Apparently you are discussing Slashdot Microsoft, the borg like all powerful and sinister company that dominates the computer industry and crushes innovation.
I'm discussing Microsoft from the perspective of someone who has to work in the computing industry and has a good generally understanding of the negative affects of monopolies. Why is it that the Web is using outrageously complicated work arounds in order to perform really common functions? Oh yeah, because MS controls the lions share of the Web because of their abusive tying of Windows and IE. As a result the entire Web is stuck using half implemented six to ten year old versions of standards.
I could present a dozen other examples of how innovation has ground to a halt. It has been over a decade since the first OS implemented a spell checker that worked in all the programs instead of making them all implement it separately. What percentage of users have that capability today? What one company has dominated the desktop OS field and felt it unimportant to implement as a innovation?
How about some examples that are less than 5 years old? The Monopoly Microsoft (1995 - DOJ settlement in 2001) was a vicious, dangerous company that destroyed companies with FUD and vaporware and crippled the industry. My content has been that recent Microsoft has been a lackluster company that has been destroying shareholder value from incompetence and ego-driven processes, and the company is generally vulnerable to group think and tunnel vision. Your examples are historical, Microsoft's monopoly isn't new, and it's a monopoly on the decline. Look at the failure to push Vista through, and the growth of OS X in the past 5 years. Microsoft is still the market leader, but their "monopoly" status has been seriously undermined in the consumer space by OS X, and Linux's server side growth stopped the ascendancy of NT Server that was going to kill the server market from the bottom up. Plenty of small businesses use little NAS systems for storage that are powered by Linux, and XPe is given away for almost free to keep Microsoft in the game.
The desktop is their strongest monopoly, has almost no growth, failed to push this upgrade cycle, and is losing steam. Linux desktops are doing well in non-US markets. Windows is less innovative than NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP/OS X, no question, and IE is a drag on the web, but those are historical examples... they also crushed much better encyclopedia's during their growth there. XBox 360 is getting beaten by little Wii, and their many pushes into the living room have been major failures.
Microsoft crushed Netscape by making the product free and paying people to give it away. In return they were rewarded with an expensive to maintain piece of software and an Internet division that can't make money even with the lock-in.
I take it you never took an economics course? MS dumps money into developing both Windows and IE. Whenever someone pays for Windows, part of that money goes to developing IE. Because of their actions with regard to IE, a lot more people have to buy Windows, because the Web coupled with a different (cheaper) OS is not a valid option. It is a very good way to make money, aside from it being illegal and even that has not been a significant problem since it has still made them money, even counting all the settlements and lobbying dollars they had to spend.
I hope you are much less of an asshole in real life than online, you missed the point of my argument. Their tying/dumping strategy (technically not dumping because software has a marginal cost of near 0). You assert that IE has made them money through their illegal actions. I suggest that their illegal actions hurt Netscape (which was later settled with AOL who bought Netscape), but I don't believe that it made Microsoft significant money OR hurt consumers. Before their dumping, Netscape wa
Given NBC's ratings, who is going to boycott them? Until Heroes and then Chuck, I don't think I watched a show on NBC in YEARS. It's hard to boycott NBC when they are the little watched network as is.
Apparently you are discussing Slashdot Microsoft, the borg like all powerful and sinister company that dominates the computer industry and crushes innovation.
I was thinking about the Microsoft that my friend worked at a few years ago, where the culture was so entrenched with "eating their own dog food" that few in the company were exposed to anything else that is going on in the computer world. The vaporware/FUD style of killing competition that Slashdot Microsoft does was generally a result of marketing not understanding engineering, making engineering look bad.
But I was also talking about MSFT, the lackluster performing stock that has failed to deliver share holder value in years. That Microsoft has two profitable product lines (three considering Windows Server separate from Windows), and keeps reinvesting profits into unprofitable lines that make less and less sense. The founder whose killer instincts led it to crush the competition leveraging each business has left to go fight diseases in Africa, and his replacement is his college drinking buddy that looks like a big fat baffoon mostly mocked as a chair thrower.
Your Microsoft conspiracy makes sense... but the incompetence theory makes sense as well. They could have meant well, decided on an open standard, had marketing gum up the process and declare everything a lock down to avoid FUD/anti-trust issues, that surfaced with their exciting new standard that they were stunned that nobody wanted.
Microsoft crushed Netscape by making the product free and paying people to give it away. In return they were rewarded with an expensive to maintain piece of software and an Internet division that can't make money even with the lock-in. They aren't evil super geniuses, they are relatively bright programmers led by Bill Gates's less intelligent cronies.
Microsoft offered ZERO help to the "open source community." They offered help to the Blender Project to get Blender to run better on Windows. They created a position to reach out to them, because their NORMAL developer channels don't include the free software guys. Microsoft doesn't care about the Open Source community, they care about Microsoft. Microsoft makes money selling Windows and Office. If helping Blender helps them sell Windows and/or Office, they will help Blender. If it does not, they will not help Blender.
Microsoft vs. Sun was obvious, Sun was stupid. Microsoft wanted to sell Windows, that meant making sure that Java apps ran best on Windows. Microsoft wants to sell Windows, so that means making Java apps that run on windows run best (or only) on Windows. Sun wanted to make Windows irrelevant with Java apps. In what universe were Microsoft and Sun's business interests aligned?
There is no "open source community." There are software projects released under Open Source Licenses, and their are "open source projects" that have community developers. There are also corporate projects and University projects that are released under "open source licenses." The only "community" angle is that code under the BSD/MIT licenses are available to everyone, and code under the GPL is available to everyone.
Microsoft doesn't care if you are a corporation or a "community," they care if your software helps them sell software (in which case they help you), or hurts them selling software (in which case they try to crush you). With open source projects, their existing channels don't work for either help/crush, so they have a new position for helping... I'm sure they have another department for crushing competitive open source projects, but that departments send out nastygrams from Legal or FUD from PR, not emails of help from the liaison office.
Is OOXML "really open?" Absolutely not. Did MS Engineering produce a "more open" file format than the previous monstrosity, absolutely. There are definitely poorly defined chunks of OOXML that require reverse engineering to master, but the previous file formats required reverse engineering for EVERYTHING. Now, MS's business unit decided to corrupt a standards process to push their nonsense through, and that should be condemned, but we shouldn't deny reality, and that reality is that OOXML is in the direction of more open file formats.
MS normally reaches out to developers through the paid developer channels. As a result, OSS developers were ignored by Microsoft. Microsoft creates a new position to reach out to them, and contacts them saying, "How can we help? Is there a file format problem? We're working on making our file formats more open, is there something that we can speed up that would help," and you all make snide remarks.
If file formats are not a problem, than a simple, "We're fine for now, but when the issue comes up, I will pass your contact information on to developer with trouble, here's my vCard, let's keep in touch," would be fine.
Microsoft isn't passing any judgment here. Windows competes with Linux in the marketplace, Blender is an application that runs on Windows and Linux, the company that makes Windows reaches out offering to help because they want Blender to run really well on Windows.
It's not about Microsoft WANTING the software for free, the Blender guys GIVE the software away for free, to Microsoft and everyone else. This is simply Microsoft realizing that their competition with Linux and other Open Source PROJECTS doesn't mean that other applications should be supported as well as other third party developers. I'm sure that Microsoft gives Adobe support because they want Adobe products to run as well or better on Windows as Mac OS X, now they are offering support to Blender.
The Blender guys may not need/want that support, but this is Microsoft "getting it," and Slashdot users NOT "getting it." The software marketplace is not proprietary vs. open source, it's not non-Free vs. free, it's product area by product area. I find it unlikely that Microsoft would offer support to the Open Office guys, because OO running better on Windows hurts their market leading Microsoft Office product, but other areas that Microsoft doesn't compete in, they can offer them support.
I would expect MS to be willing to support The Gimp writers as that program gets better, because Microsoft is indifferent between users running Windows/Photoshop and Windows/Gimp, and would like EITHER scenario better than OSX/Photoshop, OSX/Gimp, or Linux/Gimp.
Right, the general problem is very drunk people. MADD's campaign to lower it because of their hatred of alcohol has made things more dangerous. The roads are not substantially safer by busting people between a 0.08 and 0.12... 0.10 was a reasonable margin of safety, 0.12 would do it... The people at 0.08 are slightly impaired, but not that dangerous... they are less dangerous than someone on their cell phone, dealing with a crying child (because air bags have made it dangerous and illegal to keep the car seat up front with the driver, or just about any distraction).
MADD accomplished their goals, and all the good people left... nobody in America thinks that drunk driving is harmless... the people left in the organization are crazy people that think alcohol is evil and needs to be stopped. They now push more draconian laws that make us less safe.
Unfortunately, when MADD was the only game in town, they got a lot of contracts with governments to do safety things. As a result, there is a big pile of money in a 501(c)3 just ripe for the stealing... and that's who populates MADD now.
I keep meaning to pick up a color ink jet for the house... I don't print a lot of color, but sometimes it would be helpful for diagrams and things. Photos, that's crazy, CVS has a decent printer and charges like 30 cent a print. If we want a picture in a frame, why would I get a photo-quality printer when CVS will let me use theirs for next to nothing. A color laser would be cheaper if I printed a lot, but I don't, we're talking diagrams and graphs.
If I have something that needs to look good, I can upload it to Kinkos and pick it up... I can even pick it up bound. If I did that more than twice/year, I'd start to think about convenience.
There are 51 electoral races in the country, since each state (and the District of Columbia) choose to hold elections for electors instead of the state legislatures choosing them. However, those are state races, not Federal ones. Senators, since directly elected, are statewide elected races, but other than the Constitution requiring them to be directly elected, didn't change them from state selected officals to Federal ones. That's why, in a vacancy, the Governor appoints the replacement subject to that state's rules. House races are Federal in nature, but even those are only quasi-Federal since the state legislature designates the districts.
The sovereign US states possess control over many areas in this matter... the Federal government can put restrictions on Federal money, but that's about it.
In high school, a bunch of my friends were helping out on the computer network, either for credit as an independent study, or just to learn it. Everything from making cables to desktop support. I befriended the network administrator, who let me do some supervised work on the servers... I used the experience to take and pass the MCSE exams. When looking for part time work as a college student, it was a lot easier to make beer money as a network guy than a lab rat, the 5x page didn't hurt
He is getting experience, and he's learning some basic skills. I'm sure the school will bring in someone experienced when they need to do something real, but what's wrong with this student stepping up and learning a bit. The school gets the network kept going cheaply, he gets valuable experience. It may not be much now, but in 3 years, he'll have plenty of experience to get a good after school job, instead of a crappy one.
Well, if the US notifies China (PRC) that it is giving China/Taiwan (ROC) nuclear weapons, China goes to war with US, embargoes Taiwan, etc.
If US gives ROC weapons, and nobodies knows, there is no deterrent, we violate agreements, and generally encourage proliferation.
If US just plants a news story about the parts, then PRC doesn't know, "shipping error" creates plausible deniability. PRC can't make a scene, but can wonder, does the ROC have a nuke now.
PRC doesn't care about being depopulated, but 4-10 nuclear weapons might do a number on those shiny new factories that they are building.
Engineers that earn partial credit build bridges that fall down.
Engineering is a hard discipline. For scholarship students (where GPA matters and is compared against everyone), you can only do engineering with a 3.0/3.5 or whatever GPA, you only get to be an engineer if you can be a top engineer, not a mediocre one, while you can get a scholarship and be a mediocre film student. It's an odd set of priorities, but oh well. We don't need more engineers that build bridges that fall down, we need engineers that can design good ones.
Otherwise, yeah, your GPA is relative to those in your field. Take liberal arts courses, they'll lift your GPA if you are in trouble, not take a HUGE amount of work, and make you a more well rounded person.
You're missing my point. The child is a NET POSITIVE economically on society, yet a NET NEGATIVE on the family. The US economy, tax base, etc., benefits from the family having one more kid, but that family and its existing children loses out economically by having one more kid. So of course, the family has to weigh the emotional benefits against the financial costs of the additional child. That decision, across 300 million Americans, produces a non economically optimal rate of population growth.
Ok, I'll buy that. But many people in this thread seem to consider the childless as "free riders" on society, which is a characterization I object to. The solution here is to fix the system! Make the decision to have a child less of a net negative, or maybe even a net zero or net positive for a family. Personally I'm not sure a net positive is a good idea. While a family experiences a net economic negative as a result of having a child, presumably they do so because they expect to derive a net positive in other ways (emotional positive, continuing the family name, etc.). I imagine making it a net economic positive to have a child would also only encourage overpopulation.
They are free riders, in that the definition of a free rider is one who takes the benefit without paying the cost. At no point is a free rider assumed to be an immoral or illegal agent (unless you are talking a small group, not a national policy). If free riders go from outliers to actually significant, you have to fix the system. The system creates free riders, and public shaming won't change this.
Should the old couple that didn't have kids and therefore had more money to invest, two incomes the entire time, etc., be allowed, in old age, to take the wealth/economic benefit created by the old couple with four kids at appropriate it for themselves?
If it really were appropriation as you say, sure, I'd agree with you. But the old couple with four kids didn't create the economic benefit. The four kids did. That it cost the old couple to prepare those four kids to be an economic positive is immaterial to whether or not the childless old couple deserves to be able to live in a larger house because they have more money. Parents continue to have children despite the fact that it is a net negative to them. Most parents appear to be completely fine with the concept that their net negative turns into a net positive for society, but they aren't getting compensated for it (or at least they're fine enough with it to not try harder to change it).
Except, the decision to have the children created the economic benefit. My issue with the counting is that if we want count the subsidies/benefits given to the children as to the parents (including the small tax credits to the parents, etc.), then we have to credit them with the net present value of the future earnings of said children.
We're not in disagreement that the system is following a logical conclusion and insulting people is pointless. The disagreement is whether the system we have is accidentally immoral.
Social security arguments TEND to focus on the wealth transfer from current payers to recipients. But because of different aging realities and contribution realities, it's not so simple. Without the "safety net" people would depend upon their children to take care of them, or having enough saved up wealth to pay people to take care of them. The safety net allows people to depend upon "society" for that care. Across all segments of society, certain groups pay more into SS than they take out.
The childless, that avoid the cost of child rearing and receive the benefits from future generations see a wealth transfer from their child bearing peers to them, because their peers bore the costs of creating the children, and the financial benefits (via SS) are split. Clearly the childless "win" with social security.
Because parents are not adequately supported to make child rearing a costless decision, child rearing absolutely has a cost factor considered.
Sure. If you choose to have a child, you are choosing to do something that has a cost. If the non-monetary benefits of this choice do not outweigh the cost (in your opinion as an individual), then you shouldn't have a child.
You're missing my point. The child is a NET POSITIVE economically on society, yet a NET NEGATIVE on the family. The US economy, tax base, etc., benefits from the family having one more kid, but that family and its existing children loses out economically by having one more kid. So of course, the family has to weigh the emotional benefits against the financial costs of the additional child. That decision, across 300 million Americans, produces a non economically optimal rate of population growth.
The tax/subsidy model currently takes wealth away from families that have children (because they are not adequately compensated for the economic output they enable at their personal expense, often losing the second income for some period of time, etc.), and gives it to the childless, because they will benefit from that economic output without bearing the costs.
The economy doesn't chug along just fine, the entire social security disaster is because when it was created, it was assumed that people just "have children" and that that was constant.
No, the reason Social Security is currently a disaster is because there was a huge -- unusual -- surge in births after WWII (hence the term "baby boomers"). Since then, the birth rate has lowered significantly. As the children of the boomers reach retirement age, there won't be sufficient funds in the SS system. This has zero to do with the fact that some people don't have children, and everything to do with the fact that there was an unusual boom in births in the 50s and 60s.
And please, the creators of the SS program believed that population growth would be a constant? I seriously doubt that. Historical data at the time would have put that notion to bed in seconds.
No, but the problem was not the massive baby boomer population, it was the MUCH SMALLER population spawned from them. Had they maintained reasonable population growth numbers, the situation would be fine. However, feminism felt that women's empowerment was through the workforce, not the home, and we culturally devalued mothers and encouraged the boomer generation to have smaller families. We economically shifted the economic benefit away from the family (in an agrarian economy, children are net producers as children) by making schooling more and more expensive, child safety features more and more expensive, and generally tortured parents (we've criminalized so much of parenting that we've raised the cost), that we have a non-optimal number of children.
One could make the argument that the population growth rate isn't sufficient to grow the economy at current rates (though you'd have to provide some evidence of that to be credible), but I'd question whether or not that's necessarily a bad thing. Rapid economic growth is far from the be-all end-all of a measure of the health of a civilisation.
Children are a net positive economically to the country. They are a net negative to their family.
Is that fair? Before social security and pensions, old people relied upon their children to take care of them. Now, they rely upon the children of others to take care of them. Is that fair? Should the old couple that didn't have kids and therefore had more money to invest, two incomes the entire time, etc., be allowed, in old age, to take the wealth/economic benefit created by the old couple with four kids at appropriate it for themselves? That is the fundamental issue, the transfer of wealth is MAJOR, REAL, and ignored, by the
For population studies, you don't look at childless adults, you look at childless women. The number of childless women has historically been around 20%-25% (for a variety of biological/cultural reasons) but has climbed rapidly since the 70s and is now 40%. To maintain a population neutral rate of 2.1 children/woman with a 60% fertility rate, the average number of children/child bearing woman would have to be 3.5. We have created a cultural ideal of 2, it would be tremendously beneficial for their to be a government goal of increasing that "ideal" family size to 3 or 4. Right now we ARE over 2.1, because while White Christian Protestants/Catholics are under 2, White Evangelicals, Black and Hispanic birthrates are well over 2.1.
So America doesn't have a population crisis, but it's white majority is losing it's majority by not having children, which of course results in the racist backlash you're seeing as the culture shifts to accommodate the people actually living and reproducing in the country. Also, since children under 18 have no vote, and people under 30 are largely disenfranchised compared to those over 60 (voting patterns, not victimization), the population of elderly White Protestants aren't voting for leaders that understand the new American population of young Evangelical, Black, and Hispanic America. It also raises the question of how willing these young Black and Hispanic workers are going to be to support a growing social security system to support the white Baby Boomer population that they have no relationship to other than inheriting their country since Baby Boomers bought expensive homes and cars instead of having sufficient children to replace themselves and grow.
Right, but Star Trek's Stardate idea was mostly to "seem" cool, and I think was at some point established how it synced to "Earth" time (probably in San Francisco).
However, in the Fictional Star Trek Universe, it still solves a problem (remember, Star Trek assumes instantaneous communication, they have FTL communication). Sure, the visibility of stars going supernova from various outposts with ships traveling at near light speed has relativity issues. However, what is more likely, the people on Earth and Chiron Beta Prime observing a supernova and caring who sees it first, or the new Chiron Beta Prime Multiplanetary Company has a regional office on Earth, and a meeting between the regional sales managers all need to sync up time. The regional sales managers DON'T care about special relativity and time dilation, they care that they are all there for the conference call at the same time.
The fact is, when doing multi-timezone conference calls, there is a bit of confusion always in setting them up (takes an extra 15 seconds, is that 11 AM your time or mine), but we all get by and function, and usually make them. The inconvenience for us that do distance business in syncing up times is FAR less than the mess of forcing everyone to establish different local hours.
The timing of the US Market being open drives a LOT of the timing for white collar workers, albeit indirectly, and and Federal Reserve for banking, I presume that that is true in other developed economies.
Because parents are not adequately supported to make child rearing a costless decision, child rearing absolutely has a cost factor considered. Even if it doesn't affect Have children vs. no children, is certainly impacts having another child...
The economy doesn't chug along just fine, the entire social security disaster is because when it was created, it was assumed that people just "have children" and that that was constant. The slight issue from people living longer would be easy to handle assuming productivity, a slow increase in retirement ages, and other tweaks. The complete collapse the the children/woman numbers have caused the MASSIVE increase in retiree:taxpayer ratio that has made it unstable.
The economy depends on growth, which is growth in population * growth in production. The childless tend to complain that they have to "subsidize" the child rearing people by paying for education, parks, etc. that they don't use. It ignores the fact that society subsidizes child births because it receives a net positive.
The childless free ride on the system, because they don't contribute back one of the critical resources for future development. One way to compensate for this is in the tax code... the child tax credit is an attempt to bring costs from parents to society as a whole... this has the net effect of pushing the burden onto the childless a bit, which is no doubt noticed.
Social Security, however, is a massive wealth transfer from parents to the childless, since the system rewards you for work put in (that was given to your grandparent's generation), but is paid for by current payers. Net effect, if you do not have children, you are benefiting from the labor of the children of others.
If you think that it goes along fine, look into the issues that Japan and most of Europe are facing. Europe is facing an anti-immigrant backlash because the only way to prop up their economies was to import LOTS of new workers, since their country isn't doing it. France went through MASSIVE efforts to get child birth rates up, and is now (along with the US) among the only developed nations with a greater than 2.1 child:woman ratios necessary for population maintenance.
These shifting social standards are also where the "marriage penalty" comes from. The system assumes that married people will have a primary (or sole) breadwinner, which means that DINKs (double income, no kids) pay a higher tax than two single people, which essentially discourages marriage, not a good thing, and dual-income familes OFTEN pay more than Head of Household + Single would pay.
Your "self funded retirement" is no doubt roughly a mix of stocks and bonds, tilted towards bonds. Bonds are basically "secured" few future revenues, and stocks are a claim on future earnings. Those future revenues and earnings are not a function of current economic activity, they are a function of future economic activity. In other words, it is the growing economy (a function of growth in population and growth in productivity) that creates that growing wealth.
Investment Capital doesn't "generate" activity, it enables the activity. People consuming the outputs from that business activity generate the economic activity, and the investment capital than receives a return on investment for enabling that activity.
Those of you that choose to become biological dead-ends are NOT subsidizing the rest of us... you're economic model creates the straw man. You assign all children under 18 (or 21, whatever) to the parents, and assign the benefits of those subsidies and services to the parents, then, when the child becomes a useful economic agent, you assign all the economic benefit from that child to that child. In that model, of course there is a subsidy.
If you treat the child as an independent economic actor, then there is no subsidy. There is an investment phase, where society spends resources on educating that child, while parents spend resources feeding and clothing it (generally well in excess of any tax benefits from the child). When the child finishes being educated, one presumes that their economic activity will far exceed the costs of educating them and helping them reach adulthood.
Alternatively, if you credit Expected Future Earnings back to the parents, and were to net Expected Future Tax Revenues against the government "subsidies," I think that you'll find that society profits for the birth of each child.
However, society pays part of the child's costs (public school education, if they take advantage of it, nothing if they attend a private or parochial school), and the parents pay another part. Society gets it's return (future tax revenues), and parents do not get a credit (towards social security if the mother work, etc.) beyond a small tax credit and exemption. So parents are subsidizing society with their economic expenditures on their children.
You do owe the people that chose to have children, because if everyone followed your twisted world view, there would be no economic activity to generate a return on your capital, and no providing of the goods and services you want. That is only available because other people made the sacrifices necessary to bring a next generation into the world.
The Media's favorite candidates look like they are winning, which likely is going to result in a GOP victory... it'll be a close race, but Nadar is right, the Democrats SHOULD be able to blow this one out of the water. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the media destroyed the emotional GOP favorite (Huckabee) by dismissing him, and the potential run away player (Romney) by focusing so much on the Mormon issue that people who wouldn't have cared got nervous.
McCain may piss off the GOP's hard right, but he is the most purely electable candidate in the field when the field tips to the Democrats (in a year tilting rightward, like 2000, a Huckabee or Romney was a stronger candidate).
Here is a quick question, name the LAST Democratic that wasn't a Southern White Male to win the White House... That's Fighting Conservative Democratic Candidate, JFK, and before that was New Yorker FDR.
Granted, those two Democratic Presidents were the transformational, generational candidates... so the Democratic Party needs to ask itself, are either Hillary Clinton of Barrack Obama those transformational candidates that we'll be talking about 30 - 50 years later. If so, give them the nod (I'd suggest that Obama MIGHT be, Hillary certainly isn't)... otherwise, should have gone with the Southern White Male.
Clinton won in 1992 in part because with two southern white males on the tickets, the Democratic Party started out with two "leans GOP" states in their corner. While the election didn't come as close as 2000 and 2004 were, by putting those states in the Democratic pocket, the GOP had to fight in states that they might have ignored to make up for it, which changes the stakes.
So in the 20th century and early 21st century, the Democrats win when they run a generation changing transformational figure, or a southern white male. The GOP wins by either racking up wins with their base and using their electoral college advantage (same thing that gives them an edge in the states), or running a candidate from California.
The idea for MPEG-2 only was because the HDTV world was supposed to be MPEG-2. Remember all the Firewire sets before HDMI "won?" The idea was that all your media would be MPEG-2, from OTA (ATSC), DVD/HiDef DVD, etc., and from Cable (QAM encoded). You would string Firewire from your TV -> Cable -> HiDef DVD player -> Amplifier. You wouldn't need a receiver per se, you'd just use HAVi controls over Firewire... each device would implement its menus in Java, and your display system (either TV with MPEG Decoder, or Receiver with MPEG decoder, wherever the image was created) would create the interface.
It was a beautiful, tempting world, that seemed was more pleasant than what we were looking at before, 3 Component Cables + Optical/Coaxial audio for everything.
But the media companies panicked and decided that Firewire would lead to piracy because the files were manageable (you were passing around compressed data), and they wanted only uncompressed data, so they pushed DVI. Well, DVI meant two cables (video/audio) and the plug was big. So the industry created HDMI, took the DVI-D spec, put audio in there, and made the plug smaller, and we have the new world. This happens to bring Consoles into the picture (since the CE companies consider them children's toys, the fact that they wouldn't output MPEG-2 never hit anyone's radar screen).
The abandoning of MPEG-2 for "advanced codecs" meant abandoning Firewire as a transport medium, and meant more powerful players. So we made the media "smaller" (ability to use 15 GB HD DVDs), at the expense of these ridiculous players. Sticking to MPEG-2 would have vastly simplified the system, since we already have plenty of MPEG-2 Silicon being developed for OTA ATSC tuners that come with TVs now. While MPEG-2 decoders were really expensive 6 years ago, they are cheap now. Instead we have Codec soup in the BD world, and Codec soup means having a general purpose CPU instead of dedicated decoder chips, and you need a LOT more horse power to process something in a generic matter than a dedicated matter.
A simple system of MPEG-2, an advanced audio codec (for transport to receiver in bitstream), a legacy one (DD/DTS), and a Stereo/PLII stream could have all fit on 50 GB Dual Layer Blu Ray discs, looked nice, preserved Firewire as an option, and not required the insane horsepower, because I bet you could include a $20 MPEG-2 chip at this point, and transporting the audio bitstream over HDMI OR Firewire OR Toslink (technically, not legally) OR DenonLink OR some other digital format would have all been viable.
Instead we need overly fancy players that are really expensive. The Blue Laser was initially a yield expense, but the current processor expense will be with us for the next 5-6 years.
If you notice, we haven't heard ANYTHING from Apple. Apple looks like they are preventing this, because why would AT&T give them a cut if everyone else can carry the iPhone with unlocked iPhones. Apple seems to enjoy the extra sales and profits, but doesn't want to jeopardize the AT&T gravy train.
The funny math comes from business reporters/analysts that have been trained by this given the Record Labels/Movie Studios, as you pointed out. Also, it does matter to business analysts, because they are trying to project Apple profits. If you priced all iPhone sales as the deferred revenue model, you would be overstating future sales/profits. You need to know how many are "lost" to back them out of projections.
The loss is also probably more an accounting/spreadsheet thing.
If your estimate is $300 in profit from iPhone over 3 years, your line is probably:
If you estimate 1m/year
Year 1: $100m, Year 2: $200m, Year 3: $300m, Year 4: $300m, (and $300m in perpetuity)
Now, if you need to adjust that in future years, your choices are, recalculate and estimate new sales vs. unlocked sales. Or, put in a line under there: Loss from unregistered phones. The latter is easier, and looks more like an income statement's bad debt expense.
Bad debt expense is booked as an expense and a loss. However, for a company with virtual sales (software), obviously it's not really an expense. Producing the item cost you zero marginal costs, so if you don't get paid, you're no worse off than if you didn't make the sale. However, accounting treatment requires you to book the sales and then book the estimated losses from bad debts as a percentage, rather than incurring as you go.
For a small business, you might just not spend the cash until the credit card/check payment clears, but bigger businesses need to worry about GAAP compliance, and it's really important that revenue/costs are booked in the period that they occur, not when the cash clears.
The problem is that since Gates left, Microsoft has reorganized a bunch of times by corporate executives that do what executives do, make themselves look good. The new divisional lines seem designed to make certain that every division is profitable, by taking a money maker and assigning it a bunch of losers.
The corporate structure appears designed to protect executives, their jobs, and their bonuses, not identify winners to ride and losers to cut loose. The company is WAY less cutthroat and vicious that it was when Gates ran the place... and it is not dominating new markets the same way... and the stock's performance reflects that.
So either Gates saw the glory days behind him and got out on a high note, or he was a truly remarkable visionary/businessman that saw waves early enough to get in and dominate, and his replacement keeps moving the chairs around knowing that payday is on Friday, and each payday he hits is a nice win for him
PHP 5 was a MAJOR over-haul, biggest since PHP 4. When PHP 4 came out, hosts and OSes supported 3/4. PHP 3 has really cool, but extremely insecure, syntax things for web prototyping. When you posted a variable, put it on the query string, or passed it in a cookie, it just came into the script as ${name}. So if you needed to check for setting, it was isset($variable), using it was just using it, etc. This was dangerous because in PHP you don't declare your variables, so if you assumed that a variable you never zero'd/nulled before usage was null at the beginning, this could be exploiting by posting a value.
PHP 4 had a php.ini setting to use the old mode (I think register globals or something similar) that helped in the migration. Also, include_once/require_once massive simplified using libraries. Before that we had to do our own equivalent of ifdef/ifndef in our PHP code to avoid overwriting a function if two included libraries called it.
The PHP 3 -> PHP 4 transition took a while as well. What's the rush, my new systems all include PHP4 AND PHP5. All my new code is PHP 5. My PHP4 stuff happens to be in legacy mode, but if I needed to bring it will us, you put it on a machine and see what works, what doesn't, and add support for 4 AND 5, like we all used to do on PHP 3/4.
Better to introduce some source incompatibility for improvements then not being able to move forward, just make sure that there is a transition strategy. Three years isn't really that long... though when I started in web stuff, 3 years was an eternity, but 8 years later, eh, just a few more years.
IIRC, this is a common law protection based upon the assumption that husband and wife are one legal entity. Historically wedding agreements, when they existed, codified the daughter leaving the father's home and entering her husband's, with either a bridal purchase agreement or dowry, depending on the culture (generally, polygamy => bridal purchase, monogamy => dowry, but exceptions exist).
As a result, the wife wasn't a separate legal entity from the husband, so testifying against him was pointless. The real concept of marital units not being a legal entity is relatively recently in the legal system, really the past 30-100 years.
That said, it hasn't been tampered with, because there is an assumption that one should be able to speak to one's spouse in confidence, without fear of being compelled to violate that trust. The same idea for attorney-client privilege, or the constantly attacked Executive Privilege. The privileges are based on the idea that these are people that you should be able to consult with, and the need to disclose later would render such advice impossible in the future. Whatever state interest is served by compelling one spouse is not made up for by destroying families by removing that sense of confidentiality.
The people that quit are those that don't want to work a minute over 40 hours and just took a 15% pay cut. If they are non-exempt, they are now getting time-and-a-half for over 40 hours. So they need to work 10% more hours, or 4 hours/week. Everyone that puts more than 44 hours a week comes out ahead, those at 44 hours are a wash, those between 40 and 44 a slight cut, and those at 40 or below took a 15% haircut.
Guess what, IBM is going to keep their hard working billing people. The guys willing to put in 50 - 60 hour weeks will love this. The guys that put in extra time when needed but not every week will grumble about the pay cut, put in some overtime every pay period to not get a pay cut, and start to love it when big projects mean real money.
The people that will pack up and leave are the guys that show up at 9:05, leave at 4:55, take an hour for lunch, and do whatever they can to dare someone to fire them so that they can fire a wrongful dismissal suit. IBM will get rid of some dead wood and make their hardest working employees happy. They'll turn this into a net win.
Slashdot Mirror
How about some examples that are less than 5 years old? The Monopoly Microsoft (1995 - DOJ settlement in 2001) was a vicious, dangerous company that destroyed companies with FUD and vaporware and crippled the industry. My content has been that recent Microsoft has been a lackluster company that has been destroying shareholder value from incompetence and ego-driven processes, and the company is generally vulnerable to group think and tunnel vision. Your examples are historical, Microsoft's monopoly isn't new, and it's a monopoly on the decline. Look at the failure to push Vista through, and the growth of OS X in the past 5 years. Microsoft is still the market leader, but their "monopoly" status has been seriously undermined in the consumer space by OS X, and Linux's server side growth stopped the ascendancy of NT Server that was going to kill the server market from the bottom up. Plenty of small businesses use little NAS systems for storage that are powered by Linux, and XPe is given away for almost free to keep Microsoft in the game.
The desktop is their strongest monopoly, has almost no growth, failed to push this upgrade cycle, and is losing steam. Linux desktops are doing well in non-US markets. Windows is less innovative than NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP/OS X, no question, and IE is a drag on the web, but those are historical examples... they also crushed much better encyclopedia's during their growth there. XBox 360 is getting beaten by little Wii, and their many pushes into the living room have been major failures.
I hope you are much less of an asshole in real life than online, you missed the point of my argument. Their tying/dumping strategy (technically not dumping because software has a marginal cost of near 0). You assert that IE has made them money through their illegal actions. I suggest that their illegal actions hurt Netscape (which was later settled with AOL who bought Netscape), but I don't believe that it made Microsoft significant money OR hurt consumers. Before their dumping, Netscape wa
Given NBC's ratings, who is going to boycott them? Until Heroes and then Chuck, I don't think I watched a show on NBC in YEARS. It's hard to boycott NBC when they are the little watched network as is.
Apparently you are discussing Slashdot Microsoft, the borg like all powerful and sinister company that dominates the computer industry and crushes innovation.
I was thinking about the Microsoft that my friend worked at a few years ago, where the culture was so entrenched with "eating their own dog food" that few in the company were exposed to anything else that is going on in the computer world. The vaporware/FUD style of killing competition that Slashdot Microsoft does was generally a result of marketing not understanding engineering, making engineering look bad.
But I was also talking about MSFT, the lackluster performing stock that has failed to deliver share holder value in years. That Microsoft has two profitable product lines (three considering Windows Server separate from Windows), and keeps reinvesting profits into unprofitable lines that make less and less sense. The founder whose killer instincts led it to crush the competition leveraging each business has left to go fight diseases in Africa, and his replacement is his college drinking buddy that looks like a big fat baffoon mostly mocked as a chair thrower.
Your Microsoft conspiracy makes sense... but the incompetence theory makes sense as well. They could have meant well, decided on an open standard, had marketing gum up the process and declare everything a lock down to avoid FUD/anti-trust issues, that surfaced with their exciting new standard that they were stunned that nobody wanted.
Microsoft crushed Netscape by making the product free and paying people to give it away. In return they were rewarded with an expensive to maintain piece of software and an Internet division that can't make money even with the lock-in. They aren't evil super geniuses, they are relatively bright programmers led by Bill Gates's less intelligent cronies.
Microsoft offered ZERO help to the "open source community." They offered help to the Blender Project to get Blender to run better on Windows. They created a position to reach out to them, because their NORMAL developer channels don't include the free software guys. Microsoft doesn't care about the Open Source community, they care about Microsoft. Microsoft makes money selling Windows and Office. If helping Blender helps them sell Windows and/or Office, they will help Blender. If it does not, they will not help Blender.
Microsoft vs. Sun was obvious, Sun was stupid. Microsoft wanted to sell Windows, that meant making sure that Java apps ran best on Windows. Microsoft wants to sell Windows, so that means making Java apps that run on windows run best (or only) on Windows. Sun wanted to make Windows irrelevant with Java apps. In what universe were Microsoft and Sun's business interests aligned?
There is no "open source community." There are software projects released under Open Source Licenses, and their are "open source projects" that have community developers. There are also corporate projects and University projects that are released under "open source licenses." The only "community" angle is that code under the BSD/MIT licenses are available to everyone, and code under the GPL is available to everyone.
Microsoft doesn't care if you are a corporation or a "community," they care if your software helps them sell software (in which case they help you), or hurts them selling software (in which case they try to crush you). With open source projects, their existing channels don't work for either help/crush, so they have a new position for helping... I'm sure they have another department for crushing competitive open source projects, but that departments send out nastygrams from Legal or FUD from PR, not emails of help from the liaison office.
Is OOXML "really open?" Absolutely not. Did MS Engineering produce a "more open" file format than the previous monstrosity, absolutely. There are definitely poorly defined chunks of OOXML that require reverse engineering to master, but the previous file formats required reverse engineering for EVERYTHING. Now, MS's business unit decided to corrupt a standards process to push their nonsense through, and that should be condemned, but we shouldn't deny reality, and that reality is that OOXML is in the direction of more open file formats.
MS normally reaches out to developers through the paid developer channels. As a result, OSS developers were ignored by Microsoft. Microsoft creates a new position to reach out to them, and contacts them saying, "How can we help? Is there a file format problem? We're working on making our file formats more open, is there something that we can speed up that would help," and you all make snide remarks.
If file formats are not a problem, than a simple, "We're fine for now, but when the issue comes up, I will pass your contact information on to developer with trouble, here's my vCard, let's keep in touch," would be fine.
Microsoft isn't passing any judgment here. Windows competes with Linux in the marketplace, Blender is an application that runs on Windows and Linux, the company that makes Windows reaches out offering to help because they want Blender to run really well on Windows.
It's not about Microsoft WANTING the software for free, the Blender guys GIVE the software away for free, to Microsoft and everyone else. This is simply Microsoft realizing that their competition with Linux and other Open Source PROJECTS doesn't mean that other applications should be supported as well as other third party developers. I'm sure that Microsoft gives Adobe support because they want Adobe products to run as well or better on Windows as Mac OS X, now they are offering support to Blender.
The Blender guys may not need/want that support, but this is Microsoft "getting it," and Slashdot users NOT "getting it." The software marketplace is not proprietary vs. open source, it's not non-Free vs. free, it's product area by product area. I find it unlikely that Microsoft would offer support to the Open Office guys, because OO running better on Windows hurts their market leading Microsoft Office product, but other areas that Microsoft doesn't compete in, they can offer them support.
I would expect MS to be willing to support The Gimp writers as that program gets better, because Microsoft is indifferent between users running Windows/Photoshop and Windows/Gimp, and would like EITHER scenario better than OSX/Photoshop, OSX/Gimp, or Linux/Gimp.
Right, the general problem is very drunk people. MADD's campaign to lower it because of their hatred of alcohol has made things more dangerous. The roads are not substantially safer by busting people between a 0.08 and 0.12... 0.10 was a reasonable margin of safety, 0.12 would do it... The people at 0.08 are slightly impaired, but not that dangerous... they are less dangerous than someone on their cell phone, dealing with a crying child (because air bags have made it dangerous and illegal to keep the car seat up front with the driver, or just about any distraction).
MADD accomplished their goals, and all the good people left... nobody in America thinks that drunk driving is harmless... the people left in the organization are crazy people that think alcohol is evil and needs to be stopped. They now push more draconian laws that make us less safe.
Unfortunately, when MADD was the only game in town, they got a lot of contracts with governments to do safety things. As a result, there is a big pile of money in a 501(c)3 just ripe for the stealing... and that's who populates MADD now.
I keep meaning to pick up a color ink jet for the house... I don't print a lot of color, but sometimes it would be helpful for diagrams and things. Photos, that's crazy, CVS has a decent printer and charges like 30 cent a print. If we want a picture in a frame, why would I get a photo-quality printer when CVS will let me use theirs for next to nothing. A color laser would be cheaper if I printed a lot, but I don't, we're talking diagrams and graphs.
If I have something that needs to look good, I can upload it to Kinkos and pick it up... I can even pick it up bound. If I did that more than twice/year, I'd start to think about convenience.
There are 51 electoral races in the country, since each state (and the District of Columbia) choose to hold elections for electors instead of the state legislatures choosing them. However, those are state races, not Federal ones. Senators, since directly elected, are statewide elected races, but other than the Constitution requiring them to be directly elected, didn't change them from state selected officals to Federal ones. That's why, in a vacancy, the Governor appoints the replacement subject to that state's rules. House races are Federal in nature, but even those are only quasi-Federal since the state legislature designates the districts.
The sovereign US states possess control over many areas in this matter... the Federal government can put restrictions on Federal money, but that's about it.
In high school, a bunch of my friends were helping out on the computer network, either for credit as an independent study, or just to learn it. Everything from making cables to desktop support. I befriended the network administrator, who let me do some supervised work on the servers... I used the experience to take and pass the MCSE exams. When looking for part time work as a college student, it was a lot easier to make beer money as a network guy than a lab rat, the 5x page didn't hurt
He is getting experience, and he's learning some basic skills. I'm sure the school will bring in someone experienced when they need to do something real, but what's wrong with this student stepping up and learning a bit. The school gets the network kept going cheaply, he gets valuable experience. It may not be much now, but in 3 years, he'll have plenty of experience to get a good after school job, instead of a crappy one.
Well, if the US notifies China (PRC) that it is giving China/Taiwan (ROC) nuclear weapons, China goes to war with US, embargoes Taiwan, etc.
If US gives ROC weapons, and nobodies knows, there is no deterrent, we violate agreements, and generally encourage proliferation.
If US just plants a news story about the parts, then PRC doesn't know, "shipping error" creates plausible deniability. PRC can't make a scene, but can wonder, does the ROC have a nuke now.
PRC doesn't care about being depopulated, but 4-10 nuclear weapons might do a number on those shiny new factories that they are building.
A professor once told me...
Engineers that earn partial credit build bridges that fall down.
Engineering is a hard discipline. For scholarship students (where GPA matters and is compared against everyone), you can only do engineering with a 3.0/3.5 or whatever GPA, you only get to be an engineer if you can be a top engineer, not a mediocre one, while you can get a scholarship and be a mediocre film student. It's an odd set of priorities, but oh well. We don't need more engineers that build bridges that fall down, we need engineers that can design good ones.
Otherwise, yeah, your GPA is relative to those in your field. Take liberal arts courses, they'll lift your GPA if you are in trouble, not take a HUGE amount of work, and make you a more well rounded person.
They are free riders, in that the definition of a free rider is one who takes the benefit without paying the cost. At no point is a free rider assumed to be an immoral or illegal agent (unless you are talking a small group, not a national policy). If free riders go from outliers to actually significant, you have to fix the system. The system creates free riders, and public shaming won't change this.
Except, the decision to have the children created the economic benefit. My issue with the counting is that if we want count the subsidies/benefits given to the children as to the parents (including the small tax credits to the parents, etc.), then we have to credit them with the net present value of the future earnings of said children.
We're not in disagreement that the system is following a logical conclusion and insulting people is pointless. The disagreement is whether the system we have is accidentally immoral.
Social security arguments TEND to focus on the wealth transfer from current payers to recipients. But because of different aging realities and contribution realities, it's not so simple. Without the "safety net" people would depend upon their children to take care of them, or having enough saved up wealth to pay people to take care of them. The safety net allows people to depend upon "society" for that care. Across all segments of society, certain groups pay more into SS than they take out.
The childless, that avoid the cost of child rearing and receive the benefits from future generations see a wealth transfer from their child bearing peers to them, because their peers bore the costs of creating the children, and the financial benefits (via SS) are split. Clearly the childless "win" with social security.
W
You're missing my point. The child is a NET POSITIVE economically on society, yet a NET NEGATIVE on the family. The US economy, tax base, etc., benefits from the family having one more kid, but that family and its existing children loses out economically by having one more kid. So of course, the family has to weigh the emotional benefits against the financial costs of the additional child. That decision, across 300 million Americans, produces a non economically optimal rate of population growth.
The tax/subsidy model currently takes wealth away from families that have children (because they are not adequately compensated for the economic output they enable at their personal expense, often losing the second income for some period of time, etc.), and gives it to the childless, because they will benefit from that economic output without bearing the costs.
No, but the problem was not the massive baby boomer population, it was the MUCH SMALLER population spawned from them. Had they maintained reasonable population growth numbers, the situation would be fine. However, feminism felt that women's empowerment was through the workforce, not the home, and we culturally devalued mothers and encouraged the boomer generation to have smaller families. We economically shifted the economic benefit away from the family (in an agrarian economy, children are net producers as children) by making schooling more and more expensive, child safety features more and more expensive, and generally tortured parents (we've criminalized so much of parenting that we've raised the cost), that we have a non-optimal number of children.
Children are a net positive economically to the country. They are a net negative to their family.
Is that fair? Before social security and pensions, old people relied upon their children to take care of them. Now, they rely upon the children of others to take care of them. Is that fair? Should the old couple that didn't have kids and therefore had more money to invest, two incomes the entire time, etc., be allowed, in old age, to take the wealth/economic benefit created by the old couple with four kids at appropriate it for themselves? That is the fundamental issue, the transfer of wealth is MAJOR, REAL, and ignored, by the
For population studies, you don't look at childless adults, you look at childless women. The number of childless women has historically been around 20%-25% (for a variety of biological/cultural reasons) but has climbed rapidly since the 70s and is now 40%. To maintain a population neutral rate of 2.1 children/woman with a 60% fertility rate, the average number of children/child bearing woman would have to be 3.5. We have created a cultural ideal of 2, it would be tremendously beneficial for their to be a government goal of increasing that "ideal" family size to 3 or 4. Right now we ARE over 2.1, because while White Christian Protestants/Catholics are under 2, White Evangelicals, Black and Hispanic birthrates are well over 2.1.
So America doesn't have a population crisis, but it's white majority is losing it's majority by not having children, which of course results in the racist backlash you're seeing as the culture shifts to accommodate the people actually living and reproducing in the country. Also, since children under 18 have no vote, and people under 30 are largely disenfranchised compared to those over 60 (voting patterns, not victimization), the population of elderly White Protestants aren't voting for leaders that understand the new American population of young Evangelical, Black, and Hispanic America. It also raises the question of how willing these young Black and Hispanic workers are going to be to support a growing social security system to support the white Baby Boomer population that they have no relationship to other than inheriting their country since Baby Boomers bought expensive homes and cars instead of having sufficient children to replace themselves and grow.
Right, but Star Trek's Stardate idea was mostly to "seem" cool, and I think was at some point established how it synced to "Earth" time (probably in San Francisco).
However, in the Fictional Star Trek Universe, it still solves a problem (remember, Star Trek assumes instantaneous communication, they have FTL communication). Sure, the visibility of stars going supernova from various outposts with ships traveling at near light speed has relativity issues. However, what is more likely, the people on Earth and Chiron Beta Prime observing a supernova and caring who sees it first, or the new Chiron Beta Prime Multiplanetary Company has a regional office on Earth, and a meeting between the regional sales managers all need to sync up time. The regional sales managers DON'T care about special relativity and time dilation, they care that they are all there for the conference call at the same time.
The fact is, when doing multi-timezone conference calls, there is a bit of confusion always in setting them up (takes an extra 15 seconds, is that 11 AM your time or mine), but we all get by and function, and usually make them. The inconvenience for us that do distance business in syncing up times is FAR less than the mess of forcing everyone to establish different local hours.
The timing of the US Market being open drives a LOT of the timing for white collar workers, albeit indirectly, and and Federal Reserve for banking, I presume that that is true in other developed economies.
Because parents are not adequately supported to make child rearing a costless decision, child rearing absolutely has a cost factor considered. Even if it doesn't affect Have children vs. no children, is certainly impacts having another child...
The economy doesn't chug along just fine, the entire social security disaster is because when it was created, it was assumed that people just "have children" and that that was constant. The slight issue from people living longer would be easy to handle assuming productivity, a slow increase in retirement ages, and other tweaks. The complete collapse the the children/woman numbers have caused the MASSIVE increase in retiree:taxpayer ratio that has made it unstable.
The economy depends on growth, which is growth in population * growth in production. The childless tend to complain that they have to "subsidize" the child rearing people by paying for education, parks, etc. that they don't use. It ignores the fact that society subsidizes child births because it receives a net positive.
The childless free ride on the system, because they don't contribute back one of the critical resources for future development. One way to compensate for this is in the tax code... the child tax credit is an attempt to bring costs from parents to society as a whole... this has the net effect of pushing the burden onto the childless a bit, which is no doubt noticed.
Social Security, however, is a massive wealth transfer from parents to the childless, since the system rewards you for work put in (that was given to your grandparent's generation), but is paid for by current payers. Net effect, if you do not have children, you are benefiting from the labor of the children of others.
If you think that it goes along fine, look into the issues that Japan and most of Europe are facing. Europe is facing an anti-immigrant backlash because the only way to prop up their economies was to import LOTS of new workers, since their country isn't doing it. France went through MASSIVE efforts to get child birth rates up, and is now (along with the US) among the only developed nations with a greater than 2.1 child:woman ratios necessary for population maintenance.
These shifting social standards are also where the "marriage penalty" comes from. The system assumes that married people will have a primary (or sole) breadwinner, which means that DINKs (double income, no kids) pay a higher tax than two single people, which essentially discourages marriage, not a good thing, and dual-income familes OFTEN pay more than Head of Household + Single would pay.
Your "self funded retirement" is no doubt roughly a mix of stocks and bonds, tilted towards bonds. Bonds are basically "secured" few future revenues, and stocks are a claim on future earnings. Those future revenues and earnings are not a function of current economic activity, they are a function of future economic activity. In other words, it is the growing economy (a function of growth in population and growth in productivity) that creates that growing wealth.
Investment Capital doesn't "generate" activity, it enables the activity. People consuming the outputs from that business activity generate the economic activity, and the investment capital than receives a return on investment for enabling that activity.
Those of you that choose to become biological dead-ends are NOT subsidizing the rest of us... you're economic model creates the straw man. You assign all children under 18 (or 21, whatever) to the parents, and assign the benefits of those subsidies and services to the parents, then, when the child becomes a useful economic agent, you assign all the economic benefit from that child to that child. In that model, of course there is a subsidy.
If you treat the child as an independent economic actor, then there is no subsidy. There is an investment phase, where society spends resources on educating that child, while parents spend resources feeding and clothing it (generally well in excess of any tax benefits from the child). When the child finishes being educated, one presumes that their economic activity will far exceed the costs of educating them and helping them reach adulthood.
Alternatively, if you credit Expected Future Earnings back to the parents, and were to net Expected Future Tax Revenues against the government "subsidies," I think that you'll find that society profits for the birth of each child.
However, society pays part of the child's costs (public school education, if they take advantage of it, nothing if they attend a private or parochial school), and the parents pay another part. Society gets it's return (future tax revenues), and parents do not get a credit (towards social security if the mother work, etc.) beyond a small tax credit and exemption. So parents are subsidizing society with their economic expenditures on their children.
You do owe the people that chose to have children, because if everyone followed your twisted world view, there would be no economic activity to generate a return on your capital, and no providing of the goods and services you want. That is only available because other people made the sacrifices necessary to bring a next generation into the world.
The Media's favorite candidates look like they are winning, which likely is going to result in a GOP victory... it'll be a close race, but Nadar is right, the Democrats SHOULD be able to blow this one out of the water. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the media destroyed the emotional GOP favorite (Huckabee) by dismissing him, and the potential run away player (Romney) by focusing so much on the Mormon issue that people who wouldn't have cared got nervous.
McCain may piss off the GOP's hard right, but he is the most purely electable candidate in the field when the field tips to the Democrats (in a year tilting rightward, like 2000, a Huckabee or Romney was a stronger candidate).
Here is a quick question, name the LAST Democratic that wasn't a Southern White Male to win the White House... That's Fighting Conservative Democratic Candidate, JFK, and before that was New Yorker FDR.
Granted, those two Democratic Presidents were the transformational, generational candidates... so the Democratic Party needs to ask itself, are either Hillary Clinton of Barrack Obama those transformational candidates that we'll be talking about 30 - 50 years later. If so, give them the nod (I'd suggest that Obama MIGHT be, Hillary certainly isn't)... otherwise, should have gone with the Southern White Male.
Clinton won in 1992 in part because with two southern white males on the tickets, the Democratic Party started out with two "leans GOP" states in their corner. While the election didn't come as close as 2000 and 2004 were, by putting those states in the Democratic pocket, the GOP had to fight in states that they might have ignored to make up for it, which changes the stakes.
So in the 20th century and early 21st century, the Democrats win when they run a generation changing transformational figure, or a southern white male. The GOP wins by either racking up wins with their base and using their electoral college advantage (same thing that gives them an edge in the states), or running a candidate from California.
The idea for MPEG-2 only was because the HDTV world was supposed to be MPEG-2. Remember all the Firewire sets before HDMI "won?" The idea was that all your media would be MPEG-2, from OTA (ATSC), DVD/HiDef DVD, etc., and from Cable (QAM encoded). You would string Firewire from your TV -> Cable -> HiDef DVD player -> Amplifier. You wouldn't need a receiver per se, you'd just use HAVi controls over Firewire... each device would implement its menus in Java, and your display system (either TV with MPEG Decoder, or Receiver with MPEG decoder, wherever the image was created) would create the interface.
It was a beautiful, tempting world, that seemed was more pleasant than what we were looking at before, 3 Component Cables + Optical/Coaxial audio for everything.
But the media companies panicked and decided that Firewire would lead to piracy because the files were manageable (you were passing around compressed data), and they wanted only uncompressed data, so they pushed DVI. Well, DVI meant two cables (video/audio) and the plug was big. So the industry created HDMI, took the DVI-D spec, put audio in there, and made the plug smaller, and we have the new world. This happens to bring Consoles into the picture (since the CE companies consider them children's toys, the fact that they wouldn't output MPEG-2 never hit anyone's radar screen).
The abandoning of MPEG-2 for "advanced codecs" meant abandoning Firewire as a transport medium, and meant more powerful players. So we made the media "smaller" (ability to use 15 GB HD DVDs), at the expense of these ridiculous players. Sticking to MPEG-2 would have vastly simplified the system, since we already have plenty of MPEG-2 Silicon being developed for OTA ATSC tuners that come with TVs now. While MPEG-2 decoders were really expensive 6 years ago, they are cheap now. Instead we have Codec soup in the BD world, and Codec soup means having a general purpose CPU instead of dedicated decoder chips, and you need a LOT more horse power to process something in a generic matter than a dedicated matter.
A simple system of MPEG-2, an advanced audio codec (for transport to receiver in bitstream), a legacy one (DD/DTS), and a Stereo/PLII stream could have all fit on 50 GB Dual Layer Blu Ray discs, looked nice, preserved Firewire as an option, and not required the insane horsepower, because I bet you could include a $20 MPEG-2 chip at this point, and transporting the audio bitstream over HDMI OR Firewire OR Toslink (technically, not legally) OR DenonLink OR some other digital format would have all been viable.
Instead we need overly fancy players that are really expensive. The Blue Laser was initially a yield expense, but the current processor expense will be with us for the next 5-6 years.
If you notice, we haven't heard ANYTHING from Apple. Apple looks like they are preventing this, because why would AT&T give them a cut if everyone else can carry the iPhone with unlocked iPhones. Apple seems to enjoy the extra sales and profits, but doesn't want to jeopardize the AT&T gravy train.
The funny math comes from business reporters/analysts that have been trained by this given the Record Labels/Movie Studios, as you pointed out. Also, it does matter to business analysts, because they are trying to project Apple profits. If you priced all iPhone sales as the deferred revenue model, you would be overstating future sales/profits. You need to know how many are "lost" to back them out of projections.
The loss is also probably more an accounting/spreadsheet thing.
If your estimate is $300 in profit from iPhone over 3 years, your line is probably:
If you estimate 1m/year
Year 1: $100m, Year 2: $200m, Year 3: $300m, Year 4: $300m, (and $300m in perpetuity)
Now, if you need to adjust that in future years, your choices are, recalculate and estimate new sales vs. unlocked sales. Or, put in a line under there: Loss from unregistered phones. The latter is easier, and looks more like an income statement's bad debt expense.
Bad debt expense is booked as an expense and a loss. However, for a company with virtual sales (software), obviously it's not really an expense. Producing the item cost you zero marginal costs, so if you don't get paid, you're no worse off than if you didn't make the sale. However, accounting treatment requires you to book the sales and then book the estimated losses from bad debts as a percentage, rather than incurring as you go.
For a small business, you might just not spend the cash until the credit card/check payment clears, but bigger businesses need to worry about GAAP compliance, and it's really important that revenue/costs are booked in the period that they occur, not when the cash clears.
The problem is that since Gates left, Microsoft has reorganized a bunch of times by corporate executives that do what executives do, make themselves look good. The new divisional lines seem designed to make certain that every division is profitable, by taking a money maker and assigning it a bunch of losers.
The corporate structure appears designed to protect executives, their jobs, and their bonuses, not identify winners to ride and losers to cut loose. The company is WAY less cutthroat and vicious that it was when Gates ran the place... and it is not dominating new markets the same way... and the stock's performance reflects that.
So either Gates saw the glory days behind him and got out on a high note, or he was a truly remarkable visionary/businessman that saw waves early enough to get in and dominate, and his replacement keeps moving the chairs around knowing that payday is on Friday, and each payday he hits is a nice win for him
PHP 5 was a MAJOR over-haul, biggest since PHP 4. When PHP 4 came out, hosts and OSes supported 3/4. PHP 3 has really cool, but extremely insecure, syntax things for web prototyping. When you posted a variable, put it on the query string, or passed it in a cookie, it just came into the script as ${name}. So if you needed to check for setting, it was isset($variable), using it was just using it, etc. This was dangerous because in PHP you don't declare your variables, so if you assumed that a variable you never zero'd/nulled before usage was null at the beginning, this could be exploiting by posting a value.
PHP 4 had a php.ini setting to use the old mode (I think register globals or something similar) that helped in the migration. Also, include_once/require_once massive simplified using libraries. Before that we had to do our own equivalent of ifdef/ifndef in our PHP code to avoid overwriting a function if two included libraries called it.
The PHP 3 -> PHP 4 transition took a while as well. What's the rush, my new systems all include PHP4 AND PHP5. All my new code is PHP 5. My PHP4 stuff happens to be in legacy mode, but if I needed to bring it will us, you put it on a machine and see what works, what doesn't, and add support for 4 AND 5, like we all used to do on PHP 3/4.
Better to introduce some source incompatibility for improvements then not being able to move forward, just make sure that there is a transition strategy. Three years isn't really that long... though when I started in web stuff, 3 years was an eternity, but 8 years later, eh, just a few more years.
IIRC, this is a common law protection based upon the assumption that husband and wife are one legal entity. Historically wedding agreements, when they existed, codified the daughter leaving the father's home and entering her husband's, with either a bridal purchase agreement or dowry, depending on the culture (generally, polygamy => bridal purchase, monogamy => dowry, but exceptions exist).
As a result, the wife wasn't a separate legal entity from the husband, so testifying against him was pointless. The real concept of marital units not being a legal entity is relatively recently in the legal system, really the past 30-100 years.
That said, it hasn't been tampered with, because there is an assumption that one should be able to speak to one's spouse in confidence, without fear of being compelled to violate that trust. The same idea for attorney-client privilege, or the constantly attacked Executive Privilege. The privileges are based on the idea that these are people that you should be able to consult with, and the need to disclose later would render such advice impossible in the future. Whatever state interest is served by compelling one spouse is not made up for by destroying families by removing that sense of confidentiality.
The people that quit are those that don't want to work a minute over 40 hours and just took a 15% pay cut. If they are non-exempt, they are now getting time-and-a-half for over 40 hours. So they need to work 10% more hours, or 4 hours/week. Everyone that puts more than 44 hours a week comes out ahead, those at 44 hours are a wash, those between 40 and 44 a slight cut, and those at 40 or below took a 15% haircut.
Guess what, IBM is going to keep their hard working billing people. The guys willing to put in 50 - 60 hour weeks will love this. The guys that put in extra time when needed but not every week will grumble about the pay cut, put in some overtime every pay period to not get a pay cut, and start to love it when big projects mean real money.
The people that will pack up and leave are the guys that show up at 9:05, leave at 4:55, take an hour for lunch, and do whatever they can to dare someone to fire them so that they can fire a wrongful dismissal suit. IBM will get rid of some dead wood and make their hardest working employees happy. They'll turn this into a net win.