Yes. There's a similar story in "The Gold Plated Porsche". Porsche is (was) a small car company. Doors, trunks, hoods etc would occasionally not fit properly during final fitting. They would get driven out to a lot and a team of "experts" would go over them and hammer on them with a rubber mallet until all the parts fit more or less correctly. Porsche advertised this fact and billed Porsches as being hand built. Toyota doesn't have these fixit lots. Toyota took one look at this lot on the Porsche factory campus and engineered the problem out completely. Find the problem with the fit and finish, correct it, move on and find the next problem.
You've clearly never used netflix? Which is the same price and featureset, the main difference being that there are no ads on netflix's service.
I really think Hulu shot themselves in the foot here. it's important and all to get your buisness profitable, but I think they should have started off with a $6/mo service without commercials, and then transition in 2011 or 2012 to a $9/mo ad supported service, with $15/mo ad free. With the exception of recent TV episodes, Hulu doesn't have a clear advantage over Netflix, and in most cases you can watch recent episodes online for free in other places already (abc.com, cbs.com, comedycentral.com etc etc). I suppose there is the convenience factor, but how far behind is the netflix ipad app? Not very, I would imagine.
I agree with Caimlas, $10 a month for netflix is a much better deal. There's enough past seasons of TV shows on netflix to fulfill my entertainment needs. I am perfectly fine being one year behind the TV curve via netflix DVDs.
Hulu must have gotten royally shafted on their licencing terms to have to advertise on a paid TV stream; netflix and hulu are offering essentially the same services at the same prices but one is with and the other is without ads. As someone long used to not seeing ads, it's easy to choose which service I'd prefer.
The google search term you're looking for is "UDP". That's one industry term for wifi calling. Most blackberries sold for tmobile since 2008 have UDP. An older BB curve (8300?) is less than $100 new and ~$70 used, and is easily unlocked, and readily accepts SIM cards.
Bonus: It also works as a regular cell phone off campus!
Slashdot might as well add that "slight" important fact. The second time around. Instead of spinning it poorly. Makes me think they've got Doctorow* at the reins these days....
The economy is bankrupting the UK. Fark puts it succinctly: "Facing a massive budget deficit, the UK to cut welfare, increase the VAT to 20 percent, and impose a new tax on anyone who brings one of those damn vuvuzelas back from the World Cup". Chancellor George Osborne is doing what all countries should do in that situation but are afraid to do, due to the unlikelihood of reelection. The country is damn near bankruptcy, the whole European continent is over-leveraged on debt and Britain is doing their best to make an example by balancing their budget. Tax handouts to the entertainment industry don't help balance the budget. Insert snarky comment about US legislators growing some balls and balancing our budget here...
LONDON -- Setting the scene for years of potential strife with the powerful public-sector unions and their allies in the Labour Party, Britain's new coalition government on Tuesday unveiled the most severe package of spending cuts and tax increases since the early days of Margaret Thatcher's era.
George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, held the budget box as he left 11 Downing Street for Parliament on Tuesday. After only six weeks in office, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron took what his coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats acknowledged was a historic gamble: that austerity measures will help balance the government's books without pitching the country into a double-dip recession.
The cuts and tax increases, including average budget reductions of 25 percent for almost all government departments over the next five years, will make Britain a leader among European countries, including Ireland, Greece and Spain, competing to show they can slash spending and appease investors worried about surging debt. But the sharp reductions defy conventional economic wisdom, which holds that governments should increase spending to stimulate growth when the private sector is weak.
The steps outlined to the House of Commons by George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, would cut the annual government deficit by nearly $180 billion over the next five years, shrinking Britain's public sector and instituting tough reductions in public housing benefits, disability allowances and other previously sacrosanct aspects of the country's $285 billion welfare budget.
Only health and international aid spending would be protected from the 25 percent cuts for government departments by 2015, the steepest fiscal spending reductions since the 1930s. Mr. Osborne also announced a two-year wage freeze for all but the lowest paid among Britain's six million public servants and a three-year freeze on benefits paid to parents for rearing children, in addition to new medical screening for people claiming disability benefits, part of a bid to cut $16 billion from the annual welfare budget.
Mr. Osborne also announced a raft of tax increases, though he was at pains to say that the government's plan to sharply reduce the country's $1.4 trillion national debt would rest on making roughly four pounds in spending cuts for every pound in tax increases, a point of considerable political weight in a country that is already among the highest-taxed in Europe.
The new taxes include an increase next year to 20 percent from 17.5 percent in the value-added tax on most goods and services, and an increase in the capital gains tax, to a new high of 28 percent, to curb what Mr. Osborne described as rich people in Britain "paying less tax than the people who clean for them." At the same time, changes in income tax will remove nearly 900,000 of Britain's poorest people from the income tax system altogether, and corporate taxes will also be reduced over a five-year period, to 24 percent from 28 percent.
IIRC 300 baud is about as fast as you can speak the individual characters as they appear on the screen (hence the invention of Vi) -- I would presume 2400 baud (0.24kb/s, more or less) would be completely doable over a voice connection, and maintaining a 9600-14.4 connection might be touch and go. 300 baud is absolute torture even on a TTY display; with 2400 baud you can do basic things like check email and instant message in real time (barely). Surely there's a study that was done on this somewhere on the web?
Just consider this. I make zero claims about it's accuracy, but considering the fragile state of the global economy, particularly in the EU right now, another massive sell-off involving a 25% drop in US stock values would cause a ripple effect that at the time (and possibly still now) tank the EU financial markets and completely obliterate the financial mess Greece is already in. This would likely cascade back to the US causing a further sell off in US markets, and in global markets outside the US (China, Singapore, India, South America etc) resulting in chaos and mass financial panic not seen since the great depression. It's not entirely implausible that the US government would put in place a safeguard to buy up all the stock when a crash of that magnitude begins to happen. Global markets were still strong in the fall of 2008, but at this point they are considerably weaker than they were 2 years ago. Buying billions of dollars of stock at full price right as the market starts tanking to prevent a global financial meltdown (big scary words, huh?) isn't really that expensive as long as it works. Over a period of weeks or months the government can sell back all that stock they bought at or above what they paid for it. It costs almost nothing, and helps put the brakes on a massive global sell-off that would truly plunge us into the next global depression. The only flaw in this plan is when a) the public realizes the government is propping up the (currently still overvalued) stock market or b) the sell off is so big that even the government can't cushion the entire blow and ends up eating more overpriced stock than they'll ever be able to sell off.
Well, thanks for listening to Hadlock's conspiracy minute. Hope you enjoyed this installment, and come back next week where we'll discuss alien abductions and their involvement and effect with the Illuminati.
Only slightly less pedantic. Although I never pass up an opportunity to correct people on something they were supposed to master in first grade (punctuation).:)
I don't think we were required to learn the basics of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (1977; 7th ed., 2009) until 5th or 6th grade, however. The earliest I remember being graded for style was getting marks off for not underlining the title of a book in a handwritten essay in 3rd grade.
Wild. Typically states order marshal law, not the federal government (although it's possible); do you know under what state or federal law (or category of law) they were legally able to turn off the phones? I'd love to read the wikipedia article pertaining to that. Presumably you could still call 911?
Here in America, we Americans don't put apostrophes in "American's" unless it's possessive. i.e. "Scientific American's in-depth article on electronic Vuvezeula noise filtering". It's possible apostrophe rules are different where you live, such as England or South Africa, but I doubt it:)
We don't have an emergency broadcast system via landline (that I know of). What is your opinion on the government being able to turn off the phone system in case of emergency? I think that's more relevant here. Broadcast Radio and TV isn't a two-way communications system. Even during 9/11 the government only asked people to make "only essential calls to free up lines for emergency workers".
I think that the problem stems from the fact that anyone buying a Wii bought after this date, or installs the update prior to finding out about Wii homebrew, may be locked out of homebrew forever.
The economy is bankrupting the UK. Fark puts it succinctly: "Facing a massive budget deficit, the UK to cut welfare, increase the VAT to 20 percent, and impose a new tax on anyone who brings one of those damn vuvuzelas back from the World Cup". Chancellor George Osborne is doing what all countries should do in that situation but are afraid to do, due to the unlikelihood of reelection. The country is damn near bankruptcy, the whole European continent is over-leveraged on debt and Britain is doing their best to make an example by balancing their budget. Tax handouts to the entertainment industry don't help balance the budget. Insert snarky comment about US legislators growing some balls and balancing our budget here...
Here's some more info on the subject:
from the NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/europe/23britain.html?hpw Britain Unveils Emergency Budget LONDON -- Setting the scene for years of potential strife with the powerful public-sector unions and their allies in the Labour Party, Britain's new coalition government on Tuesday unveiled the most severe package of spending cuts and tax increases since the early days of Margaret Thatcher's era.
George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, held the budget box as he left 11 Downing Street for Parliament on Tuesday. After only six weeks in office, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron took what his coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats acknowledged was a historic gamble: that austerity measures will help balance the government's books without pitching the country into a double-dip recession.
The cuts and tax increases, including average budget reductions of 25 percent for almost all government departments over the next five years, will make Britain a leader among European countries, including Ireland, Greece and Spain, competing to show they can slash spending and appease investors worried about surging debt. But the sharp reductions defy conventional economic wisdom, which holds that governments should increase spending to stimulate growth when the private sector is weak.
The steps outlined to the House of Commons by George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, would cut the annual government deficit by nearly $180 billion over the next five years, shrinking Britain's public sector and instituting tough reductions in public housing benefits, disability allowances and other previously sacrosanct aspects of the country's $285 billion welfare budget.
Only health and international aid spending would be protected from the 25 percent cuts for government departments by 2015, the steepest fiscal spending reductions since the 1930s. Mr. Osborne also announced a two-year wage freeze for all but the lowest paid among Britain's six million public servants and a three-year freeze on benefits paid to parents for rearing children, in addition to new medical screening for people claiming disability benefits, part of a bid to cut $16 billion from the annual welfare budget.
Mr. Osborne also announced a raft of tax increases, though he was at pains to say that the government's plan to sharply reduce the country's $1.4 trillion national debt would rest on making roughly four pounds in spending cuts for every pound in tax increases, a point of considerable political weight in a country that is already among the highest-taxed in Europe.
The new taxes include an increase next year to 20 percent from 17.5 percent in the value-added tax on most goods and services, and an increase in the capital gains tax, to a new high of 28 percent, to curb what Mr. Osborne described as rich people in Britain "paying less tax than the people who clean for them." At the same time, changes in income tax will remove nearly 900,000 of Britain's poorest people from the income tax system altogether, and corporate taxes will also be reduced over a five-year period, to 24 percent from 28 percent.
I don't really understand all the Doctorow love here on/.... it's worse than the Pro-Apple/Anti-Slashdot moderation that goes on. Say one bad thing about Doctorow or BoingBoing (that he shamelessly uses to self-promote) here on Slashdot and you get modded down into oblivion. There's nothing in klein's post that is specifically trolling; a lot of people share this opinion. Being disenfranchised with Doctorow usually means you've been reading BoingBoing long enough to pick up on the bad things about it; klein clearly has. He deserves an "insightful" mod, not "troll".
Righto, however technically the troll is correct as well. The downside to not opting in is that you are now stuck with a phone and possibly outdated apps and OS that you can't update until you pay/agree to their NSA "time and space tracking" ransom.
It's not obvious this contest is a direct result of Deep Water oil rig. I'm pretty sure they came up with the contest, had the design firms design and then construct and transport the houses to their current location long before Deep Water self destructed. For solar companies, Deep Water is just a happy coincidence. Unless... *dons tin foil hat*
A few days ago my buddy emailed me with some infographic about "how few" solar panels it would take to power the entire planet. Now this. I'll agree there's money to be made in Solar, and it's green(ish), but has anyone else noticed just a huge marketing push in the last few weeks for solar? I guess it makes more sense to market solar energy during the summer (in the northern hemisphere) but why now? It's convenient that the BP oil spill is happening now, but this sort of thing takes lots of perpetration, time and money. I'm guessing it's in response to the Cape Wind project finally being approved? Anyone have any more info on why NOW they're doing such a large marketing push for solar? Is wind that big of a threat to solar?
It's interesting that they're doing this in Spain, where wind support is popular and has long had government support, with several large installations already.
The FDA could start a program named (yes really) "Snake Oil Salesman Licence". That way you're A) Registered with the FDA (papertrail) and B) the consumer is aware that the proprietor isn't selling medically acknowledged remedies, which could infact actually be Snake Oil. The media would have a field day with this; "Local Snake Oil Salesman promotes new weight loss drug", "Global Snake Oil Salesman Corporation X promotes new erectile dysfunction drug", "Snake Oil Salesmen promote dangerous new stem cell therapy in Thailand" etc etc...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. There's a similar story in "The Gold Plated Porsche". Porsche is (was) a small car company. Doors, trunks, hoods etc would occasionally not fit properly during final fitting. They would get driven out to a lot and a team of "experts" would go over them and hammer on them with a rubber mallet until all the parts fit more or less correctly. Porsche advertised this fact and billed Porsches as being hand built. Toyota doesn't have these fixit lots. Toyota took one look at this lot on the Porsche factory campus and engineered the problem out completely. Find the problem with the fit and finish, correct it, move on and find the next problem.
That is all. It's a game. Get over it. Anyone for a round of pistols only Counter-Strike?
Have you considered writing for The Daily Show? Or how can I subscribe to your newsletter?
Yes, that's basically the definition of "bias"
;)
You probably think Fox News' tagline "fair and accurate" is complete truth as well
.
/I make no claim that the liberal media is any less biased
You've clearly never used netflix? Which is the same price and featureset, the main difference being that there are no ads on netflix's service.
I really think Hulu shot themselves in the foot here. it's important and all to get your buisness profitable, but I think they should have started off with a $6/mo service without commercials, and then transition in 2011 or 2012 to a $9/mo ad supported service, with $15/mo ad free. With the exception of recent TV episodes, Hulu doesn't have a clear advantage over Netflix, and in most cases you can watch recent episodes online for free in other places already (abc.com, cbs.com, comedycentral.com etc etc). I suppose there is the convenience factor, but how far behind is the netflix ipad app? Not very, I would imagine.
I agree with Caimlas, $10 a month for netflix is a much better deal. There's enough past seasons of TV shows on netflix to fulfill my entertainment needs. I am perfectly fine being one year behind the TV curve via netflix DVDs.
Hulu must have gotten royally shafted on their licencing terms to have to advertise on a paid TV stream; netflix and hulu are offering essentially the same services at the same prices but one is with and the other is without ads. As someone long used to not seeing ads, it's easy to choose which service I'd prefer.
Then report it to an admin as spam and stop wasting everyone's time
Unless you want to rewrite it for me?
The google search term you're looking for is "UDP". That's one industry term for wifi calling. Most blackberries sold for tmobile since 2008 have UDP. An older BB curve (8300?) is less than $100 new and ~$70 used, and is easily unlocked, and readily accepts SIM cards.
Bonus: It also works as a regular cell phone off campus!
Slashdot might as well add that "slight" important fact. The second time around. Instead of spinning it poorly. Makes me think they've got Doctorow* at the reins these days....
*Same as John Katz
The economy is bankrupting the UK. Fark puts it succinctly: "Facing a massive budget deficit, the UK to cut welfare, increase the VAT to 20 percent, and impose a new tax on anyone who brings one of those damn vuvuzelas back from the World Cup". Chancellor George Osborne is doing what all countries should do in that situation but are afraid to do, due to the unlikelihood of reelection. The country is damn near bankruptcy, the whole European continent is over-leveraged on debt and Britain is doing their best to make an example by balancing their budget. Tax handouts to the entertainment industry don't help balance the budget. Insert snarky comment about US legislators growing some balls and balancing our budget here...
Here's some more info on the subject:
from the NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/europe/23britain.html?hpw
IIRC 300 baud is about as fast as you can speak the individual characters as they appear on the screen (hence the invention of Vi) -- I would presume 2400 baud (0.24kb/s, more or less) would be completely doable over a voice connection, and maintaining a 9600-14.4 connection might be touch and go. 300 baud is absolute torture even on a TTY display; with 2400 baud you can do basic things like check email and instant message in real time (barely). Surely there's a study that was done on this somewhere on the web?
Just consider this. I make zero claims about it's accuracy, but considering the fragile state of the global economy, particularly in the EU right now, another massive sell-off involving a 25% drop in US stock values would cause a ripple effect that at the time (and possibly still now) tank the EU financial markets and completely obliterate the financial mess Greece is already in. This would likely cascade back to the US causing a further sell off in US markets, and in global markets outside the US (China, Singapore, India, South America etc) resulting in chaos and mass financial panic not seen since the great depression. It's not entirely implausible that the US government would put in place a safeguard to buy up all the stock when a crash of that magnitude begins to happen. Global markets were still strong in the fall of 2008, but at this point they are considerably weaker than they were 2 years ago. Buying billions of dollars of stock at full price right as the market starts tanking to prevent a global financial meltdown (big scary words, huh?) isn't really that expensive as long as it works. Over a period of weeks or months the government can sell back all that stock they bought at or above what they paid for it. It costs almost nothing, and helps put the brakes on a massive global sell-off that would truly plunge us into the next global depression. The only flaw in this plan is when a) the public realizes the government is propping up the (currently still overvalued) stock market or b) the sell off is so big that even the government can't cushion the entire blow and ends up eating more overpriced stock than they'll ever be able to sell off.
Well, thanks for listening to Hadlock's conspiracy minute. Hope you enjoyed this installment, and come back next week where we'll discuss alien abductions and their involvement and effect with the Illuminati.
Only slightly less pedantic. Although I never pass up an opportunity to correct people on something they were supposed to master in first grade (punctuation). :)
I don't think we were required to learn the basics of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (1977; 7th ed., 2009) until 5th or 6th grade, however. The earliest I remember being graded for style was getting marks off for not underlining the title of a book in a handwritten essay in 3rd grade.
Wild. Typically states order marshal law, not the federal government (although it's possible); do you know under what state or federal law (or category of law) they were legally able to turn off the phones? I'd love to read the wikipedia article pertaining to that. Presumably you could still call 911?
Here in America, we Americans don't put apostrophes in "American's" unless it's possessive. i.e. "Scientific American's in-depth article on electronic Vuvezeula noise filtering". It's possible apostrophe rules are different where you live, such as England or South Africa, but I doubt it :)
http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
We don't have an emergency broadcast system via landline (that I know of). What is your opinion on the government being able to turn off the phone system in case of emergency? I think that's more relevant here. Broadcast Radio and TV isn't a two-way communications system. Even during 9/11 the government only asked people to make "only essential calls to free up lines for emergency workers".
I think that the problem stems from the fact that anyone buying a Wii bought after this date, or installs the update prior to finding out about Wii homebrew, may be locked out of homebrew forever.
The economy is bankrupting the UK. Fark puts it succinctly: "Facing a massive budget deficit, the UK to cut welfare, increase the VAT to 20 percent, and impose a new tax on anyone who brings one of those damn vuvuzelas back from the World Cup". Chancellor George Osborne is doing what all countries should do in that situation but are afraid to do, due to the unlikelihood of reelection. The country is damn near bankruptcy, the whole European continent is over-leveraged on debt and Britain is doing their best to make an example by balancing their budget. Tax handouts to the entertainment industry don't help balance the budget. Insert snarky comment about US legislators growing some balls and balancing our budget here...
Here's some more info on the subject:
I don't really understand all the Doctorow love here on /. ... it's worse than the Pro-Apple/Anti-Slashdot moderation that goes on. Say one bad thing about Doctorow or BoingBoing (that he shamelessly uses to self-promote) here on Slashdot and you get modded down into oblivion. There's nothing in klein's post that is specifically trolling; a lot of people share this opinion. Being disenfranchised with Doctorow usually means you've been reading BoingBoing long enough to pick up on the bad things about it; klein clearly has. He deserves an "insightful" mod, not "troll".
Righto, however technically the troll is correct as well. The downside to not opting in is that you are now stuck with a phone and possibly outdated apps and OS that you can't update until you pay/agree to their NSA "time and space tracking" ransom.
It's not obvious this contest is a direct result of Deep Water oil rig. I'm pretty sure they came up with the contest, had the design firms design and then construct and transport the houses to their current location long before Deep Water self destructed. For solar companies, Deep Water is just a happy coincidence. Unless... *dons tin foil hat*
A few days ago my buddy emailed me with some infographic about "how few" solar panels it would take to power the entire planet. Now this. I'll agree there's money to be made in Solar, and it's green(ish), but has anyone else noticed just a huge marketing push in the last few weeks for solar? I guess it makes more sense to market solar energy during the summer (in the northern hemisphere) but why now? It's convenient that the BP oil spill is happening now, but this sort of thing takes lots of perpetration, time and money. I'm guessing it's in response to the Cape Wind project finally being approved? Anyone have any more info on why NOW they're doing such a large marketing push for solar? Is wind that big of a threat to solar?
It's interesting that they're doing this in Spain, where wind support is popular and has long had government support, with several large installations already.
The FDA could start a program named (yes really) "Snake Oil Salesman Licence". That way you're A) Registered with the FDA (papertrail) and B) the consumer is aware that the proprietor isn't selling medically acknowledged remedies, which could infact actually be Snake Oil. The media would have a field day with this; "Local Snake Oil Salesman promotes new weight loss drug", "Global Snake Oil Salesman Corporation X promotes new erectile dysfunction drug", "Snake Oil Salesmen promote dangerous new stem cell therapy in Thailand" etc etc...
And/Or; how much of that 98 million is directed into his golden parachute fund for getting the loan?