Letting the world know you don't care to spend money on a top dollar video card is about as insightful as me saying how I'm not going to smoke crack and kill hookers all day today.
I didn't ask for the comment to get modded up, but apparently some people decided to use their mod points on it, and for that my Karma stash is grateful.
I think you're taking Slashdot a bit too seriously.
There are also people in every company who realize that it's practical to judge the company's actions compared to its competetors. This includes the company down the street that competes for employees, the company in another state that competes for customers, and the other companies around the country that compete for investors. The incentive is to save money by being roughly as good as everybody else. That way you won't lose out in a head-to-head competition.
The problem is that companies have imperfect knowledge of their competetors, and, as the article points out, overseas competetion may be even harder to monitor.
The information needed for innovation is available, however it may be hidden in a non-r&d department. Try asking people who service, install, or support a product, or who provide training services. Once these people are invited to think creatively about the business challenges, lots of great (and cheap) information can be found.
MacOS 7-9 may very well have been better than Windows 3.1, however I would expect that because they came out a few years later.
For stability, I would choose Windows 95 over MacOS 7-9 without a second thought. I admit that isn't saying much.
I really don't know how MacOSX in its latest for-a-fee service patch (10.x.x) stacks up against Windows 2000/XP. I would hope that the folks at Apple would get their act together on the stability front, because I think the classic MacOS GUI is quite user-friendly.
It's a tempting offer. Mine was one of the first to be recalled for the problems you mentioned. In fact, I think I personally convinced Apple support that a recall was needed.
I spent countless hours on the phone with Apple about the issue. My 5300 went back and forth to apple about 4 times. The first time (pre-recall) it was supposedly tested and received a clean bill of health.
I remember saying "I have re-installed the OS from scratch and the machine still crashes unexpectedly. This doesn't happen on other models. THEREFORE, there must be a hardware problem."
The 5300 was a piece of junk. So far, however, you have the highest bid.
Or, you could just fill out the registration form and let it store a cookie on your machine so that you can happily ignore karma-thirsty posts like the parent in the future and just jump straight to the article.
If you don't want to reveal personal information, then lie. At least then the Times can sell more expensive advertising because your privacy-obsessed self falsely claims to earn six figures.
By the way, if you have filled out the NY Times registration with accurate information, then I hope you have realized by now that they are the ones who are causing the voices.
Please reply to this post with the amount that you would pay for my PowerBook 5300 (100MHz PowerPC 603e). It has the grayscale screen and 50MB of ram. I'll throw in an external SCSI CD-ROM and PCMCIA ethernet card. I payed $2300 for the machine in 1995, and the RAM upgrade cost roughly $200 in 1998.
Despite the provocative headline, I don't think Unix can be dead if Linux is alive. Despite the different origins, they are functionally very similar.
Maybe you should have made the headline "Dell CIO Says Closed-Source *n*x is dead". Oh, wait, that might not be quite as good at causing knee-jerk reactions.
Glad to see we're getting off to a mature start.. but I'll continue anyway.
Government has an obligation to regulate infrastructure. Infrastructure is necessary for the functioning of a society. The role of government is to keep society functioning. See a connection?
Government has no such obligation. In a democracy, the people will vote to decide what (if any) role the government should have in regulation of any sort, infrastructure included.
Another factor you've completely ignored is the cost to enter a market. Cost to enter an infrastructure market is astronomical. The first company into the market is virtually guaranteed a de facto monopoly.
Part of what makes people want to invest in new and unproven markets is the very existance of a period of time during which no competetors exist. If you are the first to take the risk and the first to succeed, then you deserve to reap the rewards.
The cost of entry into some markets is high, and in others it's low. That has to do with the amount of equipment and resources needed to begin offering goods/services. As soon as someone new enters an existing market, there will be more pressure on prices, and they will fall. Any alternative is collusion and is against the law.
Do you honestly believe any company is going to spend the money to run their own residential lines and then try to compete with the Bells?
No, and I said no such thing. A company would be silly to try to build a copper wire infrastructure that is nearly a century old. Instead, smart companies would be looking at wireless and other last-mile alternatives.
Aside the fact that the Bells have already recouped their initial investment many times over while the newcomer will be operating in the red for years, the Bells will simply lower their prices for a year or two until the cash strapped upstart fails.
This might be considered abuse of monopoly power. There are laws designed to prevent/discourage this. Of course, since prices will naturally fall due to increased competition, one must ask if lowering prices to discourage market entry isn't a legitimate strategy. The illegality comes into play when it is done specifically to drive another company out of business.
And finally, if something is infrastructure, necessary to the functioning of society, then it is something that people in rural areas are entitled to receive, even if it isn't highly profitable. And that is where government has to step in. If it is only slightly profitable to operate in a rural area, it will take far too long to recoup the initial investment to be considered viable in today's short term profit driven economy.
In order for the government to provide something, it must have consent of the people. If the people agree to pay extra taxes so that rural folks can have DSL, then it's their choice. If politicians make a good case to the people that DSL is going to revolutionize life as we know it but only if everybody has it, then getting the required tax-increases approved won't be an issue. This is called a massive public works project.
Nobody is entitled to DSL. There are towns that don't have a fire department, water, sewer, etc.
If a company fail to capitalize on selling DSL in rural areas due to what you describe contemptiously as the "short term profit driven" economy, then they risk losing the business to another company that realizes what a business opportunity exists.
We do need some rules (such as antitrust) to keep the game fair, but we do not need the government forcing companies to do un-profitable things in order to provide products/services to unprofitable customers. There is a very simple solution: Government should raise taxes and then purchase the goods/services for the intended recipients at a farily negotiated price. If the people aren't willing to pay the tax, then the purchase should not occur. I certainly hope you can see the difference between this scenario and government officials knocking at the door and telling the company "you need to sell x at $y to company z immediately because we said so, or else".
Forcing a monopoly to allow competition is theft, how?
It's not competition. It's as though the government came into your home, told you that your marriage had been annulled, and then forced you to arm wrestle with 3 or 4 other guys to "compete" for your wife's hand in marriage. The justification being that those other guys weren't able to find wives for themselves. That's not competition, it's pure thuggery.
When the government forced the baby bells to share lines with competetors, it lowered the price of broadband. This is sold to the American people as "competition". In fact, the government effectively stole money from the baby bells at the point of a gun.
The government made a mistake by initially creating the monopoly, but the fake competition idea is rediculous.
How Should it work? If the baby bells had a monopoly, then prices would rise and there would be a much greater incentive for someone to develop the next great last mile technology. Why? Because when a monopoly raises prices high enough, it creates a HUGE incentive for someone else to enter the market through technical innovation or a better business model.
The government did the exact opposite of what it should have done. The fake "competition" locked prices down at an artificially low level and blocked the incentive for innovation. Why would you want to invest in research to create a great new broadband technology when broadband is being sold for $30/month? You would be far better off if broadband were being sold at $60 per month and the solution you invented was able to provide it at $30 per month. Now you have a way to make some serious money because lots of people who couldn't afford $60 per month will gladly pay $30/month.
Greed is an interesting word. It seems to imply unjust selfishness. We should all want companies to selfishly make money. When companies stop trying to make money then we all lose out on the new innovations that would have occurred and the fruits of the risks and research dollars that would have been spent had there been more profits.
If the government owned the lines, then in 15 years we'll probably still be using the same lines, instead of the dozens of wireless solutions that will likely naturally emerge out of individuals' and corporations' desire to create a better/cheaper way to provide broadband.
When the government created the initial monopolies held by the baby bells, it created inefficiency by eliminating the competetive forces that would have created an optimal last-mile solution. Now, since the government controls it, burocrats can't wait to divide the spoils among their friends. The best solution is to remove the regulation, let prices rise, and let the incentive for technologically viable alternatives exist.
The high prices would be the giant pot of gold dangling out in front of engineers and companies who would love to reap the spoils. When prices are kept artificially low through government intervention, this great incentive evaporates and all of us are stuck using an inferior infrastructure.
I said don't ever expect a privately owned corporation to provided
universal broadband, at universal cost. A corporation will provide
what it feels like.
Forgive me for being skeptical of your assertions, but what should it provide other than what will bring it the most profit?
A corporation would be stupid to charge the same amount for broadband in a densely populated city as in a rural area. Why? Because with most of the current infrastructure options, there are much greater economies of scale available in cities, and so the cost of operation is lower.
A few things to consider:
If the government provides something at a "discount" it is only because tax dollars have been used to subsidize it. Your tax dollars and mine.
Now to the topic of infrastructure. The fact that the local DSL provider can't sell DSL profitably to everyone means that there is a huge potential for money to be made IF someone figures out a way to provide it profitably. This is the essence of capitalism. There is enormous wealth that awaits the engineer or company who figures out how to use technology to solve problems. Many people may try and fail, but the one who succeeds will be able to patent his/her invention and reap the spoils.
As soon as the government steps in and creates some artificial kind of "competition" by forcing the baby bells to share their infrastructure, that huge incentive is removed. It is utterly vaporized. Now, because the government got involved, the reward for technological innovation is drastically reduced.
I cringe that the idea of forcing baby bells to share lines is called "competition". It is theft, and though it is not at the point of a gun it is just as vulgar.
Re:They hired the best writers around.
on
Salon Asks for Help
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Agreed. But Salon's real heyday was in 2000... back when the writing had a point besides "well now you see, the author is quite intelligent, trendy, and free-thinking"...
I liked the documentary style writing, as well as Camille Paglia's stuff. She stayed strong long after Maureen Dowd resorted to utter self-parody.
You do have a point. I think Microsoft should create a slightly greater incentive for hardware companies to get their drivers signed. One benefit would be that the driver would come with every Windows CD, but other than that the only real pressure Microsoft has is to make it difficult to run unsigned drivers. Sort of a catch-22.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't ask for the comment to get modded up, but apparently some people decided to use their mod points on it, and for that my Karma stash is grateful.
I think you're taking Slashdot a bit too seriously.
And what's in a $200 graphics card after a few months will be in a $50 graphics card in a few more months, at which point I'll buy one.
I know this. The terminology on the urban legend site is what most people (non slashdot readers) call the various pieces of hardware.
One thing that shouldn't be overlooked is this:
There are also people in every company who realize that it's practical to judge the company's actions compared to its competetors. This includes the company down the street that competes for employees, the company in another state that competes for customers, and the other companies around the country that compete for investors. The incentive is to save money by being roughly as good as everybody else. That way you won't lose out in a head-to-head competition.
The problem is that companies have imperfect knowledge of their competetors, and, as the article points out, overseas competetion may be even harder to monitor.
The information needed for innovation is available, however it may be hidden in a non-r&d department. Try asking people who service, install, or support a product, or who provide training services. Once these people are invited to think creatively about the business challenges, lots of great (and cheap) information can be found.
Actually, it seems as though the trend in the US is to invest those precious R&D dollars into massive lawsuits against Microsoft.
I bet you're using the cupholder built into your CPU now.
Fair enough. Those are good points. I would like some kind of modern Mac so that I can try 10.2 for myself.
What exactly are you doing where DLL woes become an issue?
Are you sure that it's Microsoft's fault and not the software vendor's fault?
MacOS 7-9 may very well have been better than Windows 3.1, however I would expect that because they came out a few years later.
For stability, I would choose Windows 95 over MacOS 7-9 without a second thought. I admit that isn't saying much.
I really don't know how MacOSX in its latest for-a-fee service patch (10.x.x) stacks up against Windows 2000/XP. I would hope that the folks at Apple would get their act together on the stability front, because I think the classic MacOS GUI is quite user-friendly.
It's a tempting offer. Mine was one of the first to be recalled for the problems you mentioned. In fact, I think I personally convinced Apple support that a recall was needed.
I spent countless hours on the phone with Apple about the issue. My 5300 went back and forth to apple about 4 times. The first time (pre-recall) it was supposedly tested and received a clean bill of health.
I remember saying "I have re-installed the OS from scratch and the machine still crashes unexpectedly. This doesn't happen on other models. THEREFORE, there must be a hardware problem."
The 5300 was a piece of junk. So far, however, you have the highest bid.
Extension conflicts cause mysterious problems and cause Macs to slow to a crawl or crash unexpectedly.
When the machine crashes, the hard drive won't necessarily repair itself. Soon the machine may be unbootable (I've seen this many many times).
No Jornaling File System, so data loss is prevalent.
Flimsy keyboard construction. I have seen a lot of ibooks with broken keys.
On the bright side, the kids in Maine will likely be forced to develop some tech-support skills.
Or, you could just fill out the registration form and let it store a cookie on your machine so that you can happily ignore karma-thirsty posts like the parent in the future and just jump straight to the article.
If you don't want to reveal personal information, then lie. At least then the Times can sell more expensive advertising because your privacy-obsessed self falsely claims to earn six figures.
By the way, if you have filled out the NY Times registration with accurate information, then I hope you have realized by now that they are the ones who are causing the voices.
Let's test this.
Please reply to this post with the amount that you would pay for my PowerBook 5300 (100MHz PowerPC 603e). It has the grayscale screen and 50MB of ram. I'll throw in an external SCSI CD-ROM and PCMCIA ethernet card. I payed $2300 for the machine in 1995, and the RAM upgrade cost roughly $200 in 1998.
Despite the provocative headline, I don't think Unix can be dead if Linux is alive. Despite the different origins, they are functionally very similar.
Maybe you should have made the headline "Dell CIO Says Closed-Source *n*x is dead". Oh, wait, that might not be quite as good at causing knee-jerk reactions.
Glad to see we're getting off to a mature start.. but I'll continue anyway.
Government has an obligation to regulate infrastructure. Infrastructure is necessary for the functioning of a society. The role of government is to keep society functioning. See a connection?
Government has no such obligation. In a democracy, the people will vote to decide what (if any) role the government should have in regulation of any sort, infrastructure included.
Another factor you've completely ignored is the cost to enter a market. Cost to enter an infrastructure market is astronomical. The first company into the market is virtually guaranteed a de facto monopoly.
Part of what makes people want to invest in new and unproven markets is the very existance of a period of time during which no competetors exist. If you are the first to take the risk and the first to succeed, then you deserve to reap the rewards.
The cost of entry into some markets is high, and in others it's low. That has to do with the amount of equipment and resources needed to begin offering goods/services. As soon as someone new enters an existing market, there will be more pressure on prices, and they will fall. Any alternative is collusion and is against the law.
Do you honestly believe any company is going to spend the money to run their own residential lines and then try to compete with the Bells?
No, and I said no such thing. A company would be silly to try to build a copper wire infrastructure that is nearly a century old. Instead, smart companies would be looking at wireless and other last-mile alternatives.
Aside the fact that the Bells have already recouped their initial investment many times over while the newcomer will be operating in the red for years, the Bells will simply lower their prices for a year or two until the cash strapped upstart fails.
This might be considered abuse of monopoly power. There are laws designed to prevent/discourage this. Of course, since prices will naturally fall due to increased competition, one must ask if lowering prices to discourage market entry isn't a legitimate strategy. The illegality comes into play when it is done specifically to drive another company out of business.
And finally, if something is infrastructure, necessary to the functioning of society, then it is something that people in rural areas are entitled to receive, even if it isn't highly profitable. And that is where government has to step in. If it is only slightly profitable to operate in a rural area, it will take far too long to recoup the initial investment to be considered viable in today's short term profit driven economy.
In order for the government to provide something, it must have consent of the people. If the people agree to pay extra taxes so that rural folks can have DSL, then it's their choice. If politicians make a good case to the people that DSL is going to revolutionize life as we know it but only if everybody has it, then getting the required tax-increases approved won't be an issue. This is called a massive public works project.
Nobody is entitled to DSL. There are towns that don't have a fire department, water, sewer, etc.
If a company fail to capitalize on selling DSL in rural areas due to what you describe contemptiously as the "short term profit driven" economy, then they risk losing the business to another company that realizes what a business opportunity exists.
We do need some rules (such as antitrust) to keep the game fair, but we do not need the government forcing companies to do un-profitable things in order to provide products/services to unprofitable customers. There is a very simple solution: Government should raise taxes and then purchase the goods/services for the intended recipients at a farily negotiated price. If the people aren't willing to pay the tax, then the purchase should not occur. I certainly hope you can see the difference between this scenario and government officials knocking at the door and telling the company "you need to sell x at $y to company z immediately because we said so, or else".
Forcing a monopoly to allow competition is theft, how?
It's not competition. It's as though the government came into your home, told you that your marriage had been annulled, and then forced you to arm wrestle with 3 or 4 other guys to "compete" for your wife's hand in marriage. The justification being that those other guys weren't able to find wives for themselves. That's not competition, it's pure thuggery.
You are absolutely wrong about this.
When the government forced the baby bells to share lines with competetors, it lowered the price of broadband. This is sold to the American people as "competition". In fact, the government effectively stole money from the baby bells at the point of a gun.
The government made a mistake by initially creating the monopoly, but the fake competition idea is rediculous.
How Should it work? If the baby bells had a monopoly, then prices would rise and there would be a much greater incentive for someone to develop the next great last mile technology. Why? Because when a monopoly raises prices high enough, it creates a HUGE incentive for someone else to enter the market through technical innovation or a better business model.
The government did the exact opposite of what it should have done. The fake "competition" locked prices down at an artificially low level and blocked the incentive for innovation. Why would you want to invest in research to create a great new broadband technology when broadband is being sold for $30/month? You would be far better off if broadband were being sold at $60 per month and the solution you invented was able to provide it at $30 per month. Now you have a way to make some serious money because lots of people who couldn't afford $60 per month will gladly pay $30/month.
Greed is an interesting word. It seems to imply unjust selfishness. We should all want companies to selfishly make money. When companies stop trying to make money then we all lose out on the new innovations that would have occurred and the fruits of the risks and research dollars that would have been spent had there been more profits.
When the government created the initial monopolies held by the baby bells, it created inefficiency by eliminating the competetive forces that would have created an optimal last-mile solution. Now, since the government controls it, burocrats can't wait to divide the spoils among their friends. The best solution is to remove the regulation, let prices rise, and let the incentive for technologically viable alternatives exist.
The high prices would be the giant pot of gold dangling out in front of engineers and companies who would love to reap the spoils. When prices are kept artificially low through government intervention, this great incentive evaporates and all of us are stuck using an inferior infrastructure.
Forgive me for being skeptical of your assertions, but what should it provide other than what will bring it the most profit?
A corporation would be stupid to charge the same amount for broadband in a densely populated city as in a rural area. Why? Because with most of the current infrastructure options, there are much greater economies of scale available in cities, and so the cost of operation is lower.
A few things to consider:
If the government provides something at a "discount" it is only because tax dollars have been used to subsidize it. Your tax dollars and mine.
Now to the topic of infrastructure. The fact that the local DSL provider can't sell DSL profitably to everyone means that there is a huge potential for money to be made IF someone figures out a way to provide it profitably. This is the essence of capitalism. There is enormous wealth that awaits the engineer or company who figures out how to use technology to solve problems. Many people may try and fail, but the one who succeeds will be able to patent his/her invention and reap the spoils.
As soon as the government steps in and creates some artificial kind of "competition" by forcing the baby bells to share their infrastructure, that huge incentive is removed. It is utterly vaporized. Now, because the government got involved, the reward for technological innovation is drastically reduced.
I cringe that the idea of forcing baby bells to share lines is called "competition". It is theft, and though it is not at the point of a gun it is just as vulgar.
The Swarm Development Group
SFI
Complex Systems
Agreed. But Salon's real heyday was in 2000... back when the writing had a point besides "well now you see, the author is quite intelligent, trendy, and free-thinking"...
I liked the documentary style writing, as well as Camille Paglia's stuff. She stayed strong long after Maureen Dowd resorted to utter self-parody.
Hams have also frequently used these balloons for lifting massive quantities of wire for 160M antenna farms.
This might not be the best idea during the Orange Alert.
You do have a point. I think Microsoft should create a slightly greater incentive for hardware companies to get their drivers signed. One benefit would be that the driver would come with every Windows CD, but other than that the only real pressure Microsoft has is to make it difficult to run unsigned drivers. Sort of a catch-22.
No, just that you would take the time to have the facts at your disposal before spouting FUD.
rtfa