"In many industries Windows and MS Office is the de facto standard. Also, even when it is possible, switching a reasonably large organisation to Linux isn't exactly cheap either."
So you've fostered a work environment where your business needs Microsoft, but rather than fronting the bill to switch to another platform you're going to whine and cry to the government that you're being charged too much for a product *you* made your de facto standard? There are no business situations where Microsoft is required there are only situations where Microsoft is a more convenient or cheaper solution.
Eh... no. With things like the patriot act passing, I'm willing to bet this "monstrous legislation" won't make this illegal for companies while quietly passing through a clause to finally clarify in legal terms the government's right to do so. Mean while 99% of Americans will go by happily applauding the talking heads for working together to fix these kinds of corporate scandals.
Uh hum, rich? Let's see... When those tax cuts came into place I was making just under 30k. $30,000 is hardly what I would call "rich" when you have a single income family with two dependants. But these tax cuts for "the rich" applied to me, in fact my taxes where $3,000 less than the previous year. That's a good chunk of money for a single income family, a years worth of formula if not more in fact.
Fast forward to the present, I make 2.5 times that now. Quite a bit more money, could be considered "rich" by some standards, but still a single income family. Now how are my taxes doing you might wonder? Well, I pay five times what I used to get taxed. FIVE TIMES!! My income has only doubled since then. How exactly does this fit with your statement "take money from the poor and give it to the rich"? Please do tell.
GM's stock might have taken a fall in the past few years, but so have many american companies. It's actually been on a short term increase since GM, Toyota and Hyundai where the only auto manufactures to post a net gain, it has not come back from it's glory days five years ago however. Another thing to keep in mind is GM is ranked #3 of the Fortune 500 for a second year running and #1 out of the auto industry (followed closely by Ford). I don't think we will see GM drop out of the market just yet. They are too big of a player, at least in the American arena. There are few places you can ship a car to in the U.S. without passing through a GM distribution hub. However, no one is recommending to buy or sell their stock right now.
This does not mean they make a good product or have great service. I can only say from my experience their trucks run very well, though I have only ever worked on them myself and have no experience with their service... which I'll take your word for it, it probably sucks, just like any other auto dealer service desk.
So if I am to understand you correctly, it's okay to racially profile and discriminate against a group of people so long as they have not been "enslaved and forced to pick cotton, being forced into death camps and gas chambers, pushed off their land and forced to live on reservations, stuffed into small container vessels and forced to work in restaurants and laundries and railroads for virtually no pay".? You've likely reached a new level of ignorant bigotry for this forum, congratulations.
"You have to admit that there are a lot of people that would flock to such a provider"
If you have a choice that is. In my city, our choice for phone service is Quest and that's it... For a while I thought Vonage was an option until I tried it and discovered the really poor audio quality, mostly due to poor Internet connectivity.
Zend Encoder first obfuscates function and variable names in addition to stripping comments and whitespace as you speculate, but it also "encrypts" the files into a "binary" form. When you open a Zend Encoded file you get a bunch of text that looks like you just opened a PNG in vi. An example of two lines of PHP code encoded with Zend Encoder looks like this:
A Zend Encoded PHP file will not run with a standard PHP install. It requires Zend Optimizer, a free download which allows these files to run. According to the docs Zend Optimizer also makes your PHP scripts run faster, I've not really seen a difference.
Adam and Kari drove normally, then while talking on a cell phone and also while drunk. They had officers taking breathalyzer tests to get their BAC. In the show they determined that they where equally bad at driving using a cell phone as they where while drunk. Scores where done by a driving instructor in the car with them during all the tests.
Countless ones. Altohugh not without *needing* to. Back when I was doing my time in the help desk I lost count of how many people called in with a broken IE and no backup browser. Nearly all of them allowed me to show them how to mess with ftp.exe from the command line to download Netscape. Most of them kept it, some later thanked me for showing them Netscape.
Correction: "multiply that by the number of Cities in the USA" where recharging stations are available within reasonable quantity
Outside California, recharging stations are sparse at best. These cars have a range of 150 miles on a good day. That gives you a total distance of ~75 miles away from home. Don't get me wrong, that's great for people like me who work 6 miles from home... but for most Americans, this is simply not an option. When I lived in California I'd drive almost 150 miles a day just to get to work and back, excluding a trip to the grocery store here and there. A hybrid is a much more practical solution for most people. One day you'll be able to charge your car at enough locations that EV's will be desirable.
We're at a catch-22 here. No one is going to build recharging stations until people use them and no one is going to buy these cars until the recharging stations are there. Once people are actually willing to buy them, someone *will* build, market and sell them.
"THAT'S what I'm saying. It's not profitable to sell EVs over gasoline-powered autos. That is why you won't see them mass-produced and heavily advertised"
Is it not a bit naive to expect a company to do something that is not profitable? Does it make them evil, or point to a conspiracy? More concisely, would *you* spend hundreds of millions of dollars in development and advertising for a product that sells for $30,000 which nets just over 1,200 total sales in 6 years? If you did, how long do you think your share holders will keep their money invested in you?
"but they'll yank that A off the market faster than you can blink."
Not to say this does not happen, but the RAV4EV, one of the best selling EV's, was on the market for 6 years before being pulled due to low sales. I cannot see the value in placing ads for a product that just does not sell. As a business owner myself, I can't justify spending money on a product that's just not selling... even if it is better in quality than my other products. I need to invest in performing products to keep paying the bills, no doubt it's the same with any other company.
...it was apparently *too good*. Demand real high, good sales, but they stopped selling them. gee, wonder why??
~300 cars sold it's ending yearwith an average of 208 per year over the RAV4EV's lifetime does not scream "real high" demand, or "good sales" to me. Mod me down if you like, but let's be realistic here, with sales like that *NO* car company can afford to stay in business. Until people actually *BUY* the cars, EV's will remain a pipe dream.
Usually I'll wait till these types of games drop in price before buying them. The day of the "Hot Coffee" news I immediately bought the game. This was mostly for two reasons, firstly I was not sure if they where going to be able to sell the game anymore, and secondly if they continued to sell it they might be forced to sell a crippled version. I'm sure others did the same. They did not get an extra sale from me, but they did get an extra $10-20.
What about the Xeon? I get them for a few bucks over $200, pretty affordable for a 64bit dual core chip. Comparable AMD 64bit chips where easily $90-120 more. I'm not up to date on win64 (or win* for that matter), but does it not work with the Xeon EM64 chips? The whole system: 1U case, 2x Xeon's, 120Gb RAID (2x 80Gb), 4Gb ram runs me about $1,800.
Slashdot Mirror
For anyone else wondering where Anonymous Coward got this response:
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1588
"iPod was initially Mac-only, Firewire-only, and had no music store attached to it"
Good point. I never even considered getting an iPod until these three things changed... now I own two.
"In many industries Windows and MS Office is the de facto standard. Also, even when it is possible, switching a reasonably large organisation to Linux isn't exactly cheap either."
So you've fostered a work environment where your business needs Microsoft, but rather than fronting the bill to switch to another platform you're going to whine and cry to the government that you're being charged too much for a product *you* made your de facto standard? There are no business situations where Microsoft is required there are only situations where Microsoft is a more convenient or cheaper solution.
You don't have to install their crappy software anymore? That's odd. I was sure they would never get away from that big nasty ad laden application.
Eh... no. With things like the patriot act passing, I'm willing to bet this "monstrous legislation" won't make this illegal for companies while quietly passing through a clause to finally clarify in legal terms the government's right to do so. Mean while 99% of Americans will go by happily applauding the talking heads for working together to fix these kinds of corporate scandals.
You may or may not have seen this, but this is the system I support:
http://fairtax.org/
No room for abuse, and truly low income people benefit from yearly rebates.
See, the President's job is ultimately pretty meaningless, he could be replaced with a very small shell script.
I think you're on to something here...
#!/bin/ksh
renice +19 -p $$ >/dev/null 2>&1
for NEW_BILL in 'ls $senate_bills_dir'
do
VOTE_PERCENT = 'grep vote|cut -d ":" -f 2'
if ["$VOTE_PERCENT" > "50" ]; then
echo $PRES_SIG > $NEW_BILL
else
cat $NEW_BILL | mail -s "Try again" $all_senate_email
fi
done
Uh hum, rich? Let's see... When those tax cuts came into place I was making just under 30k. $30,000 is hardly what I would call "rich" when you have a single income family with two dependants. But these tax cuts for "the rich" applied to me, in fact my taxes where $3,000 less than the previous year. That's a good chunk of money for a single income family, a years worth of formula if not more in fact.
Fast forward to the present, I make 2.5 times that now. Quite a bit more money, could be considered "rich" by some standards, but still a single income family. Now how are my taxes doing you might wonder? Well, I pay five times what I used to get taxed. FIVE TIMES!! My income has only doubled since then. How exactly does this fit with your statement "take money from the poor and give it to the rich"? Please do tell.
GM's stock might have taken a fall in the past few years, but so have many american companies. It's actually been on a short term increase since GM, Toyota and Hyundai where the only auto manufactures to post a net gain, it has not come back from it's glory days five years ago however. Another thing to keep in mind is GM is ranked #3 of the Fortune 500 for a second year running and #1 out of the auto industry (followed closely by Ford). I don't think we will see GM drop out of the market just yet. They are too big of a player, at least in the American arena. There are few places you can ship a car to in the U.S. without passing through a GM distribution hub. However, no one is recommending to buy or sell their stock right now.
This does not mean they make a good product or have great service. I can only say from my experience their trucks run very well, though I have only ever worked on them myself and have no experience with their service... which I'll take your word for it, it probably sucks, just like any other auto dealer service desk.
So if I am to understand you correctly, it's okay to racially profile and discriminate against a group of people so long as they have not been "enslaved and forced to pick cotton, being forced into death camps and gas chambers, pushed off their land and forced to live on reservations, stuffed into small container vessels and forced to work in restaurants and laundries and railroads for virtually no pay".? You've likely reached a new level of ignorant bigotry for this forum, congratulations.
"You have to admit that there are a lot of people that would flock to such a provider"
If you have a choice that is. In my city, our choice for phone service is Quest and that's it... For a while I thought Vonage was an option until I tried it and discovered the really poor audio quality, mostly due to poor Internet connectivity.
Zend Encoder first obfuscates function and variable names in addition to stripping comments and whitespace as you speculate, but it also "encrypts" the files into a "binary" form. When you open a Zend Encoded file you get a bunch of text that looks like you just opened a PNG in vi. An example of two lines of PHP code encoded with Zend Encoder looks like this:
r ¥Jè'&áÆÔ@`!ÀÛ¥pUÈ9¼--Y--äEdëýÉÃóEòðB>ðéjòz½Y
Y2\½\7v~sâù=Ãs"...p1ÅZ,á'¼¼--E"lo"ÑÌX;ë÷f(TM)yöz(
o©Z(ê5"*øÏÏÏÎ>:Ï7` ÛÝæt±:&UM"È÷ëåêSW¼nR éf3ýääl±±8&oe7l£0XMwév1;y|...ÊihÉfÑõùj
A Zend Encoded PHP file will not run with a standard PHP install. It requires Zend Optimizer, a free download which allows these files to run. According to the docs Zend Optimizer also makes your PHP scripts run faster, I've not really seen a difference.
Install Crossover Office... Download/Install Internet Explorer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(season_2 )#Cell_Phones_vs._Drunk_Driving
Adam and Kari drove normally, then while talking on a cell phone and also while drunk. They had officers taking breathalyzer tests to get their BAC. In the show they determined that they where equally bad at driving using a cell phone as they where while drunk. Scores where done by a driving instructor in the car with them during all the tests.
Countless ones. Altohugh not without *needing* to. Back when I was doing my time in the help desk I lost count of how many people called in with a broken IE and no backup browser. Nearly all of them allowed me to show them how to mess with ftp.exe from the command line to download Netscape. Most of them kept it, some later thanked me for showing them Netscape.
Correction: "multiply that by the number of Cities in the USA" where recharging stations are available within reasonable quantity
Outside California, recharging stations are sparse at best. These cars have a range of 150 miles on a good day. That gives you a total distance of ~75 miles away from home. Don't get me wrong, that's great for people like me who work 6 miles from home... but for most Americans, this is simply not an option. When I lived in California I'd drive almost 150 miles a day just to get to work and back, excluding a trip to the grocery store here and there. A hybrid is a much more practical solution for most people. One day you'll be able to charge your car at enough locations that EV's will be desirable.
We're at a catch-22 here. No one is going to build recharging stations until people use them and no one is going to buy these cars until the recharging stations are there. Once people are actually willing to buy them, someone *will* build, market and sell them.
"THAT'S what I'm saying. It's not profitable to sell EVs over gasoline-powered autos. That is why you won't see them mass-produced and heavily advertised"
Is it not a bit naive to expect a company to do something that is not profitable? Does it make them evil, or point to a conspiracy? More concisely, would *you* spend hundreds of millions of dollars in development and advertising for a product that sells for $30,000 which nets just over 1,200 total sales in 6 years? If you did, how long do you think your share holders will keep their money invested in you?
"but they'll yank that A off the market faster than you can blink."
Not to say this does not happen, but the RAV4EV, one of the best selling EV's, was on the market for 6 years before being pulled due to low sales. I cannot see the value in placing ads for a product that just does not sell. As a business owner myself, I can't justify spending money on a product that's just not selling... even if it is better in quality than my other products. I need to invest in performing products to keep paying the bills, no doubt it's the same with any other company.
...it was apparently *too good*. Demand real high, good sales, but they stopped selling them. gee, wonder why??
~300 cars sold it's ending year with an average of 208 per year over the RAV4EV's lifetime does not scream "real high" demand, or "good sales" to me. Mod me down if you like, but let's be realistic here, with sales like that *NO* car company can afford to stay in business. Until people actually *BUY* the cars, EV's will remain a pipe dream.
ERROR: Unknown column 'Intelligence' in 'where clause'
Sorry, it's China who does the most executions, not the U.S.:
"China performed more than 3400 executions in 2004, amounting to more than 90% of executions worldwide." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty
The US is in third place at 1.6% of all executions, behind Iran. Maybe next time your knee jerk U.S. response will have merit.
Usually I'll wait till these types of games drop in price before buying them. The day of the "Hot Coffee" news I immediately bought the game. This was mostly for two reasons, firstly I was not sure if they where going to be able to sell the game anymore, and secondly if they continued to sell it they might be forced to sell a crippled version. I'm sure others did the same. They did not get an extra sale from me, but they did get an extra $10-20.
What about the Xeon? I get them for a few bucks over $200, pretty affordable for a 64bit dual core chip. Comparable AMD 64bit chips where easily $90-120 more. I'm not up to date on win64 (or win* for that matter), but does it not work with the Xeon EM64 chips? The whole system: 1U case, 2x Xeon's, 120Gb RAID (2x 80Gb), 4Gb ram runs me about $1,800.
I used to use a peice of wood for a computer case... I'll try the paper bag next...
This is likely the most distasteful comment I've seen on slashdot, especially considering the contents of the thread. You ought to be ashamed.