They design, they don't fab. Just like PA Semi which Apple bought earlier. Apple designs products and product components but then outsources their manufacture. They aren't interested (so far) in owning fabrication plants. They can be more agile if they can switch manufacturers as their requirements change.
I was gonna say. I find that my bug productivity - buggery, you might call it - goes way up in these months. They are great months for writing buggy code.
That is the origin of Mitt's thinking, yes. It's the single worst decision they ever made in that it creates a grave threat to personal freedom and the healthy functioning of democracy. The fact that a few managers, not shareholders, can take money invested for an economic enterprise and spend it on their political agenda without their consent is appalling. As a shareholder, I've never been asked for or given consent to any political spending.
Your home brew is not a product from Dell or HP is it? You built it yourself. Hardly a comparison. I was comparing Apple to other computer manufacturers. If your labor is free (to you) and you are crafty and able to get the parts at good prices you can do better especially when you start loading up the upgrades. You won't have support of course. You'll be assuming the risk that some parts won't play well with other, drivers etc. The labor, risk and lack of support are costs too though different people value them differently. Most people aren't computer nerds so they won't want to take the same path as you. Tell me, can you build a laptop with 6 hours of battery life and all the other specs including weight and form factor of a Macbook Air or do you think that a plastic box with a monitor attached is the same thing?
No Apple product is half as good as anything from HP, Dell, IBM or Sony (though IBM doesn't make PCs anymore). Apple products are at least twice as good as products from these companies that are intended to compete with theirs.
You are confusing a market with a market economy. "Market economy" is a term used in the field of economics. It actually means something fairly specific though it applies a broad range of economies with widely varying degrees of government involvement. The term "market" refers to the relative importance of the market, i.e. the private sector versus government in controlling investments. Its a more useful description than "capitalist" or "capitalism". By your logic one would argue that all economies are are capitalist because you must have capital in order to have an economy.
You are confusing socialism with totalitarianism. There are democratic socialist countries. I prefer a market economy myself and I agree that government control of the economy inherently limits the potential freedom of its citizens, but so do oligarchies and cartels. It is possible to have a market economy under an authoritarian regime as well. The combination of a representative government and a market economy has the greatest potential to maximize freedom, but that depends on so many conditions its almost theoretical.
The press loves to get people all worked up about data mining. Data mining itself is not an invasion of privacy. At that point you are just an anonymous set of attributes. The purpose of data mining is to understand and discover the relationships that exist among different data. It's an analysis performed on a large body of data from a large population or it doesn't work. Your personal identity is not important or useful for its purpose. Targeted advertising isn't an invasion either even if it uses information you've provided along with relationships discovered in data mining to try to put something in front of you that you may be interested in. That's actually a service. Facebook or Google are capable of providing targeted ads without providing your information to the advertisers or any other third party. The merely need to match the ads they display on your page to your characteristics. Do you think Google shares your gmail e-mails with others in order to target advertising to you based on an email's content? An invasion of privacy happens when without your permission the information you've entered is sold or given to others to use. That is what should require an "opt in" from the user. That isn't an internet specific thing either. Every company or institution that collects information from you as part of a transaction should be so restricted.
Spot on. I hate my carrier. I don't like the carrier I'll be moving to in October, but their reception is much better. There is no way in hell I'd want them providing me this service. I want something portable across devices and carriers and run by a regulated financial services company.
provides random responses to input? I can imagine loading it with a bunch of facts and it ignoring all them while it launches into an angry rant and conspiracy theories. I get that at Slashdot already.
I was responding more to your generalization about "military attitude" and the "book". Someone wrote that the military always prepares to fight the last war which is similar in sentiment to what you wrote. The first problem with that is that it's really the military of the winning side that tends to prepare the last war. The losers innovate. However, since Vietnam, the U.S. Military has worked very hard to not repeat this mistake. They've been very good at it as long as next enemy has been identified so they can analyze the threat and come up with ways of defeating it. The realm of "cyberspace" (I hate that term) is still sort of a sideshow for them like posting guards around a military base or arms depot. They and their civilian bosses haven't yet bought into the idea that the sort of threat exists here that could be far more than annoyance. So they focus on enemies they know can kill us versus threats that can annoy us. Frankly, I don't see that the "cyber threat" is our biggest worry either. I'm wondering why we aren't building a national intranet for infrastructure, finance and government that is separate from the internet. Leave the internet to be the playground, shopping mall and public library for civilians.
No one will ever need more than 640k. - Bill Gates (paraphrased)
Being wrong != being an idiot.
The U.S. military is capable of some amazingly original and innovative thinking. It is also capable of rigid, reactive idiocy. I'm a veteran, have relatives currently in the military and I've worked with the military on a couple of projects. There isn't "an overall attitude" other than "accomplish the mission". If cyber security were seen as "a mission" with definitions for "victory" and "defeat" they'd be right on it. In the meantime they've got enemies with bombs, chemicals and guns to worry about. How do we get the politicians and the military to see cyber security in this light before a cyber security disaster occurs?
RIM's Blackberry and Nokia's internet phones had their fans, but neither took off with the general population. These were devices with some computer like capabilities. The iPhone along with the Palm and Android phones are computers with phone capabilities. Very few Blackberry users accessed the internet and they bought few apps if any. Most weren't even aware that they could. The users of Nokia's internet phones didn't buy a lot of apps or have any major impact on the industry as a whole. They were (are) good devices according to what their users say about them. Microsoft's efforts were not inspiring. What Apple did however changed everything around the world. Now RIM is trying to copy Apple and they aren't very good at it so they are withering away. The better Android manufacturers are doing very well and there is hope for Palm now it has access to HP's credit cards. Even Microsoft is tagging along hoping for some success. (I've seen Win 7 for Phones and it's pretty nice.)
RIM's value proposition was always their secure messaging. A secondary proposition was their enterprise management. There weren't good alternatives for a long time. What changed was the wider availability of 2 and 3G internet access and the availability of internet technologies that could duplicate RIM's secure messaging functionality without proprietary infrastructure. Apple capitalized on that. It was there and it was coming, but Apple was the first to recognize its potential and deliver something that would use it and excite a lot of consumers by providing a strong supporting ecosystem and the best in class marketing. So, my point is that investors and corporations around the world play very close attention to what Apple does. Their track record is too strong to ignore. Quantity doesn't matter in this case.
Quantity is more important? How? To whom? Investors care about profitability. GM used to have the largest market share. Toyota broke their own rules in order to surpass GM in quantity and it's severely damaged their reputation for quality as well as resulted in huge losses for the company. Smaller, more focused auto companies in the meantime were making money while maintaining or improving quality.
Apple's influence is huge across IT and the industry. It's market share is now just under 11% of PCs in the US, but if you subtract out the no-margin corporate market, Apple has a much larger share of the individual and education markets. Also, it's individual consumers have more disposable income and better education then those of their rivals. Apple has dramatically changed the industry first with the iPhone and then the iPad. Their influence on Microsoft has is huge as well. Where did Windows come from? (Apple code licensed by Microsoft.) The point is that Apple's reputation for correctly predicting consumer demand and being the first to ship hugely successful products has been noticed by all of its competitors as well as consumers. Smartphones took off after the iPhone, not before. Their rivals are all investing heavily in trying to compete with the iPad.
If you used logic and reason and got your facts fairly straight then you aren't a hater in my book. If you write things like "xxx sucks!" or "it's crap" or "only idiots would want that thing" then you are probably a hater because you haven't made an argument. I can tell you what I like and don't like about an iPad and what it is or isn't good for - in my view. A fanboi would be content to say that it was perfect for everything. The hater would say "it sucks".
We see it all the time here. There are rabid fans of this or that company and there are rabid haters of the same. Both groups are sick and pathetic and, I believe, doing pretty much the same thing. The problem at slashdot is that people who like or defend a product or company and who are being fairly rational and objective are often dismissed as "fanbois" by the haters. I see a lot more haters at slashdot than I do real fanbois. Most real fanbois are probably more comfortable staying with the sites where their views aren't questioned. I suppose the haters enjoy their group thinking at slashdot.
Also, the software was taken from the Exchange, not the investors. Investors pay to have their trades made through the Exchange. The Exchange just facilitates the transaction. CME is more like the casino, not the gamblers.
All the major technology companies either outsource (Apple, HP) or own manufacturing facilities in China and other third world countries. Many source from the same manufacturing plants that produce Apple's products. Apple at least inspects working conditions and releases the findings to the public as well as working to either get the problems corrected or quit doing business with the suppliers. You don't hear about problems at the Dell, HP, etc. subcontractors because if they do inspect, they don't report to the public on the problems they find.
BTW, Apple products are very fast and often are at the top of the benchmarks, but you wouldn't know that since you are too outraged to use them. The Macbook Pro has consistently tested as the fastest laptop in Windows benchmarks.
Slashdot Mirror
They design, they don't fab. Just like PA Semi which Apple bought earlier. Apple designs products and product components but then outsources their manufacture. They aren't interested (so far) in owning fabrication plants. They can be more agile if they can switch manufacturers as their requirements change.
I was gonna say. I find that my bug productivity - buggery, you might call it - goes way up in these months. They are great months for writing buggy code.
That is the origin of Mitt's thinking, yes. It's the single worst decision they ever made in that it creates a grave threat to personal freedom and the healthy functioning of democracy. The fact that a few managers, not shareholders, can take money invested for an economic enterprise and spend it on their political agenda without their consent is appalling. As a shareholder, I've never been asked for or given consent to any political spending.
Because "corporations are people too". (Mitt Romney)
Your home brew is not a product from Dell or HP is it? You built it yourself. Hardly a comparison. I was comparing Apple to other computer manufacturers. If your labor is free (to you) and you are crafty and able to get the parts at good prices you can do better especially when you start loading up the upgrades. You won't have support of course. You'll be assuming the risk that some parts won't play well with other, drivers etc. The labor, risk and lack of support are costs too though different people value them differently. Most people aren't computer nerds so they won't want to take the same path as you. Tell me, can you build a laptop with 6 hours of battery life and all the other specs including weight and form factor of a Macbook Air or do you think that a plastic box with a monitor attached is the same thing?
No Apple product is half as good as anything from HP, Dell, IBM or Sony (though IBM doesn't make PCs anymore). Apple products are at least twice as good as products from these companies that are intended to compete with theirs.
You are confusing a market with a market economy. "Market economy" is a term used in the field of economics. It actually means something fairly specific though it applies a broad range of economies with widely varying degrees of government involvement. The term "market" refers to the relative importance of the market, i.e. the private sector versus government in controlling investments. Its a more useful description than "capitalist" or "capitalism". By your logic one would argue that all economies are are capitalist because you must have capital in order to have an economy.
You are confusing socialism with totalitarianism. There are democratic socialist countries. I prefer a market economy myself and I agree that government control of the economy inherently limits the potential freedom of its citizens, but so do oligarchies and cartels. It is possible to have a market economy under an authoritarian regime as well. The combination of a representative government and a market economy has the greatest potential to maximize freedom, but that depends on so many conditions its almost theoretical.
The press loves to get people all worked up about data mining. Data mining itself is not an invasion of privacy. At that point you are just an anonymous set of attributes. The purpose of data mining is to understand and discover the relationships that exist among different data. It's an analysis performed on a large body of data from a large population or it doesn't work. Your personal identity is not important or useful for its purpose. Targeted advertising isn't an invasion either even if it uses information you've provided along with relationships discovered in data mining to try to put something in front of you that you may be interested in. That's actually a service. Facebook or Google are capable of providing targeted ads without providing your information to the advertisers or any other third party. The merely need to match the ads they display on your page to your characteristics. Do you think Google shares your gmail e-mails with others in order to target advertising to you based on an email's content? An invasion of privacy happens when without your permission the information you've entered is sold or given to others to use. That is what should require an "opt in" from the user. That isn't an internet specific thing either. Every company or institution that collects information from you as part of a transaction should be so restricted.
Get a better codec then!
That's why Republicans oppose the decriminalization of drugs. They oppose new taxes.
But I see that you are.
Spot on. I hate my carrier. I don't like the carrier I'll be moving to in October, but their reception is much better. There is no way in hell I'd want them providing me this service. I want something portable across devices and carriers and run by a regulated financial services company.
provides random responses to input? I can imagine loading it with a bunch of facts and it ignoring all them while it launches into an angry rant and conspiracy theories. I get that at Slashdot already.
According to this, throughout US history, most members of Congress are lawyers. http://www.legalreform-now.org/menu1_5.htm
I was responding more to your generalization about "military attitude" and the "book". Someone wrote that the military always prepares to fight the last war which is similar in sentiment to what you wrote. The first problem with that is that it's really the military of the winning side that tends to prepare the last war. The losers innovate. However, since Vietnam, the U.S. Military has worked very hard to not repeat this mistake. They've been very good at it as long as next enemy has been identified so they can analyze the threat and come up with ways of defeating it. The realm of "cyberspace" (I hate that term) is still sort of a sideshow for them like posting guards around a military base or arms depot. They and their civilian bosses haven't yet bought into the idea that the sort of threat exists here that could be far more than annoyance. So they focus on enemies they know can kill us versus threats that can annoy us. Frankly, I don't see that the "cyber threat" is our biggest worry either. I'm wondering why we aren't building a national intranet for infrastructure, finance and government that is separate from the internet. Leave the internet to be the playground, shopping mall and public library for civilians.
No one will ever need more than 640k. - Bill Gates (paraphrased) Being wrong != being an idiot. The U.S. military is capable of some amazingly original and innovative thinking. It is also capable of rigid, reactive idiocy. I'm a veteran, have relatives currently in the military and I've worked with the military on a couple of projects. There isn't "an overall attitude" other than "accomplish the mission". If cyber security were seen as "a mission" with definitions for "victory" and "defeat" they'd be right on it. In the meantime they've got enemies with bombs, chemicals and guns to worry about. How do we get the politicians and the military to see cyber security in this light before a cyber security disaster occurs?
He can also check this link: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/07/13/apples_share_of_u_s_pc_market_rises_to_nearly_11_on_strong_growth.html which shows Apple with a 10.7% share. The article explicitly says the iPad's are not included. I wonder if the GP is a paid Dell troll.
Whoooooosh! Steve Ballmer, is that you?
RIM's value proposition was always their secure messaging. A secondary proposition was their enterprise management. There weren't good alternatives for a long time. What changed was the wider availability of 2 and 3G internet access and the availability of internet technologies that could duplicate RIM's secure messaging functionality without proprietary infrastructure. Apple capitalized on that. It was there and it was coming, but Apple was the first to recognize its potential and deliver something that would use it and excite a lot of consumers by providing a strong supporting ecosystem and the best in class marketing. So, my point is that investors and corporations around the world play very close attention to what Apple does. Their track record is too strong to ignore. Quantity doesn't matter in this case.
Apple's influence is huge across IT and the industry. It's market share is now just under 11% of PCs in the US, but if you subtract out the no-margin corporate market, Apple has a much larger share of the individual and education markets. Also, it's individual consumers have more disposable income and better education then those of their rivals. Apple has dramatically changed the industry first with the iPhone and then the iPad. Their influence on Microsoft has is huge as well. Where did Windows come from? (Apple code licensed by Microsoft.) The point is that Apple's reputation for correctly predicting consumer demand and being the first to ship hugely successful products has been noticed by all of its competitors as well as consumers. Smartphones took off after the iPhone, not before. Their rivals are all investing heavily in trying to compete with the iPad.
Quantity is not the size that matters here.,
If you used logic and reason and got your facts fairly straight then you aren't a hater in my book. If you write things like "xxx sucks!" or "it's crap" or "only idiots would want that thing" then you are probably a hater because you haven't made an argument. I can tell you what I like and don't like about an iPad and what it is or isn't good for - in my view. A fanboi would be content to say that it was perfect for everything. The hater would say "it sucks".
We see it all the time here. There are rabid fans of this or that company and there are rabid haters of the same. Both groups are sick and pathetic and, I believe, doing pretty much the same thing. The problem at slashdot is that people who like or defend a product or company and who are being fairly rational and objective are often dismissed as "fanbois" by the haters. I see a lot more haters at slashdot than I do real fanbois. Most real fanbois are probably more comfortable staying with the sites where their views aren't questioned. I suppose the haters enjoy their group thinking at slashdot.
Also, the software was taken from the Exchange, not the investors. Investors pay to have their trades made through the Exchange. The Exchange just facilitates the transaction. CME is more like the casino, not the gamblers.
All the major technology companies either outsource (Apple, HP) or own manufacturing facilities in China and other third world countries. Many source from the same manufacturing plants that produce Apple's products. Apple at least inspects working conditions and releases the findings to the public as well as working to either get the problems corrected or quit doing business with the suppliers. You don't hear about problems at the Dell, HP, etc. subcontractors because if they do inspect, they don't report to the public on the problems they find. BTW, Apple products are very fast and often are at the top of the benchmarks, but you wouldn't know that since you are too outraged to use them. The Macbook Pro has consistently tested as the fastest laptop in Windows benchmarks.