a garage, but it's a large company, one of the 300 largest in America, with a market cap in excess of $43 BILLION dollars.
Microsoft is in fact a monopolist with those higher levels of profits, but Apple is NOT small, stop treating them as such.
In comparison, Red Hat's capitalization is under $3b, and is treated like a large bully on Slashdot, while Apple at nearly 15 times the value and a larger company is treated like it's still Steve Jobs and Woz in a garage.
I love my Powerbook, I have 15 Macs in my small business, but Apple isn't a small company and should be held to task for its failures.
BTW: at $36b in revenue compared to $8b in revenue, Microsoft isn't even ONE order of magnitude larger than Apple, and both have influences in society in different ways, hardly orders of magnitude different.
Alex
Jherek Carnelian writers, "The difference is that if you want to burn ballots in the field, you have to physically go get the ballots, physically transport them, and physically destroy them. All of which carries some amount of risk of being caught by widely-understood, traditional methods of security."
Most cases of election fraud aren't "rogue anarchists," its the local political machine. Generally, it is done by the police, the Sheriff's office, or someone else in the local political establishment.
Online liberalism only focuses on the national political scene, but politics is a rough sport, and generally takes place on the ground... busing people to polling stations, driving around neighborhoods to "get out the vote," and the Sheriff's office losing/finding ballots...
It's a fantasy about how democracy works from an online-only world that ignores the reality that all politics are local, and there is only one election in the US that is semi-national (the President/Vice President, because while the mechanics involve electing electors, people vote for a national candidate). All the OTHER raises from school board/city council, through state legislatures, through the Congress, are all LOCAL or at most state-wide elections.
Alex
Okay, companies and and should do GOOD, they just can't do altruism at the shareholders (owner's) expense, that's being a bad fiduciary. That said, there is a wide range of good you can do and justify it...
That said, this actually should accomplish a LOT for IBM.
The target is near-retirees, people that are leaving anyway.
1. If you lay them off, you risk a age-discrimination class-action suit (SCOTUS just allowed disparate affects in age discrimination, though the bar is set high).
2. If they join the public workforce, then they probably snap up the yummy government provided benefits, which gets them off IBM's benefits, at least until they retire from their new profession... Who knows, the ludicrous school retiree benefits may kick in in a short-enough time, that this may get some of the people off their benefits long term.
3. It NEVER hurts to have someone with a MAJORLY positive image of IBM teaching youngsters, the future's consumers and employees. IBM is an old established company, planning for 3 decades isn't unreasonable.
4. Brain Drain - if the person is going to retire soon anyway, you are losing their skill set. If you keep them on "leave of absence" for two years, you can pick their brain (even if not contracted to help, who wouldn't help their company that they were on leave for when called with a question). Also, if they moved into teaching with IBM's help, they are probably very happy with IBM, and may remain accessible for years helping people with arcane problems.
This looks like a HUGE win. IBM is able to do something good for the world, and there are enough plausible business benefits to justify it as a proper fiduciary activity.
Alex
AMD has often had trouble shipping chips in the needed quantity. In addition, Apple would probably be AMD's biggest account if they were 100% AMD, none of the handful of larger manufacturers are 100% AMD. Apple's chip needs would account for approximately 15% of AMD's current production. I don't believe that AMD can ramp up production 15% without problems, otherwise they would and lower prices slightly and grab more market... They don't have excess capacity.
A chip manufacturing plan is HIGHLY automated. Those lines DO NOT shut down when running.
AMD doesn't have excess capacity.
There is a REASON that AMD doesn't advertise. They are a manufacturing company, NOT a technology company. They use R&D to develop products, but they don't care about marketing. AMD can sell every chip that they product. Their market share limitation is a function of production limits.
The reason AMD does these marketing games? They are trying (and HAVE succeeded) in moving up their selling price by increasing their perceived value. They do market, but to manufacturers and large technology opinion shakers, NOT end users.
Intel is a full technology company that uses R&D, manufacturing, and branding to sell their products at a premium. Intel has excess capacity. However, as the "monopolist" in a monopoly w/ fringe market, they cede the fringe to collect monopoly rents... That means that Intel gets 100% of the market that isn't taken by the fringe players.
Dell is larger than Apple...
HP is larger than Apple...
Then who?
In the US, Apple is the #4 manufacturer of PCs, they were #8 in global sales, but I believe that they have moved up to #6 or so...
What is my point? They are one of the LARGEST manufacturers of PCs... period. The fact that there are BIGGER companies doesn't make them a small player. Their aren't many bigger sellers of machines on the planet (there are about 5 of them)... Meaning while they aren't the biggest account, there are only 4 accounts that matter more...
Remember, Apple is the #2 seller of operating systems and the #6 seller of PCs, that's not a small account. They ARE a Fortune 500 company (top 300 I believe), meaning that there aren't 300 companies in the US that are bigger than them.
Right. Basically, there are economic inefficiencies in certain markets, which is called a dead weight loss.
:) Basically, if a service is worth $50 to me, and the "market" price is $20, there is a $30 consumer surplus. If the monopolist can charge $40, then I keep $10 in surplus, and the monopolist transfers $20 in consumer surplus to producer surplus. That "sucks" for the consumer, but doesn't hurt the overall economy as the surplus is still captured anyway. The problem for the economy is the people that value the service at $35, that in a free market would buy and get $15 in surplus, but don't by from the monopolist, and that surplus is just gone.
If a monopolist grabs my share of the "surplus" that isn't really an overall loss, thought I'm pissed off.
Now, we can debate the role of the government in preventing the transfer of surplus, but at least there you aren't losing productivity.
These free-rider problems, adverse selection problems... if it costs $250 in a group, but $500 for an individual, that is because the individual is more likely to be an adverse case, that also means that the non-adverse person willing to pay between the $250 and $499 goes without insurance, which SHOULD be available at $250 but isn't because of signaling. The person for whom it is worth $500 or more is "screwed" because the insurer took his surplus, but the overall transaction is neutral... he still was better off for the trade (surplus > 0 by at least some very small epsilon, it's worth $500.0000001 to him, for example).
Beyond the political problems, any solution should be aimed to minimize ALL dead weight loss in the market, because that is money that just goes away.
NOTE TO OTHER ECONOMICS GEEKS: I am intentionally ignoring producer surplus, because it makes it too confusing to explain in a Slashdot post.
Basically, we can debate programs, but any INCREASE in dead-weight-loss needs to be realized, as this is national wealth that evaporates... the TRUE "cost" of the program... the cost of the program to the nation is the DWL, not the sticker price of the program.
BTW: I philosophically agree with you with some minimum line. I also like the consumption tax w/ rebate approach, where people can a pre-bate (basically a check from the government) to cover the poverty line level cost of the taxes, so their net tax position is effectively 0. I am comfortable with saying that our society is wealthy enough that we can suffer some losses to provide some guaranteed minimum level of lifestyle to our citizens, that includes the ability to get food, medicine, and some amount of discretion for lifestyle. I realize that this makes me a bad conservative, but I think that it is "the right thing to do" and would probably be relatively neutral compared to the absurdity of messy systems we have now.
If everyone (based on SSN) got some automatic deposit of cash, food allowance, and medical allowance, and all our taxes were hidden in some VAT, I'd think it was great. You are in the "national health plan" unless you opt-out, and your insurer files with the government to get your "allowance" deposited with them, and theoretically private enterprises can offer "0 cost" insurance that absorbs your "allowance" and offers something better/different. Likewise, for the poor, they can get physical "food stamps," while the rest of us have our banking system pull reimbursements from via the Fed/ACH to cover approved expenditures via credit card/debit card at grocery stores. Likewise, your pre-bate money... essentially your first level tax-free income, gets DD for those that use a banking system, and the rest of the people get a "Federal Bank Note" mailed to them that can be endorsed and used "same-as-cash."
I think that the tech is here that we could GREATLY simplify things and have it be non-cumbersome for all. Those that use the financial system can ignore the intricacies, and the burdens on those that don't can be minimized. On the plus side, "taking cash" instead of a check and under-reporting income becomes irrelevant, because the VAT is already collected along the way... meaning people in the black/grey markets become tax payers, instead of just hiding.
As an AC, I doubt that you'll see this...
You're confusing the two accounts.
An FSA lets you put money into a company account to use during the year pre-tax, and get reimbursements. The incentive to the company is that they keep leftover money.
The idea is that things like co-pays, etc., should be tax-neutral. In other words, if I pay an extra $1000/year to avoid $1000 in co-pays, without FSAs, I pay takes on the co-pays, so I come out behind. That encourages over-insurance to lower copays. Itemized medical deductions would be easier, but instead you can only deduct the amount over 5% or 7.5% or something ridiculous of your AGI.
The cynic in me says that the government knows that a straightforward "above the line" deduction for health care would be theoretically the same as their complicated system, but "cost the government money" because right now, they keep the errors in estimating. i.e. if I estimate $500 in FSA expenses, and spend $1000, I only get the deduction on $500. The fact that the money is lost provides an incentive to low-ball.
The idealist in me thinks that the government knows how few people itemize and therefore keep receipts, and see this as an easy solution.
The HSA is YOUR money. You can withdraw it at any time (and pay taxes + 10% penality), withdraw it at retirement / 59 1/2, (and pay taxes), or use it for ANY qualified medical expenses.
It's a federal tax incentive to encourage people to adopt high deductible plans, which aims to include market forces into routine medical decisions...
If a doctor charges $150 for a procedure (under negotiated rates) and my co-pay is $20, I make a decision on the procedure based upon the $20 co-pay. If it is worth $20 to me, I get the procedure. With a high deductible, I decide if it is worth $150. My insurance still covers any MAJOR costs, but leaves it to me to manage the low-end.
Basically, it creates insurance. If my deductible is $2000/year, I can put $2000 away in above-the-line deductions (pre tax even without itemizing), so even in years that I use my deductible, it is all pre-tax money being spent. In all other plans, at least SOME of the money is either post-tax (co-pays, or co-pays in excess of FSAs, or the company's keeping of your excess FSA money is taxable income).
Alex
The problem is one of adverse selection.
If an individual is buying insurance, then he falls into two categories, "risk adverse" or "expecting a positive return." In other words, as most people don't use anywhere NEAR the $3000 (young single individual) to $15,000 (older family) in medical costs that insurance costs, people that are sicker are more likely to purchase insurance.
By having insurance available for the entire group (with some minimum enrollment percentage), people are not more likely to choose the insurance because they EXPECT high medical costs.
That's the economic theory.
The problem is, our health insurance market is COMPLETELY messed up.
For example, I have insurance on my car, it covers unexpected events (accidents), not expected events (routine oil changes). However, our health insurance covers expected events (normal doctor's visits), which makes the market REALLY screwy.
But it gets worse, if I am paying to insure my life, then if I die, my insurance company pays out. If I pay to insure my health, it makes ZERO sense that if I get some serious disease, I can be dropped from the insurance and screwed. I don't understand why pre-existing conditions are paid for by your insurance, it SHOULD be paid for by your previous insurance.
I mean, if I develop some permanent blood disease, and I paid Blue Cross to insure me, then shouldn't they take their lumps and pay for that situation permanently? If I later contract with Aetna to take on my health risk, why are they pricing in my preexisting condition, or forced to take it with a group program, or able to exclude me.
Ideally, insurance should go forward, not backward.
The problem is routine maintenance. It is cheaper, in general, to have an annual check-up and catch things early then wait for problems. However, routine health maintenance isn't really an insurable event (I mean, if it costs $100/yr for an annual physical, and everyone has one, it is really silly to make that part of insurance, it just means that the costs go up by $100). The problem is, if you don't do it through insurance, people won't get them, because it is cheaper to pay the co-pay then to get the physical to avoid getting sick.
I believe in a market based solution, but current health care isn't one. Small co-pays for somewhat elective procedures (most therapy, some minor operations) is insane. Sure it makes peoples lives better, but then it is an individual choice.
I really like the new Consumer-Driven Healthcare Programs (I think that acronym is CDHP). The idea is a HIGH deductible, and possibly high co-pay, but a lower premium. It makes health insurance into insurance, which makes MUCH more sense. The HSA option that was added to the Medicare fiasco bill is a nice incentive. Since employer contributions to health care AND the employee side with a Section 125 plan is tax deductible, you can pay for your deductible with pre-tax money, in an HSA. It makes the CDHP option tax-neutral with traditional insurance.
The idea is to get people to pay for routine options, so they make decisions with the cost in mind, while still being insured if something major happens. It is an attempt to bring market forces to bare.
This still doesn't deal with the absurdity that you come down with a permanent condition, and your employer has an economic incentive to fire you to bring down the group rates. That requires a fundamental realignment of the insurance market.
Alex
The facts that I'm aware of include authorization paperwork for other states to send national guard troops in. And Washington sat on the paperwork for days.
Now WHY two sovereign states require permission from a Federal Executive Branch agency to help each other is beyond me, unless it is to prevent the formation of a new Army of Northern Virginia... which keeping military forces from moving around makes it harder to create an open rebellion.
I actually don't understand why we have FEMA... it seems like the heavy lifting in real emergencies is via the National Guard, and multi-state agreements generally handle it. It seems like FEMA is an attempt to share information and disaster planning (like the expanded and increasingly useless and dangerous Department of Education, which doesn't do much for education but creates red tape and sucks down resources).
It seems like a more cost effective solution would be to have a disaster planning division in the Army, instead of a civilian organization since the real work is done via military personnel, and private donations seem to dominate over government contributions...
But that's just me.
I aam in NO way excusing inept behavior by FEMA, I'm just saying that it wasn't the problem.
It was catastrophically prepared for and messed up long BEFORE FEMA got a chance to make things worse, that's all I'm saying.
Alex