The maximization of profits is a requirement of law and a desire of the shareholders.
Got a source for that? I don't think the "maximization" of profits is a requirement as such, as I'm sure a few SIVs created by Lehman Bros. were certainly not incorporated with that in mind...
That is assuming you're looking only for a net benefit to the environment. In this case, the green tech offsets the added capacity which is used for added productivity elsewhere in the economy. You're allowing for more efficient growth, and the net benefit is that the environment wasn't harmed more in the pursuit of growth.
Yes, idealists will argue that we should fix the environment first, but a pragmatist has to recognise that everyone's going to ask along the chain, "what's in it for me?". This way you've paid the solar/wind/geothermal guy so he can go reinvest capital elsewhere, and you've added productive capacity without causing harm. Showing we can stabilise the environment while growing the economy is probably going to the strongest argument for getting sceptics on side - it becomes much more of a "why wouldn't you?" pull than a "you must because" push.
Where the hell do you get those kind of "facts"? Get this ignorant shit off Slashdot.
Gandhi's goal was for the British to quit India - self-determination for Indians. That's done and dusted, 60 years ago. India certainly wouldn't be better off under the colonial heel of exploitation, the rape of a nation that the British accomplished for 90 years under the Raj.
Oceania's population according to Wikipedia is 0.038 billion, and if you take out Australia which qualifies through Asia you've got 0.017 billion. How does that justify a guaranteed slot in any way? (Note: until this year, Oceania had shared the 5th South American slot, and got soundly trumped on a regular basis).
I'd suspect this bias is more to represent countries than populations - UEFA had 53 teams/countries attempting to qualify; Africa had 52 + the host slot, Central/North America had 35, South America had 10, and Asia 43. Oceania's 10 contenders are mostly made up of the tiny island nations of the pacific and frankly aren't very good, so a guaranteed slot would pretty much be handing the slot to New Zealand every 4 years.
That's a little more valid reason for the bias, though certainly Asia deserves more than 4 and Central-North America more than 3.
Speak Up. Somewhere along the chain, there will be a competent IT manager who knows what this means, and why it is important. If your organisation is good, that'll be from the CTO down, but worst-case you'll get to a "sergeant" kind of level where the manager still deals with the coalface.
If that manager hasn't been notified already by this blog or by someone else reading slashdot, your speaking up will be appreciated. If it's been raised before, you can rest easier knowing there's someone competent around, and you know who to go to next time.
Surely the competition commission will be looking at competition between private enterprises and what government is doing to foster that, rather than trying to equialise competition between countries? It's not like tax laws are uniform across the Union to begin with, and it's not as though other Union members don't subsidise or otherwise champion specific industry sectors.
Were the competition commission's approach to be based on consumer interest, the response should be something along the lines of "it's up to you to compete with that." It's not like the UK is dominated by a single developer/studio/publisher, and you can only imagine a tax break like this would encourage further competition.
What genius in the newly-minted government thought, "Oh dear, we might be giving an unfair advantage to a premier entertainment industry sector of the 21st century, we mustn't have that in little old England, what?"
And here I was thinking only the US and Australia had truly effective lobbyists who could convince the government to act in their interests instead of the country's.
... and they don't allow any other (real) browser on the phone, either. I might be parroting comments from above, but if this was a certain other large technology company the vitriol here would have been through the roof.
Buh? I'm not sure how many more than 140 million consoles Sony could have sold if they'd "had [their] shit together on the PS2". Microsoft's entry into the market with the Xbox was through the sacrificing of roughly $1.5 billion, and the Gamecube was more or less a non-event until the same hardware was repackaged as the Wii.
The reason it's a 3 horse race at the moment is because Sony cocked up with a late delivered and needlessly complex PS3 coming up against a "good enough" Wii and the Xbox 360 taking the early sales lead by a long shot in the US. It's certainly not because of a lack of PS2 success.
Unfortunately that's never going to be how it works - the attorney general is acting on the behalf of the government of Australia, and the government is in turn acting on our (collective) behalf, irrespective of how much we dislike the policy personally.
So we'll end up paying through taxes, yes, but I'd rather that than a bullshit per-user charge that doesn't reflect the true cost, or even a variable charge depending on how much you actually "use" the net, which would be a major baulking point for people.
Thankfully we have a halfway-competent consumer rights commission in the ACCC and as a result regulatory requirements such as mobile number portability, emergency services and even mobile network unlocking are mandated to be free. I'd suspect any such charges would have to be hidden in a total package price or (more likely) would be tax-deductible for the ISPs.
And unless Rudd grows the balls to call a double-dissolution, it's only a half-Senate election in any case, so there's only so much shift that can occur. The Senate is our best chance to shaft them on this, but you have to keep the Liberals on the opposition benches in the lower house.
well, it's like that anywhere with a two party-ish system, but the added twist down here is that voting is compulsory, so by and large elections are decided by "swinging" voters who sit in marginal seats (i.e. where margins of victory are 5%). The majority of those seats are in suburban belts around the major cities, and as such there's a strong incentive to appeal to the "won't somebody think of the kids" demographic.
The last 15 years the marginal electorates have had money thrown at them hand over fist, but now that it's become rather obvious there's other angles the politicians are targeting.
That's the wrong way to look at it - more like in Science, the maximum level of confidence is that this is the best we've come up with so far, with no guarantee that there won't be a better explanation later. "Half-wrong" is only so where a better explanation is derived, often from investigating the current explanation in further detail, which demonstrates the previous theory to be invalid somehow - often older theories are good enough approximations but newer theories explain a wider set of circumstances and observed results. That doesn't make the old theory "half wrong".
Ok, not here in Australia - record or film are the verbs used here. To "video" sounds incredibly awkward to my mind, point about film being a noun/verb aside.
(and I knew the Latin meant something along those lines, but Australian English usage doesn't include that)
The arrangement makes a little more sense in Japan, where the circle ("maru") is the symbol for Correct/Yes/OK - and X is the symbol for Wrong/No. Almost all Japanese Playstation games have O as the "confirm" action button and X as cancel. For some reason they flipped it when it went outside Japan.
Sony's marketing materials for PS1 pretty much always had X/O/triangle/square as an order, from memory - anti-clockwise around the controller face.
Point in my mind is the arrangement on the pad with A/B/X/Y is just as arbitrary as the basic shapes. True, the letters hark back to the NES/SNES days but presumably Sony wanted a point of differentiation?
Slashdot Mirror
The maximization of profits is a requirement of law and a desire of the shareholders.
Got a source for that? I don't think the "maximization" of profits is a requirement as such, as I'm sure a few SIVs created by Lehman Bros. were certainly not incorporated with that in mind...
chickens crossed the time barrier to get away from Colonel Sanders, eggs came before chickens.
Now there's a story to be investigating...
Gives a whole new spin to "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."
That is assuming you're looking only for a net benefit to the environment. In this case, the green tech offsets the added capacity which is used for added productivity elsewhere in the economy. You're allowing for more efficient growth, and the net benefit is that the environment wasn't harmed more in the pursuit of growth.
Yes, idealists will argue that we should fix the environment first, but a pragmatist has to recognise that everyone's going to ask along the chain, "what's in it for me?". This way you've paid the solar/wind/geothermal guy so he can go reinvest capital elsewhere, and you've added productive capacity without causing harm. Showing we can stabilise the environment while growing the economy is probably going to the strongest argument for getting sceptics on side - it becomes much more of a "why wouldn't you?" pull than a "you must because" push.
Don't make me woosh you.
Yes. His term expires in June 2011, so the next election will be the last one before his term expires and therefore he is up for the vote.
Where the hell do you get those kind of "facts"? Get this ignorant shit off Slashdot.
Gandhi's goal was for the British to quit India - self-determination for Indians. That's done and dusted, 60 years ago. India certainly wouldn't be better off under the colonial heel of exploitation, the rape of a nation that the British accomplished for 90 years under the Raj.
Oceania's population according to Wikipedia is 0.038 billion, and if you take out Australia which qualifies through Asia you've got 0.017 billion. How does that justify a guaranteed slot in any way? (Note: until this year, Oceania had shared the 5th South American slot, and got soundly trumped on a regular basis).
I'd suspect this bias is more to represent countries than populations - UEFA had 53 teams/countries attempting to qualify; Africa had 52 + the host slot, Central/North America had 35, South America had 10, and Asia 43. Oceania's 10 contenders are mostly made up of the tiny island nations of the pacific and frankly aren't very good, so a guaranteed slot would pretty much be handing the slot to New Zealand every 4 years.
That's a little more valid reason for the bias, though certainly Asia deserves more than 4 and Central-North America more than 3.
Speak Up. Somewhere along the chain, there will be a competent IT manager who knows what this means, and why it is important. If your organisation is good, that'll be from the CTO down, but worst-case you'll get to a "sergeant" kind of level where the manager still deals with the coalface.
If that manager hasn't been notified already by this blog or by someone else reading slashdot, your speaking up will be appreciated. If it's been raised before, you can rest easier knowing there's someone competent around, and you know who to go to next time.
Seriously, what would the harm be in speaking up?
Have you got any source to confirm this or are you just pulling it out of your ass? Why would that not have been made wider knowledge?
Surely the competition commission will be looking at competition between private enterprises and what government is doing to foster that, rather than trying to equialise competition between countries? It's not like tax laws are uniform across the Union to begin with, and it's not as though other Union members don't subsidise or otherwise champion specific industry sectors.
Were the competition commission's approach to be based on consumer interest, the response should be something along the lines of "it's up to you to compete with that." It's not like the UK is dominated by a single developer/studio/publisher, and you can only imagine a tax break like this would encourage further competition.
No, this still looks like dirty lobbying to me.
What genius in the newly-minted government thought, "Oh dear, we might be giving an unfair advantage to a premier entertainment industry sector of the 21st century, we mustn't have that in little old England, what?"
And here I was thinking only the US and Australia had truly effective lobbyists who could convince the government to act in their interests instead of the country's.
So wait, does this mean Magic Eye pictures (remember those?) can make you go blind too?
And while we're at it, is it really such a great idea that almost all the kids movies these days are pushed in 3D?
Skype was owned by eBay.
Fixed that for you. Last year they sold their majority stake in it. See details on Skype Limited on Wikipedia
Don't forget the ponies!
... and they don't allow any other (real) browser on the phone, either. I might be parroting comments from above, but if this was a certain other large technology company the vitriol here would have been through the roof.
Buh? I'm not sure how many more than 140 million consoles Sony could have sold if they'd "had [their] shit together on the PS2". Microsoft's entry into the market with the Xbox was through the sacrificing of roughly $1.5 billion, and the Gamecube was more or less a non-event until the same hardware was repackaged as the Wii.
The reason it's a 3 horse race at the moment is because Sony cocked up with a late delivered and needlessly complex PS3 coming up against a "good enough" Wii and the Xbox 360 taking the early sales lead by a long shot in the US. It's certainly not because of a lack of PS2 success.
Unfortunately that's never going to be how it works - the attorney general is acting on the behalf of the government of Australia, and the government is in turn acting on our (collective) behalf, irrespective of how much we dislike the policy personally.
So we'll end up paying through taxes, yes, but I'd rather that than a bullshit per-user charge that doesn't reflect the true cost, or even a variable charge depending on how much you actually "use" the net, which would be a major baulking point for people.
Thankfully we have a halfway-competent consumer rights commission in the ACCC and as a result regulatory requirements such as mobile number portability, emergency services and even mobile network unlocking are mandated to be free. I'd suspect any such charges would have to be hidden in a total package price or (more likely) would be tax-deductible for the ISPs.
And unless Rudd grows the balls to call a double-dissolution, it's only a half-Senate election in any case, so there's only so much shift that can occur. The Senate is our best chance to shaft them on this, but you have to keep the Liberals on the opposition benches in the lower house.
This election and nation is screwed.
well, it's like that anywhere with a two party-ish system, but the added twist down here is that voting is compulsory, so by and large elections are decided by "swinging" voters who sit in marginal seats (i.e. where margins of victory are 5%). The majority of those seats are in suburban belts around the major cities, and as such there's a strong incentive to appeal to the "won't somebody think of the kids" demographic.
The last 15 years the marginal electorates have had money thrown at them hand over fist, but now that it's become rather obvious there's other angles the politicians are targeting.
That's the wrong way to look at it - more like in Science, the maximum level of confidence is that this is the best we've come up with so far, with no guarantee that there won't be a better explanation later. "Half-wrong" is only so where a better explanation is derived, often from investigating the current explanation in further detail, which demonstrates the previous theory to be invalid somehow - often older theories are good enough approximations but newer theories explain a wider set of circumstances and observed results. That doesn't make the old theory "half wrong".
But would you say "I'll video the event"? or the equivalent, "I'll audio your song"?
I use it as a noun in the sense of "I watched that video of..."
Ok, not here in Australia - record or film are the verbs used here. To "video" sounds incredibly awkward to my mind, point about film being a noun/verb aside.
(and I knew the Latin meant something along those lines, but Australian English usage doesn't include that)
The arrangement makes a little more sense in Japan, where the circle ("maru") is the symbol for Correct/Yes/OK - and X is the symbol for Wrong/No. Almost all Japanese Playstation games have O as the "confirm" action button and X as cancel. For some reason they flipped it when it went outside Japan.
Sony's marketing materials for PS1 pretty much always had X/O/triangle/square as an order, from memory - anti-clockwise around the controller face.
Point in my mind is the arrangement on the pad with A/B/X/Y is just as arbitrary as the basic shapes. True, the letters hark back to the NES/SNES days but presumably Sony wanted a point of differentiation?
"Videos"? I'm sorry, when did "video" become a verb?