Yes but you're the ideal 'unlimited' customer. You do most of your data on WiFi and don't really use much otherwise while traveling.
The 'bad' unlimited customer is a road warrior that has work VPN running for 8-10 hours a day and personal streaming, netflix, torrents, downloads, etc. running the remainder of his/her personal time. My office PC has pushed 4.3GB in the past 6 days for example. It might be a bit less if I was on a cellular connection but...not by much.
The short answer? The stock market. No really, no tin-foil hats here.
It's become a race to the bottom in order to push the stock prices up. It's not even ROI anymore. The balance sheet for a corporation has more in common with the matrix computers than your checkbook...but if the symbols line up just right you win (and your stock price goes up). Cut 10% of your workforce (even if they're actively earning money) and your numbers look immediately better. Stock price typically goes up.
Why?
Companies are run by their senior staff and board members; All of whom receive large stock-based compensation and/or typically have large holdings in the company. So laying off a bunch of hard working people or doing other shitty things even if your company is doing just fine...suddenly starts to make sense. If you own 12 million shares and cutting a department or two pushes up the stock price a buck you just make $12 million. The board is probably thrilled with you and increase your bonus this year by another 100k shares or something on top of it.
So the same game applies to stuff like patents and apps and whatnot. It's all about swinging the bigger dick and look like you're running your competition out of business. Doesn't matter if you do or not. Doesn't matter if you put a bunch of people out of work. Doesn't matter if you have a stupid. Stock price goes up? Execs win.
Granted most other people lose in the process. Buy hey, we don't count.
Not only that, but Apple *does* do a ridiculous amount of engineering in all their devices. While they don't have a dominating % of the market anymore... the % they do have is still immense in absolute numbers and since the number of different models they offer is small... each of those gets far more attention/money/engineering than most others.
I'm not particularly a fan or hater but will say their devices pretty much always fall under the 'premium' heading. That doesn't mean there aren't sometimes shortcomings or design flaws...but they sure as shit make them pretty:)
Right now they surely are production-constrained, however with that comes some financial constraint. Limited income means it's costly to throw money at things that aren't yet necessary (or can be had for free). Yes there's $bajillions backing them as/if/when needed...but having that much $ is indicative of knowing when, and what NOT, to spend it.
Why pay for advertising when you don't have enough product to sell? Why not 'fight the good fight' and get all your press for free so people are lined up waiting for when you DO have products finally sell? Spend the advertising dollars on lawsuits you'd have to fight anyhow. People listen to stories about your company/cars... then flip channels when news pauses for GM/ford/etc. commercials. You build the brand...and continue to remain production-constrained with minimal advertising spend.
People will line up to jump through hoops - if there are hoops.
'All over' is relative...and last I checked the US didn't even have the capability of getting astronauts to their own* space station much less the moon.
It's pretty pathetic how far backwards we have slid in some regards. The/original/ space race took 14 years to land a man on the moon and now they're aiming for roughly the same time frame to do it again?
I used to be a WoW fanatic even back before the first expansion. It was grueling in some ways until you discovered some of the shortcuts, easier ways, and ultimately found a good guild. You had to actually pay attention to learn...and typically were rewarded with a good experience if you have a group reasonably adept at the same.
Then all the easy-way-out things came along. Forget tricky shortcuts or easier ways to level or learning the pattern of mining nodes to run...now you could just throw gold at most of the problems and grind the others. I stuck around for 2 expansions if memory serves, left, came back a while, left again, came back to play a few hours killing time and realized it just wasn't fun anymore. Everything had to be equal like between squabbling children. Seemed like they painted an I-WIN button over the grind button.
Buy hey...keep paying! Buy this, buy that...etc. No thanks. Somewhere along the way I shrugged off the MMO world and found better games to play in RL (and no, not sports). I'll stick to hard but short-lived games games like the old 8-bit days (or kill some time with candy crush) and call it a day if I get bored.
Yes and we see what free education did for your math skills... ~62% overall taxation rate since sales tax is only effectively levied on the remaining money after paying income tax..52 + ((1-.52)*.21) =.62
On a larger scale, the US wants to be a faux socialist democratic country. In reality we just tax the people and companies who can't afford to avoid paying taxes. Wonderful example - Steve Jobs' wife didn't have to pay income tax on the $billions in stock grants her husband earned during his tenure at apple. Lovely eh?
Not only that...but if EVs were ubiquitous then chargers in parking lots would be (nearly) equally so. Right now there's no reason for big-box stores, parking garages, etc. to equip more than a very small number of spots with chargers (if any at all).
If 10% of the cars that used a parking garage in a major city were EVs you can bet they'd offer to plug them in for the day for a few bucks. Maybe not supercharger speed but even a regular plug for the 8 hours most people work would put some decent charger into the battery.
As the market demands, the demand will be met and some will surely make money off it. That money may be indirect (shoppers in our store get free charging) or direct (swipe your card for $x per hr/wkh/etc) from companies. Anyone who things this one happen doesn't understand entrepreneurship.
Honestly if the wireless charging standards would get un-stupid we wouldn't need the charging cables to begin with. There's not much reason you couldn't build a recovery method via BT or WiFi instead of wired either.
Heck, I still don't know why someone hasn't done a mag-safe type USB. Oh yah...patent law. See how that's promoting innovation? (sorry, frustration...not troll attempt)
Yah, but that's basic mechanical pins to hold the connector. Pretty much every small connector has them in some form or another. Even if they fail, it just means the plug can fall out...but it will still work.
Actually Apple makes a large profit on each device sold...so yes there are more relaxed cost constraints but it's not like they're eeking by and just barely making money on these.
The actual savings comes from Apples immense and immensely simplified manufacturing. Not only do they sell eleventeen billion of ONE product SKU (ok, some colors or extra flash but that's NBD). So Apple doesn't order 20% of battery A, 40% of battery B, 10% of C, etc....they order eleventeen billion of ONE battery. At that point they get it custom made to exactly what they want and for a substantial discount...they're well known for buying the entire factory output of a certain product for a given time. That's a big reason why the original iPod was the only device so small...they effectively (and realistically) bought the entire production of 1.8" hard drives.
Yes, they do use good materials and have extremely tight tolerances. Efficiency of scale. It's funny though, some people have chronic problems with connectors and cables - complaining about lightning, 30-pin, mini/micro-USB, etc. I never see to break my cables or connectors. Like...ever. I seriously have no idea what 'these people' are doing. I don't baby my electronics either!
I'm pretty sure at this rate the Falcon 9 beats every other space delivery system in cost by far (both development and recurring) and reliability (so far at least).
Granted they've had the entire history of space exploration as a guide towards their design...but then again any other company in the space game has access to at least the same information. I'm pretty sure the contractors and companies that built the shuttle and other rockets actually have significantly MORE information than is publicly available on top of it.
Yet who do we see actually DOING this? Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. It amazes me that the 'leadership' in the US can't understand that basic axiom.
You can thank how easily and readily the news are manipulated for this type of nonsense.
"NASA buys rocket launches from SpaceX with tax dollars. Therefore tax dollars fund SpaceX. Therefore SpaceX should be subject to the same scrutiny as any government-funded project"
Derp.
Apply the same logic to the other option - buying launches from Russia - and see how hard they laugh. Oh wait...didn't they stop or curtail launches for the US already because we're being assholes?
If the SpaceX rocket is obsolete(or too trouble-prone), all other rockets in the world are also. To make a space rocket which is not already obsolete (or too trouble-prone) requires trillions of dollars*. No one has come up with a way to build a practical space rocket which is not complicated and expensive.
*actually if you build the thing on your own instead of doing things the "right" way per the US gov't you can drop that by a few orders of magnitude.
Technically if you have more people competing for a smaller pool of jobs, then H1B shouldn't come into it.
If you're talking about H1B's competing for the job...well the salary should already be set at 'market rates' per the H1B process.
So...US jobs don't get priced lower as a result. Since the job is so critical and they can't find candidates it typically would be at the high end of the cap. They would even pay MORE because the position is for a highly sought engineer.
Right?...
Right?
Bueller?
Oh...right. Sarcasm. This is why H1B needs to just die a fiery death.
The H1B program means you have to hire a qualified, eligible local person before importing...however it's stupidly easy to disqualify candidates. A rule like this one? Yep...pretty sure it's legit as far as H1B regulations are concerned. Now that's it's gotten some spotlight it might not fly as well...but that assumes the media keeps covering it long enough to matter.
The H1B program has so many loopholes it's laughable. It's a bold-faced lie directly covering up exactly what we all know it really is. If there really were a shortage of engineers...I'd say the last 15-20 years would be long enough to rectify the situation. Hell, if there was REAL demand and that many GOOD paying jobs it'd be worth going back for a 4-year education and changing careers. But no...this is not about actual shortages as we all know.
With that said...aren't the majority of the Nokia folks outside the US anyhow?
I can't stand the 'exclusive' bullshit that networks and providers are playing lately. You try to edge out other providers so people 'have' to use your service? Nahhhhhh....
It's kind of funny that Netflix/hulu/etc. won't compete on service or ease of use or price or etc. but instead play exclusivity games. If you want XYZ you HAVE to use us. (ok, they phrase it differently)
Paypal was unique and groundbreaking in it's day. I would certainly be proud of it.
Imperfect? Sure. Still is for that matter. How they managed to avoid getting classified as a bank is beyond me (tin hat: backroom deals to provide info to TLAs)
How eBay's using it now is obnoxious and abusive for sure.
Agreed. Despite plenty of unnecessary/unrealistic opposition he continues to Get Shit Done.
Oh, Tesla cars... yah but let's try to make your dealerships illegal.
Rockets? Welllllllll......we *might* let you launch them from your own space. Maybe. Oh...you might take them out of the country? NVM...here some some approvals.
I'm not saying give the guy carte blanche but his track record is pretty impressive even despite the artificial barriers thrown up in front of his work. I mean...when he's delivering cargo for NASA that they simply *CANNOT* deliver as they lack the equipment to do so AND doing it for less money AND making some profit in the process?
And then you have the option of just... stealing the scrip pads assuming you don't bother to forge one. It's not rocket science by any stretch - and that's assuming the pharmacist bothers to check it.
If they think anything sketchy is going on they call the Dr to confirm...typically via the number on the scrip. Derp. Also pharmacists in chain stores are often assholes...oh you have a scrip for opiates or amphetamines? And tattoos? Yeah...uh huh. Right. We're going to have to call this in. Come back tomorrow.
Or you go to a mom and pop place where the biggest problem is if they have it in stock.
Or if you *really* want to get the evil eye...try filling a scrip like that without insurance. "No, I'll pay for that oxy in cash please" Good luck...
Agreed. Most POs are (or should be) there to help keep the peace. Deal with the drunken idiot. Handle the domestic violence case. Block traffic around the accident.
When someone with body armor and a rifle perches atop a building and starts shooting people... having the gallant POs rush in will get more people hurt, not less.
SWAT has it's place - against truly dangerous situations akin to urban warfare. We don't want the military operating on US soil so we need something that can handle those types of situations.
That's an interesting thought. You can still sue a governmental agency but as far as I know there's a wholly different set of protections and limitations when it comes to suing cops vs. private corporations.
I'd also question the legality of them acting as government agents (i.e. cops who arrest/detail/etc.) if they're a private corporation. Last I heard private security does NOT have the same powers as police. Not even close.
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Yes but you're the ideal 'unlimited' customer. You do most of your data on WiFi and don't really use much otherwise while traveling.
The 'bad' unlimited customer is a road warrior that has work VPN running for 8-10 hours a day and personal streaming, netflix, torrents, downloads, etc. running the remainder of his/her personal time. My office PC has pushed 4.3GB in the past 6 days for example. It might be a bit less if I was on a cellular connection but...not by much.
The short answer? The stock market. No really, no tin-foil hats here.
It's become a race to the bottom in order to push the stock prices up. It's not even ROI anymore. The balance sheet for a corporation has more in common with the matrix computers than your checkbook...but if the symbols line up just right you win (and your stock price goes up). Cut 10% of your workforce (even if they're actively earning money) and your numbers look immediately better. Stock price typically goes up.
Why?
Companies are run by their senior staff and board members; All of whom receive large stock-based compensation and/or typically have large holdings in the company. So laying off a bunch of hard working people or doing other shitty things even if your company is doing just fine...suddenly starts to make sense. If you own 12 million shares and cutting a department or two pushes up the stock price a buck you just make $12 million. The board is probably thrilled with you and increase your bonus this year by another 100k shares or something on top of it.
So the same game applies to stuff like patents and apps and whatnot. It's all about swinging the bigger dick and look like you're running your competition out of business. Doesn't matter if you do or not. Doesn't matter if you put a bunch of people out of work. Doesn't matter if you have a stupid. Stock price goes up? Execs win.
Granted most other people lose in the process. Buy hey, we don't count.
Not only that, but Apple *does* do a ridiculous amount of engineering in all their devices. While they don't have a dominating % of the market anymore ... the % they do have is still immense in absolute numbers and since the number of different models they offer is small ... each of those gets far more attention/money/engineering than most others.
I'm not particularly a fan or hater but will say their devices pretty much always fall under the 'premium' heading. That doesn't mean there aren't sometimes shortcomings or design flaws...but they sure as shit make them pretty :)
I'm not sure about that...
Right now they surely are production-constrained, however with that comes some financial constraint. Limited income means it's costly to throw money at things that aren't yet necessary (or can be had for free). Yes there's $bajillions backing them as/if/when needed...but having that much $ is indicative of knowing when, and what NOT, to spend it.
Why pay for advertising when you don't have enough product to sell? Why not 'fight the good fight' and get all your press for free so people are lined up waiting for when you DO have products finally sell? Spend the advertising dollars on lawsuits you'd have to fight anyhow. People listen to stories about your company/cars ... then flip channels when news pauses for GM/ford/etc. commercials. You build the brand...and continue to remain production-constrained with minimal advertising spend.
People will line up to jump through hoops - if there are hoops.
'All over' is relative...and last I checked the US didn't even have the capability of getting astronauts to their own* space station much less the moon.
It's pretty pathetic how far backwards we have slid in some regards. The /original/ space race took 14 years to land a man on the moon and now they're aiming for roughly the same time frame to do it again?
I used to be a WoW fanatic even back before the first expansion. It was grueling in some ways until you discovered some of the shortcuts, easier ways, and ultimately found a good guild. You had to actually pay attention to learn...and typically were rewarded with a good experience if you have a group reasonably adept at the same.
Then all the easy-way-out things came along. Forget tricky shortcuts or easier ways to level or learning the pattern of mining nodes to run...now you could just throw gold at most of the problems and grind the others. I stuck around for 2 expansions if memory serves, left, came back a while, left again, came back to play a few hours killing time and realized it just wasn't fun anymore. Everything had to be equal like between squabbling children. Seemed like they painted an I-WIN button over the grind button.
Buy hey...keep paying! Buy this, buy that...etc. No thanks. Somewhere along the way I shrugged off the MMO world and found better games to play in RL (and no, not sports). I'll stick to hard but short-lived games games like the old 8-bit days (or kill some time with candy crush) and call it a day if I get bored.
Yes and we see what free education did for your math skills ... ~62% overall taxation rate since sales tax is only effectively levied on the remaining money after paying income tax. .52 + ((1-.52)*.21) = .62
On a larger scale, the US wants to be a faux socialist democratic country. In reality we just tax the people and companies who can't afford to avoid paying taxes. Wonderful example - Steve Jobs' wife didn't have to pay income tax on the $billions in stock grants her husband earned during his tenure at apple. Lovely eh?
Not only that...but if EVs were ubiquitous then chargers in parking lots would be (nearly) equally so. Right now there's no reason for big-box stores, parking garages, etc. to equip more than a very small number of spots with chargers (if any at all).
If 10% of the cars that used a parking garage in a major city were EVs you can bet they'd offer to plug them in for the day for a few bucks. Maybe not supercharger speed but even a regular plug for the 8 hours most people work would put some decent charger into the battery.
As the market demands, the demand will be met and some will surely make money off it. That money may be indirect (shoppers in our store get free charging) or direct (swipe your card for $x per hr/wkh/etc) from companies. Anyone who things this one happen doesn't understand entrepreneurship.
If both those claims are equally accurate...it about jives with my experience as well
Honestly if the wireless charging standards would get un-stupid we wouldn't need the charging cables to begin with. There's not much reason you couldn't build a recovery method via BT or WiFi instead of wired either.
Heck, I still don't know why someone hasn't done a mag-safe type USB. Oh yah...patent law. See how that's promoting innovation? (sorry, frustration...not troll attempt)
Yah, but that's basic mechanical pins to hold the connector. Pretty much every small connector has them in some form or another. Even if they fail, it just means the plug can fall out...but it will still work.
Actually Apple makes a large profit on each device sold...so yes there are more relaxed cost constraints but it's not like they're eeking by and just barely making money on these.
The actual savings comes from Apples immense and immensely simplified manufacturing. Not only do they sell eleventeen billion of ONE product SKU (ok, some colors or extra flash but that's NBD). So Apple doesn't order 20% of battery A, 40% of battery B, 10% of C, etc....they order eleventeen billion of ONE battery. At that point they get it custom made to exactly what they want and for a substantial discount...they're well known for buying the entire factory output of a certain product for a given time. That's a big reason why the original iPod was the only device so small...they effectively (and realistically) bought the entire production of 1.8" hard drives.
Yes, they do use good materials and have extremely tight tolerances. Efficiency of scale. It's funny though, some people have chronic problems with connectors and cables - complaining about lightning, 30-pin, mini/micro-USB, etc. I never see to break my cables or connectors. Like...ever. I seriously have no idea what 'these people' are doing. I don't baby my electronics either!
I'm pretty sure at this rate the Falcon 9 beats every other space delivery system in cost by far (both development and recurring) and reliability (so far at least).
Granted they've had the entire history of space exploration as a guide towards their design...but then again any other company in the space game has access to at least the same information. I'm pretty sure the contractors and companies that built the shuttle and other rockets actually have significantly MORE information than is publicly available on top of it.
Yet who do we see actually DOING this? Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. It amazes me that the 'leadership' in the US can't understand that basic axiom.
You can thank how easily and readily the news are manipulated for this type of nonsense.
"NASA buys rocket launches from SpaceX with tax dollars. Therefore tax dollars fund SpaceX. Therefore SpaceX should be subject to the same scrutiny as any government-funded project"
Derp.
Apply the same logic to the other option - buying launches from Russia - and see how hard they laugh. Oh wait...didn't they stop or curtail launches for the US already because we're being assholes?
...especially not to another of Elon's companies.
Sometimes the best measure of success is how hard other people try to hold you back or stop you.
If the SpaceX rocket is obsolete(or too trouble-prone), all other rockets in the world are also. To make a space rocket which is not already obsolete (or too trouble-prone) requires trillions of dollars*. No one has come up with a way to build a practical space rocket which is not complicated and expensive.
*actually if you build the thing on your own instead of doing things the "right" way per the US gov't you can drop that by a few orders of magnitude.
Technically if you have more people competing for a smaller pool of jobs, then H1B shouldn't come into it.
If you're talking about H1B's competing for the job...well the salary should already be set at 'market rates' per the H1B process.
So...US jobs don't get priced lower as a result. Since the job is so critical and they can't find candidates it typically would be at the high end of the cap. They would even pay MORE because the position is for a highly sought engineer.
Right? ...
Right?
Bueller?
Oh...right. Sarcasm. This is why H1B needs to just die a fiery death.
Yes and no.
The H1B program means you have to hire a qualified, eligible local person before importing...however it's stupidly easy to disqualify candidates. A rule like this one? Yep...pretty sure it's legit as far as H1B regulations are concerned. Now that's it's gotten some spotlight it might not fly as well...but that assumes the media keeps covering it long enough to matter.
The H1B program has so many loopholes it's laughable. It's a bold-faced lie directly covering up exactly what we all know it really is. If there really were a shortage of engineers...I'd say the last 15-20 years would be long enough to rectify the situation. Hell, if there was REAL demand and that many GOOD paying jobs it'd be worth going back for a 4-year education and changing careers. But no...this is not about actual shortages as we all know.
With that said...aren't the majority of the Nokia folks outside the US anyhow?
All this will increase is torrent traffic.
I can't stand the 'exclusive' bullshit that networks and providers are playing lately. You try to edge out other providers so people 'have' to use your service? Nahhhhhh....
It's kind of funny that Netflix/hulu/etc. won't compete on service or ease of use or price or etc. but instead play exclusivity games. If you want XYZ you HAVE to use us. (ok, they phrase it differently)
Screw you guys, I'm goin home.
Paypal was unique and groundbreaking in it's day. I would certainly be proud of it.
Imperfect? Sure. Still is for that matter. How they managed to avoid getting classified as a bank is beyond me (tin hat: backroom deals to provide info to TLAs)
How eBay's using it now is obnoxious and abusive for sure.
Agreed. Despite plenty of unnecessary/unrealistic opposition he continues to Get Shit Done.
Oh, Tesla cars ... yah but let's try to make your dealerships illegal.
Rockets? Welllllllll......we *might* let you launch them from your own space. Maybe. Oh...you might take them out of the country? NVM...here some some approvals.
I'm not saying give the guy carte blanche but his track record is pretty impressive even despite the artificial barriers thrown up in front of his work. I mean...when he's delivering cargo for NASA that they simply *CANNOT* deliver as they lack the equipment to do so AND doing it for less money AND making some profit in the process?
Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. :)
And then you have the option of just ... stealing the scrip pads assuming you don't bother to forge one. It's not rocket science by any stretch - and that's assuming the pharmacist bothers to check it.
If they think anything sketchy is going on they call the Dr to confirm...typically via the number on the scrip. Derp. Also pharmacists in chain stores are often assholes...oh you have a scrip for opiates or amphetamines? And tattoos? Yeah...uh huh. Right. We're going to have to call this in. Come back tomorrow.
Or you go to a mom and pop place where the biggest problem is if they have it in stock.
Or if you *really* want to get the evil eye...try filling a scrip like that without insurance. "No, I'll pay for that oxy in cash please" Good luck...
Actually that's EXACTLY what bloomberg suggested at one point.
If nothing else, it shows how utterly out of touch with reality that man is.
Agreed. Most POs are (or should be) there to help keep the peace. Deal with the drunken idiot. Handle the domestic violence case. Block traffic around the accident.
When someone with body armor and a rifle perches atop a building and starts shooting people ... having the gallant POs rush in will get more people hurt, not less.
SWAT has it's place - against truly dangerous situations akin to urban warfare. We don't want the military operating on US soil so we need something that can handle those types of situations.
That's an interesting thought. You can still sue a governmental agency but as far as I know there's a wholly different set of protections and limitations when it comes to suing cops vs. private corporations.
I'd also question the legality of them acting as government agents (i.e. cops who arrest/detail/etc.) if they're a private corporation. Last I heard private security does NOT have the same powers as police. Not even close.